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Brandi: 00:03 Hey guys, I’m Brandi Sea.

Michelle: 00:05 And I, Michelle.

Brandi: 00:06 And you’re listening to episode 85 of Design Speaks.

Michelle: 00:10 Welcome to it. On this episode we have a very, very fun guest.

Brandi: 00:15 I, I’m like, I’m a little bit speechless at the moment. I’m, I have been a fan of our guest for go and probably 10 years. Going on 10 years. Scott Belsky.

Michelle: 00:28 He’s famous, you have to say his first and last name, Scott Belsky.

Brandi: 00:31 Scott Belsky. I’m like, I don’t know any other person that has fancy first and last names. So Scott, I first heard about Scott probably back in 2007. 5?

Michelle: 00:47 Okay.

Brandi: 00:47 I Dunno, 5 between 5 and 7 when he was starting at. I heard about him through Behance. So everybody in the creative world at this point I think knows of Behance. It’s an online portfolio. So, um, he was the co-founder of Behance. Um, I started using his products, the, the, uh, action method stuff when I was art directing the action method planner. And he had at the time he had like software and stuff and he has, he has a couple of books. One is called Making Ideas Happen, um, and the other one is called The Messy Middle. We’re gonna. We’re gonna talk to him today about The Messy Middle, but he is currently, um serving as adobe’s chief product officer and executive vice president of creative cloud.

Michelle: 01:35 Which is kind of a big deal if you didn’t know that.

Brandi: 01:37 Yeah. Yeah. So if you aren’t a designer listening to this podcast, I’m going to let Michelle explain why that’s a big deal.

Michelle: 01:46 Oh Gosh. You’re putting me on the spot.

Brandi: 01:47 Yeah cuz the non-designer voice. Go ahead.

Michelle: 01:49 That’s a big deal because one, adobe is just a really big software company. Like it’s huge and we use it at work. I know how much I know how much a creative cloud costs.

Brandi: 02:01 Yeah, and they acquired Behance.

Michelle: 02:02 Yes. So they acquired Behance. So they went from absolutely nothing to something real big about that in the interview.

Brandi: 02:10 They were, they were a little, they are a thing in order for do you know, to be noticed by adobe to begin with. But Scott Belsky is very inspiring. He is, he’s very engaging. And um, I hope you guys really get a lot out of this. He had 30 to 45 minutes and I think we milked every last second.

Michelle: 02:29 I’m counting down my fingers. So enjoy this interview and pass it along to your friends. I’m so excited for you to hear it.

Intro dude: 02:38 Welcome to Design Speaks. This lovely podcast is brought to you by a graphic design geek and a regular human being. A.K.A a non-designer. We’re here to chat about music, pop culture, cool places, and basically whatever we feel is relevant.

Brandi: 02:54 So I’m here with my cohost, I’m Brandi.

Michelle: 02:57 And I’m Michelle.

Michelle: 02:58 Welcome to Design Speaks podcast.

Scott Belsky: 03:01 Thank you.

Brandi: 03:02 So where are you calling from right now? I know that you kind of live on both coasts, right?

Scott Belsky: 03:09 Yeah. Today I’m in New York actually. I got back from San Francisco last night.

Brandi: 03:13 Oh, San Francisco is like my other heart, I think.

Michelle: 03:16 Did you leave your heart in San Francisco?

Brandi: 03:19 Well, I left my heart in Paris, but the other piece of it is i San Francisco. I have to say I met you once at the how design conference in 2010 in Denver.

Scott Belsky: 03:34 Wow, that was a while ago.

Brandi: 03:35 You probably don’t remember that. But um, I remember and I was very excited about those three seconds.

Scott Belsky: 03:41 I remember being there.

Brandi: 03:42 You remember being there. That’s enough for me. That’s enough for me. So for our listeners who don’t know you, can you give us like just a five minute overview of your journey?

Scott Belsky: 03:52 Uh, so, uh, so I’m Scott and I had been in, in the world as a, I guess the intersection of design and technology and business for the last, Gosh, I don’t know, 15 plus years.

Brandi: 04:06 Your whole life.

