#9 - Andrea Binasco @ Sefirot - On Creativity
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My guest today is Andrea Binasco.
Andrea is the co-founder of Sefirot, a publishing house of a few amazing creative tools. They have 50000 users all over the world and I am one of them. I discovered Sefirot through Cicero, their deck of cards for public speaking, and I have purchased all their other decks since then.
Andrea is a teacher, an author and, more generally, a creative. It was beautiful to hear about his creative process, their plans for Sefirot, and test some of our ideas with him.
In this episode, we talk about:
⛽ Fueling the creative process through cards
✨ Insights on the creative process
💥 Linearity and Chaos in the creative journey
Here are my takeaways:
⛽ Fueling the creative process through cards
Sefirot has designed and published a few card decks designed to support the creative process of their users. I particularly resonated with the idea to give people the tools they need to get work done. Like a Montessori facilitator would do, you offer games, and anyone can pick them up and have the entire activity on their own without needing anyone throughout the process. Growth, freedom, and empowerment.
The cards are an educational device because you learn while using them, and they are also useful right from the start because you can deliver the piece of work. You don’t need to get the theory first and then apply it to the actual project you have. You work from the very first start on your project. The wisdom is there, pre-digested for you.
The immediate benefit is that you save time. Your time to actual creation is faster and the overall creation time is less. Most important is that you can bring more of yourself in the process. Because of the format of the cards, the prompts need to be brief. And it gives you larger blanks to fill, and more space to express yourself. They’re just triggers for your intuition.
Because the cards are analog, you also reduce the risk of multitasking: you won’t switch to another screen, window, or tab. And not being online means also less risk to be distracted by someone else and their presence and what it brings of expectations, their ideas, and even sometimes their recommendations. Retreat from the world and do you! Do “deeper you”, “higher you”, whatever you call it, “more you”.
Because the cards are physical, you can use them to change your physical space. It can be on your table or it can be in an entire room using the walls, the floor, the ceiling even if you have a ladder. If you are familiar with the memory palace (aka the Method of Loci), you know that space helps us memorize and recall information, space can help you think as well. You can create zones where you can develop ideas.
We explored two paths forward involving cards as creative devices:
A room of cards.
Imagine a library made only of decks of cards, structured so you can work on your projects, whatever they are. Hundreds, or thousands of boxes stacked up by intention.
Table Top Games.
How about a card deck to create an improv scene or create a piece of art from scratch in 2-3 hours?
✨ 10 Insights on the creative process
Andrea creatively creates creative tools, so his perspective on creativity was particularly interesting to me.
Here are the 10 main insights from our chat:
Challenge your fears of expressing yourself and thinking you will be judged, just play. (Will write about this soon, reach out if you need mental models to combat that fear)
Blank page syndrome? The decks of cards Sefirot offers are one way to get the juice flowing, you get simple steps and more importantly the first one, you can question/disagree, which means you started.
Follow your intuition, Do not overthink, and get things done instead. Some things feel they are for you. Some things feel they’re not. And you want to comply.
Seek discomfort: At the same time, you want to push yourself, do things that are difficult, out of your comfort zone, and don't become complacent.
Listen to feedback from others and be data-driven in order to iterate your creation. Don’t get too attached to your creation. Build on the feedback.
Find balance: your intuition, pushing yourself out of your comfort zone, get getting feedback.
“Yes, and…”: Build on other people’s creations. Don’t get paralyzed by envy. You will see others delivering beautiful things you wish you had done already, you will be triggered, feel threatened by their genius (FOMO), and want to avoid it or judge it as crap (fear turned into anger). Don’t reject or dismiss their stuff, be grateful that they light a path for you, something you want as well, build on top, “steal” in a good way.
Wait for it. Just wait for beauty to emerge. Don’t rush the creative process, let it unfold. If you want something truly remarkable, you want bits of magic. You can’t force the magic, you channel it but it chooses when to emerge. Surrender to your inner genius whether you think/feel it as a part of your brain processing insights in the background or a connection to the source. Not everything is a process you can control. Just wait for it.
Explore many different things to connect what’s not connected yet. Remember why you are exploring and let intuition drive some of the mix and match.
Go to the root: Extract the best insights from your assemblage. Ideally, you explore the entire territory (for instance, the hero’s journey, character arc, Kishōtenketsu, and all the other ones) and you go to the root, the base concept on which everything is based and you build your creative solutions on top of that base concept.
💥 Linearity and Chaos in the creative journey
Andrea spoke about linearity and chaos in creativity and it opened my mind. I am still figuring out the implications of the dance between the two.
We used to get information linearly. Think about the curriculum at school, from one year to another, from one lesson to the next. Think about TV that was on a set schedule. Think about our computers which could barely handle one task. Today, you can ask chatGPT to summarize what the next school year will be about, you jump from one tab about 3d printing your house in clay to another about the best practices of intentional living…
Just see how the barriers to information have gone down:
Time: You don’t need to wait for the library to be open or for your favorite program to air. It is always available.
Space: You can access the content from any country in the world.
Cost: Most content is now digitized reducing the logistics cost and most of it is free. And if it is not free, there are always options to pirate it. I am not looking at the ethics of it, just the fact information is being liberated all over the place.
Speed: You don’t/won’t need to read the book cover to cover. You can read the summary. You can ask to be taught something at the level you are by AI.
Andrea spoke about “chaos” when describing the current informative/creative process in opposition to the linear paradigm of consuming/creating we used to live in. This new superpower of accessing information changes the way we think.
Andrea spoke about two paths:
Supporting people with linear processes in order to make sense of the chaos. You give tools to put structure back into an unstructured world.
Support people to be more chaotic. How do you help people shake their creative process, integrate topics that seemed completely unrelated, and prompt people to see commonalities, differences, and play.
Sefirot is doing both.
Resources:
Intuiti: The tool for Creativity used by over 30,000 creatives around the world. A synthesis of Design, Tarot and Gestalt Psychology, by Sefirot
Fabula for Storytelling, by Sefirot
Fabula for kids, by Sefirot
Cicero : Public Speaking Deck, by Sefirot
Edito : Card Deck to edit your manuscript, by Sefirot
BAD : Business Aware Design Deck, by Sefirot
Sefirot, The publishing house of Mateo & Andrea
Kishōtenketsu (起承転結) describes the structure and development of classic Chinese, Korean, and Japanese narratives. More about it here.
Raw Transcript from Descript
Mat: what most fascinated me when I found the deck was the fact that you were applying a principle that is important to me now, which is give the tools to people so that they can [00:01:00] fix themselves and make it as easy as possible.
Like a Montessori teacher would do with children. You put the box, they can pick up the box and have their entire activity on their own without any adult or external intervention. That's what really compelled me. So congrats on the great work and it would be nice to hear from you in a nutshell who you are and what Sefirot is and what you're trying to do at the moment.
