Podcast

Kevin Mooney (00:00.194)
So anyways, thank you for, for being here. I know it's super late where you're at. So thanks for working with me on this. yeah, I really appreciate it. What do you have to share today? I know you've got something.

Amit Shetty (00:01.635)
Let's go. Yeah.

Amit Shetty (00:13.73)
I'm

Amit Shetty (00:20.931)
So, well, I would say it's not late. I'm kind of a night owl. So for me, it's like this is a regular time even though I finished. Yeah. Yeah, it's like, you know, it's 10.30 PM for me, but it's like the time when I start exploring, you know, would sit.

Kevin Mooney (00:30.254)
This is, yeah, perfect. This is noon for you.

Amit Shetty (00:43.189)
Shandari after a day of work, would just sit either read comics, manga, go through some superhero stuff, do my research or watch Netflix. Or I would sit and nowadays just explore like wipe coding and all. But yeah, I think there is a lot of thing going on. think with the current volatile market, the way things are moving, the way creative industry is moving, it's a lot to unpack.

Kevin Mooney (00:50.082)
Yeah.

Amit Shetty (01:11.201)
This weekend itself, I was at an event arranged by a big company and we had VP of design from Microsoft and other agencies coming in and giving a talk and everyone was talking about AI. And I felt one of the things at least I would say in the last one year I felt we understand AI is here, but why does it have to be center stage everywhere?

Kevin Mooney (01:41.516)
Yeah, I agree.

Amit Shetty (01:41.665)
Right? It's like every conversation is like, AI this AI that and everything is like, you know, eventually AI will I'm like, yeah, we had like, if anyone who's a fan of sci fi has been living in the AI era, like we had

Kevin Mooney (01:57.678)
Forever.

Amit Shetty (01:58.787)
Yeah, Ready Player One was written 30 years back. The writer had already imagined how it would be living in a virtual world connected with a physicality. And we had, I think, 2014, the movie Her explored how people live with AI and what happens when AI goes sentient. I'm like, we've been there.

Kevin Mooney (02:05.08)
Mm-hmm.

Amit Shetty (02:25.953)
Human imagination was already way there where the tech is even trying to reach right now.

Kevin Mooney (02:32.607)
Right. It is a weird thing. Everyone is freaking out about it and it's the hot topic and everybody wants to talk about it. And here we are talking about it. It's something that you kind of slip into and it's a wild thing that it's just, it's what everybody wants to talk about constantly and only. And I get it, but it's like, we're not there yet with all of the

the technology. So there's still room for us to think. There's still room for us to do. We have to kind of grow with it and figure it out. So aside from that, what is else? What else is going on out there?

Amit Shetty (03:18.047)
Exactly. I understand. I come from 3D animation, VFX, and film's background. When I started studying, I think 2009 back then, at that point of time, think 2012 is when Life of Pi had won the Oscar for Best Animation. It had won Best VFX. I remember at that point of time, that studio went bankrupt.

Kevin Mooney (03:45.464)
Really? Wow.

Amit Shetty (03:46.275)
Yeah, it's a thing. It's like they won the Oscar for the product they created, but monetary-wise, it was not doing well. Now, one of the things we learned was we had to build everything by hand. We had to model. If I want to model a human, I have to start with having their front and back sketches, build the model, then rig it. Now, AI is able to do that part.

easily because, well, as long as it has certain inputs, it is able to just calculate things and build it up. So that's where I feel, yeah, that eases my life. I'm like, now all I have to do is think what I do with the rest of time I'm saving.

Kevin Mooney (04:24.515)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (04:34.382)
Yeah, yeah. So that was like the bulk of the work though was the setup, right? All the modeling up front. So now what would you do with all your free time if that modeling is already there?

Amit Shetty (04:40.141)
Yeah, yeah.

Amit Shetty (04:49.065)
Now it's all about bringing the soul to the product. this is a fun that like I, there's a term called Meraki. So I don't remember exactly the origin. It's I think it's in the old scriptures of the Middle East or that side. So Meraki, the word means to put your soul into. And I feel as humans, as people, any work we do.

We spend our time. Spending our time means like from the time we are born to we are on a countdown to our death. Eventually, everyone is reaching that. So any work we are doing, we are spending our time. It means we are putting our life into it, what we have at hand. And that's something which is much more important in this era when computer can generate work, but can it generate the soul that we have?

So that's the time I would spend bringing my soul into the work now in a much more efficient manner.

Kevin Mooney (05:54.486)
I love that. Okay, so let me ask you this. If our jobs right now is to put our soul into that work, is there gonna be a time when these models have learned from all of our soul work that we've put into it, and then that step is cut out of the process?

Amit Shetty (06:16.707)
They won't understand how to put a soul, but they can understand the patterns. We have seen, I can still imagine watching Wally and the end scene of Wally where everyone is just living in the virtual. And I can imagine that scenario coming in because then machines are like, we just need human intelligence to drive us in spaces where we are not able to. Because end of the day, every machine works on logic, it's calculations.

We humans don't. Right? It's one of the things that you know, what do you say? As a creator, any form of creator, if you don't create, creation is basically taking the chaos that is out there in the universe in your head, channeling it through your hands or channeling it through your skills and giving it a shape. So you get more

Kevin Mooney (06:48.62)
Yeah, no, of course not.

Amit Shetty (07:16.685)
tensed or how do you say this? You get more irritated when you don't create because that's your calling and machines don't worry about that. It's us who worry about that.

Kevin Mooney (07:25.475)
Yes.

Kevin Mooney (07:29.869)
Right.

Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, it makes sense. think that is not only a hundred percent true. It kind of sums up a lot of the way that I think and my reality. Cause there is a lot of stuff in here and it's all very messy and it's everywhere. And what I really like to do is try to take all those pieces, put it together and deliver it in some format that has some sort of meaning to somebody else in the world.

whether that's through marketing and advertising or website or UI, UX, whatever it is, but that is what I'm, I'm, I think I'm doing. I think that's what I'm doing. So it was really cool how you sum that up. And that is a really great explanation for how the machines can never take that. They can't do that. They can put patterns together and they can probably put that together in a way that makes sense.

Amit Shetty (08:12.973)
Thanks.

Kevin Mooney (08:31.318)
and maybe even has a little bit of emotion, but it can't quite get that far and it probably won't ever.

Amit Shetty (08:39.811)
Yeah. if you look at how... So in the concept, like in painting, right, in creative painting, there's something called a primal mark. Primal mark is where on a blank canvas, you put your first stroke, right? And it is said that anything and everything you want to make is already made somewhere in the world.

It's not like we are inventing something new. It's just that we are taking that idea, refining it in a certain way that works for us in a given context. And any time we come up with a new brief, a new client, they will be like, can you make me something like this? For us, a typical example we get is, can you make our product like Apple? I'm like, I understand.

Kevin Mooney (09:34.604)
Why?

Amit Shetty (09:37.579)
I'm like, understand because well, for them, the benchmark of top experience is Apple. There are hundreds of different things that might not work, but then for them, there's a benchmark. And till we get a primal mark of their own product, they won't be able to imagine what possibly we can do.

When you do branding, branding is such a wide concept where you unless and until we work as therapists for brands, I think you work as therapists for brands where you bring in multiple people. If it's the same person, you talk to them to understand what is going on so that you can provide them direction on, okay, this is how you can solve it.

Kevin Mooney (10:15.971)
Yes.

Kevin Mooney (10:28.48)
Right. Yeah, it's, I've seen this recently. In fact, I saw this with a lead that I'm talking to right now. They hired an interior designer to do, well, the interior design of this new space. And I've listened to them tell me what the concept of this thing is and what their goals are.

And then I've seen the initial designs and I'm like, none of those things match. And so what I realized was the person that was hired to do those designs is just trying to do what they are told to do. They're not bridging that gap between what they see this project as to what the goals are, to what the actual concept is, and then bringing that to life.

They're just kind of doing what they're told. And it's, it's really not great. It's not great at all. It doesn't look good and it doesn't match everything. And it's just, I like to live in that space because I'm not the best executor. I'm not the best doer in the world, but what I can do is, is take in all of the information under the umbrella and say, these things match. This doesn't match.

Amit Shetty (11:43.907)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (11:55.736)
We have to change that we have to Bob, we have to weave and then let's bring in somebody who, who matches that style that we're talking about here at this higher level. But if you do it the other way, make me look like Apple, then you actually are handicapped and you are, you're handcuffed, right? Because you won't ever realize the potential that you can be in terms of a brand or an experience or anything like that.

because now you're playing under their guidelines and you have no idea what went into those guidelines. It's a very interesting concept. like how you sum that up there.

Amit Shetty (12:33.933)
No, and absolutely. think this is something I read in one of the books that there are three types of people. So one are what do you say robots? Basically you tell them they will just do that. Two, it's people who act as robot, but they have their opinions. So you give them instruction, they will give you like, okay, multiple options. Okay, we can do.

So you have an initial start and you have a destination to roots. A robot will take you like, okay, whatever is the root they know, they will take you. But someone who understands the context right now, they will be like, okay, we are here, we need to reach here. We have three different options. This is where we might get stuck in traffic, but it would be easier. And if you agree to their opinion, they will take you there or.

you will be like, just stick to this route. And the third kind of people are people who are experts. Experts in understanding what is the problem that you are having, why are you having, and how do we achieve that in the least resistive manner. And I think as brand builders or as designers, we live somewhere between, you know,

this person two and person three, but then a lot of times we end up as person one because beyond the point I'm like, yeah, this is the best options I'm giving, but then if you feel you don't like it, fine, you're the one who's paying the money. So all good, I'll just follow you.

Kevin Mooney (14:20.108)
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, I think that's the thing that you just described is why most people in this industry experience burnout. because either a, you are person one and you just get tired of being the robot or, or B you are person two or three or a combination or in the middle. And you're like,

No, we can always hire more robots to do this thing, but we have to start here and we have to figure out what is the smoothest way to get from point A to point B. And the reality is it's never a smooth line. It's never a straight line. It's, it's a mess. And are you the type of person who wants to pay me to help figure that out? And we run into that constantly.

I'm literally in that experience with that same lead that I'm telling you about right now. You just keep hearing it and you're seeing these data points being disconnected. I don't know, it... For me, it might make me nervous at the chance that I could lose that lead by telling them what I really think. So I'm working on that to be better and upfront as soon as I see it.

say it and ultimately if they choose not to hire me, I can feel good about not being hired because I did the right thing for who I am because I want to live in that expert zone. But maybe it is that what do they say? Imposter syndrome. Maybe it's that where you kind of like, I just I don't want to go full in and become that expert because

It just feels like you're speaking so high and above people and it's an odd feeling. But that's my life.

