Genius Personal Branding Tips w/ Chris Do

you can actually apply the principles of branding and personal branding with zero followers Chris do Chris isn't Emy winning creative director CEO and chief strategist of blind a brand strategy design consultancy and founder of the future chriso chriso chriso Chris do things are changing and we we need to learn to adapt because otherwise we're choosing to be irrelevant and it's a it's a bad choice to make if we bring it all the way down to content creators how do you apply practical brand principles to a smaller YouTube channel all right welcome back to the thi

media podcast I'm here with Chris doe 2.3 million subscribers over 250 million views on your YouTube channel the future you are the CEO director and the awardwinning designer and chief strategist founder of the future mission of teaching 1 billion people how to make a living doing what they love so you're definitely an expert and a futurist and so we're going to be talking about AI we're going to be talking about the Creator economy tips for YouTube creators as a content creator yourself brand um and some tactical things that people can apply to build their brands

make more money build their personal Brands but let's start with AI so AI is disrupting a lot you know that but there's a few things I looked up so a Goldman Sachs report found that 300 million jobs globally could be disrupted by AI technology banks are fighting over AI talent and looking to hire AI experts and there was one CEO who actually shared on Twitter that he replaced 90% of his support staff with an AI chat bot saying that copy and paste jobs are gone um and then chat GPT check out this stat last year

recorded 39% of the US work force did freelance work you're an expert in that per upwork but that chat GPT is already stealing work from Freelancers especially those that are writing so AI good bad and ugly what do you think um I I'm a futurist so I'm going to say good because it's hard to stop the flow of the ocean you you have to learn how to surf and like we if we say well um there's a time in which women or certain types of people didn't have rights you know we're moving in that direction

we have to just embrace it we don't care if you like the past the way it is Things Are changing and we we need to learn to adapt because otherwise we're choosing to be irrelevant and it's a it's a bad choice to make what do you think the timeline of AI disruption do you think it's going to go faster or slower than people are estimating well the estimates are wild so I don't know which estimates but I think it's happening and it's happening very very fast let's just take a look at Mid journey in terms

of the different models and the quality in which it's been able to achieve in the time in which it's been able to achieve so in the very beginning the images were a little wanky extra fingers and weird things and it just wildly unpredictable very artistic the robot Can Dream really well but not exactly something that that you can reliably get a get a result from and then we start moving into more natural language descriptions and the fingers start getting resolved and type and things starting getting clearer more focused and them the amount that you can

specify becomes even greater we're not even talking a year's time in which there are three or four releases of the of the robot it's incredible and chat GPT is only one year old I think it just had or at least publicly being developed of course behind the scenes are you a user of chat GPT absolutely how do you use it I use it to to generate summaries for our own YouTube videos to them to write descriptions and generate title ideas I use it to translate video content into Instagram content I use it to clean up

what I'm writing so I'll write a really ugly first draft the thing that is the most difficult for people is to write like just the right to express themselves because what happens is most people when they write they don't just write from beginning to end they write and they edit while they go because they want it to be right so my my new thing is I'm just going to write it's going to be ugly it's going to be messy it's not going to be structured well I feed it back to chat and chat rewrites it

for me with the intention of what I'm writing but formats it in the way that a normal person should understand cleans up a lot of language redundancy and oftentimes it writes better than what I write it sounds less human but it's grammatically structured way better than I have structured it so I I usually use a hybrid approach which is write dirty it cleans it up and put the dirt back in and usually at the the beginning at the end are you using AI in any other ways at the future for your channel other apps software

um I know the team is um we talked about like using AI to clean up the audio so that really bad audio can be can be fixed we can use it to fix flubs if you mess up the words they can fix it without talking to me re-recording there's a lot that we can do with it editing getting that first draft out cutting shorts it hasn't been great it's a hit and miss kind of thing I'll take the full blame for it maybe the original content wasn't something that you can edit like that I'm sure

some like Gary vaynerchuk would benefit from this cuz he speaks in sound bites and short piy statements so then the AI can pretty much pull that out for you so I look at it like this I don't think any entrepreneur sits there and says to themselves I want a th000 person team what they want is a productivity of a thousand people not to manage a thousand people so I think it's and I tell people like we're a 12 person company but we can act like a 50 person company while working less and doing better work

and having higher quality of life who would refuse that what do you say to especially as a designer yourself and you coach a lot of designers to the moral or ethical implications of AI getting involved in taking out the soul of design I think the soul and as it relates to design is a human construct that if I showed you good work I'm not sure you could tell that a human created or not I think it's Prejudice mostly because there's really bad Soulful work done by humans and really beautiful non-s Soulful work made by machines

I think in this age when we can make anything it becomes a question of why we should make it not what we can make or who can make it for us and so I think we're going to see a whole new rise or the Resurgence of skills that I think we used to and that we would we would pass up on for example art history history music history we need to know our history because we need to be able to make clear references to the machine it already knows the history it's that you don't we

we we're going to see rise in curators and people who have really good sense of style we know this like maybe some people are born with a good sense of style maybe it can be refined or you can learn it but the machine can make lots of things it's it doesn't know if it's good or not it knows it's it it's rendered well it knows that the lighting ratio between the foreground and the background are good but it's not necessarily good a human I think still needs to say well of all these really good images

this is the one that speaks to me to the brand and communicates the message it's the right feeling and until the machine can know that curation art history those kinds of skills are going to be very important and good old-fashioned ability to communicate in written form in verbal form because you still need to direct the machine recently on our team um I saw a skill Gap trying to just get a square image out of a video that was vertical and the ability to just maybe in Photoshop it be very easy for me and I realized

our social media manager said I don't know how to use Photoshop I just use canva and was unaware of how to to do that and so I thought huh okay is AI making people lazy probably a separate conversation and do you think that there's still going to be a gap if people overestimate the capabilities and do they still need to sharpen their skills to have a combination of skills will those be the the the most lethal you kind of spoke to you need to know how to talk to the cuz perhaps actually canva could have

solved the problem but he felt stumped yeah what are your thoughts I don't think tools make people lazy I think tools reveal the person that's all it's never been any different microwave popcorn's not going to make you fat you got to go eat it or you got to not exercise those are things that are going to make you fat so what the tools allow us to do is to hopefully be less Technical and and be more creative and I think that's what it's happening so shooting and aspect racials for video is very important it's the

thing that's been the bane of our existence you want to shoot vertical horizontal and then now I can't reprocess so now what we do we had to shoot 6K so you can do a center crop to maintain resolution but the whole idea of Framing and cropping is is a dead idea CU you can make it wider or you can make it narrow and you can reframe you can add to the head to the feet there's so much that you can do and we're just touching the tip of the Ice Bar so when we say lazy

then I think what we're saying is are you going to be less intentional when you go to shoot right because now you're not thinking about the framing the way you used to and you're shooting for averages like okay instead of like getting the shot exactly the I want I shoot a little wider than I think I need it's not as flattering for the person I shoot a little flatter that than I need and then I'll use the machine to fix it but I think it's just another Crown in the box of tools that we get

to use and the analogy I love to make is my brother who's a software engineer tells me this he goes use Adobe Illustrator right would that make you lazy by using illustrator I'm like why would you say that it's still very difficult to do these drawings well he says Adobe Illustrator is built on the postcript language as a software engineer I'm writing the code to make the image would you like to learn how to do the code you lazy bastard of course I wouldn't we use tools to enhance human creativity and productivity if it can

enhance it all I'm saying is it's just going to reveal the person that's underneath all that AI is a massive emerging Trend what other emerging Trends do you see in design and digital media that content creators and business owner should be paying attention to content creation if we say if you have a and what should that child be prepared for so that they have a a future proof skill or at least a skill that's in demand there are still demand for hight touch things inperson experiences the machine can't replicate that we get that but let's

put that aside if we look at like what the jobs of the future going to look like people who can articulate their thinking that's really important people who can direct the machine that's going to be important and we're going to need people to help them tell those stories so the artists the content creators the people who can right who understand like I see you're delivering this but if you said it this way or tried it with this story before it you're going to impact way more lives than than this I mean we're in a studio

right now where someone's converted their home into a studio that's like moving into the future right now these weird hybrid environments helping people tell stories and creating content have you heard that universities like Cornell and other schools have added content creation as part of their curriculum I haven't but that's pretty hilarious to me what is your feeling about traditional University versus the new way of learning that you and I and others are pioneering I think each person has a different learning modality and have a emotional connection to Brands so I don't think that person is

