Dare to slow down and think deeper - James Martin (MBJ)

Daring Forever (Find your Extraordinary)

In this episode of Daring Forever, host Radim Malinic sits down with James Martin, designer, educator, and co-author of 'No B******t Branding,' to explore the gap between

Key takeaways

• Evidence (what you've actually done) is not the same as proof (what you choose to show the world).
• Perception often outruns talent, making visibility and credibility crucial in building a lasting reputation.

Main topics

• The difference between evidence and proof
• Building authentic reputation over algorithmic popularity

Notable quotes

"Evidence is everything you've actually done; proof is what you show the world so people can believe it."

Conclusion

James Martin's journey from influencer to intentional author underscores the power of slowing

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:08) I think it's really, really like, I mean, we'll just go into that kind of building like the perception piece as well. I think another really important thing about that is also who you're spending time with and what you're doing. So whereas maybe three or four years ago, yes, I had a book, but it was predominantly my world. I could only ever speak from my own perspective because that's all I've got. I'd never try and tell other people what they should do. But I realized that was becoming a... problem for me it might not be the problem for anybody else but it's a problem for me so what I wanted to do is I wanted to start putting myself in different rooms and create new opportunities for me Speaker 3 (0:50) Welcome to Daring Forever, a podcast about being human, wired for wonder, capable of courage, perpetually becoming. It's about the waves that look us under and the strange, stubborn grace with which we surface. My name is Radek Malinic. I'm an author, creative and an eternally curious human being on a mission to speak to incredible people whom I call Forever Daring Humans. Those in pursuit of an extraordinary life. Every week I share an interview that is packed with amazing stories, value, and I can only ask you, how will you dare forever? This podcast is inspired by my upcoming book titled Daring Forever, which is now available for pre-order out in October. Speaker 3 (1:34) Today on Daring Forever, I'm joined by James Martin, designer, brand builder and now also double author with his latest book, No Bullshit Branding. James built social media following he never meant to have. And when he started being seen just as another internet influencer, he did the opposite of everything the algorithm rewards. He slowed down and spent a year writing a book. We talk about the difference between evidence and proof. Why perception can outweigh talent, the hidden geniuses he keeps meeting who nobody can find, and his five idea keys to turning ideas into action. This conversation is about building a reputation you can actually stand behind. This is my conversation with James Martin. Speaker 3 (2:23) Hey, James, welcome to Daring Forever. It's great to see you again. How are you doing? Speaker 2 (2:27) Brother, I am great. Thank you so much for asking. How are you, Radim? How are you? Do you ever get asked how you are? Are you okay? I'm grand. Great. Speaker 3 (2:37) You look fantastic. James, we are here because I'm one of your fans in What You Do, and we are going to celebrate the fact that you got your new book out. It's been out in the open for the last few days. And yeah, let's talk about what it's like to be an author, brand builder, educator. As you know, I've got this line that I always say, for those who may have not heard of you, how would you introduce yourself? There's a lot of people who know you because you've got incredible following and incredible community that you've built. But if someone finds themselves here by accident, who's James and what do you do? Speaker 2 (3:12) I think, firstly, I would say James is a human being. I think that's the kind of thing that I like to call myself more than anything. I think that's an important thing to represent today. But to elevate a pitch, I would say I am James Martin, not the famous chef. I am a designer of 20 plus years. I am now a double author, which is... Amazing. As you mentioned, the new book is just fresh out, which is incredibly exciting. We'll go into the reasons why I wrote that book, I'd imagine. Brand builder, educator. I tried to mentor the new generation of creative people trying to build opportunity for themselves and trying to build their business. And Speaker 3 (3:57) as you say, I wear many other hats, which Speaker 2 (4:00) are design advisory board at Canva, creative partner at Lincoln, writing for the Fast Company. running a studio, all of the bits and pieces that are a part of my world. But I think as a creative, that makes me happier. I've never been too good at dialing. totally into one thing so that is a really shit intro but i've never been good at those even though i've done that a million times but as you say we keep evolving so Speaker 3 (4:25) it keeps changing absolutely i mean look you started with the word designer and then author and then mentor and then advisory board and all of that and i think it was rob draper who i've spoken to a few weeks ago and he