Scott Belsky: 04:08 Yeah. I started a company called Behance back in late 2005 early 2006. Our, our mission was to organize the creative world and we were a bootstrap team for five years. Venture backed for almost two years and then we were acquired by Adobe and when a company gets acquired sometimes the idea that the saying is I go, Gosh, you know, that’s the end and the company, big company is going to kill it whatever else. But in our case the hands was a little over a million members and we got acquired. Now we’re over 15 million members of the team is still together and the culture of that team is intact and in a lot of leaders of Behance have moved on other parts of the company because our mission was always to help organize and empower the creative world and Adobe makes tools for creative people. So it was a really good fit actually. And you feel like we’ve done our best to make a mark on the company. I recently came back into the company after a year or so hiatus as chief product officer overseeing all creative cloud and um, they really just feel like we’re in the early innings of what these tools can be. And they used to be these desktop downloads are these things you didn’t follow through flippy disk. There are services that connect to you from mobile to desktop. And so I think a lot about the future of creativity. Um, I’m also a, a writer as like a side hustle. So I, I love writing about lessons learned from small teams, large teams, big transitions, culture changes. And the role is designing companies. So I would say those are some of the themes that I’ve covered over there over the years with posts and two bucks, uh, most recently, The Messy Middle, which is all about the volatility of creative projects and in any bold venture. So that’s a little bit about, about me.

Brandi: 05:57 You are so good at this. That was, that was perfect.

Michelle: 06:00 Yeah. You got like your two minute response. What does that, like

Brandi: 06:02 The elevator pitch.

Michelle: 06:04 Yeah, you got that?

Scott Belsky: 06:05 Everyone’s got to have an elevator pitch. Always.

Michelle: 06:06 For sure.

Brandi: 06:07 I’m the worst at that. I got to work on that, but that’s perfect. Thank you.

Michelle: 06:11 Um, so you said after taking a year hiatus, you came back as the CPO, the chief product officer at Adobe. How was that to leave and then come back?

Scott Belsky: 06:23 It was hard because I was at Adobe for three years after the acquisition. I was having a great time, but uh, uh, but I also was wondering, Gosh, I’ve been doing this for over 10 years. Like I do, I have to actually give something else a chance. I have to think about, you know, is there another industry I want to check out or whatever, and a lot of people that were friends and mentors of mine were saying you should be an investor. The investing world needs more operators and more design minded people. And, and um, and I agree with that.

Brandi: 06:56 Absolutely.

Scott Belsky: 06:56 I learned a lesson which is that just because everyone says you should do something doesn’t mean that you want to do it or should do it. And so I kinda jumped in and realize that, well, I felt like I had a different, um, type criteria to apply as an investor, which did make me different and I think, you know, effective as an investor. I also realized I wasn’t doing what I like doing, which was working with product teams and helping build design teams and helping, um, you know, put out a straw man for a solution to a problem. And a lot of the things that I love doing, you’re actually not supposed to do as a board member and investor because that’s sort of getting in the weeds. And so I, I felt like I had hung up my spurs a little too quickly and um, and that’s, that’s where it started my migration back into this world. And of course I still had the relationship with Adobe. I still had a relationship with Shantanu, you are CEO and he said, hey, you know, if you, uh, would you ever come back in?

Brandi: 07:56 We miss you.

Scott Belsky: 07:58 Yeah. And, and, uh, and at first I said I don’t know if I would come back, it was so hard to cut the cord to begin with, sort of separated myself from my baby. Um, but, uh, but, uh, but it also, I realized it was an entirely new role with the different mandates and different setup know as chief product officer and engineering product and design are all part of my organization. So I guess they’re kind of tinker and streamline initiatives and, and, and, uh, and try new things.

Michelle: 08:24 That’s awesome. So here you are today, back as the chief product officer. What does that look like? Like what do you do?

Scott Belsky: 08:34 Yeah, well, I think there’s a, there’s a whole number of answers to that. I oversee the strategy for creative cloud, so where are we going in three years? How are creative’s going to create? What’s broken that we need to fix? You know, what are, what are the antiquated development practices in our organization that need to be modernized? I mean, think about it. There are people in the photoshop team who worked on that team for more than 15 years. 20 years in some cases. These are some of the world experts in imaging and they can, you know, figure out some of the most complex problems in graphics and imaging and photography and that sort of thing. However, are they automated? Are they automating their testing? Do they all forms of development? Um, you know, there’s work to be done. So I think a part of my job is modernization and, and in some ways of evolving a great culture into, into a new world. And I think part of my job is setting a strategy for what the product need to do, where the customer’s problems are changing, and also exploring new medium like augmented reality and voice interfaces. Adobe has a history of always bringing creatives from from one meeting to another. So there were a lot of graphic designers and print designers at one point that were very intimidated by this thing called the web.

