The Syncreate Podcast: Empowering Creativity
Welcome to Syncreate, where we explore the intersections between creativity, psychology, and spirituality. Our goal is to demystify the creative process and expand the boundaries of what it means to be creative.
Creativity. It’s a word we throw around all the time, but what does it really mean? On the Syncreate Podcast, we share stories of the creative journey. We talk to changemakers, visionaries and everyday creatives working in a wide array of fields and disciplines. Our goal is to explore creativity in all its facets, and to gain a better understanding of the creative process – from imagination to innovation and everything in between.
The Syncreate Podcast is hosted by Melinda Rothouse, PhD. She helps individuals and organizations bring their creative dreams and visions to life through coaching, consulting, workshops, retreats, and now, this podcast. She's written two books on creativity, including Syncreate: A Guide to Navigating the Creative Process for Individuals, Teams, and Communities (winner of a Silver Nautilus Award for Creativity and Innovation), with Charlotte Gullick. She's also a musician (singer-songwriter and bass player) and photographer based in Austin, Texas.
The Syncreate Podcast: Empowering Creativity
Syncreate Podcast Episode 123: The Surface Area of Serendipity with Tech Entrepreneur Charles Cadbury
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What if you began each day outside, in nature, without technology, viewed your daily activities and connections as ways to increase the surface area of your serendipity, and spent Thursday evenings appreciating the sunset with friends? Welcome to Charles Cadbury’s world. A multi-award-winning technologist focusing on human-computer interaction and AI assistance, Charles is a creative entrepreneur who values the alchemy of connection. In this episode, we discuss the power of community and collaboration in innovation, as well as the vital importance of the creative journey itself. We also explore the creative potential of (and concerns around) emerging technologies such as AI assistants and agents.
For our Creativity Pro-Tip, Charlie suggests taking time each day to unplug from technology and clear the mind, and to distill your to-do list down to three main things you can reasonably accomplish.
Credits: The Syncreate podcast is created and hosted by Melinda Rothouse, and produced at Record ATX studios with in collaboration Michael Osborne and 14th Street Studios in Austin, Texas. Syncreate logo design by Dreux Carpenter.
If you enjoy this episode and want to learn more about the creative process in a variety of contexts, you might also like our conversations in Episode 111: Stories from the Podcast Studio with Grant Davis, Episode 107: Mindfulness in Life, Work, and Creativity with Hannah Williams, and Episode 14: Anatomy of a Song with George McCormack.
At Syncreate, we're here to support your creative endeavors. If you have an idea for a project or a new venture, and you’re not sure how to get it off the ground, find us at syncreate.org. Our book, also called Syncreate, walks you through the stages of the creative process so you can take action on your creative goals. We also offer resources, creative process tools, and coaching to help you bring your work to the world. You can find more information on our website, where you can also find all of our podcast episodes. Find and connect with us on social media and YouTube under Syncreate. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and leave us a review! We’d love to hear your feedback as well, so drop us a line at info@syncreate.org.
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Melinda: Welcome to Syncreate, a show for creative seekers. We explore the deep human stories of creativity, psychology, and spirituality. We believe everyone has the capacity to create. Our goal is to demystify the process and expand the boundaries of what it means to be creative. What holds us back? Why do we get stuck? And how can we fully embrace our creativity? We talk with visionaries and change makers, and everyday creatives working in a wide range of fields and media - from the arts to science, technology, and business. We aim to illuminate the creative process from imagination to innovation and everything in between.
I'm Melinda Rothouse, and I help individuals and organizations bring their dreams and visions to life. At Syncreate, we’re here to support your creative endeavors. If you have an idea for a project or a new venture, and you're not quite sure how to get it off the ground, find us at syncreate.org. Our book, also called Syncreate, is available in both print and audio format. It walks you through the stages of the creative process so you can take action on your goals. We also offer resources, creative process tools, and coaching to help you bring your work to the world.
