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Vince Wanga is a dynamic international design thought leader, creative keynote speaker, award-winning creative executive, author of The Art of Direction, serial entrepreneur, and experienced brand consultant with an exceptional range of expertise built over a distinguished two-decade career.

As the former Vice President and Head of Creative for one of the fastest-growing technology startups in North America, he led corporate brand strategy and creative direction during a period of extraordinary growth—from pre-Series A to a “unicorn” valuation of over $1 billion.


 

In this episode, Jason and Vince discuss:

  • Why failures were the greatest teacher in Vince’s creative and leadership journey
  • The meaning behind his book The Art of Direction and why leadership is an art
  • How creative leaders play a pivotal role at the forefront of business change
  • The realistic role of AI in the workplace and how leaders should approach it
  • What he learned scaling a company from Series A to a $1B valuation in four years

Key Takeaways:

  • Vince attributes much of his growth and resilience to the failures he encountered early in his career, viewing them as foundational learning experiences rather than setbacks.
  • Leadership isn’t something you apply like a formula; it’s a nuanced, evolving practice that demands empathy, creativity, and the ability to adapt to changing people and circumstances.
  • The most successful companies aren’t reactive—they stay true to their core values and make bold, intentional choices even when the market zigs in a different direction.
  • Rather than fearing artificial intelligence, leaders should see it as a partner—a tool that can automate the mundane and amplify the strategy if used wisely.
  • Creative professionals often feel disruption before others do, serving as early indicators of broader changes in business and culture—what Vince calls the "canaries in the coal mine."

 


“I truly believe leadership has to be empathetic. You need to understand your industry, your team, and your customer—and that requires the ability to adapt, not just with the times, but with circumstances, the economy, and all the variables thrown your way. That’s where the science of leadership breaks down, and it becomes an art form—because art, inherently, is an adaptable strategy.”

- Vince Wanga

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Listen to the podcast here:


 

Vince Wanga- The Art of Direction

Hello and welcome everybody to this episode of The Insight Interviews. Today, I've got a guest, you know, sometimes we get down and dirty with statistics, sometimes it's the topic of executive coaching, which Rewire specializes in, sometimes it’s Human Resources. Today, I'm excited about this one, because I've got a creative that has joined me today, none other than Vince Wanga. Vince is a dynamic international design thought leader. And sometimes I read thought leader, and I'm like, okay, what does this mean? But then I dug into this thing that Vince has done, and, yeah, my friends, he's a thought leader. He is a creative keynote speaker, an award winning creative and executive author. He's got a new book that I'm sure we'll touch on once or twice, called “The Art of Direction.” He's a serial entrepreneur, an experienced brand consultant, and his range is just wide. He's been a brand consultant for some of the fastest growing companies in the country, and I don't know. man, without further ado, Vince, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Jason. I really appreciate it. And when I say thought leader, I just mean at this point in my career, my mind is more valuable than my hands, so it's an interesting dichotomy to be in, and I'm leaning into it.

I appreciate that. I really do. My history with that term thought leader, it goes far and wide, and at Rewire we are described as thought leaders often, and I'm like, who made me a leader in thought? I'm not really sure, but anyway, we digress. Vince, I've got a first question that we ask every guest of the Insight Interviews. We've been doing this for, I don't know, a couple 100 times now, and it just seems to get us in the right footing, in the right direction, and that is, as you and I engage one another today, who or what are you especially grateful for?

