085: Keeping the Creative Juices Flowing with Prescott Perez-Fox

By November 14, 2016Podcasts

 

Prescott Perez-Fox says: "There's a lot of folks giving advice, but not that many giving help."

Graphic designer Prescott Perez-Fox gets creative in finding solutions to getting in the zone, maintaining a smooth workflow, and more.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Great habits that your future self will thank you for
  2. How small rituals will help your team power through a project
  3. The classic/evolutionary/revolutionary system for generating broad alternatives

About Prescott
Prescott Perez-Fox is a New Jersey-based graphic designer and brand developer with more than 14 years of experience in branding, packaging, graphic design, and web design. Following varied experience working in-house for agencies, and as a freelancer, Prescott created his business, Starship Design, to work directly with small business and startup clients.

 

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Prescott Perez-Fox Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Prescott, thanks so much for being here on the How To Be Awesome At Your Job podcast.

Prescott Perez-Fox
Yeah, thanks for having me. I’m really looking forward to it.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh yes, me too. And I think we’re going to have some real fun here. And I want to know first of all, why did you name your company Starship Design?

Prescott Perez-Fox
Oh goodness, this is actually kind of funny, because it stemmed from a comment thread on a blog, where we were talking about how to name a design firm. And this is maybe 10 years ago, and the folks who brought it up were saying that you should name a design firm the way you name a band, I don’t know, just coming up with weird names. ‘Cause most people do it like a law firm, and it’s like Rigby Jones. I guess that could be a design firm, but it could also be accounting.
And they were saying, “No, you’ve got to do it like a band, it’d be like The Flaming Lips or something crazy like that.” And then people were saying, “What about Santana? What about The Steve Miller Band?” And then it was like, “What about Jefferson Airplane?” And it was like, “No, Jefferson Starship – that’s where you go from print design to web design.”
And I was like, “You know, Starship is a good name, just as a name for a design firm.” So that’s kind of where it came from, but also there’s a double meaning because it kind of evokes a sense of futurism and a sense of possibility and a sense of uplifting and going somewhere. So I kind of appreciate that double meaning too.

Pete Mockaitis
I’d take it too, and it makes me think of Star Trek and I’ve known someone who had a hand in doing some design work for the spaceships and stuff that show up there. And it’s really cool. I kind of think, “Oh, do you do starship design for movies and stuff? Then you must be amazing at your job.” So only positive associations.

Prescott Perez-Fox
Yeah, that’s funny. I have Google alert actually and occasionally I’ve got something where it’s like, “Oh, so and so shows off the new starship design” – and it’s the phrase “starship design”, rather than the proper noun.

Pete Mockaitis
I hear you. Well, that’s fun. And so another thing I want to talk about has some negative connotations. I went and kind of did some research here. I got a huge kick out of the “Your Business Card Sucks” piece that you did earlier.
And it just cracks me up because it’s so bold, and I guess it just makes me think of, in Japan and certain countries where looking reverently at a business card… Is just something that you do? And then you just throw that in the face? I think I just got to touch there at least a second.
Could you share what are some kind of things that make a business card suck versus being great? If we have the potential to make our own business cards, what should be on there versus not be on there?

Prescott
Right, right. Well, I’m going to back up just a second. So the blog that I ran for a number of years was called “Your Business Card Sucks”, but that name was really just meant to be kind of inflammatory.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m inflamed!

Prescott
And cheeky, you know. Yeah. And I never actually in real life said to someone, “Hey man, your business card sucks.” I’m just not that kind of person. But the idea is that it’s just showcasing interesting and unique cards. And it’s no longer a site unfortunately – I’m trying to bring it back actually. But it is a Pinterest board, so you can search that. But anyway, to answer the question – most people’s cards don’t suck, per se, they’re just furiously boring, and especially if they’re corporate and someone else designed it. And they just kind of turned up on your desk one day and they have the work fax machine number and you have to accommodate for the one guy that works out of the Singapore office so there’s like five lines of addresses. You know what I’m saying?
Those are the types of things that really suck the life out of a business card, and I think they’re great because there’s just a little bit of your personality kind of wrapped up in this very bite size kind of object. And you can do so much with that format, in terms of paper, in terms of material, in terms of photography; or if you’re an artist you could put a piece of your artwork on the back, you could put a pattern or anything that you do. I’ve seen web designers who kind of program their address. You know what I’m saying? It’s like address class = work. That type of thing. So there’s a lot of fun to have with it, so I think they’re great.

