A Bit of Optimism - Designing the Future with Brian Collins

Episode Date: May 4, 2021

Spotify, Target and Twitch are just three of the brands whose identity has been significantly influenced by Brian Collins. He’s a legend in the design world and thinks about the future in ways completely different from everyone else. This is… A Bit of OptimismYouTube: http://youtube.com/simonsinekFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/simonsinekLinkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/simonsinekInstagram: https://instagram.com/simonsinekTwitter: https://twitter.com/simonsinekPinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/officialsimonsinek 

Brian Collins is what is known as a legend. In the design world, he has either personally designed or overseen some of the biggest design projects. He designed the Hershey store in Times Square. His company redid the branding for Spotify, Mattel, Levi's, American Express, IBM, some of the biggest, most powerful companies. He has had significant influence in how they look and feel and present themselves to the outside world. By sheer dumb luck, I have known Brian for 20 years. And so I have learned so much from him just from getting to interact with him over all these years. And one of the things that I adore about him is his ability to think about

the future, how we live, how we interact with the world and with each other. So we sat down together and we talked about designing the future. This is a bit of optimism. Brian Collins, one of my favorite people in the world. I want to talk to you about the future. That's my favorite topic. Because you, more than almost anyone I know, think about the future, live in the future, build the future, plan the future,

and have shown me how to do that over the course of a very long time that you and I have known each other, 20 years or something we've known each other, which makes me just feel old. Yeah. I met you when I was four. Yeah, I think I met you, I think I was 62. But about the time they canceled Starsky and Hutch. Just to give a little context, you and I met when I had a – I wasn't entry level, but I was low man on the totem pole. We worked in Ogilvy at May there together. You were the head of the design group there.

I was a lowly dog's buddy. I was a lowly dog's buddy. And there was a huge new business pitch that the company was working on that took a lot of people involved from the agency to participate. And I was assigned to work on this pitch. And I was assigned to work with you. And that's how we met. Yeah, you became part of my team that day. I became part of your team that day. Flash forward many, many years. We met for lunch and you, as a little gift, gave me a copy of Dr. James Kars's Finite and Infinite Games. You gave me his book many, many years ago.

A book that profoundly changed the course of my life, but also changed the way I view the world. Because it is ostensibly about the future. It's looking at the future in a way that is far more poetic, far more generous, far more encompassing as a metaphor. And I thought at the time, since you were looking at the future in a very big sort of abundant way, it was all mapped ahead of you. You know, it was all potential. It was a cargo of possibilities in front of you. ahead of you. It was all potential. It was a cargo of possibilities in front of you.

This was a book that I thought that had a pretty powerful sort of philosophical bent, but it also had poetry to it. And I thought it would be something that you would like. Well, I'm super grateful. So growing up, did you live in your imagination? Were you always thinking about the future? Were you a fan of science fiction? Was that your thing? Well, it's interesting. I think when you're a young child, if you're creative, if you're intensely creative, you learn very early on that your mind works differently from a lot of other kids. And you can do one of two things. You can either resent that and go off and sort of become insulated and singular. But I come from a big Irish family and within a large Irish family. So we talk with each other all the time. But I come from a big Irish family, and within a large Irish family,

so we talk with each other all the time. So I was wired to be social. And so what ended up happening is I think there's a split in me. And I'm not an extrovert, and I'm not an introvert. I'm an ambivert, which means I like being really, really social. And I like really being alone at the same time. And so I like hanging out with my family. I like hanging out with friends. God knows I love hanging out with my crew and everyone on my team. But then there's time where I have to go away. And I think growing up, as I did in the 1960s, everything in the 1960s was about the future. John Kennedy's speech in 1962 puts the United States on a very different trajectory.

