THE THOUGHTFUL ENTREPRENEUR PODCAST
In this episode of the Thoughtful Entrepreneur, your host Josh Elledge speaks with the CEO & Creative Director of Qream Design Agency, Bohdan Paladiichuk.
Bohdan emphasized the importance of keeping the team small to foster creativity and collaboration. He believes a more minor team allows for a more intimate, hands-on approach to their projects.
Bohdan explained crucial factors in creating a connection with users and increasing engagement. He likened it to the experience of interactive movies, where viewers can make choices and feel more involved in the story.
When asked about the process of coming up with creative ideas, Bohdan explained that it is a skill that can be practiced and developed. He credits his background in comedy and his team's passion for generating innovative ideas.
Bohdan emphasized that branding is not just about colors and logos but about the overall promise and value that a brand communicates to its customers. Cream Design Agency helps companies with various channels, including websites, brand communication, and promotional videos. They also assist with the pre-website stage, focusing on brand identity and contact to convey the product's value effectively.
Key Points from the Episode:
- Importance of keeping the team small for creativity and collaboration
- Use of UX and interactive elements in website design to increase engagement
- Process of generating creative ideas and the role of comedy and passion
- Focus on working with tech companies that contribute to making the world a better place
- Helping brands develop a clear identity and stand out in the market
- Importance of brand promise and value in branding
- Assistance with brand communication, promotional videos, and pre-website stage
- Aligning the product with the brand's promise
- Fostering creativity through frameworks and exercises, such as design thinking
- Importance of message and target audience in branding
- Seeking connections with individuals and businesses who want to engage and stand out
About Bohdan Paladiichuk:
Bohdan Paladiichuk is a multifaceted individual known for his impactful contributions in various fields. With a unique blend of design, motion, and emotion, he has successfully elevated marketing strategies to new heights. A strong advocate for growth and aesthetics, he's also renowned as an avocado enthusiast.
Passionate about emerging technologies, Bohdan actively engages in projects that promote environmental sustainability, benefit humanity, and protect animals. His versatile background includes seven years in music, six years in scriptwriting, and five years in Ju-Jitsu. He demonstrates exceptional leadership skills with four years of experience in top management.
Bohdan's diverse experiences are exemplified by his 3-month stay in Bali and his efficient 2-week execution of a scrum sprint. He prides himself on shattering clichés and embracing innovation. Through his dynamic journey, Bohdan Paladiichuk continues to leave a positive imprint on marketing, technology, and personal growth.
About Qream Design Agency:
Qream Design Agency is a powerhouse of creativity and innovation that leaves a lasting impact. Specializing in crafting vibrant and captivating brands, Qream is known for transforming the mundane into remarkable. Their portfolio boasts eye-catching websites that function as compelling advertisements and impressive videos, animations, and 3D designs.
Their excellence has garnered recognition, including being named the 2022 TOP B2B in Ukraine by clutch.co/qream. Qream also earned the prestigious 2022 Website of the Year award from Orpetron for funkywolves.com, and their mobile prowess was celebrated with the 2022 Awards for Mobile Excellence for supermegahyperdoge.com.
Notable collaborations with influential entities like Viber, Huobi, IOTA, the Fund of the President of Ukraine, and Ice Cube exemplify their impact. Qream's dedication extends beyond aesthetics, as they draw inspiration from projects that improve the environment, humanity, and animals.
Tweetable Moments:
05:38 – “I believe that having this mechanics of the UX where the person can influence what's happening on the website, they can play around with it, touch around or see the immediate results of it, I think that gets the connection a bit warmer with the potential user because again it feels like you're kind of having fun together which I think is what you're trying to also achieve with the business as well as you want to great minds you know co-creating some project at least that's the way I envisioned the best work to happen.”
18:57 – “Our enemy is like the boring brand and the faceless brand, the brand that is just trying to be like everybody else.”
