Jack Butcher - From couch-surfing to building a million-dollar business!

Hello, hello. We're recording and welcome everyone. Thank you so much for tuning into the Undefeated Underdogs episode one. This one is kind of special to me in many ways, and especially for two reasons. One is I'm recording this episode for the first time. Like you know, in my entire life, I've never thought I would be like a host. And number two, I'm doing this with none other than the legendary Jack Butcher, who's like. A good friend of mine who's like a you know like an inspirational figure to me, and yeah thanks Jack for coming in. I just want to like quickly you know give give a brief intro about yourself, and maybe like we kick things starts there. Where should I start about Jack? He is he's one of the amazing most creative thinkers of our generation. I would say he taught a lot of people how to become a creator, how to productize themselves, and. And if you build once, you can sell infinite times. And he's like the real proof, you know, for that. He's a founder, he's a teacher, he's a designer, creator, a father. And most importantly to me, I think he's a giver. He genuinely wants to help other people. He's a good friend of mine. He supported me in many of my endeavors. I'm so stoked to have you, Jack. Welcome to the show. And I appreciate you.

Mate, thank you very much for that kind intro too. Much appreciated. Thanks for having me on.

Absolutely. Yeah. Let's kick things started. I have like so many things, honestly, I want to cover, but we only have limited time. But I just want to like right off the bat, I want to like understand your— let's go back to your early days where you moved to the US, I think in your early 20s, I guess. And you started working for advertising agencies. Being an immigrant is tough, and of course, you know the struggle, and I myself am an immigrant. How is it like, what was your mindset back then and how did you navigate the initial barriers per se as an immigrant in the US?

Yeah, so I must have been, I think, 21 or 22 when I first got to America, I did have like a couple of acquaintances that I knew through friends of mine from home that came to the States. So I wasn't completely on my own. There was a couple guys I knew that grew up in the same town as me. They weren't like— I became friends with them, but when I got here, they weren't my best of friends.

Hmm.

So I Started off, I remember getting off the subway in Brooklyn in like, if anyone knows New York, it's off the L train, the Halsey stop on the L train.

Right.

And I got off, I had my one bag, what I was wearing, that was it. And I just had an email with this guy that said, yeah, I'll meet you when you come over to New York. And I was sleeping on a sofa in an apartment of a guy who I almost knew, someone that he met the week before or something. So it was pretty last minute and kind of just going for it. So I just got on the plane, got here, and was winging it essentially for at least 6 months or so. So my first— My first 12 months, actually, I moved to a different apartment every month. So I'd go on Craigslist on the 31st of the month, try and find a room for rent.

Wow.

My budget was, I think, $300 a month for lodging back then. So that was like anybody with a sofa that needed $300, there wasn't many people. And I would just go wherever. So 12 different apartments for 12 months. And man, it was fun. I loved it though. I was so excited to be in like the environment I was in and the work itself was just like so many orders of magnitude beyond what I was doing back at home. Like the brands I was working with, the people I got to meet, the, you know, even the little errands that I would run, I was just getting pumped up by like being involved in this stuff. So I think I was just running on adrenaline for that first year, at least maybe a couple of years, but I loved it.

So I think you actually kind of used it as fuel instead of seeing it as an obstacle. You actually cherished the present, which is crashing people's couches, meeting, I think, new people every month, making friendships.

Eating cheap food, just hustling, man. Yeah, it was fun. I think, I'm sure at the time there were moments where I was, especially like some of the places I stayed where it was so loud you couldn't sleep. I got a good story. I had to buy a vibrating alarm clock for one of the places I stayed because I had to put earplugs and eye mask because this place was like on a train track and every 10 minutes a train would come by.

Wow.

So, I had to get a— and there was this strobe light outside the bedroom window. So, I had to have a vibrating alarm clock to wake me up. That was a pretty rough month. But Yeah, it was a fun— it was like I said, like the pros far outweighed the cons. Like I loved the work and at the time I was like, I'm just getting all this experience. Whatever happens, I'm gonna have had, you know, a year or 2 in this environment and then I can go and build up a portfolio and hopefully get access to other opportunities wherever this ends up going. So I was just very grateful to be in the position I was in to get exposure to all that stuff. I don't— again, I think people, there's some rose-tinted glasses where everyone looks back, it's like it was the best time ever. But it genuinely was. I genuinely loved it.

No, I think you seem kind of like a guy who immerses yourself into work. And when I say work, it means play to you. And I see you post these tweets, you just go ballistic sometimes. And And I can resonate with myself because when I get a thought, I just tweet the same way you tweet. I took that playbook from you, by the way. And I feel like, yeah, I feel when you kind of like immerse yourself into what you do, which is what you love, these things won't feel like an obstacle. And I think the follow-up question there is, just got curious there. You've made $1 million, I think more than that. recently last year, and you've built this mega media empire of yourself, and you're still, I guess, a 2-person team, you and Celia, your wife. Reflecting back, what was like, how did you ever even manifested like you will reach certain stage living in a noisy apartment in Brooklyn, juggling between trains, eating like ramen, What was your manifestation process? I'm just curious.

