How to Build a $1m+/Year Course in 1.5 Years, With Jack Butcher, Founder of Visualize Value
About The Guest
About The Guest
Jack Butcher is a designer, entrepreneur and the founder of Visualize Value — a content platform teaching people to communicate visually and build great online products.
After growing a large audience on Twitter and Instagram with his signature Visualize Value graphics, he created two successful courses — How to Visualize Value, a playbook for creating meaningful visual communication; and Build Once Sell Twice, where he teaches his process for creating digital products and taking VV’s revenue to over $100K/month.
Talking Points
11:35 — Making the jump into entrepreneurship.
12:30 — The idea behind Visualize Value.
22:04 — How Jack sold $1m+ in courses without ads.
28:35 — How to build a community.
40:03 — Why Jack started to investigate NFT’s and his take on the new technology.
45:35 — How to create NFT’s that sell.
49:55 — Leveraged income vs. passive income.
1:02:57 — Why you need to innovate or individualize.
1:13:33 — The end goal of a creator.
1:16:45 — Advice for entrepreneurs.
Show Links
Show Sponsor
HubSpot Podcast Network — https://hubspot.com/podcastnetwork
HubSpot Podcast Network is the audio destination for business professionals who seek the best education and inspiration on how to grow a business.
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The podcast is hosted by entrepreneur, business executive, author, educator & speaker, Scott D. Clary.
Scott will discuss some of the lessons he’s learned over his own career, as well as have candid interviews with execs, celebrities, notable figures and politicians. All who have achieved success through both wins and losses, to learn more about their life, their ideas and insights.
He sits down with leaders and mentors and unpacks their story to help pass those lessons onto others through both experiences and tactical strategy for business professionals, entrepreneurs and everyone in between.
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Read The Transcript (Machine Generated)
Jack 04:29
Yes, so graphic design, corporate corporate background in some respects, but I actually began my career working for a entrepreneur in a small advertising agency in New York. Five staff in a tiny little room in West Chelsea, and that I think, is probably a lot of the foundation of where I am today. in a number of ways, the guy that started that and managed to sort of wrangle the business of these huge corporate clients as a small entity, like being exposed to the fact that that was possible, I think planted a seed early on for me. So this is a, this is a new thought that I’ve been sort of playing with last couple of weeks. But all of the different experiences I had, in the first 10 years of my career have kind of culminated into creating this thing. That is, it’s hard to identify the exact catalyst for each decision in the business as it stands today. But looking back, I started as basically design intern making tea in a little agency business in New York, did that for a couple of years, that business actually got shut down, I moved in house to one of the clients to keep my visa. So I’m originally from the UK. And did that for a couple of years, and then started just basically bouncing around the agency scene in New York. So from this tiny boutique agency, where I had a relationship with the founder to a 13,000 person digital consultancy with 45 offices around the world that works with big fortune 100, fortune 50 companies in some cases. And so we did a lot of different jobs within that agency move to a smaller place back to a bigger place worked in house at Bloomberg for a little while, maybe had, I think, close to 10 full time jobs before I made the leap into building my own agency, which essentially was a replica of the businesses that I’d known today. And I think this is a, this is the process of going through that and failing was was instrumental to to finding a different author pursuing a different model in the end. So went from employee, all these different agencies tried to basically increase my economic upside by moving around. So you get your 5%, pay rise, your 2% pay rise, and then you start to get to a place where you’re, you know, the room above you is less than the room below you. So start to think about, okay, how much more upside exists in this situation how, like, how much more is that for me to learn in this world. And not that there was there wasn’t any, any more room to run or any more to learn. But I did start to feel like I was waking up and doing the same thing. Every day and running out of like, the learning curve starts to flatten off, kind of so you start at the bottom of a business like this, and you learn more and more and more. And by my seventh or eighth agency I started to was in a position where I was exposed to the the workings of the business a little more than I was when I started out. So you start to see, you know, the budgeting house time is spent, you start to like, run the pictures yourselves and get into those negotiations. And that’s when I think a light bulb went off. And I was like, there’s a huge amount of opportunity here, just based on the fact that you know, company x is spending this amount of money on this many emails, for example, or this campaign to launch this thing. And there’s an element of this, like entrepreneurial naivety and arrogance that comes into that at the beginning was like I can do this better, I can work harder, and I can you know, deliver more for less. And the reality of that situation is is often that is often not the case, right? Your energy can carry you so far. And that’s what happened to me at the beginning of the agency. Like starting my own agency is so charged up and energized that you can make up for that sort of deficit in infrastructure, just pure like 27 year old, I think it was like the energy that you still have, and you can wake up early, go to bed late and keep grinding out. And then you read your crossroads, which is what happened to me which I had a big enterprise client I was doing most of the work myself had a few freelancers come in and out. But then you reach this Crossroads where if you really want to support businesses like that over the long term, you need a big team, you need to have an office because they expect to come in and sit with you. I was like organizing we workspaces and you know, just pretending to have a business that was bigger than it was in terms of infrastructure in order to satisfy people and then just hit a wall burned out the making Okay, money, maybe like clearing a little bit more than I would as a salaried employee, but the amount of stress on top of that was also incredibly significant because there’s so many things that you’ve never done before. Ever accounted for. And you have, I didn’t have any element of specialization to the business, it was just a creative agency. So basically, if you have a creative task that needs to be done, we’ll try and estimate it and deliver it. And that is not, you know, that’s not a scalable business model unless you just hire tons and tons and tons of people. And that’s where the idea for visualize value came from essentially was, what can I do that’s way narrower than this, and not a lot of people are either interested in or good at. And the idea initially sprang from building pitch decks. So in those 10 jobs I’d had, and in the early days of building my own agency, the thing that I felt that I had an advantage in or had, like, an inordinate ability to focus on was this idea of like, visualizing concepts and selling a story visually, which normally took the form of a pitch deck. And the few people that had seen them that weren’t my clients at the time, like, Oh, can you help me do that, for me, maybe they’re entrepreneurs, I had small businesses. And that was when the transition began from, you know, agency that does anything to slightly more specialized on this very specific style of design, to then grow in a social presence and seeing that there’s opportunity to produce products that have way less of a relationship to the amount of time I spend on a daily basis delivering work.
Scott 11:35
So so everything seems very linear. And the progression makes sense from career into building your own agency. And a lot of you mentioned, a lot of people do that they make that jump because they have that entrepreneurial naivety and they think they’re going to make it and do it better than you know, the last 10 bosses could but that’s not always the case, especially in agency work, which is very difficult. But the curious part of your story, is when you decided to move away from, you know, one stop shop for everything agency and decided to make, so walk me through it, because people are listening, but also watching and maybe for YouTube, I have to put up a little screen capture of what these are, how would you best describe the first iteration of what visualize value is because the way I interpret them now, when I look at it, I see them as visual representations of various theories or quotes, is that the best way to describe them?
