Ep 53 Podcast: The Crazy One podcast's biggest lessons of 2017

In this special episode of The Crazy One, Stephen Gates reflects on the most impactful themes and lessons from the past year. Dive into core topics around creativity, career growth, and leadership, exploring where creatives often struggle and uncovering insights from the most popular episodes. Tune in to revisit key takeaways that will inspire your journey and give you the tools to navigate challenges in your creative career.

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Transcript

Stephen Gates : 0:00

What's going on everybody, and welcome into the 53rd episode of The Crazy One podcast. As always, I'm your host, Stephen Gates. And this is the show where we talk about creativity, leadership, design, and all kinds of things that matter to creative people. Now, if you like the show, make sure that you head over to your favorite podcast platform and hit the subscribe button. So you're sure you get the latest episodes whenever they come out. And while you're there, take a couple seconds let people know how you feel about the show and leave a review. I know that it's been too long since you've seen a new episode of the crazy one pop up in your feed. So I feel like I do this probably more than I would like to. I want to start off with a quick apology because my schedule has been out of control over the past three months. I think during that time I've been let's see if I can remember every place that I've been. I've been to Vegas, Toronto, Dallas, Boston, Barcelona, France. I don't know I'm sure that I'm leaving a couple of things out. I just got a notification from my trash. Have a lap, letting me know that this year alone, I think I had been on 24 flights for 110 hours and covered over 50,000 miles in the air alone this year, the trips have been amazing. And these honestly have been some of the best events I've ever done. I've gotten the chance to teach at insane places like MIT and meet some amazing, amazing creative leaders. And so the good news is that we are going to go thundering into next year, because I have a have a lot of ideas for shows that are currently in the works. But the other thing is that I just want to remind everybody because I get emails from people about wired, the show is not out every week or every two weeks or something like that. Look, people this is a hobby for me. And I remain completely dedicated to the fact that I'm not going to put out a show based on some arbitrary time interval that I'm happy. You know, whenever I'm happy with the content, that's when it's going to get released. I know this can be hard on some of you, I'm sorry. But as all things that I tried to do on this show, I'm going to be honest that I would rather choose to lose a fan who only cares about the volume of content than lose the quality of my work. And that's just going to be the way that we're going to continue to attack this. But enough about all that I feel like I said, I talked about this more than I want to. What I want to do today is that I want to put a bow, I want to put a cherry I want to figure out some way to top off 2017. And I want to do it by looking back at some of the most important themes, some of the biggest issues that we've discussed over the past year on the show. I also wanted to do this because I know like not everybody listens to all the episodes. That's understandable. Not everything is going to appeal to everybody. But I wanted to make sure that in this recap, I want to make sure that everybody goes back and really is aware of what were the most important things that creative people should be thinking about. What are the things that they should be working on. I continue to be blown away. salutely floored and humbled by the insane reaction and support that I've got from doing this show. I have never pulled any punches about the fact that this show was going to ask a lot from you that it was going to ask you to be the one to step up and make some changes that nothing we were going to talk about was going to be about magic bullets. And I love so much getting emails and seeing photos of the people who are leaning in the people who are trying to take charge for their career. They're trying to take charge of their creativity. They're trying to make a difference at their company. It has really led me understand the power and the reach that we all can have if we put ourselves out there and we share what it is that we know. And the interesting thing is that I don't know that many people would actually believe this. But doing this show has also been a massive help for me for my process for my career, but it's also made me understand How this show is different in some really interesting in key ways. The first is that I went into this show wanting this to be a collection of my insights and my experiences. I initially did that because I thought like there are enough other podcasts, there are enough other shows that do interviews that talked to amazing creative people. And I didn't think I could add anything new to that format. So I decided that I wanted to use my voice in my perspective, the interesting thing that I realized was that that format also comes with another key difference that interview shows are based on a host bringing in a new person every week and trying to draw out their insights over the course of that show. This gets you different perspectives, but it also means that the host isn't drawing on their experience and their career for the content. I'm not pointing that out as a bad thing. I'm not putting it as a negative. I think it is a insane skill to be a really good interviewer. It's not one that I think that I necessarily possess. But what it does for me is it's made me be much more introspective, it's made me really have to work on some issues that I was dealing with. Because this content makes it hard because I have to shape the content, it has to come from me. And I have to try to make sure that I do it in a way that it can connect with you in a way that you can use in your career you can use in your creative process. And I think that ultimately, that's been the most fascinating thing for me is one is how it's really forced me to look at some some really tough issues. But I think it also resonates with people because I'm able to create content from a few different perspectives that aren't like every other show. I'm a working designer, I'm a working creative, who absolutely struggles with a lot of different aspects of my own work in my creativity. Most of these themes of these shows are drawn out of what I'm going through problems that I'm having at work, things that I'm struggling with conversations that I'm having with my friends that that of course is the dream. direct line to what it is that we talked about here. I lead and mentor a lot of other creatives. And I can see the common themes and struggles that they are struggling with. You know, I write and I do this podcast as being able to distill down that experience, so that I can share it with people so you can help improve yourself. And then I can also then do things like go out and teach and do my sessions and classes and workshops, and