31. Branding and Creativity in the Age of AI with Radim Malinic - podcast episode cover

31. Branding and Creativity in the Age of AI with Radim Malinic

Mar 07, 202444 min
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Episode description

In an era when AI tools are being used to create better content every day, how a creative can stay relevant and grow? We discuss how branding has evolved (for better or worse!), as well as techniques and habits to unlock creativity, Radim’s book writing process, and practical tips for new writers.

Radim Malinic is a creative director, designer and bestselling author. Living and working in South West London, he runs Brand Nu Studio, an award winning branding and creative studio + Brand Nu Books an independent publishing imprint.

Before finding his calling in the creative industry, Czech-born Malinic was an ice hockey player, a bassist in death metal bands, an indie DJ, music journalist, and student of Economics and Business management. At the break of the new millennium, Malinic moved to the UK to explore the expansive music scene, only to find even a greater interest in art and graphic design. Since then, his eclectic interests have seen him working with some of the biggest brands, companies, and bands in the world. Clients include Harry Potter, London Film Museum, Decleor, Adidas, Dolby, WWF, and USAID, amongst many others. He is also a regular keynote speaker (Adobe Max, OFFF, FITC), guest lecturer, and brand ambassador.


Radim Malinic on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandnu/

Radim's LinkedIn post on the myth of "do what you love":

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/brandnu_powerofone-careerdevelopment-podcastshow-activity-7171441992713887745-V5dc

The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron:

https://www.amazon.com/Artists-Way-Spiritual-Higher-Creativity/dp/1585421472/

What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful by Marshall Goldsmith:

https://www.amazon.com/What-Got-Here-Wont-There/dp/B000MGBNGW/

Jordan Rakei (the musician Radim mentions):

https://www.jordanrakei.com/


If you have any questions about brands and marketing, connect with the host of this channel, Itir Eraslan, on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/itireraslan/"

Transcript

Radim Malinic

We don't use much AI in a creative process. We use the enhancements that AI gives us. So when it comes to creative AI, we skirting on the outside of possibilities. But when it comes to, for example, my written work, I use JAD JPT as a validator. I want to see how the world sees the thing. So you want to see the medium, the average, because sometimes you look at it. I'm like, okay, well, I've got my point of view, but that's how I see the world.

I don't know how the world sees me or how the world has seen other things. So it's almost like. Validating the ideas that you didn't think of.

Itir Eraslan

Hi, this is the marketing meeting and I'm your host Itir Eraslan. Every two weeks I meet with experts and we talk about topics related to brands, marketing, and businesses. We sometimes add random lifestyle topics too. I hope you enjoy the show. Hi, this is the new episode of the marketing meeting. And today I'm joined by Radim Malinic, founder of the branding and creative studio Brandnew. Welcome Radim.

Radim Malinic

All right. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to speak, speaking to you again after a short while, actually a long while.

Itir Eraslan

Three, three, four years is quite long in this times, right?

Radim Malinic

Absolutely. So I was, yeah, it was, it was a pleasure to see you that you are still active and especially doing the podcast. So it's nice to be on your show and talk to you about all sorts of exciting things.

Itir Eraslan

Yeah. I mean, I don't know where to start because you have, you are the author of six books. Seventh is coming up. You have a very nice podcast that just launched like in, uh, in January and you are already on episode 10, something like that. Eight.

Radim Malinic

I think we've got eight so far. That's

Itir Eraslan

the number of episodes that I do in a year probably. Finally I have a producer who's helping me out. But, uh, also you are, uh, You are a musician, uh, which I'm quite interested in the matter of keeping it compact for the listeners. I'm going to start with the, uh, post that you did today. It was about the do what you love myth. So, um, you are doing your own business. You have, you're running your own studio for the last 18 years. Um, Do you love what you do?

Radim Malinic

I'm obsessive about it. Yeah. I'm absolutely obsessive about what I do because not only I've got branding studio, I also got a publishing imprint and we also starting some DTC companies. We're going to start, you know, specialty coffee, a brand, and we started a few different businesses and creating our sort of general online store. So creativity is amazing. You can do anything with it. So I do love what I do.

Just like I love being a parent, like I've been a sort of endurance athlete, like I've been a human being. And, you know, sometimes there's just headwind, you know, sometimes there's crosswinds, sometimes it's rain, sometimes it's sunshine, you know, and it's, it's that balancing act of how we live and what we expect because. As I said in my today's post, it's like creativity is a slight marketing problem, especially when you want to buy into it because it looks so tempting. It looks so amazing.

You see the product of creativity and you're like, Oh my words, I want to be doing this because I see people sat in studios, listening to music, working on computers, dressed nicely. You know, there's coffee, there's, you know, Beautiful everything. And like, I'm sure that's really nice. Whereas it doesn't work that way. Creativity needs to be a difficult topic. So we actually don't lose an interest because imagine climbing mountains.

