Ryan Rodrigo on Building a Brand Story, Authenticity & What School Did to Creative Kids

There's a version of Ryan Rodrigo that ended up behind a desk at a bank. He knows exactly who that version is — because he watched it happen to someone else.

Ryan is 25. He's the Head of Brand & Marketing at Pepper Street, one of Sri Lanka's fastest-growing fashion labels, with its own manufacturing operation and a brand identity built on local story, local models, and a campaign shot outside Independence Square. He joined and helped scale the brand significantly within his first six months. Before Pepper Street, he founded CapitalReach — a startup development agency he built during COVID, ran with a team of three, and lost to financial mismanagement. Not to bad work. The work was good. The structure wasn't.

In this episode of The Creative Odyssey Podcast, recorded at Hatch — Sri Lanka's startup and creative technology hub — Sheran and Ryan talk through what it actually costs to build something real as a creative person. And what the systems around you will do to stop you from finding out you were capable in the first place.

What they cover:

- Why products are more or less the same — and why brand story is the only thing that actually differentiates
- How the Freedom Drop campaign (shot outside Independence Square with one and a half weeks of permission negotiations) became Pepper Street's early growth catalyst
- What 13 years of the Sri Lankan school system does to a creative kid who wins best singer 12 times and still gets told they're failing
- The mentor who said four words that changed the direction of Ryan's life — and why Ryan only started because he trusted that person on faith alone
- Why CapitalReach really closed — and what creative people need to understand about money, working capital, and the pace of creative output
- What authenticity actually requires — owning every flaw, out loud, on camera, without flinching
- Why every mediocre company copied someone, and what separates the ones that didn't
- How Ryan manages creative teams without killing their ideas — and why letting the first draft come in is non-negotiable
- Why a creative is not supposed to be constantly creating — and what happens to the ones that are forced to be
- A suicide note written in Sinhala about workplace pressure — and what it means for everyone listening to this podcast

This episode is for anyone who was told their creativity wasn't a career. And for anyone who believed it for longer than they should have.

Keywords: brand strategy Sri Lanka, authenticity in branding, creative entrepreneurship, startup lessons, building a brand story, creative burnout, healthy creative, managing creative teams, Pepper Street Sri Lanka, Hatch Sri Lanka, Ryan Rodrigo, Sheran Ranasinghe, The Creative Odyssey Podcast, Odyssey House Media, creativity podcast, Sri Lankan podcast, brand growth consultant, creative identity, school system creativity

The Creative Odyssey Podcast explores the inner lives of creative people — why they create, what it costs, and why creativity might be the most important thing any of us can do. Hosted by Sheran Ranasinghe. Produced by Odyssey House Media. Recorded at Hatch, Sri Lanka.

📩 thecreativeodysseypodcast@gmail.com
🎙️ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/12SGsSsLz4DqlLFwxigjXX
🍎 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/pl/podcast/the-creative-odyssey-podcast/id1750306317
📸 Instagram: @thecreativeodysseypodcast
📸 Follow Sheran: @sheranstories
📸 Follow Ryan: @jryanrodrigo

