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JobsWorth Express - Dave Officer

• John Hawker

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We’re back with another JobsWorth Express episode and this week I’m speaking with Illustrator, Graphic Designer and Founder of Doodle Juice Design, Dave Officer. 

I’ve known Dave for some time now after first meeting on LinkedIn land and it’s him you’ve got to thank for my big cartoony head screaming into the void as part of the new JobsWorth branding. 

We talk about how school very nearly became the reason he didn’t pursue his passion, what it takes to overcome the fear that stops so many of us taking the plunge and working for ourselves and the importance of pivoting (and knowing when it’s the right time to do it).

Dave also shares some super helpful advice that will get literally ANYONE’s creative juices flowing. 

Please enjoy...Dave Officer. 

#jobsworth #podcast #career #worklife #storiesthatinspirechange

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you Hello and welcome back to Jobsworth Express. This week we are speaking to Dave Officer, who is an illustrator and graphic designer. If you've ever been on LinkedIn, likelihood is you're gonna have seen some of Dave's work. He's got an iconic style and has done some work for amazing global brands like my recruitment agency, although I think, I don't know if that counts as an amazing global brand. Anyway, he's done some work for me too. Dave was kind enough. to give up some of his time to talk about what got him into illustration and graphic design in the first place. He wasn't actually the best artist by his own admission when he started out, but spent hours and hours honing his craft. We also talk about how Dave has had to pivot his business and his offering recently because of the introduction of AI. A lot of companies that would have used to go to Dave for his services are starting to outsource their idea creation to platforms like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. and Dave has had to pivot because of that. It's a really good lesson that businesses that stay still will always run into challenges. Dave also gives some really good advice on how to unleash your creativity too. So I hope you enjoy it and stay tuned for next week. you Dave, we're going to start with a question because there are to be people that are listening or watching this that don't have a clue who you are, despite your following on LinkedIn. In your own words, how do you describe what it is you do? It's weird that, isn't it? That's the kind of thing you should have prepped. And not just for this, like in everyday life. And I never do, and I don't know why. um the dull, very sort of succinct uh explanation would be, I'm a graphic designer, I'm an illustrator, and a sort of creative consultant of sorts for some people. The vast majority of my time is spent designing brands and building logos and visual identities and character designs and all that kind of stuff for people and their products. So it's mainly a B2B thing and occasionally do the odd daft request for people who want things personally. But the vast majority of it is building the visuals for brands and stuff. And then what I'm starting to do more and more of now is the sort of the consultancy side of things. helping people come up with their ideas because the years and years I've been doing the design side, it's become more apparent to me that the idea side of it is the thing that I really, really sort of really enjoy. And more and more people have started to come to me over the years to ask about that side of it as well as the design side. So it's kind of become this other little thing that I've started doing that I've really, really enjoyed. Yes, in a nutshell, a designer, an illustrator and an ideas guy, I suppose. Yeah, that's great. Okay. What inspired you to get first off was graphic design, which I know is quite is a broad term and it covers a lot of aspects too. But was graphic design kind of your first foray into then entering this world of then working with uh clients to come up with an idea creation and forming brands too? And what inspired you to get into that in the first place? I have been into design for as long as I can remember. Well, into art first, because I started off as a kid drawing and found that I had sort of like a natural knack at it and then just became sort of really obsessed with it and loved it. And the first comic book I ever got, I remember just sitting down and just wanting to draw one of the characters. weirdly enough, the first time I tried it, like it was the horseshit, like even by... And I probably would have been like six or seven. And even by my parents' like admission would have been like, okay, he's not, he's not artistic apparently. And they put it away. But for some reason later on, I tried it again and I just nailed it. I don't know what happened. It wasn't like practice. Just one day I sat and I tried to copy a drawing that I was looking at and it just worked. I don't know what happened between the ages of six and seven, but something clicked in my head. And then I went, oh, oh, this is good. And then I just did it again and again and again and again and fell in love with it. And then when I got into my sort of teenage years and I got obsessed with music, album artwork started to become this thing that I was really, really interested in. And it was more designy than sort of illustrative, which is what I kind of grew up with. I started trying to, I got really interested in that and started to learn how they were creating those and then got into, then did a course in art and design and started to learn. Photoshop and Illustrator and all that kind of stuff. School made me fall out of love with it entirely. So I went on to do a string of jobs that I absolutely detested because I was convinced that I wouldn't want to do the thing I loved as a job. It made me fall out of love with