Episode 77: A Coaching Call

We’re pulling back the curtain and letting you hear a real coaching call with a client who’s doing the brave part: building something new while the old voice in his head keeps asking, “Who do you think you are?” That tension is the heartbeat of creative work. We talk about the moment self-doubt shows up, why asking for help is harder than it sounds, and how to sort true guidance from the noise of too many opinions. 

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Transcript

Why A Coaching Call Matters

SPEAKER_04 0:01

Today's podcast is a little something different. It is a glimpse into one of my coaching calls with a client. I've worked with this particular gentleman for a few months now, and he has made bold and courageous strides in crafting his future out of his past and his current work and everything he's learned along the way. I'm incredibly proud of him and thankful that he let me share this with you. Now, a caveat. I am not a credited schooled coach or credited business coach or life coach or professional coach. I have no idea what the fuck that means. Because everybody's different. There is no formula. And we all need the same thing. We cr quite frankly hang on. Let me just do that again. Colby, Colby, Colby, we're going to do something again. We all need the same thing. We quite frankly need to be seen and heard and loved. And in order to move forward, many times we need a sounding board. Or we need permission. And we need to know that we're not crazy. All of my calls with my clients are different. Everybody is building a different part of their life or a different part of their career. Some are literally portfolio projects. I'm helping them craft and build the work they present to the world. Others are lessons in creative courage. They use me as a mirror to check their progress. And many calls are super intense with major breakthroughs and tears. And the tears are often mine. But if we do a good job together, the calls are fun. Like this one. I hope you enjoy it. And if you're serious about moving ahead in your career, or you're stuck and you're looking for the next horizon, go to jamesvictory.com and there's a little pink button that says book a free call. And we'll talk. Okay, let's do this.

SPEAKER_00 2:48

How have you been, man?

SPEAKER_04 2:50

Um, I've been good. I'm I'm working hard. Uh I've got a lot of things going on, a lot of things on on my head, which is not always a good thing. Yeah. I actually just wrote a post today about uh about um what it takes to keep going. Yeah. You know, like the tools that I have to use that, you know, how I have to go to the gym and I have to take care of my body and I have to exercise to get all the the the the humors, the you know, all the demons out of my system. Okay. So um, so yeah, uh I've I've I've been good. You know, it's like it's like I'm building a new, I'm building a new, a new course, a new school, and it's you know, it's daunting because you know, the, you know, I mean, it's what you mean, you know, thank you for thank you for filling out, I mean, sending me this letter. This is fucking awesome. But, you know, what you write in here is what I'm going through. It's this idea of like, you know, the self-doubt that creeps in. You're like, I know I'm on the path, I know this stuff is right, I know I'm good at what I do, but you know, self-doubt creeps in. So and we have to kind of ignore that, be not be stupid about it, but um be logical about it and go, okay, let me take it piece by piece. And ask, and actually, something that's very difficult for me, and something that's you know, it's good that you and I are talking, but it's difficult for me, is I have to ask for help. So I've got to I've gotta build the thing and then send it people, send it to people and say, hey, poke holes in this, would you? And they send them back, and then their holes, I fall into their holes, and I'm like, oh, damn. Yeah, that's a big hole.

SPEAKER_00 4:30

Well, and that's the weird part about it, though, right? Like when I um and I had to keep like every time after we talk, and I got I have to check myself a little bit and ask myself, wait, but do you think that? You know, I have to ask myself that it because I need it like this whole like having you as my coach is crazy for me. It's just crazy for me to even think about. And I have I had to have a conversation with myself early on and say, hey man, just because James believes it doesn't mean you have to buy in, right? Doesn't mean you believe it too. So you I have to really like think about the things that we talk about all the time, not devaluing what you think, but really just trying to the whole point of me talking to you is trying to be trying to find a way in my life to be truer to myself, yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, so how do you I feel like a lot of times people ask for too many opinions from too many different people and then they find themselves stuck. Yes. So how do you sort through that?

SPEAKER_04 5:41

Yes, I mean for me, a lot of that process is is um, you know, it gets it gets stuck in your head.

The Body Tells The Truth

SPEAKER_03 5:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 5:50

And like I said earlier, so when things get stuck in my head like that, I've got to go for a run or I gotta go to the uh to the gym. And what that does is it gets all the, you know, we spend like 95% of our time in our head. Right. And here's the thing, that's fine, but our our our our our heads lie to us, our mind lies to us. That's where all the fears are. Our body tells the truth. I mean, there's literally, you know, there's literally an important book about the mind-body association. It says the body keeps the score, right? The body remembers everything. The head lies to us, the head is the head is fear, yeah, right? So so for me, separating the fear from truth, and not only separating the fear from truth, but getting to that point where I'm like, okay, Jimbo, what's the fucking audacious answer? Yeah, what's my answer? You know, so so yes, it's it's it's asking yourself exactly like you said, what do I think? What do I think?

SPEAKER_00 6:47

Right. Yeah. And it's weird for me to get to because um it's it's a weird place for me to get to because obviously you go to school, you go to college, they don't want your your they don't want your opinion as much as they pretend like they do, they don't. Um you end up getting their opinion, and then once you start working, you get their opinion, and they don't want your opinion, right? So it's weird to be in a place in my life where it's like, no, I have to, I have to have an opinion, and I have to hold myself accountable to my opinion at all times. And that's kind of where I'm at right now, like even at work. I just changed my presentation for this last week, and like I just did a thing in Vegas uh presentation. I did two of them this month, and I changed it to be true to myself, and and also I shamelessly wanted to test it. Awesome, awesome, yeah, right? Yeah, and it just when people are being honest, you can tell, you know, and I don't know if that's some like physiology. There's this book called Power versus Force that um one of the things that it believes is like we our souls are like are like kinesiology a little bit, sure. Where you can tell the truth from what's a lie, even if you have no background or basis in what they're talking about.

SPEAKER_04 8:13

Yeah, it's truth. Everything vibrates, and when you when you match that vibration, you know, yeah, that's that's where the truth is.

Copy That Sounds Like You

SPEAKER_00 8:20

Yeah. So I've been listening to a bunch of your podcasts, and so at this point, I'm ready to sit just rip the volume knob off and just write, write, write all of my copy. And so I was on the airplane flying home yesterday, and I was like, why the fuck? Like, why do we call books creative writing? And then when it's business related, it's copy. Yes, right, right, like and so I thought, okay, I want to write writing for my business, right? Like I want to have this kind of I've been reading a lot of Clyde Barker lately because I always loved his writing style.

SPEAKER_04 8:59

I think great.

