Getting2Alpha
Getting2Alpha
Lee LeFever: The art and science of explanation
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Intro: [00:00:00] From Silicon Valley, the heart of startup land, it's Getting2Alpha, the show about creating innovative, compelling experiences that people love. And now, here's your host, game designer, entrepreneur, and startup coach, Amy Jo Kim.
Amy: Lee LeFever and his wife, Sachi, pioneered a form of visual communication called explainer videos.
They run Common Craft, an animated video production company, and they launched a training spinoff, the Explainer Academy, to empower anyone to create better, clearer explanations. Lee has a refreshingly clear way of looking at the choices a small business owner makes when things start to take off.
Lee: Along the way, we started asking a question when we had lots of opportunities to take Common Craft in a lot of different directions.
And we would ask a question that would really kind of illuminate what, where we might be headed. And that, that question is really simple. It's [00:01:00] what if it works when you're entrepreneurial and you're looking at opportunities, it's really easy to get seduced by business ideas like, Oh man, that could make a lot of money.
That's probably a way to make a lot of money. But I think by asking the question, what if it works? It forces you to think like. If it works and it does make a lot of money, that is what your life is about. Like you talk about that subject all day, every day, and the people that you talk to are doing that thing.
And that I think is a really strong indicator of. What your work life ends up being about. And, um, I think that we answered that question and saw that maybe we would rather be educators more than promoters. And I think that's something I encourage people to do when they're thinking about business opportunities is to think about what if it works, if this is successful and you become the CEO of this, is that what you want?
And maybe it is, everybody has different perspectives on it, but I think it's a good question to ask.
Amy: What if it works? That's the question Lee and Sachi asked themselves about their business. And now I'm asking myself that [00:02:00] question too. Join us and learn more about how Lee transitioned his successful business to support the life of his dreams.
Welcome Lee to the Getting2Alpha podcast.
Lee: Great to be here. Thanks
Amy: I'm so excited to catch up with you. It's been a while.
Lee: It's been a long time for sure.
Amy: And you've had such an interesting career path. So these days, tell us what you do.
Lee: Sure. I run a company called Common Craft and we're known sort of over the last decade for making explainer videos and being one of the first to make explainer videos, sort of at the dawn of the YouTube era with videos like RSS in plain English and wikis in plain English.
And these days Common Craft has kind of morphed over a number of years into being a membership service or subscription service. That educators use. And our goal is to give educators a, um, videos and visuals that help them communicate with clarity. Our, [00:03:00] our goal continues to be. Explanation and helping people see that that explanation is an important skill and that it can be a tool for business leaders, teachers, uh, educators of all types.
And, and so that's really what we do is we make videos from scratch. And we license them. That's really the core of our business.
Amy: That's so visionary that you've been doing that and it's really exploded in the last few years. You were very early in that wave.
Lee: We were very fortunate. I think it was a a set of good timing to Have the inspiration to make those early videos and for youtube to be starting at the same time was one of those kind of good coincidences I think that really kind of propelled us and and helped us be sort of Virally shared really early in the youtube world and and I talked to people all the time who still Remember us from those days that was to have us 10 years actually 11 years ago in April.
Amy: Wow. So give us a glimpse into your work life.
Lee: Sure.
Amy: What's a typical day look like? Who are [00:04:00] you working with? What kinds of decisions are you making?
Lee: Uh, you know, Common Craft is an interesting, is an interesting company. It's really has two employees, me and my wife, Sachi, and we've always been that way. And I think that's always going to be what Common Craft is.
And to kind of give you a little bit of a background there before answering the question, um, Yeah. You know, we've made our size sort of a constraint in terms of our business. Like we we've decided that we could have had employees, we could have made built an agency for making videos, but we chose instead to have a two person home based business and for that to be a constraint that helped us find.
