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Audience Growth Through Visual Storytelling w/Kacy Maxwell
70 Plays1 year ago
Welcome back to another episode of Audience Growth School! I'm your host, Dan Sanchez, and today we have an incredible guest with us. Kacy Maxwell is an expert in the art of sketchnoting and visual note-taking, and he has successfully built a strong audience through his captivating content. Today, Kacy shares his journey, strategies, and valuable insights on connecting with your audience and growing your brand.
Here are my top three takeaways:
Takeaway #1: Simplify Complex Concepts with Visual Representations
One of the key elements that have contributed to Kacy's success is his ability to simplify complex concepts into engaging visual representations. His book, "The Boy with Horns," not only addresses the important theme of feeling different and alone but also provides parents with a language to approach these emotions with their children. By transforming complex ideas into visual sketches, Kacy has effectively communicated his message to a wider audience. Think about how you can incorporate visual elements into your content to make it more approachable and understandable to your audience.
Takeaway #2: Leverage the Power of LinkedIn for Networking and Growth
Networking events may not be everyone's cup of tea, and Kacy agrees. Instead, he turned to LinkedIn as a curated platform for professionals to connect and learn from each other. By building meaningful relationships and expanding his network on LinkedIn, Kacy has discovered a world of valuable insights and opportunities. He advises leveraging the power of LinkedIn to refine ideas, create engaging discussions, and grow your audience through frequent and meaningful interactions. So take the time to build your LinkedIn profile, participate in discussions, and connect with like-minded professionals in your industry for collaboration and growth.
Takeaway #3: Engage Multiple Parts of the Brain Through Sketchnoting
Kacy's passion for sketchnoting emerged long before he even realized it was a recognized practice. By turning words into pictures and engaging multiple parts of the brain simultaneously, sketchnoting aids in memory and thinking. Kacy has harnessed this technique to not only capture and retain information but also to create visual content that resonates with his audience. Consider incorporating sketchnotes into your content creation process, whether it be for presentations, blog articles, or social media posts. Engaging your audience visually will enhance the impact and effectiveness of your message, leading to better audience growth.
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Transcript
Introduction to Audience Growth Stories
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome back to Audience Grows Scroll, where we're documenting how creators and businesses have grown in their audience so you can do the same.
Meet Casey Maxwell, CMO and Author
00:00:09
Speaker
I'm Dan Sanchez, and today I'm talking to Casey Maxwell, who is the CMO provisions group and author of The Boy with Horns. Casey, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks, Dan. Good to be here.
Transition and Building a LinkedIn Audience
00:00:21
Speaker
Man, this is the second time we've done an interview. Different podcast, different time, but I'm excited to be with you here today because a lot's progressed since then. Like a ton has changed. You were just starting to like build an audience on LinkedIn and now a lot of things have changed for you. You've ended up at a different company. You've launched a whole kids book and you have a good size LinkedIn audience now and maybe more. Tell me a little bit in the audience of this podcast, like,
The Power of Sketchnotes on LinkedIn
00:00:47
Speaker
who, where your general audience is and what are the topics you're known for by them.
00:00:53
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, honestly, you know, when you look at the strategy of audience growth, I didn't really go in with a big strategy. Now I'm a CMO and so everything that I want to do needs to have a strategic approach to it. But LinkedIn was honestly just something that I started doing as kind of a passion, a side, it wasn't even a side hustle. I wasn't getting paid for it.
00:01:20
Speaker
I just started this thing called sketch noting, right? And so it's like, for those of you that don't know what a sketchnote is, a sketchnote is just kind of, it's like an infographic, but not as polished, right? It's taking a talk or something like that and just making it
00:01:37
Speaker
into an approachable message. I started doing that from the stuff I was learning and just started posting it on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn vs Other Platforms
00:01:48
Speaker
The reason I did it, I was like, okay, if I can create something that people would understand and that is appealing, then I understand what I'm actually learning. Because if you want to teach somebody else, you need to know it
00:02:04
Speaker
really well yourself. So I started doing that and started getting really good feedback. And it just kept going from there, right? I just consistently doing it month after month. And so I've been on there for about two years. And again, I don't have crazy numbers. I mean, I have, I really only focus on LinkedIn.
00:02:25
Speaker
And so I've got about 15,000 followers on there and I've got some on Instagram. I don't spend much time there and some on Facebook, which is mostly my family and people I went to high school with. But LinkedIn is where I spend a ton of time and it's a lot of business professionals.
