Only Dead Fish Go with the Flow

Jono Hey:
I tried to make a nice picture of like, here's a river.

There's one fish which literally is dead and he's going with the flow.

And there's another fish which is working quite hard.

He's helping his way up the river.

It's one of these ones where it sort of makes me feel slightly uncomfortable in a way, but it sort of also challenges me.

It makes me think, okay, what am I doing where I'm just sitting back and letting life come at me?

Maybe that, maybe I can steer it a bit my own.

Gordon Fraser:
It's through dreaming and opening yourself up to dream and be willing to dream, I think, was the process I went through.

And from that point, you know, everything improved in our design DNA.

All the designs that came after that were all better.

Rob Bell:
When I think a designer, I automatically think of someone confidently wearing, you know, a black roll neck, designer glasses, great hair, which confirms what I already know, that I am the least cool person here.

Hello and welcome to Sketchplanations, The Podcast.

If this podcast were a board game, it would be something like the game of life.

Not the one we all played in the 80s and 90s, but the modern version.

Fast pace with twists and turns, like a library of Agatha Christie novels packed into a toboggan and sent down the Cresta Run.

In the game and in this podcast, there are ups and downs.

There's choice and reward.

There's the odd lesson learnt.

There's entertaining artwork and of course, there's a bit of fun.

The only real difference is the lack of spinny wheel thing, but we are working on that.

I'm Rob Bell, happy to be the banker and playing with me up front, leading the way with a packed car and plenty of moolah.

It's Jono Hey.

And having recently acquired an action card sending him on the holiday of a lifetime, his fortunes quickly reversed as in his next two moves, he had a car accident and lost his house to a fire.

Despite that, he still plays the game with a huge smile on his face.

It's plucky Tom Pellereau.

Tom Pellereau:
Good evening.

Someone on The Apprentices is approaching my record.

They've two boys this year have just lost six tasks in a row.

Rob Bell:
Oh, this is good.

Tom Pellereau:
I was only five in a row.

I did lose eight in the end, so they still have a bit off my record totally.

Rob Bell:
But they've lost six in a row already.

Tom Pellereau:
In a row.

Rob Bell:
Oh, so they've surpassed your record.

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah, the five in a row, but they've still got to lose two more or they've got to survive for a little bit longer to beat the all comers.

Record, is that really a right word for it?

Rob Bell:
All time, all star, all star record.

And that is a game, isn't it, in a way, The Apprentice?

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah, there's a lot of luck involved in it.

I must admit, it's a lot of luck.

Rob Bell:
Well, as with the game of life.

Did you guys ever play the game of life?

Do you know what I mean?

Tom Pellereau:
The little car with the sticks.

Rob Bell:
Yeah, and you put your family in it.

Tom Pellereau:
And the bag and the spinner.

Rob Bell:
You can get married and have kids.

Tom Pellereau:
It's in like mountainy bits.

Jono Hey:
The game of stereotypes, wasn't it, really?

Gordon Fraser:
Yes, it is exactly that, don't it?

Jono Hey:
Yeah, it's funny when you play it now.

Rob Bell:
So there are more modern versions and now you can like adopt pets.

Like there are some weird action cards where you have to like get up and do a dance or, I don't know, like post something on TikTok.

I don't know, but it's a lot more, it's modernized, it's modernized.

Tom Pellereau:
Thankfully, like a lot of the things from our youth, you can look at now, or you just try and play with your children, and you're like, oh gosh, this, questionable.

Rob Bell:
We love playing hotel in our family.

Amongst my brothers and sisters and I.

Remember that?

It's kind of a faster paced monopoly type thing.

Yeah, and you get to build stuff.

A bit sexier.

Yeah, big, lovely hotels with swimming pools and the facilities.

How many nights are you staying?

Oh, six, unlucky.

Jono Hey:
It's good, I like hotel.

Hard to get hold of these days.

Rob Bell:
Oh, right, yeah.

Well, we're still using the old version from probably the 90s, actually.

Yeah.

You're pretty good with your games, Jono.

And Tommy, you've probably got loads as well, haven't you?

Board games kicking about the house that you pull out every now and then?

Tom Pellereau:
A lot of games.

I'm not into the Monopoly.

Jack really enjoys Monopoly.

I'm like, oh gosh, it takes so long.

But yeah, Jono is a master.

Has fantastic collection.

And used to invent board games, Jono, or has invented board games.

Jono Hey:
It's fun inventing games, yeah.

I like inventing games.

I don't have a lot of time for it now.

You should do more of that actually.

Yeah, it's just good fun.

Yeah, you should do that.

Revive it.

Rob Bell:
My absolute favorite podcast, Ellis and Jon on BBC.

Tom Pellereau:
So your absolute favorite podcast, Sketchplanations.

Rob Bell:
Sorry, I'll start again.

So my second favorite podcast in the world ever after Sketchplanations podcast is Ellis and Jon show on Five Live on BBC Sounds.

And they do a made up game every week where listeners send in a made up game and then they play it.

It's brilliant.

Tom Pellereau:
I love it.

Rob Bell:
It's very good.

Because when you are kind of bored and there's nothing to do, like kind of what was similar to what we're saying last time.

So you're delayed waiting for a plane or a train or something.

It's great fun just to come up with a game and play that with your mates.

Jono Hey:
We did, we were on the train the other day and I asked ChatGPT for a game that you could play just with your fingers and the other person and came up with some quite good ones.

You could try asking ChatGPT for a game.

I don't know if it made it up or if it found it but it made up some quite good games I thought.

Rob Bell:
Very good, let's try it.

Well, whether it's Monopoly, chess or pick up sticks that floats your boat, on Sketchplanations, the podcast, we play by the rules.

So lay out the board and deal out the cards.

