← Success Story with Scott D. Clary
Success Story with Scott D. Clary
Chris Do - Emmy Award-Winning Designer | Stop Hiding Behind Your Work
01:30:45
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- [00:00]
A
You said that most creative people are children who've survived in childhood.
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B
We're taught to follow a very specific path in life and that all the individuality, all the quirkiness gets beaten out of us. We learn how to go along, to get along.
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A
What if design could change everything? Not just how we see the world, but how we live in it? Chris Du started with a simple idea. Use creativity to unlock real value.
- [00:23]
B
I think humans are hardwired to be social animals can feel very lonely, very depressing to feel no one understands you, no one gets you. So we go that path. Entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart. There's all kinds of things baked into entrepreneurship and it seems awesome to be able to have that, to be the master of your own time. But the reality is it's fraught with risk. Safe is risky and risky is safe. There's only so much you can do to remove the risk about entrepreneurship.
- [00:47]
A
From teaching design to building an empire that shapes the future of branding and business education, his work has touched millions, turning art into action, ideas into impact. But it wasn't always clear. There were moments of doubt, struggles that tested his purpose, a relentless pursuit of clarity in a noisy world.
- [01:03]
B
Pricing is positioned. Anything that has a higher price has a perceived higher value. Personal branding is not what you do, it's who you are and drilling into who you are and reflecting that into the world in the most unvarnished, real and raw, authentic way that you can. So very few people can actually do that.
- [01:28]
A
I want to unpack one of your ideas just to kick this off. So you said that most creative people are children who've survived. So explain what that idea means.
- [01:40]
B
Yeah, I think the thing is, in childhood, we're taught to follow a very specific path in life and that all the individuality, all the quirkiness gets beaten out of us in one way or the other. We learn how to go along, to get along. If you remember back into your early primary school days, the kid who was like painting and getting stuff on his face was the outcast and was shunned and kind of left to be alone. And it can be a very sad place to be. And we're pretty quick to pick up on these social cues. And we're socialized to learn how to create a Persona so that we can get along and be accepted within culture and society. Because I think humans are hardwired. Most of us are hardwired to be social animals. And so it can feel very lonely, very depressing to feel that no one understands you, no one Gets you. So we go that path. And so the creative people are the misfits who didn't see that or could not follow along despite their best efforts and survived through adulthood to kind of retain that curiosity, the ability to continue to ask what if? And try weird things and to live in their imagination.
- [02:50]
A
When you look at those people that have survived childhood, what allowed them to survive? What allowed them to step outside of traditional school education framework, society, and maintain that creativity, which obviously serves them very well in adulthood?
- [03:06]
B
I think there's a term that Brian Collins has been using that I like a lot. It's this. They're gifted misfits. They can't follow the plan for whatever reason. When the instructor said, raise your hand first, they didn't raise their hand or color inside the box. They just couldn't do it for whatever reason. Maybe they're neurodivergent or they're divergent thinkers and. And they see multitudes or multiple possible options for the future, and they like to explore that. I'll give you an example. So in World Civilization, I think I'm in junior high, John Steinbeck Middle School. Mr. Thompson was always talking about things, and he's a very engaging speaker, and he would teach us about world history and civilizations. But I was constantly just doodling characters in my notebook. I was listening, but I was doodling. And Mr. Thompson, thank God for him because he allowed me to express myself in the way that I wanted to. And knowing very well, if he asked a question, I wasn't daydreaming. I wasn't not paying attention. I was very much paying attention. I just happened to find some activity for my right hand to do. And it was funny because there was a woman next to me, a girl, and her name is Heather. And Heather's like, how come you're giving me a hard time when he's drawing all the time? He goes, watch. I'll ask him a question. He'll know the answer and you won't. That's the difference. And so I think we have a couple of people who see something in us who are our champions, whether they explicitly say it to us or not. They're rooting for us to succeed, and they give us just enough space to explore our creative side. Sometimes it's a parent or a sibling, and I've had a lot of that in my life. My mom would buy me an airbrush and a compressor because she saw me staring at the people at the fairgrounds airbrushing names on T shirts, and she just knew there was something There my older brother got me a credit card to help me start my first business, and he just encouraged everything that I did. Like, in metal shop, I would build wire sculptures, and he'd go, that's a really neat piece of art. I'm like, that's not art. That's just some junk I made.
- [05:01]
A
Is there a way to architect creativity? Or. If you've not had that support growing up and you find yourself in a 9 to 5 job and you're listening to this podcast and you consume the future and you consume your content and your show and your YouTube channel, you're like, damn. Like, I want to break out of what I know. I want to be creative, I want to be a builder, but this is not the environment I came from, so I don't want to just throw in the towel. How do you architect creativity?
- [05:31]
B
Very good question, Scott. I like that question very much. I feel like there's a frequency that's being transmitted that only some people can hear. I suspect that anybody who's watching this on our channel or your channel or listening to it on a podcast, they're already tuning themselves in to hear this. So maybe we don't need so much to reverse engineer or architect it so much as to give them permission to explore this other side that they've repressed for a really long time. There's this itch, and it's been sitting there, and they know it. And they followed someone else's game plan on how to live a successful life. They went to the proper school, studied the proper subject, and got the grades and the diplomas to prove it. And then they're in this grind and they're just sitting there thinking and daydreaming. Is there more to it? I find some parallels to the Matrix. And the Matrix is one of my favorite films of all time, probably the top film of all time for me. And in it, the character, the main character, Neo, knows in his heart and his soul there's something more to this. But he can't quite put his finger on it. And so when he gets this message on his screen, his terminal, it says something like, follow the white rabbit. And that's all it is. It's not very clear what that means. And some people are encouraging him to go to a party or something. He doesn't want to go, but when she turns, there's like a little rabbit tattoo on her back or something. And he follows the rabbit. And so maybe they're listening to this and saying, is this my moment? And it might not be the moment for you, but I suspect it is. And if you're listening to this, you're already picking up on the frequency. Now, I want to provide a broader definition of what it means to be a designer or creative person so that you're not thinking, oh, I don't draw, I don't paint, I don't sing, I don't play music. I'm excluded from this conversation. In his book the Brand Gap, Marty Neumeyer quotes Herbert Simon, I think is his name, who's a Nobel laureate, on his definition of what a designer is. And if I can remember correctly, it's something like this. A designer is one who devises courses of action to go from an existing condition or situation to preferred one. And I really like that. That means the world is the way it is and we seek to improve it in small or big ways. And anyone who does that is a designer.
- [07:44]
A
You, I mean, you've gone, you've gone out and you sort of stated that your current season of your life or your current version of yourself started at a later age. You started at 42 when you started creating content. Did you consider yourself a creative before that? Or was this like this, was there some sort of inflection point that pushed you down this, this path that you're on right now?
- [08:07]
B
I gave myself permission to be a creative person, I think in senior year in high school. I'd always been drawing, making things, thinking about building businesses and building them and failed spectacularly. And it wasn't until I met a real life graphic designer when I was 18 years old that I thought, this can be a possible career path for me. And so I think this is a very important thing to share with people. Until we see someone that we can relate to doing the thing that is that what we want to do, we don't allow ourselves to dream that hard. And that's the sad part of like, real life. So when I meet this real life graphic designer working in his home studio, his name is Dean Walker, he has the early Macintosh 512K, you know, monochrome monitor, and he's doing professional design work with his mouse and hands. I was like, this is so cool. I've seen this on tv, but I have not met anyone who does this. You know, all we see are like Mac paint and like really rudimentary illustration tools, which didn't interest me at all. But here he was drawing letter forms and building complete logo systems. And I was thinking, this is really, really cool. I knew then and there that I was a creative person. I mean, I always knew, but I didn't give myself permission to do that. And it's very easy to spot if you ask people who are listening to this podcast or watching this. Retrace back into your childhood the fondest memories that you have. They're almost always around play and imagination. Whether you put on a costume and pretended to act out a scene, you built a fort, you might have designed a go kart or a soapbox derby thing, there's something that you did and that brought joy to your heart. And then you were told, that's not a serious thing. That's play, and we have to work now. And you put those things away and just try to recall those moments. Those are clues as to who you were supposed to be before that idea or dream was snuffed out. So I already knew that at an early age. I was a creative person, but I didn't allow myself to pursue it on a professional level.
- [10:05]
A
First of all, I want your story to be a lesson for people that are later on in their career. Obviously, I think that's a very important message because I think that those people feel pigeonholed and stuck in what they're doing, especially when they've been doing it since they were 20. So I think that's a great story that I want you to talk about. But what was that thing that gave you the permission to. To do this?