said look i think just the word creative is actually now encompassing a lot more to just being a specialist. Like we do the things that we've grown into this term because I remember people taking a real sort of allergic reaction to the word creative some 10 years ago, whereas now that's what we are. I think the world is changing and we are changing with the world, Speaker 2 (4:57) right? Yeah, I think we're told to niche, aren't we? We're told to tell people exactly what we do. But I think creativity is so different for so many different people. To some, it could be art. It could be the way they think about ideas, the value that they bring into the world. But my plumber is creative. My hairdresser is creative. One of the bigger problems I actually believe within our industry is that we think we own creativity. To be fair, I think that is probably coming to the fore a little bit now, especially with all the new tech and everything that's happening in the world, this kind of ownership of creativity as... arty people or designy people has put it all into perspective hasn't it really but i've never truly believed that creativity is ours to own but i do think of things i do like to solve problems i do believe i creatively find solutions to things but again like it's a role isn't it we play would i say i'm a creative i would say that's one role that i play but i'm also a dad. I'm also a friend. I'm also many other things, a bit of a twit, do you know what I mean? Dyslexic. There's so many roles and things that I am. Not a weird question to ask somebody, not that you ask weird questions, but it's such a difficult question to answer, isn't it? The, what are you? Do you know what I mean? I think it's a toughie. Do you know what I mean? It's really Speaker 3 (6:25) interesting what you just said, because when you ask someone in the world of business, They say, look, I'm a trader. I work in finance. I do this. I do that. They're a lot more extroverted about their answers because we sometimes have confidence issues or expression issues with the fact like, who am I? What do I do? Because some people don't have that problem because they say, this is what I do. This is who I am. And I think with the multicolor, multifaceted, multi-Disneyland world of what we can be and what we can do, sometimes it is hard to explain yourself until you really worked on it because... You said something which I have to write down. It says, we are being told to niche. Speaker 3 (7:06) And I'm going to disagree with that. You can only be told what you allow yourself to be told because the world is giving you lots of signals. There's loads of signals out there in what you can adapt, what you can listen to, because some people say do whatever you want. Some people say this is the one way to find it. And you can absolutely be one thing to one type of people and you can be exploring the creativity in a way like you are. To find the interest and to find the ability to find something that changes your future as it is. Your plumber is not really likely to be writing the next symphony or be creating a screenplay for something because he just finished plumbing someone else's house. So it's just like the linear path of their work is slightly different. Whereas in creative world, we've got the ability to really invent our own dream future, which I think is one of the most incredible things we can do because I believe the life is what you make it. It's really for us to explore it because the ability to be anyone at any time is incredible. Yeah, I agree with you to some Speaker 2 (8:09) degree. But also, you'll know the challenges of being a creative person and the multi-potentialite and all of the other things that we humans love novelty in general. But I think creative people are... generally looking forward a little bit more. They see things that other people don't and they crave that kind of difference. But Speaker 3 (8:33) there is an issue Speaker 2 (8:34) and there has to be some sort of balance, I think, with that because you do have to solve problems for particular people to be able to survive as a creative. You do have to know what you do. You do have to be able to articulate your value. So I agree that... Whilst we shouldn't niche ourselves into a corner and we shouldn't try to edge ourselves and box ourselves into anything, I do believe that's also when people don't do that. This is where the business side of their creativity struggles because nobody knows what they do. Nobody really knows. how they can help them. And I think as creative people, we have to find a balance. There's a lot of creative people who are in flow, doing all sorts of things, no real rhyme or rhythm to it. It's difficult to be chosen. It's too risky for people. So I think creative people do, unfortunately, have to find a balance with the business and the creativity. Speaker 2 (9:48) I don't think it's a balance any of us have found. I haven't found it quite yet. So, you know, it's still trying to figure it out. There's a lot to learn from lots of other industries. I think that's potentially what I'm trying to say here is there's so many good people in multiple different industries where we can learn from and bring hospitality thinking into my design business. I like to try and bring... business