Ashton Rodenhiser, Sketchnoting at Mind's Eye Creative Consulting

  Welcome back, friends, to our podcast, Unlocking Your World of Creativity. And we travel around the world and today our creative passport is being stamped in Nova Scotia, Canada. We're going to be talking about live illustration. How we communicate our ideas visually and a great concept and a new book she's written called Sketch Noting. My guest is Ashton Rodenheiser. Ashton, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much, Mark, for having me.

It's such an honor to be here with you

today. It's so fun. I think we have to start with paint us the picture of your creative surroundings in rural Nova Scotia. It's a beautiful

place to live. I live in an old farmhouse on the top of a hill, surrounded by, pasture and trees.

It's a beautiful place to raise a family. And I would say the closest town that is famous to me is Lunenburg and It's very stereotypical, Maine movie, like I was saying if there's a movie filmed in Maine, it's probably not Maine. It's probably Lunenburg and it's a UNESCO world heritage site and has all the colorful houses and it's very cute.

So I live close to there and it's very, there's a decent arts community there and there's inspiration all around where I live in nature. And in the architecture that's here too. So it's yeah, it's a great place to be in.

Fantastic. We're all affected by our creative surroundings.

So I always like to know what's what's outside this little zoom square well, Ashton is a professional live illustrator, which is again why I wanted her to begin to describe this. This is what she does for a living. She's founded a great company called Minds Eye Creative Consulting and really dedicates her business to this idea of sketchnoting and live illustration to help communicate complex concepts.

Maybe for a little definition on a little foundation, Ashton, you can give us a sense of what this live illustration is all about.

Yeah. I do it primarily in two different ways. So that's either in person with large sheets of paper and my, what I call my fancy markers or virtually. So instead of seeing my little zoom square here with my face, you would actually see it.

The beginning, just a big white space and by the end of a session, it would be all drawings and you get to see that unfold. Since COVID, of course, I pride prime. Yeah. Predominantly work virtually. I had to pivot my business very quickly when that happened. Cause I was a hundred percent in person before that.

And yeah, it's been a beautiful journey of those, if doing it both ways, actually COVID kind of was a good thing for me in a way, have more flexibility, not have to be traveling all the time, which was nice, but I still really love paper markers. Yes. So oftentimes I'll be like at a conference or.

A meeting or some sort of brainstorming thing. So it could be like the boardroom with executives or could be at a retreat or what have you. And as folks are discussing something, or as a presenter is. Speaking all of their wisdom into the room. I'm listening, I'm thinking about what I'm hearing. I'm synthesizing those ideas.

I'm trying to make sense of what I'm hearing. And then I'm translating that into a visual language on the board, either physically or virtually, and my job is to do it very quickly so that by the time the speaker is done or that meeting is complete, I am pretty much done. So you're able to hear. What the speaker was saying, or the folks in the room were saying, you can see it unfold in front of your eyes.

And then you now you have this visual snapshot of the key highlights and takeaways from that presentation or what your vision is going to be for the next year or 2 or what have you. Yeah, it's you usually find me in those types of settings working as a professional. And then sketchnoting or visual note taking is using the same skill set, but using it more so on a smaller scale.

So I've been really teaching folks lately on how to use this skill set by doing it for their own personal note taking or Develop the skill so they could take it into their own meeting so they don't have to have me there and they can lead a small group or something and be able to visualize those ideas.

So it's really a combination of words, drawings. imagery and bringing those ideas to life. So it's really about highlighting and communicating information. Yes,

and I was looking at some of the samples of your portfolio on your website. Just fantastic. And I couldn't help but think about the the drawing skills, yes, we're going to talk about those, but the listening skills, the active listening, the translating, in real time this is the court reporter of visual translation here.

Tell us about how you trained yourself to be that kind of active listener.

Yeah, so I actually got into this, I found out about it as a facilitator, and as a facilitator those are the most important skills to have is the listening and, making sense of what you're hearing and then feeding back in words.

To the group. Now, when I found out about the graphic aspect of it, I fell in love with it because I'd always been very creative and I wanted to be an artist when I grew up and I didn't think it was in the cards for me. So I didn't really pursue that as a profession. But it was really this beautiful coming together of this kind of wanting to pursue and have a creative field of work.

And this world of facilitation. So I actually entered into this work. Less of an artist, like I wouldn't say my skills were that great. I'm not wasn't a great drawer when I started this by any means and but I really had an opportunity to hone in on those listening and those thinking and synthesizing skills before.

So I think. It was a, I prefer it when I look back now is very embarrassed in the beginning because I, my drawing skills just weren't that great. But I was able to just develop that and John, I felt like I was able to jump into that learning curve pretty decent because of my background as a facilitator.