Pete Mockaitis
That is fun. I’m looking forward to getting my business cards designed and created. I chatted earlier with Chris Bailey in episode 40-something, I don’t know, we’ve got a lot of episodes now. And so he had his done at a shop called Elegant Press in Lithuania, which is cool ’cause I am Lithuanian – thus Mockaitis is the name. And it has all this kind of cool real textury stuff that you can really just feel, and so I’m excited to have a business card that doesn’t suck; print it up by the folks at Elegant Press shortly.

Prescott
Awesome!

Pete Mockaitis
Alright, anyway. Let’s get into some good stuff. So you talk about habits of highly creative people, and I would love to hear some perspective there, in terms of… So this listenership audience, we’ve got all sorts of different folks in some jobs that are very creative, and some jobs that feel almost like there’s very minimal creativity and they’re trying to get a healthier dose in there.
But nonetheless, there comes a time when folks need to generate ideas or concepts or options, so what are some of the habits that you mention in terms of getting some of those things up and going cruising so you’re well equipped to answer the call when it comes?

Prescott
Yeah, okay. Goodness, where do I start? Well, first of all I should say that the origin of that eBook and of that line of thinking anyway is that in the conversations I’ve actually had with creative people, with designers and photographers and writers and all these folks that I talk to on my show, and so I kind of distilled those conversations to get these nine habits. And some of them are really simple when you say them – it’s things like respect your future self, so that has to do with saving documents in a neat way and putting things back in their original place and taking the time now to do something that will make your future self sort of easier.
And in terms of the workplace there’s all sorts of these little things, like at the end of the day put away your folders so that the next day you can pick right up where you left off; you know exactly which folder you were using ’cause it’s the one in front. That type of thing. It’s almost at a subliminal level.
Goodness, what were some of the other ones? Like outshine your former self, continuous learning, continuous improvement, and the idea that you don’t have to take this huge class, you don’t have to get five Masters degrees, but just become 1% better by constant improvement and constant testing – that was one of them. Find creative distraction is another one; and a lot of folks like to do that with running or some other kind of exercise, where you can just zone out and that will allow you to solve a problem that you’re not thinking of in that moment. The classic shower thought is a great example, and I know for a lot of people they kind of ponder things in the shower and they get out and they have to write it down. And they actually make waterproof notepads for just these types of people.

Pete Mockaitis
I totally bought those.

Prescott Perez-Fox
Oh yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Aqua notes.

Prescott Perez-Fox
Don’t freak out is one that I’m really trying to master – that’s a tough one ’cause I think it’s very much tied to your personality. But the idea that if you’re a creative person, if you’re an entrepreneurial-minded person, you’re going to have a lot of ideas, you’re going to have a lot of requests for things and you can be involved in a lot of different things. So it could really be overwhelming, and it’s amazing to me how some people are just so calm in the face of all that insanity, and I’m genuinely in envy of them. And I’m just like, “Is that a super power or what? That you just don’t have this anxiety the way that I do, and the way that some other folks do.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Let’s pause on that one for a moment here, because I think when it comes to thinking clearly and being able to generate something, some good, unique, novel, kind of creative things. There’s probably some good science behind this too, it’s just that our cortisol or stress stuff in your brain and in your blood really does, in my experience, prevent me from coming up with good thoughts and instead it’s like, “Ahhhh! I’ve got to do something immediately now, now now, now!” As opposed to, “Alright, let’s reflect upon which of these several options may be optimal for going forward.”
So it seems like you have not yet mastered yourself or we’re all works in process when it comes to the anxiety piece, but what have you seen in terms of the “how to stay calm and collected when it counts”?

Prescott Perez-Fox
Sure. Well, a lot of people are talking about mindfulness or concentration training or meditation or whatever you like to call it, and that’s been a hard habit to install, honestly. And I’m always trying these things – I really should try to get back to it – but that’s something that people claim really works. And unfortunately I think it’s a long-term play; you can’t really do it for five days and see an effect; you have to kind of commit to it for half a year at least. That’s a big one.
I think that balancing your sleep and your diet and your exercise, and it sounds really simple – that’s like middle school stuff – but I think that that plays a big part of it. And then also a certain boldness of just cutting things out of your life, especially if they bring you nothing but stress. And I think a lot of us were conventionally educated and work conventional jobs that we kind of have things that we think, “Everybody does this – I have to put up with this.” You know what I’m saying? And when you actually question it, you could be like, “Yeah, I’m not doing that.” This kind of small acts of rebellion by just cutting things out, that can help you in the long term just stay cool, stay centered. So yeah, that’s a work in progress, definitely.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, that’s a great turn of a phrase – “small acts of rebellion”. Is that a Prescott original?

