Radim Malinic - Creative Director, Designer, Podcaster, and Bestselling Author.

16:34Radim Malinic:sort of conflict of i don't know i think i think we've got more curiosity between both sides i think because you got you used to have a trade-off like i give you half information and i want to picasso and that kind of outcome yeah and vice versa and i realized even in creative teams i realized this creativity should be enjoyable but most of it even though it looked pretty and it was fun and we got paid and we had low livelihoods it fell like pulling teeth and i was like this isn't quite right and of course the traditional story of creative is that at one point you've got this horrific burnout that changes everything yeah and i had mine in about 2012 2013

17:11Claire:13 mostly self-inflicted because really what happened i was about it yeah absolutely i mean

17:16Radim Malinic:i don't want to make it sort of like a little burnout show but i've realized that creativity is a very good place to hide so if you have unresolved issues then hiding away in your home studio or in in a corner of somewhere yeah just doing almost a dopamine hits between getting work getting a signed off getting invoices getting a show getting some feedback getting some likes getting more work you find yourself in that loop cycle interesting yeah because you don't have to face the world that much yeah and that's what i did and and i did it for a few years because i was building my own business at night around my print job and then i kind of stuck with the idea that it's okay to work for 18 hours a day wow i've created obviously more problems i've totally showed my circadian rhythm i'm like i've really broken myself by working all day all night but I was loving it I was absolutely loving it and I was thinking I was doing the best thing in the world because I had clients from around the world I was doing the projects I've ever seen around the world yeah it was magical but I was incrementally making myself more and more ill and more depleted of energy to the point where I remember going to choose from my place in South Can and I remember like when you go to telly that there's glitches yeah and I'm like this is weird

18:32Claire:this shouldn't happen but anyway your brain was feeling literally I was like I was tired I was

18:37Radim Malinic:like i slept all hours i was drinking too much i was smoking too much yeah because body is broken so it just kind of sort of heals itself i will chronically dehydrated over caffeinated all the stupid mistakes you can make but i was still thinking i was having a good time and yeah a copy of the book that you've got in front of you mindful creative starts with a sentence that says creativity nearly killed me because i was unregulated because i could do whatever I want and and everyone says yeah if you if you're happy to stay for us for another two days to do this or to do that I was doing all of it because I thought I was I was buying it despite the price that that's really interesting yeah so obviously nothing goes on forever yeah I remember being so literally so broken that I struggled to cross the street oh my god I thought I was gonna pass out walking to a post office I was just like so broken that I realized something has to

19:30Claire:change so did you realize that yourself did someone tell you or was it kind of i kind of i

19:35Radim Malinic:was sending out signals i started living with my girlfriend now my wife and she's like yeah

19:39Claire:she was like i think this time you see someone yeah i went to see the first therapist and

19:45Radim Malinic:my sort of anxieties that were already there were absolutely multiplied by a thousand i went to see cognitive behavioral therapy because i got fear of heights and i mostly i got absolutely crazy out of the child and she was like okay so let's let's do a bit of a sort of stats on what

20:02Claire:would you do and how you do it so you went to see it just because of fear of heights and then

20:06Radim Malinic:i had i had literally like a full-blown anxiety of the world like i started to get on a tube i couldn't stay on the tube i mean it was quite a lonely world because even though i have a step i was living with a partner i i literally felt like i'm the only person with the problem yeah and the first sort of counselor therapist she says okay so i'd have a pie chart of 100 like how would you split work play life and i'm like 96 work well i was proud to say that i was like 96 work that's what i'm doing she was like can you see the problem here like no that is your play and that is everything else this is my whole personality this is my identity and from that day onwards i realized that you know if i don't look out for myself and my mind for the way i work really hold myself accountable how to do this because most of the times like most all of the time we have that we have definitely ability to say yes or no yeah and we need to learn for ourselves like how we can look after ourselves more so i've started looking at elements of mindfulness and how to sort of bring back what i've learned in psychology literally at uni had psychology lessons where we learned to meditate when i was 18 19 did you and i'm like what is that about like when at what point of my life will i need to lie down in the middle of the day for 20 minutes well it turns out when you turn to 32 quite a lot actually i do and you cry and crossing the street it was like maybe it's time to lie down and actually just take it easier and i started literally thinking of mindfulness processes and and essentials of like how you reprogram the brain in finding the elements of calm because it was all just firing all wrong cylinders being overdrive and overwhelmed in constant sort of anxiety because you you're chasing yeah 20 different deadlines and 20 different sort of client contacts and it was

21:58Claire:just too much that's really interesting most people don't talk about this kind of stuff and it's it's really how do you know and then how do you change it because it's changing those neural pathways to think to recognize that rest isn't a bit of a cop out or that kind of that i've struggled with that in the past just like i was drunk with now still just being able to sit still and not feel like I should be achieving something.

