You can't make all the mistakes yourself, right. So, you have to look at what other people do as well and learn from what they teach you and what they learned along the way as well. To me, it doesn't make sense if all my knowledge stays in my head. It doesn't serve anybody else. I always felt the need to share, because it's very gratifying to be able to share knowledge and then see that you can change sometimes just one person's life.

It's not often that we get to sit down together and have a chat about something that's not business related, even though we work in the same office, sort of.

This is business. So here we are, welcome. I'm sitting down with Martin Klaassen, as you know, founder and principal of Klaassen Light and Design. I've been working with Martin for quite some years now in the office in Perth here, but today we're talking about something a little bit different. But today we're talking about something a little bit different.

We've also been on a little personal journey to basically put together Light Talk, which is your personal brand, right, and it's something that's a bit more, I guess, dear to your heart. I mean, you put a lot of energy and effort all those years into developing your core lighting design business of class and lighting design, and I'm going to get into as well asking about how that all happened. You know from how you got into lighting, your inspiration, um, your journey through getting into class and lighting design, and then also what we are talking about today, which is the Light Talk platform which you have set up, and I've helped you create that over the last couple of years as well. But why not start with your personal journey First of all? What inspired you to get into lighting in the first place and how did you sort of end up having your own practice?

Yeah, it's always an interesting question. Um, I'm actually an accidental lighting designer. I never set out to become a lighting designer. Um, when I finished my studies, I did industrial design. I got a master's degree in that. Yeah, I was looking for a job, and one of the companies that I applied in is Philips. Nowadays it's called Signify, but at the time it was called Philips, philips Lighting. No, it was actually not Philips Lighting. I didn't even apply for Philips Lighting. I went to Philips.

There was an advertisement for a job in consumer products and I thought, as an industrial designer, designing consumer products would be typically something that would suit me. So I went one day and when I arrived there, they said what would you like to do? And I thought what do you mean? I'm coming for this specific job position. So now we have a few of them. What do you think about lighting design? And I had no idea what lighting design was. I said that sounds interesting, happy to have a look. As it happened, that department was just around the corner from where I was having my interview and he said well, I can make an appointment for you right now. You can go there and see if that's something that you are interested in. So I went there and it was taken away straight away um. There was about a group of 40 50 people doing lighting designs on big projects olympic games did you even know what lighting design was?

no, I had no idea.

I thought it was designing light bulbs or things with theater lighting or things like that. I had no idea that something like actual lighting design existed.

Did you think it was designing light fittings in the beginning?

Yeah, I thought more because I was a product designer. I thought there was more products rather than consultancy or services or things like that. But then I saw what they were doing and I saw how they were drawing plans and creating concepts for stadiums and for buildings and so, wow, I was blown away and I liked the vibe on the department and I said yes, straight away.

And that was in 1979.

So I'm always somebody that if I like it, I don't hesitate and I go for it. I I can turn around 20 times, but I will still come back there.

So I decided to do it and say yes was there something specifically that captured your um inspiration or your you know? You were like, yes, this was it. Was it a particular part of the process or just being able to have a say in the outcome of the project? I had no idea.

I just liked the vibe of the department. I liked the way they were working. It attracted me. The projects that they were doing. It was not just something just in Holland, because that was Holland at the time. They were doing jobs all over the world. That was also something that I thought, wow, that's also interesting. I was just captivated by what they were doing and I had no idea where it was going to bring me. And in fact, my first year I didn't do any projects. My first year I was just doing research and helping some of the department heads developing strategies for lighting and I did things about museum lighting, I studied infrared and ultraviolet lighting and some other things like that. But it's only after a year that I started to become involved in projects.

So you never actually did a proper lighting course? No, you pretty much learned everything you knew, or that you now know on the job.

On the job, hands-on. Of course, my design study, industrial design, helps you with the design process. So in a way, you could say, yes, I have the design experience because I knew what conceptual design was, I knew what design development was, I knew how to create details, work things out and all that and create documentation. All that I knew, but not specifically for lighting.

What were some I don't know if you can call them mistakes or things that you didn't know that you think I wish I actually knew that earlier. You know that you were only exposed to as a result of learning on the job, and it's they're actually quite important things.

