17 Creativity Lessons from The Do Lectures + Hiut Denim - David Hieatt

0:00Hey guys, hope you are wonderful and thank you so much for listening to the poddy. It means the world to me. everything is a little bit mental at the minute good mental we've actually had four podcast recordings this week Sir John Hegarty then another one with Rory Sutherland Seth Godin so we've got some amazing guests coming up and we're working super super hard to get them ready but I'm absolutely fucking cooked so we are going to release for this week an episode that was recorded a couple of years ago now with an absolute legend creative thinker creative genius brand builder david hyatt of hyatt denim and the do lectures um for the people who listen to this show right back in the early days many said this was their favorite many said i took out a notepad and pen and made a load of notes and absolutely loved it so yeah i hope you enjoy this one and once I'm out the tunnel of chaos we will be you know normal service resumes as of next week hello there people and listeners of the hungry podcast I'm absolutely thrilled to welcome David Hiretel to the podcast uh David has very succinctly uh summed up your career and I found it on your website David is bankrupt at 16 thrown out of college at 18 joined Saatchi and Sachi at 21 started Howie's in 1995 sold it to Timberland left started the do lectures started Hyatt Denham Co um your work has been as I said before we hit the record button been super super inspirational to starting Hungary especially Purpose that was just such a great book I implore um our listeners to definitely check that out check out the do lectures there's just a whole schleb of amazing uh just amazing different ways of thinking online it's just such a great um yeah great tool and kit and also your newsletter is absolutely fantastic so i'm incredibly grateful uh for you coming on today david oh my pleasure i mean it's um it's good to have a chat and and um you know if i could be of use to anyone fantastic if i can't then you know uh not so good but um i'd like to be i'm sure i'm absolutely sure you will be so where i'd love to start this conversation is sort of the first um kind of door i want to open i suppose is i was as i said i've been rereading a lot of your stuff in the last couple of weeks when i knew this interview was coming up and i was actually having lunch in hammersmith along the river about about about two weeks ago and it was sort of like the sun was shining you know and it's like the sort of the sea almost looks that's not the sea the river looks like it's kind of like metallic it was like it was just sparkling it was gorgeous the sun was coming through and this sound came soaring past and it was this and like this speedboat just went like that and peeled up the river and i'd read your article um called b i think it's be a speedboat oh yeah and excuse my language i sometimes swear but i was i've always thought like fucking hell is and your story of this of being a speedboat versus a shipliner and what i took from that story was the shipliner is almost like the corporate the shipliner loves meetings about meetings the shipliner loves perfection the shipliner loves to go slow um but seeing that speedboat right up up the thames really brought it to life and it was just this ability to be nimble to swim fast or go fast but i'd love to know like why do you believe challenger brand should be speedboats versus shipbuyers and maybe add some more color to that analogy because I think it's beautiful.

3:54Well, I mean, it is a strong analogy or metaphor, but the aspect really is, you know, we're in a really fast world and the ocean liner is really slow, right? It's slow to turn, to change, to stop. And I think one of the strengths of being like small and like a challenger brand is your ability to react and to be agile. And in a way, your biggest strength is your agility and ability to change really, really fast. And the important bit about the ocean liner and the speedboat is don't drop anchor. And that's what the big ships have to do, right? They have to drop anchor and they have to stay put and they have to do things how they've always done them.

4:52And the ability to be fast and react is an incredible strength in a world that is completely changing almost on a daily basis. The one thing that shouldn't really change is your values and things that you believe in. But your ability to get to them can change doing so. So for me, it's like being small now is such an incredible strength. I think, as I said, there'll be a lot of people listening to this on a walk, on a drive, whatever, and they'll be thinking, oh, there's this kind of, I love the David and Goliath story really speaks to me, but there'll be a lot of people thinking, oh, we're too small.

5:36We don't have the budget. We don't have the muscle of the big boys. We don't have the strength. But when you said you don't have to drop anchor, what do you mean by that? Well, I mean, the big ocean liner has to drop anchor. I mean, it has to stop and it has to wait for the tide to turn so it can go into port. But this little cheeky little speedboat can zap around super fast. And the thing is, you want to react to something in an incredibly powerful and fast way. The way to the future is to get there before others. And otherwise, you're always going to be copying and you're always going to be behind.

6:24And this little speedboat metaphor really is you going, hey, you can get to the future before anyone else. And if you can do that, your size doesn't really matter that much. And people get too obsessed with size because right now in a fast changing world, what's the biggest benefit is like you being slow isn't the thing that you want, right? So you can react, you can get to the future before anyone else. And so therefore you don't need to be the biggest, but you need to be agile and responsive. and you need to like read signals where others can't even see anything. And so you suddenly go, what does that mean?

7:09What does that mean to me? What could that mean to my business? And how can I go and respond super fast? That's, you know, this mindset now is the toolbox for a challenging brand is you've got a very fast changing world and you don't actually want to be that big because being big means you can't actually change super quick. And so the best armies are the fast armies, not the biggest armies. And so I think we've just got this opportunity in time to go, like, what do you need actually a big budget for? The interesting thing about big budgets is you always have more people to be more worried about how you spend it.

