Visual Note-taking for Business

over the place here, there, and everywhere. Pieces of paper, little notes, little Post-its, and etc., right? We all need to take notes and have ways to capture ideas. So today on Cash In On Camera, we're talking about visual note-taking for business, how important it is, and how best to do it. So Ann English is here to talk about this. She is the Visual Communicator and she's the perfect person to talk about the importance of doing this. So Anne, I want to ask you about the difference between, you know, putting notes on an iPad or like typing it in rather than just using pen to paper, or, you know, which is the better way to actually be taking notes in the first place?

Yeah, I mean, I really do believe that we should be putting pen to paper, getting ideas out of our head and then making them real. So yes, we've started kind of typing everything up. But when you put things onto paper, or it might even be, you know, when you're writing on an iPad, for example, there's something magical happens between what comes out of your head and then it goes down your arm and comes onto the paper. So if you think about it, when we were children, one of the first things that we did was draw, and often we would doodle during lessons, you know, and we would probably told, you know, stop doodling. But I do feel that that's really important. So I kind of have always doodled during conversations, or if I've read books, I doodle in the notes. And it's a way for me to make visual reminders and capture information. So for example, just putting a little asterisk or a star beside something highlights it. So, um, yeah, I totally believe, you know, get it out of your head and onto paper. And yeah, typing's great for some things, but actually for exploring ideas, it's the act of putting pencil to paper really changes things.

Yeah, I, you know, we have a pool here at the house, and in the summertime I like to go out there and just take time to think and sit by the pool and just write ideas, creating, you know, thoughts and just thinking and taking, you know, getting some fresh air. I've tried it both ways. I've tried to go out there with an iPad and a little keyboard to take notes and think, but it works way better if I just go out there with a pen and paper and just start like writing things down. And just, it does work better for me, and the ideas flow more easily, and, and I just like to be able to do that. So, but there is a lot, um, of reason why that works so much better. I want to show an example of the kinds of doodles that you're talking about here. So Let me just show an example on the screen. This is the kind of stuff that you do, and we'll talk about Clarity Quest a little bit later on. But this idea of, you know, some people might look at this and say, well, I couldn't possibly draw like that. I can't doodle the way Ann does. I don't have that type of talent. So let's speak to that idea of like, what does it need to look like if someone doesn't draw very well?

You know, I believe I don't draw very well. I call myself a doodler. I'm not an illustrator. The thing is, it's about interpretation, isn't it? So if it's for yourself, it doesn't matter how good it is, it just matters that it makes sense to you. So if you think about, you know, way back when there was cave paintings, then there was hieroglyphics. So yeah, our interpretation of what they meant might have got lost over time, but as long as it meant something to the people at the time— and actually, you as a storyteller or a note-taker. When you see my visual doodles, often I have a dotted line, and that's because when people are telling you something, they're taking you on a journey. So I capture that journey as a pathway, as something to follow, to follow the ideas. So when you're making visual notes, you know, it might be that you start with very, very simple graphics. But it just highlights things. And it's, it's thinking about not writing every single word down. It's writing down the words that matter and that the words that you're going to remember. So when I do these doodles, I try and capture everything onto one page so that then you can look back at it and keep it as a visual reminder, because we've all written pages and pages of notes at meetings and at events, but we never look back on them.

I know that, and that's right. And it's a shame because we go to these conferences or we go to these events and we write down a bunch of notes, but then what do we do with them after? The fact that it— in your methodology of putting them in a doodle that has a story and then in an arc, it's like this leads to that, and it— then you can refer to it and go, oh yeah, that amazing thing that I learned at that conference. And I think it's really powerful what you do. And what's interesting is that you've been hired by some pretty big names to do this type of work. I'm thinking about, I think Lewis Howes, Tony Robbins, Brené Brown. Like these are big names that have utilized this type of strategy. And can you speak a little bit to how they're utilizing what you've done for them?

Yeah, well, for some of them, I've been in the audience. I've just been listening to them and then I share with their groups and other people then go, 'Wow, you know, I've taken pages of notes, but actually I refer back to your doodle and it reminds me of what happened.' So I know one of the, um, techniques that people use to remember is to think about a story or a journey that you go on to remember if you've got to remember a whole list of things. So actually, with the visual doodles, when you go on this journey and I make key points people can often remember then the story that was told to them because the key kind of markers along that way. Whereas when you write it in terms of words only, there's nothing really stands out, it all looks the same.

So it's important then if you're going to be doing visual note-taking for business that you do draw imagery or doodles that represent certain things. It's not just putting words necessarily on there.

Yeah, I think highlighting things with— you can make your own symbols up, but for me, things like, for ideas, it might be a light bulb. For something that you want to take action, it might be a star. You know, if you just start very simply, if it's something that really speaks to you, then you might put a heart beside it. So it doesn't have to be very complicated shapes, but you're starting to use visual note-taking to be able to remember, because that's what it's about. It's, it's being able to recall information and refer back to it afterwards, after the event, because I'm all about ideas. And it's the thing about breathing life into ideas so that they don't, you know, float off and die, because ideas can very easily— you can think, oh, that's a brilliant idea. But if you don't take note of it, how many times have you done that? And then later you've thought, that's just disappeared, it's gone.