going there to learn video they're going there to get a piece of paper that says Cornell University I think that matters to them and it's okay because I'm not here to tell each person how to how to get their information my son for example he just got accepted into Columbia and that made him really happy because it's an ivy and before then I'm like I'll give you money travel the world do whatever you want he goes D I don't want that he couldn't tell me because it's a little bit too childish to say because I

care about the name and it reflects my identity but I recognize that I'm like that's cool those are your goals you go ahead and do that that's not my goal for you you get to do whatever you want so I can see that there will be demand for people are like parents saying my son or daughter's at Cornell and for that son or daughter I graduated from Cornell but we're like is that the very best video content program that you can go to probably not you probably should go to UCLA or USC or go to

the School of Hard Knocks and YouTube University how are you thinking about the evolution of education do you think that universities have to change or can they keep doing what they're doing they get to keep doing what they're doing because people are bought into the system and it requires too much thinking too much work for us to do something that's nonstandard but I'm hoping that there are pockets of entrepreneurs spread around different ideology who are experimenting with different models of Education that hopefully will then Rock the Paradigm and it will start to change slowly and

then it'll be like an avalanche if we compare to like what elon's been able to do with electric cars first it's like it's not going to work it's impractical it's it's just for like a few really forward Innovative thinkers and then it starts to like slip into is it going to be mainstream and then now it's so mainstream that I heard him say to stat on the launch of the cybertruck that they produce and sell more electric cars than all electric car companies in America combined not so much a joke anymore so it's like that

there's one person who leads it who has the resources the commitment following through with it who's all in on it who's going to change the game maybe it'll be you maybe me maybe somebody we don't know yet our children who knows but I believe it will change you mentioned Elon he a few weeks back posted on Twitter some anti-semitic and pro-nazi seeming stories and rhetoric and said he clarified in the comments but as a result advertisers pulled spending and when being interviewed they asked how do you feel about the advertisers pulling spending and he said

they can go f themselves gfy he said am I clear uh go f yourself and um do you think he's going to be blowing up his brand and doing Antics like that um what's your feelings on the future of X and on um if that's also just a brand move that actually strengthens his brand I'm really conflicted on this Elon is a person who's disrupted multiple Industries I feel like he's the second coming of Steve Jobs and what he's able to do I wish I could like all the things that he says and does but

I can't and it's really causing a lot of inner conflict within me um like what everybody says Elan please just do what you do and just keep your mouth shut but he can't he's autistic I believe uh he's rich and he's spoiled and that expression with great power or power corrupts absolutely absolute power corrupt absolutely and here's where he's at now so instead of trying to embrace it and saying I make mistakes I need to be more mindful of what I'm saying he quadrupled down on this and said go after yourself I don't care and

he he's like a child on stage with lots of money and saying I won't share and screw you and oh yeah see what I do to you and he made these threats to say like the people will decide they'll boycott it's like I think he's overestimating the Loyalty of his fans now I think he's drifting into this this kind of um what is it called identity politics to say like well I'm an independent guy who says Fu to the big companies and there's going to be a whole bunch of people who are like yeah that's

awesome but look at underlying what's happening here he took a multi-billion dollar brand overpaid for it then tried to unpay for it which is wild and then make all these weird changes to and destroy the brand so the future of X I'm I'm really concerned about as advertisers pull out and they're not worried about his threats he doesn't have all the cards he doesn't get to make all the rules and I'm glad uh but he has an incredible amount of power oversized amount and it it's kind of wild the fact that he controls starlink and

SpaceX means the governments have to come hand you know open hand and said Elon will you help us that is almost too much power for one man I love what he's doing but I think sometimes we need somebody to say like hey time out I heard that the most recent stats of how much money you need to make a year globally to be in the top 1% of humans is right around $32,000 so obviously we can't compare you to Elon there's a factor of more wealth there but you're rich we're in the 1% is that

what you're saying well you're rich you're powerful you got millions of subscribers you can do whatever you want when you see the power he has you got a lot of power how do you protect your your heart from it corrupting you it's a really good question um I'm I'm I'm driven by doing something that's greater than me and that's to help other people um it's it's in it's linked to my origin story the fact that refugees coming from Vietnam to come to America without a home can rebuild one and and find ourselves here and to

to have a peace of American Dream it's an obligation I feel to help other people uh at home and abroad and and that's what's going to keep me pointed forward we just had this conversation about money like how much money do you need to have before it's like what do you do with money I'm not going to spend it so to have more money is is what sense of security ego uh what what where what are we going to do with this I'd rather just use the money to go and make more content to help

more people hire more teachers and just scale up what we're doing to levels in which I think people are not fully comprehending like you and I were very rare as as creators on YouTube compared to the vast majority in which many of them are just making content in their bedroom they're not really building a business or a brand we're in a place where we can actually spend the money to do what we want to do it at Scales in which they can't and I think that's that's a pretty big responsibility I'm I'm a big fan

of Spider-Man there's this line that say with great power comes great responsibility and somebody flipped it on me said with great responsibility Chris comes great power so we have to play both sides of that is there anything else that you do to stay humble stay grounded um um and in your career over the last few years have you struggled with have you struggled with fame or awareness have you ever gone through any Evolution as you started getting more exposure or more known was it just a steady climb and you always had mental toughness or how

have you wrestled through honestly success I think we have to pay our dues and learn how to deal with our own ego and success at some point in our life I just paid for it mostly at the beginning which growing up poor being different being bullied and picked on by other people feeling ostracized by whatever communities I was in I I had to like learn to love myself and I I I say this kind of half-heartedly with tongue and cheek but the most confident people that you're ever going to see are overweight lesbians because they've

had to learn to love themselves really early on and the ones that I do are so powerful when I see them like everybody could just take a Chapter from your book right and learn how to love yourself the way you do and and I admire that so if you had a pretty pampered life and you didn't deal with a lot of adversity you have some fortune and some I think it could destroy you in lots of different ways we've seen it happen time and time again to different types of people so I think having a

good family Foundation sense of values and then being tested early starts to like make you travel inward versus outward to learn who you are what you stand for such that you have this resolve not to bend I heard this um child therapist he's written many bestselling books he said on stage something and I I thought was so important it was at my my children's school he said your children have something called will do not dominate them do not destroy their will by saying you must do what mom or dad says cuz you're going to need

that strength of will when they're tested when you're not around when their friends say do this steal this do this drug or hurt this person they need that strength of will to say no first of all you guys stop I'm not participating in this and you should not do this so when you break their will you break also their will to be able to stay true to themselves in situations where they're going to really need it and that really hit home for me you're a brand expert um not just by knowledge but I think by

career you have the real receipts brand gets thrown around what does it even mean okay you're right brand does get thrown around because it's such a 21st century concept and word and there's some history behind this and just for a little context it it's like when we have products that are competing in this market space and we have a good product we've established reputation we need to distinguish it from the other products so that people aren't confused in the marketplace so brand starts with just creating some distinctive elements a logo color palette way it's package

just to say like this is the high quality one and this is the lowquality one in the 21st century concept I think in the last 50 to 100 years we've moved into this place now when we have highly niched verticals we we no longer make the grow our own food or or or raise our own livestock and so now we we have a dependence on other people to provide these services to us and so we're now connecting to those things along the way when we have so much abundance and we don't have to worry about

our own food and clothing and shelter we we get to start to work towards what maslo talks about is like a higher purpose our sense of self our um self-actualization this is a very uh Western modern concept because until you have enough you're not worried about those crazy ideas right so we want to learn how to be connected and and to be able to express ourselves creatively so not to interrupt you but what you're saying on the hierarchy of needs is that some level you need a t-shirt cuz you need something to wear it's only

until you have more than enough that now the logo on the T-shirt becomes something of self-expression and that is related to brand is that what I hear you saying yes and Marty num who is written multiple books on brand and branding in his latest book brand flip and he writes like we don't buy anymore we join tribes we're searching for meaning and identity who am I when I do these things who am I when I buy this and so what we're doing is we're we're reaffirming values in ourselves and we're signaling to others what we

stand for we do this all the time you and I if you wear a cross it means you belong to a certain tribe of people if you carry a certain thing that like a gun that that means you belong to a certain it's like a lot of our own search for meaning and identity like who am I it's a very difficult question to answer so what we do is we We join tribes have a strong identity that we feel resonates with us and we also abandon them when they abandon what we think their values are

so very modern thing that's happened in the last 105 years thanks to the rise of social media is the companies don't own the brand the customers do meaning if Nike does something that betrays the tribe and community of the people who are fan and followers of them they say no Nike you've missed up and what we will do now is we will abandon you and then the corpor have to say do we want to go out of business or do we need to revise this is the Elon moment this is the bud moment and they

