Dare to choose your own problems - Kyle Wilkinson

25:15Daring Creativity Host:obviously from yorkshire so i'm stereotypically tight and what i discovered is the next door did a flat white for four quid and if you go to bagel bait you can get a coffee and the cream cheese bagel for four quid so that will breakfast and then salt beef all day for anything beyond breakfast

25:34Kyle Wilkinson:i like it because you just mentioned money and you said i'm tight but you are not tied with the production budget because how quickly did you realize that in the words of ross kemp is gonna kick off. We'll be back after a quick break. This episode is brought to you by Lax Coffee Co., the first creative speciality coffee company building a platform to shine the light on emerging global talent with a mission to make a positive impact on a creative industry and beyond. Lax Coffee Co. offers exceptional coffee sourced from around the world through ethical and sustainable practices and you can discover the current range of signature blends and single origins coffee hardware and accessories along with exceptional apparel at laxcoffee.co.uk you can use the code podcast to get 15 off your first order

26:38Daring Creativity Host:all right kicked off yeah i i i think that that was one of the difficult most difficult things to get my head around and one of the side benefits to doing this show i wanted to get into the mindset of what it's like when a client comes to me to work on a project and they're spending their money with me and that understanding now of putting your own money into stuff i've put my own money into other businesses and the studio in the past but this is slightly different because this is an unknown outcome and very quickly very early on when it became the materials that i wanted to use for some of the the pieces because i'm creating something that i would want to stand up in any gallery within the world and the pieces the materials that were used were were very expensive 24 karat gold i remember having this conversation on the phone with like do you want fake gold or 24 karat gold like who would pick fake gold i cannot honestly say to somebody like oh is this real gold no it's fake gold no it's 24 karat gold and it turns out rather than gold's expensive newsflash for everybody and yeah it started to spiral from that point which were pretty early on and the budget just yeah ended up doubling because i took a firm belief that if we're doing it like I do with every project.

27:56Daring Creativity Host:If you're doing something, you either see it through and do it right or just don't bother. The world doesn't need more kind of meh. Go and do it properly. And I do believe that is the longevity to creativity because I think there's the lower end of the market there, the slot as it's now been branded, that's going to be taken over by IAI and other technologies that's going to come in. I think people are going to seek something that is a little bit more experiential and a little bit more special. So when you start layering in this, this thing spiraled because the material costs, but then when you're booking actors to come and to come and work at the show and you want, you want the music to be right.

28:36Daring Creativity Host:We've got a free bar, you know, all that kind of thing going off. It, it adds up and the budget doubled. Yeah. This is an interesting thing, obviously from an experience.

28:44Kyle Wilkinson:I, I never thought that I would be publishing books in a way I am. i never thought that i'd be you know self-publishing or creating my own publishing company and spending money on advertising and there was this element when i realized like how much of an ambition there was and how much of a drive to make it happen where i was at that time at four books i was printing my fourth book plus the reprint of the first three and the printing bill was 55 000 pounds right for 35 000 books would i ever imagine that i would spend 55 000 pounds on real like literally like okay there's profits from the book i mean it's been a highly profitable exercise for a while and you realize like this is astronomical figures because i think i spent like 800 quid on my first thousand brochures or whatever this would i did seem like a monumental spend but again we're talking about the fact like have everything adds up how everything adds up you're not gonna go and spend 55 grand on books that are not proven you're gonna go and grow little by little to get to where you need to be because we go through this life and collect the information influence the inspiration in form of ideas to give us a sort of experience of how to do things because as you said when things started escalating really quickly is that sort of life and work grown resilience that and and and endurance that go kicks in and says and and realize i want this to be good therefore i'm going to step up and again being publicly publicly accountable to this what was the best outcome of this show because you're making that show only once and you put in your right foot forward right so i believe like when you really strive to do something mega you always find money you always find ways to make it happen