do this all over the world to be able to validate what it is that I'm sharing, and get a deeper and broader understanding of how people adopt that. It really gets to this place where it it has forced me to really embrace the fact that to be able to make a difference to be able to share, you have to be raw, you have to be honest, because I feel like the more that I've done that the bigger the response has been. So I think it's really with that spirit with that acknowledgement with that lens. I wanted to look back at what were some of the biggest themes What were the biggest things that I think really needed to be talked or go back and rehashed and not surprisingly, those themes are going to revolve around creativity, career leadership, the things that we come back to the most the questions that I get asked about the most. And I wanted to try to distill this down to what I really wanted to keep just five big themes that I think people need to be working on. And those themes came from what I think are important where I see a lot of creative struggling, and also the episodes that were the most popular over the past year. And so it's with that, that I wanted to end off 2017 it's with that, then I want to make sure that we all kind of get on the same page about where we've been as we look forward to next year and where it is that we want to go. The first theme that I wanted to talk about starts with creativity. And I think that it starts with a series of shows that I think really were I felt like a risk for me. I felt like they were a topic that I had no idea how they were going to be received. But I felt like as I went through, as I talked to people, as I looked at my own career, in my process, emotion was one of the biggest ongoing day to day things that I struggled with. And I felt like it was also the biggest thing that people weren't talking about. And I continue to want to try to push this show into places and topics for the things that we aren't talking enough about. We, you know, as creatives need to be able to do these sorts of things. And so this year, we talked about emotions like fear, frustration, happiness and empathy. And the reaction was fascinating. In Episode 41, we talked about fear and frustration to emotions that are incredibly powerful, are linked to creativity in such an unbelievable way because the really the reality is, is that we all continue to be asked to take a blank piece of paper, a blank screen, anything like that and we're asked to be able to create To be able to make our mark able to write our words, draw our pictures, create our experiences. And then out of that we have to be aware of the fact that no matter what it is that we do there is going to be absolutely will always be personal, emotional. And that a byproduct of doing anything emotional is the fact that there comes with fear, frustration, uncertainty, because of the fact that people are going to receive that work differently. I think that is one of those things where I have somebody who has had to work his way out of fear. I was somebody who could not speak in front of more than two or three people even all the way up and through college. I was always afraid of what people were going to think about my work I spent too much of my career being a mimic instead of trying to be an original. And I think in terms of working through that a lot of getting over fear is just that's what we talked about. We talked about leadership, a lot of getting over fear is just simply your willingness to be the most confident certain person to be able to say and to be able to commit to yourself that you believe in yourself enough that what it is I'm going to do, I feel like I'm going to be able to pull off. Now frustration is a slightly different part of that. I think that this is something that I continue to struggle with, because creativity also is an organic thing. And in terms of anything that is organic, there's not a set path for how it is that you're going to go after it. But it's understanding that these are going to be parts of it. It's understanding that we are people who are going to be naturally fearful, naturally frustrated in the fact that we want to make sure that the work we do tomorrow is better than the work we do today. And that that is really challenging. And I think it'll lead to the next emotion that we talked about in Episode 27, which was happiness. One of the most fascinating and most interesting interview questions that I will ever ask anybody is if they can tell me what do they actually need to be happy? That question came out of again, my own struggles for the fact that I realized that the concept of happiness is fluid and ever change Because whenever I got into this industry, happiness was my ability to just create anything to understand and use the tools that were available to be able to make a mark. And then happiness started to say, Okay, now, I've gotten to know these tools well enough that they become transparent, I can just start to create without having to think about the steps that I do that. So then happiness started to be original creations, but they were very executional then it changed to my ability to have ideas then to start to work with other people then to start to lead people then to start leaving more people then to start being more creative and on and on and on, as it went along. But the concept of what that happiness was changed. But the one constant that I realized was that I went through that process. I was not spending any time as I went through that, actually thinking about what did I need to be happy happiness became too much happenstance, too much a burden on other people. It was up to my boss to keep me happy. It was up To my wife or my girlfriend in my relationship to keep me happy that somehow it was always on other people that my success and my happiness was being defined by them, which was insanely naive, insanely unfair, and left things too much up to chance. And as you've heard me say many, many times, this is where whenever I talk about success as a choice, this is what it was based out of. This is where it came from, was really understanding that so many things, whether it came to happiness, whether it came to emotions, whenever it came to so many of these things, it was up to me to be the one that took control of that. And as I started to take control of my process, then it really let me open up and this led to Episode 47. Whenever we talked about empathy, that how critical This is because whenever you talk about emotion, the other part of this that is an incredibly tempting that is an incredible struggle for all of us is to get out of our own damn head. Because this is the thing is that to be a great Rate creative, to be a great commercial creative. Let's say that a little bit differently. But basically, if I'm going to create something that is for someone else's consumption, someone else's use to evoke an emotion in someone else, that I need to be sure that I'm designing from the outside and not the inside out, meaning that I cannot have the arrogance, I cannot have the blind perspective to think that I am absolutely the person that I'm designing for. Whenever I can