Here's the dice, go on, shake, shake, shake for a big one.

It's a six, let's podcast.

This week, I'm delighted to welcome another guest into our podcast family.

Now, they've selected a couple of Jono's sketches they'd like to explore a bit more with us, and we're excited to find out how they relate to their life and to their work.

But before we get into the episode properly, just a reminder that we love to hear from you, our listeners, on the topics and the themes that we cover, and you can send your emails to helloatsketchplanations.com.

Thank you, Tommy.

Better every week.

And finally, if you enjoy the pods, we'd love you to tell a few more people about it.

I mean, we now have listeners from over a hundred countries in the world, and it'd be great to get more people involved.

Not necessarily from different countries.

I mean, you could tell someone you sit next to at work, or someone you're sat next to right now, on the train or on the bus.

In fact, I dare you, I dare you to do that right now.

And if you do, tell us how it went.

Tommy, where do they send their emails?

Tom Pellereau:
helloatsketchplanations.com.

Rob Bell:
Lovely.

Right, our guest on the podcast this week maintains a very simple outline of their professional activities up on LinkedIn.

It simply reads, industrial designer, photographer, filmmaker, and I have to say, there's a joy in this simplicity for me.

But having hung out and worked with our guest a number of times, I know there's a lot of very fine attention to detail that goes into all of his creations.

Gordon Fraser studied innovative product design at the University of Dundee, and is now the co-founder and head designer at Marloe Watch Company.

A true creative, he oversees the aesthetics of the business, from the design of the watches to the films on its website, down to the colour pallets of the branding.

He also writes all the company's copy.

And pertinently for this podcast, when it comes to getting his initial ideas down and recorded somewhere, Gordon, I know, is a big fan of filling his sketchbooks.

Gordon, welcome to the podcast.

Gordon Fraser:
Thank you very much for having me.

Delighted to be here.

Rob Bell:
I'm, I very much feel like I'm the odd one out in this kind of coming together here, because upsettingly for me, I'm the only one who's not a designer.

And I say upsettingly because in my mind, the word designer is pretty much synonymous with cool.

Right?

Which confirms what I already know that I am the least cool person here.

You know, when I think of designer, I automatically think of someone confidently wearing, you know, a black roll neck, designer glasses, expensive laptop, great hair, I mean.

But when you talk about being a designer, Gordon, what do you talk about?

What does it mean to you?

And Tommy, Jono, I'd be interested to hear your take on this as well.

Gordon Fraser:
So we're 10 years old next year.

And for eight-

Rob Bell:
As Marloe Watch Company?

Gordon Fraser:
The Marloe Watch Company, yes.

So I've been doing what I do now for almost 10 years.

And for eight of those 10 years, I've had crushing self-doubt and insecurity and imposter syndrome.

So being a designer for me is torches because I guess in our company, especially, because I'm this kind of sole designer for everything that we do, it all comes back to me.

I don't design with a committee of people and we don't discuss it.

And it's like, together we have decided this.

Very much the axe falls directly on me.

So yeah, it's an interesting position being a designer in this business.

Rob Bell:
Tommy, is that similar for you?

Because you design and bring products to market as well.

Tom Pellereau:
I'd certainly relate to the torturous aspect of being a designer, an inventor.

I sort of feel myself more of the sort of inventor than designer.

But actually the reality is a lot of people talk to me that will tell me that I'm an entrepreneur, which I feel very uncomfortable about because I'm not very, you know, and I also therefore relate to Gordon's point about the sort of imposter syndrome.

I've been very well supported by Lord Sugar and his team and by others in his team.

And I was also, I've got to say, one of the best things about for me about winning the show was that someone backed me.

And that has stayed with me for quite a long time, which is an amazingly fortunate thing to have happened to me.

But yeah, designing, inventing is amazing, but is also quite torturous in terms of the features of the feet, the unknown, you kind of present these things and you're like, I hope they like it, I really hope they like it.

And that's not really a very good way to be trying to pitch things either.

So I get involved less and less in the sales these days because sort of probably I'm a bit too desperate in some respects.

Whereas the sales people are like, yeah, you want this, you're gonna take this, you're gonna put this in from July, aren't you?

Because it's brilliant.

We've been designing it, it's brilliant.

And I'd be like, well, please take it, it's lovely.

I put a lot of effort in.

Gordon Fraser:
It's kind of like that in the watch business.

You know, we do a lot of things behind closed doors.

And you kind of work up to this grand reveal and you go ta-da!

And then you're immediately, you know where you sit.

And we've tried to get ahead of that by kind of opening up the doors to what we do and show people how we go about doing things.

Kind of as a way to include people, you know, because this industry is very insular and very, you know, everybody keeps their close counsel.

So we've tried to open up that kind of window to come in and see how we do things.

And also to avoid this kind of crushing blow when people go, that is disgusting.

But again, you know, by opening the doors, you're also opening the doors to mid-process scrutiny as well.

Rob Bell:
Oh, I hate that.

Gordon Fraser:
I hope you're going to change that for the end of the production series.

Tom Pellereau:
And designed by committee is not always the best way of...

Gordon Fraser:
So you can't win no matter what you do.

Rob Bell:
I touched on this in the intro a bit, Gordon, but the fact that you use sketchbooks.

I think I'm right in saying that.

Is that important to you?

Is that an important part of your design process, getting those initial ideas down, having somewhere to record that so that you know you can come back to it, it isn't lost?

Gordon Fraser:
Aye, aye.

I think I've heard a lot of people talk about watch design as this kind of really arty flowing, you open the sketchbooks like, wow, look at all these lovely books.

My sketchbooks are horrible.

They're absolutely horrible.

They're a mess of just horrible wee sketches, but it's a way for me to catalogue little things that I've thought about and then I can reference later.

