"Self-doubt is the blade in my pencil sharpener" (Benji Wiedemann bonus episode)

0:00Radim Malinic:Hey, welcome to this bonus episode of the Daring Forever podcast. This is my weekly opportunity to zoom in on a few stand-down moments from this week's interview, to find those moments that deserve a second look and dig deeper in what makes them special. And this week I spoke to Benji Wiedemann, who is a co-founder and executive creative director of Wiedemann Lamb, a consultancy that he's built with his partner Alex Lamb. In our conversation we traced a line from a boy who couldn't read in a German classroom to a designer who's now shaping city-scale culture from Riyadh to Mediterranean and across the world.

0:33Radim Malinic:This episode, published a few days ago, was titled Dare to Design Across Generations and it was one of those free-flowing conversations where we talked about family history, self-doubt as a sharpening tool and why the only strategy an audience ever sees is the one they experience. If you haven't checked out the full episode I would fully encourage you to do so because Benji and Alex have run an incredible studio that does really incredible work and I'll try to entice you with these four standout moments and so he just packed his bag ran off and he said to me once and to my mum if you can't fit it into your pocket you can't have it because at any given time you have to uproot and get going and what was really fascinating that they built their life here in London and he had a rag business and did blouses and they never owned anything, no buildings, nothing because of this fundamental thing.

1:29And as I'm growing up and I think about it, the thing that fascinated me the most is if you have nothing, what is it you actually have? So you're separating the physical embodiment of your life, which we project ourselves into the deductive sense of embodiment. These are the values. These are the actions. This is how I conduct my life. And all of a sudden, this whole path of separating out the physical embodiment, but what is it you are then, has completely fascinated me and totally driven the business into working solely in culture, where our clients, don't tend to have monetary transactions.

2:19It is the exchange of value and belief systems, and it is just a completely different game.

2:26Radim Malinic:There's an incredible line that's from Benji's grandfather, a German Jew who fled the Nazis with nothing and rebuild a life in London before ever owning property, because he never trusted that he would get to keep it. It's kind of a brutal piece of family history, but what Benji does with it is the real story. He just didn't inherit the memory. He turned that piece into a working philosophy for entire business. Weirdman Lab's clients, as he puts it, don't deal in monetary transaction as an exchange of value and belief systems. And that's their branding exercise. The grandson translating inherited trauma into a way of measuring what actually matters.

3:09Radim Malinic:And it's a philosophy that you can't just see on a whiteboard. They come from lived history carried forward and repurposed until they become something useful for other people too. And I think self-doubt and one thing, if there's one thing that I've ever said to myself that I think is interesting and maybe unique is that I see self-doubt and fear as the blade in my pencil sharpener. And I was walking to work and I was like, oh, that's how it fits together. because this fear and this self-doubt constantly helps you sharpen your point to being clearer where you stand and not to go, oh, this is another one of these projects.

3:49And that every project that comes in gets treated with absolute utmost respect and not just, yeah, we'll kill it and build it. What's the saying that I heard recently? Cashing checks, snapping necks, that kind of stuff. Just like processing it. But actually, we are as a team for the work that we do quite small. so you have to make sure the work that you do is as good as it can be and we all benefit from it

4:16Radim Malinic:this moment on a second listen blew my mind because it's so eloquently and well put most people treat self-doubt as something to manage to hide let's be honest how many of us treat self-doubt as something to hide manage or push through and to be get liberated and saying yes you know well i've got a doubt i've got fear because i just love when benji said that the self-doubt and fear are the blade in the pencil sharpener he named it as one of the third of a creative trinity alongside curiosity and empathy reframing the whole sort of trifecta entirely in this instance when you think about it the fear isn't the enemy of a sharp point of view is the mechanism that creates fear.