SPEAKER_00 9:00

The way he thinks is so weird, and I think it's like a pretty great mind expander, right? The story I'm reading about is about these people's hands who become self-aware, and all these hands are like liberating themselves from the authority, which is the people's bodies, and they're running around. It's great, it's a crazy story. It's kind of a great story and it's pretty ridiculous, but at the same time, he just went for it, it's and it's a great story.

SPEAKER_04 9:28

Yeah, yeah. Um, and that's awesome to go back to your sources of um, and I do that as well. And then uh my sources are people who talk like people.

SPEAKER_03 9:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 9:39

You know, I I I I dip into LinkedIn occasionally and I'm like, oh my god, is everybody using chat? Is everybody it's like it's like they've got a uh um there's a basement somewhere in Chicago where they've got all these all these um copywriters chained up.

SPEAKER_03 9:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 9:56

And they're all spitting out the same stuff. It just sounds like it's like you know, writing for business. And I I I get it, yeah, but at the same time, that for me, that and you know, my purpose, it doesn't serve me. And for you, it doesn't serve you to write like that. It serves you. You were trying to talk to people on a on a on a on a soul-to-soul, one-to-one level, right? I mean you're trying to really reach people because you you are concerned, you want to do a good job, and you want to make change. Yeah, and and you don't want to just do the surface treatment, right? So, so yeah, so going back to those is super important. I mean, I have to I found and like we've like we've said before, for me to talk it into my phone and not sit down and type immediately helps tremendously because again, I'm just talking, generally talking and driving, so I can't even 100% think about what I'm saying. Because I'm really, really searching for the truth. And if I say the F word or I or I or I make some kind of malaprop, I try to keep it in because it's real.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

Yeah, very good, very good. So once upon a time, so I I've been like just kind of dissecting your own career, trying to figure out, just trying to see it for just to see it right sized, right? And and I think I even put it in that email to you where it's like once upon a time, you were really into writing, like you were really into reading big thoughts and big ideas, the philosophy, the poetry, and all of that stuff. And but then you were like, No, but I want to be a poster designer. Um and vision, and and I feel like what you do today though is you visualize the things, the ideas that you come up with, and the ideas that you come up with are based in this this um poetry philosophy world, right? And was that conscious, or was that just I'm doing, I'm just doing what I do.

SPEAKER_04 11:59

I'm just um the only conscious part is I wanted to tell the truth.

SPEAKER_00 12:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 12:05

And I know that I know that you know that that um words are powerful, words have meaning. And I know that poetry is another language, yeah. It's not English. You know, right. It's like it's like comedy. Yeah, you know, it's a lie to illustrate the truth. Yeah, yeah. So I uh that's the that's the core of it. I'm looking at your I'm looking at your uh I'm looking at you, you know, what you what you wrote here, um, because it's really great stuff. Um yes, and that's like we were talking earlier, that's me just trying to, I'm just trying to get to the truth.

SPEAKER_03 12:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 12:39

Like I at one point thought if if I became um a really great poster designer, I wouldn't need visuals at all. It would just be a white, big white piece of paper with flush left Helvetica in the corner and just words. Because because that would be, you know, that would be enough.

SPEAKER_03 12:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 12:57

Um I don't know if that's true or not. And it's also, you know, some images are truly sexy, and we need to uh you know pay attention to that.

Truth, Critics, And Corporate Fear

SPEAKER_00 13:07

Um but when you started, so you start in your career, and let's just call it for what it is, you were up against the guard of that day, right? So obviously when people are looking at James Victoria's handwriting and the flies having sex with each other, and at the same time, there's things like you know, Paula Sher is doing her thing, and there's sort of the the designer guard, right? Of the look, we'll call it the authority or the the hot designers of that day. How did um emotionally obviously people are talking shit to you at certain points in your career? How did you maneuver that without letting it sort of erode your own sense of self?

SPEAKER_04 13:51

Um, it's just having a vision. It's just like it's just again, it's like if you believe in what you're doing, um, and there were there there were enough people um supporting me.

SPEAKER_03 14:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 14:04

Um, mostly in Europe. Right.

SPEAKER_03 14:10

That's so awesome.

SPEAKER_04 14:11

You know, it's like it's like I I I I spoke in Switzerland um, you know, at at that point that you're talking about, I spoke in Switzerland and one of the, you know, one of my heroes came out of the audience after and said, said, um, you know, he said, James, the great thing about your work isn't about what it looks like, but what it says. And I thought, oh, okay, fuck, I'm doing something right here.

SPEAKER_03 14:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 14:35

Um, and I know that I've said this a million times. I know that with the um The Dead Indian, you know, my first poster, um, I know that I professionally shot myself in the foot, in the foot.

SPEAKER_02 14:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 14:49

Um, um I know there are still um corporate workshops that I don't get because they're afraid.

SPEAKER_03 15:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 15:02

I've been I've been I've been paid not to speak by by corporations because they, you know, they they're like, wait, huh, huh, wait, who's this guy? Because and the thing is, it's like it's the but the truth is, and this is why you and I are working together, the truth is what they were afraid of is that they thought their their their people would not come back to work the next day.

SPEAKER_03 15:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 15:26

And I'm like, yeah, well, they probably shouldn't, because they're generally, I think they're being held captive. Um and and if they don't come back, it's good for them and it's good for you because you don't want them here, because you don't have their heart. Yeah. You don't have their heart. Go find the worker bees that you need, the drones that you need.

SPEAKER_03 15:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 15:46

But let these people create, let these people find their true purpose, right? So, so, you know, and you say here in your and you put it beautifully in you when you when you wrote me last week, it said, Um, realization hit me that living my purpose might not make me as much money as I make now. I disagree it's going to be an avenue for income that you haven't even thought about.

SPEAKER_02 16:09

Right.

SPEAKER_04 16:10

But also you say, um, but creating work consistently for the first time in probably 20 years is where it's just about doing the work has been liberating. See, these things, these things are important. Tapping into that and tapping into those powers is super important. You say, um, just working and feeling the optimistic power of dreaming in the moment is helping to build what feels like real, stable, honest confidence. Motherfucker, that's awesome. Good job. Thank you. Good fucking job. Growing a pair, right?

SPEAKER_00 16:45

Well, it is in a weird way, it it's changing my aesthetic. You know, and when I audited why I do the drawings that I do of those monsters, it I I love the laboriousness of it. I'm I think at my heart, I'm a laborer. You know, like I started my career as a dishwasher. I worked in factories. I always found that kind of work to be, you know, to a degree clear. It cleared my mind out quite a bit. And it also allowed me to see the world in at its worst.

SPEAKER_03 17:19

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 17:21

Okay, I'm I'm gonna be here 10 hours and I'm hanging these parts on this factory line and like looking around at all the you know, people about to go back to prison around me, like, goddamn, you know.

