#36 - Aprill Enright: Art, Creative Reinvention, and Personal Rebranding

In this episode, Sam Bell speaks with Aprill Enright about moving through a sometimes murky transition from co-founder and operator to artist, creative partner, and a clearer new chapter.

Drawing on work across technology, customer operations, Knowledge Bird, startup investing, Tractor Ventures, and visual arts, Aprill shares how she has been reconnecting with art, rethinking what her skills are actually for, and bringing systems thinking and creative instinct back into one integrated identity.

They talk about personal rebranding, human design, career coaching, AI, art, and the practical value of many coffees when the future is still forming. 

This episode explores:

• Growing up in a creative family and choosing science over art at school
• Building a career across technology, customer operations, knowledge management, and startup leadership
• Co-founding Tractor Ventures and the toll of extended ambiguity
• Career coaching, human design, and personal rebranding as tools for clarity
• Using AI to think more deeply, articulate intent, and support creative work

Guest bio:

Aprill Enright is a Melbourne-based artist and creative partner, NED, startup coach, and former co-founder of Tractor Ventures. Her background spans 13 years in technology and customer operations, 10 years as an independent knowledge management consultant through Knowledge Bird, and 13+ years as a startup investor. She is GAICD qualified, a Venture Catalyst alumna, and was recognised as Investor of the Year at the Governor of Victoria Startup Awards in 2023.

Guest links:

• Aprill Enright: https://aprillenright.com.au/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aprillenright/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aprill.enright/

Conversation references:

• Tractor Ventures: https://www.tractorventures.com/
• Knowledge Bird: https://knowledgebird.medium.com/
• National Gallery of Victoria: https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/
• Jacqui Stockdale: https://www.jacquistockdale.com/
• Human Design: https://human.design/reports/free-report-3
• Claude: https://claude.com/product/overview

Chapters:

02:32 Art, science, and growing up in a creative family
04:38 Knowledge Bird, consulting, and building Tractor Ventures
08:19 Leaving the co-founder role and learning what her skills really are
15:50 Courage, ambiguity, and the shape of a new chapter
20:16 Family, vision, and creative lineage

Explore further:

• Book a Lab: https://naturalgenius.com.au
• Learn more about Sam: https://samanthabell.com.au
• Subscribe to hear future episodes.

About Natural Genius:

Natural Genius is a podcast and platform exploring how thoughtful people build meaningful lives, good work, and things that last. In conversation, ideas, qualities, and ways of being that help people access their natural genius come.

Credits:

Hosted by Samantha (Sam) Bell in Violet Town and Melbourne, 27 March, 2026.

Produced at the Violet Town and Kiama offices, 27 March - 25 April, 2026.

Natural Genius Podcast https://naturalgenius.com.au

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:02

Welcome to the Natural Genius Podcast. We're here to help you tap into your natural genius. Let's go. April is a strong woman who has always branded herself well and used her knowledge wisely from my point of view. She's good fun, very creative. You'll hear that we haven't seen each other for a good long while. So I'm looking forward to hearing what she's created, learnt, and what she's doing now. Enjoy hearing from April. April, welcome to the Natural Genius podcast. It is a real pleasure to catch up again after too long between a lunch and now looking at each other across the online space.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

Yeah, well, thank you for having me. It's exciting to see you again. It's been a long time.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

It's been a long time. Hey um, I've got to ask about the backdrop.

SPEAKER_02 0:57

You've got a combination of lovely books, and I can see a gin bottle up there, and I can see some paint brushes. It's very reflective, I think, of past, present, and maybe future.

SPEAKER_00 1:11

Uh yeah, well, I mean, so normally my desk is upstairs, but it's in a little nook, and behind me is the stairs up to my son's room. So that's boring. So I moved to the computer down here, which is where I used to sit during COVID anyway. So I'm sort of used to having this backdrop. Um, but yeah, there's there's uh a pile of NGV magazines there, and oh nice. Uh and I do paint from here sometimes as well. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:42

Pre- uh the pandemic, I had a membership for the National Gallery, and it was so fabulous. It's such a great thing to do to have that those different sites in Melbourne as the bases. We used to come and go. I'd take my nephew in. Sometimes we'd just go in there and have a hot chocolate and be surrounded by art. It was fabulous.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

Yeah, well, there's there's so much you can see for free uh all the time. And you know, when you have visitors from Sydney as well, you know, often it's a good place to go. So I've had a membership as well for a bit of years.

