The Futur: Welcome back to another episode on The Future Podcast with Chris Do. Today's episode is a special featuring Chris as a guest on Omar El-Takrori's podcast. Let's get started.
Chris Do: The best kind of content you can pursue, consume, to build your personal brand, is to go to see a therapist. Because what the hell are you talking about? You're as broken as everybody else, and you're, you're fronting as much as everyone else. So, we can learn the tools, what kind of cameras we're using, what kind of lighting setup, we can do all of that. That's not gonna help you. But, if you were to invest time, money, and energy towards something, go figure out who you are, like, heal. Learn to love thyself, and then hold up your freaking iPhone with crappy audio and video and just start talking to the camera. That's going to be the best brand possible.
Omar El-Takrori: I am excited. Because today's department is the branding department. If you search, what is a brand? If you search branding 101, if you search how to build a brand, this person shows up. I'm fan boying right now. And I have with me Chris Do, who is an Emmy award winner. Also an Inc 5000 recipient. Millions of followers and subscribers across social media. Multiple seven figure entrepreneur and husband of the year and the drippiest out there. Honestly, like look at the, look at the vibes and someone who appreciates fashion every time I see Chris, the bags, the Brands, Off White, Louis, Alex Studios, The Rollie. Let's go.
Chris Do: Hey, I just want to say game recognized game, brother. Dude, that's love. For real.
Omar El-Takrori: I've been following Chris for some time. I would say even before 2020. And we can even talk about in a little bit how 2020 I think was very, you know, big for your YouTube presence, but number one, just thank you for being on. This is honestly incredible. I'm so glad we can do this, Omar.
So if you go on YouTube and you type in what is branding, the video that comes up is an interview that you did is very short, three, four minute video with Marty Neumeier and you asked him what is branding and he answers the way he would three years ago. So I would ask you today. What is branding today?
Chris Do: I don't think branding has changed I think the modern conception of or the modern concept of brand hasn't changed since Marty's written about it. The ways in which we manifest the touch points change and evolve a little bit but let me just try to make it really simple for everybody to understand.
When we talk about brand, it's not what things look like it's about the emotional, irrational feeling that we have towards something. The fact that we're willing to wait in line to queue up to get something or to search and scour the internet to find a little tidbit, a morsel of like when the new drop is coming or anything. There are a couple of people, a couple of companies that have this in spades and the rest of us are mere mortals trying to achieve that level.
And the way that we do that is we have to be able to let people in on who we are on a personal level or to create certain expectations that are positive associations with that company. And we can get into it as deep as you want, but that's kind of it in a nutshell. Think about associations. You can have negative associations or positive, and that's part of your brand.
So if you show up and you treat people poorly and you're a bit of a jerk, well, that is your brand. It's a negative association. Conversely, if you're generous, if you're always kind to people, you, you take an extra minute to really genuinely want to help people, that will be the positive association or your positive brand.
Omar El-Takrori: So something that comes to mind as you explain that is, there's an organic nature to it. But then it seems like there's also a very intentional nature to it, because, should you be surprised? that people feel a way about your brand or you should be like, no, this is exactly what we decided because it's, it's like being yourself sometimes isn't a subconscious decision.
Chris Do: I don't know if always that people are intentional about it and or if intentionality is always good and I'll tell you why. Oftentimes what people think is, oh, I have a really strong brand and there's a team of people sitting here thinking about like how you show up in the world. That ain't you. And it's very manufactured and sometimes the team of people is just you and you say, well, I need to be this person to be accepted to be loved and not to be ridiculed in public. So I'm going to put on this persona and you become that person. You're too crafted, too manicured, too much layers of varnishing. And it was like, Well, who are you?
And this is why when, when people show up as themselves, or sometimes they show you a little bit more of like, this is what it looks like when I'm really messy and ugly, and I'm not having a beautiful thought or beautiful philosophical moment in my life, I'm just going to share with you, then all of a sudden we as humans look at the other person on the other side of the screen and say, oh, they just like me. You're really relatable. My god, I didn't know you struggled like that. I didn't know you have bad hair days. I have bad hair days every day, but I'm just putting it out there. You know what I mean? And then also like, oh, they're not that weird. Or they, they remind me of my cousin or my dad or my sister, my mom. And I like them a little bit more.
Omar El-Takrori: So, I mean, It's because like, there's so much thought at the same time, I'm trying to get to a place of like, somebody's at zero, or I guess I'd ask you, like, how long did it take you to you knew what your brand was, or?
Chris Do: That's a very good question. And we talked about this on a different podcast, but what you see, what happens with people typically is when you see a first piece of content, that's going to be the least like them as a real person because that's them thinking. I don't want the world to think badly of me. I need to show up as a professional or as caring or as loving or as an athlete. And I always have everything buttoned up. Over time what that person hopefully starts to realize is, man, that's a lot of work to pretend to be that person.
And I don't know, maybe one day I'm just going to show like, hey, here's the weird thing about me. And then they start to pull back the layers and then they realize that okay I don't care anymore if the world judges me a certain way. I'm just, I got to just be me. It's the easiest thing to do. It's the most natural thing to do. Yet it's the least common thing that people do. So what happens is over time, if you notice a personality, yourself or mutual friends, you might see this evolution and you think, oh, the person's changing. They're not, they're becoming more of themselves. And it's a beautiful thing to see.
Omar El-Takrori: That's really good. You know, what's funny is as someone who like does video teaches video, there's this wave of like hyper edited content. And I noticed this about last year in the summertime that I started consuming videos that weren't as edited, you know, jump cuts, fast text, and like crazy overstimulate stimulating content. And the videos I'm attracted to are actually videos that aren't heavily edited. And it looks like the pendulum is even swinging back to not intense edits, and there's this YouTuber that kind of blew up recently, I don't know if you know who he is, Sam Selleck, have you heard of him?
Chris Do: No.
Omar El-Takrori: Did 21 year old bodybuilder, 45 minute daily vlogs, just jump cuts, no text, no music, no nothing, 2 million subscribers in 30 days. And he's just driving. He's got his mic, he actually has his mic clipped onto his hat. But I say all that to say that there is, it's funny how it's like a journey of undoing. Some people I think for a guy like him, maybe he has like zero insecurity, so you can- would you say insecurity is probably the killer of all brand builders?
Chris Do: It can be, but insecurity could be your brand too. And this is a really weird thing to say. Like, I'm really insecure about X, Y, and Z. And hopefully you don't judge me too poorly. And just to put it out into universe, the whole point of building a strong personal brand is to get in touch with yourself, to have high self awareness and self acceptance and to say like, Hey, this is the way it's going to be.
You know, I can sit here and wish all day and night my hair is going to grow back. It's not, and it's okay. And I'm cool with it. I know what my limitations are. I know what my zone of genius is. And I'm not going to oversell my shortcomings and undersell my genius. I'm going to celebrate both. I'm really good at a couple of things. I'm terrible at lots of things. And that's all of me.
Omar El-Takrori: What would you say is like some of the best brand building type of content? Like if somebody was like, okay. I want to put myself out there based on your observation, especially even in the last years, as you've really grown. Like, well, how would you encourage somebody to be like, start building your brand by making these kinds of videos then?
Chris Do: Okay, I'm going to give you a funny answer, okay?
Omar El-Takrori: Dang it.
Chris Do: My funny answer is this, is the best kind of content you can pursue, consume to build your personal brand is to go to see a therapist. Because what the hell are you talking about? You're as broken as everybody else and you're, you're fronting as much as everyone else.
So we can learn the tools, what kind of cameras we're using, what kind of lighting setup. We can do all of that. That's not going to help you. But if you were to invest time, money and energy towards something, go figure out who you are, like heal. Learn to love thyself and then hold up your freaking iPhone with crappy audio and video and just start talking to the camera.
That's going to be the best brand possible. You may not become an overnight sensation. You might not become this damn guy. Who cares? The whole point is not to chase those numbers. The whole point is to just fall in love with who you are. You'll be much more attractive. We talked about this at a conference recently about what makes people so charismatic.
What is it that draws people to them? Like there's this magnetic being. And you kind of know. And it's usually not the prettiest woman who walks in the room. It's not the buffest, coolest looking guy who's like, who hunts with a bow and arrow. And, and it's like six foot two, 225 pound rip top to bottom. She's not that person. It's actually some person who's kind of doesn't call too much attention to themselves, create space for others, and it's super comfortable in their own skin. There's something really attractive about that. And the most beautiful thing about this is every person can do this. You may not be born with great genetics and cheekbones and height and physical gifts, but you can be born to learn to love yourself and to create space for others to do the same.
