On today's episode of Gathering the Kings. I love it, man. There's so much just natural enthusiasm in that story. I think anybody who just craves any sort of inspiration hears that Chaz, yes, tell me more. Come on. Come on. Come on. What's the rest of the story? What's up, everybody? I'm Chaz Wolfe, gathering the king's podcast. Today, I've got William Warren here on the king stage, mob brother, William. How we doing? I'm doing great. I'm looking forward to this.
Thanks, Chaz. Dude, we're gonna crush this conversation. I love your business. I love business in general. Don't get me wrong Chaz why I do this, but your business is creative and unique. And I just am glad that I know you now because I can think of so many ways that this can benefit, not only my companies, but so many others out there listening. So tell us, William, what kind of business do you have? Yeah. We have a really unique business. It's a very niche business.
It's one of those businesses that when I tell people what we do, oftentimes, people scratch their head or they look confused. And so I have to give a little extra context to what we do. But, basically, at the sketch effect, we are a visual communications company. And what that means is we use visuals, be it animation, infographics, sketching, we use visuals to help our clients communicate their ideas more efficiently, more effectively, in a more enjoyable way.
And so that takes its form in 2 main products or services. 1 is video animation, whichever one knows what video animation is, you know, cartoons, whiteboard videos, most graphics, We all know it. We all love those. We all love them. And they're amazing, and we love it. We make those for our corporate clients. You know, we work with, like, the Chick fillets and the mariats and the home depots of the Wolfe. To make awesome corporate cartoons, essentially.
But our other service is the one that I think is the real, like, show stop are the one that people will tend to go, wow, in the year we do. And, basically, what we do is we have live artists on our team, and we travel to corporate meetings, we travel to corporate events, trade shows, leadership conferences, whatever that event is, and our artists are in the room. They're actively listening to the meeting content and they're sketching it out in real time.
They're basically listening, synthesizing, and making a drawing of what people are talking about. And if you've seen it, then you know what it is. If you haven't seen it, you're probably still confused. But, basically, as people talk, we draw. So we have artists in the room. We have a canvas set up. We've got Mark we're listening. And by the end of this meeting or this conference, our artists have produced series of visual deliverables almost like comic strips or cartoons of the conversation.
So it's a really unique business. It's pretty niche, but there are others out there doing it. It's growing industry, and we just have a lot of fun. Yeah. I I know exactly both of these, and we we haven't used the the second one, your superpower that you kinda mentioned, but I have a friend that's an artist who in a completely different format does live art basically as encouragement. And so it it's in the same vein.
Like, it kinda just gets to know him a little bit just through a basic conversation and draws out something that they believe would be encouraging based on what they're hearing this person say. And so that that whole process is unique. You're right. It's actually I've never really heard of other people doing it. Especially in a professional way.
So I'm even more intrigued with this conversation now because the cool part about gathering the Kings is that we have great conversations, not only here on the pod, but inside of our mastermind group, whether it's our monthly round tables where we're going deep for hours, hot seats, and whatnot, we got weekly discussions on our on our kinda like topic calls, We do, like, in person events.
And so I'm already, like, exploding with ideas around the cartoons that your team can create because tell me this. In my mind, right now, I'm thinking not only was it, like, cool that this happened, but now we have a a visual memory, a representation of what happened almost like a like a marker. You know what I mean? Is that the value here? Of course.
Yeah. So, I mean, we spend all this time and energy and resources to put on these amazing events Whether it's your Mastermind group or a corporate conference or a leadership event or, a team off-site, we invest a ton of time energy to have these amazing gatherings and where conversations happen and Tiffany occur and solutions are are discovered. And then oftentimes, what typically happens is we we leave We go home, we go back to our reality, and then 90% of that evaporates.
At best, you know, usually maybe 95% evaporates. And what we do at the sketch effect is we help anchor those ideas. We help make those ideas last. We make them sticky. We make them visual. And we do that by providing a very tangible artifact. Something that people can look at, they can print out, they can put into a a recap PowerPoint deck, or or post on social media.
And what that does is it makes those ideas from that session more understandable to where people get it, you know, the comprehension increases. But also memorable to where it lasts in their brain and then finally actionable to where people can go take those ideas and then go do something with it. You know, what does that result Chaz should come from this. What is that solution that needs to be to be implemented? What is that strategy that needs to be activated?
And so That's what we're providing, and we love doing it. We love hearing our clients and and people we work with tell us how the sketches are are helping them be more successful in what they're doing. Yeah. It to memorialize a fantastic conversation, especially the ones that really aren't around the table. Like, the official table, it's the ones over near the fire, or it's the ones you know, that you had on the way to the thing that you were doing together, the the team building thing. Right?
It's all those moments that if you can capture and put in an awesome sketch, think that are pretty cool. So I wanna get into a little bit of your story here. Before we get into the nitty gritty of it, though, I gotta know, like, why do you do this? That's kind of like the first, like, layer of the why, but really what I wanna know, William is like, what's burning inside of you? Why why sketches? Why this business? What's the bigger picture? Give me what's, like, really deep in there.
Yeah. I love that question. And it it took me a few years to realize this, but the sketch effect really exists at the epicenter of of 3 passions of mine. And I encourage any entrepreneur or anyone who's pursuing their thing, whatever that thing may be, to really find this epicenter for them, kind of the center of the overlapping circles. And so one of those passions for me has always been art. I've always loved drawing ever since I was a kid, I've been been drawing, been doodling in class.
I know it's art student, art minor. I got a master's degree in illustration, so I've always loved illustration. I love drawing. I love just the the the artistic process of of creating something from scratch. So that's circle number 1. Circle number 2 or rather passion number 2 is I loved communicating ideas. I've loved communicating stories. Ever since I was a kid, I loved Comic strips.
So I was that kid who, you know, would find the get the newspaper, flip open to the comics page, and just spend, you know, my my breakfast, 80 serial reading comics. And so I was a massive fan and still am a massive fan of comics. And what I love about comics is that it's all about communicating ideas and telling stories. And so I realized that was a major passion of mine. Was this the idea of telling stories in a way that's compelling and relevant and actionable for people.