Brandi: 09:50 Raising my hand over here.

Scott Belsky: 09:53 Right. And you know, and this is something we probably talked about at the how design conference now in years ago, 10 years ago, is probably definitely the question was how do you get web designers and the mobile, um, so your print to web, web, mobile and now mobile to what? Is it to augmented reality, it’s a voice interface is to a literally new forms and design. And that’s also fun to think about. And uh, and then they also think another part of my job because the job hasn’t had a chief product officer before me is, um, is to really be the voice of the customer level of the company. And so what I’m hoping it’s one of those things where I don’t want to say it, I want to show it like I want us to show the creative world that we are starting to listen more acutely. Started to get a little bit more involved in the conversation and we’re starting to be a little bit more transparent. And what we’re working on and I think that just takes time to prove.

Michelle: 10:51 That’s awesome. And I feel like even the way you are answering these questions that you have the passion behind being that person for the people.

Scott Belsky: 11:00 I really do care about it. And um, and I think at the end of the day, listen, we’re a big company with a lot of people as a public company, you know, there’s a lot of things that can distract us from kind of the broader goal. But at the end of the day. These are the products that empower creative people to visualize and expressed their ideas. And you know, I was using photoshop and I won’t tell you what I paid for it as a 13 year old,

Brandi: 11:26 Free 5o free.

Scott Belsky: 11:30 Uh, and uh, but, uh, you know, this was like, I remember having my computer and like loading up photoshop for the first time and be like, wow. Like I was a little intimidated at the same time. I felt like I can make anything look like anything. It was empowering.

Brandi: 11:45 The potential was huge.

Scott Belsky: 11:48 Totally. So that’s what we do. We meet creative, we make products for, created, for a living. Like, what could be better?

Brandi: 11:52 That’s exciting. So you said, um, you know, talking about the broader goal. Um, I just finished reading The Messy Middle. Um, I did read Making Ideas Happen. What is it, 2010, I guess I read it when it came out and I have been using the action method products and like I bought the software for my team when I was, um, art and creative director when that was still a thing. Um, but I was reading The Messy Middle, and I wanted to kind of start with to talk about this idea of creative meritocracy. Um, I, I kind of understand what that is just because I read the book, but I would love for you to kind of just explain that briefly because I think it’s, it’s such an important concept to, um, to talk about in the creative professional space.

Scott Belsky: 12:41 Well listen, I mean it’s, it’s a, um, it’s, it’s, it’s a utopia that will never be fully attained, but the idea is to have systems that match the best ideas with the best opportunity. Because ultimately when you match the best ideas or the best opportunity. Like that’s when, you know, the greatest, the greatest things happen and I mean think about it, two levels, right? One of the macro level, the micro level on a, on a, on a macro level when you have a system like Behance, since this was sort of like a guiding principle for us where people are publishing works in their portfolio which is being discovered by other people in their fields and appreciated when I started kind to find people that are credible in the field, which makes it visible by more people. More appreciated. The idea is that, you know, whether it’s a student at SVA or whether it be a, you know, someone using one of just a drawing or painting in India or Nepal or wherever someone may be in the world, um, or whether it be known superstar that everyone has the opportunity to be discovered by his or her peers and, and get opportunity as a result of that exposure. So you’re always trying to build a system that fostered that as opposed to like only feature celebrating the all stars because that was always a principal. And you know, the idea, of course there was that ultimately like it the best opportunity, the best talent, the best ideas we have, the best opportunity like that will be good for the creative world on a micro level. Let’s just look at a team. In a team, the traditional model is to have the boss tell everyone what they’re going to do. And I hold them accountable. Right? I like modern teams where there’s more of a voluntary staffing model. Where you go to the team and you say, Hey, you know, here’s the problem. We are like, who is most interested in it? But I tend to find is that the person either with the most initiative raises his or her hand, which is a great sign for a step towards a good outcome. Or a person who the greatest who can like do it most efficiently raises her hand and says, okay, you know, I’ll just do this because I’m probably the best one to do it. But if you have a voluntary staffing model, I feel like someone is a little more organic in terms of the best ideas are the best talent, getting the best opportunity. And, and then, and then once you have those people paired, they get recognized for their excellence and that fosters this notion of creative meritocracy. So, so that’s the idea and all think we’re ever fully there, but it’s something worth striving for.