Omar El-Takrori: So do you help people build their brand is, or companies build their brands? And so, I mean, I'm, you've probably done it at a big level. So because like we're in a era where single individuals can build a brand, a personal brand, but then companies could build crazy good brand. What are some themes throughout either or both of those that matter at the same level?
Chris Do: I think foundationally, the concept is the same. Philosophically, the application is very, very different. So when we work with corporations, like really big companies, they're trying to figure out what are we, and we're a group of people with opinions, and no one opinion seems to be it, so it tends to be very watered down, very generic, and then there's like zero personality.
What we try to do, especially with most companies or corporations, is to help them figure out, what is the origin story? Like when the founders came together to do something, they wanted to change the world. They wanted to make it better in some way, somewhere along this journey, we've forgotten about that mission. So we've got to go back and rediscover it. So we've got to go back in time and find that. So that's what it is.
Now the difference here is, you know, There's a whole committee still making decisions and we have to make decisions that's smart for the business growth because when we make poor decisions, like recently with Bud, I believe they did something with transgender and it just messed up their brand in a way that is going to literally cost them billions of dollars, lives are on the line, so we don't want to mess around with that, so that's why it's usually there's attorneys, there's marketing departments, there's strategists and writers and they have to do this because they have to make calculated decisions and we get that.
If you take it over to the personal side, there is no committee. It's just you. It's just gotta be you. And I've said this recently, building a brand isn't a product of invention. It's a product of memory. Who are we? When we're between three to nine years old, that's who we are. But through conditioning, through parenting, through schooling, we've lost that because our entire society punishes people who stand out.
You're an anomaly. You're going to get put in a different classroom. You're going to get held back. You might ride the short bus. Who knows? And all of a sudden, your entire world, your social structure collapses around you because your teachers, your friends are now going to look at you and treat you differently.
So we've learned to go along is how we get along. And we've, we've done a lot of going along and I'm just trying to help people and to give them permission like, you know, what, why don't we do some of that deep work? Why don't we go into the shadow and figure out the things that you have guilt and shame over that create anxiety and frustration for you that makes you angry.
Let's explore that because that's the real you and we have to learn to recognize those parts to embrace them as who part of us, not to say we have to accept them, but to say like, okay, we can work on those things, but we're not going to pretend they don't exist. And so when you walk in a room, you see somebody is like, oh, that person is so pretentious. They're pretending to be something. Don't talk to me like that. I'm just another person. Don't pretend like you're better than me. I'm tired of that. And I'm sure everybody in this room is tired of it too. And I will tell it to your face.
Omar El-Takrori: You mentioned earlier that like branding is like the emotion, but then maybe an immature way of approaching starting a brand is caring about the image up front.
Chris Do: That's usually how people start.
Omar El-Takrori: Right.
Chris Do: So I started that way. I'll just put it out there.
Omar El-Takrori: So it was like, let's get the logo down. Let's get the colors down. Let's get, so if somebody, maybe when you had your agency or what, you know, do you still have it or?
Chris Do: It doesn't do anything. It still sits there.
Omar El-Takrori: Okay, so like you, you know, somebody comes to you and like, Hey, we need a logo, and you're like, We need a brand, or what's the brand? Cause I would just imagine people are with the websites, the colors, and all, they're focusing on all that stuff which has less to do with the emotional side of things, as far as getting people to feel something. Like, how do you deter that priority?
Chris Do: The word brand and branding has become a catch all phrase to mean all kinds of different things to people. And so we need to kind of clarify. Most people don't come in and just say, I need a logo. They're like, I need a new brand, Chris. I'm like, let's unpack that word. What do you really mean? Let's explore why you need it. What's happening in the business and the market. Tell me about the motivations behind this. We're going to have a conversation. I don't care that the clients know the right terminology to use. I'm not expecting them to. I, as a professional, need to know that. If you're a doctor, somebody comes in and is like, oh, I need surgery. Like, okay, I understand. Let's talk about the pain that you're experiencing while you're here.
And then we'll figure it out together. And a lot of creatives they think, well, clients are supposed to know all the terminology and the strategy. I said, do not wish for that future because then you would just be a production monkey at that point. We need this and put it that typeface and those colors, and we need 14 videos. We don't want that. So we have to learn to speak the language for them. So when they come in, they're going to say something like, I need some new branding. I need to rebrand. Let's talk about what that means. Then we start to unpack that. Oftentimes, what it really means is we have a bad relationship with our customers.
We need to fix that. Okay. Now we do real branding, which is how's your product? How's your customer service? Let's start there. What's the onboarding offboarding process like? What are the reviews and the feelings and the sentiment of people towards your product service organization? So we have to do a little bit of like, Empathy mapping.
We have to do a little bit of research and kind of checking in with all the employees. Okay, now we can start because that's our baseline. Here's where we're at as a company throughout across all the touch points. Here's where we'd like to be. Are we committed to this now? It's one thing for us to say we care about customers and we make great products.
When in fact, those are not true. So there's something that I read from the late Tony Hsieh from his book, Delivering Happiness, and he said, forget the brand. And everyone's like, what? What do you mean, forget the brand? He goes, get the culture right, the brand will follow. No company has a strong brand with a poor culture.
Because, and I'll tell you a little story right now. I used to be a fan of a particular airline. I'll just say it's Southwest Airlines. They're goofy. They're funny. They give their flight attendants a lot of leeway with how to do very procedural things. And so I laugh and I'm like, hey, that's remarkable the way you told me don't cry like a baby when the plane's about to crash. Okay. I get that. That's funny. But then I had a bad experience with a flight.
Omar El-Takrori: Somebody came over the microphone.
Chris Do: They say funny things. They're like stand up comics that are flying a plane. I love it.
Omar El-Takrori: I'm just saying that the plane's tripping out and they're like, yo, don't cry like a baby.
Chris Do: Well, no, this is like before the plane takes off. They're like, okay, you know, if that person's acting funny, slap them and then put on your mask or they have fun. And we know that they're saying ingest, not literally go do this. So it's the fun airline. It's a little cheap, but it's fun. And then I'm flying on the airline. And one of the flight attendants treated me really poorly.
Like, I was like, I'm not being rude. Why would you talk to me like that? It's created a negative emotional feeling that I'm willing to, for free, badmouth them right now. I even sent them a review of saying, I've had a horrible experience. I'm reconsidering booking with you. That is one employee out of thousands or tens of thousands of employees. When you get the culture wrong, the brand dies.
Omar El-Takrori: You know what's crazy? You said the product and the, like the service, something like Chick-fil-A.
Chris Do: Yeah.
Omar El-Takrori: It was all about, let's just make better chicken sandwiches. Cause they were, they were actually up against another company when they first got started. And they're like, hey, let's not do what they're doing. Let's just make a better sandwich. And then like make Chick-fil-A what they are now. Yeah. Dude, social media coming out now, dude, like Chick-fil-A is awful. But like their customer service is on par, but because I'm learning about like how they're making now making, but something you mentioned about how companies can lose it along the way, because they're trying to scale their goals may be changed or, you know, what have you, but it's crazy how much basically that saying that like, it takes a lifetime to build, build a reputation and like five seconds to lose it or whatever, like that's so real when it comes to companies and when you think about it at that level, it's, and like, it's funny how, like, when we think about branding, we think about, okay, what are the major company? Like, who would you say, let's say that maybe everybody would essentially know, like they're killing it. They have strong brand.
Chris Do: It's very easy. There's this thing, there's some science behind this, and I don't pretend to know all the neuroscience, but in our brain, if you think of your brain like a Japanese bento box, right, there's a little compartment for rice, cucumber, protein, something like that, potato salad, there's compartments, and our brain kind of works in that way too.
So in every category of every product, there exists maybe number one or number two, sometimes three or four, but not that many. And it's because it's a complicated world. We can't be sitting here and remembering everything, every single thing. Like if you had to figure out like who is the first person to break the four minute mile, you would know who was the first person to step on the moon, but who's the second person who did that?
And you kind of just start to forget. Like for you, I see that you're a fan of LaCroix. Now they have a place in your heart and your mind. When you go to the store, you're not looking at all the other brands. How many brands of sparkling water are there? There's a lot. And to each person, they're going to have a different preference.
And so it's always the battle for the heart and the mind. And we know, okay, you're rocking fear of God stuff. So fear of God for you is killing it. And based on the line of people that are ready for their, their pop up shop, clearly they've cultivate a community and culture around a community. That's something that's really powerful.
