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Why Your Brand Is Failing Without a Story (REFRAME Conference)
Chris Do explains why your personal brand is failing without a story and how to turn perceived flaws into your greatest assets.
Chris Do
Founder, The Futur™ · February 16, 2025
Your Story, Your Shield
A product, a service, or an organization without a story is a commodity. Nothing more.
Chris Do delivers this warning without preamble. It’s a stark equation he revisits often. “No story equals a commodity,” he explains, “and a commodity is something that's easily replaced... whatever is more convenient and cheapest is what is purchased.”
This is the default state for most professionals and businesses. They show up unlabeled, undifferentiated, and ultimately, undervalued. Do holds up a generic, unlabeled bottle of water to make the point visceral. Is it safe? Is it purified? Is it spring water? Without a story, there is only doubt. “Are you showing up like this in the world?” he challenges. “Without a label? With no story? Because if you are, then you're worth less.”
By contrast, he points to a bottle of Fiji Water. The label tells a story: “Earth's finest water, distilled through volcano rocks.” It’s a narrative few will ever verify, yet it immediately elevates the product from a simple commodity to a premium brand. The story creates perceived value.
The core problem is that we are trained from a young age to become commodities. The education system, Do argues, grades on conformity. “We're trained to blend in with people,” he says. “We're graded on how close we are to the norm. Deviation from the norm is what is measured.”
This training results in a deep-seated desire to be normal. Normal means standard. Standard means average.
And for a creative professional, there is no word more damning than average.
Branding, whether personal or corporate, can be reduced to a single word: differentiation. It is the art of standing out, not fitting in. If you are busy sanding down your edges, hiding your accent, and masking your history, you are actively moving toward commoditization. You are working against your own best interests.
The solution is not to invent a persona or craft a slick marketing campaign. The solution is to be more of who you already are.
“The more you you are, the more you are,” Do states, landing on a simple but profound mantra. Your brand is you, to the power of you. When you embrace your unique culture, history, and perspective, you become more potent, more memorable, and impossible to commodify.
The Unsafe Space
Before any branding work can begin, you must confront the internal forces that compel you to hide. At the REFRAME conference, an audience member named Cory vulnerably asks the question that silently plagues so many: “How do we get out of our own way?”
When asked what’s in her way, her answer is immediate and absolute. “Me.”
She feels she doesn’t belong, that others in the room are more “comfortably successful.” Do immediately puts this feeling on trial. “Are you operating in feeling or based on fact?” he presses. Cory admits it’s pure feeling, an unvalidated thought.
This is the insidious nature of comparison. It operates without evidence, yet feels like truth. “Comparison is the thief of joy,” Do reminds the audience, using the well-known phrase to highlight a common form of self-sabotage. But he doesn’t stop there. He pushes deeper, questioning the source of this internal narrative.
This is what Do calls creating an “unsafe space.” Unlike the popular concept of a safe space where comfort is paramount, an unsafe space is where friction creates clarity. “It’s in the friction that we get to the truth,” he asserts.
The voice of self-doubt is rarely your own. It’s a recording, an echo from the past. Do references the work of psychologists Robert and Lisa Firestone, whose book Conquering Your Critical Inner Voice explores this concept. The critical voice often sounds like our own, but it speaks with the judgment of a parent, a teacher, or a past bully.
He asks Cory a piercing question: “Do you have any children?” She does. “Would you ever say that to your child?”
“Never,” she replies instantly. Why not? “Because they're deserving of someone to not say those things to them.”
The follow-up question hangs in the air. “Are you less deserving?”
This is the crux of the issue. We offer unconditional love and support to others, especially our children, while holding ourselves to an impossible, often cruel, standard. The first step in building a powerful personal brand is not choosing a color palette or a font; it is learning to offer yourself the same grace you so freely give to others. A concept he explores in depth in his masterclass on building a brand through vulnerability.
The Voice in Your Head Is Not Your Own
To illustrate the deep-seated origins of the inner critic, Do shares a powerful and personal story about his cousin. His cousin, feeling he wasn’t living up to his potential, sought help from a therapist named Dr. Joan Lightfoot.
The therapist asked him a simple question: “Whose voice are you hearing inside of your head when you say that?”
“Mine, of course,” his cousin replied.
Like Cory, he was then asked if he would ever speak to his own future child with such harsh judgment. The thought brought him to tears. “I would never, ever,” he said, his sadness turning to anger. A child, he believed, is deserving of unconditional love.
In that moment, he had a breakthrough. The voice wasn’t his. It was the voice of his father, Do's uncle.
Do explains that in many traditional Asian cultures, parents use relentless criticism as a tool for motivation. They believe it creates discipline and hunger. “But all they do is they break humans,” Do states, his voice heavy with emotion. “So that for the rest of your life, they're looking for other people to tell them you're good enough.”
This realization changed his cousin’s life. He understood that he had been chasing an external validation that could never be satisfied because the goalposts were set by a voice that was never designed to be pleased.
The room is silent. The message is clear. Many of us are adults with a broken child inside, still seeking approval from a source that will never grant it. Healing begins when you can make peace with that inner child, to offer it the love and respect it was denied.
The practical application of this insight is to put your thoughts and feelings on trial. When a negative belief arises, treat it like a case in a court of law.
- Act as both prosecutor and defender. What is the evidence that this belief is true? What is the evidence that it is false?
- Separate feeling from fact. As with Cory, a single question can often dismantle a deeply held negative belief. Is this based on objective data or just a feeling?
- Assess its utility. Ask yourself: If this thought were true, would it make me feel better? Is there anything I can do about it? If the answer is no, then expending energy on it is a waste of your most valuable resource: your attention.
You cannot build a future if you are constantly at war with your past. The first act of branding is an internal truce.
You Can’t Tell Them, You Have to Show Them
With the internal work addressed, the conversation shifts to the external: how does this apply to business? An audience member named Patty asks for help. “Rebrand the name, the word, bookkeeper,” she pleads.
The audience groans in agreement. The current brand perception of “bookkeeper” is overwhelmingly negative. The crowd shouts out the associations:
- Old-fashioned
- Data entry
- Anyone can do it
- Not valuable
- Low skill
- Purely admin
It’s a perfect example of a profession being pushed into commoditization. The desire is to rebrand it as a unique, high-value skill. Another attendee, Wendy, notes the communication gap. “We need to learn to communicate in a way that they understand what we do,” she says. When bookkeepers talk about debits and credits, clients’ eyes glaze over.
Communication isn’t about what you want to say; it’s about what the other person can hear. This is a foundational principle of effective marketing and communication.
But how do you communicate that value? Another attendee, Janice, offers her approach: she tells clients she has knowledge, and that knowledge is power. She uses the classic project management triangle: “Do it right, do it cheap, do it fast. Pick two.”
Do challenges this directly. “Is branding what you tell them?” he asks. The answer is a definitive no.
He invokes the wisdom of brand strategist Marty Neumeier, author of The Brand Gap. Neumeier’s work clarifies the difference between marketing, advertising, PR, and branding. Telling people you’re a great lover is marketing. Telling them over and over is advertising. Having your friend tell them is PR. Branding is when they come to you and say, “I hear you’re a great lover.”
Branding is a result, not an action. It’s a gut feeling, a reputation that is earned, not declared. You cannot tell your way to a strong brand, especially in an age of social proof where online reviews hold more weight than any corporate slogan. When a car company declares, “Safety is Job One,” and their cars are involved in crashes, the declaration becomes a liability.