SPEAKER_02 2:17

Yeah. Oh, and I love how you can spot similar people when you go into the lounges in there as well. Tell me about art, April. So we can talk about your corporate career as well. Have you always loved art? And tell me what you love about your own.

SPEAKER_00 2:32

So I've always been artistic. Um, I did art in school, but at the end of year 10 when you have to choose the senior subjects, there was a clash between science and art. And, you know, I'm a bit both brained in that regard. And so I didn't I I had to unfortunately let one go at that that school stage, and I went with science and I did the occasional art workshop on the weekend. Like I grew up in a creative family. My mum is a brush letterist, like type like sign writing, and my dad ran the screen printing side of the business. So there was a family business that was, you know, retail sign production. So I grew up amongst that. And then after some time working in music retail, I I got into uh computers tech and I was I started doing tech support, and that kind of began a 20-plus year career in technical operations, that sort of thing. So it felt like a bit of a sort of a sliding doors decision to go one way rather than the other. Since 2016, I had another crack at at trying to get arts into my life and I I and made another attempt at mature age uni and um at Melbourne Uni and I and I was doing some fine arts subjects and I love yourself, I love yourself enfacing Giggle there, April. Yeah, I mean it was my third attempt. Another attempt. Yeah, it was my third attempt at uni. So I and I just uh it I reached a point in time where I I kind of decided I was done with essays and I really just liked the fine arts things. So I found a teacher in Brunswick, um, an artist, um Jackie Stockdale, and she ran casual classes, and that's kind of the beginning of me becoming more and more towards the art.

SPEAKER_02 4:17

When last we caught up, I remember there was still a flavour of knowledge management in your work, and then you went into startups. My guess is that you would probably be able to do many different aspects of business through Tractor Ventures. You probably jumped in and helped in different capacities at different times. Tell me more about that.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

I think it's my background in in customer support and operations that kind of gave me a an interest in sort of the problem solving that comes with continuous improvement, like working with the constraints of a situation to make it a bit better. And you know, I did that in my help desk career with the knowledge base, and I would just take ownership of the knowledge base and trying to make it better, and and that's kind of what got me into knowledge management. So I spent 10 or so years accidentally consulting in knowledge management. You know, I didn't mean to, but I I had a short stint as a freelance copywriter, and at the time Matt, my now ex-husband, was encouraging me to come up with a product to need a product. Um and uh so I was like, well, what I don't know, and I and and uh at the time I was listening to copy blogger and pro blogger, um blogs. Yeah, so I thought, oh, maybe I can write an ebook on how to create a knowledge base. And so that's what I did, and that kind of started that launched my career as KnowledgeBird, an independent knowledge management consultant, and I turned that into a presentation. I went around the world delivering this presentation on how to create a knowledge base. I was still doing Knowledge Bird when Matt and I decided to launch Tractor Ventures, and initially I was sort of doing mostly Knowledge Bird, and I was helping our portfolio companies in Tractor with their workflow improvements, things like that. So I was kind of advising. Then our team started getting bigger, and I thought, well, I think maybe I'll just shift my expertise in in-house. And I turned off KnowledgeBird and I focused on Tractor and became full-time tractor, and then was broadly operational across the business and kind of COOE. I would step in and take up things that needed a bit more dedication. I ended up taking on the collections function, Tractor Ventures for anyone that doesn't know, it's a non-bank lender. We uh had you know borrowers that sometimes might be slow, or some for some reason something has gone wrong with their loan repayments, and so I was running that, which is it's hard work. And uh eventually I I just kind of got a bit tired, like because I was I was really sort of all in on tractor and and pretty much neglecting the art side of things. And you know, I was mid-40s and the kids were older, and I don't know, I just started getting itchy for getting the more creativity back in my life. So I wound back my involvement in tractor. I was on the board last year as a non-exec and just stepped away from that at the end of last year. So it's kind of the decks are clear and I'm sort of ready to reboot. Whatever the new phase is.