And so we know, and I'll tell you how you know, and everybody can answer this question differently versus like, here's what Chris thinks, is think about the different products and services you consume that you have a preference for, that you can't explain, that you're willing to pay more money for.
Omar El-Takrori: That's good.
Chris Do: So this is really clear when you're competing on price, you have no brand. Unless your brand is, we're cheap. That's Walmart's brand. And for some people, they love that. But in most places, if you're competing on price, you have no brand because almost the definition of brand is preference and willingness to pay a premium. That's it, doesn't have to be more complicated than that.
Omar El-Takrori: That's really good. That's something I've been learning with, with selling my coaching because it's, you're literally selling invisible. There's nothing tangible to it. I have to determine the value, but then I have to get really good at uncovering that value.
And so that's why this year I've committed one of the skills I wanted to grow in his sales. And I know you talk about this and I love your philosophy, helping, especially creatives determine these things and how to, when to say the price and you talk about like not having to justify it necessarily. And I, I've had a lot of, I started as a freelancer video photography. I've been doing that for 15 years until it got to the place where it makes sense to like probably teach this stuff. And a pattern I saw even in my own journey was like, like, how do I even charge? And I think that's a, I think a lot of people who are entrepreneurs, especially online entrepreneurs are asking that question. What would be your philosophy around that?
Chris Do: The shortcut on how to charge super easy, easy to understand, really difficult to do, and I'll explain the concept and then I'll tell you why it's really difficult to do. If we were to think, let's just say all creatives are very fair minded, egalitarian, ethical people. Clearly not true, but let's just pretend for the sake of our conversation. This is true. What would be the most fair thing to do in the marketplace? To have a fixed price for all products and services or people who come in or name your own price. What do you think the answer would be? What is more fair for someone to name their own price or for you to have a fixed price? What do you think?
Omar El-Takrori: What's more fair?
Chris Do: Yeah, what's the fairest thing to do? Pay what you can or this is the price.
Omar El-Takrori: I guess pay what you can sounds like,
Chris Do: pay what you can, right? Like if you went into a cafe and there are literal signs that say pay whatever you can, today you're not having a good day. You're laid off, you go in, it's like, I only have two bucks. Somebody's like, I'm having a great life. This meal is worth 30. And the average of it will probably be the price in which they would have set in the first place. But yet, this is a very egalitarian thing. Pay what you can, let's just say that's fair. Okay. Are we in agreement that it's fair?
Omar El-Takrori: Yeah.
Chris Do: You know, you go to the airport and there's a guy shining shoes. You're like, whatever you want.
Omar El-Takrori: Right.
Chris Do: Everybody has a different idea. Some people will give them a lot. Some people will give them a little, but Lawrence has written about this. There's a person who shines shoes at a very specific airport that every time he's there, the person does such a great job. He makes sure to go there and he's like a pay what you want thing.
And he goes on average, this is how much money he makes. And he makes way more money than if he just said 8 dollars or 12 dollars. Now he's incentivized to do the very best job he can because he knows how you feel about that service is going to be what you're going to pay. I think that's a really beautiful business model.
Let's put into the real world now when we do a video project, what are we going to charge? Well, we can charge a flat fee. You want to do a two day setup is five grand, let's just say, and includes X, Y, and Z. All our customers, it's five grand. So it's fixed fee. But what if we said, what is the size of the problem you're trying to solve?
Let's charge you a price that's appropriate for what it is you're trying to do. Well, then that forces us to have a real strategic conversation that's around business that's going to impact the person. It could be, I have no problem that's going to be solved by video. Then it's your obligation and your duty to say, well, then there's no reason for you to give me money to do this.
It's actually bad business practice. In that case, I need you to go talk to this person who does strategy. This person is copywriting. You need an email funnel. We know some people. Talk to them. And if that all works out, you still feel like you have a problem that we feel that can be solved with video, please come back.
I'd love to work with you, but I don't feel right taking your money right now. I will take it if you insist, but I don't recommend it. And the funny thing is when you do this, what happens in the relationship between you and that person? What happens with the esteem, the trust? the feelings you're looking out for them.
It's not going to go down. It'll probably go up. And every time I tell a customer, not every time, a lot of times I tell them, I don't want to take your money. I will take it if you force me to, but I think you could do other things. Then they turn around, they insist to give me the money. I'm like, okay, I've done the best that I can.
You don't need plastic surgery. You don't need, like, to climb Everest. You don't need that fast car. But if you want to, I will sell it to you, but I've done my duty. So if each person that comes to you and says, I have a million dollar video problem, What should the budget be? It should be some percentage of that.
It's not a million dollars. Let's say it's 10 percent because we're on the God thing. 10%. So 100,000. Is that fair? Great. Well, I have a 10,000 problem. Okay. 10 percent of that. 1,000. Does that help you? Great. And that's how it should work. So that'll help them to understand the value conversation isn't the value of your time. It's the value of the outcome you achieve for the other person. Big difference.
Omar El-Takrori: Yeah.
Chris Do: Mindset shift.
Omar El-Takrori: I mean, and that's like sales level up too. Just speaking their problems or like speaking into their problems and their needs, not necessarily what you are all going to do.
Chris Do: Yeah. So you're, you're uncovering like four, I think, four skills within that framework that I just mentioned, right? You're doing diagnostic, you're doing strategic, you're doing consulting, you're doing sales. And by the way, you're also bringing in video expertise in that case.
Omar El-Takrori: Yeah. And I mean, just. That offer I have, which is, I call it Dialed in a Day. So I go into an office space or somebody's home. If they have this space, number one, I mean, my brain works cool. Cause I've messed with a lot of gear in a long time and I've set up a lot of shots. I like, I can see a space and then recommend the gear. And then even I come in, I set it up with my team and then we train. It's like invaluable. Like it's, it's an offer that honestly sells itself type thing. The pricing thing I've always had.
Chris Do: How much did you charge to do that?
Omar El-Takrori: It's evolved this year because- 15 grand for the service. Not with the gear.
Chris Do: This guy knows what he's doing. 15 grand that's pretty good. I like that.
Omar El-Takrori: And it's evolved to that because I started with 15 grand and included the gear. So there's a level to it too, where I'm like in my knower's knower. I'm like, this isn't worth it.
Chris Do: In you're who?
Omar El-Takrori: My knower's knower.
Chris Do: What is that? You shut your belly, but I don't know. I don't have a knower knower.
Omar El-Takrori: You ever deliver, deliver on a project or, uh, with a client and you finish it and you're like, I can't charge that much anymore. It's not, it wasn't worth my, it wasn't worth the time to do that.
Chris Do: No, I've never done that.
Omar El-Takrori: Really?
Chris Do: Wait, wait, no, I'm sorry. Yes. Yeah. Oh my bad.
Omar El-Takrori: You finished the project.
Chris Do: I can't continue to do that financially. I'll ruin myself.
Omar El-Takrori: Yeah.
Chris Do: That's what you're saying. I have that feeling all the time, actually.
Omar El-Takrori: Yeah. So I started it off. It was like 50 grand and included the gear. So I probably made like five grand for the day. And then I'm realizing also the problem that it's solving, you know, like I was learning a little bit more about that and the client that would pay it because they see the value in it. And so it's funny. It's like when you, I think you talk about this too, like usually when a client pays even more, they're usually easier, easier to work with too.
You know, that just seems like, I don't know, just the case. So right now I've landed on 15 and usually it's like, it's a podcast set up. It's multiple cameras. And then I think the value is really the training. But the question I was trying to get to is like, I kind of don't know where to stop. But you just said like, dang, dude, that's kind of pricey. But then I had somebody tell me like, dude, you should be charging 25 grand. And here's the reason why. Because you're adding a level of interior design too. It's not just the gear. It's like you're transforming a space.
Chris Do: Yeah. Okay. There's no real answer to this, but there's no end into what you should charge because as you level up customers, the customer's problem is bigger every time. So if you stay within a very specific small to medium sized business, 15 grand, they're going to choke on that. And then your pool of clients is going to start to contract, whereas if you keep leveling up, someone's like, hey, I want to look like Johnny, but I actually run a 200 million company. So let's take the abstract lesson, the meta and take it to your specific business. Is that okay?
Omar El-Takrori: Yeah.
Chris Do: All right. So the way that you're like Dialed in a Day. Catchy. It's got alliterations, good, you know, nice flow to it. But ultimately what you're doing is the way I would sell this is I'm going to tell you right now, you're going to overpay for what I do, except for when you factor into one thing, how long would it take for you to do with your team?