And then the 3rd circle in my life, the 3rd passion is I love people. I love working with people. I love working around people. I love serving people. And so the sketch effect really exists right in the center in the bull's eye of that of those overlapping circles where we're we're we're we're working with our clients. We're working with people. We've got a team around us, and at the sketchback now, our team is around twenty people. So we've grown a team.
We work with amazing clients face to face in their meetings like I discussed, but we're also helping them communicate ideas. We're helping them tell stories whatever that idea or that story may be. And then finally, we're doing it through artistic mediums. We're doing it through visuals, through drawings. Through animation. And it's just amazing. It's incredible blessing that we've been able to build this business and get to serve the clients in the way we get to serve them.
Yeah. I love that that is tied to so many things that are you, right, your identity. And and you've obviously found other people that that share in Chaz. And and also should probably share in your vision as well. What do you think? Looking back at your journey and this, like, purpose very purposeful answer that you just gave. Was it always like that? Did you start because Something else at the beginning. When did it transition? Like, give me some of that.
Yeah. So the entrepreneurial journey has been a really twisting and turning, winding road. And in fact, to be really honest, I never set out to be an entrepreneur. I never set out to run a business to to own a business, to be a CEO, whatever. Chaz was never part of my master plan, my professional master plan. You know, originally, I wanted to be a cartoonist. I wanted to be have a comic strip. I wanted to be the next Pulitzer Prize winning syndicated cartoonist and and have this great career.
And, like all of our careers, the world the world happens, you know, the things happen that influence you in that make us redirect and course correct. So one of those things that happened was I graduated from college during a recession in 2008, so the economy was not good. Also, the print industry was imploding. Like newspapers, magazines were just shutting their doors. These fantastic cartoonists that were pulots are winning people doing amazing work. We're getting laid off from their jobs.
Yeah. And Chaz that industry was just imploding. So that's one thing that happened. You know, the second thing that happened is I I realized I didn't wanna work alone. I didn't wanna work by my self. And I realized Yeah. Most illustrators, most cartoonists, most creative types. The tendency is for them to work alone. You know, a lot of them are introverts.
They kind of, to go into their cave and make this beautiful art amazing creation and present it to the world and then and then go back to their little world. And I realize that for me, I love people. I love working with people, and I realize that being a professional artist in the traditional sense of the word might not be in the cards for me professionally. Because of that passion, that one of those three circles I mentioned, because I love working with people. I love being around people.
I love rubbing shoulders with people, learning from people, developing together. And so the third thing that happened in my career journey is that I end up getting a entry level part time marketing job at Chick Fil A here in Atlanta, which is an amazing comp. So, you know, came in. I was green. Didn't know what I was doing. But was able to get this this job in marketing. And so I was there for about 3 years.
This is right before I started my business, and I got to learn firsthand how to run a great I got to have a front row seat to what it means to build a great culture, what it means to have great leaders, what it means to develop your people, what it means to grow a brand and to refine your product and to innovate and prototype and do all these amazing things.
So those those kind of things in my journey really led me to this point where I I realized I, you know, I had this amazing business opportunity at the sketch effect, and I I can tell that story as Wolfe, kinda how I started prototype the idea during that season, but, you know, those are some of the those are some of the main milestones that led me to this point. We're now 10 years later, I'm running a business We're growing. We're scaling. We're doing awesome work, working with great clients.
And, yeah, it's it's fun to to go back and retrospect to consider the journey and all the twists and turns. Yeah. Well, the purposeful piece for you that I'm pulling out is that you didn't set out to be an entrepreneur, but there are so many pieces inside of the entrepreneurial journey Yes. We, you know, the roller coaster, and we'll get to that here in a second. Like you said, the ups and the downs, the the twists, and the turns, but really what it is is this opportunity.
You you got to see something firsthand because you could have stayed. You could have been part of that team. That would have fulfilled a lot of the things that you've said. But it wouldn't have fulfilled all of the things that you said. Right.
And and so there's a piece that the listener is in alignment with us, which is like, no. In in order to actually Be the king that I'm designed to be is I have to have a space where I can press, and it's not just in the sketching world or just in the storytelling world or just in the team building world, which is, you know, kinda like the things that you've shared with us. But it's like, no. I I need to have a place where Okay. Yeah. No. I do wanna scale. I do wanna grow a team.
I do wanna impact clients all over the world. Like, this is a whole another level that wow. Never knew that this could be a possible piece, which is obviously entrepreneurialism in its in its fullest, but I do wanna hear the story. So, okay, so you've got this corporate transition happening You got this idea of this pet project. I'm sure it's probably how it started, but give us the idea or give us the give us the couple minutes on the transitions. Yeah. Let me paint the picture for you.
So here I was this creative person who always loved drawing and cartooning and working in an art studio and, you know, all that. And I found myself wearing a suit and tie working buying a cubicle in a traditional corporate environment. And like I said, it was the best of the best in terms of corporate environments to work in. You know, anyone who works at Chick Fil A can attest that it's an incredible place to work.
But for me, you know, I quickly realized that one of those, you know, passions I mentioned, the illustration, the creativity that was not being fulfilled professionally in that context of that job. I got to do some things that work Wolfe could be considered creative, but not to the extent that I wanted to be creative. And so I remember sitting in these meetings, in in, you know, whether it was a team meeting or, like, a all hands meeting or or whatever it'd be.
And I I started just to sketch my notes because I needed a creative outlet. I needed to exercise that part of my soul. I needed to express myself artistically. And so I just did what I could. I'd take my notebook. I'm a big I'm a big fan of taking handwritten notes versus typed notes. And I started to doodle my notes. So if if the concept was about, you know, marketing differentiation, whatever, I would come up with a visual concept represent that and kinda sketch it into my notes.
Or if if the team meeting was small enough and intimate enough, I would hop up on the whiteboard. And in front of the the meeting, I would start to whiteboard out the notes. Visually diagram the notes. And I remember one story in particular, one of my teammates says, hey, William. I'm working on this concept. It's for this new initiative. And I'm trying to get my ideas out on paper, but I I want your help. Could you help me? Like, I've seen you draw, I've seen you sketch. Can you help me?
And I remember we spent about 2 hours in this conference room, just me and him, and we just whiteboard out the whole thing. We diagram it from the whole journey from a to z. All the elements you know, using different colors to indicate challenges opportunities. And he took that and took a picture of it, and then he used that to make the case to the bosses and to leadership which end up being implemented at Chick Fil A. So I I thought, Wolfe, this is amazing.