My guest today is Charles Cadbury. He's a multi-award-winning technologist focusing on emerging technologies, human-computer interaction, and AI assistance. He's the co-founder of Say It Now, a voice technology advertising business. He's also the author of a children's bedtime book, The Swan. Okay! So, Charlie, welcome. It's so wonderful to have you on the show today.
Charlie: Thank you very much for the invitation. Great to be here.
Melinda: Yeah. Absolutely. So, I want to let people know a little bit about how we connected. So, your kind of oldest and dearest friend, George, is also my musical collaborator in Austin, and so, we connected through him. And we were recently on a music tour in the UK and Europe, and you so kindly hosted us at your home for a lovely house concert. Also hosted by your lovely wife Maria and your kids. And it was a lovely backyard party and chance to connect with people. So, that was a lovely experience, and thank you again for having us.
Charlie: It's kind of bookended this conversation, I think, because that was the first day we met when you were doing the final gig of your UK and Europe tour. We had a few people around the garden to watch you guys perform live, which was an amazing gig. And then we watched the first of the England World Cup matches together that evening, and that kind of set the tone. We then had a heat wave in the UK. We had a lot of similar garden parties with much inferior entertainment because we were obviously knocked out at South Bay. But it culminated with the World Cup Final in the garden yesterday. So, this feels like a nice way to bookend it all.
Melinda: Definitely. Definitely. So, you know, I want to talk about kind of your work and what you do and how it relates to creativity, of course, which is our main focus of the show. But I also want to talk about, you know, I've recently changed the tagline for the show a little bit. So it's… I talk about it being a show for creative seekers and exploring the deeper human stories behind people's creative work… and so, I'm just curious for you yourself, I know that you've (in addition to all the other things you do), you've written a children's book called The Swan, which you originally wrote for your daughter, and you host a sort of informal gathering of Thursday sunsets, where you get people together to watch the sunset in conversation.
And both of these things strike me as, you know, seeker-like activity. So, I'm curious: do you consider yourself a creative seeker, or even a mystic on some level. What does that mean for you?
Charlie: I think I’m very… I'm quite relatively sociable. I'm very curious, and I think especially over the last 10/15 years or so, I've tried to find ways to explore a little bit more, kind of what it's like to be human and a human-lived experience, and how to build deeper and more rounded conversations with those I meet. Because ultimately, I think that's the most fulfilling way we're going to get to spend our time, especially in the latter years of our life. Because the rest of my world is all around technology and kind of finding creative applications for emerging technology.
I think that the whole kind of conversational piece, you know, really kind of was… the fire of interest was ignited when I met a guy called John on the way to Morocco and a kind of big bike ride, and he had done a load of research on the art of conversation and the way he explained his thesis to me was that people can go through their lives and have a rich and successful life and retire when they're about 50, but then they spend the rest of their life, you know, coming back and actually having great conversations with people. And that's ultimately the most rewarding thing to do as a human. You know, you can climb the highest mountains, do paragliding, swim the deepest seas.
But really, in the twilight of your life, you really want to have rich conversations. So, I do think currently my life's purpose is to create great stories that I can then tell in the twilight of my years. So that when I'm 80 years old, when I'm not less socially mobile, hopefully people come to me. I'll be surrounded with people roaring, laughing at the the stories that I'm telling, and hopefully being able to engage with them in a meaningful way. So, that's a little bit about my frame.
Melinda: Yeah. Yeah. And I was having a very similar thought, you know, recently. After all the activity from the tour and this academic conference that I've just been to. You know, I'm here in Iceland for a few weeks and just contemplating, you know, little time to step back and think about things, and the other day, I just kind of had this thought, like, “Well, you know, all of these activities and all the things we do, and you know, for me, the podcast and the music and the teaching, and all of the stuff… ultimately, it's all about the connections, right? And building these connections and the quality of these connections.”
And you strike me as a connector, right? I mean, you've already connected me with several people, which I appreciate, and I see you going out and about in the world to conferences and talking to people about what they're doing creatively. So, for you, you sort of answered this question, but you know, conversation, absolutely making stories, making memories… but like, what is the importance of kind of community and network for you?
