Jean-Louis Rawlence on Value & Attention

Jean-Louis Rawlence is the co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Concept Bureau, a brand strategy agency, and co-founder of Exposure Therapy, a community platform for strategists. He also co-hosts Hopepunk - the podcast about informed optimism. I met Jean-Louis many years ago, and we have stayed in touch over the years. I have enjoyed being a part of the growing community he and Jasmine have been building.

So I start all these conversations with the same question, which I borrowed from a friend of mine. She helps people tell their story. And it's such a beautiful question is why I use it, but it's such a big question. So I over explain it the way that I am doing right now. So before I ask it, I want you to know that you that you're in total control and you can answer or not answer any way that you want to. And it is impossible to make a mistake. It's the biggest lead into a question that happens anywhere in the world. So the question is, where do you come from?

Yeah, I like that. There's so many ways that you could answer that, right? That's fantastic.

I mean, so I mean, geographically, I'm from the UK, from a small town called Melton Keynes, which fun fact about that, it was the first properly planned town in the UK. So everything is built around a grid system. And so it's kind of interesting in that because the infrastructure is so new, it's like it's like 45 years old, the whole the whole sort of town slash city that they pilot a lot of new technology there. So they had like self-driving cars. That was the first place I think in the UK to have them and a lot of new infrastructure. So it's it was an interesting place to grow up. It wasn't too far from London. And then, you know, as I kind of grew up, I moved to London and things. So geographically, I'm from there professionally. You could say that I'm from the domain of engineering. So, you know, when I was a kid, I think I was always really interested in the future. And so there was this TV show in the UK called Tomorrow's World.

And I absolutely loved that show. It was all about like the new technology things that were, you know, coming over the horizon. And so I was just fascinated by where the future is going in sci fi. I was a huge, huge fan of sci-fi. My my mom was a big fan of sci-fi. And we'd we'd always watch sci-fi shows together like Star Trek, The Next Generation and Stargate and all of those kind of things growing up together.

A lot of fond memories. And so that kind of led me to wanting to study aerospace engineering. And so, you know, at least in terms of like intellectually, you could say that I'm from that domain. What I found out later is that aerospace, it's one of the most underemployed disciplines, which is kind of surprising. So not unemployed, but underemployed. And that there's a lot of skills that you learn that you then don't go on to apply because it's such a narrow field.

That a lot of people move into like an adjacent domain. And so you end up with kind of a bucket of skills that you don't touch very often. But I guess to tee up this conversation, what has stuck with me that I think has been tremendously valuable is the kind of the engineer's mindset of like thinking with first principles and kind of it's almost every language has a way of thought. And math in that view is very much a language of thought. And so, you know, in the work that I do, you know, you could say that like that's that's where I'm from. And I think that colors a lot of how I do things that approach things.

What what was it like growing up? Milton Keynes, isn't that a name? Isn't that a person's name or am I complaining something?

Yeah, Milton and Keynes, I think they've opened the domain of psychology and things. So yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think that was a small town, a very old town. Well, actually, I have a fun little story about that. And when I was in school, I, you know, we did what is it and work experience. So you do two weeks working at a job. So I had something lined up and then I broke my ankle just before it happened. And so that I couldn't do that. So anyway, there was like all the other stuff had been picked. And there was a obscure thing with an archeology department that I ended up doing a two week stint helping them. And so I go around to these sites and then we do surveys and then we come back. And I remember I was cleaning human bones from the Middle Ages and just like, yeah, just take the mud off and then put them over there. And it was just but there was this small town, Milton Keynes, where where where the name of the town had come from. And there were jars where they had buried their dogs in these large jars like deep underground anyway.So they were like excavating that site. It's a very obscure memory. But anyway, that's my anchor to the name of like I went to some medieval ruins and helped them clean some some remains there.So there you go.

I'm fascinated by the grid that you come out of the gate with defining Milton Keynes as the plan and with the grid. Can you just tell me more about the significance of that and how that is? Because I have my own story that I want to share after about the grid.

Sure. Yeah. The state is kind of boxed in and it's a rectangle. And so there's this grid system that allows you to go really fast between the different things. So it's kind of like you've got all the capillaries and you've got the arteries where you can kind of cut through the city a lot faster. And so that just kind of lets a lot of throughput. It's also known as the roundabout capital of the UK. So it's full of roundabouts, which is actually it's a more efficient system, although I think it's less people don't like it as much. But it does. It is more effective. So it's also well known for that.

People have strong feelings about the roundabout. So is it walkable grid or is it a car grid?

