This week I invited my good friend, Ceylan Boyce to talk to us about strategic thinking and getting brief writing right. We talked about:
- why it’s so important for an agency account manager to have have that important skill of writing briefs
- why it’s important to agencies and clients to get the writing of the brief right
- what’s the implication of having a shitty brief
- where briefs go wrong
- and some of the important elements to include in a good brief.
I’m also asked Ceylan to share some experiences that she’s had, where the agency has written a brief and challenged the brief with their client. And it’s proven very, very fruitful.
I hope you enjoy the episode with Ceylan (J for short), and you come away with a few ideas about brief writing. Now, if you are interested in the brief writing workshop that we’re running, please visit my Training hub. You can reach out to me on LinkedIn at Jenny Plant, or send me an email at jenny@accountmanagementskills.com.
Transcript:
Jenny 00:03
So on today’s episode, I’m delighted to talk to my good friend Ceylan Boyce. The reason I’ve invited J onto the show is that a lot of people have been contacting me recently to ask me about ‘brief’ writing. Now, it’s a really fundamental part of an account manager’s role is to write a really good brief. And because J has a huge amount of experience in the agency world, I’m going to pass over to her in a minute to introduce her thoroughly, but she’s one of the clearest, most strategic minds that I know and she has run a training on ‘brief’ writing, with many companies very successfully. So we are getting together to offer this training for the account management community. So I want to talk to J today about first of all her background, what she’s doing now, but also to go into a little bit of detail about why we should be writing great briefs, a little bit about J’s experience of working with different companies on brief writing, and I’m sure the conversation will go in lots of different directions. So J, would you mind if I hand it over to you? Welcome to the show, would you mind spending a couple of minutes talking about you, your background, who you help, and just give us a flavour of Ceylan.
Ceylan 01:21
Yes sure Jenny, thank you so much for inviting me on the podcast. So a little bit about me, as you know, my background is pretty eclectic with a couple of backbone areas that led my decisions over the years. So I started my career in the advertising world as an account handler so I know very well the pain points of account handling. I guess from the start, I was lucky enough to be coached and guided by great managers, who spotted my interest in strategy, which also helped me climb the agency ladder quite fast. And within five, six years of the agency life, I actually became CSD to one of the leading pharmaceutical agencies, here in London. Then I opened my own strategic consultancy in 2012, and worked for major healthcare companies, and health or wellbeing related companies. In 2017, I got trained in Cambridge University as an executive coach, and trainer, professional trainer. And since then I have kind of been combining my strategic background, and all these coaching and training qualities to basically train businesses of all size in many areas that are linked to strategy. Currently, I’m also leading a new startup as you know, called Academy for Women Entrepreneurs where I am passionately training women business owners to think strategically about their businesses. So kind of probably, you know, when I said backbone areas, business and strategy are all ways, have always been these backbone areas and I added on top of it, the human development sides, and then I’m kind of combining all this. That’s me.
Jenny 03:23
Honestly, you are a firecracker. And when I introduce you to people, I say she’s a firecracker because I’ve never met anyone with so much energy and focus. I’ve seen J work on pitch presentations, you know, for several days, do you remember? Like, it was just phenomenal? And a couple of things that you said that I want to pick up on one? It was 2012 did you say that you started J stratejy? And the interesting thing about that is that model, that virtual model that you started up your strategic consultancy, was exactly what has transpired now, for many agencies starting up with the virtual model, but at the time, you had some fantastic clients on your roster. But it was a difficult sell wasn’t?
Ceylan 04:02
Oh, it was such a difficult sell, because they were just seeing us as a bunch of kind of freelance, like, I remember going to speak at the Novartis pitch, and Novartis was choosing their main agencies for three years. So it was either you were in or out. And I remember like, they were saying, ‘Well, how are we going to trust her?’ And I was like, ‘Why it is so different to you, what you’re doing with the agencies not changing is just our modality, which actually brings a lot of agility and probably, cost cut as well’. So, but hey! Hey ho!
