335 - Vulnerability Meets Growth Strategies - With Eric Siu

Summary

Episode 335 - Vulnerability Meets Growth Strategies - With Eric Siu
Release Date: March 22, 2025
Host/Author: The Futur with Chris Do

In this insightful episode of The Futur Podcast, host Chris Do engages in a deep conversation with Rich Cardona, The Futur’s podcast strategist. The discussion delves into the intricacies of personal branding, the dynamics of mastermind groups, effective social media strategies, and the importance of storytelling in building authentic connections. Rich also shares his personal experiences with mentorship and business growth, offering valuable lessons for entrepreneurs and creatives alike.

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1. Authenticity in Personal Branding

Timestamp: [00:00 - 02:37]

Rich Cardona opens the discussion by emphasizing the significance of authenticity in personal branding. He critiques the superficial approach many take, focusing solely on follower counts without showcasing the real, vulnerable human behind the brand.

• Key Points:

  • Personal branding should reflect the true self, not just curated online personas.
  • Vulnerability fosters deeper emotional connections with the audience.
  • Authenticity transcends follower numbers in defining a genuine personal brand.

• Notable Quotes:

  • Rich [00:49]: "If you're not showing what's real, I don't know what your personal brand is."
  • Rich [02:37]: "Post blow up when I'm like, here's who I am as a person and here's why I do what I do."

2. Experiences with Mastermind Groups

Timestamp: [02:37 - 05:34]

Rich shares his journey into mastermind groups, inspired by his friend Sam Ovensenser. He discusses the initial challenges and realizations that led him to refine his approach to creating a mastermind that truly benefits its members.

• Key Points:

  • Initial attempts at masterminds often face product-market fit issues.
  • Understanding the unique needs of different audiences is crucial.
  • Persistence and adaptability are key to building a successful mastermind.

• Notable Quotes:

  • Rich [04:13]: "That's not right. The product doesn't meet the market."
  • Rich [05:34]: "This is unlike me. I'm usually much quicker to take action..."

3. Building and Structuring a Mastermind

Timestamp: [05:34 - 20:20]

Delving deeper, Rich outlines the structure of his own mastermind group, focusing on simplicity and effectiveness. He describes the weekly Zoom calls, hot seat coaching sessions, and the meticulous selection process to ensure high engagement and commitment from members.

• Key Points:

  • Structuring masterminds with regular, focused meetings enhances effectiveness.
  • Hot seat coaching allows for personalized feedback and growth.
  • Selective membership criteria ensure participants are serious and capable of contributing.

• Notable Quotes:

  • Rich [06:04]: "We're doing one call a week via Zoom, and it's an hour and a half."
  • Rich [16:29]: "We're trying to save as many steps as possible."

4. Effective Social Media Strategies and Content Creation

Timestamp: [20:20 - 32:19]

Rich discusses his multifaceted approach to social media, particularly focusing on YouTube and LinkedIn. He emphasizes the importance of storytelling, engagement, and leveraging different platforms to maximize reach and impact.

• Key Points:

  • Consistent, high-quality content is essential for sustained social media presence.
  • LinkedIn requires a blend of provocative visuals and compelling narratives.
  • Understanding platform-specific algorithms can significantly boost content reach.

• Notable Quotes:

  • Rich [21:15]: "It's still really good. You still have to do best practices."
  • Rich [22:51]: "I'm doing a mix of story-driven posts with a call to action..."

5. Business Overview and Overcoming Challenges

Timestamp: [32:19 - 36:16]

Rich provides a candid update on his business, addressing current revenue streams, team dynamics, and the challenges faced in maintaining growth. He highlights the need for focused efforts and effective team management to navigate downturns.

• Key Points:

  • Transparency in business operations fosters trust and accountability.
  • Streamlining team roles and responsibilities can enhance productivity.
  • Adapting business strategies in response to market changes is crucial for resilience.

• Notable Quotes:

  • Rich [34:23]: "All my video content guys, with the exception of one, they're no longer with the company."
  • Rich [36:37]: "I'm using this winter holiday to... think about what it is that we need to do."

6. Work Detox and Personal Development

Timestamp: [36:37 - 45:58]

The conversation shifts to the importance of taking breaks and engaging in work detoxes to rejuvenate and gain clarity. Rich shares his personal practices for disconnecting and emphasizes self-love as a foundation for personal and professional growth.

• Key Points:

  • Regular periods of rest are essential for mental and emotional well-being.
  • Disconnecting from work allows the subconscious to process and solve problems.
  • Self-love and self-awareness are critical for healthy relationships and effective leadership.

• Notable Quotes:

  • Rich [27:14]: "I'm anti, like, New Year's resolution."
  • Rich [44:18]: "It's not your responsibility to take care of someone else."

7. The Power of Storytelling in Branding

Timestamp: [45:56 - 50:18]

Rich delves into the role of storytelling in creating meaningful human connections. He explains how personal narratives shape self-concept and influence brand perception, underscoring the necessity of authentic and consistent storytelling.

• Key Points:

  • Stories are fundamental to understanding and expressing self-identity.
  • Consistent storytelling aligns personal actions with brand values, building trust.
  • Authentic narratives differentiate brands in a crowded digital landscape.

• Notable Quotes:

  • Rich [47:39]: "I think it's bigger than that. I think it's about human connection."
  • Rich [50:18]: "Self acceptance is the most beautiful makeup you can wear."

8. Finding the Right Mentor and Coaching

Timestamp: [50:27 - 63:01]

In the final segment, Rich emphasizes the transformative impact of finding the right mentor or coach. He shares his personal experience with his business coach, highlighting the lessons learned and providing guidance on how to select a mentor who genuinely aligns with one’s goals.

• Key Points:

  • A good mentor can provide invaluable guidance and accelerate personal and business growth.
  • Avoid coaches who overpromise or rely solely on superficial credentials.
  • Trust and commitment are essential when engaging with a coach or mentor.

• Notable Quotes:

  • Rich [52:34]: "But how do you find the right coach?"
  • Rich [58:07]: "He taught me how to be human, how to relate to people."

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Conclusion

This episode of The Futur Podcast offers a comprehensive exploration of personal branding, the strategic formation of mastermind groups, and effective social media strategies. Rich Cardona’s candid insights, combined with his experiences in mentorship and business challenges, provide listeners with actionable advice and deep reflections on personal and professional growth. Whether you're an entrepreneur, creative, or someone looking to build an authentic personal brand, this episode delivers valuable lessons on vulnerability, authenticity, and strategic development.

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For more information and resources mentioned in this episode, visit thefutur.com/podcast.

Transcript

[Chris Doe]

Hey, everyone.

[Rich Cardona]

Welcome back to the future. This is Rich Cardona. I'm Chris's podcast strategist. And today is going to be an episode that's a throwback. This is when Chris guessed it on his good friend Eric Sue's Leveling up podcast, where they're going to talk about building personal brands, how to create authentic connections online. And most importantly, and something no one talks about is lessons learned from running a mastermind. This may actually help you determine if you want to be part of one, if you want to start one. The pros and cons, all the good things.

[Chris Doe]

What else goes into building that good personal brand? Like, there's also, like, the look, right? What else?

[Rich Cardona]

Yeah, there's parts to that. So let's start with the meatiest to, like, the lightest, right? If you're talking about personal branding, and I have a very different view than how most people talk about it because I think the word branding is super popular. So, like, well, corporate branding. And then if you have any kind of following, they're like, well, I have a personal brand. Do you? Who are you? What do you stand for? Can I predict what you're going to do next? Who are you in real life, on and off camera? That's your personal brand. In order for me to get to know that, you actually have to show something where you're actually a vulnerable, real human being. And so few people are ready to do that. They're always holding things back because they're fearful of judgment. They're fearful of, like, backlash or being canceled or, like, people like that version of me. And maybe they're right. So you kind of live this double life. There's the real you that you show that face to a few people in your world, and there's this super fake version of you that lives online. So I don't care if you have 300,000 followers. I don't care if you have 10 million followers. If you're not showing what's real, I don't know what your personal brand is. And if there isn't this irrational emotional connection that your audience and your community have with you that they're willing to bat for you, that they're willing to do anything to help you, then I don't really know if you have a personal brand. Got it. You're a content creator. You know how to work with algorithm. Like, but who are you? And we need to know that. And so I've even fallen down this trap myself because I think, hey, if I talk about me, it's really just not that interesting. I need to keep teaching. I need to keep teaching. But you know what? Post blow up when I'm like, here's who I am as a person and here's why I do what I do. And so there has to be that mix. And so when you tell a personal story, you bring in more people, but you need to deliver it with a point, otherwise it becomes kind of like self indulgent at that point.

[Chris Doe]

So you graciously spoke at one of my events maybe a year ago or so. Thank you for doing that.

