Inside Marketing with MarketSurge

Welcome to Inside Marketing
With Market Surge.

Your front row seat to the
boldest ideas and smartest

strategies in the marketing game.

Your host is Reed Hansen, chief
Growth Officer at Market Surge.

Reed: Hello, and welcome back to
Inside Marketing with Market Surge.

Please join me in welcoming Nick Coffin
product and UX design lead@gage.io

and veteran Digital Agency strategist.

With over a decade of experience
crafting intuitive interfaces and

data-driven research workflows,
Nick has helped startups and

enterprises alike turn complex tools
into user-friendly experiences.

He's passionate about leveraging
AI to supercharge UX research.

To nurture the next generation of
design leaders and bridging the

gap between design and development.

Today, he'll share actionable
insights on everything design related.

Nick Cawthon: me.

Reed: Nick, welcome to the podcast.

Yeah, my pleasure.

And, uh, Nick, I was really intrigued,
uh, when we first got acquainted just

to learn more about what you do now.

I, um.

You know, so I've done my, as I mentioned
before, I've done my internet sleuthing

and, um, but if, if you might, I'm
gonna ask you just a, a twist question.

Is there a fictional
character that best represents

Nick Cawthon: Yeah,

Reed: what you do,

Nick Cawthon: sure,

Reed: whether that's
movies or books or tv?

Nick Cawthon: and that
is the improv comedian.

Um, you know, I've.

I'm, I'm thinking Andy Kaufman or some
of those great standup comedians in the

past, but somebody who's really versed
in improv, uh, and I'll tell you why

is that, um, in my career coming in and
out of digital agencies, when you have a

client list, uh, or consultancies that.

Is varied and diverse a lot of the times.

It requires you to get up to speed
very quickly on the nature, um, the

impact, the roadblocks, the perceptions
of the client's given industry.

Uh, and that's just the background of
the logo on, on the side of the building,

all the organizational dysfunctions
and what kind of, um, goals and, and

KPIs that your client wants to achieve.

Uh, and I.

Consider this like an improv comedian
where every six months somebody

says, okay, gonna be an agricultural
company that needs a, uh, iPad app

to help their supply chain issues.

And then you have to sort of take and
think, all right, how would I sort

of try to sell this, um, to tractor
salesman or whatever it might be.

Uh, and uh, that has really
been, uh, a role that I've.

Um, tried to tread water in for a
long time is the ability to improvise,

um, and to assess and strategize for
things that I don't know much about.

In fact, um, as a quick antidote, I
find myself currently in that place.

Um, I have a philanthropist
that I'm working with.

Who's going into, uh, an area of
philanthropy that I know nothing about.

Uh, and what I've been brought in to do is
data visualization and charts and graphs,

and help compel donations to this cause.

Uh.

And in the past I would watch some
podcasts or documentaries or I guess

listen to podcasts and watch documentaries
and, uh, you know, try to get myself

up to speed through conversations
and qualitative research and in-depth

interviews, uh, as quickly as I can.

Um, but that's being, uh, preceded these
days by, um, developing, um, a rag or a,

a customizing a language model, uh, and
going in and finding all the information

there is on the web about this.

Uh, normally you'd put into a folder.

File folder or a Google Drive.

Uh, but now you can start to feed a
model, uh, and begin to ask questions

of it and see how it responds.

And in my case, citations of statistics
and data which I can visualize.

And so that's been a really sort
of context shift of how one goes

from a point of not knowing.

To a point of knowing, uh, to try to sound
educated so that when you speak with the

client, whether it be tractor, salesperson
or philanthropist, uh, that you can

have some pertinent questions that will
hopefully go into, uh, better conversation

topics than you wouldn't normally have.

Reed: Interesting.

Yeah, I, that that's a,
that's a good anecdote.

And I, um, I.

Y you know, I agree with you.

I, I don't think that, uh, I
think sales has moved faster,

as you mentioned, that like, you
have to come in prepared and, um,

Nick Cawthon: I.

