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i was told that the kkk was gonna get me and that's frightening when you're a child
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[Music] chief marketing officer to vice president of global brand an almost
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three decade career at nike that's right yeah you know nike was really the only brand that was putting people of color
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in their communication that showed me you could make a living doing what you
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love why is the air force one shoe an example of nike not chasing cool it wasn't
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created to make a statement in culture it was created to make a statement on
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the court and the fact that moses malone won on the court in the air force one
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that's cool your authenticity is your cultural currency the minute your audience can no
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longer see your original pursuit they partner with someone else april 2021 significant month for you in
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your life i got a dm through 23andme and that opened up meeting my birth families
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the last thing you'd want to be is rejected and it was just
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so without further ado i'm stephen bartlett and this is the direva ceo usa edition i hope nobody's
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listening but if you are then please keep this yourself [Music]
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greg i'm a tremendous believer in the fact that our early years are
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incredibly formative what are the things that really left a remaining mark on you in terms of their
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influence as an experience or an event or trauma yes again i had two passions growing up
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sport and art and really why i got involved in art and art of all
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sorts whether it was drawing painting sculpting is growing up as a half black half white
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adopted kid into a white family going to a all-white school system and
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experiencing uh lots of adversity through racism and and other things art
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was the thing that i was ex able to essentially escape from reality and find myself in
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in the art and that's when i started to discover that i could draw things in
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accurate detail you know i could dream and then put that on paper and it was very powerful and it was a way for me to
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you know not only feel empowered but also um engage my imagination and then sport
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as well you know sport evens the playing field if you will and so that was essentially the other escape where i
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felt like i wasn't such an outsider on that and so i think when you experience uh
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adversity like that when you're oftentimes the only one in the room um which i think you can relate to even
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even today um you also look out for other outsiders you know you're keeping an eye on other
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groups or other individuals that haven't been invited if you will
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and so you're right i took those uh experiences uh because they never leave
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you no matter how much success you have um you carry some of those chips on your
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shoulder but it doesn't have to be used as a negative uh and so as i made my way through life
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and found myself into in positions of influence i looked out for those
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individuals on that because again when when i grew up in the the late 70s and
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early 80s you were taught to not see color right that was that period of time which
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means how can you be empathetic if your parents or those that are there to
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support you teachers aren't seeing how what your experience is like so
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i love today where that is not the case and you do need to see people for how
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they identify themselves to better equip and empower them to achieve you know
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their hopes and dreams when you're young and you're different in some way we can all probably relate
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to being different in some way when we're younger but not everybody can relate to what it feels like to be racially abused when
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you're young and the confusion the you know the inadequacy whatever it
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might be that that leaves you with can you recall the first time someone racially abused you when you were
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younger absolutely i was actually in kindergarten and it
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started happening every day i was told that the kkk was going to get me now i didn't know what the ku klux klan
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the kkk was but i did know that i was the only person that they were saying it to and then you'd come into school the
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next day and you'd hear this the kkk is going to get you and that's quite
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frightening when you're a child right um and um you're you're in that situation
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alone and you you don't necessarily have the individuals that you could talk
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to about it so essentially you kind of you you bottle that up and that was the first situation and the
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issue oftentimes with with kids certainly at you know
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during that particular time is you identify people through their appearance right
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on that and for me i just hadn't developed the voice to fight with my voice so
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obviously it resulted in a lot of altercations throughout my early life
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and even into my teenage life because it took me a while to develop a voice to be able to combat that with
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words right so that was the beginning but it didn't take long to uh start hearing the n-word
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shortly thereafter in high school uh in grade school in grade school and
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so again though i i share those moments more as a way of of telling people that
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you know make sure you're looking beyond what's on the surface
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this is gets back to great brand building don't just look at the assumptions and
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observations that we all see you got to look beyond that to see how people really are experiencing and
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feeling within their life and you you saw that come to life in some of the campaigns that i worked on right
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stand up speak up campaign with tyrion re was all about fighting racism that you
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act that's invisible you can't see it but the players are hearing it i want this to be uplifting
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but i think it's important to your point to understand where we come from
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and our adversity doesn't need to necessarily be something that holds us back it can be fuel
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for the way we are motivated to get to those points where we're we're
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putting work out in the world or helping others so that they don't have to go through that
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you reference your art in the book as being a bit of an escape for you in the early years what was your art what was it was it
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design was it photography what was your art my parents didn't have much um but um i they really invested in my passion
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for for art and design and i shared a bedroom with my two brothers small bedroom and so
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imagine three beds and then there were three other elements in this bedroom okay one was my
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drafting table and desk where i drew all the time second was a sand filled
