S07.EP05 - Why Most Designers Won’t Last (and What AI Can’t Replace) with James Martin

0:00A brand, I like to view it through the lens of reputation, it being a recognisable reputation. And the reason I personally like to do that for myself and my clients, because I think it allows me to have a little bit more control, whereas feelings, I think, are a bit more difficult to understand.

0:25Hello and welcome to Just Branding. The only podcast dedicated to helping designers and entrepreneurs grow brands. Here are your hosts, Jacob Cass and Matt Davies.

0:43Before we jump in, if you're serious about mastering branding and building a thriving creative business, the Brand Builders Alliance is for you. Inside, you'll get live masterclasses, mentorship from our eight resident coaches, a stacked resource vault, and a global network of brand builders who actually get it. If you're done winging it alone and are ready to scale with structure, support, and serious momentum, head over to joinbba.com and get on the waitlist. That's joinbba.com. Hello and welcome to Just Branding. Today's guest is James Martin, a designer, author, and educator who has built a recognized reputation, not through the work he produces, but through the principles he stands for.

1:31James is the founder of Made by James, a studio known for bold, distinctive logo marks and identity work that has been shared across the design world for years. He's also recently become an affinity creative partner, working closely with the affinity team to advocate for independent creative tools and a partner at Lincoln Design Co, if you can see his lovely hat right now, where he collaborates on brand and identity projects for some of the world's biggest brands. James is also the author of Made by James, the Honest Guide to Creativity and Logo Design. And he's currently working on a new book that continues exploring themes around creativity, reputation, and the long game of creative work.

2:14Recently, James has been writing and speaking about a few ideas that have really caught our attention. And that's the importance of reputation over hype, why craft still matters in a world obsessed with speed and automation, and how taste actually develops. And more recently, the difference between motivation and care and why care is the thing that sustains creative work over time. We're also going to talk about the rise of do-it-yourself tools and AI, if we can fit it in, and when these tools actually empower creativity and when they actually quietly create bigger brand problems down the line.

2:48So, James, welcome to the show. Glad to have you here. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for that incredible, incredible, what was it? An intro, I suppose, wasn't it? It was a monologue, wasn't it? It wasn't it. Golly, I was like, maybe you should write my eulogy when I die. That was brilliant. We're all going to die. It's going to happen. It's a pleasure to be here so late in the UK with you, Jacob, and you, Matt. Thank you so much for inviting me. So what are we chatting about? Stuff, I suppose. Stuff, yes. A good old chinwag, as you like to say. I love that. I hate it. Chinwag is, do you know what?

3:21That little word, chinwag, every time I say it to somebody who isn't a Brit, they're like, what on earth is a chinwag? Do you know what I mean? It's like, it's talking, isn't it? Do you know what I mean? Not many people get it. But yeah, I love it. I love it. So yeah. Reputation. Lots of fun things. That's where we're starting. Yeah, I mean, it's a great place to start, isn't it? And I'm going to apologize to all of your viewers. it's all right for Matt because Matt's probably not going to do a lot of talking but like I'm very tired it's 10 p.m. Jacob's kind of organized this at a time which is really nice for him in his lovely hot country John so he often does that James right now the listeners are getting a little peek behind the curtain yeah he's such a diva isn't he although I'm the one who sounds like a diva because I'm the one complaining yeah reputation what a what a wonderful thing to talk about and And I think an incredibly powerful thing to understand and leverage for probably a lot of the listeners.

4:15But also we've all been in the brand game long enough to hear different opinions of how to build brand, what a brand is. And there's always variations on that theme. And I don't think anybody's ever wrong, are they? Some people are wrong, but most of the time everybody's got it. It's all about point of view, perspective, isn't it? And I think that's really important, especially from creative people who perspectives are an incredibly powerful thing when it comes to connecting dots and all the rest of it. For me, a brand, I like to view it through the lens of reputation, it being a recognizable reputation.

