Beyond the Brief - Featuring Rich Santiago

Brilliant strategist and amazing human Rich Santiago shares insights on his amazing career working on some of the world’s most interesting brands. Hear how he got started, what he does to stay in tune with the latest, and where you can check out what he’s up to next.

Topics

• Where he started – How Rich found his way to becoming a planner
• Precious, not precious – Being very precious about the human experience and truth, but not the small stuff.
• Going back to the Beans – Reimagining the Starbucks brand
• Bigger than just commercial impact - Hear how the work Rich most admires and is proud of hits big, both commercially and culturally
• Learning & Sharing - Being mentored by some of the best and paying it forward

Follow the show for all episodes - Model B - Beyond the Brief

Transcript

Chris Perkins (00:05.772)
Welcome everybody. I'm super psyched to have Rich Santiago here. Rich, do us a favor and tell us a little bit about your background.

Hey Chris, I want to you for having me. This is really cool. And you're like one of my favorite people so long. This would be really interesting. Yeah, I have a weird background. I'm from the Bronx. That I'm from the Bronx is weird. But I grew up in the Bronx, New York. Sort of fell into this world completely by accident. went, I the Bronx, went to Oberlin College in Ohio, which was already a huge transition. And, you know, left college and was doing a bunch of research with the Carnegie Mellon Fellowship.

and writing and doing zines and kind of hanging out in New York trying to figure out what's next and I got a call from Leo Burnett in Chicago. They had picked up one of my zines and they wanted me to come out for an interview. They asked if I had a book and I had no idea what a book was and so I came out and the still fitting like suit that my father's my uncle was like 6'4 and I'm not 6'4. Forgot my belt.

They were like, oh, you're great. You know, we love you. Everybody loves talking to you, but you're not an account person. I was like, OK, great. I know what an account person was. So I got a call about a week later saying, hey, we'd you to come back. We're building up this new department. It's called account planning. Have you heard of it? I was like, no, I haven't heard of it. I didn't know advertising was a job.

I read a book by John Steele that they recommended in like a couple of days went out talked about kind of my love for creativity my love for research my love for insights and kind of what's going on beneath the surface and long I got a gig and you know I hung out there with a really great probably a really formative mentor for me Esther Franklin who is still in the business still rocking and rolling and just amazing person you know locked me in a room for my mom

Rich Santiago (01:57.294)
with all these videos and briefs and research reports. And this is kind of how it works. And when she finally let me out and said, I don't want you to lose your voice. Right. That's what's going to make you interesting. That's what's going to that's what people are going to pay for your perspective on this stuff. You know how to do the things, those reforms, what you put those forms, what matters. So, you know, that's kind of how I got started in this business. And then I was lucky enough to meet you on my second go around and.

You know, it's all kind of blossoming. So I've always been kind of this hybrid strategist, creative person, right? I've always been able to really dive deep into research, really dive deep in insights. But I think the articulation is what matters. I think the stories you tell out of this, what matters, I think what you get underneath is what matters. And that's what people have continued to kind of call me for and thankfully pay me for a little bit. So I don't know if that's helpful at all, but that's kind of the background how I got here.

Absolutely. We've had the pleasure of working together a couple of times and you're definitely on my absolute short list of who to call when I'm like puzzling something. I'll never forget when you were on the team at Brand USA and you were presenting in front of the, you were the head of research and insights for Brand USA and you were presenting at a conference where

Every other presenter was a classic researcher, board of depth, know, like, you know, people looking at their phones, what kind of thing. And I remember thinking, this is going to be so interesting. And then all of a sudden the room lit up when you started. And I remember the CEO at the time, Jim Evans, saying to me, that guy's good. Like he knew that, but like the whole place just totally changed. And your ability to electrify people with insights and to talk about things that are

Frankly, not all that interesting, to find the interest in them. I've always loved that about you. that's why, you you're not only on my like instant go-to list, but, you know, anytime we could work together, it's always like one of the first things I think about. So you've, you've had lots of hats, lots, including the one you have now, but like tell me about what's going on. Like, like where are you now? But like how you've had such diverse roles.

Chris Perkins (04:12.686)
Tell us a little bit about how you found your way to those and talk a little bit about a couple of them just and the joy and challenges you found in some of those.