SPEAKER_03 17:33

What am I doing?

SPEAKER_04 17:34

Yeah, no, I hear you. I'm I'm much, I'm you know, I was you know brought up in the military, I'm a blue-collar guy, I'm a I'm a working stiff, you know.

SPEAKER_00 17:42

But but I also realize that making art in the moment and going back to it to revise it doesn't always feel right. You know what I mean? Where it's like, so it's changing my aesthetic a little bit because it is, you know, with a the advent of AI and all that stuff, where like I feel like striving for perfection is like I do believe that perfection will be the new bore, will be the new generic because AI's got a lock on that mark, sure, you know, sure, which is which is which is very freeing, yeah, for sure. Because now it's like, well, let's just make it imperfect and still utilizing my you know, the philosophies of design that I learned, but knowing it's weird too, because it's this duality where I hate the fact that there's so many rules in design, but I know all of these rules in design, and I don't necessarily disagree with every single one, right? I disagree with I I hate it when I see videos, and one of the triggering things is when they say every designer should do this, every designer should never do this, and it just makes me want to do those things, yeah. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_04 18:56

Yeah, I remember uh um a number of years ago, I was in um I I had an exhibition in Japan, so I spent um like a week and a half uh traveling in Japan. And I remember going into shops and seeing the uh t-shirts that they had for sale, and they had um it was just a like a collage or a cacophony on one on one on one shirt, and they had these um these you know English words, American words that were really boring, yeah. Right, but they had put them on backwards because it doesn't matter, right? Yeah, and there was such a level of freedom that that that affected my work for a good long time. This idea of like, wait a minute, you know, one I took the time to actually see in reverse and read the damn thing. Yeah, and like, oh shit, people will do that. People will make the effort. And what what you were saying earlier is designers are often getting rid of that process for people. AI is definitely gonna get rid of that process. You know, people write to me, I write about uh AI, and people are like, oh, but you know, I I often struggle with the you know, this or that about my work, and I plug it into chat or whatever, and it and it helps. And I'm like, no, no, no, you're removing the struggle. The struggle is important, yeah. The struggle is important, and even the audience, it's okay if they struggle. Because again, if they walk away, guess what? They're not your audience. And you're gonna catch those those those those beautiful few who will be with you for life because you're they're like, dude, you speak to me.

SPEAKER_00 20:37

Yeah. No, that's awesome. I do yeah, that's interesting.

AI, Perfection, And The Struggle

SPEAKER_04 20:45

So, you know, we we um I think the the yes, the death of perfection would be would be awesome, even if it's brought on by artificial sources.

SPEAKER_00 20:56

Right. And I actually just listened to a podcast where you're talking to, I can't remember the guy's name about AI. Um, the guy that wrote the book uh Prompt Brush.

SPEAKER_04 21:08

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:09

And um Pablo. And that was interest, it was interesting because he was actually pretty into AI and but saw the potential pitfalls of it. Um, and me at work right now, we're damn near forced to use it, where it's like, hey, we want you to streamline your processes, we want the shit not to take forever. Um, and I've I've been fighting the good fight on that as much as I can, but I mean at a certain point it will I mean it will overtake me in my position for sure.

SPEAKER_04 21:42

Uh yes, but that is that is that, you know, I often have people saying, you know, talking to me and they say, um, you know, but at my job, but at my job. And I'm like, wait, wait, no, that's actually it's actually not your job. You're in somebody else's seat.

SPEAKER_00 21:56

That's a good point.

SPEAKER_04 22:00

You're taking up space for buys you know for somebody else.

SPEAKER_03 22:02

So yeah.

SPEAKER_04 22:03

Um and I think the companies they that that believe that that the that AI is going to remove a certain part of their workforce and they're happy about it, um, and they're and they're saying they're ushering it in, they are gonna they're gonna shoot themselves in the foot.

unknown 22:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 22:20

Because it's gonna you know, it's like we see AI in movies. Yeah, and we fucking hate it. I mean that's be that's being used at top fucking tier. Right. It's crap. So so so what do you think, you know, these businesses are gonna get out of it.

SPEAKER_00 22:37

Right. Well, and open AI is talking about going public this towards the end of this year, early next year, right? So one of my theories, because I work in financial services, and strangely found myself having an aptitude for the things that they talk about in financial services. Um, one of the things that I truly believe is once open AI goes public, I mean, they purge billions of dollars a year on this company right now. It is not a prof open AI is not a profitable company. But once they go public, now they have to prove path to profitability. And I think that everybody that's got chat GPT running wild on their CRM and making email blasts and doing all their work that their employees used to do, it's gonna audit that and say, Hey, you're gonna have to give us$100,000 a month, or or we will shut off our services, essentially killing all of your workers. Yeah, yeah. I you know, I remember in grade school hearing stories about like, hey, uh, watch out because people are gonna give you drugs for free to help you get addicted to them. And that was always like an idea that people had. I've never gotten drugs for free, right? Like, I don't know who these people were that were handing them out, but I never got those drugs. But it's funny that it's in our society to think like that. Hey, they're gonna give it to you for free, and then you're gonna become addicted to it, and then they're gonna charge you a lot of money for it.

SPEAKER_04 24:04

Yeah, well, we are. We are addicted to it. Uh we're addicted to it, and it's being shoved down our throats at every there isn't a single app that I can open that doesn't say, would you like me to do this for you? I'm like, no. And I and I did I tell you, did I tell you that, you know, I I I never really I never I wasn't a chat guy, but then it came out that Claude was defending itself against the administration, and I was like, oh, that's cool. Let me check that out. So I open it up and um start signing in. And it says, You what's your name? What's your, you know, what's this, what's this, what's this? And then it says, and then the next question is, how shall I address you? And I'm like, oh fuck no. I'm not using this shit. I'm not looking for a fucking friend, Claude. No, goddamn, I guess I'll just go back to my encyclopedias and my uh Roger's thesaurus and my uh, you know, and my brain and my my my skills and my talents and my, you know, if I if I you know, if I can't if I can't spell something, I'll look it up if I, you know, or I'll just become eventually become a good uh you know, a better writer.

SPEAKER_03 25:12

Right.

SPEAKER_04 25:13

I mean, chat isn't gonna help you become a better writer. It's not gonna find it's not gonna help you what you are doing now is that you're doing all this deep diving to find out who you are and find out your voice. Yeah. Chat's not gonna do that for you. Nothing's gonna do that for you, except this level of introspection and this level of uh um the searching that you're doing and the and the and the struggle, which is awesome. You know, you said, you know, you you wrote here the um you have a whole paragraph here about the goal isn't financial, it's about doing the work that I, you know, doing the work that I love in the moment, showing the world who I am, the flaws and all. The consequence of that could be no clients, and I'm good with that. What you're doing when you write that shit and you put that, you know, when you say it to yourself and you say it to the universe, you're creating a a wide path of freedom for yourself. And that's powerful because people are gonna feel that.

