006: Cultivating Creativity and Alignment in Life and Business with Amie Peele Leake

Welcome to the Creative Permission Slip, the podcast where creativity is wild, necessary, and waiting for you. Come as you are, bring what you've got, and remember it's never too late to create. Today's guest brings a unique blend of precision and play. As the owner of her own law firm, Amy lives in a world of structure and responsibility, but behind the scenes her life blossoms with color, flavor, and inspiration. From painting and gardening to crafting gorgeous family meals, Amy shows us that creativity isn't separate from success. It is essential to it. In this episode, we explore what it looks like to cultivate beauty, peace, and expression, even in the busiest of seasons. Let's dive in. Alright, welcome to the Creative Permission Slip. Today I have a fantastic guest, Amy Peel Leak. Welcome to the show. I would thank you to Amy's. To Amy's, it's double Amy Power. I would love for you to just kick us off with, in your own words, who are you? What do you love to do professionally and personally, and where do you feel like you're going? Good questions. Thank you. Who am I? A child of this universe, like we all are, and I'm thinking obviously because of the content of this podcast about my creative side. I am a paper crafter and I'm a writer and I paint mostly watercolor. I love to paint. And I feel like I've got half a dozen books in my brain that have not made it to publishing. I do love to write and I am sort of the family archivist. I keep our scrapbooks and things put together. Professionally, I'm a lawyer by day, right? I spent over two decades in really big law and then launched my own law firm almost five years ago. Our focus is business law and intellectual property. So I do a lot in the world of contracts, branding, copyright, trademark, AI, website, creation, and maintenance and the policies that go with that. That's the world I swim in and I work with very small companies. I work with very large companies and a variety of different industries. So that breath brings me a lot of interesting work. So I'd say that's who I am. I'm also a wife and a mom and love those roles very much in my life. Yeah. Yeah. What a combination. I love it. And where do you feel like at least at this moment, you know, like where your future self is calling you to? I think to answer that question, I need to look back a little bit sort of where have I been recently and where am I going. It's been a really heady time the last almost five years launching this firm and seeing how rapidly we have grown. We just acquired another law firm. So we're in the, we're, you know, integrating those clients now. And when I think about my future professionally, I think a lot about alignment, alignment with the things my firm is best at the things my team really shines doing when we work with clients and aligning with with the clients that that feel that connection with us to so. So I think a lot about that. I see a lot of a lot of right sizing and alignment going forward as we grow our client base. And yet do so with the commitment to provide top shelf service, not not for people to feel like, you know, they're a number or a cog in the wheel for clients to fill that way. There's a lot of that out there. And I don't want to contribute to that in the legal world on the more sort of creative or personal front. I just moved my family home. And so we are in the process of some interior design choices, some gardening, upkeep and choices, building out a patio, you know, all the things you do when you move into a new place to make it your own. And so that creativity is really fun. And something I haven't done a whole lot of because I was in my prior home for over two decades. And so that's been super fun. I am looking forward to as we unpack and the whole, you know, area I have dedicated to my creative work. I should say artistic work because creativity is so much broader than that. But kind of getting that organized and, you know, figuring out, okay, where am I going to paint this thing? We're, you know, going to do this work. So I think that's, that's probably where I'm headed. Yeah. Yeah. That sounds really exciting with all of these possibilities. So when you use the phrase, make it your own. It made me think about creativity and how we weave it in even when we're maybe not aware of it. I would love to talk about making it your own in a particular shift in life. How you made your mark on something probably in a creative way to really make it your own. So one of the things I love to do is garden at my prior house. I have a very different gardening style than most people in this area of the country who like very sort of pristine, clear, right, angles, you know, I call it the mulch mulch mulch flower mulch mulch mulch flower. And that's wonderful. And it does look very neat and very manicured. And there's a lot of beauty in that. Maybe I'm not as good at gardening as I would like to be. Maybe my creative vent is a little more towards the beauty in chaos. But mine tends to be like, you know, I think of it as messy English garden. You know, we're not talking about box row, you know, or amaze, a very clipped