Yeah, I mean, I get a lot of luck. Something watching out for me is no reason why I ended up one place and, you know, people that I grew up with didn't. But it did happen and I'm really thankful. I'm also thankful to people I've been around. You've given me a tremendous platform a couple of times. Not only sort of explore my talent and explore my thoughts and my thinking, but also just the encouragement. I think that's really special. So that's why I always ask to call when you call. Get back to the question.

Yeah, I worn a lot of hats and I think it's a gift and a curse. I started out as a kid who liked to write research stuff pretending to be an account planner, right? The first briefing I did, I remember I did is like a one act play. I had a senior planner and I standing face to face pretending and we were sort of conjuring our audience through this sort of like script.

the very creative thing to do, right? I didn't think about it that way. I thought that's the best way to articulate things. So I've always kind of like straddled that. I've always kind of sat in creative departments. That was sort of a natural growth. So, you know, advice at Live Nation, I was running not only strategy, but also creative, right? So the articulation of what those insights were telling us and how do you create things out of them? wouldn't say I'm on the level of like the many talented creative people we know.

But what I do do very well is weave a story from those things into creative articulations, which I think is really the heart of what that with the advertising businesses about marketing spouse. With you, for example, I got to head up insights and research, but it was a global scale. And the challenge, I think, was so incredible because we were trying to really brand for the first time in the vein of tourism, but really in popular culture, the idea of the United States.

Rich Santiago (06:15.182)
which had its own lore, its own mythology, its own history, its own baggage. And we were just coming off of some pretty seminal moments, 9-11, the war in Iraq, know, this transition to an Obama presidency. So, you know, I think I've always kind of just followed where I think the juice is, you know, like something that's going to push me someplace where I'll be uncomfortable, someplace where I really don't have any business being in, but I want to learn about.

And luckily I'll show enough that you're really talented experience. It like, will give me a shot to do that. Right. So with brand USA was obvious. I didn't have global experience. I wanted to work for this president. I definitely want to work with you again. So that was something that I had no, we, don't think either of us knew what that job was going to be. Right. But we knew we wanted to take on the challenge and that, and you know, that was why I went there. I went to live nation because I saw this real move to.

experience in this experience economy starting to come to the forefront. And as an insight person, as a researcher, was fascinated by a lot of nations sort of closed garden, right? They own these tours, they own these festivals, they own these venues. These are places where people go to really express things they really love, whether it be an artist, a piece of music, their friends, their social circles, whatever, just being someone that they don't, they're not able to be in real life.

And I was like, wow, that's way more fascinating to try to find insights and like go into a supermarket, ride around or like, you know, go into car dealerships and talk to the car dealers. You know, there's something that is choreographed in those settings, whereas like in Live Nation and in those settings, it just it couldn't be right. So how can we be as unobtrusive while still getting what we need? And I thought that was a really interesting challenge. Went to Vice, so I had a creative and strategy there as well.

globally. I think the challenge there was not only going back to a brand that I grew up with that I love that really started my passion for what I was doing with zines and storytelling. but also really figuring out how to, excavate what's still mattered about that brand while translating it to something new. so again, the challenge that I wasn't prepared for, but that I wanted to take on same thing when I went to Metta, and was there and was a, was a, you know, had a strategy there,

Rich Santiago (08:33.933)
It was really interesting how social media was working and impacting us day to day. And unfortunately, you know, I found some really great things and interesting things and I found some things that turned me away from it. But that was an important part of the development. Where am I now is really interesting. I kind of doubled down on my own kind of R &D studio, if you will. They're human. And I think it's becoming more personal. The original idea and I talked to you about this for years was.

about really finding the core of what's going to move people and culture moving forward, right? Really looking to the future. Maybe not as a futurist, but definitely projecting out a little bit further than that quarter that year. I think with the advent of AI, where we're moving as a culture, and now with this sort of political landscape, there's a real white space for finding the core of humanity and human potential within this very fast moving.

helter skelter world that we're at. I'm kind of doubling down on that. use AI strategically in that pursuit. I always center myself on human stories that aren't being told. And I've applied this lens of how to project forward, right? How to look into the future and how to do that in a credible way, not sort of like the very sexy, but often wrong way. And I also center, you know, by pocket and fringe perspectives, which I think is really unique.