it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So because that's what education did, education made me sort of like lose interest in it. So I thought, well, if this becomes my life, then I don't want that at all. So I ended up going through my 20s just doing jobs I had absolutely no interest in and just tried to make some money and do interesting things on the side. So I was like playing music and my brain jumps all over the place and wants to do loads and loads of different things. And I find it very, hard to stay interested in anyone's thing for more than about a week and a half. I went on to do loads and loads of different things outside of work. And then when I was in my 30s, I got a job doing something I was actually quite interested in. I was able to incorporate a lot of design into that. started doing freelance stuff on the side in my thirties. So then when I got to 37, I thought I have to do this for myself. Now I think this is the time. I think I've got enough sort of life experience now to figure out that actually I can do this for myself. I've been doing it enough as a kind of like little side gig for long enough that I, you know, I got enough experience. client side with me just doing it. And I thought, right, screw it. No, the time. yeah. When you made that decision to do this full-time at the age of 37, did it feel like you were taking a leap into that or had the transition been a gradient over that time? Did it feel as stark as having to take the step off the edge and dive in or had it been happening over a period of time? It had been happening over a period of time, but I don't think that diminished the fear. I don't think that took away from the terror of still taking the plunge and doing it. So I've been doing it for seven years prior to stopping it. So I started doing little web design projects for people and then it moved on to logos and brochures of magazines and all that kind of stuff. And any time, and weirdly, the job I was in, I was actually quite enjoying. So anytime this side gig design stuff started to do quite well, I would take my foot off the gas with it. And I'd say, well, that's taken up too much of my time actually, because I still want to do the job. So it would kind of go through all these little peaks and troughs. would push it really hard, and then I would get loads of jobs in, and then I'd go, that's too much. Slow it down, And then would teeter it back down again. And then I just got to a stage where I thought, have to work for myself. I cannot do the bidding of others anymore. It's driving me mental. So there was still like loads of fear in that, but the desire to do it for myself far outweighed the fear. And I think that's kind of what happens to everybody. You you get to a stage where the fear of doing it is overtaken by the will to just crack on and get it done. I think that's what happened for me when I started up on my own. I just got to a point where I couldn't imagine another day working for someone else. I, from a family of people that work for themselves and I was seeing, yes, it was stressful. Yes, it was hard. Yes, all of the responsibility is on your shoulders. But that comes with the pro that it's your responsibility. You're not taking the burden of someone else's shit rolling down the hill every day. You're surrounded by people who have done it. Yeah, which is interesting. So I didn't know anybody I wasn't surrounded by it. All of my friends are employed. My parents were employed like I didn't know anybody who was self employed in any sort of in any way really. So it I've always gone through life and it felt like this sort of unattainable thing in a strange way. I'd gone through life not even really considering it as an option. Um, until I got into my sort of like mid mid 30s. So that's, that's kind of interesting. That is interesting. Yeah, I think being a product of your environment and the kind of inspiration, aspirational figures you've got around you, like my mum is self-employed and has been since I was a kid. My brother set up shop as an artist. Again, they're both creatives, which is complete, which is why I'm the kind of black sheep of the family. Yes, I work for myself, but I work in recruitment as my full-time job. But yeah, they were both very inspiring figures for me. So when I made the transition, was kind of like... It was scary because I had a kid and I had bills and all of these things I needed to take care of. the thought of working for myself wasn't, I don't think, as horrifying as it might have been. Horrifying is a big word. But yeah, let's say scary as it could be for someone that doesn't have that around them as an example. So I get that. How long have you been doing it now for yourself, Dave, being your own boss? How many years has it been? It has been seven. seven years. oh And recently, looking at your LinkedIn profile, and I asked anyone coming onto the podcast to fill out a form ahead of this, what's it feels like you've shaken things up a little bit with the offering that you're putting out there now? Is that fair to say? What's led to that happening? There's a few things really. Part of it is me trying to, part of it is me trying to prepare for the future of where it's going. um I see, uh, it hasn't happened yet, but I can definitely see it coming in the next three, four years. Um, my skill is becoming devalued because of what is happening with AI. And I am a firm, firm believer in that there will always be people who want to work with people. You can, if you're good enough at what you do, it reaches far beyond the actual skill you're delivering. so for example, I mean, there are a million people who can do what I do that can create logos and create the thing, but it's the idea generation behind it that makes it valuable. So there are a lot, I mean, you could go and get a logo designed on Fiverr for, you know, a hundred quid or whatever, and it'll be passable and it'll be usable. You want a whole visual system. You don't just, that