Maybe it's to do with the process or yeah, I mean, these are all small little things, but I had an interesting approach because I was surrounded by experts. So when I started in the project business, there were a lot of people that had been in the lighting design at that department for years and years. So my approach was I don't know too much, why don't I ask a couple of experts? So I would form my design approach by interviewing some of my colleagues and say, okay, you're an expert on this, how would you approach it? Then I would go to the next one. I said how would you do it? And, interestingly, after having asked two or three of them, they all had different approaches.

So, I sort of out of that, I got a bit of an idea. I like that, I like that, and there's obviously not one solution to a lighting issue or lighting problem, and so that's how I sort of gradually builds my experience. Then, of course, once you start doing lighting design, there's always little things. I can't remember all of them, but there's always little things that you that you learn about, little things that you that you learn about I don't know that the number of light fittings, position, glare, these are small, little things. That that everybody is like when you drive, when you have your driving license, you only learn to drive once you have your license. So I learned lighting design along the way and it's a lot of little, small things, um, but yeah, you learn from your mistakes, right, and interestingly, you also learn from other people's mistakes, I think that's not a very big takeaway that you, you don't.

You can't make all the mistakes yourself, right so you have to look at what other people do as well and learn from what they teach you and what they learned along the way as well.

So would you say early on that you had mentors in the business? Absolutely. Are there a few key people that you looked up to or that guided you the most through that journey?

I think within Philips, I would say gerrit van de belt was my main mentor, he was my boss. Um, he was the one also saying to me martin, don't fret about it, sleep on it, tomorrow is another day, right. Right, because sometimes you have a tendency of reacting emotionally on on a problem or if you're confronted with issues, he said he always told me just just sleep on it. Yeah, then we review it tomorrow. Think like, so he's been, he's been really good about, about helping me away, helping me, uh, progress through to the sort of diplomatic minefield, because life design is not only designing, it's also dealing with, with clients, is also dealing with your colleagues, is dealing with, uh, contractors on site. Yeah, so that's a lot of political impact diplomatic approaches on how you you approach.

I remember one day I was in Saudi Arabia and meeting some Sheikh or some important guy for whom I was still with Philips at that time. We were presenting a project and then the big boss asked me what do you think of this? I thought maybe we could do it this way or this way, and it was a ridiculous proposal. I don't think it was really good, but I couldn't tell, of course, that it was not a good design. So what I learned to say is oh, that's not a bad idea, we could do it. What about if we do it this way and this way? So, having validated him in front of his staff and then come up with another option, was a diplomatic way of saying well, your solution was not really good, but why don't we do it this way? That's the sort of thing that I've learned along the way how to listen, how to deal with clients, in validating and respecting them, but also putting your own point of view across.

And doing that in a very respectful way.

Yeah, I think lighting design also is very much about listening. You need to really listen to your clients. You need to understand where they're coming from. It's not only your way or the highway. You really need to understand what their worries are, what their concerns are and how you can address that. And then in the process, obviously you try to push forward what you think would be the right solution. But it's their money, it's their project, so you need to be respectful of what they want to spend. You need to be respectful of what they want to spend.

If you feel that they need to spend more, then you need to educate them why they should spend a bit more, what the benefits and added values are. So it sounds like already at a very early moment in your career, it already helped shape a lot of those aspects which you are actually putting in your Light Talk platform for others to make use of. We'll get to the nitty-gritty and what Light Talk is all about, but still on the topic of your journey, right, how did you then move forward from Philips to where you are, I guess, moving?

Yeah, that's also an interesting thing because I always wanted to be sort of independent. I never really liked the corporate environment where you had to clock in, you know, with a time card when you go into the office and clock again when you get out, and all this sort of over-regulated working environments was never really my thing. So there was always this desire to to be an independent, entrepreneurial sort of person. But I still spent 12 years, 12 and a half years, with Philips and at one point of time I was posted by see. I had the advantage that first of all I was multilingual, so besides Dutch, french and English and a bit of German, that was always helpful. So I was internationally schooled and trained, which made me really suitable within the organization to travel and represent the client. So I always traveled, even for Philips I traveled quite a lot.

So at one point of time they decided to post me in Singapore to develop their project business over there, because they just had sales representatives. Nobody knew really about projects. Projects were all dealt with in Holland. So they wanted to develop more application oriented and like a team that was able to develop projects. So I was posted there and my main task was to develop this project business, the project support in asia. So that was where, where I was in, in singapore.