Not only because culturally, I think that's where a lot of ideas come from, but I also think those voices increasingly are being quelled and quieted. So I think it's really important to at least have that as the big part of the mix.

I love that. You know, the irony of the world we're in today is that politics and all kinds of social dynamics have actually moved people away from each other. And the sad thing is that if you were to actually have conversations with people, they're closer to the people around them and share a lot of the same perspectives and value a lot of the same things more so than

Chris Perkins (10:35.624)
they've forgotten, they've just lost their way around that. not to take this into the politics realm, but in the world today, it's almost like you can't not. I do think the successful path forward for the world, and hopefully with America playing a key role in that, is where we do wake people up to the fact that they do care more about themselves and others rather than just themselves.

you think that hopefully there's a movement towards that. you know, the way you come at it is, I mean, I've always loved that. And, you know, I've always felt like you had superpowers and seeing those human stories and helping people see them without it being just the typical psych trope and, you know, classic, you know, boundaries.

The other thing, so I feel like I know your superpowers real well and tell me what's your kryptonite? Like what are the things that like you go, like that's just in the way that I hate that.

Um, man, uh, and let me know if the stream gets weird. I just got a little warning that that may be unstable. So if it does, let me know. I'll close down a bunch of, I have like every other person has 8,000 windows open. Um, my kryptonite is funny because I was going to say some, no, it got me in trouble. My wife. Um, I think my biggest kryptonite that I've learned, you do these jobs, right? If you do them well, they ask you to do the next job, right? The next bigger job.

And then you start you have a couple of people you work with and then you have a group and then you have a whole portfolio of group brands or whatever or a department. And yeah, I found that politics, not politics, and we were just talking about the politics of industry, the politics, corporate politics and human politics. Right. It's actually very normal. It's a very normal dynamic between people. It's what social relationships are about. Social groups are about. I struggle with those deeply.

Rich Santiago (12:35.758)
And maybe I put too much. I keep saying I'm not precious, but I think I am precious about some things. I am very precious about the human experience and truth or truth in as much as it makes sense to the groups that I'm trying to understand. And not as dogmatic, sort of definitive thing, but as like something that feels real tangible. Right. You would recognize like, fuck, I never thought about it that way. But there it is. Right.

And I find like the other things that have more to do with like credit standing. Who's going to do what? What sort of is in the background that I don't maybe know about or maybe I do and just don't care about? I struggle with. I really do, because I think it I think it tends to take the work right. And I take the work very seriously. I take my craft very seriously. I think the other thing I had to think about a kryptonite.

It'll be funny. I started to move us the other day and he was like, know what? You're probably you probably have adult ADHD like I do. I like, I didn't I never thought about that that way. And he's not a fucking psychotic. So what does he know? Right. But the fact that I enjoy moving from thing to thing, I get bored very easily. I'm probably not a farmer or more of a pioneer. can till the land, get it ready and then I'll move on to the next place.

versus really seeing it season after season. It's probably where I'm best, honestly. What you know is you know you get successful on an account or with a client and they want you to stick with that client throughout, right? Whereas I got a much better movement. I've always been really great at new business, for example, for that very reason, those big moments like those things are big crowds, like that kind of stuff gets me up. But again, I can see how that would be hindered. I think overall, the fact that I've been, I've done so many different things in so many different ways.

I'm really selfish and it's like my own personal, like I want to try this has been as kryptonite on its own, right? Because that no one knows how to place you. Right. No one knows really what box to put you in. in a world that's driven primarily by algorithms now, that's even harder. Right. Because there's not a lot of boxes for the outliers or the ones that kind of move outside of the matrix, you know.

Rich Santiago (14:59.35)
And I don't say that as like, look at me. saying it as like I've really bumped into that quite a bit in terms of trying to understand what I do or what my value is.

Yeah, one of the things I struggle with in the marketing realm is the that you touched on it is this desire to do what what has been done before and expecting the same result. You know, the you know, and the very notion of best practices is I'm so against the notion just generally because the application across industry just doesn't doesn't work. I mean, it you know, it's a rush to the mean. Yeah.

as opposed to finding that unique space. And like you, whether it's ADHD or just the desire to have a new place to tickle my brain and a problem to solve, if there's not a problem to solve, there's no joy in it for me. I struggle with that notion of rinse and repeat. And the beauty is there's people in the world that thrive on it.

