Dare to start with an audience of one - Malika Favre & George Wu

I would see all these things that I'd sent you, almost. I was shopping in real time, was literally every week. I literally had a free personal shopper. As a joke, as you can imagine, I was torn between insane jealousy and also curiosity of what I could get Malitha to buy. I made an Instagram account for literally an audience of one. I called it, I can't afford this but maybe she can. Me being the one that I can't afford this. And started like posting genuinely things that I really loved. And then Malitha would comment on the bottom saying, I'm buying this one, I'm buying this one and then we'll work here in our house. I left it open to the public because I didn't know anything about Instagram and who's going to follow this account anyway. It was just a really silly idea. Welcome to the Daring Creativity Podcast. We show about daring to forever explore creativity that isn't about chasing shiny perfection. It's about showing up with all your doubts and imperfections and making them count. It's about becoming more of who you already are. My name is Rady Malinic, I'm a designer, author and eternally curious human being. I'm talking to a broad range of guests who share their stories of small actions that spy lifetime discoveries, taking one step towards the thing that made them feel most alive. Let me begin this episode with a question. Are you ready to discover what happened when you dare to create? What happened when a shared joke between two friends became a 350,000 strong community and nobody planned any of it? My guest today, Malika Favre, is one of the most celebrated illustrators known for work that reduces the complex to the essential and makes you look twice. George Wu is a graphic designer, maker and self-described reluctant influencer. Together, they created, I can't afford this but maybe she can, the curation feed built on friendship, taste and a fierce refusal to sell out. In our conversation, we talk about building with love and no budget, curating as an act of generosity and what it means to post an audience of one when algorithms will never beat someone who genuinely cares. This episode is full of joys and it's my pleasure to share with you my conversation with Malika Favre and George Wu. Hey Malika, hey George, how are you doing today? Good, thank you. Yeah, it's pretty sunny down here. I'm in Hove, near Brighton and Malika's always in the sun. It's literally been raining for two days and we're on a high alert of winds so that's wrong but I'm in Barcelona so usually it is but it's been pretty dreadful these past few days. I love it how you're wearing the biggest scarf in the world. Yeah, this is the fact, based in England, you're in Barcelona but you've got the scarf and we don't. Exactly, which is actually part of a process I call tropicisation. It's like when I moved here after 16 years in London, I thought, oh my god, I'm going to be warm all the time, it's going to be heaven. Truth is like after one year, you start being cold on 20 degrees. It's insane. This is the thing, I've got a friend who moved from London to Barcelona. I went to OV and I saw him for dinner just before off Barcelona and he's 18 degrees, 20 degrees and he's wearing a winter jacket and I'm like, you know when people say you've changed, definitely he's changed. Years ago, he'd be walking around London in shorts and t-shirt at 20 degrees. Exactly and that's how you see the locals around here. We've given our listeners a crash course on where everyone's based which is amazing and Malika, we really need to put up a picture of your big scarves on my because it's quite impressive. It's like that sort of Lenny Kravitz moment. I think when you get papped outside, when you go for groceries, it'll be Lenny Kravitz 2.0 but thanks for both of you to actually be here today because I've seen your talk at the Birmingham Design Festival and I was just impressed with what you guys do, how you do it, how you've created your own version of daring creativity in a way of inventing your future because you both have careers, respective careers that are doing so well for you. There is something in your project, I can't afford this but maybe she can, which turn into something of its own and the story behind it and the energy behind it is something that I really wanted to share here today because it's something that I wish that a lot more people would be encouraged by a story. So, as I normally say on the show, for those who might have enough out of you, how would you introduce yourself, Malika, we'll start with you. So I'm French, you can probably hear that by the accent and basically my, let's say my real life career and job is I'm an illustrator. So I've been an illustrator for the past 15 years, started my career in London and I've the luxury of working for myself. Not having anyone telling me what to do which is brilliant and I love it. Literally I'm paid to draw. And what about you George? Who are you, what do you do? I'm George, I am English as you can hear. What do I do? I'm probably one of those annoying creative people that are being a bit vague with when they say what they do. Right now I'm a graphic designer but I would say that maybe I'm, I like to dabble in a lot of different things. So I've done events, directing, product designing to a certain extent. So I'm a bit of jack of all trades. Malika, I've been aware of your career for at least 50 years but I feel like it's been even longer. But I remember in your talk, one of your first ever illustrations, was it a stripper that you draw or was that? Ah no, it was the first ever, like the one, let's say a key drawing from my childhood was a dominatrix with a whip when I was nine. Which my mum very carefully kept in a drawer, which I think is actually is a really funny bit because she was, my mum was like the harshest art director you could think of. So I was drawing every day and let's say every year she would keep 10 drawings and throw the rest to the bin. And somehow she kept that one. She thought it was very interesting. That is very interesting indeed. George have you got a draw of paintings that go questionable in nature? No, I'm just thinking because my son is nearly three and he has only just started drawing but almost I thought he would pick it up soon obviously very much Tiger Mum here. And he just managed to do a face, his first circle with eyes and I was so proud that I've decided to keep this in the truck. It's been a long week to go before his dominatrix with whip. Oh you can just send him over to me George, just send him over for like a little month's holiday. It's got six more years to reach the same level so my girls. So I think it will be great for the podcast to establish why are you two here? How did you meet and actually what is it that you do together? Because there's a story because obviously you are just separate careers and now you do work together so how did it happen? We're even actually in separate countries now which is funny but I think which is also one of the reasons why this project happened. George and I have been very good friends for