just doesn't come out of thin air. You need to build a story around it. You need to understand who you're targeting. You need to understand the long-term vision for it. You need to understand how to tie all that into some visual elements that not... only speaks to what you're trying to convey and the audience you're trying to attract, but differentiates you from all the other target market, but still keeps you familiar enough to sit within that so people will recognize that that's what it is, but it needs to be different. But it needs to be modern. then it needs to be, you know, there's so much, there's so much that kind of goes into it. simply having a prompt bar that allows you to create anything. isn't enough, obviously. But in saying that, it is still becoming devalued. know some people, mean, there is a job. To give you a quick example of this, was uh born and raised in Northern Ireland, hence the noise coming out of my mouth. I went over there at Christmas and I hadn't been to the Game of Thrones show, yeah, the exhibition thing. And it's amazing, They've done it really, really well. There's a whole room in there dedicated to concept art. So all of the artists that created the vision for every scene, every landscape, all of the costumes, like, there's a whole massive room and a whole team of artists that created all of that vision. Concept artists are being wiped out by the fact that, you know, so if a video game, development company, wants to envisage what this new world will look like that they're creating. used to need an artist to do that. Now they can just type in and get a quick, oh, that's what we'll get it to look at. You can tweak it a little bit and by the way. So almost overnight, the use of a concept artist has been completely wiped off the floor. although I am incredibly confident that there will be a place for what I do in some capacity. the tides are turning in such an unpredictable way with all of this that you can never be sure. The one thing that I am pretty confident about is you will always need a human being to help you come up with that idea in the first place. So you can have a machine in front of you that is capable of anything, but when you're faced with a blank little prompt bar that needs you to tell it what to do, and you're faced with endless possibilities, you know, that's... It's lovely, but you still need to have the good idea of the reason. And you still need to understand why you're coming up with the idea at the first place. So, and more and more people are coming to me for the idea side of things. that's why I've decided to, I love the design. really, really love it, but I equally love the idea generation side of things. I think that's way, it's becoming way, way more important, not just for what I do, but what everybody does because AI and automation is coming to. replace us all in some sort of capacity and you need to figure out what it is that makes you valuable and how you can pivot around whatever's coming in a creative way. So that's why I'm getting a bit more into. Okay, I appreciate the transparency there. I've been quite outspoken about my thoughts around AI and creativity and how it's been used. Dave Harland, you may know from LinkedIn, an incredible copywriter, he hates it. He describes it as this outsourcing of creativity. The whole ideation, the whole thought process, outsourcing of your thought process is now put into a a box and he has a great analogy of what happens when the wifi goes down. You know, if you're sat there and I think I've had moments, so I've been very kind of anti AI for a long time because I am a frustrated creative, even though I don't work in the most creative of industries. I love creative writing. So I was part way for a creative writing degree when chat GPT and all of the LLMs really started to blow up and I stopped the degree. I just could not get my head around how I would differentiate myself or how it would be seen and perceived to be different writing something to these large language models. I'm not saying that was the right thing to do, but I got that dejected with it. I just thought, I can't, I just can't carry on down this route. what I like, Dave, is that as we all will, at some point we have to accept that change is coming and how we're to differentiate ourselves is really important. aspects. Maybe one that made you feel a uncomfortable at first. Did you have any resistance initially to go, fuck this. There's always going to be a place to do what I do the way I do it as is. Yeah, well see, I'm quite a fan of new technology. So I am not anti-AI in any way, shape or form. I am quite a fan of it. similarly, like I know from Dave's perspective, he's very much get it the hell away from me. I decided very early on that I just, because my opinion on it changed from day to day. One day it was, no, no, fuck you. these models are being trained on other people's work. I'm not okay with that. And then the next day I'd be using it for something. I'd be like, wait, hold on, you need to figure out where you are with this. But it would change every single day. so I've decided that I don't have a firm position either way because it's where I am with it is riddled with contradictions and hypocrisy. The only thing I can do is be fully transparent with how I use it. So I decided very, very early on that if I ever use it in any way, shape or form, I will be completely transparent that I'm doing it. with me, is, um so I use Adobe software for pretty much everything I do. And there's some things they've introduced inside of Photoshop that are just, they're so good, John, like they're game changers. and to not use them would just be an idiot, right? So for example, they've got this thing called generative fill. If you have a photograph, if you have a uh portrait um oriented photograph and you have a landscape canvas that you're trying to work in, say I've got a lovely picture of a sheep in a field, But I need it to fit into like a website