Amit Shetty (16:16.883)
And yeah, I'll tell you one thing, something that I've realized over the time, imposter syndrome comes to only those people who have a very high taste for certain things, but they're like, okay, my skill level is not there yet. So basically think about it.

Kevin Mooney (16:36.75)
That is interesting. That is really good. Keep going, keep going.

Amit Shetty (16:46.093)
You know, we all watch, let's say, MasterChef. You watch MasterChef Australia, US, right? We see Gordon Ramsay cooking these fancy dishes. I'm like, same ingredients we have. We know the recipe. Maybe our kitchens have the similar setup. But then where we fail is, it's not same as Ramsay, right? Because Ramsay has become our benchmark that, OK, this is the dish I want to

But then we don't realize Gordon Ramsay had to struggle years to be able to do that in half an hour. We don't have that experience to you say, okay, just smell it and know that, okay, this ingredient is done almost here. Let it be half cooked so that when I'm plating, that comes with experience, that comes with hitting dead ends, taking detours and whatnot.

Kevin Mooney (17:40.898)
Yeah, yeah. That is really good. That's a great analogy also, by the way. Yeah, and I can tell you from experience that I don't have a ton of experience in some of those more expert situations. And I could make the case that it is because most of my business has been in this little local town that I live in.

Amit Shetty (17:43.851)
It is, it is.

Kevin Mooney (18:09.664)
And so the people that I work with don't have a lot of experience. And so I've been trying to drag my clients up for so many years that when I get an opportunity with people who do have the experience, then I start to kind of cower down a little bit. And that's a very weird concept in itself because because you're right.

The ingredients are the same, the process is the same, the tools are the same, it's the same thing, but it's some other pressure that is put on us probably by ourselves and that's where that imposter syndrome comes into play. It's a very interesting concept.

Amit Shetty (18:54.401)
And that's where, know, on, you know, just taking a little bit step back on what you are saying, right? So when I look at design, design or any creative venture, it's like building a transportation system, right? So we are at point A and we need to go to point B. Now let's say we are traveling, let's say you're planning to travel to Washington DC from your place.

you have multiple options. You can take a car, you can walk, you can take a bicycle, you can even take a caravan, take a flight, or even maybe take a cruise and reach Washington. There are multiple ways, but it's all about what is your budget and what is your deadline. And if, let's say, you will be like, OK, this is the fastest way, but it is costly because, well,

If fastest way is taking a flight, but flight would cost you what, $500,000, right? But it will save you time because the system is in place. You get in, book a ticket, get into the flight, reach your destination, right? That's a straightforward flow, but not every client comes in with that, that, we have so much budget. Every time we are like, oh, we have limited budget. That's like the...

See, this I like to tell people, sometimes your aspirations is to have a Lamborghini or a Porsche as your car, but then your budget is of a second-hand dealer's car, which is...

Kevin Mooney (20:38.637)
Hahaha

Yeah.

Amit Shetty (20:42.729)
Right, so as a dealer what they can do is maximum take a car and just slap a Porsche Luga and he's like here's your Porsche for $500. That's it, go drive away.

Kevin Mooney (20:50.402)
Right, right. Yes. Yeah, it's a real. It's a real thing in that zone and I deal with it a lot. You know, there's been a few situations where people come in and they have the right amount of budget for the thing that they're trying to achieve, and that's really exciting. I think it becomes more of a challenge when they do have that budget, but they won't tell you what it is. And you're like, you're like.

Amit Shetty (21:16.781)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (21:18.366)
What game are we playing here? Do you want me to try to guess at this? Do you want to just share it? How does that go? And so it's, it might be different in your space because you know, the company is setting the budget at that point in time. And I'm, I'm curious maybe if they, do they ever bring you in to talk in those budget meetings?

Amit Shetty (21:43.875)
So over the last 13 years, I think this is the first time I've been on the product side of the company. I've worked with agencies all throughout my life. So with agencies, it was always that, OK, this is the budget. This is the timeline. So your job is to execute it, get it done. When I shifted to UX design six years back, and I have worked with multiple clients, and we used to be like,

Kevin Mooney (21:54.285)
Right.

Kevin Mooney (22:01.877)
Yeah.

Amit Shetty (22:11.157)
If it's a startup, they are like, have two months. We want to go for funding, take our idea that is there, whatever base product we have. So we just have two months and this is the maximum budget we have right now so that we just want to get the conversation going, get investor interested. So what is it that you can build? And I think this is something I've learned when I credit Jose as my guide

for UI UX and design per se, because when I was studying my master's in animation, that's the time Jose and Christo had come up with the school. It was called the school earlier, and that's where I started getting interested in this field. When I got a chance to talk to Jose, be part of the community, I told him that, are one of the reasons that I am in this field now.

But coming to budget aspect, it's always been the case that there is always a limit. When there is no limit, the problem is we have very high expectations. That's another case. But the thing is, if I want to do a campaign, I can do it in $500, $5,000, $50,000, and $5 million also.

Kevin Mooney (23:22.58)
Yes, yes.

Kevin Mooney (23:36.942)
Mm-hmm.

Amit Shetty (23:37.027)
It's just the scale would be different, the reach would be different. Because, well, if your budget is $500, I can just get some local artists to do some content for you, and I can campaign design and print basic stuff, and we could still be creative with that. It's not like we can't be creative with limited budgets. Look at the whole era of social media. If you see way before, you know,

we had these setups. All these conversations used to happen on news channels or radio shows. We all imagined that, you need that setup to be able to do that. But then today we are having conversation across the globe. We just need a Wi-Fi connection and a laptop. At the end of the day, it's an idea that we want to execute. But what is the impact that we want to have? In current day and age,

Kevin Mooney (24:12.131)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Mooney (24:23.65)
Right. Yeah, it's wild.

Amit Shetty (24:36.159)
Every brand wants to be viral. They are like, we want to get into the audience and we want them talking. Everyone is doing that. And there is no formula for virality. Anything can go viral. You don't know what sounds. Exactly. Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (24:46.008)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (24:51.106)
Yeah, for sure. It's not. It's not follow steps one through five to be viral. Like this thing that we're doing right now could go viral. For sure. I mean, doubt it. I doubt it, but you know what I'm saying.

Amit Shetty (25:06.947)
I hope it goes viral. It will be fun to see, be a little bit more famous.

Kevin Mooney (25:08.6)
Yeah.

Yes, yeah, for sure.

Yeah, so I have a couple of questions. I'm not sure which way to take it. But maybe the first one is we were kind of chatting before we got started and you said you've been thinking about the meaning of a couple of words and you just used one of them and that was impact. I guess the first question is, are you looking at these two words which were.

Amit Shetty (25:22.647)
Yeah.

Amit Shetty (25:33.965)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (25:46.126)
intention and impact. Were you looking at them versus each other or were they kind of in their own silos and you were thinking about those just words, the meaning of those words?

Amit Shetty (25:59.255)
Yeah, so this one is, think recently I've been reading a book themed Radical Respect by Kim Scott. And I highly suggest her books. Like the first book I read was Radical Candor, where she talks about working with Apple, Google, and her experience in how to actually work with people and build team. And this is the second book where she talks about respect, like how do you draw boundaries

How do you stand up across biases? And in one of those, like in radical respect, she spoke about this thing called intention and impact. So intention in any conversation, right? Like the context she speaks about it, let's say in a corporate setting, we might just make a joke out of someone's race or someone's orientation. And our intention was to

Just be fun, lighten the mood. But the impact might be that person felt left out, they felt hurt. So your intention and impact might not always be the same, and you won't realize. And a lot of times, that's the thing happened. I think one of the recent examples was the American Eagle campaign. Their intention was something else, but then the impact it crossed, it gathered.

Kevin Mooney (27:11.576)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Mooney (27:21.986)
Mm-hmm.

Amit Shetty (27:28.405)
It was altogether different.

Kevin Mooney (27:30.382)
For sure. There's a ton of those examples, right? The Jaguar, it wasn't a rebrand. think it was, no, maybe it was a rebrand that they did. Yeah, so the whole thing is like, their intention was not to lose market share. was to be a little bit more inclusive.

Amit Shetty (27:35.095)
Yeah.

Amit Shetty (27:39.295)
It was it

Amit Shetty (27:49.539)
And that's where I think, these two words stuck with me constantly because we all set out with an intention, right? Like I would say design is intention. Without an intention, you won't be able to design. While art is exploration. You are exploring. You are just going with it.

Kevin Mooney (28:17.002)
Interesting. I like that.

Amit Shetty (28:17.087)
So they say, design is solving problem and art is asking questions.

Kevin Mooney (28:24.758)
I like that. I really like that.

Amit Shetty (28:25.603)
So when we come design and design per se, right now the market feel whenever we talk about design, it's UIUX, I'm like, no. Anything that solves is design. Way before there were like UIUX product designers, we had engineers solving these problems. Engineering as a discipline is about solving problems. Science as a field is about

exploring and solving problems or making sense of things. So that intention, so if my intention is to gain more followers or build a brand, I have to first understand what are potential impacts I can have. Let's say you are in a small town, you've been working, there would be what? 10 businesses and the business you are working for

Kevin Mooney (28:59.64)
Yeah.

Amit Shetty (29:24.183)
doesn't have any competitor. So they don't need to go out of the box. They can just keep simple and be more, what do you say, more approachable, and they will get people in. But same thing, you go from a small town to a bigger city, same idea. Every block has the same idea out there. How do you stand apart?

Kevin Mooney (29:37.336)
percent.

Amit Shetty (29:49.315)
So what's the impact we want to have and to reach that impact, what are the things we need to do? So if we understand the connection between our intention and the impact we want to have, it gives us a lot of clarity.

Kevin Mooney (29:55.843)
Right.

Kevin Mooney (30:04.12)
I like that. I think that...

Kevin Mooney (30:11.928)
I mean, something you just said about that small business who doesn't have any competitors resonates with me.

It's something I said in another podcast, but the reality is if you're a coffee shop down on the corner, you may not have to do a whole bunch of social media and run ads to get business in. You just kind of need to be yourself and that's how you're going to differentiate because everybody is already doing the other thing.

But I think it takes somebody with experience to understand that all of these buzzwords, including brand and strategy and UI, UX and social media and advertising, they don't always apply to every business in every situation. And...

I think that's, it might be what's wrong with the current business ecosystem right now is that everybody thinks that they have to do everything and then they do it the exact same way as the person who was successful at it. So now we have a bunch of businesses that are exactly the same out there. And from a consumer standpoint, we have no idea who to choose because they're all the same. Whether they look the same, sound the same, do the same thing, it doesn't really matter.