I'm gonna answer this organically, and honestly, I was not prepared for that question. It's a great question, but I'm gonna answer in a different way than people might think. I am exponentially grateful for my failures, and I mean that absolutely sincerely. I have failed so many times. I have hit every obstacle on the way down, and it's built this grit and resiliency in me that at the time I didn't appreciate it. At the time, I thought the sky was falling. At the time, I thought I was done. But being able to survive those failures taught me an important lesson about what I'm made of, but also the next time I faced those obstacles, I was a little less intimidated, and I would start proactively preparing for them and embracing them. And the knowledge I've learned through my failures far eclipses anything I've learned at school or through training or even through other experiences. So, I can't believe I'm saying this at this point in my career, but at the time, it seemed daunting, but now I'm so grateful for every one of those failures, because along those paths, I failed a little bit less, and I eventually found a recipe for success. And while I'll continue failing in my life, I'll embrace it a little bit differently and take those lessons and use them to propel myself further. So, I say that, not just for my own experience, but for anyone listening who might be going through a failure cycle right now, especially as an entrepreneur, oh my gosh, embrace it, because those are lessons that few people get to experience. And if you're failing and failing upward, chances are you're challenging yourself in a way nobody else is that will lead to profound success later in your life. So, I'm grateful.

Very rarely do I ask a follow up question to our opening question, but today I'm going to make an exception to that. In November, around Thanksgiving with my colleagues and inside of the ABLE household, we'll ask a question that kind of aligns with exactly how you answered that, which is not just, hey, what are you grateful for, but what are you grateful for that at the time seemed really bad, but now in as in hindsight, being 2020, you're grateful for that thing? If you allow me to scratch a little bit beyond the surface, Vince, and I ask you for an example of maybe one of those failures or something that maybe pop into your mind that you're like, yeah, actually, that was not good, but man, I'm grateful for that.

Yeah, I actually appreciate that. I try not to talk ethereally, so, my greatest failure, and the thing I'm most grateful for, is probably my first failure. A little bit of background, I was an art prodigy and a design prodigy, and I was going to specialized schools for either art, architecture, video production, design. I had all these resources and aspirations and long story short, I went to a specialized design school to fulfill my dreams, and due to financial reasons, I got kicked out. So, the reason that's a huge failure is my career that was so predestined was now over, essentially, before it had even started. It's extremely hard to break into this industry without a degree. It's hard to break into any industry. Why I'm grateful for that is it put me in this whole new position where I had to take the back door to anything. I had to kick doors in. I had to be proactive. I had to work twice as hard to prove myself to get into an industry. And what it allowed me to do is to really adapt to an entrepreneurial mindset, where I had to get creative in how I position myself and how I approach people and how I prove myself. And when those doors were closed, I had to find alternate paths to income and would start consultancies, and I learned all these skills by having to deviate from the norms of getting into an industry that's so hyper competitive. And I'm grateful for that, because now I'm bearing the fruits of those resources that I learned at that time, and although I've proven myself to a point where that's less of an impact on my career, without those lessons, without the grit that I had to learn early, where I thought things were over, and instead, I built my own resiliency and unique paths to get back into my career, I'm not sure I'd be as prepared for the many challenges I faced since, and the leadership journey that I'm currently on. So, that was the first failure, the biggest failure, and without that, ironically, I wouldn't be as successful as I am.

How about that? Thank you for that. I appreciate the tangibility around that. There are so many directions that I want to go, Vince. You know, things that I think about, the mornings that I do the interviews, I kind of, I'll read bios, and I'll read about the guests that I'm going to have on the show, kind of do a little meditation, start to write some notes, and I was thinking of just the different directions that we could go in, and maybe some of the things that I wrote down was I wonder what he thinks about all the creative things that's happening with AI right now? And is that good, bad or otherwise? And then the title of his book is “The Art of Direction.” I just have questions about that. Why is that the name of the book, and does that have something to do with our attention and gathering it, or is it something else? Or, I don't know, maybe he just wants to riff on something, and who cares what I want. So, I don't know. Rarely do I do this, but I might hand over the reins to you. What's a direction as you and I are just here rapping, man, what direction would be really fun to go in for you today?

Well, how about we do all three?

Oh, all right.

I can speak on any of those topics really, really passionately. So, I think I'll start with the title of the book, because I think that's important and relevant here, especially for any executive leaders listening. And again, I will preface this, but things that I'm saying are based off of my experiences. Yours might differ, your opinions might differ. I'm not saying I'm right or wrong, this is just based off what's worked for me. But the title “The Art of Direction” has a lot of intentionality behind it, and really what I'm saying here in translation is the art of leadership just happens in my particular industry. That's what it's called. Direction. I'm a creative director and executive, so this is the context that I positioned it, but I really believe that these are universal principles. So, the reason I say the art of direction or leadership is because, to me, a science is something that is a formula, right? That you can subscribe to and get predictable results, so you can do it over and over and over again.

