Links Mentioned:
Timestamp:
00:00 Introduction to Today's Episode
00:15 Chris Do's Early Life and Struggles
00:43 Building a Multimillion Dollar Business
00:46 Insights on Apple's Marketing Strategies
01:02 Exclusive Membership Benefits
01:12 Meet Chris Do: Background and Achievements
02:43 Chris Do's Journey from Vietnam to the US
05:38 Early Entrepreneurial Ventures
06:36 Discovering Graphic Design
07:20 The Turning Point: Overcoming Personal Struggles
15:33 Achieving Success and Family Life
17:16 Public Speaking and Pricing Strategies
29:45 The Value of Brand and Storytelling
34:30 Materiality and Quality in Fashion
36:00 Apple's User Experience Mastery
39:33 The Power of Brand and Empathy
42:56 The Importance of Flexibility in Public Speaking
48:43 Scams and the Value of Hard Work
54:04 Building a Successful YouTube Channel
58:36 The Role of AI in Content Creation
01:01:20 Joining the Futur Community
Ash Roy's and Chris Do's Video Transcript (This transcript has been auto-generated. Artificial Intelligence is still in the process of perfecting itself. There may be some errors in transcription):
Ash Roy:
Welcome to today's episode. I'm thrilled to bring you an insightful conversation with the Emmy winning designer, Chris Do. If you're a professional or a small business owner looking to build a brand that attracts your ideal clients and turns them into lifelong fans, you're in the right place. In this video, Chris shares his powerful story from,
Chris Do:
I said, you know, let's screw that girl.
You know what? Screw my brother and his girlfriend. You know what, mom? I'm going to show you one day, and you're going to regret saying that, you know, this wasn't going to be a good idea.
Ash Roy:
But that's just the beginning. Chris also shares a story which begins when he was just three years old, and he fled Vietnam with his family during the fall of Saigon in 1975.
Chris Do:
We leave everything we know behind. Culture, our language, our food, our customs, everything behind. We've lost everything.
Ash Roy:
To building a multimillion-dollar business in the United States. We also discuss the genius behind Apple's marketing strategies and what it takes to really grind and do the deep work in today's competitive world.
This interview is packed with wisdom and insights and bold takes that will help you elevate your business and capture your audience's attention. By the way, this episode is straight from our membership archives. If you want early access to interviews, just like this one, head over to Productiveinsights.com/membership. And sign up today. Now let's dive into this conversation with my friend, Chris Do. You won't want to miss this. Let's do this. Welcome. This is Ash Roy from ProductiveInsights.com. And I have somebody I really admire on Productive Insights podcast today. And that's Chris Do. Chris Do is an Emmy award winning designer, a director and educator with over 27 years of experience in the creative industry.
He's a founder and CEO of The Futur and an online education platform and teaches business design to creative thinkers. Additionally, he's a chief strategist of Blind, an award winning, He founded in 95, his work and teachings aim to influence the way creative entrepreneurs build their careers and businesses.
And today I'm delighted to talk to Chris about his business, the futur, how he approaches increasing prices, the mindset that goes behind that and how he's accomplished some pretty impressive goals, including reaching 2. 42 million subscribers on YouTube and about half a million followers on LinkedIn.
Welcome to the Productive Insights Podcast, Chris. It's a pleasure to have you.
Chris Do:
Thanks for having me, Ash. I'm happy to be here.
Ash Roy:
Now, Chris, I've been following quite a bit of your content, and as people may know, I only invite people to this podcast that I admire. Previous guests who have been kind enough to be guests, uh, include Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki, Sonia Simone, Victoria LaBam.
I would love you to share your story with our audience, because I was very touched by it. Your family migrated to the United States in 1975. English is not your first language. Just tell us a little bit about your journey from where you started all the way to where you built your brand and your business, where you're charging 30, 000 for a 45 minute speaking engagement.
Now that's not supposed to be a flex. That's just supposed to. Talk about a journey that I would love you to share that journey, how you went from where you started to where you are today.
Chris Do:
We're talking about a 52 year long journey here, or maybe 49 year. My parents fled Vietnam, April 30th, 1975, the fall of Saigon.
I'm three years old. We land in Kansas City, Missouri, where we're going to reset our life. We leave everything we know behind our culture, our language. our food, our customs, everything behind. We've lost everything. And so we're starting over from the very bottom of the rung. My dad was, um, in the military.
I think he was an engineer. And so, he didn't have to actually shoot a gun or do anything like that. And my mom worked at the embassy as an assistant. So, we landed in America and it was through, I guess the kindness of people in the church because we're Catholic and the Catholic church members supported us.
So, we had sponsors. And so, my very large family, my mom and dad both have like, 10 brothers and sisters each. We got split up because no sponsor wants to look after that many people in terms of supporting them. So, most of them went to California. Some of them landed in Kansas City. A few of them landed in Arkansas.
So eventually my parents are able to make enough money. To move from, from Kansas City to San Jose, California, where I essentially grow up from there, from about the ages of five to 18. And throughout this time, as many immigrants, this is not going to be anything that's unusual. There's an emphasis on education, about trying to do better than your parents and living the American dream.
My parents worked very hard. So, when we grew up, there was a term it's called latchkey kids. Essentially, they go to work before, basically before you wait for you up and you lock the door, you go to school, you school bus back, and then you take care of yourself until mom and dad can come home and take care of dinner and take care of you.
So that gave us a lot of space to figure out who we were. We got into a lot of trouble, nothing criminal, nothing like that, but we would explore construction sites, go into caves and light firecrackers. We would go to the creek. It was the incident where my brother almost drowned. And he had to be resuscitated, that kind of stuff.
So, there's a lot of wild stuff, stuff that I don't think any parent today in the 21st century would allow their kids to do. We're way more protective of children. Now I include myself in that, but we did crazy, stupid stuff and we were allowed to explore and it was, the world seemed less dangerous back then.
But one thing that I really wanted to do was to be a person of my own means, to have the freedom to buy the things I wanted. I'm not unusual in that way. I think I'm just like every kid. I want stuff, and I don't want to ask my parents for it, so I'm trying to figure it out. So, I'm a teenager, I guess in my early teens, and there's this idea of a paper route, where you throw newspapers and deliver newspapers.
And that was a coveted job. Because when you're 13 years old, you can't work until you're 15 and I want to make something. So, I figured out ways to try to make money. I started a car washing business, failed because it's just too hard work. I'm too small. I go to the local Creek. I catch crayfish and try to sell them to neighbors, but I'm too shy.
I don't know who to sell it to. So, I just wound up giving it to my grandma. It's doing stuff like this over and over again, failing each and every single time. But the drive is there. I know that I want to do something where I can take advantage of this concept of arbitrage, buy low, sell high. So ultimately, I even tried to do a business selling candy because my uncle owned a liquor store.
I put in an order at wholesale, which is like an amazing concept. Like you mean the price they sell it at the stores and the price I can buy it for? This is incredible. So, I put my order in with my cousin. Who then would pick it up for me and then bring it over and I would sell the candy, would do that for a while, but I was thinking this isn't fast enough.
This is taking a really long time. So, I go through this process and it is not until I find graphic design that I have a marketable skill that requires some learning and education to get. And then now I'm worth something and I could use those skills to make a living. And I do everything to go against the wishes of my parents.
I don't go and pursue a traditional degree in anything. I get into an art school that has a private art school. That's very expensive in tuition, but I make something of myself.
Ash Roy:
As it turns out, my wife was what you call a latchkey kid too. And she came from pretty humble beginnings. She's somebody I truly admire.
Her parents didn't have. A lot in the way of means to provide for her, but she ended up becoming a surgeon. I deeply admire and respect that work ethic. In one of your YouTube videos, you shared the story about how you'd lost your way a little bit and you were living in your brother's house. It sort of picks up from there.