So we're all just kind of this, see you the same.

Amit Shetty (31:50.606)
And that's where, again, you follow a template, you don't stand apart. You are just a template. You are just a tweak template. And see, there is two aspects of these. So let's take a coffee shop example that you are saying. Let's say in a small town, you have a coffee shop that has been running for the last 50 years. So there are two generations who have been operating.

Kevin Mooney (31:59.041)
Yes.

Amit Shetty (32:17.271)
So the generation who started it, they are like, let's stick to the roots. We don't want to go fancy. The generation who's right now working on it, managing it, they're like, we can explore a little bit more just to be trained. But the third generation who's exploring social media, they see all this content, they're like, OK, let's bring in that wow factor. Everyone has their point of view, and everyone is valid.

It's not like it's wrong, right? Based on what generation you come in, your priorities are different. But if my coffee shop has been running for the last 50 years in a small town where I don't have any competition, I don't have to worry about my customers going away because these are customers who have tried and tasted and they have been coming here. And my menu would have been refined based on their feedback, right?

But if I go to a big city, like if I go to New York, every two blocks is a coffee shop. That's where the challenge is, how do I stand apart from my core product? Now, what happens is a lot of businesses forget that they still have to serve good coffee and not good content.

Kevin Mooney (33:23.49)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Mooney (33:39.584)
Right, right, that is so big.

Amit Shetty (33:42.787)
Good content can just get you so much of exposure, but if your coffee is not good, people are not going to stay.

Kevin Mooney (33:51.97)
Yep. I did. I've said this a couple of different times and I use it in a lot of the sales meetings that I have and the lines of questions that I get from from leads are like, you know, can you do this? Can you do that? We need this. We need that. And a lot of my answers are always. I can do anything that you need.

But if your product or your service is bad or the community does not like it, it doesn't matter how much marketing or how much creative or how much of anything I put into it, it's not going to matter if they don't like it. And then the post that I wrote recently on Instagram was, no amount of marketing can fix broken leadership.

And it just comes from that idea of like if the leaders don't know where we're going, then it doesn't matter how much money we spend to bring people in. This is going to fall apart and your product could even be pretty good. I mean, we're toeing the line between a lot of famous people here. The Simon Sinek's of the world who say it's not what you do, it's why you do it.

Well, that why still comes from the top. It still comes from those leaders. And so they have to be very, very clear on what this whole thing is doing and who we're talking to and what it is. But I think if you've got excellent leadership at the top, you can probably make it, but it's really going to come down to the quality of the product. That coffee better be damn good.

Amit Shetty (35:41.943)
Exactly.

Kevin Mooney (35:41.952)
You can get away with shitty coffee in a very small town or the only coffee shop, but outside of that you can't. So these. I've I've I realized that when I have these conversations, there's a lot of. Levels in tears that I'm talking about, and so. I realize that when I say some of these things, people look at me and go, this guy's crazy. Now you have to do all these things. OK, yeah, you might live in New York.

And you might have to do all of these things and be really good at it. But over in this small town over here, you actually just need to exist. That's kind of that's kind of the thing. I want to ask a question though.

Because if we level the playing field, that means best practices and tools and philosophies. We level all of those items and we're all playing on the same field.

Kevin Mooney (36:49.322)
Now let's fold in intention and impact in there. And let's say that is the focus of the business. Is it advantageous to tell people what your intention is so that you do have the desired impact? Is that your differentiator? Is that a way of pulling your personal brand out or a personality out of a business or something like that? And I just, I'm trying to

pull together these very intangible concepts and put a glossy seal on it by stamping it on there is just being transparent and saying, this is my intention behind these moves that I'm making. That way no one's actually offended by the moves that you make or maybe they're less offended. And then maybe does that amplify the impact that it has? I'm sorry, that was a lot.

Amit Shetty (37:41.283)
Thanks.

Amit Shetty (37:47.049)
No, no, no. I'm glad we get to talk so openly. One of the things, I think this is a factor that communication studies. At core, communication is not what you say. It is how it is perceived at the receiver's end. Impact is always going to be how the target audience has actually felt. Your intention would have been different.

Kevin Mooney (38:07.544)
Mm-hmm.

Amit Shetty (38:15.959)
Your intention was, okay, I want to 10K customers. My intention was to get more customers. Whatever I launched went viral. I got 50K, 1 million customers who came in. Well, it exceeded my intention. My impact was right. But what if these customers just came in as a hype train?

Kevin Mooney (38:16.056)
Mm-hmm.

Amit Shetty (38:45.059)
If you want to get 10K customers, do you want to get 10K customers in one go? Do you want every month 10K customers to keep coming? A hype train will last you for a short time. You might get 50K customers in one month and then you won't even get 500 customers next following month. It means your intention was fine, your impact you desired was there, but

Kevin Mooney (38:54.307)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Mooney (39:07.159)
Right.

Amit Shetty (39:13.717)
It just didn't follow through. It means there was lacking. It lacked something somewhere. If you look at the current trends, the Laboubou dolls, the Dubai chocolate, all these things, it's all marketing, end of the day. Laboubou works on the concept of exclusivity. If you remember as kids, in cereal boxes, we used to get those limited edition toys and cards.

Kevin Mooney (39:18.776)
Mm-hmm, interesting.

Kevin Mooney (39:29.507)
Yeah.

Amit Shetty (39:42.069)
It's the same damn concept. It's just refined in a different way. Right? And again, if we look at the term influencer, influencer is an old marketing term. It's like, you know, people who are in power, they do something, they influence a set of people. These people who are in a place of power, they start doing the same and then it spreads as a trend.

Kevin Mooney (39:42.21)
Yep. Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (40:12.258)
Yeah.

Amit Shetty (40:12.483)
You look at the medieval period, those corset and the big wigs, if you're seeing Bridgerton and Pride and Prejudice where half of these dresses, it doesn't make sense. But then the high class used to do that because they wanted to stand apart from the commons. The commoners were like, since high class is in, let's adopt a basic version of it. It was back and forth between these elements.

Kevin Mooney (40:30.296)
Yeah.

Amit Shetty (40:43.459)
At end of the day, what we are trying to say is, yes, you can have the Dubai chocolate, you can have a LabooBoo-based content, but you're still riding on LabooBoo's viral train. That is going to disappear after a point. Trends will come and go, but what is your core story?

Kevin Mooney (40:57.058)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Mooney (41:03.438)
Right.

Amit Shetty (41:05.027)
8.

Kevin Mooney (41:06.094)
So in your opinion, how do you tell that story through intention to have impact?

Amit Shetty (41:19.073)
Yeah, that's an interesting case, right? So now that I work, so I've worked in entertainment, advertising, films, and now been in digital, right? For me as a kid, you know, animation, cartoons, Power Rangers were like, you know, my go-to spaces for, wow, this is something that I still watch Power Rangers and Pokemon, because they were

something which I don't see in my everyday life. I'm like, I wish I could live in their world. And that is like, know, I want something amazing. I want to build something amazing, but how amazing it should be when I talk to a client in digital product space, what I've realized, like, you know, what I've seen over the period of time, it doesn't matter how good your tech, well, it matters how good your tech is because that defines how the experience is. But then,

Kevin Mooney (41:50.062)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (42:15.469)
sure.

Amit Shetty (42:16.451)
At end of the day, it's about the customer. If my customers just want to transfer money from their account to other account, they will choose whichever is the easiest and least error-prone platform. It doesn't matter how fancy things we build. the customer is going to have to do 10 steps just to send $1, they're like, no, I would just

Kevin Mooney (42:44.376)
Yeah.

Amit Shetty (42:46.285)
choose something else which is not so great, but it works.

Kevin Mooney (42:49.975)
right for sure.

Amit Shetty (42:52.083)
Right? And end of the day, again, I feel there is no... Yes, there are bad designs, but there is design and there is design that works in the given context. Yes, we can always be Apple's and we can always be the Airbnb or Meta of the world, Google's and Microsoft. But we have to realize those people can afford to do mistakes. They have billions of dollars with them. Right? We don't have the money.

or not every brand has the same amount of money or leeway to experiment, explore. Like Google, if you see, sometimes you will just see a new feature that comes in. Google has the bandwidth of people and the money to pour in to build just that test it out. And if everything is working, it's fine. If not, well, they have a huge graveyard of features that are products that have been built and scrapped. But not a mom and pop shop. Mom and pop shop,

They would have their life savings, whatever little profit, post all their expenses and building. They're like, OK, we want to improve. So our solution has to work in the given context. Let's say if you have only 5,000, sure, in 5,000, can only do this much. And this much can gain you so much following. So let's say if I'm going to

Kevin Mooney (44:07.064)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Mooney (44:13.859)
Yeah.

Amit Shetty (44:21.047)
to do for a moment for coffee shop. We can just do a short video or call a fairly decent, not a very big influencer. And we can just invite them saying that, your travel and maybe your food and stays with us, come in, experience, and you share with your community. We don't need to do the recording. And we're like, OK, we will just take care of it. And we just want you to experience that.

Kevin Mooney (44:43.384)
Yeah.

Amit Shetty (44:51.541)
And then based on their opinion, end of the day, they can get you the virality.

Kevin Mooney (44:57.816)
Mm-hmm.

Amit Shetty (44:59.251)
Or we can hire a huge agency, do a fancy photo shoot, video shoot, create a whole content strategy, and be on everyone's feed. That requires a lot of money.

Kevin Mooney (45:11.0)
Yes, it does. Or at least a lot of effort and a lot of time.

Amit Shetty (45:15.497)
Yeah. Right. And that's where the balancing act comes in. And it's not balancing from us designers perspective. It's end of the day. Does my customer have the money to afford it? Right. Let's say if the rebranding projects that you're doing, you charge a certain value. But same thing if tomorrow Google or Apple approaches you for a project.

you will charge them 10x not because you're going to do something different, but the brand you are going to do, their value is that much.

Kevin Mooney (45:47.736)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Mooney (45:57.026)
Right? For sure. Yeah. I mean, that's one of the reasons that I have not put my prices on my website, but it's also the reason that I put my prices on my website. And now it's the reason that I'm like, I should remove those prices from my website because you're, you're playing on multiple fields at once. You know, what league are we playing in? We playing in the top tier league, the middle league, the bottom league.

And I'm going to offer the prices. Sure. A hundred percent according to the brand that I'm working with, but also if you're a mom and pop shop, I don't want to take all of your money. And I might be able to just give you a quick, easy solution and let you go to the person. Number one, the robot to do the thing for you. But what you paid me for was the advice. Okay. This is what you need to do and go there.