[Rich Cardona]

Of course.

[Chris Doe]

And Sam Ovensenser, you're sitting next to Sam Alvin. So famously he's consulting.com, he's got school now, but what did he tell you to do and what was the result?

[Rich Cardona]

I want to paint a picture. I don't know if you remember the movie. Desperado. Antonio Banderas, he's described as Diablo. It's like this crazy gunslinger. And in the opening sequence, he's walking in and out of the shadows. So as soon as we catch a glimpse of his face, he walks back into the shadows. It's kind of wild. So Sam Alvin Evans is sitting on the left corner of the table and he's pretty much in the shadows the whole time. He doesn't say anything. He's a pretty unassuming guy. And then later on he goes, hey, Chris, it's Sam. I'm like, hey, Sam, I know who you are. We start talking. He's like, he inceptions me with this idea that I can run a mastermind. And I said, I've been thinking about this, but I don't know the structure. I don't know how to do this. He lays out the blueprint. This guy makes everything sound super easy. It could be his sweet Australian accent or whatever it is, his demeanor. He's super low key. He goes, I only have 200,000 followers on my YouTube channel. You have 2 million, you have 10x and you can do this. So for the next six, seven, eight months, I've been working on figuring out the offer and what is the product, what is the pitch? Right. Working on that, I discovered, my God, I'm just doing the same thing at a higher ticket price. And this is not going to work. Selling business design to more creatives at the price in which we're talking about, which is $36,000 for a year, was just like, what? No, I don't think I know that many people can enroll in this. And it was then through this period of discovery, a little bit of not depression but like, man, this sucks. Everything I've done so far has just worked. So this is just a giant helping of humble pie.

[Chris Doe]

Yeah.

[Rich Cardona]

And then I decided, okay, you know what? I was teaching at a different group where they're all business people and they wanted me talking about personal branding. And I thought, oh, this is a content mismatch. But they got really lit up and they were hounding me afterwards like, what can I buy? What else are you teaching? I was like, nothing. I have nothing for you. My market, my community's creators have nothing for business people. Well, I went back, retooled the whole thing, and now we're off to the races.

[Chris Doe]

I love it and I think so. When Sam shared the numbers on his mastermind back in the past, he was doing, I think 6 million a year on the Mastermind and most of it was profit because the team wasn't that big. And it was, I think that's what attracted everyone because I think he told a lot of people at that dinner, it's like, do a mastermind. Right? And I think a lot of people try to do a mastermind. Vanessa Lau ended up doing one too.

[Rich Cardona]

We should talk about this. Right? I think everybody within earshot of this conversation decided they're going to do a mastermind.

[Chris Doe]

Yeah.

[Rich Cardona]

So Vanessa Lau, our mutual friend, she was out of the gate first and she executes like a crazy mad person. And she already did her first meeting. I'm like, I'm still figuring out my offer right now and she's already doing it. And unfortunately for Vanessa, she hit burnout super fast, shut down her mastermind. Then I became friends with Eamon afterwards and he's like, I'm gonna do a mastermind.

[Chris Doe]

That's right.

[Rich Cardona]

Right.

[Chris Doe]

Yeah.

[Rich Cardona]

And then I was chatting with him. He's like, no, I'm not doing a mastermind. I'm just doing one on one coaching. It's working well. I'm just gonna keep it like that. Who else did a mastermind? Is there anybody else that we know.

[Chris Doe]

Of in that group? I don't think so. I think it was just the three.

[Rich Cardona]

Of us, the trest amigos. And I was the last one to execute. Figure it out. This is unlike me. I'm usually much quicker to take action, but taking a couple of stabs at it, it's like, that's not right. The product doesn't meet the market. Find the right product, market fit. And eventually I think I did.

[Chris Doe]

We should talk about it more because I think, I guess the event, I don't like calling it A mastermind. I guess it kind of is a mastermind in a sense, but the way I'm structuring it, it's only. It's once per year, and it's like, you know, let's call it could be anywhere, like 10 grand plus a ticket or something like that. Right. But yours, how is yours structured?

[Rich Cardona]

Okay, mine is structured very simply. And I did really get inspired by Sam. He's like, if you're adding so much to this, then you have to start to ask yourself, why are they showing up? He said, they're showing up because they want access to you and your brain and then to each other. Focus on that. So I started stripping everything away, all the accoutrements, just strip it down. So we do one call a week via Zoom, and it's an hour and a half. Sometimes it takes two hours. And there's a hot seat style coaching. So somebody already knows they're going to be the one in the hot seat. And we do whiteboarding. So they tell me, here's what I'm working on. Take a look at this. And I give very nuanced, articulated feedback. So I'm looking at your headline. This isn't working. Your image is off it. Turn it like this to change the proportion ratio. And then a B test this and next week we'll talk again.

[Chris Doe]

Y.

[Rich Cardona]

And unlike most of my coaching groups, it usually falls. And then some people do. Most people don't do anything. You know that. But this group in particular, because of the amount of money they've invested, because of who they are, we turned away a lot of people because we wanted to make sure this beta group, this, like, founder series, are really good because we want to be able to brag about their success. We want to see progress, and they all take massive action.

[Chris Doe]

Got it. So it's four calls a month.

[Rich Cardona]

Right.

[Chris Doe]

And they're paying what, 18 grand over how many months?

[Rich Cardona]

Over six months. So it's essentially three grand a month.

[Chris Doe]

Okay.

[Rich Cardona]

But you got to buy the whole chunk. You can't just op in and out.

[Chris Doe]

Got it. And how are you. Because you have, like, 2.3 million subs on YouTube. Not that subs are everything.

[Rich Cardona]

Right.

[Chris Doe]

You have an audience is my point. How are you getting these people in? And how many Mastermind members are there right now?

[Rich Cardona]

There are a total of 11. I believe it's either 10 or 11. I think somebody just added. And the way that we were marketing it was through announcing it via Instagram, through our carousel, saying, hey, put in this keyword. If you say this. Then we'll get you through a score app. You'll fill out answers to a quiz and only super qualified people. Then get on a coaching. Not a coaching call, sales call with me and I'm doing all the sales call myself. You're not going to get passed on somebody else. There's a bunch of people that are not a good fit. There's a bunch of creatives who don't meet the minimum criteria of content, team and revenue. So we have to keep saying no to those people on purpose. Like, come back when you're ready. You're not ready right now. And we didn't really leverage our YouTube audience, which I think I underestimated in terms of like the reach. We should have gone hard on LinkedIn, as hard as we did on Instagram and as on TikTok and YouTube. We didn't even announce it on YouTube.

[Chris Doe]

Yeah. I would argue. I think it's. I feel like it's the right move because you're still testing your product market fit right now.

[Rich Cardona]

Yeah.

[Chris Doe]

So I think eventually you'll probably roll it out and far down the road you're probably retargeting that audience. Like, I don't know, possibly.

[Rich Cardona]

There' a lot of people who express interest in it and even to this day, there's activations that people type in and I tell them the price and then they don't really go much beyond that. It's like I'm very upfront with pricing. I know in many instances with masterminds, you have to go pretty deep into it before you even find the price. Like you're committed to a sales call. I just want people to know this because I know my audience is broad and I don't want to really get in a call where they're making $100,000 a year and they're going to spend 18 grand with me, it's unconscionable for me. I don't want it. It's not going to work.

[Chris Doe]

So do you for ex. For the. The All In Summit. Right. They have this conference and it's like straight up. It's just like it's 7,500 a ticket. Like there's no qualification or anything. Do you say that in your, like, form? It's like, hey, it's just going to be 18 grand or no.

[Rich Cardona]

We tell them that there are three things that you must have. Number one, you must have some kind of demonstrable expertise. It's important for us because I'm not going to teach you expertise. So if you come in like how do I design, how do I market? It's like this is not what it's about. Number two, you have to be dedicated to creating content. So if you've not created content before, we'll, we'll tell you this isn't it because you're just looking for basics and we're, we're going bey basics. Okay. Number three, you have to believe in the value of long term brand building. And a soft criteria is you must be able to already have a team or be able to hire a team to help you. Because we know as entrepreneur, if we work with you, if you don't have a team, this is not going to get done. You need cinematographers, you need writers, you need designers. It doesn't have to be a full time team, it doesn't have to cost you a lot of money, but you do need to be able to delegate this work to someone. It's going to be a failure otherwise.

[Chris Doe]

Got it. And what revenue wise is like the sweet spot for I guess these prospects?

[Rich Cardona]

I would say anywhere between, between on a revenue basis somewhere really close to a million. So if they're 750, it's fine. And I would say if they're beyond 5 million that they probably want to buy into a much more pricier mastermind than this. I think I can help them, but I just think it's going to feel weird for them.

