259. Are You Accidentally Holding Yourself from Success | Chris Do

Chris Do, an Emmy-winning designer, entrepreneur, and educator whose insights on humility and self-worth are nothing short of eye-opening. In this episode, Chris shares his unique perspective on why humility, often regarded as a virtue, might not always be beneficial, especially for creatives struggling with imposter syndrome. We explore the thin line between humility and self-devaluation and discuss how overestimating your abilities might be a more effective strategy for personal and professional growth. Get ready for a deep, enlightening discussion that challenges conventional wisdom and encourages you to re-evaluate your own beliefs about humility and success.

Timestamp:

00:00 Introduction: Overestimating vs. Underestimating Skills

00:18 The Journey of Success and Self-Confidence

00:56 Christo's Inspiring Story

01:43 Understanding Humility and Imposter Syndrome

05:28 The Impact of Self-Perception on Success

09:44 Manifestation and Visualization in Achieving Goals

13:45 Mindset and Belief Systems

18:46 The Power of Small Steps

19:52 Commit to One Good Rep

20:48 Loving the Journey

25:18 Creating Engaging YouTube Content

30:02 Mastering Sales with Confidence

35:34 Building a Supportive Community

38:03 Conclusion and Future Plans

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):

Chris Do:

I'd rather that you overestimate your skill, not to underestimate it. If you look up the definition of humility, it is to have a low estimation of one's abilities. And I don't like that. One of the biggest things that they suffer from is imposter syndrome. They don't value themselves and it really attacks their own self- confidence and their self-esteem.

Athletes who win first place gold medal, they almost always say the exact same thing. They pre-visualize it. We only go as far as we tell ourselves that we're capable of. If we are hesitant, when we negotiate, it's going to send signals to the other person, that something's wrong, something's off. Ash may not be very good.

Really successful people, successful entrepreneurs. They love the journey more than the destination. You have to love the journey because it's a grind. When we enter into the sales conversation, our job isn't to sell. It's not to perform. It's to understand if they have a problem that you can solve.

Ash Roy:

Chris Do is an Emmy winning designer who recently shared his remarkably inspiring story on this YouTube channel and podcast. Essentially, when Chris was only three years old, he fled Vietnam with his family during the fall of Saigon in 1975. He landed in the United States with pretty much nothing with his family, and he's built a multi-million-dollar design agency.

More importantly, He's built an engaged following on YouTube, LinkedIn and other platforms. I love speaking to him last time so much that I'm delighted to have him back today. So, I'd like to welcome Chris Do from thefutur.com. Welcome, Chris.

Chris Do:

Thanks for having me back, Ash.

Ash Roy:

Our conversation was one of the best I've had in a long time.

When we finished our last conversation, towards the end, I mentioned that I was touched by how humble you were and you said that felt like someone was swearing at you and I thought that was a great cliffhanger to end on so let's pick it up there. Can you tell us a bit more about your take on what humility means to you and why you felt it was a swear word?

Chris Do:

Yeah, I think in in in most western cultures, even eastern cultures, humility is a virtue to be humble is to be to do something good. And the problem is, if we start to investigate what the word humble means, and then we start to look at imposter syndrome, there are a lot of correlations between that. And as I see myself as an artist and I work with a lot of people in the creative community.

One of the biggest things that they suffer from is imposter syndrome. They don't value themselves. They don't see what they're doing, as worthy of being paid for and it really attacks their own self-confidence and their self-esteem. So, let's, let's dive a little bit deeper. Okay. Yeah. If you look up the definition of humility or to be humble, it is, uh, to have a low estimation of one's abilities.

And I don't like that because that means like, I might be a really good basketball player, but I have to tell myself I'm not as good as objectively speaking. Right? And so, if we continue to have this kind of dialogue, then when we start to look at imposter syndrome, imposter syndrome is kind of the feeling that you get when you compare yourself to others and you feel like there's this wide gulf between who you see and who you look up to and how you see yourself.

And I find like there's odd similarities right there right. And then as parents, we kind of see our own children as we're growing, as they grow up and they start to have a high opinion of themselves and they become a little bit overconfident. So, what we do is to protect them and also to make sure they don't grow up into being total jerks.