So I've put my prices up because I want people to understand that this stuff costs money. But at the same time, you get a bigger lead that comes in and you're like, well, I don't want them to see those prices because that's not what I would want to charge them. So yeah, it is a balancing act and it is a big game. And that is kind of the reason that I try to operate under this, this little tagline of businesses bullshit, because that is a very

bullshit way of operating. It's just this very intangible. There's no reason why I should be doing this. I mean, there is a reason why I should be doing this, but it just all comes down to yeah, business is total bullshit. It's crazy.

Amit Shetty (47:42.371)
One of the things that we would have heard everyone say is, you get the work, dress for the role you want to get, not for the role that you are right now in. And it applies same thing. They'll be like, if you just keep designing logos and all your portfolio is just about logos,

Kevin Mooney (48:02.327)
Right.

Amit Shetty (48:12.109)
People are going to come and inquire you about logos only. They are not going to come and inquire saying that, do you do like a interior space redesign?

because they don't see, they don't have the trust factor yet on you that, you do this also. So I can trust you on to do this task also. And I think a lot of times, businesses just come in, hey, I want a logo to be done. I'm like, OK, we understand logo is just a collateral. What is it that you want? What is your business? Let's talk your story. Let's talk your brand.

Kevin Mooney (48:31.022)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Mooney (48:48.098)
Right.

Amit Shetty (48:52.321)
that takes a certain maturity to actually bring in those questions. Think about it. It's Fiverr, all these $5, $10 higher for shop, these are like speed dating. You might kick it off and things might work by chance.

Kevin Mooney (49:09.528)
Yeah, yes they are. Yes. Yeah, they are. I like your hair. I like your teeth. I like your shirt.

Amit Shetty (49:22.539)
But then if you are looking for a lifetime commitment, if you are looking for a life partner, you have to think deeper. Things go beyond just looks. You have to connect at a certain level to be able to say, I will tolerate this person for the next 50 years of my life. And same thing when it comes to what we want to work on or what is it that we want to put out there as a brand. Do you just want to have a fancy logo that is

Kevin Mooney (49:41.645)
Right.

Amit Shetty (49:52.447)
in trend with whatever CEO around or do you want to show your story? Who you are, what do you do and how do you connect with them? So and it comes with maturity.

Kevin Mooney (50:08.626)
It definitely, it definitely does. And I'm in that, that situation right now where very deep in the vetting process. And every time you have a meeting, you just learn a little bit more, a little bit more. And it's very much like dating. It may seem great for the first three dates. And then you find out that this person snores and you don't like snoring or they're very dirty, whatever. Like you just start to find these things out.

Amit Shetty (50:32.739)
you

Kevin Mooney (50:39.594)
And much like dating, where's the threshold of how much you want to put up with? And I guess I shouldn't say put up with how, where's, where's the line for you? Right. And, I'm in that situation right now and it's, it's an interesting spot to be in because I really, I really like this. I really liked the idea.

It seems like there's a lot of good things, but then there's some disconnected things. It's maybe not all the way there. And then it just creeps into your brain. Am I being too picky? Like this is better than most people that I talk to. So what am I, what am I doing? Am I just being ultra critical? but I am wondering from your perspective, how much of this brand stuff, how much of

How much of this intangible goes into the work that you currently do in the UI UX space? Because you clearly have a deep understanding of the nuances in this. It seems like there's some application in the UI UX, but I wonder how much wiggle room you actually have.

Amit Shetty (51:54.977)
Yeah, it's an interesting space because, especially when it comes to products, it's all about what is the product solving in the market space. end of the day, what is the task that we are trying to achieve. Now with the current product I work with, the team I lead, we are working on multiple brands and multiple products. Now here, our job is

to understand what our client wants, what our program or product is right now able to achieve based on tech or whatever, and then provide a solution which bridges the both. There are three pillars we look at in UIUX. One is the business, one is the tech, and one is my target audience. Once all these three pillars are properly identified,

I can create a solution that bridges them. Like, think about it. If I can serve a sandwich, like I can have the ingredients, let's say, you know, I love food, so a lot of my analogy comes in food. Yeah. So let's say, you know, we have potatoes, we have bread, and we have like cucumber and this. I have option.

Kevin Mooney (53:10.968)
is perfect, I love it, yeah.

Amit Shetty (53:22.507)
And my business is like, hey, we need to serve food. They are not telling us what to serve. They are like, we need to serve food to my audience. And then I'll ask question, OK, where are we serving food? Are we serving in a restaurant? Are we serving in a food truck? Are we serving on a cart that is on the street? Where are we doing it? And who's the audience that is going to get this food? If they say, hey, we just want to serve on a cart, I would say, OK, let's pre-make sandwiches.

Pack them, and as we go, we just hand it out and take the money. That's the fastest way. People get the food, we sell it, purpose achieved. But same thing, if you say, we have a restaurant space and it's in a fancy locality, I would say, okay, let's call in a Michelin star chef and they can make a fancy sandwich and sell it. It's all about end of the day. What is it that we are trying to achieve? And in our product space,

A lot of times we don't necessarily, the only majority of time we use brandings is to make sure visually we are consistent with the brand language. If this product, if I change the logo, it shouldn't be like, this product could have been other companies. It shouldn't be as simple. Even without the logo, people should understand the product.

Kevin Mooney (54:41.336)
Yeah.

Amit Shetty (54:47.155)
is particular to this company. That's where the branding impact comes. But from a purpose-driven perspective, like we are recording this on Riverside, same recording we could have had on Zoom. We could have just connected on Zoom, have recorded. But you chose to take Riverside because it gives you that auto-edit AI features that it suggests it makes your life easier.

Kevin Mooney (54:59.726)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Mooney (55:14.316)
Mm hmm. Yeah.

Amit Shetty (55:15.509)
Right? When you are getting into this content creation space, earlier you would have had to spend, re-look at our conversation, cut through it, and build up a story. And now Riverside is able to analyze that and suggest to you that, let's go with this. Sometimes, people are okay

Kevin Mooney (55:31.064)
so much.

Amit Shetty (55:44.875)
going with broken things as long as it gets worked on.

Kevin Mooney (55:46.946)
Mm-hmm. Yep. it's very true. Yeah.

Amit Shetty (55:51.971)
But it's not a long-term solution. It's like, okay, for now, our tech can only do this much. So generally what we do, so we have feature, have a product, we connect with client, so I connect with client or my PM teams and we discuss, okay, what this feature is about. Can you tell me? Because our product team comes, they directly connect with our CEOs and...

Kevin Mooney (55:57.102)
You

Amit Shetty (56:19.051)
internal tech teams to come up with a feature, they get approvals, okay, you know, this feature is something which will add value to our product, our clients will use it. They come with their own research and everyone comes up with their own set of solutions, I would say, which is not wrong because that's the level of understanding they have. So they will come up with solution of that level. Now, when they come to us, we ask a hundred different questions.

Why this? Why not this? Okay, if this. And we generally propose a solution and then the PM team will go back, they will verify, okay, is it achieving my task? If yes, they will go to tech. And if tech comes and says, hey, right now we don't have the base to implement this, we are like, fine, can you tell me what is the minimum thing you need? Right? I can't be designing

a feature on a very legacy tech just because your backend is not in place, but I can give you an intermediate solution where let's balance from both sides.

Kevin Mooney (57:27.352)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Amit Shetty (57:29.045)
so connecting with all these stakeholders, then the main stakeholders who have proposed solutions. So our task becomes more of advocating between what is the actual user needs, understanding what our tech can do, and dealing with requirements from stakeholders. So my job becomes going around all these things to make sure that whatever we propose or whatever we do, end of the day, it's going to be used by hundreds and

Kevin Mooney (57:33.068)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (57:48.632)
Yeah.

Amit Shetty (57:58.403)
thousands of users. And if I'm able to save even like, let's say five minutes of time in someone's life, that five minute is going back to them to utilize, maybe go back home early, spend with their family and that's end of the day. That's what we want to achieve.

Kevin Mooney (57:59.918)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Mooney (58:17.846)
Yeah. You know, it's, it's, I've told this story a couple of times when I first, I've been following Jose for a very long time as well, way back to the school, probably even the group. and when I was learning about this, I remember thinking, this is something I can use against my clients to support the things that I was, I was doing. But over time, the view has changed.

on that and I use this framework for almost all problem solving in my entire life at this point in time. Who's this thing for? What am I trying to achieve? What do I want to say? You know, what are, what's the most important thing? You know, what are the attributes that I can kind of apply to this to help get the task done? And it seems like you're very much in that same way.

I would like to know more from you.

about what the spark was when you started watching these things in the early days, how you figured out how to apply this to what you currently do. Like, what was the motivation? What did you see behind these tactics or these strategies, I should say?

Amit Shetty (59:43.619)
So I think I'll go back to my childhood. I'll give you a funny story. So I've been always been that kid who likes to understand how things work, how things work. So I remember as a kid, I don't remember if my uncle or my dad had got like us remote control cards, cars for me and my sister. I kept my car saying like I didn't touch it much. I was playing around.

I opened up my sister's just to see how it works because if it is broken, can still be like, hey, my car is fine. that's where I was always curious, like, OK, how does the car turn? What is this motor? How is the power being supplied? And it's end of the day, in that car, surface level, there was a tech.

Kevin Mooney (01:00:21.998)
Hahaha

Amit Shetty (01:00:41.761)
The car was following the purpose of entertainment. For me as a kid, as a toy, it was like it keeps me engaged. It goes straight. When I say it goes straight, it turns around as long as I'll give enough power supply. As I went into animation, advertising, there I slowly, first initial job was, just create. My first job was literally

We have these insurance product videos which were shot in particular languages. My first role was to just take those files, replace the language from language, let's say from English to another language, render the video, put it on edit timeline because they were releasing these insurance product videos to a nationwide thing. We had shot it in three languages.

Kevin Mooney (01:01:27.453)
wow.

Amit Shetty (01:01:39.083)
and those were needed to be converted into nine languages. So we had like audio, like, you know, dubbing done. And my first job was that, but that taught me to understand, you know, how good a pipeline can be. Like I tell people, you know, when I started, this might be going a little off track, but I'll come to the point of this. When I started my, yeah, my first point, first job,

Kevin Mooney (01:02:04.676)
you got it.

