#130 Breaking the Status Quo with Mindful Innovation

Transcript of Interview

Find Your Voice, Change Your Life Podcast

Podcast Host: Dr. Doreen Downing

Free Guide to Fearless Speaking: Doreen7steps.com

Episode #130 Matt Mueller

“Breaking the Status Quo with Mindful Innovation”

(00:35) Doreen Downing: Hi, this is Dr. Doreen Downing, and I’m host of the Find Your Voice, Change Your Life podcast. I’m here today with a new friend, somebody I’ve met online that I’ve come to know and respect and I’ve been on his podcast. Hi, Matt. This is Matt Mueller. I’ll give you an introduction in just a moment. Just want to say hi. 

(00:59) Matt Mueller: Hi, Doreen. Great to see you again. 

(01:01) Doreen Downing: Yes, Matt Mueller is a keynote speaker, best-selling author, columnist, mindfulness instructor, and innovation consultant. He works with some of the world’s biggest brands to help leaders focus on innovation with purposeful growth. 

He has over a decade of experience in product and service innovation, and he has uncovered deep insights, executed strategy, and facilitated change in industries that have not changed in centuries. 

Matt questioned the culture of innovation and researched what innovation was like before there was a book or process. He learned that every innovation has three key variables and it’s not about disrupting before being disrupted.

Rather, Matt teaches that if we slow down to be mindful—and notice I just slowed down there. So, Matt teaches that if we slow down to be mindful, we can innovate faster with purpose. Funny how just even that phrase, “mindful” helps me come back to center and center is what this podcast is about finding the center from which your voice arises.

And when we’re born early in life, we don’t have a sense of what that is. We get mirrored usually in our families and that’s how we come to know, well, who am I and what can I say and what’s okay, what’s not okay. That’s usually where I like to start. So, hello again. 

(02:47) Matt Mueller: Hi again. You’re right though. Mindfulness is a trigger word. It does, all of a sudden, just mellow out the situation and brings you back to that center point, so I agree with you. I calmed down a little bit too when you mentioned it, so I totally agree. 

You mentioned childhood and starting off where those challenges are. And when I was a young boy, I was super creative. Like most children, right? We are creative. It’s amazing the number of things that we can do with a paper clip or a box. We can do thousands of things when we’re kids. Then when we’re adults, we can only use a paperclip to put papers together and that’s it. So, we start to lose that creativity. 

I was always the kid that was trying to use my imagination and create things that weren’t there. I remember being on my grandparents’ steps every single Sunday afternoon and on the staircase, I just loved it so much. 

I used to think that it was my stage to perform. It was a bus for me to drive people around and I would show it to my family through the whole experience and I would tell them what to do, shine flashlights on me while I sang, sit on one of the steps while I drove them around. They, of course, because they’re a loving family, would always support me and do those things, which I’m very grateful for.

Then we have the same imagination that I would use with my friends. However, they were not as supportive and they didn’t follow my lead all the time when I was using my imagination. What I found myself doing was shutting down, where I would say, “Hey, guys, let’s go play this game. It doesn’t really exist, but we’re just going to use our imagination to play this thing,” and no one really wanted to do it with me. 

Time and time again, after mentioning these things, I was like, “Alright, fine, forget it.” I’ll just play baseball or tag, the same old games that we play every single day, because they just didn’t want to do it. 

(04:39) Doreen Downing: Oh, that’s amazing. This first hit of the story that you’re telling me, and the opening of where we are supported and where we are applauded when we’re young, it’s like, “Hello, world.”

And if the world is clapping back to us and smiling, it feels good and positive. We have a sense if this feels good to be who I am right here, right now. But then we find ourselves in social situations where people aren’t necessarily applauding us. That moment or those moments that you were talking about with friends not being quite as eager as you were. 

And there’s a difference. There’s a difference about this creative soul that you were that wanted to play in the land of not knowing. Like you said, baseball and other games are structured. They have rules and it feels like your land, what your play was, “Let’s not have some rules here.” 

