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Lessons from $80M CEO on Building a Strong Personal Brand
Chris Do explains that a strong personal brand is not invented; it's a memory of who you truly are, found through radical self-acceptance.
Chris Do
Founder, The Futur™ · September 1, 2024
The Great Branding Misunderstanding
Most people get branding wrong. They believe it is a superficial exercise in aesthetics, a hunt for the perfect logo and a matching color palette. They create a polished veneer, a manicured persona they believe the world wants to see.
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what a brand is and how it functions.
Chris Do, an Emmy award-winning designer and entrepreneur, argues that the modern concept of brand hasn’t changed since strategist Marty Neumeier first defined it in his seminal book, The Brand Gap. The touchpoints have evolved, from print ads to social media, but the core principle remains unshakable.
So, what is a brand? “It’s not what things look like,” Do explains. “It’s about the emotional or rational feeling that we have toward something.”
That feeling is the reason people are willing to queue for a new product drop or scour the internet for a rumor about a future release. It’s a preference that transcends logic and price. Brand is the accumulation of associations, positive or negative, that someone holds in their mind about you or your company.
It’s that simple, and that profound.
If you show up and treat people poorly, that is your brand. It’s a negative association. Conversely, if you are generous, kind, and genuinely helpful, that becomes your brand. It’s a positive association. The brand is not the message you broadcast; it is the feeling the audience receives.
Many people approach this intentionally, but their intention is misplaced. They engineer a persona, layering on varnish until the real person is unrecognizable. “There’s a team of people sitting here thinking about how you should show up in the world,” Do notes. “That ain’t you. It’s very manufactured.”
This manufactured self is exhausting to maintain and, worse, it fails to connect. It’s too crafted, too perfect. Real connection forms not in the presence of perfection, but in the acknowledgment of imperfection. We don’t relate to pedestals. We relate to people.
The Journey of Undoing
When you see someone’s first piece of content, you are likely seeing the version of them that is least like their true self. It is them on their best behavior, terrified of judgment, and desperate for acceptance. “I need to show up as a professional or as caring or as loving,” Do says, describing the internal monologue. “I always have everything buttoned up.”
This act is not sustainable. The effort required to be someone you are not is immense. Over time, a creator hopefully reaches a breaking point. They realize the performance is more painful than any potential criticism.
That is when the magic happens.
They start to pull back the layers. They share a messy moment, an ugly thought, a failure. They stop caring if the world judges them a certain way. “I got to just be me,” Do explains. “It’s the easiest thing to do. It’s the most natural thing to do. Yet it’s the least common thing that people do.”
What an observer perceives as “change” is actually the opposite. The person is not changing. They are becoming more of themselves. This is a journey of undoing. It is a process of shedding the armor you thought you needed and realizing you were safer without it.
The market is beginning to reward this rawness. A recent example is the meteoric rise of Sam Sulek, a 21-year-old bodybuilder who gained millions of subscribers in a month. His content is the antithesis of the hyper-edited, overstimulated videos that have dominated social media. He posts 45-minute vlogs with no music, no text overlays, and only simple jump cuts. He is just himself.
This signals a pendulum swing away from manicured perfection and toward unfiltered reality. Viewers are tired of the performance. They crave authenticity. The success of creators like Sulek proves that you don't need a high-production-value machine to build a following. You need a high degree of self-acceptance.
This is not an excuse for sloppy work, but a reordering of priorities. An authentic person with a cheap camera will always build a stronger brand than an inauthentic person with a RED cinema camera. The technology is secondary to the humanity.
The Best Brand-Building Content Is Therapy
So, what is the best content to create to build a powerful personal brand? Do's answer is both shocking and deeply insightful.
“The best kind of content you can pursue… is to go to see a therapist.”
This is not a flippant remark. It is the core of his philosophy. Before you worry about cameras, lighting, or editing software, you must first do the internal work. You need to figure out who you are. You need to heal. You need to learn to love yourself.
High self-awareness and self-acceptance are the bedrock of any strong brand. You have to know your limitations and your zone of genius. You have to be willing to celebrate both, without overselling your shortcomings or underselling your strengths. “I can sit here and wish all day and night my hair is going to grow back,” Do says. “It’s not. And it’s okay. And I’m cool with it.”
Once that internal alignment is achieved, the content creation process becomes radically simplified. You can hold up your phone with bad audio and just start talking, and it will be more powerful than the most polished, scripted video from someone who is faking it.
The goal is not to become an overnight sensation. The goal is to fall in love with who you are. This self-acceptance is the source of true charisma. It is the magnetic quality that draws people in.
What makes someone charismatic?
- It is rarely the most physically attractive person in the room.
- It is not the loudest or the one demanding the most attention.
- It is the person who is completely comfortable in their own skin.
- It is the person who creates space for others, because they are not desperately seeking validation for themselves.
This is the most democratizing force in personal branding. “You may not be born with great genetics and cheekbones and height and physical gifts,” Do argues, “but you can be born to learn to love yourself and to create space for others to do the same.” This is a skill, and like any skill, it can be developed. This is the work a therapist can guide you through, as explored in Do's conversation with Melanie Whitney on how words shape your reality.
The Brand Is Memory, Not Invention
The application of brand principles differs significantly between corporations and individuals. A corporation is a committee. It is a group of people with competing opinions, often resulting in a watered-down, generic identity with zero personality. The work of a brand strategist in that context is to act as an archaeologist, unearthing the company’s origin story.
“When the founders came together to do something, they wanted to change the world,” Do says. “Somewhere along this journey, we’ve forgotten about that mission.” The strategist’s job is to rediscover that founding purpose.
For an individual, the process is different. There is no committee. There is only you. And the work is not one of invention, but of recollection.
Building a brand isn't a product of invention; it's a product of memory.
Do challenges you to remember who you were between the ages of three and nine. That person is the real you. But through years of conditioning from parents, school, and society, that authentic self was suppressed. Society punishes people who stand out. You learn that to get along, you must go along.
The work of building a personal brand is to reverse that process. It is to go back and excavate the parts of yourself you were taught to hide. “Why don’t we do some of that deep work?” Do asks. “Why don’t we go into the shadow and figure out the things that you have guilt and shame over?”
This means exploring your anger, your frustration, and your anxieties. These are not flaws to be hidden; they are parts of you to be understood. It’s not about broadcasting them without filter, but about embracing them as part of your whole self so you no longer have to pretend they don’t exist. When you do this, you stop being pretentious. You stop performing. You become a person people can trust, a central theme in how to stop building a fake brand.
Culture, Product, and the Price of Preference
A client rarely comes to a designer and says, “I need a logo.” They say, “I need a new brand.” It is the job of the professional to unpack what that truly means. More often than not, it means, “We have a bad relationship with our customers, and we need to fix it.”
This is when real branding begins. It has little to do with visual identity at the outset. It starts with fundamental questions:
- How is your product?
- What is your customer service like?
- What is the sentiment of people toward your organization?
This is where the wisdom of the late Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, becomes critical. In his book Delivering Happiness, Hsieh famously advised to forget the brand. “Get the culture right,” he said, “the brand will follow.”
No company has a strong brand with a poor culture. The brand is the promise, but the culture is what delivers on that promise. A single employee having a bad day can inflict massive damage on a brand that took decades and billions of dollars to build. Do recounts a negative experience with a flight attendant on Southwest Airlines, an airline known for its fun, quirky culture. That one poor interaction soured his entire perception. “When you get the culture wrong,” Do states, “the brand dies.”
This leads to the ultimate definition of a strong brand. It is not just a feeling; it is a feeling that translates into action. “Almost the definition of brand is preference and willingness to pay a premium,” Do says. When you are competing on price, you have no brand. Your only brand is that you are cheap, like Walmart.
True brand power is when a customer has a preference for your product that they cannot fully explain, and they are willing to pay more for it. This preference is the holy grail, the ultimate goal of all branding efforts.
Price the Problem, Not the Project
For creative entrepreneurs, the question of pricing is a constant source of anxiety. How do you charge for something as intangible as a video, a design, or a coaching session? The shortcut, Do explains, is easy to understand but difficult to execute.
It requires a fundamental shift in perspective. Stop pricing your time. Start pricing the client’s outcome.
Do proposes a thought experiment. What is more fair: a fixed price for everyone, or a “pay what you can” model? While not practical for most businesses, the spirit of the latter is where the answer lies. It’s about tailoring the price to the situation. A better framework is to charge a price that is appropriate for the size of the problem you are solving.
This forces you to have a strategic, value-based conversation with a potential client. If a client has a million-dollar problem that your video can help solve, what should the budget be? It should be some percentage of that million-dollar value. A $100,000 video is a fair investment to solve a million-dollar problem. If the client has a $10,000 problem, the fair price is $1,000. For more on this, Do offers a deep dive in his masterclass on value pricing with Ron Baker.
This approach transforms you from a vendor into a partner. It even gives you the power and ethical obligation to turn down work. If a client has no clear problem that your service can solve, you must tell them. “I don’t feel right taking your money right now,” Do advises saying. The trust gained from this honesty is worth far more than any single project fee.
