Personal vs Corporate Branding. Live Adobe MAX 2024 Miami

know what you use your corporate brand for on social okay what engagement engagement okay I'll put that up there that's good [Music] engagement like getting new employees like on L uh what do we call that recruitment yeah recr recruitment yeah I think that's good this excellent keep going who's got another one anything else maybe talk about your mission if you're a mission based organization seems like a good place right do Mission a lot of it is PR product launches uh uh what is that called damage control those kinds of things PR okay anything else you can think of that corporate Brands like just think of a corporate account you follow okay and think of do they use it for anything else cont creators maybe to represent their brand think of a corporate brand what do they use soci we're on this side of the car okay yeah yeah it's great still early anybody else anybody else all right that's a pretty good list okay now do you notice something who typically has more followers the corporate brand or the CEO or the founder by a wide margin right if you look at Tesla and you look at Elon mus is not even Clos this is shocking to me if you look at Apple and Tim Cook who's not even the founder Tim C has way more followers than Apple yeah I know it's wild uh you look at virgin versus Richard brandson totally different okay it seems to hold true if it's an interesting CEO okay all right yeah I was going to say that yeah right where was the mic on that one all right that's true just look at me right okay so now we know now I want to ask you something you have a brand a corporate brand all of you do your business name and then there's you Jane or Jack Smith whatever it is right are you doing the same thing let's go down the list okay I'll pick up the most obvious one are you P posting on your personal account to recruit people anybody nah nah are you doing it to uh do PR you shouldn't yeah you shouldn't you can if you want I buys you not to all right n um let's see what else you're doing this one's a special one so we'll just put this aside we're taking this out okay now here's the problem if you post on the corporate brand to get engagement who gets more engagement the personal brand of the corporate brand personal brand a personal brand so we should move this one over here right it's unrealistic and I'll tell you why corporate brands do not get a lot of Engagement for brands are usually very generic content super generic content it usually is like a team has a strategy marketing department there's copywriters there's HR there's legal that's where everything goes to die in terms of creativity send it to a committee and all creativity dies that's just how it is it has too many Masters to make happy and then what they do is they just water it down until everyone's happy which means no one's happy there's a quote a good compromise is when no one's happy that's where corporate brand don't you die there some exceptions like Wendy's Wendy's has a pretty good corporate brand they're they're they're very spicy they're trolling McDonald's all the time they really are do you know this it's such they literally troll McDonald's McDonald's said why the square patties Wendy's and Wendy's CS back CS back at McDonald's cuz we don't cut Corners y now they didn't always do that they found an agency who have some amazing quick weighted writers I imagine some really sharp woman's writing these snapbacks or clapbacks and there she's good whoever's doing it the fake Wendy's is writing for wendes right okay the problem here is if we start behaving like a corporate brand we will get the engagement of corporate Brands that's the problem they're not supposed to be the same now this is the voice of many right it's the voice of many this it's the committee that decides this is the voice of one it's your voice your beliefs your mission your attitude your style your Bel it's super simple but what what I have said before is a lot of personal Brands they woke up in the morning and say we should act like a corporate brand let's do everything to corporate Brands and we'll get the exact same results as the corporate Brands which which is no one gives an app no one cares it's really weird and all the time corporate brands are trying to be more human the best the good news is you're already human there's only one of you so do you it will work right make sense okay so what should you talk about from a personal brand your values okay what else think of a personal brand yeah think of one that you like think about abstractly what they do and let's try and make a list can everybody do that in your mind okay he's got the mic so we'll stay with him for a little bit right all right rben hang in there longer answer but they they B they educate on the thing they have Mastery in or knowledge of a lot of what do we call that there's a word we use when you demonstrate Mastery to other people it's called teaching yeah teaching it's called teaching Alex thanks for being teaching stay that wave L okay before we go down that dark path so you could teach like literally just how I do what I do and there's another way of teaching which is just showing me the process we call that demonstration okay like a chef might not teach you how to cook but they're just make the the dough make the bread then cut the meat and do all that kind of stuff right so they demo okay what else do personal brands do really well all right they showcase their interests how think of an account literally take search through your mind Instagram who am I following what are they doing and find the broad term for it so that have a universal understanding well I don't have so using you for an example don't say me just just think of the person okay think of a person who [Music] be and just think what are they doing showcasing showcasing what love said that their love for fashion storytelling Come a Little Closer with you so I can see you what is you get Leah Leah is a story time they tell stories sure that that's not what I was thinking about I know that's why she said it that's why I stop looking at they tell stories okay I'll stretch it Leo what kind of stories do they tell can we hang on the mic T's losing it right now T think about what you want to say okay okay yeah tell their personal stories and experien they're okay they're people so they're going to tell personal stories but what kind of stories about what they're sing can you keep your mic a little Clos yeah about what they're selling what they're doing okay that's wrong you were doing so well if you start talking about what you're selling that's not called telling stories anymore it's called lead generation awareness marketing and conversion we committed the same sin again okay what we want to do is we we want to avoid selling on this side we can sell on that side no one cares everyone cares I'll give you the the key in a little bit okay that's the problem that's why you have the same redundancy problem is on your personal account you're trying to generate leads build awareness and convert people so you can make more money and it turns out there's a much more way to generate leads build awareness and convert and it's not by doing that but you're really good you're she's taking us to to the threshold somebody take me over the threshold what kind of stories do they tell overcoming challenges in the past yes yes challenges challenges right everybody's noting now once he says what's your name again DJ VJ once VJ says challenges those are the stories okay challenges okay AKA struggles I Teo entprise so I te how challenges and struggles yeah yeah so this is important what other kind of stories do they tell success stories sure we can talk about our failures we can talk about success what are the kind of stories you can't say personal cuz it's a personal brand go ahead Ruben yeah I was going to say like are you on stories another if you're not stories keep your mou CL I would say Au it's like I know it's right you're right the journey with c and how they got from point A to point B those would be challenges or success stories yes somebody else what other kind of stories do they tell inspiration what kind of stories are