Dare to transform fear into permission - Katie Johnson & Ilana Griffo (Goodtype)

20:10Katie Johnson:Excellent. so working together remotely having a business together remotely how does that work

20:18Ilana Griffo:it's a great question i think it works because we've worked really hard at it but i think also we got really lucky i don't know like what else to say besides luck but i think the stars aligned somehow for us and we are really compatible and we really seem to bring out the best in each other But that has also come with like tough conversations and our hearts are in the same place. So we really want the best for each other. And I think actually not being in the same city probably has been to our benefit because we built a relationship based on business first and a common goal. And from there realized because we were business first and common goal, it was like we were working on a collaborative project.

21:04Ilana Griffo:And then when it ended, we were like, that was that went pretty, pretty well. Don't you think? Maybe we should do it again. And so I think a couple of things that we've taken away are the first thing is when you're working with a partner, making sure that you are equally invested. And I don't mean just financially because that's a big piece, but also emotionally. And thankfully, Katie and I, I mean, I have two kids. Katie has a dog and two cats and a wonderful husband. And we've had to say these are my personal. This is what's really important to me personally. And we have to respect that about the other person, even though we have very different lives.

21:37Ilana Griffo:And so that's first and foremost is always like making sure humanity is cared for and our self-love is first. But I think the biggest thing is like that common, the other big thing is that common goal. We have the same vision and we share that with Bodhi as well. And just keeping that in check. And then the luck, I think, was like the way we work together. We're very yin and yang. It's been kind of crazy to watch it unfold. We had to expand a little on the yin and yang. I think I used to think compatibility in a partnership would look like sameness and agreeing all the time. And what I've discovered in trials and errors with other partnerships versus this one is that this one actually works better because we're such a yin and yang with our strengths and weaknesses.

22:23Ilana Griffo:we really fill in the gaps that the other one has and hold up the other person's strengths and allow them to step into those and it's taken time to find out where those things were and to really get to know each other and goes through a lot of projects and a lot of failures too to do that properly to be able to see where those areas are where we can lift each other up and help each other out and fill each other in.

22:52Katie Johnson:It's such a good thing to hear that is the yin and yang and more because in our naive early stages of our lives, we think I need someone who's like me for relationship, for being in bands or doing potentially started businesses. And then you realize you don't want to be looking in the mirror or going all the time. So let's say some designers be like, oh, this is my work. I need to clone myself so I can do more of the same thing faster. but then you realize actually you know what being pushed and being challenged and being shown that there's another option once you get past the initial mindset it's so liberating because in your case did you have to initially decide your strengths and weaknesses and did you decide who you was going to do what or did you delegate your tasks or how was it in your what i've written down

23:38Ilana Griffo:a long distance relationship yeah that's really what it is i think they unfolded naturally and just said them to each other. So Katie would say, hey, you were really good at this. And I would say, I really hate doing this. And she'd be like, oh, I don't mind doing that. And just that willingness to be honest with each other about things. But there are things that I now know about myself that I am good at that I wouldn't have known if Katie hadn't pointed them out. And that also gives me the confidence to do them. Yeah, same. I feel like I know myself so much more now after this working relationship than any other period of my life has exposed that to me.

24:17Ilana Griffo:So it's been really, really helpful. You totally now snatched my question because you guys bonded over licensing.

24:26Katie Johnson:Is that right? That's the juicy topic. That's how long distance relationships are formed, licensing. So who started it? Who was first?

24:37Ilana Griffo:Well, Katie posted on her stories that she was going to talk about she was going to do a class on art licensing and I wrote her and said that's so cool it's been on my list I have some notes written down about what I'm going to talk about I can't wait to learn from you see how our experiences are different and Katie instead of writing back screw you that's my idea she wrote back and said want to do it together well I should be honest and say that I had that thought the thought went through my head when I got the DM I was like, darn it. I thought I had carved out this niche. Nobody was talking about lettering for art licensing.