Jenny 04:47
It’s just amazing, isn’t it, how things have transpired? The other thing that you said that was super relevant was, you’re now helping businesses of all sizes, including the entrepreneurial community of kind of micro business owners, and one of the most successful projects, or products that you sell, is your strategic planning workshop. And I’ve just noticed so many testimonials coming up from business owners saying, ”Oh my God, this was incredible, it’s really cleared the fog’. So well done you, amazing. So tell me, J, why are you so passionate about strategy?
Ceylan 05:22
This question, like I keep asking myself as well, why do I always get pulled there? Listen, I think I’m a naturally curious person, which was one of the characteristics that kind of made me interested in strategy. You know, strategy is all about asking more questions.
But my passion came when I started to experience and witness the impact of strategic thinking on life, business and career. You know, I guess there are two real main driving forces in success. Well, this is kind of me believing in this. The first one is definitely consistency. So it’s like the power of showing up doing things in a disciplined way. Right. And we both experienced the result of a compound effect. And the second one is the ability to take perspective and analyse and shift or continue, which is, to me, is the power of the right questions and to do the right things. So the first one is do the things consistently. The second one is do the right things.
And essentially, the second one is basically be able to think strategically for me, and that’s probably why I’m so passionate about it. It’s like my wish to do the right thing and ask the right questions.
Jenny 06:49
I think this, particularly for the agency, account manager community is key. I think one of the things that comes up time and time again, is I want to be more of a strategic thinker. I want to add value to the client business in a more strategic way. Or I’m not strategic enough. There’s always that word strategy. And sometimes, you know, people use it as a mythical kind of you’re not strategic enough but what does that actually mean? And sometimes, the way the agency’s structured is that they might have a strategic planning department, which means the account management team don’t necessarily get as big a role in the strategy sometimes. So there’s that fight as well. So I’d love you to sort of talk me through what your observations have been of the account management community, when it comes to strategic ability and strategic input.
Ceylan 07:42
Okay, so this is a great question. And I would say, when I started, so this goes back to beginning of 2000s. And when I started in the advertising, especially in the healthcare advertising, there wasn’t that much of ‘Oh you are strategic or you’re this’. Account handling was a thing of strategy, you need it to understand your clients business, to be able to help them grow it. And that is all about strategy. So you needed to know the market dynamics, you needed to know the content of what you’re selling basically. It wasn’t just a classically viewed sales job or project management job, it was much more than that. And slowly, slowly, what is more applied in the consumer advertising world, which is that most strategic planners are different and then accountants are different and creatives are different, project managers are different, all of that started to filter also med comm and healthcare advertising or any agency world. My take on on this is it takes the power out of the client relationship management, because the person who holds that relationship has to have the intelligence to be able to empower that relationship to grow. And I think it’s really very key for the growth, personal growth of the account handling community members as well. So I believe it’s a really key skill. And I wish more agencies were actually behind their account handlers to gain that kind of skill, have space and time.
Jenny 09:43
I’m going to repeat this anecdotally, really, but one of the biggest complaints that I hear from the client community is that account managers don’t have enough commercial acumen. Meaning, as to your point, they don’t understand my business, they don’t understand the market environment, my competitors, my customers, and they’re not bringing me proactively, ideas based on that knowledge. So let’s talk about specifically, where account managers tend to get involved, which is the brief writing process. So A, they’re taking the brief from the client, and potentially challenging the brief, and then having to interpret the brief. So why do you believe that brief writing is so important for agencies?
Ceylan 10:29
Okay, so there are many reasons. There is a quote, and I’m going to a little bit mess it about, but basically it says behind every masterpiece, whether it’s a project creative brief or product brief, there’s a great brief. So
great briefs ensure excellence. Bad briefs, cost in time, productivity, money, client relationships to agencies, or bad briefs create bad synergy and team problems. So I mean, this is the big thing about the polarity of creatives and account handlers, because all creatives didn’t understand the brief or you didn’t apply the brief, whatever, it’s always this kind of like, touchy thing. And brief writing is probably one of the most strategic activities of account handling. So you got to have that, you got to have that little muscle ticking to be able to write excellent briefs to get to the excellent results, basically.
