Misfit Founders
Misfit Founders
Founder of Positive Impact Design Studio Shares Her Journey Into the Creative Design World for Climate Tech
Lucie reveals how she aligned her work purpose with her morals, resulting in a design studio dedicated to making a positive impact in the world.
She shares some of her highs and lows so far, from battling financial uncertainty, and the strategic pivot back to employment for personal growth, to the rewarding feeling of finding your purpose in work.
⭐ Subscribe to this channel 👉 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnH68ixWKdhqD1hPZh3RuzA?sub_confirmation=1
⭐ Join the Misfit Founder community 👉 https://nas.io/misfits
⭐ Connect with Biro 👉 https://www.linkedin.com/in/sir-biro/
⭐ Connect with Lucie👉https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucie-le-liard-986373b4/
-------------------------------------------------------
DISCLAIMER
By accessing this Podcast, I acknowledge that Misfit Founders makes no warranty, guarantee, or representation as to the accuracy or sufficiency of the information featured in this Podcast. The information, opinions, and recommendations presented in this Podcast are for general information only and any reliance on the information provided in this Podcast is done at your own risk. This Podcast should not be considered professional advice. Unless specifically stated otherwise, Misfit Founders does not endorse, approve, recommend, or certify any information, product, process, service, or organization presented or mentioned in this Podcast, and information from this Podcast should not be referenced in any way to imply such approval or endorsement. The third party materials or content of any third party site referenced in this Podcast do not necessarily reflect the opinions, standards or policies of Misfit Founders. The Misfit Founders assumes no responsibility or liability for the accuracy or completeness of the content contained in third party materials or on third party sites referenced in this Podcast or the compliance with applicable laws of such materials and/or links referenced herein. Moreover, Misfit Founders makes no warranty that this Podcast, or the server that makes it available, is free of viruses, worms, or other elements or codes that manifest contaminating or destructive properties.
MISFIT FOUNDERS EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ANY AND ALL LIABILITY OR RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR OTHER DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF ANY INDIVIDUAL'S USE OF, REFERENCE TO, RELIANCE ON, OR INABILITY TO USE, THIS PODCAST OR THE INFORMATION PRESENTED IN THIS PODCAST.
What made me Ignorance and being an idiot. And I remember thinking I need to start communicating about what I do making a website and putting stuff out there maybe LinkedIn but I was scared my boss at the time would maybe see that around and start asking questions. I was just talking with my friends back then and explaining that and they just told me why don't you just quit? So I said no, you're right. Actually I'll quit Monday. As an employee, when you work in a place, you kind of need to have that respect for the person who manages you so you can learn from them and really learn to trust them. My job is to make stuff pretty or desirable so people can buy it. It really made me question whether or not I should even continue doing design, because it's so detrimental to the world, it's so ingrained into consumption and a lot of things are not going into the right direction today because of us designers. We design stuff that are too good that too many people want to buy.
Speaker 2:You asked me what the guest number. You are right, you are officially 27th guest great and remember I think I messaged you. When did I message you? After I launched or before I launched?
Speaker 1:um, slightly after you.
Speaker 2:You had only a couple, I think yeah, so I think it was in summer then. Then that we were talking and um afterwards arranged. Yeah, so I had your the 27th guest and the last guest of 2023, actually.
Speaker 1:Oh great.
Speaker 2:So yeah, you have that badge. Um yeah, so I'm I'm kind of toning down over Christmas. I don't have anything else scheduled to record and I don't have anything else to publish. As in, I'm pausing publishing episodes until beginning of next year. So this is my last piece of work before I just um duck down for christmas awesome well. Thank you for joining me. You're coming all the way from france. Let's just say that you came specifically for misfit found I did though not to visit your friends in london.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, I did. I approved um. I start usually with an introduction of um who you are and what do you do. What's your professional?
Speaker 1:thing, uh, so I'm a designer, uh, and as a designer, I own a studio called positive impact studio. Um, what we do is we help entrepreneurs um get alignment on the things that are building. So usually they they do products, apps, and we we help them with branding and with product design strategy, and I do a lot of different things on that aspect, but mainly I'm the strategist of the house okay and I do a bit of design and I come from a design background, so I'm a designer when did you start your career in design?
Speaker 1:uh, uh must be eight years ago now. I started in 2006, no longer 2016, I don't was because we worked together yes um disclosure right um, it was modano.
Speaker 2:Modano wasn't your first job, was it? It was my first actual job oh, it was your first actual job yes, yeah, that is very surprising, because you and I worked together on a couple of projects and it just struck me like someone that had a lot of experience and worked with a lot of companies.
Speaker 1:I'm very good at pretending.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, fake it until you make it right.
Speaker 1:No, yeah.
Speaker 2:Was it on your CV? I've worked at these big companies. No, no, snuck some companies, random companies.
Speaker 1:So I recently discovered that everyone I know around me always lied on all their CVs. I must be the only person I know that never lied on my CV. So I never put like any big company names on my CV. But I had worked previously at a studio, a game studio. But, it was pretty much like a student project with actual money involved, because only the main guy and myself were working on it anyway, and Mudano hired me because of my personality, I think.
Speaker 1:I think it was like this girl sounds interesting. I don't know what we're going to do with her, but let's try it out. And yeah, it was kind of that.
Speaker 2:I was about to ask what was the basis? What do you think that contributed to you getting your first job, and is it personality?
Speaker 1:Well, the questions I asked and the conversation I had with the people who interviewed me made it so that they thought I had something interesting to bring, even though I had nothing on paper.
Speaker 2:It's quite interesting, really big revelation here, because I was always under the impression that you've worked with a lot of agencies and companies and so on. I mean, I think it's um also the way you approach um briefing and preparing your, you know, design briefs and your thinking and vocalizing your thinking about various um design concepts and brand identity and so on.
Speaker 1:That was like she's really good at it she's really good at it, um and right.
Speaker 2:So that was. Was the the job in London was your first um proper gig.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Uh, what happened afterwards?
Speaker 1:Afterwards I moved to Canada, um, and what happened while I was working in London is that I I at the time I was hired as a graphic designer, so I was doing a lot of different stuff. Some of the stuff I was doing was not so designer, so I was doing a lot of different stuff. Some of the stuff I was doing was not so interesting, like PowerPoint design, for example. Some other stuff were really interesting, like brand designing or getting to yeah, getting to craft a brand, telling a brand story and designing assets or logos or things that needed to express a certain vision or personality from a brand, and I found that I really, really liked that and I wanted to do more of that. So I thought I'm going to be able to practice doing that more if I work for an agency and not for a startup.
Speaker 1:So I moved to Canada Montreal and I started looking for work in an agency, a design agency, so I could be doing brands and strategic stuff and logos all day long. I did find that, but the agency that I was working at the time is I don't know I. It was not like the dream job, I didn't enjoy it too much and I got, um, I was always like in conflict with the artistic director there, because I was, I don't know I kept thinking that my ideas were better than his oh, wow, okay, yeah.
Speaker 2:So how did that conflict manifest? What was it? Um, just harsh. You know, conversation around my thing is better, your thing sucks. You're not confrontational no, I'm not.
Speaker 1:I mean, I speak my mind but I'm not going to tell to someone's face my ideas are better than yours. But the problem is that when you as an employee, when you work in a place, you kind of need to have that respect for the person who manage you so you can learn from them and really learn to trust them and get to do good work together. The problem is I didn't have that for him. It's probably my fault because I'm too. I was too young and untamed, I don't know. But uh, but yeah, the, the, what. The effect that it had on me is that I kept thinking that I needed to grow from more like for myself and need to look for other sources of, of um, of learning. So I continued to learn a different, a lot of different stuff on different coaching stuff or internet books, and then I decided that the time has come that I don't need to work at that place anymore because I know better than them.
