The Sound of Silence
There is a specific kind of silence that every entrepreneur knows. It’s not peace. It’s a vacuum. It’s the sound of crickets when your phone should be ringing, the dead air of an empty inbox, the gnawing anxiety of a team you can’t keep busy.
“I've been in a situation like, my God, the phones are not ringing,” recalls education entrepreneur Chris Do. “I would do anything for a lead just because I have a hungry team ready to do work, very capable. We need opportunities. Our confidence is at a low point.”
In those moments, the default instinct is to hoard. To grasp at every opportunity, no matter how ill-fitting. To say yes to anything that looks like a life raft. The idea of giving a lead away seems like an act of self-sabotage.
This is the scarcity mindset. It is a prison built of fear, and it is the single biggest obstacle to meaningful growth. The path out is not to grasp tighter, but to let go.
The solution begins with a deeply counterintuitive act: referring your precious, hard-won leads to your competitors.
The Generosity Playbook
A lead comes in. The budget is too small, the timeline is impossible, or they need a service you simply don’t offer. The scarcity-driven entrepreneur says, “Sorry, we can’t help you.” End of conversation. The lead dies on the vine, and no one wins.
The growth-minded entrepreneur sees this differently. “Our highest priority is to serve the person in front of us, not to serve ourselves,” Do explains. Serving them doesn't always mean taking their money. Sometimes, it means solving their problem even if you’re not the one to do it.
The play is simple. Instead of a hard no, you transition into a helpful guide. Do a little work. Find out what they need and connect them with someone in your network who is a perfect fit. You help the prospect, who will remember your generosity. You help another business owner, who now owes you goodwill.
This isn't about blind referrals. “Do not refer anybody you don't like, that you don't trust, or you don't believe in,” Do warns. A bad referral creates negative goodwill for everyone involved. Your network is your reputation. Vet your partners.
To formalize this, you can establish referral agreements. Approach a trusted studio and ask a simple question: “How much do you pay for new leads?” A finder’s fee of 6% to 15% is a fair range for a hot, pre-vetted client who is ready to buy. This transforms excess work you can't handle into a new, passive revenue stream.
The fear, of course, is that you’re giving away a future client. Do is blunt about the alternative. “The assumption is if you could do the work, you're not thinking about referring,” he says. The choice is not between keeping the client and giving them away. It's between saying no gracefully and saying no selfishly. One path creates value. The other destroys it.
For a more proactive approach, Do recommends a deceptively simple strategy: Take a Competitor to Lunch. It’s an often-overlooked tactic, immortalized in Keith Ferrazzi's book, Never Eat Alone.
The process is straightforward:
- Identify agencies that are slightly larger than you. A four-person shop should contact a 20-person agency. A 20-person agency should contact a 50-person one.
- Reach out with a clear and humble ask. “I've been an admirer of you. We work in the same space. I don't see us as competitors, but I would love to be able to take you out to lunch and pick your brain.”
- At the lunch, build rapport first. Then, make your pitch. “I've been wondering if there's ever a situation where you get work that isn't a good fit… I would love to be able to take some of that off your plate… I'd be happy to pay you a finder's fee.”
You present a solution to a problem they have: what to do with projects that are too small, too fast, or a conflict of interest. You’ve just made their life easier and turned a potential competitor into a feeder system. This is moving from scarcity to abundance. It is the beginning of thinking like a true business owner, but it's just one piece of the puzzle.
The Architect of Confidence
Long before The Futur, back in 1995, Chris Do was just another creative entrepreneur floundering. The internet was a novelty. There was no social media, no Google, no online communities. There was only talent, ambition, and a crushing lack of business knowledge.
“Like many creative people, I thought if the work is good enough, you never have to actually sell anything,” he says. “And boy, is that a dumb idea.”
He found himself bidding on projects for global brands like Nissan, Sun Microsystems, and Janus Funds. A 23-year-old kid in rooms where billions were made, stepping up to the plate and striking out, time and time again. “It was heartbreaking,” Do admits. “It was just devastating.”
He called friends for advice and got platitudes. He called competitors and got laughed at. He was stuck in the classic Catch-22: you can’t get hired without experience, but you can’t get experience without being hired. Survival came from a sheer volume of opportunities in the burgeoning motion design field in Los Angeles, which allowed him to make mistakes and stay afloat.
The first real breakthrough came from a producer named Karen Rainey, who showed him how to build a professional, multi-page bid in Excel. After one project, she gave him the file. For the first time, he could see the architecture of a real budget. He reverse-engineered it, tweaked it, and perfected it. This was a tool, but a tool is useless without the right mindset to wield it.
Years later, with the business on more stable footing, Do made a critical decision. “I remember telling my wife that this year I want to hire coaches and just upgrade everything,” he recalls. He brought on a CPA, an attorney, a financial advisor, and a business coach. It was an investment in infrastructure. The most transformative of these was the coach.
His coach, Keir McLaren, defied every stereotype. Instead of a sharp-suited executive, in walked a man Do describes as looking like Santa Claus, with a jovial laugh and riding a motorcycle. McLaren had no experience in the design industry. He coached musicians and camera rental companies. This turned out to be his greatest strength.
“He would say, you know, every one of you guys… think you're so unique and different. But I hate to break it to you, you're not,” Do says. McLaren’s insight was profound: creative or not, you are fundamentally in the business of sales and marketing and customer service. Your craft is just the product. This reframing is essential for any creative professional who wants to become a successful entrepreneur, a topic Do has explored in depth in discussions on pricing and value.
McLaren didn't offer cookie-cutter solutions. He asked simple, piercing questions that provided immediate clarity. He became Do’s coach for over 13 years, and the lessons he imparted became the foundation for a communication style that would eventually help Do’s agency close 75% of its qualified leads.
The Three Words That Changed Everything
The most powerful advice Keir McLaren ever gave Chris Do was just three words long. It was so simple, so fundamental, that it felt almost insulting. But applying it changed the entire trajectory of his business.
The advice was: Say what you think.
As Do explains, “We're so fearful of finding the right words, the tonality… and we're so fearful of the client's reaction to all of this that we oftentimes cannot say what it is that we think.”
We think the terms are unfair, but we don’t say it. We want to know the budget, but we don’t ask. We hear abstract language like “cinematic” and we nod along, pretending to understand, because we don’t want to seem stupid.
McLaren observed Do’s sales calls and was shocked. “How do you know what they want?” he asked. “You never ask what they want.”
Do had been operating under the assumption that as a director, his job was to provide a vision, not to ask questions. Inspired by McLaren, he started asking simple, direct, and courageous questions. When a client said a campaign needed to be “cinematic,” he would ask for specific references to get inside their mind. When they said “the best work will win” with no budget limitations, he would test the premise: “Do you mean that literally? If I came back with a million-dollar budget, you’d get this approved?”
The response was transformative. Clients were often taken aback. “These are some of the best questions that anybody's ever asked me,” they would say. The up-front investment in clarity led to dramatically better proposals and a win rate that skyrocketed. The agency went from winning one out of five jobs over $250,000 to winning three out of four.
“It got to a point in which I was thinking, this game is too easy to play,” Do confesses. “Somebody gave me the cheat codes and I'm on like God mode.”
This principle extends far beyond the sales call. It’s a life philosophy. Do cites researcher Brené Brown’s powerful mantra: Choose discomfort over resentment. It is always better to have a clear, direct, and momentarily uncomfortable conversation than to agree to something that will make you resentful later. That resentment poisons relationships, personal and professional.