Other kind of unique opportunities in terms of how we manage the business and what kind of opportunities we pursue. So we're home based. That's kind of the big thing. So, you know, on a daily basis, we're not really working with clients. We're oftentimes doing creative work. We're making videos, writing scripts, doing storyboards, making videos.
And, uh, we're also working on the business. We're working on, uh, websites and working on promotions and newsletters and communicating with [00:05:00] our customers and users and things like that. And I think that, you know, Common Craft is interesting too because it, it comes off like a lifestyle business. Lifestyle is very important to us.
We probably work, you know, as much or more than anybody else. But I think that our lifestyle is more important to us than in a lot of cases, you know, the business being, you know, a billion dollar business, if you know what I mean.
Amy: Right. But it sounds like it can support your lifestyle.
Lee: It does. Yeah. Common Craft membership has supported us for a number of years and we're really fortunate for that to be the case.
We like the idea that we can work with teachers and educators in over 50 countries who become members of our website and sort of help us support a work life that we can manage and that we can continue to build value for our customers. Like we're always making videos. Our library has, I think, 96 videos in it now and soon it'll be 100.
And you know, we publish about 10 videos a year and we couldn't do that. And couldn't kind of have business have [00:06:00] common craft work the way it does without without our members.
Amy: That's fantastic. So how did you get to be doing this? This you've carved out this unique, really satisfying role in life work life.
Where did you get started? How did you get started in the world of design and tech?
Lee: I've always been attracted to it. And especially the sort of communication side of the Internet, I got really into online communities around the turn of the century and read your book at the time, which was very helpful.
And, uh, along with the clue train manifesto, which is another book that meant a lot to me at the time, and I started an online community program at a health care software company that I worked at at the time and just. Was absolutely convinced that that was the future. Like that was really what the future of the web was going to be.
And I did that for three years and married my wife along the way. And then we decided that I could go and do a basically consulting starting in 2003. And that was when common craft really [00:07:00] started. So she stayed in her job so I could have help have health insurance. And I started doing what was at the time online community consulting.
So I was working with organizations to understand what this whole world was about, what, you know, message boards were at that time. That was the thing. Blogging was getting started, but not really something in the, in the sort of corporate world and, uh, continued to be a huge believer in these new tools.
And what I really found in working. on consulting projects was that there were these amazing, valuable and often free tools like blogs and wikis and social networking and, and things like that. And then I really wanted to help people see the value and really adopt them, you know, cause I thought that people like my parents should be interested.
And, and really what it seemed to me, the problem was, was that they weren't being communicated in a way that was understandable. There were so many people out there who understood these tools, but it was almost like they understood them too much. Like they, they couldn't put their knowledge [00:08:00] into a form that would help a normal person see why a blog would matter or how they could use it.
And in fact, one of the stories that I tell is that I was at a conference in Silicon Valley in about 2003 or 4 and a tech CEO was speaking and he mentioned RSS, you know, really simple syndication, and person raised their hand and said, what, uh, what is RSS? And he said, uh, Oh, it's an, it's an XML based content syndication format.
And just kind of moved on as if he had answered the question for the, for the guy. And I don't, I don't think it helped anybody in the room. And, and that was really one of the first times I thought like. This is a problem. Like, these things are never going to be adopted unless someone can start communicating about them in a way that normal people can understand.
And so I started writing blog posts. I started kind of working on this problem in the form of text. And then a few years later, when YouTube started to get big, Sachi and I started thinking like, what can we do that would get Common Craft some attention and build on our [00:09:00] strengths? And we had the idea of making videos.
Putting them on YouTube and using those old blog posts as a starting point. And through a bunch of experimentation and a bunch of failure and a bunch of frustration, uh, Sachi had this idea of pointing the camera down onto a whiteboard on the floor and then using our hands and paper cutouts to tell a story.
And that's now what is known as common craft style from there. We. You know, within weeks, we published RSS in plain English and then wikis in plain English, and they were viral hits and things just went kind of crazy from there. We had no idea what we were doing. We had no experience in video or education.
