Good morning, friends!

Jack Butcher spent 10 years working in advertising as a creative director for multi-billion dollar brands. And then he realized he was missing something: Freedom.

“So in search of freedom, I started my own advertising agency,” he writes. “No fun, and even less freedom.”

After two years of working on his own agency, Butcher figured out that he needed a model that could scale infinitely. “The insight behind this transition? Productizing myself,” he says.

He pivoted to a business he called Visualize Value, which consists of a $1 million per year product business and a media platform with an audience of more than 500,000 people. (You may remember when Butcher illustrated a guest post I wrote for his website.)

On Friday, Butcher participated in an hour-long, live "Ask Me Anything" with readers who are part of The Profile's members-only Telegram chat. (To join, consider becoming a premium member here.)

Below are the highlights of his Q&A with the readers:

Q: What advice or tips would you give to educators who are creating content to teach online when designing content to have maximum learning impact?

My personal approach is “principles first” — so understanding the building blocks of knowledge that are necessary for someone to practice something effectively, and introducing them one at a time.

Lots of online education teaches tactics first (or the memorization of something), which is much less effective than teaching someone the fundamentals and letting them figure it out for themselves.

It's also about encouraging people to create things off the back of what they learn creates the best kind of feedback loop — “If you can’t explain it to a 5-year-old, you don’t understand it.”

Q: How did you deal with consistency when starting VV?

I loved doing it, so consistency just happens. May be a controversial point of view, but if you have to try exceptionally hard just to motivate yourself to do something, chances are you aren't going to be able to compete with people who love doing it.

To follow up, there needs to be some selfish motivation underlying the pursuit — even if no one saw VV graphics, I was sharpening my design skills by working through them.

Q: How do you think about measuring successful content on social platform? When you post, do you look at certain things to gauge viral-ness and/or use that to inform future content?

I think I'm 10% analytics, 90% gut. A few rough frameworks I use for knowing how viral something is off the bat though (over 20% engagement/impressions on Twitter is going to fly)

The other way I think about it is content can be this really cheap method for validating things. One tangible example: tweet an image, it goes viral, and make it an NFT (as opposed to just launching an NFT and hoping for the best).

Read the Full Q&A here

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PROFILES.

— The accidental billionaires [**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]
— The basketball superstar prepared to dominate
— The disease detective
— The baby brokers
— The agent transforming the business of basketball
— The shark attack survivors
— The firm using the media to expose wrongdoing
— The $113-million deli

PEOPLE TO KNOW.

The accidental billionaires: Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi and his co-founders weren’t interested in starting a business, and even less interested in making a profit on the tech they built. Eight years later, at least three of the founders are billionaires. This is a wild story of reluctant success. (Forbes)

“We were a bunch of Berkeley hippies, and we just wanted to change the world.”

The basketball superstar prepared to dominate: Kevin Durant currently sits at the center of the wildest drama in basketball: a radical experiment in Brooklyn, where the once-hapless Nets have transformed themselves into a superteam around Durant and his friends. At long last, after all these many millions of years, Durant may have finally found his true basketball home. Now only one question remains: Will his Nets dominate the NBA playoffs? (The New York Times)

"I’m a very centered, balanced person. I understand why these people are doing this. If I didn’t understand, then I probably would go crazy.”

The disease detective: Joe DeRisi's obsession with mystery diseases began when he was a teenager in the 1980s and first heard about AIDS. “I mean, what is it?” DeRisi says. “Is it a virus? Nobody knew!" Today, DeRisi is a professor of biochemistry who studies infectious diseases at the University of California and co-president of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub. He has invented a way to find pathogens that scientists didn’t even know to look for. Can his findings help prevent the next pandemic? (The New York Times)

“With pathogens, we’re much better at watching for things that we already know are out there.”

The baby brokers: At any given time, an estimated 1 million U.S. families are looking to adopt—many of them seeking infants. That figure dramatically outpaces the number of available babies in the country. The Adoption Network Law Center (ANLC) was started in 1996 and says it has since worked on over 6,000 adoptions and that it’s the largest law corporation in the nation providing adoption services. Here's why the private adoption system is fraught with problems.