inspirational success failures they're already here next person let's go let's move the mic yes there drop a bomb on us encouragement oh I like a positive encouraging message okay it's not a story necessary but I like that they can encourage you okay I'll add that what other kinds of things do they say and do turning points those would be the struggles or success okay who else I I'll ask you a question second go ahead their interests what kind of Interest like what do they find funny what they find interesting okay okay I'm going to ask you I who spoke up on stage inspirational Keynotes the first two people actually all three of them what did they do they told you a little bit about their struggle struggle okay it's going to be like this Max day too my voice is going to go you can't use the word personal and story when they ask you what kind of personal stories do they tell personal story they they told stories about their their past okay so that you got a sense of who they are any of the three speakers that spoke what one story do you remember about their past yeah yeah yeah good what's that who who went to jail who did Deon who Devon Deon went to jail where was Deon from he's from uh the Bronx South Bronx South Bron you see how you remember that yeah okay this is good where you're from where you're born you tell that story why do people tell stories about where they're born and where they're from do you know why I'll tell you why it's rhetorical question it's because it's called cultural currency you're trading on C cultural currency because say who's here from New York so then they all like we from New York we know each other already well from New York but South Bronx and he kept saying I wanted to get out I need to get out of the bad or the hood we understand that so where you're from is a shorthand for you to connect with people like your language your Customs your culture the food that you it says a lot about you so all of you how many people here have made some effort to tell their origin story okay has it worked out for you let's give the mic to no no no right there yeah um yeah I grew up in strer in a really remote Aboriginal Community remote Australia Australia uh 3,000 people in my little town and I live in New York now and the and so my journey from a tiny little place to Big City wonderful TR from look at Dave Dave like yes Aussie here okay so you've told this story before appr kind of yeah it's yes or no I need to do it better okay so you try but not really yeah okay the here's the beautiful part telling your origin story is not that difficult but you need to tell it you need to tell it often okay and the contrast between where you started and where you are now makes a big difference right so Devin was a guy from the Bronx who didn't know how to do art who got in trouble and arrested and didn't want to disappoint his grandma you remember that story right it's going to stick with you long after today and then when he made it if he built up that story like it was more struggle than that we would have all cheered for him cuz we are Devon and Deon is us we all want to achieve something we all want to make somebody that we care a lot about happy we don't want to dis like what you do is you you add dialogue or different voices in telling the story which he did he started speaking a little bit in Spanish and as as he did what did the audience do oh I didn't understand a word but I knew that they were feeling something what you say aita aita which is like aita aita aita Abita AB Abita Abita Abita every all the is pretty much every Miami would understand he anchor that now I don't know like my I'm from Russian immigrant family if I started speaking Russian I don't think they'd get the same response thank you for saying that a so a is from like a Russian family which is not super popular right now right but you know what we all don't think our immigrant story or our origin story matters until you tell it I promise you if you told it and you found and know there's an art form to this you can't just go and blur out everybody's like okay she's one of them you tell that story and you know how I know do you know a comedian named Hassan minhaj he did this special on Netflix called homecoming and when I saw him do homecoming I just saw new ways of showing up because he showed me a way that you can be of and celebrate it make fun of it and celebrate at the same time it just showed me it's possible and there's probably not any thought this is not cool to do we we need to ass simulate we need to be like everyone else and when you lean into who you are that's powerful and that's how you get personal you tell that story okay so all of you who are sitting there like I don't know what to say start there tell your origin story your backstory where you're born how many brothers and sisters you might have only child firstborn last born your parents stories they're the firstborn or first one to go to college and first want to go to high school that matters and you tell that story everybody who shares that idea or that emotion even if they don't share your exact story are going to feel like they're with you you are them you represent them does that make sense this is why corporate Brands can't do this they were not really born they were created they don't have that same cultural currency cuz there is none the the closest version of the corporate origin story is Steve WN and Steve Jobs were in a garage in Palo the mythical Silicon Valley garage startup that turns into a $3 trillion company that's as close as they get and and if you're really into branding and marketing that's what they do for corporate Brands Colonel Sanders David Wendy they tell that story okay who said Chris okay DJ I have a question about stories like how do you how do you pick what stories to tell when okay I wasn't planning to doing a deep dive in personal branding but if we stick around either tomorrow I will will you come back for that yeah okay so I I need to get through his question okay so those are the kinds of stories you can tell okay your struggles now when I get into the personal braing stuff there's three stories you can tell okay what we call your origin story which everybody knows the origination the beginning okay the defining moment where everything changes I'm sorry there's one more the inciting incident I messed up on the order here okay inciting incident is there's this thing this is the old world or the ordinary and the new world look for in your timeline when everything changes this is a really really significant moment you guys watch Loki great Series right so good art direction is oh my God whatever the sacred timeline that was you something happened in your life it forked you picked one new path that becomes a new sacred timeline your life is totally different it's never the same again do you guys know what that moment is everybody search in your mind look in your past you know when did you discover you wanted to be a photographer the first time you figured it out not the first like I think I might but when you know so that the world is never the same again okay and then you have your defining moment when it totally crystallizes so this is a clue and somewhere along the story it becomes real now back to Devon when was Devon's inciting incident do you know when his world changed give it give okay never mind when the art school rejected him okay that's a good I think it's either that or when he met his mentor right it's really clear it's really really clear when you know what you're looking for it's much easier to find okay so this is moment so he gets rejected out of the art high school cuz he sucked and then he met a teacher who's like you suck but I'll help you and it turns out that failure was the best thing that ever happened to him you notice in his story he went back to that he called back that sometimes your rejection is the greatest gift you could have if he had a story coach he would have hit that harder and we I felt that when have you failed and thought it was a failure you might want to revisit that maybe was the best gift you could have gotten okay so far so good so that's his thing and then his defining moment was when when he knew abolita I did