Jenny 11:43
I think it’s, you’re so right, with everything that you’ve just said, I mean, when time is money, often many agencies are not necessarily value based pricing, they’re not basing their pricing on outcomes. It’s more about inputs and hours. So if every minute counts, and you write a bad brief, or you don’t do the research behind the good brief, or you’ve got your thinking wrong, then the implications is huge, isn’t it? The cost, as you said, to the team morale, the profitability of the agency, the client satisfaction, etc. so it’s huge. But like you say, it’s that key point to get it right. So, where in your experience, do agencies get it wrong with briefs?
Ceylan 12:28
Yes, there are two main reasons. So the first one is they do a quick and dirty job. Right, so you are the account handling queen. You tell me how many jobs an account handler juggles in the day?
Jenny 12:43
Yeah, it varies, doesn’t it? I mean, some account managers have multiple clients with multiple projects, and they’re just trying to keep their head above water.
Ceylan 12:51
Exactly.
Jenny 12:52
Depending on how the agencies, like how their model is, because, as you said before, sometimes the project management function is separate, so the account manager theoretically has more scope to really add the time and effort that’s needed. But some, as you say, have that combined role where they’re doing project management and account management.
Ceylan 13:16
So in my experience, what I have seen is, it’s always urgent. And the brief writing is squeezed between two calls and three mails and two projects so it’s always a squeeze thing. I used to always say to my team, there’s always time to do it again and again and again but there is never time to do it right at the first round. So that’s kind of the main problem. And the second problem is, I think, to my knowledge, and you correct me, none of the account handlers that I came across, were properly trained on brief writing. So it is a skill, but you want your team to kind of be born with it, or come up with it so they’re not trained and it is a skill to be trained up.
Jenny 14:13
I think if you’re very, very lucky, and I think things have changed since I started out, which was like a long, long, long time ago, I mean, if you’re really, really lucky, you will have an internal training session where the creative director will kind of talk you through the agency’s proprietary strategic tool, and how to write a brief. I mean, we’ve both worked in both micro agencies, independents and networked agencies, where systems are a lot more established and processes are a lot more established. But yeah, absolutely. I mean, the implication of doing, sorry we’re you going to say something there?
Ceylan 14:55
Yeah, I will just say something because like this is a really good point that you’re making. So there are processes and people are trained on processes. Let’s talk about these processes on a brief, but probably 99% of the briefs are going to ask one key question, right? It’s ‘What’s the objective?’ So the thing is, if you’re not trained to think about what’s the objective in a right way, here are the types of things that I came across in my career is something like, ‘Create a series of newsletter’. Okay, so that can be an objective written on the brief, right? Or, I came across these briefs that are like literally, the objectives that are a paragraph long, ‘Become the market leaders, create impact. stay top of mind’. So like you put a list of all the marketing jargon that you know, so that, maybe it will hit one of them? So this is it, it’s not about just processes, because processes exist, okay, great. But it’s about making people think correctly about those questions and processes and that brief. That the content of that brief, that’s the training that we are missing, I guess.
Jenny 15:24
I love that you’ve made that point, actually, because I think that’s where you’re different in that you train people in how to think strategically. And to put that down in a brief, and I think that’s the key difference. You’re right. I mean, anyone can come up with a template with headings, but it’s how you then fill out those sections. So, and I’ve seen the feedback from your previous sessions, and it’s just, it’s phenomenal. So the implications of writing a shitty brief, are?