Can you continue that story and tell us about that transformation?
Chris Do:
So, I'm 17, 18 years old. I figured out I want to be an artist, a designer, and I graduated from high school. I don't get into any of the universities in which I applied to because I wasn't, I wasn't applying myself. That's why I didn't get in.
And so, my older brother is four years older than me. He just finished, he graduated from UC San Diego. And he says, hey, why don't you come live with me? I've got to work out and prepare for my grad school examination, things like that. Come down, get away, and these were his words, I still remember, get away from the parental units.
My older brother, his name is Arthur, I love him. He's always seen things in me that I couldn't see in myself, way ahead of it, right? And in many ways, for much of my childhood, he was like my surrogate father because he, he taught me about how to dress, how to behave, how to defend yourself, those kinds of things.
I remember when I was a kid, he would go out and party with his friends and, and, and I couldn't, so I just waited for him at home like a, like a puppy. You know, and he'd come home and I'm like, Hey, what happened? And, you know, there was the smell of a cigarette smoke or alcohol. And it's like, Oh, what happened there?
And I just sit there and try and listen to what he was saying, gleaning, whatever wisdom and stories of adventure and, and girls and boys and doing whatever they're doing. Right. That was my brother. So, he's like, Hey, come, come live with me. And I, I took that opportunity. And so, I drove down to San Diego and I wound up living with him for about a year.
And the time was meant for me to prepare my portfolio. I didn't get into school. So now I got to work on my portfolio so I can have something. And I knew I wanted to go to art center. And I enrolled in a couple of commercial art classes, what they were called back then, and the problem was I had this really sticky, messy, toxic relationship This girl that I fell in love with, the first girl I ever fell in love with, it was a bad relationship and everybody could see it but me and I held on to this idea that she was going to be the one.
It was just bad because instead of focusing on my work, I was like calling her. Back then, phone bills, making long distance calls from San Diego to San Jose and then my brother would get the bill and he's like, what is this? And my brother at this point had gotten me a credit card, he was paying things for me, and I just took it all for granted because I'm a dumb kid.
All of a sudden, there's some strife between us. And I don't think it really came from him, but the lady who he was living with, his girlfriend later to be his wife, was seeing like, hey, our life was great, and then you invite your ratty kid brother who's messy, who doesn't cook, who doesn't clean, who's racking up bills and you just take care of him.
So, I'm sure it's creating some problems. I could see that. I'm a realist, but I don't know this and I'm just like, I don't like her. And then my brother eventually gets fed up with me too. He's like, I see you, you're here, you're hanging out, you're doing homework really late, you're watching TV show, late night TV show, and you're not doing your work, you're not applying yourself and you said you would, and I was just like, you man.
And at this point, I'm going through really tough time with my girlfriend. And we break up. I find out that she's dating some guy and I'm like, this sucks. I'm feeling all that stuff to self-pity, wallowing in self-doubt. I'm telling my mom, I'm crying. I'm just like, oh, my brother is such a mean guy. He's not looking after me.
He's so cruel. And my mom's like, you, you know, your brother's taking care of you.
Ash Roy:
Yeah.
Chris Do:
I'm like, you don't understand mom. No one understands me. You know, you go through that whole bit. And then I just felt like so brokenhearted. So my girl seeing some other guy. My older brother who, who doesn't look out for me and was like, he betrayed me.
My mom turned her back on me. These are the stories you tell yourself. I remember this moment very clearly. I think it's what you, you want me to tell you. I'm in my room, door closed, just crying my eyes out. And I'm, I'm lying on the floor next to the futon and I'm lying in that fetal position just feeling the depths of my depression and my sorrow.
And I just thought, you know, I don't know if I want to continue living like this. This is a bad place. And so, I remember having an outer body experience, floating above myself towards the ceiling, looking down upon myself and like, as if you're directing a scene from a movie and you can see it from the boom arm of the crane comes up and you can see yourself.
And I looked at myself with judgment and I said, you know, who is this person? You know, and I remember thinking like, you're way cooler than this. This is a terrible person that you became and you're breaking promises to yourself. Like you broke promises to people, but you're breaking promises to yourself.
You said you're going to be somebody and right now you look like a nobody. And I dried up whatever tears I had left and went to sleep. And the next morning I woke up and I became a different person. That was like my eternal dark night of the soul. And I went really dark and deep and explored that, like, what is the ultimate outcome of this kind of thinking and this behavior?
And I was ashamed of myself. And so, the very next day I woke up, I was kind of angry. I said, you know, let's screw that girl. You know what? Screw my brother and his girlfriend. You know what, mom, I'm going to show you one day, and you're going to regret saying that, you know, this wasn't going to be a good idea.
I'm going to prove to all of you. And so, my first initial emotion was one of, Pure rage and anger. I'm gonna do my work. I'm gonna prove to you I'm not a lazy bastard But you know the weird thing is if I have to work that hard to prove them wrong, then they were right So I got quickly over the negative emotions of it and got caught up in the positive the virtuous part Which is oh my god The things you're capable of doing if you're focused and immediately people could see that who's this guy now showing up to class The person we met on Friday or new is a different person on Monday Cause this happened over the weekend, this dark night of the soul.
And I'm focused and I'm doing work. And my output is crazy now compared to everyone else. And my teachers immediately recognize this like, oh, you want to go to art center? We're going to help you. What do we need you to support you? And so, it seems like there's this whole tribe of people who are now conspiring to help you when you're ready to be helped.
And my life changes. And I tell people that's the night that the boy died and the man appeared and the boy needed to die so that the man could be there.
Ash Roy:
We could talk about this for hours. But I have a question for you. What do you think was that thing that flipped the switch for you?
Chris Do:
I advise young people, old people.
I say, you know what? I think we have emotional regulators that prevent us from going to the bottom, the depths of feelings, and also cap the heights of our joy. And I like to go to extremes. And so, when I'm feeling sad, like I feel like, Oh, the person I love that I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with is, is no more.
It's an illusion. It was a lie. It's been confirmed. My brother's always looked out for me, my guardian, my, My surrogate father has just turned his back on me. His girlfriend I didn't like because of different reasons. And like, whatever, that's not a loss to me. And then my mom, the person who was in my corner, who always believed in me.
Because that's what moms do. She didn't believe in me anymore and it just broke my heart. And I said, well, the path is total self-destruction and annihilation. And if you can see that, like it might not take a day, it could take a week, a year, two years, five years, ten years. But I could see that path so clearly.
So, it's kind of like one of those movies that you see in the Marvel Cinematic Universe where Doctor Strange hovers and levitates and he thinks about all the possible futures like he comes back in a snap he says I've calculated there's one way this works it's a narrow chance it's 1 in 48 billion but it could work.
So, I'm sitting there thinking well I know the one way it's not going to work which is to continue down this path. I'm going to be a total loser reject and I'm going to be so ashamed of myself. So, I knew that the opposite of that was the way.
Ash Roy:
So do you think that you Why did you want to dramatize the story subconsciously a little bit extra to kind of drive you down to that bottom of the barrel so that you're gonna just smash your way back up?
Chris Do:
I wouldn't say I dramatized it because what I was feeling in that moment as an 18-year-old boy was very real because this woman that I thought I was going to marry said oh yeah by the way I thought we broke up I'm dating this other guy. I didn't imagine that part and that shattered my heart. And I gotta tell you to this day it's not quite 100 percent put back together.
together. I've been through a couple of relationships since then, but once it's broken, it's like I'm guarded now. Now it's like, I realized and I learned a lesson. Never give someone all of your heart if you can't explicitly trust that they'll take good care of it. And I know that's maybe a jaded point of view now because it's like, you know, that thing that's, um, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.
