Michael: All right, Matt, Laura, thank you guys so much for joining me on this episode of Producing Innovation. As we get going, everyone, I've given the introduction, but I think it would be great for you to just give a little bit of background, a couple of minutes of like your journey to this moment, a little so people who maybe know about Blue Man Group, Matt, and certainly you're obviously deeply associated with that, know about Blue Man, but won't necessarily know. you and your background and what you brought to it. And I think for the sake of, I would ordinarily, Laura say ladies first, but given the chronology of this, want Matt to give the background of the origin a lot of that. And then I think how you entered into it. And of course, most importantly, what you guys are doing now. So with that, Matt Goldman.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: Sure, well, hello everyone. I'm one of the co-founders of Blue Man Group and Blue School. And Blue Man Group was really a concept that came out of three friends back in, hate to date myself, but in the late ⁓ 1980s. And know, I know, it's crazy. And, you know, Chris sort of talked about this idea of having a bald blue character who was funny and could music. I just of said, well, as someone who had made a personal mission statement of making ideas real, I said, let's do it. Let's just do it. And he was like shocked almost. And what do mean, let's do it? I said, let's do it. Let's get bald and blue. be funny and make some music. I'm sure he was thinking like most people like, how do you even do that? he, he, he expected you to be like, that's a crazy idea. But you. Yeah. Not Matt Goldman. No. ⁓ You so I mean, the first thing we did was get bald and blue and go up onto our roof and do a little photo shoot. And it was ⁓ crazy because the first time we got bald and blue and looked at each other.
Michael: I'm at Goldman.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: we actually instantly, chemically, that there was something there, that there was something bigger than the three of us actually. And a sidebar, the miracle was that it wasn't us. So we got to serve the Blue Man, but we didn't have to be, you know, the super cool, know, Sylvester Stallone has to always be Sylvester Stallone. Brad Pitt has to be Brad Pitt, but we could be the blue men when we're the blue men and then just normal, know, dorky people all the rest of the time and eat at a restaurant. You did that really well. Right? Yeah, the dork part. Yes, yes, easy. It came naturally to you. Yeah, easy breezy.
Michael: Well, I mean, I think part of what you're saying, Matt, I remember you, I remember talking about this when we first met that like the genius of the blue man was a celebrity, but you didn't have to have the cost of celebrity in your life, which is, think such a huge trade off for people that get that. So you were known the world over for blue man group, but you still got to have a pretty normal life, you know. but normal being not a celebrity life where people are chasing you around all the time.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: Yeah. Well, and I'd like, it would be nice to say that that was a grand plan and we were so smart to think about that, that was a complete byproduct accident the entire situation that just happened to work well to our advantage. But I do think it was also extremely helpful to be serving this character, to be And then ⁓ sort interesting byproduct is even in the third, fourth, fifth shows we were doing, where we these like sort of open mic nights 3 a.m. show at King Tut's Wawa Hut in the East Village, on a Sunday, by way. People would come up to after the show, one of those 16 people who were there that night at King Tut's Wawa Hut, and they would And they would say, you know, I really like this, that and the other, but that one thing, I don't think the blue man would do that. And that blew our minds that they were seeing this character for the first time, we're performing for maybe the fifth time and people are ready and they were right. That's crazy. You know, you're right. The blue man wouldn't do that.
Michael: Hmm Totally. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah, tapped into something deeply and mythological and visceral, I And that's how I certainly, I always felt about it. But I think that that's what they were touching on, you know, like ⁓ that character everyone identified so deeply, right?
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: Yes, think that's exactly right. then happened, a couple of things sort of happened. Again, some of them and intentionally and of them just unfolded. But one thing we realized early is we really wanted to create in a measure of decades, ⁓ months or years.
Michael: Hmm.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: You know, as we started, you know, course we were an overnight sensation, although it took three and a half years to become an overnight sensation, right? And even when we opened at the Astor Place Theater, the theater was half empty and on the edge of collapse for months before we hit the tipping point, before the tipping point got coined as a, but we sort of half empty. And then we did a bunch of press and everything came together and just like one day we were then sold out six months in advance. that, so we really, Malcolm Gladwell really nailed it in his description of the ticking point, but we had experienced it before Malcolm Gladwell had named it. So after that sort of... overnight three and half year success. And once we were sold and everyone was coming at us. I mean, everyone was coming at us. It was like Disney on ice wanted to do Blue Man on ice. you know, I mean, the were and we it and actually your original boss, Manny Agregious, used to say that his job was to say, F you. in the nicest way possible because he was saying no to people 99 out of 100 times. My version of that is that Manny would say you want to deliver a no that feels like a yes. So people leave very excited and it takes them a moment to realize, wait, I don't think I got everything I was asking for, but I'm really happy with what I did get. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Manny was an expert. He was an expert at that. And, but, but, it was grounded in we
Michael: you
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: You know, we didn't want to have the media the up to have the steep down. wanted to have a sort of, ⁓ everything going to be a sine curve, but we wanted to have it with a nice even slope that we could be creating it in the Blue Man character for decades. And that stated. Now, you know, all along the way, there's luck. that happens, could never imagine that you would, we would be nominated for a Grammy for a instrumental album and then asked to perform on the Grammys. You know, we literally did say no to performing with Madonna and U2, like U2, U2, because we just thought that they, really couldn't be collaborators. So we got, you know, the producer of the ground is like, we got the greatest idea, you and Madonna. And we were like, no, we don't think that that's a great idea. know, and imagine you're being invited and you're, no. And then, but finally this idea of performing with Moby and then Jill Scott, that started to feel more right. And then,
Michael: Mm-hmm.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: And then the news was, but you got to perform to track. And you're like, well, then we can't do it. And then they're like, well, how many inputs do you need? And we're like, you we could, I think we could do it with 70. know, gets six. we're well, what if we only do two? We'll bring our own truck to our 70 tracks down to
Michael: Mmm.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: a left and a right and deliver you two inputs. ⁓
Michael: And me just ask you as a quick question for the synchronicity of this. Laura, when did you enter? What's your journey ⁓ all this too?
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: So I, yeah, my journey with Blue Man Group started in 1996. So they just were right about to open the second show and they had a realization that they were going to need like an umbrella organization that would oversee ⁓ productions and all creative endeavors. So I joined around that time. I joined as an unpaid intern, Michael, unpaid.
Michael: Okay. as all great careers began.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: Right there, yes. I moved to New York on a Sunday and I made one phone call on Monday and it was to Blue Man Group and I got to chatting with someone and they were like, why don't you come in tomorrow? So I came in, I did not know what I was signing up for, but I have no regrets. So I joined right at that moment where truly the whole thing was about to take off in the slow and measured way that Matt describes.
Michael: Wow.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: But I started kind of as general support to everybody. And then at a certain point they were like, okay, do you, what do you want to do? Do you want to do general management, casting, marketing and PR? And my love of Manny and Gracious, I was like, I want to work with Manny. ⁓ He just and a phenomenal person a character. And so ⁓ I decided, and background was in communications and theater. ⁓ So.
Michael: Mm-hmm.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: I signed up to be his associate. I started as the PR associate and grew to VP of marketing and communications over time. 25 years. Didn't you say no originally? I did say no a few times to this guy. This offered me.
Michael: Well, clearly he loves that. He loves that because he knows the strategic value of a no.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: He does, and he knows eventually, I said yes, eventually broke me down. But I was, you know, like everyone else, which I loved at Blue Man, I was performing shows at night. I was going to school for film and television. I was doing a million other things. So I was like, I don't know if I want to do this full time. what happened for me was a couple of things. One, I realized like that acting for me, although I love it, it's fun to do. It was not using enough.