The story's about, you know, making it to the top of any peak. I'm not about like, Oh yeah, it was lovely. We had a couple of biscuits, you know, then we had a cup of tea, then we got to the top and then we came back. You know, it doesn't work that way. You know, it's all about that necessary friction. We need friction in our lives. We need survival instinct ignited that we problem solve things that we do. So sometimes you have an odd day. Sometimes you have a bad day. Sometimes, you know, it's.

It's kind of getting ducks in a row, there's an expression in the UK that you need to get your ducks in a row. And sometimes that doesn't happen. And that's when you realize through pattern recognition and you can improve things. You can actually, you know, analyze your process and think about what can I do here differently? What can I do in a way that doesn't upset me?

Because I build up my branding agency only to scale it back down for a short while, because I realized that I was going after something for, you know, 18 years. or maybe longer, only to find out that what I got isn't what I wanted. I had the clients, I had the work, we had the budget, we had everything, but I wasn't in the right mindset in the right time to appreciate it. I had to remind myself that everything I've achieved is exactly what I wanted. I was going on that journey after that light.

And I got there. But my life was in the right place. You know, I was young, probably had a second child. Everything was a bit of a chaos. So there was nothing wrong with what I wanted to achieve and what I've, what I've achieved and what I got to, but my life was a chaos and I had to change the systems in getting to. Uh, appreciate creativity, how to do things that make me happy and how to create my own version of actually, let's call it a system again.

Like, how do I create a way of managing the workload? Because you know, we are parents in 21st century, you know, we're not parents in the eighties.

Itir Eraslan

You

Radim Malinic

know, we are in our, in our kids lives and we do things more involved than you try to do it. Most of you, you want to do this because you've seen firsthand how it wasn't exactly done well. So it's about finding the right balance, creating the right condition for everything, because Again, there's headwind, there's tantrums, there's dramas, there's all sorts of things, you know, unpredictability of life.

So when you build that on top of everything that we just create this crazy layer cake of responsibilities of busyness of everything. But I have purposely during the process of writing my two last books, which I released in October, 2023, I wanted to create the right conditions for my creativity.

Itir Eraslan

And

Radim Malinic

purposely scale back and spend time on my creativity so I can enjoy it. Even though writing two books in within a year, it's obviously not exactly taking time off. That's a whole another story, but it was all about making sure that I can do something at that time, which is going to be a milestone, you know, a mild pivot, you know, something that I can say, you know what? I could have carried on going the same way and that would have got me nowhere because I already found that end point.

And I wanted to open a huge new chapter in finding, um, new purpose, new explorations, using creativity for expression that can aid others in their pursuits of creativity.

Itir Eraslan

In one of your new books, which is Creativity for Sale, uh, it's talking about how to start and grow the life changing creative career and business. So in the era of, um, AI tools, creating better content every day, um, how do you think an artist or a creative can stay positive? Or is there a way to stay positive?

Radim Malinic

That's a big question. That's a big question. But It's, it's about mindset because it's about relationship with the tools and creativity. Like how do you use it? Because it's easy to find yourself being a victim, you know, like the world is unfair. And I mean, there's all these new tools. I'm going to be out of a job.

I'm going to be doing, you know, you know, AI is going to replace me being a copywriter or designer, art director, storyboard artist, like you and I are old enough to know that when Kindle came out. It was meant to be the end of books. Well, it wasn't. The internet came out, it was meant to be the end of books. There was always end of print, end of books, end of everything as we know it. Well, that's never changed.

That's never like the books, I mean, in the UK, we've had the biggest year of book sales on record. The books are selling more than ever. Kindles going down fractionally. I mean, I'm not saying like it's, it's flopping, but. It's about kind of going back to roots, because we just have these new sort of elements that show up and quite rightfully create new opportunities and new possibilities of, Oh, we can actually do this.

We can actually democratize the creativity, bring things to the market in much, much easier way. Where. You know, and this is a testament to it. Like this conversation doesn't have to be on the radio. We don't have to record it in the studio. Like we can do this, you know, from our homes and we can have this conversation across the pond, you know, from London to New York, and it can be broadcast to anyone who wants to listen to it. That's the exciting part.

No, nobody said podcasts are going to be the end of radio. YouTube was never end of TV. In fact, you know, it just, gives us more avenues and more tools because it's about finding what fits right for you. You know, so I remember listening to a conversation with Malcolm Gladwell, who said, when I was on the tube or on the subway in New York, let's call it, right? The subway is not the tube as we go here.

But he said, I've noticed that people have gone from reading books to have their phones and their headphones. And So he's decided to start an audio company that produces content for audio, because that's what we do. And I think audio books were a marvelous invention because you can consume so much more content as you go.

