🎙️ The Fortified Life Podcast with Jason Davis – Episode 208
“The Conquering Creative: Visual Thinking, Business Basics & Scaling Your Gift with William Warren”
👤 Guest:
William Warren – Founder & CEO of The Sketch Effect, illustrator, author of The Conquering Creative, and visual communication expert.
🌟 Episode Overview
In this episode of The Fortified Life Podcast, host Jason Davis (aka “Mr. Fortify”) sits down with William Warren, a lifelong creative, visual storyteller, and founder/CEO of The Sketch Effect. This company turns complex ideas into engaging visuals for events, organizations, and brands.William shares his journey from:
- A kid obsessed with Calvin & Hobbes, Peanuts, and The Far Side,
- To an art school graduate with a master’s degree,
- To a corporate marketing professional stuck in spreadsheets,
- To launch a visual note-taking side hustle,
- To become a full-time creative entrepreneur and CEO leading a team of artists serving clients worldwide.
William and Jason unpack what it means to steward God-given creativity in the marketplace, how visual thinking helps people learn and remember better, and how creatives can get “good enough” at business to build sustainable, impactful careers.
👨🎨 About William Warren
- Founder & CEO of The Sketch Effect, a visual communications company specializing in:
- Graphic recording / live visual note-taking
- Animation and motion graphics
- Infographics and visual summaries
- Visual thinking workshops
- Author of the book The Conquering Creative, where he shares nine key lessons from his first decade of building a creative business.
- A visual storyteller who thinks in pictures and helps organizations communicate complex ideas in simple, visual ways.
- A speaker and workshop leader, teaching teams how to leverage visual thinking and communication in the workplace.
🧩 Conversation Highlights
1. From Comics Kid to Visual Storyteller
- As a child, William devoured newspaper comics like Calvin & Hobbes, Charlie Brown, and The Far Side.
- He fell in love with visual storytelling long before he knew what it was called.
- A first-grade project on Captain Cook made his mom realize his gifting—she thought he’d traced the ship, but he’d drawn it from scratch.
- Drawing in church bulletins as a kid became an early expression of his creativity.
“It was always part of my DNA—how I was wired.
”2. Art School, a Corporate Pivot, and a Drained Creative Soul
- William went to art school, earned a master’s degree, and won multiple awards.
- Then he did something unexpected: he took a corporate marketing job in a cubicle.
- He was grateful for the job, loved the team and his boss, but the work was slowly draining the creative part of his soul.
- Surrounded by emails, spreadsheets, and traditional corporate communication, he began drawing during meetings just to stay creatively alive.
3. The Birth of The Sketch Effect: Turning a Hobby into a Business
- Instead of traditional note-taking, William started doing “sketch notes” in meetings:
- Words + images
- Simple icons, color, and layout
- Visual summaries of business concepts
- Colleagues noticed the value: he was turning verbal information into visual clarity.
- His reputation spread—“there’s this guy in marketing who does this weird visual thing.”
- He began getting invited to other meetings to sketch live.
- Someone finally whispered, “You know, you could probably start a business doing this.”
- He started The Sketch Effect as a side hustle, built up enough work, and eventually quit his job to pursue it full-time.
“I never set out to be an entrepreneur. I considered myself a creative first and foremost. But I’ve loved the journey.”
4. Why Visual Thinking Works (and Why It’s Not Just for “Artists”)
- William explains that all humans are visual learners, not just artists.
- Schools train us to communicate with words (writing & speaking), but rarely train us to communicate visually.
- As a result, workplaces end up with:
- Dense, wordy emails
- PowerPoint decks full of text no one reads
- Meetings where people “talk, talk, talk” and tiny sticks
- Our brains, however, are wired to think in images:
- When William reads or hears concepts, he visualizes them as a movie in his mind.