I came there in 1988. Uh, what's quite challenging is a sort of a culture shock, obviously from from uh, the, the netherlands to to a tropical country like singapore, singapore, being an expatriate there. But I had super support. But my region of support was stretching all the way from Korea in the north to Australia in the south, and so it was quite a big area and I needed to train the people and I had been already training. So the advantage with maybe just a step back as a with my education and my knowledge, I was able quite quickly, within the Philips infrastructure, to become also a trainer. So after a few years, after I had done a couple of projects, I was also integrated in their training system. So they would receive people from all over the world to their main head office in Eindhoven and we would train them and explain to them about lighting and lighting technologies and lighting applications.

And I was one of those teachers in the earlier days as well and lighting applications and I was one of those teachers in the earlier days as well. So I already had in me the ability to present and to explain things, which of course came in handy when I went to Singapore and had to train the representatives in where there's Bangkok, jakarta, manila, etc. So I did that representatives in where is Bangkok, jakarta, manila, etc. So I did that.

But then there was a reorganization in the in the early 90s I think was around 1990 Philips, I think it was called Operation Centurion. They were going to cut jobs and there were, there were going to be the changes and things like that and that's all. And it was also the first time I got into contact with actual lighting designers because, mind you, before that I was a lighting designer within a corporate manufacturer right, I didn't know other than lighting designers were part of a manufacturer. But actually when I was in Singapore I got into contact with actual independent lighting designers, people that, like architects, were having a practice providing lighting design services.

So up to that point you hadn't met outside lighting designers? No, Okay.

I had met architects, um, but never actual lighting designers. Maybe I had, but I wasn't really aware of that. They were independent. But that opened my eyes. Oh, this is actually a profession of independent lighting consultancy. Yeah, um, and I got to talk to some of them and they were actually a bit upset about what I was doing there, because I was providing lighting design services as part of a manufacturer, while they were doing it as part of an independent practice and they would say, well, you don't charge fees and you do it for free and we need to earn our money with these services. Was that the?

main contentious issue or other points of difference.

No, that was one of the triggers that I realized like, oh yes, there is actually. So I set in movement within the Philips organization how do I call that? How do I call that? A business strategy to create an independent lighting design consultancy within the Philips organization. To validate that also, to make it like also a department that charges fees for its work, to make it more in balance with the actual independent consultants. Yeah, right Now, I did a whole business plan for that.

It never saw the actual daylight. Okay, and when I had done the whole business strategy to create an independent consultancy and Philips didn't want to go ahead with it, I said, okay, then I'll do it myself. And that was basically the the moment that I decided to move away, also with the uncertainty within the philips organization. Right, I decided, okay, time for me to move on. This is maybe my moment. Um, and I uh resigned while in singapore and uh started my own, uh, private. And you never looked back. No, no, and interestingly, it had never been done before that an expatriate resigned while being away. So even me leaving Philips also create all kinds of interesting things within the company because they had never dealt with somebody who was still overseas while resigning. Interesting, yeah, but anyhow, it all worked out and yeah, you can say, I never looked back.

So did you know very early on that you wanted to be a teacher? No, did you back then know that you wanted to write a book? No, let alone two books. No, maybe more. Yeah, you didn't know that you were going to be mentoring.

No, not really. One of my other mentors was my grandmother. She was an architect one of the first female architects in France and I always admired her independency and her lack of being influenced by other people. She did what she wanted to do, regardless what other people thought of her, and she was also an educator. She wrote books right. So there's a lot of synergies between what she did writing books about architecture, writing books for children. She was also an educator During the war. She taught her own children. She was also an educator during the war. She taught her own children. And that spirit of, you know, being passionate about what she loved doing, her drive to get things done regardless of what other people thought of her, I thought has always inspired me and I think maybe book writing has been sort of coming from her side Deep down inside.

Yeah, she wrote many books, even books that weren't really done for selling, where they were not bestsellers or something, but just the joy of writing and accomplishing something, and that's what I with my own books as well. My first book uh, light talk, um, a year in the life of a lighting designer um, wasn't a book that I set out to write. As you know know, I wrote, I set myself a challenge to write a blog about lighting for one year, for 365 days, not with the idea to create a book, but I just wanted to challenge myself.

Well, that was actually going to be my question about, you know, light Talk. What came first? The book or the blog, blog, and was it ever meant to be more than that? No, so.

