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    PERSONAL BRANDING
    1h 15m 11 min read 15,595

    From Addiction To Marketing at Nike

    Chris Do and former Nike Brand Director Jordan Rogers discuss how unconventional paths, relentless hustle, and vulnerability build powerful personal brands.

    Chris Do

    Chris Do

    Founder, The Futur™ · March 21, 2024

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    Your Greatest Liability is Your Greatest Asset

    Jordan Rogers should not have worked at Nike. By every conventional measure of corporate recruiting, his résumé was a collection of red flags. A history of heroin addiction. Incarceration. A non-linear path that started far from the polished halls of a Fortune 500 company.

    Yet for nearly 11 years, he was an insider in one of the world's most powerful brand kingdoms, rising through the ranks of brand marketing and working on campaigns for Nike Football, Nike Women’s, and Nike Basketball. He worked with the biggest athletes and artists on the planet.

    How?

    In a conversation with Chris Do, Rogers, a former Nike Brand Director, unpacks a career trajectory built not on a perfect past, but on a potent mix of hustle, humility, and strategic vulnerability. His story is more than an inspirational tale of redemption. It is a playbook for anyone who feels like an outsider trying to break in.

    It reveals a fundamental truth about personal branding: the thing you think disqualifies you might be the very thing that makes you unforgettable.

    The Anatomy of a Painkiller

    To understand the drive that propelled Rogers into Nike, you must first understand the pain he was running from. At 14, his life began to unravel. Growing up in Dallas, Texas, where youth sports culture is religion, he was a self-described “jack of all trades, master of none.” As sports became hyper-specialized in high school, his athletic identity dissolved.

    His grandfather, a Southern Baptist preacher and a huge sports fan, was a hugely positive force in his life. He died. A first girlfriend cheated on him, a teenage heartbreak that felt world-ending.

    “I didn't know what to feel,” Rogers recalls. “So much conflict happening there internally and just trying to find myself.”

    This confluence of a lost identity, grief, and adolescent emotional chaos created a storm within him. He was, in his words, filled with “internal angst and frustration and struggle and discomfort.” He just needed to calm that storm.

    One night at a party, he saw an older kid snort a line of a drug. The result was immediate. The user came up from the counter and, as Rogers describes it, “looked like he had this real crazy sense of relief and stress-free just kind of roll off of him like a rolling ocean.”

    Rogers wanted to feel that. He wanted to feel nice. He tried heroin.

    “It absolutely calmed that storm,” he says. “A lot of people describe heroin as like being in the womb again… it's a warm comforting sense of relief. It is an opiate and opiates are painkillers and it absolutely kills pain.”

    But the pain heroin treats is not just physical. It is ruthlessly effective on emotional pain, too. The drug offered a temporary escape, a manufactured peace that quickly spiraled into years of addiction, stints in rehab, and eventually, a year of incarceration at age 21.

    That year behind bars was a forced reckoning. The bar for his future was set devastatingly low. “I just didn't want to stick a needle in my arm again,” he says.

    But the same obsessive energy that fueled his addiction could be redirected. That intense, single-minded focus is a powerful tool when pointed at a constructive goal. For Rogers, that goal became Nike.

    The Hustler's Playbook: How to Get In

    After getting clean, Rogers set his sights on a dream that seemed impossible. He wanted a job at Nike. He didn’t have an MBA. He didn’t have a sterling résumé. What he had was something more valuable.

    A potent combination of determination and delusion.

    “If I had known then what I know now, I don't know if I ever would have tried,” Rogers admits, reflecting on the sheer talent level inside the company. He was just delusional enough to believe he belonged there.

    For five years, he tried to get in. Rejection after rejection. He met with someone who had the job he wanted, a role known then as an EKIN, a kind of brand evangelist who travels and educates retailers on Nike’s history, heritage, and latest product innovations. The advice he got was simple and humbling: get a job in retail.

    Many would see this as a step back. Rogers saw it as a step in. He got a job at a Nike Factory Store in Dallas. He embraced the grind. As Do points out, “Humility along with determination and delusion can take you very far.”

    This is where the hustle began in earnest. Rogers didn’t just clock in and sell shoes. He started volunteering for every marketing event he could. He became a familiar face to the field marketing team, the very people in the roles he coveted.

    His strategy was not to ask for a job, but to make himself useful. This is a critical lesson for any creative professional trying to get noticed. A young man once approached Do with a similar offer: “I will do anything so that I can be around you. I will literally clean your toilets, scrub your floors, do the dishes, whatever it is.” Do gave him a shot, respecting the hustle.

    Rogers embodied this ethos. He followed Do's core advice: “Look for a job that's not being done and throw yourself at it.”

    He executed what could be called The Indispensability Playbook. Its steps are a masterclass in breaking into any competitive field.

    • Start at the Bottom: He took the retail job without complaint, understanding it was a necessary entry point to the ecosystem.
    • Do the Grunt Work: He volunteered to carry boxes and set up tents at events, simply to be in the proximity of the team he wanted to join.
    • Identify the Unmet Need: He noticed that the field marketers were great at running events but terrible at documenting them. They had no photos or recaps to show headquarters their impact.
    • Teach Yourself the Solution: A team member handed him a camera and said, “Can you figure this out?” Rogers said yes. He started taking pictures. Then he taught himself how to use iMovie to edit videos. He learned PowerPoint to build event recap presentations.
    • Become the Go-To Person: He became known as the guy who could handle the “techy sort of nerdy creative” tasks that others didn’t want to do or didn’t know how to do.

    He was making himself indispensable. A former boss once told him, “Work flows to the competent.” By demonstrating competence in areas the team was weak, he was no longer just a volunteer. He was a valuable asset.

    Those first videos? “They were terrible,” he laughs. “So bad.”

    But it didn’t matter. He was willing to learn and deliver. Unbeknownst to him, he was acquiring the very skills of content creation that would define marketing for the next 15 years. All because he was trying to be useful. After five years of this relentless hustle, during the 2008 economic collapse no less, Nike finally opened the door. He was in.

    Inside the Kingdom: A Brand Director's Job

    What does a brand marketer at Nike actually do? It is not about making ads. It is about steering the ship.

    Rogers describes the role of a brand director as an exercise in synthesis. “You're having to intake a ton of inputs and then synthesize that and then deliver it in outputs,” he explains. It is a job perfectly suited for a creative with an ADD-like nature who enjoys juggling multiple threads.

    The inputs are a constant flood of information from every corner of the business and culture:

    • Corporate Strategy: Directives from the CEO and VPs. For example, a mandate to “win in running” or grow the women’s category.
    • Consumer Insights: Data and analysis about what audiences want, what they are complaining about, and how they perceive the brand.
    • Cultural Trends: What is the vibe in sports and culture? What platforms are people using? What is the vernacular? What styles are emerging?
    • Competitive Analysis: What are competitors like Adidas, Lululemon, or Hoka doing well? What can be learned from them?

    The brand director’s job is to take all these inputs and forge them into a coherent strategy. For instance, if the 35th anniversary of “Just Do It” is approaching, the task is to figure out how to introduce that iconic tagline to Gen Z, an audience with no memory of its origin.

    Once the strategy is set, the brand director becomes the evangelist who sells and steers that vision across all the functional teams to ensure a consistent consumer experience. This is what separates a disjointed campaign from a cultural moment. Rogers would work with numerous teams to bring a single idea to life:

    • PR & Comms: To get the story into the right media outlets.
    • Creative Teams: To define the visual identity, the look, feel, and sound of the campaign. This connects to broader principles of building an authentic brand that resonates.
    • Advertising: To determine the form of the campaign, whether it is a TV commercial, a digital short, or something else entirely.
    • Media Buying: To decide where the campaign will appear, from the Super Bowl to a niche YouTube channel, depending on the target audience.
    • Social Media & Retail Teams: To ensure the message is consistent from a customer’s social feed to the in-store experience at the mall.

    The goal is a seamless narrative. A consumer sees a consistent tone of voice whether they are watching a game, scrolling Instagram, or walking into a Nike store. The brand director is the conductor of that orchestra.

    It was in this role that Rogers discovered another, more personal, truth. Five years into his Nike career, he was presented with an opportunity to tell his full story of addiction and recovery in a short film for the organization I Am Second.