Amit Shetty (01:02:08.929)
There was one of the projects where it was for a television show where you have the starting sequence, like the title sequence and the coming up sequences. The first time I took over that project, someone had done the base shoot and everything was done and it was all about replacing content for each episode. I think the first time I took over that project, I spent almost

the whole night, like I worked throughout the night to understand how and what is it I'm working on. By the 15th episode, I had streamlined myself so much that I could do the same task in one hour. Because now I knew in and out of my file, I knew what is the tech, how each file is connected. Now all it was about, okay, this is the clip that I got from editors. I place it here, this comes here.

Kevin Mooney (01:02:52.642)
Whoa. Whoa.

Amit Shetty (01:03:06.403)
Okay, now let's move on to the next step. So that same task, someone with more experience can do faster because they know what to do and what not to do. Right? And it comes back to our, you know, how do I bring in to my products is end of the day, what is it that we are trying to achieve? If my user, like we have a clear policy,

Kevin Mooney (01:03:17.486)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Amit Shetty (01:03:35.521)
like even my head of design and generally like whoever, that if I just want to have a user upload one file, I am not going to confuse them with 10 clicks. No, that doesn't make sense. Your tech doesn't support this, that is your problem. You solve it for that. But I want to make sure that the experience the user is getting like, see, you don't want to think ever that you are using a product.

Kevin Mooney (01:03:48.952)
Yeah.

Amit Shetty (01:04:06.827)
I'll get an example. Why would you, why do you order from Doordash?

Kevin Mooney (01:04:16.312)
Well, I order because it's just convenient. That's it, right? I can find something, click a couple of buttons and it shows up at my door.

Amit Shetty (01:04:24.245)
Exactly. But what is the core problem that is Dole-solving?

Kevin Mooney (01:04:29.72)
My laziness.

Amit Shetty (01:04:31.043)
That is true, but if you look at it underline the core problem here is you're hungry.

Kevin Mooney (01:04:41.249)
Right, yeah.

Amit Shetty (01:04:42.699)
Right? And when you are hungry, there are hundred different ways to satiate your hunger. Like you can go check in the kitchen what you want. Like whatever is there, you take it, ate it, or you cook something. But you choose to order DoorDash because well, it gives you more options. It not just fill your tummy, but also satiate your taste buds. You know, you can choose from multiple options and

Kevin Mooney (01:05:09.155)
Right.

Amit Shetty (01:05:12.575)
your effort and investments are different because all you have to do is spend a minute, look at the dish, order. You can spend your time and the dishes in your hand in 30 to 40 minutes. That's where end of the day.

DoorDash, psychologically for you, has become synonymous with hunger. Like, I am hungry. I need food. Food. DoorDash.

Kevin Mooney (01:05:39.907)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:05:43.648)
Right, makes sense, makes perfect sense.

Amit Shetty (01:05:47.395)
And that's where, I would say, search. Search, if you can search on Google, we can search on Yahoo, we can search on Microsoft Edge. But end of the day, search was always symbolized with Google. Just Google it. It went from a noun to a verb.

Kevin Mooney (01:06:09.078)
Yeah, that was a wild switch for sure.

Amit Shetty (01:06:12.125)
Yeah, and that's where products want to be right now. That if I want to achieve, every product wants to do that. default, if someone wants to achieve certain thing in certain space, our product should be the first thing they think of.

Kevin Mooney (01:06:28.982)
Yeah.

Amit Shetty (01:06:30.815)
And especially in B2C space, the competition is much higher considering because B2C is accessible to anyone and everyone. B2B on that matter is very niche. Right now, I work in loyalty. So I had to first understand what is loyalty space? What are the different kind of loyalty programs? How do they run it? Why do they run it? What are these 100 different terminologies?

But all I'm doing is just understanding who I am working with and then understanding who I'm going to make things for, solution for, so that then accordingly, I can create my solution. It's like I dig deep into all these factors to then create a solution. My solutions can be simple, a list, a pop-up, and save, and you're done. Most of the tasks can be done in that.

Kevin Mooney (01:07:16.814)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:07:27.786)
Right. All right.

Amit Shetty (01:07:30.551)
but end of the day, it's about, am I making you spend five minutes or 50 minutes to achieve the same task?

Kevin Mooney (01:07:37.72)
Sure, so you've just always had that. Gathering all of the information from a very very early age and then so then when you kind of discovered Jose's frameworks, you were like, this is a great structure to the client or whoever I'm working with to to pull that in. Let me ask you this does. Did the frameworks help?

Amit Shetty (01:07:46.625)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:08:06.454)
you or the people you're working with more.

Amit Shetty (01:08:10.827)
I think it helps me more because one of the things, you know, there's a saying that first know the rules of games so that you can bend them. It's not, it's not even about breaking them. It's about bending them. Right. We don't, if you break, break the rules, well, sometimes you get penalized for that, but if you bend them, you still achieve your results. But, I think these frameworks are kind of a compass. They are not like, you know, a path.

Kevin Mooney (01:08:19.586)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:08:24.194)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:08:29.868)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

for sure.

Amit Shetty (01:08:40.523)
that, this is the exact path, task one, task two, task three, like, you you do this and you achieve this result. Frameworks was like, you know, first you understand this. So when you understand this, now go to step two, you get more clarity. I think Jose's framework in that sense was more of a guiding point at, OK, where do I go?

Sometimes we could even skip the steps because if those are not necessary in the current project or the current timeline, we could definitely skip the steps. But it was helpful as a guide for myself. And then if it is helping me, it eventually helps my client because I'm able to do my work faster.

Kevin Mooney (01:09:25.654)
Yeah, I think I've looked at it like both ways, right? Where the initial way that I viewed it was, this will help clients understand these weird questions that I've been asking them. And then over time I have shifted that focus or reality to, it actually helps me and it just helps me communicate more clearly because I do sort of communicate in upward.

spiral motions and I pull in a lot of things and oftentimes when I speak that's really hard for people to follow. So you either have to understand the topic, then the language, then the concepts, just to be able to communicate with me and that could be really challenging for a lot of people. So I simplify that into these frameworks. It still doesn't always.

work because depending on the audience that I'm speaking to, they still may not understand what those frameworks translate into. And that's when I always go, did you look at my portfolio or did you look at my case studies? If you want that, you have to go through this. The simplest way that I can explain it because the rest of the words I'm about to say probably don't make any sense to you.

Amit Shetty (01:10:47.587)
Exactly. so this is something I tell my team also like, think about it that as a product, you are a restaurant, people come here to eat food. They don't care what is happening inside the kitchen. If they like the food, they will keep ordering. If they don't, they will move on. They will bad mouth your restaurant. And it's as simple as that. Like as a team, as a product delivery team,

It doesn't matter, PM came up with feature or tech did this, that, no. End of the day, my client who's like miles away who's using this, they are not able to achieve their task. They don't care who worked on it. They are like, this company is not giving me the support that I require. I'm not going to continue. As simple as that.

Kevin Mooney (01:11:38.094)
Yep. Yeah, that's interesting. like where you, it's funny because we were at the.

We're not at the same point. We're at, we're, have the same understanding of these concepts, but we came from two different perspectives, two different points. So it's really cool and really interesting to hear, to hear yours. I'm interested to hear from you. If you have any other perspectives outside of these areas that we've talked about, because we do share a commonality that is the system, the community that Jose's put together.

Amit Shetty (01:11:55.341)
Yeah.

Amit Shetty (01:12:13.943)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:12:18.1)
And it seems like inside this community, talk a lot about the same things. There's a lot of nuance in it, which makes it very fun for us. But outside of that, do you have any other takes or profound ideas that you're kind of tossing around?

Amit Shetty (01:12:40.419)
I think beyond these things, what I generally look at is what is the value that I bring in? In this conversation, you are choosing to spend two hours with me in your workday. What is that value? I need to make it worth your time to have a meaningful conversation. My value is

my expertise, my understanding, my perspective, framed in a proper manner to convey on your show. That is the value that I am bringing in. So everywhere I look at, what's the value factor? And value factor changes from person to person, product to product, teams to team. So I generally look at this. I don't work in a way. I keep a friendly environment. I try to gel with every team.

Kevin Mooney (01:13:38.584)
Yeah, heck yeah.

Amit Shetty (01:13:38.637)
Kind of like, so on the side, I kind of try to do stand-up comedy also. Yeah, I've been exploring that side of me. So for me, it's always been that case that I can connect random aspect of things, make joke of things without demeaning anyone. So there is a fine line between humor and humiliation. So, right?

Kevin Mooney (01:13:45.336)
Do you really?

Kevin Mooney (01:14:05.72)
Yes.

Amit Shetty (01:14:07.543)
Being humorous, being fun, being approachable, that's my way of working. And when I work with my leaders, I have a certain way of approaching them, communicating with them. When I work with my teammates, I talk to them in a certain way. Because I have team members who are very young, like they have just finished college, and the first year of their jobs, they are just working in.

So they come across these hurdles. how do I deal with this? How did I'm like, relax, first breathe. These things, these things never go away. just, you know, grow. Like I tell them that, you know, dealing with people is the only thing you will do. And this is, this is the only thing which is never taught in any of the colleges. You're like, will teach you strategies. They will teach you scenarios.

Kevin Mooney (01:14:40.547)
Yes.

Kevin Mooney (01:14:55.694)
Of course, of course, yes.

Amit Shetty (01:15:03.907)
But no one teaches how do we connect with a person? How do we deal with a person? If I have a stakeholder who's shouting and screaming and saying, why is this not done? As a young person, they get scared. They are like, what the fuck? What is happening? It's a power dynamic that comes into play. I'm like, what can I say to this person who's above? And I'm like, you just.

Kevin Mooney (01:15:21.208)
What did I do? What did I do wrong?

Amit Shetty (01:15:32.867)
Just take them and say, can you just explain me once what has happened so that I can understand? Maybe it didn't get through things. So for me, clarity of thought and clarity of thought of what I'm thinking, clarity of understanding or clarity in listening of what other person is saying is very important. So when it comes to these frameworks that you're seeing, right, like as you says,

Simon's next start with why. So I asked myself, why is this happening? Why is this person doing this? What is it causing? Like the four W's and one H. I think that's something that has been taught and it applies to any and every situation. And in design, we have like 100 of different framework. We have the IDOs,

Kevin Mooney (01:16:13.891)
Right.

Kevin Mooney (01:16:18.23)
Yeah, it really does.

Amit Shetty (01:16:31.605)
design thinking process where it's like, define, you ideate, prototype, then you test and launch. Same thing we have been doing for years. I think human evolution has been on that principle itself. It's all about the different approach you bring in. What is the different way you look in?