4:52And the reason I personally like to do that for myself and my clients, because I think it allows me to have a little bit more control, whereas feelings, I think, are a bit more difficult to understand. But I think when you can break down a reputation, when I break it down into four key areas of like integrity, competence, narrative and community, I think it's a little bit easier to comprehend and control and bring some sort of like edge to some boundary to. For me, the main reason why we build a reputation, which happens over a long time, but I'm sure we're going to get into craft and mastery and all the things further down the line.

5:36I personally believe we build it to reduce the commercial risk of people giving us money. Do you know what I mean? The reason we build a good reputation is so we become a safer commercial opportunity for our clients. So we do it to reduce friction. And yeah, I think reputation is truly the key. Sorry, my brain is ticking. It's starting to move now. It's starting to move. It's the key to opportunity. Do you know what I mean? I think that's what we all want. Do you know what I mean? It doesn't matter to what degree. The reason we all build brands is to essentially make money and support ourselves.

6:17That's the reason why these things are manufactured. These brands are manufactured. That is the sole reason, I believe, is to make money. now you can do that in good ways and bad ways obviously i think we do it to support our families otherwise it's something different so yeah opportunity is the big question oh yeah please do it stops me from talking all the time no no at all i'm loving it i'm loving it it's it's helpful to just see how you frame things and see things and on that note you mentioned four kind of component parts of how you break up a reputation love to dive into those just briefly like in terms of how you talked about boundaries like talk to me like about community and then the other ones yeah yeah so yeah i always i'm not that clever matt do you know what i mean so whenever i'm trying to think of things i like i always try and break them down in a way that makes them probably a little bit more understandable for people because i believe my job is to help my clients understand style like we spend a lot of time speaking to other designers and we understand are weird words but not many other people do so i think it's always good to break down things into some sort of digestible chunks so yeah the first one is obviously integrity and what i essentially mean by that is do your actions match the things that you're doing do you know what i mean your values and all the rest of it so i think that's a really important one and then there's competence do we are we confident in what we do can we walk the walk and talk the talk i think that's very important narrative is there a consistent story that is being told about you and that you are telling and then the community which is the fourth one is who is in your corner we're not talking about audience or reach here we're talking about the people who are in rooms when you're not there saying your name, do you know what I mean?

8:09So I think if you're working very hard on nurturing that community and you're working hard on being very consistent with a narrative and you live up to your integrity and your values consistently and you are continuously working on your craft and your competence consistently, and that's the really important thing is the consistency of all four of those areas. And look, if you rated yourself out of one to 10 in all of those, like nobody's ever going to be 10. Do you know what I mean? But I like to break it down in those kind of simple forms purely because it allows me to know where I need to do some work or where my clients potentially need to do some work and I can steer.

8:51So many people are generally quite good at depending on who you're speaking to. Obviously, I think competence is always generally a fairly strong one people sometimes know what they do some people don't that's a different matter again I don't want to get too much into the negative ninny stuff but I think that's always quite a strong one and then I think integrity is a bit of a wobble but it's usually the bottom two that are the ones that really start to compound when you have that consistent that consistent narrative and your community is kind of like I said bringing in opportunities for you without you even being there but that only happens again after for a lot of patience for a lot of consistency for a lot of repetition for a lot of consistency and all the rest of it yeah those are very important but i know if you work on them for a long time yes we are we're we evolve and we make mistakes and we are human and we're a little bit messy usually if you're working very hard on those four things like things do start to compound and i think that's the big problem that we see in today's world generally is that i don't think people are giving themselves enough time for the compounding to happen.

9:57There's another thing, I'm going to talk to you about all the things. There's this another thing I have called the deeds model. So it's like D-E-E-D-S. And I think it's, I say, you're like, your deeds dictate your reputation. And this is really handy for anybody just starting out or anybody who's in a little bit of a plateau or anybody who's trying to just figure out what's next or what they're doing or where they're going wrong. And I think a quick breakdown of that is the first D is decide what you want to be known for. Do you know what I mean? I think that's a really important thing you both know as brand people, when it comes to positioning, it comes to messaging, it comes to your people, you need to know what you want to be known for.

