Strands of Genius: Primal Instinct as a Metric of Success, Stop Charging for the Time it Takes To Do The Magic Trick, and Start Charging For The Magic, Snail

Guest curated by Giles Edwards, Founder of ...Gasp!, ISOLATED Talks® & Host of Call To Action®

Aug 03, 2023

:: A BIT MORE ABOUT GUEST CURATOR, GILES EDWARDS ::

LOCATION: London, UK

Hi, I'm Giles. I'm 42¼. And was described by my first agency boss as "annoyingly curious and curiously annoying".

This Guest Curation is all part of Operation Hoodwink; a mission to get close to Rosie and Faris because I'm convinced they are, in fact, on the run, merely posing as an intimidatingly smart, nomadic, creative consultancy to evade suspicion. By doing so I intend to discover what crime(s) they have committed, gather evidence, testimony, and bring them to justice. Not really. Ish.

Editor’s Note (Genius Steals):
Gee, Brain… What should we do tonight?

;)

We absolutely loved recording a podcast with Giles, and discovering another couple who are married, working together, and still enjoying life with each other :) Some really great links below, but we especially enjoyed reading Giles’ perspective on charging for creativity, as it’s a perspective we strongly share. Thanks for being here, Giles and we can’t wait to hang out in person with you and Sophie one of these days!

:: THE LINKS ::

PRIMAL INSTINCT AS A METRIC OF SUCCESS

I keep a scrappy, unkempt collection of ‘stuff and things’ (as my wife, Sophie, would say), on my desktop. Roger Moore stories, Gazza antics, Mitch Hedberg jokes, Harry Mack clips, James Victore designs. Things I know I enjoy. And I reach for them from time to time; they can lift a mood or just provoke my brain. This is one of my favourites. It’s daft and yet somehow deeply profound.

The industry I work in and love is awash with issues around measurements. Lots of reasons which Rosie and Faris could explain better than I could, but ultimately trying to simplify and logicise the behaviour of complex human beings will lead to contradictions; so the ambiguity, subtlety, significance of context, et al, will forever exist.

When I’m wrestling with the latest study on attention or revisiting Robert Heath’s writings, I reach for this story from Maurice Sendak, the American author and Illustrator, and I briefly allow myself to imagine this measure existing in adland. As silly as it sounds, I believe we'd be in a far better place if we all aspired to create copy, art direction, "content" (sorry), stuff, things, so utterly, flawlessly, brilliant, our audiences would 'see it, love it, eat it.' (Gasp Agency)

STOP CHARGING FOR THE TIME IT TAKES TO DO THE MAGIC TRICK, AND START CHARGING FOR THE MAGIC

I had to link to this. For Rosie, or more so for our united front and those (mostly indies) fighting alongside us to create the change we need. After studying innovative pricing and business models six years ago, I did what every curious, creative, business-owning lunatic would do, and ripped up our agency’s pricing model. Goodbye time-based rate cards, hello fairer financed skies. Overnight we went from the standard cost-plus, yawn, pricing methodology, to different tiers of value-based/innovative pricing, and retainer-only partnership options. Not to our benefit, initially, I should stress. Wow, I’ve failed hard at this. To quote the James Victore poster behind me as I type, ‘Birds learn to fly by falling’. I fell, we fell, conjugate the verb to fall. But this many falls, and years, later, we’re a far healthier business than most in this game. Excuse the self-indulgance here but my good mate Joe Glover asked me to talk about ‘How to break away from billable time and charge for creativity’, to The Marketing Meetup community. And the response has been overwhelmingly wonderful from small businesses who’ve now adopted the same principles to pricing titan Blair Enns, and the huge network Chiefs who have privately sent notes of support, and encouragement to fight this fight on their behalf. (The Marketing Meet Up)

An important note: I am, in the spirit of Genius Steals, regurgitating far smarter brains in this talk, who I do reference, so once you’ve heard my 20 min talk, I recommend you dig deeper and unearth Blair Enns and Tim Williams.

SNAIL

An ode to two special people, who enjoyed a truly remarkable relationship. My wife Sophie and the late, great, Sir Ken Robinson. She had the pleasure of working with Sir Ken a long time ago now, with a client of ours. True to form, despite my want to remain as equal as I possibly could in their conversations, she told him how much I adored and fanboyed him; his first TED Talk remains in my pile of 'stuff and things' and I reach for it regularly. He promised on return to the US to send me a signed copy of his upcoming book. Weeks, months, later it hadn’t arrived. So Sophie sent an email to him, with the subject line above. The only words which accompanied it in the email copy were “Is your f***ing book attached to one?” It arrived promptly after. Whether you’re familiar with Sir Ken or not, I urge you to dip into this archive of some previously unseen talks to learn not only how perfect his brain was, but how perfectly he could deliver a talk. He’s everything I hope to be when I grow up. (Sir Ken Robinson)

Looking for more from Giles Edwards? Coming Friday, look for an interview from him in your inbox!

:: AND NOW… SOME FAST FAVORITES ::

:: Game :: Cheat (card game)

:: City :: Barcelona (Sydney hot on its tail)

:: Book :: A Smile in the Mind

:: Podcast :: Desert Island Discs

:: Album :: Lyricist Lounge, Volume One

:: TO DO LISTS ::

This Guest Curation hasn't been particularly deep or sophisticated. But I do hope that it's delivered in the understated currency of daft. I also wanted to recognise this... after interviewing/persuing Rosie and Faris recently, it became obvious that we shared a lot in common. All three, legendary Geminis and love for Barcelona aside, we work with our spouses. I don't want to give the impression that my wife has a right mouth on her. Which I might have hinted at above. But I don't, don't, want to do that either. What I hope to impress on you is that working with her, in her position of MD, is a privilege as she is an inspiration. Particularly when managing and dealing with people. It's not that she can speak to people accordingly, at all, it's that she can speak to people how she speaks to people, and it's always *received* accordingly. And I'm not sure how she does it. Whether it's Sir Ken, above, or builder duo, Barry and Kenny, we employed recently. She is wholly and entirely her. As their todo note perfectly demonstrates. So this ending is a dedication to her. 'Be yourself everyone else is taken' – Oscar Wilde.

As my nieces say, onwards, upwards and Edwards x

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It's called Genius Steals because we believe ideas are new combinations and that nothing can come from nothing. But copying is lazy. We believe the best way to innovate is to look at the best of that which came before and combine those elements into new solutions.

Co-Founders Faris & Rosie are award-winning strategists and creative directors, writers, consultants and public speakers who have been living on the road/runway since March 2013, working with companies all over the world. Our Director of Operations is nomadic like us, our accounting team is based out of Washington, our company is registered in Tennessee, and our collaborators are all over the world. Being nomadic allows us to go wherever clients need us to be, and to be inspired by the world in between.

Hit reply and let’s talk about how we might be able to work together :)

Strands of Genius