Building a Sketchnotes Army with Mike Rohde

Joe Casabona: This episode of How I Built It, is brought to you by two great sponsors. The first, is our season-long sponsor. Liquid Web has been best known as a managed hosting company with tons of options. It’s also designed a managed WordPress offering that is perfect for mission-critical sites. If you’re looking for improved performance, maximized uptimes, and incredible support, Liquid web is the partner you’ve been looking for. Every liquid web managed WordPress customer has ithemes synced integrated into their managed portal allowing them to update several sites with a single touch. Liquid web hosts all of my critical websites and I couldn’t be happier with them. If you Sign up today, using the discount code ‘howibuiltit33’, you get 33% off for the next six months. Visit buildpodcast.net/liquid to get started. That’s buildpodcast.net/liquid.

It’s also brought to you like Seriously Simple Podcasting. Seriously Simple Podcasting lets you manage your podcast feed and content right inside WordPress with the introduction of Seriously Simple hosting. Now you can host your podcast media files on a dedicated hosting platform that is completely integrated with your WordPress site. So publishing your next podcast is just as easy as creating a new post, uploading your file, and clicking publish with our edit as you upload feature. There’s no need to wait around for your file to upload to finish writing your episodes, show notes. They give you full control of the post editor while your podcast file is uploaded to their servers. And How I Built It listeners can use the promo code ‘builtit’ for your first month completely free. If you’re moving from another hosting provider or have been self hosting your media files they offer a complete concierge migration for all your episodes to Seriously Simple hosting. I’ve been playing around with Seriously Simple Podcasting for the last couple weeks and I’ve gotta say I’m really impressed. As somebody who uses WordPress with podcast hosting, I think it’s a great one stop shopping tool for your podcast needs. So go ahead and visit builtpodcast.net/podcasting to sign up today. And remember to use the code “builtit” that’s B-U-I-L-T-I-T for your first month completely free.

Now, this week we have a very special guest, Mike Rhode of Sketchnotes Fame and we’re going to be talking to him about how he came up with the Sketchnotes idea, his Sketchnotes Army and much more. I’m very excited to have him as the 50th guest on this podcast.

So thanks so much for joining me. Definitely stick around this is absolutely a great conversation. And without further ado, on with the show.

Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of How I Built It, the podcast that asks “How did you build that?” Today, my guest is the leader of the Sketchnotes Army, Mike Rohde. How are you Mike?

Mike Rohde: I’m doing good Joe. Thanks for having me on. This is really fun.

Joe Casabona: Awesome, well thanks so much for being on the show. I’m really, so that we can get you on here. I’m glad that you’re on the show because you’re different from a lot of my other guests for a few reasons. First of all, Sketchnotes is a very analog thing. Most of the time we talk about things in the digital space on this show. But also you and I are both published by the same book publisher, which I think is a first for this show so I’d love to talk a little bit about that as well. But first, why don’t you tell us about who you are, what you do, and how you came up with the idea for Sketchnotes?

Mike Rohde: Sure. so, I’m Mike Rohde, I live in Milwaukee and I am a designer. I’ve been a designer for many years, and actually started my current print design, Pre Internet. So I’ve got the perspective of coming into the Internet when it was a new weird thing that nobody understood. And I was very fascinated by it in many cases other people were not. But I sort of dove headlong into it and it became a big part of my life.

So the second part of my career, I spent as a web designer. So I did some of the early web stuff, did coding, then I got to the point where I realized they were far better coders than me. And then I focused on the design and hired really good people.

