166. Why 99% of Creatives Will Be Replaced by AI (and How to Survive) ft. Matthew Encina

31:19Matthew Encina:me because in my new place i want to make a table like a sort of little table for my plants to be able to be above the railing because it's like blocked so there's no light that's like piercing through like here on our 505 so i mean i think i'm just gonna be living on youtube man i've never built something in my life like ever like literally ever you're gonna woodwork i mean you made this table i did i did make this table i did make this ikea things are a little easier for me to follow I feel like this is one that I'm going to have to watch some YouTube videos on. But man, YouTube's taught me like so much in life.

31:51Matthew Encina:I learned how to drive stick on YouTube. Wow. Yeah. This one guy had like an FRS and I was like, this is the car that I'm going to try to buy. I'm going to save up. And I was learning from this random guy on YouTube. I'd be in my room. My mom's like, what are you doing? I'm like learning how to drive stick. Just trust the process. Okay, wait, how can I make this damn table? What do I need to do? Is it like, how hard is this going to be for me? It's not. The hardest thing is just the objections in your mind, right? Just the stuff that you're telling your mind that you can't do. It's all mindset.

32:19You can build a table? I can build a damn table? Come on. I mean, it could be so simple, right?

32:24Matthew Encina:Just like some two by four. Yeah, you could just get a two by four. You can get some cinder blocks to prop it up and then just put it on there and done. Man, now you're talking. Right? Simple. I like the way you say it. How would Matthew Encinas, though? Yeah. What do you think about designing a cool table? Because that's boring. That's what everybody's doing. Those cinder blocks, I see them all the time. We got to zag when they're zigging. Yeah, that's right. How do I zag? you can start there start with the easy thing uh no i mean uh i would just sketch up stuff you know i think about like what is the context he can draw too bro see this is unfair he can't draw my sketching is not great you know that's bullshit because i've seen it it's so perfect i can't draw those lines like you man i see you just start going i'm like dude this is ridiculous but yeah maybe you just start with the drawing okay i'll start a little drawing it'll be stick yeah yeah yeah i mean once you i think the first thing is just starting because once you make one thing then you realize oh that wasn't so bad and you'll make something a little bit harder like oh what can i do like i'm going to learn how to use a different type of uh fastener to put this together like maybe the first one there's no glue or no screws maybe the next one is like okay let me build some legs for this and figure out how i'm going to screw this together so there's plenty of just basic woodworking stuff that you can find or just fun diy projects that other people have done on youtube that's a great place to learn and then the next level after that i think is just studying things around you right so like once you have some basic knowledge of how things are put together then you have the knowledge to be able to start to reverse engineer other things so you could look at a bookshelf that you have over there and you see like oh how is that fast and well you have a steel wireframe cage that's holding up each of the each of the parts and then you have all these fasteners that are screwing into this composite wood that are making up the shelves it's like okay now i know how somebody else might build it then you could start thinking about how would i build that same thing so reverse engineering and just being curious about stuff i think will really help you get more comfortable and confident because um you know i learned from scratch from youtube university and then just trying a bunch of stuff but now that i've learned some stuff now i'm always like i'm at a coffee shop i'm looking at the tables like hey man what do you want to order yeah i feel like people might think i'm weird because i'm like crawling under the table and taking photos yeah like weird stuff like oh how did they join this table because it's such a cool table and then you know i'm literally under a table at the coffee shop taking a photo and they might think I'm crazy, but it's okay because I'm just collecting ingredients for things to use later.

35:06Have you always been curious like that since like you were a kid? You've always just kind of wanted to go deeper and really understand how things work? Yes. I'll give you a story. I think I was maybe four or five years old. And I think when you're a young kid, one of the toys that is pretty appealing to you is just like some kind of race car track thing, right? So I've always as a kid I wanted just like a cool race set and then these little cars that you can control with a remote so I got it maybe it was for Christmas or birthday I don't really remember that and there are these tiny little cars and probably about after a month of playing with it I got bored as kids do and then I was just fascinated like how does this car work and so I went to the garage much took my dad's hammer and I busted the thing open and then I found this cool little motor inside that I was like how does how is this powered and then I remembered the battery that was used there and I was just like contacting the uh parts to the motor with the battery and it was turning this thing and I was more fascinated with the little motor inside than the actual car and that I can't even tell you what color the car was, but I could tell you what the motor looked like, you know, and that was so fascinating for me.

36:27So I think since I was a young kid, I was always like that. I'll get bored of something. And then it's like, what's the layer deeper here? What can be more interesting out of this situation? And I've always liked to reverse engineer stuff.

36:39Matthew Encina:How do you think you build confidence in your creative work? I know you've been doing this for so long, but in the early days of it all, did you feel confident in the things that you were making? I think so. Yeah, I think for the most part, I've felt confident. And part of that is external praise, right? Like having really good teachers and community, parents, family around you, nurturing that where it's like, oh, I drew this Ninja Turtle. And they're like, oh, that's awesome. Right. and then going through high school, taking art classes there. It's like, wow, that's really good. You're in the art show.

37:16So I think early on, it was definitely a lot of external validation, which was good for me. And then at a certain point, it made me complacent because it's like, okay, I keep getting A's, so I don't have to try any harder, right? So right after high school, I went to Art Institute which was I just went there because all of my friends were going there all my art friends it's like cool I'll go there I looked into art center but it was too intimidating for me I was like wow everybody's too serious here I don't I don't want to do that like I don't I took a summer class there when I was in high school I was like I I'm not ready for that that's not interesting so then I went to art institute and very quickly I found out like oh certain classes are super hard No one's praising me.

38:09Like, that's a C. That's not a good grade. This teacher's really hard on me. So I started to level up a little bit there. But then pretty soon, again, I got pretty complacent. It's like, okay, A's, like, this is too easy. And I was getting bored at that point. It's like, oh, this is supposed to be my career. This is kind of boring. Luckily, I had a few instructors there who were ArtCenter alumni, and they kept pushing me. They're like, this is great, but I think you can do better. I think you're too good to be here. Even though you're in my class, I think you should be trying to go over there.

38:46You should go to Art Center. So they're pushing me. So probably about a year into me being at Art Institute, I just felt that complacency. I felt pretty bored about what I was doing. And I felt like I've hit the cap of what I'm going to accomplish here i need to get new stimulation i need to challenge myself and then i started working my portfolio finished over there and then i ended up applying to art center getting a scholarship and then continued there and then that's where i was like heads down focused that's where i was surrounded by a lot of really smart hard-working folks that's where i met chris though he was my teacher in 2006 and he pushed me a lot and there was just a lot of good triggers where I'd had the blessing of really good mentors, good community that's just supportive.

39:35And then at a certain point, it became a little bit more self-initiated where I just got bored of everything. And it's like, I know a little bit better. Now I know why, right? Now that I understand how things work, now I understand how to use the tools, what actually do I wanna do with those things? And that's when those things started turning for me and started galvanizing and became a lot more internal. It's like, ooh, now I feel like I have better taste. I feel like I know I could go off on my own and start to do things if somebody gave me a task to do or if I have some kind of self-motivated thing that I want to build.

40:16And those just kept building up over the years. But it was a challenge. Just to kind of go back to one point. all the external validation it's good for a while and then after a while i had to recognize that that was a part of myself the thing that was driving me and also detach from that because meaning like you wanted to create to then get the external validation from your teachers or mentors yeah from anybody right so that's a personality trait that i became aware of that's like well this is good in some context it makes me a good student in school but outside of that it's like well then i just become a people pleaser it's good for client work to a degree but that could also let them walk all over you so it's just something that i i recognize at a certain point in my life and i started to work on it's like okay there's that people pleaser saying yes please or however you want it jump how high like all those things and then kind of internalizing it's like well is that voice valid what do i actually want to do and what's what what do i want to make and just trying to balance all those voices in my head to to make sure that i'm serving myself first um and getting a little bit more selfish in that sense and i think that was a big transition for me over the years where i was a lot more like serving other folks and then when i quit the future in 2021 which was my last job that's where i was very much like no let me focus on me because i'm kind of done building other

41:52Matthew Encina:people's stuff that's so interesting that you say that because i remember reading a book a while ago and they were saying how child prodigies a lot of the time face that where they always used to praise their whole life and so once they get to an age where everyone kind of catches up around them and they're at like a similar skill level, they kind of fall off because they've always been told like, you're so good. You're good at like, you're great at this. They don't really push them to work harder because at five or six or seven, they're astronomically better than everyone around them. So their teacher's like, man, I can't even teach this person.