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Links Mentioned in this Episode:
Want to learn more? Check out Qream Design Agency website at
Check out Qream Design Agency on LinkedIn at
https://linkedin.com/company/19056355
Check out Qream Design Agency on Facebook at
https://facebook.com/qreamdesign
Check out Qream Design Agency on Instagram at
https://instagram.com/qream_design_agency
Check out Qream Design Agency on Twitter at
https://twitter.com/qream_design
Check out Bohdan Paladiichuk on LinkedIn at
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bohdan-paladiichuk/
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Transcript
Josh (00:00:05) - Hey there, thoughtful listener. Would you like consistent and predictable sales activity with no spam and no ads? I'll teach you step by step how to do this, particularly if you're an agency owner, consultant, coach or B2B service provider. What I teach has worked for me for more than 15 years and has helped me create more than $10 million in revenue. Just head to up my influence and watch my free class on how to create endless high ticket sales appointments. You can even chat with me live and I'll see and reply to your messages. Also, don't forget the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for guests. Go to up my influence and click on podcast. We'd love to have you. With us right now, Bohdan Paladiichuk. I may have mispronounced your last name. Forgive me, Bowden, but you are the CEO and creative director of Qream Design Agency. Your website is the Qream .com and that's spelled t h e q r e a m.com. All right. So if you want to see amazing design, the kind of design that wins Webby Awards, that's exactly what you're going to see at the Qream .
Josh (00:01:31) - So Bohdan it's great to have you.
Bohdan (00:01:34) - Oh, thank you so much for the intro. I'm excited to be here and, you know, share the thoughts for the entrepreneurs trying to grow, trying to make the best out of their business and, you know, share my advices about how my path was going and everything else. Super, super excited.
Josh (00:01:49) - I also want to honor you because you are in the country, you are in Ukraine and you have a lot of Ukrainian talent. So just know that our hearts and prayers are with you. As always, we're rooting for you. We're supporting you and can't wait for war to end. So just want to throw that in there.
Bohdan (00:02:05) - Bowden But so much for that.
Josh (00:02:08) - Yeah, you bet. So tell me about about your agency, how you work and who you work with.
Bohdan (00:02:15) - Okay. So actually we are currently 25 people and that would say that we were always positioning ourselves as a boutique. I always wanted to keep the number of the people kind of like small to keep it tight knit team.
Bohdan (00:02:25) - So we're actually going to scale up to 50. That's just the possible outcome. That's it. We're not going to go anymore. Why? Because I think what we're doing is basically the design and creativity. Primarily we do the websites, branding and products for tech businesses primarily. So basically, I want to keep the team really small because this is the best way to achieve the creativity. When you have this very precise process, when you have people just moving bricks one person to person, I think that's just not doing the thing. It's not doing the award winning design. It's not doing like the breakthrough. But when you have these people like, you know, in a startup mode, in a garage, when they're exchanging ideas lively, when they're looking at each other's computers, you know, I don't know, creating this ideas or visualizations, drafting them just like that, I think that's the best way to get the result and to get the most dramatic performance out of the team and the best creativity out there.
Josh (00:03:18) - To our friend that's listening, here's what I want you to do. I want you to go to the Qream . And again thq are e a m so you need to see what we're talking about because again, this is the kind of stuff that's like, like for example, when I pull up your website, the first thing I want to do is I want to, I want to rotate and move this little guy around and.
Bohdan (00:03:41) - What are you able to do?
Josh (00:03:42) - So it's immediately engaging, like I'm having fun on your website. And and I suspect that that's. Can you can you talk about the role of like UX and why, you know, these interactive elements are so important and how that can be really, really good ultimately for engagement in business?
Bohdan (00:04:07) - Yeah. So I think that it has to do a lot with the psychology of the user themselves and the way like the users or just the regular people. By the more you're closer to touching things, to experiencing the product, the more you are likely to purchase it.