(05:40) Matt Mueller: Exactly. Yes. Well, I play by the rules all the time. It’s a little more fun to just use your imagination and just really get out there. If you keep on following rules, nothing’s going to really change. We’re just going to get the same old, same old. Boring. 

(05:52) Doreen Downing: So, you now are looking back on that earlier childhood and you’re making a connection with you coming into this world with a lot of bright energy for stepping into your imagination, and it seems like you’ve pointed to these social situations that were somewhat dampening of your spirit. Any other moments like that that you can share or remember?

(06:24) Matt Mueller: I don’t know of a particular moment that I could share, but I know where time and time again, the impact of it kept on exponentially growing to the point where when I was in high school, I would just not really want to share my thoughts and opinions. It was just like, “Okay, we’ll do whatever.” Just going with the flow. 

As I went in from childhood into young adulthood, the same thing happened at work where it was like, “You know what? I’m not going to speak up because they’re going to judge my thoughts. They’re not going to really buy into this. I’m just going to keep on going with the status quo.”

It was not like a particular moment, but I think what was really interesting is that it’s all these moments on top of each other, all of a sudden just to create this new reality of where I probably shouldn’t be speaking my mind because it’s just going to cause more trouble and nobody really wants to hear what I think.

(07:15) Doreen Downing: Oh, Yes, and I can see that during school years, we go for the grades. All right. Like you say, the status quo. Let’s stand in line and get those A’s and B’s. 

(07:26) Matt Mueller: Yes, and work. I mean, it’s not grades, but it’s trying to get the approval of your boss and make sure that you’re on the right side of their agenda.

And if you have something that goes against their agenda, that might be a game changer, but you’ll lose your job. Those are the things that were going through my mind. If I go against the founder of this company, or my boss, is he going to even want me to be in this organization?

(07:50) Doreen Downing: Right now, you’re speaking to a lot of the listeners because I do know that that’s one of the ways in which people hold themselves back and don’t express, don’t speak up because of the idea of authorities, but there really is some negative consequence that they imagine when it comes to job and job security. Isn’t that something that we’ve got to just tighten ourselves up and toe the line? 

(08:21) Matt Mueller: Yes, you find yourself just shutting down and just go with the flow and don’t disrupt. Don’t intervene. 

(08:28) Doreen Downing: That’s interesting. So, we’re starting to move into this—obviously, that’s what you did. To start out, we have some early examples of why you tighten up and say, don’t disrupt, don’t innovate, don’t imagine. Yet you must have, at some point gone, “This doesn’t work,” or “Doesn’t feel good,” or “What am I doing?” The questioning as you became deeper into life.

(09:02) Matt Mueller: Absolutely. Yes, at a certain point, you meet that breaking point or just had that moment where the straw breaks the camel’s back. When I got out of high school, I was in college. I picked up a part time job working in delis just to make a couple bucks here and buy some—I used to buy CDs and get my whole collection going. 

But I was faced with a really big challenge that after I graduated college, do I go and take a job within that profession that would pay me minimum wage? Or do I keep on going in the deli because at the deli, they were offering me to be a manager, which would have paid a lot better.

I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is a big difference when you’re like 22, 23 years old.” Yes, I’m going to take the management position in the deli because it’s just so much more money. So, I went on this path of retail, working in delis. I loved it at the beginning, but over time when I was just taking everything they were throwing at me, it started to get really old.

And it’s really common today where we talk about burn out all the time. Everybody’s burnt out about these jobs, about their jobs. I was totally burnt out. In fact, I face this fantasy of my day in the deli. This fantasy was me driving to work every single morning and while I was driving there, I would just daydream about parking in the furthest spot in the parking lot.

The furthest spot I could and not because I was nice to customers and I wanted them to get the closer spots, but because I knew that that would increase my probability of getting hit by a car on the way in. That was my fantasy. 

(10:29) Doreen Downing: Whoa, whoa, whoa. That is a wow. That’s really vulnerable. Thank you for sharing that. This unhappiness, I guess, is what you’re talking about. Moments of, “I don’t want to be here doing this thing anymore. Let me put myself in harm’s way. 

(10:48) Matt Mueller: I was just going day to day.