- Visual communication isn’t about being a great “artist”—it’s about:
- Clarifying ideas
- Making messages memorable
- Helping people learn and share more effectively
“It’s not about the quality of your art. It’s about the quality of your ideas and the effectiveness of your communication.”
5. What The Sketch Effect Does: Graphic Recording, Animation & More
Primary Service: Graphic Recording (Live Visual Note-Taking)
- A live sketch artist attends an event—conference, keynote, panel, breakout, or even church/faith-based events.
- The artist:
- Listens actively to the content
- Synthesizes and distills key ideas and themes
- Translates concepts into visuals—icons, words, arrows, layouts
- Documents the talk in real time on:
- Large physical boards (“like big whiteboards”) or
- A digital tablet projected on the screen
- The result is a visual map of the talk or discussion that:
- Makes the event more engaging
- Helps attendees remember what they learned
- Extends the life of the content beyond the room
William and Jason reference an event where Chris Carneal delivered a keynote and William visually summarized it live. Attendees could walk up afterward and literally “see” the entire talk on one board.
Other Sketch Effect Services:
- Animation & Motion Graphics
- Whiteboard videos
- Motion graphic explainers
- 2D animations
- Infographics / Summary Boards
- Still, visual summaries of content and ideas
- Workshops on Visual Thinking
- Teaching teams how to use visuals to brainstorm, plan, and communicate
“We exist to help ideas stick, spread, and make meetings better.”
6. The Business Side: From Creative to CEOWilliam shares a critical distinction:
“There’s a big difference between being a really good creative and running an excellent creative business.”
Key insights for creatives:
- Business isn’t as complicated as you think. You don’t need an MBA.
- You just need to be “good enough” at the basics:
- How sales work & why people buy
- How to hire and delegate
- Understanding basic finances and a P&L
- Minimizing overhead while increasing revenue
- Treating people well, honoring your word, and communicating clearly
- His time in corporate America taught him:
- Business, at its core, is about service, reliability, and integrity.
“If you provide a good service, treat people with kindness, and do what you say you’re going to do, you will be successful.”
7. The Conquering Creative: Changing Your Thinking, Actions & Outcomes
Jason and William discuss his book The Conquering Creative, which is built around three major shifts:
- Shift Your Thinking
- Shift Your Actions
- Shift Your Outcomes
William emphasizes that you must start with thinking:“
Your thoughts dictate your actions. Your actions become habits. Your habits become your future.”
One of the most significant mindset shifts for creatives:From: “My creativity is my passion.”
To: “My passion is my product.”
- For creatives, work is deeply tied to identity and soul.
- Moving from “I create just for love” to “I offer this as a product in the marketplace” can be emotionally challenging.
- If you don’t want to attach a price tag to your creative work:
- That’s okay—keep it as a hobby.
- But if you want to be a professional, you must:
- Accept that your passion is now a product
- Package it, price it, and present it to the world
“If you’re not willing to put a price tag on your work, you should not pursue a creative career. And that’s okay—just keep it in the hobby zone.”
8. Scaling a Creative Team & Letting Go
- The business quickly demanded more than one person could handle.
- Early on, a client required multiple breakouts to be sketched simultaneously, which forced William to think beyond “the William Show.”
- He began recruiting and training other artists, eventually building a team of 12–13 graphic recorders spread across the U.S. (plus partners in Europe).
- Emotionally, it was challenging to:
- Trust others to represent the brand.
- Release some of the creative control.
- Over time, he discovered:
- Some people aren’t the right fit—and that’s okay.
- Others are phenomenal and even better than him in certain areas.
- Today, he has complete confidence that his team will “crush it” for clients across locations.
“It makes me feel so grateful as a business owner to have a team I can rely on and depend on.”
🔗 Connect with William Warren & The Sketch Effect
The Sketch Effect (Company Site) 👉 thesketcheffect.comSpeaking, Workshops & Personal Site 👉 williamcwarren.comLinkedIn 👉 Search: William C. Warren