    He was terrified, thinking it could be “career suicide.” But he did it. The result was the opposite of what he feared.

    “We admire people through our strength,” he realized, “but they really connect with us through our struggle and our story.” His vulnerability didn’t make him weak. It made him a more relatable and effective leader. It proved that in personal branding, as explored in this full masterclass, your perceived flaws can become your most powerful connectors.

    The Rebel's Edge and the Corporate Fishbowl

    Nike built its empire on a rebellious spirit. It was the brand for pirates, the one that sided with iconoclastic athletes and challenged the establishment. Rogers felt that spirit deeply. “I felt like Nike would embrace and welcome a rebel like me and my story,” he says.

    But as companies grow, that rebellious edge can dull. The very success that makes a brand a global behemoth can also make it insular. Do presses Rogers on a key observation: Nike’s most progressive and interesting designs often come from external collaborators, not from within. Why?

    Think of the groundbreaking collaborations with Virgil Abloh’s Off-White, Jerry Lorenzo’s Fear of God, or Errolson Hugh’s Acronym. These designers took Nike’s classic silhouettes and technology and twisted them into something new, something fashion-forward and culturally potent.

    Rogers explains that the collaborator’s job is precisely to “push the bounds of design.” But he also points to a deeper issue: the “Beaverton fishbowl.”

    When you work at a massive, self-contained campus in a town where the company is the dominant employer, you begin to drink your own Kool-Aid. Rogers says, “Every presentation starts with how we're going to change the culture and we're pushing innovation and we're pushing design, but when you're just judging yourself constantly and you're not looking externally, you think that you're changing the game when really you're making 1% progress.”

    This insularity is compounded by a startling lack of diversity. Rogers points out that while the African-American population in the U.S. is around 13-16%, it is only 4% in Portland, Oregon, and a mere 2.8% in Beaverton, where Nike’s world headquarters is located. “So many of the black people who live in Portland, Oregon either work for Nike or Adidas,” he says bluntly. It is difficult to reflect the culture when your internal culture does not reflect the world.

    This creates a tension between two competing needs:

    • Serving the Core: Nike’s DNA, forged by co-founders Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman, is in serving elite athletes. They built their reputation on making products for obsessive runners, what Rogers calls “nerdy runners,” who would do anything to shave a second off their mile time.
    • Expanding the Market: To grow, Nike must appeal to a broader audience, people who might wear running shoes to run errands, not marathons. This requires a more mainstream design sensibility.

    As you expand, you risk alienating the core. You lose your sharp edge. While collaborators can inject that edge back in, the internal design engine often defaults to safer, more commercial choices. People say they want fashion, but they often buy function and value. Most customers want a reliable, affordable white and black Pegasus running shoe, not a $250 architectural masterpiece.

    The company’s rigid adherence to in-office work further exacerbates the problem. Rogers, who eventually left Nike to move his family back to Dallas, argued that the marketing teams would be far more effective if they were embedded in cultural hubs like New York, L.A., or London, not isolated in Oregon. But corporate logic often prioritizes uniformity over effectiveness. The result is a slow-moving giant that sometimes struggles to keep pace with the culture it claims to lead, in contrast to nimble smaller creative agencies.

    How to Get on the Radar

    For the creative professional watching from the outside, the dream of working with a brand like Nike can feel distant. How do you get on their radar? How do you become one of those collaborators who gets to push the boundaries?

    Rogers gets this question so often he bought the domain name `howtogetajobatonike.com`. His answer is counterintuitive. Stop banging on the front door.

    “So many of us get tunnel vision on the brand,” he explains. “We just go to their website and look at what careers are available.”

    This is the least effective path. The real opportunities often lie on the periphery. The key is to go through the side door by working with the vast ecosystem of agencies that service the brand.

    “So much of the amazing work that we do is from external agencies,” Rogers states. His job as a marketer was to come up with the strategy, but the execution was often handled by outside partners. He names one of the most famous: Wieden+Kennedy, the legendary agency that created the “Just Do It” slogan and nearly every iconic Nike commercial for decades.

    Working at an agency that services a major brand offers several advantages:

    • Direct Access: You are working on the brand’s most important projects, directly with their internal teams.
    • Creative Freedom: Agencies are often hired to bring a fresh perspective that the brand cannot generate internally.
    • Relationship Building: You build a network of contacts within the brand, creating opportunities for future collaboration or even a full-time role.

    The strategy is simple: don’t just chase the brand, chase the brand’s partners. Find the creative agencies, production houses, digital firms, and social media shops that are consistently hired by your dream client. Get a job there. Do great work. You will be in the room where it happens, proving your value on real projects rather than begging for a chance from the outside looking in. This is a practical application of the advice explored in how to attract your ideal clients.

    It is the same principle Rogers used when he was volunteering at events. He did not wait to be hired to add value. He added value to get hired.

    You do not need an invitation to start contributing.