Speaker 2:I know better than these fools. Okay, I'm going.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Bye, suckers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, pretty much. I mean I was being very cocky, but yeah, it was pretty much that.
Speaker 2:Do you still find yourself cocky? Do you still consider yourself quite?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm like it's good when you recognize it, I think I have that thing with people who are not too confident that. I sort of have I need to over.
Speaker 2:Power them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I need to find some sort of confidence from somewhere, and then it just I don't know why it just takes over fear or other stuff where do you think that comes from? Big. Uh, like I said, because I don't have, like I don't really have a lot of confidence from from, like, my personality right so I just have to I don't know like push myself and and then it just I don't know it's just a kind of like reaction mechanism yeah, I guess um, okay, I see um.
Speaker 2:And how you said you've learned, you've evolved while you were there. Is this in terms of your design skills? Is in terms of um, dealing with people? What was it that you've taken away the most while on your period at that agency in Canada?
Speaker 1:um, I, yeah, I got to. I got to learn how to deal with people, maybe politics, stuff. I also met, um, so it wasn't my boss, but I met one person who was really, really, really amazing at their job. Um, her name was azine. Her name is azine and she's uh, she's my ex-colleague from there and now she works at microsoft, I think, and she taught me everything she knew about product design and UI, ux, and at that time I was already really interested in that, but I didn't know anything. So she taught me a lot of stuff and it's from her, actually, that I learned the most and, yeah, even humanly, she was a really nice person, so she taught me a lot of things. That's the best memory I have from that place.
Speaker 1:You, her a mentor yeah, definitely in a way and do you still?
Speaker 2:do you still, um, engage with each other? Do you do you still feel like you have things to learn from her? The reason I'm asking is because I've had this conversation quite a bit often with people where most of the time, I realize that mentors are temporary. So, as in, you evolve, you get to another stage and then you don't necessarily need each other that much anymore. You find other mentors in that stage that you're on and the interest that you have there Is that how things have progressed, or do you still keep in touch and you feel like you're learning a lot from from her at this stage?
Speaker 1:no, it's exactly how you said it. It was very temporary, um, uh. She taught me a lot of things, not only about ui, ux, but also um. She helped me understand certain dynamics, like I said, with people, politics and things, which is the part that I'm really bad at because of my temper, I guess, like I'm too frank and too honest and sometimes I I'm not always good at reading rooms but she taught me a lot of that also, um, but then I left that place and uh, and she went on to to work at, I think uh, uh, yeah, microsoft or the, the job that she wanted to do and um, and now I have other mentors and we still speak. But she also started to do other stuff, more like um, um, related to spirituality or other things that she's she's interested in.
Speaker 2:So it's it's great for me to see that she's so successful and so great at what she does, but she's not like monomaniac with only one interest, and I only want to do one thing, which is a great inspiration for me, because I have so many interests also and I want to see more people living their life and following their passion beyond, just like I have this job and this is what I do, and I'm only doing this one thing that's a quality in in people and I and I know that you have this quality because we've talked a couple of times and you know when I'll start telling you about my progression with jigsaw you always seemed very interested and very happy and excited for where we're heading with Jexo, and I find that as a rare quality, like not everyone's in their little world and don't look outside their world boxes in a sense, and there's very little people that very few people that actually, um, take the time to kind of like, treat someone else's journey in a bit as as their own right, like that excitement and that that feeling, um, and I've always appreciated that.
Speaker 2:Um, you know, that's what, like the one thing that I've learned I've always been super interested in in people and founders and founders journeys and so on, but I, what I've discovered while doing, you know now, 27 episodes of misfit founders is that I, just for this hour, hour and a half, that I'm sitting down with someone like yourself, I'm just living their life, right.
Speaker 2:So my questions and everything that I'm like, just zoned in and just living your life for an hour or so, your story did you interview loic yesterday or? No, it wasn't yesterday, it was uh, it's quite a while ago.
Speaker 1:I think it was a month ago okay, I just saw the the linkedin post yeah, yeah, this morning I did okay where?
Speaker 2:how do you know him?
Speaker 1:you introduced us.
Speaker 2:Oh, I did.
Speaker 1:I'm getting older, you're just getting to introduce a lot of people how old are you, by the way? How old am I? I'm 30 30?. Welcome to the club about to turn 31, which is not as nice as I thought You're the same age as Nikki.
Speaker 2:I think she's turning 32. Yeah, she's turning 32. We're not youngsters anymore is it, I guess? Not Speaking of youngsters in your early age, when you were young, what got you into this creative side? Like, basically, how did you got into design?
Speaker 1:I think, wanting to like escape the real world, something like that, because I, I don't know, I always remember to be drawing like I always I was. I was always drawing like all the time when I was little, um, and I never really thought of it to be a career. Uh, because my family is not like a um, like we don't come from a creative background we have. Everyone has really like normal jobs and the expectations for me is to also be doing a normal job, I guess, because, um, um, I grew up in a small town and you know like it's, I never, I never had like an example around me of someone who was doing creativity or even entrepreneurship or whatever.
Speaker 2:So I was just doing a lot. What did your parents want you to do when you grew up? Did they had a plan for you?
Speaker 1:No, no, not really. They just wanted me to do well in school and to have a good diploma so that I could have a good job with good money. That's like as far as it goes.
Speaker 2:That's standard working class kind of mentality yeah but I think that's kind of shifted quite a lot recently. Like our generation of of parents are a bit different, probably because the world has changed quite a lot since your parents were younger and working and had certain expectations of how life would be for you yeah things have changed massively yeah, for sure, uh, but I also come from a, from a background of like, okay, um, the most important thing is like security and financial security.
Speaker 1:So we want you to have that first, to be independent, to be financially secure, and if you can have a little bit of fun, that's your business, but the security is what we want for you first kind of thing.
Speaker 2:So where you said the small town, where in France are you from?
Speaker 1:So it's a town called Chateaudun. It's in Chateaudun.
Speaker 2:Chateaudun. Yes, in chateaudun, chateaudun. Yes, it sounds like palace something.
Speaker 1:Yes, because it has it has the word chateau in it, which means castle yeah, that's because that's a medieval town.
Speaker 1:It has a medieval castle oh wow, it must be very touristic uh, it's, yeah, it's nice, like the center of the town is pretty cute, um, but it's in a region that's called labos and um, it's only, it only has fields and it's like I I never really liked it too much because I consider it to be like an open, open field factory. It's just really industrial, like like really huge fields and like monocultural, uh, just like one type of culture, and where is that I mean? Now I'm revealing how bad my geography is, because in school, you know, even in France, people don't really know where to place this.
Speaker 2:But I'm saying that because in school I was and this is another shameful thing I was in advanced French.
Speaker 2:Okay, in terms of foreign languages, we had an advanced and intermediate levels in primary school and they put me in advanced French, so the curriculum was more intense. And then mid-level intermediate German and then, uh, mid-level intermediate german. Um, I have, I know, nothing in in french, maybe a couple of words. I can understand a bit of french. Um, and they also teach you quite a bit of geography, areas in france and so on, and my mind just so don't worry about it.
Speaker 2:For others, silly like me, tell me where that area. Is it in the south of france, is it?
Speaker 1:it's in the middle that's how boring it is.
Speaker 2:It's really like dead center and uh, and it's got nothing in it but fields so it's the middle of um should I should I take from what you said that the middle of france is very boring?
Speaker 1:it is very boring. We actually have something in france called la diagonal du vide. It's. It means um the empty, uh, diagonal of. Yeah, and that's what it is. It's like the country is crossed by a line of emptiness where there's nothing and and chateau d'aix is right in the middle of that line of nothing is.
Speaker 2:Is it like, um, like in australia, the outback, where all of the cities are on the outskirts and then the middle is?