[Chris Doe]

So we have this one question for like our event. When you apply for it, it's basically like have you paid for a mastermind before or invested in something like this? And the people that close the sales are just like, that question determines. It affects the conversion rate majorly.

[Rich Cardona]

Okay.

[Chris Doe]

If they're down to pay for this stuff, they're like, you know what I mean?

[Rich Cardona]

Yeah. So you know, it's really interesting because I'll backtrack a story here.

[Chris Doe]

Yeah.

[Rich Cardona]

I spoke at Neil Dingerez IT Forward event. A thousand people were there. Mostly people in the real estate, mortgage, financial space. Right. A woman that you know, her and her husband saw me speak there. Connected like in terms of like, hey, we like what you do. I announced that I was doing a brand strategy workshop in Miami. They showed up, I didn't make the connection. And then they outed themselves. We're not designers, we're here, we love this. So we're just going to buy whatever you make. And then they're like, tell me about the brand lab thing. Told them they signed up like a week later. So you're right. People who are invested in personal Development who've joined masterminds before who fly all over the country to do events and workshops. They're my people. They're ready to go.

[Chris Doe]

I love that.

[Rich Cardona]

Yeah.

[Chris Doe]

I think some people poo poo on masterminds or courses or whatever. I just think it's like this is just a monetization model and it works. I think the way you do it is you do it in a very tasteful way and you're very meticulous about how you do it. It's not just like a cash grab for you. Yeah. I don't think you're lazy about it, is my point.

[Rich Cardona]

Yeah. Because I believe in the long term value of this. Because if we do this right, it's not a $6 million business, but it's a $3.6 million business that I get to coach and work with some of the people that really inspire me that I love and like a lot. So if I could just keep doing that, that's fantastic. And then we get to open the doors to now. We get to play. Once the business model is set up and the revenue is coming in, as you said, it's mostly exchange of information. So the profit margins are very high. It means I get to do some really cool stuff. So we sent like little boxes to people. There's some other surprises we're going to send to them. I didn't want to make it about that. That's just like, hey, here's a little surprise. That's all.

[Chris Doe]

Do you think like the next level would be okay? You coach some of these people up, let's say they get to like 10 million or whatever. Are you going to try to maybe invest in their company, take some equity? Like what's the play there?

[Rich Cardona]

The hormozy piece, the hermosi play? I'm not a good operator. I'm not really good at managing other people's business. So it would be dead money for me.

[Chris Doe]

But you'd be coaching for equity.

[Rich Cardona]

Okay.

[Chris Doe]

Yeah.

[Rich Cardona]

I haven't thought of it that far yet. So here's what I really think. Brand Lab is about helping people who are authorities in their space get to the next level. Public speaking, writing a book or just growing their audience to create opportunities for them and whatever else. Right. It's authority building and I get to apply all the things I've learned in practice over the last eight or nine years. And I get to help them. I think by virtue of them lifting up their personal brand, there's going to be a business benefit. We're not so focused on the business aspect. So if they're like, hey, I need to make 3 to 6 million, I'm like, yeah, that's business coaching. Call me one on one. Let's do that.

[Chris Doe]

Got it.

[Rich Cardona]

It's not really for this. It's really like it says it's for building personal brands. So it's the brand lab.

[Chris Doe]

I love it when people talk about building a brand. Like, I guess, do you tell them to go to any specific channel? I guess, what are the core fundamentals that you're teaching them?

[Rich Cardona]

Okay, very good question. So it's hot seat style coaching. There is no curriculum, there is no coursework. It's tailored for each person. So I'm figuring out what each person is trying to do. I will say, hey, I need you to read this book, but actually I need you to listen to audiobook or here's a YouTube video. So it's really curated into for individuals. Like what it is that you're going to do now. If you're listening on the call and you're like, man, I need help with that. Yeah, it's going to work for you. You're going to consume the same pieces of content. But each person has a different problem because they're at different stages in the game and they're trying to do different things. Today's coaching call was about how do I tell my story. I'm a little sloppy. I know when I go to do public speaking, it's inspirational. I move people and then they go and tell me a little bit of their story. It's a little bit all over the place. So let's refine, let's bring it down, let's boil down the idea. And they got so much clarity from that. And I was like, okay, that's where that person's at. And that's fantastic. Someone's not even in that public speaking space. They want to just grow on LinkedIn. So we look at content then, right? We look at content strategy or content repurposing or understanding. Like, what is your podcast doing? Let me look at that with you. It's very hands on in that way. I love it.

[Chris Doe]

And I guess the group coaching aspect, so I know the way Sam did it in the past was like, okay, have a bunch of people come to the classroom and then like they just. What do you guys want to talk about today? I think yep, we're watching some of the videos. So for you it's people show up. Hot seat Sal. I guess over 90 minutes. How many hot seats are you doing? I'm Trying to figure out how that workflow looks.

[Rich Cardona]

Okay. At most it's going to be three. It'll be at least one. It depends on, and I want to keep it flexible. I talked to my, my guy who helps me run the program. I said, I always want to have one person on deck and one person in the queue. So in case this, this gets resolved or we can't figure it out because they're not prepared, we're like, okay, we're gonna pause, we're bringing the other person in, and then naturally, each person tries to pull it apart. They contribute to it. It's very organic conversation. Most of the times I'm leading it, but sometimes people are like, hey, I have some tips on how to do that with SEO or AI. And I love that because everybody brings in their own expertise.

[Chris Doe]

It is very much a mastermind in that situation. Do you think this model scales because you're at 11 right now? It seems to work out. But once you get to 50 people, do you think they're all on the same call or.

[Rich Cardona]

That's a very good question. I don't think so. My feeling is if you're a 7, 8 figure entrepreneur, you're not going to want to sit on every call. There's some people who have told me, I really just enjoy the call watching you coach. I'm going to be there for as many calls as possible. But I think what it is is we're going to talk to Betty next week, and Betty's got a problem around this. Her videos need some help. So anybody's like, video, video, you should tune in. But we also allow people to bring in their assistants, their partners, so that they don't have to then relay that information. So if you're in the hot, you're allowed to bring in your friends. When I say your friends, meaning your project manager, your designer, your copywriter, and they're listening. I'm only interacting with the brand lab member, but then their teams are listening.

[Chris Doe]

Got it.

[Rich Cardona]

We're trying to save as many steps as possible. Thankfully now Zoom has those call summaries. They get the call summary, they get the PDF of the whiteboard, and of course, everybody gets access to the recorded call.

[Chris Doe]

I love it. And so your ambition here, you said 3.6 million. So you would get this to like 200 members or so.

[Rich Cardona]

That would be 100 because it's 36,000 doll for a year, 18,000 for half a year.

[Chris Doe]

Got it.

[Rich Cardona]

And I like this half year idea, which I got from Jasmine Star. She's like, just Cut it to six months because what if you don't like it? What if you don't like these people? You could discourage them from re enrolling next time because there's always going to be people you can't make happy. You don't want to deal with them for a year. It's too long of a commitment. And what if like eight, eight months in, they're like, this is miserable money back? Well, you screwed yourself. So I like this six month idea. It's a shorter sprint. It makes it easier because then we just enroll people twice a year. So hopefully people who get value, they re up. But if they got what they needed, happy to send them on their way. Hopefully they tell a couple of people and then this thing will grow.

[Chris Doe]

Got it.

[Rich Cardona]

I love it.

[Chris Doe]

Yeah, that's the mastermind component. Can you update us on the business right now? So like, what are the main focuses around the business and anything you can share. So it could be reach, could be revenue, whatever you're open to sharing, I'll.

[Rich Cardona]

Share anything that you want to know about. I'm pretty transparent about everything. Overall, we found that this year to be a down year for us, which is a little depressing for me because I only want to move one direction. Right. So I think we're going to net out between 3, 7 to 3, 8 this year, which is down quite a bit from last year, which is like 4, 4, 4, 3. I want it to be a 6 or 7 million. So we have to focus up. I think the thing is, as we're figuring out different business models, we have a pretty thin team relative to the different initiatives that we're doing and we need to focus up. So we got to consolidate our team and figure out what the new plan is. And I'm using this winter holiday to kind of do a decompress, to get some perspective, zoom all the way out and think about what it is that we need to do. I've been mostly focused on creating content, running workshops and just being a part of the community. So I've left marketing alone, I've left warm outreach, I've left all the ways that we can make money alone. And I think I have to put my face in that for a period of time so that all the brains could be working on at the same time.

[Chris Doe]

Got it. What's the approximate reach? Like how many eyeballs are you getting per month right now across socials?

[Rich Cardona]

I think our reach is incredible. It's one of the things that we don't need to fix, thankfully. So some of Our videos get between on YouTube. Between. See, on the low end, I'm going to say 15,000 views for like. I would say that's like the bottom, the basement. And some of our videos within a month are getting 400,000 views.