Alex and I went to see a movie called Julia and Julia, which is about a very well-known cook who has a cookbook and then another lady who challenges herself to cook a recipe a day out of that book and then blog about it. And when we left the movie I said, well, maybe I could do something like that about line design. Why don't I challenge myself to write about my life as a line designer by blogging about it every day for 365 days? So I set myself that challenge, and I think it was in October 2009, just before the professional line design convention in Berlin, and I said that would be a good point to start this big convention with all the line designers around the world. So that's when I started and I didn't know where I was going. I would just say let me see if I can do this 365 days, yeah, and ultimately I did. Rain or shine.

So where did you? How did you go about writing the blog? Was it just something you was it on a website straight away, or did you write it just by hand?

How did that happen? What was the process? I don't remember the first, because I started in in berlin um at the convention and, as I was there, I shared my. I think that with, with wordpress or some some program, you could create a website. So I created something right. But when I shared my idea of blogging with the organizers, they said, oh, at that time it was the Professional Lighting Designers Association that was running this convention and we said, oh, we'll be looking for somebody to blog about lighting. Okay, so they took up the idea of blogging and they put my blog on their website.

All right, I see so, and initially my blog was called Perceptions, but they thought, nah, that's not very catchy, was that something that they named it? Yeah? So they said, what about light? Talk Light, as in not heavy talking about light, and and you know, talk, because you know you talk about lighting. So I thought, yeah, that sounds good. So within one or two weeks we changed it to light talk and it became a feature on their website for many, many years and it had to reach out to all the lighting designers around the world that were a member of the professional designers quite a big yeah, so there were times where I had like three to four thousand views a month.

Oh wow, uh, just on my blogs. Um, so it was really nice and people commented and and uh, to the extent that at one point of time, one of one of my followers didn't see my blog for two days and he sent me emails and Martin, are you okay, I haven't seen your blog. Turned out that there was some issue in his country, but it just shows you that I had some some very intensive and very dedicated followers at the time, which was really nice, okay.

So let's talk about Light Talk, then, and I guess your vision for Light Talk I guess at some point in time the concept of what Light Talk is today went from being a blog then to a book. I guess that was a decision in itself. To compile everything into a book, yeah Right, a really good way to actually look back at everything you've written for starters, but then as an overall concept, what was your vision? What did you intend Live Talk to do? Or was that something that was just you didn't know at the time, and then it developed as you went along.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I didn't know. I'm very much like that with a lot of things. I know roughly the direction I want to go, but I don't always know how it will evolve. In this case, it started with the blog, but then, as I grew older and got more experienced and more knowledgeable, I also feel that there is a need for the older generation to share knowledge with the newer generation. Yeah, to me it doesn't make sense if all my knowledge stays in my head. It doesn't serve anybody else.

So I've always felt and that came already when we talked about my Phillips days, when I was already training and sharing knowledge and mentoring the new generation I always felt the need to share, because it's very gratifying to be able to share knowledge and then see that you can change, sometimes just one person's life. I remember I was at an event in Manila and one participant came up afterwards and said Martin, I've been reading your blog and I've got your book. And I said, if you remember this and this, what you said then made so much impact and it really helped me turn around my business and and gave me motivation. Um, I've had it a few times like that and that's something that's really gratifying that you know that you made an impact on somebody in a positive way by just sharing your, your, your knowledge, your expertise or giving general advice on how you could deal with lighting or the business of lighting design in general.

And you never know who is actually reading or listening or following. I remember being with you once at an event I don't remember exactly which one but you got stopped in the hallway by someone who recognized you. You didn't really know them, but they read your blog and they said hey you're Martin Klaasen. You wrote that blog, which I guess gives you a lot of satisfaction as well, yeah.

I mean, it sort of gives reason to keep doing what I'm doing, because you know that you're you're enriching other people's lives with your knowledge, your expertise. What they do with it is is not really that's relevant, but it's the fact that you can help them in some way. Um, you, you don't know where they are in their in their career, in their personal life. Recently, I've taken up mentoring as well with people that maybe are looking for a career change or a change within the lighting industry or want some motivation to grow further. That's where I think my expertise will be very helpful. That's where I think my expertise will be very helpful, because one of the things that most of lighting designers or designers in general don't learn is how to do business.

And you know what I went through to set up my business and run my business. I had to learn. I made many mistakes, and most of the mistakes are not so much in lighting design but in the financial administration of doing business. That's the most difficult thing. You have clients who want to want you to be here yesterday. You need you need to also look after your family. You have to find a balance between life and personal life, business life and personal life. All these things you learn sometimes the hard way.