Jack 12:30
Yeah, that’s, that’s pretty spot on, I think, to begin with, they were, it was just adding visual context to an idea. So that began as literally PowerPoint slides. So instead of putting up a slide with 15 bullet points on it, and watching everybody in the rooms, eyes, just glaze over, try and simplify that down into a visual representation of the thing you’re trying to convince the mob or the thing that you’re trying to help them get their head around. And a simple example of that, in a commercial context was like, if you imagine you’re presenting a campaign idea to automotive manufacturer, and you contextualize where they are, in the consumers mind relative to their competitors, right? Where Where is your advantage, you could write three paragraphs to explain that, or you could do like a two by two, and say, you know, people make this decision, emotionally versus rationally, for example, right? You sit on this end of the spectrum versus that end of the spectrum. And those simple things that were, you know, kind of throw away thoughts At one point, were actually the thing that was, that made me successful in the agency world, like that was I would get asked to work on these pitch decks for that reason. And then the pitch decks were the things that made it possible to win the business when I was out on my own. But you weren’t actually getting paid to produce the pitch decks, right. Those are the basically the conduit between you and getting to work on the opportunity. So you make this really unique thing and tell this really unique story to win this project, that’s a pretty in, in some cases, generic, right, that that wouldn’t be distinguishable between you and another agency. Or at least in my case, like the first set of deliverables for the agency was a video campaign. And that’s not my bread and butter, not my bike, not my passion by any means or not something that I’m going to excel at beyond like some of these really specialized agencies that recruit from film schools and all of these different like hyperfocused thing so discovered that you know, you can’t really be competitive at something that you don’t love. So then yeah, I just had this realization that hang on a second, there’s value in this thing, even though this is not the thing that’s being directly monetized, right now, there is a, there is a value to this thing, because it’s facilitating this transaction as helping explain something to someone that didn’t understand it before. And then focusing on trying to figure out how to bring that to market as a product versus the product of showing that thing to someone being the product. So you kind of cutting out a step.
Scott 15:36
And, and taking that and turning it into a product. What was the first iteration of that product? Was it you building a social media profile brand community around the product? Or was it actually trying to productize it?
Jack 15:54
So if it was a service business to begin with? So it was, there’s, I think this is a common misconception that there’s this, like, cut off point where, okay, I’m doing this now. But it was more of a, okay, I have some corporate clients, I’m doing this like generic creative work, but I’m gonna start to promote the agency with this more specific aesthetic. So I’m kind of failing in business at that point, right. I’m, I’m completely burned out, making Okay, money. Everybody I tell what I’m doing is like, wow, this is the most incredible thing ever, but it doesn’t really align with my experience. So start reading more start discovering, yeah, great authors that have written about the things that I’m struggling with, and started. Basically, applying my skill set to that content. So like the Seth Godin ‘s of the world, Nevada, Robin can find there, the things that they’ve said that helped me sort of break through some of these barriers, in my understanding of how to operate a business, turn that into an asset that was uniquely, you know, that had my unique perspective embedded in it, which in this case, was these visuals. And that kind of became this. This different magnet for my services as a as an agency. So a few people reached out in there, like, could you help me visualize my ideas, or I have trouble explaining this thing. And when I looked at that visual, it helped the idea land for me. And I think people can kind of reverse engineer what it would be like to have their own ideas represented that way, or their own talking points represented that way. So posting a few of those visuals early on, wasn’t called visualize value. It wasn’t like, I’m not starting this thing and calling it this thing. It was my, my agency still still exists. It’s called opponent. And that was like this idea of like contrarian thinking, and like, we’re gonna challenge you on your ideas, and we’re gonna push you to
Scott 18:00
You know, that’s a clever, that’s a clever, clever, clever theme for a business. I like that a lot. Actually, I did.
Jack 18:04
And it resonates with people. But when you run into like fortune 500 infrastructure, it doesn’t matter what your intentions are, it just you just get like completely worn down. So that was, like, I loved I love like building out that brand and that story, but it’s really hard to deliver on the promise because of just the experience that I’d had today. And like, my ultimately my naivety that I could do that individually, not saying that there aren’t great agencies out there that can like lead big businesses in new in different directions. There are, but did I want to go that route? Or did I have the skill set that I felt like I was the person to go and do that?
Jack 18:52
You have to be like, think you have to love different things. Like I love making the stuff. And yeah, if you were like really good at coaching people individually, or, you know, like, strategically leading a group of people in a certain direction and investing years in like coaching the leadership team of a business, that’s a different skill set. And people do that. Well. But that’s not that’s not me. Yeah, so started posting this stuff. And then that just became more of the mix of work. So people were approaching me specifically for visual narratives. Whether that was a pitch deck, a landing page that explained their process, and there’s a few people that I just had as close friends that I’d met in entrepreneurial groups on the internet and meetups that I went to in the city there. When they explain their business to me, I’d be like, oh, have you tried explaining it like this or, you know, you can distill your value proposition to this one diagram, this one slide. And I thought it was so obvious and they looked at it. Don’t be like, Wow, that’s great. I’m going to start using that this napkin sketch. So then like the dots started to connect, I was like, Okay, I can really narrow in on this and there’s not going to be, you know, there’s no dearth of opportunity for people that want to more clearly communicate, I’m not going to run out, well, so then visualize value is born and all of the learnings from that had been beaten into me in the corporate america world where it’s like, pick a style, stick to it, build visual equity, stick to your brand guidelines, that’s definitely you know, that training kind of kicked in. And that’s why the aesthetic is very specific, and you know, spend time choosing the name and getting all that stuff dialed in. So yeah, it wasn’t a smooth transition by any means. But still, isn’t it? Sir? Sir,
Scott 20:52
I know, you’re. So you’re, you still take on new projects. And I think that even now you have, now you have, I guess, two courses based on and one of them, one of them is on creating these creative assets, these, like, visualizing value, but the other one is just being what, I guess productizing and monetizing yourself as an individual, and what you know, so even now, you’re still you’re still creating new ideas to to sort of help people in the in the internet economy to actually tap into a different form of entrepreneurship that isn’t an agency or isn’t a recurring SAS product. If you had a technical background. So are they so let’s, so now that that makes a lot of sense. So you launched the course. The the way that you scaled it to a million dollars in revenue in 18 months, that’s also slightly unorthodox compared to many other course creators that launch on Udemy or Skillshare. Whatever. So walk me through, walk me through your strategy for your growth as a as a course creator. Yeah. And as a brand.