It's not an exercise in beauty.

It's just a logging process.

I use physical sketchbooks to do that, but I also do a lot of sketching in the computer.

The software that I use to eventually design our watches for manufacture, I also do a lot of sketching in that platform, testing ideas out that look horrible, rinse and repeat quite a lot.

I guess you could call that sketching as well.

The date stamps that the program we use gives you milestones that you can always come back to.

If you go down a rabbit hole and you divert somewhere, you can always come back and maybe explore that idea a wee bit more.

It's kind of a 3D version of sketching in a way, but in terms of sketchbooks, they're just a way for me to get things out of here, in my mind, and down on the page.

Rob Bell:
Which I find really important in the stuff I do.

I know Jono and Tommy, I know you, but Jono, you've...

Sketchplanations is an example of your prolific sketching, shall we say.

Jono Hey:
I have a big collection of sketchbooks for work and personal projects over the years, yeah, a lot.

Rob Bell:
All right, let's get on to the first sketch that you selected, Gordon.

And it's called Only Dead Fish Go With The Flow.

Now, when I told Jono that this was what you'd chosen, I remember his face kind of showed an initial surprise, I think it probably was, followed by a kind of...

I think what I'll describe as like a kind of deep approval.

I remember it, this thing was like, okay, yeah.

Do you remember that, Jono?

Jono Hey:
I do, yeah, I was surprised.

Rob Bell:
First up, Jono, do you want to describe the sketch and tell us what made you want to create it?

What made you want to communicate the meaning behind the sketch?

Jono Hey:
Yeah, and I should first say where it's from as well, which is I learned this little tiny little phrase from a book called Improv Wisdom by Patricia Ryan Madsen.

And it has a lot of things about what you can learn from improv that you can apply to your life.

As it happens, this little snippet she said she saw in a pub over the fireplace in Wales.

And I just thought it was such a nice memorable way to conjure up an approach to life.

I actually got quite interesting feedback about this one.

Like a lot of people quite strongly disagreed with it.

But for me, I liked it.

Essentially, so I drew it, right?

I tried to make a nice picture of like, here's a river.

There's one fish which literally is dead and he's going with the flow.

And there's another fish which is working quite hard and he's hopping his way up the river.

And yeah, it's one of these ones where it sort of makes me feel slightly uncomfortable in a way, but it sort of also challenges me or it makes me think, okay, what am I doing where I'm just sitting back and letting life come at me?

Maybe I can steer it a bit my own.

So that's what the sketch is about.

That's where I learned it.

And yeah, I think it's a really interesting little reminder.

Rob Bell:
It's a nice colourful sketch as well.

It's a full block colour scene, isn't it?

Jono Hey:
I've tried to leverage what I've learned from Calvin and Hobbes over the years.

Rob Bell:
Nice.

Jono Hey:
Bill Watterson's beautiful sketches.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rob Bell:
Great, great, great.

All right, so Gordon, what is it about this sketch and that meaning behind it that appeals to you?

I mean, we kind of touched on it a little bit earlier, I think, but yeah, is this purely in your professional life or kind of wider, would you say?

Gordon Fraser:
I think it's just the way I approach things personally to every kind of creative outlet that I have.

Yeah.

But you would imagine that creativity and uniqueness in Watchland is a great selling point.

You know, you come into this industry, you think, right, I'm going to do things differently.

I'm going to do things so that somebody looks at it and go, oh, I've never seen that before.

And so you do that and then you get blowback because that's not what the market wants.

It's a kind of tension of the industry and the market and the people, you get multiple approaches to watches.

You get the people who are boffins, the spec hunters, and they go looking for what it has technically.

And that's their approach to it.

And then you get the people who buy watches as a way of either status symbol or a measure of self-worth.

Look at how good I'm doing or look at me or whatever.

And then you get the guys who can't get there financially and so want something that looks like that but isn't that, it has all the stuff that that other one has.

And then you get the lay people who just love the look of it and they don't care what it has inside it or it's either a cost decision or they just love it and they go for it.

And so uniqueness to design is an interesting thing.

If you go with the flow, you have a better chance at success in this industry.

Whereas if you're a dead fish and carve your own path, you often end up a dead fish.

There's no other way out.

We've got a great example.

When we were designing our first dive watch, we thought we were going to go against every expectation here and we're going to really go to town and do what we think a dive watch should look like.

How it should look like if it's going to operate in that environment.

We did it and we went ta-da!

And everyone went, oh, no, absolutely not.

Where's the polished case and where's the ceramic bezel?

And it was a real issue because we thought we were being really clever, you know, and we'll capture the imaginations of everyone.

But in reality, we should have just went with the flow and did what people were looking for.

Rob Bell:
So is it then, is it kind of, is it horses for courses?

Is it kind of pick and choose if you want to be the dead fish going with the flow or the live fish swimming your own path and fighting against the norm a bit?

Gordon Fraser:
Well, that's when you have to start thinking on with the business head as well, you know, what do we want to be around longer than a year?

If not, do something really unique and then see what happens.

So yeah, there's a balance to be struck, I think.

And certainly, you know, we're about to, we're in the process of redesigning and relaunching the Morar as a kind of phase two.

Rob Bell:
The dive watch, the Morar, the dive watch.

Gordon Fraser:
And that is a lot more market aligned in terms of what it looks like and what specs it has and what people are looking for.

But then the challenge is to make it unique, whilst conforming to these pre-ordained expectations.

So as much as I would love to be the kind of live salmon leaping over the water and going one way, sometimes you have to just go with it.

Rob Bell:
I think that's a really important point, Gordon, because it's lovely to see her and think, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm that live fish.

I am carving out my own path here, and the rest of you can do one.