    TRANSCRIPT

    I did some preliminary listening to some of your interviews and your backstory I'm fascinated by where you've gone and what you're doing and the kinds of thoughts that you have on personal branding um I don't want to rehash too much of of the the background which I think you shared with your your audience that I think at 15 years old you went to a party you accidentally guy hooked on some pretty hard drugs and and you went on a dark Journey for a number of years and were addicted to heroin in and out of rehab and then was incarcerated for a period of time and so that's the backstory what I'm really Fascinate in talking to you about what it's like to be uh a person of prominence at a company like Nike that we all love and respect and admire for all the things that they do especially in the brand play and your thoughts on personal branding so for those people who don't know who you are Jordan could you introduce yourself and give us the cliffnotes version of your story yeah absolutely I uh Jordan Rogers I recovered from heroin addiction after a year of incarceration 20 years ago so um you know got the opportunity around the age of 21 to sit incarcerated for over a year and think about what I want to my life to look like and quite honestly I set the bar really low I just didn't want to stick a needle in my arm again um but you know God had bigger plans for me I had uh bigger opportunity and so I uh started put one foot for the other got uh my life back together became a personal trainer eventually chased this dream job at Nike spent five years trying to get into Nike Inc and finally landed that dream job after a lot of hustle and that's where I became really passionate about personal branding you know when I didn't have the background the traditional background that a company like Nike was looking for how do I find what my strengths and skills are and then how do I communicate them to a company effective and in a short amount of time really to try to get them to let me come in the door and to contribute so they finally let me in the door and then I spent almost 11 years in brand marketing working through the ranks across Nike football Nike women's Nike basketball Nike sportsware working with some of the biggest athletes and artists in the world traveling the globe doing the Nike brand marketing thing and it was a lot of fun and I left last year to Now teach colleges and corporate teams about personal branding nil is now a thing in the last three years where College athletes are able to make money off of their name image and likeness where they weren't allowed to previously so it's kind of a Hot Topic in that industry right now and that's what I do travel around I do keynote speaking I do some Consulting in branding and marketing and then of course I create content on the internet every day through Instagram and Tik Tok primarily I think we can structure our conversation today in three parts for our audience who are listening not in equal lengths but just three parts so the first part is I heard you describe you as a witness as a 15-year-old boy looking at one of your friends getting high and you're like the way you describe that I would be tempted to try now full disclosure I'm straight edged I've never drank alcohol I've never done any kind of drug but I've always wondered first of all can you redescribe what it was like for you to witness this and did it live up to your expectations or at least the first the first hit that you got I'm curious yeah absolutely um well I think the context is important you know I was 14 15 I had played all sports growing up and that was a real positive outlet for me I tell people I was a jack of all trades master of none unfortunately if you want to continue to play in junior high and High School in Dallas Texas you need to be a master of at least one and I wasn't so I had recently fallen out of all of my sports and with that a lot of my positive friends um you know going through adolescence and breakups and trying to figure figure out you know how to get girls and be cool and you know try to find our identity it's a really uncomfortable time and so in the midst of all of that I'm hanging out with some friends uh acquaintances really a couple older kids as well and uh I see a guy we at this point in my life I'm trying every drug possible so I'm smoking weed I'm drinking um taking pills I'm doing anything that anybody's got and this dude is snorting something and he goes down and you know snorts a line off of this bathroom counter at 1:00 in the morning or whatever it was and we had already been using a bunch of other drugs and he came up and looked like he had this real crazy sense of relief and stressfree just kind of roll off of him like a rolling ocean and uh it looked like he was having a good time and feeling nice and so I wanted to feel nice I did not want to feel the internal angst and frustration and struggle and discomfort that I had been feeling I would not have been able to articulate that to you at the time but here whatever almost 30 years later I can articulate that's what was happening internally and so I just needed to calm that storm that was going on Within Me internally and it absolutely calmed that storm it felt like like a warm a lot of people describe heroin as like being in the womb again uh not that I remember that but it's a warm comforting uh sense of relief it it is an opiate and opiates are painkillers and it absolutely kills pain and so when used in the proper format you know my wife had surgery last year uh if we go through hard things we break a bone or we have surgery it's really effective for that but also if you're in emotional pain it can really treat that as well what kind of emotional pain were you in you're 15 years old you're an athlete you're a jock presumably pretty popular person I was not a popular person I was not into Athletics and I always looked at it from this side of the fence as a kind of a nerd into like art and comics and things like that that those people had their lives together and they seem to be the life of the party and the center of attention especially in in high school what were you running away from what kind of emotional pain were you dealing with so I don't know if I would describe myself as a jock by that point I was a kid who really enjoyed playing a lot of sports so yeah maybe I would fall into that I always prided myself in being friends with all the groups I didn't know it at the time but I was really creative and I think what I was trying to do Chris you and I probably should have been hanging out more but in Dallas Texas in the 80s and 90s and probably still today to some degree you know today more kids want to be YouTubers than they want to be LeBron James that was not the case think when you and I were growing up especially in Texas you were either like the quarterback or the point guard or you were nothing you were a loser you know you were not cool and now I think creative is cool and I I just didn't know that maybe it could have been then too but at least in my little world and in my brain I was it it was only sports or nothing and so uh the emotional pain that I was in was uh going through entering into adolescence trying to figure out what my identity could look like if I wasn't a great athlete I was never the best athlete at any of the sports I would just always could like contribute and it was more of a community thing where I was having fun with my friends um but once it became hypers specialized and you needed to like make the team and you were going to be one of 12 kids and a thousand kids school to be on the team like that wasn't an a reality for me so I think one the the pain I was feeling was like a loss of identity a bit trying to find a new identity uh my grandfather was a Southern Baptist preacher and a real uh positive he loved Jesus and golf and sports he loves all sports uh and I think I kind of got some of that from him and I he I was really close to him and he was a very positive outlet in my life he died when I was 14 I went through a couple little breakup you know your early emotional you know had a couple girlfriends at 134 one of them cheated on me and the other you know it was like I don't I didn't know what to feel and all that I was like oh I want to forgive her my friends are like no what a you know you you got to move on you what are you a wuss you know you gonna forgive people what is that and so um man so much conflict you know happening there internally and just trying to find myself so that was the emotional pain that I was in I see and I certainly found relief in it in a temporary form from drugs and alcohol well you touched on something that I talk about in that we think some some some pain from from physical injuries you could see the wound you can heal and there's a process and people can deal with sometimes the mental pain that you feel is a much deeper thing to recover from and it sounds like a Confluence of a couple different things a broken relationship a loss of identity a loss of somebody who mattered a lot to you all at the same time filtered through a hyper emotional teenage mind where everything is like the end of the world like I remember exactly what you're going through not the age in which you went through but when my girlfriend cheated on me it it it broke me into a thousand pieces and I had to put myself back together looking back on it's kind of silly it's just another relationship one of many that you're going to have in your life but in that moment it's like it's such a powerful like my my life is ending and we feel it so so much so okay thank you very much for sharing this this kind of this warm wave uh that washes over you that kind of inner peace sounds wonderful I try to achieve that through thinking being quiet with myself and just understanding what people would describe as a medita process but the the part that gets real interesting for me is your tenure at Nike uh I I take it you moved to Beaverton well we had territory offices so I started in the Dallas Texas office and then was managing the central territory which is like Texas all the way up to Chicago and Green Bay like worked on the Green Bay Packers and Chicago Bears and Chicago Cubs and so I did all that and then if you wanted to continue to grow before I ever started this Chase they say all roads lead to Beaverton so you got to be willing to go to Beaverton so five years in here and then spent six years in Beaverton before moving back to Dallas three years ago perfect um what did you do such that Nike gave you a shot it's not like you had this Sterling resume you've gone through some trouble in your life it's not like U you're you would consider like on a resume that looked perfect what do you what do you think they hired you for or or why did they choose you out of so many different people well Chris I may not be the most talented person I may not have an NBA I may not have all that but I am a mother loving Hustler and when I get my mind fixed on something it ain't no there's nothing going to stop me and so I think that a sheer combination of determination and delusion a little bit like I would I if I had known now what I what should I say if I had known then what I know now I don't know if I ever would have tried uh because I saw the qualifications and the talent level of people that were in Nike I may not have ever even given my shot but I was just delusional enough to think that I could get a place there I thought I would be really good at it I've been passionate about Nike my whole life and about sports and what I couldn't articulate then that I can now is really passionate about kind of Storytelling inspiring other people to live a better way of life to chase their dreams that's what I really wanted to do and I also had this sense that Nike's brand at its best and the athletes that they partner with a lot of people miss that there's a rebellious Spirit within Nike that is what gives it its Edge and what makes it so great and I felt like Nike would Embrace and welcome a rebel like me and my story and I didn't tell that story publicly for about 13 years until I was into recovery and five years into my Nike career so halfway through my marketing career at Nike I finally came out and told the story that I just told you in the first five minutes of talking to you and the lesson that I learned there Chris is that we admire people through our strength so people are like oh wow this guy's great he's in brand marketing at Nike he seems cool he's very creative I had shown those skills to this