Why great brands are stolen, not created
Love at First Try · April 9, 2026 · 68 min
Transcript104 sections · auto-generated, so expect the odd wrong word
Hey, I'm Jim and this is the Love at First Sight podcast. A podcast for SAS CEOs and developers that truly want to learn more about design and care about it, but they're not designers that find it too complex. In every episode, we discuss how to design products that become sticky and unforgettable. We dive into the topics of taste, UX, growth, and conversions, and we share practical tips and frameworks you can add into your development process. Enough with the intro, so let's dive into the today's episode. So, Yak, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for making the time today. It's a pleasure to be here, Jim. Thanks for having me. >> Discuss. Yeah, anytime, man. Anytime. Happy to have you. So, yeah, as we
discussed before like the we're gonna today we're gonna discuss mainly about branding and brand strategy. And before we dive into the our core topics, I wanted to ask for a quick intro like who you are, what are you working on, a bit of your story actually because on the call we had before I got to know some parts of your background, but it would be cool to actually hear the full story of yours and uh yeah, and what are you working on right now? >> My origin story. Well, I was I was at this lab and then a radioactive spider fell off the roof and it bit my hand. And now, you know, I swing through the cities and I I fought the Green Goblin yesterday and, you know, I'm going on a date with Mary Jane Watson later today.
That would be cool. But, um, I'm not I'm not spider not saying I'm Spider-Man. I'm just saying that no one's ever seen me and Spider-Man at the same time. Okay. All joking aside, my name is Zach. I'm one of the co-founders of a marketing agency called Conversion Factory. We work with growth stage software companies helping them build a marketing engine and I run the design side of things. So I'm in charge of a team of designers that work on revamping things like web pages, social collateral, marketing assets, trade show material like you know run the gamut. There's pretty much anything that needs to look good and on brand. My team touches that and we also come up with the brand identities from scratch. So
say you know a company is bootstrapped and they look like they belong in a garage. we can take them from looking like that to then looking like they belong on the S&P 500. And that's my realm of expertise is within that and then how design serves marketing as a as a bigger picture. >> Nice. Nice. Really cool. >> Yeah. And a bit of my origin story, but I um I've been drawing since I could hold a pencil. My grandmother's a fine artist that when I was going to go to college, so I was actually in I was in a Marine Corps recruiter's office the day that I got my acceptance letter from SDSU. So it was like I was either going to go down the military path or I was going to go down becoming a designer.
And >> yeah, my mom was super happy that I got my acceptance letter from San Diego State. She's like, you know, my dad said, "Your mom was crying last night thinking about you joining the military." I was like, "Fuck." Hold on. I'm kind of out of options here. So, I got my acceptance letter, started going to school for graphic design specifically. I got a job at the entrepreneurship center my junior year, which was where I met a lot of really cool people. I met the co-founder of Vulcom. I met the co-founder of Stan Socks of Taylor of >> my mentor himself, Burn, was a big branding guy. He was like in the room formulating Amazon's brand strategy with Bezos in >> '90s. his last branding project that he
was a part of that was really really big was Birkshshire Hathaway. So being in a room with him was really cool because he helped me see it's like well Zach you you can be really good at design but until you understand brand strategy and positioning and how this actually plays into marketing strategy as a whole you're not going to be taken as seriously as you can without those soft skills. So that carried me through being not only a skilled designer when I was a freelancer from 2073 when Cory and Nick and I started conversion factory um was because I could speak client and I would talk about branding stuff not just because of how things looked. how this creative direction was not in in line with how they wanted people to feel or
it wasn't differentiated enough from their competition or not taking into consideration things like yeah you could do this but you're going to run into some issues with you know color contrast and you know this logo is really cool but it doesn't stand out and do its job from everybody else you know if you're a computer company you don't have a computer be your logo it's so I was able to talk about things in a way that moved just beyond aesthetics and went below the surface of And that's why I think I became valuable and why someone like Cory and someone like Nick were willing to team up with me because I wasn't just like, I like the color blue. Blue makes me feel good. He gives he gives good reasons behind
his design decisions. >> Yeah. I love how you explain it. I totally I fully fully understand what you mean. Yeah. That you see it like it's a solution to a business problem and not as as art that it's this is nice. I like it makes me feel good. It's actually like how does it fit into the the business context? That's a cool story. That's a pretty cool story, man. >> Not as cool as the spider though, unfortunately. >> Yeah, true. That would be more fun. Yeah. And and like really cool exposure on like really really nice mentors like for for me. I mean, yeah, the podcast is about you, but very quick intro because I never shared my my story with you as well. Like I come from engineering background. So I started as a software
engineer and I kind of back then I used to believe that design is a talent you're born with like looking back I don't really know why I was I used to believe that it was more like a technical guy that feels like that sees everybody who designs as an artist in a way but then later on once I was exposed to product designers I realized it's kind of a skill you can train and and actually learn and later on I switched to product design which was my dream but I I didn't really have any path actually to to get into that until I I found some designers and I was their front developer and started coping what they do and slowly I got my >> Well, it sounds like you and I came at it just from opposite angles where I was
the you were the very structured engineer who then saw the power of design and adding a little bit of chaos to your engineering life and I was the chaotic you know >> exactly >> kid who liked to draw who then found design as a way to add order to expression and you know having it serve serve a business goal. exactly what you said. Exactly. So yeah, that that's where where I come from on on this one. And yeah, design has been always like super interesting for me. It's like with with coding, the boring part was that I would love that I can bring ideas into life, but many times I would work on designs that I didn't like and like man like I can see things that could be better here. And also I always
love the idea of kind of a going from white to something from a white canvas to something and kind of a envisioning the product and kind of a shaping out instead of just executing on ideas that others designed in a way for me that was the most fascinating part of design. Do you have an easy time seeing things that don't exist yet? Like if you close your eyes and I tell you to picture a red star, can you actually picture a red star? >> Yeah, I would say yeah. nowadays. Yeah. In the past, not that easily, but the more >> I I work the the easier it gets. Yeah. >> Was I have this there's another theory of mine, which is that I think um there's this I don't know if it conditions the right word for it. It's
called aphantasia where >> that's the word that I was I think it's a it's a Greek one aphadia which like fadia means fantasy. It's like imagination. And when you say aphadia, it's like without imagination, you cannot imagine stuff. I think what it mean the way I've heard people who have it describe it because my wife is this way. She can't >> when I picture a red star, it's like it's very very clear. Like I can draw the the points. I can see the color red. It's on a black background and it it's just like a a plain 2D graphic and I can see that you know and it sounds like you can too. Like in your mind the picture is very clear. There's a lot of people that don't have that and they can't see something until it's actually in front
of them. Because there's some people who would get told I want you to picture this in your mind's eye, but they don't have one. And >> I think that really good designers are I think that is something that they are born with that they can naturally see things before they >> come to fruition. It's why I mean you probably noticed this now with like if you're doing a layout on a web page and I have this happen all the time where a client will say, "Hey, make this you know these bulleted text or bullets centered in the page." And I can already see it in my head and say that's going to look like crap. But then you have to show them because they can't, you know, they can't see it. They're just like
seeing is believing. >> Yeah. >> Right. For them it be it's, you know, I can believe it before I see it, but they have to see it in order to believe it. So designers are gifted quite naturally in that they can see something that doesn't exist yet. And I think it allows them to problem solve a lot in their mind before actually putting it on a canvas. Yeah, it's it's very interesting that you asked this because as a kids like even if I I got into engineering like when I was at the age of 12 yeah 12 years old I started painting but not really painting stuff actually coping comic books so I was actually talking about the Spider-Man I was in love with Spider-Man and like on my parents place I painted like a huge Spider-Man on the