Charlie: Well, I think like, you reap what you sow, right? So, you know, I believe that I'm technology forward. I'm a bit of an optimist. You know, I believe I've got a good seventy/eighty years ahead of me, and I think a lot of that time will be working. And so, whether I meet people who are nine or 90, you know, I talk to them in the same way, and I hope they're going to be my friend. The more people I talk to, the greater the surface area of my serendipity. And so, you're going to, you know, be able to achieve more things in life with a kind of a longer and stronger network. You know, people say that your network is your net worth, and if all the people you meet along the way remember you in a positive way, then one day you might find a favor that you can call back upon, and then it's easier for you to do things.
So, in the short term, you know, it might be quite challenging to get out there and meet a lot of people on a day-to-day basis. But I probably enjoy that. I mean, at the top of the call, you know, “What have you been doing, Charlie?” I was like, “My weekly activity is hopping on my bicycle and cycling around London, meeting as many new or old acquaintances as possible, keeping their relationships alive.” Can we keep them or myself relevant? How can I be of the best service to you, and possibly, you know, you can unite and do something interesting in the future? And because ultimately, you know, great things. You know, I’ve run my own businesses for the last 20-24 years, and so, my definition of kind of being an entrepreneur is absolute madness. You know, it only survives and only works if you get lucky breaks.
But my favorite quote is that “You can only see what you believe is possible…” And you know, if you believe that that magic exists and that that can only happen if you've got some kind of ability to deliver alchemy, I fundamentally believe that alchemy can only really be produced if first you have chemistry. And relationships are all about chemistry, working out who you can get on with, what they can do, where your kind of the Venn diagrams of your life experience and kind of contacts can play in, and then you've got this opportunity to do more, and then everything becomes easier over time. So yes, practice.
Melinda: Yeah. I love the metaphor of alchemy. It kind of reminds me of what my podcast producer once kind of referred to as social capital. Right? It’s this web of connections that we can draw on to create things and manifest things. And I also love this phrase that you used, “Increasing the surface area of your serendipity.” I love this.
Charlie: Yeah.
Melinda: And it's interesting because I've been hearing this term. I often use the word synchronicity, kind of coming from a Jungian background, but I've been hearing, especially being in the UK recently, coming from this possibility studies conference, a lot of people using the word serendipity, which is a similar idea, right? So increasing the surface area of one's serendipity, I think, is a beautiful aspiration.
Charlie: Or a sensible way to live. (Laughter) Right? So if you can make that fabric like, then you become luckier, right? And in a world where, you know, increasingly… like, everything, you know, everything deserves a lucky break. You know, people… the most successful people say that you know, like, “The harder I work, the luckier I became.” You know, you still need a bit of luck to get a move on.
Melinda: Speaking of our mutual friend George, I messaged with him yesterday and let him know that I was doing the show with you today, and asked if there was anything in particular that I should ask you about. And I don't want to embarrass either of you, but I actually really loved what he said, and I want to share it with you. So, he said that, “You have an ability to make things happen often through sheer positivity. The ability to take everyone else across the finish line, also. But more importantly, it often becomes about the journey and not the destination. The destination means it's over, and we're all having so much fun. It's always an adventure.” So, how's that land for you?
Charlie: That's beautiful. I love George even more right now.
Melinda: Yeah. He might not say this to your face, right?
Charlie: You know, us boys can't talk very openly together. So we, I think, a lot of that kind of thinking has landed… before I moved to London in 2004, I had this job in Oxford, and I was doing alright. I was thinking that maybe I could live in Oxford and buy a house, and that's where I would be, or I could do something else. And I decided that maybe something else. So instead I got a bicycle… I cycled from Oxford to Harwich, got a boat to Holland, and cycled through Holland, Belgium, France, Spain, back in Portugal, Spain again, and then up to Cheshire and Fez, and Morocco.