Andrea: Yeah. Totally. First of all, it's a pleasure to be here and thanks for the Cicero appreciation , it's really important for us because that's exactly what we are trying to do.
So we try to give easy access to structures and we try to teach people in the most natural way possible. A couple of things about Sefirot and about us. Basically it's two of us in Sefirot. It's me and Matt Mateo. We used to be schoolmates.
We were in the same classroom at high school, and we used to have similar interests. Then we basically split ways after the end of the high school [00:02:00] because he studied the design and I studied literature, Italian literature. I became a teacher and he became a designer. And then of course, we kept in touch.
And we used to do those long conversations about things. And that's why I like also about your podcast ideas, because we've always been people, friends in general that used to talk and talk, especially when we were teenagers, to try to solve the world's problems and understand things.
Of course, in a very naive way. Anyway, so during those conversations, we started thinking that it was a pity not to do something together because we felt so well while working and speaking. So basically, that's it. And he already developed intuiti that was a creative card deck based on tarots.
And then we said, all right what's your expertise? What's my expertise? What we can do? And we did Fabula. That is a tool for writing basically storytelling. Yeah. To, [00:03:00] yeah, for storytelling too. That gives a structure and that was the beginning then.
Of course at the beginning nobody listened to us. And then so we decided to go by ourself, but for us it was quite the case because nobody wanted to produce Fabula. So we said let's do it by ourself. At the beginning was just a game, and that's what we did. We opened Sefirot, that is our publishing house. And then slowly it became our work. So he's still a designer, of course, but he dropped the clients, I dropped the school.
This year is the first year for me, which I'm not teaching. And congratulations. Yeah. Actually I'm missing it, of course, because I do love it. But now we are full-time on that and that's it. Our struggle basically is to express ourself in the belief that we may help other people.
The story of Cicero also is quite interesting because we didn't want to do that. A public speaking expert came to us. And we already had the, just [00:04:00] two days before that we were speaking about Fabula and we said maybe we should do something about public speaking. And I said if we do that, we're gonna call it Cicero because I like the name. We found the name before the product. And then this public expert called us and said well, we don't do something about public speaking. So Cicero was born. We are able at the moment to do what we like and that's wonderful.
Yeah.
Mat: Lovely. You spoke about natural ways and you were saying maybe we talk about it later. So let's talk about it before we forget. Can you share a little bit more? Is it related to the Montessori method or No, it's
Andrea: Not consciously, of course. Being a teacher, I had the possibility to explore and to try several methods.
I used to teach adults actually, so I'm not into youngster education, but our idea is that basically there's a long way to simplification. So what we try to do is to learn and actually live as [00:05:00] much of the things we are putting out in order to simplify it, not oversimplifying in order.
And that way we believe that we can give a tool. We believe that our things are tools. So what's a tool? A tool is something that is waiting for you, but we don't tell you how to use it. Basically, you have to handle it and to try out, and that's Montessori. So because our focus is not to do Cicero and then sell the course in order to use it.
Our goal is to give Csar and let people use it also in a different way from the one we thought of till the point in which he doesn't need it. We want to create something that is useful as education useful while you're doing that, but at one point it becomes part of your luggage and you can just leave it at home.
And every time you are doing that, you will remember this as well. So[00:06:00]
Mat: Why would a teacher like you decide not to teach and let the tool teach?
Andrea: Because they, the most joyful thing in teaching is when people don't need you anymore. Of course there's a process to get there, but when you finding your student, the fact that they are able now to work on their legs, and they are able also to change what you said and to digest it and put it out in a different way.
In Italy, training is something like I tell you what's right and you listen and you take notes, and then you forget it, basically. That's the risk. Of course the ideal thing is to have a part with your students and to share things. That's something that we miss because we sell a thing and that's it. So we don't get in touch. We get in touch with some people luckily like you, but that's not common.
Mat: How about the conversations you were having as teenagers [00:07:00] with Matt Mate, right?
Is the, his name is Matto, yeah. Yeah, Matt Mateo. And now their fans. So both in terms of the format and the type of topics you were covering. Okay. Was it feeding already what he did with Intuiti, what you guys did with Fabula, or it was completely unrelated and you were going in many directions?
Andrea: So we were very lucky because in high school, we had very good teachers, so we're speaking about teaching now. We had very good teachers and they taught us basically to think so we used to try to yeah, understandings and there were those long conversation in which you are doing nothing.
We had a lot of free time, and so basically, at night in bars and smoking cigarettes and speaking about what would people need? What were our beliefs about, teenager years and things like that. That's, I think and you tell me, I think that is something that most people do.
I dunno, but I don't know if you have a similar experience, but there were those,[00:08:00] long conversations about things and slowly they. They create boundaries with our friends and we started experimenting, doing things for them. I'm saying that because at Christmas for instance, we used to, we were working together before working together because when we were giving so for Christmas, we used to give as gift basically products that we made.
So we used to, in November to meet Mi and Mateo and do things like agendas or, anything like that to our friends. So it was first start if I in hindsight of course. Yeah. It's always been there. Yeah. Yeah. So it's then it makes us feel well basically. So that's still, yeah.
Mat: Do you run
Andrea: workshops? We do. It's not our main focus though. So we do that if we are asked to. We love it.[00:09:00] And we use our tools of course to do that. So we do storytelling workshops. We never did a creativity workshop if that was the question. No, we didn't. We for now we are just in storytelling.
Of course we share our process, our things, but just related to the decks. Some of our products are very technical, so just like edito that is for editing for editors.
Mat: And so when people go to your workshop, are they going with a creative goal or are they going to the, with the goal of learning
Andrea: the tool.
Most of the time they're going with a practical goal . I have a book. I have to analyze it and improve it for instance. With Intuiti it's different because Intuiti is more holistic. That's what we really love as well. And for instance, Matt Mateo, every wednesday in his house does Intuiti sessions that are not structured at all.
So basically whoever wants to come comes and they just [00:10:00] talk out. I'm going as a guest, that are his workshops basically.
Mat: And any interest at the moment to do those workshops as a structured curriculum online, for instance, , you could have something already automated so that you have to do so much foot legwork, sorry. And then it would run on its own. And you can always support the community, but it's running itself because in a way, this is kind of a guided step by step.
So you can just put it online as a digital, as a new kind of media.
Andrea: Yes. That's a possibility . So we've been speaking about that, but we never found a way to do that. Basically. So probably it's not the correct time. And also there's just the two of us now, we're trying to To hire people to help us in those things.
So for now, we are just like always struggling between the many things that we would like to do and the things that realistically we can endeavor. So for now it's of a path that we can definitely go along, but [00:11:00] for the moment, we've not been able to do that.
Mat: What are your main learnings on how people can do their best work?
Andrea: Wow. Yeah. There are so many. I can say what are the main learnings on how I can do my best work for starting and and those are the things that I've learned. The time learning, because I used to have a different work. So when you teach you are very responsible, but also in a very safe environment because, you know what's your job when you start to be an entrepreneur or you start to be, to do things like that?