So it's a car grid. But then they also have what they call redways where you can get around the city by bike and other things very effectively where you're not on the side of the road. It's a different system. So I grew up doing a lot of cycling. You know, that was always kind of nice. And as a kid without a car, it was it was super accessible to me.

That's interesting. They totally separated those forms of transportation from. Yeah.

Yeah.

I geek out on this. I mean, I live in Hudson, New York, and I just discovered I didn't just discover, but I was just talking with people about the fact that when the proprietors came to Hudson many, many years ago, they laid out the city in a grid, which at the time, sort of novel. And it creates such a beautiful experience of the city is totally unique. And somebody also told me that maybe in hieroglyphics or Egyptian, that the sign, the symbol for a city is a grid. I didn't know that. Yeah. Anyway, I, what's the right word? I meander. I wander away from the path. So do you have a recollection of when you were young of what you wanted to be when you grew up?

I think I think I do. I mean, I remember there was one kind of pivotal experience that really cemented things for me. So I was a kid and there was there was a science competition.

And so I think I was 13 at the time. And, you know, I was always interested in space and things like that. Anyway, so we so we entered this science competition. And my wife doesn't let me let this down because I I tell this story about this competition we won. And I guess I neglected to mention that my brother was also on the team that won. So I made it sound like it was all me.

But that was four of us. My brother was one of them. We we entered this competition. And long story short, we won. So each region of the U.K. one team one. And we got to go visit NASA and all their facilities in the U.S. And it was quite it was quite an experience. You know, we saw the space shuttle land from like right by the landing pad. And then we had dinner with the astronaut who landed it the next day. And a chief engineer of the shuttle, which was incredibly inspiring and incredibly I think it was 13 or 14.

Yeah. And so to be around that and just to you know, there's a very specific mindset that it's like, hey, here's the only deal in things that haven't been done before. Which when you think about that, it's a very uncommon thing in the business world of like, well, let's just copy what the best that anyone's done. And so it's a completely different mindset. And that was very infectious. And so that kind of led me to wanting to get into aerospace engineering. I was like, I've got to do this. You know, and I think it was quite good at it, too. But the problem is that it was kind of I think one of the biggest existential bombers I've ever had, which is I really wanted to get into it.

And two things happened. One, I also wanted to be an entrepreneur. And I realized at least in the U.K., being an entrepreneur and being in that industry are mutually exclusive things. You know, there's capital in the U.S. But, you know, I live here now, but you can't work in that industry unless you're a citizen because, you know, it's related to defense and things like that. So there's no way of kind of migrating professionally over. And then the other side is that, you know, for me, the mindset was this is one of the most existentially important things we can do as a species.

But after kind of looking into it a lot more, it turns out that like it's way harder, it's way further away than we thought. And you kind of realize that, like, you know, maybe we can build a colony on Mars, although there's a lot of very large, possibly insurmountable problems to that. But we're not going to become an intergalactic species until, you know, in some ways, like what I thought at the time is until we digitize our consciousness.

Like humans are just not we're not designed for space travelers, surprisingly. And so, you know, something much deeper needs to change. And so it could be that, you know, A.I. is the thing that colonizes the universe. But it led me to kind of lean into business much more when I realized that, like, existentially, while it's incredibly exciting, it's, I think, further out of reach than I had initially thought.

How do you mean?

So, I mean, so, OK, there was there was a recent finding, for example, that the space radiation affects the human kidney much more severely than we anticipated. And so now this is this is new as of, like, I think last year that, like, oh, so when we go to Mars, we need to have far greater radiation shielding on the way, which is going to increase the mass, which is going to make it more challenging. And on Mars, even if you could make the air breathable, the pressure is one percent of the pressure of Earth.

And so to, you know, so even if it was breathable, the pressure is nowhere near enough to actually breathe, you know, even if the composition was correct. And so terraforming could take an incredible amount of time to actually make a change then. And then there's the more severe thing, which is that we don't know if it's even possible to reproduce on one third of gravity.

Like, it could be the case. And we really don't know that if you tried to have a child on a colony on Mars, it just wouldn't work. Like, it just it would be the adverse health consequences would be so bad that it's just not feasible.

And so, you know, so we don't actually know if it's possible to have a sustaining presence in that way on Mars. So there's a lot of uncertainties that are far deeper than it's like, oh, we'll just put people there and it's like, well, hang on a minute. You know, there's there's some really tough things to figure out. So, you know, those are the kind of questions that I think in terms of expected value of my career kind of pivoted me towards more. OK, let's get into entrepreneurship.