7:54And when you have a really small budget, nobody gives a shit and so you go so you can and you can place small bets find out um some data and then go and place a bigger bet because you got some data and and placing small bets is a fantastic way to to you know have ideas go and check things out go and see what the market actually thinks about as opposed to what you know you know the research companies tell you so the market always decides um but you can have a cheeky little small bet and just go okay i've actually learned something here and i kind of i think we're in this extraordinary time for small you know brands where you know like company of ones company of tens company of 20 people they're all kind of small um but you can be incredible at being small i mean like the the the thing that i've always struggled with and we were talking before we went on air is really that thing of like you know like this growth like on one level we kind of want it just because everyone else wants it and then you go like um why do you want it well and i think about growth in perhaps different ways now and i didn't always think this way um whereas i think now you can grow influence as opposed to size and so and and that's really about quality how do you 10x your you know creativity as opposed to 10x you know the size of the company and you know we make jeans for you know rennie rossetti in the past but he became world's best chef by serving 45 people and yet he's the world's best chef in fact he's won world's best chef five times he's not allowed actually to enter anymore because it's not yeah he's so good he keeps winning it's ridiculous um so how how you can look at your company now is like because growth can be really stressful to me like and you think oh i've suddenly got all these mouths to feed and and and then the company runs you and you stop running it and and the amount of founders who just look like scared rabbits because they are scared rabbits because they just don't know actually how to a they've chased the wrong you know thing and then they climbed this mountain and they got to this top of this mountain and they look around and they just think i don't even like the view and then how do i get down from this mountain that i've climbed that i thought was other someone else's mountain and and then in order to go and go get back to reality again and and you know it's it's a real we're chasing other people's narratives and and i think for any founder listening to this right now is going like what do you value the most oh my time okay Okay, obviously your health, your family's health, and your happiness, your ability to sleep.

11:12And how about growing those things? And your ability to look after your energy, your ability to look after your people's energy, and your ability to look after creativity. Like, I think we've been chasing the wrong thing. but i i am interested don't get me wrong i am interested in 10x in my creativity my ability to have ideas my ability to be of influence in the world but it's not always it's not always the thing that people really focus on they just want to grow a number they don't even know why i want to grow 20 this year and you go why like um and they don't even know oh because it's really good not not all growth is good it just means what if you're you're growing something that a product that you don't actually love um and just go yeah i just want to sell more this shit you go why like so i mean it's a it's an argument like i'm battling just like everybody else out there we're all battling with the same argument and do you know where i'm actually winning is when i've got time to walk down to work that's where i'm thinking i'm winning you know like when i'm in uh now and again i went well i went for a year and a half went swimming with a mate uh in the sea for a year and a half almost non-stop and when we're winning is where we're kind of in charge of our time and our swimming pool is connected to america and and you suddenly go and actually we're winning at that point we're sort of time millionaires time billionaires and and so that thing of founders i think they're kind of getting themselves into a pickle because they're chasing this thing this wannabe unicorn like why like don't you just want to be good don't you just want to be great at what you do why why do you think being big at what you do is better than and being amazing at what you do i'd settle for amazing rather than big all day long thousand percent it's i mean there's just so much kind of insane wisdom in there david and i think it is so true it's it's until really regoing rereading your work i you know you know i was like i was becoming obsessed with the podcast downloads because i was like more downloads equals potentially bigger sponsorships i need to get bigger bigger bigger bigger bigger um and and then you know i do these supper clubs as well and i was i need more people more people we did one with about 25 to 30 people it was way too big and it was shit it wasn't shit it was good it was all right but like we did one the other day with 12 12 to 14 and everyone was like oh my god that was so much better um one thing i want to go back back to and it's it's you said um you can get to the get to the future before uh before anybody else i think what you said that's that kind of speedboat analogy one thing and i've worked for in in in a challenger brand um which is actually a a business that was selling into grocery and inside the supermarkets and what happens is you have brands who start out when they're naive and i think naivety is actually a superpower and you're going along like a speedboat because you don't even know it's almost like a fish doesn't know it's in water right so when you're starting out you're so naive and you can just soar along you can get out the storm quickly um you can avoid the iceberg quickly but then what happens is these brands i really think a brand is like a baby growing up so it starts as a toddler it doesn't know it's just super curious and then it gets to the age of maybe you know 13 which is like in the brand's life is maybe two three years down the line when they start getting insecure and they're like oh you know like a 13 year old going to a disco they suddenly realize oh my god i'm really insecure this happens to brands and then what happens they need to bring in a corporate person and i know this like um has happened so many times with people who listen to this podcast they bring a corporate person in which is basically maybe someone from a shipliner and suddenly lose all the thing that made them great and they think they need experience and i'd love to just kind of go back to this speedboat thing like what are some of the maybe weekly day-to-day principles of like this is how we are a speedboat and this is how we are not a shipliner that you that you implement at at hyatt denim the the so i mean that's a really good question and the thing that i'm really interested in is obviously putting new ideas out there and and also like understanding that quite a lot of the ones that we're going to put out there will probably fail like 95 of them will fail and and i think that's an interesting culture because I only need really one idea to work, to really change a lot.

