Paul Boag on AI, UX Democratization, and Building a Life-First Career

Brad: [0:12] Hey, Paul

Paul Boag: [0:13] Hey, Brad. Sorry, that, that seemed even worse than the first one, but keep it. that's the natural way that we greet each other whenever we see each other, with that really awkward, yeah, shouting each other's names

Brad: [0:27] so let's dig into it. What, has you waking up excited these days?

Paul Boag: [0:31] Retirement? Does that, does that count? No, no. actually, I'm more excited now than I have been for a very long time. I'm one of those people, I started in the web in 1994, right? So just as it was all taking off, and, and, and, and I loved the chaos of it, the Wild West of it. And then, Jeffrey Zeldman came along, and we all had to learn CSS. Oh, I loved that excitement, new thing, you know, new stuff going on. And then, then Web 2 came along and, and then f- you know, Flash disappeared and, and then there was responsive design with Ethan Marcotte. And then the web got dull. It was so predictable. It was so every… We all know what we've got to do, and it's all very sensible and grownup. And then AI came along, and now we've got chaos again. And I'm somebody that thrives off of the chaos. So at the moment, I'm loving it because all of the old rules no longer apply. We've got to work out new ways of working and new ways of doing things, and I'm a sucker for that kind of stuff. the way I describe it is, you know, don't give me, don't give me a roadmap to get me from A to B, right? But give me surfing, where you have to follow the waves, and you have to… And by the way, I've never surfed a day in my life, and I would be terrible at it. But that idea that you can't just go in a straight pre-planned line, but you have to go with the flow, and, and I love it when it's like that. So yeah, I'm alive at the moment. Unlike most people that seem to be terrified, and I feel almost guilty for being excited because so many people are scared, which I understand. I get that too

Brad: [2:18] Yeah. Uh, d- well, there's a lot there. One, your, your, uh, vernacular still has that 1994, uh, surfing the web, uh,

Paul Boag: [2:29] Yeah, yeah. I ca- Yes. So I wake up every morning w- going, and I log into the internet highway using my dial-up modem. Yeah, I'm stuck in the past is what you're saying, Brad.

Brad: [2:41] yeah. No, no,

Paul Boag: [2:42] I'm not at all insulted by that.

Brad: [2:44] I think what's very, very fascinating, which gets to the heart of what this show is about, is you've been on the many waves of, of the web for, for a long time. And despite going through things, finding, uh, there, there's been times of stability, there's been times of maturity, there's these, these weird moments, these chaotic moments as you're describing. And to meet that with enthusiasm and excitement like a real quality that, that you've learned about yourself over the decades.

Paul Boag: [3:22] and it's got easier as well because there's, there's one degree where you think you have to be a certain type of person, and I am a certain type of person. I'm a person that, that loves a, a bit of chaos and a, you know, a, a, a bit of, of change. But it's also, you learn over the decades, 'cause it's now f- over three decades of working in the web, you learn over that period of time that, um, it all works out in the end. That, that you fret and you worry about these things. You know, when, when I've sat down and read Jeffrey Zeldman's book on, on designing with web standards, it was like, "Oh, shit, I have to relearn everything I know about how websites are created." And, you know, that was terrifying. That was really worrying. Um, I-- but if I go back even further, the one that I remember the most, and I think the one that is most, um, relevant today, was when I was at university. this was before the web. Oh, God, I'm so old. I studied graphic design at university, and while I was studying, this is gonna just make me sound even older, when I was studying graphic design, this thing called desktop publishing came along, right? W- And, and suddenly everybody was going, "Well, we don't need graphic designers anymore. Everybody can design their own posters and their own flyers and all of this kind of stuff. We're not gonna need you anymore." And we were all going, "Oh, no, we're all gonna be out of a job. It's the end of the world. It's terrible." And sure enough, there was a couple of years where there was-- it was really hard to find work because, all of that work was being done by, you know, people themselves in organizations. And then suddenly, people began to wake up and go, "Oh, why are all our posters look terrible?" You know, "Why are we using Comic Sans for everything?" You know, and, "Oh, we-- I need a grown-up. I need a designer to do this." And actually, that tool that I thought was to democratize or enable us all to do it, actually really was a tool for the expert to use and do more with. And we're g- I know we're gonna come over onto democratization. I'm actually a believer in that. But I think we are at the same moment where everybody's going, "Oh, we don't need specialists anymore. We don't need UX teams. We don't need developers. We can get AI to do all of this magic for us." Yeah, okay. Give it, give it 10 minutes, and you'll be all right. You know, I, I've seen this again with the dot-com boom and bust. I saw it again with, you know, all kinds of different things. This is just the way it rolls, and I think when you've been through that loop enough, you begin to chill out a little bit and know it'll work itself out.

Brad: [6:05] Yeah. think that that's, that's really good advice, but it, it kind of takes experiencing

Paul Boag: [6:10] Yeah.

Brad: [6:11] and experiencing here's this new thing, the pendulum swings hard, and then it ultimately kind of comes back to maybe more of a reasonable sort of center where it's just like, like people feel like they need to try to take it to the extreme

Paul Boag: [6:29] Yeah

Brad: [6:29] then ultimately kind of walk it back to, to a place and, and there's a lot of that gets kicked up in the process and a lot of… I, I think you're, you're right in pointing out the feelings, but, uh, but at this-- 'cause, 'cause everybody is feeling that

Paul Boag: [6:45] Yeah.

Brad: [6:46] degree right now. So I think that, that your, your arc is actually really welcoming to, to hear that many decades later it's like, "Yep, this, this happens, and it happens again, and it happens again, and, and we'll be okay."

Paul Boag: [7:01] you know, I'm not trivializing the position that people find themselves in at all. You know, my daughter at the moment is at, um, York University studying computer science, and she's supposed to be getting a year's placement, right? Not a hope. There's nothing out there for a junior, you know, developer at the moment. Nobody's, nobody's taking anybody on because, oh, we can use AI to do that.

Brad: [7:25] Yeah

Paul Boag: [7:25] and it, it… You will go through painful times. You know, I remember when the dot-com bubble went and, and I was made redundant and… But that was when I set up an agency. That was the best thing I ever did, you know? there are always opportunities. Y- The, the key is to keep your eye open for those opportunities and to grasp them when they come. And I think the, To grasp a new opportunity, you need to have empty hands, and that kind of means letting go of what went before. And I think the problem comes is where you're not, you're not willing to let go of what you've got to grasp what could be. Sorry, that sounded really tr- trite when I said that out loud, but you know what I

Brad: [8:07] No. No, no, no. I, I, I think that there's, there's something really powerful in that and 'cause it, it almost sounds like you've gotten very skilled at that process of letting go, of ha- of having to something, master something, only to kind of, not, not fully abandon it I'm sure, but, but to, to have to the, the fact that things are different now and I need to, to sort of start anew. There's a … It's almost like it's like shedding,

Paul Boag: [8:39] You could,

Brad: [8:40] or something

Paul Boag: [8:41] yeah, you could tell that if you look at my, my order of my books, right? First book, Website Owner's Manual, right? This is back in the kind of early 2000s where you had webmasters that used to do everything, right? Obviously, I had to let go of that. Then next book was Digital Adaptation, where we're all digitally transforming. Do you remember when we all did that for five minutes? Um, and, and then that's become… I mean, the idea of digitally transforming now, I mean, it's ridiculous. If your, if your, if your organization hasn't got digital at the heart of everything it's doing at this point, then you're probably a greengrocer, you know,

Brad: [9:18] Yeah.

Paul Boag: [9:19] or something like that. And then I did User Experience Revolution, which, where I was writing about establishing user-centric cultures in the organization. To be fair, that one kind of is still an ongoing issue. but then there's, you know, after that was con- one about conversion rate optimization. So you're kind of moving on all of the time, um, because the conversation moves on, you know?

Brad: [9:43] Mm-hmm. what do you have, uh, like, 'cause I've been reading your website for as long as I've been doing my thing, and I,

Paul Boag: [9:51] Let me… This is the point, this is the point, everybody listening to this, where Brad is gonna say, "I started listening to your podcast when I was at high school," or something like that, just to make me feel really old.

Brad: [10:04] No, I, no, I, I distinctly remember, I have a very specific version of your website design in my head right

Paul Boag: [10:13] Did it have cows on?

Brad: [10:14] I think so. But I, I mostly remember the, the typography of it. It's just, like, like, the, the lowercase kind of, like, retro pump demi bold something or

Paul Boag: [10:25] Yes

Brad: [10:26] just, like, like, a cool, thick, like, lowercase thing, and I just remember being like, "This is awesome." Like, like, this is… And at the time, I was just kind of feeling around for, like, who is in this world, like, just trying to get my hands on, on everything. And so yeah, so it's just, it's really wild that, that you've been at it for so long and, and have this, this longevity to sharing, publishing,

Paul Boag: [10:58] Hmm.

Brad: [10:59] going on, uh, riding these waves,

Paul Boag: [11:02] Well, that's what it comes down to. See, that's the key. That last sentence you just said there, "I figure things out via sharing." Right? What is it? They, they say you don't really understand a subject unless you can teach it or something, something like that.

Brad: [11:15] yeah,

Paul Boag: [11:15] Um, and for me, that really is how it is, and I often start teaching on a subject before I know what I think about it.

Brad: [11:23] Yep.

