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[Voiceover]: Welcome to the checkout. We catch up with previous add to cut guests and ask them five quick questions to get to know them better and leave you with a little extra inspiration to get through your Friday. Here's your host Bushy
[Voiceover]: Today's checkout features Jesse Richardson, founder and CEO of Kitted Thinking Tools and the School of thought.
[Ad]: Around 14 years ago, armed with a
[Voiceover]: background in design, advertising and a man crush on Stephen Fry, Jesse began a journey to educate the public on critical thinking, reason and understanding for the greater good. It started with a poster and a deck of cards and has grown into a SaaS platform and a framework for businesses to harness the benefits of higher order thinking. Jesse does a brilliant job in unpacking how we think and how we make decisions for better outcomes for everyone.
Nathan Bush: Jesse, thank you so much for joining
[Ad]: us on the checkout.
Nathan Bush: It was an absolute pleasure to have our extended chat with you earlier where we talked all things around critical thinking, logical fallacies, biases, both from how we think as individuals, but also how that applies into a business context. And hearing some of the tools that you've got at Kidded and School of Thought to help us overcome that was just fascinating. But we're here to learn a little bit more about you. I've got five quick questions for you. Number one, what is the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online?
Jesse Richardson: It was last week and it was a poop knife. Have you heard of these?
Speaker F: But I want to.
Jesse Richardson: I saw it on Reddit and I was like, it's become a thing right? Where there's, if you do massive turds. Apparently some people have been like at other people's houses and they've been like why is there a knife next to the toilet? And they said that's the poop knife. Like what? You don't have a poop knife? And apparently it's just culturally this divide where it's like folders and scrunches. But some people have poop knives because that is a way to deal. You don't have to get in there with a plunger or anything. You cut that up so that it goes down right. And so we bought one recently for a friend of mine who will remain unnamed for his dignity as a Christmas present that we're going to give him because he is guilty of some atrocious injustices that have been visited upon toilets in our house. And so we're going to get that for him.
Speaker F: That is fantastic. A poop knoff. I had no idea where you were going with that. That's great.
Nathan Bush: All right, number two, which retailer has most inspired you recently?
Jesse Richardson: Probably not that recently, but one that I think does it really well as masterclass. Reason being that they hit like four of the six principles of influence being scarcity, authority, liking and social proof. It's just a genius model to take the celebrity and authority of thought leaders and put it into a digestible, video based, engaging way of doing things. So I found that quite inspiring in terms of that's what we've done school of thought and for kiddid to try and make things hit those principles of influence in a way that just makes it, you know, instantly engaging and accessible. And the value proposition is obvious.
Nathan Bush: Have you signed up to any of the masterclass courses or.
Jesse Richardson: Funnily enough, no, but I've used somebody else's subscription and like checked it out because I was just interested from a nerdy perspective.
Speaker F: Yeah, yeah, I love it.
Nathan Bush: All right, number three, name a piece of tech that you or your E commerce business couldn't live without.
Jesse Richardson: I'm going to say mid journey just because I am using it for so much visually now that would have taken it's like just the sheer amount of hours that it saves me. And the visual copilot collaborative partnership of using that has been instrumental for Kirit in particular. But I'm using it on everything now and AI tools more generally. So I feel bad because I'm friends with people who are voiceover server artists and you know, I've been using them within the ad industry for years, but it's just absurd now. I can't, like, not like I used to have to go to a recording session. I'd book a, you know, a sound engineer book a recording artist would go in there, I'd spend half a day with them going through a script. I kind of want the inflection of that word like this and that, and that's not quite right. Now I can just record on my mic at home, half decent mic with like, you know, the sounds are that good. I put that into Elevenlabs IO and it all of a sudden becomes this beautiful deep British voiceover that is as good as anything I could pay for. And it cost me like five bucks. It's crazy. Incredible.
Nathan Bush: And we talked about this in a bit more depth in our main episode and what I love about you embracing these tools is that your background is in creative and art, art direction, but it hasn't stopped you from exploring different and new ways of doing things. But at the same time, what you shared about the future of AI and how it will impact our thinking was a bit concerning, but we'll leave it at that. Number four can you recommend a book or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into? Now that's a standard question, but I will just frame this that in our main episode you give I reckon there's at least 15 book tips and a few podcasts in there, so I'm not sure how you're going to narrow this down to what would you recommend?
Jesse Richardson: So Search Engine can recommend and Reply all pjvote and Alex Goldman just if anyone's interested in the Internet generally and Internet culture, they're both fantastic. And Search Engine in particular goes in these beautiful little mystery rabbit holes and is widely regarded by a lot of people. And I agree with this consensus that the Reply all episode the Case of the Missing Hit is the best podcast episode that has ever been created. It's just pitch perfect. Do check it out if you haven't already seen it.
Nathan Bush: Missing Hip as in hit like Case of hit?
Jesse Richardson: No, no. Case of the Missing Hit. The song. Like a hit song.
Nathan Bush: Oh, I gotcha, gotcha gotcha. Because that's a very different episode.
Jesse Richardson: Yeah, maybe a slightly less engaging one. But you know, the Case of the Missing Hit is definitely worth checking out. And it's like there's a J.J. abrams TED talk on mystery boxes and that's a perfect manifest of that. So I can recommend that one director at the School of Thought's podcast, you are not so Smart, highly recommend that he talks to some of the world's leading intellectuals and luminaries and makes it very accessible and curious and interesting and fascinating to listen to and get insights about persuasion and psychology and politics and sociology and all of the things that any curious mind might be curious about. And also Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg is another podcast to check out. He does a very similar format to David McRaney's you're not so smart. Interviewing leading intellectuals about issues of the day and different ways of thinking about thinking, and lots of other curious stuff.
Nathan Bush: Our bookshelves and our podcast lineup is going to be full. Thank you mate.
[Ad]: Last question I have for you.
Nathan Bush: What is your biggest challenge today?
Jesse Richardson: Time management. I've actually got to go, so I'll talk to you soon.
Speaker F: Love it. That's so good. Thank you mate.
[Ad]: To hear more from Jesse, jump back into episode 427 where Jesse shares the most common logical fallacies and how they work in our minds. He unpacks multi modular thinking and what it can do for e commerce teams. And he talks about why we should all be trying to unleash our inner 4 year old. How dangerous is that?
