Will Cady | Navigating the Intersection of Creativity, Marketing, and Mysticism

Srini RAo

Will, welcome to the Unmistakable Creative. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us.

Will Cady

Here we are, grateful to be here, thank you.

Srini RAo

Yeah, it is my pleasure to have you here. So you have a new book out called, Which Way is North? A Creative Compass for Makers, Marketers and Mystics. And when I found out that you were the head global brand ambassador and head of creative strategy at Reddit, I thought, wait a minute, what the hell is a guy who's a mystic doing that? Now I definitely wanna talk to this guy cause I'm always a skeptic when it comes to mystics. But before we get into the book, one of the senses I got from reading the book was that the relationship with your father had a profound impact on your life. And I...

Will Cady

Yeah.

Srini RAo

curious what you learned from him that ended up shaping and influencing who you've become and what you've done with your life.

Will Cady

Yeah, it's hard to choose one lesson from him. There were many, but what comes to mind for me now in this moment as I'm here on the other side of releasing a book and promoting it, right, is that he showed his support for my creativity by trying his best to put me in front of people that were out there in the world that were...

creating culture that were a part of it. And I kind of felt as a kid, like I was playing in a sandbox on the ground and there are all these icons up in the sky that were the ones that were on stage or on screens and whatnot. And he was so good at finding a way to just make an introduction, to reach out to them, to get a dinner on the books or something like that. And I think that...

lesson really comes to mind for me now because he taught me to believe in myself that life is attainable.

Srini RAo

Yeah. Well, for parents who are listening to this, what would you tell them about instilling that kind of belief in their children? Because I remember writing in my book about creativity, having grown up in the Indian culture, I always think Indians like think art just falls from the sky. It's like, who do you think makes the movies you watch? And the books that you read? I'm like, there are artists who create this stuff, but it's so not part of the cultural narrative to even think about those as career paths. So for parents who are listening to this, what would you tell them about instilling?

Will Cady

That's right

Srini RAo

their belief in their own creativity in them.

Will Cady

That's right, that's right. It's just people that are making all of it. I'm not a parent, so my advice has a limited context, but what I saw from what my father and my mother did for me is in that scenario of making these introductions, he was very eager to bring mentors into my life. And it wasn't just people that had, quote unquote, made the grade and established some fame in their field, but.

teachers and schooling and education. I think that there was a great understanding that they carried of their limitations of what they could provide for me mentorship wise. And so they didn't just seek one mentor, but they were tirelessly pursuing many to bring in to help me develop.

Srini RAo

Yeah. Well, what has been the trajectory that led to you becoming what the person you are and, you know, doing the work that you do at Reddit because Mystic doesn't exactly fit into all of this as far as I'm concerned, but that's actually what got my attention the most. So talk me through the trajectory of how you ended up here to begin with.

Will Cady

Sure, I mean, my background is really creativity first and foremost. I went to an art school, I went to a music school for college, and I played bass professionally for about 15 years. And that was an area that, you know, I practiced my instrument for eight hours a day. I studied music theory, we did ear training, learned how to, you know, understand and work with music from the inside out. And taking one discipline that far helped me to learn

how to strive for mastery in any other domain. But that schooling was really expensive. And when I graduated from college, I didn't really know how I was going to make ends meet. And the short version of that story is that that's what led me into the realm of digital media and marketing, where candidly a lot of artists end up going, because that's where we can apply our creativity.

But what I found when I was stepping into this domain is that the training in the arts that I had, specifically in music theory, was universally applicable for any kind of creativity.

You know, so with music, for example, you are working, it's a mathematic, you're working with systems of seven or 12. There's seven notes in a scale, seven, 12 notes chromatically in Western music, right? And we are drilled in to know how to play with every possible combination and permutation, ordering of those numbers. And it was used for me for playing music at first, but then I found that it was very useful

rapidly reordering ideas. And the improvisational experiences that I had being in jam sessions, hopping between different genres, also gave me an adeptness to be in a brainstorm. And that is the area where creativity brought some very, very specific and valuable tools to bear in what became my professional career in media and marketing.

Will Cady

Similarly, I looked at some of the systems and tools of my mystical upbringing and found that they were very, very much the same, that there is a usefulness to these things that hasn't necessarily been connected to the domain of life and career.

Srini RAo

Well, I think that that's what struck me the most about the book was that you somehow blended the mysticism and the practicality together, which I hadn't seen before, which is what I appreciated, because I'm like the ultimate New Age skeptic, which my friends always like you realize half the people on your show are people who fall into the category of what you call New Age nonsense. And I'm like, yes, I'm well aware of that, but I'm willing to question it. But before we get deeper into the book and the seven directions that you talked about, one thing I wonder about as a musician, because I grew up playing the tuba, I played for I think, 13 years. I

Will Cady

Good.