banner, so it's like this. The sheep image goes in and it only kind of takes up a little bit. The work involved prior to this to create a whole field scene that would fill that out, right? It's absolute pain in the ass. You have to find another similar field scene and then color grade them to match and then do all this sort of blurry masking thing to get them all to look like they're part of the same scene. Now it's like two buttons and it fills the entire canvas with what it understands would be what the rest of the field would look like. Now I can either spend... three hours creating a larger field scene that no one's going to care about. No one's ever going to take any notice of the client's not going to care really. And I'm not going to be really paid. You no one's justifying paying you for three hours of work of creating a field that didn't exist before. Or I can click two buttons. I'm clicking the two buttons because there's nothing particularly enjoyable about that. No one really appreciates the work goes in behind it. I don't really enjoy doing it. I'm clicking two buttons. So it's for stuff like that. There's loads of little things like that where if it eases a process, that I don't particularly enjoy doing, I don't get a lot of fulfillment from, then I'm gonna do it. For the stuff that I think is gonna turn my brain into mush, I won't do that stuff. If it's anything that's going to take away the fun side of creating something, that you can really sit back and go, shit, I thought of that. Whenever I'm developing an idea for someone, I wanna be able to walk them through the exact process of where that idea came from. And if the idea came from... me walking the dog and seeing a billboard that sparked an idea and did that. I need to be able to explain that full story because it just, you know, it helps the whole process just come alive. with anything I feel will actually deteriorate my creative brain, I stay the hell away from anything that will help me quickly solve a dull process that I'm not that interested in. am all on board. Bring it on. Bring it on. be honest with you, m my stance on AI has changed a lot since it initially came through. I have remained stoically in trying to ring fence it from a creative perspective. But I get what you're talking about there, Dave. If you can find ways that it's a, what do people call it, a force multiplier. And if you can really use it to take away and automate some processes that really aren't keeping your skills sharp, then... I'm now all for it. Ask me six months ago and I definitely wasn't. But I think again, with my mum and my brother both being creatives, one of the ways that you have to differentiate yourself now is show the process behind what you're creating. So whether that's being transparent about the use of AI or showing you. So my mum's a ceramicist, so she works with clay. My brother's an artist in a few different mediums, but primarily he draws. so much of the content they put out there now is showing them as human beings creating the pieces that they're doing. I think that's what you've been amazing at and I think that window into the process has been really lovely to see from your perspective. That's why I started creating video. Well, I started creating video about four years ago, but the reason I still, I do still do it is because you see me doing things. You see the actual process that goes into it create the final thing. And yeah, you're right. It's being able to fully explain how you've come up with an idea, where it's come from, being able to fully rationalize the reason that it exists in the first place. and demonstrating the purpose behind it and then being able to show step by step, know, where it came from is, yeah, it will be the differentiator, definitely. I so. I think one of the first videos I saw of yours, Dave, you wear, I always thought it was a wrist support, but I'm assuming that's... Have you got it there? There you go. So is this something to stop your, basically your hand getting involved in whatever creation you're doing on the screen? Well, these so this is for the when I'm drawing on the on the iPad. OK. And this it's got I'm going to forget the term for it now. And rejection is what they call it. So when you're drawing and your palms on the screen, then there's software built in that is set up to reject the touch of your palm. It should only feel the pencil. That's fine. But for me, it's the gliding across the screen. It really helps that kind of smooth little glide across the screen. And it also eases up on grease marks from your gonna say it stops the smears and all of that stuff on the screen too. m It does, it looks a bit twaddy, I know that. But it really helps, it genuinely helps. I think it's become like bit of an identity for you because whenever I saw that I was like, oh, Dave's done another process video. And I really bought into that. And I think, as I said, we've kind of identified that now, that the way you differentiate yourself as a creative now moving forward is showing the human being that's actually behind the process, behind the idea. What's been the hardest part of going in a slightly new direction? Are you finding that you're having to say no to opportunities that you might have once said yes to? Has there been any difficulties in deciding to say- take this route and future proof what it is you're doing. no, but I'm, I'm early on in the process. Like I've literally just about a month ago, um, released a new website with all of this stuff on it. Like it's early, it is early days. I was, I'm starting, I was starting to just kind of throw it out there towards the tail end of last year and now all these little things are coming in. Um, but I also like, I really, really enjoy it, you know, I, cause I realized, um, a few years in to do. creating all these things that it wasn't just a creation of it. It was the whole idea process that came up with it at the minute. And I think the thing that