We choose the moon. We choose the moon not because it's easy, because it is hard. And we will get there before the end of this decade. Decade, right. Decade, yeah. Well, you know, it's Boston Brahman. What I saw in front of me was the future was always arriving every day, whether it was on television, with science fiction, whether it was in Disneyland, with Tomorrowland, whether it was the McDonald's that opened up in Boston, it looked like it had flown in from the year 2025. And it was funny, really interesting to me that the future of architecture first appeared in retail, like retail architecture, because it was easy to produce. Coffee shops, car washes, drive-thrus that were sort of emblematic of the world of tomorrow. And so, every morning you would wake up and like, what is tomorrow going to bring? Because all of us were going to the moon. The culture had to catch up

with Russia. America thought that the Soviet Union was basically an agrarian or barely a post-agrarian society. And the first three breakthroughs in the frontier outer space was made by the Soviet Union, you know, from Sputnik to the first man in space. And the first dog. And the first dog, Laika, and also the first human being to go into space outside of a capsule. Those were all inventions driven by the Soviet Union. They were ahead of us kind of mathematically and scientifically, effectively by decades.

And so we had to catch up. So the country was driven. And what did that do for you as a kid? So did you just sit and watch TV? Did you dream of going to space? Oh, I dreamed about all of this. I had space toys. I read science fiction starting when I was driven. And what did that do for you as a kid? So did you just sit and watch TV? Did you dream of going to space? Oh, I dreamed about all of this. I had space toys. I read science fiction starting when I was 10.

So I live in that world because tomorrow was always coming. The other thing about the 1960s view of tomorrow was our golden era was going to be ahead of us and not behind us. It was not make America great again. America will be better than ever. People will be better than ever. The world will be better than ever. People will be better than ever. The world will be better than ever. In fact, the benchmark was, well, if we're going to the moon, and we were, then we can solve fill in the blank. We can solve the Vietnam War. We can solve racism. We can solve the common

cold. Because mankind collectively could do that, everything else by comparison seems solvable. So future orientation was something that before my childhood, by comparison, seems solvable. So future orientation was something that, before my childhood, a lot of the kids I grew up with didn't care. But my imagination was absolutely captured by it. You and I share something in common, which is we're both diehard optimists. And, you know, I mean, I have my definition of optimism, and I'm very curious what yours is. One of my definitions of optimism comes from someone who I grew up with, Noam Chomsky. Noam Chomsky's quote was, if you assume that there is no hope, you'll guarantee there will

be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, that there are opportunities to change things, there's a possibility you can contribute to making a better world. So in other words, optimism, he said, is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, it's unlikely you will step up and take responsibility for making it so. If you assume there's no hope, you guarantee there will be no hope. My definition is that optimism is not blind positivity, and it's not naive. You know, you can live in darkness, you can be in darkness, you can go through hard times,

but optimism is the undying belief that the future is bright. One definition that I like of design is design is hope made visible. And there's a great quote by Rebecca Solnit in her book, Hope in the Dark. Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch feeling lucky. It is an ax you break down doors with in an emergency. Hope should shove you out the door because it will take everything you have to steer the future away from endless war, from the annihilation of the earth's treasures and the grinding down of the poor and the marginal. To hope is to give yourself to the future and that commitment to the future of what makes the present inhabitable. Oh my goodness, I love that. Because hope I think is to some people this ethereal thing that is a lottery ticket that you hold on to and

you go, I hope, I hope it works out. I hope I win the lottery. It is like it is. But I love this idea of hope being an axe. I absolutely do adore that imagery. That makes the present inhabitable because you can plan a better future. And you have the right to change things. That's the thing. It's not passively waiting for the world to change around you. But hope and optimism is a battery that drives the energy for positive change. So you have this amazing company where you have brilliant designers and strategists and thinkers and doers, but you lose employees constantly. Yeah. For all the brilliant design that you do, you also, I don't know on purpose or by accident,

built a factory because you build these wonderful people up to become really desirable in the marketplace and they leave. And so you have this wonderful young team, but they're constantly leaving. I'm so interested how you build such a successful business where it's just people are constantly quitting to go on to greener pastures. Well, I wouldn't say they're necessarily greener pastures because they're different pastures. Fair enough. Fair enough. Fair enough. Well, I wouldn't say they're necessarily greener pastures because they're different pastures. Fair enough. Fair enough. Fair enough. They're going on for big jobs and more responsibility and getting to. Yeah, I think that's true. I believe grass is not greener on the other side. I think grass is greener where you water it. Yeah, fair enough.

