Why Most Creatives Will Fail in 2025 (Unless They Learn This)

today we're bringing you something different over the past month our podcast has been packed with powerful conversations from game-changing strategies to personal stories that will resonate with any creative or entrepreneur to make it easy for you to access the best insights we pulled together from the top five moments from this month's episodes into one video in this video you'll learn about the science of going viral and why Trends might be holding you back we'll also dive into the soft skills every creative needs Thrive uncover what it really takes to work with high-end clients and explore

their deeper side of personal branding and transformation all the videos will be linked below along with at the top of every conversation let me know in the comments if you want us to make more videos like this let's get started people think going viral is luck but there is a science and a model to it we spent the past 6 years building one and we'll break down that model today but one of the first things that we have to kind of understand is the world that we live in today so when I started in social

media I started back 2005 back when friender Myspace where the predominent players you think back then there's only a few million people on these platforms creating content today we're about to surpass 5 billion people on social media so that's how many people are producing content on these platforms and the reality is of how do we get views how do we get followers how do we get audience it's all controlled on the algorithms these algorithms have a fundamental goal and it's a business goal and how do all these platforms make money they make money by serving

ads so these these algorithms are designed solely to find the content that can grab and hold attention as long as possible at scale to keep people on the platforms longer because if people don't uh spend time on their platforms they go elsewhere and thus their profit dwindles so first understanding the purpose of the algorithm they want to partner with us they want to be our best friend it's not about trying to beat the algorithm or hack the algorithm they're incentivized and their whole business model is built on the premise that they want to serve the

best content to the most number of people at scale so if your if your content is not being seen and this might be heartbreaking to some folks it's just because it's just not that good can I say that or you're not doing the right things most people have great content okay and it's not the content it's the context of how you're representing that content one of the kind of U performance drivers are things that really hold people back especially you know when we're talking about organic social media is they're operating off of the old Paradigm

of create a niche piece of content for a niche audience the social media algorithms are not really looking for that they're not going to do the heavy lifting for you they're just looking at the retention metrics are you able to stop the scroll and how long can you hold their attention for one of the biggest principles that we talk about in terms of that contextual element to drive success around your content is called the generalist principle so how do we make your content interesting to the average person while not losing the subtext of our core

audience what kind of commitment do I need to make you said the mindset and what else do I need to do to prepare myself so that if I receive these kinds of strategies or I'm watching this video that I can commit to doing that the way that we look at social media is very different than what most kind of social media agencies or gurus will tell you to do which is follow the trends you know and what is a trend so a trend is something that's very fleeting so it typically lasts for like a few

weeks maybe a few one few months at last like the biggest Trend that I can think of is like the ice bucket challenge it's like people don't do the ice bucket challenge today and the other problem is looking at a trend is 99% of people that do that don't break through with viral success we only see the people at the top so the way that we look at it is we don't want people to go and do Trends because you're not mastering a skill set we we we tell people to look at a format the

formula starts with understanding what a format is versus a trend because I can guarantee you you will not master The Art of Storytelling and really break through without that that fundamental understanding so once we understand what a format is now we can start looking at what format do I want to tackle most people get it wrong it's not about chasing Trends it's not about Reinventing the wheel or Reinventing the wheel each piece of content it's Mastery of a single format the minute you Master a single format you can print money and it happens all the

time is there anything off the top where you going like do this this this and that and it's going to start to perform better outside of what we already talked about well I think the first part is just the mindset perspective do you actually see that social media is going to help your business are you willing to invest the time and energy into it because I think that there's a lot of people out there that just want to pay $500 to a social media manager and then expect remarkable results I'm not saying you can't make

that but if you're looking for breakthrough results and for you know a business in the 2 to 5 million range to really take it to the next level to add another 5 10 15 20 million or even Beyond it's going to take some dedication and understanding of it so that it's just a pure mindset thing I feel that our best content is almost always with me live with some level of studio audience it it happens because they bring a little bit more spice out of me and I like that and I'm more alive I feel

have to be on point number two is if I have a piece of paper and a marker with the live audience those videos tend to do really well not millions of views but hundreds of thousands of views so if I want to make that in a shorter form more viral piece of content of the 220 formats that you've uncovered what format should I be doing I kind of want to point something out before I answer the format because I have watched your content and I've looked at the most viral content versus the content that doesn't

reach that that level and I think one of the biggest drivers of your virality is perspective shift is when there is a mass massive perspective shift based upon the audience member's question that's when there's virality every business has like a client who spends way more money than most so it's got to be a client that for you makes you go ooh right that feels big so let's say you're a coach or a consultant most clients spend five grand this would be someone spending 25 to 50 Grand so here's the shocking thing that a lot of

