"Not all ideas are good" (James Martin bonus episode)

0:00Radim Malinic:Welcome to this bonus episode of the Daring Forever podcast. This is my weekly chance to zoom in on a few standout moments from this week's interview, find the ones that deserve a second look and dig deeper in what makes them special. This week I spoke to my friend James Martin who is a designer, brand builder and now a double author with his latest book No Bullshit Branding. In our conversation we talked about the difference between evidence and proof, why perception can outweigh talent, the hidden geniuses he keeps meeting who nobody can find and his five idea keys for turning ideas into action.

0:35Radim Malinic:The episode published a few days ago was titled Dead to Slow Down and Think Deeper and it was all about branding and building a reputation that you can actually stand behind. And it was an episode about not just branding, it was about reputation you can stand behind, about moves of a creative that decided to step away from being sort of seen as an influencer and being seen from about something completely different. If you haven't checked out a full episode, let me share with you these four standout moments. So there's a big difference between evidence and proof. So I think that's what people are doing with the perception thing.

1:13But maybe if they're going the wrong way, they're very, very big on, let's say they don't have any evidence. So what they're doing is they're taking this trend or they're taking what this clever person says, or they're taking the work from this person and they're talking about it they're building this perception of somebody who knows what they're talking about but because they got no evidence to back it up when a client does reach out to them and goes oh hey you're really interesting i found you online and you start talking to this person you realize they don't have a fucking clue what they're talking and you ask them can i see some of your work and they go oh it's none of its real client work or none of its this and then suddenly the client goes whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa we started with

1:51Radim Malinic:an interesting moment where James was very much talking about a fact how we can I guess piggyback on other people's ideas we talked about a fact like how much of evidence of work that we do behind the scenes comes to fruition and showing us a proof of what we know and how we can do things and in James's moment here it was quite interesting how he talked about a fact that easy to mimic it's easy to borrow and is also potentially from his own words quite easy to be found out to realize that what is being presented to the outside world from our own channels or messaging is actually understood because i guess from his point of view of being seen as a social media influencer person who used to do these quite interesting videos that once upon a time made me even question what is he doing and why because he's such a lovely human being you realize it's easy to jump on a trend it's easy to jump on something which is just surface level and i think what james was trying to say here is just that you know there is more to evidence and prove that makes us connect with potential clients, makes us connect with people.

3:09So that's the first thing. So back onto the perception versus evidence. This actually came from doing a lot of coaching and I've tried real hard to help a lot of creative people over the last decade really. And I noticed there was this particular segment of people who I call the hidden geniuses like who again like they're not really keen on playing this should we call it the perception game they're not really going on social media they're not really into marketing themselves or not marketing themselves in the way they're told to market themselves i would probably say is a better thing they get a lot of work from referrals a lot of work from word of mouth and but apart from that they're hidden they're incredibly talented they're like some of the best creatives best illustrators best photographers i only know them because i know them but nobody else knows about them and they're these incredibly talented people so sticking with the concept of evidence proof and and now perception james talked to me about the fact that he's

4:22Radim Malinic:through his through his years of coaching he's met some people who potentially struggle to get seen and he calls them hidden geniuses and i call it a pot of gold unless you've got a pot of gold that everyone sort of knows about and wants it's all about marketing it's all about getting yourself seen out there and actually making sure that the proof evidence you know perception is something that we can work on marissa garcia last week talked about it again herself how we need clarity you know how we need that sort of consistency in the messaging because we are running businesses and in some ways it's almost ironic and comical that we've got people who would prefer to go to the edge of the world for their clients to help them build their businesses but when it comes to promoting themselves they stole and they you know the brain's giving them signals like whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa we need some we need some safety here we need to be looked after we can't do this on our own but we can do it for other people and i think in james's case it's like okay how do you get people to be comfortable with their perception how do you get them to be discovered because yeah unless you tell people who you are it might be quite hard to find you because the world is busy and noisy so yeah hidden geniuses and james's work is great when it comes to finding people like them it was a reason to slow me down it was a reason to think deeper about the things that i wanted to talk about research more be more curious i think in the kind of short form video creation world and the social media world and the email marketing world it's all quite quick and attention spans are quite short and i was like well this isn't really like mastery for me is a long never-ending process of something you never get there and the book for me was just another journey towards that trying to bring a new perspective to my world of brand building because again being in that social media world it's got a little bit convoluted so there's a lot of people saying things I don't believe are totally accurate because they're learning from people who also don't know what it is.