guarantee you that you are not that you need to spend the time put in the work, walk a mile in someone else's shoes, to make sure that I'm designing from their perspective in not my opinion out. Because this is where so many things fall apart. So much of what we do in this community is us talking to ourselves or us talking to our clients, or a product person's opinion that is going to drive something that isn't really even going to solve a need that a consumer has. But it's that ability to build empathy, to go out and to do to try to test to research to talk to Whatever it is that you need to do to make sure that you really emotionally identify with the people. And this isn't just looking at a persona, it's not looking at a demographic sheet, it's not looking at the way your website's performing. All of those can be, quote, you know couched in quote, unquote, empathy or data. You can go blind on data, you can absolutely just kind of get overwhelmed to the point and you can spin it and bullshit at any way that you want. So that serves the point that you want to make. It doesn't mean that it's real, it doesn't mean that it's right. But I think that that's one of the keys is to be able to, with all of these fear, frustration, happiness and empathy, to understand the importance that they played, understand that these are fluid and changing things that are going to be different for every one of us. Again, this goes back to the theme of why I'm asking people to lean in to step up to look to ask and to do it because your emotions in the way that they interact with you. The combination of what are your strengths, and what are your weaknesses, the combination of what are the things that sets you apart versus what are the things that you need to work on. Those are all going to be different. And there's not a way around that I've said this before, I'll say it again, this is why they'll continue to write books on creativity, how self help leadership and all these other fluid subjects, because there's not ever going to be a magic bullet. There can be insights, there can be psychology and trends. But there's not going to be a magic bullet. We're going to continue to talk about emotion as we go into next year. I guarantee you, I have one show that I'm working on for quite a while around one of the biggest ones, which I think it plays such a key role, which is honesty. But these are the sort of things that we're gonna continue to get into, because I continue to think that they're so incredibly important. Now, the next theme, why don't think this theme has really kind of just been contained to this past year. But what it really is, is the theme of looking at an understanding, really the riff that cuts across our entire creative industry right now. And that what that rift is, is really just what is the base approach to creativity? How do we work with our clients? How do you choose to include them, how do you choose to bring this process to life. And it really is a rift between inclusive and exclusive creativity. The rise of the in house design team has brought about a resurgence and things that we've seen, like design thinking and new ways for creatives to focus on the way that they really work with their clients. And this is a very different model. Because in days past that model has always been that what you did was that you went out, you got the creative brief, you went away as a creative you worked in isolation in silence, to be able to come up with this big idea which you then came back and presented to them. If you worked in any sort of a different model than that you're labeled as a consultancy. whether this was IDEO si partners, whether it was somebody a bit more corporate, like a McKinsey or things like that, if you work with people, you're consultants, but even that word, I think it's fundamentally broken because you weren't even consulting. I think that design thinking and things like that aren't uncommon. collusive approach to creativity. And the reason why this model I think, continues to be so incredibly important is because as we see the rise of creative teams, as we see these sorts of things coming on, we continue to see that this is really the place where there is a need a desperate, desperate need, for creativity, for leadership and for design that we have not seen since the Industrial Revolution. The fact that there is a Global Head of design at a bank, I continue to argue, underlies this fact. But what this means is that whenever you are a part of an in house team, whenever you do design thinking, the old model of take a creative brief and then go away and we're gonna come back with a solution no longer works. But the problem with that is that to be inclusive to do design thinking can be unnerving, because in a lot of ways you now have to be able to show your creativity almost On Demand, you have to be able to work with other people, you have to let other voices in, you have to be the curator of that, which is why I think a lot of people, a lot of teams, a lot of agencies have rejected it because it's harder. It's one of those things that from the outside, they feel like it's muddy, it's messy, it's not going to lead them to the place where that they want. I would again, absolutely categorically argue against this. I very recently did an exercise, working with an agency who was very much of the exclusive we're gonna go do our thing, agency model, having brought them in and running a two day design thinking workshop, at the end of which it was amazing to watch them say that the information that they got, they got faster than they ever thought they would, that it was 20 times better than any brief they'd ever had. They were more motivated, more excited, more engaged in that work than they had ever been. And that they were so ready to go off that even whenever the workshop concluded at six o'clock at night, they went back to the office to go work because they were so excited by it. But that's the underlying part. The inclusive creativity model of the design thinking model is that it's not just simply about the base way of getting to a better brief, it taps into some other very basic very kind of primal psychological things. One of which is the fact that people will support what they're a part of. If you want to change your company, if you want to get a diverse set of teams bought into something, what you want to do is to take advantage of the base human psychology of what I said people will support what they're a part of, if I had gone through, done that work done that just with a client, giving the agency, a brief and a few PowerPoint decks or something like that, their involvement, their excitement, they're want to support it and really make it great would have been so much different than if they had spent 48 hours actually going through being a part of the process of contributing to the thinking of being able to put all that together. So then all of a sudden they had some skin in the game. And that that is the part that I think so many people don't get. They see the downside, having to work with clients, they see See the insecurity of having to think in front of people maybe not necessarily having