Srini RAo

My dad talked me out of going to the USC School of Music, because as you know, tuba players are one in every orchestra. You wait for somebody to die before a job opens up. So the job prospects there were not particularly promising. Yeah. But I think the thing that came to me from music was discipline and habits, all of which have been instrumental to everything I've done as a writer and a creator. So I'm wondering, for you, what are the habits

Will Cady

And it's tough. It's a tough instrument.

Srini RAo

the discipline, the things you learned from being somebody who took music that far, as you alluded to, like really the discipline and mastery. What are the things that you learned from that you've brought into your day-to-day life as far as habits, rituals, routines, et cetera?

Will Cady

Yeah, to commit to something up to eight hours a day, before that was practice, but when it came time to write this book, I just dropped that project into that space that was already in my psyche, in my second nature. And so I was able to make the time for it because I had done that before and I had seen the fruits of that labor before, so I could believe that it was worth it. And also building a meditation practice, there's...

a lot of the same kind of, you know, adages, you know, across them. Like in music, like my guitar teacher would be like, you got to sit in the chair every day. And meditation teachers are like, you got to sit in the mat every day. So my relationship, not only to doing it, but not doing it and overcoming the shame of like, I didn't show up for myself today. I didn't meditate. I didn't practice. And then getting back on.

the horse as they say and continuing forward, not letting that take me out. All of those patterns were deeply instilled in me and I could access them, call upon them rather than have to build them for the first time to bring these new elements into my life.

Srini RAo

Yeah. Well, you open the book by saying we all struggle with creation because creation is struggle. That's life's magic. That kind of sings beyond paint canvas or words on a page. And you mentioned this idea of just sitting in the chair or sitting on the mat. And something that I find very often when I talk to people, I realize like, I'm like, okay, just sit down and write. And I remember this girl at a party once told me she's like, Well, you can't just sit down and write. And I was like, Oh, my God, if I needless to say, that girl would never go on a date with me. Because I was like, that's complete bullshit, by the way.

Will Cady

Thanks for watching!

Will Cady

Hahaha

Srini RAo

I was like, that's probably why you've been working on your book for five years. I was like, wow, Stephen King was right that you are not going to be a member of polite society if you ever decide to become a writer. But like I hear these same sort of excuses over and over again. I don't have time. I can't just sit down and write. And of course, like, as you know, and I know that's nonsense, but you know, what is it that creates that just incredible level of what Stephen Pressfield calls resistance when it comes to creative work? Because like nobody feels resistance to checking their email.

Will Cady

Yeah, well, you know, I think that you're to start with the email piece, a lot of us, especially right now are conditioned to get that kind of cortisol injection in our bloodstream, those stress hormones that gets us out of bed. You know, if you're looking at your phone, checking your email or checking social media, that's, I think really what you're looking for. It's very, very easy to get habituated to that little fix that is like, oh, I'm being dragged out.

making me do something. But the domain of creativity and art, it's internal, not external. And if there's any hormones related to it, it might be dopamine, it might be serotonin, it might be oxytocin, it might be the good ones, right? But those kind of seep up a little slower. They don't jolt you in that same way. They're just like a warm.

blanket that comes from within and you can't access that stuff without getting all of the distraction out of the way and That's where most of the resistance is there's like a you know, there's a it's like a orange There's like a skin over the juicy part on the inside that you have to peel back and that external layer that skin is your emails it's the

stresses that media has put into you or the experiences you've had with friends and family, the chatter that's in your head. And journaling in particular, it's a great exercise because a lot of people say, and I will say this too, that half the reason to do five minutes of writing in the morning is to get that junk out. The first page is just getting past that. So you're creating

internal stuff to kind of come out. And everybody needs that a little bit differently. Some people, it's writing, some people it's drawing, some people it's painting, some people it's music. But to get to your inner self requires some degree of practice to peel back that skin and get to the juice.

Srini RAo

You said it so much more eloquently because I summed it up in a blog post saying that a brain dump is like a bowel movement for your brain.

Will Cady

Well hey yeah that too. Yeah and you know that's why you drink that morning cup of coffee right?

Srini RAo

Yeah, exactly. Well, tell me how you even came up with this idea of what you call the seven directions framework, because you say that the seven directions is a framework for contemplation is great for spinning up an idea turning around and seeing a clear path towards its creation. As a meditation through the seven directions becomes a compass for profound inner journey. So how did you even develop this framework from all the work you did? How did it emerge?