Jack 22:04
Sure. So the we haven’t spent any money on advertising ever 00 dollars on ads. And that’s been the signals you get back from the content, I think, has informed the inform the journey massively. So I started my started soliciting for business for opponent on Facebook, this is like, I don’t even know how I ended up down that rabbit hole, but maybe somebody. This is like the Facebook ad algorithm working a treat, right? They’re seeing what I’m reading, I’m looking at like on Facebook, and it’s like, join this thing like scale your business do this thing. So I end up in all these different groups and things and just for whatever reason. Like it’s a really closed garden, right, the Facebook thing started to get really like a cease, like, really, micro economies have the same kinds of people buying stuff from one another. And there’s a few dozen people that are sort of sustaining each other’s business. And now you can whatever opinion you want on that is fine. But it was really when I’ve discovered Twitter that the dynamic change completely. So the open network of Twitter, if you have, if you think if you can produce content that has like this natural velocity to it, like it will get shared organically, it really opens you up to all manner of possibilities, right, depending on depending on the products you create, depending on the work you do think you can use an organic audience that is attracted to a very specific type of creative output, you can offer all manner of unique things to those people. And the cost thing was never really in the never really in the roadmap or something that I even thought about doing. So the first six months was really just consulting and design projects and just getting more and more narrow on that. So obviously, the bigger the bigger the reach becomes like the more the more choosy you can essentially get with who you work with, right? You can qualify the people that are going to get the most out of what you do the people that you want to work with the most. And that was that was going well, and the network was just growing naturally on Twitter. And there’s actually a tweet by David parral.
Yeah. And he, he wrote a tweet, in maybe May of last year, saying, one skill I really want to sharpen up this year is my ability to design and he, I think tag visualize value in that post and he’s like, this is something that I’m studying. And that again is like because you Have the audience and the reach can act quickly on a concept like that. And there’s an element of social proof in his in his acknowledgement of it. So that was just a quote, tweet, I believe I said, Is anybody you know, if I was to put something together on this topic, like an asynchronous course that you could go through? Would you be interested in it? And it got a great response. So then I said, Okay, give me a week, I’ll make it. And that, that became that that did well, and obviously, you have the content engine is still ticking in the background, which is bringing more people into, hopefully see, expose the people that might want to learn that to that content. That I think we ran that for like three months very specifically. And you can imagine how tight of a relationship there is between posting these images that are the output of this, like honing this skill set there? And then, yes, maybe three or four months after that a lot of people reached out to me and they’re like, how did you take design as a skill set and codify it into this curriculum that people can follow? And I hadn’t done it before. But it is a you know, it’s just an exercise in design thinking it’s just a different different sort of different slant on it, right? It’s like, how do you structure information? How do you break up these principles into a sequence where people can kind of step ladder of knowledge, right, you interviewed somebody, this principle and that principle, you haven’t do this exercise. So that was essentially someone else in the Twitter audience challenged me to codify that. And that thing became another education product called build once sell twice, which is, how do you productize something that you have stumbled on really specifically, right, like, there was 10 years of corporate experience. And like a couple failed businesses landed in this place where there is this skill set that you don’t need necessarily need to hire me to capitalize on that thing. You can buy it for your designer, you can learn it yourself, you can start to bring these principles into your work. So that became, that’s not just true of design, right? There’s anybody that has a very specific skill set can scale their knowledge that way, so so I’m gonna let the dog out?
Scott 27:33
No, no, it’s all good. No, I was just gonna, I was gonna say that. I’m not sure if you if you if you did this purposefully or not. But also, I found that everything you did, you built a great community around it. So it wasn’t just putting out great content, like there was a great community that you built it? And if I’m not mistaken, even the products that the course the final, the second course, I’m not sure, but the first one. But did you build those in public as well, like you involve the community in? So that’s something else that I noticed that people that do it very well, especially on Twitter, just because it seems to be like such a huge, or the organic reach is immense compared to many other social platforms. So walk me through if you have any tips on on building that community, because if somebody does build one sell twice, that’s they have a product fine. But how do you build this reach? Because that’s really what’s going to really benefit, right?
Jack 28:35
One of the advantages I have as a designer and one of the things that’s been like, extremely instrumental in the like, the development of my career is showing my work. So it’s like, nobody’s ever cared about my degree. Nobody’s ever cared about where I went to school, every interview, I’ve gone to every like job I’ve even every project I’ve gotten to work on internally at an agency has been because of the thing I did last. So and you have a very tangible set of assets to point to as a designer, because you you produce a portfolio of work. This is a project I worked on. This is a brand I designed. This is a website I built. And I think that was almost a subconscious advantage for such a long time because I’ve always had that mentality, right? Like it doesn’t doesn’t matter what you tell me, show me what you did. And that’s how, that’s how I managed to move jobs and get a job in the first place by showing my portfolio. So I think that’s an that’s a skill that other not even a skill, it’s a practice I should say that other other industries and other disciplines are coming around to now. So if you Or, you know, if your academia does this, like they published, what they’re thinking about, right? They’re always producing, there is always an output of, Okay, this is the research that we’ve done, this is how we’re going to present it. This is, you know, our thesis. And I think convincing people that whatever it is you’re thinking about, you have an opportunity to, like produce deliverables that convey that, right. And that, to me is, it’s like a fundamental shift in thinking, that seems completely obvious to me as a designer, but when I introduce that concept, other people are like, Oh, yeah, that’s a great idea. I’m gonna start doing that. And the idea that you think you’re going to get discovered, or people will, you know, actively seek out your thinking without doing that is? I mean, it’s insane when you look at it that way, but it’s obvious.
Right, boom, that someone’s just gonna come and like, pluck you out and be like, Oh, can you? Yeah, can you sell me on your services? And, you know, the way the internet is just a monstrous force in that equation, right? Every there’s an evolved, quote, The the internet, the internet. democratizes consumption, but consolidates production. So if you’re the best in the world at anything, you get to do it for everyone. And that’s like, a really huge, overlooked force in society. I think that just because you’ve had this experience offline, or because you have this anecdote of a friend of yours that got, you know, that knew somebody and got this job here. proof of work is now like the currency that is going to move your career forward, I think, in almost every field. And people who can produce visual assets or tangible assets or record podcasts or make videos are just that much more likely to generate luck, you know, create relationships at scale, because, you know, it’s just sheer surface area. And that is just the one thing I think that is hugely underestimated, and it takes a long time to build it and get good at it and all of those things.
Jack 35:06
But another thing that’s interesting, and this is like, there’s so much nuance to this, and it often doesn’t get covered in conversations about it. But the one of the fundamental things I think, is, do you have a skill set that allows you to produce a result for someone on your own. If you do, then you have a massive opportunity to teach other people that skill set, right, if you’re a designer, a writer, video producer, if you produce something tangible, or you have, you can analyze data in a certain way, there’s, it’s like reverse engineering the result. So a huge part of the curriculum is to get people focused on the result they generate. And then essentially build things that help you deliver that result with a less linear relationship to your time, over time. So you begin as a designer that spends three days with a founding team, getting all the information out of them, and then turning that into a asset. The second iteration of that is, you have systems to collect that information from them, and you write better questions, and you spend less time you spend less time like grilling people individually, so it gets more and more efficient. And then eventually, you have a program that’s so watertight, because you’ve sent 100 people through it. And you’ve like, figured out all the blind spots and figured out what you need to introduce somebody to at what time in order to get them to think about something in a different way that helps you, like, slowly divorce your time from the delivery of the result. But I think that is the introspective question that all of this begins with this, like if, if I, if I can create leverage for someone else on my own, then I can produce an asset that essentially replicates my ability to do that. And that, like, we’re in a period of time now where it’s really hard to build that very specific skill set and stay focused long enough to be able to produce that result, right. When I started my career, I would get like two text messages a day. And I’d read them on my lunch break. People that are like practitioners and trying to learn skills now are going on Twitter, or Instagram every 45 seconds. And it feels like you’re missing the boat every time you look at something else, right? It’s like, Oh, I should be working on this or I should be I should learn that skill, or I should be following this person and, and like emulate what they’re doing. So I’m really empathetic to the fact that it’s harder, or at least my perspective of it is it’s really difficult to build these stand out skills.