42:22Matthew Encina:You're at like the level of an adult. And by the time they're 18 or 20 or whatever, and people have now caught up to their skill level, they usually don't push forward and like kind of take it to that next level because they've never had to really get you know burst through these these like these walls and try to you know work harder and see or have a mentor that's like pushing you and saying like you're you're not at that level yet and they know that you can get to this place that you don't even know that you can get to yet yeah yeah i mean and there's mentors right things that are supportive and will push you but then there are also other external factors that you have no control over right uh so when i was graduating school which was uh 2007 i started my own business everything was really good like money was good all around opportunities were fantastic there was more work than there was talent to do it so me and my friends even in college we would get all these big budget projects because all the big studios like chris's studio blind like they didn't want to do them it was small fry for them because they were doing such big jobs so they were actually tossing it to us different different companies because we're college students but we're the only ones that want to take this stuff on so even in college or just shortly after college i did work for for Nissan and did work for Lincoln Park, did work for PlayStation.

43:37And this is all in school or right after. And it's like, this is crazy. Definitely like big ego inflating moments there. It made me feel really good. And then the 2008 housing market crashed. All the money tightened up. No one was spending money on advertising and all the big studios. They're like even having a hard time why would they pass off work to us phones stop ringing opportunities stop coming in and then realize shoot we don't know what the hell we're doing right and we have no control over this stuff and we haven't done our due diligence to build up reputation build up connections we have nothing we thought we had something but all of that was handed to us now what and then for the next many many years it's just trying to piece that back together and kind of figure it out and And then throughout the years, a lot of things have changed.

44:30I used to work a lot in TV advertising. It's all on social now. And watching the internet change everything and then social media apps change everything, watching all of those phases and trends come and go, it's like, wow, the nature of the work has changed a lot. So if I just stayed stagnant and exactly the same and did not process and push through those different thresholds, I would be left way behind and probably not doing what I'm doing now. But instead, I've just understood those are things that come with life, that comes with whatever career you choose to do. And you have to ride the waves, right?

45:09You got to surf the waves every time they come and go. Sometimes they're great and sometimes it's kind of dead out there and you got to find a better place to surf. I would argue that had the housing market not crashed, and you stop getting those calls, you probably wouldn't be as far along in your career. Because I feel like we often need moments like that that humble us and make us realize certain things and kind of put your back up against the wall and force you to figure things out and actually level up as opposed to, I'm getting handed all this stuff. I can kind of just like coast at this level for forever, in a sense.

45:49Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think what's the saying is it uh like uh treacherous seas make for strong sailors so something good right something like

46:01Matthew Encina:that i'm bought into that i might get that tatted on my head later make sure you should look it up first make sure the quote is correct taking that as bible yeah matthew and scenes no but um yeah i think the more challenging um things you have to work through in life the more resilient you become and the more you realize how little or petty or how small other things actually are right like starting your first woodworking project right it might seem like a mountain and then you do it you're like wow that took me an hour that's how it really does feel right it's like it really does feel like ever wasn't that yeah i'm about to crack my neck i'm like yeah yeah you finish it in an afternoon it was like oh that wasn't so bad and then you're like now what else right so i think you go from this pessimistic worldview where you feel like everything is daunting and it's really hard and then once you start doing some of this thing you start to crest and then you become more optimistic you realize like oh that's not so bad all these other things these small things they don't really matter right you kind of just put things into perspective things that seem big and scary before now they're just like well that was just a stepping stone like there's so much more and um i think that's the more you go through that just the better you become could you take me back to 08 when the company is kind of going under some turmoil and what was going on in your mind at the time and what were you like what were those internal thoughts looking like how did you bounce back what was it like with your team or like these are i'm assuming friends yeah like i also lost a business the first one i ever did it just like didn't work and it was very humbling because similar to you i feel like in college i like understood how to make good videos and at the time i was like i was being praised people like these are really cool everyone's no one's telling you like these aren't good and so you're just so used to like win win win win and then i'm like damn we don't have any money yes like it was such a humbling experience and i remember like being on my mom's couch i applied for like 400 to 400 jobs and i would go on trying to pitch them my company and it was just didn't it didn't work let's just say that yeah i was like on my mom's couch and i'm like this sucks like i need to yeah i need to get a job and figure out like what the hell i'm gonna do with my life and it was like such a low moment and i'm just kind of curious if you could take me back to oh wait kind of where your head was at yeah i mean up until that point it was all praise and i just feel really good about the work and then all of a sudden then the world tells you, you're actually not that good.

48:37And that was a hard pill to swallow. I ran this business with five other friends. So there were six of us. It was a big thing. And just, you know, I think when you're young and you're kind of getting into whatever field you're getting into, especially if it's you're an entrepreneur and doing it yourself, I hear this all the time because I've said this before. it's like oh i just want to work at a cool company and do rad things with my friends it's like how many that's like every business that's out of college right and it's like that's like that's the reason that's their why that's and we had the same thing right so we just want to do cool work and and you know have fun together it's like um so that's not a business plan that's not a vision like that doesn't really it works to some degree um and so realizing like okay now we don't know anything and we're not making money and like that bank account is kind of shrinking the opportunities are just shrinking and shrinking and we're getting paid less each and every opportunity i'm like oh now what and at a certain point i think i could collectively read the room and we're all feeling the same way and that's where we just had a talk he's like hey i don't think this is working out anymore we were all in this luckily all on the same page and i feel like we should just dissolve the company it doesn't feel like we could take this any further and so we all got on the same page we decided to do so and we all went to freelance and i started working over at blind

50:09Matthew Encina:with chris that was right after that period yeah oh wow what year did like how long did you work at blind when did you start in that was 2000 like the end of 2008 or early 2009 it was kind of like that winter because we were closing the business i think it officially closed in 2009 but we were already on the transition out at the end of 2008. So we're just like wrapping up jobs and they're like, ah, I guess we could go back to freelance. Luckily that was still there and it was okay. Luckily there were studios that survived and places for us to go. And I'm happy that happened early on because coming right out of school, you assume all of these things.

50:49It's like, oh, this is how you're supposed to run a job. This is how you're supposed to, how much you're supposed to charge this is how long it takes and all these things because it's just a diy thing you're kind of guessing based off of what what is told to you or handed to you but until you go work in the real world or other places you don't know any better so i'm very grateful actually that happened to me earlier because i get to work at bigger studios i was bouncing around at a bunch of different shops and i started to learn a lot more so So that moment to answer your question, like there was definitely kind of like a moment where my ego got crushed.

51:24I got humbled. And it was kind of embarrassing, too, because all of my peers that I graduated with, they all knew of us. They're like, oh, they're the hot shots. They're doing all these great big projects. And all of a sudden, it's like kind of embarrassing to say that you closed your company. So I was I got very, very quiet. At that moment, I went from feeling like I was a front seat driver to being more of a passenger. So I kind of like going to the back of the car. And I was okay with that. I think internally, at first it was embarrassing and tough. But then I was immediately grateful because every industry was feeling the pain of that market crash.

52:03So being able to have a job as a freelancer felt very good to me. I was like, oh, I'm just grateful that I'm here, right? My attitude changed. and then from that moment on I was just like the responsibility of running a business is is a lot so even that actually became a relief it's like I don't have to look at the books every month it's like I'm just worried about me I'm just worried on my craft let me refocus on just doing the work and let me go to a bunch of different studios let me meet a bunch of different people and at that point that period I grew a lot more because I humbled myself and then I was just open to more opportunities and was able to focus.

52:42I think running a business is very hard because you have to wear so many hats. It's like you're doing the work, but then also running the business behind it. And sometimes running the business is actually 70 % of the work. And so once I became a freelancer and was able to work at studios, I was able to focus like 100 % on my craft. And so that was really great. And then all these other benefits happened, which was I met a bunch of cool folks. i i learned a lot of new skills depending on who i was sitting next to because i the nature of the work motion design work would be working on the computer mostly so it's a little bit of like musical chairs it's like okay i'm showing up at this shop at this week and who am i sitting next to is like well this person is some crazy houdini artist that does particle visual effects and this person's really good at compositing and then i get to lean over and then just say like hey what what are you working on?

53:38It's like, oh, how'd you do that? My curiosity kicks in. I'm reverse engineering what they're doing. Opening up files when no one's looking. It's like, oh, how did, let me see how they broke that down, right? And learning, and that was just super cool to be able to be in those opportunities. And that curious kid popped up again and just started learning like really fast because all the other stuff was out of the way. All the other stuff that I was trying to prop up and try to make work, but obviously didn't have the skill set yet, that all went away and I could just focus. So that was a different me, a much younger version of myself, but it allowed me to just develop skills, develop network, and understand what I like in the industry, right?

