Breaking out of your creative comfort zone - Marko Pfann

Summary

Podcast Summary: Mindful Creative with Radim Malinic Episode: Breaking out of your Creative Comfort Zone - Marko Pfann Release Date: December 23, 2024

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Introduction

In this enlightening episode of Mindful Creative Podcast, host Radim Malinic engages in a profound conversation with Marko Van, a seasoned creative mentor and former broadcast design studio owner. The discussion delves deep into the intricacies of scaling creative businesses, the significance of authentic relationships, and the delicate balance between creativity and profitability. Listeners are offered invaluable insights into overcoming common challenges faced by creatives aiming to elevate their careers and businesses to new heights.

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Marco Van’s Background and Journey

Marko Van introduces himself as a former business owner who transitioned into mentoring creatives and studio owners ten years ago. He shares his journey of building a successful broadcast design studio that branded some of the world's largest TV stations within just 18 months. However, rapid success led to differing value structures between him and his business partner, ultimately forcing them to part ways.

Notable Quote:

“We just two people opening a studio and it was an amazing time. But then when success comes in and there's a lot of pressure, like million-dollar deals, things like that, you're under a lot of pressure.”
— Marko Van [04:26]

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Challenges in Scaling a Creative Business

Marko elaborates on the intense pressures that come with sudden success, including managing a large team of freelancers and maintaining consistent quality. He reflects on the personal toll of working long hours and the strain it placed on his relationship with his business partner. This period of immense pressure highlighted the importance of aligning personal values and business goals.

Notable Quote:

“I was working 16-hour days, six days a week, that kind of thing. And looking back, I was younger, I was ambitious. I know why I wanted that. I wanted to push for it. But I honestly believe if we would have kept doing that, it would have killed me at some point.”
— Marko Van [10:45]

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Importance of Authentic Relationships Over Automated Systems

A central theme of the conversation is the emphasis on building genuine, authentic relationships rather than relying on automated systems like mass email campaigns. Marko argues that true success in the creative industry stems from meaningful connections, which foster trust and lead to substantial, long-term projects.

Notable Quote:

“I don't believe you get a million-dollar deal with an email sequence. It's more about building relationships.”
— Marko Van [15:48]

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Marco’s Coaching Methodology

Marko outlines his unique approach to mentoring creatives, which focuses on defining clear, authentic goals and investing in innovative, spec projects that showcase a studio's true creative potential. He discourages the productization of creative work, believing it stifles innovation and diminishes the unique value that creatives bring to their clients.

Notable Quote:

“Creativity shouldn't be productized and packaged; it should be free.”
— Marko Van [15:17]

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Balancing Creativity and Business

The discussion highlights the delicate balance between maintaining creative integrity and achieving business growth. Marko emphasizes that a creative business cannot be structured like any other business because the very essence of creativity lies in exploring new ideas and embracing uncertainty.

Notable Quote:

“A creative business cannot be structured like any other business. Why? Because wasting time is where the magic comes in.”
— Marko Van [00:50]

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Risk-Taking and Goal Setting

Marko advises creatives to set goals that push them outside their comfort zones, encouraging them to take measured risks that align with their true aspirations. He stresses the importance of evolving authenticity and adapting goals as one grows, ensuring that ambitions remain true to personal values rather than societal expectations.

Notable Quote:

“Your goal is outside your comfort zone. It's what's called the risky area. It's somewhere there.”
— Marko Van [40:10]

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Evolving Authenticity and Contribution

The conversation progresses to the notion of evolving authenticity, where Marko discusses the transition from personal ambition to making meaningful contributions. He believes that true happiness and sustained success come from giving back and contributing positively to society, rather than solely chasing financial gains.

Notable Quote:

“The final stage is more about contribution, giving back. And that's what makes people happy, really happy.”
— Marko Van [43:17]

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Conclusion

Radim and Marko conclude the episode by reaffirming the importance of authentic relationships, purposeful goal setting, and maintaining creative integrity. They emphasize that thriving in the creative industry requires a balance of passion, strategic planning, and the courage to step outside one’s comfort zone. Marko’s insights provide a roadmap for creatives seeking sustainable success without compromising their creative spirit.

Notable Quote:

“Keep doing what you're doing because I think you give back a lot to the industry and it's important for people to hear all those voices that you bring on your podcast and what you write about in your book.”
— Marko Van [57:27]

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Key Takeaways

• Authentic Growth: Success in the creative industry is best achieved through genuine relationships and authentic business practices rather than automated, impersonal methods.

• Balancing Act: Maintaining a balance between creativity and business demands is crucial for sustainable growth and personal well-being.

• Evolving Goals: Goals should evolve with personal growth and shifting values, ensuring they remain aligned with one’s true aspirations.

• Contribution Over Profit: Shifting focus from financial gains to making meaningful contributions can lead to greater fulfillment and long-term success.

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This episode of Mindful Creative offers a treasure trove of wisdom for creatives at any stage of their career, providing actionable strategies to break free from comfort zones and achieve meaningful, sustainable growth.

Transcript

[Radim Malinic]

Before we start today's episode, let me tell you about my latest adventure. Introducing Lax Coffee Company, a specialty grade coffee company inspired by creativity and creatives. The debut range is sourced from some of the best farms in Brazil, Peru, Colombia and Africa offering beautiful flavors and notes. Our single origins and house blends are roasted every Monday for next day shipping. Visit luxcoffee.co.uk and use code podcast for 15% off your first order. And yes, there's exceptional merch too. Luxe Coffee Company is where art meets exceptional coffee.

[Marco Van]

And they come across business coaches even in the creative industry that are telling them you have to productize, you have to streamline, you have to look for the profit and you have to create this cookie cutter machine thing that kills all creativity and kills the thing that got them there. Honestly believe you have to have some structure. Yes, but a creative business cannot be structured like any other business. Why? Because wasting time is where the magic comes in. You cannot productize that.