I'd say more than a decade now, George. We met in I want to say 2008, was it? Maybe late. Yeah so I think it was just when I left Ayrside the design studio I was working at and started my illustration career and it was a serendipity moment where we both got signed by the same production company in London exactly the same week so we were part of this new onboarding of directors. We were directing animation, George was making a lot of music videos now and TVI dance and things like that and London being the small world that it is I actually knew of George work from a show, a final show at the RCA and I remember having like a massive crush on her graduation film and my flatmate knew her so I knew of her. I didn't know her personally and I think we met that week and I basically jumped at her like a little fun girl. George is hilarious because by this point Malika was very famous so I'm quite surprised. Just wanted George to be my friend. I was literally trying to bully her into becoming my friend and it worked. But the funny thing is I think I'd been to your house many times, I was friends with your flatmate, I've been to house parties in your bedroom and like years before. Yeah I used to live on brick lanes so we used to have these massive house parties where like literally people were coming from the streets, imagine 200 people in your house so that's why we did not meet each other at those parties. We'll be back after a quick break. This episode is brought to you by Lax Coffee Co. The first creative speciality coffee company building a platform to shine the light on emerging global talent with a mission to make a positive impact on a creative industry and beyond. Lax Coffee Co offers exceptional coffee sourced from around the world through ethical and sustainable practices and you can discover the current range of signature blends and single origins, coffee hardware and accessories along with exceptional apparel at laxcoffee.co.uk. You can use the code podcast to get 15% off your first order. That makes the level of stalking a little bit smaller, like at least because if you say I've been having parties in Monica's bedroom. I'd like to also say I'm not a random person from the street, just throwing into random parties. Now we had a lot of friends in Commons, yeah designers, I also had friends even from Paris who went to the RCA and were in the George class. So I think we were bound to meet and yeah we got on really well. I left, I think I left the animation altogether and production company after one year. I would say to just focus on illustration because I realized that you don't like it that much. But we stayed friends. So literally this is what happened and we were friends for a decade, very close friends. So what happened with this project is it started as like a joke, no? So you can tell the story of that project. We were sending each other things that you would dream of buying as any normal friends do. Your hopes, I want to go here on holiday or one day when I have my own place, I'll buy this chair. And it actually started with, I think it's when Hay was quite new and they released a gold side table that was almost too small to be properly functional. You couldn't have it as your coffee table and too pretty to want to use it every day. So it was definitely like a luxury dream. I sent this to Malika saying, oh, look at this thing, gorgeous. And then we went, I think for a week later we went for a drink and then Malika was like, oh, by the way, my new table is arriving. And I was like, what table? My table. And then it became this weird pattern where I'd go to your house and I would see all these things that I'd sent you. Almost. I was shopping in real time. It was literally every week. I literally had a free personal shopper. As a joke, as you can imagine, I was torn between insane jealousy and also curiosity of what I could get Malika to buy. I made a Instagram account for literally an audience of one. I called it, I can't afford this, but maybe she can. Me being the one that I can't afford this. And started like posting genuinely things that I really loved. And then Malika would comment on the bottom saying, I'm buying this one. I'm buying this one. And then we'll walk here in our house. I left it open to the public because I didn't know anything about Instagram and who's going to follow this account anyway. It was just a really silly idea. And yeah, then slowly friends started following and then members of the public started following and then COVID hit. Malika, you moved to Barcelona. And then the rise of online shopping happened. Right. Everyone was stuck indoors. So we were all just constantly watching each other, loads of things. And also we were bored. I remember I was doing upholstery courses in my living room. I was like, we were all doing those Zoom pub quizzes with a lot of time. And I remember Malika saying, oh, you know that Instagram thing that you do. By this point, I've been doing it on my own for about three or four years with no plan. Like I almost posting once every quarter. Like literally wasn't really populating it. And she was like, oh, maybe we did this together. We both post things that we like. We sign them from ourselves. And that's how it grew. And we don't consult each other on what we post. So sometimes the feed looks very harmonious. And then sometimes the feed looks insane. Like it's really schizophrenic, but that's the beauty of it. Yeah. And it grew. I can't remember. I think in his first year, it grew to like 50,000 followers in one year. And currently now on correct me from wrong, 338. 350. 350. Oh, sorry. I'm actually, I'm going to correct you on 358. Yeah, it's growing. Yeah. And I think the first year, because Malika, you've already got a massive following as well. So I think a lot of your audience kind of was like, oh, I'm really interested to see what you're doing. And then, but then after that, we noticed that the kind of uptake had plateaued from your account. And we'd started reaching people organically through our own feed and it just snowballed. So definitely no plan. Definitely no vision at that point. No, but I think there is one thing we had clear when we started was let's share people doing amazing things. Let's share beautiful objects. And it's true. It started from a very simple, this is our dream list. I want this icon of four days. So it started very much with like shopping and objects. But because we had no limits, it was a love project. No one was paying us to do it. We can post anything we want. So we started posting anything from cakes to beautiful trips, places, hotels. It could literally, it could be anything like sky was a limit. And I think in a way, at that point, the algorithm was already being pretty unkind to a lot of people. And what we did should have worked because we did not put our faces. We did not create our own content. We were literally grabbing images left and right and we sharing, putting carousels. We didn't do reels. We didn't do videos. We didn't play the game. But somehow I think there is, especially in our design community, a lot of people were missing that. That kind