Creativity in a Black Hole
and Surprises at Every Turn
A Conversation with Joseph
Reimels
By Janet Stormes
Joseph Reimels is an expert risk taker, collaborator
and a successful salesman. He credits
his career and personal success to his dyslexia and the Creativity Studies
graduate program at Buffalo State. Joseph
will be presenting a talk at the 2017 CEE-Conference and if my conversation
with him is any indication, he will challenge and inspire the audience.
I had the opportunity to chat with Joseph
and our conversation was far-reaching, inspiring, and full of surprises. He attended Niagara University as an
undergraduate where he majored in political science and minored in
theater. He received his Master’s degree
in Creativity Studies from Buffalo State in 1997.
After earning his Master’s degree, he worked
for a New York state senator and then began working in sales in New York City. In 2008 (at the height of the economic
recession), he decided to make a career jump to retail finance as an independent
contractor. He spent the first two years
of his new career on the road, including six months when he was essentially
homeless and working from his car, before he landed his first national
client. Now he has 3,200 clients and
works with hundreds of sales people to help them develop their sales skills.
I asked Joseph how he managed to persevere
for those difficult years and give himself the time to succeed. He said that he learned persistence from
living with dyslexia, and optimism, confidence, and the skills to tackle
challenges from the Creativity Studies graduate program. He described dyslexia as looking at a black
hole and creativity as the light that enabled him to work himself out of the
black hole by understanding his strengths and what he wanted to do with his
life. He believes that the creative
studies graduate program is an untapped resource for many other people with
dyslexia.
Joseph said that given his background, he
values collaboration and embraces the strengths in other people. In a competitive field like retail sales, he
is unique because while he is successful in sales, he loves collaborating with
others. He uses creative problem solving
techniques in each of his meetings to ensure there are no hidden agendas with
his clients. He believes his clients and
sales team find his approach refreshing.
I wanted to interview Joseph because his
bio on the CEE conference website mentioned “his belief in applying creative
solutions to traditional outdated business practices”. I wondered about his approach because I am
interested in the same issue. During my
conversation with Joseph, we talked about how to successfully introduce new and
unfamiliar ideas to individuals working in traditional professions. He explained that because of his dyslexia, he
is very good at reading others and empathizing with them. This has proved to be valuable in sales and when
teaching or convincing others to embrace new ideas.
Joseph said that when he creates
development tools (he prefers “development” to the word “training”), he focuses
on making a clear concise presentation that demonstrates the benefits of the new
approach or product. He tries to get others
excited and inspired by his vision.
Joseph’s theater experience taught him that an actor must be clear, perform
consistently every night, and be fully committed to his or her role to engender
a rapport with the audience. He uses
this same approach when selling new products or introducing new ideas.
Joseph’s career is in retail sales and
finance and he loves theater and politics.
I worked in federal budgeting and have been a lifelong teacher, dancer
and choreographer. We bonded over our
similarly wide-ranging interests and our belief that this diversity provides us
with a unique and beneficial perspective in our professional work.
He believes that to be an effective
teacher or facilitator, we each need to create an individual approach based on
what we are passionate about and experienced in. Just as he found connections between his
dyslexia, creativity, theater, politics and sales, he encouraged me to find the
connections between my background as a dancer, federal budgeteer and what I
learn in the Creativity Studies graduate program as I develop the
approaches/tools I use for teaching and facilitating.
Our conversation covered creativity,
dyslexia, retail sales and financing, politics, theater, dance, and ways to
develop an individual’s professional skills – as I said it was challenging, inspiring,
and filled with surprising turns. I look
forward to Joseph’s talk and learning more about his unique perspective on
creativity.
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