How many iterations would you have to go through? At what point will you be happy with the result? Do the math in your head right now. Whatever that number is, I'm going to give you a new number and you're going to see if that is above or below. So this is all I would do. That's in an abstract framework.
There's a friend of mine, I can't say who he is exactly, but he transformed his business. The guy does over half a million dollars in revenue in a year and he's a one person company. One person company and he works like 10 hours a week. It's beautiful. And the thing that he shared with me, which I hope your audience finds this to be super valuable.
Sorry, friend, for revealing your secret, but I'm just gonna do it. Here goes. He used to charge a set fee for what he does, and he works in the web space. So he designs and builds websites for his clients. And then you realize, okay, now that I finished that project, I'm on the hunt for another project, and that can be grueling.
So his fundamental shift isn't what he did. He just changed how he presented it and how he offers service. So he changed from a fixed fee to a subscription fee. And I'll talk about that. Okay. So he goes to his prospects and says, okay, you need a website and websites, aren't these static things. They need to be updated security all the time.
Things are happening all the time. It's like a living organism. It's like a house plant. It needs to be taken care of. Otherwise it will die. If you had to hire an art director, a copywriter, a web developer, And a designer. What would that cost? Let's just do the numbers together. Let's just say that number one of being 400 grand because that's just 400 grand.
But if you have to fire replace them, now you're talking about compensation, whatever exit package time training. So now you're losing even more money. Let's add another hundred grand on top of that. Now, if you had a higher recruiter, we know we have to pay them 20 percent on top of that. So let's just keep doing more math.
And then you have to find a workspace for them to work. You have to give them the software, the hardware, and then how often do you maintain that? So I'm telling you right now, all that can just disappear. Let's just say that's an 800,000 dollar number. I will do this for you for less than X percent of that annually.
And what I'm going to do is I'm going to build the site for you. I'm going to maintain it and we're gonna have quarterly conversations and we're going to keep updating things as we go. Does that sound like it works for you? They're happy. He has five or six clients. That's all he needs. He doesn't have to keep chasing new clients all the time.
But the onus is on him to constantly evolve and deliver greater value over time. This is the subscription model. It's different than retainer model. And I only recently understood the difference between a retainer and a subscription. In this way, because I had time to speak with Ron Baker, who's like a master at economics and accounting, explains to me, or actually to the audience, a retainer is I pre buy time in bulk for discount.
So we're always selling time. So I'm going to buy 20 hours of your time. Instead of 200 an hour, 120, so you're great. I got good cash flow and now I'm always worrying like what hours I'm using and so I'm just going to try to fill that up. So you may have a policy in the contract where some minutes or hours roll over, but not all of them.
So next week you add another five hours and you just keep doing that. So they burned the hours they don't use. You get the charge of more for the hours that go over, but that's the model. A subscription is, we don't look at hours anymore. You're gonna pay no matter what. And I'm, and my team are gonna obsess over how to keep increasing the value to you as a customer.
Totally different. We move away from looking at blocks of time. To looking at value created. So the way that you honor that and the way that you keep clients for a really long time, it's like, you know, Mary, I've been thinking about the way you're doing this. And I think we need to upgrade the microphone or this. And you know, I'm noticing that as you're aging differently, we need to adjust the lights. I got to fly in. We're going to take care of this. We got you, Mary. That's the difference.
Omar El-Takrori: Yeah, no, that's really good. What was the first thing you did creatively to start exchanging for money? Like service wise, was it graphic design?
Chris Do: Yeah. So around graphic design. Yeah. I was a production artist.
Omar El-Takrori: Cool. Dude, it's funny because you are, you have such good business acumen and I, observation, generally speaking, I'm not, I'm not trying to make blanket statements, but oftentimes creative creatives get into business and offering them their services and they typically, they have a hard time making it because the business part just kind of messes with them. Maybe they, they get a little too attached to the craft or what would you say to a person who's like really good at a thing, let's say video, graphic design, photography, but like having to get good at business could rob them from just focusing on like the craft.
Chris Do: You said you have good business acumen. I don't. I'm gonna tell you right now. I have terrible business acumen because I was once like all of you. I really was. I was terrible at business. The first three businesses I started, I completely failed. I didn't understand the difference between revenue and profit. Like, you know how you said, Oh, I would use to package 15,000 dollars, 5,000 dollars was profit, right?
It ain't profit because somebody had to go there and do that work. And that guy. To do that job, then there might be 3,000 dollars left for profit. So it's not even understanding those principles in my mind. That's how I ran my first business into the ground. I'm like, what? I don't understand this at all. My first business, I was 17 years old. Just put it out there. So I'm struggling to build a business and I'm just figuring it out as I go. I don't. know what to do, what to say. And someone on the internet, I want to say her name is Christine. It's not Christine. She's from San Francisco. She was on a Twitter live space call with me. And we're just talking about something.
And she was what people don't fundamentally understand about sales and many of the concepts that you're teaching is they think that by looking at it, they understand they don't. It's like asking you and me to play chess and I'm a world chess champion. That would be your client because they're in business. They know negotiation and sales and to say, try to beat them at chess and you're great, but you don't know how to play chess. There I go. Okay. And you're blindfolded. Try to play that game. Try to win. So that's me as a creative person. And I think I only became successful because of two or three different things.
Number one is stupid belief in self, like I just love myself. Like this work is good, man. I don't know why people don't want to pay me, but one day they will. They just haven't figured it out yet. That's number one. And number two is just having the belief in self and actually having real skill. So putting in your 10,000 hours as Malcolm Gladwell describes it, I have a skill. So I love myself and I think the skill and the self are matching the rest of it. You just figure it out on the job. But it wasn't until I hired a business coach or actually worked with business people who, who taught me not literally taught me, but through observation, I'm like, oh, oh, you're doing things a little bit differently. I would rather do that because what I'm doing is really painful. So I learned how to bid.
Omar El-Takrori: That's good.
Chris Do: And so every time you level up, you buy a little bit more time to play the game. You're not old enough to go to the arcade, but when we were at the arcade back in the day,
Omar El-Takrori: I'm only, I mean, I'm 33. I've gone to arcades. Retro arcade.
Chris Do: I'm talking about for people who are old enough to remember when you had a pocket full of quarters. Shut up. No, not that old. Come on. Okay. When, when we, when you go to Aladdin's castle or Time Zone or whatever, we would go golf land. We would come in with a hand of quarters. And we'd play like street fight or something. And you put your quarters up because that's how many times I get to play this and somebody's like, I got next. They had to put their quarter up. So the whole point of business and life and game is how many quarters can you stack up? Because you want to play the game for as long as possible.
We know that No matter how good you are, it is finite because the time is ticking down already. So you got to stack the quarters. So what we do is we learn a skill, couple quarters that's good. But we will run out of quarters, banking just on skill, and that's a trap. A lot of people, creative people fall down and you know they're not entirely to blame because it's an idea that's perpetuated by academics within their schools. They say, like, just work on your craft, craft, craft, craft until you die. Let's celebrate more craft. Let's have shows about craftsmanship. Let's have speakers who are obsessed over craft. Where's the business part?
I'm the guy in the back. I'm about to, like, explode out of my skin here. Like, hey, you donkeys, when do we get to talk about how to sell this stuff? Yeah. How to speak about it. How to be positioned in the marketplace so that we attract the right kinds of buyers for our services. So they keep playing the craft game and we know that a certain level, it's diminishing return on investment of time.
Like you're good, you're like nationally good, being more good or gooder, not a real word. It's not really going to change your game. So what we have to do is we have to learn another skill set. Maybe we need to learn communication or presentation or sales or marketing, lead generation, conversion strategy, branding. Maybe we should try one of those things because that will help us. So the mindset of the creator person is just to get better at craft. If I make the most pristine video, if the video is extra crispy, as you like to say, as the young people say, or, you know, Oh, I came up with a super dope transition. Yeah, that's cool.
But did you help that person's business grow? That's all it is. And I can make an inferior video and still get better results. And I have evidence for this. Who is the most prolific, successful YouTube creator right now?
Omar El-Takrori: Mr. Beast.
Chris Do: What do you think about the quality of his videos?
Omar El-Takrori: Oh yeah, he's a top YouTuber and he doesn't have the sharpest video.
Chris Do: Yeah, and he could, he has the money, but he doesn't. And I have a theory as to why. When I want to see pristine video, I'm going to watch an Apple TV series. I'm going to watch an HBO production. I'm going to watch a Netflix thing. I don't tune into YouTube because I want pristine video with just flawless lines of words and editing. I don't need that. Actually, that creates a barrier between me and that person. So sometimes in the pursuit of the perfect pixel, we create a barrier and we don't want that barrier.
