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- [00:00]
Simon Squibb
Talent is actually equally distributed, but opportunity isn't.
- [00:05]
Chris Do
So if your dream is to do something, the first check is, when do you quit? When you hit a wall? Is it admissions process? Is it not getting a portfolio? Or you can't buy a computer? Or someone says you can't have this dream, whether it be your mom or Simon Squibb or Chris do. And I think these are all tests. Yeah, your mom can tell you you're not good or the footballer can say, you're not going to play in this league if you quit there. I think they were right. So I don't know if you know this, but your episode aired.
- [00:36]
Simon Squibb
I did see that. And I was just looking in the comments this morning and people seem to like us.
- [00:40]
Chris Do
They like us. One of my good friends, she's Swedish, her name's Annalee and she's a brand strategist. She goes, you know, Simon's the first guest you've ever had on your show that I feel like I could just listen to you guys talk all day because you have similar energy but different ideas and life experience experiences. So I thought that was a pretty good comment.
- [00:57]
Simon Squibb
Yeah, I've had that feedback as well from people. So maybe there's something there.
- [01:01]
Chris Do
Who knows? I did talk to Leah, your agent, and I think they're considering representing us. And so I have to kind of go through an 18 page legal document first to see what's up with that.
- [01:12]
Simon Squibb
I wish someone had told me all the different elements of like building a personal brand, apart from the obvious stuff like stand up for something and believe in things and so on. But I didn't really understand all the different buttons you could push and like Penguin, for example, and getting a publishing deal and how that worked. I had no idea. Getting speaking gigs, I got them organically here and there, but like, it's not the same as proactively going after it and having it structured properly by someone that knows what all the events are that you won't even know exist. There's not all of these events also public events. Right. So there'll be an event in London next week that it's not necessarily publicly advertised that you would be a perfect speaker for and they've got the money to do it. So. Yeah, it's just good having someone that's kind of in the business. Yeah. Hopefully that that makes you hundreds of thousands of dollars and gives you an excuse to come to London and see me.
- [02:02]
Chris Do
I don't need an excuse. I'm ready to go to London. I almost canceled my Singapore thing. Just to go to London. But they're like, no, we already paid for the venue, man. People have purchased tickets, they're flying here, so you can't back at us. I'm like, okay, I guess we have.
- [02:16]
Simon Squibb
Two things to talk about. Which?
- [02:18]
Chris Do
One?
- [02:18]
Simon Squibb
First, your stuff. What's going on with your stuff? Because that's kind of. I wanted to dig in a little bit and see what the plan is. Could be, how I could help. And then my young graphic designer, what to do, next steps.
- [02:33]
Chris Do
Let's talk about that one first. That's the juicier subject. You know me. What has happened since that conversation you and I had a couple of weeks ago?
- [02:39]
Simon Squibb
Nothing really. In fact, I can check on the DMs now. Haven't spoken to her much. I'll be in touch sort of thing. So since she sent the branding, I've been talking to my wife, asking her whether she could take an apprentice.
- [02:53]
Chris Do
What's she saying?
- [02:54]
Simon Squibb
I'm in negotiations. She has trained a lot of people to be a graphic designer, but she is in a different stage of life, I think on a personal level. She's learning homeopathy at the moment, and she's a kinesologist. She's very much into healing people now. That's what she really likes. I'm always trying to get her back into graphic design because she's actually really good. So I'm always asking her to do logos and stuff for my projects, but I think her heart lies elsewhere now, so bit of a hard sell. So I made a dinner tonight.
- [03:25]
Chris Do
I have an idea, Simon.
- [03:26]
Simon Squibb
Okay, cool.
- [03:26]
Chris Do
I used to teach at art school. I've had interns work for me. But since moving and not having an office anymore and not doing client work, there's really no interns to work with unless they want to build a personal brand or something. What if you got some corporation to pay me and you picked 10 people and I could mentor them over the course of, like, say, two months?
- [03:47]
Simon Squibb
How much does a corporation need to sponsor? What sort of amount?
- [03:50]
Chris Do
I don't know. We'd have to get into, like, the exact parts of it, but I would need to be paid to do it, and I wouldn't want them to pay and you to pay. So a sponsor would step in and it would just depend the commitment and how many calls and what we're doing. I had this series before, it was called Young Guns, and we had a call for submissions, and the first round, only boys submitted. You know, the whole gender gap there in terms of, like, women waiting for to be Overqualified to apply. There's all sorts of unqualified guys who just applied and we, we picked the top four or five and they're from all over the world. They all have real interesting stories. One guy was from Egypt, the other guy was just from a working blue collar family on the east coast. And there was one kid from the UK and we would give him projects and I would critique him over the course of each week. That series went really well. The problem was there's all these people who are like, where are all the women? None applied, so we'll do it again. And this time it's only women. So we did Young Guns season two. We had six women that we picked from all over the world, different stories again. And it was great. With the exception of one person, all of them are not doing design work now. The other five were interested, I think, but wanted to be famous more than they wanted to be a designer. And one of them admitted it to me. I was just on the show to get exposure for what I was doing. That kind of made me really sad, Simon, because here I am, I'm giving them assignments to do, I'm giving them a critique. And like I said to you before, the kind of education I've had is very rigorous and it's very like, we're going to go in, we're going to talk to you about everything that isn't working and how you can improve it. And most people are not wired to hear that kind of information. So I think a lot of them felt hurt because of the way I was critiquing the work. With the exception of one person, and I should correct this, I don't know for a fact that none of them are in design. I just am keeping tabs on one of them. The same one who is still in design is grateful for the experience. Whereas all the boys that I know, they're all doing design work and I still have a relationship with almost all of them. Some of them have gone on to do really good work.
- [05:49]
Simon Squibb
It's so interesting. Like, one of the things I love about asking people what their dream is in the street, at different streets in different countries and different times of the day, is that you get different data points. So I think you've got two data points there, right? There's actually no conclusion you can draw from it, really, that's concrete. So maybe there was a difference in the application process.
- [06:09]
Chris Do
There was.
- [06:10]
Simon Squibb
Maybe it was a targeted sponsored post as well that targeted women because last time there wasn't enough women. What was the correlation between the two, you'd have to do another 20 of those experiments to find out, I think. But it does give me an idea. By the way, you mused me a bit. So I used to run accelerated programs and I basically built 18 different accelerator programs. And the way they worked, most people know what accelerator is, but basically you have a three month program and the people apply and eight people get picked and then they go through this three month process, a combination of feedback on their idea, orientation on their idea, and at the end of it, normally under these types of accelerators around before there's a demo day and then people invest in their businesses. I wonder if there is a creator version of this and it's very sponsorable by a brand. I think if we packaged it right, if we did an accelerator. Because there are a lot of people that dream of being designers now. There's different framings. There's a lot of fashion designers, by the way, a lot of people want to design clothes, A lot of people want to launch clothing brands which they think they're designers as well. And then the course is the direct graphic designer designer. I don't know what the content would be exactly other than how can you design that whole part of it. But also like I think a lot of people now, and I remember when I had a graphic design studio, they want to make money and they feel like there's a ceiling to them spending hours designing something and they don't realize how much they can charge, of course for their work. That's definitely a big problem. A lot of people undervalue their work, but they also feel like there's a limit to the amount they can earn because there's only so much they can charge. Now I know that's one thing you've tried to help people with, by the.
- [07:53]
Chris Do
Way, but that's correct.
- [07:54]
Simon Squibb
But it doesn't mean to say it's still not a problem for a lot of people. And so when I met my wife when she was a standalone graphic designer, she just couldn't charge enough because she felt like it's her doing it. So therefore the price is X because it's amount of hours that she does. And then when she became a company with me, it was the company charging. So she was almost removed from the not Helen doing nine hours work anymore. It's the company charging for an outcome. I guess what I'm getting to is is there an accelerated program here that the dreamer I'm trying to help right now could go into? And the good thing about the accelerator program It's a bit like if people at the end, there's only one left, they're probably the only person that's going to get investment and, or presented to clients and get real work. There's a reason to get to the end. There's a reason at the end, it becomes commercial, to make it sustainable for people. I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to become famous, by the way, and a graphic designer. It depends. If they didn't really want to be a designer, they just want to be famous. Well, that's a bit weird. They're joining the wrong program.
- [08:52]
Chris Do
But we learned later that was what she wanted. She just wanted exposure, that's all.
- [08:58]
Simon Squibb
It's something we can do for people, right. As part of the program.
- [09:00]
Chris Do
Like you can.
- [09:01]
Simon Squibb
Yeah, yeah, you can too.
- [09:03]
Chris Do
Well, I can, but I don't want to. That's the problem.
- [09:05]
Simon Squibb
Yeah, but I think just by having them in your content, you're raising people's profile.
- [09:09]
Chris Do
That is true, but I don't want to necessarily support people who want to be famous for being famous. That's the crux of some of the discussion I had with you, is that you found this random girl. I know people who are talented, deserving of the opportunity for that kind of exposure, who really want it, who have been giving up everything in their lives to do this, toiling away in their garage and defying their parents. Not saying that this is my life and not that you could tell before you meet these people, but I know those people. Those are my people. And so I was like, here's Simon shining a frigging giant spotlight, giving it to a girl that as far as I could tell, was very meh about the experience and turned in work that was not to the standards and now getting tons of more opportunity. And I already predicted to you she was self destruct. She will not be able to handle stress. She does not have the training frameworks, the ability to have a conversation with people getting in their head. She doesn't even know how to read a brief. She doesn't understand like proper proportions and just basic 101 rules about design, scalability, reproduction, you know, like, can we reproduce this mark even? And what does it look like when it's half an inch by half an inch? You couldn't even read it. She basically gave me an illustration, an abstract one at that. And so that was the problem. Now here's the problem. I do know, Simon, just based on what I see at private art schools, Latinos and African Americans are really underrepresented and Asians are over indexed. Asians have become the majority, not the minority anymore at art schools, or it used to be. I don't know if things are changing again. So we'll see. When I went to school, there was only one other person in the school who was Vietnamese and was ahead of me. Everyone else was white, European, hardly saw any Latinos, almost zero black people. So it was the white majority and then an Asian minority, the biggest minority group there. So that's the problem. Like whenever I have a black student in my class, I'm so excited, like, wow, somehow you found this and it found you. And I'm so happy to see you.
- [11:05]
Simon Squibb
Why is that? Whoa. Why is that? What is the backstory on why that is the outcome?
- [11:11]
Chris Do
I have some theories, but not enough data points. But number one, first of all, if you're growing up communities that don't have opportunity, the last thing you're thinking about is going into a field that has a lot of question marks where the payoff isn't great and it's not guaranteed. And you can see in the world of design, black people are very underrepresented. So there are not a lot of role models where you. Who's the black? Johnny Ivey. But if you look into music and entertainment and so athletics, you can see tons of black role models. And the reverse is true. You don't see a lot of Asians represented in pop culture, not until recently with K pop and K dramas and all the Korean stuff, which I, as an Asian American, am very excited to see that the rest of the world is open to having a different face. Look back at them and say, we support you. We'll go to your concerts. So that's one of the problems. And okay, so here's what I understand. A lot of the students are from foreign countries that go to private art schools. And they're mostly women. And the reason why is, especially if they're from China. Single child rule. You have a daughter, what's the daughter going to do? Your expectations isn't for her to go out and crush and work in a man's world. You want her to have skills that then can attract a better man. So they send their daughters to school to study abroad for the education, but also to develop a skill so that they can be more attractive to their partners. And they're very open to the arts. And arts is like a cool thing to do. You're not sitting there working on machinery. It used to be when I was in school, Japan was the biggest exporter or importer of students to the United States. And then as Japan's economy slipped, it was Korea and now it's China. You could just follow the money, Right? So where's the money in the Asian countries right now? So you'll see now lots of Chinese, some Taiwanese, Koreans, and then Japanese all mixed in there. But the Japanese now would be the minority of the Asians that are at art schools.
