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Forget What You Know: How To Create A Personal Brand
Chris Do argues that a true personal brand is built on value and predictability, not followers or manufactured authenticity.
Chris Do
Founder, The Futur™ · September 15, 2024
Your Content is Unwatchable
It’s the kind of feedback that stops you cold. The kind you can’t ignore, especially coming from your wife. After months of creating content, pouring energy into a new YouTube channel, Chris Do asked his wife for her thoughts on their latest video.
She took a deep breath. “It’s kind of unwatchable, babe,” she said. “You guys ramble on, you interrupt each other, there’s no point.”
The feedback stung. But it was also the truth. At that moment, Do realized that simply showing up and talking was not enough. He was making content for himself, not for an audience. That painful realization became the catalyst for a radical pivot, one that would transform a struggling YouTube channel into the global education platform The Futur is today.
It was a lesson forged in failure: to build a real brand, you have to forget what you think you know about content. You have to stop selling and start serving.
The Authenticity Illusion
Most people get personal branding wrong from the start. They chase followers, manicure their lives for social media, and perform a version of themselves they believe the world wants to see. This is not branding. This is capitulating to extrinsic motivation: defining your self-worth by the opinions of others.
A true personal brand is a person’s gut feeling about who you are. It’s their impression and the associations they have with your name.
The popular prescription is to “be authentic.” But what does that mean? For Do, authenticity is not about broadcasting every unfiltered thought or messy detail of your life. It is about minimizing the distance between your private self and your public persona.
“I describe the level of authenticity as the gap between who you are when no one's watching to how you show up,” Do explains. “The bigger the gap, the less authentic you are.”
Adjusting for social norms is not inauthenticity. Wearing a suit to a formal dinner at the White House is a sign of respect for the occasion, not a betrayal of self. The betrayal occurs when your public image is a direct contradiction of your reality. It’s the business coach who preaches about seven-figure deals while their own company is in financial ruin.
That is the gap that destroys trust. It’s a manufactured persona, and modern audiences can spot it from a mile away. “Back in the day, maybe 2012, 2013, 2014, people were getting away with playing a character,” Do notes. “But now more than ever, people are seeing through that.”
Predictability is the Mark of a Real Brand
A large follower count has almost no connection to the strength of your personal brand. You can gain millions of followers by dancing on camera, but if that’s all people know you for, you don’t have a brand. You have an audience, and audiences are fickle.
The real test of a brand, personal or corporate, is predictability. Do cites a classic test, often attributed to marketing expert Seth Godin: if you swapped the logos of two companies, could they survive? “If Nike were to create a hotel, could you predict that? If Hilton created a shoe, could you predict that?” Do asks. You can imagine a Nike hotel: it would be about performance, aspiration, and sleek design. A Hilton shoe, however, is a blank. The brand stands for affordable competence, not a distinct point of view on footwear.
A strong brand allows people to predict what you will do, what you value, and how you will behave. It builds trust. This extends to another critical test: the value-add. As Do states, “If someone associates their name, their likeness to something, does the value of that thing go up? If it’s neutral or negative, you have no brand.”
A plain t-shirt from Costco is a commodity. But when a brand like Aimé Leon Dore or Y3 puts its mark on it, the garment is transformed. It becomes a story, a signal of values, taste, and affiliation. People buy that story to feel a certain way and to communicate that feeling to the world. Your personal brand must do the same.
The Painful Pivot to Value
Before The Futur, there was Blind, Do’s highly successful motion design agency, and The Skool, an early education venture with his friend and business partner, Jose Caballer. Their initial foray into YouTube was a mess of “inside baseball” content.
- The Content: They showcased client work and celebrated wins. “Here’s a cool project, congratulations to our client,” Do recalls. It was PR, not content.
- The Audience: A handful of industry friends would offer praise, but the wider world was disengaged. The content offered them nothing.
- The Format: It was a talk show with engineered personas. Caballer was the extroverted, artistic, “burner vibe” hippie. Do was the introverted, suit-wearing business mind. The chemistry was intentional, but the substance was missing.
Then came the “unwatchable” verdict from his wife. Reeling from the feedback, Do knew he was at least half the problem. He proposed a new rule to Caballer: no more pitching. No more talking about their one product. Instead, they would focus entirely on teaching.
He went home and worked until 4 a.m. preparing a detailed Keynote presentation on brand identity design. The content was pure value, using their work only as examples to illustrate a lesson. They recorded the video under this new rule.
The result was immediate and undeniable. The video dramatically outperformed everything they had done before. It was the first major clue. “Respect your audience, don’t sell them something, and do the work and give value to others,” Do says. That single experiment changed everything and set the foundation for what would become a core tenet of The Futur, a principle further explored in How to Build Content People Actually React To.
One simple question became the new filter for all content: “If you weren’t you, would you share your own content?” For most creators, the honest answer is no.
A System for Explosive Growth
Armed with the “value first” philosophy, Do turned his attention to Instagram, where his growth had stalled at around 30,000 followers. He was gaining a paltry eight followers a month. He noticed another designer and educator, Michael Janda, was growing rapidly using a specific format: the multi-slide carousel.
Here, Do applied a crucial lesson he learned from Errolson Hugh, the founder of the cult technical apparel brand Acronym. Copy the thinking, not the action. Don't just mimic what successful people do; deconstruct their strategy to understand why it works.
Do analyzed Janda's playbook:
- He was taking content directly from his book, Burn Your Portfolio.
- He was structuring this content into 10-slide carousels, a feature Do hadn't even realized was available.
- He was using these carousels to provide immense value, which in turn drove traffic to a course he was selling.
Do didn't have a book, but he had hundreds of Keynote presentations from years of teaching and running his agency. He decided to run an all-out experiment. “My goal was to get 10,000 new followers in two weeks,” he recalls. “I cleared my schedule. Nobody talked to me. I'm just going to figure this out.”
He began repurposing his presentations into carousels, aiming for three to four posts per day. The first few days were a grind, but by midweek, he found a rhythm. The wave caught. In two weeks, he had gained 20,000 followers. He had doubled his goal by understanding the system, not just copying the style. This aggressive content strategy is a theme he revisits when discussing social media, much like in Why Your Social Media Strategy is Failing.
Facts, Fun, and Feeling: The Content Trinity
Creating valuable content is one thing. Creating content that people connect with and share is another. For this, Do points to a powerful framework from Brendan Kane, author of One Million Followers. Kane argues that to reach the widest possible audience, content must appeal to three core human responses.
This is The 3Fs Approach: Facts, Fun, and Feeling.
Most creators, especially in business and education, lean heavily on facts. But in doing so, they alienate the majority of the potential audience who respond to emotion and entertainment. A truly effective piece of content blends all three.
- Facts: This is the logical component. The specs of a product, the steps in a process, the data behind a claim. It appeals to the analytical mind.
- Feeling: This is the emotional connection. It’s about making the audience imagine a future state. A real estate agent doesn't just list square footage; they say, “Imagine you sitting here with your family, hosting a fundraising event for a charity you love.”
- Fun: This is the element of surprise, humor, or absurdity that disrupts patterns. It’s the unicorn pooping rainbow ice cream in the Squatty Potty ad or the bizarre, hyper-masculine skits from Dr. Squatch soap commercials.
The Dollar Shave Club launch video is a masterclass in this blend. The founder walks through a warehouse (facts about the product), while a man in a bear costume, a confetti cannon, and deadpan humor provide the fun and feeling. By consciously incorporating all three elements, you move from simply informing to engaging and entertaining.
The Anatomy of a Pivot
The transition from a service-based agency to an education company was not clean. When Do and Caballer decided to part ways, they had a “business pre-nup” in place. “You keep the product, I keep the audience,” Do proposed. He renamed the channel The Futur and started from scratch, rebuilding the community. The first year was brutal, with the remaining audience demanding to know where Jose was.
Internally, the team at his agency, Blind, was divided. Do describes them as falling into three archetypes common during any major business transformation:
- The Skeptics: They believed the new venture was a distraction and would never work. They eventually left or were let go.
- The Believers: They were all-in, even without fully understanding the vision. They embraced the change and were willing to help after hours and on weekends.
- The Undecided: These were the most dangerous. Unsure whether to commit or leave, they consumed valuable energy and time.
For a long time, Do was essentially funding The Futur with profits from Blind, where he had transitioned into the role of “the Wolf” from Pulp Fiction. He was the high-stakes closer, called in only when a major deal was about to fall through. “I feel like this $600,000 job might go bye-bye,” an executive producer would say. “It’s time to call in Chris.”
The new education business was just an experiment until it started generating real money. The turning point came when The Futur hit $1.2 million in revenue. It was proof that this new model was not just viable but potentially more scalable than the agency ever was, a journey from practitioner to entrepreneur similar to what's detailed in How He Went from Freelancing Into a 7-Figure Agency.
Your Reputation Precedes You
With the rise of the creator economy, the “coach” has become a popular, and often maligned, figure. Many are criticized as “gurus” who haven’t actually done the work they teach. Do’s entry into education was different; it came after two decades of running a successful design firm.
His advice for aspiring coaches is direct and uncompromising. First, you must have achieved the results you are promising to others, multiple times. Second, you must fiercely protect your reputation, because it is more valuable and enduring than any money you will ever make.
“Your reputation is precious, so take care of your reputation,” Do warns. “It doesn’t take a lot for it to be ruined.”
He sees this happen constantly. Lettering artists teaching courses who can't draw a confident curve. Finance influencers attaching their name to one scam after another. They are taking advantage of an information gap, where their audience knows even less than they do. While it might work in the short term, it’s a losing game. The experts know you're a fraud, and eventually, so will everyone else.
This is why Do stayed out of the education space for so long. He didn’t want to be associated with the wave of unqualified creators who were simply flipping a book they just read. He had to prove the model with his own career first. Building a brand on a shaky foundation is a common mistake, something he cautions against in 98% of Personal Branding Experts are Wrong!.
The principle is simple. Your reputation follows you long after the money has gone.
The path is clear. Do the work. Master your craft. Then, and only then, turn around and teach. Build something real. The audience will find you.