[Radim Malinic]

Welcome to Mindful Creative Podcast, a show about understanding how to deal with the highs and lows of creative lives. My name is Radi Malinj and creativity changed my life, but it also nearly killed me. In this season, inspired by my book of the same title, I am talking to some of the most celebrated figures the creative industry. In our candid conversations, my guests share their experiences and how they overcame their challenges and struggles, how they learn to grow as creatives. A creative career in a 21st century can be overwhelming. I wanted to capture these honest and transparent conversations that might help you find that guiding light in your career. Thank you for joining me on this episode and taking the first or next step towards regaining control of your creative life. You ready? My guest today has built a global branding studios, branded countless TV station and won even more awards. But he's decided to move on in his career and now helps other creatives to unlock six to seven, even eight figure opportunities. In our conversation we discussed the challenges of creative business growth, the importance of authentic relationships over automated systems, and his approach to helping creative studios to find sustainable success without sacrificing creativity. In partnership with one of my previous guests, Hector uso, he's currently on a mission to launch a five day retreat in Merida, Mexico under the name of Paradiso. A place where creativity burns brighter and where connections are forged. It's my pleasure to introduce Marco Van. Hey Marco, it's nice to have you on the show. How are you doing today?

[Marco Van]

Thanks, I'm doing great. Lovely day today and yeah, I'm looking forward to Our conversation today, I'm excited.

[Radim Malinic]

To ask you all the questions about what we can do as creatives better. So for those who have never heard of you before, how would you introduce yourself?

[Marco Van]

First of all, thanks for having me on the show, Adam. It's an honor. Really stoked to be here. I'm a former business owner. I now coach people. I wouldn't say I'm a business coach, but I'm more mentoring creatives, studio owners, things like that. Had a broadcast design studio, sold that exactly 10 years ago, and from then kind of got pushed into coaching, consulting and mentoring people.

[Radim Malinic]

So you've been coaching for 10 years, mentoring for 10 years, is that right?

[Marco Van]

That's about right, yeah. Mentoring, coaching for the past 10 years, yes. Speaking a bit, yeah.

[Radim Malinic]

That's an interesting career because I know you had a studio which got successful fairly quickly, but then people might wondering, why would you leave studio, which you've built and got successful and got to the point where everyone would be actually wanting to do this. What happened?

[Marco Van]

Great question. And it's why I actually got into coaching is like, we were super successful. So a little background backstory here. It was a broadcast design studio and we branded like the biggest TV stations on this planet, literally. And we actually get to like super successful within 18 months. We had like German TV station, we had Chinese TV station, we had a few TV stations in Arab countries and a few in Europe. So it was just awesome, great time. But we got super successful in a very short timeframe and it changed the relationship between me and my partner. And it didn't take long for us to realize that our value structure is actually different. We didn't pay any attention to that before.

[Radim Malinic]

Right.

[Marco Van]

We just two people opening a studio and it was amazing time. But then when success comes in and there's a lot of pressure, like million dollar deals, things like that, you're under a lot of pressure. So what happened was we all fall back to our standards. And my standard back then, because I was 10 years younger, no family, no responsibilities whatsoever, I wanted to take big risks. I said, Hey, 4 million, 18 months. That's amazing. That's a great starting point. And for my partner, which had a family, a lot of responsibilities, it was quite the opposite. He wanted to scale down again. It was too much risk for him, things like that. And that's when the relationship actually crumbled. And at some point I would say we were forced to actually split apart. And yeah, that's how I ended up where I am now. That's why I left the company and start. Tried to start something new and got into a new field.

[Radim Malinic]

So how did you get into TV design? How did you. Obviously, was there a prequel to this? Did you guys. Cause how did you get to do this? Cause like you mentioned China, you mentioned Euro, Germany, like, how do you get those clients straight away? Because obviously if you mentioned within 18 months to get to 4 million, that's a big Runway, that's a big jump. And obviously that would have shaken up anyone. So you got more risky and more ambitious because I'm sure high on dopamine and adrenaline going, wow. But your business partner goes, can you keep it safe? So what's the background between the work that you were doing and before?

[Marco Van]

So I got into this industry by accident, I would say went out of school, applied for a few studios, worked at a few studios doing freelance in New Zealand, Australia, Europe, and by coincident ended up at that very good studio in Munich, which was very well known back then for broadcast design. Worked there for four or five years. And out of that studio because the owner just wanted to quit that part of the business, wanted to focus something else. My partner, me convinced him to actually give us the jobs that are coming in. And we had some other great opportunities, we had some great contacts. And that's actually the way we scaled that business to 4 million is what I teach people now. It's not about ads, it's not about content necessarily. I get that you have to have content these days, but it's more like the old school way of building a business. Yeah. And that's how I got in that though I was a broadcast designer, as you call it, before that won awards, traveled the world and then thought it might be a good idea to actually start a business and realize it's different. It's not that easy.

[Radim Malinic]

It does sound like a nice and easy Runway to be given leads from a boss or from a colleagues, like just so you didn't have to start it from scratch, you didn't have to look for new business sounds, you eased into it and actually find yourself in the right time to actually scale this app properly. So it sounds interesting that you had obviously a pool of work, obviously an experience in the field. So you didn't have to start from scratching. Obviously you were building already on a foundation. What strikes me what's interesting, that your business partner wanted to scale down like it was too much for him. Sometimes we wish about the turnover, sometimes we wish for the turnovers we try to hit. Sometimes we want that sort of dream client list to be Populated and ticked off. But when we get there, it's like scaling up a mountain and going there. The view is not that great. It was really hard to get here. And I'm here and I'm aching. What do I do next? Was it bit for him like that? Was it really crazy? Did you have to select scale personnel? Did you have lots of dependencies and that kind of stuff, like with staff and all of that stuff? What was that point? Where was the. On paper, this sounds amazing. You got 44 million in 18 months. That sounds like a dream. What was his thing? If it's okay to ask, I can't.