all make different decisions based on a number of variables so now when your when your essence grows to a certain point when there's enough people that show up and say you are this when you betray them they will leave you because that no longer rep represents who they are and there's been a lot of power that's shifted away from corporations to people when a certain Channel program or person or company he does something that's against those values we the people say we're going to boycott you advertisers pull out they don't want to pull out cuz

they're making money but they either pull out or they suffer the Wrath of the people too it's a really interesting fascinating time to be alive because the power shifted the people you mentioned Bud Light if you were Consulting with Bud Light they partnered with Dylan moany they put his face on the Can it dramatically affects their sales and I believe the the remen the it's still there's still some lingering effects who knows how long it'll last but was a pretty incredible moment what kind of Consulting would you give to these big Brands and I don't

know if you agree with this but there's this idea that Brands need to stand for something do you think at scale Brands Coca-Cola Bud Light actually kind of have to play it neutral to stay large because if you start really aligning with one tribe and ideology you're now potentially losing billions of dollars how would you consult them of what they could learn from that situation and what they should do going forward the Bud Light one is a strange example of what you should never do which is is this really who you are is this the

community you've developed or are you trying to be woke or tap into something that's trending right now and that's the worst thing that you can do because you don't even have a leg to stand on like we've always been for this no you haven't it's been clear and this is not reflective of your community it's like cashing in on something and that's like corporate greed or somebody who's a little bit too smart trying to like move the company in a Direction that's not real for them I think at the end of the day whether you

alienate people or embrace them it has to be reflective of who you are and your values and that's important Coca-Cola being a multi-billion dollar brand that's Global I don't think they're trying and have never been about polarization they're like the the polar bears during Christmas kind of people right that the red s Santa Claus people and they're like refreshment so they don't need to or nor should they Veer from that message they're bigger concern is do people want to drink sugar water anymore and that's the problem that they're working on so I I think it

has to be true to you and Nike did this with Colin Kaepernick and it seems like it is consistent with Nike's values it seems like it so there are a whole bunch of people burning their Nikes and barbecues and yeah and their sales went up because it's important for the people like yeah this is us and our tribe is here we'll buy two pairs of shoes for everyone that that guy Burns I'm not 100% certain that the person who burned that in a active demonstration or protest didn't actually go back and buy another pair we're

we're talking at a huge level um budlight cocacola but if we bring it all the way down to Content creators a brand new channel or let's call it you've got a thousand subscribers 10,000 subscribers maybe a 100,000 that's incredible we know that you can make a full-time income and even big money with a small audience but you're playing a different game you're not Coke you're not even midsized you you you are so Niche so how do you apply practical brand principles to a smaller YouTube channel you can you can actually apply the principles of branding

and personal branding with zero followers because what we're talking about here is the associations that people have with you positive negative neutral and that's happening all the time when you go to the grocery store and the person who checks your or or bags or groceries you could say a kind word and if you visit that place enough they're like Sean's a really nice guy he's really sweet he doesn't need to be nice to me and you take a point to say hey uh I love the new haircut like I didn't know you notice so you're

establishing an association that Sean cares and he pays attention to things conversely somebody's real grumpy uh Cuts people in line brings 14 items to 12 item line you're like go you're that kind of person I see and that's Association so we're building our brand all the time what happens is when we're doing on media platforms is we're amplifying that message and our ability to reach way more people than the local grocery store and this is where it gets real interesting what happens is when people create content online the first thing they do is they create

content that's nothing like themselves they're a little scared to be judged they want to be professional they want to see him intelligent so they're putting their best foot forward it's like you going on your first date on a blind date but you can only go on a first aid and blind Aid I think one time that's the problem here So eventually you have to make this decision which many people struggle with apparently is when do I get to be myself and some people will make content for years and never be themselves and you and I

are in circles well enough that we know when we run into some like oh my God you are nothing like that person you portray on camera and that's a problem for us there is some kind of cognitive dissonance like well this person was very charismatic and kind on camera and in real life they're awkward they're weird and they're unkind so now we walk away saying forget that person this is the real person and that's a problem so this is a problem and the solution is let go of this person show up as this person and

just be yourself you may not have the the most number of followers but you have people who actually show up for you and it's it's something that I think we all would want it's very tiring to pretend to be somebody do you recommend somebody cuz you say Be Yourself and there's authenticity and vulnerability is kind of a buzzword vulnerability in some cases feels like it might be over Amplified that it's becoming almost a tactic do you think that you're you're saying and we agree that being fake and cognitive dissidence is wrong do you think being

extremely vulnerable and just putting it all out there that might be the Other Extreme how do you strike a balance of creating a character when you are essentially a character in your content um and being authentic but also being strategic and maybe you're amplifying certain things and how do you do that ethically I I think of it like this Sean you're a husband uh you're a Creator you're a parent you're not moving through life exactly the same to all those situations and it's because context matters a lot if your child's having a bad moment you

can't be Sean the content creator like what do you feel about that let me interview you get you on camera that doesn't make sense you don't speak to your children the way you do to your wife you know you'd be sleeping on the couch a lot if you did so we're changing modalities we're shifting all the time and that's okay because we're really smart at understanding context you you don't wear gym shorts to church it doesn't seem right and you don't want to wear a three-piece suit also to the beach doesn't seem right so it's

okay for you to shift context but when you're doing it in an artificial way to to game the system if you will for so for example if you're not a person who who who likes swim and you try and impress your date and you're like let's go to the beach let's do this and like let's go swimming Sean you're like uh I don't uh I don't want to swim then that whole illusion breaks and unfortunately a lot of people do this they posture and they pretend to be something and then what happens is it creates

a massive amount of paranoia fear that eventually when you pull the string it all comes undone hence those videos where people say truth about Ellen truth about this celebrity they're totally fake and then the community the audience everybody goes crazy because it's like I knew it I knew that person was fake and then their whole they get canceled and their career just crumbles it's a horrible way to end end a story don't you think yes so I think it's like when we show up on camera you want to be prepared if you want to be

seen as professional you you you play the part you dress the part and you speak but I think some part of your personality needs to come through some part of real life happens and it's not all manufactured for the machine and for consumption I think that that's the important part and so so many people forget that part and they hold that back and conversely I agree with you there are a lot of people who are very almost like too authentic too vulnerable as a manufactur thing to get a response from other people and I think

human beings are very good at spotting it and so like I don't trust you I think that's a ploy why are you crying right now it doesn't even make sense hit record on the pull the phone out set it down hit record yeah yeah start crying let me get a little hot sauce okay you had to set the phone up to capture yourself it's tell right it just doesn't our spider sens is pretty good with that kind of stuff so I I think if you're having a genuine moment the thing to do is just to

feel it and let it out versus bottle it up if you're not feeling it don't like let me work on the Waterworks here it just doesn't you're not that good of an actor is what I'm saying yeah that's so good so we're talking about very practical but also some AB abstract aspects of brand what would you say if a content creator YouTuber listening to this they'll wanted to get into like a practical checklist and I've heard the term Brandon before which was like maybe a dedicated week or two weeks especially in a brand new year

if I was like man I want to kind of do an overhaul what would your checklist be in a YouTube context maybe all the way down Gran granularly to cover image Avatar thumbnails look how would you audit and on a personal level is there any a book to read a checklist to go through a couple of things if I wanted to if you will update my brand or it's already you know you're not manufacturing something but what what would you say have you ever wondered how your life could change if you had the right tools

and connections at your fingertips imagine getting Insider access to the latest trends and dynamic relationships propelling your business and YouTube channel to the next level all of that and more is happening at our annual conference grow with video live April 2024 in Las Vegas grow with video live is the only conference that's focused on helping experts entrepreneurs coaches speakers and business-minded content creators learn the best video marketing strategies and how to scale high impact businesses with YouTube you'll hear from industry experts like Dave Ramsey shellene Johnson Pat Flynn and others who are doing this at

a top level to purchase your ticket to attend just go to grow withv video live.com and I should note this conference will not be streaming online as our world becomes more digital we are focused on creating an environment for human connection and transformation so this event is truly going to be special seats are limited and we always sell out so make sure to secure your ticket at grow withth videol live.com okay I'll do this in a way that I haven't done before let's go step by step okay yeah the first thing I would do is

if I'm ready to reveal myself and say you know what I'm ready to like have a real conversation with people what I would do is show up just like this wherever we are and say okay guys I've realized something I've been showing up a certain way and I have to confess to you I'm not wearing pants they stand up and they're wearing shorts you know and let me take the camera I'm just going to turn the other way so on this side of the camera it looks like this on the other side unmade bed there's