30:25Daring Creativity Host:there's a beauty in the naivety to to things when you put yourself in a position of i don't necessarily know what i'm doing or what i'm getting into because i think the outcome is often better i heard something from noel gallagher recently and it really hit where he's he were talking about don't look back in anger and he wrote that on a sunday night or whatever just picked up his guitar and wrote it and he was saying that if he understood the enormity of that song whilst writing it it would have never been written because he would have put himself too much under too much pressure to just get it out and to get it right and to meticulous meticulously like craft every word he just did it and then put it down put his guitar down and off he went to pub or whatever it did and i think there's a beauty in that naivety and and the unknown and putting yourself in them scenarios where you've you can just create freely and in this in my scenario is that yes i didn't understand getting into it but if i'd have known at the start oh it's going to cost this much money then that would have probably held me back from doing it because i would have gone oh shit what if it didn't work out oh this is really like too much and you put a contingency and then you smash through that and it's like oh again we're in a hole here but it goes back to that earlier point of point yourself into that hole into that dark kind of shadowy area to then allow yourself to grow out of it and i really do think that that i know that personally the outcome of the show has been amazing to the feedback to have the response but and that some of the conversations that i've had as a result of it are great but personally the growth that i've had in terms of from an emotional standpoint going into another thing like this i'm planning one of the next challenges for term for 2026 and i feel so much more at ease as a result of doing that because i've just built that kind of emotional resilience and i think that that is so important the resilience that we build emotionally and intellectually in a creative career because it is

32:22Kyle Wilkinson:difficult you've gone you've gone definitely the extra mile on the on that chapter and I love a quote by Don Martel, and he said, the last mile is hardly ever crowded because not many people are prepared to go that far. And it's the uncomfortable. It's the uncomfortable. You're not going to win by doing it easy. We have the glorification of the final reel, of the show reel of like, oh, how did you do that? And then you get to hear all the details about how things nearly didn't happen, how they broke, how they glued together the duct tape, not just to make the thing be together and your eyes that's what life is about because we are aspiring to there's definitely people i'm sure there's people aspiring to be right no right in another no don't look back in anger but that wasn't written in an aspiration to write don't look back in anger as you described that was just like hey i'm doing my thing i'm here with my thoughts and i'm doing it for myself because ultimately that's what matters the most i'm

33:23Daring Creativity Host:doing it for myself that's the key thing I they I came to a real realization when doing house of thrills when you when you splitting my time away from the other side of my creative career and life is like is this the right decision and you come to a realization that if you won the lottery what would you be doing if you had like endless funds and endless time to be doing whatever this is what I'd be doing I'd be building shows and releasing products and creating things it's exactly what I'll be doing and I feel really privileged and lucky to be able to do that but you know I've spent years working towards to put myself in that situation so you've got to firstly create for yourself and then be strategic enough to be then thinking actually this will work for a broader audience this can like be a brand that can be more accessible to people you can apply some strategy and business and creative thinking to that but first and foremost you've got to you've got to want to pick the guitar up for yourself and sing the song or create the piece of art or

34:19Kyle Wilkinson:whatever it be i love what you said earlier so it's the beauty and naivety because we all flying it's quite comfortable to fly the flag at the beginning and says hey i'm doing this stuff it's it's clicking together but i don't know what i'm doing and you say to the room of you know creatives and they're clapping like hey dude you don't know what you're doing but it's looking good and then you get to the point of like maybe i should know what i'm doing ignorance is not always the excuse for things and i've gone to the other side of the argument thinking like is it a cop-out for industry like are we are we not are we setting ourselves for not looking professionals like i don't know what i'm doing but so thinking you need to know what you're doing but there is a the other side of the coin is is equally corrosive because when you know too much you're like i need the uncomfortable i need that unknown i need to work it out because like knowing the answers doesn't always spur you if you know how to write the next don't look back in anger would you really write it or would you actually try to write something different and that's my question like do we where is that where is the peak in between the two two sides of the coin on the edge going how much do you want to know because being beaten up the beauty of naivety is it's a fantastic way of being because it actually helps you to open the doors that you didn't even not existed.