And the videos show it. I mean, if you look those up on YouTube, it's, uh, I say it's a technical abomination, but They had good explanations. They, they did what they were supposed to do, which was help people understand these tools from a different perspective. And that led to being hired to make videos. We were, our second client was Google, and we made a video called Google Docs in plain [00:10:00] English and continued doing custom work for a long time.
Eventually we started getting requests from people that wanted to use. Videos that we made that were our original videos, not ones that we were paid to make, but ones that were our property said, Hey, I want to be able to download a file and put it in my PowerPoint for work. I want to use it in my classroom.
I want to use it, you know, for, as a business tool. And we thought, Hmm, this is kind of interesting because the custom work is great, but it only pays once. Is there an opportunity here to think about video as a product? Can this be something that we make once and license multiple times? And that was like this revelation.
And so we started to slowly but surely turn the company away from getting hired to make videos and building a library of our own property that we can license. And that's really where we are now. It's taken years and years to make that transition. But that's the business we wanted to be in. And that's the business that I think, uh, makes us happy and makes us fulfilled.
And it does all the things for us that we want. And honestly, the custom side of [00:11:00] the business was, was great in a lot of ways, but, uh, going, that was a road that we felt like if we went further down, we would, we would become less and less happy.
Amy: Why is that?
Lee: Um, a couple of things getting hired to make custom videos varies widely.
And for the most part, everything has been, has been pretty great on that side, but they often are promotional. They are explaining a tool or an app or a service, and we at heart want to be educators. We don't want to be promoters. And that the business model that goes along with that is another thing where, as I mentioned before, getting hired to do a service is very different than selling a product.
And you kind of get into the services business and That business can't scale without hiring people. And once you start hiring people, then you sort of have to continue to feed the beast for the company to kind of be successful. Whereas licensing offers a way for a business to scale via, you know, licensing fees that, that are more passive and allow us to remain a small company, but for the business to scale, uh, without us actually growing the [00:12:00] manpower of the business.
Amy: That's great. So you mentioned earlier that educators are mostly your clients. Can you say a little bit more about the variety of clients and also who are the clients you have now that make you really happy?
Lee: That's a good question. You know, I think that on a sort of volume basis, individual teachers make up a lot of our customers, but that also extends to whole school districts and sometimes universities, community colleges.
And, uh, sometimes even fortune 50 companies who have training teams inside their company that are teaching things like internet safety and how to avoid phishing scams and things like that. And our videos are really aimed at, you know, not your most technical person, but a person who is informed and smart, but just as missing kind of the big picture of some of these ideas.
And so we think they're really flexible. One of my favorites, just came about last fall, and I think we might be doing this project for a long [00:13:00] time. Uh, IBM, I don't know if you know, IBM has been active in Africa since like the 1920s or something like that. And they have a new project called, uh, Digital Nation to Africa.
And part of their goal is to provide educational services to people all over Africa, to create, to help create what they call new collar jobs. So it's helping people move from a sort of less tech, less internet kind of based background and understand the internet in a way that's useful to them as far as their careers, being a part of their community and so on.
And they came to us and said, Hey, your videos are perfect for our program. You know, we want to license a number of your videos and use them in this educational platform that could someday, you know, reach millions and millions of people in Africa. And along the way, we have made a few videos that kind of fit into that as well, but I just love the idea of Common Craft videos.
Playing that role in a developing, developing content and some of these nations that are starting to, to really adopt [00:14:00] these new tools. And that's really our sweet spot. You know, we really want our videos to help sort of influence people to see the value of technology and not just know what to click and how to use it.
Amy: So what are some of the topics that the videos you're making are going to be in this IBM Africa project?