- [13:04]
Simon Squibb
Fascinating.
- [13:05]
Chris Do
So, you know, I saw the one comment on the channel which was, I'd like to see Simon go into black communities and help some black people. Where are all the black people? So I was like, oh, I wonder how that would go down.
- [13:16]
Simon Squibb
I've been with my wife 23 years. It's interesting because I genuinely think, you know, when I met my wife, she's basically half Chinese, right? I didn't even think about what ethnicity she was. I just saw someone who had a bright energy, smart, enjoyed having a conversation with her. It's interesting because, like, when I first started doing the content, just by luck, but like you're saying with your program, it's a lot of men at the beginning, and then suddenly it was a lot of women. And then it's men and women, and people start complaining it's not enough women, okay? And then slowly they're like, well, where's the disabled people? I guess with the street content. Anyway, I'm not really looking for any particular. I'm looking for energy when I just scale back. What you said at the very beginning of, like, you know, there's people out there that really want this opportunity, and then there's someone random. Right. I didn't know what she was going to pick when I asked her. I met someone the other day who wanted to be a footballer, and I'm not here to judge whether or not they're a good footballer or not. That's not for me to judge. I think it's more like, well, what do you need to make it happen? That's kind of my mo. It's not like I'm here to judge whether or not their dream is something they should be dreaming. I see my role is like, well, what education can I provide you to help you? And then I can give you exposure. And in the case of a graphic designer, exposure can be half of it because you need a client or two or three. So I meet someone, they tell me they want to be a graphic designer. I believe them. And then that night, we edit a video and we put it up, and it gets 20 million views. And now I've set up A project to design something for me As a Part 2 follow up to her story, and the design comes in and it's not to my liking or your liking. But again, art is subjective. Let's just be clear, you know, like.
- [15:01]
Chris Do
Well, we can argue about that a little bit.
- [15:03]
Simon Squibb
Yeah, we can argue about that a little bit. But I think, you know, it is her design and that's what she thinks is good. Now, as a client, I would say for me, that design is not correct for my brand. So I can say, as a client, thank you for doing this, but that's not for me. And I can also add, if you want feedback, I can give it, but it might not be useful, because it might be that your type of approach to design in your particular style is you're designing for a certain demographic that, you know, let's say. Because she told me she liked designing skateboards before, right? So it might be that she knows that community, maybe they're more grungy than me. So her design fits that criteria. So what I'm getting to is, like, the reason I do the random stuff is because I actually really like fate as a general concept. Like, not everything has to be perfectly choreographed and planned. This has worked for the last five years. I meet someone who has a dream to be a cleaner. Doesn't sound sexy.
- [16:04]
Chris Do
Yeah, yeah, I saw that one.
- [16:05]
Simon Squibb
I don't know if they're good at cleaning or not. And then we say these guys want to be cleaners. They go from five of them living in one room together, almost being evicted. Two years later, they've got a cleaning company, they're sponsored by big brands like British Airways. They now live as a family in a house, and they're not under threat of losing their. Where they're going to sleep tonight. And so that's kind of the education, fun, education model, right? In the real world, I think this particular case has thrown me through a little bit of a reflection loop.
- [16:37]
Chris Do
And I like that it has, by the way.
- [16:38]
Simon Squibb
Yeah, no, it's healthy. It's like. So I have two models, right? One is me walking in the street and asking people what their dream is and that it has its flaws. Maybe in this case there's a flaw here, but I have another model, which is if you have a dream, you can go press the doorbell of dreams, which we've set up, and you can pitch your dream to it and we promote you in exactly the same way. Apart from it doesn't involve Simon Squibb. So for the graphic designer that you're describing, there My long term dream would be we have a doorbell of dreams in every major city in the world. And if they really want some help that break that this girl got just by chance and. But they want to make the break happen. I hope in the future they can go press this doorbell and that that system I built which is now scaling, will give that person you're talking about an opportunity. So I do think about those people and I know exactly what you mean. Equally those people already, by the sounds of it, taking initiative and fighting and trying to push through and will probably make it. Maybe not as quickly as if I promoted on my social channels, but they will make it because that's their destiny.
- [17:41]
Chris Do
Or they may not. I don't know. This is where I love our conversation. So you know that expression. I think it's something like hard work and preparation increases the surface area for luck to happen. You may call it fate or destiny, but I don't think everybody who wants to do it, who's working really hard is going to make it. Simon, they do need some help. And that's why people like you exist. That's why certain agencies exist. Because wanting something and working for it is not an enough. Because I've also seen people who are really. That's why I was. It kind of. It tore a little thing in my heart where I was like, shoot, had I known you and had I known you were going to do this for somebody, I would have reached out to my community and you would get thousands of people saying please because they're in my DMs, they're telling me and they're showing me their work and they do good work. But I'm like, I don't know what to do with this. I'm not in the business of sitting here and being kingmaker and promoting people. That's. I'm here to teach. Now, I don't think your man in the street model can fail because your objective is different than mine. Your objective is give everybody a shot. And I gave you your shot. Whether you missed the basket or whatever, that's on you. It's not really on me. I'm not here to judge.
- [18:49]
Simon Squibb
I mean also, at the end of the day, the videos are also about. People watch these videos and feel inspired to go for their dreams. Right? So which is better than just.
- [18:58]
Chris Do
That works too.
- [19:00]
Simon Squibb
The world is going to give you a shit job and you've got to do it. What I find interesting is like, because to me there's two sides to this conversation. One is like, how we help this young girl whose dream is to be a graphic designer, help her in any way we can. Again, without judgment. You are, as you said it yourself, a design snob.
- [19:18]
Chris Do
I am.
- [19:19]
Simon Squibb
I am someone that owned a design company for 20 years, but I'm not a designer. But I worked with designers. So by default, I got to see. Plenty of people will pay for what you might describe as substandard design, but does the work that the client wants. You can be a graphic designer. You can make a living, and you don't have to be the best graphic designer in the world.
- [19:42]
Chris Do
I'm with you on this.
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Simon Squibb
In fact, I would argue that if you're the best salesperson in the world and an average graphic designer, you'll probably do better than someone who can't sell but is a brilliant graphic designer.
- [19:51]
Chris Do
And I would agree with you. And I think perhaps your business is built on this.
- [19:55]
Simon Squibb
There's a chance.
- [19:56]
Chris Do
There's a high probability.
- [19:57]
Simon Squibb
There's a chance. I never wanted to say that I don't believe that to be true. But having said that, I can totally accept. My business was based in Hong Kong, and there was some pretty amazing designers in that city who were not doing as well as us. That's a lesson there in itself, isn't it?
- [20:15]
Chris Do
Okay, but we have to take out the sales equation, because that's the Simon factor. Okay, now we're talking about design, right? So here's my theory on this. There's a level. We'll call it the basement. And you got to get out of the basement for you to even be considered a designer. And then there's the. The penthouse suite or the attic, whatever. That's where the top 20 most famous celebrated designers exist. They write books, they give lectures at famous universities. There's a lot of room in the middle. When I say I'm a design snob, I say I can be critical. But I understand that not all the successful people are in the attic or in the penthouse suite. That's not the case at all. But when you said subjectively, we don't like this, I'm like, no, objectively, it is not good. I'm not saying shades of green or do I like that it touches this or that? It was like it failed on all levels. And I'll explain why. There's this expression, I get in trouble for saying this. The getification of design in that anybody and everybody can do it. It's like if you take legal or medical or you take bioengineering, and you're like, oh, anybody can do it. You've devalued the entire profession. And this is the thing that I have to as, on behalf of the design community, say, no, there is a standard, and she has not met that base standard. That's the problem. Number one, let's talk about it. Design is a service that solves a client's problem. If you haven't had a conversation and you don't know how to ask the client what their problem is, you're making art. And I'm going to take the conversation of art and illustration off the table. This is about design. What you're saying is maybe her kind of art is for different people, but she's not saying I'm an artist. Because if you're an artist, go paint, sculpt, make something in a studio and go sell it somewhere. This is a different thing. So if she doesn't ask you what your problems are or doesn't understand how to read the brief, because you are like, presumably, and we should read the brief together and understand how to read a brief. This is what you go to school to see. It's like, here's a block of information. What is important, what's relevant, what needs to be clarified with the client? You. And then she should not design it for you, she should design it with you. That's a big difference. This is what amateurs do. They think, they go away, they make something, they present it. You should pick one. No, we should build this together. It's like we're designing a restaurant. We need to figure out the decor, we need to figure out the flow. Is it open kitchen? Is it closed kitchen? How fancy is it? What's the price point? And design solves to that problem. Now, if the brief is bad, that's on you. It's not on her. I haven't read the brief. I'm going to assume that you know how to write a brief. As of your years in. In design and marketing, you would know. So now she's fundamentally failed the number one principle, which is understand thy client and do work with them and not for them. That's the problem.
- [22:54]
Simon Squibb
I totally understand what you mean. I think anyone who is in the creative space, and I hear you about like. But defending the design community. The first time my wife ever took me to an art gallery and showed me a mattress against a wall and told me this was a very famous piece of art that symbolized something, I just. It's a mattress against a wall. That's all I could see, you know, like. And she's like, no, this is positioned in a Certain way to highlight the day that the planes flew in on D day. Okay, so it's context. Right. And I think art is subjective. Now, of course, a brief is a brief. And I think in this particular case, for this particular dream where she dreams of being a graphic designer, I think the brief could have been better. The brief, by the way, was recorded. It was a verbal brief. And we're going to put up a video of me giving her the Helen meeting. The meeting with you, I think, is in it. And then I sat down with her and talked business side. Not the design side, the business side of how it all works, how the business side of building a graphic design business that I have done. So it's like survival bias, my way of doing it. But I think the actual output, I guess my brain says, well, I can reassert the brief because perhaps it's my fault. Right. And give her a second chance to redo it. Or I can get her some mentorship with someone that perhaps knows how to read a brief and help her with that process. Something that Helen can do, you could definitely do. And so that's one option. Well, the third option is I make a judgment call and say, you're not a graphic designer. Pick another dream.
- [24:42]
Chris Do
There's a fourth option.
- [24:43]
Simon Squibb
What's the fourth option?
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Chris Do
The fourth option is, I wanted this so much to work. It's just not working for me. Everything in my body wants to make this work, and I'm not in a position to tell you what to do. So I'm just going to thank you for the work you've been paid, and I wish you the very best on your pursuit of your dream. Maybe you can ask her. What did you learn from this experience? Is there anything you'd like to do differently and just move on because you don't have to close the door.
- [25:05]
Simon Squibb
Yeah, I mean, I feel like that's very similar to option three. It's just a nice way of putting it. It's a much nicer.
- [25:12]
Chris Do
Well, the way you said it was like, you're not a designer. Go F off. That's all we're saying here.