But yeah, that, that is like the hardest thing to almost describe to people and trying to explain to folks. It's really a process you have to try for yourself when you're listening because it's, you're not doing just straight note taking anymore. You're not like listening to a word and trying to capture a word.

There's you're doing the hard work while you're also listening. So you are listening to what they're saying, and you're trying to deepen your understanding before you put it to paper because you can't capture everything. So you have to make those like split second decisions of what you're hearing and what's resonating with you or what you think is resonant.

Like for me, when I'm doing professionally, I'm trying to resonate pick out what might be resonating with the whole or like the audience. So That's a little bit more of a guessing game, but with your, when you're doing sketch noting for yourself, you're trying to resonate. If you're, if you want to do it live, you don't always have to do it live.

But if you want to do that live, yeah, you have to make those decisions in the moment and you have to make those decisions very quickly. So you have to think about what you're listening to very rapidly for sure. And it is one of the hardest things to teach. You really just have to practice it for yourself.

And every time you do one, you just learn more and more about that listening and thinking and how quickly you can capture some things too. Yes.

Your portfolio runs deep. I think about Malcolm Gladwell's 10, 000 hours to become an expert. Once you've done 2, 500 of these conversations as you have.

And I'm sure that since that's on a website, it's more and more every day. But yeah, what you're right about practice. And I think about in many creative areas, it's having the idea is one thing, but actually doing it over and over as you build your skills and your

craft. Yeah, I saw something, I think it was like a TikTok reel or something the other day, and it was someone talking about talent and they're like, I hate it when people say, Oh, you're so talented.

And I really resonate with that, like what she was saying she was like, tongue in cheek about it. But I resonated what she said, because if someone looked at my work today, 10 years into doing this, they're like, oh, you're so talented, but I show you my stuff. I started off with 10 years ago.

Oh, it is bad is so bad. And I do. I like sharing them, even though I didn't necessarily show it like a couple of years ago, but I feel more brazen to do it these days to be like, look how far. You can come if you just practice that's all the difference and I've said to people like it has to look good If it doesn't there's a problem like if you drew and you sketchnoted every single day almost for 10 years It better look pretty decent.

You're going to get

good at this.

Yes. Yeah, like I did. I think out of those 2, 500, I think 600 I did just last year alone. So it's like that you're looking at almost two a day all year long. And, so I'm obviously not doing two a day every day, but I might be doing like 10 in one day and five in another or so.

You just get good because you're doing it so much. It's not about talent. It's not knowing how to like the first three years. Honestly, I do a light bulb on everything because I didn't know what else to draw.

What else do I say about an idea? Yeah, it was

like, oh, that's a good idea. Here's a light bulb.

Like I already I knew how to draw it. I practice how to draw it. Like my drawing skills were pretty sad. Pretty sad in the beginning. I really had to work hard to develop that visual vocabulary in my mind. So when someone says vision or someone says collaborate or someone says anything basically, I know what to draw.

I are, I have a little bank in my mind.

That's what I was curious. Do you have this bank where you have almost a visual mouth thesaurus?

Yes. Yeah. So there's maybe an icon where you can learn How to draw like when I teach it to people, I encourage people when they get to the point of learning how to draw things is learn how to draw things that multiple meanings.

So like a light bulb is a good one because it can, you can use it in so many different ways. It could be like a big idea or you want to highlight something shining a light, like there's different use cases or like a magnifying glass can be like, it could be focused. It could be analytics, like it could represent many different things.

To jump up that learning curve a little bit higher. Learn how to draw simple icons that have multiple meanings. So in the book that I have, I show how to draw 15 icons, but those 15 icons can represent over 80 different ideas, right? So You know it's less about learning how to draw everything and leaning in on some of those things that you can reuse constantly.

But then it's also, at its core the drawing elements that kind of hold a sketchnote together are not. Icons necessarily they're things like a line. That's the first thing I teach people how to draw a line And then how to turn that line into an arrow and then draw a square Like and how you can use a square or a circle to contain information or to separate or to show flow of the information across the page because At the end of the day the information is always going to have to win out Because you're capturing information but you can slowly transition over into a sketch noting type style.

It could be 95 percent words and 5 percent drawings and those 5 percent drawings could just be something simple like a line and a square and a little, maybe a little light bulb. There you go.

Yes, comes back to that. You've mentioned the book. Let's jump into that for a second.

How fun to be able to capture these experiences in these concepts and publish it in a book.