And then once I moved through that process, the third I guess the third act that I’ve been in as user experience design so I think I’ve actually always had the perspective of how things work and how to make them simple and work easily. So it was a natural fit when I had an opportunity to join a firm here in Milwaukee that focuses on human centered or user experience design. I have been doing that for about seven years now, currently contracting at a large insurance company, and providing user experience, and design services to software team. So I work with lots of developers and that could be an interesting angle that we could take specifically on applying Sketchnoting. But then finally as far as sketchnoting, sketchnoting is, I like to call it notes plus. So it’s this idea that you take the notes you’re writing already and you simply add visuals to them. And then you sort of process through them through the filter of what’s, what are the big ideas or what are the important things that I can take value from. You focus on those and you capture those and everything else. You let it go because obviously you’re not going to apply those to your life so why recording things you don’t care about. So that’s really the core of it. It’s a visual thinking approach to taking notes and it sort of got started when I was actually a really fantastic notetaker. But I hated it because I was in the opposite mode where I recorded everything and then I had to parse through all this stuff that I wrote and try to figure out who was valuable. And that’s where I really realized, like why am I recording everything and then forcing myself to process what I’ll get. Why don’t I just process it all in the moment to the analysis in the moment and just take the things that I think are valuable then. And once I did that, I suddenly found all this free time as sense to visualize it. And that’s where my design background came in to start using drawings and typography and things to make my notes more interesting. And it was a way for me to solve a painful problem and I thought, “Hey, there’s probably other people like me out there. So maybe I should share this idea.” So that’s where it led to building a community doing lots of sharing and eventually getting an opportunity to write a book. And then another book about the approach to sketchnoting so that other people could adopt the idea.

Joe Casabona: Nice. Yes, that’s awesome for a few reasons because you do have the kind of technical background of other guests that have been on the show and then we talked about, you know, everybody probably who listens to this show has gone to a conference is, Siena talk has sat in a classroom where you spend time writing down everything that the person saying and then you’re not really listening right? You don’t really get what they’re saying because you’re too busy writing it down. But with the Sketchnotes, you’re hearing it, you’re writing down the important stuff. So I’m sure it probably has some effect on your retention rate as well. Would you argue with that?

Mike Rohde: Yes. I think it’s, it certainly does. And I think a lot of the reason why there were some, actually recent research that was done is that, the, if you want to look up the research, the people who conducted it are someone named Mueller and Oppenheimer. And basically in a nutshell, the test they did is they pitted longhand note takers versus typists and they played a Ted talk or something like that said we want you to record,m you know, the things that are most valuable from the talk and they we’re going to test you. So they set them loose, added two groups. The one that was long, and one that was typist. And they did the, they watched videos and took notes. Immediately afterwards both groups did fine. You know, it was so fresh in their memory it sort of didn’t matter. But when they came back and tested them at a later time. I think it was maybe a week later but the keyboardists memory retention drops significantly compared to the longhand writers. And they were kind of, it hurt kind of confused her, discuss surprised by that. They thought maybe, you know, having that much more speed typing it would be better note, you know, better retention. But it actually didn’t work out that way. And what they realized was the longhand note takers were actually doing analysis because they came to the point where they realize there’s no way that I can hand write verbatim notes that this person is saying. I have to make some decisions about what the concepts are, right? Had to sort of do some formation in their heads and use their hand to write. And So what they did is they ran the test again because he felt like “Oh, if we tell the keyboardist that they should take formatting notes maybe then you know the quality of their retention would be the same.” And so they told him that. And the second run and the keyboardist just fell right back into typing verbatim notes again and it really did make a difference. So it was kind of an interesting bit of research that suggests analysis is a big part of the value of note taking and the retention that you’re, the memories that you’re making are all part of that analysis that’s happening. In the moment whether you’re in this case, they weren’t drawing anything. There’s something reading longhand but I think the other thing they sort of seem to discover was using your hand to do the writing as opposed to keyboarding was a little bit more connected. So the whole body movement and brain. And so the kinesthetic aspect of it seemed to be more significant with long handwriting. And I imagine Sketchnotes will do the same way. And it really focuses your mind in different ways about listening, right?

so if you’re listening, simply to record what’s being said. It’s almost like passing through your mind. You’re not really capturing anything or if you’re doing analysis you have to listen, right? To make sense of it and just sort of piece it together and make it logically makes sense to you. Or to call out the things that don’t make sense if you feel like that person is you know, not saying that that’s something that makes sense so you can later research it.

Joe Casabona: Yeah, absolutely. And I mean that makes perfect sense and especially, you know, if somebody is using their own laptop, there’s also like the distraction fracture, right? So that’s very cool. I was fortunate enough to be included in your second Sketchnotes book, ‘Sketchnoting’. I believe it was the Yankees, it was a Yankee Mets game I remember because I drew the little subway train, the subway that…

Mike Rohde: Exactly, yeah.

Joe Casabona: So, but we’ll dive into that a bit more later because it is a fun topic. When you, so let’s talk about, now that we have a background on Sketchnotes, what was the, I guess the research process like for deciding to write the book and then ultimately getting the book accepted by Peachpit?