And they make a ton of money doing it. Right. Right. I mean, they make a lot more money than you and I make doing it. Right. No doubt. It's much more difficult to try to not do that. And it's also less safe. Right. Like and there is something to be said for that. You know, we live in this world, least this marketing part of our worlds where we want to do things that's never been done before. Right. We want to. And then the first thing you say is like, show me the case study from Chan that won like this before so we can emulate it.

Right. Show me what other health brands are doing or other things they're doing so I can. So, you know, and I get it. It's a safety thing. Nobody wants to be those outliers in those things. But let's just be honest. You know, I think I think the honesty about that is important. And some brands demand it. Right. Some brands are track Coca-Cola, for example. Right. Like if they tried and true brand, they are not going to go way far out, even if even if the world has until they are forced to.

Rich Santiago (16:59.246)
Because like they know what they are and they don't need to stray outside. They don't have an awareness problem. know, their issues are different. So I get it. But it's also a little like tickle the brain. I think for folks and think that's why we're kind of radical in that way is for folks like us that we know the world doesn't move forward that way. One. Right. And two, like it's hell of a boy.

Really? That's right.

depressing you won't get the best out of folks like us if we're not like really trying to see outside of you know right down the middle fastball so

Yeah. So one of the things that when people ask me about me, I talk about it is I'm insanely curious and I get in trouble with my wife and people I'm with because I'm always looking around and watching people. know, and you're very similar in many ways and probably much more talented at actually seeing things to roll into what you're thinking about. tell me how you when you're

grinding on a problem or figuring out a brief, how do you like do you what are the things you do? are some of the behaviors that you lean on and the places you go to find those those nuggets that you build with?

Rich Santiago (18:13.07)
Yeah, it's a great question. And it's so funny. Another dear mentor, one of my best friends, Mike Dezo, he said, man, what makes you a great planner also makes you shitty at relationships. when things are good, you're always asking what's happening, what's underneath the surface, what's next. You're asking questions because you're wired that way. It's funny when you mentioned your wife. Yeah, it's kind of evolved. You know, I see in and I want to push this away just for marketing, because I think that you definitely me, I

ascribed to or tried to aspire to is bigger than marketing and advertising, honestly. But, you know, I see two schools of thoughts and strategic thinking essentially now, right? There's the classic deep, right? Research and site and research in lot of different ways, right? The way it kind of comes to it. But there is a there is a pedagogy and a methodology to it. And then there's sort of like this like strategy that, you know, it's like Gonzo journalism kind of.

You know I mean? Like, it's like stipend headlines and put in a deck and then it's a tick tock video. And there's nothing wrong with that. I actually do it myself, but it, but it's, I find it needs to be couched in also some real deep theory about what's happening. So how do I get to that? As I think we're trusting. So I've evolved my thinking on that and because the tools involved, right.

before you would do a bunch of research, you'd hopefully be able to find some qualitative, you'd be able to do a quantity, stuff like that. you do some, you know, some scanning of the cultural vibes and then you kind of put all in with your mind and get people figured out. Now I try to and I've written some scripts on this for my computer overlords. I try to really think about sort of asymmetrical insights, asymmetrical kind of analysis as a starting point.

and not to be jargon about it, but, you I try to identify as quickly as possible. What is the mainstream narrative happening? Right. What is the thing that gets put on the people post on Facebook? But you know, what is the thing that's being posted on by like your aunt on Facebook? You know, what's the general understanding? What are the general essential clients going to come into a meeting with or a partner that you're working with? What's that thing that's in the ether? And then I try to like turn that around as many ways as possible. Right.

Rich Santiago (20:32.014)
I try to think about like, what would I text you at four o'clock in the morning? Um, that isn't being considered. What's the story that's being left out? What are the power dynamics in that story? Right. What if the volume is so high on that whose volume is being turned down, who's being impacted that can all of a sudden come back and really bite that narrative. And in that I find opportunity at worst, I'll find an interesting, a more interesting story to tell than just sort of sniping what everyone else is talking about. I don't know that makes sense, but,

That's sort of where I've gone to. And then there's a host of questions underneath that, but that's the basic tenet.

