The other day I played music with a band I'm privileged to play in. Each band member comes from a different school of music - one was a House DJ, another a jazz musician, someone else was a school music teacher. The lead singer is a saxophonist that runs an auto body. Nobody is the same - everybody is different.

At this rehearsal, we were helping the singer write new material. The singer said, "I this is more 'Huey Lewis & the News'." Right away, we each started thinking of what that means to us. Then we all started throwing out ideas. Seconds went by before each member began to throw out new ideas. Then we immediately built on each other's ideas. After two minutes, we had created the shell of a four and a half minute song.

How many ideas did we go through in that time? Too many to count.

Did we get defensive about one person's idea not being good enough? No, because we were not sharing ideas to make our ideas stand out above the rest. We shared ideas to help make our collective work better.

Musicians, and other artists, have a unique way of making things better by making better things through iteration and collaboration. I never realized how valuable these skills were until I began working with non-musicians.

I now appreciate every lesson I ever had and every teacher who pushed me to try something different.

And more, I appreciate every musician who has ever said - we can make this better together.