Speaker 1:you could say that yeah like all everything interesting is like uh, either on the west or like northwest or southeast. Uh, there's also interesting stuff on the southwest, but yeah, mostly it's like there's a lot of interesting stuff in france, beautiful landscapes, but in the middle there's nothing and what's your favorite um area of the country the southwest where I live now yes, awesome.
Speaker 2:Um, yeah, I love the south side of france, although I've been to france once and it was in the south and I'm actually happy that I went the south of France as my first visit um. So you grew up there um. Was there anything to do in your town?
Speaker 1:yeah, drawing drawing.
Speaker 2:So you're drawing a lot.
Speaker 1:I was drawing all the time, like literally every single day, all the time.
Speaker 2:I know this is a very, very difficult question to answer, but if circumstances would have been different, let's say if you're born in bordeaux or in paris, let's say, do you reckon your faith, your path, would have been different oh yeah, 100, what would? That. What would that would look 100%, what would that look like If you go through that exercise to think of?
Speaker 1:I don't know. Give me a scenario.
Speaker 2:Maybe I would be a, I don't know. I don't know a chemist or an engineer or something like that.
Speaker 1:Honestly, I don't know, but I think I would probably still be a creative um that's what draws you, that's what excites you the most.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the artistic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would still be a creative. Maybe I wouldn't be doing like a visual design stuff, maybe I would be doing music, but I would still be a creative and I would definitely still be an entrepreneur okay, I'm asking because I see you as a quite a um, a thinker and an analyst as well, like you.
Speaker 2:Like not all creatives have this trait of um just being able to take themselves out of their creative craft and look at a project in a more ample way and abstract way, right and contextualize things. And I think that's one of the things that I've seen while working with you Although it's been a while ago and I don't remember all the projects, but I don't remember bits here and there. And also you started um, your own company, and you were working with brands, and you did mention that the thing that you've, at least while you were developing your skills at that agency, that one of the things that you really liked was to come up with concepts for brands, figure out their ethos, figure out what they stand for and materialize that into visual, which, again, I do find that it's a very important creative aspect. But you also have to have certain type of traits in order to be able to convey the business's brand and culture and values in the right way and link it to design.
Speaker 1:So post that job where you decided that you're better than everyone, sounds so hot no, yeah, I'm joking, um kind of um what happened afterwards I quit and um and I went, just like that did you had anything as a backup or did you decide nothing at all? I had, like I don't know, five grand saved, so that's not much though no, not at all.
Speaker 2:Last you half a month in canada.
Speaker 1:That's how expensive canada is uh, montreal is slightly cheaper than like places like vancouver or toronto, but still, yeah, it was like nothing. Um, my, the person who was living with at the time was like unemployed, so it was really like oh, wow yellow but to talk me through that.
Speaker 2:So, because a lot of people are terrified of that, I'm terrified of that like I've never left the um, the certainty and comfort of my job for to take a plunge in something without having some solid ground, like when, when we left um, the previous company to where we were working in london, to start jexo properly to work, for we already had seed investment, we were basically running. We started running on stable ground. What made you decide to, well, screw it. I'm out of here and I'll figure out later what to do versus let me stick around for a while until I figure out what to do.
Speaker 1:What made me Ignorance and being an idiot, but I don't regret it. It was 100% the right thing to do. I had a couple clients, honestly on like really small projects that was gonna last me like maybe one or two months, and I was doing these projects on the side of my full-time job and I remember thinking that for me this was like the beginning of something great. Like I had only like two clients or like really nothing going on, but it was the start of how great my company was going to be. And I remember thinking, ok, I need to, I need to start communicating about what I do and, like I don't know, making a website and putting stuff out there, maybe LinkedIn.
Speaker 1:I remember I knew I had to start doing that, but I was scared that my boss at the time would maybe see that around and start asking questions of what was, what was I doing on the side, or yeah, or I felt like I really I couldn't do that, uh, fully, because I was held back by my, by my job. So I was just talking with my friends back then and explaining that and they just told me why don't you just quit? So I said, no, you're right.
Speaker 2:well, actually I'll quit Monday and then all of a sudden wow, that is, that is brave.
Speaker 2:Either brave of you or silly of you, it really depends on who you ask because you know, having being lucky afterwards and getting work, you know, retrospectively you might say, or some might say, well, hey, that was a brave move, right? If you would have completely flopped out of the gate and went back into employment, people would judge you as silly, right? So it's always that kind of like society just looks at you, depending on how you wind up, right.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:But when you look at it, there are risky moves and you need courage and you need a bit of confidence in yourself and a ton of luck at the end.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, 100, yeah and when you decided that it's time to go and start your own thing, did you had a really good thinking of? And, by the way, before I ask you, let me make a bit of a parenthesis here and say that I know what you're talking about, because I'm the same and I find it very inconvenient if I have a job and I have this exciting thing that I want to pursue, thing that I that I want to pursue, and and I just don't feel like I'm focusing or I'm putting my energy in in this other thing. And even if I am putting my energy in this other thing, there's this, always this back of your mind, and not just in the back of your mind, but like that feeling of I have this thing that's holding me back. Um, I completely understand what what you're saying and it is you know you have to take decisions based on, sometimes, gut feel. That's, that's what it is.
Speaker 1:Um for me. I think it was just because I felt like I really needed to commit to the thing I was building and, um, and well, still having a job was like not letting me be full on it, like really committed um. So I guess also taking the risk was the the the thing for me that meant, okay, I'm, I'm committed because I'm taking the risk. I'm doing something, maybe super dumb, but I I want to give myself the the chance to explore and take the risk and see where it leads me. And if it doesn't lead anywhere, then at least I will have given myself that chance, because otherwise no one else was gonna give it to me were you concerned at all?
Speaker 2:uh that, oh, if this fails, I'm screwed um. Or did you always think, well, if this fails, can always find, I can find a job like this uh, no, I don't.
Speaker 1:I was. I wasn't concerned about failing and I wasn't really telling myself I'll succeed or nothing. Either I was just doing it and not really thinking about anything else than than the actual thing I needed to do. I had a plan, like I had a plan on how, what was the plan um. The plan was to make my own brand.
Speaker 1:I was also very, very excited about um crafting crafting a, a brand, a storytelling for the for yourself, yeah, for myself, after doing it for exactly many other companies so I was super excited about doing that and also because I really really believed into what I was doing and, um, the, the power of design and branding and all that. I thought if I create a brand that is amazing, uh enough, that it conveys the, the message that that I want to take to the world, and if it conveys my energy and my passion, etc. Then clients will come because, of course, my you know, like my my brand is amazing, so they will want people will be fighting to work with me and what did you find along?
Speaker 2:what did you learn along the way?
Speaker 1:uh, it's it. It takes a bit more than that uh to to make it into the creative uh industry, especially with, like just so many, so many of us out there agencies, freelancers, uh, studios, uh. So it does take a lot more than that. It takes a lot of uh of work on the, the marketing side of things and content creation. And, yeah, this is when I started hitting a wall a little bit um was that when we were having our conversation like our mini um?
Speaker 2:advisory things did I scare you when I started talking about, um you know founder, branding and influencer and, um you know founder led type of marketing initiatives no, you, you didn't scare me, because I it's not something that was, uh, completely new, like out of the blue for me.
Speaker 1:I kind of had that in the back of my mind. I needed to do something like that, but the the sheer effort that it represents, that it represented of like doing that thing it is was so like. It seemed to me like a mountain that I needed to climb, and that was, uh, yeah, that it was.
Speaker 2:It was scary, but also I felt discouraged by how big the task was it is um, and that's that has been my go-to, because that's that's what helped me in this digital world. But there's also other things like networking, like being super prolific at networking in-person events. Being everywhere is a very powerful tool as well to gain leads and customers. You don't have to go the extreme of creating a content blasting strategy in order to get there. Yeah, potentially gives you a bit more of a selective choice because that's what we were talking about back then like it's being able for you to position yourself as a thought leader and have the the choice of who you work with yeah because, at the end of the day, that was uh, that's, that was your ethos with the company as well, is it still?