16:43And we've put things out there like a history tag where on a pair of jeans, you know, you would be able to... I was kind of obsessed by how jeans tell stories. And because I saw a pair of jeans in a Levi's store and it was 140 years old, and I just wanted to know the story behind it. What was its hardest day? you know what was this luckiest day and and the pair of jeans couldn't actually tell me that story at all so you know that story died with the owner right so but the jeans were still there and so we came up with this history tag thing and it was a lovely idea and so therefore people could you know you know when those jeans went into a secondhand uh store one day the the stories would go with them too it was a really lovely idea except it didn't work and and i think for me is that thing of um the thing i'm fighting against is to i think on the ocean liner is they're quite happy with what they've got and they don't want to find the new way they don't want to find anything else than actually sticking to their formula.

17:58And for me, a formula is a form of a trap. And so at some point you'll go, we always do it this way, we always do it this way, we always do it this way, until one day that way is completely out of time. The problem with the formula is it's really successful for a period of time, and then it completely falls off the cliff. and so that's where you see these amazing businesses amazing businesses and then almost overnight disappear and and i think that culture if you can create a culture where you just go like should we try this can we try this can we try this and they're small bets and and it can actually be quite like upsetting for people to go oh we'll try this this thing and this thing didn't work either and and once you've done 90 experiments you find 90 ways that it doesn't work is at some point you've got to do something that does work and it can change you know that's what getting to the future is is is you have to you have to go and try stuff that is there's no formula for it you there's no comparison where you go oh it's a bit like airbnb but it does this that's not really an idea that's just copying and that's you know that's fine but for me the culture of experimentation and an experiment really is something you'll try something and you don't actually know if it's going to work that's an experiment because it if there's no risk there's no experiment and so so whereas the ocean line is quite happy with exactly how it's doing things it doesn't want to change anything it wants to stay exactly as it is i think the opportunity with small brands is to go and go what if we did it like this um oh that didn't work that was a disaster you go okay well what what do we learn from that and can we now go and iterate something else which would maybe work and i think it's the culture you know the metaphor really is about the cultures whereas you know it's one is of um sticking to the formula and don't change um and the other one is a formula where you know we experiment and one day we'll get to the future before anyone else because we just tried shit um and we kept trying shit i was reading james dyson's book oh yeah yeah uh the second one invention i think it is and he was talking about all the stuff they're doing with sort of strawberries and all this sustainable farming and he was talking about staying how like the word experience like almost sends shivers up his spine um and it's interesting because it's almost like you need experience to to know and do better but you're you're mostly a huge healthy balance of naivety to almost stay dumb and keep asking the dumb questions so how do you how do you stay i don't mean this i can like how do you stay naive as you get older the the thing is like because there's no attachment to either the failure or the success where you just gonna you just try stuff and i mean the interesting thing with james it was Dyson.

21:28I mean, I only met him once, but I got asked to do his brand book. And I was like, I mean, he already had a successful brand. Nobody's going to read. I'm going to go and write a brand book that nobody's going to read. Like, who cares? And I couldn't quite understand why they wanted a brand book, but it was for Japan and America. But the reason actually I went and did it It was because they showed me this poster of how many times he'd failed and iterated. It was 5 ,126 times in order to get to the point of success. And at that point, I was just going, oh, yeah, I'll write that brand book. Only because I just want to meet him.

22:16Yeah, yeah. And because I liked, I just loved that way of thinking where you just go, well, I'll do this, then I'll do this, then I'll do this. And I think the mindset of openness to failure, it's not like you want to attract failure. It's just you want to find experiments that don't work because then you're closer to finding something that does work. And I think when there's no attachment either way and you can do things where you're bet in the farm, well, bet in the farm gate, not the farm each time, The problem with founders sometimes is they bet the complete farm on a hunch. And that can actually do well, but it can also, nine times out of ten, doesn't do well.

23:07But if you bet the farm gate, you just go, okay, it's a farm gate. I'll bet another farm gate. Then I'll bet another one. So it's small bets. And that's what I'm kind of really interested in, where you just go small bets. You find something, you go, oh, hang on. We've got something here. maybe we need to go and pay more attention now it's um it's obviously i always think of this kind of a process and it's that you've got to hack a lot of lead to stumble across the gold and you've got to be okay with finding leads and you've got to be okay with just just seeing there's a beautiful lesson and gift in every failure i think and it's I think failure is kind of the wrong word.