came, the interesting thing that came out of me creating videos online is people started coming to me and going, I would like to be able to come up with ideas for that content as well, but I have no idea how to do it. And then I would jump on a call with them and go, well, what are you trying to promote? What are you trying to do? have you thought about doing this? Have you thought about doing this? And then just seeing like the kind of buzz from people when you throw ideas at them um or just throw little kernels at them that they can then build ideas off of them and seeing that kind of buzz, you know, because the buzz that comes from, you know, being creative and coming up with little ideas is brilliant. And if you can kind of just inspire that a little bit in people, is incredibly rewarding. So um Yeah, I'm enjoying it, but I haven't seen, I haven't come across any sort of conflict yet. It's early days. We are proud to be supported by friends of the show and previous guests, the local merchants. They stock some of finest ready-to-wear brands in the world and now offer a made-to-measure service that, speaking from personal experience, will leave you feeling like a proper celebrity. 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T's and C's apply. you uh Have you ever had a moment throughout this part of your career where you thought, what the hell am I doing? um Am I doing something now? Has the confidence been there that you're doing the right thing, you're going in the right direction all the time? Or have you had those moments of doubt where you thought, shit, this is the right thing? a lot. So when I went off on my own, did what I think a lot of people do is trying to offer the world. So I knew how to create websites in WordPress. Did not enjoy it in any way, shape or form, hated it. those jobs were a lot easier to come by than logo jobs or character illustration jobs or like the stuff I really actually genuinely wanted to do. So I did a lot of websites when I first started and um I thought this is and it was amazing to begin with because I was working for myself and that was the only thing I really cared about and it wasn't till there was one day in particular I remember I had an entire day on the phone dealing with problems on websites, I was IT support for a full day. And it was all stuff that was nothing to do with me. It was just some WordPress update. happened. And now every plugin that you'd use is no longer working. You had to go through about 30 sites and just try and figure out what the hell was going on in Fixel. And I remember just at the end of that day going, I'm turning into full-time IT support. This is not what I want. quickly like sack that stuff off and went fully in on, you know, doing what I actually wanted to do. so yeah, there's, yeah, there's been plenty of plenty of points where I've thought I don't think I'm doing this properly. need to, I need to shake this up a little bit, but like, um, I think I wasn't, I wasn't fully, I had the confidence enough to obviously quit the full-time job I had and then go into this, but the entire time has been, uh, riddled with self-doubt and but I think that's healthy at the same time as well. I think if you're going through a process like this and you are fully confident the entire time, everything you're doing is great and you've got a bit of a problem. should be... You should always have like a little air of trepidation, a little bit of... There should always be a little twinge in your backside, you know, that your bumhole should always be squeaking a little bit because it keeps you on your toes, it keeps you, you know... keeps you sharp. You're like, need to make sure that I'm fucking doing my best here because I don't know that it's like, I don't know if I can do that good. And it keeps you like pushing ahead. you entered every, if I entered every client project going, I can do this easy. I'm not going to put a lot of effort into it. I like, so I think a little bit of shitting yourself is healthy. Yeah, and there's a couple of scenarios and I'll put it in recruitment terms as well. Most of the people that I put forward to go for interviews, it's the ones that go, John, don't worry about it, I've got it. I'm going to smash this interview. Nine times out of 10, they are the ones that get the worst feedback because they've gone in assuming they are absolutely going to knock it out of the park. that means That comes across, doesn't it? Maybe overly confident, maybe they've gone in and not done the preparation that they should have done. So I completely agree. have imposter syndrome, have days, weeks, months even where I look at the forecast for how the month's going and think, how the hell am I going to carry on doing this for another? I feel like I've been lucky. I feel like I've just fluked five years since running my agency. Seven, yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%. Yeah, it's, it's, um, it's that David Bowie quote, isn't it? Where he says, always go a little bit deeper into the water than you feel you're comfortable being. That's where the interesting stuff happens. And that's where you actually grow. m I like that. I love that. Cool. We'll use that when we promote the episode. I think there's an assumption from people that creativity is all fun and it was all about fun and ideas. But what's the part nobody talks about? the part that's not fun. I think I'm not so bad at this now but um for my industry specifically it's very hard to not um take negative feedback personally. Especially when, so at any one time This can happen. any one time I've got like so for example, one two, three, four, five six seven eight There's nine different projects. I'm working on like concurrently at the minute if I were and this this does happen if I if I have sent um the bits of a project off to each one of these people over the course of a week. There can be a single day that every single person comes back to you and every single