21: Building with Intention: A Purpose-Led Path to Creative Influence with Ben Rennie
What if the secret to impactful design isn’t talent or aesthetics, but responsibility to your community, the planet, and the people you’re building for?
As the co-founder of Reny, a certified B Corp agency, Ben Rennie has built his career around using design as a force for impact. The agency now works with global brands like Patagonia, Google, and Nike. But that wasn’t the starting line.
Ben started as a self-taught designer, shaping his craft over time while developing a worldview anchored in responsibility, sustainability, and community.
From Grassroots to Global Reach
What began as a personal practice turned into a studio and eventually, a full-scale agency operating on a global level. Reny didn’t grow because it chased trends. It grew because it stayed grounded in purpose, credibility, and long-term thinking.
Ben learned early on that visibility matters but alignment matters more. The work had to stand for something.
“Design should make you feel something or change something.”
Actionable Insight: Start with a clear vision, but be willing to evolve. Consistency over time is what creates traction in creative businesses.
Bonus: Spend 10 minutes today identifying one small creative habit you can repeat weekly. Pick something so simple you can’t avoid doing it.
Creative Control as a Business Strategy
A big part of Reny’s staying power comes from creative autonomy. Instead of relying on outside permission or gatekeepers, Ben built the platform around ownership: of ideas, of impact, and of the process itself.
That choice wasn’t just aesthetic. It was strategic.
“Design isn’t just about things that look good. It’s about the impact they make.”
When you control the work, you control the integrity.
Actionable Insight: Identify one area of your creative process where you can step into full ownership even if it makes you uncomfortable.
Bonus: Look up one independent designer or creative studio you admire and note how they control their platform.
Building a Brand People Notice
Work this intentional doesn’t spread by accident. Rennie put in the reps through strategic marketing, community-building, positioning, storytelling, and showing up where the right audience gathers.
Actionable Insight: Commit to being visible. Start small: post, publish, share, and see what resonates.
Bonus: Engage with at least 5 people in your audience this week. Not “posting at them” but actually interacting with them.
Balancing Work While Building the Vision
None of this happened overnight. There were years where the agency grew in the margins — nights, early mornings, pockets of time between responsibilities. Creative entrepreneurship is a long game, and Ben understood that early.
“It’s a long-ass marathon, not a sprint.”
That mindset of patience + forward motion became their competitive advantage.
Actionable Insight: Block out a small, consistent window of creation each week.
Bonus: Use a single 20–30 minute session to plan your one creative priority for the week.
What Ben’s Journey Teaches Us
- Passion might start the work, but persistence finishes it.
- Design is both a craft and a lever for change.
- Creative control requires boundaries and leadership.
- Brand recognition is earned through consistency and clarity.
- Growth comes from being visible, not waiting to be discovered.
Bringing It All Together
Ben didn’t wait for permission. He built his own lane — project by project, conversation by conversation, collaboration by collaboration. His story is proof that you don’t have to jump early to land big. You just have to stay committed long enough for your work to matter.
Want help growing your own creative business?
If you’ve been sitting on an idea: a creative project, a business, a new direction, but don't know where to start, I'm offering a free strategy session to help get you on track.
Just sign up at TheStandoutCreative.com
Transcript
Creative confidence starts with that, you know, that feeling of just, it's okay to walk into the room and ask for help.
Speaker A:It's okay to go and ask for the raise.
Speaker A:It's okay to go and, you know, like I was listening to Scott Galloway talk about this yesterday and I just had so much regret over my career that I never did.
Speaker A:This was if you're in a job and you're there for two to three years, it's time to leave.
Speaker A:And what he means by that isn't go and get something else, it's go and ask the market what you're worth, you know, so that to me was this.
Speaker A:Just be brave enough to just keep elevating up.
Speaker B:Welcome to the Standout Creatives, where making money and creating meaningful work go hand in hand.
Speaker B:You're already passionate about what you create.
Speaker B:Now let's turn that passion into a standout business.
Speaker A:Marketing.
Speaker B:Your work doesn't have to be overwhelming.
Speaker B:It can actually amplify your creativity.
Speaker B:I'm your guide, Kevin Chung, and this podcast is your roadmap to creative business success.
Speaker B:I'll show you how to turn your unique talents into a business that truly represents who you are.
Speaker B:Let's get started.
Speaker B:Welcome to another episode of Standout Creatives.
Speaker B:Today.
Speaker B:I'm Ben Rennie.
Speaker B:Ben is a designer advisor and co founder of Renny, a certified B Corp agency that helps brands like Patagonia, Google and Nike create innovative, purpose driven experiences.
Speaker B:Ben believes design isn't just how things look, it's about the impact they make.
Speaker B:From advising to top, from advising top executives to speaking at Parliament House.
Speaker B:He spent his career pushing the boundaries of design, technology and sustainability.
Speaker B:Ben, that sounds like a really fun job that you have.
Speaker B:Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, how you got into the work you're doing?
Speaker A:Yeah, it's so interesting when you hear it, you know, like I suppose a 15 year career sort of squished into a 40 second intro and all those brands too.
Speaker A:You know, like when you hear that like Patagonia, Google, Nike, it feels like, you know, that's what we're doing all the time, every day.
Speaker A:But that's stretched over a span of time.
Speaker A:You know, the reality is with our work, like any agency is, or any design studio or creative businesses, you know, most of the work we're doing is actually, you know, at grassroots level dealing with, you know, problem solving, you know, creative projects, building websites, designing brands.
Speaker A:And it's really, for us, it's just around impact and making sure we're working with things that have an impact on community, climate or the environment, which is really important.
Speaker A:But how do I get into it?
Speaker A:I was a really late bloomer into design and I sort of stumbled my way from brand side.
Speaker A:Like I'd always worked on client side, like working with Ray Ban in particular eyewear brands.
Speaker A:You know, my life has sort of revolved around, you know, Oakley, Ray Ban, Dolce and Gabbana, Chanel, like just chasing or sort of finding myself sort of working alongside them for these really amazing, inspiring brands.
Speaker A:And I think what happens off the back of that is you get really connected to why brands matter, what the role of a brand is, what it can do for community and for people, and also their status of what a brand says about someone.
Speaker A:And I always just found that really interesting, probably more important than the product.
Speaker A:I found the role of a brand and what that can do in community sort of more powerful.
Speaker A: ing to a, you know, closer to: Speaker A: d setting up my own agency in: Speaker A:It was sort of like a self taught journey, you know, to go into that, into that world.
Speaker A:But yeah, that's how we found ourselves here, which is really interesting.
Speaker B:Awesome.
Speaker B:What did you like to do as a kid that would have foreshadowed you becoming like a brand designer and agency owner?
Speaker A:That's actually an amazing question.
Speaker A:I played a really boring sport as a kid and as an Australian and you know, I'm familiar with America.
Speaker A:We spent a lot of time in America, my family and I, and we haven't.
Speaker A:The agency has an office in, in the States.
Speaker A:But I played a sport called cricket.
Speaker A:If you're really cricket, yeah, like incredibly boring.
Speaker A:Every time I mentioned that to Americans, they sort of just roll their eyes and like, like a really bad version of baseball, which is probably right.
Speaker A:So I grew up sort of in Australia in the hot sun, scorching sun, dreaming of other places to be, literally until I was 20 when I realized that that was probably not a bad idea.
Speaker A:And this connection back to creativity for me was.
Speaker A:And this is all reflection.
Speaker A:I only really discovered this writing my book.
Speaker A:I was going back and going, well, where did it come from, that connection to brand or design or creativity?
Speaker A:And I think the main catalyst was my mum would.
Speaker A:When we were young, we used to drive a long way to her family, see her family at Christmas and at Easter and she'd always stop into old secondhand stores and pick things up, like little things, tiny things.
Speaker A:And she'd always share the stories behind them and like, I wonder who owned this before you?
Speaker A:Or an old record or an old chair or something.
Speaker A:And as a young kid, I was always intrigued by that, the stories that things could tell, like where had they been or what life had they lived.
Speaker A:So I suppose as I got older and sort of moved more into, you know, this idea of making the mass manufacturing products like Ray Ban, which is very important and cool, but started as I matured into the idea of brands, started to understand the history and the heritage of these products and how do we make them better or different or whatever.
Speaker A:So I just kept like writing my book and just kept coming back to those road trips and walking into old trinket stores and trying to, you know, I could give you an example of that.
Speaker A:We, my wife and I, bought a dining table from a secondhand store which we still do things like this, which we sort of regret at the end of it because we always want to buy some beautiful big table, but we find ourselves in the stores and go, that's the one, let's buy it.
Speaker A:We bought this dining table and it was a table, it sat eight at it.
Speaker A:And one spot at the dining table was worn down, like to the point of like raw.
Speaker A:And the rest was sort of this nice finish.
Speaker A:And you know, the reality was this, this table, the previous owner probably lived on their own at home.
Speaker A:And my kids would never sit at that spot.
Speaker A:They'd always sit around it everywhere but where the worn down spot was.
Speaker A:Whereas my mum would come over and she'd run her hands over it.
Speaker A:She'd always say, I wonder what stories this table could tell.
Speaker A:Stories, you know, so that's my connection to creativity and brand and design.
Speaker A:It's like, what stories can we tell, you know, from the things we're making.
Speaker B:That's cool.
Speaker B:There's a book called, I think it's called Everyday Objects and it's somebody that did an art project where they found a bunch of stuff, like old stuff.
Speaker B:Like you were at like old thrift stores and whatnot.
Speaker B:And they wrote a history that they made up for it and then sold the objects on ebay.
Speaker B:And then they just showed like how much profit they made from creating this story and like just getting people's reactions from it.
Speaker B:It was a really cool way to look at.
Speaker A:Storytelling is powerful.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:But I think we're, our inclination is to connect with communities that way.
Speaker A:And I think you know, when we're talking about brands and products, we also.
Speaker A:We're also talking about, you know, consumerism in a way, but if it can bring a community together through a story.
Speaker A:We did a similar experiment years ago to that one where we had this.
Speaker A:I was working for a snowboard company and we had these goggles, and it came out with a purple lens.