- [10:24]
B
Radical shift for context. So from about 2000 to 2018, I worked and studied as a professional graphic designer. I went to a prestigious art and design school. I got my degree in design. I started working commercials and music videos. And that's where I stayed for almost 25 years. Something significant happened in 2014 that would change the course of my life. So I met. There's a couple of things I have to mention, okay. Because they're kind of important for people to understand and unpack. Number one, I had been working pretty much solidly as an entrepreneur for 20 some odd years. 1995 is when I started my company. And so that's almost 20 years at that point, I think. And I've built up enough financial reserves such that I started to think about what I want to do with the rest of my life. It's not a midlife crisis, but it's when we remove the need to make money. We start to ask ourselves, who am I supposed to be in this world? And it was a confluence, a couple different things happening within close proximity in terms of a timeline, that. That got me to shift in a very different direction. I'm teaching at Art Center I'm teaching sequential design, and my wife is hanging out with me, and she's a designer too. And in class she's kind of asking me this question, which is, I think you were destined to do more and to be more, that your genius needs to be shared with more than just eight students at a time. Private art school, very small classroom, good student to teacher ratio. And I was like, shoot, how do I do this? Because I felt that I needed the institution, I needed their enrollment process, I needed the curriculum, I needed the credentials, I needed all these things, and I didn't have an answer for it. But just like less than six months later, I get reintroduced to an old friend from Arts Art school. His name is Jose Caballer. And we're meeting at, like, the AIGA boardroom, talking about the future of design. And I was asking him questions about web design. And that began a chain of events that led us to this conclusion that we're both very passionate about education. He was already teaching using YouTube, and I was teaching, like, in brick and mortar schools. And he was challenging me, why don't we make content together? And at first I rejected the idea. I thought that only pretenders near to do wells, people who don't have any real Skill, get onto YouTube and babble on about things they don't know anything about. Because that's kind of how the landscape was back in 2014. It's very true. Right?
- [12:47]
A
And some things have not changed too.
- [12:48]
B
But now you see lawyers, you see therapists, you see people with, yes, people.
- [12:52]
A
That really do know what they're doing, multiple degrees.
- [12:54]
B
And people who are serious entrepreneurs creating content on YouTube, people who've exited out of companies for a hundred million dollars doing content on YouTube because they see the opportunity. But back then it was kind of dark. But he insisted I do this, and he gave me a very generous offer that one that I could not refuse. And so I started making content. It took a couple years for it to click for me, like, this is going to work. There's a real business here. And it allowed me to transition from doing client service work to doing just peer content and education. And that's what I've been doing for the last, I guess, 10 years now.
- [13:26]
A
Do you think that that is the ideal version of entrepreneurship, where you build up the safety net so you can or should, so you can take more risk? Or should people maybe work a 9 to 5, not have complete financial safety, but start to build that at a much younger age? Like, what if you could just give somebody the perfect playbook for de risked and highest chance of success entrepreneurship. What would that look like?
- [13:50]
B
I'm gonna say things that may be controversial. So if I say em, you wanna push back, I, I encourage you to. Entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart. There's all kinds of things baked into entrepreneurship. There's a side that people share about, like being your own boss, having your own ability to write your future, so to speak, and to make the money and manage people. And it seems awesome to be able to have that, to be the master of your own time. But the reality is it's fraught with risk and entrepreneurship is risk and it's risky to be able to do that. But there's an admin who said safe is risky and risky is safe. So if you want to go the safe route, you're going to have a very predictable job, but those jobs can go away and you're kind of at the, the whim of whatever corporations want to do with your life. And so that's problematic, right? They downsize, they merge, they sell, they, they go in a bad management spiral and you're kind of just stuck and you don't know what else to do. So I want to let people know there's only so much you can do to remove the risk about entrepreneurship because entrepreneurship rewards people who want to take risk. I think that's a great thing about America, which is we're a capitalistic society and we reward people with, with patents and IP things that they can trademark or copyright. We give them special tax incentives so that they can build businesses because they know that there's a pretty high percentage of failure. And I think if that sounds like you, then you might consider this. But I don't think I can make you like more risk tolerant. People are averse to risks or people are tolerant to risk. I'll give you an example. My wife is very risk averse. She doesn't want to take risks. She wants to have a very stable life, especially as we're kind of getting up there years. She doesn't want this and I get that. But I thrive in the kind of pool of stress and the unknowns. And I think that's the first sign, you know, you're ripe for entrepreneurship. Number two is to realize this one thing which is your life is relatively short for the moment in which you're born. You're counting down the days in which you're going to expire, either by natural causes or unnatural causes, you're going to die. And if you come to that, that realization, if you get one spin at this one play. Why not make the play the biggest, boldest thing that you can do in your lifetime so that it fills you with joy and it gives your life meaning and purpose. Because I know no one sits there and wakes up one day and it's like my big dream is to work 9 to 5 helping to contribute to somebody else's wealth.
- [16:23]
A
When you look at first time entrepreneurs, you speak about this a lot. And I think this is one of your most viral posts. It's about pricing, it's about what you should charge and what you are worth. I think there was something like 64 million views on this one post. But the concept of starving artist, of solopreneur, of not charging enough, is a very hot topic. Because I think that for first time entrepreneurs it's very nerve wracking to ask somebody for money and ask somebody for a lot of money. I think that you generally default to imposter syndrome and not asking for enough. So maybe just walk me through some of the, some of the arguments you make for charging more, for knowing your worth, for knowing your value and maybe even talk through it in terms of like a timeline of as you're building out your solopreneur venture. Like do you adopt these ideas of charging premium in month one or is it like this, is this like a month 12 or year two conversation?
- [17:26]
B
Okay, I'm going to make some analogies. If I get lost in my own analogy, pull me back. Okay? Just wave at me like, yo, we don't know what the heck you're talking about anymore. All right, here's how I want to look at this. I don't know if you've ever played the game Battleship Battleship, where there's a little screen. You kind of what you do in Battleship is you don't try to sink the battleship. You do something called range finding. You put a couple like targets on the board and you kind of eliminate whole areas of where the battleship can't be. And if you're out in the field, maybe before computers and AI assisted weaponry was available, you'd fire a shot like a catapult, right? A trebuchet, and you'd fire a shot. You're like, okay, that was way too far. And then you fire the next one. You don't just make small movements there. You'll then go really short. So you know somewhere between those two markings is where you're going to hit. And based on that, the third shot will get you really close. And what some people do is they just fire a shot and they go, okay, that didn't work. And they just do wild things. There's no strategy for it. And I want you to think of your value as a game, and the pricing is a game. So we don't know where the target's going to be. So what people tend to do is they say, okay, what did Jimmy or Mary make on that job? They're like, okay, it's 30 bucks an hour. Well, based on their portfolio, I'm not as good as them, or I'm not as fast or as experienced as them, so I'll do 25. So we compare to that benchmark, but we're using pretty bad data, because how do we know that Mary or Bob put in the good price to begin with? And then we start to adjust ever so slightly. Well, we'll do $26, and we'll do $28. And we slowly work our way up. After years of working saying, now I feel like I'm ready to charge what Bob and Mary charge. My game is I know that what I do is good because I put in the time and work when I was in school, and I knew where I stood relative to my. My classmates. So when I went out into the professional world, I started putting out a price, and they said yes. And that. That got me to think, well, is that the ceiling? Because I always want some tension in the conversation. I generally avoid tension, but in the pricing game, I love to have tension. So I want to raise that price again and see, like, what they say to. To the next client or to the same client, because I know whatever they paid me to do, I'm gonna do a better job. I create more value than what I charge. And I always know that I'm on the right side of that equation, because in my mind, even at that time, there's no amount that you could pay me where I wouldn't work harder to earn that business and make you feel good about it, Right? And if you don't feel good, we don't ever have to work together again. And that'll be a bad mark on me. And I know that. And a lot of creative people feel this way. So I just keep asking for more money until they start to say no. But I don't stop there. I'm like, why did they say no this time? I wonder why? Because the perception of the value I've created in the prospects or the client's mind doesn't exceed the pain it costs for them to give me that money. Good news is, if you sell to affluent buyers, People who have serious problems, their pain threshold is very high relative to the price they're willing to pay to get rid of that problem. Let's put it in a different context now. If you're in a boat and the boat is sinking and you're out at sea and you don't know how to swim and you have a family of four in there and you're going to perish, anybody who pulls up to you, who offers you an emergency vessel or life jackets or a beacon or instant repair to your boat, you will pay just about anything because it's worth a lot to you. But the problem is the person who pulls up on that boat to save you and your family of four, they're like, well, it only costs this much materials and this much time and they're pricing based on what it costs them versus the value to you. Now that might not be a very good analogy because you know, now you're charging money to save people's lives. And so maybe that's a bad analogy, but I think I've made the point there. So what you do then is you need to understand the other person has a pain point, can afford this, and it would give them pleasure to give you money to make that problem go away. We don't want to deny them that process of figuring out what the value is to them. And so that's why I just kept playing the game. So I went from doing probably $250 a day, which is about $30 an hour for an eight hour day, to 300 to 400 to 600 to 800. And now I was starting to feel like I'm hitting a ceiling here. So in my mind it wasn't there was a problem. It was just the problem to solve was how do I create greater perceived value in what I do? Who do I need to sell to such that they would see the value in what it is that I do? And I kept finding more buyers for the work. So here's the first lesson. Pricing is positioning. Whenever we look at comparable objects, anything that has a higher price has a perceived higher value. That's the bottom line. So if we look at T shirts, we look at sneakers, we look at cars. I'll give you the example. I'm really into limited drops sneakers. And I'm not talking about Air Force ones, which everybody knows about. I'm talking about like, they're like these weird ones that come out that no one seems to like. But there's only so many of them that are made. And I was late to the game.