Omar El-Takrori: Dang. YouTube. Juice.
The Futur: It's time for a quick break, but we'll be right back.
Enjoying the conversation you're listening to right now? You're going to love what we have for you inside The Futur Pro membership. From live group calls with myself and vetted guest experts, to over 600 hours of pro exclusive trainings and monthly networking, You'll have everything you need to fast track your growth. Check it out at thefutur.com/pro.
And we're back. Welcome back to our conversation.
Omar El-Takrori: How much did you pay that business coach? How long into your journey? Was that your first investment into yourself? Because that's actually in the humility. You said you don't have a business acumen. And then five minutes later, you're like, yo, you gotta learn sales, conversion, fulfillment, retention,
Chris Do: back massages. You gotta learn it all. You have to. But how long did you learn it? Right.
Omar El-Takrori: Yeah.
Chris Do: So in the very beginning, all of us, unless for whatever reason, the stars are aligned just perfectly for us. We will struggle for a period of time. You may, I know our friend Sean probably has, we all struggle. Like we'll all kind of be broken at some point. And then we hit this point. And then we hit that proverbial road, the fork in the road, and we have to make a decision. Do we want to do more of the same and suffer? Or are we going to change? Sadly, the vast majority of the people in our space choose the right road, which is the wrong road to lead down the path of more of the same.
And then they cry and they feel the world is unfair. I hear from them all the freaking time and I feel so bad for them. My heart does go out to them, but I say, friend, if nothing changes, nothing changes. You're just going to keep doing this. Let's try something else. I don't care. That's the whole reason why Trump got elected. He's like, I'm not saying I'm a great option. I'm not even saying I'm a good human being, but you want more of the same. That's an interesting platform to run on. Right. Cause people are like, yeah, my life ain't great. I don't want more of the same. I want something different. We should have got something different.
All right, but that's another topic. So let's try to choose something else. So I was hiring my business coach care. The first investment myself. No, it's one of many, and it's a continual perpetual investment in myself. You might read some books. That's an investment in yourself. I attended workshops. I attended a sales workshop, made my skin crawl on my mind. I ran out of that meeting. I'm like, never again. That's the last super sales webinar in person. It was horrific by my books in a bag. I'm like, there's zero value being created here. All of this was to qualify people to move up the chain, to buy more products for them person. I don't want that.
Omar El-Takrori: Yeah,
Chris Do: I don't want that. I don't know why they keep doing that. So I'm like, I ran from that. I've enrolled in a weekend course to learn video editing. I pay people to say like, hey, will you share some of what you know? And they're like, nah, don't worry about it. I'll tell you what I know. I'm like, great. Even better. At least let me buy you lunch or something.
So we're investing in ourselves all the time. So about five or six years into my business at this point, we're doing about 2, 2 million, 2.2 million dollars every year. And I'm like, hey, what's the next threshold? Cause I'm not content with that. Let's go. There's a glass ceiling. I want to break past it. I meet my business coach, Keir McLaren. I work with him. He helps me to change first year 3.9 million dollars. Okay. And that was just the lowest it's ever been since then. So we just keep jamming after that. I wind up working with Keir for 13 plus years. I met with him every single week for 13 years. I put in the work.
For many of those years, this is the funny thing about YouTube. Y'all, I'm 51 years old. I created my first video when I was 42. So 12 years after this guy is alive, I start my first video. But by then I've already put in a decade of teaching. I don't know how many years I've been working with Keir at that point. And so I'm going to go on the internet, having the experience of teaching, directing commercials, making music videos with some of the biggest brands and bands in the world, reflecting what it is I've learned. So people are like, um, how hard was it? Well, you go put in your 10 years and you see how hard it is. And if you're good year one, congratulations, you're a freaking genius. The rest of us, we just got to work for it.
Omar El-Takrori: What is the thing you want to get better in right now?
Chris Do: Marketing. We suck.
Omar El-Takrori: Okay. Dang. That's one of, that was one of the questions I had.
Chris Do: Why do you suck?
Omar El-Takrori: Yeah. Why, why do you suck? Yeah. But what- I think people can sometimes mistake the two of what, like the difference between branding and marketing, but you're a genius when it comes to branding. And you just said like, we suck at marketing. Why do you think you suck at marketing with millions of subscribers, almost a million on Instagram at the time of shooting this, like. Why would you say that?
Chris Do: I say that because I look at the results, sadly. I'll talk real with you right now. So let's get into some numbers, okay? Last year, I think we did a little over 5 million in revenue. None of it comes from client work. We've been client free. Our, our freedom date is December, 2018. We stopped doing client work. That's it. It's an important date for us. It's like our emancipation, right? Sorry if I used that word.
Omar El-Takrori: How much people are still with you from 2018? When you say we.
Chris Do: Good question. Just a small handful.
Omar El-Takrori: Okay.
Chris Do: Some didn't make the transition. Some didn't want the transition. And some of them have left recently to pursue their own career doing what we do. So I love them for that. So bravo. Congrats, Matthew. Good job. All right. But. We changed, we evolved, right? So, so last year I said we did a little over 5 million. This year, I don't think we're going to break 5 million, which is concerning to me. It's like, I only want to move in one direction. It's up. I don't want to believe in gravity.
I just want to keep moving up. And I think about companies and people who sell one product, do one course that's semi mediocre, but understand their niche really well. And they do 10 million sales every single year. And they do one big promotion or something like that. They're done. And I think that's cool.. But I don't want that because I'm not doing this purely in pursuit of money. Money's just a scorecard for the impact I get to make. So we're trying to change education, but in order for us to think big and actually make the kind of impact I want, we need lots of capital to burn, to hire more people, to keep doing what we're doing.
And it's okay that we don't make a ton of money. I just want to play it on a bigger stage and so that's the problem we have a bunch of courses I think we're okay at marketing and the difference between marketing and branding is marketing is focusing on sales and revenue or brand is focused on long term value creation.
I have no doubt that the long term value creation in the brand that we built will be worth a lot of freaking money but in order to get it to that point we have to keep playing we need more quarters on the on the dash there we just need it. Otherwise, I can't get it to that level. Okay, and I don't want to do it by myself. I don't want to do it as a three person operation. I want to do it as a 50, 100 person operation, creating the kind of content and educational materials that's going to transform the lives of the people, not just in this country, but all over the world. That's the mission.
Omar El-Takrori: That's good.
Chris Do: And I have a really big freaking mission. You know how Gary Vaynerchuk says, I'm going to buy the Jets?
Omar El-Takrori: Right.
Chris Do: So we, we understand what's motivating Gary. Some childhood, immature obsession over the Jets and he just needs to do it. I know there's a video on that that explains why. I want to make enough money. I can go out and buy an art school and transform the entire school. That's going to require a lot of money. It's probably going to require more than a hundred million dollars. I want to change it. I want to change the game. You know, there's this thing, I'm a Game of Thrones fan. It's like Danny Targaryen. She's like, we don't want to keep, the wheel just keeps going. One king is replaced by another king, by a queen, whatever. She wants to break the wheel. I want to be a wheel breaker.
Omar El-Takrori: That's good. What are you doing now to like make your way to it? Because here,
Chris Do: here's what's the Khaleesi, but you missed your mark.
Omar El-Takrori: I don't watch. I didn't want you to watch guys. That's why I missed. I'm sorry. Do old people watch Game of Thrones only? No, I'm just kidding.
Chris Do: Those smart people do.
Omar El-Takrori: Yeah. Dang it. Um, you say a hundred million to transfer, is it because you're thinking about transforming it in its traditional sense? Because-
Chris Do: You want to know the plan? I'll tell you the plan right now. I'll just put it out there. I went to ArtCenter. ArtCenter is not for sale, but I'd like to buy ArtCenter. They have four buildings. They have a bunch of like, what I would consider institutional knowledge, world class instructors. They have antiquated programs on how to disseminate that. They're working on it. No shade, but I would just like to go and buy it. Sadly, I can't. Let go of most of the administrators, create a hybrid school where there's like in person gathering space, theaters, common areas, workshops and labs, and then bring in guest speakers, but try to turn as much of the knowledge into a digital product as we can to share with our students who have different learning modalities, who may be like, um, visually or hearing impaired so that we can, we can address that.
But also sometimes people need to see something 14 times before it gets through their head. Yeah. Right. And then to be able to disseminate that across the world for a fraction of what it costs today, the goal would be to take eight semesters worth of tuition, turn it into one and offer the exact same program.