5:02Radim Malinic:Without it, we'd be thinking that they would just go, well, we'll kill it and bill it, as Benji puts it, like it would be just another job. But with every project that gets handled, it's a genuine respect. Because this creative culture insists confidence as a prerequisite for good work. But when you think about it, reality is often the opposite instinct. A bit of doubt held onto is rather than eliminated, keeps the work honest. and it's this moment where it genuinely reframes doubt for anyone who's been ashamed of how much they second-guessed themselves self-doubt and fear are the best blade in everyone's pencil sharpener and i think one of the key differences and i'm actually quite sad to say that working in the industry is to go in not with the idea of what we're going to push onto the project but what we can extract and grow out of it so from its cultural equity what can we learn and build from so often we talk about place shaping that you take the cultural mass and you shape that into something that is understood locally regionally and internationally while they're all connecting and we i think one of the greatest quotes that we got as a from a client is you don't only listen you show us how we've been heard what we mean by we don't go in and do this immersion and listening as a box ticking exercise benji told me that 70 of his agency work is listening and that is the line that is not just a nice sentiment but it's the actual carrier of this mechanism anyone can nod for a stakeholder interview yeah let's be honest that brings up some memories but what separates real listening from box-dicking exercise is his telling that is the reflection of what you heard back showing someone clearly and specifically that what they said has landed and shaped what happens next that's much higher bar a much rarer skill of course it depends on the project itself you know sometimes you can be so enthralled and so immersed in a conversation and project and sometimes it's just not having a good day but what i love about benji's philosophy here is that it's a consistent thing because that constant ability to make sure that their clients are being heard is the difference between being heard and just merely being present so if you're doing a client facing creative work or honestly anyone in a relationship of any kind.

7:43Radim Malinic:It's a genuinely practical distinction. Listening isn't the soft skill that people assume that it might be. When it's done properly and on a scale that Benji describes here, it's closer to discipline than an instinct. And it's a thing that clients trust him for most. There's something about different types of listening. And I've got an episode with Sepp Epstein from Los York coming up very soon, who talked about the fact like how he removed himself from the situation where you want to volunteer ideas, volunteer answers, volunteer anything. You just sit there and listen and actually tell people back what you've heard and what they've communicated to you.

8:21Radim Malinic:Because I found many years ago through doing a coaching program that I was doing for about six or seven months. And the only thing I've learned was to listen, to actually shut up and listen. Because I realized there was a drop-off point in my life when I'd realized I don't have to prove anything to anyone. I can actually be there and stop trying to push myself forward. And that opened up everything. So when Benji said, again, I'm going to repeat him at this moment, when he said, you don't only listen, but you show that you've heard, that's powerful. That's strong. So we've got contact with all the projects.

9:01And that's really important to us, and it's really important to the people who work with us, that the people whose names are at the door, are actually the people who show up on calls, are the people who you can get involved with. And there is also a point where we say this now say with someone else, and that's because we don't want to micromanage the team. Alex and I, we see the whole business more like a fruit bowl. So we are like the fruit bowl, and then you've got all the different fruits in it. So we are more of a supportive structure, helping everybody achieve what they want to achieve out of their professional lives as good as we can without saying hey we're here to the client we're always involved and then sorry we got the job now we're off now this is a careful balance that we have because we don't want to undermine the total skill set of everybody in the office it's an incredibly brilliant team and if the question arises that you ask me is where do you find the time this

9:57Radim Malinic:moment reminds me reading anything you want i think that's the name of the book by derek severs he was describing how he built his company called CD Baby. If you are sort of around my age, you may have come across CD Baby. As a company, they were selling CDs overseas from independent artists. The reason why I'm telling you this, because in his book, he said, the way I grew the business was that I let people, the autonomy, to make their own decisions. Like, I don't need to sign off everything all the time. You build a product, you build the idea, you deliver it, I don't need to be told about this.

10:31Radim Malinic:and it worked for him it worked really really well to the point when he can then sell the company for millions of dollars and it worked in this instance benji is talking about his business basically not relying on them because in a way it's a classic founder's trap how do you stay visible and involved if i'm micromanaging every person and project this metaphor does quite a lot of heavy lifting although you know i don't know how many people still have a fruit bowl at home but a fruitball doesn't tell the fruit what to be. It just holds everything together and lets each piece to do its own thing.

11:08Radim Malinic:It's a deliberately humble way to describe leadership, especially for someone whose name is literally on the door. Paired with his belief that business owners' real job is eventually to make themselves redundant, that goes back to that Derek Sivers quote, and it points to something a lot of ambitious people struggle with. The idea that real influence sometimes means stepping back and not leaning in and for anyone who's building a team rather than just a career it's a helpful nudge your job isn't to be everywhere it's to make everywhere function without you thank you for joining me on this bonus episode with benji weidman it's a great conversation where we did a lot of swerves left and right into other topics from family life to are bringing school systems you know past family and again i'll repeat myself as i always do i love not knowing too much about people before i interview them because i don't find so many interesting pockets of their lives bringing all together join the dots and in benji's case you know and many others in fact is that realization when you find out that what they do they were always destined to do that type of work they do now so thanks again for joining me on this one and I'll see you next week with my interview with Marisa Garcia when we talk about personal branding and more.

12:30If you enjoyed this episode

12:31Radim Malinic: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. 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.