In this episode, we sat down with Adam Morgan who is the Executive Creative Director at Adobe.
With over 25 years of experience in marketing, with a focus on creativity, strategy and storytelling, Adam has produced several award-winning campaigns. He was also named the 40 under 40 up-and-coming professionals by Utah Business Magazine and in 2020 and AdWeek named him one of the top 100 creative minds in the world, influencing advertising, media, and culture.

In this episode of Just a Chat with, I sit down with architect and entrepreneur Danny Campbell, founder of Hoko Design and judge on BBC’s Scotland’s Home of the Year.

We chat about building a business with purpose, the dangers of ego, and what happens when you scale too fast. Danny opens up about how near-burnout reshaped his views on success, why he swapped a Jaguar for Crocs, and how kindness—not competition—became his guiding principle.

It’s a conversation about design, growth, and rediscovering what really matters—at work, at home, and in life.

Key Takeaways:

• Ego is the enemy. Growth driven by ego leads to stress and instability. Purpose-driven growth lasts.
• Kindness scales. Doing good for others multiplies back—personally and professionally.
• Simplify to survive. Hoko shrank from 35 people to 10 and became more profitable and happier.
• Inside-out success. The best businesses start by getting the people and purpose right before the process.
• You don’t need more—just the right things. Letting go of material pressure creates mental freedom.

• Chapters
• 00:00 Welcome Back and Introduction to Danny Campbell
• 01:51 Incredible Journey: The McLean Brothers’ Record-Breaking Row
• 05:25 Reflections on Travel and Inspiration
• 09:18 Finding Purpose and Passion in Work
• 12:54 The Architecture of Home: A Unique Perspective
• 17:41 Building a Team: The Importance of Complementary Skills
• 21:57 Navigating Growth: Lessons from Scaling a Business
• 26:41 Embracing Technology: The Role of AI in Architecture
• 30:05 The Impact of Public Life: Balancing Work and Family
• 34:20 Parenting in the Digital Age: Teaching Resilience
• 39:38 The Future of Hoko: Vision and Growth Strategies

Follow Danny here:
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Transcript

Andrew Dobbie (00:06)
So welcome to Just a Chat with a brand and creativity podcast with the world’s best in class. I’m your host, Andrew Dobbie and we’re here after a break, after a couple of years, and we’re back for season four. And I’m lucky enough to be here with a good friend of mine, Danny Campbell. Danny is a father of three young boys. He’s an architect and entrepreneur. He’s the founder of Hoco Design, and he’s also a crock wearing judge and presenter for BBC Home of the Year.

Glad I got all that out. There’s a lot to say there, isn’t there? Welcome Danny, how are you?

Danny Campbell (00:40)
Yeah,

very good. That makes me sound so much busier than I feel actually, but…

Andrew Dobbie (00:43)
I always say if you’re trying to get something done in life, find a busy person and you seem to be one of those people that very busy.

Danny Campbell (00:49)
Yeah, but don’t give me anything to do. That’s your plan. I want either less than that.

Andrew Dobbie (00:53)
Yeah,

I was going to get you to do. So you’re just back from Australia. Do want to chat to us, tell us a little bit about what you’ve been doing over there?

Danny Campbell (00:59)
Yeah, that was amazing. I’ve never been to Australia before, so it was quite an eye-opener. A bit of a last-minute getaway. So one of my very good friends, Jamie Maclean, and his two brothers just completed a world record-breaking row. Just a casual 9000 crowd.

From Lima in Peru to Cairns, Australia.

Andrew Dobbie (01:21)
I was looking at it on the map last night and it’s a wild amount of distance isn’t it? We’re at 19,000 miles.

Danny Campbell (01:28)
10,000 miles, you know, I’ve got Jamie on find my friends and you know, you’d go on to look at and he’s there in the middle of the screen and it’s just blue. You know, in the middle of the largest ocean on earth, it’s incredible. And there was just so much distance between them and everybody else. And they just had their brothers for, you know, safety and support. It was quite an incredible thing. So I flew out there to see them arrive.

Andrew Dobbie (01:51)
And that was the the final stretch, obviously, that’s where you’re

Danny Campbell (01:54)
That’s before the real challenge started of all the kind of media stuff that they had to go through ⁓ But it was an incredible thing and I think it’s a once-in-a-lifetime Moment to go and support your friends. Yeah, my incredible friends doing something really extraordinary. Yeah

Andrew Dobbie (02:06)
I I saw some of the footage on Instagram and it’s just like, you know, it’s like those giant waves that are just enveloping them. And yeah, I can’t imagine, you know, even just even just the loneliness, I suppose, of being out there for, you how many weeks was that they were out?

Danny Campbell (02:19)
⁓

139 days it took. they set off before Easter and you know, go about your life and you forget about them from time to time. And then you think, you know, ⁓ God, yeah, they’re still, still roaring. ⁓ And you know, they’re not sleeping. The food.

Andrew Dobbie (02:34)
It was one of them up the whole time, that kind of thing.

Danny Campbell (02:36)
They

were pretty much, yeah, there were always somebody rowing. They would maybe get a four hour stretch of sleep, rowing through the night. There’s something really kind of terrifying about the sea at night as well. I think I’ve only ever been out, we’ve got like a little fishing boat up at my parents in the lagoon. There’s a few times we’ve been out at night and it’s really unnerving. There’s something, the idea of the water and the size of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, it was incredible. And the thing that impressed me the most about them was that their mental fortitude.

Andrew Dobbie (02:57)
voice down there.

Danny Campbell (03:05)
They were laughing and joking the whole way, like taking the piss out of each other and doing all the little interviews and there was a few videos of Jamie getting teared up which always saw a big spike in the donations. So I think that was real, but it was…

Andrew Dobbie (03:18)
You learn to cry. I

think they raised about a million pounds didn’t they?

Danny Campbell (03:24)
They raised a million pounds for ⁓ clean water charities in Madagascar. So 40,000 people will have clean water for life now.