It's like now I cannot be fooled twice anymore. So, and I know this and I know this about myself that I'm gonna hold back just a little bit that key to the inner chamber of the heart until I can totally trust you.
Ash Roy:
I can
Chris Do:
relate to that too.
Ash Roy:
So where are you at now? Who, who is Christo now? Are you married?
Do you have kids? You don't have to share that if you don't want to, but did the story end well?
Chris Do:
I think the story ends pretty well. But I'm, I'm still alive. So, who knows how the story ends? Because that, that last chapter is not written yet. And if I die tomorrow, I think the story ended really well. I'm married.
I married my best friend from school. My first friend from school. We've been married now since 1997. Wow. So, it's been a long time. Yeah. And I have two beautiful, amazing children. I shouldn't say children because they're adults. One is 20 and one is 30. So, you had them when you were three, of
Ash Roy:
course, dude, you do not
Chris Do:
look,
Ash Roy:
you do not look at, I know you, I heard you say that in one of the other, uh, podcasts.
I don't know what you do, but you don't look at man. Well, thank you. I appreciate you saying
Chris Do:
that.
Ash Roy:
I think it's a lot of accessories.
Chris Do:
Yeah.
Ash Roy:
Let's take the story now. I'd love to take it into. It's a great segue into mindset. We now have the backdrop of your development as someone who came to America as an immigrant.
I have a similar story. I came to Australia as an immigrant, immigrant, and I too, like you, I'm from an Asian background. I'm of Indian origin. So we have very similar values, particularly from a family background. How do you think that played into your mindset and specifically, how do you believe that has helped you build?
The mindset necessary to increase your prices from something like, I don't know, a couple of hundred dollars an hour to 30 grand for a four to 45 talk. I'm sure it helps that you've got an Emmy award and all those things, but there's a ton of hard work that went into that. So, could you just give us a little bit of a story about that transition?
If someone's listening to this and they want to charge higher prices, including me, what's your best advice? I think
Chris Do:
I have to break this question down into a couple of different parts. It's a compounded question. If you're a creative service provider, which is what I was for 20, 20 plus years, that's one answer.
And then if I'm a public speaker, there's a different answer. I'll go with the easier question first. If you want to be a public speaker and you want to be able to charge more, first of all, you have to put in the reps. This is very important. So, there's the part that nobody knows you, nobody pays for anything.
And actually, I pay to speak, meaning they pay you nothing. I have to get myself in a car, drive, pay for gas, pay for parking, pay for food, and then speak and then get myself and then leave because there's zero budget for you. And you do that for a while and you suck for a while. You're learning your craft and that's important.
But the biggest game changer for me are two things that you probably cannot control. Number one is me growing my social following. Because the number of social followers, whether you like it or not, has an impact on the perception of who you are. I think the Emmy is less important here because I know a lot of people who've won prestigious awards but aren't invited to speak and aren't paid anything.
Because I think from the lens of the event organizer, they need to put butts in seats. You need to draw people. So, they, I think, falsely assume because you have a big following that when you announce that there's some cachet and then people like say, oh, I need to see this person speak. It's like your favorite band playing one song and you want to hear them speak in a small menu.
So, I get that part. And then what I see is then there's demand and I get better speaking slots. At first, you get the worst speaking slots is we usually like after lunch, when everybody's comatose or something like that. I don't know what the worst speaking spots are, but I do know the best speaking spot is the closing keynote or the opening keynote.
So, I start moving away from the center and I start going to opening keynote, opening keynote, and then closing keynote. So, I'm like, what is going on? Such a big responsibility. The second component of it outside of growing the larger social following is when the pandemic hit. It made it a lot easier for me to negotiate because before event organizers, they have a lot of expenses, the venue, hotels, logistics, production, AV, even though it looks like they're making a lot of money.
Most of them, as far as I know, break even or lose money and it's a passion project, right? Absolutely. And so, when we went over to the pandemic, well, they had to reinvent their business model, so they're doing. Zoom conferences. Well, what are your expenses? Kind of like nothing. 30 a month. I don't know what Zoom costs.
It can't be that much. And so now they realize something that they should have known all along. What is an event or conference without the talent? And you and I, my friend, are the talent. So then I start negotiating and say, well, it's 10, 000 to speak. They're like, for a Zoom call, Chris? I'm like, yep. It's not about the Zoom call.
It's not about me getting my car. In fact, I should charge you even more for getting my car. So then they all of a sudden start to agree and that changes the whole pay structure because I was trying to get 000 pretty consistently and I wasn't getting it until the pandemic happened. Afterwards, I realized something.
It is easier for people to get them to say yes when they have no other choice. And if you stand your ground, you They either decide you're worth it or you're not, and I'm not going to sell you that I'm worth it. You have to decide. I just say that's the price. Why is that? Because that's the price. I have other things I can do.
If you want me, let me know. And the way you want me is you give me a deposit for half. Otherwise, I'll book something else. And so that started to rewire my brain, and then sooner than later, I'm like 10, 000, I'm speaking too much now. I'm on the road all the time. And then when I calculate the time in which I'm on the road preparing and building the keynotes, and then the after stuff, the VIP events and the parties, it's a lot of me I'm giving away.
So, then I said, you know what? That's not enough. I need to just do the next big jump. The next big jump. I don't go in small increments. I go in two Xs. So, from 15 grand, I just say it's 30 grand. something that I, I don't say that often, Ash, which is this. I go to conferences. I'm a really critical person.
I'm in the backstage. I'm in the green room. I'm in the audience. And I'm listening to people Bomb. Talk about themselves. Show you their portfolio and just go blah blah blah. Not entertaining. Not engaging. Super awkward. And here I am, putting my heart and soul, trying to deliver value. Be engaging. Helping them with social promotion.
Hanging out. Because a lot of speakers, what they do is they, they speak and they disappear. Because you know, I don't blame them. They're equally awkward and shy. They don't want to be around people. But I, I'm, I'm already here. I'm already bought and paid for. I want to go talk to the people now. So that's when I realized, you know what, it's 30k.
It has to be 30k. And I think now it's even low because I hear people getting paid way more than that. And I think, do I bring more value? Do I move more butts in seats? And I think I do. And if that's the case, then I need to be paid more. And here's the thing about life. You don't get what you don't ask for, Ash.
And if you don't ask for it, they're not going to volunteer to pay you more. Here's the other part to this equation before somebody misunderstands what I'm saying. If you charge 20, 000, if you charge 80, 000, I don't care what you charge, bring more value than you charge. You get booked all the time. So what people do is they'll, they'll say, I heard Chris say it should be 15 grand.
They ask for it and they go and they don't prepare and they're not that good. They haven't put in their time and their craft and they suck. That's kind of the end of it.
Ash Roy:
But how do you demonstrate the value to the person hosting the event before they book you?
Chris Do:
The way that you do that is what they do is they're auditing you.
And you know where they find you? At another event. Event organizers and producers go to other people's events because what are they doing very safely? They're picking who they think are good who brings the goods so that they're learning on someone else's dime So of the 1520 speakers that have an event, they're like those four I like I'm gonna reach out to them They got a sample.
It's like the Mrs Fields thing like taste the cookie if you like it buy the whole cookie and so I make sure I'm not just Showing up and showing up. It's not giving a talk. It's a performance. It's an audio-visual human performance in a connection. And they see me at the parties talking to people, not being weird and saying, Oh, I'm happy to take pictures and sign things I'm game.
So they see that they're like, okay, this person knows how to show up and deliver it. And they're mapping it to their audience and what they think the next component is when you get on the phone and I usually I don't take a booking until I know what they want me to talk about in the format. Cause I need to be a discretionary seller of services.
I have to use discretion; I have to be discriminatory. You're doing something on this and I don't think I'm a good speaker for that. I don't want to show up to that because it just, it's going to make me feel like I have to do all this extra work and I'm not an expert at that. There's probably better people to do that than me.