22:18Radim Malinic:Yeah. How do you do that? I mean, I can tell you that it took me 10 years to break myself properly. It took me as long as it took me to break myself. It took me time to fix myself.

22:28Claire:Yes.

22:29Radim Malinic:So it was the part where incrementally, slowly, I started doing work on myself. I started meditating. I watched Mark Williams' book, which is called Mindfulness in a Busy Life.

22:41Claire:Yeah.

22:41Radim Malinic:And just to understand the fundamentals of how we operate and how we work, because it was a revelation to me. I started watching the sermons by the School of Life when they started. I've still got a link to their Vimeo channel where they had Robbie Sutherland and all sorts of amazing people actually explaining stuff. Because up to that point, I was very much head buried into advanced Photoshop, computerized magazines. It was industry stuff. And it doesn't go left or right too much. It's like, we do creative work, we talk about creative work this is what we do and it kind of makes you feel like if you're not in here maybe you're doing something wrong yeah whereas when i've opened the door to information from modern philosophies and actually understanding mindfulness understanding more how we actually operate as humans and understanding more of myself yeah i realized i'll the more i'm at peace with myself the more i'm at peace with everything else yes because it makes me realize like how many absolutely nonsensical sort of client punch-ups you had, how many times you fought for that tone of red for a client who had everything blue, you know, like those sort of silly projections of kind of hoping that you get some elements of self-acceptance from other people just because you've tried to justify the worth of yourself in the room.

24:00Radim Malinic:yeah so letting go of that sort of side of myself and going you know what anything goes i'm here to actually make everything as good as it can be yeah let go of the sense of identity which is ego you know like okay i'm here as a team player and in fact i'm actually here for anything just to see like how i can actually help the room with whatever i do yeah everything eased off everything opened up and it was just like you know what i don't feel less of a creative in fact i feel i had more of a say because you start implying empathy and emotional intelligence in your process and say what do what does everyone else feel like what does everyone need what what is this that we all think because i'll normally say that there's a lot of especially it used to be in the past and

24:46Claire:potentially still is lots of unresolved people around us of course and when you put all of those people in the room and give them a creative task it's going to be first punch up on the studio side

24:56Radim Malinic:and then with the clients and everyone sort of then goes to have a first day drinks and just

25:00Claire:gets blind drunk because they're overloaded yeah and it's just like again going to that

25:04Radim Malinic:self-accountability like how can i work on myself more to bring myself to absolute zero foundation at least close to that foundation and say you know what i'm not a problem here because i don't have to prove anything to myself yeah i don't have to kind of have those elements of glitch like justifications of like in my inner right place because i was lucky that i never felt like an creative imposter but i realized as an immigrant i'm a societal imposter i felt like for did you feel that i realized that 22 years later yeah that okay i realized that when i was most at peace i realized why did i need extra couple of pints why do i need to do this i don't need to hang out with those people because we are all equal yeah the societal you know differences or the society again like the english one when you go class system yeah like which ones are you and you're the foreigner yeah i realized that there was a lot of elements that i've sort of used as taking the edge of to become equal at that moment yeah and i moved to my latest house with my family to a quite leachy suburb and I was like this is this is literally all the red lights are flashing I went to do a therapy session

26:20Claire:I do equine therapy do you?

26:22Radim Malinic:yeah I do equine therapy

26:23Claire:I don't know and if you found it obviously yeah so my bike is now

26:27Radim Malinic:retrained equine therapist too but it's finding ways of real calm like how you project your energy and how you can't run away from it

26:34Claire:do you ride or is it just

26:35Radim Malinic:I know I'm 14 starting back but my kids ride my wife I mean my wife runs a whole livery yard and equine therapy session but i'm taking you on a whole merry-go-round i had to do a session on the fact that i used to say i can't believe she's my life in a good way yeah reassuring like all right oh my god we've gone this far and i told that to the therapist and she was like that's a really negative language you can't say that she's like why well obviously

27:03Claire:you clearly worked on all of this yeah like yes every day really hard so yeah you can absolutely