I've helped my teammate execute his idea by doing something that I am naturally good at and naturally passionate about, and it led to results. It led to something real being creative. And so more and more of that happened where people around the organization noticed that I had this skill of taking ideas and then visually representing them. And they asked me to come do it for their meetings or their sessions or their initiatives. And so, sure enough, this snowball started to roll.
I started to hop around a supply chain or HR or to IT or whatever the department was, still getting my actual work done, and I started to sketch these other teams. And so it just became this sort of viral thing around the organization that there's this guy, William, who can do the sketching thing, and you should call him. And that's really where the seed of the business started to grow. I love it, man. There's so much just, like, natural enthusiasm in that story.
I I think anybody who just, like, craves any sort of inspiration Here's that as, like, yes. Tell me more. Like, come on. Come on. Come on. You know, what's the rest of the story? The one thing I wanna pull out real quick here for the listener is that Chaz entrepreneurs, a lot of times, we have great ideas. Well, let me let me rephrase that. We have a lot of ideas. I don't know how great most of them are. I think we can agree on that. Lots of ideas.
But the hard part that I have found and also a lot of the very successful entrepreneurs that I, you know, circle myself with have a hard time articulating what those ideas are or what they look like. It's like they can see it kind of in their brain. It's like, I I want this to do this. And then I want this to happen right after that, but no one else can really they're like, you know, I've I've done this with my own team, and my team's just like, What are you talking about? You know?
But to have what you're talking about as a visual representation, again, I'm just, like, already promoting but I just I I know that this thing works because I've tried to draw things. I am not a sketch artist whatsoever. The furthest thing from And when I have said, okay. Okay. Just give me a second. And I use words and and half, you know, skeleton people. Sketch people.
It's like it doesn't may maybe like a full, like, ding light bulb, like, where they get exactly what I'm trying to say, but it it is incredible when a visualization can be given. I mean, that's that is what vision is is I can see what it is that we're going towards. And so Right. I just think that this is a superpower. Go ahead. Keep going. Oh, I see. It's an incredibly clarifying thing to be forced to draw a picture of what you are trying to to do or communicate.
You know, you might have this idea in your brain, like you mentioned, but to actually sit down on a whiteboard and depict it visually. It doesn't have to be this incredibly artistic rendering. But simply being able to put your ideas into visual concepts is an incredible clarifying thing, not only for you Chaz you're working through the idea as the entrepreneur, but also for people around you. I mean, even MIT. We we do this for ourselves.
Like, we're refining a major process in our business right now. We just got our team together, and we just got in front of the whiteboard and started just sketching it out. And it wasn't professional grade work. Like, this is not what I would consider professional work. That I would offer to our clients, but it was enough for us. You know, it was enough for us to clarify the ideas and to draw out the action items and really kinda wrap our arms around the problem.
What our goal is is to help our clients be successful, whatever that is. Oftentimes that's solving a problem. Oftentimes that's collaborating. Coming up with a new solution, finding understanding, getting alignment. You know, we wanna step in and help our clients to be successful, whatever their goal is, however they define success. And so in that in that little story I told with my my colleague at Chick Fil A, like, success for him was to put this vision he had into a singular picture.
That he could then go and take and, you know, make the case for for his idea. For our team recently, when we kinda sketched out this process, our goal is to refine the process and draw action items and then create a timeline to implement these things and improve the process. But, yeah, I would encourage any entrepreneur who's working through an idea whether a new business idea or a new concept in the business or a new process is to sketch it out, you know, draw it out.
And like you mentioned, your drawings can be crude. They can be little stick figure. They can be simple drawings, but just marrying auditory ideas with visual depictions starts to unlock parts of your brain and helps you see it in new ways come up with new solutions and and the light bulb will go off and it's off to the races. It does.
There's one one little point here I wanna point out listener because I first learned about audio and visual being the same years ago when I'm studying the sales process and then eventually teaching it to others, but when you're presenting or when you're sharing what oftentimes entrepreneurs don't realize because they're just sharing with their team, but in the sales process, If I'm talking to you about my product or about your problem and how my
product can solve your problem, and if I have a visual representation at the same time, that's why we use a slide That's why we if if an in person meeting, there's a there's a presentation or there's maybe even a a flip chart of sorts. There's these visual representations or, you know, a flyer.
And then the key piece is is that the sales process, which we should use as entrepreneurs as well, is that I have to make sure that what's being said at this specific moment is also what's being represented visually So what that looks like in the sales process is I can't be visually showing one slide and have already moved on to the next slide verbally. They they need to be the same. What they're hearing needs to be what they're seeing.
Otherwise, there's just this huge disconnect, which then fast forward to an entrepreneur, Here we are around the table, and we're talking about this idea, and nobody really can grasp what it is that I'm thinking because There's no visual representation. So I think what you've done, not only just is, like, psychology, but it's just an incredible, like, arm for entrepreneurs to be able to use where in our own businesses or even for our clients, like, I'm just thinking right now.
Gathering the Kings Chaz itself is a mastermind group. Okay. Cool. But, like, how is that different than the hundreds of others? Because I do believe that we're unique and we're different. And the people that are in my group have been a part of other groups, and they're like, dude, this is different. You're different. The people you put in this room are different. Like, I'm woah. How do I articulate that to the next guy? Who's like, it's just another mastermind group. It's stuff like this.
Right? Right. Well, human beings have always been visual creatures. I mean, you go back in history and you look at All of past civilizations have been visual communicators going all the way back to the the cavemen from 1000 and 1000 years ago Yeah. To the Egyptians and hieroglyphics and ancient Chinese Chaz a system called logograms. And then the Greek alphabet, like, society has always communicated visually. And it really wasn't until I'm gonna nerd out a little bit here.
It wasn't until the late 1800 1900 were verbal and written communication became mainstream because all of a sudden, cheaper and more accessible. But all throughout history, human beings communicate visually, you'll get stained glass windows and and churches from the medieval period, The reason they did that was not to be pretty, not to be something nice to look at, but to communicate stories from the Bible because people were illiterate and they needed to be able to understand these stories.