And you talked earlier about mindset. How would you describe the mindset that you're in when you're fact you're considering all this stuff about getting to Mars? What are you what's going on with you?

What do you love about about that?

Yeah, I mean, it's really I mean, listening to you and getting to know you over the past year and a half, there's definitely that sensation that you I'm with you up to a certain point. And then you just keep going where I don't feel like there's any anything underneath you. But clearly there is. And it's likely math.

No, I think it s. I think I think it's such an underrated and powerful language at understanding things like just and math in the sense of just the mental logic, not even necessarily getting to the level of an equation, but just the process through which you reason in math.

And so you could argue that there are certain ideas that have had far more impact than any like physical, hard technology. And if you look at the arc of how history changes, it's mostly the story of these ideas, not the actual physical engineering technologies that have truly changed things, if you really look into it. And so in building this agency, kind of it's pushed us down this path of more cultural futurism, studying culture and to study culture, you kind of have to study history a bit.

So I find myself, you know, kind of, I never thought I'd be there, but I'm really enjoying learning a lot more about history because, you know, they say history, you know, it doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. And so to understand where things are going, sometimes you can find phenomenal precedent in where things, you know, where we've come from. And so long story short, we built out that business and in doing that, we, you know, we publish a lot of thought leadership and we have, you know, a decent following of people who are really engaged in the type of thinking that we do.

And so, you know, not everyone, the challenge with strategy is it's a very timely thing. A lot of people, you know, really value strategic thinking, that kind of content, looking at culture, but you only need a new strategy, maybe every three to five years for business. And so even if you're super motivated, you want to work with us, most of the time, there's no need.

And so, you know, we had this audience. And so that's where we felt it was, it made just a ton of sense. So Concept Bureau is the consulting side of things. Exposure Therapy is a community for professionals. And, you know, it started off just people in brand strategy, but I think now it's just the criteria is anyone who is culturally curious where your success hinges on being curious.

I think that's broadly who we're for. And so, you know, as you know, you know, every month we publish original thinking around, you know, either it's like more strategy related topics or it's more culture. But I find myself moving, you know, going from futurism and engineering to almost like a little bit of philosophy now, which I'm really enjoying.

Yeah, yeah, it's wonderful. I mean, the work that you guys have done, the work that I'm aware that the concept bureau has done has always been so great. And then my experience of exposure therapy has just been so rewarding and so good. It's really beautiful what you guys have built. How do you, you know, I think every company kind of attracts its own customers in a way. Like, what do you find when people come to you, what are they asking you to do? What kind of questions do they, what do you find people come to you for?

So that's a great question. I think what's interesting is that brand is such a nebulous term. Like, it's kind of unfortunate in that it has so many meanings. I mean, sometimes you talk about brand and someone's like, you mean colors, right? You know, and on the other hand, you know, it's a whole mythology, it's a whole story, you know, it's, you know, it's the whole thought leadership and conceptual package behind a business. And so the challenge that we often find is that people come to us when usually there's some kind of specific impetus, they've raised money, they're, you know, looking for an acquisition, they've just been acquired, they're launching a new product.

There's some like fundamental change that requires a rethinking of like a recontextualization of their offering. You know, so often, like, if you're launching a new line of products, you branded yourself around this one offering, and now you're launching a second offering. Well, you know, there's an existential reckoning happening there a little bit in terms of, well, who are we now?

And by the way, that's all these other things that you need. And so, you know, that's kind of the the broader story. I think a lot of the time people come thinking it's a story, but realizing it's such a it's a much more it's like a new mental model on your business.

It's a new way of thinking, a new way of approaching and solving problems. And so a lot of it is it comes down to how you how you think about your business, you know, and that kind of becomes the structure through which the filter through which you solve problems. And so what we say often is that really, if you if you do brand strategy, well, your brand strategy should sit on top of your business strategy.

And in doing that, what are you not paying attention to, right? It's just simply here is a great thing we've made like so many times, you know, people do phenomenal things in business, incredible innovations, but they forget to tell anyone. So it's like they have the by far and away the best product, but no one knows. And no one knows to care. And so that's kind of often like when you have you realize that brand is sitting on so much equity. So many people think so highly of the business, but they haven't told anyone because they don't know they should tell anyone.

And so a lot of it is just do you understand the value you create, which is a it's a psychological thing. It's a cultural thing. There's many layers to that. And then are you directing their attention at a basic level? And so if you understand that, then that should dictate then your business decisions. How do you hire?