Speaker 1:yeah, absolutely right.
Speaker 2:Tell me a bit about how you got to that realization that you want to work with companies, sustainable companies, companies that um generate, that create um sustainable products or are in these industries for positive impact?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it started a while ago when I was still living in London. I was having a lot of thoughts about the world and how things are going, generally speaking. Verbalize them now.
Speaker 2:So you can use fingers as well I was.
Speaker 1:I just um, I don't know, I guess I I just uh, I don't know, I don't. I don't remember how it started, but I started to look into the huge problem that we're facing regarding the climate and climate change and the how complex that whole problem is and what are things that people can do to kind of make their lives a bit more sustainable and less damaging for the the planet the ecosystem, etc.
Speaker 1:It's such a huge issue anyway. So I started looking into this like a really long time ago and at the start my entry point into this whole topic was food and what people eat. When I finished my studies, I studied fine arts, so I don't even have a degree in design studies. I studied fine art, so I don't even have a degree in design.
Speaker 1:When I finished my studies, I wrote a book of interviews where I went to ask people questions about what they eat and why do they eat what they eat. And the whole point of that book was to kind of ask people questions so that I could myself answer the question what do I eat and why do I eat what I eat? And the answer was basically that I was not at ease with the whole tradition of like, we eat this because it's the tradition and we've always done things this way, and for me it was just not like I wasn't comfortable with that. I basically I wanted to stop eating animals and I didn't know how to express it or how to do it. So I just wrote a book and then it made me realize, okay, I just need to stop eating animals and I'll be fine.
Speaker 1:But I didn't stop there. Then, after I started questioning a lot of different stuff and, of course, I started questioning my my job and when I realized that, as a designer, my job is to make stuff pretty or desirable so people can buy it, it really made me question whether or not I should even continue doing design, because it's so detrimental to the world, it's so ingrained into consumption and, yeah, you know, a lot of things are not going into the right direction today because, uh, because because of us designers, we design stuff that are too good that too many people want to buy yeah, true, consumerism is a is a big problem, and I should know I mean, yeah, we, we all do what we can, but anyway.
Speaker 1:So realizing that was also like a huge thing for me, and then I started asking myself whether or not I should continue doing design and oh, really, so you got to that point, yeah yeah I. I thought maybe I need to stop and change career um.
Speaker 2:What was your option there?
Speaker 1:well, the first thing, that, because I was thinking very dramatically at the time. So in in this whole thought process, we all are dramas.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:The whole thought process was okay, what can I do? That is the most virtuous thing, given the problem that I'm just realizing now, and the answer was, I guess, abandon everything, go back to Chateaudun in La Bourse and, you know, grow potatoes and carrots.
Speaker 2:So why did you not do that? Because, I don't want to go back to.
Speaker 1:Châteaudun in La Bourse and grow potatoes and carrots and I didn't think I could be doing anything else in design. It's just I love it too much is what I have to be doing.
Speaker 2:But you did find a compromise.
Speaker 1:So yeah. So then I went looking for that compromise and when I left London and went to Canada, the agency that I wanted to work at, the ideal agency I was looking for was like a place where we would only work for non-profits or NGOs and or only be doing, like you know, ethical marketing for brands like Patagonia, the North Face or you know, just cool stuff like that.
Speaker 1:That's, that's really what I wanted to do. So obviously, the agency that I joined was not in that train of of work, uh, so that also contributed to me getting like bored really fast, because I I, I knew what I needed to be doing, but I just couldn't find the right place to to be to be doing that. So so, yeah, it also led me to quit that job and start my own studio so that I could create the job that I was looking for, but I just couldn't find.
Speaker 2:So this was quite early, I suppose. So this was your, because I wasn't sure whether you wanted to do a difference. You got more into this topic of sustainability when you were putting together your company and or while you were running your business, or was it earlier? It sounds like it was earlier.
Speaker 1:It was earlier Before leaving London actually. Yeah, it was earlier and, like I said, for a long time I looked for a job that I could feel more at ease with the stuff I'm doing and I could feel like my everyday activities are aligned with, I guess, my values and the things I believe in. And because I couldn't find that, I just made it.
Speaker 2:And that was the purpose from the beginning to work with sustainable brands yes, that's why I called my studio positive impact studio that's a really good name, to be honest I use positive impact all the time yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1:I thought it would be a good like seo strategy.
Speaker 2:I don't know if it still is was it um quite uh kind of like blank space in that sense on on searches in google um yeah, because there there were, there weren't too many like stuff that would pop up.
Speaker 1:uh, when you, when you looked for that and all the stuff that would pop up were not too there weren't too many agencies or design-related stuff. Mostly, I don't think there was a bag brand or clothing, apparel, stuff like that.
Speaker 2:So now, if I type on Google positive impact design, I'm still not on the first page.
Speaker 1:No, Because I don't really put too much effort into it Right, you're not. No, I have to do it, but it's not.
Speaker 2:It doesn't sound like unless it's a popular term like positive impact design uh, it's.
Speaker 1:I mean you can try it out. I don't know if I've been told I'm not on the first page, but Let me see. I'll try it now live.
Speaker 2:So you said you had two customers, two clients when you left the business, that would give you like a runway for a month or two or something like that, yeah, something like that. So how much time did it take you to get a new customer to be able to survive?
Speaker 1:um, actually not too long, because at that point, I don't know, I think the stars aligned maybe at that moment and I started to have a lot of clients, like right at the beginning, and I actually ended up having is this yours?
Speaker 2:yes well, you kind of underplayed yourself, because if you type positive impact design, it's the first that's coming up oh really, okay, well, that's great after a couple of scholarly articles, and then right underneath is positive impact uh, dot studio, and I've not even typed positive impact studio. I type positive impact, impact design.
Speaker 1:So you're there, there you go.
Speaker 2:There you go, so you need to check your position a bit more often, and your logos are the images there.
Speaker 1:So it's all populated with my beautiful design, yeah.
Speaker 2:And there also I see you put a place like Google location, because your Google location.
Speaker 1:What does it say?
Speaker 2:It says it's open. It closes at 5 pm. It doesn't show okay and then you also have the under the images and everything you have your about us page, so you're dominating the top positions for positive impact design. Yeah, which is great because you can just tell people what do you, what's your company? Positive impact design, if they search on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I mean I chose that name also because it's well, supposedly it's like sticky, you can remember it easily. It's not like, uh, some some obscure, like you know, startup names that are yeah with loads of xyz. And what do you? What are?
Speaker 2:you. Oh my goodness, you know what my company was no, right, jigsaw it's.
Speaker 1:So it's super easy to remember if you, if you're, if you're thinking about it okay, thank you.
Speaker 2:I felt attacked no no, but it is. It is a great name and I'm starting to do I hated it at first.
Speaker 1:But yeah, you did. How come? Because I was looking for a clever name with a lot of X, y, zs and I couldn't find one. I just had like stupid ideas in mind and I was like all right, I'll just go with like classic Positive Impact Studio.
Speaker 2:It's long, I didn't like it, but then but is it positive impact studio or positive impact impact design? The name of your company?
Speaker 1:uh, I bought both domains, so I don't know. You can call it okay where you want.
Speaker 2:Uh, oh, so you, you're one of those, as in like me, which searches for first for the domain.
Speaker 1:I have an idea.
Speaker 2:Let's find the domain straight away yeah, but do you search for the domain before you? You?
Speaker 1:figure out what the company name is. Yeah, of course, of course.
Speaker 2:Yeah, me too. I think this is a disease.