Omar El-Takrori: Dang, that's really good. I went to UNLV for broadcast journalism. Before that, in high school, I took broadcast journalism and I just stuck with it. You know, people would say like, dude, you're just so gifted. I'm like, no, I just never put down the camera. I would hope that I'd be good at what I do this many years.
And the funny thing about it, when I was in college was learning, I almost feel like, when you have to standardize education, it takes a long time to steer the ship, which is why there was literally people who were doing when they were journalists, they were literally typing on typewriters and like if newspapers and stuff.
And like, at the time it was like 20- 2009 where Twitter is coming along and like news is starting to be changed and it made me think a lot about the time, the signs of times. And trying to bring relevant information to a large group of people and also change it when it needs to be changed, but it not be so standardized. Like I, how would you see like your way being different in that? Because I would say that's why they suck the art institutes. Is because they feel like in order to change this thing, it has to go through a process that makes it like, no, we'll just keep teaching the same thing then.
Chris Do: Yeah, I think the Arts Institute wound up closing, right?
Omar El-Takrori: Yeah.
Chris Do: There's some scandal there too that I can't speak to. 'cause I don't know unfortunately
Omar El-Takrori: because I was really close to going. I was, 'cause I was-
Chris Do: You dodged bullet brother.
Omar El-Takrori: Yeah.
Chris Do: He dodged bullet . Here's the problem. Is that for a lot of people who are uninformed buyers of products and services, what looks like a thing, isn't a thing. Like what looks like a Louis bag may not be a Louis bag after all, it might be this 50 dollar knockoff, right? So what happens is there are real institutions who know how to teach. And then they're like, well, why don't we create something that looks and sounds and you know, and we'll hire the third tier teachers who couldn't get there and we'll teach them here.
And then we'll take your money. We'll help your parents pay for the education through loans and all that kind of stuff. And then go through this and it can only sustain itself for so long. And then you look at the quality of education and the, and you can, it's demonstrated in the students themselves, like what art institutes are shade throwing wind up doing something significant.
And if they did, then probably the school had little to do with it. And that's actually because they were actually really talented before they got there. And so it has the look and feel of something that's high quality, but it's not. So we're not talking about that. Let's talk about taking a really great school and trying to make it better.
So the thing that works against us is it's run by committees. There's usually a board of trustees and a whole bunch of people trying to like guide this thing that are not 100 percent invested in outcome. They just want to make safe conservative decisions. Naturally, I understand why. And then you have just legacy. Well, our forefathers did it this way and their forefathers did it this way. Why wouldn't we just keep doing it? Well, I don't know if you've noticed the world has changed a lot. There's lots of tools and things that are available to us that we can do now. Here's the example I would give to you. Four years ago, we thought work from home or remote work was a terrible idea.
Now it's the predominant way in which most companies are run. And they've been able to do something that's really important. They've decentralized their operation so that there's no cataclysmic failure in case the IT system goes down. Well, Everybody's working from home, their computers are still working, the internet's still working, and this is good.
So we have some redundancy. So we have these kinds of programs for finances, for computer, for security. Why wouldn't we have it for people? So it totally makes sense. So when we're forced to change and innovate, we will change and we will innovate. Unfortunately, There's no motivation here to change orientedly because they're not forced to.
So I feel like I'm that force, a force from the future to say like, I will create a new business model to then threaten you with love. There's another model here. And until we make enough success and noise, they will not feel threatened. Today, we're nothing. We're like the flea in the back of the butt. No one cares.
But one day we won't be that flea and we'll be a small dog and it will bark a lot. And eventually people are like, wait, what's happening here? And think about this, my business coach told me this, he goes, when companies acquire smaller, more innovative companies, it looks like they just bought them. It's the other way around.
I'm like, what? So when Disney bought Pixar, you think, oh, they just absorbed them, killed the competition. And he goes, that's not what's going to happen. It's weird. Financially, they bought them, but Pixar bought Disney because the Pixar people will be running Disney. And sure enough, John Lasseter, the whole team, because they're so good at doing what they do that Disney realized in animation, we just need to learn from them. So they paid him a lot of money and they acquired all the top talent and they put him in executive decision making roles. So it's not what you think.
Omar El-Takrori: That's right.
Chris Do: So this might happen to where a big institution's like, we love the innovative thinking. We can't get there. So we just buy you. And now you tell us what to do. You sit on the board. You run the company. And that's what we'll do. We'll start to change it.
Omar El-Takrori: That's cool. Will you call it The Futur? Cause that would be fire.
Chris Do: That, that, that name works for me right now.
Omar El-Takrori: Yeah, no, it's dope. I honestly had the same thought over the summer because somebody came to me and was like, yo, I'm looking for a, uh, like a, a content person. So now we're in this era where having somebody, at least one person that understands photo, video, and all these things, uh, matters. And I just operated in that role for a long time. And then I see Gary Vee as DRock and DRock brought a new breed of genre when it comes to creativity. And that is almost like a Swiss army knife of a creative that you understand the reason why you're following somebody around and filming them and all that stuff. I call him a shredder. Kind of me and Sean kind of like, we kind of came up with that idea. And some guy was like, yo, I got like 80, I got like 80 to 100 K for this person. Do you know anybody?
And like, honestly, I've made a handful of them. But they all work for other people now. And, you know, my, my brain has been trying to wrap around, like, how do I systemize the approach to be able to create shreditors? Cause it's a guaranteed like 50, 60 at minimum, if you are a young gun wanting to just get a secure job and live somewhere, you know, like, but then being almost like this agency that can, not agency, but like, you know, they can hire people that are certified.
Chris Do: You want me to design the business model for you?
Omar El-Takrori: Please.
Chris Do: Okay. I'll do it for you right now.
Omar El-Takrori: Okay.
Chris Do: If you do and you're super successful, send me some money later. Okay. Here's there's a couple of parts to it. You know, one of the things that I think is a benefit to being like people like you and me is we get to be around really freaking smart people. We're only stupid if we don't actually learn from them because they're just spilling ideas all over the place. So I've learned these concepts from different people who are in my circle. I'm very grateful for that. The first part is you set up an academy. And the outcome is very clear. Earn 50 to 100,000 dollars a year, traveling the world, working with super influential people.
And you're not only are you going to produce work for them, but you're going to be within a hair's breadth away from you're the mentor of your dreams. How does that sound? Okay. Join me. I'm going to teach you how to do this. The systems, the techniques, the storytelling structure, the strategy, and upon completion, my other agency, a placement agency will help you find a job with one of those people.
The placement agency It's in contact with all these influential people. It's like, you need a person. I got the right person, right temperament, the right, whatever it is that you need. And the minimum that you're going to pay them is 60 or 80, whatever you work out to be. But you have to charge a placement fee with them.
And that's going to be 20 K. Okay. Now here's the cool thing. Everybody applies to your program. You don't accept. Because they're not all good enough. They have to demonstrate certain things, because the biggest thing that you have to do is you have to filter who goes through your program. Because that's going to largely determine how you're going to be successful.
I have this theory. Harvard is not the best school in the country or in the world. They're just the best at picking the future winners. Look at Bill Gates, dropout. Zuckerberg, dropout. All these guys are just in gals or dropouts because they're going to be successful. So what Harvard did was they created a powerful enough magnet that they would apply so that they can say Harvard dropout.
Omar El-Takrori: Yeah.
Chris Do: And that's important. So when they're super successful, then go back and donate a ton of fricking money. And then you say, well, we'll give you an honorary degree. You know, those kinds of things work. Now, all the rejects that you have. This may or may not be ethical, but I'm going to say it. You sell the rejects as a name to UNLV's video department program, because they need students and they can work with them and they will pay you money for those qualified leads.
So these people have already expressed intent. We want to learn. We want a career in journalism and videography or editing. You're like, you know, what? You move them over there. There's a three way business model right there.
Omar El-Takrori: No, and that's, that's, when I mapped it out, I saw that part. The thing, here's the thing I struggle with is the idea that a lot of these entrepreneurs you would work for and I'm seeing it. They're losing a lot of their creatives because they sell a lifestyle type of business, freedom, you know, do what you want. But the guy who's filming them say that message can't live by that. And so what's happening is, is like the creatives want to be entrepreneurs, but it's like, no, dude, you got paid for you're, you're getting a salary for this job.
And it's like, I also paid 20,000 dollars for you to be here. That's kind of the thing that I, like, I'm like, I don't know how much I involvement I have in that part, but it would speak to the placement agency that like, hey, this didn't work out after a while. It was like, well, they had the talent, but this person, and I know you, somebody might just say, oh, just have him sign a contract. Well, I mean, I guess, but you, do you know what I'm saying?