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Uh little Ryan was a destructor of many things. Walls, plates, cups, books, I mean trees, you name it, like I was always somebody that would like for lack of a better terminology, like Elays everything and start over. So I was an idiot in school. The school was 13 years of self-dove because now I know I'm not good at math, I'm not good at science, I'm not good at geography. But here I was in a system that I had to whatever the creativity or whatever that I was supposed to do, what I was good at, was all pressed down. In school, your entire value is in the report card. Even though that report card doesn't have enough facets to judge your value. You may not be on mathematics, you may not be on history, but the scale in which you should be mentioned is not in the report card. I have a mentor to which I did a lot of myself, and it was not something that I identified. I don't want to lie to you. My mentor he came to me one day and he said, I know this guy. He said, I see you, you know, you have like gave me the same thing because I trusted on that word. I started. Being authentic takes class. You know why? You have to open up to every single flaw you have. It's like this if you're an actor, right? It's the easiest role actors can place themselves. The hardest role they play is when they have to embody somebody else. You have to always keep encouraging yourself to take the journey. If you don't, no matter how creative you are, you can end up being the day doing a night. Hi, welcome back to the Killbarts Podcast. My name is Sharon, and today we are at Hatch in Sri Lanka, uh startup hub where creativity and technology kind of meet and inspire creativity and change. Creativity doesn't just belong in the arts. Creativity shows up in the way we build, how we bounce back, and how you can brand something from scratch. And Ryan Robrigo has this amazing story about how he has done that. So, Ryan, thank you for being on the podcast. Thank you for having me. Yeah. So let's go ahead and start right away. What do you think makes a brand start out creatively today? Especially in a saturated space like you're in. Tell us a bit about what you're doing. Alright, so a bit of a background to me. Yeah, currently I work as the head of marketing for Paper Street. So I believe when it comes to products, products more or less are the same. You can buy a t-shirt from a certain location, and if the brand really wants to add value to it, there'll be a value, but more or less it's the same. If you check all the global brands, Nike, underarm, you go to the place. You check the fabric, you check the composition, you check the stitching. You feel like more or less it's the same thing. Right, right. But what makes Nike Nike, what makes underarm underarm, and what makes Pepper Street Pepper Street is how they've decided to position themselves, how they've decided to tell their story, what is their take? Why are they here? Why are they doing what they do? So I think that is the main thing. Very cool. So you scale Pepper Street uh really fast. And how did you decide on a visual style and voice? Yeah. So I think uh before we get into that answer, yeah, yeah. I want to give credit where credit is due, right? So my two directors, Dylane, Fernando and Vasid Yakub, they are the founders and directors of Pepper Street, right? Building a brand or scaling a brand is not just about you know, you can't simply be creative only to build it. So there were brilliant finance minds in our directors, there were brilliant organizational minds. These are the people that spearheaded it so that I have room to be creative, right? And how we did that in the local market is um we had somewhat of a first move advantage, right? Um, but then when it came to building pepper, what we identified was okay, we have this good product now. Like I said, remember, there are products, yeah, more or less it's the same, right? But we had the ability to create a product in-house in our own factory here in Sri Lanka. And what we did was we identified, okay, we have a great product, but how do we make this visible and in what light do we show it to the consumer? Right? So, in that journey, what we decided was okay, we take the brand, we build the story, and it was easy because the story already existed.

SPEAKER_02 4:20

Right.

SPEAKER_03 4:21

All we had to do is sit down and say, This is the story, this is our journey, this is simply what we want to do. And in that journey, what we did was we simply brought together all these elements and added the spark of creativity. It wasn't something that I was simply, you know, we looked at someone and said, We want to do that. No. A lot of people do that nowadays. I think that's where the creative strain and stuff like brain rot come into play nowadays. But what we did was we we knew we had a good product. Productive single link, you know, we took that product, we added our spark, and that is how we got pepper to that growth point short while after long single bread. Like I told you before, you know, as I joined, as they hired me, in a span of six months initially, we had a massive growth scheme. And the main reason to do that was I I remember going to Basit and telling Basit, you know, this thing nobody else has done. Sometimes, you know, to people that may be like a scary thing. Right, right, right. Because he used to look at me as if I was crazy, but I I, you know, he's a brilliant man, and he he always said, Yeah, go for it. So, in doing certain things that hadn't been done in the market, the Sri Lankan consumers hadn't seen it. This style of content they hadn't seen, this style of model they hadn't seen. You know, in a world where people always try to go towards foreign models only, at that particular season we went with solely local model. We built stories around, like example, I remember we did this drop called the Freedom Drop at our initial stages, and uh I just came up with the name because it was an oversized collection, right? So freedom as it like you know, it's five lakhs and all of that. I did the entire campaign in front of the independent square in Sri Lanka while getting permission from the necessary authorities, which took me close to about one and a half to two weeks. Wow, right? And still didn't let us shoot inside. We had to shoot close by so we could just see the building, yeah. Right. And we pushed this freedom collection. We gave some stories, we we spoke about the country, we spoke about you know how as Sri Lankans, you know, we are free, so on and so forth, and we brought all of that into perspective, and in that storytelling, plus that good product that we had now, you know, that's that's basically how it's far.

SPEAKER_00 6:35

We're so excited to share with you all the episodes that we filmed in Sri Lanka. We know a lot of you have been waiting, but we wanted to make sure that we did this really meaningfully because it really was an exciting time. When Sean first came to me and said he was gonna take the podcast to Sri Lanka, I honestly thought he was crazy.

SPEAKER_03 6:50

And so did I. I was like, is there any possibility we can fit this in? I wanted to try to bring the podcast in and get to know people and interview people.

