Chris Do Live in Vancouver

[00:00:00] Ami: Tonight we have a very special event. As you well know, it’s Chris Doe Live in Vancouver. Um, I don’t think we need to do a massive introduction on who Chris Doe is, but for the uninitiated, if you happen to have been brought along to this event because your friend said, you just have to come. Okay, I’ll give you the Sparks Note edition.

[00:00:18] Ami: In 1995, Chris started his agency Blind, where he worked with airlines and pop stars like Coldplay, Um, and and reached massive levels of success after doing what he set out to do with the agency. He moved his focus on to what we calls the future, um, where he is focusing on helping one billion people, um, learn how to make a living without losing their soul.

[00:00:47] Ami: And the vast majority of those people are creatives, like many of you. Today, he has 2. 6 million followers following his social channels. He’s pretty much as close as it gets to a superstar in our [00:01:00] little industry. Um, and we are very, very lucky to welcome him back for the third time here at Creative Pulse.

[00:01:08] Ami: So, without further ado, let’s give a warm welcome to Chris Do. Applause Okay, so, just a rundown of how we’re running this event tonight. You guys, when you bought tickets, you had an option to submit questions. And, uh, I’ve read all of them. Every single one of those questions that you have for Chris, and I’ve tried to consolidate, figure out the patterns and themes, and, uh, curate the best of the best.

[00:01:45] Ami: So that’s what we’re gonna cover here tonight. We’ll, we’ll do a mix. We’ll try to cover a number of questions, but also go deep and find value in the questions that make sense. So that’s the plan. Alright. Um, before we [00:02:00] dive in, I always like to get a sense of who’s in the room. Can you give me a hand up if you are a freelancer?

[00:02:05] Ami: You’re a freelance creative primarily. Huge, huge chunk. Alright, how many of you are principals of teams? Studios, uh, agencies, that type of thing? Yeah, good chunk. How many of you are staff creatives? You’re working at agencies, you’re working, uh, in house. Okay. Smaller percentage. Okay. And what’s the other category?

[00:02:26] Ami: You’re a student. You’re actually not a creative. Whatever it is, you’re also welcome here. But yeah, a good little chunk there too. Awesome. That’s helpful. Um, okay, let’s dive in here. You know, one of the things that I’ve seen with videos and just watching people approach you, Chris, is people will sometimes say, like, how do I find my first client?

[00:02:49] Ami: And that’s an interesting question, but I’m interested in what it looked like when you were starting out. Can you tell us a story of landing your first client?

[00:02:59] Chris: First of all, I want to [00:03:00] apologize for my voice. I don’t really sound like this normally. It’s like five days in a Canadian wilderness, yelling at my friends, pull your rod up, that’ll do it to your voice.

[00:03:10] Chris: So I’m going to try and keep it together for next hour and a half. Is that how much time we have? Okay. So I’m going to tell you how I got my first client, but it’s going to be completely useless to you. But we’ll start there since that was the question I was asked. Because often time we think, okay, success leaves clues, and then, Great, I’ll tell you how I did it.

[00:03:27] Chris: And you’re like, well, that’s not attainable for me right now, but I’ll do it, okay? So the first way you get a client is you go to the top design school that you can get into, which for me was Art Center. Then you graduate the top of your class, and you try to be generous and gracious with your efforts and your energy and your creativity by helping all of your classmates.

[00:03:45] Chris: So that when you get out of school, you kind of like land on your feet. So I worked at an agency, an advertising agency for a brief period of time. Then I worked at Epitaph Records for an even briefer period of time. And I just thought, these things don’t work for me. I’m unemployable. I’m just too [00:04:00] headstrong, too committed to doing it my way.

[00:04:02] Chris: That I’m, I’m thinking, I’m just going to start a business. And so the way I start my business is, friends and previous employers just hired me. Once I knew I was going out on my own, because of the impression I made on each place that I went to, so Colin Weber, the ad agency, my former boss, hired me to do a commercial, which I was underqualified to do.

[00:04:23] Chris: And to tell you how underqualified I was, we did a commercial for K2 Skis, and I hired one of my friends from school to do the work, and he was already three times better than me as an animator. So I just worked really slowly to let him do all the work. That’s how it worked out. And then my previous employer said, or my colleagues at Epitaph records, the other place I worked at, they just hired me to do punk rock album art.

[00:04:45] Chris: And that’s what I wound up doing. And then other places I freelance just wind up giving me their overflow work. So it wasn’t that hard to get work. The moral of that story is you have to work really hard, be super talented and be a genuine human to have your network work for you. [00:05:00] And in addition, you have to be at the right place at the right time.

[00:05:02] Chris: Los Angeles in 1995 was a great place to be if you wanted to be at the birthplace of motion design. And I just happened to be there at that time. So now you’re sitting there thinking, well, I’m not the right place at the right time. So what, what kind of opportunities can I create for myself? You’re at a different place at a different time.

[00:05:19] Chris: What you have to do is be ahead of that curve. What Wayne Gretzky would say, skate to where the puck is going, not to where it’s at. And it’s kind of hard to be able to do that. And I didn’t have any crystal ball, I just knew like, this is where my heart is, this is where my passion is. And I like this idea of technology coming together with design and creativity.

[00:05:37] Chris: That’s where the puck was going, that’s where I skated to.

[00:05:41] Ami: You say it’s unreplicatable, but I think the nugget that I hear from that is you became a person people wanted to keep in their circle, which is replicatable, right? Like, that’s something that I think of as somebody who hires subcontractors and other creatives and my own team is like, some people, they’re fine.[00:06:00] 

[00:06:00] Ami: And other people, you just want to keep, you want to keep, you know what I mean? And it sounds like people recognize that in you really early on. Um,

[00:06:09] Chris: So let me ask you a question.

[00:06:10] Ami: Yeah.

[00:06:12] Chris: Who do you keep around?

[00:06:14] Ami: It’s the personality that you’re looking for, which is I think maybe why this nugget is valuable.

[00:06:20] Ami: The personality of somebody who says, I will figure it out, just give me the time, give me like the support I need, and I’m going to do a good job. That’s, that’s what I look for. Especially when we’re talking about juniors kind of starting out on their own. Yeah. You know sometimes if somebody is just going to do a great job on their own if they go freelance or studio And so you give them more chances So I guess if I was looking for the nugget is like reflecting on Am I behaving like somebody that is entrepreneurial?

[00:06:53] Ami: Am I taking on the responsibility? That make sense?

[00:06:57] Chris: Yeah, it makes sense. I, I know this might offend somebody. We’re gonna get [00:07:00] started right, so I’m gonna just offend some people right away. Boom. Just so you know how it’s gonna go. I find that young people, and it’s a big, broad statement, I don’t know, millennials and younger, there’s this attitude, like, what are you gonna do for me as an employer?

[00:07:13] Chris: And I’m old, old fashioned, and so I’m like, what? Wait. So what they do is they work to the level of their title and their salary, and they don’t do more. And that’s fine. That’s fair. But then there will be somebody who does what, the kind of job they weren’t paid to do or asked to do. And those are the ones you keep an eye on.

[00:07:31] Chris: And it’s very apparent. So from a place of an employer, when you do that, you stand out easily because everybody else is not doing that. And it’s sad because, I don’t want to tell you who told me this, but a prominent author that I look up to, he goes, you know, it’s becoming harder and harder to work with people from the West.

[00:07:47] Chris: Like Eastern Europe, they like to work. And I’m like, okay. They enjoy work. They are grateful for work. And I’m like, what happened to that, I know we’re not in America, but that American spirit? Like, I like to [00:08:00] work. I want to do a good job. That’s why people recognize me right away. When I was working at Colton Weber, people literally went home at 5 o’clock, which was a foreign concept for me, just while I was in school, because I worked at 2 in the morning.

[00:08:10] Chris: So I just stayed there, and I just kept working and working. And my timesheets were ridiculous, right? So Dolly, who runs the HR payroll stuff, she called me up to the fifth floor, and I knew I was in trouble. And she goes, Chris, your timesheets are off the charts. I’m like, am I in trouble? She goes, we gotta get Kevin to approve this.

[00:08:33] Chris: So she calls Kevin, my boss, who’s a copywriter, amazing human being, Kevin Jones, shout out. He went up to the fifth floor, and he goes, what’s wrong? She goes, do you know how many hours Chris put in that he’s working? Because I was working literally till five in the morning. Right? I didn’t know I was going to get paid.

[00:08:49] Chris: I just filled out my time sheet. And he goes, if there are not more than 24 hours in a day that he’s writing, pay him. And so Kevin wound up hiring me for jobs and we became friends. And he, and he, [00:09:00] and for the brief time that I worked for him, he became a mentor of mine. And good people recognize really good people really, really fast.

[00:09:06] Chris: If you’ve been in business for any period of time, you recognize talent, hard work, moxie, initiative, autonomy, you know that right away. So, I wasn’t trying to climb the corporate ladder, I was trying to jump off of it, but it still worked. Because all my friends that were there, my peers were trying to figure out a way to hire me.

[00:09:25] Chris: And that was not hireable, but you could hire my company, and then I did the work. Are there any questions about that? It’s pretty straight forward, right? So the question is, are you doing that? And if you’re not, what’s the obstacle that’s getting in your way? And then if you can answer that, you’ll have the answer.

[00:09:43] Ami: Awesome. So jumping from that period of working from others, and then going off on your own, was there a transition where you freelance for a period, then started blind, where you’re like, fuck it, I’m just gonna start blind right away? Like, what did that look like, that transition period?

[00:09:58] Chris: Yeah, I think I freelanced for about [00:10:00] three weeks.

[00:10:02] Chris: I’m really impatient. I’m so impatient. Because after quitting Epitaph Records, I only worked there for like a month and a half. The reason why I quit there was the wrong fit. And that’s maybe there’s a lesson there. Uh, Epitaph Records in the 90s was like thermonuclear. The offspring was selling a gazillion albums.

[00:10:19] Chris: Mr. Brett, when he hired me, he was like, we just grew our company by 1, 000%. And I couldn’t even fathom, like, what does 1, 000 percent growth look like? You know, there was a lot of drug, sex, and rock and roll in that place for sure. And that’s not an exaggeration, but it was a wild place. But I was like, I’m not even punk rock.

[00:10:36] Chris: I don’t even listen to the music. What am I doing here? And my boss, the reason why I was there, this creative director who I really admired when I was going to school, his name is Fred. Fred was no longer there. They let Fred go and hired someone else. So my only reason was to be there, was to be with Fred.

[00:10:52] Chris: So as soon as Fred left, I took a breath and put in my two weeks notice. They offered me more money. They offered me different kinds of things, but it’s the wrong fit. I [00:11:00] already knew it was the wrong fit. So then I’m like, what now? Luckily, there were freelance opportunities. And the thing that got the other parts of the story about how do you get your first client was, some of my student work appeared on the Adobe After Effects CD ROM when Adobe bought it from Cosa.

[00:11:15] Chris: And I think I was one of six students that the work was being sent out all over the world. Some of it happened to land in LA, and those people looked at it and called me up. And here’s the really weird thing. I never thought I was a very good animator. I struggled really hard in that class. I thought my work was okay, but the design was pretty good.