54:22Because if you're just isolated in one context, it's like you only know what you see, right? But if you're able to freelance in different places, then you get a sense. It's like, ooh, I like working with this type of folk or I like working with on this type of project. I like doing these tasks. I don't like doing these things. I don't like this environment. I don't like 16 hour days. I like the eight hour days. Like those are nice, right? Or I like the two hour lunches here. Like this is kind of cool. You know, whatever it is, it's like you get a better sense of what it is that you actually enjoy.

54:53I wanna go deep on your process and I'd love to know what you learned and what changed in your process from when you were in college and you were running your own company to like then freelancing and learning from so many different people your newest youtube video you're so confident when it comes to doing a rebrand for a company like mode and like it's fascinating because you i feel like you know exactly what to do start to finish from like conceptualizing a an idea for a product or design to it being done And so I'd love to know what your process looks like and how that has changed over the years and like what you were able to pull and learn from different people over those years of from going from being in college to working at blind and then doing your own thing now.

55:44It's a lot. There's a lot of little things.

55:51and I think just to follow the theme of our conversation so far it's just like the more you do it the more aware you are of things the shorter things become because you kind of understand more shorthand like how to do something where the very first time you're doing it you're going to fumble and fail and it's going to be very hard and it's going to take you a long time to do the first version of that but by your hundredth iteration of doing the same thing you're fast like you don't even have to you don't have to think about it you just do it right where some of that change I think during that period where I was a freelancer I became very very competent at my job like really fast and I kept getting hired because you know I produced the work you say it needs to be done on Friday it's done on Thursday night you know it's I'm just I became so efficient and so good and it wasn't until Chris had offered me a position as a creative director that I had another transformation in my life, which was, okay, now you're leading the team.

56:51Instead of taking the orders and kind of executing the plan, you have to come up with the plan and train the team to do it or tell the team, instruct the team on what to do. So that became another challenge, which was articulating thoughts. And it became most helpful for me to develop that process when I started working with interns. surprisingly enough because interns would come in you know they're still in college and they're competent at their skill level they're very good I would work with them and then I would come around for critique I was looking at their frames or looking at what they animated I'm like I'll change this let's make this a little bit faster let's make this a little bit bigger and then they started to ask why Bye.

57:37And then it took me a little moment, these first few iterations, like, wait, why am I doing that? I was like, it's just, I think it's going to look better. And then I would just take over and then do the thing. Right. And after a while, it doesn't make sense. It's like, well, if every time somebody is going to run into a problem and I have to jump on the box to do it, it's like, it's not, there's no point in me being the creative director. It's like, I might as well just be a one man team and it's going to be slow and inefficient. So I started thinking about that question, why? And probably after the third, fourth, fifth time, an intern asked me, like, why did you do this?

58:15Then I started to just retrace my thoughts. It's like, well, I feel like this type is not that legible. So I'm making it bigger to be more legible. I'm adding this little bit of shadow behind to increase the contrast. And I'm putting it in this negative space in the frame, because it's not that busy here. That's why I'm doing it. And so I started being able to connect the dots between what I'm doing here and what I'm doing in terms of my craft and articulating why I'm doing those things. Because I have to, when I'm working with a designer or even working with a client, I have to be able to defend and justify the things that we're doing.

58:54It's like, hey, we made this type bigger because it wasn't that legible. Are you okay with that? If not, what can we do to make this more legible? Same thing working with interns or people that I've hired. It's like, all I care about is this is more legible. How you accomplish that, I'm really open to. But then just understanding what the goal is and levers to pull in order to accomplish those things, those are things that I started to develop as a creative director. And I think even to this day, now it has permeated into the content that I create. because I think like a designer, I try to articulate like that creative director who's trying to instruct my interns and trying to teach folks is like, this is the process because it's very clear in my mind.

59:42Like I need to get to here. Here are some steps that I can do. And then looking back, here are the steps that I actually took in order to get there. The other moment in my career where this was very powerful in my development was when I started creating content at the future. Because Chris said, it's like, you're good behind the camera. Now I want you to be in front of the camera. And I want you to teach something. So same thing. I was like, well, shoot. I'm not smart like you, Chris. I'm not a teacher. Nobody wants to listen to what I have to say. And he's like, no, no, no. You have so much locked up inside of you.

1:00:21You're just taking it all for granted. You're overlooking all this special stuff. It's like, just take one thing, teach it. it'll be good. Reluctantly, I did it. And luckily that first video, it just, it did very well on the channel. The comments were like, more of this guy, so appreciative of this. And I was like, I'm not Christo, but cool. Like people appreciate this stuff. So that got me onto this trajectory of like, what else do I do every day? Or what tasks and processes do I do throughout my everyday that I'm taking for granted? What can I explain and reverse engineer and then convey that to somebody else so that they can learn?

1:00:59Because Chris's big goal for running the future was to democratize education, right? It's like all this stuff, it's like we're in these small rooms with five people and we have all this locked up knowledge. Like why does it have to be stuck here? Even when he was teaching at Art Center, it's like, okay, there's 10 students in this class because they can afford it and they could be here. Why should it be that way? and so just being influenced by him and being around him helped me just open up and unlock all of these things and learn to articulate and give very abundantly as many secrets secrets as i can away to folks it's like this was interesting novel and hard for me to learn so let me give that away and try to teach you because i think it's it's fascinating what were some of your

1:01:43Matthew Encina:biggest takeaways from being under chris because i feel like when chris came over here man i was like yo get out your pens of paper let's lock in this was crazy it was like two hours of just straight game and then i remember after the pod chris stayed for another like at least 45 minutes and we're just talking business for another like pretty much an hour and it was uh it was so fun because i've watched so much of his content and i was like you're a reason you know why i feel like i now have pricing power when i go to these clients like i feel like i learned so much from his stuff and from books that he had recommended you know what are some of the biggest takeaways ways that you feel like you know you took from the years at blind working under chris yeah i think the biggest thing that i took away from that is confidence like uh again entering working for him as a freelancer first i was at one of my lowest points in my career which is like i'm just grateful to be here thank you i'll work really hard and then him taking me under his wing offered me a good opportunity to go in-house staff and then even train me, that gave me a lot of confidence because he was always willing to be like, hey, this is new, this is hard, just go try.

1:02:52And if you really fail, I'll come in and help clean up the mess. So there's a little bit of a safety net for me as I was developing, right? And he was a really good mentor, really good teacher, really great leader for that sense. And those are things that kind of became a part of me. And I did that for the people that I trained and that I worked with. So just having that sense of be a good teacher so that other folks can learn and develop. Because if you put good stuff out in the world, you'll just develop more good people. And I think that culture that he developed around the companies that he started definitely had stuck with me.

1:03:35And the other part, just watching him being such a good teacher, I realized, I think he told me, I forget what year this was, but he teaches to learn, right? So because when you teach something, let me back up a little bit, there's this thing called the learning retention pyramid. And it's just different modalities of learning and how much you retain, right? So if you look at the pyramid, the types of learning that you retain the least amount of knowledge is something like a lecture. If you go down there, that's passive learning, right? If you go down a little bit further, there's more active learning.

1:04:20So you might do a workshop. And when you do a workshop, you actually retain more of that. You do like 50 60 retention but the thing where you'd retain 90 of that information is when you teach because there's a difference right when you're passively consuming something some of it comes in and then most of it goes out because it's hard to connect the dots like from something that feels like a theory to something that's practical to be used when you're doing something like a workshop somebody's kind of holding your hand or you have a director or somebody that's kind of helping you get to the thing and it's like oh i built this now i feel a little bit more confident to do it but you still don't have all the knowledge yet but when you teach somebody you have to go through the process of absorbing the the knowledge processing and turning that into somewhat of a recipe for somebody else to follow so it becomes a lot more concrete in your mind it's like i have this goal for you i need you to do these five steps and stay within these parameters in order to make this thing right and then all of a sudden that knowledge becomes concrete you own that for the rest of your life so i think teaching has been a powerful tool for me to just own information and make that concrete as part of who i am i think you bring up a few very interesting points teaching we've done a few episodes we've done more than a few where it's just us and we're not really interviewing or having a podcast with somebody else and i found or have i have found that over the years of us like quote unquote teaching it we also have a cohort where we teach you know people and you start to learn and you're able to explain why uh certain things work or why you should do certain things and i've always like understood what we've taught but i understand it i think better now and you're able to regurgitate that easier through teaching and i think that's a really good point i want to ask you about those secrets i'm not great at design the man to my left is also terrible i'd say i'm one of the i'm better than one of us are there you're like so i don't know if you love the word like aesthetic because i heard once that like aesthetic that's actually something can't be aesthetic it's like a certain type of aesthetic but something For something to be like, to look better when it comes to design, are there few basic principles that you can share with us to make something look better?

