We were lucky to catch up with Will Cady recently and have shared our conversation below.

Will, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

My craft is creativity itself.

I like to help people to find their purpose and express it more completely. It’s not about telling people what to think, it’s about showing people how. I do this by advising creatives and executives, building creative teams, and developing creative strategies for businesses. Whatever it is I do…the word ‘creative’ always finds its way in there.

This began for me when I was learning how to be a musician; a bass player, specifically, That tight focus on one particular creative endeavor helped me to develop from a young age a discipline around something I could grasp. I didn’t know at the time that I was learning about something as big and vague as creativity more broadly. I thought I was learning how to pluck strings. However, as time went on and my mind and heart grew with each year of learning, what had seemed to be very specific lessons flowered out into much more profound truths. How to think, how to play, how to come up with a story worth telling.

Learning how to play music taught me how to think and collaborate creatively. In music, you’ve got to know how to listen deeply. You’ve got to figure out the key you’re playing in quickly. You’ve got to be able to turn melodies inside out and upside down thoroughly. The same can be said for how to play with ideas. It could be about identifying a brand purpose, developing a fictional character, choosing a logo motif, writing out a story.

As my identity expanded from bass player to musician to creative, I learned how to carry these patterns of thinking with me. As I began to lead and build teams, I began to coach from principles I had learned from playing music. To me, it’s all music.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My name is Will Cady.

In October 2023, I published my first book, ‘Which Way Is North: A Creative Compass for Makers, Marketers, and Mystics’. It outlines the unique perspective and insights I’ve gleaned at the intersection between my role as a creative executive at Reddit since 2016 collaborating with some of the world’s biggest brands, my role as a professional tarot card reader and meditation teacher, and my experience as a professional musician and writer.

The big idea I have to offer has to do with our collective fears around anxiety and hopes around creativity. I believe that anxiety IS creativity ready to be transmuted. This means that all the anxiety that we all have today – it doesn’t mean there is something wrong for us. It means there is something for us to do.

My task is to help people at the largest and most intimate scales to bring more human creativity into this world so we can resolve the stuck energies we each feel as anxieties every day. I do my work from center stage at business conferences to the back rooms of crystal shops. Speaking to large crowds or one person at a time, the message is the same. I’m here to help us all cultivate more creativity.

As services, I provide:

– 1:1 coaching/consultation on personal creativity and/or business strategy
– creativity workshops for groups
– guided meditations
– tarot sessions
– keynote talks on trending themes

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

I believe that we are currently living in the consequences of a decades-long pattern of divesting from the humanities. The value that we’ve put on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) in education, policy, and industry is undeniably vital to addressing some of our most urgent and important needs. However, I believe that to prioritize STEM at the cost of funding the humanities was a grave error.

Many of the challenges within our most urgent and important needs have arisen because of the devaluing of our humanity. Runaway technologies are eroding the social fabric and destroying ecosystems. Ethics demonstrated by business and policy leaders are observably dubious, resulting in great consequences for a public that struggles to unify and express what matters to our common interest most and why. Many of these challenges are best addressed by a level of human acumen that can only come from education in creativity: the arts, literature, philosophy, anthropology, even theology. How can best repair our societal bonds? How do we reconcile our differences? What lessons can be gleaned from the cultures that lived before modernity in sustaining a place of balance with our environments?

Art is not Science. Both have an important role to play in saving our future. We can’t call in a future we can’t envision. We can’t cast out the evils we can’t name. Creative literacy is a solution.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

My mission statement is to repair broken systems through storytelling and strategies.

Overall, this idea of resurfacing our humanity in our technological systems is a huge focus of mine. The state of discourse in culture today, the levels of anxiety, the creativity with which we are envisioning our future. These are all areas that need help. I don’t truthfully know what kind of impact I could make, but those are the fires I’m running toward. So much focus has been put on changing the world. It’s time to focus on healing it too.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.will-cady.com
• Instagram: @willcady
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/willcady
• Twitter: @willcady

Image Credits
Elysse Frelinger