Bohdan (00:04:19) - I think this is neuroscience, neuroscience kind of finding and everything. So basically when you get people to play around with something on your website, get them to touch, get them to be the hero of the story that you have created, not just the observer from the behind. It gets them way more engaged into the life of the product, the story of the product, and it gets them to explore more. So I would say really like as for me personally, I love Netflix movies and I like Black Mirror, for example, like the series, but the most exciting episode is the one that I could control, like the interactive one, where you could I don't know if you saw it or not, but I'm pretty sure a lot of subscribers actually did. Is the episode where you can choose what the person is going to do in the movie, and this way you get more involved and it feels like you're part of the story in this way. Again, you feel you're much more a part of the brand than by just looking something being shown to you.
Bohdan (00:05:08) - So I believe that having this mechanics of the UX where the person can influence what's happening on the website, they can play around with it, touch around or see the immediate results of it, I think that gets the connection a bit warmer with the potential user because again, it feels like you're kind of having fun together, which I think is what you're trying to also achieve with the business as well as you want to great minds, you know, co-creating some project. At least that's the way I envisioned the best work to happen.
Josh (00:05:38) - Yeah. And someone might be looking at the work that you do and they say, how do you come up with all of these ideas? I mean, this is just quite, you know, this the use of a lot of imagination. And like as a business owner, I wouldn't I don't know that I could come up with the kind of stuff that you come up with, but how do you do it?
Bohdan (00:06:00) - Okay. So I would say this is actually not a it's a skill that can be practiced.
Bohdan (00:06:05) - So I actually grabbed a lot of my creative idea generating skills from the times when I was doing comedy. The first couple of years, I couldn't write a single joke. I was just, you know, super into it, but I couldn't do anything about it. So then I started writing and writing and writing and practicing. And this is the way you kind of start to feel the framework. You start to understand how these things are done. And I would say, honestly, I'm not going to take all the credit just for myself. I have an amazing people on the board. For example, my creative strategist that is also coming from the same comedy background actually as myself. So we were generating ideas back in high school and then we brought it to the to the business world, I would say. And yeah, I would say again, this is a skill and this is actually a framework. There are different frameworks that you can use for idea generation and everything, but the best is to get passionate people doing something that they love.
Bohdan (00:06:55) - I think that's the best recipe of getting maximum with the creative ideas and again, just using the skill sets that you have. And if you're really passionate about something, you're going to work on that a hell a lot till the result is extremely, I would say, outstanding. And that's definitely the way that we are kind of working and striving for.
Josh (00:07:13) - Yeah. And so who? What types of companies are you typically working with?
Bohdan (00:07:19) - Yeah, we're primarily working with tech companies and I have a big special reason for that. I would say I really think that what is happening currently in tech is the innovation that it's kind of frontier. So at the times where, you know, there was Thomas Edison and all these people coming up with physical appliances that make the world a better place, I think the biggest progress to humanity that is currently happening is happening within the tech sphere. So basically, all this tools that are being provided for us, AI as itself right, is is a huge advancement for the humanity.
Bohdan (00:07:50) - I believe, and I personally love my work to be meaningful and I am not extremely in love with helping one guys just make more money. I'm way more interested in advocating for the good ideas that push the humanity forward. Forward. So I actually see a lot of progress in making people's lives healthier, happier, faster, more efficient through technology lately. And I think that's the the biggest part that drives the, again, the humanity progress for ourselves and upcoming generations currently is the biggest like locomotive of it all. So I definitely love being the part of it. And that's why helping tech company is something that we focus on or basically coming step back. We don't only work with tech companies, but this is our biggest focus. But generally I love working with people who are creating the healthy progress. So I would say so helping you eat better, have the earth more sustainable place to be, helping people become happier. So even if it's not tech, but this is something that the company is helping with, I'm extremely excited to pair up with the entrepreneur and get the best ideas to amplify the ideas that you know are making the world a better place, I guess.
Josh (00:08:59) - Yeah. So, so more than just websites, can you kind of talk about all of the different uses that that Qream is doing design work?