And I've been lucky enough to talk to people about everything from from from death, you know, working in hospice to consensual non-monogamy, working in interesting dating apps to health and athleticism and just everything in between your money and parenting, whatever it is. It's just you get to talk to people and go really deep. You know, often like we say, the gold standard for our research process is that someone in one of the interviews tells us that this feels like therapy.

That's when we know we're kind of hitting the mark. You know, and that's the job of understanding the value that you provide. Right. And so I think I've lost track of the exact question. But the point is just that like it's there is value you're providing to to be a successful business, to make at the very least, to be in the business, making, you know, tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. You have to be doing something.

A lot of the time, not always, but a lot of the time, you know, we do quantitative and qualitative research. And we'll tell people stories that really affect people, you know, that really kind of they understand, you know, like the human impact of the problems that they're solving. But then they won't trust it until there's a number behind it.

Right.

And so, like, do we quantify this story? Do we quantify the pain? And the when you felt what that felt like for him, and you get that intuitive sense, you understand like the imperative of helping those kind of people, you understand what it like the what that is to help them. And the kind of value you're providing, which is so much more finances like the bottom of the thing in terms of like how the kind of value you're providing to them from a meaning point of view from a safety from a psychological point of view. And so, you know, it's that kind of intuitive knowledge when you understand that it makes decision making so much easier, because now you know you have that intuitive knowledge. And so I think that that's something that businesses, most businesses are not doing enough to build intuitive knowledge in their leadership.

Yeah, so that there's a I mean, I think it's overused at this point, but it's overused for good reason. It's one of my favorite quotes in business, which is from James clear from atomic habits, you don't rise to your goals, you fall to your system. So the analogy is that everyone at the start line of a marathon has the same goal, right?

They all it's not for lack of goals that, you know, who's going to win or lose. It's the systems. And I think we often forget that it's like, if we just had better goals would be fine. It's like, no, no, no, it's got nothing to do with that. And so it's accountability. Ultimately, it's like, how do you make sure that you do this consistently, right?

And so that is really fulfilling, I think, to study meaning, to understand the nuts and bolts of meaning, the psycho technology that allows us to have meaning or the the market conditioning that gets in the way of us arriving at meaning. And so you kind of, that's what you end up having to study, if you keep going down that rabbit hole. And that, to me, is like, it's personally fulfilling, and it's very intellectually satisfying, too.

What do you mean when you say meaning? When we're, you know, what are you, what are we talking about when we're talking about meaning?

You know, your brain is like, you know, you rub your hands together, intellectually, you're just like, here we go, there's some great stuff. And he brought up this point that I think about so much. And it's incredibly relevant now and in a way that you wouldn't think so.

In the time of the Egyptians, they had certain mythologies around the way that the world that life unfolds, right? And their belief is that life is circular. Nothing really changes, right?You can't let the whole hero's journey is predicated on the idea that the future is different than the past, right?

And so Egyptian mythology doesn't include that. And so when you think about what are all the stories that we tell, so like Christopher Nolan right now is making a movie, a movie on the Odyssey, right? And that's Greek mythology. We don't tell stories of Egyptian mythology because we find them unrelatable because none of them contain progress. You can't fit a hero's journey into a mythology that's circular, that doesn't change because, you know, the hero hasn't succeeded if he hasn't changed the world. And so it is unavailable to us to find meaning in those stories. And so that's fascinating. But it relates to today in a really interesting way.

So Nick Bostrom wrote this book, Deep Utopia, which is exploring, you know, everyone's talking about the worst cases of AI. And, you know, there's very good reason to understand that. He's looking at, well, what if it works? What if it really works? What happens? Like what? Like if we arrive at utopia, what are the problems with utopia? And there's a really interesting notion here, which is there is a feasible scenario in which AI is so good at what it does that we don't get to contribute to the progress of humanity in the way that we used to.

You've got all these instruments from, you know, the, you know, the, you know, the wartime that these are like the marching band. This is, you know, part of that. You've got a huge population of what are now no longer slaves. And there, you know, you've got this cultural mismatch. You've got African rhythms. You've got a lot of, you know, like interesting culture there. But then you're also trying to integrate that into society. And so you've got so much going on. And so that's where jazz comes from.

And it makes sense of so many different things. In Brazil, there's a similar thing. You have a large, you've got a Latin population, you've got like a Latin population, you've got a tribal population, you've got a Catholic population. And there's a festival. I can't remember what it is. But somehow, everything blends together, all the music, the dance, all the practices.