So, you know, you can be doing dishwasher, you can be stuck in a dishwasher or going to the shops or going to school run or whatever, and you can still carry on, um, reading and consuming content, which is what we couldn't do before. So you can turn someone who. isn't exactly a book reader into a book reader, which is incredible. So I think being a positive in the world of AI is like, accept what is it as a tool here?

Because I've had conversations with people talking about how artists who were painting pictures, when photography arrives, they had to change. We had cubism, we had new movements because you have to change how we see reality. So, you know, like almost like you start on the first day in a company, you get your welcome pack. This is what you're working with. Enjoy what you can do because if this is this exciting right now, it can be only more exciting because AI is still a calculator on steroids.

It's an amazing thing that, you know, it can produce amazing things, but it's not here to replace you. It can aid your process and you can have a crazy idea, especially talking about generative AI, how we can now help you because you and I know there's thousands of different pieces of AI in our daily lives. that we take for granted. We don't even register it's in our lives.

So yeah, as an artist, I always say you can have a life changing career because creativity changed my life because it provided everything in my life. Obviously I can't measure creativity. I can't shape it. I can't, you know, I can't put it in a pocket, but. It's everything I've created for myself because I was going after my expression and creativity helped me to, to achieve it.

Itir Eraslan

You have a branding studio and you're a creative director as well. Um, what are the, um, AI tools or resources that you are adopting or using nowadays?

Radim Malinic

We don't, we don't use much AI, um, per se in a creative process. We use the enhancements that AI gives us. So, because we've always been working quite extensively in 3d. So it's almost like you create your own worlds, but tailor made. So creativity is good for. What if, you know, what if there was a, a deer with a queen's head, you know, doing something, you know, like you can sort of create these mashups, but we used to be able to do it manually before.

So like to us, it's just enhancing the process, making it quicker, but it's not necessarily, you know, too way off the track because we still have to create custom made work for our clients that has to be translated into production. So when it comes to creative AI, We're skirting on the outside of possibilities because our work requires less of it. But when it comes to, for example, my, my written work, I use very much JAD JPT as a validator. I want to see how the world sees. the thing.

So you want to see the medium, the average, you know, because chat GPT is kind of like, um, like a buddy, you know, like, okay, what do you think of this? Because sometimes you look at it, I'm like, okay, well, I've got my point of view, but that's how I see the world. I don't know how the world sees me or how the world has seen other things. So it's almost like validating the ideas that you didn't think of. So I very much wanted to stay away from chat GPT as much as possible.

But then I was writing two books and one of them, the creativity for sale is very much sans AI, like we didn't touch AI in it with it whatsoever. And it's very much my own sort of honest portrayal of how I see the world of creativity and how you can build a business and career. Whereas when it goes to broader topic, like how do you use. mindfulness and creativity and how other people can be perceiving that topic of sort of conditions for creativity.

I wanted to have a little bit of an idea of, of what else can be there because I just felt that I couldn't really just provide my own first view account, if that makes sense. So it was more broader. Like it was, I was working with two different editors, one on each book. And I wanted, I always write my books and then editors Kind of clean it up and shaping it in the right, um, right format, uh, purely for just having somebody else, you know, touching it because it goes out there.

It's not for me, written for me. So that's what I wanted to do.

Itir Eraslan

we've met because of the, with the help of your book, the book of branding. Uh, is it the third or fourth book that you've written?

Radim Malinic

It was the third one, yeah,

Itir Eraslan

it was the third one. Okay. So, uh, in between those times you wrote that book back in 2018, uh, and till now, um, what has changed in the branding world other than Chachi pt of course,

Radim Malinic

Yeah, I mean, that's a great question and I was looking forward to this question. I think we have got collectively much, much better in branding. I think what used to be once a trailblazer is now one of many, because the world has opened up bigger, bigger and wider. So we can see, you know, what once used to be a groundbreaking work by Nike or, you know, every other sports brand or big brands like Benetton and stuff like that is now normal. You can create that work with five people.

You know, we can create stunning visuals. Our team was never bigger than five or six, you know, and we can have a team of external freelancers helping you on a project. And we now can see what first hand result of good branding look like. And it's not a problem to replicate it wherever you are in the world. So when you see, for example, startups, They used to be quite, quite to the point, really badly branded.

Like nobody cared about the name or messaging or positioning, you know, whatever, like, Oh, we've got this idea for software. We are product heavy. We'll focus on this. And then one day we might fix it. You know, when you look at, for example, how Airbnb started when they rebranded, I think it was in 2014, 2015, they kind of changed the perception of what a startup could look like and other people followed. And now everyone's been properly.