No, I love that. it's almost like each time you have to figure out the way to get people in the zone differently because you've got to honor the problem. And the audience trying to influence with getting them there. And sometimes it takes multiple ways at it. Sometimes it is that.

immersive conversation. Sometimes it is a brief that then falls on with three or four conversations. You know, the, I agree that because it's different each time, there's lots of different ways in, and lots of places you find these things. You know, the, I do think that there's great clues in ideas on the rise in culture and, you know, the little sparks that you can grab and nurture into something. you know, the

The other time, I want go back to you made a great point, it's bigger than marketing. Marketing just becomes the group that has the assignment.

Rich Santiago (22:10.094)
It's most well-funded problem-solving.

That's right. Well, you know, and failing, you know, aspects too, because it misses the mark so often. Which is part of why, you know, it's the dichotomy of the problem of that, that I love. How do we do it well? And how do we not be the problem? How do we not just be another, you know, retargeting effort?

They used AI and homogenized answer of, saw you did this, great. You know, like stop. Yeah, that's, so you've been involved in some really super highly regarded work. Like tell me a little bit about like your journey on a couple of those that you're most proud of, those campaigns or bodies of work. And it have to be ads. It can be whatever that you helped build or influence.

I'm curious if along the way there's any times where you had the brief and had all the briefing but landed on something as you were working on it that was like, here's the thing. Here's now we're onto something here. Talk a little bit about that.

Yeah, I put around a lot of work, so you got to forgive me if some of it just sort of like spaces. I think the biggest, you know, BBDO is kind of my spiritual home. And the reason for that is less about the work and the sort of like reputation of the place. And it was more about the people and the way of working and didn't always work that way. So I think the interesting bit about what we would do, which just talking about, so that was brilliant. In our in this game, in our game.

Rich Santiago (23:50.19)
Right. It is still a team game. Right. We are not Malcolm Gladwell writing a singular perspective book. It's a lot of inputs. It's a singular vision for what he or she believes is an idea that's important. Here it's you'll have an idea coming in. You'll tell me about what the client said. We also have another idea. You'll give me some interesting tidbits. I'll go away, find a whole bunch of other ideas, come back and print this to you. Then we present it to the creators and they're like, call bullshit.

So it's very much a team game. It's a lot of back and forth. It's a lot of stretch, pull, pull back, reimagine, scrap. And that can be, you know, that's trying. Everybody's built for that. That's that's a lot of ego death involved in that. Right. So, you know, for me, I think the best best experiences I've had are really with really talented, smarter than me, way more interesting collaborators like yourself.

Like the David Lubars, like the Tom Bar films, you know, the great Hans, the Giuliana Cobbs, you know, where you come in with the scratch of a thought and then they ponder, they think it's interesting, or at least they feign interest because they like you, you know, then they come back and they push in a certain way. They are articulated in a certain way. I found that the biggest twists have been in first language, right?

And then it will change the brief and oftentimes simplify the answer to the problem. So an example is, you know, Starbucks back in the day, I was called. I wasn't even on this fucking account, man. I was asked to come up and support it because they were just hitting a dead end. It was out of New York. I was there in Atlanta. I didn't want to go do it. I thought there was no get there for me at all. Like, it's not my shops, not my account. I can only fail here. Even if I win it, won't be mine.

And I went in and I had a great young planner who's now a very seasoned marketer, Sophia Gonzalez. And, you we went up and we're doing the briefing, we're trying to check it out. And we started to, you know, Starbucks wanted to reimagine itself,  it's always reimagining itself every three years. You know, wanted to reimagine itself itself, it saw, you know, kind of like declining store sales and they were they were obviously over expanding at that point. You remember when they had like a Starbucks in every half block or whatever, right? As if it was profitable, you know, to do about it.

Rich Santiago (26:16.366)
So their thought was like, we need go back to the beans, which I think they're doing now again, which doesn't make any sense to me. But when you go back to the beans and like our heritage and I was like, all right, maybe. And what we started to find in the human story of what was happening was the first inklings of what we've now started to really clinically identify as like the lonely, the sympathetic, right? This idea that despite all of the technology, all the promises of social media and this

you know, globalized media landscape, bringing us together. It actually was  driving people apart. Right. And it was not only driving people apart. It driving families apart. It was a stunning piece that Sophia had found that identified the amount of time parents spend with their children on a daily basis. Small little research thing. Right. And it was like 17 minutes in the U.S. It was 22 minutes in the UK. was 13 minutes in Japan.

