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Daring Creativity
"Time is a luxury. Be conscious of where your time and energy are going." (Rachel Gogel bonus episode)
00:14:42
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Transcript9 lines
- [00:00]
A
Hey, welcome to 2026. Happy New Year. Hope you're well, hope you had a great holiday. Hope you're having up, still chilling and enjoying these mince pies and beer and all of the naughtiness that comes with taking time off before we all go back in. So this is another bonus episode of the Daring Creativity Podcast, the first one of 2026, and I'm back to unpack some of the gems from this week's conversation, pulling out those moments that deserve a second look and digging deeper into what makes them special. This week I spoke to Rachel Gauzel, an independent design executive and devoted generalist who's built her career on embracing discomfort, creating her own path without waiting for permission. The episode that was published a few days ago was titled Dare to Embrace the Messy Process of Creative Growth, and Rachel challenged the narrative that designers must specialize. She was reasoning for conviction and the power of being adaptable in navigating rapid technological and social change. If you haven't checked out a full interview yet, let me start with these four moments that stood out from our conversation.
- [01:08]
B
I guess it's interesting because what came up for me as you were talking was that I see myself as an early observer, not necessarily an early adopter. And what I mean by that is I have always felt like I'm close to what's happening in culture, no matter. You know, I mean, I live near Silicon Valley now, but I was in New York when I was working in publishing, and I felt like I was close to or in the heartbeat of what was happening in publishing at the time, which was interactive print, which now feels like an old dated thing. But it's when a lot of the iPads were figuring out how to bring magazines to life. And it can get really overwhelming when you see new things happening in culture and then you figuring out where and how you want to get involved with it. What is your opinion on it? How do you want to use it?
- [02:02]
A
Of course we couldn't avoid talking about AI, and I love that Reg made this distinction when talking about a relationship with AI and new technologies, explaining that while she lives near Silicon Valley and is exposed to constant innovation, she's intentional about where and how she engages with new tools. She fundamentally challenged the tech industry obsession about being first in creative fields especially, there's enormous pressures to adopt every new tool, platform or technology the moment it launches. It's driven by the fear of irrelevance fomo, obviously, and the misconception that early adoption equals competitive advantage. However, Rachel's reframing is powerful because it validates a more sustainable, thoughtful approach. Being an observer doesn't mean you're being passive or ignorant. It means developing informed opinions without burnout of constant experimentation. It's about strategic awareness over reactive adoption. This distinction is particularly relevant now during the AI boom, where creatives are drowning in new tools. Launching daily Rachel's approach offers permission to curate your consumption, to decide where and how you want to get involved, rather than feeling obliged to try everything. It acknowledges that you can maintain cultural awareness or professional relevance without sacrificing your time, energy or mental health to the hamster wheel of endless tool testing. So it would be absolutely fair to say that this reveals a mature creative leadership, the confidence to say I figure out what feels right for me in the moment, rather than letting external trends dictate internal practice. It's conviction over conformity.
- [03:52]
B
I'm a big believer in karma related to relationships and really approaching them with kind of genuine empathy and curiosity and really just trying to help others because you really never know. And it really has served me. Every job that I have had truly has been through relationships, whether that's a former colleague, someone I met for coffee, I guess at this point in my career, maybe some referrals. So someone who then shares my information and what I do and it really, I would say out of anything or any advice I would give to anyone is just making more time for relationships. And almost back to this idea that it's so noisy right now that people are spending a lot of times on their phones or like getting distracted really easily. Just remember again some of the basics which is just the more you're able to spend time towards building relationships and trust, it really can change your life.
- [04:56]
A
It's been mentioned throughout the podcast so many times with people who have built longevity in their careers, which wasn't built on cold calling, cold emails, lead generation, aggregate. It was real relationships, it was real humility. And in Renshu's case, she almost unknowingly started a job list, a creative job list which she ran unpaid for years, organically building a network that led to every major opportunity in her career, including some of the major roles in this moment. Rachel isn't talking about strategic relationship building or networking for success. She was describing genuine curiosity with her expectation of return and then marveling how the universe rewarded that generosity. If there's anything I'm perspective advocating is the lack of expectations, how many times we need to fix something real quick and we hoping it will go real quick change our fortunes. But every seed is a plant to grow. And in Rachel's case, the word karma is very crucial because it acknowledges something really mystical, something beyond the cause and effect calculations. You can't game genuine generosity. You can't strategically help people just enough to get referrals later. The magic only works when your motivation is pure, when you truly want just to connect people and help them succeed. This moment speaks to the long game. The newsletter that she's creating didn't bring immediate return on her time investment. It was the seed planted in good faith that sprouted years down the line. Most people won't invest into relationships that might pay off later, if ever. And that's exactly why this approach is so powerful and so rare.