Michael: Mm-hmm.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: of my brain power and enough of my creativity. my day job at Blue Man was so was like creativity everywhere in every way. And so eventually was convinced like, sure, I could let go of some of the other things, not everything, but some of the other things that I was doing and focus on Blue Man Group. Yeah.
Michael: Yeah. Yeah. I know we've kind of like now we're going in several directions, but this is exactly, exactly what, what I love. And I know what our, lot of our listeners love is like just the organic conversation and to see where it goes. But Matt, want to, I want to dial back a bit further and and then jump ahead because there's, there's, such a long history, right? But one of the things that, you know, and I, ⁓ I this in the intro, like Matt, know, you, you were. ⁓ I've blessed with several mentors in my life, but you were in a class all your own in terms of impact on my life. And I consider you to be really truly one of the great of my career and the years that we spent together and since have had more impact on me than anybody. And one of the things that always struck me I've gotten complimented for myself on and I always just like point back to you. ⁓ is the balance of creativity and business. to know that like you were, and I always said like had a different role, but like the business strategy I know ⁓ so much an outgrowth of you and what you understood about business from your time prior to Blue Man and doing things. And I just love to like get a little bit of that. perspective because I think that sometimes people think like, creative people like just have lived a creative life their whole time and they went to art school, obviously. And, and you are someone that, you know, studied business, I believe had an MBA and then, and you know, ended up doing all this crazy stuff, but it was the understanding of how do you build a brand? How do you not go too steep a trajectory of growth? So as to, to catapult down the other side, like all of those insights to me and really much of the commercial success of Blue Man that is so embedded in the creative success of Blue Man. I think you wouldn't have had so many of the opportunities that you did creatively if you hadn't had the commercial success. So I think that you can't separate the two. I if you'd agree with that, but certainly I think getting a sense of some of that background and you're thinking as a business person, I'd just love to hear how that sort of, you know, the ground
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: Yeah.
Michael: it all grew out of.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: Yeah, so thank you for bringing that up. I first and foremost, absolutely. I that the creativity involved to put something on stage and the creativity to build an organization and an entrepreneurial endeavor, that it's ⁓ all creative and acts and they're just details are different. and in our case, we made the creativity ⁓ what happens on stage and what happens backstage and in the office inextricably linked. Cause for us, we creating a genuine, real non-forth experience. were there with the audience members trying to end this ecstatic at the end of the night. And it was. totally real and totally different and it mattered who was in the audience and the personality of the audience. it didn't happen every night, believe me. Not like the truly get goosebumps, walk out of there like freaking out, excited feeling. And the only way you could get there is if everything backstage and in our case backstage was really the whole basement of the theater.
Michael: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: If everything wasn't right with all those folks too, like couldn't be in some kind of big, uh, dramatic turmoil. Yeah. And then walk out on stage and create that. So we had to have it. So in the early days, a lot of people came, Oh, we'll, we'll be your producers and we'll take care of all that business stuff. And you just watch the creative stuff. we're like, Oh, you know, we think the creative stuff is kind of the business stuff is fun too. And creative too. So.
Michael: Right. Right.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: So I agree with you that they're all the same. The other thing that happened was even before Blue Man, as I I sort of created personal mission statement of ideas real. I also ⁓ was very conflicted in own self that I couldn't paint, I couldn't sculpt, I was a really bad musician. a terrible writer and yet, so by all society's standards, I was not a creative person, but I felt creative and I didn't know how to reconcile those things. And even before Blue Man, when I was doing in the early days of software production and when I say software production, wasn't, writing code, I wasn't writing the booklets, nothing like that. But I was like a record producer, I was pulling together all the entities. I felt like it was a highly creative act to have idea in software, if someone else have an idea in software, and then to over three, five, six, eight months, get it from the idea to on a shelf. And so in regard, I felt creative, though, and then I was feeling like I was making ideas happen, making ideas real. And then the big breakthrough moment came very early in Blue Man when we used to sort of share books together. And I got section of a book where Brancusi, who did Bird in Space, that amazing, beautiful, just elegant sculpture. Brancusi said being an artist, which is really being creative is not a lightning bolt from God being struck by lightning bolt from God, having clear intent and passion. And just thought that that was, that was me. I could put blinders on. could have clear intent. I could manufacture passion with it and only later did neuroscience backup that You can decide to just be passionate. You can train your brain to be passionate. At the time, no one knew yet. then of course, as a neurodivergent learner, I knew nothing happened without hard work. And then later, a neuroscience of mine, ⁓ Dr. Dan said, ⁓ you've got three of them, intent, passion, and work, but don't you need a... attention in that formula. I was like, ⁓ my God, yes, yes. That's big problem. ⁓ Attention all over the place. once I sort of got that definition for myself, clear intention, attention, hard work, then I felt like I could make ideas real intentionally and frequently rather you know, and occasionally. And ⁓ all gears you know, we started running on all cylinders.
Michael: Sure, sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's so much, so much history and so many great stories. I I've, I've, I've been in that orbit for a long time and I just know, I was always so impressed with how from the culture to your communication styles, to, to just aspect of what you built as an organization, as a show, as a product, as a, as an album, it was done with, with real innovation. And I feel like having you guys here in this conversation is so, you know, appropriate for what we're trying to do here. And Laura, I kind of want to pivot to you and here, like, you know, as you started, right, unpaid intern at the very beginning and then grew through the ranks. I mean, I know at the end you were, you know, leading efforts in a very, very meaningful and very, very impactful way for the organization. Like, how did that transpire for you? And then how did that lead? I mean, you guys have worked together now post Blue Man for years on many different things and now you're writing a book together. Like give me, give me some of that story.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: Well, Michael, I have to say, I feel very similar to you in that, sorry to put you on the spot here, Matt, but Matt's been the greatest mentor of my life as well. And I think we were speaking recently about each other Matt would have a business phrase that he would use all the time, which is the rising tide floats all ships, right? ⁓ I equated ⁓ Goldman ⁓ the rising tide.
Michael: Yeah, yeah, totally. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: If you are lucky, you get to have a boat in the vicinity of Matt Goldman's Rising Tide because he will bring, he will lift everyone else up with him. So I feel very lucky that I got to be that ride with him and witnessed so many of the things, Michael, what you're talking about, his like ability to apply creativity to every aspect. One of the things like in my where that showed up. on a day-to-day basis was learning from Matt how you can go into a conversation creatively and empowered and not just be like, I'm gonna be a passive participant and wait and see what they want from me. ⁓ no, you can go in and you can ask for what you want.
Michael: Mm-hmm.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: You can be in a collaborative discussion about like, what do we think Michael wants from this and what do we want from this and how can we all get what we want? And so many people that I know don't realize you can approach your whole life in this way. You don't have to just be in the backseat waiting to see like, what does somebody want from me?
Michael: Hmm, totally.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: And that changed a million things we could point to with Blue Man, that we would never have gotten A, B, or C if we hadn't strategized before a conversation and gone in with, well, here's what we hope to get out of it, and let's work together to get everybody what they need. So just a ⁓ examples of that type of just applied imagination throughout every So for me, was a lot ⁓ learning ⁓ on, guess on the job. There were times where like when Matt would want to promote me and I couldn't the vision for I'm like, but ⁓ what would I if I wasn't doing all this minutiae? Because as we haven't mentioned this yet, I say Matt likes to remind everyone I grew up in Kansas. And so hard work for me was an absolute, but so was humility. So, I never thought I was creative because I ⁓ to that theory of like creative is equal to genius. ⁓ ⁓ have ideas that nobody's ever had before. And at Man, I realized that creativity can actually be what we call creation by recombination. ⁓ Taking it's of a.