Bohdan (00:09:09) - Yeah, absolutely. So we actually focus on branding side of things. I would say primarily well, actually the branding and the tech product, as we say like that. So the website is the, I would say, the major part of any brand. This is the website. This is the place where all the people come and kind of check you out, see your story, look at you at the storefront, basically. But this again comes from a deeper root, like who you are as a brand. And this is actually something that we're also working on. So we're usually starting with the brand strategy, like who you are, what's your vision, vision, what's your mission, what is your unique value proposition? How do you highlight that and make it kind of in a catchy language, nice language that people are going to perceive? And then you create communication based on that, which is the website, the the visuals that you post in social media.
Bohdan (00:09:53) - This is everything that even the product itself, I think is should be shaped by Brand's core, which is the identity itself. So I would say we are focusing on helping brands getting the more clear identity about who they are and how they stand in the market instead of being just super generic saying like we are for everybody doing just the innovation and you don't understand what was there the right fit for you. So acknowledging your own core on an identity level, I see it being under looked in many beginning companies at least like or the companies that were kind of product like growth. It's totally okay to be like product light and I think it's the product always should be flawless, but the brand around it, why you exist, why the customers should relate about you. I think this is a very fundamental thing to all the marketing and sales that are happening then and then the adoption of the product. And again, it also influences, I believe, the creation of the product itself. If you know, as Steve Jobs saying like, we want to build the best possible like mobile experiences, for example, right? So when they're building a product, the product team is working on it.
Bohdan (00:10:56) - They can question themselves. Is this the best possible experience? Is this, you know, kind of correlating to what we are promising on the brand level? So I believe having a firm identity, which is more on the strategy level, it's not even just the logo, the colors or everything, because people usually treat brands as, you know, okay, I need rebranding. Can you help me revamp the colors? It's not about the colors. It's about the overall promise that you're giving. And then you're basically picking the right colors, logos, tone of voice and wordings to kind of communicate that essence to the people. So I think that these are the things that we are helping companies with. And again, it's about different channels. I would say like our design definitely encompasses a couple of channels. We're helping brands with the websites because it's primary communication. But again, when we see that the product is complex, for example, and maybe the website is just not fully enough, where are the people coming to the website from? They're coming from some communications that you've been showing them.
Bohdan (00:11:55) - Are these communications good? Are they explaining the real value of why they should go with you? So we actually we also focused a lot of times by helping companies on this kind of pre website stage, which can be again, brand communication, brand identity and the promo videos which are actually, I think the best way to communicate value of every product because one image is worth a thousand words. And when this image is moving and doing the wow effect and is actually triggered to convey the meaning, I think that's the best way you can explain anything. So this is what we focus on. But I primarily also come from the background. So as we're working with the tech companies, I also oftentimes see the places where the product can be improved. And this is also actually very much similar process about what are you showing to which people and what do you expect out of them, what do you expect them to do? And I see this also being kind of a bit wrong in many, many products. It's sometimes about the founder's vision, like I want the product to have this feature rather than it should be solving this pain for the customer.
Bohdan (00:12:56) - So this is the cycle that we basically cover. I would say we're like full cycle, but we're definitely like at Qream . We're primarily focusing on this pre product part. And for the product part, we're actually preparing this brand new awesome offering that's going to help the interpreters to get more talented people like ourselves to be part of their. Product and evolve that as they scale and grow. But that's going to be upcoming. And there are new brand called Fat Cats. I do everything with a Q inside of it.
Josh (00:13:24) - That's part of the brand. Yeah, it's.
Bohdan (00:13:28) - My actually it's my life. Big life goal, I guess, is to claim the Q letter on the brand level. This is one of this big, ambitious, foolish goals, I would say. But still, like, I want to claim that the whole letter from the alphabet to belong to Qream , which is the Q That's why whenever we're using the K letter, I always twist it to Q, So it's always Q in the in the mix?
Josh (00:13:49) - Yeah.
Josh (00:13:50) - Yeah. And you mentioned a little bit about this earlier, and I see this in your social media about, you know, how to think more creatively or how to inspire creativity within our organizations or our teams. Any thoughts on that or maybe some practices that we can start kind of working into our daily lives so we can start thinking maybe less linearly and a little bit more broadly? I don't know if you have any suggestions on that for sure.