To rebrand “bookkeeper,” the entire profession must collectively start acting in a way that creates a new perception. It requires a shift from talking about the “what” (data entry, ledgers) to demonstrating the “why” (financial clarity, business stability, peace of mind). You cannot tell a client you are valuable; you must create value so profoundly that they come to that conclusion on their own.
The Blasphemer in the Church of Personal Branding
This leads Do to a scathing critique of the modern personal branding industry. Most experts, he argues, get it fundamentally wrong.
“When I look into the world of people who speak on personal branding, I think they have it all wrong,” he declares. “They use the word personal branding in lieu of advertising, marketing, sales strategy, funnel building.”
For them, a personal brand is a tool to sell more things. It’s about crafting a polished image of success, focusing exclusively on accomplishments, education, and material possessions. It’s an exercise in performance, not authenticity.
“You are not what you do,” Do insists. “You're way more than that. Your personal brand is who you are. Your thoughts, your beliefs, your values.”
Any conversation about personal branding that doesn't include the messy, weird, and vulnerable parts of being human is fake. It’s a carefully constructed facade designed for commerce, and Do is here to tear it down. The goal isn't just to sell more, as many gurus teach, but to build something more meaningful. This is a recurring theme in his work, similar to the advice he gives entrepreneurs in Personal Brand, Not Just a Business Brand.
“In the Church of Personal Branding, all they want to do is help you sell more things to more people... things that they don't want at a higher price,” he says. “I find that really problematic.”
He positions himself as a contrarian, a blasphemer, even the Antichrist in this so-called church. His gospel is not about sales funnels; it’s about self-acceptance, self-reliance, and resilience. It’s about learning to love yourself, accept yourself, and lean into the very things you’ve been taught to hide.
The contrarian approach is to talk about what sucks. Instead of a highlight reel, he advocates for a conversation about our struggles, our anxieties, and our perceived flaws. He uses his friend and event host, Hector Garcia, as an example. Hector has large, powerful hands, a feature he was once trolled for online. Most people would hide them. Do’s instinct is to lean in.
How can that liability become an asset? How can that source of ridicule become a source of power? The answer lies in the reframe. Instead of being a vulnerability, Hector's hands can become a symbol of his hands-on approach and deep care for his community. A slogan emerges: “You’re in good hands.”
The Playbook for the Reframe
This leads to an exercise. Do instructs the audience to write a long list of words that describe the things about themselves that make them anxious, guilty, or ashamed. A list of their inner critic’s favorite insults.
An attendee named Chrissy shares her words: workaholic, overly energetic, impulsive.
Do focuses on “impulsive.” It’s a word loaded with negative judgment, associated with regret and a lack of control. But instead of trying to fix it, he asks a different question: “How has being impulsive also been a benefit in your life?”
This is the essence of a reframe. It’s not about positive thinking; it’s about expanding your perspective to see the whole truth. Every trait, positive or negative, has a dual nature. The work is to find the upside to what you perceive as a downside.
The room jumps in with suggestions for the positive side of “impulsive”:
- Eager to try new things
- A leader
- An innovator
- Curious
- Brave
- Adventurous
Suddenly, a weakness is transformed into a collection of strengths. The attribute hasn't changed, but the story around it has. Do shares his own reframe. He used to tell himself he was a slow reader, a sign he wasn’t smart. Now, he says, “I read deeply to teach.” His slowness is not a deficit; it's a sign of his commitment to mastery.
This method of finding the benefit in perceived negatives is a key technique taught by Dr. John Demartini, a human behavior specialist. Demartini works with people who have suffered severe trauma and helps them find the hidden benefits in their most painful experiences, a process that allows them to neutralize the emotional charge and move forward.
Another attendee shouts out that she struggles with being a “creative defiant person” who craves structure and then immediately wants to destroy it, such as making a schedule and breaking it within minutes.
Many see this as procrastination, a character flaw. Do reframes it. He shares how he does his best work at the last minute, fueled by the pressure. This is a phenomenon brilliantly explained in Tim Urban's TED talk, “Inside the mind of a master procrastinator,” where he introduces the “Panic Monster” that arrives just in time to trigger action.
But Do gives it a more empowering name. “I don't call it the Panic Monster,” he says. “I call it the creative elixir of life.”
The Unconscious Advantage
This ability to thrive under pressure isn't just about adrenaline. It’s about leveraging the power of the subconscious mind. What looks like procrastination is often a period of unconscious processing.
Do explains the concept of the two brains, drawing on the work of Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, author of Thinking, Fast and Slow. We have an active mind (System 2), the one we use for conscious tasks, and an archival mind (System 1), which stores everything we've ever learned and works in the background.
“When you find something that's successful, why would you change that?” Do asks. His “procrastination” is a trusted process. He is consciously disengaging to allow his archival brain to solve the problem. The best ideas often surface not when we are staring at a screen, but when our active mind is occupied with a mundane task like washing dishes, driving, or taking a shower.
Creative geniuses throughout history have understood and cultivated this ability to slip between conscious and subconscious states. They engineered ways to access the archival mind on demand. While Do attributes a technique involving a steel ball to Benjamin Franklin, it's more famously associated with artist Salvador Dalí and inventor Thomas Edison. They would hold an object while dozing off, and the moment they entered deep sleep, their hand would relax, drop the object, and wake them up, allowing them to capture the dreamlike ideas from the hypnagogic state.
This is the ultimate competitive advantage. It is not about outworking everyone else. It’s about understanding your own internal operating system—your tendencies, your “flaws,” your creative rhythms—and learning to work with it, not against it.
The journey to a powerful brand doesn’t start with a marketing plan. It starts with a radical act of self-inquiry and self-acceptance.
Stop trying to be normal. Stop hiding your quirks. They are not liabilities; they are the very source of your power.
The world doesn't need another commodity. It needs you.