And on that way down, you know, I was, you know, four months, 4000 miles on a bicycle with a tent on the back, camping in different places every night, meeting different people every day, and you know learning how to make friends with the neighbors, getting my French and Spanish a lot better along the way. When I came home, and people say, "Oh, Charlie! You’ve been away for a few months. Where have you been?” I'd say, "Oh, you know, I've just cycled all the way through these countries to Morocco.” 90-95% of the people would then say, "Oh, wow, what's Morocco like? (Laughter)
And at that moment, I was like, "It's really, really, really, really missed the point. And I think that, you know, that that then kind of built understanding of, you know, if you want to do something good, it's going to take a long time. It's going to be quite hard, like, kind of waking up every day and having to, you know, paddle on your own. It's, you know, it's mentally wearing at times. But secondly, the mass perception of destination culture. You know you're always looking at particular goals as the finish line. These finite moments in time. That whether that be kind of the go on a journey, you know, you don't really think about the airlines, but it's the states or the countries you fly over.
You just think about the start and end points. Whereas, you know, it's a lot more than that. And if you can learn to appreciate the day-to-day, and that's where the real work is done. That's where the real life is lived, and then that's a far more enjoyable experience. So, trying to focus a bit more on that and that way of thinking and making conscious actions has been an evolving theme.
Melinda: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's so… I love that he said that as well, and that you know we can… there’s so much in the process, like, which in creativity we talk about creative product versus process, and there's so much in that process, and so much in that journey, and so much valuable experience along the way. It’s not just about the goal or the destination. So, I love that story. I think it really illustrates.
Charlie: Yeah. And I think if you enjoy the process, the product is better. My ancestors, like, my family, they used to build/make chocolate, and they were very very keen on kind of workers' rights, and they were very proud that, you know, if they treated the people that worked with them in a good way, people would come to the factory to make Cadbury’s chocolate. They were encouraged to kind of sing and, you know, do some worship. Like, before they started their day's work at the factory, and then they built cricket grounds and tennis grounds to encourage their workers to go and take up sport and live their lives, and live a wide ranging, fulfilling life with looking after every aspect of it.
Then that was then going to (a) make them kind of more ethically sound as an organization, but (b) you know, it's actually going to make the products better. You know if you've got kind of a happy environment in order to create an output, the output will be better in its own way. And I think it's interesting that business is then bought by faceless multinationals, and the introduction of palm oil, and over industrialization of product. Those certainly believe the quality of that product has come down as a direct result.
Melinda: Yeah. Yeah. So that's an interesting segue, I think, because I've been talking about this actually with my partner Juro, quite a bit… about just kind of this capitalist machine that we're living in, and quality of life, and how can you find quality of life? You know, in your everyday working professional life, and not be sort of ground down by it. So, that kind of brings us nicely to the work that you do with emerging technologies, and, you know, these kind of working with AI assistants and voice technologies to try to help kind of make things easier for people potentially… and so, I'm curious to hear maybe a little bit about what's exciting for you in these technologies at the moment that you're working with, and how they can potentially make our lives better, easier. Make the world a better place.
Charlie: I'll give a bit of a kind of frame where this has all come from. So, for the last 26 years, I've been working with emergent technologies. I was selling websites for other people in '99. Had a software business in 2005. I started with a friend of mine building websites and Facebook applications, then hundreds of mobile apps, and we grew that from two people to about 50 people building hundreds of these digital products. And then in 2015, I was like, “Actually, instead of building an agency exchanging time for money, let's build a layer of technology to help people move to the next interface.”
And I'd seen the rise of the web, the rise of social, the rise of mobile. And for me, it was very obvious when Alexa launched the next way that people were going to engage with technology is through voice. So, for the last 11 years, I've been focused on AI assistants and voice engagement, very much like your friends Siri, Gemini, and Alexa. And so, you know, we help brands show up there. So, if you have to say kind of Alexa opened Chase Bank or Starbucks, then that's interfaced that we've waited to do that. And so, the question was kind of how do I think about enjoying this on a day-to-day basis?