Yeah. So honestly, getting into it, going back before I was even in New York, my work experience, I worked in a Honda factory for 9 months. I worked in industrial shredders. I worked in hairdressers, like sweeping the floor in hairdressers. I did all these different jobs. And my last, I worked in a printer's in the town I grew up in, in the UK as well. And that was kind of like this, there's 2 points. One, a cousin of mine worked in a design studio. When I was 16, I got to go and do work experience in the design studio with him.

Wow.

And that kind of planted this idea in my head that I think going through those other working experiences, I was like, Man, some people are getting paid to sit in front of a computer all day and come up with logos, right? Design magazines and all this stuff. And then the second point, I was working in this printers and one of the clients of the printers was this beautiful graphic design magazine. And I picked it up one day. I'm like, man, there's somebody sitting in front of a computer somewhere working on this thing. And I'm like in this dusty warehouse running the paper through the printer.

Right.

And that I think was like always in the back of my mind. And then getting to just do that for a living was just amazing. Like I wasn't even really— I wanted enough, I want to make enough money to be able to support myself. And I was, you know, single dude in New York. It's not, you don't need to make silly amounts of money, but you need to make a decent living just to kind of participate. and pay your rent and all that good stuff. So I remember when I got offered my first full-time job in New York, I had to ask people like, is this enough money to survive? I have no idea how much it costs to live here because I've been living on sofas, right? And hopefully, I can get off the sofa. Is this enough to get off the sofa? Right. And people are like, yeah, you'll be fine on that. Like, get a roommate, whatever, you'll be fine. And then I didn't even really realize what the economic upside in design was. I had no idea like where that capped out, I think a lot of people get into technology and stuff like that because they see that's where the money is. And if you're a product manager with 10 years experience, you'll make $800 grand or whatever it is at these big firms.

Right.

But I didn't get into it with that. I didn't grow up around that culture. Having a job that you enjoy that paid you decent money is like, you made it, you're good. So it took me probably 7 years to go through enough agency jobs where I was like, I'm making great money, traveling, got the expense account, living good.

Right.

And then just realizing when you get to a certain point, you start to see the numbers. So you go into the meetings where they're budgeting out the jobs and you see what they're billing your time out at. You see how many people are working on this thing, what this project costs. And that's only then was my mind starting to turn where I was like, hmm, hang on a minute. I feel like I'm doing X amount of work and I'm getting 2% of what this job is paying. And there's some degree of arrogance in that too where I was like, I could do all of this by myself, right? You don't need a project manager. You don't need this. I can do all of it.

Right.

And I was mid-20s. So I think that kind of comes with the territory a bit as well, right? You just feel like you got all the energy in the world. You just like, I can do anything.

The young blood, I would say.

Exactly, exactly. And I like, I leaned into that a lot and some of that was naive, but others like you learn lessons fast. So started my own agency based on that insight where I was like, I could be capturing more of this, but all I knew was that model, right? So all I could do is like try and build a competitor to the thing that I'd been working in because that was my world. That's the only way I understood how any of this stuff works. And like the only advantage I would have was just being like, you have to be 10 times better, but you're still like operating as like, build the pitch deck, go in and convince them, and then just try and deliver the work faster. That's really it. Right. So long-winded way to answer the question. It was never about money, nor did I even think there was like a path to like outsized income from working in this world. I was just like very happy to be able to get to do this for a living and not be like screwing exhausts onto Honda Civics. You

know, that's— I feel like you've covered some amazing points there. I think you're naive enough to like acknowledge and your self-awareness actually helped you in a way, right? Like you don't know how to live in the Brooklyn, New York, that kind of like make you curious, number one. And the next thing which you covered is you kind of sensed an opportunity, a gap where you can chime in and take advantage of it, which is I can do this all by myself. Like, why should I work for some agency, get 2% of the cut, you know, when they're paying like for freaking logo, they might pay $100K, you know?

Right, right, right. It's outrageous. Some of the stuff you saw. Exactly.

And I think there I have a very interesting, I guess, just want to dive deeper into your mind. You've never done that before, meaning you never run an agency before. No. But where did you get that confidence? I see like a lot of people see that arrogance, but I see more from a confidence standpoint. You're like, I can do this. Is it like from your family or from friends? Who influenced you?

Yeah, it's a good question. I think, again, like some of this I'll be like retrofitting, like things that I think it was. I don't know if this was it, but I'm going to guess. So, I think one of the things from being in those environments and just feeling like lucky to be there, one of the things that that made me do was just like go absolutely nuts, like work like crazy. Like you would have competition among your peers in an agency environment where it's like this designer or this art director against me and we'll go and like you'd have 3 days and then you present your concepts. I'd never lose ever.

It

was like, no one's going to beat me.

Right.

And I think a lot of the people that I was up against, were maybe further into their careers or had more options to move around different agencies. And I mean, maybe someone can correct me, come back and tell me if I ever lost one of those battles, but I'm pretty sure I never did because I just, I felt so fortunate to be in a position where that was my job.

Right.

And I think having that attitude in those agencies specifically was like, got me exposed to selling the work in too. So if you come up with an idea and you've thought about it to such a ridiculous extent that you, like, the idea is yours, you've presented it in a way that the people who would traditionally go in the room and present it are like, you just sell it yourself. I know you love it. Just go and do it yourself.