point um but they really connect with us through our struggle and our story and I started to connect with my teammates my leaders um the people that I worked with day in and day out on a much deeper basis because I was willing to be vulnerable I was willing to risk hurt or injury I thought that I might be C committing career suicide but I had been clear on my values that I wanted to help inspire people and felt like my life purpose was to help inspire people to achieve Freedom out of addiction Andor incarceration and so when I was presented with an opportunity to do a film publicly a 10-minute short film telling my story with an organization called I Am Second I had to take them up on that and it was a decision that I'm really glad I made so what I heard from you and I believe this is a good dose of determination and delusion are a pretty good recipe for success and when I hear people who have an addictive personality addiction is just one path of that determination and delusion but the other part is like deep rooted passion that you can't deter and it's a beautiful thing when it's applied to the betterment of yourself towards self-development in a career or a skill or trade or something like that as opposed to sometimes what people would consider pretty self-destructive behavior and that same energy like I know people who used to be addicted to one thing or the other and then now they're like Gym Rats they just apply the energy to something else and so they build themselves up and they're as addicted to lifting weights as they are to doing lines of coke or heroin or whatever it is but you didn't answer my question which was what did you say or do in that critical moment when you're just a scrub from the street into joining them what did you what do you think it is like looking back on that moment do you have any insight as to why you think they gave you the shot yeah okay you're right um thank you for holding me accountable on that it was the determination and delusion so I spent 5 years I am a mother loving Hustler as I told you so I was hustling so I was constantly there so I started I met with a guy who had the job that I wanted this role called the Ean role it's uh brand evangelist people who know Nike backwards and forwards sometimes called Tech reps you travel around you teach people about the history and Heritage of the brand at Nike and about the latest and greatest Innovation that is carried in stores and so you're training people on that in both the story and in the latest product that's coming out and so I started when I first sat with them most everybody said are you willing to move to Beaverton eventually I said yes and they said uh okay are you willing to move around in your career I said yes they said uh are you willing to work at retail you need to work at retail so I went and got a job working in retail at the Nike Factory Store here in Dallas and then I started volunteering for every event that I could with these uh people who had these jobs and so I would just carry boxes for them I would uh set up tents for them I would uh and what became clear is that in these field marketing events what was really valuable to them was getting pictures of them actually doing the event and so a real turning point in my career was picking up a camera and uh a couple of the guys I was working with I was known as like The Tech Guy the techy sort of nerdy creative dude and they were like hey we got this fancy camera here can you figure this out and I was like absolutely and so I would raise my hand and volunteer for the things that people couldn't figure out or didn't want to do and so one of those was building PowerPoint presentations of Recaps of what the events included and insights that people wanted to know about these events and then um capturing these events so I became useful I was just trying to get in where I fit in Chris you know and so um I just proved to be a willing Hustler who would be useful and get the job done whatever that job was done so if you needed photos from your event cool I'm going to be a great photographer for you if you need a video of your event great I'm gonna teach myself iMovie on this computer and I'm gonna learn how to edit this video and put some cool music to it and give it to you and you know what those first video they were terrible they were so bad um but I was willing to learn it and then little did I know Chris like probably the reason I'm talking to you but like I the next 15 years of social media would be dependent upon whether you could take a pretty picture or whether you could edit a video and so just in the process of me trying to be useful and helpful to someone I learned these skills and it helped my life inside my career certainly but outside the walls of Nike as well which have kind of given me wings and uh freedom in my life today as a independent consultant and a content creator um there's a couple things I need to just check in on and I want to recap cuz you you you actually gave us the light bulb moment which I want to to Circle back to but I'm just doing a quick age check here you said you're 20 years sober from 21 are you 41 I'm 42 42 so okay my math is pretty good here so you're 42 uh I'm 52 so I'm 10 years I'm just trying to figure out like what year you are and when you're doing these photos like do you recall like what year this is uh 2008 2009 okay um let's like the economy falling apart in 2008 right yes Chris I did not realize this at the time I graduated in December of 2007 and started trying to get a job at Nike in two thou Nike is going through this right now they're reorg they're hurting they're uh struggling they're trying to figure out the next generation of the company I was trying to get in that company when they were doing that they were reorg the whole company first big reorg in 10 years the economy was collapsing so yes I didn't realize it at the time but yes I had a lot of headwinds here's what I heard and I want to share a story with everyone that humility along with determination and delusion can take you very far so you were saying there's nothing I wouldn't do including working in retail like a lot of people are like no I'm not going to work retail that's stupid I want to get to that place and unfortunately there's whole generation of people not to make too broad of a statement that they have certain expectations and what people would describe as entitlement like I should get the the creative position that I should just get for no reason and I just want to say this there was a young man who approached me at the beginning of my my service design business and he said I will do anything so that I can be around you I don't even need to do creative things I will literally clean your toilets scrub your floors do the dishes whatever it is just so I can be here so I can absorb that now his portfolio at that time didn't warrant the position but his attitude did I said this could be a big mistake for me but I've never been wrong before when I see another hustler in front of me I got to respect the game now some people talk a good talk and then as soon as you put them in the position like I'm not going to do this and we see that happen all the time the fact that you worked retail the fact that you made yourself useful so everybody needs to listen up to this because we have a broad audience of creative people who just don't understand this concept look for a job that's not being done and throw yourself at it with the humility to say you know what I'm not not going to be good at this at the start but I can be useful I can take pictures I can document kind of pre-social media I can help to do this and this is what the company is going to be find to find valuable I can teach myself PowerPoint I can summarize and so you put yourself in a position where they have to if they're smart look at you in a different light and I think to me it's like if I'm a manager of yours I'm like what is this kid doing this kid is tearing it up what is Bobby doing Bobby's doing nothing we need to give Jordan a shot here put him in the game give him a shot yeah and they did eventually and I think the uh what I found is that if you can demonstrate competence I had a boss one time who said work flows to the competent and sometimes that's like in a negative sense you know the most competent people get all the workload and so they they do a good job and then they're rewarded with more work that happens in corporations a lot but what I found was that it was basically just showing that you can be useful and play a role and and if you want to use a sports analogy you be a team player like show up and figure out what is the so when I talk to people about careers there's timing teams and talent so what is your unique talent you know both you and I are passionate about personal branding what is your unique talent what are your skills and Gifts what are your passions and interests that you can bring to a team but then you have to assess the team that exists there at the time if you have that luxury and you see okay what is the missing role here on this team so maybe I love do maybe I'm the super creative guy but there's already a really creative gal on this team and they don't need me and those skills right now for that so I'm going to be the I don't know the useful guy or the you know objective whatever the strategist in this role and so uh there's all kinds of ways that we can kind of get in where we fit in and demonstrate competence yes and as a person who's worked with lots of people in my life there are people I'm drawn to who just look for jobs to help make my life easier and the thing I I want to impress upon everyone who's listening or watching this is the person that you're working with or for their time is very valuable anytime you can save them time you're giving them money back and it's a powerful thing it's a very simple concept but not enough people execute on this so I'm sorry to drive this point home I just want to make sure everybody's hearing this if you're looking for a job if you're looking for a client find something that they would find to be useful and just do it do the best that you can with what you have it doesn't need to be perfect but if you show that initiative smart people recognize this immediately they did not get to that position without being smart most of the time okay now I got to get to this part which my brain is cooking you're at Nike managing brand doing marketing I have no idea what that's like what is it like inside the kingdom what are the kinds of things that you're working on take us through what a typical meeting or would be like so that we can understand what someone in your level and position does yeah great question um brand management is hard to describe I think to a lot of people to a lot of people they see or hear commercials or they see the print ad um from a brand marketing standpoint our job was to sell and steer the vision for campaigns or uh how the brand wanted to show up let's say for the next quarter or this this coming year or for the next three years depending on what level you're in so it's balancing a lot of things and I think it tapped into my ADD nature my creative nature that wanted to do a lot of things so we would sit there and you're having to intake a ton of inputs and then synthesize that and then deliver it in outputs right so I'm going to sit here and listen to our CEO to the people who report to him to my boss to the VP and there are many many layers at Nike but I am going to listen to okay what is the strategy right so right now I've talked about this on social Nike at its hard as a Running Company they need to win and running uh and they need to win with certain audiences right so over the last few years they've been trying to win with women one of my role was to be a brand director on a team of mostly women to try to help serve women because Nike Under Armour Adidas New Balance Puma all these historic companies who serve men have figured out there's 51% of the population who are women and if they want to grow and make more billions of dollars they're going to serve them the lululemons of the world and the aloss and the Athleta have also figured out that there's the other 49% of the population who are men and if they want to continue to grow they need to win with them so it's no coincidence that Lulu Limon just uh launched a men's shoe and is trying to win with men and bought a Super Bowl ad or NFL ad to try to win with men so uh we would take in okay we want to win with women uh running is a priority training is a priority