Yeah. So I wrote the beginner's guide to sketch noting and published it a few months ago and took me about a year and a half to write it. And I, I also did like a beta reading process. So I invited people to provide feedback along the way.

And I did three different rounds of beta reading and it was doing that process was completely like perfect because I don't think I could have created the book that it is today without the help of the beta readers. It was such a important role to to do because things that I thought were common sense were not so and the beginner, I really emphasize the beginner part of the beginner's guide to sketch noting.

And that's why I labeled it that way, because what I was experiencing is that people would like, I think it's such a powerful tool to help you learn, to help you understand and get clarity on your ideas to help you remember. To help you take action on information and When people come up to me and say, oh, I could never do that.

I'm like, but you could though. It's like I said earlier, it's like a line and a square. Like I know I'm oversimplifying it right now, but it really is not rocket science. Like you can learn the drawing elements in 15 minutes. Like you could jump

through the first. But it is a muscle that you have to develop to be able to quickly translate, the verbal to the visual.

Yes,

exactly. But like at a glance, what, sometimes what I'll do is I'll take a sketch note and we'll pull all the pieces apart and you'll get to see how they all kind of work together. And the individual pieces are not difficult to learn. So it's just about building up that muscle memory and that confidence.

And I really wanted to write something that. Jumped right in. It was a complete how to guide by the end of it. Like you have the confidence that you can do it Where I was finding there was a bit of a gap where people were wanting to learn how to do this But there was too much heavy on the illustrative piece like one thing that we don't even, I don't even talk about in the book is like a visual metaphor, but then you'd find all this stuff about visual metaphors and that's like too advanced.

It's let's just start with the basics here, people. We can get to visual metaphors like in the future, but I really wanted people to get as much like success in the moment as possible to get them to experience the benefits of it because I think it, it is so powerful and such a powerful way to help you learn and engage with information and.

And yeah, so that was really important to me to really create a guide that was very hand holy through the process. So I hope I did just that justice. Yeah, I think

so. And you've got all these experiences and, say corporate settings and meetings, conferences, you mentioned non profits, other organizations.

I wonder if any of these experiences or meetings stand out. You say, in the course of building your competency were there moments or particular meetings that stand out for you where either the content, or the discussion, I even think of meetings that we've all been in, where things got a little tense are you capturing the conflict, are you waiting for it all to figure out?

Yes, I do. I capture and sometimes I have, if I know there might be some conflict going into it, I tell the client, I'm going to draw what people say. So be prepared. I'm not filtering out, it's not my company culture. So I'm going to highlight what people say. I would say the most.

I think one of the best ones that are the experiences that are the most memorable were situations where people engaged with me in a way that I allowed them to have a voice that, and they expressed that they never felt like they had a voice before. And in those situations, it's just a complete honor to be there and support them in this way, because it's not about at the end of the day for me.

If I can draw a quote unquote pretty picture or not, it's that they said something and I wrote it down and drew a little picture or I connected it to someone else's idea, but like their idea was written down and they can see it as a part of a whole conversation and that they're Voice was valuable in that room.

I did have a gentleman years and years ago come up to me and he said, I have worked at this company for 40 years and no one has ever asked me how I felt before. So You just get blown away in those situations where you're like, this is a very important place to be to hold that space for them.

Very good. And you're taking it one step further. A good facilitator should do that, right? Make sure everyone in the room is heard, not just the extroverted, louder people, but a lot of people have ideas. And it sounds like this sketchnoting technique sometimes, we were laughing about post it notes, but it's like we've all papered the walls.

with the post it notes and the flip charts and everything else. But sometimes people still can't be heard. And so having this outside facilitator ear and translating, technique is a way to let them know they were really appreciated.

Yeah, sometimes you need to have that, that third party person like myself or a co facilitator to be able to feel safe to be able to share.

Cause, if it's your manager wanting you to talk about stuff you might not want to feel comfortable doing that. So sometimes if there's tension in the room, like if I, I try to pick up on. Cues that are even not said, or if it's like a random thing that even doesn't have anything to do with the information.

For example I was in a space one time and there were some guys that came in and clearly made it very clear. That they didn't want to be there. So I really leaned in and listened to that group and they had, they were like joking about something and it was like an anchor. So I drew a little anchor on the thing, even though it had nothing to do with the information.

And I totally won them over because at the break, they came over and they joked about it and they were like, okay, like they felt like this was worth, because they were feeling heard. Yes. Yeah,

And, we think about what kind of meetings could this be used in and, some come to mind, but I loved on your website.

You have topics we covered and there's 50 different subject matters, everything from cyber security to midwifery. Doesn't seem like there's a topic that it wouldn't work in.