Given a nice lick of paint, like Dropbox and all the other tools, you know, like you see that these companies have grown bigger and they need to look better. But when you look overall, there's very little surprise when we now call it the brand Deja Vu, because we've established a number of routes that you can take with a

Itir Eraslan

rebrand.

Radim Malinic

And it's been followed. So, you know, there's a trend in colors. Now there's a certain amount of rebrands that's in trending colors. And you look at studios specializing, especially like startup and startup branding, and you're like, that just looks all the same. You know, there's a little icon, there's a little type. And again, it fits in a way like, okay, you would expect that from a branding. So actually we kind of created a norm. So like, okay, so for, for, for running, we've got a shoe.

Okay. Okay. For how would you produce a shoe? There's a certain specification of like, it needs to be bouncy. It needs to be this, it needs to be durable. It needs to be this. And I kind of feel like with branding, we just created almost this checklist. Okay. Have you got illustrated characters? Have you got animation? You know, have you got this? It's, I think it's given branding studios.

A bigger scope to be more impactful and create a bigger toolkit and actually have someone to launch a new startup on almost minimum budget with maximum, maximum return. Like you can actually do really amazing things on, you know, a few tens of thousands of dollars and we can have a really amazing toolkit that makes you look world class. So what's changed is that because of all of this advancement in understanding of what branding could be.

We don't have many surprises and I think it really now pays dividends to, to realize how can you be different in, in the world? Because I've been laboring this quote for a while recently that the market is only saturated if you look and sound like everybody else. You're my quote, I stole it somewhere, but it makes perfect sense, you know, if you look and sound like everybody else. You feel you're in a saturated market, like how do you stand out?

Because what once used to be the standout is now the norm. So we bring in the breakthrough, lower and lower. So what now, what used to be, let's say in graphic design, like a laborious work is now a click of a button. Now what took me, let's say five hours, some 20 years ago, is now five seconds. So, I find it sort of parallel, like in the hunter gatherer evolution, that we once upon a time, we used to go and hunt for food. We no longer have to hunt for food, you know, we've got the food.

So what do we do next? And what do we do next? Obviously, the baseline of everything has been lowered. The foundation level has been lowered. So we can say, okay, so what do we do next? Because when you think about Generative AI, that gets better weekly, you know, like that's just, you know, oh, there's mid journey seven or whatever, like it's just, and it just gets better and better and better.

It reminds you of how computer chips went from, you know, massive chips to microchips with many times more capacity, because we improve and we evolve and we're making things better. So the question in branding, I think, in my opinion, is going to be. What do we do next? Because everyone's caught up, you know, the studios that used to have a particular style or be known for anything, they all look the same now. Like everyone produces the same, everyone goes after the same clients.

And it's just like the branding studios usually come with a project and they go like, well, you know, this company is here to change the world and change this and change that. I'm like, But that looks like a company you launched two weeks ago. Like, I mean, just, you know, what's going on. So I may be sort of unduly cynical about this, but there is a brand deja vu and it's a huge one.

You know, we've got a standard, which is great because looking back at our childhood, there was lack of standards. It was like anything goes, you know, whatever, just write it, put it on the wall, whatever. Now we have studio like hours when we work on a new branding and work on a new product. The product doesn't even exist. So we, we created in 3d where we do all the visualization, all the, all the things, and we've been doing it for the last nearly 10 years, like in that style.

And now, obviously we've got more and more tools to say, you know, you can visualize your product, you can do this. Ikea catalogs are all 3d, you know, like jewelry's all 3d. Like it's the advancements, you know, like we've created the most amazing tools. But are we going to hit a plateau? Like what's going to happen next?

Because I just feel, I'm not sure if you agree, but I guess humans, we need to catch up with what we've created because in terms of just even content consumption, like I think it was for, for many years that 70 percent of music on iTunes were never downloaded. You know, you've got 60 new thousand tracks on Spotify every day and God knows how many humongous amount of hours on YouTube of the contents being uploaded that sometimes nobody watches.

Itir Eraslan

So like,

Radim Malinic

we've got this more, more, more, more, more ever expanding world with sometimes lacking meaning. Does that make sense?

Itir Eraslan

I, lately I started adding to my briefs, uh, I started adding pages saying, don't do this or don't use these colors, or like, a page where. in that industry or in similar industries, the colors that all the other brands are using. And I put a note, please don't go this path, try another path, find another path. Because as you said, I mean, like one day I'm seeing a food brand. Looking exactly the same with, um, Razor brand.

Nowadays, when I go to a store, especially like the new organic type of stores, where you have like thousands of startups, it feels like sometimes everything's looking the same. And also the messaging looking the same. So what I try to do is that, okay, what are we doing different here? If you are looking exactly the same with others, why are we doing this then? Or if it's not for branding, then what are we doing? Separately than others on the other parts of the business.