Prescott Perez-Fox
Oh man, I don’t know, possibly. Occasionally I’ll come up with something. And I’m like, “I like the way it sounds,” and I have no idea if anyone said it before, especially if it’s a common word, like “the audacity of hope” – that’s Barack Obama’s of course, but someone probably put those words in that order.
I read that book, and in the book he talks about the audacity of hope is really “the audacity to hope”, and it’s really kind of rebellion through idealistic defiance, and then not accepting that things are just stuck the way they are. And that’s a definite analog to the workplace, and especially if you work in a larger organization, there’s so much of this kind of, “Welcome to the show! This is how it is.” And it’s like imagine if, again, these small acts of rebellion kind of improving 1% at the time can make some real progress.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. So could you share, what are some specific, I guess, small acts of rebellion or things that folks can often get away with chucking or eliminating, and that they don’t have to do after all?

Prescott Perez-Fox
Wow, tough one. I’m thinking of the last former full-time job, where I just didn’t check my email on their system, on Outlook; calendar invites, all that type of thing. I just did not use that, and if there was some kind of team meeting I would say, “Hey, when’s the team meeting?” and they would say, “It’s Thursday at 10:00”, and I’d be like, “Okay, cool.” I’d be using my own system, but I would not go in there and be like, “Accept changes” and do those types of silly things. That’s a small one.
Same thing with PowerPoint, like if someone was going to send me this crazy PowerPoint file, I’m just like, “Okay, I’m going to print this out and then I’m going to remake the entire thing, and if there’s anything that’s too much type that I don’t want to copy over, that means it needs to be re-phrased and re-written all together.” You know what I’m saying? It’s not a matter of me typing it. So I just wouldn’t use PowerPoint; I would send back a PDF and that was that.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright. Did you get any sort of backlash in a serious way from that?

Prescott Perez-Fox
Well, not really, because I’m a graphic designer, so when people send me things, they just send me the only thing they’re able to, and they kind of know I’m going to take it apart and do what’s best, and especially if it’s going to a printer or it’s going into some other kind of production, they kind of know I know what’s best.
It wasn’t the type of traditional corporate job, where you do give a lot of PowerPoints and that type of thing, fortunately. That’s kind of a weird culture that I’m glad I’ve never been brought into.

Pete Mockaitis
I hear you. At the same time though, you do produce a lot of stuff. You get kind of up and out the door at a healthy rate and you’ve talked with a number of guests associated with workflow and process and how to get things kind of up and humming and cruising, so you are kind of ship it at a healthy rate. So what would you say are some of the key workflow insights you’ve discovered along the way that could be applicable to folks who are into corporate environment?

Prescott Perez-Fox
Sure. Well, I think one thing that’s huge that a lot of folks don’t realize they’re doing it or not doing it, is creating what I call “rituals”. And these are simple things; these are kind of acknowledging and celebrating the steps of the process. And whatever that process is, especially if you have a project that has a definitive beginning, middle, end – you can create these rituals and get everyone on board.
So, let me give you an example. Let’s say you’re doing some kind of “Back to School” campaign – it could be a marketing campaign or a kind of fall fashion line, I don’t know. When it comes time to start working on it – six months earlier, in January / February – there can be a moment where you say, “Okay guys, we are now putting this project on the board”, and you actually cut out a piece of paper that says in bold type “Fall Campaign” and can actually put it onto a physical board. And that moment is a little ritual and you can also contribute multiple things at that same time.
So the moment you put it on the board, that also reflects the fact that there’s now a folder on the server with that same project name. Or you can also set up in your project management, your invoicing tool, the job number, that type of thing. So you can have multiple rituals that happen at once and I think that’s really important for getting everyone started on the same page.
Same thing at the end of a project – you can do a post-mortem on the team and you can actually talk about what went well and what you think you can do better next time. Same thing with archiving something, like pulling it down and saying… This is, again that board, “This is done, we’ve finished it, it’s out the door!” and just acknowledging it and celebrating it.
Even if it goes badly, there can be rituals for things that get canceled and maybe even you have a piece of paper that’s the project tracking sheet, I don’t know, I’m making stuff up. But you can actually rip it in half at a team meeting on Thursday morning.
That could be a little bit of a ritual, even though it’s sort of celebrating a negative, as you like. But those rituals really keep people working together in the same flow, and I think they build character and kind of culture as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh yes, it is true, and it’s fun and it’s something that you can look forward to and appreciate at the same time, like, “We’ve hit a milestone and when we hit a milestone we all go out to dinner or drinks or something. And, alright – here we are and that feels good!”