Will Cady

So at the start of endeavoring to write a book, I had a lot of ideas for it. And I always consult with a lot of people before I put anything out there. And nothing was really a bullseye until we kind of got to the point where the question was, why don't we deconstruct how I think? And so...

That was really the genesis of the seven directions system itself, because we talked about my background in music, we talked a little bit about my career and whatnot. I've made a living off of being creative very quickly and effectively. And so that, I kind of had to get it from other people's reflections. That is the interesting thing that I have to share. So I sat down and I was like, okay, how do I think?

Where do my ideas come from? And it was shockingly instantaneous. The seven direction system just came out within five minutes. So that was the origin of it. And then the rest of the work was integrating that. Some people in the New Age community would call that a download. You just get a ton of information really quickly, and then you have to integrate it and put it to work.

And I really called upon some of the past experiences that I had in my music education and my mystical education that were working with the phenomenology of inner experiences that arise so that you can start to grab a hold of whatever it is that's coming up on the inside and turn it into creativity. That system, Seven Directions, happened at the same time that 2020 was happening.

and I was called to lead meditations for people that were struggling. We all were struggling with a lot of anxiety. And the system was the same in terms of, okay, you know, this is about creativity, but it's also about anxiety. Basically, sitting with yourself, identifying and articulating the struggle that you're feeling, and that's something that's good for making art or calming your nerves. And it all just kind of created itself. It manifested itself.

Srini RAo

Well, you know, one of the things that struck me most that you said was that this is a key for you to consider is that art is subjective, science is objective, the greatest creations come from those who know how to make the subjective and objective align. So can you expand on that for me? Because I think that was one of those braids I thought, hell yes. And then I was like, Hey, what does he really mean by that?

Will Cady

Hmm.

Will Cady

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of passes that I take at the book in terms of reconciling the skepticism. And one of the areas that for me as an author was very important is I see a lot of voices in the spirituality space trying to speak the language of science and say that this is like a science. And I don't want to do that. I just want to say, well, what if we just talk about this as art? And what if art...

has value that is an equal counterpart in a marriage to science. Because art is the subjective domain. It's the humanities. It's understanding, not explanation, which is what science delivers us, but experience and being able to have clarity of your internal experience. So that is one of the many places in that book where I play with that frame between let's put art and subjectivity on one side.

and that's the domain of our spiritual experience. And let's put science and objectivity on the other side, and that's the domain of our technology. Now that we've done that, let's talk about the relationship between those two. I believe that's an effective contribution to the conversation of the human experience.

Srini RAo

Well, let's talk about that through the lens of what you call a creative vision. You said that creative vision is about what you see without your eyes, whether they're open or closed. It is the programming code of your experience, determining what you notice and what you don't both in the dark of your imagination and in the light of your surroundings. So let's talk about bridging the gap between a creative vision and making that creative vision reality through the lens of each of these seven directions. Uh, because I feel like they're people who have no shortage of ideas and

Will Cady

Yeah.

Srini RAo

but an incredible shortage of execution of those ideas, particularly with creatives.

Will Cady

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, that's where the marriage of these becomes really complete because execution, it's in the domain of science, right? It's the tools, it's the technology, it's what you do to take what is on the inside and get it out, right? And so, that is something that is very difficult for people in the creative fields, I think, because to some degree...

We are really born with a unique perspective on the world. Of course we are. And so we come into the world, and then when we're like I was as a young student, we learn our instrument. We get our mentors that teach us how to express ourselves, whatever it is that we carry, in a way that the rest of the world is ready to receive, ready to understand. We're learning how to join the conversation that's already there.

Creative vision is a term that I repeat a few times throughout the book. And the reason for that is to help the reader anchor this idea in terms of, how do I describe this thing that I carry by which I could possibly express myself? And I'm speaking to multiple people at once. The impetus for even talking about creative vision in the first place is when I made the change from being in the...

art world to the business world. And there were people that said, you come up with an idea, you're the creative one, I'm not, I can't do that. And I was like, what are you talking about? That was really shocking for me. So when I'm talking about the creative vision in this book, I'm inviting people to really claim that for themselves, because this is not necessarily a book about execution. We don't talk about paint. We don't talk about, you know,

writing copy, we don't talk about SEO optimization, we don't talk about the kinds of things that typically go into a book about creativity or marketing or spirituality. It's very, very deep in terms of what is your relationship with your own vision inside of yourself. If that switch is not turned on, how do we do it?

