Summary: Episode 188 of The SitePoint Podcast is now available! This week Patrick O’Keefe (@ifroggy) interviews Lee LeFever (@leelefever) from Common Craft about how their explaining videos came about, the community around Common Craft, his book The Art Of Explanation and more! Listen in Your Browser Play this episode directly in your browser — just click the orange “play” button below: Download this Episode You can download this episode as a standalone MP3 file. Here’s the link: SitePoint Podcast #188: The Art of Explanation with Lee LeFever (MP3, 54:54, 52.7MB) Subscribe to the Podcast The SitePoint Podcast is on iTunes! Add the SitePoint Podcast to your iTunes player. Or, if you don’t use iTunes, you can subscribe to the feed directly. googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1328644474660-10'); }); Episode Summary Patrick and Lee talk about the place for creativity in explaining many things and how explanation (or sometimes the lack of it) can impact in so many areas of creativity and client relationships. Browse the full list of links referenced in the show at http://delicious.com/sitepointpodcast/188. Interview Transcript Patrick: Hello and welcome to the SitePoint Podcast. This is Patrick O’Keefe and I’m doing an interview show today with my friend Lee LeFever. Lee is the founder and Chief Explainer at Common Craft, and he’s the author of a new book, The Art of Explanation: Making Your Ideas, Products, and Services Easier to Understand. According to the Common Craft website they are on a mission, they want to make the world a more understandable place to live and work by helping professionals like you possibly become explanation specialists because more specialists mean better explanations. And that’s a good thing. Common Craft is married couple Lee and Sachi LeFever with Tom Bosco serving as a mascot. I’ve known Lee for a while and it’s great to have him on the show. Lee, welcome to the SitePoint Podcast. Lee: It’s great to be here Patrick, thanks. Patrick: My pleasure. I want to talk about a few different areas of your life and your business, Common Craft, and a little bit on online community and of course explanation. So first the business, Common Craft. I mentioned how Common Craft is just you and Sachi, and for the record, on the cover of the book, is that you and Sachi to the right? Lee: Yeah, that is an image that has been with us for a few years. I re-did it for the book but it is meant to be me and Sachi. Patrick: Okay, now who’s that other third guy, is he like a creepy guy who follows you around pointing at his head, or who is that person? Lee: Just a little more Common Craft art. Patrick: Awesome, so one of the cool things about Common Craft, and there’s a number of cool things about Common Craft, but you’ve spoken about how important lifestyle is as a priority for you as a business. Specifically being small and happy. To me, Common Craft is at least to some extent a lifestyle business. You’re successful but you never want to be successful at the cost of sacrificing your independent lifestyle. That sometimes can be hard for some people to understand, because they think that you should always want to be bigger, bigger, bigger. But bigger can come with a cost, and it’s been interesting to watch Common Craft grow while also seeing you negotiate that cost and maintain your mission. I wanted to ask you to speak a little bit about that negotiation with the cost of sacrificing that lifestyle but also growing and how you’ve been able to accomplish your goals. Lee: Yeah, definitely, that’s a great question. Common Craft started in 2003 with me being an independent consultant and then when Sachi joined in 2007 we became a two-person company and that’s when we started making the videos for which we’re known now. [...]