SPEAKER_00 7:00

So we expected to have just a few conversations, maybe a little sparks of inspiration here and there, but what happened was so much deeper than that. We met so many people that not only you got to interview, but that also like came alongside us to help make these conversations happen.

SPEAKER_03 7:16

The crazy thing was this daring idea of going to a country, even from Freedom. I hadn't been back for like seven years, and all I knew was some people from school that I went to and some social media that I were following, but didn't really have a concrete plan to make it happen. And some days we had six, seven episodes back-to-back recorded because people were waiting and you were kind of facilitating that yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:42

Yeah, so it felt really significant because not only was it that we were having like these raw typically conversations, but a lot of their stories resonated with Tron, and so it just was really fascinating to see them speaking the same language and to see like just this commonality of creativity and identity and purpose coming out as the themes of these conversations.

SPEAKER_03 8:02

You must be wondering when this could happen. It happened in September, and uh the goal was to get these episodes out by a lot of things happen, and I didn't want to diminish the work we put in and again the amazing gifts that we had. So we decided to do something really cool, and we're gonna post how many we can a week.

SPEAKER_00 8:23

So LinkedIn, every single episode you'll find a free PDF. It's actually a magazine that we developed. You can kind of think of it like if you go to a concert and you get like the souvenir of what happened behind the scenes and just about the different artists and all those things. We wanted to share with you not only about Trinidad's journey, but then help you connect with some of the guests that we interview in Shrilanka, and then invite you on your own creative Odyssey.

SPEAKER_03 8:44

Yes, there's so much more that goes into uh that fills this podcast, which is this this mission to inspire people to create so that they can get to themselves and connect with each other. So to see that we could bring that story out of Sri Lanka creatives out. I was raised of creatives, it was definitely a highlight.

SPEAKER_00 9:09

Our hope is that whether you're living in the States, you're living in Sri Lanka, or somewhere else around the world, you'll connect with someone's story within Sri Lanka, and it might inspire you to continue on your own creative fantasy.

SPEAKER_03 9:19

The link to the PDF for the magazine is in the description, and please check it out. They're doing really cool things that I really think you should be checking out to see their journeys. So, without further ado, let's get to the episode. So I know I know a little bit that you are a creative person, you're a musician, yeah, all of that stuff. So I wasn't gonna ask you this now, I'm curious. So, what was Little Ryan like? And was he always a creative? And how did all of that kind of play into where you were at? Little Ryan was a destructor of many things: walls, plates, cups, books, I mean trees, you name it. Like, I was always somebody that would like, for lack of a better terminology, like erase everything and start over.

SPEAKER_02 10:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 10:05

So even even if you would uh I don't know if they're around anywhere, if you could find one of my school writing books, yeah. Above every writing book, you would find like doodles of random things. My go-to used to be the cross because it was the easiest to draw, and then glamour, glamour around it. So there were so many things like that. But Little Ryan composed his first song when he was about ten years ago, I remember. Wow. Interesting. The the lyrics were My Name is Bad Zaria. It was a it's a it was a song about food. So that's how it all came into being an art. Thanks to my mom, I had a the privilege of working with the brilliant producer Shiraz Yusuf, he's a rapper. And just for the just for the heck of it, he produced the song for me. No way, yeah. So uh even back back in the day, uh when he talked about creative see the thing with me, and I think it's a problem with a lot of Sri Lankans as well. Our school system necessarily doesn't encourage creativity. Right. So I was an idiot in school.

SPEAKER_02 10:59

Ah, same here.

