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Daring Forever (Find your Extraordinary)
"There are no dead ends, cul-de-sacs or mistakes" (Simon Dixon bonus episode)
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- [00:07]
Tom
Hey, welcome to this bonus episode of the Daring Forever Podcast. This is my opportunity to zoom in on a few standout moments from this week's interview, finding those moments that deserve a second look and dig deeper in what makes them special. This week it was return of Simon Dixon, who is a co founder of Dixon Baxie and one of the leading voices in the creative industry. If you've ever spent five minutes on LinkedIn, it's impossible not to see Simon's words and thoughts and advice on our creative work out there. In our conversation this time, we talked about what it really means to feel comfortable in your own skin. Why doubt is the price of growth rather than something to fear, how taste, not talent, is what separates work that lasts. As you might know, I run these conversations personally, purposely unprepared, meaning that I don't have any questions sketched down. I don't really know where it's going to take us, and it's a lot of fun always to see where the conversation leads next. And when speaking to someone like Simon, it's doubly unpredictable to see where we're going to get, to see where we can vibe comfortable with one another and see where it takes us. The episode that I published a few days ago was titled Dare to Never Ask Permission and it was a masterclass in staying curious. After more than three decades decades in the business, if you haven't checked out a full interview, I'm already encouraging you to do so because it was a great conversation. If you want to have a bit of a taste, down here are four standout moments from that conversation.
- [01:38]
Simon Dixon
That's why I did. I didn't have a job. I've never had a mentor. I didn't ask any permission. I probably didn't either have the creativity, intelligence or knowledge to know that I shouldn't do that. But I've never been a person that has to ask permission from the world to do what I do. I believe everybody should do their version of it, and I think it takes time to get elite and to get to a very high level and skill there. But I just always met the world the same way.
- [02:02]
Tom
There's always something magical about stories like this, from mid-90s, late-90s, early 2000s, where generally I just felt people were more naive, go after what they really wanted. Because in Simon's case, when he talks about the fact that he didn't go to university, he didn't have a mentor, he they built the whole Dixon Bucks infrastructure from nothing and on their own terms. I talked to apova Baksi. He's obviously co founder of Dixon Baksi a few months ago on previous season. It just makes it exciting to know that sometimes following your instinct will stop you from waiting for permission from somebody else to begin. I know there's a whole sort of myth about. There's a whole big question about what is it that is a permission? And genuinely, through my coaching practice, I found that I work with people who are just made slightly differently. They are looking for validation. They're looking to be told that they're okay, that they can produce the work they can produce. Because you get naive idiots like me or Simon. I'm not calling Simon idiot, just naive at the beginning that. Just go for it. You just want to do something and you start and you just. You work it out. And in the book Daring Forever, there is a chapter called Permission which talks about the now versus how. And it really looks into the biological truth of what it stands between us and the moment of trying to do something that feels unknown. We can't have a confidence about something we've never done before. And there's this fact of how we go after the things that we want because then you can work out what it really is. So the element of permission, which this episode is really rooted around, it's just, you know, what if you were to wait for somebody to do something for you, you might be actually waiting forever.
- [03:56]
Simon Dixon
As you and I are talking about applied professional creativity that has a number of stakeholders in that if we're just talking about pure creativity and pure self expression, where you have zero responsibility, then what we're talking about is art and being an artist, and then that self expression is about how you meet the world. But we're talking about applied creativity, which has stakes and stakeholders. Whenever I've developed my career, I've considered those people. The first stakeholder is me. How is the work making me feel? Does it elevate me? Am I growing? The second thing is my partners or people I would work with that could be a sound designer, it could be one of my creative partners, it could be typographer. And then there's the client, the person who facilitates or sponsors whatever I'm making. But actually I'm designing for people around the world, whether a rave flyer for 50 people in a nightclub when I started out or a billion people a day with TikTok. It's the same feeling, which is I share something and I hope I love it. But really what I want is the end audience not to love it because they'll never know I designed it, but I like the idea that it will be useful, meaningful, and move the needle for them in some way. If I was an individual solopreneur, I would still think the same way. We're all interconnecting. There is a contextual nature if you're professionally creative.
- [05:14]
Tom
So in this moment is where Simon comes really alive. This moment is not about him being selfish. He's actually been very aware of the process. Not about taking a credit or control. He's talking about growth. Because if the work that he does doesn't elevate him first, he's suggesting it can't really serve anyone else well either. But he talks about him understanding the whole bigger picture. Then he can talk to collaborators, clients, everybody else to really understand if that's really working. In this instance is the hierarchy for anyone who's ever felt guilty for wanting creative satisfaction alongside client satisfaction. Simon's making the case here that there's no making this in competition. Looking after your own growth isn't vanity, but is the first link in the chain that ends with better work reaching real people. And when you think about it, that's a permission slip that some people really need.
