What Happens When You Get Curious with Tiffany Pratt

Tiffany Pratt has built a career out of one simple belief: that curiosity is the most powerful creative tool you have. And that most of us stopped giving ourselves permission to use it a long time ago.

In this episode Kirsten talks to Tiffany, artist, designer, and brand storyteller, about what it actually looks like to build a business from a place of joy. How she has moved through interior design, television, product development, and brand work without waiting for perfect conditions or the right budget. And why the willingness to just try something, to move things around, to see what happens, is not a personality trait. It is a practice.

This one will make you want to go make something.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to Field Trip Marketing, the podcast, a podcast which is all about looking at marketing differently. I'm Kirsten, a marketing coach and consultant, the host, and the idea behind this show is simple. Each season I'm gonna pick something worth exploring, and we'll go on a field trip together. Different angles, interesting conversations, and one big question. What does this mean for how you build your business and show up in your marketing? This season, our field trip is all about joy, and I think it's gonna change how you see everything. I can't wait to get started. Thank you for being here. When I was thinking about who I would love to interview on this podcast, I kept coming back to this person who you're gonna meet in a minute. She is somebody who I think of as a creative, magical unicorn. She's an artist, she's a designer, she's a creative force, she is an amazing marketer. And I think you are going to love hearing our conversation today. So without further ado, let's get into things. And you're gonna meet Tiffany Pratt in just a moment. Okay, so as I mentioned, I am so excited to introduce you to my guest today, Tiffany. As I let everybody know in the intro, she was actually the first person I consulted when I had this idea, this crazy idea, or so I thought, about going on a field trip with marketing. And she convinced me this was not a crazy idea. So I wanted to bring her as my very first guest on this podcast. So, Tiffany, welcome.

SPEAKER_00 1:39

Thank you for having me. I'm so happy to be here. And I want to say there are no bad ideas. There's always only ever good ideas.

SPEAKER_01 1:47

I love that. And your encouragement as I've been on this field trip, on this mythical bus, has just been so positive and has honestly made me believe this could be something. But I don't want to talk about me. I want to talk about you because you are like this magical unicorn for me. So for anyone that doesn't know of you, know of Tiffany Pratt, can you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do and just let it flow?

SPEAKER_00 2:18

I think that that last piece of advice is the most important, which is letting it flow. We as humans love to get caught up in titles and what we are. And I think everybody is a lot of things, and we're all comprised of many things. So I've hung many shingles, I've worn many hats, and I would say, as people would know me, it would be through different vehicles. So I've done creative direction work, I've done artwork, I've been an entrepreneur for 18 years, had my own shingle doing product design, I've done interior design, commercial design. I've been on television. I did television and have continued to do television for over a decade. Wrote a book, authored a book, still writing, still write every day. And so I think the best way people would know me is as a creative person who activates in the world in lots of creative ways. And I think as of maybe the last, I definitely would say for the last eight years, one of the greatest joys of my work has been being able to talk and do, and that's actually how we originally met was being able to talk to your woman's group. And I love to inspire and empower people in the creative world because it does scare a lot of people, and it is not an easy linear road. And so I think that that's been the one thing that I take the most delight in is being able to talk to people, consult people, like our consultation that we did. I do consultation work all the time, really digging in with people about their creative ideas. And hopefully you found your experience with me was just that. It really lifted you up versus making you feel like, you know, this isn't possible. And I, there are no bad ideas in my world. I try everything myself and I implore other people to do the same.

SPEAKER_01 4:05

Yeah, I mean, there's just so many directions. I would love to go, but I I really loved what you just said about your own journey, right? You've been a creative director, you've written a book, you've been an entrepreneur for 18 years. And I think that it's such an important message that it's okay to change, it's okay to evolve. And in a way, it they're all building blocks, making you who you are. And, you know, oftentimes with some of the women that I've worked with, there's this fear about like, well, people know me in this way. I can't be that. Well, why not? Why can't you be that? So I just love that. And yeah, you you entered the room for this event series. It was called Gather Society, and it was all about bringing women in business together in Toronto, and you were one of our speakers, a very corporate place, the Toronto Dominion Bank Tower. And I just remember you entering the room with your pink hair, and you had on this spectacular, like lime green, satiny, silky dress, and you brought bags of like joy with you. And I don't know how to describe it. Do you remember you brought these like little joy bags?