“Anytime you put dollar signs and human beings in the same sentence, you have a recipe for disaster.”

The agent transforming the business of basketball: Rich Paul is the trusted agent of LeBron James and a bevy of other NBA all-stars. He started his agency, Klutch Sports Group, 9 years ago. Since then, he has negotiated nearly $2 billion in deals for his clients. He met his biggest client — LeBron James — when the athlete was 17 years old. Paul was selling vintage sports jerseys out of the trunk of his car. The rest is history. (The New Yorker)

“He is absolutely unrelenting in getting his players what they want, and he will use every means available to him to do that.”

The shark attack survivors: The odds of being attacked by a shark are less than one in 11 million, which makes it nearly impossible to find people to turn to when you become that one. Meet the survivors who are part of a support group called the Bite Club—the most exclusive club nobody wants to join. (Outside Magazine)

“Once you realize you’re part of the food chain—not sitting on top of it—it’s really difficult.”

COMPANIES TO WATCH.

The firm using the media to expose wrongdoing: In the whisper networks of corporate America, people pass around the names of colleagues to avoid — sexists, racists, creeps, and toxic bosses. Now, the firm Lioness is helping employees make those names public. It has carved out a specialty helping people navigate the process of speaking out against workplace mistreatment. Here's how the two founders midwife stories of discrimination, harassment, fraud and mistreatment into the world. (The New York Times)

“We’ve noticed that stories change hearts. It’s much more effective than the legal case, in a way.”

The $113-million deli: Your Hometown Deli in rural New Jersey sold cheese steaks and chicken parm in a concrete building with red awnings. This would not seem like a high-growth business model, but since it went public in 2019, the deli’s stock price had risen 1,200 percent, to $13 a share. This profile solves the mystery of how a sandwich shop somehow attained a value of $113 million on the stock market. (The New York Times)

“There may be something more clever and even more sinister behind this."

This installment of The Profile is free for everyone. If you would like to get full access to all of the recommendations, including today’s audio and video sections, sign up below.

AUDIO TO HEAR.

Rick Steves on building a $100 million business: Travel guru Rick Steves has built an impressive $100 million travel business through sheer persistence and a genuine love for the art of travel. He got the idea through his own experience: When he went backpacking through Europe, he had trouble affording housing, food, and cultural experiences. When he returned to America, he realized that people were eager for recommendations on how to visit Europe on a budget. This is a masterclass on how to turn your passion into a full-fledged hundred-million dollar business. (Link available to premium members.)

Orna Guralnik on love during a pandemic: The COVID pandemic presented unique challenges to even the most committed and strong relationships. If you've felt overwhelmed in the last year, you're not alone. Psychoanalyst Orna Guralnik suggests asking yourself: "Is my feeling of overwhelm coming from a rational place or an emotional place?" In this conversation Guralnik discusses COVID-19, quarantining, and all other relationship anxieties. (Link available to premium members.)

Ana Lorena Fabrega & Chrisman Frank on the future of education: Asking kids "What do you want to be when you grow up" is not a productive question. Ana Lorena Fabrega and Chrisman Frank, who are leading the startup Synthesis, explain that learning needs to follow kids' obsessions. "What’s interesting about it is that there are infinite occupations in the world," Frank says. "There’s infinite niche." (Link available to premium members.)

VIDEOS TO SEE.

Steve Callahan on his improbable survival: In 1982, Steve Callahan was on a journey in his sailboat headed for Antigua. Seven days into his trip, the boat was punctured by an object during a storm, and it became swamped. Callahan escaped into an inflatable life boat, but he found himself adrift and alone. Here's how Callahan survived 76 days in open water with limited supplies. (Link available to premium members.)

Vitalik Buterin on the future of Ethereum: Vitalik Buterin is the co-creator of Ethereum, a cryptocurrency that is currently the second-largest digital currency after Bitcoin. In this interview, he discusses all the hot topics in crypto at the moment. He delves into Dogecoin, Elon Musk, NFTs, and oh, the meaning of life. (Link available to premium members.)

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