SPEAKER_02 7:26

Tell me, is the new phase being able to have a lot of canvases and a lot of paint?

SPEAKER_00 7:32

I started a diploma in visual arts. I'm in it's a two-year diploma and I'm in the second year, so I'll be finished, I'll be graduating at the end of this year. I really became intentional that okay, some kind of creative career is coming next. And I'm just now going through some rebranding and will go about with a clear vision because I the past two years has been very transitional and murky, ambiguous, like I didn't know where I was going, and uh I just knew that art was going to be part of it, but I kept thinking I had to go back to the old stuff and just being stuck between two worlds in a way in my head, and I just was unclear, but it's it's much clearer now.

SPEAKER_02 8:14

With the sort of spare work time or whatever we call it these days, how did you decide to do that?

SPEAKER_00 8:19

Uh so when yeah, when I left Tractor, like left the full-time job part of it, I did struggle to know what even were my skills because when you're in a co-founding situation, you've generally not done that job before. I've worked in IT operations in in finance, so I haven't worked in finance. I'm not an accountant, I'm not a lawyer, but I found myself in this C-level operational role having to uh understand contracts and talk to the lawyers and project manage due diligence with upstream funders and things like this. And you kind of get through it, but it's for me, it was just quite an overwhelming experience. Yeah, very challenging, and I push it a long way further than probably I should have. I did it for longer than I wanted to. I like when you're in startups, uh you're always feeling incompetent. Or most people. I mean, well, maybe not most people, some of the people. But you're always feeling like you don't know everything. And a lot of the founders out there who are those natural sort of entrepreneurial types, they don't care about that. Like that's exciting and energizing for them, but not for me. Like an oper, I'm an operational, you know, I like to have an idea of where we're heading so that then I can get there. But when it's all a mystery, I've got no idea, and it's very hard. So um it just doesn't suit my personality type. Um eventually I kind of ran out of steam. This diploma opportunity came along at the right time, and it felt a bit like an escape hatch had opened up. I got accepted into this diploma and it was like, okay, that's the sign. Yes, yeah. Yeah. So look, when I left Tractor, I really felt like I didn't know what I was really good at. I didn't know even what I really wanted to do. So I invested in finding that out. I got a career coach and spent some time with her, and she really helped me objectively understand what my range of skills was because I take things fairly literally. And when somebody says, What are your achievements? I'm like, Well, I got an award once for for writing a white paper. I I thought that's that's the only achievement. No, no, no, no, Lisa was like, no, no, no, just you know, what uh what what have you learnt in all the different jobs you've had?

SPEAKER_01 10:41

Oh, sorry, interrupt, but you are so endearing how self-epacing you are. Well, I don't know, like I got an award for a white paper, seriously. Well, I can write one.

SPEAKER_02 10:55

But also, I'm hearing chief of staff, I'm hearing special projects, I'm hearing like similar to me, and that you've just jumped in and just done the stuff that helps companies to grow. I'm sorry that that was this there was a significant discomfort for an extended amount of time.

SPEAKER_00 11:12

And it was tough on the the some of the well, it was tough on the co-founding team because you know they're they're obviously getting on with things and sort of wanting me to be able to have the confidence to just keep going and and delivering whatever ambiguous thing it was meant to be delivered. Um, but yeah, without having that model up uh to look at for me, I couldn't I couldn't deliver from nothing. Like I'm a responder, so I I have to have something to respond to.

SPEAKER_02 11:42

There's a model that I've done called human design, and in that it really says that I'm a responder and generator. And the friend who debriefed me and others that have talked to me about it since, they just laugh because they look at my LinkedIn and at all these things that I've done. The responder aspect is not necessarily on other personality profiling tools or business tools or people tools, it's a good one to recognise that you enjoy responding to things.