A designer for instance you don't know what's gonna be the future of the things you're doing, what's gonna be the future of your company. So the the thing that I , it may sound like common sense, but for me it was not to overthink and to just from one end follow intuition.
[00:12:00] So do what you like to do. And from the other hand, don't be narcissistic and understand that if something doesn't work, it doesn't work. So those are my two main struggles. So for me, what I've learned is that I have to constantly put into question what I've been doing with actual data.
So if Cicero is not working because all the people is not happy about that, I don't have to cry on myself. That was difficult at the beginning. And the other side, if we think that we should do workshop, but we never do that, at some point you have to say, oh that's not mine.
That's not my path. So I either find someone that does workshop for me or we basically don't do that. So those were my two learnings.
And then there's how to allow people from the other side of the product to actually take profit out of it. Profit meaning take value out of it.[00:13:00] That's UX designing, basically, you have to be the most empathetic with them. Empathy. And also not to oversimplify, because I think that you have to give this sense of achievement when using a tool.
Because if it's too simple it gets boring and it doesn't stretch the person to its potential. So for me, it has to be a little bit complicated as well. It's not just do a thing that the user want. It's more try to provoke it. In order for them to just don't be completely comfortable.
That's the point. Because when you speak about you exercise, sometimes you think that the user is, has to be just like sitting there and having a strategy PT to write this tool. That's obviously not the case. It's just like a stupid thought, but that's, for me, it's more giving them a little bit of of dark sides in order for them to, to actually work.[00:14:00]
Yeah. Gotcha.
Mat: So in terms of creativity, you were speaking about how do I choose my projects or how do I know when I need to work or not work on something? And it was really inner work, which is do I feel like doing it? And the other one was, is the market or are the indicators telling me whether it's good or not?
Now, let's say that you know what you want to work on and you have you have very much clarity on what are the next two weeks that's stay what needs to happen in the next two weeks? How do you help yourself get there?
Andrea: I wouldn't say that I have a method. The question is how do I basically achieve what I want to achieve in a daily basis, more or less, but in a great
Mat: way. Yeah. For me, the level of quality that you deliver in your products is high. You're not improvising something. It's not half baked products. It's really good. Especially the Cicero one, that's a really beautiful benchmark. You're achieving amazing work. And so the question is more like, okay, you have those two [00:15:00] weeks and you want to do something as good as Cicero. How do you do it? What's your process with Matteo?
Andrea: First of all two weeks are not enough. Yeah. We take our time and you try it on yourself and on other people . It takes a long time for us. We as a company have the value of doing things that are durable. So that's our main struggle and that's our unique value proposition. Doing deep stuff. That's what we want to do. Of course, if we can, , that's where we strive.
So we take our time, first of all. Then there are two things. There's the process, and the process is quite manageable. We know how to do a deck of cards. We know some, technicalities that help people using cards. And those are more or less the same for every deck of cards that we do.
So there's the process and that's quite easy. From designing to production, we have a path that we follow, but then our constant [00:16:00] question is is that enough? Or is there that little bright side, that little thing that can improve it. And that transforms it from a deck of prompts.
And that's perfectly fine. There are companies that do that very well, but that's not what we want to do to an actual method and that thing you have to wait for it. It's a way,
Mat: it's to wow factor. Are you talking about a wow factor?
Andrea: Yeah, kinda wow factor. Yeah, exactly. Not because it's Wow but because it's deeper, , that depth. Of course, it's not always possible to achieve it. We always strive to it and we have to wait for it, basically. So we wait for it, it feels,
Mat: sorry I'm interrupting you, but it feels a story within the deck as well.
It's like the wow factor of the deck would be that there's an over overarching story that you can pick up from using the cards.
Andrea: That's your experience in it? Probably. I don't know if that was the thing, but Yeah, it is. When we speak about tarot, because we don't do [00:17:00] tarot, as the divination, but we use cards , we use Intuiti , and we always say that to really understand them, to really understand the archetype, you have to live it basically. You have to put it on. And that's what we try to do. So we try to actually experience what we put into the deck.
But to do that, it's a long way. It takes a lot of time , so we have projects that are half made, but they're not satisfying. And so basically, they are there, we have that big box of projects. And we don't go there just like looking for the next one. We wait for it basically.
Of course, we do things while we wait we eat things, we speak, we talk to other people . Business wise is not so good because it's very difficult to have so few products and to still manage to have a company because most of the business models of [00:18:00] companies like ours publishing is long tail, having a lot of products. So putting them out at a very fast pace. And of course the quality would drop a little bit so we are there struggling. And that's what happens when you do something because you want to, not because you need it.
And then, and that's what, how we started, but now we need to do that as well because that's our job. So we are,
Mat: yeah. Yeah. That's why probably the path of the workshops on top of the existing decks is probably the easiest way to stay in your heart while growing the numbers,
Andrea: the revenue.
Yeah. That's the, that's a possible thing.
Mat: Love it. When you look at people using your decks and being creative on their own projects, what are the commonalities? What do you see help people do better work or do more [00:19:00] work or be more fulfilled in what they do?
Andrea: So we take Fabula and Cicero the first help that they get from the tool is the structure. So because does this blank page syndrome that people have so that's the very first thing. You say to them that's an efficient way. You have steps to, to follow.
And that's the first thing. And then when they start to learn it, they start to see possibilities. And that's beautiful because then they ask questions and they disagree with something you say. The debate opens and that's beautiful. Especially for storytelling, there are things that everybody knows, without knowing nobody knows they know.
, the hero journey is something that everybody knows without knowing. So when you show it, they are just like, wow. , it's [00:20:00] like they discover something about themselves , and that's beautiful. Of course, for any storyteller that's common knowledge, but people that use the deck, they don't.
And kids as well, we did Fabula for kids so they already know things of course, because they see the movies, because that's how human being tells a story. So they know it, but they don't know how to at least they know how to as well. But to find something that tells them that, that's beautiful. So that's where they start to be more creative. And that's what we like. But of course there's the structure part that is important as well, because otherwise it you get crazy. You just don't know where to start or you don't know where to end.
And so it's all messy. And in terms of,
Mat: Behavior or attitudes beliefs about the world what do you think works in creativity and what do you think doesn't work
Andrea: It's a pity to start with the bad things, but the first thing that came into my mind [00:21:00] is that people sometimes are very envious about the creativity process.
I think that is because at least in Italy to be creative, it's not such a value. So there's this strange association between creativity, art, and being not responsible. So if you are creative, you are an artist, so you don't function so well in terms of efficiency for instance, we have this product for editors that is called Edito, and it's about editing a book.
So improving a book we constantly receive very angry feedbacks from people that never used it because they feel threatened[00:22:00] because, and that's very stupid. It's just again, strategic because they, they spoke about artificial intelligence saying there will be a point in which artificial intelligence will write books.