Yeah, that's true. I get to learn about so many different things, which is awesome. Yes.

I also wanted to highlight and ask you about one of the things that you mentioned was not only the people being heard, that's for sure, but communicating the idea and even this idea of accessibility to the communication.

You spend a lot of time on how are we going to get the ideas, communicated.

Yeah, it's sorry, you're asking the different situations.

Yes. And also, I guess this idea of the communication, the output, it's visual, but it also has to be accessible to many communication styles or many people's needs.

Yeah. The one thing that I have been talking with a lot of folks lately is around the accessibility piece and like folks who are neurodiverse.

So like folks that may have different learning styles. So like technically learning styles have been debunked. Technically scientists got together and learning styles aren't a thing. Apparently, but it is still the number one comment that people come up to me and say Oh, I'm a visual learner.

This resonates with me . And so there's that. And then there's sometimes that emotional piece that can help you connect because you're like, Oh, I felt heard. And here is my voice. And then, , there's the neurodiverse folks that maybe can't physically or mentally sit through ten presentations at a conference.

Even us who aren't neurodiverse, that's a hard ask these days. If if you can have a visual representation of the information, even if they couldn't sit on that conversation or that presentation, they still feel, they don't feel like they've missed out. Like they've still been able to engage with it.

And at least in that way, and ask their colleagues about something, maybe that's on the drawing, for example. Like folks that may prefer to read or to listen and, maybe don't consider themselves a visual learner, like nothing is a catch all for everybody.

But what I have experienced is that the majority of folks in a room do like to have a visual to, to compliment. And the example I always give is YouTube. So YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world for a reason. We want to see people doing things. We want to see that unfold in front of our eyes instead of reading it or consuming it in a different way.

Yeah. yOu've also

created, in addition to this book on sketchnoting, you've also created a great doodling book on the Maritimes. Really celebrating and illustrating your region in a creative way. Tell us about how that came together.

Oh, when you have these random ideas, I always fall asleep at night.

Isn't that what always

happens?

No, nobody has those ideas. Yes. Yeah, I I just thought it would be fun. It's like more of a little passion project, a little fun thing to do. So they're like little step by step drawings of things that are commonly found where I live and the provinces close by. Yeah, so there's some pretty fun little ones that you might be confused about if you didn't live here, but if you lived here, you totally get it.

Yeah. That's

a lot of fun. And you bring up this word we've been talking about it in a really formal businessy kind of sketch noting way, but doodling is a creative outlet in and of itself, isn't it?

Yeah, so the way that I like doodling is amazing and it's gotten a bad rap so I feel like My goal in life is to try to bring back the doodle like the doodle is amazing Like people should be doodling and the way that I see doodling like In sketchnoting, how they relate to one another is that, a doodle can lead to a sketchnote, or it could be a building block, or you can make your doodling more purposeful by sketchnoting something.

So if you're going to be doodling anyways, like, why not incorporate some more sketchnoting skills and make those doodles really work for you? Because doodling in its own right can help you remember up to 29 percent more information, right? Just by doodling just by putting pen to paper and drawing a little my always go to doodle is a snail I like to draw a little swirl and a little head and there you go a little got a little snail a lot of folks have their go to one that they like and yeah, so so if A lot of folks would get in trouble when they were younger in school for doodling in their own notebook, but it was doing what your teacher thought opposite.

She thought it was distracting you but it was actually helping you stay focused. So I always say if someone has a problem with you doodling, you come tell them to talk to me and I'll say, yes,

we're going to go back to the learning styles. It's this is a learning tool.

Exactly. I love that.

It's going to help you stay focused. Yes. Even if that doodle has nothing to do with the information, it's still helping you stay focused and engaged, even though you might not be looking at the speaker or looking at the teacher you are learning in your own way. So yeah, sketching, sketchnoting can just be this beautiful step up from the doodle, really.

Yes.

I love that. And taking the craft then to creating a business out of this, your MindsEyeCreative. ca. What lessons can we learn from that? In other words, you saw this passion, this talent that you had but you said, I really want to create. I don't want to just be the sort of a one off freelancer. I want this to be a business and just people see it as a business offering.

How was that for you?

it, and it wasn't until late: 2016

had attended a conference in: 2015

So I sat in on those and just tried to soak up as much as I could in those three days. I was pregnant with my second child at the time. So then after he was born, I was like, okay, let's like, let's try to figure this out and build a business around this and take this seriously. Cause I. wanted to see what that could look like for me if I actually You know, went all in on it instead of just like here and there.