[Chris Doe]

Yeah.

[Rich Cardona]

And there's a wide spectrum in between. I would say a good video is going to give a hundred thousand views, and if an average video gets like six or seven minutes, that's a lot of time being spent watching the content. So we're pretty happy with that. We're picking up about 15,000 new subs every month. Revenue is about $10,000 as AdSense. So the channel makes a little over 120 grand a year. Just as a straight up passive income. Of course, there are brand deals, which I'm very excited about. LinkedIn reach is really good. I'm growing there between 100 to 650 new followers every single day.

[Chris Doe]

Wow.

[Rich Cardona]

And I don't even post that often, so there is a bit of that momentum. Right. You got the big mo working for you. So as soon as you start creating enough content, people start tagging you. They start resharing your YouTube videos or Instagram carousels. And I'm not one of those creators, like, hey, how dare you repurpose my content to benefit yourself. Thank you, I appreciate it. And you're just helping me get the name out.

[Chris Doe]

Yeah.

[Rich Cardona]

And my Instagram, if I'm consistent on it, I get decent reach. Maybe 300,000 impressions every seven days or something like that. Now, if I'm consistently dropping carousels and reels, that number will go way, way up. Up.

[Chris Doe]

Yeah.

[Rich Cardona]

But I'm fairly inconsistent with that. But I'm getting better.

[Chris Doe]

So would it be safe to say that your reach on socials each month is probably like, I don't know, 2 or 3 million?

[Rich Cardona]

I would say higher. Yeah. For a month. Yeah, yeah, for sure, for a month.

[Chris Doe]

And it's probably. I mean, the person we had before you, she gets like 16 million views, but it's like on reels. Right. I would say that your views might be higher quality because it's a lot of. It's YouTube. Would you say that's fair?

[Rich Cardona]

I think so, yeah. I'm also kind of like now nine years into it, so people who know me know what I stand for. We have really good international reach. There's really high engagement. One of the things I'm really proud of is that the interaction between the people who follow me is great. They're commenting on each other's comments and they're like, I'm just here for the comments, man.

[Chris Doe]

Yeah, I love that. Yeah, your comments are really good and you engage with them too.

[Rich Cardona]

I do.

[Chris Doe]

A lot of times it's you leaving the comments or maybe all the time.

[Rich Cardona]

It's mostly me.

[Chris Doe]

Yeah.

[Rich Cardona]

Yeah. Because nobody else is running my account.

[Chris Doe]

Yep. Figures. You know, a lot of people are talking about LinkedIn and what is your workflow like? Cause here's the thing, right? Like my personal LinkedIn, right? I look at it, it's like in the past, my, whatever I post, it's just gold, right. It gets a lot of reach. Now I'm just like, it struggles, right.

[Rich Cardona]

It's a little harder.

[Chris Doe]

What is it for you now?

[Rich Cardona]

It's still really good. You still have to do best practices. You can't just phone it in before. If you like farted and ate a pizza, people like, oh, so Inspiring.

[Chris Doe]

Your pizza 8000 likes.

[Rich Cardona]

Your pizza shots are ridiculous. Because you know what, everybody's getting better at creating content. There's just a little bit more competition. But relative to all social platforms, I think think the least amount of competition exists on LinkedIn. The algorithm is super generous. It's pretty straightforward. If you get people to engage and comment, you will just have your post seen more. So there are a couple of things you just need to do. It's not that complicated. Number one, include a really provocative image. Preferably you doing something weird and out of the ordinary that's not this professional. Like, we know you hired a photographer to do this kind of thing, right? So I find that goofy photos of me that exist in my photo albums work really well. Really well. Like there's a shot of me in Taiwan. We were hiking in the mountain somewhere and there were two big rocks and I just said, honey, I got an idea. Take a picture of me. So I'm stretched out horizontally, supported by my hands and my feet. So it's like a board and I'm just floating in space. She takes a picture, I look at the camera, it's done. Anytime I post that, that's gonna stop people in the feed. We're looking for pattern interrupts. We're looking for weird things that don't fit the box. So if you have a super professional photo, that's like the three quarter smiley LinkedIn photo day shoot. And that's not a pattern interrupt.

[Chris Doe]

Got it.

[Rich Cardona]

Try things like flip your photo upside down.

[Chris Doe]

Got it. So you're doing provocative. I guess the question is what are you doing right now? Are you doing the carousels? Are you doing repurposing your LinkedIn or your YouTube videos, you're doing provocative images like, what are you doing?

[Rich Cardona]

I'm doing a mix of story driven posts with a call to action to answer a question, to provoke people to share. And I usually phrase the question two or three different ways. So it's like, if you don't like the way I phrased the first time, I'll do like, have you ever thought of this? But what about that? And then tell me a time when you did this. So somewhere in there they're going to interact and then I include a thought provoking image that kind of sort of goes with it. And I tell people this. I'm pretty good at taking a photo, telling a random story that is sort of related to the photo and then bringing it to the point that I want to talk about. And that's just like me just trying to exercise that muscle. I'm pretty good at it. So it's like you can like a friend of mine, Neil Dingra, who's in the brand lab, who I mentioned before he posted this thing, he's walking in the street, suburban neighborhood, and he said, you know how I just walk by these two guys and have those really big wide leg pants that are hanging below their waist? I was like, I thought that thing went out in the 90s, or am I too old? It never looked good. I'm still sitting here thinking, here we are in 2023. That trend is still apparently viable to some people. And he stopped there and I called him, I said, neil, you missed an opportunity to pivot. That thing stood out to you. That's gonna get a lot of people to laugh. But you should have said, and how many of you marketing with a 1990s strategy, and you're still doing the same thing? How many people are selling the same way they learned how to sell when they were 24 years old? As funny it is for people, for us to see people with their pants down their waist, it's just as funny. Looking at your marketing. So here's me calling you out. Love you, bye. It's a good hook. So you see what I'm saying? So you bring me in with something that's relevant and kind of funny and awkward and then you, you take me where you want to go. So you just find that parallel.

[Chris Doe]

And are you just waking up? Because sometimes people are just like, yeah, I just wake up with these ideas. So for you, are you shooting from the hip when you're writing on LinkedIn? Are you actually spending time ideating?

[Rich Cardona]

Almost always from the hip. I'm in the shower because here's my workflow in the morning. I wake up and I'm a little groggy eyed, but I know it's time to get up. I'm just scrolling through the feed. I'm going to read some stupid comment or somebody asking a really good question. I'm like, I wonder what that's all about. Up. I forget about it. I brush my teeth, I jump in the shower. And in the shower I'm like shaving or doing whatever I'm doing. I'm like, wait a minute, I have an idea on how to frame that. And I have to repeat it to myself two or three times because I know as soon as I walk down to the studio, it's going to be gone.

[Chris Doe]

Yeah.

[Rich Cardona]

I get out, I go down the studio and I write. I'm like, boom, there it is. Let me find the right image and it's out and I leave it alone. So a post like that is going to get anywhere between 2,000 to maybe 4,000 engagements. Wow. Or reactions. Yeah, I should say.

[Chris Doe]

Yeah.

[Rich Cardona]

Yeah.

[Chris Doe]

And by the way, like, some people will talk about how they post on LinkedIn, but really they half ass it and they might spend like five minutes on a post. Are you spending. I'm assuming you're spending like 30 minutes an hour.

[Rich Cardona]

I would say no more than 30 minutes for the writing. I have a general rule, the longer you write on it, the worse it gets. So I write when it's hot, when I'm emotional or sometimes I really feel like touched emotionally. Like just an abundance of love and joy and I'll write from that place. I'm like, who's this mushy writer? Okay, I just write that those posts do well. Sometimes I'm like not happy because some idiot asked me some stupid question and they're trying to kill themselves. I'm like, okay, let me just respond to that. And I find that I'm a much better writer when I'm writing from a place of emotion. When I feel something, I want you to feel that thing in the writing. So if you read it, like, yeah, I'm fired up too, man. I can't believe people are so stupid. I'm like, cool, we're on the same page. To me, that's art. Art. If you watch a film and you don't feel what they're feeling, it's really boring, Right? If you listen to music and you don't feel the pain that that person's feeling when they wrote that music, that's not a good piece of music. That's not art to me.

[Chris Doe]

I love it. I think this is. I mean, this is the purest form of works on LinkedIn. You're not doing any engagement groups or anything like that, I'm assuming. Yeah.

[Rich Cardona]

People do ask me about this. I'm like, no, friend, I'm sorry. It's pretty artificial. If you write something and you're my friend, I'm trying to support you. I'll give you a. Like, I might write a comment. Yeah. Because we're friends. But yeah, I'm not doing that as any part of, like, some larger program. And I don't want anybody to do that for me either.

[Chris Doe]

Got it?

[Rich Cardona]

Yeah.