27:09Radim Malinic:believe that this is it you know like you don't ever tell yourself they should be feeling something or shouldn't be feeling something yeah you know because you see lots of people you see lots of projects and they go people like i can't believe we did this yeah you worked on it for six months yeah you deserve it allow yourself to allow yourself because i'm a big fan of tour de france or cycling as a racing and you've got two types of winners you go to guys who put their hands in the air and they go like little sort of v-shape yeah then you know people with their hands on ahead because they can't believe it yeah it's that sort of mindset of like how do you work on yourself because yes the guy with his hands and his head will go i can't believe i won whereas the guy who's absolutely ruthless and works on winning all the time yeah of course i won yeah i work for this and i deserve it again comes from that self-acceptance that comes from within you to allow yourself to think that way that you will do that you know because lots of people like myself have been in the industry kind of doing this you know like being in the industry sort of as almost like a hideaway if i'm behind a mac you know do my job back and whatever brief and do whatever i need to do then the world around me will not exist for a while but unfortunately still that is waiting for you when you leave you know at six o 'clock in the evening

28:26Claire:so tell me about how the publishing side started then so you were in a room and thought i wanted to a sort of metaphorical room but you were somewhere and you basically thought i want to

28:36Radim Malinic:yeah here is the publisher or the author so the publishing started kind of incrementally i started properly writing books after my burn out yeah because i mean all of my books i've written are

28:50Claire:very much what i call laced with mindfulness yeah there's always an element of mindfulness even with

28:55Radim Malinic:in a branding book i always try to put a focus on the fact how do you perceive what we do like how do you understand what we do because it's so easy to talk about you know research and insights and whatever strategies i just design whatever planning and a little project management yeah ultimately it's like how would you step away from the situation and look at it and go okay i can understand what's going on here so two or three years after the burnout i wrote my first book on book of ideas that was my clever idea yeah but i wrote my experiences of like how i've understood the elements there and i it was a proper chaos because i hadn't properly produced a book for amazon or i haven't produced a proper book before i've only made sort of promotional brochures and i kind of practiced a little bit by promoting my business through printed publications but I never wanted to wait for a publisher because that book deal was never coming and my daughter was being born pretty soon near the publishing day that I've said for myself yeah so I've just decided to just to do it myself and it was it was beautiful chaos I printed a thousand copies thinking normally it takes me 12 months to sell a thousand copies yeah and I listed books on Amazon I thought it was a massive cop-out it was like I don't want to be on Amazon

30:14Claire:wow so you actually chose not to be on Amazon no no no I had to go on Amazon that was the thing I was gonna say that's a bold move because I feel like look I want to sell books directly because I was always used to selling books directly and I got listed on Amazon and those

30:28Radim Malinic:books sold out in like three weeks I saw a thousand copies in three weeks wow okay this is interesting yeah let's fix some of the typos printed three thousand or four or five thousand copies again that's sold out by christmas and we printed more and more books and that book the first book someone sold more than 50 000 copies wow well i said more nearly 50 000 copies about 1500 copies left from those brand runs before we so that's amazing alone and and i've started and it just gave me the bug to do more and more of it because yeah again i was free to do whatever I want so just like that ability to jump into anything yeah you know overworking or over caffeinating or doing anything just not taking on too much I was like well there's no barriers like the only barriers that we have in this creative life is actually what we said to ourselves because there is lots of wars in front of us yeah and you can just climb over them over and over and over because you're going to discover something different behind every single one of them so I didn't know I was starting a publishing career because you can imagine in that first book after three or four months of upsetting various people various clients from not doing their work properly on time it was like i was obsessed about my new book yeah so i did it i was like never again and then people buy your book and they go volume two soon i'm like really yeah and then six months later it's like oh yeah we've got leftovers we've got work and i'm so happy i did it because i was never a blogger i was never any of those things that were quite popular at the time yeah but the medium of book is still sort of wrapped in mystery or like the sort of exclusivity

32:07Claire:yeah it's beautiful i mean his books are absolutely lovely thank you because and it's

32:10Radim Malinic:and it feels like someone needs to validate you when people say are you a published author yes that means normally that you have no thanks for writing a book we will never see any money from it that's what published author sometimes means whereas i wanted to create my own company that can do whatever yeah whenever and i've published six books in seven years and i was like this is great i mean are you actually made so that's what i was thinking when you're talking

32:35Claire:about the ability to be able to go wherever you want and choose whatever you want because it's totally true but you also i assume need to make money out of it and it's that that's usually what ties people down isn't it just staying with one thing that's sort of having a mortgage and all that kind of stuff but you've obviously made money out of the books which is fantastic i mean