it I made it when was that moment what's that you're so smart you're so smart you should be right up front no you're good so the second video he knew I could anybody can have one viral hit that ain't nothing you're one hit wonder can you do it consistently and he started to figure it out if I keep doing this it's going to work and it's brought him to the biggest stages to meet the most popular people the most famous and powerful people see how the story is really well crafted that is how you build a personal did you talk about the generation hire me was he trying to like do conversions On You by telling his story though kind of weird there were probably a couple of cor from you in the audience like we need to hire this guy so I told you if you want this do not do this do this the same thing who's the last people was his name Jason Mason what was his name Jason Jason Jason is like oh I did this one thing and now everybody's hiring me he didn't ever say hire me but I bet you you're a bunch of corporate types like we need a mirror from Jason see how that works you invite them versus you chasing them it's an awesome thing when you do this the right way okay mik back to Tay Tay the content should not be redundant because it's a totally different Paradigm it's totally different philosophy you don't do it the same way the reason why tasis question and why many of you are probably a little bit confused is cuz you see people posting and you can't see the difference between the two there are in my opinion way more examples of people making these the same and far fewer people who draw a pretty clear Line This Is Me this is what I do okay there's a big difference this is you this is you being you Human Being Human doing makes sense okay he any other questions not right now fig out do you are you complete as they used to stay in the clubhouse you remember that call back sorry yeah we go to the next one okay all right yeah Eric wants to add on okay let's do this if you have an add-on now that t is complete go ahead is there a middle ground is it's called Purgatory you want to live in purgatory no imagine you have a personal you have a business what about a collection or a collaborative of personals so a group of artists who are banned together as as keep the mic here sorry a group of artists who are banned together it is personal you invest in those artists you invest in those characters but as a group as a collective they lean more into business than they do into personal you've confused me so every give me an example every artist has their own website right it's a way to promote themselves it's a way to get themselves out there but really the only person unless you be big or viral the only people who are looking at that website are those who are potential buyers or employers or whatever then you have a company website and I've seen many artists try to invent themselves into a company right it almost seems fake but for me I wonder if there's an between you where thank you my site to look at me but you Eng me we a a uh almost a entity unto itself right and that is marketable okay Eric I'm going to try to answer this as quickly as possible we're going to move on okay how many people go to a website as the first point of contact to talk to to engage with them I don't think so pre- internet I mean pre social media probably you send an email form today the conversation is not happening website you're right no unless they already know about you so that becomes a catch 22 right so what do we do we we go on social like Instagram and YouTube and Twitter and Linkedin and we drive people to our website to have a deeper conversation the the website just becomes like a business card or brochure or a buy page you know and about me and they can have more information so usually it's a couple of points of contact before they actually want to hire you for work right thinking more on the level of conversation so conversations don't happen on on on your website well sure they do if it's a collective so motionographer is a good example conversations can happen in a sphere we're looking at multip Community fair enough but where do the lines start to blur between a social media community and an online community that start BL those I'm gonna help you are you motion graic person creative director in Motion Graphics what what compan you work for NBC and NBC okay okay you remember okay we're going to go down memor really fast I'm I think we're okay you talk to me later I'm going to just say this and I'm move on okay there's no rebuttal to this I remember in a time right around 2000ish where Justin con created motionographer and was just the hottest thing for a brief period in time blind my company was on the top 10 the cream list and we got work from that you know we Justus in is today you know the revelance of motionographer today it's not relevant at all I'm sorry to say I talked to him he said missed the internet social wave the conversations are happen on social media cuz we can talk really fast so very few people actually go to those Community sites now the influence that they used they don't have anymore I I suppose corporates don't spend as much time on social they'll go to a site like that it'll work I think I really want to focus on his main question which is what do I post on each of these accounts and how do I make it not redundant it won't be redundant CU of two totally different strategies now he's asking me so that's my opinion it's just my opinion you can follow anybody you want and do what they say to do cuz I'm telling you the vast majority of the people do it this way it's all blurry it's all messy no one engages no one cares on both sides so you screwed yourself over twice and I'm telling you from experience when I had my company blind I was posting for BL I didn't know what to say cuz there's a whole bunch of creative directors I don't want to screw people over by saying I feel this so it was always the wi we think this and it was always PR based and congratulations our client at NBC or Fox it was super PR I'm telling you right now almost no one shows up on any media platform to see another ad almost no one you can read about this in permission markeing from Seth Goen he has a whole thesis on this you can read about it okay you understand that all keep doing is making more ads we think we're being clever with the content but it's an ad non-stop I'm not tuning in for that personally I all right stage question is over Andress he's got the next mic okay what's your question okay my question what's your advice for creating uh recurrent Revenue in a wooden business where clients typically only need my services once after I referral and perent to partnership with with Ben some planners but I encounter challenges in both okay your question could be much simpler than that okay what you do what do you do there one um wedding stationary in sinish okay wedding stationary well that's tricky man okay you do bespoke service right in theory you get married one time you guys know what I mean when I say Boke custom one of a time one off so his question is how do I go from Boke to subscription I I do both I do semi semic custom too that's fine custom and semic custom all right to subscription right you guys know what we we're talking about when we say subscription a subscription model this is a oneoff you guys know the difference does anybody subscrib to anything they keep paying money month over month all of us do we just don't pay careful attention to if you have Spotify and you have premium you're doing it if you have YouTube premium you're doing that now we used to think okay that's software it's media we're used to doing that can we do it for Creative Services that's the trick question here who here has a creative service that they build a subscription model for thank you you do okay can you hand it to her what's your business so curly q Design Studio I do logos packaging websites um and I found it really hard in the beginning to figure out how I could keep clients coming back to me because the process was 3 months and then I'd kind of give them all their files and be like okay I'm here after this if you need anything like shoot me an email whatever follow up so then