You know, so I've been a teacher for starting in the California College of Arts. And so when you're a teacher, you have a different perspective. The object is to make sure that your students grow and accelerate. And I speak to my students like I speak with my employees, which is you speak to them about who they can become, not who they are. The other thing I try to do is I don't hire people for their potential. I hire people for their inevitability. What does that mean? Everyone I hire, I see them for who they can become. Isn't that potential? No, it means I know they will become. In other words, I treat them as if it's inevitable, not potential. Potentially, yes. Potentially, no. But if you treat them that it's inevitable, they will do nothing but succeed. That's a different conversation. You tell somebody you will not fail.

There's nothing you can do where you will not fail. There's nothing you can do where the outcome of this will not be successful. You'll be in good hands. Everything will be okay. That changes a young person's mindset. So you're teaching them to envision the future for themselves. Always. You're teaching them the confidence of a bright future.

The purpose of Collins is not to create followers of Brian Collins. That's stupid. The purpose of Collins is to create more leaders. Now, by the way, I've had people who work with me for 21 years. I've also had people on our team who work here for eight or nine years. We have boomerangers who come back, and that's really interesting. So if you see yourself as a community of where people come and go, as long as there's a core group of people that keep the values in place, then I'm okay that people go off and try new things, you know, as long as they send us postcards. As somebody who lives in the future, designs the future, builds the future,

teaches young people to have confidence in the future and themselves, how do you deal with disappointment? Not well. No, I wish I could be like, well, you know, I'm very zen about it, but I'm not because I have hopes for them. So when something goes sideways, just walk me through that. Whether a person lets you down or a project goes sideways or a meeting goes badly, how does that show up? I don't see it as failure.

Yeah. I see it as it's the best you could do and it's the best that we could do at that point. So if we made a mistake, let's apologize, but let's not beat ourselves up. Let's learn from this. If we learn from it and we don't make the same mistake again, then I'm okay.

If we make the same mistake again, then I'm like, what the hell? Make new mistakes. Are you like that with yourself? No, I'm not. I beat myself up to death. My worst thing is when I know that I didn't deliver, that I didn't step up to the plate or the standards that I set for my staff. And I come short, I will go into a shame spiral. I've got to check out. Why did I do that? And then, you know, and sometimes when I get like

the 22-year-old Brian who set out to start his own, you know, his career doesn't want to talk to me. Like, Brian, I'm not talking to you. You just pissed me off. But, you know, it gets back to this idea of disappointment because disappointed is related to the idea of regret. And the thing about regret is if you look at it, and now that I'm, you know, on, you know, now that I'm on the other side of 22, regret could be a tool for opening up a smarter future. Walk me through that. I'm, I'm cause and it its face, I'm not sure I agree. Years ago, when I was at Ogilvy, there was a gifted young designer who worked on my team,

who found out how much somebody else was making. And they were both about the same age. This other person I had to get out of a very famous design company. And so I had to pay him. He's probably made about a 25% more at the time than this other young designer did. And he got wind of it. And he came into my office and publicly in front of four or five other people said, I demand the same level or I will quit. And my ego was like, well, you can't say that to me. You can't say that. I said, now you've given me no option because you have to quit because if I give you a salary now, people will now see that's how you get salaries by coming in and doing brinksmanship i regret having treated uh that designer in that way and so recently um when someone had made a mistake that would and around it wasn't a salary issue but someone came in and acted out of like and this is young this is a very

young designer i was in my 30s at the time. The design was all full of piss and vinegar. And someone did the same thing. A young designer on my team was all full of piss and vinegar and sort of played brinksmanship with me. And I said, I understand. I hear you. I understand why this is difficult. Why don't we go out and have a dinner and maybe have a drink?