wall it's like by far my favorite super superhero and for this one I could copy well what I see on the comic book, but I couldn't paint it out of my head like and same with humans or like with other stuff like I couldn't really visualize all the details. So when you ask me if I can see stuff, I'm like I think I can like I do it while designing but I cannot go into like a lot of details in the same time. >> And the more that I design the better I get at it. So it really depends on the like now in UI design it's easier for me but if I try painting I'm going to have a really hard uh hard time. So that that's something that I've >> observed like on on me it's way easier if I look at something and have to
replicate it. On that part I'm pretty good. But with painting I'm curious like for you could you kind of just bring back a memory of a landscape and start painting it and make like a yeah a close enough version. I mean it still takes me a long time like really getting all the details. And it's still easier for me if I have a photo for reference to then try and paint it. I mean that's it's easier for all artists. system. The camera obscur was used for for centuries before we had photographs for reference. But yeah, I could if given the time I could paint what I see in my head, work on it that way. There's varying degrees of it. I've seen there's because they give this grid of it goes from, you know, a
spectrum of a a blank space like where it's just black and then a a square red star on a black background >> and then it kind of varies as far as the degree of fidelity that you can see it in. You know, it does vary. You bring up an interesting question of whether it's a skill that can be developed and a muscle that can be worked over time, that would be something to be studied for sure. >> Yeah. Yeah. 100%. >> Yeah. Yeah. And the the whole concept of a how do you say in English? A fantasia. No, that's too Greek the way that I say it. I think >> a fantasia. >> Fantasia. Yeah. This one is like I didn't even know about it and a developer actually told me when I was helping him on a landing page that he
has this. I'm like what is it? And then I searched the word and I saw that it has like recordings and I got to know kind of the the whole concept because I didn't know that there were people that cannot even visualize an idea just to an extent. Yeah, it was an interesting discovery uh back then. So talking about design now and and the branding like uh my first question would be how do you define taste as a designer like from your experience so far? It's also a pretty hot topic right now with AI that taste is a new mode and all this kind of uh click baity stuff in my opinion, but I'm curious like about your take on taste. How do you define it? So, a quick clarification here. I I was not prepared
for this question specifically. So, I'm going to give I'm going to give a a best bat at it. Taste I mean that's a it's a really hard one. I think it's deter being able to sus out when something doesn't hit the mark. like if it doesn't achieve the objective that it's set out to do in a a pleasant way and I mean your taste taste is such a weird word because it's is quite hard to define exactly what it means which is why I try and use other words to fill that in like in the concept of branding right like a brand is a gut feeling it's the way that people have an emotional reaction to something and when you have a a uniform direction of that feeling that's where you know your branding is good and visuals will be part of that,
you know, when the name, the story, the motion design, the packaging, the textures, the feel, even the purpose of the company, when all that feels like it comes from one place and there's a direct throughine within all of it, you know that your branding is working really well. I don't have the same kind of definition for taste other than you've trained yourself to understand historically what people appreciate and you've kind of cataloged that. So maybe it's like a cross reference of ta taste is what it is. It's a cross reference of what does and does not work and your ability to apply that or at least use it as a filter by which you see the world. It's my my go. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That that's a pretty pretty robust kind of
answer on that. Yeah. Also on this one there is no right or wrong. That that's why I love these questions because it's very everybody perceives like the concept of taste in a in a different way um as uh >> as well. Well, taste is a really interesting thing. Have you I'm assuming you've watched the video the gap by Ira Glass. >> Um I don't think so or maybe and I don't remember. >> Yeah. Well, so Ira Glass was um he was the narrator for This American Life, which was an NPR podcast, and one of my typography professors at San Diego State showed us this video because what he talks about is like when you start doing any kind of creative work, you can very clearly spot the gap between work that you perceive as really, really good and
then your work because you're just starting out and you know what you're doing right now is garbage. And you know it's garbage because you can see the delta between what you're producing and what you want to produce, which is like, you know, if you're a young designer, it's me doing weird stuff for my graphic design 101 class and then I'm looking at things like Pentagram or Design Studio or Kodo and watching these professionals just freaking kill it, you know? Like I'm like, how do they do this so so well? And that's the gap between between you now and then where you want to be. But your taste is still killer because you know that it's not good and it's it's like your your gauge for what is and what and is not suitable work. And
the only way that you actually close that gap is through just producing a lot of work and doing a lot of really good stuff. And then I think by doing that you kind of bring in and refine your own taste to be like your flavor. And I'm sure that you probably have like different flavors that you can pull in when you need to. Like I think that I have this weird dichotomy with my designs where you know the first design projects that I did were doing a lot of punk rock concerts and like you know scratch punk and hatched everything cuz I was really into the punk scene when I was in college and then I found a really deep appreciation for Swiss graphic design and minimalism and Yantis and Joseph Ma Brockman and all those
characters who kind of set the foundation for graphic design as we know it. And so you get this cool blend and that's like my aesthetic, you know, for for Zach personally. And I think that I dip into both of those to a certain degree depending on what the client needs. And there's a kid who also just likes, you know, drawing cartoons on napkins. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Really love the Yeah. When you explain the whole idea of the gap, like it it feels like I read it somewhere recently, but uh yeah, it fully makes sense the way that you explain it and and I love it. And also the taste the Yeah, it's it's it's a mix of things, right? It's like a bit of like the personal taste like things that uh it's like a bit we could even call it
like your style, your personal style. That's something that a brand designer that I was working with uh told me that hey when I was looking for a brand designer he explained the idea that hey Jim you cannot just have one brand designer for all kinds of branding projects because the taste of every brand designer and even the specialization is different and it would be different if you could hire somebody from Louis Vuitton let's say like a a fashion brand or for a B2B sauce or for Apple or some other company. So there is it's not like yeah like the taste is a big is a big thing especially when it comes to brand design and who is the right fit which is I feel like taste there is defined more on the style
closer to the concept of style and then you have the what he says like being able to tell if it's right or wrong with like the it's more on the quality side if you if you have like high quality standards or not which yeah it's related to the gap part you mentioned. >> Yeah. Well, it's one of the reasons why. So, you mentioned the um it's difficult to pick a brand designer as a like, you know, a founder or you feel like you have to pick somebody that has a specific aesthetic in order to work with them. And I actually think that's not true because I've seen this personally where I can design things that would fit a local coffee shop because I can I know the feeling that I want people to to get
from this. And this is why I believe that great brands aren't created, they're stolen. And what they're stolen from are the things that make you feel the way that you want other people to feel. This is how you get a brand like Liquid Death that, excuse me, comes into a category like water, which is very refined and kind of pure, and then they come in with metal cans and punk rock and zombies and, you know, demonic sacrifices of water. And the reason that works is because Mike Cecio wanted people to feel that way. He's like, I want them to feel like a punk rock concert when they're drinking water. And that's what they get. So you get a really interesting blend when you have an external point of reference. In
