The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 379 - Jack Butcher - How To Visualize Value

Episode Date: August 16, 2020

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk Text LEARNERS to 44222 to learn more Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com #379: Jack Butcher - Founder of Visualize Value Notes: Excellence: Humility - "People who don't think they're very good." The willingness to "put yourself in situations where you don't have a clue." No Plateau - Need to put yourself in scenarios where you are inexperienced... To learn and build resilience. Why Jack shoots "one take" videos and doesn't edit --There is a focus on "getting things out there." Ship it. Publish. Take action. "The ability to publish is prioritized." You can build a bond with a teacher through their authenticity. Create and share what you're building in real time... People want to go on that journey with you (when it's real) How Jack has built such a high level of confidence in himself -- Had a great mentor who was a polymath. It was six months into being a designer... Jack was preparing to show some of his work. He framed it as "I'm not sure if this is any good..." His mentor told him, "Never discount what you're doing prior to showing it to them." Frame it right. KNOW YOUR WORK. Own the full interaction of your story. Explain how you got the answer. DO the necessary work to understand it at its fundamental level. Think as if you are going to defend your work as you present it -- "What would the worst critic say about this work?" How would I respond to that? Do your research and be prepared. That's how confidence is built. Be consciously competent about your work. Visualize Value -- Jack is a designer by trade. He has built his skills based on his previous decade working with some of the world's largest brands. He most enjoyed the strategic component of the process -- The articulation of the strategy through the use of compelling visual images. Think: How can I make this argument more visual? He helps businesses understand their value proposition He takes the same principle to consumers now with Visualize Value Leadership Development - Understand the individual components to transformation Curriculum - Organize it to a sequence of principles that build on one another. Share myths - What's incorrect Don't skip the foundation Share the problem - Don't just focus on the symptom Prescriptions can mask the symptom Help with transformation -- "Debug the code" "Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better." - Pat Riley As a leader, it's important to constantly set a new baseline. Consistency - "We're bad at understanding the compounding function." Resistance - Progress is a force you're pushing against. Your ability to continually push forward against the resistance is critical in your long term success. Sales - There's no scenario where sales isn't important. Sales is always a component to what you're doing whether you like it or not.

A lot of the practice that I put in earlier in my career is kind of owning a full iteration of that story. So if someone asks you a question, you could answer at every level. It's like just similar to the, you know, when you're back in school and it's like show your work. Don't just show up with the answer. Like explain how you got there. I think everybody who produces anything of value can do that work. It's just a lot of us are kind of trained not to do it. So I think kind of stripping back from what you're presenting or what you're selling

and kind of understanding the things that fit together to make it possible or the things that inform it, knowing all of that stuff, I think that gives you like an incredible amount of confidence that you can defend anything you're presenting. Are you looking to go beyond simply passively learning via podcast in books? Are you looking to level up your leadership and take a more professional? proactive approach. If so, the Learning Leader Academy may be for you. It's been designed to not only provide you with online training videos. In fact, I filmed 30 of them sitting side by side with my dad covering a wide variety of leadership topics. In addition to that, we created a playbook, a manual to put into practice to help you becoming more effective leader. But the Learning Leader Academy also gives you the opportunity. to interact with an active community of leaders with growth-oriented mindsets. The video lessons serve as a framework to stimulate discussion amongst our community of thoughtful

and intentional leaders helping each other grow into the kind of leader that inspires others to follow. If this sounds interesting to you, go to Ryanhawk.me. That's Ryanhawk.me for more details about the Learning Leader Academy. Welcome to the Learning Leader Show presented by Rixie and Meyer. I am Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text learners to 44222 in order to join tens of thousands of learning leaders from all over the world. Receive Mindful Monday updates.

What I'm reading, writing, watching, thinking about. Also give you more details about how my book, Welcome to Management. will help you become a more effective leader. Text learners to 44222. Now on tonight's featured leader, the great Jack Butcher. For 10 years, he worked in corporate advertising in New York City, but he noted how very little time was actually spent

clarifying and articulating the value of specialized businesses. And that is what Jack is a master at. So for the past two years, he's been building visualize value. And we discuss the process of that build and how it's personally benefited me. Few of the other topics we got into. His process for building confidence and competence and how you can do this as well. And then why it's beneficial for leaders to learn in public, mistakes and all. A fascinating story he told about this.

And then live sketches. I gave Jack a quote that is very meaningful to me. And then he pulled out his sketchboard electronically. This may be a fun one for you to watch on YouTube. So you can actually see him turning the words into the visual representation that he creates out of thin air. It's absolutely fascinating. It's still good on audio because you get to hear him describe his thought process as he's turning my words into a picture. But it's really interesting, unlike anything we've ever done before.