I figured out subscription just tell me the bottle yeah so it's a monthly subscription essentially and um there's x amount of hours and then they pay me a fee every month for it and they submit an inquiry and then we just do I'm going to ask you some really quick questions quick answers please okay sorry go over the board with details no no it's okay you're doing great Alex you still got a little of credit from before yeah you steal a lot of money in the bank okay all right okay how much do you how how much you charge for the subscription 2500 a month 2500 bucks a month how many clients do you service um two with the subscription okay and how many hours are they buying so 20 hours 20 hours per month what happens if you don't use all the hours um roll over no no roll over they're dead roll over so basically if fine what happens if they use more it's rare that they use more you're a chair but what happens if they do I will just do it for them you'll just eat it y some okay so you have a flexible program y but what if they're consistently needing 60 hours of time from you then a conversation will be have okay this is beautiful Alex Alex actually does not have a subscription model she has a retainer model okay so she's like he it's retainer there's a difference and it doesn't seem like there's a big difference until I explain it to you okay so we're going to take a minute to explain this okay the only reason why I know this is because I asked Ron Baker wrote the book implementing value pricing he's a wizard with economics and accounting and he explained it to me like whoa now we know the difference okay here we go okay how many of you guys do a retainer model raise your hand okay see they know the difference okay so there's difference between retainer subscription and let me ask the people who know the difference what the difference is this pass M over Jenna JMA jmy Jimmy Jimmy what's the difference between these two thank you um apprciate in my case I think of a retainer as how you describe it you give like a minimum maximum of hours work for a segmented amount of time maybe months together subscription I think of it as ongoing usually pre-made content as well not necessar okay but um yeah like it's a everyone knows that amount coming through okay very good let's give the mic back to Alex okay I'll get you okay a retainer is you're selling a prepackage set amount of hours that they buy in advance for a slight discount okay does that make sense so what you're really selling is time you're still selling time but it's prepackaged in bulk and whenever you buy something with bulk and you know this cuz you go to Costco it's cheaper it makes sense and you have some predictability in terms of Revenue you don't have to worry you can hire people makes sense right beautiful a subscription is you don't sell time at all you don't talk about time you just talk about results Okay the reason why this is a ginormous shift and it sounds the same but it's not is you don't you never measure time okay you don't track your time you don't report your time I've done retainer models before they want to know how much time you spent cuz they get upset they're like you haven't done enough so when you sell a unit of time they don't care about the quality of the work or the results they care about how much time they use and the relationship I don't want to have with my clients is them being afraid to call me because the clock is running you guys know that every time you build hour Le by the minute my lawyers this way I'm like I got to go by he's like hey Chris how's your wife no no no I got to go I got to go cuz I know I'm getting a bill for every minute we're talking okay the difference here we're going to get into it now what you do is you set up some goals so it's some metrics for success and then you determine how much time and the means and the people to do it totally different give you an example uh I work with a lot of people who help me make content writers uh producers editors people who do my podcast there's a whole team of us who do this stuff right multiple teams so if I did a retainer model with them I would buy 30 hours let's just say at 33,000 okay that's how we do it but the way I do it is is I say hey I want these metrics Subs up why I think you keep pointing this yeah Alex you're doing great you're starting to go down I know do not point the mic at the speaker you're still doing it that's the speaker right there oh when you point yeah you see that yeah okay great Subs I care about watch time I care about and then I care a little bit about R those are the only things we matter that matter to us I don't care how many videos it takes I do not care how many hours it takes all I care is about this so instead of reporting hours or videos produced all I care about is are Subs up what video did you do to produce that our watch time up it is revenue up in that exact order does that make sense the relationship is totally different now so if they drop one video and it gets me all the results I don't care anymore and the reason why this works for me is because I also don't care if they made me a 100 videos that don't get me this you see the shift here all of you that are selling time what is being measured is time not quality not results but I know if you buy stuff you want results right and I'll prove it to you right now right let's say you need somebody to help you with your Instagram account what do you care about you care about how much time they're working on it anybody no you care about how many pieces of content they made no you care I want more followers I want greater engagement and ultimately I want conversions I want to make some money and it might be a different order for you right and that's totally okay so Walmore you have to figure out what is the result that somebody want that you could sell them that they would be happy to give you money it requires a very special kind of person who has an ongoing need for what you do maybe a wedding plan but not a couple does that make sense give them back to M I've done that with wedding planners and and venues but I've received the same feedback that it's just more work for them they they you're doing right they feel like a middleman you're not doing it right okay I'll tell you there's a buddy of mine I can't tell you his name but he builds websites who here builds websites okay there's a couple of you so doesn't matter to you okay I was like how do you apply this model to websites he's like here's how I do it so he builds websites thank you the speaker there just look at the speakers if you're pointing down it's great okay websites so websites are typically you know anywhere between 30k to like 250k depending on who you talk to right that make any sense it feels like very much as a a spoke you design it you build it you deliver it we're out his motto is I'm going to work and this is the keyword he uses a fractional creative director or sometimes a chief technology officer that's too lofty of a title but he's like you know what your website's going to need building updating adding content modification all the time let's say his price people told me when I talk math you guys die they their brains broke yesterday so they use big round numbers I'm going to do big round numbers for you today okay you're smarter today I know you are I feel it 100K all right so let's say he's going to charge 100K to a website how does he structure this as a fractional ongoing subscription model that's the big puzzle he has to figure out okay so let's say he figures out he's going to charge him 10K okay a month with a minimum of 6 months so if they leave in six months he's kind of screwed cuz he's shy 40K make sense don't make me do the math you got it okay but if you say for 12 months he's already now over 20k here's the really cool thing they don't think about anymore and the check just keeps going out now here's responsibility is to continually invest in the welfare of their business he's not waiting for to call it this is a passive role this is an active role make sense tell you all into this you feel it you feel the spirit yeah okay you know it okay so this is passive I'm waiting for them to call me to give me more work and