Michael: Hmm. Mm. Totally.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: of creativity, right? So you're taking things that already exist and combining them in new ways. And that is something that I realized, ⁓ I do that all the time. Like I'm always thinking about like, wow, we could take what we learned from this and apply it to this and now we have something new. But I didn't have a name for that. And I didn't realize that that in of itself was creative. So those are just a few examples of how that showed up for me, Michael, over the years. I embraced it every step of the way. I'll stop there because I've been talking for
Michael: You know, that's awesome. mean, I can't tell you how many, many lines of intersection that has with me and sort of my beliefs. And I know some of them definitely came through Matt Goldman inspiration and conversations. One of my most often quoted, you know, truisms about creativity, innovation, invention is ⁓ Einstein's famous. are no new things, just new combinations of old things. which is certainly in the spirit of what you're talking about. And I totally subscribe to that. just think, just taking, it's the law of physics really, like we're just combining things anew and they have sometimes a catalytic effect and ⁓ create special. And sometimes they don't, but that's just another step the journey to something further down the road. So let's jump all the forward and talk about a little bit how ⁓ those lessons the things that, you know, have originated in both of you are now combining into what you're, you know, speaking about and writing about and teaching about and how, and sort of what your mission is for that. Cause I, and I don't want to like jump over the ⁓ blue school era because I think that that is so critical. So feel free to like dial it back to blue school and then talk about how that led to what you're doing now. But I'd just be curious how did those insights now manifest into different forms of educating in the world.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: Yeah. So, I mean, I think there's a lot of ways into this. And I think that maybe the fastest way to just talk about Blue School real quick, which, you know, we, co-founded six of us, ⁓ the three founders of Blue Man Group and our partners and, is we created a balanced model. You know, we totally, wanted our students to have mastery. but but we felt like things were a little bit out of balance. There's so many schools that that's really the main thing and then it's all about that. So we wanted to balance academic mastery with creative thinking, with what used to be called emotional intelligence, but even Daniel Goldman calls it self and social learning. academic mastery, creative thinking and self and social, the... the space between people. And ⁓ really resonated for a lot of people and it attracted a lot of people very quickly. it quickly got a lot of attention and Wired Magazine called it one of the, I don't know, five or seven most innovative schools in the world and, know, et cetera, et so, and when I left Blue Man to do Blue School full time. Kamian was one of our very first poaches and we had her help us on that project too. So fast forward to, and then Kamian will talk about the Spark file where they do creative coaching and have built a of creative folks who also might not have considered creative until. ⁓
Michael: awesome.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: or didn't know how to even start their creativity, but I'll let Kemi and talk about that. And all of those experiences, plus, you know, taking the Columbia University executive coaching course and doing a bunch of consulting and led us to the idea that, you know, which we had had brewing for a long time, but now it seemed like the time was right to put these ideas down in a book.
Michael: Mm-hmm.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: ⁓ which is really a book about how to make ideas real, how to foster the for creativity and innovation to thrive in teams, a leader, as an individual writing on by themselves. It's really, ⁓ and they're building that worked for us that we realized
Michael: Yeah.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: could be like Lego pieces, you could actually just take these blocks and create them any way you want. there's no real discipline to it or design. basic sort tenants, foundational things like trust, and respecting multiple perspectives and having clarity, but also being comfortable living in the ambiguity. You know, just these things that just, a lot of people are intuitive, but once and we're far down the line, we're kind of excited to get it into people's hands. But once you sort see it the way it worked and see it through different eyes and then other folks like Patrick Willingham at the Public Theater took sort of some of those learnings and applied them to the, and created a whole new culture at the public. Laura Clement sort of was a founding member of Little Island, which is a great park space here in New York that also has three performance venues. And she took her of these sort of approach to creativity and innovation. And it's one of the most wild, successful, amazing places in any city in the world right now.
Michael: Yeah, totally. Yeah, it's incredible.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: And the list goes on and on. so, but most importantly, it's such a way to and live. Like, you know, we're 30 years in and we're having more fun and feeling like our learning curve is working on this book than it has been in any of the
Michael: Mm-hmm.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: 29 years prior to this, and we've done a lot of projects together. We have. mean, the are really interesting because, yes, they will support creativity being a repeatable practice, something you can rely upon instead of ⁓ for inspiration to strike. But they also are principles that lead to really relationships. ⁓
Michael: Wow. Wow. What do I... Mm-hmm.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: of relationships that last 30 years and kind of an added ⁓ ⁓ like embracing these principles. And my partner and I, Susan Blackwell, we created the Spark file based on a lot of these same principles. We might call them different things in the Spark file, but they're all very, very similar. And it starts with trust. It starts with psychological safety because nobody can be in a group environment without feeling safe to do so. ⁓
Michael: Sure, totally.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: to be that person that tosses out the idea or embarrassing idea. Everybody has to understand there are no bad ideas. They're all welcome and we will build upon them. So at Spark file, we help individual creatives in a group setting and they're creatives of all kinds, maybe reconnect with their creativity that they've lost touch with. Maybe they are people who have dedicated their creative energies to someone or some other ⁓ job their whole life, or not going to find out like what might happen if I applied my creative energies to my own vision, my own ideas. So we use all of these same principles in the Spark file as well. Right.
Michael: And you inspire creatives because you guys were an inspiration to me in starting this podcast, Producing Innovation. know, like I was just so, I just really admired when you started the podcast and I was like really impressed with how you were doing it and just the way you were sharing ideas and I'm a huge fan of Susan's and it's just, it's awesome. So to be full circle like this is kind of cool.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: See ya. Thank you so much. did not know that. Thanks for being a listener, Appreciate that. ⁓ But if I might say something like we were, Susan and I were sitting in this very room that Matt and I are in right now, when we were brainstorming, you know, what we want to do with the next chapter of our lives. And we have a lot of big visions and a lot of big ideas. And it's something that we teach all of our clients now to do and to think about, which is sequencing, right? not going to have
Michael: Yeah. Yep. for sure.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: built all of this by tomorrow. So what can we do right away? And in that moment in time, was just before, was about a year before the pandemic. I was working at Blue School we had ⁓ of our visions on Post-it notes around these walls. And we left like, all right, so what can we start tomorrow? What do do tomorrow? Right now we will on Amazon, we will order the equipment we need for our podcast.
Michael: Mm-hmm.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: We will spend the week crafting our theme song, crafting our intros, outros, and our first episodes. And in a week, we will start our podcast. Did you write your motto back then? We did write our motto. What is your motto? One of our mottos is that we believe everyone is creative, but smart kids don't go it alone. Thanks for remembering that, Matt. That's a great one. Matt loves it.
Michael: Mm-hmm, that is, that is. know, it's so funny. I was thinking this morning about like things I wanted to actually talk about and that very idea is one of them. Cause I feel like it's such a part of my sense of Blue Man, which is that line, if you wanna go fast, go alone. If you wanna go far, go together. And think that there's something to that in, know, been mostly drawn to collaborative art forms. ⁓
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: Yes. Yeah.
Michael: through my career and, and I just, think that that's, yeah, I'd love, I love for you both actually just to, to sort of tee off on that a little bit at, at Blue Man and, beyond, because I think one of the things that was always so compelling me about Blue Man and so innovative ⁓ as ecosystem was the culture and the way you like, I mean, so listeners, my, the way I actually met these guys was through my wife, Sharon. She, back in the day, worked Blue Man early on, around the same time as Laura and Dr. Sharon Counts, yes, of course. And she, being a part of Blue Man, like when I first met her, I was like, you're in a cult and the cult is called Blue Man. And like, it's like this community of people that like love each and hang out nonstop and are constantly in touch, long before.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: Now Dr. Sharon by the
Michael: Everyone was texting everyone all the time. These guys had two way pagers. The whole community of Blue Man had two way pagers they would like, and it, it united them as a community in a way that back then in the mid nineties was nowhere be seen except the Blue Man group. And I just remember that as being so vivid and thinking like those guys are so fucking smart as a company. Cause I had a company at the time too. I also worked with Manny and Grigis who I love. Shout out Manny.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: I'm ready.