Ceylan 16:54
Well, I mean, like, at the end of the day, it’s a business outcome. It impacts directly the business outcome, which is money, which then transforms into the account handlers life as less bonus, okay. So if everyone needs to take their kind of shitty impact, there’s shit impact for everyone. For the client who was managing it, he’s not going to hit their target, do you know, that’s the shit impact. For the agency in general, probably they’re not going to be able to retain that client that long, or they’re not going to have more of the projects, they’re not going to be able to grow their projects. For the people who are working in the agency, they’re going to have a really kind of dodgy relationship within the team, because everybody will kind of give the hot potato to others. So I think it’s everyone is impacted when the key strategic activity, often account handler, is badly done.
Jenny 18:06
I absolutely agree with you, I think you get a lot more respect within your agency, if you know how to write a really good brief. And actually, from my experience, you are going to stand out a mile from the pack if you can, because it’s a skill, as you say, it’s almost like a muscle that you develop, and then you can repeat and repeat and repeat. But you do no need to know the fundamentals. And on that point, what are the important elements that go into a really good brief?
Ceylan 18:33
There are many, but just to give it a quick kind of thing, so first of all, is really understanding the end audience, right? The end user of that piece or product or app, whatever that brief will result into, whoever is going to be exposed to that end result, you need to understand that person. You need to clarify the objective, and there is a really simple tool to be able to clarify the objective. And when I train people, I say, ‘Becoming the top of mind’, is the last time that you’re using those words. No more marketing jargon, or if you’re going to use it, you got to explain to me, what do you mean again, so really clarifying the objective. Defining the key messages and again, it’s not the classical way of defining the key messages, but impactful messages, this is going to actually hit the objective. This message will hit the objective, this information, this data helps this objective to move forward. And then, there are some simple steps to follow, key steps of writing, reading, editing a brief. You don’t just write a brief in 10 minutes and then shove it in front of the creative team because they will understand it. So you need head space and time to be able to perfect it. And I’m not a perfectionist, but that brief writing needs to be excellent. So that the result is excellent, basically.
Jenny 20:18
Okay, love it. And what else goes into that brief? I mean, what other elements do you think should be important in your experience of training this with loads of different people? What points do they need to understand more than others?
Ceylan 20:36
The three points that I mentioned. So audience, objective and key message and then after that, it’s all about also giving the right amount of information. So, for example, you ask, what is the background information? And then they put everything and anything? Yes, but why am I supposed to read all this information, does it really help my brief? So, for example, if the brief is about a brand that has a long presence in the market, and actually you are celebrating their 20th year in the market, and it’s a big campaign, right, I’m just like literally making it up right now. Then it makes sense to talk about heritage of this brand, and how it came. But if actually, the brief is about refreshing an old brand and giving them a punchy look, a newer look, then maybe you should not talk about that whole heritage and give that information or keep it only in one sentence. Yes, this is an old brand but actually, you want to renew it. So the information that you’re choosing in the background has to be conditioned by your objective, and by the end results that you want to get. This is one thing, avoiding all the jargon and general sentences is another thing because it creates confusion. So really being precise, concise, is the key. And there are tools to be able to actually make it like that.
Jenny 22:22
I love that you’re sharing this because what’s becoming clear is this is not just about brief writing is it? This is about a skill in communication. Because to your point about, and sometimes maybe it’s a lack of confidence thing, I’m just going to cut and paste all this background info because it looks like you know, to Seth Godin’s point, it’s got the ‘thud factor’, there’s a lot in there so that means I’ve done a good job. But actually the reverse is true, isn’t it? You know, what are the key points that I really need to communicate? And how much can I cut out? Because I noticed J, with all of your communications, everything is very succinct. And onpoint. Can you speak to a little bit on that?
Ceylan 23:00
Yeah, sure and I really want to also jump on what you said. It’s not just yes, the brief writing, when you get it right, it’s not just about brief writing. It’s a skill that you can apply into any parts of communication, it’s a skill that you can apply in presentation, it’s a skill that you can apply in email writing. It’s a very transferable life skill basically. It’s a skill that you can apply in how to manage a meeting, how to define those key points that are important for your audience it’s really a life skill. Right. So in that sense, repeat again your previous question, I just got lost!