35:39Daring Creativity Host:I think it comes down to adhering to your principles that I want to create things of quality with whatever I create. And that can, that's sector agnostic. So I think once you have that grounding route of your own kind of personal beliefs and principles within the work, the work can then go off into any direction that you see fit or would like to search down. And for me, with creativity, especially when you get a client brief, if you know the answer at the start of the project then you're doing it wrong because it's not about not if you you're not creating anything you're just replicating something that you've either you've done before you're resting on your laurels you're in a certain scenario that you know what you're doing the whole point of creativity is to create something to make something and it's like it's like knowing the answer to the jigsaw puzzle before you've you've you've started that's not the point of the the game point of the game is to not know what you're doing and join the dots and create the thing that is right for the the setting the project the target audience whatever that be and i think that that is often the thing that's lost within this sector is do you know it's not professional to not know what you're doing well no you're the expert that is paid to play with a blank canvas if you put a blank piece of paper down in front of a lot of people they freak out create me something oh no oh, I can't do that.

37:03Daring Creativity Host:We welcome it. We go, oh yeah, cool. What's the constraints? Where's the edges to this? Where can we go? Where can we not? And you figure it out and you put it together like a puzzle. And I think that, so that's the answer for me is always pointing yourself in, resting on your principles and your experience, but pushing yourself out of your comfort zone to not actually know the answer and the outcome at the beginning because you will get there.

37:31Kyle Wilkinson:you mentioned constraints and there are no better constraints than a physical materials physical physical exhibition that you need to almost narrow down the list of options so you had a mixture of different pieces so again for those who didn't see the show online or didn't didn't attend you mentioned frames and you mentioned frames on the other side of the country so i would like to know why you've chosen them but what was the whole sort of idea behind the the eclecticness of the show that had so many varied pieces tied together with one theme but how did you decide on you know what these pieces would be why would you spend money on 24 i mean you told us why would you spend money on 24 current gold but like there were other elements that elevated the show so So yeah, constraints, supplies, suppliers, decisions, and limitations, potentially financial and even material, resourceful.

38:27Daring Creativity Host:I wanted a body of work that could feel cohesive, but that had that kind of, oh, I like this, but I don't like that one, but I'm interested in this, and what is this? And bringing my interest into bringing physical products to life as well as something that we're more traditionally used to, having a piece of paper to play with or a canvas. So I created these wooden dopamine sculptures that were, they were very testing to do in that timeframe, but I wanted to represent our addiction to dopamine in this, I called it Superdope. And it's like a, one of them is a 50 centimeter in diameter dopamine pill that is, has that kind of depth to it where it's called the big red pill, which is linked to the matrix.

39:13Daring Creativity Host:A few people picked upon it but the the idea is that the you're stepping into a world where we've got all these little boxes of likes and filters and dopamine so it brings together my experience in graphic design and branding and the physical products that i've made in the chairs and the lighting that i've done in the past it brings together all these skills that i've stacked over the years that i wanted to deploy so it's allowing it's not restricting myself to one medium is what i wanted to do with the show because I felt as though that that makes it more immersive it makes it more accessible for people that might like a particular thing i.e if you like sculpture if you like pieces on the wall the frames that were purely a a quality choice that I the framers that I used I used to framing people like Julian Opie's work and if they've and Bella Freud's these are people that I look up to and and if I'm going to get to that level then why not play at that level at the very beginning and and so i sourced them the very best things that i could use to then use that that at my disposables at my disposal so that i can create the best possible product within the time frame and within obviously budget restraints because that that does come into it and then the materials used were both a creative decision so it wasn't just banging 24 karat gold on these things 24 karat gold is a link to the depth to the work so we're all lusting after likes and validation and dopamine and all these things that we seek these are shine these the dopamine element is the new shiny magpie the thing that we magpie towards which is traditionally 24 karat gold within society we look at this shiny thing that glistens for centuries and we seek it and we want it and we we want it and need it in our lives and it's kind of a depth to the work that i wanted to put in that it's there if people want it but also it looks cool and and it can be as shallow as that and that you know that you've got something that's luxury you've summarized it really well when you