Let's think about it. You are enormously important to me. And I don't want you to make a mistake. So I've been through this and I will not let you make this mistake. I'm going to give you some options that I think will be good for you. And then we'll make these decisions together. If you decide to leave good, if you decide to stay good, but I've got to give you these options. So you will not make a mistake. Okay. Okay. And so what I did, cause I did not want to go through that heartbreak, looking back at what I did. Life is lived in the moment, but it's understood by looking backwards. And so, by the way, he ended up, he saw his options. He calmed down. It took him two days

and he goes, yeah, you're right. Had I made that decision last 24 hours, I would have regretted it. Like, yeah, I know my job is to prevent you from making a mistake or if you, or giving you options. So you're acting. So you're choosing a future instead of reacting against one you don't like. So choose the future. Do you choose this? He said, yes, I want to do this. And he's still a key part of our team. I want to say that again, because that's such a good point to choose a future rather than reacting against the one you don't like. Correct. So it's running towards rather than running away.

That's right. He was running away and I didn't want him to run away. I said, after two days, if you choose to run away, I'll support you in doing that. But let me outline a future that might be interesting and we can create it together. And we kicked it back and forth and said, does this seem interesting to you? Oh yeah, that's better. I didn't know that was possible. Well, you didn't know unless we had a conversation.

And you wouldn't have been able to do that had you not screwed it up a bunch of years earlier. Yeah, I'm devastated by that choice that I've made. I let that designer leave. It was one of the dumbest things I've ever done. I've talked about this before, but I so love it, which is there's this Chinese story that's told, and it's told many ways, but this is the way I know it, of a young man who's born with a remarkable ability for horse riding. And everyone in the village says, you're so lucky. And the monk says, we'll see. And then he falls off his horse, breaks his leg, his career is over.

And everyone in the village says, you're so unlucky. And the monk says, we'll see. And then war breaks out and all the young men are sent to battle, but he can't go because of his busted leg. And everyone in the village says, you're so lucky. And the monk says, we'll see. And this is sort of regret. Like, had you not had that experience go sideways all those years ago and had that what we're calling regret, then you may not have learned the lesson on how to actually treat someone properly and with empathy and understand the emotional side of these conversations better later. So the question is, do you have to go through regret to grow?

Yes, you do. You have no choice. Wisdom isn't gained by studying. Wisdom isn't gained through reading. Wisdom is gained through years of sometimes pain and regret. Now, the thing about that too is it's not something you do. It's something sometimes that's done to you. I'm going to go back to that hope analogy, which is I think potential for some people is a lottery ticket they're holding on to. Right. Which is somebody once told them you have potential and now they walk around holding on to it. Well, if you're always loaded with potential, then you don't have to choose because you're always the person on their way to somewhere incredible. Right. Where inevitability to me, you know, is that ax,

which is strangely enough, it's not inevitable unless you're plowing forwards. From very early in my career, I always chose who I was going to work for rather than what or where I was going to work for. And I took lower paying job offers because I really liked who my boss was going to be versus the higher paying job and the fancier account who they were fine. Like the team was fine, but I wasn't inspired or enamored by them. And I remember that traditional HR question. So Simon, what are you looking for when I'm being interviewed? And I would always say the same thing. I said, the thing that I'm looking for is a lot like looking for love, I'd say, which is I'm looking for a mentor. And I literally went from job to these jobs looking for somebody who would teach me. And this

goes back to what you were saying before, which is one of the greatest assets you have as a leader is you're also a teacher. And it raises the question, should all people in leadership positions and senior leadership positions, should they also teach? Will that make somebody a better leader? Well, I think there are people who are natural leaders, and I'm certainly not one. When I started Collins, it was very clear to me in the process of doing it that I became more excited about seeing other people create things that they had no understanding that they could create that level of work and see young people manifest work or ideas or writing or potentials that they didn't know they could is far more interesting to me than anything that I could create.