Paul Boag: [11:24] Which, which sounds so wrong, you know. It sounds terrible. and y- you do get screwed over doing that. I remember teaching, um, about accessibility back in, I don't know, must have been the early noughties or, um, something around there. I said a load of stuff that was complete rubbish, right? I got it entirely wrong. A- and that was embarrassing, but it, it's how I learn because I got a response back. You have to be quite thick-skinned sometimes 'cause the response is fairly merciless. Um, but that's how I learnt through that, and, and I've always had that mentality of, of let's share and let's learn together. I know that the vast majority of people don't do that. I think there's a lot of people that, if they do share, they're doing it really from content marketing point of view, you know. Um, well, and I do it for that. I'm not gonna claim I don't do it for that as well. But it is primarily a learning mechanism for myself to help me articulate what it is I'm thinking about, where I'm going, and that often leads to a response and that further refines my thinking, um, and the direction that I'm going with stuff. So I

Brad: [12:35] Yes

Paul Boag: [12:36] be the same surely. It, uh, I imagine

Brad: [12:39] I think that more people need to hear this because I think that things have evolved to the, to speak to the content marketing side of things, and just, like, content creation just I think, like, in general, it's just that stuff just makes me wince even though, like you, I'm also out there. I've got things to sell and, you know, a,

Paul Boag: [13:00] Yeah

Brad: [13:01] know, a family to feed and whatever. But at the same time, I think that you're, you're touching on the, the, the basis of what makes this medium so powerful is that we're all able to, to get out there. Here's, here's my, my, my coffee,

Paul Boag: [13:16] Yeah.

Brad: [13:17] m- coffee mug. Let's share, let's share what we know, right?

Paul Boag: [13:20] Yeah

Brad: [13:20] web. But, but also, let's share what we don't know, and I think

Paul Boag: [13:24] Mm-hmm.

Brad: [13:25] a real, there's a real art to what you're describing. It's like, yeah, going out saying, "Here's all this stuff about accessibility," and to speak like you know what it is even if you're, you're just kinda figuring it out. there's a way, there's an art form to basically going, "Here's this area I find intellectually interesting," or, or something that, that appears to have some promise or, "Here's what I'm learning." To be able to sort of simultaneously share and share what you've learned to date, but also not being so bold to say, like, "This is the…" And, and that's what, like, the, the current state of, like, LinkedIn, for instance,

Paul Boag: [14:04] Yeah.

Brad: [14:05] room

Paul Boag: [14:06] No

Brad: [14:06] of that kind of humility, uh, in, in saying like, "Hey, I don't have this figured out, but I think that this is really cool and this is really interesting."

Paul Boag: [14:15] Uh, uh, and that is a learnt skill, 'cause wh- if I go back to that example with, with accessibility, I did go in with that I know everything mentality

Brad: [14:25] know.

Paul Boag: [14:25] and I fell flat on my face. And I, I've kind of learnt from constant levels of embarrassment over the years to, to maybe tone it down a bit, you know.

Brad: [14:34] Yeah

Paul Boag: [14:35] and I think that's, that's part of growing older anyway, is realizing that you're not God's gift to the world and, you know, you don't have all of the answers. Um, but I… What's interesting I find about LinkedIn is that, uh, is that people are very savvy, um, and they can smell content marketing BS a mile off. And actually, especially now when you can use AI to produce all this shit, the, the, the more sincere, the more, um, genuine, the more open you are, the more that people respond to that kind of stuff. And, and I, I run a, an agency academy, so, uh, agency owners and freelancers and, and, uh, most of them go, "Oh, I could never share like you share, Paul," because, you know, I, I'm, I'm not a fan of that kind of content marketing. It makes me feel uncomfortable," and all of that kind of stuff. And I said, "Forget all of that. Forget selling, forget building a profile. Just help people. Just share what you know and help people." And really that's all I do. I went down, right? I went down that path. So I started off with that mentality. Then everybody started, you know, "Content marketing is an important part of your personal brand," and all this. I went, "Oh, yeah, all right then." And, and so I kinda went down that road for a while. And it, A, it felt very uncomfortable. B, it was not me. and, and so I've now pulled back to it and just gone back to, I don't care who you are, I don't care if you're a student who's never gonna hire me, I'll have a chat with you. You know, I'll, I'll help as many people as I can in whatever situation I can, you know, and, and I'll share what I know as I get along, and people love it. And, and it, it just… But even if they don't, I don't care. You know, I just… Because I'm getting as much reward out of the process of sharing. And like I do, I do something on, uh, uh, people, you know, I often chat, um, people will comment on something I've written on LinkedIn or whatever and, and so I'd reply and, and, and I'd often say, "Do you want a, just a virtual coffee?" Right? "Do you wanna grab…" And I don't even look at their profile to see who they are. But the number of times I've had calls with people and, and I've come away going, "Do you know what? I learnt more out of that. They thought they were gonna learn from me, but I took so much away from that experience." Because we all live in our little isolated bubbles otherwise.

Brad: [17:08] Yep. Yep. everybody is living their own rich life. They only, uh, they, uh, they are the only person who has traveled the road that they've

Paul Boag: [17:19] Yeah!

Brad: [17:19] that has the experience, that has this specific lens. And through that, and through meeting and, and going, "You seeing what I'm seeing?" Or, or, "Oh, yeah, like, here's how I see it differently." You know, just, just like this conversation. But like, with any conversation, we have so much to learn from each other that it sounds-- That's, that sounds trite. That sounds just like, like a cliché

Paul Boag: [17:45] Yeah, but it's true

Brad: [17:47] but it's the freaking truth.

Paul Boag: [17:49] Yeah

Brad: [17:49] like the, "Oh. Oh, okay. I didn't, I didn't think about it that way," or, "Ooh, that's like a really cool framing for it," or, "That's a really

Paul Boag: [17:58] Do you know…

Brad: [17:58] or just,

Paul Boag: [17:59] But even,

Brad: [18:00] that stuff sinks

Paul Boag: [18:01] yeah. And even, you know, for me as a consultant, you know, why I often get hired as a consultant is because people don't know whether they're doing it right, you know, in quotation marks or not, right? And they want a consultant to come in to, to reassure them or whatever. So every single one of those conversations I have is a reference point that I can make. You know, so I, if I cha- I was chatting with someone from Peloton recently, right? I'm very unlikely to ever work for them. But, um, uh, there wasn't… I can now say, "Oh, well, you know, Peloton kind of take this approach in this situation, and, you know, this is what they've learned." And that's, that adds to the conversation. And I wish more organizations would actively share their experiences online. Some of the… One of the, the, the sectors that I've worked in most heavily is higher education, And one of the things I love about the higher education sector is they do share, right? They're always… They've all got their own blogs talking about, you know, the struggles they've had. They have their conferences where they all come together and bitch and moan about senior management and, you know, that's wonderful, and that's the way it should be. So we should all be doing that really

Brad: [19:11] I f- and I feel like maybe that was part of, and you tell me, but it's like I feel like that there was a window in time where that felt more common, but I think it's in that s- that area you described at the beginning where things kinda grew up and matured, that it's like the only things that were maybe being shared by places was, was more around the here's like the case study of our like kinda journey in this, and it's just like it just kinda felt like well-trodden and just kinda safe and whatever, and

Paul Boag: [19:47] And I think that … Yeah, no, I would, I would utterly agree. I think there was a time, and I think the reason there was that time, was because none of us knew anything. You know, really we were making things up as we were going along, and we were working out the best way of doing it. And the only way you could find out, you know, there was no Reddit, there was no AI you could ask. You know, you had to ask other people, and you had to find out from other people. And I think that has slowly got eroded. you know, partly because of COVID, I think it stopped us meeting and coming together in, in maybe the ways we did, that everything matured so there was guides to do pretty much everything. And that's the other thing I come across a lot recently, is that people go, "Well, what have I got to add to the conversation? It's all been said," right? but I think it's how you say it that matters more. It's that your way of expressing things is gonna be very different to the way that I express it, and that's gonna resonate with some people, while the way I say it won't. And the example I always give is when, when I used to run an agency and, uh, there was three of us. There was myself, Marcus Ellington, and Chris Scott. me and, me and Chris were opp- opposite ends of the spectrum. While I'm big picture, hate details, get bored easily, you know, attention span of a goldfish, but full of great ideas. Chris is so detailed and so methodical and so … Um, there were some clients that I was banned from going into the room with because I, I used to just wind them up, right? While Chris was that safe, detailed pair of hands that nurtured them, and they loved Chris. But equally, the other way round. You could watch some clients, their eyes would glaze over if Chris started talking. Um, bless him. and, and that's fine and, and that's the way the world should be, so that you've always got something to say because what- the way you say it will resonate in a way that w- a way I say it won't with some people

Brad: [21:42] Yeah. Yep, 100%. And it's like, I think that there's also a fallacy that I see people get into where it's like, "Oh, well, Paul's ev- al-already blogged about this, so I have nothing." Well, not, not ev- not everyone is, is plugged into your world.

Paul Boag: [21:57] Yeah!

Brad: [21:58] have your own sphere of people in, in your realm, right? That, experience something. And better yet, there's these things called hyperlinks where you can kind of stitch a bunch of these different ideas together to sort of make, know, more rich meaning kinda come out the other end of it. but I, again, it's like I can't help but think that the landscape right now versus o- over the last few decades, it feels a little, hostile to just kind of open, honest sharing. Here's perspective. It, it feels like everything needs to have an agenda to it versus just, like, the act of, "Here's what I'm seeing. I feel compelled to, like, kind of share this. I don't know, what do you think?"

Paul Boag: [22:47] Yeah

Brad: [22:47] feels like everything's gotta have this bow around it

Paul Boag: [22:51] but then, but the, the irony is that I think now is the moment where it's needed more than ever, right? Partly because of what I was saying earlier about we need authentic human voices which learn mistakes and don't say things with utter confidence like an AI system.

Brad: [23:07] Yeah, yeah

Paul Boag: [23:08] you know, uh, so there's that aspect. But then there's also the aspect that, well, everything's changing again. Everything's up in the air again. You're not gonna find the answers, you know, in n- some n- nice, neat tutorial because, yeah, it really ama- amuses me that when I go around LinkedIn at the moment, that there are AI experts. The bloody people that make these AIs are not AI experts. They don't understand how these things work, let alone us. So it's like now is the time we need to be going, "Did that work for you? Did this work for you?" And there is some of that. There's certainly some of that more on the software side of things and the kinda backend development. But I don't feel that there is anywhere near that am- amount of thing going on within the front-end community or the, the UX community, uh, 'cause I don't think most of us, um, certainly from the UX side of things, has really figured it out at all. They, at the moment, we just don't have a clue what we're doing with it.

