The Multiplier Effect of Creative Passion: Hypercreative Kyle Stapleton

Gavin Guidry
Nov 7 · 7 min read

What does it look like when someone believes so passionately in something that it affects an entire city? I don’t know how to answer that question on my own, but I know where to start.

My friend Kyle Stapleton is one of the most passionate people I know. Passionate about his work, passionate about others, and passionate about his city. He emits passion in a way that is contagious to those around him. As a result, I always find some of Atlanta’s most creative and influential movers and shakers in community with Kyle; whether that be regular exchanges with Killer Mike, leading opinion on culture through his CULTURE LABx series, or shaping the future of our city through Lead Atlanta. I believe that we can learn a lot about multiplying our creative endeavors using the passionate blueprint that Kyle has laid out.

What’s your slashes?

“Culture shaper / writer / speaker / pseudo-creative director / troublemaker.”

What do you actually do for a living?

“By day, I’m Sr. Manager of Culture & Experience for Turner Studios, a massive in-house creative engine for most of WarnerMedia’s brands. My charge is to show up each day and try to create the conditions that help our craftspeople deliver their very best. As big corporate day jobs go, I couldn’t imagine a much better one. I mean, we make Inside the NBA at my office.”

You’re creative, but not in the obvious or visual sense. So what do your creative outputs look like?

“It’s normally intangible, and I’ve had to come to terms with that — especially being married to a prolific and mega-talented visual artist. Instead, I’ve focused more on making a living by drawing out creativity in the world around me. My most successful medium to date has been public speaking, trying to spur action on complex problems or share challenging ideas in creative and memorable ways.”

I can personally attest to you bringing the creativity out of the world around you. Just in the big and small ways that you’ve supported me throughout my career, it’s easy to see that you believe heavily in others and what they create. Why is that, and where does that come from?

“All of my energy comes from other people, especially unique and expressive ones (like you, for instance). I’m irresistibly drawn to them, and I get straight-up ecstatic when I’m able to tune in to others’ inspiration. Those wavelengths amplify my own best thoughts. I can’t help but share that with other people, because inspiration has a multiplier effect — the more is shared, the more is made.”

“Inspiration has a multiplier effect — the more is shared, the more is made.”

You’re one of the most passionate people I know. What are you passionate about?

“I’m passionate about the insane miracle of being alive and the people and the place that make my life what it is. The way to honor those who gave me this life is to devote mine to building toward a Beloved Community, where we’ve overcome the three evils about which Dr. King preached at the end of his life. That means people are free to be themselves, and we govern with the kind of principled justice required to make it so.”

I love that. I think your passion is partly what draws so many creatives in this city to you. How do you use passion to influence what you create?

“I tend to go all-in when I’m passionate about a pursuit, and I’ve fallen out of love with enough of them that I’ve had to learn to make creativity a more sacred and personal thing. That way it sustains me instead of burning me out.

The greatest rewards for me have come when I tried something small and simple just to see what would happen, and an insatiable love of music has driven most of them. My childhood best friend and I curated quarterly mixtapes for a few years as a way to stay close while he lived in other cities, and I wove in themes and designed the artwork. An idea for a social media platform for album recommendation evolved into a successful, profitable side project in the music biz, which then led to a podcast about albums, which in turn has gotten me more into audio engineering. And my favorite was a birthday crowdfunding experiment that became a scholarship endowment for first-generation college students at my alma mater.

Did you go to school to learn all of this?

“Yes and no. I got two degrees from Georgia State, including an MBA. More than anything I learned in grad school (which was a lot), I had my man-behind-the-curtain moment that made two things abundantly clear: (1) that I’d never arrive at a moment where I’d “made it,” so I’d better disabuse myself of that idea immediately and (2) that the ability to connect with people is a far greater determinant of success than any supposedly valuable ‘hard skill.’”

How else did you learn?

“Getting into lots of rooms I wasn’t qualified to be in, faking it ’til I made it, trying to pick up on the cues of the people influencing the room, pulling all-nighters trying to figure out how to get projects just how I wanted them, revisiting and cringing at old work then trying my hand at it again with the benefit of hindsight, reading about and taking notes on my curiosities pretty much constantly, and pushing the limits of my tastes in things like music and movies almost out of compulsion. All of them were important, but that last one is the one I still do the most often.”

When did you know you were creative?

“I still struggle with calling myself a “creative” with a straight face, given that I spend just about every minute of my life — professional and personal — around prolific, world-class creative talents of all stripes. I mostly just know that I’m not not creative. I know I’m not one of those Brave New World people who sleepwalks through my life, consuming mindlessly and accepting the world as it’s force-fed to me. To me, being creative simply means seeing the world not as it is, but as it could be, and trying to live my life in a way that draws others in that direction.”

When did you know you were going to do something creative for the rest of your life?

“I didn’t. I’ve always been in awe of the people who didn’t seem to even consider another path. All I know to do is begin each day with an intention to do something different that day and help people around me do the same.”


Marianne Williamson famously wrote, “Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you… And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

As we’ve discussed before, society aims to pull us away from hypercreativity. We’re told to stick to one medium or discipline to experience success. Be satisfied with a good job and don’t let aspirations distract you from that. I’m glad to know people like Kyle Stapleton who turn that misconception on its head, and show why doing more is not bad but actually better, because we’re able to inspire the creation of those around us. Even with a full-time “day job”, passion led Kyle from a hobby, to a successful business, picking up useful skills and giving back to his community along the way. Through all of his endeavors, he’s been able to actually empower others to create along with him, multiplying the effects of his creativity. This is exactly what passion does for us as creatives: passion multiplies creativity. It pushes us to create things that our work schedules or comfort zones would never allow. When we confine our creativity to a 9 to 5, we rob the world and others around us of what our passion can create.

Gavin Guidry

Written by

Hyper-creative individual making sense of this world of creativity one photo and blog post at a time.

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