of old school, almost Tumblr blogging and sharing things just for the beauty of it. Yeah, you're absolutely right. Because I'm a lover of color and everything that you post out there, it just makes you happy. It makes you feel something. George, when you say, hey, this has been slightly with chaotic to defeat. This is only what designer can say. Okay, we need to organize this. We need to make this because if someone scrolls, it doesn't matter how he looks on the side by side. I'm not trying to cheap on this because obviously we all put care into our grids. And then you're like, some people are like, oh, is that what you did? I didn't come across. Thank you. But George, what I want to find out, obviously, from you, you're the head curator at least at the beginning. Where do you go to find these things? Because obviously you said you were running this for three to four years on your own, right? Because initially you've been providing the shopping links to Malika and she was buying and buying. But your curiosity, where does it take you? And where do you find the stuff in the first place? I definitely wouldn't give myself a title of head curator knowing that Malika posts five posts to one a day. So definitely the head curator can go over there. But at the beginning, it is interesting because even when we look at the kind of things that we posted at the start, it's really different to what we post now. So at the beginning, I was literally finding your classic design pieces, right? So like things that you would see in places like Conran store, brands like Hay, your proper graphic design loves. And then I guess naturally I have a really big love of faux cart. I really love craft. So that's really fed into it. But what I think is really interesting over the course of the years that we've done this account is actually how much you can let go of your ego. So when it was only an audience of one with Malika, I didn't really care. I'm just putting stuff that I like, right? And then as soon as our friends started joining, of which there are some very like hipster people and quite judgy people in like rooms, they might be like, I'm not sure about that thing or that thing and that kind of paranoia, my thinking. And then when we started doing the Instagram together, I almost had the safety of Malika and her giant followings. I was like, okay, I'll go back to posting what I like and feeling quite secure. But now because it's grown so dramatically and I've seen posts from, I remember Malika posting a dish of onions in the shape of fish or I'd post. What's another crazy one? A textile designer that does amazing kind of reveals when you cut the threads of like different illustrations. It's almost like now it's total freedom. Anything goes. As long as it makes us smile and we find it interesting, then it goes on. So thinking about where we get it from, we've talked about this before, but yeah, I am a very reluctant influencer. I find social media really difficult. It doesn't take long for me to be like, someone's on holiday, oh, that's nice for them. Someone's doing an extension on that house. So I actually have to go out of social media to find stuff. And that generally comes from projects that I happen to be working on in my day job, or things that I'm interested in terms of my hobbies. And I go a bit around the houses and then bring that back in. Whereas I know that Malika, you go out about in a really different way. Yeah. I'm on a constant fight with the algorithm, so trying to tame it so that he gives me what I want. And I would say that sometimes the algorithm has given me like really interesting things. And when you look at our explore page, a lot of it is extremely good. Because I think literally that's the job of the algorithm is to keep you there and to give you what you want. And if you are very careful about what you look at and what you click on and everything, it will follow you in a way. The problem is that all that job can be gone if you start looking at pictures of dogs for a bit too long. So this is an interesting thing about the algorithm, because if you're a creator, if you're a creator, you want the algorithm to work for you and present your work to other people. Whereas what you Malika quite beautifully described, and I do this with Spotify, my Discover Weekly, was highly curated to my taste because I'm very careful about what I save. It's a bit of a musical salad because I'm listening to the same thing in a different colors, different tones, and if that makes sense. But when it comes to the visual algorithm, especially on Instagram, mostly you get people who celebrate it and people who hate it because you want to be seen. But maybe people are not finding you because they're not looking for you at that time, because they haven't potentially made as much effort as you have made. Because you say it works for you because you're really careful, you mold it in a way how you want it to behave. I think that's a juxtaposition because we see algorithms as a negative word. No one's ever said, hey, algorithms are here. This is great. This is technically a decision made by something else. But I want to go to one point, George. He said, I wasn't confident at the beginning of doing this on my own. And I've learned this beautiful sentence just the other day about courage. And it said, courage is not a solo sport. It takes a village for people to be courageous because it's, when we do something on our own, we don't have that validation. We don't know exactly, especially if you're holding yourself into the unknown. You're like, what's happening? What am I doing? I like it that you had Malika who's the behemoth of illustration. Like, hey, I can validate it for you. Even though what you do, and it's obviously an exception, amazing. So it's interesting to hear that we have these different levels of confidence or anxieties and securities. Even when it comes to our own work or even just Instagram feeds, just is this worthy? Is it good enough? Because ultimately, what I'm getting from this is the point of care of creating something for people that get value out of this. And I'm glad you didn't give in to your trendy hipster friends, just to put you off. Going back to how we find things, I would say also that there is quite a big stalking element to it as well. So it's not, yes, the Explore feed does give us some stuff. But I think to also curate that, and I know you do this too, Malika, you end up going first like designer, oh, who are they following? And who are then they following? And then you just go into that weird wormhole of literally going through people's followers to try and find interesting things. So that's still quite an intense mining situation. And then we inject that obviously you start following these people that are quite outside your network and that refreshes the Explore thing for a bit. But after a while, because it just starts repeating itself, then you have to go out again and give it fresh inspiration to then go, okay, here's a new set of parameters of things I'm interested in now, go off and find me those things. So you do have to really feed the