There will be a point in which, so they don't see the creative part of that. They just see the threat. That's what happens sometimes. and that's something that really hinders creativity in my opinion, because it stops you from basically stealing the things that you then will be able to put together in a different way and put out.
And that's a thing that I have of course, because when I see something really beautiful, really when someone makes something that is really wow, I wish I would've done that. There's this little, feeling of envy basically of yeah,
Mat: why didn't I think about it before, something like that.
Andrea: Exactly why. And then you say if it's surely crap, because it's not possible. So they're selling me something that is just [00:23:00] crap. That's natural. I have it. I don't know if you do. I do. Yeah.
I dunno if people, everyone does. But I do.
Mat: But as part of us, the question is that I think we all have the voice. The question is do we listen to it or not?
Andrea: Yeah, exactly. So you have, for me, it was like an actual work on myself to do benchmark. For me, it's very difficult because I have to look at things that are well made and there's this kind of angry party that says , something exists that is well done, that is not mine.
I dunno. It's this feeling, for me, it's difficult. I was speaking about that at the beginning as well. That's what I've learned, that you have to see the beautiful things because they actually are the steps that you can work on to, to get to do other beautiful things.
And so that's the thing that does creativity, in my opinion, from people. One of many things. Then there's the fear of expressing [00:24:00] themselves and the fear of how what I've done will be perceived. And then there's the thing that helps creativity, to stop judgment and to play, you know what,
Mat: yeah, sorry, the second part. Come from the first one, right? Yeah. Because everything you describe about fear, so just disconnect the fear and which is judgment. And then boom you're good. So disconnect the ego. Super easy. Thank you all. Yeah.
Andrea: Yeah. Now everybody will do that and we
Mat: love it. Okay? Imagine you go to this kind of resort where we go there to create and just like a Montessori room for kids, where you have at your level, you can pick up any box.
And I imagine right now you have five or six boxes at Sefirot, but you have entire walls of boxes. That room is creativity and you have hundreds of boxes for different problems. So one is public [00:25:00] speaking, there's Edito for editing your book. There's the storytelling one, and people just go there. They have like different tables. Every table has the right size so that any deck can be opened properly and just people have fun there. Why don't we have this already?
Andrea: That's beautiful because if you go there and you choose the thing that you like,
you won't do anything good. So there's, even
Mat: if I didn't get you, if you do the things that you like,
Andrea: you won't do anything creative. Ah, I'm being provocative. The thing that came into my mind while you were speaking was that room was great. I would love to be in there, but I would sit on the least comfortable chair and take the thing that would be the farthest for me [00:26:00] in that place.
So what I'm saying is that if you let people I dunno how to express it in a reasonable way, but even if the space has changed, then people would still stick to their kind of comfort zone. That room should be a little bit frightening as well. I dunno if you got
Mat: it. I get you. I get the point that if I go in a room and there are different games, if I'm a marketer, I might pick up the marketing game and then the risk that I see is that I might compare what I know and my process to the process and then validate. I would just validate what is there and or judge like you were expressing before of envious, huh? I could have created this card, blah. And then closing the deck and do go do something else.
I think that's the worst interaction that you can have, but that's possible. I probably set you up in a way that didn't show the value of the room, but the idea is that you enter the room with an [00:27:00] intention. So you have a need. I think that if there's the need, then there's no problem that, that room is perfect in itself. In my mind first you clarify your intention, you're clear on what you want, and then you enter the room and it's like paradise for you. Because one of those boxes, or many of those boxes will have the answers to the problems that you bring
Andrea: with you. Yeah, definitely. With the intention, you're right, it changes the thing because then you have tools.
Mat: What do we need for you to do this? What do we Yeah, exactly. Ideally you sell the wall, right? Why this room doesn't exist yet.
Andrea: That's true. That it should exist. I don't know. Did you do your benchmark? I know,
Mat: I think people have books and libraries is the way to, I think this is the next level of library because the library, the book is amazing. But you, it takes so much work to read the book, right?
Joseph Campbell, the Hero with a Thousand Faces,, I prefer Fabula and, get, get the shortcut if I have a creative endeavor right now. And I think also it's empowering people to do their first step, as you said [00:28:00] at the beginning, most difficult thing is the first step. And if the my first step is to read the book, then I will finish the book and I will not have done the work. And then you need to go back and do the work.
Hopefully this is version two of libraries instead of having chat G P T. And we don't have libraries anymore and we don't care about anything and everything is on our phone. In my mind it's for creative endeavors. We need this kind of new kind of spaces
Andrea: that would be beautiful.
Yeah, that would be beautiful. Really. I don't know why it doesn't exist, actually. Because that's very empowering. And it brings out the real, the real strength of humans. Because basically it's association, creativity is, for me is putting together things.
So if you are, if you have a lot of things to put together, who knows what comes out and you have an intention that's cool. Otherwise you are lost. Yeah. We should do that.
Mat: I think that's a pathway for you, ma. Actually one of the things that I've [00:29:00] been doing is starting to do cards as well for improvisation workshops and different things that I try to teach through the retreats. My path is there as well. I need to do cards. And then I need to have cards from people that I trust. I got some from you, I got from psychological experts that have created decks as well. There are many decks that are useful. . The question is how do you put together the experience so that it's it's consistent, and people know what each box means, because you would've a section with communication and then you would've all the boxes for communication.
How do you know which deck to create? And then for each deck, how do you know which key ideas you should keep and not to oversimplify remove too many, but at the same time not surface, some that are not good enough. And also you have so many different methodologies.
Why do you choose one methodology instead of the other one? So for the hero with a thousand faces, it's quite obvious because I feel that's the one model. But if you were looking at personalities, for instance [00:30:00] personality testing, you have so many different frameworks that have been created by so many different experts.
Which one do you choose? for instance, that one, I have not found the answer. For the one with the storytelling, probably I would follow the same deck, the same method that you have. So in my mind, there's this big question of mapping the entire territory and then choosing the right things before you put it into your process of, of creating the beautiful design and the user experience.
Andrea: There are again, things that we do with a method and things we do without the method. So with a method, we create a product. So we start basically from a need. Of course, public speaking is a need. That has to be fulfilled. People need things that help them with public speaking, so that's of course a thing.
And that's quite normal in the process of designing. How then there's, again, as a teacher, you need to know what to teach. So the whole process [00:31:00] is influenced by our expertise and our our lives. So we pick those things that communicate with us. I couldn't do something about designing spaces because that's not something that I've experimented
when we need to do something like that, our process that is very young, so it's just like the beginning, but is to ask someone to show us how they work and taking notes basically.
So we try to steal the expertise steal, of course, it's a good way. And that's it. And then how we choose among many possible methods. And also here, there are different, Things. One is, for instance, we have, we've just did something about business aware design, about design, and then we try to be the more holistic possible.