psychology, it's called role modeling where you base your identity off the traits you see in other people because you can't actually identify it within yourself. You can only identify it externally. But then you adopt those. And I think you do the same thing with brands. Mike Cerio bringing in things like black letter typography and um beer can design and metal posters or heavy metal posters into the design of their product. So I think that if you are a designer that can actually identify those things and see what's making them work like well why is this design for Apple like this compared to this one for Postto or you know another brand that brings in something that's really kind of unique and different like with the
PostG stuff it's quite easy you can see well the influence for this was pixel art and arcade games and old graphic interfaces I can take those pieces and steal them and then use them, but I'm bringing them into a new context. So, it feels really interesting and unique. And you had the same thing happen with Apple, right? It was a merge of computers where you would only access them from a terminal at the time and then a melding of that with calligraphy and fine art and photography and music. And that's how you got the Apple aesthetic at the beginning. It was a blend of fine arts and technology, which didn't exist at the time. >> Yeah, it's a good point, an interesting take on this. Yeah. Yeah, I totally see
your point on this that also like a great brand designer can actually adopt different styles because the the actual expertise is I need to like the actual expertise is understanding and defining how people should feel and then you use all the visual tools you have in your hands which like typography, colors, photography, visual graphics, all kinds of things to to create that that feeling. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I totally totally see your point. Like if I think about also like our approach that we're mainly focused on B2B SAS so I never had to kind of a fully answer that question but I totally it totally makes sense the way that you that you describe yeah that you describe it for >> page there there are some things that
might require a little a different skill that you might not have for example I'm not really great at scripted type typography you know like the kind of stuff that for like 30-year-old white girls want to put on their wedding invitations I'm not very good at that because it's a specialized skill but as if we were like developing a a branded language around that. I can direct and say, "Yeah, yeah, we want >> exactly someone to come in with scripted liatures and make this feel like it was all handone or perhaps a very custom illustration style. There's a kind of B2B text elongated figures that we see that became really popular through intercom or Mailchimp or folks like that. But then you have illustration
style that's a little bit more more rustic like what's on this meat bar that I was just eating, you know, and those are different illustrations. And it's your ability to pick and choose the direction that I think is more powerful. It's one of the reasons why AI is really interesting because >> I don't have to know how to draw like that. I can direct it and say it needs to look and feel kind of like this for this brand. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I I fully fully see your point. is like you have the creative direction which is the person owning the direction how do I make want to make people feel and the person identifying what are the visual elements to incorporate and then you have the like the specialist that is going to
execute on every idea like what he says like a typography expert and that's where AI comes in and like it gives more power to the directors actually I really saw this with photography recently when we started working on some photos for for Zen mate for example where you don't really have the excuse anymore like yeah it's expensive to do photo shoots we need to hire this and that and that like all you need is great direction. So the question is are you a good photo photograph director or not there. So that's kind of the only answer we have to the only question we have to answer there and figure out what would be the right style to to aim for >> which is very interesting like on on the design space for for sure the whole
thing with because you see with AI people making crazy photos and then people making crappy photos so you can see that the direction is what's actually Well, defund there and and the stewardship because this is the issue was is that you had a lot of people that you have a lot of people that suddenly now have access to this tool but they still have no direction and that's the hard part it is how do I cohhere all of this and make it feel like it came from the same place you know are you familiar with every do you know every who made the >> yeah every two you mean which yeah every two that's right yeah every two yeah >> so like they have a lot of really cool AI at least think they're AI illustrations they've done that also
kind of like renaissance. >> Yeah. >> Broke very romanticized type stuff. And someone had to go in and direct all of that and say, "Well, I need it all to feel like it came from one place. If it doesn't, then it's going to break >> the image and or the the continuity and the brand equity that's built up within that." >> On this one, now that you mentioned this, I cannot wait for this question. I'm really curious. What is your take on this kind of a trend on the with the eye products of the beautiful arts artistic paintings that they use like intercom started the so what is your what are your thoughts and your take on these I think they're good so long as it's used to support messaging and copy there's
there's some instances where the design can lead some of the charge like if you're doing more brand awareness type things like if you just if you just have a billboard because you want everybody to know who every is and you don't really care if they're going take an action after that. You just want them to know and appreciate your brand. Then you don't have to have a whole lot of emphasis on copy. The the issue that we run into with design leading the charge, specifically on things like websites for B2B SAS, is that then the message doesn't get put forth as precisely or succinctly as it should because it's following the visuals and the layout rather than the design and visuals following the marketing and copy
because you need people to take an action. And so what I really appreciate is when there's a balance and a respect for that which is the design is subservant of marketing or product where it's like it's still got to maintain that use case. Design doesn't operate as its own silo without them becoming art at that point. It's not design. It's it's an expression which is okay assuming that you are okay with that goal of >> Yeah. Exactly. >> We just want something that's aesthetically nice. Great. You know it's like putting a poster in your in your studio. You could put a poster and it could look as cool as you want. It doesn't have to do anything other than look really good. That's its sole purpose. But if you're going to put a
web page out there, I'm going to assume the goal of that web page is to get somebody to buy something or sign up for a newsletter or take an action of some kind so that they then move forward in the funnel and that this becomes a ROI positive investment from that company that hired this designer to do the work. So, as far as the aesthetic, it's like, well, great, you know, have at it. I'm I'm okay with beautiful illustrations so long as they are in support of good marketing and good product design. I fully on the same page on this. However, I don't like if I take the example of Finn for example of Intercom. If I open their website right now and you click on the intercom suite, you just see a nice
landscape futuristic landscape on the background. Like I don't feel like I'm some and I've seen it with other websites like Duna is another one that has a nice style. DU uh it's like a compliance tool very elegant brand and a beautiful website but it's just an artistic element into the website and I don't really understand the message and I don't want to be judgmental maybe I'm just not getting the message but they're saying something so for sure I've seen the trend of course like you see designers posting on next just a cool illustration or a photo and then just like more templated driven design where it doesn't really communicate anything but with these two examples of successful companies I'm having a bit of
a hard time to get the idea like I feel like with AI it's also like this that every company is copying kind of each other. It's like a way to tell that we're an AI product nowadays which is like on the aesthetics part but on the actual content of the painting and the illustration that's where I don't yeah I don't always get it. I think that there's I think there's good reason for it and it there there's a fine line to walk because there was there was another site that comes to mind with this which I think it was called Adeline. It it like broke design Twitter for for a little bit. Um yeah, eight lots of really crazy like they have this really interesting parallax scroll effect as you scroll through a page where you're
in a park for like 10 seconds until you actually get to see >> uh Yeah, I've seen you remember this one. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> That initial section I'm like it's cool and I get the idea like they want people to feel very calm about it and that's fine. I think you need to have some more conversion rate optimized elements in there like what what do you do? Who is this for? What are what are the objection busters and the copy that are in bullets saying like sign up for free, you know, no credit card required, free trial. Just some things to at least set the tone for this is what our engagement is going to be. You are here to make a purchase decision. You're not here to gawk at our our website. And then you