We humble them by knocking them down a peg. In many cultures, there's different expressions for this being too big for your boots, too big for your britches, thinking too high of yourself, getting a big head. There's some, or a tall poppy syndrome is a lot of different things. Okay. Yeah. You know what I mean?

Ash Roy:

That's a big thing in Australia.

Chris Do:

There's countless other expressions of this and then when we get into the professional world or even into school, we're afraid to ask for what we want, we negotiate against ourselves and we, we feel some truth when some clients say horrible things to us.

We're like, oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. I didn't do a good job let me now work four times as hard for half as much money and so, I have a real big problem with that

Ash Roy:

Well, Chris, this is one of the many reasons I really enjoy talking to you because in my experience that has been very true for me like you, I come from an eastern background.

I was born and raised in India. I came to Australia when I was 16, I'm sure our family values are similar in the sense that, yeah, you've got to be humble. And you know what was going through my mind as you were talking about that? I was thinking, no wonder the West has been able to dominate a lot of the Eastern cultures, over centuries, because humility is not a core thing in that culture.

And you've opened my mind to this, because now I need to question. What humility means because boy, do I suffer from imposter syndrome before we started this recording. You spent half an hour with me, Chris, helping me troubleshoot problems on my camera and stuff. And as I'm speaking, I'm realizing that I've conflated humility with kindness and empathy, but the two can be diametrically opposed.

In fact, the more confident you are, the more likely you are to be empathetic and kind.

Chris Do:

There we go. Let's talk about that. Okay. So, if we say, let's say there was some universal objective way to measure skill, whatever it is, basketball, writing, speaking, art, design, and let's just say that's the truth. Okay.

And it's very hard to, in this imaginary world, there's an objective measurement. So, Ash, you walk around and let's just say, what is it that you're known for asking?

Ash Roy:

Okay, now I'm feeling very uncomfortable, but I've got a few, I don't know how to answer that.

Chris Do:

Just give me one, just for the exercise. Okay, right.

Let's just work with me here.

Ash Roy:

Interviewing.

Chris Do:

And you can make up one too.

Interview, okay. So, let's say on the spectrum of 0, you've never done interviewing before, and 10, you're like Walter Cronkite or whoever it is that you admire the most. And say, that is world class interviewer conversationalist. And that would be a 10.

Let's say there was this committee that was super objective, totally unbiased, and they were able to measure your skill as a host to interview. And whatever that number is, we're just going to pretend that it's some number. Now, arbitrarily speaking, let's just call it 7. Okay? Where you have room to grow, but you're much further along than someone who's never done it.

When you're humble, you have a low estimation of your own skill or self-worth. So, it's a low estimation. So that's one way, and then when you're arrogant, you have an overestimation or overconfident or cocky or whatever the word you like to use, then you're going to estimate yourself as a nine. And so, neither are good.

There's only one that's perfect, which is the whatever the real objective number is. But let's explore this for a little bit. So, let's just say in your mind you think you're a 3 when you're really a 7. And this can be applied to anybody in any industry. Just play along with me on this exercise. What happens when you see yourself as lower than you are?

Well, you're going to hold yourself a little bit differently, your body language might change, you might be afraid to ask someone for the opportunity, you might undersell yourself consistently, and the way that you speak, your tone of voice, your, your hesitancy, when you ask questions, your inability to make eye contact, uh, you don't ask for sponsors to support you.

You don't even have a call to action for your community to rate the podcast because you think, I suck. I'm so bad at this.

Let's go on the flip side. Let's say you overestimate your actual objective level and you're a nine. What are the downfalls? Let's look at it and what are the pluses and the minuses?

Okay. So, the downfalls are you're going to ask for opportunities that you haven't earned, and you're going to feel as if you're an equal to the people that you look up to, because you don't even look up to people because you think I'm really good at this. And you're going to ask for the sponsorships.

Now you may, from time to time acting in a way that feels a little bit off putting to a few people. So, there are some downsides, but there are a lot of upsides to this. Whereas when you underestimate your skill, you probably are less likely to try things to put yourself out there to publish, you might beat yourself up every time you listen back to a podcast and say, Oh, what, why am I so stupid?