digital is a priority we need to get people in the app or um get them onboarded with us to become members so that we can serve them more specifically I'm taking in all of those inputs then I am working with my consumer teams in the city uh consumer insights people to understand what is the culture right now what are kids want what do people want what is the vibe what is happening in this sphere of sports and culture what is trending what are the platforms people are using uh what is the vernacular that people are using what is the style that's coming what do people want more of from Nike what are they complaining about what are they asking for uh what competitor brands are doing things well and what could we learn from them and then within my category whether it's American football whether it was Nike sportswar so like sneakers and lifestyle or Nike women's or Nike basketball we would then put together a strategy that said okay for this year we're going to stand for I don't know uh you know just do it is going to be the thing this year it's the 35th Anniversary so we need to introduce gen Z to the concept of just do it that us 40 and 50 year olds are very familiar with but they have no context for the origination of that so um it's basically intaking all of those inputs then putting then putting together a strategy that will then connect with the audience so the last thing I'll tell you is in brand we and if this sounds egocentric trick from a brand marketing person trust your instincts but I would think most people would agree with this the brand role is then helping to sell and steer a vision across all of the functions which are basically the business units that people most people would know so PR so I'm working with my PR and comms team to get the right media Outlets I'm working with my creative team and the great creatives like yourself and others Chris to put together what does this brand identity need to look like and sound like and feel like for Nike basketball this coming year uh I'm going to work with the advertising team to say okay if we need to do a television commercial what do we want to shoot who's the director we want to work with and then I'm going to work with the media buying team and say does this need to show up at the Super Bowl or on an NFL game or do we need to go to YouTube since we're trying to reach a younger audience uh and then I'm going to work with my social media team my retail team so that when a consumer is watching uh a basketball game on television they're thumbing through their social media feed they leave the house they see a billboard on the way to the mall they go to the mall they walk in a store it all looks feels and sounds a similar consistent tone of voice that we want to connect with that consumer on so that's a long-winded way to tell you of what brand marketing does and we can dive deeper into what a day in the life of that would look like but that's generally what brand marketing does I got a lot of insight from that uh the the the word that you use that I understand really well is brand evangelist where you love everything that it is about your division or your company and you're trying to evangelize others whether it's new technology or whatever it is just like there are Apple evangelists there are evangelists for everything certain camera companies Etc um I can't help but my mind was wandering a little bit you were saying something about your job was to help your division or department or team find new customers Peter duer said a purpose a business has a couple of purposes creating a customer is one of them so when it's all men into running you might want to think about women into running or men into basketball men into skateboarding and you kind of look for new customers to Market to now I've seen this switch here because I live in Pasadena now that the Nike store it's a small store they're almost seemingly about yoga and in Pasad Oldtown there are like three or four different brands that I came to see within two and a half blocks all targeting women in yoga I like I see the play now lululemons going after Nike with athletic sneakers for men well Nike better not just sit there and just wait somewhere somebody like you exists and says you know what we're going to get our lunch eaten like we want to make sure we defend our territory and expand our Market did I understand that correctly yep yeah you do yes and the fine line and the art of this which is really hard is like so Nike is going through a challenge right now they're losing market share and running because a lot of these market shares the thing that made Nike great was that they started with core Runners who were obsessed with running I call them like nerdy Runner like people who just love running they're shaving seconds off their mile they run in the rain they run in the snow they run when times are good they run when times are bad and that's how they build this like identity and that's how they build that's how they speak to an audience Who falls in love with them because the audience says I you get me you understand me you understand all my idiosyncracies and the things that I love the hard part is when you start then needing to grow your market share and now you're trying to convince people to love running and you lose your sharp edge with the people who already do love and the other people who are kind of like H I'm not sure I want to buy my running shoes to run errands in the afternoon and you lose a bit of your Edge and it comes very hard it's it's a hard and and it becomes like a pendulum you know you go hard in on your core consumer you try to expand out and then if you go too far and you lose the original you get into a tough place and so that's the art and the science that you're always trying to calibrate as you expand your Market you will alienate your core hardcore customers who are like we're about this and now Nike is about something else now so it's a very delicate Balancing Act I do want to ask your your thoughts on this because you said said you left about a year ago and I saw that video where you announced you leaving which was very touching and powerful and cool it felt like a Nike commercial I was watching maybe it was who knows um is that movie air that came out last year which is a dramatization a reenactment of sorts with Matt Damon I'm just curious like what the internal feeling was especially from Phil Knight he was not presented in the best light like he was cutting edge and then he became not cutting edge and this other person played by Matt Damon is pushing him like it's all about baset put all our eggs in basketball he's like we're a Running Company man no one's going to want to wear basketball shoes they wear running shoes what is the internal feeling about that well I happened to listen to a podcast last week where Phil Knight gave a very rare interview and he talked about it and he said he liked it I think most people recognized that it was a good film it was a good movie but it was also a Hollywood interpretation of a movie and uh you know I get a history degree and one of the quick things you learn in history is to site sources and understand what the source is of a story and that story air is based all on Matt Damon's character which is sunny vakaro who was working for Nike at the time but he left and got fired really and then went on to work for Adidas went on to work for Reebok he sort of invented that whole kind of Grassroots marketing and basketball but you have to take that with a grain of salt so he's obviously the hero and he's going to portray the guy who fired him as this you know kind of and then they need a dramatize it for Hollywood yeah he's the villain you know so Phil Knight becomes the villain and uh Sunny aaro becomes the hero when you really dive into the and I actually I've only done a couple YouTube videos but I interviewed Nike's official historian who who also left the company last year and he would tell you that um uh that the other character in there I don't know why his name is escaping me right now but um he was uh one who really pushed a lot of this Sunny's role was probably overstated but uh there was a big team effort and so I think everybody thought it was a great Hollywood movie but it it missed some of the more nuanced details yeah well one of the things that that blew me away if this is in any way accurate where they go to I forget the shoe designer's name but they go in like we need a shoe he's like but when tomorrow and he's like okay I'm gonna do something and go crazy with this and like make a statement and it in the story I know fiction I I work in Hollywood it happens in one night I'm like there's just genius Talent everywhere in Nike and and some of that has to be true maybe not to the extent but what is the true story about the designer who creates the the Air Jordan you would be amazed the amount of things that can happen um a friend of mine runs an agency called Victory and they have this big neon sign behind him that says there's always a way and so and that I do think is a spirit that lives on and Nike and sometimes it'll Crush you because you're trying to create Magic in a short amount of time but almost anything is possible if you get together really talented people and if you have big budgets like Nike does sometimes you can make things happen uh you'd be amazed and so you know I don't know that he actually designed a shoe overnight but they can put together they can piece together like Franken we call it frankensteining if you had the sole of a shoe and you had the upper of a shoe and had different color laces and you had a different color panel that you could sew on on the outside you could throw together a black and red you know a shoe that would be fine for display but not fine to put on the basketball court and that happens often you know we would uh show athletes samples all the time and that that's quite regular and they could do something like that pretty quick but there are a lot a lot of overnight Miracles that happen on a very regular basis at Nike I'll tell you that much I mean there's like a lot of parts and pieces that come together I in a different documentary I think they talked to the designer who came up with the Air Force logo which is the genius thing in itself and just the whole idea that we need our mascot or our ambassador this guy who could float through the air and it they're like waiting for Jordan to happen and then he appears and all the stars line up then Nike owns the world and it's a beautiful thing uh I have another question for you full disclosure I'm not a Nike like sneaker head I do own a few pairs I've always wondered this myself and I was hoping that you can shed some insight on this Nike as a design company isn't as Progressive as I would love it to be but their most Progressive designs are typically their collaborations fear of God with um offwhite with um a bunch of other smaller known designers and I was thinking why can't that just be part of the Nike DNA why is it always a very mainstream looking shoe whereas Adidas has more contemporary interesting fashionable shoes that I'm like I'm drawn to the design can you explain the culture and why that isn't more like the internal DNA yeah I can and I think that's a great observation the role of the collaborator is to push the bounds of design there's a reason they collaborate you say Virgil uh from off-white you would say what would you like to do for this Air Force One we want to celebrate it what would you do with this and um you know Jerry Lorenzo comes in and we would say how would you make a basketball shoe if you wanted it to be really style forward but also have the performance elements that we feel are really important and I think the performance elements is really important to look at Nike's DNA is in serving athletes on the court and on the field of play and so Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight Phil Knight was a runner at Oregon and Bill Bowerman was a legendary track coach and so they were always tinkering trying to get a product that would help them run faster that would help them win more races give them more traction and so at its best Nike's DNA is in making products that help athletes win better sometimes that looks really cool and people like yourself and others find that to be interesting design something like maybe the flynit which was developed about 10 years ago is kind of what most people would think is their last real Innovative push design that they've made uh but a lot of times that doesn't line up with