Michelle: 15:21 You said while expertise qualifies you obsession mobilizes you in a way that runs circles around the experts. This kind of is off that last question of can you explain the difference or would you explain the difference between like expertise and obsession?

Scott Belsky: 15:39 It’s a good question and I think I would start by saying or explaining why I always try to hire people based on their initiative a little more than their experience. First of all, as a founder of a startup, you don’t have any choice. You can’t afford guy or the most experienced.

Brandi: 15:58 The experts.

Scott Belsky: 16:01 So, and you can only afford to hire people that really have a tremendous amount of initiative and initiative is easily measured by looking at what they’ve done before in the things that were interesting to them. So if they are interested in design, you know, did they started, did they start a podcast from design? Did they write a blog and design? Did they proactively courses in design and did they become president of some club in college? Because of designer whatever, you know, how do you measure initiative in someone’s interests and that of course becomes an indicator of their, their likelihood of taking initiative and their interest in the future. It says you can get them jazzed up about what you’re doing. They will join your team and they will exceed expectations in my, in my experience. However, if you, um, get a little bit more, you know, uh, a successful as a team and you have more resources and they become more of a resume snob, and you start to hire people that are just experienced or heard their skills as opposed to their initiative, I think sometimes you can get stuck and get stuck with people who just do their job but aren’t thinking proactively about what, what, what take us to the next level are questioning the status quo. And that’s where you become complacent. So that’s what I mean by that.

Michelle: 17:16 I think that’s the answer that I was hoping you would have. It’s really nice to hear you say it out loud because it’s, it’s really affirming to know that like there are like minded people out there.

Brandi: 17:26 It’s definitely something that Michelle resonates with because, um, she, she kind of likes to try out a lot of different things and she likes to kind of pursue new things and she’s very passionate about creative pursuits, but on paper it doesn’t always show, you know, the passion that she has and so that. I just really thought that was a great question for her to ask you because I thought it would be really perfect.

Scott Belsky: 17:49 Great question.

Michelle: 17:50 Okay. So what does, this is our next question, just in case you were wondering, what does the messy middle look like?

Scott Belsky: 18:02 Oh, the messy middle on is the endless volatility. Um, where you just don’t know where you aren’t necessarily going. You don’t have an end in sight. You’re doing getting the short term rewards or signs and satisfaction, indications of progress that you need as a human with a short term reward system. They were all geared towards, um, I always like to remember that not too long ago, the lifespan was in the twenties, the average lifespan. Um, and so, uh, you know, just, you know, we’re just talking like a few hundred years ago. And so of course, like from the beginning of humanity, the idea of setting off on a seven to 10 year pursuit was just not smart. Like, you know, you may not even live that long.

Brandi: 18:55 You might just die before you see the end.

Scott Belsky: 18:57 Yeah. So we’re geared towards short term rewards. But that is what is it trickling stream of progress that keeps us going. And so to depart from that and embark on something bold and creative with no end in sight takes some, uh, some inorganic tendencies and uh, and tricks and hacks and, and stories you tell yourself and everything else. And so to me, like the middle volatility the messy middle is this endless, repetitive, mundane. Um, full of anonymity, ambiguity or uncertainty, um, and, uh, and hopefully complemented by some of those hacks and tricks. And the last thing I would say about the messy middle is that we have to recognize in this volatility that we are not our best selves at either the lows or the highs. At every low, and there are many lows and highs. It’s like a series of lows and highs and every low we make decisions out of fear, you know, we get worried that we’re going to run out of money or we’re going to be failures or we’re gonna, we’re looking at a competitor and we start to make decisions out of fear. And so we’re not our best selves. We react too much. And when we’re, when things are going really well, we’re also not our selves because we falsely attributes the thing that we did to the things that work. And we start to develop false narratives of like, why we’re actually there, when in fact, oftentimes it wasn’t us, it was the people around us. It wasn’t the idea with the environment. And so either way you kind of have to check yourself and you need to, um, and you need to really, uh, you know, needing to be an active leader rather than a passive participant in this messy middle.

Brandi: 20:42 That’s awesome. So, um, I personally, I kind of am building my whole platform, um on like this process that I have, it’s like a creative design process to get me from the beginning of a project to the end where I get to turn my ideas into action. But in the messy middle, you talk about that if people are aligned, you don’t need a process. So how do you define a process in a creative space in this context?