TRANSCRIPT
in today's episode I sit down with the guys over at the 505 podcast we unpack the secrets of personal branding why authenticity is key and how to genuinely connect with your audience I'll be diving into practical tips for enhancing your brand exploring the real value behind the content you share if you enjoy
this episode check out their podcast linked below let's jump in ladies and gentlemen welcome back to episode 114 of the 505 podcast we got Chris doe on the show The M of personal brand dude this one jam packed with information I mean he he really gave you the blueprint for developing your personal
brand and getting into this space of content creation I really felt like this conversation is just it's it is a jam-packed it's a gold mine dude we found just rivets of Gold Everywhere he every time he spoke I was like bang dude just panning for gold we um bra and I did a
little role playing thing where we were clients and he was you know as a big designer telling us how he would price it out and we were just overpaying over and over again dude everything he said was so smart and we were like we got to we got to raise our [ __
] thing for him we got to raise our budget he was so good at it it actually blew my mind and I've been trying to use it ever since we talked to him what I loved about the role play that you guys did was how slow he took the conversation and the level
of questions that he asked he was telling us that like the better you are at asking questions the more successful you are going to be as an artist and I thought that was great I also think that when you're thinking about pricing your work he breaks down such important topics that I I
don't want to wait I don't want to let them wait any longer dude I think we need to get into this Christo he's a Serial entrepreneur he's a recovering designer public speaker you name it the man does it all let's get into this episode Chris do give me the one-handed crack I have
high hopes for you oh shoot I know there's lots of rules here nice crush it wow insane It's Tricky oh you got it I'm going to break a fingernail on this don't break a fingernail we might have to pause for commercial break yeah oh he's got in terms of like it's pretty smooth
once it got there and I think the perseverance has to have something there 52 for kristo you you didn't Dent it and you had it in the air that's what's important I just want to say my middle finger is no longer operable but it's cool all for the show wow see but I
feel like I feel like that was a cheap can you know feel like that there's no way that was the same Co is going to do it exactly how you did it oh oh my Lord oh gosh I don't even know if I really what the point of this so this is a
that I do on my Instagram story I started doing it in college and then one day one random person goes hey like I want to send in a submission and I was like a submission for what and he's like the one-headed crack and this random person like named it I don't know who
who did it so he sends me a submission and I rate them every day they're really bad no one's really good at it we've had like one decent score on the Pod long time Gary V's old filmmaker Tyler Babin got like a 91 he's he Sol I can do it but I D
I'm all power no finesse so I I get it open but the whole can usually gets crumpled really has got it down the only important thing is are you sponsored by Leisure hydration they they sto sponsoring us oh my God but it's not our fault it's not our fault what happened with that
we ended the partnership no bread dude just yeah they didn't have them they didn't have the bread to keep going so but it is genuinely a very good drink yeah so start getting his money that's an honest opinion cheers guys cheers Chris welcome to the show thanks let's go absolutely I'm not numbered
on this one I got to see you speak at a doughy Max this past year which is really cool we've been following you for a while um so to have you on the Pod is like really really cool the talk you gave was all about personal brand yep so for the audience how
would you describe personal brand in like one sentence a personal brand is just like a corporate brand so we start there with that definition is a person's gut feeling about who you are it's their impression and the associations that people have of you you talked a lot about too in in the talk
at Adobe Max about authenticity in your content I I think you very authentic in the things that you put out and you go back in your catalog a really long time on the future and it's still the same person now talk to us about being authentic in your content like some people choose
to not go that route why do you choose to be authentic in the content and preach that to people that create content on the internet authenticity should be the easiest thing in the world to do it's just being yourself when no one's watching but I think because we live in such a manicured
curated Society especially on social media you can see people are turning on all the filters they're pointing the camera towards the one spot in their home or their life that is not terrible in a total train wreck it's because they don't have a strong sense of self and they rely too much on
extrinsic motivation the opinions of other people to Define who they are and how they feel about themselves if you were to be able to put a sticker over somebody's head and say this is judging your sense of self-worth from zero to 100 and if they look on social and they have lots of
likes it would probably just go up conversely if it's bombing their emotional score would probably go down their sense of self but it shouldn't be that way because it should be an intrinsic thing something that's motivated from within and we've been uh socialize and and culture to care about the opinions of people
that we give authority to so you think about when you're growing up in grade school in junior high high school there's this whole order of how things are supposed to work the kids who acted differently acted out were usually the ones who were pushed into a corner sent to the principal's office said
as a troublemaker has troubles concentrating and they're ostracized by their society by their community and so we learned really early on we have to go along to get along and it's really important for us as social safety and that's very important we never grow out of it that's the problem and we just
kind of stay on that one path chameleon a little bit but obviously you can't be a chameleon and people like see it and think this is interesting or new you know if you're just kind of fitting in yeah I feel like I fall into that sometimes like we all do it it is
it is hard can someone be 100% authentic online or do you feel like there is maybe some barrier good question I I believe you can get pretty close to being 100% authentic so if we say here's who you are when no one's watching now you all live together we we live together we
used to all live together okay you live here okay so you kind of see each other 100% authentic there may be times when you come out and you're underwear and it's dirty and you have't brush your teeth and he's like hey 8T away bro but that's just you you're not trying to impress
him because that's some point when you live together and you spend a lot of time together you don't care if you have to burp fart scratch your nose pick it whatever you're totally cool but outside we have social norms and I think some social norms are good because if everybody didn't bait didn't
brush your teeth walked around the underwear it would just be a pretty nasty ranked Society so you have to adjust to to fit in just a little bit so I describe the level of authenticity as the gap between who you are when no one's watching to how you show up the bigger the
Gap the less authentic you are so we can adjust for example if you were invited to the White House doesn't matter what president at the White House there was a special dinner you dress up you comb your hair you'd brush your teeth and you'd wash your face and you'd look presentable because you
want to make your parents proud like hey we raise kids all right we we have good values and plus there's a decorum that you need to adhere to is that you probably not you're not wearing a suit all the time bow tie but that is just social norms and I think that is
not what I'm talking about at all I'm talking about uh your partner just left you your company's in financial Ru and you show up what's up guys I just scored a giant six fig deal I'm a S8 figure coach and I'm like what that is not authentic completely I totally I totally agree
with you and I think that it's something that creators are always trying to trying to adhere to you know they're trying to be their authentic self and you can you can feel it now I feel like more than ever I think back in the day maybe the 2012 2013 14 those early days
of YouTube being popular I think that people were getting away with that with playing a character but now more than ever people are seeing through that they're like Yo dude this is not this person this is not who they really are or on Instagram like the aspirational lifestyle like when Instagram was at
like the Heyday back in like 2016 2017 like the travel influencer I wanted to ask you about that like do you feel as though just because somebody has like a lot of followers like that aspirational lifestyle travel influencer that maybe doesn't necessarily mean they have a strong personal brand it just means they
have a lot of followers cuz someone's aspiring to be like that yeah having a lot of followers has no connection to having a strong personal brand it's often Associated because there's a lot of people who follow you but here's the way that we look at companies and then when we understand companies then
we can understand personal Brands there are some differences but there's lots of overlap if a company if you can't predict what the company is going to do I'm going to say they have no brand and the the the classic test I think it's either South Goden or somebody else who had said this
who said if you transpose two Brands could you accept that this company can survive and the example is if if Nike were to create a hotel could you predict that if Hilton created a shoe could you predict that I'm like Hilton shoes I'm not buying Hilton Hotels I can't even tell what they
did right besides being semi affordable and kind of like almost together but not totally that's their brand and it's the associations that I have so when it comes to personal brand it's like there are people who are very good at getting like somebody who dances a lot let's say they can get gazillion
followers but you know nothing about them you can't predict anything except for somewhere in this clip they're going to start dancing out of nowhere that's kind of it so it goes way beyond that so when we talk about in human uh interactions you all can know if you ask each other to pick
pick one another up at the airport is that person going to pick you up or not if they say they're going to do something are they going to do it or not so that kind of level of trust and predictability it's like okay are they going to like coffee tea or milk we
kind of can predict certain things and the other test that I have is if someone Associates their name their likeness to something does the value of that thing go up if it's neutral negative you have no brand so I argue whatever shirt that you all are wearing it's more valuable because of what's
been printed on it because if you if you were to blast all that information off it would sell as a commodity for the lowest price and you can buy a pack of t-shirts at Costco probably for like 10 bucks and people do that because they don't care about brand or communicating to other
people their associations their affiliations their values their what what the preferences are but the minute Nike Adidas Y3 somebody puts their logo or their mark on on it it transforms that thing because we as humans love stories we want to tell stories we consume stories stories is how we understand the world and
all of a sudden that little Mark tells us a story we love being a part of something right 100% yeah because being ostracized socially is one of the worst things that can happen to you mhm 100% And I feel like we like aspirationally buy Brands like I wanted to buy like am Leon
door cuz like I want to seem like a guy that knows a lot about basketball and like it has like cool street style which like I don't really but I want to be seen as such you know and want to feel like I do really is the main thing right so I would
want to like buy a sweatshirt for $300 or cuz then you get to feel it some way and you're going to get a large next time yeah yeah I about it way too small you know but I'll say this A buddy of mine has a a fake Louis Vuitton wallet okay and he
was at the bar and he's like credit card pays and then all of a sudden the person next to him a woman was like oh hey how's it going and he's like H this stuff works it doesn't work it says I'm at a certain place that I can afford to knock off Louis
withon Waller can't tell the difference not in a glance like that I learned uh speaking about fake designer that nego the guy who created Bape he was running the factories that were creating the fake Bape no and so he made like hundreds of millions because he was behind the operation so he just
had like a discount version of his own thing that was like he was like making The Fakes oh and and then destroy the so funny dude talk about doubling down well and just like if they're going to do this to me I might as well do it first might as well prop it
up too it's kind of like the 8 Mile Eminem thing myself yeah was your personal brand something that was conscious and you sat down with maybe a team that you're working with at blind and were like okay I need to actually be posting content on the internet because I believe I read somewhere
that you waited until you were like in your 40s lower 40s to start creating content now with your team what did it look like did you kind of put up pillars and you're like I want to talk about design I want to help Freelancers turn into full-time people I want to you know
