EPISODE 098: Deckible: 500 Card Decks In Your Pocket with Nick Kellet

podcast Sep 07, 2023

In this episode, I interview Nick Kellet, the creator of Deckible – your digital companion for card decks! Deckible is an essential tool in your daily practice, having a variety of card decks right at your fingertips, ready to provide guidance, inspiration, and self-reflection whenever you need it.

Deckible is more than just a collection of digitized cards; it’s an engagement experience. Nick explains how to uncover its user-friendly interface and customization options, which make it easy to curate a personalized journey through different decks. Whether you’re a seasoned practitioner or just starting, Deckible adapts to your personal preferences.

This Week’s Episode

“We’ve created this ultimate customizable experience for the phone, for the tablet. This is your metaphoric church – your rituals and practices are designed in here for you and they’re in your pocket and you can do all of that on the go wherever you are.” – Nick Kellet

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About Psychic Matters Podcasts

Ann Théato, CSNUt, Psychic, Medium and Spiritual Tutor, investigates psychic development, mediumship techniques, and paranormal science, so that you can come to understand your own innate psychic ability and expand your knowledge, whilst learning to develop a curious mind.

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PM 098

Deckible is more than just a collection of digitized cards; it’s an engagement experience. Nick explains how to uncover its user-friendly interface and customization options, which make it easy to curate a personalized journey through different decks. Whether you’re a seasoned practitioner or just starting, Deckible adapts to your personal preferences.

Join us as we reveal the advantages of embracing digitized card decks. Discover how Creators are using Deckible to enhance their offerings. From interactive readings that foster a deeper connection with the cards, to guided meditations and affirmations based on your draws, Deckible becomes a versatile tool for personal growth. And the perks of this digital journey don’t end there. We also explore how Deckible encourages community engagement. Share your insights and experiences with others using the app, creating a supportive space for exploration and learning.

Are you curious about how to integrate Deckible into your daily rituals? Tune in as we guide you through the process. Intrigued? Join us in this episode to learn how Deckible is revolutionizing card reading, making it accessible, convenient, and eco-friendly. Whether you’re seeking guidance, affirmation, or simply a moment of introspection, Deckible has something to offer on your journey of self-discovery.

You’ll Learn

What Deckible is
How Deckible can help you
Why Deckible is an engagement experience
How to use Deckible in your daily practice
The advantages of digitised card decks
Incredible ways Creators are using Deckible
The advantages of digital journaling
How to seamlessly integrate Deckible in your daily ritual
How to foster a sense of community
The convenience of Deckible for Guidance

TRANSCRIPT

Hello, my name is Ann Théato and welcome to episode 98 of the Psychic Matters podcast. Don’t forget to like and subscribe to the show and leave a written review because they help so much to move the podcast up those important podcast charts and you can leave as many written reviews as you like – one per episode if you want – that would really, really help me! Go to Apple podcasts to do that or Podchaser.com and look for Psychic Matters.

What is new this week? Well, life is going apace, is it not? It seems like time is speeding up! I’m still travelling back and forth and back and forth to Ireland so things are very difficult there and it’s all just awful so I’m just trying to keep as buoyant as possible and not think about it. Instead, I’m busy planning some amazing courses to teach you next year online – so do check out my website anntheato.com – you’ll see I’m teaching a really exciting mentorship programme – The Tools Needed for Remote Viewing in Psychic Detection – where I will be helping you to explore psychometry and dowsing, scrying, map reading and understanding the secrets held within ideograms. So if you fancy that – details are on my website anntheato.com or if you want something less intensive and more experiential – you might love my new 12 month course which starts in January called The Traveller – where we will be experimenting with various forms of consciousness travel – looking at past life regression, astral travel, future life progression, life between lives, extended remote viewing and all kinds of spirit led experiences and soul adventures. If you fancy that, details are on my website anntheato.com

Meanwhile, in this week’s podcast, I’m talking to Nick Kellet, an Innovator, a visionary thinker and a seasoned entrepreneur. Nick is the mastermind behind an impressive mobile application named Deckible. It’s an app that adapts to your unique spiritual path. Visualise it as having a supportive mentor constantly in your pocket, providing enthusiastic encouragement and valuable insights. Not only does it mean you can carry around an extensive collection of 500+ card decks, but Deckible transforms into a versatile resource for enhancing oneself, for receiving coaching, and for accessing business training. Listen to this episode and find out why Deckible has become THE indispensable toolkit for your daily practice.

.Ann:

Today I am joined in the studio by Nick Kellet from Deckible. I’m super excited about this episode because I know what Nick is about to share with you is gonna blow your minds. And for those of you out there who, absolutely love using cards in your daily practice, whether you love using affirmation cards or Oracle cards, coaching cards, or tarot cards, or something in between, Nick has created an incredible product that will enable you to carry 500 plus card decks in your phone, so that you have access to your personal collection of cards at all times during the day, without needing to bring a wheelbarrow around with you to cart them all about. Nick Kellet, welcome to Psychic Matters.

Nick: Thank you. I’m gonna reuse that wheelbarrow. That’s a so much more provocative metaphor than carrying a backpack.

Ann: Yeah, that’s right. Because a lot of us do, we have a lot of different tarot cards or, or Oracle card packs, and they weigh a ton. And we love to have access to all of them. Some of them we even forget we have. tell us, Nick, what is Deckible and how can we make the most of it?