- [22:40]
A
You get like a text when they drop.
- [22:41]
B
I was, I'm not that kind of guy. I'm too late to the game. It's like it's an eight year old shoe and I'm like, shoot, I really want that shoe. And I'm trying to figure out what the price point to that is and the value it is to me, right? So when I see a sneaker that's 6, 7, $800 and that's a way above retail, I'm like, that's the real one. And then because of targeting, somebody sends me, not somebody, like some company starts targeting me and says, oh, you want that limited edition shoe? Ours is 150. My immediate thought is that's a fake because I know the market price. Everywhere I've looked, it's between 6 to $800. So one that comes in 150. And sure enough, when I dig into the details, they don't use the brand's name. They say like that kind of shoe. So they get all the SEO stuff, but they can't say it's that same shoe. And I, like many people, don't want to buy a knockoff because buying a knockoff says something about me and my values. I'm not a counterfeit buyer. I don't want to support counterfeit companies. So pricing is positioning so many of you. If you want better clients, what you have to do is you have to charge more because you're going to attract a different kind of buyer. One who has a bigger problem, one who thinks whatever it is that you do is the solution to something that they feel is urgent to solve.
- [23:58]
A
Quick question. What's your go to when you got 10 minutes before a meeting or a workout? For me, it just used to be whatever I could grab, which usually meant skipping meals entirely or just grabbing something that left me crashing an hour later because it was just full of garbage. That's why I'm partnering with Huel. This black edition Ready to drink is a complete meal. So it has 35 grams of protein, 6 grams of fiber, 35 essential vitamins and minerals. It is no sugar added, gluten free, under five bucks. I always keep a few of these in my fridge and honestly, it solved the whole back to back meetings. Go, go, go nonstop, no time to eat problem. Super well. And this one's new for me. It's Huel's Daily Greens. I had the Blueberry this morning. Honestly, first impression, it was way better than I expected. It's developed by registered nutritionists and dietitians. There are 42 vitamins, minerals and superfoods. Only 25 calories, 4 grams of fiber and just 1 gram of sugar. I throw one back first thing before my morning calls. Every single morning. Look, if you're running a business, time is the most valuable asset. Huel makes healthy eating simple and they also just launched into target stores nationwide, so you can get it everywhere. Try both products today with 15% off your purchase for new customers with my exclusive code Scott@huel.com Scott tried both products today with 15% off your purchase for new customers with my exclusive code Scott S C O t t@huell.com Scott use my code fill out the post checkout survey to help support the show that is Huell.com Scott they really make healthy living taste amazing even if you're on the go. Healthy eating, healthy lifestyle doesn't have to taste bad. It doesn't have to suck HubSpot is a success Story Partner now think about listening to this podcast. Right now you're probably multitasking. You're probably catching 70 to 80% of what we're talking about. But let's flip that and imagine you're only catching 20%. That'd be crazy, right? It's really not a good use of your time if you remember 20% of what we're talking about. But most businesses, most entrepreneurs are only using 20% of their data. All the most important details in call logs, emails, chats with their customers. It's just left floating in digital space, not being used. HubSpot it gives you the access to those insights to help you grow your business. Because when you know more, you grow more. Visit HubSpot.com to get the full picture of your business today. NetSuite is a success story partner. Now what does the future hold for business? If you ask nine experts, you'll get 10 answers. Bull market, Bear Market rates are up, rates are down. At the end of the day, it'd just be easier if somebody invented a crystal ball. But until then, over 43,000 businesses have future proof themselves with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one AI cloud ERP that brings accounting, financial management, inventory and HR into one unified platform. Here's what I love about it. Instead of juggling multiple systems, you get one source of truth. Real time insights and forecasting that actually let you peer into the future with actionable data. When you're closing your books in days instead of weeks, you're spending less time looking backwards and more time focusing on what's next. Whether your company is earning millions or hundreds of millions. NetSuite helps you tackle immediate challenges while seizing your biggest opportunities. If I needed this product in my business, this is what I'd use. It's a game changer for business visibility and control. If you want to see how AI can transform your financial operations, download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free. That's NetSuite.com Scott Clary that's NetSuite.com Scott Clay Clary NetSuite.com Scott Clay Indeed is a success story partner. Now, if you're hiring Indeed is all you need. Let me give you an example. If I needed to hire a new editor for this show, I'd go to Indeed and be super specific. Not just can you edit audio. I'd say I need someone who's edited a conversational podcast for at least three years, gets our style and knows our software. Someone who's done this before. And here's the thing with Indeed Sponsored Jobs, I'd get people who fit that description. I'm not digging through resumes from people who've edited one YouTube video. I'm getting actual podcast editors who know what they're doing. People who've worked on shows like ours and can prove it. That's what makes a difference. You get people who actually are what you're looking for. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed are 90% more likely to report a higher than non sponsored jobs and people are finding quality hires right now. In the minute that I've been speaking to you, companies like yours have made 27 hires on Indeed. According to Indeed Data worldwide. Spend more time interviewing candidates who check all the boxes. Less stress, less time, and more results. Now with Indeed Sponsored Jobs and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help you get your job premium status it deserves@ Indeed.com Clary just go to Indeed.com Clary right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed. On this podcast. Indeed.com Clary terms and conditions apply. Hiring do it the right way with Indeed. Why do you think? Because when you say it makes so much sense. Common sense is never common. That's sort of like my my my rule that I live by. But and again. So I was just looking at my notes. 64 million views on this one particular topic. Why do you think this is such a viral topic? Why do you think that people have such a hard time with this when it seems like it should be yes, charge more. It makes sense. If they say no, then figure out why they're saying no I think that.
- [29:04]
B
Video has the most views because there are two sides of this argument. And whenever you can find that, whenever you can find something that both sides will argue on, I think you get a video that gets a lot of views. Because if we all agreed, we're like, well, that's a platitude. We all think breathing is necessary and love is good in the world and kindness, right? So if you make videos about generosity and kindness and love, you get some views. But there are hardly anybody who's going to say, well, that's a terrible idea. So where we get a lot of views on this is we touched a nerve. So for all the creatives, and I'm talking about how it's expanded way beyond graphic designers and people who make logos. I have people who work at airports who see that video, who serve behind kitchen counters at fast casual restaurants, or people who do plumbing and tile or electrical work saying, I'll watch your video. That changed the game for me. So what I'm doing is I'm giving them a logical argument about why charging based on time, time based pricing, punishes you for being good, for being efficient and for being experienced. Because you could do a job 2, 3, 4, 5 times faster and better than some rookie. And if the rookie in you were to charge similar hourly rates, they would make more money. So you're being punished for your efficiency and for being good. Conversely, there's other people who take the other side, which is you're just an idiot trying to raise prices on people with no foundation. I have no idea what I'm talking about because this is not how it works in the real world based on their experience. So you're getting both sides coming at this from the side of the buyer and the seller arguing with each other and myself included, saying, either I don't know what I'm talking about or Chris Preach. And that's why that video has so many views.
- [30:48]
A
So it's interesting and it's funny that people say this isn't how the real world works because I've, in past companies, I think I spent about 50 grand for a PowerPoint from, from Deloitte or McKinsey. So that would be cheap. This world definitely does work like this. Yeah, that is a cheap PowerPoint. That was a, for a pre revenue company, that was the most you're willing to spend pre revenue. But I mean, there's endless amounts that you can charge if you, if you can find a way to quantify the value. If you look at even, I mean, we can sort of Talk about content for a second. I know that you actually. I don't want to talk about content yet. It's a fun topic. You talk about it a lot. But I was listening to a couple other podcasts you were on, and I. And I liked this position that you took so on, on brand and personal brand. So everybody's trying to build a personal brand. And I think you were talking to Eric sue, if not mistaken, about this, and your position was, are you really building a personal brand? And a lot of people that think they have brands do not have brands. So please explain that to me, because I love these spiky points of view that you don't hear a lot. And I think that's something that hopefully people that are listening to this audience, again, there's entrepreneurs in the audience, there's intrapreneurs that are still trying to build. But ultimately, I think what's ironic is, even though I don't think people should just build a personal brand just to have it, I think that's a vanity metric they're chasing. The biggest question I get is how do I grow my Instagram audience, which I actually find to be the most useful measure of. A useless measure of my success? Excuse me? I mean, it doesn't actually benefit me to any significant degree. Downloads from the podcast don't come from Instagram. I can grow on Instagram, but if you're talking about where I monetize my actual brand and my actual audience, it's not on Instagram. So for me, it's silly that people want to do this, but I get that people are just trying to chase fame or followers or vanity, whatever. Talk to me about personal brand.
- [32:40]
B
There's a lot to unpack here. So I just made some notes here. I think we need to get into a spirited conversation. So here's a warning for everybody. It's going to get a little spicy, okay? You might feel triggered or called out in this conversation. And, Scott, I'm going to have to rely on you to represent the side of the sane, because I'm going to go insane in the membrane right now.