Bohdan (00:14:20) - I would say the interesting thing about creativity, as I said, it is actually belonging. There's a bunch of frameworks that can be helping you to become more creative and exercises that kind of trigger this learning process and the creative process by itself. So there are different ones in the internet. You can Google them up. They're very interesting, but they give you like a very precise step by step plan for the people who are more like thinking systems or being like more organizational, less of this kind of winded creative approach that I would say again, you just Google down the framework and you see different ones that can get you creative.
Bohdan (00:14:54) - And one of the basic ones I would say is just design thinking itself. The other advice that I would say if any entrepreneur has the designer within their company launch a short conversation and ask them about how to be creative, I think this can actually open up a lot of doors and open up a lot of different cool ways of thinking about the business itself. It's not about just the design. I think the designers themselves are just the holders of the knowledge, how to apply the science of psychology and creative brainstorming to generate the best ideas. They just turn out to be visual most of the times or product driven. But in the end of the day it's about the generating the solution based on certain requirements. I think that's the core skill of the every designer. And for myself, I was also showing this very interesting practice practice that you can practice, which is called basically the alpha state of mind, which is I'm allowed into also brain hacking and understanding how the brain works. So basically rewiring yourself from what you're currently doing, go in for unwinding for like 15, 20 minute walk, just getting all the thoughts cleared out from your cash.
Bohdan (00:15:58) - And then you when you come back to the problem, it becomes way easier to solve or the solution starts popping. And this is the again, the state of mind that is characterized by alpha frequency waves working at 80 to 130, 30Hz in your brain. And this state kind of happens when you're going to bed. So before you go to bed, you would also always have this or not always. But frequently when you're actually relaxed, you're going to have this amazing ideas pop into your head and you're going to connect the dots that were not anyhow kind of, you know, connecting in the normal way of thinking. Because normally when we're focus on something, this is a very narrow thinking corridor when we're like all in to find the solution. But we don't see the wider picture just because we're focused on that one specific solution that we're kind of fixing. And then before going to bed, your mind opens up fully and then you start, What about this? What about the inter combine, everything that has been in your head for years and then you're like, Oh, this might be a great solution.
Bohdan (00:16:53) - So again, before bed is something that naturally kind of occurs when you unwind yourself fully. But if you want to do it throughout the day, it's an amazing 15 to 20 minute practice to just meditate or get yourself a coffee walk around. It gives tremendous, tremendous results. Even in the busiest days. When I got 10 or 12 hours of work, if I managed to get this 15 or 20 minutes to unwind, then the productivity of the left over time it just increases dramatically. So definitely a must, must thing and something I do frequently.
Josh (00:17:26) - Yeah, great tips. Thank you. I appreciate that. But on your website, the Qream .com who you know in terms of like who might be listening should should be reaching out how might they know that they're going to be a good candidate for you to potentially work with and who might not be a great fit.
Bohdan (00:17:48) - Okay. So I think there's definitely one criteria that can help to determine are you actually the right fit or what we're offering is the right solution for you.
Bohdan (00:17:56) - If you look at our website, you would see it's not conventional. I would say like it's really conventional. There's the 3D character flying around and the whole narrative and just the the way the design visually and verbally is built is a little bit on the evocative side and a bit on the bolder side of things. So when you're doing something with your business and you believe that your brand is not that bold or, you know, like people are not maybe getting it, maybe not enough of people are being excited about what you're offering. You're not getting enough traction, especially on the early final stages. So there's not a lot of traffic coming to your website, for example, or not a lot of the traffic, all the traffic that comes, it's not converting properly. I think the answer is pretty much always in your identity. And again, it's about the narrative that you're telling to them, the visuals that you're showing to them. And just overall how they comprehend you. So I would say our enemy is like the boring brand, and the faceless brand is the brand that is just trying to be like everybody else.