10:39So you can then kind of position yourself in the right way. This first E is educate yourself in alignment to becoming that person. And that never stops. That is a continuous and that's where craft, mastery, all of these things, you never reach mastery, it's impossible. But the education is such an important thing for that competence. Then you've got to evidence the process of becoming that person and through doing the thing. So that could be anything from getting testimonials from your clients, like building your own IP, your own frameworks, like showing your work and all this kind of stuff but the thing with evidence is that not everybody's going to have access to evidence it's impossible for everybody to have access to all the things you've ever done so what you've then got to do is you've got to demonstrate the proof which is the next d and demonstrate the proof in the right spaces because there's a big difference between evidence and proof do you know what i mean so there might be and this is the a slight struggle when people don't do enough marketing i think is that they've got a lot of evidence they might have been in the industry for 30 years and they've done so all this great work but if nobody knows about it if it's never turned into proof then it doesn't exist essentially and then the final s is stay in the game long enough for it to compound and that was the reason why i wanted to mention that that deeds model because i think it's like if anybody's ever in a little bit of a funk or like worried about what to do next i think that deeds model your deeds dictate your reputation i think it all starts with having a really good understanding of what you do who you do it for because then the rest of the stuff seemingly fits into place it gives you your azimuth do you know where you're going love that love that yeah i think that consistency and i love that stay in the game right i think it's tough to stay in the game isn't it it is i know like we're in a very fast world and i think we think oh if it's not working after three weeks right that's these things people look at jacob myself and probably you as well James for sure and they look at us and think oh I'll do that I'll do the things and they do it for two weeks and then that's it and then like oh it didn't work you're like hold on this has taken us years like literally decades to build I guess the expertise the reputation to your point James to be able to command the rooms that we do and speak to the and have the honor of speaking to the people that we speak to this takes a long time folks you've got to stick at it like you and I love all of that one of the things I think is fascinating I coach people from time to time and I always say to them look you've got to show yourself in action and demonstrate your value they're my kind of two two principles and it's lovely to virtually see pretty much that's what you've got there you've got the evidence and the demonstrate but you've added much more on which is even better than my two yeah I mean you've come to your understanding through from time and patience in the game and yeah I think the I think it's such a really interesting world that we you know how important perception is for example especially in branding and the reason we I suppose curate or manufacture a brand is to have some sort of control of that perception do you know what I mean especially if we're working with clients but perception can also be faked.

14:00Do you know what I mean? You can have bugger all evidence. You can have no competence, zero integrity, and you can now build a huge following by just playing the game. Do you know what I mean? And creating this perception of somebody who is competent and has integrity. we don't even know if they're real humans anymore like but that's the thing like so the perception game is actually quite easy but it's also flawed you see a lot of it don't you maybe i see even crazy things like people like like literally copying somebody's exact website and then putting their face on it do you know what i mean literally literally that was cj wasn't it like it but it's but it's happened yeah no what's that talk to me tell the story jake yeah so cj corley another great speaker we had the summit and he's a designer of a big following and someone literally copied his whole site and used ai to change his photos and just swap the face so his whole website's copied his work and even the photos in his studio just changed the name with ai and the face which is crazy yeah it is crazy you must have been fuming they did something cheeky and he actually put a photo on his contact page with his brand name on his own website on cj's website so like when you roll over one of the photos it says his name on it anyway but the thing is with that particular game so that what that chap is trying to do is trying to increase his perception somebody who knows what look at all this body of work not mine look at my great studio look how creative i am not mine look at my words not mine do you know what i mean perception perception perception now what happens when a client finds him how does that person execute that style of work how does that person is that person competent enough this is the big disconnect with that kind of game this is why yeah you will definitely lose yeah you would lose and this is the big this is why i get quite upset and a little bit antsy about the kind of personal brand world and how like the way to fix your problems is to just get loads of reach and loads of visibility and you'll be rich do you know what i mean because that there's no point having all that visibility and that reach if you've got a like a jar full of friction like this guy like he's gonna maybe get some eyes on him he's maybe gonna get a client come to him but he's not gonna to be able to he hasn't got the competence to to work with the client so it's just all that's going to happen is it's just going to fall flat on its face it's actually going to be a detriment to his brand because he's going to get bad ratings he's going to and then he's probably just going to go on to the next thing and copy Jacob's website or Matt's website next so he'll try and win here he'll fail he'll try and move again and what you're doing there is you're just going backwards you're not progressing you're not growing you're not doing anything so this is the really interesting game i think when people talk about reach and perception because i don't think evidence can be faked i don't think proof can you can fake evidence if you steal it again but again if you can't back it up do you know what i mean like what's the game what's the end game and i think this is i don't know in the order we're going in do you know what i mean with our conversation here but you know when i good bridge to craft right because if we're building like design invisibility I was going to go somewhere else, Jacob, but you go there.