Mike Rohde: So actually I was really fortunate that I had a fellow author who made an introduction for me. So this guy named Von Glitschka, you can look him up. He lives out in or is again an amazing illustrator. He became fascinated with Sketchnotes and we became friends. And when I went to Portland for another event, we had dinner together and over dinner he said “Mike, you gotta write a book about this sketchnoting stuff” I said, “But you know, I’m writing blog posts.” And you know, I’m getting all this attention like it’s now you need to write a book like “Okay!” He said I know the person we need to talk to and he introduced me to his editor later that evening. So that was certainly a big part of you know, getting attention. A lot of times it’s just hard to get people that come and you know be open to your idea. But I think what you do find is people that do acquisitions that call themselves acquisition editors are always looking for really interesting ideas, different angles on things that have been covered. And that’s you know, part of the whole book process. How do you do something unique that also is still relevant and in context to other things, right? It can, if it’s too far out there you may not have any audience, but if it’s too much like everything else then it’s like why bother making another book. So you gotta find that interesting balance between the two so he made that introduction. I think that was a big part of it.

Joe Casabona: Nice. Yeah, absolutely. With book writing especially because I’m sure I don’t have any numbers to back this up so this is just anecdotal. But I imagine it’s a lot harder to justify the value of writing and printing books now, you know, because there’s Ebooks, there’s video courses, and things like that. You know, I’d love to do a follow up of version 2 of my book ‘Responsive Design with WordPress’ which to your point was about timing. There was not a book like that already and it was a popular topic. But you know, I don’t know if the band with this there for the publisher to be able to do that now or to justify doing that now.

Mike Rohde: I think it’s a much more challenging environment than when we wrote our books. My first book was 2012 so that seems like eons ago, that’s like five years ago now.

Joe Casabona: It’s like a hundred and then it…

Mike Rohde: Exactly. And then the second was 2014 which is three years ago which is still like forever ago. And in those terms and I think in that short time, I think there’s still a place for books. But I think it’s a much more niche place in some ways and I almost think a lot of ways. Video is sort of taking a big chunk of that. I think the challenge and the reason why I haven’t really focused at on doing a course or anything on sketchnoting is, I just don’t know if the formula is quite right yet. I see lots of courses out there and it helps some people. But I know like Seth Goldstein did some research on the courses he did [inaudible 13:33:3] his saas code and writing should have like you know 90% completion rates and he was getting like really tiny completion rates like 5% or something outrageously low. And he was just dissatisfied with it and that’s what pushed him to do something he calls the ‘alt MBA’ which was much more on. He set, I think his concept of the problem with video courses is generally that there’s really no accountability, right? You can sign up for a million courses and just never watch a couple episodes and never finish them. And There’s no impetus to really do it because there’s no one really knows, no one waiting for you in the room that you’re going to like in a typical classroom and there’s just not a lot of accountability. So he structured the ‘alt MBA’ in different ways by, you know, building in accountabilities. Got smaller groups, he charges a pretty fair, fairly high price. I think it’s like $3000 or something like that. So it’s much more expensive so he sort of like, taking the video course model instead of turning it on his head. But he’s doing it for a reason because he wants engagement and change and not just earning money off of a course that people watch 22% of and then quit, right?

So, but I think that space is sort of absorbing a lot of the training stuff. And I think there’s still a place for books but I think maybe it’s almost more like kickstarter books. So if you have someone that you like to work with, that they’re doing, and you, and they have an idea for a book and you believe in that person it’s almost like, personality based in some ways. Like do I believe in, “But Joe can produce related to anything around responsive.” like you could do responsive design for weasels or something and you might get, you know, backing right? But I mean that’s of course a silly example. But I think we’re maybe moving in that direction where you sort of buy the work that the person does and then you’re just interested in seeing what they might come up with. I know that there’s a variety of people, someone like Paul Jarvis who does a lot of work and he sort of sells in that concept, right? That he sort of has a certain perspective and if you like his perspective you’d probably like most of the things he produces. So it’s a challenge, right? I think there’s still going to be the big books, right? The ones where you get quarter million, half million, million dollar advance. But might have to research that two or three years and do this huge proposal and it’s like almost like a business plan.