TRANSCRIPT
a product or service or an organization without a story is a commodity so no story equals a commodity and a commodity is something that's easily replaced and usually whatever is more convenient and cheapest is what is purchased each time you create a story it's a brand new Act of Creation it's very difficult
to do this what if instead of creating a narrative you created a world figure out how you want to package it up so that people ask you questions about it that becomes the springboard for all of your ideas your name is your brand so how can you use your name as a way
to create a brand some of you have that problem cuz you're like Johnson Associates or whatever it is we need to create ourselves thank you so much um I'm just out of curiosity I just wonder how many introverts are in this room can you just raise your hand and it's true earlier that
I I think the hector had said like in a different life I would have been an accountant if I'd listen to my aptitude test in high school but instead I decided to go down this dark path called design and I just I want to tell you don't worry I'm not going to have
you do another exercise we have to talk to another person the good news is we're going to do something a little bit different one of the most amazing things that Hector and Carlos do for me is they say Chris whatever you want to do whatever format you want to do it and we
support that which creates a lot of pressure on me I just want to let you know my happy place is isn't doing Keynotes even though I literally will make hundreds of slides for Keynotes it's just to have conversations with people and to have a little fun together and I'm in my happy place
if I have a piece of paper and a marker so they gave me a piece of paper and some markers to work with I'm just curious for for some of you what would make today worthwhile for you so you can go back days and weeks and months from now and say to yourself
I got a lot of value and I can't wait to come next time I'm just curious if anybody has any suggestions otherwise they will do what I normally do up here does anybody have any suggestions I'm I'm willing to work with whatever you have if we have the agreement um that we trust
each other enough that you'll say whatever I I might embrace it I might make fun of you a little bit but it's all in the spirit of fun okay now I know in today's time and space it's really important to create safe space you know where we we feel so comfortable to talk
to each other well I like to tell people I create unsaved space because it's in the friction that we get to the truth and we get to some point of clarity either for you or for me for all of us in case you know who I am I'm a recovering graphic designer I've
accidentally created a personal brand and I've helped to educate mostly creative people how to run a business but a couple of years ago I ran into a group of left brainers people who work in the mortgage space real estate loan officers and then all of you find people in accounting space and I
started to doubt myself like what am I doing here why are they even listening to me right now and then I realized going back to those origins of I think I'm half accountant business person and half crazy creative person so depending on who I'm speaking to I tell people I help left Bringers
think right in other words and I'm also a big nerd about pop culture do you know who blade is Wesley Snipes character he's half them and he's half human so his line in the movie which I love a lot which is I have all the strengths of the vampire and none of their
weaknesses is called a day Walker a hybrid someone who travels Two Worlds and sometimes I think of myself like that since we don't have any suggestions so far or you guys I promise that you didn't have to speak so I'll just keep talking until you're ready to talk okay oh we have a
hand up here I'm going to be vulnerable so um my suggestion is how do we get out of our own way I feel like so many of us feel like we don't belong in these spaces so how do we get out of our way so that we can make progress and move forward
thank you for that questions who is this that's speaking would just hold on to the mic we're have a conversation oh wow who didn't know that uh Corey Corey Corey what do you think's in your way me that's a lot of self-awareness that's great and where are you trying to get to uh
a more successful place and feeling like I belong in this space with these amazing people a more successful place is the place that you're in right now doesn't does it not feel successful it doesn't feel comfortably successful it doesn't feel like the place that so many other people seem to be in who
are these people that you speak of the the the other how many people are in this room okay I'm going to ask you Cory can I ask you this question are you operating in feeling or based on fat that these people are more successful than you oh absolutely feeling so this is an
unvalidated Fox that you have yes okay now I'm going to just throw this out there I don't want to invalidate you but I'm going to challenge your thinking is that okay please okay here's the thing is you're here now you've been able to buy it to it you have the time and the
resources to be here there's a lot of people who could not be here today A lot of people who really wanted to be here today who probably underwater right now like figuratively and L literally so I think often times we use this thing of comparison to kind of put ourselves down sometimes it's
used to lift us up and to be to inspire us to take action but more often than not I find that comparison really drags us down as the quote goes like comparison is a thief of joy are you doing that to yourself yes okay have you done any kind of like inner work
some some until it gets uncomfortable oh that's the way to do that kind of work it's supposed to be uncomfortable from the beginning if you really want help I mean you're being really vulnerable right now are you feeling uncomfortable yes I'm curious why you are more comfortable telling a room of strangers who
make more than you just kidding about that part what it is that you're trying to work through but you when you do the inner work and if you're working with a therapist why you want to pull out before it gets uncomfortable because I don't think that I'm the only one having these feelings
I think that there are a lot of other people in this room who have these same feelings and we just don't talk about them enough openly oh gosh I I when I talk to people they often say there's always people more successful than them but what they never do is just look behind
you like look how many people are behind you okay I don't want to get into numbers even though this are numbers kind of room because maybe that will make you uncomfortable right like if you were to just write down in a piece of paper how much money you're making do you think everyone
is making so much more money than you because it can't be true with half the rooms that you're all making more money than the other person so either half the room is Rich and half the room is poor or that cannot be true you know there's something that I read in this book
called conquering your inner critical voice has anybody read that book there's a handful of people it's written by two or a couple of doctors Dr firestones I think a husband and wife team about this voice that we hear inside of our head now when you said this I immediately thought of the book
I want to get out my own way my problem is me pretty violent language I think um I want to be more successful people are doing much more comfortably than me does that sound like a loving supportive voice inside of your head do you have any children yes now I'm curious would you
ever say that to your child never why would why wouldn't you am I being vulnerable or should I just say the real I would just prefer you be as real as you can be uh because they're deserving of someone to not say those things to them are you less deserving of that someone
else want to take over I'm still on you right now can we zoom in on our face no I'm just kidding I mean aren't you deserving of the same love you give to your children yes for sure you are aren't you you got this cool that's exactly the reaction I was thinking you
would say I mean this is the thing I'll tell you something if I tell you this story I might break up here on stage myself so I'm going to be careful on how I say the story okay um I've gone to see the most amazing therapist her name is Dr Joan Lightfoot and
she's not Native American but she she's got a cool name and Dr lifefood ask us to examine our history our family history it says a lot about us she was so amazing I recommended all my friends so three of my friends went to see her and she's amazing too and my cousin went
to see her and he shared this story with me now this is a trigger warn it's not violent but for some of you you're going to feel like your heart's been stepped on so I'm just going to say it okay he goes to see her and he goes she asks him why are
you here to see me this is my cousin I grew up with him he says to her I don't know I just don't feel like I'm living up to my potential she goes oh whose voice are you hearing inside of your head when you say that he goes mine of course it sounds
just like me now my cousin had that time was single and she asked him this question well one day if you get married if you're to get married and one day if you decide to have a child and you have a child would you ever talk to your child like this and you
immediately started to cry and goes I would never ever and he got really angry say that to my child and she goes why not cuz they're deserving of unconditional love but no matter what they did there was no more they ever needed to do to be loved and then he dawned on him
is the voice of his dad my uncle and if you've grown up in Asian culture or near it you know what I'm talking about there is nothing that you can do for Asian parents to be good enough and they think this is how they motivate and and create this discipline this hunger inside
your belly but all they do is they break humans so that the rest of your life they're looking for other people to tell them you're good enough you're doing enough you've hit your potential when you realized that his life changed and here's the thing I love my uncle he's a great guy he's
so lovy he wants to love on everybody but he comes from that old school where he just pushes you to want more and it's devastating are you guys having that kind of inner dialogue what do you want to do about that is the question and you're all probably sitting there thinking this is