SPEAKER_00 26:04

Yeah, once upon a time, this old timer in AA, a lot of the shit that I like, I didn't really have a dad growing up. I had a stepdad that really wasn't my dad, and I had a dad that really wasn't my dad. So a lot of this weird advice that I keep going back to as an adult, I got from these old dudes and AA. And um, I remember, you know, one of the the omnipresent things that these old timers are always tell you about is hey, don't be don't be attached to the result. It may not be what you want it to be. Like be attached to the you know, the now and to the moment. Like, who gives a fuck? It's not gonna work out.

SPEAKER_04 26:39

It wasn't possible. Exactly. You have to love the journey because that's all you got.

SPEAKER_03 26:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 26:44

You know, and and and I've known I've known people, I've known millionaires, you know. Uh I've known a couple of millionaires personally, um, and it it it's never enough. Yeah, there's just just it's all there will always be a hole, they're always trying to fill it. So, so you know, um, yeah, it's there's a level of um gratitude that we all have to assume, right? Right.

SPEAKER_00 27:11

Do you know who Aaron Draplin is? He's got a video on social media right now where he was talking about being on a zoom call. He's like, and there's three of us, and there's a billionaire. And the billionaire was in a time zone where he it was the middle of the night for him, so he's on the zoom call with the rest of us. And he's like, and I the my first thought is why the fuck are you a billionaire and nobody else on this call is? Right? And then he's like, and when you think about what that dynamic is, that's not exactly he calls it apples to apples. He's like, that's not exactly apples to apples, right? Yeah, he's like, and if you have a billion dollars, why are you still working at your, you know, your job or your business or whatever it is, why are you still doing that? He said, I was so uncomfortable that I opted out. I said, I'm not doing this. If my buddy needs a record cover, that's apples to apples. If a business needs a logo, that's apples to apples. I can't be dealing with billionaires because that's not apples to apples, and I become an employee.

SPEAKER_03 28:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:14

Um, and it's interesting though, right? Um, have you ever come across that in your career where you're like, wait a second? Like they want me to come in here to be there, you know, kind of dancing monkey.

SPEAKER_04 28:29

Um, I have been I'm lucky enough that I have not. I have been approached by some companies when I when I did a lot of um when I was my studio back in New York and I did a lot of cosmetic stuff for Bobby Brown and Aveda and stuff, I got approached by some companies and they and I and I did the research and I found out they were, you know, doing a lot of animal testing and they were doing you know a lot of bad stuff, and I was like, yeah, um party. So, you know, that that kind of thing. But you know, you can't you can't if you dig deep, right? There's a certain amount of dirt. Yeah. Right? Yeah, right. It might be who they bank with.

SPEAKER_02 29:10

Right.

SPEAKER_04 29:11

So it's hard to it's hard to be 100%, you know, above board. Um, you know, unless you, you know, make prints, you know, you're your own little tiny cottage industry. Right. You know.

SPEAKER_00 29:23

And is that what you're up to now in your career? Are are you actively looking for client work or like brand deals?

SPEAKER_04 29:30

No, no, I don't actively look. I have a few small clients that um that I've had forever, and I, you know, I sign on with them when they're when they need. Um, but I'm not looking. I'm not I'm I'm less interested in that these days. Because, you know, and here's the thing, because I know what I'm capable of. Right. And I know what clients are generally capable of. And I and they and they and and the alignment isn't there. I have to work with people who are you know aligned uh and people who trust me. Because if you trust me, you'll get great work. But if you you know, if you just pay me, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter how much you pay me.

SPEAKER_00 30:09

Right, right, right. All right, so I so I think next step for me is is literally take my my iPhone um starting tonight and just writing what I think the verbiage should be for this website. Um when you go into okay, I need a website for like a book or something. What do you do have a concept out the gate on how much copy you're gonna put in there? It's like I'll just fucking purge and edit it down.

SPEAKER_04 30:42

Um yeah, editing comes later, obviously, right? You know, um, you know, what is the expression uh, you know, write drunk, edit sober. Um you know. Um I write um in the morning and I write in the afternoon.

SPEAKER_03 30:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 31:00

Um and then the next day I look at that and I try to I try to get to a place where I can just start playing with it.

SPEAKER_03 31:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 31:11

You know, it's like it's like um English literature author Hugh Walpole, a humorist, um wrote some really wonderful stuff. And um in an interview, they asked, I said, they said, Mr. Walpole, you know, um, how do you write such witty books? And he said, Oh no, I don't add the wit until the seventh or eighth draft. It's like you just you start with shitty first drafts, right? You should it's an Anne Lamotte expression. You start by just, you know, puking it out.

SPEAKER_03 31:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 31:47

Um, um, trying to get the the the brass tax. What is it? What are the what are the things that I need to say? Yeah, right. And just it could start as even just a list. I need to say this, I need to say this. Um, I try not to ask to send it around and ask too many opinions because I will I will drown in that.

SPEAKER_03 32:05

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 32:06

No. Um, and um, I think the little bit that I've dabbled in in AI uh did that for me. Yeah, I got lost in in its suggestions, and I'm like, yeah, you're a robot. I'm not gonna listen to you.

SPEAKER_03 32:21

Right.

SPEAKER_04 32:22

You know, they they're you know, I need somebody who has success and somebody who's failed. I want to listen to those voices.

SPEAKER_00 32:30

Correct. Yep. No, I totally agree. That's a hundred per I'm 100% on board with that. That and that's funny too, because this guy that I worked with said, why won't you just train an AI to do that for you? And it's like, well, I can't, because an AI isn't successful. They and they don't know the like the emotional struggle of getting out of this shit that we're in and trying to get into something that ever literally everybody in your life is telling you real people don't get to do that. You know what I mean? Like AI doesn't have to doesn't know how to deal with that stuff.

SPEAKER_04 33:04

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and as far as the you know, as far as the going from shitty first drafts into something real, is that's when you start trying to add the humanity and the humor. If that's your gig, you know, it might not be, you know. I my my my sense of humor comes from the macabre or the you know or um or the illogical ideas, you know, and I want to add those. And I like using, you know, the the the malapprops, the wrong word, the wrong phrase. You know, I like the wrongest idea.

SPEAKER_03 33:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 33:38

So I try to add those because again, that's where I'm going to find my audience.