the answer, maybe not necessarily having the best answer, not being the smartest person in the room. But I think you have to be able to have the confidence to be able to develop your skill set in a different way to be able to say, Okay, look, it's fine. If I'm not the one that has the big homerun idea. Maybe it comes from my team, maybe it comes from a client, maybe it comes from the agency, but my ability to facilitate that, to understand that the solutions that I need are in pieces that are scattered across this room. But what I'm going to do in terms of bringing this team together, what I'm going to ultimately do to help serve this work, that's what's really gonna make a difference. Because the thing is, is that so many times too many times, what we instead want to do is to give in to tribalism. We want to say it's us versus them. It's my creative team versus the client. It's my in house team versus the agency's agency versus the company. It's always somebody versus somebody else. And I think that's the thing that I really come to embrace is that whenever it is that all the sides lose, because at the end of the day, what we're doing is that we're putting our consumer we're putting the end user in a place where they ultimately lose, because we're putting our politics are bullshit, our need to win a short term battle ahead of what the ultimate product is going to be. Because that's the interesting thing is that whenever you launch something, whenever consumer sees it, when they go to write a review, they don't give a shit, who got credit, they don't care where the big idea came from. They don't care which side of the table came up with that. They don't care what compromises you made, how many conference calls you're on, all they care about is the reality of what's in front of them. What are they using, what are they experiencing? And that is a hard, cold truth that too many of us forget. Because it's easier. It's easy to get wrapped up in our own bullshit and be able to say, Okay, well, I'm going to go win this because then I feel better. I feel like I've won But at the end of the day, your work is weak. Your experience suffers, your reviews are bad, your consumers are not happy. So as a result, your clients are not happy. So congratulations, you won a battle that nobody is ever going to know or care about. Was that worth it? And I think that then transitions into the third and kind of final theme as we talk about creativity, which is really looking at that thinking. And really trying to remember that great design is just a visual expression of great thinking. That as we talked about the the opportunities that we have, as we talk about the sort of things that we can step up and do we have to understand that our responsibility as creatives is for more than just pretty pictures and nice words and things like that. That we have been caught up and diluted by too many trends, internet famous designers where you can go on to Pinterest or dribble or all these other places. Put out Work that looks very pretty. That is, you know, kind of very well done very nicely executed. It's devoid of constraints. It's devoid of budget and time and research and users, it's just getting to the place where evaluating pretty, we have a responsibility for creativity, which ultimately is problem solving that is bigger than just pretty. The reason why this industry continues to not step up and not take really advantage of its full potential is that we just want to settle for design. I don't run a design team anymore. I run the creative team and as a willful change that I have made in my thinking, and a theme that has really emerged so strongly for me this year, because that's the thing is we are responsible for problem solving, and our design our words, our expression of that of that process. That is a byproduct that is the expression of that problem solving. We have to focus on empathy, and thinking and so much more for these sorts of things. Because that's the reality is that thing that remember So crystal clear to me. If you're on an in house team or an agency, if you do anything that works with a client, people will value creativity almost universally, because they can tap into that they can understand a good idea, they can understand how that makes them successful. But the other thing that I've realized is how few how rare how fleeting the appreciation of design is, because design is subjective design is debatable. Design is something that we're not all going to agree on. It's very opinion based, as opposed to problem solving, which can be very fact based. But that's the thing is that for us for our creativity, for our process in our industry, we have to look at this, we have to understand the role that we can play that I think that for me it is my ability to bring creativity into a company first and foremost, that can make the biggest difference. I can bring in things like design thinking I can bring in a consumer centric point of view, you can bring in a lot of these other things that will empower people, one of the greatest moments that I had this year. Was I was in our office in Long Island City and I walked I went to a different floor and walked into a conference room, the conference rooms are covered in idea paint, which is really just makes everything essentially into a dry erase board. And there on the wall I saw words that made me incredibly happy. Now one of the base foundations in design thinking is really looking at how do you transition between strategy and a brainstorm. This is such a critical thing. And I think, in many cases, a creative brief doesn't necessarily cover this. So if you remember, and you listen to those episodes, what we did was that we went back, and we looked at really three words that were called How might we? And how might we statements set up any brainstorm? How might we do something? What I walked into in that conference room as I walked into the words, how might we have a baby shower? It seems like a small thing. It seems like an A name thing. But that may have been one of my biggest successes for this past year. Because what it did was it represented that whenever we taught design thinking people didn't just look at it as a way to be able to do things at work differently. It transcended changing the way people behaved. And it started to get to changing the way people thought, which is such an incredible thing to do such an incredibly hard thing to do as well. But just for the fact that whenever these people, this team was going to plan a baby shower, they went to design thinking they went to trying to figure out how to use this methodology to summon your creativity on demand. That was astounding to me, took a photo of it, send it to my friends at IDEO a bunch of other places, because to me, it was such a great expression of hope, such a great expression of how you can change a company have the impact that we can have, that if I had come in and just simply focused on design, I would have changed behavior, not thinking that I would have had such a huge debate that my impact on the company would have been so much smaller. But that's the challenge is that to change thinking is Much