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weightlifting set that just sat in the middle and then finally my parents which is um pretty innovative they just
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basically left a wall white and they put a wood frame around the entire wall and they said
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this is your mural and you can paint or draw anything you want on it right and again cramped space i just
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want you to think about like three kids in here so i would draw sports logos
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baseball football hockey logos on this this is one of my obsession with
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branding um and the art of how powerful and and how
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logos and symbols can connect and create so much story and emotion and then the
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other thing i drew all the time was superheroes because i was obsessed with comic books and that idea of
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heroics and athleticism but within that i i started to understand how your art
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can communicate and through those logos and the visual communication that
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i saw within the world of sports started to pique my interest
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in in doing this and i'll take it a step further i got really lucky uh when i was
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15 i got a job in a warehouse at a small publishing company
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just in the warehouse after school and throughout the summer just packing books into boxes but i noticed that there was
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an art department in this place and i'm not sure where i got the courage
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but somehow i did i went in and i i said hey is it possible for me to spend part
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of the time in this art department and part of it in the warehouse you have you have to put yourself out
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there to ask i learned that at that point and they said yes and so suddenly i was shoulder to
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shoulder as a 15 year old with art directors and writers and creative directors and storytellers and then by
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the next year i spent all my time in the art department and
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not only in there doing menial tasks they were having me do illustrations they were having me do page layouts
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again this is pre-computer so um that showed me at an early age
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that you could make a living doing what you love what are you
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passionate about because up until that point i wasn't necessarily sure how you could
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essentially you know make a living doing that so that that was kind of my earliest stage
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in terms of art as commerce if you will was within the publishing arena but what
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it did do is it gave me a shortcut to to start to focus on that so by the time i
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got to college i knew that i wanted to be a designer
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you knew you wanted to be a designer that's right yeah and you went on and studied design
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at college graduated and then the story as i as i heard it is you
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basically get two internships post-graduation you get a call from nike nike said that they've got this urgent
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position you've got to drop everything and come now and start at nike and that starts and i've skipped a process there but yeah that starts the
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an almost three decade career at nike that's right yeah where you move from what was your first role at nike called
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do you remember just a graphic design intern graphic design intern
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to chief marketing officer to vice president of global brand innovation
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over almost 30 years for me this is remarkable for many
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reasons obviously being involved nike is one of those companies and culture and in society that is more than a brand
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they're more than a shoe company for many reasons which we'll talk about but also the really staggering thing is you stayed at a company for 30 almost 30
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years my question there is what is it about you that made you so
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loyal to that company because a lot of people can love their job but they still get that desire to move on and do something awesome
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30 years at one company what is it about you that made you stay in terms of your
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character or whatever yeah i think two two things one is the
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again this this incredible situation where art and sport
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uh came together and this brand certainly mastered the art of art of marketing right
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and and expressing the art that exists in sport and the art of storytelling so
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i didn't have to choose it's like wow you show up to this place and it's like your two passions on full display
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that's number one two it's i often times told people that
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nike was like miniature graduate schools because every two years there was either a world cup
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or a summer olympics so imagine the transformation in terms of innovation in
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terms of new athletes in terms of new platforms and technology in terms of how
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you can engage with consumers and so not to mention what your audience is experiencing during that time in terms
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of how they want to engage with brands and so i always told people it's almost like the
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it was a new slightly new company every two years and to be able to participate in both these
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these you know essentially restarts or revolutions right so that was very
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exciting then i'd say the final thing um is that you know by the time i was a
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teenager and started to see seeing nike's commercials you know nike was really the only brand that was
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putting people of color in their communication really you had to look really hard
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around the arena of of companies to see anyone else doing that and so
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that started to instill in me the power that this brand has um to represent uh
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everyone but and also you know it's in their mission statement to bring inspiration and innovation to every
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athlete so um those are some of the factors that um
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uh kept me engaged for for that long as well as um
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i i have this you know nike's original um slogan was there is no finish line
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before just do it there is no finish line and so if you're you know maybe a perfectionist or
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you're always in pursuit of better and even to your own detriment sometimes
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right never satisfied never finished i was kind of all of those things
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oftentimes i think a lot of creators and makers are right so that was the other
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part of it that you could always keep reaching um for that next
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design or that next story and um and the company's expectations
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were just as high of you as itself you know um and what what's great about
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nike and certainly the nike i grew up with is complacency was the enemy of creativity
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so there was no sitting back right it's kind of that forward lean just like in in athletics
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so that's just a a few of the um aspects i think that um
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just you know created that longevity and loyalty brands companies teams they