But yeah, when reality hits, it can be a bit different.

Jono, tell me, what do you feel, what's your perspectives and experience with taking this kind of approach?

Jono Hey:
Yeah, it's interesting, particularly I think with products.

There was something I learned in a class I took, which was that products are created by the culture and products create the culture.

And it's this sort of cyclical thing.

So the thing that is gonna succeed now is gonna succeed now because what everybody is ready for now.

And yet when somebody creates something new, you shift the culture.

But it's very hard, I think, to your point, Gordon, you can't just come in from left field and do this because people won't always be ready for that.

But gradually things do change, right?

But there's this sort of window of changeability or you have to find the right people for it.

Like maybe some people really loved your stuff, but that's not gonna work.

Mass markets, not gonna be enough sales to make a business in your particular case.

Other domains maybe you can get away with just go, I'm gonna find my niche customers who get this new thing that I'm doing and that's enough.

So I think it depends quite a lot.

So for example, I don't know, it may be software where overheads can be a bit lower and you can change stuff a bit smaller.

It's much easier to get stuff out.

Maybe you can serve much smaller markets with something that is just for those people.

And it doesn't matter.

If you wanna start a newsletter right now talking about some completely unique thing, which is just you and 50 other people, you can do it.

It will hardly cost you anything.

But if you wanna start a watch company and you wanna sell a lot of watches, then it has to somehow meet what the culture is ready for.

So yeah, I think it's a dilemma, but on the other hand, you also, you have to ask yourself what you wanna do.

I mean, you don't do this, Gordon, either, right?

And like you say that, but all your stuff is beautiful and it's not run of the mill, like cookie cutter products, right?

So you are pushing the boundaries at the same time as meeting the needs of the culture at the top.

Gordon Fraser:
We have a real difficulty because what we do, people have to make that leap of faith initially through pictures on the internet and videos and what we're trying to do to convey what it is, but the morrow especially, people had to see it in front of them and then they went, I know what you were trying to do and I love it.

So it's that, if you are going to go off piste, it kind of pays to somehow get people to see it in person, especially in Watchland, you know, before you can judge if it's a success or not.

Rob Bell:
That makes a lot of sense to me.

So where is a business?

Yes, you have to judge that, right?

You have to look at your surroundings, you have to look at the environment, you have to judge that.

I think in kind of personal social life, it's much more up to you, right?

The stakes are a lot lower, I guess.

And Tommy, I'd say you have been someone who has carved their own path a little bit, just in terms of the way you go about stuff and that you don't really care that much about what people think sometimes.

And I'm not talking about this in terms of your business.

I'm talking about this about, and I mean this as a compliment, and how you go about a lot of the things that you do.

I find it brilliant.

I find it inspiring a lot of the time.

Tom Pellereau:
Thank you.

That's very kind.

The first thing that I think is so important in life is to be proactive.

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

Tom Pellereau:
And don't be that dead fish that is just literally just going with the flow.

I think the most important thing that I try to give with my team and with my children is you've got to be proactive.

Make the most of every day.

Make the most of all the resources you've got.

And make the most of the feedback that you're getting, the most of your ideas.

So that is so important.

And I certainly read that from this dead fish sketch.

The other, and Gordon, you made this comment, which I also, you know, we thought we were being really clever, right?

And I have that feeling occasionally.

I'm like, oh yeah, I'm doing this.

I think this is really clever idea and da da da.

And I'm fortunate as often where I stumble because I'm trying to show that I am clever rather than that the idea is clever or I'm doing it in the hope that people say, oh, that's really clever.

Whereas as soon as you start focusing on that, personally I found that's when I then trip up.

Rob Bell:
As opposed to looking at the product and the needs of your customers.

Tom Pellereau:
Yes, doing something for the sake of trying to look clever rather than for the sake of people wanting it.

Gordon Fraser:
I think a lot of people are searching for that Steve Jobs iPhone reveal moment where people go, I never knew I wanted this, but I want it.

I think that's the pinnacle, isn't it?

You launch a watch and people go, I didn't realise I needed this until then.

It's a very strict frame that we work within.

It's a wristwatch.

It's a luxury in terms of, it's not a necessary object.

But we're always striving for that grand reveal when people go, I need this right now.

It's a hard thing to master.

Jono Hey:
I was glad you started Gordon, about the different reasons people buy watches, because I think watches are really, they're kind of a fascinating product.

We did an episode on Veblen goods, and Veblen goods are ones which are more valuable the more expensive they are.

And a Rolex is a classic thing.

It's desirable because it's out of reach for most people.

And so watches, they don't behave necessarily, they're not like buying a mop, which has got to be really good at washing your floor.

And people can tell the time on their phone.

So there's a lot of complex and subtle reasons why people are buying watches.

So in a way, I think of it as, it's a bit like buying candles, like nobody particularly needs to buy a lot of candles these days, but they sell a lot of candles.

Rob Bell:
So a lot of expensive candles.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, and so it becomes, you know, and watches, but a watch, you know, candles are simple, but watches are like this.

It is incredibly hard, it's like, you know, if I think of what is the, there's a, you must have been there, in the British Museum, there's a clock gallery in London, and it's like one of the coolest rooms in London, and it's got these incredible mechanical clocks from, you know, 150 years ago, or something like that, or more, and you think of like the pinnacle of what is a complicated thing, and it's like a watch mechanism, and you have this like really complicated psychology of why people are buying these products in the first place, and I just think it's a really fascinating and yet difficult space to operate in.

Gordon Fraser:
It is, let me tell you, because you've got the added pressure as well that our watches, we only design mechanical watches, and if you look after this and you have it serviced regularly, this watch will last not just your life, but multiple lifetimes, and so you're designing from a perspective of this object will be here forever, and so you've got to design from a perspective kind of ignorant of fad or trend or anything that's happening right now, and look beyond that to what will, you know, it's timeless, isn't it?