- [25:17]
Simon Squibb
Look, my present model is I kind of had this give about take mind structure. So give and take is very much a transaction. I give you a brief, you do it. You don't do it. I don't pay you. You do do it. I pay you. That, to me, is kind of the old way. I used to live as well, but the way I've. I've tried to, like, move on to like a give without Take model. And the give without take model is you tell me your dream. I tried to help you make it happen. And then, you know, it's not really my job to make it happen. It's my job to do what I said I could do, which is put you up online and tell people about you. And that particular example, I said, I'll pay you £1,000 now to do this design, and if I like it, I'll pay you $10,000. I don't like it. So that's the end of that. But that doesn't mean to say, okay, now what can I do? My model is I have a community of people that can. You can now join up, help bank, and you can get help from the community. And so it's never come into my mind that I would say to someone and people tell me they want to be football stars. I don't know if they're good at football or not. They tell me they want to be TV anchors. Someone told me six months ago they want to be a TV anchor. I don't know what's a good TV anchor. This was in Romania. Six months ago they told me they want to be a TV anchor. So I took their dream, I put it up online. And then two days ago, they became the news anchor for Euro News Romania. They are now the new anchor on euronews. So I'm not there to judge whether or not they're a good news anchor. And there's certainly news anchors out there who'll be saying, oh, it's a profession, it's a skill, it's not something anyone can do. You need to go to universities, do it. I took 20 years to get good at this. You can't do it easily.
- [26:57]
Chris Do
The Simon train ran head first into a wall called professionalism and training and rigorous. So sales, marketing, writing, performance, even cooking and TV anchors. I don't know what the credentials are to actually achieve that. I think I know what they are. But again, maybe some TV anchor person will say, here's what you have to learn in journalism. And we wouldn't know that. But it's not our position to say, right, who cares?
- [27:25]
Simon Squibb
I also don't know how to become a professional footballer. But what I do know, some of the core stuff is always the same. You have to apply yourself. And I would argue that anyone could become an entrepreneur if they apply themselves. But you might be a different type of entrepreneur. Some will be very successful, some will be average, some might just make a living, some won't be able to make a living. And they have to go back and get a job.
- [27:47]
Chris Do
Yeah, I know a lot of those people.
- [27:49]
Simon Squibb
I guess maybe to frame this conversation, I know those four options. Let's call them four options. Right now I'm at a stage where I'm thinking, okay, I'm going to tell her that I don't like the designs. It doesn't mean to say she's not a good designer. I don't think it's my right to say that to her. Her. Because I don't know what a good designer is. And I can also say maybe my brief wasn't clear, which is probably true. But like you say, it's still her dream. So it's not for me to take her dream away. Right. And so what I have seen, sometimes people change their mind in a year or two's time. They have a different.
- [28:21]
Chris Do
Yeah, I'm not even sure it's her dream, Simon. Right, because when you walked up to her, you asked her, what's your dream? She goes to go to ucla. That was her dream. She just wants to go to school and she needs money to do that. And then you're like, what would you study? And you're like, I want to be a graphic designer. Then that was something you could work with. And so people will say that whenever it's like, maybe she meant to say, I want to be an illustrator.
- [28:42]
Simon Squibb
She's going to UCLA to study graphic design is US$60,000 a year.
- [28:47]
Chris Do
Yeah, yeah. So like I said to you and.
- [28:49]
Simon Squibb
To her, to study something we're now saying she might not want to do. Yeah, well, that in itself is me.
- [28:57]
Chris Do
I. No, I see. Okay, I'll share something with you. Okay. It costs money to go to school here. It's not free. That's one of the biggest shortcomings of American education system. She might have wanted to be just at UCLA to study something, but graphic design seemed like the easiest, coolest thing to do at the moment. I'm not convinced that she wants that because like I said, there are more prestigious design schools out there that'll cost the exact same amount. Why she didn't apply to them says a lot to me. And I'll tell you, just confession. When I was getting done with high school, I had to apply to universities and I picked graphic design because I thought it was the least impacted thing I could sneak into so that I can get a degree from a school my parents could understand.
- [29:37]
Simon Squibb
Worked out for you though, didn't it?
- [29:38]
Chris Do
No, he didn't. Because I got rejected out of all those schools.
- [29:41]
Simon Squibb
Oh, really?
- [29:41]
Chris Do
Yeah. I wasn't good enough. I didn't have a portfolio to get in.
- [29:44]
Simon Squibb
Wow.
- [29:45]
Chris Do
Yeah. Oh, there's a whole story here. I applied to ucla, to UC San Diego, and to Cal Poly Pomona or San Luis Obispo because I heard that they had a decent art program. And I wish I had that letter, Simon, the one that UCLA sent back to me. Your work demonstrates potential, but you're not ready. And I wasn't upset. I knew it. I knew it. I half assed it. I didn't whole ass it. I half assed it.
- [30:09]
Simon Squibb
What happened after that, though? So you get a letter basically saying you're not ready. A polite way of saying you're not good enough.
- [30:15]
Chris Do
So what I have to do then is I have to tell my parents I got rejected out of all three schools. And this is very shameful to say to Asian parents. And I said, I'm going to go to community college. And I figured out that I want to go to Art Center. Now, in the time in which I applied and got rejected, I got a job at a silk screening place where I did production artwork. I was literally tracing over inking someone's drawings to prepare for artwork to be printed, which is a whole different story, because that's where I was able to become an entrepreneur. Because I asked my boss at that time, how do people hire you to do this work? What does the cost? He told me it was like $5.25 printed. I said, if I can go out and sell the shirt, would you charge me five and a quarter? So then I just sold the shirts for $20. And I was thinking to myself, being a production artist is not my future, but I'm going to go and study. I'm going to go to Art Center. So I took a year to work on my portfolio, and I got into Art center on a scholarship. So your girl might be in a very similar thing where she may or may not be accepted already. Did you ask her if she got accepted into the UCLA design program?
- [31:16]
Simon Squibb
I don't think she has.
- [31:17]
Chris Do
I don't think she can with the portfolio or the work that you shared with me. Like, my work as a high school student back in 1990 is better than that logo that you got. So I put it out there for you.
- [31:29]
Simon Squibb
It's a fascinating story, though, because, let's face it, you're quite good at this stuff.
- [31:33]
Chris Do
So I'm good because I was taught how to be good at this. There's a difference there.
- [31:37]
Simon Squibb
What I'm saying is that's their job to teach you that stuff. So they didn't see potential in you.
- [31:43]
Chris Do
That is there or not. You can only judge it based on the work. Right. How do you judge potential? You can.
- [31:49]
Simon Squibb
In reality, behind the curtain, you'll probably find that they just met their criteria and you didn't tick a box that they were trying to tick.
- [31:56]
Chris Do
I don't know. I'm trying to be objective about this. The portfolio I sent to them was not a good portfolio because I hadn't fully committed that this was what I was gonna do with my life. I basically pulled together a bunch of pieces randomly from the art classes I had at school. And I wasn't really seriously thinking about this. So what I sent to them, I would not have accepted me. So I don't have ill will. They did the right thing. And like you said, it did work out for me because I need to get serious. So a year later, after going to community college, I had a portfolio that was decent enough to show somebody I can get in. And not only did I get in, I got a scholarship, which I think surprised my parents.
- [32:33]
Simon Squibb
I kind of hope this happens. For the dreamer, this will be great. Five years from now, ten years from now.
- [32:39]
Chris Do
Yes. But you know what? She'll have to meet someone in or out of school who's going to say to her, here's how we start to do this whole process. I thought of a metaphor or analogy for you. Okay. In your world, everything is like a pit fight. You have two hands, you have a heart, you have a spirit to win. You just throw people in the pit and they either win or they lose. But in the world of professional mixed martial artists, you cannot just throw a rando in there because the professionals destroy them. They've done the cardio work, they have the techniques, they know submissions, they know striking, they know balance, they know how to pace themselves, and they have a winning mindset.
- [33:16]
Simon Squibb
I love the analogy, but just to defend myself for a minute, literally to continue the analogy, I have never said you don't need training, and I totally agree with you. For something like mixed martial arts, you need training. Ironically, a year and a half ago, I met someone who said they wanted to be a mixed martial artist. A year and a half later, after we've been following their story, and I got them some sponsorship and got them the food they needed sponsored, and they're now in Arizona, and they're lined up to be an M and A fighter. And. And they are ready. I'm not saying meet them today, tomorrow, they're the world's Best graphic designer. Of course not. I totally agree with you. Any training. I wouldn't suggest you get in the boxing ring without training.
- [33:57]
Chris Do
Okay, let's go through this. You're like, you don't need school. My wife was self taught. She can. MMA is not a self taught sport. See, there's a difference there.
- [34:07]
Simon Squibb
That's one way of getting the training. That's one way. I actually am a bit upset that the university's become the only path.
- [34:15]
Chris Do
They're not the only path. I don't champion that.
- [34:17]
Simon Squibb
I know, I know. All I'm saying is graphic design. If you weren't, we could probably come up with a package to get it sponsored and her go work with you. I'm 100% convinced within two years of working with you, although it might be frustrating for you, that she will be able to get a client to pay her to do graphic design.
- [34:35]
Chris Do
I guarantee it. You're right. You are right.
- [34:37]
Simon Squibb
So if her dream is to be a graphic designer, and it really is her dream, it does have to be her dream. It can't be a fleeting dream. It can't be a false dream because she just wanted to go to USA la and this is a cheap, easy way to do it. If all of those things are true, then it wasn't her real dream and she lied to me that day.
- [34:51]
Chris Do
Or she just wasn't aware enough, or she was lying to herself.
- [34:55]
Simon Squibb
Either way, it probably won't work out if it isn't her true dream. This is kind of my philosophy, by the way. If it's your true dream, you will find a way.
- [35:01]
Chris Do
I just had an idea. Can I just share it with you before I forget it? I'm Simon Squibb. I'm gonna redo the bubblegum shrimp thing. I'm gonna walk up to this woman, I'm gonna say, hey, what? What's your dream? She's like to go to ucla. Wonderful. What do you want to study there? Graphic design. Have you been accepted? You haven't? Can we look at your portfolio? Because I'm in the business to help people make their dreams come true. And then from the portfolio we can have people that I know. I can reach out to my wife Helen. Maybe my new friend Chris can look at it and help you sharpen your portfolio so that you can get into ucla, which was her dream. It wasn't to be a graphic designer. It's not what she said. First, I can help you get into ucla. I can call people on admissions board, understand what's going on, help you and that Would be a wonderful dream and a close story.
- [35:47]
Simon Squibb
Hindsight is brilliant. I love hindsight.
- [35:49]
Chris Do
I know when there's no pressure to be the man on the street. When I do my man on the street, you'll be laughing at me too. I am doing it.
- [35:56]
Simon Squibb
Are you doing it?
- [35:56]
Chris Do
I am doing it. So I talked to Brendan Cain. Do you know Brendan Cain? He wrote the book Hook Point. He was able to grow a million followers on multiple platforms. Platforms in like a 30 day period. He goes, chris, I've been, My team's been studying your content. He's become a friend of mine now. He goes, there's a couple of formats that would work for you. He's all about formats. He goes, your thing is you help people to see the value in what they do. I'm like, okay. He goes, so if you want to do man on the street. And he goes, you're going to hate it. I said, I do want to do it. I met this guy's time and I'm going to do it. He goes, what you do is you approach people and you just ask him, how much do you charge an hour? And then I argued with Brandon. I'm like, dude, this is not about me. I don't think anybody should be putting a rate on a unit of time. But then I was working through it and I've tried it on a couple of people, it works brilliantly. So I was like, this is great. So my first person that I'm going to do this to is Simon Squibb.
- [36:49]
Simon Squibb
Yeah. Here's the irony. I don't charge by the hour, so.
- [36:52]
Chris Do
No, I know, but that, see, that's the whole conversation. That's the beautiful.