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over time learn what's making them successful and lean further and further into that so i'm wondering in your 30
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years at nike what did you see nike realize while you were there and lean more into in terms of the values of the
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organization how it operates from a marketing perspective a culture perspective or whatever do you understand what i'm trying to say like
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sure well first and foremost i think and i you know i i'm a brand advisor now with
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establishments brands and startups and you know what nike had from the beginning is such
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a clear brand house if you will its belief its mission its vision its
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values you know where are you going how are you gonna get there what do you believe what's your promise
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to your audience and what are the characteristics and traits that compose
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your brand in that pursuit um to deliver inspiration and innovation to everyone
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and so it's imagine the power of that in terms of everyone is clear as they walk
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through the door to show up to work why they're there and i say this because a lot of brands can't
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say that a lot of startups haven't even got there yet because they're just trying to perfect their product and get it to
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market and so first and foremost this idea that authenticity and serving the athlete
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is the anchor at all times so even though you're trying to be maybe
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the most influential and coolest brand on earth you know and there's an art to doing that
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um you always have to go back and ensure that um it serves the athlete in the the
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deepest way possible and that's why you know maybe we'll get to this later but um i always use that mantra don't chase
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cool because uh most likely you're not gonna catch it and that idea that your your
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authenticity in terms of what i've learned over and over again keep going back to your authenticity is your
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cultural currency the minute your audience can no longer see your original pursuit
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and every company is a bit different is the day they kind of leave you and go
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go engage and partner with someone else that's in part because you've left yourself right in the pursuit of cool
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you've abandoned your authenticity you talk about that in chapter six of your book emotion by design which is out now
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you talk about the air force one in that chapter as an example of
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success in that realm so why is the air force one shoe an example of nike not chasing cool
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well first and foremost uh it's an innovation that was created in 1982
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that was created to serve the basketball athlete right it wasn't created to make a
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statement in culture it was created to make a statement on the court
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and the designer was obsessed with creating something that gave that athlete an advantage
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and it's really hard to create if you want any chance for a product to
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ultimately become a cultural icon if you will and by the way brands don't get to decide that you know your audience does
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over time then you must the the the inception and creation of that product has to start
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with what's the benefit that you're trying to deliver what's the problem you're trying
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to solve so that's that's part one and the fact that someone like moses malone who was a
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center for the philadelphia 76ers at the time you know won on the court
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in the air force one so that's cool that's proving that innovation
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right out of the gates and so from there as it grew in stature
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what was great about all the teams that played a role across all the different disciplines at nike to bring this to
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market every year is all of the storytelling was rooted in authenticity this colorway came from
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this basketball court this colorway was from this new york outdoor court
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and this player scored x amount of points you know the stories are rooted
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in an emotion like and you as a enthusiast for this sneaker got to take
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part in a little bit of that and as i talk about in the book you know at some point stories no longer
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you know belong only to the brand they get passed down um and so um the air
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force one is interesting because this year again it was the the highest
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selling sneaker out there and so it's very accessible and yet it's
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also you could argue the most um culturally relevant sneaker as well and
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so it's aspirational and so my point is that's by design you're you're ensuring that there's a
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level of the authentic storytelling and that those that you're partnering
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with the ambassadors if you will that show up in your communication um on that
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have a have a a real um connection and affinity
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for the air force one just like kendrick lamar grew up with the nike cortez sneaker
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very real relationship with the shoe that's very much a part of la and so when we partnered with kendrick
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lamar it's coming from a shared passion and that authenticity comes through
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to your your audience right when it doesn't that's when it it feels like
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you're chasing cool um and so i always say just make sure your connections are are really really
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clear to your audience in terms of who you partner with what is the the real
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purpose of your product beyond all the the shiny new um partnerships and other things you can
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do you still have to kind of go back to its its roots
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an example of where a brand has has not done that well
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can you think of a couple top of them well for some reason i thought of that uh that pepsi advert i know it was a tragedy for so many reasons but when
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they got one of those kardashians to kind of hold the pepsi can in that social justice scene that riot scene you
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couldn't as an audience member understand why that kardashian was stood there apparently as the
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cure to a social justice issue holding a kind of it all felt and disjointed inauthentic yeah because you have to be
00:22:03
able to connect what you sell to what the world needs in a specific moment when it comes to
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social impact or social justice so whether you're a food and beverage company an automobile company a sneaker
00:22:16
company if you want to participate in that conversation and you
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know break down barriers and empower people or change the way people feel about a particular issue
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it's for nike you had to speak through the lens of sport that's the connection right and i think
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when you see a brand maybe miss you know sometimes you might be watching tv and you'll see an ad and
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it's clear that this whoever this brand is that they are trying to
00:22:47
create positive change in the world but you can't figure it out and it's not until the end that you see the logo