Andrew Dobbie (03:30)
It’s amazing isn’t it? Absolutely inspiring to do.

Danny Campbell (03:33)
Yeah,

three brave young men doing something, you know, as daring as that is, is marvelous.

Andrew Dobbie (03:38)
You know and I’d say if you’re if you’re listening to this go and check them out on Instagram think just McLean Brothers is just

Danny Campbell (03:44)
Yeah, the McLean brothers and yeah, Mark Wahlberg’s been their biggest fan actually recently. know. Making a film. Yeah, the famous duo. ⁓

Andrew Dobbie (03:49)
He was popped up one day the… Lorraine Kelly. And

then, you know, you were obviously following along on that journey, they’re good friends of yours and you did a 24 hour row off, am I right?

Danny Campbell (04:03)
Yeah, I mean that should have been… I’m amazed we didn’t raise a million pounds for that because that was the most horrible thing I’ve ever done in my entire life. It was absolutely brutal. So me and two of my other really good friends, Greg Holler and Hugh Parker, two of the fittest guys I know, we decided to do this 24-hour row to help raise awareness and it was brutal, absolutely brutal. And we did it at the social hub, obviously where we both…

Andrew Dobbie (04:27)
was out of the country when that was happening and you didn’t try and sort of rope me into it. I once like, I think it was two or three years ago, I got signed up for, it was to do, I think like 3000 press ups in a month for, to raise awareness on male suicide. I thought, right, that’s a great cause. I’m going to do that. I still have crunching in my spine from that moment. So no, that’s off to you and the back’s all right.

Danny Campbell (04:48)
Yeah,

it’s fine. I still get like PTSD walking past that little bit of carpet where we did the rowing. Let’s try not to look at it.

Andrew Dobbie (04:54)
Yeah, it’s kind of one of these things that sounds fun at first, but then it gets worse.

Danny Campbell (04:57)
It’s

like we couldn’t even complain because we were getting like Marks and Spencer’s brought to us, you know, there’s loads of drinks, you go have a shower, there’s a bathroom and the McLean brothers are there with like a bucket and their freeze dried meals. Not an &S in sight. So yeah, and we actually did a little FaceTime with them when we were at hour 23. Yeah, yeah. And they were just laughing at us. were pathetic. Yeah, it was just awful.

Andrew Dobbie (05:19)
That is perfect.

Good. And so what was the experience like out in Australia then, you know?

Danny Campbell (05:25)
It was incredible. did a bit of surfing. I also went over to New Zealand as well to surprise one of my very good friends, Jeremiah, who I lived with in Vancouver before I started Hoke actually. So it was him that was the inspiration. was Hoke was a Maori word that means commerce. So trying to think of a name for a business is really challenging. So I thought four letter word is almost like looks like something to do with home. But it’s got a nice kind of backstory that I could kind of buy into emotionally. So it was really nice to see him and his young family.

Andrew Dobbie (05:42)
That’s hardest thing, isn’t it?

And see he was the one that spurred that idea, that name. that’s, yeah. So was nice kind of moment to come back round and kind of get.

Danny Campbell (05:59)
Yeah,

exactly. And it’s one of those things he lives on the other side of the world. So we don’t see each other all the time, but we fell straight back into how things used to be. And we had one of these weird, like lovely little moments. So we were driving down to Dunedin, which is about an hour and a half drive, just chatting the whole way. And he was telling me about how traveling through sport has been such a significant ⁓ backbone to his whole life story. It’s what he describes as the thing that’s made him the man he is today. And he’s was spent a lot of time down in

in England in a place called Olney. And he was working with the rugby club and the cricket club. And now a little boy who was there when he was there is now coming over to stay with them. And he’s sorted out with a job and a lifestyle and a place to live. And he just says he loves it. And I was like, well, why don’t you just do that? That could be like an amazing job. And it’s when you’re speaking to somebody, when you’re used to entrepreneurship and business and finding opportunities, if they’ve never actually kind of been in that capacity before, the fear in his eyes.

but also that kind of like the butterflies of opportunity of like, don’t tease me, don’t tease me. I could actually do something I love, like for my job.

Andrew Dobbie (07:05)
I think someone needs to unlock that in you, don’t you? I remember being younger and I remember you’re kind of searching for and you don’t you don’t realize you can make a career around the things you actually enjoy.

Danny Campbell (07:16)
And it’s difficult because to have self-reflection to figure out, all right, what am I actually good at? What might people actually value as something to buy? What’s kind of like good for society and where do I actually fit in? And then how can you mold something around that? Because most people get kind of told or there’s expectations or there’s pressure on where they should go and they maybe miss that kind of moment of kind of self-discovery.

Andrew Dobbie (07:40)
Yeah, it’s trying to like, it’s like what you said there. It’s trying to get those, those, that Venn diagram where all those things overlap. It’s like what the world needs, what you’re passionate about and what you’re actually good at. yeah. I was going to say the word, but I couldn’t think of that word was.

Danny Campbell (07:49)
It’s like the Icky Guy thing, isn’t it?

It

was something really exotic, yeah. So yeah, we decided just to set up as a business.

Andrew Dobbie (08:00)
So a new business, another one, separate one.

Danny Campbell (08:02)
Well, it’s not my business, it’s his business, but I kind of helped him get it going. So basically the last two days, me being in New Zealand was like an episode of The Apprentice where we like got a logo made up, we got a website, got his emails all set up. ⁓ We watched the Simon Sinek start with why, how does he kind of do his pitch? And it was incredible because I loved his courage going into the town and meeting all the people that he knows. And he would just grab them and say, ⁓ bro, can I pitch to you? ⁓

straight away into it. And it improved so much at the start it was quite clunky, but by the end he was like, he had this like really beautiful, really snappy, this is my purpose to help as many young people, you know, experience the season abroad, using my experience and expertise and my global network. And it’s like this whole thing just kind of dot together.