1:06:51You know, something that somebody is going to be drawn to a little bit more, like putting text a little bit bigger in the white space? Yeah. I mean, I think probably one of the biggest things is just understanding hierarchy. Right. So if you look at any image, you just have to ask yourself, what do I want somebody to look at first? what's the most important thing what's the second thing what's the third thing fourth fifth if it even goes that deep and that will just help you really arrange and move stuff around in frame until it makes sense so if we were all filming this can you might look at it and be like well this surface is really busy it's really checkered let's swap out and let's maybe let's put like a like a faux concrete thing under here it's like okay cool now it's like well this is golden blue what can we do to accentuate this?

1:07:43Well, the material on the can, it's reflective. So maybe we can hit it with a couple of really sharp lights. And then all of a sudden we get this cool rim light. Maybe we backlight it, right? So now it's popping out. It's like, well, everything's bright now. Well, let's put a negative fill, right? Let's just put a black card right here. Let's put a dark background. All of a sudden it's backlit on a dark background. And then this thing is just glowing on there. It's like, okay, cool. Now it's popping out. all the other stuff has faded in the background. So when you think about design or just image making in general, even writing, right?

1:08:15Like if you're trying to articulate a thought, what is the most important thing? And make sure that that's the important thing. And then start thinking about all the other stuff and how those add up to the important thing. So I think that's the biggest thing that people don't consider. Like they might be framing a shot or putting stuff in, and they're just putting it in because it's like oh cool I want to I want to decorate this but really part of it is just taking things out it's like let's highlight the thing and then start putting in other things until it feels right and then you might still take some stuff out and it's just all editing at that point right so if you just understand the hierarchy of what you want to communicate then it just becomes editing taking stuff out accentuating the things that need to be there and then it'll be fine what are some of the things that you took from working with chris

1:09:05Matthew Encina:the future on the leadership side of things that you've now taken into mod and mode that you're now that you're now doing now with working with other people working with designers maybe project managers i'm just curious yeah i think the biggest thing that i took away of working with chris and actually just working in production in general is planning and organization understanding that things will go wrong and planning ahead to make sure that you're covered when those things go wrong i'll give you an example my old um uh head of production amy neural uh when i was just starting out as a creative director we would work on our budgets together it's like okay here's a project and she would ask me how many days of a designer do you need i'll be like 10 she writes something down it's like okay how many animators do you need uh two animators for four weeks write something down and then how long do you think the project's gonna take uh i would say four weeks for this phase and then two weeks to to do finishing and then we can deliver try stuff down and i would look over on her screen and all of the stuff that i told her she padded it all so like oh 10 days she put 15 uh two designers she actually put two and a half and extended the time six weeks no it's eight weeks.

1:10:19So I was like, wait, what are you doing? And she was like, yeah, I mean, this is what you assume, but something is going to go wrong. There's going to be downtime. There's all this in-between time for things that you're not considering because you're just raw, like thinking about the work. Like if you were to do it, this is how long it would take you. But we don't know what freelancers we're going to get. They might be slower. They might be faster. We don't know what the client's going to say. There could be a delay in there. So we need to expand this out. so just thinking through a lot more thoroughly about a project and taking it in a sense that you have your ego telling you how long or how much effort's going to take pad that and then save yourself right so i a lot of the work that i do now it's mostly solo and so it's like i have to hold myself accountable but when i do i just it's like okay i need to pad all of these things and where are things going to go wrong you set deadlines for yourself i do yeah but uh a lot of it i still require some external motivation so for me like all of my content on youtube every video is sponsored i have a sponsor for every single video because that's motivation for me i can do it without it and it's totally fine but getting a sponsor on board it's like oh there's a there's a client involved and it just again it's that people pleaser a little bit coming through but it also it just helps me stay a little bit more accountable it's like well somebody else is looking at it even though they barely have a say on the content you know they have a say on the the sponsored section but i'm accountable to somebody else and it helps pay for the production so it's like all these things just that's the real reason that's the real reason trying to get some bread that's

1:12:01Matthew Encina:right that's right it's all of those things tell me about the process for when you leave blind and now you're making all these awesome pieces of mod musings like what what goes into making a keyboard because i'm i've been deep diving on your content i see all the little details that i think most people don't think about where you're like talking about the click clack of what the keys sound like and how they feel a certain way and how there's all these different layers that come together to make a keyboard and people just see it and they think it's just probably like one thing and then the keyboards go on top of it and there's so many little details that go into it the color that you choose uh you know how it feels on your hand like how it sits how much it's raised or not i'm just curious when you think about making that first ever keyboard that you created what were all the little things that went into that process yeah i think prior to that point is just going so deep into that hobby into that niche um so i bought tons of other keyboards and studied them i went to keyboard meetups which is a thing shut up yeah i believe it dude there's some for everybody man for everything yeah so there's just this whole community of enthusiasts that you get to go and it's like if i were to acquire all the the keyboards that were there would cost me tens of thousands of dollars but if i go to a meetup and everybody has you know their one or two that they bring and then i get to try it out i get to feel it i get to see different finishes so part of it is just saturating and understanding what's out there what people like what i like and it only came to the point where i felt like okay there's a lot of metal rectangles out there they all kind of look the same i like woodworking and i like the natural material of wood how come folks haven't brought that into the space and now that's that kind of creative novelty it's like i'm trying to connect a dot that other people are not seeing that's what made me do this project to start working with mode it's like hey can we start by making a little wooden accent for your metal keyboard turned out it was it was awesome and it was a hit they started making more wood products after that that's where they invited me they're like hey do you want to just design a whole keyboard with us it's like okay i i have i have a a genesis point something i want to see in the world that does not exist and now let me figure out the expression for that so let me take some of the tried and true things that I have already learned from other keyboards, from the keyboards that Mode has previously made as well.

1:14:29And then what are the novel things that I can add to it? It's like, what if we have this whole wood face on this thing? How do we integrate wood? And it was a pretty deep exploration for different ways that, like how thin or thick can we make the wood before it's going to snap? You know, how do we fasten it and put it on to the metal? How do we get the seams looking all right and it was just a lot of refinement it's just understanding like okay the the hierarchy the part of it that that we wanted to be prominent was this wood piece on the front so everything is kind of serving that but everything still has to work together and you're just trying to make this um this vision uh come together in real life and there were so many ways that we could have done it so many things that we've explored but luckily i had uh mode as experts there where they can help me avoid expensive landmines or expensive failures because I could show them a design concept and they could tell me like, actually, that's really hard to manufacture.

1:15:30But if you do it like this or like this, you might be able to try something else. So I think for me, a lot of the products that I've been designing over the past three years has always been with an expert in that field. And for two reasons. One, it's like, it's not going to be, if I did it all by myself, it'll take really long and it might not be the best. But if I work with an expert, it's going to come out really good. And I'm going to get to learn in the process. So a lot of the things that kind of drew me into creating products was just because I want the knowledge. Like that's the thing I really want to learn.

1:16:07Like the money and all the stuff that comes around it like it's great I want to see my vision in the world but just working with other experts it's like cool it's just back to my freelance days it's like what are you doing over here what are you doing over here how'd you do that right so I that same curiosity kicks in because I'm just trying to reverse engineer stuff and work with folks that know what they're talking about so that I can absorb these things and then I make content about it because guess what I'm trying to teach it and I'm trying to absorb that and keep that information for me for life

1:16:40Matthew Encina:right what was the first product that you made for your own company when you left yeah the first the first project was actually with grove made oh with grove made okay yeah so they they hit me up as soon as i left pretty much they're like hey do you want to you want to work on something together i see you're free now they're weighing they're weighing yeah but i mean prior to that i was i was doing a lot of you know some sponsored stuff with them and i just developed a great relationship and i think for them at the time they looked at me as somebody who is making content in the space that they were communicating in that they were selling to desk desk accessories desk setups they're like you are the voice and we like the way you talk about the stuff so i feel like you bring something to the table that we don't have are you interested in developing a product because i feel like there's something there um that maybe you want to make but you don't have the know-how so it was just a nice little exchange um and then after that i was like oh i didn't know i could do this and then you know however many products later it's like cool it's it's not that bad it's not as hard as i thought and i want to just keep learning and i want to keep making things that i want to see in the world because they don't exist yet you have a great exercise for finding the white space and when it comes to a brand figuring out what makes a brand different i'd love to talk about that because everybody wants to find the white space all the most successful creators or all the most successful brands, they find the white space in some way, but can almost feel a little bit fugazi of like, ah, you got to be different.