a bowl of cereal a dirty pot something I'm just going to show you like really this is what it's about I show up like this because I want you to see me as a professional but moving forward I'm going to start revealing more of myself I hope you're along for the journey and if if this turns you off I appreciate the time you spent with me and if you want to see more let me know in the comments and this is what I'm going to do because it's for me it's not necessary for you and

here's the weird thing it's my prediction if you do it in a genuine way maybe you get a little bit of coaching then people are going to really say thank God finally somebody's doing it and it's going to go against the grain any time you want to stand out and disrupt a pattern you got to do the opposite of what everybody's doing so when most people are like turning on filters and Glam filters and pristine lighting and everything I'm just going to do a little different and that will be the thing that breaks through and

that's really what you want anyways it's like you're inviting people quite literally into your home so that you can have a conversation with them and they're going to feel so much more connected on a heart level not on a brain level to you that's going to be really meaningful and so that speaks to maybe a video that's so powerful somebody could shoot but is there let's talk about it from like the design side a lot of people I coach a lot of people they suck at design the content creator plight they do like and and

all they did was pick up their smartphone or Sony zv1 they started making videos and they might have gotten relatively far what's amazing is they're they're breaking every rule you teach but if they wanted to improve the design the look and the logo aspect but they're the solo Creator and they're lean resources how could they get better at design perfect I'm moving into different space I'm trying to teach creative principles to non- creatives so I have an exercise I give them when they're doing this personal branding stuff with me I say go to the supermarket

preferably one that's highly curated because they only pick the very best design products in the world right because they can shop from anywhere you can go to Whole Foods and airan um what is AD and Duca you can go into one of those shops and like oh okay go through the highway find something that speaks to you find a package of like a food product that you like like oh I like this I like the typ face I like the colors I like the visual language I like that it's impressionistic painting or it's a geometric

Memphis style illustration I like the patterns I like the way they write and the words and everything about it I like take that thing home unpack it wrap lay it out flat and say okay I'm going to like be a master designer now pick apart the elements I wonder what type face that is well there's an app for that just shoot it with your phone and identify the Ty facee for oh that is Rockwell boom okay great um Rockwell semi bold okay and are they using all caps or upper lowercase what parts of this do

you like I like this shade of pink that shade of green and a little hint of metallic gold understand the ratio of how they're using it it's just a little bit of gold lots of pink and some green so it's like a 70255 ratio so when you're designing your thumbnails think about the 7525 what kind of illustration style this try to figure that out now you can teach yourself design and art so we're not so good at invention but we're really good at replicating when when you're in art school the way that you learn to

draw is you literally copy the Masters and the close as close as you can determines your ability to draft so you might look at a da Vinci drawing or a mangelo or something and you were like okay let me just how did they interpret the lighting oh kajio did it this way okay you just keep doing that and then you start to learn and through the process of absorbing their technique as a human you can't help it but to inject some of your thing into it if you do this enough eventually it becomes this weird

hybrid new thing that becomes your voice so you'll never be able to to replicate it perfectly that's okay get really close and you'll see your thumbnail game Your Design sensibility go really really high if you practice this throughout the rest of your life when you go to a hotel and there's a really good menu study it take a couple of pictures do the same thing when you go to a store Boutique and you you pull something out don't just look at the Garment look at the Hang tag look at how they package it I recently

bought some off-white shoes and it comes in this mint green box with a clear plastic sleeve and I was like who packages things like this Virgil does you pull this off and you're going through like wow this is super interesting there's a whole intentional design thing that's going on here that you can learn a lot from just keep doing that over and over again you're not going to be I was joking you're not going to become a master designer but you'll be masterful in what you do it reminds me there's a famous copywriter named Gary

Halbert and he encouraged people that wanted to get better at writing to take top 100 AD copy and ads and actually copy them word for word handwritten in pen for a 100 days as many days as possible to reprogram your conscious mind to your unconscious mind to see not just the words but the Rhythm and how direct response copy is written that is effective direct response ads that were incredibly effective so that you absorb those and you become better the quote has been thrown around quoted by Steve Jobs perhaps Pablo Picasso said at first good

artist copy great artist steal do you believe that and how do you solve that maybe cognitive dissidence that people hear like like wait a minute you're telling me to steal and what's the difference between that and plagiarism yeah I I think there's some misunderstanding with that so we have to unpack that good artist borrow great artist steal you're talking about a masterful artist who said this okay and so Picasso's journey is that he can paint like uh rapael and the Masters by the time he was like 12 so it became boring for him so he

learned how to copy the paintings and he doesn't become known in until much later in terms of his distinct style what what they're saying is you have to become a student of the game so if you want to become a great director you need to read screenplays you need to watch films and what what people do is they borrow a little bit and they think they got it my my children are like this when I try to explain them how to do something they want to take the shortcut they just want to skip all over

the steps and just like no I got it Dad then when they produce them they're like yeah see that didn't work cuz you didn't follow directions and people are like this we think we're smarter than we really are it it takes a lot of patience dedication Believe It or Not intelligence to do really great forgeries some of the the great forgers are like very high IQ people they pay attention to Crazy amounts of detail so you need to do that for a period of time so that you can get a feel for the words get

a feel for how to frame a shot or how to light a scene before you can go out and do your thing and so the the classic example is this and I use a lot the Kate kid Mr Miyagi Daniel it's like Daniel just do what I tell you to do that was his condition in teaching Daniel because he didn't want to teach Daniel right so Mr Miyagi is like you know whack wax on wax off just like this no like this stand like this hold your hand he like why is this guy being so

particular about this then wax on wax off the same thing paint the fence okay you just keep doing it over and over again then he gets really frustrated he's like you told me you're going to teach me karate we've been doing nothing but all your chores and he goes Daniel paint defense he tries to hit him he's like do this and do that wax on he's like oh my God so that's like made for fiction or made for for Cinema but the principles are true if somebody were to come and work for me and say

Chris I love how you make these beautiful Photoshop frames first day for the next few days all you going to do is cut out images and you're going to like hate this why am I rotoscoping why am I using channels why am I using remove background comment because this how you learn how to cut stuff out you want to learn from me you want to go out the door you got to do it the way I tell you because this is going to get you there so the poor student tells the master how to teach

them the good student says yes and just keeps doing Kill Bill the same thing same thing over and over again I I have this this feeling and I don't think I'm alone in this that movies and books are messages from the past to our future selves so we can learn from them to save ourselves from a lot of pain but many of us are so stubborn our eyes are not fully open and so when these messages come to us on screen we laugh we cry and we move on with our life and we forget there's

a powerful lesson here you're a Christ follower there's a message there for you to read and understand that's 2,000 years old but people don't want to listen what did you mean mean by Kill Bill the same as um Thurman uh when when Bill introduces her to I think his name is pime this old Chinese Kung Fu Master she's I think emblematic of what's wrong with students she's proud or prideful she's headstrong she's a Westerner trying to learn in eastern art she's like I know how to do this you know how many people I kill and

she and he gets up there and he's like if you can hit me one time with your sword I will beg for mercy and we'll be done with this and he humiliates her and he treats like a dog until she starts to learn and put in the work the one-inch punch everything that he tells her to do she does with obedience and he actually starts to love her and it's a very interesting thing and then he teaches her the eight Palm strike or whatever that's called which Bill never even learned because um Uma became the

perfect student she was willing to copy the master when people were just willing to borrow if I wanted to read some books on brand what would you suggest probably pick up the brand flip from Marty newm let's see what other brand books I mean if you just read brand flip you you'd do really well for yourself it's not 100% like practical steps but it'll give you a really good highle overview part of brand is being a good Storyteller so I would tell you to read how to tell a story by The Moth group and probably

stories that stick by Kindra Hall so you understand the concepts of brand now you need to tell Story and there's probably a book you need to read about customer experience user experience and culture I would tell you to read delivering Happiness by Tony Shay the three of them make make a pretty deadly triangle we'll link those up of course in the show notes and um I always love your reading list and I want to Circle back on that later especially for just content creators in general but before we move on speaking of the content creator

people are on social media platforms how important is having a website in 2024 it's important as a final destination not the beginning people are going to find you through social first and then they're going to need to find something where it's all collected and it's organized and then you get to control the format the look and the length which you're restricted by on other platforms I think it is important but not at the beginning but at the end of a journey I went to your website and I can hire you for $4,999 for one hour

of coaching why are you worth that and how did you come to that number I'm not worth that only the buyer determines that worth that's just the price I set and I came to that number because I was booked too much at $1,500 an hour $499 an hour since you were so precise so my strategy and it's something I tell people to do when you get booked too much you need to raise your rates I don't believe in making incremental increases I I want to make a seismic jump I want to move really far forward