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you're like okay i don't get the connection and so the point is is like you you have
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to start by saying um is what's happening in this situation
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uh relate to our values and our mission and then if it does
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what new unique insight are we bringing to the conversation that's not already being talked about and then finally the
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the other thing steven is is um because i think sometimes the default is
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we need to say something as a brand when there are so many other ways that you can engage
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and and be a part of the conversation right and um
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just just look at what epic games did in terms of taking the uh revenue from
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fortnite over a period of time and making donations to ukraine relief
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they didn't do an ad but they found a way that was authentic to them
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to you know create an opportunity that's going to help a lot of people um in a
00:23:57
really tough situation right now so that's the thing when i'm talking to to brands it's like that's just number one
00:24:03
it's like storytelling isn't always um the example advertising in terms of
00:24:09
you know social impact statements um and um part one and part two you you must
00:24:16
um ensure that what you want to say
00:24:22
clearly comes through who you are as a brand and what you bring into the world that's why i say
00:24:29
connect what you sell with what the world needs if you can't do that then most likely you need to think about kind
00:24:35
of moving into a different arena so those are when when i see something maybe that's tone deaf or it's not um
00:24:43
you know it's usually because it's just simply not on brand and it's confusing to your audience
00:24:50
much of the the things we'll talk about i'm sure are underpinned by a topic you talk about in the t and in the book in chapter two which is teams and culture
00:24:57
um that kind of underpins everything you referenced how when people walk in the door at nike it's quite clear that there's a they have clarity of culture
00:25:04
in terms of why they're there and what what they're doing there etc you were at nike for almost 30 years um
00:25:10
had a lot of people work underneath you um you observe that organization from various perspectives
00:25:16
how does one build a culture that wins on its objective
00:25:22
and how do they and how does someone keep that culture and police it and protect it from
00:25:27
scale and you know harm and you know yeah no it's it's a it's a great great
00:25:32
point um because you know creative collaboration uh is unique because oftentimes
00:25:40
uh creativity and innovation is a very personal pursuit right it can get pretty
00:25:45
territorial you know you've spent a lot of time on this and you know you're you you want insurance
00:25:52
essentially that you you get credit and so a lot of what you're doing is trying to instill both self-confidence and
00:25:58
self-awareness um so that and you're trying to eliminate kind of the silos and in
00:26:04
independent kind of studios you if you will um i was given
00:26:10
this awesome opportunity to run all the creative functions at nike you know
00:26:15
here's the coolest most influential brand and so my job was to take
00:26:20
advertising and digital marketing and brand design and event marketing take all these groups that have worked
00:26:27
independently for quite some time where the integration took a lot of work with
00:26:34
really long passes and i i used this example frequently and i'm sure it drove
00:26:39
my my teams crazy but i used uh fc barcelona as an example of
00:26:46
radical creative collaboration you know their style of play the tiki taka it's all those short passes there's there's
00:26:53
no waiting everybody's moving around the field at the same time and i would show the team these clips of this you know
00:27:00
pep guardiola's fc barcelona team passing the ball 40 50 60 times in a
00:27:06
game in a row without interruption okay and how does that happen it's because
00:27:12
you could say radical selflessness right the goal is just literally the pursuit is still to put
00:27:19
the goal in uh the net um you need the buy-in and
00:27:25
my job was to make sure that i was there with the empathy needed to recognize the
00:27:30
contributions of everybody but but to also ask people to make the sacrifice
00:27:36
so that we could run faster be more timely create more distinctive work and
00:27:44
ultimately as things are going the consumer expects everything in their life to be connected
00:27:51
right the last thing they would want to hear about is that um there are these really long handoffs
00:27:58
between agencies and brands and departments and that's why the work is kind of disjointed you can't have that
00:28:04
you'll you'll lose your consumer so part of it is it was creating this connected team this this one team that
00:28:12
that operated with great chemistry just like the the greatest um teams in the world on that
00:28:20
and maybe one other piece to that was this this idea of individuality and so for
00:28:27
for that and again i'm telling you i'm sure there's folks out there that got tired of seeing my my um parallels
00:28:35
with the sport of football but the brazil national team was a team that i had you know this this 25-year
00:28:42
relationship with starting as an intern right and what's great about the brazil national team is that um they played
00:28:50
with the zhenga style which means to sway and zynga is is you know the influences
00:28:56
of that style of play comes from capoeira you know brazilian martial arts and samba
00:29:03
um but um it emphasized uh the individual eccentricities of the players um we've
00:29:10
all watched brazil over the years we've been enthralled by them and sometimes they drive us a bit mad because maybe
00:29:17
there's a bit of disorganization but at the end of the day they've won five world cups more
00:29:22
than any other team and that's because they value the diversity and ex the the
00:29:28
perspective and experience and expertise of each individual player and so yes there's structure that team
00:29:36
um yes there's an expectation that there's a level of precision but they
00:29:42
allow improv they allow spontaneity to reveal opportunity throughout those games and
00:29:49
that's why oftentimes anywhere you go in the world it's someone's second favorite team
00:29:55
beyond the club that they support and so that was another point of inspiration that i use to lead these
00:30:03
these massive teams right you're talking about just the scale of of nike in terms
00:30:10
of the output of of creative around the world you needed to still have a high degree
00:30:17
of operational excellence to run something like that but i wanted to make sure that
00:30:24
you were incentivized to take risks you had the space to be able to
00:30:31
present ideas that may not be on the plan and you had a receptive executive team
00:30:37
that was willing to hear from you and that's why there's so many examples of the book
00:30:42
um of work that wasn't briefed of work that was just a conversation
00:30:48
with a couple people who were empowered to visualize that idea and then put it out in the world many of
00:30:54
them um ideas that had great scale and are still around today so
00:31:02
that's just a little insight in terms of how i looked at building that chemistry
00:31:07
how did you incentivize risk or disincentivize risk adversion
00:31:13
so it's a great call and again i i'm still figuring it out
00:31:18
um because think about it you're you're asking individuals um
00:31:26
right brain and left brain thinkers to essentially you're saying i said this often we're
00:31:32
going to develop four different concepts this quarter
00:31:38
and they're going to be outside of our normal workload because again we have to deliver the business front and center we
00:31:45
can't get distracted from that but alongside of that we're gonna visualize and prototype four ideas but
00:31:51
you know what only one of them probably will have a chance so that's
00:31:57
not for everyone right oftentimes people only want to work on things that have
00:32:02
almost 100 certainty of finding their way in the world you know
00:32:07
and i had to condition everyone to ensure that they were were comfortable taking
00:32:13
the big swings and part of that is seeing the end results like again let's look at the last two
00:32:21
years you see this particular concept that is now in you know 500 stores around the world
00:32:28
you know it's one example but the house of hoops example we had a conversation about
00:32:35
how could we create a store specific to basketball
00:32:40
that had the same level of passion and energy that a kid's room would have
00:32:46
if they loved basketball you go into a kid's room they would have posters and so much inspiration and objects and
00:32:53
pictures that really express their passion and yet how come you go into a store oftentimes and
00:33:00
it might just be shoes on on a wall and you're not feeling the story and the legacy of that
00:33:06
and so rendering that up and knowing that in three days you could have an audience
00:33:13
with the president of the company and not only that you could get a go no go
00:33:18
that quickly of well let's let's try this concept in the wild and then lo and
00:33:24
behold in less than two years you have 300 of those stores around the world so
00:33:31
all you need is a couple of those examples to say okay well i'd like to participate in that
00:33:37
and i buy into this idea that not everything we're going to do is is going to make it