And I think they can respect that. That makes them want you even more. Well, what would work for you, Chris? Well, I'd like to speak on this. Does that work for you? Yes, it does. Well, let's get contracts drafted and I'll be there. And I'm really easygoing. One of the things I learned from being on the road and being in the service industry is make it easier for the people who hire you.
Make their job easier. Sign the contracts, show up on time, go to rehearsals, do everything. The only thing that I don't do and I don't comply with and sometimes it aggravates them is I don't send them my deck ahead of time. They always ask, where's your deck? I'm like, I'm still working on it. And the truth is, I'm still writing it.
I'm not even working on it yet.
Ash Roy:
Do you tend to leave things to the last minute or is there, is there a reason for that?
Chris Do:
There is a reason for it because I'm reading, researching, writing, pontificating what it is that I think is the most relevant thing to them. I don't give cookie cutter talks. I don't have a book of talks where I'm just like, yeah, one of these three, you could just pick it on a la cart menu.
And I think that's wonderful for people who can do that. I just. I just don't do that. It's tough. And I think if you want to be a professional speaker, you should have a couple of templatized talks where you can give it a drop of a dime. So that's why I don't do that.
Ash Roy:
It's very interesting that, uh, listening to you, because pre pandemic, I was doing quite a lot of public speaking and just realized as we're having this conversation that I've kind of shrunk back into my, into my cave a bit.
I used to be an extrovert. I don't know what happened. I've become an introvert now. And I remember Seth Godin. Telling me in episode 200, he told me a story about if you want to be a marathon runner and you go to a coach who's gonna teach you how to run a marathon, the coach is not gonna tell you where to put the tired.
Uh, this is a typical cym. He's not gonna tell you how to run a marathon without getting tired. He or she's gonna tell you where to put the tired, but they're not gonna teach you how not to get tired. And, and basically what he was trying to tell me is if you're feeling fear, you're probably doing something important.
In most cases, you need to run towards the fear. One of my members, I have a membership community like you do. You mentioned, uh, something about music bands and stuff. And I just want to say, I'm a huge fan of Coldplay and Jet and you've worked with them. So that's just amazing to me. But one of my members, uh, his name is Philippe Guichard.
And I want to give him a shout out because he said something very interesting to me in one of our membership calls yesterday. And that was, he said, I said to him, I'm going to be talking to Chris Doe tomorrow. And he was like, wow, I, I like his work. And I said, he said, you know, in terms of pricing, I think it's important to be reassuringly expensive.
So I love that phrase. So. Kudos to you, Philippe, for, for saying it. Would you like to share your thoughts on what it means to be reassuringly expensive?
Chris Do:
I don't know if that's my term. I love it. So I'm going to pretend like, uh, we, we've had that conversation and it came out of my mouth hole, but, so we, we know what expensive is.
Expensive means out of reach, too much, not worth it, expensive, right? It's like a thing that we have to contemplate a lot and then we know what it means to be reassuring, where we feel confident in our. In our position, in our decision. So reassuringly expensive. We put those two words together. My deduction is it's worth it.
You're making a good decision. You know, there's something that I'm relatively new to is the world of luxury goods. And here's the weird thing. They're very expensive. Is a jacket or sweater worth two grand? I don't [00:27:00] think so. It didn't cost that much to make it, I know that for sure. But here's the weird thing, if you look in the second-hand market, which I've, I've purchased a few things in the second-hand market, they hold their value.
So my wife told me, don't go to the second hand market, just buy it in the store, get the full experience and whatever it is that you want, and then when you're tired of the piece, You can sell in the second hand market and you'll only pay a few hundred bucks to have worn it and to have Enjoyed it and it doesn't go into the landfill.
It's great. So don't buy that junk anymore buy the stuff that you really want She's given me full permission to indulge in my shopping adventures, which is not a good thing for me. Don't, don't encourage me, babe. Right? So that I think is reassuringly expensive. When you buy something or you do something, you know, you're getting more value or enjoyment from, from it versus what you've paid.
And I think it's our job to earn the trust of our client, to reassure them along the way, to reduce risk.
Ash Roy:
I want to share something, a couple of things around that when I did my MBA, which I have to say I was quite skeptical of at the time. And I'm still skeptical of it in some ways now, because some of the people who graduate with MBAs think they're God's gift to humanity and they're not. One of the biggest things I learned from my MBA was how little I know.
Price signaling was something they talked about and I thought at the time it was hogwash. I turns out I'm wrong. Oh, I was wrong. What's the difference between somebody who pays 5, 000 for a Prada handbag, and 50 for a functionally identical bag? Maybe the stitching is not quite as good, maybe the materials aren't as good, but does the same job.
The difference is, and I love this, Seth Godin told me this, he said, when people buy something, they're buying a story. So, when a person buys a Prada handbag, they're buying themselves, in fact one of my colleagues actually bought one of these and that's why I'm thinking of that as an example, my wife's colleagues.
She dropped five grand on a Prada handbag and I was like, why would you do that? She's like, I don't know. And then I remembered what Seth said. She has worked her tail off. She's gotten to where she is. She carries a lot of risk as, as part of her job. Maybe she felt like I deserve a treat. And so, she dropped five grand for a bag that she felt I've earned the right to this status.
So maybe that's what we do when we buy Chris Doe. I don't mean to sound crass, but when we buy Chris Doe for 45 minutes, we are buying a story. We have told ourselves by watching Chris Doe perform for a period of time, consistently provide good content, consistently on social media, has built a YouTube channel to 2.
42 million subscribers, has got half a million-dollar following on LinkedIn, and we believe that that is what it's worth. And my point being, brand has value. Would you agree?
Chris Do:
It has a lot of value. This is a Michael Margolis idea, or at least I heard it from him. A product with a story is a brand. A product with no story is a commodity and the way that we measure brand value is the amount of money somebody's willing to pay over a comparable product.
We can also look at that premium as goodwill. They've earned the goodwill from you. And the example would be say like water. Water is a commodity. We can actually get it for free. You can collect water. almost anywhere in the world and drink for free. Yet we don't because of convenience and for lots of different reasons.
But so here in America we have like Arrowhead or something spring water and it's the cheapest water you can buy. It's like 39 cents a bottle and then you can buy a bottle of Voss. And Voss is like, say, three dollars a bottle. Same, maybe a little bit more liquid than that, but it's a glass jar or bottle.
It used to be, and now it's plastic. And it's like, why did somebody pay a drastically different price, like on an order of 10x, 100x different? And the reason is because they've told us a really good story. Like, Fiji is a great example. That's close to you. Fiji is like, Uh, filtered through volcanic rock, never touched by man.
And they have this image of Fiji in the back of the bottle, and you look at it and it's like, That's right. My water was not touched by anybody. Filtered through thousand year old volcanic rock. It's a good story.
Ash Roy:
It's a great story.
Chris Do:
You know, Arrowhead, on the other hand, is filtered through some river, and it's filtered water from a Pepsi Cola company or something like that.
That's not a good story. Avian from the Swiss Alps or something. I'm like, okay, or the French Alps. I'm like, okay, it's a story. I know you're a fan of Seth and you've spoken to him. I don't know if you read All Marketers are Liars, but Seth goes into this in great detail. He says, and this backs up your observation about story, is that we judge the taste of the wine before we drink it.
Ash Roy:
Yes.
Chris Do:
We've already told ourself a story because of the bottle, the cup. Mostly because of the price, sometimes the packaging of the label, like Sauvignon, you know, from the blah, blah, blah vineyard. I don't even know my wine, so that's as far as I can go. And he said that if you're a wine snob or a cognac snob, you order a glass, hand blown glass from exquisite sources and handmade, whatever it is, and then the wine tastes better.