selling my time is not scalable and it is exhausting for me to talk to someone and give them all of my attention for one hour and I keep thinking what kind of buyer do I want to attract so pricing is positioning so when you set your price at $100,000 an hour you're you're going to attract a certain type of person that kind of person is probably a go-getter doesn't need tactical steps needs to hear one or two things from you that's going to change their game and the kind of impact that person is going to

make by implementing one or two things that you say it's going to be profound they're playing at a whole different level I also believe the person who pays a ton of money is so vested in heing what you have to say they're so ready to do it that you're not going to get the normal resistance if it was $1.99 those people are going to say why would this work what evidence you have oh tomorrow's a good day to start or why should I listen to you I'm like I'm I'm I'm done I'm bored with you

already I'm going to Mr Miyagi yet would you gener generally encourage people to raise their prices entrepreneurs I yes in in general because we don't know what the ceiling is your job is to find the ceiling your job is to find the ceiling to set it so far that people keep saying no and then to acquire the skills to close the skill Gap and that's the game of life you take the ball you throw it as far as you can and then you run after and you keep throwing it that's that's it what is the

most you've paid for Education probably um my business coach how much um I should know this number I forget now but I worked with him for 13 years and I hired him I paid him every single month I could do the math real quick well how much a month did it go up no it didn't go up a month I think it was three grand a month so times 13 years what would you say to somebody that can't comprehend that and says how could that possibly be worth it I would tell that person they're asking

the wrong kinds of questions that's the the question that poor people ask and I'll tell you why because within one of the first meetings literally the first meeting I had with him he saved me from making a disastrous business decision I was going to start a second business that was a complete distraction one that didn't give me joy I didn't know why I was doing it one that didn't give me strong Financial returns yet I was committed to doing it for some crazy reason he gave me permission to change my mind it's a powerful thing

and then when I asked him to look at how or why I was not winning jobs that were over $200,000 we sat down we talked in two conversations he fixed the problem for me and he allowed us to go from $2.2 million to $3.9 million and I credit him for the person who was the architect of that think about this for a second two conversations almost $2 million double our Revenue but that's like for the rest of my life and so that was six years into our business we ran that service business for 25 years

so the rest was just gravy here's the beautiful part I got to teach my directors how to sell based on what I learned from him and they were closing jobs so now I got all this free time again because I don't have to be on the calls anymore it was a beautiful thing and now I get to speak about it I I can write a book about it and so the knowledge in which he shared with me applied over time in real life situations what is that value $10 million it's probably worth more than that

it's worth more than that because throughout the lifetime of our business so so from years five to years 25 I applied his knowledge moving forward so every year a low year would be $4 million a high year would be about 6 and a half million that's I don't know what that is now I don't the math is beyond me that's the value so people who keep focusing too much on price and not and value that's what poor people do I did the math 15 years you didn't do the math your calculator did the math calculator

did the math but 15 years right $3,000 you paid a business coach you paid him $540,000 but as you just explained the value you got was 10 30 20 30X that investment okay and I'll say this people ask me so why did you stop cuz one I'm grateful I'm loyal so those two why didn't you stop yeah cuz what else did you learn in the last next 13 years was it always that impactful truth be told no I we would meet we would talk sometimes about life about my children something and not all of it

was profound not all of it is going to be a game changer it can't be you can't let the bar of expectations because it he hit it so far out of the park that every meeting has to be like that it's not going to be like that and because he did this for me I was like you kind of bought this for the next 10 years so we're going to just do that and so I'm I'm a person who understands how to be grateful and to reciprocate so so someone can help me I understand the

value of that and I say this cuz this is an important thing to understand when you have a brand and you create a relationship and you create a transformation for people it's asymmetrical right you could have created such profound impact on one person's life that's drastically different than these other people and they're all going to measure it differently and so I'm not shy to tell people if I've helped you then help me I've done it I've been consistent and unfortunately not everybody does that because our company should much bigger but I'm not going to be

from an entitled place I'm like I'll keep earning it I'm going to I'm going to deliver so much value to you that you feel guilty not to give me money that's a pretty good business model I think and really not only were you expressing loyalty and gratitude but you were also playing with house money because you'd already had such an exponential return and I've been similar coaching situations where months could go by but all I needed and if I get one idea in one year if you got one idea in 10 years and you applied

it if someone's trying to figure out their brand you could call it a niche their Niche or their channel topic you've broken down icky guy before explain that concept for somebody that maybe is like I want to start a new YouTube channel I'm trying to figure out about what I'm committed to starting a channel but I'm not sure about what could that be helpful yeah so the concept is this is that we've been entirely focused on usually three dimensions First Dimension is uh what you're good at what you love and what pays well and that's

the pursuit it's very Western concept iy is a Japanese concept I know the purists will find fault with me and I I apologize in advance it's it's like iyy means like a way of being and in in places in Japan there they there seems to be great joy in just doing mundane things and it's a beautiful culture and one that is worth studying they introduced the fourth uh di menion which is what the world needs so when you look at what you're good at uh what what you love what pays well and what the world

needs you find this really interesting cross-section now the more Dimensions you have the harder this thing becomes right two Dimensions the easy to find the overlap so in the ven diagram there's four circles like the question of what the world needs is really important and speaking for myself here when when I made commercials for a living I got paid a lot of money so I was good at it and it paid really well but didn't really feel my like do I love doing this do I love clients telling me like make it bigger or can

we try four more versions of the same thing no not really put that aside so I go to teach something I really love and I'm also good at but they don't pay Jack for that so I can have a full or filled like have a sense of fulfillment but I'm going to be broke doing this and so I struggle with these two world I thought you quite literally had to leave one world the business world to go into to join the AC academic world and the two cannot intersect so a friend of mine I hope

I'm going to answer your question a friend of mine is like hey Chris I know you're really passionate about education why don't we just make content on YouTube and then build a knowledge product and that way you can teach and do it sustainably and we can do this I'm like hell no I'm not going to do that I don't want to do that that seems crazy well we know how that turned out cuz we're like 2,000 videos in you know so many subscribers later I found that intersection so the world needs High qual quality education

from people who've been there and done it before and that are passionate that have a skill for teaching and Entrepreneurship and know how to make videos and do storytelling I found that intersection and so I think I found my reason for being and it's going to be different for each person and so when I do that I feel most fulfilled I'm in the highest um alignment of myself and I'm I'm creating tremendous value for others and I get some of it back that works really well for me so those are the people who are out

there on YouTube you You' already now gotten one part of the platform figured out you just need to fill in the other parts and find that perfect intersection what is your opinion on competition if I go through those four circles in the VIN diagram I'm excited to start a new YouTube channel in 2024 but when I say what does the world need well I love branding and design the future Chris the world it's it's already too crowded there's no more room to start a branding and designed YouTube channel and there's no channel for me to

start what would you say I would say cuz you're looking at it from the wrong point of view there's a lady I forget her name now but she blew up on Tik Tok cuz she's like you know these are ugly logos I'm going to redraw them and she purposely redraws them really bad she takes Global recognized logos designed by Masters and she just punks everyone and does it and I'm watching these videos at first I thought it was serious I'm like you can't do not change the type oh my God I can't believe you're doing

that and she's getting a reaction from people like me like how dare you touch that logo that you should never touch and she's doing this and it's blowing up now famous established brands are like do us next do us next and they pay her to do that so the question you should be asking yourself is how do I compete against Chris no how do you do it in the way that feels true to you based on your gifts based on your height your skin color your tone of voice whatever it is your shape your size

your quirks like if you like doing puppets why don't you teach me designing logos with puppets I can't do that you can freestyle rap do that teach it that way there's room there's so much room and I find it quite fascinating that in the society that we live in today there's so many very narrow niches that turn out to be much bigger than we think there are people who who who do dance videos for a very specific type of dance and there's ones that would do it for kids so even in the same genre they

do it a little bit different or the ones who wear costumes or ones that wears the mask or who adds laser lights to it do it your way that's brilliant um we're recording this at the end of 2023 and whenever we approach a new year I know personally it's goal setting what can I learn from the last year how can I improve next year how can I up my game this next year specifically in content creation you're a content creator how are you approaching creating engaging content and platforms like YouTube and Instagram in 2024 really

good question our main goal is to catch up to this one YouTube channel I think it's called think something there's this guy Sean is super annoying he's always ahead of us and we can't seem him to catch up and so it's really it's just really frustrating I'm like team what are we not doing how come Sean keeps killing us because the way I look at it it's friendly competition obviously I respect you I'm like who's the next mile marker and I for whatever reason I just picked you I'm like you're the guy we picked a