not what I signed up for I usually ask if there's a therapist in the room is there a therapist in the room anybody please save me okay let me just say this let's not go so deep because I can get us in trouble and I won't know how to get us out of
it okay I'm just throwing out there I'm fascinated by philosophy therapy and all these kinds of things but I just find that we're all adults with a broken child inside and the minute we can come in peace with that child to love on that child to respect and honor that child a wonderful
amazing things can happen for all of you now it makes what I was planning to say pretty trivial I don't know how to go back from this so does any else have another thing they want to talk about to make the rest of us cry you you do I mean let's do this
let's transition out of this Darkness for a little bit make cry it's not going to make me cry okay okay good oh are we okay to move on I feel like I just opened the wound and just left you there I would just ask a thank you so much thanks for giving her
hug I would hug you but I can't right okay so here's the thing let's turn this in actionable thing when you have a thought a feeling whatever you want to describe it I think you should do what therapists do which is to ask let's make a case for and against this thing let's
put it on trial let's put your thoughts and feelings on trial in a court of law and you are the lawyer and the judge for both right you can say well I don't think I'm really as successful as I need to be I'm not doing as well as my peers my contemporaries well
what evidence do you have that to be true what evidence do you have that to be false and I only I had to ask Corey one question and it kind of fell apart is it a feeling or is it based on facts and Corey said I don't know it's just feelings I think
I think that's a pretty good case for like maybe you shouldn't believe that and here's the other thing I always think about this when I have a negative or dark thought I asked myself this question if it were true would it make me feel better is there anything I can do about it
and if I can't do anything about it I just only want to think about it anymore right I only want to change or work on the things that I have a possible or possibility that I can change and if everybody's making more money than you and if it's true and you can change
that I think that's why you're here aren't you so you've already taken action to remedy whatever belief you have do you believe that to be true okay if not talk to Hector and Carlos after this because I'm the brand new marketing guy I think okay let's move the conversation up here is that
okay hi my name is Patty nice to meet you Chris nice to meet you Patty is it with an ey or why thank you Patty help me and I think help us in the room to Rebrand the name the word bookkeeper stop your applause I don't know how to do that that's that's
Hector's job isn't it you want to Rebrand bookkeeper okay we will try I feel like I'm going to crash and burn this was a setup I have expect Ash and kusher to pop but you've been punked you know okay bookkeeper first of all do we know what branding is we use this word
a lot so you've asked the question so I just want to ask you what does rebranding mean to you I think branding or or rebranding or branding is public or common perception of a word okay do we accept that definition it's public perception of something right of a company of a person of
profession is that okay do we accept that so public perception if you if you like read the books on branding it's like it's like this gut feeling we talked about this last time it's a gut feeling it's a reputation it's an idea but shared by enough people okay so what before we can
Rebrand assum we need to know what is the public perception of what bookkeepers are what they do I think the perception is that it's an oldfashioned term okay it's it's an oldfashioned term is that the public perception or is that your perception I'm talking about the public not the public of Keepers it's
just dat okay I like that okay let's say that is it's just data entry okay are you upset there's a lot of angry people in this room damn okay term for that I'm not angry I'm just batshit passionate about it just saying who who's talking right now I can't where are you okay
you're not angry just passionate yes I'm going to tell my wife that next time and see if it works I don't think it's going to fly but we'll see okay it's easy anyone can do it so it's commodity right yes okay we we might be able to get on the thing I wanted
to talk about soon I'm excited about this commodity okay anybody else what's wrong with booking the I mean the perception okay back there you could just shout it out I think it's going to take too long to hand the mics around so back there go ahead I would just shout it out I
am the oldest of six kids but my outdoor voice is broken um there's no value in providing bookkeeping services okay so it's not valuable that is that yeah well Commodities it's easily replaced low amount okay low amount low value okay here we go low it's just purely admin is it you told me
to buzz [Laughter] off I'll leave soon oh low cost oh yeah low skill oh no wonder you're so angry I mean passionate dang you know what here's the funny thing is there are a lot of professions right now that some of these things could be set about as well cuz we're in a
time of massive change right we really are okay um how do we change this part what is it that we'd like to move it to and we have to be truthful here not like wishful thinking I have a bookkeeper I can check what you say against my feelings it's a unique skill it's
Unique skill they don't know how hard it is the value we need to learn to communicate what that value is and we need to learn to communicate in a way that they understand what we do and we start when we start talking debits and credits and liabilities and balance sheet it's like if
I say anything like that to my husband I see the eyeballs twirling he's a Salesman so he he doesn't think like I do yeah his it's like glassy eyed yeah so we need to learn how to be valuable to our clients by talking because the key to communication is talking in a way
that the person you're communicating with understand you not getting them to un not getting them to come to the way we communicate but we need to communicate for them to understand I love that what is your name Wendy Wendy Wendy says we have to be less nerdy that's what you said right cuz
for me when you guys get into that language just like the old modems and it's like what are we doing here right my wife does this to me although I'm an entrepreneur I don't care about the money at all she's like hey can we look at the balance she oh please shoot me
now I don't want to look at it all I ask her to do is faster or slower step on the gas you can spend more money or pump the brakes a little bit that's all I care about beyond that I want to know and if you're working with an entrepreneur maybe that's how
you need to talk to them we assume they're as nerdy about what it is that we're nerdy about so we force it upon them and earlier at my table it's like my client doesn't want to go at the speed in which I want to go we have different ways of working and we
just need to align that and be happy with that and you said something wonderful Wendy about communication communication isn't about what I want to say it's about how I can most effectively deliver the thing that would make sense to both of us you have to find that common language right you're finding the
common language okay now what are you doing to communicate the value of what you're doing and why it's a unique skill why it's not easily replaced and why it should be not the cheapest thing that you pay for how are you doing that today jail what you just went super violent I wasn't
asking that kind of thing she's saying keep them out of jail no I just meant like how are you doing this cuz are you making content you're recording videos some of you are I don't see a lot of heads but like three three of hey quick just a quick quick comment we are
recording the audio and the the shouting out doesn't get picked up on so we miss on it okay I'll try to repeat it raise your hand okay yes okay all right thanks okay right over here hi hello I'm Janice hi Janice the one thing that I will always tell my client is that
I am not just a bookkeeper yeah I have been to for the last 15 years that I've been in business for myself I've been to tons of these conferences and the one thing that I always have taken away is the knowledge and knowledge is power and that is what I share with my
clients and I don't care how good or bad I am I think I do a pretty good job but I make sure that all of my clients hear that expression and I always tell them the three do it right do it cheap do it fast pick two right so that's what I always
give them so they feel like I do have that knowledge good fast and cheap you say pick two right it's a popular meme that goes around I'm curious is that effective when you use that has any been really effective at saying hey you want good fast or cheap pick two out of three
anybody win with that I've never heard of anybody that won with that but it's like a little joke we share with each other within our Reddit forums or our Facebook communities and we're yeah you go girl you tell them what's up and you have one last client right okay this is very interesting
Janice right okay you're like well I tell them this do you know what branding is is branding what you tell them what you just said let's Rebrand it but I'm going to tell them branding is a feeling that they have and they have to come to that conclusion on their own right I
don't remember it exactly but Marty numer writes in this book I think it's the brand Gap when when you like I'm a great lover that's called marketing and you say I'm a great lover I'm a great lover I'm a great lover that's called advertising and when your friend says he's a great lover
that's called PR it's only when they come to you and say I hear you're a great lover that's called branding you see what you're doing right now okay so we want to help them get there but we can't tell them because whenever you tell somebody it feels like you're selling somebody and I
don't believe you if a car company comes out it's like uh safety is job number one or and then they have a bunch of car crashes that people die in they can't tell their way now because of social media we learn more from the reputation that's created online than we do from any