Scientifically, it does not taste better. It's stable, inert glass. It's not going to
change the flavor, but because of the weight in your hand and the ads and the images you've seen before and the people you admire drink it a certain way. When you drink it that way, the wine tastes better. So, there are lies that we tell ourself and this is all marketers are liars.
We as the consumer are complicit in the lie. We gladly, gleefully volunteer into the lie. So, you know what? You drive the car before you turn on the engine because like most boys, at least in America, you had a poster of a couple of different cars, probably in your bedroom, it was probably the Ferrari Testarossa is the Porsche 911, or it was the Lamborghini Countach.
And we were children then, we don't even know what cars are, we can't drive, but we, we've lusted after these things. Because, the people that we admire, and the images that were put out into the world, young, virile men, beautiful women, living the life, it's James Bond, or um, I'm the driver, I win hearts and minds.
We want to be that one day. So, it's been a story we've been telling ourselves for long enough now and our peers tell us the same thing. Oh, one day i'm gonna get the porsche one day I'm gonna get the lamborghini So when we can finally afford it, we fulfill a promise that we made to ourselves as children So it completes the loop now your wife's colleague who bought the product bag bought the story But I think it's a little bit more complicated than that.
So, do you mind if I go a little bit deeper? Oh, please i'm fascinated. Yes Okay, because I do study brands and I'm just a geek about this kind of stuff. Okay. So, we look at two bags. One could be a knockoff or just a similar looking shape, but it's 50 and the other one's 5, 000. So, what's the difference? Now, most people say you're a sucker for buying product.
That's stupid. It's so overpriced. You deserve to spend all your money, dummy. And there's lots of people like that. Like, my dad, that's what my dad would think. He's like, this is ridiculous. He's not calling you stupid, but he's like, why would you ever do this? It doesn't make any sense. Utility. If everything can come from Costco, he's very happy.
Because it's a good price. The Kirkland brand is quality for him. But you know what? As one who makes things, as a craftsperson, I pay attention to lots of details. And you know, when you touch the material, the kind of vinyl they're using, it's a little sticky, it has a different sheen, and you know this, when you get into a car that's a cheap car, the plastic trim feels cheap.
The German brands have engineered or sourced high-quality plastic that costs more money, so that you don't know as a consumer, but when you touch it, it feels more premium. This is true about leather, about textiles, about everything. The wood and the grain and the finishing of it, the level of shininess.
How it makes you feel. There's something called materiality. So, the materials. is usually where discount companies make shortcuts. They make shortcuts in the materials, in the construction. So instead of doing double stitching, uh, some kind of taped hem or laser cut, they do it a different way. And it's all these little decisions where they cut corners that add to this totality of the experience.
So, you know, you give me a bag, you strip off the labels and you say, which one is better? Which one would you pay more money for? Probably 10 times I'd tell you which one's better. You know, and I met a fashion designer. He has a brand and he was recounting stories about, um, I think Yoji Yamamoto. And Yoji Yamamoto walked over, touched something.
He goes, Mm, he's like Japanese cotton, you know? And he could just tell by touching it, like where it came from. So, there's like God in his fingertips. He can touch it and he knows. You can't hide that from me. So, the Prada bag is actually, not always, made from better materials, constructed better, and the details and the proportions are exactly right.
And you and I know this. You're wearing a, uh, what is that, are those Apple, what kind of brand headphones are you wearing? Yeah, they're,
Ash Roy:
they're Apple. I was, I was going to talk about that in a second, but yes, go ahead. Yes, they're the AirPods, uh, AirPods Max.
Chris Do:
Yes, AirPods Max, right? So you're wearing like 400 headphones, I believe.
In Australia, they're 800, but yes, I'm sorry.
Ash Roy:
It hurts me more than it hurts you, man.
Chris Do:
So, Apple is one of these companies that spends a lot of time thinking about the user experience. Yes. And the user experience begins before you even decide to buy, okay? It's at the zero moment of truth and you're like, I'm not even sure I need headphones, but I'm going to start looking.
And then you see these reviews and you see other people that you admire, audiophiles or influencers or fashionistas, and you're like, Oh, that kind of looks interesting. And then eventually you make your way to the Apple store and you put them on like they feel pretty good and you're like Justifying to yourself.
Is it worth the expense? You're like screw it. I live once my ears are worth it You pay the thing and you get the box and it's beautifully packaged and the experience and the ease in which they can get you in and out of an apple store is unparalleled Unparalleled then you get home you cut it open and you slide the box open.
First of all, they solved a big problem It's sturdy plastic wrapping, but when you want to take it apart, it falls apart instantly Did you notice that? It's like a little tab. You pull it and the whole thing falls apart.
Ash Roy:
Yes.
Chris Do:
You buy something from another manufacturer. You got to take out the knife, the scissors, you're working at it.
It's like, it's childproof. Clearly, I'm a child. I can't get into it.
Ash Roy:
Yes.
Chris Do:
And then you open the box and the cardboard, it's designed to, to have a certain level of friction where it makes satisfying.
Ash Roy:
Yes.
Chris Do:
You pull it off. I noticed these things and it lands with a heft, but not too tough and not so slippery.
And then all the materials. It's like origami. It's a present. You're unwrapping this thing and it's a present
Ash Roy:
from you, to you, for you. I love that. I think it was Guy Kawasaki I was talking to about this, but as you probably know, he was the chief evangelist of Apple and he worked with Steve Jobs for eight years and I think I was telling him about my first experience when I bought an iPod.
You know, they don't sell them anymore, but it was a square shaped thing. And it was absolutely gorgeous. It had the slightly grainy feel to it. And I was an Apple hater. Like a lot of people at the time, this is, we're going back about 15 years and I hated Apple because everybody else hated Apple and, you know, they're overpriced and they're all marketing and a gimmicky and all that stuff.
But when I actually experienced that iPod. A lot of things were happening subconsciously that I didn't even realize, but I just fell in love with that device. Then I brought it home and I took it for a run and then there was this pleasant surprises, like in the middle of the click wheel, there was this thing that you pressed it and it was, you played a power song, you know, it would play a power song from your playlist where you can sprint during your run.
And I was just like, just continuous little. And Apple was 90 days from bankruptcy when they entered or re-entered, I should say, a very commoditized market, which was Steve Jobs's second act, I guess. It must've taken a lot of courage for him to cut all those products. And sure, I know he made a lot of enemies in that process because a lot of people lost their jobs and stuff, but the care, attention, and love that went into creating those products.
We're unparalleled. It staggers me to this day that Apple entered a heavily commoditized PC market. I remember going into the local stores at the time and these people, the original equipment manufacturers, were selling at such low margins that they would sell you these cables to try and Make a bit of profit because there was in some cases losing money on the hardware and these guys come into that market And they're making obscene amounts of profit to this day Now, yes, I accept that tim cook is not steve jobs and you know Johnny ivar has left and all that sort of stuff, but they're still managing I don't know whether it's a halo effect of the brand from what they did back then But they're still managing to get away with eight hundred dollars for a pair of freaking headphones To this day.
I am a bit shocked that I paid so much money for You Brand is so much more than a logo. Brand is what people say about your business when you're not in the room. Brand is what people feel when they think about your product, your business. Brand is an experience, not just in, not just a tactile experience, but also a memory that people carry about your business.
Would you agree?
Chris Do:
Yes. I agree with all that. And, and those are a lot of ways to understand brand, but I, I've been thinking about it a little bit. Maybe I'll add something to that. Please. Where a brand is just either the positive or negative associations that people have about your product, service, or organization.
What do they associate you with? High quality, stewardship, um, sustainably sourced, or vast, cheap, and good, or powerful, or heritage, or status. It's just, what do they associate with? That's it. And so, we know humans make all, all of our decisions emotionally, not logically. And so, what people mistakenly do is they talk about the data, the logic, and they're missing the whole point.