Chris Do: No, what's wrong?
Omar El-Takrori: That like, I'm guaranteeing like a salary job essentially with the placement agency. But the types of people they work for make, build their self belief to want to go out and build their own thing. So it's a thing that's happening.
Chris Do: You mean the people you place then wind up leaving and doing their own thing?
Omar El-Takrori: Right.
Chris Do: Well, how's that your problem? I'll tell you something.
Omar El-Takrori: Because I placed them.
Chris Do: No, it's not your problem. Do you know how this works? Have you ever hired a recruitment, like a headhunting agency before? I have. That's how I know that how this works. Okay. So here's the skinny. They place people. The better they are, the less duds they send you to look at as candidates. They make 20%. If they quit or you fire them with a certain amount of time, then you help them find someone else at no extra charge. But after a certain period of time, it's not your problem anymore.
They're hungry and desperate for someone to do the work. For one reason or another, either they're not inspiring, or they're cruel, they're not good people, or the person didn't wind up having a good ethic beyond that, then they all part ways. All you have to do is call up a recruitment agency right now, find out the terms and policies.
Actually, you can just skip the whole process, type into ChatGPT, I need a boilerplate placement agency contract that follows industry standards and norms about fees and termination agreement, have it drafted for you. It'll just pull it right out and just save you some money.
Omar El-Takrori: Yeah, that's fire. Okay, just put it in the thing. Kay, you, you, you mentioned it, AI. I just wrote a few things down because I'm not resistant for it. You know, like there are some things that are like pretty interesting. What are your thoughts around AI stuff? Like, put this phrase in, it creates that graphic. As far as like the skill that no long, we talked about so much about like putting in the time and the reason why there was so much that you had to offer, because you spent a lot of time doing a thing. And it's kind of like. The time to do a thing is, is getting smaller and faster and requiring less discovery, which makes a person, I don't know, what are your thoughts on AI?
Chris Do: If you and I had an opinion about AI, it actually impacted what's going to happen in the future, then I would love to talk to you about it. But no amount of you and me talking is going to slow climate change or to change the conversation that's happening with AI. It's not going to happen. So if we accept a new reality where there's climate change. AI is going to completely disrupt every industry possible then the only real question that we should have is, what are we going to do to incorporate AI into what we do to enhance our productivity, our creativity, everything else?
So here's what I think, and I've thrown this out in front of entrepreneurs before, is I want you to imagine when your, when your daughter is 22 years old and she looks back on this time and says, dad, that was the greatest economic upheaval and opportunity in the last 2000 years. Daddy, why aren't we in the golden tower right now? Daddy, what did you do with AI? Like, oh, you know, I slept on it. I slept on it, I resisted, I didn't do it. Or I was slow to adopt and we were destroyed. That's why we live in this part of town and not that part of town. Yeah, I just want you to think about it like that. Okay, so if you're not incorporating AI into your workflow, to automating certain things, to improving your customer service, onboarding experience, helping you generate ideas, helping you take tedious things away from what you're doing, Which you already are, by the way, then you're going to get left in the dust.
Omar El-Takrori: So if you were teaching somebody Photoshop, graphic design, is that now a quicker delivery of education information? Because now it's like, yo, you don't have to use the masking tool. Just, I don't know. You know, you know what I'm saying?
Chris Do: I know what you're saying. You still do. Cause it ain't perfect. The cutter ain't perfect. There's some fundamental skills that you need to, but I'm going to flip the question in a totally different way, which is, well, if I want to learn Photoshop, what should I do? Well, why don't you just ask AI? Design me a curriculum that's seven weeks long that allows me to watch a combination of videos and read tutorials for four minutes or four hours a day with clear actionable outcomes that are in line with industry standards to work in a job doing x, y, and z.
Design that for me. I'm a 24 year old kid. I have ADHD and you know, I can only sit in a chair for 10 minutes at a time. That's what I'm talking about. So forget about the threat of like, do we need to learn rotoscoping? Cause AI will cut it out for us. But think about like, how do we become an enhanced human in the pursuit of creativity and self expression while we utilize all the tools in front of us? Not just some.
Omar El-Takrori: That's really good. I love that.
Chris Do: You see the shift there?
Omar El-Takrori: No. Yeah.
Chris Do: One is threatening. One is embracing.
Omar El-Takrori: Right.
Chris Do: Yeah.
Omar El-Takrori: I think it's dope. Like literally Neil just texted me cause I did an interview with Neil and he was like, yo, I threw our interview in Opus clips. And it literally sends, gives you 10 clips. And he's like, bro, they're actually not that bad. You know? And I was like, turn up, dude, run it.
Chris Do: You know, turn up, turn up, turn up.
Omar El-Takrori: Yesterday we were here and you were interviewing Leila Hormozi. And before the interview you asked her, like, is there stuff that you. are excited about or want to talk about? I didn't ask you that question.
Chris Do: Are we at that point in the interview now?
Omar El-Takrori: Yeah. You earned it.
Chris Do: Cue the violin. The music's beginning.
Omar El-Takrori: Yeah. What's exciting you now? And like, what's kind of been the thing that you would hope that somebody would ask you the questions about?
Chris Do: I get so many opportunities to speak that I'm not quite sure how to answer that stupid question. I don't know who asked that question. No, I mean, Omar, are there things that you wish that I would talk more about? I'd be happy to talk about them. I'm a pretty open book. So if there's something you want to know, and I don't want to presume that what I think is interesting is what you might think is interesting. So are there other things like little nooks and crannies? Like, Hey, I thought I heard a rumor about this and I'm happy to talk about it.
Omar El-Takrori: No, I guess something that comes to mind is that you probably spent a lot of your time behind a computer. And now you just said that you do a lot of speaking, and I know you mentioned getting better at communication, but what have you found about speaking and the iterations and what makes people draw to you in a room when you have an hour?
Chris Do: I think we've lost the art of rhetoric, the art of conversation, the art of listening, and I think whether you're speaking in a podcast like this, or on the stage in front of hundreds or thousands of people. We have to remember that there are humans sitting on the other side of that stage that want to have an experience with you.
So if you're going to just sit there and talk about yourself and talk at them, talk over them, you're really missing the opportunity. And it's quite sad to me. Like I go to conferences a lot these days and I get to see speakers. And for the most part, with a few exceptions, of course, they're really boring.
It's very mechanical what they do. It's very, produced in terms of like, they're not going to have a misspoken word or a slide that's got one typo in it. And I think, like, why don't I just watch this on YouTube? TED already does this better than you, friend. Why are you doing this right now? And you're killing my brain, you're killing my time.
I'm starting to resent you, I'm resenting this conference, and those are not good feelings. And I look around the room like, is anybody else feeling this or am I just the only person awake in the matrix right now? And sometimes I feel like I'm the only one. Then I go backstage and I talk to a couple of friends that I really trust and I really let them know how I feel.
Like, dude, I can't believe you feel this way too. Yet, we commit the same sin over and over again. And I try not to do that. When I go up on stage, very rarely is it ever rehearsed. I look at my slides. I'm like, I hope I got in the right order a couple of times. And then I go and do my thing and I want to feel the energy of the room.
I think all public speakers would do better if they were to study crowd work from comedians and learn to work with the audience to be more improvisational, to be more conversational. So I'll tell you some things that you can do right now. Just right now, if you got a talk that you're doing tomorrow in front of your company, board of directors, or clients, or thousands of people, here are two or three things that you can do.
Number one, ask the audience real questions. Don't ask them purely rhetorical questions. Like, literally ask them, Why are you here? I'd love to hear from you. And just say that. And just talk to them. Like, I want to have a conversation with you right now. And try to let go of the need for it to follow a very specific talk track.
And just, be a little bit more improvisational. The more that you can do that, the better. Number two is to learn to use your entire body and your body language. And I think a lot of times we have this model of what perfection looks like, and we try to emulate that. And so we walk, we're stiff, we have our hands a certain way, we're very professorial, and it's like, yo, it's okay if you shrug your shoulders, it's okay if you raise your hands like this.
Express and communicate through the entire body, not just like this. This is really, really important. And I think the last thing is, if you have voices, If you can bring a little bit more of like the quirkiness of who you are on there, onto the stage, into the platform, you're going to connect and hit with so many people.
I'm going to present this to you. Basketball was played a very specific way for a really long time. They wore really short shorts, they had bad haircuts, and they would dribble and do layups. That's it. And then black people get in the game and they're doing all kinds of stuff. And I'm like, whoa, this game is fun now.