You know, throughout human history, we have used pictures to tell ideas. But for some reason, in the 20th century, we thought, yeah, we're over that we'll just have these, you know, newspapers and lots of texts and then that got weeded out in schools. And so you've got kids who, from a young age, left to draw, and illustrate, and then by time they're high school. They're kind of like over that. And then we enter the corporate Wolfe. We're expected to learn and communicate and solve problems.
Using lengthy emails or boring power points that are endless and Right. What we're learning is that that visual side of humanity has never gone away. We're still visual creatures. And in fact, we're even swinging even further into this visual world. If you look at all the fastest growing social media channels, Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, it's all going visual, YouTube. We're all hungry to communicate and and process ideas visually.
And if if you're in the corporate space, you're an entrepreneur, you're a business and you're not leaning into visual communication, then you're gonna miss you're gonna miss out on a ton. You're gonna miss people by 90% or more. So, yeah, I'm a big believer. I'm a big I'm a big evangelist for for visuals. Obviously, it's what what we do in our business. Yeah. I think that you're you're not self righteous, though, in that act because you're you really are doing something that's super powerful.
So, anyway, I wanna move on to some decisions that you've made. You have this incredible story that we've built so far, but I wanna know if good decision specifically that you've made that maybe you can look back and go, a lot of the things that we have here at the sketch effect are from this one decision. What would that be? So one decision I'm especially proud of in hindsight is at the end of 2019.
I decided it was time to lean into some innovative ideas that we had always talked about, but had never done. Specifically, our business had always done our sketching mostly the same way. We Chaz markers on a big sheet of foam core physically in the room with our clients. That's how we did 99% of our work And so I said, hey, team. What if we thought about doing this digitally? What if we thought about doing this on an iPad? Maybe we could even stream it into a room from a remote location.
I think you could probably know where this story is going. And so we were like, I don't know. It's kind of confusing to me. Expensive to buy our whole team iPads and train them on this new process and invent new SOPs for how to do digital sketching yadayadayada. And I said, No. Like, we need to do like, we need to innovate. We need to push the boundaries. You know, it may not be it may not be a fruitful product now, but it's it's valuable just to innovate and try stuff. Sows at the end of 2019.
So we bought it by iPads. We train them how to do live sketching on an iPad digitally in a digital format. And then 3 months later, COVID happened, and our entire business model got flipped upside down, our sales pipeline withered away Our month over month sales dropped 80%. So we were like, this sucks. Like, our business model is literally being rendered irrelevant by the policies of the pandemic preventing people from getting together.
And so I, you know, had a little moment of panic And then I, like, I said, you know what? Okay. It's panic's over. Time to act. You know, of no more excuses. It's time to act. And so Thankfully, we were able to move quickly. We were able to innovate and and watch a brand new product, which we called virtual live sketching, which is the virtual version of our in person live sketching. And thankfully, we Chaz the tools in place to do that quickly. The training.
Because month months prior the training, months prior, we had an outfit of the team. We had trained them all. And so, literally, a few days after the lockdown started, we had a new product up on the website. We started offering it to our clients. We said, hey. Your Wolfe is disrupted. So is ours. We wouldn't help your virtual meetings to be more successful. We can virtually sketch your event today. And so we started selling this product started marketing.
It it took a while for it to pick up, you know, the 1st few months were slow, but we still had it and we moved quickly. By the fall, it was our best selling product ever. And in q 4, the virtual sketching made up for it exceeded q 1, q 2, and q threes revenue. So in 1 quarter, we did more sales with this one new product than we did the entire rest of the year and it really saved our business. I mean, it was a hard year.
It was a tough year for anyone who is in live events or any kind of a in person service model. But it could have been way more destructive. Had we not one innovated and had the gear of the training in place and then also had the courage to just move quickly. Like, we didn't know if this would work, but we had the courage to just jump in and do it anyways and see what happened.
And so that's one decision that in hindsight, I'm grateful we made because, you know, I don't know if the business would exist today. How do we not been able to move that quickly? Yeah. There's a couple of things inside of that decision specifically that I wanna get your opinion on because it was an idea. Right? Well, first off, we could articulate probably in a whole other podcast on its own where that idea came them. Right?
Call it a hunch, call it a subconscious, maybe call it a download from heaven. Like, we can we we can analyze that in a lot of different ways, but you acted on it, number 1, and I think a lot of entrepreneurs get ideas, and then we think about them or we bring them up. But to Press into them even when maybe business isn't necessary. Like, we don't need this to, you know, generate monthly income to pay the rent. Like, it it wasn't a need at that moment.
You were just trying to innovate and get better and grow. It wasn't out of necessity, and so it wasn't a desperate situation, but you did it anyway. Made the investment. You made the the press even though your team was a little uncertain about it. And so what was for you in in that? What was the confidence? Or was it just a I just feel really good about it. What was that? Hey, Kings and Queens. Chaz Wolf. I wanna talk to you about something that's super important to me.
We put a lot of time and effort. We, meaning myself and my team, into this podcast, into the content that goes out every single day. And if you have been getting any sort of value or insight from this, we want it to be able to reach other business owners too.
So we would love if you would like, comment, share, leave a review, post, share again, all of the things on social media, on all the different platforms, or even on the podcast mediums of Apple and Spotify, we would love to be able to get our content into more hands, more entrepreneurs so they can grow their business as quick as possible. Together, we are building a community of like minded entrepreneurs who are committed to growing their businesses to new heights. So let's do this.
Let's help each other. Let's help each other grow. Well, to answer the question with the idea to innovate and to to, like, lean into, you know, investing in a new tool or new gear, Chaz really I know you're you're in a mastermind group. I'm a huge fan of being in groups, whatever that may be.
And so at the time, I was in a group And I remember us talking about the product, and I was I was lamenting that a lot of, you know, a lot of our our sales that we lose are because people don't wanna fly an artist to their event or they don't wanna book an artist in hotel. They don't wanna pay a artist per diem. So we would lose some deals because of Chaz. And I remember our mentor at the time. He just challenged me. He's like, well, could you think about your products in a different way?