[Chris Doe]

Going back to the business. So how are. I guess if we look at a pie, how is your revenue split?

[Rich Cardona]

I would know this answer before, but now I'm really fuzzy. Okay. I've asked Ben, literally. I sent a message earlier today, hey, give me all the breakdown financially, because when I go to do this work detox, I want to have those numbers so that they start to fuel my mind.

[Chris Doe]

Yep. Let's talk about the work detox piece, because everyone has a way of winding down towards the end of the year. So what's the Christo way of detoxing?

[Rich Cardona]

Yeah. So I'm anti, like, New Year's resolution. Right. It's a silly thing for you to wait a year to, like, finally do something with your life. But I'm also super aware of seasons and seasons of life, seasons of growth, seasons of pain. And when we enter into the winter months, we have less sunlight. It's colder outside. I think your energy changes, so it'd be foolish to ignore that. I think you need to, like, use this season to rest up, to not. Not overfill your schedule with stuff to do. I say that as I look at my schedule tomorrow. It's crazy. And so there's going to be this period where I'm going to get to spend time with family. We usually go on a trip. We go to Asia. We go somewhere and we do something. And my wife's always surprised, like, where's your computer? I didn't bring it. Yeah, no one is allowed to talk to me right now. And I'm not going to, other than checking my messages from time to time on socials. That's it for me. So I find that if you go into a period of rest with clarity as to what the problems are, let your subconscious mind work on it. It. It'll figure out things for you. It'll connect dots. It'll say, this Person needs a promotion. Those two people need to be fired. And I always find that when I go away for an extended period of time, get to that state where I'm really bored, somebody's getting fired, somebody's getting hired. It's almost always that way. Yeah. It's not good.

[Chris Doe]

When Chris goes to detox.

[Rich Cardona]

Yeah. Like, let me go on vacation, see what happens.

[Chris Doe]

Are you writing any of this down, journaling it anywhere, or just it's in your head?

[Rich Cardona]

No, I'm writing. You have to write it because you have these ideas that you're like, this is great. And then later on you're like, wait a minute, what was I thinking? I don't recall. So I bring a notebook with me, good old analog pen and paper. I just write them down.

[Chris Doe]

It's different when it's actually like when you can touch it. I feel like when you're writing, there's.

[Rich Cardona]

Some science behind it. You know that.

[Chris Doe]

No. What? What is it?

[Rich Cardona]

Yeah. So when we learn to write and to read, I don't know about you. You draw these letters, right? Yeah. So there's some memory with the kinesthetic movement of your hand and drawing the characters. But when we evolved to type on a typewriter, the action is this. It's just poking. The mind doesn't know what these things are. Yeah. It's not like, yes, your body has memory. And so when you're writing the dog ate the biscuit.

[Chris Doe]

Yeah.

[Rich Cardona]

You're feeling that on a different level than you are just typing it in. At least that's for me.

[Chris Doe]

It's time for a quick break, but we'll be right back.

[Rich Cardona]

When I started my motion design company blind in 95, there was a lot I didn't know. So I tried reaching out to other business owners and professionals for help. What did I find? Many saw me as competition, and those who didn't weren't able to give advice that made sense for my line of work. Thankfully, I was able to find my first and only business coach, Kier McLaren, who mentored me for 13 years. I also learned that my story isn't unique. Many entrepreneurs feel like they are left to figure everything out on their own. It's why I created the Future Pro Membership, a community I wish I had when I first started. And I'd like to invite you to check out all that we have waiting for you [e-mail] pro.

[Chris Doe]

And Rebecca, welcome back to our conversation. There's a concept known as, I guess from the book Story worthy Crash and burning in the morning. Right where it's almost like letting your creative faucet because there's a lot of gunk in the morning, so you're just writing for like 10, 15 minutes. So I just will, like, type it out, but I feel like now there's an argument to just, like, write it all out for five, 10 minutes. Anything that's on your mind, and then you pick, like, you cherry pick the content ideas there. Do you do anything like that?

[Rich Cardona]

I don't not like that, but what I do is I'm usually in bed and people are like, how much time you spend on social? A lot. My life is social, so I could be in bed for 45 minutes or an hour. In the morning, I'll usually get up 6, 7 in the morning, I'll go through my messages, and my cue to get up if there's not a deadline is when I'm fired up, I just jump out of bed. I'm like, I. I got the idea.

[Chris Doe]

Yeah.

[Rich Cardona]

So it's just provoking the brain to, like, what do you want to talk about today?

[Chris Doe]

Yeah.

[Rich Cardona]

So instead of like, jotting down the 30 bad ideas.

[Chris Doe]

Yeah.

[Rich Cardona]

I'm going through, like, wait a minute, I'll type in the answer and then I'll screen capture, like, that's the prompt for today's post. That's what'll drive it.

[Chris Doe]

Got it. Is it scheduled, like, your creativity? I. I feel like you can't schedule creativity, but are you trying to dedicate your first hour to it usually, or is it just like, whenever it hits?

[Rich Cardona]

For me, I just write when I feel it. It. I've done it before where I sit up and I'm like, I'm gonna write three posts today. And they're dogs. Like, they're not good. It's not coming from anything. I'm not really fired up about answering any questions. The good news is you probably have to exhaust a lot of content before you get to that point. And we're talking about different levels of writing here. Right. So I feel like I've answered these questions too many times already. Is there a new way to do this? So recently, somebody was asking me, like, hey, can I be on your podcast? And the way they ask is so brushed to me. I'm like, no, please don't ask me that question. So that inspired me to write how to Get Booked on a Podcast. And of course, that post does well because everybody wants to be booked, but they're approaching it the wrong way. And then I think I wrote something a little goofy in there. I'm like, and how many of these are you guilty of? Are your ears a little hot right now? Because you probably broke some of these rules already.

[Chris Doe]

Right?

[Rich Cardona]

People lose etiquette when they're online. I don't understand it.

[Chris Doe]

Yeah, I love that. Yeah, it's okay. So, and we're talking about LinkedIn right now, specifically, right?

[Rich Cardona]

Yeah.

[Chris Doe]

Do you do a lot on Twitter or X?

[Rich Cardona]

Yeah, I do post some things on Twitter, but I'm finding that it's all over the place in terms of reach and engagement. It used to be, like, pretty predictable, either good or bad. I kind of knew what to expect. Now it's like, sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't. And I think it's because Elon and team are behind the machine, changing lots of things that we're not privy to. And they're testing all the time.

[Chris Doe]

Right.

[Rich Cardona]

And you notice now when you read responses, it continues showing you what other people say about nothing about what you're talking about. Right. So they're like, recommending random things. Random things. I'm like, wait, this is not related to me. So it's pretty seamless. You read. You read. And like, oh, four posts down. I'm like, they're not. I don't even know who these people are. So I think they're testing lots of ideas. They're doing things on the back end. They're allowing us to edit our tweets now up to a certain period. They're slowing down our respond button. Like, are you sure? I think those things Twitter needed for a long time.

[Chris Doe]

They're shipping a lot faster. We can give them that.

[Rich Cardona]

They are. They're trying new things. And Elon, for all his faults, I think he knows how to make product.

[Chris Doe]

Yeah. Oh, for sure.

[Rich Cardona]

I wish he would just stay out of that. Here's my thought leadership stuff. Yeah. That's all. Because I want to love the companies too, but it's getting harder, too. Yeah.

[Chris Doe]

So it sounds like to me like you might have. Let's just call it the main point is the meat, but you might have different hooks and different stories and you're kind of repackaging because you have a lot of the main points you want to make, but you have to keep changing it up. Right.

[Rich Cardona]

Well, I don't know. I feel like I've said everything I need to say, but I don't know why. I'll write something else. And they're like, oh, that worked. I'm like, is it different? I don't know. I try to stay out of the judging business, so I Find problems. When I find a problem I care enough about, I just bring into action, I figure out a solution, and then I let that go. Love it, right?

[Chris Doe]

Yep.

[Rich Cardona]

Because my idea, and I'm sure, I mean, my mind, just like yours, is constantly like, give me a good problem, I'll solve it. So it's in search of a good problem.

[Chris Doe]

Got it. How about your creative team right now? How is that structured? Who's on the team and all that?

