Visualize Value
Why a picture may be worth more than a thousand words
Every other week I write an email discussing what I learn launching and growing Reboot Motion. If you would like to receive it directly in your inbox, subscribe below.
I’ve long believed the best way to organize my thoughts was to write them down.
“When you can explain your thinking in writing, that is when you truly understand it.”
But what if there is a better way?
What if there is a more succinct way to hammer home the most important points. A more direct way to formulate the key takeaway….and a quicker way to ensure the audience not only understands, but remembers.
I started Learn Your Keep shortly after Reboot Motion launched. I had some selfish goals- most notably to guarantee clearer thinking. But I also hoped my journey would be interesting for others.
As I continue writing, I should take the same approach as any startup and put the customer first.
Readers are the customer. And in this case, the customer is busy. They have endless information, but finite time.
A large portion of people who click do not read the entire thing. People click, they scroll through, they move on.
And that is OK. Readers are customers paying with their time and it is my job to give them the best return.
It is my job to meet readers where they are and look for the most efficient way to 1) entertain 2) engage and 3) teach.
And this isn’t always done with words. Sometimes, it’s done with pictures.
—
A few weeks back, I started Jack Butcher’s course, Visualize Value.
As the title makes known, Jack loves using visuals to tell stories. People are naturally good at internalizing pictures…and in today’s world of limited attention spans and limitless information, efficiency is mandatory.
With that said, lets dive in to what I learned- specifically:
Why consistency is the best strategy
Why common visuals are the best tactic
My early experimentation
Consistency
If there is one obvious takeaway from Jack, it is consistency is key.
People are busy. When they read your content- whether that be a twitter post or an article- they are paying you with their time. Consistency maximizes what they get in return.
Additionally, people consume nonstop information from an almost as endless number of creators. Consistency creates a connection.
Look at the following posts from Jack. His audience immediately knows what they are signing up for when they come across his work:
Black background, white font, lots of blank space, simple sayings, etc. Jack’s audience can recognize his brand without his signature.
Finally (and selfishly), consistency makes the creator’s life easier. By having specific rules not breaking from them, Jack
speeds up the process
allows the user to focus on the content
builds his brand
At no point does he have to think about background color, font, or aesthetics. He has the ancillary stuff pre-formatted and can maximize his time on what is important.
Common Visuals
Humans are predictable. In Hitmakers, Derek Thompson writes how humans like things that are mostly the same, but with a new twist. This review explains it well:
What Thompson finds is that there’s a simple formula for making a product that appeals to the world: Human beings like things that are pleasingly familiar, with a gentle touch of surprise. We like movies like Star Wars that combine genres we already know — Westerns, a hero’s journey — in new and exciting ways (in space!). We like pop songs that repeat the same four chords with a new hook. We like reading books and essays that elegantly confirm ideas we already more or less thought were true, while presenting a bit of new evidence.
This is what Jack does so well. He plays on common stories and common visuals people are already good at internalizing, which makes it 10x easier to get his point across…and to make it memorable.
Below are a few templates he gives in his course:
Comparisons
Overlap
Loops
Look at the image below, where Jack hit on multiple “common patterns”. He:
compares “being happy with what you have”, “working for what you want”, and anything in the middle. These three data points make it clear either end is good, but the middle is not.
puts an arrow at the end to show a journey. You can continuously be happy with what you have while working for what you want.
forges the image into a smile.
The audience is used to comparisons, personal journeys, and common emotions like a smile…but they have not seen any of them presented this way.
Early Experimentation
Since I started writing, consistency has been a struggle- not in frequency, but in content.
I generally write about what I find interesting.
Sometimes I write about baseball- touching on economic issues (Growing Baseball with a Cap), player development (Using Physics to Drive Change), and more.
And sometimes I write about launching a business- whether it be Reboot Motion specific (We Don’t Sell Biomechanics Reports), or ancillary things I’ve learned along the way (Book Review: Thinking in Bets).
However, the best traction has come when I combine sports, business, and player development…as I did in The LA Dodgers: Baseball’s Best Investment Firm and The Business of Player Development.
Nothing I wrote was novel…but the combination was unique.
People like the same…but a little different.
Looking back on my writing, I noticed a few points I regularly hit on. In the past, I regularly wrote on these “major topics” and hoped the reader received the takeaway I looked to convey.
I can do better.
I can reemphasize those takeaways with images 1) embedded in what I write and 2) on other platforms- notably twitter, where I and Reboot Motion have our largest presence.
For example:
I’ve written about partnerships a lot. I was explicit about it, when I wrote The Value of Partnerships for Reboot Motion. I also touched on a similar idea when discussing MLB and the MLBPA on multiple occasions.
In both cases, the goal can be visualized below:
As should be obvious with our view on partnerships, I am a believer in playing the long game.
Reboot has been working Diamond Kinetics since our inception on developing a movement efficiency application within their platform that will be a game changer for remote baseball coaching. Neither party has seen a return yet. But, if we invest in great customer discovery and put the user first, we expect the long-term payoff to be worth it.
Large organizations like MLB teams and the league itself will be better off with a similar approach. By investing in the customer and maximizing engagement, they will see the largest long-term payoffs.
In both cases, what I am saying can be boiled down to a picture: maximizing long-term engagement will always beat short-term cash flow.
My long-term view applies generally, but really plays out over and over in working with athletes. Whether it is top teams understanding the key to player development, or MLB doing more to market its players and grow the game, investing in athletes is a no brainer.
Using the lesson’s from Jack, I knocked major themes down to simple graphics that are easy for readers to digest. I played on common images- venn diagrams, pie charts, comparisons, exponential growth- but used them in a context specific to my area of interest.
Additionally, I made visual decisions early and kept them constant throughout. White backgrounds, orange font, and an all caps header, are all decisions I can stick with to make my life easier and my branding consistent.
Conclusion
I am just getting started with the idea of being more visual, and it is very likely I will look back on early decisions and early designs with lots of questions.
However, honing this idea should give me a better understanding of design, which will help in 1) day to day branding and 2) working with more skilled designers. (Yes, I believe in investing in great designers for long-term projects...see my visuals above about long-term thinking.)