Scott Belsky: 21:12 Yeah. Well it’s a great. I think that by this topic all the time, because my world straddled both a big company with thousands of people and a lot of startups that I work with, with, with less than a dozen people. And what’s beautiful about a early stage startup type team is that everyone’s 100 percent alined because you’re all sitting around a table, you’ve all taken, you know, you’ve all put a lot of skin in the game, uh, and, and, and you joined this team when there was nothing because you had the same sort of passion and the same idea for how to solve the problem and, uh, and have all sought empathy with the customer. Everyone’s in the same place. And so in such an environment, you actually don’t need much process. In fact you don’t want much process. You don’t want to have regularly scheduled meetings and frameworks and annual priorities in check, you know, and all these different sorts of hurdles.

Brandi: 22:08 Because you’re all on the same page already.

Scott Belsky: 22:11 100 percent, right? And, uh, and everyone’s looking over designers shoulder, like everyone sees everything. So you don’t need it. When a company gets bigger and you start to have people in different regions and you have people with different beliefs and incentives, you need to start hiring your 30th employee, your 40th employee who really doesn’t know. It was embarrassed totally for the longterm vision. But more so because he or she needs a job and you just start to get a different group of people have different motivations. And so what happens is people started to fall out of alignment. And what did we do when that happens? We throw process at the problem. Oh, okay. If we don’t all share the same priorities, let’s now have a process where we develop priorities and we hold people accountable. Oh, you know, we’re not all doing the same amount of work every week, let’s start having a, a, you know, a measure of the tickets that are closed and a daily scrum meeting. And, you know, in that process, some of it is good, a lot of it is good. But I think one of the points I’m trying to make in the book is that alignment and process are like two, two, um, two sort of tools to solve the same problem. And so when people fall out of alignment, instead of throwing process, you also can do other things to get people back into alignment. And one of those things, by the way, is leading with design. You know, that notion of a prototype being worth a thousand meetings when you walked people through where it’s going and why you, it’s like a shortcut to alignment and may also lead you having to instill more process

Brandi: 23:48 Because the visuals are the communication.

Scott Belsky: 23:51 Yup.

Brandi: 23:52 So, um, okay. So now I understand that in, in, in the context of like the creative organization. So how does, how do you see like implementing process into like making an actual idea happened from the time that you hand something off to a designer to the time that they hand you the product, um, what is the merit in having a process in that area?

Scott Belsky: 24:20 Well, I think that in that area, you know, I, my attitude is you always want to strip it down to what’s actionable and whose court the ball is in. And so that is like the ultimate objective of our process is to track action. Know whose court the ball is and, and, um, and also to um, provide some guard rails for things like privacy and legal and whatever else. Of course there’s that stuff as well, but on the nature of a, a project in between the designer and somebody that he or she is working with, um, you know, to me it’s always about a, is there always a next step captured in every conversation? Is there always a deadline or a date by which you’ll have a deadline? Is there, is there a clear milestone defined where there is some progress and do we know that progress is intended to be by the time that milestone happens? I think these are the types of granular things that has to be instilled and so there are all kinds of tools that people use, whether it’s base camp or, or different sorts of things. Um, but when I see processes break it because one of those things hasn’t happened, either there was a discussion and an action step wasn’t captured. Or there’s work being done and there was no set deadline with the expectation of what progress would have been made. You know, it’s something like that that dropped, that ended up breaking.

Brandi: 25:45 Gotcha. That makes so much sense. So where does the long game then play in the middle? Um, I’ve heard, um, I’ve heard this a lot from Gary V, he talks a lot about playing the long game and not worrying about it so that, that leaves you a lot in this middle. So, um, you said the easy path will only take you to a crowded place. So how does, how does all that play into the long game and making ideas happen in this middle space?

Scott Belsky: 26:12 Well, I think the long game to me is first of all, first of all, I don’t think that, um, that being passionate for a solution to a problem is enough. I actually think that empathy come before passion and when you have empathy with the customer suffering the problem that sticks with you. To me even longer than passion for a solution. It also guide you in the right direction, the products that I’ve seen really miss the mark and the company that have shut down, they oftentimes built something that was 30 degrees off of what the customer really needed. And I think it’s because they didn’t seek enough empathy with the customer suffering the problem. Um, I think that, so in terms of playing the long game, I think part of it is anchoring yourself with that, the, the customer’s suffering is that kind of, you then become a partner of someone and that just keeps going on and on. I think also you have the long game is about switching up the measures you use to, uh, uh, to keep yourself going. And we talked a little bit earlier about short term rewards, but um I think we should talk a little bit more about it because when you had a long term pursuits and then you want to achieve over a number of years.