Uh, there should be like kind of a differentiator. I, I guess, um, in your creative processes. Before we started the podcast, uh, we were talking about like systems and how you manage your company as well as all the books, podcasts, and so on. Uh, being in the creative world and managing your own business requires. a big systems thinking and planning. And you have a book, very nice book. The other book that you have launched is mindful creative.

Uh, and there, I think you're also sharing techniques and habits to transform one's creative process. Could you share like some tips and methods from there? First of all, I would suggest every listener to read your books because it's such a pleasure, not in terms of content only also, but the thing that you touch is something else and it's like colorful and very nice. Yeah,

Radim Malinic

that's a very nice compliment. And I'll try to condense 40, 000 words in about two minutes of an answer. Um, it's

Itir Eraslan

maybe

Radim Malinic

absolutely. So in a creative world, and I can speak from experience, uh, we are very much catching up with what's possible, you know, what's available to us, because in my world right now, I've never been busier. My calendar never looked busier ever, you know, ever before, but. I am my own time management app is the discipline. You know, everything starts with me. And once it starts, how I want to run my day and how I run, run the workload, how I want to run my family.

Because when we have, when we have too many possibilities, life is chaos. You know, I mean, we don't want to say, Oh, you know what, my life is predictable. You know, my life is this, you know, I have settled on this. This is my choice. Whereas the uncertainty kind of froze the system in the air. And I've, I used to work with this very inspiring guy called Pete Gosling, who's got his agency in Westchester and sort of upstate from where you are in New York. And I saw his process.

Practically 10 years ago, and everything was automated and I was just looking at it like, what do you mean? Like his Zapier just looked like, you know, Narnia. And I'm like, how? And it's like, look, I'm not that creative. You know, we do this and that. I'm like, you've got everything sorted. Like, this is incredible. Like your inquiry comes in and like, and his system, like just incredible. And we were like, what'd you do? Well, I'm still typing up, you know, the email.

So I've started typing up my invoices in InDesign or whatever, like creative

Itir Eraslan

people,

Radim Malinic

sometimes astoundingly non creative in their, in their ways, because you think I'm not professional in graphic design, I'm a professional illustrator, I'm professional, whatever, I'm a brand strategist. You know what? I don't need the fancy stuff. It's all about like, you know what? There's people going a hundred miles an hour doing very nothing, because everything's automated, everything's there.

And that curiosity takes you to the places that when you try to run your own day, when you try to run your own goals and your system, basically you put your systems into the place you want when your goal is to be achieved, then world becomes somewhat simpler because you can, You know, what's happening and when, because you've just, you've defined the spaces and then the time in your calendar and your day that can only happen in a certain time.

And it's the magic that happens, you know, in that meeting that you have, not once, once a day, you've got slot for a meeting, you know. And people can make it, you know, you give people 17 different options. They'll book one, then they'll change it. They do this. And when you say, you know what, in my day, I record a podcast, either at 1030 in the morning, or I don't. I've got a new client meeting at one o'clock because that's after lunch. So that kind of fits the different time zones.

And I'll be doing potentially another podcast recording at nine o'clock in the evening, which is what we're doing today. And that's all. My times I can guarantee I'll be available, so therefore I don't have to get stressed about something's overlapping or something's doing not, because I can catch up with my team before the recordings or after recordings or before the meeting and after the meeting. So I've got my sort of flexibility in a day, but the pillars of my day are set.

I know when my kids will wake up, I know what time they go to school, I know when I can exercise. And that sort of regimented discipline actually really helps because before it'd be like, am I busy at two? Am I busy at three? Am I busy at that? You know, and you just, you find yourself like, this is my schedule. And you know what, that works because it's predictable and you can then find the ways how you can grow and enjoy those pockets.

Because what I've found throughout working on these two last two books that I had to change, you know, like I was writing in sporadic times, I never had a sort of ring fenced time for creativity. It was like, well, I might have 20 minutes after dinner, I might have this and that. And it just never felt that enjoyable because of course. You're not on a survival instinct, like I need to get books out. I've set my publishing date, we have to do it. But it was, it was mess for a while.

And I'm like, okay, no new client works, we're just going to focus on our existing clients. We can get the studio smaller so we don't have to pay extra overheads and extra costs and extra salaries. Therefore we don't have to work for everyone just for the sake of working with everyone. And let's be honest, like this is our chance to actually refocus on what we want to achieve. It does come with the portion of like, when you actually do these things, it's the uncertainty.

Running your own creative career, it's lots of uncertainty, nothing's given, you know, starting your own business, your startup, anything, uncertainty, but you're doing this, what if, you know, like, I mean, this is my chance to actually explore it, actually to do this, because if you don't do it, you might end up in regret. So what's better, regrets or uncertainty? Because if it doesn't, if it doesn't work out, you go back.