So we [00:32:00] try to say in our opinion, what is missing is the big picture. Because when we design something, we have to think what we want to do, who will be the user, what will be the business model, and things like that. So we try to put all those things together. That's one way. So trying to take things from there. From then, the most useful ones. So the most ancient one, the most, typical ones and put them together or basically completely I shouldn't say that, but it's so why we choose the hero with a thousand faces or the hero journey, but basically because it happened of course we are aware of many other possibilities, but that's the one that crossed our path and that worked better.
So we went for it. Of course, it'll help people. Some people, other people won't be helped by that. They would've been helped by the character's arc or[00:33:00] I think ancient Korean structure about storytelling that is much less confrontational and much less Western. I cannot judge it, but that's the feeling that I have. So we may have gone with that, but that was not the case.
Mat: So it's, so the Korean one, just very interesting. So the Korean one would be more, so aversion is a more a clash and a struggle and all these things.
And the Korean one is more like a zen kind of thing where everything
Andrea: close. Yeah that's the west of perception. I mean that, that's how I, that's why I got it. Of course, I may be saying biased things, but that was my feeling looking at that interesting. It's just like philosophy,
if you take tarots, they are one thing. If you take I ching, they're another thing. For us, tarots, they are more comfort zone. And I ching are not. So that's why we did tarots and not I ching. Then the very beautiful thing that we would like to do is to get [00:34:00] even deeper because there are similarities between TA and itching, for instance, between the hero's journey, the character acts between those things and the deeper you go, that gives a key that you can use in many doors even culturally.
That would be beautiful. I have studied linguistic as well. And that's the thing that is very popular in linguistics , to try to get to the root, of the words, but of language in general. So it's since all we do is language, the Hero's Journey is language, Cicero is language and the Tarots are a language .
There are some universal concepts. So of course while we don't work striving to them, but we try to mix and match things in order to see if there's something that can work [00:35:00] on the broader basis. That's that's just chatting actually, because that's our kind of philosophy is not that we work like that.
Of course, when we do Cicero we are much more structured than how I'm speaking. But still, the fascinating thing is that sometimes something glimpses out that works very well and that thing it's the thing that probably is the more connected to us and that's what we what we look for, I don't know.
I
Mat: totally resonate with the depth the depth, the deep process that you want to go through. If you have unlimited resources, it's probably the most interesting thing to do is to take all the different decks .
I think the power of the Eros journey is that many people will have some kind of a feeling for it it requires less of an onboarding. And if you go very deep, I think you will have a very hard work to do to get to that depth and understanding the whole thing. And then you will have a lot of work too, [00:36:00] in terms of ux design and language to put it into words that people can actually understand.
Andrea: Yeah. It's going up and down, so you go up the hill and that's the, you go up the hill and you learn things up the hill, and then you have to get down to simplify it because you have to teach uh, the next heroin about that. So you have to, but that's teaching as well. So when I teach I teach history.
I teach Napoleon. So I've been studying Napoleon in university for one year and I've read 10 books about him. And I've been to the Museum of Napoleon and I've bought a coin with his face on and I've been visiting France and that's all my path. Then I go into the classroom and I just say, Napoleon was born.
That day. And he was from uh, kaa, how do you say? Kaa? Yeah, KAA, yeah, KAA and that's very simple, but the more you have studied it,[00:37:00] the best is your lesson. Even if you are not bringing all your experience into that, because there's no time, but , that thing, , it comes out.
So it's this process of teaching that I like. Of course you cannot do that for everything, but you have to simplify because of time and because of interest of the other person. But the more you know about that, the more you experience that the best would be your simplification more or less.
Yeah. Yeah.
Mat: But at the same time, because you're in a teaching process, ideally you don't wanna simplify, right? You want to give them the whole thing and it's ah, you don't know what Navian is.
Andrea: You don't, you have to give them the the. How do you say they will to carry on? To go on their leg. Yeah.
So you'll have to give them, because there's no way you can share, and even if you share whatever, it'll be your knowledge not there. So they would, you don't want them to repeat what you said, so it's
Mat: you just wanna share the [00:38:00] enthusiasm.
Andrea: Yeah, exactly. You use the topic to teach something that is not the topic, that is the process.
So there's, that's why as a teacher, I try to, I work in this company basically, so that's my, because is a designer and he's very good at what you said before. So you have to take action in order to make the tool effective. And that's very difficult because you have a lot of things and you have to put down, the essentials you have to make it usable.
You have to, and that's very difficult. I'm not good at that. The thing that I try to, the balance is because I try to bring this idea of teaching into the deck. And that's actually something that I've never coded. So I thank you for your questions because now it's a little bit more clear now that I told you it's not something that I already processed.
It's the very first time that I've seen the [00:39:00] relation between my practice into classrooms and my practice into designing things. But it's that, so to give a simplified version that can be enriched by the other person, but that has very solid grounds because that's another important thing.
You cannot do something on sand. That's not what we want to do. Just build a deck of cards about personalities. Oh yeah, let's Google the anagram and let's put it into cards,
Mat: engine keys and all the other ones. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Interesting. And so what's the relationship with Matt Mateo?
So you, you are if I understand correctly, your process is, you are the one who's basically exploring the whole thing. You're both exploring the whole thing, but you put together some kind of essence and then you give it to him and he basically cuts it even further, right?
Andrea: We tend to work a lot together and work means we tend to speak a lot together. And then the actual tasks, it depends. So sometimes I write the booklet, for [00:40:00] instance, some, sometimes I do the research. Sometimes he does. According to our experience. Of course the design part, it was mostly on him of the last tour, the kid deck.
It was mostly on me, but then so we or we worked together on it. But the fact is that we constantly, and that's a thing that is another limit, because it's just the two of us. So we are currently looking for, to broaden our, our team because it's not realistic that two people can do all of us.
Amen. Yeah. Can do, always them, and people knowing each other. So it's the risk is to become very redundant, very to echo each other. Exactly. But that's how we work. We have a good dynamic of course. So we are lucky. And so anyway, the we roles are very going up and down. [00:41:00] The creative process is sharing thoughts basically and see if they work and experimenting it. And then there's the process part. Yep.
Mat: Because we're talking about cards, it brings me to an interesting topic. So I initially thought that there were two archetypes with your relationship, right? But what you tell me is not, it's not really the case. You are switching and you do different things.
And so it leads me to thinking of having different cards of roles for a company, for instance, and say, okay, this is the person that thinks only about, people. This is the person who thinks only about visual. Blah, blah, blah.
You can have as many cars as you want and then it's a way to avoid the problem that you talk about. Obviously you want to grow the company, have more people and have more resources to build more decks and have this beautiful, what we talked about.
But if you are restricted, it's creates the thinking hats of de bono. You can describe the personality. That's what I do for improvisation and say, okay, you're the person that actually thinks everything is negative and is critical about [00:42:00] everything. If you don't have it in the team, Then you might lose some good insights of someone criticizing you before it goes to the market.