Melinda: Yeah. Like, how can these technologies actually improve our lives, make them better, or even make the world a better place? Like, I know some of the, you know, apps that you've worked on are focused not only on business applications but like, say public information campaigns and things like that.
Charlie: Yeah. So I've got some practical examples. So, you know, we work with different charities. So, work with say NSPCC, which is the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and we have Martin Freeman running radio ads saying, "Hey! Look. I'm Martin Freeman. You're listening to this on a smart speaker at home. Not all homes are as nice as yours. To find out what we do at the NSPCC and donate, just say Alexa and NSPCC, where you find out more about charity, and then you can donate directly using kind of at the Amazon Pay account.” So, we work with the government to make sure that people understand a little bit more about how they can talk to their children about online safety, giving kind of practical hints and tips.
But then I've got quite a technology positive, kind of vision for the future here. You know, at the moment, you know these devices are only starting to get a little bit of context about how they can help your lives. And so, if we think about our lives, you know, we could for the next 50 years, stay in touch and, you know, perhaps miss out on opportunities where we could we could rendezvous again. Whereas if our assistants actually start to take away what I call the kind of the “admin scum around our lives”… I don't want to be spending hours chasing down parking fines to figure out which is the best insurance for me to have.
These are things I'd like, or kind of administration I'd like to delegate to my assistant. And as my assistant, better and better understanding my wants and needs, it'll be able to take more and more of that off my plate. I'll be able to have a bit more leisure time. It will also be able to have a look and see exactly where you might be, or where George might be. He might be flying through, might be having coffee in the same town, and we could have more of these kind of serendipitous meetings. We can actually kind of action them. We can kind of build a layer of kind of actionable serendipity. That’d be great.
And so, you know, the way I think about this is my life's great, and if on my 80th birthday giving a speech to to my friends and family at that point, I'll be giving a great speech. But there's an opportunity for technology to come in, find out more of the things that I like to do, want to find out more of these interesting opportunities that I might be missing if I'm left to my own devices, and you know, I can amplify my hopes and desires with technology in that version of the future, I'm giving a slightly different speech at a life which is slightly better lived, where I've been able to kind of find more opportunities to myself. So, I think there's a lot more to come. I think that there's a lot of a good bit of teaching and kind of AI applications as well.
I see how lots of organizations, their management teams are thinking about the application of AI. And the first question that always gets asked when I walk in the room is, "How far behind our competition are we?” And I think everyone's just trying to work it out. I think this is a new tool, and we're just trying to work out how to use this new tool. There's a lot of hype around these large technology companies have got ungodly amounts of funding, much of which they're spending on marketing, and that marketing is using a very blunt instrument, saying, "If you do not use our technology, you will fall behind. Please pay for our technology right now.” And that's, I think, causing a lot of fear and unease within the market. And I think that we've got a bit more time to work with it. So, I think we can all take a break.
Melinda: Yeah. It’s funny because I was actually just reading some articles last week about how, because of this sort of “AI race”, we might call it, you know, that a lot of companies are actually telling their employees to cut back on their AI use, or not use the most, you know, current most advanced version because it's costing them so much money to do so. So, interesting finding that balance. But also, so something that always jumps to mind for me, you know, I'm very curious about these emerging technologies and AI applications, but I also have this sense of, you know, privacy concerns, and I'm sure that must come up a lot in your line of work. So, how do you navigate that, or how do you talk to people who are maybe concerned about giving over their whole lives to AI or to technology?
Charlie: It's because… I've fielded this question for the last 20 years, right? So, when people started to, you know, build websites, you know, they (and we built websites for them, you know), they were worried about the information the websites could collect, even if that's kind of anonymous. Kind of our trafficking data. Then when we started to build mobile phone applications, I remember in 2009/2010 when we started to build iPhone and Android and BlackBerry apps, and people were like, "Well, I don't know why you’ve got to build an app because I'm only going to use my phone for making phone calls, receiving texts. I'd never ever use it for like. banking or anything else.”