Speaker A:And everyone we showed the purple lens to just went, well, that's ridiculous.
Speaker A:Why would I wear a purple lens?
Speaker A:First of all, it looks dumb.
Speaker A:Secondly, what's the benefit?
Speaker A:So I remember going away and thinking, what is the benefit?
Speaker A:So we come up with this story, and we were young, so this is a.
Speaker A:This is a business lie.
Speaker A:And the story we made up was that it opens an adrenaline plant in your brain and gets you, like, really motivated, like a can of Red Bull.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So, like, that's the role of purple window lens.
Speaker A:And I remember sitting around a table laughing about that as, like, let's tell someone that and see how they respond.
Speaker A:And I remember years ago, probably three or four years later, we sold a lot of those goggles, by the way, off the back of that story.
Speaker A:You know, we don't tell stories like that now, very young, but I remember three to four years later, sitting on a chairlift and this guy had a pair of goggles on with a purple lens from a different brand, which we'd never seen before.
Speaker A:And he was telling his mate that it opens an adrenaline gland in your brain, makes you get all excited, you know.
Speaker A:And I remember sitting there going, wow, you know, stories can spread really fast, you know, and you always think, too, that in these campaigns or these ideas or these brands, you're building, you know, even my book, like when I wrote my book, I felt like, no one's going to read this.
Speaker A:No one on earth is going to read it.
Speaker A:But people do.
Speaker A:And it takes one, you know, to tell, to share the story.
Speaker A:And if the story resonates and there's a community that wants to align with it, it spreads.
Speaker A:You know, story spread.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:And that's the importance, I think, coming back later and maturing into my agency, you know, I'm 50 now and looking back and going, what stories can we tell that are true and honest and raw, that build community and build impact in a way that's positive?
Speaker A:You know, in the same way we can tell stories that aren't so positive about, you know, purple lenses that don't really do anything.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So you're just taking this, the same concept and applying it in a way that feels Obviously better as like a way to make a change as opposed to just try to sell something totally.
Speaker A:There was this sort of journey in my business.
Speaker A: We started in: Speaker A:Like we wanted to actually give someone something as opposed to thinking, know, when you bring in the advisory space, you're handing over ideas.
Speaker A:I've sort of come to understand that ideas are free because the hardest thing about an idea is someone doing something with it.
Speaker A:And the biggest, bigger the organization, the more of a challenge that presents because they just move slow.
Speaker A: o somehow in our business, in: Speaker A:And remarkable being just simply worth talking about, like, how do we make that company worth a conversation in the future?
Speaker A:And somehow, and I don't know how this happens, and if anyone ever asked me for advice on how did you grow the business?
Speaker A:I don't really know what the catalyst was.
Speaker A:But we found ourselves going from having no clients to really small clients who couldn't afford to pay us, to then going to working with Canon, you know, a camera company, or we were working with Australia Post, which is the equivalent of US Mail, on how to reposition mail from traditional mail to digital.
Speaker A:So all these things got really big really fast.
Speaker A: remember that initial goal in: Speaker A:And we found ourselves sort of almost, you know, entrenched in this system we're trying to avoid or escape.
Speaker A:So now we're just another cog in this big machine of big business.
Speaker A: And it was: Speaker A:A meeting in South Australia in the McLaren Vale wine region, and I was going to see one of the banks, one of the biggest, call them the Big Four.
Speaker A:In Australia, there's four major, major banks and went into a meeting with one of the Big Four, and I had a pretty much a panic attack that I built this business and I was in this room that I didn't want to be in, void of creativity, not designing anything, just sharing, thinking And a little bit like, you know, I've had panic attacks before and this was definitely one where I excuse myself in the meeting, went into the bathroom and washed my face with water three times, which did nothing.
Speaker A:So when I left the meeting, I actually resigned from my own company.
Speaker A:We built this company and I remember bringing my business partner the next day and said, I sort of built this thing, but it's not the thing I wanted to build.
Speaker A:And if I can build this, I can build the thing I want to over here.
Speaker A:So we rang, my wife got to the airport, we went to the States and this is how our relationship with the US started.
Speaker A:We went over to the US and spent three months trying to re establish what it was we wanted to be in the world and what we wanted to do.
Speaker A:And creativity was the through line of that was just we want to make things and that it look good.
Speaker A:And that idea of saying yes to everything, irrespective of the consequence of what we're making became the catalyst to change.
Speaker A:Whereas now we sort of reflect on if it's a yes, why, why are we saying yes?
Speaker A:What's a consequence of that environment change in three years, four years, five years time, you know, so that was the biggest shift for us and again, it comes back to storytelling and we just wanted to tell a different story and make sure that our legacy online was a little bit more positive, you know, rather than doing something for the sake of it.
Speaker B:Yeah, I think when you're running a company it's really important to focus on why you're doing it because otherwise you're going to end up in that situation when you're talking to the bank where you're panicking all the time, it's like, it's not good for you.
Speaker B:One second it's like, why are you doing this?
Speaker B:Does it make sense to continue?
Speaker A:Yeah, I totally agree.
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker A:And I even now, like, I think the decision then made our business harder.
Speaker A:Like this is hard.
Speaker A:And I don't for a second undervalue how hard it is to first of all spend your life savings on trying to reset what you're doing in the age of 40 or 45, which is what I was doing with three kids.
Speaker A:So we couldn't afford to do it to exit that business which we built.
Speaker A:But I couldn't afford not to.
Speaker A:You know, like, I think your mental health or your, what you bring to the world is you only get to one shot, you know, one go round.
Speaker A:So for me it was like, well, if I can build this the wrong Way I wonder if I can build it the right way.
Speaker A:That was my sort of thoughts.
Speaker A:And I will say that ever since then, it's just been a.
Speaker A:It's been a battle.
Speaker A:Like, it's been so hard to sort of try and move into, you know, designing for impact.
Speaker A:It's been really hard, you know, because I don't think the world cares as much about, you know, the things we're making, all the.
Speaker A:The footprint we want to leave.
Speaker A:I think we're just really good at making stuff for a commercial sense, you know, so it's been.
Speaker A:It's been a challenge, but a rewarding.
Speaker B:One, you know, how did you essentially decide what the business was going to be about, like the principles or whatever that might be?
Speaker B:And how did you.
Speaker B:How do you pitch that to people in a way that makes sense to them?
Speaker B:Yeah, in order to hire you?
Speaker A:Like, for me, I needed to go back and understand what it was that got me up in the morning and inspired me.
Speaker A:And creativity was the obvious thing.
Speaker A:Like, I was obsessed with stories and things, and I just wanted to make sure the things that I was obsessed with were responsible things.
Speaker A:The second part is nature.
Speaker A: en we exited that business in: Speaker A:And when I say spending our retirement, that's literally what we're doing.
Speaker A:But that feeling of being in nature was the catalyst for me.
Speaker A:And I remember some of my most most important childhood memories being in the mountains, snowboarding with mates in Sorel boots that I couldn't afford, and in a borrowed snowboard and just scraping enough money together for my ticket.
Speaker A:And the excitement and the.
Speaker A:And the feeling I got from that was just irreplaceable, you know, so I. I was just kept thinking, you know, like, I'm sitting in a boardroom with, with, you know, one of the most amazing businesses at one of Australia's best banks.
Speaker A:Great people, great product, but just wasn't giving me the same feeling as sitting in the ocean on a.
Speaker A:On a surfboard with mates, you know, so it's like, how do you come back and find balance?
Speaker A:And the.
Speaker A:The through line for me was always nature.
Speaker A:So when we rebuilt this business, it was taking cues from nature around what is it that we love about it?
Speaker A:How do we protect it?
Speaker A:And we continue to tell the story of nature and how do we facilitate businesses that want to also continue to protect nature?
Speaker A:And I think through that, that's our relationship came, you know, back to Bellroy or in the States, you know, United Climate foundation found us.
Speaker A:And so I think when you can sort of sit with your internal value and go, well, this is the thing that I like, is the thing that I love.
Speaker A:So I'm going to build a business that reflects that, and we're going to go out into the world and as a design agency, we're going to design solutions.
Speaker A:And when in your introduction, you talked about.
Speaker A:Ben believes design isn't just about things that look good, it's about impact they make.
Speaker A:So design should make you feel something or change something.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:So Patagonia does a great job of that.
Speaker A:We think about our environment, we think about the choices.
Speaker A:Don't buy this jacket campaign from them was quite profound because what they were saying was, don't buy that jacket again.
Speaker A:But what they're actually saying is, trust us in a way that our role here isn't just commercial, it's also environmental.
Speaker A:And sure, it is commercial.
Speaker A:They're a business and they're going to survive.
Speaker A:But they're also coming back and saying, we are trying to find a balance between the commercial opportunities that we want to have as a business and the footprint and the resources that we draw on.
Speaker A:So that, that's a great model that we sort of respected and came back and applied to our own business.
Speaker A:But again, I'll say it's.
Speaker A:It's really hard.
Speaker A:Like, it's really hard.
Speaker A:And it's really hard to align with businesses who see what you're trying to do and what you want to do.
Speaker A:So you just got to be really brave in telling your story.
Speaker A:Did I answer your question?
Speaker A:I don't know if I did.
Speaker B:Yeah, it's just about focusing on the things that really matter.
Speaker B:And when you do that, I think the other companies that respect that idea are more likely to find you because your alignment is so good that it makes the most sense.
Speaker B:Because other companies can work just to make money as much profit as possible.
Speaker B:But when you're doing something for a purpose, that's what really draws in the companies like Patagonia that are trying to make a difference.
Speaker A:Yeah, totally.
Speaker A:And we're not changing the world.
Speaker A:Patagonia.
Speaker A:Our role with them is tiny, you know, but from my point of view, whether it's a day's work or 100 days work, with them, it's.
Speaker A:It's an engagement that means something, you know, so our role with Patagonia is that we're not going in there and advising them how to become a better business.
Speaker A:We're doing a specific task.
Speaker A:But for me, that's valuable.
Speaker A:But it's also valuable for us because we learn from them as much as they learn from us.
Speaker A:So how do we take those stories and confidently share those stories to find other businesses?