41:21Kyle Wilkinson:say like you put your foot right obviously you where you want to be you you play to that level you play at higher stakes game rather than let's make it work let's do something about it like whatever whatever goes because ultimately that level of achievement and that level of strive gets rewarded by recognition that it's it's i mean it looked established it looked incredible and i thought i knew what to expect and i was beautifully surprised by getting so much more because i and that sounds weird when we say when we say this as humans like i didn't expect it and that was my hit of dopamine that was my like oh shit and yeah it took me a minute to really get it took me a minute to absorb like how much effort's gone into it and how quickly you did all of it and the level of detail that you put into this was astounding because i've only like discovered some of the details from the photos afterwards because it's a melee right obviously it's a show with lots of people some people travel from scotland and far apart like it was incredible to see how people how you brought people together and not in our community but it was some of the things that are so thought out so well executed and because they are just a tiny detail but a really important detail oh it took me like a second time to just to relive the show and going like oh that's what it all was that was incredible so yeah i mean to have that that detail that you've put into it you've written all the copy like you've created like it was established i mean that sounds silly to say that but like it wasn't a half-assed effort it was like it was it was playing high stakes game and whatever you do with the next it's already standing on really tall legs rather than trying to walk and yeah it's as you can tell i'm so happy i'm so so so happy for you that that's what you did and the effort that you put into it because you yeah you've created your

43:12Daring Creativity Host:own game like that's that's for sure thanks man it does mean a lot it's the the feedback has been humbling i never know what to do with a compliment because you want to you strive to do these things and when they actually pull them off, it's always for other people to say of how good or how well they enjoyed it and how good they thought it was. So I really do appreciate it. But I do think that it's the immense amount of effort that went into it that paid off. And yeah, don't get me wrong, it wasn't a healthy process. It's not a healthy process to put yourself under that much pressure. I thrive on it, but it's one of those that I have propelled things and accelerated things to a certain point.

43:57Daring Creativity Host:And I do think that when you skill stack like this, you can create different things because I've never wanted to niche down in my abilities. And I think that that show would a representation of what you can do when you get used to putting yourself in them uncomfortable scenarios because all of it is not something that I've done before. But you put yourself under that. Again, coming back to that, it must be the very best I can do. And that changes and evolves. But that's grounding it in them principles that I believe in in the work.

44:30Kyle Wilkinson:There's something magical when we can choose our own problems. To be able to choose our own problems makes you already half the level of cortisol and stress. Because on client projects, you have to deal with the constraints given to you, whatever the work needs to be plugged into, whatever we need to do with it. and your skill stack as you mentioned is driven by their demand by their requirements whereas you can choose your own skill stack you can actually cherry pick the cure through curiosity and obsession like okay i want to know this i want to do this i want to choose my own problems because when i'm dealing with my own problems as you say sometimes it's unhealthy but it's your own problems and it makes you not hate what you do because you're like you're going to see it through

45:11Daring Creativity Host:and that and that's exactly why i think pressure is a privilege it is ultimately you putting yourself in that position that you're under pressure but what a situation to be in i've put myself in a position that i can create a show in london under my own steam and do what i want with it that's a privilege that's amazing it's an immense amount of pressure of course it is but what a ride what an experience and irrelevant of the outcome the memories that are built from it and the kind of experience and emotional kind of growth from it is worth every step and every painful kind of part of the process thankfully obviously it's it it were reasonably successful there were no there were no kind of measure of success on this one it was what do people kept asking me oh what what do you expect from this i'm like absolutely nothing nothing i i hope at the very best that people will turn up and they will enjoy it that is the bare minimum i'm not doing this in the as a result of do x and y will come out of it that that weren't there i think we've got to be the kind of path that i'm on at the minute is a long-term play and it's not something that i'm trying to build a world out with house of thrills that's why i've not put it under my own name i'm trying to build a world out that i can play within and that involves many chapters and many things that will come out of it and this is just a i've raced 90 days is to get to the starting point get to the start line and then start running when you create you created what

46:45Kyle Wilkinson:i call the eternal lesson in staying present when you when you don't think about what's beyond the moment what's beyond the opening doors like you just you're working you're focusing getting you and you're getting yourself in a state of flow, stressed state of flow, but we get in there because it's so stressful, is the best way to be because it's the validation. Like when we think of, and again, I don't think there's an episode of this podcast when I don't talk about self-acceptance as a part of creative work, because surprise, surprise, there's a chapter in a new book and talking about self-acceptance.