Where can you save costs that you can pass on to the client? And so at the time, we invaded this idea of of virtual sketching. At the time, we were gonna have the virtual artist beam their sketch into an in person room where people are gathered around a table and then projected onto a wall. So the artist didn't need to be physically there, but people were still around the table in person. So that was the idea. That was the the the manifestation of that idea.
Was that the artist would be virtual or remote, but the meeting would still be taking place in person. I had no idea that 3 months later, 4 months later, that in person gathering would no longer be feasible, you know, but the the principal would still apply. So I that's just a shout out to to just being in a group. Yeah. It's so valuable to be in a group surrounded by other people who could push you and challenge you and encourage you to think in different ways.
And then hold you accountable to it because it's one thing to say, I'm gonna innovate. I'm gonna do this stuff. And then but to have somebody who can actually say, hey. Did you do it? Did you did you implement the thing? Did you Did you try that thing? Did you prototype it? How to go with the first client? Yeah. That's one thing. And then during the actual, kinda, when the actual shutdown started, I mean, To me, it was one of those moments where, you know, I believe crisis creates clarity.
You know, when when the world is falling apart, it can be a very thing. It it really makes you zone in on what matters most. And so to me, you know, I've studied people throughout history who have been leaders throughout crisis. I've got a few books I can recommend later because I know we're gonna talk about books later, but to me, I just knew, like, in a crisis, you have to act quickly.
You have to preserve the most valuable resources, and you have to keep your people around you motivated and committed to moving forward. So for us, the virtual sketching product was all of those things. 1, it was a way to preserve critical resources know, we could get some sales in the door to generate some cash flow when when all other cash flow streams are drying up. 2, it was a vision that our team could rally Like, hey. We're gonna launch this new product. We're gonna do it fast.
Kind of this moonshot thing. And I'm I'm blanking on the third one, but you know, I knew that in this moment of crisis, what's very clear is we have to preserve resources. We have to move fast, and we have to keep the team anchored to a vision of of how we're gonna get out of this crisis. Yeah. What you said came so naturally to you, clarity comes in crisis. And I I know that to be true when you press into that. For a lot of people, crisis brings confusion. Or uncertainty and, like, a tornado.
Right? And so for you, what what enables you to go to crisis's clarity and really dial in as opposed to kinda throw your hands up and be even more confused than you've ever been ever because there was a lot of people during that time that didn't know what to do, even quit, right, like, just just threw their hands altogether, which is not clarity.
But there's something to clear that you have or the, a mindset that you developed that maybe you can share here with the listeners that when crisis comes again for them, they can they can adapt your process. Yeah. Agree that crisis can create confusion if you're not locked into purpose. So for me, you know, I I have a purpose behind the business. And we have a we have a business purpose. We have corporate, you know, corporate purpose.
We know we don't really consider ourselves corporate, but we have a we have a business purpose. And for me, I wanna create an environment where people are becoming their best and giving their best. In order to do that, we have to have people on the team. And so you're correct. I could have laid off my team. I could have trimmed the resources. I could have cut the budgets.
And that could have just been me, you know, and there probably would have been enough resources to sustain William professionally through that season. Sure. And that would have probably been acting out of confusion. Oh, this is so crazy. I don't know what's going on. I'm confused. I'm just gonna start, like, cutting and and making, you know, rash decisions and and burning the whole thing down, at least look out for me. But but that's not my purpose.
You know, my purpose is to invest in people and to have a team around me and to invest in them and to create environments we're we're continually developing, continually getting better, doing our best work. And so for me, my purpose, in that moment was to keep the team intact. It was I didn't wanna I didn't wanna cut any of my overhead or any other I don't wanna cut any of my staff. I didn't wanna lay anyone off.
I wanted to encourage them through the process because there was a lot of fear, and there was a lot of fear in our team. And I realized at my time as the leader that my job was to instill courage in them. You know, I was freaking on the inside, but on the outside, I wanted to project courage. You know, I wanted to project courage to them. To give him something to rally around and to save the business and to save the team.
And, yeah, we lost, you know, we had a lot of a payroll expenses that we never recovered or or wouldn't recover that year. But we kept people on the team. We didn't lay a single person off, and I believe that clarity to go back to the, you know, the original point came from just knowing what the purpose was. Yeah. So powerful. The work that you've done on getting clear on your purpose is what you're saying.
It gave you clarity in the moment of crisis, and I think that that is Chaz is a magic formula right there. So I appreciate you sharing. What about a bad decision? I'm sure somewhere in there in the last couple of years. Lots. You've made 1 or 2. Tell us what? I'm just not your greatest hour. Yeah. Oh, man. So so many to pick from. The good decision question's a lot easier because there's only a couple.
You know, one bad decision that I look back on, and I wish, like, a change is Chaz, like I said, I love people. I love working with people. And so my vision for my business when I started was I wanted to have a big team. I wanted to have people around me. I wanted to, you know, I wanna have a team. I wanted to grow culture. And I and I think part of that was a an altruistic thing. Like, I wanted to invest in people. I wanted to encourage people, lead people Wolfe.
But there was also a lot of pride mixed into that. I wanted to post on Instagram that had all these team members. I wanted people to think that I was successful and and see my massive team and go, wow. William has really made it, you know, whatever that is. So there was a lot of pride kind of woven into that ambition. Which is true for most ambitions.
It's like a a combination of a really good intent, but also a little bit of ego, you know, and it kind of hopefully becomes a a good thing that benefits people. But the decision is that I think I was too quick to hire. I don't think I vetted people properly. And I think I could have hired them in a smarter way. So k. You know, hold the trigger on hiring a couple team members along the journey Chaz should probably never have been hired.
They probably should have been contractors or part time engagements. And, you know, we paid the price for that, you know, whether it was having a toxic team member on the team too long or having an underperformer on the team for too long. Right. And so in hindsight, I I would go back and I would have restructured the approach to growing that team.
I would have been probably a little bit less quick to say you're hired and join the team full time and private a little bit more prudent and kind of deliberate and slow with how I brought people onto the scene because that would have spared us a lot of a lot of turmoil, a lot of tension down the road. Yeah. Yeah. Those are those are good reminders, I guess.
But for the person that's maybe not made that bad decision yet, what have you learned now that in that interview process or maybe it's a personality assessment? Maybe it's just, you know, having somebody else interview for you. I don't know what what's the solution now that you can share with Yeah. I think that one thing to to get really laser focused on is job description and kinda what will the person do because one thing to say, we need an X and X. We need a such and such role.