- [06:13]
Simon Dixon
You say fear, I say down. If you're going to grow and develop as a person, you will feel down. It goes back to being in the gym again. When you exercise, you'll feel an ache in your arm because you're growing and developing. And creativity is the same. You'll feel it in your head. So things like Imposter Syndrome, they come from two places. One is doubt and the sense of identity and place in the world and people looking at you, which can manifest itself in lots of different ways. Fear, lots of different things. But it's not a fear instinct. It's contextual doubt about how you're changing and growing. Then the other thing is the infrastructure around you and how that allows you to be creative and say, this is a safe space. It's okay to make mistakes. It's okay for you to not know the answer to that.
- [06:59]
Tom
It's okay.
- [06:59]
Simon Dixon
It's okay for you to understand that you're on a journey. It's okay for you to make bad work before you make good work, because that's how you grow.
- [07:06]
Tom
So this is an interesting one. I've been sounding out lots of content from my book with Simon, and this episode was recorded a few months ago. And it's always interesting to hear what comes back. When we look at fear, it often implies danger, but doubt often implies development. And Simon was talking about the Fact that you can compare it to Jim, there's lots of muscle strengthening when it comes to doubt, anxiety, confidence, all of it's about reps. And in this instance, he was talking about the fact that you can just go a little bit more every single time. It's not a place where we would disagree because everyone's got slightly different view on all these things. But it was great to him to talk about it in his own way because this sort of message is for anyone who's ever mistaken creative discomfort for a sign that they should stop. This basically, again, is about permission to keep lifting the heavyweights and keep going.
- [08:01]
Simon Dixon
So we have a thing which is there are no dead ends, there are no cul de sacs, there's no mistakes. What you're doing is just looking at what you've won. And if you've won nothing, it tells you at least something. And it's okay to feel that. The other thing as well is you also want to balance the ability to help people with them going through the same experiences you did to get to where you are, because falling down and feeling what that feels like is part of the journey. So if you constantly stop people feeling uncomfortable at all, they don't grow enough. So you're in between those two states. We have to balance it and make sure you protect people mentally and literally, but also give them enough room to do their own version of it rather than macromanage them. But you can tell. You could just see. Well, you can't always tell, but in lots of instances you can tell. There's signals in the work, there's signals in the way people carry themselves and talk. And what you've got to do is remain open and sensitive to that. And it's one of the hardest things to learn, I think. I think I was not very good at that when I was younger. I think particularly when you start your career, you're very self obsessed, you're narcissistic, it's about you. And you're supposed to be because you're finding yourself. But then you realize it's like doing things with other people. And once you realize that learning the sensitivity to how you carry yourself and spot in the problems before they happen, I think is a big thing.
- [09:24]
Tom
Again, if I was to zoom back to the conversation that's in parallel with my chapter about curiosity, there's this, I think, this finding that I really liked from the book, that curiosity will always give you something. You either find what you're looking for or you find something else. And talking to Simon about his work and philosophy for managing people through hard patches, not through sentiment. But instead of framing a failed idea or bad outcome as a waste effort, he reframes it as a data point. You either got what you wanted, what you tried to find, or you got an information about what doesn't work, but they both count as a win. There's no such version of a story where nothing happened. It's a subtle but powerful shift. But in that instance, there's this powerful shift for anyone leading a team, and not just leading themselves, because it removes the stink of this went nowhere and it replaces it with, you know what? We've learned something here. Because these setbacks, they stop being verdicts and they start being signals. And that's the kind of language that keeps people moving forward instead of freezing up next time they're asked to take a Creative risk thank you for joining me on this bonus episode. If you haven't checked out a full interview with Simon and you enjoyed these four moments, please give it a listen. It's one of those beautiful human conversations where I try to stay away from any branding. Just focus on what it's like to be human, trying to be daring forever. Thank you for joining me and I'll catch you on the next episode where I talk to Eliza Williams from Creative Review. If you enjoyed this episode and would like more accessible resources to help you discover your daring creativity, you can pick up one of my books on themes of mindful creativity, creative business, branding, and graphic design. Every physical book purchase comes with a free digital bundle, including an ebook and audiobook to make the content accessible wherever you are and whatever you do. To get 10% off your order, visit novemberuniverse.co.uk and use the Code podcast. Have a look around and start living daringly.