lot of other people we passed them so it's now there's a guy that is is not going to slow down he has a team so is not going to be able to catch up to this guy so I keep asking our team how do we need to do things different better what is working for us what isn't and I don't want to wait a year to figure this Stu out we're doing these conversations like every week every month like what do we need to do I think this idea of the annual reset is is fascinating

and I I think we should never ever wait for a January date to appear before we start thinking about this but I do understand why it works because it's kind of really built around Seasons right and we have different seasons so as we come out of the winter season which is our season for rest for reflection it gives us opportunity to to kind of recalibrate I think that's the important part so as much as I uphor the idea of starting in January as a New Year's resolution I too am saying in January I'm going to

do this because I'm going on like what I think is going to be a pretty profound trip for me for the first time in my life I'm going back to Vietnam we're going to be there for 4 weeks I'm just going to be with my family and be connected to culture I haven't seen uh up front or up close and I want to use that time just like not think about work so everybody's like what do we want to do I'm like just chill I don't care don't worry about it the numbers don't need to

be anything don't worry I'll address it when I come back and I know this every time I give my brain an opportunity to think to reflect and not to be constantly grinding and putting out fires the best ideas emerge and I'm I'm just so looking forward to like not thinking about anything so that I can think about something really profound I think we just have to give our subconscious mind time to rest and recover and when we do that great things will come so one of the things on your calendar is rest yes after rest

and maybe you haven't defined this yet do you have a Target that you know now as far as volume certain number of videos a week the team is chopping things up and amplifying it but do you know off the top of your head what your current Target is and how many original pieces of content or podcast you're doing what's kind of the checklist for you for podcast it's clear to me that releasing once a week will keep us on Pace but it will not move us up I have to figure out a strategy where I

can not only release one episode a week but maybe possibly two episodes a week which is going to be a little nutty my friend Rich is here he's like I have a way for you to do that I'm like great love it let's do that we will try that we know that frequency does help but frequency with the right kind of content is like gasoline it's going to just turn everything up in terms of the YouTube channel not really in terms of a number here's what we've learned people like long form content from us the

shorts don't perform well I'm not doing skits I'm not doing those kinds of things that are the things that people want in a short they want super Snappy entertaining bits we don't do that it's hard for me to teach in a 60-second clip so we're we're we we're going to reinvest our energy in producing much fewer shorts maybe even fewer mids we're just going to go for long form content and try to use the footage that we've already captured this last year when I'm out and I'm teaching I'm best in front of real people uh

they they get me excited my brain turns on I'm like I have to be ready to answer anything and everything and I'm working at a level and we're going to start releasing that kind of content but it's just a number game for me we just got to catch up to Sean that's it what is your definition of long form content 45 minutes and Beyond okay yeah believe it or not Sean our I think it's an anomaly for our channel that the longer the content it is the more views it gets it's really weird so we

take a long form we chop it into like 3 to five minute episodes they do not perform as well as the long form one and people are like don't even edit them like what they're like we we want to just hear the conversation as it flows so I think what's happening is they'll turn it on they'll do different things and if you're really chopping up like they have to pay attention versus like we just want to feel it and then we'll rewind we'll watch other parts they just want a longer form conversation from us it's

different from other channels I want to challenge what you said about shorts because I was just studying your channel oh so maybe something changed but you have like a 50 million viewed short now many multi-million viewed shorts hundreds of thousands so do you think something changed or how do you reconcile that cuz you mentioned staring away from shorts I know it it's still 50 billion views a day is how many views YouTube shorts are getting yeah are you completely ignoring them or you just saying they're going to be less of your strategy okay I think

we are the beneficiaries of what many people were when YouTube launch shorts not a lot of people were doing it so we just did it and we picked up a ton of new followers it's the only way we were sort able to catch up close to you was because of shorts we picked up almost a million new Subs because of shorts wow but as everyone started to come to the realization they need to create shorts the market became super saturated with shorts and now they weren't giving you that free traffic that they were before the

video in which you're referencing is kind of an anomaly for us it's based on a long form video that got 4 million views that when we chopped it down to a short it got 50 million views or something like that and here's the weird thing we just recropped it and that video got 10 million views so maybe I need to do like an animated version of it cuz that'll get 10 million views that's it seems like there's one piece of content on our channel that just outperforms everything not even close we are sitting there trying

to figure out what is the magic secret sauce for us and for what I like to do we have not been able to crack the puzzle we do know that when I have a marker in my hand there's a whiteboard and there's a a gnarly person in the audience those tend to do really well because we're hitting on emotions and they're seeing how someone me responds in real time to someone who's not going to just roll over and they're there they say popcorn ready and so when I'm out in the real world and I'm doing

talks and workshops whenever someone starts to argue with me like team team get the camera on them I feel a viral video coming up and then all a sudden they shut down I'm like fudge me oh man now it's not going to happen because they know what's going to happen in some of them I God bless them they'll say I know I still want to argue with you I'm like you know how this ends for every person who does this you don't look like a superstar would you like to proceed like yes like love you

let's go so we need to be out in the real world doing that kind of stuff you uh I saw a short that you had and I'm curious if this would apply you referenced David Baker's book The Business of expertise and there's a concept called drop and give me 20 can that relate to creators they want to stand out in a competitive world can that be helpful yeah you know the thing about that idea from have you read that book by the way I have not okay perfect I'll give you a little context for that

his whole thing is people will say I have no expertise I can't write any articles and he says in the military to test your preparedness they say drop and give me 20 you should be able to do 20 push-ups at any given time unless you're not fit enough to be in the military that's the concept so he's like saying you know what right now drop and give me 20 nuggets about what you know it takes the preciousness away from like what is the most important just give me many things right now so that's just a

prompt to get you to like not be be like a perfectionist monster and like oh okay okay it's you could do this and the surprising thing is and it's it's going to be true for a lot of people you're going to say this is dumb no one's going to Care this is super low value when in truth it is not dumb a lot of people will care and it will be valuable for lots of people it's because there's a cognitive bias it's called The Curse of knowledge that we tend to forget how hard it was

for us at the beginning and it's so easy for us today that we think no one can possibly not know this right now but you could probably tell me something about our stats I'm like oh yeah I don't know that you're like dude that is so 101 and I'll be like oh my God Sean's a genius so what you would encourage the listeners that are a content creator write out 20 topics 20 ideas 20 things you know about your channel topic yeah and turn that into content would you say say if it's an answer to

a question one question one video how would you package the distribution of content whole groups of subject matter one question one video if you're saying long form it' probably be a little bit more robust how do you think about slicing and dicing information and packaging it in a good way that answer is going to depend if you're a newbie Creator or you're Alex heroi it's going to be very different let's assume you're relatively new because you're like I need to get my sea legs under me I would say one question one answer for video because

the title of the video is going to be much easier you're going to make it more searchable and that's really kind of an important part to drive traffic to your channel when you talk about multiple topics it's like what are you going to call it you going to call it a or call B and this is where it becomes very confusing like I don't know so if you call it B which is the second part of the video everybody's Turing like what I'm not getting this at all this is a clickbait they might bounce and

you're G to get punished for it you call it a soon as they get that part they'll leave and they're like well that's the problem let's say you do this enough now where you feel like you can talk about multiple topics because they build on a bigger idea this is probably the harosi technique which is I got a big idea it requires a couple of steps for me to explain but he's very good he's gifted at teaching people complex Concepts very simply and he takes all the Academia language out so you can just understand and

that's Genius of what he does everybody here can do that but you have to practice and you have to do this in front of real people so you can see them responding to it because you're like oh I lost you there didn't I okay let me fix that part so the way I do my whiteboard long form content is this I'll tell you the formula right now I have some young people who work for me it happen to be these two guys I said what is it that you want to learn that the people from

our Channel haven't figured out yet they're like what about this so we write a bunch of topics say of all these topics which one do you think we should address first let's prioritize that one okay give me two seconds okay let me explain to you I would just freestyle the whole thing and I would see what parts were easy what parts they got stuck and then we're done I would say I'll see you guys tomorrow we'll record this video they send me the screenshot of that board I go home and build a keynote deck I

build in the dialogue so we're able to condense something that took two hours to work through into 45 minutes and then we try to make it interactive we invite our friends from Zoom to join us live and so as I'm explaining it they can raise questions and we can interact with them so I get a little bit of the the audience part and the interaction and feedback but the audience doesn't have to sit through a painful like Chris is still working out the problem part that form has worked really well for us those videos typically

do over two or 300,000 views some of them have surpassed a million views and so that's what you do on 45 or longer minute videos that was the workflow yes to figure out the concept your team people on Zoom help you process it all you synthesize it make sure that it's going to be valuable into a deck and then when you present that do you present it live or is that an edited YouTube video uh often times it's live we live stream the whole thing I've seen you do this too and they tend to work

if you promote it enough in advance tune in on this day I'm going to do this and then they'll tune in if you're a good teacher if you're a good communicator and you bring like 1 ounce of Charisma people will stick there because you're giving them a free lesson and the intention is to teach them so if you're good at it they will tune in to this date our highest viewed live stream uh which was I think I want to say like 1500 or 1700 people I can't remember and it beat the the one with