00:33:43
but why i say that i'm still trying to figure it out is is it is hard to convince some people
00:33:50
that failure is what leads to success that and if i can use this example it's
00:33:56
not in the book but it's literally my favorite commercial ad of all time and it's
00:34:02
michael jordan's 9 000 shots and amazing
00:34:07
uh commercial from 1997 and the widening kennedy agency sat down with him and
00:34:13
learned that michael had missed 9 000 shots 26 times he was asked to take the
00:34:19
game-winning shot and he missed and he said yet i failed over and over
00:34:25
again but that's why i succeed and that's the spirit of
00:34:31
risk-taking in the innovation space you need you need to take the shot
00:34:36
because even if you miss it success will come down the road and so that's what i try to instill
00:34:43
uh with my team quick one we bring in eight people a month to watch these conversations live
00:34:49
here in the studio when we're here in the uk and when we're in la if you want to be one of those people all you've got
00:34:54
to do is hit subscribe chapter three of your book the title is never play it safe play to win which is
00:34:59
very much in line with what you're talking about there and i think one of the more interesting concepts which which was mentioned in the book
00:35:06
which i could really relate to was how you say that some of nike's boldest ideas
00:35:12
came when the team had no time or resources and actually that's really what founded
00:35:18
my company to be honest because uh we ran out of money so all of the conventional marketing um channels were
00:35:24
out of budget so we were left to figure something else out and that's when we started thinking about social media in
00:35:30
2012 and it was free we could put time in and get a big return and off we went and
00:35:36
that started my company which now you know ended up making 700 million whatever it is this year it'll make
00:35:42
um and that was when we ran out of money our best ideas came so when i read that i thought oh this is interesting
00:35:48
so so true so often uh and also i put a yeah a timeline in a budget um or lack
00:35:54
of budget but a strict timeline can be amazing right do you always do timelines
00:35:59
i was going to ask you that as well do you always make sure projects have timelines not necessarily but um but i
00:36:05
like to put a timeline on how quickly you visualize a conversation um that is i can't say this enough and
00:36:12
if i have one suggestion to smaller brands or even startups as
00:36:18
they're starting to expand it's like when you have a conversation like build a either build internally or have a
00:36:25
relationship with an agency that can take your conversations and the ideas you have and quickly visualize them
00:36:32
in a visceral way so and you've heard it before a picture says a thousand words
00:36:38
and the problem oftentimes with businesses that maybe are a bit uh bureaucratic
00:36:45
is you and i could have a conversation about a cool idea and then three months go by and we see each other again it's
00:36:51
like you know what happened to that yeah i don't know well no one took ownership of it one and two
00:36:57
i would walk out of those conversations over and over again i'd walk over to the visualization team
00:37:03
and i said let's let's come back to the team let's surprise them in three days
00:37:10
with either an image or a short gif or a film or even
00:37:16
often times an app prototype that was working if i didn't do that um then
00:37:23
more often than not you might forget that the conversations ever happened so i went on that tangent just to say
00:37:30
um i think it's incredibly effective these brands large and small
00:37:36
that have visualization capability um and that everyone understands why
00:37:43
that's a competitive advantage um and so many of the concepts
00:37:48
that were brought to life in this book um you know came out of the speed at which
00:37:55
we brought the idea to life it wasn't well our agency's too busy
00:38:01
so maybe two months from now we can talk to him about you know this this this new um nft
00:38:09
id we have no it's like how about start to riff on some of those ideas
00:38:14
um so that you're first to play in that in that sector on that so i guess and maybe if i can
00:38:21
just you know there's one story in this book which was the the ronaldinho one of
00:38:26
my favorite footballers of all time but yeah we were launching a a new boot and
00:38:32
um there was no time and quite frankly there really wasn't a budget or it wasn't talked about right
00:38:39
but um born out of this urgency was this very
00:38:45
resourceful approach to storytelling which was to shoot ronaldinho with a video camera
00:38:52
essentially getting these new soccer boots football boots on the pitch and then proceeding to do that old game
00:38:59
that we all played growing up of crossbar where you're sitting kind of you know just under midfield and you're
00:39:05
trying to kick the ball and hit that top of the crossbar only in this video ronaldinho is able to do it you know two
00:39:12
three different times without the ball hitting the ground and i'll leave it to the audience to figure out if it was
00:39:18
real or not the point is is that you know and not only did we not have time but um
00:39:25
there was a young platform that had just started to emerge called youtube
00:39:31
and yeah the team dropped this particular video of ronaldinho uh on the platform
00:39:37
and um lo and behold it becomes the first brand film to reach
00:39:43
a million views right and quite frankly all because there was no money no time
00:39:49
and the team had to be unbelievably resourceful to to create something that would make
00:39:55
people want to watch and that gets back to emotion by design i want to emphasize this is that
00:40:02
i think the best brands ask the question how do i want this work
00:40:08
to make the consumer feel about themselves and make them feel empowered to go and
00:40:14
do great things does the work kind of engage and stir emotions in that
00:40:20
way where people feel that they can go out and do it or not does it create indifference or
00:40:25
because like look there's and i'm not saying the speed at which we're having conversations now with
00:40:32
between brands and audiences is in real time and you're not going to be able to create everything as a hit you know
00:40:39
there's not enough time money etc um but you should have someone in the room
00:40:45
that's representing your brand story that's representing
00:40:50
um the emotional qualities that can be released through your work because if
00:40:57
that person isn't in the room and it's just someone looking at it as content that needs to be distributed
00:41:05
that that's that's not very human the stronger the emotional connections the
00:41:10
bigger status your brand is going to have most likely in culture and therefore
00:41:17
the more opportunities you would have to step beyond the business to have a real
00:41:23
impact in the world on on some of the most pressing issues of our time
00:41:28
so i do believe there's a process to to to achieving that to create a strong
00:41:35
emotional connection with someone else i'm presuming you have to take a strong emotional stance yourself often so i'm
00:41:41
just thinking about the things that have revoked the strongest emotional connections with anything i do the things that i've evoked the strongest
00:41:46
emotional connections with this podcast in its audience are strong emotional stories
00:41:52
but that when you do that when you avoid indifference you are um
00:41:58
putting yourself in line for potential criticism and attacks and you're going to polarize people some people are going
00:42:04
to love and hate you how important has that been for nike and how important is it for
00:42:10
a person starting a podcast or a business or leading a team or whatever else for a brand like nike it was
00:42:16
you know look at the athletes that represented the brand um early on i mean they were
00:42:23
were all rebels you know within their own sports and and so
00:42:28
you know this idea of def and you know having a a maxim within the company that
00:42:35
was defy convention right so your your your values kind of say it's like yeah
00:42:41
there are going to be things we do with conviction that may be polarizing
00:42:46
but it is the deep belief we have in those things and as long as we always relate them
00:42:52
back to sport and this this idea of of you know
00:42:58
serving the athlete then we're willing to go there um and
00:43:05
if we're not clearly tethered to you know what we say and what we do
00:43:11
then we would deserve the critique and the criticism so i think you can for any
00:43:18
small or large company that's kind of you know that's wrestling with this that maybe wants to kind of go beyond um just
00:43:26
the transactions and truly move into that arena where you really are having
00:43:32
real relationships with your audience that their affinity for you comes from
00:43:37
the fact that they're getting meaningful benefits whether those are mental or physical
00:43:43
that are allowing them to progress in life you know when you reach that status
00:43:49
i believe indifference isn't an option right now i believe we need to look to
00:43:55
brands that have that level of success and again it's not about scale because there's plenty of small brands you know
00:44:02
mom and pop brands that are doing great things through their business to affect the
00:44:08
lives of people underserved communities but again so much of what we're talking about is authenticity even even
00:44:16
doing this book it's it's like well you know how much social media should i do and
00:44:21
on this platform does that seem like i'm inauthentic and like i as so at the end of the day um because i'm driving people
00:44:29
crazy with these questions is that because i you know i'm not the most public person right but but as long