25:15Ilana Griffo:And I thought I'd found this special thing. And somebody else is in my DMs telling me she has the same idea. Well, I had the opportunity to just be like, forget it and kind of throw in the towel to be mad at her to look at it as a competitive thing. And I let all those feelings pass through because I'm human. And then I was able to once I was less emotional, I'll pull back and just be like, hey, aren't you always talking about community over competition? And aren't you about a rising boat or a rising tide lifts all sails, that kind of thing? And so this is probably not the behavior that you want to act out.

25:54Ilana Griffo:You probably want to do something more aligned with what you say your values are. So that snapped me out of it. And then I rethought it and realized we could make something better. And from two different perspectives of two artists who'd had this foray into licensing and that would and we'd have twice the reach. And this could be an actual better situation than the one that I was in. And it turned out it literally changed my whole life. So, yeah, I think I'm really glad that I took some time and rethought it.

26:28Katie Johnson:That's excellent. so having a licensing experience you don't come to it as a sort of fresh topic because you kind of you have to am i right to say live it before you can teach it right you like you learn do and share so what was your prior experience with licensing and why did you i guess you must have realized it's quite a topic that could be valuable to many so what was your experience with licensing and how did you get to that point that you thought people need to know about it well i think both

26:59Ilana Griffo:of us, we both fell into licensing by like a client basically saying, great, we want to license this. And then we said, absolutely. And then we Googled it and we realized there was very little information. So it was really based on our own experience when we were trying to find the information and it became a huge part of our income stream. And we realized we were doing so much work to try and figure it out that there were probably plenty of other artists just like us who were also trying to figure this out. And if they weren't trying to figure it out, they probably I didn't even know it existed.

27:29Ilana Griffo:And it had been really lucrative for us. And it just seemed so silly that no one else was talking about it or that we couldn't find people specifically in the lettering world that were talking about it. And I think we have done that. I think we've opened the door for other artists. I mean, we see so many more artists licensing their work now, or at least understanding what a license is. And I think it's definitely much more spoken about. it's still a weird kind of closed door industry, but I do think it's definitely more prevalent. And yeah, it was really impactful to us in our careers and opened a lot of doors for us.

28:05Ilana Griffo:So it's only fair to spread that wealth with other people.

28:10Katie Johnson:Absolutely. And you're right about the information being sparse, especially some years ago, because I learned about usage when I had my stint as an illustrator in advertising. and then you get to hear oh you're gonna pay you're gonna get paid usage fee and i'm like what no one ever told you that am i and then you realize oh this campaign's been renewed like yeah i need to pay for this thank you it's just this is fun i remember watching this campaign it was for a lotto here in the uk and i had a big poster company like a big key visual which was going for year second year and i'm like that's a lot of money in the usage fees and i'm literally looking at my watch like in two days time it's either gonna come down or i'm gonna get paid again it's come and it came down but i remember like how i was i knew to the date that if it was being renewed it would be renewed by that day but this is great because you guys still talk about licensing and it's still a call on one of your core messages because we always get new people to come into the game that they need to know this so it's always going to be valid useful to many when did you realize that other avenues of education and creativity and business should be taught to explain to people.

29:18Ilana Griffo:I think about this same time or whenever we were going out to start our own art businesses in general and support ourselves. Alana did have entrepreneurs in her family, but I did not. And I have, my dad is my biggest supporter, but he's also like very risk averse and he's very much about calculated risks like he wants me to find the things that I love but be really reasonable while I'm trying to achieve them it's like a parental keeping me safe kind of thing so my kind of goal I guess going out on my own before I left my original nine-to-five job I made like a 40-page business plan and because I wanted to be able to pass it around at our weekly dinner and see my dad be like, okay, she can do it.

30:15Ilana Griffo:She's got this because it was really a reflection of my own fears. But yeah, around that whole time, just delving into entrepreneurship, not having known anything about it. And I have this art education, but I don't have a business education. I felt very intimidated by that. And the way that business is usually taught is usually not typically geared towards artists or creatives. So I was finding a lot of it very cold and not aligning with like how much of art is about following your authentic self. And a lot of the business advice I was seeing was like cut and dry, follow the money kind of thing.