[00:11:34] Chris: I didn’t even want to put it on the, on the, on the reel, because I thought it’s not that good. So the lesson there is you are the worst judge of your own work and its value. You are just the worst, because you’re like, this is dog trash, please don’t show it to anybody. But the fact that it was on that disc got me, uh, two clients, and some friends that I still know to this day, some almost 30 years later.

[00:11:54] Chris: And it’s wild. These guys happen to be in Hollywood where I was. There’s a lot of coincidence happening there, [00:12:00] right? And so then they called me up and was like, Hey, I saw your thing. Can you go and do this work? I’m like, Yes. Maybe that’s lesson number two, say yes to things you can’t do and then figure it out.

[00:12:10] Chris: And I think some of us suffer from that, Oh, I’m not going to say yes until I know 1000 percent I can do it. And maybe that’s the prudent way, but I’m not very prudent either. So I get myself into trouble. I don’t know. Um, and maybe my, my, uh, just this obstinance, this determination, it’s like, I’ll figure it out.

[00:12:29] Chris: I’m okay with the stress. I’ll figure it out.

[00:12:32] Ami: Um, speaking of stress, I mean, there’s a considerable amount of stress that comes with starting an agency with payroll. There’s a considerable jump in overhead and all of those, um, risks. Um, what did it look like navigating that early on for you? Um, Okay.

[00:12:48] Chris: You know, it was, I didn’t look at it as stress.

[00:12:51] Chris: The world gives you all these inputs. And how you process those inputs will determine your feeling of that reality. Your words shape your world. So, [00:13:00] for me, it’s just a challenge to overcome and conquer. I didn’t look at it like, Oh, I’m going to stress out over this. So my goal, because I told my girlfriend and later my wife like, How do we know we’ve made it, babe?

[00:13:10] Chris: She goes, I don’t know. And I just made up an arbitrary number in my mind. If we can afford to pay three people full time salaries, With insurance and dental and eye coverage or whatever. And I think we made it. And so my obsession was get to three employees. It didn’t matter who they were. I just wanted three.

[00:13:26] Chris: And when we got to three, I’m like three feels pretty good. How about four? And they were all working, believe it or not in my house. They’re literally working my house. The best time in our company’s history ever was when we ran our production company out of our house, a three story modern postmodern house in Venice.

[00:13:44] Chris: Literally a block and a half from the beach in the weirdest part of Venice. And they literally would walk past the second floor, which is all the bedrooms to the third floor and just start working. And I told them, do not come here before 9am because I’m still ugly at [00:14:00] 9am. Don’t do it. So literally someone would just park outside and wait.

[00:14:05] Chris: I’m a bastard. I know. Just wait for me. And then they came up and they worked and we would eat together. We’d watch TV, we’d go skateboarding. It was just awesome. I

[00:14:16] Ami: know that there’s a lot of people in this room that are looking at that similar transition between kind of a solo, maybe through that fluid agency to really wanting to be recognized as a studio or agency and are struggling with budget and are stressed.

[00:14:30] Ami: You know, that perspective isn’t there as a challenge. What is the advice you have for folks in that position? What is

[00:14:38] Chris: the challenge?

[00:14:39] Ami: The challenge is growing to being an agency without having the budget in place to hire full time staff.

[00:14:50] Chris: Okay. Not a popular answer. Not everybody who wants to be an entrepreneur is an entrepreneur.

[00:14:57] Chris: Entrepreneurs like risk. [00:15:00] Entrepreneurs are totally comfortable with the unknown. All entrepreneurs just figure the S out. They just do. And if you’re not that person, I know it’s like sexy on Instagram to talk about your entrepreneurship journey, entrepreneurial journey. But you’re not made for it. A lot of people I know are not made for it.

[00:15:16] Chris: When I tell them you need to do this, I can’t. So being an employee, it’s totally okay. Nothing wrong with that. So you have to like, take a hard look in the mirror and say, is this what I want? Does not knowing where the next job comes from brings me excitement? Like, I’ve told this before, and I’ll just say it right now.

[00:15:33] Chris: Cool. The future as a company is down a million dollars in revenue from 2022 to 2023. And we’re not doing great right now either. Everybody’s like, are you stressed? No. Cause I’ll figure it out. I’ll figure it out. This is what we do. And I get excited about figuring out the next puzzle piece. Like I feel like as humans, or at least for me.

[00:15:51] Chris: I have an infinite number of answers. I’m just looking for a good problem to solve. And sometimes you invent the problem and sometimes the problem is made for you. I don’t know. Is [00:16:00] anybody here like make an educational info product? Raise your hand a book and a course, uh, something, a guide, anything educated, how are sales for you up, down, sideways, right?

[00:16:12] Chris: Everybody’s like more, do you know why that is information is cheap and it got a whole lot cheaper as more and more people use GPT. And I can’t even argue against it. I don’t want to argue against it because if you say, okay, let’s say anybody here in the health and fitness industry, okay, just a small group of people.

[00:16:31] Chris: Let’s say you’re a personal trainer, right? You’re like, Hey, pay me 300 or a hundred, 2, 200 a month. I’ll put together a personal fitness plan for you. I’ll coach you virtually all good. Right? You could tell GPT to do that. And it’s more nuanced than your personal trainer can tell you. You say, act like a world class personal trainer.

[00:16:50] Chris: I’m this weight, I only want to work out this much, I want to eat this. And you give it all information. Put together a program that only takes me 20 minutes a day, including macros, [00:17:00] exercises with links to YouTube videos. I don’t know if it does that, but it probably could. Describe in detail the exact plan.

[00:17:05] Chris: Optimize for my ethnicity, where I’m from, and the weather. And it will do it. What does it cost for GPT? 21 a month?

[00:17:14] Ami: If you’re feeling fancy. I’m a GPT. You can get a look guys.

[00:17:18] Chris: If we’re 21 a month as a fancy, we need a new definition of fancy. If you can’t afford 21 bucks a month, it’s free. I can help you, but you know, let’s get out of that mindset right away.

[00:17:29] Chris: The number one thing I realized about entrepreneurs and I think of myself as an entrepreneur until I meet like a real entrepreneur. They will spend crazy amounts of money because they look in their mind. If I spend 10, 000 or 50, 000 for a mastermind, they know they’ll get 51, 000 back. They go into these programs knowing this in the heart and then they can execute.

[00:17:52] Ami: We talk about, you know, risk being just not really, you didn’t, doesn’t sound like the perspective on risk was the same [00:18:00] as most people. If you’re an entrepreneur, where did you find the self confidence early on when you didn’t have the big portfolio with the big names, um, blinds, blind spots, Early on in that journey.

[00:18:14] Ami: Um, yeah, how did you, how did you find that when you were talking to some prospects?

[00:18:18] Chris: I, I think the confidence comes from this belief that you can solve problems. And the confidence precedes your ability to demonstrate it. Cause once you can demonstrate it, what is confidence for? I’ve won 55 tennis mat, you know, tennis match championships.

[00:18:34] Chris: Well your tennis, well of course I’m confident in tennis. It’s the belief that you can do it before there’s evidence. And you know, on this fishing trip with the people in the front and some over there, these 20 friends of mine, we talk a lot about like this idea of surrendering and faith, like faith is acting despite having evidence.

[00:18:50] Chris: So I’m not talking necessarily about God, but do you have faith in you? Do you believe in you? Cause if you don’t believe in you, I don’t believe in you. And a lot of you [00:19:00] just don’t believe in you. So, you know, when I was in school, I was doing work. I believed in myself. Now, here’s the truth. I’m not trying to say this in a way that makes me seem more, more humble or grounded because I’m, I’m just whatever I am, whatever label you want to put, I don’t really care.

[00:19:14] Chris: Is, I, I grew up in a traditional Vietnamese American family who were refugees from Vietnam. No one in my circle was a creative human that was not starving. There was no blueprint for that. And I grew up in the valley, like Silicon Valley, in San Jose, kind of not the cultural hub of the world. I had really bad taste in design, in fashion, in colors, in typography.

[00:19:43] Chris: I was excited about some things, but I just really had bad taste. I go to Art Center, there are Europeans there because they just shut down the Art Center Europe campus. Ooh, intimidating, like you guys grew up with culture. And you guys invented a lot of the stuff that I’m looking up to. And then you have a bunch of rich kids, rich white kids, and then you have rich [00:20:00] Asian kids who are there.

[00:20:00] Chris: It’s very pizzicato. To be a, a foreign student, you have to be able to afford no scholarship, no financial aid. So everybody was richer than me. I found two people poorer than me, but that was kind of it. But you know, they had taste, they had education, they were raised in culture. They had every advantage, but they didn’t have one advantage.

[00:20:17] Chris: And I knew that at the time, I would just outwork you. So when they went to party, and when they went to sleep, I was in the library or the computer lab. All my friends knew, if you don’t see them in the library, you’ll be in the computer lab. That’s it. Either I was working there or I was just there all the time.

[00:20:33] Chris: Cause I didn’t have my own computer. And so slowly, but surely I’m like, look at this wealth of knowledge in this library. Like for me, not having a lot of money, the art center library was just like gold everywhere. I know it’s not a lot of money now, but like 60 European magazines on car interior design.

[00:20:51] Chris: And they had every magazine from every country. I would just pick up that stack and put them there and just go through it. And I didn’t realize at a time I was educating myself on [00:21:00] what good design looks like. I had a lot of time to make up for. And eventually my taste improved and I just believe that I’m going to beat you.

[00:21:09] Chris: I will beat you. It’s inevitable.

[00:21:13] Ami: That’s interesting. You know, one of the things you’ve kind of mentioned a couple times here tonight is, uh, you know, when things either weren’t working out. You mentioned futures had some challenges over the last couple of years or challenges that you faced early on. One of the things I’ve personally been reflecting on over the last few years is goals, right?

[00:21:33] Ami: I’ve, I kind of started out on my own, very hustle, and then there’s periods where things don’t work out. So I’d love to hear like, you know, it sounds like you’re kind of in it in some ways. When things don’t work out on a personal goal, when the team isn’t hitting their goals. How do you manage yourself?

[00:21:52] Ami: How do you manage your team? How do you stay motivated in those periods? What’s the perspective there?

[00:21:57] Chris: What period in life you want me to [00:22:00] answer that question? Because depending on what period I have a different answer.

[00:22:03] Ami: Let’s say this one then, I guess. With what you’re dealing with the future.

[00:22:07] Chris: Okay, so if everybody here isn’t already feeling the threat or has been displaced by AI, you need to be on this train right now.

[00:22:18] Chris: Again, not a popular opinion. Don’t fight the inevitable. The future always wins. It has a perfect score. Everyone who fights the future loses. And the future is now in AI. And everything you touch, look at, is AI enhanced and enabled. And if you’re not using the tools, being conversant, and transforming your own business, disrupting your own business, you’re going to be totally hosed.