Brad: [24:07] Yeah

Paul Boag: [24:08] got things that have worked for me, but I don't know they'll work for anyone else

Brad: [24:14] I think, I think that there's a lot there, and I think that, that I 100% agree with you and love the framing that it's like these things are out there confidently

Paul Boag: [24:26] Yeah.

Brad: [24:27] saying straight up just falsehoods. Like things that, that you know, you're like, "Yeah, I know that that isn't true at all," but you say it with such certitude that it's just like, ugh. So I think that there's something really interesting in that we humans have this capability of saying things in such a way that, I'm not so sure about this. Like I, I, I'm not-- I don't have this figured out." That feels like, like a really powerful,

Paul Boag: [25:01] It always is

Brad: [25:02] to exhibit in this moment in time. I think

Paul Boag: [25:04] But with it,

Brad: [25:05] well to point that out.

Paul Boag: [25:07] with-- there is this huge contradiction in us because we do have this power to say, "I don't know," or, "I'm not sure. What's your experience been?" That we are social animals. But on the other hand, we crave certainty. Um, and I see this amongst young designers a lot, um, that they want, they want a process, right? I, I do the double diamond. I start with my discovery phase, and then I do this, and then I do that because that's the process. And one of the things that I think I've learnt over the years is that's bollocks. That doesn't… What is it? They say, you know, um, y- y- you-- what is it? M-Muhammad Ali or somebody said that you can have a plan until you get punched in the face or something.

Brad: [25:51] my, my Tyson

Paul Boag: [25:53] Mike Tyson, right, yeah.

Brad: [25:54] yeah

Paul Boag: [25:55] S-so it's that mentality that, okay, it can be great to have a double diamond and a process, but the-- when you hit the reality of a project, all of that goes out the window,

Brad: [26:04] Yeah. Yeah, yeah

Paul Boag: [26:05] and that actually we need to be much freer, uh, to say, "Look, this doesn't work in my situation. I need to adapt it." But if you've got these gurus, right? And I've put myself, you know, I've put myself in that category in the past. I've done it, and I, I still make that mistake occasionally of saying things too confidently. People go, "Oh, well, that must be the way to do things." When in truth, I make it up as I go along on a per project basis.

Brad: [26:34] Yeah.

Paul Boag: [26:35] toolkit, you know, I have a big toolkit of tools, and I take different tools out on different projects, but sometimes you shouldn't do a discovery phase because it's not appropriate in that situation. Other times, you might not want to do user testing until later in the project or earlier in the project or, or not at all sometimes, you know? That kind of openness and transparency, I think is what we really need because there are a lot of people that feel like, "Oh, well, I don't do it properly." Right? "I can't share what I do because I never get any budget to do user testing." Well, hang on a minute. there are millions of people out there who don't have any budget to do user testing. So how do you work round that? 'Cause they need to know, right? And, and you need to know how they work round it,

Brad: [27:26] Yep.

Paul Boag: [27:26] that's what I like about these transition points like at the moment where AI comes along and it, it breaks everything. So now all of that neat process that we had where we did things in a certain way, well, that's all rubbish now, right? Um, because AI has enabled us to do different things. So now is the time. Now is the time you can go, "Do you know what? The old way never really did work for me."

Brad: [27:52] Yeah,

Paul Boag: [27:52] But, uh, yeah, a-anyway, but now it certainly doesn't, you know?

Brad: [27:56] Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's this, this kind of like almost a false comfort or like a false, this is how it is or this is the right way of doing things. And a lot of it is just boils down to it's like just happen to calcify in a certain shape. That doesn't mean that it was the right shape. It just meant that like we got into this

Paul Boag: [28:18] Yeah!

Brad: [28:18] doing things i- in a certain way, and I think that, that yeah, this, this moment has showed up with some dynamite to

Paul Boag: [28:28] And the

Brad: [28:28] explode all of

Paul Boag: [28:29] the other problem it creates is that oftentimes the people that are talking about this kind of stuff, right, who are talking about best practice, are people like us who are very privileged and have reached a certain standing in our career where we're tending to work with a certain type of client that are often quite big what works for those clients may be massively inappropriate for another. You know, take something like design systems that you write about or have done in the past. You know, you, you've got an amazing, structured way of thinking about design systems that's incredibly scalable, that can work for really big clients. But if I'm working for, you know, a little, three-person business, I shouldn't be building a massive design system like that. It would be the inappropriate solution. But, you know, I could easily go away feeling bad, "Oh, I haven't done it like Brad says I should do it, therefore I'm a rubbish human being," you know? Sorry, I shouldn't have picked on your stuff, should I? I should have picked on something I talk about

Brad: [29:31] we see it, w- we've seen it all the time. It's like pe- people look over their shoulders at, like, at material design and whatever, and they're like, "Oh, love to do that," or something like that, "but, like, we don't have

Paul Boag: [29:44] Hmm.

Brad: [29:44] gobs of, you know, just people and infinite time and budget." It's like, yeah, it's like you're comparing yourself against, like, a giant, giant, very mature, very, like, whatever thing, and it's like, yeah, you don't, it should do the things that you need it to do and, and little else. a consultant, How have you balanced the pressure of feeling like you need to roll in with those best practices

Paul Boag: [30:10] I, I try not to get myself in, into situations that have me on that kind of pedestal. so,

Brad: [30:19] That's good.

Paul Boag: [30:20] be- because inevitably I fail and mess up if I do that. There are some, there are many organizations, especially my bigger clients, that, that want that, that want, "Here's, here's a set of recommendations in a very big document that we can s- uh, send to our, our senior managers." And I'm absolutely fine producing that if I can do it with the in-house team, right? 'Cause what there is, is inevitably there is a group of people that know way more of me, about … than me about the circumstances within that organization, and are much more aware of it, and, uh, and, and they know the constraints and the limitations and all of the rest of it. and my job is really just to articulate that, maybe in a slightly more businessy way than they're comfortable doing is often the case in my situation. and also to add my credibility to what they've already been saying, and I've not got an in- an axe to grind as an external person. I don't have an agenda. So I could come in and reinforce what they wanna say and add impartiality to it. So that's really what I see my job as, not as having all of the answers. and that's why, you know, I joke, especially with, with people where they've had me forced upon them, which happens sometimes. the first thing I do is go in to say, "Well, what have you been saying for three years that I can now regurgitate and everybody will suddenly listen to?" You know?

Brad: [31:50] Yeah.

Paul Boag: [31:50] and I, I'm very honest with them that that's what I'll do. Um, but my job is to push through what you already know needs happening, and I think that's a big part of, of, of my role. What about you? I mean, do you, do you do that kind of engagement?

Brad: [32:05] Yeah, I, I mean, that's what I have done for the last 12, 13 years and, uh, kind of shift-shifted gears a little bit, uh, recently. But, but same thing, and it's, it's what we were talking about earlier with just being able to share. kind of coming at things with, with different perspectives, and these things aren't in competition with one another. It

Paul Boag: [32:27] Wowee

Brad: [32:27] takes the listening to the people who have been living

Paul Boag: [32:32] Yeah

Brad: [32:33] for years and years that know exactly what to do, but just for whatever reason, just based on how human beings work, they're not being listened to, and it takes the outside voice in order to sort of carry it over the line. And it's that, it's that partnership. It's, it's really a dance of, of, uh, kind of a marriage of those different perspectives that ultimately things forward. And, and so that's true for consulting, that's true for, for blogging, that's true for, like, a lot of things where it's like one person by themselves isn't going to have all the answers. It really is in that sort of rich like, here's my experience, here's this experience, here's these things, sure, hand-wavy best practices, but it all kind of comes together in this, this something that feels like feels directional, this feels good, this feels like this actually marries or, or it, it-- this actually ladders up to a reality that we can all kind of agree to. I really like that because it does. It, it doesn't put the burden on any one person. And I, I'm similar where it's like, I hate being the, "Well, Brad, what do you think?" And I, I could say, "Yep, here's what I've seen in, in my experience," you know, ducking my heads into all these different places and working with all these different teams. But ultimately, it, it is in the, the, the people that are there, the people that are living reality that are frustrated, that know what needs to happen in order to get out of that frustrated place. And frankly, like, learned through doing this for so long is that most people just want to be heard. Most people want to be validated. Most people don't like being in situations where you're operating in daily frustration,

Paul Boag: [34:25] Yeah

Brad: [34:26] like, people are willing to do whatever, compromise, in order to make that happen. And so I really like being put in the, the position of helping people get to that point So that's always been like, I think one of the most satisfying parts of, of doing that kind of work is, is just like actually giving people the real excuse to just work, work together and like have fun it doesn't need to be like this Maybe maybe all those uh weird ass best practices and double diamonds and all that stuff like maybe none of that matters Maybe you all just need to get in a freaking room and talk about what it is you should be making together