The Wrongest Idea Creative Tool

SPEAKER_00 33:44

Did you come up with this concept of the wrongest idea? Uh like organically, or did you hear that? Or did you where you ideate that with something?

SPEAKER_04 33:54

Uh the the those words, the wrongest idea.

SPEAKER_00 33:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 33:57

I just I'm a I like puns.

SPEAKER_03 33:59

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 34:00

I like puns. And I um um I worked that way for a while. When I when I switched from being being a strictly commercial designer and I was doing just like book jackets and album covers, yeah, um, into doing some of my own work. Um I started trying to not I'm I realized I was always trying to pick the correct typeface. What's the right typeface? Yeah. The typeface that just that just means exactly that thing. And I realized that's the wrong way to go about it. So I started picking the opposite, using beautiful types to say something ugly or ugly type to say something beautiful. And the same with imagery, right? How to say something beautiful with with an ugly image. Um, and then I had this uh period where um um Stefan uh you know, uh Sagmeister and I would have lunch together regularly, and we would always kind of just for fun bring a little something that we were working on. Yeah. And it was it all it was always that. You know, I we we we we basically would come up with the wrongest idea, the worst idea possible, but the dead then design the shit out of it. Yeah, and turn it into like like a a a a very saleable uh piece. Yeah, you know what I mean? Make it make it s come sound like it's complete sense.

SPEAKER_03 35:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 35:24

That's really like taking the wrongest answer and turning it into the right answer. And I've and I found by doing that, I rarely, rarely, if ever, you know, got got turned down or killed. And then of course, then of course, you you know, you and and this is what you're starting to do as well, is then of course you you establish a reputation for doing that or being being that, and you get hired for that and it makes it a little bit easier.

SPEAKER_00 35:48

Yeah. I actually had a guy uh this last couple of days ask me, pulled me aside and said, Hey, are you doing this through your own company, or is this through your own company? Because I really just like to work with you. I appreciate it, but yeah, this particular thing is through, but it's like it felt good to that this thing was resonating to that degree, right? Yeah, like hey, I just want to work because I did say some crazy shit, and I actually did I even showed that video I saw on your timeline the other day about um uh you don't get to tell me who I get to be. Yeah, and that's how I ended the speech. And I said, Hey, listen, right now, all of your vendors, all of your IMOs, all of your designers, all of the brand authority is telling you who the fuck to be. And if you started your own business not to be an employee to a vendor, you know, and so I I I went in super hot with that at the very end, and I think that um really resonated too, where people were like, Holy fuck, like we all do look like financial advisors, and we're not.

SPEAKER_04 36:56

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you're speaking to their humanity, right? It's awesome. Ah, I'm super proud of you.

SPEAKER_00 37:03

I mean, that was a great did you do the voiceover in that, or did he do that?

SPEAKER_04 37:07

Just for that last little bit.

SPEAKER_00 37:08

Yeah, no, that was awesome. It was so like he said, James, I did this video. Take a look, I want you to say this thing. It was so good, and it is like, and when you were talking like that, do you know who Harley Race is? No, he so he's this old-time pro wrestler that talks like really slow, and he's considered to be like one of the like the probably the toughest guys in wrestling. He did not give a fuck, you know what I mean? Like he would um, if somebody like swerved him, he wouldn't like try to play politics, he would just beat him up, right? Like and so everybody was always kind of afraid of Harley Race, even as he got older, like even into his 70s, and he talked really slow. And when just your cadence, I was like, God damn, he sounds like Harley Race. Like, I'll fucking burn your house down if you tell me who I get to be, you know.

SPEAKER_04 38:01

That's awesome. Yeah, I recorded it into my phone like three times and sent them to him. He said, Oh, yeah, that's it. And then, of course, and then of course, here's what happens, right? I did it three times, yeah, and I sent it, and then I wrote him, I sent him, then I went back and uh I emailed him and said, Hey, listen, I'm thinking of you know doing it this way. And he's like, He's like, Nope, I already picked one. Bye. Now we we we second guess ourselves, yeah, yeah. Even even for even with something just you know for fun. Um, and you know, the and the trick is to to not do that. The trick is, you know, the same thing with hand lettering for me. Write it two or three times, try to pick the first. Yeah, because everything else, everything else after that is just judging.

SPEAKER_00 38:45

Oh, and that's actually another thing I wanted to talk to you about today. Um, you know, there is this widespread, this widespread, you know, propaganda in our industry that, hey, your first idea sucks, right? Yeah, you gotta you gotta keep going, keep going, you know. As many times, you know, and and that's the undefined part that nobody can really tell you is like, well, if your first idea sucks and your last idea is the fucking best, why would you ever stop? Right? Why wouldn't you just go on years and years and years and blow the deadline and be the showing in museums? Correct. What is your thought on that?

SPEAKER_04 39:23

Um yeah, you're right. You will you will first of all you'll make yourself crazy. Right. Searching, right? Searching. There, there, there's nothing more beautiful than a deadline. Yeah. Nothing gets done with a dead without a deadline. Right. You know, um, for me, for something simple like a, you know, the an you know, easy fun voiceover, I'm like, okay, I'm gonna give, I'm gonna give him, you know, 15 minutes. Yeah, I'll give him 15 minutes, see what happens. Um, you know, for longer pieces, obviously, you know, I look on the calendar and I go, okay, it's a month out. That's my deadline. Let's go.

SPEAKER_03 39:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 39:59

Right? Um, nothing happens without a deadline. Um and I also think that there's a level of acceptance that we need to, that we need to um acquire, develop, where, where, where um, you know, done is better than perfect, is what I've you know, what I like to say. Um, and it's not about doing sloppy work. It's just about accepting that, you know, I'm gonna do a million pieces in my life. Yeah some of them will be good.

SPEAKER_02 40:27

Right.

SPEAKER_04 40:28

You know, I knew I I worked for the New York Times magazine, and you know, uh they did they were some of the best and most talented designers in New York. And I I got lucky and I did a bunch of covers for them, but I would meet them and I'm like, man, how do you know how do you do that? How do you keep how do you keep it up? And you know, Jill, who was the um uh the the creative director at the time, she said, she said, James, we do 52 covers. Some of them are gonna stink. Yeah, like it's like it's like, or not even 52, they just do you know one every one every week. It's like you can't. Yeah, you you gotta you gotta there's a there's a deadline and you just get it done.