algorithm. It's an ongoing thing. It is exhausting and you feel a little bit like a hamster in a wheel. That's how I feel as well about it. But and it is more about going down, as George was saying, going down kind of rabbit holes and then doing little jumps left and right and then you enter in that hole and then you get out another door and then you find someone else who is doing kites in Japan and he's the fourth generation craftsperson. And then you start looking into that person and translating their website. And it's so much work. But at the same time, I think we all see the same thing. And for me, that's an issue with Instagram today. If there is a cool product coming out, you're going to see it on 50 different feeds, literally in the space of a week. This comes down with marketing budgets. A lot of people are investing a lot of money in getting this seen. And I think for us, it's like we used to post these things as well because sometimes they were great. But very quickly, we also realized that people were following us and sticking around because we were outside of trends, because we were finding things that maybe someone had never seen before. And at the same time, we were not feeding this kind of big brand doing cool collaboration and underpaying the designer. We were suddenly giving more exposure to someone doing something very cool for the past 30 years and getting very little recognition from it at the other corner of the world. And I think this is when we started really getting a kick out of it as well and feeling that we were being good actors in that space, which also means we were being very poor. But yeah. I have to say, it goes to that one to death phrase from Simon Sinning. People don't care what you do. People care why you do what you do. And when you said being, you meant you said exhausting in a way. It shows the true curiosity of how far you're prepared to go to find information to celebrate someone to actually appreciate what someone creates rather than go, this is the press release, this is going to be okay for us. I think people can see beyond the bullshit the surface level promotion, especially if it's a path of a PR in a week or two, it's surface. People can see through it. But what I can see from what you guys have been doing, you care about what goes on. You care where it appears in the feed. You care who's there and then you go deeper. Again, I've used this phrase on a podcast for a long time, but the phrase is, the last mile is hardly ever crowded because not many people are prepared to go that far. And you don't have to tell people about how much you care about craft because you show it to them. They can see that what you're creating and what makes you happy, what makes you feel something, it's presented on this. And that was, I'm sure, one of the reasons why it's grown so far and so fast now. And I think there is something also that I think is important to say is, for example, Instagram has changed a lot, social media have changed a lot over the past decade. And I know that, for example, for my illustration career, social media did a lot for me. A lot of people reshared my work. That's how I became who I am. A lot of magazines reshared my work. The likes of Creative Review, It's Nice That, all this. Back then, you could send a cool project to a magazine and they would literally make a full blown article about you. Today, that does not exist anymore. Everything is commodified. Nothing is for free anymore. And social media, the feeds are also like this. Everything is sponsored. And that's also something we agreed on very early on with George. We don't want to be these guys. Maybe we can give exposure to these people. And we don't even tell them we're going to post them. We just post them, which is a little bit illegal. But then my thing was always like, if they want us to take it down, we'll take it down. But why would they? It's like we're literally celebrating them in a feed. And so I think in a way, it's also a little bit about, for me, about giving back and proving, maybe it's a bit of a lost battle, but proving that you can still be generous in this space. And that creative should be more generous with each other. We decided very early on that we were not going to do sponsored posts, for example. So that if a brand contacted us, we were not going to post on the feed. We were not going to use our feed in that way. So that was something that was very clearly on, but also meant that we were never going to make money that way. And what started at the beginning as something that was taking an hour a day or something, slowly grew into something, I think it's taking me like four, five hours a day now. So it's a bit insane. I have to admit that I did put my illustration career a little bit on hold for the past year. I did, I had to. It's like at some point I couldn't do everything, but I was lucky enough that I had a very good first decade of work. I'm lucky that I can take fewer projects and I still can live. And for me, that was a necessary sacrifice. But also after, I think it was after four years, we started talking with George about how do we somehow make these viable? Because this is insane. There is a moment where it's just becoming a bit mad. And so that's when we started to think about making a shop, almost like a curated concept store. We asked our audience, we did a survey. We really bounced around a lot of ideas like doing an archive of all our curation, maybe doing subscription. We really talked about all these options and landed on this idea of a shock. And also we were lucky enough last year to get commissioned by an auction house in Paris to curate for them. So for us, even though we were sharing that on the feed, the fact we accepted, we said, yes, and there was a budget for it. We said, yes, because we had complete carte blanche and it was about curating. So we didn't feel it was someone buying our audience to push a product. They were literally not telling us what to put. We were selecting seven objects a month and we did that for six months, I think. It was really amazing. And I think without François and Droho, that client, we could never have built a shop. So we used that budget to literally build the whole shop and get it kicking off. So we didn't take external investment. We paid ourselves very little last year. From that, so this is like a drop in the ocean. And now we're trying this format where we have a curated bazaar. We partner with brands. It's completely free for them to join. And when they sell something through us, we get a commission. So we tried also, we really wanted to have a model that was fair on both sides. It's not sustainable yet, so we'll see. But that's our best attempt of making it a little bit viable and allowing us to continue. I've just one step. We don't do the classic sponsored posts because they send us some pictures and we just post those. But we have done almost more collaborations. If we really like a product, then we'll create some content for them. And that has been really fun as well. However, I think even, I guess, our whole thing with this feed and the way that we're