Apple made a pretty intelligent, just genius, marketing move because they couldn't compete with Intel chips for a long time. So, they stopped talking about the megahertz and the processing speed. Yes! They moved away from that. So, this is a guerrilla marketing warfare kind of concept, right? If you can't beat it, change the game, change the conversation.
Ash Roy:
Remember that tagline? I keep talking about it in all my previous podcasts. Thousand songs in your pocket. I thought that was so powerful that demonstrated so much empathy because I remember at the time all these mp3 players on the market, they kept talking about megabytes of space or whatever, and Jobs came up with thousand songs in your pocket and the in your pocket personalized it.
I remember thinking so simple and then another one they came up with. around the iPod was no more moving parts because the Discman would jump whenever you ran with it or walked with it or whatever. Empathy is just such an important part of building an enduring brand. To me, building a brand, if you imagine a cube, a business has many aspects to it, and if pricing is one side of that cube, then branding is another one of that.
Another side of that cube. You, you could argue that it's on a, not exactly a continuum, but they go hand in hand. Was that a fair comment?
Chris Do:
Yes. Except for my key would be very thin. It'd be like an iPad where prices on the other side, it's almost a two-dimensional playing card because pricing is positioning.
You don't really have a brand if you can't command a premium, your commodity. So, they're very, very closely tied.
Ash Roy:
Great point, but you can't decommoditize your brand if you don't have empathy. So, empathy is critical to deeply understanding your audience and building resonance. And that's what I believe you're doing when you're.
Creating your slides to the last minute for the talk that, you know, like when I used to do talk, I like to go into the audience and shake a few hands and speak to a few people and actually think about, you know, what brought you here? What would you like to learn from this talk? And then I'll try and weave that into the conversation.
When I'm standing on stage and speaking, because I want those people to feel seen and to feel heard. And it's quite likely that those people will go back to the event organizer and say I really enjoyed that guy's talk. And I think empathy is, as I said to Seth, it's one of the least used words in marketing that I've seen and probably one of the most important.
Chris Do:
I was a last-minute replacement speaker for an event happening in Newcastle called Atomicon. I was traveling and my producer waited for me to come back because she didn't want to bother me during my vacation. So she goes, hey, last minute replacement, something happened, family emergency, and the closing keynote, they'll give to you.
They'll pay you. They don't need to prove anything. They just need you to say yes. I'm like, yeah. Yes, fine. I'm gonna go there. And so I have many things going on. I just agreed to do a talk that's like probably less than 10 days away, which isn't a lot of time to prepare. We don't have the usual like, let's have a conference call, let's plan this thing out, or like talk about whatever you want.
Cool. Okay. It's fine. I like that. I'm preparing. I'm, um, I fly in the day before. I go to some parties I shouldn't have gone to. I should have worked on the deck a little bit more. But this is the day of the event. I'm the last speaker of the day. And it's a one day speaking thing. I'm just feeling something.
Now you imagine, uh, you, you're from sunny California, it's sun's out, 72 and sunny. I'm gonna go to the north part of England. It's gonna be cold. I bring sweaters, jackets, and layers and I get there and it's hotter in Newcastle than it is in LA. Something freaky is going on. They don't have air conditioners there because they're not used to warm weather.
Is this wild? I'm like, okay. And so, I keep thinking about this. I'm like, damn, global warming, okay. Something's happened here. And so, I keep thinking about this. And then an idea dawns on me during lunch of the same day. I grab my laptop. I said, guys, I have to disappear. I was talking to Matt Essam and Daniel Priest about it.
I'm like, I gotta go to the green room. I have an idea. I go back there. I change my slides. I'm working on it. And you know what I was thinking? I said, you know, I found a photo. This is me in LA. 10 days ago, sunshine, pool, tropical plants, everything's great. And then I get a call and we're going to go to Newcastle.
I say, yes. And I'm thinking I'm going to dress appropriately. And he said, this is the North. And I find a picture from game of Thrones and it's a wall of ice and freezing cold, and they're all laughing now, you know, I said, this is what I was prepared for, but this is what happened. And I showed a picture of an ice cube melted.
And he said, this is probably how you're feeling. But it's not because of the temperature, because it's the end of the day and I bet you your, your brain is mush right now.
Ash Roy:
That's such a great metaphor.
Chris Do:
Right? And I'm going to gently take you out of here. I'm an introvert. I know there's a lot of loud extroverts here, dancing, singing, making you sing.
I'm not going to do that to you because I wouldn't do it to myself. And that's how I begin my talk. Now, if I'm not given the flexibility, to be in the moment, in the pocket, and adjust and be spontaneous. It's a slightly different talk. The meat is the same. But you know this, as a public speaker. You have this moment where everybody in the audience is like, who is this?
Do I want to listen to you or am I going to tune out? I'm going to go to the bathroom. Or is this worth listening to? And considering, I'm a last-minute replacement speaker, my face is not even in the program. They have to put stickers on them. Quite literally, it's like, that's all you get. You get a sticker and an insert card.
Baby. Because it was somebody else. It was a woman. It was like, she had a family emergency, so here I am. So that's the kind of thing I wish [00:46:00] more organizers and speakers. Remain flexible to remain in the moment and be super present. Now you, you mentioned guy Kawasaki, I'm a fan of his. He's like, you know, every time I do a talk, here's a tip for you.
I changed the beginning of it to contextualize it, to make it familiar to everybody. So, I always arrive two or three days before this guy's speaking. Now I'll take a picture of my local market. I'll have a funny observation and he'll tell that and the audience warms up immediately. And you know what that does to you.
It allows you to give a talk you've given before and feel like it's new.
Ash Roy:
I would say empathy is the ultimate pattern. Interrupt. It's a great way to engage your audience in a way that is kind and inclusive.
Chris Do:
There's a, a, a five-point thing on a UX thing, UX design, and I saw user-centric marketing. I dunno if you've seen this.
And I, I adapted the idea and I made it tomato 'cause I was talking about Heinz ketchup. Heinz ketchup for the, for the longest part of the history, sold the bottle upside down. What do I mean by that? It's stored like this with a cap on top, but the ketchup is so thick you're sitting there like jamming it.
There's tricks and there's all kinds of things you got to do to get the ketchup. You got to get a knife. Everybody's like hit it on the label. This is dumb. So one day some brilliant designers said, you know what, flip the bottle upside down. Let gravity do most of the work. Let's put in this squeezy bottle so people don't have to do this anymore.
So, they went from a brand centric design to a user centric design. And so the five points on the user centric UX marketing, user centric marketing is this. Know me. Anticipate my needs. Simplify my life. Take care of me and reward me or something like that. I forget it, but there's these five beautiful points.
So, the first thing is to know me and then to anticipate my needs. What does that sound like? Sounds a lot like empathy.
Ash Roy:
Yeah, right. Absolutely. This is reminding me of this case study. I'm dating myself, but I did my MBA in 2004, but it was a case study that I was, that blew my mind. I think it was Southwest Airlines.
It's slightly tangential, but they asked themselves, What industry are we really in? And until they asked themselves that question, they thought they were in the airline industry. When they revisited that question, they realized they were in the transport industry and their competitors were no longer the other domestic airlines.
It became Hertz and Avis and all these other people. And they introduced a no-frills airline. They changed their whole approach to business. They implemented the balanced scorecard approach. The idea was to sweat their assets more. So that means that. Airlines had to be in the air, the planes had to be in the air more, not like a certain company that starts with a letter B, but anyway.
And they really got their assets sweating for them, they maintained them, and they turned the company around. Um, I think it was Herb something was the name of the guy, I can't remember now, but remarkable story. When we buy things, one of the unfortunate things I find that happens as a byproduct of that, Is we also fall for a lot of scams and there's a lot of scammers online.