Right.

So even a couple weeks into my bigger agency jobs, I was in front of clients. And that is like, that's what an agency is. That's all it is. It's like, obviously you have to execute on the backend. I already knew I could do that. But the real leverage in the agency business is being able to go into a room and explain someone's business to them better than they understand it basically. And they're like, we trust that you can tell this story or you can build this product or you can do whatever. And then I think like slowly you kind of just erode away the belief that everybody ahead of you is better than you or everybody that's been in the building longer than you knows more than you do. And a lot of times in those big businesses, they're just skating along. Like a lot of people are just trying to like collect their paycheck, not disrupt anything too much. And I think that like that young energy too is just like, it's kind of crazy what you can accomplish when you're like on a roll like that. And like, I was kind of all or nothing. I'm in New York, I'm away from my family. I've made a huge sacrifice to be in this position. I'm not gonna like phone it in. You know, I'm not just gonna like show up and like do the bare minimum. Like I've made a massive decision to be here. So I'm gonna get something out of it.

So in a way, I think your attitude towards being grateful that you have the opportunity, number one, Number 2, the competitiveness that I want to beat the other guy or I want to present my idea in a better way. And I think the 3rd thing is you're playing high stakes game. You left everything and you moved to this new city. I feel, and of course on top of it, you have this adrenaline, young blood. I feel that's rare. I hope you're missing that today. I'm missing that from mine. I love, love, love your perspective, and I feel for people who are listening. I think it's a and it's it's not like you you you make it overnight. It takes a lot of time, and it takes a lot of perseverance. And having these you know like going all in attitude really helps. I think in my opinion, right? Love love that. And I I I have like a. immediate question. I think you might have at least guessed it, which is you've worked in all these agencies and you kind of like, I don't want to dive into how you, because you've kind of answered a lot of these questions in other podcasts, which is how Visualize Value came and you saw the opportunity of like, you know, and in your website you talked about fun and freedom in your about page. How important is freedom to you? And I think at what point in this whole journey you're like, you know what, fuck it, let's actually try to achieve that.

Yeah, I mean, it's very important to me. I think again, there's degrees of it within every situation I've been in where there's a trade-off in each situation. Like I had freedom, like I had creative freedom after a couple of years in my career where like, do whatever you want. Like, we trust you, pitch whatever you want, put the budget together. If they buy it, then you get to execute on it. Great. That's freedom. Like to some extent that's freedom, right? And then maybe at some point you run into a barrier where it's like, Somebody tells you, you can't do that. Or like client says, oh my, you know, we took this to the layer above us and they decided that they don't want to do it.

And

I'm not saying that's not freedom. There's like just varying degrees within all these things. But when I start to run into walls where I'm like, I'm frustrated, like I want to make this or I want to do this. And there's somebody else who rightly so has the authority to say no, fine. Right. I'm like, I'm signed up. I'm collecting my paycheck. If you don't want to do it, fine. All I can do is try and convince you. Right. And then just slowly edging away into different environments where it's like, okay, now I want to try and start an agency business. So I've got freedom to pitch whoever I want, to work as long as I want, to wake up when I want and where I want. But At the same time, I don't have the monthly paycheck coming in,

so

I don't have the freedom to go out to dinner 5 times a month, whatever I was doing before.

Yeah.

So I think it's all like, it's all a sliding scale. There's all trade-offs involved in all of this. And then I think what if to sustain like doing your own thing all the time, like to want to build a business and to like keep at it, that trade-off is responsibility, right? It's like you have the responsibility to make something work, make something happen over and over and over again. And if you feel like you're losing the ability to do that, you have to trade back a little bit of your freedom to say whatever you want or make whatever you want for some constraint on the other side. So it's definitely important to me, but I also recognize it's like It's a very nuanced idea. And for some people, freedom might mean not having to worry about your job on the weekend. I wake up every day and sometimes wake up in the middle of the night with an idea where I'm like, I have to get this down. Right?

Right.

Because if I don't remember this thing, then that's like something that I could have made happen that I didn't versus like, oh, I'm going to still have a job next year. Maybe it'll come back to me. So it's different. It's what you care about, I think, changes your definition of freedom, in my opinion.

And what pushed you? I think you should have satisfied yourself when you had the freedom. I think creative freedom is really satisfying, right? Because you could get to do what you want. At the same time, you get paid. And why didn't you get satisfied or say, you know what, I'm cool with this.

Yeah, I think there's— I think it's fine, like pushing your own limit. I think when you feel like you subtly have a sense that you're like, I could be doing more, I could be failing more, like this is getting a bit too easy, right? Like there's— if you're going in and you're winning every situation you're in, or like every you feel like you're hitting ceilings. The irony is like you have to, you can come from an agency environment where you're talking to like CEOs of Fortune 50 companies, right? Like you're doing, like you're at the top of the corporate American hierarchy.

Right.

And then you go and start your own business and you're working like a $5,000 job for a startup. Like it's a completely, you're going from like $10 million contract that you are a tiny part of to something that you own, but it's completely different scale.

Right.