It's interesting. It's improvisational. It's a little flashy and it's, it's really fun to watch and you start to see innovation happen. And I think there's something that's really beautiful about black culture here in America is that there's this lyricism to the way black culture interprets music, fashion, architecture, design, sports, performance, comedy, that gives everyone else permission. It's like, oh, we never had to do it this way the whole time. And they like, no one told us we couldn't do it. So we're just going to do it.
Omar El-Takrori: Yeah.
Chris Do: When you come from a place of not having a lot, you have to use your imagination and you start to break rules. Like, oh, we could do anything. And I think that's what's really interesting. So speaking as a person of color, if I can just say that, it's like, I try to bring in my culture, my flair, my emotion, my, my quirkiness, my comedy, my humor, my sarcasm, my sometimes inappropriate jokes. I'm just going to bring them because you know what? I don't care if you hate me, hate me, but I'm just going to be me.
Omar El-Takrori: Last thing, you know, Russell Brunson, he defines marketing. He would say marketing is attracting and repelling. Would you say branding is attracting and repelling?
Chris Do: Yes, but I think we're saying in different ways. Branding is attracting and repelling, attracting more people who identify with what you're about and repelling the ones that are not. I think marketing is attracting, it's attracting money and revenue, but it's repelling. It's like it's repulsive to me, the kinds of tactics that marketers use. They're in for a short term revenue gain and they'll do anything and everything they can to get that buck. We've been burned. All of us have been burned by one program or another.
They had not lived up to its, to its marketing. And that's problematic. So I think the traditional marketer that many of us have problems with, they think they can just find an infinite number of new customers or new suckers to sell to. And they will, and they will keep doing that until, until they make enough money. They can invest in legitimate businesses. It seems like that's the way it goes.
Omar El-Takrori: Yeah.
Chris Do: You know what I'm saying? As soon as I said that I saw you smart, yeah, I know the plan. I've seen it before. I would rather just build slowly if it means that we're not going to be a 10 million dollar company as fast as I would like it to be, so be it, but I'm really interested in building audience community and meaningful connection. And if that takes a gazillion years, let it take that long.
Omar El-Takrori: What it, so, I mean, you have been able to make decent revenue. What do you do with your revenue?
Chris Do: I invested in our people, I invested in our programs, and that's where I'd like to go. So let's say tomorrow you're like, Chris, I'm a billionaire, I'm a philanthropist, I would just want to give you 10 million, what would you do? No strings attached, do whatever you want, because we just, we just love you and we want to support what you do. Here's what I would do. I would take some of the ideas that I think are successful now and just run it at mass, a massive scale. So what I would like to do is to onboard a whole bunch of teachers that I think are amazing, give them a 15,000 dollar advance.
And say, take the time. It's necessary to write and produce your course. We know you can teach, but we need to know that you can teach in video format and we will then just produce that. So I would probably need 10 producers and a bunch of editors working with them so that we're just onboarding them as fast as possible when they're ready to make the content and then to sell the content for a fraction of what it would cost you to get in a normal traditional brick and mortar school.
That's what I would want to do. So that's going to be a money losing, uh, proposition all day long until it's not so when you're about 50 or 100 courses deep into your catalog, all of a sudden now that catalog becomes super valuable because somebody is going to have a good experience with this professor and say, oh, you have this other thing.
I wasn't even. oh, I didn't know that was available. And this sounds really cool. And I had a good experience and they just keep doing that. So then all the instructors went in, then The Futur is in a school wins. But when we only have a smattering of courses, like the end of the journey is quite quick.
You might take three or four courses from us. Like, oh, that's, that's kind of all they got because literally that's all we got. That's what happens when you're bootstrapped, strapped, self financed person who believes in ethical, long term brand building, even though if it means that our marketing sucks.
Omar El-Takrori: Yeah. That's really good. And I like that. I mean, you didn't, you didn't say stash it away in real estate.
Chris Do: No,
Omar El-Takrori: that's in stocks seems like the concept of retirement is not one that you subscribe to
Chris Do: it was
Omar El-Takrori: or pay a retainer to,
Chris Do: you know, well played chasing retirement was an idea I had until I found out I could retire. And I'm like, I retire, it's stupid. So I don't need more money for more money's sake. This is where I start to kind of get confused because there's a lot of people we know that only live a certain way. Like people have like crazy amounts of money. They don't live like that. So what do you do with all that extra money?
I think a lot of it is just because the idea of winning more. It's fun for them, but then it's like, wouldn't the idea of helping more people be better? You notice this happens a lot in the age of the tycoons, the railroad tycoons, the steel tycoons. When they got older, they found God, they found religion, and they started to give all their money away.
But they waited a motherfricking long time to give that money away. You could be doing it on the ascension. And I'm not giving money away like I'm doing charity because charity runs out. It doesn't empower people. You're only feeding them for the day. What I'm talking about is investing in tools to empower people to achieve a lifetime of earning.
That's the way I'm going to do this. So there's no point for me to make 10 million and put it in a bank. What am I going to do with that? To make more money that I'm not going to spend? Yeah, I might buy another chain or something. But other than that, you know, not a bag. I mean, you know, I need another bag. Daddy needs a new bag. But outside of that, it's like, I'd rather just use that money to help people. And here's the best part to try to bring the whole conversation in a little loop here to bookend it, right? We talked about personal branding at the beginning and branding. I am very fortunate to live this life that I get to live, that the message that we send out through the internet literally reaches some kid in Ghana who doesn't have the opportunity that people here have the financial resources, the mobility, just nothing, but somehow they can watch that video and start to apply that and transform their lives.
And I know this because they send me messages. I know this because when I walk the streets and somewhere other than where I live, someone will come up to me in some weird corner of the world and say, you changed my life. I'm like, what do you mean? And I hear this, I used to earn minimum wage, and then last year I did 150,000 dollars, this year I'm going to do 250,000 dollars.
To this, this makes me smile from ear to ear, and I give him a big hug and I say, I shouldn't say this but I say it anyways because I think it'll impact him, I say I'm really proud of you. Please continue. And don't forget to send me some money. Cause daddy need a new bag. That's all.
Omar El-Takrori: Dang, dude, guys. Don't hear that.
Chris Do: Which part of the new bag?
Omar El-Takrori: No, the, that part too. No, the proud of you.
Chris Do: Yeah.
Omar El-Takrori: I had a friend tell me that he was like, hey Omar, I just want, I don't know the last time you heard it, but like legit bro, I'm proud of you. As a friend, bro, it got me. Cause I was like, dang, I haven't heard that. Maybe I haven't heard that from a man, even though he was a friend, you know, like, like man to man, it does something to hear that because probably we don't hear it enough. But dude, thanks so much. Could you, uh, let people know where would they go next step with you?
Chris Do: Yeah. Before I say that, my wife and I, we went to like a relationship building workshop course. And there was this man who was teaching it and we were watching videos and reading his book. And he says like, we all want love. But love is such an abstract concept. So let's try to make it less abstract because we just want to be acknowledged and appreciated. That's so fundamental and it's so easy to do. I see you and I'm grateful for you. So I know this because I understand about a little bit about human psychology is that when I look at people in the eye, I know that most people are a little bit broken inside and they needed a word of encouragement in their life and they didn't get it from probably one of their parents or both.
So when I really want to touch somebody emotionally, like just strike a nerve with them, I just look them in the eye and just like, you're deserving, you're good and you need to be nothing more than that. And I just see you and I do that and men start crying immediately in front of me and it's like, it's okay, it's okay to cry.
And I think if the world kind of operated on this principle of just acknowledging people and appreciating them, just a little bit, it doesn't take anything, it'd be a better place. So I'm going to look at you all in the eye right now and say, you're worthy and I'm proud of you. Keep it up. And on that note, If you'd like to follow me and find out some more information about what we do, I'm on most social channels @theChrisDo.
That's D O. And if you're interested in The Futur, my future and yours as well, it's The Future, F U T U R dot com. It's not the further, it's The Futur. Thanks very much. Appreciate you.
The Futur: Thanks for joining us. If you haven't already, subscribe to our show on your favorite podcasting app and get new insightful episodes from us every week. The Fuure Podcast is hosted by Chris Do and produced and edited by Rich Cardona Media. Thank you to Adam Sandborn for our intro music. If you enjoyed this episode, then do us a favor by reviewing and rating our show on Apple Podcasts.
It will help us grow the show and make future episodes that much better. If you'd like to support the show you and invest in yourself while you're at it, visit thefutur.com and you'll find video courses, digital products, and a bunch of helpful resources about design and the creative business. Thanks again for listening, and we'll see you next time.

‍