Jenny 23:48
Don’t worry, I think I’m lost as well! I’m really enjoying the conversation. Just go with the flow. Just carry on. I’ve got another question up my sleeve, though.
Ceylan 23:58
All right. So this is kind of what I was gonna say.
It’s not just about brief writing, when you get good at brief writing, you get good at communicating, which is probably the most important life skill that you can gain.
Jenny 24:13
Agreed. Just going back to the confidence thing. I remember you, and I don’t know whether you can remember this, but you gave me an example where you challenged the brief, because I think the skill that you’re talking about now about writing a good brief, is actually relevant for both clients and agencies. So it could be, and this is why you help companies in general with briefing, it could be a client that gives you a brief that’s not on point and the same implications happen, or it could be an agency account manager writing a brief for their internal team, I think the principles are the same. So if in the scenario of when a client comes to you with a brief that maybe is very quickly written, not a lot of thought in it, not a lot of context, maybe no data to support anything, no evidence, etc. And can you talk to us about the importance of sort of challenging the brief and really helping that process to make it to even better output?
Ceylan 25:17
Sure. And thank you very much for asking this question. Because right now, we’re putting everything on the shoulders of account handlers.
But actually account handlers receive, most of the time, very bad briefs. Very, very bad briefs, because clients are not trained in brief writing either. And especially a marketing side of the client, so a marketing person from the client side, oh, my God, the things that they need to juggle between. So brief writing is the lowest importance on their to do list, and they just like chuck some information and send it to their agency. And then the account handler finds himself or herself in front of the thing that is called ‘brief’. And there’s a choice to make. It’s either, I’m gonna take ownership and be able to push back or at least, I’m not saying pushing back in a irrespectful way, it’s just asking the questions to actually refine that brief. Or you’re going to become a post office, and then you’re just going to pass the baby to, again, the hot potato, to the creative team, who will struggle, not understand, and then they will just create something.
Creative team or a product team or whoever is the production team in your scenario. So in that case, yes, you have to 1, manage the expectation of the clients, in terms of brief writing, and make them understand that this is important to you, this is important to the agency and to them as an end result, and probably manage that expectation upfront within the relationship management, which you would do much better than me, but it’s all about saying, look, when we send you a brief template, if you didn’t have time to fill it that much, why don’t we go through it together? And then you have some questions that you can ask because you know what you’re talking about, and you can get the right information and then you write it. It happened to me in my career, like years, years, years ago, a client came said it was about HIV, it was an HIV client and they wanted to do a campaign on women HIV. And they just came in, they said, ‘Oh, we want to do a brochure on this’. And I was just like, ‘Why a brochure? Why are you even doing a campaign on this?’ and actually, their objective was so much bigger than a brochure could meet up. Then the 80k client, so they had 80k budget to do this mini campaign became 400k client within six months. So this is the good impact on the agency, of course, but also the impact on the client, it was that they started to be recognised literally as the leaders in that sector for dealing with woman HIV and how to prevent HIV in women. So that’s the, I guess, power of being able to, as you said, trust yourself, trust your guts, and just go, ‘Why?’
Jenny 28:59
That seems to be like a key question. And I’m not sure it’s done enough. Partly because maybe the lack of, I don’t know, confidence or not wanting to disrespect someone, but actually, what you’ve just explained is the reason we should be asking why. And in fairness, the clients like you said, they’re short of time, they haven’t necessarily received the training, it’s a tick boxing exercise, where they say, ‘Well, this is the brief, let’s just go and do something executionly’. But actually, the co-creation of that brief session is key, isn’t it? And maybe that should be in every agency’s repertoire in terms of service that they provide?