30:53Ilana Griffo:And that just there was a layer missing. So, yeah, I felt that what's it called? A disparity. That's the word I'm looking for and knew that I needed to fill it in. Yeah, I think for me, I had this idea. It's actually an idea I pitched to a project. Katie and I like applied for the same residency before we met each other. And my idea was to create a workbook for because I had that was raised in a house that entrepreneurship never felt like this thing that was on a pedestal was just like another option. It always felt like something that was in my reach because I grew up in a house with entrepreneurs.

31:32Ilana Griffo:It was never like on this pedestal. It was just one of the options. And so I had this idea to write a workbook and it would be about how to make business more accessible for creatives. Because when I went freelance, I felt like really equipped to go freelance. Like I felt like I knew what I was doing. I definitely didn't have a 40 page business plan like Katie, but I felt like I had the tools I needed and that I would figure it out. And I did have a business plan. It was just like five pages and jumbled. But so I had pitched that for a residency. And then when I didn't get the residency, I pitched it to publishers and I got a book deal.

32:10Ilana Griffo:And it went on to be right when I met Katie, I think it was already published, but it was like starting to pick up traction, right? Was it published? Yeah. You were just like releasing the photos, I feel like. And I I remember seeing them for the first time. Yeah. So it ended up doing really well. It was sold in obviously where books are sold, but it was sold in anthropology stores, which was like felt like such a big win because it was such a demographic I wanted to tap into. It was like an Amazon bestseller featured in a Forbes article. And like that was like deep in my core, something that I wanted to do.

32:43Ilana Griffo:And Katie just shared that exact same, all the thoughts from it. And when we did the course, the whole same message was like at the core of it was helping other people feel more secure in taking creativity in by means of business and merging those two worlds. And so I think really in everything we've done, that's been like our deep down in our core, what we want to help people with, whether it's for licensing or bettering their lettering skills or bringing them together and connecting them with people who they can collaborate with or like suggesting people for jobs or referring people. It's like always been about helping other people to pursue something that for Katie didn't feel felt maybe inevitable, but like less risk averse.

33:26Ilana Griffo:But for me, like I think just felt something that I could access, something that was available to me. And it doesn't seem like it was available to everyone else.

33:35Katie Johnson:Katie, you said your dad was risk adverse, but did you see him that way?

33:41Ilana Griffo:well he makes I kind of amended what I said because he makes calculated risks I think he just needs to have the logic and the plan to back things up but I mean he did some really amazing things in his career that were not easy steps to make and he did he's done some very courageous things so yeah I don't mean to sound like he's ever holding me back it's just that he instilled in me the importance of having strategy behind the things that I do. Yeah. And sometimes my anxiety takes it a little further than perhaps is actually healthy. But I've been really working on toning that back lately. But Katie, strategy is like one of the things that you're so good at.

34:28Ilana Griffo:Like we were talking about our roles earlier and like my role is very rarely strategy. My role is get out there and get it started. And Katie will be like, just like a friendly reminder, where are we going? She has to pull up that, all that she learned in her topography class, like the map, the compass is pointing the opposite direction right now. But I struggle with getting it started because I'm too busy writing my 40 page business plan. So that's how we balance each other out.

34:57Katie Johnson:That's how you roll. So you are juggling quite a few different things because obviously you inspire people for your instagram you got your community you do your education stuff and you got your studio you talk about quite a lot about licensing and i want to know how much of focus and time and split sort of percentages you go actually for commission work and how much do you actually pre-make work for licensing if that's still the

35:24Ilana Griffo:case yeah it's a good question i think it comes down to the season so like you said we're juggling a lot of things. I think we all are as creatives. I think we're always jumping around and that's probably what makes us candidates for self-employment. But in this current season, right now we're working on our book that comes out in the spring. We're working on our conference, which is our virtual conference. And we're not making as much art as we did two months ago, where we were pretty much solely focused on adding pieces to our portfolio. So it really comes in waves. And I think we've got a pretty good mix now of 20 % of this, 20 % of that, but it just comes in every week looks a little bit different.