- [32:59]
A
Deal? Deal.
- [33:00]
B
First, the words. Words matter. We have to agree that words matter and the definitions of words, and having a common, shared definition of words do matter, too, because otherwise, anybody can use any word to mean something other than what it really means. And when we talk about brand, brand has become an elevated term, and it's become so popular in the creative culture that people misuse that word so much. So there are people who design logos and say, well, I'M I do branding. No, you design a logo. Well, I design an identity system. No, you're an identity system designer. The people who can legitimately claim that are doing branding or brand design are the people who understand the entirety of the company. The culture, the mission, the vision, the purpose, understand its customers, their wants and needs, and develop a complete 360 degree approach to communicating and sharing an experience with their customers. So that doesn't sound like a whole lot of people, but because they feel denigrated that they're calling themselves a logo designer, they start to call themselves a branding expert, which they're not. And this is not to diminish the value of a really great mark. I will pay a lot of money for people who understand how to design a great logo, type or word mark or a combination mark or something like that, or symbol, because there's not that many people who can do a really great logo. But there's this false connection that if you make a mark or if you pick colors, then you're doing branding, because branding is much bigger than that. So if we look at the entire customer experience around branding, then we start to get a sense of what it means. So Marty Neumeyer has already done a great job of this. He defines brand in his books, multiple books. Brand as a gut feeling, a person's gut feeling about a product, service, organization. And it's a feeling. So the feeling is generated through a lot of different touch points and it can come from how you're greeted at the door, how they respond to a customer service problem, to the very smallest details of the packaging experience. Apple does it on levels way above everyone else. If you've ever purchased an Apple product, the entire experience from walking into the store to leaving, is unlike most experiences that you've had anywhere else. They've been doing this for decades, yet companies still cannot copy the, the experience that one has. Right.
- [35:21]
A
Can I add one thing to that, just so you to, to understand how detailed Apple is in their overall brand experience, if you hold up any of their phone boxes, they've timed the friction on their phone box so it takes only so many seconds for that phone to open on its own. So every time that you pull up a phone from like the counter or whatever and you're just holding that box, it'll take, I can't remember how long it is. It could be three seconds or four seconds, but every single box will open at the exact same moment. That's the exact amount of friction that they put between the upper portion of the box and the lower portion of the box. So the. The. The attention to detail, that's like a master class in. In brand.
- [35:59]
B
Even the way that you pull one little tab and the whole plastic thing comes off. Because those are points of frustration for most products when you get them. Like, you got to get a knife in there. You got to dig at it. You're tearing it away with your teeth, and sometimes they just fall out, and it feels like, whoa, I could have broken that. Or it just. There's too much friction. Like, now I can't get it out, and it's making me really angry. So the. The level of detail that they pay attention to is incredible. And that's what we talk about when we talk about branding. Okay, so now we move away from branding to personal branding. And there's some differences here. So we still understand as a person's gut feeling, it's about the entire experience. And there are many definitions of branding. Like, people will say, it's a person's. What they say about you when you're not in the room, it's your reputation. But sometimes I think those things are a little too reductive. And I prefer to use the definition from people who spend a lifetime developing brands. Okay. Now, a corporate brand is very different than a personal brand in that a corporate brand is the culmination of a lot of different people's opinions and ideas. It's. It kind of doesn't represent a person. It represents the entire culture of a company. Although one person starts it, it grows way beyond that in terms of, like, how it exists today. So Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started Apple in the Cupertino garage, but neither of them are connected to this company anymore. But Apple yet still has a very strong brand. The problem with this is there's a whole group of people from copywriters, strategists, art directors, designers, legal department, hr, kind of filtering out the experience for people. And so it becomes an amalgamation of a lot of different inputs. And we know that anything designed by committee is not the sharpest thing. It's because it's the lowest common denominator versus the one outlier. If you contrast that with a personal brand, a personal brand is representative of exactly one person. You or me, Scott or Chris. And here's the problem. And this ties back to where this conversation began. If we've been socialized to create a Persona, to get along, we've created a alternate version of ourselves that we have lived in this suit for so long that we forgot what our individual voice and point of view is. And we are also fearful that if we really say what it is that we think that we will get canceled, that people will find what our thoughts are so repulsive that they'll shut us down and it'll eliminate future opportunities for us for work, work, for clients, for partners. And I was listening to this one program where there's two people went on a first date, and she's like, I'm never going out with him again. Why is that? Well, because he's a ex supporter, some presidential candidate. And that was enough for her to say, I'm not interested in you. So that's why we have good reason to be scared. So what is happening is you have a lot of people out there who say they have this personal brand, but what they're putting out there is not a reflection of their real, true identity. They're not really being authentic. They're manicuring or curating all the things around in their lives. Like, they go to one nice hotel and like, this is my life. They rent a car and it's like, this is my car. They hire models and say, these are who I'm dating, you know, and it's all manufactured and fabricated. That's one type of personal brand. The other type of personal brand, which I'm not for either, is what people are using to get clients. Okay? So they look at personal branding as a form of marketing and advertising to talk about what they do, the kinds of benefits or features or outcomes that they're able to create for other people. Again, none of that is about who you are as a person. So for me, and I think I'm a lone minority in this world when I talk about personal brand. Personal branding is not what you do. It's who you are and drilling into who you are and reflecting that into the world in the most unvarnished, real and raw, authentic way that you can. So very few people can actually do that.
- [40:09]
A
The first I can never get on board with. I can't get on board with renting cars or renting models to pretend to be their girlfriend or renting a private jet and saying that you own it. Like that. Just ridiculous. The second I understand what they're trying to accomplish. They're trying to build a business, and they're not trying to do it maliciously. They're just trying to figure out, okay, how do I use my insight of my experience to sell a product or service that I'm fully qualified to sell? And I feel like if I'm injecting, like, my political views into this, it's only going to hurt me. It's not going to accomplish a net positive. So let's focus on that second person, because I think there's a lot more. I would hope there's a lot more of that second person listening to this podcast and the person who's renting models and posting the on Instagram. So the person is trying to achieve an actual business objective through their content, and they. That's what they speak about. And they don't bring their whole self into it. What's the advice for them? Because I don't think they're doing anything wrong. I just don't think they know how else to act because they're scared of hurting their income.
- [41:07]
B
So let's, let's try and unpack that. First of all, I gave extreme examples of, like, the fake Persona, but if you dial that back to, like, how people really show up, for example, filters on their face, you know, only one corner of the house looks immaculate, and everything else looks like a total pigsty, right? And so we do these things, we curate all the time, and it's natural for us to do some of that, to the extent of which you can start to say that's fake AF right now. Here's the problem in corporations. The way we go get new business is we do something called marketing, advertising, and public relations, but we don't call that personal branding. So if you act like a corporation, we just got to call a duck a duck. That's not personal brand building. It's just another tool for you to get clients. And that's why corporations don't talk about politics or strong points of view, because they have to toe that middle line. They run it through HR and strategy and copywriting and legal, and they figure out what we need to say to get more customers. But no one wakes up and says, oh, I just love that corporate faceless entity. They might like their products or how it makes them feel, right? Like, unfortunately, most of these fashion houses, the person who, who originated or created that brand in the first place are no longer connected. They've been ousted from their own company. So when we say we love Gucci, it's like, no one from the Gucci family is actually associated with Gucci anymore. If you believe the film right now, here's what's happening. Corporations are trying to be more personal. My friend Yo Santosa says people don't fall in love with corporations. They fall in love with personality. So they're trying to act like a person. Here's the ironic twist to all of this, people are trying to act more like corporations, which is really weird. So you guys just want to meet in the middle and have a weird party. That's cool. You guys go do that, right? So I think it's important when you have a business brand for you do exactly what you're talking about. You don't say too many inflammatory things. You're not polarizing, and you're very careful with what you produce. No one really connects with that content except for clients, which I understand you write case studies and you do PR releases about some cool project you've worked on. And you're very careful. You reread it, you send it through legal, all that kind of stuff. What I'm talking about now is something totally different, which is there's a business brand, Scott's creative business and Scott as the human. Those two, believe it or not, can coexist in the world. And in fact, the more you are you, Scott, the more you're gonna. You're going to drive interest around Scott's company. And we can see this happening. If you look at Virgin vs. Richard Branson in terms of the follower count, if you look at Elon Musk versus Tesla, Tim Cook versus Apple, you just go down the list. Basically, people want to connect to real people. And yeah, we'll follow the corporate accounts, but we're not really paying that careful attention to it because we know almost everything they put out in terms of content. It's designed for one purpose, to control our thinking and to influence us or nudge us towards behavior that benefits them. Maybe not so much us.
- [44:17]
A
When you look at what you've built, I think most people objectively would say that you've built a personal brand by the classic definition or by the definition that I think the majority of people would define a personal brand going into this podcast before, they just listen to how you broke it down. But would you consider yourself to be somebody who's built a personal brand? And if yes, why? If no, why?