Paul Boag: [35:10] and part of the problem there is, is, is departmental silos, job descriptions, all those kinds of things where they, they put up barriers between different people collaborating. You know, "This is my area, this is your area." And the, the truth is that a lot of certainly what I do, um, will cross over those because user experience doesn't give a monkey's arse about organizational silos. Um, and so, uh, and, and that's where people get uncomfortable because they feel like they may be treading on each other turf and somebody is interfering with my area, and that kind of thing. Um, my hope that one of the things that will come out of AI is actually a move back towards the generalist. That, that w- we used to live in a world, you know, I've talked about my first book with website owner, um, that was responsible for the whole of the website. But we used to live in a world where, where we all had a, a good understanding of … Or we did a lot of the jobs ourselves, right? And then we began to specialize, and we would become more, and more, and more, and more specialized. But what I'm seeing from AI is it's given me the opportunities to maybe start pushing the edges of roles a little bit more, and allowing people to take on areas that aren't primarily their roles. Now, that's not to say we can get rid of the other roles. So a great example is coding, right? You know, um, I, I used to code, um, like, like all web designers used to do, if you go back far enough. I mean, uh, that fell out of favor. But, but, you know, there would've been a time where, you know … And, and there is still a time where any good developer would've slapped me around the head and said, "Whatever you do, do not touch any code, Paul. You are not a responsible adult. You cannot be trusted with code." Um, and they would be right, and they still are right to an extent. But what AI has given me is the ability to maybe, um, prototype in code and, and try things out and, and provide a more, um, detailed spec to the grownup that will write the proper code with security, and accessibility, and all those things that I won't have thought of, right? The edges of the roles are bleeding a little bit, right? And that gets really interesting. And that then comes back to our attitude. How are we gonna respond to that? Are we gonna feel threatened by that? Or are we gonna embrace that? So one example of … that I've become a, a huge, um, proponent of, and, and the reason you originally w- reached out to me, was I 'Cause I was writing about the democratization of UX. And, and my argument here is that most UX teams are under-resourced and underfunded, right? You know, so there, there's a handful of people. You know, if you look outside of, um, y- you know, if I look at a typical agency, there might be a one-to-two ratio between designers and developers. You'll never find that in-house, right? There'll always be way more developers than there are designers. So you have this underfunded team that maybe can touch a slither of the user experience, right? but now we're beginning to get into a world where, hang on a minute, we can start empowering a developer to do good UX decision- make good UX decisions, or a business analyst, or a project manager, or a marketer, and even maybe to do a little bit of testing themselves or maybe do a little bit of prototyping themselves. Whoa, I don't know about that. They'll do it shit, right? Yeah, they will compared to you, the professional. But you're touching, what, say, ten percent of the overall user experience within your organization? A slither, because you- you're under-resourced, right? So e- let's say you're doing that ten percent at a hundred percent quality, you know, top, you know, best you can possibly do, right? Great. So you've now hit ten percent. You've improved ten percent of the overall user experience. But if you empower everybody across the organization, even if they just do it to fifty percent, right? That's gonna be significantly better than what you would have done yourself. So our roles start then changing from being one of doers, right, to being one of, uh, conductors, right? Conducting AI agents, conducting humans using AI, providing the resources, the teaching material, the training, the governance frameworks, everything people need to succeed in that area. And I think the same could be said of developers, right? Instead of going, "Well, designers are beginning to come onto our turf," developers should be embracing that and saying, "Okay, how can we empower designers to do it less shit, right? So when we have to pick it up, right, there's a better foundation to work on rather than us having to start from scratch." So we all need to let go of our little kind of areas of control and start embracing a more fluid, you know, management system, in my opinion

Brad: [40:10] Yeah No I thi I that's beautiful I've used this mental model or metaphor or whatever in the in the past with a lot of things but it's like there's bricks are brick people that have well-defined roles right I am a developer I do this right I'm a designer You like like the people yelling at you Don't touch code You're a designer You're you're this shape of person And I see material as being more of a mortar function that

Paul Boag: [40:38] Yeah

Brad: [40:39] in between all the cracks and gives sort of connective tissue and sort of strengthens things and/or has the ability to That's not the That's not a given that that will happen But I think that you're you're touching on that dynamic really really well where it's like we're all kind of able to expand outside of our normal parameters or our historic parameters you can meet that I think as you rightly said as a threat thing where it's like Whoa whoa whoa don't do that kind of work That's my job Or you could go Oh cool you're interested in this area or you know and I'm willing to learn And how do you kind of use this moment to kind of bring people closer together especially across these different across diff people with different incentives different priorities different fears different whatever different just They're different people with different dynamics And I think that one of the things that's particularly interesting about AI as a as a technology is its ability to translate into different languages And so when you take y you know you could take that literally as like yes this is being translated from English into you know Japanese or something like that But you could also this as here is the BA who's caring about this from their perspective Here is the QA engineer that's at the end of the line that that a cares about these other things Here's all these people that individually kinda have the pieces of the puzzle but very very often it's hard to bring that together into a cohesive whole And I feel like like this new material allows more of that where it's just like right everybody throw your h hopes fears dreams research give me all your PDFs give me all your whatever We're gonna just like throw it all in the stew throw it

Paul Boag: [42:40] Yeah

Brad: [42:40] cauldron in the middle and we're gonna like make some cool shit together that is actually like well considered and is taking into account all of these different sometimes competing dynamics

Paul Boag: [42:53] And the real power with that is that A lot of organizations and people within organizations, and, and people generally, we're kind of fundamentally selfish, right? And I don't mean that in a horrible way. But, We want our lives to be easy, right? We don't wanna sit in more meetings. We don't wanna have more work than we need to, et cetera, et cetera. And so much, certainly so much of the stuff that UX teams want is to- is asking people to do more, right? "I want you to do user research. I want you to stop your project," right? "I know you've got a deadline. I know you've got a budget. But we're gonna stop all of that, and we're gonna go and find out what users want." And then the other common problem, uh, from UX professionals is, is like, um, "Oh, I want a seat at the table," right? No, no, no, we don't want you in the room. You'll only have other opinions and other ideas that will make… The meeting is bad enough as it is. Can we just get through this and get things moving?

Brad: [43:47] Right

Paul Boag: [43:48] And so what AI, I think, offers us is, is very low-barrier entry points for people to start thinking about the user experience without overcomplicating it. So the, the one example that I've come up with is, you know, most UX teams, they've got tons of research that they've done, right? And they might even… Let's imagine they're super organized, and they've got a user research repository where all this kind of stuff is held. Well, no one's gonna look through that shit, right ? You know, only you care about that. And every time somebody wants to know something about the user, we're sitting in a meeting. We're discussing, "Yeah, should we do this?" You know, "Add this feature to this thing." "Oh, we ought to find out what the users think." "Oh, yeah, but that means going to Bill, and you know that, that's another week gone waiting to hear back from Bill. Let's just make a decision and move on." But imagine if you connect that user res- uh, repository with an AI that's got a persona built on that user repository that can respond like the user would in that situation. Sure, that's not as good as real user research. But now, in that meeting, they can go, "Well, I wonder what our users would think of this. What would you think of this?" into the AI, and then they got a response. Now, is that as good as real user research? No. But at least it's getting the user in the room. At least it's getting you in the room. And it can even, the AI can even say, "Well, based on our UX playbook," where someone has taken the time to document all this stuff, "really it would be quite good to run a survey around this," right? but it, it suddenly makes it all so much accessible, more accessible. On top of which, you, the AI can also be logging all of those questions that are getting asked so that the central UX team can then go away and do additional research that further improves the repository, and that's, that's where AI can be helping.

Brad: [45:45] Yeah

Paul Boag: [45:45] facilitating the easy flow of an integration of different disciplines without this kind of awkward, "Oh, bloody hell, we've gotta have somebody else in a meeting," you know?

Brad: [45:57] Yep Yep yep yep No I I you you hit the nail on the head and I've I've I've said similar like elsewhere is like But you said it you said the word beautifully which is like facilitation is a facilitator It brings things in so that during our meetings we're no longer just actively fighting and trying to talk each other out of

Paul Boag: [46:21] Yeah!

Brad: [46:22] because it's laborious and expensive to make that prototype or do that thing or go bother Bill or like figure that stuff out It's just like Ugh we can't be bothered so we're going to spend our time together in meetings Let's push back And you're like That's thoroughly depressing What if you're like oh in the f in the course of a meeting just on demand the stuff just kinda comes to

Paul Boag: [46:50] Yeah

Brad: [46:50] and and it's not and it's not a a an approximation of it It's like often just the actual raw stuff

Paul Boag: [46:58] Yeah

Brad: [46:59] can be

Paul Boag: [47:00] Yeah.

Brad: [47:01] brought closer to you and that that could happen from UX research That could happen from a you know a business standpoint That could happen from a designer perspective a developer perspective Like literally like any perspective It's like Oh yeah like I have stuff for that And then again you throw it in the cauldron and then your meetings become less Let's like talk each other out of doing things and instead go we got all this good stuff here Let's let's explore it together Let's

Paul Boag: [47:27] I-

Brad: [47:27] what this gets us

Paul Boag: [47:29] is that not transforming as well that your job? I mean, I feel like I've got a superpower. So I go into a new organization, right? And, and I'm sure you feel this, or at least I hope you do. I hope it's not just me. But when I go into it, I feel utterly overwhelmed instantly because everybody's throwing this information at you, and it you're kind of parsing it all. Now I'm hungry for it. Now I'm saying, "You know, any PowerPoint presentation you've ever made that's vaguely related to this, any document, any data source, anything, give me. Give me it all, and then I can push it through an AI that consolidates it all." And you can begin to see a narrative emerge of what's gone wrong or what's gone right, and how we might move through it. Then you start doing your stakeholder interviews, where you talk to all the different people, and they share their perspectives. All of that gets fed in as well, and you end up with this really… And like you say, it extracts this kind of common narrative or this common thread that you can follow. And yes, of course, you've still gotta make judgments about it. You still need a human in the loop. But processing that vast amount of information, it's so much easier than it would be doing it personally, you know?

Brad: [48:42] through those those conversations that you have where you're able to start sort of playing some of this stuff back to actually see if it matches reality cause cause there is like a real risk in just kinda being like Cool we just threw a bunch of artifacts in there It spat out like

Paul Boag: [48:58] Yeah doesn't mean it's right.