other source right how do I know this when you go on Amazon and you need to buy something you've never bought before if you're like me you just look at the reviews and if there's not enough reviews we kind of don't trust it or if the reviews are so glowing we're like plants
it's an industry plant it's fake okay so if we want to Rebrand bookkeeping we kind of have to know where we need to go with this and then we have to start collectively doing it all together so that enough people have a different impression of you but the thing that I can help
you with right now because this is the thing I was prepared to talk about is that this idea of a commodity and it doesn't matter if you're a bookkeeper an accountant a CPA an attorney we're all racing towards being a commodity I'll share something I learned by talking to Michael Margolis who wrote
This Book story 10x and he says a product or service or an organization without a story is a commodity a product a service or an organization without a story is a commodity so no story equals a commodity and a commodity is something that's easily replaced and usually whatever is more convenient and cheapest
is what is purchase right there's lots of things that you buy that are Commodities and they're feeling pretty bad it's not your problem is it okay so I was thinking about this the Earth is covered like 2third of the Earth is covered in water and there's some different percentages but we're mostly water
ourselves right most of you of what is inside of you is water and I was just looking at this bottle here there a bottle of water how much is bottle of water worth what do you say it depends why does it depend is it in my hotel room okay so location matters so
I'm going to write this while like I don't have enough hands here the [Music] location how thirsty you are if you're dying of thirst it's worth a lot more in a hotel it's pretty expensive um in a theater it's pretty expensive but right next to a drinking fountain probably not as much okay
what is your name GA gaita okay gaita says this bottle Has No Label so she's really paying attention to what I'm doing here everybody else is going with what they know right so no label is this bottle of water worth more with or without a label what's that are you sure when I
see a bottle like this without a label I'm scary aren't you did they just refill that bottle why is there no label what bottle where is this coronated is it purified is it Vapor distilled is it natural spring water so here's the weird thing I was at a conference I was so thirsty
as I'm right now and I see a whole area of unlabeled Waters of bottle I almost died of thirst they removed the label because of copyright trademark right and it made me think about this and I ask everybody so if you were to pay a dollar for this bottle of water I would
argue that this is worth less without a label now here's some here's another bottle of water this is a bottle of Fiji Water natural artisian water 100% recycled plastic um Earth's finest water distilled through volcano rocks this is pretty expensive water and I think they just told you a story has anybody gone
to Fiji to check out the source of this water now if somebody rais their hand there's just Balling on you right now flossing like yeah I have it's kind of weird how quickly we can give something we never verify if it's true or not isn't that weird so I ask you this if
you're mostly water are you showing up like this in the world without a label with no story cuz if you are then you're worth less than a person that at least has a little bit of a story so it's something to think about now I I like to play with words a little
bit so I think like when you meet somebody say you're single and you meet the perfect partner and you're telling your friend your girlfriend your boyfriends whatever I guess we don't call them your boyfriends your best mates and you're like my god there they're kind they love me they have a great job
they want to raise children if that's we share the same Faith you say what they're tall they're they're handsome they're beautiful they're curvy whatever it is you say they're the total package so you are the container for all this water but here's the weird thing most of us raised in the way that
we're raised like what Ed was talking about we are trained to have answers the other thing that he didn't talk about I don't think or maybe this heard was we're trained to blend in with people we're graded on how close we are to the norm deviation from the norm is what is measured
right you guys understand this right now here's the thing why do we want to be normal why do we want to be normal because I think normal means standard another word for standard and is a word that hurts me is average okay in our school the worst thing that the teacher could say
about your work isn't that it's terrible it's not well found out poorly executed it's to say to you your work is average and that would tear us apart tell me it's terrible tell me it's bad just don't call me average yet when I look into the normal world that's all everybody wants they
just want to be just like everyone else okay so here's number two branding whether it's personal or corpor will reduce it down to one word differentiation to be different to be unique to stand out you need to stand out so if you're busy blending in using the same language that everyone else is
[Music] using then you're not doing yourself any favor right now you're moving more towards being a commodity than you are towards being a brand the good news is to stand out all you have to do is be you to be different all you have to do is be more of you so I
wrote this line earlier today I so proud of myself I'm GNA just read it for you okay I know it's on the orange card you tell me if it's any good the more you you are the more you are okay the more you you are the more you are so I've been toying
with this idea like what personal branding is most of us are trying to remove anything that makes us unique our history our ethnicity our training our accent the way we look the way we dress the way we show up the tone of our voice we're trying to blend in to be more like
the norm so here's the idea when it's you and more of you it's you to the power of you that's it it's you to the power of you so when you remove parts of you your history your culture your language you're becoming less and I share this with you mostly because you're like
duh dummy I know this you might not because when I look into the world that people who speak on personal branding I think they have it all wrong there are a lot of stages where I speak on and they use the word personal branding in lie of advertising Marketing sales Strate funnel building
so they talk about a personal brand to get more business so they talk about it like what you do but you are not what you do you're way more than that you are who your personal brand is who you are your thoughts your beliefs your values so any conversation about personal Brandy that
doesn't dive into all the weird things that make you you I find that it's fake and here's the weird thing I feel like this that 99% of the people online on stages are talking about the wrong way and if you allow me to make a little joke here in the Church of personal
branding all they want to do is help you sell more things to more people to things that they don't want at a higher price I find that really problematic and I want to be the voice maybe of many but right now one to take a different approach like I'm the blasphemer in the
church or personal branding because I want you just to learn to love love yourself to accept yourself to be self-confident self reliant and be very resilient so I tell people in the church or personal branding I'm the Antichrist because I'm going to take it a different direction okay now I want you to
get in touch with this person and one place to start and it's a dangerous place for me to start is to lean into all the things you're afraid to share with the world because remember you've been trying to be normal so you cover up all those weird little things about you right and
if I can pull Hector into this conversation I find that when people are asked to talk about their personal brand all they do is talk about their strengths what they're good at what they've accomplished where they went to school what kind of cars they drive and the homes they have they're not being
real they're not being real at all so let's take an opposite approach a contrarian approach let's go a different direction let's talk about the things that we don't want to talk about the things that suck about us so I was talking to Hector and you know last time I was here he was
like Chris I'll pick you up let's go let's hang out and we were driving I noticed when he put his hand on the steering column he has meaty freaking hands have you seen the size of this man's hands hold him up there and I didn't want to say anything I was in the
car like look at my dainty Asian hands okay just look at my hands and just for a point of contrast when I was working at Ad Agency there was this really big chair I was standing something on the computer I held my hands behind the wall and somebody walked behind and it's like
oh Carrie it's you I'm like no it's not I have hairless thin Asian hands and this guy's a baseball mitt for a hand and I go over to him and we were talking earlier today look don't create your day job you're not gonna be a hand model okay and I was telling him
man you have the freaking meest hands I've ever seen your face is super thin now but your hands are still beefy and he goes you know Chris people troll me online yeah they troll them because the camera's here not only does he have big hands they're twice as big because they're close to
the camera in the video just the way the video was I was explaining payroll for like 10 minutes but I kept doing this doing this and then and the angle didn't work the shirt was a little bit weird in size so it looked like prop hands were slapping at the camera and I
didn't so good and I didn't even notice this until I started reading the comments wait wait I want to tell this part can I tell this part okay he shared some things with me and I just went on the internet and just find some more things some of it may or may not
be true okay so you're saying you do a lot of Hands-On draining this is hands down the best uh course in QuickBooks it's really firsthand knowledge come on man you've been talking for an hour this is getting out of hand hand you know he cares so much he lends a hand right and
