#17 Strip Away Your Cultural Conditioning To Dream Bigger + Build Better
Last fall I saw Miki Agrawal speak at Marketing Brew’s conference, “The Brief” and was blown away by her authentic energy. She embodies the definition of leading with curiosity and wonder.
Miki is the Co-Founder and former CEO of THINX (period underwear) & Tushy (bidet attachment). Miki proudly shares that she invents products in taboo categories– like periods and poop.
In its first giveback partnership, THINX helped over 100,000 girls in Uganda return to school.
Your Cultural Conditioning
Cultural Conditioning is the process by which people internalize and conform to the beliefs, values, norms, and practices of their culture. Whenever we wonder ‘how is this happening in the world?’ or ‘why do we do things like this, it doesn’t make sense’ … that’s cultural conditioning.
In Miki Agrawal’s Book Disrupt-Her she “disrupts” 13 ideas we’re accustom to because of our cultural conditioning from our childhoods and societal norms. The first one is as follows:
“You can still live in a childlike state of curiosity, playfulness, and awe and be a responsible adult, on and off the job.”
At the childhood stage in our lives we believe anything is possible. We believe we can do anything and be anything.
Miki shares a story in her book about Gordon MacKenzie, Creative Director for Hallmark cards, where he volunteered every month at an elementary school and asked the same question to each class. “How many artists are in the room?” – the 1st graders jumped from their chairs and raised both of their hands. All of the children thought they were artists. By 2nd grade only half raised their hands to shoulder height without jumping out of their seats and by the 3rd grade only 1/3 of students timidly raised their hands.
We are so playful and creative as children and then cultural conditioning shifts us in a direction to be “cool” “normal” “fit in” – less creative. We stifle our creativity as we get older and fall in line with the social norms we’ve been conditioned to respect.
Going against our cultural conditioning is hard, shifting culture feels slow and impossible, but understanding and identifying your beliefs is the most freeing feeling in the world.
What beliefs do you loosely hold that if you let go would radically change your life’s direction?
It’s not too late to explore your creative side. It might even lead to inventing the next THINX.
About building innovative products…
The only way to truly innovate is to question your cultural conditioning and the way the world already works. And that is hard to do in your every day environment with your typical schedule and way of doing.
Use this guide to get out of your head and into a state of new creation:
01 Seek creative inspiration + prioritize learning
Read books like Miki Agrawal’s Disrupt-Her, study Creators by listening to podcasts like Jay Clouse’s Creator Science, go hiking in the mountains, try sketching, take a cooking class. Learning is pivotal to creating– it’s the only way to stay continuously inspired.
Miki reserves every Friday in her schedule for learning + creativity. Be like Miki. And if you think that is impossible for you… is that you speaking or your cultural conditioning?
You are capable of generating your own creative inspiration. Everyone is creative.
02 Go somewhere new, somewhere beautiful
Breaking the rhythm of your everyday context can be incredibly inspirational and invite new ideas and energy into your creative work. Try a new coffee shop, explore a new city, go to the beach, immerse yourself in a new culture.
Allow yourself to question everything around you and use all of your senses to let this new place reinvigorate you with a childlike state of wonder.
03 Deeply understand a problem to be solved
What do you find yourself insanely curious about? What have you discovered as a problem that effects many people through your work and life experiences?
What are you frustrated by? Are others frustrated by it? Sara Blakely didn’t have a background in e-comm or fashion when she bootstrapped SPANX. She was just a frustrated consumer.
04 Generate 100 ideas as off the wall as possible
In a new environment outside of your cultural walls and regular place of being… what can you come up with to solve this problem? Don’t shy away from things that you have 0 idea how to actually create or build. Figuring out HOW comes later.
Let all the ideas pour out even if you’re laughing while you do it. You may think you’re insane but the definition of insanity is doing something again and again expecting a different result.
“Fresh ideas come when we play like children” - Miki Agrawal
05 Experiment with the best ideas
Choose a few ideas to experiment with and don’t shy away from the off the wall ones! How can you test the concept? How can you get it in front of people?
Think scrappy. The idea at this stage is to validate your idea.
Airbnb founders Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia created a basic website with photos of their own apartment and tried renting it out. When it was easy for them to rent their space they knew they had validated their idea.
Rent the Runway founders Jennifer Hyman and Jennifer Fleiss also put up a basic website and then manually fulfilled all requests and personally delivered dresses to customers. The hands-on approach helped them validate the demand and improve their business model.
If you’d like help with this process in your business or niche this is the exact process I help you work through in my power hour workshop. Let’s get creative, together!