Why didn't I ask that question? It, Oh my gosh. And you edit the heck out of this thing and then you sit on it and you never release something. So, if we're going to err on the side of thinking too highly of yourself, of your skill, overestimating or being super spot on versus underestimating I would say for right now, for most people, I'd rather that you overestimate your skill and not to underestimate it.

There are some areas in which is a super dangerous driving surgery or flying. There are things that you don't want to get into when you're overestimating your skill level, rock climbing. There's things that will get you killed or will hurt other people, but there's lots of things that we do every single day that But those negative consequences don't exist.

Ash Roy:

In many ways it feels like you're telling my story because I sat on a podcast episode that I'd recorded with Neil Patel ten plus years ago, it was my first episode, I didn't publish it for a year and a half. I think the underestimation piece is absolutely spot on. My friend Derek Sivers has released a book called Useful Not True.

His view in the book is your beliefs are as good as the action. They enable you to take. He sees beliefs as a tool rather than a homeostasis kind of thing.

Chris Do:

Now there's a piece that I think I heard on Radiolab many, many years ago about the mindset of athletes who are, who win first place gold medal. And they, they interviewed athlete after athlete, and they almost always say the exact same thing.

And they're talking about sports like swimming, where the difference between first and second place is a fraction of a second. And they said, like, what do you do? Like, well, and they didn't say these words, but they pre-visualized winning. They think of themselves at first place, standing on the podium, getting the medal, and, and having the accolades and people cheering them on.

So, they're rehearsing in their mind, I'm going to win. I'm going to have a perfect entry into the pool. My breathing is going to be perfect. The rhythm is going to be perfect; I'm going to turn exactly the right moment, I'm going to kick off on the wall, I'm going to do this. And this is what they tell themselves.

And they go to different sports and different athletes. They almost always say the same thing. They visualize winning. Conversely, the athletes that don't are a little hesitant. They're like, I don't know if today's the right day, I'm feeling a little achy, I don't know the weather condition, and so not a little bit between second and first place.

A lot of times boil down to a mindset and so you're right if we are hesitant and when we negotiate with someone even though we know we can do the work, but we come across hesitant It's going to send signals the other person Unconsciously, we're going to send signals that something's wrong.

Something's off like ash may not be very good Uh, and maybe I should be concerned maybe the price is too high or maybe I don't have enough experience and then later on what happens we don't get the gig. Now, our fear of what is going to happen is actually materialized into reality. And so that sends us new information like oh, yeah, we're not that good.

It was too much money and so in a way, it's a weird self-fulfilling prophecy

Ash Roy:

You know, they talk about the reticular activation system and stuff like that. There's a couple of conversations that come to my mind that might be useful to our viewers and listeners it certainly has helped me a lot. I spoke to a guy called Todd Herman in episode176 and he wrote a book called The Alter Ego Effect.

And apparently a lot of successful artists have used some kind of an alter ego, Beyonce used Sasha Fierce, that was the name of her first album, I believe. The Beatles had Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, David Bowie had Ziggy Stardust, and so on. And what I found it helped me to do was step into an alternative ego, I guess, with a different set of beliefs that were less limiting.

and less damaging and allowed me to pretend to be somebody else. As you were talking about the athletes, what I thought about was Noah Lyles in this Paris Olympics. I watched this Netflix documentary on these various sprinters and Noah Lyles has this, what seems to me, to be an almost unreasonable assumption that he's going to win because some of the other athletes are pretty good.

There's one tall guy whose name I can't remember and he looked to me to be more likely to win or certainly had better hardware He's taller but Noah Lyles when he came out into that Paris Olympics. He was like jumping. He jumps really high. He was jumping and he was like, really acting like he'd already won.

And I was like, man, this guy's, this guy's arrogant. But he won by a hair. I mean, he won by a tiny amount. And you've got to ask yourself, what was the difference between him and, you know, the silver medalist? Probably nothing. Nothing, in terms of physical ability and training. But he still managed to pull it off.

You know, you have to now start asking yourself, well, did he manifest it? I'm very skeptical about manifestation, but it makes you wonder, right?