SPEAKER_03 11:00

That's my story too, right here. I was I thought I wasn't smart enough. Yeah, like so to me, uh it was a it was a j school was 13 years of self-doubt because now I know I'm not good at math, I'm not good at science, I'm not good at geography. But here I was in a system that I had to, whatever the creativity or whatever that I was supposed to do and what I was good at was all pressed down. So I was stuck in a system of oh my god, I'm a failure. But the creativity used to spew out here and there. Yeah, there was this one time for the hick of it. I did a western and eastern drama in school, and I ended up getting an award for it. Wow, but it wasn't something that was encouraged, right? Even for playing that part in a single drama in school, I was you know, it was a it was a very tough journey for literature. But then again, I believe it was that journey that graduated because the moment you're done with school, yeah, it's a sense of freedom. So then when you give it some space, you'll notice, oh, you actually you kind of create it. Talk to me about that process. How did you come to that uh conclusion of no no no, I have value, I am a creator. It's like this, I'll be very honest with you. I have a mentor to which I credit a lot of my success, and it was not something that I identified. I don't want to lie to you. My mentor he came to me one day and he said, You know, I know this guy who's doing digital marketing, so on and so on. He said, I see you, you know, you have that capable of the same thing. Because I trusted him on that word, I started how old was this? This was I believe in around 2017. So that would be like what age would you be? Um I would have been somewhere between 1920. Yeah, somewhere else. That's like really cool that happened at a such a young age. Yeah, I mean, I'm blessed. See the thing was when when he told me that, I already knew because I would feel it. Like I used to be obsessed with stuff like comics and how they would draw it and how they would come up with this entire story just with a pen and a paper and some colours. Yeah. Yeah. So then when it came to music, I believe I started playing the organ when I was about six, seven years old based on what I heard. Wow. So my mom used to be like, you know, I don't know how he does it, but he does it. My parents are both musicians. I want to I want to point that out as well. So it could be in the genes, it could be in the blood, whatever it is. But so from those early stages it started, you know, spewing out. When I got that information, and I said, No, I see you doing this kind of thing, I said, you know, okay, and that's how this change started. So I'm even more curious now going out of the topic, but also valuable. Your parents are musicians. Yeah, my parents were musicians. Right. My mom sings here and there, now same with my dad. Sure. My mom's an engineering consultant, something like that. So my question is, even if your parents were musicians, whatever, how come society was still able to influence you to a point where you think of yourself as uh not valuable? It's like this, right? In school, your entire value is in that report card. Yes. Even though that report card doesn't have enough facets to judge your value. You may not be on mathematics, you may not be on history, but the scale in which you should be mentioned is not in the report card. But you know, I hope you're doing okay, but I really don't want to see them ever again, my teachers. Because I remember school being a painful experience. I'll be honest with you and your viewers. I wasn't good at it because it wasn't my fault. I have around 11 to 12 certificates. I have one best singer in the entire group, right? That didn't matter because if you fail at math, you're gone.

SPEAKER_02 14:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:41

It was a hobby, right? Yeah, I I it wasn't encouraged, you know, they didn't you know they didn't look to it as it is now. It was all like if you fail in these eight to nine subjects, well, you're nothing. So I think that was a very demotivating and stressful really, yeah. You and I have similar stories, I suppose that's really cool. I think that's the case with a lot of creative people. Yes. Because at the and especially if you were bought up here, you are demotive they will try to erase the creative out of you. Put you into that mold. If you survive, you make it. You know, funny story. I had a guy who used to design posts. Like he was a graphic designer. I am telling you, he was one of the best graphic designers I knew. So I used to give him some freelancer back in the day. Advance said, Hey bro, I'm sorry, uh, I'm not gonna be able to do this anymore. I was I was so concerned. I didn't want to poke into his personal business, let it go. Yeah, and I asked him, Why did you stop? Oh no, my parents, um, my parents, you know, they said it's not a stable career, so on and so forth. But I tell you now, he's working at a bank doing a desk job with all even to this day. And it really broke my heart to s hear that. Yeah. But that's what happened. That's that's crazy. Yeah, I feel I feel that pain. Uh, it took me like I I went through what you went through at 30. So 19, 13, you know. So that's a good thing that happened to you early. So let's jump into the startup you started. And you mentioned that you made a bunch of mistakes and stuff like that. Before you jumped into the startup, what gave you the courage to start the startup? And then tell me what happened. Like I told you, my mentor he said, you know, I I think I know you'll be good at this, you follow this, pursue this, and all of that. So COVID struck, and all of us were stuck at home.

