In this episode of Inside the Collective, Brad Amos sits down with Willie Mack, a creative and commercial strategist and partner at The Jays and The Carrot Collective, who has led over $1 billion in licensing and partnership deals and co-authored the legislation that opened New York's cannabis market.

They talk about the difference between brands that genuinely move culture and ones that just borrow from it, what most people get wrong about partnership, and how staying human matters most in categories built to sensationalise or sanitise, like cannabis and death tech. Willie also connects his photography and meditation practice directly to how he approaches business problems, and shares an unusually grounded take on where AI does and doesn't belong in creative work.

A conversation about building things that are commercially real without losing what made them worth building.

Inside the Collective is a podcast from The Carrot Collective, exploring the thinking behind how people work.

In this episode of Inside the Collective, Brad Amos sits down with Lorenzo Petrillo, urban placemaker, design strategist and founder of Loop Lab, a Singapore-based consultancy that has spent 12 years helping governments and organisations unlock the value of underused public space.

Lorenzo and Brad talk about why he pitched “measuring the number of smiles” to government stakeholders instead of a financial return, how his team finds the people a space was never designed for, and why placemaking should be tested cheap and fast rather than planned to death. They also get into desire paths, gentrification, the fight for pedestrianisation and colour on Singapore's streets, and what stops good ideas getting signed off.

A conversation about building public spaces that people actually make their own.

Inside the Collective is a podcast from The Carrot Collective, exploring the thinking behind how people work.

In this episode of Inside the Collective, Brad Amos sits down with Frances Gaillard, brand strategist, self-described advertising nerd and founder of 43 Elephants, a specialist brand and growth collective for founder-led and challenger businesses.

Frances and Brad talk about why literal, word-for-word localisation is a wasted opportunity, and what “freedom within a framework” looks like when it works.

They dig into how ambition and taste shift across Singapore, Shanghai, London and the US, why “feedforward” beats feedback, and how easily good teams slide into what Frances calls the “vortex of doom” — months of committee-driven churn that produces work nobody actually believes in. They also talk candidly about trust, friction, and the disappearing courage to call bullshit.

A conversation about building brands and client relationships that can hold structure and nuance at the same time.

Inside the Collective is a podcast from The Carrot Collective, exploring the thinking behind how people work.