Brad: [49:00] it No But but but that's where it's like you as a facilitator as a human facilitator you're able to sort of like start holding up a mirror and sort of say like How does this feel as

Paul Boag: [49:10] Yeah

Brad: [49:11] you know some some trends or these things that have like happened You know the one of my favorite questions to ask is just like Oh like what haven't I considered yet what is opaque or what is like not the thing that I'm like directly asking for but like what are like some subterranean or like different trends or or alternative ways of of thinking about this that is used as a vehicle for expanding our human judgment and and exercising critical thinking

Paul Boag: [49:41] Yeah

Brad: [49:41] collectively like as a group of human beings get to sort of explore this territory together It j it just feels it feels healthy and it and because it is like kinda taking that stuff would otherwise be just very very very laborious to put together It's like you you could probably get there on your own but but just having something that's like a lot more immediate allows you to have more fruitful conversations and make better decisions sooner that feels like a good thing I don't know

Paul Boag: [50:15] Uh, yeah. And I, and I think there's another aspect to it, is that It's very easy for you to misinterpret what someone has said, and AI is really good. if you ask it to summarize what somebody has said, like in a meeting or whatever, it can often throw up your own misinterpretation of what happened. Uh, there was a great example recently where I was talking to a new client she said, "Well, why are you so much more expensive than other people?" I'd quoted her a number, right? And, and she said, "You're, you're much more expensive than everybody else." So I went into this long r- diatribe about how I'm worth it 'cause, you know, obviously I am. But when I read back the, the, the, the transcript afterwards, or where I got AI to talk it through with me, it said she misunderstood you. She thought you were quoting a per month rate when you were quoting a year rate, right? And, and those kinds of things. I mean, I, I, I get things like that when I do, um, user interviews as well, that I'll come away with a load of notes. AI will come away with a completely different n- set of notes where it's seen different things in that meeting. Now, obviously, you have to say, "How did you come to that conclusion? Give me a quote," so that you know it's not just making stuff up as it, as it likes to. Um, but, but it's really useful. Although I don't understand this. This whole thing about hallucination, right, it really amuses me. "Oh, you can't trust AI, it hallucinates," right? Well, hang on a minute, so do people. We ha- we hallucinate all the time. We make up shit all the time. It-- we misremember things. So why, so why are we holding AI to a higher standard? You know, it's-- as long as you know that it makes things up and as long as you get it to justify, you know, its statements, that's okay. You know, you just gotta take what it says with a pinch of salt like you do with a human. We've been too used to computers always being right. Um, I think that's the problem

Brad: [52:11] Yeah No I I I think that that's right and and it gets into here's math here's like deterministic

Paul Boag: [52:18] Yeah,

Brad: [52:18] code right Two and two always equals four And so it is it's it's a very weird thing But but viewed through the lens of yeah here's fallible human beings with our own biases with our own

Paul Boag: [52:30] Ooh.

Brad: [52:31] of instincts and stuff And the idea hopefully just as we do with groups of human beings uh as we've been talking about in this conversation is just like sharing our different perspectives and kinda figuring out where the truth is somewhere in the middle And hopefully using our conversations and our and our mirrors up a up to each other to find out where is this just my own personal bias or privilege or whatever bleeding into things And like how do we sort of arrive at a at a healthy middle ground And we now have this extra tool that helps us do that even further right Where it itself is hallucinating and making these things but when used appropriately you can kind of find the It's like where is the truth in in between And I think that getting that point where we're sort of using this tool as a way of exercising more critical thinking and more judgment it's 100 possible Again that doesn't mean that it's a given that that that's like an in inherit like but it can be used that

Paul Boag: [53:39] Yeah

Brad: [53:39] can be used as a way to facilitate human judgment and and critical thinking

Paul Boag: [53:45] I love your idea of you can take lots of different perspectives of different people within an organization and get AI to, to extract commonality or to help you understand those different perspectives. I think that's really good. It just reminded me of something I did, um, a while ago on my own business, right? 'Cause one of the things that I'm sure you feel the same, uh, uh, you're by yourself. You don't have a partner in your business, do you? Is it, is it just you?

Brad: [54:13] work with my brother I work

Paul Boag: [54:14] Oh, you work with your brother. Oh, that helps.

Brad: [54:16] works

Paul Boag: [54:17] So I used to, I used to run an agency, as I said, with two other people, but I don't anymore. It's just me, and I miss that, right?

Brad: [54:24] Yep

Paul Boag: [54:24] being able to talk it over with other people, and so I came up with this stupid idea of, well, okay, if I could create my ideal board of directors, who would it be, right? So I wrote out a list of people, different authors, and stuff that I like, and I got AI to go away. I want you to do deep research using Perplexity on these people, their standpoints, their point of view, the, well, the rest of it. I consolidated all that together, filed it, file, um, uh, pushed it into a large language model, and so now I ask business questions of my virtual board. And it, it kind of, it comes back with all these different perspectives on the problem. Now, obviously, you don't take that literally, and you have to use your judgment, but when you work by yourself, it's really good for challenging your view of things, your worldview of things. 'Cause this is the big problem. It's like I see this amongst UX professionals all the time. Why does nobody care about the user? Where, why … The, all these people should care about the user. Well, how much do you care about health and safety, right? Or HR or finance? You don't read any of their memos or their emails, right? But all those things are re- really important to those departments. Yeah. So we all live in our own little bubbles, and anything that can challenge that, I think is just brilliant, you know?

Brad: [55:44] Yeah Yeah Yeah And and that's the thing is just like here are these things here are these regulatory blah blah blah Here are these things that like those people are often just the messengers of

Paul Boag: [55:55] Yeah!

Brad: [55:56] the the industry is But it's it's like it's the parable of the blind men and the elephant right Which is

Paul Boag: [56:02] Yeah,

Brad: [56:02] everyone approaches the elephant and oh oh the elephant is is like a snake because they're touching the trunk and Or

Paul Boag: [56:10] yeah

Brad: [56:11] is like a tree because they're touching the leg And it's it is really through everyone's collective perspective that you can paint a full picture And again that that historically has been very hard to come by very laborious to come by because the chances of getting that regulatory person in the room with the UX designer and the engineering manager and the Just you know forget about it Like those those those opportunities don't come up nearly as often as they should where like this idea of just kind of having something that can help triangulate and and synthesize and kind of help find the like what is that overlapping Venn diagram that sort of

Paul Boag: [56:53] Yeah

Brad: [56:54] the things that every single group needs to do and then also better yet that actually like addresses people's individual fears and and risks and stuff like that I think that that stuff's like really powerful too because people are motivated by like we wanna do a good job We have dreams and aspirations I think that that's that's probably true That's an innate human quality We're we're to something And then we also care a lot about we're we're fearful creatures We have you know there are risks there are things that get us promoted there are things that get us fired And I think like if you're able to sort of extract that from groups of human beings even though those fears those hopes those dreams all of those things are going to be individually different there are ways to sort of Extract that use it in useful ways and sort of find the way that that is the sweet spot between everything that is just like Oh okay Yeah like here's a way forward that that ticks all of these boxes for all of these different people As things have grown up and and matured things have calcified at this place where people have their own lanes We kind of have this understanding people aren't stepping on each other's toes and here are the protocols for interacting with these people and you go through these Jira tickets and

Paul Boag: [58:20] Yeah

Brad: [58:20] things and stuff like that what I'm finding and I've always found it difficult to do is to just be like You know you could just get together and like work together and jam on some things and like have just like a creative conversation and make some stuff together people are just like Ugh Ugh Uh like I hear what you're saying but also that feels scary Like I I don't know It just it feels like things have stratified things have calcified in kind of an unhealthy dynamic and now it's just like kind of like okay here's this tool And we get it a lot just even with our like our AI and design systems course that we're putting together is just like how do we use this to like facilitate like handoff or to make handoff go better It's like well what if you just remove handoff entirely What does it look like to just maybe use this as a means to to get come together and build stuff together

Paul Boag: [59:19] yeah I mean, I think it, it depends on the organization, um, uh, because I think logistically that can pr- when the organization reaches a certain size, logistically, just getting everybody in the room to jam on something together is,

Brad: [59:36] Yeah

Paul Boag: [59:36] a, a logistical nightmare. the way that I'm tending to do it is almost the complete opposite of that, yet I agree with the, the essentials of what you're saying there, which is, um, that I'm tending to take the attitude of try- trying to get beyond the stepping on each other's toes, that it's okay to step on each other's toes, right? so rather than necessarily let's get everybody together and do it all in a room together, which can be difficult to do, and I've struggled to do that, I'm

Brad: [1:00:07] sure

Paul Boag: [1:00:08] going down the lines of, well, look, start letting go control of your area and em- and empower other people to have a go at what you go… you do, right?

Brad: [1:00:20] Yeah Yep

Paul Boag: [1:00:22] and, and so, you know, for example, it's stupid if y- let's imagine an organization with a design system, okay?

Brad: [1:00:30] Mm-hmm

Paul Boag: [1:00:30] a design system in place. It's stupid that the developer has to come back to a designer every time they want a new user interface, um, designed, right? You've, you've got a design system that's got accessibility baked into it, and everything else that needs to be considered from a UI point of view. All you need is a little bit of extra documentation in your design system that says, which probably should be there anyway, which says, "This is h- when you use a radio button compared to when you use a checkbox, and this is where…" Uh, just laying out a bit of rules. That can even be fed into an AI, so an AI can follow those rules. If the, the UX team, um, creates some associated documentation that, that outlines this is how landing pages are built, this is how donation flow is built or whatever else, then, then really why get involved in that, right? Um, yeah, but, and, but what you do, you don't just then make that the developer's problem and say, "Well, that's your problem now." You say, "Well, we'll still be responsible for it. We're gonna take the blame if it goes wrong. We're also here if you wanna show us stuff, but we just don't wanna get in the way. We'll help you as much as you want to, but don't feel you have to come to us if it's just a little thing. You can get, you know, AI to, to produce your interface based on our rules or whatever else." You know, we insert ourselves into situations where we don't really always need to be there. and then that enables us to look at the bigger picture, right, and to start doing the more strategic work that we bitch and moan about that we've never got time to do at the minute,

Brad: [1:02:07] Yeah Yeah Yep yep No that's that's exactly right And that's it like you you just perfectly described I think what we're getting at with with our course and what we've been kind of doing

Paul Boag: [1:02:17] Yeah

Brad: [1:02:18] how do you just like push this stuff down make the stuff available so that humans machines and hybrids of the two can just kind of like do things And when you say make a landing page it builds it using the the best practices that you collectively have agreed are are are the things that make up a good landing page and stuff So it's a different shape of kind of the same thing

Paul Boag: [1:02:41] And this is where I've been really cracking on about something that hasn't taken off. You, you wrote this amazing book on atomic designing, and design systems took off, and everybody went, "Oh, Brad's wonderful. He's so clever," right? So, so design systems have really taken off. My thing, right, which sits alongside that, is a digital playbook, right? With, with operator- standard operating procedures and all of that kind of stuff, and no, that's, that's not sexy like a design system is, so everybody's ignored that. But I'm, as you can tell, I'm deeply bitter about this because especially now, because that repository, if you have a repository of all of that information, AI eats that shit up and, and will, can now churn out, you know, designs that are not just using the design system but are using it right, are using it from a, a usable, accessible, you know, readable, scannable, all of the other able's, um, perspective. And so those two components actually, I think, sit together very well as a whole. but unfortunately my half is not as trendy as your half 'cause… So, you know, I'm bitter

Brad: [1:03:51] uh y you shouldn't be because I think it's all like you said I think you said it really well It's like this is all in play It's like here are these things these these assets and stuff like that but it's like without the proper instruction manual without like proper

Paul Boag: [1:04:06] Mm-hmm.