Speaker A:Like, you know, I could go back and we've, we've, we've sat in meeting rooms with Nike off the back of a conversation we had with someone else or Cotopaxi in Salt Lake City and just these really amazing brands or Bellroy and Torquay, you know, tariodology and in Australia.
Speaker A:And I think it comes from being really clear on those values, being really confident about the stories we want to tell about ourselves, but also confident in the idea that what we're learning collaboratively through all these relationships has value for the world beyond just commercial products.
Speaker A:So that's a really interesting balance for me.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Can you talk about some of the ways that you've built relationships in order to find business?
Speaker B:Because I think that's the best way to build business partnerships is with relationship building versus, you know, I don't know, ads or what have you.
Speaker A:Yeah, well, we've never in our life got a, got a, a client off an ad, ever.
Speaker A:We've had, we've engaged agencies like businesses to get on the phone and cold call and I can't think of one client we've ever had in our life outside of a nurtured relationship or doing good work.
Speaker A:And that story being told to someone else.
Speaker A:So that, that comes back to.
Speaker A:And I need to be really clear, we have this business is hard.
Speaker A:So there is months where we go, oh my God, how do we survive?
Speaker A:But then there's other months where we go, this is working, this is great.
Speaker A:So 15 years is a large span of time to exist.
Speaker A:That doesn't mean there's not down periods where we just don't know how to survive.
Speaker A:That absolutely happens to us all the time.
Speaker A:But I think it's the challenge.
Speaker A:We create that challenge for ourself in a way because we're comfortable saying no to things that we shouldn't do.
Speaker A:So commercially, I think that hurts us a bit, but emotionally it gives me everything.
Speaker A:I wake up motivated to do this work and to talk to you about it.
Speaker A:So how do we get work?
Speaker A:I think again, telling our story and being confident about it, you know, like it always comes back to if you do bad work.
Speaker A:If we say yes to a project you're not passionate about, there is no way the execution can be good.
Speaker A:The end game will fail somewhere.
Speaker A:So if we take on a project or a brand for someone or a brand, we Just don't understand or don't love.
Speaker A:There's going to be a point where there's a fraction in that, right.
Speaker A:We're going to get to the end and they're going to go, I don't love this.
Speaker A:And we're going to go, yeah, well, we don't either because we don't love the engagement.
Speaker A:So if you love the project and you lean into something where your values are aligned, right.
Speaker A:And the dots are aligned and you.
Speaker A:That's a project you want to work on, can guarantee the end is great, you know, like because.
Speaker A:Because there's alignment of values.
Speaker A:And so, you know, we were, we do a project look in saying that sometimes you do get it wrong too, and I could name a thousand examples of that.
Speaker A:But most of the time when you're aligned on values, you're aligned on the creative collaboration and the outcome's good.
Speaker A:And of course, if the outcome's good, they're going to tell someone it's good.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So that's how we exist.
Speaker A:We literally wouldn't be here without the ability to put good work out into the world or solve a problem for a client or hopefully add more or over and above what we've agreed to do.
Speaker A:You know, that's also important, you know, so I think part of that is also the idea and this realization that ideas are free.
Speaker A:You know, when a client rings, not everything's billable.
Speaker A:Sometimes that client's just ringing to help and the conversation, like, that's really valuable, but, you know, nurturing the relationship.
Speaker A:But yeah, we've never had much luck with scaling our business through cold calling or EDMs and so forth.
Speaker A:It's been challenging, but yeah, it just comes down to good work for sure.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:I think the thing, the best thing you can do is.
Speaker B:Well, I think the minimum standard is good work.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:And then going above and beyond is what people expect.
Speaker B:So you have to do that all the time.
Speaker B:But plus have good values.
Speaker B:It's like, it's such a difficult thing to maintain, I think that balance of good work plus they have to meet all your criteria and you have to have a good relationship with them.
Speaker B:It could be the other two, but.
Speaker B:But it has to be like everything coming together.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I wish I knew how to build ideo.
Speaker A:You know, like I look at IDEO or columns in New York or a lot of these businesses and I.
Speaker A:And you know, I've been in this.
Speaker A:I've been doing this for 19 years, this business, and I don't know.
Speaker A:Or 16 years.
Speaker A:Sorry, I don't know how to scale.
Speaker A:Like I have no idea how to do that.
Speaker A:So there's also this awareness of we're really good at this thing.
Speaker A:We're not that good at this thing.
Speaker A:You know, there was a period of time where we had a cap of our turnover, where we went, we want to turn over this and we want to not go a dollar over because that means we can be very personal under that scale or that cap and we can build really nice relationships.
Speaker A:We only have to do so much work and we can survive.
Speaker A:And then I have these moments where I go, oh, let's just go and build an empire.
Speaker A:Let's just go and make this thing huge.
Speaker A:How did ideo do it?
Speaker A:And that two or three year period where I'm focused really heavily on growing my business nightmare.
Speaker A:No way I can do it for your business.
Speaker A:Give you all the advice in the world on how you should do it.
Speaker A:You know, from research or branding or conversations on self reflection and turning the lens back on ourself.
Speaker A:I've always found that really hard.
Speaker A:But it's like that we're at a good size and we're where we want to be.
Speaker A:But you know, you look at these businesses like audio, it's like it's another mindset, another.
Speaker A:It's a whole nother level.
Speaker A:And you know, that's, that's always been my challenge about if anyone's got any advice how to become that, love to hear it because it's been a challenge for me just to find that next tier.
Speaker A:You know.
Speaker B:I often wonder whether or not it makes sense for everyone to scale.
Speaker B:Obviously it makes it easier to live the type of lifestyle that you want to when you make more money and you're like a larger company.
Speaker B:But also when you do that, you lose something.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:You're, you're just doing things to, to grow and kind of be more comfortable.
Speaker B:And is that always the right decision?
Speaker B:Hard to say.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I've never had comfort in this business.
Speaker A:It's always been hard.
Speaker A: I hear my mom passed away in: Speaker A:Ringing in my years like everything happens for a reason.
Speaker A:You know, you're not meant to be me, you're meant to be X.
Speaker A:You know, and, and, and I do think there's truth in that.
Speaker A:I think when you come back and your focus is impact, you know, it's always going to be hard because not everyone cares about impact.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Most businesses are existing for commercial gain and that's okay for us, that's we were that and then we made a very conscious decision not to be that.
Speaker A:And, you know, that's a limited market, it's a niche.
Speaker A:So, yeah, that's always been a challenge.
Speaker A:But, yeah, place in the world.
Speaker A:I do like the idea of being ideo, though.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker B:If you can keep your, obviously, your principles together, plus reach that size, obviously that's the best case scenario.
Speaker B:But, yeah, yeah, it's not always guaranteed that something like that can happen or will happen.
Speaker A:Yeah, we're also.
Speaker A:Yeah, totally.
Speaker A:We're also guilty of moving a goalpost all the time.
Speaker A: we are now, if I said this in: Speaker A:You get there and you go, right, what's next?
Speaker A:And it's just a human nature thing, you know, maybe there's a.
Speaker A:There's a.
Speaker A:There's a just slow down to get your foot off the gas and just be comfortable in the presence that you're doing good work or that you've even got clients.
Speaker A:You know, there's also that, too.
Speaker A:So, yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker A:Food for thought.
Speaker B:Did you.
Speaker B:When you left the company, did it transition into the new company or did that company stay and then you built another one from scratch?
Speaker A:Built another one from scratch.
Speaker A:It was quite interesting because it wasn't really planned.
Speaker A:It was a very abrupt, oh, my God, this is.
Speaker A:I'm dying here.
Speaker A:The biggest reason for it, and I'll swing back around to that question is I couldn't extradite myself from being physically present.
Speaker A:You know, I didn't know how to become the director or CEO.
Speaker A:I was still the consultant.
Speaker A:Like, people are still buying me, not my brand.
Speaker A:So I was still finding myself, you know, when Australia Post ring and say, we need to solve the problem with digital mail, Ben, can you come and help us?
Speaker A:Not can my agency come and help?
Speaker A:So I'd always had that challenge around, how do I become a guy running a business where there's people in the business who could replicate that?
Speaker A:And so that was sort of this.
Speaker A:That was the pressure.
Speaker A:I never knew how to do it at the time, and I'm definitely better at it now.
Speaker A:But that was like this building pressure of when I'm doing work physically for brands that I want to be working with right now who also don't need me, you know, like a bank doesn't need me.
Speaker A:You know, they got some pretty good people internally, you know, what they're doing, you know, so it was almost like, if not here, then where.
Speaker A:So when that abrupt change happened my business partner, Paul Breen, who I love dearly, his nickname's the Bull because he's just a fierce business guy with amazing values.
Speaker A:And you know, he's, he's owned multiple million dollar companies.
Speaker A:So scale for him was sort of relatively easy.
Speaker A:So he had that idea in his head.
Speaker A:Now I think what happened when we parted ways amicably was he took the consulting arm and all the moving parts with that and sort of set that up into his, his little world of different businesses.
Speaker A:I think that business sort of got morphed into an educational business that became more and selling ideas and education.
Speaker A:And where he went with that I'm not sure.
Speaker A:But I do know that he was very heavily involved in a business that went public because he's just that guy, he knows how to do that.
Speaker A:I was really focused on creativity and hands on and wouldn't have a clue how to do that.
Speaker A:So, so there was a really positive offshoot of where that business ended up, which I thought was really cool.
Speaker A:What I wanted to take out of it was creative execution.
Speaker A:So when we solved a problem for a client and they came to us and said I could go and design that pen or go and build as that brand, that's the work I wanted to do was not give that to an agency partner.
Speaker A:I wanted to be the agency partner.
Speaker A:I wanted to go and do the creative execution.
Speaker A:So that's where I changed.
Speaker A:And this really funny thing happened when, when we, me and, me and Paul agreed on that was I'm going to build a different business which is a design agency and you can go and continue to be the consultancy firm or advisory firm.
Speaker A:So there was a real distinct separation.
Speaker A:Nothing I wanted to do was crossing over with what the business was doing or wanted to do.