Prescott Perez-Fox
Yeah, actually at my last job – and this is a positive memory of my last job – that we created a jar in our department, and the jar was like the swear jar, but it wasn’t for cursing, because we were like sailors up in there, but whenever we broke the rules we had to put a dollar in the jar and so it became the “Jar Rules” and then we cut out a photo of the rapper Ja Rule and put him on the side, so it was like “Ja Rules”. And some of the rules were…
Let me give you these examples, ’cause these were methods to correct our own internal personal bad habits, so there were things like accidentally emailing someone at their home email – that was a dollar; if you brought a computer or a tablet to a meeting – that was a dollar; if you emailed somebody about a project rather than posting in the project management software – that was a dollar. All these types of things.
Man, I don’t remember them all off the top of my head, but you know what? We trained each other pretty good, and after a while we had to invent new rules, and some of them were not really calling out one individual person, but it was kind of like, “Okay, I know this happens and I know one person is the most guilty of it”, and it’s all from love. But the result of that was that you put in your dollar, you put in 2, 3 at a time, and then next thing you know, you’ve got enough to go buy pizza for the whole team.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is fun and I really dig that kind of principle, because it also just kind of gets a lot more positivity out there associated with that. It was like, “Dang it, Prescott, you never posted it in the project management software and it’s really ticking me off.” We just sort of sidestep all of that – it was like, “Oops, yeah, you’re right. Here’s a buck, we have a laugh, I’ve supported the pizza fund”, and it’s also reinforcing good behaviors.

Prescott Perez-Fox
Yeah, and some of them too were, like you said, reinforcing good behaviors, that if you complain without a solution – that’s a dollar, and that might’ve actually been like a $3 penalty; that anytime you observe something that can be fixed, you should be trying to fix it, you should not just be complaining about it. And for a struggling organization, a non-profit, a growing team, whatever it is, you definitely need more solutions than complaining.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. Alright, so now I’d like to hear some of your take when it comes to if there are some ruts, when ideas aren’t flowing or you’re not in the groove or the zone, just one of those days. What are some key ways that you recommend folks kind of find inspiration or kind of do something to shift their state of mind so that they can be more effective?

Prescott Perez-Fox
Yeah. Wow, tough one! It should be known I’m not super-human and I suffer from this. Are you kidding me? Man, who was it recently? Someone was talking about the 70% problem – that when you get to 70% completion on a project, there’s always that slump and everybody’s energy just vanishes, and everybody – the client, the designer, whoever – you just want it to be done, you just want the result, you’re tired of the process, you’re tired of the timeline. And man, I know that feeling well.
And I think one way to prevent that… So before we get to a solution, it’s just preventing it, is to really chopping up into small increments, so that way you can go faster or slower, at a certain phase you can put things on pause, you can celebrate those milestones like we were saying. But that helps to I think to eliminate some of that 70% problem, because 70% of a phase is a little bit different.
I like to do the classic things – get away from your environment, like physically take your computer to a coffee shop, even if you’re just checking emails and doing some writing; go walk and take a different direction home – that’s a small thing but if you change up your environment, you change up what you’re seeing, you’re also changing how your brain is kind of handling questions and quandaries. That’s a good one.
I’m a big fitness guy, so sometimes I like to push away from my desk and go to kickboxing class and just beat the crap out of a punching bag. That always helps the wheels get back to turning. And again, on that walk home, especially after you’ve had a good workout, you’d be surprised at the level of clarity that you can bring to a project again.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful, thank you. And I also got a kick out of researching your stuff – when you start a logo project, you sketch out kind of three different kinds of concepts for folks with a classic version, an evolutionary version and a revolutionary version. And I don’t know why, I really like that kind of framework or sense of three quite distinct options, proposals. And I would imagine that has some applicability to other times when you’re proposing ideas or offering potential solutions or initiatives to any number of things. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Prescott Perez-Fox
Yeah, I think this is a classic framework, and whether it’s a shortcut, a heuristic – things have different names. But it’s kind of like, why start with a completely blank page if you already have some things that are sort of locked in. And it doesn’t always work, it’s not always a formula, but this is a great starting point. So in this case it’s kind of logo design or identity, generally.
I know in advertising there’s a whole number of these; I don’t have them all memorized off the top of my head, but it’s things like celebrity endorsement, competition against the competitor, nostalgia, these other things. Mud slinging, the classic propaganda techniques – these are in politics as well.
So you can, “This is the classic “product as hero” ad and it’s the the Toyota Highlander is jumping over a mud puddle,” or whatever it is. That’s almost a type of formula, so whatever the brief is, for again Toyota for that example… They could come into a room and they could just have the no cars and be like, “Okay, product as hero, celebrity endorsement.”
And you have these couple of options right from the start, so that’s basically where that came from just these templates are the starting points that are made for you. And no matter who’s listening, I’m sure your workflow, your job has these starting points; you just kind of have to think of them, especially if you’ve done them before you could probably find patterns in your own work.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, I’m curious, is there anything else you want to make sure you get to put out there in terms of finding creative inspiration, getting some good workflow cruising, staying in the creative zone over long stretches, before we shift gears into the fast faves?

