Jack Butcher - Visualising Value & Constant Creativity | Modern Wisdom Podcast 328

I still don't really understand, like, the potential of the internet. You're always underestimating the power of what you're doing today. If you're being consistent in putting stuff out, you're always underestimating the fractal, crazy effects that show up months and months or years later in some cases. And I think this is another idea that I've always struggled to articulate, but the, just the notion that you did something for 12 months consistently, if nobody interacts with it... I would honestly challenge anybody on the planet, if you did something every day for 365 days, like some creative exercise and posted it, if you couldn't create one commercial opportunity off the back of that, I just don't think it's possible.

The British are coming. The British are here.

They've arrived. We have arrived.

(laughs) Yeah, we have. Was it harder to grow a business to 100 grand a month or to deal with a newborn baby?

Newborn baby. Hot 10 times over, I think.

Really?

Incredible, man. Just, like, everything you take for granted watching even people in the street with babies is like, "Oh, everybody has babies, you know. How difficult can it be?" It's freaking hard.

(laughs)

It's hard.

What's been the biggest challenge?

Uh, I think just like handing over your agency or just, like, just completely absolving yourself of agency for a period of time where the baby is in control, right? The baby dictates how the day is gonna go. This is not a, "Hey, this is the schedule for today." It's like, you don't make those decisions anymore.

(laughs)

Baby's making those decisions at least for a couple of months, right, at the start. You're, uh, you are on a different set of rules than you had ever imagined you were, would be on beforehand. Um, underestimated that to some degree, but we're, we're at 14 weeks now so we're sort of arriving at, uh... Actually, we're recording this, he broke a record last night, his longest sleep ever, so, uh-

Congratulations.

... nine hours and two minutes.

(laughs)

So we're getting there, man.

So you're tracking your baby's sleep? Have you got an Oura Ring on him?

No, he's got more equipment than you could possibly imagine.

(laughs) That's cool. So talk to me about lessons, right? You've this sort of one-man band running Visualize Value and all of the other stuff that you do, and then you add fatherhood into the mix. What are some of the lessons that you've learned from that?

I think, um, a lot of the business today has been based on this concept of using the internet to create leverage, like divorce your time and income, create products not services. And those concepts all are incredibly, um, they're incredibly valuable to a business, but there is the connection between your time and the result is still very obvious when you take a, a step back from building those things. So, um, big lessons, one was just how much, how much uninterrupted focus can lead to these like seemingly small things that create big, uh, results down the road. So, um, you know, you could be walking around for four or five hours or sort of just like on the computer messing around, reading something, and then an idea just comes to you. Those periods of time are drastically compressed after you're, you know, in a situation where there's a human being depending on you. And my wife does an incredible job of like holding back the, the tidal wave there. But at the beginning of the process, it was very much a, uh, you know, the, the baby's in the room with you, you get like 90 minutes at a time before stuff kicks off. And, uh, that is like, I think you start to reflect on the fact that the space, that the space that I had before led to a lot of the, um... You know, the best work is not necessarily, I think Morgan Housel talks about this. It's, uh, it's not when you're doing the work, it's all the thinking that you do for days on end, and then you just arrive at this epiphany. And you're, you know, when a child is really small and you're looking after it, then those windows to create epiphanies are drastically compressed. So you feel like at the start there, it's like, "Am I ever gonna get, um, like 90 minutes of clear thought time?" And that's also a product of it being your first baby and you're like, uh, you know, you can't walk two steps away, you're really, um, nervous.