Chris Do:

Well, I'm going to make hopefully you a little less skeptical at manifestation and it's a fancy word, right? So, let's let's get into that I believe and you know with the race you're talking about They had to do replay it because they first thought the other guy won race that way.

Wait, hold on a second we need to review the tape and they looked at this and I think it was that no one expected him to win because the other guy was just taken off I remember there was a little catch up that he had to do so physically he might not even be the same despite the results that his mentality said I'm going to win this guy who's ahead of me It's okay because I'm going to take him in a second I'm just going to overtake him in a little bit and he was able to do that.

Let's talk about manifesting a little bit here, we only go as far as we tell ourselves that we're capable of. Seth Godin, before he has his exercise and he does it quite often, he's like everybody raise your hands as high as you can, and then everybody's trying to raise their hand and he goes now raise a little bit higher and then he raised a little bit higher he's like what just happened? Why did we do that?

Right and his explanation is we're, we've come like we have expected in our lives. We've become accustomed to Knowing that people always ask us for more so we subconsciously hold back a little bit but let's just do this right now I exercise. So, when I say to myself, I'm going to commit to doing 30 or 40 pushups or 15 pull ups or 10 or 12 or four, it doesn't really matter.

It's kind of weird. Right before I get to my number, I start to feel a little tired, right? So, like 10, Oh, I don't know if I'm going to do this 11. And then 12, I drop off the bar. And why, why does that happen? Now there's an exercise. I think it was Vim Hof who did this with somebody. Okay. Who he's like, okay, let's see how many push-ups you can do and they do this, right?

And theoretically the lactic acid is building up in your chest or your pectorals and you should not be able to do as many or even more because you're fatigued So he goes let's do this again. And but I'm gonna do the counting this time. He goes one two seven four seventeen, so he's scrambling the guy's brain.

So, he's lost track of how many push-ups he's doing and then they stopped and he did more than he previously had done. So, we're, we're, we're understanding that a lot of this is self-limiting beliefs. We're holding ourselves back when we call someone and we're, we're going to ask them for an opportunity, a new business opportunity.

We tell ourselves there's no way they're going to hire us. They don't want what we got. And so when they say, I'm not going to hire you, I don't want what you have. Then we're like, I knew it, I just knew it. But if you're Noah Lyles and you're walking in there, like. It's just a formality when I'm going to collect the gold medal and I have to go through this just so everybody knows it's, it's not like me cheating.

So he, then he runs and he wins and it's incredible. So, I think you, you might want to re and rethink or investigate a little bit about this idea of your belief system and how they control your worldview, which then dictates your actions, your thoughts, the way you carry yourself. And then ultimately. Your body, your body is going to be held back.

Ash Roy:

Man, I love talking to you. This is just so much fun. I'm feeling so much joy in this conversation.

Chris Do:

There was an ad, and I'm not an athlete by any stretch of the imagination. I started working out pretty late in life. And there was this ad for Adidas, and it was on a street. It's a double page ad. And it's just like one road going off into the horizon, kind of like, disappearing into the horizon and it's just a normal suburban neighborhood.

And there's little bits of type and it would say, and it says just to the car, just to the mailbox. And the type got smaller and smaller. It says tracing along this imaginary road that was just appearing into the horizon, single point perspective. And it would say just at end of the street, just to the next signpost, just to the, and so it was really interesting because I'm not a runner.

But I think they perfectly captured the essence of what it feels like to run. And it's, it's just to the, whatever it is. And then when you get there, you can make a new goal. And then this is how you trick yourself into doing things that you previously dread. So you're absolutely right. And I'm spacing on the guy's name right now, but I read an article about him.

Terry Cruz, you know who Terry Cruz is? Big muscular, um, uh, African American man. He's on America's Got Talent as the host on the side. He's not the judge, but he's like, you know, and he's also the spokesperson for old spice. And he used to do the peck poppers. Like he's a very fit man used to play for the NFL.

I believe became an actor afterwards. And you think a guy like him loves the gym. So, I'm reading an article about him in men's health or men's fitness. And it says, I hate going to the gym. I hate it. It's the worst thing ever. I'm like, what? How's this possible? He goes, you know what? All I do in the morning is I put on my gym clothes.