Kevin Mooney (01:16:53.292)
Yeah, definitely. What, what, what is it like working with the younger generation? And I ask because during my 10 years with the agency, we worked with a lot of people, but they were basically the same age or the same generation, except for one time we had somebody who was a Gen Z and

I wouldn't say it was a challenge, but there was a pretty big gap between.

maybe just styles, styles of doing business, styles of working together, whatever that was. And so I've only had one instance where I've worked with a lot of younger people, but it sounds like you've got a lot of younger people that you work with. Share that experience, I wanna know.

Amit Shetty (01:17:51.779)
So one of the things I've realized is, end of the day, it's all a matter of priorities. So if I take an example, India became independent in 1947. So we were ruled by British at that point of time, and we became independent. So that is the generation where my grandfather was in. For that generation, there

basic need was to get food, clothing, and shelter because, well, the country has just got independence, so stabilizing everything, all of that was the factor. Then came my parents' which we call Generation X. So we had the Boomers, Generation X. For Generation X, it was more about getting stability. Food, clothing is fine. Now we need to have a stable household.

where we get enough money. So, you know, at least from a cultural point of view, if you look at like Indians or Asians, they typically go for doctors, engineers. You know, these are the professions because at that point of time, these are the professions that guaranteed you income. Art or design was looked at more of, you would, since you can't do anything else, you do art. Right. Because no one

Kevin Mooney (01:19:13.129)
You do that.

Amit Shetty (01:19:18.153)
at that point of time knew that, OK, there is actually monetary factor in this. So that's how it was looked at. Now, when it came to our generation that we are in, for us, the stability is already there. We have the house. have parents who are working and supporting us. That is there. Our priority becomes more aspirational.

At the level of life we are here, how do we go about? What is my passion? Passion factor came into being, that what is my calling that came in. And for the next generation, the Gen Z, for them, a lot of things were already figured out. When I tell people, when I started learning animation, we didn't have this career guidance so deep.

and so was creative options. were like either you become a fine artist or you become a commercial artist or animation was one of the options. These were the only things. And web design was considered as like coding. And I'm like, that's where it was like, you know, this was like 17 years back. This was the case. And I'm like, the current generation has all the resources, all the explorations already done for them.

Kevin Mooney (01:20:28.322)
Right. Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:20:34.861)
Mm-hmm.

Amit Shetty (01:20:44.919)
So for them, it's becoming more of, OK, what makes me stay calm or what clicks with me more? Because, you see the Maslow's hierarchy, right? You have the basic needs, tertiary, secondary, tertiary, and then the top three. So we have already achieved the three layers.

So for Gen Z, it's the fourth layer. What is the differentiating factor and what is that luxury factor? And luxury in context of mental and physical space. It's not about the monetary factors. It's not about having assets. Yeah, based on how well off a family you come from. But most of them are in a space where everything else is taken care.

Kevin Mooney (01:21:17.878)
Yeah.

Amit Shetty (01:21:39.875)
What is it that clicks to them? What is it they try to Now, they are a generation who, I think, is exposed to so much information. they have, like, we didn't have so much YouTube or anything. At that point, that was when internet just came in 2007. Facebook just launched. And we were like, oh, wow, I can message my long-lost school friend who's somewhere there.

Kevin Mooney (01:21:55.053)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:22:06.254)
You're right. Yeah.

Amit Shetty (01:22:09.215)
And now everyone is just connected. But for Gen Z, it's like.

how comfortable I am mentally. Now, Gen Z is very open about mental space because, well, they have the leeway of thinking that way. I'm not saying in a bad way. It's more of when you look at Gen X, whose priority was stabilizing, they didn't have a leeway of thinking, oh, I'm burnout. For them, it's like, I need to put money on table for my family. I need money to survive.

Kevin Mooney (01:22:39.096)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:22:43.822)
Mm-hmm.

Amit Shetty (01:22:45.877)
I will deal with, like I've seen my father work day and night. He's going because he's like, OK, I need to do this so that my family can stay. And as those priorities have changed with Gen Z, connect with, like when I talk to them, I try to understand where they come from and why they are saying certain things. Certain things I generally learn them, hey, you have to be

comfortable being uncomfortable. Nothing is achieved in the comfort zone, Right, comfort zone, yeah, it's fine. You can be mediocre and you can just be average in the comfort zone because everyone is doing it. You do that, that is fine. But then just because you become suddenly uncomfortable, you want to quit, that's not how it works. So I think this is one of the topics that, you know, so I work with like,

Kevin Mooney (01:23:18.573)
Yeah.

Of course.

Kevin Mooney (01:23:38.807)
Right.

Amit Shetty (01:23:44.615)
a lot of design communities in like Hyderabad, the southern part of India. And we've been talking to certain leaders and we've been having these thoughts that adaptability and resilience is something that this generation needs to bring in or build up. We don't get knocked down. It's not about being stubborn. Sometimes I feel my parents are being stubborn.

I'm like, OK, then I look at the perspective, OK, because they are a certain way, the things, if I want to get the same thing done, I need to approach it certain way. But being resilient and being stubborn are two different things.

Kevin Mooney (01:24:14.402)
Sure.

Kevin Mooney (01:24:29.07)
For sure, yes.

Amit Shetty (01:24:31.221)
Right? And it's a two-way street. It's not like, you know, just we have to give, give. It's like both ways we have to communicate that if I say, wow, I mean, amazing. And if they say, this is lit, I'm like, it just means wow. that, you know, vocabulary, sentiments we might have seen is just that since the vocabulary is different, we are finding it hard to connect.

Kevin Mooney (01:24:50.093)
Right.

Kevin Mooney (01:25:00.76)
Sure.

Amit Shetty (01:25:00.833)
but I feel if we can bridge that, is something that helps.

Kevin Mooney (01:25:05.684)
Yeah, you know, it's so funny. I part of the reason that I have shifted away from my agency work and more into this space to talk and communicate and and really learn and learn from other people is this reason that we're talking about. I don't know the Gen Z. Audience, I don't know their group. I don't know what they want. I.

100 % understand everything that you just said breaking it down like that generationally makes Really good sense and it's not that I haven't thought about it, but I haven't heard somebody say it the way you said it so I really appreciate that and You know, I'm 40. I was born in 85. That's still right in the millennial zone but I also came from the gen X family and

Amit Shetty (01:25:59.587)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:26:04.556)
So I've adopted a lot of those, like you have to work hard and there's no room for crying. You have to go to your job every day. You have to go to school yet that you know, all of those things. And I actually understand that the Gen Z and below don't have that. They don't have, they don't know what that is. So they, they fall into this mental health space of their motivation is driven by comfort.

And I agree with you that some of the older principles need to kind of be adopted by that generation for them to succeed. But where I'm going with this is.

that it's part of the reason I don't know how to advertise to those, those people, because if it is all about mental health and, and space, well, I don't come from that generation. I don't really quite understand it. So I don't really want to do agency work too much longer because I'm going to fall right out of that. I'm, I don't know that I'll build a wrap my head around it. so it's interesting to hear you talk about this and

Maybe I'm curious from your perspective, working with them often, do you see them adopting some of these principles? What were the words that you used? They were perfect. Adaptability, correct? And resilience, do you see them developing some of those skills?

Amit Shetty (01:27:29.631)
adaptability and resilience.

Amit Shetty (01:27:37.259)
I think they are the generation who's, they're the most adaptable generation as of now because

they already have the top-level tech or elements that is there that we have looked to. This piece of gadget we have is much more powerful than the computers we used back in the day. Exactly. This has 12 gigs of RAM and I'm like, yes, I used to play Road Rash on 128 MB of RAM.

Kevin Mooney (01:28:04.574)
Yes, the whole school.

Amit Shetty (01:28:17.599)
on my friend's computer at home. There's a huge difference and we still used to enjoy. One thing I really like about Gen Z is because they are open about talking about their feelings and mental space, everything. But it's also a factor that since they come from a space where they feel safe, talking about emotion, that is very important. That is something we can learn because a lot of times,

Kevin Mooney (01:28:19.885)
Yes.

Amit Shetty (01:28:46.687)
Growing up, we would bottle up our emotions and say, hey, I don't want to create a rift and just keep it in. We didn't realize at that point of time that eventually that not speaking up at the right time just builds in a certain negativity about ourselves. I'm really glad these people have these conversations. They bring in that important factor, but sometimes I feel

Since they are already at such a top level of concept, sometimes they don't, they miss out on understanding the basics of things, the foundational elements. I tell my teammates that, hey, as a designer,

Kevin Mooney (01:29:26.456)
Yeah.

Amit Shetty (01:29:35.767)
basic thing I expect from you is alignments, color, spacing. are like, know, basics. As a designer, your role is that to manage those. If I work with you and I need to correct again and again on these basic things, means then I don't have time to define, what is the exact flow we are working on? What is the problem we are trying to solve? So for me, that is like first understand your basics.

Why do we do this? So I tend to first understand what they are coming from, then I put my perspective, and then we discuss, what works and what doesn't work. And if it needs to work for their context, how do we do it?

Kevin Mooney (01:30:23.17)
Yeah, it makes sense.

Amit Shetty (01:30:23.277)
So that's, I've been trying to, I've been trying to, but yeah. And on one end you are right. Like, you know, so me and my sister have a seven years of age gap. So technically she comes into almost like Gen Z, but the way we approach things is very different, right? She has a different understanding. Like she works in marketing and, you know, she works with younger crowd and she has certain way.

Kevin Mooney (01:30:41.368)
Yeah.

Amit Shetty (01:30:49.421)
So when we observe, we talk about things, there are different aspects that I get to explore and she gets to explore. It's not like one is better than other. It's all about how well do we bridge it.

Kevin Mooney (01:30:59.566)
Of course, yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:31:03.99)
Yeah, yeah, I think that's great. I dealt with a lot of that with my Gen Z teammate. She was a fantastic designer and it was very ethereal design and it was very, very hip and very cool. But every time I would see a design, I'm like, the spacing is...

garbage, the alignment is completely wrong. There's type or there's spelling and grammatical errors everywhere. I'm like, I love that you are thinking this big and you're super talented and you're pulling in all these abstract ideas into the design, but I can't send this to the client. And I also don't have time to go back and fix all of these errors. So I'm trying to tell you.

And then those things would never get fixed and they would never get fixed and they would never get fixed. and I'm only drawing from one experience in my life. So I'm not applying this to an entire generation of people, but it was one thing that I noticed. And you're right. I think the basics are things that people have to learn. And I'm not saying that if you want to be a video producer, that you have to learn how to edit the old way.

But we have to bring some of these principles and these foundational basics through the current systems that we have. And if you have that, then you're pretty much unstoppable because the rest is already done for you, right? We've already done all the research. There's the million pieces of creative that have gone in the world. There's a million websites that have been done. Now it's time to apply all that coolness to some of these basics. And now we're really partying.