SPEAKER_01 16:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:27

And I live with my mom, I used to live, I'm married now. I used to live with my mom and my sister and my grandmother. I had a room, I had a decent tech setup of a laptop and a monitor and my speaker and all of that. And uh then what I realized was a couple of my friends started businesses during COVID, delivering stuff and all of that, and I realized all those businesses were short-lived a month, a couple of weeks, a couple of months. So then uh I did some research and I found out that there wasn't a particular body in Sri Lanka that was devoted or which purpose was to help startups. There was a lot of agencies, even in this very building we are in now, there were a lot of agencies, brilliant, brilliant minds, brilliant work, all that. But there wasn't anybody that wanted to position themselves and help startups. The idea hit me. I thought I'm going to create a startup development agency. That was my idea. So lo and behold, I launched my business capital reach, I registered it, all of that. I got a few clients in and I got stuff rolling. So I focused on a couple of key points. Agency is expensive. Most businesses can't afford it, let alone startup. Yes, yeah. So I let the entry level to the pricing be very affordable. In fact, I used to do some work for a certain brand that I personally saw potentially. I said, I'll do it for you now, you pay me later, not a problem. Simply because I was building my story. I wanted to have something to prove to people and say, hey, look, I did this, right? So it started like that. I got a couple of clients in, a couple of clothing brands, couple of you know, delivery guys, couple of uh there was this uh grocery brand, so on and so forth. Yeah, so it was a very diverse market because there were so many startups trying to make it out of the COVID time. So it was in that season that uh you know I kind of capitalized on it. I had a small listing. Um I'm very proud to say this, even at that time, I had about three people working for me from home. Yeah, at that particular time handling my little clients and all of that. It's a big deal. Yeah, it's a big deal. It was to me at least. You know, yeah. It was to me at least, and then you know, everything was going good. But then you you also mentioned the mistakes. I I'll tell you straight away. The biggest mistake I made, now this is very important if you're a creative person, but I believe as a creative myself, it's not enough simply to be creative because my money management was terrible. I see. So here I am doing this good work. And I'm telling you, if you ask anybody that I have worked with in that season and you ask them what kind of work did you get, it was really good stuff. In fact, I'll even show you some stuff when we're done with it. Yeah, it was really good stuff. But as the clients kept coming in and you know, people kept coming in, the money started coming in. I I simply took a creative I never thought about the money, I never thought about what next, I didn't know what working capital was, I didn't know okay. Now I've being creative is fine, but how do I scale that creativity? How do I reach people? So, you know, I I did a bunch of stuff for myself in terms of the business. At that particular time, I got a really top influencer to run my TikTok with. Yeah, and she did some brilliant work. It was expensive, but was it necessary? No, because I didn't get any leads off TikTok. It was just so that people know I exist, my business exists. So the mismanagement of finances throughout the line eventually killed capital gains. That's what happened. That was the main reason. A secondary reason to add to that uh it's not easy to admit. But I believe creative people need a lot of time. I personally enjoy just sitting in front of my laptop or my computer. I'm not talking about doom scrolling or just wasting time. But I like to just sit in silence and think. Or just kids or or just like consume a piece of content that is just completely weird. In doing that, I also started slacking because the more clients I got, it required me to do more work at a pace that wasn't matching up to my creative output. So definitely the financial mismanagement was number one, but number two was because of that habit. And I don't think it's a bad habit. I just think that's what kind of spews out your creativity. Yeah. But uh that was the second habit that kind of you know put stuff because now you because as a creative person, when you when you're in that industry, you want to do the best for everybody. I don't believe in dishing out the same thing for client A, B, C, and D. Yeah, yeah. So the time I take for client A has to be given to client B, C, and D. By the time A goes to Z, you are lost by the letter E. Yeah. So how have you figured out a solution for that? To be honest with you, I'm not that experienced. I'm still 25, but um but I believe my creativity now comes out of the knowledge that I have. So what I do is I like to consume anything. Now, even as we are talking here, my eye goes to the gentleman's oversized t shirt and the branding where I'm thinking you who did that. I'm thinking you know, it's a block form, it's an interesting form of branding, it takes up a lot of space on the t-shirt. At some point down the line, when I go back to my job, I'm gonna bring that into perspective. Or I can look at bats on your teeth and like I believe that it's a lot of things that I consume when the moment is needed for me to create something. Yeah, I feel like all of those kind of connect in my head, and I'm just like right. And then I refine it, I find it, and take it from that. So the point what you're saying is you don't spend as much time as you use. You can't. So do you not allow that time anymore? Or how do you I try my best to allow it because um it's very important. That consuming part is where I allow that time. It can be anything, no matter how tired I am. When I get to bed, I will spend about a good 20-30 minutes just consuming. Yeah. Because being creative also, it's something that changes. Like almost every second, your creative sales.