This thinking can evolve a business model from project-based to subscription-based. Do shares the story of a friend in web development who stopped charging fixed fees for websites. Instead, he sells a subscription. He tells clients the total annual cost to hire a full team (designer, developer, writer, etc.) might be $800,000. He offers to provide all of that value as an ongoing service for a fraction of that cost, billed annually. He builds the site, maintains it, and provides quarterly strategic updates.
This is a true subscription model, not a retainer. As pricing expert Ron Baker explains, a retainer is simply a pre-purchase of hours, usually at a discount. A subscription is a commitment to delivering ongoing, increasing value, completely divorced from tracking hours. The onus is on the provider to obsess over the client's success.
Your Craft Will Not Save You
For many creatives, there is a dangerous belief that has been perpetuated by academic institutions and the industry itself: that craft is all that matters. They are told to just get better at their skill, and success will follow. This is a trap.
“I have terrible business acumen,” Do admits, recounting his own early struggles. “The first three businesses I started, I completely failed. I didn’t understand the difference between revenue and profit.”
Success did not come from being the best designer. It came from two things: a stubborn, stupid belief in himself, and a decision to learn the language of business. He invested in a business coach, Kier McLaren, and worked with him every week for over a decade. The results were immediate and dramatic, with his company’s revenue jumping from $2.2 million to $3.9 million in the first year.
This is the part of the story many people miss. They see the success but not the investment that preceded it. The lesson is clear: at a certain point, there is a diminishing return on improving your craft. Being slightly “gooder” at your skill will not change your business trajectory.
Do uses an analogy of an old-school arcade. “The whole point of business and life and game is how many quarters can you stack up,” he says. Your craft gives you a few quarters. But you will run out. To get more quarters and stay in the game longer, you must learn another skill set.
These skills are not optional:
- Communication
- Presentation
- Sales
- Marketing
- Lead Generation
- Strategy
Look at the most successful creator on YouTube, MrBeast. Are his videos the most pristine, technically perfect productions? No. But they achieve results. In the pursuit of the perfect pixel, many creatives accidentally create a barrier between themselves and their audience. They are so focused on craft they forget the goal: to solve a problem and grow a business. A concept Do has explored in detail in why you should stop chasing virality.
The world is filled with brilliant artists and designers who are broke. Their schools and mentors failed them by celebrating craft above all else. They were not taught how to position themselves, how to speak about their work, or how to sell it.
You have a choice. You can continue down the path of more of the same, focusing only on your craft and feeling like the world is unfair. Or you can change.
If nothing changes, nothing changes.
TRANSCRIPT
in this video I sit down with Omar over at the department as his guest on his podcast we dive deep into what truly makes a brand a brand it's not just about logos or Aesthetics it's about that deep emotional connection you forge with your audience we'll explore why showing your true self is
key to creating a strong personal brand and how being vulnerable makes you more approachable and relatable join us as we uncover simple yet effective ways to make your brand resonate deeply with others if you like this episode make sure to check out his channel Link in the description below let's go welcome to
the department where we interview people who are killing it in their department and I'm excited because today's department is The Branding Department if you search what is a brand if you search branding 101 if you search how to build a brand this person shows up I'm fan boying right now and I have
with me Chris doe who is an Emmy Award winner uh also an Inc 5000 recipient yes millions of followers and subscribers across social media multiple seven figure entrepreneur and husband of the year and the drippiest out there honestly like look at the look at the Vibes and someone uh who appreciates uh fashion
every time I see CH Chris the the bags the brands off-white Louie Alex Studios uh the the rly let's go hey I just want to say game recognize game brother dude that's love for real um I've been I've been following Chris for some time I would say even before 2020 and we can
even talk about in a little bit how 2020 I think was very big for your YouTube presence um but number one just thank you for being on this is honestly incredible I'm I'm so glad we can do this Omar so I was you know if you go on YouTube and you type in
what is branding uh the the video that comes up is an interview that you did a very short 3 four minute video with Marty how do you pronounce it new new and you asked him U you know what is branding and you know he answers the way he would three years ago so
I would ask you today um what is branding today I don't think branding has changed I think the modern conception of or the modern concept of brand hasn't changed since Marty's written about it the ways in which we manifest the touch points change and evolve a little bit but let me just try
to make it really simple for everybody to understand when we talk about brand it's not what things look like it's about the emotional or rational feeling that we have toward something the fact that we're willing to wait in line to que up to get something or to search and scour the internet to
find a little tidbit a morsel of like when the new drop is coming or anything there are a couple of people a couple companies that have this in Spades and the rest of us are M Mortals trying to achieve that level and the way way that we do that is we have to
be able to let people in on who we are on a personal level or to create certain expectations that are positive associations with that company and we can get into it as deep as you want but that's kind of it in nutshell think about associations you can have negative associations or positive and
that's part of your brand so if you show up and you treat people poorly and you're a bit of a jerk well that is your brand it's a negative association conversely if you're generous if you're always kind to people you you take an extra minute to to Really genuinely want to help people
that will be the positive Association or your positive brand so something that comes to mind as you explain that is there's an organic nature to it but then it seems like there's also a very intentional nature to it because should you be surprised that people feel a way about your brand or you
should be like no this is exactly what we decided because it's it's like being yourself sometimes isn't a subconscious decision or you know what I'm does that does that make sense yeah I I don't know if always that people are intentional about it and or if intentionality is always good and I'll tell
you why often times what people think is oh I have a really strong brand and there's a team of people sitting here thinking about like how you should show up in the world that ain't you and it's very manufactured and sometimes the team of people is just you and you say well I
need to be this person to be accepted to be loved and not to be ridiculed in public so I'm going to put on this Persona and you become that person you're too crafted too manicured too much layers of varnishing and it's was like well who are you and this is why when when
people show up as themselves or sometimes they show you a little bit more of like this is what it looks like when I'm really messy and ugly and I'm not having a beautiful thought or beautiful philosophical moment in my life I'm just going to share with you then all of a sudden we
as humans look at the other person on the other side of the screen and say oh they just like me you're really relatable my God I didn't know you struggled like that I didn't know you have bad hair days you know I I have bad ha days every day but I'm just putting
it out there you know what I mean and then all a sudden like oh they're they're not that weird or they they remind me of my cousin or my dad or my sister my mom and I like them a little bit more so I mean it's because like there's there's so much thought
at the same time I'm trying to get to a place of like somebody's at zero or or or I guess I could ask you like how long did it take you till you knew what your brand was or that's a very good question and we we talked about this on a different podcast
but what you see what happens with people typically is when you see a first piece of content that's going to be the least like them as a real person because that's them thinking I don't want the world to think badly of me I need to show up as a professional or as caring
or as loving or as an athlete and I always have everything buttoned up over time what that person hopefully starts to realize is man that's a lot of work to pretend to be that person and I don't know maybe one day I'm just going to show like hey here's the weird thing about
me and then they start start to pull back the layers and then they realize okay I don't care anymore if the world judges me a certain way I'm just I got to just be me it's the easiest thing to do it's the most natural thing to do yet it's the least common thing
that people do so what happens is over time if you notice a personality yourself our our mutual friends you might see this Evolution and you think oh the person's changing they're not they're becoming more of themselves and it's a beautiful thing to see that's really good you know what's funny is as someone
who like does video teaches video you know there's this wave of like hyperedited content and I noticed this about last year in the summertime that I started consuming videos that weren't as edited you know jump Cuts fast you know text and like crazy over stimulate stimulating content and I'm like the the videos
I'm attracted to are actually videos that aren't heavily edited and it looks like the pendulum is even swinging back to you know not intense edits and there's this YouTuber that kind of blew up recently I don't if you know who he is what is his name uh Sam Sam Su Sam suck have
you heard of him no dude 21y old bodybuilder 45 minute daily Vlogs no just jump cuts no text no music no nothing 2 million subscribers in 30 days and he's just driving he's got his M he actually has his mic clipped on to his hat but I I say all that to say
that there is it's funny how it's like a journey of undoing some people I think for for a guy like him maybe he has like zero insecurity so you can would you say insecurity is probably the killer of all brand builders it can be but insecurity could be your brand too and this
is a really weird thing to say like I'm really insecure about X Y and Z and hopefully you don't judge me too poorly and just to put it out into Universe the the whole point of building a strong personal brand is to get in touch with yourself to have high self-awareness and self-acceptance
and to say like hey this is the way it's going to be you know I can sit here and wish all day and night my hair is going to grow back it's not and it's okay and I'm cool with it you know I I know what my limitations are I know what my
zone of Genius is and I'm not going to oversell my shortcomings and undersell my genius I'm going to celebrate both I'm really good at a couple things I'm terrible at lots of things and that's all of me what would you say is like some of the best brand building type of content what
do you mean like if somebody was like okay I want to put myself out there based on your observation especially even the last years as you really grown like how would you encourage somebody to be like start building your brand by making these kinds of videos then okay I'm going to give you
a funny answer okay dang it my funny answer is this is the best kind of content you can um pursue consume to build your personal brand is to go to see a therapist that's cuz what the hell are you talking about you're as broken as everybody else and you're you're fronting as much
as everyone else so we can learn the tools what kind of cameras we're using what kind of lighting setup we can do all of that that's not going to help you but if you were to invest time money and energy towards something go figure out who you are like heal learn to love
