"Creative must win" (Tim Thompson bonus episode)

0:02Radim Malinic:Hey, welcome to this bonus episode of the Daring Creativity Podcast. This is where I revisit the interview published earlier in the week because it's my opportunity to find a few standout moments and zoom in on them for extra value and meaning. today i look back in my conversation with tim thompson that has landed in so many different ways because i cherish my time talking to tim about his life about his experiences about his ways of working with the industry and his way of seeing where we're gonna go next i picked out a few moments and i would like to share them with you now the first quote is if you believe in talent and all you are basing your career on is your raw talent, then AI is very much a scary thing.

0:52And you should be afraid because that skill that you have, that you're really talented at, is a skill that can be replaced and will be. If it wasn't for AI, it'd just be a younger generation with a faster filter that will take care of it for you. If you have a career based in creativity, then there's no reason to be afraid because your creative mind will always come up with something. And that ability, that's what the creative mind is doing. You just have to enter that space for the muse to show up. You have to know what that's like. And you have to use that space to find the future, project that future, and then achieve it.

1:32So there's nothing scary about a technological advancement with a creative mind because the creative mind is the one that's actually asking the bigger questions what to do with it.

1:43Radim Malinic:so this quote cuts to the heart of the ai anxiety that is plaguing our creative industry today have a think what did you do and how did you think where the first mention of generative ai actually came out were you scared or were you thinking that's okay i'll be all right because Tim's insight reveals a fundamental misunderstanding many creatives have about their own value proposition. How many even think about value proposition? He's essentially arguing that if your career is built on executing tasks, even very skillfully, you're vulnerable, not just to AI, but to market forces that have always existed.

2:28Radim Malinic:The deeper wisdom here is about future-proofing creative careers through mindset shift. Dean distinguishes between being a skilled executor versus being a visionary creator. Talent is replicable. Creativity is generative. And this perspective transforms AI from an existential threat into a tool that can enhance truly creative work. Some people swear by it. Some people avoid it. Some people put fingers in their ears and close their eyes. But AI is here to stay. And he's got a point. Back in the day, no one was ever immune to change. We crave change. We want change. But we are scared of it when it comes to us.

3:12Radim Malinic:We tell our clients about change. But when it comes to us, maybe, maybe in the future. Here's a second quote I would like to share. Yeah. So the best way to do that is to put a lot of parameters on that project and basically work against the creative person is what it turns out to be or what it feels like. At IF, I learned that creative must win. You know, some of it is because of the genius of Kyle Cooper. Like he wasn't going to let you win anyway. He was going to win no matter what creative was going to win. So I had to actually start changing my thinking of what it meant to come alongside a creative person, finance the project that they were looking for, and get it delivered still on time and on budget, but working alongside them.

4:01So that shift of creative must win, game changer for me. And it allowed me to be the creative person that I have inside that needs to come out and have a very different talent for it.

4:15Radim Malinic:i absolutely adored the opportunity to talk to tim about his work on title sequence for the movie seven if you've seen the movie in a similar age to mine which i was i think maybe older teenager it was mind-blowing it was incredible so to learn more about a title sequence and how they did it it was fascinating and tim said creative must win we see this from his side being in creative management of how the producer artist dynamics must have worked at that time because i enjoyed the way of reframing the entire relationship is something that we can hopefully learn from and how many people do we know that see the same production sort of system from the same perspective because everyone's got their little politics and anxieties and insecurities how they slot into the creative process but building cultures where innovation thrives where everyone feels safe and everyone feels accounted for and being spaced to do their best work is often rare.

5:32Radim Malinic:So creative must win. I think it's a great reminder that we're in this together and we're trying to do the best work possible. Here's the next quote. The muse that has to show up in the creative process comes from an aha moment. It's like a moment of revelation and it's not there. You're often just doing something. Matisse process was literally start drawing until the muse shows up, right? So you're basically just looking for the muse. But when the muse shows up, you actually now know what the purpose is of the creative thing you're doing. And then the pieces fall in and you get these major spikes in their output.