- [36:55]
Simon Squibb
Oh, I think let's do it.
- [36:56]
Chris Do
And I'm looking, see what I'm saying? I'm like, excuse me, excuse me. How much you charge an hour? And you're like, well, I don't believe in charging an hour. Well, what do you mean? Then you get to explain it.
- [37:03]
Simon Squibb
Look, I think we all going to find, as you push that format to the nth degree, as I'm pushing mine, that there will be flaws in it. There will be people that are in fight or flight trying to survive that will tell you an hourly rate that you might laugh at. And you'll tell them they shouldn't be charging an hourly rate. And they'll be like, but listen, man, I've got two kids and we an immigrant family. And you know, we got. Basically there'll be scenarios where that is just the way it is. Because I, I also Tell people, don't charge by the hour. I charge by the outcome. But it's easy to say from an out of fight or flight position. But anyway, I think it's a great.
- [37:38]
Chris Do
Series, but you'll get to laugh at me and how I crash and burn.
- [37:41]
Simon Squibb
But yeah, and you, there are going to be some people because what's the follow up to that? So you find out the hourly rate and then you tell them not to do that.
- [37:48]
Chris Do
It just. No, no, no, I don't, I don't tell many things. So first that was what I was thinking. But I went to my wife, I'm like, honey, let me just ask you a question. How much you charge an hour? And she goes, I don't said, this is wonderful. How is it that you cannot charge an hour? Well, I married well. She winks and smiles. And so now we have a whole story. And I'm not here to convince you of anything. I just want to be a great conversationalist. So I talked to one of my friends and he said, how much you charge an hour? And she goes, $800 an hour. I'm like, wow, that is a lot of money. What is it that you do? And you teach us what it is that you taught or why people will pay you $800 an hour. So I'm not here to convince people to charge for the outcome.
- [38:22]
Simon Squibb
I don't think $800 an hour is a lot of money, by the way.
- [38:24]
Chris Do
But anyway, well, for a lot of people it is.
- [38:27]
Simon Squibb
I love the format. I'm excited.
- [38:29]
Chris Do
See, so if it's a dollar an hour, zero, it seems to work up and down the spectrum, including people who say I don't charge by the hour. I'm like, well, how do you do it then?
- [38:37]
Simon Squibb
I love it, I see it.
- [38:39]
Chris Do
I think it's going to work, Simon.
- [38:40]
Simon Squibb
But just going back to the university issue, if I'd follow what you just said, by the way, and she'd said university, the thing I feel with university is now the default for every young person. Every young person now feels like they have to go to university. And it's partly because the company's the other side. It's like to have a university degree. So the whole analogy again, that Tesla could only wouldn't get a job at Tesla now because he walked out of university.
- [39:08]
Chris Do
But you know, Simon, I don't know if that's true. I don't have data to back this part up. I think when we were growing up as little kids, university was the only way you want to get a Good job, make a good living.
- [39:18]
Simon Squibb
No, it wasn't.
- [39:19]
Chris Do
I grew up in America. This is the story I was told.
- [39:22]
Simon Squibb
You could get apprenticeships. A lot of designers, a lot.
- [39:24]
Chris Do
Not in America, they got apprenticeships. We don't have a strong apprenticeship program here. That word, probably most people don't even know what it means. So what I see is the opposite, which is today there are a lot of people understanding that you can teach yourself, you can go and create a YouTube channel, you can be an influencer. There's a lot of non university things, especially Apple, Google, and I forget the. I think Amazon has now removed the requirement for university degree. So the world is changing. Because a lot of the founders were university dropouts, by the way. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Zuckerberg, I don't.
- [39:58]
Simon Squibb
Think graduated, but that's what I mean. But partly, once they drop out, they're committed to what they're doing and it's almost like they can't really go. But they're the ones we hear. By the way, there's plenty of people that dropped out and went back. But there is a commitment in that process that makes you double down on what you've committed to. You can't drop out of a prestigious university and then not make your idea work, can you?
- [40:19]
Chris Do
No. A lot of people fail too. They're just dropouts. I think the key here is, and I entertain this question, when you go to Harvard, does Harvard make you great or were you great before you went to Harvard? I suspect it's the latter of the two. And Harvard just has a really great upside on this, where they have more great applicants than they know what to do with. And then they just get to cherry pick the future winners.
- [40:42]
Simon Squibb
Some of the smartest people, by the way, what they do now is they apply to Harvard or Cambridge or Oxford, they get in and then they say, I'm dropping out of Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, to do this startup. And that makes them more desirable as an investment.
- [40:55]
Chris Do
Yeah, because it's shorthand for I'm good enough, I'm accomplished enough, and I don't need a piece of paper to tell me that. And I think all these people that drop out of Harvard or whatever school they go to, it's not because they don't believe in the education system, but they already have a very successful business and school's getting in the way of that versus normal people who drop out because they couldn't hack it, or they ran out of funds or they lost focus. There's a different reason. There's Zuck has founded Facebook inside of Harvard. He's like, this is getting in the way of me running a billion dollar company. I'm leaving. I think Bill Gates is the same. I don't know what Steve Jobs story is, but he's just like, I'm going on a pilgrimage to India or whatever it is and decides this is not for me. But they're all very brilliant people.
- [41:39]
Simon Squibb
Let me ask you a question.
- [41:40]
Chris Do
Yes, sir.
- [41:41]
Simon Squibb
Do you think universities are a business?
- [41:46]
Chris Do
Absolutely.
- [41:47]
Simon Squibb
Do you think the business of university is almost now the only option for most people if they're trying to build up their lives and careers?
- [41:59]
Chris Do
No. I think if you pull a lot of millennials, Gen Z, Gen X, Gen, whatever the next is, they're going to say no. My son who is in university is thinking about dropping out. And I'm like, great, let's drop out.
- [42:12]
Simon Squibb
Okay, so he's going to drop out and do what?
- [42:14]
Chris Do
He's going to get on with his life. He's an artist, he's a designer.
- [42:17]
Simon Squibb
So why did he go to university in the first place?
- [42:19]
Chris Do
Because it's what his high school friends were doing and he wasn't confident enough that he could do this, even though he's already made a couple hundred thousand dollars on his own before he even went to college.
- [42:28]
Simon Squibb
He's a designer.
- [42:29]
Chris Do
Illustrator. Designer, yeah. Not a graphic designer. Like he designs monsters and spaceships and things like that.
- [42:35]
Simon Squibb
This is this thing, you know, like talent is actually equally distributed, but opportunity isn't. So in your son's case, he has you, you probably taught him, guided him, and there was no sponsorship required because he's your child and you had to do it. So I think there are a lot of people who feel a desire to be a certain thing but don't have those advantages. I mean, maybe it's easier to talk about something like marketing because that's my profession. Okay, So I can say with marketing, there were definitely people in marketing who are good and people in marketing who are bad, but they are selling a marketing degree in university. And my experience of people that have got a degree in marketing is that quite often they don't know anything about marketing. You know, I say to them, how does the TikTok algorithm work? I go, I go live on TikTok now and I ask people, how do you make five ways you make money on TikTok? I mean, marketing people come from a university after four years and £60,000 worth of debt and they do not know how does the YouTube algorithm work? One of the most powerful marketing tools in existence today how does it work? Don't know. We were talking about pets.com and how they promoted themselves in 1990 when there was no Internet users. I'm like, well, that's useful, isn't it? I think I can talk with more conviction about the marketing space because I could also be very precious about it. And I think I am one of the top marketers in the world and I could quite easily be very precious about it and say, oh, no, it's a discipline. You have to study it. You have to understand the psychological aspect of the human brain, the frontal lobe, you know, the subconscious. You need to study it. And the reality is to become good at something, there are many different ways to get there. You can study it for five years and then apply it to the world, or you can do what I did, which is just do it. I learned sales by knocking on a door, someone saying, yes. First time I ever tried to sell. That was probably very lucky because it gave me the confidence to knock on the second door who told me no. And if I hadn't got yes the first time, maybe I would have been God. I need someone to teach me this because the first person said no, so I'm doing it wrong.
- [44:43]
Chris Do
Well, okay, hold on. First of all, I 100% agree with you about marketing because there was a woman who interned for me back when I was running my studio and she was about to graduate from some university with a marketing degree. I said, okay, this is exciting to me. You're a senior, you're about to graduate. Tell me everything you know about marketing. And there was very little she could tell me. So I was thinking, oh, my God, either you're a really bad student, that's a terrible program, or both could be true. Because I don't know anything about marketing and I know more about marketing than you because a lot of things you could watch, understand, reverse engineer, and study what's happening today. What schools are teaching you, especially in the marketing program, is what's happened 10, 15, 20 years ago, not what's happening, which is very different because those university professors, most likely, and I hope I'm not going to just paint with such a broad stroke, is they're actually not marketers, they're historians of marketing. That's what they're teaching you.
- [45:38]
Simon Squibb
And most of the people teaching it have never actually put it in the real world themselves and made a living from it or applied it in a way that's actually real world application.
- [45:47]
Chris Do
Most of the teachers, and it can't say I disagree with you by the.
- [45:50]
Simon Squibb
Way, maybe this is a good way to meet in the middle on this because I think there are certain things in university I have come to really see the university system a little bit as my enemy because it's a little bit stealing people's dreams from them and then putting them in a box. You know, that whole like, what are you going to do when you grow up? Box, which then stops people thinking the way I think people should think, which is, what problem do I want to solve in the world? What problem I want to solve in the world means that we can have 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 different careers to then solve the problem we care about. But I think what's happening with the university system is it's become like a conveyor belt, right? You want to be a lawyer, okay, great. You know, six years old, you tell us you want to be a lawyer and then these are the universities you need to go to. These are the sort of grades you need to go to. This is the intern job we call I can't believe you haven't got internships in America. But where are they called low paying jobs to learn the skills in the work. Internships to me is more valuable than the education. Now of course there are certain professions and let's say, let's say a doctor, brain surgeon, you have to go to university to learn that. But at some point you're going to have to operate on a brain. So someone's going to stand with you and help you there, right? Maybe you read a lot of textbooks before that and you've watched a lot of videos, maybe you've done something on a dummy, but at some point you're going to have to operate on a real human and then you need someone standing with you and helping you.
- [47:08]
Chris Do
This is just based on my own experience and I'm not saying all universities because there are great universities out there with great programs and teachers and they have a consistent track record of giving you good ROI in terms of your tuition. But I believe universities or colleges are a business. They're in business to make money, to build buildings and to put names on buildings. And in many cases they're front of house operations for banks. What I mean by that is this entire system that we have, it's the one thing that you have no financial resources, but the government will give you a loan that's never forgivable. And then the universities in cahoots with, I think the banks say, well, we all set up the system and work within the way the government is structured such that we will vet applications and theoretically find a way for them to make money at the back end so that they'll be able to pay off these loans. And there are so many people in America who are stuck with this debt that never goes away and it'll cripple them for life. So you and I, we don't see any difference here. And I'll go further by saying they are front of house operations for banks because they'll get you a loan. I can't have a business idea and walk into a bank and get a loan. I can't have a dream to be a pop star and get a loan that you don't have to pay for four years.
- [48:19]
Simon Squibb
This is my frustration with the way this is structured right now.
- [48:22]
Chris Do
And I believe you have a solution for this.