Michael: You know, was, he moonlit from his day job with, my company in Brooklyn. And, and I just like, you know, I just thought, man, those guys are those being you guys and Blue Man Group as a community, we're just so smart and so ahead of the curve. Like how a little bit on the, on the go far together and the community aspect and how you, how you created that. I'd love to hear that from both your perspectives, maybe as as a near near question.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: Yeah. Yeah. Sure, so I guess I'll just hit it from a couple of disparate things and try to pull it together because there's no direct line to one thing we were three partners at Blue Man we made a decision or anything on majority rules. We kept at until we were unanimous. So ⁓ it didn't matter what it was.
Michael: Mm-hmm.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: We all three had to decide that was, boy talk about, that was a time consuming process because decisions took really long time, especially when the polarity flipped and they say, okay, I agree. I go, no, no, no, I'm on your side. that was one and that carried really, you know, it didn't like, you know, Nine people say yes and eight people say no. So it's gonna be yes. Like we would stay at it until we had sort of more of a group kind of consensus to things. So that's one way in. For me personally, I was always incredibly inspired by Ball's story because A, I just, you I had grown up watching I Love Lucy and thought she was one of the...
Michael: Mm-hmm. Okay.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: greatest comedians of all time. And also recognizing, because I grew up in the 60s and 70s, was a trailblazer as a woman who had a star of her own show and the first studio, had her own studio, first ever of that. And quote that with is, she said, never want to regret what I didn't do. I regret what I did do. You know, that was a driver, like, OK, we're going to just keep at it. Like, not let's let's just keep doing things because I'd rather regret that I did it than I didn't do it. Right. ⁓ So and then was like just being respectful of ⁓ everyone, like everyone's emotions everyone's
Michael: Hmm.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: thinking matters, you might not agree with everything, you might not execute on it, but when you start to get into a process where you're taking in everyone's perspectives and lenses, invariably hybrid ideas, new ideas, like you stick at it long enough, stuff will emerge that you never would have gotten to on your own.
Michael: Mm-hmm.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: And that doesn't mean that you're still not leading the process or you're just, you know, it's just all kumbaya and you just give no, it means that you're drawing on the incredible resource of a diverse group of people to, with the trust that as you know, I have to come up with every idea, but I just have to really like them. ⁓ We're to keep at it until we get to a new, idea that we all really like.
Michael: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Totally.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: So those are some sort of just. And in the book, we talk about that. We call it multiple perspectives, just as a process and as a belief system. But how it feels to be a team member in that process is that, you know, we have words for it now, belonging, feeling seen and heard. don't think I used those phrases in the 90s or the early 2000s, but that's what it felt like. It felt like. I can offer an idea. Maybe my idea will get into the mix or not. Maybe it'll end up on stage. Maybe it won't. It doesn't really matter. I know it will be heard. I know it will be given respect and a thoughtful contemplation. it is really significant to know that you can go to work each day and you're making a meaningful contribution to any number of things in any day. ⁓ And I would add to that, another thing we talked about in the book is clarity and the clarity of knowing like what we're all doing here. What is our mission? What is our goal? ⁓ think that I also was accused so many times of being in a cult and people loved ones just being like, you have to stop talking about how much you love your job because everybody here hates theirs. So you need to zip it. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. But can I just say one more thing about how much I love my job? We all felt, I think, that we were working on something that was bigger than ourselves. It was bigger than a theater show. again, we didn't have the words for this until much later. We've like tried on a million phrases, but eventually talked about the show as attempt to experience a heightened sense of being alive. That you might feel that in the show. ⁓
Michael: Mm-hmm.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: but that we felt that way day in our jobs, that we are truly alive, we are doing important work in the world and bringing joy to people and making people connected to each other. I think we all ⁓ really this idea that we had a shared purpose. ⁓
Michael: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, was so apparent, you know, in every way in the show and the community. I I married one of your cult members because she was so ⁓ awesome and unique. She's doing great. Yeah, she's doing great. She's doing great. We're doing great. Yeah. Teaching her ass off, like inspiring the youth, the youth of ⁓ upcoming designers of the world. But yeah, she's great. And ⁓
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: How's she doing? she's okay. ⁓ Okay. Yeah.
Michael: And yeah, and I think that was part of my, I think when you, it's a great line that I share with my son who's a freshman at Bentley University this year. And it was when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. And I think a lot of that DNA was shared between us. And I made art because I wanted to help people reconnect with wonder.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: Hmm.
Michael: you know, and awe because I feel like that is a, that's spiritual, you know, it's our purpose in being here. It elevates consciousness. And I saw that in what Blue Man was doing and what you guys were doing. And I saw it in what you, how you try to instill that in education later. It's why I'm so excited about your book. And I think that that's, that feels like my purpose today, right? don't make shows in the way that I used to, but I'm now trying to sort of teach as you are creativity and applying creativity to one's life. and to our communities and to the things that we do, because if we can reconnect with that awe and that wonder, just a way of experiencing our lives, you know, and it's one filled with joy and it's one in which you realize that, you know, abundance isn't something that you have to find out there, it's within you. And so joy it's something, you how you bring, how you do things is joyful or not, as opposed to something that you get externally in. Anyway, I just feel so aligned with you guys. I'm so excited for the book to come out. I think it's going to be such a gift to the world. When can we expect it? When can we expect it? When can I go order it on Amazon? Where can I find you guys as well?
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: Yeah, it may be a minute we are still we're still writing it and so the publishing process will do its job and take its time. Yeah, we've sort of flipped the polarity. We're a bunch of speaking engagements about the work in the book even before the book is out because we're too excited to not start talking about it in public.
Michael: Okay. Mm-hmm.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: And, but I think, you know, I think a year, 18 months is a reasonable timeframe for, for, for the book to come out, you know, many options these days, but it looks like it's going to be with a publisher and, ⁓ you ⁓ go that route. so, it's, it's, it's, just such a fun project. And that's the point in that the joyfulness and the life satisfaction is exponential. And it's like, is boundless. And the more people who are involved in these projects that of us have worked on in the past and will work on in the future, it just, I we see it right now. If anyone's following the social media or on the hamnet, I mean, they were part of ⁓ such a amazing experience that And so, you know, and often to that kind of environment as being in a learning organization. ⁓ And it's sort a phrase was coined by ⁓ Peter ⁓ Senge. And when we exposed to work, which was a little bit after Blue Man started, there was one line that haunted us for, ⁓
Michael: Hmm, yeah.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: really haunted me, think Kamiin is once you've experienced that sort of gestalt, ⁓ that of being in a high functioning learning organization, you'll be chasing that feeling for the rest of your life. I was like, don't, first of all, can't imagine being more amped up than it was Blue Man, but I don't want to ⁓ chase that experience for the rest my life. ⁓ want to create it.
Michael: Yeah.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: created everywhere we're at. And then we've done that in several different environments between. And so it's totally totally. And I don't mean replicable. Replicable is the wrong word. The ingredients be brought to the table and the chefs, all different chefs ⁓ make it into dish they want. ⁓ Lego pieces. Here the Lego pieces. Design the Lego any way you want.
Michael: Yeah. Yeah.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: But it's really cool because it's a Lego sculpture. that's really what's become really clear is that it's available to anyone who wants to. ⁓ ⁓ a little more work on the front end just to sort of, but the pay off is off charts.