SPEAKER_00 5:23

My business cards. So back in now, this is right as I was hanging my shingle as a creative person for hire after I had finished when I first moved to Toronto. I had opened up my own art studio and I was facilitating all different art experiences for children and adults. And then that business happened to change into product design because the physical space was being bought out by the landlord company. So then I started into making products for children. And when I got out of that after years of just really heavy in the toy industry and working on product design, I hung my shingle as myself, but I was still bringing all those elements of joy and play from children. And I thought of what is a business card that would be interesting and interactive, that people could get a sense of who I was from just this one piece of something. So at that time, now this is over a decade ago, I found these tiny little Ziploc bags at the dollar store in mass, and I had a business card cut to fit inside the bag perfectly. And then I filled the bag full of glitter and sequins and all sorts of weird things. In the past, I've done gems. This current incarnation has worry dolls in them, but I that's what I passed out. I passed out and so I found these cards, they came back. They they they had a comeback event for the your event because I had had a bunch of them sort of unstuffed and I had retired them for almost eight years because at the time I passed them out for about two years and they become very polarizing for people. And I would have some customers say, I don't want to open this up, I don't want glitter here, I don't like glitter, I can't read your details through the bag. A lot of complaints. So I started to become a little bit more mainstream with my business cards. And so last year, just before the Gather Society event, I was cleaning out my basement and I found them. And it was a really fun reminder for me to go backwards in order to go forwards. Is that, you know, we're talking about ideas here and how ideas form. And at the time, that idea felt so alive and real and fun for me. And I let the world kind of squish that down and tell me it wasn't functional. And so it was a reminder for me last year to say, you know, all your ideas and all these crazy things that are you are still applicable. So there I was last year stuffing X amount of bags, and I passed them out to all your patrons. And yes, it was a labor of love to stuff, I don't know, was it like a hundred little bags or bags? But it was fun for people to receive them. And it's not transactional when it's a bag of glitter and worry dolls. It doesn't feel like a business plan and a business person trying to sell you their wares. It's it feels like a person who made this thing for you, which was the idea.

SPEAKER_01 8:16

Yeah, no, I mean, it went over really well. And I think there's probably still glitter on the floor in the TD tower, which probably it needs a little bit of glitter, I'm gonna be honest. What I noticed as well, it transformed the energy of the realm. And I think it really reminded people, you know, that it's okay to play. It's okay to create. And everybody has their own definition of what play and being creative looks like. And I think sometimes when we hear those words, we get so hung up on a definition that it can only look one way. Well, go and create what you want to create. So you've spent your whole career, all iterations of it, making things feel really magical. Were you always like this as a child? Speaking of childhood.