retire designers and create them into companies what did those original conversations look like you know enough just to ask the right wrong like dangerous question so I love where we're going with this so there's two companies there's at that time blind and a new company called the school which I was a 50%
partner in started by my friend Jose cabier and blind was like we're trying to do social media like everybody else the wrong way which is here's a cool project congratulations to our client it's all fake it's all PR marketing uh calls to action soft sales and naturally no one cares about that kind
of stuff there's like 10 industry friends who look at him like yeah good job man that was dope what you did with that car that you were moving around but the regular people don't care cuz you haven't given them a reason to care you're talking inside baseball there so when Jose comes to
me he's like hey let's go make content on YouTube I'm like no I'm not going to do that it's stupid dude no one that's professional makes YouTube content it's all these wannabees people have never made anything with their life and this is their Outlet cool and he's like no you need to do
this with me we're going to do this education company this is how we're going to do it but he had experience in creating products he had experience in hosting and creating programming I had none of that so initially I'm putting on my producer director hat which I'm used to doing and saying how
do we need to show up on camera because I consume a lot of TV I know how this stuff is done I write treatments for living at that time to get commercial work I said okay we need to figure out our personas and so it was crafted in engineered very much so and
if you watch the old episodes you'll see oh he is showing up as somebody Jose and I we could not more different I'm an inj he's an ENFP so he's literally the opposite of the Myers break I'm introverted he's super extroverted he's loud he's obnoxious he's Puerto Rican I'm Vietnamese we're both immigrants
that's about similarity there okay and I notice something about him he's bearded uh he's like kind of like hippie esque he's coming back from from burning man so he's got these burner Vibes you know he's got the whole he's Falls right into a little box and like beads and everything like hey man
you know that old TV show The Odd Couple mhm they're the complete opposites like one is a neat freak the other guy literally eats a sandwich out of the trash can because that's just the way to work but I know in chemist uh in TV chemistry is all really important we don't want
two the same people you're this guy lean more into that personality like the hippie everything goes let's drop some acid even if that's not what you're saying you got that Vibe I'm a business guy this what I do and I I need an excuse to wear suits I like my suits and I
don't have enough opportunities to wear them so I'll show up as a suit let's get stuff done and you can show up as a Carefree guy and we would just do that and we played those characters they are authentically us just hyper versions of us and it was a thought but that's as
far as the thought went it wasn't like brand pillars all that kind of stuff did you take the design firm of blind and say hey like we want to go this educational route um and if so when was that period of time because I I think many people know you as an educator
and not the beginning phase of you creating treatments for all these Brands and running a huge design firm that's trying to bid on these million dooll projects The Blind Side was really confused us to what I was doing because they wanted me involved in running the company writing pitches or doing bids and
all that kind of stuff just trying to win the new business but my team is very competent they're they're great at coming up with ideas and closing business so I would be pulled in from time to time only as needed I would describe to people my my personality my role in the was
kind of like the wolf from from Pulp Fiction like after you accidentally shoot the brains out of the guy in the back seat and you're in trouble and Bonnie's coming home you got to call the wolf and the wolf's like I'm in kohanga or whatever I'm 25 minutes away I'll be there in
10 you know that's the person you call and it's like I I don't mean to be Kurt we got to get stuff done you want me to be here or not so I was the guy that the executive producer would say I feel like job slipping away from us this $600,000 job am
might go byebye it's time to call in Chris and that's when I would step in and we would do the call and I'm like okay we got it back on the right path you guys keep going I'm out m in the meantime I was in the stage talking Jose about like what do
we do for our next piece of content like when you want to record how do we do this and setting that whole booth and Studio up so that we can film and produce content So eventually when I say eventually two and a half years later we're starting to make traction this is when
the plot starts to thicken where the the guys the team could say see like oh there's something here maybe we should get involved and we want help cuz it looks like a lot of fun over there and doing client work is fine but it's not freeing it's not like this thing of self-expression
were those videos living on what is now the Future YouTube or was it a different channel so it was called the school Jose and I split up we go our separate ways we're still friends thankfully I rename the channel the future and it's one of those deals that I had with Jose because
I I always tell young people this or anybody's going into business if you have a partner work on the prenup before you go into business together what do this look like if we were to separate so you don't have any fights later on and thankfully we did that because when things got tense
between the two of us I had something to lean back on like you remember this we said we're going to do it like this are you cool he's like okay and to his word he's like I'm cool even though that's not what he wanted he did agree to it so my whole thing
was you keep the product I keep the audience and the audience was on YouTube he's like do you want to use the name I said it's probably better for me to start fresh so that people don't have the same Association for the first year people were really unhappy with me why did you
break us up like what what it's like Mom and Dad had a fight and now we the children have to be the survivors of a divorced parenting it was like that they're like where is he bring them back you know it's like it's a new channel bro I'm running things now and it's
different so that's kind of how that happened so two and a half years in it became the future did you just keep persevering right when the like termoil was happening and you split with Jose and then people like yo what the hell Chris we want Jose back maybe a few people like this
thing that he did and a lot of people liked him and they liked us they were like you're better together and for parts of we were better together but we had such different working Styles and Visions for the future that I'm like dude I think you need to run your company your way
and I start to again be reminded that I'm not a good team player I don't make a great collaborator I want to do things my way I want to move fast I want to break things and some people are just not comfortable with that and so we had to for our own sanity
and our relationship go separate ways but they were just picking at me and I'm like if you guys love Jose so much I'm sure he has another Channel go follow that I'm going to do my thing and eventually it quiets down but it takes like a year wow for it to eventually go
away and then every once in a while somebody's like Hey where's Jose I miss Jose I'm like I miss him too bro I don't know where he's at I don't know t for yeah he's doing stuff but it's not with me right now but now it's like Jose Who and the weird thing
is if you go back in old videos where there's a new audience that's formed around the current future they go back and watch his videos like oh K this guy just shut up like let Chris talk like who is this guy he thinks he's funny and they're just ruthless but that's just the
internet they're ruthless to me too but they're especially unkind to him wow I I remember seeing something a long time ago that you posted U because I think a lot of people creative specifically photo video design it's a lot of me and like the reason why we made this show was to expedite
the careers of people either in design photo film video just in our space and I want to know what your thoughts are on cre content that is value driven and if if that was a conscious choice of like Hey we're posting our design and like you talked about it earlier like blind's posting
design people like oh [ __ ] cool Chris like whatever H but when did that kind of shift happen because we we even noticed it with our stuff when you begin to provide value for people they spread your message for you it's a beautiful thing and like they'll share the stuff on reals
and instead of it getting 10 views it gets 10,000 views because you have 100 people that are sharing it and I'm just curious on you know when that was for you yeah there's a simp rule if you weren't you would you share your own content and that's a pretty good rule to follow
if you weren't you would you share this thing with someone else and most of the times no because everybody looks at content in terms of does this help me does this lift up my day does this inspire me does this give me a technique process or does it reframe my world in a
positive way such that I'm better for it and the degree in which you can do that the more likely they are to share it with someone else so here's the big breakthrough we're we're about almost like six or eight months into making content I'm still super awkward and weird on camera and I'm
having a conversation with my wife maybe it's a few months I'm not sure but I know I've made enough content at this point and she's kind of like beused at what I'm doing like oh what is this weird thing you guys are trying and say hey did you watch her latest video and
she pauses and deep breath I'm like I'm not going to like whatever she's going to say next I already know it's not going to be good and she goes um it's kind of unwatchable babe I'm like what do you mean she goes you guys ramble on you interrupt each other there's no point
and I'm just I'm just done and you know I could probably hear that from just about anybody but for my wife it just hurts a little bit more cuz I just don't want her to be right I'm man enough to just say I just babe I got this I got it you know
I'm G to figure this out so I go and crawl in my own corner I'm like God dang it she's right it's unwatchable and I can't like literally I can't watch it because I'm so self-conscious but I know what she's saying is true cuz I was there I was there in the tape
I was at least one half of the problem so I go to Jose and I say you know what we're pitching a lot of things and we're all over the place we're disorganized let's try something new let's try this new rule I'm going to go home tonight I'm going to prepare for tomorrow
we're going to talk about X you do your your work and I'll do my work okay I'll get a keynote like the old school days I'm going to go get ready for this thing and the rule is no more pitching we're not going to talk about our product the one product that we
had and he goes okay I worked till 3:00 or 4: in the morning I got to this deck it's all it's all about brand identity and design and it's not showcasing the work except for to make a point and the work is just an example of the lesson I want to teach you
fantastic we show up we do it we record video goes out and of course it overperforms everything else that we've done so that was the first aha moment respect your audience don't sell them something and do the work and give value to others and the the the difference was night and day in
terms of viewership and it's like oh that's a clue we're on to something so he thought I think this was like a one-time experiment but my thing is like if something works do more of what works don't quit that so I would show up again and again and I could see now I
want to work hard at this and make it serious and he was concerned rightfully so how do we make money on any of this stuff because you're talking about things we have no product for so this is the beginning of me just making content because I think it serves people not because it's
trying to move one of our things that's it mhm and that that flip was what kind of changed everything yeah so I say from six months to a year into making content that that one experiment started to change thing change things and I say to everybody you need in your life at least
one truthsayer who's going to look you right in the face and say you suck that don't work it stinks kindly it's our girlfriend our girlfriend man oh they'll tell us it could be a parent it could be your best best friend but somebody who's like can look in your eye and say I
love you I don't want to hurt you I want to see you do well but you suck it's not how my girlfriend says it but she gets the point across right which is all that matters I think all girlfriends lost that book do it they just skip to you suck watch yeah but
it's still I need to learn that lesson you have to unpack in your mind no babe you you're right you love me you support me you want to see me succeed and it does suck yeah my girlfriend hit me with that about me wearing black socks I learned this that apparently black socks
are not it and I used to love to wear black socks and she hit me with the it ain't it white socks or it Chris is rocking black socks dude I'm girlfri Wrong by the way I also dude not to not not to derail I like a black sock not to derail my
girlfriend dude this was Unreal so I I have developed like a little bit of a role right and instead of this was nice of her instead of instead of just saying like hey you got to start working out more and like eating less potato chips she gives it she gives my role a