SPEAKER_00 41:08

That's really cool. It's because that that mindset is so freeing, and at the same time, like it's the first time we talked, you're like, hey, everybody poops, everybody makes shit that sucks. Everybody, it doesn't matter where you're at in this game, like whether you're me, you, fucking polish air, everybody, right? And I've never actually heard somebody say that, even though every like, and I've been to design conventions, nobody talks about that. Hey, we're making fucking burners on a daily basis that we don't give a fuck about, that are never gonna see our portfolio, we're not gonna sign our name to. Who cares? Right? We're like trying to not be homeless at a certain point in our career.

SPEAKER_04 41:49

Yeah. Um also, also, you know, you're what you're doing when you when you teach yourself that uh the level of acceptance and you know, literally fecking perfection, what you're teaching yourself is a level of trust that you're trusting, you're trusting your work, you're trusting your words. And you might look at it once it's you know, I mean, of course, I hit I hit send. Yeah, and I'm like, oh, you know what I should have done. Right, right. You know, so so save it. Save it. It'll be in the next one. Don't worry, don't worry. There's, you know, often often with these types of things, I always my my go-to is always the is always the humanity. It's never the professionalism, it's never the money, it's never the um perfectionism, it's always the humanity. Walk away, walk away doing, you know, doing being the best that you can be.

Branding With Humanity And Story

SPEAKER_00 42:40

Yeah. So and so in one of these podcasts, you talked about how you talked about the Tao and how it's um like in there, there's this idea of like within the simple, you like it contains complex, and within the complex, it contains simple ideas, right? Yeah, yeah. Um, I was kind of mulling over that for a couple of days, thinking about maybe like really auditing how I felt about design, why I feel the way I feel, and not that I think not that I can't appreciate it, though, you know, and and I want to like always make that really clear like, hey, I'm not just like torching the entire industry and saying you guys fucking suck. But I am challenging it a little bit. And this idea of with modernism, with this kind of modernist aesthetic where everything's got to be clean and super simple and very referential. I think my bigger issue with it is that we're getting we're taking simple ideas and executing them in a simple way that never really has anything deeper to it. Like when I look at and I've been talking a lot lately, like I hate him, but I don't hate him because I can appreciate what he appreciates what he appreciates about his work. I just think It's so surface where he's like, Oh, it's called Firestone Pizza, and I made a piece of pizza in a flame as one icon, and that was the logo. And it was like his stuff is always like the simplest, is always the best. But there's no for me, like when I make stuff, I have to have a little black leather jacket moment, you know, where it's like it's badass, it's there's a rebelliousness to it. There's a there's an excess to it that maybe it doesn't need, but the reason it's there is to show you, like, hey, we got double middle fingers going at all times. Like, that's my personal little bit.

SPEAKER_04 44:34

Yeah. I mean, we what you're talking about again, it's the humanity thing. You you want you want it. I mean, the the work that you're talking about is um I wanted to I wanted to give you words. Um, um, it's got no meat on it.

SPEAKER_03 44:49

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 44:50

It's got no meat on it. You can't simplify that much. There's no complexity to it. Right. That's if we if we're gonna go, if we're gonna talk about the doubta chain, there's no complexity to it. Yeah it's just simple.

SPEAKER_00 45:01

Um, and and you know, it's been it's been it's been thoroughly digested, you know, and it's completely, you know, absorbent, and you know, all these paper line, by the way, in your podcast where I could go through the critics' digestive system, yeah, and come out unscathed. Yeah, did you but there's nothing out to read, or did you just say that? Did you just come up with it?

SPEAKER_04 45:25

Uh, I think I probably used that line before.

SPEAKER_00 45:28

Yeah, yeah, so fucking great.

SPEAKER_04 45:30

Yeah, yeah, but it's but it but it but it's it's how I try to, you know, we we we simplify these things down exactly. So so it we it'll it'll pass through a committee, and everybody go everybody nods their head and goes, Yep, that says pizza, that says pizza, yep, yep, yep. You know, but but but at the end of the day, it just it's it it doesn't it does nothing for the viewer, yeah. Yeah, you know, and what and what you what you want is is that level again, that level of complexity within simplicity.

SPEAKER_00 46:01

Well, and I think like yeah, I think one of the pill one of the things that I always preach about branding is you have to give people something to support, even if it's the idea of your overarching story. Where it's like I started here and now I'm here, yeah, I'll get behind that before I can get behind Amazon, right? I'll buy my shit at your store instead. Because like that's a piece of my my own brand doctrine that I want to that I try to put into every brand where it's like, look, if you're human enough, people will see your humanity, and at the very least, they'll support you before they'll support somebody else because your story is is reflective, they'll see some empathy of their own selves.

SPEAKER_04 46:41

Correct.

SPEAKER_00 46:42

Um correct. And I just as much as I see the word authenticity on LinkedIn, it feels like it's a marketing campaign. You know? Like, hey, don't forget to be authentic, and then you look at their fucking profile picture and they're like, oh, I'm wearing the what it's like, I'm not sure what I'm looking at.

SPEAKER_04 47:04

Well, my you know, my my argument over on on that those pages are all the uh the the crappy AI art.

SPEAKER_03 47:13

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 47:15

You know, so so yeah, how authentic is you know that. Right. Um yes. Yes is your answer.

From Sandstorm To Hero Mindset

SPEAKER_00 47:28

Very good, very good. No, I I appreciate this time with you because I do it does give me a baseline, um, especially somebody like me, man, where I feel like I do like in my heart, I feel like these ideas are are resonant and they're good ideas for myself, and I am being true to myself. But over the course of a day, you know, you get it's like being in a sandstorm. Being in the world is like being in a sandstorm a little bit, where it's like, no, you should just be be grateful, you know. And and I believe in being grateful, but I don't believe in being grateful as a form of of self-imposed slavery to say, okay, VP of marketing is what I am, that's what I got to be, be happy with it. You got further than most, and you know, go to the beach. Or I yeah, I don't know what people do with their free time when they're you know what I mean. I'm just not that guy.

SPEAKER_04 48:23

Well, I mean, what happens most times, uh the the people who are attracted to um um to me and my work are the ones, you know, are like you, people who are like, hey, I went to I was a creative kid, you know, seven-year-old me was awesome. Um, which actually is funny because I just wrote this morning a piece and I ended with, you know, seven-year-old Jimmy would be very pleased, right?

SPEAKER_03 48:49

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 48:50

Um, but um uh, you know, I was a creative kid, I went to a creative college, you know, um, or creative school, got a degree, I got a creative job. Why do I drive home every night um crying? Yeah, you know, and and the thing is because because it's just a job now. Yeah, it may have never been creative.

SPEAKER_02 49:14

Right.

SPEAKER_04 49:15

Um and and and you're frustrated. Yeah, you're creatively frustrated because you are you know what you're capable of and you're not and you're not pursuing that. And that sucks.