And people were very worried about using mobile because it was going to track them and be able to take a bit more data. I think at some point there's always this kind of… and it's usually by these big tech companies being very good at nudging a whole, and because they don't really care about a time frame; they just need something to happen over the course of time, gently making you comfortable and delivering way more value than you see is the perceived threat of somebody else having access to your data. So, your mobile phone is hacking you in 100 different ways now, and then the platforms are actually quite good at making you see a load more benefit than that concern.
The same as moving forward with these AI models, which are learning very very quickly because conversation is, you know, the best way to build a trusted relationship. And so you can get a whole load of insight through having these natural language kind of conversations, which is how by presenting that interface all over the place, and that's just presenting it with smart speakers as a another interface within the home. So, you know, the platforms are always going to be slightly ahead of regulation. I think the people… concerns about their own lives are slightly misjudged. I don't… I think that there's very few people that are important enough to be bulged.
So, like, the average person, myself, I've got very few security concerns because I know that the way that these technologies use the data is in a very anonymized way just to understand generalized behavior, so they can sell stuff or deliver better services to us. So, yeah, I think it's an overhyped concern. I think it always has been because as long as, you know, the individual is getting more utility, and it's usually at very little or no cost that, you know, the privacy concerns will go away over time.
Melinda: Yeah. Interesting. Okay. And I'm curious also when we were chatting a little bit about doing this podcast, we were talking about kind of this overlap between creativity and entrepreneurship… and you being a sort of longtime serial entrepreneur, I'm curious how you see yourself using your creativity in the context of your entrepreneurial activities within these emerging technologies. Like, where do you see your own creativity kind of coming into play in terms of looking for business opportunities or developing apps, and this kind of thing?
Charlie: Well, I'm a trier, right? And I'm very very curious, and I'm very positive, and I've got very high tolerance to failure and kind of, you know, risk excites me a little bit. I think the first actually was how the first business I started with a friend of mine, Ed… we started a marketing agency, but very quickly would try other ideas. We had a business putting ads on water cooler bottles, we bought a speed dating franchise, and then we helped another business launch that would be a ski tracker, and then we had mobile phones come out. So, you know, we’d try and we'd fail a lot of these different things, and along the way, kind of get better and better understand what works.
Then the software business, you know, we grew that during that time. I was like, "This is great, but we're learning again by making all these mistakes. Are there better frameworks to kind of understand what is valuable, how to capture that?” So, I've been on a number of accelerator courses with kind of different universities, and university and corporate partnerships, and you know, I think because kind of building within that domain with building apps when they've just come out, and building websites or Facebook applications when they're very brand new. Having had, I think six or seven years with that agency environment, I think we've built about 350 or 400 digital products. We could have… someone would say, "I've got this idea for an app, how much it can cost, and what might it look like…” We'd run a process. We'd probably win between, I suppose, three… one in three, kind of, one in five.
We'd actually win, but they'd all expect us to come up with an idea about how we could use this new technology to achieve that goal, and we're working with, you know, people like Shell Oil, or we worked with Durex, we worked with Cancer Research, worked with BBC, worked with Boeing… like, all sorts of different organizations. They'd all come with a brief and kind of a business challenge, and we'd then have to, you know, go through and slightly create a process and work out how we can use this new… our understanding of the new technology to then deliver against that because it was this challenge. I think that process that goes seven years of like “next”, isn't it?
So, you know, you're doing one or two of these a week, two or three of these a day, maybe, and you know getting better and better at applying kind of a creative understanding of a new technology to a business challenge. That then built that kind of muscle in my mind, and then you can then apply to other domains. And so, you know, alongside, kind of starting to work with Alexa 10 years ago, I then also mentioned you know that book for Sienna, which was kind of a side quest. But then, also kind of got more in deep understanding. Kind of, I went through a mindful-based stress reduction course to mindfulness every day, and built out another business called The Moment Company,building a physical product specifically to help people take more mindful moments during their day, so that you ended up not living your life on autopilot, but making conscious decisions.