SPEAKER_00 12:09

It's the human design was my, you know, that's the last thing I've done to really get an understanding of what who who and what I am in terms of professional trajectory. You know, after getting a sense of, okay, a reframing around what are my skills actually, and then I needed to go and go and figure out, okay, well, what am I doing with my creative business? I feel like I need to have my own business that's art direction or something like this. And I I needed someone to help me imagine what that is. Like I I just kind of did this word salad to this person, Lauren, and and she said, Yeah, I totally get it. She's got an agency background, so she she could understand where I was coming from. So she's worked with me as well on the creative side of things and getting me comfortable with, I don't need to be a split personality. Yes, I love it. And that's what that's what I've struggled with, is like I've tried to be this split personality and and and the human design element of it that I did most recently had it shows me how what that that through line is through all of that. And you will obviously, with your career path, look back and see something like that too. And you know, for me, it is that continuous improvement that has come through everything. And even in art, so now I'm finding myself after having done the first year of my diploma, that what I love the most is the creative strategy. Now I would never have called myself a strategist, but when we're given a concept, like and it's a word, and and you have to come up with some creative project that's related to this word, that's the exciting thing for me. I love that. So um, and I didn't expect that. So I I'm I'm I'm really excited about the potential of maybe having a business that's freelance art direction for the people that kind of have half of an they have an idea, but they don't they can't necessarily execute creatively on it, on making it real. Uh um, but um that's the bit I like is helping them flesh that idea out and make it real.

SPEAKER_02 14:18

So and possibly creating the structure that you didn't have. Yes. To go back to something that you just said, not wanting to project a split personality or being careful that you wanted to represent yourself holistically, I guess. Yeah, I hear that so often, April. Partly because when you and I met years ago, I probably would have still been doing social media strategy and social media leadership work. Yeah, yeah. And I first got into social media to help individuals express themselves. And then I ended up because it was really early, I ended up by doing social media strategy and advisory around digital. I have always said to people, present your whole self because eventually you're gonna have this avatar or you're gonna have this three-dimensional website or whatever you want to say that's gonna be representing April. These days I'm still amazed that I'm encouraging people to bring their whole self. And sometimes it's people who are doing like healing stuff in their after hours and they're doing corporate stuff during hours, or there's some sort of way that they sort of feel a little bit split. And I I love 2026 for the fact that we do feel like the differentiation of the individual is important to be able to craft words, which I'm pleased that you've got people that can help with that, like craft words so that you can represent yourself holistically.

SPEAKER_00 15:50

It's still sort of evolving. So, you know, I went I went to the mentor walks this morning in in at the TAN. Whenever I'm around those sorts of people who are the corporate types, you know, oh yeah, and so what do you do? And I I default to that co-founder of a fintech, uh non-exec director and advisor, and I default to that stuff rather than leading with the artist and art direction. And um, so I'm still kind of trying to work through that. It'll come as I as I get my new branding and start hitting the ground running properly. So it'll get better, but it does take a long time after you leave corporate life or you know, whatever the version of corporate life is, and do a total pivot. It's it does, it is hard to just straight away go into the new thing. Well done. Does it feel like it takes courage? I do think it takes courage when you're uncomfortable with ambiguity. Like I am uncomfortable with ambiguity and I don't love it. I like when there's some structure. Like I don't I don't like all of it. I like to come up with things I like to come up with the how, but but it's nice to have the what and and uh you don't have that when you leave something to go into something else because you're not quite sure what the something else is gonna look like yet.

SPEAKER_02 17:08

Yeah. And perfect, what what would the perfect project or perfect client kind of around the creative direction or art direction be, do you think? Or is that still forming?

SPEAKER_00 17:22

Um I think it's still forming, but I you know, I like the idea of having a client brief and um uh and so I'm I'm thinking more of the organizations or the you know pub public institution stuff, yeah. That that could be fun. So um that's where I'm sort of leading in in my thinking at the moment. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:49

And then and still commissioned works as well, like still being able to do um oil or acrylic that you do?