That's right.

I don't think that's the way leadership works, in my experience. There are so many different variables that you get thrown at. You have different objectives, different goals, different teams, different industries that you might work in. You might be the CEO of Starbucks, but you came from Chipotle, you know? So, similar industries in retail, but two completely different products and audiences, and while some things will translate, there's nuances there. I really believe that leadership has to be empathetic, where you understand your industry and your personnel and your customer, and that requires an ability to adapt, not just with the times, but also with the circumstances, the economy. All these variables get thrown in, and that's where the science breaks down, and it has to become an art form, because inherently is an adaptable strategy, and that is why I approach it from that stance, but also it allows for some creativity, some variance. And I think anyone who's been in executive leadership knows that that's what it takes, because you're there to load vision, and I really wanted to emphasize that. So, that part, the art is really intentional, and I'm trying to get away from rigid schools of thought like the Jack Welch School of Management, which was highly effective for many years, but times have changed, and art form is adaptable. And instead of a philosophy or ethos that you follow rigidly, you have to adapt to your teams, the times, the objectives, the customer, the economy, and that is why I emphasize that in my book, and approached it from that particular perspective.

I think it's such an “and”, and not necessarily an “or”, right? Like, there are certain strategies, and schools of thought. You mentioned Jack Welch. I was thinking that as you were talking, or Drucker, and any of those management books or leadership books that a lot of us have read. There are techniques and things that that kind of work, but boy, if you're only relying on that and not the nuance of personalities or creativity or the nuance of how this conversation is going in this feedback session that I'm having with my employee, it needs to go somewhere else, because he or she's just in a different spot right now than what I was thinking. And so, it seems like it's the art and the science combined, not just the art, because, gosh, if a leader is just an artist, does anything even get done, right? But if it's just science, to your point, we're not robots. It's not math. One plus one equals two. That's not how leadership works. But I don't know. How would you comment on that?

I 100% agree, and my point is that I'm writing it from the art perspective, because there's so many great books that cover the science part. You know, it's there and it's solid. There’s “Good to Great” by Jim Collins that really broke down quantitatively what leadership looks like. So, I'm not trying to compete with that. I'm talking more about experience and the art form. But I 100% agree, it is a balance. A yin and yang that has to exist, because even with the art form, I'm still objectively held accountable to business metrics, eyes to the results. That's the science. There's money involved, right? So, it is definitely a balance, and people should factor that. The art form in the science is adaptability, where maybe it's a hybrid. You know, you got Jack Welch, but you're also adapting to something else. So, the point is flexibility and understanding that the times change, and as we know from a historical context, but also through data, those companies and individuals who don't adapt and change, tend to die off, metaphorically speaking, and I think it's an important lesson that I've applied to leadership.

What are some examples that you're seeing in today's world? You know, it's so funny, the more conversations that I've had recently with thought leaders and executives and specialists around the country, I feel like I'm saying, you know, with all the changes that's going on these days in the political environment, or AI, or whatever, but you know what, Vince, if you and I were having a conversation 50 years ago or 100 years ago, we would be thinking and feeling the same thing. It's never been like this before. It's so different. Whatever. This just happens to be that we're in 2025 right now, at least when we're recording this, but it does seem like things are changing and crazy and whatever. And so, I guess my question with that context in place is, what types of things are you seeing right now where the best of the best leaders are using creativity or the art of direction, the art of creativity or leadership? Like, what are some examples that you're observing out there where you're going, “yeah, that's it right there.”