Reed: so, you know, I, I,
I've worked in agencies for.

Uh, a long period before we had these,
these models or the ability to generate

like a custom GPT, uh, to bounce ideas off
of, and we, we would literally be doing

deep interviews with users or potential
users and, uh, you know, and try to

Nick Cawthon: still

Reed: derive learnings.

D are, are you still seeing the,
the need to do both the, you know,

firsthand research or, or do you
think there's potential that,

that that's no longer necessary?

Nick Cawthon: You framed it well too, um,
where you left it open to say, you know,

what's your interpretation of the balance
between an algorithm and a human being?

Uh, and it's a conversation topic
that I'm happy we get to go into.

Uh, yes.

The balance always needs to occur of
where are the vulnerabilities, uh,

and, and we can use this, um, metaphor
of a, a client, uh, that has come

to an agency or a marketer or even.

To some of your small and medium sized
business owners is how do we truly

understand what it's you're going through?

And those human emotions only come
through human conversations there.

I I say this now.

Um, I doubt the ability, uh, to
really start to get to that level of

insight without all the nuances and
pauses and reflections that come with.

Well conducted qualitative research.

Um, those types of, um,
types of experiences are so

much more than text-based.

Um.

I'll give you a well used example, but,
uh, it, it certainly resonates here in,

um, the product design or the tech world
of, um, when Uber was a new concept.

Um, and the notion of getting into
a stranger's car and conducting a

transaction was novel and nobody.

Really was familiar with houses, let alone
vehicles, all through the help of an app.

And if you remember those early days of
Uber, when you would open it up, you'd see

taxi cabs all driving around the screen.

Well, those were fake, but what
they did is they helped alleviate

some of the fear, uh, that new Uber
user would have of, what am I doing?

Like, are there other people doing this?

Like, I heard about somebody riding
this, but are they all around me?

And well, if you see all these Uber.

must mean you are kind entering into a
level of social affirmation and acceptance

because it's all over the place.

And another fear that they would
have is this service is so, um.

um, adopted that I'm gonna be
waiting longer for a Uber ride

than I would a normal taxi cab.

And, you know, the, um, embarrassment
that I'll have of standing with my

arms raised, trying to flag a taxi
down, uh, is gonna be supplanted by

me just standing there and staring at
my phone and waiting for this ride.

So that kind of fake activity
helped assu those two fears.

One of nobody's doing this and it's
gonna be just me with some rando and.

Two, it's gonna be inefficient and
I should go back to the way that

I knew how to hail taxi services.

So I don't think a algorithm
will ever tell you that these are

the things that your client is
going through at any given point.

I think that comes through experience,
uh, understanding service design and, and

all of those great aspects about being
a strategic digital product design or

marketer or, uh, that kind of positioning.

Reed: That's, uh, you know,
that, that's really interesting.

And, and you know, as you
mentioned in, in earlier that.

My audience has a lot of small and
medium sized business owners, and so

both, there's both a skills gap in like
service-based design and, um, you know,

other design principles and a resource
gap where, you know, a a maybe a VC-backed

firm like Uber, uh, could do some, some
deep research and deep, um, uh, you

know, mapping of the customer journey.

Nick Cawthon: so

Reed: Where, you know, sometimes these
solopreneurs or multi-location, um,

service providers or, or retailers, uh,
maybe don't have that same experience.

Are there tools or techniques that,
that everybody could start with?

Uh, you know, like any, anything to, um,

Nick Cawthon: Yeah.

Reed: you know, help them get
there, you know, to compete

with the enterprise level,

Nick Cawthon: uh,

Reed: uh, in, uh, budgets.

Nick Cawthon: or outreach, um, has
been, um, exponentially improved over

the last couple years, whether it be
user testing or surveys or LinkedIn

surveys, as any time you can launch
these things at scale, um, it gives

you an entry point into a conversation.

Um, that is, is a.