[Marco Van]

Really speak for him. What? But my reasoning is that he was 10 years older than me, like more experienced, smarter than me than I was back then. And I get it now, 10 years later, I totally get it. I think that taking big risks is part of being successful. However, as you said, it's like when you're up there, it might not be what you wanted. I realized, or he at least realized and I realized this way later, is that having like 30 people, not on staff, but freelancers, and it's a lot of money you spend every month. And you have to feed the beast, you have to feed the engine. Like you have to keep the engine running here. And also we did work primarily with freelancers. We also felt a responsibility for them. It's not like we just wanted to let them go. So we had to get in jobs and it worked. But there's always this Democles sword over your head. It could just fail and then you lose everything. I get why he wanted to scale down, because we were at the point where we could actually cherry pick who we wanted to work with and maybe even raise the prices, things like that. So that was could have been a strategy. We didn't get to this point. The reason was because the relationship really crumbled. We weren't able to align each other again. And so we just had to go different ways.

[Radim Malinic]

I understand that feeding the beast and getting to work in just to feed the beast can feel really cruel sometimes.

[Marco Van]

So looking back, I wasn't necessarily happy. I was just proud of what we have built. And I thought, okay, what else could come then I wasn't convinced that that's the end. And I think it wasn't. But looking back, I wasn't happy. I was working 16 hour days, six days a week, that kind of thing. And looking back, I was younger, I was ambitious. I know why I wanted that. I wanted to push for it. But I honestly believe if we would have kept doing that. It would have killed me at some point.

[Radim Malinic]

We'll be back after a quick break. If you're enjoying this podcast and would like more support and information on your creative journey, you can pick up one of my books to help you do just that. My titles cover branding, graphic design, illustration all the way to career business advice with ideas how to navigate the highs and lows of the creative process. You can pick up signed paperbacks at no extra cost from my [e-mail] and we are shipping worldwide use code podcast for extra 10% off your order and you can find the links in the show Notes. Any day should be a new book day. I can very much relate to it. The beginning of the book that inspired this series. It's called Mindful Creative and the first sentence is creativity nearly killed me because can very much understand the 16 by 6, you know, 16 hours a day, six days a week. I was pushing sometimes up to 20 hours, I think at that age. And I was, I think similar age to you 10, 15 years ago. It was pride because you making something happen. You planted your seeds, they are growing, the plants are growing. You feel proud, you feel happy and obviously now you need to water the plants. You have to actually give it more food. So you working yourself in that spiral when you realize, I'm just working for the sake of working because I've earned some money. You're pushing yourself in life. So you buy property, you spend all your money, then big stack bill comes up and you're like, this is vicious cycle. How do other people do it? Because you're going to look around and go in. I feel everyone's got it really good and I'm really struggling here, even though it looks good on the outside, which is confusing. So it's interesting you said it would have killed you because I'm sure that there is many people in that situation still today, even though we've got more awareness. Because there is a survival, isn't it? There's a bit of a survival instinct that once you got this going, there is no what we call safety net. Like no one's holding you back. There's no trust funds to lean against and say, you know what, I'll give up my work for an hour. I want to go to a shitty job. Like you feel like you're so exposed and you're the one running the show with your partner. It's demanding we think about it on a way out.

[Marco Van]

I love that. Yeah, that's certainly right. It's like everyone dreams to be there, but I think there's a better way to get there. I think you can have a form $10 million business with a lot less responsibilities. Smaller studio, maybe more high profile studio. I think that's totally feasible. But yeah, I had sleepless nights because of the payroll we had to make. I had. And the thing is, we also had to take on work we didn't really want to do. But we had to keep feeding the beast. Really. Things like that happened. And then you wonder, so how was everyone else doing that? Why is Buck putting out all that amazing work? Men vs Vishik we pitched a lot against big studios, actually, big agencies even. And we always felt like we're giving everything here and there for them. It seems to be so easy. And being a coach now or consulting people and actually the people that I competed against back in the days, I see that they actually have the same problems, the same struggles even today. Right. And some of my clients, they have 10, $20 million businesses and they still have the same problem. So I think it's something that in the industry we never got taught how to manage ourselves a business. No one is even like the mantra in the industry keeps seems to be like, work hard and you get your chance or you be rich or whatever you want. I think that leads us into the wrong direction. We have to balance things more. There's a different way of living as a creative.

[Radim Malinic]

I very much agree with that. Very much.

[Marco Van]

Also on the other hand, you made the same experience, right? You had a business that you probably tried to scale and then at some point realized, maybe that's not what I want to do. And then you started with a coffee company, writing books, you currently teaching the.

[Radim Malinic]

Method that helped you to grow the studio within the 18 months to the place it was. So that's kind of a backbone of your sort of mentoring and coaching stuff. Can we zoom in on this? What's the method?

[Marco Van]

So the basic idea is, I don't believe you get a million dollar deal with an email sequence called email sequences. It's more about building relationships. Right. And what I see out there these days, like when creatives get into business, they understand, okay, I got to learn business, I don't know how to do this, and so on and so forth. We are not stupid. We know we have to acquire new skill set. But by doing oftentimes what happens, people forget the thing that got them here. So they forgot their innovation. They're taking risks, all those things. And they come across business coaches even in the creative Industry that are telling them you have to productize, you have to streamline, you have to look for the profit and you have to create this cookie cutter machine thing that kills all creativity and kills the thing that got them there. Honestly believe you have to have some structure, yes, But a creative business cannot be structured like any other business. Why? Because wasting time is where the magic comes in. You cannot productize that and you can't have like no decide, no project should be like the last one you did. Why? Because it's fucking boring and it's not going to make you happy and you don't want to do the same thing over and over again. At least not the top people. You want to explore something new, you wrote a book, you don't want to write the same book again. You will have a new book, you have a new opinion. The same goes for animation, sound design, film. Once you're told one story, you want to have a new story when you're a storyteller, right? Something like that. So I believe that creativity shouldn't be productized and packaged, it should be free. And I believe, and that's another thing. I believe top creatives are the tipping point, the spear for any business out there. Why? Because any business needs to innovate and needs to market. And as creatives, that's where we come in. We can lead people to innovate their messages, maybe even their products. Depends on what you do. And actually lead the process of creating something new, a new message, even creating some purpose for the company within the company. I truly believe, as creatives, we have a responsibility to lead clients and not to do what the client tells us to do. And that's where I see the business coaching industry going. Like, productized your services, you can make a ton of money. And yes, you will be more profitable, you will make more money. I guarantee if you follow the advice of the other business coaches, you will make more money, but you won't be happy.

