1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:01,084
You don't really hate the work.

2
00:00:01,084 --> 00:00:02,919
You just hate that
you didn't price it properly.

3
00:00:02,919 --> 00:00:06,214
How much of winning
a deal is the proposal itself?

4
00:00:06,256 --> 00:00:07,757
The proposal is almost meaningless.

5
00:00:07,757 --> 00:00:11,469
Christo is the Emmy winning strategist
who reshaped creative entrepreneurship

6
00:00:11,511 --> 00:00:14,097
by turning brand positioning
into an exact science,

7
00:00:14,097 --> 00:00:16,599
and you the blueprint to charge
what you're actually worth.

8
00:00:16,599 --> 00:00:18,226
If it's Friday night at 6 p.m.

9
00:00:18,226 --> 00:00:20,854
and they call you,
or are you joyous to pick up the phone?

10
00:00:20,854 --> 00:00:22,605
If you're joyous,
it means you've charged enough.

11
00:00:22,605 --> 00:00:24,482
My goal is to be
the most expensive bidder.

12
00:00:24,482 --> 00:00:27,652
Did that lead you to start adding a zero
to every new project that came?

13
00:00:27,777 --> 00:00:30,947
You came up with many creative ways
to insert more money into the bid.

14
00:00:30,989 --> 00:00:33,324
How big was that project?
Do you remember? It was so profitable.

15
00:00:33,324 --> 00:00:34,993
A talented creative is about to quit.

16
00:00:34,993 --> 00:00:36,369
What would you say to them? So.

17
00:00:38,621 --> 00:00:39,122
I have

18
00:00:39,122 --> 00:00:42,125
three
logos here that you haven't seen before.

19
00:00:42,167 --> 00:00:43,585
using these three logos.

20
00:00:43,585 --> 00:00:50,216
What can you see in a piece of design
that most trained designers still can't?

21
00:00:50,383 --> 00:00:52,469
I've seen all of these logos before.

22
00:00:52,469 --> 00:00:54,846
Just not here. Together like this.

23
00:00:54,846 --> 00:00:58,058
Let's talk about the one that I can
objectively speak about.

24
00:00:58,141 --> 00:01:00,226
The first one is the Nike swoosh logo.

25
00:01:00,226 --> 00:01:03,772
I think in terms of a pure symbol,
it is beautiful.

26
00:01:03,772 --> 00:01:05,857
It's nearly perfect.

27
00:01:05,857 --> 00:01:08,777
And it communicates
the original intention, which is it

28
00:01:08,777 --> 00:01:10,111
just needs to look fast.

29
00:01:10,111 --> 00:01:12,822
The symbols is super iconic.

30
00:01:12,822 --> 00:01:15,366
And when we look at an icon like this,

31
00:01:15,366 --> 00:01:18,244
what we're trying to do is is it
recognizable? Is it different?

32
00:01:18,244 --> 00:01:19,412
Is it memorable?

33
00:01:19,412 --> 00:01:24,292
And the Nike logo,
the swoosh logo has is so well designed

34
00:01:24,292 --> 00:01:29,339
that I can then draw it in the darkness
with my eyes closed.

35
00:01:29,631 --> 00:01:34,469
Most logos
you can't do that with and the Nike logo.

36
00:01:34,469 --> 00:01:37,931
Through multiple decades of marketing

37
00:01:38,640 --> 00:01:41,559
and exposure,
they can remove the word Nike.

38
00:01:41,559 --> 00:01:44,979
And we just now associate the symbol
with the word, which is like

39
00:01:44,979 --> 00:01:47,982
they've created their own visual language,
which is beautiful.

40
00:01:48,525 --> 00:01:50,401
I'm not sure that I'm telling you anything

41
00:01:50,401 --> 00:01:53,404
that nobody else can see,
but I'm trying to use that language there.

42
00:01:53,488 --> 00:01:58,326
And for a logo that has very pointed edges
from tip to tell the fact that there's

43
00:01:58,326 --> 00:02:02,580
this nice curve to it makes it
not look like it's going to kill you.

44
00:02:02,580 --> 00:02:07,335
So it's a good balance
between linear and curvilinear elements.

45
00:02:07,335 --> 00:02:10,046
That is really beautiful. The Ted logo.

46
00:02:10,046 --> 00:02:12,757
Is what many people in the lay
person would say.

47
00:02:12,757 --> 00:02:14,509
It's just the typeface.