- [48:24]
Simon Squibb
I have been into universities to do talks and often when you go and do these talks, you sit and listen to the professors before you talk to some of the students. You know, again, I've also interviewed lots of people that come out of these university structures and half the time they haven't helped them, they've hindered them, they've told them about all the risk that all these companies that failed before and so on and so forth. So I think, I mean I'm just initially, we've got some common ground here, which is that there is a problem with the university system. And I know about your kids, but what I'm seeing is everyone, you know, young person, 18, 19 years old, probably never going to be as free again in their life as they are at that age, right? They can still live at home, their costs are low, they could take risk and start a business, let's say argument's sake, marketing business, because it's easier than being a designer and maybe get a couple of clients using them for social media posting and build up a little business and learn along the way and make money while they're learning and maybe the business does well and turns into something or maybe they just learn a lot of stuff of how to build a business and then find out what they actually love doing and then they can go and do that, not be in four years worth of debt and waste four years of their life learning from people. Most of the time again, don't want to be a broad brush statement either, but most of the time haven't actually done anything except teach in their lives. So I think there's a real problem. Problem. I could get some numbers on this, but the last time I looked at the UK university system, 35% of people are going there to study business and that linked to marketing and strategy. And the best way to learn business is either go work with someone that's running a business or start a business. So it's crazy to me that billions is being spent, debt from the banks to human beings that then traps them later on. Things that you can teach yourself. Now, maybe I could get precious about marketing and say it is a discipline and you do need to go to university to learn it. But I honestly think that if you just pair up with the best marketing people in the world from six months, you'll probably pick up enough to earn quite a good living. I think about a young guy who works with me, Ben, who was about to go to university before he joined me. And he's worked with me now actually two years. But within six months of working with me, he could have easily said, I'm working with Simon Squibb. He's done really well on social and I've been helping him do it. Would you like to hire me as Ben Design Ltd. And he would have got work and he would have known how to do the basics and he really would have done quite well. He'd probably have quite a big marketing agency by now. And so six months with me is better than four years getting into debt in university. I paid him right away during that time as well. So there is a problem there now when it comes to, let's say, graphic design or being a doctor, I can totally accept that. There's probably a different process involved depending on your skill level too, because my wife did fine art, but she did become a very successful graphic designer. I need to show you some of her work so you could critique it. But so my survival bias and what I've seen and by the way, nearly every single person who worked in my agency, and we had hundreds of designers working for us, very few actually went to university. The ones that went to university, often that came out the other end not wanting to do it anymore, they got it brainwashed out. Or even worse, I did hire one person who went to Parsons University. That was a big university in America, right? And they kept asking us what we think all the time. Like. Like they didn't have any independent thinking anymore. It's like almost like they needed a teacher to tell them whether the work was good enough or not. They got so used to that they no longer had the ability to say, I'm happy with this, this is good enough, let's share it with a client. They'd be like, what do you think? Can you just give me Some feedback on it. I'm like, not a teacher giving you feedback. I'm the guy that's going to present it to the client. Do you like it or not? Are you happy with it or not?
- [52:20]
Chris Do
This is interesting. We share similar ideas about education. So here's the thing. If I'm listening to this, I'm like, okay, yeah, it'd be wonderful to work with Simon, who's successful and to be an apprentice and also get paid and not be in debt. Learn valuable life skills. And I can probably learn all that I need to learn in six months and not four years. But Simon is not scalable. He's not helping a thousand people. And there's hundreds of thousands of people who need assignment in their life. And I could do the same. I could take somebody under my wing and teach them, but that would be a lot of my time spent teaching them instead of building my business. Right.
- [52:55]
Simon Squibb
That's why we have YouTube. When we make content.
- [52:57]
Chris Do
That's right. And we can scale it that way, but it's different when you're in front of someone and you can see these things. Now, the interesting thing is, if you had a mentor who taught you marketing, I think you would understand why the Parsons student works the way they work. Because again, I don't want to overuse the word. There's a rigor. There's a. We put our minds together to squeeze something so that we can turn something raw into something beautiful. That pressure makes diamonds. So that person was asking you or somebody was, is there an art director or creative director here who can help critique this so I can learn in the process? It's through discovering what works and what doesn't work that we start to download the operating system into our brain, that we become better. Because I can smash my head against this headline and it could suck for a really long time. Or you can tell me why it doesn't work, but it requires a level of articulation. Articulation and experience to be able to do that. And so a lot of design training is you get into a room, you do whatever your instincts tell you, and then through a series of really sometimes brutal critiques, you learn not to do those things again. And you start to take away ways that don't work. I have this idea. Since you have an agent and you have the ability to go out and do whatever it is that you want with your team, I would love for you to entertain this idea that you and I could do some kind of small tour. We can try it out, but have these kinds of conversations in the public square, so to speak, where someone can pay for it and I can make some money doing it. I can bring a little bit of my team and we could just make content around this because I think there are so many different things that we can talk about. Because I love your spirit and your energy and I love that you were able to do all of this just mostly on your own.
- [54:36]
Simon Squibb
Definitely, I'd like to do it. Chris. I do genuinely believe there needs to be an alternative to the university system. And again, when I was young, I don't know what they called it in America, but I. There were, you know, professions were respected, like being a. Making a wooden door. You'd go and work for a company that does that. You know, there was those perfections.
- [54:58]
Chris Do
You go to trade school to learn those things.
- [54:59]
Simon Squibb
Yeah, there was. They didn't even call them trade schools in England. They're just like, go work for a company that makes them and they teach you, they bring you up through their ranks, right. And, and so you earn while you learn. YTS programs we had here, you know, young training schemes, and that's all gone and got replaced by these businesses which are university. And I certainly see a place for university. I, you know, I think that you do need to learn things before you become a doctor, so. And you probably need a good ability to remember things, so you need the memorization skills. So that's cool.
- [55:33]
Chris Do
You have to have a steady hand. I mean, you got to think about that.
- [55:35]
Simon Squibb
You've got to have a steady hand, all of those things. Well, but, but, but I, I think that's now that niche, what universities in my mind used to be, you know, a certain sector of society has become. All young people think they need to go to university. And so it's a problem because it's, it's meant that the natural instinct in people of what they're meant to be doing gets lost. They no longer search their soul. They never go out there and experience the world. They never try one thing and then another thing and another thing. Over the next six months they try 10, 20, 30 different things and then they suddenly find something that they actually naturally like and are naturally inclined towards, which certainly makes learning it easier. Which is why I like leading with what's your dream? Because if you genuinely want to be a footballer, the chances of you dedicating to it are much higher. Like this MMA fighter, which. And I'll send you a video, you know, this, this guy has become an MMA fighter. Now, was he the most technically skilled MMA fighter? When I met him, I don't know.
- [56:28]
Chris Do
He may never win a world championship. Who knows?
- [56:31]
Simon Squibb
I think he will. But then regardless, you know, like I think, I think you got to let people dream, right? You got to let people follow through on their dream. I think universe is killing dreams. And when you talk about this speaking series, I think we could take it a step further. I'm quite interested in like building a new type of school and I don't even want to call it school. I want to call it a youth training scheme where, you know, we can take people's natural instincts, the things they think they're good at, and help them figure out how to be good at it and build a business model around it so they can earn a living doing it. And maybe, you know, patient zero is the lady gravitas, but don't get me wrong, I mean, look, it's still up to the individuals. We can't. If she's willing to take feedback and put the work in, then there's a high chance it will work. If you just think, no, I'm brilliant and leave me alone, then of course, you know, there's nothing we can do. It, it will all up be up to subjectivity of art after that, in my opinion.
- [57:29]
Chris Do
Well, let me ask you this question. You've had hundreds of people work for you and now you have a small, dedicated elite unit of content creators working with you, for you. As far as you can tell, what are the criterias or the traits that they exhibit that you know we're going to do well together as opposed to, I don't think this is going to work. What's your number one?
- [57:49]
Simon Squibb
They care about the same mission I care about. In my case, freeing humanity.
- [57:54]
Chris Do
So they're on purpose with you.
- [57:55]
Simon Squibb
Match purpose number one point. Most important number two, they have a skill that they enjoy that can naturally contribute to the army's requirements. So let's take Callum. He really cares about freeing humanity and he has a natural, never been taught attribute and passion for making YouTube work.
- [58:16]
Chris Do
So we call that an autodidact, right?
- [58:18]
Simon Squibb
Yeah. And then I personally then look at like moral code do people doing this just for the money. To your point earlier about just doing it for fame, you know, like if you just want to make money, there's other ways. This might not work out for you if it's just about the money, so. But moral code generally like will you lie? I hate liars, I can't stand lies.
- [58:38]
Chris Do
But that would be taken care of with the match purpose?
- [58:41]
Simon Squibb
Yes and no. I mean Sometimes people can match with your purpose but still be, you know, natural born liars.
- [58:46]
Chris Do
Okay, rule zero. You cannot be a liar.
- [58:49]
Simon Squibb
Yeah, maybe. Yeah. I don't know if I could put this in any particular order, but if you're a liar and then you tell me your purpose is the same as mine, it might be because you're a liar.
- [58:56]
Chris Do
Yeah, because you're a liar. So no liars. I'll put that in. I can organize this for you. Go on.
- [59:00]
Simon Squibb
I like to have fun, so don't get me wrong, I've got 32 people full time on my team now, so I don't think I laugh with everybody, but I think it. Most of the people we can laugh, you know, because it can get stressful when you've got people's dreams and people are having hard times and it can be a tough old game this particular road we're on. So we have to have a laugh between us. You have some fun, a sense of humor at least, and taking things seriously, but sometimes not too seriously, just. And I think the ability to take criticism. Every single month, I ask my team how I can do better. Even at this stage in my career, I'm very open. I did a talk last week in Romania. I got paid £34,000 to do that talk. And I came off stage and I asked my team, how could I do it better? And they're very nice. Oh, you did this. That was brilliant. This made me cry. All these. But okay, it's really nice. I really love it when you're being nice. But it's what could I do better? So that ability to accept critique for the benefit of you and of course, the army as a whole, and loyalty is quite important to me. Like if you just say, right, Simon, I want to start my own business. I mean, this matches with honesty too, I guess, but like, I don't mind. It's just like, let's do it together sort of thing. And like, I've had cases where people have stolen clients from me, they've stolen my database. I'll never speak to those people again. Like that. That is just a crossing a line and. And talking behind your back instead of to your face, that type of stuff. I'm going to stop there because it might be a long list, but I think that's the basic topic.
- [60:29]
Chris Do
It's a pretty long list.
- [60:30]
Simon Squibb
Pretty basic. It all interlinks that list.
- [60:32]
Chris Do
When you meet people, how do you interview them for if this is a good fit for you? Because a lot of these things require time to figure out Well, I would.
- [60:41]
Simon Squibb
Say it's a combination of recommendations from people I already have this relationship with. So they would. If you recommended someone to me, Chris, I'm pretty sure they're going to be honest. They're going to be authentic, because that's who you are. So you're not likely to recommend people that don't have a lot of those things already now, where they have the same mission as me. Well, I'd have to ask them. I'd probably ask by asking them what their dream is, and I want them to tell me the truth. And if they don't, they're a liar, so that's. They're gone. But if they do, then I'm going to know what they really want. And if I know what they really want, I'm going to know if it's actually linked to what I'm trying to do. So it's not as hard as it sounds. And, you know, a bit like you now, I'm sure I have an instinct most of the time as well.
- [61:17]
Chris Do
You know, people always ask me, what makes for the great, greatest employee or mentee that you ever had. And he said it always comes down to one thing, and it's going to sound really weird, but I'm going to do this in story form. Did we talk about the Karate Kid?
- [61:30]
Simon Squibb
Yeah, I love Karate kid.