23:51There needs to almost be a new word in the lexicon for these sort of speedboat challenge around businesses. But it's fascinating. One thing I do want to talk about, and you can almost spot it a mile off, is when a brand has, you can have the best speedboat in the world. It's sat in the harbour, it's shining under the sunshine, it's red and blue, and it looks amazing. so that could be a brand with like great packaging and then you've got actually a pretty decent product as well and this podcast started more in the food and drink spheres so there's lots of brands that have that so they have great product pretty good packaging as well but they don't have the purpose and the purpose is like the petrol the pet it's it's the purpose is the compass the the it's the petrol it's what gets you through the storms and one of your quotes i read somewhere is teams need to know what change they're going to make in this world it is the fuel for the journey it is the grit it is the passion it is the meaning it is belief that there is or soon will be a better way to do this no vision no fuel no fuel no culture no culture no team no team no point and i just again this is why i'm pluralist to read your works it's brilliant but you started howies what what were some of the lessons you well you said you'd sold howies and you said you'd felt broken you didn't want to run around that track twice what were some of the lessons you took about purpose from Howie's that you then applied to hire yeah I mean it's um I mean it's kind of interesting because like we're sort of we're fed a story that you know you go and build a company and then you sell it and you get a check and you know and you're successful um and that's one narrative that people are told and and for me i didn't really feel you know that narrative i'd sort of i would we were growing howies and we'd never done a business before and it was growing too fast and we didn't really know what we were doing and in essence then we we went and sold it and then we got a big check and you go thank you very much but the mission was half complete so it It was kind of like, well, got some money, but we've only half got to where we even wanted to get to and felt like we're really just starting that.

26:21And suddenly, so my learning was to, if you find something you love doing, then you have to find a way to keep doing it. And the notion of suddenly selling a company just for money, and so that means that you're selling something you love, and so that might actually shorten your period of time for doing it. It doesn't actually mathematically make sense, apart from you've got a bunch of money, but now you've stopped doing the thing that you love. So the thing that I really thought about long and hard was keeping hold of Hyatt before we started it. And I'd sort of arranged to have a phone call with Yvonne Charnard at Patagonia because we'd done a bunch of stuff with him.

27:19and we came pretty close to maybe selling Howie's to Patagonia, but at the time Patagonia needed to focus on Patagonia. But I sort of got the respect of Patagonia. I'd written a thing about a journey of a carrot from Poland to Cardigan, which was completely and utterly one of the most boring pieces of copy I'd ever written. with every left turn, right turn, every roundabout, every waist sign. It was insanely dull and boring. But it sort of inspired Patagonia to go and do Footprint Chronicles. And so to cut this story a little bit short, I just wanted to have a chat with Yvonne. And I'd been sending him the Howie's catalogs.

28:11The Howie's catalogs became quite famous and collectible. and we built a company through words really and you know and telling people what was important to us and so i i just asked him a question i said ivan like how did you keep hold of patagonia because i didn't keep hold of howie's and i want to make sure that i keep hold of it this time and he thought about it and and he just said well it's like 40 years hard work i went thought so um and then he said yeah and two remortgages and i'm going yeah thought so um and i think that's the that's the beautiful quest is if you've found something you want to do and and this is where purpose is actually people like can take purpose in in the wrong way and and they just think purpose is just a nice thin air bit of brand washing and but in essence the real core of purpose is it kind of you're doing something that gives you the highest energy and because everything you do is a transfer of energy and so when you feel it the most you can transfer that energy to another human being and and you can do that through laughter humor you know like with passion and so it's a transference of energy from you to another human being but when you're operating as a human being from the highest form of energy is you found your love and and so therefore like that's what you know purpose does right and and you hope you're going to be successful but grit you know you know hope needs grit and and what keeps you going is the fact that you kind of want to do the thing that you love doing.

30:07The theory is that because you love doing it, you're going to get really good at it. Like next level good. And that's the thing that actually allows you to keep doing it because you're on another level compared to anyone else because that's what love has allowed you to do was love has allowed you to go and practice. enough to get so ridiculously good that you can keep doing it for a long time and and i think for me you know but the the saddest thing ever is when people go and build businesses and and all they have is a five-year plan and then to go and sell it and you're going you just sold five years of your life for money um and because by the way you can make money from doing the stuff that you actually love because you're actually going to be better than anyone else out there because you love doing it because you'll just do do it for longer and harder and work will be play so that notion of like um deferred life plans because you're going to go and build a business that you don't actually care about is a denial of life and and the thing for you is if you start thinking about what gives you energy and you know what makes you excited is don't you just want to do that and don't you want to find a way to become so good at it you can always do it and and so that's really it's it's not even that complicated apart from people make it complicated because they chase other people's dreams and and that's that's the sadness sometimes with founders they kind of climb mountains and and they get up to a top of a mountain after 10 years and they just work out they've climbed the wrong mountain and it's the saddest journey back down yes peaks and battles right so interesting there's so there's so much in that so i think it's there's a um i think it's paul graham who's got the paul graham essays who's got the do what feels like uh play to you but looks like worse others i think it's something like that and that's one that's kind of why i went all in on this because i'm kind of i know we were talking before we hit record about how to slow down but because i'm so obsessed with it like it's it's very easy for me to do a 16 hour day and it's not like gloating but it doesn't feel like work like it's what i would do if it wasn't wasn't doing that do you mean yeah and i think there's a lot in that for listeners i think the other thing is again if i was to go back to when i started this podcast i was like right i'm gonna the reason i'm doing this to help people help people know how to sell their brand i interviewed william chase who's the founder of tyrells and he said when you're in the winner's enclosure you realize that all the fun was in the race and that's a quote that's really stuck with me and actually probably one of the biggest things that i've unlearned is that selling the businesses is not something that's actually good it's this false narrative that we've been you know uh kind of infected with and i think that's a really great quote i mean paul graham is fantastic as well i mean but the the the thing is like because like don't get me wrong like when you start something the odds are against you succeeding like a lot right so there's for every 10 startups maybe two or three succeed in the end right so that the odds are not good you know but we're risk takers and we're willing to take the risk and now there's two ways to look at um things and And it's, you can go and succeed and you can have a miserable journey.