Lee: That's a good question. We're kind of starting to work on phase two. Initially, it was a lot of, uh, our internet safety videos. So that's things that sort of help people understand how to avoid being scammed, how to have a good password, how to think about, You know, sharing online, like what's appropriate to share and what's not, and also a lot of like internet basics about like what are, we have a video that explains web browsers and we have videos that explain things like website cookies and things that are kind of a part of the internet that help people sort of fill in a fuller picture of what the internet really is.
Um, I think more of it in the future will be around mobile and mobile safety and using mobile devices for [00:15:00] transactions and, and how. Uh, the internet can be a, a way for people to, uh, communicate with their local government and things like that.
Amy: Wow. So really basic, but fundamentally important stuff.
Lee: Yeah. I think that's a good way to look at it.
Amy: Looking back over your career path and how you navigated, what do you know now? That you wish you had known 10 years ago.
Lee: That's a really good question. I think something that I've thought about recently is along the way, we started asking a question when we have lots of opportunities to take common craft in a lot of different directions.
And we would ask a question that would really kind of illuminate where we might be headed. And that question is really simple. It's, What if it works when you're entrepreneurial and you're looking at opportunities, it's really easy to get seduced by business ideas. Like, Oh man, that could make a lot of money.
That's probably a way to make a lot of money. But I think by asking the question, what if it works, it forces you to think like if it [00:16:00] works and it does make a lot of money, that is what your life is about. Like you talk about that subject all day every day. And the people that you talk to are doing that thing.
And that I think is a really strong. indicator of what your work life ends up being about. And, um, I think that we answered that question and saw that maybe we would rather be educators more than promoters. And I think that's something I encourage people to do when they're thinking about business opportunities is to think about what if it works, if this is successful and you become the CEO of this, is that what you want?
And maybe it is. Everybody has different perspectives on it, but I think it's a good question to ask.
Amy: You also offer courses in training products. I've noticed where you empower people to create their own explainer videos. Tell us a little about that.
Lee: Sure. You know, this, this goes way back into sort of the common crafts earlier days, you know, from the moment we started making videos, there were, there were copycats, And, uh, people would email us all the time and say like, Oh, look at [00:17:00] this person.
They've totally copied your style. You know, you should do something about this. And, and we were never really sure what to do. Like it was not a fun thing to see happen, but we always took a more hands off approach. I think our fans really wanted us to like, you should send them a cease and desist and you should, you know, police this a little better.
And I think our lawyers said the same thing, but it's just not part of the way that we look at the world. I think that, uh, what we learned really was that a lot of people copying our style were really just our biggest fans who were testing a new way to present information. And they had no intentions of trying to compete with us or anything like that.
There were a couple of agencies along the way that did that, but it was a passing thing. And we re we reached this point where we kind of had to decide, you know, are we going to, police this? Like, what's the, what's the alternative? And we decided that instead of looking at it as a threat, we decided to look at it as an opportunity that there were, there was, you know, essentially demand from people who wanted to [00:18:00] do this.
And they would, they would email us and ask us and say, Hey, you should teach people how to do this. And we kind of took that to heart and started thinking about ways that we could put things into the world that actually encourage people to, to be inspired by what we do and do it for their own purposes.
Do it inside of a company or do it at a school. And today you can search for Common Craft Style on YouTube and there's hundreds and hundreds of videos where students and teachers have made them to explain history and things like that. And so we've taken a very hands off approach. In fact, we're encouraging people to do it.
And that goes across a number of subjects. And in 2012, I wrote a book called The Art of Explanation, which shares, you know, everything we learned about explanation from making videos and applies it to sort of everyday life. We started, you know, Licensing a library of our artwork that we call cutouts that kind of removes the barrier of visuals.
So if you have a big library of thousands of visuals, you don't have to figure out how, you know, what, what visuals to use. And then, um, [00:19:00] that kind of led us into this idea of what we call the Explainer Academy, which is, um, an online school that has two courses right now that teaches, you know, explanation skills and then video creation skills.
And, uh, that's sort of our latest thing is the explainer academy. And it is really designed, like you said, to help people see opportunities to, to make videos that look like ours and work like ours, but for their own purposes.