Michael: Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. it comes out, I'm to be promoting the hell out of it because I have no doubt that it's going to be a message and a gift to the world as you guys are. Mack Olm and Laura Kamian, such a ⁓ pleasure to with you guys. I love you both so much. I'm so grateful for your work and for your friendship and for just all that I've learned from you guys because it's been so much over such a long period of time. So thank you, thank you, thank you. And yeah, I can't wait to see what's next.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: Like what? Thanks, Michael.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: Sure, well, hello everyone. I'm one of the co-founders of Blue Man Group and Blue School. And Blue Man Group was really a concept that came out of three friends back in, hate to date myself, but in the late ⁓ 1980s. And know, I know, it's crazy. And, you know, Chris sort of talked about this idea of having a bald blue character who was funny and could music. I just of said, well, as someone who had made a personal mission statement of making ideas real, I said, let's do it. Let's just do it. And he was like shocked almost. And what do mean, let's do it? I said, let's do it. Let's get bald and blue. be funny and make some music. I'm sure he was thinking like most people like, how do you even do that? he, he, he expected you to be like, that's a crazy idea. But you. Yeah. Not Matt Goldman. No. ⁓ You so I mean, the first thing we did was get bald and blue and go up onto our roof and do a little photo shoot. And it was ⁓ crazy because the first time we got bald and blue and looked at each other.
Michael: I'm at Goldman.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: we actually instantly, chemically, that there was something there, that there was something bigger than the three of us actually. And a sidebar, the miracle was that it wasn't us. So we got to serve the Blue Man, but we didn't have to be, you know, the super cool, know, Sylvester Stallone has to always be Sylvester Stallone. Brad Pitt has to be Brad Pitt, but we could be the blue men when we're the blue men and then just normal, know, dorky people all the rest of the time and eat at a restaurant. You did that really well. Right? Yeah, the dork part. Yes, yes, easy. It came naturally to you. Yeah, easy breezy.
Michael: Well, I mean, I think part of what you're saying, Matt, I remember you, I remember talking about this when we first met that like the genius of the blue man was a celebrity, but you didn't have to have the cost of celebrity in your life, which is, think such a huge trade off for people that get that. So you were known the world over for blue man group, but you still got to have a pretty normal life, you know. but normal being not a celebrity life where people are chasing you around all the time.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: Yeah. Well, and I'd like, it would be nice to say that that was a grand plan and we were so smart to think about that, that was a complete byproduct accident the entire situation that just happened to work well to our advantage. But I do think it was also extremely helpful to be serving this character, to be And then ⁓ sort interesting byproduct is even in the third, fourth, fifth shows we were doing, where we these like sort of open mic nights 3 a.m. show at King Tut's Wawa Hut in the East Village, on a Sunday, by way. People would come up to after the show, one of those 16 people who were there that night at King Tut's Wawa Hut, and they would And they would say, you know, I really like this, that and the other, but that one thing, I don't think the blue man would do that. And that blew our minds that they were seeing this character for the first time, we're performing for maybe the fifth time and people are ready and they were right. That's crazy. You know, you're right. The blue man wouldn't do that.
Michael: Hmm Totally. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah, tapped into something deeply and mythological and visceral, I And that's how I certainly, I always felt about it. But I think that that's what they were touching on, you know, like ⁓ that character everyone identified so deeply, right?
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: Yes, think that's exactly right. then happened, a couple of things sort of happened. Again, some of them and intentionally and of them just unfolded. But one thing we realized early is we really wanted to create in a measure of decades, ⁓ months or years.
Michael: Hmm.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: You know, as we started, you know, course we were an overnight sensation, although it took three and a half years to become an overnight sensation, right? And even when we opened at the Astor Place Theater, the theater was half empty and on the edge of collapse for months before we hit the tipping point, before the tipping point got coined as a, but we sort of half empty. And then we did a bunch of press and everything came together and just like one day we were then sold out six months in advance. that, so we really, Malcolm Gladwell really nailed it in his description of the ticking point, but we had experienced it before Malcolm Gladwell had named it. So after that sort of... overnight three and half year success. And once we were sold and everyone was coming at us. I mean, everyone was coming at us. It was like Disney on ice wanted to do Blue Man on ice. you know, I mean, the were and we it and actually your original boss, Manny Agregious, used to say that his job was to say, F you. in the nicest way possible because he was saying no to people 99 out of 100 times. My version of that is that Manny would say you want to deliver a no that feels like a yes. So people leave very excited and it takes them a moment to realize, wait, I don't think I got everything I was asking for, but I'm really happy with what I did get. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Manny was an expert. He was an expert at that. And, but, but, it was grounded in we
Michael: you
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: You know, we didn't want to have the media the up to have the steep down. wanted to have a sort of, ⁓ everything going to be a sine curve, but we wanted to have it with a nice even slope that we could be creating it in the Blue Man character for decades. And that stated. Now, you know, all along the way, there's luck. that happens, could never imagine that you would, we would be nominated for a Grammy for a instrumental album and then asked to perform on the Grammys. You know, we literally did say no to performing with Madonna and U2, like U2, U2, because we just thought that they, really couldn't be collaborators. So we got, you know, the producer of the ground is like, we got the greatest idea, you and Madonna. And we were like, no, we don't think that that's a great idea. know, and imagine you're being invited and you're, no. And then, but finally this idea of performing with Moby and then Jill Scott, that started to feel more right. And then,
Michael: Mm-hmm.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: And then the news was, but you got to perform to track. And you're like, well, then we can't do it. And then they're like, well, how many inputs do you need? And we're like, you we could, I think we could do it with 70. know, gets six. we're well, what if we only do two? We'll bring our own truck to our 70 tracks down to
Michael: Mmm.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: a left and a right and deliver you two inputs. ⁓
Michael: And me just ask you as a quick question for the synchronicity of this. Laura, when did you enter? What's your journey ⁓ all this too?
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: So I, yeah, my journey with Blue Man Group started in 1996. So they just were right about to open the second show and they had a realization that they were going to need like an umbrella organization that would oversee ⁓ productions and all creative endeavors. So I joined around that time. I joined as an unpaid intern, Michael, unpaid.
Michael: Okay. as all great careers began.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: Right there, yes. I moved to New York on a Sunday and I made one phone call on Monday and it was to Blue Man Group and I got to chatting with someone and they were like, why don't you come in tomorrow? So I came in, I did not know what I was signing up for, but I have no regrets. So I joined right at that moment where truly the whole thing was about to take off in the slow and measured way that Matt describes.
Michael: Wow.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: But I started kind of as general support to everybody. And then at a certain point they were like, okay, do you, what do you want to do? Do you want to do general management, casting, marketing and PR? And my love of Manny and Gracious, I was like, I want to work with Manny. ⁓ He just and a phenomenal person a character. And so ⁓ I decided, and background was in communications and theater. ⁓ So.
Michael: Mm-hmm.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: I signed up to be his associate. I started as the PR associate and grew to VP of marketing and communications over time. 25 years. Didn't you say no originally? I did say no a few times to this guy. This offered me.
Michael: Well, clearly he loves that. He loves that because he knows the strategic value of a no.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: He does, and he knows eventually, I said yes, eventually broke me down. But I was, you know, like everyone else, which I loved at Blue Man, I was performing shows at night. I was going to school for film and television. I was doing a million other things. So I was like, I don't know if I want to do this full time. what happened for me was a couple of things. One, I realized like that acting for me, although I love it, it's fun to do. It was not using enough.
Michael: Mm-hmm.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: of my brain power and enough of my creativity. my day job at Blue Man was so was like creativity everywhere in every way. And so eventually was convinced like, sure, I could let go of some of the other things, not everything, but some of the other things that I was doing and focus on Blue Man Group. Yeah.