thyself and then hold up your freaking iPhone with crappy audio and video and just start talking to the camera that's going to be the best brand possible you may not become an overnight sensation you might not become the Sam guy who cares the whole point is not to chase those numbers the whole
point is to just fall in love with who you are you'll be much more attractive you know we talked about this at a conference recently about what makes people so charismatic what is it that draws people to them like they're just magnetic being and you kind of know and it's usually not the
prettiest woman who walks in the room it's not the buffest coolest looking guy who's like who hunts with a bow and arrow and and is like 6'2 225 lb rip top to bottom she's not that person it's actually some person who's kind of doesn't call too much attention to themselves creates space for
others and it's super comfortable in their own skin there's something really attractive about that and the most beautiful thing about this is every person can do this you may not be born with great genetics and cheekbones and height and physical gifts but you can be born to to learn to love yourself and
to create space for others to do the same dude it's so good you have great cheekbones by the way I don't know if that's why you said that I'm just kidding subliminally I'm just going to put that out there hashtag cheekbones yeah um so do you help people build their brand is or
companies build their brands and Stu I mean you probably done it at a at a big level so like because like we're in a era where single individuals can build a brand a personal brand but then companies could build Crazy good brand right what are some themes throughout either or both of those
that like that matter at the same level I think foundationally the concept is the same philosophically the application is very very different so when we work with corporations like really big companies they're trying to figure out what are we and we're a group of people with opinions and no one opinion seems to
be it so it tends to be very watered down very generic and then there's like zero personality what we try to do especially with most companies or corporations is to help them figure out what is the origin story like when the founders came together to do something they wanted to change the world
they wanted to make it better in some way somewhere along this journey we've forgotten about that mission so we got to go back and ReDiscover it so we got to go back in time and find that so that's what it is now the difference here is there's a whole committee still making decisions
and we we have to make decisions that's smart for the business growth because when we make poor decisions like recently with bud I believe they did something with transgender and it just messed up their brand in a way that is going to to literally cost them billions of dollars lives are on the
line so we don't want to mess around with that so that's why it's usually there's attorneys there's marketing departments or strategists and writers and they have to do this because they have to make calculated decisions and we get that if you take it over to the personal side there is no committee it's
just you it's just got to be you and I've said this recently building a brand isn't a product of invention it's a product of memory who are we when we're between 3 to 9 years old that's who we are but through conditioning through parenting through schooling we've lost that because our entire Society
punishes people who stand out you're an anomaly you're going to get put in a different classroom you're going to get held back you might ride the short bus who knows and all of a sudden your entire world your social structure collapses around you because your teachers your friends are now going to look
at you and treat you differently so we've learned to to um go along as how we get along and we've we've done a lot of going along and I'm just trying to help people and to give them permission like you know what why don't we do some of that deep work why don't
we go into the Shadow and figure out the things that you have guilt and shame over that create anxiety and frustration for you that makes you angry let's explore that because that's the real you and we have to learn to recognize those parts to embrace them as who part of us not to
say we have to accept them but to say like okay we can work on those things but we're not going to pretend they don't exist and so when you walk in a room and you you you see somebody it's like oh that person is so pretentious mhm they're pretending to be something like
don't talk to me like that I'm just another person don't pretend like you're better than me I'm tired of that and I'm sure everybody in this room is tired of it too and I will tell it to you to your face so you because you mentioned earlier that like branding is like the
emotion but then maybe an immature way of approaching starting a brand is caring about the the the image up front that's usually how people start right so I started that way I'll just put it out there so there's like let's get the logo down let's get the colors down let's get so if
somebody maybe when you had your agency or you know do you still have it or it doesn't do anything it still sits there okay so like you you know somebody comes to you and like hey we need a logo and you're like we need a brand or what's the brand like what because
I would just imagine people with the websites the colors and all they're focusing on all that stuff which has less to do with the emotional side of things as far as people to feel like how do you deter that priority let's talk about that um the word brand and branding has become a
catch-all phrase to mean all kinds of different things to people so we need to kind of clarify most people don't come in and just say I need a logo they're like I need a new brand Chris I'm like let's unpack that word what do you really mean let's explore why you need it
what's happening in the business and the market tell me about the motivations behind this we're going to have a conversation I don't care that the clients know the right terminology to use I'm not expecting them to I the professional need to know that if you're a doctor somebody comes and like oh I
need surgery like okay I understand like let's talk about the pain that you're experiencing while you're here and then we'll figure it out together and a lot of creatives they think well the clients are supposed to know all the terminology and the strategy I said do not wish for that future because then
you'll just be a production monkey at that point we need this and put it that type face and those colors and we need 14 videos that going to in we don't want that so we have to learn to speak the Lang language for them so when they come in they're going to say
something like I need some new branding I need to Rebrand let's talk about what that means then we start to unpack that often times what it really means is we have a bad relationship with our customers we need to fix that okay now we do real branding which is how's your product how's
your customer service let's start there what's the onboarding offboarding process like what are the reviews and the feelings and the sentiment of people towards your product service organization so we have to do a little bit of like um empathy mapping we have to do a little bit of research and kind of checking
in with all the employees okay now we can start because that's our Baseline here's where we're at as a company through across all the touch points here's where we'd like to be are we committed to this now it's one thing for us to say we care about customers and we make great products
when in in fact those are not true so there's something that I read from the late Tony Shay from his book delivering happiness and he said forget the brand and was like what what do you mean forget the brand he goes get the culture right the brand will follow no company has a
strong brand with a poor culture because and I'll tell you a little story right now if I used to be a fan of this particular Airline I'll just say it's Southwest Airlines they're goofy they're funny they give their flight attendants a lot of leeway with how to do very procedural things and so
I laugh and I'm like hey that's remarkable the way you told me don't cry like a baby when the plane's about to cry okay I get that that's funny but then I had a bad experience happened huh somebody came over the microphone and they say funny things they're like stand up Comics that
are flying the plane and I love it I'm just saying that the plane's tripping out and they're like yo don't cry like a baby I'm sorry well no this is like before the plane takes off they're like okay you know if that person's acting funny slap them and then put on your mask
or they have fun and we know that they're saying in just not literally to go do this so it's the fun Airline it's a little cheap but it's fun then I'm flying on the airline and one of the flight attendants treated me really poorly like I was like I'm not being rude why
would you talk to me like that and it's last it's created a negative emotional feeling that I'm willing to for free badmouth them right now I even sent them review saying I've had a horrible experience I'm reconsidering booking with you that is one employee out of thousands or tens of thousands of employees
wow when you get the culture wrong the brand dies dang you know what's crazy you said the like the product and the like the service um something like Chick-fil-A yeah it was all about let's just make better chicken sandwiches because they were they were actually up against another company when they first got
started and they're like hey let's not do what they're doing let's just make a better sandwich and it like make Chick-fil-A what they are now yeah dude social media coming out now dude like Chick-fil-A is awful but like their customer service is on par but because I'm learning about like how they're now
making but something you mentioned about how companies can lose it along the way because they're trying to scale uh or their goals may be changed or you know what have you but uh it's crazy how much they that saying that like it takes a lifetime to build build a reputation and like 5
Seconds to lose it or whatever like that's so real uh when it comes to companies and when you think about it at that level it's and like it's funny how like when we think about branding we think about okay what are the major company like who would you say let's say that maybe
everybody would essentially know like they're killing it they have strong brand it's very easy there's this thing there's some science behind this and I don't pretend to know all the Neuroscience but in our brain if you think of your brain like a Japanese bental box right there's little compartment for Rice cucumber protein
something like that potato salad there's compartments and our brain kind of works in that way too so in every category of every product there exists maybe number one or number two sometimes three or four but not that many and it's because it's a complicated world we can't be sitting here remembering every every
single thing like if you had to figure out like who is the first person to break the four-minute mile you would you would know who who was the first person to step on the moon but who's the second person who did that and you kind of just start to forget like for you
I see that you're a fan of lroy now they have a a place in your heart and your mind when you go to the store you're not looking at all the other brands how many brands of sparkling water are there there's a lot and to each person they're going to have a different
preference and so it's always the battle for the heart and the mind and we know okay you're rocking fear of God stuff so fear of God for you is is killing it and and based on the line of people that are ready for their their popup sh shop clearly they've they've cultivated Community
culture around a community that's something that's really powerful and so we know and I'll tell you how you know and everybody can answer this question differently versus like here's what Chris thinks is think about the different products and services you consume that you have a preference for that you can't explain that you're
willing to pay more money for that's good so this is really clear when you're competing on price you have no brand unless your brand is we're cheap that's Walmart's brand and for some people they love that but in most places if you're competing on price you have no brand because almost the definition