That's all. That's just all I want to do. And then I go and have breakfast and I'm like, what am I doing? I'm an idiot. I'm in my gym clothes. Why don't I go to the gym, but I'm just going to sit in the parking lot. So, he goes to the parking lot. He sits there. It's like, well, there are a lot of people going in and out.

I'll just go in for a few minutes. He goes in and he goes, well, I'm here. He walks around and he's like, I'll just pick up one weight, just one. And then an hour and a half later, he's like, whew, finished my workout. And it's very true. Right? So, if we sit there and say, I'm going to go do a whole ab routine, or I'm going to go through one circuit, high intensity training, we're like, I'm not doing that.

And we'll find a way out. We'll find a way out. But if you're like, I'm just going to stand in the gym and turn on the TV. That's all I'm going to do. Then once you're in there like, uh, what is this? Wait, I'll just pick it up for a little bit so it's kind of really interesting how we can train ourselves to just take one small step And that is a chain reaction it leads to Amazing results I think and so I I think this could be rippled through everything.

I'm not going to read the book today I'll just read one page the first paragraph and if I don't feel good, there's another guy. His name is Michael Chang. And he, he used to like be like six pack ab shortcuts guy, but he's totally reformed now. And he's much more holistic the way he looks at health and fitness and he goes, you know what?

People get this all wrong. You know, what you should do is commit yourself to doing just one good rep and see how you feel. So just don't, that's it. Don't commit to doing 100 or 300, whatever. Just one good rep. And then if it gives you joy, if you, if you feel exhilarated, if your heart's pumping and if the inner talk is I'm doing something good, then you go do one more and then stop and say, do I still feel good?

And if I feel achy, if it doesn't feel right, I'm pushing myself too hard, then stop, but if it feels good, do another rep. So, you see this idea, this philosophy is rippled throughout lots of different things, and this is how I think we can. In a way, navigate ourselves to greatness.

Ash Roy:

And this is a great segue to talk about how you, in my opinion, have achieved greatness as a YouTuber, as a designer, you've won an Emmy award.

I've noticed that I tend to conflate the results. with the journey. I look at Chris Do's channel and I see 2. 5 million YouTube subscribers. Wow. And I remember asking you to the towards the end of our last conversation, how did you get there or something? And you said 10 years, because I've been on YouTube for 10 years, but I haven't uploaded consistently until March this year.

And it's been growing quite quickly since then, consistently going towards that letterbox or that lamppost is how the marathon is run. It's not run by saying, I'm going to run a marathon. It's run by saying, I'm going to run the next hundred meters and so on. So, it's a far more dynamic mindset. There's a lot more flux in that process than most of us assume because we conflate the outcome with the journey.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

Chris Do:

I think it is not an original thought, but a lot of people will say something to the fact where really successful people, successful entrepreneurs, successful athletes, they love the journey more than the destination. You have to love the journey because it's a grind.

And if you get joy from that, then you have the will and the fortitude to persist while other people, when they don't get the results, quit. A friend of mine, who who is desperately out of shape said to me, oh, I just need a quick win. I just want to feel like I'm making progress on my goal, but I'm not seeing the weight loss and I'm not making a lot of improvement quickly.

I just need that. I said, your whole mindset about this. I'm so sorry to say this. It's wrong. You have to say to yourself, I'm not in this for the quick win, the viral video or the quick shape body redefining moment. And there are a lot of people who will do that. They're going to take diuretics. They're, um, maybe Ozempic.

I think that's what it's called now or something like that. And they're going to take these shortcuts because we live in this kind of fast culture. Fast food, fast fashion, instant coffee everything, uh, instant noodles. It's like we want things so fast that we forgot that it should be joyful to do things.

There's a line that I got from Ryan Holiday's book, The Obstacles, The Way. I don't know the Latin the original Latin version of it, but it goes something the translation is there's nobility in doing humble things well, and I like that a lot.

Now in our house, there's a lot of like clear division between labor, I do the work part. My wife manages the finance, she runs the household I look like I'm the CEO and she's a CHO. She's the chief home officer and I don't cook and I don't do dishes very often but yesterday I was like, you know what? I'm not on a deadline. I don't have anything to do. Let me just do my own dishes It's like a very small thing and I had like three or four things to do but before I could do that, I had to clear the dish rack So that was a thing and I was as I was doing it.