The anxiety we feel in business is rarely a result of what we say. “The stress that you're feeling does not come from the things you say,” Do states. “It comes from the things you do not say.” True communication requires courage, a skill that can be honed like any other, as discussed in Do's teachings on advanced communication tactics.
Mastering the Dynamics of Power
As an owner or manager, you hold more power than you realize. Your team wants to please you, and this desire can create a dangerous echo chamber where no one tells you the truth. McLaren’s second piece of foundational advice directly addressed this blind spot.
The lesson: you must give people permission to say no.
Do found himself consistently frustrated by missed deadlines and disappointing work from his staff. When he’d assign a task, they would nod and agree, even if they knew it was impossible. “By default, they would not say no,” he explains. “They will nod as if they agree... and they already know that it cannot be done.”
McLaren provided a script. After giving an assignment, Do was to add a simple but crucial line: “Is this something that you can do, and it's okay for you to say no? I need to hear that now so that I'm not disappointed later.”
The first time he tried it, the truth came spilling out. A designer, tasked with three ideas by Tuesday, admitted he had two other priority projects. It wasn't about capability; it was about conflicting directives. This simple question opened the door for a real conversation about priorities, preventing a future failure.
Do calls this principle the Symmetry of Logic. If it works for you as a boss managing an employee, it must also work for you as a vendor managing a client. You are, in effect, the employee to your client. You must have the courage to raise your hand and say, “I heard what you want, and I'm having a hard time reconciling this in my mind. This is more work than can be done in the time allotted.”
When an employee does this, a manager’s respect for them grows. They see leadership potential. The same is true for clients. Raising a problem early shows you are a mature business owner focused on delivering quality, not just a passive order-taker. This approach is fundamental to closing better deals, a core theme in Do's workshops on listening techniques.
The final lesson from McLaren was about embracing another uncomfortable truth: The Power of the Owner.
Initially, Do hated the concept. It felt arrogant. He would hide in his office during client meetings. McLaren called him out. “You're robbing them of an experience that only you can bring,” he said.
He used an analogy. Imagine you’re at a fine restaurant. The owner, the executive chef, comes to your table to ask how you enjoyed your meal. You instantly feel important, seen, and cared for. That single act creates a powerful emotional connection. That is the power of the owner.
Do didn't know how to start those conversations, so his team coached him. They would bring him into a meeting, introduce him as the founder, and after a few moments, an executive producer would politely “steal him away” for another call. It was a staged but effective way to practice. Over time, he learned to do it himself, to walk into a room, express his gratitude for their business, and create that invaluable connection.
It reminded him of an early experience when he was a young delivery boy. He walked into the famed editorial company Rock Paper Scissors, founded by legendary editor Angus Wall. The executive producer, barefoot and friendly, offered him a coffee or a sandwich. She treated him, a person with no status, with care and respect. That feeling stuck with him. Years later, he understood. That is the experience you must create for your clients.
The Courage to Communicate
All these lessons—referring leads, saying what you think, empowering your team, and showing up as the owner—boil down to a single master skill: courageous communication.
So much of business is lost in translation, assumption, and fear. The most common mistake is using the wrong tool for the job. When it comes to difficult conversations, many people hide behind the keyboard.
“Sending an email or a text message is the equivalent to breaking up with someone via email or text message,” Do states unequivocally. “You lack courage.”
Written text is a dangerously flawed medium for conflict or nuance. It fails for several key reasons:
- It lacks tone. The same words, “What are you thinking?” can be read as an attack, a genuine inquiry, or a sarcastic jab. The reader’s emotional state dictates the interpretation, not the writer’s intent.
- It hides body language. You cannot see the micro-expressions, the posture, or the gestures that reveal the truth behind the words. You miss the disconnect when someone’s body says no while their words say yes.
- It prevents real-time clarification. An email is a monologue. A conversation is a dialogue. On a call, you can pause, ask follow-up questions, and address discomfort the moment it arises.
The rule is simple. Whenever it comes to conflict resolution or bringing up tough issues, get on the phone. Even better, get in front of your client. A five-minute conversation will yield more information and build a stronger relationship than a dozen back-and-forth emails.
It is in these conversations that you deploy all the other tools: you say what you think, you ask clarifying questions, and you listen for what is not being said. This proactive, courageous communication is what separates struggling freelancers from thriving agency owners. It's not about having a better portfolio; it's about leading a better conversation.
The transformation this requires is not theoretical. It is visible. Years after Do began working with his coach, his own cousin, who had worked with him from the start, pulled him aside after a meeting. “He looked at me funny,” Do remembers. “He goes, ‘You've changed… The way you speak, the confidence, how you carry yourself, and the way that you organize your mind is totally different.’”
It was not a dig, but an observation filled with admiration. This is the power of deliberate practice and expert guidance. The journey from the desperate creative hoping the phone will ring to the confident leader in “God mode” is paved with thousands of small, courageous conversations. It starts by picking up the phone.
TRANSCRIPT
I'm in a situation like my God the phones are not ringing it's like crickets out there hello hello is anyone there and I would do anything for Lee just because I have a hungry team ready to do work very capable we need opportunities our confidence is the low point and I would pay
for that my former business coach care McLaren always tell me if you fail to plan then you plan to fail doing so we went from winning only one out of five jobs to winning about 75 percent of the jobs that came in it got to a point in which I was thinking this
game is too easy to play somebody gave me the cheat codes and I'm on like God mode where the bullets don't hurt you you have unlimited power ups and I'm just doing this and I got kind of I ultimate a little confident a little cocky maybe even arrogant where I'm like yeah I'm
not getting out of bed unless the 600 000 job the team can win the other ones [Music] question Chris comes from the pro group is should I refer my leads to my competitors um there's going to be moments in your life in your career when you get projects and clients that are not
a good fit for a number of different reasons it could be from a scheduling point of view a budget a wrong product marketing mix it's something and what are you going to do with this work and people are very reluctant to say say no because they are living in a scarcity mindset but
my best recommendation is to refer someone else in your network you help somebody else out and you help this Prospect and they'll remember you for it remember whenever it is that we're in a sales State of Mind our highest priority is to serve the person in front of us not to serve ourselves
so when they need help you have to get into like get outside of your own mindset and say look what do they need right now they need a logo designer or they need somebody to help them with a marketing funnel and you don't currently offer those Services instead of just saying no I
can't help you do a little bit of work find out what they want find somebody in your network and refer them do not refer anybody you don't like that you don't trust or you don't believe in because that's going to do disservice to all three parties to the designer vendor to the client
and yourself because then you will instead of building Goodwill you build negative Goodwill and if you wind up doing this a lot you might want to establish a relationship with the people that you refer out and say how much do you pay for New Leads and open it up that way and say
well I have excess work that I cannot do that's sometimes not a good fit for me but might be a perfect fit for you do you want those leads and can we have an agreement where the leads that I send you you're going to pay me a finder's fee or a sales commission
for introducing you to the client these are pre-vetted clients who are ready to buy if you ask most people they would be thrilled to pay a percentage of the revenue that is generated for a good hot lead this could be anywhere between six to fifteen percent I think somewhere in there feels pretty
fair to me so that everybody can make some money and there's still some meat on the bone bro what about if you're going to be referring clients to someone else uh I guess my fear is that wouldn't I be losing potential future business by giving my clients away to somebody else what's the
alternative drigo you can't do the work the assumption is if you could do the work you're not think about referring right so you want to let the client just die on the vine it's like nope I can't help you I'm too busy where's enough but it's giving my clients away to somebody else
um you know I feel like I could be henrying myself from potentially in the future working with that client again okay you just really run through the scenario in your mind one you can say yes and take on the client and really stretch yourself so thin that you're going to do a poor
job with existing clients that you've promised and the new client that you're about to onboard you're serving nobody in this way and you're probably not building healthy relationships in your life by saying yes to everything so your only real option is to say no so by saying no I can't work with you
you a create more demand for you in the future to say like you know what I'd love to work with you but my schedule is full I'm not able to take anybody on because it would compromise the work that I've already committed myself to and that shows that you have integrity you have