Speaker 1:I know so many people who are obsessed with buying stuff on Amazon. My obsession is buying domains, so I guess everyone has.
Speaker 2:How many do you own?
Speaker 1:No, not that many, but I want to buy a lot of different ones. Yeah, me too.
Speaker 2:I just need to protect my cash flow so so you're, you're, you're sitting quite well on google, um, I've checked um right, so you're saying about your, your first customers after the ones that you already had yeah, and I had a lot of new customers afterwards, so it just had so much work in that period.
Speaker 1:It also made me super confident. I just literally I just quit my job and I was fully booked for like four or five months, so it gave me a lot of confidence and it was great. I was, yeah, I remember being like super ecstatic in that period. I was probably working 80 hours a week for like months and months and months but I was just floating like super happy and yeah, I was.
Speaker 2:And were these all the type of customer profiles and personas that you were looking for?
Speaker 1:Not at all, but it was. You know, it was something I needed to start somewhere right, yeah, that's very true.
Speaker 2:Um, and what happened afterwards? Did you had, because you said I had. So you're talking past yeah, um.
Speaker 1:Well, what happened after? I think, at the end of the of that period of being really busy, it probably started to slow down a little bit, and this is when you realize, oh yeah, okay, so I actually need to like put in some real work and like actually look for clients. And when it calmed down, this is, uh, this is when I took the opportunity to, I guess, redo my website and so many other stuff that I needed to do. Then I did that and I went looking for other clients and it started rolling again.
Speaker 2:How did you do that? What was the first thing that you did to tap into the customer base?
Speaker 1:I was talking to people nonstop. All the time. I was talking to people on Twitter on X. Now. I was talking to people on sostop all the time. I was talking to people on Twitter on x. Now. I was talking to people on so many different slack communities. I I had, I think, almost every single day I had like a meeting with some random person, um, who just accepted to talk to me, and I just I just took loads of different information from loads of different places and and um, every time someone was like, oh, that's interesting, I know someone who might need like something that you're doing, and then I was just jumping on every opportunity I mean like, I feel like that's the way to go when that's the way to go, yeah at least in the early days
Speaker 2:yeah and nowadays, how does that work for you?
Speaker 1:So I stopped doing that because I want to be more focused on who I work with, more focused on the goal of working with climate tech and sustainable businesses. So I stopped having calls with random people every single day.
Speaker 2:It's not sustainable, right? Unless you're a salesperson, that's your single day. It's not sustainable, right? Unless you're a salesperson, that's your role, it's not sustainable.
Speaker 1:It's not sustainable and and if you, if you're just being honest with yourself, it's it's like it's it's not worth the the time, so it's it's better to just have meetings and talk with people who you know it's really going to be worth it. So, so I put more efforts into other stuff. I don't. I also, I am still not very comfortable with the whole content creation stuff. I just can't find the time to do it and, um, I should be delegating that and I still don't, which is bad. Um, but I, I would say now, I, I, I try to get into the right communities, I try to speak with the right people and I count on these relationships to flower, to bloom.
Speaker 2:What kind of communities do you engage or are part of? Is it strictly design communities?
Speaker 1:No, mostly tech communities.
Speaker 2:Right, so sustainable tech communities Right.
Speaker 1:So sustainable tech communities yeah.
Speaker 2:Or tech in general. I feel that that's the right way. I mean, I think your own craft type of industries is useful as well to keep in touch with everything that's happening in your industry creative and design and but rarely brings you customers no, it's great to hang out with your peers yeah it's amazing to to feel I also.
Speaker 1:I also remember when I started doing that, when I started hanging out in I don't know like coaching groups or meeting other other studio owners or freelancers, I remember thinking I feel understood for the first time like people are like me, we, we, everyone has this thing that, just like me, we could never do just one thing. Uh, we always have like a main job and a side gig and always creative and yeah, so I really I really love hanging out with these people because it's a great community. You meet people from all around the world, yeah, but the real people that the other love that I have is the, of course, the tech world, the entrepreneur, the entrepreneurs, and I love hanging out with people who are more like less creative but more like scientific kind scientific, like engineers.
Speaker 1:I love these people too, because they think so differently than me, but for that reason they are so interesting to talk to. So, yeah, it's great to hang out with your peers and feel at home, but it's also great to hang out with other people and feel like everyone is different, but they have such an interesting way of a you get a new, a different perspective um for your own journey and for your own uh business and work, because if you're just stuck in the design world, then I do think that it's very difficult to relate to your customers and be able to have proper conversations and connections and
Speaker 2:understand them adequately. If you're part of groups and you're talking to tech people, if you're part of conversations around climate and climate technology that's coming out and things like that, then you're a lot more versatile, well-versed in this field. So it's a lot easier to impress customers in a sense, because you're sitting down with them and you know you can basically complete their sentences when it comes to the stuff that's happening in the positive impact and climate change type of industry. So no, that's very powerful. That's why I was asking, because I was curious whether that's where you exist in your, let's say, not working and designing spare business time working and designing spare business time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I I put on that habit of um of talking to to engineers, entrepreneurs, scientists a lot when I started the studio, because I it was part of my plan that I knew that I needed to spend more time with these people, talk to them more so that I could understand them better, um and and learn to speak to them, learn what are the codes, their way of understanding the world. I needed to have a perfect understanding of that so that I could penetrate better that whole community and make them feel understood by me and the things I offer to them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you're also networking quite a lot, which will bring you opportunities for your business. So we talked about the reason why you're doing it. We talked about the ups and downs, like periods where you get quite a bit of work and interesting projects and then periods where things are lower. I want to know, on the lifespan of positive impact design slash positive impact studios, because you have, apparently you have two companies. Um, what was the hardest period up?
Speaker 1:until now for your, for your business and for yourself as a, as a founder and entrepreneur uh, it was last year when, um, when I just, um, I just ended a period of um, like a couple months that were really, really successful, like I had never made more cash than these months before, I had never had such interesting projects.
Speaker 1:I was managing a team a little bit bigger than I would normally, so I was ending a really long period of time where not long period, but a period of time where everything was going super well and I felt really confident, but I felt also really exhausted because I was working super hard, like crazy, like no evenings, no weekends, I was just working literally all the time. No weekends, I was just working literally all the time. So at that point, when that period ended and I had a, a few, a few weeks without any work, um, I took a holiday. And then it was really difficult the day that I realized that, when it was the last day of my holiday and I needed to return back to work, I was just unable to do that um, because I guess I was burnt out. So, yeah, that was difficult, realizing that there's actually a limit to what I can do. I'm not invincible. I can't just work like crazy, take a two-week holidays and then go back to work as if it's normal.
Speaker 2:How did that manifest? You said you couldn't get back to work and you realized that you were burned out. What were some of?
Speaker 1:the symptoms, not taking the plane back to work for my holiday.
Speaker 2:But what kept you from booking the flight? Was it you didn't had an internal desire? You felt that you weren't, you weren't eager to do that? Or were there other things like, let's say, for example, for example, exhaustion, certain feelings that you had, certain fears concerns? What were some of those? Things that kept you from booking the flight ticket back.
Speaker 1:I did book it, I just never showed up at the airport.
Speaker 2:Oh really.
Speaker 1:It wasn't one of these horrible anxiety crises. It wasn't one of these horrible like anxiety crisis. It wasn't like that it was. I think it was. I was having fun and I was really enjoying my time off and I just asked myself, like why do I have to go back? Actually, I don't have to. I get to decide, right, I'm the boss. So if I don't want to go back from my holiday, maybe I can just stay on holiday and I don't? I don't. Yeah, I didn't think that far. I mean, it wasn't like a horrible moment of realization of like everything is collapsing. It was more like a. It was more like a I think I need to breathe. So, so let's just breathe for a moment and see if I can keep things going. But I just felt like I needed to do that in order not to trigger any other horrible thing that could have happened, like all the anxiety crisis and all that. I didn't have that, thank God, but I think I had to let myself breathe in order not to fall into that.