Scott 38:03
You have that shiny object syndrome, for sure. Right? That’s always an issue now with social and constant exposure, and you’re always questioning whether or not you’re doing it, right. Even if you’re getting results, should you redo it or learn something new or do it a different way. So how do you how do you personally focus on what’s driving results and not follow that shiny object all the time? It’s increasingly difficult, right?
Jack 38:24
not follow that shiny object all the time? It’s increasingly difficult, right? The The amazing thing about building a business like this is it sort of trails your curiosity. So you have to, you have to be interested in something that you’re not quite great at, in order to continue to, like, deliver those learnings to people who haven’t gone down the same path as you. But you also have to recognize when you are, like just completely distracted and wasting time. And that’s the the like the amazing thing about the internet is it cuts both ways, right? You can go super deep and build once or twice the addressable market for that is enormous. You could go and sell that for a decade, probably right. There’s enough people that have not been exposed to those ideas. But you can get in this little echo chamber where you’ve, you’ve you start to burn out on on that thinking because you’ve been teaching it for a year, for example. But then you you could switch to fire in a different direction, right or for me, like my shiny object is crypto. So I’m like down all these different rabbit holes. I played around with NF T’s this year. And I’m incredibly like I’m a huge believer in all this technology. But there’s also a cost to being distracted from the thing that 100,000 people know Before, for example, true, and if at all,
Scott 40:03
there’s so many that now there’s so many projects, right? It’s even hard, and they all have some level of technical aptitude and competence behind them for the most part. And so so you know, and then your but the same, like in any in any site, you know, side interests like even if you’re looking to invest in traditional stocks or or anything really, you just have to now crypto as a added layer of complexity because you have to understand the underlying technology. It’s not like, you know, you can just go on Google and understand the latest project because its function like the past 200 or 300. projects, right? Everything’s so different.
Jack 40:38
Yeah. And this is, I think this is another interesting. There’s a huge philosophical and political layer to all of this, which is the amount of bias to the success stories that something like social media exposes, right? It’s like, why would I sit down and learn a skill for five years when I can make a 7,000% return on this thing in 24 hours, right? And if I get an, if I get a shot at that every single day for the rest of my life? Why would I, you know, why would I ever learn a skill? So I think there’s a, there’s a really, the speed of it. And again, I’m close to it feels just bonkers to me, like, even in the last six months or so, I literally see it show up in the interest in the stuff that we produce. So try and get somebody to sit down and spend six months building an asset that they could sell for three years, versus like, hey, put $50 into this like meme, coin, got it, and then you’re gonna be in great shape for the rest of you, right? It’s going to take people going through and crashing through those cycles to learn that that’s not a sustainable strategy. But
Scott 41:55
But yeah, real estate, I know real estate investors that have multiple properties that are now fully in and like completely, like, they’re not looking at units anymore. They’re just like, I need to figure out crypto. And that that blows my mind. It blows my mind. Because, you know, some of these some of these investments. And I’m not like it was I’m not an expert, but like something that has like a billion dollar market cap. Like you can’t liquidate that, like, everybody who owns it. Like, it’s like, like, it’s not sustainable. So, and like I think, you know, some of the numbers are just insane. So, you know, it’s, I think, listen, this is part of a larger narrative of chasing after everything you see on social media. You see the the fancy lifestyle, the car that got it’s a crypto investor that drives like five Lamborghinis. And you’re like, Oh, I want I want some of that. I like, yeah, that’s nice. But that’s not that’s not the norm. Right? That’s not that’s not reality. In my in my opinion, it would be, of course, yes. What I love to invest a couple 100 bucks and then retire. Yeah. But also, would it be nice to have something that I know is, you know, I see that the 5% or 10% growth in the business that I own, that I spend maybe 10 hours a week working on or 20 hours a week working on, and that’s safer. It’s not It’s not fun dealing with some of that stuff. Some of the the upsides, huge downsides, even bigger, right? But yeah, it’s funny that you mentioned
Jack 43:16
you don’t calculate is just how beat up you get by when you get it wrong. And that’s like way, like, that’s a way bigger drag on your long term, achievement, whatever you want to call it. Then the momentary upside you might get if you catch some luck is, you know, casino territory, right? Even these assets in the crypto land that have gone up 10,000% from inception required you tab 10 years of conviction through all sorts of carnage. That is, I don’t think going to change this idea of like shiny objects getting shiny here is a pretty fascinating I haven’t really thought about it like that. But that’s really a think in the last year or two the frequency and the craziness in that world as is on a parabolic move upward.
Scott 44:15
So I think that that’s why you see people that are educated investors, they put in you know, a percentage a small percentage of their portfolio because my god like you know, your heart’s not gonna take that. I was I was listening to your on your on my first million podcast I was listening to I was listening to your episode to prep for this one because I was listening to just Sean who’s doing another episode about how he woke up and he lost $500,000 in stocks and in crypto and just he had like some some mental health lessons and and some mental health learnings to how to how to get through that. But the biggest issue with like losses like that when you invest is it ruins everything else you’re working on. Well, you could have a job, you could have a business that you’re running, you could have invest ones that are doing fine. And that as a human, if you lose $500,000 in one day, everything else is going to shit everything out does it like unless you’re a very strong individual to configure how to get through that everything else goes to shit. So he was just cautioning like, okay, it’s fine to invest and it’s fine to take losses, but the losses are not always the financial ones that are, are directly realized from the asset depreciation. It’s everything else in your life. That’s a great point. You’re an NF T’s I just I just really because you’re in you’re in, you know, you create visual assets. This is your, you’re primed for NF T’s.
Jack 45:35
Yeah, yeah, I’ve sold some NF T’s. It’s, it’s a crazy world out there, man. There’s a lot of cool stuff happening in that world. But it’s also like, mania is total craziness, the barrier to entry is so low. And obviously, the desire to win is so huge. And the, like the disproportion the disproportionate exposure to like some people who did survive, or people who did get it right, is not providing your brain with an accurate picture of your, your actual likelihood of survival or success.
Scott 46:18
Do you think that do you think that there’s some longevity in NFT markets? Or do you think that it’s going to be a fad?