So yeah, and it's an, it's interesting business, right? So it had in the beginning, I would get rejected every day and they hurt Pearl, like those rejections, hundreds, probably of rejections over years. They hurt real bad in the beginning, I'm, I guess seven or so years into the business side of it and you like I you get to a place where you believe in your work so much that It's unfortunate if they don't hire you because the people in the room really could have benefited from it maybe it's me. Maybe I didn't I wasn't able to speak to The value enough of it, or maybe I wasn't talking to the one who actually would pay for it.

It's somebody who has to now go and convince someone else to pay for it. And that doesn't always work, right? Because that value gets lost in translation. And if I'm speaking to people who've never seen it before, that's very hard because they weren't in the room and experienced the power of it for themselves.

So even if they can't articulate it. They have a stronger incentive because they believe in the power of it for themselves. So for me, it's if you want to hire me, that'd be awesome. And I'd love to work with you, but if you don't want to, that's okay too, but in those early days, it was not that way.

You didn't quite have

that swagger.

I feel very brazen on sales calls now. I'm just like, are you fun? Cause if you're not, I'm not going to work with you. And they're like, I think I'm fun. I want to be fun. I don't think I'm fun. It's they're trying to convince me that they're fun enough to work with me.

Because I don't like, my style is my style. The way I work is the way I work. And if you want the Ashton experience, then that's what you can have. But, they have to know that's what they're, that's what they want and that it's a perfect alignment. And it's not always going to be that, if they want me to show up and draw a pretty picture, I'm not your person.

Because I want to work with people who care about the people in the room and they care about their learning and they care about their engagement and I'm not there just to check a box or be the like entertainment. I'm not the entertainment. I'm there to serve a business goal, a purpose. Right?

There is, there should be an ROI for me there, whether it's like monetary or otherwise, like there should be, right? I find when I, when people, early days when I would get hired more as the entertainment, it's just the vibe is off. It's like they Yeah, it's just a different type of treatment if they look at you as the entertainment like the sketch artist.

Yeah. Yeah. And I like the snob, and kudos to all those folks that do that. And that is still a great way to, to make a living and to be creative in that way. But that's just not the way that I want to work. I just was able to hone over and luckily stuck through all those rejections over years and have gotten to this place now.

And it's one of those things that when you're in it, now you're on the other side, you do forget what it was like in those early days. But it was a tough go there for a while trying to really, I had to work on my mindset a lot to get to a place where I deserve. I believe that I deserve to get paid well to do this work and.

Yeah, it was a tough go those first few years, but I am and then basically when COVID hit, I had to basically recreate my business. Yes.

Yes. Thanks. Thanks for sharing these personal insights because there's not a person listening to this podcast who hasn't gone through that. it's like the purgatory of your work.

It's I need to get through this and and make progress. And then finally coming out the other end, like you said, the the amount of work, the quality of work always pays off. So thanks for sharing

that. Yeah, no problem. It is, it can be really hard as a creative when you are building a business or trying to do the sales around it because the rejections do feel so personal because you feel like they are saying no to not just you, but to your creativity.

Yes.

It's a tough one. In the soul.

rIght in the

heart. That's my creativity you're talking about. Exactly. And everybody else is saying, it's just a numbers game, just keep making those calls, just keep putting out those proposals. Ashton Rodenheiser has been my guest. Ashton, I can't thank you enough for the great conversation.

I think about When you were describing going to your conference and hearing the other people and wondering if this was something you could do as a business, I think you've spoke to people today on the podcast who may be at the some point in their creative journey who say, I'm not sure if I should push the button, go out on my own or start a business or, ask for a transfer to another department, whatever the case might be.

And you've given us some real encouraging words and I really appreciate

it. I'm good. I'm glad. Yeah. And if you're one of those people, just keep at it, right? Try not to compare yourself to other success. Followers are just a number. They don't mean anything, you just show up and you serve the people the best that you can.

And. You don't need to have a million clients or a million sales to be successful, right? Like just go your own pace and do your own thing. Yeah.

Good advice. Good insights. Folks, my guest Ashton Rodenheiser and her company is Mind's Eye Creative. In Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, outside Halifax.

Let's don't lump this nice country setting into the big city. Ashton. Thanks for being on the show and listeners. We're going to continue our around the world journeys. We love talking to creative practitioners and places all over the globe about how they organize ideas and we've learned to Visual communication tool today and how we gain the confidence and the connections.

We've also heard about to launch our work out into the world. We'll continue these conversations and I hope you'll come back and consider subscribing and following and even leaving a review of the podcast of this has contributed to your creativity until next time. I'm Mark Stinson and we'll continue to unlock your world of creativity.