what the culture thinks is novel or interesting and so Adidas you look at some somebody like Adidas they're German roots and they kind of have that German engineering like architectural feeling and so a lot of their new products have a bit of that DNA they also brought in a collaborator you know now Infamous but Kanye West who is a Visionary and pushes the bounds and then what they do them more than I think a lot of these other people and you see it in Nike like Virgil ablo had incredible lasting effects that we still see today on Nike's design language maybe more in their graphics and in some of the way they treat the outside less about the internal components of a shoe but Kanye really pushed the bounds of what Adidas has adopted as that kind of design ethos so I think about their I literally have one right here sorry um I have this ae1 I did a story on this on my uh on my social media platform and they sent me one of these but this to me is a really interesting design and it feels very architectural it feels like uh zahid or um you know someone like that a really contemporary design and they sort of adopt that design language and then put it into their more General releases and performance shoes like basketball well I I visited New York recently I see people carrying around these um tote bags with the Nike store a Nike logo but it's like a grid and it's like really cool as a person who loves to sign I'm like where are people where do they get these bags from and then I'm taken to the Nike store I forget what it's called but there are specialty stores that show like Innovation lab or something do you what is it called again uh yeah that that that's proba it changes names all the time so like the one you saw on Pasadena is now called the night well Collective but it's essentially a Nike DTC Store direct a consumer store but the one in New York there's only a handful of these locations I think one is in Dubai as well where they're selling shoes that are pretty pricey for a naggie shoe like $250 I think but the design the presentation of it is like what I hope is the normal DNA but instead it's kind of like this Rogue operation that's pushing the boundaries when you said they bring in external forces to disrupt my question is why isn't that at the internal language like we should be disrupting fashion we should be disrupting performance apparel and all these things and I I I hate to say this with all the resources and the market share and the profits why can't the design be cooler I want it to be cooler because I want to buy it but it's hard for me well Chris yes sir how long do we have um the okay I mean that's I mean dude look this is the challenge I believe so look I moved the reason I the primary reason I left Nike I needed to live back home in Dallas Texas I had two children my wife is from here all of our friends and family for here so this I would relate to I was trying to push the boundaries on innovation in terms of remote work and asynchronous work and all these kinds of things I believe that um obviously magic can happen in Beaverton I also think Beaverton becomes a fishbowl and when you only drink your own Kool-Aid and when you only just look around because believe me every presentation starts with how we're going to change the culture and we're pushing Innovation and we're pushing design but when you're just judging yourself constantly and you're not looking externally you think that you're changing the game when really you're making very M you're making 1% progress on something from last year and so it's like well we've we've got really cushy foam you know and sometimes you like well well we've had kushy foam for 30 years what what is the you know what's the new thing and so I would say that's one is is hard when you don't have the context when you're not out in the market when you're just kind of all drinking the same Kool-Aid the other is you are very Pro you are on the bleeding edge of design you know just in you're you're cool you're fashion forward uh the fact of the matter is most people who are buying are do not want a $250 shoe that looks like a spaceship so we all kind of think that we do but in reality a lot of times people just want a white and black Pegasus for $100 that they can wear and it's even better if they can get it on sale for $85 uh and so people are looking for function they think they want fashion but a lot of times people want function and if it looks fashionable it's a bonus but they also want it in a financially uh you know they want to be prudent with their finances as well they only have so many dollars and so they have to factor all of those things and that's where you kind of land in the middle and you end up unsatisfying people like yourself and a lot of times myself I see you said one of the things as an evangelist or at least a person on the ground managing the brand is to be on top of you didn't use the word but Trends to see what culture is doing who's the young what are the young people talking about what are they excited over what is the language that they use so we reflect the culture sometimes we make the culture and it kind of influences one of the other like how life imitates art and art imitates life so I noticed something here so part of it is if you're in Beaverton in the Fishbowl the chances that you're going to reflect the rest of America and the world is going to be pretty small especially if that's the only source of information that you're Gathering you need to be in the streets you need to be in the inner city you need to be all kinds of places and I just realized something and I don't want to make this an issue of diversity but you have virtual ablo who's an African-American you have Jerry Lorenzo from fear of God I believe he's African-American and you have Kanye West African-American and there's one other person I want to just mentioned you have um erolon Hugh who is an Asian Canadian and they do and then that's acronym for people who don't know doing these really cool things with all the technology and the resources that Nike already has but they bring in this other voice and it just makes it so freaking cool I just want them to design everything so I to walk in and feel like I'm at Walmart looking at the Nike selection but that's just me is it is that a part of it that they're part of different C cultures and subgroups that they can bring in these ideas about t typography patterns and spaceship design I mean I don't love spaceship design either but you know that's they're kind of infusing with this this breath of fresh air and I love it absolutely and the industry is going through a massive Reckoning with that to the credit of John Dono who's the Nike CEO who who may or may not be there for much longer you know he was brought in he did a tour of 90 days of listening and I will give him credit this was prior to George Floyd prior to 2020 when all of that got accelerated massively for most of these companies you know he said hey I've here's what I've heard and what I see is that our external Partners um the internal representation in the company does not reflect the external representation of athletes that we have signed or the collabor that we're using so they're trying to get more diversity within the company and within leadership but I'll tell you this uh I know this this is a well-known secret within it's not a secret internally if you were to open your ears for two minutes you would see that uh a lot of black people don't want to live in Portland Oregon Chris um you know you could mention any people of color I mean Anderson Cooper's calling in this is uh breaking news everybody yeah breaking news uh one of the least least diverse cities in America uh African-American population in America is 13 to 16% depending on and and way higher like I live in Dallas Texas 30% it's 4% in Portland Oregon Beaverton Beaverton is 2.8% Chris oh my gosh so many of the black people who live in Portland Oregon either work for Nike or Adidas you know it's like well known and so they have a real issue you know uh there's a lot of issues with remote work and I I'm not going to pretend to try to have all the answers but one of the reasons that I couldn't work in Corporate America anymore was I just couldn't like literally to the top all the way to the top of Nike uh in marketing everyone knew that there was no reason marketing needed to be in the office for five days a week in fact marketing would do better if they were out in places like New York La Canada Paris you know wherever just being in the market um but guess what uh corporate logic is such that everybody falls to the mean and so they say oh well account that wouldn't be fair to accounting or to whoever you know the well guess what does that have to do with me nothing you know like I have a job to do we we're not all equal and fair and so they have a lot of challenges and a lot of these corporations have these challenges they think that the culture is in the office and that you need to be in the office five days a week and so they will struggle because of that so to answer your question though they do have City teams do have people who travel outside of that they are working with agencies who are bringing them consumer insights and so they're trying to address that they're trying to beef up their City teams in La New York a lot of these companies are and they're trying to figure out what that right balance is between Homebase and having people in the market so that they can get those insights that the collaborators bring as an outsider you want Nike to Nike themselves which is to be the rebel people that they are the Pirates and just change the structure it's not necessary it's just because it's the way it was done and so many other companies have embraced remote working satellite offices and to really reflect the culture and not just speaking to it but internally the culture is what we are presenting to the outside world and I have another question for you on this and then we'll move on which is our audience I think the demographic is mostly self-identifies As creative designers visual artists those kinds of people and one of my dreams is to put myself in a position where I'm a person who sought after for Creative Direction and input to be able to to work with the Nikes of the world and if there's a creative here who's like you know give me a shot let me help you guys design a new pattern or a shoe or a colorway or something give us a shot because you have so many resources how does one begin that process how does Nike or or how does one get on the radar of Nike that they're like you know what give them a shot let's let's see what they can come up with and we'll see if if we like it we'll use it if we don't we won't how does one get into that position I'm so glad you asked Chris and I get asked this question uh multiple times a day so much so that I bought the domain name how to get a job at nike.com so I have a lot of resources that I've put there please feel free to go there uh a lot of those resources are directed at people who are trying to get in that door but there's multiple ways to do that and one of them to answer your question very directly is to work with agencies well so there's there's two sides I'll say find agencies whether they're creative agency production agencies ad agencies there are so many as you know there's digital there's social media agency there's so many I think a lot of people and I I was ignorant of how companies worked especially companies like Nike so many of us get Tunnel Vision on the brand and so we just go to like their website and look at what careers are available on their site and go okay if I wanted to work with Nike or do a shoe with Nike or have any of my input to them I have to get inside there and often times as you pointed out with collaborators you can have a bigger effect sometimes outside of it working hand inand with them and so uh one of the best ways to do that is to find the agencies that Nike is hiring regularly there are tons of them uh Nike you know my job as a marketer was to come up with the ideas the strategy the ways that we should implement this and of course I was working with a lot of my internal team but tons of my relationships all so much of the amazing work that we do is from external agencies so one of the most famous ones is widen and Kennedy who created just do it they created every every one of your favorite Nike commercials or Air Jordan commercials I guarantee you was done by widen and Kennedy and still to this day so uh I got the privilege of working