00:02:45
Speaker
which makes sense. Oh, that's LinkedIn. But the thing that I love about LinkedIn is that the ideas, the sketchnotes that I'm putting on there, people want to have discussions about them. They're not just like, Oh, pretty picture. Oh, great food dish you had last night, right? They're like, Hey, I want to I want to talk to you more about that. And I'll get DMS and I'll get, you know, conversations happening more. So yeah, it's just it's a really fun place.
00:03:14
Speaker
There's something special about LinkedIn.
Deep Connections and Networking on LinkedIn
00:03:17
Speaker
It kind of reminds me of like what online school forums should be or should have been. I don't know. Do you ever do like online college?
00:03:26
Speaker
I didn't. I'm, I'm too old. Uh, that was not an option when I was in school. Oh man. I tried it once and they have these things called discussion forms. That's how they grade, you know, cause you can't have these conversations or like, Hey, here's the prompt. You need to have a 300 word response and then respond to like three of your peers with this 250 word followup. You're like, okay. But like people are just trying to knock out the word counts and then just move on. And then they get graded on their response.
00:03:54
Speaker
But it's funny because no one has conversations like that. No one actually throws down a 300 word thing. Usually it's just kind of like clarifying question. Okay, here's my thoughts, you know. But on LinkedIn, the kinds of conversations that are taking place in the comments, I swear I've learned more from that than a lot of books that I've read on marketing. Just because you have professionals, people that actually know what they're talking about, asking good questions, poking,
00:04:17
Speaker
like putting their two cents on it and you're like, oh, that is a good point. You're like, dang. So it's a place where you can be refined and actually build community in a way that I don't know. I don't feel like it's happening in such a positive way on other social networks. I know it's kind of rare on Twitter where you're going to get kicked a lot more. Yeah. Well, and I hate networking. I have never been good at going to networking events. I always thought I was an extrovert. I think maybe I am an introvert, but like when I go to a big party,
00:04:46
Speaker
I kinda wanna find a couple people that I know and I wanna go find a table in the back and just hang out with them the entire night.
LinkedIn's Professional Impact
00:04:53
Speaker
I don't wanna work a room or talk to anybody like that. And so generally, I didn't have a lot of...
00:05:00
Speaker
business associates. I don't know a good term to put that right. I didn't have a lot of people that I was connected with from a business perspective. And so LinkedIn just started growing that for me. It was it was very easy to start having these conversations. I mean, that's, that's how you and I met, right? We've met in person since then, because now you now you live here locally. But we just started connecting on LinkedIn started, I was commenting on your posts, you were commenting on mine. I think we
00:05:30
Speaker
we DM'd a couple times and then we did a podcast together. And then from there we met in person. And so we've been connected and it's all because of an interaction on LinkedIn. I've found that with a lot of my customers at my current role, whether it's my side hustle of creating sketchnotes and helping with frameworks or whether it's my full-time gig about marketing strategy and fractional CMO work, like either one of those,
00:05:58
Speaker
connect with them online, and then we still have interactions that wouldn't happen otherwise. So it's like I'm interacting with my clients, not just in the pre-planned meetings that we have, but I'm also having conversations with them about stuff that's important to them and stuff that's important to me. And it just creates a better dynamic with people than just one meeting, you know, every three months.
Making Friends Over Networking
00:06:24
Speaker
Yep, it's kind of like the dream that social media was supposed to be. At least in the business context for LinkedIn, some of that's actually taking place instead of just like news and hype and, you know, I guess there's probably a little niche groups on Facebook somewhere, but I feel like LinkedIn, it's like where social media has finally like.
00:06:44
Speaker
like the promise of social media is at least played out for me. And it seems like for you and a lot of other people who are actually involved and engaged there, like you're actually able to find the people that are doing the thing you do and actually have great conversations and make new friends. That's what I tell people on LinkedIn. I'm like, I'm not here to network. I'm just here to make friends. And, you know, if it happens to come about something positive comes my way because of that, like a job or a client or something fantastic.
00:07:09
Speaker
If not, then hopefully I'm here just to help a lot of people and have some fun too, you know? Well, that's the best way to have people reach out to you to work, right? You are giving. So this is a great example. When I left my last job, I left without a role in place. I was kind of like, I don't know what I wanted to do and just kind of put it out there. I said, hey, I'm kind of looking for my next full-time role or maybe some contract work. If you have either, just send them my way.