I don't do it because I want to teach people to be critical, for instance, for that card, but I want to see the interaction between that person and someone who's very optimist and see all this clash on stage. So I'm more interesting in the relationship and the learning from that interaction.
But from a deck of card perspective, that would be very useful as well in terms of, Hey you are a one man show, you are a freelancer and you need to do all these different things. You need to be a marketer, then take the card of the marketer and you're gonna work as a marketer, blah, blah, blah. So just as a, as an idea.
Andrea: Yeah, that will be helpful because to do it in a structured way. So cards, again they give you structures. So sometimes we forget to wear the black hat or the yellow hat, of course. So of course there are trades. Also, I wear that hat more, and also about leadership, the same thing. [00:43:00] So there's always the person that takes that, the leader, there's always the follower and the exchange, but sometimes you miss it, and that's another problem.
You can apply that to leadership, I think, while you were speaking, because sometimes that's the worst case scenario when you don't get a leader. So sometimes you have to remember it and, yeah. That's beautiful. Yeah. It actually, it can actually work and giving, giving structure as well. It's more yeah.
Mat: And the beauty of this card as well is that you can layer them, right? Because you have, you were talking about the leadership bit. You can layer trauma, you can layer personality traits. You can layer the Hero's journey where in my journey I am right now. Yep. And then you can create complexity in the character.
So if you were doing a very complex character the author would be able to give you all those different details, but actually just one line, just if you do a database, it would just be a number of lines with different characteristics by each line.[00:44:00]
Andrea: Yeah. And the goal, again, that's the intention would be to actually empower the work on creative process by yeah, by role play, basically.
Mat: Yeah. So the reason why I'm doing all these things on my side is to deconstruct the ego. Oh yeah. Because what we are is just a story, right? We are just a story that we practice so much that we become so good at it that we think we are this story. And so as you deconstruct the story and you get people to play with different components.
The main mood that you have or the way you, categorize the world as well, like personal constructs. Like you see someone, you're like, is this person rich or poor? Is this person smart or dump? Like you can judge people based on personal constructs and the way they judge the world is the way they are.
Can I get people to play with those different things so that when they see it in themselves and in people, they're just like, oh yeah, that's the ego playing with me [00:45:00] and I want to play with a different one today,
Andrea: a different card. That, of course would be part of the person.
But they don't know. Yeah. That's beautiful. Yeah. So I'm,
Mat: I've, man, I have I have hundreds of cards
Andrea: yeah, that's the point.
Mat: Yeah. It's a lot. One, one thing that I'm very interested in is your own path, like spiritual path, let's say. So it's more okay, if you go deep into your journey, you were talking to me about shamanism, but if I don't go that far, what you're talking about in language is the storytelling bit is the most is the most spiritual part of linguist of a language and literature.
Because there is this kind of progress and there's a yearning for something else. And you can take that yearning just to, okay, I wanna change my life, or I want to go beyond life let's say, so what led you there? What is there a connection there? What are you doing on your side to, to explore further?
Yeah. It's asked very clumsily. I don't ask
Andrea: question. I got it. There's a need [00:46:00] again, there's a, there's the always the intention at the beginning. So what happens, what happened to me is that at some point I had the need to explore a little bit that at any of religion basically.
So religion in the sense of spiritualism of deeper connection and basically that's it. But I think it's very universal and common for people. They hero journey, for instance. And if you lay down the tarot, if you lay down the hero journey, if you think about the shamanic journey and all those things, there's always This strive to get a little bit to know yourself more and to do a path, and that's very messy because when you look at it, you tend to find it everywhere.
For me, it's something that we are the way we are built so we tend to look at those things. I have the need to explore that part of myself and that part of myself, meaning [00:47:00] anything that means the intuition and the feeling that I have, not the thoughts and the bad feelings that I have. That's the idea.
It is not that it is my hat. My character, it's more just I tend to see those things and to be attracted by those things being questions about yourself and the knowledge that to get to a knowledge of things, you have to work a path basically.
And then it does the things that if it works for me, it works. So as a personal story, Matt Mateo was, was lucky enough to meet a mentor. That was one of his university teachers he met it at university. That introducing with whom she's a woman with whom he worked on Intuiti, so he started this kind of personal gold path there.
And then with the contact with Matt Mateo I started to explore it a little bit, [00:48:00] I don't want to simplify it too much, but it's just like, uh, going to the gym because going to the gym is something that is very difficult but makes you feel well and you have the sense that your body is made to be used and it feels better when you use it.
Having those kind of interests and those kind of practices, it helps me so I do them. But I'm not into a system. When I was young, I used to go to the mass and follow, you know, and I'm a Christian actually, culturally but that wasn't enough for me because it was just like giving away responsibility in my opinion.
And so I had the need to feel a little bit more responsible for myself. And the idea that you are actually working down a path and you can change direction, I like it. That's why I like the hero journey. And the hero journey, by the way, comes from myth, and myths are religion before the book.
For me it's [00:49:00] very true, let's say like that. I dunno if it, this was your questions, and also I just like,
Mat: Yeah. You answer, you're answering My question is not really concrete. The Hero's journey uh, it goes way beyond the, just the specific quest that we all see, right?
The pattern is a pattern for growth, a pattern for striving for something else. And so that's what that got my interest because for me, shamanism, the little I know about Shamanism is go beyond the ego to journey towards your the true self .
Your Hero's journey is the same thing. It's just usually a component of your true self that you go towards. And unfortunately the quest is always a little bit, it's oh, the love or the get the peace or self-confidence and we never get to the point where we understand that it's a full blossomed individual that is at the end of all the Hero's' journey.
And exactly. It's missing it's like the tree that hides the forest, I feel, cuz we see all these Hollywood movies, there's a deep emotional resonance and you're like, oh yeah, I can totally relate to this. [00:50:00] And we see a glimpse of it, but it doesn't go deep enough.
I feel that's, that would be my take on it. But that's, so that's the veal for me. And then I'm, I want to see what do you feel behind it?
Andrea: But just to, so I'm not really yet into that. I'm just going up the surface. But this is relevant because that's what happens. Just going to the gym, I'll I go down this very simple metaphor.
There's a fear before going to the gym. There's a feeling of uneasiness. Yeah. And that's the same thing. So the, my struggle now is that I'd love to see what's behind this feeling, but I'm a little bit stuck into that. So I'm a little bit blocked. So I feel the u the urge to actually do some work on myself.
But I'm still struggling. And that's the hero journey as well, because, the important part is the part in which you face the cover, so you go to [00:51:00] the dark. That's it. I think that is very common as a feeling. And so I think that most of people feel that they may go a little bit farther in any practice they have, but they are restrained by themselves.