- [61:31]
Chris Do
So Daniel LaRusso, young kid, single mom, comes to town and is bullied by the boys who have. And he's in the have nots, and he gets beat up all the time. So one day he's super desperate, and he's getting beat up against a chain link fence. And this old, small, frail Japanese man, Mr. Miyagi, comes on, kicks everyone's ass, and then he begs him, will you teach me karate? He goes, no. He says, please, I can't survive like this. He goes, no, I'm not going to do it. He goes, anything, Anything, Please tell me. And then Mr. Miyagi says to him, under one condition. He goes, what is anything? Do exactly what I tell you to do, no questions. Daniel being super desperate in that moment is like, yeah, of course I would do that. Why would I do anything else? And then the rest of it, we know how it works, but why was Mr. Miyagi telling him, do exactly what I tell you to do, no questions. Just pause on that. Just think about that. And then, decades later, Quentin Tarantino writes a movie called Kill Bill, where Uma Thurman's character is such a great assassin, martial artist herself, and her mentor, teacher, lover, Bill says I need you to go meet Pai Mei. That's what happens. Well, he's the one who taught me. So she comes in there with all this arrogance and self confidence bravado for an American, meets Pai Mei. And he goes, well, you don't have to be here. If you can just hit me with the sword. Of course she cannot. He humiliates her and he treats her like a dog. Like he gives food to the dog before he gives it to her kind of thing. But eventually, over time, she understands and learns to love and respect Pai Mei. And he teaches her the five Exploding Palm Heart technique, which no one knows. And so we have two stories that are telling us something. And if you look into a lot of Asian cinema and pop culture, you'll see very similar themes. A rebellious spirit and a grand master who's willing to teach you if you're willing to learn. It's just the problem is most people aren't willing to learn. So I find that everybody that I've ever coached, when I say, you know what? Stop doing it this way, do it this way, they're like, okay, and it's done. The majority of the people fall into the second category, which is resistance. I need explanations. Why does this work? What proof do you have? And I say to them, I think you're looking for a reason not to do this, for which I am not your teacher. So my number one criteria is, are you willing to do what doesn't feel natural, right or true to you at the beginning so I can get you to where you want to be? Because I don't have time to waste with people who aren't really ready to learn. I'm just not your teacher.
- [64:09]
Simon Squibb
I love that it resonates with me because that's partly what I'm doing. When I ask people their dream, they tell me their dream. And I say, this is what you need to make it happen. Do you do it? You don't. It is kind of like that.
- [64:18]
Chris Do
Yeah. I'm not here to convince you. You either do it or you don't. And maybe there's other ways, but this is my way. And you choose your master. I tell everybody it's not so important that you find the perfect master, but that you make a commitment to a master to teach you and you do everything they tell you to do. I recently had a conversation with my former mentor's ex wife, I guess he's passed away. And she called me and we had a great conversation. At the end, she goes, do you know that he was so proud of you that you are his shining star and you were the best student he's ever had. And when he told me, you're the best student I've ever had when he was alive, when we were working together, I always like, man, what does that even mean? I don't even know what that means because all I do is do whatever he tells me to do. And people keep asking me, what was the secret to your success? Don't be an idiot, just do what.
- [65:07]
Simon Squibb
They tell you to do.
- [65:07]
Chris Do
He goes, do public speaking. I thought that was a crazy idea and I did it. He told me, go talk to the clients. And then he told me to go do this. And whatever he told me to do, ask more questions instead of telling people what it is that you're going to do for them. And I did it and I made more money and they had a lot of success. So as far as I can tell, this is my survivor bias. To be a really good student is not that complicated. Just do what you're told to do and if you don't want to do it with this person, find a different teacher, AKA different master.
- [65:34]
Simon Squibb
It's that simple. It's a really good insight, I think for people that wouldn't want to learn, they should learn. But again, like your point, not everyone's got access to people that actually know what they're doing. So when they tell you they're right, they are right. That's probably the job of the student to be discerning. But most people aren't discerning, they just apply to a university. Most of the time they're applying to a university, not even to the actual person who's going to teach them almost.
- [66:03]
Chris Do
All the time because they don't even know who the teachers are at sometimes. Right?
- [66:06]
Simon Squibb
Another flaw in the university system. I really like your idea of a tour and I think this subject is nuanced because if you want to be a graphic designer, then I do think you can become one, whether you become a good one. What is good anyway? Right? Same as marketing. And you know, maybe you get lucky and someone thinks you're good at marketing when you're not, or you get lucky in marketing and post a video and it works. And I think with graphic design, there will be someone that will pay that designer for the work that she has done, but that person actually is me because I have paid her for work that I'm not going to use. I guess what's interesting is there's some people that do have natural skill and my wife was One of them. But there are people that have natural skill and with a bit of mentoring, no university, a bit of mentoring, they can make it. And there are people that are not good enough and it doesn't matter if they went to university. Probably. I mean, UCLA is not going to make her a better. Necessarily going to make her make it. It's probably going to make her realize she's probably not good enough to make it.
- [67:09]
Chris Do
Well, they have an admission process that should prevent her from going to school if she's not going to be good enough. And that's one of the biggest gripes that I have is the admission program should be able to determine if you're good enough before they take your money. The sad part is they have overhead to pay and they'll take more people that they know won't work.
- [67:28]
Simon Squibb
I find your story fascinating because they rejected you. You're almost grateful now, but that could have also killed you.
- [67:34]
Chris Do
I am grateful.
- [67:36]
Simon Squibb
That could have killed you off.
- [67:37]
Chris Do
It might have. Who knows?
- [67:39]
Simon Squibb
You could have gone and got a job in a car manufacturing place and started spraying cars and called it artistic nature and no. Just got laid off.
- [67:50]
Chris Do
No, no, I would have been a designer. I mean, I was applying to the graphic design program. So you knew it was going to.
- [67:55]
Simon Squibb
Happen no matter what.
- [67:56]
Chris Do
When I was 17, 18, I had said in my mind, I will be a graphic designer come hell or high water. That's it. And there's no option.
- [68:02]
Simon Squibb
Even though they told you you weren't good enough.
- [68:04]
Chris Do
Yeah, that actually made me more galvanized. That's how you know. I mean, this is. You don't talk about this, but when you tell people you can't do something, that's a test. Now, you're not in the business of telling people not to do something, but I think that's a really good test.
- [68:19]
Simon Squibb
No, I'm not against that.
- [68:21]
Chris Do
You see what I'm saying, though?
- [68:22]
Simon Squibb
It's like you're telling me, telling her that she's not good enough or make her go for it or find another dream.
- [68:29]
Chris Do
Well, if it's not really her dream, it's better to know sooner than later.
- [68:33]
Simon Squibb
You tell me what to do and I'll do it. Master.
- [68:39]
Chris Do
What am I the master of right now? Master debater. I think for her you've done your part. It would have been great if in hindsight, like if you actually just helped her get into ucla would have been perfect and then everything works out perfectly.
- [68:55]
Simon Squibb
She doesn't need my help to do that.
- [68:56]
Chris Do
Yeah, she does.
- [68:57]
Simon Squibb
No, her parents are going to pay for that.
- [68:59]
Chris Do
No, it's not about money getting into ucla. She has to have a portfolio, and I suspect she does not have a portfolio.
- [69:05]
Simon Squibb
I don't really want to help. I mean, this is like when someone tells me they want to be in the property business, that's their dream. I try not to judge, but I tend to not help people get into that business because I don't like it.
- [69:15]
Chris Do
So that's the problem. Okay, so now we've uncovered something. I knew this because I was waiting for you to say this. So when you ask this question, you do have a bias.
- [69:24]
Simon Squibb
I do. In certain industries, yeah.
- [69:26]
Chris Do
Yeah. There's two things we know so far. If you want to go to a formal education, I'm against it. If you want to build real estate.
- [69:34]
Simon Squibb
Not in all cases, by the way. If someone says, I want to be a doctor, I know there's no choice. So I'm not against it then.
- [69:39]
Chris Do
Right, right. In general, I don't think you're to meet people in the street saying, I want to be a doctor, like working at Bubba Gump. So for that, I would be like, if you're. If you're king dream maker, it's like, it's not for me to judge. If universities for you just help her with her portfolio. And I think the story would have been beautiful. You're like, I'll tell you what, I'll spend a thousand dollars. I'm going to have someone review your portfolio and give you some needed advice, and you work on this so that you can do this. And then three months later, she looks, simon, I got in. And then you say, but now do you really want to get in? Because that was just the first test.
- [70:14]
Simon Squibb
I think I've ever really saw myself as the, you know, king maker.
- [70:17]
Chris Do
I think it's dream maker, dream maker. Aren't you the dream maker?
- [70:21]
Simon Squibb
In my head, maybe it's become that, but in my head, I'm there. I mean, I started this journey five years ago by wanting to provide knowledge about business. And when I was doing that, I guess I got a bit bored with me speaking all the time. So I thought, what do people actually need? What is it that people don't have that I can give them to help them with their desired thing? So I reversed it. Instead of me sitting there telling people what I know to help them do it, I did a survey and I went into the street and I said, what's your dream? How do you want to make it happen? Actually, my original kind of question was like, what business would you start. If you could start any business, but it wasn't a good enough hook. Back to your point. Like, what's your salary? Is your job to help people earn more money? Not necessarily, right? Not necessarily. I think it's more than that, isn't it? I guess my, my job, the way I see it is like I asked someone their dream. It's not my. It's not. You're right. I need to be careful with judging. I do know about that. I'm like, oh, property people say, trading, crypto. I'm like, oh, God, no. Really, there's no control over that. You sure? So it's still my job to educate because I'm really an educator. I'm like, well, trading, you can do it and. But it's gambling.
- [71:39]
Chris Do
Oh, this is interesting.
- [71:41]
Simon Squibb
I don't like it. But that doesn't mean, say you shouldn't do it if it was your dream. Is it really your dream? Because there are levels of dream. I don't know if you've had a chance to read my book, Chris, but there are levels of dreams, right? There's different type. There's the I want a house dream, there's I want a holiday dream, there's I want someone to love dream. The dream parameters are quite varied and people tell me different things. But when it comes to business, I do see quite quickly how they could make it happen if they did what I told them to do. Now, when it comes to certain professions, there is no choice but to go to university. I actually think the debate though, is for me, what's the alternative to university for some people, I do think is experience. And so maybe graphic design creates an interesting, like friction around this idea, but.
- [72:27]
Chris Do
Or, you know, I don't have to be about graphic design, but maybe the detour is. Are schools stealing your dreams?
- [72:35]
Simon Squibb
Love that name. I think we could come up with some creative title. I think there's something really interesting in this because I do think what I'm trying to do, if I'm being honest with things like help bank, if I look at it honestly in my head, it's like, I want alternative to university, one where the knowledge is free and you're not going to get into debt to get this knowledge. But then it's applied knowledge, so you can take it and put it into the real world and make a life for yourself. Now, especially when you're young, like, I think about your son, right? He's got a window. Everyone says, you know, oh, you're young, don't worry, you've got Time, in a way, there's going to be a moment when he'll get a partner and then maybe there's a family and there's a mortgage and then there's responsibility and there's kind of a 10 year window roughly where you can go and take real risk. You can go and try things and your costs are low. So you can get things going, which, you know, as you get older, get harder. And so university strips that away for a lot of people. It makes people get debt, which means they have to get a job when they come out of university, start paying down that debt. And then also they've gone through four years of pains and now they want to get a nice flat and get themselves a nice car. And so all these things start coming onto them and next thing you know they're in a job for three or four years, realizing they don't love it. With this university education, it was a sunken cost and they've got stuck. That is the story for a lot of people. And so that doesn't seem right to me. So when someone says they're going to go to university and spend 60,000 a year to learn graphic design, my brain short circuits. I'm like, what?