SPEAKER_00 17:58

Yeah, so I do do acrylics and oils, and and um, you know, I've done pet portraits and uh a couple of other things from from time to time, and yeah, I am keen to do and do more commissions for just art lovers. Uh so when I was a teenager, I worked in family business for a while and and in the screen printing um as production assistant, I suppose you could say. Um, and this was the uh early 90s, um, 92, 91, 92. Um, and my dad had a factory space in Annandale um downstairs from uh this guy who's a potter, and and Warren is like um 80 something now. Um, but he he's still making pottery and it's amazing. And um, so I was up in Sydney a couple of months ago because we we had a bit of a reunion with the old work team and and we went and re-refreshed the mural we have on the doors to the old factory space. Like it's a big brush with brush marks, all on this double door, timber door in this factory in this lane in Andale. And so we we we we spent some time with Warren, like reminiscing, and uh upstairs where he lives, um it's such a bohemian-looking environment, and and he's made all these tiles that look like sky, it looks like clouds, and he's he's made these tiles, and the way that he's kind of glazed, got the blue glaze for the sky, and then blown across the surface with the slip to make it look like clouds. I just saw and he's got them set up there like an archway, and looks it looks like you're sitting looking out, even though you're in the inner city there, looking out at the ocean and the sky. Oh, the ocean as well. Yeah, yeah. So um that was really I don't know, I was just really inspired by that. Oh my god, how beautiful!

SPEAKER_02 20:11

And also how that how lovely to kind of have that link with your past as well.

SPEAKER_00 20:16

Yeah, so that was really nice. I didn't expect to come away with that bit of vision um uh that day. So yeah, that that that's something that just happened recently. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:27

Oh wow, and what about your family, April? Like, did you have lovely connections with grandparents or auntie or uncle?

SPEAKER_00 20:36

Well, I'm an only child, um, and uh my dad died in 2016, so that's been 10 years now. My mum lives in Sydney and still and she's very active, um, 76 or something. She's her local Rotary Club president. And so she's still very much out there. And in fact, today I think she took her entry into the Archibald Prize. So what? She submitted into the Archibald, and I think I don't know what the process is. Uh she'll find that.

SPEAKER_01 21:08

So well done from me. Would you ever do it?

SPEAKER_00 21:11

Oh, yeah, I wouldn't mind doing it. But this was on her bucket list to to put a submission in. So today was delivery day, I think. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:20

That is stunning. What a great achievement. And um, do you have any idea which Australian individual you might do for the archibald?

SPEAKER_00 21:28

I've had a few ideas over the years, um, and mainly because of the I've got direct connections to them. So not not necessarily one-on-one, but uh through somebody. So I have I did think yesterday that I'm a degree away from Zanro. So I know Zanro's brother. So there's there's an opportunity.

SPEAKER_01 21:50

Um I'm saying it. You're so endearing. I love hearing your giggle. Do that. It sounds like there might be others that you may consider as well.

SPEAKER_00 22:06

Yeah, I did have a period about might have been five years ago where I was um I used to go to the same gym as Jill Stark, who is um she's an author and a journalist, and um you know we knew each other through the gym. And um Amy Gray is another, she's another writer. And for a while I kind of felt like taking their their Instagram selfies and and recreating those as paintings. So I it is something that still sits in the back of my mind, but um you have to have when you when you enter the Archibald, you have to have them sit, you have to have them sit. Yeah, so I don't know that I'll pursue that one, but it it did cross my mind a few years ago.

SPEAKER_02 22:50

I had this conversation with a friend of a friend, Christian, that's about to be one of the episodes that we're about to release, and he was talking about his career transition, and they said, I'm gonna have to have you back on so that you can tell us what you've transitioned to. I'm so curious as to what art and creative direction you're gonna do. You've got so much to be proud of with so many ripple effects that you've created in life. Everything you're talking about, it just sounds like this next stage is gonna be a success.