I told myself; this is fun I like I want to make sure the dishes are dry I want to place them in the right spot and I just want to figure out the lay of the land because I don't know where anything is and I'm just kind of trying to appreciate that moment. And so, to me, it's not so much that you the dishes are done.

It's the fact that I get to enjoy this process of like, oh This is what it's like to do the dishes and I can find joy in this or when I went to wash my wife's car an hour and a half later and my back is achy and I was sitting there thinking I enjoy this. Maybe it's not perfect but I just enjoy like the fruit of this where I get to like put Physical labor into action, which is usually not the stuff that I'm doing And I think when you start to love that the game changes dramatically.

Ash Roy:

I'm starting to find so much joy in thinking of new ways to tell stories, visual storytelling. I've been teaching myself final cut pro. I went and bought this gadget, which is an Instaflow 360, to film myself. Uh, I've been filming outdoors and I'm really enjoying the journey and I'm not getting too caught up with the analytics.

Of course, I want to know how what's working and what's not working on the YouTube channel. The journey is the reward for me. I'd love to know a little bit about your approach to YouTube. Is there anything specifically you've done to grow your channel to two and a half million followers or subscribers?

Chris Do:

I think the key, there's a couple of key lessons I've learned when it comes to creating content, especially on YouTube. Number one is if you're busy pitching and selling something, the audience feels that. And that's not really a great way to build a connection or community. So, when we stop thinking about, well, we got to sell product.

I, it was very liberating because now I could just teach and that's what I like to do. And the number two is when you show up to teach, well, now you have to like put in some work. You can't just freestyle this. You're not that good. I promise you. And many of you think you're that good. This is an overestimation of one skill.

So, I've had over 10 years of teaching in a classroom, but, but teaching on a camera is very different than teaching in a classroom. There's no one to interact with. And so, what I have to do is I have to go and prepare the lesson and anticipate what the dialogue might be and kind of explain it that way.

And then you get to enjoy that process. So, I remember the first breakthrough video, I must have stayed up to three or four in the morning preparing the keynote slides. And I was able to talk about the different processes and, you know, one thing to build confidence is when you put in the work, your confidence is going to be higher than if you didn't put in the work and, and think, Oh, what am I going to do next?

Right. So, I prepared for it and I worked on it and then immediately the audience starts to recognize it. Whoa, this is a little different. We like this. And so this is the first video that started to take off for us. And so that was a pretty clear signal that in a world where there's meritocracy, assuming there is such a thing that if you make better content than bad content, then more people will show up and you're going to see engagement go up.

More, more people are going to share and they're going to sit up and pay attention to what it is that you're saying. I think the next part is to not love so much like a really fine polished product and just say, you know what? Yeah, this is not perfect, but you know, what's better than perfection is progress.

And every time I make a video, I tell myself, Oh, there was an opportunity to do a little bit different. I'm going to try this next time and let's change this. And my team was like, what? Everything is so kinetic. And I said, yeah, that's what we want to do. Let's change the lighting. Let's move this. I noticed a couple of things.

I didn't feel comfortable here. I needed something else. And they would make these adjustments. And a hundred videos later. A you're better, you're more confident and you know how to teach in a way that works for people and you know how to deliver the message in a way that people can hear and now the camera work is, is the, what you want, the lighting looks really good.

And so, we don't worry so much that that needs to be our first entry into creating content in the last little bit. I'll say is you may have a plan going in, but be flexible enough to respond to what the audience really wants. So initially I was creating a lot of design content. I was critiquing logos and doing layout, like working on top of someone else's layout.

And the audience showed up for that. But I'm speaking to a very small audience right now, the ones who care enough to get on a YouTube channel and watch somebody else work on design. But there's a video that we started talking about pricing, about business strategy, and that video started to take off. So that was when I was thinking, I thought this stuff was really boring.

You mean people are going to sit here and watch this kind of stuff? And to my surprise, I still, I mean, I'm not surprised today, but back then I used to say for years, I make videos that teach people really boring things. I don't even know why anybody shows up, but I'm glad they do. And now it's like what people know me for.