[Radim Malinic]

Let me unpick a few things in that answer because I think they are very interesting. And I've got my personal experiences, my studio experiences. And the first one would be, first answer is, we need the client, not what the client's telling us to do. That's what you said, right? If it's all right, I agree with it halfway. Because yeah, we lead the client, we educate, we show the possibilities, we make the invisible visible in a way, way. But sometimes would it make us too blind not to actually double down on research structure and also stop us from having a healthy compromise? Because the things that work is when everyone is on board. So when you've got big bold ideas, that makes me think of when I was 20, 21 and I worked in my first design job and I was like, here I am, I will solve everything. They're like, how long have you been doing this? Two days. Okay, sit down and work on this. Right? Just sit and learn. Because I think some of our friction. Let me just use the right word friction in design industry is based on the fact that we believe we've got the right solution. We are visionaries. We therefore pushing for the solution that we think is the best solution. But sometimes we've got so many blind spots, we don't know the history of the company, we don't know history of every campaign. But we are pushing for something that potentially make us look good so that another client can come going, oh, shit, you guys did amazing work. But you end up with an unhappy client and something that potentially fails because you bulldozed the ideas. How much of your bold vision for your clients, for your studios, involves a buffer for compromise, setback, rejection? Because with bold approach, it's a bit like live by the sword, die by the sword. It's quite strong. So how would you, how do you go about it with your clients?

[Marco Van]

Great question. From my perspective is leading is not telling. You don't have a solution. When you start working with a client, you don't have a solution. You should not have a solution. You should go in there like a blank canvas and you want to ask questions. That kind of leadership I'm looking for ask, question, challenge your clients believes because the client might also think he has the perfect solution at hand. You just need to execute it. And you want to question that. You want to challenge the client, you want to challenge yourself. And it is a compromise, as you said. But I wouldn't call it a compromise. But it's like operation maybe. Yeah, you actually end up. You two have to work together. And I think sometimes the clients don't want to work with studios because they think they just want to hand it off and be get rid of the responsibility. But you have to involve your client, otherwise you will not end up at a good solution. And that's why I don't really like pitches. Because you go into a pitch with a predefined solution and you don't know if that is the right solution. You have no idea because you did not have the time to research everything. You did not have the time to talk to stakeholders, to your clients, to the employees, to anyone. That's involved in the whole process. So I think this is a risky undertaking. And yeah, just closing this answer. Leaving means asking questions, not telling what to do.

[Radim Malinic]

Yeah, I like your answer. Leave not telling. Because I think there could be, I think there's a nuance in the answer. Leading on topic. You said like when you're leading the client, it feels like you could be actually just driving because from experience we know that a lot of agency would be actually pushing for solution. I've seen someone else's project, they were like, we went to get our branding down from this studio and they were like, pick one, two or three. There was no two way conversation. There was a brief and there was three options. Pick one, pay, goodbye. Like, yeah, that doesn't feel right at all, does it? You mentioned the word relationships and relationships. Meaningful connections and meaningful relationships is something that carries every business for 10, 20, 30, 40 years. Because we are in obsessed with new business, like new business seems to be. We don't have to go too far on LinkedIn going get more leads, get more deals, get more. That, as you said, million pound budget doesn't land you with the email sequence. There's so many sharks who are now going, okay by lead generation. Like we're gonna send 600 emails a day to blind prospects. I know you might have six meetings out of this and that's fundamentally wrong because as creatives would you agree creative work is, it's like you need a yin and yang, you need that creative partner in a form of a client to actually enable them to flourish and to be better. Because yeah, chasing blind leads with an email sequence, it just seems so nonsensical that somehow should be just grabbed.

[Marco Van]

It should. But then at these times, like it's challenging time, like we are in a depression, there are no jobs out there, at least that's what people believe. There are no jobs out there. It's hard to get clients and what happens? Everyone gets into the survival mode and now everyone gets into short term thinking and everyone wants to get a client tomorrow and doesn't ask is that the right client for me? Will that client help me to build my portfolio, my reputation, anyone just wants to get jobs at the moment, I think that's very risky. And what I see with my clients, the ones that think long term, they actually make short term gains, but it's because they want to build that long term relationship with a client. It's because they travel across the country, meet someone, or travel across countries to meet people in person for a one hour meeting or 15 minute meetings, things like that. And that's really, that's what I believe in building that long term relationship, going in for a meaningful conversation or meaningful relationship. And once you get that going, you could actually get quick time, like short term gains, but it's not guaranteed. And one story I keep telling is like when we had this massive pitch back in the days when I had my company for Astro, which is something like sky paid TV but huge. It's massive. They have 50 of their own channels in, in addition to all the other channels they can buy and we had the opportunity to redesign and rebrand 50 of their own channels, massive. And so we actually won the pitch, the creative pitch and we got into the shortlist and then people wanted to get to know us. So we were flown in for a 15 minute meeting. So we were flown in first class to Malaysia, that's where it was. We spent a full week in a five star hotel just to be there. When the chairman of the company has a 15 minute slot, we could jump in. And the reason why he did that was he wanted to look us in the eye and see who we are, feel the energy, all that. It's a relationship thing. We did not get the project before we met him. Anything else was figured out, but he had the last say. And we had the same experience with other clients when we worked in Arabic countries. One time they sent a nine person delegation, just get to know us and spend time with us in our rooms for a full week. It's like in those countries it's more about relationship. And we inherently know that if you want to give someone a million dollar, you better trust them. And the best way to build trust is you have to meet the person in real life. And a lot of business coaches out there, that's what the business coaching industry out there tells you is not working. They tell you you can automate that, you can send out like a thousand emails and that's better than just hopping on the plane and meeting one person. I believe that's wrong. You could get 2,000, $3,000 jobs with email blasts, but you will not get a hundred K or a million dollar project out of that.