34:08And you've got to find a way as founders, even though there's fear and there's stress and there's self-doubt, is you've got to find a way to enjoy the ride. Because whether you get to the winning enclosure or you cannot take a fall, is either way like if you don't enjoy the ride you're literally misspending time because the ride is all of the thing and actually the result is some other thing but it's not even as close to all the things you're ever going to remember are probably the hardest and toughest days where you just go oh my god when you were really tested and somehow you got through it and and and those you know those you know it didn't feel like it at the time but those were the days and and then and then you think you're only gonna have a great day when um you win is that's so small amount of the time over 10 or 15 you appeared that one day where you suddenly you know someone tells you you know mostly probably through a big check that you won is this if that's the only day that you truly are happy you got all these other days that you didn't enjoy the ride and so like the the the thing for you for your life is to go and find a way to enjoy it and have belief have belief in where you just go like and you know have so much belief that that you just keep doing it until there's a point where you just can't do it anymore um and but even then you'll go again and but the the key thing is to go like you gotta um you gotta be true to yourself and and you just go like even even the hardest days are still your days where you've made a choice to do that and you just go like you know like be resilient to it and and just accept it and just go like find a way to look after yourself find a way to switch off find a way to get rest but like ultimately play the long game but it's your game it is you you've literally chosen this of all the things that you could do in your life you've chosen this so you might as well enjoy even the worst of days because they they're oddly the ones that you're just going to look back and laugh at which is could you remember where actually we did that product and it was absolutely shit and no one bought it and we don't blame them during those that oddly those are the moments peak moments are when things go really well peak moments when actually also when things go really badly so the things that we remember are peak moments so so it's kind of like enjoy the ride because i mean that's all you got what what there's i want to go into in a sec um we'll hold that for a sec but one thing i want to talk about is is this purpose because there'll be a lot of people listening to this who as i said right at the beginning they've got the great product they've great got the great packaging but they haven't got the purpose and i almost think i always sometimes think of categories like a music festival right and the bigger the you've got loads of different tents i.e loads of different brands that ramp up the music the bigger the purpose the louder the music and people just gravitate towards that like a beacon right and you know reading your stuff is and and reading your work when you you kind of got it in that one sentence which is like get 400 people their jobs back in cardigan it's it's it's a story like i suppose where i'm trying to go with this david is like how do brands how do you found as you've got the the the the purpose in their soul right how do they transfer that into into like an actual story like are there any specific exercises they can do um questions to ask themselves well i mean i think i think in terms of brand storytelling is i mean imagine if you could just own one word um and it's actually a really good exercise especially if you're writing and i think all founders should write and um and and the thing is like because i i teach founders like um on some workshops and the one thing i say look hey there's a million distinct words um but you have to choose one um because your ability to go from unknown to known like relies on you being really clear about your voice and and and actually you know most founders they kind of think oh i can't find my voice well it's pretty easy you already got it it's just you haven't actually done the work on getting clear and so if you can go and choose one word is it it's kind of really i do this triangle exercise and and it's kind of like people just go oh my god that's incredible you go yeah i mean the reason nike beat adidas when they shouldn't have done you know because adidas had 40 years of you know they were 40 years ahead they had all the money they had all the athletes had all the product you know that all the distribution nike shouldn't actually even be in the top 10 apart from they had a guy called dan wyden who allowed them to find the voice and made sport an emotional thing because it actually is an emotional thing and and so like a founder has to go and do the work on your voice and if you can't find your voice i can tell you this now in a busy world you're literally not going to stand out and and so like so so i'm like going well it's it's pretty you know the reason like people like innocent and all those like stood stood out is because they found a voice and and and and it's a distinct voice and it allows them to go from unknown to known in a busy world um and and that's like that's the work i would if i was a founder right now i'm just going like you know like oh what's the one thing that could really help me learn to write and get quick at it and get good at it because great writing allows you to do great thinking.

40:47And if you can write things, and that could be about your ideas as well, it allows you to communicate with your community. And a brand is really just a well-told story. Apart from most founders can't actually tell their story. You go, hmm, you're in the storytelling business and you think you're in the making jam business, you go, don't get me wrong, the jam has to be good. It has to be the best in the world. But your ability to tell your story has to be as good, if not bad, than your product. Yeah, I mean, my brain's kind of articulating with different ideas. So I think the first thing I want to kind of go back into and explore is this one-word piece.