- [06:50]
B
Spread optimism and then create impact while making a living. So it's what's been interesting is I no longer think about climbing the corporate ladder. I really think about success as to your point, not necessarily scaling up and that growth doesn't always mean expansion. Like I can be a successful solopreneur and kind of define what those rules should look like. So I'm very selective in where and how my time is spent. And I think obviously I can't ignore I live in one of the most expensive cities in the world and my wife is also self employed and a comics creator and works with a lot of nonprofits.
- [07:33]
A
In our conversation I had to pay my compliments to Rachel's reframing of success. It made me think differently and I hope if you check out a conversation that it will make you think differently about the way we can think about success. Because to me it was about just potentially like hey, if I don't have to go back to my old shitty job. It wasn't too bad by the way. But I'm thinking I wasn't in charge of my growth and I was only in my job to for two and a half years out of the last 25. But I still see every day as not needing to go back to the previous step as a success. But in Rachel's case, she shared how she redefined success as harmonious blend of consulting, mentoring, teaching, speaking and advocacy. Deliberately remaining small while creating meaningful impact. And are absolutely adore that. Because this moment rejects the fundamental assumption underlying most creative advice that success mean upward mobility, team growth and scaling. And the Silicon Valley was mentioned quite a few times in this conversation because she lives on the edge of the relentless pressure towards bigger and better more employees, more clients, more revenue, more everything. In the rangefield's case, she no longer think about climbing. This isn't a defeatist resignation. It's a liberated rejection. She's not saying that she's failed to climb. She's saying that she stopped valuing the climb itself. And this is so profound because it requires unlearning decades of cultural programming about what professional success looks like. Growth doesn't always mean expansion challenges. And the part when she says the growth doesn't always mean expansion challenges the business orthodoxy that equates success with scale. For solopreneurs and small creative practices, this is a permission giving language. You don't have to build an agency, you don't have to 10x anything. You can remain intentionally small while still growing in depth, expertise, impact and income. This matters enormously for creators who feel trapped between a corporate ladder and a startup grind. And Rachel proves that as a third path. Deliberately small, deeply meaningful, self defined practice that prioritizes impact over empire building. It's a success measured by fulfillment and contribution rather than headcount and valuation. In an era where everyone's supposed to have a side hustle, that becomes a startup that scares to an exit. Rageless contentment, the solo practitioner is quietly radical.
- [10:19]
B
When you think like that, it means that you haven't really had like a traumatic event happen to you. That you're like, you think that you even have time to do something meaningful after your mid-40s and that that's the time when you're gonna fulfill your mission or whatever it is. And so why wait? I guess I think it comes from a huge place of privilege to think that you're gonna even be alive by the time you're in your mid-40s. And I don't know, there's. There's something that has happened to me that I can't unsee or forget easily. And I do think that a lot of people, if they weren't directly affected by Covid and that was obviously a big, big traumatic event and it changed a lot of people's lives. But now I'm. I'm noticing that more people are like get. Just getting back to whatever quote unquote normal and forgetting that that happened. And I just want people to remember that time is a luxury and to be, I guess just being more conscious of where your time is going and your energy is going and make sure that you're. You're spending it on the right things because you really never know what could happen. So yeah, that's. It's just something I think about a lot, maybe more than your average person.
- [11:33]
A
As you could tell from the message so far, this is all about time. It's all about justifying the right decisions and spending time and energy in the right places. Because Rachel shared with me discussing her chronic health conditions, experiences with loss, and observing how people post Covid now are reverting to old patterns, forgetting the fragility they once acknowledged. She challenges the fire, which stands for FIR financial independence. Retire early and it's a mentality coming off as a privilege of assuming that you live long enough to enjoy that deferred life. In this moment, she was cutting to the existential heart of creative life. While everyone talks about time management or work life balance, Rachel goes deeper. Time itself is the ultimate privilege, the foundational resource we take for granted until we can't. The moment when she talks about time is a luxury reframes the entire relationship with work. If time is luxury, then spending it on meaningless work isn't just inefficient, it's a tragic waste of your most precious resource. And this transforms career decisions from practical considerations like what pays well to profound new ones. What deserves my limited time on earth? You really never know. What could happen isn't pessimistic, it's realistic acknowledgment of life's fragility. Rachel speaks from experience. Health conditions, loss, trauma. These aren't abstract possibilities. They are her lived reality. And the reality makes her impatient with deferring living with the idea that you'll do meaningful work later, that you'll pursue your dreams when circumstances are better that will take your creative risks once you're more established. This last moment summarizes the motion of daring creativity. Daring forever. As you know, daring in this case isn't doing something stupid, something crazy. It's actually daring to choose what you want to have, how you want to live, what you want to create, and how you want to decide your life. Because we can choose our lives right here and now. No one can stand in our way if you really want to pursue what you want. So I'm really thankful for Rachel's insights because, darling, they really reframed the mind of the modern creative of what we can be and how we can do and how we can challenge the old stereotypes and build new worlds. Thank you for joining me on the first bonus episode of 2026 and I hope to see you on the next one. 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 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.