harder. It's such a bigger task. It's something that a lot of people want to shy away from, because it feels so daunting. But in that moment, the moment where you see it breakthrough, the moment where you can see made a difference, it is undeniable. It is astounding. It is the realization that is you go on in your career, some of your best moments, some of your greatest work is not going to be in your portfolio anymore. That your greatest work is going to be in the people you can help the places that you can mentor the things where you can make a difference beyond just something that I can go stick in my portfolio. And that that is such an incredible, incredible thing. Now it feels a little bit funny, probably clumsy and one of those cases where I probably should have done a better job of looking at the order in which these were in. But let's actually transition to talk about what is your portfolio let's start to talk to you about what's your brand. Because here again, we've talked about you know, the The ability and the opportunity for creatives to influence companies like we haven't seen in such a long time. But one of the byproducts of this trend is that creatives need to be able to show these companies that they have the skills and leadership to do this work. Because again, we're trying to come into companies, we're trying to come into spaces, we're trying to come into boardrooms and a lot of other places we're creatives have not traditionally SAT. And that that's a challenge. It creates massive insecurity with leadership. Because most companies don't understand creativity. They don't understand what it is that we do. It's valued very differently. I think that's always the thing where whenever I think kind of longingly back over my career the thing that is great about the agency model is that creativity and ideas are undoubtedly undeniably the heart of the house. They are the reason for being there, the thing that are valued above all others. But on the client side on the place where the rubber meets the road. It's valued differently because it Not the main product, the company is there to produce something else. And that that's a real struggle. But to get into those conversations to set yourself up for success, you need to build your personal brand. And I would continue to argue that as I look at so many resumes, so many portfolios, this is one of the things that we all suck at. It's amazing how we can do this brilliant, finessed, nuanced, insightful work for our clients, that we cannot turn that high power perception on ourselves. And I think it Look, it's understandable, but it's frustrating. But I think that the reason why it happens is that as creatives we continue to be caught between this push and pull. The company that we are with, wants us to be a great team member. They want us to be selfless. They want us to be the people who will do anything for our team and for our company, and that it is beyond the eye that needs to be the week to be a success. Well team to do great work, it has to be about the UI. But the challenge becomes that if the Wi Fi comes at the exclusion, of your growth, your progression, even your brand, you need to understand the byproduct of that because your next company, your next job, that big opportunity that we keep talking about that company, that hiring manager, they want a strong and unique individual who has industry credibility, a strong sense of self and a really strong portfolio. And this isn't what I think most people do is that we say, Okay, look, I don't have much time I don't have much mental energy. So all that I'm going to do is I'm going to take my portfolio I'm gonna do whatever it is, and I'm going to slap in a bunch of screenshots I'm gonna slap in my articles, my words, were whatever it is that I'm going to do also because it's a hard line to walk because if all of a sudden I say Okay, look, I care about my brand. I care about who I am. I want to make sure that my success is something that again, is choice, not happenstance. Well, that can suddenly look egotistical. It's a really hard line to walk. How can I say that I'm part of the UI that I'm here for the team? yet? I'm off doing this. I work. This I brand this. I think that is just about me. It's a line that came crashing down on me too much. That's how I had to learn this lesson. It's why I want to talk about it. Because I've been laid off from to my last three jobs. I mean, shut I was laid off with my work running in a global Apple commercial coming off of I don't know how many consecutive Apple keynotes like I mean, you name it. The work that in an Apple Watch was everywhere. It was probably the most successful app on that platform. Yet, changing management, new CEO doesn't value digital views me as a very visible part of the old regime, somebody that needs to be gotten rid of. In that moment, and in the moment two jobs before whenever I was brought in to start the digital arm of a print. agency the.com bubble burst, and they went running back to what it is that they knew that first time taught me why I have to keep this in balance, why there's an importance for you to work on your brand, not just to get that new job. But on the one hand in case there is that doomsday scenario where I have a job one day, and the next day, I don't, because I swore to myself that I was never going to be in a place again, to be caught flat footed, I was never going to be in a place where I wasn't empowered, where I couldn't reach out the next day, to have the tools to have the network and have the ability to move past them, that I was never gonna let them minimize me that way ever again. And that it's taken a long time for me to figure out how to walk that line. How to be the person that is the brand that can do a podcast, I can do it in a way that is socially and commercially acceptable. that it isn't just simply, you know, look at me, look at me, look at me. That but it is something where It's something where it's a, it's a phrase that a friend of mine use that I always kind of keep in the back of my head, where he would always say, work until you walk into a room and no longer have to introduce yourself and work until you become the name that's dropped. And you can do it, you can do both. But you have to build your brand. And the other reason why I would argue why this becomes so important, is because most people will just simply want to build their brand on that cycle of two to whatever it is for years, you're frustrated, you want to look for a new job. Whenever you do that. Now it's time for me to update my portfolio. Now it's time for me to think about my brand. It's incredibly short sighted because I would also argue that building your brand and having clarity around what you want, what you stand for where you want to go, that will help you with the job that you're in today. Because you need to be able to express what it is you want what you need to be happy. We talked about this already. You need to be able to tell your manager what these things are as a leader. The worst thing that I can work with is a person who looks at me and says you tell What it is that you think I should be, can't work with