- [44:38]
B
And I'll tell you for sure. So in the early ages or the dawn of social media, I didn't really understand social media. So we were creating things for my service design company blind. And so I was always worried, like, what do I write? Because there's a lot of people, creative directors, who are on the front line. And I don't want to create a situation where they have to explain themselves. And there's 10, 20 years between me and them in terms of our age difference. So we're into different things. They're much More inclusive and softer in their language. And I'm a little bit brasher and kind of more direct and blunt and I don't want to have them apologizing on every new business call. So I found it really difficult to write in any kind of real way with passion and with energy and emotion. So they wound up becoming very boring. So when I created the future by circumstance or by design, it was just me. I had one volunteer who was an unpaid volunteer at the beginning. And so it wasn't like I was going to write we. Everything was in I. I'm thinking this, I like this. And some people would push back. They're like, Kris, you're supposed to always write the we. I'm like, I don't know what school you went to, you write the way you want. I'm going to write the way I want because I'm spending all of my money to do this and I don't even need to make money. I'm just going to do what I want. So please don't tell me what to do. I felt it as inauthentic to write in the we because there is no we, there's just me. I'm not pretending to be anything but to be myself. And I say, right, here's the thing that's going to maybe shock some people. My personal account grew faster than the corporate account because it's like keeping in line with the data that we already see today. And there's no surprise there because people want to show up for a person and we understand that. I can alienate people. I can be off putting to many people. And that's totally okay because here's the really cool part. The stronger you are as who you're supposed to be in this world, the stronger it creates this filter to attract the right kind of people and repel the wrong kind of people. We totally get that right. So we were talking about certain political figures before we went on air. They attract certain kinds of people and they repel other kinds of people because they're speaking from who they are. And our frustration with American politics is people show up and we don't know who the hell is there. It's like some corporate puppet that's backed by billion dollar investors or something. And they have zero personality. They can't speak clearly or directly. And we're really frustrated. Hence why I think we got the result we got. Okay? So for me, I believe I have a very strong personal brand. People know what I stand for. I'm saying things that I believe in my Heart to be true. I'm very passionate about it and it will piss people off, but it will attract more people to the conversation than that will drive them away. And I'm okay with that.
- [47:26]
A
If you were going to give somebody a tactical guide on how to adopt this ideology into their own personal brand, would you say that there is some sort of framework that you abide by? 20% talking about my kids and my wife, 80% talking about my business. I'm sure you've thought through this because there can be probably over indexing on your views. So just for somebody who wants to get into this, what's the playbook?
- [47:54]
B
There's a very specific way that I found that has worked for me. It might work for them. Okay, initially, if you just talk about you, unless you're like a lifestyle brand, no one's going to care. No one will care about your life, your story, your history, or anything like that. The first arc of this, and maybe it's multiple phases, is for you to give tremendous value to the people that you want to serve. So find a customer that's passionate about something that has a problem that you'd like to help them solve. This is not advertising, by the way. This is just me showing up to try to help people. Initially, it was design content. I thought, I'll help you teach you about typography and logo design and corporate design. Cool. I kind of got bored with that. I'm like, I want to do something different. When I found that people were really hungry for business information and insight despite not having any product to serve that audience, I just created content for this community. Later on I found products because they would ask me, kris, do you have something on X, Y or Z? Now people are asking, do you have a course or a workbook or anything on personal branding? Because we love your perspective on it. So first you serve the audience in the community. Now here's the thing. When you teach, you're really just giving value up front. At some point, I don't know where the tipping point is, people want to see you in the content. So it's described as faceless content. Now, like, I'll write posts and it mostly typographic and design driven, a couple of photos, but it's really not me speaking or doing anything. And that brings in an audience. And then there's this question mark. Who is this? Is this a team of people writing, or is this a person I can relate to and connect with and share some kind of cultural currency with? And so then you have to start to put yourself in there. Because if you just lead with all value, it just becomes like a robot account. This is kind of important and this is where I want to warn everybody. It's my opinion, stay away from faceless AI content. I don't know what you're building there. You're just taking shortcuts, right? So now that you're creating content, you're delivering tremendous amounts of value. People want to know a little bit about who you are so that they can get into the story. And this is very important now because if it's purely education based, there's no, there are no emotional hooks there, right? Like somebody's going to tune into this content. They're going to see my face, my glasses, my hat, or hear my voice and say, hey, there's somebody that resonates. That frequency connects with me and we're kind of in sync, we're drawn towards each other. If I were to come on this show and be very professorial, which I could not be, to be very careful, my wording of things, to speak without a lot of. Of passion, to be kind of cold in, in my delivery, people are like, well, some people love that and some people hate that. And I find that when I speak with passion, more people will tune in. Hence that one viral video that you were mentioning.
- [50:43]
A
One thing that I think is a great exercise is if you look at your favorite creator and you look at their content and video, content's great for this. And go to their YouTube and go to oldest videos and look at how much of a robot they are versus who they are now, and you can see that, listen, being comfortable putting yourself out there and being comfortable having spiky points of view and opinions, it's not something that I would ever expect somebody to be okay with day one. I don't think it's easy to say. It's very hard to do. But I think that if you, you know, you put yourself into the arena, you do enough reps, you start to realize that showing up as yourself authentically on camera or in your posts or tweets or Instagram stories or whatever it is, it starts to become second nature. And I think there's a positive feedback loop from your. You'll get negative for sure. And I think that that could actually be a barometer of whether or not you're doing it properly. But there will be some sort of positive feedback loop that I think outweighs the negative in almost every situation I've seen. I mean, even the most, I think outspoken personal brands, they usually, it's usually a net positive for whatever objective they're trying to accomplish, whether or not you love them or hate them. Like, if they're still doing it, they're still online. And there's a reason why. I have one last question about personal brand. We did not have time to go into, like, a whole bunch of content today that we do that for another. Another. Another episode. But just one last question, because I'm happy when we went into this. You have a very specific look. And I. And I'm sure that that is, like, curated to a degree. I know that Seth Godin has his glasses. I know you have, you have glasses as well. What is, what is that factor in personal brand? Because I don't really know many people that. That evolve personal brand to that level. Is that on purpose or is it just by chance?
- [52:23]
B
I want to say a couple things. Do you know who Mark Manson is?
- [52:25]
A
Of course. Yeah.
- [52:26]
B
Okay. He wrote the book the Subtle Art of Not Giving an F. Right. I follow him and he said something that I thought was really good. He goes, you know, if you want to be a 1 percenter, to stand out and to achieve what the 1 percenters achieve, he says, you have to be a contrarian to say what everyone else is saying is not really contributing to the dialogue. Right. We understand that, but any fool can say the moon is made from cheese or the ocean is pink and be a contrarian. We get that. So he goes, the trick is you have to be a correct contrarian. I don't say things to be controversial or to be polarizing. I just have thoughts that oftentimes rubs against popular belief. I will argue with people because I'm so convicted in what it is. I'm thinking that if I hear a better argument from the other side, I will adopt their point of view. But most often it doesn't happen that way. So I will say things that will be a little bit shocking to people, and people will say, oh, I never thought of it that way. So then I know that that's a piece of content that I can double down on. And how I'm talking about personal branding is quite contrarian to how I think 99% of the people who are personal branding experts talk about it. They're talking about marketing and advertising and building funnels to grow your business, which I find nothing wrong with. I just. Just don't think that's personal branding. That's everything from the corporate world, and we borrow from the things we know the most about. I get that part. Now I want to get into the second part to this, the aesthetic part, is I'm a designer. And so, meaning, like, I used to design layouts, interiors, signage, all that kind of stuff and that kind of designer. And I'm obsessed with lots of different things. And fashion is one thing that I have become very aware of now. In my. My previous life, I used to make commercials and music videos. One thing that you learn about character design for an animated film is before they really design the character, they design design shapes and silhouettes. So if you look at Kung Fu Panda, which is one of the best examples of this, there's Po, who's like, bubbly and round because he's the lovable panda. And it kind of feels as if that's Jack Black in a panda form. There's Mantis, there's Snake, and there is Shifu, which is like, I don't know what he is, but he's small. And so. And there's the. The. The orangutan, I believe, who's like, they all have different shapes. And so when you turn off all the lights and it's just shapes, you can tell them apart from each other. And so I'm designing the character of me. And so if we're all stripped naked, we have slightly different shapes, but for the most part, we're human. What's really interesting is if you look at the world of fashion, I think Alexander McQueen said this. The late Alexander McQueen said, if you want to design in fashion, change the silhouette. You change the silhouette, you change everything. And I see two parallels now. When you're designing characters for animated films, you look at the silhouette and we're designing fashion. You change the silhouette. And so it's really important. So I think, okay, I'm a designer. I'm going to design me. I'm going to design the way I look to represent who I am in this world so that I'm not just in a brown paper bag, right? So this is the packaging of Chris. And so there's certain pieces of jewelry that I'm wearing now or funky glasses that are statement pieces that really bring this kind of, hey, I don't know what that guy does, but he's probably creative, artistic, or something like that. And it's been real interesting as an experiment, as I'm showing up and being more adventurous with how I come across with my. The way I look, people automatically assume I'm a fashion designer. And it's pretty wild because that is actually where I'm moving, because I want to design my own fashion line. And it's wild that you can signal to someone else without words. From old people to young people to people on airplanes and people at restaurants and cafes. They're like, oh, you look really interesting. You must be a fashion designer. And it's wild. So what I'm signaling to others, they're receiving, and that's really important to me. So what I want to communicate is, is I'm a person who's very particular about certain things. But there's another thing to note here in the sea of same. The last thing you want is to blend in. You need to stand out in your perspective. You need to stand out in the kinds of things you have to offer. The way that you teach and the way you speak and the way you create content. But you also want to stand out, like, physically. Now, me dressing and looking a certain way is very intentional because I'm a really socially awkward guy. I don't know what to do at parties when no one. I don't know anybody, I always feel like, oh, what am I doing here? I'm plotting my exit, Scott. I'm looking for how long do I need to stay at this thing to.