get other elements of this where I think there's some major problems like if you go scroll down further I think there's at one point you hit a like a floor map. It's a floor map. And when I saw this like this has no purpose. >> Yeah. It's just like cool visuals with the goal of kind of a creating a guo effect and not really telling a story. It's more like okay here's a cool custom animation with 3D effects and cool scroll interactions. And and I think that there's like I said, there's a fine line because a lot of the stuff and the design decisions that were made within this I think are actually quite lovely and >> like the micro interactions that happen. Am I okay to share screens so people can
actually see what we're talking about? >> Yeah. Yeah, of course. Yeah. >> All right. Cool. I'm going do that then. >> Yeah. Actually, first time we did on the podcast. It's good that you asked because I was looking and I was thinking of this like, oh, maybe we should. >> Well, so >> good good that you asked. >> We'll run it for we'll run it from the top. I love the aesthetic of this. I think that it's great. I love the colors. I love the negative space. What I'd want to see on stuff like this is more conversion optimized copy like a get started button. Maybe have this not be the entire fold so that you are cued to move down and show like, hey, you know, you're here to actually see some other stuff. And this interaction really
cool takes [ __ ] forever to try and get to the point of this video and then you don't even realize that it's a video. M there's no stop and pause element. I might miss this. It's not pulsating. It's not doing anything to help encourage me to to click on it. But then we get somewhere like here and I think that this is actually really nice. I like these micro interactions that are up here to help differentiate between these. And I think that the the subtleties between this are quite lovely where I'd want to see some more stuff like this. I think that there's something to be said about hiding things behind tabs, you know, and like that's not really a good >> design decision because people are probably going to glance over this
>> unless they scroll. But, you know, I guess I don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water as far as like this thing is completely useless. Therefore, the entire aesthetic of this website is bad because I don't think that's I don't think that's true. And I'd say the same thing about Duna actually I think does a a better job where they have this but then the rest of their site is quite useful >> pedestrian you know like what what you would expect really well designed and good iconography good type scales and you know all that stuff and I think that these elements add a little bit of color in an area that would have otherwise been very boring which is you know it's it's a very fine line to walk as a
designer between the am I creating something to help again serve marketing or am I creating something because I just want to play design god and make things that are beautiful. >> Are you design Yeah. I always like to call it like are you designing for the for design Twitter or are you designing for the client like for for the business because they don't always align. Most of the times I don't like honestly like nowadays like I find like the design community on X like a bit not yeah like I don't feel like really hang out there but that's another topic because there is too much kind of a hype driven design like with cool effects that honestly now that I'm way more businessoriented and I my principle is like spend 90% of your
time reading content of your customers and not of designers. That's the only way to get better at your business. Like I see how disconnected these two are. I'm like, man, like nobody cares about all these cool glass effects. Like, browsers cannot even support it yet. Like, why would I spend so many hours in Figma making all these cool effects? They're really nice. I would love it visually, but yeah, if I'm not making a native iOS app to really leverage the graphic APIs like from from Apple to come up with all these, there's no point into even researching these kind of things. So, yeah. >> Well, I mean, and we we apply that same principle to a multitude of things. I think I actually have this. see if I can
find it cuz I'm pretty sure I made this image of a I put two hammers right next to each other and one had a very ornate handle. It was like if you held that it would and you tried to use it, it would like put a hole in your hand because it had like these really unique ornamentations and it was beautiful looking, but it wouldn't work. The only purpose of that hammer is to hang it up on a wall. You can actually use it to drive in nails or pull things out of ripoff baseboards. And then there's a hammer that's right next to it that doesn't have all the ornamentation, but you could actually use that thing. You could swing it. So, I think that we have to have the same kind of approach. It's like, is this
inhibiting the function of >> the goal of the of the design? Is it supposed to communicate the value of this product? Is it supposed to help people feel like they will achieve a higher status if they buy this uh, you know, physical product? Can they actually see the product? Are they going to understand what this couch looks like more thoroughly or is it going to be these very abstracted shots that don't really give you the whole picture of how this is going to look in my living room? >> So aesthetic takes a backseat to >> function. And this is why I'm a proponent of design doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's always a subservient of it's always servant to marketing or it's servant to product. >> It's one of the two. But other than
that, it becomes art. It's no longer design. I fully fully agree and I love all the feedback you shared like about Adeline the website and on this one yeah I'm fully fully on the same page with you just going back to to that example where the the visual side of it like the the colors the sades the interactions the flow and everything like feels really good but the messaging part is entirely off is like beautiful visuals but they don't really communicate a story like Apple is always like a website the Apple website especially in the old days I mean nowadays it's still good where I feel like they're really telling link stories in a very good way and it's always very engaging like when you see the new iPhone Pro presentation
you have like these super cool 3D devices like scrolling and then like you see ahead of somebody wearing the AirPods and you scroll and like you kind of get the zoom out effect where like many of these websites have copied these interactions but there is like for me the ultimate version because they combined the messaging like I want people to feel something I want to make them feel something and I'm going to use all these cool tools to make them feel that So like once these two align that's where all dematic happens. >> It's als it's also quite different for people like us who work with a lot of software companies because a physical product has the advantage of you can actually hold that thing and when you
have a human interacting with a physical product it's a different story than somebody physically interacting with their keyboard which is very boring. So >> yes, >> it's get like the the challenge is that it's like how do I make something that is just existent on a screen feel away which is why I think that you know I would give someone like Duna a pass like open AI does this you know they have those abstracted watercolor paintings and like Rothcoesque type backdrops which I think are beautiful and help differentiate them and that's like a just a little bit of personality that they're adding to help differentiate themselves but it's not the focal point you know like focal point is still the words and for a company like Adeline
like well what about your product like you know I want to see more of these abstractions and I want to see more of this ability to show >> what's the value that people obtain from your product not just our website looks really cool >> yeah yeah yeah exactly and I fully agree like on the personality stuffs like that all these kind of a trend with these artistic styles like it's really good in terms of personality and even adding more beauty into the products, making them less boring. But yeah, it's it's it's not the way to it shouldn't be the focal point as you say, like not the the main thing to uh to focus on. What you said also with the I mean, since you I told you like with the podcast we're going with
the flow, so since you mentioned I'm going to comment on this, I'm going to jump into my next question of the from the agenda. You said that it's really hard with products like to show to show like similar visuals to like Apple where they show a device, you show somebody using the device, work on the street, listening to cool music on their AirPods Pro and all these cool things that they do. And this has been a topic that we've been discussing a lot lately with the teams that we're working with. We're working on the marketing websites right now. And the problems that we're really like in photography. So you open the website and it's all full of UI s and you don't really see like the people that are using it and you don't see
anybody there to relate to and also like to to feel like I'm like that person like that could be me for example and also like to explain visually who is the target audience for example you can show super corporate people like wearing suits and like working in offices like in a super corporate company or you can sell more hipster people or some people like that are somewhere in the middle. So on this one, it's a challenge we're working towards right now. How can you incorporate more photography and ideally even video? That would be cool to at some point. We we don't have the skills internally yet to make really cool videos with AI, but we're working on it. Uh so how can you incorporate more of