17:38That's great. Let's go there. Craft, taste. Yeah. What were you going to go with? I'm with you, mate. It's your world. I just live in it. Let's go. I think it's a good segue because you can't fake the craft if once someone comes to you and then you try to execute on it, you can't do it. Then that's where the friction is. We have AI design tools, templates, like instant logos now. How do you feel about all of that? Are designers getting better? Are they lazier? What's your... never going to speak for another designer i don't think that's my place but like for me i think when like i said i'm all i always try and control what i can control i can't control the tech there's no way this guy can stop anything from happening i mean none of us have that power i think there's six people on the planet that have all the power right now we're just living in their world, do you know what I mean?

18:29So look, I can't change the tech, but I can control where I put my energy and I can control where I place effort. I, again, if I think through the lens of reputation and how I know opportunities work, good opportunities happen when you are competent. And competence generally comes from a craft that you've decided to be good at, do you know what I I mean, yes, you can, I would say I'm pretty competent at like brand design, visual identity. I believe I have an interesting mind when it comes to thinking and creativity, but I write 4 ,000, 5 ,000 words every single week on the subject. I read about it.

19:17I explore it. I spend a lot of time with it. And I have done that for just like you. like i've been in the industry now for 20 years and i think when we talk about crafts and i think you mentioned the word discipline as well like for 20 years it hasn't been easy it's actually still incredibly difficult today do you know what i mean it gets more and more there's different types of difficulty but it's it's still not easy like this whole idea that you get to a point and everything just becomes easy. There's always another level, right? You get to one mountain. Yeah, I think there's always another.

19:59I think there's always, especially if you are striving towards a mastery of craft and you know that's never attainable, but that's also the most exciting thing about it. For me, I know I'm never going to be perfect. And that's something that I embrace quite a lot. And I've been wrong a lot along the way. I just hope that I'm more confident like I know if I'm confident and I know what I'm talking about and I do that by reading and relearning and rethinking I know that when I have conversations like this I'm able to do so with other clever people because I believe I do have a good understanding of the subjects we're talking about if you put me on a podcast about cookery or like gardening i would probably have to fake my evidence and make shit up just to try and be interesting do you know what i mean but i think in this particular room i have the right to be here to talk with you two about this would be quite amusing to be honest to be fair you have got a lot of plants in the background there yeah and but there is also a famous chef called james martin as well oh is that right have you never had a james martin where have you been sleeping i'm not a culinary master chef not either so no i can tell that matt i can tell that about you so yeah yeah so i think the discipline things are really important thing but like the discipline takes a lot of control as well because like i said like it is sometimes quite boring life and work it is not always exciting and i think that's when a lot of people when it does get tough they pivot tweak change move on whereas I believe the people that go through those times and maybe like evolve or change or and I think there's god it's such an interesting topic with all the tech and we're going to probably talk about DIY tech and we're going to talk about AI and stuff and it's it's got everybody in a little bit of panic a little bit of a pickle jada because it's really difficult i was very blessed to to speak at the dnad in london a couple of weeks ago about this subject and it was the topic that i wanted to bring up was this whole that the subject was is creativity dead or alive and the question i wanted to raise in the room was it's not really whether creativity is dead or alive it's what happens to creativity when people are continuously told they're about to be replaced do you know what i mean because that doesn't leave enough room or space for creativity to thrive or to happen but it's really it is really interesting because i spend a lot of time in different networks of different industries and like the design creative industry is like on the whole very anti understandably music industry the same a lot of those kind of creative arts film the same but you go into other spaces do you know what i mean and it's generally quite positive it's a really interesting thing because i do believe there is this element of identity that we tie to our work and our practice that we feel is being taken from us a little bit as well We'll probably go on some more stuff like that.