- [74:07]
Chris Do
You know, it's really interesting as a man on the street doing your prompt about what's your dream. I never thought of you as an educator. This might hurt you, Simon. I thought of you as a facilitator, one who facilitates those things happening.
- [74:22]
Simon Squibb
You're not the only one that thought that until I put up a YouTube video that became viral about business knowledge. So, you know, I realized that was a slight mistake on my personal brand because people think I'm just this guy in the street facilitating people's dreams. But I'm not. I'm an educator. I'm not offended by the way. It's okay, I don't mind being either.
- [74:38]
Chris Do
No, no. But I'm not saying you're not an educator, but in those man on the street videos, I think you're mostly a facilitator. Like, what do you need to have happen for you to be a chef or a footballer? Great. What is it? So you're relying on them to tell you what it is that they need and they're like, okay, I can help you with some of this. I tell you what, I'll be your first customer or I'll organize a group. Can you come back here and make a meal or perform? And so all of that is facilitation. It's only when you are like doing these Longer things. When you're interviewing people like teach me everything you know, that's the educator part. And I wouldn't call that the facilitator, I would call that the educator. But on the street it's really hard to educate people.
- [75:15]
Simon Squibb
You're going to find this when you, when you do the short form content in the street, the hook and the time you've got a minute. So you might find you have the same brand switch. Because there's no way you can educate someone in 60 seconds, hear their download, which is 20 seconds, and then feedback or whatever it's going to be. You're also going to be seen as a facilitator, not an educator. In that moment, probably you can't educate people. Once people tell you their salary, what's there to educate them on? You know, you charge them too much, you're making more than four, you know.
- [75:46]
Chris Do
No, I would just ask them questions.
- [75:47]
Simon Squibb
But you'll have it, you'll find if you want to work, make that work. You've got a minute.
- [75:51]
Chris Do
I can see that. So this is a new format. I'm not an extrovert, so this would be really difficult for me to do, but I'm going to try this. But what I was saying is the frame matters a lot. So who cares about what people think about you? But in that moment, in the minute, you really, it's very difficult to educate anybody. So mostly if you said to yourself, I'm a facilitator, it would probably change the way the follow up questions or the comments. Because if somebody's like, I want to buy real estate, okay, what do you need to have happen? Because if you saw yourself as a facilitator, I think the conversations would be a little bit different, not terribly different, but I think you are a facilitator in that moment.
- [76:25]
Simon Squibb
It's an interesting framing. I don't disagree. I think my purpose is to give people knowledge to do what they love. And when people tell me in a spontaneous moment what they love, I mean, you said this earlier, it's a fair point. Maybe that's not what their dream is. Maybe they don't know what their dream is. A lot of people don't know what their dream is, but some people don't know that the dream they tell me isn't really their dream yet. I had this today. Someone said their dream is to go to Australia. So, you know, I knew this wasn't their real dream. So I, I gave them a job in Australia and they went to Australia for three months and Then like, actually, I'm not happy here. I miss my family. This isn't actually. It's just a place, it's not a dream. So I don't know what I'm doing here. It's a step by step process. And I say this in my book, by the way, step by step process to find your dream. And sometimes you have to do things you think are your dream before you find your dream.
- [77:13]
Chris Do
That's fair. But you know, when I used to do client work, we would do multi day brand strategy sessions with them. And I said, I'm a facilitator, I'm not here to tell you what's right or wrong, but I'm here to extract from all of you and build some kind of consensus on what it is we need to do and the path forward that is most likely to succeed. And we need to get by in all the key stakeholders. And so I was facilitating. So when you ask people like, what's your dream to go to Australia? You're going to ask them, I think in theory, what's a dream underneath that dream of yours, which is what is in Australia that you can't do here? Or sometimes is this your dream or is this someone else's dream? Because we're not aware of these inception things that have been placed inside of our brain by our parents. It's like, I never wanted to be a lawyer, but that was my mom's dream or my dad's dream. So that you're helping them to peel away the layers of the onion to reveal the core and redirect them if necessary. But then they're agreeing to that. It's not you saying, well, you need to do X, Y and Z. Here's the really interesting thing. I think you already know this, but my mind was blown when I learned this, that the word educate says like, what are we putting into our children? But the word educate, the root word is educe, which means to draw out. Education isn't about putting crap in people's brains. It's about drawing out from them what it is that they need to know.
- [78:32]
Simon Squibb
That's why I love home education. We home educate our son and every single day is really pulling out what's already there. Which by the way, probably a good moment to say she wants to be a graphic designer. Pulling out from her. I haven't told her that she can't or she can or haven't. I haven't even judged her work yet. You know, there's something really interesting and letting that come out and maybe she thinks she can be and then she tries to do it and she's not. Then she has to reset. My son every single day. I just love watching him come up with what he wants to learn as opposed to what I want him to learn or what I think he should be learning. Right.
- [79:08]
Chris Do
That should be the real core of education. Not putting stuff in, helping each person find it within themselves because we make more self reliant, resilient, self educated, self improving people. To your point about the designers who kept coming to you saying, what should I do? You like this. You don't. It would be great if we trained you how to think and be critical of your own work, such that you don't need to ask anybody for what needs to happen. If you go to a really good design program, it's what they teach you how to do. And it's a really strange thing. So it's a transference of skills, of how to see the world. And so one of my criteria is, if you're going to be a great designer, you have to be very observant. You have to be an observer of the world. If you don't have that innately within you, if you're not naturally curious, there's not a lot I can do. I can teach all the formal stuff, you can watch videos on YouTube to do the technical stuff, but it'd be a waste of our times.
- [80:04]
Simon Squibb
I believe there needs to be a place where people can go, where they can feel free to ask questions without being judged and they can feel like they've got a dream that's not going to be judged even by me, and get help with that dream in some shape or form. Even if it's some tough love.
- [80:22]
Chris Do
I've been obsessed with this word or this phrase. It's like necessary friction. And I believe in this. In sales, I think it's important to have necessary friction. And there's such a thing. People who avoid friction is like, that's not a great conversation. And so when I'm teaching and when you're like, without being judged, I'm like, part of the fear of judgment is the necessary friction. I think maybe not for your dream, but for education and how I like to teach and work with people, there's going to be friction.
- [80:52]
Simon Squibb
Yeah, I think I can add to that. You know, you're right, you're right. I completely agree with you. I think what I mean is like, there's a kid a few days ago who wants to be a footballer and his mum doesn't believe he can be so what are the chances of becoming a footballer if his own mum doesn't believe he can be now his trainer, a professional football scout or trainer. Saying that is very different to a mum just no longer believing their son can do it. And they're not an expert. So I think judgment has to come from those who actually have the knowledge in the particular sphere that they say their dream is in. So in this case, I do respect your opinion and criticism from you is justified. Criticism, by the way, from my wife, I also believe is justified. Criticism from me is not justified because it's subjective. When it's me, I'm not skilled as a graphic. But judgment and critical feedback are different things. If someone tells me their dream is to be a footballer, I might put in the work. I'm pretty sure if you put in the work, you can become a footballer. It's just kicking a ball around. But there will be a Manchester United. I don't know how much you know about English football. There'll be a football team here that pays millions of dollars to a footballer. And they'll say they're never going to get into the Premier League, they're never going to make it. But all right, you can say that because you know the business. I don't.
- [82:14]
Chris Do
Maybe we ended on this. There's a thought I have that ties some of our conversation together here, which is this. I get this question asked once in a while, Chris, how do I regain my passion for design? Because after working in the industry for so long, I just feeling like this isn't for me. And I said to them, the answer I'm about to give you will not make you feel better. I said, we are not all given by our divine maker or creator or whatever a right to do anything. That when you ask me this question, I almost automatically think design is not the thing for you. Because there's never once where I wake up and I'm like, I need to get more passionate about this thing. It's more of a question of like, you cannot stop me from this thing. So if your dream is to do something, the first check is, when do you quit? When you hit a wall? Is it admissions process? Is it not getting a portfolio? Or you can't buy a computer? Or someone says, you can't have this dream, whether it be your mom or Simon Squibb or Chris Do? And I think these are all tests, because when I got rejected out of those three schools, I'm like, watch me. When my mom and dad says, this is not a good idea, she just Said, hold on. When the tuition and the amount of debt that I was going to inherit was crippling, I'm like, I'm going to do this no matter what. And I made a commitment to myself when I was 18 or 19, I said, if I have to go to school for a semester, take a semester off to work and do this, and for like 16 years, however long it takes me to get through this, I will do this. You cannot stop me. So I think in all of this, it's like, yeah, your mom can tell you you're not good, or the footballer can say, you're not going to play in this league, and if you quit there, I think they were right. And for the rest of the people who will not quit, who will not take no for an answer, I think you're the perfect person to help them.
- [84:04]
Simon Squibb
I also think sometimes, you know, your own experience. I was a terrible salesperson when I was young, and I just kept going until I got good. And to your point earlier about necessity, I feel it's not wanting it, it's needing it. So you need to need it. Otherwise. Yeah. Someone tells you you're crap, you might believe them and that's it.
- [84:23]
Chris Do
Simon, do me a favor. Ask me what my dream is again. I'm going to tell you my dream. Last time you asked me, I was just messing around with you, dude.
- [84:30]
Simon Squibb
What is your dream, Chris?
- [84:32]
Chris Do
My dream is to be able to teach and share everything that is that I know with as many people as possible and never worry about charging them a dollar. My dream is that it'll be aligned with corporate corporations that believe in doing this out of the goodness of their heart. Not wanting to make a dime on this, but to support that. And I believe I need to make a certain amount of money so I can do this. I always thought, like, God, if corporate America stepped up and just gave me money and allowed me to teach, I think I can make a really big impact on a lot of people's lives. That's what I want to be able to do.
- [85:05]
Simon Squibb
Oh, Chris, we're so aligned.
- [85:07]
Chris Do
I know. That's why I feel the spirit like when. When we met each other and there's a warmth to you, and I just like, I don't know you, but I think I know you. And then when we got together, I think there's magical things that can happen. We just have different ways of achieving this. You're clearly further along that path than I am. But I have a real business that I need to make money so I can continue to Hire and support the people who support this mission that I'm on. And it's been tough because I'm an educator before, I'm a business person and I'm conflicted with all the, well, I can get all this stuff or I can give it out, but if I give it all out, I'll have two people working for me and I can't scale.
- [85:45]
Simon Squibb
There's one part of your statement, and maybe this is going to be my education part instead of facilitator part. Facilitator in me says, yeah, do it, no problem. The educator in me says, you got to change one thing. In your statement you said I might have to play it back to get the exact wording. But the basic gist was you want brands to support it without an expectation of anything back. I don't think you need that part of the formula. I think there's nothing wrong with brands supporting you and getting something back. So we are doing that, right? We are charging brands and they are getting clients and they are getting business and that allows them to keep doing it because we're not charity. I actually think the model I have is a model that I can put in a manual and give to you and we can team up. I see where you're at, I get what you mean. But I think that there is a way to do this and it's actually a lot easier than you think. The charging people model, it's a little bit of a self fulfilling trap because you need to charge people and then you build up a team around that model and then those people need paying for that, that structure. And everyone who's working there expects to get paid based on the fact that you're charging people. But if you do switch it and a combination of social media, income, sponsorship and revenue is a personal brand. You don't need to charge people. In fact, you'll reach more people if you don't, which is your dream as well. And I think I can help you do it. And I think if I help you do it, then as I got one more person in my army helping me, it might be that you're skewed towards the creative space. That's cool. I'm not really covering that space personally very well. I'm covering the marketing space really well and business generally quite well. I actually have a blind spot on the creative side, by the way. I also have a blind spot on the sports side, you know, like people that want to be athletes. And so that's another. I don't know if we know Anybody in that space. But like, I really like the idea of getting you set up so that you can. And maybe this is why I'd need to spend proper time going through your business where you are now, where you could take it and help you retool it a bit for what you actually want to do. And I think with what I've learned with things like public speaking, which I've hooked you up with that, but like other stuff, we can do it quite easily without you having to charge.