32:53Radim Malinic:at one point if i had doubled down on this i mean it was making more than my first salary in the print shop wow in a month it was incredible like we were selling 1500 2000 books a month that's brilliant of course the profit is much bigger because you have to run the show but yeah again you have to be more accountable to the process so i went on that sort of discovery to like how do you sell more books how do you run ads where do you promote it how do you lean magnet how do you build a newsletter yeah you teach yourself because that information is already out there so all you have to do actually is go and scoop it up and learn and teach yourself and just go okay that's how i built something rather than saying well i've got a book yeah nobody's bought it and i've not made any money out of it yes that's a cop-out like i always say like especially in the year 2025 something you don't do doesn't work yeah don't complain fix it yeah yeah absolutely I like that so yeah so it was an interesting journey because I've gone from very much picture heavy books being a very much daily illustrator daily designer yeah to know books which are very much about you know the philosophical ways of the senior industry seeing art sort of places in the industry and I'm so going back around again one more time for my several book which I'm writing in the open through having conversations on my podcast and i've titled it daring creativity daring forever because everything that i'm describing especially with the theme of daring creativity it's not about jumping out of planes and doing something really ridiculously stupid yeah it's actually doing the first steps that was the one thing that you wish you would have regret never starting and everything i feel like i've done even with breaking myself in a plan out or doing whatever everything was worth doing because it's about the thinking like i will not

34:38Claire:push myself to go that one step forward so is it about how to say if i was if i was listening to this and was thinking i've got loads of projects i want to start this is like not so much practical advice on how to start it but reasons how to get over the mindset of into starting it does that

34:53Radim Malinic:make any sense yeah it does i mean so this is the thing i feel very lucky that you know i've had a very great career in branding and in illustration in design and we've still got studio going in in certain capacity and some working with amazing clients that give us all the space and time to do amazing work but there was a part of my career where 2023 let's say three and a half years ago i realized that i wanted to be in a room with somebody different yeah okay and it was the fact that you know i remember i would become an illustrator i was proud as a punch but i'm an illustrator i feel so poetic yeah and i remember the day when i didn't want to be an illustrator anymore because i was like i feel like i've done this bit and you know being a branding director like this is great i love this but again there's more to this yeah because i realized that with visual work you need to find your fans based on what you've created okay this is this is green this is blue this is illustrative this is that some people will love it some people hate it yeah but i wanted to find the ways of how do we connect to people in a better way that we can inspire them with our voices without like how we perceive like verbal creativity how we can do all of that stuff and not necessarily need every sort of daily weekly portfolio update to show people what we're about.

36:07Claire:Yeah.

36:07Radim Malinic:So I remember being on a client shoot. I was like, okay, I want to double down being an author. I want to be in a room as someone who actually leads with more a way of like how can we inspire the future generations of current and future creatives and non-creative people and actually pursuing that extra mile, that extra bit. Brilliant. And it thrown me around so much because I was the muscle memory. The brain was used to sort of going to work. solving problems in certain ways yeah and rebuilding my career for let's say four times because i wanted to felt very confusing but ultimately it gave me the idea of like okay how do i understand the next step and it's not necessarily because i wasn't brave or courageous yeah because i could really understand what i call the self-driving car that we've been given in the way of what it does and what i tell me about that what you mean by the self-driving car So driving car is what everyone's got, which is our bodies, right?

37:01Radim Malinic:Yeah. So we've been given this biological truth in a way of how do we operate. So we understand the words like fear, courage, confidence, anxiety as a sort of dictionary meaning.

37:14Claire:Yeah.

37:15Radim Malinic:But everyone's got their own very personal sort of explanation of what fear means to them. Some people are fearless, some people are not fearful. And it's just a difference. but it's more about how do we understand what we've been given from a biological perspective in a way that how does it make me feel and how do I work with it because having done counseling for fear and anxiety you get told after six months it will never go away and you're like what you could have told me on a day one and I would have left but if that happens after six months it'll never go yeah I thought I could get myself rid of fear yeah she's like that doesn't happen I'm like

37:50Claire:okay but anyway but living with it rather than exactly how do you manage it so so my idea of

37:57Radim Malinic:like daring and creativity again we've got dictionary explanations but again everyone's differently daring yeah everyone's got a different idea of creativity we've got societal understanding

38:07Claire:and we've obviously our own personal understanding yeah so what i want to do with the book and