23:24It's interesting you mentioned that. I don't know what your thoughts are, but for me, I used to run creative teams in the past, and I always used to think the number one killer of creativity is fear, right? Because if somebody is scared to put a bit of themselves out there, it could come from anywhere. They might be scared of rejection, scared of failure, scared of being humiliated, whatever it might be. It could be, as you say, fear of putting something out there and then them losing their jobs the next day because there's an AI that can do it better. Like all of that is going to not produce the best creative work.

23:57So I just think you're right there. And I think in the creative field, I'm like you, James. I spend a lot of time in other very boring industries where they think AI is phenomenal. I'm doing a project at the moment with a client in the medical industry and they see AI as basically saving lives. Now, you can't say that's a bad ambition for them to have in that space. It's one of those things. but I do always think, what are your thoughts on AI, if I can say so, James, as a sort of through and through creative? Like, how do you view it? Are you afraid of said AI or like, how do you confront that?

24:31I think what my blessing and my curse is that I don't try and overthink too much. Yeah, yeah. So first, let's go back onto the panic and the fear before we go onto this, because I think that's a really interesting thing. If you're serious about mastering branding and building a thriving creative business, the Brand Builders Alliance is for you. Inside, you'll get live masterclasses, mentorship from our eight resident coaches, a stacked resource vault and a global network of brand builders who actually get it. If you're done winging it alone and are ready to scale with structure, support and serious momentum, head over to joinbba.com and get on the waitlist.

25:12That's joinbba.com. I think it's really important to remember that we're wired this way as well. So we have this tiny little thing in our brain called the amygdala. It's this tiny little almond-shaped thing, like in the back of our head somewhere, I think it is in our brain. And it's got one job, and it is basically to scan for risk, react really quickly, and keep us f***ing alive. Do you know what I mean? So everybody's amygdala is firing right now. So if people ever think that they're alone in the panic and the fear, they're not. That's just your brain doing its job. That's how you're wired.

25:52And the problem is we are continuously fed. Your job's going, your job's going, your job's going. So everybody's just going, do you know what I mean, right now? And that is very normal. But back on to the kind of AI conversation. Look, I don't honestly believe that even the people in control of the AI know what's going to happen. I honestly don't believe anybody has a clue what sort of Pandora's box we've opened here, which should scare the life out of us all. Firstly, I don't potentially think this is just a job thing. I think this is like, like it could be cataclysmic. That's a big word for 11pm almost, but it could be really bad.

26:46Look, before this was happening, AI and all the rest of it, I also knew that I was going to die eventually. Like we're all going to die eventually. And that's always been incredibly motivating to me because I know my time is finite. So I try and do everything I can do while I'm here, while I've got choice. And I think at the moment we still have choice. So for me, the choice is to take action, pivot, try, do, start something, build something or don't. And I think we have that choice. For me, when we talk about motivation, we go on to that. I think the tools have the potential to amplify what's already there.

27:32So if you're lazy, it will make you lazier. Do you know what I mean? If you're driven, it will give you more drive. If you're curious, it can give you the power to really push your curiosity. So I think right now that's how I look at it. I use it every day. I learnt quite early on that it was quite important to, I heard somebody, so I can't remember who it was, like, try it in everything and figure out what it helps with and figure out what it doesn't help with. and I've found out a ton of stuff it doesn't help with any sort of execute like my style execution right now it's getting better don't get me wrong but like for me right now like logos identities creativity concept generation it's still average but it's like if it's a weird thing to think about But if you took it as like a people say it's not that creative, but I would probably suggest that it might be more creative than 90 % of the world.