00:07:39
Speaker
And I had a guy reach out to me. Uh, and at first the, the DM seemed pretty shady. It was like, I, because I didn't know this guy, he, he wasn't somebody that I had talked to. And he was like, Hey, I would like to talk to you about, um, maybe working for my company for your next role.
Influence Beyond Engagement
00:07:56
Speaker
And I was kind of like, I don't even know who you are like, and you're offering me a job. And so it definitely didn't sound legit. I jumped on the phone.
00:08:04
Speaker
completely legit. This company had been around for 14 years, really good sized company. And he proceeded to tell me, he's like, I've followed you for the last two years. I've printed out some of your sketch notes there on my desktop. And I can tell by the way that you write LinkedIn posts, how your mind works. And I want that type of thinking at my company. And it was just like,
00:08:32
Speaker
Oh, he had never, at least I don't remember him commenting on any of my posts. It's always lurkers. Clicking on any links or doing any of that kind of stuff. But he trusted me because of what I put out there. And I had been investing in putting that out there for two years.
Balancing Quality and Time in Sketchnotes
00:08:50
Speaker
And then when I did ask, I was extremely surprised by the type of results that I got.
00:08:59
Speaker
Yeah. It's amazing when people come out of the woodwork, you put all this time into making these, this content and you're like, you see the numbers, you're like, Oh, a few thousand people saw this. A few thousand people saw that. But after a while you just kind of become numb to the fact that thousands of people are seeing it. And they're probably like hundreds are actually like consuming every piece of it. And maybe a few hundred are like reading it and actually consuming it consistently. But you're like, Oh, every one of those numbers is a person on the other side that are reading and being influenced by your stuff. And then they just come out and become buyers or,
00:09:28
Speaker
people that hire you or become really strategic for you later on. Because most people just don't make content. Most people, like I don't know about you, but on other platforms, I hardly ever comment. I'm literally just lurking most of the time on almost all other platforms. I'm just there to consume.
00:09:43
Speaker
Most people do that on LinkedIn too. So let's talk about the sketch notes. You're like, you're like, it's like a lesser quality than infographic. I'm like, ah, your, your sketch notes are like better than most infographics that I've ever seen. I mean, every once in a while you get a really intricate infographic that's like designed by a digital artist and it's like nuts. And you're just like, whoa. But beyond just like the 5% of infographics that are like that.
00:10:07
Speaker
your sketch notes are amazing. And it's like no, no surprise to me why you have the following you do now, because so much thought goes into those sketch notes. So maybe it just comes naturally to you. How much time do you spend making those? And how much are you usually, it's hard to keep track from the outside. How many of those are you putting out like a month? Yeah.
00:10:25
Speaker
Um, well, I appreciate you saying that I, you know, I've, some of that is, uh, my career. I, when I was young, I love to draw. I love doing all of that. And then I got into sort of the business side of business. And so I had creatives on my team and I always kind of had this. Anytime I'd give feedback or speak into that, they're like, ah,
00:10:46
Speaker
you're not you're not a creative, you don't get to have opinions on that, like, you know, and so there was the now there's this sort of thing that I've got in my mind that I'm like, well, I'm not really creative, I just kind of do these lesser, you know, because I'm not designing these these beautiful masterpieces. But there's there's something that I've just
00:11:05
Speaker
That's kinda how i use to always just take notes i would draw pictures because my mind i've never been diagnosed with anything but like focusing when someone's talking. It's so my mind goes fifty different directions and i know a lot of people are like that but if i was taking notes and able to draw pictures next to the notes one i would pay attention more.
00:11:30
Speaker
but two, I would remember the notes. And I didn't realize why that was, but I did some research and sketchnoting and just visual note-taking uses two different parts of your brain. It uses the parts of your brain that processes words and then the part of your brain that processes pictures because you're doing two different functions at the same time, right? If someone says words and you write those words down,
00:11:59
Speaker
you're processing the words. If someone says words and you take those words, turn them into a picture and write them down, you're now using multiple parts of your brain. The more pieces of your brain, the more it sticks. I was sketchnoting before I even knew it was a thing. I've always just really enjoyed that. It helps me think, it helps me remember. But
00:12:27
Speaker
Again, I just started putting them out on LinkedIn. And when I first started, they took me a lot longer, right? They would, and some of it is probably every creative person out there would understand this where you're like, you want it to be perfect. And you're like, I'm going to spend this infinite amount. And I'm going to do all this detail. I'm just going to, you know, and you spend way too much time, like seven or eight hours on one of these sketchnotes. And it was just like you spent
00:12:54
Speaker
Early on I did, I was spending a six. And again, it wasn't all just dedicated focus because I do this on nights and weekends, right? It's not my full-time gig. And so I'd be doing it, watching TV or just hanging out, kind of focus, kind of drawing here and there. But then when I really started getting consistent about it, I was like, I've got to figure out smarter ways to do this. And some of it was I learned how I want to do text.