Speaker 2:But I think I had to let myself breathe in order not to fall into that. You see, I can't relate, okay, and I'm actually quite en work for the team that acquired us and kind of like maybe slow down a bit and not do anything else.
Speaker 2:And I think last it was like I was, probably a couple of months afterwards, already thinking I need more, I need something more. So, although I thought that I'll be able to just take a break for a while, I didn't. So, yeah, so I'm actually. That's why I was also asking this, because, well, you know, because I'm wired different than that, not different than everyone, because I know a lot of people that are wired like me that just can't stand still, they need to do stuff. You can't find them on a beach somewhere for more than a day, because they're already.
Speaker 2:Like, even when I took a weekend off with Nikki, we went to a cabin in the woods and we put our phones, locked our phones away and I think she came, uh, more sick of me than uh, than prior, because I would just tell her all of the crazy ideas that I had. Like my brain was just, I feel, more amplified because it was quiet, because it was that's my brain always kind of like intensifies when there's yeah yeah, if I have distractions, my brain doesn't go that mental no, no, yeah, I get it um.
Speaker 2:So when did, when did you? After what period did you decide to go back to um society?
Speaker 1:uh, it took. Honestly, it took a while because, um so, like I said, I needed to, I needed to take a break, but I was doing a lot of stuff honestly, during that time I was just doing different stuff and, uh, also to put things back into context, I hadn't had a proper break extended break for like since forever Before I was either a student or poor or like I couldn't, you know, enjoy too many.
Speaker 1:You know just luxury of being like off and doing nothing or doing a lot of different things but not related to work anyway. So I did that. It lasted a while and I felt like I needed to that this it was in real life, like it was nice, but it was in real life, like it was nice, but it was in real life. Uh, so I needed to go back to actually like what I'm really made for, like what I'm, what I, what I feel like I'm great at, and that I've really felt like I needed to use my brain again. I guess, right, um, so I went Right. So I went back to work and it was hard, but it was, was it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was hard because Because, yeah, I think at that point I realized, okay, it's fun, like I'm the boss, I get to decide, but if you leave and you just return, like I don't know, sometime, after all the you know the work piled, and then, uh, you can't, just I felt like it's difficult to keep things going. Uh, if you're not like on it all the time, like people forget you, um, you can't just like, you can't just disappear and and come back and people will be there like waiting for you and this is yeah.
Speaker 2:So that realization was a bit hard so you didn't have any people connections, companies that you worked before that you could ring up and say hey, I'm back no, I did, but I didn't want to do it.
Speaker 1:So I think when I came back from from that time, I also wanted to take things slowly and say, okay, now I'm really going to focus, I'm really going to do, finally, like all the content creation and, um, like really, kate, like do everything I can so that the next client that comes is really going to be like a Patagonia, like it's super sustainable, like great, or climate tech, like something really cool. So I did have a few leads and I rejected all of them one by one, because maybe part of me didn't want to go back to work that much and maybe part of me was like, okay, no, I want to go back to work that much. And maybe part of me was like, okay, no, I want to free some time so that I can dedicate my self to really making room for, for, for what comes next and something better, bigger. But the thing is that it wasn't a bad idea.
Speaker 1:It was just way too early to do that and, um, and it didn't work, uh, because all of the all of the room that I made to to allow myself to to put the things in place, uh, so that the right client would come um. It didn't really quite unfold as as that, and the right client never really came and um, and then I thought that I made a bad decision. And then I you know, time passed, I still didn't have work and I became really broke. And then it comes the moment where you have to you don't have a choice anymore that you you need to make difficult decisions of like going to going back to work for clients or taking on projects that you would never have wanted to do, or you thought it's like, oh, it's below me, so yeah so that will happen.
Speaker 2:That's what happened.
Speaker 1:You started working for um a company uh, not really because of that, but also because, uh, after I made that decision and a lot of bad moves, like business moves, I remember thinking, okay, I also maybe don't really have like an education in business and I don't really, I don't really know exactly what I'm doing, to be honest with you. Uh. So I remember thinking I need to go back to school, I need this is like now is the time, time like I've had fun, I've experienced a lot of different things. I've had really like incredible wins, um, some bad losses, but now it's time that I need to go back to school and really like learn. What is it that I'm doing? Because the, this whole experimentation is like fun, but it's not taking me where I want to be. At that point, I still haven't got like the the perfect client that I'm looking for or the perfect that point. I still haven't got like the the perfect client that I'm looking for, or the perfect portfolio. Well, I still haven't penetrated that community of like climate tech entrepreneurs and it's taking too long. It's like I'm getting, I'm getting impatient of getting there. So I'm thinking I need to maybe the the job that I was looking for back then when I was looking for an agency where I can grow and become not just a designer but like someone who's part of the leadership team and and work on interesting projects like bigger and bigger budgets, etc. I thought maybe now is the time that I can do that, because I have a track record of what I can do. No one was, of course, letting me take on that responsibility before, because I couldn't show, I couldn't prove that I could do it. But now I can because I've done it for me, for my company. So I started.
Speaker 1:I met two guys on a on a Slack community, and then it turns out they were looking for someone to to hire in the in the agency. So I didn't really look at the job position, I just talked to them and say, hey, this is what I have, this is what I I have to offer. Like I'm putting this on the table. What do you guys have? Can we talk? And then um, and then we did talk and turns out, uh, they, I think they liked the approach that I took and they, they, they were interested by the whole.
Speaker 1:Okay, you're a designer, but you're also an entrepreneur, you understand that and we can have that level of conversation together. So I got hired um in that company and I sort of have like a partner level uh with them. But I'm just a normal employee but I take decisions with them and it's honestly great because I work part-time, I still get to do um work for positive impact studio and I've got financial security which allows me to make the right decisions and not and take my time and and have also time for living and playing and doing other activities and just working.
Speaker 1:So it's, it's been great when did you start this? Role. It's going to be a year soon. Oh wow, yeah.
Speaker 2:Time passes because I remember you telling me this it feels like yesterday.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, no, it's been a year already and, honestly, so long story short, after one year of working with them, I've learned so, so much, which is amazing. So I'm pretty I'm really feeling like I've made the right decision. It was difficult, like I'm not going to lie the whole like really Am I going to be an employee again After I thought I remember thinking I'm going to burn like all the CV and all that I'm never going to use that again. But yeah, so I had to kind of swallow my ego, the same ego that made me quit a job, thinking that I was better than my boss.
Speaker 2:I had to swallow that that was better than my boss. I had to swallow that. Do you still think you're better than your bosses now? Okay, we're not gonna say anything, he's still working there, um, but you know, the point is there is it's not like better or worse or generalizing things, because people are good at various things and you know me as a co-founder of Jexo and I would say don't like the word boss, but like leader of a team Like there's so many things that I've, and that's why I hired people to to be the experts, so that I look dumb when I talk to them. Um, not that dumb, I still want to be able to, you know, conduct myself and not feel like I'm extremely silly.
Speaker 1:And in topics like design, like marketing, like this, like that, no, but you can own your, your role, and your role is to have vision. Yeah, you're the captain of the boat and you?
Speaker 2:and work with people.
Speaker 1:We're going this way, yeah but you don't know how to maneuver that sail or that other thing, that this is that person's job.
Speaker 2:Yeah, to know that and with our branding, with everything. As the branding progressed, um, and we hired um internal um uh, designer mel, which is amazing, um, she, she was able to just take our both nikki and i's vision and put it into really amazing concepts and present that to the team and do so. It's like kind of like.