standards and you're willing to say no today for a yes tomorrow and if you just leave it there then that's fine but that means that that client is going to go somewhere else anyways and find somebody that may or may not be a good fit for them but you've earned no more Goodwill
the best thing to do is to say no I can't do this tell me more about what you need perhaps somebody my network can help you because if you're looking for a referral I can do that so now you're actually creating Goodwill but you're also helping someone else out and that's also a
good thing because those people are going to also owe you and this is a wonderful thing you get to help two people all because you don't want to be a jerk about this and live in a a place of scarcity like how should I find someone to be a good fit as a
referral partner for my business well this is the feature Pro group right we have several hundred people in here who are at least United by my connection with them I'm not saying that they're all great people and they all know how to run a business but I would start in the pool of
people that you know and this is a great way to build a meaningful long-term relationship because the idea is when you're in the community communities help each other uh I'm constantly posting job leads that are not a good fit for me actually all job leads are not good fit for me because I
don't do work for clients and think about it if you're the recipient to one of these leads that actually leads to real money in your pocket don't you feel like you have a deeper connection to me and you might feel like wow dang I'm making money just by being in this community and
this is a good thing because like I've said this many times before people refer people that they know like and Trust so you start with a pool of people you already know now if you want to take this to the next level if you think of yourself as a fluid agency which means
you're you're just a few people at the upper levels of management but you don't have a ton of production resources in-house it means you need to be able to have established relationships with a variety of people who basically create the services that you want so you would be able to refer designers developers
people who run content marketing funnels things of that nature content writers and you want to have a roster of people you vetted beforehand so that when the work comes in you can bring them on as subcontractors or you can just refer the work out those are options for you the key to making
this successful is not to wait for the the man to come and then to scramble to look for a solution you want to be proactive and you want to be ready for these moments right my former business coach Karen McLaren always tell me if you fail to plan then you plan to fail
is there more tactical tips or any uh advice you can give someone reaching out to another business owner yeah so here's here's the big concept take a competitor out to lunch why would you take a Confederate out to lunch and why would they even have lunch with you I got to tell you
something this is an often overlooked strategy that people don't pay enough attention to because it seems weird it seems counterintuitive that no one would agree to this but there have been books that have been written about this one of the books that that is out there is called Never Eat Alone everybody has
to eat everybody has to eat at least once a day I think unless you're or you're a fasting but people have to eat lunch and they have to eat dinner the easier these two options is lunch because it's a low commitment it's not too expensive what you should do is you should reach
out to the agencies and Studios that are bigger than you so if you're a four-person Agency contact a 20-person agency if you're a 20 person Agency contact a 50 person agency you understand the idea and you can say I've been admirer of you we work in the same space I don't see us
as competitors but I would love to be able to take you out to lunch and and pick your brain right easy ass there and you won't do this uh and you'll tell yourself all kinds of reasons until one day you wake up and like you know what I'm just gonna give this a
try you'll reach out to them and they're like oh yeah okay we'll go to lunch and you pick somewhere nice and you go to sit down and you say thank you so much for doing this ask him a few questions and the way that you want to approach this is after you've built
some Rapport because this is a social call you don't want to go straight in for the business but you know you can say something like this I've been wondering if there's ever a situation where you get work that isn't a good fit or the timing or the client is a conflict of interest
and if you do I would love to be able to take some of that off your plate and service your client and if you send me any of this kind of work I'd be happy to pay you a finder's fee you let me know what works for you and if it's fair I'm
happy to do this and you would be surprised first of all now you've met a competitor that might one day be your Mentor but now they have a solution and you've presented yourself and you've stood out from the rest of the people you've made their life easier and you you don't have to
show them work over the lunch table you can say I'll follow up with you I'll send you a couple of relevant links that I think are appropriate and and during that conversation you'll probably learn some things about where their pain points and challenges are and then that way you can align the work
that you send over and if you think you know what actually what they need is not what I can do then you probably said you know what from the sounds of it from from today I appreciate you I don't do any of that work this is more what I do so it might
not be a good fit that's an opportunity for him to say well send it to me anyways so you want to do this very permission based marketing approach or sales approach where they're inviting you to share not you just doing that spam approach it's just like giving people solutions they don't want or
have never asked for so here's the thing I've recently got an email or a direct message from someone saying Chris I didn't believe you I didn't believe you I resisted I resisted and finally I took a competitor out to lunch and they said yes and now I'm getting work from them surprise like
what I say works if you apply it okay the rest is up to you is there a number or a range of how much I should be expecting to pay as a referral or finder's fee yeah I mentioned before drigo it should be anywhere between six to fifteen percent when it gets Beyond
fifteen percent it becomes almost uh untenable in terms of like your margins for some people they're so desperate for leads they'd pay you 30 to 50 it doesn't even matter and you've been in a situation like this I've been in situations like this I'm not trying to get on a high horse and
say like you little people or something I've been in situations like my God the phones are not ringing it's it's like crickets out there and I would do anything for Lee just because I have a hungry team ready to do work very capable we need opportunities our confidence is the low point and
I would pay for that that would mean that you would be buying the project meaning there'd probably be no profit for you but it's at least something for your portfolio for the experience and just a boost of like Hey we're not dead yet we've still got a little pulse going on here awesome
thanks for that the next question from the pro group is what should I look for in a good Communications coach I have been the beneficiary of having a few really important and effective mentors and coaches in my life not a ton but just enough so that I've been able to get unstuck in
the most critical moments of my life for many people they're looking for the perfect coach or mentor to work with and I just tell you right now the alternative is to do nothing to sit in your pain for another three six nine months and see what happens so oftentimes perfect can be the
enemy of good and good is the result that we're looking for so you're going to reach out to people in your network and say hey do you work with a coach do you have a mentor that you work with that you can recommend just reach out to your friends and family Network and
just start there because they're not going to steer you wrong be a little wary of coaches that are on stage is talking about how great they are as part of their sales funnel because their business is to bring in more clients and sometimes they can be credible but I'm always a little leery
of those types of coaches just go with the friends and family Network and ask around if somebody's had a positive experience and then here's what I would do schedule a call with them and get a feel for their coaching style and don't be afraid to tell them here's how I like to be
coached is this your style are we a good fit for each other and depending on how they answer you have a feel for it and trust your gut because at this point it's really about feeling like style and communication are important things to see if you're going to mesh well together don't worry
so much if they have specific industry experience this is a classic mistake if you are a restaurateur you're and you do Italian food you're going to look for a coach who's coached other restaurant tours who do Italian food first of all it's very hard to find them and I'm not quite sure what
you're looking for are you looking for a cookie cutter me too Solutions is that what you're looking for are you looking for a person who understands the larger aspect of Business Marketing sales customer like relationships when I hired my business coach I'm going to tell you the story and then I'll wrap this
part up here's the first part number one is I was having lunch with a friend of mine and he talked about how his business was booming and I was super curious I'm like what did you differently well we hired a business coach and it was the first time I actually heard that term
business coach okay so forgive me for like living under a rock so I immediately asked for the referral I called this business coach I met with this business coach and first of all he looked nothing like what I thought a business coach was was going to look like so this is an important
lesson of not judging a book by its cover I'm living in Los Angeles specifically I'm living in Venice I expected somebody to come in with a business suit you know uh maybe casual or just business attire somebody that you would see on on TNT or something where you're like whoa okay like sharp
hair like a Hollywood agent comes in it's like super sharp pressed shirt a middle-aged person nope not at all who walked in a a large overweight man who looked like Santa Claus and that was my coach for 13 plus years his name is care McLaren he comes in a little jovial and just