- [56:58]
A
Say I'm the same, Right. But, yes, I totally get it. Yeah.
- [57:02]
B
So if you dress a certain way, if you have purple hair or you have, like, bright shoes or a weird tie or an interesting dress, when you walk into that room, people find a reason to talk to you because they look across. Everyone looks the same. Duck, duck, duck, duck. There's a goose right there. Let me go talk to the goose. They might have an interesting perspective. So I rely on this wardrobe or this look or the silhouette to help invite people to come and talk to me, but also for people to be able to recognize me in the street because I love talking to people and they're afraid to talk to me. And I just want to make it easy for them to know. That is Chris. And if you've gotten some value for you to be encouraged to come up and talk to me because I want to share stories with you.
- [57:44]
A
The HubSpot Podcast network is a success story partner. Now, a quick podcast recommendation. I've been listening to Truth, Lies and work. They're in the HubSpot Podcast Network. Just like success story, it's this husband and wife team, Al and Leanne Elliott. They break down why people actually do what they do at work. So if you have a business, if you manage people, if you have to hire people, at any point, you have to listen to their show. I just listened to an episode on why good employees suddenly quit. That's an issue that we all have, and it totally clicked for me. One of the reasons they explained is why it's not usually about the money. It's about all these little promises that we as founders, entrepreneurs, managers, leaders, we break without realizing it. Like when you tell someone you just hired that they're going to learn all these new skills, but you just keep giving them the same tasks over and over and over again. It made me realize that I probably lost a lot of good people for dumb reasons that I never noticed. And hiring is one of the most important things you can figure out. So if you manage people or if you just want to understand what makes your coworkers tick, it's worth checking out. Listen to truth, lies and work wherever you get your podcast shipstation is a success story partner. You know what separates successful online businesses from literally everyone else? It's not just having great products. It's delivering an amazing shipping experience that keeps customers coming back. All of my friends that run the biggest e commerce companies, they use ShipStation and it has completely transformed how they handle orders. They save thousands on shipping costs thanks to the Rate Chopper tool that finds the best discounts. And what makes Shipstation brilliant, You never need to upgrade because it grows with your business no matter how big you get. And they offer discounts up to 88% off UPS, DHL Express and USPS rates, and up to 90% off FedEx. It integrates seamlessly with every selling channel you're already using, and your customers get branded tracking updates to keep them happy and informed. When shoppers choose your products, you turn them into loyal customers with cheaper, faster and better shipping. No credit card required. Cancel anytime. That's shipstation.com code success store story HubSpot is a success story partner. Now. The future of business is happening right now and you don't want to miss it. That's why you have to be at inbound 2025. They are bringing together the brightest minds in marketing, sales, business, entrepreneurship, AI for three incredible days in San Francisco, the global epicenter of innovation and technological disruption. Picture this. You are learning directly from Amy Poehler about creative leadership. You're getting AI insights from Dario Amodi, who's literally shaping the future of artificial intelligence. Here's what makes Inbound special. It's not just the great keynote notes. You're going to dive into breakout sessions where you can immediately implement what you learn. And plus, San Francisco's legendary startup ecosystem provides the perfect backdrop for networking with all these great entrepreneurs, decision makers, industry leaders peers who are actively shaping the future of business. From September 3rd to 5th at the Moscone center, you're going to be surrounded by forward thinking professionals who turn insights and ideas into breakthroughs. Don't just watch the future unfold, be part of creating it. Visit inbound.com register to get your ticket today. There's a couple other things that I said. I don't know if you wanted to talk about them or comment on them. I mentioned using failure as a barometer of successful personal branding or not failure. Excuse me, negative comments as a barometer of successful personal branding. That was one idea. I can't remember. I think we covered most everything else about brand. I was going to say is there any other factors that you consider when you are putting yourself out into the world that somebody else should think about? Whether or not it's looking for negative comments as yes, I have a spiky point of view. Check. Or is there some other X factor that you include in the way you speak, in the, in the, the way you present, in the type of content you put out? I don't know. You, you're the expert. There's, there's probably some, a lot of things. But what would be another thing that stands out that people should just take a note of?
- [61:21]
B
You now have reminded me what I wanted to talk about.
- [61:23]
A
Okay, good.
- [61:25]
B
And this is quote, I forget who said this, but I would rather be hated for being me than to be loved for not being me. And this is going to cut deep for a lot of people, right? So we're too entirely focused on what other people want. And it's like you can't be an influencer if you're chasing followers. It doesn't work that way. And I'll give you a prime example. Okay. People will make weird comments about like, oh, this guy's a douchebag. Look at the way he's dressing. Oh, dress your age. I'm like, you dress your age. You know, I'm 52. You want to dress like grandpa and wear your pants really high up and ill fitted suits like an accountant. You do you and I'm of the mind that I'm going to do me. I don't really care what you think or have to say. And eventually, like I said, the people who like you will follow you. And the people don't, won't like artists don't sit around and take polls about what they should paint or sculpt. They just make it. And if people don't like it, they suffer the consequences. They can change or they don't have to. It's entirely up to them. So people would literally say, never trust a guy who wears a baseball cap inside. Okay, I don't know where you got that story from, but I'm not going to change me for you. That doesn't make sense. So again, we're so conditioned to create a Persona or conform ourselves based on acceptance from others that we don't even know.
- [62:45]
A
It's funny how we chase all these vanity metrics.
- [62:47]
B
We do.
- [62:48]
A
I mean, we just chase all these.
- [62:51]
B
Or just accept it. I wouldn't even put that as vanity metrics. Just acceptance. Sometimes it manifests as vanity metrics. But I'll talk about that, too. Okay, so you have to ask yourself, am I leading or am I following? And if you're leading, if you're the thought leader, if you're the influencer, if an influencer has a bad taste in people's mouths. But people write articles, who make films, who design fashion and build buildings. They are influencers. They nudge people's behavior depending on how they do certain things. And they start trends or they create movements both political and social. And that's kind of an important thing to think about. Now, this whole idea of, like, manatee metrics, because you mentioned it like three times now, I want to talk about a little bit.
- [63:39]
A
You know, why it bugs me so much. And I think I mentioned it, too. It's because, again, it is not the things that people ask me to help them solve for. And listen, I'm not even a consultant. These are just DMs and replies to my newsletters. The things that people ask me to solve for or to help them out with have no bearing on my actual business. Like, they are not my KPI that I try and optimize for when I'm building my business. And I mean, I'm in it. So I understand that. I understand, like, what moves the needle on the podcast and what moves the needle on newsletter subscribers. And those are sort of precursors because, you know, I can tie a subscriber down to an advertising dollar, I can tie an additional podcast download down to an advertising dollar. And then if I'm going to try and sell a product, it would probably be coming through a newsletter subscriber. So I can follow that funnel. But ultimately, followers are not a metric of success. There's a lot of other metrics that I look for that are sort of leading indicators, not even just lagging indicators. But again, when I put out into the world, hey, what would you like me to Speak about, Because I poll the audience and I pull on my newsletter and I pull in stories, and I'll say, what do you want me to speak about? What do you want me to do? More content around or create more content around. It's always about, how do I grow my Instagram? How do I grow my Instagram? And it's just frustrating. And I don't know why people think that that's a useful skill.