SPEAKER_02 22:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:56

The only way you can stay ahead of that is just by consuming, consuming, consuming. Thinking, thinking, thinking.

unknown 23:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:03

First of all, I wanted to mention thanks for being so vulnerable. Absolutely. That that takes a lot of guts to say those things. So now that I look about those things, when you've met those setbacks, how do you stay creatively motivated to do what you're doing? It's like this. To me, at a certain point, it was all about the money. It started off with, oh, this is a good source of income. Yeah. To the point where it was a hyper moment of me telling everybody, I love my job. To this date, I tell my wife, I tell my friends, I am so blessed to have the job that I have. Because imagine, no matter how demotivated you get, every opportunity you have is an opportunity to create something. Yeah. And I have created billboards and banners and commercials and on your digital commercials and stuff that have been viewed by millions of people. Wow. That makes me so happy. So to answer your question, yes, there is a sense of demotivation, obviously, because I believe that there's no one gets made more fun of than creative people. Yes, 100%. Because even if you go to an employer, they'll either want you to replicate someone else's idea or they'll want to do it their way. So the creative person is constantly at a disadvantage.

SPEAKER_02 24:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:28

Because he is the only one that is convinced of his idea or she. Right. You understand? So to me, it was no matter how many people, you know, said, Oh, it may not be a good idea, I don't know, whatever. I am grateful to have worked with people like Basil who also put their trust in me and said, Okay, you know what? This is a weird concept, but go in. So I think that is something that's an advantage. But I think it's important to keep you have to always keep encouraging yourself to take the journey. If you don't, no matter how creative you are, you can end up behind a desk doing a nine to five. But yeah, I hope you're doing well. I hope so too. If you're watching, please listen to this man and get back into doing illustrative works. We had Hatch and and a lot of founders here. As a creative marketer, digital marketer, how would how would you recommend them to tell their story and and market their brand? First of all, shout out to Hats. Yeah, Hats has been a place that I've seen from far. I've attended a couple of events here as well. But it has been, and I know the founder bit, it has been a location that constantly nurtured creativity, nurtured taking a risk, nurtured taking that first step, and that's brilliant. But to answer your question, one founder to the other, what people miss to understand nowadays is that you are different from me. If the four of us in this room start four different businesses, we have to decide and have the boldness to take our own journey. I bring I employ back into the picture Pepper Street launched years ago. From the time we launched to now, do you know how many Sri Lankan clothing brands have started and closed? No one knows it's that much. I personally know a few of my friends that also started clothing brands, spent millions, put it in. Why? Most of the time people try to follow somebody else's journey. Where's the creative in that? Where's the authenticity in that? I'm not saying everything we do is completely 100% authentic. Because I do believe that there's nothing original under the sun. Exactly. Right? Right. It's just the person that tweaks it the right way gets the job done. So my advice to the founders would be coming from me, would say if you are a founder and if you have your business, take your own journey. Don't be afraid to do your own thing. Because it's like this every big business, every big company had the guts and the boldness to take their own journey. Every mediocre company copied someone. Yeah, that's true. You can throw all your stones at upwards.

SPEAKER_01 27:12

You can throw all your stones. They do what they want when they want it, how they want it, in the scale.

SPEAKER_03 27:24

They are not trying to fight with Samsung that launches 55 models of phones a year. They're trying to compete with Xiaomi, they're not trying to compete with it. Most important thing is that you understand your strengths, your weaknesses. You go your journey. That's how you create something. If not, you don't create a business, you create a clone. Right. So you see a lot of talk about people not being authentic, especially online and things like that. How can one be authentic? It's not easy. Being authentic takes guts. Do you know why? You have to own up to every single flaw you have. It's not a bad thing. To the outside, you might know people that think have certain certain things that they don't like about. Yes. Same with me. I know I'm not liked as much as I've born to be. But it's okay. The reason, I believe at least, is when you are fully under sorry, when you have fully understood who you are, what you can do, what you can't do, what you want to do, what you're good at, what you're bad at. You have to have the guts to own up to it. I am not afraid to come here, sit down in front of you and your viewers and say, I was not good at Matt. That's me being authentic. If I come here and tell you I was brilliant at Matth, and one of my teachers see this, they're gonna email you, they're gonna flag this video for misinformation, and we are gonna have a whole lot of that's the thing, right? Right. So I believe being authentic is simply understanding and coming to terms with the fact that the fact of who you are, and then walking off and saying, Hey, this is me. A friend says this is me. Um because there's no point of putting out a facade that you're not, right. But more than important, like what you just said, it's like you know who you are. You don't have to pretend. You don't have to. It's like this if you're an actor, right? Uh the easiest role an actor can play is themselves. The hardest role they play is when they have to embody somebody else.