name and she knows I love tennis she calls it Billy Jean King which is my role and she's like I love Billy Jean King and it makes me feel so self-conscious cuz now now this my favorite female tennis player is just living on a rooll in my body and every time I go
to the gym I'm like I got to do crunches even though I don't want to dude just got to get rid of Billy get rid of it and be like babe I don't know where Billy's at haven't seen him in a while gone just gone but anyways you're right though you need someone
to tell you this stra yeah okay so speaking about uh you know telling a better story and all that kind of stuff you have What's called the 3fs approach which is facts feelings and fun which is a way to tell a better story we've talked about how in every piece of content you
should aim to like educate Inspire or entertain and I feel like it's kind of similar can you touch on that 3f's approach and how it can lead to telling a better story yeah to educate to inspire or what's the third one Entertain Entertain those are the the outcomes or the goals of what
you're trying to do it's not actually the tactics on how to get there you're like can you make your thing more entertaining like yeah thanks Sherlock I would be more entertaining if I could be so we we look at those as as broad categories of outcomes that we want Brenan Kane who I
interviewed who wrote the book a million followers which he's been able to repeat multiple times to get a million followers on different accounts in 30 days which is ridiculous crazy some gry hat strategies in there but he's a super smart analytical person and he was saying you know the the vast majority of
the population responds to almost 30% 30% 30% facts fun or feeling based so when you only go with facts you're losing potentially 70% of the population there are many other categories but the other ones add up only to be about 10% so let's focus on the big threes three so he calls them
the three FS facts fun and feeling so the the way that we do this is if you if you watch a real estate video it's a classic example of a real estate video they used to shoot real estate videos with no one talking they would show you the specs how many square feet
what's a lot size how much parking uh price per square foot those kinds of things and that's all fact base the visuals are are just a way to get us through the fact because otherwise we couldn't even watch it right and then you start to notice something else where there's now a host
and the host walks in explains to you and Visually kind of talks you through this thing and so now it's starting to touch on another thing but the way that you do this is you incorporate a sense of fun and you ask them to imagine something so the real estate person who does
this really well walks into a $10 million property and says imagine you sitting here with your family or with your friends and hosting a fundraising event for a charity that you love and this is the butler's Pantry so your staff is coming out and they're doing this and look at this so they're
trying to immerse you in the emotional component of it this is stirring at your feelings now I noticed there's this woman I'm forgetting her name tall blonde lady she does Real Estate videos and she's relatively young I noticed in every one of her videos she does something wacky and I don't even understand
it but that would be the fun part so she's in high heels and you know a pretty tight bodysuit thing and she's trying to throw like a basketball into the hoop I'm like what's this guy to do with a video it has nothing or she'll go into this $25 million property and try
to lift a 50 PB dumbbell and do it like a a tricep Kickback and she's like and she does it I did it I did it that is the fun component so there's something wacky so what Brendan did was he explained the Dollar Shave Club and he broke it down he's like this
incorporates everything this whole company should not even exist because they make a commodity in razor blades and they're not they're nothing special but what makes it special is the story in which they tell so you have this guy he he walks in and he's he drops an F bomb he talks about like
his product in a very serious way so he's just telling you and there's a dwarf in it there's a Mexican lady in it and then at the end of the thing I think confetti gets shot and some Banner rolls down in a warehouse which is like this Carnival likee atmosphere and so he's
giving you the right combination of fact fun and feeling so fun doesn't mean you have to do something crazy exuberant out of ordinary but the backdrop might be weird just like the is it the poopery one or Squatty Potty there's a unicorn that shoots out rainbows as it's poo and it's like that
is really wacky or the two guys from Dr Squatch there's like homoeroticism in that you know and there like breaks a dish on the Rock like you're not a dish you're a man I'm like I know but what do you mean that's how they get you kind of also a pattern disrupt it's
like you're used to seeing the same deodorant of like Dove and they're like you need to buy Dove it's like dude we don't want to buy Dove right now although I do use Dove I like the spray the spray is fire and that coming are you a spray or a stick kind of
guy I don't use deodorant power such a power move that's awesome I need to get on that wave I would stink up this whole place yeah yeah I think it's called get on the Asian wave it's kind of too late for you on that damn it it's got to go back like 20
few years that's funny I noticed that a lot of your content you do a great job on Instagram of sharing these sharable carousels but most of it in the beginning started on YouTube and still to this day we're getting about three YouTube videos a week when I averaged it out why did you
start on YouTube and I noticed that your content isn't like you know we come from a film making background if I was to make a YouTube video it's going to be like we're going to set up all these lights I'm going to do this thing I'm going to take them to the gym
I'm going to have aoll Galore Boll Galore Boll city right you're sitting down and it's a hourong conversation which traditionally you think that's not a YouTube video it is but it's like that's not the traditional YouTube video why do you think that has been successful and you've kept doing it it obviously works
I looked at the views they're doing super well uh and what do you think kind of is the future for your YouTube channel pun intended okay uh YouTube was the only re the only reason why I was on YouTube is because Jose said let's go make YouTube videos he said let's make uh
Snapchat videos that's what I would be doing or Vine Videos I don't know any better I I didn't even know what social platforms literally had to ask him one time before we started making content together like I don't understand Twitter I have a Twitter account but what do you do here like what
I don't understand any of the stuff so I'm like the idiot in the social media space and I still am to this day and I I want I want to park that and come back to that later first answer your question so we're trying to figure out what to do with YouTube and
he and I we want to do a talk show he used to host a show called this week in web design it was uh Jason calus's Network and he used to do that for Jason as one of the many programs on YouTube and so we set up a three camera setup we had
an automated Dolly thing on a curved track you know using all the film language we made it in black and white so it was kind of fartsy cool and we did that and now what now what are we going to do my identity isn't so much as a YouTuber but as an educator
I want to teach you something so what I know how to do is I know how to hold a marker hold the tension and to draw things but back then it was like I don't even know what to draw here so I'll just lean on my my other skill which is a graphic
designer I've made presentations I've given keynote presentations so you go to what's familiar to you so I would just over prepare on the keynote deck and have the team intercut between us talking to the slides and that seemed to work once it was just me it's like well now I can do whatever
I want what do I want to do to this day I think our highest performing videos are you give me a marker you give me a hungry audience and I'll do whatever and the more I can rip into them the better the content is going to perform so when there's like somebody who
wants to argue with me which is all the ones who that have more than a million views when I say something salacious outrageous or controversial everybody comes out for good and for bad like finally something put that person down or this is not going to age well for you whatever I don't care
I don't care so I like to teach and that's my natural format it's either in a keynote or a whiteboard everything else is just because a compromise like it's a oneman crew I'm going to sit in a chair focus is the most important part like if I go like this I'm out of
focus you brought up the carousels though um was it Michael J yeah Michael J okay so he was the one who told you about carousels or like that you saw that he was doing that and you were like let me try to do that how many followers before you started doing those carousels
did you have and how many were you gaining like every month it was pretty like meteoric correct like I said I'm not doing this for a fact I really am just an idiot when it comes to social media and the point I wanted to make on this is despite being an idiot with
social being way pass his prime too old for social if you know how to make great content eventually this will work if you're committed to doing this so I tell everybody oh the algorithm hates me I've been shadowbanned my response is usually it could be because your content sucks you know how to
write usually it's bad usually it's that it's easy to blame oh you know the internet doesn't like me I'm like no it's just not good content it's super generic so I'm watching Janda and he's he's growing I think I'm at like 30,000 followers the first five was was easy to get the next
five was hell to get cuz I'm like I've exhausted my friends and family Network or my students I I would literally tell them in class like you you guys need to follow me it's just it's part of class so it really is I'm grading you on the fact that you know how to
follow instructions y don't want to fail yeah don't don't fail that I was freaking growing eight followers a month no because I had eight students you know that's kind of how was smashing social you know I just keep working at this I'm like yeah you know I don't know what works here I
don't know what to share it feels really weird so JN jenda is coming out of nowhere like dude I canot let this older white guy freaking catch up to me this this not right it's just not right but he's growing and I'm like oh you I see what you're doing using this Carousel
thing and I can see the Playbook even if somebody doesn't tell me you know um I got to hear erolon Hugh talk about you know AC acronym the clothing brand yeah Street Wear Arison he was the founder or co-founder and I saw him speak at an event one time before I got to
know him and he said something like don't copy what people do copy the thinking or the process the methodology of what they do that requires you to like have some higher level view of this thing because if they cut something diagonally you cut something diagonally just like them then you're just copying what
they do but if you try to understand they're trying to create asymmetrical forms you might find a different way of expressing that so when I look at Jan's post I know what he's doing this is all from his book I already know know this so he wrote a book and he's peeling back
chapters of his book which is also driving traffic to a course that he's selling I can see the Playbook I meet him I'm like dude you're doing it this is awesome he goes Chris you have to do this I'm like I'm gonna do this needed you to say this on TV so that
people don't say you took Janice Playbook I gave him lots of credit for showing me that you can use 10 slides before then it was three slides and I didn't even know that it switched over to 10 it's one of those things like duh and so I was thinking oh you're using a
keynote I don't have a book but I have not hundreds but approaching a 100 Keynotes of which there a couple hundred slides per keynote started doing that and eventually you get into a Cadence and you figure out what works and it took a little while to make it work so my goal was
to get 10,000 new followers in two weeks I got 20,000 followers in two weeks and now I'm like I'm a genius I know how this works you know but I was dedicating two weeks of my life to figuring this out I cleared my schedule nobody talked to me I'm just going to figure
this out first day made one post second day made one post and I knew I had to post like three or four times a day to get to 10,000 but once you catch the wave and you get into Rhythm by about little after like midweek I started to figure out the Cadence I
can increase the the the volume of content I was producing I figured it out to a degree and I started to grow really really fast wow so that was like from 30,000 to like 50,000 to 70,000 this is happening in weeks amount of time damn that's insane it's similar to like growing this
pod like we we started out uh just doing like one reel a week or something and then we hired on a person to help us and now we're post three times a day and it has been crazy cuz people just share it and then one of them will kick off and then they're
all kicking off at once and that is the reason going back to your point I think talking about Michael Janda and like the thing that he was doing we tell people to look at what the best people are doing in the respective space that you want to get into and say what little
tiny anything can I take from this like what is that person doing he's posting these carousels great or this person's posting vertical video on a horizontal platform why is it working and kind of take these little details and put it into the things you're doing and you'll be drastically further ahead like six