47:19Kyle Wilkinson:But when we celebrate our uniqueness, when we think about like, how do you stick to your own narrative and when you focus on your narrative, that helps you to focus on what you're doing because at first when we're younger more selfish with your ideas egocentric you're like hey do you like this because you need that immediate validation to say yes carry on whereas when you get much further down the road you're like i don't give a shit what people think because the first person that needs to meet it needs to make sense to is me and then we see what happens next because it's not sociopathic way of working like i don't care what people think because ultimately you you still will have some sort of feedback and you said and you said earlier that you don't know how to take a compliment because you are still processing like how this works and what i'm doing with this and finding your own way through so that delayed gratification it's a skill that comes with time because yeah you can't learn it you can't teach it you can't tell people to be that it's something that you pick up as you go i think it's it's

48:18Daring Creativity Host:really important i think it's the the situation that you've got to hit your own bar set yourself that bar again the principal side of it if you hit your own bar and level of quality then it doesn't really matter what people think if you if you feel that it's the right work for the for you and what you're creating i fully accept that some people come in i have had polarizing reviews of one of the popular pieces that sold quite a few of the giant skull which is called like to death somebody so beautifully described the piece of being of its time and being really has a good balance between satirical and and dark humor and of its time for kind of the social commentary that it is and this they understood they said it better than i i could and i created the piece of work and then the other polarizing view is why the fuck would you want a skull on you want and like it's like that's both are correct both are valid both we create we we create platforms and this is the beauty of it when people people often ask what what do you worry about what people think about your work and to me it's like we create the platform for opinion so we create a piece of work for to allow people to allow others to have an opinion I would so, so much rather be on the pitch playing the game than being the stands throwing the opinions about.

49:43Daring Creativity Host:I want to be on the game. I want to be on the pitch playing the game every single time. And sometimes I will play badly or some people will think I shouldn't be playing. And that's fine because I'm still going to play. And I think that once you hit that bar, that only comes from that kind of self-confidence. I'm not quite sure what it is, but that kind of hitting that bar of I'm going to create this for me. and hit a standard that I expect of myself. And then if that results in a positive or negative outcome, it doesn't really matter. Obviously, you're human. You want it to be positive. But it's better that you still play the game.

50:20Kyle Wilkinson:It's interesting what you just said. You're a human. You want it to be positive. Because positive is the positive fuel. But yeah, it's an interesting one. It stopped me from thinking about 11 Kyles again. Like you want to be on a pitch. 11 Kyles. Back on. Back on. it brings the football pitch analogy back but they yeah it's i said that more in the in the sense just

50:40Daring Creativity Host:to be i suppose real is that you want a response regardless positive or negative but if you're going to flip a coin which side would you rather it land on i'd rather it land on positive yes of course because the reason the reason why is not to to give me the gratification because it's normally especially in the creative world if you get a positive response for something you get further momentum that will change your trajectory into a different project all the things going forward if somebody constantly pans your work then there's less likelihood of something happening going forward or other people wanting to work with that you we can question that because i think that that unfortunately is why we've got a lot of people on social media that's got clout i'm going down a different earlier but the social media kind of game where if you've got the kind of validation from others that you will get the work, but they're not necessarily the right people for the work.

51:35Daring Creativity Host:So I understand that part of the scenario is that people want that kind of social proof that this is good.