of brand is preference and willingness to pay a premium that's it doesn't have to be more complicated than that that's really good that's something I've been learning with with with selling my coaching because it's you're literally selling invisible it's it's not there's nothing tangible to it I have to determine the value but
then I have to get really good at um uncovering that value and so that's why this J this year I've committed one of the skills I wanted to grow in is sales and I know you talk about this and I love your philosophy helping especially creatives uh determine these things and how to
when to say the price and not you talk about like not uh having to justify it necessarily and um but I I've had a lot of I started as a freelancer video photography I've been doing that for 15 years until it got to the place where it makes sense to like probably teach
this stuff and a pattern I saw even in my own Journey was like like how do I even charge and I think that's a I think a lot of people who entrepreneurs especially online entrepreneurs are asking that question what would be your philosophy around that the shortcut on how to charge super easy
easy to understand really difficult to do and I'll explain the concept and then I'll tell you why it's really difficult to do if we were to think let's just say all creatives are very fair-minded egalitarian ethical people clearly not true but let's just pretend for the sake of our conversation this is true
what would be the most fair thing to do in the marketplace to have a fixed price for all products and services or or people who come in or name your own price what do you think the answer would be what is more fair for someone to name their own price or for you
to have a fixed price what do you think what's more fair yeah what's the fairest thing to do pay what you can or this is the price I guess pay what you can sounds like pay what you can right like if you went into a cafe and their their literal sign says pay
whatever you can today you're not having a good day you're laid off you go in it's like I only have two bucks somebody's like I'm having a great life this meal is worth $30 and the average of it will probably be the price in which they would have set in the first place
but yet this is a very egalitarian thing pay what you can Church works like that we understand these Concepts right okay kind of what do you mean cuz it's 10% it's a suggestion it's not a rule huh no a rule no it's not a rule but but 10% applies to wherever so it
is a set price like God is giving a set price is God really or is the church because it's it's 10% of whatever comes in your income yeah yeah so it's the same for everybody well it still well it still pay what you can because somebody has 10 million that's a lot more
than what somebody who's like I'm broke it still pay what you can and it's still up to you it's a suggestion sure you may feel like it's a rule but I I say it's a suggestion the mere fact that you show up as a suggestion okay cuz there's no gun to head right
right okay let's that may or may not be a great piece of content for your audience but let's get back to it so pay what you can so let's just say that's fair okay are we in agreement that it's fair yeah I'm sure in the comments are like few Chris not I just
I do I do think going to a restaurant and it's like give whatever you can is different than here's a restaurant it's 10% or it's a percentage of whatever you make there's a I mean right we do semantics now I don't know go go go go go okay go we're hung up on
the concept right like um like you know you go to to airport and there's a guy shining shoes like whatever you want right everybody has a different idea some people give them a lot some people will give them a little but Blair end has written about this there's a person who shines shoes
out of very specific airport that every time he's there the person does such a great job he makes sure to go there and he's like a pay what you want thing and he goes on average this is how much money he makes and he makes way more money than if he just said
$8 or $12 okay he now he's incentivized to do the very best job he can because he knows how you feel about that service is going to be what you're going to pay I think that's a really beautiful business model let's put it into the real world now when we do do a
video project what are we going to charge well we can charge a flat fee uh you want to do a two- days setup is five grand let's just say and includes X Y and Z and all our customers it's five grand so it's fixed fee but what if we said what is the
size of the problem you're trying to solve let's charge you a price that's appropriate for for what it is you're trying to do well then that forces us to have a real strategic conversation that's around business that's going to impact the person it could be I have no problem that going to be
solved by video then it's your obligation and your duty to say well then there's no reason for you to give me money to do this it's actually Bad Business practice in that case I need you to go talk to this person who does strategy this person is copyrighting you need an email funnel
we know some people talk to them and if that all works out and you still feel like you have a problem that we feel that can be solved with video please come back I'd love to work with you but I don't feel right taking your money right now yeah I will take it
if you insist but I don't recommend it and the funny thing is when you do this what happens in the relationship between you and that person what happens with the esteem the trust the feeling that you're looking out for them it's not going to go down it'll probably go up that's really good
right and every time I tell a customer not every time a lot of times I tell them I don't want to take your money I will take it if you force me to but I think you could do other things then they turn around they insist to give me the money I'm like
okay I've done the best that I can you don't need plastic surgery you don't need like to climb Everest you don't need that fast car but if you want to I will sell it to you but I've done my duty so if each person that comes to you and says I have a
million dollar video Problem what should the budget be it should be some percentage of that it's not a million let's say it's 10% because we're on the God thing 10% so $100,000 is that fair great well I have a $10,000 problem okay 10% of that $1,000 does that help you great yeah and
and that's how should work so that will help them to understand the value conversation isn't the value of your time it's the value of the outcome you achieve for the other person big difference yeah mindset shift I mean and that's like sales like level up too just speaking their problems or like speaking
into their problems and their needs not necessarily what you are all going to do yeah so you're you're you're uncovering like four I think four skills within that framework that I just mentioned right you're doing diagnostic you're doing strategic you're doing consulting you're doing sales and by the way you're also bringing in
video expertise in that case yeah and I mean just with my that offer I have which is I call it dialed in a day so I go into an office space or somebody's home if they have this space number one I my brain works cool because I've messed with a lot of gear
in a long time and I've set up a lot of shots that like I could see a space and then recommend the gear and then even I come in I set it up with my team and then we train it's like invaluable like it's it's an offer that honestly sells itself type thing
but the pricing thing I've always had a how much you charger do that it's it's evolved this year because tell me the price 15 grand oh that's a lot for the service okay not with the year not with the gear this guy knows what he's doing 15 grand that's pretty good yeah I
like that um and and it's evolved to that because I started with 15 grand and it included the gear okay so there's a level to it too where I'm like in my know where's noer I'm like this isn't worth it in your who my know's noer like what is that you tou your
belly but I don't know I don't have a nowhere you ever deliver deliver on a on a project or a you know with a client and you finish it and you're like I can't charge that much anymore it's not it wasn't worth my it wasn't worth the time to do that no I've
never done that really wait wait no I'm sorry yes yeah my bad question finished a project like I can continue to do that financially I'll ruin myself yeah that's what you're saying yes I had that feeling all the time actually yeah so I started it off it was like 50 Grand and included
the gear so I probably made five grand for the day right and then and then I'm realizing also the problem that it's solving you know like I was learning a little bit more about that and the and the client that's that would pay it because they see the value in in it and
so it's funny it's like when I think you talk about this too like usually when a client pays even more they're usually EAS easier to work with too you know they're just I know just the case so right now I've landed on 15 and usually it's like it's a podcast setup you know
because it's multiple cameras um and then I think the value is really the training um but I think I think the question I was trying to get to is like I kind of don't know where to stop so you just said like dang dude that's kind of pricey but then my had like
I I had somebody tell me like dude you should be charging 25 Grand and here's the reason why because you're adding a level of um interior design too it's not just the gear it's like you're you're transforming a space yeah okay there's no there's no way there's no real answer to this but
there's no ending to what you should charge because as you level up customers the customers problem is bigger every time so if you stay within a very specific small to mediumsized business 15 grand they're going to choke on that and then your pool of clients is going to start to contract right whereas
if you keep leveling up somebody's like hey I want to look like Johnny but I actually run a $200 million company so let's let's take the abstract lesson The Meta and take it to your specific business is that okay yeah all right so the way that you you're like dialing a day catchy
it's got alliteration it's got you know nice flow to it but ultimately what you're doing is is the way I would sell this is I'm going to tell you right now you're going to overpay for what I do except for when you factor into one thing how long would it take for you
to do with your team how many iterations would you have to go through and when at what point will you be happy with the result do the math in your head right now whatever that number is I'm going to give you a new number and you're going to just see if that is
above or below right that's really good so this is all I would do that that's in an abstract framework there's a friend of mine I can't say who he is exactly but he transformed his business the guy does over a half a million dollars in Revenue in a year and he's a oneperson
company right one person company and he works like 10 hours a week it's beautiful and the thing that he shared with me which I I hope your audience finds this to be super valuable sorry friend for revealing your secret but I'm just going to do it here it goes he used to charge
a set fee for what he does and he works in the web space so he designs and builds websites for his clients and then he realized okay now that I finished that project I'm on the hunt for another project and that can be grueling so his fundamental shift isn't what he did he
just changed how he presented it and how he offers service so he changed from a fixed to subscription fee and I'll talk about that okay so he goes to his prospects and says okay you need a website and websites aren't the static things they need to be updated security all the time things
are happening all the time it's like a like a living organism it's like a house plan it needs to be taken care of otherwise it will die if you had to hire an art director a copywriter a web developer and a designer what would that cost let's just do the numbers together let's
just say that number wanted being 400 Grand goes that's just 400 Grand but if you have to fire replace them now you're talking about compensation whatever exit package time training so now you're losing even more money let's add another 100 Grand on top of that now if you had a hire recruiter we