these elements because the people actually the product has an audience. It's more it's just that it's more complicated to produce these kind of things because you have to kind of define the small details. the new home page of Zenmate. For example, we've worked on like the hero section where we have this cleaning business owner chilling on the chair and kind of uh enjoying how automated and cool her cleaning business is. And we made like five concepts for the hero section where another concept is a clean business team actually hugging each other and being happy about their successful business. That was like the best explorations we've done like with photography where we had a very clear message that we want
like a cleaning team and it looks like for our audience these are the personas that should be in there and this is the most want to make them feel and this is how we're going to connect it to the headline. It was one of the explorations we did with photography that showed like started making me feel that oh like with SAS companies also we can start incorporating this but I feel it's more complex because yeah compared to to an iPhone where things are way more kind of a streamlined and easy to to produce in a in a way. >> Yeah. Well I mean there's that is the way to do it. If you want more humanity in your website as a software company you have to add people. >> Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. That's that's what
I realize as well. >> But that's a double-edged sword, right? You know, like that's cuz inherently when you see a lot of smiling faces, it's not going to have the same kind of effect that perhaps a cutting edge AI cyber security company is going to want to have, >> right? >> So that's where you understand it's like what do you want people to feel? Do you want feel like they're looking through a a phone book of >> local cleaning ladies that they want to, you know, that they want to have everything feel streamlined? Kind of like a >> I get reminded of Did you ever watch the show the the marvelous Miss Masel? It was an Amazon show. >> I think like 1950s diner, you know, like nifty type aesthetic. Uh I get vibes of
that from Zen made but you know applied in a more you know SAS forward context. So but you can take reference points like that and then say like yeah we want it to feel like this you know it should it should feel really unique. We did >> I can't share that one actually. Sorry it's not launched yet but I can share this one which was something that we did for Tandem which was a uh auction management or auction house management software. So, you know, you add a photo of what this like someone packing something. It's just by having this human hand here, it feels that much more real like we understood exactly what they were going for. This guy who's looking at, >> you know, his artwork because he's
concerned about the resale and royalties, which is a, you know, an element that's very specific to auction management. >> Um, like, you know, like this, this is more of just like, you know, trying to make sure the colors match. This pink is kind of out there, but you know, this green is very fitting with everything else. You can layer on some abstractions of the >> the software itself. And then it feels like, yeah, I can actually interact this kind of like Tony Stark with, you know, interacting with his HUD and Jarvis and all that. That's kind of the the vibe that you get when you blend those two things together. I think it adds a lot of richness. And if you, like you said, you know, when you have video
capability, it then gets augmented even further because >> moving graphics are going to be far much more captivating than something that's >> a little bit harder, not even a little bit f far more difficult to actually >> control, especially with AI. >> Like, no, no, I need that. That's not what the product looks like. It's wrong. >> Yeah. Like putting screen recordings in there. Yeah. It's a mess. Yeah. Yeah. It's too complex. Yeah. >> Yeah. And for this like I I really agree to what you said before is that it depends like what what's the vibe you're going for if you want to add like a human element or not because indeed like if I think about development tools like when you're selling to like post hog you
wouldn't put photos in post hog like it would make it feel like entirely off but if you sell to a less technical audience then like that's a thing that I've seen but I cannot like describe it as a rule in design that the less technical the audience the more need that I've seen to photography and the more development oriented the audience the less but it's too abstract like what I'm saying to say that this kind of applies it's just kind of a from the projects we've worked within the last two years it's kind of a thing that I've seen emerging >> I think I think it more depends on the emotion that they're looking to convey not necessarily the technical prowess of their audience for because like post hog
is still post is still a very technical product they've set that thing up you have to be >> a very experienced marketer uh to understand like what you're supposed to do cuz That's a big freaking sword to try and swing >> compared to something like Fathom Analytics or, you know, a neighboring competitor. But I think that what they did was it's still very human. It's still very fun. It's still very enjoyable and very creative. It doesn't have photos of people necessarily, but I mean their logo and like their mascot is a pixelated hedgehog. So, you know, they've adopted a very playful we don't take ourselves too seriously type of approach. And you compare that with something I'm trying to think of, I
don't know, one of like the many like a Palunteer or, you know, Anderil, which are these, you know, super high-end >> national defense companies where they're not going to do pixelated stuff like that because it's not trustworthy. It's not playful or it it's too playful. They want to be taken seriously. I have this entire set of branding spectrums that I put I ask clients to put themselves on. like it's masculine versus feminine, subtle versus very expressive, luxury versus affordable, and they just have to map. And it's like, well, where do you fall on this spectrum? Cuz you're somewhere on here. You just got to tell me which one you're thinking of. And then you can actually pinpoint and say,
you said you want to be very elite rather than approachable, but you want to look very affordable. Like, do you see the mismatch there between those two adjectives? And where you can achieve that? I'm sure it's possible. It's just going to be very hard. And we have to know what axes are non-negotiable and which ones are negotiable. Because I've had this happen with clients all the time where they they'll say something like, "Well, we want to be seen as approachable." I said, "Yeah, but you're you said you want to be seen as a luxury item and you want to be seen as elite like on these other areas or other things that I would assume would be a little bit more exclusive." And then they understand that like, well, that's
the one spectrum we get to play on and we can come up with directions. say this one is very very highbrow and luxurious versus this one which is like all these other adjectives that we had created but with a more approachable spin on it. Mhm. >> So having them understand how they want people to feel and then when you ask the question of what makes you feel this way like give me some tangible examples from the real world. It doesn't have to be one thing in particular. It could be anything. You know it could be a book cover. It could be an album cover. It could be a movie poster, a movie character, a movie setting, a restaurant that you went to. It could be a theme or idea like the civil rights movement or
minimalism or something else. But what are the visuals that you want to pull from this that make you feel the way you want other people to feel? cuz then you you get a little bit more of a precise definition without them having to define anything because you can see it. And like when someone shows me a picture of a laboratory with a bunch of scientists working at it and it's very sterile and clean and shiny and reflective, I get the feeling that they want to achieve with that and then I can fill in the gaps with iconography and typography, pattern and texture compared to if they said I want it to feel like a punk rock show. It's like, ah, I see where we're we're not aligned here quite or those
are very diametrically opposed feelings. I don't think there's a middle ground between them, but we should probably pick one and see which one we think is going to be the most differentiated, the easiest for you to work with, and the one that feels most in line with the emotions you're looking to convey. >> Yeah. Yeah. I fully fully agree on everything like what what I mentioned before also like after your explanation like the way that you described I I take it back like what I said like with the tech less tech versus more technical it's 100% of what I'm saying it's just the vibe actually it always comes back to the same things like what are you trying to tell people like to communicate out there like photography
is just a tool like it also developers are humans like they can they need some kind of a sometimes photography makes sense yeah it's more kind of a thing about in more stereotypes like with the popular websites and everything. And if we think even about the websites, yeah, maybe not on the homepage, but what about the other pages? Maybe it's a landing pages. If we take GitHub for example, some pages are really geeky, but if you go towards let's say the enterprise, it's kind of a different or also on the product maybe they use. Yeah. Always comes down to to that rule that you said. It's like what are you trying to tell people and then we can discuss if you need photos or not. That's that's the rule.