- [88:05]
Chris Do
Well, I want to ask you this question because I'm a little naive in how corporate space works. The reason why I say to that add the element, like without any desire to get anything back, because I know large corporations just donate money to things that are just totally stupid and have no roi. For example, rich people tend to donate to art programs because it makes them feel good. And so they're supporting inner city art programs. But those programs sometimes suck and there's no accountability there and they have no track record and they're not really helping people. And so I don't need a lot of money, Simon, to do what it is I want to do. I just need some so that I don't have to worry about any of this stuff anymore. And every time I do a brand deal, it's like, oh, we need you to read this thing. It's like, and you need to say it this way. I'm like, you know what? This is not what I'm in it for. If we can just be allowed to show the brands and talk about it from a very passionate, organic way, a hundred percent, I'm good with that. I know there's gotta be ROI somewhere, but I'm hoping it's like they have funds for good on this subject.
- [89:05]
Simon Squibb
It's a sales issue. And we'll come back to the brand stuff in a minute because what you just said there is also truth. So let me, don't let me forget, there's a real important point I think you're missing with the brands. But let's just focus for a second on like where the money comes from. There are many different ways to get, say for example, an education center paid for. You can get an angel investor, you can get an education department in government somehow to pay for it, right? If they're in that right mood, it's the right time. You can get a one off donor that just likes you and is a billionaire and says, there you go. You can do crowdfunding, you can get community to pay for it. It. You can do equity Crowdfunding, which means people will get a piece of whatever the business model is and pay for it. I think there's just so many different ways to go about it. The thing is, the one area that you are talking about there is very small and is very over subscribed. So you know, you and every other good Samaritan out there is going after that sector. And in a way, and I know I sometimes when I hear you talk, I don't think you realize this, but you, you are undervaluing one of your value propositions, which is your social media prowess and knowledge. You do have what most a lot of people don't have. It might not be at the scale you want it to be at, but it's there. And so when it comes to the brands, what happens is when you first start dealing with brands, they will bully you because you're not confident enough to say yes, no, whatever. The way to deal with brands is not to say they inquire with you and then you say, yes, I'll do your ad. The way to deal with brands is you go to them with your idea and they sponsor it. It's like the Olympics. The Olympics don't go to brands and say, what would you like us to do a brand? The brand's like, oh, this year we're promoting our new 12 month subscription package. So yeah, as you've asked us, we'd like you to, to do that. No, what do the Olympics do? The Olympics go to these brands and they say, right, we've got these events. Every single country is going to be there, every single successful athlete is going to be there. And we're going to put your logo here, here and here. And then at the press conference in front of Ronaldo, we're going to put your Coke bottles and it's 1.6 billion. And if you don't want it, Pepsi have said they'd do it. So you've given you first the right refusal. For anybody else do you want it? And so I mean for your stuff, and this is maybe the beginning is of like re engineering the way you do things. It's like you need to put forward what your offer is, not what they offer you. And there is so much money in this brand space, like all of the TV money, all of the billboard money is now going online. So it's so exciting for people like you and me. And if you position it right, they need you. And you just like you just said, give the money to me, tell me what you'd like. As a result, I'LL make it happen. And don't make me say you're pointless shit that doesn't even resonate with people. It's a slight arrogance. Maybe it sounds like arrogance, but you're kind of also a bit like, you know, the master thing earlier, you know, brand, you got the same thing. You listen to me exactly. And do it as I tell you to do it. And you'll get what you need out of this. I want you to get what you need out of this. Because if you get what you need out of this, then this is every year, forever. You're going to support my dream of helping people for free learn stuff that they need to learn. So I'm in it with you. But don't tell me to do things your way on my system. Again. The Olympics wouldn't have lasted a year if the brands at every second. And he's about to throw the shot put. And let me just mention, Puma, they are the best shoe in the world. They help you run faster. And now we can go back to the action, you know, like it just wouldn't exist. The other point is, of course, on platforms like YouTube, the ads are being inserted for you. So it's not like you even have to have those conversations or even worry about that. All you need to worry about is getting more views. That's another point. And then finally, brand deals that I'm doing that again. I know this is on the record, so the big deals that I'm making is affiliate link deals. So you might have a monthly retainer to lock you in as ambassador, but then the real money comes from every time someone signs up something and it's reoccurring revenue as well. So it's like you, you might as well own a part of the business, the same result. Except you don't own equity in the brand. Of course, they sell for a lot of money. That's a different thing. But you're getting income every year from the people that sign up because of you, just in those few different elements alone. First of all, you can charge a lot more because you would package up something that's unique. So you're not just reading an ad and putting on your Instagram, right, Which any monkey can do. You're offering them something different, which is exactly the way to do it. Almost like free creative, in a way. It's like, I'm going to do the creative for you and it's going to perform better than your own shitty version that you run ads on that no one wants to watch. Just being the educational part of what you said there, like, I don't think it's that hard for you to turn this. And again, like, I don't know, I look at the video I put up on YouTube, which is two hours and 26 minutes of business knowledge. It made US$48,000 last month. It's one year old. So it's like a, you know, I know I could make millions from a course and all that stuff, but I made that video a year ago, and last month it bought a small house in Scotland. Just one video. Right? So I think the other side of it is, and you know, this, you're putting content up, you know, you know, you know what's possible. And I think it's just a combination of like, scaling up that income and setting the deals right with brand partnerships and having a big vision that people get excited by. And I'm talking about companies mainly, not people that they, they fund it. I mean, football stadiums and in America, American baseball stadiums are built on the fact that a brand said, we'll underpin your, you know, you're the Staples stadium. We'll underpin it.
- [94:47]
Chris Do
Wrigley Field.
- [94:48]
Simon Squibb
Exactly. So it's just, it's more, the vision has to be sold and then these people have the money and they will take a risk if they believe in you.
- [94:57]
Chris Do
See, I find your advice and the educational bit super interesting and reflective of our different paths in life. You're speaking about the problem through the lens of marketing and sales, and I look at the problem through the lens of education and brand. And so I have a lot to learn here. For sure. Most of the deals we get, actually all of them are passive. Like, I don't pursue any of these deals. I just want to focus on how do I become a better teacher, what else can we do to innovate, and how do I become more effective? So I read their comments and I'm like, okay, I see this is where you were lost. And I'll take improv classes to learn how to be a better teacher. So none of my brain or my team is dedicated to going out and proposing these opportunities. So it's got me thinking, well, by.
- [95:42]
Simon Squibb
The way, I have a team that does that. So if we were able to find a way to team up, I have a team that does that and we have all the brand relationships. So I noticed that in our interview, by the way, because you said, adobe, come to me. Adobe, come to me. Even if they see that, they're not going to come to you like that. You need to have A package. And you need to go to them with a competitive offer under your terms, not theirs. They will always be running ads. They might contact you randomly. But this is what we're doing. This is how we're going to do it. Do you want in? We're going to fix the education system, help people do what they love. I'm going to do it at scale. Do you want it in Adobe? You want to be the main partner for anyone designing a logo for their new business or anyone creating a presentation for their pitch deck to get investment or like you want us to make you the default for that? I think there's something really interesting in this and your education center. I told you already. This idea you have is something I also have. If you type in entrepreneurhouse.com Now I have a house where people can get educated. It's no different to what you're talking about. It's just a different type of what. What is the content is the only difference. You're talking about creativeness, but I think having a dream is a creative process.
- [96:51]
Chris Do
I spoke at a theater last week. It's the Rivian Theater. Quite innovative kind of idea. It's in Laguna beach and it was perfect when Drigo and I walked in there. We're like, Chris, this is what the future needs. And it's quite perfect for a lot of different reasons, but. So Rivian only has two cars and they have a lot of showroom space. But what they did was they bought and then renovated this theater. And in the theater is a co working space that you use for free because they only have two cars and they want people around doing something. And then they have a coffee shop which isn't free. But then they open up the theater after hours for community events. Quite fascinating. And because it's a historic theater, there is a living unit attached to this which they could not change. So they offered the living unit to any of the speakers who are speaking there so that they can stay overnight. And. And it's literally 50 steps from the ocean. I didn't want it to be that fancy, but I was like, wow, this is it. A giant LED screen built in. Theater seating and common areas. I'm like, this is perfect, except for we don't sell cars. A place for people to come congregate meat for free. And so it just so happened that day that I was speaking there, there were a bunch of new college grads who were just hanging out there unbeknownst there was an event happening later that day. Just because it's air conditioned it's well lit and it's safe and clean. I thought that was really good. So I know you're not loving the idea of real estate, but that was like a great use of real estate. And I applaud Rivian for doing things like that.
- [98:22]
Simon Squibb
You know, the thing with real estate is I don't dislike real estate. It's hard to scale real estate. That, that's one a business side of me says it's hard to scale. The thing is, like, I genuinely would love to take over Starbucks and revamp it and I think I could turn it in, I could double its profit because I think they, they've forgotten what makes Starbucks unique, which is that community, connection, third space thing. It's become a coffee shop now, and that's why it's declining in, in my opinion. I think physical space is so powerful. I love events that we do. I love connecting to the community. But the reality is that online is where the scale's at. This is why Amazon buys. Amazon is now buying up all the physical space businesses. Whole Foods, you know, they're buying them up because once you own the digital, Whole Foods can't become digital. But actually it's, it's surprisingly easy to do physical. The building is the structure, the bones. Put an LED screen in and serve coffee and most of the time you're there, right? And then after that, the hard bit begins again. Because what goes in that space, that's longevity, you know, what is the education content? What is going to be the stickiness over time, right? But the thing is, if you can crack the online, which is why I put so much energy into the online, because if you can crack the online, you make enough money and you're global that you can start building the offline. So now I'm ready to do some of the offline because we make so much money from the online, and the online system and community is so big and so vast and so global and brings credibility that getting the physical is like, I wouldn't say it's super easy, but it's not selling a big dream, let's say, to a government, so they support us, we can show them the numbers on social, and there's proof. But if I took them to a little facility and said it's this, but a hundred times more, they can't grasp it. So it's just so much easier to go digital first, make that massive, and then you can literally take all that globalness and all that credibility and start building physical locations, which is what I want to do, right which is what you want to do. There is a part of me that says well what's the right timing combination of the right location? I think definitely location wise for me it's either London, Louisiana or New York. These are the three prime locations for me. I mean maybe Hong Kong because I have a very strong connection there and I did have a premises and in Hong Kong a really beautiful entrepreneur space in Hong Kong. So I kind of know I could probably get a space for free in Hong Kong because I'm so connected there. I love the idea of creating something and it could be a combination of like entrepreneur, creative center. But I think for me anyway like keep milking the online world because that is something that makes you unique, it's scalable and it doesn't rely on someone opening up a door each day in space. Good to check. Thank you so much for your time.
- [101:19]
Chris Do
Okay, thank you.