00:13:23
Speaker
And so I've learned how I've got a separate thing that has all of these letters that I've done before and I can just kind of drag those in and I can use different styles. So I've created a library to be able to do them a little bit faster. I kind of know styles of how I approach things. So I would say some will take me an hour. And it's funny, those often are ones that hit better than ones that I spend two and a half, three hours on.
00:13:52
Speaker
I mean, I did one. Yeah, I did. I did one that I've started doing a new series called Leadership Whiteboard, where it looks like I'm writing on a whiteboard. I made my my procreate settings look like a whiteboard. And it usually just has one message in the middle and then some sketches around it. And those those don't take me any time at all. Like that one would take me 30 minutes. And I had one of those go crazy. Like it was it was silly. And I'm like,
00:14:19
Speaker
Really, really, I spent so much time on this one over here. And this this is the one. This is the one. But I'm trying to do two of those a week. So one leadership whiteboard and then one sort of bigger idea that's kind of my normal sketch note. And so I try to do those about up to a week. How many how many views are you averaging on those sketch
The Story Behind 'The Boy with Horns'
00:14:46
Speaker
notes?
00:14:47
Speaker
It depends. It's really it's so I would say kind of base level is around seven, eight thousand. And then I've had a couple crazy ones with like one hundred and fifty thousand, which has just been it's just been so much. Well, it is. And it's it's silly. But the interesting thing, and because this is audience growth, you know, about growing your audience,
00:15:12
Speaker
I have seen a correlation between my number of followers and growth, but I've had higher impressions and higher interactions than people with a lot higher followers than me. And so followers are important, but to get content out there,
00:15:34
Speaker
that they're not, it's not necessarily one to one, right? Because of the algorithm and depending on what hits and when it hits and all of that. But but yeah, I've had I've had a couple of the really, really big ones. But one of my friends had had a big quote unquote viral post. And she gained like 2500 followers from that one post, which was amazing. I've had
00:16:03
Speaker
I think based on interactions, I think I've had more viral posts, like my posts were more viral than hers. And I got like 500. You know, so like, again, I don't I don't even know how that works from the quote unquote viral aspect of it. But
00:16:23
Speaker
Based on what I've heard from other creators on LinkedIn, like I had a conversation with Sam Brown who probably is around 80K followers now. He does one post a week. He goes all in on just one big carousel and just like bam and hits everybody. And he's active throughout the week commenting and building relationships, but every Wednesday he drops his carousel.
00:16:44
Speaker
Um, they all probably reach, you know, between 60 and a hundred K people, a carousel deck. Oh yeah. But he's got slow and steady growth. You like, he's like, I can watch other than one, one part where like I peaked early on, it's kind of like, Nope, it's going on. It's amazing that he can do it all because I, I mean, you're, if you're getting, you know, seven, eight K a post, you know, you're probably doing, you know, between 15 and 20 K impressions a week.
00:17:13
Speaker
where I'm doing 20 to 30, but I'm also posting way more to get there. So it'd be interesting to see like a per minute breakdown of that, but ultimately there's different ways that there's so many different ways to win, which is the cool part. Like you can get away with posting one, but it better be killer where you can post like once or twice a day. Like I do multiple times a week and still do relatively well. There's just so many ways to win on LinkedIn, which is what I love. Exactly.
00:17:40
Speaker
So the sketch note thing has led to bigger things for you. And you launched a kid's book. Tell me a little bit about that. What was your thinking about that? Did the sketch thing like build the confidence you needed in order to like do a kid's book? Or did you just always wanted to do a kid's book and that now was the time you just happened to be doing something artistically on the side too?
00:18:04
Speaker
I don't think they were one necessarily led to the other, but one helped make the other possible. And what I mean by that is I had not always wanted to write a kid's book. Probably if you ask most people, they're like, I want to write a book one day. Most people would say that. I don't know how many people would say, I want to write a kid's book one day. But about five, five and a half years ago, my son was asking me to put him to bed and
00:18:34
Speaker
One of his tactics to keep me in the room after we do all the other routine of reading a book and praying and doing all that is to tell me a story. So most most of the time my stories are terrible. They have no plot. They're all over the place. But one night I just started the the hook was a boy wakes up one morning and he found out he grew horns overnight. And the strange thing is he's the only one that can see him.