There's several. First, I want to touch on an excellent point that you made about the greatest lessons about the future are in history. Everyone's like, we're emerging technology. We've never seen times like this. Well, tell that to the people in the industrial revolution, you know? Tell that to the people of the Renaissance. Tell that to the people in World War One and World War Two, where GE had to convert to a war machine from consumer products, and did that successfully, and then switch back to consumer products afterwards. So, the resiliency of human history should tell us that we will get through these times and we will adapt. There's also lessons in manufacturing, which were decimated in the 80s and 90s, that a lot of people are going to have to reskill and find new industries or find themselves in a very precarious economic situation. So, first and foremost, I carry the lessons from the past, and I'm a student of history. Going forward, I appreciate companies that in these times where nobody is an oracle and knows what's going to happen, really are steadfast to their mission. I'll give you an example. Let's look at Tech, which is where I came from most recently, and is very adaptable to the times and change. During COVID, they sent everyone remote, and profits increased dramatically, and they hired a bunch of people, and they thought that was going to sustain itself, and then COVID ended. A lot of those products that were more geared towards consumers staying at home, those changed, and those companies like Peloton and Facebook and other places really found themselves in a precarious position where they thought these times were sustained and they didn't and consumer behavior changed, and now their bottom line was being affected, so they overreacted because they over- hired. Now, they're firing a bunch of people and changing their strategy and forcing everyone back to the office, and that's fine. But imagine a company like Spotify, which also benefited from the COVID pandemic and sent everyone remotely, but they decided, hey, we're going to keep this policy because it's working for us. We're not going to do knee jerks based on what the industry does. We're going to stay with our ethos and treat our employees towards the lifestyle that they want to be most productive, and we're going to see where this goes, and Spotify is still thriving. So my point is, even though earlier I was talking about adaptability, there's also something about being a business executive and making decisions that are based off of your core ethos, and not just doing what the industry trends do. Because if you did that, you also would have over hired in COVID and now had to fire 25% of your workforce, instead of staying steady and seeing how the landscape changes. So, I also study companies that, over time, have sustained success. Think of IBM, where they are a market leader amongst Open AI and Google and all these other things in AI with their Watson product. IBM's over 100 years old. They're not a startup. They're a legacy company that continues to innovate and be at the cusp of technology because of those time-tested traditions that they continue to maintain, while still attracting top talent and being able to compete with these young, hip startups. So, I really look at those legacy companies also that continue to thrive and survive. The Walgreens, the IBMs, who have faced so many of these inflection points in history and continue to sustain their success, because that's the model that's going to get us through this period, where none of us knows how it ends.

Yeah, thank you for that. I mean, I appreciate those examples, and I think that our listeners, whether they're driving their car right now or washing the dishes or going on a run, I think they can probably see themselves in some of the examples that you gave there. So, thank you for that. All right. Well, that touched on one of the three things that I brought up. What are you thinking about the future and technology and how creative fits in with all that? And, you know, the click bait question is, hey, is there going to be any room for artists anymore, Vince, because, you know, the robots are, are doing all that now? But I don't want to ask that. What are you thinking about as you read the stories, as you probably engage AI yourself and seeing what it's doing in the creative space, what types of things are you thinking about when you're engaging?

I appreciate that question, because for anyone who's listening and is wondering why I should listen to this creative executive guy when I'm a business leader or sales leader or anything else, let me tell you quite bluntly, we’re the canaries in the coal mine. We are at the cutting, bleeding edge of technology, of innovation, of everything, including this AI revolution. We're also the first to be let go when the economy catches a cold because we're seen as important, but luxuries, just like fitting in so many other things. And whether that’s true or not, that's just the sentiment I've experienced in my career. But the things that happen, we're usually on the ground floor for, you know? We're the first forces that go. We're the Marines. So pay attention to what happens to us when you see creatives and marketers and sales being cut, there's probably some economic indications and interest rates that you can look at that might be a bellwether for the rest of you in your industry. The reason I emphasize that is because we're at the cutting edge. We are often absorbing information and things and trends before the rest of the people who work in corporate America, and one thing that I've learned being in those rooms where they're having high level conversations about the future of AI is they're actively trying to find ways that they can replace everyone. The irony is, some of those people in those rooms, the C-suite executives are also eligible to be replaced. The grounding point that I've taken from all that information is that I'm not an AI enthusiast or somebody who's pessimistic about it. I'm right in the middle, and I think you have to be. You have to embrace this new technology in order to do your job more efficiently. Help multiply your skills. Help do the things that you don't want to do. Use AI for that so that you can do that you want to do. You'll be in a much better position than somebody who doesn't use AI at all because they don't trust it, and AI comes and replaces you. If you're already leveraging it to level up and level out, it's much harder for it to come in and do what you do on its own. I fundamentally believe that humans plus AI is greater than what humans or AI can do separately, so we have to embrace it. The second point is, especially if you're an executive leader, stop going out and chasing the latest greatest AI stuff like it's the wild west right now. Half of it's not even AI. It has variable security parameters.