(10:50) Doreen Downing: I was thinking about, “Yes, let me put myself in harm’s way.” 

(10:55) Matt Mueller: Yes, seriously. But I don’t want to get run over and die. I was in Florida at the time, so I figured it would be an old person in a car backing off, I would just get hurt a little bit and be out for like 3 months, get some time off and make a little lawsuit. That’s what I was hoping. 

And the reason why—it was because I was going to work every single day facing the mandates that the company was giving me. It was 15 different focus items that I had to work on every single day. They were cutting back our hours, and I was managing a team of people that didn’t want to show up to work, and it was just so frustrating. 

Every time I tried to speak up, I would be shut down and I wasn’t able to create the change, so it just created this burnout. I was like, “I have to get out of here.” So, at one point, that was it. I was like, “You know what? I really need to leave and just figure it out.”

I wound up foreclosing on my home, moving back to family in New York, just with my tail between my legs, but it was what I had to do. I didn’t do it just to start over completely. I wanted to be able to change the industry. I realized I needed to do something about this. That’s when I got a job with a company that served those delis that really focused in on training and supporting those stores.

What I wanted to do was to join that company so I can share my experience, my viewpoint, then also provide—for the executives within those companies—empathy for frontline employees in those stores. So they know what they actually go through on a day to day. 

(12:14) Doreen Downing: That’s a perfect transition, but it goes also along with what I know of you about purpose. It feels like it was more purposeful that you had a vision of change and that seems to be what started to happen for you is visualizing change and how to make change happen because you were in a situation that needed to be changed and you had no power to do that. 

(12:42) Matt Mueller: Yes, I wouldn’t say I visualized it because I didn’t know what it would look like or how to do it, but I just knew that it was so meaningful to me. I was so impacted by this. I know so many fellow frontline workers that are impacted by the way that corporations are run. Someone had to do something about this. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was going to do, but I was going to keep on pounding the drum. That was going to be my purpose. I was going to find a way to have an impact.

(13:09) Doreen Downing: I like that phrase, “Pounding the drum of purpose.” 

(13:15) Matt Mueller: Yes. 

(13:15) Doreen Downing: Yes. Well, let’s talk a little bit about voice then. How voice comes to play when you are pounding the drum of purpose. 

(13:28) Matt Mueller: One is to never feel like you’re overdoing it. It’s called pounding the drum, right? So, you have to say it over and over and over again. And it’s for yourself. It is really for you to own it, but it’s also for everybody else to really resonate with that message. 

What I realized when I was in the corporate side of the business, working with the companies that supported delis that we would very quickly forget what was important and what was our purpose.

And people need to be constantly reminded why we were doing the things that we were doing. There are so many things that we are doing. There’s like 15-20 focuses that we have within these companies. So, the one that pounds the drum the most is the one that they’re going to support. 

So, when I pound the drum, it’s not only for myself, but it’s also for everybody within the organization, because I want everybody to be focused in on making the life better for the employee, because if we do that, they’re going to serve the customers better. 

If that’s the drum that I keep on pounding, that message is going to finally get through if you say it over and over again. It’s really just a matter of pounding it over and over again for yourself and for others.

(14:36) Doreen Downing: Oh, I think that’s a wonderful tip today for listeners is not only the courage to speak up, but to keep on, keep on, keep on. That is so opposite of what happened to you earlier in life is that you didn’t keep on. 

(14:55) Matt Mueller: Yes. I didn’t feel like I had the confidence back then, I guess, to do it. It wasn’t something that I was totally passionate about. There was no passion behind it. It was like, “I don’t want to play dodgeball. I want to play hopscotch or whatever. I really don’t care. It’s not that big of a deal. I’ll play kickball.” 

But when it comes down to it, I was sick of my job, I was depressed, I wanted to get hit by a car, I was drinking every single night, I foreclosed on my home. All of a sudden, you have all these things that are just building and building and building to where now you have passion to keep on talking about it. You’re not going to not do anything to stop because it’s impacted you that much. There’s that much emotion behind it. 