But I really think you're going to like it. Ladies and gentlemen, it's Jack Butcher. I've been looking forward to this one. Welcome, Jack Butcher to the Learning Leader Show. It's great to talk to you, man. Thanks for having me on, Ron. I appreciate it, mate. I've told you before we start recording, I'm a big fan of what you do and how you do it.

and so I'm excited to dive in. But first, Jack, you know one of the biggest themes that I love to study is excellence, particularly people who have sustained excellence over an extended period of time. And you've worked in corporate America, you've worked as an entrepreneur, you're a designer, you are a very interesting thinker. I'm curious from your perspective, what have you found to be some of the commonalities among people who have sustained excellence over an extended period of time?

the first thing that comes to mind for me is like it's kind of a there's a little irony in the answer or a little contradiction in the answer it's typically people who don't think they're very good or don't think they're very accomplished always have something they can learn from anybody they encounter or any situation they're in to me that's i think you know the most growth i've experienced personally is kind of being in situations where you don't have a clue what you're doing and that's kind of humbling to the point of needing to up skill. I think that kind of seeking, and in the same token, like when I plateaued, it's been a result of not forcing challenge

or not getting into situations where you easily plateau if you're in situations where you know exactly what's going to happen as a result of your actions. I was actually talking about this with a friend of mine last night. The idea of, you know, if you know what's going to happen before you take an action, it's kind of a pointless action or there's no real growth to be had on the other side of that decision so i think that you know the combination of putting yourself in scenarios where you are inexperienced and doing things that you don't necessarily know are going to occur in a perfect like these scenarios that aren't perfect i think that's where you know people pick up the

extra skills and kind of fill in all the gaps in their competency and stay competitive and stay great at what they're doing. It's really about finding environments that you're an amateur in, to be honest. It's interesting you said I've purchased a

couple of the courses that you've put out and I absolutely love them. We'll get into them at some point here during our conversation. But one of the things I noticed about them is I wanted to ask you is what is your prep before you start filming a video? Because

I've noticed at times you'll leave in your mistakes. You'll spell a word wrong and have to wipe it out and rewrite it. You'll say something that maybe it wasn't perfect. And so you have to restate it in a way that makes it better. And I find that charming and enjoyable and real and authentic. And I know from building my own course, though, I mean, maybe I'm a little ashamed of this. Like, when I mess up, I would reshoot the whole thing. And it took forever to make these videos because I would.

I would mess something up and I would then reshoot it. What's your thought process around basically it sounds like one take. It feels like as a student that you do one take and it's the first take and then you publish it. And I'd love to hear your mindset around that. Yeah, I'm glad it doesn't come off as ill-prepared or incorrect. I think a lot of it is honestly kind of parallel to a lot of the stuff that I'm teaching in the course to. A lot of the principles of it is like, you know, get things out there, action and is is that mistake really taking away from the message you're communicating is it you know

is it like detrimental to the lesson and in most cases no if there are probably a couple takes that like left on the floor or i'm just like i completely run out of steam or the thought just goes like out of my head entirely and you just blank but if it's correctable in the moment like a lot of well the two courses that are out there are really about like you know get your work out there don't be as much of a perfectionist as maybe you've been taught to in an environment that i don't really know if perfectionism is rewarded the way we think it is a lot of the time so if we can you know get in a get in a place where the ability to publish is prioritized and you know obviously you wouldn't put out anything that isn't uh that doesn't contain the information that it needs to contain but

these little slip-ups and little mistakes. When I was first starting my journey, I was in a very similar position. It's scripting out a video and reading it line by line. And then I'll watch it back, and I was like, this feels like super mechanic,

and I don't think, you know, people are going to want to follow along with this in the same way. And I actually get like everything I record, it goes through my wife as a filter. So she watches this stuff. And it's like, oh, I messed up. Do you think this is like,

you know, do you think it's, I need to re-record this entire 20-minute stint because, you know, I had to erase something in the middle. She's like, what do you mean? Definitely not. Just keep it. And I think the genuine, you know, you build a kind of a bond through that with your remote audience too because I think, you know, everybody slips up. And no matter how much of a subject matter expert you are, there are, you know, there are obviously mistakes going to be made in communication. But the medium allows you to correct yourself in real time. And I think that like authenticity and the bond with the teacher is as important as the, as important as the lesson at this point.

So trying to be, and it's tough, you know, it's tough to kind of put that stuff out there. And, you know, some people might watch that and be like, this guy didn't even like try to correct his mistakes or, you know, some people could interpret that way. It hasn't happened to date. Like I haven't heard anything like that. but yeah it's been it's been interesting and it's great to hear that feedback because it just it kind of unlocks way more potential right if you're if you have permission to just like create in real time and if you make a mistake just you know rub it out and carry on you're gonna

you're gonna communicate with more people you're going to create more stuff you're going to just be more prolific as a result of not being like an absolute perfectionist and what you sacrifice for perfection is probably, you know, a bit of character and a bit of what you're describing, which is kind of this, you know, organic feeling relationship that you can build. One of the things I've gathered from watching a lot of your videos and reading your work and looking at the visuals you create, when you speak, you seem to have, you seem to be very comfortable in your own skin and exude confidence. And that, it's when you deconstruct how does somebody develop that, you can go a million different directions.

And I'm curious if you have to self-reflect and share how you've built this charisma and confidence, what would you say? What do you think it's taken over the years to where you can sense that you have the confidence to have mistakes and leave them on tape? and then you fix them and share in a way that we are drawn closer to you. I think that's a magnetic quality that all leaders, regardless if they do design work or not like you do, in fact, most people don't who are listening and watching, but they do want to develop that, that confidence, that magnetism, that charisma because it can create followers.

And that's what leaders are trying to do. How do you think you've built that up over the years? Great question. And thank you for the compliment. I appreciate it. I think the one of the biggest, I mean, there are a few things, so let me try and separate them out. I think having one particular great mentor earlier in my career, there's this one moment that stands out to me. I've done a little bit of reflecting on this idea and there was this one moment really early on in my career.