And I always tell people like, When you're employed, you're not in charge, like your security, you know, is not a security. Company can go bust. You can be let off. You can be made redundant. Markets change. Everything changes. So isn't it easier just to hold on to your wheel and drive your own destiny and start your own thing? Because then in that space that you create for yourself, you can find so much magic in a way of.

You know, I can create things that no one says I couldn't do, you know, like you can just explore the world for what it is. Because as I was saying, just in the previous answer, like we've got the world of possibilities we created that you can go to market with anything you want, you know, you can publish any type of work you want, you know, you can bring anything to the world that, you know, you'll find your little group of people that will say, we like this, we need more of this.

So, you know, you just explore and experiment. And it's all about. Making the right conditions for creativity and the whole thing was inspired by Ken Robinson. Fantastic Ken Robinson, who was the pioneer of creativity in education, who said that the role of the gardener isn't to make the plant grow, it's to create optimal condition for growth. And that's pretty much what we need to do. Like creativity isn't to be found around the corner or in our pockets.

It's like to have the optimal conditions for creativity, which ultimately takes us to the state of flow. And obviously you need to create the conditions.

Itir Eraslan

I'll go through the systems in book writing because you own your own business, uh, you have your own studio, you have clients, uh, you have your podcast now, but book writing especially out of all of these requires a very disciplined way of approaching things, approaching life. So you mentioned the time blocks that you put to yourself to write a book and so on. Other than that, like, what are the things that. Uh, you have done when writing a book or some of the tips that you can share with us,

Radim Malinic

while

Itir Eraslan

you know, managing your own company and writing your book. What was the process?

Radim Malinic

I can see how much you want to write your book. I can see that. I can see that. For two years this is

Itir Eraslan

in the plan, but let's see.

Radim Malinic

Yeah. So it's, I think for about seven or eight years, I hope that. There'll be some magical space and time for me to do it because it was always done amidst chaos. I mean, I did a book of branding, for example, in three months. I wrote it in a month, we designed it in a month, we edited it and we published it. I mean, the secret is that that book is a first draft.

Literally, I just wrote it almost like upside, like I'm literally falling backwards on the sofa because I was falling asleep as I was writing because my son was going to be born. So I had a deadline. And of course I didn't invent the process of branding in three months. Obviously I was writing about experiences, running my studio for more than a decade. So it was more like, this is what we got in our head. We smash it together, see what happens.

Of course, sometimes haste makes waste, you know, some, there's things in the book that if we had an extra year, obviously that book would be different, but there's something quite happy and scrappy in the book that we made it happen in record time. And people like yourself, I mean, that we are in this conversation just because of that book, like the book actually found a new connection. So the process of writing is that.

If you're hoping for the golden time, because, you know, we like to believe that, I don't know, the writers are kind of, sometimes they wake up, they live, they live in their cabin and they, you know, they live their sort of happy life. To make things happen is very unpretty at first because you are driven by obsession. So the first word in this conversation was like, how do you find a love? And I'm like, I am obsessed about a process.

You know, I get up every morning and I want to find a new way how I can do this. Find even more enjoyment and how I can do it maybe in a shorter space of time so I can have time for other things, you know, like bringing that baseline lower and lower. And with the writing, it's, if you're hoping to sit down and start having an idea for a book that will sort of start unravel, it will never happen. So my first tip number one is the, the, the tool to do this. And I've picked up my iPhone.

I'll write in my notes app. I just write things I can think of. So for example, today I'm listening to Junior Cameron's the Artist Way, the book.

Itir Eraslan

Mm-Hmm. . And

Radim Malinic

what I wrote was the, or the audacity. It's the audacity and not the talent that moves the artist to the center stage. So that's just my one thing from today. Like I just write daily, daily, daily notes. What I hear, what I think, you know, I cycle quite a lot.

So I just kind of process things and i'm like, okay, i'm gonna stop write this down i'm gonna stop write this down because One of, one of my therapists once said like, you don't have to write anything because the thought that you like will come back to you time and time again. It's not a problem. As long as you're thinking about something intensely, it will come back to you.

But when you go to a studio, employees, business, another business, you know, podcasting, everything, like sometimes there's very little space in the airwaves in our brain to actually say, you know what, I'm holding onto this onto you. So The advice is that you start writing your book today. Obviously you start thinking of what's your chapters like, what's your title, what is your second book, you know, what is your, what is your series like, what can you do?

Because I think it was Seth Godin who said that you should go on a walk with your friend and tell them everything that you want them to know, record it and have it transcribed and that's your first book. You know, that's literally like, this is how you give advice. Because my books are not written as, you know, some sort of fiction, they're like, okay, this is all I know. This is all I know. And it changed my life.