Brandi: 27:33 That’s hard to see.

Scott Belsky: 27:34 Yeah, right. Your conviction in the end state is enough to get your, maybe quit your job and commit to it or take this bold projects, but then three weeks later it’s just not enough anymore. You have to start to have rewards when there aren’t any. Which is why I like to say you have to short circuit the reward system and make up rewards where there aren’t any. And you know, a couple fun examples that I always give from my own experience. One was we used to type Behance into Google and it always said, do you mean enhance, do you mean enhance? Like we’re a mistake, but some day, maybe some day we will no longer be a mistake

Brandi: 28:14 You like have a staff person on Google all day long. Tell me when this pops up.

Scott Belsky: 28:19 No, we did it all the time, you know, and uh, and, and, and of course, what could we do? Well, if we get enough portfolio project published that are linking obviously doc from blogs and articles that are linking to these pieces of work and if the other blog posts that are written about us maybe stimulated by a blog where you write about others and we played all these, um, all these tricks to just track like strategies to make sure that we could accomplish that. So it was a shorter term goal then building a company with millions of members and whatever else.

Brandi: 28:57 And it was also a fun goal.

Scott Belsky: 28:59 It was a fun goal and we felt like we could actually make a dent. And you can see the year, we can see our search rankings go up a little bit incrementally with like every month of work. And low and behold, one day, one of our engineers types in Behance and it shows up as a legitimate search result.

Brandi: 29:19 Yay! Party time.

Scott Belsky: 29:19 Totally party. And this was back in like 2007, 2008. And then of course like six months later, Beyonce becomes super popular and we were right back to where we started.

Michelle: 29:33 Frickin Beyonce.

Scott Belsky: 29:33 I know, frickin Beyonce.

Michelle: 29:33 Would you speak to the benefit of sticking with your conviction and trusting your gut?

Scott Belsky: 29:41 Yeah. Well, you know, another very common question I get from entrepreneurs I know is when you do you quit, when do you stick with it? And um, any projects, I think that’s, even if you’re designing something, you’re taking an approach, you know, I do. I keep working at this, or just quit and start a different approach? To me. To me, the, the answer boils down to do you still have as much if not more conviction in kind of the end states as you did when you started or in the process of trying, have you last conviction that this is the right solution. And now if you were, if you still believe in the end state, like the problem that you’re trying to solve and that your solution is going to be the one that changes that part of the world than you, and you’re just in the messy middle, you got to stick with it. You cannot give up trying another iteration. Pivot a little bit, try it or attempt to hire different people, you know. But if, um, if you, if you’ve lost conviction, they have some all that you’ve learned in the process, then you should quit. I mean, why should you continue to do something that you have lost conviction in? You should totally revert, you know, and try something completely different. I think that oftentimes service people.

Brandi: 31:08 Okay, so I have, I have something to ask on that line then. So this year I’ve committed to not just starting projects but finishing them. Um, you know, creatives are chronic starters and all that stuff. So at what point you’re talking about like quitting if you lose conviction. But, uh, at which point do you know where does finishing play in this? And should you commit to finishing because you’ve started a thing or is it, is it okay to not, does that make you a quitter? Like what? Where does actually finished finishing come in here?

Scott Belsky: 31:41 Yeah, it’s a good question and um just don’t, I don’t subscribe to the idea that like winner’s never quit because um, you know, I think that again, like you don’t want to spend so much of your time pursuing something you don’t believe in just because you initially committed to doing it. Um, you know, I got to, it’s to, it’s to a utopia, that anything you say I’m going to do, you know, ends up being something that you should do.

Brandi: 32:12 That’s really freeing.

Scott Belsky: 32:14 After learning so much. You know, we’re humans and we commit to things before we really know what we’re in for. And then when we go about it, we learned a lot and we need to learn that it is something we should do or something that we shouldn’t do and we have to be open to that, but we can’t quit because it gets hard. Like that’s the thing that’s really important to note. And I think that sometimes, I think the winner’s never quit mantra really intended to dissuade people from quitting when it gets tough. And I completely agree.

Michelle: 32:46 Um, we are talking about content from your book, The Messy Middle. Um, so I’m wondering who do you think your ideal reader is for this book?