Srini RAo

Well, speaking of turning that switch on, one of the things you say is that if you want others to value the creative visions you see, start by connecting your vision with symbols. Symbols hold the intangible means of creative vision into a form that binds its story into something memorable. So talk to me about this idea of symbols and you know, give us some examples of this because like, in my mind, the first thing I'm thinking is the apple with a bite out of it. Like, is that a symbol for the apple brand?

Because I've been seeing this idea of symbols in a few other books I've read and it just got me thinking. It's like, how do I do that in my own work?

Will Cady

Yeah, yeah, so that is something that I play with in the book itself. So I show it first thing. So anybody that has the book, the first eight or so pages, you see these symbols that are a motif that repeats throughout every chapter. There's a point, a vision, a compass, a star, and you're seeing how it is slowly unfolding. And that's something that I designed to...

again, show what I'm talking about when it comes to this idea of what symbols do for us. And so the eye is a great example of a deeply archetypal symbol. It's a symbol, in this case, for creative vision, but it's a symbol for so, so much more. And I expand quite a bit in terms of, you know, the eye of Ra and the eye of, you know,

provenance on the dollar and in different ways that the eye has been used in sort of our relationship with ideas and value in this world. So that's one example to look to. The apple example is also great because you have the bitten apple, which in the Western world is a reference to the fruit of the tree of knowledge. That goes very, very deep into our psyche in terms of...

programming what our relationship is going to be with this thing that is branded with this symbol. And if it's as practical as logo design, the colors that you choose are one thing, the forms that you choose are another, but there is an archetypal language in a lot of mythic symbols like the eye, like the fruit, that runs very, very deep. And I do personally believe that it's very important

for people that are in the media world, that are the ones that are creating and purveying these symbols, to have literacy in terms of what is the archetypal language that you're using because it has an unconscious effect on people. And that's something to be mindful about.

Srini RAo

Well, it just got me thinking like as I read that and I was reading this Other book called the iconist by Jamie Mustard and I was like, okay How does somebody figure out what that symbol would be for their own work? Like I was just thinking about it from the perspective of unmistakable and I've been racking my brain about this and when I saw it Again, I was like, okay, there's something here. I need to explore this more now that I have you here Yeah, I get the better, you know, since I'm the beneficiary of getting to pick your brain leaks. How does somebody uncover that symbol?

Will Cady

Mm.

Will Cady

Ha ha.

Will Cady

Well...

You know, to some degree, it's a great way to decode what is happening in the collective unconscious. And, you know, let's ground that idea, the collective unconscious, in terms of what are the accidental behaviors that illuminate the stories that we're telling ourselves collectively about who we are and where we're going. So, you know, that expresses itself in what's fashionable, basically.

Will Cady

our stories and what myths do those characters come from. So as a consumer of media, symbols are very, very much a way in which I kind of get a sense of what is going on here? What are the stories that are being told? What are the archetypes that are coming to the forefront? Right, and you know, there's... I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

There's characters in films and in TV shows. Marvel is a great example of the re-expression of archetypes, like God characters from different pantheons. And you have these shifts that take place between them. In that case, you've literally got the character of Tony Stark, who's like a scientist and an engineer. And then you've got Dr. Strange, who is the mystic, right? Literally has an eye necklace. And there is a shift.

between them in the storytelling of who is taking that role of the kind of arrogant leader, but they're playing, they're cast into the same role, but it's a different character. And so this is a part of, for me, media literacy, because I notice why these shifts are happening, and I wonder why. Why is that character going through that kind of transformation on a screen that all these people are seeing? Or why is it that...

a company like Apple would choose to have the bitten Apple as its logo. Why is it that, you know, Nikkei, the Greek god of victory, is such a powerful, you know, athletic brand? It's a relationship between what is happening now, what you can see in the modern media, and educating yourself on where a lot of these symbols and characters and myths come from.

Srini RAo

Well, it's funny because as you're saying that I have a cup of Starbucks coffee on my desk and I never noticed before What this logo is like I'm like there's oh, yeah, there's a woman and you know, and it's like wow Okay, which that had never I'd never even paid attention to that until you were just saying

Will Cady

Yeah, it's a siren.

Will Cady

Yeah, so let's unpack that, right? So the siren comes from the Odyssey, and it's the songstresses in the ocean that Odysseus asked his crew to tie him to the mast of the ship so that he could hear the siren's song but not be so enchanted to jump into the water and drown as the curse of them.

So what does that do for the Starbucks brand, right? What it kind of brings to mind for me is that there's this journey that Odysseus is on. It's the journey, it's the Odyssey, right? And Starbucks as that third place, right? It's also something that you can rely on and feel like you know what you're gonna get when you come across a Starbucks in an airport or in a different city. So archetypally, Starbucks does have a role to play anytime I'm on an Odyssey. I always get that spinach feta wrap.

and then a cold brew, right? So it's archetypically connecting itself deeply with people's unconscious sense of being on an odyssey. It's comfort when you're away from home.