A knowing what questions you want to ask,
uh, again, as a small to medium sized

business owner, you have a pretty good I
idea of your ICP of your customer profile

and just try to understand what questions
that they would like to answer or what.

Um, barriers or roadblocks they
might have in past experiences, uh,

is worth conducting a survey over.

And those, again, those can be launched
for, you know, a couple hundred

bucks if you want a statistically
significant, uh, response set.

And I know that's not qualitative,
that's more quantitative, but

you can tie it in to say, Hey,
um, if you ever want any kind of.

Follow up or, uh, engagement about
what you said in that survey.

Here's a link to my calendar
or here's my email address.

And I would love to again,
begin to engage you that way.

Um, there is a platform that I use for,
um, demand generation who upon registry,

the CEO as well as some of their sales
development representatives have just put

their calendar out there to say, if you've
got a problem with our product, um, you

can find time on my calendar at any point.

Uh, and notion of being
user-centric was so refreshing

and I called them out on LinkedIn.

they were giving up their time,
which is the most valuable thing

for any small business owner.

Uh, and saying, I will meet random
customers or even customers that

are considering, uh, and have that
kind of feedback loop, that feedback

cycle that's gonna help us make more
informed product decisions, marketing

decisions, and strategy decisions.

And so.

starts with the ethos of, yes, I will
constrain this to two or three sessions

a week of customers that have chosen
to find time on my calendar to have

something in a, say, good ideas are
bad, it can be 20 minutes or less.

Uh, and then I wanna start to do surveys
and outreach and polling, uh, and have

that kind of, uh, research cycle that's
ongoing to help me inform some of maybe

the longer term initiatives of whether or
not this, uh, idea is in the right place.

Um,

Reed: Yeah.

Interesting.

Nick Cawthon: to,

Reed: Um, well, I wanna
jump to another area.

Uh, you know, talk about some macro trends
that affect consumers of, of all kinds.

Um, two that come to mind
are the, uh, ubiquity of AI

in so many different things.

And then also remote and hybrid work

Nick Cawthon: um,

Reed: much more common.

Nick Cawthon: that you.

Reed: Um, you know, I'm sure there
are others that you're very mindful

of, but between those two, how, how
are you seeing your clients and the

businesses you work with, uh, adapt their
offerings to these, to these big trends?

And, and, you know, feel free to throw in
any other macro trends you, you think are,

Nick Cawthon: stay

Reed: are, uh, relevant.

Nick Cawthon: two macro trends
of AI and automation and then

Reed: No.

Nick Cawthon: work.

Um, again, they're taking the
human outta the loop in, in both

cases, um, we're, we're finding.

Again, I don't need to have
somebody write you an email.

I can have a script that will do so, and
that, that's a very simple example of it.

Um, but your are consolidating, um,
teams into one person with a, a.

a gift to pros, programming pros,
uh, can do it all, can replace

many different creative and product
management and engineering departments.

One person with some basic skill
can really, um, sort of consolidate

several different departments.

I think that's a, a, a.

Conversation for your product manager,
podcasts of, you know, how do you start

to divide up the labor or distinguish who
does what when we all can do everything.

Um, and that from an organizational
design or departmental design for

both digital marketing as well as
product development, that's gonna be

coming to a forefront very quickly.

Um.

If not, we've already seen it with
layoffs and internal restructuring.

And the second question you asked,
uh, was with regards to remote work.

Again, that is, uh, trust
building and relationships.

And, um, we have a, a.

Sort of a, a label called a work wife.

It's somebody that you've taken with you
on your career or they've taken you and

you've latched onto each other to say,
we enjoy working with one another and we

have the same sort of ethos and balance
and, uh, responsibilities in our lives.

And wherever you go, I go and vice versa.

those kinds of people, and many of
your listeners are probably coming to

mind, their work wife or husband, um.

That, happens to those?

Do we still have those?

Do I see read every six months online?

And that's the sort of, um, the
confirmation of our emotional connection

because, pre COVID times, we were
all in the trenches with one another.

Quite literally shoulder to shoulder.