00:19:01
Speaker
That was that was the hook. I don't know where it came from. It just kind of came because, you know, most of the hooks are really stupid to start with. You know, it's about a peach or, you know, some animal or whatever. And so I just start telling this story and it's he can't find anybody and he's asking all these people. And I knew I wanted him to find somebody. Right. So I get to the I get to the end, he finds somebody and I finish that story. And my son is just quiet in the room and my son goes,
00:19:32
Speaker
Dad, that was actually a good story. And I wasn't even mad that he said actually, because most of my stories were terrible, right? But he asked me to tell him the next night, and then the next night, and then the next night, and then I eventually,
00:19:50
Speaker
told my wife and she's like, you should probably write that down. And so I did. And then it sat in a Google doc for about five years. And every, every year I would write goals. And one of the goals was write a kid's book and every year I would move it to the bottom of the goals. And then I would move it to the top of next year's goals. Right. So it was always one of these things that I'm like, I need to do it. And
00:20:13
Speaker
I've never written, I'd never written a kid's book, I didn't know who was gonna illustrate it, I didn't know who was gonna publish it, so I didn't know any of this stuff. And I got to the end of the year last year in December, and I got a wild hair, again, I don't know why, but I just said, you know what, forget it, I'm gonna illustrate it, I'm gonna publish it, and I'm gonna write it. And so I made a post and put it out on social media.
00:20:42
Speaker
I didn't know how to do any of that stuff. But the simple act of putting it out on social media, all of a sudden I get this flood of people reaching out to me saying, oh my gosh, that's so cool. I want to write a kid's book. I'm going to watch you. Let me know how you do it. Do you know this? And start asking me all these questions. So I'm like, all right.
00:21:03
Speaker
Well, this is this will be good content. I can just kind of share my progress through this as I'm figuring stuff out. So I started an email list and started writing a blog just about, hey, this is how I found this. And this is how I'm learning how to actually illustrate. And the reason I say they're kind of together is. I had gotten an iPad a couple of years ago, and that's what I had started using to do the sketch notes. And so I had learned a program called Procreate.
00:21:33
Speaker
And that program is like a super simple version of Photoshop and or any of the Adobe suite, which was that was never the way my brain worked. I could never make sense of Photoshop in that. I just it just wasn't logical to me. But once I get on to procreate, it just made it all so simple and it and it brought back the tactical feeling of drawing that I had when when I was younger. So
00:22:01
Speaker
I created the entire book in Procreate. I did all the illustrations. I would go on Google and figure out, oh, how do you do this type of shading? Or how do you do XYZ? And so, yeah, I started doing that. And just the simple act of posting it on social media, followed by just continuing to talk about it, continue to give me that positive peer pressure,
00:22:27
Speaker
of people asking, Hey, you said you're going to do that book. When is it coming out? Is it still going to be April? Is it so? And now I didn't publish in April, I published in May. So about five or six weeks later, but at least I published it, right? I mean, like a month out of a month later, like, that's better than not doing it at all. And so LinkedIn, LinkedIn, where is where a lot of my book sales came from?
00:22:55
Speaker
And, you know, cause I could track it from when I would post or from the email list that was mostly generated from LinkedIn. All of that stuff, uh, kind of all worked, all worked together. So.
00:23:07
Speaker
That's fan. I love the book. I loved reading it with my kids. It was like one of the few kids books and I just read, um, gosh, best book on story count telling I've ever read called the save the cat writes a novel. Um, yeah, read it. It's like, it was probably the first good storytelling. I've read a couple of books on storytelling. This one talks about like,
00:23:26
Speaker
all the basics of plot and having an A story and a B story, right? What's the thing happening to the character, but what's the B story happening in the character? And I'm like, it's one of the few kids books I've read that has a B story. Like it's very much not just, I mean, the horns are the, is the A story, but the thing going on inside the kid, B story, right? Most kids, all A story.
00:23:49
Speaker
So it's um, it's got a motion to it. It has weight. You could feel, you could feel the thing that, but the part at the end got me with the dad. I was like, I don't know. It just hit different. Yeah. Yeah. And it's probably one of the few books that I'm like, man, this is like one of the few books I've seen. Even children's anything I've seen in a long time that actually sets the dad into like a really good light. And that was just refreshing. So it was fun to read with my son. So I hope.