Brad: [1:04:07] and well-considered ways of of sort of assembling it all you're gonna end up with a freaking mess

Paul Boag: [1:04:13] Yeah, but you see, talking about standard operating procedures sounds dull. What I need to start doing is I need to call them AI skills, right? 'Cause of course that's trendy at the moment, but it's essentially a standard operating procedure written in Markdown. So, so I'll just call it a different name and it'll be fine.

Brad: [1:04:34] Sex sexy operating procedures would be more sexy

Paul Boag: [1:04:38] I'm not convinced. I don't think we're fooling anyone with that one.

Brad: [1:04:41] one thing uh y you you joked at the very beginning uh about retirement

Paul Boag: [1:04:47] Yes

Brad: [1:04:48] As as you've been sort of on on this journey for a long time as

Paul Boag: [1:04:53] Ooh

Brad: [1:04:53] daughter's sort of coming up through y you get to see her

Paul Boag: [1:04:58] Yeah

Brad: [1:04:59] career sorta starting can you can you talk about that a little bit Just like it it's through the lens of longevity but also kind of like new chapters and kinda what comes next when you feel like you've you've been riding all of these waves for so long there's clearly an excitement and enthusiasm and a lot to be digging into in this day and age But I'm also very curious about like when you have been working on at something since 1994 and it's just like Oh okay you know Like here we are all these years later Like what your journey and like thought process been around that And like what do you see in terms of

Paul Boag: [1:05:41] Is that a very long way of wha- yeah, it's a very long way of saying, "Are you gonna retire, Paul? Get… Come on. Sort your act out. Get get, out of the way for the younger people."

Brad: [1:05:51] no, no, no. It's definitely, definitely not that. But I am very, I am very interested in just kind of like how people are, are approaching that because there's, there's not a standard operating procedure for

Paul Boag: [1:06:07] No. there's not, because it's the first generation that are beginning to, to get to that point now,

Brad: [1:06:13] Yep

Paul Boag: [1:06:14] Um, people like, you know, Steve Krug, um, Jakob Nielsen, they're a little bit ahead of me. The trouble is, there are aspects I absolutely do want to retire from, and there are aspects that I don't. The… Really, I love what I do. and I, uh, and, and the bit that I love more than anything else is helping people. I know that sounds so trite, doesn't it?

Brad: [1:06:37] No, dude

Paul Boag: [1:06:38] but, but I love, I love helping people when they get stuck on projects, and I can unstick them. I love giving people advice because I think I know everything. Um, you know, I just… I love all of that stuff. so I wanna carry on doing that really as long as, as long as people will listen to me. Um, I don't imagine myself retiring. I don't imagine myself stopping, learning new stuff because,

Brad: [1:07:05] Mm-hmm.

Paul Boag: [1:07:05] uh, you know, I see so many people that retire and then turn into vegetables because they're not continually engaging with the world. Um, and I look at my, my dad is… Even though I'm what? Mid-50s now, my dad is still a role model to me and, and, you know, he's still very much active in his 70s and still, still lecturing and still teaching and all that kind of stuff. So I imagine that. But what I, um, want… The, the bit that I wanna retire from is, is, you know this, is running your own business, is having to bring in enough money every month. That, that's the bit I'm done with. You know, that anxiety of, you know, am I gonna pay the bills this month? And it's not… I mean, I'm pretty fortunate these days, but, but e- even so, it'd be nice to be rid of that. and in some ways, I am kind of semi-retired. I probably realistically am working four, five hours a day rather than eight now, which is nice, and I spend most of my time traveling. So we spent three years traveling around the States in, in an RV, um, which was amazing, and we're beginning to do the same thing now in, in UK this year and then next year across into Europe. Uh, I've, I've built a lifestyle business very, very intentionally. I'm not gonna get rich. I'm not gonna be able to sell my agency or my consultancy. It's all built around me. I don't care. I'm more int- I'm more interested in living life now than I am when I retire, but I don't wanna screw myself over equally 'cause, you know, I d- I want to not have to bring in, you know, what I have to bring in every month.

Brad: [1:08:39] Yeah. That, uh, that's amazing. And, uh, so it sounds like you've done a lot of active work to get to that

Paul Boag: [1:08:48] Yeah.

Brad: [1:08:50] get into an RV and, and do that. That, that obviously requires a lot of careful planning and consideration. Ca- could you speak to that a little bit?

Paul Boag: [1:08:59] Yeah so it took about a decade, I think, from when I first had the idea to where the business… 'Cause when I first, I say I first had the idea, it was my wife, um, really wanted to do it, and I was like, "I don't know whether, you know, I don't know whether that's practical. I don't know how to do that," et cetera. Um, but she was determined. Cause to begin with, I was still at an agency, right? I was still running the agency, so I was running that with other people. That ties you down and limits what you can do and, and when, what hours you need to be available and all those kinds of things. So that had to change to begin with. Um, then I had to build up the new business because, you know, you can't do it from day one, although I was very fortunate. Um, and then, then the big problem was connectivity for a while, and I hate this. I hate it with a passion, but I am, I have to be grateful to Elon for Starlinks because I, I wouldn't be able to do it very easily without Starlink. Um, I'm using Starlink at the moment. and there were various other logistic- I had to break my clients into the idea that I would only be available in mornings for my American clients and afternoons for my, my UK clients. I had to wean myself off of Australian clients 'cause I just couldn't get that to work. Then I had to learn how to work more intensely, I, you know, so that I could work four hours in a very efficient manner. and of course, I had to get my rates to a point where, like, that was enough for working four hours a day. So there was a lot of moving parts to it, which happened over a series of years. Um, a- and I got lucky as well. It was a big… You know, that's a part of it as well. For example, w- we, going back to Starlink, you know, we started doing this going, "Well, we're gonna have to be in areas where there was cell coverage." Um, and we started, and a month in, Starlink came out, you know? And suddenly we could be, y- you know, in the middle of a dried-up riverbed in Utah, um, and I can still do my Zoom calls, you know?

Brad: [1:11:11] That's incredible. That's incredible. And, and thank you for, for painting that picture because I'm sure that people, like to the outside observer, if you just see yourself riding around in an RV, you go, "Oh, well that must be nice."

Paul Boag: [1:11:26] Yeah, yeah

Brad: [1:11:26] talking about like a decade of work to lead to, to that moment. I, I really love that because it's like that's a… Y- you just designed that for

Paul Boag: [1:11:36] Yeah.

Brad: [1:11:37] and your family. Like,

Paul Boag: [1:11:38] I've always been, I've always been a bit like that. I'm always this, uh … In fact, I, I feel lost if I've not got something I'm working towards. Um, so, you know, that … I, I had a weird time when I mean, we would still be in America to this day if it wasn't for your current president and his attitude towards, people coming into his country. when we stopped doing that, I was kinda lost. It was like, "Well, what's my aim now?" so that, that was, that was a tricky time for a little while. So yeah, I do like to have a plan I'm working towards. But it never goes as you think it is, does, you know. Uh, our poor daughter, she went off to university, uh, and, um, it was like, "Right, bye. We're going to the other side of the Atlantic. Best of luck." You know? She just got abandoned. yeah

Brad: [1:12:29] was crying the, crying the whole time.

Paul Boag: [1:12:32] No, she had, she, uh, she, she was one term in. We were intending to wait a year, and she had such a, uh, she just took like, you know, duck to water to it, and just wasn't contacting us or calling us or… And she was well settled, and it was like, "Well, there's no point of us being here then, is there?"

Brad: [1:12:49] there we go. All right. That's amazing. That's amazing. you're also getting at though, it's like, what's all of this for?

Paul Boag: [1:12:57] Oh, yeah.

Brad: [1:12:58] for? What's,

Paul Boag: [1:12:59] Yeah,

Brad: [1:12:59] what's running a business? What's running your own business for? And, and I think that this is, this is something that with this new landscape, who the hell knows how this is gonna shape up, but it does feel like there might be more opportunities for more people to exercise their own agency and, and autonomy and stuff and, and do things in a way that works with, with what they wanna get out of life and to not have to wait until you hit, you know, 63 and get a

Paul Boag: [1:13:30] Yeah,

Brad: [1:13:30] in order to finally start traveling. So, so I really love… Could you speak to that aspect of it? Or it's just like,

Paul Boag: [1:13:37] yeah

Brad: [1:13:38] "Here's what it does. Here's what, what you could point it at in order

Paul Boag: [1:13:43] I mean,

Brad: [1:13:43] g-

Paul Boag: [1:13:43] Eddie

Brad: [1:13:44] you live a richer life."