And shamanism or the hero journey or any kind of practice Cabala, whatever. After the moment in which you say, oh, wow, that's so cool. I would like to be one of them. And that's very the, just like the stupid part. Then there's this little bump that you have to overcome.
And that's where I am at the moment. So it's not, I'm not into it, but I feel really attracted by exploring my spirituality in a deeper way. One of the things that can be done is using tarots, shamanism, any kind of religion, anything.
Mat: Was Intuiti built for this as well, or it's more for the creation
Andrea: [00:52:00] creativity part.
So the need was creativity. Matteo was attending university and he was constantly asked to do creative things, but they didn't give him a method of course, but he felt like going into, into circles. So he had the need to have a tool to help him overcome the ego overcome I have to do a work that is good to get a mark. I have to satisfy my client that in the case was a professor and to do something that could have connected him to a more meaningful practice. Again, in hindsight meeting, that person that I was speaking about, he was guided into the archetypical part of ourself.
So it was guided into something like if you want to detach with your ego, one way is to see if there are [00:53:00] tools that speak by archetypes. So they are more than one. They are more than one person there. And so he chose tarot and he worked on the tarot.
So Intuiti now is a scalable, because you can use it as a deck of cultural creativity. So I want to write a song. I pick a card that is a butterfly, how does it feel to me? And I work on that. But there's also the tarot that is not for divination, but it's for, self exploration kind of.
Mat: I still have trouble with Intuiti because I felt like when I realized it was a tarot, it was a layer on top of the tarot. I was like I have the tarot. Why don't I use the tarot instead? And then I was too busy to go through the deck the booklet.
So I didn't go in, in depth into Intuiti yet. But I will at some point. Cool. Is there anything that we didn't talk about and you feel that, like that's a key thing that, that you do or that we should know
Andrea: about? Wow.[00:54:00] No, maybe the only thing that is related to where I am now is the fact that now I have to choose between being a teacher and being an entrepreneur. And this is maybe a fear that a lot of people have because I have torn between, a profession that I like and that is very stable that can help me grow and then there's this very creative job.
That is another thing that is about about creativity. It's about choices as well. Maybe going into the path that is less comfortable for you also for me may work. To be creative, go where you don't feel so, at ease.
I dunno if it's a common knowledge, but I'm
Mat: way too much on that side of the, of go against the flow and just fight it and make it difficult. So I'm actually trying to learn the opposite. The yin side of just go with the flow. Doesn't, no, don't force it.
I'm trying to learn the opposite, but I think, yeah, it depends where you are on the spectrum. I'm[00:55:00] really yang and pushy. And actually I realized last week that I'm, I actually seek challenge, I seek problems like everywhere. When it doesn't flow, I'm going there because I want to fix it and I need to learn to be going more with, okay what, when what flows there?
Okay. Let's go there.
Cool, man. In my mind, one of the reasons why the card are so powerful instead of using it on Miro or other online tools is that we always so connected to technology and technology connects us to others. So other ideas. And even if there's no noise, let's say that they're the right ideas. They are not our ideas or they are not what you were talking about earlier, which is I take all the different experiences in my life and I distill it into this beautiful juice that no one else can understand the way I am.
I can. And so when we keep consuming other people's juices, we understand a little bit of it, but we don't really understand it even if we go very deep because [00:56:00] they access reality and we don't, we access a a point of view of reality, let's say. And so to me, We need to stop being connected at some point.
And the problem is we are always connected and it, we removes our ability to access our own juices and value it and say, this is my inner voice, or this is my own side of the, and this is the most true thing I can have in my life because I truly experience it. And so in my mind, we need more tools like yours because they enable us to shut up the computer and the phone, put ourselves on the table, and be us with the pencil and the paper.
And there's no other voices. There's just ours. So to me, this is one, one of the reasons why also I like it. Now, obviously, you can argue that there are prompts, so the prompts are coming from a voice in itself. But let's simplify and say, okay I, at least I deal with one voice, not a thousand. And it gives more space to my own.
Because once the prompt is over because it's a short prompt, then I'm on my own. It's me only. [00:57:00] And To me, the future of creativity is there is in this kind of tool where you can shut the noise keep working, because there's this tension in me where I want to shut the noise and meditate, let's say or be in a meditative state.
But I also wanna be creative. I'm trying to find all the tools that enable me to be in that center in myself, but in a contributing process where I actually produce something. So the question with this long introduction is where do you see the future of creativity but also teaching?
And if you are very bold with Sefirot, because I think you can, if you dream, where do you see the world going and where do you feel yourself called to do and serve?
Okay.
Andrea: Again I'll bring up again my experience as a teacher because you have, when you're a teacher, you connect with younger people, of course, and those who will be the ones that will set trends. And I think that and I speak again about [00:58:00] language because what is happening in my opinion, is that there's a change in the language people are using.
That's common sense. And specifically, we are moving from a linear way of telling things and telling stories and expressing ourself to a messy way of doing that. And I say messy because I've been born in the linear part. But it's not that it's messy. So the way in which younger communicate and work inside the classroom, it may feel very chaotic, but it's also very creative because it's just like your room.
So they have access to a lot of things at the same time, and they can pick whatever they want and they, the, so the things are not aligned that there's not a level just here, come here for mentoring, come here for personality, come here for creativity. It's more like that. So there's a big potential [00:59:00] and cards are more or less on that.
They are slowly moving on that spectrum because you can change you can, shuffle them. Yes. Yeah. So my feeling is that we are going towards that sort of language. So probably in the future I personally like to do one of the two things. One thing is to be stubborn and teach people the importance of linear thinking and of process, because that's the risk we may experience into this sort of environment in which we get, constantly bombarded with things that are not linear, but linearity is important in some things.
That's one thing. And the other one is to embrace it and wonder if there's, there may be an empowerment or a tool that follows that sort [01:00:00] of logic that is not random because we don't get random things. We get. A lot of things from out of the infinity, infinite possibilities and infinite messages we get, we do get something with a criterium, with a, with a choice.
So something that way, of course it's not it's not a complete answer, but the feeling is that things will be changing towards less le linearity to sum it up. And that thing is a beautiful thing in education, for instance, because it is actually where creativity is when you get the the first card, the first card means the magician in tarot.
So that's the condition you have the chaos that is actually, That gives birth to things. The creative soup. Exactly. The creative soup. So if we are able to [01:01:00] transform the noise into a soup, then, and if we had tools to do that, this could be very powerful. But at the same way and that's again, something that I've learned with my students.
You, you cannot throw someone into the creative soup and wait for him to build the box emerge. Yeah.
Mat: The linearity is easy to see, and then you were talking about chaos. So for a while I didn't really know what you were talking about.
And one of the things I would've asked is, so what form does it take? And I think at the end, you basically given answer, which is basically many different points. So the idea would be to let, give a tools for people to connect those points for themselves. Cuz initially when you said this, in my mind it was philosophically, it's the idea of that everything is happening at the same time in all the possible ways.