48
00:02:14,509 --> 00:02:18,847
But what people don't understand
is that word marks, like Ted in

49
00:02:18,847 --> 00:02:23,309
this case is an acronym for technology,
entertainment and design is what I would

50
00:02:23,309 --> 00:02:28,606
consider a custom typeface an alphabet,
but with just three letters in it.

51
00:02:28,606 --> 00:02:32,193
So we have to take into consideration
to counter the balance, the weight.

52
00:02:32,193 --> 00:02:37,073
And this this combination of letterforms.

53
00:02:37,115 --> 00:02:42,745
The T is a very difficult thing
to work with because it has a crossbar

54
00:02:42,745 --> 00:02:46,374
and a tall vertical stem,
but it has a lot of empty space around it.

55
00:02:46,374 --> 00:02:49,377
And so you're always trying to fight
like how do I balance it

56
00:02:49,377 --> 00:02:52,922
and get the
the kerning to be proper for this?

57
00:02:53,006 --> 00:02:55,008
I'm not sure it's 100% resolved.

58
00:02:55,008 --> 00:03:00,847
it is bold, it is graphic
and it's not taking too many risk.

59
00:03:00,847 --> 00:03:04,309
So most likely it will stand withstand
the test of time.

60
00:03:04,517 --> 00:03:08,438
And what young and average designers
don't understand

61
00:03:08,479 --> 00:03:12,108
is that the logo is not supposed
to communicate what you do.

62
00:03:12,150 --> 00:03:16,738
It's the communicate
a feeling like a rough, abstract idea.

63
00:03:16,905 --> 00:03:19,115
And the example I give to people is like

64
00:03:19,115 --> 00:03:22,785
a pizza logo is not supposed to look like
a guy throwing a pizza in a brick oven

65
00:03:22,785 --> 00:03:25,914
or a delivery service has like,
wheels on it.

66
00:03:25,955 --> 00:03:27,624
It's just about the idea.

67
00:03:27,624 --> 00:03:31,419
The classic example here is the Paul ran
the UPS logo

68
00:03:31,419 --> 00:03:36,299
and you designed it as a shield,
because people who deliver our packages

69
00:03:36,341 --> 00:03:38,384
should take care of them to protect them.

70
00:03:38,384 --> 00:03:42,472
And then he added this little element,
and he asked his daughter at that time,

71
00:03:42,472 --> 00:03:43,348
what does this look like?

72
00:03:43,348 --> 00:03:45,266
And she said, daddy,
it looks like a present.

73
00:03:45,266 --> 00:03:48,019
He goes, I'm done. It's like,
I don't know.

74
00:03:48,019 --> 00:03:49,520
I mean, you're a lot younger than me.

75
00:03:49,520 --> 00:03:52,982
But when I was growing up,
one of the greatest joys of my childhood

76
00:03:52,982 --> 00:03:58,112
is like, the mailman comes and delivers
a package of something I saved up for,

77
00:03:58,112 --> 00:04:01,866
and it was such a joyous moment, like,
I could not wait to tear that thing open.

78
00:04:01,866 --> 00:04:03,868
So those are feelings.

79
00:04:03,868 --> 00:04:07,288
Those are ideas, but they're not to show
you literally what happens.

80
00:04:07,288 --> 00:04:10,917
So this is why a lot of times
people don't understand why

81
00:04:11,876 --> 00:04:14,879
just using a beautiful typeface,

82
00:04:15,046 --> 00:04:20,802
properly spaced, can be very powerful,
because this allows the marketing and the

83
00:04:20,885 --> 00:04:26,391
all the ideas that you're going to use
over the years to have a life of their own

84
00:04:26,391 --> 00:04:30,103
and not be overpowered by your pizza
spinning logo guy.

85
00:04:30,103 --> 00:04:32,605
and the last one I'll talk about
is our logo.

86
00:04:32,605 --> 00:04:33,815
It's the future.

87
00:04:33,815 --> 00:04:35,149
So the future.

88
00:04:35,149 --> 00:04:39,737
There's there's there's stories and
mythology around where the name came from.

89
00:04:39,779 --> 00:04:44,784
I won't get into that part,
but the future is based on

90
00:04:44,826 --> 00:04:49,080
a typeface called Futura
and is one of my favorite typefaces.

91
00:04:49,080 --> 00:04:52,542
It's bold,
it kind of has a Swiss German feel to it.