True.

It's like when the iPhone came out and everyone had all these apps that we use on a daily basis. AI is coming to you. If you're in Microsoft Excel, Microsoft has Co-pilot and is integrating AI into your tools. If you use HubSpot, they're integrating AI into their resources. It will come to you. You need to learn it and embrace it so that you can be better positioned for this new AI revolution than somebody who doesn't use it at all. And again, I'm no oracle, but here's why I think that's important in the future, and with AI, which moves exponentially, that could be in six months, not six years, right? AI is going to be integrated into our businesses. Your manager might be AI, you might be a manager, managing AI, your CEO might be AI, and there's going to be an integration of AI bots and agents with human resources in order to have much more lean, efficient, structured businesses. So, if they're going to be your coworkers or potentially your boss or your subordinate, you should probably learn how to work with them now so that you can be in a better position to thrive in that new hybrid economy. Again, I'm no oracle, I don't know what's going to happen, but this is already being tested at some of the highest businesses that exist, and people should be very cautious about their knowledge gaps with this new technology. It's not going away, so embrace it, but be cautious and find a way to integrate it into your problems so that you can focus more on the solutions that you actually have expertise in.

An executive in the mortgage space that I was speaking with yesterday said, you know, there's so many people in that industry, just like most industries right now, are saying, oh, we're all going to be replaced by AI and was talking specifically about loan officers, the sales force in the mortgage space. Loan officers are going to be replaced by AI. And he said that's not it at all. The loan officers are not going to be replaced by AI, they're going to be replaced by the loan officers that understand, learn and work with AI. That's going to be the difference, which goes hand in hand with exactly what you said. The way that you put the words together about letting AI come to you, that's an interesting point that I need to ponder some more. That's a really good one, because you're right. There's AI that's already part of our lives, whether we know it or not, and you gave some tangible examples, but that's true, and learning and going out and trying to figure out things at the same time, I think is brilliant. So, I appreciate that. What I heard from you is, yeah, the sky's not falling. Creatives, yeah, the bellwether, you guys are on the cutting edge. That's an interesting thought there. But there's no doomsday in anything that you just said there. I think that it sounds like creatives will maybe have AI beside them, helping them, augmenting them, and then moving forward, maybe greater than they could have, either on their own, or if they're like you said, chasing the latest fad or that type of thing.

Why I mentioned creatives is because we face a lot of these inflection points, whether it's the no code, low code, stuff that happened with Squarespace and Wix and these were supposed to replace creatives and developers, whether it was desktop publishing and interactive that killed print design, right? We face these inflection points, and guess what? We're still here. I'm still here. So, if we can survive this, there's lessons there that can apply to everyone else. I think there is another important lesson for executive leaders who might be looking at AI to completely automate their workforce. There's a cautionary tale, and it's called Klarna, who is this, buy now, pay later app that was really struggling, replaced a huge portion of their employees with AI, and then thought, hey, one at minimum, we'll save a lot of money and up our balance sheet and look more profitable, and it was a disaster. In fact, they are hiring back a lot of those people they let go because AI, just because it can, doesn't mean it should. It doesn't mean it understands the intuition of the business. It doesn’t mean the information it's giving you is 100% accurate and it's not hallucinating, and they learned a very powerful and painful lesson that the rest of us should take note of, that it is not an absolute solution. And to my earlier point, the best combination is human plus AI energy, leveraging your industry versus 100% or the other, and we should learn to work with it, but also those leaders making those decisions that affect 1000s of jobs should understand that there's a reason human ingenuity is so highly valued, and we should be training our humans to work with this new technology, instead of the technology to replace the humans.