a big hearty laugh wearing jeans and a t-shirt wrote in on his motorcycle I'm like okay and we talked and he did not at that point in time have any clients that worked in the design or the motion design space he had people that were musicians camera rental companies something you know creative
abstract in the larger sense but no specific experience but what he did was he asked me a series of really simple questions and gave me Clarity and insight immediately this was our initial meeting no money had exchanged hands and I knew this is going to be my coach for a long time because
he saved me from a disastrous business decision later on I would find out he would say you know every one of you guys meaning people in the creative space think you're so unique and different but I hate to break it to you you're not you're in the business of sales and marketing and
customer service it just so happens that you do design and he really helped me to understand that because we think oh my gosh well I'm an underwater basket Weaver no one could possibly understand that but what are you without clients what are you without marketing and sales and if you're able to sell
through and you suck at customer service it's not going to take too long before you run out of clients to sell too so we're all really in the same business it's someone who understands business understands people Communications and what what leverage the pool they'll be able to help you so please don't get
hung up on if they have extremely relevant industry experience it's more about communication Styles more about coaching style that's what you're looking for now I just want to let you know I look for very specific types of people in my life that I'm going to take advice from and I tell them I
like direct clear communication I don't want to dance around this issue and if you work in that way we're going to get along just fine I say to them I have relatively thick skin I prefer you to give it to me straight doctor as they say I don't want to like Meander through
like well how does this feel and for you to be tiptoeing on and walking on eggshells I don't want that just tell it to me straight so my therapist John Lightfoot my former business coach Karen McLaren they were super straight and I learned so much from both of them and you might say
like has that influenced my own personal communication Style maybe maybe this is a chicken and egg thing maybe this is how I communicate and I find the right people and we amplify each other or maybe I was on the cusp of something and because I can see their communication style that I learned
from that and they start to emulate them who knows so you're a coach break here for 13 years what would you say was the best advice that he gave you he told me say what you think and it sounds super simple and basic like what do you mean say what you think don't
we all say what we think turns out we don't we're so fearful of finding the right words the tonality and to be able to stay stated in a way that matches their intention and we're so fearful of the client's reaction to all of this that we oftentimes cannot say what it is that
we think and this creates a lot of stress in us like we want to know what the budget is but we don't ask we think the terms are unfair but we don't say they're using abstract language and we think we know what they're saying but we don't ask because we don't want to
seem stupid or dumb and so early on care looked at some of my sales calls he would say tell me how you do a sales call from beginning to end and he was a little shocked and amused I think and he said how do you know what they want you never ask what
they want and I thought you could never ask for what it is that you want because that would mean that you're out of touch with what's going on that I thought you were supposed to be leading the conversation now keep in mind I was working as a director talking to advertising agencies about
commercial campaigns and so I always thought they're looking for me for a perspective a way to shoot the way to edit or to color grade or a visual effects trick and that's how I'd seen this done before from directors that I had looked up to and so I was behaving like them but
I find that it's just much easier to say when you're writing this concept what inspired you what is it about this campaign that is like every other campaign that you've worked on or is totally different can you be super specific when you say it needs to be cinematic can you give me some
reference points so I can get into your mind um when you say you know there's there's no budget limitations the best work will win do you mean that literally any budget will work so if I came back with a million dollar budget you get this approved so he just gave me permission to
say what it is I was thinking and I thought this is too simple this is too basic and maybe to crass like I'm some uneducated cretan who is a production monkey and it turns out asking these questions Garner is a very interesting response as you can imagine oftentimes people are thrown for a
loop and they sit back and I wait these are some of the best questions that anybody's ever asked me and you're asking me to go into my own mind to explain to you what I was thinking Some people say it's quite uncomfortable to do this and over time I would tell them before
we even got deep into the conversation do you have 45 minutes an hour to talk to us about your project because it's going to take that much because I'm going to ask you a lot of questions that might get uncomfortable for you but we find that when we spend this kind of time
to learn about what our clients want and think and expect and are afraid of we come up with much better solutions that are meaningful to you and that's important to me and in doing so we started to see our win rate go up by a lot so prior to that point in time
it was very difficult for us to win jobs for 250 000 and above and that might sound like a lot to you but to make a commercial back in the day that's actually a relatively small budget doing so we went from winning only one out of five jobs to winning about 75 percent
of the jobs that came in it got to a point in which I was thinking this game is too easy to play somebody gave me the cheat codes and I'm on like God mode where the bullets don't hurt you you have unlimited power apps and I'm just doing this and I got kind
of I ultimate a little confident a little cocky maybe even arrogant or I'm like yeah I'm not getting out of bed unless the 600 000 job the team can win the other ones it just became so easy so if you're like where does Chris get his confidence from well Where'd I get my
confidence is from is from nailing half a million dollar jobs left and right feeling like a walk on water and you learn these skills and it's a communication skill it's about listening and asking and being curious and that's a super powerful thing something that no one ever taught me someone something no one
ever talked about in school or even understood and this is coming from a relatively old man he could be my father telling me all you have to do is say what it is that you think to be courageous enough to speak your mind then the rest of it is finding the the terminology
the Cadence the flow to be able to say it so and say it with a smile the speaking smile if you will so that clients don't feel like put off and and that takes a little bit of practice but it's not an impossible skill to acquire that was tip number one with the
say what you think do you apply this to other parts of your life as well yes if it if you think about this this is a human dehuman relationship it's a communication dynamic and I often will refer this as an example when people are confused like when your friends ask you for something
that puts you on uh into like a state of discomfort like you're like why are you asking me for these things and we don't have clear boundaries with people and we feel like gosh if I say no it's just gonna be the worst human being in the world and sometimes you just have
to learn to say no because it actually protects you and your relationships brene Brown said this and I think it's wonderful what she said she said choose discomfort over resentment it's better for you to be clear and to live in a state of discomfort than to say or go along with something and
feel super resentful to the person afterwards this damages your relationships and this happens all the time if you think about it when somebody's a really good salesperson they're able to convince you to say yes and they use a lot of social cues and Dynamics to trigger you to say yes and you can't
say no so you're like okay I'll just say yes but later on you walk away feeling cheated and you're going to be very resentful to this person and you're going to beat yourself up and you're going to say like why didn't have a backbone why didn't I do this and instead of taking
it on the chin you're gonna externalize that negative emotion and you're going to project it to that person they did what they needed to do which was to get you to say yes well maybe they weren't super 100 ethical about it but you have free will you just couldn't say no and so
then you choose to now dislike this person so there's a lesson to be learned here that the stress that you're feeling does not come from the things you say it comes from the things you do not say you could just walk away and say this is not a good fit for me and
just walk away otherwise you'll wind up beating yourself up and disliking people and this could really create long-term harm in your personal and professional relationships here's tip number two and it's about really managing your relationships with the people who work for you and and this is going to be a theme that might
lead into my next tip but here we go when people work for you you do not realize the power you have as the owner as the Director or the creative director so people want to please you they don't want to tell you the truth and they just want to see you happy it's
innate and it's probably why you hire them in the first place right and so oftentimes we're finding that I was getting frustrated or disappointed in the work product that I was getting from the team either Freelancers or staff they were either missing deadlines or they're not doing what it is that I thought
they were supposed to be doing so I talked to Keira about this and he's like you know you need to give people permission to say no to you by default they would not say no they will nod as if they agree as if it can be done and they already know that it
cannot be done so he says do this next time you talk to one of your employees or staff when you tell them what you want like I want to have three ideas done my Tuesday night and then here's the thing he's like you have to add this part is this something that you