with them regularly they are the best in the business I love them so much and um uh kisses and hugs to all the widen and Kennedy people but uh so you could get a job there uh you could freelance with them you could Outsource with them there are all kinds of agencies who do that even some that I even put in one of my career workshops but uh just find whatever realm you're are trying to get in and then find the agency who is doing that type of work and you could work with them and have some input and perhaps influence the brand that you're so passionate about that's awesome and I'm glad that you have that will share in the notes it's it's a how to get a job at nike.com is that right yes sir my my question was though I don't want a job at Nike I want to collaborate I want to be able to design or be brought in to give input on certain things is there an easier path and then to be super famous yourself uh how does one begin that relationship as a collaborator not as a employee yeah so I and and that's what I was you know the to answer that question I think if you're wanting to get a job internally at Nike getting in with agencies is super helpful but you could never want to get a job at Nike and you get in with agencies who do the work so uh get in if you want to affect anything at Nike whatever realm you were mentioning in the audience is creative so some of those are going to be graphic designers some of those are going to be directors some of those are going to be photographers videographers uh creative directors the people who are doing that type of work like doing the work are are creatives at agencies hired out by the Nike creative team or the Nike creative Direction team um so that is one path I think mostly for your audience who's going to be listening to this who would be able to work with Nike the second thing which I'll get to as a collaborator is the biggest thing that I don't think enough people take advantage of today with the democratization of tools that you and I are using right now do something publicly and make great things and put it into the world and let the world respond to that and help you refine your process and so many creatives and people get discovered by the internet today I mean Instagram is probably the primary tool that people are finding great creatives and so you know artists like Virgil ablo were starting in Chicago doing great work there he was an architecture student and you know went on to collaborate he jumped on with you know Kanye to do his album art work and then Kanye makes clothes they make clothes together him and Haron Preston and Matthew Williams are are getting together and collaborate they are making things and I think to your point earlier about this next generation or maybe youth sometimes we are waiting for someone to come and say hey you I need I would want to give you a shot to do the no no no don't wait on them go do the thing go make the thing that you want to see and I think not enough people understand that N I would see creatives on Instagram do some really cool um Nike bag and then we would DM them or get our agency and go hey go get this person we want them to come do those bags for our consumers at NBA All-Star game or we want to bring them to the Super Bowl or we're going to do a seating kit for a bunch of influencers we want them to do the kit and so make things do things and you will get the attention of people and if you're not getting the attention then make better things and put it into the world and figure out that iteration process of what do people respond to because chances are if your Instagram audience is responding to it that's all Nike needs to know is the people love this and now we want to be a part of this so not enough people are taking advantage of the tools that are really available to them make things put it in public and continue to refine that process and you will get on the radar of Brands I promise you there it is Jordan just dropped the blueprint everybody so he's saying don't sit around way for someone to anoint you as worthy of having an opportunity create your own future manifest it into being by doing work creating things and using social platform to share and hopefully if there's enough buzz and excitement he's saying Nike is looking at you right now they are and they'll tap you if they think it's hot and it's interesting and you're the person you can you can Manifest this into reality I love that thank you very much okay I think the real reason why I want to talk to you despite us spending the last hour talking is about you working with athletes I was unfamiliar with the term name image and likeness I know a big thing had changed within amateur sports that they're allowed to make money off this now and so now all these young prospects aren't getting taken advantage of by colleges but now they can start to do this so now a whole new market exists for people who could be the next Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods so how do you help young athletes who could be the next superstars in their field cultivate their own personal brand and to Lage that so that other people aren't making the money they are yeah so I teach College athletes about personal branding whether they want to go on to be Michael Jordan or whether they just want to figure out how to craft their career in life after Sports I think I developed the passion for personal branding when I was trying to develop a career it is what are my strengths and skills what can I bring to a team how do I want to show that to people how are people perceiving me and if I like that then cool I want to feed into that but if there's things that they're perceiving about me that I don't want or that they don't know about me how do I show that to them so that they start to know me for that element and really my appeal to college athletes is there's more to you than your sport so many of them just reinforce that athlete mentality which is which is great and there's nothing wrong with that but people find real uh interest in an athlete who is is also something else and so uh to very tactically answer your question I travel around and I do workshops much like yourself but I do workshops with College athletics teams so I was in Georgia last week at the University of Georgia doing workshops with all of their sports teams they have 21 sports teams I did two seminars back to back of about 200 athletes each and then I went and spoke to their football team directly and then I did a smaller workshop with their Women's Basketball team based on scheduling and so in that I teach them about what is a brand what is a personal brand how do we start to know what these terminologies are I tell them what it's not hey this is not Tik Tok or Instagram they are usually told right now with this new opportunity that they have most people just come to them and go you need to be on Tik Tok more you need to post trending audio you need to post more to your social feed and that's well and good but that's not what a personal brand is so I try to go to the 10,000 foot view with them and figure out who they are what strengths and skills they have what they bring to the table and then the element that I'm really passionate about based on my story going through addiction getting into recovery and spending the last 20 years mentoring people and being a freedom advocate of helping people get out of addiction and incarceration I believe that each of these athletes I've worked with enough athletes now over my career that I know a lot of them have have really interesting stories they've overcome a lot of real hard things and they have an opportunity to inspire people with the platform that they've been given and the platform they've earned quite frankly and so I know that they can have a deeper impact on people and my workshops are trying to help pull that out of them so that they can have a bigger impact with the platform that they have could you give us a little preview because I I don't know what your stance on branding or personal branding I know what mine is but when you're pulling these athletes in they're dealing with lots of things in life probably thing they're thinking about is this what are some of the big things that you do to kind of help to align them like what is the value that you are giving to them such that they can start to develop this and put intention behind it yeah so I use a formula of about three things I tell my story and I plant Easter eggs throughout my story uh We've touched on some of them today right so what I thought was my uh struggle uh going through addiction incarceration turned out to be one of my biggest strengths and so I plant a bit of a seed there I plant a seed that hey I had to do a lot of work whether it was packing up boxes or laying out you know when I'm triy to chase a career it doesn't just happen overnight uh we have to sometimes we need to work through and try a lot of things and be bad at things so that we can figure out what our strengths and skills are um and so so I teach I I share with them my story and I plant Easter eggs throughout them and then I teach a bit about like a college professor and it's kind of what I do on my social media a lot I'm teaching people about Sports Marketing and branding a lot of What You Do by the way which is amazing and I really appreciate your resources uh and so I'm teaching them and then we do writing so I've created a I've created a workbook that I have with them uh so we'll either do worksheets or a workbook where I want them writing in this process because as you know and as you shared we learn much better by putting pen to paper and so I teach and then I give them examples and then I give them time to write and one of the biggest principles that I think I've learned with a college athlete schedule a lot of people don't know this but their schedule is jam-packed for like 16 hours a day across studying strength training rehab nutrition training practice games travel they have very very little time so I am in just the 60 or 90 minutes that I have with them I want to create 10 15 20 30 minutes that they're just thinking about who am I and what do I want out of this whole experience I don't think they stop enough and think about what is it that I actually want to do with all of this what do I want my life to look like in the future and so while I had a full year to do that at 21 years old I'm just is trying to create a little bit of space for them to think about what they might want and then to reflect on themselves um when they're not busy or distracted and so that's a lot of the elements I'm using pen to paper and then trying to get them to make a commitment to get to know themselves a little bit better and maybe that there's a cause that they want to serve in that connects with their story thanks for sharing that could you give me a little taste of what one example that you might talk about about and what the writing prompt might sound like because a lot of our people are not in college anymore they're definitely not athletes so this is probably not right for them but I think they can learn a lot about your approach on on how you teach athletes to build a personal brand yeah so Chris I teach I believe that there's three elements that make a successful personal brand to be distinct to be defined and to be real and I use real because most people just say authentic be your authentic self and I think we sometimes lose the verbiage and that I try to use most plain English that I can but um in order to be distinct you know we're trying to figure out how do we stand out what makes us unique and individual and I think the first exercise that we do to that we we figure out the way that we figure out how we're distinct and how we stand out is to then Define what our strength and skills are what our passions and interests are but before we do that I start with what are you not not and so my version of what am I not when I was chasing my job at Nike the archetype that Nike wants to hire is oftentimes a former College athlete who didn't go pro who double majored in you know marketing or entrepreneurship or sports management who probably got their MBA because they had an extra year of Eligibility they probably had a 4.0 uh they were volunteering at orphanages in their offseason they had three internships with every cool company you could think of like this is the archetype that is getting a job in Nike and so what I always what I sometimes we get in the Trap of we we keep looking at who are the successful people and we go I'm not that I'm not that