Speaker 2:And, yes, there's, there was feedback and in the early days there was a, you know, a bit of feedback or in the terms of you know, this moving a bit too much from the current brand or what we're trying to to convey or this or that. But you know, as a, I think, as a designer, creative, you have to push a bit the boundaries, um, and I think, for example, mel done a really great job at it because you know she presented and she worked on stuff. We had to pull back a bit on some of the concepts, but then we still got to the same concepts, but it took a journey right. And also being able to work with your leadership as a creative senior, creative work with the leadership, work with the founder and so on to get to that point where they're comfortable in what you're proposing and so on.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I mean I'm sure that there are many times that, um, my creative team and marketing thing taught of me of uh being a bugger that knows nothing about what they're doing. So it's normal, I think it's normal right, where's this all going for you?
Speaker 1:for now. I'm continuing to learn. I'm continuing to learn and I'm really, really, really exciting about the things I'm learning right now. Um, I still. I still have clients. I still do work with really cool people, and the work that I do now with my clients is so much better than it was last year. I'm cringing so much at the work I was doing back then.
Speaker 2:That's a good sign You're evolving.
Speaker 1:It's a really good sign because, um, because it wasn't always the case like um, when last year, when I was working uh just like all the time on positive impact studio, I was also, of course, always busy like 100 of the time with uh, generating leads and getting clients. So the the actual craft, the actual work I was doing, of doing strategy with clients and coming up with design concepts and all that it was difficult to split myself in so many ways. And now the fact that I have time to to continue learning the craft, but also not just that, but also the, the business side of things, and and um, and getting better at understanding uh products and ecosystems, of how you make a really good product and how you can make a really good strategy to sell that product, etc. I'm getting so much better at all these things now that I don't have to think all the time about when is the next client going to come you know when that's someone else's job and I'm so happy that that's the case.
Speaker 1:It makes me think that when I, when, of course, my goal is to is to continue growing positive impact studio, so when I go back to that, 100's the case. It makes me think that when I, when, of course, my goal is to is to continue growing positive impact studio, so when I go back to that, 100% of the time, I definitely want to hire people to like generate leads for me. I know that I want to be the the face of of the business because I'm it's. It's worked well so far me doing that, but I want, I need help, like I can't just be doing everything and I think you should.
Speaker 2:You know that there's there's definitely there's so many marketers out there that preach that every single company should have a founder with a personal brand online and be a bit more founder led. I don't, I don't agree. There's people that just don't have it or don't want it right. They just don't. They're not the type of people to be always posting on socials. Always be at events, networking, speak on stages, be on camera, like there are people that just don't get me wrong.
Speaker 1:I I like doing that, but no, but sorry.
Speaker 2:What I was saying was, um, what I was getting to was it's not for everyone, but I can definitely see you as a character and personality, being able to build a quite a strong brand, also because you have you know you have, I would say, strong opinions at times. You can voice your thoughts. Be careful with that stuff and that shows character and people love characters. You have people that resonate with your um, your character and your journey and the stories that you tell.
Speaker 1:so, yeah, yeah, of course, I think the part that I don't want to be doing anymore is just writing like articles, and it's it's the easiest part to hand over. Yeah, exactly so so perfect the plan is already made you do things like this, pr stuff exactly the fun part, the fun part.
Speaker 2:Um, now there's before closing. I want to ask a question because it kind of like stuck with me when you said when you came back from your holiday you started working but you wanted to do things on your terms and you allocated some time on booked with work for getting those customers that you wanted and you were, do you?
Speaker 2:you wanted to start doing certain things in order to put yourself in front of those customers, and you said something interesting. You said it was too early, it wasn't the right time. What did you mean by that? In, let's say, in a, in a perfect world? If you would do that again now, when would it be in in for? From your perspective, when would it be the right time to set that up? After what stage of your company?
Speaker 1:um. The answer to that is, uh is it's not just with the company, it's also with, maybe, myself and my personal journey. Um, the the right moment would have been when I have um a longer runway, like financially speaking okay because the problem is, you can never make good decisions when you, when you, when you're short on cash oh yeah right so when, when, when your stomach is uh making hunger noises, you can't really think clear exactly so.
Speaker 1:So that was the first. The first mistake like first bad moment, yeah, also second bad moment is uh, well, it's a good moment, it's a good idea to, to be thinking more strategically about the decisions you take and which client you take on board, etc. When you are in a mindset that you're ready to work and ready to like be fully committed and and available for your business and for for working. I wasn't um and um.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's mostly that so you weren't in the mindset for that um no, yeah, I still had.
Speaker 1:I still had person, I still had stuff in my personal life that I I needed to kind of explore and pursue and, um, it went along with the whole thing about what I was saying earlier that I I work was like my whole life for so many years that I kind of left some personal things on the side, like just living my life as a young person and and I needed to do that. And for a moment I thought maybe I can try and do both at the same time. But there's a moment for everything and I think I just at that time it was really the moment was to live your life just like be be free for it for a moment, for everything. And I think at that time, really the moment was to live your life.
Speaker 1:Just be free for a moment, and then it's not convenient that it happened after I already started building my business. I wish I had that moment when I was like I don't know, it's a different time, but it always comes like that, right, I don't know, it's a different time, but it always comes like that right.
Speaker 2:You know, I had the exact same thing where I was trying to build businesses. This was when I moved to London. In the first three years I've just. This is why it resonates quite a lot with your story, because I would just hustle hard to get customers to build them websites, go on Upwork there, there, and then eventually I started meeting a couple of people and they recommended me to another customer and another customer.
Speaker 2:And for a while I had really good work to do. It was a bit boring to me and I was eye-rolling because that wasn't what I wanted to build. That wasn't the type of customers that I wanted to do to have. I wanted to do SaaS.
Speaker 2:It's kind of very similar to to your journey and then the periods were like super poor.
Speaker 2:I was like super, super poor.
Speaker 2:I couldn't even afford to go out and buy food from the store, in a sense, like I had moments like that where you know, I had to starve myself for a couple of days until you know could reach a friend to borrow me some money.
Speaker 2:So very, very low, and then get a bit more work done and get a bit more payments and after three years of that and suffering and you know, like yourself, allocating some of the time for the freelancing job and then some of the time in trying to build SaaS businesses and this and that and putting together solutions, but never investing, never being in the mindset or the know-how or having enough time to also invest in marketing and figuring out how to make those projects successful. So eventually I was like it's time for me to let go temporarily of all of this and get a job and I was exactly the same. I was like I'm never gonna work for anyone else. And I did and, honestly, that was the best decision that I could take, and it does sound like it was the best decision for you at this stage in your life as well.
Speaker 1:I mean, yeah, thank you for for sharing that, because it's, it's not. There's not a lot of stories where you hear like the successful entrepreneur, and then suddenly you have to go back get a job. I don't know it's, it's. It's honestly, it's difficult to to be like at peace with that and to tell yourself like it's not a failure, okay, it's just like. Um, it's just that you know things are not linear and it's not like, okay, you start your journey as an entrepreneur and then, once you start, you never go back, kind of thing. I don't know.
Speaker 2:It's not like that and I know a lot of people that actually enjoy. I actually had the last episode that I published with Andrew Davies. He's the chief marketing officer at Paddle and he's been an entrepreneur since he was in uni and, again, quite an interesting story. I'm not going to go over that because it's already published, but now he's, he went into employment and he's part of leadership of a team and he's super happy because he's making an impact and he's making a difference and he still practices. He's still kind of like an internal, an entrepreneur, which kind of sounds like you're a bit of an entrepreneur for that company as well, given that you're able to take decisions, given that you're able to talk and you're at the table of decision-making. So, yeah, that's really good. Thank you so much Before the ending ceremony. So, yeah, that's really good.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Before the ending ceremony I love that because everyone makes a face when I say ending ceremony. Are we?