In our cubicles on, on our tables
and building up that emotional trust.

I think that the same thing is true,
um, for you marketers out there,

um, who are developing client trust
and you need to have that, um,

approachability and accessibility.

That used to be across the office
hallway where you'd meet at the water

cooler and now it's in some chat form.

Um, and so going out from
a business development.

Perspective and being so much more
deliberate about phone calls or lunches on

a Friday and trying to keep that habit up.

Um.

Reid, you and I talked about, uh, the
East Bay and the San Francisco Bay

area, whereas for 20 years I would go
nine to five into San Francisco for

whatever position or job or client I had.

And that was just assumed that
Monday through Friday, nine to

five, you were in this town.

And, um, again, somewhere
around 2020 that all stopped.

Uh.

I've forced myself to go back into San
Francisco several days a week to keep

that muscle memory alive, to enjoy the
serendipity, uh, that comes with walking

down the sidewalk and seeing somebody you
used to work with or somebody you used

to work for, uh, and making a promise to
a, a future date where you get together

and have time to catch up and share.

Uh, so those, those were questions that
I, I saw with the macro trends around

automation and ai, as well as that.

Humanistic stance from
business development or um,

coworking environments as well.

I.

Reed: Yeah, no, I, I've felt it as well,
and uh, you know, it's almost like the.

Uh, and you know, your comment
about having to be deliberate about

scheduling face-to-face time is, uh,
like I have to keep reminding myself.

It's like, oh, I, okay.

I need human touch, you know, and I
need to, um, uh, you know, I can't

just keep sending hundreds more emails.

I've just, I, I need to strengthen
some ties and build some trust.

Uh, now, um, as, as people.

So, so, you know, I, I, I liked, you
know, what I learned is you're trying

to develop the next generation of
UX professionals and, and leaders.

What do you think is going to
be different about somebody that

wants to get into a ux, uh, design
role or, or UX research role?

Uh, going forward?

What, what do you think will be.

Different about their journey than,
uh, you know, the generations past.

I mean, I mean, I, I think there's some
obvious ones, but, um, but how, how,

how are they gonna get to be effective?

Nick Cawthon: work with students both
here at uc, Berkeley, uh, that are

data scientists, uh, as well as my alma
mater, California College of the Arts

in San Francisco, who are going into,
um, an MBA program and design strategy.

and so you got two very different roles.

Reed: Hmm.

Nick Cawthon: MBA program are
all mid-career professionals

that are burnt out from.

Their product management jobs and the
data science students are undergraduates

that are wide-eyed and bushy-tailed about
how, uh, they're gonna change the world,

and both face their own challenges.

Um, I will give you my reflection
and my journey and then sort of.

about how it might've been different
if that journey was happening today.

as a another antidote, I brought on
a graduate of, um, California College

of the Arts of the Undergraduate
Interaction Design Program, uh,

for a project that we, um, we took
on at the beginning of the year.

And, uh, she had spent the last
four years of her university.

how to use Figma, learning how
to use a specific design tool,

um, that was intended to solve a
problem of interaction design and

building web-based applications.

and within six months we,
um, sorry, within six.

Days, we decided that that tool was
no longer gonna be one that we use.

We are gonna pivot away from Figma because
these generative tools are going to allow

us much better velocity and efficiency.

Uh, and we were gonna start at the finish,
meaning we were gonna take the client's

existing code base and their component
library and all the design decisions

and, uh, react and Tailwind versions
and all of their, um, end product.

And reverse engineer any prototypes
or design components based upon what's

already done, and that's reducing the
gap between design and development.

question was about students and
juniors coming into the career.

And the lesson to be learned was that she
thought she would graduate into a world in

which she would be exalted by her mastery
of this tool, uh, and very quickly.

Two weeks in that tool got put aside and
said, you need to rely upon these skills,

uh, rather than this tool, because that
tool all of a sudden became obsolete.

Um, a similar analogy was I have a
friend who graduated, uh, with an

economics degree in 2008, 2009, uh, at
the, the cratering of the, the stock

market because of the mortgage crisis.