[00:22:38] Chris: So, AI is disrupting the future, right? Because you can get an education from AI. I don’t know if it’s good, but you can get it for a lot cheaper than what we can afford to sell it to you for. So, well, you know what we do? We fight AI with AI. So, one of the things I’ve always wanted to do is help people with implementation.

[00:22:54] Chris: And it’s very hard to do implementation because it requires people. To [00:23:00] help you design a website or to help you write your copy or to analyze a sales call or to help you navigate like your positioning statement. Those are people. And I don’t want to build a company that is heavy on people because that’s overhead.

[00:23:13] Chris: That feels like a job to be, I want to be as lean as possible. So we’re working on creating an army of robots specifically trained to solve one problem. I was talking to some, some folks that I was hanging out with this past week, which is you thought you bombed your last sales call. Now, I ask you, what if you had the transcript or the other audio file and you send it to our robot and it analyze it for you along the eight, uh, metrics where we score you.

[00:23:40] Chris: And it tells you where rapport was broken, where you are pitching, presenting and selling as opposed to being totally present. It’ll analyze it line by line and tell you what questions you could have asked or how you could have rephrased one of the questions and areas for improvement. Now, if that call analysis [00:24:00] was done by a human, it would take maybe half a day, maybe longer, and you’d have to pay a couple hundred bucks for that.

[00:24:05] Chris: But if it costs 20 to do it, maybe you’ll do it. So what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna use the robots to fight the robots. We just have to make better robots. But I believe that’s the prologue to, like, Terminator 2000. How Skynet begins.

[00:24:20] Ami: Right.

[00:24:21] Chris: Hey, if we’re all gonna die, let’s enjoy the ride on the way out.

[00:24:25] Chris: That’s it, right? Why not?

[00:24:31] Ami: You’ve mentioned AI, like a lot has changed since you first published Pocket Full of Dough. One of the questions I got from, from folks was, are there any previous principles that you put in the book, or just has been, has been radically updated since, since that period? Anything you reflect on, you’re like, yeah, that, that one needs an update.

[00:24:51] Chris: I can’t answer that question. I just stay present, look forward, I don’t look backwards. If I spent any time re reading my own book, I’d probably [00:25:00] just cry. You know what I mean? Like, nah, it wasn’t good enough, why did I phrase it that way? I’m just ready to write the next book. So I’ll write a book on sales, I’ll write a book on personal branding, which is literally what I’m working on right now.

[00:25:11] Chris: And, you know this, you look at your student portfolio, what idiot made that work? Let me spend a lot of time looking at that. That’ll build up my confidence, I’m pretty sure of it. You know what? Because you’re a learning evolving machine. That was just an artifact of your intelligence, your creativity, your curiosity at a moment in time.

[00:25:33] Chris: Let’s keep moving forward. But I like to think that the principles in the book aren’t technical, that they’re timeless. It should be evergreen content. But if somebody reads it and tells me, Yo, you gotta update that. Go and send it to me. I’ll try and figure it out, but I’m not going to do that myself.

[00:25:48] Ami: Sweet. Uh, you know, you mentioned portfolios. That was something else a lot of people were asking, like, what’s the right way to showcase work? Um, I think reflecting on your past work with Blind, like you worked [00:26:00] with, uh, pop stars and airlines, this wide variety of types of clients. Like, what is, I guess, what are the ingredients of a good portfolio if you’re trying to update that for yourself?

[00:26:15] Chris: That’s a question that needs context. A portfolio is only as good as the person who’s looking at it. Meaning, if it doesn’t matter to them, I don’t care how good you are. If I come in with a portfolio of album art or music videos, and the person is in the finance space, like, what is, what are, what are you showing me this for?

[00:26:33] Chris: And, and believe it or not, even financially relevant. So we had clients that we work with directly and they would literally say, we don’t want all that. That’s too much for what we have. Like you’re saying, like, we’re not even telling you the price. You just look at it. Like we can’t afford that. What? So context does really matter.

[00:26:52] Chris: Um, I’m not sure if this is a phrase I’ve heard or I’m just, you know, invented, but, uh, like people don’t care about what you do until they know what it could do for them. [00:27:00] So I don’t care what your portfolio is. Look at your customer, be super specific, understand their wants and needs, hopes, dreams, fears.

[00:27:07] Chris: And ask yourself, do I solve any of those problems with this work? The work is the evidence of a philosophy, so the philosophy of what you do isn’t correct, it doesn’t matter what the evidence looks like.

[00:27:19] Ami: Yeah, that kind of leads really well into I guess the challenge of the internet in some ways, right?

[00:27:26] Ami: Pre internet if somebody calls you like, yeah I want to work with you, you’re only going to show them the work that matters to them. Right now we’ve got Behance, we’ve got our websites, all these different elements. So is this a case where niching helps? Uh, or is there a different approach where you create category pages on your portfolio?

[00:27:46] Ami: How, how do you, I mean, you talk to creatives, I assume, with this challenge quite a bit. Um, what are the different levers it can pull?

[00:27:56] Chris: Yeah, there’s, you guys understand the difference between breadth and depth, right? [00:28:00] I almost guarantee whoever asked that question or who feels this, You don’t have enough depth for one category, yet you’re worried about breadth.

[00:28:08] Chris: I, I, I, okay, I’ll tell you the story. Do you not, the way I got my first job, professional job, post, like, uh, an education in design, I worked for an ad agency. And one of my friends, one of my acquaintances or classmates had graduated before me, because I took a couple semesters off to focus on academics. She was a copywriter, she was in the ad department, so I had two classes with her.

[00:28:31] Chris: I would say two classes. She got hired at Colton Webber, and the way advertising works is they pair copywriters with art directors. So one day she reaches out to me, while still living in LA, she goes, Chris, I got a job. I’m like, congrats. I need a partner. I’d like to recommend you. First of all, I hadn’t finished school.

[00:28:51] Chris: I didn’t study advertising. I didn’t even know what to send. So I, I go through whatever portfolio I have, and I said, okay, These are four pieces that I think are most [00:29:00] aligned with advertising. I didn’t send them 30 pieces. I sent four pieces in a FedEx box. And I was thinking I’m never gonna get this job.

[00:29:07] Chris: I put it in, I sent it off, and then they say we’d like to hire you. And that was a very valuable first lesson in the business world. It’s like, You don’t need a lot if it’s really good. And if it’s not good, then you then get good. Cause I don’t need the volume of it. So what people do is they have this false idea.

[00:29:23] Chris: And Dan Mullins here is up in front. You can probably get a lot of advice from him as well is they make this mistake. Like, I don’t think I can survive in this industry. So you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to spread myself out. So in case they want something else, I can offer all to them. What you don’t realize is you’ve unwittingly invited all the people in those other categories that compete with you too.

[00:29:45] Chris: It’s wild, right? So let’s, let’s put it in some context. Let’s say you’re in a food court. There’s a lot of food courts in malls. Everybody knows what that is. Let’s say you sell pizza. And you’re not that good. The crust isn’t that good. The sauce is not that good. So you’re like, let me add tacos. And that [00:30:00] doesn’t work, and then you add chicken wings.

[00:30:02] Chris: And now you compete with the chicken wing place, you compete with the Mexican taqueria place, and the places that make pizza better than you. That’s what happens. So what’s really important is for you to get that T skill first, like really deep on one vertical. And you know what builds confidence? Doing the same thing over and over again.

[00:30:21] Chris: It’s called drills. So drills before skills. If you could just do that, you’ll have the confidence. And then you can go, and I’ve learned this recently, instead of the T shape, you can have the pie shape, which is two verticals with a crossbar. So you can go deep on two things and you can do that usually when you’re a little bit older.

[00:30:41] Chris: You know, for all the people who think I’m, I’m a, I’m a polymath. I’m a Multihyphenate, are you? If you’re like 40 or 50 years old and you have a master’s degree in multiple programs, yeah, maybe. But you’re 18. Don’t tell me you’re multi hyphenate because I just don’t think you’ve been alive long enough. I know that’s ageist I’m just gonna throw it [00:31:00] out there.

[00:31:00] Chris: It’s okay.

[00:31:03] Ami: I once had a mentor who said chase two rabbits capture none and He was this billionaire founder that had multiple companies and I think this fits really well with what you’re describing. He’s 80 years old He’s like, yeah, I’ve got an empire, but I did one at a time, right? So

[00:31:18] Chris: wait, I just want to add this because I’m gonna update my reference it you guys watch the Olympics There was so much buzz about this one guy who just did The horse, I think it was called, and he didn’t do any of the events.

[00:31:29] Chris: He just did this one thing and the team needed him to nail that. And boy, did he shine and the internet exploded like she, I’m like, focus. I mean, they’re like focused niche. Just do one thing. Don’t worry about anybody says don’t follow convention. Where did all these specialists come from? Like they, you were not championing this idea and now you’re like on that.

[00:31:47] Chris: Come on, you see what you can do. You can win an Olympic medal for your team.

[00:31:53] Ami: Focus. Focus. Do we answer? We have a question over there. You say it, I’m going to repeat it for the recording. [00:32:00] Okay.

[00:32:21] Ami: Right. For the recording, that was understanding what your purpose is makes it a lot easier to be helped in the first place. That’s, that’s great.

[00:32:29] Chris: Well, I mean, it seems pretty obvious. The clearer you are about what you want, the more likely you are to get what you want, right? So if you’re single, you’re like, anybody will do what anybody will do.

[00:32:40] Chris: But if you’re like, you know, I want this person with this kind of intelligence, sense of humor, they look like this, and whatever it is you want, be super clear. So that when that person appears in your life, you’re like, boom, I think we’re meant to be together. They might not feel the same way about you, but at least you’re clear.

[00:32:55] Ami: Half the battle. I’m

[00:32:55] Chris: not giving dating advice, I’m just saying, be clear. Right? And I’m gonna give you [00:33:00] guys a little hack here, okay? I’m just gonna throw this out there, I’ve been thinking a lot about this. You guys like to read books? Or listen to them now, I guess? That’s what people do? Boom. I’m a visual learner, right?

[00:33:10] Chris: So I want to ask you this question, whatever your favorite book was, could you teach it today without any preparation? Some of you can’t, most of you cannot, you know, I would do this. Okay. Um, I read this book called the wind without pitching manifesto by another Canadian, uh, Blair ends who I admire a lot.

[00:33:28] Chris: And once I read it, I’m like, Hmm, this is fricking good. So I bought a bunch of copies and it gave them to my management team. I’m like, read this book. Let’s talk in a week. It don’t take that long to read. It doesn’t. It’s a very short book. He’s got an economy of words that I just really admire. As my friend Jose would say, it’s a two poop book.

[00:33:47] Chris: You could read in two poops. You can. That’s how short it is, alright? It’s

[00:33:52] Attendee: true.

[00:33:52] Chris: So I gave it to him. I gave him a week to read it. And I’m like, so, you read it? And they’re like, yep, yep, read it, read it, read it, read it, read it, read it. I’m like, what’s it [00:34:00] about? They’re like, what do you mean? I mean Give me a summary or tell me a big idea.