Speaker A:So it was an easy and amicable separation and I was really clear on what I wanted to build.
Speaker A:And one of the first clients I rang that we'd been doing business with who wanted to build something with a third party agency, I rang them and said, hey, we're parting ways and I'm setting up this business and where building brands and websites and so forth.
Speaker A:And I wasn't really clear on what exactly what it was.
Speaker A:So it was a very fumbling conversation.
Speaker A:And he said I'd love to stay with you guys.
Speaker A:That's amazing.
Speaker A:What, what's it called?
Speaker A:And I realized that I hadn't actually given the business a name.
Speaker A:And I was sitting, I was sitting at my desk and above my desk I had a shelf and on the Shelf was the whole collection of the last four or five years of Monocle magazines.
Speaker A:Do you know Monocle Magazine?
Speaker B:I think I've heard of that.
Speaker B:Not too familiar with it, though.
Speaker A:Well, it's now owned by Conde Nast and I think it's how you pronounce it.
Speaker A:But that.
Speaker A:That magazine is a beautiful magazine out of the uk, owned by Tyler Brul, who.
Speaker A:I think I might be making this up.
Speaker A:I think he was one of the original owners of Ted and.
Speaker A:And Wyatt, I think.
Speaker A:So he shot Monocle magazine.
Speaker A:It's beautiful.
Speaker A:And I just looked at the magazines and went, Monocle.
Speaker A:And the fire went on.
Speaker A:Monacle, that's a great name.
Speaker A:Like.
Speaker A:And then.
Speaker A:And then he's.
Speaker A:And the next thing he said was, like, the magazine.
Speaker A:And I was like, well, sort of.
Speaker A:So I went away and did a search and I registered the name Monocle Digital as an agency on Monocle design.
Speaker A:And turns out three years later, I met Tyler Brulee at a conference and he just sold his business to Conde Nast.
Speaker A:I wish I knew how to pronounce that.
Speaker A:I think that's right.
Speaker A:They own Vogue and everything, and they did a worldwide audit on this name and found us, and we got a little letter in the post, which is how we became Rennie R E N Y.
Speaker A:So, yeah, it was an interesting transition, but I think we.
Speaker A:We sort of found our feet in a very fumbling kind of way.
Speaker A:And the next three months we.
Speaker A:After I resigned from that company, we booked an airfare at flight to San Francisco, made our way to Lake Tahoe and rented a little cabin there.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And that's when we sort of just planned out what, what, what.
Speaker A:What this thing was, what we needed to build, you know, mate.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And the way to survive through that was, you know, a bit like foraging, you know, for food.
Speaker A:In the old days, we just took what we could find to survive as we found it, decided to discover what we wanted to become, you know.
Speaker B:What was the first project that you really remember saying, oh, this is.
Speaker B:This is what I've been searching for.
Speaker B:You know, this idea that I can make an impact in a positive way, like a change like that.
Speaker A:That is so interesting.
Speaker A:I think it's probably a brand called moh so M W A H, which is making work absolutely human.
Speaker A:So Rhonda Brighton hall, who was the Australian Businesswoman of the Year, and she was formerly at Luxonica, the CEO of Sara Lee Worldwide, and she was in Chicago, and she was also at Luxonica, which is a really massive highway company about Of Italy.
Speaker A:They own Sunglass Hut, Ray Ban.
Speaker A:So she was there, and I knew her through that relationship when I was working there.
Speaker A:And she rang me around the time we set this business up that she wanted to set up a new human resource company to make work human, that businesses were getting, you know, robotic and we needed to get back to our roots.
Speaker A:And so she rang me for dinner.
Speaker A:I went, saw her for dinner, and she said two things.
Speaker A:I want you to join Robot Advisory Board, and secondly, I want to build the brand and build the platform.
Speaker A:So that was.
Speaker A:And I like this idea is she wanted to build this human business, and all roads went back to us.
Speaker A:She liked what we were doing.
Speaker A:So that, to me, was great validation because I just respect Wanda at a level that, you know, I can't even put into words.
Speaker A:You know, she's one of the smartest businesswoman women I've ever met, business leaders I've ever met.
Speaker A:And I think, you know, one of the things she said to me years ago when we first met, when I was sort of fumbling my way through my career, was everything to the Power five.
Speaker A:And I remember she said, if it can't fit in the palm of your hand, it's too many things.
Speaker A:So when you wake up in the morning, if you've got more than five things to do, it's too many.
Speaker A:If you've got more than five goals, it's too many.
Speaker A:And I remember hearing that.
Speaker A:And she said, just write it down.
Speaker A:And, you know, it should be your daily goals or your yearly goals should just need to fit in the palm of your hand.
Speaker A:And I loved it.
Speaker A:So for someone like that, who just had such a influence and inspiration on my life, to come back years later and say, hey, I'm building this thing.
Speaker A:Can you be?
Speaker A:It was.
Speaker A:Was mad.
Speaker A:Really, really a really rewarding experience.
Speaker B:That's awesome.
Speaker B:I think we oftentimes have too many goals.
Speaker B:Like you're saying, we all want to do as much as we possibly can, but it doesn't make sense to.
Speaker B:So I think five is a very good number because obviously you can just look at your hand.
Speaker B:Remember, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
Speaker B:These are the things that I'm trying to accomplish.
Speaker B:Because when you set out to do too many things, you kind of spread yourself too thin.
Speaker A:Totally.
Speaker A:I like that word power in there, too.
Speaker A:Everything to the power of five is so good.
Speaker A:I love that five business values, you know, and we've done that with our business.
Speaker A:I just wrote an article actually recently on, you know, the power of a manifesto in a Business.
Speaker A:And it's like just pick five great words that represent that define what those words mean and go and live it, you know.
Speaker A:And I think that all came from Bumba for sure.
Speaker B:What is your creative manifesto or the five principles?
Speaker A:Oh my God, I need to get on a website and read it.
Speaker A:It's brand new.
Speaker A:One of the things that is probably our most important one is not to take ourselves too serious.
Speaker A:That was really important.
Speaker A:And we're not a hierarchy or we're not a. I remember writing in my book about Vortex and they've got this lattice business model.
Speaker A:So with the lattice business model, there's no up and down hierarchy.
Speaker A:So whilst there's management bosses, there's no.
Speaker A:They're not tied into this idea of slowing things down because they've got to wait for the boss, if that makes sense.
Speaker A:And I really love that.
Speaker A: you know, hierarchies are so: Speaker A:We wrote now that was this sort of old thinking and there's a better way and the better way is this collaborative structure and so forth.
Speaker A:There's, you know, celebrate emotion, don't be scared to sort of pat them on the back and that, that needs to come from anywhere.
Speaker A:And this other idea too, which I think was a big one for us and probably the most important was, you know, I've been really heavily focused on human centered design, you know, design thinking, which is coming out of IDEO and that design thinking and this word of human centered design.
Speaker A:When we're designing for humans, we're sort of ignoring the systems in which we operate and the places we play.
Speaker A:So there's a consequence to designing for humans and not designing for humanity.
Speaker A:So we changed the word of humans to humanity and that, that's that, I suppose step in our manifesto shifted our whole business to rethink our process, to rethink every way the way we actually did business, the way we approached the process of design.
Speaker A:And an example of that is bottled water.
Speaker A:You know, it's a great convenience for us or single use plastics, but it's a massive income convenience for humanity, you know, so when we look at human centered design and we don't question it, all of a sudden we think it's the solution that's going to solve everything.
Speaker A:But at the same time, like equally, any other thing we create can create sort of problems if we don't consider the systems in which they operate.
Speaker A:So yeah, that's how a manifesto impacted us.
Speaker B:Yeah, I love that there's such a Small difference in the wording of human versus humanity makes such a big difference in the idea of what you're working towards.
Speaker B:Because working for humans, obviously you can sell anything to anybody if you do a good enough job of it.
Speaker B:But to build something that's positive for everyone as a whole is a completely different story.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:The word systems become so important in that it's like because when we're designing for humans, we forget we're not all intentionally good.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:Well, I think everyone's inherently good.
Speaker A:I think everyone is.
Speaker A:I think everyone is inherently good, but at the same time, we're lazy.
Speaker A:I think we can easily make a choice that has an impact.
Speaker A:Even though it might be convenient for us in the moment, it might have an impact somewhere else.
Speaker A:And I remember doing some work with an airline years ago, and one of the things they put on their website with this little tick box saying, do you want to offset your carbon?
Speaker A:You know, for 198 or $2, whatever it might be.
Speaker A:And I think what they do with that is they go away and they plant a tree or they'll, they'll do something.
Speaker A:And the statistics, they did this research and it was significant.
Speaker A:It was over like 20,000 users and it was like 96% of people tickets when they're with someone and it was less than 5% when they were on their own.
Speaker B:Oh, wow.
Speaker A:You know, and they said they were like, okay, there's this tick box here and I'm on my own.
Speaker A:I'm rushing through booking, I'm not going to ticket because, you know, but if I'm booking that with you, and I'm like, do you want to offset your carbon?
Speaker A:Of course I do.
Speaker A:Always offsetting my carbon.
Speaker A:So that research to me was really staggering.
Speaker A:And that was a long time ago.
Speaker A:So again, that came back to questioning design and going, well, how do we solve that?
Speaker A:You know, how do we solve that problem?
Speaker A:And then education and knowledge becomes really important in that, you know, or maybe, you know, I think the way they got around that was, it was pre ticked was just part of the price.
Speaker A:Our airline offsets carbon irrespective of whether you think you want to or not.
Speaker A:And if you don't want it, you untick it, you know, for 1 86.
Speaker A:And you gave that, you made it easy to untick, but it was a different approach.
Speaker A:And I think the numbers are 65% leave it and are happy to pay the 1.50, you know, so I think, you know, plastic bottles or single use plastics is exactly, is the exact Same thing is so convenient for us in the world we live in, but just incredibly inconvenient for the planet and almost an irreversible problem, you know?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:It's interesting to think about the ways that it could be solvable.
Speaker B:Like, instead of using plastic, what are alternative materials or whatnot?