36:08Ilana Griffo:And I think that keeps things chugging along. Yeah. I think the biggest thing to explain here too, is that working with growing the education side of our business and all of those offerings, we had less and less time to do our own art and I got to a place of a bit of burnout from all of that just not attending to some of my own creative needs as much and that came at the end-ish of last year and so we we only opened quote-unquote our good type studio at the very beginning of this year and have started to try and refocus so that we can intentionally make space and time to make the art this comes though knowing that some of these choices aren't based in that kind of logic I was talking about earlier where businesses are usually taught to follow the money some of these choices that we want to make that's going more towards the art sometimes that's at the expense of other doing other things with our time taking on sponsorships taking on creating more courses things like that could technically create a larger financial impact.

37:22Ilana Griffo:So yeah, that's something that we're figuring out how our business looks with this new model, but with our mental health and our happiness at the center. I think that's the older I get, the less I'm willing to sprint towards a hill that I know when I get to the top of. I'm just going to look around and be like, well, now what?

37:44Katie Johnson:what you said quite nicely it was like not necessarily following the money is a more liberating choice it's not what it's not what many people want to hear but when you don't follow the money you find yourself being a lot less stressed because you are actually focusing on what really is what inside you how you want to express your soul what you want to do your creativity what's how much of dopamine you want to get back and how much of sort of return on that sort of emotional investment you're going to get. I want to know in the world that still prefers you to be singular and position yourself as a typographer or type designer or illustrator, you've got five different things that you do.

38:23Katie Johnson:How do people find you that you're available for type? Do you go out to them? Did you get work for licensing contacts? Like how do you do this? Because you can make it rewarding for yourself, but too busy for the others to understand it.

38:35Ilana Griffo:Yeah. I think something else to say is just that we it's a huge privilege to be able to say we're not going to just follow the money we're going to follow our heart and we've worked really hard not to say that you work hard it'll happen but we have worked hard and really focused on setting up our education to be more passive and i think that there's like a real big misconception with passive income because it's like we're never not working on it, but we're just not building a course. We're marketing our course. And that's just like a different way to that's a different type of work. But we do a lot of outreach.

39:13Ilana Griffo:And because there's two of us, we can focus on different things. So if we have a client deadline, one of us might work on that while the other one is working on marketing. And one of us might work on outreach while the other one works on something else. And so that's worked in our favor. But we also have had, I think, what, 20 years of freelancing between the two of us before we started working together. So we have a lot of contacts and past clients that we can tap into as well. And I think there's like something about freelancers where when you're like destined to work for yourself, I think you're just like, you're going to figure it out.

39:44Ilana Griffo:I don't know if it's that we're like willing to do things to make it work or we're going to make it happen. And so I think a lot of it is like throwing spaghetti at the wall. And then when something sticks, we go in that direction for a little bit. I don't know, Katie, did I forget anything? I think Alana is really great at the relationship piece, which is arguably the most important piece of finding work. Everything is based on relationships. And oh, I know this cousin of this lady that I met at the grocery store and literally just did that. Juana is the actual queen of that. And you do that just by being a good, fun person, like a good, kind-hearted person who listens to other people and engages.

40:26Ilana Griffo:And I think that those are skills that aren't emphasized very much in typical graphic design education, but they have served us the best out of any skills. Like it's more important to have that than to have the best design skills in the world. If I had to pick between which one of those I wanted to crank to a hundred, I would crank the relationship skills for sure.

40:51Katie Johnson:The listening itself is a superpower, absolute superpower. What you describe, the combined 20 years of experience and relationships, this is your momentum. This is your plane taking off, going through the bumpy bit at the cruising altitude, going, we've worked on this. We actually got somewhere where we can enjoy potentially doing other things and add interesting things to the mix. And it's some of those relationships were created in the slightly noisier times where you've got time to. Yeah, OK, Instagram has been around for 10 years. We've been doing sort of things on the side and promoting ourselves.

41:24Katie Johnson:But it feels like the relationship were slightly more, I want to use the word easier, but they were like more human, more or less synthetic.