Which is like, holy crap, right? Like, that's like, whoa, that's that's that's the thing. Right. So now it became how do we convince Starbucks that this is actually there? This is actually their opportunity. Right. And we had, you know, I had this great thing and this big debt, you know, do the decks and the stories and things. And Greg Hahn looks at it he's nodding. You know, Greg is really thoughtful, but also quirky and quiet. He goes sometimes people just need to be with people. And we were like,

F*ck, that's it. That's it. That's it, isn't it? Like it's the small things that are big thing. It's that simple human thing, you know? It's beautiful, man. Like that kind of stuff I live for and that kind of, and that's when the collaboration and the dynamics of what we do, our game, really hum. It's like when you get to play on really great teams that really just click and know each other. I had a similar experience on CBS where, you know, they thought it was a big repositioning of their.

You know, the parent brand who now owned all these things, you know, it really was. It was just about looking at health care really differently. You guys people, you know, stuff like that. think Brand USA was another one where, you know, and I think I think we give you the credit for this. Seeing this country through the eyes of potential versus the stories that have been told and telling those stories through places that have never been told, never been talked about so much makeup to tapestry. I just thought that was such a brilliant

Rich Santiago (28:41.39)
way to take all of these insights that we had in all of this, you know, all the stuff and distill it down to, know what to do with that. And I know where that will live in someone's head. then the day you're trying to leave people with a, you know, with a headline, with a thought, right. An idea. that that's hard to do if, you have to over explain it, kind of like I'm doing right now. So.

No, I love that. Megan Kenton, the JWT team that was working on that, when they pitched it, they had that idea. I was literally thrown in, employee number three, trying to figure out where my office was and saying, yeah, I've got four meetings on the Hill to convince Chuck Schumer and all these politicos that I'm not going to put their

their community in the ads, which we hadn't even got to yet. Like, what's the brief first? Let's get that. when I remember when the JWT and Megan and the team shared the work, you know, the strategy first, and then eventually the work, was like, thank God, we've just nailed this. This is so like, what a relief, because now we've got a territory we can, we can, you know, really build on for a long time. And

Yeah, it was great work and a lot of fun for a lot of people until it wasn't, which is often the case, right? You know, mean,

It's always the case. Yeah, it's always the case. Right. The winning winning, right. The winning. I think you told me this winning the pitch is the best day that you'll have. Exactly. Everyone loves the ideas. Everyone said the champagne's popping. You have the big dinner. You go home, you wake up the next day and you have to do the work. Exactly. And what's happening now, I find, and you can see it on a lot of books, great example. Sprite is a great example, right? Where you get bored with yourself.

Chris Perkins (30:14.54)
Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Rich Santiago (30:35.51)
Because now everyone has the same mind that I probably was born with, which is this like seven seconds is about what I can handle in terms of long standing brand management, for example, or long standing cause marketing, for example. We tend to get very over ourselves very fast. So we don't mind the depths of what's possible anymore. We move on. We go with the new thing we try to. And so therefore you can imagine what that creates on the other side, the human side of like why

Why do you look? Why don't people care about branding? Well, because maybe we don't. Maybe we don't. You maybe we just care about making the thing at that moment. And that's how it's perceived. So you're not tricking anybody. So that's why they can move from brand to brand. So that's why they move from cost to cost. So that's why I don't care about it anymore. Like, you know, whether we like it or not, Trump's been working Magga for long time and Magga is not a new idea. Not at all. It's not a new idea. It's just it's continually mind.

the depravity of what it could be. But it stayed on fucking message. So and there's something to be said for that. And I don't know if that'll ever be back. Maybe that's not really old school talking about it that way. But, you know, there is some beauty in being able to have a platform that can continually be mined for new expressions versus continually looking for new lands to plow. So.

Well, one of the ironies is that when you talk to clients, their priority is commercial value. And yet the work that they admire most, and certainly the work we all aspire to do, has a much bigger impact and commercial value, like in that order. And the juxtaposition of that, they want to grind and throw data at you and say, do that again.