92
00:04:52,542 --> 00:04:57,171
And so if you're looking for power for
for something that is strong

93
00:04:57,171 --> 00:05:00,758
and shows a lot of strength,
you would use the typeface Futura.

94
00:05:00,758 --> 00:05:04,345
we do make some small modifications to it.

95
00:05:04,345 --> 00:05:08,975
The crossbar of the T's been cut off just
because we want a nice clean, sharp edge

96
00:05:09,017 --> 00:05:13,563
just to show people this is a unique thing
that we've put together.

97
00:05:13,563 --> 00:05:16,733
And again,
it's not supposed to be this crazy

98
00:05:16,733 --> 00:05:20,403
expression
of what we do in education company.

99
00:05:20,486 --> 00:05:20,945
Beautiful.

100
00:05:20,945 --> 00:05:22,155
And when did you first

101
00:05:22,155 --> 00:05:27,702
realize you were seeing things
that other good designers were missing?

102
00:05:27,952 --> 00:05:30,538
don't know
if I've ever thought that, to be honest.

103
00:05:30,538 --> 00:05:35,335
I would describe myself as like, I'm
going to steal South Godin's words here.

104
00:05:35,376 --> 00:05:38,129
I notice things, I'm very particular.

105
00:05:38,129 --> 00:05:43,885
I have a healthy dose of OCD,
and I would say I see things

106
00:05:43,885 --> 00:05:47,263
that most people don't see, but I wouldn't
say most designers don't see.

107
00:05:47,472 --> 00:05:50,141
I think designers are obsessed
about things like this.

108
00:05:50,141 --> 00:05:51,642
You have to have a little OK'd

109
00:05:51,642 --> 00:05:55,688
to be an amazing designer,
or to see design differently than others.

110
00:05:55,688 --> 00:05:59,692
No, but I think some form of OCD

111
00:05:59,692 --> 00:06:04,113
is kind of champion within our field,
our practice in traditional design.

112
00:06:04,155 --> 00:06:08,242
Because I remember somebody,
I forget the person's name right now,

113
00:06:08,242 --> 00:06:12,163
but they were giving a presentation
about typefaces and they were saying,

114
00:06:12,163 --> 00:06:17,377
I drew this type, this letter form
85,000 times, and the audience gasp

115
00:06:17,418 --> 00:06:20,630
not in horror,
but out of respect, just because, like,

116
00:06:20,630 --> 00:06:23,633
I couldn't resolve
the way this just terminates or connects.

117
00:06:23,800 --> 00:06:26,010
I'm like, yeah, I could see that.

118
00:06:26,010 --> 00:06:32,225
So they they spent over a year
designing a typeface and they're already

119
00:06:32,225 --> 00:06:35,395
a master typeface designer,
but they're like, could not resolve this.

120
00:06:35,395 --> 00:06:38,856
And finally I found this
and then it made sense.

121
00:06:38,856 --> 00:06:41,275
And it's like you wrote your,

122
00:06:41,275 --> 00:06:45,613
your, your masterpiece of music,
but it just happens to be letterforms.

123
00:06:45,696 --> 00:06:47,448
85,000 times

124
00:06:47,448 --> 00:06:51,077
just but it's like the amount of sketches
and the drawings and redrawing

125
00:06:51,077 --> 00:06:55,915
and you can see the tissues and overlays
and you just see a ton of work product.

126
00:06:55,915 --> 00:06:58,209
So most of us just see the finished thing.
Right.

127
00:06:58,209 --> 00:06:59,460
Yeah. Pretty good.

128
00:06:59,460 --> 00:07:00,503
Anybody can do that.

129
00:07:00,503 --> 00:07:04,006
But when you really get into it
then they talk about the kerning pairs

130
00:07:04,006 --> 00:07:08,386
and the amount of man hours or human hours
spent in designing a typeface

131
00:07:08,386 --> 00:07:10,596
so that once you release it
into the world,

132
00:07:10,596 --> 00:07:13,599
you don't create
like a visual assault on people.

133
00:07:13,641 --> 00:07:16,102
It's like, well, considered. Okay.

134
00:07:16,102 --> 00:07:20,773
Tell me about the day you realized that
you'd been charging too little, right?

135
00:07:20,815 --> 00:07:24,861
Walk me through the process
when you understood your value.

136
00:07:25,278 --> 00:07:28,281
I don't know if I've thought
that I've charged too little.