>> Exactly. Well, and as you said before, the context as well for the actual deliverable matters. Have you read the brand gap by Marty Newmire? >> Uh I don't remember like the full stuff, but yeah, I I've gone through through it. Yeah. >> Well, there's a section in it where he he likens brand identity. Brand identity can get quite rigid. So like we only use these colors. And I think that there's a lot of good constraints to put on there, but you're always going to have a balance of being I call it brands on fire or brands on ice where if you're not at a neutral temperature where you can expose yourself to both, you're going to be on fire, which means your type your type faces don't match, your
colors don't match across like all your different collateral and you're on fire. You're a complete mess. >> Or you could be on ice, which is you are antiquated now. Like you're very boring. You have lost touch with yourself. You're just going through the motions. You're in a rut creatively. And what you need is to be somewhere in the middle walking that line of having some kind of spontaneity and novelty within the context of your like a guided and steward brand. And that's how people change, you know. Um, and the point that I was getting at with this was that you can vary it based on the intent. Like, you know, I you will always find me in a black t-shirt, a blue pair of jeans, and white sneakers. But in summertime when
it's really hot, I'm going to wear a pair of khaki shorts because I I don't want to wear denim blue jean shorts cuz I'm not a total dweeb and it still needs to fit the brand and feel like Zach, but this is Zach and shorts or like I might wear flip-flops. It's still the same personality. Like it's very neutral. It's not super flamboyant um out there. It's there's zero graphics apart from, you know, stuff like this on my jacket. like I don't wear a whole lot of branded gear. And the same thing goes with my workout gear. You're like, "My workout clothes are it's still going to feel the same. Like I'm still going to feel like the same person. It's not going to be this totally different pivot in my
aesthetic." You're going to say, "For this context, it makes sense that Zach would wear this." And I think the same thing applies to your brand. For this context of a commercial that is going to be played on YouTube, it makes sense for you to be a little bit more funny. For this context of a formal document that is going to be released out to all your clients, it makes sense for you to be a little bit more rigid and stoic and to the point. What do you think about that? You're muted. We can't hear you. >> Tim, that's usually that's the case in Zoom calls, not podcasts. Yeah, I I fully agree on Earth that you mentioned actually. Yeah, I'm fully fully on the same page that it's good to have the
guidelines, but you shouldn't kind of uh and I really like how the book describes it like you shouldn't really lose kind of your creativity and taste and kind of yourself into this whole thing. Like you can adjust and also you can apply different styles but still keep the same vibe. Like that's how I really like I mean vibe is trendy word right now with the vibe coding and vibe everything. But like that's a way that I like to describe brands is like what is the vibe we're aiming for in general. Like you could also call it like energy. How because a vibe I really like it because it's a combination of things. It's the typography with the white space with how big the typography is going to be and if
it's going to be a photo behind or a flat color or a gradient or this or that. So it's like all these they create a vibe and for me because I come from engineering background so like branding is an area that I'm not the expert in the team when it comes to brand design but uh I'm like a a huge enthusiast around it like I I studied more and more like every day around it. It's very crazy how just with typography like that's also something that Amar from Zade said when I showed him one of the new mockups with the new typography we're going to introduce in the next months and his reaction was like I could never really believe that a font can make such a big difference on the overall vibe. I'm like yep it's just the
font just the font. >> I mean you've seen the type faces might not be what exactly is said but they are how things are said. >> Have you seen the sideby side of the serial killer versus a love note? Have you seen that? It rings a bell, but uh let's bring it up. Yeah, let's look at it again. It really rings a bell. Like I I've seen somewhere online. >> Yeah. I mean, you're going to see it and be like, "Oh, yeah, that totally makes sense. Let me see here. Yeah, it's this one." Oh, mother. Hang on. I have uh time blocks on my stuff. I'm not I'm not allowed to be on Twitter until until 2:30 p.m. Monday through, right? So, I'm not going to be able to pull up the the whole thing, but you can see here,
>> you know, like the scripted type face, I will always find you. This >> you're going to call 911. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> And thankfully, it's never this drastic usually when it comes to brand design, but it does matter. Having a more geometric type face is going to feel a different way than something that's more transitional and has a little bit more thick to thin counter on it. That thick to thin counter is going to feel far more nostalgic. and wise and older, but that perfectly geometric round sand serif is going to feel very new age and clean and modern and sometimes sterile like if you if you don't use it the right way. So type matters, man. It's huge. And like once you realize it, it feels so obvious after. It's like yeah,
I mean words, they're always into the a design. If you think about UI, it has a lot of text. If you think about a poster like it's not like yeah there is always a decent amount of copy inside anything you want to communicate out there because copy is like what people need to read. So how you going to make that copy look like it's going to have a massive impact and like now that I think about is like yeah it's obvious but for some reason before it it wasn't as as much. >> Yeah. >> It's the tone. >> It's the equivalent of me saying hello Jim versus hello Jim. >> Yeah. It's like yeah that's very typography. That that that wasn't like, you know, too too much an advancement for you. >> That's good. That was a really good good
analogy. Um, okay. On this one, I'm looking at the time as well and I want to make sure I'm we're not going to go much. >> I think we can do one more. We do one more. >> Yeah. So, I have two questions. Like the one is I mean we we can find a way to to make it short. It's like what I said a project story. It's a like a recent brand design that you you worked on that would be really cool to to dive into, but I'm wondering like if we can keep these short maybe like an example of a vibe like yeah actually that that's the way that I would ask this question is what is one of the recent like brands that you worked on that you're feel excited about that uh that went pretty well and how do you define the brand
there like what was the brand you were going for and what are the elements you decided to use to create that vibe actually for that brand. Okay, let me see here. I'm going to pull up a um a common client between the two of us, which is Mentor Cruz. Shout out Dominic Man. I miss you and I'm sad that I didn't get to see you while you were in Southern California. We're going to make it happen someday. Okay, so let me go ahead and share here what went down and take a look. So, this is what Mentor Cruz's site looked like before >> Conversion Factory got a hold of it. uh you know quite minimal um very utilitarian and as far as luxury is concerned not extremely high there's there's some things in here that you know just got
kind of screwed up when we used the HTML to design plugins so that we could grab all the assets that they were after uh but then we changed it and now it looks like this or at least this is one of the final designs that we had sent over they might have changed You can see here their logo is pretty much the same. Like I I went in and refined it because there were some nitpicks with it that we we wanted to fix. But we added a lot of luxuriousness to this and that's a a major shift in things like, you know, expanding on their color palette, having some different shades of green and blue that we could work with. um bringing in some more detailed elements like these uh backdrops and patterns and texture that