Srini RAo

Let's talk about this idea of repair, because you say no matter how you've lived, you have a past mistake, wounds triumph, all memories that keep an energy for you to tap if you're willing and able to find them again, your past can be a gift if you would accept it. And you know, the I always joke that if anybody wants proof that your past pain is, you know, fuel for your future creativity, just look at the rock band Chicago, they've built a multi decade recording career off of nothing but pain and heartbreak. You know, if you listen to the lyrics,

Will Cady

Not the only ones, that's, yeah.

Srini RAo

Yeah, but it struck me that, you know, I think the key word there is if you would accept it. So how does somebody accept their past and the pain of it and use that as fuel for the future of creativity?

Will Cady

Yeah.

Will Cady

Yeah, so this is kind of turned out to be like the main theme of our conversation so far, mythology, right? And that's fun. So in that chapter, I do a little bit of personal analysis on the Perseus myth. And again, it plays with that dynamic between art and science because I love a constellation of stars in the sky because they only exist from our vantage points. Those stars aren't actually...

Srini RAo

Yeah.

Will Cady

objectively close together, but they are subjectively close together when we see them from our vantage point. And we have imbued those constellations with stories that share deep, deep wisdom for future generations. It's one of the most beautiful things that we can look up at our sky and see what hands that came before us pointed to and said, Hey, this is important. There's a story here to pay attention to.

So in that chapter, I talk about the Percy meteor shower, which is midsummer, and it's like late August, early September, and there is literally like a blockbuster movie that plays out in the sky. And it's in the ordering of how the different constellations rise. You've got all the characters like Perseus and Cassiopeia and drama to the galaxy. And I talk through how it unfolds. And that is a little bit of a story. This is...

What's the film? The Wrath of the Titans? Or Remember the Titans? But it's been turned into a blockbuster film many times. And this is the character of the hero who rides out on a unicorn carrying Medusa's head and it uses Medusa's head to defeat the Kraken that is trying to consume the damsel in distress who represents our future. So this is a story about how we save our future from the jaws of chaos. And...

he gets Medusa's head from a cave where he has to go into and defeat this monster whose own story is kind of an allegory for trauma because there's something terrible that happened to Medusa and because of this terrible thing that happened to her, she became this monster that if you look upon her directly will turn you into stone. And so then Perseus is given this shield and a sword and the shield he can use as a mirror

into the cave backwards and uses the mirror to look at Medusa from a different angle, to not be turned into stone by beholding her directly, is able to vanquish her, and the very power of her horror is the power that he takes out of the cave to use to defeat chaos and save the future. All of that, to me, is, well first off, the story that has been printed in our sky by the artists of old. But for people today, it's an allegory for

Will Cady

going back into your past. Our own traumas are so terrifying to look at directly sometimes that we've got to back into them and see them from another angle, that you can't change the facts of what's in there, what's in the cave of your past, but you can change the story. You can see it from a different vantage point. And if you're able to do that and get close enough to vanquish that trauma,

that trauma, that anxiety actually becomes the very power that you can come back with and do something great. And I will certainly tell you the process of writing this book was that over and over and over again. So many different things came up for me as I was examining who I am, where I come from, that it helped me to decide where I'm going. And in so many different respects, the physical copy of the book itself is my Medusa's head

in my hands on the other side of the shadow work that I had to do.

Srini RAo

Beautiful. Well, speaking of stories, you say that everyone has a story, but not all of us know how to tell it in the same way. Everyone has a creative spark, but not all of us know how to find it. It begins with understanding what you're made of. We all rest upon a story. We might just not be living it. And so that really struck me because I want one of my friends, Nikki groom, she said, everybody has a story worth telling. And that has honestly been kind of one of the foundational values by which I have run this show where it's never

hey, how famous is this person? Is this story worth telling? And is it personally interesting to me? But how do you connect a creative vision and a story together? Because I think there are some people who are masterful at doing it. They can take their life story and you see it in these beautiful movies and beautiful art or books. But then there are people who have a story, but to your point, they don't know how to tell it and they don't know how to express it. So how do you bridge that gap?

Will Cady

Yeah, so that part is in the what you rest upon chapter, which is the grounded one. I mean, that's the one where, you know, you gotta contend with the reality of who you are and who you're not in terms of where do you begin, right? And so there's a bit of a message in the book in terms of a lot of people that don't know where to begin. It's just like, look at your feet.