he could do this with his hands tied behind his back and we're talking about this he has a good sense of humor about this but most people are like oh don't talk I just keep my hands over here right and then I was thinking when I say thinking I was mostly stressed out
and anxious over there like what the hell am I going to say when I get up here I'm like hexar I think it's beautiful can we lean into this how do we do this how do we take a negative thing a li liability and turn into an asset how do we make something
that might hurt us and turn into a thing of power how about we just say you're in good hands you're in good hands this guy cares so much he produces an event like this I think and I I talked to Carlos about this he's going to drive the company into the ground spending
all this kind of money cuz he really does care one thing you know about going to this conference is you'll never go hungry that's for sure there's food everywhere I turn right so I'm not saying that we we call Hector big hands or or you're in good hands but it's something interesting to
play with so here's the thing that I would like for you to think about what is it about you that makes you a little anxious nervous you feel guilty or sometimes shame around just make it really long list with those things can you do that this is a pretty dark group right there's
so many negative exercises I feel like I need therapy after those exercises it's rough so if you were to make a long list of all those words and we could do this together sometimes this fails every once in a while it works can we do that why don't we just take one minute
you don't have to talk to anybody I promised that we weren't going to do that part just write down a bunch of words ways of of descri desing yourself and sometimes this is really hard to do until you pretend like you're a Critic of you oh yeah just write those words down okay
I'm mostly looking for neutral slightly negative or fullon negative violent words all right do we have anybody that wants to step into the darkness with me it's a dance and it could be tough okay and hopefully you have lots of good words for us to work with now I'm going to need the
help of a lot of people here like all of you smart people including Carlos and and Hector and anybody else who wants to help me with this so the first part of this exercise is to write words without judgment to just pour it out of you and there's a trick that you can
do sometimes when you get stuck is you can write the words in your non-dominant hand for some reason that helps to kind of release some of the control that you have in your brain you can try that okay sometimes um my coach used to tell me this he would say ask a question
write it with your dominant hand and then answer it with your non-dominant hand some freaky Dicky things happen yeah I know it's like Blair Witch okay um who do we pick to start okay you ready what is your name Chrissy Chrissy okay Chrissy what are some of your words just give me two
or three workaholic okay overly energetic okay what else impulsive okay those are the only three I have I can think of more let's just keep going okay think of a bully that you had in school or mean teacher oh see you got one te teacher's pet anything else we get thought there okay
which one of these makes you feel most uncomfortable but also feels it's really you I would probably say impulsive just because I feel the need to react to things immediately and I would say as I've gotten older I've become more self-aware to try to step back and look at things before I just
respond because it is better to slow down but that is like my default I would say Okay respond right away you're really impulsive so you've done things that you maybe later regret yes you say things that you wish you hadn't yes I won't ask you for examples but I just wanted to make
sure okay that we had the same definition of impulsive now the reason why these words are really tricky for us to work with is because they're bringing some pain and judgment with them do you feel some pain and judgment with this okay now here's the weird trick how has this being impul also
been a benefit in your life you need to think about that a little bit okay because most of the times we focus all of our energy figure out what's negative about it that we very rarely stop to think about what's positive like the question is how might this be a benefit okay and
I'll give you an example so I'm stalling to give you time to think okay so you all kind ask yourself this question how might this be a benefit now I'll tell you something I'm a pretty slow reader and I probably read more books in the last three years than all of my life
prior to that moment and because I have a negative emotion attached to reading and I attribute this to the conversations I would have with my mom I was not a great student in school things that bored me I'm like I I'm going to barely do the minimum and get an A minus and
be okay and so I would just take forever and so my classmates were like hey did you finish the book yeah I'm like I'm on page 30 how' you finish it already so I started to tell myself I'm not that smart I'm a slow reader this is not good I must be dumb
and so you know what I did I just didn't apply myself much more so your thoughts wind up becoming your habits and your habits become your destiny right I think I'm not smart so I don't apply myself I don't go into the AP classes and it just becomes real later on as I'm
in therapy I start thinking about this what is the benefit of being a slow reader so I changed that you know what I just read deeply I read every single word I reread words and so I've come up with this thing to tell myself some people read to be done some of you
are those people right some of you read to understand that's better than just to be done because it was an assignment to feel good about yourself some read some people read to apply which is even better than understanding right that's what knowledge is for so that we can apply it is there a
level beyond that I read to teach so there's no wonder I read really slowly because I want to master the concepts the first time I read it so I will write in the columns I'll underline words I'll look things up I'll let my mind drift off and look for examples in my life
to see where it's true because I want to own the material of my mind so now you don't tell me myself anymore that I'm a slow reader that's a critical thought I read deeply to teach you see the benefit okay was that enough time to stall for you get wonderful what might be
a benefit of you being impulsive you got it so now we're going to ask the room for some help in case I'm stuck okay no my friend the T good job friend you jump into things easily new things okay say that the most positive version of that because jumping into things easily is
the definition impulsive I think how can that be a real positive thing Chrissy I'm more oh no no no let her sit in the pain a little bit sorry go ahead everybody has the answer I'm more eager to try new things what do we call that people who try new things go ahead
chrisy you got this what do we call people who try new things don't look at her the answer is in your mind you got this um leaders what leaders okay leaders try your F there's a better word I think somebody will help you here somebody El shout out one word innovators curious okay
I like that word you're really curious you're brave you're adventurous which I heard over here I'll give you credit yeah Brave and Adventures so every negative attribute has a positive attribute every positive attribute has a negative attribute and understanding the dynamic of this is really important they kind of coexist together you want
to say something hand on the mic please so what do you do because when you're sitting in that negativity it's really hard to to find that positivity yeah and you like I'm sitting here looking at my list and I can't see what the positive side of those things are how how do you
go where do you go from there when you can't see the positivity of it that's a great question are you an accountant is it a problem with the profession maybe okay this takes some work takes a little kind of like neuroplasticity to be able to stretch right so I think what makes you
guys super powerful is your convergent thinkers like there's one right answer everything has to be one thing where Creator people are Divergent thinkers they think well there's many many possibilities and they're both superow Powers when used in the right way they have a focus problem you have a creative thinking outside the box
problem process oriented can be controlled now there's a doctor and I've I've I've learned a little bit about the doctor his name is Dr John D Martini does anybody know Dr Dr John D Martini still alive have you worked with him okay A friend of mine in a mastermind we were just chatting
he says Chris you have to study with Dr John de Martini little controversial he's a therapist he brings people together who have suffered from severe trauma and he was telling me a story super uncomfortable to sitting in a room and this is what Dr John de Martini would say he goes all of
us have these negative emotions and feelings about things and all we do is focus all of our energy on the negative feeling and experience that we don't take a moment to think how it was good for us how it was a benefit so all of us have suffered from something imperfect parents escaped
War have gone through a lot of crap but all we do is we focus our energy on the negative so what Dr John D Martini is able to do is help people find the benefit and this gentleman that I met this new person at the same table dinner he goes you know what
in one year I lost my company I was sued by my ex partner and my account was deleted off Facebook and I had like 10 million followers or something like that he went to his coach and his coach was like what's the benefit of this what's the benefit of this and he went
through all the horrible emotions and he says go home today and write down 100 benefits of your father dying he thought it was a ridiculous thing to do somewhere around 24 on this list of 100 he found a lot of reasons why it was a benefit he rebuilt his company got out of
the lawsuit and is back on social media it's not easy to do but it is possible I love that same quote or definition of wisdom it's experience plus reflection hey Chris yes pleas so what happens when your creative side meets your defiant side like the creative defiant person meets the type A personality
