Jack Butcher

The Brief

Jack is truly an inspiration, but really hard to describe.

For years he worked as a visual designer in an agency, but then eventually went solo. As he was about to burn out, he became a course creator and became very successful, very fast.

At the moment, he’s working on an NFT project called Checks which I attempted to write about here. I believe he’s working on something new, but I struggle to understand these projects.

Course Creator

Playbook

It’s hard to look at what Jack Butcher has done and is doing and draw up a playbook. For me, it comes down to one thing:

Iterate.

When you look at what Jack has done just in the last 2-3 years, it’s really hard to believe his success was held at bay for nearly the decade before. But there truly is a time and a place for everyone and all that burnout agency work has paid off.

To my observation, it’s gone like this:

• Share ideas and singular visual work on Twitter and get traction
• Get invited onto podcasts and earn authority and followers
• Package up learnings into high-quality courses; Build Once, Sell Twice is his flagship course
• Be helpful and friendly and a model of integrity
• Be open to ideas; at the end of ’22 he was building additional traffic through SEO after not paying any attention to it previously
• Pay attention to NFTs and think deeply about the possibilities and leverage his following to magnify the potential (e.g. the Checks project)
• and iterate.

For me, the playbook is to build a following of like-minded or interesting people and be endlessly curious with them.

I don’t think you or I can replicate this quite in the same way. Jack is singular and he truly has a personal monopoly.

Actually, I think he has two or three simultaneous monopolies.

Toolbox

This is a partial list.

Courses

In development.