41:32um back to the analogy about kind of categories like music festivals almost is i think brands can get stuck where they start looking and imagine going to a music festival you've got kind of oasis um i don't know stone roses and another manchester band like joy division they all sound very different and you want them to sound different because they found their unique voice and i think what can happen is brands get insecure and they start trying to sound like someone else so if you went to oasis and he was trying to and liam gallagher was trying to play like ian brown you'd be a bit like hang on a second and it loses that oomph and that unique connection that unique voice with this word piece like you said there's that triangle triangular thing like how can people find their unique voice with this triangle because i think that could really help us well i mean it's kind of an exercise i mean i kind of i mean it's it's not overly complicated it's just like people in you know adidas are still trying to find their voice and and it's the equivalent of you know like um when you have the handbrake stuck on on your car and you're driving and you're going oh it's not going very fast you go yeah and actually finding the voice is releasing the handbrake so to give you an example like so like you know if you're if your listeners know like say um brené brown like her one word could be vulnerability you go like go and own vulnerability right so or gary vernichek could own hustle right so it's like what's the one word that you could go and like own and and the the the nuance with it is then And you've got to go and build your, and it's a triangle exercise.

43:25And at the top of it, your voice. And then at the bottom, it is your two characters, right? And so for Nike, it would be justified irreverence or grit. Going to make this shit happen, whatever. Do you mean so? And if you put like the top of Nike's thing would be empowerment. And then you put those two words at the bottom. So in essence, that triangle allows you to go and be fully in charge of your voice and to also brief anyone and look, hey, this is what we're about. And most brands never do that work because they don't actually know how to do it. But once you have, you know, the reason like brands come out and just go, wow, okay, they discovered their voice early and their ability to stand out is because they've found it.

44:23And copycat bands, you know, like nobody wants to be a copycat band. Everybody wants the real thing. And so I think it's important work for founders to understand how to cut through. And the great thing is you don't have a budget. You go, great. Because actually having a budget and if you don't know your voice is really scary because you actually spend an awful lot of money and have no impact. The voice is the difference between a blunt arrow and a sharp arrow. and you go, oh, I spent a lot of money. I didn't cut through. You go, yeah, because you actually don't actually know how to talk to another human being so they actually feel something.

45:16And the voice allows you to, you know, you want to always speak to the heart because that's the biggest decision maker. And most brands speak to the head and the heart makes most of the decisions. it's the storytelling piece and you're a very uh polished writer and i want to i mean i write every day as well and i want to explore i just i've been doing it for yonks but i just i would love to we'll go into a kind of creative process in a sec but storytelling is so important and i think i don't know which book it's in but there's the story of the guy in new york the blind man in new york and i think for listeners this is a great example of how you've got the blunt arrow versus the sharp arrow and i think and correct me if i've got this a little bit wrong but there's basically a blind guy in new york and he's trying to um uh you know get get some money basically and then i think he changes the sign to i am blind it is spring and those that story is is delicious and it just realizes okay well people the guy's blind at spring do you want to talk about that a bit because i think it's yeah it's it's the it's the context right so like you know the The sign says, basically, I'm blind, give me money.

46:32But then the sign got changed because it's spring and I'm blind. So then everybody could actually understand what it must be like to be blind when all these flowers are popping off and the color's incredible and the bees are out there. And so this person's missing out on all of that. So basically, great writing actually makes you feel something like for the other human being. And so it's just a really subtle change of words. But that's the beauty of being able to write where you've got 26 letters just like everybody else and your ability to rearrange them in the right order so another human being can actually feel something.

47:26is going to separate you from, you know, being unknown to known. And that's the beauty of it, right? So it's kind of like it's, you know, founders who can write actually do really well. If you're a challenger brand that's absolutely killing it in D2C, but you're struggling to crack retail, then you've got to listen to this. Maybe you've got an Ocado listing, maybe you've got a Whole Foods listing. Maybe you're absolutely killing it in Selfridges. Maybe you're absolutely killing it in your farm shop and your indies. But my friends, making the leap, crossing El Chasum, crossing El Rubicon to grocery retail is not easy.

48:02It's the Champions League of FMCG. It's super hard. It means playing at a higher level and that's where some of you amazing brands sadly stumble. Look, retailers want stories backed by data, not dreams and a pretty pitch deck. And let's be real, supermarkets are not just going to magically make a space for you and your little brand. They need data. Something's got to go for you to get in, for you to get on shelf. and that is why I've got to tell you about Northstar. They are the team that's helping purpose-led FMCG brands go from gut instinct dreams to unstoppable pitch decks that actually unlock retailers.