What do you carry? What is in your heritage? What is your ancestry? There's always stories there that can give you a purpose if you want to take that up. If not, then there's the land that you stand upon. And there's deep, deep stories within that land. There's a lot of empowerment, I think, with looking at your feet to figure out where to go next. Because that's the reality that you wake up to.

And if you want to go somewhere, it's one of those, you know, take one step at a time kind of things. And so there's a lot of, you know, storytelling that I did in that chapter in terms of how I contended that with myself in terms of, you know, my ancestry and the land that my life has been built upon. But this is about purpose, right? This is about... There's another way to... There's another angle of which to approach this. It's...

It's creativity as service rather than as expression. And that's something that I discovered through my career when I made the switch from being a musician constantly trying to promote my music and thinking about what I was trying to express, and then by circumstance being forced into work, I found that my relationship with creativity shifted to being not about expression, but about service.

It was like, here are these things that I can do. Here's the job that I have. Now that gives me direction. So it's actually really quite simple when you look at your capabilities and your circumstances. And sometimes the next step is just right there in front of you.

Srini RAo

Well, speaking of next steps, like the thing that another thing that really struck me is you said that the makers and marketers look to the short cycles of trends and fashion, the mystics look to the broader and more sweeping cycles of change, they each understand the same things change is the only changes. The only constant the human story evolved substantially across the slow moving, but certain turning of the wheel of the planets and stars. And this idea of chasing trends really struck me because I started a podcast long before it was trendy. I mean, you know,

In fact, it was anything but trendy. People were saying podcasting was dead, but then I saw this over and over. And I kept thinking to myself, I'm like, you never wanna be the person who chases or follows a trend. You wanna be the one who starts it.

Will Cady

Oh yeah, this is the good stuff. We are stuck. When I say we, I mean the kind of modern internet citizen. We are stuck in like a one week cycle. And that is no way to create, that is no way to live really. And in the business world, we're stuck in quarterly cycles or annual cycles.

That's where a lot of the work is in terms of if you're trying to, you know, make revenue for a business, if you're trying to chase an algorithm by posting according to what is trending, you're playing catch-up constantly. And I'm not here to say that is the wrong thing to do. I am saying that if that's the only thing that you're doing, you're going to get stuck.

And so this is where the knowledge and systems of the mystics can be brought to bear because they are kind of by definition made to do two things. One, to ground you deeper in the present moment and release from the stress of keeping up all the time. And two, to give you a longer view of the unfolding of humanity over...

more than just years, but decades and centuries and millennia.

Srini RAo

You know the thing that always strikes me about trends in particular and this ended up becoming the foundation for my first book That I wrote was that I would see this pattern over and over again Somebody would see a person who was successful get a result and they would try to replicate that thing at to the letter You know, and I always said like you're missing one giant variable here go look in the mirror And so I wonder when you think about this idea of trends like why are people so blind to context? When they think about this thing particularly when it comes to prescriptive advice

Will Cady

Wow, I've been thinking about context a lot. I wanna ask you a little bit more first, like you're talking about context here, what does context mean to you?

Srini RAo

Well, it's funny because I literally just published a blog post title context is everything. So I think context is multifaceted, right? I don't think we can say it's just one thing. In my mind, it's a combination of things environment, upbringing, timing, you know, your social groups, your genetics, all those things play a role. So to give you an absurd example, imagine me trying to go to the NBA, never going to happen, no matter how much I practice. I'm a scrawny Indian, you know, like it's just

I'm not predetermined to be able to do that as I learned from seventh grade football where I got the hell beat out of me. But I see this over and over, particularly when it comes to self-help. And I saw it over and over in the online marketing world. It was like people would take a podcasting course, then they would try to replicate the same exact podcast that the person teaching the course had started. Instead of ecosystems, they were building echo chambers.

Will Cady

Mm-hmm. So this is so cool, right? Because I have a blog post ready to hit publish about context right now, too. So this is a perfect example of being tuned into something that is coming out of our collective unconscious that is ready to be brought into the algorithm, ready to be brought into the mainstream. And obviously, this is not the first time that we've talked about context, but...

It is my job as a creative strategist, as a maker, marketer, and mystic, it is my job to intuit when there is a concept, a word, or a symbol, an idea, that is stepping into exaltation, that there is a new light that is being shined on it. It is carrying a charged energy that is going to...

shift the conversation. And there is certainly something happening around the word context right now. So, you know, context is many, many different things as far as the structure of our environments in terms of whether it's, you know, the city that we're brought up in or the digital community that we get our information that creates a context that shapes our reality.