And his comment was.

Everything I learned in school was
obsolete within three weeks of me

graduating because all the metrics
and mantras were now thrown aside.

and I think that's the case
with a lot of people coming out

of school now, is that, um, I.

We haven't figured out how to teach
this, uh, on a number of different

levels yet, uh, organizations
haven't figured out how to adopt

it on a number of different levels.

I mentioned some of the division of
labor and departmental bleed of how

that all is all going to change.

Um.

And how, uh, young people, coming
into the profession, um, will

adapt, is going to be interesting.

I think you're gonna see so much more
empowerment for opportunities to say,

instead of climbing up the ladder.

And trying to achieve the seniority,
I now have a jet pack on my back,

and if I want a web-based application
or if I want a subscription product,

or if I have a business idea, I can
get to the actuality of it so, so

fast in ways that I could never do
before or I never could afford before.

That's all now at the
power of my fingertips.

I just need to have the patience
to learn about what everything's

happening and how it's gonna fall
back and how it's gonna fail.

Um, but again, I can do so much more.

So.

Again, not to keep going back to,
to COVID, um, but this notion of job

structure and, um, you know, seniority
and promotion, I think it's called into

Reed: No.

Nick Cawthon: Organizations are, instead
of being, um, pyramid shaped where you've

got a lot at the bottom trying to get to
the top, it's now diamond shaped where

there's not gonna be many at the bottom.

There's gonna be a ton in the middle.

Uh, and there's gonna be
very few at the top again.

Um, so.

lesson to be learned from that graduate
of, um, interaction design was, it's

not the tool that's gonna get you there.

It, it's the thinking and the curiosity
that we'll, we'll see you through.

Reed: Interesting.

Yeah.

And, and I have both read
and contemplated, you know,

our, you know, as, as many.

Many in our, uh, economy have
moved away from standing or working

with their hands to sitting.

They have those muscles atrophied.

You know, our, our backs
and knees got weaker.

You know, it does.

Um, I, I, I, I don't know that
I've actually, I can quantify

it or really notice, but I, I.

I can't help but think that
overuse of the, uh, chat, GPT and

other, uh, models like that might
atrophy our thinking a little bit.

And so to come with training
on how to be a strong thinker

Nick Cawthon: Yep.

Reed: to be really, really important.

Um, you know, and, and so I, I mean,
I, I, I love what you're saying.

Yeah, if I wanted to see if we could
drill in just a little bit more on

the job roles and do you think that,
you know, you know, in in years past

we've had distinct roles for designer.

UX researcher, uh, developer, uh, you
know, scrum master or project manager.

You know, a handful of different
roles that were clearly de delineated

and there was some wisdom in the
balance to kind of check each other

and to specialize and, um, but when.

When we have tools, you know, I've
been playing around with like cursor

and you know, you mentioned Figma
and you know, Figma has started to

incorporate AI and the AI starts to
feed things into Figma and, and, um, I.

I mean, it, it does kind of seem
like the lines are blurring it.

Do we, should we fight that tendency
and, and try to keep a team where

ideas can bounce off and we specialize,
or should we embrace the friend

of, of blurring in doing more,

Nick Cawthon: don't think we

Reed: uh, from each role?

Nick Cawthon: so we might
as well embrace it, um, um,

Reed: Mm-hmm.

Nick Cawthon: if we are kind of in the
sandbox where we can all integrate our

existing tools, uh, whether it be Figma,
that's at a very, very rough stage of

integrating with these, um, environments.

Um.

And, know, the sooner that we can let
go of those past tools, uh, and really

understand what is being processed and
what the limitations are, uh, they'll

think the more value we will be.

Um, you just talked about the, uh, atrophy
of, uh, just accepting what's being

spit out, uh, that critical thinking
skills of the transparency in which the.

I'm thinking citations and texts and
sort of qualitative, unstructured data.