Andrew Dobbie (08:49)
And now he’s soaring with it, And it’s nice when you can kind of light that fire under someone. And I think what you’ve honed in there in terms of that kind of practice and that pitch is such an important piece. And I think, like, I remember starting my business and it’ll be the same with yours. And you’ve got to just keep trying that until you find where you get that market fit, where you get that bit of excitement and what story resonates. Yeah, definitely. I suppose going on that theme then and when we kind of find our purpose and

You know, the Simon Sinek’s a great example of, know, if you’ve not seen that, if you’ve not watched that, over to YouTube right now and search Simon Sinek Why. How did you get to your why? And, you know, was that always in you in terms of you’re clearly very creative and I’ve spent a weekend away with you in Amsterdam and, you know, I was like, wow, this guy’s super creative as well and we had a great time together. you know, has that always been in you? Is it something that’s been nurtured in your family? Is it something that you’ve had? Or is it the environment you came from?

Give us a bit of a…

Danny Campbell (09:49)
I think it’s a whole mixture of all those things. Certainly came from a very loving dynamic at home. Two brothers, that dynamic of three very different people is always very rich.

Andrew Dobbie (10:03)
And

you’re the middle child, The forgotten one. I think they’re sometimes called.

Danny Campbell (10:08)
Yeah, independent one has really told me. ⁓ So yeah, I was kind of like the independent one would often do one thing. My younger brother was very innocent, very pure as a person. My older brother incredibly musical and creative in his own way. ⁓ But my father was a very, quite a stoic man, very strong, very morally rigid, ⁓ which I think for ⁓ maybe a young…

male like I was, who had tons of energy, quite chaotic, quite like living on the fringes of like what is actually acceptable, was really good to have somebody ⁓ in authority above me who I was kind of slightly scared of. Keep me in check. Like the days I would get home from school and mum would say, you know, dad’s waiting for you in the office. I’d be like, go to the little home office and you’d be like, stand there.

Andrew Dobbie (10:50)
You check. Yeah.

⁓ no.

Danny Campbell (11:02)
and I’m waiting there he’s pretending to keep working to build the kind of tension. And then there’s some thing that I’ve done. It really helped me, think it was vital. My mom was a, she was a nurse by loving, but very kind of fiery and stuff as well. So I think that sort of those kinds of people, they always instilled in us, know, do something that you you love. Do something that is like important to you. So my older brother went into opera singing. My younger brother was a poet and an actor. And then I ended up doing, you know, architecture.

Andrew Dobbie (11:10)
Yeah.

Everyone’s like super achievers. You’ve got like a sergeant. There’s no like standards rules here. ⁓

Danny Campbell (11:37)
Well,

yeah, maybe you could put it that way, maybe that was a byproduct of the environment. There was definitely an expectation to do something which for yourself was important, which I think is then in finding your purpose becomes really relevant because I went down the route of doing architecture, which I think is a very noble profession. It’s got a lot to it. It’s very stimulating. But for me, even within that bracket felt like I needed to push the envelope. I needed to find something that I could really get my

teeth in two.

Andrew Dobbie (12:07)
I was actually going to train to be an architect, believe it or not, and then I saw how long the course was and I was like, no.

Danny Campbell (12:13)
You didn’t even get as far to how little they get paid as well. It’s a tough gig to be honest. It’s, architects get a pretty raw deal. So I didn’t, before I even knew that, I wanted to kind of like latch onto something. I love like a project. I love kind of figuring something out. So yeah, what I found was like the homeowner market. And to me, it seemed like this obvious opportunity. It’s an enormous market.

Nobody’s really looking at it because there’s a stigma. It wasn’t talked about university at all. And then in the center of all this, you’ve got something incredibly easily to attach to emotionally, which is home.

Andrew Dobbie (12:51)
Yeah. So powerful, isn’t it? Right?

Danny Campbell (12:54)
The most important piece of architecture you ever inhabit. All the most significant moments of your life happen at home. I feel homesick. I want to go home. These are powerful statements. Why is this not a bigger deal within our profession?

Andrew Dobbie (13:04)
Yeah.

Why do you think that is? there a snobbery? What is it that’s

Danny Campbell (13:14)
Yeah, I think it’s developed kind of organically. I think that the way the education system works for architects has kind of been the catalyst for it. So you do three years at university, you then go out into practice. You go into practice with no discernible skills. So the only people who can really support these young people are the much bigger practices. You then go back into study having gained experience from a bigger practice, which will typically work on bigger projects. You then work on bigger projects through your coursework.

I mean, I remember we were doing like master plans for cityscapes and stuff, you know, in our fifth year of uni. And it’s wild to think of the complexity involved in those projects, but really you can gain just as much from small projects going into more detail. You then go back into practice to gain more experience in a similar environment where you go into a big practice. And then a lot of people within construction, when they talk to each other and weigh each other up, it’s, you know, how expensive is the project you’re working on? And I felt it. I felt the kind of, the heat.

of somebody looking down the nose at me, I’m working on extensions. They’re like…

Andrew Dobbie (14:17)
⁓ and is it like an ego thing to like the bigger the project, the bigger the budget, the more important you are? Is that, is that the kind of

Danny Campbell (14:24)
think possibly, I think there’s a security in working in large professional teams. I think that people kind of understand that homeowners, by the very nature of it being their own money, they’re naive, they’ve never done it before, you’re working with smaller contractors, there’s going to be a chaos there. And the messiness makes it really unattractive. So I think it’s within that environment that it maybe attracts the wrong things associated to it. But then I was reading this book called Blue Ocean Strategy.

And by read a book, obviously I mean I listen to an audio book. No, I’m good with pictures.

Andrew Dobbie (14:57)
can’t read, can

you? I’m the same. I like colour in for a living.

Danny Campbell (15:05)
⁓ And yet in this book, it talks about examples of businesses that found what they call a blue ocean market. So a good example was circuses. So circuses are competing on bigger venue, more spectacle, lower ticket price. And then suddenly you’ve got Cirque du Soleil came in and they’re like, we’ll just take theaters. They already exist and we’re going to have acrobats. And it’s going to be pitched at a higher price point because we’re trying to make it a luxury product.