So I can share that with you and you can take it, leave it, you know, pick the bits that you like, because that's what we do from other books, you know, I listened to Julia Cameron's book for about an hour and I wrote one sentence, you know, like, it's just like picking out the things that, that resonate with you. You've got more of an outline of the book that you want to write, like, what's the topic? Um, you start looking at research. Who's written something similar?

Like, how well has it, how well has it rated? Like, what else can we, you know, add to, to that, to that category? Because there's zillions of books on, you know, MBAs and Smart thinking, all sorts of stuff. And only some of them are, you know, the ones they shoot up higher.

And of course, in our lifetimes, I don't think neither of us will achieve something sort of astronomical, like, you know, being the next Malcolm Gladwell, you know, so like you got these star wars and then we go all of us mortals. But the thing is, it's about trying to push the boundaries. Like, what can I do? Especially on an independent basis that you don't need an approval of 14 different editors or, you know, marketing people and having sort of narrative of a big publisher.

Because again, we've got these tools that can easily enable us to actually have that self expression. So you don't necessarily want to write a book with AI, which takes about 15 minutes because that's just absolute nonsense of people's lives, but you start little just like with everything else because you can liken it to running, you know, marathon running, you know, walk a mile, then you run a mile, then no, then you run two miles and you start building, building, building.

So never wait for the moment that things might sort of start coming together, because it's the gradual process of adding a little bit every day to, um, to get you to the point that, you know, we'll, we'll give you something to start sort of shaping as a book content.

Itir Eraslan

Do you use a publisher on your first book? Probably now? Yes. Uh, but did you publish yourself or? How did that go?

Radim Malinic

I'm fiercely independent. I'm fiercely independent. So I didn't wait for anyone to come my way to say, Hey, do you think you've got a book in you? Because there would be about 77 million other people next to me going, I've got a book in me too. You know, like if the book contracts were handed out that way, then the book lot of reason, the bookstores would be, have to be the size of a city center. You know, like everyone would have their book in there, but no one would read it.

So there's a reason why still the book publishing is very much. Kind of filtered, you know, there's gatekeepers in the way, because if you want to be part of a big publishing machine, they take you on, you have to be really good, just like a musician, you know, anyone can write music, anyone can put it on Spotify, anyone can make sketches on YouTube, you know, but how many people will watch it, you know, you try to sort of take something good and build bigger.

Whereas in my case, I was like, You know what? My daughter was being born eight years ago. Actually, in fact, it's going to be our eighth anniversary of the first book tomorrow.

Itir Eraslan

Oh,

Radim Malinic

okay. Eight years. Eight years. And it was gung ho effort. Again, I think I did it in about three or four months, and I was like a little sort of detective going around and looking at the back of the book, like, where does the ISBN go? And, you know, I was thinking, we'll keep it independent and sell it on our own website. And somebody said, well, you need to put it on Amazon. So I just. Looked up how to set up an Amazon account, like a supplier, printed a thousand books.

They sold out in like three weeks, so we printed number three or four, and that first book sold 45, 000 copies, like independently, I still haven't got American distribution. So altogether with the new books is about 77, 000 books now, which again is done in a very, thank you by the way, but it's done in a very sort of still scrappy way, you know, like we've got UK distributor. It's the little things that you need to fine tune, and it's an investment.

I put my time investment, put my money investment, because we print 5, 000 copies, just like the publishers, like just like a, no regular publisher would do, but we print them in the UK. They're sustainable. They're all printed with, um, Green energy. Mm-Hmm. , you know, so we do it a lot more costly than we would do it in China, but we've got, we can keep an eye on the process.

Yeah. So we can actually fine tune things and we know it's, it's local and it just makes sometimes really nice sort of feeling just to make books with your friends in a way, you know? We know. But keeping it simple gives you freedom to explore. Because after selling all of these books, you're now being approached by, you know, big publishers about, you know, new books. They pay notice because it was our own narrative that has enabled us to create things that would not be necessarily accepted.

So mindful creative, I'm not sure how I would sell it to a big publisher at first or creativity for sale or other books, you know, like it's very much. We've got the opportunity to reinvent the wheel, literally. Like, we've got the basics, and how do we dress it, what do we put on it. That's our own making.

We can actually do these things fiercely independent, and change people's lives, because We don't get edited, you know, I know people who spent three years on a book with a minimal advance that the book ended up being something completely different, you know, and it's just like, there's a beauty in collaboration, but in your personal expression, if you want to pursue something, there's always somebody who's going to read the book because, you know, that's how everything started.

Itir Eraslan

I really love the way that you take business independently. You know, you have your own company for so many years. And, uh, then when it comes to book publishing, then you do it on your own. It's independent also. I think there's like a lot of things to learn from there. And, uh, to wrap up, I have like two, three, You know, quick questions. Um, since we have talked a lot about the books, if you could recommend one business book, what would it be?