[00:34:08] Chris: They’re, well, we don’t read like that. Like, none of them in the room could tell me anything about the book. I’m like, tell me one vague memory of the book. I think that’s how most people read. They read a book to finish the book. Not to actually learn. Okay, so you’re already in level two if you read the book because you want to be able to apply it.

[00:34:26] Chris: But I’m going to tell you to read the book on level three, which is read it to teach it. So your intentionality will affect how you read the book. Okay? So the hack I have for you is this, and it’s very simple. It’s so dumb, stupid simple that most of you will not do it. I’ve got a theory that some of the people you really admire, and you look up to, that are super successful, more successful than me, will read a book over and over again until they know that book like it’s their book.

[00:34:51] Chris: And then they’ll read four more versions of that book. So by the time you read five books on one topic from five different people, [00:35:00] I think you can feel pretty confident that you know something. And if you start to synthesize those five ideas and add your own stories on top, you’d be up here instead of me.

[00:35:12] Chris: How long does it take to read five books?

[00:35:17] Chris: Good answer! Okay. Who said that? Someone’s paying attention. Somebody’s trying to outshine me right now. My God, she’s fast. Those are really long poops. You might have blisters and you’re Yeah, my feet falls asleep when it’s that long. You know what I’m talking about. Old people know what I’m talking about.

[00:35:36] Chris: It’s like, oh my god, you gotta shake it out before you Cause you’re all wobbly, you know what I mean? Come on, let’s

[00:35:41] Ami: be real. I was just reading like this week about how the phrase well read today means reading a ton of books but it used to mean reading a handful of books really, really well. That’s what well read used to mean to the ancients, right?

[00:35:55] Ami: So that’s kind of an interesting parallel. And for

[00:35:58] Chris: the rest of our conversation, [00:36:00] I want us all to measure time in poops. Fair. So how long have you been in business? 8, 000 poops. Okay? Just point forward. Right. Okay. That’s a new t shirt, I think.

[00:36:14] Ami: Um, okay, so we’re talking about, uh, the breadth and depth of, of, of experience and skill.

[00:36:22] Ami: Um, there’s that old cliché of the riches being in the niches. Uh, which is nice on another t shirt beside the poop t shirt. Uh, but how do you actually go about, as a creative, Figuring out which niche overlaps with your interest and commercial viability.

[00:36:41] Chris: Oh, that’s super easy. Uh, I was reading in Michael, is it Michael Porter’s book, Book Yourself Solid?

[00:36:48] Chris: And he wrote that your niche is the market that you want to serve plus your passion. That’s it. It didn’t have to be that complicated. So if you want to do graphic [00:37:00] design for financial institutions, if you can just add one more dimension of what you’re passionate about, I think you already have your niche.

[00:37:07] Chris: We don’t have to get super crazy about that. It doesn’t have to be that complicated. Do you want more?

[00:37:14] Ami: I want more. Yeah.

[00:37:16] Chris: Well, challenge me then. Okay.

[00:37:17] Ami: So when I first started out as a photographer, I was just like, uh, niches, they’re supposed to be good, so I chose, like, uh, uh, dramatic portraits, um, for, for commercial brands, right, so kind of this meaningless sentence that, that, that has no meaning, really, um, and, and I think I was a pretty decent photographer, but I really struggled to actually leverage that as any potential niche, so yeah.

[00:37:45] Ami: It’s a mistake I see other people making is that they will focus on the passion part of that Venn diagram a little heavily, which may lead them down the wrong path. And so if you’re talking to 19 year old Ami [00:38:00] right now, making this mistake, how would you, how would you steer?

[00:38:04] Chris: Okay, so let’s apply the formula together.

[00:38:07] Chris: Yeah. So what you do photography and who do you do it for your market? Who do you do it for?

[00:38:14] Ami: Commercial brands, so agencies and, uh, and businesses needing, needing dramatic portraits. It was, that’s the part of the Venn diagram that was weak.

[00:38:25] Chris: That’s pretty weak, you’re like basically anybody who has money.

[00:38:28] Ami: Businesses.

[00:38:29] Chris: You know, you guys say that too, like who do you work for? You know, entrepreneurs.

[00:38:33] Ami: Yeah. I think it’s shit right now, but this is me in hindsight.

[00:38:37] Chris: Well, we’re here now. Yeah. You know, that’s a past problem. So we have to look at it like, okay, you take photos for who? You just got to tell me the market and has to be one market needs to be clear

[00:38:49] Ami: Okay,

[00:38:49] Chris: what would that be?

[00:38:50] Chris: Well, you start with your passion 19 year old. I’m he’s passionate about what?

[00:38:54] Ami: Yeah, it was well music was a big part of it. Okay,

[00:38:57] Chris: that’s all that’s enough.

[00:38:58] Ami: Yeah.

[00:38:59] Chris: Now we have [00:39:00] your niche, right? What are you photographer?

[00:39:02] Ami: Right. Okay,

[00:39:03] Chris: what kind of music?

[00:39:05] Ami: Pretty wide breath there, but, um,

[00:39:08] Chris: what, just say one, one genre of music you like.

[00:39:10] Ami: Um, well, jazz, but I don’t think there’s jazz. Yeah.

[00:39:13] Chris: You’re gonna be broke. .

[00:39:15] Ami: Yeah.

[00:39:17] Chris: So that would be a problem with your niche. Yeah. Yeah. Let’s say you like, um, rock. Rock. Sure. Okay. So I take, um, behind the scenes photos for rock bands that tour the world. It’s not that hard, right? Is it? You know what’s really hard is your attachment to your identity and your resistance to change and commit.

[00:39:42] Chris: That’s all it is. You get past that. Everything’s super easy. So, you know, I, I try my best to give my very best advice to people and I know it’s super frustrating from your point of view cause I’ve heard from you. Oh, you make it sound so easy. It is really freaking easy. So then I have to [00:40:00] figure it out cause it’s not easy for you because there’s something that’s holding you back.

[00:40:05] Chris: And until I get to know you better, I don’t know what that is. But then if we find out what the limiting belief is, and I tell you what it is, you still don’t want to let it go. I coached lots of people at scale and individually and people just don’t want to change. That’s the bottom line. The minute you want to change, it’ll be super easy.

[00:40:27] Chris: So as miserable as some people are, as broke as they are, as frustrated and as stressed out as they are, If I say just walk through that door and there’s a pot of gold, everything will be solved. Like, no, I like my misery. That’s how it feels for me. I just don’t understand it.

[00:40:43] Ami: Right.

[00:40:43] Chris: I had this question before, maybe it was on the boat.

[00:40:46] Chris: Was that you, Tay? I don’t remember. I had so many conversations. But, oh, it was you. It was on the boat. It was at dinner. And we were talking about, like, how you look for students or people you coach. That was you, right? Yeah. How you [00:41:00] look for people you like to coach and I told him it and I’m not sure he was super happy with the answer, but then he’s like, but how were you like?

[00:41:06] Chris: Maybe he was surprised. So I’ll tell you right now. I love to mentor people who just want to do what the hell I tell them to do. Because all of it is a waste of energy. You know, I’ll teach you how to be rich. I’ll teach you how to be successful. I’ll teach you how to be happy. Just follow the steps. Trust and believe.

[00:41:24] Chris: Trust in your teacher. Believe in yourself. Trust that I picked you, and you picked me, and I have good things designed for you. That’s all I want. Just do what I tell you to do. Okay? And you’ve heard me say this before. There are allegories in pop culture that are trying to tell you this story over and over again.

[00:41:45] Chris: You’ll go to the box office, you’ll watch the movie, you’ll feel great, and you’ll forget the lesson. Right? I grew up in the 80s with a karate kid. Right? And now you’re, Oh, shoot. Here we go. I’ve watched it. I didn’t learn the lesson. [00:42:00] And I think there’s something really wonderful about art, paintings, literature, poems, movies.

[00:42:07] Chris: I think there are messages from the future. You trying to tell you, you need to know this lesson today, but we fricking go to them and we consume it and we’re like, ha, ha, that was entertaining. And we don’t do what it tells us to do. So just to refresh some of your memories. Okay. Daniel LaRusso gets his ass kicked all the time by, I forget the guy’s name, Johnny.

[00:42:29] Chris: Johnny who? Johnny Lawrence. Cobra Kai, you know, they’re bullies and they’re not nice guys and he’s like a kid from out of town and he’s poor. And he just gets his ass kicked all the time. And they’re cruel about it. So, you know, he’s super desperate and he gets, he tries to get revenge, whatever, and he gets jumped by the fence.

[00:42:46] Chris: Mr. Miyagi, you know, super short Japanese guy, comes out and kicks all their butts. And he goes, Oh my God, what is that? And Mr. Miyagi is not interested in his kid. Not at all. So he begs him to teach him. Do you remember what Mr. Miyagi’s rule is for you? Non karate kid [00:43:00] fans. I only have one rule. Do everything I tell you to do.

[00:43:04] Chris: Go watch it again. See if I’m lying. That’s it. Without question. He goes, yeah, yeah. Cause you know, Daniel’s desperate. Follow the Japanese man or get your ass kicked. Pretty straightforward decision. So he commits to it. Shows up, what does Mr. Miyagi do? Freaking wash these cars. But very specifically, wax on, wax off.

[00:43:26] Chris: So he does it, and you can tell, being this strong, independent American boy, he’s like, oh, okay. And then he’s like, what’s next? Paint the fence, Daniel. Paint the fence, paint the fence, paint the fence. And after finishing that, he goes, you know what? I just feel like you’re getting me to do all your dirty work.

[00:43:44] Chris: You said you were going to teach me karate. I’m kidding. He says, I’ve been, he goes, what are you talking about? So he’s wax on, he’d hits him and he blocks it. And then Daniel was like, Oh my God. So why is that? And they’re telling you this thing, you [00:44:00] know, you watch kill bill, Uma Thurman headstrong. I don’t need to learn from PI May.

[00:44:06] Chris: And he’s like, if you can hit me with a sword, you’re the master. She can’t do it. And so he breaks her spirit, she does what he tells him to do, and he actually cares for her like a father to a daughter. He teaches her the eight palm strike move that he taught nobody. Spoiler alert. What are these movies trying to tell you to do?

[00:44:28] Chris: And if you look at a lot of, like, eastern cinema, you know, which I grew up watching, it was always the same freaking story. Rebellious punk kid, Jackie Chan, steals his unruly, stubborn, finds a master always with a beard, you know, whatever, teaches him a style. And he has to learn these lessons. So that’s who I want to work with.

[00:44:49] Chris: I want to work with a student who trusts that I know what I’m doing to tell you what to do, in your best interest. And I know it sounds really weird, just like, [00:45:00] just do it. And then they’re like, well you don’t do that, Chris. Well you know what, I did do that. From my typography teachers, from my advertising teachers, to my mentor who I worked with for 13 years.

[00:45:12] Chris: I’m not here without him. And I don’t know why anybody pays someone money and time to get advice and then not do the advice. Kier said, stop selling on your calls. Ask them what they want. I can do that, Kier. Just ask them what the budget is. If they were going to hire someone else other than you. You’re welcome.