SPEAKER_00 9:05

Yeah, I mean, if you talk to my mom, she'll tell you I've, you know, definitely came out and I was, I wanted to create. I wasn't uh the kid who wanted toys. I was the kid who wanted paper products and staplers and paints, and I wanted, and I don't know, can I swear on this podcast? Yeah, for sure. I call it fucking with shit. I just wanted to fuck with shit. I just wanted to cut things, I wanted to modify, and I was my mom will still regale anybody with stories of I was designing my own clothes at four, telling her exactly what I wanted to wear. So I had her make me these custom I wanted white walking shorts, and they needed to have pockets and they needed to be a certain length. So I think as in my mother, the joy of my mother and who I've always been is that my mom is also a creative person. She never hung her shingle as a creative person, but my mom is wildly talented and very creative. And so because she is who she is, she never squished my ideas or told me no. She just let me go. She never controlled it, she never really didn't also like go nuts and try to put me in art school and force me to be anything either. She just let me go. And I think that I've have and always will be a self-directed person. Even as a child, I was very self-directed. I knew what I liked. I I was always interested in colors and textures and experimentation. And I didn't know other than fashion, because fashion spoke to me first. Other than fashion, uh that was my first love. And so I would say if little Tiffany was here talking to you, little Tiffany was looking at Vogue magazines before I was in the double digits and really connecting to Jeannie Becker, fashion television, and witnessing the creative life. So do you see it as magical? I'm grateful for that. I do believe in magic. I do think that magic exists. And I think that my as I've gotten older, what I've learned about myself from childhood to now is that you don't need to be anything, you don't need to go to school for a certain thing, you don't need to be particularly good at something, you don't need to be a pro. You just need to have a point of view and you need to love it. And there needs to be a purpose behind what you're doing that will always keep you going. So for me, the purpose that I've always secretly had was using what I had and making it my way. Because as a child, I didn't grow up with we didn't have lots of money. I had there was no privilege, there was no, there was, this is all we have, and make it work. And so I would use my my mom had all sorts of crazy clothes, and she would get hand-me-downs. My I'm I'm one of three sisters. So the clothes thing became a pool of stuff. And then I learned how to assimilate what we had between my mom's clothes and my sister's clothes to make my own style, not because I needed to buy it, but because I made it. I made it my style because it's what we had. And then I started to really get excited by this idea of using what we have in every capacity, because it became a challenge and a fun creative challenge for me in everything I've ever done. And I think that that's why I've succeeded in all my different avenues, is because I'm not interested in having a perfect environment and the biggest budget and the most perfect supplies. I am happy to meet a set, a budget, a family, a home, a circumstance where they're at and help them make magic with what they have.

SPEAKER_01 12:58

I love that. And, you know, I am familiar with some of your more physical projects. Like I'm thinking about Robert Street Cookies, the cookie caravan, Lazy Daisy's Cafe, the patio refresh, and the work that you did inside there, it just completely transformed. So when you take on projects, does your gut tell you that it's the right project to take on?

SPEAKER_00 13:22

Well, with I'll use Lazy Daisies as a great example because Lazy Daisies is roughly in my neighborhood. I'm in East Ender in Toronto. And back when Lazy Daisies first opened, my then boyfriend was a foodie, and he's like, oh my God, I discovered the greatest breakfast sandwiches. And I've been, long before Don, who owns the place, knew who I was, a devotee to these godforsaking breakfast sandwiches. So I was always going in there, and when my I had a staff of people at one point and I'd do morning meetings, it was a mainstay for all of us to have our meetings, eating breakfast sandwiches at my work table. So Lazy Daisies was a part of my world without her really knowing. I was introduced to Dawn specifically because that Girard Street strip really inspires me, and I've done work on the Food Network, and the Food Network asked me, what neighborhood do I eat in? So I did a Food Network tour of Gerard Street, where she's located, and showed not just some of my favorite Indian food restaurants and grocers, but also Lazy Daisies because I love her the way that she cooks, everything is locally sourced, made by hand, and that really made me happy even then. And this is a decade ago. So Dawn became familiar with me as a designer, as a patron of her restaurant, and I was familiar with all the touch points of her business from a customer perspective. So when it came to Dawn approaching me to help her with her business during COVID, it wasn't as an outsider person who was new to her business, it was as a customer that truly understood herself and her product. So when Dawn and I first had our initial, you know, five-hour consultation, I told her she has to start all over again. We I said, you need a new logo. We need a new logo, we need the whole place needs to be reconfigured on how you use the space. And we talked about colors and how color has a lot of a big part to play. In Dawn's eyes, the story was always about her family's farm. So her logo has a cow on it. But I kept trying to explain to her that when you put a cow on something, it feels like a dairy. People wouldn't necessarily look at you as like this kit hip cool restaurant. So because the cow's name was Lazy Daisies, my inspiration was to lean on the daisies because anybody of any age could really connect to that iconography. So I'm explaining all of this because my work with Dawn scared the shit out of her because working with me meant starting again, but it also meant a way for a place that's been there for years to be witnessed in a new perspective that drove a whole bunch of new traffic to her because it seemed so fresh and new. The space itself, the logo, the way things were presented. I worked on, you know, what plates she used. When I get hired to do a project, I don't stop at just the space. For me, it's like the way the menu looks, what materials we're using here, what people are wearing. I told Don, I said, Don, you should never be seen without wearing daisies. So I got her on a tirade looking for all daisy clothes, daisy earrings, because she's the lazy Daisies lady. So um that story she truly is. Now she's owning the brand. Before she was kind of running under the radar, and I explained to her, you're gonna sell these biscuits in grocery stores. You want to be out there with the people, you have to be your brand. That is just a small example of somebody who was in business and did trust my process. And then we did her outdoor patio, and the beat goes on. Anytime Dawn's doing anything that requires any sort of creative visioning, I'm definitely in her artillery. And that's the kind of relationships I build with my clients, which is about let's talk about what you want to do, let's talk about where you're at, let's talk about what the what you want to accomplish. And then we find our way there creatively while staying the course creatively. Because when a brand or a restaurant or a person or a product has a very clear point of view, people really respond to that.