We're really doing some fun work.

Amit Shetty (01:33:01.013)
Yeah, and one thing, you know, if we look at the current space, tech space we are in, every information is available to you at fingertips. Like you search for something, just jeep, charge a bit, write something, hey, can you do a SWOT analysis for me? It will just scrub the web, maybe hallucinate a little bit and give you output. But I'm like, that's a good start. Like we come from a

place where we actually had to visit all the company websites, look at different pages, then write and make our own hypothesis. it's difference between fine dining and fast food. Right now, it's a fast food era because everything is instant, everything follows that template, which is lip smacking. And people are not now.

when you are so used to fast food, waiting for even five minutes is like a hyper thing for you. You can just wait two more minutes, look at this, adjust it, and you'd be done. And that's where fine dining, you go to a Michelin star restaurant, you go there, you pay that money for the experience of it. So you wouldn't expect a Michelin star to...

Kevin Mooney (01:34:13.731)
Yeah.

Amit Shetty (01:34:27.401)
give you food in five minutes and be like, you're done, go away, give me $5,000 for the night and you're dead. So you will feel cheated, right? And I think one of the things that we, when we were growing up, for us to understand brands, to understand different competitors, we had to search through a hundred different things to come up with our own reasoning. But in, as we were searching, could

Kevin Mooney (01:34:33.208)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:34:37.174)
Yeah.

Amit Shetty (01:34:57.271)
we would stumble across certain things which we never expected. But now that everything is at fingertips, that exploration is not happening. They're like, chat.jpg said this. I'm just going to take it for face value. I'm like, no, how do you ask more questions? Ask deeper. Go deeper.

Kevin Mooney (01:35:03.235)
Yes.

Kevin Mooney (01:35:10.638)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Mooney (01:35:20.0)
Right. Yeah. It's, it's, it's exactly why I'm doing the content that I'm doing, or at least trying to. And I don't know if it'll work, but the idea is that I want to do that. I want to bring that exploration back in the form of, of a podcast or in the form of the content that I put out, whether it's video or graphical or short form or long form.

I want to bring in that exploration and I think a lot of people, let me say this, there's not a lot of people that are watching my content right now, but of the people that are watching it, they're all asking me, why is it two hours long? Why are you talking for five minutes? The recipe for virality on Instagram is you start with the hook and you create a curiosity gap and you

You wait for the payoff, you build anticipation and then you pay off and you do this. And, and I'm like, yeah, I understand that, but that's kind of boring and that's what everybody does. So why don't we explore a lot of topics? Why don't we talk about generations and why don't we talk about process and why don't we talk about our thoughts around brand and why don't we,

Why don't we debate and argue a little bit about marketing or, or, or just real life, like even exclude the agency stuff or B2B or B2C. Like, why don't we debate and argue a little bit more about some of these topics that just exist. And it, maybe it's just the way that I'm wired. Maybe I'm just wired to want to explore these things. And when it does come down to making a piece of content, then I have

all of this information from all of these sources in the world. And maybe it's a movie I watched, maybe it's a food I ate, maybe it's an experience I had at a restaurant. It doesn't really matter, but I can bring that into the solution as opposed to saying, well, if you want to get more business, do these five steps and put them on Instagram, YouTube and tick tock, and then you're going to be good. And the challenge with that is

Kevin Mooney (01:37:44.448)
If the younger generation is being fed fast food all the time, will the will the younger generation want to hear something from an old gray bald man in the US about whatever it is that we're talking about? I think that they might. And I'm not saying that I or you or we are better than them. I'm saying that this is more of just from a generational standpoint, how we do it.

But to your point is if they are the people who are the most in touch with their feelings and they are the most open to, let's say new things, then maybe they are actually going to be interested in content like this. And maybe it's actually the gen Xers or the millennials who are going to be tired of this. And maybe we are in front of the new generation. It's, hard to say, but

Those are like the concepts that were kind of floating in my head as we were talking.

Amit Shetty (01:38:45.685)
No, and I think one of the things I feel, you when I see your content, I'm like, I feel you are the content you're producing is something which you felt you could have got when you started your career. These conversations where, you know, if someone was there to talk about these things, you would have been in a much more streamlined way. yeah, see,

Kevin Mooney (01:39:03.414)
Yes.

Amit Shetty (01:39:16.757)
Everyone has to make their own mistakes to learn from. A kid won't learn how to run without falling. You can't fall on behalf of the kid. You can't shelter someone their whole life. They will still need to make their own mistakes to gain their own wisdom. And every wisdom we get is our own way of perceiving things, our way of perceiving the lessons we are learning.

Kevin Mooney (01:39:27.246)
Of course.

Amit Shetty (01:39:46.953)
And what you correctly said is right now, if you look at any content on Instagram, LinkedIn, everywhere you go, everything is preachy.

Kevin Mooney (01:40:00.684)
Yes, that is very true right now. It is, it's hard. It's hard to fall into that, not to fall into that trap because you

Amit Shetty (01:40:09.023)
Everything is pretty everything is checklist like do this this this I'm like, okay

Kevin Mooney (01:40:13.794)
Yeah. Well, in, and we're kind of preached to constantly in order for people to trust you, you have to speak from authoritative place. And so you're like, well, in order to speak from authoritative, authoritative place, I have to say it like this and I have to be preachy and I have to, you know, and you kind of have to hammer it down. And I think that that has worked for a lot of people.

And mean, Chris Doe is great at it, right? But Chris Doe has been done. He's doing his thing. And I think he's actually even shifting his tone in his content right now as well. But I do think that the world needs a little bit less of this is how it's done and more of, hey, watch me try to do it. I'm going to try. So see what it looks like. And it might be a little bit messy and you might not like everything.

but you might see yourself in this. And that's kind of the position that I'm trying to.

Amit Shetty (01:41:16.023)
Yeah, and that's absolutely like, see, I think Chris Doe himself has said this a lot of times. He was never an extrovert person. He's always been the introvert who would sit in the corner, but he has spent 40 years, you know, before he got into content. So he built that base to bring credibility from and to bring that credibility, we need to bring in our work, our best work.

Kevin Mooney (01:41:40.558)
for sure.

Amit Shetty (01:41:45.919)
Today, with AI, our clients can just go type in, hey, I want this logo in this style, bring in download images from Dribbble and feed it to the AI and say, yeah, AI will create it. But it won't have a sole. It will just have a pattern-based content. Same thing comes with any kind of work. I can copy a feature from a product, say that, hey, Google does this.

Kevin Mooney (01:42:01.827)
Yeah.

Yes.

Amit Shetty (01:42:15.661)
So a lot of times people would copy some like, Google does it. I ask them, but do you understand the context in which Google does it this way? Why does Google does this and why doesn't it work for us? There are 100 different things that are applicable to this. we have to understand the 360-degree elements to actually be able to solve it.

Kevin Mooney (01:42:25.261)
Right.

Kevin Mooney (01:42:29.038)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Mooney (01:42:40.662)
Yeah. Yeah. I've done that. Right. I, when my first, my first shot at my first real business, and I've talked about this before, I tried really, really hard to make that thing a winner. And I was just mimicking exactly what everyone else was doing. I might've had the smallest tiny bit of differentiation from a brand perspective, but I, at that time, I didn't really know the true meaning of brand.

and so the long story short is I failed miserably at that. And I failed forward in that, you know, I made a little bit of money. I sustained the business for a little bit of time. Let's say it like that. didn't make any money. I lost money, but that is an experience that not a lot of people can say that they have had in their life. And

And so you're right. You know, I would look at, I would look at Amazon and say, well, they have a buy now button. So I'll put a buy now button on my website. Well, why aren't people buying from me? Well, it had nothing to do with the buy now button, but I was doing the exact same thing that Amazon was doing and it was built on Shopify. at the time it was almost as good as the buy now button, but not quite. And so

It just took a lot of failures to understand that you can take a feature from somebody else and apply it to yours. But if you don't know all of those other things, it's not, it's probably not going to work. It might, but you still need some brains behind it who are going to say, well, how do they actually use this feature? Why are we doing this feature? All of the, all of the questions that we have to ask.

Amit Shetty (01:44:34.093)
Like I'll tell you, one of my previous projects was, you know, kind of redesigning the complete agent portal for a big insurance company in India. And it was like few years back, I worked on it. As a designer, more than learning to do, like more than setting up the elements, my primary job was to understand what is the domain about, why they want...

certain things certain way because insurance comes with a lot of nuances like lot of processes, lot of paperwork and lot of different ways that it goes in. So if I don't understand that and I just propose something, it will break and when it breaks, when it breaks for a big client, it's a huge loss. So there is a ripple effect. And if we don't understand at what level

Kevin Mooney (01:45:19.96)
Course.

Amit Shetty (01:45:30.167)
that effect is acceptable and not acceptable, that defines how good you are going to design things.

Kevin Mooney (01:45:38.55)
Yes, yeah. It's still crazy to me that there are designers or marketers or advertisers or filmmakers or motion designers who don't do these things. It's very shocking in my local area and to any of the local people watching right now. It is true. The majority of the people in this place will just do your thing for you. You see it.

Actually, Heather brought this to my attention. She said that when you have a small community, the first wave of creative comes in the form of web. And it's so true. When I started doing web design for pay, I was like, my gosh, everybody wants web design and development. Like I could crush it in this space. And then I soon.

paste myself out of the web design space because I started to realize one website actually requires a ton of my thought before I even put anything down on. was using XD at the time for the designs there. So before I even opened up into the XD, I have to do all of this thinking and I would pump out 50 websites in a year and then then it shrunk immediately to like 10.

And then like now it's down to I could barely do one at this point in time because there's so much thinking and I just look at a lot of the people around here doing 10, 15, 20, 50 websites in a year. I'm just going you're not there's no way you can do it right. There's no way plus when I look at the website, I'm like, no, this isn't this isn't done right. It's pretty. It's very pretty, but it doesn't speak to anybody that is

possibly their customers.

Amit Shetty (01:47:39.073)
No, think this comes to the point where I think us designers are the worst people to design our own portfolios.

Kevin Mooney (01:47:49.518)
I only have one case study done on my website and a lead just asked me, where's the rest of them? And I was like, you have no idea how difficult it is for me to make these things.