(15:33) Doreen Downing: Oh, wow, Yes. The actual living of the struggle and then finding the breakthrough moments that you’re talking about around what you really feel, but you feel it because you’ve been oppressed or you’ve been tied up in the challenges, but then to feel the strength, the inner strength to speak up and to move yourself and align yourself with change processes. 

And change—I think what I’m really getting today too, is that the voice of change and the drum that you’ve just talked about is something that has to start somewhere and you found your voice. It feels like. At least at that moment, in the beginning of. Say more about how that gave you confidence.

(16:27) Matt Mueller: Well, I think it was just that it was such an important goal for me. It had that much meaning to me, but I didn’t care if someone just scoffed at it and said, “That’s just stupid.” Fine. I’m going to keep on saying it over and over again because I owned it. I wanted to change it and I was going to do anything I could in my power to do it. I just didn’t care about the judgment and the fear of what people are going to say behind my back. 

So, I just kept on going because I knew I needed to do it. After you pound that drum over and over again, they may scoff at you for the first five months or whatever, but eventually they’re going to start to see, especially when they start seeing little changes, those little ripples of change.

And then they’re going to come on board with that. They’re going to create that little ripple into a huge wave once everyone starts to come on to it. So just keep on pounding it and eventually people will start to buy in. 

(17:19) Doreen Downing: What a belief that you’re sharing with people today about possibility and change. This is wonderful. What happened next then? Because I know you are—and you’ve written a book—a master innovator. 

(17:36) Matt Mueller: Well, thank you. You make me blush by saying that. I was working within that company and we created some great change. We were able to make change within the industry in those delis by creating a new process that was going to increase sales that was going to reduce the turnover. All because we listened to consumers. We listened to employees and we made a better process in place. But it wasn’t like it happened overnight. We made a lot of mistakes. 

When I first joined the innovation team because I was just from retail, that innovation was about robots, lasers, and AI, and it was all these cool tech things, and we’re just going to create this Disney experience within the industry. We kept on trying different things and everything was just failing over and over again. 

It wasn’t until this one test that we put into stores where we were testing out a sign. So, I went to this one expo where we looked at different merchandising displays and there’s one sign that was in this expo that was really cool. It was like a big white box that had a holographic image on it. When you look at this holographic image and you go side to side, it moves with you like one of those old baseball cards. Then behind that was like another video screen that would have a copy that would go on there and other animations.

And it just really caught your attention. I was like, “This can solve one of the biggest problems I’m facing in my stores.” Customers aren’t looking at my signs. They have to look at this if we get this sign. So, we brought it back to our lab. We spent lots of money, lots of hours and developed this really cool sign. You should have seen this thing, Doreen. It was so cool. 

It was a barbecue and on this barbecue, we have hot dogs and hamburgers, a person in the apron with beer and a spatula, and as you walked side to side, it felt like you were in the backyard with this person and then there’ll be smoke rising from the screen, so you can see the smoke coming from that barbecue. Every once in a while, it’ll flare up with a flame, which will pop up. It really made you look at the thing and we put it into stores. We tested it out. 

After a week of testing, we learned something really profound. They didn’t look at our sign. They don’t care. They still didn’t look at our sign. It was a complete failure, and there were so many failures in a row. The reason why it failed is because consumers just don’t care about our science. It wasn’t their problem. I just wasn’t really picking up on that. 

I went back to my hotel that night. I was so frustrated and I would be on my phone while I was walking down the sidewalk in Manhattan, just texting everybody saying one other test just failed. I don’t know what we’re going to do. We’re missing all of our goals this year. 

As I was doing that, it was this orange blur in the distance, and it kept on growing closer and closer to me until eventually I had to put my phone down and look. It happened to be a monk in an orange robe standing there right in front of me in the middle of Manhattan. I was so blown away. 

There’s 15 people standing shoulder to shoulder, and this monk stood right in front of me on one of the most frustrating days of my life, and he put his palm out in front of me, and in that palm, he had a wooden mala bracelet. On that bracelet, he had a symbol that was on there in Sanskrit, and that symbol means, “Ripga”.