[Rich Cardona]

Okay. All my video content guys, with the exception of one, they're no longer with the company. They left for different reasons. I didn't fire them. Okay. I didn't fire them. Everybody. And then my wife's like, do you need these people in house or what's the deal? So now we work with independent contractors, and they're friends of mine, and they just deliver product. So I'm like, what is the result that you're getting? However you want to get there. It's up to you. I don't like to manage the means. I just want to look at the results. So when the results are off, like, you know, you post a lot but it's not working, or you didn't post anything and it's not working. Between the two, I'd rather you post a lot than not at all. So let's talk about it. Or the thumbnails mismatched with the headline and this video makes no sense. We just talk about it. So that's mostly the content team. There's an addition of a writer. I have a young woman who's working with me. She's an independent contractor. She helps out with a lot of writing and researching. I've never really had that before. We're still finding the right cadence for each other in terms of like, this doesn't sound like me when you write this, so I don't feel comfortable reading it. Let's work on this a little bit more. So people who have not recorded lots of videos, they write in long run on sentences. But when I try to read them, like, who talks like that? I can't even breathe to read this. Put some pauses in here. Make the sentences simpler to understand. And so that's the thing we need to work on.

[Chris Doe]

And how your content team, how much do you think you're spending per month? Month?

[Rich Cardona]

I know exactly how much we're spending. So the hard costs are 13 grand a month outside of our internal team. So we have some internal overhead that manage that as well. But the hard cost, the writer and the video editing crew, it's 13 grand. A month.

[Chris Doe]

Got it. And so if you add an internal. Maybe it's like 25 or something, it.

[Rich Cardona]

May not be that high because they're managing other things, but they're also, like, looking at them, it might be a little bit more than that because I forgot there's a person who's helping me with the podcast editing. So we have basically supervision of the content team, but they don't really need a ton of supervision.

[Chris Doe]

You know what's interesting? I look at your YouTube channel because you've been doing it for a long time, and you've been consistent. I think no matter what, over the last couple years, you've always uploaded, right?

[Rich Cardona]

Yes.

[Chris Doe]

I think it's changed quite a bit, because when I look at your old. I could be wrong here, but your older videos, I think because YouTube was easier back then, you were getting a lot more views, and now it's more competitive. Right. Now when I look at Gary Vee, he was super prolific before. He's not really getting that many views per video anymore, but when I look at yours, there are some that have 1002-003004-00000. What do you think it is? Do you think it's just a competitive piece?

[Rich Cardona]

This is a clickbait title here. I feel one coming, and I will bite, sir. We'll see how this goes. Okay. It's interesting that you mentioned Gary Vee, because I think he puts out so much content that by volume, it gets reached. Right. And because it's Gary Vee. So at a certain point, I think the way the Internet works and the world works is if you're successful, success breeds more success. You're Alex Ramosi. You exit out $100 million company, well, whatever you say, it's just gonna carry that much more weight. He literally said that on stage. He said, maybe the advice that I gave is not different than Susie Homemaker, but because I've done this, you'll probably listen to me more than you will Susie Homemaker. We could literally say the same thing. So he's all about do the work, get the receipts, then talk about it. Work first, then talk second, which is anti Internet culture. Internet cultures just talk all the time, never do anything, and just be famous for talking about the thing. Thing that you know nothing about. Right. That's typically how it works. Now, I notice on. On Gary's content, the views are terrible because the algorithms need to do this thing where they try to bring in as many people to create content as possible. So essentially, the old model was, if you're popular you're going to be more popular if you're Casey Neistat. If you're any one of these old school creators, you're just going to get the traffic. But that is very discouraging for new creators because their content might be better. The algo is going to favor the old school creators with a bigger audience. So essentially what they did was they stripped away your reach. Basically, if you look at your stats, it's going to be like recommends or Discovery versus actual subscribers. Subscribers for us is third or fourth down the list of who's actually watching the video. So if you have 2 million subs, it's not going to send it to 2 million people. It'll send it to a small portion of them and that's it. Unless they literally turn the bell on for notifications, they're not going to see it. It's more democratized that way. So now Gary's content has to compete with Susie Houmaker or Bobby two Pants or whatever. They have to basically compete on the same level. And now here comes the hard part. Is Gary's content that good? Has it progressed? Has it grown? Like, has he said anything new? Currently he's on I love my mom, Empathy and kindness. Empathy and kindness. I love my mom. And it's like, okay, Gary, what else are we going to do? What's that?

[Chris Doe]

LinkedIn as well.

[Rich Cardona]

Well, on LinkedIn, I mean, here's the thing.

[Chris Doe]

Well, I'm just saying, he says LinkedIn's like another.

[Rich Cardona]

Yeah, yeah. You know, this is the business. If you want to be famous, make 100 predictions, only talk about the three that you get. Right, Right, right. Just let the other ones die. We see this like, he ain't talking about Snap anymore. Yeah, it's crazy. Snap's still a viable platform. But nobody I know uses Snap. Right? How it's a viable platform, I have no freaking clue.

[Chris Doe]

Right?

[Rich Cardona]

Okay. Ain't talking about that. And I'm sure nft, I know we all loved him at one point, but you know, hey, it's kind of a graveyard out there, right? There's dead bodies everywhere. I'm like, okay, let's see what. So you can make a lot of predictions. So here's the thing. I think if Gary were actually to sit down to write some content and be more intentional in the way he creates, he's going to grow again. But it's all over the place, man. His team is just trying everything left and right and center. His posts don't look the same, they don't sound the same, and they're just trying stuff. And he's getting killed on LinkedIn, on YouTube. I don't know where else he's posting content, but it's not getting that kind of reach. It's kind of. It's almost sad to me.

[Chris Doe]

Right.

[Rich Cardona]

Like, I'm rooting for him in a way, but I'm like, I guess there's democracy here.

[Chris Doe]

Right.

[Rich Cardona]

I guess we are moving towards an egalitarian social media space.

[Chris Doe]

I think that's right. Because, like, to your point, yeah. It used to be about how many followers you have, but when you look at reels or TikToks, for example, now it's just like, if your video is good, it's just gonna take off. And so we publish a lot of these clips. Right. To my ig. And some will get a couple hundred thousand, some will get 50,000, some will get like a thousand or whatever. Right. And it's just like, if it's good, it's good. And that's right.

[Rich Cardona]

Yeah. So you want to do everything you can to make it good so that if a good video goes out, it will catch.

[Chris Doe]

Yep. And I'll share this story, too. Like that. My YouTube's not that big. It's like 78,000 or so. But I used to get, like, you know, 50,0001-000001-50000 views or so. And then I thought I was in YouTube jail.

[Rich Cardona]

Right.

[Chris Doe]

I was only like 100 views, 200 views or whatever. I posted. Alex Formosi wants 60,000 views. Layla wants like 40,000 views. And it's. And it's like, relatively speaking, it's way more. And it's because I think the YouTube product guy, he's just Todd, I believe. He's just like, dude. Like, they're like little saplings each video. And it's like, YouTube will try to make it work if your video's good.

[Rich Cardona]

Yeah.

[Chris Doe]

Well, eight. I guess it feels like you don't care too much about what people think about you. Would you just say that's true?

[Rich Cardona]

It's 100% true. I don't give a flying F. I'll just say it.

[Chris Doe]

How do you care less about what people think about you?

[Rich Cardona]

You learn to fall in love with yourself. I know it's a hard thing to say. And people are like, oh, gross. Fall in love with yourself. And the story I'll share with you is this. I get people who send me messages, and I'm sure you get the same. We're like, chris Doe, I'm your number one fan. Right. And sometimes they're men, sometimes they're women. And I'll like, oh, here's Jenny. She's like, I love this and that. And my wife's like, she ain't your number one fan. I'm like, okay. She goes, I'm your number one fan, babe. You know my wife's tough on me. Like, babe, trust me, you're not my number one fan. You love me, me, we'll die for each other. But I'm not sure you're my number one fan. I could do no wrong. But I said, despite all that said I said, honey, you're not my number one fan. She goes, how come? I'm like, I'm my number one fan, so get in line. So here's the thing that I think about is a person is really hard to love if they don't love themselves. People who are broken need constant affirmations and validation from others. And if you're a person who's like, very generous and giving, what you do is you put your own personal development on hold, your own love on hold, so that you can fill the gaps for the other person. The other person becomes super needy and clingy and they're having good days and they have horrible down days, and it's this roller coaster of emotions. I'm the worst human being. I'm the best. It's going between self love and self loathing. Terrible place to be in. Super toxic. It's like you need to heal, you need to learn to love yourself. Because two people who love themselves lift each other up. And I think in a weird way, both Layla and Alex have the expression of two people who truly love themselves, even though they both suffer from crippling insecurity, they both admitted this, that they do not try to change each other. So one person wants to do this, do more of that, one person wants to do something else, do more of that. And they overlap in these wonderful ways. I think there's something really weird, beautiful, utilitarian and magical about how they exist. Most relationships are not like that. So when one person starts to outgrow the other, the other person feels insecure, jealous, and wants to pull the other person back. And they sabotage each other and they drag each other into the gutter. That's why those two are like a power couple doing whatever they want in their lives. It's pretty amazing. Their relationship's not perfect, obviously, but it's freaking pretty awesome from where I'm standing, right? So we have to learn to love ourselves. So therefore, if I know who I am and Accept the good and the bad parts of me me. When some Internet person says, hey, you're a donkey, you don't know what making money is or your design 10 sucks and you look like an old lesbian lady. I'm like, cool, bro, cool. I don't care. Because none of that is how I see myself. And yes, you're allowed to have an opinion and your opinion can be true too, but it's not going to match my opinion. So when there's no enemy within, there's no enemy without.