I was also not financially literate enough to understand that you should only, I mean, it sounds maybe trivial right now, but you shouldn't spend money if you don't have it right. Having invoiced a client doesn't mean you have the money yet, right? And at that time I thought, oh, I've invoiced the money, it's fine, I'm going to get paid. It's not in the bank until it's in the bank. It's not in the bank until it's in the bank.

The other thing that you learn the hard way is that expenses keep on coming but income is not guaranteed, right, yeah? Um, so these kind of lessons um help shape you to run, to run a business. Um, you have to take care that you look after that. Um create some stability, financial stability, in the company. I went to near bankruptcy as well, which you know that's a big learning curve, but, yeah, so that's the sort of expertise and knowledge that is nice to share and it may help other people to prevent or avoid some of the pitfalls of being a lighting designer. Yeah, which is not only about lighting design, it's also about balancing a business with being creative.

So this book, Light Talk, is full of your experiences. Yes, daily experiences. Yes, so a lot of the things that you just talked about, these are things that you captured in the book, right, yeah, yeah, do you? You still have insights that you take away from the things that you wrote at the time when you wrote this?

yeah, there are things that are still as actual as it was 10 years ago when I wrote it. You know things like your daily dose of daylight, which, when I wrote it, I think it was 2011,. 2012 or something around there that you need your daily input of daylight, and nowadays we talk about human-centric lighting, circadian rhythms and all that.

Yeah, it's very actual still today, but that wasn't the thing back then. Yes, no, not really.

It wasn't the term that we used in lighting design. It was something that was just coming. You know, in the view of some designers that that would be important, so there's quite a lot of things like that. But the book in itself is really about my daily life as a line designer. So one day it deals about issues that I have with a contractor or a supplier. The other day it's about typical site issues when I go to commission a project, or just the actual traveling from from, let's say, singapore, to mumbai in india, yeah, or to china, the things that you'll come across.

Sometimes it hasn't even to do specifically with line design, but traveling from a to b, from one country and culture to another country and culture are also big impacts on how you run your business. It may be about lighting technologies, new things that came up, things that you deal with in terms of application experience, client problems, anything that happened on the day. It were never long blogs, maybe a few hundred words only, but it sort of captured the mood of the day. I remember riding the blog in the back of a taxi driving to the busy streets of Mumbai, because a lot of traffic jam there and a lot of noise outside, and I would sometimes even wind down the window just to get the noise in the field and then meanwhile I was on my laptop typing away the story of the day, you know, yeah, so these kind of things.

That's that book, that's Light Talk 1. That's really about the experiences that you go through. It also talks about my holidays because it's literally every single day, so including when I went on holidays to France or other countries, going to market and then the experience of daylight, sunrise you know, sunrise in the morning, or lights at the market or anything seeing light fixtures being sold.

Did you find it challenging to blog every single day, or were there days where you didn't have any inspiration or you were not in a position to be able to write a blog? Did that ever happen, or was it just?

no, once you got into the routine.

That's it, yeah.

It's actually interesting. In the beginning I thought, oh, I'm not into the routine, that's it. Yeah, it's actually interesting. In the beginning I thought, oh, I'm not sure if I'll be able to do that, but as I started, I wasn't short of subjects at all. On the contrary, In the beginning it went so well that I actually created emergency subjects that.

I just stored away, just in case as a backup if I couldn't find a subject. But I never run out of out of subjects which was really interesting. And still today, as you know, I've picked up blogging again and and now I'm doing it on a weekly basis, but I sort of never run out of out of subjects. There's always something I know what to write about. So no, interestingly enough, I never run out of subjects, but I did always have quite a number of, let's say, backup subjects in case, in case, you needed it yeah, all right, so let's talk now about this book.