Jack 46:25
Yeah, I believe in them. For sure. I think it’s like, the utility that exists beneath, you know, the media hype cycle is significant. And there’s a lot of cool stuff happening, but it is, you know, like anything these like speculative bubbles around them to begin with, and then bear market to three years of building and then it comes back, like, you know, much stronger and more refined version of itself. But yeah, I honestly, I struggle to not be completely enamored by that technology, because I think it’s, it’s fascinating.
Scott 47:01
It is, but even if you look through the cycles of that of blockchain technology, like even you had all these incredible applications that were supposed to change the world that were three years ago, you know, all these different types of like, like smart contracts and things like that, that, how many of them, some of them have come to fruition, but how many of them have impacted your day to day? How many of them have impacted the infrastructure that you that you I knew somebody that was trying to build out a project that was supposed to enable smart contracts for telecom billing to, to, to, I guess, sort of augment the level of transparency, with telco billing and how charges are levied on one I just because obviously like that’s everybody’s issue, right to get like a you know, $500 cell phone bill, I don’t know what happened. But like that stuff is never going to what you’re going to tell you’re going to tell telcos like Verizon, at&t to restructure, like they’re not going to do it. You have to move mountains. And I don’t see a lot of that happening yet.
Jack 48:02
Right. It’s more crypto native markets. And there’s a big enough market for you to for you to build and trade with people who have been in crypto for 10 years, you can opt out of fear entirely in a lot of ways like trip up to your point. You try and bring some blockchain application to like entrenched fortune 500 company or like government funded utility. Forget it, man. That’s an absolute, like,
Scott 48:30
no Gods the that’s, that’s the goal. That’s the goal of adoption. That is what you want to do. But that’s not I don’t see it moving yet.
Jack 48:38
Yeah, I don’t know how it plays out, like, long term. I’m definitely bullish on it long term based on the applications I see in the small markets. But, ya know, I’m what I know about adoption of new technology in big companies can take a while.
Scott 48:54
If you work, if you’ve I remember, so I used to work for Taco Bell Canada, which I’m trying, right? So, you know, Belkin. It’s like the biggest telco in Canada, like so much of Verizon or at&t or whatnot. And I remember when I worked with them, they had a they had an in house ordering system that was built around, it was like built out of MS DOS, and it looked like an MS DOS program. And that was like, like, you know, MS DOS, well, like 80s. And that was and we were using it like 10 years ago. So it’s slow. It is definitely, it’s definitely slow. I think have you have you had any big wins with NF T’s? I’m just curious now.
Jack 49:37
Yeah, yeah, I’ll send you a link to afterwards but I made an NF t explaining NF Ts. Those are really simple.
Scott 49:46
graphs. I think I saw that. I saw that somewhere on socially. I didn’t know you sold that as an NFT. Okay.
Jack 49:51
Yeah, inception. NFT inception. Cool.
Scott 49:55
Very cool. All right. Okay, a couple more. I wanted to ask you just to Two more things about, you know, as you built the visualize value, you mentioned one point on, I think it was actually, oh, no, I think I camera which podcast it was, you’re speaking about leveraged income versus passive income. And I thought that was an interesting point, because people look at you, and they say, Oh, he makes money while he sleeps, that’s passive income. But what is it really what is what is the ideal setup for somebody who wants to do their own thing to build courses to be an entrepreneur, because I don’t think it is pure passive.
Jack 50:32
No, I mean, not nothing up until you have the level of capital where you can, you know, buy massive amounts of real estate, for example, passive income is not a, you know, a not a phenomenon that you have access to unless you have absurd amounts of capital. And maybe there are exceptions to the rule, I’ve met a lot of people and I don’t know of any yet, but the idea of an internet business is really about leverage, and the amplification of good judgment, right. So you build a product that has zero cost of replication to you. So that could be a software product where, you know, you have lines of code where every time a new user signs up, creates an account for them, this is like happening automatically, obviously. And, or you can build information products, content, things that media, things of that nature, where you produce something once, and it can be displayed on a million screens at the same time anywhere in the world. And that affords you leverage, right, so then your judgment becomes the thing that affects your income. And, for example, you write a compelling piece of copy that introduces somebody to an education product, if you post that piece of copy to an audience of 100 people and 2% of them buy, that’s, you know, let’s say the cost, the product is $100, you make $200. On that day, you grow your audience to 1000 people 2%, convert, you make $2,000, and then so on and so forth. And then you write better copy, that percentage goes up. So or you write a better line of code, and the software is more appealing to person x. So leverage, a leveraged business is really the the disconnection from our spent and money earned, there’s definitely, you definitely spend time making better decisions that produce more income in the long run. But it’s, it’s way less. the ironic thing is, I think there’s I think Bill Gates or somebody that ran a big technology company said, this is like, we hire lazy people, because we want them to basically make themselves redundant, right? We want them to write code that puts them out of a job. So they’re not sitting around doing repetitive things that a computer can do every day, they’re not having the same conversation with someone every day. Like if you’re one of the Actually, I use an example of a graduate, build once or twice, there’s an oncologist, and he, you know, has tons of patients. He’s a massively respected cancer doctor. And now he’s built this library of assets that explain in detail the mechanics of the disease. So when someone comes into his office, it’s not him reading from a script, like teaching somebody this thing, it’s a very, like, personalized. Let’s talk about your specific situation and how you’re going to deal with this. And I have all of these like, explanations that you can take home and watch with your family and really get your head around what’s going on inside your body. That’s an example of media leverage in a in a profession, which you’d never imagine could take advantage of something like that, right? And that is smart, that maybe doesn’t, that maybe doesn’t count as an internet business, but it does increase the return on your time, right? It increases the number of people you can help and it increases the quality of the experience that you have with those people. And obviously, it’s an incredibly traumatic thing for somebody to be going through. So these principles don’t just apply to income they apply to like the quality of the service you provide to. And that’s like, the promise of, of computing and the internet at large, right. It’s like if you figure out how to help one person, and you can codify that thing. Then really it just like your work becomes a search function for the people who need that thing or interested in that thing. I mentioned earlier on, build once sell twice the market for that. is fairly large, right? It’s people who have a skill that they are currently applying their time to get to market like a one to one relationship between their time and the delivery of that skill versus taking elements of that and either writing it in code or producing media that stops you from repeating yourself, then that leverage starts to happen and if you pair that with distribution so if you grow a great network on a platform like Twitter or you build a YouTube audience or now even this is not exclusive to education and like these very like heavy businesses, either Jake Paul has some of the like, most leverage in the world right this guy is getting paid $100 million to fight all those Logan Paul right but to fight Louis Boyd Mayweather they both
Scott 55:57
they both box but still Yeah, logo got the big Why?
Jack 56:00
Why does he have access to an opportunity like that? Because he has an enormous audience and they can like sell pay per views out and he could sell a million dollars a merge with a tweet. He’s, like he’s so leveraged is ridiculous. Kylie Jenner is another example. Like, I think the team that ran that makeup thing that she was doing for probably is still doing was a dozen people. But her brand just create so much leverage. It’s ridiculous, like, the name on the box gets printed, and somebody else could be selling the exact same product, but they don’t have the leverage that she has. Yeah, the internet is just a monster of a vehicle for disconnecting. Time spent from a result.