I was maybe six months in, 12 months in to being a designer and I was working for a guy who's like 25 years of each. experienced Madison Avenue, you know, done everything you could possibly imagine in that world. And designer, art director, copyright, a strategist. So it's like a bit of a polymath in the advertising world. And there was this one afternoon where I was presenting some work or sharing some work in progress for to present to a client eventually. And I showed up with, I guess, my laptop or a piece of paper at the time. I don't exactly remember the specifics. but I put it on the table and like just I instantly was like well this is not very like this isn't right or this I can't remember the exact language I use but I was essentially saying this isn't as good as it should be can you take that into consideration before you look at it and he's like why are you showing me then he's like I don't want to see it if you're going to lead with that why are you bringing it to me and I think that was like a huge light bulb in my mind which was a couple there's a couple parallel tracks I think one is like never like discount discount discount what you're doing to somebody, you know, prior to showing it to them.

You're like, you're completely taking the wind out of your sales. And the second is kind of, you know, it would have been better for me to say it's not ready. I need more time or to just frame it up differently. That's like one tiny component of it. I think over the longer term, that is developed really by like knowing the work and believing in the work you're doing. So in the world of like advertising, marketing, branding, all of that, you know, strategy, like so much of that is like constructing a story and knowing what that story is.

And I really struggled later on in my career in bigger teams, honestly, because like delegating different parts of that story and how do you, you know, how does this person's work integrate with that person's work? And that's, you know, it's an incredible quality of leadership to be able to bring people together. tell a cohesive story. I think a lot of the practice that I put in earlier in my career is kind of owning a full

iteration of that story. So if someone asks you a question, you could answer at every level. It's like just similar to the, you know, when you're back in school and it's like, show your work. Don't just show up with the answer. Like explain how you got there. I think everybody who produces anything of value can do

that work. It's just a lot of us are kind of trained not to do it. So I think kind of stripping back from what you're presenting or what you're selling and kind of understanding the things that fit together to make it possible or the things that inform it, knowing all of that stuff, I think that gives you like an incredible amount of confidence that you can defend anything you're presenting. So, and I'm talking in the specific context of presentation because that's kind of my bread and butter and my background, but the idea that the work that you're going to present, if you can kind of defend it,

if you can imagine, this is, I think, a thought process that occurs sometimes, like, what would the worst critic of this work say? Like the most, like,

vicious critic have to say about this thing I'm building or this thing I'm presenting, and how would I respond to that critique? I think if you have a working understanding of, like, those attack vectors, like have you done your research? Do you know why you're presenting this versus this? That I think is the sort of foundation of speaking confidently and having sort of command over a room or an audience or anything that, yeah, any situation where you're trying to

convince people of something, it behooves you to have done your research and understand the things that inform what you're what you're talking about yeah i think the regular practice of putting yourself in the position of i always like to say okay we're going to we're going to have a debate and there are actually organized debate teams in college and had a few guests on here that have been a part of those debate teams and one of the practices that is useful for any leader i think is to debate the argument from both sides. Whatever it may be. And so if you regularly are putting yourself, okay, I have to now, sometimes in the,

in actual debate, you don't get to choose. So there's one side here and there's one side here. And then they assign you a side and you have to then do the work and debate that side and also be prepared for what they're going to say. I think taking that approach to what you're, whether you're a manager getting up and speaking in front of your team or you. or you're launching a new project or you're sharing results, whatever it may be,

thinking about having that mindset, what would you say, what would the worst critic say? How would I respond to that? Have you done your research? Just thinking with that frame of mind can build a great deal of confidence because, unfortunately, let's just face it, most people don't do that.

Right. Yeah, and if you've gotten to the conclusion, you probably have the arguments in the tank. haven't necessarily like focused on what they might be and nine times out of ten you don't hear them but if you know that you have them ready to go it's kind of like you know it's it's uh insurance almost like you walk into a room knowing that you can defend your position even if you don't have to defend it you're going to present it more confidently so like i'm not saying that this to be like get yourselves in positions where you constantly have to like aggressively

defend what you're doing. That's not necessarily the point, even though it might be like possible or feasible for you to do so. But the idea that you could, if necessary, I think gives, at least in my case, it gives me more confidence in presenting an idea if I feel like I've done my homework on it and I understand it myself. Yeah. So, Jackie, your story, you spent about about a decade in corporate advertising in New York City. You said you've loved it. But one of the issues, was, but you said you've written only a very small percentage of those minutes were spent clarifying and articulating the value of specialized businesses, which is what you're really good at. You've self-identified, I would agree, as a consumer of your work, is something you're

really good at. And one of the things you started building was called visualize value. And I would love for you to first unpack what visualized value actually means. in your mind. Sure. So it was a long and interesting journey getting to that point. So designer by trade and in an agency environment or in a corporate setting, your design skills are kind of deployed against whatever work comes in the door.

So one day you might be designing a website for a chocolate brand. The next day you might be doing some internal marketing thing for a company, Christmas party, whatever it might be, there's just like all of these different applications of your skills and all of this experimentation as it were. So I think the combination of just like deploying a very, like a skill that can kind of take on any creative brief is empowering and it's very like you kind of get lost in it at the same time too. It's like I think a lot of people struggle. with this, like they have, they're competent to the point they can kind of solve any problem. So that makes sense. It's like you can lend yourself to all of these different things.