people don't realize they think okay number one when you have a really big client you have to do totally different things not necessarily true and you you and and that the other thing is that they're going to be really high maintenance they're going to nitpick every little thing completely the opposite so let's dispel that myth first because although the idea is very attractive to our listeners that having a big client that's going to spend five 3 to five or even 10x of what you normally get that would just cause their blood pressure to go up

because of those fears but let's dispel that myth first my experience with super high-end clients is that they're completely reasonable um small things mean a m big deal to them uh and actually their ability to get a return on investment is normally so high that even just doing a small thing well will actually get them return on investment even though they've spent so much money so that probably is a key difference that you know when you're working with a small client where for them 20 grand is a big deal um you're going to have a

situation where they're going to micromanage you they're going to be really freaking out and also the underlying business business that they have is probably so small that even if you do an incredible job they you know even if you double their business it may not even be profitable the service that you provide depending on who's the buyer and the impact it has on their life and their business can mean a worldly difference in terms of what they're willing to pay from working with thousands of businesses the businesses that really take off and really become profitable

and really end up selling for millions and delivering huge amounts of financial rewards to the founder they solve a problem for a client who likes to throw money at their problems not time at their problems and that's a real distinction cuz I see people I was talking to some young guys the other day they're like oh we're going to work with students who are struggling to get this I'm like these are people who like to throw time at problems they don't like to throw money at problems they don't have enough money to throw at problems

and then I talked to an IT services company that works with the biggest brands in the world and they deliver an IT service that these Brands need and these Brands don't want to throw any time at that problem they just want to pay for the solution and just get it done so there is a huge distinction here that a high-end client fits that description they really just want to throw some money at a problem and get the problem solved and get it done they don't like throwing time at their problem so that's one of the

very clear reasons as to why they're a good client that should be a warning signal for some people and you may disagree with with me on this but while designers love to work with nonprofits like real nonprofits like there's no money at all not like the fake nonprofit which is a whole different classification or unfunded startups cuz all they got is time they don't have money they can't throw money at it but they just love to go there and they find themselves having to pull like tooth and nail to get some money from them and

then they're super micro they like to micromanage everything yeah yeah well they've got no other tool in the leadup to meeting with a high-end client you want to position yourself as what we call a key person of influence there's a a harsh piece of Truth that I share with a lot of people around this idea that when you talk to people they judge you and they're putting you in one of three buckets they're saying this is a newb who needs more experience this is a worker be who has an alley rate that is in line

with everyone else's alley rate key person of influence typically is someone who says we've won awards we've got a niche we've got something that we're super specialized in we're we're considered to be the best at this particular very narrow thing um I've written a book on it or I've written content created content about it um I'm followed for this I've got followers on social media so these are the types of things that point towards you being the key person of influence for XY and Z when it comes to blank there there's only a few names

that keep coming up mine included the thing about a key person of influence is that they're committed to changing someone's future state that if they don't show up something's not going to happen they know that their job in the world is bending reality they Bend reality towards a different outcome that wouldn't have happened had they not been in the room so when we discover that we're a key person of influence it's actually a discovery of our ability to bend reality um and to say hey when I'm in the room this project goes really well and

if I wasn't here it would not go that well right I know that anyone else can get you a 30% uplift I can get you a 300% uplift because I bend reality that way for this particular thing and I can't bend reality for everything but I can bend reality for that that sounds wonderful but I know the people listening to this were going to say well easy for Daniel to say easy for Chris to apply but what about me May I'm maybe I'm not even close to that does that mean I'm excluded from being considered

this way it's crazy to think that what a brand will spend on a more Legacy style commercial some content creators getting paid the same amount just to make vertical selfie videos talking about a product I was like that can't be real and then I saw it I was like oh my God it's real so you know what pushed me to do it was knowing that it was real knowing that I had my back pushed up against a wall a lot of people were saying you should give it a shot you have nothing you literally have

nothing much left to lose and I I went for it I'm an introvert I don't know are you an introvert I don't like being outside okay so you have to get out of your own skin to go to an event and then you have to do something that's even harder than going outside which is you have to go talk to people and then you have to convince them to work with you Talent is the base level right it sounds cliche it sounds obvious but we're all capable of doing great things yeah the thing that will

separate us from everybody is our soft skills like the hard skills is making it the soft skills is how easy of a person are you to work with are you moldable for the job it's just the grittiness that it takes to to work in this field and all of those things you know they will V you on whether it's a conversation at the bar or a video conference call and showing up understanding that I need to remove my ego from this as just a creative to I am just a cog in the entire machine has

helped me navigate that whole convincing process cuz at the end of the day it is a job if we want to go create art we should go create art and express ourselves freely by our own passion projects but if you're working for Nike and they have this Big Brand campaign they want you to direct you can't just come in there making this commercial that doesn't feel like a Nike commercial like it just doesn't work that way I mean there are bits of you that you should inject and can inject but overall like I know a