this has to be active for it to work you have to be vested in their business to see it succeed so in the case of the video stuff I'll explain it here okay if I hire my video team they shouldn't be waiting around asking me Chris what's the next video they should be like you know what I noticed a lot of people are watching this video right at this point I have some ideas can we try this I'm a guess you know I want to do this can I book this guest for you yes I think we should delist these videos because it's hurting our performance I hired a consultant to help us with titling I've made a new tool can we use it that's an active client management versus a passive Cent management system does that make sense so there's some risk here because if they bail you're kind of screwed the risk he's willing to take and so right now he told me he makes about half a million dollar million dollars a year he works like8 hours a week he doesn't have to chase any more clients I mean you didn't get into this business to be chasing clients I don't think or this field you got into this field because you want to express your vision with the world so if you can get clients to hang out with you for a really long time you don't have to get on that lead generation wheel that we all want to get off of does that make sense but this is tricky so I asked him how do you sell this to the claim it's brilliant what he said you know I think I know a lot of things but I'm still learning so many new things every single day Casey your back you good today you be good girl you be good we're good today someone has to challenge no no no you can't you can challenge me okay here's what he said all right here's how he sells it instead of going in and talking about uh what what software he's going to use or how many pages that has or all that boring stuff that we talk about in web you know information architecture he just goes in and asks him these simple questions this part you need to pay attention to okay I'm going to say it I'll draw on the board and if you need to ask me a question ask me I'm here for you okay I'm going to tell you what he does and how he teaches people he goes to whoever's hiring him maybe the CMO he goes let me ask you a question currently you're building a site you have a website right okay who all is in involved in your team to do this right so he's like okay so you have a creative director right you have probably an art director you have some designer visual designer it's weird that visual designer is VD okay and then you have a developer and then you have a copywriter and you probably have some QA people like coordinat so he asked them how much money do you spend on a salary basis every going follow me okay I'm going to say you just yell out like number if I can hear you how much do does it cost in a like Metropolitan City to have a creative director who's decent full-time what are you guys getting paid 100 is that okay 100 we're good okay maybe a little bit more but we'll say 100K I like that an art director it's got to be less than that 75 we'll just go with that number since you set the bar at 100 75 how about a visual designer say 65 a developer maybe 90 a copywriter maybe 55 maybe they're still pretty new right a lowlevel coordinator quality insurance person maybe it's like 40K okay so what he does is he adds up this number it's a really big number by the way Andress what's the number oh shut it's a big number okay but when you understand how businesses work then there's benefits there's vacation there's onboarding and offboarding time you know when you have to there's recruitment fees that you have to pay when you hire people you guys know this it's usually like 20% of the person's salary for a head hunter to find them the numb is getting bigger and bigger by the minute and then there's the equipment right and then there's things like liability insurance and disability pay and the 401K plan and then there's lawsuits oh my God cuz when you fire people in out America you can't just just fire them anymore you get sued it's tough so when you add that number it's a ginormous number let's just do a quick estimation 420k when you added all this it's got to be way higher than that dude this number is 420 then you had 20% on top then you had all this other junk on top it's it's enormous let's say 650k you just do the real math right so you're spending at a minimum $650,000 a year if it goes well but there's an emotional toll to managing people what tax would you put on managing people a lot what would you say Alex look at her she's having a migraine just thinking about it and you feel that pain you guys like managing people especially creatives horrible what would you pay someone to manage your whole team and make it run like like runs on Rails 30% more 50% more a lot double it you mean a lot so say it's another $100,000 just the management headache of dealing with creative people so now he's at 750k so he goes you know what I run my own team you hire me as a fractional creative conductor I have all these people working for me you just pay me 10K a month you fire me anytime you want after 6 months so your risk is 60k versus 750k I have literally done this myself I fired my team I just work that makes sense so every month so right now I'm going to do the quick math I pay about $113,000 a month a little bit more than that for people just to run our our media stuff that's what I pay to make the prodct go away make sense okay that's how you move to subscription based model your problem is how do I find the right customer and it might not be possible who thinks this is a miracle that's your challenge and you can do it maybe I can what's that maybe I can over them like uh what we're going to do all you going to be here later today we're going to do an AI session we're going to use GPT or Claud we're going to ask it to design you a subscription model based on your customer profile and it should be able to figure it out for you have you guys tried it you probably didn't because you didn't even understand what a subscription model was prior to today hard to ask for things that you don't understand right the machine is smarter than century skills learning how to ask the right questions t so here's the cool part this is the best part about the gpts and the clouds in the world but I'd like to move towards that here's what I do can you help me design a subscription model such that the customer that I'm looking to work with would be happy to pay me this amount a month ity knows the answer you're just not smart enough to ask it so it's really important today when you're walking around from Booth to Booth or from session to session to pick up on the Big Ideas because because later Dave and I were going to help you figure out how to talk to the machine so it helps you out now I'm going to be real honest with you guys the violence is coming out you're creative visual people you're not good with words and some of you are terrible with math and not great with logic either that's what makes you a great creative person logic people the left brainers have been ruling the world for about you know over 2,000 years it is the age of the creative person the non U I'm sorry the Divergent thinker not the convergent thinker but in order for you to reap the rewards of the 21st century you have to learn a few of their skills okay you have to become a day Walker all the RS of the vampire and none of the weaknesses right now you burn in the sun that's the problem okay so you have to learn how to talk to the machine you have to have a little bit more logic in you Casey just a little bit more and you'll do really well no you're good you're good I just is it okay if I mess around with you are you getting tired of it it's okay she's okay I asked after I slap her so it's all good that didn't hurt did it no it didn't does that makes sense your business is really hard if I really thought about it I could probably solve it for you but I just I don't have that kind of time right now okay all right how we doing on time 1 hour we have one more hour no we are 1 hour so we have 3 more minutes whatever you want 30 more minutes is what he said 30 more minutes Andress oh Kristen you're you're ready to go