Use best practices like stop like that's actually what I don't want to do is I want to actually create the next thing that somebody follows rather than You know either one that's doing the same thing. It's repeat

Rich Santiago (32:37.622)
I think I think behind that is somewhat like yourself, but you do it to help really for a long time. There is someone who told the story in a way to give the decision makers the powers that be the courage to go down that path. that I think is that's a real talent. That's a real genius skill that I don't think is cultivated now as much. It's just not like in where you find those genius storytellers are now entrepreneurs who have a YouTube channel or

do things on their own. They're not in the instruction, but they can make massive impact by convincing leaders and, the money to follow great ideas and real human thinking versus just the data says this, so we'll just do this or this work before. So why not do that? There is someone back there really, really running on that treadmill, making things happen and they and you get no credit for it. But that's what the real storytelling happens when you convince folks to.

do things, especially with their purse strings that they norm, that they're, they're incented not to do.

You've been around, you've worked with some great people that I'm sure have influenced you in a lot of ways. Talk a little bit about some of the people that you've influenced and how in doing that, you've also gotten so much out of it. Because I know you well enough to know there's a whole, you've touched on some of it, you've named some of them. And I love that about it because it's not about you, it's about...

You charging your battery by charging others which you you're amazing about so talk a little bit about you know how you you know Find and in groove on that as you go

Rich Santiago (34:16.16)
Yeah, it's funny. think I've I've been a really bad influence on a whole lot of To be totally honest with you, man, Yeah, no, really, like, you know, I am a really great question. mean, there's so many rights for Morales, for example. She's outstanding. Steve Raggiani, great guy. He was not even a creator before I met him. And I, you know, keep crushing it. There's so many people.

There's that too.

Rich Santiago (34:45.07)
That one, mean, I don't mentoring in the sense that like I felt like you were my mentor, for example. Right. We didn't like how to fight it. We didn't like said you're my mentor. You know, but like you were always an experienced and inspiring stage like figure to me that I could always go to and even by left, like completely demoralized, not by any stretch for you, but just you ask great questions and I don't have to answer them.

I felt reinvigorated to go back to the well and keep, you know, kind of pushing at it. don't know if I've had that. Maybe I have. I don't know if I've had that impact. know I get a lot of energy from being challenged, talking through things, seeing how others see things and really trying to cultivate that voice. And I do get that from Esther. Right. E.T. could have done the safe thing. Do it this way. It's very easy to do. Right.

She didn't. challenged me to really find some perspective that was uniquely my own. And as you know, that's really hard to do. That's really, really hard to do because one, you don't trust it. Two, there's not a lot of outlets for that kind of thinking. And three, like, well, people even care. Right. When I can easily do the thing that's in the middle. Yep. So I I really get energized. And you see, you know it right. Like when you meet, especially with like a younger talent.

Out of that 30 minutes, 45 minutes, hour they take of the time together. There's maybe like three minutes. Maybe if you're lucky, where like they peek out where their thinking peaks out, not the thing they read or the assignment that they're answering or like the what they came to the meeting to talk about something about that. wait, I want to know more about that. That's that there's something there. I don't even know if it makes sense yet.

Right. But that's where the energy that's where it's going to be. That's where the energy is. And I get really excited about that. I get you know, I tend to get I get up. I like to have fun. So I think I think people feel safe in that. And so they start exploring places, spaces, voice, tone, ideas that while I look, we may not even bring this to the meeting, right. This may not even see the light of day out of here. That's going to be a really interesting time we spent.

Rich Santiago (37:03.886)
That's going to embolden you to keep pushing because now you have the audience in the ear and the eyes that are lit up. It's something that you know is something inside of you, not something that's just sort of academic. And that gets me really excited. And what I've seen is the folks that I've had those experiences with tend to go on and continue to do really great things. I attribute that to me being lucky enough to be around that kind of talent versus me having any impact on it.

but I know that creates a different dynamic. And I think that's why creators really dig me, right? Like I see possibility, I see interest, I see sparks, see things that don't really exist that we haven't even conjured yet, but I see the traces of it very easily. I mean, besides me talking a lot of shit all the time, I am sort of all plus optimist. I am somebody who really believes in, you know, the human spirit, human potential and who we are as people and the fact that we can be extremely different and that be magical as well.

