A short bonus episode showcasing a few stand out moments from this week's guest interview with Rachel Gogel ~ 

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[00:00:00] Hey, welcome to 2026. Happy New Year. Hope you are well. Hope you had a great holiday. Hope you're have enough. Still chilling and enjoying these mince pies and beer and all of the naughtiness that comes with, taking time off before we all go back in. So this is another bonus episode of the Dare and Creative Youth Podcast, the first one of 2026, and I'm back to unpack some of the gems from this week's conversation.

Pulling out those moments that deserve a second look, and digging deeper in what makes them special. This week I spoke to Rachel Gogel, an independent design executive, and devoted generalist who's built her career on embracing discomfort, creating her own path without waiting for permission.

 The episode that was published a few days ago was titled Dare to Embrace the Messy Process of Creative Growth, and Rachel challenged a narrative that designers must specialize. She was reasoning for conviction and the power of being adaptable in navigating rapid technological [00:01:00] and social change.

 if you haven't checked out a full interview yet, let me start with these four moments that stood out from our conversation.

I guess it's interesting 'cause what came up for me as you were talking was that I see myself as an early observer, not necessarily an ear early adopter. And what I mean by that is I.

Rachel: I have always felt like I'm close to what's happening in culture. no matter you know, I mean, I live near Silicon Valley now, but I was in New York when I was working in publishing and I felt like I was close to or in the heartbeat of what was happening in publishing at the time, which was Interactive print, which now feels like an old dated thing.

But, it's when, a lot of the iPads were figuring out how to bring magazines, to life. And it can get really overwhelming when you see new things happening in culture and then you figuring out where and how you wanna get involved with it. What, what is your opinion on it? [00:02:00] how do you wanna use it?

 of course we couldn't avoid talking about ai, and I love that rage made this distinction when talking about a relationship with AI and new technologies.

Explaining that while she lives near Silicon Valley and is exposed to constant innovation, she's intentional about where and how she engages with new tools. She fundamentally challenged the text industry obsession about being first. In creative fields especially, there's enormous pressures to adopt every new tool platform, all technology.

The moment in launches is driven by the fear of IRRs, fomo, obviously, and the misconception that early adoption equals competitive advantage. However, Rachel's reframing is powerful because it validates a more sustainable, thoughtful approach. Being an observer doesn't mean you're being a passive or ignorant.

It means developing informed opinions without burnout of constant experimentation. It's [00:03:00] about strategic awareness over reactive adoption. This distinction is particularly relevant now during the AI boom where creatives are drowning in new tools, launching daily. Rachel's approach offers permission to curate your consumption to decide where and how you want to get involved.

Rather than feeling obliged to try everything, it acknowledges that you can maintain cultural awareness or professional relevance without sacrificing your time, energy, or mental health to the hamster wheel of endless tool testing side. It'd be absolutely fair to say that this reveals a mature, creative leadership.

The COVID is to say, I figure out what feels right for me in the moment, rather than letting external trends dictate internal practice, its conviction over conformity.

Rachel: I'm a big believer in karma related to relationships and really approaching them with kind of genuine, empathy and curiosity and [00:04:00] really just trying to help others because you really never know. And it really has served me every job that I have had truly has been through relationships, whether that's a former colleague, someone I met for coffee, I guess at this point in my career, maybe some referrals.

So someone who then, shares my information and what I do. And it really, I would say out of anything or any advice I would give to anyone is just making more time for relationships. And almost back to this idea that, that it's so noisy right now that people are, spending a lot of times on their phones or like,getting distracted really easily.

Just remember, again, some of the basics, which is just the more you're able to spend time towards building relationships and trust it really, can change your life.  

It's been mentioned throughout podcast so many times [00:05:00] with people who have built longevity in their careers, which wasn't built on cold calling in cold emails. Lead generation aggregates. It was real relationships. It was real humility. And in Rachel's case, she almost unknowingly started a job list, a creative job list, which she ran unpaid for years.

Organically building a network that led to every major opportunity in her career, including some of the major roles, In this moment, Rachel isn't talking about strategic relationship building or networking for success.

 She was describing genuine curiosity with her expectation of return and then marveling how the universe rewarded that generosity. If there's anything I'm personally advocating is the lack of expectations. How many times we need to fix something real quick, and we are hoping it will go real quick, change our fortunes.

But every [00:06:00] seed is a plant to grow. And in Rachel's case, the word karma is very crucial because it acknowledges something really mystical. Something beyond the cause and effect calculations. You can't game genuine generosity. You can't strategically help people just enough to get referrals later.

 The magic only works when your motivation is pure, when you truly want just to connect people and help them succeed. this moment speaks to the long game. The newsletter that she's creating didn't bring immediate return on her in time investment. It was the seed planted in good faith that sprouted years down the line.

Most people won't invest into relationships that might pay off later, if ever, and that's exactly why this approach is so powerful and so rare.

Rachel: Spread optimism and then create impact while making a living. So it's what's been interesting is I, no longer think about climbing the corporate [00:07:00] ladder. I really think about success as to your point, not necessarily scaling up. And that growth doesn't always mean expansion. Like I can be a successful solopreneur and kind of define what those rules should look like.