Scott 56:45
I have one more just one more question on that point. Because you tweeted something else out earlier today. And it was along the lines of if no is like if nobody copies you then what you’re creating isn’t worth while or something like that. Or if you create the content, then people should copy or something along those lines. Whatever it was, I can’t remember the exact verbiage. But how do you maintain that monopoly on your personal brand? And in some way for for a period of time for forever? Right? Because somebody’s gonna come around and copy I even I’ve seen people, probably the graduates from your your program create similar looking assets. Right? So how do you stay as as you know, main visualize value, besides the fact that you were first and somebody who didn’t come from your program? Who wants to create similar assets? They’re probably not going to be respectful of you either. So what’s your what’s your strategy?
Jack 57:36
Yeah, I mean, they pop up all the time and beginning like, honestly, that was the one of the catalysts for building the course in the first place. Like if people are going to copy this anyway, or like the market is demonstrating a desire to produce similar things. I’m going to I’m going to produce something that can allow me to capture value from that desire, right? The people that maybe want to do that, but don’t know where to start don’t know what tools to use and how to think about it. It’s again, another like, weird, double edged sword of the internet. It’s like if you’re onto something, people are going to come after you for it like that. There’s, you’re not. I’m done. Imagine you’ve listened to this. But there’s this this nine and a half hour podcast with Michael Saylor and Robert breedlove. on Bitcoin night. It’s called what is money and in the last episode, Michael Saylor, this guy’s like massive Bitcoin bull and MIT graduate is like, runs a technology company. He says, if you’re in if you’re 99.99%, smarter than everybody in the world, there are still 750,000 people smarter than you that want what you have. That’s just like such a mind blowing statistic to me is that is insane. Your advantage in that situation is to be yourself. Right? If you’re not growing a if you’re not trying to like out, maybe these are interchangeable, but there’s like you either out innovate, or you out individualize. So you, and I’ve started to think do this over time is like, I’ve learned way more into my personality over time, like I started as this really specific, like, here’s this thing I can do hire me to do it, I’ll get it done. And then like, I’ll find someone else and that that really, I think people maybe overshoot this sometimes where there’s nothing wrong with having a business where you take on 10 clients a year and you get to pick from a huge pool of clients based on the very specific message you’re putting out to market right the desire to get completely divorced from time and income from day one. One is, I don’t know, maybe some people are able to do it. It’s not how I did it. And I’m not completely divorced, either. I’m leveraged. But there’s there’s not a complete divorce. But it comes from like, really over time starting to like, you can’t really deny the thing that got you there in the first place, right? There’s constantly pursue and you’re curious curiosity and all the cliches about skating to where the puck is going. And all of these things, it’s like, the way I think about it specifically for an education business is, there’s always like, you’re kind of visual would be appropriate here. But you basically have the people you learn from, and the people that you can teach, and you kind of sit in the middle there. So as you start to learn new things from new people, or you start to go into these different areas of interest, or industries, or whatever it might be, those learnings can like filter back to the people that are interested in pursuing some aspect of what you’ve already done. So visualize value, for example, is like, going from how to visualize how to visualize these ideas that might sit in the presentation of a fortune 500 company to how do I expect or explain crypto Project X, right, my personal interests start to fill into the stuff that I’m producing. And then I get more specific, and the people that reach out to me more aligned with my interest long term. And I think that’s the that’s the really nuanced thing about all of this is you can really get stuck in this generic trap for such a long time. And you’re like, people end up commoditizing themselves, because they’re afraid of shutting themselves off from certain opportunity, right? That’s where I was, even at the beginning of visualize values, like I would work with anybody that would pay me. And it’s only through like, saying no, and chopping off like, huge chunks of what you did before, can you like, you have to sort of survive that dip, right of saying, I’m just gonna focus on this. And as my focus changes, so will the work I do or the products I build. And we could go into a long and deep rabbit hole about this, like the direction of the world. But I think that that is a that is it feels to me like there’s either going to be these like monolithic companies, like you’re either going to be an Amazon or you’re going to be this very, very specific artisan, like you have this very specific output. Like, that’s the general trend of technology, right, everything in the middle just gets destroyed. Not to be I mean, that’s
Scott 1:02:57
where that brings you back to that quote about, you’re either going to innovate or individualize. Yes. And it’s, I would say that one seems drastically easier to do than the other. Indeed, indeed. And like to think about the scale at which there’s a great
Jack 1:03:17
there’s a guy called ro hand Gilks, he has a great Twitter account tweets a lot about like, you know, more traditional businesses that are augmented by technology. So he’s built cleaning businesses, built landscaping businesses, and just put like, great technology on the front end of them. And he had a quote, I’ll paraphrase it, but basically says, if you’re an employee, of a company, you’re already an entrepreneur, the only difference is you only have one customer. So the idea that the idea that you exist outside of the same set of rules is kind of an illusion, right? The the proof of work thing, the ability to build things on the internet, the ability to build a network that like has some anti fragile properties, where I know that even a year ago, at this point, when visualized value was maybe a couple 1000 people, there was enough work in that network, there was enough goodwill and enough time span and enough, like competence demonstrated that I could live off the relationships that I’d built in that at that stage in time, and I think it’s this kind of chicken before the egg, it’s like you have to really, you have to deny certain opportunities in the short term in order to like really go deep and specific over the long term and become that individual. representative of the thing you do very hard to give a specific prescription but that’s how I think about it.
Scott 1:04:57
The mindset, the mindset makes sense. And that’s the difficult That’s the that’s the step that I find a lot of people have difficulty with. Because how many people get to literally the point in your life where you were, when you transition into agency? That’s where everybody gets stuck. And that’s where most people turn it on entrepreneurs. And that’s where most people find out that entrepreneurship is not great. It’s not what they want it and they’re like, Okay, well, let’s just go back. And work. I’ve done that I’ve done that myself. I did agency work. I tried to do some consulting fractional CFO stuff, it’s very difficult.
Jack 1:05:26
It is very difficult. It is. Yeah, I think. Yeah, media. And there’s also this trap of sort of becoming this, like, entering these echo chambers, or becoming the same version of someone else doing a similar thing. And that’s like a human thing, right? The mimicry of everybody catches themselves doing it, I do it as you look at something like that. It’s not really me, I’m doing that because I saw it work for someone else. And, yeah, I truly believe in this long term. Like, the way things play long term is like, you can have an incredible life working for, you know, Uber, or whatever, learn a skill that’s like, incredibly valuable to a massive tech business, get a huge chunk of equity, you’re probably going to be making more than me in a few years, based on the fact that Uber is taking over the world, or you. you pursue something that you’re just irrationally passionate about. And the internet affords you the ability to build a network of people that, like, would only ever hire you to do that thing. And that’s a really hard thing to do. Like, it’s not I, like I would never say otherwise. And I think it’s irresponsible for people to say otherwise. It’s like, a lot of these principles need time to marinate in your head to so some of the like, build ones sell twice, for example. You might take that course, today, and then maybe in 18 months, you make a different decision because of it. Some people might be at a stage where they take it and they go, and they’re like, Okay, I know what to build now. But other people will just pick up like four principles from it, and will like, negotiate for a different position at work, or start to, you know, build a media company side hustle that job. Yeah, it’s not a one size fits all prescription. And I would like condemned a lot of the approaches that are one size fits all prescriptions, because most of them are turning you into a commodity, which long term is a race to the bottom right? If you’re, if you’re not the only person that does what you do, or at least a very specific strain of something, then the market will come and get you man. It’s the internet is a crazy place.