And there’s expectations around what you know what you’re going to deliver. So it’s the bar is higher or like I think we were in the tech press where the bar was a little bit lower, the budgets were a little bit lower, the advantages are a little lower and they could take more risks, right? It was almost like investing in startups, small startups or something like an incubator or something. So I think that if you think of it that way, like those big books you see when you go to the airport, those are like, you know, half million dollar advances, in some cases more. But it’s also a huge research process to get to the, even to accept it right? So it’s another whole whole completely different animal, completely different game.

Joe Casabona: Yeah, absolutely. And so to that point, right? You have two books out. The video course stuff is interesting. We talked about that on this show with people like Troy Dean and Sean Haskett which I will link in the show notes along with the study that you mentioned. So, but you do have a community, right? So I like to ask, do you talk to anybody about business advice or direction of things like that? But maybe you could talk to this community of Sketchnoters that have been built up over the last few years.

Mike Rohde: Well yeah. I think that’s the most exciting thing and probably the proudest thing like, you know, I buy. All right. I should be proud of my books and of course I am. But I think I’m actually more proud of the community they got that’s been built over time. Because I think that’s the thing that’s gonna make sketchnoting go forward. It’s people, you know, getting turned on by the idea and applying it in their own lives in unique ways that I could have never imagined. Like that’s really exciting to me to see people like my friend, Rob who’s a physicist using it to capture ideas around his work in physics, right? Like really heavy duty scientific concepts and he’s using it as a way to express ideas like I could have never imagined that in my books, right? That’s just not my space. But the concept was just general enough that it opened up the doors for people like him and and I variety of other people added teachers are really crapping out to the idea as a way to help their students who have a tendency to want that doodle. Anyway why it could be Coop that concept and actually encourage them to doodle if that’s what they, if that’s how they think and work. But that could help them to really absorb and internalize the concepts that they’re trying to teach and in their own way.

So I have a variety of friends in this community that I rely on. One big person is Mauro Toselli who basically is the chief operating sketchnoter of the sketch.army that’s a sketchnotearmy.com and the focus of that site is simply that we promote other people’s work from beginners to more experienced people. It’s just an outlet to show what you can do with Sketchnotes and to get as wide a variety of people and the work that they do up there. So if somebody comes to it they could look through it and say “Wow! They are using it.” You know, in business or science or education or travel or you know, all these wide variety of uses, it provides sort of that reference and I think that’s the beauty of community for me is just seeing how wide and how deep the concept can be applied. And it’s fun some of my lifelong friends have been built through this community so it’s definitely benefited me in many ways. And I’m pretty excited about the opportunities that I see ahead for the community as a whole and all the places where sketchnoting could go that I still can’t even imagine. Yet there might be many other ways it could be applied so that’s pretty exciting.

Joe Casabona: Yeah, that’s awesome. And that was kind of the impetus to your second book right? So to set this up, there was the Sketchnotes, there was, I’m [inaudible 19:30.9] but it was [crosstalk 19:32.5] and the Sketchnote workbook was the second one. So the handbook introduces the notion and the workbook kind of shows you all of the many ways that you could apply Sketchnotes, right? So you know, like I said, I sketched a Yankee game and instead of just, like keeping a box score which is an impossible thing to do especially if you’re watching like a National League game, you know, it’s harder. But sketching the game I still like, remember, like Pineda pitched and he had like 11 strikeouts because I wrote like an ace. And that game was years ago, the book came out in 2014. So I did it on probably 20, 2013, right? So you know, it’s very cool to kind of see you take this concept and apply it to things where you might not even consider doing it because you’re not taking notes, right? It’s more than sketching, something that’s happening than just straight up taking notes about something.

Mike Rohde: Yeah. That’s more like capturing the experience in a lot of ways.

Joe Casabona: Yeah. Very cool. Very cool. I remember I learned like in an art class I took in high school the notion of the thumbnail sketch. You know, an artist would see something and then like draw it on the thumbnail so that later they can do like a proper painting or apply it. So that’s very cool. So okay, so we’ve talked all about the community and Sketchnotes. So let’s talk about how you built it, which are your books. I’d love to talk about the publishing process going from idea to execution. So maybe you could talk a little bit about that.