SPEAKER_00 23:20

Oh, thanks. Yeah, well, I I feel like, you know, the the kids have one kid has moved out, he's living in the in the UK, working over there at the moment, and the other one is nearly 19. So they were little little teenagers. Yeah. So I've had this chance to uh really examine and understand what I want because you can lose your way and it can be hard to know what you even enjoy doing in your spare time when you've suddenly got some spare time.

SPEAKER_02 23:54

So And is do you think that's through business, or do you think it's more so having a family or a bit of both?

SPEAKER_00 24:02

Uh I think through parenting you sort of naturally uh can you know put yourself last and so you sort of don't really give yourself the time to do things that are on your terms. Um I I I think also if you're in the wrong marriage that you you each of you change in ways you don't in you you never meant to, um, and so you could lose your way that way. It can take a lot to come back.

SPEAKER_02 24:31

And again, tips for the transition. So you said that the career coach and um maybe a personal branding coach from what you described before, uh any other aspects that really helped or any other practice processes or practices that could help others?

SPEAKER_00 24:49

Oh, so it's gonna sound super woo. Um but um uh uh I I downloaded my birth chart and also I also when I did the career coach um session, uh she had me do the the Berkman um profile. So I had my Berkman profile and I had the birth chart, and so I uploaded them both to uh Claude AI. Um and I just started asking questions um of Claude, given it had this preloaded information about well, you know, what kind of uh careers suit my pro my personality type and profile and all of this. And um and I, you know, when I got the human design report, I uploaded that. And so uh Claude has been amazing for me to just understand myself. Like it's been really great. Um, so it's a little bit woo and and and a bit, you know, of just basic data, uh, you know, having having the machine sort of you know synthesize the data and re represent it to me in a way that goes, oh yeah, I can see that. Like, yeah, so that's been amazing, like so good.

SPEAKER_02 26:09

And do you pop that into the settings of Claude as well to be able to say uh give me uh answers in uh in line with these profiles?

SPEAKER_00 26:22

Yeah, so I've I've created a project called Me, Myself and I, and it's all in there. And so it's really the self-discovery project. And um, you know, that that kind of when whenever there's stuff that comes out of there, um, you know, I can go and into another project that's about, you know, um uh art art career or or some portfolio career or something. And so it it remembers the things that are relevant. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:54

I've got so many people that have it's like their operating system. How do they take their way of operating in life to the next level by using Claudel? Different agents. I did a little hack this week that was uh there was a certain aspect of my character I want to grow into, and I was kind of gonna put that into the setting. Return results with respect to this character trait, especially with a knowledge management background and startup background and tech background. How do you manage your own personal data privacy around that?

SPEAKER_00 27:25

I'm not super worried about my data privacy. I'm kind of out there already as an artist on social media. I've been on social media forever anyway. So I'm not precious about who knows what.

SPEAKER_01 27:38

Um I've been on social media forever, me too. I haven't said it that way, but probably I have. Like literally forever.

SPEAKER_00 27:49

So um, so uh I I'm not that worried about it. And I I've had other people sort of I've got into arguments with um Gen Z about AI because they're naturally worried about their career careers, they're at the start of their careers, and they're nobody really knows what AI is going to do to that. And so they were sort of fighting a good fight. But I'm pro-AI from my perspective, even as an artist, because for me it really unlocks my ability to think more deeply and articulate more clearly my intention as an artist. That's invaluable. So um I I'm a big fan, and uh my view is that I like I have had uh I've been putting material out on the net for years and years, and and you know, people people have had artwork stolen, re reproduced on Timu before AI came along. So I mean it's always gonna be a problem. And we're all getting to know the AI slop. So we all know what what bad looks like from AI at the moment, you know. I mean it's gonna be changing for a long time. So yeah, I think it's just being it's it's being sort of more, it's engaging more with how how you use it rather than just using it blindly.

SPEAKER_02 29:16

Yeah, the two words refinement and discernment are coming up a lot. And you would completely understand from experience that it's also refining what you're putting in and being discerning about what you want out. Uh, no matter how many extra people it feels like you've got your team of copywriters and your team of operations experts that you have access to, it's it's also being able to be refined around what you need.