But it's another thing to actually list out what they're all gonna do. And then to walk through on the interview process and make sure that you're clear and they're clear because if it's not a good fit, if it's not a good fit for you or for them that it's it's not gonna work out. So adding us one thing that we've gotten better at is getting really clear job descriptions And another thing we've gotten really good at is is setting up standards of success, standards of quality.
And this is actually a relatively new thing that we probably did the last 8 months. Where we sat down, we looked at every Wolfe. And we said, what does good look like for this role? And that's especially tricky in our business because a lot of our work is creative. It's subjective. You know, it's, like, looking at someone's art and saying, is it good or is it not good? I don't know. Or looking at someone's animation, you know, that's that's tough.
But we got laser focused on listing out standards of quality. And so when we when we have to have conversations with our team, we we refer back to We say, hey. This is our standards quality. You know, we're all on the same page. We've all read this. We all agreed to it. Maybe you're missing the mark here and here. Like, we need to fix that. Or you're doing great here, like, do more of this.
And so just having a really clear standards of quality has been a game changer for us in in developing people, holding people accountable, and just having a better overall team. Yeah. I love that. The marker of, I guess, the job description. You said one thing that I want I want you just to speak to for just a half second. You said that we can say we need a so and so person or a title, but what are they gonna actually do?
And I think there's probably some people listening right now that went wait a second. Those are different. Right? And so, obviously, they are. When you really think about it, this artist, well, yes, they're gonna create art, but specifically, how and when and then what quantity. And, like, there's a lot of detail that go into the agreement that you're basically making with them. And so is there something there that you can add on to the person who's right now Chaz goes, okay.
Well, I thought all I needed was a foreman or I thought all I needed was a a new artist or whatever Chaz title was was like, oh, I gotta go another layer deeper and actually, like, create bullet points. Right. Yeah. What are you actually gonna do when you show up at work? Like, what are the tasks that you're gonna do? I'm a massive believer in outlining the entirety of your working process down to, like, you're clicking this button or you're writing this thing. Are you doing that?
And so what we've done is, you know, we have identified all the tasks associated with different roles throughout the process. Literally, when we make a job description, we go through, we, like, circle stuff. Like, okay. They're gonna do this. They're gonna do that. They're gonna do this. They're gonna do this. And you have to have a very clearly defined process order to do that. So that's kinda the first step is you gotta really lean in and really define your process.
But then when you put together the job description, you gotta pick all those things out of there and then lump it together into one job description and then hand that to the person and say, this is what you're doing. Right. And That's been really clarifying because sometimes we've thought we need a cert a certain type of Wolfe, and then we've done that process and realized there's really not enough here for a full time role. Or the opposite. There's really too much here for one full time role.
It seems to be two people, or it needs to be one person in a part time, or it needs to be one person in, you know, a contractor. And so I think it's a healthy exercise is to really drill deep into your process and break it down into the actionable steps that one must take to do the thing and then build the job description based on that. We've done the same thing with a couple clients where we've helped them build a Wolfe, their their client experience. Right?
Like, from a to z, how the client experiences them from a marketing all the way through to the sale and implementation, and then whatever the relationship looks like after the sale. And when you can sketch or or identify those different points, Then you could say, okay.
Well, in order for this to happen, and even all the little touch points along the way make a difference too, the emails, the text messages, the reminders, the this, the Chaz, like, all of those things, if they're, like, super bullet pointed out, you go, okay. Well, this person needs to do this and this and this, just like William just said, that helps you basically put these bullet points into a job description, which then makes it clear. Then, okay.
So now these are the things I need to train on. And now I can not only get, like, a hire this person, but now I have an outline of literally what they're gonna do and I can train them and how I can onboard them and just a gateway to a lot of other things when it comes to bringing somebody on successfully. Would you agree? Right. Oh, yeah. Having a manual for the job is just so incredible. And and we've been we've been doing that since probably a few years of the business is, like, Hey.
What does this job do? Well, how do you do it? What are the steps so that when there is turnover, you know, or someone or someone, you know, graduates or or gets promoted, and we have to fill that role. You've already got the guide book to that role. And this is a big initiative that my COO and I are working on is that we wanna make guidebooks for every role.
So in theory, if our business were to get obliterated by a meteor, right, I don't want that to happen, but were, someone, some archaeologists could dig to the ashes and find our handbooks and resurrect the sketch effect with relative ease because everything's documented. Every role is documented. The vision's documented, the culture's documented. Every part of our DNA as a business is documented and magical things happen.
When everything's documented, there's clarity, there's less drama, there's less confusion. Yeah. People are are anchored to the purpose. People self select out, you know, if they don't line up with the how how the business documented the right people are attracted in. And that's one thing that we're working on is just being really laser focused on articulating the DNA of our business and then documenting it, putting into manuals It's a it's an ongoing process, but it's it's a valuable process.
Yeah. I agree. A 100%. I wanna ask you. You said you're being laser dialed in. What's the number one KPI that you've been tracking right now in your business. Oh, man. Number 1. I mean, sales. I mean, in your business, you're always tracking sales. Businesses live and die by sales. You know Chaz? That's not mystery, so we're always tracking sales. Another KPI that we are tracking is Let's see here. I'm trying to think of it as interesting or relatively different from the standard business stuff.
We track something called make it better efforts. Making better efforts. And these are hard to pin down, but we, as a team, get together probably on a monthly basis, and we jot down all of our ideas for how we can make it better or whatever it may be. Sure. And it's across the whole business. And and these are small things or they're big things. Sometimes it it balloons into this massive big initiative that could take couple years, or maybe it's a small thing. Like, hey.
Our our client intake forms are crappy. Why do we ask them ten questions. We can just ask 5, you know, and, great. Great. Let's do it. And so we set a numerical target for how many make it better efforts we achieve. And Yeah. We just go about that every month, and it's been incredible. It's buried a lot of fruit. It's made our lives better. It's made our business better.
And so, yeah, it's not a traditional KPI in the sense that we have, like, dashboards to measure all of it, but it's more of just like a loose kind of, like, spirit. We're gonna continue to try to make things in our business better, and we're just gonna put points on the board as soon as something is considered improved. Well, the the subjective piece there is obviously whether the idea is valid or not or good or not, or you're gonna do anything with it, but the measurement is easy.