[Radim Malinic]

I fully agree with this and I think there's this sort of healthy dose of ignorance when you got these memes online. It's like someone paid me £500 or $500 for a job and they've got seven different changes and they're going to pay the invoice late and da da da, da da. And someone with $50,000 said I love it. Here's the invoice paid. When can we start another project? Obviously you and I know that's beautifully naive because yes, the 500 pound client will commission you because you are not proven. Like if you're charging $500, then you don't have a track record. Obviously you're selling yourself short. And there's a reason potentially for it because if you had the balls to sell yourself for $50,000, then that comes with more experience and your inexperience shows in how much you charge. So I think we create this idealistic vanity prospect that we should be paid more just because we showed up. And I think that understanding of human connection and human exchange and as you said, leading the project, that's where the money is usually like when you think of the executions around a sort of similar price mark, most of it is based on the conversations and the strategy work and way of finding the solution before you make it. Because essentially we all have the same tools. Like we more or less use the same hardware, more or less use the same software, you can use the same production companies, you can create similar work. But it's how you come to it, how you actually prepare yourself, how do you deal with your client, how do you make those connections and how do you think even outside the industry, what you mentioned with this, small gains or marginal gains, this is the incremental change. Because it's easy to be sitting with your email sequence hoping that just because you got a nice website that people will be coming. But it just doesn't work that way, does it?

[Marco Van]

No, and exactly that it doesn't work that way. You have to have the experience. Yes. And I see a lot of young people coming into the industry and actually make a ton of money because they follow those rules. But they will crush, they crash at some point because they can't deliver. They make big promises, but can't deliver to the promises. Right. And the other thing is when you work with more sophisticated people, they can look behind that facade, they understand what you're trying to do. They just by from nuances, they ask you questions and they understand, okay, that he doesn't have the experience we need. That's why people want to meet you. Because in person you are who you are, you are authentic, you're real and you can't hide anything. You can't build that facade. And I really think this is a game changer. When people realize this, it's okay to be you and go out there. You don't have to be this clean version you don't have to be a perfect copywriter, you just be you. You should be able to articulate yourself, but you can be you, right? And that when people realize this, this usually changes the game for them. Like it's the confidence, right? You don't have to be like everyone out there. People just want to work with a real person. And then when people realize this, I believe that's usually a game changer.

[Radim Malinic]

So how would you take Rough diamond that's got potential to actually scale up to a million dollar business? Part of this obviously you say, is the leadership of the building relationships. But what would you do with a sort of prospective studio and say, okay, Michael, we want to work with you, where do you start with them? What is this sort of process of doing this? Where do you start? Is it a human level, business level, creative level? There's many different touch points in a company's presence and obtain people's skills, soft skills, hard skills, creative skills. Where do you start? What is your process?

[Marco Van]

So when we work with clients, it's me, it's my business partner, Hector Ayuso, and also Manny Fernandez. And what we do, where we start is literally by defining goal. Because you said this in the beginning, you never had a goal when you started a company and I didn't either. I didn't know where to go. So any opportunity that came my way, I just was happy to take it. And we actually defined that. Go, where do you want to be in 10 years, three years? And we break that down into a strategy, lesser strategy, more plan, how to get there and also find the purpose behind that. Right? If you want to build a big company, it's okay. But why, why do you want to build a big company? If you want to stay small, that's great too. Because you can't have a million dollar company as a two man studio. That's totally doable. But if you don't know why you're doing what you're doing, then it actually strains on you because you have all this opportunities coming in and you have to decide from opportunity to opportunity, Is that the right opportunity? If you don't know what you value, what your purpose is, then it's really hard to make a decision that goes against money. I think that's a trap. If you decide only based on will I make profit with that project, it's gotta, it's very risky. What I would love to do is for people to understand, yes, we wanna work with that brand. And I think that brand could creatively challenge us. That's Beautiful, let's do that. Or they could intellectually, things like that. So first thing really is vision. After that, this next big game changer is. And that's what the other business coaches don't do. You only are as good as your last project, right? And you attract exactly the people as good as you are. The last project attracts the same kind of people, usually not as good, but a little bit lower qualified client. So what you want to do is you want to actually want to invest in a spec project that's innovative, that's fresh, that's units, actually stands out in the noise. And I know a lot of people tell you, don't do that, it's a waste of time. I believe that's how you actually get interest in the market and can rise to the top very quickly. If you look at any artist and to name a few from our industry, Sagmeister, maybe Valer Duhamel, all those people, they got to where they are. Even State myself from State Design, they got to where they are by investing in their craft. They wanted to create something big and they didn't just wait for the next client to fund the next project. They invested in doing something amazing. And that amazing project that sometimes could be really expensive, but doesn't have to be, but that project attracts the people you want. And that better be amazing, right? That better be really good. And it doesn't like you don't have to spend a million dollars, but you get what I mean, right? You also wrote a book because you invested in writing this book. You didn't wait for the opportunity. You actually jumped in and you did that.

[Radim Malinic]

Absolutely. And I agree that the self initiated creativity is again one of those seeds that you plant and it grows. As you know from my talk, the message I see as creatives is taken from Chris Cornell from Soundgarden, who said if I was a musician, I was into music and if I was the best musician ever, people would come and find me and beg me to play for the best band in the world. But that didn't happen. We had to create our own best band in the world and that was Soundgarden. So just showing up and okay, look, I can do amazing things. You need to prove the world that you can do things. And especially it gives you the boundless creativity in a way because you can really be who you are. Because the point of this conversation and a conversation I've had on the series so far is that you at the formative years, you do crazy shit like anything goes. Like you, you put compress everything, you touch everything, you mold everything, you play with it. And then the creativity is almost like you got two axes. You've got money and creativity. And the creativity is up and the money's low. And then you get to the point in your career with like, money's high and the creativity gets lower because there's more money and functional design rather than crazy design. And it's like, how do you find those two things that actually match up? Because when you're high on creativity and low on money, you go high expectations and low resilience. When you high on money and low on creativity, you've got high resilience and low expectations. That's what it is. Because obviously you working towards the fact that the work's not going to be crazy, therefore it's there somewhere in between. But would you say being aware of your strategy, aware of your values and your goals? That doesn't come out of the box because our initial cognitive vision is forked with creativity and the enthusiasm.