girl all right what's your question what mind what D sorry did you make this is a family show sorry did you make to make sorry what mindset shift did you make to start recognizing the true value of your work and gain confidence in showing the value of your pricing can you ask me more confidently because your question trailed off and before you do that can I ask you guys in the back you can leave anytime my feelings are not hurt even if Walmore got up my left in the middle of what I was saying I would not be hurt could you guys just come in a little bit closer there's a weird Gap here unless they smell really bad just come a little closer just just go like this I know all right ask your question one more done what was your mindset shift I can't say that mindset shift to start recognizing the true value of your work and gain confidence to show the value of your pricing you want to know my personal shift what clicked in your brain okay this is good I'll answer your question but I'm going to tell you something I'll tell you what worked for me and I know this you're like but I can't do that Chris you really want me to tell you what I did you're sure okay how far back do you want me to go you have the [Music] mic basically your origin story and that um deciding moment okay great you guys understand the question she wants to know where I got my confidence from and why I can price what I price okay here's the deal um the first thing you have to do is you have to get into a really good school I got to Art Center and then you have to be like a the head of your class which I did and then you have to get all the scholarships which I did that helps you build your confidence don't you think so I'm at an elite art school at the top of my class not the top but just at the top and I have opportunities everywhere opportunities abound first with students say hey can you help me with this can you help me with that can you teach me can I hire you so those are good things right and before I get out of school my last semester I was offered a job at an ad agency I'm like what am I doing here this is incredible so I go and work for colle Weber in Seattle working advertising which I didn't deny get study okay feeling very insecure by the way feeling the heavy dose of the impostor syndrome cuz everybody there studied advertising has about being an art director or copywriter all their lives I'm curious about it but this is not my dream so I'm there feeling like a totally like somebody snuck me in the back door waiting to be discovered you guys know that feeling okay I felt that really heavily what's really interesting is I went to my old playbook out work every single person in the company so there I am I'm like 20 years old I'm at an ad agency I I temporary League school I'm there right I'm there till 3:00 or 4 in the morning everybody leaves at 5:00 p.m. okay I'll tell you how weird it is one day I get a call from Dolly Dolly's like the accounting HR person she calls me to the fifth floor I know I'm in trouble already she calls me up there and she says Chris I'm looking at your time sheets is this correct I'm like and she shows it to me I'm like it's correct she goes I need to call your supervisor I'm like damn calls them it's like Kevin Kevin Jones come up to the fifth floor Kevin comes up he's like what's going on Dolly goes did you see Chris's time he goes I don't need to as long as he doesn't put more than 24 hours in a day it's okay and I proove it you have a boss like that he knew I literally sometimes would sleep underneath the desk in the crus office it was next to the bathroom with no windows okay I hustled and I hustled so when the corner office opened up sa for senior creative directors he gave it to me temporarily so now I'm a 20-year-old kid a month into a job sitting in the corner office him offering me double my salary that does a lot for your confidence okay I told you my story's not g to help you but I don't even want to work here anymore so I quit I go back and get my degree I get out of school I'm going to freelance for a little bit I know wind up designing Bank brochures because that's what's on the job board they pay you $30 an hour I've fallen pretty far from that top part okay make sense but then I started getting inquiries for work for motion design and they kept asking me what's your day rate I never even heard of a day rate before I like you just take my number and multiply by eight that's my day rate but because I was getting more inquiries for work than what I have capacity to do I started to play a game the game was I wonder what the ceiling is for a day rate so when I started it was 30 bucks an hour roughly doing Bank brochures which I only did one time I wanted to kill myself I was telling myself did you go to art school and do all these fun crazy typ typographic experi so you can design brochur Wells Fargo as a subcontractor not even the main point person like no I did not okay so my day rate would have been $240 an hour so the first person who called me and said what's your day rate we want you to work on some commercial I'm like great it's 300 they said fine they booked me for a week next person called me I'm like it's 400 and it just kept going up and up and up so I find like the ceiling for the amount you can charge is really high I'm talking about of time here not years it gets to the point when I'm working with somebody and I was changing my rate every time they called me right and they got upset at me she I remember her name is saffron saffron's like Chris last week you said your rate was 600 I'm like I know it's a new week it's weird it's $850 now it's $850 now I was just waiting for them to say no the problem with me is they never said no there was a little push back but there was never a no of course saffron calls Kyle Kyle Cooper he goes are you going to pay Chris 850 he goes pay him whatever he wants the game continues so that's been my game it's like I just look at it like I want to hear a no so I know what it sounds like okay I still use this philosophy to this day I'll give you an example right now I know the numbers are going to shock you okay they're meant to shock you I'm going to just tell you how my brain works and then I'll take a question for you a follow up okay I was recently in the Middle East the UAE I did a talk okay this is what I charge to do the top is $30,000 plus business class flight hotel all that good cool not a big deal I got back to LA they called me up and said hey we want you to host a podcast for us how many episodes five episodes on my channel yours their Channel we want you to fly we'll fly you back out for 2 days you we'll prepare all the questions for you we just want you to host I'm like this is freaking cool we'll fly you back business class flight and we'll give you $50,000 I'm like damn to interview people with questions you give to me but they're like you know what but we need you to post it on your social medias too oh okay that's going to cost you more here's what I do I see that's fantastic let me think about it I go back and I say I want to fly first class I don't want you to pay me 100k and I want to do they asked for like 10 posts I said I'll do two posts I do this not because I think I'm worth anything I just want to hear them say no so I know what to seal feeling is and then they told me Chris do you know how much a first class flight is to Dubai I have no idea do you know how much a cost flight did you buy first class does anybody know how much would you guess it C I fly like a premium economy when I pay but when they pay it's business are better cuz my my Amy is my business manager she goes you want to fly you know to Miami business I'm like no we're paying right no no no I'll just I'll say like this I'm short it works you right like as long as my knee is not up to my chin I'm good I'm good I'll eat the airline food fine but when they fly it's got to be as fast or better it turns out they sent me a message back the first class flight is 24K Jesus that's what they told me I'm like damn and and they're like well we talk to them they can't afford it we'll find another opportunity for you so I know now what the ceiling might be today but my narrative always changes because