Mike Rohde: Yes, sure. And I would say that I’m probably a little bit unique in some ways in that. I came from a print design background so I had the ability to actually ended many annual reports and other large long format books from design to production. So I would actually turn files over to printers and go on press checks and make sure the colors are right and all that kind of stuff. So I had that advantage. So going into it, I was offered the opportunity to pretty much do the whole book. So it was a huge control thing, right? Where I think in your case you probably did screenshots, and you wrote, and probably got approvals for screenshots of other people’s work and stuff like that. I’ve got to see you wrote the concepts and worked with an editor and all that kind of stuff. So I had the distinct advantage of being able to do everything. Everything from the writing of the concepts all the way to delivering the file. So the way it started was from this the story told about Von connecting me with the acquisitions editor, Nikki McDonald. It then went to a proposal stage so we basically, I wrote an outline of what I thought the book would be broken into chapters. And I gave an overview of each chapter and what it would cover, a relatively good amount of detail. They provided actually a structure for how they wanted things to be received so that was very helpful to have a template that would show exactly what they wanted to see and how they wanted to see it. And then my acquisitions editor Nikki, actually reviewed the proposal and gave me advice and so we kept tuning it until we got it the way she thought she could win that pitch. And then she took it into the, there’s apparently like board meetings typically where a variety of people sit on the board and they make decisions about which books to make an offer for and which ones that they’re going to decline or whatever or they may be pushed back and say “Refine this further.” So she took it in and she made a great pitch and they were willing to take it on.

Around that same time I became aware of getting sort of a literary agent through my friend, Austin Kleon. He had some stuff to be posted about that. So, through another person that works with Chris Kloiber I’d done some illustrations for his book $100 start up and he had an agent so he connected me with this agent. And the agent I thought the value for me on the agent was partially that he was able to negotiate probably a little bit more money for the advance and some of the details on royalties. But I think the reason I wanted an older age and then I’m willing to take some of the earnings that I have been given to him as he continues to provide advice for me in the publishing space which I am not an expert in, right? Like I knew nothing about publishing things. So having an expert in that space who is a neutral party, not my publisher, I could ask questions like you know, what should I expect or you know, what happens if this happens or how should I think about this. He could give me sort of why things work the way they do. And some of the details he could also tell me like, you know, what I’m hearing from other publishing houses in this is a problem or, you know, I could ask him questions that were outside of what maybe an editor might be willing or able to respond with. So it’s sort of like having a third party advisor and some sense right? So that’s why I looked at it and he continues to be valuable in that way. So I connected with him. He did some negotiation. We came up with a deal, signed the contract, and then started working, basically taking the outline that we used to sell the book and expanding it one chapter at a time. So I would take each one of those items and then write it very detailed outline for each one to sort of figure out what it was they were trying to say and then provide examples like how we would show this like describing how we might illustrate this thing. What if there’s a sketchnote that I know of that could illustrate this concept and start to build each chapter that way.

And then at some point we turned into a manuscript. We actually started writing all the text that you see in the book. The editor would go through it and do the modifications, and you know, advise on you know, lots of grammar because my grammar wasn’t that great in a lot of cases so I needed help there. So eventually we would arrive at a final manuscript that everybody approved and liked. Now in this case, someone like you might then turn that over to the production team and they would come up with a design and ask for advice like, ‘Okay, we got a screenshot for this Joe. Do you want it? Do you have a…” Showing WordPress like what shot do we need to put here, you have to manage that stuff in my case. But this book because it was so visual and so unusual and I was in control of that from a design perspective, actually did the thumbnails you mentioned before thumbnails for paintings, I did thumbnails for the whole book. So I got to build the templates for myself and then I pencil sketch basically every chapter of the book at a very high level based on the manuscript that we created sketching out what stuff might appear where and and that kind of stuff. And oddly enough when we finished the book. The thumbnail was actually pretty close to what the final book was. That means there were obviously modifications and structural changes. But for the most part, it was a pretty good representation of the book. I got that sort of approval by the editor’s editorial team and then we started to go to work in sort of making it happen. That was a combination of a couple things. We had the manuscript ready so that was good to go but I had, then I started having to do all the illustration of lettering. One of the other tidbits about my book as I, because I was a print designer, I knew if I had to hand write the whole book. It would be insane, that would be a nightmare so I reached out to a friend who knew a type designer and we partnered up and he built the typeface for me from my handwriting. A couple of different handwriting styles and that allowed me to basically layout the book like I would have any other typeface. So once we got to the point of putting all the illustration and the words together that was actually my handwriting as a typeface. And the end result of that two was because we had this product we actually turned around and we formalized it, we cleaned it up and now we’re selling that as a typeface and others can use on their home projects. So it turned out to be kind of a nice benefit and the end that we sort of thought maybe we could do and that turned out to be pretty good. So I have to, you know, illustrations and just lay the whole thing out in black and white and you know the editor again would go through it and check everything and we would sort of get it, nailed down in black and white.