So there's like an ego thing too that is difficult to manage. And maybe there are some instances where people go directly out of one environment and into the same, but for themselves. But I tend to think you have to kind of jump down a few levels and settle somewhere and work your way back up. But that to me was like, How much further can you go under some other banner? In the agency world, the currency is very different. It's like there's a lot of awards, so it's a lot of like—

Lots of credits.

Yeah. The competition between the industry versus making the thing better for the business or understanding what metric you're actually trying to improve. There's a lot of, yeah, carrot chasing is a good way to think about it. And again, if that's what you like doing, you should definitely do that. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but I didn't. So that I think was the push, was like, I keep hitting these ceilings, or there must be something else I can do, or like the environment doesn't quite allow for all of the experiments that I want to run, things like that. And again, the timing in my life also coincided with like being able to stay awake 20 hours a day. And, you know, it's that, that's definitely a factor too,

right? Yeah, I love that. I think, you know, I feel it's that urgency you have to create for yourself. that helps you cross boundaries, or else you just stagnate yourself where you are. I do have a question on— I think you admire him. I personally admire him as well. And I know you when you had around, I think, 5,000 followers on Twitter when I was actually working on this side project called The Angel Philosopher. which is like a big— I remember.

Yeah.

Big, you know, a simple project, but an ambition to like bring everything what Naval Ravikant created as content and put it under one place. And you were one of the first persons to approach me and say, hey, random guy, I've created these free posters for iPhone, like wallpapers. I would love to be part of the project. And I still remember actually gave that to many folks. Me too. Yeah. So my question is, how much— he kind of tweeted this many times, basically productizing yourself, right? And you literally did that. And this is the result. Visualize Value, all the Web3 projects you did, the courses, the audience building and everything. And how much influence do you think he played? And when did that become like a key factor for you? Because you saw many people, I'm sure, right? You have your mentors, icons, heroes you look up to. When did Naval join to that list?

So I'm trying to pinpoint it, but the way I've talked about it or tried to describe how impactful it was. It's kind of the— you know that idiom, when the student is ready, the teacher appears?

Appears by itself.

That idea.

Yep.

Yeah. So that to me was a great way of describing it because I'd been in this agency world for 10 years.

So

I hadn't been really exposed to any of these Silicon Valley software principles. And I imagine obviously Naval's experience investing, building software companies, talking to founders, like all of the different— there's so much variety in all of that subject matter, but there's also these principles that just run across everything. And I think what How to Get Rich Without Getting Lucky pulls out— Right. are those truths that are consistent across all of these different endeavors and obviously in the human experience itself. But I'd never been really exposed to it. I kind of understood software. I use software every day, obviously, but never thought of myself as a developer of or a purveyor of software.

Right.

That set or those set of principles, I should say, combined with all of the knowledge and experience that I'd accrued, just had this like perfect— it's just this inflection point where I was like, wait a minute, all of the stuff he's describing is like this thing that it's on my tongue, but I can't quite describe why I'm frustrated. with all the things that I'm doing or why I can't break through this wall or why this agency business just feels like I'm running my body into the ground and getting no, not no upside from it, but it just feels like a really, really, really difficult thing to crack. And it wasn't really aligned with my strengths. Growing an agency business is essentially building a competitor to all the businesses that I'd worked at before, which would require me to go and hire a bunch of people, get real estate, do all of this stuff, basically entertain all of these clients that want to come to New York for 5 days and go to nice restaurants. And I'm just, no, that's not for me. Like, I'm not going to do that.

Right.

I've discovered these ideas. I'd been pivoting the agency business away from corporate like these big corporate clients where you just do basically anything they tell you to do. We have this. Okay, I'll find a freelancer to do it. We've got this other project. Okay, I'll find— and you just like you spread yourself really thin.

Right.

So I'm deviating from the question here, but those principles help me evaluate every iteration from that point forward. It's almost, I've always, use this analogy in loads of different contexts, but after you find out Santa isn't real, when you spot your mom in the corner of the room bringing the presents in, it's like that realization where you can't wake up the next day and be like, I wonder if Santa's going to come this year. The illusion is broken. So, once you know that—

I love that.

You just have to start doing everything differently, right? Even if you try and go back to it, you're just, why am I doing this to myself? I know that there's a better way here. And, even if I'm going to try and fail, I'd rather be on the other side of that paradigm than pretending that Santa is real every day. So that was what, like, if I had to condense what Naval's writing did for me, it was that level of epiphany that I had after reading his stuff.

I think what you're saying is more importantly surrounding having that fundamentals, not necessarily, you don't need to be like a developer and building up, founding companies before, but you can still take and apply to make it relevant to yourself, whatever the thing you did. I think even I personally got a lot of epiphany, education, kind of like this light bulb moment after reading that thread. And he talks about leverage, building leverage, putting skin in the game. And and building proof of work and collaborating with people who you work with for the rest of the years, like 10 years, 20 years, play the long game. And there are certain fundamentals that will really mess up your mind because, like you said, once you know the truth, there is no going back. Once you know there is no Santa, you're like, what the fuck? How would I celebrate Christmas next year?

Right? Right.