months from now if you just do it consistently so going back to the the swap over from the blind team to to your personal brand did a lot of the people stay with you and keep working on your personal brand or did they were like hey I came to a design firm like
I didn't I don't want to help you grow this new business this new Venture of coaching that you're going after and what was what was that period of time like it was pretty rough I would say people fell into three categories the skeptical I don't believe this is never going to work they
ultimately found different jobs or forced me to get rid of them they're the people I'm all in I don't even care I don't understand but let's go because this was a culture of embracing and driving change then there were the people in the middle like I'm not sure I'm not out I'm not
in those were the most difficult to work through so the yeses are great the NOS are great the Mayes are always very dangerous because you wind up pouring into them some of them work out some of them do not and it wasn't that they were helping me to build my personal brand and
and what people don't know is when Jose and I split there was this moment where I'm like this is going to suck to rebuild new Facebook Community we kept the channel but we're changing the logo and the identity so it's kind of weird but we're doing it so everything else had to be
rebuilt and now I'm like on my own and Jose was the guy who was guiding me through this Social Media stuff and now I had to figure it out surprise surprise you figured out pretty quickly our audience grew on Facebook faster than it did for the school we did probably in a month
and a half what it took us two years to build as a school but there was a singular voice and I was writing the post I was sharing my thoughts so as the future as a brand a company of one and one assistant I was writing content so I would write I I
I didn't write we because there's no Wii it's just me and people were criticizing me saying shouldn't you always speak in the plural I said when there's a plural here I'll speak in the plural but this is my opinion if you want to start a company you write however you want I felt
it was more dishonest to write we I'm not posturing like this is uh this Viacom or something it's just not um omn media it's just it's just Chris writing and it just happens to be the future and that's this brand and so we do this it starts to pick up momentum and steam
and so the the team that was like ready to jump they're like when do we jump I'm like I have no money keep earning money over there and they would start to work after hours on the weekend to just try and help and they wanted to help make more content or manage a
Channel or optimize things and at first that's all they were doing until it became clear that we can run a real business that was real money involved I think when we hit like $1.2 million in Revenue like we can make this work it's not enough to pay for everybody but if there's enough
proof fear that we can make it work did you begin to run ads immediately or was a lot of it just organic and is it still all organic or do you run paid ads do you have a team that does that or do you do it all yourself most of what we do
is organic earned media and when I tell people how much we spent cuz there are people who try and help they're like what is your ad spend I'm like let me look it up it's $22,000 they're like 22 Grand like in a month like no all year and they fall out of a
chair because we literally know people who spend half a million to a million dollars a month in advertising mhm and they need to spend that money so that they can bring in traffic because they have very low organic reach yeah they're not posting as much as you and they're not giving as much
value they're not giving value that's their challenge that's the big one yeah they got to bring in the wolf dude calling the you can fix theirs that's funny and I also feel like a lot of the the people on social that are Educators I think that it can get like a bad rap
like I I've done a coaching program for these last three years I've loved every second of it but when I first started doing it people were like you're making a course you're selling out I'm like no don't buy it don't buy the damn thing if you don't want to learn from it I'm
confident that it'll work though and I think what like to your point you know you built a successful design for him you knew what it took you like I'm not just some phony guy who says I'm a designer and is not actually doing the damn thing I have this company over here if
someone wants to get into into coaching what do you feel like is almost like this this uh this barrier that they kind of need to overcome because I think it's common like even people I'm talking oh I want to make this coaching program but I'm scared like I don't want to do it
it's common in our space right now and I I think it gets a bad rap for these Guru fake gurus that didn't actually do the damn thing I say the first step into becoming a coach is to make sure you've done it yourself enough times with enough frequency and consistency that you can
confidently take somebody's money and not leave them high and dry that your your your life is relatively long your reputation is precious so take care of your reputation because it doesn't take a lot for it to be ruined there's a couple people who make consistent videos I won't name them by name but
they talk a lot about financials and investment and they get attached to one scam scheme after another and they're like I could not have known I just couldn't know that this bank was not real I'm like you burned so many people why would you do that don't you have money like why would
you do that why would you lend your good name to this it's just not a good look for you and eventually people might forget and you there may be new suckers for you to rope in but it's just not how you wouldn't to live your reputation follows you long after the money has
gone so focus on that my my challenge is there are a lot of people who barely learn how to do something and they try and turn around and flip it and they're taking advantage of this thing where the people who write the content who spend years researching and practicing and studying they're not
very charismatic let's just say some of them are homely they're they're just so weird on camera and they never even thought to be on camera then you have a young person who's fairly charismatic understands language of social goes through the book and like I'll start teaching this not cite anything and pretend like
I've come up with this content even famous people you know have done this I'm like it's not a good look when people who know know it's not a good look so I would see lettering artists who would teach lettering courses who could barely draw a curved line without shaking it's the chicken SC
scratch drawing I know you put in your time when you draw an ARCA sweep a line and it's a confident line we've learned how to do this in art school clearly you did not and the way that you talk about things and the letter forms in which you design I can tell you
don't know what you're doing but there are a lot more people who know less than you and so they think you know what you're doing and that's why I didn't want to get into the YouTube space I didn't want to to have a course because I don't want to be associated with any
of those people you know so much so it's kind of weird because there's a lot of people who follow us in the future it's like who's this young Yahoo kid who that's never made a dollar they literally say this in the comments like I don't mean to flex but I think I've lost
more money than you've made in your life I know I'm sure that's a great flex but you know what do you mean I don't know anything about business you want to show your receipts you want to sit down and talk but that's how the internet is they're easily fooled Everyone's an expert and
everyone's a fool at the same time yeah I I saw that on a on when I was researching for the show like you went on Reddit and you're like if you want to talk I'll talk to you and you're not afraid to like go at him like what do you want to know
like what do you think I'm I'm bullshitting about I think that's commendable because most people are like no I'm not going to like talk to these [ __ ] and you go back at them you're like yo let me know what do you want I want to talk to them yeah you want
to know why they think these things okay you SE me in the comments you seen me send out the invites out of a 100 trolls or critics how many have actually accepted my invitation to have a live debate with me how many do you think out of a 100 oh I bet it's
zero like four four zero what do you think a handful yeah like two or three okay zero z% Chris Chris wants all the smoke smoke bring it I'll destroy you I really will right and here's the thing it's like it's pretty brave for you to type recently I got into it with somebody
I don't remember what platform that's probably YouTube somebody's like oh he always talks about like how he manages people this guy can't design anything I'm like uh show me your website bro what you got he goes here's I I say here's my website she like well your where's your name on everything you
know like what would you do it's like do you know what it means to run a company to own a company right and and he's like well I'm not saying I'm a designer I'm like so you're not a designer you won't show your website but you have all these opinions about what designers
should be doing let's go what do you want to do I'll do live comp I'll do whatever do you like a live draw off yeah yeah wow that's fun um I love that you cited the sources at the adelby max conference I thought that like at the end you like these are the
sources this is where I got my stuff from I thought that was really cool and um I've been meeting with a business coach and he talks about working within your gift and you talk about identifying your superpower so how can somebody identify their superpower and bring it into their personal brand okay first
the sighting part I I I Almost Do It to fault and if you literally look at the slides you'll see if there's a line or idea I put the person's name in their title their book whatever cuz this is how you honor people and I think it's really weird and suspicious for people
to use other people's ideas and pretend they came up with it I don't know who you're fooling because this stuff catches you when you catch somebody telling one lie you just assume nothing you say is the truth and I don't understand this and there are lots of people on social media who follow
me who then post the exact same content and make no reference to me I'm like what are you doing and I dm' them like oh I'm sorry I didn't I was practicing or I'm like that's not how you practice you practice in a quiet room somewhere you don't post it and pretend like
it's yours I don't understand this it's not a good look for you and they're like oh I'll take it down right now I'm like do you really need me to tell you that so it's really weird and to a point in which some uh respected professionals say Chris it's almost like you give
away too much credit so like we we want now what need to know what is your idea into this I'm like yeah I don't really care to own anything I am a Col of lot of different influences from mentors friends teachers books that I read Concepts I see on YouTube I you can
own whatever I'm not in the business of trying to own ideas I don't care if you think I did it or not that's not really on me now uh tell me your question again how can someone identify their superpower and bring it into their personal brand all right I I believe this whether
you're a spiritual person a god-loving person or you're an atheist it doesn't really matter the universe conspired to produce you you're like a one in a billion shot of a bunch of different things happening luck circumstance fate design whatever and each one of us I think has at least one gift something that
we do better than most with very little effort unfortunately for most of us when that gift presented itself it didn't look like a gift because it didn't fit within the construct of what normal people say that's valuable and you know early 2000s maybe the gift was about engineering Sciences the kind of left
brain stuff and so all the right brainer is like uh I can't play and you'll suffer as a starving artist and you bury it and you keep telling yourself this is not good this is not valuable but the people who recognize this gift who are able to present it to the world tap
into some kind of power and you see on these singing competitions when there's like some old guy I saw one recently he was a janitor his teeth was messed up his face was a little messed up but when he sang it was like oh my God or Susan Bole who had the voice
of an with the unibrow and she finally at whatever age she was she could not be a young lady at that point and she does her bit she becomes famous for she does her thing and she goes back to her normal life because she couldn't handle that kind of exposure but I think
all of us have at least that one gift now if you're sitting here thinking I don't know what that gift is there are some Clues from your childhood if you look back at maybe between 3 and 7 years old sometimes a little earlier sometimes a little bit later there's something that you did
did that you just knew it was so easy to do whatever that is it could be painting it could be constructing things out of nothing it could be crafting something I don't know what it is or maybe equations came really easy to you but for some reason it didn't fit in somebody's plan
for you so then you you let that thing go revisit that thing if you always love to make music or to build things or to destroy things lean into that so I know for a period of time these videos were very very popular were like will it blend yes somebody is sick and