And it was actually only when I started my own business three years ago that I found the need to get more specialized in the application of my skills. So I started with this idea of essentially emulating the companies that I'd worked for in the past. So start an agency, find clients, do whatever creative work comes my way, publish a book of different projects and just try and attract people and pitch them our services and, you know, come up with a unique solution for every problem that people have. And I quickly realize, like, the only way to continue to scale that business is to hire more people, you know, have more project management staff, have, you know, very, like, broad outreach and marketing that then translates to these really complex

pitch processes and get very specific, like so many specific different conversations and different objectives going on. So it was like this backward reflection of how do I figure out what I'm like at least semi uniquely positioned to do. And looking back, I think this refers back to the last like section of the conversation we were having. One of the things that I enjoyed doing and was decent at in my agency career was the strategic component of the process. So visualizing the strategy that we would eventually sell that would become the TV commercial or the web infrastructure or whatever it might be, not the end product, but the articulation of the strategy that sold in the end product.

So that piece of it, I was like, well, why not use that as a, you know, a front-end asset for businesses that really struggle to articulate what they do. And I had a couple friends that ran, you know, they're small businesses like professional services, like very specialized marketing agencies that work with a specific vertical or a specific type of person. They have a very unique and proprietary process for acquiring clients. So their normal way of selling that would just be get on the phone and kind of, you know, just pitch with a script and hope that someone converts. As opposed to, I was like, well, we could work together and I could figure out how to actually visualize the process you take a client through and how the technology you're using works to get a result.

So it really is like, you know, referring back to the last piece of this conversation is how do you make that argument visual? And then what can you apply that, what can you apply that ability to as a service? So one component of it is helping businesses articulate their value proposition, which is typically like complex software or professional services, people that need to create an edge in their storytelling to explain what they do. And then the consumer side of the brand or the, I guess the larger market side, I wouldn't even call it consumer brand really. but the idea of how do you take that same principle that can be applied really specifically to like a sales pitch for a B2B business exercise to like how can you visualize concepts and ideas that people can leverage on a daily basis to like improve their life or you know think more strategically about their business and that really like came about as an exercise

to get clients for the business side of things. So demonstrating my ability to articulate things visually and just used content that was more, that appealed to a wider market of people as opposed to trying to sell, trying to sell that service by just publishing case studies of like supply chain companies and things like that. Because while it's impressive,

if you don't know that industry, you don't really understand. You don't have that epiphany of like, wow, I understand that idea more clearly because I've seen it articulated visually. So that and there's more to this answer as well, but there's like that informs like the types of products that we want to add to the portfolio because it's kind of helping people do that same thing themselves. So how do you better articulate what you're great at? How do you better convince people that you are the, you know, solution to problem X? and trying to create the tools to help people become more comprehensive communicators. Gotcha.

So I want to do a couple things, Jack, if you're up for it. So first, this may relate to selling the sawdust, and we'll explain what that means in a second. And second, maybe we can sketch out a quote that really speaks to me and speaks to, I think, my audience and what I'm trying to do if you're cool with that. Yeah, sounds good. Cool. So first, so I think this applies. to anybody in a business setting, running a team, running a business.

And I'll quote you. And then maybe we can, I can, I can be the example. Maybe we could, we could roll play real quick about what it would sound like if I was coming to you for help so you can explain how you do this. So I'm, I'm going to, I'm going to read a little bit about some things that you've written that I've spoke to me as far as how you do what you do. When building a narrative to sell a service or product, there's three things. use clear, concise, and descriptive language, leverage visuals to expand upon your ideas, and break down what you do, and I like this part, break down what you do into transformations.

So clear, concise, descriptive language, leverage visuals to expand upon your ideas, break down what you do into transformation. So, Jack, in order to illustrate this and actually use some practical application, let's talk. about what I do and maybe we can we can we can share so I struggle with this and this is something that I want to get better at because this whole thought process around leadership development is so broad there's tons and tons and tons and tons of noise out there when it comes to leadership development and when I was working with my publisher for my first book that the whole message was you have to niche down to something specific and so

I chose that time when you want from individual contributor to manager for the first time. And the book's called Welcome to Management. And it's done well and it's worked. But still, my podcast called The Learning Leaders Show. And I'm fascinated by helping others become learning leaders, become the type of people that are on this trajectory like this, always working to get better. This mindset of never arrived, always becoming, which I got from JJ Reddick on this show. But that's really what I'm thinking about.

And that's what I want to do and help people. But is that a transformation? I don't know. And I love maybe to workshop this real quick with you, however your brain works when you hear some of the things I'm spitting out at you in this very broad, huge sea of leadership development. And what are some of the things that come to mind when I say this to you? Or maybe you have questions. I don't know, but I'm curious. Yeah.

Yeah. I think the where my head immediately goes when you when you talk about the, well, I guess the first question is, is the objective to expand beyond the individual contributor to the management position? You're talking about a layer above that. Yes. Yes, because that was a focus of a singular book and I certainly have clients that are in that position. work with them, but that is just one aspect of what I want to do. So I think where I would go, where I would start to ask questions is kind of understanding like the individual components of that transformation.

So a lot of the work I do with the B2B clients that we work with is so much of it. is about, and this is kind of becoming clearer and clearer to me as I build products out myself is really about kind of a curriculum. Like the way you teach and the way you think is organized like a curriculum. I think most people have all of that IP kind of bundled up and they can pull from, you know, one scenario or another in like in a specific context, but very few people ever organize that into a sort of sequence of principles that build on one another, if that makes sense. So you're trying to start at like the philosophical level or the foundational level of one thing that's,

one commonality that I've seen work really well in how we have been helping people articulate transformation is like what other, first of all, how do we outline the things? you need to unlearn in order to take on this transformation. So what are the myths or the, like the, there is a word for it that I can't recall right now, but the, just the misconceptions about this transformation. And I think because you're operating in such a noisy environment, you can view that as an opportunity to say what everybody else is doing incorrectly, right? And most of the time, regardless of what you do, it's people skipping over the foundation and going straight to the tactics or trying to get a quick win, you know, do X, Y, and Z.