But still, I think you'll figure it out your way and your kind of curiosity doubles down. And I think you kind of like execute on top of these fundamentals. I love that. I feel like for people who are listening, they should definitely read Naval's How to Get Rich thread. It's a Bible for many folks. And I want to cover one more thing, Jack. You are a big advocate of permissionless execution. Yeah. And you kind of like created a big course on it, right? And you did permissionless execution for Naval himself. The wallpaper stake is an example, converting his quotes into these beautiful minimalistic posters. And when did you realize the power of it? I want to know, when did that light bulb moment went like, you know what, might as well package this So other folks can take advantage of it.

So I had the light bulb moment. Well, let's say a dim light bulb moment many years before this.

Oh.

So this was again, when I described that these principles were like on the tip of my tongue before I saw Naval articulate them. I worked in an agency business and there was this amazing agency. I don't know if they're still around or not, called Fantasy Interactive. I didn't work there. This was like gray or my dream job. And they used to do like proof of concept videos.

So

they would build like made up UIs for, the one I remember was like the future of air travel.

Wow.

So here's what we think the future of air travel should look like from a UI/UX perspective. Here's a bunch of really beautiful screens animated showing the UX experience, how we would change it, all of these different, maybe even technically infeasible at the time ideas, but they're showing their thinking. And I was working at an agency at the time and I was just looking around. I was like, these guys have figured it out. They'll just sit and do that.

And

then they can book 100 meetings with every airline in the world and somebody will say, yeah, just put our logo in the top corner and build it. Let's do it.

Yeah.

Versus what we were doing, which was sending people to, I don't know, Soho House or something and trying to eavesdrop on a conversation and then keep up a relationship for 2 years. And then eventually maybe they send you an email asking you to come up with an idea for an email campaign that they want to run. something. It's just, it's a really bizarre way of doing business. And I mean, it's huge, still going on, and I don't think there's any end in sight.

Right.

But it's very different than, hey, let's generate the demand ourselves and actually go to market with something that we believe in and then have a conversation from that perspective versus like chasing this opportunity or just responding to the whims of all these companies. And oh, permissionless. So that was the first time I realized it. And then the business model prevents you from doing that in those environments because

you

have to bill your hours to a client that's paying you.

Right.

Yeah. Or you have to say,

right,

we're doing this because X. Also, I saw a few examples in my early design career where designers would just do, here's how I would redesign Facebook. Here's how I would think about putting whatever company through the filter of my experience. Right. So being a designer in general, I think has given me all of these little ways to think about, you build experience, you build a body of work, you have a portfolio that represents you and how you think. Regardless of your personal network. You go to an interview as a designer, slap your portfolio on the table. They just look at it and go, yeah, it looks amazing. Can you explain why you did this? And if you can, you've got the job.

Exactly right. Yep.

It's not like this political, hey, I can woo clients into doing X, Y, and Z. So that's another part of it.

Your work impresses you know, people, your work speaks for yourself. And I think— Exactly. Like, also didn't mean to stop you there. I feel design has such a power where you can show the future because it's all about imagining what it can be and it replicates down the line to the work you put in. And I feel I've experienced myself in, you know, I saw like, I admire how sometimes these concepts come in, like, you know, the futuristic iPhone. looks like. And you kind of like, you know, and whoever kind of finds it relevant will buy it, you know, at the end of the day, it's not like, you know, and I feel, yeah, go on. I do have like another thought. But yeah, I want to hear that.

Yeah, no, it's great. I mean, I think you've articulated it perfectly. It's like you're pulling the future into the present. You're able to, it's like a cheat code for reality in many ways. you can show people stuff that doesn't exist without having to build every single component of it.

Right, exactly.

There's another quote, I'm going to completely mess it up, but if you want to get people to build a ship, you don't get all the materials together and then tell them what to do. You inspire them with tales of the high seas and et cetera, et cetera.

Right, right.

And design is an incredible tool for Visualizing that which does not yet exist or organizing things that don't yet exist. And I think it's a shame that we've categorized that into a job title, right? Like a designer does that versus everybody that wants to move the world forward in some way should be able to leverage that skillset in some way. Like otherwise, you're stuck in the present forever.

Correct. forever. Yep. Yep.

So being a better communicator, being a better designer, even if you're like, you have a whiteboard and a pen,

right?

The things that you can do, the ways in which you can affect reality are much more significant than just sitting in the present and endlessly talking in loops about what already exists. And then when it really clicked was Twitter. So the quick oversimplified example is I was messing around on Facebook before this. I was posting my work on Facebook, which is like 300 people that I've gone to school with or gone to work with. So like

friends,

family, 95% of them already don't care. Like they're not trying to buy graphic design services off me, right?

Right.

Not saying they don't care about me or they're not interested in like what I'm doing for work. They might be, but they're not they're not struggling with the same things I'm struggling with, or they're not trying to buy the things that I'm selling.

It's something they don't want, pure, simply. Like, you put it simple way.

It's very, yeah, very simple. I think this is a hard thing for a lot of people because a lot of people start their creator or entrepreneurial journeys, especially on the internet, with their existing networks.

Right.

They get hugely discouraged when what they do doesn't resonate with the kids they went to school with.

Correct.