And then the last couple steps were we did two colors which are black and orange and grays and tons of orange. So I would go through it after the approval was done and colorize it. And then it was pretty much done. I would turn it over to the final files over to the production people and they ran it on the press.

Joe Casabona: That’s man, that’s awesome. And that is, yeah, like you said, I, so I’m not sure what your timeline was like, like my timeline was a little tighter because they wanted to get it out by the end of the year. They accepted the proposal in May and they wanted it out by December. So I was just actually doing like a chapter every two weeks or every 10 days or something like that. But you’re right. I would write a chapter, I would include screenshots, I would send it off to the first editor, they would make edits, they’d send it back to me and then send it off to the technical editor to make sure that it was programmatically correct. And so that was a bit of a whirlwind process for me. And then I essentially you know, I approved designs of the cover, and the layout and stuff like that but I wasn’t involved in that all. Essentially I handed everything over the final manuscript in October. I saw a final PDF I think in the middle of November, and it hit shelves in the middle of December.

Mike Rohde: Yeah. That’s, that sounds like, I think I had, I think if you counted…so I think of it two ways if you counted from when find clude, the proposal part of it was about a year for each one. And if you conclude the approval to the final production that I handed over or that was like nine months which is kind of insane. Now the other twist that we had is Peachpit at both workbooks wanted to do videos. We actually turned all the concepts into a video series. Unfortunately I had a friend who does video, Brian…so he worked with me to shoot all the videos and I had a scriptwriter. It helped turn the manuscript and the scripts for TV more or less into video. So it was really insane to say schedules for not only doing a book and all the production but then doing all the video as well. But I think having the control was really attractive. And now we’re really happy we did it because I think we made it exactly the way we wanted. And probably the advantage in your case is they probably had somewhat of a template they could rely on, right? So once they have text they flow within and you know it doesn’t take too too long for them to tweak some styles and make it unique but yet still follow a standard format. So…

Joe Casabona: Yeah, yeah. I remember like I had the cover and the cover was out in the wild is like pre order. And then I saw another cover that looked almost exactly like mine and I said, “Hey guys you know, it looks like somebody’s ripping off the cover of my book.” And they were like, “Oh, yeah. Well that’s actually just clip art so you’ll probably see that a lot.” And I was like “Oh, okay. cool.” like I didn’t care. It was just funny but it didn’t even dawn on me that they would use like a stock thing.

Mike Rohde: Oh, interesting.

Joe Casabona: Yeah. So but nevertheless we are, man I can’t believe how fast time has gone. We’re coming up on time and I have, there are a couple more questions I want to ask. We’ve talked about the process essentially from writing it to it hitting the shelves. But maybe we can do like a combined question of what are the big transformations since launch? So maybe you could talk about things like the promotion process or things that you, if you notice, like if there’s any errors are there’s in my book? And then what are your plans for the future of Sketchnotes?

Mike Rohde: Interesting. So PR was, is much work as in some ways as the book itself which you probably could attest too right? Sort of my angle on it was I had sort of overtime, built up people that I thought would be good candidates to receive samples of a book. My angle was to give away tons of free samples to people I thought could be influencers, people that would be welcoming to the idea who would be interested in the idea. And if people ask me, I would send them samples. And Peachpit has been great about anybody that I can send a name, address, and email, and telephone number in some cases like for internationals, they would send books to them. So I think that was a huge part in getting traction.

I think there was also the benefit of there was sort of a desire to have some direction on how to do this sketch toning because it was like you said becoming more popular at most conferences. And people would see it and think, “Well, you know, I can’t do that.” So, but if they were open to it, there was sort of a book that would give them direction and how to get started and to move it forward. So I think PR wise, I did as many podcasts like this as I could, I did interviews like any kind of opportunities to really sell the idea that that included talks and that I think really helped sort of the, all this slower ground working on the ground with people, individuals. One at a time has sort of built up overtime and that sort of help build a momentum because I think it’s a little bit more organic and natural in a lot of ways.