6:13But that muse and that creative moment, that aha moment actually lives in the same part of your brain as fight and flight. So what I've started to realize is that the creative entrepreneur actually has a different challenge than just, you know, like say a business process, because the fight and flight mechanism, the reptile brain is actually at the core of your brainstem and it hijacks the rest of it. So it hijacks the analytical brains, the higher brains in order to kind of be there and inspired by that. And I feel like creative people are kind of, are asking for permission. Can you guard my back while I enter fight and flight stage into this very edgy, very, can you keep peace while I'm fighting this battle?

6:57Radim Malinic:So, if I wanted to sound clever, I would say the neurological framework for understanding creative vulnerability lies in emotional intensity. Tim connects the mystical concept of the muse with concrete brain science that helps demystify why creative work can feel simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying. The fight or flight connection explains why creative professionals often experience anxiety, procrastination and emotional volatility around their work. And if you listen to both episodes last week with Miss Liz Mosey, she called it the dark night of the soul. Things don't always work. There is no such thing as end or problems.

7:44But the source of creativity comes from a similar place.

7:50Radim Malinic:So feeling anxiety or emotional volatility is not a weakness or drama. It's just a brain survival mechanism that's being triggered to the same neural pathways that generate breakthrough insights. So understanding has a practical implications for creative support networks. If the creative mind must enter a similar state of fight or flight to access breakthrough thinking, then creative professionals need environments and relationships that provide safety and support during these vulnerable moments and this goes back to creative must win and as tim said as a producer is clearly guiding creators backs so we need people like tim don't we the next quote is It's fine.

8:40I kind of was burned out. It was hard work.

8:44Radim Malinic:We worked 100-hour weeks easily. And I had to find a different purpose, a different way to kind of understand what I was contributing. I didn't necessarily like the person I was becoming. I felt like I could even be a little manipulative of the time. And I wanted to re-anchor who I was and what my purpose was. so to go find a new foundation and to serve people in a very different way seemed like the perfect match and was encouraged a lot by the people around me to go do that i enjoyed brutal honesty when i heard that tim didn't like the person he was becoming because he found that fork in the road and took the right turn to get out of his sort of success driven ego career path because i had heaps of sympathy with what he was saying because when you learn about someone doing 100 hour weeks you know they're not gonna be in a very good place having done 100 hour weeks in the past myself it's easy to break yourself and tim's recognition that this was changing him into someone he didn't want to be demonstrated his remarkable emotional intelligence and long-term thinking he talked about the fact that if he didn't go on a path of fixing that situation he would be divorced with two sons whereas he's still happily married with five sons it's potentially an important reminder of what comes first where the priorities lie because there's always going to be more creative work to do there's going to be more projects more accolades more awards more hours to spend on anything but when everything's said and done what matters most it's a simple question and the last quote we'll wrap up with is this one i don't think most people don't have careers that are 30 and 40 years.

10:46They have good 10-year careers or 20-year careers, but there's a lot of people I got started with and I don't have any idea where they are now. They have all faded away. And there's a few of us that have been around as long as me, and it's kind of fun. We feel like there's an old guard to it. So I also do feel like there's a responsibility. If you can survive 30 years in this industry, you have a responsibility to pay it back and gives that experience to the younger generation.

11:13Radim Malinic:Other people-ness might be Tim's most important conceptual contribution to creative career thinking. This term captures the fundamental shift from self-focused to community-focused thinking that enables us long-term creative sustainability. When Tim told me that he's rooting for the industry, you might have heard my answer and saying you don't need to tell us we see you you're there you are the supporting network and you're gluing this all together because behind the scenes behind some of the most amazing work there's heaps of people there's groups of people holding this together and tim's approach to helping studios of all sizes creatives he doesn't view anyone as competition in his mind, it actually tries to bring everyone together so he can advocate for an approach where success comes through lifting others.

12:08Radim Malinic:His approach suggests that the most successful creative careers become platforms for developing others. If there's one thing I hope you can take from this conversation is to look out for the others. How do you connect? How do you communicate? How do you lift others up? and what is your positive impact on the industry because creative must win and we can always create the optimal conditions for creativity ourselves. Thank you for joining me on this bonus episode and I'll see you next week.