41:33Ilana Griffo:Yeah, Instagram is so surface level. I feel like you think you know someone. And I'm just realizing that there's probably a perception that Katie and I are like new at this. And because we're new to good type. I mean, good type was around well before us. And we're not coming to it and just like overnight a success or anything like that. But we're not new at this. We've been in this field for a long time. And yeah, I think there's misconceptions when you judge someone by their internet presence for sure. But we've been at this for a while. But I think like Katie said, like we're not afraid to go out there and ask for something.

42:08Ilana Griffo:But I think because we're also leading with heart and community and enjoying what we do, we're not trying to be the biggest agency. We're not trying to make a billion dollars overnight. We're not trying to get the biggest Instagram following. I just want to feel creatively fulfilled and I want to feed my family. Like we didn't go into a field where we're like, wow, we're going to be loaded. it like we're gonna make the most money of anyone like we just want to make a great a good living doing something that we love and it's not a trade-off one versus the other yeah we would probably offer different services if that's what we were looking for but what you're approaching

42:49Katie Johnson:it with is questions it's constant questions like how could this work better how can we better someone else's careers how can we better the industry how can we do this because i might have repeated this recently on my podcast maybe more than once but the quote is the sale happens when you're listening like when you listen to someone when they tell you everything about this when you ask them more and more questions they will more or less bring themselves to asking for a solution rather than going hey i'm a graphic designer what can i do for you to be like what do you actually do but when you listen to someone all the time and sometimes you can apply this method which is called questions only so you don't say anything about yourself and you just ask questions and ask questions i do it a lot with uber drivers and my kids hate it dad you're embarrassing us why does why does daddy talk to everyone all the time but i love the fact that you get so much more trust and value from people just because you care about who they are what they want and i think that's a kind of superpower because in in creativity itself when you think about creative blogs there was just unguarded thoughts that conflicted unguarded thoughts whereas if you had the question just like you're gonna walk out of the front door you're gonna if i'm gonna do one step i'm gonna be okay if i do another one i'm gonna be okay and you kind of you plan it you think about it like how to do this and questioning the process is such a beautiful thing because it removes you from the core of the problem and puts you on the outside of it so with your creative education and with your processes how much of this sort of approach to curiosity do you sometimes feel like you need to almost instill into your students or into your community group well this

44:32Ilana Griffo:year we've dubbed the year of experiments for ourselves and that's exactly the mindset that we're kind of trying to take on and then share with other people so we've been trying different experiments where we are not so invested in the outcome and so tied into it and emotionally invested. It's more about approaching it from like a scientific way. So one of the things that we're facing is getting really fed up with social media and everybody's been feeling so unseen and buried and just grossed out by the vibes I think that have come about with social media. So like we just did a 30 day experiment where we tried LinkedIn and we just posted on there for 30 days and we were looking at the analytics and like what worked and what didn't.

45:27Ilana Griffo:And one of my posts went semi viral. And how did that happen? And what kind of inquiries did we get out of it? And then we've been sharing it in like a lab report kind of style. We just our podcast episode about that one just came out and we literally put release like a little lab report on Instagram in a carousel that had like little graphs and stuff just to kind of point to, hey, this isn't about showing you the next hot thing or like giving you five steps to 100K. It's about approaching things with curiosity and seeing what happens and reporting back. And so I think that is something that we're actively trying to get in our own heads and then instill in students and viewers as well, because I think it's just a really like much healthier way to go through life as an observer, as I mean, you're going to have emotions and you're going to have things cycle through your head.

46:24Ilana Griffo:Like my initial responses to Alana's DM, where I was insecure and upset. And then I took time and viewed the facts and saw that if I actually put this together with the things that I have at my disposal, I can actually make this a better scenario for both of us.

46:43Katie Johnson:So with your experiments, I get to see this as alignment with daring creativity because you're doing things you might potentially wouldn't have regretted not doing. What else have you tried or what else is on your radar of things that you might do that you wish to start?