They point me out in the street. You're the logo guy. You tell us how much to charge. I'm like, I could be, I hope I'm the right guy. Are you angry at that guy?

Ash Roy:

Guy Kawasaki was telling me when Steve Jobs used to do his talks at Mac world, He used to prepare for weeks. Weeks and he was a pretty flawless presenter and you know, that was one of his superpowers, right?

He was a he was a magician on stage in a sense and he was a showman exactly and you know he knew how to bring drama and the right font, he would have the thing crash down when he was talking about the prices and all that stuff. It was all Orchestrated but it looks so fluid and natural. Anyway, Guy Kawasaki says, you know Steve Jobs prepared for weeks and believe me, and he points to the screen and goes, you're not Steve Jobs.

Now, I don't know, maybe, but there are Steve Jobs who is watching this and maybe there are some people better than Steve Jobs. I don't know, but there's so much joy and value that comes from preparation. If nothing else, it gives you that confidence. And it tells you that, you know what I've earned. The right to be confident because I've done the work.

Let's talk about sales, which is something I think you're really good at. And I absolutely love your sales workshops that you do on YouTube. I find them wonderful. You have a combination of humor; you can put people on the spot. I find that you're very connected to your audience. It's a little bit like you're an, you know, a conductor in an orchestra.

You kind of feel when to push a person, when to induce them and tell us a little bit about your approach to sales. How does one build their confidence when they're reaching out to make sales calls and not have that rubbish going on in their mind that, oh, this person is going to say no to me. And they've pretty much, you know, set themselves up for failure before they even pick up the phone.

Chris Do:

Well, there's a lot to unpack here, so I will try. Okay. I think fundamentally, if you've put in the work to learn your craft, whatever it is, writing, design, public speaking, keynote design, whatever it is, if you put in your 10, 000 hours, as Malcolm Gladwell has suggested, then you know, it's built on foundation of skill.

So now here's the next question. Okay, so what people don't understand is I don't usually talk about this part. So they say, well, how come I can't do this? Well, did you put in the 10, 000 hours or not? Because if you didn't, you're selling garbage essentially at some point that you know, you can't do, and it erodes your confidence, your ability to hold the conversation and show up as yourself.

So, first thing is, okay, let's make sure we put in our 10, 000 hours of practice. And if you look at it mathematically divided over days in which you can work on it, it's actually really not that long. It sounds like a really long time, but you can do it in like, I think, uh, two years. So, we put in the practice.

The next thing you have to ask yourself is do I fundamentally believe that when I give someone my skill, my craft, my time, that they're better for it. Okay. So if you don't believe that, like I'm good, but actually this doesn't benefit anybody, then let's try and find an audience where they would find that valuable.

We don't necessarily need to reinvent ourselves, but what we need to do is to find an audience. I'll share a story about a conversation with Daniel Priestley on a forthcoming episode with him, he goes, if Lewis Hamilton got a coach and that coach could shave one second off a lap time for him, that would be worth millions to him because sometimes if you add up the seconds lap after lap, it's going to be the difference between first place and second place, but being a champion or a runner up, but Daniel says, if you teach me how to drive a lap a second faster.

That's worth nothing to me because I don't aspire to drive one second faster. And then we're joking. I said, it actually might be a liability because you might crash the car. So, a coach who teaches someone to drive a little bit faster is worthless or a liability to one audience, one customer, but is invaluable to a different type of customer.

So if you have this skill, you have to find the right customer who sees the benefit of what you're doing. That's primes you for success. That's setting you up to succeed. This is really important. There's a couple more things now. So, when we enter into the sales conversation, our job isn't to sell. It's not to perform, it's not to present, it's not to manipulate anybody. It's to understand if they have a problem that you can solve and what is the real problem? And is it connected to the reason why they want to, to purchase something? So, if someone comes into a store and says, I want to buy a tire, the bad sales person will say, well, we have four here.

They're all ranged in price and we'll then try to sell you the most expensive one. A really great sales person will say, what makes you think you need a tire? They're well, I hear the sound and it feels like it's going to go. Why don't we check the tread and it turns out your tires are perfectly fine.