Speaker B:I know a lot of people are trying to do this with different materials, like bamboo and like banana leaves and all kinds of interesting things, but I think the scaling is always the issue with these sorts of solutions.
Speaker B:How do we get it so that we can scale anything other than, you know, making it inconvenient again, because you can say you're doing good for the environment and stuff, but if your methods eventually lead to more harm than good, like an example of this is electric vehicles.
Speaker B:In theory, they're amazing.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:But how do we get the ability to make these vehicles?
Speaker B:You have to do a lot of stuff with the environment that's not so good, right?
Speaker A:Totally.
Speaker A:That's.
Speaker A:That's transition design for me.
Speaker A:I think there's this transition that we either we.
Speaker A:We overlook or don't think about too often.
Speaker A:And, you know, the solution isn't to go from coal to wind.
Speaker A:It's to transition over a period of time to these things.
Speaker A:You know, we're doing some really good work at a.
Speaker A:With a company out of LA called Mediclo, and I love these guys, and they're making really beautiful, sustainable scrubs.
Speaker A:And they want to solve the problem tomorrow of, you know, making scrubs sustainable or you're presented with challenges in a way that when you're using bamboo to make apparel, bamboo's sustainable from a growth point of view, but it's actually not in terms of just using bamboo to make fabrics, because you've got to break it down.
Speaker A:And breaking it down, it can be really challenging.
Speaker A:And for a long period of time, breaking down bamboo, it's used to prep load a lot water, like so much water to do it.
Speaker A:I think a t shirt was 70,000 liters of water.
Speaker A:And the challenge you've got with that water is that to break down bamboo, you've got to use chemicals.
Speaker A:So when you're using chemicals in the water, that water can't be used again.
Speaker A:So you might be using sustainable material, but the idea of circular, meaning everything goes into it comes back again, and we can use again the water that was used to go into that process of breaking down bamboo to become a stable fabric, that water can't be used.
Speaker A:So that water's now gone to waste, and that's A lot of water that a lot of communities can do with all over the world.
Speaker A:So I think the idea of transition design, so that got us to a point where they work out a better way to make products that can use the water again.
Speaker A:My wife has a company which I write about in my book about, she wanted to make a software.
Speaker A:The water that broke down the materials such as carpets and so forth and wood pulp could be used again to continue to make more and more socks rather than just that water going to waste.
Speaker A:So that was, that's transition design for me.
Speaker A:I always look at electric cars as, you know, I've got a hybrid car as a transition to something in the future that's better, you know, so the, the wind farms are interesting and people always go, oh, you know, wind farm in the ocean, what about the whales?
Speaker A:And there's always a what about or a what if or there's a consequence to everything we do.
Speaker A:And then the trade off for me is, is it progress towards sustainability, is it transitioning to.
Speaker A:Over a period of time?
Speaker A:And so in the case of medical, it's like, what does it look like in three years, you know, don't worry about it tomorrow.
Speaker A:I know we care about that, but what's our transition to three years to get to X?
Speaker A:And I love that language.
Speaker A:I think it's all of a sudden we can take the pressure off ourselves, give ourselves space and time to think about it.
Speaker A:You know, there's that classic line.
Speaker A:And my daughter always says this to me, you know, when I complain about paper straws, you know, in America you'd have to worry about it because I think you just got, just got the executive order to get rid of paper straws.
Speaker A:And she always says, you know, like, oh God, I hate paper straws, or what is a straw going to be?
Speaker A:Plastic straw.
Speaker A:And she always replies with said 1 million people, you know, and I, I think it's a powerful statement that, you know, like, this straw has no impact on the world.
Speaker A:And that's what it doesn't.
Speaker A:But when you put in the hands of a million people in the same time, you know, then all of a sudden it's a lot of plastic.
Speaker A:So it's like, how do we transition away from that?
Speaker A:And paper straws are a transition and they're the worst things you'll ever use in your life.
Speaker A:And if you go to the cinema, guarantee halfway through you're walking out for.
Speaker B:A second trying to pick it out of the water.
Speaker A:Nightmare.
Speaker A:No, it's a nightmare.
Speaker A:So, and no one denies it's a nightmare.
Speaker A:Of course it is.
Speaker A:But it's a transition, right?
Speaker A:It's a transition and there's something that's going to evolve.
Speaker A:And, you know, my kids all use steel straws.
Speaker A:They take them with them everywhere.
Speaker A:I don't do that.
Speaker A:You know, I haven't got the energy or the capacity or the memory of the shift in my behavior is too, too big.
Speaker A:But they don't even think twice about it.
Speaker B:You know, that does speak to the hope that future generations are going to take the advice because they have to live in the future planet.
Speaker B:I mean, some of us are closer to not seeing the results as they are, but they're going to have to live through the consequences of all the stuff that's happening.
Speaker B:So it's good that they're thinking about what is going to happen to preserve what we have.
Speaker A:Yeah, I think about that with social media, you know, and I.
Speaker A:It's such a transition for my generation to go from having no digital communication to everything, whereas kids have just grown up with it, you know, it's just.
Speaker A:It's natural to them.
Speaker A:So, you know, I always, you know, you get on these local forums about an environment or whatever, and it's the people banging their chest are being really vocal or really gnarly.
Speaker A:It's generally my generation because it's such a shift.
Speaker A:It's like, oh, my God, I've got a voice now.
Speaker A:Whereas, you know, we've always sort of grown up in our family and said what we see online and shouldn't be different to what we see offline.
Speaker A:You know, it's.
Speaker A:It's just an extension of us.
Speaker A:And I always.
Speaker A:I compare it in a bit to road rage.
Speaker A:You know, when someone's sitting in a car and someone cuts them off and they're like, right, I'm going to kill you.
Speaker A:Whereas if there's no car and someone cuts you off, you're not as angry, right?
Speaker A:You're not.
Speaker A:It's just life.
Speaker A:It's just like, oh, sorry, man, do me anyway.
Speaker A:And I feel like is when we're in a cage or when we've got a shell or a shield, like the Internet, or like, you know, our Twitter channel, when no one can physically engage with us, then there's different versions of us and.
Speaker A:And I think that's a problem.
Speaker A:But I think that's an adjustment too.
Speaker A:You know, going through the evolution of the world we live in now versus what we grew up with.
Speaker A:And hopefully, you know, the environment and climate is like that.
Speaker A:You know, there's a Transition that takes an adjustment that, you know, my kids understand social media a lot better than a lot of people my age who don't really understand how to use it, you know.
Speaker A:So hopefully the world's just.
Speaker A:Just grows up healthier and smarter, you know, with a complete awareness that clean creativity is really important, you know.
Speaker B:Yeah, I think the, the separation of ourselves from the world around us, like you were saying, through social media and stuff, it's hard to deal with that because you have the, for the most part, anonymity of the avatar of whoever you portray yourself to be online.
Speaker B:So it's, it's very hard unless you're conscious about what you're doing and how you impact everyone around you.
Speaker A:Totally.
Speaker B:Can you talk about the idea of writing your book?
Speaker B:What.
Speaker B:What started it?
Speaker B:And you know, what was the thing that said, oh, this is.
Speaker B:I need to get out?
Speaker A:Yeah, sure.
Speaker A:It was, it was very personal.
Speaker A:Like my, like, I like writing.
Speaker A:I've always written.
Speaker A:I used to have a blog when blogs were a thing.
Speaker A:You know, I remember going, starting with a blogger and then it became a WordPress, you know, dot com account and then my own blog.
Speaker A:And that then transitioned into sort of me writing about innovation and design.
Speaker A:And that was almost like a way for me to learn and understand design, you know, in the industry was to write about it.
Speaker A:So writing became like a bit, you know, my journal of getting things outside of this build up in my head and putting it onto a screen.
Speaker A: g, sort of, you know, between: Speaker A:So that was quite interesting, that journey of understanding the power of words and putting things out there and watching this community build around it.
Speaker A: In: Speaker A:But just before she passed away, she said, I always wanted to run a book.
Speaker A:I should have written a book, you know, and she didn't want to write a book.
Speaker A:I don't know why she said that, but it was interesting.
Speaker A:And my response to that was, oh, don't worry, mama.
Speaker A:Right, one for you, you know.
Speaker A:And so not long after she passed away, it was another way for me to write and to get things off my chest and.
Speaker A:And I started.
Speaker A:The first iteration of the book was just.
Speaker A:I was.
Speaker A:If it was in my head, I was writing about it.
Speaker A:So it was just an almost like I'm just going to put it all into words.
Speaker A:And a friend of mine called Tim Ross has written I don't know, 10 books.
Speaker A:He said to me, just write it, then go back and revisit it and edit it.
Speaker A:And so I did that.
Speaker A:I just started writing and it had no sense of sensibility or no through line or no real reason other than I had some things to share in my head that I wanted to talk about.
Speaker A: God, it would have been July: Speaker A:And he said, well, you have finished, that's a book.
Speaker A:And he owns a little place in Byron Bay in Australia which is called the writer's room, where he goes and finishes his writing.
Speaker A:It's a little cabin.
Speaker A:So I said, I'm going to go to the writer's room, I'm going to finish the book.
Speaker A:And I got up there for the first time I read it and it was really bad.
Speaker A:It was so embarrassing.
Speaker A:It was the worst thing.
Speaker A:It was just like it made no sense.
Speaker A:It was all ego, it was all how I wanted to be deceived by the world.
Speaker A:And when I read it, I got just embarrassed.
Speaker A:And I remember ringing him, he was overseas and I rang him and said, oh man, it's awful.
Speaker A:And he said, well, start again, you're in, you're in the writer's room, just start again.
Speaker A:And so that night I deleted 58,000 words and started again and wrote from a position of I understood.
Speaker A:I wanted to write about creativity, I wanted to write about the stories that I was too scared to talk about my business challenges and be really vulnerable and honest about those, what worked and what didn't, when businesses failed, why, when projects went wrong, why, like I wanted to go and be really honest about that for my own sake, but also for the other people going through the same journey I'm going through.
Speaker A:So when I wrote it again, it was really easy.