Aaron drin was me teaching people typography super relatively boring stuff but I said each week I'm going to add a lesson and if you don't watch it live it disappears in 24 hours and you have to buy it so every week the audience kept growing and growing so by the third week they're like this is good we're learning I'm going to bring the goods and that's what I did so if you want to do that and develop a Cadence where you can maintain that unfortunately it does a lot of work as you know yeah it's

like I worked on it for like a whole day to get ready for like an hour live stream yep do the same and it helps and and teaching off a deck uh helps you live stream better yes yeah it helps you uh have your thoughts organized it's for the audience sake yeah um you mentioned earlier have you ever done like a a whiteboard version of your deck uh we did a a king flip which is a paper uh you know whiteboard but yes we've done that I would love to do more I want to start

how did that perform for you uh great and I want to start a show called framework Friday and and do Frameworks on Friday on a whiteboard you know um I don't think I have 52 Frameworks so I don't think it would go all year but it could be here in there every once in a while and it doesn't need to be on a Friday but you know freestyle rap I'm trying to just it sounds cool yeah I like it as we land the plane you did mention if you're just starting out or if you're professional

um like Alex heroi you you should you know adapt the kind of content you're creating understand where you are and then up um what is the difference between professionals and amateurs and how can uh we level up our game this year excuse me professional teachers or professional what in general I don't know I saw one of your YouTube shorts that said professionals versus amateurs and I'm trying to rehack your own viral content by pulling Clips out of this video yeah you genius you Dar okay um well if we just like what's the difference between profession

and amateurs by the definition professional does it for a living an amateur is a hobbyist Enthusiast right but I think the viral content comes into to an amateur does something once and says I'm good a professional does it over and over again until they get really really good those are some of the differences uh just I think if we look at say uh Seth godden's the dip right and the dip is a pretty simple concept would probably be one of your framework Fridays by the way that whenever we start out something if we look at

the graph this on the on this axis it's like time and energy on this it's results so in the very beginning we we do something we're playing basketball we we're making a YouTube video we put very little time and energy into an effort and then we get some result I got 100 new followers or I got thousand views pretty awesome we keep doing that and all of a sudden it Peaks and it starts to go down in the negative Direction and like wait a minute what's going on how come I can't get the same success

now I'm working really hard and I'm just chasing the dragon if you will it's like I can't get back there and then we get into the valley aka the dip and it's just a lot of work and not a lot of reward and we're like I just I'm not made for this stuff and most people quit the Valley of the dip is where all the quitters live and die there's a lot of graves there's a lot of bodies there Seth's thing is when you make a commitment to be good at something you're not allowed to

quit you have to just work your way through the dip because on the other side of the dip is this massive return and you and I know this from every creator that we've looked up to they went through this they call it consistency but it's not consistency it's the fact that you're not willing to quit and you're making incremental improvements until you figure it out so you got to play the game long enough until you get good so what Seth goes on to talk about or right is that you want things that you want to

be difficult to attain because difficult things to attain are valuable because they're scarce and rare So if everybody was a great charismatic long form teacher on YouTube I'm out of a job I really am because it's like everybody can do this I'm going to go back to break dancing or something I don't do that by the way and so we we we want to love that there's a dip we have to have the fortitude to get through it so that we can be good at something it's true about every single thing unless you're some kind

of savant You Got god-born Talent or whatever it is you got to work through it and so instead of grimacing through the dip we should embrace it and say this was expected the rewards on the other side I'm going to go through it on the other side of the dip is is Mastery one of our core values at our company is the pursuit of Mastery you're a master what's your definition of Mastery I I that's a good question I don't have a great answer for you but I'll throw it out there when you can do

something without great effort I think you've achieved a level of Mastery you know those chefs that cut them vegetabl like that I'm like that's Mastery in terms of like knife work I get that when you have to stop measuring the ingredients and you can put together a beautiful dish that's Mastery when you can pull up a canvas and just start putting things on and then this the most emotional profound portrait you've ever seen just materializes out of nothing that's Mastery there's this one gentleman I believe he's in China somewhere in some Province somewhere and he's

sitting there minding his own business the setup is exactly the same every single time somebody walks up to him and shoves something in front of him he goes oh okay and it might be like um like a a green comb or something okay then he takes a little bit of this paint a little bit of that paint a little bit of this paint and he just no measurement no nothing just by eyeballing it he looks in the light he mixes it up he put in his can and then he spray paints he spray paints on

something it is a color match 100% of the time some guy who's like I don't even where he's wearing shoes and there's a stray random dog on the street he's just he's like the Home Depot color matching bear system but a human does have you seen this video no do you understand what I'm saying here it's insane that's wild so what happens is people in these provinces uh their their thing gets damaged something and they need an exact color match where are they going to go yeah they're going to go to the Chinese Master yeah

and it's ridiculous because if you ever try to color match even metallic colors Home Depot doesn't get it right Lowe's is going to fail like $25,000 worth of laser equipment they fail yeah and he gets a right now maybe he doesn't get right every once in a while and they throw that video way yeah but my God if you ever search this guy you're going to see it is ridiculous how good he is so I think there's a sense of effortlessness that happens when you achieve a level of Mastery John Maxwell wrote a book called

good leaders ask great questions what do you think the importance of questions is and uh what questions do you think content creators should be asking I think in a society where we're trained to prize answers questions are the undervalued thing that if you learn how to ask great questions especially in this age of AI to bring It full circle it's the big unlock in life I'm more impressed with people who know how to direct the Machine by asking it the right questions and directing it then I am in the result itself I even think that

there were levels of prompting that some of these people are doing that like clearly I don't understand this game so whenever I'm talking to a client in any kind of situation or Prospect I should say I've learned this thing from my former business Mentor he's passed away I used to think it was about me demonstrating my knowledge or my Mastery by giving them answers suggestions and advice the way I demonstrate my Mastery is to ask them questions to help them reveal the answer to themselves to get the clarity I've also learned that in life very

rarely do people like ideas that are so new and challenging that are not their own but if you ask right questions they'll come to that new challenging idea that they feel they have ownership over and they will give you all the credit for coming up with idea and if you just learn to ask questions cuz asking great questions is a 21st century skill that's undervalued right now as we land the plane what should be on my 2024 reading list or audible listen list if I want to grow and succeed as a content creator are we

really Landing the plane on this one this one you killing me on this last question here that's a tough one Sean what would you say it is you can open up your audible if you have your phone on do audible you you don't do any audiobooks I I can't learn from them okay I'm mostly a visual processor like if you use words I won't know how to pronounce the word unless I see the word I didn't know this about myself for a long time like you would say something I would mispronounce it later they're like

that's not the word dude are you an idiot I'm like I heard Sean say it and until I see how it's spelled I I can't remember it I've tried listening to audio books yeah I don't like an hour or two hours go by I'm like I don't know a single thing that it said yeah so I need to read the book well if we Riff on books that I think are related to content creation um at the top of the list is YouTube secret second edition I was going to say that if you let me

say it start over I will tell I was going to say it but I'm like where are we going this and uh and and that's the only book art of humility too and and the list is over so actually that was it was a trick question one one I failed I'm like I don't know it's right in front of me YouTube Secrets every we were planting it there was a plant uh I was like you you did um um what is that they called a mentalist trick on me I'm like I is it the secrets

addition I need to train for more Mastery in Jedi Mind Tricks and go visit Yoda because it was over there it didn't work but but uh no I mean legitimately I think YouTube secrets that's correct U you know shout out to Daryl EES I think YouTube formula is phenomenal as well um Pat Flynn super fans is uh great I think Russell Brunson expert Secrets is a good read for expert industry kind of personal brand those are a few and then I would often ask what specific skills because if we Veer off into do you need

to start selling do you want to learn how to get into some particular skill you're going to package coaching program or an online course or something how do you sell it and there could be some Niche learnings there um and then of course if you need to build a team or something so that would be a leadership direction or Brian Tracy had a deleg gate would be and old maybe there's better new ones Dan Martell buy back your time if you're just trying to get productivity but keeping in the lane of maybe the business the

online business packaging your expertise you can mention that one again I think about YouTube creators um and content creators any books that come to mind okay that's a good really good list I would start with the number one book on that list which is YouTube Secrets let's put that aside I'll take a totally different approach to this something we we discussed somewhere else but um I think if you want to create content you need to work on the skill of teaching because that's really what you're doing unless you're doing an entertainment thing so if you're

doing an entertainment thing you're asking the wrong guy because I'm not that guy so let's look at pedagogy and and and things about teaching so there's a book it's called um 50 strategies to boost cognitive engagement that's not a book normal people pick up wow yes and it really breaks down the differences between traditional education and Effective Education and it goes down line by line it's quite brilliant and at least now we have a foundation understand like we don't want to repeat the sins of our parents we want to look towards the future and so