Paul Boag: [1:13:46] This is a… 'Cause I coach, I coach lots of people, but one of the groups I coach, I think I've already mentioned this, is freelancers and agency owners. And,

Brad: [1:13:54] Yeah

Paul Boag: [1:13:55] well, you know, they come in and they talk about what they want to achieve with their business, you know, that, that, um, "Oh, we haven't got enough sales," or, you know, "I don't…" You know, "I'm thinking about hiring people," and all the rest of it. And the first question I always ask is, "Forget the business. What do you want your life to be?" because I often think people start from the wrong premise. It, it always reminds me of a little, um, The Rocky Horror Show and, and Seymour, that your business becomes this monster that needs to be constantly fed. and actually your business needs to be facilitating your life, not your life facilitating your business. And I think a lot of people get trapped in this scenario where, they go, "Well, it has to be this way." I mean, the typical thing is, I have to work seven days a week, uh, multiple, you know, long hours every day because, I'm not earning enough money. I'm not earning enough money because I'm not… Um, I can't charge more. I can't charge more because my clients wouldn't accept me charging higher." And I'm like, "No, no, no, no, no, you're, you're looking at the entire thing back to front." You gotta start by saying, "What do I want," right, "from my life? How much money do I need to earn to do that? What would my hourly ra- How many hours am I willing to work to do that? What would my hourly rate be? What type of clients do I need in order to be able to do that?" and, and so starting from the lifestyle I think is really important. And I mean, yeah, I've, I've got, um, a, a… Friends of my parents had, um, a, a kid a little bit younger than me, and, um, he, uh, moved into the same industry and, and has been hugely successful in the field. and he's now probably mid-40s coming up to 50, and he's semi-retir- He's retired basically at that point. But he bust his gut to do that, right? He worked up in London. He had long commutes. He, worked huge hours, earned a fortune, all the rest of it, and that's great. That's, that's what he wanted and, and now he can retire early and that's g- I'm not criticizing that. That's his choice. I didn't want that for my life. I wanted to be able to liv- earn enough to live the life that I wanted to live. you've gotta be clear of what you want going in. Do you want to earn a load of money and retire early, or pay off your mortgage or whatever else? Do you wanna be able to travel? Do you wanna be able to take every Wednesday afternoon off to go play golf or, you know, do whatever? And I don't think people have a clear enough idea of what they actually want from um, from their lives, you know? And

Brad: [1:16:34] Yeah

Paul Boag: [1:16:34] wrong, that's not easy to know that, especially when you're trapped in a cycle of, of I'm just doing work because I've got to do work, you know?

Brad: [1:16:44] Yep. Yep. Yep. I think that, that, this kind of chaotic moment in time. The, the wave is very sort of foamy and thrashy, and like everybody is just kind of caught up in it, that there's not really a lot of time or space to put yourself into that head space of, "Well, what exactly do I want?"

Paul Boag: [1:17:07] But

Brad: [1:17:07] think that there's so much of like the-- Yeah.

Paul Boag: [1:17:10] ironically, it's also the best time because everything's going to shit anyway. That's, that's a huge, a huge exaggeration. But everything's in turmoil, so what have you got to lose? You know, it's like we set up our agency, as the dotcom bubble burst 'cause we got made redundant. So what do we have to lose, right? And actually, I think it's much harder to make those lifestyle changes when everything's very level and safe and, you know… You, you almost need the push, don't you really sometimes, of going, "Well, I'm gonna get fired and replaced with AI anyway, so why don't I try something new?" You know?

Brad: [1:17:48] Yeah is, is really well said, and I agree with you. When things are comfortable, it's very, very difficult

Paul Boag: [1:17:56] Hmm.

Brad: [1:17:56] rock that boat, that it really takes sometimes some hard, which sucks that it, that it sometimes requires that. But those are really important moments. Those are important seams that these are moments to capitalize on, to basically sort of take a step back. I promise you that the hype cycle, the, the fervor will all still be there, but it's like kinda taking a step back and figuring out w- what it is you want. Did, did you have anything that's been particularly helpful for you defining what that is? Is it-- It sounds like your wife certainly had like a

Paul Boag: [1:18:35] She, yeah, she tells me.

Brad: [1:18:36] like had

Paul Boag: [1:18:37] yeah.

Brad: [1:18:37] but she tells you

Paul Boag: [1:18:39] She, she says, "I want more money."

Brad: [1:18:41] out of

Paul Boag: [1:18:42] Yeah, "I want more money," or, "I want to travel. Make it happen, Paul." No,

Brad: [1:18:46] Yeah

Paul Boag: [1:18:47] I honestly couldn't tell you. Although I'm a very optimistic person, I'm sure almost naively optimistic as maybe it's come across in this interview, I'm also somebody who is easily dissatisfied with life, right? So I often want to change things. Oh, I'm s- I'm always stuck in this office. I wanna get out in the world, right? And I'm almost motivated by dissatisfaction a lot of the time. I get bored very easily is the other big thing for me. so I'm always wanting to try new things. And then sometimes, you know, I try all these new things, and they won't resonate, and then something, I hit something, and it, it, and it just feels right, and I will pursue that, regardless. I'm also very lucky in my personality. I mean, this is, uh, every, every personality trait has its pros and its cons, and this is, this is a good example of that, but I am one of those people that tends to run in where angels fear to tread and not think through consequences at all. Um, and, and that can be very useful when it comes to trying new things and going in new directions. Um, and so, uh, my inability to think something through and then think through the consequences maybe works in my advantage, and maybe if I thought more, I wouldn't actually do stuff. I don't know.

Brad: [1:20:06] But, you see what happens when people do spend too much time thinking

Paul Boag: [1:20:11] You could paralyze yourself. Yeah, yeah

Brad: [1:20:13] 100%. We, we both see that. So it's like, yeah, it's, it's the, there's, there's kind of risk, risk-taking, and then there's kind of just basic responsibility almost of, of sorts. So it's just like kinda going like, yeah, you're not just going to go, "Right, everything we own and just, you know, put it all on black, uh, on the

Paul Boag: [1:20:31] No, I'm not like that.

Brad: [1:20:33] that. Yeah,

Paul Boag: [1:20:34] I, I think it helps if you can nurture, or, or not nurture, the opposite of nurture, crush the, the fear of failure. it's okay to try things and them not work out. I think it always ultimately works out. And don't get me wrong, I mean, I've been through some horrendous times in my career. you know, we, before we started recording, I talked about, you know, how I burnt myself out and, and all of that kind of stuff. Um, there have been times when I've really screwed up badly, but it recovers, you know? And, and I … There's a, there's a, a kind of great attitude that I absolutely love, which is everything is in constant, a constant state of flux and a constant state of change. So the bad times won't last forever, but neither will the good times, right? It's always changing, and it's always moving, and as long as you keep moving with it, it'll work itself out. And, and I know that's naive in some situations, and I know it doesn't work out for everybody all of the time, but it's still a good attitude to have if you can lie to yourself enough to believe it.

Brad: [1:21:40] But I, I don't think that it's being li- i- it, it's lying. It's, it's, it's being quite honest with which, which is things are changing these times of, of calm, of relative

Paul Boag: [1:21:52] Yeah, that'll go

Brad: [1:21:53] It-- that's been a hard thing for me after kind of years and years of, of kind of varied traumas when the times have been calmer, and they thankfully, at least in this moment in time are, I've, I have that kinda looking over my shoulder a little bit and, and there's, there's, uh, you know, a guardedness or, you know, I'm kind of v- vigilant. at the same time, I think that even though that sucks, I've kind of learned to sort of translate most of that into just a constant state of gratitude for every day

Paul Boag: [1:22:29] Yeah

Brad: [1:22:30] not on fire.

Paul Boag: [1:22:31] I mean, obviously it helps to go this, this bad period isn't gonna last forever. That's easy, right? We all, we all like that. But the, this good period is not gonna last forever.

Brad: [1:22:43] Yeah.

Paul Boag: [1:22:43] That's a harder skill to come to terms with, but it's very releasing when, when you get there. I mean, take for example, you know, um, when Mr. Trump started, you know, changing the rules about traveling around America and what we could do and, and we had to come to the conclusion that this thing we'd been doing for three years had come to an end. And, and we'd loved it. We loved every minute of it. But being able to let go and say, "Okay, that was a good time, but it's gone," right? And it's now time to find the next thing and move on to the next thing. And I think that applies in personal life, but it applies in your career as well, you know?

Brad: [1:23:22] Yeah.

Paul Boag: [1:23:23] I remember when I was laid off, uh-- well, not when I was laid off. What am I talking about? I ma- I laid myself off from the agency, and I stepped back from that, and that was a very hard thing to let go of. Um, a-a-and I mourned losing it, but it now allowed me to turn my attention to the next thing and what was gonna come next. And, and I think that's good. That's the-- It's all right that everything passes, you know? Sorry, got very profound, haven't we, here towards the end of this podcast?

Brad: [1:23:53] I think, I think, I think, I think it's important because, uh, you know, whether you've been at it for, for a while or, or a lot of people are still, getting into it along the way, th- that bit of self-reflection and that bit of just understanding the cyclical nature of things, the constant state of change, how we feel about it, how we react towards it, what we do about it, what actions we do take, all of that matters. Like, you know,

Paul Boag: [1:24:22] I t-

Brad: [1:24:23] what really all of

Paul Boag: [1:24:24] yeah.

Brad: [1:24:24] what all of this is for

Paul Boag: [1:24:26] And from, from a really practical point of view, I think it's particularly relevant to those of us who run our own businesses, where that day when you lose that really good client, right? 'Cause they just decide to go somewhere else. And you can really beat yourself up from that. You can think, "Oh, what have I done wrong? I've messed up." But everything passes, right? Everything cha- event- you know, people sometimes change supplier just because they feel it's time for a ch- a change, and, you know, no other reason than that. you've got to try and be as chilled about these things as you can and allow things, things to come and go. I should be a Buddhist monk, I think. I've, I've, I've gone very Zen all of a sudden. I've got the haircut for it,

Brad: [1:25:09] You got the hair? Yeah,

Paul Boag: [1:25:11] Yeah,

Brad: [1:25:11] right ready for it. But,

Paul Boag: [1:25:12] yeah,

Brad: [1:25:12] I do think, I do think it's good advice. It's like, go easy on yourself. By all means, I think, like feel the feelings, like when, when

Paul Boag: [1:25:20] I'm not, yeah

Brad: [1:25:21] When there's loss, when there's hard, it's like let all that stuff in, but at the same time, have it serve its time. Things need to run their course, and that's different for each person individually. Uh, but at the same time, you do sort of see it crop up in the form of resentment over time, where the people haven't had the chance to, to kinda like it go and just move on to the next chapter. It's like the, " If it weren't just for that, that one thing, I could've made it. If, if the

Paul Boag: [1:25:54] Yeah.