And then suddenly, boom, there’s a new market. Another really good one was Yellowtail, the wine company. So then they were like, okay, well, is ⁓ weighed on the basis of history, ⁓ the notes, it’s a snobbery, it’s high society. And then Yellowtail came in and in supermarkets with beautiful young Australians with the cork hats being like, do you want to be the cool one of your friends? Take Yellowtail. And suddenly they captured a whole new generation.

And they became this like really fast growing product.

Andrew Dobbie (16:02)
Yeah, and you’ve got a lot of the chicken wine. Do you see that chicken? There’s a lot of new kind of innovation in wine. One thing that’s always struck me with wine, I don’t know you know the answer to this or anyone knows the answer to do, is like, see when you see like whiskey come in all shapes and sizes bottles, when you see gin, they come in all shapes and sizes gin. Wine.

It’s the same bottle and I don’t know why there’s been no innovation or no creativity other than the label. And there’s obviously a lot of innovation in the label and how people market them, but they never seem to change the bottle. Yeah, that was a segue. I don’t know where we got to there, but we’re now in wine bottle change. Let’s think about this for a moment.

Danny Campbell (16:34)
That’s a funny one. Wonder what that is.

It’s

the problem we start to check is like we’re gonna finish this podcast. We’re like launching a wine brand

Andrew Dobbie (16:47)
Stranger things have happened. In terms of the architecture, I’m interested, and specifically in your story, because you’re obviously trained as an architect, and often creative businesses, they’re often led and they’re often founded by the creative person who’s usually a technician, who’s an expert at their craft, and you spend seven years training for that.

But what quite like about your story is you came straight out of there. You’ve not grown up around entrepreneurs in your family and you’ve come straight out, but you created a business where you weren’t necessarily the talent on the work. And I think you’ve jumped ahead to where a lot of people struggle in creative businesses. Cause I’ve, you know, I’ve come across a lot of them myself and obviously haven’t grown one myself is often it’s the barrier to growth, right? Because that the person that founds wants to be the talent and

they then become the bottleneck in their own business. And I love in your story that you’ve, you know, I think you, I heard you say something the other day that every great business has a technician and entrepreneur and a manager. ⁓

Danny Campbell (17:54)
Richard Branson quote by the way just in case like

Andrew Dobbie (17:57)
Yeah,

I heard you paraphrasing right. But it’s a really good insight. And I think what’s quite inspiring for me is to hear how you jump to that position very quickly, or you’ve managed to set yourself up in that way. I’m quite interested to hear, because people have heard Hoco, but it’s always interesting. How did you make the first hire? How did you go from you walking out of university, getting that degree, and turning it into an actual business that creates revenue and builds a team?

Danny Campbell (18:26)
Yeah, I think it’s a really good point. The founder led bit as well. I think for a lot of freelancers who would love to grow, you’re totally right. It’s the thing that they can’t let go of. ⁓ I was desperate to let go of it. And also I was certainly self-aware that I knew the depths of my inexperience. I knew that my naive optimism was on one hand an absolute positive, but on the other hand could bring annihilation.

And there’s a level of like social responsibility where, you know, I’m working with these people on their home. You know, I need to park my ego and make sure this gets done really, really properly. So I found my first hire who is one of the best people I’ve ever met. I was so incredibly lucky in terms of like things that happen in your life or your business life. There’s moments of like extreme luck that you look back and you’re like, wow, that could have gone totally different.

And finding Simon Martin was like the bit that came to me at the exact right time. So the way it happened was quite ⁓ fortuitous. So ⁓ I got a call from Donald Wilson, who was my business mentor at the time, like on a casual friends basis. And he said, there’s this company, ADF Architects, that are going into liquidation. Here it is on the news. He said, maybe you should get in touch with them and see if they’ve got any computers or desks or chairs and stuff. So I got onto the liquidators and said,

Have you got any people? Have you got any really good people? And they put the word out to all the staff and I got one email and it was from Simon. And I wasn’t even an architect, but at this point I was still going through my training. I remember I was doing the charge trip through the RIBA and I was down in Liverpool in the middle of a lecture and I got this call from a blank number. And I remember I went to the toilets outside the lecture hall and I was walking up and down the bathrooms talking to this guy Simon. And we arranged a meeting for when I got back.

And then he came in and we shook hands and I think straight away we were like, yeah, we’re going to get on really well because the skills that I’ve got, he doesn’t have and the skills that I don’t have, he has. And we’ve got that complete unity of purpose, but with trust and you know, I do think we would do anything for each other.

Andrew Dobbie (20:39)
And you really need that, don’t you? need those polar opposites. And sometimes I think it’s easy when you start your business to look for more of the same of yourself, your skills. We’re often attracted to people that have similar things, but you’ve caught that really early, which is really important.

Danny Campbell (20:52)
I mean, we’ve been working together for six years. I trust him completely. And it’s just amazing to see how he’s grown within the business as well. ⁓ Yeah, he’s just an incredibly hard worker, incredibly diligent, ⁓ very technically gifted, very intelligent. And these are all the skills that I don’t have. yeah.

Andrew Dobbie (21:13)
Yeah, you need to find them quite quickly. Right, so, okay, you found Simon, but you’ve not quite finished ⁓ your studies yet. You’ve got this idea in your head, I’ve got a business. ⁓ How does it go from here to there?

Danny Campbell (21:27)
So

I think it’s easier to look back on it in hindsight. The thing ⁓ that architects, like every professional service gets taught, is that an inquiry comes in. You weigh how long that’s going to take. You set a service proposal in place for the amount of time, and they can go ahead or not. Whereas I just assumed somebody wants an extension, they want an output. So there’s the price for the output. And then because we were output focused, it meant that anything that would help us save time, become more efficient, was like gold dust to us.