can do and it's okay for you to say no and I need to hear that now so that I'm not disappointed later if there's some part of this is confusing or there's too much here for you to do let's have a conversation about it and then we'll figure out what we can do
and so here's the funny thing I try this thinking they're not going to tell me anything but in fact what he said is true so I'm talking to designer and he said Chris everything makes sense I totally can do this here's my problem I've been given two other priorities in air quotes which
one is more important which is a greater priority like oh my God even though you had these two other things who the heck's telling you to do these things and clearly in my mind my thing is more important I'm the boss and now they're like stressed out so they said I'm gonna go
talk to your manager who assigned these two other things I'm gonna make that go away and if I could do that can you deliver this because now that's the expectation and please do not come to me hours before the deadline tag can't do it okay if you can't do it for whatever reason
you need to tell me in an appropriate amount of time at the halfway point that you need additional help and you got stuck somewhere so I can find the right resources but what's not acceptable is not doing what I asked by that deadline are we clear they're clear and that was a pretty
big unlock you have to give people permission to say no to you in a way that they can hear and you have to check in like do we understand each other otherwise what people do is just keep agreeing with you and you're going to be disappointed time and time again it sounds like
uh set an expectation just across your business is I think with their clients but then also with your employees because you know sometimes you get requests from clients that you're just like well can we even do this but setting that expectations up front it just um it's gonna save you a lot of
trouble yeah well before I get into my next tip let me add a different spin on this we've been talking about it from the point of view of the the owner of the manager but what if you're the other person I mean even though you owned your own business you still have a
client everybody has a boss as they say right so what if your clients come to you and say hey we need is this and this done by this date and you're feeling like oh I can't do that so you can understand now you're like whoa and we just agree we go along with
this so now you can understand how that feels from an employee or subordinate point of view because now you're the employee or the subordinate to your clients and so you also need to even though they're not expert communicators you can raise your hand and you can say okay uh Mr Mrs client I
heard what it is do you want and I'm having a hard time reconciling this in my mind because a this goes way out of scope or B this is way more work than can be done I need to figure out was to you right now what the nice to have ours and the
have to haves are because we need to prioritize that I don't want you to be disappointed to come Tuesday at 4 pm and we're not able to give you the quality of the work that you're expecting from us that we know we're capable of doing so what you want to do is you
want to raise the problem you want to raise the problem up front as early as possible because the longer it takes to raise the problem the more expensive it comes to solve so if we see the problem we have to say the problem we have to be able to talk about it we
have to have enough courage and conviction to be able to say it and to to be a mature business owner and say I don't know how to do this in a time in which you've allotted or with the resources that we currently have we need to have a conversation about this now imagine
if your employee or your staff or team member said this to you right up front when you said I need X Y and Z done by this date and they're like whoa hold on what you're saying requires four people to be able to do and I'm one person I need help in figuring
out how you expect us to do this or me to do it and what kind of resources are available or maybe it was just a wish list and really the only thing you want done is this let's have a conversation about it what happens to you as a manager as an owner as
a boss when somebody says that oh my gosh you just rise in esteem you're like whoa this is a real go-getter this is leadership material here the person was able to bring this up you respect them more so the thing that I'd like to share with everyone is this concept of friend taught
me many many years ago it's called the symmetry of logic like if it works for a boss does it work for an employee if it works for employee does it work for a boss because oftentimes you're both the boss and the employee if you're looking from both perspectives then you're consistent both directions
and you know at least you're good because you're like well employee will never say that well have you ever said that yes I have said it to my clients well you see how it works that way so symmetry of logic it should be both or it should be the same on both sides
speaking of communicating with your clients and your employees how would you suggest having conversations like this I just gave you an example but is there a specific situation you're looking for Draco yeah um I guess what I was trying to get from you was you know having these talks is like how you
mentioned about like having tough conversations to pick up the phone call versus doing something like that in email so you can actually read or get a response from somebody because I think a lot of people get scared of just like I'm gonna send out this quick email or a text message and and
things sometimes aren't as clear because maybe we're not a good communicator but also maybe because the client doesn't understand the language that we use yeah okay sending an email or a text message is the equivalent to breaking up with someone via email or text message you lack courage you lack cajones you lacks
whatever and you're afraid and so what you want to do is you want to send off a a message or something that you don't have enough courage to say out loud and you're not that good of a writer to be able to do this via email or text and that's what you're doing
and what email and text can never do is to communicate tone communicate the anxiety awkwardness or excitement somebody might feel when they say those exact words and we do this in communication exercises right communication exercise would be to say something like what are you thinking what are you thinking what are you thinking
so I just said it three ways that would resonate differently with a person just by the tone intonation and pacing but when you type it on a screen the tone and intonation is really depending on the person's State of Mind who's reading it so if they're having a bad day they're going to
read that like what screw you or oh my gosh I'm glad somebody cares like what am I thinking let me tell you what I'm thinking and so it can be very different so I'm going to tell you whatever it comes to conflict resolution or bringing up tough issues get on the phone get
on the phone get in front of your client have a conversation with them because not only do you get to hear their feeling in the words that they say but you can also look at their face and their body language and their micro expressions and you're going to be able to see like
oh the words don't don't match the body and the mind and the Heart so when you see that you should also pause like I'm getting a sense that some part of this isn't hitting you right tell me more about what you're feeling right now or it seems like you're uncomfortable with this can
you express what you're thinking this is important for you to be able to address right then and there so anytime there's a conflict pick up the phone have a five minute conversation you'll get way more information and you're going to build a stronger relationship with your client yes data ties into tip number
one to say what you think yeah they're all going to be the same more or less so here we go the last tip the last tip is this is I talked a little bit about the power of being an owner and when care used those words with me in the beginning like a
power the owner is like two words that's like making me feel really uncomfortable I don't want to have power I'm not trying to be powerful and I'm not trying to beat my chest and it's like well me owner you employee and it just seems wrong but the next lesson he taught me was
do not underestimate the power of being an owner and he said that I see you hiding in your office afraid to talk to clients and what you're doing is you're robbing them of an experience that only you can bring and he would say this thing it's like imagine that you're going to a
restaurant or a cafe and you sit down and you're having a really nice meal and it's you and your wife and you're just enjoying everything and then something comes out from the back it's the owner the executive chef in introduces himself he he bends over he's got his uh apron on he he
shakes his hand he's like um I don't know if you know this but I'm the executive chef my name is Jean Philippe I was wondering how your meal was you ordered the lamb you ordered the salmon was it cooked to your to your liking and of course you're like oh my God to
Chef the owners here checking in on me like who am I today that this has happened and no matter what you're gonna say this is a lovely meal this is incredible thank you very much and you're going to walk away feeling really important and looked after and you're gonna have an emotional connection
to that establishment in all my years of dining I might it might have happened one time when somebody came out and asked me this I'm like damn I'm feeling really important today this is feeling really good only one time I'm 51 years old okay I've eaten out a lot so he's like now
take that into the context of your business and your team is working with the clients and they come in you have a spread you you've got the welcome sign everything is great but we are you in this picture and I always tell them here I I can't do this I don't really want
to have conversation with people he said what's wrong I said I don't know how to begin the conversation and worse I don't want to get out of them so what he did was he's like uh staff come around they're all gathered around my executive team now Chris he needs to be in front
of the client it's critical for this company to build that kind of relationship because they're going to feel like he cares and it's important for us to get referral work and to continue continue to grow this company he doesn't know how to have a conversation with people so here's what I want you