Michael: Yeah. Yeah. I know we've kind of like now we're going in several directions, but this is exactly, exactly what, what I love. And I know what our, lot of our listeners love is like just the organic conversation and to see where it goes. But Matt, want to, I want to dial back a bit further and and then jump ahead because there's, there's, such a long history, right? But one of the things that, you know, and I, ⁓ I this in the intro, like Matt, know, you, you were. ⁓ I've blessed with several mentors in my life, but you were in a class all your own in terms of impact on my life. And I consider you to be really truly one of the great of my career and the years that we spent together and since have had more impact on me than anybody. And one of the things that always struck me I've gotten complimented for myself on and I always just like point back to you. ⁓ is the balance of creativity and business. to know that like you were, and I always said like had a different role, but like the business strategy I know ⁓ so much an outgrowth of you and what you understood about business from your time prior to Blue Man and doing things. And I just love to like get a little bit of that. perspective because I think that sometimes people think like, creative people like just have lived a creative life their whole time and they went to art school, obviously. And, and you are someone that, you know, studied business, I believe had an MBA and then, and you know, ended up doing all this crazy stuff, but it was the understanding of how do you build a brand? How do you not go too steep a trajectory of growth? So as to, to catapult down the other side, like all of those insights to me and really much of the commercial success of Blue Man that is so embedded in the creative success of Blue Man. I think you wouldn't have had so many of the opportunities that you did creatively if you hadn't had the commercial success. So I think that you can't separate the two. I if you'd agree with that, but certainly I think getting a sense of some of that background and you're thinking as a business person, I'd just love to hear how that sort of, you know, the ground
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: Yeah.
Michael: it all grew out of.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: Yeah, so thank you for bringing that up. I first and foremost, absolutely. I that the creativity involved to put something on stage and the creativity to build an organization and an entrepreneurial endeavor, that it's ⁓ all creative and acts and they're just details are different. and in our case, we made the creativity ⁓ what happens on stage and what happens backstage and in the office inextricably linked. Cause for us, we creating a genuine, real non-forth experience. were there with the audience members trying to end this ecstatic at the end of the night. And it was. totally real and totally different and it mattered who was in the audience and the personality of the audience. it didn't happen every night, believe me. Not like the truly get goosebumps, walk out of there like freaking out, excited feeling. And the only way you could get there is if everything backstage and in our case backstage was really the whole basement of the theater.
Michael: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: If everything wasn't right with all those folks too, like couldn't be in some kind of big, uh, dramatic turmoil. Yeah. And then walk out on stage and create that. So we had to have it. So in the early days, a lot of people came, Oh, we'll, we'll be your producers and we'll take care of all that business stuff. And you just watch the creative stuff. we're like, Oh, you know, we think the creative stuff is kind of the business stuff is fun too. And creative too. So.
Michael: Right. Right.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: So I agree with you that they're all the same. The other thing that happened was even before Blue Man, as I I sort of created personal mission statement of ideas real. I also ⁓ was very conflicted in own self that I couldn't paint, I couldn't sculpt, I was a really bad musician. a terrible writer and yet, so by all society's standards, I was not a creative person, but I felt creative and I didn't know how to reconcile those things. And even before Blue Man, when I was doing in the early days of software production and when I say software production, wasn't, writing code, I wasn't writing the booklets, nothing like that. But I was like a record producer, I was pulling together all the entities. I felt like it was a highly creative act to have idea in software, if someone else have an idea in software, and then to over three, five, six, eight months, get it from the idea to on a shelf. And so in regard, I felt creative, though, and then I was feeling like I was making ideas happen, making ideas real. And then the big breakthrough moment came very early in Blue Man when we used to sort of share books together. And I got section of a book where Brancusi, who did Bird in Space, that amazing, beautiful, just elegant sculpture. Brancusi said being an artist, which is really being creative is not a lightning bolt from God being struck by lightning bolt from God, having clear intent and passion. And just thought that that was, that was me. I could put blinders on. could have clear intent. I could manufacture passion with it and only later did neuroscience backup that You can decide to just be passionate. You can train your brain to be passionate. At the time, no one knew yet. then of course, as a neurodivergent learner, I knew nothing happened without hard work. And then later, a neuroscience of mine, ⁓ Dr. Dan said, ⁓ you've got three of them, intent, passion, and work, but don't you need a... attention in that formula. I was like, ⁓ my God, yes, yes. That's big problem. ⁓ Attention all over the place. once I sort of got that definition for myself, clear intention, attention, hard work, then I felt like I could make ideas real intentionally and frequently rather you know, and occasionally. And ⁓ all gears you know, we started running on all cylinders.
Michael: Sure, sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's so much, so much history and so many great stories. I I've, I've, I've been in that orbit for a long time and I just know, I was always so impressed with how from the culture to your communication styles, to, to just aspect of what you built as an organization, as a show, as a product, as a, as an album, it was done with, with real innovation. And I feel like having you guys here in this conversation is so, you know, appropriate for what we're trying to do here. And Laura, I kind of want to pivot to you and here, like, you know, as you started, right, unpaid intern at the very beginning and then grew through the ranks. I mean, I know at the end you were, you know, leading efforts in a very, very meaningful and very, very impactful way for the organization. Like, how did that transpire for you? And then how did that lead? I mean, you guys have worked together now post Blue Man for years on many different things and now you're writing a book together. Like give me, give me some of that story.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: Well, Michael, I have to say, I feel very similar to you in that, sorry to put you on the spot here, Matt, but Matt's been the greatest mentor of my life as well. And I think we were speaking recently about each other Matt would have a business phrase that he would use all the time, which is the rising tide floats all ships, right? ⁓ I equated ⁓ Goldman ⁓ the rising tide.
Michael: Yeah, yeah, totally. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: If you are lucky, you get to have a boat in the vicinity of Matt Goldman's Rising Tide because he will bring, he will lift everyone else up with him. So I feel very lucky that I got to be that ride with him and witnessed so many of the things, Michael, what you're talking about, his like ability to apply creativity to every aspect. One of the things like in my where that showed up. on a day-to-day basis was learning from Matt how you can go into a conversation creatively and empowered and not just be like, I'm gonna be a passive participant and wait and see what they want from me. ⁓ no, you can go in and you can ask for what you want.
Michael: Mm-hmm.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: You can be in a collaborative discussion about like, what do we think Michael wants from this and what do we want from this and how can we all get what we want? And so many people that I know don't realize you can approach your whole life in this way. You don't have to just be in the backseat waiting to see like, what does somebody want from me?
Michael: Hmm, totally.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: And that changed a million things we could point to with Blue Man, that we would never have gotten A, B, or C if we hadn't strategized before a conversation and gone in with, well, here's what we hope to get out of it, and let's work together to get everybody what they need. So just a ⁓ examples of that type of just applied imagination throughout every So for me, was a lot ⁓ learning ⁓ on, guess on the job. There were times where like when Matt would want to promote me and I couldn't the vision for I'm like, but ⁓ what would I if I wasn't doing all this minutiae? Because as we haven't mentioned this yet, I say Matt likes to remind everyone I grew up in Kansas. And so hard work for me was an absolute, but so was humility. So, I never thought I was creative because I ⁓ to that theory of like creative is equal to genius. ⁓ ⁓ have ideas that nobody's ever had before. And at Man, I realized that creativity can actually be what we call creation by recombination. ⁓ Taking it's of a.
