What do the words “Creation” and “Fantasy” mean for Franco?

I help founders build from a place of alignment, between who they are and what they’re creating. My background’s in design strategy, but more than anything, I’m motivated by long-term, human-centered approaches to entrepreneurship and living life.

When we use language, we often mean different things because of different life experiences and life stories.

Darryl Lim  00:00

What does CREATION or FANTASY mean for you?

Franco  00:04

Creation means: I don't know that this exists yet, and I can do something differently, and I can bring in something to the world that is not already there, that I can do, that I can help do. So if it's finding Pokemon, it's the fact that Pokemon never existed, right? Or if it's on the soccer pitch, it means that I can contribute much differently to how another player might contribute in my position or change the outcome of the game. If it's a designer, it's very simple. What problem can I solve or what? On a deeper level, once again, what can I create that the world hasn't seen yet? But perhaps there's a tying of sorts to a helping identity thing there too. If I can help my team win, if I can help someone solve a customer pain point.

Darryl Lim  01:04

Creation is about something that is both new, and something that helps, for you.

Franco  01:13

Yeah. There's like a flow thing there too, like an enjoyment aspect of it.

Darryl Lim  01:19

What do you mean?

Franco  01:22

There's an enjoyment flow aspect to creating for me. So I tend to really get absorbed in what I'm doing, and more. it puts me in a more of a flow state, whether that's designing a new brand logo for a concept, or trying to unpack someone's design brief and getting to know psychologically what do they want from this thing? And it's, there's no resistance to it. From an energy perspective, it's very much, I'm going to hone in here and do this thing. On the soccer pitch, right? I'm not thinking about anything else. I'm creating, and I'm in the flow.

Darryl Lim  02:05

But what about fantasy? Because fantasy is quite distinct, or maybe connected to creation?

Franco  02:12

God, you're so right? I think fantasy is a big undercurrent, too. Let's say it's the main one, right? When I was young, and I'm creating, and I expressed that I used to create my own Power Rangers, the ones that didn't exist yet, right? That was the fantasy that, like, I built a whole story around this particular Power Ranger, and it didn't exist yet. And it's cool, it's the coolest one. And, like, if it was real, then, like, you know, but it was very much for me. So to fantasize was almost the, the ingredient in which I could, like, pick from the pantry to start creating, yeah. Fantasy was a big one. I had cousins that were my age as well. And when we would play together, we'd make up these, these stories, and we'd be running around the playground, and we'd make up like, you know, he would be spider man one day, and I'd be, I'd be Batman, and then we were going to go and solve this thing, right? And then we come across this stone, and we're like, oh, that's the stone of this. And that means that we have to go. Completely immersed in fantasy, like, 100% convinced in fantasy, and no separation. So it's like, you come back into normal life, and we still have this dynamic. Like, yeah, remember that? And then my whole family are stone masons, even on my mom's side and my dad's side. I don't know how it happened. I'm the only person that didn't become a stone mason or work in trade, but I was around it all the time. So I'm watching my dad chipping away at little pieces of marble and then putting them in particular places and and I was always there to, like, hand him something, or put something down, or, like, you know, helping him do that as well, and then so, fantasy, let's think about fantasy again. On my fifth birthday, I remember this distinctively. There's the... here's the cake, you know, light the candles, make a wish, and I remember wishing that I would have a wife that loved me and a family. That was my wish at five years old. Even then I was fantasizing about having a family of my own, and how much enjoyment that would give me at five years old. I blew out the candle subsequently, till I was about, until you stopped doing that, maybe nine years old. But that feeling of that is still there so and I still fantasize about that, and that comes into dating, or it comes into whatever. And then in school, I always had the best time in practical classes like music and art. For obvious reasons. So it became a curriculum. You know, today's art class is about, we're going to design a can of soft drink. So here's all the tools you need. Go away and think about it. And I'm fantasizing, like, what, what could be a cool thing for a soft drink? Like, there's something about ice, and the whole thing of condensation and ice and and this is maybe at 10 years old, and that continued on for life. I'm a massive nerd, like, imagine what Lords Of The Rings does for me, and then imagine the extra stuff that I do after that. Hours and hours and hours of LOTR. Just from the laptop, on YouTube like, oh yeah, this relationship, this character, actually was like, people making shit up, other people making shit up. I'm like, yeah, let's go, let's do it, right? Doesn't exist. It's not real.