And then translating that to English, I learned later on in my hotel room that “Ripga” means unconfused knowledge. What was really interesting about that was I started to realize, “Oh, I’ve been confusing what innovation really is.” This whole time, I thought it was about technology and AI and robots and all those other cool things, but no, I had to slow down and become more mindful about my innovation and really be within that moment.

That’s when I realized how to innovate and where we really made some breakthroughs within the industry, it was all by just being mindful about the process. We looked at innovation back from 4000 B.C. to see what innovation was like before there was knowledge about innovation, before book, before process. There’s great things that are out there to help us. But what was it like before that? How do we invent the wheelbarrow? How did we invent the potter’s wheel? All these different things that we had back then. It always came back to these three key variables that we started to use within our innovation, which created a lot of change within the industry.

(21:35) Doreen Downing: One, two, three, name them. 

(21:38) Matt Mueller: All right, so first we have real problems. That’s the one thing that I was doing with my sign. So, when I put that sign into place, I was trying to solve my problem. That was not a real problem. That was a problem just to sell for our company. But what if we were to look at it from the consumer’s viewpoint? What if we were to change that question, “How do I get customers to look at my sign,” and change that question to, “How can I solve a problem for my consumers with a sign?” 

Now all of a sudden, I solved my problem and I solved their problem all at one time. So, it’s just a matter of asking the question a little bit differently and solving real problems rather than just solving our own. That’s variable number one. 

Number two is change that improves and that’s what we say is the easiest part of innovation. Yes. I know we have to create change. It’s going to improve that problem. So, yes, absolutely. But the thing is do you have the voice to actually speak that out? To actually have the ability to be able to voice your opinions and your thoughts and be creative. We have to get back to that childhood mind state to really do that, create that change that’s going to improve. 

The third variable that I always talk about, which I think is one of the toughest for us to do is acceptance. We need to get others to accept that that is the change that’s going to improve the real problem. So, if we get others to accept, that’s where we have real change. We can solve real problems with really creative things, but if someone doesn’t accept it, it’s never going to work. So, how do you get others to accept it? 

And that comes down from the consumer side of things. If you’re talking about a retail experience, you’re talking about employees, the retailer and the consumer all need to have acceptance in this process, because they’re all key stakeholders. So, getting acceptance across the board is so important and vital for innovation to be successful. 

(23:23) Doreen Downing: Oh, that was a quick overview of your entire book I think. The problem, a real problem. And I like the idea that it’s not just my problem, but to expand what problem means to whoever’s invested in it. So, that was really something I didn’t quite get as much as in the book as I got right now from you, about how to view a problem and the change that’s going to make the big difference and all the ways in which you have to keep on in that journey to find the best change and then the acceptance of it for whoever happens to be affected by it, I guess.

I know it sounds like such a simple model, but it’s very detailed and complex and beautifully integrated. So, people here—Yes, of course you have a problem. Of course, you need a change and of course you need everybody to say, “Okay,” but to have the how to, to me, that’s why I called you a master innovator because I think people can hear your enthusiasm and your experience in innovating.

(24:42) Matt Mueller: Well, thank you, Doreen. Yes, it just comes down to those simple three variables. I think the key to it is to not get lost in the shiny objects that are all around us. We might want to have a cool, fancy sign, or add augmented reality, or use AI in some fashion in our business, but just slow down for a second and be mindful and say, “Does that really solve a real problem,” and “Is that the real change that I need to solve that real problem?” 

And just think about each of those variables in a mindful state. Just slow down for a second and think about it that way. Just don’t go run off when you hear about something really cool that’s new. Yes, there’s thousands of articles right now on AI and everyone’s talking about how to leverage it for your business, but just take a beat.

It’s not really a race. You don’t have to worry about being disrupted in the next 10 minutes. Just slow down and really think about it. “Is that necessary?” 

(25:37) Doreen Downing: I love this idea that you’re talking about right now about slowing down and rather than racing to come up with a—just keep on trying to push yourself.

It’s like, “Oh, let’s just stop.” Take that breath and expand our awareness and be open to whatever comes and more of the stillness as opposed to the pushiness of trying to get something done. 