mindset into creativity and relationship building and psychology into my creative business hopefully i can still pay my bills and support my family and all the other shit we gotta do as people absolutely Speaker 3 (10:24) because when you think about it i always feel that when you are a novice creative designer whoever you want to be You are very focused on who you are identity-wise. You've got this sort of this inward stage where you need to prove your worth and show the world that you've got something to add. But as you grow older, that lens is getting wider and wider and you actually realize that unless someone's got a problem, you're not really working. And obviously you need to be almost selfless about solving that problem because after all, you are delivering the solution to somebody who's paying for it. This is for some reason this analogy popped in my head. Imagine jumping on a bus. And you're like, hey, can you take me to the next whatever, next train station? And we're like, yeah, I'll take you there my way. We'll take you there and offer you somewhere else. It's like, no, no, no. There's a logic between A and B. And that's what we need to sometimes do. What I want to talk about is one of your hats, which is being an author. And I really want to congratulate you on finishing publishing the second book. It's incredible, obviously, to see how you do things and what you've put into this and where you want the world to be in a way to drive this knowledge that you've got to share. It's incredible. So when we talk about, in your book, it's called No Bullshit Branding, a step-by-step guide to discover, design, and deliver your brand. Take me to the beginning. Where did the idea for the book come from? Why did you feel it needed to exist? And what did you want to achieve with this? Because the books, as you know, are my seventh one now. You can always tussle with the reason, does the world need it? And then you realize it does. And here's the reason Speaker 2 (11:54) why. Great question. Now, writing books isn't easy. And it's not something, I don't say that to sound cool. I say that because it's really difficult. It takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of patience, takes a lot of research, takes a lot of thinking. And I think that really, when you mentioned there, why another book? Does the world need another book like this? And this particular book, I actually wrote for me. And what I mean by that is like, I think we've all, especially over the last maybe three to five years, we've found... There's so many things distracting us now. There's so much noise. Do this. You're not good enough. You're not earning enough. You should be doing this. You should be following this trend. You should become this. Kind of like what we were saying at the beginning. You should do this. Speaker 3 (12:47) Not that we're saying we should do that. Speaker 2 (12:49) And I found myself, especially as somebody who is an addict at heart, I used to be cocaine and alcohol. Now it's marketing myself and trying to build a business. work, essentially. Probably not going to kill me as quick, but could kill me. But we talked only about how you evolve every few years. I was kind of going through one of those evolutions where I was maybe being perceived as something I didn't want to be perceived. I think whenever you grow a community online, you kind of get positioned as the influencer or the twit on the internet, which I am. the twit on the internet a little bit. But I realized that wasn't really something that I wanted for myself. It's not something that I'd worked for 20 years to try and build was to then be known as this thing. I was running a studio before even social media was even a thing. So it was something I accidentally fell into a little bit. So basically the book for me was, what do I want to be known for? It was a reason to slow me down. It was a reason to think. deeper about the things that I wanted to talk about, research more, be more curious. I think in the kind of short form video creation world and the social media world and the email marketing world, it's all quite quick and the attention spans are quite short. And I was like, well, this isn't really like mastery for me is a long, never ending process of something. You never get there. And the book for me was just another journey towards that, trying to bring a new perspective to my world of brand building. Because again, being in that social media world, it's got a little bit convoluted. So there's a lot of people saying things I don't believe are totally accurate because they're learning from people who also don't know what it is. So I think for me, it was like this, okay, well, let me just... Sit down. Let me spend a huge amount of time writing 40,000 words, designing a book, creating all the shit. I physically had to slow down to think because I was like, thinking is going to be so important moving forward because this is when AI was coming into it and all this conversation of automation, chatting PT and all this stuff. And I was like, golly, I don't want to fall into that trap of outsourcing my brain. I want to use my brain. So essentially I wrote a book and that is where we are today. It was purely a selfish thing to stop me from getting distracted by