SPEAKER_01 17:41

Yeah, no, absolutely. And it's so funny. I'm smiling because at the time when you entered Dawn's world in this way, I was doing her social media content. Oh, I didn't know that. You didn't know that. And so I very distinctly remember, Tiffany, Dawn, we would have our monthly strategy meetings, and she's like, something crazy's coming. I'm gonna shut down the cafe. And at the time it was during COVID, and I was like, oh, like, and she's like, I'm gonna completely redesign the space. And I was like, wow, like restaurants everywhere are shuttering their doors. And I like Dawn has always been an inspiration for me. She's one of somebody I really look up to because she is just so brave and bold in what she does and what and the kindness and heart she has as a woman in business. And I was like blown away. But I can tell you, I no longer do her social media, but at the time, the difference in energy that I felt, like once that transformation happened, it was so fun to do her content because there was something more to work with. And like she had a great reputation before in the neighborhood and the community she had in the, especially with families, that little train set. But using changing the logo, changing the feel of the place, it's just become the best marketing tool for her, I'm gonna say. Like she is the brand, her spaces, like what she's doing with her biscuits now in grocery stores, like she's gonna be like across the country in no time.

SPEAKER_00 19:20

Well, everything was on the table at that point. We were looking at packaging for the biscuits. We were tearing the place down, we were relocoing, we are looking at all of her, just the cups and everything she was not only serving in-house but out of house. The point is, is that my joy in life is to look at any business holistically, any person holistically, any home holistically, and be able to help somebody see their dream in a new way that can be approached in such a fashion that everybody finds it interesting, desirable, curious. Because that's, I think, the missing link of what Dawn didn't have is she didn't have mass appeal because she wasn't branded and situated in a way where people would be curious. It was like one of those cute little local spots that everyone loved, but she needed to go beyond that feeling and really cater to a wider audience. And I think that that's you talked about Robert Street cookies, it's that same thing. I saw what direction Steph was going and she had originally approached me because she thought the cookies were gonna be a physical space when she first and it wasn't even gonna be cookies when Steph and I first started talking. Really? Yeah, it was not gonna be cookies and it was in a physical space. So we had had this whole design branding conversation two years before she got the camper. And I I saw on social, she had gotten the camper and she posted sort of what the plan was, and that was so off the target of what her and I originally spoke about. And so I just cold called her and I said, Steph, I don't know if you want me back in your life, but this direction that you're going in is not at all what we spoke about. And I don't want you to forget your original love and what you originally like lit you up. And in that moment, as a business person, I put myself out on a limb because I never call clients and say, put me back in the ring coach. But in this moment, it was like very visceral for me that she was she wasn't remembering what originally got her excited. And so that is an amazing example of my work. I'll sit at a boardroom table with somebody who will tell me about a toy or a product or a something. And it's like, this is where we started, this is the idea, this is what the product is, but we got lost along the way, and now we got to do this. What would you do? And my answer is always tell me about what got you excited in the first place about this thing, this product, this whatever. Because from an ideas creative perspective, from a magic perspective, from a remembering perspective, all of the most amazing things are in that initial incubation. In my experience, soon as you start to distill out of the original incubation of an idea, it starts getting dried down and you start losing the magic. So when you say your work is magical, maybe I am magical, but mostly what I like to do in my work is to remember the magic of what something is supposed to be and help people remember so that that's the work that goes out as the original magic. That's why I titled that presentation at your conference, Original Magic. Because original magic to me is where it all is. So in the case of Steph, I pulled back the old mood board and I said, Remember this? She's like, Oh yeah, I love it. And I was like, So if you love this, how could you do that? And she was like, You're right. So I just I did it again. I canned everything she had worked on for two years, all the logos that she had. And in three months, I started again. And we got her up and running with the original vision because that's where her heart was. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:08