[Chris Doe]

It's not your responsibility to take care of someone else. Like I'm thinking about relationship wise, right? Like you have to take care of your own stuff. You have to fall in love with yourself. You can't expect someone else to come help you do that.

[Rich Cardona]

I mean, but people do that all the time, don't they? Yeah, they are actually literally looking for people to fulfill some empty spot in them. Shel Silverstein wrote this book called the Missing Piece. It's a beautiful story. It's written for children. I really think it's for adults. There's a character, it looks like Pac man and it's like a pie shaped thing and it's rolling around and it's got this wedge missing and it's like it sings a little song. Hidey ho, hidey ho. Off I go, go. Have you seen my missing piece? It goes to the butterfly and they're like, nuh. Goes to the bird, it goes to the grasshopper. No one has seen this missing piece. And eventually it finds a couple of pieces it doesn't fit quite right and it just keeps going. And then eventually it finds a piece as it's rolling down the hill that fits it exactly and says, hey, are you my missing piece? I was like, I don't know. They connect. They form a perfect circle. And now when it rolls down the hill because it's got something in its mouth, it can no longer sing. So ba ba ba ba ba ba ba. It can't sing anymore and it's rolling too fast. So it can't say hi to the sn. I can't say hi to the butterfly. Eventually it stops. It spits the piece out. And it's like, you know what? I'm okay just the way I am. It's a beautiful story. And so this is life. This is us from 0 to 55 or 40 or, you know, 100. Still searching for something to feel complete. And I have this diagram. I said, are you a whole human? I show a picture of a person silhouetted with A hole? Or are you a whole human? Are you complete? Can you see which one you are? Because that hole that exists within you, no matter how much you put in it can never be filled. That's the problem. So heal the whole.

[Chris Doe]

First, thanks for sharing that story. And the second, I have to ask you, do you keep like a story bank in your head that you work on?

[Rich Cardona]

No, not really. And you know, the funny thing is I'm getting older, so my memory should get worse, but I'm recalling things from my childhood that I'm like, why haven't I told that story? Oh, that's interesting. I'm still discovering things about my own life. And I think each and every single one of us has this, Eric, where we have an infinite bank of stories. Just we have to learn to look for them, to harness them, and to get into the practice of telling them. I heard this story from Vin Zhang. He's a public speaker, communications guy from Australia. He's a magician. He's pretty funny, good looking, like Asian dude, right?

[Chris Doe]

Asian dude.

[Rich Cardona]

He's Vietnamese brother from another mother. Yeah, mother effer. Okay, okay. He's successful too. My God, I hate him. Okay, so here's the deal with Vin.

[Chris Doe]

He.

[Rich Cardona]

He goes, why do we tell stories? Why is it important for us to tell stories? His answer was very different than what you expect. His answer was so that we can know who we are. So that when people question us, we're like, no, I've told my story to myself enough times that your story doesn't match how I see me. And so we need to get into the practice of telling our story about who we are, what our beliefs and values are and where we come from and who we honor, who we love, who we dislike. We have to keep telling that because that becomes part of our track in terms of the record of our life. So people who aren't in the practice of telling their story don't know themselves. So before you can get to self acceptance, you have to get to self awareness. And they're missing that self awareness.

[Chris Doe]

It's interesting too. Speaking of stories, like, let's say we're sitting at the dinner. There's always one person that captivates the entire table with their stories. It's like everything comes down to storytelling. Not everything, right? But it's such a huge piece of branding and marketing in general.

[Rich Cardona]

I think it's bigger than that. I think it's about human connection. And allow me to indulge in the whole theory of story. Eric and Meads talks about this. He's like stories of the operating system of the human mind. Everything that we know that we believe, the God that we pray to, the God we don't pray to, how we identify, like, go, San Jose State warriors. Or whatever is San Jose State Warriors, Golden State warriors. You know, about where we're from, about our culture, our customs, about our grandparents, about our genealogy. All these things define us. I read in Brian Tracy's book the Psychology of Sailing, he said that the most profound discovery in the 21st century or the 20th century in psychology happened in the idea of the self concept. It's very important. The self concept is, who are we and what makes us us. Now when we get into identity politics and we get into branding, now if you understand this, like, who is Eric, who is Brad, who is Chris? How do we see ourselves? And our actions are the in or out of alignment with how we see ourselves. So when you have guilt, it's because you've done something wrong. And you know that because this is not in keeping with me. So if your self stories like, I'm a generous, loving person and I turn the other choice cheek and somebody cuts you off the freeway and you scream at them with road rage, you mother effer and you try and chase them off the road, it's like, is that in alignment with how you see yourself? And so then you will go home later that day, like, you'll feel really bad. You're like, oh, why did I do that? Why am I such an a hole? So if you yell at your kids, you yell at your spouse, like, wait a minute, that's not how I see myself. So then you have to make a decision. Which one is the real me? Am I the a hole? Or do I just love the image of myself in that, that I'm a kind, generous person that turns the other cheek. So we have to let those two ideas of ourselves fight. And one of them needs to win. Until that's resolved, we have this internal conflict. We're a little confused. So we're never sure how we're going to behave. This manifests itself in our brand because when we're online, how do we respond to something? We're completely inconsistent. So somebody else is not going to take the flag with us and join our cause. Because, like, I don't know who you are. Some days you pretended to be this person, and some days you showed me your true face. I'm not sure who you are. And so then what happens? Goodwill erodes, trust erodes, and then therefore rapport is gone. So if you Want to be that charismatic person in a room, in a podcast, at dinner. You have to learn to be aware of who you are and to accept that, to me, self acceptance is the most beautiful makeup you can wear.

[Chris Doe]

I feel like if you're not constantly re. Underwriting yourself, then you start to lose yourself because you're not in control of your story anymore.

[Rich Cardona]

Is that a financial term? Underwriting?

[Chris Doe]

Yeah. Yeah. You can say re. Evaluating.

[Rich Cardona]

Reevaluating. Yeah. See, I think who you are has been established already for a long time, and it's just we forget who we are. So when I teach story and personal branding, it's not a product of invention. It's a product of memory, remembering who you are. So there's some debate about this, but I think anywhere between the ages of 5 and 9, who you are for the rest of your life has already been formed. Your brain is forming, and you're seeing things that both good and bad, start to shape your beliefs and your actions moving forward. So if you had said something inappropriately because you thought it was funny and you were reprimanded by your mom, by your dad, by a teacher, you may develop a stuttering problem from that point forward. And it comes to that childhood trauma that's unresolved. And now you're going to develop a speech impediment or you're going to be much more introverted. You're afraid to speak your mind, and you don't make eye contact with people. So things are shaping for you because your mind is so malleable at that point that any positive and negative stimuli can change how you think. So now as an adult, you're not even sure what you're responding to. So when somebody speaks loudly, you'll, like, tell them, be quiet. Why is that? You're echoing what you learn when you're 5 years old, and that person triggers you in the way that you're really annoyed by them because you're annoyed by yourself. But no one's really annoyed by themselves. They're just parenting themselves the way they were parented. Dr. Firestone's right about this in the book overcoming your inner critical dialogue or something like that. And it's quite interesting that once we go back in time, we uncover that point and we'll look at it like the sacred timeline split between who you could have been and who you are. And we can heal that part. We can rediscover who the heck we were.

[Chris Doe]

I want to switch gears to talk about. And this will be the last part, but you talked about finding in one of your videos, finding the right coach and mentor. What does that look like to you? And what kind of impact have you seen from that?

[Rich Cardona]

Yeah, I think more of us would be better in life if we just sought out coaches or teachers, instructors for the things we want to improve in. That's how I want to say it. Because the label of coach, teacher, therapist, whatever, it kind of has a different connotation to different people. So if I say to you I'm seeing a therapist, you're like, ooh, something's wrong with Chris. No, A physical therapist. Oh, you're fine. You know, it's kind of weird how we look at it like that, right? I'm seeing a coach for tennis. Makes sense. I'm seeing a business coach. Oh, you don't know how to run a business? I don't get it. If you need help with something, it's wise for you to take some kind of shortcut by working with someone who can help you get there faster with less pain and less wasted resources. And so I was very lucky. I found my business coach just a few years out of starting my business. I think about five or six years in. He transformed me and then therefore transformed my business. And I worked with him for 13 years. He's since passed away. But he was probably the single greatest influence and impact on my life outside of my parents and my family, my professional life, a hundred percent my sense of self. Not a hundred percent. It's with my parents and other people, but. And then here we are, we see people, and I have friends like this. They're just constantly grinding away at it because they were not raised in a culture where it was okay to ask for help, or they just think, you know, the best way is to do it the hard way way. If that's your way of life, then go be successful doing what you do. But I'm telling you right now, if somebody knows how to do something or can help you do it in your way, but faster. It's worth its weight in gold because we can make more money. We could never make more time.