cuz I live in that little dot right in the middle where I am defiant yet can be creative at the same time yes does that make sense not really that was very creatively defiant of you to to say it that way thank you does anybody know what she said you do okay can
we let's get something closer you know what she said okay okay you understand you speak that same language well I create structure and wait are you going to tell me what she said or you going to tell me what you're going to say I'm kind of trying to make it relate oh are
you sure that I can break them so it's like you crave structure but then you destroy it okay I like that is thato bingo okay okay you crave structure and then you want to destroy it wow can you give me an example wait wait can you keep the mic on her please can
you get can you give me an example of how you create structure and you want to destroy it a schedule a schedule of where I'm okay I feel you I feel you now I know what you're talking about yeah like this day will be for meetings and this day is for work and
then I totally destroy it within 30 minutes [Laughter] it's weird what you guys Bingo on but I like it okay when you said schedu I feel you like to-do list things that you're like this feels right for me it's going to The Container Store and buying all the the ways to organize my
life and they're still sitting in the garage you feel me on that one but I enjoy that part about myself and my wife said what are you doing we have containers on top of containers well that's what they're for we put the containers inside a container you never know when I'm going to
organize things she goes I know it's five years old honey it's not going to happen it's all those side projects that never get launched okay so so here's the weird thing instead of saying this is horrible can we just say this is who we are and dance with this is that okay so
you know what most people believe procrastination is a bad thing is anybody think procrastination is a good thing raise your hand oh what's your argument for why procrastination is good pick some new person so I didn't rehearse my keynote that all happened on the spot I didn't rehearse the chbt class that all
happened on the spot I've do things last minute because somehow that last minute the level of anxiety just gives me that superpower to come up with things adrenaline to come up with things that I wouldn't even have thought as a matter of fact the more I think about something the more I destroy
it and it's really when it comes out of that pressure that comes out in unexpected ways so that's how that's a story I tell myself anyway so I can continue to procrastinate that's that's the Panic monster Panic monster the Panic monster okay is that what you call it who who's talking about you
guys need to stand up and do a little dance cuz I don't know who talk over there I don't remember who did it but it was a TED Talk has anybody seen it about procrastination the Panic monster okay this is good I like this is panic monster good or bad I don't like
the fact that I wait till the Panic monster shows up to actually get stuff done but sometimes it's my best work and sometimes it's an all nighter and I haven't had any sleep but holy cow look at the product okay you know this is called reframe right do you know what reframing means
do you know what that means okay I'm going to give you a very literal definition of it because I help creative people understand understand complex ideas right if you literally think about a frame and you move the frame somewhere else or you changed the frame what is inside changes and I'll give you
an example of art if you walk through like an open flea market and there's art work in plastic sleeves just sitting there you can Wile to hundreds of them what is the value of that piece of art 35 bucks not very much but if you take that piece of art out and you
put it in a nice frame you display it in the same flea market it's proba worth two times three times as much you take that same painting and you put it into a gallery that's crowded with lots of paintings it's now worth more but still not that much but you put in the
lube behind six in of glass where nothing is close to it it's called The Mona Lisa I don't know why the world loves Mona Lisa I can't even see it you can't even see and then they tell me that's not even the real Mona Lisa behind a piece of glass that's just a
story though by the way okay I don't think Panic monster is a good thing I love procrastinating my wife not so much it drives her crazy when I have to do a keynote and I'm like babe do you want to watch a movie and she's sitting there shaking I'm like what's wrong are
you cold she goes don't you have a keynote I'm like yeah I got it it's 11:00 at night aren't you flying out tomorrow and you haven't even packed babe you're stressing me out just relax just enjoy this movie together I even fall asleep on the couch and she leaves I get up like
oh I need to work on my keynot I go downstairs work to 4 in the morning I don't call it the Panic monster I call it the creative elixir of life that's called a referend this one is unhealthy relationship this one I love I tell my procrastination side it's time for us to
get to work tomorrow what she doesn't realize which is probably what's happening with you is we don't give enough credit to our our subconscious mind working on the problem while our conscious mind is just doing whatever we do you notice there's this great frequency like when you're doing the dishes when you're in
the shower washing the car folding laundry you get your best ideas why is that there's some science behind this right it's because there's two brains that are at work your active brain or system one system two thinking active brain and your archival brain are you guys familiar with this concept okay your active
brain is the one you're using right now taking notes or falling asleep whatever it is what you're doing thinking about what you're going to eat later today what the part is cool or not your archival brain knows everything you've ever learned in your entire life has forgotten nothing barring some kind of brain
injury creative people when I say creative people I mean artists poets musicians writers um anybody who makes anything they've learned to slip from the active mind to the archival mind and going back and forth they know how to control that and I'll tell you what I mean okay if your active mind is
running your archival mind is dormant what happens is during the day your body and your mind is processing so much information that when you slip into sleep your archival brain is trying to sort out all the crazy stupid stuff you saw that day and it tells your subconscious mind a story that's we
call that a dream but the problem is dreams are very they disappear immediately after you get up the really good part is the moments right before you go to sleep and the moments right after you get up but you can slip into this mode on purpose I think Benjamin Franklin did this many
famous successful people would put themselves into states of sleep and nonsleep I think he famously held like a steel ball in his hand in his chair and he'd work until he fell asleep and when the ball dropped he would just wake up again that sounds like torture to me but he understood this
a lot of famous artists inventors successful entrepreneurs SLI in and out of the state so for me procrastination is me leaving the problem for my archival brain to solve and I've had a career in design for over 30 years now it's done a pretty good job you know when you find something that's
successful why would you change that I'm not saying this is for everybody but if we look at our whole need to create things and Destroy things and look at that as a negative thing well we're going to beat ourselves up what if that's just part of who you are and the magic that
makes you you we don't want to deny that part we want to lean into it so you know people used to make fun of me for all kinds of weird stuff now I dress even weirder than I did before and what's really strange to me in the last couple of years random people
who are fans of mine walk up it's like how much I have to pay you for you to consult me on how to dress and I said I don't do that it's like we'll see okay I think what they're meaning is I will pay you enough money that you will agree to do
this for me Isn't that pretty cool you know people like uh my friend Trevor which I'll tell a little story about and make this land this point for you he's like yeah Chris came on stage and he took the seat Bel off the airplane I like my seat belt from the airplane you
know okay let's let's go back to our exercise here okay now if we can look at some of these negative words and trying to swing it positively we're asking our body and our mind to do something it's not used to doing like for a Hector it might be exercise and for you anytime
you do something new it's going to be really uncomfortable that's how you know it's new and exciting so our friend here I'm already forgetting the name it's a Chrissy the impulsive one she's really good at doing new things she's good at trying new things and you know what it's kind of ironic or
maybe it's not she volunteered to do it first isn't that awesome you're The Brave One Brave is a much cooler word than impulsive so there's some negative so what we do is we're not trying to mask this to pretend like it doesn't exist we need to recognize it and honor it that it
helps us to be brave and when we're acting impulsively we have to ask ourselves am I being impulsive or am I being brave right now not always Brave by the way so we learn to embrace this as part of who we are now how do we do this and turn this into a
story okay all right here's what we need to do so I have this idea and the idea is something like this okay your name is your brand your name is your brand you know when you hear the name Nike all kinds of ideas come up Apple Samsung whatever it is Google an idea
comes up but let's just say your name is John Smith or Jane Smith not super sexy or interesting so how can you use your name as a way to create a brand some of you have that problem because you're like Johnson Associates or whatever it is right so I have this observation we
need to create ourselves a new name one that we have control over that reflects our true personality our really weird quirks even things we don't like about ourselves I started to look into the world of Combat Sports you notice how they always have a nickname name Sugar Ray Leonard I wonder why he's