Nick: Yeah, well, Deckible literally is like, we have all these decks, a typical deck fan who, who were like almost like the Magicals, in Harry Potter. They’re a small subset of society at this point, but they love their decks so much they own 10, 20, 50, a hundred, 200 decks. And then when you have that many decks, you tend to forget. Some people are almost embarrassed to tell people how big a deck collection they have, and they often end up lying to their partners. “I didn’t buy another deck. No, no, you’ve seen that before.” so we’ve basically digitized that. We expect to get our songs from Spotify or Apple. We get our movies from, Apple movie or Netflix or wherever, right, at Amazon Prime. We expect it on our phone and we get our books from, from Kindle or Audible or, you know, everything’s digital. And the poor card deck got left behind. And, and the reason for that is ’cause there’s more intense experience, you know. Books, movie, songs are passive consumption, right? we read, we listen, it’s coming to us from the creator. Whereas a deck is actually a participation. It’s an experience, it’s an engagement experience. So, it’s a good deal harder to create an awesome card deck app. And lots of people have tried and made lots of not so cool card deck apps. They, they lack the feeling like everyone in this space is, you know, as touchy feely, as you could be. Right? And so, if the experience isn’t touchy feely, guess what? If you don’t feel anything, you don’t love it, you don’t use it, it falls out of practice.

You don’t use it every day and then you stop using it. And lots of people have bought and used some tarot deck apps and cease to use them. And what we’ve created is something that you won’t wanna cease to use. ‘Cause it’s fun and engaging. And it’s really the first app. We have 500 decks on Deckible and that’s only gonna keep growing. And so, the randomness and variety and the inspiration that comes from having 500 decks. And we do mixed readings and mixed readings are awesome. Everyone loves mixed readings, but they’re a pain in the butt if you’ve got a physical deck. ‘Cause who wants to mix up two or three decks and then go and unpick them afterwards?

Ann: Yeah.

Nick: Not just because they’re heavy, and we could just go, oh, shuffle this deck. Shuffle. Oh, check that card. Gimme three cards from here. Shuffle this deck, gimme some cards, and mix it up. What does that mean to you? and what does it say to you and what does it make you feel? And ’cause it’s all about taking you inwards.

Ann: That’s really beautiful. I love that actually. ‘Cause you can layer up the meanings of different cards. I, I think that’s fantastic that you can pick and choose from different decks. That’s amazing.

Nick: Right, right, right. And, oh, have you heard of, um, the Alleyman Tarot?

Ann: No. Tell me about the Alleyman tarot.

Nick: The Alleyman Tarot is the best-selling kickstarter Tarot Deck ever. It sold 22,000 or something, copies at first pass.

Ann: Wow.

Nick: And it’s a deck of 130 cards from 130 decks from 130 creators, something like that.

Ann: Wow.

Nick: So, I, I heard of it. Before it was launched, ’cause I’d already bought stuff from this guy, the creator of the deck because he just curated it, right? He didn’t create it, he curated it from all the content already existed, it was just assembled into one deck and I, so I backed the project and then I was part of a Facebook group. The actual print production, everything was a long way off. People were too excited, the idea of all these mixed decks. And so, people in the group started saying, Hey, I want to take this deck of mine and break it up, and I, I’ll mail it to people, so if you, what will you trade me? So, people were trading cards. From decks and posting them to people. I mean, it’s a very inefficient, expensive process to send a whole deck into like, you know, 10, 12 different envelopes and mail it to different people. And then it’s an exercise of trust for those people to receive back that, you know, I’ll send you this, you send me that, and it’s all going on. But there was such an excitement and buzz because people wanted this. So, everyone created before they actually got the Alleyman deck, they’d broken at least one of their decks, mailed it to other people, received cards back and created their own mix deck. And we were doing this exactly at the time we were creating Deckible. And we knew we’d already conceived we were gonna do that as a feature set in Deckible, but this was just massive validation that this audience was super excited by it and it makes total sense to me. So that, that was a major source of inspirational validation of what we were doing. And. It’s hard to explain. You know, Deckible is incredibly easy to explain, but really hard to explain in equal measure. And I’ll tell you why. When it’s because people have already touched an existing card deck app, so I tell you it’s an existing card deck app. That’s like saying you’ve driven a car before. It’s like the car I’ve driven before. I’ve got a mini, driving a mini is not like driving a Ferrari, right?

Ann: Yes.

Nick: I was just at this amazing experience last week in Poland and I, and ran a little workshop there, and these are incredibly experiential performer type people and a bunch of people came to the session and they walked away going, I had no idea. You told me this, but I did not imagine that. And when I show people what it was, they’re like, this is like, and I show people a mixed deck reading. We did a card a like a, card sort. So, people chose their values from a deck that was, and this one lady was like, she was choosing, it was just beautiful and everyone was like, you can, Wow. And ’cause when, when you choose cards in Deckible, you can pinch and zoom them, make them bigger and smaller, right? And, and we were choosing, this lady chose her values. And then I said, okay, now prioritize them. She said, how’d you do that? I was like, well, you just, you make this card bigger. So, creativity is bigger than love, than is efficiency. And so, she just like prioritized them based on how she felt. Well, when you are pinching and zooming, you are 100% in that moment. You know, it’s so, when we do yoga or when we do meditation, we often, we always say when we do meditation, return to the breath. When you get distracted, return to the breath, right. We’ve, we’ve all heard that. We’ve heard that a hundred thousand times, right? And when you are pinching and zooming cards, I don’t have to tell you to return anywhere ’cause you haven’t gone anywhere. You are with the cards in the moment and it’s on your phone. and I smile, ’cause a lot of people say to me, oh yeah, it’s great. I really like the tactile feel and sensation of having a real deck. I’m like, oh yeah, sure. Whatever, let me show you the app and then they see it and they play with it and realize it’s actually more engaging and tactile and, hey, I’m not, I love, I own 150 plus decks of my own, so I love the tactile and I leave them around. I leave my decks out. I love, I love board games and I play a lot of board games. And to me, board games and, and card decks are art. So, I leave them around my, my place and because it, it touches me, right? And I think everyone feels that. But, but to actually create a transformative experience for touchy-feely people, sensorial, energetic, energy driven people is powerful. And we, I, I absolutely feel we’ve done that. I’m not saying we are done, we are far, far, far from done. But right now, if I ever get despondent. If I’m having a bad day, you know, things didn’t happen, something got delayed, something got whatever it is, right? People, things happen, right? I just sit down with Deckible and I pinch and zoom, I pick a random card deck and I just draw format and I’m like, this experience is really what we set out to create. I remind myself because life, you know, can, deal you lemons on occasion and you get some bad days, and What we’ve done is phenomenal. Like to have 500 decks is I’m an eternal optimist, an optimist in the extreme. I don’t see the obstacles. Usually energy, just positive energy and enthusiasm passes through most obstacles, right? Sometimes you just keep hitting the same obstacle and eventually you just either wander around it or over it or through it. But to get the first 50 decks on Deckible to get the first 10 decks was like, it’s like trying to sell a fax machine.