that can't lead that. Because by the time I figure out what that is, the person is going to get frustrated and leave. It's going to take too long and it's too happenstance. Here again, success is a choice. Your future is a choice to find what you want. Don't accept your career to just simply be the happenstance of what people give you. And I think that was the biggest lesson that I've learned in being laid off is that no longer Am I going to be happy with what people give me. It's what I want. It's the direction I want to go. It's the thing that so that I know, with incredible clarity. What do I need out of my career? How do I set myself up to be successful? What are the things that I want? What are the places that I want to go? And then how do I express that? Not as a demand and not as, you know, a stick up or something like that, but as a conversation, so that I also have a palette, a scorecard, a metric that I can look at, at regular intervals to say, am I continuing to move towards that goal? Yes or no? So if this was something that you're interested in, go back, check out Episode 58 This was a session that I did at Adobe max this year. That was all about personal branding and all the reasons why you want to do this. And the last one for me, like I said, is to really think about this need for leadership. We've talked about tribalism, we've talked about, you know, whether it's the conflict between creative and tech or product or all these things that conflict between in house and agencies conflict between our clients and us. All of these things mean and ask for leadership. And that it's making sure that you're really looking at how do you make sure that you win the war, not just a battle, and I think especially for the teams that are the in house teams that there is this desperate, unbelievable need for in house design leadership, is I have spoken all over the world the sessions that have been standing room only continue to be the ones that are out in house design, the biggest fan base for this Show I know comes from teams that are all about in house design. And this is the place. This is the year. And this is the time where the biggest trend for us is that we've got to step up and own this role. We've got to find a way and it is, I don't know another way to say it, it is fucking hard. It is lonely. It is a seed on your soul to try to get these big companies to change to sign up to be the speedboat in front of the Queen Mary. But we need more people who are willing to step up and to take this challenge. We need more people who are willing to share what it is that they are doing that is successful. We need to figure out how do we have these conversations. I mean, I've started to jokingly call the sessions whenever I talk about in house design these in house design therapy sessions. As I'm looking at some big events next year that actually may be what I do is to try to figure out how do we come together and just have open discussions as a community around what works and what doesn't. Because positioning creativity inside of an organization like that is just fundamentally different. It is harder it takes more partners. It takes more openness, it takes more of the things that we talked about with design thinking and some of the things like that. And it's hard. It is lonely. It is something that man, when it works, it is fantastic. But on all the other days, it can just be this soul crushing thing of just trying to change something that you don't know if you're going to get there. And too often I've had to give the advice this year, that I really think that people need to go find a different company and it breaks my heart when I have to do that. But this is the thing is that not every company is going to be the one that you can change. But we need more of them. We need more success cases we need more things you can point to the old tired examples of the apples and the Nikes or the startups that started you know, the Ubers and Airbnb zz that haven't their DNA. They're too easy. We want to fetishize those but the thing that we don't have enough of are the big old guard brands. We don't have enough of the you know, the small mom and pops that never understood that thought that branding and marketing was something that was more appealing. And then something that mattered to their business. But how do we continue to push to get that appreciation for design? How do we understand that there's a value in that it is something that we all can do. But it's up to us that again, this is not going to be something that's given to us, this is not going to be something that is going to happen easily. And it's not something that that we're just going to have fall in our lap. Our responsibility has got to be bigger. And we need to step up and own more of that leadership. And that's up to all of us who are listening that are in that position to figure out how, because that's the challenge is that we will sit around and say how much we want, I will sit around and say these things. But we don't walk our talk. And that's got to change. So I thought for a while about how can I try to sum all this up and kind of one final thought for the year. And it's tough because we've covered a lot of ground together. And on a lot of different subjects. We're looking at what makes create a piece of people successful really over a long arc of time. To start to talk about issues and different things that matter. And one of the things really was that I as I continue to look at what I feel like a really successful creative people as I continue to struggle with my creative process, my insecurities, the things that I think that I'm doing really well and the things that I think that I'm not, I've started to come to really appreciate. And I think that this is that underlying theme for me for the year. Whenever you build a brand you go through and there's an exercise you can do called personas. We've talked about this, if you go back and listen to the personal branding episode, but these are called personas archetypes, they're different things we can call them. If we're going to step back and look at our role as creatives and what makes us successful, I think the two archetypes really come to the surface. And the two of them are the artist and the ruler, the artist being just what it says the person who really wants to create the person who wants to contribute the person who wants to kind of use their craft to make Something that makes people feel something. And the ruler being somebody like Steve Jobs, somebody that is a strong person that really is becomes an authority. That's somebody that really can make a difference that can have an impact on things. I would argue that if you're creative, we all start as artists, we all start as somebody who wants to create things, who is getting to understand what is our basic creative process? How do we start to summon our creativity on demand? How do we start to do a lot of these things that really is about creativity. But as we start to find success, we continue to see the trend that that success will pull us away from being that artist and push us towards being the ruler and authority at your company, your