1:18:11You got to find the white space. It's not always super easy, but you have a great exercise of like, how can we look at where our brand is and compare it to other brands and like, uh, almost like have a formula for figuring out that white space. I was, I would love to go into that. Yeah. Um, I think you're referring to one of the exercises we did on the building a brand episode I did for mode where we did a rebrand and as we were going through the process one of those exercises was to determine all of our brand attributes through different lenses right how do we look and feel right how do we sound like what is our voice out there and then taking a lot of those brand attributes and plotting it on a x y grid and the idea is to take the things that we either are or aspire to be and putting them on one end of uh the the grid like say on the x uh x coordinates on one side of the grid we have uh warm and inviting and then the other one is cold and industrial right we take the opposite, right?

1:19:20So we understand this is the range. Then on the Y, we might put another brand attribute there, which is, are we opaque or are we transparent in terms of our voice, right? So we kind of look at these things. And now we have a way for us to look, well, I think we are somewhat opaque and a little bit warm. So we're kind of somewhere in the middle. and then we take all of our competitors and we'll plot them on that grid. Like, where are they? Well, this brand is very cold and industrial. Like that's their vibe and it's kind of cool. So they're over here. And then there's this other brand who's like very DIY and they're very transparent and all of their content is about showing their process.

1:20:05So they're over here. So we plot all of these folks on this grid and then we see, wow, it's very crowded where we're at. A lot of folks are doing the things that we're doing. We need to find the white space on this grid where other people aren't playing. And, you know, we'll push ourselves up and to the right. Usually that's the quadrant that most of these things turn out to be. It's like up and to the right. We want to be aspirational, like a lot more warm tech. And that was a little phrase that we came up with that was meaningful to us or that we said in our session that made sense for us because we felt like a lot of tech is very cold.

1:20:45and we want to be more transparent because we haven't done a great job of that. The company has been a little bit opaque, but we as a group felt very collective. And while we fall in love with these brands that feel a lot more human, if I could see the faces behind the person that's making it, then I feel a lot more connected to the brand and their products. So these are more things like, okay, our competitors are not doing these things. Let's move in this space. and then we do this over and over for different types of attributes until we kind of define where it is we we want to be relative to our competitors and finding your thing whether that's personal or your brand i think comes from two things one it's relative to what everybody else is doing and then the other part is the things that you actually care about right because you could just do the white space stuff things that people aren't doing but if you have no passion for it you're going to fizzle out really fast right so some of the things internally as a brand like well we care about the planet we care about making products that are going to last 50 years 60 years we'd love we love you know old things like we some of us are you know vinyl collectors and we have like old cameras and stuff that has been has lasted through the test of time.

1:22:08And we've seen a lot of our competitors kind of race to the bottom or make these mass-produced things. And there's a new flavor of the week, every week type of product. And we're like, that's not what we want to do. We actually want to take our time and take it a little bit slower. Let's spend more time in developing these things, things that are interesting and unique to us and things that we know are going to last for a really long time. So let's shift the brand there because other people aren't really doing that or their focus is not there. So I think it's just, you know, look at what other people are doing and see if you can push away from that.

1:22:41And then think about very internally, like, well, why do you even want to do any of these things? And if you have a good answer for why, then that will help become your compass, your North Star of where you should be heading.

1:22:53Matthew Encina:Why is it worth the risk for a brand to rebrand? So I remember when we had Chris on the show, So we had like this hypothetical or like talking about a rebrand and he's like, well, is it, you know, is it worth potentially losing, you know, 10 % of revenue because people won't remember you or people don't know, you know, this is you after you change. So what are those conversations look like for a brand that's already doing well? And how do you guys decide on? Yes, like this is what we need to do. This will be the best for the company to push us forward is we do need to change something. Yeah. Well, if you don't change anything, nothing's going to change.

1:23:27Nothing changes. Nothing changes.

1:23:29Matthew Encina:Right. Right, right. Or if you don't change anything, you're just going to eventually fade out into obscurity because the world is going to change around you. So like we, the theme of this podcast so far is like things change all the time. A lot of it is out of your control, right? So where Mode started five years ago versus where they are five years later, they're a different person. They will understand what kind of products are meaningful to them and things they enjoy. They have understood now what are some of the products that their customers really like and then the whole world has changed going through the you know pandemic post pandemic where everyone was working at home and now they're not like how has that whole environment shifted and what's important to to folks through through this change and so if the company stayed exactly the same as it was five years ago it's obsolete so now it's like it's just it's more or less of refresh like so we didn't change the logo we refined it a little bit because it's like i like the logo and for some of the reasons that chris had cited it's like i don't want people to see a brand new logo and then feel like oh i don't know what that is it's like no it's the same logo but everything around it has changed so the people the container like the colors like everything has changed how we speak um what we put out there in terms of content, what we design in terms of product, all of that has changed.

1:24:54We've kept mostly everything that was good, but we've kind of gotten rid of 80 % of our catalog. And getting rid of all of that has just given us so much more room and opportunity to fill that gap with things that we actually want to see now that we know better, now that we've had all these experiences behind us. It's kind of like what you're saying. You, you get rid of everything to highlight the most important thing. That's so interesting. Can you walk us through the double diamond framework as it, I'm going to start to say that one more.

1:25:32Matthew Encina:Fuck that up. Land the plane. I'm going to land it. Here we go. Can you walk us through the double diamond framework when it comes to branding? Yeah. So the double diamond framework is something that's been codified. It's not something that I invented, but in the design community, a lot of different design practices are familiar with the double diamond practice. So the first part is you start with looking at either a particular challenge or goal that you want to do. And the first thing is discovery. So understanding everything as it relates to the goal that you're doing, right? So it's an expansive moment where you're exploring.

1:26:12Let me learn about the business. Let me learn about the customers. Let me learn about the landscape and the competitors. Let me learn about where we were and where we want to be. So it's all discovery. It's like you're gathering a lot of information. And then the next phase is define. So of all of those things, what are the insights that are worth pulling from here? Let me understand what it is that is worth taking because there's a lot of data and information. Here are some of the highlights. Here are some of the insights that are going to be meaningful for us moving forward. So now it's this moment where everything is converging, right?

1:26:48Where it's like now you understand what specific problem you want to solve. What aspects of the brand need to change? What assets or parts of the business need to change or things you need to create from scratch because they don't exist yet? So now you're focused. You learned all this stuff. you're focused, you understand what it is that you're going to be working on. Then the next part is developing, right? So it's like, okay, we know what the goal is and our parameters. What are some solutions we can explore that solve this thing? So it's a little bit more plain. It's expansive. Again, we're growing, we're exploring this idea, exploring this idea, exploring this, until we get to a point where we pause and we're like, ooh, this is the best way forward.

1:27:32We've explored and this feels like it ticks the most boxes and is best at serving our goals that we had set out in the beginning. Now it's converging again. And the last phase is deliver. So now you're taking all the things and you're just taking it home, right? You're finalizing everything until it gets out there. And then actually this process will keep continuing where you would just iterate, right? So a brand is kind of like a living, breathing thing where even though you're done, it's like, okay, here's the new logo, here's the new website. It lives out there, right? Because the world is changing, people interact with it, and then it has to iterate and change and grow over time as things develop, right?

1:28:16Because we've done this all isolated to a degree and now we're putting it out to customers, to users and just see how they receive it and then just work with that and keep iterating.

1:28:26Matthew Encina:How scary is that to put something out to the masses that you've worked so hard on behind the scenes? Yeah, it's, I've developed thick skin and I'm still developing thick skin, right? Because as I said earlier in the podcast, I'm a bit of a people pleaser. I value external validation. So when I see praise, it makes me feel good. Me too. when i see criticism oh it it usually will it'll it's a challenge when i seek a criticism and the people pleaser in me will try to understand them and address them and try and figure it out but at a certain point some of these folks are just saying mean things right or they're critical and they're just not our ideal customer or my ideal audience i don't necessarily want them here anyway right and they just don't know what the fuck they're talking about yeah many many of those things so dude i've been doing this 30 years exactly you didn't think i thought about this yeah exactly and and that's fine like i mean everybody's welcome to an opinion and i've just developed a little bit more of a stoic kind of approach and look at it or it's like okay this i just acknowledge they are right for making their comment they can feel a way and i acknowledge that i was like what do i want to do with that right and there's there's a lot of approaches right i could understand them and try to win them over but most of the time i just it's like it is what it is right and and it's interesting too like when when it comes to products specifically like we have a discord which a lot of our communities on there and every so often there's a critique on there something is broken something's not working or it's like they had a bad customer experience and i'm like oh that doesn't feel good and then i realized well this is one person out of thousands maybe more i was like the percentage is really low and i'm just so hyper focused because the person who is you know not having a great time is the loudest there of course yeah trolls are always the loudest right right and most of the time they just want to be heard and that's fine and once they're heard usually they're like thank you but yeah you know getting into it just like it's sometimes hard to to see that stuff and then i'm just learning to be better in in approaching like i've done that on the content side um i feel really good it's like if somebody posts a critique or not a great comment it's like it's just usually slicks right off of me now i'm trying to do that with the products it's a little different you're better than me man i go to fucking bat i'm like you want to play today yeah brain sends me screenshots all I'm like, you see what this motherfucker said?