So we straight away started working with, know, a CRM platforms and automations and little clever bits of software that speed up the process. And that kind of link to technology has kind of been the backbone of how we work. So that when there’s a revelation like AI that comes into play, we’re like, wow, let’s get on that. There might be something in there that can save us huge amounts of time. And that kind of mental clarity on we can do better for our clients if we spend more time with them.

and if we spend more time designing. So how do you actually achieve that? It’s you take time away from other stuff. And that’s really been a superpower for us. So it’s basically been a process of innovation, testing things, loads of ideas fail, loads of ideas we’ve kept, and gradually we’ve kind of like chipped away at what the sculpture is going to be. ⁓ The way I kind of visualise Hoco actually is that it’s like a little tech company parasite.

Andrew Dobbie (22:30)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Danny Campbell (22:55)
that’s like embedded into an architect host. And it’s gradually outgrowing and it’s going to get to a certain point where it has to like, you know, emerge and spread its wings and offer something back to the industry, which is ultimately going to hopefully try and solve a problem.

Andrew Dobbie (23:11)
Yeah, and you’re not resting on what this industry has always looked like, how it’s always acted, and what I love about when we get down to sitting and chatting often, we’re often chatting a lot about AI. And it’s a big topic in all creative industries and all industries just now. And you’ve not been sitting waiting for it to happen to you. You’ve been deep in there. Do you want to talk a little bit about? Yeah.

Danny Campbell (23:33)
I

mean, the way we kind of approach bringing any sort of software intervention into the business is kind of on two kind of levels. The first one is, does it align with our purpose? Is it helping us getting closer to our ultimate goal? And if it does, then we’ll entertain it. The next thing of figuring out whether we need it is we kind of time track all the things we do. And we usually start with the biggest ones first. Some of the bits of software, they’re quite glamorous. They’re exciting, and they’re a bit gimmicky.

⁓ But if you’ve got a distinct need for something, so an example would be visualizations, right? So does creating a better visualization help us get closer to our purpose of people having a better home? And it does, you know, they need to see what they’re getting and they need to see the vision of their future home. So then it’s like, okay, when we look at how long that takes, it was probably taken as about three or four days per bundle of visuals per client.

So it’s like, well, that’s a huge amount of time that we could claw back. So we started to look at all these different options we’ve got. We found some of the kind of the best in the business. know, Amir Nouri from AI Hub. He’s an absolute, he calls himself the Harry Potter of architecture. ⁓ He’s really, really cool. And we gave him the brief and he just got stuck into it. And now we can create visuals in, you know, 30 minutes.

Andrew Dobbie (24:51)
Yeah, I like that you’re doing it on the fly now because I think that that process is really slow, isn’t it? When you’re working with an architect and you want to see a change and they’ve come out all the way, here’s a presentation. that’s not quite what I was thinking. Your team are able to do that.

Danny Campbell (25:06)
So now it’s as simple as, okay, well, ⁓ if you don’t like it in that, you know, aesthetic fingerprint, let’s try something else. And you can do-loo-loo, and then there you go. What can you do? Do-loo-loo. ⁓

Andrew Dobbie (25:18)
of your team embrace that because I know like sometimes you know in the creative industries we can hold on to our craft and you know I think you know architecture is similar to design and sometimes you know people love the I’ve trained for years to learn how to do those visualizations and they take three weeks to do and changing them now where it’s now prompt based or you know that kind of speed are the team embracing it is it something have they brought that energy to you or is it kind of you’re having to work to lead that? Yeah so

Danny Campbell (25:45)
think that the business has changed so much over the years. I think they kind of are used to getting on board with stuff. We’ve kind of really hit a stride over the last two years and everybody just buys into what we’re doing. We’ve got such a lovely culture, a great team. So when there’s like new interventions, they’re always open to trying stuff. And what I’ve seen is that each individual character within the organization takes on different parts that they find are interesting and then they get to have their voice and then the whole thing becomes.

⁓ a much richer environment where everybody’s contributing to it. And I think that’s where, when we’re talking about being purpose driven, it doesn’t necessarily just need to be the founder. If you can buy into a purpose, it can make your life so much more meaningful in your work. And then when the success is and you celebrate together, everybody’s contributed to it. ⁓ And it’s a wonderful thing. I’m always staggered by the extent of what people can achieve through human collaboration.

Andrew Dobbie (26:41)
Yeah.

Danny Campbell (26:42)
I go

into space and stuff, it’s like you can do anything. Like, let’s raise the bar.

Andrew Dobbie (26:46)
I know, it’s when you realize the world is malleable, isn’t it? And you can make stuff happen. You can just like, you get out there, and I always talk about, you know, and I think it’s kind of part of what you’re constantly doing. It’s like you put yourself in a position to get lucky. It’s just like, just keep putting yourself in places, say yes to things, and surround yourself with great people. have a big believer that like iron sharpens iron. And you have a chance to kind of like put yourself in these places. And I think, you know, it’s inspiring hearing the story of your friend, you know, when you were in Australia and like,

you know, putting people and giving people that inspiration and making these things happen is really exciting. Danny, you know, I think for you, you know, you’ve got this added, you know, part of your life now. You’re now in the public eye. You’re on BBC Home of the Year, the judge and presenter. You’ve just finished filming the second season. And I’m interested just, you know, sometimes when you watch people on TV, right? Now, I know it’s just TV and this is like we’re on a screen here, but suddenly when you see people on a screen,

it almost feels like they’re not a real person anymore, right? And I’m interested to your experience over the last couple of years and how that’s changed and what that’s brought into your life, good and bad. And also, you’ve got a lot on your plate, right? You’ve got a young family, you’re juggling a business, you’re now on TV and you’re doing all that stuff and you’ve got all this travel. There’s a lot of stress that comes behind the scenes of all these things. And you strike me as a person that’s managed to put a lot of good into your life in terms of how you…

you know, your time in sport, rugby, CrossFit and all these things. Just take us through some of that journey over the last couple of years and what it’s meant for you.