[00:45:32] Chris: And I did. And it just opened up my world. I’m like, what’s next? And he would just teach me one thing after the other. And I didn’t need two lessons. I’m a one lesson kind of guy. I’m cheap like that. Why do you all just sit here in therapy for 10 years? Do you think it’s a therapist or do you think it’s you?

[00:45:55] Chris: I worked with a family therapist and I met her 11 times the [00:46:00] best money highest ROI I’ve ever had in my life. And my, and you know, my business coach here, he’s like, do public speaking. Okay. And it was horrible. They said, I was bad. He goes, let’s find something you like. You like making images, don’t you? I’m like, yeah.

[00:46:19] Chris: He said, just make a bunch of images together and just make up a story between all those images. I could do that. And that’s what I did. So again, ask yourself this thing. When someone tells you what to do, the internet, a book, a movie, a Some idiot like me, why don’t you just do it? What are you waiting for?

[00:46:38] Chris: Cause you are waiting for something. And yeah, I would just do it. So the, the, the lesson here is pick a master, don’t overthink it and just go for a while for as long as you can handle it. And if, if it didn’t work, you knew you gave it your all. So a [00:47:00] lot of times, and maybe we’re going to do a fishing analogy here.

[00:47:04] Chris: Fishing is one of these weird things that everybody thinks they’re an expert with zero experience, right? So the where we go in the Canadian wilderness, they have fishing school. They teach you how to fish a very specific way to catch a very specific species. In a minute, everybody hits the water, like we’ll do it our own creative way.

[00:47:19] Chris: They said, hook it through the head, we’ll hit it, we’ll hook it through the, they say drop it 10 feet. They, oh, 50 feet sounds pretty good. They just get creative with instructions. So how do you know the instruction was bad or it’s you when you don’t follow the instructions? You just don’t know. And happy to say, every person who went fishing with me, caught a fish.

[00:47:38] Chris: Many of them never fished before. The one exclusion, he’s not here, so I can still say, Everybody who was here, caught a fish. Right? And they didn’t know what they were doing, but they just followed the directions. It’s weird when you follow directions, it just works. Right, Tim? I mean, It’s weird. You just do what you’re told and it just [00:48:00] works.

[00:48:01] Chris: So why don’t people do that? Somebody’s gonna have to tell me the answer, because if I can solve it, I’ll be really rich. Why? Does anybody know? Okay, who said that? Hi, me. Why? We have no mics for you. What?

[00:48:20] Chris: Yeah. Waiting for permission. Okay, so you’re waiting for permission. Or they’re waiting for permission. Okay, so you’re waiting for permission. You’re waiting for permission. Who would you like permission from? You’re right though, I was waiting for permission too. It’s true. Who are you waiting for, uh, to give you permission?

[00:48:51] Chris: Okay, let’s play this scenario. An older version of you is going to figure it out. How far in the future is [00:49:00] that going to be?

[00:49:09] Chris: Maybe the next minute. Or maybe not. All I know is you have this minute, we can play that game of like tomorrow will be a really great day and something could happen to you where you, you no longer can function the way you function today. Why you wait for tomorrow? That’s the thing. It’s like, I don’t know why, like I’m, I’m pretty, I think I’m pretty smart.

[00:49:38] Chris: I don’t know why I didn’t ask the clients what they wanted before my business coach told me to. I thought maybe it was rude, inappropriate, like not creative to ask what they want. I had all these stories, and I was thinking to myself, who told you those stories? And I couldn’t find the source of them, [00:50:00] so it must be, I told myself those stories.

[00:50:03] Chris: And the minute he’s like, just ask them what they want, I’m like, what does that sound like? He’s like, what’s your budget? That’s it? That’s what I’m paying you for? I don’t know. I’ll try that. What’s your budget? And they get really weird. And then some of them tell you. I’m like, oh my god, this works. What are you looking for?

[00:50:21] Chris: What inspired this idea? In your ideal world, when we’re done with this, what does that look like? How do you feel about it? And then all of a sudden, the questions just keep flowing. I mean, find whoever you need to get permission from and go get it. And you realize you just need permission from yourself.

[00:50:40] Chris: That’s it.

[00:50:42] Ami: Yeah,

[00:50:43] Chris: that’s awesome. I’ll sell permission later.

[00:50:45] Ami: Yeah.

[00:50:46] Chris: Super cheap.

[00:50:49] Ami: A thousand bucks. One of the things that I think a lot of people want permission about is this idea of like value based pricing. There’s a lot of confidence and good [00:51:00] question and exploration that’s required to do that at an effective level.

[00:51:05] Ami: Are there cases where you look at someone’s business and you’re like, Value based pricing doesn’t make sense.

[00:51:12] Chris: Yeah. A lot of them. Um, there was a guy I was hanging out with in Australia and he was telling me, Chris, I struggle with value based pricing. I said, okay, I’ll help you right now. You don’t need to do it.

[00:51:27] Chris: Okay. You just don’t need to do it, man. It’s like, you know, my wife’s not that hot. It’s like, well, who said you’re supposed to have a hot wife? Who cares? She’s great. So your business model can be great. Just. Don’t chase after this thing that you don’t know how to do and you’re not confident about. So I asked him this question.

[00:51:43] Chris: What is the budget range of pro They’re in like, UX, web design, right? I said, what is the range of budgets from low to high that you get? I’m making up some numbers now. He’s like, 50 to 150 grand. Okay, let’s just say that’s the range. Easy number. 50 to 150 thousand [00:52:00] dollars. I said, are they more on the 50 side or more on the 150 thousand side?

[00:52:04] Chris: He’s like, more on the 50 side. We get a couple at 150. So he said, why don’t you just tell every client to work with me? It’s a hundred thousand dollars. If all your clients paid you a hundred grand, would you be happy with that? He goes really happy. You don’t need value based pricing. He’s like, that’s it.

[00:52:19] Chris: Like, that’s it. You need more permission. It is going to cost you money. And he’s like, okay, I said, dinner’s on you, man. Why do you need to make it more complicated? If you take out all the variability and just say it’s a thousand bucks. If you’re poor, if you’re rich, it’s a thousand bucks. Some jobs I’ll make less than I’m supposed to, but I’ll make a lot more than the jobs I’m getting.

[00:52:45] Chris: So if they consistently book a hundred thousand dollar website jobs, they’ll have a new problem, which is now they want to do value based pricing, but they have made so much money in the meantime, they reduce all the stress on their landing page. It’s a hundred grand. There’s [00:53:00] no mystery about it right now.

[00:53:01] Chris: And they can just fall over piles of money until they want to go to the next level. They may never want to go to the next level, and it’s totally okay.

[00:53:09] Ami: Yeah one of the gifts of taking value based pricing seriously is That it forces you to behave or it encourages you to behave a little bit more like a street strategic advisor Which is I think what a lot of people in this room want they don’t want to be order takers And some of us are in the position to do that, right?

[00:53:30] Ami: We are strategists, we’re at that level. But what about the people who are either junior, or they are, um, delivering, you know, social media assets. They’re kind of lower on the, on the strategic scale. How does somebody like that navigate this challenge of feeling like an order taker? Um, yeah, what advice?

[00:53:56] Ami: For scenarios like that.

[00:53:57] Chris: You feel like an order taker because you [00:54:00] don’t have, there’s a lot of things here to unpack. This one’s complicated to answer. I mean, so I, I think if we strip away the word strategic, cause that means too many things to too many people, I’m going to ask you this question and you have to be really honest with yourself.

[00:54:17] Chris: Do you care about your client’s real success? Okay. And if you care about their success, you will do everything in your power. To put that need ahead of everything else. So when they say I need a new logo, you have to say like, What will that do for your business? Because as much as I like to take your money, How will it impact anything?

[00:54:37] Chris: And if they’re like, I can’t, you should not take their money. Now I know people do this a lot. I’m not saying anyone is wrong. But you say we’re strategists because you think you can charge more. When you don’t understand strategy and you actually don’t care if their business succeeds or not, and you don’t have the business acumen to make decisions that will impact their [00:55:00] finances, their marketing, the customer, the user experience.

[00:55:02] Chris: You just like that term because it sounds better than the term you’re using. So that’s when we use labels that aren’t appropriate. You haven’t been trained. You don’t really understand these things that that kind of gets into a weird place, to be honest.

[00:55:15] Attendee: Yeah.

[00:55:16] Chris: So if you’re more junior. Be happy to work with clients who love what you do and just charge enough money so that you feel really excited to do the work.

[00:55:26] Chris: And everybody here will have a different number. You know, I was talking to somebody like, Chris, I hate my client. I just hate them. I’m like, okay. I said, what do they pay you now? I don’t know what number they said. They said, what if we charge twice as much? Well, they’re mildly annoying. What if you charge four times as much?

[00:55:47] Chris: Oh, I think I’d like to work. Is it them? Or is it you? Now you see, because you were afraid to ask for the amount of money that would bring joy to you. That’s all it is. Cause you know what? I’ve [00:56:00] done really exciting projects. I’ve done not exciting projects, but I loved all my clients because they paid me a lot.

[00:56:08] Chris: And you know what it is? Maybe you’re like, that’s so capitalistic. It’s really not because somebody worked really hard to make that money and they know they have a boring job to give you. But they’re going to say, you know, I apologize for such a boring job where I’m a pain in the ass client. I know that, or we’re disorganized, but we’re going to pay you the money to help some of the pain go away.

[00:56:30] Chris: Maybe that’ll help you out with like, uh, your, your kid’s college fund, or maybe you can pay down your student tuition. That means a lot to me. You know, we take it for granted that money’s easy to get, and it’s not. You know how hard it is to get. So when someone gives you that amount of money. That’s a vote for you We have to elevate ourselves beyond the work that we do You know, I’m so delighted that some of the clients I’ve worked with from 20 30 years ago [00:57:00] Will call me out of blue and said Chris.

[00:57:01] Chris: I love where you’re going with your life Can we do something together like 30 years later? That means that seed that was planted 30 years ago Was handled in such a way that they felt positive residual energy How many of your clients would call you 30 years later? Right? Yours would? Great. That was a rhetorical question.

[00:57:25] Chris: Good. Nailed it. He’s like, uh, me? Seriously? Me. Right now. Me. You know?

[00:57:32] Ami: That’s cool. Um. I had a thought, but you knocked it out of my head. Um, yeah, I guess one of the common You messed up on me. See that? Yeah. Yeah. Got

[00:57:44] Chris: derailed. You know this guy? Yeah. Okay, got it. Um Is it in keeping with his personality? Yes.

[00:57:50] Chris: How you do one thing is how you do everything.

[00:57:54] Ami: Um, one of the issues that maybe every industry but particularly afflicts [00:58:00] creatives is when a client says, Yeah, we’re on. It’s happening. This is the start date. Or Yes, I will give you this asset at this time, uh, so that you can do what you need to do. And then they, they flake on those dates.

[00:58:15] Ami: Um, I don’t think it comes from a place of, uh, You know, they’re not, they don’t mean any, any harm by it, but it happens. Um, and it happens to the point where it starts to hurt businesses, right? They can’t take on other projects, projects because of this. Uh, common, common issue. How do you advise somebody who’s facing this on a repeated basis?