kind of carry over through the whole thing. And again, like I said, expanding the color palette. Um which you could see here where it's like now we have these cool sections that aren't just all white. They have dark green ones and they have light off-white ones. Um and then cool gradients and illustrations where we found necessary. So the way that this works is for conversion factory um we go through an entire brand blueprint where I'm asking a series of questions like where do you want to be in 10 years um what is the story arc of your primary user like you know what are they after what do they want how do they want to change themselves and then what are what is your story you founder um and things that inspire you and make you
feel the way you want other people to feel about your brand so Dominic gave really really good answers for this And we ended up coming up with three creative directions. One of them was a kind of like if we kept the old version of their website, which if you'll recall looked kind of like this. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> But let's update it and let's bring in some of these more lively elements like some handdrawn illustrations. I think they had one or two of these, but they weren't used like in unison across the site. So like, well, let's lean into that. You know, we can make a lighthouse out of that. We can bring in these color swatches this way. and um handdrawn iconography. So, this was one route. It
was like the this is the new and improved of what you have currently. And then we had two others that were really interesting. This was a um I forget where she lives, but she is a prime minister of I think a I think it's a country in the Netherlands actually. I think she's Finnish or Yeah, I think somewhere in the Nordics. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so he really liked her her vibe, you know, the way that she made people feel. Um, and he also really liked this Rufus Doul poster. You know, this is a visual that he gave like I like the way this feels, the minimalism, the colors. And so we take both of these things and then combine them and we have, you know, like from her sash, we were able to get these patterns. Um, and
have things be very squared off the same way it is within this Rufus to Soul poster. Um, and we even able to pull the colors. I mean, we had a straight up like a swatch library right here that we pulled from, right? So, >> to get these different vibes, we look at other stuff and we say, "Great. Now, how do we apply this to mentor cruise knowing what we believe?" So, this last one, which is the one that we ended up going with, >> was uh Dominic really loved these old school vintage ads like for Porsche or um you know, old Mac ads. And so we looked at these and we think what is it about this that makes it really cool? It's the texture. So like you know this kind of speckle element that's in there,
the grain, it's the typography, these serif type faces and the fact that they're all all caps um or kind of condensed with one another and the gradients that are in here. So, let's take those and use them and then we can apply it with these other colors and maybe bring in some other elements that would be unexpected. Like, you know, this doesn't have icons, but what icons would we pair with this in order to make it the brand feel complete? This doesn't have an illustration necessarily, but what illustration style could we use to make this feel complete? So, we ended up picking this one and it then got applied to the entire site. You can see here like this is a very utilitarian version of that stylescape because it had to be
usable for the website. You can see here like this is the same gradient >> that is being used on this but we're using it very sparingly and then we're incorporating these other colors in a way that's like this is the website and it's still aligned with this creative direction. it's being used in a way that's very particular to a website because it has to like we're not gonna >> depart from best website practice website design practices um to try and fit an aesthetic. So what do you want people to feel? What makes you feel that way visually? And then what can you steal and take and apply to your brand? And you get some freaking wild answers for this dude. Like u there's people who I had another founder
who said I really like Taylor Swift's brand so we based an entire software brand off of her eras tour like uh stuff. Um, we had another it's like uh you know even conversion factory our website is like these blues this blue gradient that's here this is based off of Kanye West's Jesus is King album >> which is you see here this blue >> oh wow >> and even even the typography that's in here like this serif type base you know this is why we incorporated this inside >> of here so That's why I believe and evidence of great brands aren't created, they're stolen. >> Yeah. Yeah. On this one. Sorry. I mean, no, no, it's good. No, no, no. I I wasn't about to comment on the on the screen share. It's more like I see like
you incorporate a lot like what does the team and the founder like like what is what are the things that they really like and so on. And I'm curious like on on this one, how much weight does has does it have in the overall brand? Like does it matter what they like or not in your opinion and why? Well, I think that it does. >> I shouldn't say that. It matters that they're able to discern what they like versus what they like and fits the brand. For example, >> I I love I love drinking green tea and I love Japanese bonsai and Zen gardens just as much as I love punk rock concerts. And there you have to make a decision. It's like I like this thing. Does it actually fit the emotional >> arc that I'm trying to communicate with
people? So with mentor cruise it was you're going to become the best version of yourself through being mentored on here like we are going to give you age-old wisdom that you might not understand like you might have a lot of technical power but you don't understand office place dynamics and how to move up in the chain move to that next level. So, it's a great that's the vibe that we are the emotion that we're trying to connect. And I think with Dominics, it was quite hard to pick between those three because I think they all had a lot of similarities. And at that, it can come down to just subjective choice. Like if the three creative directions you present, it's like these are all really killer and there is no like we
wouldn't make a bad decision picking any one of them. We just have to pick one and move forward. So it does matter what you like to an extent so long as you are able to discern and this is where a good designer can come in and say hey I know you like this like for example I have as a list of things that people could give um like who's a political figure that inspires you maybe there's something that we could derive from that and everybody always says like Barack Obama all right but then they never give a reason of like well what is it about Barack Obama visually that you actually appreciate and want to use you because they they never reference things like and there are some visual elements, you know, like
um uh the hope poster is iconic, you know, it's this um you know, stencil art that was done by Shepherd Ferry that feels more like it belongs for a skate brand than it does for a political poster, but it was very powerful. But they never say that. They're like, well, I just like him because of his he's who I voted for or it was like his policies. But if you say somebody like Winston Churchill and then I say I like this because of the keep common carry-on poster or this black and white photo of him that's you know giving the peace sign for or the V for victory or the World War II posters that were alongside him. So it's a matter of I like this thing but do I like the visuals for this? Is this something that I can