Ann: Right.

Nick: Because no one to send them to. If you’ve got, like when everyone’s got a fax machine, everyone wants a fax machine. But when

Ann: Of course.

Nick: And I didn’t really anticipate that, but it was really tough. When we got to 10, it was like, okay, suddenly, we got to 50 and then a hundred was easier and suddenly we’re at 250. We, we set a goal of a hundred for the launch and we got to 250, we’re now at 500. And that to me is like insane gratitude of like, I have now got 500 probably a thousand artists who’ve trusted us with Deckible, who have got decks in the, in the works have, they’ve used it, they’re using it, they’re involved in it, and it’s phenomenal because we get insanely awesome feedback from people.

Ann: What sort of feedback are you getting, Nick?

Nick: Oh, um, like one person uses it. She’s never meditated successfully, and now she’s done like a, well, she’s nonstop. She’s used it every day since she started using it. She’s integrated in Deckible into her daily practice. She, this person’s like, sent me so many DMM messages of like, oh, this doesn’t quite work, or that would do, this isn’t. And so, we just grab all of that and the product gets better and better. As you know, the suggestions when you can sit there and look at our software product and think, well, we should do X and Y, but when 10 people tell you something who are actually using it, that’s, that’s, you know, you don’t need to, I don’t need to make any choices anymore.

my job now is like thinking about where to steer the ship.

Ann: Yeah.

Nick: But the voice of people, and I just say to people, just join, don’t, don’t assume it’s perfect. It’s not, this is a massive project. It’s getting better and better, but. Get on board, get a voice, drive the, you know, join us on the bus and help us decide where the bus is going.

Ann: Yeah. And that’s beautiful, isn’t it? It’s community built. Well, obviously you’ve built it, but it’s, it’s influenced by the users and you are trying to produce what it is they require and it’s an ever-evolving business, I feel, because spirituality ever evolves and it doesn’t ever stay the same. But Nick, just go back a little, if you will, for those people who want to imagine as they’re listening to this episode, you’ve talked about, let’s just say a tarot card in your pocket. It’s the size and shape it comes up on your telephone screen exactly as the size and shape of your telephone.

Nick: Yeah.

Ann: You’ve spoken about the pinch and squeeze and making it bigger and smaller, but there’s a lot more to Deckible, is there not because

Nick: Absolutely. Yeah.

Ann: There’s journals, there’s affirmations, there’s sound.

Nick: Right?

Ann: So, can you, if somebody was to pick a card for the day, what would it look like to try to describe, if you can, that user experience.

Nick: Yeah. Okay, so, so firstly, this is what you asked me. You just asked me what did I, what have I learned? Randomness was not something I perceived to be as important as it was, and so you can shuffle a deck. Shuffling is really important to people who use physical decks. So the way we shuffle the deck, it isn’t just, I guess, lots of software products. Do a faux shuffle that that cards jiggle a bit and you’re gonna get the card you were gonna get anyway, but it said it was a shuffle. Here we are shuffling the deck and you can see the cards are like shuffling, and then there’s a stop button you can play now and you can interrupt the shuffle and, and then that will influence what you get. So, you are actually in control of the shuffle. And then that’s one example. people can choose at random one, two, or three cards. ‘Cause a lot of what we’ve discovered is people want to just start their day with their, my daily ritual, my daily practice is I want to draw one card at random from a deck or three cards or two. Everyone’s different, nothing’s right and nothing’s wrong, and they’re all wonderful. And so, and even in Deckible, we can choose a, there’s a, there’s a random deck button, so I remember get lucky on Google that no one the button, no one uses, but you can choose a random deck and, and if you’ve got a lot of decks, that’s important, ’cause you actually, the decks get forgotten. and, and it’s like trusting the universe is gonna bring you the message of the card you need today from the deck you need, is this, right?

Ann: Yeah.

Nick: And at any point in Deckible is you could always choose the deck choose the cards yourself or let Deckible choose.

Ann: Right.

Nick: And to have mixed that up in one, because there’s the whole spiritual divination side of things, and you can use card decks for decision making, like prioritization, choosing ideation. There’s so many ways to influence what you choose. But then you, as you mentioned, like, a card deck is actually incredibly limiting in a very cute, adorable way. The only card decks only have two sides to a piece of paper right front and back. And then that’s why we have a separate guidebook because if I would’ve put the guidebook on the third side in a real world, if I could have three-sided paper, but I can’t. Digitally we can, we don’t have a guidebook because the guidebook is, well we do. It’s woven into the deck. So, you draw the card. Look, I’ve got the Hanged Man. What does that mean in this deck? Flip it over. I’ve got the guidebook.

Ann: Yeah, it’s brilliant.

Nick: remember the Mash Gets Smashed advert from way back in the …

Ann: Yes! Yes, I do.