And we as a global internet culture are, I think, ready to have that conversation about all that means. Context also means like your intent in terms of coming into a conversation. My context coming into this conversation is I've got a book to promote. That's a mindset, right? And that is something that marketers deeply understand. But...

Srini RAo

Yeah.

Will Cady

Context is this word that is really coming to the forefront in terms of something that is there for us all to think about, whether it's as a part of our business strategy or how we are writing or how we are connecting compassionately from human to human. Words are kind of like symbols in that way. They're anchors for these big ideas and it's really interesting to me that we both have blog posts ready to go about this idea of context right now.

Srini RAo

Yeah, well, I've been just gradually writing up sections for a book that, you know, working title is everybody is full of shit, including me, which I think is like a fitting way to describe context because in different depending on the context, I am full of shit. And you know, you are too, to a degree, depending on who we're talking about. I learned this actually from a student in one of my courses when she showed up with two babies in tow to one of our calls. And I thought to myself, I'm giving her productivity advice based on.

Will Cady

Ha ha ha!

Will Cady

Yeah.

Srini RAo

the life of a guy who was single. I am so full of shit right now and I don't even realize it.

Will Cady

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, and it's vantage point, right? That's where you're talking about the alignment of subjective and objective, right? There's two completely different experiences, two different contexts. And I think that we're learning right now how to build with an understanding of the existence of different contexts.

Srini RAo

Well, let's talk about AI. This was like probably one of my favorite sections of the book because you had talked about the concerns that creatives have. And I have a blog post that's now ranking second on Google titled, you know, AI spells trouble for creatives, how to adapt and thrive. But the thing that struck me was.

What you said was this, was that generative AI tools are impressive in their ability to render in the likeness of great creators or their styles of composition, but they will rely on those inputs to imagine. The inventiveness of a new style comes from something else. It's not that AI is incapable of providing a style of creativity unseen. What every AI pushes out is defined by whatever it pulls in. Outputs from inputs, giving from receiving, that's a creative current at its core. And the reason that struck me so much was,

I had a book called the artificially intelligent creative that I self published a while back and I had an entire chapter on the importance of communicating with AI and it was based on a conversation I had with my cousin when we were talking about this and he said, yeah, you're still 50% of the equation. And I was like, yeah, like human input is one of the most important things. And I see this with my own clients that I've been working with. I literally have a client this morning and he sent me a thing saying, hey, the thing you told me to do isn't working. And I looked at the prompt and I was like, okay, I know why it's not working.

Will Cady

Hmm.

Srini RAo

But it just got me thinking that you know these artists are so scared and I realized like this is in a lot of ways a Golden opportunity if you see it that way and you don't see it as a tool but as a partner

Will Cady

Absolutely. So this is a rich one. The first place I want to go to is doubling down on what it highlights in the last part of our conversation. I wrapped this book, I finished writing it last year. So bringing up AI and thinking about where is the conversation going to be in October of 2023, where this is the end of 2022. So much has happened in that time.

And I really had to rely on the tools that I've been talking about in terms of looking up and intuiting where is this going? What is beyond the cycle of the conversation this week, this quarter, even this year? This isn't the next year. So I hope that the writing that I did on AI

still fits and you sharing that quote is validation that to some degree that it did. So, you know, it just, I want to first like emphasize the importance of being able to cultivate that skill of being able to, you hear this a lot, a lot of sports analogies in the business world, right? Skate to where the puck is going, right?

So that first and foremost. But I think that the dominant conversation within the last year about AI, between when I finished the final draft of this and this conversation now, has been about these fears that a lot of creatives have in terms of what is this going to do to our livelihoods. And it's been a lot of envisioning what it's taking away rather than what it is giving. And so...

I do think that at some point in the book I described, like AI is another mind that you can use to express your human heart. It still needs that subjective experience. It still needs the anxiety that you feel, the emotions that you bring to it, your connection to these, the synchronicities of experience that a human is privy to in ways that maybe, maybe a machine is not.

Will Cady

There was a time when the cutting edge of art was mixing paint colors. And all of a sudden we were able to depict light on canvas. And that changed everything. And then there's perspective. And then there's impressionism and expressionism. And there's all these moments in this. There's a dialogue between the art and science. Between what it is, the truth that we want to express, and the technology that we have to do so.

I don't think that there's really, maybe somebody can correct me that's listening, but I don't think that there's really been a time that a technological advancement has set creativity back. It has certainly caused disruption, but the photograph, recorded music, many, many concerns that people had when those technologies were brought to bear. And they certainly changed the economics of things, but they helped us realize creativity.

that simply wasn't available to us beforehand. And I believe that is what is coming next.