Scott Belsky: 32:57 To me, it’s someone who is embarking on something longer term. Whether it be a creative career, a major creative project, or a new company startup or a new product within a big company. You are inevitably going to go through this very volatile messy middle because you’re defying the status quo. You’re kind of going against the grain of society and you’re going to be squat. You’re going to be pushed, you’re going to feel like you’re empty. You’re going to feel like you’re working in our midst in the uncertainty that I described earlier and um, and you need to kind of become, you need to take the reigns and, and develop tactics to ensure the loads and optimize the highest. And so that, that really was the purpose of the book is to chronicle insights from all sorts of folks about enduring loads and optimizing eyes.

Brandi: 33:51 So, um, speaking of like longer-term goals, I’m just going to ask like a really self-serving question, hopefully, other people and get something out of it. But um, so right now I’m a service based um designer. I obviously do like a podcast and stuff, but I’ve been trying to figure out how to implement some sort of product to offer to my audience. What’s a good strategy for discovering what a product offering might be if you’re a service based creative.

Scott Belsky: 34:24 I mean, you’ve seen other products that take offering. You mean an offering of your services like a way to kind of merchandise it?

Brandi: 34:31 Yeah, yeah like some sort of either one. Like I’m sort of like in this place where I want to start creating passive income, but also resources that people can use. Like whether it’s a physical product or a digital product, I’m definitely right now I feel like I’m in this messy middle of my own mind and trying to even like find my way to the start of something. It’s like a different middle. I’m not in the middle of the product, I’m trying to figure out what that might be.

Scott Belsky: 34:58 Right. Yeah. Well, it’s a good question. You know, I think that um, especially for in the design world right now, we’re gonna we’re in a time where everyone wants to design, you know, everyone wants to be able to stand out at work, stand out in school. People want to share their ideas on social media in a compelling way. People wanting to visually express themselves. If you step back, like I think one of the reasons is in a macro level, like more labor is being commoditized and automated and creativity is ultimately the most unique human trait we have is what we should be learning in school is what we should be doing on the job. Otherwise will be replaced by machines. Right?

Brandi: 35:43 Yes. Yes we will.

Scott Belsky: 35:46 Right. So design is such in, in some ways, you know, design is sort of the um, you know, it’s an extremely human discipline as people kind of try to embrace their humanity to, to survive and do this.

Brandi: 36:04 To fight the future robots?

Scott Belsky: 36:05 Yeah, exactly. Then we can only fight them with creativity and I’m sort of joking and kinda being serious. So, so then, so to go back to your question, I mean one thing I think a lot of designers are doing is realizing like they have something that people want at scale, which is learning how to design. Um using assets to start with as opposed to the blank page, um, the power of template, like empowering people to feel successful without the talent, skill and expertise that you have from your years of practice. So I think that there is, there is an opportunity for um, for a lot of designers to think about that manifesting in doing master classes or classes online that people subscribe and pay for your subscribing on Patreon to get sort of design, you know, sort of tricks and tips and lessons on a monthly basis.

Brandi: 37:03 We have a Patreon. We just started that. That’s awesome.

Scott Belsky: 37:07 A premium podcast that people have to subscribe to or they can do to record it. So contributing digital vids to marketplaces so people can start out with templates and you know, UI kits from all this, you know, in Behance there’s this massive kind of underground marketplace as PSD’s are people are buying PSD’s from one another or to give them the, accelerate some of their work. So there’s so many things like that that I think our range or desires to scale themselves as a business.

Brandi: 37:33 That’s awesome. Thank you so much for that. I think that. I know that that will just help me. So I guess it wasn’t completely self-serving, so we’re just about done, but we have a few questions that we ask everyone.

Michelle: 37:47 So describe yourself in three words.

Scott Belsky: 37:51 Um optimistic yet paranoid.

Michelle: 37:57 I think the paranoia is good in small doses.

Scott Belsky: 38:00 Keeps you on your toes.

Michelle: 38:01 Yep.

Brandi: 38:03 Okay. Next, what do you geek out about?

Scott Belsky: 38:09 Um, new technology.

Michelle: 38:13 What would your mom and tell her friends you do?

Scott Belsky: 38:17 Well, what age now or?

Michelle: 38:19 Now.

Brandi: 38:20 Now if, if someone, if your mom ran into an old friend at the grocery store.

Scott Belsky: 38:25 Now my mother would simply say he’s doing too much.

Michelle: 38:31 What about in the beginning of Behance when you were like googling, making sure Behance could be up there?

Scott Belsky: 38:39 Something for creative people.