And in three weeks, you'll be this. Never works. I mean, in my experience, I've never come across something that can create sustainable change by selling a product like that. I think going back to the root of why this is a problem in the first place and what people have been sold or. bought into that isn't getting them the result, how do you, like, if you're a, if you're if you're helping people make a

transformation, the first, I think the first component of that is like debugging the code. You know, it's like where is it broken to begin with? What can we isolate? And how can we start to organize those things in the order in which you have to unlearn them.

Is this making sense? Yeah, I know I'm putting it on the spot, but it is, I think it's, the, the reason I like this is because it's, it's, what you do is you, you force me to think deeper about the problem and about how, instead of just saying, well, here's the obvious answer because that's not helpful. What's helpful, not helpful long term, at least. What's helpful long term is, is to tweak how you think about. problems or think how you attack a specific market that may be super noisy.

And that's that's why you can see me taking so many notes and thinking about, okay, how do I really think about this? And as you mentioned, too, creating a sequence, I think is an important aspect of it that you've, and I notice in your courses that I've taken, they are sequential. Maybe you talk a little bit more about like how you've created this, the sequential aspect to your teaching. Yeah, so I think this applies to the question you asked as well. The idea that so many products or services are all focused on the symptom, right?

And I think the symptom is obviously a pain point that you can use to help people understand that they, you know, help people identify with the problem they're experiencing. but so much of the prescriptions that are given out are like attacking or masking a symptom that isn't ultimately going to get resolved through being masked or being covered up or being distracted from so I guess the simplest way is like if you think about it like a spectrum like there's a source at one end and there's a symptom at the other end and like the beginning of your message, at least when somebody is experiencing

the product or service needs to start at the source. A lot of the marketing is going to come from the symptom end. And I think it's very easy to get caught up in the things that are resonating in your marketing, transferring straight into your product. But the real, I think the results

that I've experienced have been, you know, you want to take someone back to the source and say, the reason you're experiencing the symptoms because you've been thinking about this wrong, this wrong, this wrong, and this wrong. And these are the principles that you need to install in order for, you know, the action you take in the future to eliminate the possibility of you experiencing that symptom. And some of it will be, you know, some of it won't be eliminating symptoms. It will be, you need to think about this symptom differently because maybe you think that this is, you know, a negative thing. But in a lot

cases, you know, even just the way you think about the problem you're experiencing, if you can shift your perspective on that, it can completely change, you know, the trajectory you're on too. So so much of it, it's really hard to, it's really hard to position this as, like, a product a lot of the time, it's like, you just have to change the way you think and everything will be great, you know. But it's about changing the way you think in the upfront. So, you know, that eventually filters into the way you act. and the way you implement and all of those things. Like you have to fix the source.

It's really hard to sell like the long journey and the principles, but they save you so much time in the long run because you're acting from a better set of rules and a better operating system, as it were. And that's kind of, I guess, to come full circle on the question you ask, it's like an operating system for a leader in Environment X is like that to me is a compelling way to talk about what you're doing because there's so much to it but you have to like boil it down to something that feels like you know it's this foundational

you're getting this foundational benefit because leadership like you say is such a broad subject it's you know like parents are leaders corporate employees are leaders entrepreneurs are leaders everybody making a difference or doing something positive i think would think of themselves as a leader or they should at least and that's another piece of it right like most people who are leaders don't think of themselves as leaders

or haven't stepped into their role as a leader and like there's so much to unpack there and even you know reframe the idea of you know to be a leader you need to be you know you need to know the answer to every single question that anybody ever asks you that's a misconception that I would start a course like that with you know it's about it's not about that it's about honestly it's more about

the frequency in which you say i don't know is probably correlates with how good of a leader you are yeah i love it uh all right you want to do a sketch on the fly here yeah let's do it okay so the quote that i have chosen for audio listeners this won't be as good so i would go to youtube but it's i don't know as we talk through it it could be good um but i this is in the vein of of you jack because I've seen how you seem to be able to operate with confidence in uncertain environments without knowing the end result. I highly doubt you've practiced this. I know I sent you over the quote via DM a week ago,

but I think you got a lot going on. So the quote I've chosen is from Pat Riley, and it speaks to me because I'm asked a lot, how would you define excellence? and I've written and rewritten notes and what I came up with came from him, which is excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better. So excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better. It's simplistic, but so true.

And so excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better. And so for audio, Jack is using his. tool now to create the uh and i have no idea what you're about to do but i think it's it's pretty cool to see you do your work uh here in real time um i maybe walk us through what you're thinking as as you're you're putting this together yeah sure so i think it's a great quote for a number of reasons obviously it's uh there's a there's some a lot of truth to it but i think the way um of idea to visual is like when there's some kind of logic or story embedded in the quote itself. So obviously when you read this, excellence is a gradual result.