- [65:04]
B
Okay, I'm gonna help shine some light on that. Okay, so here's a hot take. Here we go. Buckle in. This is probably the second most explosive thing I'm about to say. There's this rejection of followers and vanity metrics. And the term vanity is not a good term. There's a negative association with that. It's about appearances and nothing meaningful. And a friend of mine who is an influencer herself would say, followers don't equal dollars. And that's fine. When you look at social media and content as a means to go make more money, like, I've already established that idea, that for me, it's not about that at all. But when you create things, Scott, that help your community, you're doing something wonderful. You're creating goodwill. And goodwill goes a long freaking way. So that when you have something to sell to them, when you need their support because of whatever reason, like your account's being banned or some weirdos are stealing your identity, the people that you've created all this goodwill for will show up and fight for you. Because they've said in their mind, this guy fights for us, so we got your back. However, if you make the relationship transactional, this is a really important concept to understand. When I give somebody 10 bucks or 12 bucks to buy a burger, the relationship is kind of over. You give me the burger, I give you the money. It's a transaction. I don't owe you anything. You don't owe me anything. I don't feel compelled to go on social media and say, oh, best burger I've ever eaten in my life. Please go here. Now, some people do because they're trying to build influence in that space, but regular people don't. Okay, now here's the thing. And this is kind of an interesting shift in how people perceive things. There's something called social proof. And social proof is very valuable. And some people now are shifting of their mindset that social media has become the new resume. So let's unpack that. Okay? The resume is something that's fabricated, that most people don't actually dig much deeper. And so there's all forms of puffery and exaggeration that are used in resumes. I'll give you an example. I was working with this one person who was helping me with some marketing stuff, and I said they went to Stanford. On their LinkedIn profile says Stanford. But when I talked to them, I dug a little deeper and like, oh, when did you graduate? How long? You know, they went to Stanford for one semester and dropped out. That is a very misleading thing to say. You went to Stanford. Now, they're not lying, but they just say went to Stanford. Right. But they know how people are going to interpret that. And people give themselves all kinds of crazy titles. Head of product Design and development. You did a sketch that. So people exaggerate. And we know this about resumes. So I think resumes are worthless now. Work product matters a lot. If you're in a creative space, just show me your portfolio. But there aren't as many industries or verticals that you can be in that there's work product that you can prove you know what you're doing. So we go to the next available thing. We go into the realm of social proof. Testimonials, awards, certificates, things you've accomplished. And we all know this. When you go and find two people who speak on a similar subject, the one that has 10 million followers versus the one that has 10,000, you automatically associate the person with 10 million followers as having greater presence, reach, depth of knowledge, charisma, and all the kinds of things. Because humans are lazy, we use heuristics to help us not have to think so much, good or bad. That's an important thing to note. Now I will say this, and this is where I'm willing to kind of fight on the hill and die on my sword on this, which is everything that you do, Scott, everything that your audience does benefits on a exponential level if they have a really strong personal brand that is backed by a lot of social proof, period. So let me land that part. So if you sell donuts and you're the donut king on Instagram, your business will explode. If you are like an IT professional who helps people deal with cybersecurity, and you're the foremost expert or a prolific content creator about cybersecurity and patches and things that people need to do, your IT security business will blow up in the positive direction. And so what people don't understand is, and it's being proven again and again, people who have a strong tribe and community can make dumb, simple commodities very, very valuable. So you take Ryan Reynolds with aviation you take the rock with Teremana and you take all these people or even previously Logan, Paul and I forget the other guy's name. So he's pumping Prime. And prime became like the fastest growing energy drink company in the world because the association that they can drive. I get way better public speaking gigs and rates and speaking slots. Not because I'm a better speaker, not because I've written a best selling book or have been included in Fast Company or any of these Inc Magazine or Entrepreneur magazine. It's mostly because I have a large social following. So the social following is the new currency in the 21st century. And this is going to shatter people's heads because they're like, no, it's not, Chris. They're going to argue with me. They're all vanity. And I'll tell you right now, because of the social following, I get better book deals. I'm literally negotiating a deal with a publisher because they're looking at the social following. I get better sponsor rates or brand deals where people will open doors that even know existed. Forget about like me trying to open the door. And you're getting invited to meetings and events and you're being brought into the room, the room where it happens according to Hamilton. You're getting brought into the room where there are people there that you've looked up to all of your life because of the perceived authority that you have because of your social following. I just got back from a trip from Ireland as a business retreat with 20 other very accomplished individuals. And the first thing that they say when I'm introduced is, Kris, how many followers do you have? Again, not you won an Emmy or you worked on this account or you grew your business to XY million dollars. They just say, how many followers you got? Again, like you're saying they're incessantly chasing after you, Scott, saying, how do I grow my Instagram account? Because instinctively they also know something that you may or may not have accepted yet, that in the 21st century, the attention economy is the economy.
- [71:31]
A
I'll tell. So two things. KSI is his business partner. I just looked it up.
- [71:37]
B
Good, somebody's doing the research. Fact check.
- [71:39]
A
And the second thing is, I don't disagree with you. I think my frustration comes not from because yes, the following has given me incredible opportunity and put me on stages that I would not have had the opportunity to go on without that following. I think what frustrates me is people substitute audience building for building a profitable business from the ground up and figuring out a product that has product market Fit and then. And traditional entrepreneurship, they think that if they just build an audience similar to what your friend said. Well, actually, counter to what your friend said, actually, they think if they build an audience, it's going to lead to dollars. And that is. That is what I'm trying to push back against. I'm trying to say, hey, I know this crowd is entrepreneurial. I don't know the ambitions or the financial status of every single person that follows me. But if you are trying to build a business, let's focus on the business fundamentals first. Let's focus on solving a problem that people actually need solved. And then an audience will just make that a little bit easier. But just collecting followers with no rhyme or reason is really not going to solve what you're trying to accomplish. I think that's probably a better way of saying it. That's why I get frustrated.
- [72:47]
B
Let's weave this. These two ideas together, right? If you're trying to run a business and then you're an entrepreneur, you have to focus on the fundamentals. Marketing, sales, customer service, those kinds of things. Product delivery. That's paramount to you being able to play this game. So once you have your house in order or in parallel, you can develop your personal brand such that both these things help each other. Here's the example. If you're an unaccomplished person, you've got no experience, and you're trying to say, I've done things. Where are the receipts? The people on the social will say, where are the receipts? You've done nothing. You don't know anything about what you're talking about. Which is the criticism I get a lot. I'm like, okay, I have receipts. Do you want to look at them or do you just want to dig your head into the ground and say, blah, blah, blah. You don't know what you're talking about, right? So I had the receipts. So people are saying to me, kris, you wouldn't have been able to launch or create such a large following if you didn't have this business that backs up everything you're saying. I think some of that is fair. However, now on the opposite side, because I've been able to grow my social following to the. To the size that it is today. Whatever business I want to get into is going to be fueled by that. And I'll give you the example. Right now, I'm at a conference. It's called Reframe. It's for a bunch of accountants. There are a bunch of sponsors that are sitting along the wall to support this event. So there's a guy who's in the app development space. He and his entire family is super successful. Multiple IPOs between his siblings. He says, kris, it's very easy to get you money if you want to get venture capital. I'm like, really? He goes, well, most people, most entrepreneurs get venture capital. They build a product and then they spend all the energy trying to build an audience so that somebody will use their products and their tools. He goes, you already got that. I will help you go get venture capital. And once you build your product, there will be immense anticipation or buildup for it because you just tell your community, I'm working on this product for you guys. I've solved the problem that I think you will find that makes your life easier or better. And because of that, a person who has never launched an app or a digital product like that has not only access. So the conversation is being had with me and another serial entrepreneur who's very successful, who says, we can get your capital, I can partner with you to build some of this and we know it's going to be successful. And then we can create a whole bidding war for a second, like Series B Venture capital that is built almost primarily off the social following that I have and the goodwill that's been created. Nobody's talking about blind the company I spent twice as much time building. Almost no one's talking about that today. So I want to balance those two things, right? So it is foolish to go out there and be a Life coach at 17. You haven't lived life enough. Or to say like, you've done X number of conversions or you're a sales expert when you've not done anything. You're a kid in a bedroom, which, you know, maybe there's some ageism there. I get that. If you have experience and you know what you're doing, it's a great time for you to start creating content. And Scott, I understand your frustration because people have holes in the ship. Let's plug those holes up real quick While they spend 10 to 20% of the energy building their personal brand, because those things work in concert to help each other.
- [76:07]
A
If you have built a brand and you, you have built an audience. Excuse me, should creators. We can adopt a generalized view to this, to this idea, obviously we can make arguments for either. But should creators try and build a company, or should creators leverage their audience and take equity positions in startups or small companies where their product aligns with the audience avatar, what do you think in most cases is a better Use of their audience is a more leverageable option.
- [76:38]
B
Yeah, we have to kind of be real careful here. This goodwill that you've been building up, trust is hard to build. It's easy to lose. And once you lose trust, it's really hard to come back from. Okay? So as a general rule, I don't promote or leverage my audience for anything that I personally don't like, use, or I'm in love with. Otherwise, I have a real problem because I've become a pitch man for other people's products and I'm trading on the goodwill to make a quick buck. And you can do that, but that's not the game I'm playing. There is an interesting trend that's happening right now. There are a lot of SaaS, companies out there who are looking for that very thing. We just talked about a large audience to seed their software or their tools. Right. So what they're doing now is I have two such deals, equity deals, where I'm helping to promote a product that I like and use, that we've been using to our community, to our audience, and offering value to them in. In better deals in exchange for equity in these companies. This is an amazing time to be alive if you have a powerful personal brand with a good community, a strong following. And it's. It's awesome because not only. Here's what I think, if any one of these companies have equity and are sold or go ipo. So I think instead of my community getting upset at me, they're going to just be saying, good for you, Chris. They're going to be so proud to say, we're here to support you 1000%. And because that's the culture in which I've cultivated in the community that we have. Right. We want to see each other win. I'm there rooting for you. I'm there supporting you with content, with educational material so that you can build a life built around your passion. So when I'm also rewarded, our community stands up and it's like, this is freaking amazing. We're so happy. We're proud. We're here for you. What else do we need to do? And I'll tell you something. Something really remarkable has happened in the, in this whole content game that we started in 2014, which is people out of the goodness of their own heart just give us money. Nothing to buy, just as reciprocity. Right? So I ask people who are marketers, who are building brands out there, how much do you pay to acquire a customer? And do you pay a dollar $10, $100, $1,000. It depends on how big your offer is. You'll pay a lot because your lifetime customer value is quite high. And then I said, how great would it be if your customers actually paid you to market to them? And that's the rare position that we're in right now because we've been doing this for 10 years, creating goodwill and we've been honest and we've been doing it with integrity. And I have stayed away from anything that's made me cringe. So it's like people are in it for the long haul.