One of my favorite things about our friendship is because we've known each other for so long, and because we've actually, because I met you professionally, is I can actually remember who you were as a leader 20 years ago. I know exactly. And who you are as a leader now. And it's fun, I think, because I think we can say this about each other, which is because we've been friends constantly for 20 years. It's not like we took a break. And you've always been a genius and you've always had a perspective on the world that is unique and illuminating. You've always had that. That has always been something that has astounded me about being in a room with you. But I remember back in the day, back in the day, no, no, no. You were always the smartest guy in the room. But back in

the day, it became abundantly clear that you it's not that you wanted to tell us it's that you just had all these ideas that you did tell us and you you dominated rooms oh yeah and you and you were polarizing people loved you and hated you back in the day even you know you you were the genius that you know and some people had issues with it and some people didn't what sitting in meetings with you now, it's a totally different experience. A what? Really? That's interesting.

Totally different experience. You're still the smartest guy in the room, but it's amazing how much you defer. And it's amazing how much when somebody asks you your opinion, you go, well, let's ask Stacey, her opinion first. It's an amazing thing to see. Was this organic? Was this an evolution? Or was there another regret? Is there something that happened that pushed you in this direction as an evolving and growing leader? Well, the thing is about hiring young people, I have a nose for talent, I think.

I think you do. We don't need to temper that statement. You have remarkably talented people who divide the world into two kinds of people and those who don't, right? But there are two kinds of leaders, I think. There are those who kind of like in architecture, like Frank Lloyd Wright, and there's the grandmaster and the guru. And you learn how to design like Frank Lloyd Wright, an incredibly game-changing philosophy about nature, about the importance of design, how the world and the world you lived in and the materials and the habitat you were surrounded by, both you informed it and how it informed you and led to some of the most remarkable pieces of architecture in the world, including Falling Water and the Guggenheim Museum in New York. They feel inevitable. And that's one way of being a design leader.

There's another way of being a design leader, which is how Jim Henson did it, because we worked in the design of the Jim Henson exhibit who created the Muppets and was one of the co-creators of Sesame Street. As Henson realized, his own talent was amplified, accelerated, complemented, dimensionalized, color was added to it, musicality was added to it, when he brought in collaborators who were very different than him. And the Muppets exist because of that collision of forces that he didn't know about. And so, the Muppets, even though it said Jim Henson Associates, the Muppets is a manifestation of 30, 40, 50 kinds of musicians, and writers, and composers, and illustrators, clown Muppets, is a manifestation of 30, 40, 50 kinds of musicians and writers and

composers and illustrators, clowns, performers, actors, cinematographers. And he went out to find people who were infinitely better than he was. And as a result, what they did together, they never could have done. And he went under Frank Lloyd Wright. Frank Lloyd Wright had a nose for talent, but he was also looking for people who were obsequious, who would follow his lead, who were gifted, but were willing to go, okay, you want it to be that way. And I always found it much more interesting as I progressed in my career, is that I found there were people who were enormously more talented than I was in design, in writing. I'm like, oh my God, we can actually do more stuff if we hire people who are different than I am, who are not like me. This is important. This is important because we started talking about

the future and the building of the future. And when you're a Frank Lloyd Wright, as genius as you are, you die. And for the rest of time, we are forced to repair and put your work in formaldehyde so that we can look back on it. Where you have your Jim Henson's and your Walt Disney's who surrounded themselves with people who are far better. And those companies with their leaders long gone, with their founders long gone, continue to innovate and pave the way in their industries, but because of the people he built around them. And so the, the inevitability of hope of hope as an ax. Yes. Requires us the humility. This is very interesting that it requires the humility to surround