[Chris Doe]

How do you find? Because I'm sure a lot of people listening, they want a mentor, they want to coach. They're a little different.

[Rich Cardona]

Right?

[Chris Doe]

But it's like, how do you find the right coach?

[Rich Cardona]

That's a really good question. I think I'm going to give bad advice on this because I was really lucky. I just met a guy and it's like, I'll hire you. And I worked with that person for 13 years, never questioned it. I was done. So people are going to meet charlatans. So let me tell you what to avoid first before we figure out what to do. The people who over promise what they can do, the people who talk about themselves so much and don't have receipts and rely a lot on social proof, you have to be a little careful of they know that a trigger for us is if I take pictures with famous people, if I have fancy cars, live in a nice house and seem to be dating the right kinds of people, they use that in lieu of real work, real experience and then they pull you into a web and you are complicit in the lie. Seth Godin writes about this. All marketers are liars and we're complicit in the lie. We want to believe that. What's more interesting is if you meet somebody who's really grounded, who drives like a Honda Civic or something, who isn't flashy about anything but is deep in what they have to say and have lived a life. I'd be a little bit nervous about getting life advice from 30 year olds. They haven't lived enough of it to know what to look out for. Not to say there aren't some really wise 30 year olds out there, but most of them are charlatans. They took an online course, they talked to talk, they've never walked a walk. And one way you can tell is if somebody got rich. Teaching people how to get rich versus doing the thing that they're trying to teach you, you, that's usually a warning sign. That's a red flag if you will. So let's put all that aside now. Now let's say you find somebody and you don't need to find the best, most qualified, most experienced person in the world. First of all, you probably can't afford them. You might not be a good fit for them. I think what you need to do is say do I trust this person? And you have a pretty good instinct. We call it our gut. If your gut says this is a pretty good person, they seem to be the credible. What I want you to do, it's just to do what they instruct you to do to the best of your ability, the way you were instructed. That's been my life Hack, give you an example. I hired a personal trainer virtually for the first time in my life. I've exercised before and I continue to exercise. And then the personal trainer says, eat this, lift those weights, don't eat that. Log it this way and take these photos. And my wife, it's like, do you need to eat that. Why don't you substitute it with this? Do you need to work that hard? You need to take it easy on yourself. You're going to hurt yourself. This person doesn't know enough about you. I'm like, babe, I paid this person. I made the commitment. I'm doing exactly as the person prescribes. Otherwise, I will not know if he is a good coach for me or not. I must do it. Exactly. And of course, I consume it. I'm like, I'm doing it. I'm doing everything I'm supposed to do. So she's the type who starts to edit the advice almost immediately because her logical mind says, I can't do these things. This. These things don't work. She has a lot of suspicion. So my thing is, if you don't trust the person, don't hire him as a coach. Give it a certain time. Say, I'm going to work with you for 60 days with the expectation that X, Y, and Z is going to happen. At the end of 60 days, there's no more obligation for you to continue. If you love the work, if you love the way you feel and the way you're being treated, then keep going. Otherwise, cut your losses and move on. But trust the person. Otherwise, there's no point. I love that.

[Chris Doe]

So this would be the last one you had. There was a $312,000 bit of coaching advice that saved your life. What was it?

[Rich Cardona]

Oh, okay. You just looked at the YouTube thumbnail, right? Yeah. So I worked with my business coach for 13 years, and I paid him, I think, two to $3,000 a month. So it's the aggregate of what I paid. I've learned invaluable things from my business coach. So now you want to know, like, what the highlights are. Yeah.

[Chris Doe]

Because you know what's funny? Like, the office that we're recording in, so he. He's a buddy, and he's like, I had a coach. You. For someone that had a publicly traded company, whatever. He's like, didn't get much from it, right?

[Rich Cardona]

Yeah.

[Chris Doe]

And he's like, our coach is really good. So here's the chance.

[Rich Cardona]

Okay. So the thing that. And it's funny because I'll bring up a Gary Vaynerchuk thing. You might think a basketball is worthless. And he goes on to say, a basketball is pretty worthless to me. I've blown out two Achilles. He'll, you know, and I'm like, this is not anything for me. So you can say, basketballs are stupid. They're not worth Anything. But you give the basketball to LeBron James and it's worth a billion dollars because, because he knows how to use it. Because a coach didn't work for you doesn't mean coaches are not good. He went for the name brand, he went for the accolades versus the person. And we get trapped in this all the time. It's called the Halo effect. So somebody goes to Harvard, we just assume there must be good. We just attribute too much. Somebody's good looking, we think they're good salespeople. You're not looking at this objectively with clear eyes. Look at the substance, not the vindictive veneer. And he's, he's looking at the veneer. And I have many friends who fall down this trap, right. Mostly because they're insecure about something and they see like, my God, I want a public trade company, therefore I must listen to this person. So we bring it back. What did my business coach teach me? He taught me really profound things that when I tell you are so fundamental, you're like, did somebody really need to teach you that? Well, yeah, because this boy didn't know it. And it's not going to be some weird Nintendo back up ab, down, left, right, right, right button start thing. It's not like that. It's execute the fundamentals. And so one of the things he taught me was he gave me permission basically for a bunch of different things. He gave me permission to say what I think. That's the life changing advice. Yeah. If you're a guy who hides his thoughts, it's pretty big. If you're an introvert, if you're afraid that people will feel offended if you ask him, like, how'd you come up with this idea? Or do you recommend this? Or how are you going to make the decision as to who you're going to work with? And those are things. Things I never thought I could ask a prospect. Because we are taught somewhere it's rude to ask those kind of questions or it's uncouth to do that. What are you, some Cretan knuckle dragging mouth breather? And initially, the reaction I got from people because no one's ever asked them those kinds of questions was a little friction. You push past the friction and what they do is they give you insights. But what's really important is they feel seen, they feel heard, they feel appreciated. And now I feel like the job is already ours and we haven't even done any creative work yet, so now we can only screw it up with bad creative. So that's how we went from closing 25% of the jobs to closing 85% of the jobs. And at this point, I really literally feel this way because I've done it too. I've closed a million dollar job before and I can close a $10 million job. Give me a buyer who's really serious. Give me the information I need. I will close that person because he just taught me how to be human, how to relate to people. So I will say to people who are, who have an adverse reaction to selling, I said, selling isn't what you think it is. Selling is serving. Selling is helping someone. And if you're passionate about what it is that you do and you believe in the solution, helping the person find a solution that's good for them is the most natural thing to do. So we don't have to learn how to sell. We have to learn how to be human first. So that's just one of the things. Another thing he gave me was permission to be the boss. It's really weird because he's like, Chris, you're sitting here holding meetings with your executive producer, with your creative directors and you allow them to make decisions for you, but your instincts are better than all of theirs combined. So you see, he says, as the boss, if someone's going to be wrong, you have the first right to be wrong. You've earned the right to be wrong because you're the ones who stays up late at night. You're the one who has to let people go. You're the ones who has to deal with that stress and that burden. You should be the first person to be wrong. So take that right now.

[Chris Doe]

I love that. I think that's there's more.

[Rich Cardona]

But you know, I can sit here and actually much of what I've written in my book Pocket Full of Dough is from, from the lessons I've learned from Kir. I can go on and on and on because, you know, tell me a situation. I will recite something that he taught me in those 13 years.

[Chris Doe]

You got a long YouTube video you can make from that. So by the way, so where can people find Pocket full of dough? And then also where can people find all your stuff online?

[Rich Cardona]

The best place is go to our websites, the future dot com. We spell future kind of funnies. F U T U R There's no E. Somebody asked me where the ego. I said we drop the ego. That's why there's no. It's just the future dot com and I'm Hechris Do. Do is spelled D O you can find me pretty much on any social platform that's relevant to anybody.

[Chris Doe]

Thanks for joining us. If you haven't already, subscribe to our show on your favorite podcasting app and get new insightful episodes from us every week. The Future Podcast is hosted by Christo and produced and edited by Riddle Cardona Media. Thank you to Adam Sanborn for our intro music. If you enjoyed this episode, then do us a favor by reviewing and rating our show on Apple Podcasts. It will help us grow the show and make future episodes that much better. If you'd like to support the show and invest in yourself while you're at it, visit thefuture.com and you'll find video courses, digital products, and a bunch of helpful resources sources about design and the creative business. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time.