It's kind of there's an implication of time or something happening over the, you know, there's a start point. Well, there is no end point, but there's definitely motion happening there, right? So there's a bunch of simple ways to do this. I think the first visual that comes to my mind is how familiar you are with like financial charts but there's so many interesting parallels to like human behavior in the way you know financial assets are plotted on charts so one of the ideas that comes to my head is kind of like as a leader your objective is to just constantly set a new baseline right so you're going to faith there's going to be resistance and I think this idea of striving to do better doesn't necessarily mean you are always

going to do better it just means like there's an upward trajectory there's an intentional upward trajectory happening you're striving you're always striving to do better it doesn't mean you're always going to do better but that the mindset is that we're always striving for yeah so the way the the visual that comes to mind is something like this so let me do a little In this program you're using is called... This is called Sketch. There's a version of this, it's essentially the same software.

It's called Figma, and you can play around with it online for free. Sketch, I think, is 100 bucks, but it's... So the way I would think about it is kind of, you know, you see these, they're kind of these points of resistance that you're hitting up against, you know? maybe there's like some serious volatility happening.

But ultimately, you know, over the course of time, you're improving. So I think people can understand the, let me just distribute these evenly, understand the idea of like coming up against resistance. And there are moments in time where you have. have these like you know dips and you're going to you're going to struggle i think another idea let me just do a couple versions of this so i think yeah go ahead go on go go no i was just curious about your i think you've written about this but the this has to be so attractive for the client work but i know you're trying to do less of that but how much client work are you doing

now versus the product work? Probably about 15, 20% client work. I think there's, do you just do this may be a dumb question, but given that your desire more is to do more of the products so you can, I guess the age old phrase, where you make money while you sleep,

kind of like passive income because you build it once and sell it a million times. But which name of your course, one of the courses I bought is called Build Once, Sell Twice. Um, the, is it, um, one of my friends when I said, hey, I, someone just asked me to do this type of. It was kind of like one on one work and I wasn't super excited about the person. And I said, I don't know what to do. And a mentor said, price it at a rate that is just insane.

It's just insane. And if they say yes, and it's like, well, at least you kind of, this may sound trite or, or bad, but he's like, if you get it, then, you know, you're, you're doing well financially. Um, and maybe you'll actually like it. And so that's what I did. It actually happened and worked. And now I've scaled back that amount of work with one-on-one people and only have less than five because I pick and choose the ones that are actually friends and people I want to work with on a one-on-one basis and don't really do that anymore. But is that like how you think about this?

Do you think about if from a client perspective, I'm just going to make my rates at a level that are insane and people still say yes or how do you do it? So I think there's two components. So one is like, there's like, and I don't know if this is a story I'm telling myself, but there's like a necessity to operate in the market in order to be, you know, to be able to translate what you're learning as a teacher or as a, you know, as a builder of product. It's important to, it's important to like, you know, keep your eye on the ball and understand the market and get that practice. So a lot of it is like a lot of the decisions on the B2B side are made through that lens of like, is this going to make me a better communicator?

Is this going to help me understand an industry that I think is a very, you know, like relevant to understand or is it going to round out my skill set? The beauty of a lot of these, a lot of these engagements is that just like you work with people that are so. talented and they have like exposure and experience to all these industries that you know i've never i've never been a part of but i get a really like i get a ton out of it selfishly as a as a as a partner just having them like espouse their knowledge and uh that's one piece of it i think the something that's like what the trajectory of the client service stuff like actually working with someone now to help them build a curriculum. So so much of what we're doing on the product side is kind of translating to the service side

and making it more and more scalable. So I think the more you prove yourself as a practitioner, the irony is the less practitioner work you need to do. So like strategic conversations about how you would break down, let's say, for example, for Ryan Hawke's learning leader curriculum, how would you structure that? How would you put all these ideas together?

And then, you know, there are components in there that should be visualized. There are concepts that need to plug into one another. How can we make that happen? It was really, really manual when we started doing it. So we'd do an interview and then we'd just create something and kind of hand it over. But it's getting more and more collaborative with time

because I think there's, you know, the visual piece is definitely what attracts people in the front door, but the strategy component, excuse me, and the, like the pulling together of these ideas into some cohesive narrative is now, like, I think the more valuable part of the service. And trying to find some people to help with the visual stuff, there's definitely not a ton of people with that experience. But, wanting to keep those interesting relationships going on the client side because I think it makes us build more compelling products rather than just build products in a vacuum.

So that's makes sense. I mean, I think that's one of the values, too, of having an advising and consulting role is you get exposure, especially if you have the luxury to pick your clients, which I'd imagine you do, you get exposure to brilliant, brilliant people doing fascinating things. and you can learn so much while you're working, while you're helping them. And I think that's something I personally value with some people I work with. I'm thinking I'm learning just as much or more than they are

because of I'm getting exposure to them and their teams and I'm there actually to help them. So, okay, let's get back to the drawings. You've done, now this is the third one. Do you want to go through this one and the second one as well? Yes, I think the... That's sweet. Man, this is so cool.

this idea of, I should redraw this line, but this idea of the, you know, excellence being this sort of, it's almost this thing you can't feel in real time, right? It's like there are some parallels with the way, like, money compounds, like, you know, slowly then all at once. It's kind of like, well, you weren't looking.

And then suddenly you show up and it's like, wow, I've really come a long way, but it's so gradual in the moment. that's something that I think we can try and depict visually as well. So excellence is really like depicted by this line, but your behavior is kind of erratically happening around it. That makes sense. So there's an improvement happening at the macro level,

but it doesn't feel like it on the micro level. I think that's kind of a... And almost the key to this is the fact that you... Consistency is a big deal to me. feel like it is to you too, but the fact of showing up, if we're talking about this specific quote of excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better. When I see the visual that you're creating here,

it means though this stops if you stop showing up. If you stop doing the work, these ups and downs and kind of the roller coaster. Yeah. Looks more like that. Yep, exactly. Like you stop and it's over. And so,

and that's hard though. And it's not sexy to. consistently show up or even reliability, dependability, consistency. None are sexy words. But that is what's a critical component to this idea of excellence and this gradual result of always striving to do better. And that's how we get this upward trajectory here. Yeah, I think there's a good friend of mine and client. I don't know if you know, I'm Carl Richards.