called sugar is it because it's a sweet science of boxing what if it's like um the notorious Conor McGregor or Bobby The Brain Heenan or Jake the Snake Roberts you think that's a good guy so what they've done in this kind of like fictional wrestling world is they've created characters Dwayne The Rock
Johnson Hulk Hogan because it understand that's a shorthand for a much bigger story okay so this new name this nickname of yours can be the most efficient delivery vehicle of your brand and we get to create it we get to control it we get to own it it's kind of interesting the the
weirder it is the better it is the weirder it is the better it is so this is one moment where I'm going to ask you to kind of like really push look into your vulnerabilities Your Shadow words the things that make you scared to tell people and just own that personality and I'll
give you some examples okay so we're going to evolve in the exercise to think about your nickname now all throughout your life people have given you nicknames right you know what they are write those down right now just write them all down write down your nicknames and if you don't have a good
ni nickname just write down adjectives that describe your personality and I'm going to encourage you not to write all the positive words down because then you're just be like everybody else you know what you should never call a creative company creative designs first of all it's redundant and that's the least creative name
you can come up with you talked about how many of us have a personal name as part of our corporate name what are your thoughts on going with a corporate brand versus a personal brand and or should your personal brand be your corporate brand that's a very good question and I would just
like to cite evidence for you okay the whole point of creating a brand is to be able to impact as many lives as possible to get the greatest reach and engagement fair if we look at at what's out there as evidence the answer will be self-evident if you look at how many Apple
followers there are on Twitter and how many Tim Cook has it's not even close and if you just go down the list Elon Musk versus Tesla the personal brand is way more powerful than corporate brand because a corporation is an amalgamation it's a fictional thing that's created but you are you and you
get to have a voice and opinion and you get to speak from that I find that whenever I write or create for corporate Brands it's super boring but if I can write for the person there's a point of view and there's there's like an opinion and sometimes that's not what everybody wants to
hear and it's totally okay so there's nicknames okay so everybody we we have some homework okay write down all the nicknames write down all the adjectives that you can think of I'm going to take you two two more steps and I'm going to finish this part okay and it be really fun for
some of you so I'm working with one of my friends who runs on a conference he's a what is he a mortgage broker it's similar to kind of the kind of analytical stuff that you guys can probably relate to and he's a really mild-mannered Indian man his name is Neil dingra and when
I asked the audience a community of a thousand people live on stage what do you think of Neil when it comes to an AG that might describe him they started yelling all crazy stuff the word that stuck in my mind was this word he is Rel this because you know what he's the
kind of guy who make 500 phone calls to get a sale and he would just not let go of you he is a Relentless salesperson and you you might like oh that's kind of gross it might be aggressive but I'm like let's make this a virtue how do we make this a virtue
we have to embrace this as part of our identity so I asked him okay let's just say that's his name you know like Relentless Neil Relentless dingra that's not interesting enough yet we want to then we want to exaggerate this be hyperbolic about it Relentless like in what way what's the extreme version
of being relentless non-stop Unstoppable okay then I say all right think of an avatar in pop culture either movies TV comic books whatever what's an avatar that represents a force that's Unstoppable and they came up with some weird names go ahead Chuck Norris Chuck door Chuck Norris Chuck Norris okay I think Chuck
Norris is an avatar for like the manliest man alive no okay so the room started giving all kinds of funny suggestions just like that one right and I said you know what isn't he like the T800 you guys know who the T800 is arold I like he's like the Terminator and when I
said that the room kind of lit up and they're like that's him and you know how the Terminators in the first movie they cut off his whole body there's still an arm and it's coming after you and I was like on stage like that's just like Neil like buy my cor sign up
for my Mastermind it is fully just Neil 100% so Neil's like reaches out to me afterward like Chris what I do with this well look at all the phrases from the Terminator franchise all those sound bites I'll be back come with me if you want to live right he could use that as
a sales pitch he gets off stage and he's like I'll be back with the sales pitch he could weather wear a leather jacket he could have smoke fill the stage with laser lights and the theme song for Terminator he could do all that he's like Chris I like this so afterwards I sent
a a chat GP I sawry mid Journey picture of himself with glasses and his baseball cap and it split the thing and there a skull from the terer it's like I love this Chris I want to animate this so now he's created an avatar and a theme that he can build on what
we do when we create content is we have one little story we have another little story have another little story that's kind of it so each time you create a story it's a brand new Act of Creation it's very difficult to do this but what if you created a narrative and you kind
of know where the story goes it's a lot easier because well what happens next what happens next and then therefore but you kind of have that that's pretty cool but what if instead of creating a narrative you created a world when you create the world which maybe another word for the world is
a theme like a big idea that you can hang everything on so there's a gentleman his name is Johnny Earl he goes by the name Johnny Cupcakes he runs the world's first te t-shirt Bakery instead of having affiliate dealers he has cake dealers and he has his theme so his stores are filled
with vanilla scented air fresheners to make you feel like you're walking into Bakery in fact the way you get into the store is you open giant oven and you walk through and when he delivers a t-shirt it comes in a to- Go box for pastries he creates an experience so now Johnny has
built the world around baked goods which allows him to make a t-shirt every single week he's been doing this for over 10 years it gives him infinite ideas for packaging for pro promotional things instead of telling you his speaking fees or what he can do he creates a menu he shows up in
an ice cream truck in a in an ice cream truck delivery uniform to hand out t-shirts designed and package it looks like a push-up pop you want to create a world and I'll tell you why you want to create a world because in the world of entertainment and fiction we get really excited
when Two Worlds Collide it's called a crossover Deadpool and Wolverine blew up the box office Superman versus Batman those are pretty good moments sometimes they even have two different universes crossover like Marvel and DC right collaboration is a really powerful thing the example I'd like to share with you is the world of
supreme Street Wear and the world of Louis Vuitton cross over for a moment in time and the things that they created were more powerful than what they individually created the the articles that they made together for this very unique period of time is worth more than what Supreme did by themselves or Louis
Vuitton here's the cool part each and every single one of you has the potential to collaborate with a much bigger Force but not if you just have a little story a little moment not if you have a little narrative you want to have your worlds cross over so you're going to start to
figure out who you are come from a place of vulnerability that's true that's uniquely you figure out how you want to package it up so that people ask you questions about it that becomes the springboard for all of your ideas that is the beginning of Your World if you build a powerful enough
World other powerful creators will want to join forces with you and have this amazing place of collaboration and co-creation right in here is this something you can do I talked to a couple people at the hallway and asked them was there a teacher or someone in your life that you remember that did
something special for you that made you feel seen and heard and I I'm sorry I don't know anybody's name somebody said well my golf coach and she had an emotional moment I said why is that important to you that you're golf coach she said that we have had a personal connection for the
one moment in my life that I felt super vulnerable I felt seen the other person said my accounting teacher like accounting sounds pretty boring and I said well how did they make accounting feel fun and memorable for you and she said well she brought in real world examples you all do something pretty
boring in my opinion you really do I'm not telling you not to do that but what you have to do is find a way to make that story that that piece of information you have to share relatable to of people because she brought into the real world I follow one accountant on Tik
Tok you know what he does he tells you the business model of companies that you know so he takes something that you know from pop culture and he ties to something he knows deeply so you'll talk about like how Costco makes money and it's not what you think it's through memberships and this
is how much money they make every single year through memberships or he tell you this is why in and- out makes more money than these other companies because he breaks down the business model and inov bis you can follow me I'm an accountant I do X that's pretty cool the thing that you
can't do is to talk about a niche idea to a niche audience because you'll have seven views so what you do is tie it six what you do is you tie it to something that everyone knows and then you build a bridge to something that you know I'm out of time I have
to get out of here thanks very much everybody [Music]
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