48:39Northstar are not like another data company that force Fiji data like Fuagua that act like a NASA space mission. It's super, super simple to use. Their team are amazing and they actually get the challenger mindset. Northstar are your shortcut to smarter decisions, stronger pitches and investor confidence all built specifically for challenger brands like yours you don't need a massive sales team you need north star link in the show notes click that link and you'll be able to book a free demo with north star highly highly recommend that and thank me later what what is your writing process like then because i think i've read you know it's somewhere you've i just find it interesting how everyone's got their own different kind of idiosyncrasies obviously you've got a lot of books behind you there what what does your morning look like when do you write um what does that look like well like i think i mean it's a really interesting question because like like your ability to design your week is really important because the one thing you know like the founder is up against is basically busy and and busy is the most toughest gnarliest sneakiest opponent that any founder is ever going to have and and we've also got this notion of you know 20 of what we do actually matters and the 80 doesn't matter at all and so and letting go of that 80 is going to be your ability to concentrate on the 20 and so in terms of writing is and the reason i say this is in a way the way most people that work is working is actually isn't working and not in terms of a brain science point of view and and so what i'm trying to do and you know and this is like an ongoing practice is to you know i'll work on myself you know the first hour first two hours i mean i'll go either sea swimming i'll do some exercise to do some meditation and and all that stuff that's just kind of like just a bit of movement and meditation movement you go yeah actually the founder has to look after the founder because the founder's looking after everybody else and so what i'm trying to do is to work in two-hour blocks.

51:07So company one, two-hour block, then two hours, not do anything, and then two-hour block, then an hour, not do anything, and then last hour of the day is creative writing. Because I always used to start my writing when I had the most energy. But actually, in terms of creative writing, it's actually really good to do your creative writing when you're a little bit tired because the barriers that you would have in terms of resistance to maybe a dumb idea, you think, oh, that's a really dumb idea. The resistance is actually really low when you're tired and you just go, yeah, maybe it's good, maybe it's not.

51:50So actually writing when you're tired is a little bit good for creativity. But I think the hard thing for everybody is we're kind of not doing any really deep work anywhere and we're trying to multitask and it's an absolutely incredible, awful lie. So if you want to actually do, the whole reason to say all this is, like if you want to go and increase your influence, it's about quality. And it's the quality of thinking, the quality of creativity, it's the quality of writing, whichever quality you are chasing so in order to get that you have to block out time in order to focus on things you don't actually need to work harder longer is you just go you need to be more focused and you need to get rid of all that other shit that doesn't matter and by the way busy is a sneaky little shit um and um and and it's tempting to you know stay in busy because being busy is is actually easier than thinking.

53:04Sorry. Go on. I was on almost this busy narrative to bring it back to the speedboat versus shipliner. Is the shipliners with loads of people, super busy, loads of just meetings about meetings whereas I think the speedboat allows you to go deep work, go in deep and move quick. And the thing is that with the speedboat is there's no passengers. like you're on there and you have to hang on but like on an ocean liner like you can there's loads of passengers on a ocean liner and i'm not just saying passengers as in passengers i'm going the people on working on the ship they're kind of like they're like half steam ahead do you mean like they're not really you know busting their heads to do the best work they've ever done but on a speedboat everybody's there has to play a role um and that's what i kind of mean by the no passenger thing is everyone's there we're going all in the same direction and we're going very fast and everybody has a job to do um that's that's kind of really interesting doing i think in terms that your listeners is like be really discerning with your time and um and the tendency uh the the reason people go to overwhelm is they try and do too much they try and like oh i'm going to be on seven social media platforms you know try one like try actually you know punching really hard on one and just have a singular focus.

54:44Try and do less, but make it mean more. And that's how you go and 10x your influence in this world. You go and write something and people just go, oh my God, that really did matter. I love that. And I want to talk, there's a picture on your website and it says Made in Wales of the genes. It's got a beautiful coastline. i was down in cornwall uh two weeks ago and just i started getting me thinking about the the sea and creativity and i think there's so many parallels between the sea and creativity i mean weirdly i think creativity has been here since the beginning of time and will be here till the end of time so is the sea do you know i mean when the pyramids were getting built that the waves were crashing against the sea longer after i'm gone longer after you're gone the new innovations there'll still be the sea it's just this i think energy creativity is a flow uh obviously the sea flows creativity is kind of dangerous the sea is kind of dangerous i think there's lots of parallels um you you as you talked about earlier david about doing these sea dips with your mate like how does does being by the sea being in the in the west being i think you've got a quote which says innovation happens in the at the edges like how does the sea make you more creative and 10x your creativity i think um the reason the reason i kind of um did the sea swims for a year and a half almost every day i mean and it's brutal and it's like there's ice on the sand do you mean it's kind of cold and yeah um but the the interesting thing for me was i don't really like the cold and i'm not that good a swimmer and i'm not like a surfer like going i'm born for the sea but it really got me doing hard things first thing and i'm going oh and and it was and it was never easy it didn't get any easier the more we did it it was like always hard for that moment you're going in and and i kind of like really liked it where you just go like you felt this freshness when you came out and you know whether you know there was a reset and you suddenly come out and you just you were ready to do you know you if you were ready to do the work that mattered most to you that day it sort of got you ready and and i think um when you're suddenly concentrating so much on like how cold it is it's like oh my god it's like it's bonkers cold then you've done hard things then and then there's a reset of like well all i gotta do say is try and solve this problem and so so and what it does in terms of creativity is it just gets you to understand like solving problems is actually kind of fun um and and it is good to do hard things and and the reason you will go and succeed is because you can do hard things when other people can only do easy things and and you know and really what created to creativity is is seeing something that um from a set of data that no one else has seen and you put it in a form where suddenly people can go oh my god i didn't actually see that but you did and that's a hard thing but But you can only do your best work when you have a clear head and not a busy head.