They don't care and they're never going to care. And if you let that be the barrier to you starting what you're going to do, you're never going to get anything done. So the thing that really got me on Twitter was, I think it was a Nassim Taleb quote, the first one that really went crazy. He retweeted it. And the fact that I was able to tag him, that just set off a light bulb in my mind where I was like, wow, this is a really different platform where people who have achieved material levels of success, influence in the world are opening this app up and I can get a message in front of them. That is insane.

That is. Yeah.

Facebook is like a fan page that somebody would never even think about checking or like an interest group. That network is just not set up that way. So as soon as I discovered Twitter, I was like, wow, this is a cheat code for reality. The Fantasy Interactive example I was describing, they still had to do all that PR and manual legwork and, hey, can we show you this? Can I schedule a demo? All that stuff. Whereas they could have just gone @AmericanAirlines, @Delta, @blah, blah, blah. This sucks. Here's a better way to do it.

And publicly broadcast so that not just American Airlines sees this, Southwest Airlines will also see because they tagged American Airlines and specifically mentioning them, right? Yeah, I love it. I feel the power of Twitter is so insane that I got into Naval's DMs just by executing the Angel Philosopher.

Incredible.

And I didn't do anything. I don't know him. I never met him. I have no connections. I'm this nobody at that time. I have like zero following on Twitter. I have like basically nothing, but the work actually attracted him the way He put it in

his bio, right? I remember seeing he had it as his bio link. Yeah.

He had almost for a year had that link. And the way you're telling the same thing, right? You can reach, but you have to put into work first. Without it, the idea's just ideas.

Yeah. I think the permissionless philosophy is more about doing the work first and then taking advantage of the structure of the world and the internet and Twitter and all of these things, not, hey, can you gimme a job? You know, like operating from the assumption that somebody out there can do it better than you, but they're just not going to.

Yeah. That's a great word. That's it. That's a great way of looking at permissionless execution. I love that. I absolutely love that. You should tweet about this after this. And I think you have to— that's what, right? I think going back to that, putting that work first, you don't— you— there are 2 ways. You can find an opportunity and then work. The permissionless way is more amazing because you put the work and opportunity seeks you.

Mm-hmm.

And it becomes like an inbound It truly becomes like you are the upper hand because you've created the work already. All they have to do is either approve, yeah, let's collab, you got the job.

Yeah, it's true. And there's even a combination of those 2 where you're doing— if anybody's paying you to do anything, there is economic value in that thing you're producing. And the likelihood of that person being the only person in the world experiencing that problem and paying for it, Is zero.

Zero. Right.

So there's a parallel path to whatever it is you're doing in your day job. I'm not saying you're going to create a million-dollar business overnight by doing this. I'm saying there are, when you're doing the things that don't scale, the Paul Graham idea, those things are informing the things that can scale. Through gathering experience, through sitting one-on-one with people, through applying your skillset in a very manual and unscalable way, you identify patterns, problems, things that could be repeated. And it's a process. It's like you slowly add a little bit of leverage here. It's like instead of having a phone call with somebody to explain something for 45 minutes, you record a video and you you send that. You saved yourself 45 minutes every single time.

Correct.

And that's like a basic example. There's obviously software where you can automate logic, you can write code. There's a million different examples of this, but it is more of just a constant lens that you apply over things where you're just trying to get a little bit more every day. The leverage thing is a really good analogy because it's like you're just trying to kick the fulcrum a little bit further over every day.

Right. Love that. Yeah. And fundamentally, you're a designer, and I believe you kind of evolved from being just one identity to many, which I said, like founder, creator, and whatnot. And recently, I think you went ballistic being a content creator, be it like writing threads on Twitter or creating courses. capturing that creator economy is another thing which you did in a very seamless way. My curiosity is, what was the transition like? And when did you— again, predominantly, you're a prominent figure in Web3 as well. So you kind of saw and you are kind of manifesting the future and taking action, I assume. How did that journey look like? And if someone who's listening, say, for example, they're limiting themselves to being a designer, how they can become a content creator in this scenario?

Yeah, I think what's fascinating is people get way too attached to labels of stuff in general, creator economy, Web3, audience builder, whatever you want to call it. Like, I think people box themselves into these terms And they forget about really all it is, is the adaptation of your skillset, your experience, your point of view with what the world cares about at any given time.

Right.

I think there's this tension where people don't want to be seen as I'm flip-flopping between subject matter or I'm this one day and then I'm that the other day.

Right.

And the truth is, if you put the focus on yourself and what you care about and just put everything through your filter of curiosity, you can't get caught up in that side of things. So I think for me, never really attaching myself to those terms, at least I don't feel like I have or haven't tried to, has made me more successful in those ways. worlds than I would've been if I tried to chase after them directly. It's the idea that you are positioning yourself in a way that's more informed by the principles of all this stuff than any given terminology. So if you're thinking about how the internet is changing the way we conduct

business,

socialization, all of— at the base layer, it's like you're going to get rewarded for being different and good.

Right.

And you're going to get rewarded for being able to solve people's problems. You're going to be able to get rewarded for if you can take something complicated and make it simple. You'll never ever run out of opportunity if you have that skillset and you can tell people that. And that to me is a far more fundamental skillset and what you should focus on versus I'm the Web3 guy or I'm the NFT guy or I'm the creator economy guy. Because I'm none of those things. Like you said, I am maybe classically trained as a designer, but I wouldn't even really think of myself that way. Like if I had to use one word, I definitely would use designer because it's the idea of taking something and organizing it or, you know,

visualizing it.