Nick: Those kind of robots. I can’t believe people are actually smashing up their potatoes and there’s like, I can’t believe people are actually using a Guidebook and not look it up. Like, because I guarantee you 80% of people do not look up the meaning of the cards. And, and if there’s other people around there’s this huge pressure. and if you draw five cards in a reading, you’re gonna look up five bits of the book. you may, when you first get the deck, but there’s a point where you kind of zoom through that and so now you don’t have to worry. You just flip to it. And then the other thing is it’s digital. It’s a phone. it’s a powerful device. So, you could actually record an audio track or a video to go with each card.

Ann: So you, the user, or you the …?

Nick: Well, not currently, but that’s actually a really good question. I mean, why not? Yeah, I mean, that’s, that’s an amazing, we haven’t, I haven’t actually heard that suggestion before, bizarrely, but no, I haven’t. But for now, we’ve focused on the creator and saying the creator, like we have an amazing creator, um, Elena Rower, who is very well known globally as a, as a yoga teacher. And she had a, she has this beautiful deck, uh, daily. It’s called Daily Ceremony. It’s got, I think 40, 42 cards and we just, we moved it to Deckible and she, the card had a really weird layout, so she redesigned it for Deckible to be a square card with one word on it. But because of the audio video capability, she decided to create an audio track for each card. So, it may say, what card did I draw from her deck today? And I, I should play you one of these in a second. I’ll try and take one out. Um, it can say like, action. Where in your life are you taking action? Where are you not taking action? How can you think about today? Carry the word action with you. Take it into think everything you do to be more action oriented today, whatever it might say. I’ve made that up.

Ann: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nick: Hers is about that sort of length and all of hers begin with the word and end with the word. She’s this powerful. I mean, she is who she is because of, she’s done this a lot. She is totally time served in the art of being a yoga instructor on a global, global scale, and she’s published many books. Beautifully done. Amazing experience to, to use that deck. And it’s like, that’s, that’s the beginning of your meditation for today. It just keys you up. Right?

Ann: Yeah. That’s really beautiful. And then speak about the audible side of things. Uh, excuse me. Speak about the journal, journaling side of things.

Nick: So, so basically the key, when you enter Deckible, and it’s unknown to you when you don’t know what Deckible is, but the first time you land on the home screen, what you don’t realize is below the screen is a timeline of everything you’ve ever done on Deckible. So we never forget a reading. So when you drew two cards on Tuesday, a year ago, these were the cards you drew. How many times have we taken photos of cards? We did in a reading.

Ann: Loads of times and, and then when I read people online, I send them photographs of the cards that have been pulled.

Nick: but it’s impossible pretty much, given how many photos we take to go back to find that reading.

Ann: Totally.

Nick: And what were you feeling at the time with that reading? that’s what gets lost more than anything. And with Deckible, that’s where the journaling kicks in, right? So, we have the timeline on Tuesday. A year ago I picked, you know, the Hangman and the Hierophant, and then what did that make me feel? How did I interpret it on that day? So, I’ve got free freeform journaling section where I can type or just talk to my phone about what I felt about that. In the middle of that, I can flip to the guidebook. It’s all, it’s all woven in. It’s beautifully integrated that, you know, you don’t have to use all of this, but you can use it all and, and everyone will use it differently. And that’s the magical part of it. And so we talked about journaling. There’s also meditation. There’s a meditation timer. So you can pick a card and then start the timer. Choose where you want to journal for, you know, five minutes, 20 minutes, whatever you want. And then, you meditate, it saves away the card, especially in the timeline to say you did that, so you got proof. Um, we at the moment, and, and we haven’t got any alerts in Deckible, it’s just you turn up with your positive intention to turn up every day to use Deckible. And so I call that, that’s like self-guided. It’s a self-guided practice. If I turn up and use, I remember I told you about that lady that meditated every day.

Ann: Yes.

Nick: A hundred, 200 days. Now that is self-guided. There was no alerts, no alarms, no reminders. That’s, in my opinion, a hundred times more impactful. That is practice where she’s committed to the art of practice, but life is incredibly busy. Chaotic and it’s hard to do that. So we use, you know, if I didn’t use alerts and reminders, I would’ve forgotten that we had this podcast today, right?

Ann: Well, exactly. Me too.

Nick: That’s what our calendar is for, right?

Ann: That’s right.

Nick: So a calendar is, is a guided practice to make you turn up to an event. I could, I could wander through life and try and remember all those things. That’s unguided. I’m sure I’m gonna miss some events. Right?

Ann: Yeah.

Nick: And that’s the idea with Deckible. Everything in Deckible can be done, guided or unguided.

Ann: Right.

Nick: guided journaling is, where there’s a question I’m asked, you know, I’m asked, I’m given a prompt. Whatever that might be. Reflect on, you know, reflect on your, your relationship with your children, what happened today, how did this make you feel? Whatever there might be, whatever the deck is. ‘Cause the deck will be in, could be, can be incredibly specific and the prompts in that deck can therefore be incredibly specific to guide you down a path. Could be a shadow work deck, for example, right. Or it could be, you know, an affirmations and gratitude deck and it’s gonna ask you a prompt about that. That’s a guide, that’s guided. Unguided journaling is a blank page. We can meditate without guidance. That’s just silence and a timer. Or you can have listen to something to be guided through that process. So it’s, it’s amazing what we’ve learned about how, how we can actually help people create a toolkit, companion for their journey into daily practice. And I’ve been describing this since the whole essence of the timeline in Deckible, I call it my done list. Not a To Do list. A To Do list is what I’ve got to do, but what I’ve to done, is as important, if not more important than my to-dos and to done is more important because you congratulate yourself. You can pat yourself at the back and say, look, I value myself. I value my self-care and mental wellbeing. I invest in me. Look, I’ve done this for the last a hundred days. I am having a really shitty day today. I’m gonna need to draw a card. I didn’t draw a card for the last three days. Is that failure? No, because look back. Look what I’ve done. Look all the things that I’ve done. Oh, look, you are great. You can keep going.