Amy: Awesome. So how would you describe your superpower as a creative person? Your sweet spot?
What really lights you up?
Lee: Uh, this is kind of an easy one for me. I felt like this for a very long time. Um, I am very good at explaining things. Um, I, my, my superpower is I can take a subject and one of the ones that we've been talking a lot about recently is blockchain. It's a classic explanation problem, kind of a subject that, you know, it's what runs bit, it's the kind of, sort of the backbone idea of Bitcoin it's super technical, but kind of really simple.
If, if you look at it the right way. [00:20:00] And my superpower is being able to take a subject like that and explain it in about 500 words, which is about how long a Common Craft video script is. Uh, I don't get it right the first time. It's a very collaborative process with Sachi and I. She's a big part of everything I do.
But that, that is, that is really what I do at heart is I, uh, find creative ways to take complicated ideas and explain them in the, in a short video.
Amy: And you found a way to make that. The central thing that's enabling your life and making you be able to provide so much value in the world, which is great.
Lee: Yeah. I feel really, really good about that. I feel like that's how we convert our sort of talents into capital. So to speak.
Amy: So building on that. What do you see that's new and exciting in design and tech these days? What trends are you personally following?
Lee: That's a good question. Um, you know, I'm really interested in media.
Like I think journalism, I'm, I'm really, uh, uh, there's, [00:21:00] uh, there's journalism plays such a huge role these days, but, um, You know, journalism is starting to take on more of an explanatory role. Um, there's people like Ezra Klein who, who runs Vox Media, not Fox, Vox Media, who really is an explainer himself and someone who, uh, sees the value and not just but doing it from a perspective that gives people a new kind of way to look at it.
It helps people understand the news. Um, so that's not really necessarily a design and tech kind of idea, but, uh, I do think it's a trend that I'm happy to see is more of a focus on that sort of thing.
And that is true with things like, you know, Neil deGrasse Tyson is, is someone who he's kind of all over the place, but he's this, uh, amazingly smart physicist who is also able to take these complex ideas and make them interesting and understandable to normal people. Um, so there's things like that I think are really sort of in our wheelhouse from the explanation side that I'm most interested in.
Amy: Yeah, my family and I spent a really happy [00:22:00] summer watching Cosmos the reboot.
Lee: Yeah, totally. That's great.
Amy: So where's your focus these days? What's coming up on the horizon for you?
Lee: Yeah. Um, you know, we're always, we're always making videos. We've making videos is so normal to us now we've done it for, for 10 years. So there's always that I am in the process of writing a book. It's not a follow on to the art of explanation.
It's called camping on Tuesdays. And it's really about some of the stuff we've discussed today. It's really about building a business in our case and making lots of decisions and having lots of, you know, failures and things. Things to think about, but trying to create a business that makes time the priority versus money.
And part of the idea is that, that time is the new wealth that, you know, that's really what people are so short on and what they would value the most is having more time. And we think that it's possible to look at business in a way that actually makes that work. And camping on Tuesdays is the whole idea of being able to camp on a Tuesday because you have control of your time [00:23:00] versus camping on a Saturday when everybody else is there.
So it's a really personal kind of story, um, about our sort of path in our lives.
Amy: Where can we find out more about this book?
Lee: It's really early. It's not, we're still working on the manuscript. So, um, there is, campingontuesdays. com is available. It's sort of just a medium publication right now. There's not really anything about the book there, but campingontuesdays.
com will be the place to find information, uh, here in a little while.
Amy: Fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us and sharing your journey. It's inspiring to talk to you.
Lee: Thanks for having me.
Outro: Thanks for listening to Getting2Alpha with Amy Jo Kim, the shows that help you innovate faster and smarter. Be sure to check out our website, getting2alpha.com. That's getting2alpha.com for more great resources and podcast [00:24:00] episodes.