00:44:36
as i speak to from the the center uh and the anchor of
00:44:43
the power of creativity in business and its ability to change the world and make that connection clear
00:44:51
and then if people are pissed off about that then then it is what it is um but more often than not look at some
00:44:58
of the most successful brands and they're they're it's it's made their own
00:45:03
business successful it's accelerated their growth and so that's where i get
00:45:08
into this um you know yeah our primary goal certainly for a public company is to
00:45:14
drive growth both from a brand and business standpoint
00:45:19
but more and more i believe that within that you have to integrate this
00:45:25
you know being a great corporate citizen um and using your platform to to to
00:45:32
you know provide your innovation and your inspiration to those that quite frankly
00:45:38
don't have the access and opportunity to get it how do i find which story to tell because if i'm if i'm running this
00:45:44
podcast and i'm thinking okay i need to do the logo the branding i need to position it in a way that's going to be
00:45:49
this is typically the way the brain thinks it's trying it's the outcome is success and it's trying
00:45:55
to figure out which story to tell to get me to success so how do i make this podcast successful how do you go about knowing
00:46:03
where and how to find that story in your business brand team whatever it is um
00:46:08
and which one is the right one to tell to get the outcome i'm looking for which is success the success to me is that it's not
00:46:15
overly packaged the success to me is that the transparency and of authenticity of
00:46:22
the conversations and that um there's a rawness to it and that's
00:46:29
that is branding sometimes it's the the lack of
00:46:34
design if you will is the very thing that makes something successful
00:46:40
versus there's there's uh you know there's go-to um
00:46:46
it's always the same questions and so that that's the one thing i i really appreciate about what you're doing is
00:46:53
this again back to this this being human um as as a
00:46:59
um being human and creating emotion um and part of that is just due through
00:47:06
people can you know see themselves in you or us um
00:47:11
and that the yeah i mean that that's that's what i say it's less about um sometimes uh
00:47:19
the traditional aspects of of branding which is uh i want to make sure the
00:47:25
frame of every podcast has the color gold and it must you know so and again
00:47:31
i'm saying this as as someone who's oftentimes been pretty rigid in terms of
00:47:37
to grow some of these businesses to own a brand color if you will
00:47:43
uh and you pick your pick your favorite brand there's a level of repetition
00:47:48
needed um to build that kind of equity in a typeface in a color
00:47:55
in a in a logo you need to build that brand frame right oftentimes startups almost skip
00:48:02
that it's like no go back it's like really build your brand uh identifiers your brand elements right because that's
00:48:09
your picture frame and the stronger the picture frame the more the picture in it is going to
00:48:14
shine the weaker that frame then your the picture within it is kind
00:48:20
of it's it's just it's not on a on solid ground if that makes sense so that's why in the
00:48:27
book i talk about the picture in the frame and ensuring that the frame never
00:48:32
outshines the picture that's what i'm getting at it's like you're when you're thinking about brand
00:48:38
brand elements and how best to express those through the different platforms
00:48:44
it's the right question but making sure that they don't take away from
00:48:50
the actual storytelling within it which is the picture which happens a lot for me so some things that
00:48:57
we do intentionally to try and communicate the i guess the heart of what we're doing on
00:49:04
this podcast for example in the branding so one of the things is we always make sure it feels like home
00:49:10
yeah so it's in whether in l.a or in london it's actually shot in my actual kitchen on a very similar looking table
00:49:16
people are actually surprised it looks exactly the same but we always shoot it at home because i think the conversations we're having
00:49:23
are homely ones they're the ones people have at home they're not ones that you know we could we could go to this in a massive studio but it wouldn't be in
00:49:29
line with our values the other thing is it's dark in here so that speaks to the subject matter sometimes it speaks to
00:49:35
secrets the other thing is obviously the title of the podcast is the diary of a ceo and you you ask yourself what one
00:49:41
might keep in a diary it tends to be things that are a little bit deeper yeah and there's all these small things you
00:49:46
know we even i mean we spend many days this week me and jack debating removing the microphones because it kills
00:49:53
what the humanness of authentic communication so we're thinking about ways where we can have the microphones
00:49:58
hanging where you we can remove the barrier and all these small things i guess is that the frame is
00:50:04
when you think about brand elements you're talking more about like colors and things no i think that's the frame as well you know when i walk into a
00:50:11
space i'm a bit obsessive compulsive about like design and details you know and i
00:50:16
walk in i look at the carpet and what type of chairs and um like the display case and what are
00:50:22
the objects you know and whether i go into a restaurant or the hotel i stayed in last night you know and i'm
00:50:29
i'm i'm soaking all that up but that isn't the that isn't the actual experience that
00:50:35
isn't the actual um story look you're revealing the story um of this podcast
00:50:41
through all these elements but but it's that's still the the story
00:50:47
frame and is where i'm going and then um the delivery of you know through your voice
00:50:54
and these conversations is what sits within it but my but yes those identifiers those brand elements um play
00:51:02
a huge role because every one of them i guess what i'm saying what i like
00:51:07
about when i walked in is it's like everything was considered it was nothing arbitrary
00:51:13
because what a miss for for some some brands large and small
00:51:20
when they don't have a culture that um cares deeply about those details
00:51:27
and i think the best ones do and certainly when you think of some of the the the
00:51:34
most successful fashion brands like you you know there's just an ethic
00:51:40
inside that any any detail large or small um will be intentional so and you know
00:51:47
that's does design you know emotion by design the word design is really about intention
00:51:53
be intentional and look to reveal something about yourself
00:51:59
through this round table you know with the marble top it's like it all communicates um
00:52:05
trust me i drive my my wife and my kids absolutely mad right because they've had to live with
00:52:12
this guy who's just constantly moving stuff around and you know is the clock is the bookcase
00:52:20
like you know curated perfectly are the books in the right um so
00:52:27
if i have a problem it's in some some ways that it's um uh i i've i'm
00:52:34
you know searching for perfection too often and what can happen is you start to
00:52:41
strip the soul and personality out of something and it's been great that i've had people throughout my
00:52:47
career to balance that that's back to this idea of creative tension like if
00:52:52
there's a two startup founders you know it's i love it when it's someone's it's
00:52:58
someone represents the art and someone represents the science you know someone's more analytical
00:53:04
in their decision-making process and others maybe a little bit more non-linear maybe a little bit more right
00:53:11
brain thinking um and i love that tension because when you
00:53:17
don't have that it's like one side starts to kind of creep up and that's why i got
00:53:23
into you know i'm also the branding instructor at the university of oregon's graduate school of business and these
00:53:29
are you know i'm in front of mainly folks that want to become future gms
00:53:34
entrepreneurs product developers you name it right and but i'm there to say it's like
00:53:41
you know yes we're going to go through how you create a brand plan and a brand strategy we're going to do this but
00:53:46
you're also going to work on brand identity and don't worry about if you you can't if
00:53:52
you don't think you're creative because that's i i just that kills me when i hear that
00:53:58
the application of creativity yes it's oftentimes reserved for people that have
00:54:04
created a fluency through experience and education whether it's an architect
00:54:10
a coder etc but the creation that the site the inception
00:54:17
of an idea we can all participate in that like the brainstorming of an idea
00:54:23
we can all participate because what happens oftentimes is people say well i can't draw i'm not creative
00:54:29
and it's like well that's that's only part of the equation you know i've i've done i don't know
00:54:36
hundred a couple hundred i've led a couple hundred brainstorm sessions over the years
00:54:42
big and small and i've never said at the beginning of the brainstorm session um i want all the non-creative people to
00:54:48
leave the room right now because we're going to start to concept and be creative no it's again it's
00:54:56
writing left brain thinkers working to deliver working together to conceive great
00:55:02
things i'm really compelled by and i talk to my team a lot about this about this and you've mentioned it twice now this the
00:55:08
importance of details from your your 30 years of nike how did you make sure teams cared about
00:55:15
the detail is it just continually reminding them is there something else we can do to make sure that our teams
00:55:20