One experience and making it a smoother experience. Or like you say, a complicated visual and a simple visual. Like there's a the process of design is the organization of something. There's a pre and a post state. And I definitely, everybody does that.

Yep. Some, and at some level, yes.

Yeah. And the idea that these terms kind of come up more as a way for people to ground themselves or a way for like, they're almost like media invented, right? Remember when metaverse was a thing?

Yep.

It's like everybody on their earnings call is saying metaverse, metaverse. We're going to build the metaverse. And it's like, what do you even mean? You press them on any of it, they have no clue what they're talking about.

Right.

But because it's part of the meta narrative, excuse the term overlap there, they just have to say it. And I think the people who will last a long time and the people who can position themselves above any given trend are just focused on their skillset. Like just focused on what am I great at? The chance that you're going to swing from expert in this area to that area overnight is really slim. Like, people don't really do that. It's more packaging up all of your experience and putting it out in a way that is incredibly unique, that avoids attaching yourself to something that will be either irrelevant or just the term that the space moves on from the term.

Right.

Because Web3 NFTs is no real different than creator economy, right? And then there's probably a version of whatever they called creator economy, probably social media, right? They're just being updated because humans like shiny new terms and they like to feel like they're part of the thing that's happening right now.

Buzzwords.

Weirdly, attaching yourself to that stuff is how you get left behind because you don't— you're then like, oh, I can't get distracted by this shiny object or that shiny object. And in reality, like, I think it's as all things in life probably come down to, it's like you just have to understand yourself and you— the more you just focus on like, okay, what am I genuinely interested in and good at? And can I even examine relationships I've had or situations I've been in where people will point out to me, you're really good at that, or you seem to be able to focus on that a lot longer than other people? That's the thing to focus on. And Visualize Value just became that for me through all of these periods of iteration where now, I feel like it's just a filter for anything. I can take something I learn, put it through the filter of visualized value, read a book, put it through the filter of visualized value, sit in a meeting, invest in a startup, whatever. It's just a vehicle for capturing my interests. And I think that's— not saying that's an easy thing to do, but that to me is a more future-proof way to approach it. And being less precious too, like being less boxed in by these terms. And like, it's another interesting thing you see happen with people is like, they can't come with the narrative because they've stuck themselves somewhere.

Right.

Because they feel as though the people that were interested in what they had to say when they started their journey, are not interested in this part or that part or that part. But if you think about like a musician, I'm sure you have examples where like there's a musician you love where the album where you got introduced to their music is your favorite album. And then the stuff they keep bringing out, there's a few exceptions in my life where I was like, okay, every other one is great. Or like the most recent one is great. But there's a point in time where you are introduced where that music just hits for you.

Right.

And anybody who makes anything, I think that's true. It's like you are going to go through seasons. People that listen to your stuff or watch your stuff go through seasons and to try and just perpetually satisfy the people that joined at the start, you actually miss, like, I think people don't want you to do that either. Like they want to see your evolution.

Correct.

Like I've definitely experienced that with all of the people I've made great friends with over the course of my short internet journey. You see them evolve and you love it and encourage it and you want people to lean into their curiosity because it gets super tedious if you don't do that.

Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. And that's great advice. You basically have to rely on— I think it all boils down to being self-aware of what really you are good at and where do you really find fun? 100%. I was actually trained as a software developer when I did my graduation and I never liked it, like one single bit of it. I hated all my college, but for whatever reason, my parents forced me to like—

Stuck it out. Yeah.

But what I truly enjoy is community building and I truly enjoy building products and I truly enjoy solving problems of myself and putting it out so other people can find it relevant. That is basically what I— when I discovered that is when I take chances and try things out. And so I feel one thing, in a way you did as well, is try 100 things and 1 or 2 things work. I'm sure you have so many course ideas. But I feel predominantly Build Once, Sell Twice is something that resonated with thousands and millions of people. That's why it's like clicking. That's something people want. And to put it in that position, you created, I feel like, so many things before, right?

Oh yeah. Yeah. There's a good— I think it's Miles Davis. It's like 80 tracks, 80 B-sides for every A-side.

Yeah. Love that.

another music analogy, just like you have these hits, just a function of reps where—

Right.

And power laws within the work you do. There's obviously power laws in the market at large, like who gets the most people watching their stuff, buying their stuff, et cetera. But then even within your own body of work, there's this crazy power law where you have one sentence that drives 2 years of results.

Right.

And then you're back on the hamster wheel looking for the next thing. But you have to trust your curiosity to get to something that's actually compelling and interesting versus staying stuck in that place because that work is done and you're building on your understanding. So you're almost subconsciously reinforcing the work you've already done. Like if you keep heading in the direction of your curiosity, everything else kind of falls into line behind that. It's pretty magic.

I think clearly this poster says it all. Keep it going, right? Like, you know, that's it.

I appreciate that.