SPEAKER_03 49:27

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 49:28

It's a bad feeling.

SPEAKER_03 49:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 49:31

And I would rather, you know, I would rather, you know, get people to be more adventurous, take a chance, and you know, find out what find out what you can do. Yeah, you know, you quite frankly have this awesome, you know, uh Lamborghini or this, you know, uh this Porsche that you've built in your garage, and have never even you've never taken it for a test run.

SPEAKER_03 49:54

Right.

SPEAKER_04 49:55

Let's go see what it can do. Yeah. Carmen Carmen Gia would be maybe the better vehicle to choose, but whatever. Right. That's what that's one you could actually build yourself.

SPEAKER_00 50:07

Right, right. No, I love that. Yeah, because it is liberating, just just the pursuit of it, just the like the hey, opening some subject, okay, let's like get into this. Um it's interesting because it's almost like writing your own doctrine or your own manifesto of like, no, this is actually what I think, and it's weird how long it takes to get to the truth of how I myself actually feel about something. Because you have that you have that emotional blinder a little bit where, like, I I mean, I'm a recovering drug addict and alcoholic. I do unreasonable things all the time, you know. So when I read something on LinkedIn and I'm triggered by it, I'm not always in the know of why I'm triggered by it. It's like, is it another corporate fuck saying stupid shit, or am I but because a lot of times I find myself especially at momentum, which is I always find myself feeling hollow afterwards. That's our big event where they hire big dollar speakers and they all get everybody super excited, right?

SPEAKER_03 51:13

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 51:14

And I watch these speakers and I've realized over the last couple of years the reason I get so irritated and so like triggered by watching these speakers is because I know I could do what they do and I know I could do it better than they could. But I'm not. And so instead of being the big dollar guy on stage, I'm the employee on stage um that does a better fucking job.

SPEAKER_04 51:39

Yeah, yeah, you know, yeah, and I think the I think the average human version of that is sitting in um, you know, in the movie theaters at Hunger Games and going, fuck, is uh you know, relating with the hero so strongly. Yeah, you know, and then the one who says, why do you think that's not you?

SPEAKER_03 51:59

Yeah, right, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 52:02

That's completely you.

SPEAKER_00 52:05

Do you think most people think that though? Do you think most people are like, no, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 52:10

Why do you think Star Wars is so huge? Right? We we we relate with the with both the hero and um the the rebellion, yeah. But we don't get but we don't get to have it in our lives, so we have it in our, you know, it's like why sex in the city was such a big TV show, because you know, people weren't having sex in their lives. They were on TV, right? You can think about it, or or that whole that whole you know, line of books is available, right? The romance novels, right? So we can feel that in our lives, and and you know, uh I I enjoyed that, but you know, I want it in my life too. Yeah, I want the rebellion, I want to be the hero, I want that passionate sex, I want all those things.

SPEAKER_00 52:59

Have you read the book The War of Art?

unknown 53:03

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 53:05

Do you think most people would rather be in the Coliseum and not in the battle? Like in the book, it kind of proposed that idea where a lot like creatives would rather die on the battlefield in the Coliseum than have to sit in a seat in the Coliseum and watch it and be a spectator.

SPEAKER_04 53:29

I always use the um I always use the lady in the tramp analogy. You know, who do you see yourself as? As the lady where you're taken care of and all your meals are there and you're prompt, you know, you're you're comfortable. Um, but you can't do this, you can't do this, you can't do this. Or are you the tramp where you you know you're scruffy and you fight for it and you get your thing and you're you know, like yeah, um um I I think at different parts of our lives we are different, you know. We're we we as Whitman says, we contain multitudes, right? We we we want it all. I want, I want, I can't imagine life without hot showers.

SPEAKER_03 54:07

Right, right. You know, so good.

SPEAKER_04 54:14

Not even penicillin, just hot showers.

SPEAKER_00 54:16

Yeah. It's it's weird though, too, because you know, in our world, to be a it's hard to I find myself having to like emotionally and and intellectually regulate myself where it's like, hey man, like it's fine to disagree with a thing, but not necessarily hate it or not necessarily hate the, you know what I mean? Because it's such a a snowballing effect.

SPEAKER_04 54:41

Sure. No, I hear you, and I find myself, especially when, you know, again, we start talking about AI and stuff, you know, I find myself being, you know, vehemently against, and I have to catch myself and go, dude, that's just not it's first of all, it's just not cool. Yeah, it works for some people, some people need that. That's great. I don't deny anybody anything, right? Um, but I think being a hater just isn't isn't conducive, right? Right? I think we have to be open to everything and say, hey, listen, that's not my gig. Yeah, you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna be speaking in Dusseldorf next month. I know that I know for a fact there are you know major AI proponents who are gonna be on stage, and I can't go up every time and punch him in the nose and go. Right, right. You know, it's just not gonna work. You know, different strokes for different folks. I mean, you know, the world the world moves on.

SPEAKER_00 55:33

Yeah. So what are you gonna talk about in front of a bunch of AI people?

SPEAKER_04 55:38

Oh, I don't know. I don't know. Um yeah, I've I'm I'm I'm wavering between a couple of different one. I want to get up there and be the American and go, okay, we're not all like that, okay, man. We'll see. I uh I've got a bunch of things I want to, uh you know, I want to share.

Speaking, Logos, And Parting Words

SPEAKER_00 55:58

So that's awesome, man.

SPEAKER_04 56:00

I don't talk about my work anymore, so really yeah, and I don't and I don't show slides anymore either.

SPEAKER_03 56:07

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_04 56:08

Yeah, it's because it's because uh I've realized that stand-up comedians don't have slides.

SPEAKER_00 56:15

Yeah, that's a good point.

SPEAKER_04 56:18

They just have points. They have they have something to say. I mean, I've got something to say, and I have to and I have to stand by that and understand that it's enough.

SPEAKER_00 56:27

Yeah, that's badass. I just saw this guy named Inky Johnson. Um he was a football player, he was gonna be in the NFL, he was gonna be fucking awesome. Hey, you're gonna be a top 30 draft pick. And when he was in college, he went to tackle a guy and was completely paralyzed. Like it was just a weird hit, became paralyzed over the course of the next couple of months, maybe a year. He started getting feeling back, but he never got his arm atrophied. He can't use one of his arms, it's really weird looking. And he is like, you know what? And he just flipped his perspective on it and was like, I was never gonna be what I was supposed to be had this not happened. Like, I would have been a pretty good player in the NFL, and people would have forgotten me, you know, a couple of years after my career was over, and that would have been the end of it. But because this happened to me, now I can be a real force of change in the world and say, hey, you're gonna you're gonna put in all the work, you're gonna do all the shit, and it's gonna be fucking awesome. And all of that shit that you worked really hard for, that you put everything that you went all in for, can be taken away. Somebody can still take it all away. It can all be gone just like that. So think about that and and re and recalibrate your mindset and what you're up to. And it's kind of in line with your hey, everybody should go to a funeral once a year.