know we have to pay them 20% on top of that so let's just keep doing more math and then you have to find a workpace for them to work you have to give them the software the hardware and then how often do you maintain that so I'm telling you right now all that
can just disappear let's just say that's an $800,000 number I will do this for you for less than x% of that annually and what I'm going to do is I'm going to build the site for you I'm going to maintain it and we're going to have quarterly conversations and we're going to keep
updating things as we go does that sound like it works for you they're happy he has five or six clients that's all he needs he doesn't have to keep chasing new clients all the time but the onus is on him to constantly evolve and deliver greater value over time this is the subscription
model it's different than retainer model and I only recently understood the difference between a retainer and a subscription in this way cuz I had time to speak with Ron Baker who's like a master at economics and accounting explain this to to me or actually to the audience a retainer is I pre- buby
time in bulk for discount so we're always selling time so I'm going to buy 20 hours of your time at instead of $200 an hour 120 so you're great I got good cash flow and now I'm always worrying like what hours am I using and so I'm just going to try to fill
that up so you may have a policy in the contract where some minutes or hours roll over but not all of them so next week you add another five hours and you just keep doing that so they burn the hours they don't use you get to charge them more for the hours that
go over but that's the model a subscription is we don't look at at hours anymore you're going to pay no matter what and I'm and my team are going to obsess over how to keep increas in the value to you as a customer totally different we move away from looking at blocks of
time to looking at Value created so the way that you honor that in the way that you keep clients for a really long time is like you know Mary I've been thinking about the way you're doing this and I think we need to upgrade the the microphone or this and you know I'm
noticing that as you're aging differently we need to adjust the lights I got to fly in we're going to take care of this we got you Mary that's the difference yeah no that's really good what was the first thing you did creatively to start exchanging for money like service wise was it graphic
design no I was washing cars oh creatively creatively okay trying to be funny that was not funny first thing yeah so around graphic design yeah I was a production artist cool cuz like dude it's funny because you are you have such good business Acumen and I observation generally speaking I'm not I'm not
trying to make blanket statements but often times creative creatives get into business and offering them their services and they typically they they have a hard time making it because the business part just kind of messes with them uh maybe they they get a little too attached to the craft or I don't know
when did you feel like two questions of it's what are the what what would you say to a person who's like really good at a thing let's say video graphic design photography but like having to get good at business could Rob him from just focusing on like The Craft okay can can you
remember that question cuz I need to correct something before I answer that question okay will you remember your question yeah okay will you remember it art art like oh you're in the headlights over there all right just remember it whatever it was that you just asked okay all right you said you have
good business Acumen I don't I'm going tell you right now I have terrible business Acumen cuz I was once like all of you I really was I was ter up business the first three businesses I started I completely failed I didn't understand the difference between revenue and profit like you know how you
said oh I would use to package $15,000 $55,000 so was profit right it ain't profit because somebody had to go there and do that work and if you had to pay that guy to do that job then there might be $3,000 left for profit right so it's not even understanding those principles in
my mind that that's how I ran my first business into the ground I'm like what I don't understand this at all my first business I was 17 years old I just put it out there okay so I'm struggling to build a business and I'm just figuring it out as I go I don't
know what to do what to say and someone on the internet I want to say her name is Christine it's not Christine she's from San Francisco she was on a Twitter Liv space call with me and we're just talking about something and she goes what people don't fundamentally understand about sales and many
of the concepts that you're teaching is they think that by looking at it they understand they don't it's like asking you and me to play chess and I'm a world chess champion that would be your client cuz they're in business they know negotiation and sales and you say try to beat them at
chess and you're great but you don't know how to play chess they go okay and you're blindfolded try to play that game try to win so that's me as a creative person and I think I only became successful because of two or three different things number one is stupid belief in self like
I just love myself like this work is good I don't know why people don't want to pay me but one day they will they just haven't figured it out yet that's number one and number two is just having the belief in s and actually having real skill so putting in your 10,000 hours
as Malcolm Gladwell describes it I have a skill so I love myself and I think the skill and the self are matching the rest of it you just figure out on the job but it wasn't until I hired a business coach or actually worked with business people who who taught me not literally
taught me but through observation I'm like oh oh you're doing things a little bit differently I would rather do that cuz what I'm doing is really painful M so I learn how to bid that's good and so every time you level up you buy a little bit more time to play the game
you know you're not old enough to go to the arcade but when we were at the arcade back in the day bro I'm only I mean I'm 33 I can I've I've got arcade dude retro arcade I'm talking about for people who are old enough to remember when you had a pocket full
of quarters shut up no not that old come on okay when when we you to Aladdin's Castle or time zone or whatever we would go golf plan we would come in with a hand of quarters and we'd play like street fight or something and you put your quarters up because that's how many
times I get to play this and somebody's that I got next they have to put their quarter up so the whole point of business and life and game is how many quarters can you stack up can because you want to play the game for as long as possible we know that no matter
how good you are it is finite because the time is ticking down already so you got to stack the quarters so what we do is we we we learn a skill couple of quarters that's good but we will run out of quarters banking just unskill and that's a trap a lot of people
creative people fall down and they're not entirely to blame because it's an idea that's perpetuated by academics within their schools to say like just work on your craft craft craft craft until you die let's celebrate more craft let's have shows about craftsmanship let's have speakers who are obsessed over craft where's the business
part I'm the guy in the back I'm about to like explode out of my skin here like hey you donkey when do we get to talk about how to sell this stuff how to speak about it how to be positioned in the marketplace so that we attract the right kinds of buyers for
our services so they keep playing the craft game and we know that a certain level it's diminishing return on investment of time yeah like you're good you're like nationally good being more good or gooder not a real word is not really going to change your game so what we have to do is
we have to learn another skill set maybe we need to learn communication or presentation or sales or marketing lead generation conversion strategy branding maybe we should try one of those things because that will help us okay so the mindset of the creative person is just to get better at craft if I make
the most pristin video if the video is extra crispy as you like to say as young people say or you know oh I came up with a super dope transition yeah that's cool but did you help that person's business grow that's all it is good and I can make an inferior video and
still get better results and and I have evidence for this who does who is the most prolific successful YouTube Creator right now Mr Beast what do you think about the quality of his videos I mean he int I mean he's talked about being in 10 they they've leveled up as of late but
no it's like it's m m yeah am merp merp yeah I'm like learning some new lingo here rich see you got to stay young with the kids no cap this guy just learned cap the other night no yeah top YouTuber and he doesn't have the the sharpest video yeah and he could yeah
he has the money but he doesn't and I have a theory as to why when I want to see pristine video I'm going to watch an Apple TV series I'm going to watch an HBO production I'm going to watch a Netflix thing I don't tune into YouTube because I want pristine video with
just Flawless lines of words and editing I don't need that actually that creates a barrier between me and that person so sometimes in the pursuit of the perfect pixel we create a barrier and we don't want that barrier dang YouTube juice so how much not mer No Cap juice juice yeah how much
did you pay that business uh coach how long into your journey was that your first investment into yourself uh because that's actually you know you in humility you said you don't have business agument and then five minutes later you're like yo you got to learn sales conversion fulfillment yeah retention back massages you
got to learn it all you have to you do learn it right yeah so in the very beginning all of us unless for whatever reason the stars are align just perfectly for us we will struggle for a period of time you may I know our friend Sean probably has we all struggle like
we all kind of be broke at some point and then we hit this point and we hit that proverbial Road the fork in the road and we have to make a decision do we want to do more of the same and suffer or are we going to change sadly the vast majority of
the people in our space choose the right road which is the wrong road to lead down the path of more of the same and then they cry and they feel the world is unfair I hear from them all the freaking time and I feel so bad for them my heart does go out
to them but I say friend if if nothing changes nothing changes you're just going to keep doing this let's try something else I don't care that's the whole reason why Trump got elected he's like I'm not saying I'm a great option I'm not even saying I'm a good human being but you want
more of the same that's an interesting platform to run on right because people are like yeah my life ain't great I don't want more of the same I want something different we sure got something different all right but that's another topic so let's try to choose something else so was hiring my business
coach care the first investment itself no it's one of many and it's a continual Perpetual investment in myself you might read some books that's an investment in yourself I attended workshops I attended a sales Workshop made my skin crawl out my mind I ran out of that meeting like never again that's the
last super sales webinar you in person it was horrific buy my books in the bag I'm like there's zero value being created here all of this was to qualify people to move up to chain to buy more products for that person I don't want that yeah I don't want that I don't know
why they keep doing that so I'm like I ran from that I I I I've taken I've enrolled in a weekend course to learn video editing I pay people to say like hey will you share some of what you know and like nah don't worry about I'll tell you what I know I'm
like great even better at least let me buy you lunch or something so we're investing in ourselves all the time so about five or six years into my business at this point we're doing about two2 million $2.2 million every year and I'm like hey what's the next threshold CU I'm not content with