bushes and things like that. I kind of like to let one thing, you know, flow into the other and it's more of a natural habitat. Well, I had a lot of fun with my garden at the old house. And one year I even cultivated, I had an Easter basket gift from a friend of mine. This is just like four years ago. And one of the things in it was a bag of sunflower seeds that, you know, you could cultivate inside and then go plant. So I thought, well, why not do that? It's COVID. There's not much else to do. So I got the egg carton, you know, and I cultivated all these little seeds through the late winter and very early spring. And I planted them and I had this fabulous sunflower garden in the summer. And that was really fun. And I then got more into feeding my birds in that same area of a garden plot. And over the years, what's happened is the birds have planted them for me because they get on, you know, I have one of the bird buddies like everyone over the age of 48 and watch, you know, watch the birds on the camera and my phone and all of that. And you know, we feed in the black sunflower seeds because they love them, but they always kick some off. And so what was so fun about that was watching what comes to you when you're not trying so hard. So there was so much beauty in that for me and it was almost as if the creativity was about letting go. And I also experienced that in this garden because over the years, I planted some heirloom lilies. My late aunt on my dad's side was a phenomenal gardener. And so she passed on cuttings to my stopmother who then passed them on to me. So I had these beautiful patches of these lilies from my great aunt's garden. My aunt's garden, oh, she's not my great aunt. She might roll over in her grave for me saying that, but sorry, at least. But then to see them propagate and see them grow and extend their reach. That's to me sort of the fun in this. And one reason that I do like that more casual way of gardening because I like to see what's going to happen. I am at a turning point in my life now with the new place, which is landscape with mulch, mulch, mulch flower. And so I'm wondering where do I go with that? And they do have, or they we now have to raise beds in the back with just a few things in them. So I put my bird buddy right in the middle. We'll see if the birds plant me some sunflowers. Oh, that's fun. It feels like kind of a blank canvas. [BLANK_AUDIO] I mean, they have plenty of beautiful flowers here. Very manicured, rose bushes, things I've never grown before. You know, it's interesting how life tells you what's right. Because I've always, I'm from the deep, deep south, and hydrangeas are very big down there. And I've always wanted to have hydrangeas. And I have burned them to a crisp multiple times over and over and over. So I thought, this is beyond me. I can't do it. I moved into this home and right outside the master bedroom is an enormous, beautiful hydrangea bush that is taller than I am. So I get to see this every day, every day, and evening. And I think, well, if I'm not supposed to be in this house, I'm not sure where I'm supposed to be. So that's been beautiful and part of the transformation. I think there's some other aspects of my life where there have been pivot points and transformations where I've had some other creative times or moments. You know, so I'm remarried. So, you know, getting divorced gave me more time, maybe than I had before. My painting really took off then, and that's been amazing. And not just my own painting, but my appreciation of others. I didn't know I love abstract art. I always thought I didn't. Well, I don't know why who told me that. And I have found that I can be really moved by abstract art. And so I've started a tradition of purchasing art from people that I know, or that I even commissioned to create art for me. One example is a really good friend of mine from high school has a daughter who's neurodivergent. And she painted a picture of an animal, and I just fell in love with it. And so this is the first time I did this for myself for my birthday. And so for my 50th, I asked him if I could commission his daughter to paint something for me. And he said, "Okay, well, sure. What? She was maybe 12." And he said, "What? I said a horse." So she does. I pay for it. And what comes back is this amazing abstract of a horse, and I'm totally blown away. And so it was this really meaningful thing. So now every year I do something else with art for my birthday for myself, right? And so it's not just about painting what comes out of me and my paintbrush, but appreciating the beauty that's out there. Yeah. Oh, that's so fun. And I feel like part of what you are speaking to here has to do with allowing the mystery of creativity and the. Like you take part in it, and you also allow and see what shows up kind of like this dance with creativity. Does that feel. I think that's so right. I mean, we have intentionally evolved our aesthetic in this new home. I had a lot of other people's stuff in my former home. My mom had lived with us. A lot of her belongings were there. She's been gone 16 years. I still had all this stuff. So I kind of went through it and re-homed items with people who would really