It's the thing that will kind of transcend multiple generations and still be relevant or valid or exciting, so it's a little extra bit of pressure on top of all the other pressures.

Rob Bell:
How can we summarize what we're saying about this sketch?

It feels to me that there are definitely times when you probably need to consider, if you look at it more as a scale than a binary thing, I think perhaps, and depending on the situation, you might be at different points.

You might need to place yourself at different points on that scale between carving your own path and going with the flow.

And you probably want to try and avoid being at the absolute extreme of that scale on either side and just be playing somewhere around in the middle, depending on the situation.

Does that feel like a decent summary of that?

Gordon Fraser:
I think so, yeah.

We've found the boundaries of where not to go with various designs, but yeah, I think that's a great way to see it.

Rob Bell:
Let me caveat that.

Within business, I think in your personal life, sometimes it's quite fun to go right on the extreme and see where that ends up, like in social life or something.

I don't quite know what I'm picturing with that.

Gordon Fraser:
I don't know either because I'm married and there's very strict rules involved in that.

Jono Hey:
I was trying to think, I was going to ask, when do you think you've in your life swam against the current, done your own thing, not where everybody else is going?

Rob Bell:
Well, I changed my career.

I'd say that I see that as a bit of moment when I was told getting into telly is really, really hard.

Very few people actually make it.

You're probably better off just sticking with your job or get another job.

I feel that was a bit of a moment for me, personally, that stands out.

Jono Hey:
Here's an example I really like, which is on totally the completely simple side of it.

There's a sketch I did.

It was one of the first 100 or something, which was used both sides of a buffet.

It sounds ridiculous.

You know when there's a big line of food at a buffet at a conference or something, and everybody's queuing up for the food and waiting ages, maybe for the whole of lunchtime, just in a queue to get the food, and yet a buffet has two sides.

So I always steadfastly swim against the current and go my own way and just go from the other side.

But there, the consequences, I don't go out of business.

And I can still pay the bills, you know, so.

Yeah, maybe you're right, different extremes.

Gordon Fraser:
Our business was founded upon going against how it's done.

It was out of the blue that Oliver and I came together.

Rob Bell:
Oliver's your business partner, Gordon?

Gordon Fraser:
Yes, so Oliver was living in Sweden at this point, and he saw the kind of blossoming watch market in Sweden and said, I can do this, but I have no idea how to design anything.

And so he went looking for a designer and stumbled through a list of people and then arrived at me.

And he pitched what he wanted to do, and I said, no thanks.

And then a couple of weeks later, I went, ah, that was a shame.

I should have jumped at the chance.

And so I wrote back to him and said, right, okay, let's talk about this a bit more.

And so we began talking, and after about three or four weeks, I went, right, let's do this together.

And then from that point, we didn't meet in person for two years.

We just did it all over the internet.

So we launched two watches to market, sold all these watches, and hadn't met once in person.

It was only after two years that we met, and people went, oh, right, this is a real thing.

So yeah, that was going against, because all the way along those two years, we had people saying to us, what are you doing?

Who is this person?

You don't know them.

It could be Fleece and you, or it could be anybody.

But it was just a huge ball of trust and reading people.

We both had the measure of each other and thought, yeah, we're both swimming in the same direction.

So let's do it together.

So that was a big moment for me, going against all that.

Rob Bell:
I think a big word you've used there in that is that if you are going to go against the flow, it's trust, right?

Gordon Fraser:
Oh, hugely, trust is everything.

Yeah.

Rob Bell:
Trust in your idea, trust in your ability, trust in your team or whatever it might be.

You need that trust to, I guess that then yields the confidence and the motivation that you need.

Gordon Fraser:
And knowing which seeds of doubt to cast aside.

You know, you can let seeds of doubt grow, but it's just kind of knowing which ones to say, well, okay, we'll ignore that one for now.

Rob Bell:
Lovely.

Listen, I'm going to move us on to our second sketch that you selected, Gordon.

So it's called Prints & Performances, prints with a T, not like princes and princesses, Prints & Performances.

I'd say, Jono, it's one of maybe just a few sketches in your collection that are, I'd say, more kind of art driven.

So Jono, what's the sketch and what is it about?

Jono Hey:
Yeah, it's, I mean, it is just a drawing of Half Dome, which is a mountain in Yosemite Valley in California.

And it's the quote, the quote is from Ansel Adams, who is one of the foremost American photographers.

And the quote is, the negative is the score, the print is the performance.

And very much I was trying to evoke the feel of an Ansel Adams photo in the start of the sketch when I put it there.

But it's something that when I heard his view on it through that quote, it just resonated with me at the time.

And so, yeah, there's not much to it from a sketch point of view other than it is very much, I hope, if you know Ansel Adams' work, reminiscent of his photography as well.

Rob Bell:
So Gordon, I mean, I can imagine this metaphor and this mantra is something that you bring into many different parts of your work and your life outside work perhaps as well.

What is it about this sketch that appeals to you?

It's easy to think about your photography as maybe a very obvious place to start, but I'm sure it comes into a lot of the other creative outlets.

Gordon Fraser:
Yeah, yeah, it comes into everything.

A watch is a pretty simple thing.

It's a movement and a case and hands and a dial and glass to sandwich it all together.

And that's it.

So that's the negative, you know, everybody knows what a watch is.

But if you just attack it from that perspective, you know, give them the specs, it can go to 100 meters or it's got sapphire crystal, whatever, that's no use to anybody.

It's why it exists and why we've done it and what drives us and what motivates us and why this object exists and framing around something that is inspiring to us, that engages people.