twisted and like I would never do that but as a child I bet you that's what they're doing they're smashing things all the time they're waiting for society to catch up where that was going to be valuable there's people and I see this fairly decent looking guy I think he is Hispanic I
think his name is Juan he goes on college campuses and talks to girls and does weird things like I love you I know what you're talking about know I'm talking about that is not my thing bad confident makes my back sweat you know got red you know what I mean like I don't
know how he does what he does but where else is this skill valuable not a lot of places but you know what puts the camera on him and he's just pranking people he's just having fun it works really well so find that gift that talent that you have and sometimes the talent is
a Confluence of a couple different skills and weird interests that you might have so I'll tell you something about me I love comic books I love mixed martial arts I grew up heavily influenced by ad skateboard graphics and I love graphic design and business and uh now writing I guess I didn't even
know that so if you look at what I produce It's a combination of all those things put together reflect back on Adobe Max uh the personal branding talk that I did there was it was Dripping with Marvel stuff that I probably would get sued for I'm really into teaching people how to build
stories because that's what I used to do at school I'm trying to tie it into something that's relevant about around content and writing and I'm putting all that together a space that I think I can do better than most and you know you look at people who are really nerdy into research like
uh dead people like biographies and they just read biographies all day long it's not my jam so when they do that I'm just really impressed like how do you remember that person did this and how they're connected to this and they was just really great at doing their research in history that's their
jam it's not my thing so often times we sit here and look at them and say I wish I was more like them and they're sitting there wishing they were more like us so when we start to like take that mirror and bend it towards us we'll see what what it is we
were meant to do and if you could have an actual superpower what would you choose oh nice pivot you know when I was a kid the only superpow I wanted this a reflection of my wounded nature I just wanted the power of invisibility because I had a you know not such a great
childhood upbringing in terms of like not being accepted by people uh I I was one of a few Asian people in a mostly white dominant culture and I'm I'm small guy you know I got into some some issues and so I'm like I just need to be invisible right now so that's the
power that's my default power Chase what's yours well I just want to say how crazy it is that you went from that to now like YouTube personality like all the things that you've done it's just admirable as [ __ ] it's cool um mine oh man what are you going with I don't
even know like toasty wants strength for sure wants strength he needs it no I I have that one already right du I think oh I'm flying dude I would I would be able to digest gluten that's good power yeah that's where I would go d then Billy Jean would be really that's so
funny she wants more gluten Chris uh a long time ago on your YouTube I I bought a book actually that you recommended by Ronald Baker about value based pricing it changed everything that I've done uh as a business person as a Creator as a filmmaker and I've told a lot of people about
to buy this 10 like $20 book that most people that most people don't Ron's going to make it more cheap dude no he doesn't right you're right double the price of it you're right triple the price of it um so with with this book on value based pricing when you read this book
was that one of the first times that you had heard about this uh this implementation of the pricing and what is value based pricing for those that don't know what it is okay I I love compounded questions not really um my bad no I okay first I have money I saw that price
of the book I like sitting on Amazon like putting on a wish list back in the C put in the wish 120 it's not 120 bucks literally is it no it is it's like 120 it was just a pricey book I'm like what is this is this a textbook from a school what
is this but you know I order it anyways I've already been talking about value based pricing for a a long time prior to getting to that book because we've been practicing it in our business in a different way we do it in the real world and then later on I find out there's
an academic explanation for it so I like to tie in instinctively how we evolve to do things like in our business and then I read about the principle I'm like oh somebody did a lot of research to figure this stuff out but we're already doing it but now I'm armed with the kind
of academic research and language that I can describe it to folks but if you if you watch like our videos have been talking about this for quite some time before I'm actually reading this book so what is value based pricing value based pricing is to say that the the the the the mistake
that service professionals do is they say my time is worth a certain amount of money and based on units of time I'm going to multiply my value times time and sell it to you it takes into no account as to what matters to you it's all about me and I I would argue
with people that pricing things based on your time and your value is to say is a very self-centered approach to pricing so if I make a logo and you all represent three different companies if you're a startup you're a mature kind of established company and you're like a Fortune 100 company the logo
would be worth vastly different amounts each one of you and for me to come in is it's like say a number like it's 10,000 bucks 10,000 bucks 10,000 bucks 10,000 bucks you're like that's too much I don't need to go to help you're like I think I can do it it's still a
little pricey can you justify he's like that's too cheap I can't hire you you see what I'm saying so value based pricing says you price the customer and not the job so each person has a problem to solve relative to them because value is relative it's subjective it's personal and so like beauty
is like you probably all three have different standards of beauty or fairness and value and the example that I heard Jonathan Stark talk about which is his son plays a digital like video game on his iPad or something and he wants to spend money to buy coins because he wants to upgrade in
the suit or the gun that he has and it doesn't make it perform better it just looks different and that's important to him his dad Jonathan is like this makes no freaking sense but I love you here's the money and the and and then take my hard earned money just give it to
this company and it gives you no value but to that kid it means a lot just like Pokemon cards have no real value but to the people who collect them they say it's valuable so you could have the most rare ultra rare million dollar card it's worth nothing to you you give it
to one of the Pauls and they're going to go crazy over it right so it's subjective it's individual it's contextual and it varies greatly so what we should do is we should ask is a logo worth anything to you like not really my business is banging I don't need a logo I'm like
cool I don't want to sell you a logo is are you solving a problem where a logo helps to get you closer to your goals you're maybe but it's not critical it's a lo you know what we do $35 million of printing every year and this logo if goes wrong it's going to
cost us not just the printing cost but it costs us in loss Revenue right like the Kia logo redesign over here that's probably cost a billion dollars design right no the Kia logo's fine no but they redesigned it like what like 5 years ago and that was probably a huge job now I
think like I never thought about it's a million dollar job for sure yeah that's insane but it's fine you're talking about like like Orangina or something yeah sure that's the real case study because people couldn't find the package and so they it was a better design uh on a objective level it looked
better it was more modern it was fresher looking everything but people who are used to find finding orangino or something like toana I'm sorry it's Tropicana orange juice I believe and they couldn't find it so their sales plummeted it cost them millions of dollars because they had a better design that didn't sell
so they had to revert wow that's that's where design actually matters what are your thoughts on HBO Max rebranding to just max I feel like they've had Decades of building up The Branding of HBO Max and now they switched to Max do you feel like that hurts them at all what I always
caution creative folks to do is don't look at the tip of the iceberg to determine what the rest of it looks like because we just don't know do you know what HBO stands for I do not no it's an acronym it stands for something do you know home broadcasting something Observer OB okay
you got some of the words correct it stands for home box office because HBO got it start with boxing so you're at the box office and you're buying boxing things this is the legacy of the brand that's a long freaking time ago boxing is not even relevant anymore okay it was between Showtime
like Showtime you know and those are two competing brands for live entertainment Sports specifically boxing I believe so now we're into the Digital streaming age and HBO does way more than home box office stuff right so perhaps on a business unit they're like we're making a departure here just like how Reed hings
tried to change Netflix to Netflix and some other service because he wanted one to mean something and the other to mean something else do you remember that there was a split there for half a second people freak off out they're oops are bad will put it back so the business people that are
behind the scenes thinking about the 5 10 year thing about the legacy of the brand and wanting to say we're making a departure here we have that at some point let go of the Legacy so that we can forge a new future so everybody who knows about HBO will get a little upset
but moving forward as the days weeks months and years go on people are not going to remember that and it's okay I just don't like the aesthetic of it Max and we have mutual friends that design the logo my okay that's all I think this is a perfect time you brought up boxing
I feel like we should do the the role play oh oh boy so I think you both should be asking Chris oh this is a warm Le you have to warm me up for this okay we know we know and we've seen your work and we do want to work with you okay
we we own a brand that's a sunglasses company we're B Toc um and our average product cost is $150 there's a lot of facts for me I want I'm going to I'll flip it around for you we want to increase brand awareness we want to drive sales and we want to be known
as a big player in the space you can't see the budget okay don't scroll down that's your description who's selling who you're selling me on your on your services I'm a design company you're a design company you manufacture sunglasses no he's he's a we're yeah let's do do design that's his background do
design Chris what's happening hey man I I am really excited about uh about this call I'm looking forward to potentially getting some design from you I don't even know what that means but our our logo probably needs some work I think and we we have these sunglasses right and these are going to
be in are going to be in a lot of places Nordstroms is going to be carrying these We're Going Global a lot of online sales is happening right now and we kind of want to take over with this new logo really shake up the sunglasses world you got sounds like you got a
lot going on we do we're we're I mean we're we're growing fast this place is booming all right usually when people approach me they tell me what they want and most of the times they're right but what I want to do is take a half step back and say something has changed in
your life to Warrant this kind of conversation it's either something's going really well or something's not going well is it one of these two things or something totally different yeah we just fired our other design firm fudge yeah yeah we didn't like them all right they weren't they weren't responding to our emails
quick enough real slow people we need this logo by the end of the month and we're at June 2nd right now so we need it by the end of the month do you think that's like a doable timeline to get this back to us okay so let let me first just understand before
I answer that question okay it sounds like you're a fast-moving company I don't know that much about you I apologize and you need a responsive player to make sure they're moving as quickly as you exactly but before we even get into that what is the the motivation the reason why you are trying
to change the logo or to change whatever it is that you're changing we just got into Nordstrom as he mentioned okay you got a deal in Nordstrom we got a deal in Nordstrom and I feel like people used to view The Branding as like cheaper like it wasn't as good the logo wasn't
as good and Nordstrom because there's a lot of variety right you can get cheapish at Nordstrom but not really it's all pretty nice we want to be on the nicer end of the Nordstrom sunglasses that you'll see once you're walking through the department store perfect you got a big deal at Nordstrom did
they comment on the necessity for you to move up or down Market or position they didn't say anything they said keep selling the sunglasses okay so the the product doesn't change you're you're for whatever reason decided you want a different logo Yeah couple quick quick questions what's the price point like what's the
Consumer Price Point retail 150 bucks ret we're changing it now $200 retail okay just like that live call yeah live call on the call we move fast we move fast I told you we move quick dude proof is in the pudding right here $200 okay he I'm not that familiar with the sunglass