Amit Shetty (01:47:54.531)
You

Amit Shetty (01:48:03.619)
And because I think somewhere, you know, when we design for other people, we take it as a responsibility that, hey, they are paying me for my like, they are investing money and time in me to give them an output. So we spend that time when it comes to us. We are like, well, I'm not paying money to myself and any which way I'm spending my

time on myself. So I'll take my time to be perfect. I want like that, you know, reaching that perfection sometimes just becomes a very long run. And I really appreciate designers who are able to Europe, like design that portfolio. Like, I think my when the portfolio I just shared with you, I'm like, I put a hard deadline on myself. I'm like three days.

Kevin Mooney (01:48:34.253)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:48:45.422)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:49:01.667)
Yeah.

Amit Shetty (01:49:01.909)
In three days, I know I can't take up a templatized website. I won't take up a web like Framer or Webflow and edit it because those were too complicated. I'll take a site which gives me easy creative stuff. I will just put tech in simple words and that's it. Because that was the whole purpose. I'm like for a portfolio, there are two portfolios. One is for a job and one as a designer themselves.

Kevin Mooney (01:49:31.18)
Yes.

Amit Shetty (01:49:31.371)
So if I want to build my own thing, like I've started on it, but I'm like, it will take me time to shape it and bring in. But I'm like.

Kevin Mooney (01:49:40.428)
Yeah. I mean, it's a, it's a story within a story, right? You're telling a story about the story that you created for that project that you are working on. And it's like, and then you're thinking about it from who is the audience that is, is looking at this view of it and what story do I want to tell them? It's not just the story of what you did is a story about that story. And so it's, it's very complex.

Amit Shetty (01:49:46.21)
Yeah.

Amit Shetty (01:49:54.729)
Thank you.

Kevin Mooney (01:50:10.2)
That's why I only have one on my website.

Amit Shetty (01:50:15.619)
That's the interesting part of building portfolios and all. And I tell my friends, it's okay, you want to take template, just look at what you want to achieve in short term and what you want to achieve in long term. If you want to do something which is instantaneous, want to get going, like brands say the GTM strategy, go to market strategy. We all have to think that because

Kevin Mooney (01:50:15.655)
man. Yeah.

Amit Shetty (01:50:45.365)
Well, if I don't have a good, if I'm not going to market faster, there are hundreds of brands providing same services going in that space. But how well refined I am going to the market. So in product space, they call MVP, minimum viable product. But there is something called as MVD, is minimum MDV.

minimum desired product where it needs to have at least these basic functionalities for a person to be able to use it.

Kevin Mooney (01:51:21.834)
Right. Yeah.

Amit Shetty (01:51:25.667)
Like if let's say we talk about DoorDash, the basic functionality is it has a search feature, it has list of restaurants. I should be able to see the dishes that are available. I need to be able to add an order and make the payment. Every food app needs to have these basic functionality. Other than that, the exploratory feature, the offered sections,

All the gamifications are all add-on and they are built later on. Those are the hook elements where you get discounts, all those things are to integrate. But without these base features, my product is not going to run. Understanding that base purpose, if I want to put out a case study, and who am I showing this case study for? What do you want to know? I can give you one paragraph.

that this is what I did. Or if you want, let's get on a call and I can discuss with you. As simple as that.

Kevin Mooney (01:52:28.632)
Yeah. Yeah, I like it. I want to ask two questions and then I probably want to wrap us up. But, the first question is, is there anything that you want to just say that you've been like holding in? It can be about.

life, can be about business, can be about agency, UX, whatever you want. Is there anything you just want to like blow out?

Amit Shetty (01:53:00.067)
What I really want to say to people is

We know who's using AI. Yeah, like we know everyone is like, know, right now, I think last year I saw a comic where it had two panels. On one panel, there was a person who was like, okay, I want to say this one line, GPT, can you expand it in a more fancy way? It made a para. On the other side, it was the receiver of the email.

Kevin Mooney (01:53:08.216)
Hahaha

You're not fooling us, everyone.

Amit Shetty (01:53:34.721)
And they are like, GPT, can you simplify this?

Amit Shetty (01:53:41.699)
And the thing I to tell people I would want to tell people is come straight to the point. No need to fluff. No need to go around. You know, if you want to say, hey, I didn't like it, just say I didn't like it. OK. And ask what and if someone comes and tells you they didn't like it, ask them what they didn't like because.

liking the whole product, not liking the whole product or not liking one aspect of the product or the design itself, that feedback is important. We have to dig down into that feedback. And everyone right now, I won't say I produce content. I write sometimes on LinkedIn, I post, and my thoughts are based on what I learn from my day-to-day experience, what I read from books, and I come on that.

But a lot of content out there I see is, comment on this to get access to our portfolio, this thing, or subscribe to our three hours master class. If everything is becoming master class, then who's supposed to be the master here?

Kevin Mooney (01:54:50.126)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:54:56.858)
Right. It's lost its meaning. I've said that for a while now. Like, I don't want to be an internet guru and put on master classes and coaching programs because I'm, well, I'm not a master. I'm a master of none, right? But I can share my experiences and if you like those experiences or you like the work that I do or the way that I think, the way that I talk, sure, there's probably opportunity to make money and collaborate and do all that stuff, but I'm not.

a guru. I'm not a master. So if everyone's a freaking master, then nobody is doing anything out there.

Amit Shetty (01:55:34.413)
Yeah, and there's a saying, right? If you are the smartest person in the room, then you are in the wrong room.

Kevin Mooney (01:55:40.064)
My wife just told me that because I said that in one of, came out of a, a sales meeting and I was like, I hate to say this out loud, but I was the smartest person in the room. And she was like, you're in the wrong room. You need to go find another room. I was like, you're right. I can't, that was not the right room to be in. So that's a good point. I liked that you said that.

Amit Shetty (01:56:03.299)
Yeah, and I think one of the things is. Right now we are so hung up on achievements and glory. Right, I am this I am that I'm like. Can you describe yourself without telling me where you studied or where you work?

Right? People go blank. And I'm like, without your credentials of work or study, what are you as a person? What are your values? What drives you? What makes you get up every day and say, hey, this is who I am, and this is what I'm here to do?

Kevin Mooney (01:56:29.048)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:56:46.296)
I like that. I think I should probably, I mean, I, that's not a new concept to me, but I do think that that concept has been lost because what I'm doing in my content is sharing where I came from. So I think that there's some value in that. And, I appreciate you just reminding me of that concept because it is true. Everybody. I mean, if you think about it, every time you meet somebody new,

You say, hi, my name is this. And then the first question is, what do you do? And you're, waiting for the response to see if they're smart or if they're wealthy or if they're cool, whatever the thing is, but it's hinging upon that credential that they say. So if they say I'm a doctor, you're like, wow, you must be smart and rich. I probably want to know you, but I don't, I haven't lived my life in that.

that way. I've always wanted to dig in deep and figure out what is this person all about? That's how I formed my friendships. So I need to take some of my own advice there.

Amit Shetty (01:57:56.259)
Exactly. you know, with like, we live with so many tags attached to us. I'm like, what are we without those tags? Like, what are we like, if tomorrow I am asked to, you know, I lose all my memory. Okay. And I just walk into a space. What am I going to say? Hey, I am Amit. This is what I think I do. That's all.

Kevin Mooney (01:58:06.125)
Right.

Amit Shetty (01:58:26.743)
Because I won't remember what I studied or what, but I would remember how I make people around me feel. Right. So I love to host events. So I host like a lot of events with friends of Figma and hosting like 250, 300 plus people. And I can go on and on and on stage as a host. My responsibility is like, I don't come and say, hey,

Kevin Mooney (01:58:46.424)
Wow.

Amit Shetty (01:58:55.491)
I am this person who is managing team, the India team for this particular company. I'm like, hey, I'm the host for you today. My job is to keep you entertained and have you focus on all the other guests that we have.

Kevin Mooney (01:59:10.19)
That's cool. I like that.

Amit Shetty (01:59:11.829)
Right? that purpose is like, so if in Indian literature, like in the Indian literature, there's a big literature called Mahabharata. Mahabharata is like a very epic story if you ever want to explore all of this. So there is a term called sutradhar. So sutradhar is nothing but the narrator. Right? So in what's?

Kevin Mooney (01:59:31.138)
course.

Amit Shetty (01:59:40.521)
The narrator is responsible for how the story is perceived. So whenever you are in a space, are you the narrator or are you getting narrated?

Kevin Mooney (01:59:45.869)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:59:54.254)
I like that. I mean, I like that. That's good, man. I want to I want to leave on that note because that's a super high note. However, I do have one one more question and I think I have to look. You go by the handle out there in the world as it's a myth. What's a myth? What's the myth?

Amit Shetty (02:00:18.403)
Yeah.

It's a funny story. This is what this handle was, know, came when I was doing my masters. One of my, like, hostile mates gave this handle. Like, he played wordplay on my name. Like, my name is Amit. So the meaning of Amit is boundaryless. So there is no boundary in this. And then he just came up with,

It's a myth. And I started using that. And I'm like, every myth comes from a legend. So I'm like, I'm a legend. And whatever you know about me, it's a myth. Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (02:00:57.612)
Yeah, for sure.

I'm at the legend.

Kevin Mooney (02:01:06.138)
I love that. That's super good. Awesome. Well, thank you. Thank you so much for doing this and being here taking part of your evening. It's late for you right now, but I know it's like noon for you. But no, just thank you so much. This was this was awesome. Do you want to give a shout out to yourself? Tell people where to go, you know, for the millions and millions of people watching.

Amit Shetty (02:01:09.325)
So that's.

Amit Shetty (02:01:33.411)
No, so first of all, thank you so much, Kevin, for giving this space and having this open forum because not everyone is able to make that space and making it safe to share all these thoughts because well, as professionals, we have to think through a lot of things of what we can say. But then end of the day,

Kevin Mooney (02:01:57.804)
Yes, we do.

Amit Shetty (02:02:02.679)
you coming in and providing the space and your humble approach to all of them that made me share a lot of these things. So thank you so much for having. And yeah, if anyone wants to reach out, I'm there on LinkedIn. All they have to type is Amit Shetty. Or they can search on me on Instagram. It's a myth. I'm there, always happy to have conversations. I just, so one thing I tell about myself, like I craft.

experiences and experiments. So experiences is for the world and experiments are for myself to learn. That's all.

Kevin Mooney (02:02:36.258)
love that.

Kevin Mooney (02:02:41.55)
That's super cool. Well, I would love to do this again because I had a blast. This was super cool. So. Very cool. Alright, let's say bye to everyone and stick around for a few minutes. Alright, thank you bye.

Amit Shetty (02:02:46.915)
Absolutely, anytime.

Amit Shetty (02:02:52.579)
Bye, Kevin. Bye, everyone. Thank you.

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