that was today's price tomorrow's price is even more than today okay and I'll tell you why because before I used to do a bit of public speaking I got paid an incredible amount and for a long time it was like this amount and then during the pandemic it was this amount and I was shocked I'm like you guys are going to pay me $10,000 for a zoom call this is freaking fantastic I didn't even have to wear pants this is freaking dope right this is amazing I don't have to go anywhere it's the cleanest $10,000 I ever make it's like 1 hour of talking it's beautiful I know and so when I got 10K consistently I'm like it's too cheap now you got to pay me 30 and they would say no I say well I can't be there here's the cool part I've been getting paid pretty consistently 30k through public talk right not Adobe for sure that's for sure Adobe okay but one of the event organizers called me up and they gave me like a little envelope under the door idea he says Chris you know what we these other speakers that are not as good as you I think the minimum has to be 50k Chris and I asked them I got you so you're saying I need to change the rate for you it's pretty dope it's really awesome when your clients tell you charge us more I almost feel bad because I should have told them that first okay make sense okay microphone please we'll come back to you I was waving at somebody you flirting with somebody no was to my boy okay all right you have a VA question so in 2025 it should be 50k plus business bu but I told Amy she's not here if I have to fly more than 7 hours I got to push for first class I'm going to keep asking for it but oh I forgot there's another event I'm speaking at they're like we can't get your first class but if you do a social media post I'm sure they'll let you have first class I'm like I can do that pretty good you know that follower thing is working out pretty well for man I got to say okay Kristen ask a followup question I told you it may not help you I warned you okay followup question please so you're basically going for I always go for now I always go for now yeah why wouldn't you even with my girlfriend soon to be my wife or back then she said no many times I had to convince her like God I worked too hard hard for you babe we too hard so with the Imposter syndrome that you were facing what did you do to help get you out of that was it just buckling down and working hard finding resources and learning more yeah it's been a consistent theme in my life whenever I don't feel right I just work harder and then I find out I didn't need to work that hard I just need to believe that I was already chosen for a reason okay and my boss hold it towards you okay I'm going to tell you something right now okay I'm we going to give it to somebody in a second okay when I got hired my first professional job out of school I was technically out of school they offered me 40K same Dolly negotiated I'm like I want 50 she goes no I'm like okay I got no leverage and then Kevin started to see me working and goes Chris I love having you here I want to you know what do we need to do to make you stay here he was the most amazing boss still is to this day he's the best boss you could ever dream to have I'll tell you more about Kevin in a second so when he wanted to hire me he goes Chris I need you I'm like okay I'll offer you $85,000 I was only committed to working for the agency for 4 months so he wanted to make sure I was going to come back to the agency and he was going to pay me this but since I didn't love advertising I'm like I don't know I didn't say no I just I don't know so he's like what if we allowed you to work 3 days a week I'm like ah I don't know what if we gave you space inside the agency so you could run your own agency inside our agency you can are your own friends for the two days that you work I'm like that sounds pretty good he goes okay cool do you need to go home see your girlfriend I'm like yes I'll follow you back and forth every other week to La so your girlfriend I'm like God dang this is good he's the best boss ever but the Imposter syndrome of me is like Kevin why would you do this for me I'm a graphic designer I know a lot of the art directors and creative directors here look at me with disdain they hate me they really do cuz they think I'm some leper coming into her office with my designery things with type and graphics and imagery he goes you know what first of all you're really talented in my world copy writers like me are a dime a dozen designers like you are very hard to [Music] find what a boss he said that to me okay he says I can find people like me all over the place but you and he goes you know what and you work so hard you embarrass people here I feel like they're working a little bit harder because you're around like damn somebody noticed me I feel so seen and heard right now so that hard work is what gets me through now I'm not trying to dismiss that I'm not talented I have talent too okay I'm a really fast learner so that's my secret okay let's pass the mic over to her what is your name Jimmy Jimmy um in all of your nose through that process um I'm just curious where if some of the yeses come back so like in that example where the project with the podcast you you asked at a no right see if you could get a no do you ever then backtrack in your pricing or do you keep it really firm I like your question Jeffy okay when do I compromise okay yeah okay I compromise when they show enough interest they want to make it work I'm going to tell you A Life Lesson right now that it's going to be very hard for you to hear and you're not going to believe me but one day you're going to send me a DM and you're going to say it's true you don't lie Chris I don't lie okay here's the truth when two parties want to work together money is never a problem it is never a problem cuz I asked a different organization I want to fly first class they're like we can't but we'll talk to aine and see if we can get you a deal see cuz they wanted to make it work that's the difference between the podcast they are like you know what we're 50k all in including your flight hotel like I'm out so they're not even saying saying the original offer which he thought he was going to get for me but you know what he said my Handler over there I'm going to find you that deal cuz I want to work with you too you see the difference there so often times and they won't work with right that's not they just didn't want to work with you cuz they magically find the money okay I'm going to tell you a couple stories okay this is real life stories do you know the band Coldplay we were writing treatments for coold playay and we we wrote something that they just love and it's a band they're pretty Progressive with using new technology and so we pitched them this interactive music video for a song called Inc my creative director Matthew wrote that treatment that we love it right their managers said we love it we want you guys to do this video we have no budget how is the world's biggest ban poor that they can't pay us money to do the video they're like well you know we did this thing for ABC and it's a New Year's Eve special we hadn't planned on we had to spend a lot of money so that's your problem that's my problem and they thought we're going to roll over now I know a lot of people including my producer at the time would say take the L take the L do this and we'll leverage this for more work which is probably true but I wasn't prepared to invest $100,000 to buy future work that I don't know about so we just stood our ground I know my producer at the time was not happy was like oh my I worked so hard to get us in there with whole play at the the altar you know we're about to wet up and you're saying no I'm like no I turned to Matthew he's like you don't want to buy this project he's I do not want to buy this project right so we said no and you know what the really cool thing is they came back and said we found money you think about how much money Co playay spends that's like their um catering budget for an event so they found the 100,000 bucks and we did the video see how that works now I'm going to tell you a little story here too on how to design for the no cuz you're like well when