This is your second book, as the title explains explains it's 16 years in the life of light. So you've gone from 365 days of blogging to 16 years. What's? What's that all about?

yeah, so, um, in 2003, um, I was invited to write a column for a magazine called Lighting Today. Lighting Today was created in Singapore and, through a contact of mine, I knew the editor and he asked me well, you're a prominent lighting designer, would you like to write a column in every issue of lighting magazine, writing today magazine?

so that was monthly I'm guessing that was no, that was a quarterly okay, or quarterly yeah, um. So four issues a year, um, and I. It was again a challenge. I didn't know if I would be able to, because that was a bit more than just blogging. That was literally a whole A4 size, you know. But I said, yeah, let's just do it, because you know you have to sometimes throw yourself at the deep end. And I said, okay, let me do it, I'll see where I go. So that started in 2003. And I actually did it for 16 years. So this book is sort of a collection of all my articles, every single thing that I wrote from 2003 till 2019. When I decided that was just before COVID, so still quite recently, 2019?.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Just a few years ago when they decided to go digital. Yeah, so I wrote in a paper version of the magazine, but in 2019, they decided to stop the paper version and go digital, which was also for me a good moment to say, okay, it has been nice 16 years. And then I had, like, all these 16 years of articles, what do I do with it? Which was really interesting because these articles also give a sort of a bird's-eye view about what happened in the lighting industry from 2003 till 2019, which, in a way, saw the arrival of LEDs, because in 2003, basically, lighting LEDs were not the thing yet. So the whole development and arrival of LEDs is described in there. Okay, all the way till 2019, when we start talking about smart and intelligent lighting, and in between there are things like human-centric lighting and things like that. So it gives a really nice overview or how the lighting industry evolved from the early 2000s till nearly 2019-20 so it's a really.

Yeah, it's a really nice background and in a way, I started this before that one. Light talk one. Yeah, um, and in fact, the launch of light talk one is in light talk two, because I actually wrote about it in one of the magazine articles, in one of the the columns.

Yeah, so you've gone from a more personal lens. So we were talking about your personal journey just before, which is also in this book. Then you brought it out and actually this is a journey of lighting more generally as an industry a reflection of the lighting industry and the evolve the how. The evolution of the lighting industry over over 16 years, so it's actually quite interesting to read them sort of together, if you're really nice uh sort of the balanced background yeah, the personal input and and the general lighting industry.

Uh, what happened in the background as well? Yeah, yeah, and now I'm, I'm, I'm looking at the next one.

Um, since this year's 45 years that I've been in the lighting design business, I'm planning to do Light Talk 3, which will be 45 years in the life of Light Talk. So what lens is that going?

to have, or you don't know yet that will be.

Personal general, everything, Everything.

Universal that will have bits of Light Talk 1, bits of Light Talk 2, and a lot of personal experiences. Yeah, basically from the day I finished my studies to today.

Almost like a biography actually. It could be sort of.

I mean some details will not be in there. It could be sort of, but I mean some details will not be in there. Everything that relates to my journey within lighting and lighting design from my early days. What formed me from my family side, from my mother and my father, from having you guys as kids and a family, to where I'm today in australia. Um, yeah that that I'm only halfway, so there's still a way to go, but um, it's coming.

The journey is just beginning. So we've talked about your books. We've talked about your personal journey. Let's now touch on some other elements that you have been heavily involved in. You've mentored, yeah, um, a number of people you have been heavily involved in. You've mentored a number of people. You have also done masterclasses, but in terms of mentoring, I think they kind of go hand in hand with the journey and the mentoring and that whole. You know the takeaways that you've been able to get from that lifetime of being in the lighting industry. Where. How have you found mentoring other people? Um, maybe talk a little bit about your experience as being a mentor rather than being mentored. Um, what aspects do you feel that you are quite good at being able to to help others with? I mean, what have others specifically asked you to mentor? With certain parts of the lighting industry maybe?

give us a bit of background about that mentoring.

It's always hard to say, because mentoring individuals has a specific develops, a specific relationship with that individual and they all have different backgrounds, right, and people are in different stages of their life as well. They can be just young and starting, they can be more advanced and wanting a change in direction. So the mentoring is very much about listening. It's not about telling somebody what to do. I think that's one of the key things that I also got from being mentored myself. You need to be able to listen, understand where somebody is at and not try to impose what you think is best right, because that's your point of view. Yeah, and the difficult thing is to really understand where somebody is, where they're at in their lives, what sort of decisions they have to make, what their passion is, what their drive is, what it is that makes them think, and so that's the part of mentoring that is maybe not easy for everybody, but I think the more experience you have and the more you have dealt with people in general which of course I have because I've been dealing with so many different people, whether it's a contractor, a client, a colleague, a team member, you know a supplier, a manufacturer they all come from different backgrounds. So you learn along the way how to first of all, listen, what it is they want and secondly, understand the background, the cultural, cultural background, the economical background, uh, geographical background. That all comes into play when you want to sort of mentor somebody. You need to understand where somebody is at that particular point, what it is.