Some of them well known, some of them virtually household names who are selling a dream that isn't achievable. The truth is I can tell you that I'll make you a million dollars in a week or a month or if you buy my course. But the truth is you're not going to do that unless you do the work. How does a person like you and I, who is trying to represent the world, Truth and make an honest offer.
How do you stand out from the noise? The outrageous promises that are screaming. I'll get you the moon, which most people know is BS But they still don't want to hear the truth, which is you got to do the work to get to the way you want to Go, how do you how do you sell the truth when everyone else is lying?
Chris Do:
It's a very good question It's very on my mind right now because my friends who know me really well You People in, who I coach or people who have gotten into my inner circle, they're upset for me. Like, Chris, you should be the richest person we know because you give so much. And yet we see these fly by night operations do millions of dollars, just like on a launch.
And here I'm grinding away, making two bucks at a time. And I think about this, I think they deserve each other. You know what I mean? So, Let's say you're a young single guy, and you see a super attractive girl who's just chasing after the trappings of success. Fancy car, person comes from rich neighborhood, and those people aren't very kind.
Let's just say stereotypes and all, and you're a good wholesome person. You're gonna be honest, and you're gonna be, you're gonna take care of them. You're gonna be kind and supportive, and you're like, why is that girl that I lust after chasing after these other guys? And I think they deserve each other.
Three marriages later, They're wrecked. They're, they've, they've got all kinds of injections and, and, and, and surgeries. They don't look human anymore. And you're like, oof, I just dodged a bullet. So here's what I think. There are a lot of people selling cryptocurrency investment schemes. Swampland, whatever it is they're selling, people are jumping in because you know what?
People like shortcuts. And I think there's only a small percentage of the population that wants to do the deep work, that are okay grinding it out, doing the difficult things. It's, it's difficult to get a degree. It's difficult to get an MBA. It's difficult to get a PhD. But you do the difficult work and you separate yourself from other people.
If nothing else, to teach yourself that you have discipline. And you have focus and you can see things through. So, if you want to get rich quick scheme, y'all deserve each other. The scammer knows. And you know what the thing is, and I'll take it to like a pop culture reference. I love movies that are filled with con artists and the con is always set up in a very specific way.
They invite the mark, the victim into something that they know is not above board. And that's how they know that no matter what, they'll never get caught because the person then has to admit, I was trying to do, cheat on my taxes, cheat on my wife, cheat on my husband. They're going to do something that they're not supposed to do in the first place.
And so I think, in a way, they deserve each other. Now, I know I'm being cold hearted. I'm not saying it literally. Right. But if you want to invest in some cryptocurrency because somebody you send somebody 20 grand, uh, You know, that's kind
Ash Roy:
of shame on you. I totally agree with you the people This is why I said at the start right people know that it's BS But they are they don't want to hear the truth, which is you got to do the work.
You got to do the reps It ain't gonna happen just because you pay a couple of grand for a course, but it's your greed and it's your laziness Yes. That is lying to you and tricking you into thinking you're going to get that result.
Chris Do:
Yes. So, they deserve each other. I don't, I don't want your money. Because look, you enroll in my program.
I'm like, uh, it takes work. Have you made your 10 calls? Have you worked on your case studies? Are you applying the principles in which we teach you? They're going to say no, no, and no. That, Chris, it doesn't work. I'm like, no, it doesn't work when you don't work. You see all these other people where it works for?
They're no different than you. The key difference is they believe and they try. You don't believe and you're not trying. So, I, I don't know how to help you. I don't want to run an anti-state or an anti-company. I'm not here to like spoon feed you. I just can't do that. So, I think. The fact that I'm not willing to go there to use those predatory practices to make promises that I know can't be true, because after all, what do I have but not my name?
If we're talking about brand, we talk about goodwill. And I want to bring it back to the thing you said. When we give you money, we're buying into the Christo story. I think you're buying a little bit more than that, but I'll go with you there. I hopefully have showed up consistently enough times. In different venues and spaces and places where you have done your vetting and you have decided I kind of like this guy.
He doesn't totally annoy me. And I think he knows what he's talking about. And he speaks my love language, which is its hard work baby. No shortcuts.
Ash Roy:
I really like you. I know that sounds a little bit silly to say, but I really like you and I'm touched by your humility. Your knowledge, man, I got to say, I've been doing this for 11 years and I'm not a millionaire.
Not even close. I say it very honestly, I'm not going to sell you the story of how you can make a million dollars. I probably should be, but I'm not. You've accomplished amazing amounts with your YouTube channel. I love your YouTube channel. I love how you do those workshops and stuff like that. And you've built it up to 2.
4 million subscribers. And this is partly a selfish [00:54:00] question. I want to build my YouTube channel, which has only got about 900 subscribers at the moment. So. What goals did you set for yourself? How do you approach goal setting? How did you build your YouTube channel to this size so quickly?
Chris Do:
When we say so quickly, I've been making content for 10 years.
Just let's put that in context. Okay. So, you'd have to start in 2014,
Ash Roy:
which I did, but I didn't, I didn't put in great content consistently. And by the way, it's funny because I was talking to Neil Patel, who I'm sure you've heard of, and he was telling me last time he's I've spoken, he's been on the podcast three times.
He was my first guest. He said he's been doing it for 20 years. So, decades, think decades, not years.
Chris Do:
We're, we're, we're using the wrong measuring stick, everybody. And, you know, I met a gentleman. He's a pastor, he's an iconoclast, his name is Erwin McManus, and I met him at a thing and he was speaking ahead of me, or no, he spoke after me, and I was just like, this man knows how to tell a story.
And then I get to know him, we have lunch, and we connected a couple times, and I'm like, Erwin, how long have you been doing this? He's like, 40 years. I'm like, oh, okay. Guys, come back when I'm 85. I'll be as, hopefully as good as Erwin is. I just have to put in the reps. I'm only on year 10. I'm a quarter his age.
I mean, in terms of his media age, his speaking age, and he gives no shit. a sermon every single week. He's giving a TED talk every single week. That's a lot of reps, man. I'm not recording videos every single week for 40 years. Not yet. Maybe I can make up for it. Let's get into your question goal setting.
Here's what I think. What we do is we set a goal. And it should be ambitious, but not so ambitious that we think it's impossible to achieve because that's, it's going to deflate us, and we don't want to do that. And so, what we do is we take a big goal and we just keep chunking it down until the goal feels it's within reach.
Before you get to 100, 000, you got to get to 20. Before you get to 20, you get to 10, 000. And then you get to 5. 5 seems like a realistic goal from 900. Let's focus on that. And you just keep moving the mile marker out. The way I describe it to people is, I set goals. Sometimes it happens really fast.
Sometimes it takes a really long time. Once I reach my goal, I don't sit there and camp and celebrate. I take that mile marker and I throw it as far as I can in front of me. So, it's out of sight. And I keep moving towards that. And I love this idea. I'm not sure it was Jack Canfield who said this or Jim Rohn.
I'm sorry. I wish I could cite the source. It's something, it says something like this. Goal setting, is itself kind of like a trick. You set the goal and it's not that important that you achieve the goal but the person you become in the pursuit of that goal. So, in order for you to 5x your subscribers on YouTube, you have to be 5x a different person.
The teacher, the communicator, the empath, the person who can do video editing. Something, something has to change within you because there's another expression. I forget who this is. But she says, if nothing changes, nothing changes. Because if you want to keep getting what you're getting, just keep doing what you're doing.
Well, what the heck? So, my team, and, and, there's some of them are hanging around with me right now. He's like, Chris, you know what I [00:57:00] love about you? I just love how your brain works. Look, what do you mean? Because he's been hanging out here for a couple days. He goes, we just finished something and you're already talking about how to improve it.