00:24:12
Speaker
more people go and read it and write more kids books. And of course, we're both fans of kids books in general. So hopefully you've got a couple under your belt now. You got two, right? Yeah. Two books. Um, I didn't do the illustrations for them, but someday I'm like, dang, I, I, I loved art in high school. So I'm like, I would like to do that. Like actually do the illustrations myself. They won't be like the ones I've done or the illustrator I had do mine, but it would still be fun to like get creative and
00:24:42
Speaker
figure out what those could be too. I'd have to actually write something that I could.
00:24:46
Speaker
possibly illustrate, but it'd be fun. Well, I'm more than happy to help you show you how to use Procreate. Because again, it's a really simple tool. But yeah, I was learning all the things. How do you shade this? How do you make this look? I mean, at one point, one of my favorite illustrations in the book is he's so stressed out about these horns. Nobody can see him.
00:25:13
Speaker
that he goes down to eat his dinner and it's his favorite dinner, but he can't even eat it. So he just he's basically playing with his food. And so he creates his favorite dish is mashed potatoes, fish and fish sticks and with crescent rolls. And so he creates a mashed potato boy with fish sticks, arms and legs and crescent roll horns. And when I had that idea,
00:25:37
Speaker
I was like, I have no idea how to draw all that food to make it actually look like food. I mean, it's harder than you think to make mashed potatoes look like. How do you do mashed potatoes on a white plate, right? You're like, uh. Yeah. I guess they're kind of yellow from the butter. They look like clouds then. Yeah. There's a little brownness. There's a little shading. Yeah. It was a challenge. But it was one of those things that I knew going into it. I'm like, this is where I'm the weakest.
00:26:06
Speaker
I mean, I can, I can draw. Okay. But I illustrating and drawing are two different things, having it look consistent throughout the whole book and having all of these characters and all this stuff.
Clarifying Personal Brand Through Writing
00:26:18
Speaker
So, um, it was a journey still can't do it at least that well, because it can't be consistent. It's in its illustration right now. People ask me, did you do this with mid journey? I'm like, you clearly don't understand how AI image works where you can't make a consistent character with that thing yet. No, no, they're all over the place.
00:26:36
Speaker
Well, what did that do for your audience growth or just your audience in general? So you published the book, you put, you posted it all over LinkedIn. I saw it was like well celebrated. So did your, did that just like re like, how did your audience receive it? I think they, they received it. Well, um, a lot of, uh, a lot of people were helping me out. People were introducing me to other people. They were buying it. And for other people, some people were buying it for their schools.
00:27:04
Speaker
They were connecting me. I just had a connection connect me with this guy who is creating a YouTube series where the authors come on and read books. And it has legit people on there and I'm like, okay. It didn't do anything from a, oh gosh, it got this and now I got 50,000 followers or any of that kind of stuff.
00:27:31
Speaker
The same thing is true with the book that is also true with the sketch notes. And it's when I think of things that I really, really enjoy, and I love that you point out that there's a B story to that book is taking really big concepts and making them simple. Like that's the whole idea behind sketch notes, right? You're taking a hour long talk, 30 minute talk, hour long, and you're simplifying it down into an eight and a half by 11 picture.
00:28:02
Speaker
Right. And this, the boy with horns is all about the things in life that make us feel different and feel alone that most of the time other people can't share or can't see. And it gives a language that a parent can talk to a kid about. They can say, Hey, do you have any horns? Do you have anything that makes you feel scared? Like, and all of a sudden it's like, that's, you know, that, that makes it easier. They're like, Oh yeah, I do kind of have that. Right. There's that, there's that common language, which is,
00:28:31
Speaker
to me, frameworks, and all that. So it didn't necessarily do anything big, but as I'm forming who I am from a personal brand standpoint, it's helping me hone what I offer.
Audience Growth and Self-Discovery
00:28:47
Speaker
Why would you follow me? Why would you want to consume my content? And it's like, do you want visual things that are going to simplify bigger concepts?
00:28:58
Speaker
The answer is yes, then you should probably follow me because that's what I try and do. And when I take it whenever I post something and it doesn't do well, I often don't think that it's because I didn't draw it well enough. I think that I didn't make it clear enough. Yep. And so I didn't know. And so I usually will go back and go, I feel like I missed something because I didn't communicate because the reason I made it is it was an aha for me.