that let's go there's a glass ceiling I want to break past it I meet my business coach Kier McLaren I work with him he helps me to change first year $3.9 million wow okay and that was just the lowest it's ever been since then so we just keep jamming after that I wind
up working with Kier for 13 plus years I met with him every single week for 13 years I put in the work for many of those years this is the funny thing about YouTube y'all I'm 51 years old I created my first video when I was 42 so 12 years after this guy
is alive I start my first video but by then I've already put in a decade of teaching um I don't know how many years I've been work with k at that point so I'm going to go on the internet having the experience of teaching directing commercials making music videos with some of the
biggest brands and bands in the world reflecting what it is I've learned so people are like um how hard was it well you go put in your 10 years and you see how hard it is yeah and if you're good year one congratulations you're a freaking genius the rest of us we just
got to work for it that's really good what what is the the thing you want to get better in right now marketing we suck okay dang that's one that was one of the questions I had was like why you suck yeah why why do you suck yeah but what's I think people can
sometimes mistake the two of what like the difference between branding and marketing yeah but you're a genius when it comes to branding and you just said like we suck at marketing why do you think you suck at marketing with millions of subscribers almost a million on Instagram at the time of shooting this
like why would you say that I say that because I look at the results sadly I I'll talk real with you right now so let's get into some numbers okay um last year I think we did a little over 5 million in Revenue none of it comes from client work we've been client
free our our freedom date is December 2018 wow we stopped doing client work that's it it's an important date for us it's like our emancipation right sorry if I use that word how much people are still with you from 2018 could you say we good question just a small handful okay some didn't
make the transition some didn't want the trans I and some of them have left recently to pursue their own career doing what we do so I love them for that so Bravo congrats Matthew good job all right but you know we we we change we evolve right so um so so last year
I said we did a little over $5 million this year I don't think we're going to break 5 million which is concerning to me it's like I only want to move in One Direction it's up I don't want to believe in gravity I just want to keep moving up and so and I
think about companies and people who sell one product do one course that's semi mediocre but understand their Niche really well and they do $10 million sales every single year and they do one big promotion or something like that they're done and I think that's cool but I don't want that because I'm not
doing this purely in pursuit of money money is just a scorecard for the impact I get to make so we're trying to change education but in order for us to think big and actually make the kind of impact I want we need lots of capital to burn to hire more people to keep
doing what we're doing and it's okay that we don't make a ton of money I just want to play it on a bigger stage and so that's the problem we have a bunch of courses I think we're okay at marketing and the difference between marketing and branding is marketing is focusing on sales
and revenue where brand is focused on long-term value creation I I have no doubt that the long-term value Creation in the brand that we built will be worth a lot of freaking money but in order to get it to that point we have to keep playing we need more quarters on the on
the dash there we just need it other wise I can't get it to that level okay and I don't want to do it by myself I don't want to do it as a three person operation I want to do it as a 50 100 person operation creating the kind of content and educational
materials that's going to transform the lives of the people not just in this country but all over the world that's the mission that's good and I have a really big freaking Mission you know how uh Gary vaynerchuck says I'm going to buy the Jets right so we we understand what's motivating Gary some
childhood immature obsession over the Jets and he just needs to do it I know there's a video on that that explains why I want to make enough money I can go out and buy an art school and transform the entire school that's going to require a lot of money it's probably going to
require more than $100 million I want to change it I want to change the game you know there's this thing I'm A Game of Thrones fan it's like um Danny Targaryen she's like we don't want to keep the wheel just keeps going one king is replaced by another King by a queen whatever
she wants to break the wheel I want to be a wheel breaker that's good what what are you doing now to like make your way toward cuz here here's you're supposed leas you but you miss your mark I don't watch I didn't watch that's why I miss my mark do old people watch
Game of Thrones only no I'm just kidding no smart people do yeah dang it rip um skull emoj no you say 100 million to trans is it because you're you're thinking about transforming it in its traditional sense because you want to know the plan I'll tell you the plan right now I'll just
put it out there I went to art center Art Center is not for sale but I'd like to buy art center they have four buildings they have a bunch of like what I would consider institutional knowledge worldclass instructors they have Antiquated programs on how to disseminate that they're working on it no no
shade but I would just like to go and buy it sadly let go most of the administrators yeah create a hybrid school where there's like in-person Gathering space theaters uh common areas workshops and labs and then bring in guest speakers but try to turn as much of the knowledge into a digital product
as we can to share with our students who have different learning modalities who may be like uh visually or hearing impaired so that we can we can address that but also sometimes people need to see something 14 times before it gets through their head yeah right and then to be able to disseminate
that across the world for a fraction of what it costs today the goal would be to take eight semesters worth of tuition turn into one and offer the exact same program D that's really good I went to UNLV for broadcast journalism before that in high school I took broadcast journalism and I just
stuck with it you know people say like dude you're so gifted I'm like no I just never put down the camera I would hope that I'd be good at what I do this many years and the funny thing about it go when I was in college was learning it I almost feel like
when you when you when you have to standardize education the the it takes a long time to steer the ship which is why there was literally people who were doing like when they when they were journalists they were literally typing on typewriters and like newspapers and stuff and like at the time it
was like 20 2009 you know where Twitter is coming along and like news is starting to be changed and it made me think a lot about the T the signs of times and trying to bring relevant information to a large group of people and also change it when it needs to be changed
but it not be so standardized like I how would you see like your way being different in that because I would say that's why they suck the art institutes is because they feel like in order to change this thing we have to it has to go through a process that makes it like
no we'll just keep teaching the same thing then yeah I think the arts institute wound up closing right yeah there's some Scandal there too that I can't speak to because I don't know unfortunately cuz I was really close to going I was cuz I DOD the bullet brother DOD the bullet here's the
problem is that for a lot of people who are uninformed buyers of products and services what looks like a thing isn't a thing like what looks like a Louis bag may not be Louis bag after all might be this $50 knockoff right yeah right so what happens is there are real institutions who
know how to teach and then they're like well why don't we create something that looks and sounds and you know and we'll hire the third tier teachers who couldn't get there and we'll teach them here and then we'll take your money we'll help your parents pay for the education through loans and all
that kind of stuff and they go through this and they can only sustained itself for so long and then you look at the quality of education and the and you it's demonstrated in the students themselves like what art institute sorry shade throwing wind up doing something significant and and if they did then
probably the school had little to do with it and it's actually because they were actually really talented before they got there right and so it has the look and feel of something that's high quality but it is not so we're not talking about that let's talk about taking a really great school and
trying to make it better so the thing that works against us is it's run by committees MH there's usually a Board of Trustees and a whole bunch of people trying to like guide this thing that are not 100% vested in the outcome they just want to make safe conservative decisions naturally I understand
why and then you have just Legacy well our forefathers did it this way and their forefathers did it this way why wouldn't we just keep doing it well I don't know if you've noticed the world's changed a lot there's lots of tools and things that are available to us that we can do
now here's the example I would give to you four years ago we thought work from home or remote work was a terrible idea now it's the predominant way in which most companies are run and they've been able to do something and it's really important they've decentralized their operation so that there's no cataclysmic
failure in case the it system goes down Well everybody's working from home their computers are still working the internet's still working and this is good so we have some redundancy so we have these kinds of programs for finances for computer for security why would we have it for people so it totally makes
sense so when we're forced to change and innovate we will change and we will innovate unfortunately there's no motivation here to change or innovate because they're not forced to so I feel like I'm that forc a force from the future to say like I will create a new business model to then threaten
you with love there's another model here and until we make enough success and noise they will not feel threatened today we're nothing we're like the flea in the back of the butt no one cares but one day we won't be that flea and we'll be a small dog and it will bark a
lot and eventually people are like wait what's happening here that's really good and think about this my business coach told me this he goes when companies acquire smaller more Innovative companies it looks like they just bought them it's the other way around I'm like what so when Disney bought Pixar you think oh
they just absorbed them kill the competition and goes that's not what's going to happen it's weird financially they bought them but Pixar bought Disney cuz the Pixar people will be running Disney M and sure enough John Lasser the whole team because they're so good at doing what they do that Disney realized in
animation we just need to learn from them so they paid them a lot of money and they acquired all the top talent and they put them in executive decision-making roles so it's not what you think so this might happen to where a big institution like we love the Innovative thinking we can't get
there so we just buy you and now you tell us what to do you sit on the board you run the company and that's what we'll do we'll start to change it that's cool you will you probably would you call it the future because that' be fire that that that name works for
me right now yeah no it's dope I honestly had the same thought over the summer because somebody came to me and was like yo I'm looking for a like a a Content person so now that we're in this era where you know having somebody at least one person that understands photo video and
all these things uh matters and I just operated in that role for a long time and then I see Gary ve has dck and dck you know brought a new breed of genre when it comes to creativity and that is almost like a Swiss army knife of a creative that you understand the