going about the shop and how do you monetize it is very much about experimentation. See which one works, what works with the audience. We have done maybe slightly more classic sponsored posts in the past where, and this is why we decided they don't work because if the product isn't something that the audience would really resonate with, then it just doesn't work. However, when we get to do our own take on it and it does better, the Druar stuff has been amazing because it's what we do already. We're just instead of curating things that we find, we get to go into this crazy antiques world and find incredible old masters. We were never allowed to show Picasso paintings, but they were there all the way to Fawnazetti cat bins, for example. And it was like a so different place for us to go on personally as well. I've never really delved into the world of antiques before. Super interesting. So I guess it's now we're really interested in collaborations. Meeting new partners that would like to try something else, not your classic sponsored post, if that makes sense. And let us curate. I think curation for us is the backbone of this, is you have to let us dig and choose and build a story around it. And also what we did is we started a newsletter, which in a way is old school. But I think that also came at a moment where that's when we had the idea for the shop and that's also when we had this feeling of we don't know where Meta is going. We don't know where Instagram is going. We need to start having a presence outside, not be dependent on these big companies. And that's when we start doing newsletters, interviewing people and having our quirky tone. And so we've got this really fun interview. Now we've got a new format where we dive into the story of an object from like first sketches and everything. And the brilliant thing is like the newsletter is going slowly because we're not pushing it like crazy. And also we don't have anything to offer really, apart from content. We don't have big discounts or things like this. But yeah, I think we're like on 7000 people now. And what's great is that the response is amazing. So literally we have like more than 70% open rate on each issue. And I know that's like closely a bit mad. But I think it's also in a way it's like a continuation of the feed. It's a space where we can have our tone, we can highlight products that are a little bit mad. And I don't know, and I think it's interesting. We're trying to develop other editorial formats. Malika, I can tell you that there's a lot of marketeers running newsletters who would kill for 70% open rate. I know. This is mad. This is where the true metric really lies because the number of subscribers doesn't really matter. It's like how many people actually open it. Yeah, that's the true metric. Again, it just goes back to why you do this and how much you care. Because George, am I right that this project also led you to develop in your own product that you've created? Yeah, I guess it's the inspiration behind it. I think when COVID hit, I have a lot of friends already that are illustrators or they're makers. And I don't know if, and you remember that it was like this boom of everyone like, okay, let's just make something ourselves. I'm obviously from a design background. I always have to work with someone else's brief, someone else's product. And I just thought, oh, that'd be quite fun to make something myself and try and be one of those brands. And I actually remember talking to you Malika. I made like a little deck of all the ideas that I had was thinking about the time and said, okay, as a business person, which one of these is actually going to make any kind of money? And she chose the umbrellas. I think that's the other thing that the feed is really amazing for is taking us on slightly different tangents. I would have never done the Birmingham talk before doing that feed, before doing it. Malika, she literally bullied me into doing that talk. I would have never really considered doing this podcast or even potentially creating my own version of interviews. I didn't really see myself in that way. And I think now it's okay. We have a following where we are curators, where people are interested in the kind of things that we're interested in. That's just a whole other space for me. And Malika, I'm sure the same for you too. Even the idea like something else that we're talking to people about is creatively collaborating with people's products, coming together in terms of in our own artistic way, rather than just curating. So there's a lot of different avenues that we can go down, which is super exciting. I discovered your para world and I love it in size, bringing joy to bad weather because I work with Timo Kildo on my last two books. Timo is amazing. And I think soon after we released these two books, a Soda Umbrella, did you guys live together? I was like, oh, this is everything about Timo, right? Dogs, yellow, color, happiness. It's just, yeah, it was one of these things that I didn't know it was your project at that time and later joined the Dots. And that makes so much sense because your statement, bring in joy to bad weather, it's bringing joy through everything that you do to any kind of situation. What I like about you that you said, I wouldn't do this because I needed Malika to push me into doing things because you've got very modest generosity in a way. I'm doing this because I care, but that doesn't make you to buy me. That makes sense. I think we're, as a couple, like now we're going to psych-alarm-ize ourselves. Malika's obviously come from incredible success. She's a very successful creative. And I've come from a slightly different world where I can't remember what's called the portfolio career. I've tried this, maybe it hasn't worked out, tried that, hasn't worked out. So I haven't, I had definitely a creative that's come from a background of more anxiety, uncertainty of what it's like to be a major success. And so I think, yeah, it's been amazing to partner with someone that is just, come on, what's the matter with you? Just do it. And I think I used to be like that maybe in my 20s. As I'm older, needing more security, I've gotten a bit more of the kind of fear to be brave. And I think when you do it as a two, it definitely helps because one of you can then go, no, it's great. Come on, let's keep going. And it feels like you're in it together when you have your own demons. I think I have more demons than Malika for sure. That's also why we get along so well. We have a lot in common and then we're very different. And in a way, I've always felt that it's much harder for people who are very interdisciplinary and want to touch, like you've got these breed of people like George, who want to touch everything. And when they do something, then they want to move on to something else. And so they keep trying techniques and mediums and formats. So it's amazing creatively, commercially, it's very difficult. For example, we all know that it has as frustrating as it is for some people, being a successful illustrator also means having a very strong recognizable style. And how do