28:40Do you know what I mean? Like, I do believe it is. If you took the average, the mean, it probably beats a lot of people. Do you know what I mean? We know how good it is at math and I can see, I can see how quickly it's moving. And you've seen all the Will Smith tests and the spaghetti tests and all that kind of. It's pretty mind-boggling from 2023 or 2024 or whenever. I think it was 2023. Like the speed over the last three years in which it's evolved. Now, like I said, we don't know what's coming. Do they have enough power, computing power? Do they have enough electricity? Do they have... It's fucking shit for the planet.

29:17I don't... I think for every good thing it could possibly do, cure, I think there'll be 10 bad things it does, unfortunately. But I, again, very focused on James, which feels selfish, but I think this is a good time to be selfish. And if I could give any guidance to anybody right now, it would be it's never been easier to build the thing, make the thing or start the thing. It's never been easier. and I think creative people in general have the opportunity to rule the world do you know what I mean if I think about creative people we're very we've got very good people skills generally very good at problem solving we have creativity we have empathy all of these things which I believe make pretty good leaders do you know what I mean and if we used the creativity and we got our own ideas out of our head and into the world like I said which has never been easier before than it has been do you know what i mean i would go and build the thing i would go and do the thing i think it's time to take control the thing is joe james as you alluded to earlier designers see themselves as designers do you know what i mean i think that's an over generalization i think some don't yeah maybe i'd certainly just talking for myself back in the day like i very much saw my identity as matt the designer right that was my thing yeah it did take me quite a journey to break out of that self that self-created box and now i'm something completely different in fact i hardly reference myself as a designer even though the stuff i do now very much is designed just in different fields right like the same principles are being applied i just design businesses with business leaders now rather than designing the graphic design that used to promote yeah if that makes sense yeah so it is really interesting to to think about that so anyway that was just my personal i think i no i'm not even i'm not going to i'm not going to say that you're wrong either like i think i don't think you are wrong but i think we all get in our own way sometimes yeah and we talk about the old amygdala again like it's trying to keep us safe so change comfort zones risk these are not things that like the majority of people on the planet are happy to do people would much prefer to stay in a steady job than follow their dreams because they're worried about bits and pieces like bills and that's rightly so John I mean I don't like to I can't predict the future but I do believe I do believe that there will be a point soon where we won't have the choice potentially so right now I think we still have you've got to have a little bit of agency you've got to have a little bit of get up and go and you've got to you've got to try and do something because the problem I do see and I hate talking down about stuff because I know how difficult it is for lots of people but there's just a lot of talk about how bad it is rather than and then the people I see talk about how bad it is I don't see them doing anything do you know what I mean and that's always the that's always the thing for me is I like I I could never live a day in anybody else's shoes or nothing like that.

32:41So I don't really know what's going on in the background. But I speak to a lot of creatives and a lot of designers who are out of work or lost their job or whatever. And I speak to them about what they're doing, like how they promoted themselves, how they marketed themselves. Have they done their website? Like, what are they doing? And they've done nothing. And I'm like, this is tough. It's going to be tough if there isn't that motivation to try and change the scenario. But yeah, it's a toughie, isn't it? The beautiful thing about it is that if it gets to what they suggest it might get to, we're all f***ing.

33:18So it's not just designers. James, so our friend James Bernard, he recently shared a video reel. It was like AI versus me as a designer. And that had some backlash. But in his community, he posted about it saying that he actually did lose a job to AI because the creative director wanted to go that direction. So it's actually happened behind the scenes. And this is from an established person with a lot of following and a lot of leads and everything. But maybe he should just be a better designer. Do you know what I mean? Only joking, JB. But I hear it all the time. I was speaking to a friend of mine only Wednesday, yesterday, and he said he had a web project and his job was to design and then basically code out and build out the website and help this client with this particular thing.