Prescott Perez-Fox
Well, one thing that’s been interesting is that as an observer, in terms of being a blogger, being a curator, whatever you want to call it, when you look in the back of your mind, saying, “Okay, I have to find something”, you’d be surprised at what you can find. So if I’m reading articles or just looking through magazines or looking on the street, it’s amazing how you always find the thing you’re looking for, as long as you keep your awareness of it.
So, one thing I found that’s helpful is that recently – or I guess for a little more than a year already – I’ve been doing a weekly link post on my blog, and this is just sometimes as few as three items that I found that week that are relevant to the topic.
And just the fact that you’re continuously looking for these in the background, you’ll find so many more of them. And if you keep track of them, if you keep putting them out there, you’re developing a library for yourself, you’re developing resources that you can use when it’s time to get busy.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful, thank you. Alright, well, now I’d love to hear a little bit some of your favorite things. Could you start us off by sharing a favorite quote?

Prescott Perez-Fox
Yes. This one I know form John Lennon, I’m not sure where he got it from, but it says, “In order for the forest to be green, every tree must be green.” And this is the idea, simply that, whatever you’re doing as part of a larger group, every single individual must also master that thing within themselves. So it’s about inner peace, but in a teamwork sense it’s pretty obvious.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite study or experiment or a piece of research?

Prescott Perez-Fox
Yeah, I love things that are counter-intuitive. And one thing that comes to mind is from the book called The Culture Code. And in it he talks about how Nestlé in the ’70s tried to sell instant coffee in Japan, and they had been really successful in Europe and the United States, and they couldn’t get the Nescafé coffee brand any traction, because Japan has such a tea culture.
And so what they did was they switched tactics and they created coffee-flavored candy, and they sold it to children and planted that seed. And wouldn’t you know, 20 something years later, they’ve reintroduced the instant coffee, and now that folks had a taste for it, it became very popular in Japan.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s long-term thinking.

Prescott Perez-Fox
I know, that is crazy to me. But things like that are counter-intuitive, right? The un-persistent person would just be like, “Okay, they don’t like coffee. Let’s get out of here.” But someone else had this wacky idea, this counter-intuitive idea that, “Let’s not sell them coffee; let’s sell them candy instead.” And the next thing you know, they’ll take to it.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite book?

Prescott Perez-Fox
Man, where do we start even? I was actually talking with someone about audio books, and I always recommend a great audio book – The Time Traveler’s Wife. And they made it into a movie a few years ago, and the movie wasn’t bad for what it was, but the audio book is amazing, because there’s two principle characters and they switch off perspectives. And so you have two narrators as well, and for with anything to do with time travel, it can get confusing, so you want to have those two narrators – you know if it’s a woman, this is Clare’s chapter, and if it’s a man, it’s Henry’s chapter. So check out The Time Traveler’s Wife.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright. And how about a favorite tool? Something that you use often and really boosts your effectiveness?