And just really hope for things to, you know, really hope for things that maybe aren't there right now, but that could be. And I think I'd give that up for at least try to be, for sure. Very annoying in this pessimistic world now, but it is. So I don't know how much impact I've had on people, but I know I've been lucky enough to be around some really talented people who light me up in a way. And hopefully I give that back.

I certainly get it from you, for sure. So what are you reading or watching or doing to stimulate yourself outside of work and other things in life that are just kind of the normal?

Yeah, my son's made me get into manga. Which is the trip if you've ever if you've not read it before. Right. And I'm reading like something about an ancient samurai. It's an ancient samurai story. And it's actually based on a true story. But what I noticed the other day was reading from right to left and down the left down and going back that way is such a trip for my head.

Rich Santiago (39:03.374)
Yeah, like it makes you look at the world totally different. I have no idea why. So I'm doing that. am trying to speaking of like trying to get courage and finding your voice. I have been trying to figure out how to. I think I'm at the point of my career where I need to be sharing more like sharing. And who cares? Right. Like who cares? But just for my own education, my own sort of personal give back and how to do that. As you know, and I didn't talk about it, but like, you know, I worked with an AI company for about a year.

I'm trying to just understand that world before it became where it is now. It's like just sort of ubiquitous, but still nobody knows what it is. Right. Trying to really mine the tools, the ideas around that and from a human from a human potential perspective and less about this. I think we're being fed this trouble. Like, no, it's a tool and it's only to enhance humans. is. But there's so much more going on. There's so much more going on. I don't know if you saw there was an article today.

It was sort of a note from a bunch of security analysts who were working with OpenAI and that a lot of them left because not because of AGI and it was because it was being tuned to be emotionally provocative, right, to to sort of be extremely comforting or, you know, so and then you see and then you you you see then also opening up wanting to create a social network.

and the dynamics that underpin social networks and what that's done. So, you know, those kind of ideas I don't think are things that are talked about. And it's less than say like, oh, bad opening eye or bad this or bad that. I try to remain value neutral. I have my own opinions, but I try not to talk about those. But I think there are real human consequences to every behavior, good and bad. Right. And I don't think I think we don't think about them because they require more than seven seconds of our attention. You know. Right.

I think I'm going to largely be ignored, which is great. to be the best worker to get ignored. But you know, that kind of stuff, and not being afraid of kind of the voice I have, which is, you know, I, I am decently well read. I am a thoughtful person, but I'm also a kid from the Bronx, right? that's a voice that I don't see out there very often. So it, it didn't sense me not to, so I tried to fight against that. but yeah, I mean like, you know, man, I'll read man Carson flow.

Rich Santiago (41:25.662)
I'm looking at a couple of couple of art things, hope art books and things like that, but I'm always like trying to take in whatever is in front of me. I'm trying to also get away from screens a little bit and just get more into like tangible making. So I'm stitching together some zines and doing some other stuff, so I'm all over the place, man.

I love it. love it. So totally enjoyed the conversation. As always, I could go on for six hours. Probably nobody would watch that long. So we'll wrap up now. If people want to check you out, where can they find you?

Um, right now I post so rarely on social media. I guess my LinkedIn is where I'm doing some blogging stuff. I'll eventually I'm going to maybe get back and do my podcast. Um, and I have like a newsletter. I'm just trying to get my voice back. So I guess LinkedIn, which is my name, which Richef Santiago, uh, my website, which will get, uh, updated that they're human. Um, but again, I'm trying to influence, uh, people who can impact the big hairy problems and they generally live on LinkedIn.

So and some of my art, I've been reluctantly sharing some of my art on Instagram and some of the places. So I love Dave, but I try not to be too. I try to be more making than I do talking about it. So maybe I should get better at that. That's probably why I don't. got the problems I got.

Well, brother, thank you so much for sharing all your thoughts and insights. It's been absolutely a joy, and I really appreciate all the time.

Rich Santiago (42:55.374)
Absolutely. Anytime, man. Good luck with everything. I know it's going to be a blast. I'll definitely post it everywhere to my sudden followers. a good weekend.