Paul's pursuit of a values-driven career

EPISODE 07

I first met my guest today in the late 1990s at the very beginning of the convergence of advertising and the internet. A quarter of a century later, I'm eager to discover how he has shaped an independent career that continues to champion the fusion of technology and creativity, as well as help ambitious founders and companies, big and small, tell their unique stories to the world.

Welcome to Freedom Unscripted with Paul Alexandrou.

This is your office window right here. Look, I come down here, it must be a couple of times a week, a few hours and you get some deep work done.

A NON-LINEAR CAREER PATH

I don't think I can start the conversation with you and me without alluding to our career highlight of being part of the team that delivered Australia's very first Cyber Lion at Cannes, for Diet Coke.

That seems like a long time ago.

It was. 2001?

Almost a quarter of a century ago, if you can believe it.

No, I don't want to think about all that.

You know, epic romances either begin with some kind of epic tragedy or epic victory.

I like the fact that you describe it as an epic romance.

It is.  You know, nothing connects people like tragedy and sort of epic wins. We kind of had both in our career.

That's very true.

Actually, we both had a very spotted career that was  deeply non-linear as well, I would say. There are so many different ways to do virtually anything, and I think one of the challenges is knowing where to start.

Yes, I'm not sure I ever wanted to be an architect, but the thing that I really loved about doing that degree was just really getting under the skin of the creative process.

That takes real thought and creative contemplation, that I've since applied into everything I've done.

What do you think about balancing the need to be a generalist and a slasher with a specialist and a niche expert in one thing?

I don't have anything against people that do multiple disciplines, but if I had my choice of who I'm looking for, it's almost like a T-shape.

They have one very specific niche or specialty that you will back them 100% on, but they also understand a lot of the adjacent skills that help bring their core focus to the fore.

INDEPENDENT LEARNING & DEVELOPMENT

How do you tackle learning and development?

One way that I'm very conscious of learning is by getting involved in companies that give me a reason to learn about a new category or a new technology. So generative AI, LLMs, finding companies that give me a reason to understand something that is beyond my skill set or beyond my knowledge base, that is one way that I very deliberately self-educate these days. I think the other way is through, you know, I do a lot of discovery through dialogue. You know, I'm surprised by how many people prepared to accept the well-intentioned but unsolicited advances of a stranger. If you seek advice, you might ask ten people and one of them is going to say yes.

UNSCRIPTED OPPORTUNITIES

What drew you back to Sydney?

I was in London for about a decade and I really had no intention of coming back at any fixed time. And then, on a random Sunday, I just got an email about an agency back here that was doing some very non-traditional stuff and I'd sort of hung up my agency boots, I guess.

You know, I think it's sort of true of most of my career and my journey is you have an idea about how things may turn out, and then it rarely ever transpires the way you'd hoped.

I think like a lot of the biggest decisions in our lives, they sort of percolate for quite a while, and then they happen very quickly. Look, the truth is that never eventuated, but it set in motion a conversation with my wife and myself, and we committed to move regardless.

So that's been the truth of my career is that there's been a lot of broad intention with some very unscripted opportunities.

DESIGNING YOUR LIFE

You know, when I was a kid, my brother was a mad fisherman. I'm talking obsessed.

We found ourselves on this jetty one day. It was just the two of us. I would have been about eight at the time. And there was an older fisherman that was sort of sitting nearby with a line in the water. And I can't remember the exact circumstances, but I recall getting my line in a horrific knot. I was there trying to untangle it and he said to me said throw the line in the water and the currents will sort it out. So I did and slowly but surely the water just started to separate this tangled knot and I think of how relevant that is to a lot of times in our life where sometimes things that seem insurmountable just need a bit of space. And for me, this place is where I find that. I come here with a problem, I try not to meditate on it, and I try to just be present. It might not happen immediately, but over time you find that answers come.

Problems diminish and it's up to me to design my life and my work around the things that I valued as opposed to designing my life to service the work or the job that I had. When you get clarity on that, then it reframes the opportunities that you pursue.

BRANDING AS IDENTITY

I know you to be an expert in branding. What do you think about that in terms of its relevance to the freelance game or even why branding is so important?

We get hung up on the word brand as sort of a marketing artefact. But if I was to change that word to identity, it essentially means the same thing.

You know, what do I believe in? What am I striving for? What do I value? Our identity, our perception of ourself informs our actions. What your purpose is actually a really good design tool for career as much as it is for a company.

In your vast experience as a freelancer, you know there are times of feast or famine for every freelancer, right? Can you speak to any lean times that you might've had?

Lean times are learning times. You know, when you resist that, you resist the lesson, why is it lean? How do I get out of this? That's when you cause yourself pain. When you lean into those questions, that's where you grow.

Do you know this is a learning moment when you're in the lean times? Or does it take you a little while to go, okay, I better invest in myself right now?

It's pretty normal to just sort of thrash around and try and work your way through it. But there are some times, for whatever reason, the projects aren't flowing, things just don't feel like they're on rails the way that they usually are and you look around and there is no visibility on what's next.

I think it's only when you sort of realise where you're at and then you accept that, that you know the tap's not going to turn on tomorrow, so what can I do to make the most of this situation right now?

I think lean times creep up on you, you just sort of find yourself in the middle of them, they don't sort of come and declare themselves.

A MORE INTERESTING JOURNEY

But I'm assuming you've had lean times as well, certainly as a founder.

Absolutely, and I think as a founder, you run the full gamut of emotions. The euphoric highs and the absolute depressing lows, mainly because you've got a lot on your shoulders. You're not only trying to build a company, but you also have a lot of people's livelihoods and careers as your responsibility. You've gotta be able to help them achieve their goals personally in conjunction with you building a business and I think that becomes very stressful.

Just like you said, in those lean times, what are you doing to educate yourself so that when you do come out of those lean times, then you're almost fully equipped or you're better equipped to attack the next period of that startup journey.

The journey of building a company, it is as much an exercise and a journey in self and self-development as it is a journey in entrepreneurialism and commercial growth.

And I don't think you can ever divorce the two, can you?

I think that just makes for a more interesting journey.

What captivates me about Paul's story is the deliberate intentionality behind everything he does. His actions and choices reflect a conscious effort to design a life aligned with his deepest values. As a freelancer and an independent specialist in his craft, he has gained both the control and freedom to view each fork in the road as an opportunity to reassess his direction of travel and make decisions that stay true to those values.

It’s clear to me that this freedom has truly unlocked the world for him.

- fin

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