Keep going. I think, you know, you just have to like figure out and trust in yourself and, you know, find a way. I do have a couple of things and I want to be mindful with your time as well. You're one person, you know, I took literally your playbook when I was building ShoutOut, and I really like, you know, like the way you did things, which is being transparent and building things in public, like truly like sharing the highs, lows, and lessons and whatnot. Where did that philosophy come from and how did that impact Visualize Value as a whole business?

I can't remember exactly where the philosophy came from, but I think the root of it is like, how do I get people that don't know me to trust me? There's a lot of people selling stuff on the internet. There's a lot of false promises. There's a lot of people that are a little bit dodgy with the truth, shall we say, right? Manipulate the narrative.

Yep.

So I think the shortcut to getting people to trust you is to just be completely transparent about what you're doing and answer people's questions when they have them. Like I started posting revenue screenshots way back in the day, which I think is a huge—

Yeah.

Was a huge like boon to the narrative in general. Also conducting everything on Twitter, it almost feels like that's the default where you, if you start out that way, people are invested in the growth of the thing. And the only way you can really keep people apprised of the fact that it's still working is to be transparent about the numbers and all. And like Twitter itself, you kind of see the stuff growing from the outside, right? It's not like you're looking at these static things. You see the social proof of the account gaining followers, the, you know, the courses themselves or the content relevant to all of that stuff being consumed by more people. So there's a combination of being intentionally transparent and then just the forcing function of doing it in public where people see it happening in real time. But it is, to this day, it's still the best. Like if I'm ever in doubt of like, what do I talk about? How do I think about doing this? Just like,

Let's do it.

Rip off all the veneer and just say what's happening. And like the responses you get when you do that, whether publicly or privately, are always way more rich, compelling, interesting than really trying to, you know, manufacture a narrative of some description.

I don't know if you know this, you've, you've kind of invented this thing called transparency time. And I literally like, you know, copied every boo of what I did with ShoutOut. And I really like that. I think kind of like putting yourself in a vulnerable position, like someone might attack you or someone might praise you. But if you don't do that, you're still kind of like stuck with your boxed strategy either

way,

right? Exactly. Yeah. People definitely going to attack you in one way or the other. So might as well you take the charge so that you have the satisfaction. Love this. I definitely have so many questions, but I don't want to get into all of them. I only have, I think, 3 more minutes. But I think what I'm trying to do is I'm kind of making it fun as well for listeners. And I'm kind of— I want to introduce this thing called Rapid Fire 5, which—

Okay.

Where I will just ask 5 questions, you know, whatever that comes to your mind. Would love to, like, hear your thoughts. First question for you. one creator you are currently admiring right now?

I'm going to go Aaron Alto, my boy.

Yeah, I love him. I love his visuals. He's been killing it. He recently did some permissionless work for you. Love that. Yeah, he's my favorite too. You come from England. I'm sure you know the game cricket, the sport. Who's your favorite cricketer?

I'm going to have to pass. I know nothing about cricket.

Oh my God. Really? Wow.

Nothing. Nothing.

Nice. What's your favorite permissionless project?

Oh, I think The Archive, a guy called Piers Kearns did—

The Chrome extension?

Airtable. No, an Airtable where he put all of the the pieces in searchable by keywords and stuff. I'll send you a link to it.

Oh, wow. I didn't know that.

Good.

Cool.

That's good.

Love that. Yeah, we'll put it in the show notes as well. This will be— this is the tough one, I guess. What's your favorite poster you've ever designed?

I think it has to be the one behind you just for the level of resonance and like The amount of times it pops up, just most days I see a reference to it and I think it's had the biggest impact. I think it's probably the one that people refer to the most, which I think qualifies it as the most successful. There you go. Look at that. I appreciate that.

Last thing, and I saw you, you're in advertising and I kind of like also kind of got trained in advertising a little bit in my childhood. And for some reason, most of the designers love Porsche. What's your favorite Porsche car if you want to ever imagine owning one?

Yeah. So mine has to be the 911 GT3.

Nice.

I drove one last year. I think it was last year. Celia got me an anniversary present, go and drive one. It's a phenomenal piece of equipment. I think the design community appreciates Porsche and even maybe more specifically the 911 because it's almost perfect to the point where they barely update it each time.

Yes.

Like the iterations on that car, right? You know, they'll change a little piece here, a little line there, right? But the DNA of the thing,

you

can't deny. You can stand like a 60-year-old one next to one from Shipped out the factory yesterday and you can tell that they're related. It's a pretty amazing story and amazing brand.

It's like a Coke bottle you can recognize from anywhere.

Incredible, incredible.

Man, I love— I wish we have more time to discuss more about—

We'll do another one.

We do another one. Maybe you come back as a second repeating guest, but I love you, Jack. What should I say? I love you. I admire you for your work and for your attitude and for your just thinking, like, you know, your service to others. And yeah, wish you everything, any success. And, you know, and let's keep being as friends and keep killing it. And I, you know, love to see you more on Twitter. Your one-liners are like amazing. I don't know if people said this to you, but I actually sometimes bookmark and refer back to them. So And thanks for being on the podcast, guest one. I hope audience who are listening love this conversation and get one or two takeaways so that you can implement in your life. And that's the goal. If we impact at least one person, we've done the job.

Yeah, indeed, mate. Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure.

Love always talking to you. Thanks, Jack.

Mate, thank you.