to do I want you to introduce him and a couple minutes later I just want you to make up a reason and get them out of the room so they bring me into the room next time the client was there he they would introduce me it's like oh everybody I just wants you
to meet Chris he's the founder and owner of the company um he he just wants to check in on you I'm like hi everybody are we taking good care of you you know doing the same bit like I've been looking at the work and I hope it's your liking just you know the
same analogy here and then my executive producer is like you know what I hate to do this but I have to steal them away he has a prep for another call and I was like guys I'm so sorry if there's anything you need please let me know and pull me out and then
they felt that same thing that I've only felt once in my life that the owner cares so over time I was able to develop this into a skill believe it or not I know you guys are all laughing at me right now that I can actually walk in myself and introduce myself and
to say okay everything's great I'm probably actually disturbing the workflow right now so I'll get out of your hair and let me know if you need anything I just walk out and so I acquired a life skill but I also learned a big life lesson which is at the end of the day
they can get anybody to do the work but very few people actually care enough to communicate to them that their business is important and we don't take it for granted and again these are all communication skills I think communication skills with your client with your team both up and down the food chain
if you will and then being able to be present and walk into a room and to look people in the eye and to be able to say I care about you outside of the work I care if there's anything I can do let me know here's the funny thing years ago when I
just was starting out I literally was the messenger the delivery boy for our own work and so when the client said we need you to go pick up something I didn't send a messenger I literally went out there and I went to this place called rock paper scissor it's a famous editorial company
it's run by a guy named Angus wall I didn't know it at the time but I walk and it's a beautiful as beautiful space as you can imagine creative spaces in the 90s they had more money and it was just brilliant big open beautiful space I walk in there and I sit down
and this lady walks over and Barefoot a little kind of hippie but kind of Hollywood LA Hip you know walks over to me it's like honey do you need anything I said no and she goes what are you here for I said I'm waiting for a tape so that I can work on
something she goes okay well if you need a coffee a sandwich or anything let me know I'll take care of you this was the executive producer who was a second in command at this company for all intents and purposes she ran the company Angus was the talent and if you're like how do
I know this name Angus wall and rock paper scissor Angus I believe has cut a bunch of David Fincher films and has worked with Fincher for many years as a commercial director as a music media director and then into Cinema so these are Big important people and I'm just some young dumb kid
who for all she knew I was just a messenger because that's how I presented myself and she showed that she cared and I didn't even realize it back then and then I'm like those two moments come together I'm like oh that's what they're talking about I get it now awesome story uh it
says we're talking about the past and we're taking it back what was Christo doing before he was closing 500k thousand dollar projects like what made you want to find coaching okay I I don't remember exactly what year it was but we were having a couple of good Financial years I think we were
we had two years where we did two million plus 2.2 million dollars and back then I had very little overhead so most of it was profit I would say we're probably running at 80 gross profit margins so I'm not saying that's a net but our expenses were so low I was working out
of my home in Venice and I had a bunch of these young people literally in my house set up in my living room with with desks and computers and we're just just living large that was awesome and I remember telling my wife that this year I want to hire coaches and just upgrade
everything that we had so we we transition from our accountant to CPA we brought on our attorney we brought on a financial advisor and we brought on a business coach and so this is something that people don't understand it takes money to make money and we had money what we didn't want to
do was just go throw in the bank because that money wasn't going to do anything for us so this is where we upgraded everything so I learned a lot by working with our CPA the first CPA we were able to work with we've worked with many since the attorney that helped us out
and just formalizing a lot of what we did the the financial planner who started helping us move our money around so we're minimizing our tax obligation but the most important person was the business coach who helped me to grow way way way Beyond here's the here's the interesting thing to take note of
my cousin started working with me I did relatively early into my my business he had just graduated were the same age and I said to him you know what what are you doing I just started a business you want to come and hang out I don't know if I have work but maybe
hang out with me you can just live with me rent free he goes cool and he started working with me a couple of years into my coaching I would have a staff meeting and I would speak to the team and everything and he looked at me funny and after the staff meeting was
over and I said yo why you gave me that look he goes you've changed and I can see it it's so clear to me now I said what do you mean I've changed he goes well the way you speak the confidence how you carry yourself in the way that you organize your mind
totally different and he wasn't saying that as a dig he was saying that in admiration like wow you put in the work and you can actually transform and he could see it and this is a person who's known me most of my life we've known each other since I was five years old
That's The Power of coaching way way back when I first started my business I was like everybody else I was floundering as an entrepreneur without the resources without the business Acumen and without the confidence and I was lucky enough to be in a place where there are plenty of opportunities and I felt
like my talent was good enough but my marketing business and pricing and sales skills were zero like like many creative people I thought if the work is good enough you never have to actually sell anything and boy is that a dumb idea so I'm put into situations where I'm bidding on projects with
global Brands Fortune 500 Fortune 100 companies like Nissan Sun Microsystems Janus funds companies had made billions of dollars and here I am as a 23 24 year old kid fresh out of school bidding on projects and not knowing what it is I was doing it was heartbreaking it was just devastating to me
to be able to be considered for these really big prestigious jobs which were high profile and time and time again step up to the plate and just swing and strike out every single time and it was just like emotion like very hard to handle because I'm like I know I'm doing a terrible
job on these conference calls I think my work is good enough but it's just I'm missing something here so I get into Solutions mode I start to call up people that I know I called up some of my friends who were directors who had graduated before me thinking what is it that you
know that I don't know how are you getting work and I got some of the worst advice ever advice like just leave the call take control they're looking for answers I'm like okay and I tried that I knew in my heart that was not the answer but that's what they told me and
then I started to do the unthinkable I called up my competitors and asked them hey um you don't know me but we're in the same space and I was wondering if I could chat with you about a couple of business Concepts and I just want to know how you when your clients because
we're having a really hard time they either laughed or they gave they gave me the weirdest response and hung up the phone I'm like okay this sucks man so I'm gonna be stuck in this loop it's a catch-22 thing where people won't hire me because I don't have experience doing something but to
get experience doing something I need to be hired super frustrating so we're just scraping by and it's the toughest uh two years in business and everybody knows this their first two years are probably going to be the roughest in your life I'm not ready to give up now luck or fate would have
it and that I would run into producers who knew how to bid projects and something as simple as bidding a project was back then Super complicated my mind something that had a lot of mystery around it and it was a lot of guesswork so the first producer who came in bit the project
I didn't win it but I started to see how they started to work and one of my friends from school referred me to the former executive producer at e Entertainment Television her name is Karen Rainey Karen wherever you are thank you so much for helping me out she came into my office bid
the project asked me like how how I'm going to do it mapped it on the calendar created Milestones figured out the resources that I need and put together a five-page spreadsheet via Excel to formalize the bid it looks super professional and the beautiful thing is she did the exact same thing that the
previous producer did except she gave me the file she goes if you need anything else let me know and I didn't win that project either but now my brain can go into the Excel spreadsheet and see things how things are Bid and it was an eye-opening thing and I started to change the
formulas I started to craft it and over time refine this thing to Perfection and we use this wave bidding for years afterwards and it allowed us to be much more confident in our bidding the reason why I created the Pro Group the reason why was because back then when I was struggling so
desperately to make it knowing that I had the talent but lacked critical business skills and know-how that if someone were just generous enough to show me how to do it it would have changed my life so I would go on for many years just working on my own figuring things out as I
go making tons of mistakes but the thing that allowed me to survive and thrive in those early days was I had a like a crazy amount of opportunities just presented to me because of the skill that I had motion design in the city in which I lived in Los Angeles and the industry
that worked in commercials and production there were so many opportunities and so few people to do it that allowed me to make lots of mistakes to learn up until the point in which I find my business mentor about four or five years into business and then being able to hire him changed my