you not get bored by yourself? So I think there is a thing when my nature is I'm a compulsive, addictive, I have an addictive personality. And I'm someone who is going to do the same thing for 10 years and still find joy in it. But if that's not your nature, then that's hell. That situation is hell for me. I love pushing something by little incremental pivots. And I remember we had that conversation with George and that's when I think it really defines us. It's such a brilliant definition of who we are. George wants to do things that are innovative and new. I want to make this thing that already exists perfect or better. And I think these are two ways of being creative and approaching. My entire work is playing with cliches, with almost images you have in your subconscious, the collective mind, but making them so striking that you feel like you're seeing them for the first time. My work, my illustration work is not innovative. It's trying to reach that perfection. How perfect is that line? That is beautifully said. I remember seeing one of your talks ages ago where as a successful illustrator with a very distinctive style, you find yourself a little bit caged in. Some people can't stomach it because I remember I think you said, the number of times that people asked me to do something different to what I do, it was maybe three or four times. Because you create the thing that makes money and is very successful, but then that is your identity, that is your craft, that is your style, and people come to you because that's Deywa Malika. But what I love what you said is that you're trying to make it perfect. You're trying to find perfection. And you never find an endpoint to it because I have personally had some kind of incarnation of my career because I always find the endpoint. I was like, this was 10 years of this, let's do something else. This is 10 years of that, let's do something else. You overlap these things and you go over the curious to take you. Because would you say in your case that doing this thing with George gave you a bit of a catalyst to not run out or burn out what you do, even though you might one day find it perfectly what you do, with your illustration style, but did you find it working with George, gave you extra energy and a view on creativity and the expression of what you can do for the benefit of others? I think the biggest thing I learned as well is that the same as my work, my taste I think was much more confined and was much more in line with my work when we started this project. So I was creating very graphic, very geometric, color blocking, stripes, all the things that you would expect for me to curate. And I think curating with George and seeing her post its absolutely bonkers thing sometimes was in a way opened me up as well. And I think I embraced the whole spectrum of my own taste. And George was already doing that. And in a way that's also when the account really took off. It's also when we were really like, we all have guilty pleasures. I don't know why I find this beautiful, but it is, but it's not beautiful in the sense that some people might say, oh, that's on the line. We call it the line actually. Did we cross the line on this? And I think this is what really made it in a way made it popular with people because I think we all have guilty pleasures and we all have things that we find utterly beautiful that maybe not everyone would agree. And this is part of being human. I have decoded this since we're doing the couples counseling here. When you see the link between the works and when you said, obviously you said about George, that she's about a new innovation and you said about a perfection. When I look at the products and the things that you curate and put together on your store, it's innovation and perfection because some of these things are classics and they just take into 11. So these things are just a perfection of this. I think I found this link between the two because where your words have overlapped and met, it's just, oh, incredible stuff happened and keeps happening. That's how I see it. Would you agree? Yeah, for sure. That's a very nicely thought and I think we should change our about on our website now because that makes a way more effective. Okay, so we're getting ahead into rewrite our bio and concept. Absolutely. The manifesto. Who's a manifesto? By the first, I have to appreciate your ticket that says everything, everything, everything, everything. I mean, absolutely love it because I can, when I read those words, I hate underworld, cowgirl, everything, everything. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I remember the day we put that on the website and George, she does, she just did it actually today screenshotting something I wrote for the newsletter as like, lol, it's me. It was me making like a really bad pun. That ticket on the website was the same. George screenshot it and sent it to me and say, lol. And somehow we left it because it's funny. It's perfect. Absolutely. Never change it. We can work on your bio, but never change the ticker. But actually speaking of the show, you guys mentioned obviously having some fun to create it, obviously putting the tech stuff together. So what have you learned about putting an online store together? Let's talk about technical headaches. Oh, God. So that was intense. That was an intense year because we funded it, but literally we did it ourselves. So we had very little help. My husband helped us a lot with putting the products up like we're talking, we launched with like more than 300 products and I think there was like 80 brands and we had to contact every single brand individually. So we're not dropshipping for a start. We are really leading people to the shops. So we don't hold customer data. We don't take orders. We're almost like linking almost in between women, like a directory almost of beautiful objects. But that's meant that we didn't want to use like Amazon, of course, obviously, or existing affiliate platform because that would mean we would have the same thing as anybody else and anyone can take our curation and put it on their website. So we actually found a model, a plug-in, the technical setup to do something privately with all these brands. So we had to partner in like email, video calls, explain the concept with all these 90 brands and then curate the products, put them up on the shop. It was a good, I would say, eight months of work. So that was really intense. And then we had a developer who helped us. But again, like I had to learn coding. I did up learning Shopify liquid coding a little bit just to tweak the little things and make it, it was a hell of a lot of work and it still is to run it. But what it means is that at least we now we have a setup where it's pretty lean in terms of the monthly cost to kit it up because we do everything ourselves. So it's like a few apps, Shopify store, the right plug-in. And then we can just put new products up very easy. When it says everything, everything, when you say 300 products, that ticker is right. It's everything, everything. It's like... Everything. We were meant to have 30 brands, I