community or your industry. Whatever it is, whatever scale that it is, you're suddenly then looked on. As somebody who has more knowledge you were asked to lead people you're asked to be able to speak more and to do these different things. And that I think that where you see too many careers stall where you See, the inflection point that I think surrounds so much of what we talked about on this show is you see a few different things happen. One is that people get stuck in just the artist, they just want to be the ones who create. And that's all it is that they feel like they want to do, well then that has a ceiling that it's going to put on your career, and you're only gonna be able to go so far. Or you see people who go to the ruler category, and that they can become an authority on something. But the interesting thing is that expertise and authority is not, it doesn't last forever, and that they're in that place. And they they find their success for a little while, but over time that tapers off and they lose touch with artistic side with their ability to execute with the trends that are going on. And so that then all of a sudden, their portfolio falls out of date, their leadership falls out of date, because they don't have that foundation anymore of where they came from. And so it really has to be a cycle between these two things that we have to all continue to be the Artists, we have to continue to be grounded in our creativity, we have to understand that our process is different from everybody else. But then again, we also have to be the person who cycles up to the ruler to be able to push towards that. But once you're the ruler to understand that, then I have to stay remainded and grounded in the artist. It's the push and pull between these two things, between creativity and expertise. The ability to be able to share is such a transient thing. That's the challenge. But you have to push yourself and you have to be honest with yourself about this. What are you doing? Do you have the self awareness to even understand any of that? Because that's the part of so much of this is that your ability to be honest with yourself your ability to be able to look at what it is you're doing and to take and you know, really take stock of that. But the other thing that I want to make sure that doesn't get lost in all of this is making sure that you are taking some time to reflect back on how far you've come. What have you accomplished. This is a huge huge thing that I really suck at, I do something that is good, I do something that is work that has it makes a difference. I enjoy it. I think at its greatest, I've enjoyed it for a day or two tops, and then all of a sudden I start to see the flaws in it, I start to move on insecurity creeps in. And I'm back to feeling like I'm not good enough and having to work through this. It is a rare moment. It is a strange moment for me almost where I take the time to actually reflect and to give myself credit. Some of the most interesting conversations I have revere are with people that I used to work with, because I find them to be an interesting metric to see. Where am I at. I see how they are still using a lot of the same things. These could be the same process, the same thinking the same tools that we used years ago whenever we work together. But they've stayed stuck in that moment. My incredible insecurity, my drive to evolve to grow What it does is that in that moment, it lets me see how much I've changed how much I've evolved, how even if it was just a year or two ago how that was the way that we were doing how convinced I was of that. But now two years later, because of my drive, and because of my want the that cycle, because of the fact that I continue to try to cycle through the artist and the ruler to be able to make sure that I'm working both sides of it. I can see what's different. If you've been working to change yourself, if you've taken some of the lessons from the show, and tried to think about what can you do differently. Make sure that you take the time to have these moments for yourself to give yourself some credit. And if you are struggling with that if you just thought, yeah, I know that I've done some things differently, but I'm not really sure what those are. I'm not sure how much I've changed. Here's what I have you do. Take some time if you're driving, don't do it now. But take some time over the next week. And write down what is your process. What are the main themes or thinking or things that you're struggling with? What are the tools that you're using, and put it in an envelope, seal it away somewhere, put it in a note and put it someplace on your computer. And one year from that date, go back and look at it. Because what you need to do is you need to have a gauge to see how you're doing and to take an honest look at your process to take an honest look at am I getting better Yes or no? How do I have a measuring stick that I can look at? Because I think that's the thing for me is that as long as I keep coming back in those year intervals and looking at me, and looking at my process, my thinking the tools that I use the applications that I use every day, as long as those continue to evolve, then I'm getting better. It ultimately is the underlying reason why do this podcast why speak and write and do these other things is because for me, I know that I get comfortable with too easily. And that comfort is the enemy of greatness that if I don't do this, if I don't give away my ideas, if I don't give away things, then I sit in one place for too damn long. I let at that base human psychology of just like, okay, I've done something that's successful, I'm going to stay in that place. But when I give it away, it forces me to continue forward, it forces me to be able to need to show up to this show and other places with something intelligent to say. And it's hard. It's incredibly hard to get comfortable being uncomfortable to give these things away, to start to live in that fear. Because this is what we all deal with, is that when we're faced with a problem, whenever we start to see a solution to that the first solution that we get, brings us that psychological relief, it makes us feel better because we know that there's a solution. We've done something that works. You want to hold on to that. It's it's incredibly understandable. But here again, you have to push and we have to be honest. And you know what, I think that more than anything, That's probably is the biggest theme for this year is honesty. I have to admit, you know, look, I find it sad when people call me out for being honest. It's a really interesting thing for me. And I get it a lot, where people say, Oh, you're brutally honest, you're the only one who says it like it is, oh, you're the only one who will say what other people want. I understand that it's a compliment. But it makes me sad. And the reason is, is because I think that honesty should be the cost of entry for every creative. It should not be something that is different or exceptional. And that we need to all take a moment and figure out why. Because why are we so afraid? To be honest? What do we think is going to happen? So this, I