You can't see it from where we're sitting right now, or this vantage point, because you're looking at my background. But in front of me I have a huge whiteboard, and on this whiteboard are words. There are no symbols, there are no stars, there are no hearts. But as I look at it, and, and in some cases these are ideas that I've put on the whiteboard, I think it would be to my benefit to go and maybe erase that and start over and just put that idea up there but with some imagery. And the other thing I think about too is that we live in a world where we're full of emojis, right? We see emojis everywhere that we go. So we are more likely now to at least be able to associate a word with a certain emotion or emoji and then just do your own version of that emoji. You're not going to be able to draw it perfectly if you have skills like I do, but the idea and the concept is that you would associate that image with that word.

And that's really interesting what you've said about emojis. That's exactly it. Why do we use emojis? Because visual images like that, very simple symbols, are powerful. And they can say, like they say about a picture, um, telling a thousand words. You know, an emoji— I've actually got some signs here, so when I go on calls like this, I often— I've got my own versions You know, and I can just, I can, I can give people, you know, send some love. I can give them a round of applause. So these are just things that I use, you know, for, for no and yes. So these are my own kind of visual note-taking emojis. But you can see immediately that transfers information, doesn't it? Very, very simply. And actually also across different languages as well. Yeah, this is how it can be so powerful. The other thing that I would say, Cheryl, is, you know, if you've got that board with all those ideas, what I love to do is what I call connecting the dots. So when you've got lots of ideas out there, lots of words, well, what relates to what, you know, is, is it the fact that there's, there's categories with some of the words that you've got so you can put them together? So with the Clarity Quest, this starts off as lots of ideas. How do you take an idea and then make it a reality. But I take people on a journey from the world of the imagination, taking you through your creativity, how people can drown their ideas in the, you know, the sea of negativity. Either you drown them or other people do. But then it's about planting them in the land of possibility. However, along that route, you're gonna hit roadblocks along the way, but it's kind of being able to navigate that journey, because I believe that we all have a superpower, but we don't see it in ourselves. And that's why on there you'll see the word 'just,' because like when I was doing the drawings, you know, this was my visual note-taking for me until somebody said, 'Share that on social media.' And I was like, 'But that's just what I do.' And often we diminish our superpower by going, 'Well, that's just what I do,' because what you find easy or that people can sometimes find valuable and they see something in you that you don't see in yourself.

Absolutely. I think that happens in life. We're so close to what we do, we don't see necessarily how special the thing is that we naturally have a gift or a talent or a skill toward because we do it, we just naturally, it comes to us naturally. And this visual doodling, this visual communication comes to you naturally, But what I love is that you're sharing with us, those of us who don't feel like we could draw the way you do and doodle the way that you do, but we can still utilize those strategies for note-taking that helps us in our business. I want to ask you, Ann, how often do you recommend or think that online entrepreneurs should take time to do doodling and come up with ideas and get all the things in their brain out onto, in this case, paper?

I think it's invaluable to do it. Um, but I think you can do it in lots of different ways, whatever works for you. So like you say, if you've got a whiteboard, if you use Post-it notes, you know, if you want to, to draw it in a book or whatever it is, it doesn't really matter as long as you're capturing it somewhere, you know, taking it out of your head and putting it onto paper. So yeah, pick whatever method works for you. Or for me, I use a lot of methods. When I did my TEDx talk, The Clarity Quest, and I was coming up with all the different ideas and I wanted to share, you know, some of the things were on mind maps, you know, I do vision maps, some things I ended up moving on to PowerPoint, you know, doing slides, because for me, I like to switch it up and change it around. You know, if you get stuck at one point, then actually, okay, take it from a Post-it note, put it on a mind map. That kind of thing. But for me, to visually communicate the ideas, to get out of your head and onto paper, just makes it real. And it also means that you can share your ideas with somebody else. So how many times— it's like that back of a napkin kind of thing where you can sketch something, and actually, if you're talking through it, it doesn't have to be the best drawing in the world. If you tell somebody that this is a cat You know, they go, all right, okay, they just, you know, go along with that storytelling. So whatever that cat looks like to you does not really matter if it's, you know, an exact example of what a cat looks like. In fact, there was a game called Pictionary, and when that first came out, I was hopeless. I was useless at playing that game. Everybody thought they wanted me on their team But originally when it came out, what I was trying to do was illustrate the image of the thing, whereas actually people that weren't illustrators, weren't creative, they would draw like a stick character, and often they would get to the result very quick. And then I realized that actually what I was doing, it didn't matter, you know, how accurate it looked. It, it was just about doodling an idea in a way that you could communicate that. So, um, I honestly believe that we can all doodle, and definitely don't compare your doodles to me because you will have your own way of doing that, and it will be really powerful if you start putting pen to paper.