Scott 1:07:52
That’s very, very, very smart advice. And I appreciate it. Appreciate your words, just because I think that a lot of people that try and make money online, don’t always people that teach it don’t always have the best intentions. So I think, obviously a much a much different way that you’re you’re teaching it obviously. But just you know, if I would not want you to get grouped into the same category as many other people that try and help people break away from their jobs.
Jack 1:08:18
Yeah, I definitely that’s a that’s a personal like, it’s a something I take very seriously not like being grouped in with that. Because the barrier to entry to be a teacher on the internet is so low, anybody can do it with an internet connection. And everybody like we’re seeing with these, like, crypto pump and dump things like you promise people the ability to make x, then they make, like emotional decisions and pursue those things rationally, a lot of the time, and there’s way more nuance involved than that. So yeah, it’s a it’s a long fight to try and, you know, try and get out of that category. I’ve think I’ve been fortunate enough to not play in that world. But it’s, it’s hard to, it’s hard to convey the nuance at in the speed of the internet, right. And the way people like expect results to happen is honestly quite far. In a lot of cases.
Scott 1:09:21
And that’s actually why that’s why I advise actually, most people that want to start their own business to not because a lot of people just the expectations are just absolutely incorrect. Yep, so that’s why it’s like build build the brand while you’re working for a company. Maybe start a side hustle, but don’t quit your job and see if it see if there’s that inflection point that where you can start to move over but don’t don’t do anything irrational. Like Like, it’s all comes back to the social media propagating the shiny object syndrome. This is larger than life, you know, the people that can live these lavish lifestyles because of their internet, you know, internet money type. Yeah, it’s just, it’s just not good. But anyway, That’s why I was I was happy to break down your process and your, your course and your thought process because I know it’s logical, it’s, it’s rational. And and it’s it’s achievable to do things that like what you’re doing as long as you as long as you understand what the expectations are you have you have rational expectations for the outcome.
Jack 1:10:24
Yeah, I didn’t mention this in my story, but I only started the I was running this ghost agency, while I had a full time job, like, at no point did I say, okay, you know, I call my boss into a room say I quit. And we’re going to start my own agency, I already had another agency for all intents and purposes and contracts signed, and all these different things before making the leap. Because Yeah, Yeah, I agree. It’s, it’s a really, it’s a problematic narrative to, to push, because as the internet makes things, you know, it claims to make things easier, also increases competition to like the enth degree, it’s, it’s an interesting mix, and you get different perspective at different scales. And you start to understand how power laws work and network effects work. And more, the longer I spend at it, the more I’m convinced that there is this happy middle ground of like, just get really good at something and find 10 people that need you to do it for them. And you could either do that on the side, or you can build like a really solid business that way. So one other point I’ll I’ll make is exposure to commercial environments, where you see what people pay for things and what the relationship between, you know, price and value is, is another huge advantage. So another thing that I see, like, kids coming out of college and trying to start an agency business off the bat, it’s like, you don’t even really know who you’re competing with there. And you don’t think you see the specific problem you solve or the like, how you’re different from the traditional options. So again, all of these different experiences, teach things that you could never, like, project out. It’s all hindsight. So there’s a I think it’s a Steve Jobs, quote, or it’s a version of this inspired by, he talks about all the different experiences he had through school, like went to typography classes, and then did computer science and like all these like, mishmash things of his interest, which culminated in a new version of a computer, right? That considered things that PCs and whatever else just didn’t care about. And the analogy or the metaphor is you can you collect the dots in real time, then you connect the dots in hindsight, so you do these things you like, take risks, you have new experiences, you meet new people, and then, you know, visualize value doesn’t have a 10 year roadmap or anything like that. It’s like, I’m expecting that I’ll run into something in three months time, I’ll be like, okay, pivots like change direction, and you have like, if you have that relationship with people at scale, you really have this like liquidity to maneuver a little more to. But that’s two years in, right. That’s not on day one.
Scott 1:13:33
No, exactly. And that’s actually that was my that was my, sort of my last question that I wanted to just ask you about, for somebody who is a creator, what is the end goal in your mind? what’s the what’s the end result?
Jack 1:13:47
I think just the like, it’s like maintaining this, the state that I’m in now, like the optionality is great. The like, ability to meet people pursue interests, like have conversations like this is all a lot of it comes down to like surrendering to your curiosity after a certain amount of time. And that to me, is like, you know, that I’ve had offers to like, raise venture money and builder like media beast machine, I’m like, I’m already like, semi retired, in a sense. So why would I go and do that? You know, there’s
Scott 1:14:28
a great there’s the Have you ever heard you never know, you never know what you’re gonna do in six months or a year from now? Depending on right.
Jack 1:14:34
Yeah. And, like, I want to live that way. And there are downsides to it. There is a drawback to like, a lack of predictability in some ways, but I’d take that trade off for the like time freedom that provides it’s the that’s the I’d also say there’s no predictability and in what we consider to be predictable jobs anyways, it’s
Scott 1:14:55
true to the last two years have taught us anything.
Jack 1:14:57
And so this is true. That’s a great, I’ll send you a link to it. It’s like the fishermen and the venture capitalists. Have you heard of that? story? No, no, send it. I don’t know this. I can, if you have a time, I can just quickly reiterate. Yeah, do it. So I think it’s an American. This is how it’s told us in American guy is on holiday in Mexico, and as a fisherman on the beach in Mexico, and He’s, uh, he’s got his cat, she’s got like, three fish, the American goes up to him is like, oh, wow, how long you’ve been out for is like, a couple hours. Got my three fish. He’s like, Okay, why don’t you if you’re catching fish, why didn’t you stay out longer, he’s like, I don’t need any more fish. He’s like, Oh, you know what you should do? You should get more boats. And then you should like hire a bunch of fishermen and get a fleet out there. And you know, then eventually, you can get big enough where you could do an IPO and you could sell your business to? And he’s like, why would I do that? He’s like, Oh, you know, so you can, you know, chill out with your family and like, go and see your friends at night. And he’s like, that’s where I’m going right now. That’s I’m already doing that. There’s just as fast. You get caught up in right, where you Yeah, you’re swinging for this weird result. And a lot of a lot of the time the like, yeah, you just get completely lost in this process with this arbitrary thing. And you may have the majority of that already going for you. So Stumbling on something that you like to do every day and can keep you alive. You know, there’s economically feasible, that again, your point about trying stuff while you already have income in another world, or, you know, you don’t have to burn all the bridges and starts, you know, swinging for the fences on day one. There’s a lot of optionality out there.