It's the why of the thing rather than just the raw blueprint.

So that's why I chose this.

I think it's all about the performance.

It's all about why are you singing this way?

What is it about you that draws people towards you?

And funnily enough, we're right in the middle of the tail end of our biggest watch to date for me.

It's called the Day Timer and it came out of a process of.

Quite complex design psychology.

I was fed up with everything that I was designing at the time, not in terms of our catalogue, but what I was producing from the sketches on the computer.

Every time I got to a point, I thought, that's no good.

I'm not happy with that.

And Oliver noticed my kind of despondency and said, what's going on?

Why have you stopped dreaming?

What is it about your design language that is causing you to stumble?

And so we're really forming this daytime campaign around the result of that, which was I designed a watch for me.

What drives me?

What excites me?

What got me into watch design in the first place?

What about a watch inspires me?

And we're building it around the concept of dreamers.

There's a poem.

It was actually through watching Willy Wonka, to be honest with you.

When my daughter was watching it one day, and there's a point where Violet licks the wallpaper, and she goes, Snowsberry.

And Willy Wonka says, We are the music makers and we are the dreamers of dreams.

You don't have to pigeonhole anything.

You can do whatever you want.

And we can do whatever we want.

We start every project with a total blank page, infinity at our disposal, and we can do whatever we want.

And quite often that can bind you, can bind the cogs of creativity, or it can unleash you into wild flights of fantasy.

And so we're building this campaign around dreamers.

And why did I stop dreaming?

Because dreaming is essential to creativity and producing your finest work.

Rob Bell:
Producing that performance.

Gordon Fraser:
Exactly.

You can have all the parts, but it's useless to you if you're not happy and you're not willing to dream and find out new things and let yourself just be inspired.

Because of that, I chose the Ansel Adams sketch.

Jono Hey:
I resonate at first with this quote because of photography, right?

It's a music metaphor for photography because he was a photographer.

And it was at the sort of time where digital photography was really taking off.

And for me, it was also like, I remember when HDR photos, High Dynamic Range photos came out, it was like, oh wow, you can get so much more out of it.

So you take the photo and then you can work on it and make it much better.

And I remember at the time, in some ways, it felt a bit like a cheat.

So I was like, well, I didn't, you didn't like that photo looks amazing.

And this was happening all the time.

You look on Flickr or something, incredible photo, and you're like, well, it wasn't exactly like that when they stood there.

They've done all sorts of stuff to it.

And yet you might still love it.

And so one of the things I liked about it was it made me realize that Ansel Adams, like the dawn of photography, he was carrying around a tripod and plates, massive heavy plates, and he had to do these exposures over multiple minutes and put his head under the blanket kind of photography, that kind of thing.

And he'd been doing this for years and years ago in the sense that what you did is you went out in the field, you tried to take the best, like the perfect negative, capture as much as you can, and then you're not done.

You've still got like your, you can still express your artistic vision of it.

And then maybe if you do that enough, and perhaps you get a bit like Gordon, you like, you just see it and you capture it there, and then in the moment in the field, that's it, you're done.

But also, I quite like the idea that, you know, you go, actually, what I've done is I've captured the information and I've got stuff to work with here now.

And his photos are incredibly striking and memorable, but he was doing what in those days was called dodging and burning in the dark room, like lighting in areas, darkening areas, which is what you do on Photoshop and all the photo editing tools that you do these days.

And that's okay.

It's okay because you're making your artistic vision.

And so for me, I think that was, I don't know, it was quite interesting for me because I guess I felt a bit conflicted, like working on, I say working on photos, but like tweaking them afterwards, doing stuff to them, like, is that okay?

Is that cheating?

And so one of the reasons I liked it was because of that, just straight from the photography aspect.

Rob Bell:
I will tell by your reactions if this is appropriate application of this metaphor or not.

Sometimes I'll take a piece of Ikea furniture and I will up, what do you call it, up?

Tom Pellereau:
Up cycle.

Rob Bell:
Up cycle?

Well, not really.

I mean, I haven't kind of got it from a scrap heap.

I've taken it from my house sometimes.

Upgrade.

And I've just made it better.

I've added stuff.

I've taken it into the workshop.

I've added stuff.

I've made my own handles out of concrete.

I've added a bit of trim.

I've painted it.

I've put my new new style on it.

So is the IKEA build the negative and the print is my finished version of it?

Jono Hey:
Yeah, you've bought like basic wardrobe number one.

And you've applied Rob's artistic vision on top.

Rob Bell:
That is a creative outlet I have that I think that probably applies the most for me.

I think an important point that Gordon made there was that you don't have to be expertly skilled in whatever activity we're talking about in order for it to be your performance.

You can still make, let's take the cooking for example, you make it however you can.

And if you were more skilled and with more experience in the two, three more years of doing it, maybe it would be slightly more finessed.

But that doesn't devalue your performance at any one time because you don't necessarily have the experience and have accumulated a load of skills in that area.

I think that's a really important point to make on this.

For me anyway, that feels encouraging.

Knowing that feels a safer place to explore with your performances, I feel.

Gordon Fraser:
I think a lot of that comes with maturity and age.

For a lot of your life or your formative years, you're looking to differentiate yourself and be the one that's doing something different.

But you get to a certain point in life where you go, I'm just happy where I am and what I'm doing and people like it, then great.

If they don't, then they don't.

And that's also okay.

I think the more you expose yourself to masters of craft and people who are really kind of trailblazing, you'll hear them say, I don't ever stop learning.

They're always finding new things.

It's just that they might be at a different point in their creative trajectory than you are.

So I don't think you can ever devalue where you're at because it's not as good as other people.

You are where you are and people find value in what you're doing as well as other people.

So never, ever worry that you're no good.