38:11Radim Malinic:i've been looking after sort of looking through the concepts is the fact like the self-driving car is what we all have right it's we believe in it you know it can it can blink it can digest on its own it can breathe you know like it does all of the things i don't actively have to think i need to breathe now exactly our bodies do a lot on their own but then we step in with our sort of soul and our minds yeah and we could have tried to sort of take that car or that vehicle into the first gear because we're learning how to do it so it takes us many years to actually realize how to speak how to sort of operate it obviously how to you know express ourselves find out the ways of doing things then you're right okay maybe i can take into second gear but then you have to sort of accept who's driving yeah and if it's confusing for anyone i'm sorry i don't think we make personal sense i'm sure it's like okay so then who is the driver so like again i talked about the topics of self-acceptance yeah and resilience like how do you move around and how do you understand the world around you and how the world understands you yeah and making peace with who you are and doubling down on this because i don't have a problem to tell you all of my experiences of feeling the lowest of the low yeah because i don't have to hide the truth yeah like it's cleansing it's soothing it's liberating because i don't have to remember who i talk to anyone like this is the way of self-acceptance you know like this is my accent this is who i look this is no yeah it's all that and i'm enjoying it now of course like you try to emulate anybody else when in your 20s thinking am I successful that's good looking whatever so we create ourselves a lot of false narratives until we realize you know what I'm good with who I am now what's this step three and that's curiosity like where can this take me I want to be really seeing like I've got certain amount of time if you're lucky we don't know how much time you've all of all of us absolutely have why would I wait for anyone's permission to see where I can go and And on that journey, you go to step four, and that's gratitude.

40:09Claire:Yeah.

40:09Radim Malinic:Realizing, oh, my God, I'm doing this. This is it. I can be sat here doing a podcast. I can be making books. I can experience London for all the colors and smells and food and everything. I can share this.

40:20Claire:Yeah. And really enjoy it because we will always get sunny weather.

40:25Radim Malinic:We always get clouds. We will have the 50-50 in our lives. But it's like, how do you enjoy both of these sites and appreciate what we have? because you can't avoid having bad days you can't avoid having bad experiences you know like we still have the wipeouts that you know you can be as prepared as possible but it's the element of self-acceptance and resilience to realize this is going to happen and i'm ready for this so just like with the elements of let's say mindful breathing or meditation what you do and you're preparing yourself for the element when you need to tap in into that side of your brain going we're ready for this we can deal with this so hence why going back to the beginning of my story of like finding the self-accountability in a creative process and realizing that it's only you who can drive yourself to your destination or on your journey because despite having a lot more empathetic sort of creative industry a lot more sort of clued up industry no one's still waiting for not to make your career happen like it's all about you stepping up and doing it everyone's got

41:27Claire:I don't mean to say that everyone's selfish to a certain degree, but you are really, it's like if you want to go out and do something, you kind of have to make it happen. No one's going to say, he's a three options. One of them is being an author. Which one do you want to choose?

41:39Radim Malinic:I have given those copies to quite famous people in our industry. You know, just because you give a copy of a book to somebody and they like you and they like your book, it doesn't mean they're going to change your career because I am the only person who can change my career.

41:54Claire:Yeah, definitely.

41:54Radim Malinic:So, yeah, I just found that everything is so liberating in a way that, especially by thinking about what is your voice, what do you stand for, what's your philosophy, makes you almost bulletproof in the company of anyone. Because in a way of name dropping, I have to signpost it. I'm aware of what I'm going to say. Go on, I'm going to say that. But I was signed at Paradiso Festival in March with David Carson.

42:18Claire:Yeah, okay. In Mexico.

42:20Radim Malinic:Yeah, in Mexico, thanks to Hector. and I was sat with David Carson for a few days on and off, just chatting. And I don't like what David Carson does in a way. I'm not a fan. I like what he does, and I love that he's had a career as illustrious as he had, but it's not my blood type. I appreciate it, but I don't fall in love with it. But I'm chatting to him, and I feel like we are equal, even though I haven't got a 40-year career. I'm challenging him on certain views of how he's been perceiving his career and his visual career.

42:51Claire:Yeah.

42:52Radim Malinic:And I'm there sort of talking about how verbal philosophies can inspire people in the age of prompts and creativity per se, which is more automated. And where do we go as creatives in this sort of complicated world? And he says, oh, yeah, you see, lots of people tell me they enjoy my masterclass and they are not very creative. And I'm like, there we go. Because you told them your words. You told them how you work. You told them how you think. And I feel this will become a lot more important, especially in the next few years, when we're really trying to find what voices people have in this industry and where we're going with this as a society.