00:29:24
Speaker
And for some reason it's not hitting as an aha, right? So that's, when you think of audience growth, when you think of why people will follow you, getting very, very clear with that, it's taken me two years to slowly clarify that from who I want to be to who I want people to think of me as, but the more clear I get, it really helps me go, oh, well then I can add this, or I could also do this, or I could do that.
Inspiring a Community Through Sketchnotes
00:29:52
Speaker
I'm pretty sure just by all the notes you've posted, you've probably sold probably a hundred iPads. Like I'm pretty sure more people have bought iPads because of you, but then anybody else I know on LinkedIn, because I've never wanted one until I see you posting these sketch notes on because you're drawing them all with your iPad. And then I'm like, man.
00:30:09
Speaker
I like drawing, but it's, it's hard to take a good enough picture of it to really do it justice and you can't manipulate it and there's no command Z on those things or on just pen and paper. So, which is hard when you're trying to like draw something as you're hearing it because then you might want to move things around based on new information that's just come in. So I'm like, man.
00:30:28
Speaker
I need to get an iPad that, and I think it's just more compelling to even, even if I'm recording a video, teaching something, I'm like, well, I might want to sketch it out instead, do his in PowerPoint. You know, it's just a compelling medium. Um, so Apple should send you a gift card or something.
Future Projects and Teaching
00:30:44
Speaker
I'm pretty sure. Yeah, I'm not getting any, I'm not getting any revenue from that. I have had a lot of people ask me.
00:30:51
Speaker
How are you doing this? And so I will tell them Apple Pencil, iPad, and I used to use Notability. That was kind of the first thing I started doing, and then I moved into Procreate. And I think because the drawings look simple, that it seems like it's simple, and that there's a lack of tools needed. And so it's not...
00:31:20
Speaker
How do I say this and not sound arrogant? It makes me feel good and when people say, I got an iPad and it's hard.
00:31:31
Speaker
Right. Because then I'm like, well, good. Then I'm, I'm making it look easy. Right. Because I know it is hard. It's hard to get it to look how I wanted it to communicate it well, but something, I guess the way that, the way that I'm doing the sketch notes makes it look like, uh, makes it look like anybody could do it. So as a reason why I'm pretty sure you're the only person posting content like that on LinkedIn that I've seen. Yeah. So because it is hard to make, I remember going in and looking at it and evaluating like, do I want to make that?
00:32:01
Speaker
I know this is probably going to take me five hours at least. I don't know if I want to make it that bad. Well, if anybody's out there listening, I don't have it formulated yet, but I'm spinning up some things on the side. Companies have been coming to me and asking me to sketch note their frameworks or sketch note. How do we take something? Because I'm doing two different things. One, it's
00:32:28
Speaker
People are like, oh no, I've got all the information. You just sketch it out. And then when I start putting this, I'm like, this is not cohesive. I have to help you fix this. So I fix frameworks and create a sketchnote around that. So if anybody is looking for that, definitely reach out. It's a side thing, so I can't take a ton of clients. But it's a fun thing. I enjoy doing it.
00:32:51
Speaker
So where's this going for you in the future? You got the sketch thing going on. You're known for simplifying a lot of leadership concepts. I've seen business and like work concepts in there. Like today you talked about, uh, engagement in the office place, uh, which was a fun one, but what do you want to do with it? Where are you going? You're a CMO. You're a strategic thinker. Where do you see this like going for you in the future?
00:33:16
Speaker
Yeah. That's one of the biggest things that I am wrestling through, journaling through, because there's a lot of different things. When I think about it, I'm like, man, I would love to teach it. You're thinking, hey, I'd like to get into that. And I'm like, I would love to sit down with you, Dan. And I'll just come over, get your iPad, let's sit down. I would love to walk you through it. So I created a LinkedIn Live
00:33:41
Speaker
a year or two ago, I don't know, it was a while ago of how to sketch note. And it was just taking the process of how I use my mind and how I've had these simple set of icons and how I do that. And so there's this aspect of teaching other people to do it. There's an aspect of doing the sketch notes for people. But then there's something beyond that. I like talking about it.
00:34:08
Speaker
Something, you know, someone said this to me one time and I was like, yeah, I think that they're like, with the amount of content that you've already put out there, you could take all those sketchnotes and just put them into a book and sell the book.