my world now keep in mind everybody I started my business in 1995. 1995 okay cell phones were very uncommon and expensive the internet was just a thing it just became a thing in like 1994 I had to literally ask my brother what is the Internet it's like Morpheus what is the internet and
he'd have to tell me this is pre-social Media pre-facebook pre-google these resources were not available and I know this in my heart it can feel very lonely isolated to be an entrepreneur who do you turn to when you're not sure you're making the right decisions if you're being fair or if you're being
generous or too generous because there's such a thing where you pay yourself less and you eat less and everyone eats but you so I can turn to my wife my business partner I can turn into a couple of Knucklehead friends and ask them like what's going on what would you advise and they
would just give me uninformed opinions based on nothing more than gut feeling and God bless them love them and I know they they care about me but this is not the kind of advice that I need what I needed to hear was what I needed to hear from was other business owners who
are going through similar things or to have a coach who could see above all of that so years ago I created the solution that I wanted for myself so desperately a place where you can go to get information and resources to be coached by someone who's been in business much longer than you
who has seen many battles on the field and can share those experiences but I realized something is that where I'm at and where someone else is at is at such different levels that even though I think the advice is very sound they cannot see it for themselves like well I don't have those
same accolades I don't have the same social proof my bank account isn't as flush so I cannot say what it is that you say sad as it is for me to admit there's truth in this in that we want to learn from someone who's slightly ahead of where we are or we're going
to be because then that information feels very relevant it feels very doable and it's going to make me feel like I can take on the world so the pro group was born because it is an international diverse collection of like-minded individuals and entrepreneurs who are a little bit behind you are a little
bit ahead of you and if you believe Jim Rohn in his expression saying that you are average of The Five People You spend the most time with this is kind of critical and they see this if you spend time all day with children your your brain the way that you speak the way
you think is at a different level not to say smarter Dumber but you're looking to protect children which is a different mindset but when you're around people who are just in the streets trying to make their name dealing with Marketing sales tough clients bad clients good clients your business Acumen is going to
rise your business IQ will go up it's the law of averages and that's what I want to create here in the future Pro community because I want you to have a better business IQ and to be around people who are going through what you're going through to find Community to find connection to
feel safe and to be able to share uh Jim quick says this too he says the best student is also the best teacher and the best teacher is also the best student and so we think when we join a community we want to be a student and people are just going to feed
us information we're going to grow but as it turns out if you just turn around and look at the person slightly behind you and you help them not only do you help them you help yourself because you gain clarity through articulation David C Baker by helping them you fortify what it is that
you think you know and this is how I became a much clearer thinker much more level-headed and a faster processor of creativity and information because for 15 years I taught and that first year in which I taught I learned so much about myself and the way I think I grew in confidence in
an unshakable way and it was all through teaching so we hope that if you're considering joining the future program that you're going to come in with the learner's mindset but also with the teacher's Spirit of generosity if you can do both you're an ideal person for this community I hope to see you
in there when people will come up to me in the streets or in the Pro Group and they asked me this question Chris you've done so much for me what can I do for you my response always is and if you come up to me I'll say the same thing like a robot
I'll say you winning is the biggest thing that you can do for me because I'm not doing this for my health I'm doing it because I want to see if I can help people and you achieving your goals blasting past Milestones unlocking parts of your mind crushing your limiting beliefs is the the
feel for my fire because it means that what I'm saying what I'm doing what I'm teaching is actually effective I don't understand here and talk to people and have no results so when I see inside the community when people DM me or they're sharing with each other how much they've been impacted by
being a part of this community or having this unlock that is all the reward oh that's all the things that I need and so it happens quite often I start to become a little numb to it but people continue to post their wins and they post it on the brag board I love
seeing those things and I love people like recording their first podcast ever or reaching a hundred thousand followers on a social media platform where they thought they could never get past ten thousand that is the spice of life for me and so I hope that with all the resources that we provide the
office hours and the group coaching that I provide personally the curated content that I write specifically addressed the pain points and challenges that I'm feeling inside the group The amas all that stuff is designed to help you grow and those are the resources I wish I had what do you think is a
skill that everyone should be learning right now there are three critical skills you need to have in 21st century regardless of what it is that you do you need to be a critical thinker to be able to digest consume information to compare and contrast and do some topical reading so that you can
have an informed opinion this is super critical there's an abundance information conflicting ideas from supposed experts but you need to figure out after you're able to compare and contrast to figure out what your truth is and that's important number two is you need to learn how to learn today especially aided by artificial
intelligence the ability to ask the right question is more important than ever because you as the Thinker critical human uh it's a critical thinking human have to learn how to articulate what you want Via questions or queries or prompts in being able to do so will allow you to learn even more and
every time I think I've like hit some kind of plateau on this somebody will share with me what they're doing with AI or how they're structuring their workshop and my mind is blown I'm like you know what I'm still a kid in this game still learning and people are still out hustling me
and I love that I'm I'm challenged and I'm inspired because it means that this game of learning is infinite it's not finite you don't hit a ceiling you just hit a plateau that's the base of a new mountain and I love that so learning how to learn how to unlearn and to relearn
is a critical 21st century skill and the last one is your ability to articulate your thinking through writing through poetry through music through interpretive dance through visuals through storytelling you need to be able to learn how to be a persuasive speaker now back in ancient Roman Greek rhetoric was a critical subject like
math something happened over the last couple hundred years or a thousand years where we've lost rhetoric as a key skill rhetoric means art and philosophy or the theory of persuasive speaking this is very important as you can see back in the days the senate or Socrates or Plato the ability to speak command
attention and to move people was the skill that people looked at as one of the most important skills to have you need to articulate your thinking because otherwise how do you share your ideas with the world this could be through a painting or through a 60-second real or Tick Tock that you put
out there because whoever is able to do this and the most effective communicators of the 21st century will be the most influential and with influence you can do just about anything those are the three critical skills you need to have next question is what service could you start off frame by using Photoshop
and AI as a creative well that's a very specific question Photoshop and AI as a creative okay if you look at where people spend money it'll give you a clue as to what the market wants right now and if you if you accept that we're in the uh information economy a subset of
that is the attention economy so it used to be that whoever can deliver the information control and organize information will be the richest companies and brands in the world Google is Rich for a reason because they have organized the world's information and then now we're moving into a place where okay there's an
abundance information now what are we going to do with that so it turns out we're not as independent thinkers as we'd like to be or we imagine ourselves to be that we're more influenced by the people that we look up to and they curate the information for us somebody told me this before
that universities used to be the centers of knowledge but the knowledge and the information that's out there is so abundantly available that if they want to say we're going to charge you thirty thousand dollars a semester to go to the school they're competing with free or next to free so the universities are
no longer the information centers they're the curators of information because there's an abundance information they have to say well we've done their research for you these are the Articles these are the videos these are the books that you need to read if you want to become good at something and what they're really
doing is they're saying we're going to read all of it we're going to sell you your time back to you because you don't have the time to read all of them you might not even know all of them and therefore I'm going to pay you so I don't have to read all I
could just read the right one that is the influencer attention economy at work there so the rest of us who aren't interested in going to universities are looking to people who have done their own research who have who are going to basically sell us our time back to us and say look I've