SPEAKER_02 29:29

Correct.

SPEAKER_03 29:30

That's the best example for authenticity that I can give you. I like that. The easiest role an actor can play is themselves. Yeah. Because that's why they're an actor, no? They're good at playing anybody else. Yeah, I that's that's really good. How do you build trust uh when you're collaborating with the team? Especially creatives. What team? And let's say in your in your situation, marketing, right? And then you work with a ton of creative people, and creative people come with their own baggage. So, how do you build that kind of collaboration and then trust within that team to follow your direction? It's simple, again, to me at least, right? It may not be the case, but I feel like once you hear what I'm about to say, you'll be like, okay, that makes sense. It's not coming from an arrogant point of view, he just knows what his experience is, right? When it comes to creative people, you have to understand one thing the creative person role is unlike any other job role. You're not hiring an accountant, you're not hiring an auditor, you're not hiring someone that is set to do task A, B, C. You're hiring someone that you want to take you from A to C, and the in-between journey is more or less their responsibility. Am I correct? Yes. Right. So when I work with the team, I love to do this, and I do it every morning. You can ask the people I work with in the team under me. As I get to work with my bag, I will say, guys, come and have a seat in front of my table. I talk to them. I paint the picture of what our goals are, what our challenges are, who are our competitors, and I just paint that picture just so that they know this is the space in which that we are competing or that we are in. Once I do that, I always, because it's like this as a as somebody that uh talks about, you know, I was not encouraged to be creative in school. It would be hypocritical of me to slip somebody else's wings now, just because I have the power to do so. I love that. So I will always give the benefit of the doubt to somebody that is creative and say, This is what I want you to do, get me from here to there, and I will first let that first draft always come in. You can ask anyone, any photographer, any agency I worked with. I would always say, certain people, certain photographers, yes, do this, this is what I want. Yeah, and if there's anything that I need to tweak very nicely and humbly, I'll go and say, I this particular part I don't like. At that part, I tell him in a way or she in a way that they can tell me back, but I think this is okay. And there have been times, seven out of ten times, that they have been right and I have told them to stick with that person. If you take that approach to working with creative people, it's not that hard. You yourself is not saying, like, I'm my vision is correct. No, that's not creativity, that's dictatorship. Because usually creative people have that kind of tendency to be like, no, no, my vision is always um see, it's like this. I think that's an ignorant take. Do you know why? You know how creative you are, right? As an individual, yeah. You know how creative you are. Just imagine the power of you into three, right? You have to have the humility to understand there can be someone with a better idea than you. When you have that understanding and you rub them the right way, the result is astronomy. That's one of the reasons I started this podcast, because creative people like yourself and myself, we've gone through shit to be here. Sorry to cuss, but like we've gone through words to be here to come to this point of like at least accepting that you're a creative, right? And then on top of that, now we have to like navigate in this all of this stuff. Point is if we use creativity to connect with ourselves, get to know ourselves, which creativity, every time you get to the flow state, I believe that every time you learn something about yourself, absolutely, if you do it right, right? And and if you allow that time thinking time, it's fun. I do the same thing, I allow myself to be there and just like let the thoughts flow and learn what's happening and all of those things, and then comes clarity. So, more and more, if you do that, then I believe creatives become healthier. The reason I can agree with you now and say humility is important is because I have come to that safe understanding, which didn't happen out of nowhere. I didn't start believing because somebody told me I had to first take the time to know who I am, my weaknesses, and all those things to be able to say, no, no, no, no, there is so much more value in other people's creativity. Yeah. The best way to develop that humility is to put yourself with people better than you. You mentioned the whole musician thing. I sing at my church and I sing uh with two of arguably the best singers in the country. They're two ladies. Yeah. And there used to be a time, and I'm sure if there was this, but there used to be a time where I used to think, you know, I I don't think there's a song that I can't sing until I realize that's true. There may be not a song that I can't sing, but that same song sung from another person sounds how it's supposed to sound. Now I'm completely comfortable. Now if I know a song and a heal and I go this one, that's your song, you say. Please and that approach to life makes everything so much easier. Number one is you have more peace. Yes. Number two is your output becomes phenomenal.