ourselves with people who are a lot better than we are. And different. And different. And different. There are people in my team who are not particularly good writers. They might not be as fluent in conversations about strategy. But if you give them the brief, and the brief is inspiring and open-ended enough, they will absorb that brief, and they will create things that you will blow your mind. And so you have to recognize there are going to be different kinds of intelligences, different kinds of energies. You have to create people who, you have to create

room for people who are insanely introverted, who may even be by every definition somewhere on the spectrum, whatever that means, as well as people who are alphas, who are going to go out and help you, you know, win the day in a massive project. The culture has to accommodate all sorts of different energies. I despise the term cultural fit. What a pernicious word. You don't fit, get out. Really? You don't fit, leave. It is such a cover. It is such a tiny fig leaf for people to hide behind. Any kind reason i don't like you it can hide all sorts of things racism homophobia um you know all sorts of all sorts of fears where we hire for what we would say is cultural contribution what do you bring how are you different how can you add

to our tapestry with something that we don't have how can you do how can you bring something to us that's different so we try to hire for people who are not a fit but who couldn't who contribute to something and then the culture has to then accommodate them i like this because the culture absolutely is a set of values right yeah there is such thing as fitting the culture but what i love is this terminology of seeing someone as a fit absolutely has a pernicious side to it but what what I like is fit is passive, right? Like you're a square. We have a place for a square over here.

Square peg, square hole. Ta-da, right? There you go. Versus contribution, which is a growth mindset. With this contribution, which is we're growing, we're expanding, we're amplifying. And we need whatever it is you have to help us amplify. It goes back to Frank Lloyd Wright. Do you fit? Are you, you know, will you be the square peg that I need in the square hole at this moment to serve, to serve me?

Or are you going to do something that's going to challenge me and make me uncomfortable, Jim Henson, Walt Disney, and look what we can build together that I couldn't do without you. That's, that's cultural contribution. I really, really like that for us to think of someone as a potential cultural contributor rather than a fit. What do you bring that we don't have? Yeah. How is your voice different?

How is your personality different? How can you? Yeah. And I'm going to even tweak my language in, not as a potential cultural contributor, an inevitable cultural contributor. Inevitable in part, but yes. I'm once again a prisoner of language. Thank you. You spot my Achilles heel. No, I'm once again a prisoner of language. Thank you. You spot my Achilles heel.

No, I'm with you. But I think changing words, I mean, you and I both know this, changing the words we use actually matters. It sure does. There's a proverb, I think, or statement, I think it comes from the Ivory Coast. I might be wrong. But it says, if you want to go somewhere fast, go alone. If you want to go somewhere far, go together. But that means there are going to be certain kinds of things that you do with a bunch of people who are going to go

together. There's going to be arguments. There's going to be difficulties. You have to accommodate, particularly if you want to accommodate enormously talented and uncommonly gifted people like we have at our company. And they tend to be ambitious. They tend to want to run fast and get things done, make stuff. Talented people love to get stuff out the door. One of the things that we've had to do, and this is sometimes, the other thing I've learned is that there are people who love to talk and there are people who love to do, and then there are people who love to do both. I think there's a huge mistake in the business press,

in the writing about business and the studying of leadership. And it's this, which is we spend too much time studying the companies who are quote unquote big, successful, fast growing, where the leaders have outsized egos, you know, for all the reasons. And I think we're missing an opportunity to study the creative companies. You know, yes, there's been books written by, you know, about Disney and about Henson, but they tend to be read by people from those industries or from creative people like everybody in the world isn't reading about Jim Henson like they read about, you know, General Electric. You know, they're writing books about Google and Twitter and Amazon. Creative companies, theater companies, dance companies, yours, a design company, where the idea of hiring misfits and hiring for contribution and, by the way, hiring introverts and how you create space for an introvert who is insanely talented. But it's really important if you're building a creative company where you want to be on the frontier of things all the time.