remember. We had this original brainstorming meeting of, okay, we'll start with, we'll start small. Yeah, it was first small. And then explode. But because again, I think it's also because when you do an outreach to brands and you ask them, do you want to be on this? And if you sell, you give us 20% commission. It's like we expected that one brand out of 10 would say yes. So we actually started the outreach pretty late, like in July, which is the worst time to do it, end of July. And we knew we wanted to launch maximum by October. So we really, we went wide. But the truth is that 60% of the brands say yes. So we did not expect that. We were like, oh, shit. And then once you've proposed, you've offered them to join, you can't tell them no. Yeah, so the last months were mad. And I had to go on a one month break now in the winter because I was just like, I need a rest. That, that ride since end of July till the launch in October was insane. So would you say that it's on the same? But again, it shows the love and care that you guys put into it. But would you say that everything that you've put into work on curating the feed on Instagram helped you to preselect the brands actually go after the products that you loved already? Or did you search for new products? Because I feel like there was quite a lot on your feed already. Yeah, I think it started a lot with everyone, a lot of people that we already knew about, right? And then I think it's recently we've started like maybe this year we've started looking at new brands. I think the thing we're learning about the most is what is selling, what kind of things, what price point and where in the world. Because that's the other problem, not problem, but the thing that we have is the global directory. So sadly in the UK, we're bound by EU and also the American tariffs. Got so many restrictions of who actually UK brands can sell to. And the same for anyone selling in Europe trying to, oh no, specifically like in Asia, trying to sell to America. That's a whole problem as well. So it was like making sure that we had a good spread for our audience. Our audience is correct me from Ron Malika. One third US, one third Europe and then... Yeah, 50% Europe. If we, I always include you guys in Europe. Oh, thank you. We're still there. Thank you. You're still there. 30% US, 50% Europe and then the rest of the world. So we had to make sure that people in the US had something to buy, people in Europe had something to buy. And then obviously like we've got really lovely like people, customers in Japan and Australia, but they were smaller. So it's all again, things that we're learning. I know Malika is so into the analytics. I love it. Like again, making it perfect. So she knows where one's clicking and what people are clicking on. And I think it's just constantly trying to optimize this thing. But it's hard. We have to admit it's a very tough financial model. It always was. I knew that from the start. Affiliate linking is very tough. And the truth is that we don't know if it's going to work. We can only try our best. The only thing I would say that anyone lending on the shop loves it. We, all we got was compliments was like, oh my God, what is that crazy selection? But there is also, we didn't want to limit ourselves to start with. So that's also why we had like kids stuff. And then we also have like outliers. We've got deal dose and bonds. It's a statement. We needed deal dose on that shop. And then we also have a lot of homeware, then arts. We've got price point going from 10 pounds to 10,000. So we almost went a little bit nuts on the launch. But I always find in general that it's better to go with everything and then you refine. And it might be a case that we, at some point, we realize actually, we're more of a homeware concept store. And as much we would love to keep all of that in. But also we need to see what works and not to confuse people too much. And I think also what's hard with what we curate is that every piece is so special. How do you choose? It's literally if you put a really bold orange thing in the middle of gray stuff, everyone will go buy that orange thing. Now, if everything is gorgeous and everything is intense, how do you choose? And I think people love looking at our store. But I think we can definitely improve on the buying. And we want to do well by our brands. But the great thing is that because it's risk free for them, they don't have anything to lose. This is what I'm going to say because when you think about, if you follow a fashion brand or any retail brand, their website changes three times a year. It's a constant evolution of understanding of the eye tracking user experience. What, where, how? Because as you described, if something's orange in the middle of gray, of course people will go there. Because that leaves me to a question, really, Carl, since you are over the analytics and understanding. Because you guys have a potentially very clear idea of what sells in a vast number of products. Do you get approached for consultancy, data, or questions about product development from these brands? We had actually a brainstorming session with a good brand of ours who was trying to help us what our future is. And when we did the survey, that did come up. Remember, it's like trend forecasting. Yeah, there's lots of different avenues. This is again, where I'm going to get into trouble and get unstuck. Because yeah, I like the new thing. So I try not to think about it. Just concentrate on the shop. Be a bit more blinkered. Because when you think about innovation and perfection, like so many ideas, so many people create products because they believe in them, because they care. And the difference between being successful or not, sometimes is patience, sometimes is algorithm, sometimes is the trend. Sometimes if we were to only create because it would work, we will create very few things and it will look all shit, because they will be just made for the mass market. But the quirky things, the amazing things, the products filled with souls, sometimes you can potentially help someone's career by just saying, hey, you just need this or this works, that works, that's the size, that's the thing. Because I think with your insights, it potentially can help. Because you've created this amazing platform where their passion means the reality. For me, that's one of my biggest contradictions. I struggle with that as well, because I think the people who need our help the most can't pay us. And for me, that's, I think, sometimes I really wish I won the lottery or I inherited millions from a long lost uncle from somewhere and could focus on doing this and helping the people who really need it. The craft people. And I think what we're very good at is how to present a product visually, tells a story behind it, all this content as well. And I almost think that it's a tough moment for retail. It's a tough moment for makers. You have all these people who are selling incredibly well through Instagram, and now nothing is coming their way because the algorithm cut it. And for example, one thing I saw that was nuts, it's when we