Ceylan 29:36
100% I mean, I remember like,
you make your client sign a brief right, and the client will sign a brief, okay, they will correct some minor stuff and they will sign a brief and then you are there. You’re feeling empowered because because you can hold them accountable. That’s, I’m sorry the expression, but it’s bullshit because whenever that project goes wrong, even if you tell them oh you signed the brief that’s it, it actually damaged the relationship. So that’s where I actually like owning that relationship and nurturing it from the start by saying, hang on, this is a really key moment, let’s spare an hour of your time and my time, let’s hop on a call, a zoom call and let’s go through all these questions together. And that’s it, one hour.
Jenny 30:29
It shows massive proactivity, massive professionalism, it shows that you’re adding value that you’re helping, that you’re interested in this success. You know, it’s the part of your partnership in terms of working with the client that you are committed to the shared success. So I think it’s a great example. And just out of interest, that HIV client, the brief originally was a brochure and what did the end kind of programme look like?
Ceylan 30:57
Oh it was a massive Medcomm MedEd programme. It became something massive, and it was a repeat programme, they created an award, like Research Award with them, so they were able to give awards, etc. So it became, and it still is going on, it’s still something that they are continuing now, not as the format that we had created in 2007, or something, but it became a heritage programme for them. So yeah, and that’s the moment where you just say no, this is not sounding right. There’s something weird in this.
Jenny 31:36
Yeah, so it’s totally the opportunity for the account manager to shine, for the agency to shine. And it really is one of those absolute key moments to get it right, to add the most value, isn’t it? Because once that ball is in motion, and people are executing on it, then it just becomes a project that’s just not going to get any better is it? You’re not going to come back from that. Yeah, I love this. This is this is so important. So let’s talk a little bit about this brief writing training that we’re going to put on for the agency community because I’m super passionate about this, because I really think it’s needed. And I think everyone should have that skill. So can you talk me through a bit about how it works and some of the benefits?
Ceylan 32:18
Sure. So first of all, let’s follow our kind of our own brief writing format, right. So, Who is it for? Who are the people? So I guess the simplest way to say is whoever is exposed to either brief writing or being the gatekeeper of the briefs, or standard bearer of the good briefs, so whoever is exposed to that, so it can be from client side, as I said, I have delivered this training to very, very technical people who had to write briefs and who had no idea about what does an objective, what is a marketing objective? What does this you know? So it really helped them understand certain parameters of good brief. And in an agency context, it’s mostly account handlers but also creatives because they have to also fight their corner, right? So they need to say, hang on, this doesn’t make sense. You’re saying this in the objective now you’re coming with this key message? Why? It doesn’t even follow. What’s this about? So anybody who has to actually work with that brief, can benefit from this training. So what is the objective of the training? The training not only gives the skills but also gives a very clear format of brief, and also as I said, it’s not just about ‘What’s the objective?, it’s ‘How am I going to think about the objective and all the questions within that question?’ So that you actually come up with a very clear idea on each part of the brief. And basically, when when you go through those questions, because there’s much more sub questions and sub questions, you know, it’s the why, why, why, why? And at the end, there is nothing left but the barebone important information. So you end up by gaining that skill of writing a good brief and you get out of it with the tools. So you are a good brief writer, that’s the objective of it. And my key message is 1, I seriously didn’t come across any account handler who were able to write good briefs because they were not trained. So I believe account handlers can massively benefit from this. I believe agencies can massively benefit from this because it will actually save them time, money, productivity and it will regenerate the team synergy between their account teams and creative teams. That’s it!
Jenny 35:11
Love it, I have to agree with everything. The only thing I’m thinking is if there is an agency that’s not traditional creative agency, but there might be maybe a website development agency or a video production agency an app development agency or video production agency, any type of agency where there’s a client, and there’s an agency, right?
Ceylan 35:33
Oh, 100%, there’s a client, an agency, or there is two teams where there is a project management team and more technical production team. And when there is those different skill sets that are not actually working on a end product, there is always a communication and there is always lost in translation. So this always helps them to set those bridges between teams.