Danny Campbell (28:24)
It’s been a pretty interesting year or so, to be honest with you. ⁓ Just to be clear, I still feel like a real person, very real sometimes, too real ⁓ for myself. I think I didn’t quite realize ⁓ how that whole thing would play out. ⁓ The majority of it has been overwhelmingly good. So many people are just so lovely and so happy and thrilled. And think Scotland’s Home of the Year, it’s such a feel-good show. ⁓

low jeopardy, know, we get to go around these people’s homes, all the contributors are so brave. exactly. I I stop every like sneaking around somebody’s house, like looking at stuff. It’s exhausting though, as well as to do the show. Obviously the relationship with the other judges is really important. I think that from a working capacity, I did kind of retreat a little bit from client facing work because I think the combination of being an architect and being on the BBC,

you know, it’s quite a kind of a dangerous place to be if there’s ever conflict or problems. But that’s been managed really well by the team and stuff and they’ve kind of taken that in their stride. I think that what it kind of allowed me to kind of find for myself is that I can trust my own voice, that I do ⁓ understand what I’m talking about and I want to talk about it more. I want to like engage with this concept of home deeply because I do, you know, within my personal life and with my own thoughts in my head,

in my private time. So why shouldn’t I kind of give that back and try to open the door to those sorts of chats? But it’s totally changed my work dynamic in terms of how I spend my time, how the business has to stand up on its own two feet when I’m not there for six to eight weeks.

Andrew Dobbie (30:05)
I suppose it forces you to make sure that you don’t have to be involved for it to be a success. ⁓

Danny Campbell (30:10)
Yeah,

exactly. And actually it does better when I’m out there, where it’s just like saying something. I ⁓ think it’s a funny one. One of the things I was wondering about was ⁓ like negative criticism. Like how would I feel about that? ⁓ And I’d be quite glad that it doesn’t really bother me. I’ve had negative stuff in… ⁓

in architecture forums and stuff before. There’s one in Glasgow called Urban Realm, which is an absolute bare pit. I remember we had our first, honestly, Andrew, you should go and have a look, it’s savage.

Andrew Dobbie (30:40)
I don’t, I might be on there somewhere.

Danny Campbell (30:42)
Yeah,

are you one of the anonymous people commenting? I know it’s one of those ones where I remember when I was 26, the business had just set up. My good friend Greg did our first press release and he gave me the list of them all and I’m reading every single one. And then Urban Realm, was like, oh my God, I love Urban Realm. And I went on, this is the architecture one. And it was just like, know, savage comment after savage comment after savage comment, you know, like hope he fails, you know, who does he think he is and all that sort of stuff. And it’s funny when you’re actually faced with that, you kind of have

basically two options. Either you let it consume you and then try and fit in again, or you have to build this mental moat within yourself where you’re like, you know what, I actually believe in what I’m doing more than what this anonymous person is actually saying about me.

Andrew Dobbie (31:27)
It’s a weird thing isn’t it? I never contemplate going online to put negative energy out my heart or body to someone else but people seem to want to do it but I think we have this strange thing as human beings is like there could be a hundred comments and they’re all positive and there’s one negative and your brain attaches there and you need to almost learn to detach like you say so

Danny Campbell (31:50)
I know it’s like, don’t really, ⁓ I never give them any second thought. It’s one of those things that I was nervous about within myself before this all kind of kicked off. But I feel like I’ve never been happier. See, within my life, I feel like there’s certain things that if I do those things, I live a very content life. I wake up full of beans, smile on my face, laughing and joking, regardless of the stress that’s on in my life. And that’s doing things.

that are for my family, it’s keeping physically fit and eating healthy. And you can’t do all of it all the time. But I think as long as those three things are in place, know, nothing else really matters.

Andrew Dobbie (32:26)
Yeah, mean, you know, I’ve got a TikTok with my son Finn and, you know, our TikTok blew up last year. We’ve had about 300 million views across our video. And, you know, I’ve thought about this a lot in terms of like, because obviously my son’s been thrown into, you know, bit of the public eye with the attention that that gets. And, you know, he’s 14 now and we’ve been doing it for the last few years. And I kind of thought, you know, it’s weird because even like on our content, you’re putting out all this positive stuff, but yet these people appear, these little gremlins appear in the comments.

You know, I contemplated, is this the right thing as a parent to have him on social media to do this? what I did quite quickly with Finn was when those comments would appear, I would use it as a moment to have a conversation about them. would say, why do you think that person popped that comment? How do you think they’re feeling in life? Do you think there’s a reason? And then I would give him the choice. Should we try and delight them? Should we try and turn them into a fan? Should we delete them? Should we block them out of our life? Is that the right thing to do right now?

And you know, what do you think? And then we’d have a conversation about it. That’s really smart. You know what’s amazing now? He’s now like you in terms of it just rolls off him now. He sees them and they just float past. And so I think, yeah, I think there’s something powerful about acknowledging them, but you know.

Danny Campbell (33:40)
incredible that’s such good parenting as well that’s it’s one of those weird things where your son can never really be your best friend right they’re your son and you’re the dad it’s such a powerful bond but there’s a moment there where you can blur the line into kind of like gradually letting them into like adult world and being aware of certain things and I think to ignore it or to lead them to it is it will make the problems worse that’s if I ever had the opportunity to talk with my boys I’ll definitely do

Andrew Dobbie (34:07)
hope

it’s the right thing because I tried to but it’s definitely something they’re going to have to learn to live with, isn’t it, in terms of they’ve grown up with these things, we only got them at an age in our lives. You’ve got three young boys.

Danny Campbell (34:20)
Yeah, I had a similar moment with my oldest Teddy not too long ago. So he was overheard on his own swearing and I was asked to have a quiet word with him. So we were lying in bed and it was, we’re having a little bit of a cuddle and a laugh and a joke and he’s just so like small and like childish. And I was like, I need to have this chat with him about swearing. And it’s like, how do you deal with this conversation? Do I like tell him off or?