and the people we work with and ourselves even are really valuing the smallest of details
00:55:26
yeah i do i do believe in publishing whether it's you want to call it an
00:55:32
ethos a manifesto a set of principles where you clearly articulate
00:55:39
what your design standards are or your creative standards i've always believed that and they they
00:55:47
can change over time but i'm a big believer in publishing um thought publishing
00:55:54
ideals that that you have and i'll go even further um because what i learned
00:56:00
over the years is is i was doing a little bit too much self authorship when i really started to manage teams i'd go
00:56:07
away and i'd come back and it's like here's the the six principles of of you know
00:56:15
obsessing the details that we're going to focus on this year but i didn't involve them in authoring those so it's
00:56:21
like publish what you believe invite folks into the process that have
00:56:29
maybe slightly different opinions than you do and then complete this build the
00:56:34
consensus and then make sure everyone has it so that clearly as you drive down
00:56:40
the road and you're looking at restaurant architecture you know business
00:56:46
building architecture it's pretty clear that people just decided like it was good enough and
00:56:53
no one will ever you know who cares if it's going to win the point isn't to win awards the point is take something as
00:57:00
far as you can um to contribute something great to
00:57:07
you know to society whether it is a building or um
00:57:13
a book or this bottle design um you know the amount of thought that went into
00:57:18
that i think that's the typeface helvetica i believe and the choices made
00:57:23
to go upper and lower case like that's all intentional you know to have it black on white
00:57:31
um human fuel yeah well and that's the thing i mean you have to start with
00:57:36
naming right and one of the hardest pursuits is naming a product or naming a
00:57:42
company because it's such a crowded space but man if you get the name right
00:57:48
it will save you millions in marketing so if i was to ask you now and i used to
00:57:53
say right i have a team of 100 000 people and i want them to be great marketeers but we're only allowed to give them
00:57:58
three guiding principles which they will take with them these can just be philosophies ideas whatever but
00:58:05
we can only give them three guiding principles to hope to make them successful what would those top three
00:58:11
guiding principles be i'll start with the three characteristics um that i would say it's like we're
00:58:18
gonna we're gonna have the dominant traits of empathy curiosity
00:58:24
and let's call it courage or risk taking like those those three traits is what we're going
00:58:30
to be known for and for empathy you know to me within the marketing process is is you know the principle
00:58:38
that i talk about in the book is you know see what others see find what others don't
00:58:43
the best marketing teams and the best communication teams are able to peel back the layers get
00:58:49
under the surface of a human being a city or a community
00:58:55
and find the deeper insight or truth that resides there and then they reveal
00:59:01
it through storytelling it's back to the michael jordan example how many how many more
00:59:07
ads could you do about him dunking a basketball so empathy is like go deeper
00:59:12
whether you're designing a product it's like you know you're you're you're revealing the the the true
00:59:20
problem that needs to be solved you're not just observing some behavior and
00:59:25
making um you know uh a you know hypothesis off that you're
00:59:31
actually spending the time to go deeper and deeper into that and that's that idea of see what others see find what
00:59:37
others don't curiosity is that idea of getting outside yourself because
00:59:43
it's one thing to have the insight right and the problem that you're going
00:59:48
to solve and you're clear on that but now you need to reveal it to the world and oftentimes you need
00:59:55
uh points of inspiration coming into the process and that's why you look at
01:00:01
nike air probably the greatest innovation in the history of of sneakers right uh
01:00:08
air air air bags and air cushioning and sneakers well that came from an engineer at nasa
01:00:16
who was experimenting with creating an innovation for astronaut helmets for
01:00:21
space exploration and he brought that to nike and that led to nike air that's my point about find
01:00:27
inspiration outside of your sector and that's the idea of bringing the outside
01:00:32
in so that's the curiosity thing outside uh get outside yourself and then
01:00:38
you know finally is that idea of of you know we don't play it safe we play to win
01:00:44
um we want to def we we're not comfortable with the status quo
01:00:50
um and we want people comfortable kind of pursuing what's next
01:00:57
not just getting complacent and delivering products services
01:01:03
stories in the way everyone else is so we also want to be a team that that is
01:01:09
obsessive about um every aspect of
01:01:14
branding you know and so think of how powerful that can become is
01:01:20
if you have a team and that they're deeply empathetic to
01:01:25
who they serve like they get great at learning and asking questions
01:01:30
they're unbelievable uh unbelievably curious and always looking
01:01:36
beyond what's in front of them to see what else they can because so much of innovation is about transference you
01:01:42
take something from here you bring it into your sector and you you you change the game and then
01:01:48
and then but and then the risk-taking thing is not feeling like you have a team that has to ask for permission to
01:01:55
use their imagination i think that's really important because if you're in a if you develop a culture
01:02:02
where people have to ask um to think people have to get approval
01:02:09
um then you're not i i don't believe you would be known as a leading innovator in
01:02:16
in your space on that so those are just a few but i i just think it's also i'll
01:02:21
tell you this when i was cmo i did an informal poll with
01:02:27
my the marketing leaders and i'm biased of course but
01:02:32
i felt and i believe this is the best marketing team in the world i said what are the top two characteristics you look
01:02:39
for in any marketer that you're interviewing for a particular job
01:02:45
within the nike marketing team and the top two um traits that
01:02:50
came to the top from everybody was curiosity and collaborative
01:02:56
i mean to a person and it was kind of tied i want someone who's
01:03:01
always searching for inspiration is curious about about their teammates about the consumer
01:03:08
about technology entertainment art
01:03:14
and then i want someone who who can play with others right and um that you can
01:03:20
feel that sense that this person is um has conviction um you know believes in
01:03:26
themselves but can play within a in a team um and those were the two that that
01:03:33
rose to the top and and um you know and i i think that's true today
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significant month for you in your life does it ring a bell yeah absolutely yes
01:04:48
i was sitting at home uh actually reading the new york times an actual newspaper remember those
01:04:56
um and uh yeah i got a a dm uh through 23andme i had i had done the 23andme
01:05:02
thing 23andme for anybody that doesn't yeah so you you submit your dna um and it's
01:05:10
along with ancestry.com um it gives you kind of your family tree
01:05:15
you can figure out others that have joined 23andme if you're related to them uh and um
01:05:22
you know a variety of other things in terms of what you might be susceptible for from a medical
01:05:28
standpoint or other and so you know as some as an adoptee and
01:05:34
growing up not knowing who my parents were or who my families were
01:05:40
having lots of questions my whole life but basically i'd gotten to the point where it is what it is and i'm just
01:05:46
moving on with my life right um so i'm sitting around and i get this
01:05:51
this dm and and through 23andme and and i usually just ignore those because sometimes it's like hey you have a uh
01:05:58
predisposition to like uh breadcrust i mean you get these emails right and it's like oh and great another 23andme notice
01:06:06
but i look in it and this note says um wow i had no idea i had an uncle
01:06:12
on this uh or in life and so i looked at it and then um i
01:06:18
looked at the name and i went to you know as you do i went to facebook
01:06:23
right and i looked this person up and i was like whoa so the person went
01:06:28
to my high school the person was also a graphic designer
01:06:34
which was my what i got a degree in they had a degree and as we did my wife and i did a little
01:06:41
bit more sleuthing it turned out that this wasn't my niece this was my
01:06:46
sister and this meant that her mom was you know not my sister her mom was my
01:06:54
mom and so wow that that was a lot right and that
01:07:00
opened up uh an unbelievable door over the last year of meeting my birth
01:07:07
families and for the first time being able to answer questions like why do i look the
01:07:13
way i do why do i have this why is my voice the way it is and why do
01:07:19
i have certain characteristics or passions and as i dove deeper into it um
01:07:24
you know two things started to unfold one is the the amount of art and design
01:07:32
um practice going back generations on both sides right not to mention my
01:07:38
sister you know as a graphic designer my birth mom was a long time flight attendant but
01:07:44
would spend all of her down time at art museums from around the world my birth grandmother was a painter right
01:07:52
and there was art and design on my father's side but kind of going back to where we started
01:07:58
this conversation right about race and search for identity
01:08:04