(26:05) Matt Mueller: Yes, there’s so much power within that stillness and we don’t leverage it enough because we’re always running away from the stillness. We’re just in that race and we just keep on moving really fast. We’re making decisions. We don’t realize the decisions aren’t really fully baked. And the next thing you know, we have to stop and start over and we’re spending more time in the cycle of making bad decisions because we’re just not staying within that stillness. The answers are there when we really just sit there and just look inside. 

(26:32) Doreen Downing: Oh, that’s wonderful. Before we end, I want to make sure and have you talk about your book and how people can find it. But also, could you give us just a mini exercise on mindfulness? 

(26:45) Matt Mueller: Okay. Would you like me to just do something like a meditation format or just give you steps that you could do on your own? What would you prefer? 

(26:51) Doreen Downing: Since I’m a receiver and hoping my listeners are not driving their cars, and even if they are, they’ll come back to listen to just a quick however you can—the experience of it, Matt. 

(27:08) Matt Mueller: Let’s do it. If you’re driving, please don’t do this. Find a comfortable place and take a few deep breaths and close your eyes and just relax. And I want you just to take another deep breath in through the nose and out through the mouth, and I want you just to reflect for a moment on a problem that you’re trying to solve. What is a big hot button issue for you, your company, for your team? What are you working on right now that you’re trying to solve?

And then once you get that problem, I want you to breathe in again through the nose, and out through the mouth. Now, I want you just to take that problem, see it in front of you. Just visualize out that problem coming out to play.

I want you to think about the factual evidence that supports that this is a real problem. What’s the first thing that comes to mind that this is a real problem? Now, I want you to question yourself, really look deep within, right into the center of your stomach, right into the gut, “Is it real?”

“Is this a real piece of evidence that supports this problem?” Might be yes, definitely. This is a definite fact that supports why I should be doing this. Might be a no, and it also could be a maybe.

If it’s a yes, then it means it’s a problem you should follow, something that you should solve. If it’s a no, is there any other evidence? And if it’s maybe, maybe we just need to do a little bit more work to solve or to see if this really is a problem.

So, another deep breath in and out. After that first problem is identified, go to a second one, a second piece of evidence. Once you find that, ask that same question. “Is this piece of evidence true?” Yes, no, or maybe? If you find that no keeps on coming up, go back to the drawing board and find a true problem that needs to be solved. This might be something that will come up in the future, this problem that you’re trying to tackle today, but it isn’t a true problem that you need to solve to move you forward to your company phone. Although in another way, it’s not a priority. 

Focus on problems that are more of a priority. And anytime that you want to explore problems, come back to this reflection. Just sit down, center yourselves, breathe in and out, and visualize the scene, and find the evidence that supports that this is a real problem. When you’re ready, you can just take another deep breath in, nice cleansing breath out, and then come back whenever you’re ready. 

(31:43) Doreen Downing: Yes. Well, my voice is totally different.

(31:50) Matt Mueller: Late night radio DJ voice. 

(31:53) Doreen Downing: It’s deep in my sense of being here now. What a beautiful—we should, I should start all podcasts this way because it’s such a different experience to be deepening myself and my voice, and have my voice come from a sense of great, great centering. Thank you, Matt.

So how do people, how do people find you who want more of you? 

(32:21) Matt Mueller: Oh, Yes, definitely. You can find me on LinkedIn. That is the channel that I’m most active on. It’s Matt Muller Innovation on LinkedIn. You can also find me at Matt Muller Innovation on YouTube. Of course, check out the book on Amazon. It’s bestseller on Amazon, The Mindful Innovator.

(32:39) Doreen Downing: Yes, and podcast. 

(32:41) Matt Mueller: Oh, yes. I forgot. I am now a podcast host. Just finishing up here. Season 1 of Innovate On Purpose brought to you by The Mindful Innovator, where we are talking to executives in all different industries to find out what tips they can provide people to innovate more on purpose. So, please join us on that podcast as well.

(33:03) Doreen Downing: Wonderful. Thank you so much. 

(33:06) Matt Mueller: Thank you, Doreen. I am so grateful to you and appreciate the time today.