Like you said, we just said, we just wanna have a certain amount of idea flow, and and we're gonna try to just make it better every month. And some of those are gonna be we don't wanna do that, but some of them are gonna really, like you said, change the way that you guys do things. And there's a there's an an open forum there at that point that's not being created. I wanna ask you about a book or, like, a resource, a podcast or, business book that you've read or just anything.
Well, I guess, the resource that you Wolfe recommend that the listener grabs right away. Of course. Yeah. So going back to the the crisis conversation, there's a book called Endurance, and it's about it's about a historical figure called Ernest Shackleton, who was a ant arctic polar explorer. And it's one of the best books about leadership during crisis, which was very relevant for me during 2020 2021. And so that gave me a lot of courage and gave me a lot of clarity in that season.
So if any of your listeners are going through a mode of crisis, however they define Chaz, I really encourage pick up that book by, I think it's Alfred Lansing, and the book is in Durham. It's amazing. From a business standpoint, a book that I've read recently that really has inspired me is called deep work. By Cal Newport. And it's amazing because it it talks about how we do the most impact on our business.
We grow our businesses most successfully when we're doing what is quote unquote deep work. It's work that's highly valuable produces results, but it requires a to dive deep or exceeded periods of time to work on it. And our society is all about shallow work. You know, we're getting we're getting buzzed. We're getting tweeted. We're getting ding. We're getting reminders. We're getting phone calls.
We're getting emails all day long, and so it creates this steady this kind of ongoing to shallow working mode. We're dipping into something. We're dipping out, and we're jumping around, and we're multitasking. And what results is we're not doing great work. We're not really going deep into any one thing, and it just creates general kind of unproductive malaise.
And so I encourage anyone to pick up deep work by Cal Newport and just learn how to set up systems and boundaries in your working schedule to go deep and dive deep on the things and the the activities that really matter most. Yeah. And not and not to be afraid of going deep, I think. Because you're right. It is a great book. I wanna give that this podcast Chaz an example.
I have been a guest on many podcasts where we are on the call for, I don't know, 7 to 15 minutes, maybe 20 minutes, and they're good. Like, there's a there's a purpose for those. But I didn't get to know the person. They didn't really get to know me. I didn't really get to share my story. It's shallow. Right?
And so even looking at our format here, Gavin, the Kings, I've had so many people appreciate our, I mean, we don't record for 2 hours or 3 hours like Rogan, but, you know, this it's a it's a little bit longer. We take a little bit, like, I ask a couple more follow-up questions because we really wanna know. And the listeners really wanna know, like, how did you really do that? Don't just give me just a surface answer. Give me the story behind it.
And there's value in that of what William's telling you. So whatever your work is in your business, and and and task oriented or and or the actual service that the business provides. You can take this approach in in in both of those concepts. I appreciate you sharing that. It's a great book. Yeah. I wanna know about family for a second. We we talk a lot here on Gathering the Kings about obsession. And I think entrepreneurs in general are obsessed. This is what we do.
This is why you made it through the crisis is because there's there's like a never quit spirit about us. Right? But I wanna know how you've done that same thing, that obsession thing in your family along the same time frame as you've been obsessed with your business. Well, I love my family. I've been married now for 10 years. Just celebrate 10 year anniversary with my Wolfe, and we've got 3 kids. They're 6, 4, and 1a half, and they're amazing, annoying, crazy goofball kids, but we love them.
And, you know, I think Going back to the obsession question, our obsessions must be reflected on our calendar. So I'm I'm a massive believer that your calendar reflects your priorities. And so we might say, oh, my family's a priority or my health is a priority or whatever. But if it's not on your calendar, is it really a priority? And so for me, you know, I have been very deliberate about making sure my calendar reflects the obsession, which is that I wanna be a great dad.
I wanna be there for my kids. I wanna be there for their things. I want them to know me. I want them to remember me. And I wanna invest in them. So that's one thing I've done is I've just really taken a hard look at my calendar, set up boundaries, make sure things are literally blocked on my calendar. So a couple of those things that I have blocked in my calendar is I do a monthly daddy daughter date night with my daughter, Gracie. It's amazing. Uh-huh. It's on the calendar.
Once a month, I do a weekly day night with my wife, which is wonderful. It's on the calendar once a week. You know, my son and I, we do a monthly, like, adventure on the weekends you know, it's on the calendar. It's blocked. And and then the other things, I could go down the list. I don't need to give the whole list now. Yeah. But what What matters is that it's on the calendar and that it's protected and that people know it's protected and that you you defend those boundaries.
So that's one way that I've tried to maintain obsession with the family. And the other the other thing is to just get really anchored into purpose and culture and values with the family. You know, for newer, spend a lot of time really hashing out their one of their company core values. What is their company mission statement? What is their company purpose statement? What are their cultural rhythms? When do we do our team off-site? When do we do our team retreat?
When do we do our all hands meeting? But very few parents do that same process for their family. And that's what my wife and I are are working on, and it's still a work in progress, but we sat down. We did a week and away a year ago when we we really almost had, like, a working session. Like, what is our family mission statement? What is our family purpose state? What are our family values?
What do you want our kids to be really what do we want what do we want ingrained into our kids' DNA as they're growing up? And then what do we want our cultural fairy rhythms to be? And that's the thing like the Diadara date night and the the adventure days and family vacations. Like, what are the what are gonna be those anchor points in our calendar where we build culture as family? And so for me, and I would and I would encourage everyone else to do it.
I I'm working hard to to develop the culture of our family and then also to document it and to codify it. And then to and then to publish it, you know, like, I'm an artist, so I'm working on a a poster of our family values that we're gonna print out and put into our kitchen so that every time we're eating dinner, we can look at our family values and say, Hey.
You know, son, did you display fortitude today or or or how did you display compassion today and kind of go around the horn about around these values and make sure they're being wired into our family DNA. Yeah. I posted on social media, I don't know, maybe a week or so ago, and I said, In essence, what if you were able to create the scenario, the mindset, the fortitude, the the base for our children that we've had to create for ourselves in our twenties thirties and maybe forties for some.