1:31:06I'm like, all right, dude. I'm like, I have time today. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let me dive in on this comment.

1:31:10Matthew Encina:I ain't got a shoe today. Yeah, he's like, I remember. I'm home editing all day. I'm chilling right now, brother. I'm ready. I'm ready to lock in. It's crazy that I just took my lunch break. We're doing a two-hour lunch break instead of one hour. We're going to go through all these.

1:31:27Matthew Encina:I remember when I was at the Lakers, like with the jersey design specifically, I didn't work on this at all. I had no part in it whatsoever, except from the video standpoint. But no one's really ever shitting on the videos. They're shitting on the design. Right. Like they're not, dude, you should have shot this in 24. Like no one's ever doing that. Right. Not only are the jerseys ugly. This video sucks. This video sucks out of focus. Out of focus shots. I remember reading the comments and the only ones that are mean are at the top. They're always the ones with the most likes. All the ones that are like, this is sick.

1:32:00Matthew Encina:I buy it. They're at the very bottom. them and i remember seeing portions of the designers work who worked on it and i i feel like if it was me it's got to sting a little bit because you're like you fuck these people they have no idea how hard you know we work on this design we're not trying to make something bad and for a majority of the people by the masses it's really good and accepted with the stuff that you're doing on for for mod musings how do you kind of take that feedback constructively because I think it's really hard and it's something that I still I can't deal with it yet I haven't figured out a way to deal with a critic yet that doesn't fucking ignite my like a fire in me that's just the kind of person I am like I'm not good if you're coming at it from like a negative standpoint my approach is to usually meet it with right back there with you and I don't think that's like awesome trying to work on that but I'm curious like you know you've been in the game longer than me so what have you what tools have you kind of added to the toolkit to deal with that stuff because it's like you put so much work into these things you're obviously not trying to put something out that doesn't work great you know or isn't so thought out you're like i've spent thousands of hours on this thing i wouldn't put it out if i didn't think it was awesome right i'm just kind of curious what yeah i would say the best artists and creatives in the world all have critics right so that that comes with the territory, right?

1:33:22So if you accept that part, then it's like, okay, there's going to be a few loud voices that don't praise your work. When it comes to these critiques, one thing that I kind of look at is like, well, sometimes these people just want to be heard. That's most of the time, right? And if you acknowledge them, I've seen a lot of folks where they come in with a negative comment, but yeah, that's totally fair. Like, I get it. It's, you know, it's not for everyone. and the reason why we did these things is x y and z but i could see i could see your point and then you could see there's sometimes they'll follow up and it's so much softer it's like okay cool because i'm not i'm not trying to defend them and i'm not trying to say that they're wrong i think a lot of people on the internet they feel like you're wrong and i'm right and if you just take that part out of it it's like well no one's wrong or right everyone's right everyone has a bias like i'm biased so how can i you know how can i put that aside and just like okay what's your viewpoint usually my follow-up especially the ones that are a little bit more snarky what would you do instead stealing that one how would you change it it's like this is this is how we did it and sometimes they just don't answer it's like okay hey, I won.

1:34:43There's that, right? I won. Right? And then other times it's like, because you're letting, it's sometimes then they kind of, because they might feel dumb because they actually don't have anything to say. They don't, they can't offer a real critique. They're just sharing their opinion, but they actually don't have a critique to make it better. Critiques are good if they're actually helpful, if we'll make the end product better. And I'm actually looking for those. So sometimes I genuinely ask, like, you know, I get that. what would you change or what would you do differently? And sometimes people will give me a long, thoughtful response and it's not heated.

1:35:20Usually it's just like, no, let me just share my thoughts and thank you for acknowledging me. And then what they share is like, let me consider that. That's actually a really good point. And I do take that critique and feedback because people have spent the time to write something out. And then other times they're still kind of nasty or whatever and judgmental and it's okay have you found that most of the people are kind like on your years on the internet what from my content yeah yes yeah i would say

1:35:48Matthew Encina:like 98 is pretty kind that's the same for us too i feel like i mean what are people shitting on like dude you're fucking your your desk fucking sucks yeah this room your plants are mid yeah what kind negative comments yeah what are they what are they saying um a lot of when it comes to products usually it's out of folks price range so i was like oh i can't believe you would spend x amount of dollars on this i'm like why spend any money on anything you just say step your bread up broke boy no i don't right it's like for instance like if i'm talking if i might talk about a pen and it's like a hundred dollar pen like why would anyone spend a hundred dollars on a pen it's like you're right just buy the cheapest of everything period buy the one dollar pen yeah do that for the rest of your life or i might ask it's like so you don't spend any expense you don't spend money on anything then you must you must live a really frugal life and that's fantastic good for you yeah you know and so that couldn't be me but matt you like that mom block dude oh my god okay you know lavar ball no the ball brothers okay so lavar ball is a dad and he has three sons and two of them are in the nba but they got a lot of hype because he's a very loud personality and he's like my three boys are going to be the best basketball players to ever play and they were really good in high school and now chino hills chino hills i see okay and they made shoes and he started a brand called big baller brand and he made apparel and shoes and the shoes cost like 500 and people were shitting on him be like who the fuck is gonna buy a 500 pair of shoes off of like a kid who's in college and he goes man you just ain't a big baller

1:37:40Matthew Encina:step your bread up right those shoes sold yeah yeah they were buying those shoes i'm also laughing because i remember when chris came on the pod and he was like i want all the smoke do you remember that yeah because you asked him about like how do you deal with the haters like i'll go after him i want all dm me brother send me an email yeah yeah he likes this he likes confrontation he likes to fight i'm a small confrontation guy but if it comes at if in my dogs you know i'm there yeah for sure yeah i'm non-confrontational until i'm not right so it takes a lot it takes a lot for me to get to that point yeah but once you cross a certain line like you you will not like to see the that version of me and very few people have seen that version of me but you know all of us have our limits for the most part again i think it's that people pleaser inside of me it's just like i would want everybody to be happy and cheery and kind of vanilla around me and tension makes me uncomfortable so i try to soften that right and and a lot of the internet mob yeah i just try to pacify them or just like acknowledge them yeah and it's like just relieve myself of like even caring right it's like okay and then it's i don't ever have to look at that comment ever again yeah right what is the business behind creating physical products because i think we live in digital product land they don't cost a ton to make you have massive profit margins on them because once they're made it's done yes and i think i have such a an admiration for people who make physical things especially things that are different like you're saying you look at them and you're like i haven't seen this before in the world which is i think why there's such a deep appreciation for them but you also on the other side of it if you're putting this time this investment monetary investment time investment to it you have to come out with something on the other side of it yeah so how does that work in in your world for the physical things that you're doing not with mode yeah yeah i mean because they obviously require some sort of you know investment you're like i have to we have to make money on this to make this make sense so we can keep making awesome things yeah a lot of it is just uh educated guesses at every step right um so with products that i make uh early on you know i would get prototypes of these things so i could just test it out and then also once it's good enough to share try to put that idea out in the world and if that idea if that concept people get as excited about it as i am then i know there's a potential audience there for them for that product right that's like a good first kind of guess like testing with the prototype first so like you wouldn't go you wouldn't go mass something out if you're not if people aren't messaging you about the prototype is that like a process that you kind of stand by with these things uh not necessarily but it's it's i try to do things small before i go mass and even when we say mass it's like it's not a lot of units and be like you know up to a thousand or five hundred even less than that hundred fifty you know trying to do things as small as possible because i would rather sell out rather than having things sitting on the shelf right that's way more expensive burning a hole in your pocket but if you make something that's small and bespoke and maybe it's a little pricey because of the small run but if it sells out you're like well i'll make a bigger batch the next run and then the next run and then the next run um i'll give you an example the x-ray keycaps that i made uh i got prototypes for those i started sharing it on my socials and it got a lot of hype i was like wow you know know there's a there's a lot of interest in this and the company that i worked with kbd fans usually they put little interest checks like oh so leave your email to sign up if you're interested in this project so they kind of share some stuff as it's getting developed my project got the most signups out of thing anything they ran that whole year so i was like this is a good sign so we made a bunch like more than we thought we were going to sell and then when we put it for sale the first day it sold out like within the hour and like most vendors it's like dude i thought this was going to last for five weeks for a quarter at least you know like at the most and it sold out in the first day and then it's like what are we going to do well maybe we could just open a pre-order and let's just make it because the machines like we already have everything set up all the vendors are set up everybody's set up let's just turn it on to pre-order from in stock and then you know we got a big pre-order and a few months later we delivered a second batch and now we just delivered our third batch because it's just one of those things that it keeps selling out and the demand is really high but i'm not trying to go in there where it feels like i'm putting everything like all in right i'm not i'm not that type of player it's like just a little bit at a time until i get a sense like does this feel good um and for how long right because after a while this will probably fizzle out maybe this third batch is the last one we do for a while or it may be at all because it's a little bit slower it's like okay we're good now something you did for the mode rebrand is you created customer personas which i thought was super interesting and it wasn't just like we're trying to sell to males 18 to 35 who use a computer it was very specific um age demo what they're interested in how important is that for a brand to do to reverse engineer their ideal customer to see success and to be able to make educated guesses on like the products they should bring to market yeah i mean that stuff is helpful for us whenever i've worked on different branding projects with different clients and brands it's always helpful for us to visualize real people right when we hear a demographic range males 18 to 35 it's like that's a amorphous cloud i don't know who I'm designing for.