Yeah, totally. No, I agree. I very much appreciate that answer. Very calm, very even keel, as I listen to you and now I know why you're described as the thought leader, Vince. It's all coming together now. There's so many people in your space that I am hearing whether it's an ad agency or a video creative department where they are like, oh my gosh, we're all being replaced. And yes, there’s going to be some things that are just going to be different, and then, to me, it is an opportunity to go, okay, well, where it might look different moving forward, but maybe it's different in a cool way. Who knows? And I don't know, let's saddle up and see what happens type of thing. Where else do we want to go today?

You know, I'm down to talk about anything. You know, I think an important point here, again, on the theme of like creative leadership is that we are this essential kind of cog in the wheel. You know, especially me as an executive creative, I report directly to the C suite in my last tech job, where I worked for a company that went from series A to a $1 billion valuation, under my creative and brand leadership. So, I reported directly to the C suite, and the reason that's important is people need to understand how important the creative process is to your bottom line. And that's something I really want to emphasize. One, we're extremely highly researched. Two, we understand the business and the business metrics and the fundamentals of the business, and we have to be at my level. And that we are important partners and stakeholders to the sales team, to marketing, to development, all those essential functions. All are things that we orbit and help provide solutions for. I'm also really integrated with the sales team, because I'm in the pitches, you know? When we're going out to solicit work, I'm the one who creates that vision and that excitement for the client to get buy in, to actually do the thing. So, one of the objectives I really wanted here with an audience that might not be within my industry is to explain why we're vital and important. And again, this ties back to AI that I don't care how sophisticated that AI is, if we're past the bar, it's not going to go into a client pitch and wow them. It’s not there yet. There's something intangible about human ingenuity that will sustain and that we as humans need to understand at what point are we going to put our foot down and buy into things? Just because AI can do artwork, are you going to buy it? Just because it can do a guitar riff, are you going to buy it? No, because it's the human behind it. It's their story. It's BB King's blues that are based on his lived experiences that really make it valuable. And I just want to emphasize why that human energy is important, both organizationally, from a creative standpoint, but also so that you can use that as leverage to defend yourself and your value to your industry, especially for people like sales, which is such a relationship based industry.

Sure.

I see a scenario where I get an AI robo call, and that convinces me to convert. So, there's some time here for us to adapt and prove our value and I wanted to take this opportunity to remind people why creatives are essential. We are tied to the bottom line. We care about those objectives. We're highly researched. We're at the most intimate level with the customer. We're constantly iterating to improve the product on their behalf and those insights are invaluable to an organization, and that's the value that we provide beyond the esthetic, ethereal things that most people think of us for.

Sure. Is there anything that I haven't asked you today that you would hope that I would ask?

I was part of a crazy, transformational experience, if you want me to jump into that?

Come on, man. Yeah, after you tease it like that, like what do you mean?

Fair enough. I mentioned earlier, I joined this company PreSeries A, and we eventually, in a four year period, became a billion-dollar unicorn.

Yeah.