- [79:17]
A
If you're building an audience and you don't want to take bad brand deals right away, you just want to, you want to stay in integrity with your audience and you want to monetize the audience in some way because you are fully set on becoming a full time creator. What do you think is the most integrous way to monetize an audience? When you're first starting out and you don't have a massive amount of people to sell into or you don't have a massive pool of trust? Like how do you monetize it when you're starting?
- [79:54]
B
The way I'm going to answer this question is delay the ask or monetization for as long as you can. This is why if creating content is your primary source of income, you're not going to be able to do this. And this is why I'm going to back you on your let's build a business first, because that gives you more Runway. And what happens is there's this idea of karmic equity. The more I do good for the world, the more I make a deposit in the equity bank and it compounds interest over time. Especially if you do consistently. They say something like the minute your child is born or your partner is pregnant, you make a deposit and you keep adding money to this account such that by the time they go to college, especially here in America, they have college tuition ready to go. And we were very responsible as parents. So both my kids, the college tuition fund was already built. So both of them can have all their tuition money now or whenever they want so that they can figure out if they want to go to school or they want to travel the world and be a student of life. And so if we put these deposits in, but we're asking or doing monetization or doing deals or ask and running ads all the time, we empty the account out, it never has enough momentum to build into something substantial. There's this thing that people, there's this thing that Darren Hardy wrote about in the Compound Effect, he goes, would you rather have a million dollars or a penny that doubles in value every single day for 30 days? It's quite fascinating. So most people, I'll take the million dollars. I must be more. How can a penny be worth more than that? So what gets really interesting, by day 28, it's still less than a million dollars. By day 29, it surpasses it. And by day 30, it becomes a much bigger number. And so you can look at karma or goodwill or helping others or the act of generosity as that penny that keeps compounding and doubles every single day. And so I want to warn people, don't be so quick to monetize. Stay away from that. Because what's going to happen is you can do Much bigger deals 2, 3, 4, 5 years into this that are going to feel really like it's. It's like you're going to get better terms. And the kind of money you're going to be paid, it's going to surpass all of what you could have done cumulatively in one deal. So some of the biggest deals I've done are six figures. 120, $140,000 for one social media brand deal. And if I sat there and tried to take $1,000 out each time, I'm going to wear my audience down. I'm not going to feel good about myself, and I'm shilling products that I shouldn't be associated with because they can't afford to pay what one will pay to work with somebody like myself.
- [82:33]
A
Out of all the things that we've spoken about, what would be the last major misconception or red flag that you'd like to sort of like. Like, you know, put a stake in when it comes to somebody building their personal brand?
- [82:46]
B
Building a personal brand is not advertising because as far as I know, this is a Seth Godin thing. I think it's in permission marketing. Almost no one opens their email to find spam. Almost no one listens to the radio or watches TV to listen to an ad. In fact, we pay money to get the premium subscription service such that we don't have to listen to ads whether it's on Apple, Music, Spotify, Amazon, or whatever else. We just pay money to get rid of the ads. Ask yourself this question. This is the quick smell test. Does it smell like an ad? Because if it does, your audience is much smarter than you give them credit for. So be genuine when you're advertising to them. Don't try to disguise it and be real when you're creating content and don't ask for anything and what people do a lot. And I see it all over social, Whether it's on LinkedIn, on Twitter, on Instagram or on YouTube, it's an ad with a very sloppy package as value. And what happens is it turns people off. No one watches it, no one shares it. And they know that, okay, you're here to sell me something. I'll grind my teeth and bear through this painful experience so that I can pick up one or two pieces of information from you. But that's not a positive sentiment that they're feeling. It's quite negative. I don't know how many webinars you've been on, but the ones that seem to be successful, quote, unquote, follow a very specific formula. Promise three things, take forever to deliver those three things, and wait to the very end to deliver it while you're pitching to them every 10 or 15 minutes. That's pretty rough, by the way.
- [84:16]
A
I would say that the webinars that I actually appreciate are webinars that are actually so in depth and teach so much that it actually makes me. There's actually no pitching. And this is just subjective to me. I don't know the science of webinars. I'm not an expert, but when somebody comes on and basically teaches me the exact same thing, that they'd be selling me anyways for free. But I know that I'm not accountable enough or have the, or have the, the, the, the will to do it myself. And they're saying, hey, this is what you do, by the way, pay me $20,000 and I'll do it for you. And I'm like, you know what? Yeah, because you've already told me what you're exactly going to do and you haven't tried to sell me, and now I believe you can do it. And I probably could, with enough energy and effort, just do it myself, but I don't really want to. So, yes, here's the $20,000 or the 5,000 or the whatever, it doesn't matter. But those are the webinars that actually resonate with me as a customer. And I hate the ones that sell every five minutes or the oh, my God. Or the events where they just put the sponsors on stage and the sponsors can't have, like, an educated conversation. They're just pitching their product. It's an immediate turnoff. It's an immediate turnoff. So don't create that experience 100%.
- [85:24]
B
I'd like to end Our podcast today with a story and a question that was shared with me, and I want hopefully for you to think about it. Feel free to do a follow up to this. There's a buddy of mine, his name is Trevor, and Trevor is like Chris, and he hosts events with his boss, Neil, right? They've hosted multiple events throughout the year for a bunch of real estate professionals. He goes, what's your game, man? I'm like, what do you mean, what's my game? He goes, what is it that you're trying to sell when you speak? And I really had to think about it. I said, I don't think I'm trying to sell anything. He goes, see, I thought the same thing. Because every other speaker who goes on stage is selling a book. They want you to enroll in their mastermind or hire them to do your personal branding or whatever it is. They're always selling something. You're one of the few people who speak on stage and you don't sell anything. But I don't believe that to be true. There must be something you're selling, otherwise why are you doing it? I said, it's quite simple. Number one is I do it to honor you guys as the people who've chose me to speak today. I want to make sure I bring value to you to validate the decision to bring me in. It was a good one. Number two. And as a close number two, I do it to give value to the people who spent their time, energy, and resources to be here rather than be with their family or to spend their money and time on something else. And so that's what I'm trying to do. That's my agenda. So I said that people are much smarter than you think. When you come in with an agenda, they can smell it a mile away. And no matter what you say, you're undermining the value that you're giving because you're making it transactional. You see them as a dollar sign in a bank account, and I don't want to do that. And he goes, I get it. And people think they're so clever with their not so hidden agenda. I don't know why people keep doing that. And it's like, you've been paid to speak. These people have paid good money for you not to be a commercial. Again, I'm fairly like the minority in this versus the norm. And I'm okay with that because it allows me to shine. And so what happens afterwards, Scott, is people will come up to me, what are you buying? I mean, I'm sorry What are you selling? I want to buy something from you. I'm like, I don't know, what do you need? I'll look at my catalog. No, I don't think I have anything for you. But I appreciate you wanting to buy something from me. And the really cool thing here is I don't know if you know this, but I do one on one coaching. It's very expensive to hire me and so I think all this goodwill that I'm building up, people are like, shut up, take my money. I want to hire you on one on one. And they just sign up for it. So when you're so good at delivering value, they will find a way to give you money. The good ones always do.
- [88:20]
A
Chris, where should people connect with you? Consume your content, all the socials, your website, all of that.
- [88:27]
B
That for following me on almost all social platforms. I'm HeChris Do. Do is spelled D o and if you want to find out more about our programs, just look into futur. So if you go to thefuture.com you can find us there. The future is spelled without an e at the end. So it's F u T u r. Or if you're French you say futur. So that's, that's who we are.
- [88:46]
A
But you've had an incredible life, multiple seasons to your life. If you could go back and tell your 20 year old self one thing, what would that thing be?
- [88:53]
B
I'm going to tell myself it's going to be really uncomfortable. You're not going to want to do it. There's no proof that it's going to work. But create content as soon as you can, even when you don't know what you're doing. Because those early years are very important to help you become the person that you're supposed to be in this world. And my life has transformed. The relationships I have have transformed and I have now, I'm so proud of this. Friends that are from all over the world who will fly and meet me wherever we're going to be. And we travel like a pack of wolves. And it's an amazing thing to have adult friends that kind of. We do like adult camp and it's the fun, the most fun I've ever had with people that I genuinely like and we want to see each other win. So that's the byproduct of showing up and creating content, building community.