person does not like what you've sent and everything and everything that you have just poured a ton of work into the past week has just been ripped apart and needs to be started over again. Those kind of things can like really get on top of you, especially if... Because it's all kind of... It's all coming from your head. didn't, it wasn't a thing before and it came to your head and you try and convey it in the best way possible. And then, but sometimes it just doesn't land and you know, and that's, that's fine. Um, but whenever you get a ton of negative feedback back and not everybody is the best at conveying it in the most diplomatic way either, that can knock you for six and ideas don't come when you want them to. That's the other thing as well. Like I can have an entire afternoon set aside to develop the concept of something and at the end of that afternoon, I have nothing. And that's really, that can really knock you for six as well, especially because I'm, I love, I love being productive, you know, I love just being able to at the end of the day go on, I've done this, this, this, this, this, but if the one thing that you were relying on to take off load of things in your to do list is just having some ideas from here and they just don't come. Because you just can't force them. If it's not working on that particular day, you just need to leave it and come back to it the next day. There's nothing you can do about that. That's incredibly frustrating. So it's just learning to work with those kind of things. There's stuff I do now that I've learned to kind of deal with that. I know now that when I'm on fire in terms of coming up with ideas and creativity, I've got... systems and plates. Now I write down absolutely everything and stuff. when I am having flat periods, I've got a whole bank of ideas and techniques and stuff I can go to, to look at whenever, you know, nothing new is coming. So I think it's just, you kind of, when you're really, really into what you do, and it's a bit of a creative pursuit and you start with a blank page and you create something, you can't help, but like, love it a little bit, you know, you shouldn't be sending it to somebody if you don't love it a little bit. And when they don't, it's, it could be a bit crushing. So you have to learn to distance yourself from being so I think that's probably the one thing I would say. That's a really good point. I've had multiple discussions with my brother about this. He started his career as an architect or interior designer and he'd have project briefs that he'd have to create stuff for. When you receive notes on that as a creative person, like you are birthing something into the world, aren't you? From your brain onto a page or whatever, in whatever capacity, using whatever medium. To receive notes on that can be... you've said, really bloody hard. I think Luke was liberated when he started creating pieces for himself and being able to make money that way, purely for his own enjoyment, without having to think about who the end user is of that. It liberated him completely. 100%. I always make sure I've got time to do some daft stuff for myself. uh I'm fully aware of how wanky it sounds to be complaining that I've created this thing and the client doesn't like it. I always make it very, very clear to people that they have to be entirely transparent and honest with me because this just won't work otherwise. And also, what I think a lot of people in my field don't do enough is they don't talk to people enough before they put pen to paper, before they start. Because what should really happen is you should completely understand that person, their business, what they're trying to attain, and you should give them a really solid idea of what you're about to go and do before you do it as well. So, I mean, nine times out of ten, now, you know, it's kind of good. And if it is a change, it's only like a very small one. But occasionally it still, you know, does happen. It's just, everything's been completely misunderstood by... everybody and it just doesn't work and that's hard to deal with. But I've got enough processes in place now to deal with that. m uh That's really good. Can you give some advice, Dave, now? to pose this question and see what you're happy to share. Can you give some tips on a few ways that maybe people can start to think more creatively? So whether that's sitting down with a blank piece of paper and starting to want to generate ideas, maybe it's some of the processes you've gone through to get the... God, this is going to sound so wanky as well. The creative juice is flowing. I can't believe I've said that. But you know what I mean. So are there any tips that you've got that might be able to start that process for people that struggle to get creative? I've got two things that I would suggest that really, really helped me. The first one is, you know that feeling you get when you see something really, really good and you go, oh, why didn't I think of that? Right? Because that happens to absolutely everybody. And the reason you think it is because you're perfectly capable of thinking it because it's a really cool idea, but it's also a very simple one. So you think, I'm... I could have thought of that. Why didn't I? And you get angry. Every time you see something like that, make a note of what it was and where it was. So whatever you want to be more creative in, let's say it is marketing. So every time you see a good ad on the TV or you see a cool billboard ad or something in a newspaper and you think, God, that's good. wish I I'd thought of that or why didn't I think of that? You either take a picture of it, copy the link if it's online. Put it somewhere. Put it somewhere you store notes. Like I've got a Trello board for stuff like this. Write it down, you know, why it's good, why it works. And then write down what question you would have needed to have been asked for you to think of it. Because quite often, if, so let's imagine you see