Some of them don't know what direction they want to go, and that's why they come to you. So you try to unlock what it is that drives them, that gives them a feeling of satisfaction or completion. So that's the sort of thing that you try to unlock. Completion. So that's the sort of thing that you try to unlock. You, you want them to find the direction themselves by offering options. Right, you can't be saying, oh, this is what you should do. I don't think that's the right way of mentoring.

I think the right way of mentoring is saying, well, this is where you are, these are the sort of options that could be of your interest, something that really would ignite your passion to do, and then with that you can develop a sort of a schedule of what to do and how to reach.

But you need that person to find that path themselves, because it has to be something that they feel like it's theirs. They have come to the conclusion that that's something that they want to do. What you provide is the framework, maybe the options, and maybe also show what the potential pitfalls could be if you go in one direction or the other directions. So you look at the various values that are related to certain directions or certain things, but also the positives and the negatives. So you need to give that overview so somebody can make their own decisions about what it is that attracts them to go into that direction. Then, of course, you can encourage. I mean, part of a mentor is also to encourage somebody right, if they feel really optimistic and positive about something, then it's also important to encourage and support.

Did it ever happen that values did not align and that somebody did not find their passion? And they realized maybe this is not for me? Yes.

I actually had one mentee that initially wanted to get mentored in developing further into lighting and then that particular person suddenly didn't feel like lighting was something. So there was a point at at at one moment that we decided that it didn't make sense to continue, because that person was not aligned to continue in the path of lighting, my, my mentorship. I mean, I'm not, I'm not a counselor, right? No, so there has to be a distinct separation between being a counselor and being a mentor, right? So at that point, when that person was no longer interested in pursuing a career in lighting but wanted to go into a different direction, more into education and and other things, community work, um, I decided that, and and that person also decided that it would be better to separate, and we just ended it on a friendly, friendly basis, but with the knowledge for that person that my door is always open.

I think as a mentor, I don't feel my task ends any ever. You know, if somebody that I've mentored, after a year or two you would like to come back. So, like I'm here, you know I would need some further. Yeah, for me it's fine.

So is there an ideal length of time to mentor someone? Or, you know, should it be six months a year is ongoingly? What would be sort of an optimal amount of time to be mentoring someone over the?

course of it depends really what they achieve. To me, I think mentorship um is potentially a lifetime, uh sort of undertaking, right. I don't think it can stop just after two or three months, right, but the first few months may be very helpful is setting somebody off in a certain direction, right, and then they can develop themselves and and it's not like you need to to hold their hand all the time but a mentor is there um to help somebody when they maybe don't see which what the next step would have to be how often would you meet up with someone, for instance to um, to find out what needs to be done next?

Certainly in the beginning can be weekly or two weekly. Just seven an hour and that's enough. Yeah, it's one, two hours. One two hours maybe on a weekly basis or two weekly basis depends on what the achievement is and what?

I guess it's different with every some people you know most of the people are quite busy.

They have their own lives. So it's not like you can. You can go to school every day and, and you know, get something. No, it has to be fitted in their personal lives, their business lives. So we find that one or two hours a week or every two weeks is sufficient, and then, of course, that's just our personal interaction. After that, I generally leave them with a bit of homework, right? So, yeah, after we have talked it through, I say okay, this is what we discussed today, this is what I want you to do for the coming week, so that when we meet again, I want you to do this, this, this, or give me a feedback on this, this and that so mentoring is highly personalized to the person.

Absolutely. That you're mentoring yeah, master your master classes, I'm guessing is more of a broader context in which to to learn from. Let's now talk about your master classes, because that's an all that's also a very important, I think, element as part of your light talk platform. Yeah, where did that come from? Like, what's your approach in terms of your master?

classes. So what I want to do is to sort of like I've written my books. They are sort of general in nature this is my life. But the master classes are very subject driven, right. So that will be about maybe the business of lighting design or how to do conceptual design, or I'm going to go into lighting application. So it will be very subject directed and I want to create little modules for about 45 minutes each that gives a deeper insight on one specific subject, right, so that people can accumulate the specific knowledge about that subject. Some subject may be spread over two or three modules. I have started now with six or seven modules I've done now, but there will be some more modules that will be very specific on applications, and in that I share my 45 years of knowledge of doing things and of course it's my experience.

