#grantspanier

[cheenogrey]

Polaroids by Grant Spanier

[arcadebroke]

[contentnowatscoopr]

Grant Spanier is an inspiring content creator and entrepreneur out of Minneapolis, Minnesota. He writes for Advertising Week, is the creative director of Greenroom Magazine and runs LESS Co., a small creative studio in St. Paul. His accomplishments combined with his go-getter attitude make him a Content Creator We Love! For more on Grant, check him out on his new podcast, 10,000 Hours, or on his website. 

    Tell me a little about yourself and your background.

Currently, I’m based in Minneapolis. I call myself a writer, designer and entrepreneur. I’m involved in a lot of different projects. I run a creative studio, called LESS Co. We do a lot of branding and identity, design work, as well as a lot of video commercial story telling work. I am also the creative director at Green Room magazine which is something we kick started in September. I’m involved in a handful of other organizations like TedxHennepinAve. We’re setting up a Tedx this summer. I also volunteer with a lot of organizations.

    You did the “Sethternship” with Seth Godin. What was that like?

Seth has been a long time personal hero of mine. I’ve read all of his books and am a big fan. The internship was a two week project at his office in New York at the end of July and early August this past summer and I continued to work on the project for a couple months after. It was a phenomenal opportunity, definitely one of the best experiences of my life. It has opened a ton of doors and connected me with some great friends and people I continue to collaborate with today.

    What did you create together at the internship?

What we were doing was trying to create a platform to respond to the education problem that Seth saw, which is that there’s accessed information through MOOC’s (Massive Open Online Courses) but they only have a 2% completion rate. Technically, anyone can go take a Stanford course online, but no one finishes it. The idea was that learning happens together; you need a group and to be able to collaborate in person. We tried to create a platform for people to organize and for us to disseminate classes from thought leaders like Seth, Ken Robinson, or Chris Guillebeau, that sort of TED style content. We worked really, really hard on creating that platform and building it from the ground up during those two weeks and continued to afterwards. We ended up running into a lot of issues on the development side of things and Seth then posed the question, “Are we in the technology business or are we in the education business? What are we really trying to do here?” We decided to scrap it and go with an easier to use, email style dissemination. Regardless, it was a phenomenal experience and I learned a lot from it.

    What kind of content do you create as the host of the new podcast, 10,000 HOURS?

That was actually born during the Seth project. I’d been looking to start a new project and I connected and became close with a guy named Josh Long. Josh has a podcast called Happy Monday, which he does with Sarah Parmenter. He inspired me to start something in the same space and he gave me a lot of guidance. It’s called 10,000 HOURS and is loosely based on the Malcolm Gladwell theory that it takes 10,000 hours to be a master at anything. The show is really based on conversations with people who are putting in their time and trying to become experts and trying to grow. It’s about craft and creativity and the journey. We launched in January and we’re doing 1 episode per week, every Friday. So far, it’s been a really great project.

      How have you seen user generated content affect your job(s)?

There have been a couple of apps that I’ve worked with where user generated content has been a component of a campaign. I really do think it’s a powerful thing. It’s really powerful when you can find an authentic intersection between a brand and a user or a customer and then give them tools or inspiration and enable them to create things.

    What would your advice be to Scoopr Brand Ambassadors?

Always be creating. I think you get better over time. Even with something as simple as Instagram, just be intentional about a caption or about the way you see the world. That’s a way of practicing and honing a skill. Photography is just capturing a moment so you can constantly be doing that. I think it’s being in that ‘turned on’ mindset of being a creator.  As a creator, I am always looking for an opportunity for a story, an angle, or an image that appeals to my eye. Having that posture to the world and not being too precious or perfect about the content is useful in creating.

  Another part of it is consuming. I’m always consuming content and looking to see what other people are doing and trying to take that in. It fills my wells of inspiration. But then, if we consume too much, we don’t get better. I read a quote that said, “You don’t get better at lettering by scrolling.” That’s what a lot of people end up doing, falling into the trap of overconsumption. They end up just scrolling through these Instagram or Pinterest feeds thinking they’re getting better, when really they are just looking at pretty images instead of creating them and honing their own skills.