43:26Radim Malinic:Because we've taken out that sort of self-taught design element. You know, like you can be brilliant by using AI. You can be brilliant by using all the filters and presets. Like the complicated stuff we spend hours, sometimes 18 hours a day.

43:40Claire:You can make stuff look brilliant, but it's still not.

43:42Radim Malinic:that's quick that's done quickly so you can actually focus on how to use your time wisely on the other side of the work but we haven't worked it out because we are talking on instagram and whatever linked in like you know trying to form do a template so it's more like how do you elevate yourself as an individual and how do you dare forever to actually be someone who is curious about the work and how do we use creativity in the next few years and beyond yeah because because I feel strong voices will lead and you don't have to be a strong person or somebody exceptional to have a strong voice it's more like how much do you care about where you're heading and how much you care about where we're all heading by actually creating this so they're in creativity and therefore it was going to be a sort of a platform like a community platform and there's quite a few of them now but I want to build a community where people can come and share and realize we are equal.

44:37Radim Malinic:There's nobody, like, I'm sure for your own podcast or from mine, I realize that we are so equal in this game. Everyone's got their little something. We are all equal in creativity and life. And that's the exciting part because you can speak to whoever of an illustrious career and you realize, yep, still a human.

44:57Claire:Yeah, totally. They've got all of those stories.

44:59Radim Malinic:And I think the more we talk about the fact that that's who we are, the more it's going to be easier for us to actually move on and accept what we do and accept the change and find ways of how to use it to all of our benefits and not necessarily worry about where our careers are because being able to adapt change and and embrace the future is one of the gifts well that's it i feel

45:22Claire:i mean sure everyone feels that things are changing more quickly than ever so i'm spending a lot of time at the moment looking at what's going to happen and what's going to happen where they are and stuff like this so this could be like a guide for how to maximize all that kind of stuff i think find your own way rather than maybe maximize i think it's just not being scared

45:40Radim Malinic:about our first step because ultimately i'm not helping anyone to do anything apart from the fact to realizing that you're gonna feel lots of physical reactions before stepping on the stage before presenting your pitch before presenting your work our brains don't distinguish between been sharing work with thousands of strangers and the same tooth tiger like our brains are still hardwired yeah to recognize fear and uncertainty so it we are still working with those ancestral sort of you know systems yeah we've got in our brains but it's more about the fact to realize that we are equal yeah just because someone's done something somewhere somehow that didn't make anyone doubly you know qualified to do it it's more that someone decided you know what i'm gonna I feel some pain of basically wanting to become an author full-time or full-time consulting editor or whatever like work in a totally different field for a while and that comes with uncertainty because every change requires something of you if everything was super easy I mean how quickly will we get bored can I take you back to what you just said about consulting

46:43Claire:editor so that's something you're doing as well working with other people on their books I have

46:47Radim Malinic:yeah so through giving myself a status of someone who writes a lot of books really quickly I have been helping people write their other books. So it's quite, I have to say, satisfying in a way because I spent most of my creative life being a visual storyteller. Finding the ways of how we can elevate the visual side of things of brands and advertising campaigns to a level where people find it sort of exciting, interesting, and sort of something they can potentially even love. And from my written work, I never had a problem putting words to paper to the point where I now get approached by lots of people in our industry.

47:25Radim Malinic:And it's not something I even ask anyone to say. I haven't put it on my LinkedIn profile.

47:30Claire:It's that sort of brand tone of voice type thing you get approached on.

47:33Radim Malinic:No, I get literally, people will always want to write books. Like there's a medium of the book that people still love. So there's lots of people like consultants, designers, design leaders who want to have a book. And most of them realize that one way to get a book is not to wait and ask someone to say, can you write a book for us? They start. and then realize, oh, there's a guy who's written quite a few books waiting to help and asking for help. And it's fascinating. It's such a liberating work because I've made everyone rewrite their books at least three times now.

48:03Claire:Really?