Ann: Yeah.

Nick: And you pick it back up and, and keep moving with it. And that’s what daily practice is all about. but you know, you could use the deck or the decks and the mick to do whatever you like, however you use cards right now, if you are, you know, doing readings for people, you can do that digitally and then send, you, just send them the reading, you share the reading, and that person can get the reading without being on Deckible. They can even have those cards in the reading inside Deckible if they want to. but it’s slick and easy and efficient. And then if they want to buy the deck, they can.

Ann: Yeah.

Nick: to create their own readings or get access to the rest of the deck. So it’s a very simple, beautiful process. and I look on Instagram and I’ve seen so many, pictures of people’s, like light camera reflection off cards, you know, the cards look horrible.

Ann: Yeah.

Nick: But digitally it’s pixel perfect. There’s no horrible shadows. It’s just…

Ann: yeah.

Nick: Right.

Ann: They don’t get dirty or smudged or torn at the corners. That’s, that’s the thing. And you do different shapes of cards as well, do you? Right. Do you not? Oh, yeah.

Nick: Yeah. Yes. And, and I’m, that’s one thing people have not used a lot of, and this kind of things’ quite surprised me.

We have some, we have a beautiful hexagonal deck,

Ann: right.

Nick: That I love, Called heart space, beautiful deck. We have some, we have quite a few round decks, but you could actually create a tarot deck, which is just literally the outline of a shape. You don’t, you don’t have to have rectangles.

Ann: Yeah,

Nick: you could have the Hanged Man just being the Hanged Man.

Ann: Right.

Nick: As a cut-out shape, like a sticker, you know?

Ann: Yes, yes.

Nick: And then you bring in several cards. They lay over each other and you create this beautiful

collage.

Ann: Ooh, now that’s exciting, isn’t it? Layered up imagery, and then you get your scene. What is this?

Nick: Yeah.

Ann: I love that.

Nick: That becomes a storytelling game. I mean, tarot started as a storytelling game, right?

Ann: Yeah.

Nick: And that’s the origin of it, right?

Ann: Wouldn’t that be good? You could pick a card. I’m gonna create this. Pick a card for the background. Out of a selection of this many. Pick a card for the foreground. Pick a card for the weather, pick a card for this. And then when you’ve got your seven cards interlocking

Nick: right.

Ann: And they all lay over one another, then you’ve got a unique and individual tarot card for which

you would read.

Nick: Yeah

Ann: I’ve just created that. Isn’t that amazing? Go.

Nick: Oh, I have, I have, I have a deck. Oh my God, this is amazing. I gotta tell you this story. , Gives me goosebumps. This I was, I love when the universe does these things to you. Right? So, I was just at the Edinburgh Festival.

Ann: Oh, I love the Edinburgh Festival.

Nick: Oh my God. And so like, it was totally last minute because my daughter’s going to doing her MA at Edinburgh University. And so I met up with them. That was the primary reason my two of my daughters were there. So I went to meet them. But it happened to be the start of term, which happens to be when the festival is on and the only place I could book at that point that was sort of near my daughter’s place or whatever was, was a student Halls of residence.

Ann: Right.

Nick: They’ve totally monetized, like it’s expensive staying in and they’re like, monetized it. It’s really smart. Right. But I, I had this room and because I’m, I had a podcast, I had not, I had a Zoom call to do, so I kind of pulled the table away from the wall to get into a better, like, daylight situation and I heard this clunk behind the, the desk was an emotion wheel.

Ann: Was a what? Sorry, Nick?

Nick: An emotion wheel. You know that, that, have you seen that? Let me find it.

Ann: What is an emotion wheel? Oh, Nick’s gone off to hunt for it. Everybody. He’ll be back in a minute.

Nick: Oh yeah. Here we go. Ooh. Okay. Here we are. So, it’s basically there’s seven types. This is a common product. If you Google emotion wheel, you’ll find it. Okay. But this was handmade by somebody.

Ann: We are looking, uh, listeners at a circle, within a circle within a circle divided into sections like a cake. Yeah. Ever and ever tiny, uh, uh, sections.

Nick: So, there’s 123 emotions listed here.

Ann: Right.

Nick: And so, I, it was, it was bigger than this, but I, I kind of reduced it ’cause I, I stuffed it in my backpack, but it was like, and, and there was also a five-pound note behind there. It was funny.

Ann: Lovely.

Nick: And so I, this came out of it and it made me think and, and it made me decide I’m gonna, I’ve, I’m, I’m gonna turn this into a deck.

Ann: Wow.

Nick: But it’s actually gonna be, it’s gonna be like Venn diagrams. Like circles. So I can pick the, bring

the emotions in onto the screen in Deckible. I can overlap them and they’re transparent.

Ann: Yes.

Nick: So the colours combine, but I can say I’m really fearful right now. So I make fearful bigger. I’m a little bit, curious, but I’m very angry for make this bigger, right? So you can express yourself visually with this text.

Ann: That’s brilliant.

Nick: And it’s just like, I love Venn diagrams. I have a history of doing stuff with Venn diagrams and then here I am, the emotion wheels discovering it. It was just, I don’t know, like you, I love walking through life where you, curiosity keeps you opening the door and opening the door. And opening the door.

Ann: Yeah. Yeah.

Nick: And I was meant to pull back that chair, that table to find that it’s probably, it probably fell down when the student, whoever was the last student in that room.

Ann: Yeah.

Nick: Forgotten it where they’ve lost that wheel now they wouldn’t, they’re fully off on that journey of the rest of their life, right?

Ann: Yes. Incredible. Yeah. We are meant, things are meant for us, and they drop into our lives in the most extraordinary way sometimes. So why Nick, you are, um, in your background, your own personal history, a board game designer, an entrepreneur. What, um, what inspired you to create Deckible in the first place?