Jenny 36:07
Great. And how do you run this session J? Is this virtual? Is this face to face? How long is it? What’s the kind of format?
Ceylan 36:14
Both. Well, in our world right now, it’s mostly virtual. So it’s three hours with a little break. It’s highly interactive, I really do three minutes talk and then it’s all about them working on the show, it’s really they are working. And it’s only three hours, it’s pretty easy, pretty simple to gather people, it can be just the morning and then they go off to lunch or afternoon. It can be also delivered in person, when we’re allowed to and then I just say half a day, because there’s more social networking components in it as well. But yeah, it’s really, really interactive. And I don’t just lecture, it’s not about lecturing, it’s all about making people do stuff.
Jenny 37:13
Yeah. And your latest client, I know that you told me this the other day, and I had to say it, they were so impressed with what you did for them, that they’ve invited you back to repeat it six times.
Ceylan 37:24
Yes. exactly. So they had trained I think, at the beginning six, nine people. And then they just came back saying we want to train 45 people in the company, is it possible? I said, well, we need to chop them into groups but definitely, we can do it. So yeah.
Jenny 37:49
I’ve just so excited about putting this out. And I know that there’s a few agencies that spring to mind that particularly have been asking me about this. So I’m really super excited. I’ve got the right person, the right person partnering, so I’m going to include all of the details for, if anyone’s listening, and they’re interested in knowing more about it. The key contact will be me on on LinkedIn or jenny@accountmanagementskills.com and I can give them more information. But any final advice J, for agency account managers who are listening to you and thinking, Oh, my God, I know what she’s saying is true. Have you got any final words of wisdom or advice for them?
Ceylan 38:32
I guess I think, slow down. I know what agency life is like, I have done those hours – 4am, 7am. I have done that and slow down. No one is dying. And it’s only communications and when you slow down, answers come to you. So slow down, especially brief writing, it’s not a rushed thing. Create space, create time and take your time to really reflect on those questions of your brief template.
Jenny 39:12
Love that. Love that. And the point that we were talking about before, I think it’s important to invest in your career and yourself, don’t you? I mean, you and I’ve spent a fortune on masterclasses, education etc. And I think you’ve only got, your career is one of the most valuable assets. And the other thing I was going to ask you was because you are such a sharp, creative and strategic thinker, what are your sources of inspiration? Can you recommend any books, podcasts, sources that you go to to get inspired with thinking the way you think?
Ceylan 39:49
So I’m a little bit of a geek and that’s why my sources are quite eclectic. I mean, I can go into big encyclopaedia of neuropsychology or neuroplasticity as much as I can also go into a yoga book that will inspire me. But within the strategic thinking or learning or being curious, probably my number one podcast for everyone is, as you know, I’m passionate about that is The Knowledge Project because the host Shane Parrish has been running Farnam Street so his blog for years and years and Knowledge Project hosted, like the biggest name in every and any sector. So you just like can listen from parenting, to marketing, to investment to whatever the topic that he had in mind. So it’s really, it’s really inspiring, that’s one of the things. Others I would say, kind of sector of reading or knowledge that I am really interested in is mental models. So any book around mental models would help you. Shane Parrish has made two books are on mental models. And there is a book called Super Thinking, which also is all about kind of applying different mental models into your daily life. And finally, another book is Loser Think and that is the book where how some type of thinking can actually lead you into into wrong areas.
Jenny 41:37
Wow, thank you so much for sharing that. I mean, I listen to The Knowledge Project and the Farnam Street blog, but the other recommendations, wonderful. Thank you so much J. I just want to say a huge thank you. And if anyone’s listening and they want to reach out to either me or J, then you can hit us up on LinkedIn. And I would highly recommend following you because you’re doing some amazing things. I watch and see so much activity and just, you’re always inspiring me. So thank you so much for coming on J. This has been brilliant.
Ceylan 42:11
Thank you very much for inviting me.