00:34:19
Speaker
And I'm like, that's probably an interesting idea. So I think there's more books. It wouldn't be just shoving them together, right? There would need to be actual other words written in there. And it would need to be on a specific topic. Because I would say my biggest weakness as a creator is that I'm probably, from a sketchnote perspective, I'm probably too broad.
00:34:43
Speaker
I go maybe a little too broad on some of these topics.
Consistency in Building a Personal Brand
00:34:49
Speaker
I don't know, have you thought about positioning yourself as someone who simplifies complex things?
00:34:55
Speaker
I mean, CMOs, that's kind of what you have to do is you have to simplify your go to market. You got to simplify and then you have to teach it and do internal marketing and to get buy into it. So there's probably some overlaps there with what you're doing with sketch notes and what you're doing with your career that I'm like, I don't know. There's probably an overlap with the branding there.
00:35:16
Speaker
I think would probably work out pretty well. That could be a lot of fun. Yeah. There's something there. And honestly, I came up with, as I've been doing kind of the, it sounds, the circuit. I've been talking on different podcasts about my book. And I was talking with my son and we were working through, and I came up with
00:35:35
Speaker
the follow up to the boy with horns. And so I've got that book. And I'm like, Oh, gosh, I don't think I am not ready to take on another entire book and do all of that. But but yeah, like I've got I've got I'm not want for ideas. I just have to choose what is what is the right way to go in the next step. So stay tuned. Something's formulating. Something's been percolating. So stay tuned.
00:36:05
Speaker
Well, I'm excited to see what's next. And it's good to know that like you can grow an audience and not, I mean, I think this is true for anybody who grows an audience, whether intentionally or just kind of accidentally as you start posting things, um, that it's a journey that you don't have to have it figured out that you actually.
00:36:24
Speaker
At least for me, you kind of discover yourself in the process through the feedback, but also in the soul searching and the testing out of different ideas to see what you have that actually resonates with the marketplace to find out who you want to position yourself to be. I'm wrestling with it a lot right now, having the last transition that I just had a few weeks ago.
00:36:47
Speaker
It's just part of the process, but it's awesome and you have to take it. But once you're out there and you're being public and you're having conversations, actually find that it's easier because people are giving you feedback that you can make more decisions with. My biggest my biggest thing and you are you are a prime example of this is consistency and sticking with it.
00:37:09
Speaker
The amount of people that I have seen over the last two and a half years that have come and gone, right? I think there's this expectation I'm going to go and I'm going to start posting. And after my third post, I'm going to be viral. I'm going to have thousands of followers and all of that, but.
00:37:24
Speaker
There's nothing that I've done that has grown my following huge over one act. It's just been the consistency and staying in there, right? And so most people will drop out. They just will. And so staying with it and making sure you're consistent, you'll do exactly what you just said.
Connecting on LinkedIn and Exploring Work
00:37:45
Speaker
You'll make mistakes, you'll do things and you're like, ah, I don't like that. Or, ooh, I do really like that. And you will find out who you actually want to be
00:37:54
Speaker
Because it may, you're exactly right. It may be different than who you start. You're like, I want to be known for this. And then you start going in there and you're like. It's not even really what I think. It's that internal B story. Just stay with it. Yep. You go to build an audience and in the discovery, in the process of building an audience, you kind of discover yourself and find out the audience is great. But what I've learned about myself in the process is really what's the worthwhile thing, right? Classic like movie stuff. They go on a journey to find something and to find, ah, they didn't need the thing.
00:38:23
Speaker
But what they learned in the process is there, right? That's your hope for the opening of this episode right there. What you just summarized. Put that at the beginning. I'll spin it around the front. Casey, thank you so much for joining me on this episode. Where can people go to buy the book, learn more about you, and connect with you on LinkedIn?
00:38:42
Speaker
There's three places that I'll sign people, so I'm on LinkedIn pretty much every day, at least for a portion of time. I post three days a week, but I'm there commenting, interacting, and connecting with people.
00:38:56
Speaker
where you can buy the book is Amazon. I mean, you can get it on Walmart or Barnes and Noble, but I'm usually sending most people there. And if you want to read any of the blogs that I've done, maybe you're considering writing a kid's book or any of that, just go to theboywithhorns.com.
00:39:17
Speaker
and hit the, you can enter your email. Once you enter your email, then you can just see all the posts there. And if you've ever wondered how to find a publisher, how to work with a copy editor, any of that kind of stuff, it's all there. Fantastic. Thanks again for joining me. My pleasure.