[00:58:34] Chris: Super easy. Number one, charge more. Number two, have penalties for missing deadlines. Those are just healthy boundaries to have. Okay? And then just ask them. I mean, if somebody says, we’ll start on a project, but they haven’t given you money, sometimes people say that just to make you go away. Sometimes people change their mind, it’s totally okay.

[00:58:52] Chris: You change your mind all the time. And I know it’s really weird, but we’re really stuck in our commitment to what it is that we say. And sometimes to our [00:59:00] own detriment. You know? If you say, uh, I’m gonna pick you up at four o’clock, I’ll pick you up And then you realize it was your anniversary. What do we do?

[00:59:07] Chris: We go pick the person up at four o’clock and we get divorced. When you’re like, you know what, John, Mary, I F’d up. I said, I was gonna pick you up, but I flaked. It’s my anniversary. Take an Uber. I’ll reimburse you. Okay. It was my bad. We have the ability to change our mind. It’s a beautiful thing. And sometimes we get trapped and Tony Robbins talks about this.

[00:59:27] Chris: He’s like the number one thing that drives human decisions is the need to be consistent with ourselves. And I’m stuck here just like you are. It’s a human thing. So sometimes we need to say, wait, wait, what am I doing? I need to change course right now. We just have to, and it’s really difficult to do because you’ll feel like you’re not a good person, but when doing what you said you were going to do hurts more people than it helps change your mind.

[00:59:51] Chris: So you do this. That means your clients can do this. And all you have to do is say, it feels like this is no longer a priority to you. Let me know if it, if that changes and move on [01:00:00] with your life. And if it’s one of those deadline things, just say, as you know, as we previously talked about, you have this much time and we’re over that time.

[01:00:10] Chris: This is a grace period now. And if you go beyond that, we have one of two options. I’m going to kill the job, send you an invoice for the work that was done and we’ll pick it up, but it won’t be the same price because we’re starting up again. Or you’re going to have to pay this amount because I can’t have my team Idling by it’s like leaving the car running.

[01:00:27] Chris: We’re not going nowhere and Business people know that a business can’t be sitting around waiting for you to make a decision. That’s all

[01:00:36] Ami: Yeah, I find that Freelancers particularly feel like they have to be the most flexible person in the room and and kind of accept that behavior Well, are we

[01:00:45] Chris: using the same terminology when you start to describe a freelancer?

[01:00:48] Chris: I’m afraid we’re not

[01:00:50] Ami: Solos, I guess is what I’m talking about

[01:00:52] Chris: What is a solo? Somebody who works independently. Are they a business or are they a freelancer? Because they’re different.

[01:00:58] Ami: Hmm. A business [01:01:00] being Well, why don’t you tell me the difference?

[01:01:02] Chris: A freelancer sells time. Usually for a boss. A freelancer cannot hire other people to do the work for them.

[01:01:09] Chris: Often times a freelancer has to show up on site or at least be available for that person. We assume if you say you work 8 hours that you’ve given them the 8 hours and you’re not going to double book yourself. How many people here are freelancers under that definition? See, that’s a problem with the terminology.

[01:01:25] Chris: So only a few people, whereas before you took that poll, most people, you guys are independent business owners who just happen to have one employee, you, and that’s totally okay. You do marketing, you sales, negotiations, contracts. Freelancers don’t do that. They say when, where, and how much, and then you get booked.

[01:01:41] Chris: That’s it. So we use this term kind of interchangeably because it’s a popular use of the term, but, uh, if you talk to Jonathan Stark, he’ll tell you the word freelancer comes from a lancer who used to sell the services. You’re a mercenary in medieval times. Is that you? Are you a mercenary? I don’t think [01:02:00] so.

[01:02:02] Chris: You’re, you’re a sellsword in Game of Thrones terminology. Right? You’re not a freelancer, you’re an independent business owner, so you have to learn how to do content marketing, customer service relationships, you have to do sales, there’s a lot of skills you have to acquire. You just don’t have any employees right now, except for you.

[01:02:19] Chris: So, now, let’s reframe the question. What is the question again?

[01:02:22] Ami: Um, well, it was a comment. It was a comment on freelancers slash sellsword being the most flexible person in the room when we have the least capability of it. We have less buffer than a larger business. But, We generally feel like they’re hiring us to, to bend over backwards.

[01:02:41] Ami: And so we take the, the, the brunt of that behavior over and over. Where other businesses would just be like, no this won’t work.

[01:02:49] Chris: That’s a colorful way to describe freelancing. If, if you feel like that, don’t be a freelancer. You do literally sell your time. And I’ve worked with [01:03:00] hundreds, maybe thousands of freelancers.

[01:03:01] Chris: I love them, I pay them, they do their job. They range the gamut of very low money to lots of money and it works. They have no stress in the sense that they get booked and they get paid no matter what. I don’t consider bending anybody over backwards. I’ve not done that to anybody. You pay them on time.

[01:03:19] Chris: Everybody’s good. Now, when you’re an independent business owner, you get to dictate the terms of how you want to work. When you accept terms that you’re not happy with, you’ve bent yourself over backwards. Nobody bent you. Okay. Because you don’t have boundaries, you don’t have clear definition of scope, and you accepted it because you’re afraid to have that conversation, because you’re afraid of some tension.

[01:03:39] Chris: You know what? Here’s what I’ve experienced in my life. If you’re brave enough to have that tension, people respect you more. It’s really weird. We think, no, no friction, okay? And then the person walks away like, I’m not sure they understand how this stuff works. When you meet somebody, you’re like, okay. It doesn’t matter what trade, it [01:04:00] doesn’t matter.

[01:04:00] Chris: When they say, okay, here’s how most clients work with us. They do this, and they do this, and this happens, and it’ll be here, and this whole onboarding process, you feel relieved. You’ve done this before. And when I come to you to give you money, you’re like, and I’m like, when do I expect things? How does this work?

[01:04:19] Chris: My confidence is not exactly high. Right? Yep.

[01:04:25] Ami: Yeah. Um. A question I got that I found interesting was somebody said that they’ve been in and out of the field for, for two decades. And were wondering how to stay passionate in design. And it, I found it interesting because the last time we did this, you kind of, relatively on the fly, like whipped up some promo graphics for us.

[01:04:51] Ami: And you, I can tell that there’s still very much, um, A like a passion for the craft. You don’t have to do that. Like it’s not something you had to do. [01:05:00] Um, so decades in the field, how do you stay in touch with that passion? Um, through the ups and downs of the business.

[01:05:09] Chris: Okay. I’m going to segue into a soapbox moment.

[01:05:13] Chris: I’m just going to let you know. Okay. People have asked this question before, Chris, I’m just not that passionate about this one. What I do, I’m like, get out. This was not meant for you. If you ain’t got it, get out. You tried. Remember that whole, the need to be consistent with yourself? Cause you told somebody you’re gonna be an NBA player.

[01:05:29] Chris: It’s not working, you’re not doing it. You’re not a stand up comic. It’s not working, get out. Do something different. But, what, what I describe as passion is something that you do that you would do for free. Something that you obsess over. Something where when you do, you lose track of time. So when you told everybody here our mission, there was an important component that was missing in the description, which I don’t blame you for, but it’s to help a billion people how to make a living doing what they love without losing their soul.[01:06:00] 

[01:06:00] Chris: So the love part is really important, because you know what? I mean, we’re half joking that Skynet will be here upon us, but let’s just assume we don’t have that much time left. How are you going to spend the rest of your days? Because every day you have one less day. We’re all in states of dying. From the moment we’re born, we’re all in states of dying, right?

[01:06:20] Chris: So accept that part. So if we don’t take that we have tomorrow for granted, do something that you really love, that you’re super passionate about. It’s your competitive advantage. So I’m gonna do this talk next week, so I’ll practice some of the material on you right now, okay? I believe, if you imagine, that you’re all the byproducts of some super alien species.

[01:06:45] Chris: That you were sent to Earth, as the last of your kind, to live with Earthlings. And you were raised by human parents, who taught you about human limitations. But your parents knew that being on [01:07:00] Earth would give you an advantage. And you had all these gifts. And then because you’re raised by humans with human limitations, your society, you’re socialized to be certain things.

[01:07:11] Chris: And the thing that kills you the most, you’re socialized to be normal. So we feel weird is abnormal. But if you look at what is normal, normal, it’s just means average. The norm is average, right? Who here like, like grew up thinking, you know what I’m going to be? I’m going to be average. So somehow we’ve made being average.

[01:07:34] Chris: And it’s really weird because the deepest insult you can have for a creative, especially if I was your teacher, was for me to say, You know what? John, Mary, your work is average. That would cut a hole through your soul. To say it’s bad would be better than to say it’s average. To say I don’t understand it would be better than average.

[01:07:59] Chris: [01:08:00] To say it’s weird would be better than average. Yet, somehow, we want to be average. If we understand that, then we can do some good work together. So, all those gifts are waiting for you to unearth. But you have to remember, you’re not a human. You’re superhuman. And if this sounds anywhat familiar, you might think, maybe I’m superman or superwoman.

[01:08:23] Chris: Because that’s the story. A little bit different than that, but I believe that. So I’m also of that person who discovered what it is that made me weird and different. My passion. So for a long time I believed, you know what? I need to be an entrepreneur. I’m going to make commercials and music videos for a living.

[01:08:38] Chris: This is going to be freaking awesome. And I wasn’t wholly fulfilled. And then I was like, I’m going to teach because that’s going to make me great. I’m like, Mmm. I was financially fulfilled. It wasn’t until I started to bring all the things that I forgot about. The things that I love. And I’ll tell you all the weird things I like.

[01:08:54] Chris: And some of it will start to make sense to you. And I put it in a place where people can see it. That’s the [01:09:00] important part. Then I found my passion. Cause you know, I’m not a young man anymore, but I’m so energized by what it is I’m doing, I just can’t wait for the next day so I can do more of it. And the fact that I get paid to do it, it’s just a bonus.

[01:09:17] Chris: So I’m really into just business concepts. I’m really into learning and reading into teaching cause it fulfills me and I have experienced running a business and I’m a creative person. I’m a designer, motion designer. I’ve worked with clients and I’m into mixed martial arts and skateboarding and weird typo typographic, weird things, oddities and comic books and narrative.

[01:09:39] Chris: I’m a nut for movies and I can bring all that together and I like to draw diagrams and weird stuff. Now you can see, if you look at our content, like, duh, why did it take me until 42 years old to figure that stuff out? So when we say like, I’m not passionate about this anymore, it’s like, maybe you [01:10:00] weren’t, and that’s okay.

[01:10:02] Chris: Find the thing that you’re passionate about. Now I’m going to bring some weird stuff to you guys right now. Okay. My wife’s really like into like metaphysical woo stuff and we make fun of each other. Okay. Cause she’s like, you’re so three dimensional, babe. And you know, she’ll tell me some weird ass theory that she saw on the internet.

[01:10:23] Chris: That’s how I see it. I’m like, oh my god, you just gave me a great idea. I know what to do with that. She goes, you’re really good at densifying. Well, babe, in the 3D world where we have 3D bills and 3D obligations, I’m pretty good at this. She goes, you would be. You’ve mastered the three dimensional game. We just do this all day long, guys.