[Marco Van]

It's deeper than that. You need the outside perspective. We all are conditioned by the industry, by society, by our parents, by our upcoming. And we don't like. We are conditioned to know what we don't want, but rarely do we know what we want. You know what you don't like tonight for dinner, but you probably have hard time thinking about the thing you actually want to have for dinner tonight. And that's the same for the business. This takes effort. This really is hard work. Finding what you want to have in life and committing all your energy towards that goal. And then you will realize, yeah, also it's a big goal. Things will happen that actually align with your big goal. But if you don't have a goal, you will not see the little things, the opportunities right in front of you. Why? Because your mind is not focused on that goal. So those opportunities right in front of you are not relevant. Nothing is relevant for your mind if you don't have a goal. And the same thing when you want to buy a Tesla. All of a sudden you see all those Teslas on the street. You have noticed them before. And that's how the mind works. So you want to have a goal because that focuses your mind to find ways to get there faster, easier, more comfortable. And that those are the things I teach people as well. So there's a lot of psychology involved because we literally stand in our own way because we have blinds spots which are caused by no focus. And we have all that baggage and that baggage that we have collected over the years that's why the creativity goes down when the money goes up is because we had some bad experiences and our mind doesn't want us to repeat those experiences, although we know those experiences actually got us where we are. So we have to uncondition that the older you get, the less risks you want to take. And you want to get back to that early stage that you mentioned when you just come out of industry and you want to own the world and you want to take a lot of risks, you want to use that with the wisdom you have collected over the years, then take risk with wisdom. That's amazing. Obviously, if you take risks and you don't know anything, that's just stupid. But we have all been there, we all have to go through that. But it's not a good thing to not take risks anymore when you get older or more seasoned.

[Radim Malinic]

Let's just say that's interesting. That's interesting what you said because you said when we get older, we don't risk things as much.

[Marco Van]

It's harder. Like you have more responsibilities, you have a life now, you have family. Right. So you don't take the same risk. And I think the prime reason is because we have collected more bad experiences. So we naturally don't go after. We naturally rule out some of the risks because we have made a bad experience. So for example, I made a very bad experience with my first business partner. Wasn't his fault, but it was a bad experience. So I could have ruled out ever having a business partner again. And I literally did for 10 years because this is not going to work for me. And I did it. And now I met Hector and I mean, that's an amazing experience, meeting Hector and many my new business partners. I'm in this and it's such a liberating experience now having people that think the same way, act the same way, say the same things like I say and actually have the same goal and the same bold wishing behind that. And that's what I mean. I literally ruled out having a business partner for 10 years. That was. I didn't want to take the risk again. I was hurt. I didn't want to take the risk again.

[Radim Malinic]

Interesting, because I think we are going to zoom in on the risk and the goal because yeah, jumping in unprepared, trying to make things work out, especially at the younger ages, is because there's again, it's that magnetic energy that wants you. Like there's something I've seen other people do. I'm sure I can do it too. I wanted to find yourself really taken aback. Literally wiping out on that surfway going, these waves are the biggest I've ever served because I can't serve. That's why I'm wiping out. So I think that's more naivety, especially that's a lack of experience, doesn't necessarily even risk. It's more like you putting yourself at risk of doing something really bad. Whereas if you want to achieve a goal, there's going to be barriers in a way, there's going to be things. There's. You know, you have to identify a big mountain of, like, how do I get to that top? Where is my top? So I feel from personal experience that I had to follow my goal and therefore I had to put a risk in place. Like, you don't win by being vanilla. You don't win by doing the same thing over and over again. This doesn't work. So how do you be able to identify a goal? And how do you put an element? Or it's a risky investment, or how do you. How do you actually empower or enable your clients to do this? Because I feel like risk and a goal are kind of together. Like, there are two elements that they add up.

[Marco Van]

So I always tell people, like, your goal is outside your comfort zone. It's what's called the risky area. It's somewhere there. And the beauty is you don't necessarily need to know what your goal is just yet, but you have to get outside of your comfort zone. And I actually realized earlier this year that I was totally in my comfort zone. As a consultant, coach, mentor, I made really good money, but I got bored and I was in my comfort zone. And then I did something that actually got me out of my comfort zone. I didn't know what I wanted. I didn't know where to go. Should I scale my business? Should I get people in, other coaches, whatever? I didn't know what I wanted, but I knew I had to get out of my comfort zone. So I reached out to Hector, a user, the founder of. Of which I didn't know, to have a speech panel at this last conference. And that got me out of the comfort zone. I haven't done this before. And just that experience actually led to the next thing, building a new company now, which is more passionate, which aligns more with all my goals, passion and experience and everything. This aligns more with everything than I have done before. And that's the beauty. That's what I tell people. You don't need, necessarily need to know where you're going. If you have a direction that's amazing. But just get out of your comfort zone and things will unfold.

[Radim Malinic]

Do you think we need a sell by date on our goals? Because do you need to renew them? Because something can take forever. Let's say you are planning to hit a million, you're planning to hit a campaign and you're not getting there. Do you switch? Do you pursue? Do you have a sell by? Do you have a use by day on that goal? Do you rethink it? How does it often work with creative clients and even yourself? Because you said for 10 years you didn't want a business plan, now you've got a new goal because you're more or less, you've terminated the first goal. Okay, I want to run this on my own. How do we do that? Like how do we renew things?

[Marco Van]

I think setting a timeframe helps, but it's also limiting you. If you set a timeframe, say I want to be a millionaire and the timeframe is 10 years, it's unlikely that you're going to reach it before 10 years because now you have the timeframe of 10 years and you explore and do a lot of other things and the same thing happens and you say, hey, I want to be a millionaire in the next three months. It's not going to happen either. So I think setting a timeframe is hard. I usually tell people like the biggest goal you can dream of in 10 years and then we're going to reduce the timeframe to three years. That's usually the formula I start with. So what's the biggest thing you can dream of in 10 years? Where could you be? And then one important factor is like a goal is about who you can be or want to be and not what you have. Because you will not get a million dollar business if you're not the person that can speak as like millionaire or like someone that has a million dollar business. So it's who you are and not what you want. That's one of the things. But then once you know who you want to be in 10 years, then okay, how can we make that happen in three years?