SPEAKER_00 29:44

Yeah, and and I use it for research. You're right, you do get a lot back. We've all got our own way of synthesizing and representing it. And I I think that's the fun part for me. I mean, I like making a slide deck. Um, so um, but the little research has already been done.

SPEAKER_02 30:04

You just reminded me oftentimes these days, if I keep on getting this slot or not what I'm after for three goes, I will go back in the agent to the top where I was still getting quality and I'll edit that prompt. As you're talking about projects or clones, I'm finding that that that sort of stuff is helping, and so that I can kind of keep some source documents in there and then it can refer back to formats or to examples. One of the things, April, that I'm really enjoying about these podcast episodes is the multidimensionality of humans. You and I can talk about art, we can talk about creative direction, we can talk about family, ancestors, sky and and water in tiles, and then be talking about AI agents. We are so lucky to all know each other. It's also such a brilliant time. I love that you've got this positive attitude towards AI. I've seen some brilliant stuff in the visual arts. A great artist out of Manhattan. She's done collaborations on generative art AI art for ages, yeah. And the beautiful images that she comes up with with a combination of often just two brands that haven't paid her. She's actually just doing it as a mock-up. One time I saw like Adidas and BMW, and then another time she'll have put shells and masquerade or something. But to just like that, just to fill out the volume and to fill out the imagery, and then to have also sort of strategized around which brands might go well together, and then which theme or which concept might go together. Oh, I just think you couldn't afford to have a creative team to put that those drafts together. And then also I remember hearing the All-in podcast over a year or more ago, and Freebird was talking about how a year or two back they would never have been able to do a research study on whether they could grow under the water. But now he could set AIs to do this quick cost analysis as to whether it would be fortuitous to do some ag underwater. I love hearing those examples because it's not straightforward as to whether AI is good or bad. It's actually No, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:25

And it it is a lot about how you use it and and for the people using it in their work, the kind of checks and balances they're employing to be able to use it well.

SPEAKER_02 32:37

I still so warmly remember the lunch that we had 10 years ago, and still the warmth is there and the connections there.

SPEAKER_00 32:46

That's right. Well, it's it's been fun, yeah, talking about all this. I mean, it's the first actual proper conversation where things are getting a bit clearer.

SPEAKER_02 32:55

I really love that for you. Maybe there's a lot of people that are either going through transition now, April, or will go through transition in the next little while. It's so great that you had some tips to be able to pass on things like human design or getting to know style and what do we say, third, fourth, fifth act? There's different acts in life and different adventures to have and different personal branding challenges that come up.

SPEAKER_00 33:21

Yeah, that's right. There might be more to come after this phase.

SPEAKER_02 33:26

Absolutely. When you're transitioning in career is meeting with people having coffees or just seeing examples to be able to grow into the imagination of what a future vision might be like is helpful too, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 33:39

Yeah, that's right. I thought I might have wanted to do agency. I had a lot of coffees with people who were ex-agency. They kind of thought, given my operational background, maybe group account director would would be a good role to try and step into in agency land. Um so I flirted with that idea for a while. But then, you know, the more people I spoke to in that realm, the more it just seemed to be about lead gen and creating Facebook ads. And and I was like, well, I'm not into that. So that was a bit of a research project. Um and I I think when you have that that sort of transition and you're unclear, you have to have a lot of coffees with people just to just to rule out some things.

SPEAKER_02 34:20

I remember years ago I was in transition and I ended up by talking to this business strategist who ran an agency and was really successful. And he'd been a pilot, and it really sort of sticks in my mind. He'd been a pilot up until he was, I don't know, 30. And then he moved into business strategy agency work and he was very empowered around that. Thank you so, so very much for your time. Yeah, thanks a lot. It was fun. Thanks for listening to the Natural Genius Podcast. Please share this with anyone who came to mind and visit us at naturalgenious.com.au. Thanks so much.