Brad: [1:25:54] only put me in it.

Paul Boag: [1:25:56] Yeah.

Brad: [1:25:56] the coach only

Paul Boag: [1:25:57] Yeah.

Brad: [1:25:58] in, I I would've been

Paul Boag: [1:25:59] See, that's a, the, the, y- that, that says the difference between us, right? You're, you're using a sports analogy. You know what it reminded me of? It reminded me of the first episode of Deep Space Nine. Did you ever watch Sp- Deep Space Nine?

Brad: [1:26:13] kn- I know of it. I've never watched it though,

Paul Boag: [1:26:15] So in Deep Space Nine, you've got this character called Sisko, and his, his wife, uh, g- gets killed, um, uh, very dramatically in the first episode. And then he meets these aliens, these very advanced aliens, that exist outside of time, and they're very confused because Sisko seems to live in the past, in this moment when he lost his wife, and he's never been able to move on from that. And, and I often think about that, that shit episode, because I'm a massive nerd, and I would argue it's a good episode actually, but, you know, if you're not a Trekkie, fair enough. Of that idea that we can live in the past, and we get stuck in there. Almost like you were saying, you look back on those traumatic times and you're waiting for what we talk about, in our family, talk about waiting for the other shoe to drop, for something else to go wrong because we're, we're kind of trapped in that mindset. And so, you know, getting into that mindset of, okay, that happened. I'm acknowledging that. I'm living with that. I'm accepting that, but I'm looking forward. You know, I'm, I'm trying to live… Ideally, you should live in the present, but I, I kind of live in the future. What's coming next? What's over the hill,

Brad: [1:27:28] yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And there's an art to, to being in the present but also doing the

Paul Boag: [1:27:34] Yeah, I haven't quite worked that bit out yet.

Brad: [1:27:36] yeah.

Paul Boag: [1:27:36] Yeah.

Brad: [1:27:37] That's for

Paul Boag: [1:27:38] shiny thing over there. That's what I want"

Brad: [1:27:40] But it, but it does sound like y- you've, you've translated a fair amount into, into gratitude even as you are excited by the next shiny thing. It's like y- you are, y- you realize what you have

Paul Boag: [1:27:52] I've been, I've been very fortunate. I mean, my timing was impeccable to j- you know, and pure luck that I got into the industry. And that's why I'm, I'm so pissed off for my poor daughter, 'cause I just walked in at the beginning of the internet and just went poof. While she's like, she's just come out of uni- you know, just coming out of university and she's hit with this, "Oh, by the way, we just changed all the rules after you've spent however many thousands of pounds w- on your education." It's like, oh, poor girl, you know?

Brad: [1:28:23] But, but at the same time, it is, it is in those moments that

Paul Boag: [1:28:28] Yeah.

Brad: [1:28:28] her generation, they're going to be in this position of inventing

Paul Boag: [1:28:34] What's next?

Brad: [1:28:35] And,

Paul Boag: [1:28:36] Yeah

Brad: [1:28:36] that's, it is, it is a very, very strange thing to kind of put those things in to contrast with each other. And don't get me wrong, that's not to trivialize, like, the real,

Paul Boag: [1:28:48] Oh yeah

Brad: [1:28:48] the bo- the bottom rung of the ladder being sawed off, like, it seems like across, across the

Paul Boag: [1:28:53] Yeah, that does worry me

Brad: [1:28:55] But at the same time, your, your daughter is inventive and creative, and so are her peers, and I, I have to think that, that even that kind of lousy landscape will work out

Paul Boag: [1:29:10] I, and I, I believe that. You know, I believe they'll, they'll make their own ladder, you know?

Brad: [1:29:15] Yeah.

Paul Boag: [1:29:16] uh, just like, you know, in some ways I did at the beginning of the web, you know? And I, uh, but I do think you've also got to, to be grateful for the breaks that you get, and I did get some good breaks, you

Brad: [1:29:30] Yep.

Paul Boag: [1:29:31] Just wandering blindly into the, to the internet, you know, I, I was an art student, you know. My job prospects were Burger King, you know? but I happened to see in, in our studio a, a, a Post-It note stuck on a board that said, "IBM are looking for interns for a year out." And I thought, "Oh, that'd be good experience for me," you know, to, to do an interview, not to get the job. I didn't think I was gonna get the job. so I, I ran for this, and it was, it was to work on their first ever multimedia PC with a, a sound card and a CD-ROM, right? Somehow I landed that, right? Yeah, I grabbed the opportunity, and I think that's what it's about. It's about grabbing the opportunities as they came along. But, you know, that was luck to a big degree. And then I got the job, and of course, while I was there, we started to get, you know, "Do you know anything about this internet thing?" And everybody took a look at it, and it was, this was before, I think, just as the image tag had been introduced. So there was no design. We hadn't even worked out table-based design at that point. And it was like, "I'll give it to the student." Nobody else wanted to touch it 'cause, you know, 'cause it was boring and shit. So I got given it, and so that lucked out. And then even down to things like, you know, when, uh, the iPod came out and it first, uh, first, uh, supported podcasting. And I looked for, a podcast on web design, and there wasn't any, and that annoyed me, and I decided to make my own. Again, just, just life just happens. That's what I mean about surfing. Do you know what I mean? You've just gotta surf these different waves because you don't know where they're gonna come from next, you know?

Brad: [1:31:09] That's beautiful. That's beautiful. Well, that's, that's the perfect way to wrap this up, is just, it's find, find the waves. We're all kind of riding this wave right now, whether you're decades into it

Paul Boag: [1:31:20] Yeah

Brad: [1:31:21] you're just getting started. It's like, we are. Here

Paul Boag: [1:31:25] And i- in many ways,

Brad: [1:31:26] do with it?

Paul Boag: [1:31:27] I mean, what a great equalizer, right? Because our decades of experience don't mean that much at the moment, do they?

Brad: [1:31:35] Yeah.

Paul Boag: [1:31:35] so you could be young starting out, and you're not a lot far- further behind the two of us

Brad: [1:31:41] Yep. yeah, it's like rather than the, "Am I doing this right?" Or whatever, it's, it's I think like really cul- cultivating a, "What do I find interesting in this moment? What are, what are the things that I, when I look out into the world that are missing, and w- what can I do about it," right? It's, uh, it feels like a really, really amazing time. We have nothing but… You know, forget sound cards. It's like, jeez, man, like we have

Paul Boag: [1:32:09] I know, right?

Brad: [1:32:10] materials to work with now. So it's, uh, I, I do hope that we're able to sort of collectively kind of steer into kind of the, the opportunity part of this versus the, the, the fear-based or scarcity mindset. And so I really appreciate you for you talking about your naive optimism. I think that that, that… But that attitude really matters though, I think, in moments

Paul Boag: [1:32:37] Yeah

Brad: [1:32:37] like, 'cause we have to be able to paint a picture of what could be. Otherwise, we're all just gonna be sitting here scared shitless. So, so it really does take that optimism and that hope and that, like, kinda, that looking at the shining thing on the horizon to kind of pull us all along, I think.

Paul Boag: [1:32:55] But equally you need the other side of things. You need the people that are worried about the consequences. Otherwise, you know, we end up you know, all following Elon Musk on whatever wild dream he has. You know, and I go, "Oh, yeah, that looks shiny. I'll follow that." So,

Brad: [1:33:10] Yeah,

Paul Boag: [1:33:11] all got our part to play, haven't we really?

Brad: [1:33:12] Yeah. Yep, Well, thank you. Thanks so much for, for taking the time. This has been great. Uh, last question of the whole show, the only other structured part of the show is what music do you want more people to know about?

Paul Boag: [1:33:25] So you, you mentioned this at the beginning before we started recording and, and I said I have no musical anything, right? but I do want to reference, because I feel it, it's relevant to the conversation we've just had, which is that, that, um, old song, Running Against the Wind, right? "I'm older now and I'm running against the wind." And it's a song that is basically all about getting kind of pushed down by life and how life overwhelms you. You start off young and enthusiastic, and it pushes you down and it, it grinds you down, but you come out of the other side of that. that is where… I think bear that in mind. If you're in that pushed down stage, in that crushed stage, you will come out the other end, and you'll be stronger for it, and you'll be running against the wind again, you know? So I just love that song. I love the, the thought of that song.

Brad: [1:34:16] Bob, Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band

Paul Boag: [1:34:19] Thank you. I wouldn't have a clue. See, this is why I'm the worst person to answer that question. No idea. I heard it once, I liked it. Great.

Brad: [1:34:28] Amazing. that's what I'm listening to, Bob Seger for the rest of the day. I love it. I love it. Uh, last, last thing is where can people learn about you, find out about you, follow along with what you're up to and

Paul Boag: [1:34:41] so everything's on my, my website. I am, I, I am old, so I still blog. um, and there's a newsletter you can sign up to. I put a lot of stuff out on Instagram, so my… But my website's a good place to start, boagworld.com, B-O-A-G world.com

Brad: [1:34:57] And that is, that is the, the that I have seared into my memory, uh, for as long as I, as I live as, as being just getting started trying to figure out how to, how to get into this. So, so thank you for your many years of, of contributing to that, to that website.

Paul Boag: [1:35:16] Every week since 2005. So if you wanna know the naive shit that we believed back in 2005, you can go and find it there.

Brad: [1:35:27] Amazing. Amazing. Well, thanks so much, Paul. Uh, yeah, take good care and, uh, we'll see you soon

Paul Boag: [1:35:33] Thank you