lot of creatives get frustrated that they're told bring your creative approach to this and then we need to make revisions on revisions it's just understanding that I need to deliver for the brand more than I need to deliver for myself and if I want to deliver for myself I have my own passion projects for that a lot of times people think that the way you get business is maybe you saw something on TV and you act like that that's not the way it's done right it came from a place of genuine appreciation and saying I

know enough about what you're doing and if they're if invited to that dialogue you're like here's a couple of things I've noticed and letting that play out the way it plays out you know just doing it in a way where you're not attacking what this brand or artist is already doing it's like just letting him know like hey like in this music video I saw he did this but how about like next time let's try this idea you know let me know what you think about it and it wouldn't it just wouldn't be invasive I

think that's what a lot of us Freelancers should understand too like we have the talent and skill that we've done through our own art to get to this place to make it a profession when it becomes a profession like our whole job is really to serve whether it's an album cover whether it's a music video or a commercial to sell pasta we're serving something through our skill yeah and I let that be known I let it be apparent like I want to help make a great product there seems to be a high effort into making

a very specific type of film tell me a little bit about your creative process and how you actually pull these things off my creative process A to Z starts with you know it's the ideation process a lot of that comes from whether it's driving or listening to music um I'm drawn to a feeling and if this song invokes A Feeling or a a thought I write it down then I'll usually pick a song to write to like an instrumental that I like I'll pick like a a Jay-Z song or something I'll write my concept to

that beat like a like a rapper embarrassingly enough like together it's coming right together like I said in the beginning it's um it all stems from from music I'll write my script to it and then I'll put the shots to it basically my edit is done before I go out and shoot anything which is something I call the paper edit yeah and then I'll go out I'll do by shoot day come back ingest the footage and I just drag the song in which I've already I know exactly what parts of the song I'm going to

use and it's just plug andplay from there I got paid $140,000 to work with a tech company and it was kind of not like a selfie video but it was not on my iPhone wow I edit it myself and I'm thinking back in the day they'd pay you 100 grand for a music video an entire music video freaking and you spending most of the money if it as a director you only get 10% and you cut into that trying to make it a better product what kind of dream world are we living in and I

understand this because I've been in the business for a long time there's the budget to produce the video or commercial and then there's the media buy so they're actually getting a huge bargain because what they're doing is they're buying not only your Production Services but they're buying your distribution yeah so the larger your following the larger the engagement the viewership that's what they're buying so they're getting it actually a great deal so more brands should support artists and they're going to have a much more effective delivery vehicle for someone that people trust and like and

the message is authentic we started out with two laptops four desks and idea that design wouldn't be what we make design is what what we would make um possible that put the emphasis not on the artifacts but on the outcome and on the action that designers could have on creating the future in effect what we're doing is designers Are wizards we're able to kind of rehearse the future before it arrives and the way that we would say it is there's really no such thing is the future what there are there are many Futures all in

competition with each other and your job is to fight for the one future that you believe in and then design is the bridge that helps you get to that future where do we get our bearings before we jump into the future what we decided to do was to completely blow up the old business model what we decided to do is reimagine basically the foundations of the business what we did is we looked back at what we had done most successfully over the previous 16 years we tried to find what that pattern was and we double

down on three things the first was design is not what it looks like design is what it does and how it behaves and then what it looks like is a result of what it does and what it behaves the second thing is that brand is not visuality brand is not the tight face brand is not the color brand is not the logo brand is not the design system brand is not the interface looking fuel what brand is is differentiation and differentiation is about change and differentiation is about making sure you do not become a commodity

the third thing we realize is that companies if they're not a step ahead of the culture are going to be behind the culture therefore companies always have to change therefore companies always have to transform we realized that the business that we were actually were in wasn't the graphic design business was it the Communications business was it the branding business the business that we were actually in was in the transformation business and helping companies transform so they could build a better future that was a step ahead of the culture then we had a force realization coming

out of that which was our most successful case studies in terms of design were also our most successful case studies in terms of business like we were became very well known for our work with Spotify it was celebrated as a great sort of creative and design achievement and branding achievement it also helped Spotify take off as a younger person I underestimated the power of language and words I'm not that stupid anymore can you talk to us philosophically intellectually about the the potency of the words when you find the right words in the correct sequence it

can unlock that very strong emotional response from this powerful CEO words create Worlds the powerful language to create and paint a picture the future that is grounded in understanding of where the business has been where it is and where it needs to go language that identifies what is what must be and language that identifies what could be in your articulation of a company's future you hit those three things and you help people to understand what future it is that they're fighting for it opens up enormous Wells of trust because people say you've listened to me