Just keep going and I think you will eventually become comfortable with your own abilities and where you sit in the grand scheme of things.

Rob Bell:
And this coming from the man who was at the top of the podcast talking about imposter syndrome.

Gordon Fraser:
I know.

I did say 10 years and 8 of those were imposter.

I feel a lot more comfortable now.

I think going through that process of the daytime where I was no happy, I think that was the real point at which I thought, what is it?

Why am I not happy?

And I went through a process to discover happiness.

It was through dreaming and opening yourself up to dream and be willing to dream, I think was the kind of process I went through.

And from that point, you know, everything improved in our design DNA.

All the designs that came after that were all better.

All the language that we were using was all better because I've got out of my own way.

I stopped worrying about where I, you know, worried about criticism and I worried about where we sat in the world.

Just trust yourself and do what you do and believe that you have the ability to do it.

And sure enough, you know, things just got easier after that point.

Jono Hey:
There's the word trust again.

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

It's brilliant.

Jono Hey:
I was going to say, and maybe this is more for Tom, but, you know, Gordon, you've started business as well.

Like I usually think, I think for business, I think this quote applies to me.

In fact, maybe hugely so, because I was massive when we came out of university.

I was massive on ideas.

I love ideas, coming up with new ideas and stuff and ideas for new products and things.

And I think the more my career has gone on and I've worked on more businesses and projects and products, you realize that ideas are pretty well.

I don't know.

I think in business, ideas are quite cheap.

And actually, like ideas, in this case for me, like the negative and the print is like the or the performances, the execution.

Like, you know, you made a watch company work and watches have been around forever.

So why do we need a new watch company?

But it's all about the execution.

And so that's why I think it's, you know, it's easy to go, oh, here's an idea for this.

Or I thought that first before, you know, Elon Musk did.

But actually, you make it happen.

And that's in business.

What the performance is, is the execution.

And so, Tom, you've been doing that left, right and center for years.

It's fine to say, oh, I could have thought a curve nail file.

I don't know if anybody had thought of a curve nail file, but a lot of people could have thought of it.

But you actually made it happen and you turn it into a business.

And so I feel like business, you know, the execution is like the performance of it.

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah, you're absolutely right.

The execution and you're also right about the fact that the ideas are maybe the negative.

And I would say that the problem that people want being solved, I find is the most important bit.

Finding the problems of what people want is, you know, ideas can be cheap.

But if the idea isn't solving a problem that actually people want to buy and for a certain price, then that's not going to work at all.

The execution is so important.

And I loved your quote from a couple of weeks ago.

The diamonds are in the detail and I suspect, Gordon, you must spend a huge amount of your time looking at things that are like less than a millimetre big.

I'd imagine.

Gordon Fraser:
I had a bit of a debate.

We've got a really flourishing and positive fan group on Facebook, started by somebody else, but we're part of it just to see what's going on.

And we put out an email with some macro shots.

And there was a huge debate on this texture that we'd used on the daytime.

It's a honeycomb texture.

But we'd inverted it.

Usually you have a flat surface and you cut lines into it to create a honeycomb.

But we pushed the squares down.

So you ended up with kind of mountains, like lines in the opposite direction.

And there was a huge debate about this.

If this was the right thing to do and what are you playing at?

You know, you're going to...

This can't be done.

And those squares were 0.2 of a mil across.

Tom Pellereau:
0.2.

Amazing.

Gordon Fraser:
It has no bearing on anything.

But there was a huge debate about this honeycomb texture.

Jono Hey:
I can't even see 0.2.

Gordon Fraser:
No.

So it's funny, you know, I do go into that level of detail.

But often, you know, in the reality of it, it doesn't really matter that much.

Yeah.

Rob Bell:
But it matters to a lot of people.

Gordon Fraser:
It really does.

It really does.

Rob Bell:
It matters to you.

Tom Pellereau:
Well, it does when it matters.

And this is one of the tricky things about design and inventing and bringing products to market is finding those things where it really does matter.

Gordon Fraser:
And it's funny, Chris, we've got pre-production samples in for this daytime.

And I sent them to Oliver to look at them.

He's going, I don't know what you're complaining about.

These look great.

But for me, there's so many bits on that that I need to improve before it goes to market.

I'm completely intolerant of imperfection.

So the details do matter, I lied to you there.

They absolutely do matter to me.

Rob Bell:
That is interesting because we did spend quite a bit of time discussing this not too long ago.

Jono Hey:
The Law of Diminishing Returns.

Rob Bell:
Was it the Law of Diminishing Returns?

Yeah, OK.

Yes.

You know, 80-20 rule.

When is enough enough?

Again, and I'll come back to the fish metaphor on this, it's a scale, right?

Sometimes it's applicable, other times it's not.

Gordon, is there anything from you or from Marloe coming up soon that we should be keeping our eye out for?

Gordon Fraser:
2024 for us is the year of events.

We're really getting out there and we're really trying to get in front of people and just get, expose more people to Marloe Watch Company.

So we've got 24 events planned this year.

Some kind of really small watch-boffing events and other more associated events.

National Motor Museum, we're in partnership with them as official timing partners.

We're doing a lot of their events.

So you'll start to see a lot of us around, which is great.

But yeah, I think just visit marlowatchcompany.com and give us a wee like and see what you think.

Rob Bell:
I mean, I don't know if this is still the case, but you definitely used to have quite an open door policy with your head office.

Is that still the case?

Gordon Fraser:
100% 100% So our new office in Sonny Common is geared towards customers coming to see us.

It's a beautiful building and an old barn.

An actual fact, next month we're about to employ an in-house watchmaker, our first watchmaker.

She's coming on board to head up our progression into assembly and servicing and maintenance, which is a real kind of feather in the cap of any watch company to have in-house expertise.