He does a lot of, he does some work. in the financial space, but it's a very similar principle to trading versus investing. So you're, you know, you look at a financial chart on any given day. There's so much volatility. If you zoom out to three decades, it's just up until the right. Like, yes, I think a lot of the, a lot of our inability as people, I think even this is like way, like really exaggerated with the internet. but the idea that we think linearly and we experience life a day at a time, a moment at a time, but we're really, really bad at understanding compound.

The compound function and the exponential function and the internet just, I think, makes that even more difficult to comprehend. It's like, you know, if you add 1% to the audience of people that are listening to you every day for 10 years, even if you start at 100 people, it's just bonkers what it ends up as. And the internet is like, you know, it's just this supernatural thing that it's very hard for people to comprehend. And until you've experienced it personally, you don't get it. And I think that's why you see so many like runaway examples of success of like digital businesses. And then there's so many on the other side of that line that haven't, you know, that didn't get to the point of experiencing the compounding and gave up before it kicked in.

So that to me is like, but again, even the people that get to that level beyond the compound interest, you stop showing up, you know, there's zero, doesn't compound. Yeah. So these things are like this principle applies across the board. That's a great quote. can you walk me through the three pictures here and how you've got to this point here yeah so the first one i think is you know and it's a variation on the last one we showed but it's kind of like you know if you wanted to depict this as levels i think maybe you know if you

exist within a structure or if you're you know there are milestones that you want to break these would also work really well as like motion visuals in motion, you kind of have this, you know, iterative thing. You're never really, you never get there. There is no destination. It's just like there are new measurements along the way and you'll fall below them and you'll Yeah, and the arrow doesn't stop. I think it would be cool.

Like I'm visualizing a slide as I'm on a stage and you actually see the line moving. Right. You know, behind you. And as long as you keep showing up and keep consistently focusing on doing the work, the line you'll have ups and downs, but it's pointing up as you have this that you're depicting here. Yeah, I would think even more like, kind of like the, it's like a video game. I forget the one, but the, like the lines are kind of, the camera is moving past the lines and the arrow is just continuing to go up. And there's going to be dips and drops, but like generally speaking, you know, the arrow grinds its way north over time.

you put the reps in. Yep. Okay. The second one. The second one is, yeah, this idea of like, there is a component of resistance as well.

This is, this visual is not completely refined, but the idea that you're, maybe this, you know, you could even make a distinction between these two. So you have a,

like any kind of progress is ultimately a, there's like a force that you are resisting or a force that you're pushing against, whether that's like internal or external. I think what I'm trying to say here is, you know, your... We could just color code this crudely for a second. Whoops. This gives you a whole new set of tools if you're going to use color.

Which you normally don't. Yeah, try to restrain it because it's, you know, you can get out of control. but just to make this illustrate this point quickly, excellence is essentially your ability to like continually push forward against resistance. This is like the act of excellence is being able to force your way right. And then this final one we talked about. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. So it goes to the second one. So explain what the lines with the shaded in line. means in the yellow arrows against them? So this idea here is like this is a progress bar, so we're all familiar with the idea of a progress bar. And the, maybe we could even refine this a little bit.

Like, excellence is really this. And you know what? You can fix this. Don't need an arrow. I love how you go through this. It's great. Ah, okay. This is the visual part of the show, for sure.

Yeah, so the, like, that growth is, I think depicting the, like, the counterforce is kind of an important piece of this idea, you know? Yeah, so you have, you have, there's something, there's always going to be something in your face. And excellence, as you've outlined here in yellow, is the ability to, you have, you have, you're, there's something. keep going while understanding and embracing even the fact that there will be some sort of obstacle in your path. Yeah, you could also do like a maze of some sort, you know, where you're, you're constantly looking for a way out and like, you know, it's just problem solving, perpetual problem solving, I think is another way to think about the idea of excellence, right? the more you, yeah, the more you, the more you show up, the more problems you're going to

encounter, which is kind of an, like, there's a certain irony to it. And it's why it's very difficult to continue. But, you know, the ability to push past that and hit bigger problems, I think, is, that's what excellence is, right? To become a better leader, you're, like, solving bigger and harder problems in sequence. So there's a few, there's a few different ways to visualize that. We could go on for a whole another 90 minutes and on how to

visualize it, but it's a great way. I'll sit with it for a bit longer too. I love it. I really appreciate it. You're doing this. And actually the time flew by. I'm very appreciative of your investment of your time, Jack, because I know you got a lot going on. But where would you send

my viewers and listeners to learn more about you online. I would say Twitter is probably a good place to start. So just Jack Butcher on Twitter and visualize value. And then what I encourage is if the products that align with what I'm talking about makes sense in what you do, then check them out. If not, then I'd just love to have the opportunity to share how I think. Well, one, it's amazing to see the conversion of tweets to sales. But part of that is, and this is something that I've talked with friends and clients and people I advise,

you seem to not have any fear to ask for the sale. And I love that. I mean, I grew up, my first ever job was a telephonic sales professional making 80 cold calls a day, Jack. So, I love that aspect that you have no fear towards that. Maybe you can share your philosophy about why you do not now you don't do it in a cheesy way or or blast my email inbox even though i'm subscribed you don't do it that way but but you have this this this ability to say no it's part of your job it's almost like i have a responsibility to make sure you know you can and should buy this what's your thought process around selling yeah so uh there's yeah i come from the opposite school of thought as well, like the way I grew up and the jobs I had.