34:14And halfway through, they did it in AI by themselves, the design and the layout in one of the AI agent tools. Yeah, and you can do it in a couple of keystrokes, right? This is the thing. And it will become, you know, a lot of strategists. I know a lot of designers. So, like, James's scenario is, and I love him for everything he does. We're good friends. And he's a very brave and honest dude. And it's good to start people to start seeing this because it's going to happen more and more. And there's a lot of people who wouldn't be brave enough to tell anybody about that. So, yeah, Matt's got, like, some crazy bug flying around in his thing.

34:54I was trying to say, car. Is that some sort of AI drone? But yeah, I mean, it's a really interesting thing. And I know it's happening because that isn't the first time. James's story, Mr. Barnard's story, is not an isolated moment. That is happening more and more. I hear a lot. There was a time in history, though, right, when somebody saw a printing press for the first time and all the sign painters were like, oh, wow. Do you know what I mean? yeah i think this is different though isn't it it's it is but is it like it's different in a sense of the technology and the way this stuff reasons and things but in terms of production in terms of new new possibilities it's i guess it's of a similar step change from pre-industrial revolution to industrial revolution in my mind anyway yeah i mean i yeah i think i think it's slightly different in the fact that usually when you replace a job a new job is there for you i if this agi happens in 2027 or whenever they believe it might happen humans won't need work yeah it's bizarre no like so what we do all day i think we just jump on podcasts like this talking about the good old days but i think i do think it's slightly different in that respect because i don't think there'll be more jobs generated um no because i don't think unless we are all very funny but scary meme not me but it was this kind of like parody and it was like a really fat Elon Musk and a really fat Bezos and who like Sam Altman do you know I mean and they're really fat and unfit and basically what they had done is they'd started like like humans there was like these like big rooms like of really stacked men and women like just cycling because they were the ones who were generating all the energy for the time that was their job their job was just to get pumped because that was the all that was left.

37:05Do you know what I mean? So look, like I said at the beginning, we don't know what's going to happen. We're only, I believe the narrative around your job's going to be replaced. Humans are going to be replaced. We're going to save world debt. We're going to cure the world. The only reason these narratives are happening is because the people who are saying them need people to keep giving them money. Do you know what I mean? If they said we haven't quite figured it out yet they're in trouble aren't they yeah we'll figure it out we'll figure it out so what's your thoughts on this as like an antidote so moving from like a task doer to more of a strategic partner with clients working alongside them to build a brand versus just execute on say a logo or website which is increasingly getting more outsourced Yeah, I think I suppose the question is that when the technology makes execution easier, where does the value go?

38:04I would say the easy answer is probably judgment and discernment, taste. Those are probably the things that we still, by the multitude of experiences that we've all had individually, we see the world slightly differently from each other. So like I said, through the craft and through the kind of the path to mastery or whatever you want to call it, you've basically absorbed so much work. You've consumed a lot of work. You've done a lot of work. You've educated yourself and you studied a lot of work. So you start to know what's good, what's bad, what's right, what's wrong. So people talk about what's going upstream, don't they?