Bohdan (00:18:57) - And if you again, are looking at our website, looking at your presence, if you see that we're a bit sharper in that and you're probably not getting enough traction yet, this is something that we can be helping you out, like finding your perfect North Star amongst the star constellations that are happening because everybody has the competitors and all of them shine at different respect. If you want to shine brighter, if you want to be remembered and struggling with the traction of the clients. Again, I think like the conversion of the website, if you measure it numerically, this is the best metric, I would say, or just the engagement of the social media and the pipeline. This is definitely something that we are the best at and this is something we help brands to fix, finding their image and communicating that primarily on the website. So I would say again, one special thing. If the website is not converting in the best way possible, it's again, it's not about the color of that button, it's not about whether it's on the left or the right.
Bohdan (00:19:57) - Is it circle or square? No, it's about the message that you're telling and who are you telling it to? So I think this is where the biggest part of the work and the biggest part of the output actually comes from.
Josh (00:20:08) - Sure. Sure. Okay. So the website again, the Qream .com qr e a m when somebody goes there. And again, if you want to have a boring brand, thanks for listening. But you know we're looking for you know a good a good connection would be someone who doesn't want to have a boring brand. They want to connect and engage. And for those folks. But on what would be their next steps.
Bohdan (00:20:37) - I would say just reaching out and saying like, hey, I think the most important problem in reaching out or like maybe the hesitation is that the founders usually try to come up with a solution and then contacting somebody to find to do it. I think with the designers, the best advice is to share the problem itself. Like, Hey, I'm experiencing like low traction or my website again is not converting.
Bohdan (00:20:59) - Or maybe, I don't know, there's a lot of people looking at me, but not a lot of people are moving forward. Our pipeline, what can we do about it? Or we just want, you know, we have a thousand people looking at us. We want 1000 thousand million people looking at us. What can we do about it? So I think just giving us a quick email is going to have our creative strategist and myself probably because I'm the the leader definitely in the brainstorming part, like I love solving problems. This is something that I'm driven for, like with my life solving business problems because I run a business and I solve these problems for myself. So whenever I see a fellow entrepreneur facing some problems that I already solved for my brand or for the other clients, I'm extremely excited to generate bazillion ideas how that can be possible. So I would say just shooting an email saying, Hi, we have, you know, something that we would like to achieve. We can always hop in a 30 minute call, just, you know, brainstorm, tell about the ways that it can be possibly done.
Bohdan (00:21:52) - And wherever the problem lies in the surface that we are not currently solving or anything, I would definitely just recommend, you know, something you want to do is go there, go there and go there and ask these people about how you can do it if it's not something that is fixed by our service. So I would say I would myself. I'm never like selling anything. Usually I'm always like consulting people to get the best result. So often when they come for requests for the website, they actually end up having a video because the website can be doing quite okay, but just the video is not working for them that they have or they don't have any video explaining what the business actually is. And this is quite important for the very first stages. So yeah, shooting an email with Hey, we'd like to achieve this is if you're a tech company, definitely something that should be addressed towards the Qream .com. Myself personally LinkedIn or just any way possible is definitely fine.
Josh (00:22:44) - Yeah and you can go play with chubby.
Josh (00:22:47) - The the the little guy the soul of Qream . I'm telling you, it's addictive. I can't stop turning this guy around and flipping him over and stuff. It's crazy. Great. Again, it's been it's been great having you and again, Bohdan.
Bohdan (00:23:08) - Yeah. Wow. Okay.
Josh (00:23:10) - All right. CEO and creative director forgive me of Qream Design agency your website The Qream Bowden thank you so much for joining us.
Bohdan (00:23:19) - Thank you so much for having me.
Josh (00:23:26) - Thanks for listening to the Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, please visit up My Influence slash guest. If you're a listener, I'd love to shout out your business to our whole audience for free. You can do that by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or join our listener Facebook group. Just search for the thoughtful entrepreneur and Facebook. I'd love even if you just stopped by to say hi, I'd love to meet you. We believe that every person has a message that can positively impact the world.
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