and you've heard me and you've given me a map that I never thought I would be able to get there's this quote that people in design use often they said that Einstein said imagination is more important than knowledge right youve heard that but then you have to ask the next question what's more what's more important than imagination what's more important than imagination is craft can you make it can you create it can you animate it can you ship it can you write it and the craft of writing is actually more important than imagination itself imagination

is easy in some Industries um they go I've get a good idea I wake up like you do like anyone who's listening to you right now we have a 100 good ideas hit us during the course of the day it's not about the big idea it's about the big craft can you make it real and that's what language is about do you know the difference between the right word and the wrong word and I've seen it in a room and I've seen it in a room I've seen it open up the head of a CEO

and I've seen it make a CEO cry and I go holy sh I didn't think that was possible that's the power of real language the power of real language is not to out and say we're connected and this is a human brand and we're getting oldold and relevant and and Innova kill me now I mean if I see these interchangeable Brad decks they're all the same everyone has bold relevant Innovative you it it's they're interchangeable so the power of language to create not only meaning but more importantly in terms of brand differentiation at this point

where we stuck dynamite in our old business model you know The Branding industry is about to go through a Hu two things are about to happen and why I think the the old branding industry the way you knew it is debt it's it's it's gone personal branding for me is a process of discovering who you are and getting in touch with that and healing from trauma that we don't even understand we have so for you it's clearly not a strategy just to get more clients expand your marketing but a deeper process of self-discovery I want

to know from you your personal experience how did you come to this realization you personally Kristof I don't think we should pursue personal branding if you believe in the thesis to get clients at all this is the wrong thing to do and it kind of ties closely to my perspective on why we post content on social media almost everybody that I know posts content on social media as a thinly disguised advertisement for their business for their services and products and it it just kind of makes us all cringe like why are you posting that and

and even if you lead with 80% value and at that last little 20% you kind of ask me for something you kind of burn all the Goodwill so I'm really a big believer or proponent for this generosity kind of marketing where you just give lots and lots of value and when you're ready to ask just ask you don't have to worry about hiding it in something we don't have to use this Trojan Horse concept okay I think 98% of creators that you see on the internet are all fake they're all fake they're all building a

lie they've lied to themselves they've lied to you and you're bought into it you getting sold no I follow some people that I feel are very genuine and sometimes I'm like uh are you just feeding me a line so I can buy your product cuz there's a CTA in this video well every time there's a CTA you have to ask yourself is this real yeah you have to ask yourself I'm not saying 98% of people are fake but 98% of the people online are completely fake when we're building our companies we like to edit for

sensationalism or for convenience of knowing who they are there are certain health and fitness gurus who purportedly sold their companies for a certain dollar amount but they didn't actually sell their company for that amount they sold it for a portion of that amount therefore valuating at a certain price and then they just claim that's what I sold it for and if you actually read their own story told by themselves at the end of the book you'll see that they didn't actually sell it for that amount but who really cares because that number sounds really sexy

I always think every Creator that's out there is one or two bad PR Pieces away from going to jail for lying for fraud or being sued in court it's because people feel the need to put on a certain Persona to be accepted to be liked to be respected and admired and I'm just sick of it I see lots of people either posting content on social or speaking on stages writing books on this thing about personal branding I think they know nothing about personal branding personal branding has become a cultural Zeitgeist it's become like a word

lightning rod that if you use all of a sudden everything you say has more gravitas because it's very attractive to everybody few of us can build a brand all of us have a personal brand so they're using this new label to put lipstick on a Pig they're teaching you about how to do marketing funnels sales strategies on how to position things in a marketing sense and I say it's all hogwash cuz who the hell are you you're just packaging things up call it packagings I don't believe in any of this stuff because how can you

go around telling people who you are and you've got a strong personal brand when you don't know who you are and you don't know what makes you you that you still have unresolved childhood trauma that you're reacting and responding to things in a way to to mask your insecurities and and the hurt that you felt and I I feel bad for you the thing that I want people to understand about personal branding is when you show up as you in all your glory the things that you're proud to tell people about your accomplishments and the

the hard work or the perseverance you've had the things you've had to overcome as a human being and you talk about things you want no one to hear about the things that you would be embarrassed that people talked about then now for the first time I think you're starting to show up as a real person there was a Creator in the digital marketing space and she was saying the opposite of what you're saying actually do not show up vulnerable anymore I've been showing up vulnerable and it's been weaponized against me and it's actually triggered me

and it's actually brought up old things for me and it had didn't really move the needle forward from a business standpoint so what this person did was show up and present their vulnerability as a means to get more of an audience wrong wrong already okay cuz that's like you or me saying poor me I've struggled so much in my life don't you feel so bad for me that is like I hate to say it I don't there's probably a better expression it's like pity porn pity me and let's all get together and share like how

the world has been so unfair to us the kind of vulnerability I'm talking about is I've accepted that I have certain shortcomings I've healed from it and more importantly I've grown from it [Music]