48:04Radim Malinic:Because it just produces better work. Because it's, again, all of it's driven by conversations, by understanding what people really mean because you will start writing a book because you think you should be a particular voice. But your voice inside gets sometimes sort of trampled on because you want to make yourself be a pseudo philosopher or something yeah okay or pseudo sort of consultant sort of extraordinaire but it's actually what you want to write is within you so some of the processes we do one of quite important people in the industry i'm having a weekly conversation with him and and capturing the book that way interesting because people say you know to write a book i never have time or money yeah you always have enough money and you know it never have enough time yeah because you can ease the process and again it's something about being internally curious of like how can we get something out of people yeah people love books everyone wants to have a book i mean i haven't met a person who say i don't want to have a book there's even people saying i would like to write okay maybe the first but yeah i think it's something in the industry that it feels like a sort of validations of who we are yeah completely it's a brilliant thing to do yeah and so when you realize that actually you can get people to be who they are what they want to be how they can create it as a business development tool or aid tool like something that sort of helps them with their sort of regeneration or whatever or create it into a book consultants who the big cheese consultants they do all the time they write books and somebody else writes the books whatever it's in the industry we still think that you know thames and hudson should come and knock on our door and say you know you've got 500 pages and the heaviest book on the planet can you fill it with some stuff like that that barely happens yeah so it's more like how do you get yourself out there and how to start using almost like i would say sort of advanced processes is rather than shutting someone away for two three years to write a book and then they realize

49:52Claire:it's but that you're not good enough yeah that's always a terrifying thing to do is that if you gave someone two years to write a book and then said go to a room and do it that's a scary way of doing it but break it down to an hour a week or something i mean it's i mean this is the bit

50:04Radim Malinic:because i mean we are podcasting here i mean lots of people are using their voices and yeah lots of people have a lot to say but we haven't been training our brains to formulate in the best possible way and yeah it's so fun to having gone through this process so many times and always trying to write a book that as short as possible and almost coming up with 35 40 000 words like i want it shorter shorter shorter just to make you more digestible and more easy and less fluffy and make you more hard-hitting because it's the shortest books that sell the most yeah people

50:38Claire:actually read them and absorb it and yeah you can review it in 20 minutes and it costs you eight

50:42Radim Malinic:pounds so that's why a book like for by paul arden books were so successful because they were easily digestible and people love them yeah because they can finish it in a day and take it off and go like

50:55Claire:yeah i've learned something so what's next what's your next plan after the book have you got any

50:59Radim Malinic:other stuff coming up i want to do a book tour next year i want to publish the book yeah i've got some chat going to australia and do a few places and always do lots of talks in canada i think i want to do that that's a really good idea be finished maybe this time next year sort of maybe bike with bike by december 2026 then i want to take a bit of a sabbatical for like just ride my bike for like six months and i just forget about it all of it that's what i'm dreaming about doing because that sounds lovely yeah i mean hopefully i'll do it i'm sure you will but i've got four other books sketching my phone you know i mean there's there's always more books to write but this time I'm really turning this concept of the book into what I call auxiliary products like workshops talks yeah like a card game like like how to create some self-guided workshops obviously you have a good podcast already and and I really want to build a community space where people can just come in and find the right books find the right talks find the right sort of wealth of information of how do you go after that thing that you really want because a physical community space or it's online space but you never know where that can yeah i mean we have even running the pilots for sort of creative dinners and yeah in contact with Adobe about sort of next year doing sort of in-person events brilliant the quote that i carried close to my

52:18Claire:heart is from a musician called Chris Cornell yeah and he was once chatting to Jules Holland

52:24Radim Malinic:on the old Jules Holland show whatever it's called yeah and they were chatting and Chris said like as if I knew him right the one buddy Chris said and Chris said look once upon a time when I was young I was into music I was practicing all the time I thought if I was the best musician I could be then the best band in the world would come and beg me to play for them and he said except that never happened of course so we had to create our own band and that was Soundgarden yeah I realized okay so I never waited for the best branding studio to come because they never come in so I starting my own there was no publishing contract so i had to start my own i got bored of pitching for podcasts so starting my own yeah i started a coffee company which we could have we potentially oh yeah tell me about that no no no i've just i didn't want to wait for the best coffee company in the world to change their brand not to do their branding for them so i started my own

53:14Claire:what's different about your coffee company though why is it so good

53:18Radim Malinic:i suppose it's so good that's an interesting question um we want to do it as a creative company i don't know some might sound a bit cliche i mean it's already inspired by creatives and creative processes but it's more like how do you create it as an inclusive space and potentially the creativity and inclusiveness into creating products for various hospitality projects it looks great it looks really thank you yeah i did it with julie solstrom who she's done incredible work on this it's like it's just finding a fantastic coffee and i'm looking at it from the mindfulness perspective of like how do you supply studios with really good coffee yeah that promotes the time away from deadlines or rather than sort of chugging diesel on the deadline then you'd be like oh this is just too much you know yeah so it's more about like the awareness because everyone says like oh so what is your usp i'm like well i mean it's talking to creative industry i'm converting people like myself who was once coffee ignorant yeah into someone who says okay no what's your workflow that's the worst thing to say ever yeah but it's more about the fact like how you can match it to their lives yeah how you match your life but also actually drink better coffee that doesn't give you the jitters and kind of makes you appreciate the