and not necessarily growing up with the black experience at least the
01:08:10
positive one and to come all the way to today and have spent the last year
01:08:17
diving very deep into my african-american heritage
01:08:22
going all the way back pre-civil american civil war and um
01:08:29
and just i i i can't tell you what a life bonus this has been um i can't put
01:08:35
a dollar amount on it to be able to start to
01:08:40
put the pieces together for the first time
01:08:46
because up until now you're you're manufacturing a lot of that as someone
01:08:51
who's who's adopted right um and um so yeah it's just uh it's it's
01:08:58
just been an amazing run they don't all you know reuniting with birth families
01:09:03
doesn't you know the percentages aren't always high that is going to be a positive one and in this case
01:09:09
um everyone has been just i mean unbelievably generous with their time thoughtful
01:09:17
and i have i could put together a museum of all the objects and
01:09:23
pictures and um memorabilia from the generations of these families um you
01:09:30
know now and it's just been uh it's just been amazing and i wanted to make sure i i captured some of that in the book
01:09:37
to to honor them as well and i want to say something too it's like
01:09:43
to learn that your grandfather was the only black man in his graduating class in college in
01:09:50
1955. can you imagine what that was like in america in 1955
01:09:57
to be the only black person let alone there was no women in that class
01:10:03
so um yeah i i just look at that and uh i i start to feel where some of my
01:10:11
um drive uh to to you know create things that stand out um do
01:10:19
things a bit differently and um and now i have a backstop if you will
01:10:25
um a history that maybe i didn't uh get to draw from
01:10:30
uh in the past you must have first met
01:10:36
your and got to hug your biological mother what was that day like yeah i mean it it's again you're you're
01:10:43
talking about a time when you know my birth parents were 17 when they had me and
01:10:48
you know you've got two kids one's black one one's white in minnesota
01:10:55
in 1970 that's just not acceptable you can imagine right
01:11:01
in high school so and my birth mom right had to go live in a
01:11:08
home as you did as a teenager if you got pregnant and to have me and then had to
01:11:14
give me up okay so and then keeps that a secret
01:11:20
her whole life until that day when her daughter said
01:11:25
i have to ask you something you know i i know i have a brother
01:11:31
so two months later after lots of discussions kind of
01:11:36
getting comfortable getting to know i we fly out there and yeah i mean it's um as you're
01:11:44
i'm trying to play it cool because that's me just always trying to be be um
01:11:50
you know cool about things and um but really it's it's just like
01:11:55
how's this gonna go i mean because the last thing you want to be is rejected but now that you've crossed that point
01:12:01
there's you this is a new experience that you know you've never had so what's great that my birth mom did is
01:12:08
i i as we parked and we met like at a park acro on a lake with with them
01:12:16
is she just cause i didn't know if i could make the first move but she came running up and just
01:12:21
gave me a big hug we didn't even say anything and that was the beginning of that the first time i saw her in person
01:12:27
and it was just uh yeah i mean um
01:12:32
you know uh it's just i'll be honest i'm a happier
01:12:38
person
01:12:53
so you know and it's not that i was i i've gotten so
01:13:00
much so much i have such a wonderful family and kids and such an amazing career and having
01:13:07
the opportunity to share it with everybody um but to experience this at
01:13:12
this stage of my life is just i mean it's just amazing
01:13:21
thank you it's been a real honor and uh you know you you've inspired me tremendously for so many reasons and you've been a real
01:13:28
sort of affirming uh and reaffirming force reading your book emotion by design um
01:13:34
has taught me a lot of the things that i did right and i didn't even know i did write and then a lot of the things that i definitely could have done better in certain areas of my life and even you
01:13:41
know i can say i'm almost 30 years old as a marketeer but you've illuminated certain things
01:13:48
that i i don't think people talk about enough especially considering the way that the world is heading and it's and
01:13:54
how you know creativity is being sometimes talked about in a secondary sense to things like ai and data and and
01:14:02
we're losing the human in things but not just in marketing in the world as well there's an optimization of our lives
01:14:08
driven by data which is which is sacrificing the love and the art and the beauty of what it is to be a human and
01:14:13
that's also the broader point that i got from the book is and from you today is is the importance of not losing that and
01:14:20
yeah we do have a closing tradition on this podcast which is the previous guest leaves a
01:14:26
question for the next guest is there something right now
01:14:33
that you know you're doing wrong but you haven't fixed yet if so
01:14:38
how will you get unstuck wow
01:14:44
now we're going deep the election in america
01:14:49
um in 2016 really
01:14:54
damaged the relationship with my parents my parents who adopted me
01:15:00
because i'm you know uh obviously being um
01:15:06
you can see through the work that i'm very much um
01:15:11
you know on the left if someone wanted to uh you know categorize me as such and i
01:15:18
think you could cater categorize my parents maybe on the right and
01:15:23
just through all the um uh just the divisiveness of
01:15:29
america and the division between political parties as
01:15:35
well as um you know the citizens of america unfortunately that is where
01:15:42
uh my own family went right because um i don't share those values and so
01:15:48
it's not right right now um and i'm not one to to
01:15:54
allow something to just you know not be fixed so
01:16:00
while i don't have the answers to that i can say and i'm revealing maybe too much
01:16:05
about my life because on the one hand i've met my birth families and i have these two new families i'm
01:16:12
really enjoying and engaging with and then on the other side i need to figure out
01:16:18
how to get beyond the politics um that exists today back to this idea of
01:16:24
getting past the ideology to have you know to go back to why we're
01:16:30
connected in the first place through emotion you know
01:16:35
um and so i'm gonna see everybody uh in another month and um just try to create
01:16:42
a create a different type of um you know relationship um that is respectful on
01:16:50
both sides so um i don't know if that fully answers the question you have it perfectly but
01:16:56
it's uh it's a hell of a thing what's happened um you know over over the last four or five
01:17:02
years and how um it's it's what started within politics um just
01:17:09
kind of moved into families and in some cases it's broken them up
01:17:16
over um you know political views and such so it's less
01:17:21
about me being right or others being right it's just trying to find like what is the common kind of
01:17:28
you know cause that we can kind of at least agree on on that
01:17:34
so perfectly answered and very very very important topic that people don't talk about enough because it i think a lot of
01:17:40
families will relate to that division especially generationally right so kids and their parents don't tend to be part of the same
01:17:46
left right values uh and i guess there's empathy needed because someone said to me one day which i've
01:17:52
never forgotten which is if you were if you were them you would be making the decisions and
01:17:57
believe what they believed and it's a really simple concept but that strikes empathy into me so i've had like a bit
01:18:03
of a falling out with my mom lately and it's because of some you know in my view it's the way she behaves in it
01:18:08
whatever um and and just coming back to that point of like well if i was my mom and i'd been born in nigeria and i'd had
01:18:15
the experiences of racism that she had growing up and then moving to the uk being the only black woman in a village
01:18:20
called plymouth in the uk having your car burned and all of these the things that have made her so bitter
01:18:26
if i if i was her i would be doing exactly what she's doing even and her son doesn't like what she's doing but if
01:18:32
i was her and i'd had her brain her genetics her experiences i would be doing the same thing
01:18:38
and for me that kind of has created an empathy which allows me to try and keep building the bridge in you know an extended branch so yeah
01:18:44
you make a great point and i and i think like you i never wanted i would see i would hear about these estranged
01:18:50
relationships where people didn't talk family members for years and i was like well that's never going to be me
01:18:57
um but you can fall into it especially when there's uh in in the there's there's polarizing things
01:19:04
happening in the world to your point where there's there's um there's bound to be generational differences in terms
01:19:10
of you know the eyes you look through so um but um that's also good advice that
01:19:16
that you have there it does get back to empathy and practicing what i preach
01:19:21
thank you greg thank you appreciate it as you might know crafted one of the sponsors of this podcast and crafted are
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01:19:36
it represents courage it represents ambition it represents being calm and loving and respectful and nurturing
01:19:43
while also being the antithesis of that seemingly the antithesis of that which is
01:19:48
sometimes a little bit aggressive with my goals and determined and courageous and brave the really wonderful thing
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01:20:06
[Music]
01:20:23
you