1:43:36But if I say I'm designing for Charles, he's 24 years old and he's in San Francisco. He works at a tech job. He's making 200K a year. He has lots of expendable income, not enough to buy a house, but enough to spend it on the finer things in life. And he's young and he's exploring with his money. This might be a person that might be interested in our product because they're trying to develop their own taste. And sometimes they develop that taste by the products they buy and they're just upgrading from the college ikea life that they had right and in their clothes like the uni clothes and then they're just like slowly upgrading different points in their life then all of a sudden it's like i could design for that person you know why because i was that person when i was 24 then all of a sudden all of the decisions we make whether it's for the brand or for the product we can go back like does will charles appreciate that?

1:44:27Or will Jim appreciate that? Will Sarah like that? So we can look at it through these different lenses. And these people are real to us because a lot of these user personas are amalgamations of people we know in real life or people that we were or people that we interviewed in video calls and in customer interviews. So it's really interesting and helpful in that sense because it just helps us create a filter for what we do. And the goal is not just to always serve them and appeal to them. It's just almost like a gut check. It's like, hey, we've been isolated. We've been working on our thing. Let's pause for a moment.

1:45:04Will these people appreciate and like this thing? And is that something you take into account when it comes to your own personal content as well? Because I feel like creators who make content on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, they can probably take that into account as well. Like we just had a buddy of ours named Sam Newton and we asked him advice to someone wanting to like talk to the camera. And he said that instead of thinking about talking to thousands of people or millions of people, it's like sit down. If you're going to talk to the camera, act as if you're talking to one person. And I feel like if you can even go as far as this is what this person's name is, like you said, age, their job, where they live.

1:45:43It makes it like so much more tangible as like this is the message I'm trying to get across to this specific person. And this is who I want to target specifically with my content. Yeah, I think it could be helpful in that sense. But, you know, to be honest, I don't I haven't gone through all of that for my own personal brand. Gotcha. Mostly I'm very selfish in the sense that it's like I want to make the things that I want to make. And I'm happy to just talk about it in a way that is digestible and entertaining for other folks. Right. And all of this is just all things that I've learned working in advertising, working at the future, making content, and then finally getting to a point where I feel mature enough to understand my own tastes, things that I like, why I'm doing these things, and understand that there are other folks just like me who will appreciate this stuff.

1:46:31And I'm kind of creating for people like me.

1:46:33Matthew Encina:That's really cool that you're creating like for yourself and in a way. Right. And I think that Rick Rubin said that in his book and he was like, I think that as a creative, you should create for yourself. And if people like it, that's awesome. He said he thinks about the audience last. Yes. That's what it was. So interesting. And I feel like most people or like I feel like you're taught almost as a creator in the early days that you're you're making for other people. I feel like I've heard that before. Yeah. And when he said that, I was like kind of flipped it on on its head. everything that I had thought and been told is like, oh, you're making for the audience.

1:47:07Matthew Encina:And it's like, no, you're making for yourself. And by doing that, the work inherently becomes better. And instead of letting a thousand other voices kind of impede on what you're thinking about or your process or like how you've done something or how you should do something because of what someone else is going to think, you're making it because like, this is the way I think it should be done or this is the way I'm proud of. And then you put it out and how the market takes it, the market takes it yeah i think both are valuable both perspectives are very valuable because i think if you create or design for an audience and you understand what what will trigger them in positive ways and negative ways you just learn right like human nature you learn what other humans like and dislike so that's good information to have and whether you're consciously using that information or subconsciously using that it's important you're like oh there's a little melody for going to the music right little melody oh that sounds pleasant to me it's like i'm going to use that because i know maybe other folks will like that too because i like it so when i'm making my own content i'm kind of thinking about stuff i've explored in the past right again like tried and true stuff in film or other content that i've seen and really like or books and lines from those books that I really like.

1:48:26It's like, ooh, other people I know like this as well. So I'm going to infuse these little bits here and there into my work. And it just comes to a point where it's like, I don't care about the numbers. I don't care about all that stuff. Like I want to be proud of what I make. And it's interesting because I don't know how other creators are, but I like watching my own work. Like I'll rewatch old videos and I'll sit through the whole thing. I was like, wow, that was a good video. like this like you're your own favorite youtuber yeah you're watching yourself on your on your

1:48:59Matthew Encina:his recommended matthew's recommended just like death set up 2024 yeah well sometimes i'll go and watch things of my old stuff for inspiration it's like i made this video like five years ago and then i'll watch it's like oh yeah yeah that was that was a great way that i said that like i forgot that i i did that you know but i think that's a good sign because i think earlier in my career i might make something and it's a little bit harder to watch older work it's like oh sure i i could have made that better like you know all where all the bodies are buried right so you can't look at that now it's like that part is kind of out of the way the technical things and it's just like well what was the what was the content about i saw um another basketball reference do you know the basketball player kairi irving i know of him yeah okay so he just started streaming and he was watching his own highlights he's like man i'm so good he's like y 'all don't understand how this is just i'm i'm really about this like i'm i'm that good he's like this is easy for me but he's like watching himself in disbelief he's like man that was great i think it's hilarious i watch our old podcast i'm like man we are just so funny so great questions we asked man we really the first one ever is like i remember someone commented on it like you guys have commented a long way i'm like appreciate that thank you okay i want to get nitty gritty on design stuff products that you actually use uh like what programs do you use to design and then like what products do you like to use physically um pens and paper because i'm like a pen snob but i don't feel like i know like i don't got the money to spend on a mont blanc What are some of these tools that I can use in my new home office to design stuff and write specifically pen and paper?

1:50:50You ever used a Muji pen? I have. Yeah. I don't have an opinion. I'm not a huge pen guy. I'm not going to pretend like I know everything about pens. But I am designing a pen. I'm designing a pen. So I'm working with a company in Pasadena. They're called Inventory. And I met them, surprisingly enough, at a keyboard meetup because they had a booth there. and they just knew like the audience between pens and the hobbyists and keyboards are like they're the same crowd they're similar crowd so they okay it's keyboard meetups keyboard meetups i didn't realize you had booths i thought it was just people showing up like a parking lot like walmart there's like there's like vendors and sponsors i see so just like any other meetup like there's folks who bring their stuff to like just show where's this at where are these happening hobby lobby type thing i thought you were just like pulling up to a fucking parking lot just like and then you guys got like a bag yeah like a louis vuitton bag you're like whoa what's going on in that i mean there's small like little group meetups like that but then the one that i met them at um was called kiblai and it's at pasadena convention center this is insane yeah so it's like big enough to be in the convention center sick wow yeah so yeah anyways um so you're making a pen i'm making a pen and so i i recommend their stuff i'm super biased but i it's cool because their workshop is in Pasadena.