I'm not that well that's cool and so I give them a moment I think when I stand on stage for the first time A lot of times people hear personal brand they go oh you know what I don't have a big social media following this is not for me I'm not famous like the Kardashians this is not for me oh I'm not the I'm not the star point guard this is not for me and so what I want to do is take those insecurities and those objections and put them on paper and I even actually include a dotted line we can do one of two things with that we can cut it out I actually put it in my workbook there's a dotted line we can cut that out or rip that out and throw it in the trash when we're done with with it and you can say oh I'm not tall enough I'm not pretty enough I'm not a good dancer enough whatever they think is in their brain about personal branding and then I want them to be rid of that and then we turn the page and so you can either keep it there to Define okay I'm very clear on what I'm not because now we're about to turn the page about what I am and so I'm doing like a one1 exercise Chris so then a prompt on that is what are your strengths and skills you can start with an athlete is usually speaking a language of sports so I would say what are you good at on the court or on the field you can start there but I bet you that that translates to your daily personal life so are you a good communicator you're a point guard so you are you're in charge of seeing what everyone is doing or if you're the quarterback your job is not only to know your job it's to know everyone else's job so maybe you're a great organizer you're an understander of people and you're a good communicator you need to call out the plays and you need to tell people where to be I bet you that you're a good communicator and so I'll give them some ideas and prompt them but then I want to hear what theirs are and those are two examples of prompts that I might give them that then they might be able to grasp and start to write and start to refine I'll pause there and I I can say more but I'll pause there I like that so what you're saying is there's a couple different things that you're saying so I'll go backwards an order of what you just most recently said which is you think you have a finite skill set on the field but those skill sets translate to other things you need to zoom out a little bit and see that so the quarterback has a lot of skills leadership management team building Communicator sometimes an a-hole you know they're usually the alpha dog but whatever so you can see like okay where does that skill translate into other things off the field I love that a lot of times we kind of get myopic we see we're good at this one thing because we're not really good at recognizing our own true strengths it takes an outsider like yourself to look like don't you also do this this and that and then you get them on that train of flat like oh my God you're right I can do these other things now we can apply that the other thing and I love that used the word insecurity it's it sings true to my heart because when I teach people personal branding it's about embracing the darkness that's in you and coming to peace with it I don't allow them to throw it away I want them to put it into their front it's the it's the Eight Mile B rabbit rule where if you stay to the world yes I'm I'm white trash I live in a trailer park my my mom is you know XYZ my girlfriend just cheated on me what can the world do now to hurt you there's no left there's no chinks left in the armor it's like what can they do and you've owned it and I love that part so there's definitely overlap in the way that we think for sure I really appreciate that and that would make sense Chris that I have your book right here uh I've learned a lot from you and I really appreciate that man um in fact you did a you did a did an interview with um the department um Omar I believe his name was yes and you talked about how the first thing I just man I just it was music to my ears I I even re-shared it and basically didn't add any of my own commentary because I'm very rarely at a loss for words Chris but um you summed it up beautifully you said hey man you're front go to therapy and and Chris the way that I describe my workshops is it's a marketing class meets group therapy uh we are basically trying to let's put our insecurities on the table in the what am I not uh in fact man I have kumbai yach so sometimes the college athletes on a smaller like I love doing a um workshop with Women's Basketball team women are just more reflective they're more willing to be vulnerable and in a basketball team there's only about 12 of them so I've had some of my best sessions with like that intimate group but with corporate groups they're older like I did a high impact leadership sh group at Southwest Airlines Chris we were this was a kumbai yah man we had tears people were crying shedding in the part where we ripped out our insecurities this woman raised her hand and was balling and and I I often I want to do in my workshops call and respond like tell me what you wrote and then let's dive a little bit deeper into that she said for my whole career I've been so insecure that I did not have a college degree all these other people around me have mbas they were 4.0 knows they have this cool alma mater and I've just always felt less than because I didn't have this degree and she's just like weeping letting this stuff out and it's so beautiful because when we can just put that up that could now be one of your strengths hey I'm here in despite the fact that I didn't have a college degree and I bring something different to this table that might be her distinction uh that she can bring to the table and then we bring it all full circle and we go real what is your story what are your rabbit insecurities how do we put those on the table but then use it to distinctly and specifically serve people in a manner that's connected with your story so what I see with athletes a lot of times is I think they get kind of infantilized and they go and there's nothing wrong with a generic approach but they're like hey we're going to do the turkey pass out for Thanksgiving or we're going to do the soup kitchen line and we're going to take a picture of you I think all of that is well and good there is no service that we should ever uh pass up but they have ways and audiences that they can serve uniquely a lot of football players that I have worked with grew up in a single parent household often a single mother they have a unique gift and understanding to be able to serve other young men who have grown up without a father and they have some deep deep impact that they can have on other people that is far beyond being able to run or catch of football that will last far beyond when the final whistle is blown on the field and that's what I'm trying to get out of them so that they can have a bigger impact in their lives and in the lives of the people who look up to them you know so much of who we are is we long for the things we don't have while we have all these gifts that we can't acknowledge so the classic example is this the brand strategist who didn't study branding but has worked with great clients and has done great work work and then the academic who spent all their time studying Brands talking about it teaching it so what the academic wants is Real World experience and admires that and feels insecure for not having that Real World experience while the real world person Longs for the academic pedigree of someone who credential and well spoken and has eight words within their disposal they both want to be each other and nobody wants to be themselves so there's just this really Mass massive like kind of Disconnect cognitive dissonance that happens and as thinking as you and I can clearly see it because we've had our own Journey if we could just lean into who we are we'd be happier healthier and wealthier and so I love that you're doing this work with athletes and it sounds like you're doing it with corporations now too I'm I'm curious because I'm almost out of time here with you which is if somebody who's not an athlete how do they get into one of your programs if they're tickled by what you're saying and they want to lean into the things that you've developed for athletes how can they participate in this they can go to my website Jordan rogers. XY Z and I have uh resources that I'm putting there I have a career Workshop I'm about to launch my first personal brand Workshop publicly digitally uh next week I believe so by the time this gets posted it should be there uh I just came off an insane trip uh I'm just fully living I'm just practicing what I preach Chris uh I just got back from Los Angeles I've told when I give this I just I'll just give this example but I give people I say that I'm interested in three thing you know in a busy and distracted world we can't be known for all the 10 things that we're interested in so for purposes of social media I share about three things one sports business that's primarily the thing I'm teaching people about Sports Marketing two criminal justice I'm passionate about it it's never going to get good engagement but it's important to me and it's what I believe God put me here to do and three golf because I can't not talk about it and I often said it doesn't get good engagement no one cares and I don't care because I love it in the last three months people have finally started to care about sports business and golf because Tiger Woods left Nike and all people wanted to hear about was why Tiger Woods was leaving Nike so for once Chris my following now has grown by 30,000 people in the last like 60 days because people want to hear about the Tiger Woods Nike event and because I was putting that content on the internet because I was practicing what I preached guess who invited me to the unveiling of their brand new brand after they left Nike Tiger Woods so I went to this ceremony and when they brought Tiger Woods on stage the literal first words that Aaron Andrew said to Tiger Woods was Jordan Rogers is right over there tiger and like oh my God I just had this crazy moment this week and so I'm finally like I want to I'm going to make my workshop now available publicly because I'm just living that right now and it's I feel free I feel happy I'm having fun and I really want other people to do the same hey what a way to end our story our conversation together that it comes full Circle where kind of book ending it so first there was personal story then there were some lessons and things packed in there and then you living like you eating your own dog food as Blair NS would like to say and reaping the rewards of it you said earlier just a few minutes ago you said hey don't wait for opportunities to happen go create them if you want something to happen go do it and you did it for all the right reasons because it aligns with what makes you happy what gives you Joy and you put it out into the universe and then the universe aligns itself to your interest and then everything is just perfectly like it's like one shot that shoots through like 18 car windows and hits its Target you're able to nail that to get that kind of recognition from someone of of Tiger Wood stature you're doing it all right congratulations to you so everybody um I want I want you to do this if you're interested in the kinds of ideas the philosophy the ethos that Jordan has by the time this is out the site will be up and you can go look it up and hopefully you can take his course or do whatever it is you want to do to or to go down that rabbit hole it's Jordan rogers. XYZ correct correct or Jordan Rogers on Instagram where I'm also very active okay thank you so much for doing this with me um I want to say this if you're doing something in La i' I'd love to just have a coffee or a drink with you or to be a fly in the wall as you're doing your magic with athletes or corporations because I'm fascinated by people who are passionate about teaching especially when it comes to personal branding if if it makes sense if it's not too weird I'd love to dip in and say hello and just check out what you're doing Chris I would love to collaborate with you I send your resources to someone at least every other day uh you're doing God's work I appreciate you and uh would love to collaborate with you anytime thank you so [Music] much
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    “Look for a job that's not being done and throw yourself at it.”

    — Chris Do

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