you're getting all these NOS I don't get a lot of NOS I just keep trying to increase my value or the perception of the value such that it would give them joy to hire me or to work with me that is like why you build a personal brand because at some point you become more valuable to them than they become valuable to you I'm going to circle back to that point in a second okay I can't say but somewhere in this room a large technology company asked me if they can work together and do a collaboration I said fine right so this is what Matthew was still working with me and Matthew is a tough negotiator I love him and we're like how much should we charge him to do some social media posts on Instagram right this is when I had like half a million followers so I'm like I don't know what should we do Matthew I like to play this game with my my team and they love this game with me who who's thinking of the higher number that's the game we play we sit around I'm like you think of a number I think of a number in my mind I'm like like maybe 50 60,000 bucks and Matthew is like Chris here's what I'm thinking I'm like you go first Matthew he's like 120,000 that's what I was thinking you read my mind he goes I'm going to go for it and ask for it see what they say right so we get on the phone we're talking and they just say yes like oh my God and they ask do you need more money than that I'm like well no I think we're good here I don't want get greedy it's fine unless you guys get crazy on us then we'll ask for more and they say if you want more I'll ask for more see we're constantly setting a very low ceiling for oursel and there's this story I don't know if it's true but you know how to train fleas fleas can jump like 3 feet they can jump really high but if you put fleas in a jar they hit at their heads and after a while they don't jump that high anymore cuz they learn you take the lid off the jar they don't jump out anymore put my in myag sometimes I think we're like fle but we crawled in the jar and we screwed the lid on by ourselves it's a story that you've learned and you keep telling yourself over and over again and this is what's holding you back now I want to say this if you were here yesterday you will understand the foundation which is built upon I'm not saying if you're not good if you have a lot of work to do that you can pull this off you just won't be able to or if you do you get yourself in a lot of hot water and you're going to suck it's going to be very stressful and that person is going to be very upset at you they might even sue you okay okay you got to work hard you got to do good work and then you have to apply what I'm talking about and that's how you kind of break that limiting does that make sense okay are we good with this question now does that help you how does it help you I have a question for can you hand them Jemma Jimmy Jemma say your Jimmy Jimmy thank you Kristen how what are you going to do how are you going to apply this to your life I'm curious I've always been around or I guess the clients that had started off freance can you keep yes um started off freelance the clients that I had always had a very low expectation when I tried to raise the ceiling it was very strong no whatever so I'm trying to get out of that Circle and get into clients at this point but just the encouragement of go ahead and raise the ceiling take the lid off and just do it okay so that's honestly like what's helpful for me there are two things I want to point out to you okay are you married now okay was there a time you're dating like not very good people you know you stand up when you met those people wherever you met them did you realize if you just went somewhere else you meet higher quality people is that true if you hang out at the bowling alley the chance of you finding a high quality I'm not saying anything about that but like at the back alley you're at a bar where it's like $2 beers you're not can to be a high quality people there very rarely but if you go to like the penthouse suite of like a kind of a fancy Club you will meet higher quality people maybe at a university or church or wherever you think high quality people live or or hang out congregate that's why a lot of people who hate golf are on the golf course cuz people who have money and who are powerful hang out at the golf course that's how it works okay the reason why I think people don't value you is because of where you're hanging out so to speak and the way you're presenting yourself okay now I believe this very much the clothes we wear are a tool they're tools to do a job so when you're um I don't know in church you're going to dress a little bit differently and when you're at the beach you shouldn't wear what you wear at church to the beach it's a little bit different that's a tool so your clothes are just an extension of the overall packaging of you so your website your social media account is the packaging of you so if you don't like the kinds of people you're attracting change the package don't change you just change the package does that make sense it does and his question before was actually kind of the foundation of why this is helpful too so separating the professional um account from the personal account yes that's right now I'm going to go back to this page here okay the reason why I think it's really important for you to work on your personal brand is without the story it just worked okay this is the problem that most of you will struggle with okay your portfolio case it's just your work and if you're like me and you get to see a lot of portfolio cases it starts to blur together right how do I know this all you have to do is be like a recruiter and look at a thousand resumés and your your head will be very very numb you won't remember a person from the other person however somebody who sends you a pink resume you will remember that person if they're good or not we don't know would you remember the resume so little things of design and how you intentionally show up will make you memorable okay professor professor Errol garon would say you just need to stand up when eighth of an inch that's all it takes he has a great story okay when he graduated he wanted to work for one of the big four accounting agencies or accounting firms not agencies and he couldn't get anybody to call him back he's starting to get worried right so he goes and talks to one of his professors from USC and say um I don't know what I'm doing wrong no one's calling me back and then he saw a stack of resumés they all look the same now you realize this is not going to work so if you think about from the side of the recruiter the decision maker your clients that's the stack of resumes right they all literally look the same so you know what he did he went to a print shop had a custom piece of paper cut 1/8 of an inch longer than everyone else's and then he types at it and he used a different color he used the USC Trojan color that red that Crimson so he sent it out and then he got a call and there're hey are you the idiot who applies for this job with this piece of paper that I can't put in the filing cabinet he goes yes do you know how frustrating that is for me it goes yes come to my office he got the job that's his story about standing out 1/8 of an inch so the problem is especially in Creative culture we tend to emulate what other people do somebody uses a color we all use the same color somebody uses a new trendy font we all use the same font you can tell these look Alik attack of the Clones they're all there what we should be doing is doing the opposite that's how you stand out and it's very easy to stand out because you just have to be more of yourself okay I'm going to be doing a talk at some point either today or tomorrow if you guys come back it's called you to the power of you and why being more of you is a game changer come back for that that's the personal branding one whoever was asking right right any questions okay thank you tomorrow 10:45 thanks Dave what's up okay we're done he's you could just said we're done he's he wrote a whole beautiful post we're done thank you very much for being here I'll see you guys at the next session at 2 p p.m. 2 p.m. thanks guys see you soon bye-bye [Music]