[01:10:43] Chris: All day long. Okay, so she’s like, it would be important to me if you went to Sedona because I want to see this channeler. I’m like, channeler? Like changing the TV channel? No, they channel alien beings. I’m like, holy fudge, what are we signing up for? And his name [01:11:00] is Bashar. Oh, you just outed yourself, whoever you are.

[01:11:06] Chris: So we drive to Sedona. We fly into Arizona, to Phoenix, and then we drive to Sedona and some freaky things happen. Coincidental. I go to see Bashar. And they’re like, Bashar! And he’s like talking to an alien in a spacecraft above us because we’re an energy vortex. I just throw out terms like I know what they mean.

[01:11:28] Chris: Right? He’s channeling Bashar. And he does this whole thing. He talks in the plural, like we. He closes his eyes. He makes weird clicking reptilian sounds. It’s weird. It’s, it’s, it’s interesting. Let’s not put a weird label on it. You know, it’s interesting. And so they asked him, like, what are we supposed to do?

[01:11:45] Chris: He goes, we believe we told you to plan. And he does this really affected voice, right? We told you to plan, follow your highest passion, without expectations, without any anticipation, and do it to your highest level. Even if the passion is a little bit more than the other one, do that [01:12:00] one, and everything will work out.

[01:12:01] Chris: It’s called the plan. I’m like, this is weird, but that’s a good plan. That’s a good plan. I’m going to teach people. Oh, you’re going to densify it. Aren’t you? Yes, I am. We paid for this. I’m going to densify the heck out of this. I want money back. So I believe that and I’m like, Hey, we agree on some philosophies.

[01:12:22] Chris: Follow your highest passion without expectations to the highest of your ability and you will live well without expectations of financial gain or anything else. And every time I’ve done that in my life, things have worked out pretty freaking good. How did we get here? I have no idea.

[01:12:43] Ami: We have, we have time for one more question.

[01:12:46] Ami: And, uh, you do a fair number of these. You do them in person, you do podcasting, all this stuff. What is the question that you wish people asked you before? Uh, that I haven’t done tonight, or a crowd like [01:13:00] this. What do you want to share? Okay,

[01:13:01] Chris: I want to do something different. I did write something on the board over here.

[01:13:04] Chris: I thought there was going to be a Q& A session, so I was ready to do whatever you want. Despite being really tired from fishing for four days, okay? You’re like, cry me a river, bro. Okay, so whenever people ask a question, they ask horrible questions. You know this, if you watch anything and listen to anything, what I do is like, my patience for stupid questions is like about that much.

[01:13:24] Chris: Right? And no matter what we say, everybody follows down the same fricking steps. Well, Chris, when I was born, this happened, and then my mother met my f You know, it’s like, why do I need all that? I don’t need that. So, there’s this formula for story. It’s a character wants something and there’s an obstacle.

[01:13:42] Chris: That’s all stories. If a story doesn’t have an obstacle or want or an interesting character, it’s not a very good story. It’s a story still, but not a very good one. So when you follow this really well, it works really well, okay? So, you are the character. So when you ask a question, just say, I’m a designer.

[01:13:56] Chris: I’m a, you know, a mechanic. I don’t care what you are. Just say [01:14:00] whatever you are. I want this, but the obstacle is this. If you can just say this 99 percent of the problems baked into your question. And then here’s a really cool thing. If you can just frame it, like I’m this person I want, this is what’s standing in my way, you’ll be able to answer your own question.

[01:14:15] Chris: And if you learn this trick, you’ll be up here answering questions to people you never met. It’s not that hard. And I will show it to you live demonstration. How to find the answer in the question. So a well constructed question is like at least 50 percent of the answer is really weird. And you’ll see, and I’ll diagram it for you, but I need a good question to start.

[01:14:34] Chris: What happens inevitably is you ask terrible questions. That takes me so long to get through, but once we were able to get the question on the board, the answer will be evident to almost everybody, except for the person asking it. That’s how that works. Right? So what is your character? I don’t need your biography, your Wikipedia page.

[01:14:50] Chris: Just give me a little bit of this. I want that. And this is what’s standing in my way. Now I added some parts to this later today. Cause I thought people were going [01:15:00] to ask me about how do you make content and things like that. I’m trying to anticipate some of those things. If you write your next LinkedIn posts, Instagram story with, I wanted this, but I couldn’t do it because this happened, but what I learned was this.

[01:15:14] Chris: Your stories will be 10x better than it is today. People do not follow basic formulas. Because do you know why? Because you don’t follow directions. We already know that. We established that already, right? And the one little thing you can add is at the end of it, ask them a reflective question. Tell me about a time when you experienced this.

[01:15:31] Chris: Tell me a time when you were stuck. And then what happens is they start answering. This is the beginning of dialogue. And we know that the algorithm loves engagement. This But most of you failed to ask a reflective question. And then when you ask it, follow up with people. So you know what I love about the community that’s gathered around the content that we get to make is they should show up for the comments.

[01:15:59] Chris: It’s an educated [01:16:00] group of people. There’s some dumbass people, but there’s some really smart people in there. I’m like, wow, I didn’t know that. You asked an even better question back to me. Let’s dialogue. And some of those people ask such good questions or have such great responses. I feel like I have to add them to follow them and keep in touch with them.

[01:16:16] Chris: That sounds like a warm lead or at least a future friend. So you just follow that very basic formula. It will work for you. Okay. And you’ll see, it’s not magic. Some of you guys will give me a really dumb story. I’m like, well, what stops it? What’s the one. And then it’s like, it becomes a good story. I could do it most of the time.

[01:16:33] Chris: Just freestyling in my head because I understand frameworks and I know how to apply them. So let’s take on a question. I don’t want to ask myself a dumb question. It just never makes any sense. Okay. So somebody who’s got a really good one, cause you’re gonna blow it for the transcript, they’d not be happy with you.

[01:16:50] Chris: Think about the character, that’s you. Don’t ask for a friend, it needs to be you. You have a want. It can be any want, and what’s the obstacle, okay? [01:17:00] Alright, you have the most interesting shirt, so you get to ask the question. Yeah, you. Who’s that? That guy right there, yeah. So, yeah, stand up man. Alright, you can say it.

[01:17:11] Chris: No, no, I’m sorry. I over pointed. The person above you, my bad. Hawaiian shirt guy, sit down. Color block pattern guy, stand up. Yeah, man. Okay, you ready? All right. Sorry. I was like, I have a stray finger. I meant like that. My bad. Okay, go ahead. Everybody with an interesting search start standing up like it’s me, bro.

[01:17:28] Chris: It’s me. Go ahead. What’s your question?

[01:17:32] Attendee: I am a designer and I want to find interesting scenarios where I can help people through design and what’s standing in my way is being able to Reach them and talk to them and find out what they need to do.

[01:17:52] Chris: Okay. Okay. Stop. That’s a generic question, bro, what kind of designer are you?[01:18:00] 

[01:18:01] Attendee: Mostly a spatial designer architecture

[01:18:05] Chris: Okay, now I got even weirder. You’re You’re a spatial or that are you a special designer? spatial architect Space. You’re an architect. Why don’t you say I’m an architect? Why you got to make it so complicated? Well, are you an architect?

[01:18:22] Attendee: I’m not registered, but yeah,

[01:18:25] Chris: I’m not going to call the board.

[01:18:27] Chris: Okay. What the heck is wrong with you guys? Well, I’ve not passed the exam yet. I didn’t put them at your freaking architect. Just say I’m an architect. God dang it. See what I mean? You guys make it too complicated. I’m an architect. Everybody here know what an architect is? Yes. You guys know what a spatial designer is?

[01:18:49] Chris: Come on, okay. You’re an architect. You want to do interesting things. We ban the word interesting. It doesn’t mean anything.

[01:18:56] Attendee: Mm hmm.

[01:18:57] Chris: Cut through the BS. Are you Canadian?

[01:18:59] Attendee: Yeah. [01:19:00] 

[01:19:00] Chris: Just cut through the BS, man. Just tell me what you want. In basic baby fifth grade language, okay? This is the other problem. We use abstract language.

[01:19:08] Chris: And before, our friend over here says, Speed. Speed. As my son would say, Pacific, be very specific. Okay. Be Pacific. What do you want? Don’t say it in a complicated way. I’m an architect. I want what say I want what design cool buildings. I want to design cool buildings. Cool. Does that sound like anything? Like what he said before, not even close, you know, you’re all laughing, but I know the next person to do the exact same thing.

[01:19:39] Chris: Be real. What’s the problem with being real? I want to design cool buildings?

[01:19:44] Attendee: Right.

[01:19:45] Chris: What kind of buildings? Residential? Commercial? Retail? Um,

[01:19:49] Attendee: hospitality, hotels.

[01:19:52] Chris: Boutique? Mega hotels?

[01:19:54] Attendee: Larger, yeah. What’s large? [01:20:00] Um, Bitfine Boutique and Massive Resort.

[01:20:03] Chris: How many rooms, man? A hundred. A hundred. I want to design cool hotels.

[01:20:11] Chris: 100 plus rooms. What’s your obstacle? You don’t have a license.

[01:20:25] Chris: Hey, go get your license, next. You see? A well formulated question, the answer’s right there. Do I need to write out the rest of it? You’re just early, right?

[01:20:37] Attendee: I’m sorry, I’m early?

[01:20:40] Chris: You’re early, you don’t have your license yet.

[01:20:42] Attendee: No, I’m not in that. Yeah, it’s a little more complex. So I don’t want to do the architecture part necessarily, it’s architecture is complicated.

[01:20:52] Attendee: But I want to do the more of the initial stages, like the concept design.[01:21:00] 

[01:21:02] Chris: Why didn’t you say that then? You see, I told you how this is gonna work. It’s gonna take us half an hour to get a person’s question out. So you want to do conceptual designs so that you don’t need a license?

[01:21:15] Attendee: No.

[01:21:16] Chris: Is that right? Yeah. What do we call that? Spatial design.

[01:21:26] Chris: There’s a reason why I only do these talks once a year. You guys test my patience here. It’s not spatial design. It’s a four poop spatial design, guys. Yeah. Come on, man.

[01:21:41] Attendee: Design direction.

[01:21:42] Chris: Design direction. Sure. Is that what it’s called?

[01:21:46] Attendee: That’s what I’m calling it.

[01:21:48] Chris: There isn’t like what we can do. We can do something.

[01:21:50] Chris: We can actually invent words by combining words. People already understand.

[01:21:56] Attendee: We can, you said, or we can’t, we can

[01:21:59] Chris: take two words. [01:22:00] People already understand, put them together and that’s what you want to do. So I want to design. Okay. So design direction. We bet. Okay. Whoever gets the mic next work through this problem first, please.

[01:22:10] Chris: Just for the rest of us, okay? I wanted to do design direction for cool hotels, but, so I, because I don’t have a license.

[01:22:22] Chris: Right?