Market where does that put you who are the competitors slightly above you and Below you uh above us is like uh we got Tom Ford we got DOL chain gabana those guys are sitting at like 350 400 bucks on more I think yeah Ray band's a little above us Ray band's a little
below us CH really Chase is not on the marketing side of things it's just more design L I'm just here for the Vibes he might need to be fired yeah if you move fast prove it okay yeah so about 200 bucks is the price we're sitting right in the middle I feel like
the cheaper ones are in the 75 to 100 bucks and we're sitting below the biggest designer Brands the Dior all those but we want to be able to play ball we want people to be able to afford our glasses that can't maybe buy the Dior and kind of sit with us in a
premier brand okay this might be a weird question and if it is just say next question do you see yourself as a higher-end Rayban or like top of the Rayband category or an affordable version of the Tom Ford the Dior and the doang gabas what do you think I I always thought of
us as a high-end rayb band okay I'm down with that I think that's probably appropriate yeah let's play with that okay so you want a logo and and I would be happy to help you with your logo and whatever other design needs you have but before we get into that if you didn't
change the logo would it do anything to your business aders like would it have any adverse effect is this a pure like aesthetic play or do you think it's actually going to move the needle for you I think it might move the needle for us and I think it is bigger on the
aesthetic play but I think there is a possibility that it could move the needle maybe 10% in grow sales is what I'm hoping so you think changing the logo could improve but 10% is a lot to risk the change like I don't know it you guys might want to talk about this but
and and don't don't get me wrong if you want to force money down my you know into my bank account I'll take it but I want to make sure what I do is actually going to be valuable to you lots of people ask this new website new logos and once we get deeper
into the business we learn that this is actually not a good play for them so if you change your logo I think you RIS and you know this um confusion in the marketplace lots of people are attached to an emotional feeling in terms of the logo what it means to them and if
you're thinking it's only going to move 10% is it worth it and that's a decision you guys have to make what what's Your Gut telling you right now I think we got I think we want to go with Chris I really do I think that his design and his firm is going to
take us to that next level that's what we need dude for for shady boys Inc sh I haven't even sold you yet you're going with me I yeah I think I I think uh I think just hearing what he's saying I'm I'm bought in I'm fully I'm bought in he cares about us
yeah it seems like he does care he's trying not to just sell it to me off the bat this is obviously this is a wall right here Chris can't hear this conversation this part was on mute the whole time on mute you on mute I I do think that this is guy is
someone that we want to go with I think he can help us out a lot got make sure we got to make sure that price and I think the price point like let's see what his price is at and let's go from there okay Chris we're back sorry sorry for the brief Interruption
dogking take your time yeah uh I think I'm going to go back on the 10% and I I do believe that this change could be a 20ish per increase in sales for us I think that having us in Nordstroms and having a more Premier feel to our brand is what is going to
push it that's what we're thinking from the internal team super thank thanks for uh entertaining that idea for me does Nordstrom have any say in this at all CU I know sometimes these big retailers they want input on the packaging and the design the logo they said just let's go we have freedom
you have freedom would you care to get their opinion at all no is that a good idea probably not I mean okay sorry let's just back up a little bit how big is this order for how many units are you selling to them I see now he's getting into the units okay okay
we're we want to sell is that under mute no no no no you were talking loudly to me too he wants to hear he wants to hear the units and that's an understandable question cuz we s we sell units 100,000 units at 200 bucks a pop yep yeah how many they bought your
wholesale price would be 100 no no no that that our our wholesale price is 100 bucks yeah yeah okay so you're talking about $100,000 no no I think it's more no it's a million dollar million million doll deal yeah it's a million dollar deal he's going to these numbers we're rich dud oh
God he's going to charge it's super I can hear you by know I know no I know I know I know look the way I like to work with my clients is to make sure we're making good business decisions because end the day you can hire lots of designers to make yourself I
feel like it would be irresponsible and it's unfortunately what happens with a lot of creative people they're so hungry to get the business that later on you're like wait we just effed up our entire business this a million-dollar deal that went bad because we're making poor decisions here's where my recommendation whoever you
wind up working with whether it's me or anybody else I would say quickly do some mockups and tests and get it in front of customers and run surveys or interviews and then get it in front of Nordstroms as well to say we're in the middle of rebranding I know you trust us but
we want to get your input on this at least get them bought in on this so you need their backing because if they think it stinks they're not going to push your product okay so I think some part of the plan has to be like that I'm I'm into that yeah I think
I think that's a great call and I was originally going to say no to Nordstrom's being a part of this but I think that's a good good idea okay bring them in yeah bring them in bring them into this combo um asides from Price what else do you need to know about me
or our firm for you to make a decision either to go with us or to go with someone else anything else we need to talk about price is the biggest one okay let's talk about price so you're talking about a million dollar initiative here that could grow into something else what are you
guys setting aside for Budget here 10% of gross sale or of net sales of net sales so what is your net margin on million on this million 500,000 500 so you're saying 50k mhm okay for this initial first test project because I I want to grow with you I want to I want
to have you guys as my design yeah I want to have you guys do my design you guys are going to be in my design of record my my design Agency on record I wish I had a dollar every time somebody told me that I'd be $5 richer okay so there's a logo
is there anything else we need to talk about that's really that's it you think you think we do the packaging as well no I think for now we leave it it's just black okay it's pretty sleep maybe down you we this yeah but I really need I think that 50,000 is kind of
where I'm sitting can they get the job done all right so just a few other things before I I say yes or no here so the logo is applied to the sunglasses yes and it's applied to the packaging to the website any other unusual application I need to know about because sometimes that
will impact how we design the logo there is like a little display at Nordstrom that okay cell display yeah it's kind of it's kind of oval shaped okay I don't see a problem there okay um I think I can work with you guys in your budget I get a really good vibe from
you guys um yeah I I I think I can make this work for 50k CHR let's go we're working together done deal this is this is really interesting and I love how you tried you got it out of us but you asked about the unit price and how many we were going to
sell and I don't think enough people talk about that they just immediately go into these com we we have a lot of filmmakers and photographers that listen to our pod not as many designers but they'll go into these calls and you know they they might be making a video that has a million
dollar impact or like they don't ask the question this is an in say it's an internal video right A lot of them won't say Hey you know what's the investment for these people that you're showing to internally oh if we lock them in it's a million dollars it's like okay well how many
people do you lock in a year they don't go that extra mile and I appreciate how slow you were and I'm going to take that into my calls cuz I I didn't feel sold to it all I wanted to give you the damn I'm like I want I want you did no I
really did and it it felt like you cared and you like took a step back and I think that's something that a lot of you can take into your sales cycle it doesn't it shouldn't feel like you're trying to sell them and I didn't feel sold to at all I wanted to give
you the money really like and and I the work speaks for itself and you get a Vibe of them on the phone and I'm like man these guys aren't trying to take advantage of me they want to help my business grow and they care about it like I was going to tell Nordstrom
to f off but if he didn't say that we weren't we weren't going to go talk to Nordstrom they be upset at us yeah it's a good point yeah the role of the designer is not to make you stuff is to make sure your business objectives are met through the language of design
and the way that we show our expertise and the way we add value to the conversation is to be able to speak the language of business so you have blind spots you're like go go go go well does it matter should we do this what if your partner's freak the F out because
this does happen and I have enough experience so I would tell people how do you prove that you're an experienced creative person and they they're like my portfolio Awards press what I'm like no the quality of the questions that you ask a young person if you were to talk to my son who's
a designer too he'd be like I'm ready to go you want black white purple uh you want cartoons or you want typ face he's ready into the execution mode because he doesn't have that knowledge he doesn't know what a double Keystone is he doesn't know the difference between retail net and grow sales
are and he can't talk to you about that so in that instance you're like we're the business people that's the creative we just tell the creative what to do but what I need to do is establish like I am the creative person but I bring a certain knowledge about industry and things that
is value ad in that way I allow you guys to decide he's a partner how could we decide to work with anybody else but him because the other monkeys are just going to do what we tell them to do and they're just trying to sell us right off they trying to CL you
they don't even care they care that you sign the line sign on the dotted line now if you flip the switch Yeah and 50k was too much I feel like often times you get the objection of oh you're too expensive how would you recommend a Creator uh someone created photo video design whatever
it may be how can they handle the objection of you're too expensive okay very good question first what did you write down for your budget you told me not to scroll up what did you write down it was a lot cheaper it was a lot it was 24,000 but really got sold I
can feel it I didn't I didn't what you didn't see I didn't write down the units sold and then I I blurted out that number it had to make sense no it had to make sense he three to four grand like get off the damn phone right so I want this is really
important though okay because what is the price of a logo it could be 300 it could be 3,000 it could be 30 or 300 we just don't know so what I tell people a lot is absent context nothing is too expensive or too inexpensive I'll show you what I mean uh this bottle
of water which I assume is refilled yes I'm going to try and sell you this for $3,000 would you buy it no why wouldn't you buy it cuz it was refilled right I refill for giving me this to water f it no it's good water it's filtered it's filtered by a br okay
let's change the context you're stranded on the side of road it's Arizona it's 105 degrees and you're going to die soon I cruise up I'm like yo $3,000 bottle of water context matters right convenience matters how big is the problem how urgent is the solution desired those things matter so to answer your
question now I don't usually get it's too expensive because of the way I structure the conversation I don't want to sell you something if it's not going to help you we don't even get to talk about money because I'm like I just don't in good Consciousness I can't take your money I'm not
going to be able to solve your problem you're not going to be happy and you're going to overpay me to do what it is they're like what do you mean overpay it's going to be too expensive for you no I'll let tell you if it's too expensive and then I tell them the
price like yeah it is and we're fine there's nothing for me to convince the problem with almost every creative person whether you do podcasting to design or websites is they just get right into the price and it's like the other person doesn't even know what they're trying to solve so if we got
to it I'm like can you guys do six you're like no I have two and a half then now negotiating from Two and a Half and the game is done it's kind of hard to put the genie back in the bottle so I need to know what the heck are you doing so
I got to slow the conversation down revisit the past the pain point in somebody was not responsive y and you're moving fast and you want to make a connection with someone to say do you see me cuz I'm going to have to work with you I see you guys as fast moving people
as like somewhat Reckless on this call like we got to just get in there we'll change the price days we don't know who we're against and we don't give an f what anybody thinks so I got to just help you a little bit right and then you're like whoa whoa whoa this person