a really good marketing campaign, right? And you go to yourself, fuck that, that's really good. So the one that pops into my head, there was a, German think it was German a German TV channel and all of the programs were around drama So they did this ad out in a city square And it just had a big button in the middle of the city square and it said push me for drama, right? And you just seen some people walking about and obviously a lot of people looked at it and went nope walked on but you know, got the little uh Kid walked around and just that smacked it all of a sudden The doors from the building in front open up, a guy runs out and collapses, an ambulance comes and picks him up, tries to him in the ambulance and he falls off the stretcher. A wrestler comes along, punches one of the ambulance guys. A woman, a scantily-glad woman in a motorcycle and a helmet flies by and slaps one of them. Now all of a sudden there's a full squad of SAS soldiers that come out and start shooting. It escalates in about two minutes, it goes from nothing to this big escalation. Then I think an American football team come out and grab everybody that was in the scene and just drag them back into the building and it's end scene. And you just think, what the fuck? So they clip the video with a few people touching it and then their reactions as all of this is playing out. Once the whole scene ends, a massive banner falls down and goes, for um all your drama needs or something like that. this is the channel. And it's like, it's a really, really cool and obviously they do it not for the people in the city, but for the whole video they can put together for it. So for something like that, I would say I'd save the link to that and then say, what question would I need to have needed to been asked to come up with an idea like that? And the question I would have needed to have been asked would be, how can we take the benefit that we deliver and show it and give it a literal representation in real life. Right. So rather than someone, you imagine someone from that TV channel sitting you down and saying, come up with an idea for us to market ourselves. Or can you come up with an idea for how I can market myself? That's a really shit question. It's too general. But if they said, can you come up with an idea that helps me literally represent the how good or drama is in a real world setting, then all of a sudden you've got something to work with. So when you're approaching ideas, if you have better questions in front of you to ask yourself, that's already a a massive head start from a lot of people who will just ask themselves a simple question like, how can I market this? But you've got a more strong question. So every time you see something that you really like, think, how could I ask What question would I have needed to have been asked to come up with that idea? Know you're capable of coming up with it. You just weren't in the right circumstance and hadn't been asked the right question. So if you have a little folder that's full of those, the next time you want to come up with an idea, just visit that folder and ask yourself each of those questions and you'll start reading them. That's a brilliant tip. That's a brilliant tip. Did you say you've got two Dave? Is there another one you're happy to share? Go for it. on. If you've got time. The other one is to write down 10 ideas every day, which is kind of like a mental exercise. Kind of like go into the gym for your body. This is like go into the gym. So it's having that discipline to just take the time, take the space. Now what I do, and I realize this doesn't work for everybody, this can stress people out, but for me I need it to just like push me. It's just set a 10 minute timer, so you don't ally any more than 10 minutes and you just write down 10 ideas. And it can be about absolutely anything, right? So you can, I mix mine up with, know, think of an idea of a video to promote yourself or think of a stupid band, a fictional band. or think of uh something you'd really like to do on the weekend or a new hobby you'd like to take up or how you can improve a service that you offer or what you need to do to improve day-to-day life in the home. Like you can come up with a ton of categories and the first few days you do this, that can be your ideas. What categories will I write ideas about? So say that's your first week. Your first Monday to Friday is just thinking of as many categories as possible that you would like to think of more ideas for. know, improving your home life, improving your social life, improving your health, improving your business, all that kind of stuff. And then the following week on the Monday, you look at all of those ideas and you think of one for each. And you just think of, what's something I need to improve in the house? Right, it's that. How am I going to improve the way I show up online? I'm going to do this. And you just think of a little, and make some of them complete nonsense as well. Like some of them, some of mine are come up with a stupid title for a new TV show or a concept for a new TV show or a new idea for a, for a board game, you know, like stuff like that. And the vast, vast majority of them, cannot stress this enough will be horse shit, but that's absolutely fine. That's the point. The point is to just, just think and write it down. And the more and more you do that and the more it becomes a routine and the more that you. kind of get you accustomed to just forcing yourself to come up with 10 ideas, you will start coming up with better ones. You'll still have days where everything is awful, right? That's kind of the point and that's a good thing because you're sort of clearing the waste, I suppose. But what I get, what I really find useful at this is at the end of every month, I'll go back through it and I will pull out the really, really good stuff. And sometimes there's only a handful, you know, but like, but it's really, really useful. And it... when