Um, but the understanding of, uh,
how is this algorithm citing, uh,

and formulating these thoughts and
opinions so that I might, again,

poke holes in it or defend it, uh,
or instruct my algorithm to give me.

Greater transparency
on how it got to this.

Uh, the same thing can
be true with design.

Uh, if I'm asking for components that
are coming in from a Figma import of a,

how are you using the correct variables?

Are you using the correct, uh, embeddings
of components within one another?

Are you following an atomic
design system correctly?

If we're in these kinds of conversations
with other engineers and product managers,

and we all have a seat at this keyboard,
um, we should be understanding of the

realm that we're bringing into this.

Because the danger comes when the
engineer says, oh, I found this thing

called magic patterns, and you can
type that in and now you can bring

it back into the IDE and then you can
retrofit it so that it outputs that.

So I got from idea to prototype much
faster than you did when you had to

go and, and prompt everything by hand.

And so I think to be aware of how
rapidly this landscape is changing

and these tools are eating themselves
at such a rapid pace, uh, is our

responsibility to our, our discipline.

Um, the best thing that came out of design
school for me was the ability to stand up.

And we used to have these foam core eight
foot by four foot boards where we would.

Pushpin are printed out, work on, uh,
and have to present to the professors

in the class to say, here's my
idea, here's my marketing concept.

What do you think?

And people would raise their hand, say,
why you did that, why you did that.

And the worst thing you could ever say
was, I don't know, I just put it up there.

I thought it would look good.

You have to always have some sort
of reasoning, uh, and justification

for what was being produced.

The same thing should be true
with the output from these tools.

I need to understand that the output
is this way because it was told to

do this or not to do this or given
this kind of input and variable.

That way we can maintain some sense
of identity and specialization even if

we're again, playing in the same sandbox
and huddling around the same keyboard.

Reed: Yeah.

Yeah.

And, and, uh, you know, that does
take me to, to even expand on,

on this, you know, something you
brought up in a, in our earlier

conversation is how hard it is to be.

Um, now we're using these very
powerful models that have absorbed so

much data from social media and, you
know, just the internet as a whole.

And, uh, you know,
we're dependent on them.

And so a lot of the output starts
to look standardized and similar.

Um, how, how do we keep, like, protect
a brand and, and keep it unique and,

you know, still leverage these tools.

But, but hold on to something that's.

Unique and, um, you know,
it has some novelty to it.

How, how do we incorporate that
in our products and branding?

Nick Cawthon: human emotion
and, um, sense perception?

Um,

Reed: Yeah.

Nick Cawthon: read between the lines?

Because it does look.

Reed: I.

Nick Cawthon: same.

It's all, uh, again, cookie cutter,
patterns and languages and words.

Um, was this, you know, funny story
about how one of the models was trained,

uh, by a team in Eastern Africa,
uh, and there was a word that was

endemic to that region of the country.

And so if you analyze the output from.

This model, you can see a, a recurrence
of that word at a unnatural rate.

Um, and so you, there are
still humans behind this.

It's not as if this is all, um, sort of
generated from, uh, from nothing that we,

we started to train this and, uh, develop
these models and, uh, I think that that's.

Going to be, again, I don't mean to
beat a dead horse here, but those

kind of critical thinking skills
of yeah, this is good enough.

Um, this is something that gets the
point across, but how do you start to

extrapolate what it is that the user,
the viewer, the customer might be seeing?

And where can we interpret
more humanity in this?

Um.

You know, the availability of to show,
um, there is a human behind this, uh,

I think becomes all the more important.

are numerous ways to do so.

Um, how, how you position yourself.

I saw there was a United Airline
customer service app that had a call to

action of speak to a human, which you.

That, that's what I do
when I'm on the phone tree.

I just hit zero, 10 times.

And finally the, the, the algorithm, heres

Reed: Right.

Nick Cawthon: pissed off
and takes me to an operator.

Uh, I think our life is gonna be
like that of, of just human being.

Reed: Right,

Nick Cawthon: as imperfect as we may be.