[01:22:26] Chris: And you don’t pay Jack. No, no, he wants to do the visual parts, all the fun stuff that architects have to painfully crawl through.

[01:22:36] Attendee: Yeah, you can call it experience design. It’s But then it gets mixed up with like UX, that kind of stuff. So, yeah, experiential

[01:22:43] Chris: design. Okay, we’re in trouble.

[01:22:46] Attendee: Yeah.

[01:22:47] Chris: We don’t know who the character is here.

[01:22:49] Chris: It’s getting really confusing. So, here’s what we do know, though. If you can’t articulate the question, our chances of finding the answer are pretty hard. It’s really difficult.

[01:22:59] Attendee: That’s right.

[01:22:59] Chris: [01:23:00] Right? So, work on your question, and then we’ll figure it out. But we do know a couple things. You like to do the fun things, not the hard things, and you don’t have a license.

[01:23:10] Chris: So some of those things can work. So do you wanna work with architects and help them to visualize or you wanna do the visual part? Like who’s gonna pay you to do that?

[01:23:21] Attendee: So I’ve been doing this for like. I work with, like, property developers, I’ve worked in house for property developers, and I have done this process.

[01:23:33] Attendee: Now I want to see if I can do it as an independent, as a, as a, as a consultant.

[01:23:41] Chris: Okay, so we can probably construct this question a little bit better. Who here paid attention to English class? You want to workshop this? Hand the microphone to somebody else. Raise your hand if you’re really good at English and understand how to rephrase this question.

[01:23:55] Chris: Okay, hand it to the gentleman who talked about focus. You’re the focus guy, [01:24:00] right? Purpose, focus?

[01:24:01] Attendee: Uh, I tried to help a friend recently, and he kept shifting the goal poles on his interest. And I just said to him, look, I don’t know how to help you. I want to help you. You gotta know what you want, exactly why you want it, so that I can help you.

[01:24:15] Attendee: Okay friend, you’re gonna rephrase this for us. He wants to be a conceptual designer of architecture.

[01:24:20] Chris: Yes. I was waiting for somebody to say that.

[01:24:26] Attendee: He’s focused on concept and design for architecture. That’s it. And he wants to find clients but doesn’t know how to.

[01:24:35] Chris: Right? Yeah. So he could say like, I want to design cool conceptual architecture for hotels that don’t exist yet but are looking for a preview of what it could be.

[01:24:46] Attendee: Yeah, you’re gonna, you’re gonna get clients who are looking to do some kind of, we’ll call it a pitch deck using film terms. He wants to be the guy they hire comes along and designs the concept for them. They figure out how to put it together.

[01:24:59] Chris: [01:25:00] Does that sound okay? No, don’t do that. Yes or no? Don’t go Is it yes or no?

[01:25:11] Chris: No. Look, I know it’s not possible, but I’m about to fire you. Okay? Okay, let’s move the microphone around. Do you want to try to land this plane or no? We’re going to move on. Do you want to land this? Do you want to articulate what it is that you really want? Yes or no? One more sure and we’re going to move on.

[01:25:30] Chris: I do have

[01:25:31] Attendee: one though, but for me, if I No,

[01:25:33] Chris: I asked you to do it for him. I did do it for him, yeah.

[01:25:36] Attendee: Look, he wants to be a conceptual designer for architecture. That’s it. No, he said sure. He’s not buying it. Then he doesn’t know what he wants? No, no, no, no, no, no,

[01:25:44] Chris: no. We don’t get to do that. It’s a safe space.

[01:25:46] Chris: Hand him the microphone. It’s not a safe space. I’m very violent, but it’s safe space. When somebody else talks, go ahead. You get one more shot, say what you want, man. Be clear. [01:26:00] 

[01:26:00] Attendee: Um, I want to be the vision setter for, um, large, um, hospitality projects, um, doing the experiential design. Uh, of those spaces and my, uh, obstacle would be, as you said correctly, how to, um, find those clients.

[01:26:33] Chris: Okay. Okay. We’ll work with you. Okay. Because how much time do we have?

[01:26:41] Chris: Okay. We’re going to have to end with this. So we’re going to finish this. Okay. So we’ll write it out. I want to be a vision setter.

[01:26:53] Chris: For cool, large hospitality projects? Yes.[01:27:00] 

[01:27:09] Chris: Right? And, create the experience? Mm hmm. Use your words again.

[01:27:15] Attendee: Create the experiential design aspects.

[01:27:27] Chris: Yeah. Wait, hold on. I can’t listen and write at the same time. And create the experience? What?

[01:27:34] Attendee: Create the experience for those projects. That’s it. Experiential design. That’s good

[01:27:40] Chris: enough. Okay. But, what’s your but? The obstacle is I have what? The obstacle

[01:27:46] Attendee: is for me to be able to find those, um, clients.

[01:27:52] Chris: But I don’t know how to find the clients.

[01:27:54] Chris: You need to say it right now. We’re running out of time, bro.

[01:27:56] Attendee: Yeah. .

[01:27:58] Chris: No, I didn’t. I didn’t understand, [01:28:00] but I don’t know how to find the clients. Yes. Okay. We good? Yeah. Uh, give us back the mic. Alright. Okay.

[01:28:16] Chris: Okay. Okay. This is a much better articulated question with specificity. Now I know who you are and what you wanna do. It’s pretty clear. I don’t know why you didn’t start with that. Like I told you guys, be clear before you raise your hand. So he wants to do vision center. I understand what that means for cool and large two conditions for hospitality clients.

[01:28:36] Chris: That’s very clear. That’s your market, right? And to create the experience, something, something, but I don’t know how to get, how to find clients. Okay. Now here’s a really cool, weird part of all of this. What is the most important part that we need to help them figure out? Okay. What have you tried? What have you tried, friend?[01:29:00] 

[01:29:02] Chris: Okay. The answer is try something much. What’s wrong with you, friend? You haven’t tried. How about you try a couple times? It’s clear, right? Well, you know, the thing is, there are lots of people who teach you how to find clients. Sometimes I do it. Other people do it better than me. Try doing some of those things.

[01:29:27] Chris: Can you guys see the answer already up on this page? What would the answer be? Yes. All the way in the back.

[01:29:49] Chris: Wait, that’s his answer. What?

[01:29:56] Chris: Okay, is this, are we using Canadian rules here? [01:30:00] Okay, south of the border, when we ask for an answer, we look for an answer based on the question. Not like, what, I, what?

[01:30:09] Chris: But he ain’t got the kind of money.

[01:30:15] Chris: Oh, I, I know her answer. Be rich, bro. Dawg. Have bags, you know. What the heck? Okay, okay, I love your answer. Be rich. You have a rich uncle? Aunt? You’re his friend?

[01:30:34] Chris: Okay, for people who don’t have rich friends or aren’t rich, let’s figure out this problem. Okay, it’s clear he doesn’t know how to find clients, because he hasn’t tried. So the first part might be to try, but beyond that, like, what do you think the answer is?

[01:30:47] Ami: I would add something here. I think that one of the sneaky bits is that the hospitality clients aren’t the clients.

[01:30:54] Ami: The clients would be the developer that may be trying to raise investing money. [01:31:00] They need concepts to

[01:31:01] Chris: sell that. Okay, I love what Amir said here, okay? Well, now we have to say, who are the clients? Who’s going to actually give you money for this? Do you know? Who is it?

[01:31:19] Chris: Okay, that’s fine. You know your business, so it’d be developers or hotel groups, right? Okay. Okay. So, we need to know who the clients are before we can sell them something. That seems pretty clear. So, then the rest of it is pretty easy. What do they want? What do they need? What are their hopes and fears?

[01:31:47] Chris: What’s a big problem they haven’t been able to solve? You’re looking for problems. Have you done that before? Have you done that before? You have? What are their big problems?[01:32:00] 

[01:32:08] Chris: Okay. Alright. So, articulate the value prop then. Do you know how to do that?

[01:32:21] Chris: Okay, here’s how you do this. It is a very simple formula. I’m just going to freestyle. I don’t have it perfect in my mind right now. You would say something, you know how hotel developers get into cost overrun, invest in projects that don’t wind up materializing, fulfilling the experience they hope for? I help solve that.

[01:32:39] Chris: Wanna know how? Some of your content needs to sound something like that. So when we get clear on who we’re working for, what the problems are, assuming that you understand it, then you need to put that where they look for that kind of information. Probably not in Behance. I’m guessing. Right? You probably should write articles for people who [01:33:00] are rich and where they read and solving these kinds of problems.

[01:33:03] Chris: Thanks. And then you can become a thought leader in that space to be known for this, okay? So, I, I, I, I can’t emphasize this enough. If you can articulate your question clearly with specific information, then you start to understand what the problem is. And everybody already knew how to find clients. We didn’t even need to hear this first part.

[01:33:26] Chris: You could have just said, I need clients, I don’t know how to get them. And we could have worked with that. Because all the other stuff was just extra information, believe it or not, okay? And then we would start to unpack this. And so there are so many resources out there on how to find clients. You just need to figure out who you’re working for.

[01:33:44] Chris: It’s not, not hard then, right? So the gentleman up there about clarity of purpose and vision, if you get clear. Everybody can do this, and then you all can see the answer, right? Can you? Be rich. That was the answer. You can do it. [01:34:00] Yeah. His problem is he’s not rich, so. And he doesn’t have rich friends. Okay.

[01:34:09] Chris: Does he let me check the passion? He doesn’t have the license. He hasn’t even explored how to do this right now. It sounds like a hobby he’s currently interested in. A passion is like this deep burning desire that keeps him up at night, obsessing over this. And he just can’t sleep because he wants to do this so bad.

[01:34:33] Chris: He can taste it and smell it. Yeah? Are you there? Are you at that level yet? See? Even his answers are like He’s not that clear. That’s okay. And that’s okay that you’re not that clear because you now know you’re not clear and you can work on that. So once you work on it, you’ll be fine. Okay? So I’m going to say this because I know we’re out of time.

[01:34:56] Chris: If you guys can just work on your content. Describe a [01:35:00] character that wants something and there’s an obstacle. Okay. And the lesson that you learned is this. Now I was asked this question. What if the character in the one, the obstacle is not business related. And if you read a lot of my posts on LinkedIn, it’s actually not business related at all.

[01:35:14] Chris: It’s a very personal story, but what you do is you build a bridge to the business lesson. You connect that and that’s the gift of creativity. You bend the story to this thing and you make it work. And there’s a thousand ways to do that. And then ask a reflective question. Hopefully what that’ll do is it will create interest in the clients that you want to work with, that you don’t know how to find.

[01:35:35] Chris: If you do that over and over again, and you connect these things, eventually somebody’s like, that’s fascinating. Your perspective about building cool, conceptual designs for large scale hotels, I want to talk to you. Have you done any of that work yet? You have? You posted things?

[01:35:58] Chris: Who’s gonna read your, who’s gonna go to your [01:36:00] website? Yeah, so the answer is you haven’t done that. Okay, that’s the answer. Okay. I’m so sorry, I wish I could do more, but I think we have to

[01:36:07] Ami: Yeah, let’s, let’s give a round of applause for Chris.