And so, you know, it's really like once an idea forms, then try and speak to lots of people about it. As if many people tell you it's crazy, it's probably worth exploring further. (Laughter) And, you know, and then, if you have… you can build enough conviction in your own mind, then you go ahead with it. So, I think there's a lot of muscle memory, a lot of reps to get to this point. And there's, you know… I've got a long list of businesses that I'd like to explore that continually get added to. And you socialize them. And the minute you were you going to do something, then my approach is like, tell as many people as I could possibly tell that I'm going to go and do this thing that I've built.
Like, lots of mini social contracts, so that if the next time I meet them, I haven't made some progress, I'd feel like a fool. And then that's what I thought I could have tried into my own operating system to make sure I can double down on forward momentum.
Melinda: Yeah. I love that actually, because, you know, at Syncreate, we talk a lot about accountability partnerships. And it's just that. Right? It’s like having other people that you tell like, “This is what I'm doing. This is what I'm working on.” And you know, then you've put it out there in the world in some sort of concrete way and have somebody to kind of check in with about it. But I also love what you said about this kind of, you know, tolerance for failure, because I think that is so extremely important in creativity. You have to be willing to try things out, and not everything's going to work. And I'm also curious that -
Charlie: And it's okay for things not to work. I mean, it's like failing. It's alright. It's part of the learning journey. The mindset that I think there’s too much concern about what failure might look and feel like. I'm very accepting. I think within my teams, I always say that I make decisions when I'm about 70% sure of it being the right direction. Because then I am very happy with making 30% of the wrong decisions most of the time. Please help me with that framing. As other people will only ever make decisions at 95%. And yes, they are making, you know, they're making fewer mistakes, but I think they're missing out on a whole load more learning throughout their life. And ultimately, it's a slower path.
Melinda: Yeah. And we often learn the most from the “failures” or, you know, just the trial and error process itself. But I also love what you said about, you know, sharing what you're working on, because I think, you know, a lot of people feel, especially with their creative work, that they have to sort of like, hoard it and not tell anyone because somebody might take their idea or something like that. But it's come up in the show before, you know, that actually sharing your ideas or putting them out there, rather than, you know, holding on to them so tightly… it helps them, you know, get made. It helps you find collaborators potentially to help you achieve your vision or like you're saying, you know, some kind of accountability rather than holding it so close out of fear.
Charlie: I completely agree. Let's say the ideas are… it's the execution that counts. And, you know, that bringing together of an idea and the right team at the right time and the right execution, that’s a very, very hard balance to deliver. So, I think the more you can socialize ideas as clearly as possible, you then find the relevant experts to tell you whether it's going to write or not. Then if you do find the right experts that you then share that chemistry with, then you've got a better chance of developing something out. I've got an amazing, amazing adoration for solo founders. It's not something I'd ever… I've got to understand.
I believe my weak points, my blind spots. So, yeah. Just the more you can talk it into existence, the better and the quicker it will take shape. More likely here has got to take might.
Melinda: Yeah. Absolutely, I love that. So, kind of, last major question I have for you, since you're working on the edge of these emerging technologies always, I'm curious like, what's on the horizon? Or you know, what do you see as something potentially really exciting that is emerging in this technological space at the moment?
Charlie: Well, I mean, the big moment is agents and so, you know, this is the concept of, you know, with a tool that has a little bit more agency to act on your behalf. And, you know, you've got to have trust before that happens. And so, I think this will happen slowly, but the way that it then builds out can actually be massively life changing. So if, for example, you know, you are happy to choose a - going back to you on no insurance, you want you to have an intermediary agent do daily checks on your home insurance, your life insurance, your car insurance to check if it’s the best deal that you can get in the market. You're happy for it to then go and work and apply for that best thing, then that's something I'll never have to do in my life.
Now, that's quite a big, bold statement. I have to go through a load of barriers to trust that agent is always going to work in my best interest, because that maybe hasn't happened in the past, but that's one small… that’s kind of one small example. But you bubble this up to the assistant. So, you choose Siri or Gemini or ChatGPT or Claude, whoever you want to be as your assistant, you know, day-by-day. We probably year-by-year, will gain more and more context around things and you will start to trust the output. You know, hallucinations are a thing and they're still being worked out. Not great engineering at this stage of the technology adoption cycle, but you know, that will be worked out for specific domains.
