Breakfast and Brainstorming: The Chicago Debut of Creative Mornings

The highly-attended premiere of Creative Mornings in Chicago proves inspiring, thanks to a motivating talk by Jim Coudal, of Coudal Partners

I volunteered this morning to open the door and greet the flood of creatives eager to attend today’s Creative Mornings, a monthly breakfast lecture series currently hosted in five cities across the globe: Zurich, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and now Chicago. This was the first one held in Chicago, organized by one of my best friends and industry pro, Mig Reyes, who works for the rockin’ tee-shirt company we all know and love: Threadless. The event is free and open to all creatives looking for some perspective from leaders in the industry. Plus, there’s coffee and breakfast for all!

This morning’s presentation was given by Jim Coudal, president of Coudal Partners, a small creative agency in Chicago. Jim’s talk focused on the awesome things that can happen when you make the shift from being a service-based firm to being more product-based.

Some of the key points he made were:

• He joked about how hard it is to listen to clients telling you what to do and what they need/want after calling all your own shots for your own products.
• He discussed how people talk about doing projects in their spare time, when really, when do you have spare time? His advice: stop saying that you’ll do it later and do it now. You should be working on these awesome ideas you have NOW.

Another inspiring point was on how people fear they’re wasting time on something that won’t be anything, when really, that’s when some of our most creative ideas are generated. We have a lot of great ideas at Mightybytes, but often struggle with finding the time to allow them to grow. Jim pointed out two obvious examples of companies that successfully brought their big ideas to life: Threadless and Groupon. Both started out so small, with a simple idea, and because their founders nurtured their concepts with time and energy, they’ve been able to grow them into large, profitable companies.

I’m incredibly excited about Chicago’s first Creative Mornings session, and can’t wait until next month’s! Keep up to date with details at creativemornings.com.

Creative Mornings - Chicago
Speaker: Jim Coudal, Coudal Partners
Organizer: Mig Reyes, Threadless
Host: GravityTank
Breakfast: Sponsored by Neenah Paper