So yeah, we're so excited about that.

Rob Bell:
Something common, if you're around the area, if you're passing, go and check it out.

I mean, lovely guys to go and chat watches and see the lovely collection.

And as far as I'm aware, and from what Gordon says, you are always welcome.

Gordon Fraser:
All the time, always.

Rob Bell:
Gordon, that's been a really fascinating conversation.

It's so lovely to speak to someone who's so passionate about what they do.

I'm always really inspired by, and inspired and moved actually by people who can translate their ideas into this creativity, into something very tangible, like the mechanical watches that you guys create.

So thank you very much for that.

Gordon Fraser:
Thank you for having me.

It's been a real privilege to speak to you.

Rob Bell:
Additionally, that conversation has confirmed the hypothesis I put forward at the beginning of the podcast that I am the least cool person on here, and I'm fine with that.

We'll be going through some of your listener correspondence since the previous episode in just a moment, and please send us your thoughts and experiences on anything we've talked about here to our email hello at sketchplanations.com or on our social media platforms.

I'm just going to have a quick look for black roll neck jumpers on the M&S website, but until next time, thank you for listening.

Go well, stay well.

Goodbye.

All right, we're back, and it's just Jono and I to nose through the post bag this week, and we've just got a couple that I wanted to highlight with you, Jono.

So this is a message we had in from Alex Christensen through social media, and he was referring to our episode with Frankie, our previous episode, talking about music composition.

And he was saying, I remember when I was getting into product management and someone suggested I read On Writing by Stephen King.

As I recall, his process almost felt engineered, but very applicable to any creative endeavours, which is kind of along the lines of what we're talking about with Frankie.

We're talking specifically about music, but it was great to open it up into your world, into Tommy's world, into my world, and hopefully to our listeners' world as well.

But what Alex talks about here I find really interesting about almost feeling engineered, like there's this set process behind it, or a set of instructions that you might follow based on what Stephen King had talked about in his book on writing.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, I love that.

I've actually not read Stephen King's book, but authors is quite an interesting area of creativity, isn't it?

How did Roald Dahl come up with so many stories, or Isaac Asimov?

And Isaac Asimov has this thing, like he got up at like 4am every day and he'd write for three hours, and then that would be it, or something like that.

But just regimented.

It's not like, oh, I've got some great ideas that I'm going to write up tomorrow.

It's no, I'm going to sit at the desk, I'm going to sit here for three hours, and something's going to happen.

I think, yeah, it's just really interesting what the process is for writing craft, as well as other disciplines.

How am I going to come up with ideas?

Well, I'm going to sit at the desk and do something.

I should read Stephen King's.

I've heard about it before.

Yeah, it sounds pretty good.

Rob Bell:
It sounds great for me.

That's right up my street, that kind of thing.

A coach I was working with once recommended to me that I take 15 minutes before I do anything else in the day and just write a stream of consciousness.

Don't think about it.

Actually write it, don't type it.

Handwrite it out.

Do a side of A4 or two sides of A4.

Just bang it out.

Don't think too much or at all write, but don't stop writing.

Don't stop writing.

I remember doing it for a while.

My hand got really tired.

Jono Hey:
We're not used to it.

Our hands are weak.

Rob Bell:
But again, there's a process behind that.

And it did help kind of unlock something.

What I think it did, it just processed any thoughts that were in my head.

Not even processed them probably, but just gave them some attention to any thoughts that were in my head.

Then allowed me to free up that brain capacity to put into more creative endeavors.

Jono Hey:
I like it.

It gets rid of the, if you force yourself to keep going, it gets rid of the pressure that what you have to write down is good as well.

And I think that's quite nice.

It's not like, oh, I'll wait until I have something good and then I write it down.

No, I'm just going to keep writing and some of it might be good.

Rob Bell:
And with this, the coach I was working with said, there's absolutely no need to read it back.

Probably don't.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Jono Hey:
Use it as a process.

Rob Bell:
Yeah, I love it.

Exactly.

So I like that.

I like that.

Thank you very much for highlighting that to us, Alex.

On writing by Stephen King, if anyone is interested.

And well, let's just skip through actually.

I just want to highlight this message in.

So it's an email we've had from an anonymous listener.

And this is with reference to our chat about egg corns at the start of the fun at the beach episode, I think it was.

So this listener messaged in to tell us this one that his wife used to get wrong.

Jono Hey:
It's always easy to find somebody else's.

Rob Bell:
I think I think that's why we're keeping it anonymous.

So here we go.

If someone was choking on some food or had an obstacle stuck in their throat for ages, she used to think that to try and dislodge the obstruction, one would perform the Heimlich Remover.

Jono Hey:
Makes a lot of sense.

Makes a lot of sense.

Rob Bell:
The Heimlich Remover.

Jono Hey:
Does anybody know the Heimlich Remover?

Maneuver, right?

Rob Bell:
There you go.

Gordon Fraser:
That's what it is.

Rob Bell:
It does make sense.

Jono Hey:
I was with somebody the other day and we saw some hooks in the wall and he was like, I wonder if these are tenter hooks.

What is a tenter hook anyway?

Rob Bell:
Did I not?

Jono Hey:
I think you did say.

I've forgotten what they were.

They were really old, so I thought maybe they were.

Rob Bell:
They were hooks for hanging fabric down from.

I think.

Anyway, thank you Anonymous Lister for sending that in and you can send your messages in anonymously.

That's absolutely fine as well.

We just love to hear how what we talk about on the podcast relates to you and your stories around those topics as well.

Thanks very much for listening and we'll be back soon.

Bye for now.

All music on this podcast is sourced from the very talented Franc Cinelli.

And you can find loads more tracks at franccinelli.com.