We always want to be on the frontier. So I have to make space. I sense this person might have something. It gets want to be on the frontier. I have to make space. I sense this person might have something. It gets back to this puzzle, I think. I've seen this an awful lot. I've been falling victim to this because I like people who are intelligent, hyper-articulate, and charismatic. I fall for it more often than not. If you're not careful, and I don't do this anymore. I used to do it a lot when we started Collins is I would hire articulate incompetence and the marketing industry

is chock-a-block with them. People who can talk on the blue street don't know how to write a deck, don't know how to design it, don't know how to design a damn thing, can't write it.

I've hired some of those companies. Oh, and they go, yeah, more of this, more of that. Advertising marketing is filled with them and they don't have ideas, but man, can they go, yeah, more of this, more of that. Advertising marketing is filled with them. And they don't have ideas, but man, can they talk a blue streak? Man, can they sell you, you know, they can sell ice in Minnesota in January when it throws 30 degrees below zero and snow drifts 10 feet.

And they're like, and I've fallen victim to this. Yeah, it's true. I have too. Articulate incompetence, I think. Yeah. That sums up the industry. Articulate incompetency is rife. And you see them.

And the other flip side is they get fame and mastery confused or conflated. And so what we try to do is, and I see this with young creative people often, because they get fame, you know, because of Instagram, God knows, TikTok, Pinterest, all the places that they're posting. They can become very, very famous, but you don't have to be very, very good. There are less great masterful creative people, but not all of them are famous. And so what I try to do is not conflate the two. And I'm very interested in mastery. Mastery is a long game. This is so interesting to me. I've learned so much about what it takes to build the future and the idea of hiring for cultural contribution, the idea of looking for misfits and offering them

the inevitability of their own future. And it's really a confidence grain, right? Helping them build the confidence and putting them in uncomfortable positions and letting them know that they can't fail because they're surrounded by people who want to see them succeed and feel supported. Who will not let them fail.

Who will not let them fail. And if they have a setback, then it's simply a lesson and we'll get through this together, you know, because not everything goes according to plan. No, and you know, God knows we've made mistakes and people, you know, we like, for whatever reason. There is no greater statement of optimism than to think about the future as an inevitable,

positive place. I don't use the word the future. I use the word the futures because there's no such thing as the future. All futures are in competition with each other all the time. The future I thought was going to be inevitable in the year 2016, I sat with 15 members of my team. I saw that future collapse in November 2016. I'm like, what? That future was not inevitable and I thought it was. All futures are in competition with other futures all the time. You have to choose which future are you going to invest in. But then it's not inevitable, is it? No, no, no, no, no, no. What I'm saying is their trajectory to be self-actualized in my mind

is inevitable. I love this. I love this. No such thing as, I'm going to say it again because I love it. There's no such thing as the future. No. There are futures and all of these ideas of what the future could be are in competition. And shapeable. And shapeable, ideas of what the future could be are in competition. And this is- And shapeable. And shapeable, which is why we have to show up in life with an ax and not a lottery ticket, because the future that we get to live in is the one that we will have to build and bash down doors to see happen.

And the one that you believe is worth fighting for. And the one that you believe is worth fighting for. Amen to that. Brian, I could talk to you for hours. Thank you so much for doing this with me. This is so good. Every time I talk to you, I learn something new. I really do. I love it. Well, Simon, the same thing you do. It was great. How do I say this? We talked about regret, right? I've learned two things. If I've learned anything at all, it's the power of regret to be a sort of a tiller to help you avoid the same mistakes. And I use it in some ways as a bit of a sale to help me make better decisions. And the second thing I've learned about regret, probably more than anything else, the secret of long-term creative relationships is the secret

of long-term romantic relationships. And it's not respect. It's not delight. It's not confidence. It's not, it's endless, endless, endless forgiveness and saying, okay, we'll, we'll try it next time and let's get up and do it again tomorrow. It's true. I love you, Brian. I really do. I'll talk to you soon. If you enjoyed this podcast and you'd like to hear more, please subscribe wherever you like to listen to podcasts. Until then, take care of yourself. Take care of each other.