The in, in like infinity of possibilities are already happening, right?
Andrea: And[01:02:00]
Mat: so it's basically an infinity of linearity, linearities. And that's what came up to me. We are not gonna get to an answer, but the what would you say the tool would do?
Andrea: You get, because you get a lot of, again, a lot of noise, but you, when you are able to switch from one thing to the other very quickly, you.
So they understand themselves. I dunno how to say that. So it's it's just like a change of the language. It's when you read a book, you read a book, but when you open a webpage that's very easy. That was the first step. You can jump from one thing to the other and it's it has meaning.
These, those jumps have meanings, but they're not just about one thing. I dunno how to say. So probably a tool may be something that can, again, empower these constant Jumping from one things to the other, because again, if [01:03:00] creativity is putting things together, it's very difficult to put things together.
If you have to read one book and then read the other book and then summarize them and then think what are the common things between them? Oh, why don't I apply the hero journey to the lean process. So I read about the lean process, I read about the real journey, I, that and so on. If with this kind of communication, I can have a appeal of the, your journey and appeal of the lean process, and maybe I can connect two of those stages and build from there.
So it's more like something that that can generate ideas out of the constant noise, as you said, because if you stay, of course, the. Being in my center and devoting myself to one thing. It's very important, but at the same time, the risk is that I'm missing something that is very valuable just because I don't like the fact that I get too much.
It's [01:04:00] just like being in front of a table, and being annoyed by the fact that there's too many things to eat. That's my feeling as well. But then something that can guide through that. Not in an inner way, I dunno, but it's just like a concept that I, it's
Mat: a crazy idea. The beautiful thing that you talked about in my opinion is the way we used to take in information, which is the book reading.
And we could not buy so many books at the time. So you were stuck with one book for a week or even more, more time. And now the way we do it, which is more like the tab on our brother, we have so many tabs open and we, you know the pattern of the website so you know where to click to see the menu, and quickly you make you get your way.
And it's an interesting thing to know how this impacts the way we connect ideas. I never thought about this. I think the next, next probably is to think about mental operations of what kind of operations you can do with each thing and, but it would not be so many cars. And I think[01:05:00] in one way I think the cars are of a future in another way.
I think it's also about the state or the way we process information, which is cannot be outside of us. It needs to be inside, which is how do we get in the state that enables us to process the information better, which is more as a spiritual thing where, you need to go deeper yourself in to your own process.
In order to go quicker with these things and basically have wisdom because no cars will be like, there's so many different bits of, and pieces that you need to trust your intuition, the thing you were talking about earlier, to connect it for you and to put it in the back of your mind and not try to have control over it because it's just too much information.
That's what came, comes to me. But anyway.
Andrea: Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. Cards, by the way, I'm waiting to do something that is not card. I don't know if it's an ego fact that I want to do something new again or if it's an actual need of people.[01:06:00] I never say that cards are the best tool.
Cards are the good tool for something, linear things. Okay. Collaborative. Okay. Being analog and allowing you to work by yourself. Very true. The other good thing about cards is that you actually changed the space. So the important thing about Fabula is that you laid down and then you have an actual physical space that has changed and now represents your story.
So you can actually work. And that's important because again, then you take them in your hand, so you actually experience them. Another thing that is very beautiful is the tabletop games. So what if we make a tabletop game that actually, it's not about entertaining, but it's about growing and creating.
Sure there are some of them. [01:07:00] That's a part that I would like maybe in the future to explore. But also,
Mat: who knows? I love it. I love it. I'm interested in one for improvisation. Because I like pr, practicing it basically. Not just thinking it, but okay, now get on stage, get on, get in the center of the room and do this,
Andrea: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. For something that forces you to leave because fab forces you to think something that forces you to do Yeah. That would be beautiful.
Mat: Yeah. Although I'm truly, and I started working the improvisation thing that I was to telling you about is exactly this. It's just not, so basically I have all the components, like the atoms of the game, like the chaos that you were talking about.
Now I don't have a structure that puts it together in a way that you can play. I need to be me taking the cards and say, okay, now you do this and now you do this. And I put the meaning of the dynamic the way we interact with it.
Two last questions. One is you spoke about the kind of crossroad you were at, which is there was professor in front of you, and then there was [01:08:00] the entrepreneurship. I feel you still at that crossroad. I was going to ask you what's the next one?
But you're still there, right?
Andrea: Yeah, there's no one next. Now I have to choose the path. Actually you have to pass an exam in order to become an actual teacher, . And you have to perform better than other people. That's what I did last year, and I got the role and now I am in a unpaid leave from teaching.
And I will be deciding next year. So that's where I am, and that's actually a decision that I've been taking the last three years. So it's a long process and that's where I am. So I don't have the side to see the future next. That's my state now and I'm embracing it.
Mat: Maybe tell me just to talk about the near future. What are the doubts that you have with what you're doing, and what are the half baked projects that you have in stock?
Some you have a lot of them in the room. I understood. But maybe the top one or the one that you feel comfortable talking
Andrea: about. Okay. As we now we just came [01:09:00] out with two new tools recently. One is on the Kickstarter right now, and the other one is Edito.
And the one that we have been, that's the one that is called Bed and it's for design. So we are now at the moment in which we stopped and we have to decide what would be the next. We have several ideas, but none of them is very structured. I'd really like to work a little bit on a project that we've been putting aside for a long time that is Fabula for nonfiction.
We already have collaborated with a person that did some research And that would be the kind of the co-author. But we've been halting this project for a long time, so I'll have to dive a little bit into that to see if it can make it, and that's one thing. And then there are other things I would like to do something more as I said, more playful.
As in my personal experience life, I'm at the point in which We will take, we'll take the decision and see what's the road, but we don't see the road yet [01:10:00] about actual project, the road of the company, and the doubts about it very quickly.
The company now is solid, but we have reached a point in which growth is no longer possible unless something happens. We are considering looking for investors and considering opening up to the outside and there comes my very doubt. That's the two of us. We've been doing this for some time now, four or five years.
So we need to learn something new. And that's where, that's the main doubt. So we, and that's the doubt that of course we see outside and that's our, so we don't want to close and to think that cards are the best thing, and our business model is the best thing. And we will be doing this forever.
That's the risk. We don't want that. But we need to be inspired to do something different. So we need to find someone that can inspire us. Of course, everybody can [01:11:00] inspire us, but for now, we, we still haven't found that. So that's the research we'll be, we will be in the future.
Lovely,
Mat: lovely. Thank you so much, Andrea. It's been very inspiring and interesting. I had a really good time.
Andrea: Yeah, I too. I did too. And I thank you as well, because a lot of things came, as you said, a lot of things came up. And I wasn't expecting them, but it was very good for me. It was very a good practice.
So I thank you also for the format that I really enjoy, so keep it up. Beautiful. Thank you.