And, you know, even in advertising, there's this weird, like, corporate advertising at certain scales. There's this weird, like, non-sales approach to positioning. You make the argument of, like, what is brand marketing versus direct marketing? And I think one of the things that's made it very easy to do that is being completely transparent about my, like, incentives and my intent. I don't. There's no like hoodwinking going on or no like, there's no like really like nefarious idea there. I think being transparent about the things that are being, the things that are being taught in the products are kind of like the promotion is an extension of that too. So I think that alignment is really interesting and like makes it much easier to transition to like direct sales messaging at times.

and you know there's no it took me a long time to learn this but there's no profession no scenario no um sales is always a component of what you're doing whether you like to admit it or not right if you're moving through the world and um making things happen for yourself then you have to convince people to do things at a certain point and when uh like when you have a P&L for yourself i think the the game changes a little bit i think I could talk at length about the difference between my mentality as an employee versus an entrepreneur and so much of how I wish I would have thought about my work when I was working in other businesses and there was like a naibity in what I did and like an arrogance almost about like the

amazing amount of effort and energy that had gone into construction. that business that had given me an opportunity to work there. And I just, if I was to go back to that position now, I would do it a lot differently. And just being, kind of, you know, having skin in the game to the extent where, you know, if you don't sell something, then you have to go and take a job or you have to, you know, it's like, it's really tied to the relationship you have with your audience and, like, that. equity that you build up is you know it's you have this trust that you you can't take for granted and it's yeah I'm I'm I love to hear that it's being received in a way that it isn't feeling like

people are being bombarded and so much of that I think is because I I want people to know that they can do that themselves too like if you believe in what you're doing you have uh yeah go on I I I that's how I feel I feel better about it with my own service and products when I see the video of your phone scrolling of all the Shopify purchases or gum road purchases. I mean, I'm sure you already heard this before, but I love seeing that. I was like, this is awesome. I remember showing my wife, I'm like, there's this new guy I'm following named Jack Butcher. I bought everything he sells and look at this video. And it's just cool. It's very transparent. It's very honest. Hey, I don't even remember exactly what you'd say,

but here's today's sales and you just see the screen scrolling of all the notifications. I'd be a pretty good feeling too for you. Like this is resonating. This is really working. It's great, man. And it's like, again, to go back to the exponential, the internet thing, it's like, if you don't ask for that, then you're never going to get that, you're never going to get that feeling for the first time, which is essentially the validation you need to scale.

Right. And I think a lot of people are put off by the idea that, oh, someone might not like it. It's like, well, if that person doesn't like it, they weren't going to buy from you anyway. So I'm not really sure what you're worried about. It's bizarre, man. We're bizarre creatures. But like once you can break through that barrier and again, going back to the first like question that we were talking about, the idea that you can defend what you're selling

is all you really need to go to market and pitch it. I think, again, people have more of a problem or, you know, there's more control. prophecy that surrounds products that are being sold digitally because it's not a face-to-face scenario, right? You wouldn't go up to somebody in a farmer's market and be like, what are you doing selling potatoes? How dare you? You wouldn't never do that, right? It's just, it's a different environment and it's easier to, you know, it's easier to throw stones in that scenario and you will experience it at some point. It just happens. But if you're completely transparent about your incentives and you believe in the product that you've built and people have gotten results from it,

then there's absolutely like no reason for you to not ask people to buy what you're selling. Love it. Jack, thanks again for being here. I'd love to do this again at some point in the future because there is so much to get to with your story and what you teach. So I certainly want to continue our dialogue as we both progress, ma'am. I love the conversation. Thank you for having me. All right. Thanks so much, man. Thanks, right. As you can probably tell, I'm a massive fan of Jack's work. I especially admire his ability to take words and create pictures so quickly.

I am amazed at how his mind works. I hope you enjoyed that one as much as I did. Again, if you just listen to this one, I'd encourage you to go to my YouTube channel and watch this one. You'll see him do the sketches as well. we talk through what it means to be excellent and the definition of it. And now that I have three cool visuals to use moving forward, thanks to Jack. A few of the other topics that really stuck out to me.

Never discount what you're doing prior to showing it to others. If it's not ready, then don't show it. But if you're going to show it, don't discount it prior to doing it. That was some of the best advice that Jack had told me he received early in his career. And then be able to defend the work you present. What would the worst critic say? Think of those questions. Think of those criticisms prior to showing it to others and be prepared to answer those questions.

And then sales. It will always be a component to what you're doing, regardless if you work in sales with a quota or not. selling yourself, you are selling your ideas, you are selling yourself to be a part of projects. Sales is just a way of life. And so to try to run from that is a mistake. It's more useful to understand that and work to develop that skill. Thank you once again for continuing to spread the word, one person at a time, telling a friend this episode of the learning leader show was unique. Jack Butcher is a different kind of a guy, but I love the way he thinks.

And I think it could benefit you. I really appreciate the fact that you continue to spread the word. Because you do that, you give me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so much. Talk with you soon. Can't wait.