appreciate them, and then started choosing things that I would select like today. And I had this really interesting conversation with my daughter who's now 16. So I did a lot of purging with this move. I mean, ate a lot. We filled four dumpsters over the course of the move, and we're not quite finished yet. So being a good Southern mom, I had the beautiful gang-ums, mocked dresses, the giant bibs, and the big old giant monogram, you know, all of that for my daughter when she was young. And, you know, the bloomers with the whole thing. And so I held them up to a measure like the last few things that I've held on to and just could not wrench from my hands. And I said, you know, to my daughter, what do we do about these? And she looked at me and she said, "Mom, they don't fit me anymore." And I thought, I mean, here's this 16-year-old girl in the driveway telling you this. And I thought, "Okay, that's both like immediate and logistic, but it's also prophetic." I mean, there's this wisdom there, you know, like existential wisdom of where you live in, Mom, are you living, you know, 14 years ago? Or are you going to live in 2025? Because that didn't fit me anymore, so I'm moving on. She has taught me so much about living in the moment. And so they got donated. And I hope somebody has her monogram or knows how to take it off and do it, which is extremely hard to do, I've learned. So I loved that. I loved that free thinking objective viewpoint from her. I think there's room for creativity in our daily round, even when we may not be thinking about it. And even, you know, coffee on the back patio in the morning and appreciating a sunrise or the cardinal couple that comes to see every day. And those kinds of what you might think of as mundane moments, but particularly since COVID, I have learned that that's what we live for, right? Those little interstitials between the work we do and the parenting and the volunteer and just all the incidents of daily life, those glimmers, there's so much creativity in that. And then, you know, just even for example in the work that I do with my clients, we do with a lot of contracts, we deal with a lot of dispute, super contracts, we deal with a lot of intellectual property and a lot of disputes over intellectual property. And quite often there are creative ways to get to yes that you may not even be thinking about. Like we don't have to make this a giant fight. Let's see how quickly we can get to what do you really need from like my client side and what does the other person really need? How quickly can we get to that so that all of those generative energies are spent doing what's best for our respective businesses and your people, you know, but I talked to clients a lot about if we're in a dispute, what it's going to cost them. Really the opportunity costs are way more important than the financials, you know, I can say this is a $20,000 project, this is a $3 million project or you know it could be up to that much if we take it to the mat, scorched earth, whatever. But the opportunity cost in terms of leadership's time, energy, attitude and what it's going to take from your people to be engaged in that kind of battle. I sometimes think is not taken into account maybe as deeply as clients could. And so I really encourage that because it's a whole distraction of its own type and you can't avoid it but oftentimes you can. So how do you bring creativity that's still protecting the companies involved. How do you bring that to the table is something I think about a lot. And then one final thing along the lines of creativity in the professional world. I tell the folks I talk to you about coming on to the team at my firm. The real reason I created this type of platform for people to practice law is that I firmly believe that we can have really robust legal practices as lawyers and also have a life. And so we very much encourage bringing your whole self to work and supporting each other when we you know have other things that we're doing it you know people default to parenting that's certainly one thing we have one lawyer who is in seminary. So she's balancing those two things and that was a dream from years ago a dream deferred for variety of reasons and she's able to pick that mantle up again and how amazing is that hiking with your kids and doing all these other other types of pursuits so I think there's creativity in the way we arrange our work and our commitment to work and commitment to an integrated life. Yeah, I love that we encourage people to bring their whole self to work. I think that's a very creative approach and I think that's also gosh the only way we can actually do it even though we've kind of been taught otherwise right but what a beautiful I can only I can do it. imagine the culture that you create. Not just at work, but I'm sure that that same kind of feeling is in your home as well. And I'm really glad you touched on this too because this was part of my curiosity to get to know this with you and to get to expand this perspective with other people perhaps too is even when we think that something maybe a person resides, for example, on the left side of the brain more, or this type of job is maybe more left brain, or