Michael: Hmm. Mm. Totally.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: of creativity, right? So you're taking things that already exist and combining them in new ways. And that is something that I realized, ⁓ I do that all the time. Like I'm always thinking about like, wow, we could take what we learned from this and apply it to this and now we have something new. But I didn't have a name for that. And I didn't realize that that in of itself was creative. So those are just a few examples of how that showed up for me, Michael, over the years. I embraced it every step of the way. I'll stop there because I've been talking for
Michael: You know, that's awesome. mean, I can't tell you how many, many lines of intersection that has with me and sort of my beliefs. And I know some of them definitely came through Matt Goldman inspiration and conversations. One of my most often quoted, you know, truisms about creativity, innovation, invention is ⁓ Einstein's famous. are no new things, just new combinations of old things. which is certainly in the spirit of what you're talking about. And I totally subscribe to that. just think, just taking, it's the law of physics really, like we're just combining things anew and they have sometimes a catalytic effect and ⁓ create special. And sometimes they don't, but that's just another step the journey to something further down the road. So let's jump all the forward and talk about a little bit how ⁓ those lessons the things that, you know, have originated in both of you are now combining into what you're, you know, speaking about and writing about and teaching about and how, and sort of what your mission is for that. Cause I, and I don't want to like jump over the ⁓ blue school era because I think that that is so critical. So feel free to like dial it back to blue school and then talk about how that led to what you're doing now. But I'd just be curious how did those insights now manifest into different forms of educating in the world.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: Yeah. So, I mean, I think there's a lot of ways into this. And I think that maybe the fastest way to just talk about Blue School real quick, which, you know, we, co-founded six of us, ⁓ the three founders of Blue Man Group and our partners and, is we created a balanced model. You know, we totally, wanted our students to have mastery. but but we felt like things were a little bit out of balance. There's so many schools that that's really the main thing and then it's all about that. So we wanted to balance academic mastery with creative thinking, with what used to be called emotional intelligence, but even Daniel Goldman calls it self and social learning. academic mastery, creative thinking and self and social, the... the space between people. And ⁓ really resonated for a lot of people and it attracted a lot of people very quickly. it quickly got a lot of attention and Wired Magazine called it one of the, I don't know, five or seven most innovative schools in the world and, know, et cetera, et so, and when I left Blue Man to do Blue School full time. Kamian was one of our very first poaches and we had her help us on that project too. So fast forward to, and then Kamian will talk about the Spark file where they do creative coaching and have built a of creative folks who also might not have considered creative until. ⁓
Michael: awesome.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: or didn't know how to even start their creativity, but I'll let Kemi and talk about that. And all of those experiences, plus, you know, taking the Columbia University executive coaching course and doing a bunch of consulting and led us to the idea that, you know, which we had had brewing for a long time, but now it seemed like the time was right to put these ideas down in a book.
Michael: Mm-hmm.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: ⁓ which is really a book about how to make ideas real, how to foster the for creativity and innovation to thrive in teams, a leader, as an individual writing on by themselves. It's really, ⁓ and they're building that worked for us that we realized
Michael: Yeah.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: could be like Lego pieces, you could actually just take these blocks and create them any way you want. there's no real discipline to it or design. basic sort tenants, foundational things like trust, and respecting multiple perspectives and having clarity, but also being comfortable living in the ambiguity. You know, just these things that just, a lot of people are intuitive, but once and we're far down the line, we're kind of excited to get it into people's hands. But once you sort see it the way it worked and see it through different eyes and then other folks like Patrick Willingham at the Public Theater took sort of some of those learnings and applied them to the, and created a whole new culture at the public. Laura Clement sort of was a founding member of Little Island, which is a great park space here in New York that also has three performance venues. And she took her of these sort of approach to creativity and innovation. And it's one of the most wild, successful, amazing places in any city in the world right now.
Michael: Yeah, totally. Yeah, it's incredible.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: And the list goes on and on. so, but most importantly, it's such a way to and live. Like, you know, we're 30 years in and we're having more fun and feeling like our learning curve is working on this book than it has been in any of the
Michael: Mm-hmm.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: 29 years prior to this, and we've done a lot of projects together. We have. mean, the are really interesting because, yes, they will support creativity being a repeatable practice, something you can rely upon instead of ⁓ for inspiration to strike. But they also are principles that lead to really relationships. ⁓
Michael: Wow. Wow. What do I... Mm-hmm.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: of relationships that last 30 years and kind of an added ⁓ ⁓ like embracing these principles. And my partner and I, Susan Blackwell, we created the Spark file based on a lot of these same principles. We might call them different things in the Spark file, but they're all very, very similar. And it starts with trust. It starts with psychological safety because nobody can be in a group environment without feeling safe to do so. ⁓
Michael: Sure, totally.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: to be that person that tosses out the idea or embarrassing idea. Everybody has to understand there are no bad ideas. They're all welcome and we will build upon them. So at Spark file, we help individual creatives in a group setting and they're creatives of all kinds, maybe reconnect with their creativity that they've lost touch with. Maybe they are people who have dedicated their creative energies to someone or some other ⁓ job their whole life, or not going to find out like what might happen if I applied my creative energies to my own vision, my own ideas. So we use all of these same principles in the Spark file as well. Right.
Michael: And you inspire creatives because you guys were an inspiration to me in starting this podcast, Producing Innovation. know, like I was just so, I just really admired when you started the podcast and I was like really impressed with how you were doing it and just the way you were sharing ideas and I'm a huge fan of Susan's and it's just, it's awesome. So to be full circle like this is kind of cool.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: See ya. Thank you so much. did not know that. Thanks for being a listener, Appreciate that. ⁓ But if I might say something like we were, Susan and I were sitting in this very room that Matt and I are in right now, when we were brainstorming, you know, what we want to do with the next chapter of our lives. And we have a lot of big visions and a lot of big ideas. And it's something that we teach all of our clients now to do and to think about, which is sequencing, right? not going to have
Michael: Yeah. Yep. for sure.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: built all of this by tomorrow. So what can we do right away? And in that moment in time, was just before, was about a year before the pandemic. I was working at Blue School we had ⁓ of our visions on Post-it notes around these walls. And we left like, all right, so what can we start tomorrow? What do do tomorrow? Right now we will on Amazon, we will order the equipment we need for our podcast.
Michael: Mm-hmm.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: We will spend the week crafting our theme song, crafting our intros, outros, and our first episodes. And in a week, we will start our podcast. Did you write your motto back then? We did write our motto. What is your motto? One of our mottos is that we believe everyone is creative, but smart kids don't go it alone. Thanks for remembering that, Matt. That's a great one. Matt loves it.
Michael: Mm-hmm, that is, that is. know, it's so funny. I was thinking this morning about like things I wanted to actually talk about and that very idea is one of them. Cause I feel like it's such a part of my sense of Blue Man, which is that line, if you wanna go fast, go alone. If you wanna go far, go together. And think that there's something to that in, know, been mostly drawn to collaborative art forms. ⁓
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: Yes. Yeah.
Michael: through my career and, and I just, think that that's, yeah, I'd love, I love for you both actually just to, to sort of tee off on that a little bit at, at Blue Man and, beyond, because I think one of the things that was always so compelling me about Blue Man and so innovative ⁓ as ecosystem was the culture and the way you like, I mean, so listeners, my, the way I actually met these guys was through my wife, Sharon. She, back in the day, worked Blue Man early on, around the same time as Laura and Dr. Sharon Counts, yes, of course. And she, being a part of Blue Man, like when I first met her, I was like, you're in a cult and the cult is called Blue Man. And like, it's like this community of people that like love each and hang out nonstop and are constantly in touch, long before.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: Now Dr. Sharon by the
Michael: Everyone was texting everyone all the time. These guys had two way pagers. The whole community of Blue Man had two way pagers they would like, and it, it united them as a community in a way that back then in the mid nineties was nowhere be seen except the Blue Man group. And I just remember that as being so vivid and thinking like those guys are so fucking smart as a company. Cause I had a company at the time too. I also worked with Manny and Grigis who I love. Shout out Manny.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: I'm ready.