And that's a lot of kind of what coming back to brand, that's the role that brands have to, if they choose to, that's a huge source of value that you can provide people, which is just how do we navigate so much chaos? And that's what sense making is in many ways. And that's what we're trying to do. And so you can see pockets of that. And as it emerges, and where it emerges, and, you know, you can look at that and see so much opportunity for greater value. But yeah, ultimately, like, sense making is a big thing of how do you get to meaning?

How would you say, you said it's been 10 years since you guys opened the concert. How has, how has it changed? How has the obligations or the opportunities for brand, how has that changed in 10 years, if at all?

And it completely changed my concept on pricing, you know, as far as, you know, like, if, if you spend little money, then you don't have to take it seriously. But if you spend enough money that you can't buy it twice, then you have to take it seriously. And I think that, like, and it's not to say that you don't provide a lot of value, but it's understanding the level of value you provide.

And, you know, so early days, it was much smaller, much more narrow engagements. And as we've grown, our engagements have kind of they've grown in size. Perhaps they're even too large now, you know, like our engagement sometimes like five, six months of heavy research and insight.

And then, you know, we'll support clients for a long time after that executing on it. So I think it's the level of depth of realizing that, like, there is so much value, you have to make sure that they understand how to use it. And so that's kind of one of the challenges is that you can provide them the most ingenious strategy ever.

But then if they don't execute it and if it's not the right strategy for them to be able to execute, then it's also not valuable. And so it's understanding that middle ground of like, oh, there's something crazy they could do. But that's not right for them.

You know, so there's that piece of it. I think the other thing is we're always iterating our process, you know, always like refining. It's that engineers think of how do we turn branding, which is a very artistic endeavor into, you know, and my way to put it was about hyperbolic is how do you turn that into an engineering problem?

How do you turn it into a math equation where you can figure out what are the inputs and what are the outputs? And that's kind of what we've tried to do. So our process doesn't really change clients to client.

Absolutely. I remember two things come to mind on the topic of just confidently asking for the right price. I think the neuroscience says that we experience spending money as pain, sort of the brain, the brain registers spending as a form of pain. And so, yeah, you have people need to hurt a little bit in order for them to listen. You know what I mean? They're going to be more likely to listen if it hurts. And that's one anecdote on that. And then I want to hear it. And then I just got an email from I spoke to Clotere Rapay, who's a, you know, legend. Right. And he offers a service of devising discovering your code. And I think it's 10 sessions, thirty five thousand dollars a session. Wow. I was like, oh, yeah, well, that's I see what he's doing there.

Well, you know, I think what it is in business is that people often don't appreciate the notion of leverage in the way that they should. Like if it's just you can do so. So the analogy that I think is really helpful, again, just borrowing from engineering unbiased is the difference between speed and velocity.

And that's kind of what it is. Like, I always another way of, you know, another kind of mental model that I come back to a lot is just, I don't know if I have a clear phrase for it, but it's kind of just like cracking ideas over the anvil. You're trying to break an idea. You're really trying to break it. And if you can succeed, then there was something wrong with it. And actually, this does it.

There's a fun story here. So many years ago, when I was living in London, I'm in LA now, obviously. But in London, I helped run the Google Startup Accelerator Program. And so this was like it was a bit different than earlier stage startups. It was a week long intensive that we'd run with a whole batch of startups. And in doing a few iterations of that, we realized that the best way to run that program is in a week, can we break your business?

We would just be as aggressive as possible. Every day was a different part of the business. We just try and break it. We'd say like, okay, let's prove it wrong. Let's prove you in the harshest way possible that that's not going to work. The marketing isn't going to work.

The product isn't going to work. The engineering, the team isn't going to work. Whatever it is, we would just try and break it over the anvil. And sometimes we would. And that really reveals something interesting. So there's one story I love to tell. There was a company that they'd run a pretty successful Kickstarter. They had a product. They've been churning away it for two years. It was a connected dog collar. It's that you're at work. You're anxious about how your dog feels. Home alone. You want to check in on them. You want to make sure they're all right.

And so sometimes, violence is the best answer, for want of a better way to put it. But it is that just trying to be really aggressive and that if you can prove it doesn't work, then there's a problem. And so you get to be, you really can't be precious with your ideas. And you have to absolutely just like, propose them and then try and destroy them. And that process is how I think you get to a really strong position. Beautiful.

Well, listen, that's all the time that we have. I want to thank you so much. This has been a lot of fun.

Thank you, Peter

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