this conversation is maybe more left brain, whatever it is that we are engaged with. I think there's so much more play between the right brain and the left brain than we give credit to. You just express that so well about how just some of the ways that they weave together for you at work, at home, in the garden, in relationships. I was guessing, this was a question I wanted to bring up for you too. I was guessing that creativity and your artistic endeavors really played a part in your, for example, as you were going through your divorce and processing different things. And I think that was maybe around the same time you were starting your own business that I'm guessing it really helped with your physical health, your mental health. I think it did. I wrote a song which I never even thought I could do, right? But in that period of time, I did that. We did a super fun thing as a family. And I mean, extended family over Thanksgiving last year that I initiated. I don't know if you've heard of this company called Murrow Mosaic. But you paint a tile. You pick a color scheme of the ones they're offering. And then you get to paint it however you want. And then you send it back to them or send a photo of it and they transfer that digital image to a metal tile. And then they build this mural somewhere. And you can pick the US or the can't. I mean, they go all over the world. And then you get to go see it. So you've become part of this huge thing. So we did that. I ordered 30 kits and you know, everyone from two years old to almost 80, painted at least one. It was a phenomenal fun experience throughout the Thanksgiving week. And they just unveiled the locations in Pennsylvania. And so a lot of people want to go and have a family reunion and go see that. So it was something that I began to do more of myself, but also bring to the table with family and extended family. And you know, you're talking about the atmosphere and our family here at home too. We strive for unconditional belonging in this home. And for defining and knowing what love looks like here. So that we know my military husband would say rules of engagement are for showing expressing love. And we've all done, you know, the the test about our our love languages and where we fall in that so that we hopefully can get closer to each other's preferred styles. And so I say all of that to kind of set the stage one example this week. You know, my kids are both musically inclined and with the new house, we just built out a music studio. So even though they're five years apart, you know, we're hearing them having jam sessions after school and after work. And I mean, it is just music to our ears quite literally and and also very spiritually yet at dinner will then have this really interesting conversation about math and science and whatever's going going on and whatever class my daughter's taking and just seeing the way all that weaves together. There's so much creativity there that if you're not thinking about it, you may not you may not see it, but it's there. Yeah. Oh, what a what a beautiful example that just happened this week. I love that. And it seems to speak to what you mentioned earlier about how creativity and gratitude go hand in hand. Oh, yes. You know, the way you view it. And I really think that's been my experience too. And so as we kind of wrap this up and kind of weave this all together, is there anything else on your mind around just what you would love for people to know or express from that thought of creative permission? Yes, there's one more thing. And this is a video out there that everyone can find. There is, I think it's a relatively recent video of Phil Collins, who is the A.G. is. And they took him to see his drum set again. And we all know how prolific and musician he's been his whole career. And everyone's probably seen the YouTube video that's the aerial view of him with these drums that basically encircle him. And he's just, you know, going at it. And to see him go at this age and time in his life and sit in, you know, at his drum set, pick up the sticks and almost with a reverence. Right. What dawned on me then is you want to be able to be that person, not the person who wished they had been a drummer. So whatever is tickling the back of your mind, whatever message, however faint, pick up the pen, pick up the keyboard, pick up the sticks, pick up the paintbrush, just go do it, go to the glass class. You know, I've done a blown pumpkin. I mean, beginners can do so much. Just let go of the fear and just enjoy. Let go of the fear. Just enjoy. No regrets. No regrets. Yeah. Yeah. Lovely way to end this conversation. Thank you so much, Amy, for sharing your life and your perspective and your, your own creative permission. Thank you, Amy, for the opportunity. Thanks for joining us on the creative permission slip. If something resonated, stirred your spirit or sparked a new idea, we'd love to hear from you. Drop us a note at Amy. That's A-I-M-E-E at sheforcecoach.com. I check all my messages and respond back. I'd love to hear from you. And don't forget to subscribe on your favorite platform so you never miss an episode. It's never too late to get creative. Until next time, this is Amy.