unknown 35:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:14

Now it's not just your mind. So hey, I want to end this with this question. So a lot of creatives who are watching this and and and and must be wondering, like, how how did like Ryan saying I'm supposed to be uh humble and all of those things? What is your advice to them to come become like a healthy creative? My advice become a healthy creative to anyone is like we've been going back and forth on this podcast has been understand yourself, understand your strengths, understand your weaknesses. Yes, while that is important. You have to understand that this is not a race. If you want to do the creative work, you can't rush it for anything. Yes. When I say rush it, I also mean you can't be too hard on yourself, you can't be too lenient with yourself, but you also have to be lenient with yourself. Sounds like a big conundrum, but but because it's like this a lot of creative people that I know. I've worked at an agency also in this process. Heavy smokers, heavy drinkers. You know why that is? So much pressure. Yeah. I have to create, I have to deliver. That one was waiting for this, this one is waiting for that. Oh, so every 10 minutes out of the office, like I said, that's not rock at sign. But it's not easy, also. You have to have built those things about yourself where you give yourself a break every now and then, where you understand, and you have to segregate time to sit down and breathe. With creatives, uh, this might be controversial, but I don't believe that a creative is supposed to be constantly creating.

SPEAKER_02 36:56

I agree.

SPEAKER_03 36:57

If you're a creative and you think your journey forward is working at an agency or working at a digital media company, you shouldn't be sitting on your laptop creating content 24-7.

SPEAKER_02 37:11

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 37:11

At some point, they have the ability to do what your school needs to you and kill them. I've seen it happen. One graphic designer will get 12 clients. So on how to do 12 posts, how to do. What does he do? He goes to stock him yourself, photoshop, but becoming healthy, creative. If at all you're becoming more unhealthy because you're in one place doing nothing and eating and drinking, and you know, if you have bad habits, you're smoking, you're drinking, all of that. To sum it up, give yourself a break. But also, like I said, you you can't be too lenient with yourself, but you also have to be lenient. You can't be too hard on yourself. It's almost as if you you would treat yourself as if you were treating your younger self. Yeah, because now uh it's it's uh phenomenally bother up. When you were mentioning that, what I was thinking was, man, if I could have taken care of little Ryan, right, who went through all that mental torment simply because everybody thought I was autistic. Can I say that word? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, autism is a that's okay, right? I don't know. Everybody like they used to look at me like because they put me to special classes for subjects. Now I'm a normal person built to doubt myself. Yeah, St. Joseph's College has a uh a special class and learn extra about the thing that you already don't want to do, that you're already not good at. Oh my gosh. So thank you for bringing that up because I would be very kind to that person and know, hey man, it's not the end of the world. You have to give yourself some room. And I think that's the case with any job we've seen in Sri Lanka. People committing suicide, yeah, and writing in the note, I did it because my job was too pressurized. It happened a while ago. I don't remember the story exactly, but in Sri Lanka it happened, and he in the suicide note he had mentioned writing the mom, which means because the pressure of my job was too much, I took this decision. How sad dang, I don't even know where to go from that. Um I just I mean, it makes me more inspired to kind of talk about what I'm talking about as far as encouraging people to create. And and I and accuse like you, I believe everyone's creative, you know. Whether you're at a startup and problem-solving or artistic or whatever type of thing, creativity should be part of uh everybody's life and they should give more time to think and things like that. Uh, Brian, that's all I have, man. I really, really am grateful for you being with Abish Schedule. Yeah, until is there anything you'd like to tell the audience? Uh thank you for having me and for bringing up all this stuff. I hope uh more than anything this helps someone. Yes. The main reason I said yes and I want to do this with you also is because I identified in you that you were someone that was doing a podcast for a purpose. Yes. I've seen podcasts that start for the sake of it because we need to have podcasts. But I realized okay, this man has a vision. I think I check your following and what is about you. I'm glad you didn't, I didn't! Because when I first interaction with you was at the store. Yes. This guy has a vision. And I somehow meet me on social media. So thank you for having me. Thank you for watching. I wish you all the best. Thank you. Continue to create, continue to inspire. Thank you. Until next time, keep creating, keep dreaming, and keep going on your own creative RSC. Until next time, see you there.