Michael: You know, was, he moonlit from his day job with, my company in Brooklyn. And, and I just like, you know, I just thought, man, those guys are those being you guys and Blue Man Group as a community, we're just so smart and so ahead of the curve. Like how a little bit on the, on the go far together and the community aspect and how you, how you created that. I'd love to hear that from both your perspectives, maybe as as a near near question.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: Yeah. Yeah. Sure, so I guess I'll just hit it from a couple of disparate things and try to pull it together because there's no direct line to one thing we were three partners at Blue Man we made a decision or anything on majority rules. We kept at until we were unanimous. So ⁓ it didn't matter what it was.
Michael: Mm-hmm.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: We all three had to decide that was, boy talk about, that was a time consuming process because decisions took really long time, especially when the polarity flipped and they say, okay, I agree. I go, no, no, no, I'm on your side. that was one and that carried really, you know, it didn't like, you know, Nine people say yes and eight people say no. So it's gonna be yes. Like we would stay at it until we had sort of more of a group kind of consensus to things. So that's one way in. For me personally, I was always incredibly inspired by Ball's story because A, I just, you I had grown up watching I Love Lucy and thought she was one of the...
Michael: Mm-hmm. Okay.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: greatest comedians of all time. And also recognizing, because I grew up in the 60s and 70s, was a trailblazer as a woman who had a star of her own show and the first studio, had her own studio, first ever of that. And quote that with is, she said, never want to regret what I didn't do. I regret what I did do. You know, that was a driver, like, OK, we're going to just keep at it. Like, not let's let's just keep doing things because I'd rather regret that I did it than I didn't do it. Right. ⁓ So and then was like just being respectful of ⁓ everyone, like everyone's emotions everyone's
Michael: Hmm.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: thinking matters, you might not agree with everything, you might not execute on it, but when you start to get into a process where you're taking in everyone's perspectives and lenses, invariably hybrid ideas, new ideas, like you stick at it long enough, stuff will emerge that you never would have gotten to on your own.
Michael: Mm-hmm.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: And that doesn't mean that you're still not leading the process or you're just, you know, it's just all kumbaya and you just give no, it means that you're drawing on the incredible resource of a diverse group of people to, with the trust that as you know, I have to come up with every idea, but I just have to really like them. ⁓ We're to keep at it until we get to a new, idea that we all really like.
Michael: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Totally.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: So those are some sort of just. And in the book, we talk about that. We call it multiple perspectives, just as a process and as a belief system. But how it feels to be a team member in that process is that, you know, we have words for it now, belonging, feeling seen and heard. don't think I used those phrases in the 90s or the early 2000s, but that's what it felt like. It felt like. I can offer an idea. Maybe my idea will get into the mix or not. Maybe it'll end up on stage. Maybe it won't. It doesn't really matter. I know it will be heard. I know it will be given respect and a thoughtful contemplation. it is really significant to know that you can go to work each day and you're making a meaningful contribution to any number of things in any day. ⁓ And I would add to that, another thing we talked about in the book is clarity and the clarity of knowing like what we're all doing here. What is our mission? What is our goal? ⁓ think that I also was accused so many times of being in a cult and people loved ones just being like, you have to stop talking about how much you love your job because everybody here hates theirs. So you need to zip it. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. But can I just say one more thing about how much I love my job? We all felt, I think, that we were working on something that was bigger than ourselves. It was bigger than a theater show. again, we didn't have the words for this until much later. We've like tried on a million phrases, but eventually talked about the show as attempt to experience a heightened sense of being alive. That you might feel that in the show. ⁓
Michael: Mm-hmm.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: but that we felt that way day in our jobs, that we are truly alive, we are doing important work in the world and bringing joy to people and making people connected to each other. I think we all ⁓ really this idea that we had a shared purpose. ⁓
Michael: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, was so apparent, you know, in every way in the show and the community. I I married one of your cult members because she was so ⁓ awesome and unique. She's doing great. Yeah, she's doing great. She's doing great. We're doing great. Yeah. Teaching her ass off, like inspiring the youth, the youth of ⁓ upcoming designers of the world. But yeah, she's great. And ⁓
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: How's she doing? she's okay. ⁓ Okay. Yeah.
Michael: And yeah, and I think that was part of my, I think when you, it's a great line that I share with my son who's a freshman at Bentley University this year. And it was when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. And I think a lot of that DNA was shared between us. And I made art because I wanted to help people reconnect with wonder.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: Hmm.
Michael: you know, and awe because I feel like that is a, that's spiritual, you know, it's our purpose in being here. It elevates consciousness. And I saw that in what Blue Man was doing and what you guys were doing. And I saw it in what you, how you try to instill that in education later. It's why I'm so excited about your book. And I think that that's, that feels like my purpose today, right? don't make shows in the way that I used to, but I'm now trying to sort of teach as you are creativity and applying creativity to one's life. and to our communities and to the things that we do, because if we can reconnect with that awe and that wonder, just a way of experiencing our lives, you know, and it's one filled with joy and it's one in which you realize that, you know, abundance isn't something that you have to find out there, it's within you. And so joy it's something, you how you bring, how you do things is joyful or not, as opposed to something that you get externally in. Anyway, I just feel so aligned with you guys. I'm so excited for the book to come out. I think it's going to be such a gift to the world. When can we expect it? When can we expect it? When can I go order it on Amazon? Where can I find you guys as well?
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: Yeah, it may be a minute we are still we're still writing it and so the publishing process will do its job and take its time. Yeah, we've sort of flipped the polarity. We're a bunch of speaking engagements about the work in the book even before the book is out because we're too excited to not start talking about it in public.
Michael: Okay. Mm-hmm.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: And, but I think, you know, I think a year, 18 months is a reasonable timeframe for, for, for the book to come out, you know, many options these days, but it looks like it's going to be with a publisher and, ⁓ you ⁓ go that route. so, it's, it's, it's, just such a fun project. And that's the point in that the joyfulness and the life satisfaction is exponential. And it's like, is boundless. And the more people who are involved in these projects that of us have worked on in the past and will work on in the future, it just, I we see it right now. If anyone's following the social media or on the hamnet, I mean, they were part of ⁓ such a amazing experience that And so, you know, and often to that kind of environment as being in a learning organization. ⁓ And it's sort a phrase was coined by ⁓ Peter ⁓ Senge. And when we exposed to work, which was a little bit after Blue Man started, there was one line that haunted us for, ⁓
Michael: Hmm, yeah.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: really haunted me, think Kamiin is once you've experienced that sort of gestalt, ⁓ that of being in a high functioning learning organization, you'll be chasing that feeling for the rest of your life. I was like, don't, first of all, can't imagine being more amped up than it was Blue Man, but I don't want to ⁓ chase that experience for the rest my life. ⁓ want to create it.
Michael: Yeah.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: created everywhere we're at. And then we've done that in several different environments between. And so it's totally totally. And I don't mean replicable. Replicable is the wrong word. The ingredients be brought to the table and the chefs, all different chefs ⁓ make it into dish they want. ⁓ Lego pieces. Here the Lego pieces. Design the Lego any way you want.
Michael: Yeah. Yeah.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: But it's really cool because it's a Lego sculpture. that's really what's become really clear is that it's available to anyone who wants to. ⁓ ⁓ a little more work on the front end just to sort of, but the pay off is off charts.
Michael: Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. it comes out, I'm to be promoting the hell out of it because I have no doubt that it's going to be a message and a gift to the world as you guys are. Mack Olm and Laura Kamian, such a ⁓ pleasure to with you guys. I love you both so much. I'm so grateful for your work and for your friendship and for just all that I've learned from you guys because it's been so much over such a long period of time. So thank you, thank you, thank you. And yeah, I can't wait to see what's next.
Matt Goldman & Laura Camien: Like what? Thanks, Michael.