um the reason why you're following somebody around and filming them and all that stuff I call him a shreditor kind of me and Sean kind of like we kind of came up with that idea and so I was like yo I got like 80 I got like 80 to 100K for this person
do you know anybody and like honestly I've made a handful of them but they all work for other people now and you know my my brain has been trying to wrap around like how do I systemize the approach to be able to create trators because it's a guaranteed like 50 60 at minimum
if you are a young gun wanting to just get a secure job and live somewhere you know like but then being almost like this agency that can um not agency but like you know they can hire people that are certified you know you want me to design the business model for you please
okay I'll do it for you right now okay if you do it and you're super successful send me some money later okay here's there's couple parts to it you know one of the things that I think is a benefit to being like people like you and me is we get to be around
really freaking smart people we're only stupid if we don't actually learn from them right cuz they're just spilling ideas all over the place so I've learned these Concepts from different people who are in my circle I'm very grateful for that the first part is you set up an academy and the outcome is
very clear earn 50 to $100,000 a year traveling the world working with super influential people and not only are you going to produce work for them but you're going to be within a hairs brought away from your the mentor of your dreams how does that sound okay join me I'm going to teach
you how to do this the systems the techniques the storytelling structure the strategy and upon completion my other age agency a placement agency will help you find a job with one of those people the placement agency is in contact with all these influential people it's like you need a person I got the
right person right temperament the right whatever it is that you need and the minimum that you're going to pay them is 6 80 whatever you work out to be but you have to charge a placement fee with them and that's going to be 20K okay now here's the cool thing everybody applies in
your program you don't accept because they're not all good enough they have to demonstrate certain things because the biggest thing that you have to do is you have to filter who goes through your program because that's going to largely determine how you're going to be successful I have this Theory Harvard is not
the best school in the country or in the world they're just the best at picking the future winners look at Bill Gates Dropout uh Zuckerberg Dropout uh all these guys are just in gals are dropouts because they're going to be successful so what Harvard did was they created a powerful enough magnet that
they would apply so they can say Harvard Dropout yeah and that's important so when they're super successful then go back and donate a ton of freaking money and they can say well we'll give you an honorary degree you know those kind of things work now all the rejects that you have this may
or may not be ethical but I'm going to say it you sell the rejects as a name to unlv's video Department program because they need students and they can work with them and they will pay you money for those qualified leads so these people have already expressed intent we want to learn we
want a career in journalism and video videography or editing you're like you know what you you move them over there dude it's amazing there's a three-way business model right there no and that's that's when I mapped it out I I saw that part the thing I here's the thing I struggle with is
the idea that you a lot of these entrepreneurs you would work for and I'm seeing it they're losing a lot of their creatives because they sell a lifestyle type of business Freedom you know do what you want and and then but the guy who's filming him say that message can't can't live by
that and so what's happening is is like the creatives want to be entrepreneurs but it's like no dude you got paid for you're you're getting a salary for this job and it's like I also paid $20,000 for you to be here like that that's kind of the thing that I like I'm like
I don't know how much I involvement I have in that part but it would it would speak to the placement agency that like hey this didn't work out after a while was like well they had the talent but this person and I know you somebody might just say yo just have haven't signed
a contract well I mean I guess but do you know what I'm saying no what's the problem that like I'm guaranteeing like a salary job essentially with the placement a agency but the people the types of people they work for make build their self-belief to want to go out and build their own
thing so it's it's a thing that's happening like you mean the people you place then wind up leaving and doing their own thing right well how's that your problem I'll tell you something cuz I placed them no it's not your problem do you know how this works have you ever hired a recruitment
like a head hunting agency before I have that's how I know that how this works okay so here's the skinny they place people the better they are the less Duds they send you to look at as candidates they make 20% if they quit or you fire them with a certain amount of time
then you help them find someone else that no extra charge but after a certain period of time it's not your problem anymore yeah okay they're hungry and desperate for someone to do the work for one reason or another either they're not inspiring or they're cruel they're not good people or the person didn't
wind up having a good ethic beyond that then they all part ways all you have to do is call up a recruitment agency right now find out the terms and policies actually you can just skip the whole process type into jat GPT I need a boiler plate placement agency contract that follows industry
standards and Norms about fees and termination agreement have it drafted for you it'll just pull it right out I just save you some money that's fire okay just put it in K you you mentioned it AI um I just wrote a few things down because I'm not I'm not resistant for it you
know like there are some things that are like pretty interesting um what are your thoughts around AI stuff like you know put it you put this phrase in it creates that graphic um you know as far as like the skill that no long we talked about so much about like putting in the
time and the reason why there was so much that you had to offer because you spend a lot of time doing a thing and it's kind of like the time to do a thing is is getting smaller and faster and requiring less Discovery um which makes a person you don't know what are
your thoughts on AI if you and I had an opinion about Ai and it actually impacted what's going to happen in the future then I would love to talk to you about it but no amount of you and me talking is going to slow climate change or to change the conversation that's happening
with AI it's not going to happen so if we if we accept a new reality where there's climate change AI is going to to completely uh disrupt every industry possible then the only real question that we should have is what are we going to do to incorporate AI into what we do to
enhance our productivity our creativity and everything else so here's what I think and I I've thrown this out in front of entrepreneurs before is I want you to imagine when you're when your daughter is 22 years old and she looks back on this time and says Dad that was the greatest economic upheaval
and opportunity in the last 2,000 years daddy why aren't we in the golden Tower right now Daddy what did you do with AI like oh you know I slept on it I slept on it I resisted I didn't do it or I was slow to adopt and we were destroyed oh that's why
we live in this part of town and not that part of town I just want you to think about it like that okay so if you're not incorporating AI into your workflow to automating certain things to improving your customer service onboarding experience helping you generate ideas helping you take tedious things away from
what you're doing which you already are by the way then you're then you're going to get left in the dust fire that's it so if you were teaching somebody photo Photoshop graphic design is that a is that now a quicker delivery of Education information because now it's like yo you don't have to
use the masking tool just I don't know you know you know what I'm saying I know what you're saying you still do because it ain't perfect the cutout ain't perfect there's some fundamental skills that you need to but I'm going to flip the question in a totally different way which is well if
I want to learn Photoshop what should I do well why don't you just ask AI design me a curriculum that that's 7 weeks long that allows me to watch a combination of videos and read tutorials for 4 minutes or four hours a day with clear actionable outcomes that are in line with industry
standards to to work in a job doing X Y and Z design that for me I'm a 24 year old kid I have ADHD and you know I can only sit in the chair for 10 minutes at a time that's what I'm talking about so forget about the threat of like do we
need to learn rotoscoping because AI will cut it out for us but think about like how do we become an enhanced human in the pursuit of creativity and self-expression while we utilize all the tools in front of us not just some that's really good I love that you see the shift there no
yeah one is threatening one is embracing right yeah I think it's dope like literally Neil just texted me because I did an interview with Neil um and he was like yo I threw our interview in Opus clips and it literally send gives you 10 clips and he was like bro they're actually not
that bad you know and I was like turn up dude run it you know um turn up grench turn up turn up the yesterday we were here and you were interviewing uh Leila Heros and before the interview you asked her like is there stuff that you are excited about or want to talk
about I didn't ask you that question but are we at that point in the interview now yeah you earned it C the violin the music's yeah what's exciting you now and like what what what's kind of been the thing that um you would hope that somebody would ask you questions about I I
get so many opportunities to speak that I'm not quite sure how to answer that stupid question I don't know who asked that question at first place no I mean Omar are there things that you wish that I would talk more about I'd be happy to talk about them I'm a pretty open book
so if there's something you want to know and I don't want to presume that what I think is interesting is what you might think is interesting so are there are the things like little nooks and crannies like hey I thought heard a rumor about this and I'm happy to talk about it no
I guess something that comes to mind is that you probably spent a lot of your time behind a computer and now you just said that you do a lot of speaking and I know you mentioned getting better at communication um but what have you found about speaking and the iterations and what makes
people draw to you in a room when you have an hour I think we've lost the art of rhetoric the art of conversation the art of listening and I think whether you're speaking in a podcast like this or on stage in front of hundreds or thousands of people we have to remember that
there are humans sitting on the other side of that stage that want to have an experience with you so if you're going to just sit there and talk about yourself and talk at them talk over them you're really missing the opportunity and it's quite sad to me like I go to conferences a
lot these days and I get to see speakers and for the most part with a few exceptions of course they're really boring it's very mechanical what they do it's very produced in terms of like they're not going to have a spoken word or a slide that's got one type on it and I
think look why didn't I just watch this on YouTube Ted already does this better than you friend why are you doing this right now and you're killing my brain you're killing my time I'm starting to resent you I'm resenting this conference and those are not good feelings and I look around the room
like is anybody else feeling this or am I just the only person awake in The Matrix right now and sometimes I feel like I'm the only one then I go backstage and I talked to a couple of friends I really trust and I really let them know how I feel like dude I