Speaker A:And I'd find myself waking up at 5:30 in the morning just with this desire to write, you know, and at 6 I'm on a computer from 9 and then I'd go to work and then at night time, like 8 o', clock, I'm back on the computer writing.
Speaker A:And so it just sort of poured out of me.
Speaker A:And so the motivation was a very personal one, driven by my mum to sort of honor her dream of writing a book that she never wanted to write.
Speaker A:And the second one was just honoring my own sort of integrity as well and going, oh, this isn't very good and now it's got to be good.
Speaker A:So It's a weird thing when you're writing something because I never.
Speaker A:I just.
Speaker A:When I was writing that, I never expected anyone to want to, first of all, publish it or anyone read it.
Speaker A:So it was a really honest book to write because I just never thought.
Speaker A:I thought maybe my kids might read it, you know, I might self publish, because who would want to publish my book?
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And so in the end, amazingly, people did want to publish it in.
Speaker A:It's a lot.
Speaker B:I think there's a important idea of knowing when something needs to change because there's like a few instances of this happening.
Speaker B:Very famous ones, like Toy Story 2, I believe.
Speaker B:They had to start over from scratch.
Speaker B:I think was the reason.
Speaker B:I think Rogue one was also restarted from scratch.
Speaker A:Really.
Speaker B:And then the most recent example that I know of, not as big as those, but Chase Jarvis wrote a book on creativity that he also had to rewrite from scratch.
Speaker B:So it's like knowing when to make that change and why you're making the change and why the change is important.
Speaker A:Yeah, it was such a.
Speaker A:It was a.
Speaker A:It was an easy decision to delete the words.
Speaker A:And every time I tell people that, they're like, on my God, how did you do that?
Speaker A:You know, and it was easier sense of.
Speaker A:I just didn't want people to hear that perspective or that side of me that I, you know, that was.
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker A:It's the private voice in your head, you know, that's on your shoulder telling you you can or you can't.
Speaker A:That's private, you know, like, that was my ego giving me the confidence to walk in the room.
Speaker A:And when you walk in the room, you're walking as the best version of yourself with humility.
Speaker A:And so, you know, there was.
Speaker A:The first version was just felt like I was beating my chest and doing amazing things.
Speaker A:And the reality is it's just been a hard journey, you know, like, and.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And recognizing that that's okay too, you know, that.
Speaker A:And also trying to understand what that.
Speaker A:What the upside of hard means.
Speaker A:You know, it's connection, it's relationships.
Speaker A:It's forging, you know, relationships with brands that, you know and I know that exist in the world.
Speaker A:And, you know, there's a. I remember there was a.
Speaker A:The story I wrote in the book.
Speaker A:Years ago, I got invited to.
Speaker A:I was in Milan for a fashion week, and I got invited to the launch of the Dolce and Gabbana nightclub.
Speaker A:They built a nightclub.
Speaker A:And in the day it was a cafe, and at night it was called Gold.
Speaker A:And I got invited to that, you know, and there's Ronaldo's there and all these famous Italian people.
Speaker A:And I got invited.
Speaker A:And when I walked in, I just thought, first of all, how am I invited?
Speaker A:Secondly, what am I doing in here?
Speaker A:And, you know, growing up in a small town in western Sydney, you know, I. I didn't know how to tell my mates that I was going because they just go, what do I say?
Speaker A:What's wrong with you?
Speaker A:And then the second part was, you know, when I was there to convince my mates that I was there, I stole some knives and forks.
Speaker A:The Dolce and Havana written on them.
Speaker A:I put them in my pocket.
Speaker A:And the interesting thing about that is I don't know where the knives and forks are, nor did I tell my mates.
Speaker A:And as I mature and get older, I'm like, well, I'm comfortable telling those stories now and I should tell them.
Speaker A:So I wrote about him in the book, but I also write about what I felt when I was there.
Speaker A:Trying to understand what.
Speaker A:That.
Speaker A:Why I was feeling like that, which is imposter syndrome, and all the things we all go through.
Speaker A:And then understanding, you know, the reason I was in the room, and I know this now, was because I was invited.
Speaker A:And I was invited because I made really tough choices in my professional life which put me in these places to be invited, you know, and those things are really important and, you know, and tough choices in a sense of when someone says, hey, you know, working for brands is a great connector.
Speaker A:You know, when you're working for Ray Ban and Tom Cruise wears Ray Ban the common interest is this popular product, not me.
Speaker A:So when, you know, I was telling someone else this, that when Dewey Cox, the movie came to Sydney for the premiere, it's like, we want to use Ray Bans because Julie Cox wears Ray Bans in the movie.
Speaker A:Can you send us a bunch?
Speaker A:My response is, sure, but I'm going to bring him.
Speaker A:I'm going to meet Jimmy Cox, Will Ferrell's best mate.
Speaker A:I can't remember his name, the actor.
Speaker A:Obviously not a very popular movie because no one ever responds to Dewey Cox.
Speaker A:What is that?
Speaker A:John C. Reilly?
Speaker A:Is it John C. Reilly, the actor?
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:So it's him, writes his movie.
Speaker A:And so I'm going to go and I'm going to give him the frames and I'm going to be in the room when the film is on because maybe I might meet someone, you know, And.
Speaker A:And I did.
Speaker A:So it's just about.
Speaker A:And that.
Speaker A:That's creativity for me.
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker A:It's oh, there's this really cool opportunity to send us some brains.
Speaker A:It's like, yeah, that's cool.
Speaker A:I can do that, but I can also bring them, you know, and what do I get back for that?
Speaker A:I get to sit in this room full of really creative people who just made a movie for the first time in my life.
Speaker A:And it's like, what can come from that?
Speaker A:Maybe nothing, but maybe everything, you know, who knows?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:I think the best part of writing a book in the way that you're doing it, is that you get to show people the lead up into the Instagramable moments, like working with Nike and Patagonia and all that stuff.
Speaker B:Everyone sees that.
Speaker B:They're like, oh, yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker B:But they don't see the hard work that leads up to this moment because obviously there's a million steps that were taken in order to get into that position.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's so true, Kevin.
Speaker A: I think that period between: Speaker A:That was the most challenging period of my life to.
Speaker A:To make it work, like, so hard.
Speaker A:But of course, if you just see it online, it's like, oh, Ben's in another snow resort living the dream.
Speaker A:So we can look at it in two ways.
Speaker A:We can either look at it and go, what's the reality?
Speaker A:How the hell did he make that work?
Speaker A:Or we can look at and go, oh, I wish what he had.
Speaker A:I wish I could do what he's doing, or I wish I had that.
Speaker A:And, you know, there was nothing easy about it.
Speaker A:You know, there was risk, it was.
Speaker A:It was expensive.
Speaker A:I was doing it with three kids.
Speaker A:You know, that was the.
Speaker A:The most rewarding and most challenging period of my life.
Speaker A:But that choice is open to anyone, you know, and the amount of people that were like, oh, you're so lucky.
Speaker A:It's like, well, anyone can get on a plane and go to Lake Tahoe and then drive to Colorado and hang out in Colorado for a few months.
Speaker A:And like, anyone.
Speaker A:And that was the choice we made.
Speaker A:And it came with its own challenges.
Speaker A:It came from restarting again at the age of, you know, mid-40s financially, because it wasn't cheap, but restarting from a position of real.
Speaker A:This is what we want to do now and really clear on that, you know, that was.
Speaker A:That was the goal.
Speaker A:And so what we got to do.
Speaker B:Can you talk about finding the publisher?
Speaker B:Like, your journey with Publishing and how you ultimately selected the publisher that you want to go with.
Speaker A:Yeah, every single person told me that you won't find one, you won't get published, it's your first book, you have to self publish.
Speaker A:Everyone told me that.
Speaker A:Not one person said, with the exception of a couple of my writing friends who said, just put it out into the world and see what they say.
Speaker A:Vash Whitfield, a friend of mine who's my business coach, would say, just email it out, just put it out there.
Speaker A:And it's.
Speaker A:Once it's out, they either want it or they don't.
Speaker A:So I.
Speaker A:Two really crazy things happen.
Speaker A:One is the original publisher was one of the biggest in the world.
Speaker A:I don't know if I meant to, if I'm allowed to mention them because we're not using them, but they originally come back.
Speaker A:I emailed this publisher, the head of the publishing the manuscript, the first three chapters, there's a little email.
Speaker A:And you're not meant to do this.
Speaker A:You meant to go to the website, fill in a form, submit it on a certain date.
Speaker A:I went to the, one of those websites where you can scrape data, you know, and I was like, right, there's an email address for a publisher.
Speaker A:I'm going to get that.
Speaker A:I'm going to cold email this person.
Speaker A:Which I never really, I'd never done before.
Speaker A:So I email the publisher.
Speaker A:She gets it on a flight from New York to Sydney.
Speaker A:She said she gets on her flight, she rings me from Sydney airport, right, the next day, and I send the email off.
Speaker A:I'm sitting up.
Speaker A:God, I should have done that.
Speaker A:She's on a flight from New York.
Speaker A:She rings me and says, you wouldn't believe what happened last night.
Speaker A:I'm on a flight from New York.
Speaker A:I, I turn, my screen isn't working on her computer, like on the flight, so she can't watch a movie.
Speaker A:So she's like, oh, you might as well just work.
Speaker A:And she opens a laptop, turns on the, the airline, WI fi, and the first email that comes in is mine.
Speaker A:And she goes, oh, maybe it's someone I know.
Speaker A:And it's a.
Speaker A:And it's a manuscript.
Speaker A:And she's like, oh, that's weird, because she doesn't get sent them very often because obviously people go to the website and fill in the form.
Speaker A:I didn't.
Speaker A:And she opened it and she's like, this is really interesting.
Speaker A:And she said, I would never have read that at work.
Speaker A:I would have just deleted that.
Speaker B:Go on.
Speaker A:But I'm sitting on a flight.
Speaker A:It was a new environment.
Speaker A:Fly.
Speaker A:So she read it, and when I was talking on the phone, she said it reminded me of Shoe Dog, the book by Phil Knight, right?
Speaker A:It was the CEO of Nike.
Speaker A:And I said, well, interestingly, that was my.