51:41Kyle Wilkinson:You made me think of something when you put stuff out, people like it. You're thinking, oh, they like my work. They're associated with this. They might potentially understand the point. And then you meet them in a social setting and they're like, oh, is that you who did that thing? Is that you? You're like, yeah, that's me. You think it doesn't fucking matter, does it? Like people just click, click, click, click, click, click, click, carry on. Whereas it's what you did just show, like literally puts a focus and a spotlight on the fact like how important it is to do this in public. How important is to bring back to the values and to the experiences that we had in the past?

52:18Kyle Wilkinson:Because yeah, it's so easy to get click, click, click, click, click. I mean, this is a terrible thing of saying like likes and clapping hands or whatever.

52:25Daring Creativity Host:So that's what the show were about in terms of not seeking out that validation, seeking validation through the people around you and the real people that's in your life, as opposed to the kind of faux shiny thing. That's why a lot of the pieces in the show had diamond dust on is that they glint in the light and they say that you have that magpie effect where you seek out that shiny, shiny thing. And it's like just that visual reminder, a physical reminder within that you hang in your your house your flat wherever you live that is a reminder that the physical dopamine is so much better than the the kind of online thing that we build a world and as minds to think that that is actually what we want it's very instant but very shallow and the whole point of house thrills going forward is to to try and build these events that are live events that bring people within the same room the thing that i'm most proud about with the show in particular is not doing it to their quality and all the kind of nice things that you've said and doing it in the time constraint it's the feedback on the atmosphere within the room that i'm the most proud of because that was the most important to me is that you can like the work you can hate the work that's indifferent to me you're entitled to that and you are correct whichever way but it's the atmosphere yeah dude i mean what you're describing

53:46Kyle Wilkinson:is exactly what happened and i just i just loved that drive of what you created and it was nice to be part of a tiny smidgen being part of the story with partnership with lax coffee where yeah we provided hospitality we did a collaboration on the kiss of life coffee which as you told me was stolen quite a lot just this is what it's bad to hear but again i think what i've mostly what i've been doing with my side projects and their various sort of capacities is like how do you start a thing that can be a collaboration how can be a conversation how can you do something because ultimately sitting at home and complaining that an adobe cloud has gone from 51 pounds to 52 pounds and then that's the time to cancel your subscription yeah it's not a fucking point of life is it like it's like how do you do things that you can actually inspire people be build a community and actually bring people together it's something that we want upon a time we used to do on a regular basis whereas now we celebrate it as as something which is special so i think what we need to do is just to carry on where we've been with the knowledge we've got now and how we do it so So Kyle, I was looking forward to this one because I knew there's so much more to talk about.

54:51Kyle Wilkinson:This is the thing that I've been cheering you on from the sidelines and making sure that you've got the support from our side just to make sure that to get to the other side and making it happen is going to bring us so much reward and relief and validation in what you created. Because through many conversations that you and I had was like, who else is doing anything like this right now in our industry? and the answer was always no one so to put yourself out there to spend the money to to put in a way neck on the line in a way of like put setting your bank account on fire what you're going to remember for years to come is how you make people feel in that room what you put in that detail what what is now which skulls are now hanging on people's walls because too right there should be skull on everyone's ball so i'm a big fan i salute you for what you're doing and i'm so excited for 2026 and beyond what you can create with this because creating your universe creating your own world is always the most satisfying thing to do so well done thanks mate i really appreciate

55:52Daring Creativity Host:it

56:02Kyle Wilkinson:thank you for listening to this episode of daring creativity podcast i'd love to know your thoughts questions and suggestions so please get in touch via the email in the show notes or social channels this episode was produced and presented by me Radim Malinij the audio production was done by Neil Mackay from 7 million bags podcast thank you and I hope to see you on the next episode if you enjoyed this episode and would like more accessible resources to help you discover your daring creativity you can pick up one of my books on themes of mindful creativity creative business, branding and graphic design.

56:39Kyle Wilkinson:Every physical book purchase comes with a free digital bundle including an e-book and audio book to make the content accessible wherever you are and whatever you do. To get 10 % of your order, visit novemberuniverse.co.uk and use the code PODCAST. Have a look around and start living daringly.