can't believe you feel this way too yet we commit the same sin over and over again and I try not to do that when I go up on stage very rarely is it ever rehearsed uh I look at my slides I'm like I hope I got in the right order a couple of
times and then I go and do my thing and I want to feel the energy of the room I think all public speakers would do better if they were to study crowd work from Comedians and learn to work with the audience to be more improvisational to be more conversational so I'll tell you
some things that you can do right now just right now if you got a talk that you're doing tomorrow in front of your company board of directors or clients or thousands of people here are two or three things that you can do number one ask audience real questions don't ask them purely rhetorical
questions like literally ask him why are you here I'd love to hear from you and just say that and just talk to them like I want to have a conversation with you right now and try to let go of the need for it to follow a very specific talk track and just be
a little bit more improvisational the more that you can do that the better number two is to learn to use your entire body and your body language and I think a lot of times we have this model of what Perfection looks like and we try to emulate that and so we walk we're
stiff we have our hands a certain way we're very professorial it's like yo it's okay if you shrug your shoulders it's okay if you raise your hands like this EX exess and communicate through the entire body not just like this this is really really important and I think the last thing is if
you have voices if you can bring a little bit more of like the quirkiness of who you are on there onto the stage into the platform you're going to connect and hit with so many people I'm going to show I'm going to present this to you basketball was played a very specific way
for a really long time they wore really short shorts M uh they had bad haircuts and they would dribble and do layups there's no three-pointer that's it and then black people get in the game and they're doing all kinds of stuff I'm like whoa this game is fun now it's interesting it's improvisational
it's a little flashy and it's it's really fun to watch and you start to see Innovation happen and I think there's something that's really beautiful about black culture here in America is that there 's his lyricism to the to the way Black Culture interprets music fashion architecture design Sports Performance comedy that gives
everyone else permission it's like oh we never had to do it this way the whole time and they like no one told us we we couldn't do it so we're just going to do it yeah when you come from a place of not having a lot you have to use your imagination and
you start to break rules like oh we could do anything and I think that's what's really interesting so speaking as a person of color if I can just say that it's like I try to bring in my culture my flare my emotion my my quirkiness my comedy my humor my sarcasm my sometimes
inappropriate jokes I'm just going to bring them because you know what I don't care if you hate me hate me but I'm just going to be me great last thing uh you know Russell Brunson I know of him he says he says he defines marketing as he would say marketing is attracting and
repelling would you say branding is attracting and repelling yes but I think we're saying in different ways I think attracting branding is attracting and repelling attracting more of people who identify with what you're about and repelling the ones that are not I think marketing is attracting in that it's attracting money and revenue
but it's repelling as like it's repulsive to me the the kinds of tactics that marketers use they're in for a short-term Revenue gain and they'll do anything and everything they can to get that buck MH we've been burned all of us have been burned by one program or another they had not lived
up to its to its marketing and that's problematic so I think the the like the traditional marketer that many of us have problems with they think they can just find an infinite number of new customers or new suckers to sell to and they will and they'll keep doing that until they make enough
money they can invest and legitimate businesses it seems like that's the way it goes you know what I'm saying as soon as I said that I saw you SM like yeah I know the plan I've seen it before I would rather just build slowly if it means that we're not going to be
a $10 million company as fast as I I would like it to be so be it but I'm really interested in building audience community and meaningful connection and if that takes a gazillion years let it take that long what it so I mean you have been able to make decent Revenue yeah what
do you do with your Revenue I invested in our people I invested in our programs and that's where I'd like to go so let's say tomorrow you're like Chris I'm I'm a billionaire I'm a philanthropist I would just want to give you $10 million what would you do no strings attached do whatever
you want because we just we just love you and we want to support what you do here's what I would do I would um take some of the the ideas that I think are successful now and just run it at massive massive scale so what I would like to do is to onboard
a whole bunch of teachers that I think are amazing give them a $155,000 advance and say take the time it's necessary to write and produce your course we know you can teach but we need to know that you can teach in video format and we will then just produce that so I would
probably need 10 producers and and a bunch of editors working with them so that we're just onboarding them as fast as possible when they're ready to make the content and then to sell that content for a fraction of what it would cost you to get in a normal traditional brick and mortar school
that's what I would want to do so that's going to be a money losing proposition all day long until it's not so when you're about 50 or 100 courses deep into your catalog all of the sudden now that catalog becomes super valuable because somebody's going to have a good experience with this professor
and say oh you have this other thing I I wasn't even oh I didn't know that was available and this sounds really cool and I had a good experience and they just keep doing that so then all the instructors went in then the future is in a school wins but when we only
have a smattering of course it's like the the end of the journey is quite quick you might take three or four courses from us like oh that's that's kind of all they got cuz literally that's all we got that's what happens when your bootst stra self- finan person who believes in ethical long-term
brand building even though if it means that our marketing sucks that's really good and I like that I mean you didn't you didn't say stash it away in real estate or invest in stocks um there's a seems like the concept of being of retirement is not one that you uh subscribe to it
was or pay a retainer to well played um chasing retirement was an idea I had until I found out I could retire I'm like I don't want to retire this is stupid so I don't need more money for more money's sake this is where I start to kind of get confused because there's
a lot of people we know that only live a certain way like people have an like crazy amounts of money they don't live like that so what do you do with all that extra money mhm I think a lot of it is just because the idea winmore is fun for them but then
it's like wouldn't the idea of helping more people be better you notice this happens a lot in in the age of the tycoons the railroad tycoons the steel tycoons when they got older they found God they found religion and they started to give all their money away but they waited a mother freaking
long time to give that money away you could be doing it on the Ascension right and I'm not giving money way like I'm doing charity cuz charity runs out it doesn't Empower people you're only feeding them for the day what I'm talking about is investing in tools to empower people to achieve a
lifetime of earning that's the way I'm going to do this so there's no point for me to make $1 million and put in the bank what am I to do with that to make more money that I'm not going to spend yeah I might buy another chain or something but other than that
another L you know another bag I mean you know I need another bag Daddy needs a new bag but outside of that it's like I don't i' rather just use that money to help people and here's the best part to try to bring the whole conversation in in a little Loop here to
bookend it right we talked about personal branding at the beginning and branding I think I mean I I I am very fortunate to live this life that I get to live that the message that we send out through the internet literally reaches some kid in Ghana who doesn't have the opportunity that people
here have the financial um resources the mobility just nothing but somehow they can watch that video and start to apply that and transform their lives and I know this because they send me messages I notice because when I walk the streets somewhere other than where I live someone will come up to me
in some weird corner of the world it's like you changed my life I'm like what do you mean and I hear this I used to earn minimum wage and then last year I did $150,000 this year I'm going to do$ 250 to this this makes me smile from ear to ear and I
give him a big hug and I say I shouldn't say this but I say it anyways because I think it'll impact them I say I'm really proud of you please continue that's good and don't forget to send me some money yeah whis cuz Daddy need a new bag that's all dang dude guys
don't hear that which part the new bag no the that part twoo no the proud of you yeah I had a friend tell me that uh he was like Hey Omar I just want I don't know the last time you heard it but like legit bro I'm proud of you as a friend
bro it got me CU I was like dang you I haven't heard that maybe yeah I haven't heard that from a man even though he was a friend you know like like manto man it it it does something to hear that because uh probably we don't hear it enough yeah um but dude
thanks so much could you uh let people know where would go next step with you from this conversation yeah before I say that uh my wife and I we went to like a like a a relationship building workshop course yeah and there was this man who was teaching it and we were watching
videos and reading his book and he says like we all want love but love is such an abstract concept so let's try to make it less abstract he goes we just want to be acknowledged and appreciated that's so fundamental and it's so easy to do I see you and I'm grateful for you
so I know this cuz I understand about a little bit about human psychology is when I look at people in the eye I know I know that most people are a little bit broken inside and they needed a word of encouragement in their life and they didn't get it from probably one of
their parents or both so when I really want to touch somebody emotionally like just strike a nerve with them I just look them in the eye and just like you're deserving you're good and you need to be nothing more than that and I just see you and I do that and Men start
crying immediately in front of me and it's like it's okay it's okay to cry and I think if the world kind of operated under this principle of just acknowledging people and appreciating them just a little bit it doesn't take anything it'd be a better place so I'm going to look at you all
in the eye right now and say you're worthy and I'm proud of you keep it up and on that note if you'd like to follow me and find out some more information about what we do I'm on most social channels at the Chris do that's do and if you're interested in the future
my future and yours as well it's the future f.com it's not the further it's the future thanks very much appreciate you there dud there's a scripture that that hits that yeah so when when Jesus comes he goes to John the Baptist and John the Baptist baptizes Jesus in the in the uh the
Jordan River and and then it says in all the Gospels it says this account a dove comes upon him and a voice from the sky says this is my beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased it's the first thing God says about Jesus is that I'm proud of you and I and I
see you it's kind of crazy huh there's something there yeah if you want to equip yourself with the right Community training and resources to take your business to the next level I want to to personally invite you to check out the future PR group and our membership specifically created for experienced business owners
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