And it's because it's misaligned. So, there's a repair shop down the street, they'll line your wheels, and you know what, you're going to get a lot more mileage, it's going to be a lot safer for you. And I say thank you, friend. If you can use this mindset when you go into it, you'll start to realize you're free of all the internal pressures to prove yourself, to answer any kind of questions, because I'm here to serve you.

And if I can't, the best thing I can do is to recommend that you, you go somewhere else. And that takes all the pressure off of me. So, the way that I can handle sales calls is because; A. I believe I put in the practice. B. I believe you will benefit from what it is that I do. So, the only thing I'm trying to do is to ascertain as to whether or not you have a problem that I can solve, that I want to solve.

And if I want to work with you. And so, in that way, it's very neutral and objective for me. You can say horrific things to me, it's not going to impact me at all because that's just your point of view and you're entitled to it and I'm not saying I have some stranglehold on the truth we could both be wrong.

We both could be right.

Ash Roy:

There's so much that's coming up in my mind around the growth versus fixed mindset and scarcity thinking because whenever I approach a sales call with the idea that oh my god, you know, my revenues are down. I gotta close a sale completely different energy there's no generosity in that conversation, there's no empathy, it’s just about me, me, me, and I made that mistake so many times more than I would like to admit. When I approach the sales call with how can I be of service to this person in a genuine way, in a way that is generous and empathetic and put my needs aside?

Whatever needs to happen will happen. And it may not mean that I will get the sale, but the best thing will happen, and one thing is for sure, I won't hurt my brand.

Now, you have a remarkable membership community, and I'm sure you help a lot of entrepreneurs with these things. Would you like to tell us a little bit about that, and how people can find out more about it?

Chris Do:

Yes, I think our entire business model is built around this idea of reciprocity. I will show up consistently and deliver value after value at some point, maybe you'll start to feel a little guilty or maybe you'll be a little curious and you'll feel compelled to want to pay us back, but we don't try to like force you into some kind of funnel like, oh, you can watch the rest of this thing only if you do X, Y, and Z.

But we're realizing that we're leaving too much up to the discretion of the person. Because there are a lot of people, they're not bad people, they will consume and consume and consume and they will never feel like maybe they should leave a tip or do more than that, that they've done their part by just watching the content.

So, we have a couple of ways for people to participate. We run two coaching communities. It's a, it's a one-to-many platform and one is called Accelerator. The other is called the Future Pro Group and it depends on where you are in your business life. If you're just getting started, Accelerator is a great place for you.

They're going to teach you all the business fundamentals, and if you're at a place where it's time to start to grow the team to expand and to get kind of business coaching that you wish you had, that's the Future Pro Group. But even as affordable as I think they are, there's still a lot of people in the world that can't participate in any of this kind of stuff.

Well, we've just recently launched YouTube memberships and we have two levels. One is called premier and the other one's called patron. And the premier level is just a dollar, a dollar a month. Gets you a badge to say, you know what? We appreciate you and we support what you're doing. And a dollar a month.

That's all we're asking for. At the $15 level, you become a patron and you get access to videos that we don't know what to do with. What I mean by that is, we record workshops and talks where I think I can't just flood our channel with all this content because no one will ever buy anything, but it's not quite a course and I don't really want to build a course for it.

So let's put it here. So, we've been sitting on weeks’ worth of material in terms of hours that we didn't know what to do. And so now we're slowly editing those and releasing them there in hopes that people will feel like, you know what, 15 bucks, that's like two or three coffees a month. If you want to buy us a coffee, we'd appreciate it.

Ash Roy:

That's very cool. Uh, we do something similar. We can give early access to our conversations like this to our members, and we chop up the conversation to smaller pieces, which is what people seem to prefer on YouTube and publish it to YouTube and, you know, get multiple bites of the cherry. How do people find out About all these products of yours. What website can they go to?

Chris Do:

I would suggest that they go to thefutur.com. It's F. U. T. U. R. There's no E at the end. It's just thefutur.com. And that's a great place to start.

Ash Roy:

Okay, so we'll link to that in the description and in all the comms that go out. It's just been wonderful as always talking to you.

I don't expect it, but if you're open to it, maybe we can do this again someday.

Chris Do:

Absolutely. Thanks, Ash.