So I'm very selective in where and how my time is spent. And I think obviously I can't ignore, I live in one of the most expensive cities in the world and my wife is also self-employed and a comics creator and works with a lot of nonprofits. 

in our conversation. I had to pay my compliments to Rachel's reframing of success. It made me think differently, and I hope if you check out a conversation that it will make you think differently about the way we can think about success. Because to me it was about just potentially like, Hey, if I don't have to go back to my old shitty job.

It wasn't too bad, by the way, but I'm thinking, I wasn't in charge of my growth and I [00:08:00] was only in my job for two and a half years out of the last 25, but I still see every day as not needing to go back to the previous step as a success. But In Rachel's case, she shared how she redefines success as harmonious blend of consulting, mentoring, teaching, speaking, and advocacy, deliberately remaining small while creating meaningful impact. And a absolutely ador her because.

This moment rejects the fundamental assumption underlying most creative advice. That success mean upward mobility team growth and scaling. And the Silicon Valley was mentioned quite a few times in this conversation because she lives on the edge of the relentless pressure towards bigger and better.

More employees, more clients, more revenue, more everything. And the Rachel Case, she no longer think about climbing. this isn't a, a defeatist resignation. It's [00:09:00] a liberated rejection. She's not saying that she's failed to climb. She's saying that she stopped valuing the climb itself. and this is so profound because it requires unlearning decades of cultural programming about professional success.

Looks like. Growth doesn't always mean expansion challenges, and the part when she says the growth doesn't always mean expansion, challenges the business orthodoxy. That equates success with scale for solopreneurs and small creative practices. This is a permission giving language.

 You don't have to build an agency. You don't have to 10 x anything. you can remain intentionally small while still growing in depth, expertise, impact, and income. This matters enormously for creators of fuel trap between a corporate ladder and a startup grind, and Rachel proves that as a third path, deliberately small, deeply meaningful, self-defined practice that prioritizes impact of empire [00:10:00] building. It's a success measured by fulfillment and contribution rather than headcount and valuation.

 In an era where everyone's supposed to have a side hustle, that becomes a startup, that goes to an exit. Rachel's contentment the solo practitioner is quietly radical.

Rachel: When you think like that, it means that you haven't really had like a traumatic event happen to you, that you're, like, you think that you even have time to do something meaningful after your mid forties, and that that's the time when you're gonna, fulfill your mission or whatever it is. And so why wait, I guess?

 I think it comes from a, a huge place of privilege to think that you're gonna even be alive by the time you're in your mid forties. And I don't know. There's, there's something that has happened to me that I can't unsee or forget easily. And I do think that a lot of people, if they weren't directly affected by COVID, and that was obviously a big, big traumatic event and [00:11:00] it changed a lot of people's lives, but now I'm, I'm noticing that more people are like, get just getting back to whatever quote unquote normal and forgetting that that happened.

And I, I just want people to remember that. Time is a luxury and, to be, I guess just being more conscious of where your time is going and your energy is going, and make sure that you're, you're spending it on the right things because you really never know what could happen. so yeah, that's, it is just something I think about a lot, maybe more than your average person. 

 as you could tell from the message so far, this is all about time. It's all about justifying the right decisions and spending time and energy in the right places.

' cause Rachel shared with me discussing her chronic health conditions, experiences with loss, and observing how people post COVID now are reverting to all patterns. Forgetting the fragility. They once acknowledge she challenges the fire, [00:12:00] which stands for FIRE.

Financial independence retire early and it's a mentality coming off as a privilege of assuming that you'll live long enough to enjoy that deferred life. In this moment, she was cutting through the existential heart of creative life.

 While everyone talks about time management or work life balance. Ratio goes deeper. time itself is the ultimate privilege, the foundational resource we take for granted until we can't. The moment when she talks about time is a luxury. Reframes the entire relationship with work.

 If time is luxury, then spending it on meaningless work isn't just inefficient. It's a tragic waste of your most precious resource. And this transformed career decisions from practical considerations like what pays well to profound new ones. What does those might limited time on earth? You really never know.

What could happen is pessimistic, is realistic. Acknowledgement of lies', [00:13:00] fragility. Rachel speaks from experience. Health conditions, loss, trauma. These aren't abstract possibilities. They are her lived reality, and the reality makes a impatient with deferring, living with the idea that you'll do meaningful work later, that you'll pursue your dreams when circumstances are better.

that will take your creative risks once you more established This last moment summarizes the motion of daring creativity, daring, forever. As you know, daring in this case isn't doing something stupid, something crazy.

 It's actually daring to choose what you want to have, how you want to live, what you want to create, and how you want to decide your life. Because we can choose our lives right here and now. No one can stand in our way if you really want to pursue what you want. So. I'm really thankful for Rachel's insights because they really reframe the mind of the modern creative of what we can be and how we can do, and how we can challenge the old stereotypes and build new world. Thank you for joining [00:14:00] me on the first bonus episode of 2026, and I hope to see you on the next one.