Nick: I mean, There’s a long, complicated stories that, but I’ll give you a shortened version. that I, I was trying to build some, I was exploring, trying to find a new, what should I next, what would be my next project? Right? And I was working with a friend of mine who’s a coach, and we were trying to create experiences. It’s funny that that was exactly the word, having just been to the, the College of Extraordinary Experiences. Experiences is this thread, right. And, and an experience for the phone. I, I didn’t feel that people, like the online course platforms that exist, I don’t think they’re experiences that they’re a way of delivering information. They’re like the old school model of teacher on stage talking down to the student and your modern age student wants to participate and get engaged. Yes, they want an experience. So I was creating that and it was all sorts of ideas were flowing through that, and it was around that point that I discovered. Just some of the types of card decks that exist. I didn’t realize, like I know about a lot about card decks ’cause I’ve been researching them for like two and a half, three years now and I started buying them and I was like, oh, this would work so well on a phone and a computer. ’cause it’s like, you know the pinch and zoom Tactile.

Ann: Yes.

Nick: And I just started buying decks and started. Then I built some prototypes of how this might work. On a computer and a phone and just the beautiful nature of laying out a spread of cards is just so visual. Or drawing a cards laid out in a circle like the, uh, zodiac spread and spreads are a beautify thing, right? They’re lay. That was an inspiration for me. Um, and it was then realization. I looked at what existed and there was not a good app. And, and, and the apps that existed were like, This deck, this app, one-to-one relationship.

Ann: Yeah.

Nick: Well, Spotify would not be successful if you had to download a different app for each album.

Ann: Yeah.

Nick: Right.

Ann: Yeah, for sure.

Nick: Oh yeah. I’ve got the, you know, ZZ top D app. And you know, this app and that app and no, I want to, I want to choose in the moment what I’ve got and that’s, so why didn’t that exist for card decks? And so that was the simplest idea, was like, let’s do that. And then, but we then said, If I’m gonna do that, what, what would the deck want to be? If it was digital, how would it be different? And that’s what we’ve enabled. And I just think, I look at, you know, Spotify and Audible, and Kindle and YouTube and Netflix, all these platforms of, they’re just, they’re universal because it’s, it’s, that’s how we expect our content to be these days. Right?

Ann: Yeah.

Nick: And even the mindfulness wellness space that we sit within is incredibly fragmented. So over, you know, we’ve got Headspace and Calm over here with …

Ann: yes.

Nick: You know that. And then there’s journaling apps over here with diary one and dah, dah, dah. And then there’s all these different card decks and they’re separate and there’s, there’s lots of other breathing apps and like colouring apps and it just goes on and on. And we were, what if we put all that together around a timeline? Which is your done list, your journal entries of what you’ve drawn and that becomes your daily practice.

Ann: Yeah

Nick: and that’s the magical thing is it’s it’s card deck centric, but you don’t have to be into spirituality or you can be, and some people are both, there’s plenty of people who’ve taken the spirituality into the workplace and some people hate it, don’t need it. We have lots of workplace decks, facilitation tools for people using this in the workplace. There are people that have created spiritual decks for the workplace. Wonderful. There, you know, we’re all different. We, we live in a world of, I want to customize the shoes that I wear, the jeans that I buy, the t-shirts that I wear, everything it’s like, tweak, tweak, tweak.

Ann: Yeah.

Nick: And so that’s what we’ve created, this ultimate customizable experience for the phone, for the tablet, that, that we serve many people, you know, we serve the creators, we serve people who just want to use card decks themselves, and we serve facilitators who are organizing or card deck readers, mediums that are using the platform. We’re just like, we are holding space for these people to do what they wanna do. Bring your decks, put, you know, but what do you do? What’s your practice? We don’t know the answer to all of that. And we’re trying not to, like, you tell us and we’ll listen to a few people and go, oh my God, we should add this, right? Because that makes sense. ‘Cause look how people are using it.

Ann: Yeah. Yeah. Like I said, it’s all gonna evolve, isn’t it? And I love all the different genres that you have here. Yeah. I’m just looking at your website as we are talking and you’ve got, as you’ve just said, business strategy cards, Celebration cards, brainstorming and ideation cards, as well as your tarot and your meditation and your spirituality, all of those different things. So, it’s very, very varied.

Nick: Yeah. I mean, I’ve deliberately gone and sought out, you know, that because otherwise if people see one thing, we get pigeonholed and people describe, oh, Deckible’s, just tarot decks, not the just d tarot deck is, is a a small, it’s a big thing, but it’s, the magic for me is the variety. You know, why, why, why does that matter to human beings? We all get incredibly bored very, very, very quickly. Right? I mean, look what it takes to make an amazing movie, to capture our attention. To make a, in a spot for two hours. Many, many millions of dollars to spend. So here we’re creating some and habits are hard work. It takes 21-day research shows, 21-60 days. It doesn’t matter. It takes a chunk of time and dedication to turn up to create a healthy habit. And so, turning up and creating that, and then the risk of getting bored. I know people use a journaling app for a while and then they get bored. So, they move on to the next one and they say they throw away all their work ’cause their work is lost in that app and it’s gone. And they pick up the next app, oh, this is great. I love this app. This is wonderful. And they use it for two months and then it’s like, oh, I’m bored. And they move on. Right?

Ann: Yeah.

Nick: And what we are trying to say is, we’re not trying, we are saying it, but we’re just gonna get better and better at saying is, you don’t need to leave. If you get bored, insert new deck into practice. Practice becomes vibrant and new and fresh again, excitement, energy, you carry on. Your practice is alive. You haven’t lost your history. You just choose a new deck and it’s like, that’s this, I, I own 700 plus books on Audible.

Ann: Wow. Do you, that’s a, that’s a lot.

Nick: You know, I, and I love it. I love, they’re all on my phone. There they are. Right? Yeah. It’s like when, when the iPod was launched, do you remember what the tagline was?