54:28Claire:flavors because when i drank chastain i don't know much about this i'm gonna no i mean there is

54:33Radim Malinic:there's something i remember drinking but a sampling a blue mountain average is one of the

54:38Claire:most expensive coffee in the world or like one of the highest yeah i was like what is this all

54:43Radim Malinic:of a sudden you're like you're expecting something to taste so different in one way and it surprises you because it's something completely different you're like i was never expecting this so it's just that appreciation for being able to create these things as well yeah so yeah it's yeah it's the fact because i speak to lots of studio founders who never have time to start their own projects they're like i speak to pablo from mucho it was like well we know the best olive oil producers we know the best producers and that we never create our own brands because we're too busy for working for others yes and this is also stems back from me wanting to be in a room with somebody else and actually stop that noise let my staff go and just sort of wind down the busy part of my studio and saying i'm here to pursue what's the second part of my life by being daringly creative or daring forever in a way that i would have regretted not making that change that change wasn't always pretty it's working now but it's about doubling down on that decision and going you know what i will never regret this because there is a way to find something new so i didn't have an idea i would be doing you know consultancy work on yeah books but it feels so right because i've already done those previous steps and it opens lots of the new possibilities of actually working with other founders and other sort of networks of food innovators.

56:05Radim Malinic:And it's just my life is really interested in colourful because once upon a time, I'd be obsessing about illustrating and unrealistic watering on an ad campaign. And now I'm just talking to people about something completely different. And it's just like, it still makes me feel alive. And that's the best deciding part.

56:21Claire:That's amazing. So I always ask the final question, what's your top tips for juniors coming into the industry today? but that's an amazing just actually going and doing it and that's making it all happen but is there anything more you want to add on that sort of side of it i mean it's that realization

56:35Radim Malinic:that when you ask yourself what you really want and it's really hard to know what you want when you're junior yeah it's just like focus on the first thing in front of you what is it that you want and and explore it and say like what would i what i become like what makes me really excited because you might be something at that time without having a future prospect, right?

56:57Claire:Yeah.

56:57Radim Malinic:Of course, I wanted to be a rock star when I was a musician, right? But I was just being deluded. I remember how much of that guided my design career because I could have conversations with labels, musicians, producers, about how their music is created and how they can transfer into this. And then you sort of find out more of my information about lots of other things. and when you're curious about these things you have wider conversations and you realize that those are richer and people will more likely to work with you because you understand them already rather than going i don't know who you are i don't know how to do this will you pay me of course i'll do it you know and it's just like it's being excited about things that are in front of you because the world will always be scary in some way yeah there's always a reason not to do it now but there's so much out there that if you're excited about particular japanese culture and and pencil cases i'm sure there's a joke for life in that particular yeah but then you realize you can take it to something else you know you can and i think it's just those elements when you slow down and actually savor that moment of like i'm doing this now then it will go on to something because i've had many conversations with people about the fact like the world makes you feel yeah and i'm very very careful of saying like how the world's telling you but how you can make you feel from the world thinking i need to become something now yeah like there's people with tens of millions of youtube followers or hundreds of thousands of instagram followers and you've got your 20

58:27Claire:followers and you're thinking is the life over yes it's just like those people on totally different

58:33Radim Malinic:trajectories there's some there's totally somewhere else and it's just like being able to savor every day and learning something new and thinking maybe you know like trying to identify the new doors to open that's the best part of doing this because you do it every day is only

58:50Claire:no we only have every day once yes it's just like how do you get the most out of it and someone

58:56Radim Malinic:once said or maybe i've seen this online somebody said like i'm asking myself every morning how can be the best day of my life ever wow and i'm thinking that's a pretty cool way of actually thinking like how can I make my day the best possible would this be the best so far yeah absolutely I love that so how can I have the best creative experience by learning new tool or just trying something new or yeah adding something to my meal or just exploring stuff because

59:21Claire:then you've got vision for life really that's amazing advice I love it Radim thank you so much I just stole it from someone that's definitely fair enough thank you thank you so much for coming on the podcast I've really enjoyed it it's been amazing thank you so much for having me I've

59:35Radim Malinic:fun of your show so it's nice to be sitting here with you today.

59:38Claire:Thank you very much.