46:58Ilana Griffo:Well, I think starting our studio is definitely one of them. Writing a book we are currently in the experiment of And I'm trying to, yeah, I have the emotional ups and downs of the feelings during it. But I am trying to also look at the, just the experience because I think we're going to try and like do it again. We have lots of book ideas. So now that we're paying attention to the process so that we can refine and make it better for ourselves in the future. What are some experiments that you want to do? We have specific clients that we want to do outreach to and more outreach experiments in general.

47:36Ilana Griffo:but what are some others Alana yeah I mean I have been doing my own experiment on TikTok which is like iffy to do in the U.S. because we don't really know we just don't really know so I've been doing that and just seeing like how do I feel because I have a very different emotional tie to TikTok and I find that I really enjoy creating things for that platform as opposed to Instagram and we've also talked about doing it on Pinterest as well because Katie's had a lot of people reach out to her from Pinterest. So we're like, oh, you know, what way of connecting with clients and building relationships feels the best for us?

48:11Ilana Griffo:I think it's like kind of our ongoing experiment. We had some, I have a bunch of small ones that were on my initial list that it's just felt like such a hectic year, but I just need to make some time to do these things. What if I did Pomodoro sprints for a whole week and just did nothing but that? Would I hate my life or would I be more productive? And it might very well be I might hate my life. Well, lesson learned. And little things like that. What if I just set aside a week to just make art for no one but myself? Those types of smaller questions that can lead to a bit more playful kind of findings.

48:50Ilana Griffo:I think I want to sprinkle more throughout our workflow. We've also decided we want to see what working with other people. It's like not, this is just like a two person. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. I want to make it clear it's not, but together we'd like to, we have this really great photography duo that we knew, that we know. And we were like, what would it be like if we did a passion project with them with no client, with no, just for fun, what would that look like? How fun would that be? And I think, yeah, we've just got some things that we want to try. I mean, like personally too, Like I was like, what if I just pick up crocheting again?

49:29Ilana Griffo:What would I make? And I set a reading goal for myself for the year. I mean, I love to read, so it's not so hard, but just like little things like that where we just are leading with more curiosity and questions than we are. Like my goal for the year is to accomplish this. And if I don't accomplish it, I'm a failure. But I think just that mindset has helped us a lot to try things and be okay with whatever findings we have and making sure we look at that as data instead of defining success.

49:56Katie Johnson:yes well katie i can tell you that i've just been rereading 4 000 weeks by oliver berkman and he was a productivity geek and he said basically doing the pomodoro technique is pretty much a version of insanity so i think see if we can if we can replicate it but i could see

50:12Ilana Griffo:that i've i'm such a person who doesn't seem like i would fit into pomodoros at all and i've only tried it one time and i actually got a lot done but i think if i did it for a whole week i would rip maybe all of my hair out but we could try a couple days to see how she goes it's the continuous

50:31Katie Johnson:repetition of it i think it's just like doing it once for 25 minutes over a few times there's not a problem but actually trying to really stick to it well that's the experiment at what point do i

50:40Ilana Griffo:start to pull the hairs out it's interesting too because like i've always thought it was interesting and it really depends on like your wiring if you suffer from getting too tight in tunnel vision and then you forget about the other things that need to happen then maybe it could be worth trying but also some things do require just like a lot of your attention and switch even harder the apt to just stare at my computer and the same thing for the entire day and forget to eat and sleep and pee yeah i mean that can be okay yeah maybe it's maybe it's a longer pomodoro yeah we'll report back once i've experimented with it well i'm looking forward to reading a

51:25Katie Johnson:report on the pomodoro on your website but before i let you go tell me more about the conference and

51:30Ilana Griffo:why did you do it yeah katie you take this one because i think it was your idea from the get-go yeah i think i was reading um the how i built this book i think that yeah i think that's what was happening and they were just talking about the importance of bringing your community together in one space and how that can really impact your the future of your community and your brand and everything and it's like absolutely this feels like such a natural fit to kind of bring everybody together and we picked virtually at first because post-covid world first of all and like keeping expenses down and it's just kind of worked like we did look into well I guess I should backtrack and say it's a conference.