Ann: Oh, I remember the old iPod. Don’t remember the timeline.

Nick: The tag. Well, the tagline was…

Ann: oh, the tagline, excuse me.

Nick: The tagline, it was originally, it was a thousand songs in your pocket.

Ann: That’s right. That’s right. It was.

Nick: Right. And then it became 10,000 songs in your pocket. Didn’t really matter because quite honestly you couldn’t, if you think of a thousand songs, that’s probably over a hundred albums. Right?

Ann: Yeah.

Nick: And whether at the time we were cassettes or CDs, we probably weren’t many cassette players by that point were there, we were CDs, Or albums. ‘Cause some people were still in that space. You couldn’t visualize, there’s something magical in that metaphor, that statement. ‘Cause you couldn’t visualize what a hundred decks would be. How would that fit in my pocket? That’s magical. Right. And we’ve created that with Deckible, a hundred decks in your pocket. It’s magical. You don’t have to have a hundred decks, just one is fine. But you can begin on this journey and collect the decks that speak to you. And you know, we live in life where we’re on a constant learning path. We’re always, there’s always something new to learn. And there’s something new to unlearn, to leave space for what’s coming.

Ann: Yeah.

Nick: And I think we’ve moved more to a like just in time learning model. We learn the thing we need just before we need it because otherwise, well, what we learned would be outta date, be contextually irrelevant to our new existence.

Ann: Yeah.

Nick: And that’s what decks can do. You can literally turn anything into a course or a book. A book can be turned into a deck, not necessarily novels. But you know, any self-health, personal growth, reflection business book has some concepts in it that can be turned into a deck. And I dunno about you, but I have said this, it’s embarrassing to admit, but I’ve said this many times, oh my God, this book is gonna change my life.

Ann: Yes.

Nick: Right? We’ve all said that. I mean, hands up everyone who’s said that, right. Yeah, we have. And then what do we do about it? We went on to read the next book. We forgot about the book that was gonna change our life.

Ann: Yeah, it’s true.

Nick: Right? So true. And so, the thing you need to do to allow that book to change your life is integration in order to transform so that your life now has that into integrated. You need to weave that knowledge into habits, into daily practice. So, you turn up every day. To relearn and reaffirm what was in there that got you so excited to say this is gonna, and the books that’s gonna change my life will be different than the one that’s gonna change yours. And, and, and in 10 years’ time, what will change my life will be different than what changes mine now, right? So I’m constantly evolving, but if I want to instantiate those habits, if I take that, if that book, if, if the creator of that book distils it down into the most beautiful, visually inspiring, Deck with visuals and powerful words, and it’s basically the best of the book rendered as 30, 40, 50 cards, whatever you, whatever’s necessary with audio and video to, let me see, and remind me why this person, you know, say I, I’m total Brene Brown fan, or a Eckhart Tolle fan. and I wanna distil that down and I want to hear Eckhart or Brene tell me about something. To anchor that learning that, that I thought was gonna transform me. That’s powerful.

Ann: Yeah. really powerful.

Nick: Right? And we all learn differently. And the problem is everyone projects their own biases on the world. If you are a reader, a fanatical reader, but you don’t listen or watch video or you don’t learn by doing, you’re not a kinaesthetic person. You tend to engineer, not you personally, but everyone tends to engineer the way they communicate and the things they’re giving to the world through the lens of the way you learn. if you can create. and this is what Deckible does a stunning job of, and it wasn’t, this was not a, this is a happy accident. Was not by design, but we’re there and now we’re, now we’re like the keeper of this with our job is to cherish this lucky, happy accident to make it become more and more true. Because you can read and because you can watch a video and because you can move things around and draw and, and, and journal and meditate, you can create the experience you need for the learning style that you have to instantiate the habits you want. All that is possible, and that’s, like that gives me, I’m like, gives me goosebumps when I think about that, you know, and it, it, it feels like weirdly insane responsibility to just be the shepherd or the holder of this truth.

Ann: Yeah.

Nick: To hold that place and space for anyone who wants to create. And it could be just, you could literally come to Deckible and create your own deck for your own use. You could create, you already have a deck and you want to monetize it, and you want to make your deck accessible to more people, right?

It’s like postage has gone nuts. You know, we live in a big world where everyone can find your stuff and they want your deck in the, in Australia, but you live in the uk, so what do you do? You pay 40, $50 to ship that. Do you, do you store stock in each country?

Ann: Yeah.

Nick: Like digitally. You don’t have to and you put it in your pocket. And I, it’s, this is a really, like, we have some ingrained things, belief, our societal beliefs, and people print and want to love their card decks, which I, I’m a big fan of, but I ask this question to people a lot. It’s like when, when you need your deck, when you’ve had a shitty moment and you want to re-anchor or you want to just, whatever your ritual is, to reclaim your sanity in that moment where life’s dealt you, something you didn’t want to receive, and where you wanna be incredibly grateful for what’s just something amazing’s happened, where’s your deck? Very likely it’s a home, but I guarantee you this is in your pocket, fully charged, right? And so, this is. This is your, your metaphoric church that you, your, your rituals and practices are designed in here for you and they’re in your pocket. And you can do all of that on the go wherever you are. And it’s cool, ’cause if you think about it, you know, if you’re a medium and you’re doing readings for people, you’ve got it. But the people you’ve done that for get to carry your reading on into their life and their daily practice.

Ann: It’s beautiful. It’s a portal to a new way of life. Is it not?

Nick: I think so, and I think, I think we’re, sadly, I, I, I’m, I’m torn as a technologist ’cause I love what the good things that tech has done for us, right?

Ann: Mm-hmm.

Nick: But tech has also done some bad things for us. And, and I think like, you know, doom scrolling is a, is a, is a scary word, but we’ve all done it, I think. And. I kind of think of Deckible as design your own distractions.