Speaker 2:going to sacrifice? No, we're not going to sacrifice any animals. You're vegan, vegan, okay. Um, before any of that, do you have any any? Do you have any curiosity about um jigsaw journey or me, nikki, as founders, or anything like that that you want to ask me?
Speaker 1:curiosity yeah, any questions or anything like that, perfectly fine, if you don't no, I mean, I have a lot of curiosity, but, um, I already know a little bit about your journey and you do yeah and mostly yeah, I'm sure there's also loads of stuff that I don't know, but I'm curious to discover more um we did stay in touch yeah around, maybe like a good pint at the pub we need to have a drink later on.
Speaker 2:I've not had a drink in three weeks because I've been on antibiotics, yeah, so this would be my first drink after three weeks.
Speaker 2:Let me put this question to you, right? Let me incentivize a question that you would ask me. So, just for context, for whoever's listening, there was a time at the beginning of the journey of Jigsaw where you and I connected, reconnected, where we were just. We were just, we just got seed investment and we were getting full time working for Jigsaw you remember that and we were looking to build like a brand and figure out, improve the brand, redesign the website and all of that stuff, and we were discussing with you to potentially get that done. Did I ever mention why we didn't?
Speaker 1:I must have asked, but you probably answered something really generic.
Speaker 2:Was it generic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because I don't remember it.
Speaker 2:It was probably quite political and so on. It was because we didn't like no, I'm joking.
Speaker 2:I'm joking, it's a prank, no, it was actually.
Speaker 2:I really wanted to work with you at that stage, but we were such an early stage and although we had seed investment and I think this is one of the things that helped us get to where we got we were super economical with our finances and Nikki and I were jack of all trades and we and especially and probably more Niki because I can't call myself economical, I'm like I'm a crazy spender so it's Niki that's keeping, yeah, the studio as an example, but it's Niki that kind of keeps me in check in a sense because you know I a sense because you know I wanted to.
Speaker 2:You know I wanted to hire someone and I was talking to you to rebuild a website, do a crazy redesign and rebrand and so on. I wanted to, um, pay advertising a lot of money in advertising this, that, pay advertising a lot of money in advertising this, that, that. And it was Nikki that helped kind of tone down that craziness, because we had 200K seed investment. We didn't have like millions or anything like that. So we started looking at right, so this money needs to be runway for a long time.
Speaker 1:What are the?
Speaker 2:things that we can do and spend time on versus the things that we really are not able to do and have to put money. So that was the the thinking in the very early days and that's why we eventually pulled the plug on the website redesign and we said, okay, we'll just change stuff and we'll do it ourselves later down the road. So yeah, I don't know if I ever said it like this when we discussed, but that was the reason why yeah, no, you know you probably said something similar to that potentially, but more shorter and more political, more, um you know, yeah, political, well it's it's not easy.
Speaker 1:I mean, most of the time when I don't get to work with, with, with people, it's mostly because of that, it's because they also I speak to a lot of really early stage entrepreneurs, so they all have the same problem.
Speaker 2:Like we were yeah.
Speaker 1:So I mean, everyone wants to work with me in the end, but they don't always. Yeah, they can't always afford it, but you did the right thing because, because, because you, it worked really well yeah and there's a moment in time where it makes sense to invest in branding, and it's really not necessarily as early stage as people think well, it turned out great.
Speaker 2:The branding was great. People you know we got acquired because of our strong brand and our presence and our marketing. But I don't doubt that if we would have worked together on Jexo, it would have been awesome. It would have been an amazing brand because we worked before and that's why I kind of like reached out to potentially talk about this, because you know, we worked on other projects and I think it was a really good dynamic there and we made some magic happen. In the previous company. I think there was some really cool projects so I wanted some of that magic for jigsaw. So it was just too early in our stage at that point right. So now that I've self-inflicted this upon the conversation, I'm gonna end it with three flash questions.
Speaker 1:One, a quote that you live by a quote that I live by work hard and be nice to people that seems common sense yeah, well, sorry, it's not very original but it's not.
Speaker 2:No, no, you don't have to apologize, it's not that, but uh, what I wanted to follow up with um is that is it. It's a hard balance, though. Yeah, work hard and be nice with people. When you work hard, usually you become an asshole.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I've been a grump in the last year of Jekyll quite a bit and I regret it. To be honest, If I would turn back time, what I would do better is, you know, be a bit better with how I work and communicate with my people, with my folk, with my team, and not put such a big, tall stress-stall into it because it affected my health as well. So it is not a. I mean, it depends on your character as well. Right, If you're intense as an individual and with working and so on, which I've been quite a few times, it's very hard to be also nice to people.
Speaker 1:Yes, definitely, but that's why I like to keep this phrase in mind.
Speaker 2:Okay, and a book that changed your life, whether personal or a professional business book.
Speaker 1:I read a book called Win Without Pitching Manifesto. It's quite a famous book in the creative industry and it's written by a guy called blair ends. He's um, he's, he coaches um creative entrepreneurs and basically this book, uh, was written at a time where the common practice for um creative, um creative agencies was to write pitches for to win work right. So any given company would post out um, um a work, a job that they wanted done, and several companies would gather and like work on pitch for weeks and it would cost them loads of money and they would put loads of free ideas in the pitch I know the the recipe because that's in consultancy as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, yeah, so, but it's, it's always, it's always like everyone loses. It's that because, um, the agencies obviously, uh waste so much money doing that, um, and then if, of course, if you don't end up winning the the work, it's like all of that is lost, and and most but when there's a lot of people who do it and only one who's chosen in the end, so, yeah, mostly people lose. And then, uh, all the ideas that you put in the pitch, they are probably bad ideas, because not, not any discovery has been made, um has been like conducted before prior to giving the ideas. So, it's, it's all bad ideas. It's just to kind of show off what we can do creatively.
Speaker 1:But yeah okay, so everyone loses that. And this guy, blarence, he wrote that uh manifesto, uh, which says a lot of things, but um, one one really important thing is that he says um, it's written as as like um, as in we will not xyz. And it's written as like as in we will not X, y, z, and it's the whole book is written like that. It's like a book written for creatives as part of like a group us, the creatives in the industry. We will stop doing that so that our industry will like change and get better.
Speaker 2:So it's like the 10 commandments of the design industry.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's exactly how it's written. It even looks like a typical thing.
Speaker 2:It's a really beautiful object. I love it. I want to see a picture of it now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a nice book and Blerens has written a lot of other books that are really interesting. He has a podcast and this guy in particular. He taught me a lot of things. He doesn't know it, but I owe him a lot.
Speaker 2:Nice, nice, Awesome. I need to see a picture of that book. You show me a picture. I'm curious. And then the last bit what is a good habit that you advocate for?
Speaker 1:Don't forget to stretch, actually. Morning and evening yeah, um minimum like 15 minutes every morning and every evening, and your body will thank you, especially if you're less than 30. Put on the habit now so that you will keep your uh flexibility especially if you're over 30. You mean not less than 30 no, you need to take on the habit before you turn 30, because when you're 30, it's already too late. You lost all your flexibility, your back hurts, and then this is when you're like I need to start stretching, but I'm hurting everywhere.
Speaker 2:It's too late, so damn, it is too late for me it's too late for me. You have to do it anyway and this is you remind me of nikki, because this is how she spooks me about my eye situation getting older and she goes like you need to use that cream before it's too late. She bought me like a eye wrinkle cream.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, and put sunscreen on.
Speaker 2:Yes, I never do.
Speaker 1:It's very well. You live in England, so you're forgiven.
Speaker 2:But come on, we have time here from time to time, okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, stretching and sun cream.
Speaker 2:Stretching and sun cream. Okay, perfect combo. Well, thank you so much for having the conversation. Thank you so much, Niro it was lovely and, yeah, I'm looking forward to see what you do with Positive Impact Design.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
Speaker 2:And you're on the first page. Okay, Don't forget that.