Scott 1:16:45
Very good advice. All right. I’ll do a couple I’ll do a couple rapid fire just to bring out some life lesson career insights that that you’ve experienced over your career? And then we’ll tell people where to go find you if they haven’t already seen you online. Okay. What has been the biggest challenge in your career? And how did you overcome it?
Jack 1:17:04
Hmm, probably, it definitely was when I was running an agency. And the, like, accepting, accepting all of these jobs I knew I wasn’t like 100% qualified to do. I was just like, it was really burning me out and like wrecking my relationships and stuff. And then going, like, really leaning into saying no, and like, that’s a really hard thing to learn for me. Like saying no to people is really hard. Because I always assume Yes, is, you know, the gateway to opportunity. And to a certain extent it is. But when you have enough proof that you don’t need to say yes, anymore. Stop saying Yes, that was the hardest thing I ever did. But it took like it. It was a rocket underneath the growth of the business and my personal life and everything. And just even little things like, you know, I’d have friends that will say like, Oh, can you get on the phone with me for two hours to do this thing? I’m just like, no, Bro, I can’t do that anymore. I used to do it all the time, my calendar before I don’t do it anymore. And then, you know, three months later, when people start to come to terms that you have better relationships with them anyway. So like, saying no is hard, but that’s definitely been instrumental.
1:18:28
Good advice.
Scott 1:18:30
So this sort of segues into the next question. Hopefully you can pull something different out what what would be the what would be some advice you tell your younger self?
Jack 1:18:39
I think there’s a like, I think about this a lot like trust your gut is perhaps the
1:18:50
Yeah, one thing that I
Jack 1:18:54
in hindsight, hasn’t steered me wrong, right. You think of the gods as this like, emotional thing. But I’m actually starting to think, you know, there are exceptions to this rule like meme coins. And things aside, the idea that your gut is made up of like 1000s and 1000s, of 1000s of exposure of exposure to 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of situations and like the all the calls that you’ve made subtly, like when I end up like overthinking a decision like with regards to like staying in a job or you know, switching say no to someone like almost always when I’ve questioned my initial instinct, I’ve ended up in a in the wrong place. So that like, trust your gut trust the process, the most cliche advice there is but like, trusting the fact that your body is telling you something because it has way more experience than your conscious mind can even comprehend. A lot of the time has not steered me wrong. And I mean, there’s I think there’s only so long you can go against your instinct right before you just,
Scott 1:20:10
I think it would just break you down eventually,
Jack 1:20:12
it would be difficult. You’re not nice to be around all of those things. Yeah.
Scott 1:20:20
Okay, so one one person that had a major impact on your life, and what did you learn from them?
Jack 1:20:27
So I’m gonna go, I would say, my wife, but I’m going to give a professional example, my first boss, in that small agency, I mentioned, he would definitely not remember this comment he made, but there was a review of some work. It was like one lunchtime meeting. And I was maybe six months into the job. And I’ve came over with these print outs, I was about to review this thing. And I said, Hey, I don’t really know if this is good enough or right. And he’s like, I’m gonna stop you there. Why are you showing it to me? If it’s not good enough?
1:21:02
I was like,
1:21:05
I don’t I don’t know.
Jack 1:21:06
He’s like, take it away, like, cancel the meeting, like don’t bring it to me. If it’s not good enough, if you know, you haven’t taken it, as far as you can take it, I don’t want to see it. You’re not confident in it. Like, even like opening? The presentation of your work with that statement is make me think it’s no good. Right? So like, you’re not doing yourself any favors in any dimension with that. So that to me has been like, you know, like I said, he probably forgot they even said that, but I’ve thought about it every day probably since.
1:21:40
Interesting. Interesting. Yeah.
Scott 1:21:43
Now that’s impactful, too, I guess. Because then it makes you pause it? Well, first of all, do sort of two lessons to bring out of that. Don’t sell yourself short, because then you’re setting the stage for you can actually you’re imprinting on them, whatever it is that you think your work is or isn’t and that’s not good, because there’s a chance it could be fine, right? Secondly, if your work isn’t good, then why are you delivering it? That’s a smart, very, very smart thing to take away a very, you know, it’s funny how like, you think back on like the people you’ve worked with and for, and like some small off the cuff comment, like totally changes your mindset, and your outlook on life. It’s very interesting. Actually. That’s another that’s even. That’s another lesson. You have to watch what you say. Yeah, because it can have a massive negative or positive impact on Yeah, especially if you have leverage. You have a lot
Jack 1:22:32
100% Yeah, that’s a great point. And especially because the internet sort of disconnects you from the feeling of leverage to like, it’s really hard to comprehend. 100,000 people reading something, you right?
Scott 1:22:48
Yeah, it’s really hard. And the stadium. Yeah, you would be like, you know, you’d pause for Xavier. Holy
Jack 1:22:54
shit. Exactly. But no, people just like firing out whatever, you know, brain fart they have. Yeah, that’s a powerful thing. And pros and cons, right? there’ll be people that are like, I read this thing you wrote a year ago that you forgotten about that had an instrumental impact on someone. So I think if your intent is good, great. Like that’s what it all comes back to.
Scott 1:23:16
Yeah, and it but if you’re if your intent isn’t, watch out, because the internet’s forever, man is coming for you, man. Yeah, there’s there’s no hiding. Okay, what’s one resource book podcast, Audible, somebody should go check out. I’m gonna do
Jack 1:23:39
there’s a book called Psycho Cybernetics guy called Maxwell. maltz. You heard his book? Yeah. Yeah. Great book. And then I’m gonna give one more. Bob’s gonna give this first the how to get rich without getting lucky. Navarro. avoca the tweet podcast read. Well, and the tweets radio read it and lawyers gonna see the tweet thread. Yeah, okay. That was instrumental in my in, you know, I sort of found that and so many light bulbs went off and sent me in a different direction. And that’s another thing, that’s another lesson and just how rare it is to find things that can drastically change the trajectory of your life. Like, you know, you can read a book, but this is I think the density of wisdom. And that thing is all time great. Like the amount of people that have have, yeah, change the direction of their life for the better for reading that I think is is very high. So that’s great, though. That’s
Scott 1:24:35
so you reference the pocket. I was just saying that you go on Twitter, look up Novell. I’m pretty sure that still is pinned. Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s still his pin tweet on his profile, but
Jack 1:24:45
I think there’s a three hour podcast where it goes a little deeper. So get that get that in your ears, too.
Scott 1:24:51
Yeah, no good advice. And then lastly, what is what does success mean to you? Think
Jack 1:25:02
like waking up looking forward to the day or go into bed and not like and being excited about tomorrow like I wish your way the night’s sleep. And that’s like you got everything if if you go to bed feeling that I think