Ann: I love that

Nick: you choose Being distracted is wonderful. It’s a joy, but make sure you are driving the distraction bus, not, Facebook, Google, Instagram, and, and that’s what we’ve created is so like people can say, don’t use this device, right. I. Tech is bad. Let’s get off like aa, let’s, let’s, let’s go cold Turkey.

Ann: Yeah.

Nick: You can’t cold Turkey on this thing, otherwise you’re gonna be lonely and depressed because this is how people connect with you, right?

Ann: Yeah.

Nick: But how we use the technology for good it’s by creating healthy daily habits and turning up and, and not doom scrolling. It’s about designing your own distraction, which is a case of just choose, choose your decks that speak to you for your needs, for your world, everything that you need, design it, and if it doesn’t exist, design your own deck, right? Design the practice you need for you.

Ann: Brilliant. Nick, it’s so brilliant. So, people listening, they want to, of course they want to go straight to Deckible. What is the website? How do they sign up? What’s the cost? Um, yeah, all the rest of it. tell us about it.

Nick: So basically, it’s, it’s Deckible – I.B.L.E.. like Audible. you can find the app on Google Play or Apple App Store. you can actually sign up in the app if you want. And so you basically need a password and an email address to sign up. Once you’ve signed up, then we give you a couple of decks for free, just as a, like, you can see what the experience is and then you buy the decks you’re interested in and, Then those decks you in, you download them. So you, if you buy the deck, it appears in your timeline, there’s the deck you just bought. You click on it, it’ll download for the first time onto your phone, and then from there on, you can be in a plane, in a train, in a cave, in an airplane. You don’t need Wi-Fi. You can use your deck, you know, without wifi, journal, do drawings, and when you actually then get back to society and have wifi, it’s all there, right. And so, yeah. And then a applicable works on your phone and your tablet. So it works on an iPad or it works on an Android tablet, and it’s beautiful to have that space. But it also works on this, like you can’t, there’s a, there’s an expression people use in tech that called mo, like design for mobile first. What that means is you design for this device. ‘Cause then when you move for, you know, this device to this device, it’s really easy to grow.

Ann: You’re holding up an iPad there, just for people listening.

Nick: If you have an iPad, you cannot squeeze an iPad into an iPhone. You lose something, go the other way. And so, we basically designed something for mobile experience. So, anything and everything you that I say you can do on Deckible, you can do it from your iPhone in your pocket. I love using on a tablet. I do both right? And in time we’re gonna have a desktop version as well. Not that we, that’s all part of our roadmap. And, um, there’s so many exciting things coming and so many things are possible, and it’s just, I don’t know. It’s, it’s wonderful. I get, I get to have crazy cool conversations with people every day about that deck project that’s already created or, it, it’s imagined, right? I used to have this expression that people said that everyone has a book in, everyone has a book inside them.

Whether whether it comes out or not is optional. Right? When I published my board game, I then discovered everyone has a a game in them too. Right?

Ann: Wow.

Nick: So, do you have a book in, you have a game in you now because of Deckible I’m discovering everyone’s got a deck in them too. It’s an, it’s a form of creative expression.

Ann: Yes.

Nick: It’s so empowering, like creative impression is so, so good for the soul. I have to create every day. If I don’t create something and by creation, I could just mean taking a beautiful photo.

Ann: Yeah.

Nick: But a photo where I took five minutes to like find the angle, the thing I want to, you know. Take that photo, that that qualifies as creation for me, it could be creating a deck, it could be making a video, writing a blog post. If I don’t create, I go a little, I die inside. I need to do that. I need to fill my fuel, fuel my existence through that every day. And we’re all different. We all need, but we all have things we need to do every day to keep happy. It’s like, it could just be calling friends, it could be going for a walk. It could be making tea. It could be all are valid. And , holding space for that is, I think a beautiful thing.

Ann: Nick, it’s been brilliant talking to you. I love your sense of curiosity. I love your sense of creativity and the fact that you’ve created this for everybody to enjoy, and it continues to create itself, and you are, you’re obviously steering the ship so beautifully. Thank you for, for doing it for everybody it’s been great having you here. I’m sure everyone listening has just really been blown away. Like I am even just hearing you talk and I know about Deckible and I’m lucky enough to have a set of cards on Deckible. I’ve got my Focus Cards on Deckible and it’s brilliant, so it’s just lovely to be able to give this access to everybody, uh, who listens to Psychic Matters, uh, ’cause I just know they’re gonna love it. So, thank you very much, Nick Kellett.

Nick: Yeah. Thank you.

Ann: Well, I hope you enjoyed that episode and that you will go to deckible.com and check it out. You can also contact Nick on Instagram at deckible.cards, tiktok @deckible, Facebook @deckible.com and you can find Nick Kellet on LinkedIn. And do let us both know what thought of this episode – I always love to hear from listeners – you can email me directly if you’d like to [email protected] that will come straight to me.

As with all episodes, it is a deaf friendly podcast, and I have a full transcript available on my website, (just click on the podcast tab) plus links and URL’s to everything mentioned and there are links there that will lead you directly to Nick Kellet and his work – if you are driving and can’t write down all links mentioned – go to my website instead – it’s all written out for there for you. Feel free to join my mailing list also – I send only two emails a month – only when I release a new podcast which is twice a month – and in that newsletter it tells you all about the new podcast I’m releasing, I also mention any courses I am teaching in that newsletter too – so you can keep up to date with what I have got on offer coming up over the next few months., That’s if you want to learn with me – I’d love to see you in class.

I’ll be back in two weeks’ time with another exciting episode. Until then, happy card pulling. My name is Ann Théato and thank you for listening to Psychic Matters.

EPISODE 098: Deckible: 500 Card Decks In Your Pocket with Nick Kellet

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