I mean, we're talking about a decade's worth of growth in four years. It was an incredible experience, but the reason I want to make an emphasis of this on this show is you think leadership is hard, try when you go from less than 100 employees to an enterprise in four years. So, the reason I mentioned that is that this ties back into the message I had earlier about adaptability. I had to adapt two, three times per year just to keep up with that growth. I had a small fledgling team and an entire department full of dozens of people before that experience was over. So really, I'm using this as an example to emphasize with people that you never know where this journey will take you on your next gig, on your next project, on your next occupation, and that you have to have a leadership style, again, based off core principles in science, but also adaptable enough in an art form that can survive something like that, that you can never predict, and the style of leadership that you had to manage three or four people completely transforms when it's 40 and it's an entire division. So, I really want to emphasize to people don't over index on rigid systems philosophies and find ways that you can continue to grow and adapt and iterate and get feedback on your journey. Because while that was a crazy once in a lifetime experience, for me, it was due to that adaptability and part and my hard work that helped us also reach that goal, and the same could be true for you. It could be your own business, where you thought you're selling trinkets on Etsy, and then it blows up. Now you gotta hire and figure out global manufacturing and supply chain, and now you find yourself a leader of a company instead of an individual hobby. You have to prepare for it in advance. And I firmly believe that opportunity is really based off of preparation, and you have to prepare for things that you might not anticipate will happen, and that is what will get you through when you finally reach those outcomes, and don't be afraid to fail, because even if I failed in that experience, those lessons would be applied to the next thing, and you'd be much better off.

You're wrapping our conversation in a bow, Vince. You started off talking about being grateful for your failures and you're ending up that way as well. You did say something else about opportunity. What's the definition of luck? When preparation meets opportunity, right? Like that is 100% and so, yeah, I really hope people heed to that last message there. Vince, I have a feeling people are going to want to reach out to you as a result of our conversation. How should people find you?

Sure, absolutely. I have a website, VincentWanga.com, where you can see some of my quote, unquote thought leadership from the various keynotes and speeches I've given, but also many interviews about my background and my experience and the things that I really feel. In addition to that, my book “The Art of Direction, personal perspectives on the path to creative leadership”, can be accessed through my website. It's also on Amazon, Walmart books, Watterson'sBookshop.org, all the major online retailers as well as for order from your bookshop worldwide. And then you can also connect with me on LinkedIn. Just look up my name, Vincent Wanga. I love connecting with people. I think this is really important that especially when you get into leadership and executive leadership, I mentioned earlier, it's a very lonely island. I love the anecdote that you can only complain up and not down, but what happens when you're at the top?

True.

It's important that we connect with each other and share our stories and our ideas and our failures and philosophies. That's where you learn things that, you know, you're in retail and I'm in hospitality, but you taught me something that I can apply to my industry, and we need to share ideas and talk with each other. And I mentioned that because I'd love people to connect with me and share their stories, I'll share mine, and we'll learn from each other, because at our level, it can be very incestuous, it can be very lonely, and that's dangerous for innovation and progression. So, please reach out love to connect with people, and those are the primary ways you can get a hold of me.

Oh, so good. Vince man, thanks for your expertise. Thanks for your time today. You gave of it freely and for the wide-ranging conversation that we had today. I certainly appreciate that, and I know our listeners do too. Until next time, my friend, thank you so much.

Yeah, thank you, Jason. It's been a pleasure.

Ah, Vince Wanga. So good. Gosh, I'm grateful for the conversation that I just had with this dude and the insights that that I had. I mean, just the title of his book, “The Art of Direction” was very intriguing to me, and I love the way that he talked about it. It made me think of a lot of different things, you know? Especially how he answered about creatives really being the canary in the coal mine, almost like the Marines. Like the first ones that are sent in. And that just resonated with me, because I think it's true creatives are so darn important, and there are times when, because they're on the cutting edge sometimes they feel the pinch or the squeeze before other industries do. But it is a little bit of a bellwether. Like, oh, maybe there's something not so good coming, or the opposite, like, oh, some really cool things are about to happen. So, I just appreciate that. His thoughts on AI, I thought, were very interesting, where AI and human beings together, and the people that embrace it and move forward, not go crazy about it, not chasing the latest and the greatest, but that just embrace it, knowing that AI is kind of that sentiment of, let it come to us, but then also study and learn at the same time. I just thought that that was very even keeled, and I appreciate that. But those were the insights that I had. What really matters, you know, not necessarily me as the host, my insights, but what really matters listeners are, what insights did you have?

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