started posting in December, there was no way to reach our audience, no way, because the landscape was filled with ads. So literally, everything we did was organic. So we rely on, yeah, that explore feed, the algorithm pushing us. And literally, it's like the algorithm is pushing us when it's a low moment for ads, and brands are not investing that much. As soon as brands are putting the money in, we disappear, we go behind the curtain, and no one shows what we have to offer. And that's what I'm struggling with. We live in a world where money wins, and the more investment wins, and our biggest challenge is going to be how can we make these smaller people win, who do amazing things, and still win ourselves? That's going to be very difficult. When you said the people who need our help potentially are the people who can afford us, I'm going to badly paraphrase Debbie Millman who said, money is never about money. When you realize there's a help, what you guys potentially can do, and when you put yourself in the position of a creative, and I know it from writing books and trying to solve people's problems, because it's not meant to do, people will only admit when they've got a problem and it clicks. When you realize, you know what, I've tried every single way of taking my own path, and some people are taking shortcuts, and some people are getting help to get there. The penny drops at some point. Sometimes the penny drops very late, but it dropped at some point in the future, and that's because we are here to help each other to thrive. We mostly survive, we're here to survive and thrive. I think to be able to look into what can make business successful, you've started your illustration career by you want to be in yourself, but obviously you're also validated that there's a space in the market for someone. There's not creating something that's somebody else. So I think that generosity that you put into everything that you do, I think it's going to unlock some people's amazing futures and successes, because as I said, as we said throughout this conversation, you do it from the point of care, from the point of curiosity, and you can never fake this. This is the beautiful part, because why would you spend a year building a bazaar? Why would you spend years doing this? Because you care because it's there. So when people try, sometimes when people are trying to introduce themselves and say, this is what I do and this is why I do it, you don't always believe them. Whereas people come up in your feet, up in your store, and you're like, yeah, that makes perfect sense. What's interesting as well is, remember when we were doing the website with George, we talked about do we put a manifesto? Do we talk about why we do what we do? And then we decided not to. We shouldn't be saying anything. We both felt what we are about is there. If someone wants to look, it's very obvious. It's in the tone, it's in the way we talk about people. And I think, yeah, no one in the end, it wasn't needed. It was needed to. And maybe one day we will explain it, but I always find it more interesting to explain it on podcasts or interviews or to not brag about things because I think everyone brags a lot. And a lot of it is a lot of bullshit. That's exactly one of the reasons why I wanted to have you guys on a podcast. After seeing your tour, beautifully eloquently describing what you do with so much passion, let's keep bringing to more people that reason why you do it. But before I let you go, where do you see the not so distant future of what you guys do? I know it is there. Do you see it in a way of trends, in a way of your work? Yeah, what can we find out? I think we both have a desire to explore the editorial side of things. At the immediate future, Malika's already mentioned the evolution of the newsletter, which is, you're being quite modest by the way about the newsletter. I think 7000 is quite a lot considering you've not been doing it for crazy long time. But yeah, again, expanding on when you have a post is so visual. People don't really read the caption sometimes. What I do love about posts is that you can have a bit more of a dialogue with the audience themselves. So I think expanding a bit more of that kind of interaction is where we're going right now. More with the brands, I would like to say individuals that are behind these brands, behind the stories of what makes them tick. Also the audience themselves, again, doing things like the podcast, doing the newsletter, doing more interviews, longer formats. Just to see, it almost feels like the community is the thing. And I know a lot of brands talk about our community, but we have quite an engaged one. So we just want to learn more about them and have that more, like because everyone seems very positive at the moment on our feed. And it's nice to engage with them and see why do they come and what are they into, not just ourselves. Sorry, I'm rambling there. And potentially maybe we're already talking about doing some exclusive products, maybe some limited edition runs with some of our favorite makers and brands. I think we're taking it one month at a time and trying to not run five things at once. Also because it's only three of us with Blabby. But I think we'll go away, takes us and what makes the most sense. And I think the goal is to not be forced into something, a space we don't want to be in. So I think so many things that are possible. Yeah, pop-ups, curating for brands, consulting. I think we could even be social media consultants today. But all these things, it's organic. I think we'll take any opportunities as they come, but trying to stay very strong to our ethos and not forget why we started it and why we're doing it. You just summarized it beautifully. We'll go where it takes us, a rock-tod-roll piece of paper. Because the thing is, you can have a strategy, you can have plans, but if you go to valleys and a willingness to pursue them and explore them, that ain't any business plan for breakfast. I'm so happy we got to make this happen and to recreate it on with your talk. And yeah, celebrate what you guys do because it's incredible. I can't wait to see what happens next. So thank you for being here. Thank you. Thank you so much for inviting us. Thank you for listening to this episode of Daring Creativity Podcast. I'd love to know your thoughts, questions and suggestions. So please get in touch via the email in the show notes or social channels. This episode was produced and presented by me, Radim Mananj. The audio production was done by Nier Makai from 7Mb Podcast. Thank you and I hope to see you on the next episode. If you enjoyed this episode and would like more accessible resources to help you discover your daring creativity, you can pick up one of my books on themes of mindful creativity creative business branding and graphic design. Every physical book purchase comes with a free digital bundle, including an e-book and audio book to make the content accessible whatever you are and whatever you do. To get 10% of your order, visit novemberuniverse.co.uk and use the code podcast. Have a look around and start living daringly.