is providing a lens into the problem in which we don't have value ad this person's cred this person has not tried to sell this a single thing we didn't even get into like what I'm going to do you got the job dude I'm like I didn't even know it was going for the
job yet I was just asking questions so the reason why people say it's too expensive is because that's a symptom of a faulty sales conversation at this point it's like uh my girlfriend's pregnant what do I do it's like it's kind of late bro right it's kind of late you have a couple
options but they're not good options do you know what I mean so what we want to do is understand the client's problem and make sure so when I do a sales framework and I teach people like there are about five things you need to know what is the first thing you need to
know well what is your goal the next thing I need to know what is your reason why you want this goal and if those two are not connected I have to resolve that before we get into what kind of solution do you want what kind of value is there to you so I
I was thinking in the conversation you need a Lo new logo because you think this is going to improve sales okay let's talk about it cuz usually sunglasses are purely aesthetic there's not I mean besides the UV lenses and the coating that you have if you make a quality product it's most of
it is just an aesthetic play and I can understand why that would work it's fashion right M but if you're like I need to add a fifth wheel to a car I'm like um I'm not sure that's a great reason and you're like cuz I wanted to go faster well it shows it
turns out less friction equals faster so you want three wheels and not four more friction slower more power so we we need to resolve that so so many creatives are so quick to like try to get the deal skip over this whole process there's no Rapport I don't understand your goals I don't
understand the problems you've had with the other people you've worked with in the past very few people show up having never worked with anybody and you need to know who they worked with before and why they're not working with him anymore those pain points you got to know so responsiveness is an important
trait for you being able to move quickly helping you to see past your blind spots those are important and Ron's book he talked about that too where he was saying how in his accounting firm there was like this billionaire and he's like I can't charge these guys 1,500 bucks a pop to do
their taxes this guy's calling me every damn day I'm saving this guy hundreds of millions of dollars like I have to change the pricing of it and it's so true cuz like we want you to respond all the time and so you're thinking about that of like these guys are going to kind
of bug my team you know is that factor that's got to factor into the price somehow because we're going to be busy responding these emails and my project manager can't like project manage our other stuff it's very interesting so going uh going off the too expensive comment I think another thing that creatives
have a problem with is when they go to pitch something right they're pitching they're pitching a price and this might be for a client they don't want to really work with but they need the money bad they got rent to pay yeah what do you say in those conversations especially like a lot
of our listeners might be younger they might just getting their first client what is that conversation like when that client might not that they don't want to really do it but they need the money in in that situation what do you feel like your advice is my advice is to ask the person
do you have integrity what would they say if I asked him do you have integrity would they say yes or no they say yes and then I would ask him what does it mean to have integrity do you know and to be honest with oneself okay that's the first part of it I
think it's to be consistent with your values there's no Integrity if you're like I would never steal and there's money on table and you steal there's no Integrity if you say like I defend weak people but there's somebody getting attacked but you're afraid and you don't stand up it's just all words until
you actually do something about it so to have integrity is to sell with Integrity to act and live with Integrity so if you don't like this client you don't want to work with this client just because you need money you're breaking your own rule right there you're going to half asset you're going
to give them attitude and you're just taking it for the money you've turned into what my friend calls an art prostitute if that's how you see yourself then take the money but I say you know what I know someone's going to serve you better than me and I just can in good conscience
take your money and I'll do my best to find someone who I think is a better alignment for you this is non-judging nonviolent language it's just it's not right I'd would rather starve I would word and then cut all your expenses you everybody lives beyond their means and I want to answer your
question now I was not being trying to be flip I thought you were going to impress me and say give me an answer mother effer okay but we don't do that on the F answer the questions at your own pace whatever you like so if so if your prospect says that's too expensive
here's what I would say I'm sorry I think I I misjudged the problem we're trying to solve I thought we're trying to solve a really big problem that had a impact on your business your marketing your feelings about your company whatever I I think I misgauged that that's usually when they're like no
no no no hold on it is actually really important Well it can't be because you only want to spend $200 um and then I'd probably quote Jim ran which is you don't want to minor in the majors you don't want to make a minor effort for a major goal do you believe in
that they're like no I'm like I'm just probably not the right person for you and I don't feel offended by that you flip it on them yeah always I love that you Retreat a little bit they'll probably come back too possibly or you just save yourself a headache you definitely so if you
take two creatives who have the same level of work yeah you oftentimes find in the marketplace that they're charging different prices yep you know but the quality of work is is the same so how can someone raise their prices or charge more for their work without um improving the actual quality of their
work the there's a mistake in the question okay that you think the price is relative to the Quality it's not how many people have seen really large corporations charge six seven figures for a logo and you're like I could design a better logo in my sleep they mistakenly believe that the buyer buys
the end product and they do not they buy a certain level of assurance and trust and they don't want to get fired so when somebody has $100,000 for a logo they can look at five firms that are at a certain level with and usually they hire the one that has the best longest
reputation or they can look at a kid off fer they all could do the same work but if you hire the kid off Fiverr and it doesn't work out you're going to get fired if you hire the AAA company doesn't work out you're like who could have figured out of course I mean
we all hired the best person and this is how the industry works we kind of make not the best decision but the one that's least risky and this person over here represents the greatest amount of risk and how do I know that because they don't even know how to put together a proposal
they don't send over a master service agreement they don't have a team they don't even have bank account set up properly they don't have terms of payment they're not on any vendor list they're they're nothing burger and when you get on the phone they're like chewing on gum and not taking notes you're
like uh who hired John you're get fired you're getting fired you didn't do your due diligence and you're thinking I was trying to be hero to the company by saving us $95,000 by hiring this kid for five first of all you need to realize at certain levels of the game it's not my
money I don't make a dollar more for saving any money why would I want to save the company money they don't want to save money so I use all of the budget if not more to hire the best people because I want to go to sleep at night knowing I'm not going to
get fired and these this vendor is going to take care of the job so you're buying all of that and it it it changes over time what the assurances are it used to be an office on a fancy street it's changing it's moving into social where this person has 800,000 followers they've worked
with X Y and Z we don't care if they're in some Podunk town we just don't care because they bring social proof with them how do you think a creative can determine the value of their work what are the key things that go into that uh a conversation with a client it's not
about you to determine your value it's all in the market you get invited to the dance you play to the to the music that you're invited to and if you can understand that that pricing is not a fixed thing based on your value and your time you you'll have a much better chance
of finding the real price mhm my general rule is if you get three yeses it's time for you to raise your price because You' charging too little three yeses without any resistance you're just charging too little so the game that I've always played uh from when I was 22 years old and entering
the market is I wonder how much I can charge and I'm going to keep pushing that limit day by day week by week if have to to to a point in which I find what the theoretical ceiling is and then I'll grind at it for a while and then I'll push past that
CE and just keep doing it I'll give you an example okay um there was a long time starting the future people are calling me up hey can I talk to you I'm like sure sure some I'm giving away advice coaching for free and then I asked my friend Carrie he's like um I'm
getting overwhelmed with answering all these questions because there is no gate here to stop them my nature is to help people and if I have no barrier I'll say yes all the time how much should I charge so I was thinking like 150 bucks an hour and she goes Chris if you don't
charge anything less if you charge less than 500 bucks an hour I will not respect you I'm like damn girl I'm trying to help people I'm fighting myself to negotiate lower rate for myself it's really weird I'm like I want to still help people you don't understand she goes you do that I
will not respect you so I put up a page it's 500 bucks people ask hey can I um sorry you're just going to have to book me through this and then they look at the price like nothing happens but eventually people start paying and it just becomes just like before too many people
are calling and booking me I have no more free time so then I changed the rate $1,500 an hour same thing no calls some calls too many calls I'm like I'm getting tired again 5,000 bucks an hour for sure no one will call me I need my time back and of course no
one calls me for a really long time then one person calls me another person calls me it's at the right price point to the Cadence of how many calls I want to do and when they call they are so ready to talk and that's the kind of person I want to work with
so soon it won't be 5,000 it'll be 10 grand I don't make little increments I make big jumps and you know you may have heard me say this the price I give you today will always be the best price cuz my value never goes down it only goes up hell yeah I love
that I love that well I don't want to get hit with a fat a fat invoice if we go over this this hour you know you want to hit him with yeah Chris what is your advice it's getting hot in here by the way I know I know we turn that AC up
what what's your advice to your 18-year-old self if you could go back and talk to Chris easy okay go hit me go make content right now boom I'll tell you there's a pastor I met his name is Irwin mcmanis he runs the Mosaic mega church and he's kind of an iconic class he
doesn't fit in any single box because he's a pastor he's super stylish and he's a super passionate and Powerful public speaker of course many pastors are and I'm hanging out with him having dinner I just see him speak and I hate speaking next to him because you feel like an idiot he gets
people to stand up without even trying and they're plotting like oh fudge I'm just Cho over in this game and I tell s how long has irn been doing this well he's been preaching for 40 freaking years I've been doing YouTube for 10 years public speaking maybe for eight I need to like
put some miles on the odometer here before I can even say like I hold a candle to this gentleman so I think to myself I started making content when I was 42 what if I started when I was 32 that'd give me 18 years I'm pretty powerful at 18 years what if I
started when I was 22 now we're talking those are some good numbers now so the thing I I I try to say to everybody is today will not be the perfect day and if you wait for the perfect day you'll wait until like you're about to die on your deathbed to release that
piece of content to share with the world what it is that you think start today start putting in the hours and don't give up it will get dark there are bad dark days ahead of you I promise you there are but the people who are willing to push past that kind of grave
of dis bear where everybody drops in the dip you keep persevering you'll see chriso thank you so much for coming on the show I appreciate a ton learned a ton and I think I think the rocks are going to learn a ton from you ladies and gentlemen thank you so much for tuning
to episode 114 of the 505 pod hit the Subscribe button leave us a like and drop a comment we'll see you all next week peace if you want to equip yourself with the right Community training and resources to take your business to the next level I want to personally invite you to check
out the future Pro Group and our membership specifically created for experience business business owners ready to scale [Music]
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“A personal brand is a person's gut feeling about who you are.”
— Chris Do
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