you do need to come up with ideas for things, it's just, you've trained that muscle to just handle it a little bit better. I would suggest, those are the two main things for me that helps me like massively when it comes to just helping them. It's great. I think when I, again, when I talked to Dave Harland, he, I think we use the word atrophy when we were talking about AI and using that for the creative process to kind of act as the catalyst for the ideas that muscle starts to atrophy because it's not you generating it. The prompt that you put in is not the creative spark that is generating all these things. And I'm taking both of those tips and using them because I, again, as a frustrated creative, I, would love more of a regimented process to kind of think, okay, how do I start to train that muscle to come up with those ideas? And I like the discipline of thinking about 10 ideas a day as well. think that's really good. Yeah, yeah. And seriously, when it comes to AI, think one of the last things I used it for is I had a list of words that were all separated by commas. Like, take all these words, put them onto a list, a list, em and put that list onto an Excel sheet. And because that's something that would have taken ages to do manually, but it does it in like seconds. So it's stuff like that that AI is just perfect for. But don't get it to do the fun stuff. Whatever you enjoy, don't get it to do that. And this is another reason that I'm quite hypocritical about it as well, because some people um want to do some creative things that they don't enjoy doing. So let's imagine you've got a band, You've got like three or four guys who are trying to make it to doing the music and stuff. They have bugger all money. They're creating music, they're out there gigging in the pubs and clubs every weekend just trying to make it work. None of them have any interest in creating album artwork. They don't know anybody who can do it for them and they certainly don't have any money to pay for it. They can go and create themselves some album artwork really, really easily. And yes, no artist is getting paid for it, but they wouldn't be anyway because these guys don't have any fucking money. They're just trying to get, you know, their interest is in music. They have zero interest in creating album artwork, but they can do it now. which can help them package up what they're doing, which might help them do it. So like, I can't be too pissy with it because the stuff that I don't enjoy doing, I will use AI for it. But there's plenty of people that don't enjoy doing what I do, what I'm doing, but they certainly wouldn't be spending money on anyway. So I'm not losing any money. I wouldn't be paying someone to format that Excel spreadsheet for me. It has like a hundred lines in it. So yeah, it's things like that. The reason I'm not dead against it, I'm always suspicious of anybody who is like, massively pro it as in like, you know, screw everything else. The only thing is AI. I'm a little bit skeptical of people who are like, leave it alone and don't touch for absolutely anything. There is a nice, there is a middle grind. Fine, because it's coming whether we like it or not. So you need to find the middle. That's the kind of position I'm in that default mindset now of that is happening. So you embrace it or you're going to get overtaken in some way. well, look, Dave, we're nearly at the end now. I've got a game to finish off, if that's okay. So we're going to play overrated or underrated. There's going to be quick fire. I've got 10 statements to make and you have to tell me if it's overrated or underrated. I can't allow you to give any context, unfortunately. You've just got to Okay, so number one, AI. Hmm, overrated. Number two, personal branding. I overrated. Number 3, Knit Working Events Under it. 4. Creativity Hacks Oh, the word hacks makes me feel ill, but I'm gonna say... Underage. Okay, number five, using humour in business. Oh, underrated. Number six, sticky notes as a creative tool. Question seven, people who claim they get their best ideas in the shower. I've never had a good idea in the shower, so I'm gonna say overrated. Number eight, giving your business a ridiculous name just so people remember it. I'm overrated. Okay, number nine, the phrase, think outside the box. overrated afraid. number 10, holding a workshop purely because nobody else knows what else to do. Definitely over it. Mason- Okay, Dave. Thank you for getting involved with that. I appreciate it. I know you want to give some context to that, but I just can't allow you to. To finish off, I just wanted to ask where, for people listening to this and thinking that they'd like to learn more about what it is you do, the services you offer, where can we find out more about you? Where can people go to learn more about Dave? I would say my website which is DaveOfficer.com because it links out to everything else that I do. There's a newsletter I've got, all of my socials, all of the stuff, it's all on there. that's the best place. Okay, that's fantastic. I I was introduced to you on LinkedIn as well, so I would recommend anyone that's on LinkedIn and uses the platform to start following Dave, connect with Dave and seeing the content he puts out there. Because whether you go to the website initially on the back of listening to this or not, the minute they start following you and seeing your content on LinkedIn, it's a one-way trip to then go and more. yeah, I've loved seeing stuff you put out there. It is genuinely inspiring. think some of the questions you pose to people or pose through your uh content have inspired me to think differently about what I'm doing, Dave too. It's just been a pleasure. Thank you so much for taking the time to have a chat. It has been an honor, my friend. Thank you very much. No worries. Right, we'll stop recording there. Cheers for that, Dave. Thank you so much, mate. I appreciate that.

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