Brandi: 38:42 Hey, that’s, that’s still pretty accurate.

Michelle: 38:45 Good. It’s good.

Brandi: 38:45 Accurate. Okay. And lastly, um, how do you want to be remembered?

Scott Belsky: 38:52 One of the things I want to be remembered for is as a great dad and a great husband and I want to be remembered as someone who gave back more or then he got. And I think that’s, that’s something I’m always trying to make sure of is that whatever I’m doing in my career, I feel like I’m, you know, that I feel like there’s some sort of equality or a disproportionate tilted the balance toward the impact I’m having as opposed to like, you know, the gratification or financial reward that I’m getting and um, you know, I think we all should try to like keep an eye on that because you don’t want to. Once you throw that ratio out of balance to me that’s when, uh, when trouble happens.

Brandi: 39:37 Especially with the creative ego. So I absolutely agree. Um, so thank you so much for being here. Um, everyone out there, The Messy Middle is anywhere you can buy books. I listened to the Audio Book and looked at the physical book. That’s how I am. Um, but any, any last thoughts that you’d like to share before we, uh, before we let you get back to what is probably the cold of New York City.

Scott Belsky: 40:04 No, thank you so much for having me and I’m a fan of what you guys are doing. Thank you for. Thank you for doing it for the design world and thanks for having me. This was awesome.

Brandi: 40:12 That’s all I needed to hear that you were a fan of what we’re doing just like made my month. So I’ve been with you for a long time and um, you have impacted me personally and professionally in huge ways the last nine or 10 years. So I just wanted to thank you quasi, in person for that and I hope that you, uh, are super excited about whatever’s going on for the rest of your day.

Scott Belsky: 40:34 Thanks so much. Have a great day.

Brandi: 40:37 Thanks, Scott.

Michelle: 40:37 Bye.

Scott Belsky: 40:37 Take care guys, bye bye.

Brandi: 40:43 So that was Scott Belsky and us and we are just in awe of his, his wisdom and his insight into the world of a creative.

Michelle: 40:53 He, when he was talking, I said this in the interview, I really felt like he was for the people, for the creatives. Um, he’s doing amazing things. I’m so thankful that he took time out of his day to talk to us. I know that he’s a busy man.

Brandi: 41:09 I love that he is so practical that, that is, you know, I have, you guys all know by now I have this process deal and I’m, I’m very into like making things happen and I never really realized that that was what I was doing until I read his, his stuff and, and hurt his thing. So, um.

Michelle: 41:29 Again, The Messy Middle.

Brandi: 41:30 The Messy Middle is an awesome book. It’s really laid out really beautifully too.

Michelle: 41:34 It’s very fun to look at.

Brandi: 41:35 So if you, if you are a reader of physical reader as opposed to an audible reader.

Michelle: 41:41 That’s me.

Brandi: 41:41 I highly suggest that you actually get the book.

Michelle: 41:43 Yes. It was just released in October. So it’s brand spanking new again, as we said, you can get it anywhere that books are sold. Yeah, it was a great interview. Again, pass this along to your friends. You have creative friends, you have friends, pass it along to them.

Brandi: 41:56 Regular normal people, friends. Yeah. Everyone can use this. There’s. There’s lots of things in there that even apply to like relationships. There’s just so much in it, so um Michelle. Where can people find us?

Michelle: 42:07 You can find us on all forms of social media, facebook, instagram, twitter via

Brandi: 42:12 Tweeter.

Michelle: 42:13 Tweeter. I’m like, how old am I? Fifty-five? “On the tweeter.”

Brandi: 42:17 On the tweeter.

Michelle: 42:17 Via at Brandi Sea. Spell your name for them.

Brandi: 42:20 B R A N D I S E A.

Michelle: 42:22 You can also find us on Instagram @designspeakspodcasts. Go check us out. Give us a follow and stay updated. Um doing some cool things over there.

Brandi: 42:31 And if you want to, we would love it if you would check out our Patreon and support us. Even if it’s a dollar a month for any little thing. Helps a couple dollars over a couple of months can help us buy some songs or whatever.

Michelle: 42:46 What is our URL?

Brandi: 42:50 Patrion.com/designspeaks.

Michelle: 42:51 Nice.

Brandi: 42:52 Yeah.

Michelle: 42:52 Thank you to Vesperteen for allowing us to use his song as the intro and outro to our podcast.

Brandi: 43:00 Amen. Thanks, Colin.