This is the Business Village People podcast. Hello, I'm David Markwell and welcome to the Business Village People podcast. This is the podcast. This is series one, episode 12. This podcast showcases unique stories from the vibrant community of companies, service providers, dogs,  and entrepreneurs at the business village here in Barnsley, South Yorkshire.

We celebrate the success, encourage collaboration, and highlight the diverse businesses that call the business village their home. Finding previous episodes is easy. Just search for the business village people on your preferred podcast platform, and we should show up straight away. Click on the subscribe button and you'll never miss our episodes again.

Okay, let's go. In this episode of business village people, we have the privilege of meeting Craig Burgess from genius division and delve into his unique approach to leveraging LinkedIn. Try. We talk to HR consultant Trudy Morris about the upcoming changes to employment law that may affect you. She'll also provide you with details of how you can receive free human resources advice here at The Business Village. 

Our first guest is Trudy. It's Craig Burgess from the Design and Marketing Agency, Genius Division. I asked him why the company chose the business village as its base. We were here before, and we liked it. Then we wanted a bit of a change, we moved somewhere else. And then we wanted a little bit of a change and came back here.

Primarily because we like community, and there's been a hell of a lot of change here. It's renovated, been renovated a hell of a lot. It's totally changed since we last came. It's a much nicer place to be now versus Seven years ago or something like that when we were here tell me about genius division.

How did it start? What's the same? Well, we started 14 15 years ago now in James's back bedroom when there were just two of us I've always wanted to run an agency so as James and We both got a thousand quid together and we lived at home with parents at times  We both have a thousand quid and we said should we quit as jobs and we did and then every month since then for 15 years We've basically said well when we run out of money, we'll just go get a real job And it hadn't happened yet.

That's genius division. So what were you doing before you got into this game? So I were a graphic designer and a web designer. So were James. In fact, James was more famous than me. He used to design Arctic Monkeys websites. So he used to work for Arctic Monkeys. But we've both been tinkering with websites, branding, design, etc, etc.

Since we're both about 15 years old or something.  Much older than 15 years old now, um, and we just always wanted to run his own agency We had we thought we could do it better. You know that Bolshee Teenager young 20s thing we thought we could do it better than everybody else and can you yeah, we're not bad  What have you learned over the years that you've been working for yourself?

What I'm trying to say is I went to a  The meeting where you were talking, you were talking about customer services, and sometimes it's important to not work with certain people if it doesn't feel right, and I just wondered where all that came from. Well, when you work for yourself, you quickly realize that every bad client you have is a lesson that you should learn.

And when at that talk you were talking about, where I was specifically talking about how to handle clients, and not necessarily bad clients, but how to handle clients better, it all just comes from bad experiences. And not wanting to repeat those bad experiences with other clients, you know what I mean?

So I, I think when you, when you're running your own agency, when you're running your own business, that your first job is not the job that you advertise that you're doing. So I, you know, I call myself a, a graphic designer to my mum and dad because they don't understand what I do for a living. My job as a designer is not my first job.

My first job is actually, you know, doing a good job for clients, customer service and dealing with customers, because if you don't have customers, you've got no work, you've got no money. So it all just kind of. Came from that you know knowing that you have to do it You have to do a good job because that's how you get more business And that's really how we've grown genius division over the last 15 years We've literally done no marketing until very recently and it's all been doing a good job for a good client Them telling somebody else And then them telling somebody else, et cetera, et cetera, for 15 years, and it's, it's gone alright.

What are the current trends at the moment in digital design? Well, we're gonna have to talk about AI, aren't we? Because that's the thing that everybody's getting their hands on. Specifically, shout out to EBT.  Uh, it's the latest new hot thing.  And, you know, I saw this repeat, well, I didn't see this repeat, because I am a little bit younger.

That I probably sound when design started becoming a commercial thing when we used to call it commercial art computers came around particularly apple macintosh  And everybody were crying the death of a designer at that point Everyone's going to do it on their own computer And ai is now doing that for a lot of a lot of creative industries not just design not just websites So people are now writing their website content with ai people are writing job applications with ai people are People Making images with AI.

I mean, they just launched Sora the other day, which you can make video now. You just type a couple of commands. Please show me a Ferrari driving down a country lane in a rainy England and it makes a video and it's pretty damn impressive. So,  AI is the, you know, AI is the thing that everyone's talking about, but I don't see it as a particular Threat to what we do because people come to creative agencies for ideas.

And the problem with AI is that you already have to have the idea in your head. You already have to know that you want a car in Rainy Britain, in England at at some point in 13th century.  If you don't know that, you still need to come to an agency. And also you don't want it to look like everybody else's stuff.

So AI certainly is the thing. That's the hot topic on everybody's lips at the minute, but.  I'm not scared of it. Well, I'm not. I, I mean, I'm, I'm  quite dyslexic and, and it's really helped me a lot.  I, I, I write things initially, then I bang it into someone else and say, well, wordily, actually. I use wordily a lot, which I've discovered.

And for somebody like myself, it is absolutely fantastic. Absolutely brilliant, you know, and I've got no fears about it because as you've said, you've got to have that initial thought, that initial kind of creative spark  to, to, you know, even think about what words you want or what, what can you see in your head? 

And I've got. I've got no problem with it. I noticed on your website, one of the jobs that you've got advertising, it's a don't use chat, GPT, will know, how, how, how do you know people have used it?  Because it looks very generic, um,  so  basically you can use it to scan a job ad and then write a job application.

Then it's basically I've not thought of that. Chuffy now, fire. All them years crying.  So it basically just says stuff like, Oh, I'd really love to apply for a job at Genius Division, and based in Barnsley in the UK, with your seven employees, and one female, and, you know, like that, basically. So you can just read, you can read it and you know it.

It doesn't sound  human,  obviously because it's mostly robots writing it, and I think that's the big differentiator with AI. Right. That it, it removes that human touch. It's alright if, like you, you've written something already, and you're using AI to polish it up, because ultimately a human wrote it. But if you're starting from the beginning, where it's all written by AI, or created by AI, it's like that Uncanny Valley thing.

You know, the, the way that animation, they purposefully make animation not look like humans, because people know that it isn't a human. And I think, in truth And instinctually people know that  something written by A. I. is not A. I. At the minute, although I listened to a guy who'd recorded a podcast with A.

I. the other day. Was it a good podcast?  Well he'd used it, he'd done it as a test. Basically, so he uploaded four hours of his own podcast that he'd recorded to an AI model and then he spat out a 15 second,  um, example of what it can do and I couldn't tell the difference. What does worry you in your game? 

Well, to find new work, to find new work, to  somewhat grow to some extent because that's how people see quote unquote success. And obviously we're coming out on the other side of a recession, even though we've been in a recession a long time but they were just calling it a cost of living crisis.  So all those kind of things make you  worry. 

So constantly you're thinking where's next job going to come from and things like that. But that's why I've kind of started  pushing marketing. Because for 15 years, like I said, we've never done anything. And now for the first time ever, I'm actually trying to do something. I know it sounds cheesy to say I don't really worry about anything.

But I think.  If you have that attitude as a business person, that you are worried about these things, or at least you show it to people,  you give off kind of a desperate vibe.  And people can detect it when you're going for work. If you're desperately trying to find your next client, they can detect it. And somehow, I often find they don't want to work with you at that point.

You have to just understand that industry, like all others, is ebbs and flows, and you just have to  You have to ride it,