It's like we've had to overcome a lot to have the mindset of an entrepreneur to be successful to overcome and be obsessed, like, all these things that we've just talked about. But what if we could create that from the beginning for our family, for our children, right, for whatever they're gonna do, I mean, naturally speaking, our children are gonna be entrepreneurs. Right?
But, you know, whatever they wanna do, we're gonna build them in a way where it's like, man, if I had an extra 20 years, if I didn't start learning this at 20, but I started learning it before I was even able to conceptualize, Wolfe. You know? And and how much further ahead can our children be from the intentionality that you and your wife and and me and my family do very similar things. And so I really, really appreciate that perspective. You gave a really good visual or verbal visual there.
Not not an actual, but, yes, may maybe you can drop some stuff, and we'll send it over. We'll put it into the into the pot here. Yeah. We'll do a visual version. Yeah. Exactly. I got one last question here for you, William. I wanna know if you had the opportunity to reach back into time and whisper into the younger William's ear. What would you say? I would say it's not as hard as you think. You know, I think for me, I never set out to be a business owner. Never decided to do the business thing.
And I think I I waited maybe a little bit too long to kind of start to pursue entrepreneurial ambitions because I was afraid of the business side of things. I didn't know how to read a p and l. Didn't know how to do sales. Didn't know how to do taxes and set up an LLC. Like, all this business y stuff really intimidated me. So I would go back in time and and say it's not as hard as you think. And and in fact, if if I may, I recently wrote a book all about that idea.
Love I wrote a book for basically for myself from 10, 15 years ago. It's called the conquering creative. If you're watching on a video, that's the cover, right, behind me. Love it. It's a it is a it's a business book for creative people like me. You know, people who are who are wired to do creative things and then want to make a living from it, You know, the notion of doing business and making a living from your craft is extremely intimidating to people that are not naturally wired for business.
People like me are naturally wired to create and do artistic things. And to be, you know, fluid and and all Chaz. The business side of things do not come naturally to us. But like I said, it's not as hard as you think. It's easier than you think. You can do it. All you need is some equipping and some encouraging and and some courage. You need courage from other people and then just summon the courage to yourself. And so I wrote this book.
It's called the conquering creative, and it's it's all about 9 shifts to build an unstoppable creative business. And I've heard from people Chaz read it. They say, William, you wrote this book for creative people, but I think that these business principles apply to any entrepreneur, anyone who's running a business or wants to That's right. Make a living doing what they're passionate about can learn from this book. So I love it. You know, I encourage your listeners to check it out.
It's on Amazon. It's on the conquering creative.com. And, even if you are not necessarily a creative person, but you have a nephew or a niece or a son or a daughter or a friend or colleague who's creative, it could use some basics in business. This is a great resource for them as well. That's awesome, man. I'm glad you you shared Chaz. It's such a profound mindset shift because you're right.
And there's a lot of entrepreneurs the creative that's listening that's listening right now, maybe he doesn't do artwork, but he's a tile specialist, right, and he creates beautiful showers. And that's his art or the guy that creates funnels, marketing campaigns, and and writes copy or whatever the creative outlet is. For the individual that's listening right now. Everything that you've just shared is incredible.
So we'll put the link in the in the show notes as well, but please check out the book and make sure that so that you grab it, that'll be awesome. Also wanna know just real quick here, how can we find you if we wanna just get to know you as a business owner, but also how can we find you if we want to hire you to come in and sketch our world or the things that are happening in our business, help us bring clarity to the ideas that we have.
We would love to sketch for whoever wants to bring it to their meeting or event. So to find us, go to the sketch effect dotcom. That's the sketch effect effect. Effectility, the sketch effect dotcom and reach out to us. We've got amazing sales team. They reply fast, so we'll get to you back to you right away. Give confusion, or you wanna know how it works or how it's priced or all that stuff.
So the sketch bag dot com or on Instagram at the sketch effect, we post a lot of fun visual content there. So check that out. And then if if listeners wanna learn more about the book or the conquering creative, side project that I'm working on, it's the conquering creative.com. The book is the conquering creative.com slash book. And if people wanna connect with me personally, I'm on Instagram at the conquering creative. And so, yeah, I would love to connect.
I would love to learn more about how we can enhance your meeting with with live sketching, whether it be virtual or in person or make a great animated video for your company, or, you know, if you wanna learn more about this book, the conquering creative, and I will do one more shout out, which is fully illustrated. So this is a business book that's fully illustrated by me. There's over a 150 illustrations. So you open it, and it's not just your typical boring so called boring business book.
It's it's fully illustrated. It's a page turner. And so I encourage people to check it out. I know some people just for that fact that are like, oh, I'm now buying it. Because I get to read business principles in cartoon form. Of course, let's do it. So I I have enjoyed this conversation. You are an incredible for Newer. I can't wait to do business with you, and I'm excited for that conversation as well as just wherever else in life.
We're so in alignment with our families and such that think this is gonna be a fun ride for the 2 of us, but thank you for being here. Thank you for adding value. And for giving your time here today to the audience, we so appreciate you. Blessings to your family and to your business. Thanks for being here. Of course. Chaz a great time. Thanks, Chaz, and hope this was a valuable conversation to your listeners. Thank you for listening to Gathering the Kings today.
I hope you were able to pull out a few nuggets to go apply into your business right away. More importantly, though, I hope that you're realizing that it takes more to be successful than just being by yourself doing it all on your own, carrying the weight all by yourself.
What I have realized, not only in my own journey from multiple businesses and mall different industries and now interviewing over 2 or 300 other very successful 7, 8, and 9 figure business owners is that It's tough to do it alone. And so gathering the Kings exists to bring together successful entrepreneurs. In fact, we are putting together 1 1000 kings, specifically who are grateful, but not done.
We're intentionally assembling kings who fight tooth and nail for their business, family, and communities, and here's what we believe Chaz in the pursuit of excellence in those areas, that it ignites within us the responsibility to govern power and forge a lasting legacy. So if that relates and and resonates with you, and you know that you need people around you, sharp, qualified other very successful business owners. I want you to go to gatheringthekings.com.
Want you to take a look at what we're doing and see if it makes sense for you to be part of our pursuit to 1000 kings. Talk soon.