Do I ask him politely when he’s probably going to ignore me or like how do deal with it? So we had this chat about there’s some words that you don’t say, like grown up words, and the scenarios where you potentially might say them, because he was very quick to tell me he’d heard me say it playing rugby. ⁓ And then I had to kind of explain to him that if you ever have questions about grown up life, just come and ask me and I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you and you can ask me anything you want. And then he pulled the quilt up over his face like that and he said, there other swear words?

So at this horrible moment where I was like, well, yes, there are. And his follow up question was pretty obvious. Like, can you tell me them? So I’d kind of made a run for my own back there. So I had to quickly rattle off every single sweater I could think of. It’s amazing how quickly they come to you.

Andrew Dobbie (35:29)
Yeah.

Fuck shit, cuntbusters!

Danny Campbell (35:35)
And then I told him the deal was like, now you know, now you know not to say them.

Andrew Dobbie (35:39)
Funny thing isn’t it that there’s words that you’re not allowed to say. We swear in our family but I think we’ve kind of struck this balance where Finn knows when to say them when not to say them but not if that makes sense. But it is weird isn’t it that there’s words in our language because it’s all made up. The world is made up. Everything is made up.

Danny Campbell (35:54)
But it yeah

up.

I feel like we’re back at UpStab.

Andrew Dobbie (36:03)
Well, you know, it’s just like, it’s just like, I always, brain goes off in these weird tangents into, yeah, the world has just been created by us and its language and all of these things.

Danny Campbell (36:15)
think that’s the important thing with like entrepreneurship though. See, once you realize that none of this actually matters, like what even is consciousness? Like I was listening to this book when I was on the flight called My Big Toe by Tom Campbell, Not A Relation. And he’s like a physicist. Big Toe. He was on a Joe Rogan podcast that I listened to first. And I got the, then I read the book. I listened to it again. I listened to it about seven times because it was so hard to understand.

Andrew Dobbie (36:30)
Who’s it? My pick too, that

Danny Campbell (36:43)
And he’s got this very clear theory that we’re living in ⁓ artificial reality, which is a series of ⁓ software rules, are physics, biology, and chemistry. And then within that rule set, we as consciousness are the avatars, part of a wider consciousness. And what he’s realized is the way you kind of play the game in the same way you would control an avatar in a video game ⁓ is through kindness and love and not through fear and materialism.

And as he talks to human society, as humanity has developed and evolved, it’s been pushing towards love and kindness. And the analogy he was making was, what would you do for Finn? You would sacrifice yourself for him. You would do anything ever. But passing someone in the street, imagine if you were to treat them in the same way and then spread that across everybody. It suddenly becomes a much kind of a really kind of dynamic force for improvement.

And if that’s what consciousness is, it’s a connection of, you know, a network. ⁓ This is where I start to struggle with explaining it, but it was blowing my mind. it was basically, felt like he’d like, he felt like as an atheist physicist, they proved the existence of know, that God is love. Love, the universal consciousness is something that we will all go back to.

Andrew Dobbie (37:52)
down and have a think about this for a minute.

Danny Campbell (38:07)
So this idea of like reincarnation became relevant where you’re like a drop from the universe of consciousness that comes in and then when you die, you go back to it and then you come back again. And the reason the universe exists is to self-discover what consciousness is for.

Andrew Dobbie (38:22)
Wow. See when you start even thinking about the universe, You ever think about that? Going to the universe and you’re thinking like, that ends at some point, but if it ends and there’s a wall, what’s on the other side of the wall? I don’t know where I’m going.

Danny Campbell (38:41)
That’s the thing with the idea of like the ⁓ he had this idea that like, you know, what is before the big bang? Like it all goes back to that. But then what was before that? Like what started it? And he thinks that was the the computer starting up, you know, to be crude about it. That’s just like the simulation was starting.

Andrew Dobbie (38:46)
Yeah, I know, yeah.

It’s just humans were just inherently made to create stories, aren’t we? And I think that’s it, isn’t it? It’s like all of this is just built around stories that we create and we can shape and we can make. I think it’s back to kind of you can create your own story whichever way you want and you can change it as well. You can decide at this moment I’m going to change my story.

Danny Campbell (39:22)
It’s like when somebody says this feels like a movie. ⁓ It’s like, right, well, what’s the next scene? Let’s do some main character shit. Let’s do something cool.

Andrew Dobbie (39:29)
And that’s the opportunity. So I suppose on that point then, what’s the next part of your story? Where does Hoco go next? Where does Danny go next?

Danny Campbell (39:38)
So

we’ve got the businesses at a really interesting point in its journey so ⁓ We scaled up quite rapidly and then we were covering most of the UK and then we kind of brought it back down because the thing was like, know, rattling and shaking like crazy and we had to get our foundation right

Andrew Dobbie (39:54)
Let’s talk us through that a little bit because that’s, you know, it’s easy to glance over these bits, right? And it’s easy for people listening to, you know, Danny and hearing all the success that you’ve had. But those moments, those little moments in business when stuff doesn’t go right, because it’s not always easy and it’s not always within our control. You know, what has that felt like for you? Yeah.

Danny Campbell (40:13)
I’ll tell you through what actually happened then. It was incredibly exciting but traumatic and brutal at the same time. Basically, the situation we found ourselves in was that I was doing all the design and all the sales and Simon was producing all the documentation and the technical stuff. And because we were both doing 100 % of what we should be doing, we found that we could really outperform a lot of our competitors. We started winning loads of projects, started getting recognition. And they were like, right, let’s scale this up.

more Dannys and more Simons and we brought on more architects and we kind of hit COVID and came out of COVID then there was really good employment schemes for getting graduates and we were like, yeah, let’s, we’ve got unlimited holiday. We’ve got this like carefree kind of hippie culture. We could like get all these young people, young creative professional folks and create a culture where we’re all striving for that purpose. So then we very quickly had architects, you know, ⁓

I think we were at 12 architects at one point, a team of about 35. ⁓ We were in London, Bristol, Brighton up to Inverness and everywhere in between. And we were winning loads of projects. what we found was that as we grew, the overhead grew. ⁓ Probably the pressure on me from other people kind of affected my decision making. I think it’s one of the things ⁓ that is a huge trap.

for young business people who start to grow, which is the conversation of, how many people have you got now? And then every time they’re like, how many people have you got now? As if it’s some marker of progress. And it’s really not, it’s an ego trap and it’s, over hiring is probably one of the biggest causes for businesses failing. And I kind of, this is a natural thing to grow your team and you think the thing will do better. But we end up in a situation where the margins were getting super, super tight.