As far as where I think it’s going, right now I’m really excited because I have an opportunity to do a lot of teaching and I think that’s really where I wanted to go with this was how can I take these concepts and go in and mainly with teams now, I’ve done some individual stuff where I invite people to come to a place and those are often a ton of work. And sometimes you wonder whether the return is great from the impact side. But like the earnings that you make from all the work, you have to do to get an event like a workshop to happen is a ton. And you know, I’m doing it on the side as my sub full time job so that’s the other kicker than there is this isn’t my full time thing. So I’m really excited to have opportunities to go in to a lot of places like Drexel University or to how live in Chicago or different places and teach the concepts to people and the teams. And I think that’s the future that I see is just going out and teaching people and really sort of giving him a kick start where they can now take it and see in a really short time that it’s applicable and then use it in their lives.

Joe Casabona: Nice, that’s awesome. And so we are at time, we can go a little bit long though because this is really interesting to me. As you know, I, well so by the time this comes out I will be completely solo. I at the time of this recording, do you have a full time job that’s been very good to me about being flexible to do the podcast in the side gate. So what’s it like trying to balance your full time job with kind of your side stuff?

Mike Rohde: It’s a big challenge because in addition to having sketchnoting on the side and the sketchnote Army and teaching and then a full time day job, I’ve got three little kids at home. And they all want to, you know, go on bike rides and play. I have my wife that I want to go on dates with and spend time with and, you know, other activities. So it’s a challenge but I think what I’ve learned is it’s important to really balance and focus on the important thing. So most of the time I get it pretty good but there’s times when you miss things or you know, made it, maybe I just made a choice that turned out it would have been better had I done it, this other thing. And you just don’t know you just have to roll with it. But it’s a challenge, it really is.

I think if you know sketchnoting continues to grow and have the momentum that I see there, maybe come a point in time where I have to make a decision if I want to do a full time. And that’s a challenge, right? When you got a family, and kids like to sort of make that jump as a father, and you know with mortgages and payments and all the other things that come with having a family, it’s a big risk. It’s a lot lot bigger risk than when you’re single or something. I mean not that it’s not to dismiss those that are of course risky too but it’s a different kind of risk. Maybe it’s a better way to say it. So it’s a challenge. So it’s just a matter of choosing priorities and deciding what I want to do and I think that having that perspective helps.

Joe Casabona: Yeah, absolutely. You know it’s funny I made the decision to go solo with a 3 month old in the house and it’s…so I could spend more time with her. On the flip side you know, I probably would have had the bond with to go solo while I was single but I had the time then. You know, I didn’t have as many expenses or a family as this for it but I also had the time to kind of work on my full time job and my sidekick. So it’s an interesting balance and it’s definitely a tough decision no matter what you decide to do. And with that I wanna ask the last question before I get to the fast five which I didn’t prep you for but it’s just five questions I like to ask. Just give me your gut answer. But the first, or the last official question is, do you have any trade secrets for us?

Mike Rohde: So I mentioned this that I had a sketchnote conference that I was at and I think a lot of people don’t realize this, they really focus on the drawing ability and how beautiful things look sketchnoting particularly. But I think the secret rep, the secret weapon and sketchnoting is really listening well. So like you hone your listening skills, I think Sketchnoting gets a lot easier because you can clearly determine what stuffs worth keeping and what’s not and that’s a really tough question to ask. People ask me how do you know? What’s, what’s the big idea? What’s important? What is it like? Well I sort of, “I can’t tell you that because that’s a decision that you have to make, right?” It’s all relative to what you want to get out of something. But I think if you can really focus on listening, if you’re listening is good, it makes everything a lot easier. And that’s sort of my trade secret is the sort of enter into things I sketchnote by really focusing on listening and sort of analyzing and piecing things together and coming to my own conclusions about what it means. Because ultimately that’s what I’m gonna take away and apply, right?

Joe Casabona: Yeah, absolutely. And just to add to that point you definitely don’t have to be good at drawing to be a good sketchnoter. I’ve always enjoyed drawing but seeing my Sketchnotes next to the fellow who did the soccer game you know, shows that the skill levels can vary and you could still capture the idea well. So okay! So let’s get to the Fast 5.

Mike Rohde: All right. Let’s do it.

Joe Casabona: All right. So what is your favorite book?