[Radim Malinic]

But you say 10 years is a long time. 10 years, like where do you want to be in 10 years? Because we change as people, we change the things. Personally, what I wanted 10 years ago, I've accomplished them maybe quicker. Some other things took me 20 years to do and I wish I've had them quicker because the goal changes. Like it emulates some other values and other qualities. And I think it's interesting that you say, okay, where do you want to be in 10 years? I'm making it in three. Because we live in a very fast paced world. We are hyper connected. We are influenced by so many more things from our outside vision and innovation. And you think like, how do you stay true to yourself? How do you stay true to your goal and how do you police it? Because you can be very focused on what you're trying to achieve, but believe in a world of shiny things. There's a lot of interesting things like how do you police that discipline of pursuing a goal and obviously sticking at least to that three year Runway.

[Marco Van]

What I believe in is that being your authentic self is not like this fixed, solid thing, but it's evolving to who you are, your authenticity, who you are. You evolve as a person. Only when you bring that out, you are your authentic self. So me too, I'm different than I used to be 10 years ago. And looking back 10 years ago, I didn't know anything. And I'm sure going into the future, looking back 10 years, I'll say the same thing. Basically, I think how can you make sure you always follow your goal? It's like the goal shifts, it moves. And that's okay because it evolves too. And sometimes when you are at the point you're getting close to your goal and you realize, oh, that's not what I wanted, it doesn't feel right. You shift the goal and you understand, okay, that actually wasn't a goal, but what the goal accomplished me to do. So you move towards that. And what I see with a lot of people is at some point it's more about the contribution than actually significance. Like we in the beginning, it's all about we want to have some certainty. Then it's more about significance. And what I see, then the final stage is more about contribution, giving back. And that's what makes people happy, really happy. And I love that because that actually opens different opportunities and it's a different way of life. If it's not all about money anymore but actually giving back. And you will realize once you're there and you actually give back. Like you giving back with your books, that's what you do. If you're giving back with wisdom and also with this podcast, that's what you do. And you realize you're more happy. I assume you are more happy now and you actually have more opportunities business wise in your life because you actually give back to people.

[Radim Malinic]

Fully agree. I think there's three stages to a career, or at least creative career, because the first one is about me. Like, how can I satisfy my soul, my ambition, my ego? Then you realize, actually that doesn't always work. Like, I'm pushing against no brick wall, but I can open that wall by saying, what can I do for you? So in terms of that situation, I've been a client, you're like, what can I do for my client? Actually, I'll listen to them more and they rise. What can I do with my work? For us, for everyone? What can I do? Because the beauty of getting older and I really enjoy it, the things don't ache yet. I'm enjoying getting older because I care less what people think about me. I care less about my appearance. I used to be painfully shy, anxious about situations because I don't have that armor of confidence. I see my kids being brought up in a completely different way. So now you're getting. Everyone's got anxiety, but they get in a toolkit of how to deal with these things. Whereas I think creative industry, especially 20 years ago, 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago, you had people who spoke, had people who never spoke. And I think there's a change in how we open up and how we actually project more of our personalities. That's how we find out more about ourselves, of actually what we can do, how we can have a positive contribution to society to work that unlocks the confidence in us. Because if you are selfless with your creativity, if you think, I can make other things better with what I'm creating, rather than where is this sort of satisfaction inside? It changes everything. And remember, on our conversation and in my talk, I speak about the fact that when you the odd one out, when you accept of who you are, competition falls away because you realize you only one of you and it doesn't matter because somebody is a different version of another human being, they do differently. And you try to open yourself to celebrating other people's successes and actually be more present and unlocking new relationship and new collaborations by saying, hey, look, I've seen your work, it's amazing. You're on the other side of the world. But I want to give you the compliment because we really tried to still look after our little seeds that we've planted and now we're watering that we don't want anyone to touch it. It's our little allotment. Don't look in here, don't touch this, don't be part of it. Whereas, hey, look, this is what I've created, this is what I've planted, this is what's growing, and you are very much welcome to it. Because I want you to celebrate it. And I think it's a cognitive shift, it's a change of mindset. And it changes so much in the industry because we really work. When you think about it, like when you said you're only as good as your last job, that scarcity of supply, like demand, supply scarcity, then also anthropological things, kind of like human instincts got into play saying there's a lack of resources, therefore I will never work again. Industry is so built on anxiety and insecurity that you really have to work out who you are and how you want to be, what you want to do and identify your goals more than ever. Because we know more about ourselves, we know more about the work, yet we failing at the basics. So my question is, when you come to a new client, how do you shape their goal and do you have them to identify the right goals? Because I'm sure some people don't have always the right vision of who they want to be. Some people might be stuck. How do you identify that next three year, 10 year.

[Marco Van]

It's finding out where people are with their minds and with the development on their journey. And the goal will come out, it's there, it will come out. When you once you actually make people to believe in themselves, when you actually show where they good at, when you show what they already achieved, when you do those things, when you build up the confidence of people to be themselves, as you said, don't be insecure anymore and know how to talk in front of people. Because a lot of times people have a goal. The first goal that usually comes up is a conditioned call. I call this a conditioned goal. It's a goal that cool and that's accepted by society. So it's accepted by society for by creative industries to get to a million dollar, that's cool. What if we talk about $10 million that's not accepted. A lot of envy comes up. And then in our industry the $1 million mark is always covered with envy. Like a lot of people get envy at you when you do that. So the first goal is a conditioned goal. And then when I break people up in the beginning is a lot of talking, mentoring and get to the kind of the core root why they started this business and what they want to change in the world. Then we get to the real goal, more real goal. It's not the final goal. And I don't believe that this will there is a final goal. But once you strip away the layers of conditioning that we have built up over the years, people see what's underneath that. And that's what they actually identify as themselves.

[Radim Malinic]

It's.