Radim Malinic

I actually had it handy. Uh, what good you here won't get you there. I'm trying

Itir Eraslan

to remember if I read it before.

Radim Malinic

It's been, it's been around for a while. It's like a, I think someone says like a coaching book for coaches, but it's kind of semi old school, but there's a lot of gold in it. And there's a section that sometimes, you know, when you hear or see things in life, you're like, Oh, I wish I thought of that first. So in mindful creative, we have meditation. There are three different meditations, you know, there's pretty much toolkit for creating optimal creativity, like bringing your right self to.

you know, your problem task, um, solving because mindful creative could be happy businessman or calm illustrator. Like we can have interchangeable titles and, and we'll got you here. We'll get you there. There's this exercise when he says, when I go to people and when they are sort of distracted. I say, close your eyes and count to 50, and how quickly would your mind interrupt you?

And you start counting to 50, you're like, Oh yeah, on seven, you know, I'm starting to think about washing, you know, start thinking about my shoes, whatever, the mind will arrive because

Itir Eraslan

You'll probably won't end up counting to 50. Yeah.

Radim Malinic

No, like, I mean, I've been doing it in my, I've brought it into my, in my coaching sessions and I think I had someone come to the 21 ones, but everyone was struggling after three or four. It's one of those things like, Oh, I wish I had that, but the whole moral of the story is like, you can't hear the world if you can't hear yourself, you know, like you need to find a clarity, like, because our worlds are so busy.

So we, we've been working for a particular client for the last 15 years and I remember making their belief posters. And one of, one of the belief posters was this, what got you here won't get you there. When I was looking at it, like, it kind of makes sense, kind of doesn't. And then 10 years later, I was like, Oh, it makes sense now.

Because that's pretty much everything of this conversation that we've been in the last 45 minutes is that you can't expect to have one thing and it working in perpetuity. It never works. You have to change. You have to adapt. You know, selling books has changed every single year. What worked one year didn't work a second year, you know, like everything changes every year.

So that's why we need to, um, kind of take that mantra and you know what, you build something and you start rebuilding it as soon as you launched it. And that's the acceptance.

Itir Eraslan

Perfect. And then I would add to that, uh, Julia Cameron's book, Artist's Way. Uh, it's a book that I, since we've talked about it, I will also edit here. Uh, it's one of the books that's changed my life actually, because I'm, when I read books, you know, there's the exercises that are on the book. Most people just, you know, postpone it. Okay. I'll do it when I have time. And I'm just like, I literally do them a hundred percent. So that book changed my life.

I mean, this is, this is why I'm, I'm sitting here doing my own business and so on. Uh, one music track you love the most nowadays. Since you are a musician, it's a hard question, I know. I mean,

Radim Malinic

I struggle, I struggle, struggle, struggle. Um, I mean, nowadays, I mean, there's, there's so much music. I mean, I can share some playlists with you, but, you know, I always go into Spotify. It's the 30 tracks of the week. I've trained my algorithm so much that, you know, I've got, I've got the most amazing music.

Itir Eraslan

And you, you, you use Spotify still?

Radim Malinic

I'm on Spotify. Yeah. I just, I'm just on Spotify just for Discover Weekly, literally just for that. Um, I would just recommend maybe Jordan Rakai, Freedom, like he's got a new album coming out. Beautiful music, you know, just lots of layers and, and honesty. And I remember going to see Jordan Rakai when he launched the last album, just sort of mid COVID. Like we had this period in the UK where you can go out for a bit and he was doing a gig in a church, launching an album.

And I was there literally just crying. I couldn't get my friends to come out. So I was just set aside with strangers, like a few hundred strangers. And I was just like, tears down, running down my face because of everything we've been going through. So Maybe we'll add

Itir Eraslan

like a little bit of that track, uh, maybe Ray will add a little bit of that track to the edit. That would be lovely. I will listen to it right after this. And one final question is what's your favorite coffee place in London?

Radim Malinic

My favorite coffee place, I became the fellow of the RSA, the Royal Society of Arts, which is 260 years old, and they've got a beautiful building on the Strand, just near the river, and it's a beautiful space, but full of little sort of, it's kind of like a hobbit space, you know, like the ceilings are not too high, it's not like, it's not your loft, it's the opposite of the loft, and it's got the most impressive library. Coffee's good. Um, yeah, the RSA is the place to go at the moment.

Itir Eraslan

I hope like before my UK visa ends, I'll come there and then we grab a coffee and maybe work a bit at RSA.

Radim Malinic

Absolutely.

Itir Eraslan

Thank you so much, Erdem. Thank you so much for joining me.

Radim Malinic

Thank you. for having me.

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