SPEAKER_04 57:46

Um, and you know you're talking about yourself now, right?

SPEAKER_03 57:49

Yeah, yeah. Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 57:54

You know you're talking about yourself, all the stuff that you, you know, heretofore believed in and worked hard for. Like now you gotta f now you gotta, you know, attitude and perspective. Because without that, you you know, without that, you've got nothing.

SPEAKER_00 58:11

I recorded up another, so I've recorded like six podcasts so far, and I've scrapped them all because it just they sounded like actually the last one was pretty good. The second last one I thought was pretty good, and I just wasn't quite, I feel like I was doing a lot of research, I was talking about a lot of topical things and not really speaking my own truth. But this last one I want so the whole part of my podcast is I do a little introduction, tell a little story about myself, and then go into like two or three different topics of just things that I found interesting. So the first break was three logos that exist are still being used today that literally break all the rules of of branding and design, and each one of them in a different way. One of them I use the Sherwin Williams logo because that's the logo that everyone's like, that thing's such a pile of shit. But I love the fact that Sherwin Williams is still a growing company and they do they just don't give a fuck.

SPEAKER_04 59:06

Oh, you're talking about covers the earth? Yeah, yeah, I saw it on the back of a truck recently, and I was like, that is fucking hero.

SPEAKER_03 59:15

That is so good.

SPEAKER_04 59:18

I have tried to rip that off so many times unsuccessfully.

SPEAKER_00 59:24

It's just so good because it's so it it it really is so anti-everything, and like even like I can only imagine the poor environmentalist that's like, what the fuck am I looking at? You know, cover the earth with paint. And Sherwin Wellings is like, we're passionate, we're passionate, what the fuck? I'm sorry, you know.

SPEAKER_04 59:45

It's so good. Hey, hey, don't throw anything away, dude.

SPEAKER_00 59:48

Yeah, you know, and I still have all those podcasts, but I just felt like I was trying to, I was trying to do stuff instead of doing stuff from the heart. So I did the three logo thing, and then I told a story about a professor that kind of changed my life in school that he didn't realize that he did, and um, he actually died recently. And so that's that first podcast. So it's a mix of like personal stories, and then just like, hey, here's some weird shit that I found that actually tells that informs us that hey, just because we're graphic designers and we decided to build all these fucking rules for everything doesn't necessarily mean we have a lock on identifiability or we have a lock on the emotional uh trigger, you know?

SPEAKER_04 1:00:31

Yeah, super, super. You know, it's funny, you remind me uh I saw something the other day. I was out with my kids and I saw something the other day and it it and it and it triggered a a memory and uh something I have stowed away somewhere. I'm not quite sure where it is, but I was out walking when I lived and um owned an apartment in Soho a bunch of years ago. Um I was walking on the sidewalk and there was a whole box, you know, stack of boxes sitting in the garbage. And um one of them had this sticker on it.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:02

And I was like, what? Right? It was like one of these, you know, a good idea um enters through the eye and explodes in the brain.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:12

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:13

And I and I look at it, I'm like, what? So I go and I tear it off. The I tear that label off, uh, that that that that that uh flap of the box and I kept it. And the sticker the was for a um um, it was basically should have said fragile. Yeah. And the company made um, it was a company that uh uh made uh one of a kind hats in Soho. And and the sticker said caution hats. And I'm like, oh my God, that is so great. Like, what about form and content? And what about what about puns? What about poetry? What about oh my god? And it was just like one of these stickers that you can you can you can order over the phone. You just pick a typeface and pick a size.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:04

It wasn't like the shittiest sticker, but they're like caution hats.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:08

Caution hats. That's so good. I could write, you know, I could write a whole, you know, a whole book on that. It was so good.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:16

Super awesome, you know, it's I so the same guy that said, Hey, you should look into James Victoria's stuff, because I think that's kind of what you're up to. Um, he was uh a professor and he's like, I was showing him something, and he's like, No, I hate that. It's like he's like, it'd be like if I made a I was wearing like a white t-shirt and it just said in Helvetica t-shirt. And then he pauses, and the whole class is like paused. And I said, I'd actually, I think I'd actually buy that shirt. And he goes, I would too. That's a real static sample.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:49

It's good, it's good.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:54

But yeah, one one last note is uh um when I was in art school, there was this um, there was this, I'd never seen the, you know, I was from upstate New York. I was a you know, Rube off the farm. Yeah, I was in New York City, and there was a kid named Ethan, who I wish I wish I still knew him. Um, he was totally punk and would, you know, probably I think he was an alcoholic then. Um, but he would come in with a you know a flannel shirt and a t-shirt on underneath. And but the t-shirts he'd just made, like he with a with a paintbrush. And usually he usually always said, I hate something.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:27

Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:28

Every single one said, I hate something. And my my painting instructor um, you know, loved Ethan, thought Ethan was a hoot. And you know, I remember one day uh the instructor says, Hey Ethan, who do you hate today? And he opens his shirt and it says, I hate you. And the timing was like so good, so good.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:52

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:53

I think it might have even just been the letter U, you know, handwritten on a t-shirt, very, very Patty Smith. It was so good.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:02

So awesome. Yeah, I love stuff like that. Just making his own clothes. Like, I can't compete. I can't compete with all those designer brands those kids are wearing. I'll just make my own. Like, I love that concept, you know, like I'll just tell them how I feel on my t-shirt.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:17

So good. Yeah, yeah. And and of course, you know, it's it's it's it's just genius. And then you see, then you see Madonna wearing it, and you know, or she, you know, she made her own, Joan Jett made her own, all this, you know, yeah, great stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:34

For sure.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:35

Okay. Hey, uh, you're doing beautiful work.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:38

Thank you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:41

I appreciate it. You know, I appreciate it. I, you know, I I respect that. Good job.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:46

Thank you. No, I appreciate that. And um, yeah, I just feel like I wouldn't have like obviously I wouldn't have gotten it out of AI. And I do appreciate just the honesty, you know. Like I just feel like most people aren't that honest, and everybody that sells stuff sells stuff. Um, which is why what I appreciate about you in that video where you're like, yeah, I mean, design's good for selling socks, but you know, but no. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:15

Um, I'm just, you know, I'm turning you on to yourself.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:18

For sure. I and I appreciate it, man. Okay, groovy. All right, we'll talk soon. Okay, bye. All right, bye.