[Marco Van]

That's what you are and it's more in line what you really want. But we have to be careful not to fall for goals that are society accepted, that look good, like money, fame, fortune, those things. But more what do you want to do? And maybe it's just I just want to have a good life and raise kids on the countryside. That's okay. That's something that's big and others do want to make money. That's fine. It could be authentic as well. I doubt that it's an authentic goal for any creative studio owner to become rich. I doubt that. But it's possible.

[Radim Malinic]

I think there was a mixed messaging in what some people portray of there, what they say and how it makes people feel when they feel insecure. Like I want to make million pounds because it feels like it's going to give me security, potentially happiness. But the roads to that money, it's impossible to get if you're just thinking that the money's there. I think I always believe that money is a side product of what we do. Like obviously, if you have a business plan and you got systems in place, that equation should produce profit. The more you put in it, the more you scale it up, then there's more money in it. But I think when we rewind back to the beginning of the conversation, a lot of people will start creative studios because they have outgrown the capacity of what they can do on their own. So they will get more people to come in and then we work it out. And you said, I think quite that most of these problems are quite unique to our creative industry. But I think it's just generally like other people start other things because they want to be of help, they've got some vision and then they realize they're over the head with responsibility and tasks that they need other people to work in. But I think there's this big megaphone of the industry that we feel sometimes we are hard done by because we project our life and soul and expression into what we do. And that feels doubly hard to then be rejected or to be waiting for an invoice to be paid. Because you put a lot more than a plumber fixing a leak. You show up, you do a couple of bids, you go away, that's your job done. Whereas we've got. We preempt what a thing could be. We preempt the work, we battle it out. Like we get it done. Sometimes it goes well, sometimes it doesn't, then it's finished. Then you get a feedback. It's a concoction of so many different emotions. So it sometimes makes us feel like we are potentially people with a lot more emotional spend on this journey than others. How would you see it?

[Marco Van]

It's true. Like, we get into the industry because we want to express ourselves. And words is not usually the thing that the creative uses to express themselves, at least not in the beginning. So, yes, it's more emotional. Like our work is us, and we work hard to get there, to create this kind of work, and then we get rejected. It really hurts. But that's. That only hurts because you attach yourself to the work. And that's another thing. It's like, why would that work be you? It's just, it was you, like, a month ago, a week ago. You would do a different thing today. So it's not you anymore. It used to be you. That's one way to think, to reframe the whole thing. Yes, that was the best I could have done a week ago, but today I could do something different, something else. So you want to detach yourself from the work to some extent. On the other hand, your work, your personality has to go in there. Otherwise it's not authentic. It's not you. It's not special. It gets boring if your self is not in the work. And I believe it's hard. As you said, like, once you're in this game for some time, you have a thicker skin and then you grow some confidence. And I believe that the confidence you have is in correlation to the money you can make. You have to be confident and that there's no other way than to go in, get the work, maybe even get beaten up, but get some experience. You have to have experience. Like, no one is coming out of university and working for the big brands. And if they do, they're still scared to death to work with those brands because they don't know how it works. They have no experience. Right. And that's fine. And I think, like, anxiety, as you said, is. Our industry is built on anxiety. And what do you say? Anxiety and insecurity. And that's totally true. Yes, that's okay. But that doesn't have to hold you back. I'm introverted and I'm on the podcast with you. I coach people. It took me a while to get there, but if I wouldn't have been stepping out of my comfort zone, I would never have discovered that other part of me which is not. Which isn't introverted. It's just more extroverted. That's what I mean.

[Radim Malinic]

If.

[Marco Van]

If you are in your comfort zone, that's the Persona you are. But there are different parts of you outside of that comfort zone. And you could go into that. You can be a different person by deciding to be a different person. That's how the mind works. And you can trick your mind into that. You can be an expert and an extrovert if you're an introvert. Because introversion is also just a conditioning. No person, no baby is born as an introvert or extrovert. It's just the way you grew up. You're conditioned from your parents in the very early stages of your life. That's how you perceive the way to be. That's your coping mechanism. Your personality develops because you look what the people around you doing, and that's the strategy you're using because you see it working for other people. Right? And that's. Once you realize that, you understand, okay, that's just a conditioning. It's just a pattern. And you can develop a new pattern and break that pattern. And that's a big part of the work I'm doing, is to break those beliefs and to install new beliefs.

[Radim Malinic]

Fantastic work, Marco. It's been so great to be hearing about your work. I'm fascinated. What you do unlocks a new dimension into seeing how creative businesses could work again. This type of coaching wasn't widely discussed even 10 years ago, 20 years ago. I think we're making the strides and explaining how we can actually thrive collectively. And it's nice that what you're describing has got this huge human element to unlocking the potential within the actual beings. You've got a breath of fresh air in your messaging and I think, yeah, it's what you've now started doing with Hector and you have a business partner. I think it's fantastic. And honestly, like, making those connections, those relationships, taking the right risks and actually leading, not telling people what to do is fantastic. So thank you for sharing that with me today.

[Marco Van]

Thanks for having me. And keep doing what you're doing because I think you give back a lot to an industry and it's important for people to have to hear all those voices that you bring on your podcast and what you write about in your book. So keep doing that and hope to see you again.

[Radim Malinic]

Thank you. I thank you for listening to this episode of Mindful Creative Podcast. I'd love to know your thoughts, questions, or even suggestions. So please get in touch via the show notes or social channels. This episode was produced and presented by me, Radim Malinj. Editing and audio production was masterfully done by Neil McKay from 7 Million Bytes podcast and the theme music was written and produced by Jack James. Thank you and I hope to see you on the next episode. Hey hey. Thank you for listening to this episode of Mindful Creative Podcast. I'd love to know your thoughts, questions or even suggestions, so please get in touch via the show notes or social channels. This episode was produced and presented by me, Radim Malinic. Editing and audio production was masterfully done by Neil McKay from 7 Million Bikes podcast and the theme music was written and produced by Jack James. Thank you and I hope to see you on the next episode. Hey, just a quick note to say thank you for joining me on this episode. If this is your first time or you're a regular listener, please take a minute and rate the show on your chosen platform. A short review helps every show to be more visible to new listeners and provide them with value. So thank you for helping out. Thank you.