38:54So the thinking is the thing that's going to be of value, which again, I think is probably true. Probably an obvious answer. So taste is something you talk about quite a bit and technical skills you can teach, right? But taste is a bit harder to define because it's based on experience. But how do creatives develop taste over time? i think you've just got i think what i just said really i suppose i think you have to curate it do you know what i mean so like when we talk about the deeds model again then the education that when i think of education i think of that as like taste enabling do you know what i mean so you're constantly like doing the thing learning about the thing seeing what other people do with the thing you're potentially bringing in different perspectives from other industries to help you do the thing your experiences your travel different cultures like different movies different books do you know I mean all of the things come together to form taste I suppose you can add in other bits and pieces to that but again like these things they don't just happen they don't just happen overnight unfortunately and they can't be rushed there's a lot of shortcuts hacks do this in 10 days make a hundred million tomorrow by following my prompt do you know i mean like that like i i don't know i don't know how we have got here but like i said the things that i think will endure and always have uh there's actually i re-read a book called drive recently by daniel h pink and that talks about motivation i know we've talked about that and he talks about these um this one talks about this oh yeah yeah that one yeah it's a classic yeah yeah it's a great book yeah i love it he talks about the two types of motivation in there and he talks about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and i like when i there's a few books that i'll read again and again because as the world changes as I change I find different things I connect different dots and that's always been a nice little kind of creativity hack for me and but when we talk about taste and patience and mastery and all of these things he talks about I think he calls it what is this the it's like amp I think it's like autonomy mastery and purpose are the three things that he feels that drive people continuously drive people for like intrinsically motivated people so autonomy being like the feeling that you are choosing you have agency over the decision that you're doing rather than simply responding to a moment do you know what i mean and then you've got mastery which is that kind of slow incredibly frustrating humanness but what you're trying to do is you're you you really want to get better at something so because it matters to you do you know what i mean for all of us here i would like to think that we really care about our craft so the kind of striving to mastery to some degree is a part of the pain do you know what i mean and then there's obviously right because we we know that we're heading somewhere and we hope so yeah yeah there is that yeah yeah it's last one's purpose isn't it that kind of idea yes it is yeah and that's just generally the kind of effort that's probably connecting to something larger than yourself So there has to be a reason to get up in the morning, isn't there?

42:35But the whole intrinsic and extrinsic thing is really interesting, I think, because he classifies extrinsic motivation as things like the fear and the money and the kind of things that are almost like incentives. And they're really important, do you know what I mean? But they only ever work well early on because the novelty of the extrinsic motivations fades. And obviously when novelty fades, the only thing that matters is whether you give a shit. And you see this all the time. Like when people get jobs and they make good money, like that incentive, do you know what I mean, works to a point. and then they go, f***ing hell, this is f***ing it.

43:25Do you know what I mean? That's the thing, because they're not intrinsically motivated to push through and to keep going. The purpose, the craft, the mastery. Do you know what I mean? Like the extrinsic motivations, they fade after a while. And when we look at the AI back on that and you think about what are people motivated by now? Saving time, saving money, speed. Do you know what I mean? Extrinsic motivators. But what's going to happen in two to three years time when they're bored of doing it themselves and it's their brand might have moved quicker, but nobody gives a shit because it looks crap and it sounds crap and it is crap because also like we know the importance of like humans and culture and like value, especially from YouTube's perspective.

44:21brand builders where's where's the culture where's the like what happens when the ai takes over and nobody gives what happens to the brands and also like thinking about big picture shit here what happens when we all lose our jobs we got no money to pay for these brands that are all using ai do you know what i mean like where how does that loop get closed do you know what i mean there i don't know if anybody's fought this all the way through what i mean no but again but yeah it's a really interesting thing but yeah taste again like taste is just something that is it just comes through experience and through doing and i think there's you i think you both know stefan sagmeister he he has this thing called he has this thing called i think he calls it a sagmeister actually or it's called a sagmeister basically he'll work for two to three years with his clients then he'll take a year off and he'll just say i'm taking a year off and he'll just go traveling and he'll go and absorb different culture.

45:21He'll do different things, push his creativity, and then he'll come back. But when he comes back after a year, he's got different perspectives. He's developed his taste. He's brought in new nuance and theories and all the rest of it. He can probably get away with it because he's probably really rich and he's really clever. You know what I mean? But it's not always easy for all of us to do that. But again, like choice. He chooses to do that. Yes, he might not make that much money that year but he's probably done all right the few years before and it allows he knows when he comes back he'll be able to use those experiences and that taste that he's been curating to go again do you know what i mean and his clients are probably like give me some of that brand new sag meister whatever that is give me that i want you day one when you're back from holiday son do you know what i mean that's probably what people said yeah that's his strategy yeah awesome something we didn't talk about was like care and i think that's the through line between all of this It's like, yeah, when you care for your craft and like building tastes and the motivation comes because you care.