And it it's the same thing because what I see as an out like a more of an outsider, right? And for everybody listening, I'll put in the show notes the link to Steph's social media as well as Dawn's, is that watching Steph on her social media, there's a joyfulness to it. And I think what she's created has allowed her to carry that through to the social content. Like she sits at pizza tables. I think you were in one of her videos. She does like things that she heard at the cookie camper. And it's just so fun.

SPEAKER_00 23:46

Well, and all of this stuff started in our conversations. So this is literally just her and I. And I'm like, she's like, what do I do here? What do I do there? I'm like, Steph, be where you are. My advice always is not just the beauty. It's like, let's remember that what you're putting out in the world, which is the marketing, is a direct reflection of what's happening on the street, in where you are, in your bakery, in your cafe, in your home. That's where people want to be a part of it. So we started talking about the shit people say. So I remember saying to her, post it. Tell people what people are saying. Because originally, when I was there for the launch week, I was taking videos of people putting these cookies in their mouth, shitting themselves. But she couldn't always take a video because you can't be selling the cookie and taking videos of people shooting themselves. So I think the the thing you're feeling is visceral because it's real. Yeah. It's there, it's honest, it's happening in real time, you know?

SPEAKER_01 24:51

Yeah. And it's going back to what you said a moment ago around like I've been on this whole season of this podcast is going on a field trip around joy. And instead of oftentimes, like marketers focus on like pain points and like, you know, what what keeps people up at night and like building around that? And I'm like, why can't we flip the switch? And it's what you spoke about. Like, why can't we flip it around? Like, what makes you feel you? What makes you feel like, why are you excited about this? And I think in both of the examples of the projects that you shared, there's that joyfulness. So maybe joyful marketing is the way to go.

SPEAKER_00 25:35

So but to me, I think joy period. We're all so hungry for something that will make us feel something and something that is positive and something that will help us. I'll use Lazy Daisies as an example. I did different vintage daisy wallpapers in the space. And do you know how many times people will look at some of these wallpapers and remember, oh my god, my grandmother had that wallpaper in her kitchen? Oh my god, I had this wallpaper at our cottage. And spaces and objects and patterns and colors, all of that stuff really helps people remember the stuff that brings them joy, the stuff that makes them feel positive, the stuff that brings them back to something that was like a core memory in their family, their life, their childhood, their school. And I and I think that for years, I've never gotten serious, but a lot of people have gotten quite serious. Yes. Stripped themselves down and stripped down their business and took the magic out of the logos and got rid of the history and took out the color and made things so beautiful and modern. And for me, there's just absolutely no soul left. There's all that original magic has been stripped out. Like I could talk about so many brands that have gotten rid of their original logos, and all that original magic is gone. And people can't feel it anymore because the color is gone. So, in marketing, what my experience has been is if you build it and it's good, they will come. Like when I did piano piano back 10 years ago, and we painted that very sad, so the exterior of that building was gray, and it was like a very stone, serious gray. And and I said, We're gonna paint it pink and we're gonna rip flowers all over this thing. And to be honest, at that time, that aesthetic and painting buildings and putting, you know, spray painting build that wasn't a thing a decade ago. And when we did it, it was risky business. But my I remember saying to the chef, Victor, who I was doing this with and his wife Nikki, that this space will sell itself just based on the exterior alone. People will stop and take pictures of this and wonder what it is. And if you just give something beautiful for somebody to look at, if it's a building, if it's an object, if it's a printable, if it's it doesn't matter. Beauty awakens something in everybody. And then the question mark begins, which is what is that? What am I looking at? Why does it make me feel this way? Why do I like this? And this is what I constantly tell all my clients is create the question mark because your business will sell itself. The world moves so quick right now, you have five seconds to erupt that flow with something beautiful, is a wonderful place to start. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:40

And I mean, I know the piano piano restaurant the on Mount Pleasant, and that wall, like as you're talking, like I could see the flowers, and I think it actually is expanded out to other corners, like around them. I don't know if you had anything to do with that, but I'm like, it's expanded.

