Designing a Life That Fuels Creativity w/ Mo Said | Ep 408
Episode
75 min
Read time
2 min
Topics
Productivity, Startups, Fundraising & VC
AI-Generated Summary
Key Takeaways
- ✓Starting with constraints: Saied launched his agency as a senior copywriter earning $85k, securing one $60k client first, then mapping backup plans (bartending, weed delivery) to eliminate fear. He advises throwing paper balls at wastebaskets—set small goals, achieve them, move the basket forward, repeat.
- ✓Becoming interesting through action: Chase what interests you in 30-day sprints rather than five-year plans. Saied writes letters to his 80-year-old self to identify skills and memories worth building now (piano, running, jiu-jitsu). Interesting people accumulate stories through good trouble and misadventures, not posturing.
- ✓Pitching with radical transparency: Win clients by solving their business problem first, then presenting creative solutions with genuine enthusiasm. Saied tells clients directly: "If you leave halfway through, I go out of business—you're one of 900 clients to other agencies." People buy the person, not just the deck.
- ✓Creative-business integration: The internal war between creative and business personas creates anxiety. Saied resolved this by learning business through biographies and Tony Robbins courses, realizing both sides must respect each other. Structure fuels creativity—knowing what you want is 95% of success, then building systems to achieve it.
- ✓AI advantage for creatives: In an AI-enabled world, imagination and taste become the only differentiators. Saied predicts top creatives will earn "LeBron money" because 60% of job tasks (not jobs) get automated, freeing creatives to focus on vision and judgment while AI handles execution like explosions or band arrangements.
What It Covers
Moe Saied, founder of 80-person agency Mojo Supermarket, explains how interesting work comes from interesting people living interesting lives, covering creative entrepreneurship, pitching Fortune 500 clients, and thriving in an AI-enabled creative economy.
Key Questions Answered
- •Starting with constraints: Saied launched his agency as a senior copywriter earning $85k, securing one $60k client first, then mapping backup plans (bartending, weed delivery) to eliminate fear. He advises throwing paper balls at wastebaskets—set small goals, achieve them, move the basket forward, repeat.
- •Becoming interesting through action: Chase what interests you in 30-day sprints rather than five-year plans. Saied writes letters to his 80-year-old self to identify skills and memories worth building now (piano, running, jiu-jitsu). Interesting people accumulate stories through good trouble and misadventures, not posturing.
- •Pitching with radical transparency: Win clients by solving their business problem first, then presenting creative solutions with genuine enthusiasm. Saied tells clients directly: "If you leave halfway through, I go out of business—you're one of 900 clients to other agencies." People buy the person, not just the deck.
- •Creative-business integration: The internal war between creative and business personas creates anxiety. Saied resolved this by learning business through biographies and Tony Robbins courses, realizing both sides must respect each other. Structure fuels creativity—knowing what you want is 95% of success, then building systems to achieve it.
- •AI advantage for creatives: In an AI-enabled world, imagination and taste become the only differentiators. Saied predicts top creatives will earn "LeBron money" because 60% of job tasks (not jobs) get automated, freeing creatives to focus on vision and judgment while AI handles execution like explosions or band arrangements.
Notable Moment
During a pitch, the client revealed they overheard Saied's coffee shop conversation about testing their intelligence. Instead of apologizing, Saied confronted them: you're testing me through this pitch, I'm testing you too. He then delivered an exceptional presentation, turning potential disaster into mutual respect.
Episode Transcript
Today's guest possibly is the world's most interesting man. He reminds me of a campaign, a classic campaign for you advertising nut jobs aficionados of the Dos Equi campaign, and it was the world's most interesting man. And some of the lines on it were so funny, and I just thought it was appropriate to mention them as we kind of lead into our guest today. So the campaign's like, he once had an awkward moment just to see how it feels. And if he were to punch you in the face, you would have to fight off a strong urge to thank him. Sharks have a week dedicated to him. His only regret is not knowing what regret feels like, and that's what it's like to have the most interesting man. And my guest today, Moe Saeed, is talking about this idea about creating a life and business that is interesting. My name is Moe Saeed, and you're listening to the future. I love this line that he wrote, because interesting work and interesting companies come from interesting people living interesting lives. Welcome to the podcast, Moe. How are you? Thank you very much, man. I'm so excited to be here. I'm very, very well. There's a lot of interesting in that sentence, but it's true. I love that. It's just like I love repetition. There's something delightful to see words used over and over again. It makes us super hooky. Before we jump into it, I would love for you to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit of your backstory, and then we have these big five big ideas we wanna touch on. My name is Moe Saeed. I am the founder and creative director of an agency called Mojo Supermarket. It's a mid sized creative agency, and we work with a lot of Fortune 500 brands. I've had this for six and seven years. I'm originally from Pakistan. I moved to The US, went to Michigan State, and then I ended up in New York. I worked in agencies for six years, and then I ended up while quite low on the totem pole, just starting my own to see what that was like, and that's grown into this eighty, ninety person company that we have today. Wow. That's no small company now. What kind of creative agency is this? What is it that you actually do? We figure out the brand strategy all the way from creative campaigns, and then we make those campaigns for like, we do it for TikTok. We do it for Pinterest. We do it for Lululemon. We do it for Rivian, the car company. We do it for Chase, the bank, Chime, the banking app. Savage Fenty, we've done work for we've done for Adidas was our first client. That style of company. Oh, small companies you never heard of. Small companies. Yeah. Small businesses. Hold on. I mean, people are listening to this. Like, wait a minute. When …
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