I would start there I already mentioned how to tell a story and stories that stick because now we we we understand how to teach but teaching based on facts is not engaging for anybody teaching through stories is and so if we say then we need to learn from the world of like the pixars and the Disneys of the world who are masterful storytellers there's this book I believe it's called directing a story and if that's incorrect I'll send you the proper link it's called directing a story and it shows how to storyboard an entire film

it's fascinating how they break it down so there's ideas and then there are images that story boards that go with it and you're like I'm really into the story right now and it's masterfully done and so if you study anywhere where you think there's a masterful masterful Storyteller you should just copy them as much as possible and then you'll be able to transform it into your own style I also love to watch standup comics and in particular I watch their stage presence the delivery the intonation their timing but I I really appreciate crowd work too

that aligns more with my style of teaching and talking because you have to be quick on your feet and when they turn off phrase or they they pull something from nothing it's the match trick for the audience audience and it's something that's going to be captivating for everybody who's there I fell in love with the band 21 Pilots because I think his name is Tyler Joseph I saw a random clip on YouTube where he's like he's on a piano with a laptop and there's a darken room somewhere a small very very small venue he goes

I'd like to perform some songs for you and I'm just going to do it all by myself he's that okay and so he has two or three different mics because there's different vocal processing he does and he starts playing piano he goes okay that's pretty good and he builds a song in front of us in real time a song that he's performed before but in the nature of him doing it it's like a very unique version of it and I was like this guy is so talented and then I started looking in the back catalog

and realized blurry face and all these other songs I was listening to was from the same band anytime you have master Mastery or expertise that you can demonstrate in real time that's how we know you know what you're doing those are some great recommendations and of course we'll put a full list of resources including at the end when we share your resources but a question on reading do you read fiction I don't not anymore I used to love fiction what kind science fiction mostly did you learn from it as related to business or was it

more for entertainment and relaxation I think it's for like uh changing my world view um I'm a big Isaac asima fan MH so long before foundation I read Foundation the series I read iRobot I I also love Dune Frank Herbert so I'm just into like World building and there's something that's really interesting um and science fiction intrigues me because it's it could be real just we don't have the explanation on how to how to like scientifically proag just yet and so I love that I also love Edgar Allen poems like some some dark gothic stuff

you a fan of the new Dune movie I was a fan of the original which puts me in the minority cuz people just hated on David Lynch's version even David Lynch doesn't like his movie but I loved his film I am also a fan of the new movie and it's killing me that the movie was delayed in terms of it second release final question um there's a song called Forever Young what is your secret to the Fountain of Youth are you starting aide skin care company do you have a skincare routine and for anybody that

wants to not Aid like you what are your tips I don't even know how to answer this question I'm going to do a joke on stage yeah I said I'm here to teach you about sales and marketing content creation but I really know what you're here for I'm 51 years old and you want to know what my skincare regime is and I'm going to tell you but I'm going to tell you all these things and it's not going to matter to you because the most important thing is to be Asian because it was an expression

right Asian don't raisin rais Asian don't raisin and then there's like black don't crack and Latin always satin then I say white good night white white good night I don't know what to do I appreciate it I mean that's struggle is real moisturizer mostly just moisturizer just moisturizer mostly yeah daily for you for me yeah for you you give me me advice no no I mean I need it I no because cuz white folk have drier skin yeah and Asian folk have Oiler skin so it has its good and bad I'm always shiny but I'm

not drying out especially out here in the desert isn't your skin like super dry I try to drink water I I just started getting into like ke's uh skin care stuff I just turned 40 okay you know okay very good yeah work doing my best okay so I I'll get real with you okay two two straight guys talking about skincare yeah okay so the first thing is just you want to have Clean Skin So you usually wash your face in the morning at night and all soaps will clean your skin the more expensive ones will

not dry out your skin so you just want to clean your skin you want to exfoliate just a little bit and then you need to moisturize like for me this part of my mouth gets really dry and cracked right so you need to moisturize differently here than everywhere else and then it's like um a sunblock you wear sunblock no oh it's going to be a problem because the H spots and the melanin and all that kind of stuff so you want to wear some sunblock and sunblock again the cheap kind will protect you but it's

greasy it's oily and make you look really shiny not very flattering for camera so you just want to buy like L Ro POS or something like that it's super expensive but it it comes on like milk like you want to buy the milk kind I my secret was I grew up in Seattle for the first 27 27 years of my life so it was no sun so it kind of saved the sunblock piece but now a little bit veg you can get a lot of sun yeah we're kind of going back to Seattle majoritively but

uh those are some it's probably the most important part of the podcast was this this information so Christo um you got a book pocket full of dough yes and we'll link that one up and what are you doing what do you want to shout out what should be in the show notes okay I'm GNA I'm going to be selfish I'm going to ask for two things right now number one I have a coaching Community if you're a creative entrepreneur and you feel like it's a very lonely Endeavor and you just need people to be around

you to to help support you and to know that people struggle and they have Solutions and you find Community something that's exciting consider joining the future Pro Group and if you're at a place where you're doing a million dollars more and you're creating content and you feel like you've hit a certain Plateau I have a program called brand lab it's going to open up in April of next year we we're doing our pilot season it's 10 entrepreneurs right now Neil's one of them and we're they're just amazing I've never had people in a coaching group

or students I don't want to call them students because they're they're successful entrepreneurs that are such go-getters it's incredible like I say something and I forgot what they resp supposed to do and next week they come back don't you want to review this I'm like I've never seen this before like you actually do the things I asked you to do it's incredible so what we do is we do a lot of whiteboard Road mapping and figuring out things and then we're hopefully we're getting to this point where they can show me what they're doing and

I could give them very specific feedback on how to make it better I believe that's one of my skills I'm a really critical observant person I just need to get paid for it so I'm like okay if you change this and try this and do this instead let's measure that versus what you're doing now so I'm very excited about that brilliant so those two programs will link up thank you number three I'll add to the list if you're on YouTube I would love to hear your aha moment or your greatest takeaway from this episode and

then of course on the audio platforms R and review and uh always love and super grateful for those reviews on uh Apple in particular really helped spread the word on this podcast and share it with somebody it's an honor to get to sit across from you talking to a master and dropping so much wisdom Christo thank you for coming back and number four there's a past conversations that we've had um on your channel and on your podcast one of my favorites was an almost two-hour conversation about lessons from grow videoo live and spending almost a

million dollars and uh all the different crazy things yeah that episode was a classic and that's on your show that could be the show notes as well as a couple other conversations if any but wants more Chris do Sean can I say something please I know that was the end of the episode but somebody shared this idea with me actually it was Scott Galloway he didn't share it with me he shared it with everybody he's like the metaverse you remember that hype and how meta is dumping a ton of money into this losing proposition he

goes the metaverse already happens except for it doesn't happen here it happens here he says podcast think about it most people listen to podcast while they're doing other things so they're experiencing simultaneous realities at the at the same time time so they're they're driving they're washing the dishes or they're doing something while they're listening to you don't underestimate the Mind space that you have this is very powerful real EST estate up here so podcast this is why I'm like going to double down on my podcast it's a a really different relationship with the audience CU

you're literally in their head MH and it's a profound thing so podcasts like this you're going to develop such a deep relationship with that person that when they see you in real life they're going like you've been in my head in my bed on the lawn this whole time and I know that sounds really creepy but it's you know it's platonic I believe that they're saying that but you know they're experiencing on another level and it's it's a profound responsibility now bro you've been in my head in my bed on the lawn on the tread

on the tread yeah uh it turns out the freestyle rap thing that was the context that actually pack this all up but saying that as the plate is officially landed massive love and gratitude to think media podcast Community for hanging out with us today Chris thank you so much and we will see you in a future episode