There's no time for celebration. There's no time for like high fives go around. You already think about iteration and when you hear criticism and negative feedback, you're not pushing it away. You're like, let me process that. Let's see what works. I'm not saying that you're going to prescribe things for me to do, but I need to hear the feedback and I'll decide what I want to do.
So, people don't do that. A, they're too quick to celebrate. They're not analytical. They're not looking for iterative ways to improve. They're so attached to their process and their way of doing things. And they're pushing any form of criticism and feedback away. I love clearly articulated, non-judging objective feedback and say it to me.
Straight.
Ash Roy:
That takes humility. Does it? Of course it does. I think it does. Okay to listen to feedback and not get offended by it, but rather say, okay, let me find out how I can use it. I mean, I love that. Like, have you heard of Derek Sivers? He was here in Sydney last year and we hung out for a whole day.
Our kids, we went to a local amusement park and another person I truly admire episode 222 shameless plug. He's writing a book right now called useful, not true. And he invites people to disagree with him. He likes people to disagree with him. I mean, his story is remarkable. I don't know if you've read anything you want, but it's an amazing book.
I really love that book. And I, and he wrote it because Seth Godin told him to write it. Look, we got to do this again. I would love to do this again, if you're open to it, but there's so much more I want to talk about. We didn't even talk about AI, you know, but I think it's such an important tool now when you're creating content.
I'm not saying to use it just to use it as a sounding board and wanted to share how I'm using it. And I've found it to be very effective. What I've done to use AI more for my content creation is I've created an information sheet on a word document, which outlines my goals, my objectives, my target audience, what their likes, dislikes, all that stuff, persona, empathy, map, everything.
I just upload that into chat GPT. Then I ask, I ask questions. And so, it's like having the most brilliant. Who's read about, what is it? 10 percent of the internet or something with a photographic memory who can hold in memory your entire story of your business, yourself, your likes, dislikes, and all that, and give you advice on what you should be focusing on right now.
I even upload bits of. Excel, I document what I've been doing with every hour of my time in Excel, upload it and say, did I use my time effectively yesterday? What task should I be focusing on right now? And it freaking lists the tasks in order of importance and tells me why and maps it to my objectives.
I mean, it's insanely valuable. I don't use it to write content, but I use it to be my sparring partner. I don't know if you use it that way, but I just wanted to share that. I
Chris Do:
do, and
Ash Roy:
I was
Chris Do:
listening to an Akimbo podcast with Seth Godin, and he talked about AI and what AI is really good for. It's really good at accomplishing tasks.
And so that's also a kind of, um, warning bell, if you will, or a siren to say, if your main way of making a living is doing tasks, you, you do need to start rethinking that because if it's a task that can be articulated, a machine can do it better than you. And we're entering this really strange time where there's tremendous opportunity, but there's also going to be massive job displacement on scales which we've never seen before in humanity.
So, we're going to have to look at that. I would love to talk to you about AI and a couple of other things, but I think those are each two-hour long conversation, but you'll decide. But I do want to say something. When I come back, I would like to open a conversation right back where it's going to end, which is about humility.
I think people think of humility as a virtue. I think it's almost like you're swearing at me. And we'll talk about that. So, there's a cliffhanger there. I would describe what I was talking about as stoicism, critical thinking, and detachment. I would love to have a conversation with you. I have a, an odd perspective on the word humility, because people who come to see me speak and hang out with me, it's like, Chris, you know what I like about you?
You're so humble. I'm like, take those words back. How dare you? It's not a compliment to me. We'll talk about it some more next time.
Ash Roy:
Oh, man. Yeah. I can't wait. I apologize if I've offended you. No, no, no, I'm not offended. I'm just
Chris Do:
being a little dramatic here. What? Oh
Ash Roy:
man. Yeah, this sounds
Chris Do:
great.
Ash Roy:
Let's do it.
Let's do it now. I know you have a community. Yes. And if I was wealthy enough, I would join it in a heartbeat. I can't yet. But how do people find out about it? You know, how can people find out more about you? Can you share anything? I'll, I'll link to all of that in the show notes, but Sure.
Chris Do:
We run multiple communities and I really appreciate you teeing me up for this.
'cause it's important. As I said, I, I don't want all the scam marketers to take all the money, so I have to do a little bit better job of letting people know how to give us their money if they should. So, feel inclined. I work basically on a reciprocity model, which is I teach for free. And if you, if you get value that I hope one day you come back and put something in the well and the bucket so that we can continue doing this for other people.
Now, the way we look at it, it's like there are courses and that's fine for people who are like, I want something I can quote unquote own and do it at my own pace. But if you want more human interaction, we essentially have a couple of programs and really it's just one program, but depending on who you are, we segment you into one of two, potentially three groups.
So if you're. Starting in your entrepreneurial journey, you're thinking about leaving a full time job. We have a program called the Accelerator Group. It's for people who are going from zero to 100k. These are all the foundational skills that you need to learn. When we say 100k, we're talking about USD and we'll help to get you there.
And we've seen remarkable results. People saying, I went from nothing and now I'm doing 30k per project. That's incredible. That's phenomenal. I'm not going to say those results are typical, but people are just shouting out their wins and we love seeing that. It's run by Ben Burns and Stephanie and I'm not involved.
They're really there. It's kind of step by step, hold your hand one track. Then the group that I run, it's called the pro group. And it's $250 a month. You have to make a 90-day commitment. If you can't commit to 90 days. What we don't wanna do is have people drop in and drop out. It wears their system down.
You make friends and then your friends are like, wait, where'd they go? They disappeared. And this is for the group who, who is somewhere between a hundred K to a million who wants to scale up to the next level. They have systems in place, they have clients. They know how to talk to clients. They bid, they, they do sales.
They know how to price, but they all could do that on a level better. And here's the crazy, freaky thing. I worked with a business coach for 13 years. He's since passed away. His name is Keir McLaren. The kinds of things that he taught me, you can learn in 10 minutes. If you applied it that day, you would change your life.
So, the kind of myth that people have, is to change your life, it's these difficult things and these difficult concepts. It's not. Once you achieve a level of proficiency. Because what he told me in two conversations, a total of about an hour and a half long, maybe two hours, allowed me to go from 2. 2 million to 3.
9 million in buildings in one year. And for many decades, 3. 9 million was the least that we ever did. Wow. So, it's transformative. I believe in the power of instruction and coaching, but a special person has to show up. A person who understands the value of an idea. So, if you're one of those people who are looking for the quick, easy Scammer, get rich quick scheme.
I'm not for you because it won't work for you because you want something that's done automagically. I don't sell that. If your other type of person is so resistant and they can usually tell who you are because you're like, well, Chris, you just told me that in five minutes. Why, why, why would I pay for that information?
You're not for me either. You're too dense. Okay. Now somebody asked me this question. I do want to end it on this so people understand my point of view. I worked with Kier. That first year he's, he helped me to almost literally double my business. And we're not talking small numbers, we're talking about really big numbers here.
And because of that, I continued to work with him for 13 years. We met every single week for about an hour and a half for 13 years. I spent over a quarter million dollars working with him. Now, I say this for this one reason, because people are like, well, were you learning from him for 13 years? And truthfully, the answer's no.
Not every meeting was a life changing moment. My life can't change that many times. But I knew he earned his keep for 10 years. Because of what he told me in two hours, that's the kind of person I am. I'm looking for
Ash Roy:
people just like that. I love that. And how does someone who's listening or watching find out what URL can they go to to find out about this?
Chris Do:
They can just go to thefuture.com. That's the, and future is spelled F U T U R, there's no E at the end, thefuture.com. That's it.
Ash Roy:
Thank you so much for being on the show. I can't wait to talk to you again. Thank you for your time. I'm very grateful.