52:13Ilana Griffo:It's currently a virtual conference that's usually about three days and it just brings the global type community, design nerds, artists, anyone interested in art entrepreneurship of any kind can really benefit from coming to this summit. And we just gather a lot of amazing speakers and teachers and people in the community who are out doing the things that we really admire and who are teaching really important concepts. And we've really had a vast kind of variety of speakers come in and teach from their various standpoints. We really want it to be something from a lot of different perspectives.

52:57Ilana Griffo:So there's something that will resonate with everyone. And so we're not just hearing the same thing over and over. And so it's not just also basically portfolio pitches over and over because conferences can be that sometimes. And that's not what this is. And there's a lot of we really put stock in having actionable things that people know what to do next. I learned this information. So what am I going to do with it? Because I think the kind of general feeling that we have after conferences is overload, overly inspired, and then we don't do anything with it because there were too many routes that our brain was going in.

53:37Ilana Griffo:So I think really honing in on those takeaways and the focusing on, okay, now let's do something about it. Yeah. Yeah. So, and then as far as virtual goes, I think for the foreseeable future, we're probably going to keep it virtual because like you said, how much goes into it? Oh my gosh, just running a virtual conference is like a full-time job. And we work on it from the second it ends pretty much into the next year. So, yeah, it's a lot of work. And then bringing it in person, we've looked into it, but just financially, it doesn't really make a lot of sense for us right now. We so appreciate the people who do invest in the in-person conferences because it's awesome.

54:21Ilana Griffo:But yeah, doesn't work with our current business model, maybe a smaller version someday. Well, and I think there's so many conferences that we've gone to with the people who we'd want to join, and there are already great conferences out there. And so I think by doing it virtually, we can fill a gap for the people who can't afford to travel to one and bring people together that definitely wouldn't be meeting at these in-person events. And so I think we can bring something to the table in that sense as well, where we're like creating a virtual room where everyone can get together, even though we'd all love to be together in person.

54:54Katie Johnson:i mean the lineup looks fantastic and yeah it's i always say the unsung heroes of our industry are the people who bring us together because the community really is where people feel safe when they feel heard when they feel seen when you can trust when you can ask questions and i think this is something that yeah when i see those people who put money and their neck on the line and build something in person and it's 50 50 if it's going to even break even realize those are the real heroes So I actually push that together because it's a lot of work, as you say, virtually, let alone doing it in person and deal with all sorts of bills and politics and people.

55:30Ilana Griffo:Yeah, the more conferences we go to, the more we just appreciate the heck out of it. Because we see now that we have this insight, even just from a virtual standpoint, we laser focus into every detail. And, oh, I bet that took forever to figure out. Or, oh, that's a really nice detail that probably costs a lot of money and they're getting no return on that. So then I just appreciate it so much more. The logistics even. I think we could pull it off, but it doesn't sound that appealing. There's so much work. And like Katie said, we have so much respect for our pals who have done it in Britain because it's totally a different beast for sure.

56:06Katie Johnson:Thanks for coming to talk to me today because from my point of view, how I see your world, it makes perfect sense because I'm a big believer in trying lots of different things, daring creatively. and exploring and finding ways that potentially can change someone's view on creativity on entrepreneurship on business like what is possible because the world is no longer linear and potentially never was and it was only our perceptions how we decide to see the world and potentially zoom in on just the one thing and find absolute magic in it but i believe what could then potentially could seem like sort of multifaceted complicated world of doing too many things at the same time and having that sort of experience of being thrown around by all of the experiences going is this secure is this right am i doing this should i do this do that ultimately it's the process of discovery and looking for all of these things and finding your way because the magic is usually hiding behind the corner and when you learn to see around those corners it's where the good stuff is so thank you so much for what you're doing what you're doing for the community being dedicated to it and hearing about the fact that it's not an easy ride but it benefits a lot of people so thank you so much for what you're doing and thanks for

57:16Ilana Griffo:coming to talk to me today thank you well thank you and back at you thanks for your podcast and all you do thank you

57:29thank you for listening to this episode of daring creativity podcast i'd love to know your thoughts

57:40Katie Johnson: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 Malinage 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

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