6:46So I think for me, it was like this, okay, well, let me just sit down. Let me spend a huge amount of time writing 40 ,000 words, designing a book, creating all the shit. I physically had to slow down to think because I was like, thinking is going to be so important moving forward. Because this is when AI was coming into it and all this conversation of automation, chatting PT and all this stuff. And I was like, golly I don't want to fall into that trap of like outsourcing my brain I want to use my brain so essentially I wrote a book and that is where we are today it was purely a selfish thing to stop me from getting distracted by a world that I didn't want to be in

7:28Radim Malinic:I mean where do we start on books books can be the most rewarding thing to make some of the hardest things to make yeah it's a very much a carnival ride that throws you around from start to finish and then when you launch the book it's even worse because just like with everything else just like in the previous point it's evidence-proof perception marketing you know all sorts of things reviews and i haven't got to know james for the last few years and he's a beautiful human being who is very open about his past struggles. And him to say that, you know what, I have got a very addictive brain and I want to be selfish about how I slow down, remove myself from the noise, is honorable.

8:17Because I think you can see people in a real life

8:22Radim Malinic:who are open with their shortcomings, with their addictions. And to say to someone out loud who you are what you do and what you struggle with that's our identity that's who we are and personally i found that when i started being very open about my anxieties and just to say hey look this is how i'm feeling as opposed to trying to hide things it's liberating because there's a sentence that says if you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything so if you tell everyone how you feel you don't have to feel guilty about feeling different because you sometimes don't even know what other people might feel like.

9:01Radim Malinic:So going back to James's point, the element of wanting to steer the ship in a direction where you want to travel is the only way to build perception, evidence and proof. It's the only way of getting to be where you want to be and actually find your space to hear yourself thinking, to hear yourself creating stuff. Because I found there's no such thing as a magic space you can walk into magic vacuum going hey I want to write a book can you please give me six months worth of money silence and space to make this happen no it doesn't work that way so well done to James getting this book done and finished and getting it out there because he's done incredible work on that VB minimum viable brand which is basically a total rip it's not a rip really but it's like the MVP which is from Eric Reese's lean startup but minimum viable products is basically like you build a really scrappy version of a product you put it out into the world to real humans they tell you what they like and what they don't like and then you go back and you make it better and you just go through this process and that's how I've done the books that's how I've done my frameworks that's how I've done my courses in the past build small test it with a few come back make it better put it out into the world so basically the five idea keys is a part of that mvb process so once you've got an idea if that okay great now what do i do with it well you take it through the five idea keys but the five idea keys are sequential you can't go to the blue key without knowing the answer to the first key do you know what i mean so you have to go through all these things but the beautiful thing about this rather is the fact that not all ideas are good and so when you take them through these keys if you can't answer a question in there i've got like little exercises in each key which is super my mum can even do them in james's book no bullshit branding that we're celebrating in this week's episode has so many incredible ideas and one of them was the five idea keys so the sequence of actions that get james basically get ideas to validate them and it was interesting and i guess it's again very liberating for us to be honest to say look just because of an idea doesn't mean it's gonna work i mean the best bit about an idea is to actually have an idea and create another idea from it it reminds me of an episode with Pablo Juncanela from Mucho Studio in Barcelona who literally just said like look you've got idea today you have another idea tomorrow and one idea basically takes you somewhere else it is almost like a sequence here we go it's like a sequence of actions that take you somewhere and for anyone who might be you know in their early 20s and feeling like they really want to defend their idea to the hills and say look what i've got is great i think the most liberating thing i've ever found is to actually open yourself to the fact that are you potentially wrong all the time because if you feel you might be wrong not that you are doubting that your idea might be good but being open to be wrong is one of the most fantastic things because But you can see something online and go like, what is this?

12:16Radim Malinic:And then you might have 5 ,000 likes from people who absolutely love it. And you realize that half of the world is not for you. In fact, 90 % of the world is not for you. 90 % of the world isn't here for your ideas. Your ideas are for the right audience, for the right people. And yeah, I just love that James has got the sequence in his book and various throughout the book of how he sees the world of branding through the current lens. that will definitely help and unlock a lot of potential in lots of people. There was a question when I published a book titled Book of Branding in 2019, and I looked at it in a way that the world doesn't need anything new whatsoever.

12:56Radim Malinic:We technically have enough of everything. But it's the personal way of the contemporary way of seeing how we progress, how we do things differently, that I found my Book of Branding so successful when it launched, because it was a new way of seeing things. And in James's case, I think he's timed the book to a perfection because the way he sees the world, the way the world sees him, and how we can reframe the process of how we help people in lower stakes is immeasurable because we need a book like his to prove that the world is moving, the world is changing, and the entry barrier to creating this work perfectly is now so low that you can do incredible work with just not just yourself but with a small team.

13:42Radim Malinic:Thank you for joining me on this bonus episode with James Martin. Again, the episode published a few days ago was titled Dare to Slow Down and Think Deeper. I think it's an incredible way of sort of summarizing where James has got himself into the process of being a creative, being, you know, the brand builder, community builder, the face of Canva and Affinity because it was very deep and mature what he does and he's the right person to do it. Thank you for being here and I'll see you next week 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.

14:30Radim Malinic:Every physical book purchase comes with a free digital bundle including an e-book and audio book to make the content accessible whatever 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.