58:21And that's why we have to defeat busy. Because otherwise, you will not win. You will not have your best ideas. A busy head gives you shallow ideas. And that's why we've got to be really, really intentional on our time, on our energy, and what we say yes to and what we say no to it's and i've so i can completely get wait what you're saying with with the founder and almost re-bending time which is what you've got when you can kind of escape busy when you've when you're now you're building the team at higher denim and there's there's people who expect to come into work at nine or i don't that's what i want to explore with you but when there is this kind of schedule further down or further across the hierarchy how do you get people in your team to not be busy so they can do their best work um and look the truth is this is like an this is a daily battle and yeah yeah yeah and just because we know the problem doesn't mean we always practice the you know the solution and and But what it really comes down to is focus.

59:38And I did this really great exercise, and it was one of the meetings where everyone just went, hmm, okay. And I asked really two simple questions. What could we do to grow our business by 10 %? And there was 50 answers. and they go no we could do this and we could do that and and and i go oh okay whatever and so now what are the things that we could do to 10x our business and and the answer was only two things you know one was like go and you know you know get our website to do some of the things that is not currently able to do um you know like that would 10x the business if we you know if we could suddenly tell you what your fit of gene is in 60 seconds um we would 10x our business the other one is to have more influence in the world and how do you have more influence is to have better ideas so so there was only really two things that we could do to go and 10x our business whereas if we wanted 10 % of our business, there was hundreds of things.

1:00:54And so really the busyness and how to defeat it is really what is focus and what is busy. And so you've got to be able to let go of some things where you just go, can we just let go of that? And by the way, some of these things you're going to have to let go of, you might have been doing for a long time. and it's pretty hard and the team, like we've got a really small team and there is a tendency even now to chase after busy work as opposed to the important work and how much you are in your impact zone versus busy zone will actually decide your future and this is the work that every founder has to do.

1:01:54I think what you've said there about busy head gives you shallow ideas and busy zone versus impact zone, it's just, as you say, there's no exact science to this and what was, I think, really reassuring is you know the problem but doing that on an organizational level is really tricky because more people inherently baked into that equals busy. So it's just interesting. This is a question I ask quite a lot of guests. What would you say in one sentence is creativity to you? What is your definition of creativity? I mean, not following. Two words. Perfect. I mean, it's not following others. it's kind of like it's a pretty good it's a pretty good metric and there are specific examples of that I've read a couple listened to a couple of your talks you did and I think there was I think it was the example of the back pocket in the jean I want to get into add some more colour to this are there examples of these idea machines I think it's like if we go back to the ocean line and the speedboat, it's like the ocean line carries on with the formula and doesn't want to actually make any change materially.

1:03:19So like a five pocket Western gene hasn't actually changed in 140 years. I mean, the most innovative day was when Mr. Davis had an idea for like a rivet. So that was the end of innovation. Like same number of legs. and but there's a coin there's a coin pocket on the five pocket gene which was for when you had like a watch like on a chain and so they invented that pocket so you wouldn't lose the watch on your chain so it's like well now we're not even wearing watches really apart from apple watches um so So it's kind of redundant. And it's like no one even actually knows why it's there in the first place.

1:04:07And all we've done is gone, well, can we redesign it so you can put your AirPods in it? And so you suddenly go, well, okay. And people go, oh, it's got to be a bit wider. It's got to be this. You go, like, it's literally not even a big idea apart from like no one is actually doing it. So they're quite happy having a pocket that makes no sense. apart from 140 years ago when you were worried about losing your pocket watch. And so I think it's just like, a big idea can actually be quite small where you suddenly go, oh, okay. Is that a big idea? You go, well, apart from no one else is doing it, it's fine.

1:04:53But people are accepted. That's the way it is. I'm going, oh, what? why do we have that pocket there it doesn't make any sense and there's no use to it and you can't even put your fingers in it and then suddenly if you then go or earpods which are like you know like i was kind of reading the other day like if you if they were um uh you know the earpod business is is bigger than some massive companies and people go it's it's a it's a big thing everyone has them and now you suddenly, well, you can put them in our genes and you go, yeah, it's not it ain't rocket science it's just like, but no one else is doing it There's a simplicity to it as well as what I think I'm picking up from you, David which I think the impact simplicity equals impact and that's a really simple idea with big impact but going back to this busy thing if you've got a busy head, you've kind of got shallow things it's almost like you can't see those simple things.

1:05:55I don't know. Someone was saying to me, the answer is right in front of you. There's a quote, I don't know where I, it was a podcast, I think I was listening to it. It's like, the answer is literally right in front of you. Sometimes it's just, we're so busy with notifications and all this shit that it's hard to see through it. I mean, we've, in order for us to like really try and win is, we're going to have to defeat, you know, this thing about attention And so if you want really great ideas, I mean, the reason I actually really admire James Dyson was he walked past the timber yard and he saw a centrifugal device.