Prescott Perez-Fox
Yeah. Man, it’s hard to choose one. I read an article a while ago called Take Back Your Mac, which introduces four free tools to use on the Mac. But the one that’s not in that article is TextExpander.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh yeah.

Prescott Perez-Fox
TextExpander. Yeah, man, on the Mac it’s all but essential. I don’t know how it’s not built in. There is a Windows version equivalent; I forget what it’s named. But yeah, I would have to say TextExpander.
The ability to hide bits of type behind a snippet and have that short code, and just with a few key strokes, you expand out into sometimes paragraphs of text, is immensely helpful. And I use it for little things – I use it for my own name, I use it for my email address, my phone number, ’cause those are the things you type time and time again throughout the day.

Pete Mockaitis
I like to use it to decline podcast guest pitches.

Prescott Perez-Fox
Yeah, you can put a lot of that in there too.

Pete Mockaitis
So, “Thank you so much for thinking of us. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem like we have quite the right fit here, given our focus on…” And then it’s like… ‘Cause I just feel kind of rude if I just completely ignore folks or I reach out and say, “No”. It’s like, I can give them a little bit of context and maybe they can come back with, “Oh, actually we also cover topics A, B and C.” It’s like, “Okay, now maybe we’re in business, very good.”

Prescott Perez-Fox
Right, right, right.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. And how about a favorite habit, a personal practice of yours that’s really been helpful?

Prescott Perez-Fox
Yeah, I think I kind of mentioned it though – the ability to constantly be grazing and observing, with the idea that I’m either building this link pack on my blog, or I’m just looking for something to recommend to others. People are always asking me, “Hey, what do you think about this?” And so I like to keep things in the back of my mind as I operate the Internet especially. So I would say the continuous observing and reporting back has been really useful. And especially over time, because you build this body of work, this body of knowledge that really takes some time to grow.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about, is there a particular maybe resonance nugget or piece that you share in your blog, your podcast, your work, that folks really seem to latch on to and nod their heads and re-tweet and say, “Oh yeah, Prescott’s a genius. He said this.”

Prescott Perez-Fox
Interesting. A lot of metaphors. I’ve gotten compliments on my metaphors, which is kind of funny – the guests will sit there and talk for 10 minutes about these different things. I’m like, “Yeah, we call that ‘shadowing.’” Just make up a term. Apple-saucing is one that we came up with.

Pete Mockaitis
Apple-saucing. What does that mean? I’ve got to know. I’ve got to know what’s “apple-saucing”.

Prescott Perez-Fox
Apple-saucing. Okay, so in the publishing and content industry, whatever you’re calling it, it takes time. You’ve got to plant the seed, it takes time for the trees to grow, and then when they grow it takes time to bear fruit. So that’s your apple – your blog post, your podcast, whatever it is.
But some of the apples will not be so good. So what do you do? You create apple sauce, or you create apple butter, or you create apple-flavored fig newtons, or you save the seeds and try to plant more trees. So it’s like continually using the by-products or the second derivative of your original content to re-publish and to appeal to someone else.
So, in our example we’re podcasters, maybe the transcript can be put together in some kind of compendium, and folks that like to read rather than listen, might appreciate that.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s fun. Apple-saucing. That reminds me of an Onion article – it’s like a new piece of jargon going around the office, “platforming” – it’s got to be bad news for all of us.

Prescott Perez-Fox
The Onion is so great.

Pete Mockaitis
Apple-saucing, platforming. I love it. Okay, cool. So now, what would you say is the best way is to find you if folks want to see what you’re up to, learn more – where would you point them to?

Prescott Perez-Fox
Yeah, definitely, busycreator.com – that’s the website for my podcast and blog, and all my social media links are there, as well as a contact form. And I’d love to hear from anyone listening.

Pete Mockaitis
Very good. And do you have a final parting challenge or call to action, something that you’d leave folks with, who are seeking to be more awesome at their jobs?

Prescott Perez-Fox
Yeah. And this usually isn’t in the job context, but I’d like to say it, that there’s a lot of folks giving advice, but not that many giving help. So if you can give help to someone, I think it will be returned many times over to you. So see what you can do about actually helping someone, not just giving them advice.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Okay, well, Prescott, thanks so much. This has been a real treat. There’s some interesting stuff I’m going to be chewing on and applying and apple-saucing. And I wish you tons of luck with The Busy Creator and all you’re up to here.

Prescott Perez-Fox
Absolutely, man. Thanks a lot!

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