1:52:11So I've been working on this pen with them for the past few months, like since last year. And it's going to release with a keyboard that I'm releasing with Mode in August. So all this stuff is releasing in August. And it's all very - Is it a pair? Is it like, they go together? They go together. Yeah, the aesthetic for all of them are the same. They're following the same kind of translucent industrial design. So it's an evolution of the X-ray keycaps that I've made before. and it's just like more along those lines but anyways um working with them it's just allowed me to appreciate pens a lot more so you know going over there it's like well hold this pen and hold this pen and write with this one let's change the refills there's 20 different refills and let's try like so going through that process of writing and holding and using a pen for a prolonged amount of time for different things it's like i can appreciate that so i would look into their pens i'm super biased how thin is the point yeah what's the point where i think it's a 0.5 i like 0.5 and 0.7 both are nice oh i'm copping one yeah asap yeah but you could change the refills right i think anything i think they're called parker style refills so there's like a certain footprint that different manufacturers will make refills for so depending on what you like and then what about like paper what kind of paper you like paper okay so when it comes because your question was in the context of designing products right yeah so i've been using this uh canson marker paper uh i just got recommended to it from another like industrial designer on youtube i was like okay i'm a beginner i'm a student what do other people use and it's just uh kind of almost like vellum it's like a translucent paper and i use um what are these it's translucent what's the name of it say it one more time can canson marker paper canson mark vellum yeah it's heard that word before vellum is like it's it's like a translucent paper like you can see kind of through it's like milky it's like milky okay canson vasum paper uh canson uh marker paper canson marker yeah the cover will be like a purple color yeah i see okay so that's what i used to draw dash this here yeah so then that that's that's the that's the paper that i used to draw on and then the markers i use are i forget the name right now but it's a but it's it's a marker i mostly draw with markers and the reason why is because i'm a light sketcher right so when i use pencils i'll draw really like hairline because i'm afraid of commitment many things in my life but it when it comes to drawing very much so like i'm not like a bold like so and i'll with a pencil you can erase with a marker you just your force is a bold line coming right out of the marker and you can't erase that so um i just learned to embrace that it's like okay every stroke i just need to get better at drawing lines drawing circles and then if it's there like how am i going to work within that so it's just i'm giving myself these constraints so i could get a little bit more confident and better with drawing and how i express the ideas and i really enjoy working with that there's something really fun about having this translucent marker paper where it's like okay this is permanent if i want to do another iteration you could you know put it on top and you can kind of draw over your lines and just keep iterating that way but i really love processing thoughts on paper same what is that about like you you write it down it just feels so much better than typing it on a screen i tried

1:55:41Matthew Encina:the ipad thing writing on the ipad not the same and i yeah yeah with the with the ipad pencil not the same it's not sick i yeah i completely went back to just regular pen and paper i'm sure there's some science behind it i don't i don't know it in particular but for me i just connect with my ideas way more and it sticks with me totally right yeah a lot of times i take notes because i know it's just for retention i might never review those notes again just because it's like oh it's already stuck here and i could recall conversations and pull up the bullet points right here because i wrote it down you know so i like that i like analog tools a lot yeah yes it's way better are they going to be coming out again with the reusable paper oh so you're talking about swipe piece yeah yeah so yeah yeah yeah so on a couple of my videos i use this like reusable paper so cool yeah it's from this small brand called swipeys i think for the longest time they had a url they changed it they didn't let me know and then i i just updated it on a lot of my links gotcha but I mean, I haven't talked to them in a long time.

1:56:41Like I was talking to the founder for a little bit, but yeah, they kind of went silent. So I don't, I had just assumed they had gone under because the URL wasn't working. And then somebody corrected it. They're like, hey, I found the link here and it's a different URL. It's like, oh, cool. And I get nothing from it. I just like, people ask about it all the time. So I was just like, go buy this thing. It's a small independent business. So hopefully it's not. Dude, your top down stuff on YouTube is so cool. yeah what do you use for the top down uh it's just a c stand and then a r6 mark ii something that's really light and you use a c stand though okay i use a c stand yeah and um

1:57:19Matthew Encina:i just have that over you use like a baby boom kind of situation no just a c stand just a c stand c stand with an arm and then there's just counter is a magic arm or something i forget what it's called is is that the one with the knuckle at the end of it i don't know no it's just like a standard oh literally just like just like we got right here just yeah yeah just like that and then i just have an adapter like a quarter inch okay to put the like a like a head like a tripod kind of head yeah well there's no tripod head it just goes right into the camera oh yeah huh yeah so it's just like quarter 20 at the bottom yeah yeah oh i see i've i've had i've had one yeah so it's straight it can't adjust it it's like once it's locked in there then you just adjust it in the on the knuckle like where i see what you're saying yeah wow interesting so i try to keep it simple it's just a nice overhead but the reason why I do that is it was something that I adopted maybe a year and a half or two years ago on one of my videos because I was like man I'm kind of getting bored of my own b-roll right it's like how many times can I show myself working at a desk yeah and I don't really want to do animation even though that was my career for a long time it's like it's pretty it's a lot of labor to make something interesting animated I'm like what can i do to help articulate my ideas that's visually stimulating and different from the b-roll that i normally shoot whiteboard bang yeah we're big whiteboard guys in this house yeah it's fun i mean i got that um from chris i like watching whenever he does his whiteboard sessions i feel like oh i can connect with the idea better because you're kind of watching this human in front of you process their ideas and you're like following along right it's like a map it's like oh then you went from here and then you went to here and then you went to here and then there's like this is natural animation right here right like there's something visually stimulating because somebody is doing something and it's almost like uh it's like when you watch bob ross you're slowly watching the image be revealed to you and it's like oh by the end of this sequence you have the answer yeah that's so interesting you you've said before that you've wanted a job that you don't have to retire from?

1:59:24Matthew Encina:And is the thing you're doing right now, do you feel so creatively fulfilled by it at this moment that you feel like it wouldn't be something that you'd want to retire from? Yeah. If I can just keep making stuff, 100%. And luckily for the past three years, since I've been running my solo practice, it's taken all kinds of directions that I did not expect, right? When I first quit at the future and I went on my own two different people hit me up the first one was Grovemate they're like hey do you want to design a product with us and that took me down a path of industrial design which I was not planning and the other thing too is a company called Webflow they hit me up they're like hey do you want to be a documentary director for the series we're doing I'm like I'm not a I'm not a director for documentaries but okay and so both of those things were just interesting new opportunities for me to one improve and work on my storytelling which is why I took on that documentary gig and then work on products because it's something new and that was my whole goal when I quit it's like I'm at my creative prime I have all this knowledge and expertise and network that I've developed what am I going to do with it if I stay here I'm always going to be serving this job this company?

2:00:44What if I go on my own? What will happen? And those were two examples of like, wow, this allowed me to explore things that I did not know I even wanted to do. I have one more for you. If you could go back and talk to your 18-year-old self, you wouldn't change the journey. But if you could just have a conversation with your younger self and bestow some piece of advice to your younger self, what would you say? I would only ask questions, not give advice. And the questions would mostly be, why are you doing this thing? And then ask why again. I think that was something that was very powerful for me as I've developed these last few years, the past decade really, is just understanding why are you doing the things that you're doing, right?

2:01:34I shared the story earlier about the interns. I was like, oh, why are you doing that thing? It forced me to articulate. But even just reflecting on your own life, your career, any things that you're doing, like why are you doing that? And part of this I got from my wife. I was working on a video maybe in 2018. And then, you know, I'll pitch her ideas sometimes like, oh, what if I do this? Or what if I do that? And she's like, but why? And at first it's like, oh, like, why are you being so negative? Like, I just want to make something. And then I think the reason why I felt that way is because I didn't have a good answer.

2:02:10It's like, wait a minute. Why am I doing this thing? I got caught up in something. Maybe something I watched, something else influenced me, or something I think is going to be a banger or whatever it is. It's just like it pulled me in a way, but I didn't have a good answer to why I'm doing it. Now I ask myself why all the time. So when I'm doing something, it's like, why are you doing this? What are you hoping to get out of it? And so that's what I would ask my 18-year-old self if I had a conversation. Like, why are you doing what you're doing? And just see where that goes, because I think that might hopefully unlock something in that person's brain.

2:02:46And I try to do that with a lot of conversations as well. Just like, why? Why are you doing that? And I think if everyone can just develop that, that's just the perfect question for reflection. And I don't think a lot of people stop to ask why enough. They're just on autopilot.

2:03:04Matthew Encina:Rock's got to ask why. That's what I would do. Ladies and gentlemen, this has been episode 165 with Matthew Encinas. If you're still here, please hit the subscribe button. leave us a comment we'll see you guys all next week peace