Speaker A:One of my favorite books.
Speaker A:I mean, I was writing this book.
Speaker A:I wanted to channel that type of journalism.
Speaker A:I'd never written as a writer before.
Speaker A:So that was my inspiration, the Shoe Dog.
Speaker A:And she said, well, that's interesting because I was the editor.
Speaker A:And she just saw the connection straight away.
Speaker A:And so she said to me at Sydney airport, and she hadn't even got off the, you know, out of the airport yet.
Speaker A:She was just landing in Sydney, and she said, I want to publish the book.
Speaker A:I want to do it.
Speaker A:And that was.
Speaker A:And I said yes.
Speaker A:So we.
Speaker A:We had an agreement.
Speaker A:The agreement was to meet a certain deadline of which I didn't make.
Speaker A:So that was me going back and rewriting the book.
Speaker A:So the three chapters she got was the first version, which she liked.
Speaker A:The first three chapters that you'll read in the book is the same as the.
Speaker A:When I deleted everything, it was after that and ended up with a tweak to the first three chapters.
Speaker A:So I just didn't finish it in time.
Speaker A:So they kept it.
Speaker A:But they also put into their.
Speaker A:Into the world of.
Speaker A:They.
Speaker A:They publish a lot of big books by a lot of writers, and I'm a nobody in that world of big writers.
Speaker A:So they said.
Speaker A: is deadline, so you've missed: Speaker A:We really wanted this in for Christmas because that's our window to sell books on people who don't know who you are.
Speaker A:And they sort of shelved it for a year and said, we just don't know what to do with it now because you've missed your deadline.
Speaker A:So I said, can I open up the other publishers?
Speaker A:And she said, of course you can.
Speaker A:So I did.
Speaker A:I emailed three more.
Speaker A:And amazingly, the next day I got another phone call from WY in Melbourne.
Speaker A:So Lucy in Melbourne, Wiley's an American publishing house out of Brooklyn.
Speaker A:They've got an office in Melbourne.
Speaker A:She got it and she said, we just had a book cancellation that we pulled on.
Speaker A:We need to fill a space for this year for May.
Speaker A: n November, actually, for May: Speaker A:Do you want to.
Speaker A:You want to feel it?
Speaker A:I was like, yeah, sure.
Speaker A:So it was really just putting my.
Speaker A:You know, I didn't use the forms online.
Speaker A:I emailed people directly.
Speaker A:I did some research online to find out who I Should email and just write a really personal email.
Speaker A:I wrote a book and I hope you like it.
Speaker A:You know, that was it.
Speaker A:And extraordinarily that worked for me.
Speaker A:And, and I don't know if that would work for everyone.
Speaker A:It worked already, but yeah, it was.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker B:So two very, like, coincidental things.
Speaker B:It's like sometimes you make your own luck, right?
Speaker B:I think that's a lesson that we all need to take into account when we see things happening and success that happens sometimes it is just, you know, there's a coincidence either that she opened it right out as she got out of the plane or, you know, the other person, the other person dropped a book and there's just now an opening that happens to line up with when you asked.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:So, yeah, this is the essence of creativity.
Speaker A:In a way, it's like, God, it's such a scary thing to ask for help or to put yourself out into the world and to go, I deserve this, or I learned this.
Speaker A:Like, that is really scary.
Speaker A:Scary for me.
Speaker A:I get terrified every week of those things, you know, and even social media, when I'm posting on LinkedIn, I look at it for 10 minutes going, what does this say about me?
Speaker A:What does it say about who's going to like, it's scary for me.
Speaker A:So to do it at the level of a book where I've got, you know, 75, 000 words of my life and my perspective on what it means to live a creative life or how to live a creative life, there's advice in there which I've always been reluctant to share.
Speaker A:Yeah, it's really scary.
Speaker A:Shit's really scary.
Speaker A:Terrifying.
Speaker B:Yeah, it's.
Speaker B:It's always scary to be vulnerable, but that's often the times that you connect the most with the people who need to, to hear it.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So there's.
Speaker B:There's a balance of being vulnerable and you knowing that that is going to make an impact on somebody, even if it's just one person.
Speaker A:That's right.
Speaker A:So true.
Speaker B:So what is your, your plan, the marketing plan for your book?
Speaker B:Because I said it's coming out in May.
Speaker A:Yeah, it may.
Speaker A:So it comes out, comes out in Australia on the 1st of May, I think in the US, Barnes and Noble Target is June, but it is on Amazon and a bunch of other online stores from, from the 1st of May.
Speaker A:You can pre order it now.
Speaker A:The marketing is podcast.
Speaker A:I want to just talk to people.
Speaker A:You know, I love this idea of podcasts are forever.
Speaker A:You know, they're just there and, you know, I like you know you've got an audience and you've got a set of people who like what you're talking about.
Speaker A:And whether that's one or a million, it comes back to one of the first conversations we had in this podcast was if it's a story worth sharing and worth talking about, then it'll scale and that one will tell one.
Speaker A:And so yeah, my approach to this was podcasts that the publisher's idea was similar podcasts and of course sharing on socials.
Speaker A:But from a marketing point of view, I think it's just talking about the book and talking to people who understand creativity and design and who have an audience who want to talk about that.
Speaker A:So that's my approach is just have these conversations as often as we can.
Speaker B:It's just finding the community and the connections of people who might have the audience that fits the message of your book.
Speaker B:Which is, I think one thing that is often overlooked.
Speaker B:You're trying to figure out how do I get out to millions of people?
Speaker B:But that's not really what you need to be doing.
Speaker B:You need to be finding the people who are going to be interested in it because.
Speaker B:Because you can find a million people easy if you pay for it.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:But finding the people who are interested is a completely different story.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And the book isn't for everyone.
Speaker A:There's a really interesting stat that I read on the Adobe one of their research reports years ago, which was 96% of kids believe they're creative but only 26% of adults agree.
Speaker A:And it's really interesting and I actually read recently that that has now shrink to 3% of 50 year olds in a bomb believe they're creative.
Speaker A:And I actually don't believe anyone's born creative.
Speaker A:I think it's a choice.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And I love how Ken Robinson used to talk about creativity in a sense of it's a choice within us, we can learn it, but it's really just the ability to solve a problem, to put yourself into the world.
Speaker A:And people misunderstand creativity as art or painting.
Speaker A:And it's actually much deeper than that.
Speaker A:It's really the ability to look at a problem and understand with confidence that you can lean into it and have it, have the ability to solve it, that's one thing.
Speaker A:But also it's, it's the ability to sort of, yeah, send an email at 9 o' clock at night when the easiest thing to do is not send it and see where it lands and see what happens with the person that calls you.
Speaker A:And then having the confidence to pick up the phone the next day and take the call when most calls I look at with unknown numbers I just don't take that scary.
Speaker A:So creativity menace of manifests itself in so many ways.
Speaker A:But having you know, creative confidence is, is that step to take, you know, to lean into it and you know there's a re.
Speaker A:And I come back to Dolce and Gabbana, the gold nightclub and not that that's everyone's holy grail and it's not.
Speaker A:I mean but there's a reason people get invited and I actually think it's because they're creatively confident.
Speaker A:They put themselves out into the world in a way that is appealing to people and, and there's no reason why me being a chubby 50 year old man and bored to get invited these things over someone else.
Speaker A:You know what I mean?
Speaker A:So the, the reality is it's just lean in and be brave, you know, that's creativity.
Speaker B:Awesome.
Speaker B:So I got a few more questions left.
Speaker B:Do you know anyone personally who also runs a standout creative business and what do they do to stand out?
Speaker A:Oh man, so many creative businesses.
Speaker A:I think Vince Cost is my favorite designer on earth.
Speaker A:I know Vince, I really like his work.
Speaker A:Andrew Simpson from Bert is probably, probably the most intriguing business owner I've ever met.
Speaker A:He's, he's incredibly smart.
Speaker A:Like I sort of put Andrew Simpson at the and think of him in the same sense as I would think of God, you know, like Bill Gates or you know, really clever, really calculated, really well thought out.
Speaker A:He's an industrial designer and owns a really beautiful agency.
Speaker A:I really admire his work.
Speaker A:He's had it for years.
Speaker A:He understands the business side of design, he understands the creativity side of design and he understands the complexities of leadership for people.
Speaker A:You know, just go to vertdesign.com and you'll see Andrew and you'll just admire him.
Speaker A:Like my.
Speaker A:I suppose my understanding and patu around business has evolved a lot since I'm getting another one in the UK is a guy called Abdio.
Speaker A:He owns Goodness Drift Time Agency.
Speaker A:Abdi again is a big corp. You know like my ability to understand my business more comes from talking to him.
Speaker A:You know like the abbey details.
Speaker A:Drift Time is just profound.
Speaker A:He's the founding member at Designer Players which is a charity, a design charity out of the UK of which my wife and I own the Australian Chapter 4.
Speaker A:So I think Abdi's amazing.
Speaker A:Just really, really patient and present.
Speaker A:You know, like incredible.
Speaker A:He's writing a book at the moment and you know to talk about Impact.
Speaker A:It's not on Amazon.
Speaker A:It's a book.
Speaker A:He wants to control of distribution and he doesn't agree with Amazon's policies, so it's not on there.
Speaker A:And that alignment between your values is wild.
Speaker A:So yeah, they're three for me.
Speaker A:Vince Ross, from a creative point of view is design works.
Speaker A:Amazing.
Speaker A:Andrew Simpson.
Speaker A:I give Taylor.
Speaker B:Yeah, I think one of the ways you can also be a very good creative business is to learn from other creative people.
Speaker B:Because doing it by yourself is fine and it can work, but when you have a community of like minded creative people, it just fuels you to either be better or learn from people who are doing interesting things.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Then I don't think we need to look at them as competition.
Speaker A:I think we need to look at them as knowledge and education, you know, competition.
Speaker A:It's just.
Speaker B:Yeah, because everyone's fighting for different people.
Speaker B:So it doesn't make sense to look at people as competition when you're all aiming to do different things.
Speaker B:Like, back to that.
Speaker B:Why?