Darryl Lim  05:57

Whatever that you've described, sounds to me like, imagination. What's the difference between imagining and fantasizing? For you.

Franco  06:07

Story. Imagination is like, to me, an act of creating a thought or creating a micro-thought or a micro-decision. But fantasy is a sense of long term theory, or long term arc of something. So I could imagine right now that I should maybe redesign this very particular part of the logo that's like maybe not looking right? I need to, I need to imagine what it might look like if it was in this position, and then I do it. But the fantasy thing is like, what's your brief? What's the story? Where do you want to go, and everything in between.

Darryl Lim  06:56

And when you say STORY, what does story mean personally for you?

Franco  07:01

It's very complex. It's the beginning, the middle, the end, the journey. It's the context in which everything is. Why it is. The story involves a lot of dynamic, dynamism, just in general. We think about a drama, character arcs, trauma, events... led to this. There's a lot of emotions that are going like this, and it includes all of that. To me, that's what a story is. It includes all that dynamic effect of every micro context within what I'm fantasizing, why it's happening, what's happening?

Darryl Lim  07:54

How did you come to this complex definition of a story?

Franco  08:00

I think it defined itself. I think it's a full circle moment back to fantasy. I'm trying to think, when was the first time that I started thinking this way? And, you know, at two years old, I'm bringing a transformer into the shower and creating a whole thing, right? I'm creating a whole fantasy around... a whole story around what this transformer is doing in the shower. Enjoyment. Flow once again. Yeah, very innate. Didn't try. It's not that I thought, let me go into the shower and make a story up. It was like, that's what I'm doing. No prior thought. Man, I had like, 15 teddy bears with names and whole backstories on them all. Yeah, I put them all on my bed. Knew exactly what was going on with all of them. I talked to them separately. Yeah, there was one. It was a koala, and it had a cape and an F in the middle, and his name is Super Franc. And he was the leader. He was the guy at the front of the pack. Super Franc controlled everything.

Darryl Lim  09:20

How do you feel, even just thinking about it?

Franco  09:25

I miss it. Man, I actually miss it. Yeah, grief, little bit of grief. Happy, sadness, melancholy.

Darryl Lim  09:34

So we have these words right, like imagination, fantasy, specifically, and then story and a few other words that came up as well. For you.

Franco  09:46

Flow, yeah, energy, yeah.

Darryl Lim  09:50

How do all these things tie up together for you?

Franco  09:54

Ah, how do the words tie into each other? I think if one of them was missing, it wouldn't work. If I'm trying to figure out from a young age how this started, I'm thinking about it from a nurture perspective. There isn't a single person in my family that I can remember, and I've done a whole family tree system that goes back to the 1700s that wasn't a creator. And I told you my mom's side and my dad's side, they're both stone masons, and that's a very different meaning in Italy. In Australia, stone mason is, you cut the marble and you put it on the bench top. In Italy, it is the highest order of trade you can attain in your life. It's literally like years of mastery and sculpting and imagining and all of that stuff, right? So my grandpa, he was a painter ordained in the Catholic Church. As a painter, he was the one painting the ceilings and cathedrals. And he started a construction empire as well. And you'd go to his house and he'd have all of these super, super, super, what's the word? It wasn't like a typical Italian grandpa where, where the couch is covered in plastic. You know, he would have all these strange dolls from Tahiti. He'd have all these naked pictures all over the house and like, really strange artifacts from around the world. Crystals. He had his own bar that was kind of like Australian-themed. And he had the all these birds that he would sing to, and he played the accordion. And my whole family is that. My whole family is that, even on my mom's side. They are geniuses. My uncles, like, without even reading a textbook, we're like, taking out engines and cars and recreating like old Fords. And one of my uncles was like a singer, and he was up there with, like, Frank Sinatra, in terms of, that whole scene, you know, like that strong timbre singing. And my grandfather was, like, really known in Melbourne as the guy that you need to go to if you need, like, some serious stone masonry stuff done, like, staircases. And anyway, I grew up around all of this. That's my life. I don't know. There wasn't an accountant in the family. There wasn't a business person. Everyone worked for themselves and everyone did their own thing.

At Split Arenas, we believe professional communication should be rooted in personal stories. When we look at the words people use, and the stories behind those words, we understand who they are, and we can build better relationships. To learn more about what we do, click here. If you wish to experience this conversation, where you’ll discover a word that means a lot to you and the stories/memories behind that word, book an appointment here.