incorporate? >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I see I I see your point on these ones like you also use it as a source of inspiration also to to gather like ideas well. Yeah. >> Yeah. And you could say the same thing conversely like I I really like the way that Kanye West album cover looks. >> I disagree vehemently with like everything that Kanye West says and how he acts, right? So it's like Yeah. Yeah. I don't want my brand at all to feel like Kanye West. I like that blue and that's about it. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally see your point. That's super. Do you have two minutes for the la for another quick one? Another last question. So I always end the episodes asking like uh one question which is what's your favorite
product SAS product at this moment? Could be a mobile app as well. It's more like digital product and why and some people have a hard time to answer this. So you could also think about like the last 30 days what is a product you feel excited about using that made you feel something and what is the product and why did it have this impact? Okay. Within the past 30 days, like what is a product? >> Or if I ask you like what's your favorite in general? If also something comes up, that's also fine. You have like a top product. >> Good question. Okay. Can I give three answers? Is that okay? >> Yeah. Yeah, feel free. Yeah, everything is fine. >> So, the first one is Kora. C R A computer every which is the email
sorter. My gosh, I have never thought that email would be so easy with cuz I I'm somebody I love to get to inbox zero every day like boom boom boom boom boom boom boom go and you know things about payments. Core is really cool because it actually does the job of a virtual assistant as far as categorizing and labeling your email and it's actually really good at it. Like it's not garbage at doing so. So that product I'm very enthused about because it saved me a lot of time and it was very easy to set up. So that's one. The other would be an app called Mile IQ, which is for tracking your mileage as a business owner. I'm not sure if this is something this is a thing in Europe where you can deduct the
mileage that you drive for business. >> Yeah. So, Mile IQ runs in the background on my phone and then whenever I get in the car, like if I'm going to a a networking event, you know, in town, it'll allow me to mark that and it tallies up my mileage reimbursements quite seamlessly. But it's a really intuitive process, you know, like I I swipe left for business, I swipe right for personal and I can very easily categorize things. So, you know, what would take like where was I going for this? But it'll like I can compare it with my calendar. And then it's very easy for me to go through and I can even have our virtual assistant go in and say, "Yeah, Zach was at a networking event. I know exactly where this was.
This is a business one." And then I can get reimbursed for u that mileage through conversion factory. It's a super intuitive and easy product. And I think the third, let me see if I have anything on my phone that I was using recently just to double check and make sure. Um, I mean, I I've been using chat GBT like a freaking madman. Like all over. It's it's very slowly taking the place of my search. I'm going straight to if I need an answer, I'm like Chad GBT. And for everything, I'm like, give me >> Same. Yeah. >> Yeah. like I need a recipe for cooking sweet potatoes or just like the knowhow. It's going to give me a way more thorough answer. I don't have to sift through a bunch of ads to try and try
and get it. >> Exactly. >> I also use it for if like I think through things externally and process it through speaking out loud. That's the best way that I think I can work through my thoughts. So I will chat with chatt. I love talking to veil which is one of the the voices and I'll go on a walk with my earphones in and then talk through anything that I'm thinking about and it's a good way for me to distill my thoughts and not just for business but personal stuff. I will talk to it about you know this is what I'm concerned about with you know my kid or my relationship or I haven't been able to see my friend I haven't heard this and I can actually vomit all that I am thinking and feeling and then I can read
it later in a way that's a lot more distilled and stripped down. So GPT is a super powerful product use it for so much particularly for distillation of communication. Yeah, similar here. Like I yeah it feels like life before TPT men like I was man like I cannot imagine googling stuff and going through articles and trying to make sense like combine different sources and do this like in our heads like it was very slow and also the quality wasn't that good on this one just very quick the me like talking with for me like what I started doing recently it's actually the talking part I never really for some reason didn't click with me like the audio conversation with because mainly I use it for work And I always love like the
long answers with the bullet points where I can quickly like scan the full answer, zoom in specific details. I started using Whisper Flow and man this is like now I get the hype. I I get why it's uh people are talking about it. Now my interaction with AI is different. Like now I talk to my computer and my prompts are like three times bigger, more detailed without the pain. Like I actually enjoy more interacting with AI because I don't have to type and be like, "Okay, Jim, you need to push a bit more. Just give more details into the prompt. to be lazy. Now I just talk and things happen which is it's beautiful >> and that's and those well you can do that native with chatbt on your on your device like you you actually don't even
need whisper flow. >> Yeah. Yeah. Like I tried that one but I wasn't really happy like I don't have trust into that because many times it wouldn't perform well like either the the the the things that I would say wouldn't be written like in the right way like the the audio to text and sometimes it would get into >> uh audio. Yeah. like I had a few bad experiences and uh that's why I installed Whisper. And the cool thing with Whisper is like I can also use it in Slack and other platform. It's something that I installed like three weeks ago and I was like that's pretty cool. >> Yeah. Well, I like yours. I mean, let's do a little experiment here because I'm just curious. Your chats don't look like
um Let's just pick this one. Like, you know, if I if I come in here, you don't have this microphone button. Uh yeah. Yeah. I think I You're using the native app. Yeah, I use the browser version. Maybe they do also there. >> Yeah, cuz I'll do if you if you permit me like I I need to create a three course meal for Christmas for my vegetarian sister and my uh carnivore like father. Please give me a three course meal. >> Yeah, this one is on the app by the way. I just checked them on browser. They don't have it. Which is pretty much the same as Whisper Flow what you just did there. Yeah. >> Yeah, exactly. So, I've really enjoyed doing this and the the chat the chat itself I do that while I'm walking
because I can then pick up the conversation again >> like so I can speak and then I tell Chad GBT I say I don't need you to affirm anything that I'm saying I just need you to tell me that you've taken it and then distilled it and logged it for later so then I can just keep talking and if I ask it to I'll say hey I need you to like gut check this thing with some uh >> um you know if you were to debate me on this what's your strongest argument against what I'm about to say. >> Mhm. >> Cool. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Good stuff, man. And interesting times like uh it's scary and interesting the whole thing with AI and actually like Yeah, like the the power we have in our hands, right? Because can do pretty cool
things. And it's a really cool tool to think along with and actually use it to get smarter and more sophisticated. But that a different episode for sometime in the future. We can talk about the existential and the philosophical crisis another time. For now, I use it Exactly. >> I use it in place of search and I love talking to it to get ideas out of my head and on paper while I'm walking. Yeah. Same. Same. Super cool, man. So, yeah. Thanks a lot for today. Thanks for making the time. It was a beautiful conversation with many many interesting interesting topics. Yeah. What do you what do you think in general about the the
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