You will then go absolutely… actually every time this gets this right for me, you know, it might be from your weekly shop to booking airline tickets, whatever it is, that agency, you just… instead of saying “Can you try and, you know, show me the best prices for this flight or do some research just like, can you find me the best price for this flight? You know all of my criteria.“ You know, these are giving you hours back in your life. And as these compound, then, you know, your life becomes a little bit less admin happy and you could get a little bit more leisure time to do what you want. The worry there is that you spend more time on just scrolling social media, which has far better understanding of you.
So, I think the thing we need to do is turn up what we do, which is rightly human. So, more or less screen time, more human contacts. You know, go and kiss the grass, whatever you need to do to get to nature. I think that's really, really important to build into the fabric of your life. I think I would have gone mad if I had gone to this every day on the underground. Used my bicycle, every day. And I think it’s the best thing I've ever done for myself, myself. I'm away from screens and in the every day.
Melinda: Yeah. So, I love like, where we're coming to is like, kind of using technology to actually free up more quality of life. So, around that thought, I'm curious… I usually like to end each episode with what I call a Creativity Pro Tip. So, is there anything related to that? Like, you know, just how we can use technologies to actually create more of that social time, of that family time, of that community time? Like, maybe somebody who's slightly skeptical or slightly new to some of these technologies. What could be like, a baby step for them to explore?
Charlie: So, my technology Pro Tip is a technology abstinence, right? So, I go for a run in the morning before the family wake up. And I do not take my headphones with me. Right? So it's time just for me. Right? So I run down to the river and I think about (I was given this technique by a board member of ours), and, you know, you've got a thousand things that you might want to do that day, that week, that month. And, you know, I run through those all in my mind when I'm running along, and I come back with a list of three things. So, I never write down lists of three things to do. So, I come back and that whole kind of, big fog of things that I might like. If there's any three things that I do either before breakfast or kind of before lunchtime that day, I'll write down those three things.
And it just helps that ultra-filtration process of kind of what are the exciting, most meaningful, most impactful things that I can do that day? And that way, I'm always ahead of the day, you know? Sure, I can use different kind of tools, technologies to do things more efficiently these days, but I think one of the best things that you can do when thinking about your day is to kind of get away from it all, to write the lists, and that's where your mind can really get creative about the problem solving. And there's a specific bit of the park that seems to be the sweet spot because of like, it's on the way back and it's that way, like, I have my unique… this is one spot I can write… I can't wait to get to (laughter) because I get this eureka moment and like, there's, you know, there's always a lot to process.
But I think, just giving yourself some time space to process things. You know, your best… the best thinking happens in a subconscious mind. So, like, this waking up first is best. I l like getting it done before you wake up, like out of bed on the road. And then there's this spot. It all starts to make sense. And then, you know, that works for me anyway.
Melinda: Yeah. I love that. Stepping away. Organic time. Simplifying the to do list. Love it.
Charlie: Yeah. Get to the river. Yeah. (Laughter)
Melinda: Get to the river. Exactly. Get outside. So, Charlie, it's been so great to chat with you. We've covered so many lovely topics today. And so, if people want to learn more about you and what you're up to, and what you're working on, what are the best ways for them to find you?
Charlie: Yeah. So I’m trying to get LinkedIn famous, so you can find Charles Cadbury on LinkedIn. Please, please connect with me. My business is Say It Now. You can find that at sayitnow.ai. And I've got a personal website at charlescadbury.com. I try to make myself very approachable, so please feel free to reach out if you’d like to have a chat.
Melinda: Find and connect with us on YouTube and social media under @syncreate. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and leave us a review. We're recording today with Record ATX Studios in Austin, with Charlie joining us from London. The podcast is produced in collaboration with Mike Osborne at 14th Street Studios. Thanks so much for being with us, and see you next time.