It doesn't mean that that's the way to do it, it's just I'm sharing I'm sharing what I did and how I did things, the the, the pitfalls that I came across, the things that I learned, most of all because you learn from your mistakes. Yeah, so I'm sharing also my mistakes and and what I learned along the way because, as I said in the beginning, you learn also from a lot of people's mistakes. Exactly, if I share my mistakes, people can learn from my mistakes as well, correct?

How many modules have you got at the moment with your masterclasses? We've got seven modules.

Do you? Yeah, that's more about the general aspects of lighting design. Okay, I think it's important to understand what it takes to become a lighting designer, what it takes to deliver the service as a as a practicing lighting designer. So I will go through all the aspects from designing, from specifications, from running a business as lighting designer, how to deal with, how to deal with the lighting technology. That's all part of the first seven modules, and once these are done, then we're going to step into actual applications.

So building on that initial base of a masterclass, I think you need to have a general understanding about lighting design first the basics of lighting design, so to speak and once you have the basics, then you can move into specific applications.

And these are all available on your Light Talk website, which is lighttalkspace, so people can participate in your masterclasses by basically putting your name down and you can follow it in your own time. Would you recommend also, I guess, coupling that with mentoring at the same time, or it really doesn't matter what?

Well, the thing is that we are giving the first mentor or consultancy session for free, so people who want to know more, they can just log in and book an appointment. I'm happy to give a free session where we can discuss what people need one or would like to do, and from there they can decide what they want to follow and how they want to follow up.

So I think there's plenty of materials there, everything from your experiences in light talk one and light talk two, combined with which reflects my 45 years as a lighting designer in the business and a lot of that would have gone into your master classes as well, of course of course, it's not only light design, so, mind you, it's also the cultural and geographical experience that I had by doing projects. I'm not just doing projects just in Australia or in Singapore or whatever. I've done projects all over the world.

So, it comes with my experience of doing works and projects in China, works and projects in India, philippines, australia, europe, right, so that is also a cultural background. And dealing with contractors in the Middle East for argument's sake, it's all a bit different. So that cultural background and geographical spread of experience also is a very big part of the knowledge sharing that comes with this.

Yeah, absolutely. Now you mentioned that you were 45 years in the business. Yeah, is there a lot for you beyond lighting, I guess, maybe in a practical sense, your core lighting design? Yeah, is there a shift away from that to more of an educational type of role within lighting design?

or is it going to be something completely different? Let's put it this way the number one priority when you get older is your health. In order to keep your health at a good level, you need to eliminate stress. In order to eliminate stress, I probably need to do a bit less of project design and being in a hectic environment where I have to satisfy clients all the time. So that probably well, it does mean that I'm going to step back from my active lighting design activities. I will still be involved because it's in my blood. I've done it for 45 years.

You'll never retire I can't really retire but being more remotely involved, let the new generation take over the day-to-day activities. I will be still mentoring the team and then, yeah, all the experience that I've potted up over the last 45 years, now I want to sort of put it out there and share with the industry. I will do that through the books. I'll do that through the Light Talk website. Obviously. I also do that by public speaking, and I've been already invited in several events for this year. I share my knowledge through public speaking as well. We're going to do an audio version of this book as well, absolutely. So there will be an e-book, an audio book of that as well, because a lot of people use their mobile phone and are on the road all the time, so now they can listen to the to the light talk books as well.

But yeah, that's that I'll be moving to that, meaning I will be more doing lighting when I want it rather than on yours. I have to do it on your terms, basically my terms. I think by now I've earned my, my position in the industry to be doing it more when I want it rather than because I have to. Yeah, fantastic.

I think that's a great way to end our little discussion here. And, yeah, I think everyone should check out Light Talk. For sure, lighttalkspace you can find it out online. You can continue reading Martin's blogs, maybe check out the master class if that's something you'd like to tap into as well as maybe… Consultancies as well With consultancy.

I'm certainly very keen on doing consultancies as well, because it's something that I can use all my my 45 years of experience to help people on the way give insights. Don't forget, I've had a lot of interactions also with manufacturers, with people that do innovations in the lighting industry. So that knowledge also with manufacturers, with people that do innovations in the lighting industry, so that knowledge also helps manufacturers to maybe develop new lighting application oriented products All that knowledge I have and, yeah, I'd love to share that, yeah, perfect.

Thank you very much. Thank you.