Srini RAo

Yeah. I mean, I, this is something that I had said in a episode before that, you know, I remember reading the Wealth of Nations and Adam Smith talked about this idea of division of labor being the key to maximizing your output. And of course, you work at Reddit, so you know that like, but who has the resources that Reddit does most creators don't. And I realized I was like, this is literally shifting that balance of power and making division of labor at scale, accessible to the masses and giving the ability to create at the speed of thought.

Will Cady

Yeah.

Srini RAo

Like that is one of the most fundamental economic power shifts in 200 years.

Will Cady

It absolutely is, yeah. So, you know, there's a lot of people that are saving a lot of time in terms of execution. That's been a theme of this conversation too, right? So because it's easier to execute now, that is why I'm confident about tripling down on the idea of focusing on, well, where does creativity come from? Because having the idea and having a sense of taste and having a literacy in aesthetic and in the humanities,

Srini RAo

Yeah.

Will Cady

is all of a sudden a more urgent education and skill set than it was before.

Srini RAo

Yeah. Well, the way I'd said it was that your ability to imagine what's possible with these tools is going to be far more important than the technical competency needed to use them as they get easier and easier to use. Because over probably 25 years, I've just observed what I call this gap between creativity and technology. I don't know how old you are, but I was at Berkeley in the mid-90s when the internet first came about. And if you had an idea for whatever it was...

Will Cady

Mm-hmm.

Srini RAo

the technical skills required to make that idea a reality were sufficient. Like they, they required serious training. So the average person could not execute, but as you know, sort of technology has progressed, what once took a hundred million dollars in funding, I remember this, I interviewed Lisa Gansky, the co-founder of Ohphoto. Ohphoto was, you know, for people listening who don't know that one of the early photo sharing sites. And she told me that website took a hundred million dollars in funding to build.

Will Cady

Yeah.

Srini RAo (45:58.undefined)

And today somebody could sit at their desk on a weekend and build that in an hour.

Will Cady

Yeah, I mean, it's incredible. I, you know, there's a few moments that I look to and on that path, I think that, you know, in the 2000s, the smartphone put a content studio in everybody's pocket and that created a world of the content creator where it's easy to be a photographer. You don't have to know how to, you know, develop film in a dark room like I had to learn, right?

And today with AI, everybody has a developer terminal in their pocket now. So what is that influencer of the future web? It's, it's going to be a different skillset where the, the barrier to entry has just completely crumbled. And now the question is, can we raise, can we raise the ceiling on the other side? Can we, if more people have access to tools.

This is a question I don't have an answer to. If more people have access to the tools, does that make the world better?

Srini RAo

Yeah. Well, on that note, I want to bring back a clip from a previous episode with a conversation about a conversation I had with Julian Smith. Take a listen. I don't want to get your take on this.

Srini RAo

Oh, sorry. Sorry, Josh, cut that out. Please.

Srini RAo

So that conversation stayed with me. I remember that and that informed so much of what I did and thought about technology every time a new piece of technology came. Like my default question anytime I saw a new product was what can I make with this that I couldn't before? But I wanna hear your take on that.

Will Cady

Yeah, well, I mean, he's correct. So I agree emphatically with that description of each new piece of technology is stacked upon what came before it. The adjacent possible is always moving up based upon what is. I think that my role in this conversation is to add the humanity side to it. If Jenga is the metaphor, then the arrangement of those pieces

by human reactions to them. And then of course, along the lines of myth, we're playing with the Tower of Babel here, aren't we? How high can we go without the whole thing falling down?

Srini RAo

Amazing. Well, I could probably talk to you all day about this. I mean, this is, like I said, such a deep, rich, you know, multifaceted, multi-layered subject. So we may have to have you back again at some point, but in the interest of time, I want to finish with my final question, which is how we finish all of our interviews. What do you think it is that makes somebody or something on mistake?

Will Cady

Would love to be back.

Will Cady

honesty.

Will Cady

Yeah, so I think going back to the beginning of our conversation in terms of morning pages, morning notes, you know, your morning coffee and the release that leads to, the skin of the orange over the juice, getting to the honesty on the inside. It's unmistakable. There's an intelligence in your heart that doesn't live in your head. You know, the...

The head thinks, but the heart knows. And that's unmistakable.

Srini RAo

Beautiful. Well, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us and share your story, your wisdom, and your insights with all listeners. Where can people find out more about you, your work, and everything else you're up to?

Will Cady

I'm on mostly I'm actually on LinkedIn and Instagram. My name will Katie C-A-D-Y is how you spell it. My handle is willkaty and my website is willcady.com.

Srini RAo

Amazing. And for everybody listening, we will wrap the show with that.