think, is my challenge all of you. What can we all do next year to be more honest, to share more to help other creatives more to step up and take these opportunities more. To let people understand that we're all going through the same thing. I don't care if you work on the biggest brand in the world or the smallest mom and pop that there is the creative process in what it is that we go through their universal challenges that are out there for all of us. We get into the social media temptation of this bullshit, like our lives are all perfect. And that honesty is somehow something that now we need to shy away from. It's a challenge we need to take more seriously. If we recognize all these themes that we've talked about, if we understand them, if you understand them and start to figure out what sustainable changes can you make, just start to make progress, to start to be more honest. Just start with being more honest with yourself. Because I also think if you can't be honest with yourself, you damn sure can't be honest with anybody else. Start there. Let that Be the one theme. The one thing that comes out of this show the out of this year out of where your work is, is that as you go into next year that you're going to be prepared, willing, open and honest enough to be that raw to be that honest, because I think that's the thing that I've seen. It's been the scariest thing for me and doing this show was how honest that I want to be, how vulnerable that I want to be, what did I want to admit to and that there were times whenever you do things and you kind of sit here and I think to myself, these are gonna be either gonna be great or this is gonna be career suicide, I'll be working in kinkos the rest of my life, because I've admitted to something that people are going to laugh at. I've admitted to something that people aren't going to agree with, or I'm going to say things that are piss people off or whatever that was. But the thing that I've found is that the more honest I've been, the more open I've been the more raw and vulnerable that I've been, however hard that's been for me, the more support there's been The more people who will stand up and say I'm going through that to that this is something I've started my whole career. And I've been afraid to say that. But that's the thing is just try it. Start with yourself, start with trying to figure out how can you be that stronger, better version of you, because that's the thing in all of this. The answers that you need, aren't with me. They're with you. I can give you some guidance, I can give you some insights. But the person that's going to make the difference versus is going to make the change the person that's going to lead you to that greater creative work is staring back at you. I don't know what else to think because I that's why I said this is this is why this whole show started. The title came out of Here's to the crazy ones, which is the tattoo that I keep on my arm, because my insecurity and my inability to accept that insight drove me to have to physically mark my body as a reminder to not give into that. Don't get to that point. Don't be the person who needs to be able to do that. But start to figure out what is your path forward? How do you make it better? How are you more honest? And how do you really start to tap into what makes you different? and makes you crazy? I said at the beginning, and I want to say it again. But thank you. And I know that it may be a strange thing for me to say that as much as I do, but I feel like this show helps me just as much as it helps everybody else. Because it helps me exercise some of my demons talking about the things that I've struggled with. Hopefully, it lets you see that I don't care, whatever perceived level of success you think somebody has, it's something that everybody struggles with. It's something that we all try to come to grips with. And we know that we're dealing in a medium that causes this huge amount of insecurity and fear and other things like that. But we're gonna keep taking that on, I'm gonna keep talking about it. I'm gonna keep trying to push that and try to challenge everybody on the things that I think we need to continue to look at. I've got a lot of new ideas for next year. For the show for the sessions that I want to do. I want to change things Again, I don't want to become comfortable, I think I've become too complacent in the format of the show and the format of my talks, I need to change things. And that's the honesty that I need to bring to the end of this year, is that I need to take an honest look at it, what am I going to do to evolve? What am I going to do differently? Because that's the thing at the end of the day, the other thing that this show is done is to really point out to me that it's very easy to talk about the right thing. It's very easy for me to sit here and give advice. If I don't have the courage and the ability and the honesty to take my own advice, what the hell do I know? And why do I begin to deserve to tell anybody else what they should be doing? But thank you for your support. It means the world to me. The letters, the emails, the tweets, the whatever it is. The fact that the any of this content connects with somebody is more than I ever could have asked for. And it's an incredibly humbling thing. And thank you for giving giving me the chance to be able to do it. So as always, if you want to get the notes for this I'm gonna have all this stuff posted up links to all these different episodes things like that. Head over to podcast Stephen Gates calm Stephen is still STP he AND gates like Bill Gates comm if you want to have a discussion about any of this, follow me on social media write to me I try to write back to everybody that writes to me, head over to Facebook type in The Crazy One podcast like that page, we can have a discussion there about whatever this is because I think that's the other part of it is that I want to make sure that this remains a discussion. This isn't a one way dialogue, that we continue to find ways to talk about this stuff to put it out in the open to support the people that are taking the risk support the people that are being bold enough to talk about these sort of issues, to be able to shine a spotlight on them and to give them the love and support that they need for being able to take those risks so that more of us will be willing to do that. As always, the boys and I realized that there also probably should be a few girls I need to work on my gender diversity for that but the people that And legal? Well, he's want me to remind you that the views here are always just my own. They don't represent any of my current or former employees. These are just my own thoughts. And so as we put a bow on 2017 Thanks for your time. I'm always incredibly humble that you want to spend any of it with me. I know that it's truly the only the only real luxury that any of us have. And so, have a happy Christmas Kwanzaa. Have a nice break, take some time off to be able to think about some of this stuff. And as we charge out of this year, not sure where next year is going to take us. The one thing that we all know is that we can all stay crazy