Speaker A:Totally agree.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:What is one extraordinary book, podcast, documentary or tool that has had the biggest impact on your journey?
Speaker A:Oh, on my journey.
Speaker A:Anything by Mac.
Speaker A:I'm Gladwell.
Speaker A:I always just found so, so insightful.
Speaker A:Love all his writing, his podcasts.
Speaker A:I like his patience and his confidence.
Speaker A:I think Seth Godin's probably been, I would say I've met Seth Godin, I've interviewed him.
Speaker A:I actually spoke to him about my book before I wrote it and then during the writing process I sent him a copy of it.
Speaker A:He sent me back some feedback that it was a really good idea to write about creativity.
Speaker A:I even tried to convince him to write a blurb on the back of which he said join the line.
Speaker A:You know, join the team.
Speaker A:So I think he's, he's been amazing.
Speaker A:I like where he's heading in terms of his Carbon Almanac, which he just wrote, which my family's got and we've read.
Speaker A:Amazing.
Speaker A:Rhonda Brighton Hall's been incredible.
Speaker A:I love Brene Brown to death.
Speaker A:Good friend of ours from London is the vice president at Nike.
Speaker A:Every single conversation I've ever had with her in my life has been a life altering conversation in a sense around positivity, connection, that place in the world.
Speaker A:So I think, you know, there's so many, there's so many.
Speaker A:But in terms of just out of the box reading Seth Godin, knock on Fadwell.
Speaker A:I really like Brian Collins in New York.
Speaker A:Desperate work.
Speaker B:Awesome.
Speaker B:What do you think makes a creative business stand out?
Speaker B:And what is one piece of Advice that you give to somebody based on your experience on how to stand out themselves.
Speaker A:Honesty, like values.
Speaker A:Your manifesto come back to the end of it, you know, and if you, if you were to draw a line from left to right, you know, and what we say about ourselves over here and what the market says about us over here, if those lines don't, if that's on a straight line left to right or right to left, we've got a disconnect and a problem.
Speaker A:So I think the best thing we can do is be really clear on the story we want to tell about ourselves and then understand what the market thinks of that and what they say about us and just make sure those thoughts line up.
Speaker A:That's everything.
Speaker B:That's interesting thought because you don't often think about how what you think and what other people think should intersect.
Speaker B:But I think like you said, it's very important to know because you don't want your perception of yourself to be completely different from other people's perception of you.
Speaker B:Because when you're talking or communicating with people, you're going to have this big disconnect when you have that kind of problem.
Speaker A:Totally agree.
Speaker A:It just, you've manifesto in your brand, babies become your, your living, breathing document, you know, like that's.
Speaker A:If you're ever stuck to that, just go to Nike's website and go and look at their manifesto and.
Speaker A:Or Patagonia's and look at their manifesto and that'll give you a benchmark.
Speaker A:I think it's okay to copy.
Speaker A:I think it's okay to copy.
Speaker A:You know, I think your version of copying someone else's work, not, not the work, don't go and copy the iPhone.
Speaker A:I'm just saying the idea of the framework or the values of a business like Nike, it's okay to take that, apply that yourself, because it'll never be the same like what you do, Kevin, with your business and me.
Speaker A:And if we try and go and replicate Patagonia's business values, we're still going to face that into the world very differently.
Speaker A:Now I want to leverage on the dots, you know, so draw inspiration from competition.
Speaker A:Look at them as collaborators, look at them as ways to sort of, you know, I always say someone else's endpoint is your new beginning, you know, so nothing is ever finished.
Speaker A:And we can talk about, know my, my earbuds or we could talk about a coffee cup or a rode microphone.
Speaker A:And that's the end.
Speaker A:That end point is your new beginning.
Speaker A:It's like, what did someone do there to make it so great.
Speaker A:And what is your point?
Speaker A:To take it further.
Speaker A:You know, and that's the same with a car.
Speaker A:You know, the way we approach street science, you know, wayfinding, it's like, that's the end point.
Speaker A:What you see is the end where someone got to.
Speaker A:Our new beginning is taking that and moving forward.
Speaker A:We don't need to reinvent the wheel.
Speaker A:We just need to understand where that thing left or ended and where we begin.
Speaker B:There's a very good book.
Speaker B:I don't know if you've read it.
Speaker B:You probably have Steal like an Artist by Austin Kleon.
Speaker B:Amazing book.
Speaker A:I haven't read it, but I know about it.
Speaker A:I'm going to run it down right now.
Speaker B:And then he.
Speaker B:This is very common, but it's good.
Speaker B:Artists copy and then great artists steal.
Speaker B:Like, so anyone can copy anybody else, but like, to steal the thoughts and ideas and processes and all that stuff is where the real gold happens.
Speaker B:Because you're not like doing things bit by bit exactly as they did it because you.
Speaker B:Everyone has their own spin on things.
Speaker A:Yeah, Well, I think Rick Rubin talks about it as well.
Speaker A:Like, you know, he's had.
Speaker A:He's had the Chili Peppers come in and say, I want to do what Johnny Cash did with that.
Speaker A:With that guitar solo.
Speaker A:And they're like.
Speaker A:He's like, great, just do it then.
Speaker A:Because it's never going to sound like Johnny Cash.
Speaker A:It's going to sound like the Chili Peppers.
Speaker A:And, you know, I think he talks about, you know, the Chili Peppers will always sound like the Chili Peppers, even if they're doing Johnny Cash.
Speaker A:You know, there's.
Speaker A:And I.
Speaker A:And I sort of feel like there's truth in that in design and designing businesses or designing your life as well.
Speaker B:Interestingly enough, Questlove, I'm listening to his book.
Speaker B:He as well, talks about his style is just like copying other people's styles in which creates his own style by doing that right.
Speaker B:So he can go in any which direction he wants to.
Speaker B:But by doing it and being it himself, it's just going to be different.
Speaker B:It doesn't matter how much you try to copy somebody.
Speaker B:It's just going to be your own thing.
Speaker A:100%.
Speaker A:I love the transparency and the power of that transparency.
Speaker A:I think it's good.
Speaker A:I have those same conversations that people like going, why don't you copy Patagonia's manifesto?
Speaker A:I'm like, word for word.
Speaker A:And by the way, when it comes out of my mouth, it sounds so different and it looks different.
Speaker A:And we're a design Agency, and they're a product company.
Speaker A:So, yeah, I just think I like the word steal is a better word than copy.
Speaker A:So I'm going to take that on.
Speaker B:Can you give the listeners a challenge that they can take action on right away?
Speaker A:Oh, wow.
Speaker A:That's a really tough question.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So I don't want to say yes to something or say yes to everything.
Speaker A:But, yeah, creative confidence starts with that, you know, that feeling of just, it's okay to walk into the room and ask for help.
Speaker A:It's okay to go and ask for the raise.
Speaker A:It's okay to go and, you know, like, I was listening to Scott Galloway talk about this yesterday, and I just had so much regret over my career that I never did.
Speaker A:This was, if you're in a job and you're there for two to three years, it's time to leave.
Speaker A:And what he means by that isn't go and get something else, it's go and ask the market what you're worth.
Speaker A:You know, so that to me was this.
Speaker A:Just be brave enough to just keep elevating up knowledge, skills, and that some.
Speaker A:That starts by walking into some rooms you don't want to walk into.
Speaker A:So that to me is the.
Speaker A:That's the most obvious thing is.
Speaker A:And that, you know, you know those ideas when you're in the shower and you have all these thoughts and you're like, oh, my God, I'm going to build this today.
Speaker A:I'm going to do that so I can get out of the shower and chow down and you're dressing, drive to work and you forget everything you just thought about.
Speaker A:Write it down.
Speaker A:Get out your own.
Speaker A:Just write down those ideas and that becomes your power five.
Speaker A:You know.
Speaker B:I heard somebody say that they, they have like a.
Speaker B:A marker or something that they bring to the shower that's like, obviously waterproof.
Speaker B:So that way that they can write ideas that they're in the shower.
Speaker B:Because oftentimes when you take a break from things and you're in a mode of not thinking about the problem you're trying to solve, that's when the solutions come to you and you need a way for you to capture that.
Speaker B:So I think that's a great way just to find a waterproof marker or something and write down any ideas that you come up with.
Speaker A:I used to do that years ago, not anymore.
Speaker A:When I first started, my business had a waterproof market.
Speaker A:But now I always say the answers are out there, not in here.
Speaker A:And that's true about everything.
Speaker A:You know, your family relationships, you know, your parenting skills.
Speaker A:It's like you can only bring what you know.
Speaker A:So how do you find the answers are out there, not in here?
Speaker A:And that's really interesting.
Speaker A:And I think what you just said about when you go away from a problem and in those moments of solace when you're out in the world, it's like, come to the answers, come to you.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:You just gotta find a way to capture that and then be brave enough to do something with it.
Speaker A:That's the challenge.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Remember, write down everything and take action on it.
Speaker B:It's always great advice.
Speaker B:Well, Ben, it's been really awesome talking to you.
Speaker B:Where can people keep up to date with your work and when your book comes out and all that kind of good stuff?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Benreni.com is the easiest.
Speaker A:So just my website.
Speaker A:There'll be links on there for the book and.
Speaker A:But I think the best place for a book is to Google search and buy it from your favorite retailer.
Speaker A:Mate, great to chat.
Speaker A:Kevin, thanks so much, mate.
Speaker A:I really appreciate it.
Speaker B:Yeah, thanks for coming on.
Speaker A:Thank you.
Speaker B:Bye.
Speaker B:Thanks for listening to this episode of Standout Creatives.
Speaker B:If you're feeling stuck, let's chat and see how we can help you.
Speaker B:Start standing out instead of burning out.
Speaker B:You can sign up for a free strategy call at the Standout Creative site.
Speaker B:If you want to keep up to date with everything I'm working on, including interviews, essays, and upcoming projects, head to standoutcreativebusiness.substack.com and if you have any thoughts on this episode or just want to chat, you can follow me on Instagram at standoutcreativebusiness.
Speaker B:Thanks again for tuning in.
Speaker B:And as always, lean into your creativity and curiosity.
Speaker B:I'll see you again on the next episode.