I think entrepreneurs have so many ideas, but they often are just sort of blocked up in their minds because they're so, you know, busy doing all the things. And taking that time, even if it's Once a month, you know, take an hour for yourself, get a pen and paper, go to the stationery store and buy yourself something nice and pretty, a nice pen and a nice journal or a marker or whatever. And really kind of get into that space of creation and get all of those ideas out, I think, is a great exercise that people could do. Now, I know that you have a way to help guide people through this process, and we've been hinting at it here today, which is the Clarity Quest. Tell us a little bit more about that.

Yeah, so the Clarity Quest is my TEDx talk, and so that's available online. And I actually, when I decided to do a TEDx talk, my reason for doing that was to share how you take an idea and make it a reality. And I knew that if I was going to do a TEDx talk, it needed to be illustrated because I was a visual communicator. I didn't think at the time that I would be the one to visually communicate that. But this happened during lockdown, so I had plenty time to practice my drawing skills, you know. So I did end up visually communicating that as the story goes along, the various ideas, and then at the end it all comes together to provide a map of the journey that I've taken people on. And then what I've done more recently, because TEDx talks you can only do up to about 18 minutes, and I knew that there was lots of deeper dive ideas. So that's now an online program. So I coach people through that, and it's called the Clarity Quest. And, um, I provide ideas books. So ideas books— in fact, I'll just hold one up here, one I made earlier. But the idea with the ideas book is that you, you write your ideas down and that you've got then a journal, a visual journal of your ideas that you can refer back to. Because I'm all about making it that you've got a place where ideas have a home because they're so valuable. They're really valuable to entrepreneurs. Um, you know, that's what we base our business on. It always started with an idea, didn't it? Yeah.

So, and, and, and how do people get in touch? I think LinkedIn is the best place that you like to connect with people, correct?

Yeah, I think that's probably how we connected originally. I love LinkedIn. I think it's a genuine place for connections. And then also as well, you know, posting on there, I like to follow people's stories and their journeys because you see that, don't you, in there, you know, when people post their activities on LinkedIn. So yes, you can see me with, with a head full of ideas on there.

That's great.

I've got these ideas hats that visually— it's about visually representing, you know, what I do. It's taking that intangible stuff that nobody can see. But then when you make it tangible, you can also then share that with people who are on your journey, people that can help you, or people that you want to work with by visually communicating it. So people get— my business is called Create Intrigue, but people are intrigued when they see your drawing. It doesn't matter how good it is, they just, you know, they connect with that. I feel they connect with that a lot. Good.

Yeah, I love that. You really specialize in the art of visual communications and we've shown some examples here. And for anyone who's interested in knowing more about the Clarity Quest, connect with Ann on LinkedIn and just send a message and see where that goes. But Ann, this has been great. I want to ask you before you go though, what is a tip, tool, tactic, or technique that's really helping you to market yourself for the year we live in today.

Yeah, so, you know, always from being a child, doodle, do that, get back into that doodle place. But one tip that I do is I share the time-lapse videos of me drawing these illustrations, and people love that. The, the, you know, it is something that creates intrigue. They like to see how something develops and how something grows. So if you— whatever you're doing, you know, let people see behind this, this. If you are making notes in a notebook, take a photograph of that, you know, put that on social media because people are really intrigued to see, you know, how you develop your ideas and you make them a reality.

I love that. I actually was speaking with someone recently, an artist, and I had suggested, I said, document what you're doing, document what you're doing. And she started doing it recently, and I can see that she's getting some people responding now and engagement. Yeah, absolutely, people want to see that behind-the-scenes action. So that's a great—

and I think people are too, um, they're too used to seeing the end result, so people can sometimes, you know, um, scroll past it because it's what they see every day. But when they see something, you know, almost like the idea of being born, that's when they start then connecting with it, and they're more intrigued as to how this is going to be evolved into something rather than just seeing the end result of it. Because I think we've got so much used to seeing everything neat and tidy and finished and polished, but actually we quite like to see the rough idea in its, you know, it just Oh, it just cut out for a second.

Yeah, it just— the last 3 seconds of what you said cut out, but I understand what you're saying. It's like people want to see the journey. They want to see the result, um, you know, or not the result, they want to see the journey of how you got to the result. And I think that your point is well taken. Definitely. And thank you so much for coming on the show today and sharing those tips and ideas, and I hope people will reach out to you on LinkedIn and connect with you. I'm so glad we're connected, obviously, and we've had many chats. You've helped me with some of your visual communications in the past and the mapping, and it was a really helpful process that you take people through. So thank you so much for being here.

That's brilliant. Thank you. And you're gonna get this, you're gonna get this. Awesome. Bye for now. Thank you.

Bye.