Mike Rohde: I would say my favorite book is still gotta be ‘Lord of the Rings, Lord of the Rings series.

Joe Casabona: Nice, very nice. As a follow up, what’s the last book that you read?

Mike Rohde: The last book, I just read a book, an interesting book just this week by getting Rob Bell who wrote the book called, ‘What is the Bible?’ And so he comes at the Bible from a contextual perspective. He does a lot of research in scripture from the Hebrew and from the Jewish perspective. So what I like about it was he looked at the context of who were the people that wrote the Bible. What was it like when they wrote it? Why did they write the things that he wrote? And why did these things stick around? Like what made these things survive for thousands of years and so many other things didn’t. So his perspective on looking at scripture is really fascinating for me and I quite enjoyed that one.

Joe Casabona: Yeah, wow! That’s man, we could have a whole of the show on that. I went to 20 years of Catholic school and we talked about that, so interesting. Very cool. What is your favorite type of music?

Mike Rohde: Well I’m really wide. I love a wide variety but I would say if I had to choose one, I really like 80s music. So like 80s new wave.

Joe Casabona: Nice, nice. Any band you wanna shout out here?

Mike Rohde: Oh boy, I’m a big New Order fan. So that would be a good choice. I’m really happy now that I’m hearing lots of bands that are actually sort of trying to capture that 80s new wave alternative sound. So I’m really excited about some of the music that I’m hearing coming up, coming back.

Joe Casabona: Nice. Very cool. What is your favorite food?

Mike Rohde: My favorite food? But that’s a tough one. If I was forced to narrow it down I would love Pad Thai, Thai food.

Joe Casabona: Nice. Man, I haven’t into Thai food in a while. I’m gonna have to get that now which I think I say after every answer. Who is your favorite sports team?

Mike Rohde: Of course, it’s the Green Bay Packers.

Joe Casabona: I think I knew the answer to that one, yep.

Mike Rohde: Excited about that this year. Lots of young guys coming in. Got him a good quarterback. So you gotta love your team wherever you’re from. I respect it.

Joe Casabona: Absolutely. I myself, am born and raised in New York so I’m a Giants fan. but I’ve, as long as the Packers weren’t playing the Giants over for the Packers it just a good team you know, they’re like a good group of guys it seems like. So…

Mike Rohde: Yeah. Big Blue…Big Blue.

Joe Casabona: Yeah, absolutely. So, and then the last question I’ll post to you the same way that it was posted to me, which was if you couldn’t do computer work, what would you do? So if you couldn’t do the thing that you do as a day job, what would you do professionally ?

Mike Rohde: I think I would go into sketchnoting and that wouldn’t not necessarily include computers. It would be lots of whiteboarding and paper and maybe it would be iPads but it would be more drawing focused. And teaching. I think teaching would be really fascinating to come to, you know, complex ideas and simplify them and help people to see them in a new way. I think that’s really exciting to see people really like glomming onto an idea and really taking it to the next step for them to have huge huge talent that I would love to build on.

Joe Casabona: Awesome, yeah. That sounds fantastic. I think I said on one show that I would be an animator and the guest pointed out that I think animators still need to use computers. So I would definitely focus on more on the drawing and the art part of it.

Mike Rohde: Yeah.

Joe Casabona: Cool. Very cool. Well Mike, thank you so much for joining me today. It was, we went a little long but it was a great conversation so I’m happy to do that.

Mike Rohde: Well thanks for making time. This is a lot of fun to sort of step into a different space and share. And hopefully, you know, the stuff we’ve talked about is helpful to some people out there and you know, definitely if you want to reach out and say hello, I can, I answer questions in addition that you may have had from the, for the podcast.

Joe Casabona: Awesome. Well Mike, thank you so much for joining me.

What a great conversation. I loved talking to him about Sketchnotes in general and publishing through our publisher. It’s something that we have in common. And again, just a fantastic conversation definitely check the show notes for all of Mike’s contact information and the links that we talked about.

And if you liked the show then definitely head over to Apple podcasts and leave us a rating and a review. It helps people find us and honestly it’s a great way for me to get feedback from the listeners on things that work, things that don’t work. And you know what, if you leave a review, maybe I’ll read it on the air.

So again, thank you so much for listening. Thanks to our sponsors Liquidweb and Seriously Simple Podcasting .

And until next time, get out there and build something.