Um, there's something to that.

Reed: right.

Yeah.

No, that's great.

You know, and, um, I, I was
prepping a blog the other day and

I was looking at an article, so
it was really specific to like.

AI overuse in telemarketing, you know, a
lot of, um, AI robots, and then there's

some regulations that, um, old, the old,
uh, I think it's TCPA regulations that

are, um, not, not really well adapted for
the ai, uh, ability anyway, not to get

into the subject of the article, but, um.

The, the first line of the article,
you know, it's, it's written by, I

don't know, Logan Smith or something.

And, and, uh, the first line
was in today's fast paced world,

and I was like, oh, come on.

That's like the number one giveaway

Nick Cawthon: yeah.

Reed: that this was ai

You're, you're writing
about how bad AI using ai,

Nick Cawthon: house that I

Reed: so

Nick Cawthon: to him earlier.

Um, and he had received a, a, a thank
you letter from Charity Navigator,

big big company, and we both took 10
minutes to try to see whether or not this

letter was handwritten or generative,
and the imperfections of human.

Reed: Mm-hmm.

Nick Cawthon: Letters was as such that
I, I don't think I was greater than

80% confident one way or the other
that it was or was not written by a,

a machine or a, uh, a individual, um,
given the quality of my handwriting.

That's, that's, take that
all with a grain of salt.

Um, so yeah, I'm going back to
your initial question is how do

you start to cut through the noise?

Um, and I think that's being
overly forward with, um.

A scalable way, uh, to bring
out, um, we know to be true.

The imperfections of human conversation.

Just as you and I sort of stutter and
stop, and for anybody listening at home

wondering are, are we auto-generated?

Is this conversation happening
in between two algorithms?

I can assure you my mispronunciation
of the word arugula, uh,

wouldn't happen on any.

Um, chat bot.

Um, and so I think there's
a messiness in that.

Uh, the wonderful thing about second
Empire strikes back, uh, the second

Star Wars movie, or fifth if you count
chronologically, is that everything

broke and the spaceships were patched
together and there were sort of, you know,

laser charring and it was all so messy.

Um.

I to keep throwing metaphors at
the, uh, faithful listener, um, our

local basketball team, um, the GM
at the time talked about winning,

uh, when they went on their, uh,
run of, of several championships.

uh, his message was that
winning is really messy.

It's not.

Quick and easy.

Like you've got to fail and fail
and fail, and fail, and to show

that out as a, um, as a measure of
brand positioning or communication.

Um, and not to try to be as slick as
that auto gen, uh, in today's fast paced

world sentence, but to really feel like
you're, you're connecting with somebody

as they would want to be spoken to.

Um.

So I know that was dipping into
hyperbole a little bit, but, um,

the tho those are some of my, my

Reed: Yeah.

Nick Cawthon: feedback.

Reed: Well, well, Nick, uh, you've got
so much experience and you have really

shared a lot of, uh, great insights.

I, um, I, I, I guess you've made
me contemplate a lot of things at a

high level and at the tactical level.

Uh, if people would like to work
with you or converse with you, where,

where can they find you online?

Nick Cawthon: um, or on LinkedIn.

Um, please do reach out.

I would love to hear from you.

I'm in the San Francisco Bay area
as, as mentioned in our conversation.

Um, work out of the ferry
building several days a week.

Uh, and I have a, a great, uh, pension
for meeting people for, with copy,

for and with copy and about coffee.

Um, so do, uh, say hello and, uh,
maybe we can make acquaintances, uh.

Reed: Awesome.

Well, and when next time I'm
out in the Bay Area, I mentioned

I have a brother out there.

Uh, I'd love to hit you up and, and
take you up on, on that offer for

coffee, so that sounds fantastic.

Uh, Nick, it's been a real pleasure.

Thanks for joining the podcast
and, to everybody in the audience,

please reach out to Nick.

if you have.

Ideas for design, or you want
to improve your user experience.

Nick is.

Nick is your guy,

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