tested these products this is one you want to buy I've read these books this is the one you want to read I've tried these exercise programs this is the one you want to participate in and they're therefore capturing that attention and directing the information the right information to the right groups of people
so this is the thing that you want to be able to do so you can see that there are successful entrepreneurs like I I like to reference Alex hermosi who goes on stage and tells how much he's spending per month on his social media team so when I heard him last I think
he said he spent forty thousand dollars a month that's an eye-watering amount of money per month and he said look you think that's crazy my wife spends forty thousand dollars a month and they're married so it's like the two of them together spend eighty thousand dollars a month on social media marketing and
then I heard recently that he was on stage saying he spends now 120 000 a month the number is just getting higher and higher so he and his wife are practically spending a quarter million dollars a month in social media marketing and you think this is ridiculous why would anybody do this so
Alex releases a video and he says okay let's do let's take a look at something why I have no problem spending this amount of money and why you might not be looking at the right thing I got and he's saying this I'm just making those numbers 10 million impressions or views okay and
if you said if you look at what they pay per CPM at twenty dollars so if he has 10 million uh divided by 10 000 times 20 he's like that's how much somebody would have had to pay for this media and he did the math and I I forget what the number was
but it's a really stupid High number so he's like I can spend money buying ads or I could just create content but when I create content I'm in complete control of what it is I do and if I get the same Impressions that is equivalent of me spending five times as much money
and ads so I will spend this money all day long the reason why Alice can do this is because he has a business where you invest in other people so he needs to raise his profile to attract better candidates so that he can invest more money and more people he's making his money
work for him so when we say like what should we do with our skill set look at where people are spending their money and how you can participate in this so you if you do packaging design if you do brochure design or web design if the attention isn't there and people aren't valuing
that the way that you would like to be valued look at where they're spending money they're spending money on social media marketing on podcasts on YouTube on Instagram on LinkedIn to create awareness and engagement so if you have some photoshop skills and you have some ability to generate things in AI I think
there's a wonderful place that you can live in to turn that Talent towards helping people grow on their social media channels by designing more engaging content so that they get better reach and Impressions and engagement if you can do that people will pay you thousands of dollars a month and you can sign
them up as a retainer client and for you it will be baby work so you got to just take your skills and just bring them to a slightly different market and you have a whole new opportunity and you're thinking to yourself I know what you're thinking how many hermoses are there out there
well not a lot but they're different authors CEOs and founders of companies that have realized the same thing that Alex has realized those that can capture Direct and monetize the attention will be the future billionaires they're willing to spend the money they're happy to spend the money in fact if you just look
at me I'm not anywhere near Alex's level but we have how many editors we have we have three full-time editors one on staff and two uh two uh contractors who are working with us I'm spending thousands of dollars a month with each one of these things I have a social media person that
helps me with my Instagram and Linkedin content I hired a Content writer who's working with it every single month so now I'm looking at the numbers I'm getting up there I think I'm spending probably more than twenty thousand dollars a month in the different things that I'm doing with social media easily and
I'm on a tiny little scale of a spectrum compared to like what Alex is doing Revenue wise and yet it's important to me and you know the funny thing is one of the people I consult or coach he was telling me how much money he paid for someone to write his tweet tweets
for him he pays three thousand dollars a month or something close to that just so he doesn't have to go on Twitter and he doesn't even make that much money and asked him like shouldn't you do this yourself he goes no I don't want to my time is more valuable I'd rather focus
on writing courses of reading books and doing something and I'm happy to do this but growing on Twitter is critical to my business model I'm like I get it smart guy smart guy can you give us uh a tip like for a designer that was looking to make some extra money right now
using Photoshop and AI what would be like uh a business opportunity you see right now if you got some photoshop skills and you understand a little bit about how algorithms work you could easily make extra money right now by going in and helping people who have YouTube channels optimize without creating any content
quote unquote you can help them come up with better titles and if you use chat EBT and you ask it to watch the video and you scrape and you ask it to generate title ideas for you that has the highest potential click-through rate and use the human can pick through that and then
go through and provide this as a service to to people who are actively trying to grow on YouTube to change their titles and their thumbnail now you can use Photoshop data to generate uh just about anything so you can take a pretty boring headshot and I've done this myself take a headshot where
I don't have a rest of body you can extend the body you can add arms you can point you can change Expressions you can change the clothes you can change the background and you can use those design skills that you have at getting people to stop to pay attention to investigate and pick
something up you can use that also for YouTube and people are willing to pay thousands of dollars a month every single month and if you picked up three clients you can make a hundred thousand dollars a year easily and if that's something that you want to do I strongly encourage you to do
this how do I pay with my business to a new service offering why are you pivoting your business do you need service offering because you're seeing a trend in the market and uh the let's say I used to work in you know the newspaper and now that is a dying field and I
want to start offering a new service to my clients if you're finding that you're working with an industry that's dying that's no longer starving like traditional print media for magazines and newspaper or clearly the days are numbered and if it's not over it's about to be over and in a second or two
so you have really good design skills you know how to lay things out you know how to communicate things you know how to create copy that's compelling and legible and interesting to look at so when you want to offer more services my suggestion to you is not to offer more services but to
find an industry with the exact same skill set that you offer needs you right now I'll give you the example okay here's the classic example I used to teach I taught for 15 years at private art schools both at Art Center and at Otis College of design and when I was a teacher
I was paid I think 55 dollars an hour I think towards the end of my teaching career meaning for for over a decade the most I remain was about 55 bucks an hour I'm sure it's a little bit higher than that but it's not much and when you do the math it's less
than what I paid Freelancers to work for me because some Freelancers I paid eight nine hundred dollars a day which is a hundred dollars an hour and more and so I was thinking okay nobody ever got rich teaching especially as an assistant adjunct instructor I couldn't even get the title Professor because I
didn't have the credentials apparently kind of interesting how Academia works and so there it is there's my maximum earning potential so here's the funny thing I take the same skill set that I have the same lesson the same personality same swung and I just go and record a video on YouTube and I
do so for a number of years and it's not that many years into it that my earning potential went from zero dollars an hour to thousands of dollars an hour because I'm able to monetize my teaching through brand deals through uh YouTube ad Revenue through teaching and speaking opportunities I'm teaching the exact
same thing in the exact same style that I used to teach but all I did was I changed the format and the delivery platform and it's a whole new world so when you're thinking like you know what what I'm doing sucks and it's a dead end thing you're going to then chase a
trend like everybody's doing like generative art or everybody's doing copywriting or building websites using webflow and you chase that what's happening is you're chasing the tail and you're not leading but you're entering into a field where you don't know that much about so not only are you a newbie chasing the tail you're
the most inexperienced person doing it I would encourage you not to chase different skills or services but to think if I take the exact same skill set that I have and I apply it to like an industry that's one degree different it can have a massive return on investment so let me give
you some numbers to think about my first topography course the first course I've ever produced recorded and published has now made over a million dollars in gross sales and I only needed to record it one time take into consideration 15 years of teaching the entire salary in which I made from teaching those
15 years far distant number compared to the million dollars of teaching one course and that course I recorded I think in about six weeks four weeks initially and then adding two weeks to add addendums to it so six weeks of teaching grossed a million dollars in Revenue 14 weeks of teaching over 15
years three times a year I don't know if I've even made 100 grand that's a difference so when I tell you if you're in a dead-end place don't add more services switch the vertical that's what I'm talking about I hope I made that super concrete for you if you want to equip yourself
with the right Community training and resources to take your business to the next level I want to personally invite you to check out the future Pro Group and our membership specifically created for experienced business owners ready to scale foreign
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