SPEAKER_00 29:01

That corner really took to that aesthetic and they've made it into a destination. And I'm very I'm dear friends with the uh street artist who I did that with. And we I was on the scissor lift with him back in the day when we were doing piano piano and picking the colors and like, okay, this needs to be bigger and creating that look. Those days of being on that scissor lift with him and building that would never you would never believe that that would turn into seven locations. You would never believe that this thing that you're creating could expand in the way that it does. But that's why when you do something with heart and you do something with love and intention, people really respond to it. Why? Because it's created by a person who sprayed that building with their hands. There's not a lot of buildings in Toronto that you can feel physical art that is tandem to the business. And you could look at this physical art on the exterior of a building and immediately know what it is. And so that's what I do is I'm always trying to get people to have visual cues to a brand so that there's an initial, I know exactly what this is, or if I don't know what this is, I want to know.

SPEAKER_01 30:15

I love that. Okay, this I could go on and on, but I'm gonna ask you my three rapid fire questions that I'm gonna ask at all of the episodes with my guests. But what is something that you do just for yourself? No audience, no outcome that brings you joy.

SPEAKER_00 30:32

My quiet time is my favorite Tiffany time. And in my quiet time, the things I love doing the most are my morning pages, Julia Cameron's book, The Artist Way. I've been a devotee to those pages for 25 years. So I write my three long-handed pages, and I took up transcendental meditation back in 2018. That is what I do for myself. Having that 20-minute time period two times a day, writing things out and processing things, that is something that fills my cup no matter what. No matter where I am, no matter how I feel, no matter what's going on, those are things that right me.

SPEAKER_01 31:10

So for somebody who's listening to this, what's one thing that they could do this week to bring more joy into how they market themselves that wouldn't cost any money?

SPEAKER_00 31:20

I think that there's two things I would think about, which is if you can do anything in a physical environment that doesn't cost any money that can bring joy, it would be to move things around. People will get stuck in a static environment and believe because the table's always been here, it should always stay here, and because the cash desk has always been here or because the rooms always look like this. Change something. Move something around. When you change a space or something around, you will change your perspective on it. And then if I could also recommend anything, is that there's always something that someone has always wanted to do. If you're a baker, it's you know, maybe putting sprinkles on top of something, or it's, you know, in the case of Steph, I told her, sidewalk chalk the crap out of this area. Put it out there, let the kids go nuts. There's a school right there, let the kids play. And it's almost it's the most inexpensive way for people to have attention. They have a bunch of, she has a bunch of kids out of school doing sidewalk chalk all over her camper. Play is the way. Have fun in your business. Jump on social media and do something fun. Create something, use what you have, make something with what you have, challenge yourself to make something more beautiful with what you have. That's where the magic is. And that's why I wrote my book, This Can Be Beautiful. The idea was that this, this life can be beautiful. We have everything we need. We just need to change how we look at it. So by moving something around, or by using this thing that we have in a new way, or by adding glitter onto this inadimate object, somehow we've changed the way we feel about it and we change the way we interact with it. That was such great advice. Okay, last one. Where can people find you? My website is my name, Tiffany Pratt.com, T-I-F-F-A-N-Y-P-R-A-T-T. My Instagram is at the Tiffany Pratt.

SPEAKER_01 33:19

Okay, awesome. Well, thank you so much, Tiffany. This is this has been amazing. And I know you're an incredibly busy woman, and I really appreciate you taking the time to do this.

SPEAKER_00 33:30

Everybody's got something. We're all humans on this planet, we're all busy, we're all doing stuff, but it is my joy to see you doing what you love. It's my joy to support you. It's my joy to like watch this dream that you have expand in all the different ways. So I'm really so proud of you and excited to see where it's all. So thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01 33:50

Thank you so much. Okay. And that's a wrap on today's episode. Thank you so much for joining me. Come find me over at fieldtrippmarketing.ca or on Instagram at Kirsten J Marketing. I'd love to hear what you thought, and if you have any ideas on where we should take this field trip next. See you next time.