Andrew Dobbie (41:49)
The weird one is.

Danny Campbell (42:08)
There was this huge overhead at the start of every month, more pressure, more stress, a young team, everyone wants to have fun. ⁓ And it just was wobbling. And we did really well to survive that, to be honest. ⁓ And we came out the other side of it. gradually, naturally, with hiring younger people as well, was that a year or two years, they’re ready to try something new. So it happened really nicely organically as the kind of business developed and kind of shrunk back to what was

a really healthy size. now we’re 10 people. We’re actually in the same turnovers we did with three times the staff. And the efficiencies are so much better and the stress is like 1 % of what it was before.

Andrew Dobbie (42:49)
much more enjoyable for everyone, much more sustainable.

Danny Campbell (42:52)
But

the biggest lesson I learned through all of that was ⁓ about ego. ⁓ Ego, especially male ego, is the biggest trap you can fall into, in my opinion, in your life generally. So long as you’re doing things that are created around your egotistical mindset, they’re going to be the wrong thing. You need to do things for the right reasons. Do you go to the gym because you want to show off?

you know, your body or what you can lift and, you know, promote yourself in that way. ⁓ I think if that’s linked to ego rather than, know, your health or the positive reasons for you doing it, you know, you’re probably going to end up in an unhealthy situation mentally. ⁓ so it’s all about kind of getting that balance and doing things for other people. And do know what? That was one of the messages of that. My big tool book was see, I don’t know why it’s called that. I don’t know why, but it’s this whole idea of,

Andrew Dobbie (43:40)
I just love the name of that book.

Danny Campbell (43:47)
See if you do something for materialism or through fear, you can maybe get kind of far, you can maybe get some advantages here and there. But if you do stuff through kindness, people give it back to you and you feel good about it as well. And as soon as you start doing that, it multiplies incredibly quickly and then you can make serious progress.

Andrew Dobbie (44:05)
Yeah, I know. think I think it’s I’ve fallen into the same trap, you know, growing a business. I’ve definitely found myself when I was younger talking about team size and those things. And I think when you manage to shake it off, like you say, it’s so much more fulfilling. Yeah, absolutely. realize for everyone around you. And I think during the pandemic, actually, you when you talk about giving back, I remember like in the pandemic, it’s obviously very stressful for anyone running a business. And I had a big, big team at that time. And, you know,

Over a few days, we had all of our clients phoning up, canceling every film shoot, and I was looking at, well, revenue, and all these things were disappearing. And I remember my creative director, ⁓ Stephen, saying to me, because I remember I was out for dinner with a friend, and I tears in my eyes. I thought, is all going away, and we’re losing our whole business. And our purpose at Made Brave has always been inspire creativity in everyone around you. And Stephen said, Andrew, this is a moment where let’s

dig into her purpose. And you you talked today earlier about Simon Sinek and why, and it sounds, it can sound kind of fluffy to talk about purpose. And, in that moment I thought, you know, I’m going to do that. And you know, I went online and I said, look, I’m going to create a community for everyone in the creative industries. And we had 4,000 people join in a week. And I gave so much of my time away to say, look, I’m going to help people. you know, when you put that energy out and you give, and it’s like, you say, if you

Coming to the world with kindness and niceness and every situation into like, what can I give you rather than what can I take? I’ve found personally, it comes back tenfold and you feel much more fulfilled along that journey.

Danny Campbell (45:42)
That’s where the power is. That’s where the power is in life story, I think. I think we all kind of forget that hopefully at some point we’ll be really old and on our deathbed and reflecting on stuff. But I think that’s where real power is found is in kindness and seeing other people’s humanity. ⁓ But yeah, it’s funny. People don’t maybe understand that until they go through a period of extreme stress. ⁓ I don’t think I had a breakdown, but I had like a significant…

life altering moment where I just got rid of all my stuff. That’s why I wear Crocs. You know, that’s where it started. Like years ago, I was like, I had a nice like Jaguar F-Pace and the like things were doing well. I had this big team and I felt, you know, really good about myself, like externally. Inside I was panicking, like seriously panicking. I was anxious. I was like, there’s public shaming on the horizon. All these people that I employ and their families are going to be so disappointed in me when this goes down.

the the stakeholders, the whole lot. And suddenly you see all these faces of people that you’re responsible for. And I was like, right, I’m getting rid of the car, I’m getting a smart car. I’m getting rid of like all the materialistic stuff that I own. I’m completely in pursuit of my North Star, which is, you know, the business purpose at that point in time. And the things that help me do that are, you know, keeping my physical and mental health, which I find through being good to my family and stuff as well. And then…

I got rid of literally all my clothes and stuff as well and I had a pair of Crocs left and I was kicking around wearing them and I was going to meetings with them and it started off as this ⁓ like a joke. And I was like, do know what? It really doesn’t matter like what you have or what you wear.

Andrew Dobbie (47:23)
Then it becomes a thing, It’s like brand identity 101. It’s become my thing. I used it in intro today. mean, how does it work when it rains?

Danny Campbell (47:31)
Yeah, just take your socks off and put them in your pocket, it’s like pretty functional.

Andrew Dobbie (47:35)
Well Danny, it’s been an absolute delight and you know thanks I think it’s a nice way to end on putting a bit kindness into the world and kind of remembering to leave our egos behind. So yeah thanks for all the positivity and thanks for sharing today and yeah it’s been really nice and we’ll probably just jump back in the car now to the social. All right we’ll see you in the next episode. Thanks so much.

Danny Campbell (47:56)
Pleasure, thanks, happy.