137
00:07:28,281 --> 00:07:31,242
I've always questioned
how much more can I charge.

138
00:07:31,242 --> 00:07:33,035
Even when you were first getting started.

139
00:07:33,035 --> 00:07:34,328
Yeah. Really?

140
00:07:34,328 --> 00:07:37,081
What were you charging
then? a 30 bucks an hour.

141
00:07:37,081 --> 00:07:38,082
Okay. Yeah.

142
00:07:38,082 --> 00:07:41,169
And the reason why I was charging
that was because the flier said

143
00:07:41,210 --> 00:07:42,879
we'll pay you 30 bucks an hour.

144
00:07:42,879 --> 00:07:46,090
And I remember I was in school,
I wanted to make a little bit of money,

145
00:07:46,090 --> 00:07:49,677
and they have job postings
on a bulletin board somewhere.

146
00:07:49,719 --> 00:07:51,262
You go and you pull the tab off.

147
00:07:51,262 --> 00:07:54,265
And it was from an arts center, London.

148
00:07:54,765 --> 00:07:59,562
And they called and and sent him some work
and he goes, cool, you can get started.

149
00:07:59,562 --> 00:08:02,607
And I was, I was designing bank
brochures, a

150
00:08:02,607 --> 00:08:06,152
trifold bank brochure,
and I just sent in hours.

151
00:08:06,152 --> 00:08:07,653
I'm like, this is terrible.

152
00:08:07,653 --> 00:08:11,491
First of all, I don't think
I went to school to design bank brochures.

153
00:08:11,491 --> 00:08:13,075
I could have done that
without going to school.

154
00:08:13,075 --> 00:08:16,329
And I think my life is
is meant to be more than this.

155
00:08:16,329 --> 00:08:20,082
And so I would just go wherever
and somebody like, what's your rate?

156
00:08:20,082 --> 00:08:24,670
I would just say a number like, okay,
so then I'm like, okay, let me try again.

157
00:08:24,712 --> 00:08:26,923
I'll just keep saying it
until they say no.

158
00:08:26,923 --> 00:08:29,509
And it took a long time
before they would say no.

159
00:08:29,509 --> 00:08:32,595
Sometimes it'd be a little bit irritated
that you would say a number because like,

160
00:08:32,637 --> 00:08:34,096
didn't you just graduate school?

161
00:08:34,096 --> 00:08:36,807
I'm like, you have a problem with that?

162
00:08:36,807 --> 00:08:39,769
Like, no. Okay, so we would just move on.

163
00:08:39,977 --> 00:08:41,187
I'll share a story.

164
00:08:41,187 --> 00:08:42,730
I'd love to tell this story.

165
00:08:42,730 --> 00:08:45,399
I think I'm a year out of school.

166
00:08:45,399 --> 00:08:46,692
Yeah, probably not more than a year.

167
00:08:46,692 --> 00:08:47,860
I'm freelancing.

168
00:08:47,860 --> 00:08:51,197
And when I say freelancing,
I'm kind of like this hybrid freelancer

169
00:08:51,197 --> 00:08:52,990
because I don't work in somebody's office.

170
00:08:52,990 --> 00:08:56,118
I sent them an invoice
and things like that. And

171
00:08:57,119 --> 00:08:59,872
it was at this
point in which I was testing the theory

172
00:08:59,872 --> 00:09:02,458
about how much money can I charge,
because it's just a game.

173
00:09:02,458 --> 00:09:04,001
For me, money is a construct.

174
00:09:04,001 --> 00:09:06,754
It's an imaginary thing
that we all have social green on on.

175
00:09:06,754 --> 00:09:09,131
That is real, but it's not.

176
00:09:09,131 --> 00:09:13,844
I was raising my rates every project
with the same company, by the way.

177
00:09:13,886 --> 00:09:16,514
So at first it was like $300 a day.

178
00:09:16,514 --> 00:09:17,848
And I'm like, that doesn't feel right.

179
00:09:17,848 --> 00:09:20,643
Let's try 400, four, 50, 500, 600.

180
00:09:20,643 --> 00:09:22,311
And they just kept paying.

181
00:09:22,311 --> 00:09:26,190
So one day I tell them, yeah,
you guys want to book me?

182
00:09:26,190 --> 00:09:28,901
I just need to let you know
it's $800 a day.

183
00:09:28,901 --> 00:09:31,654
And at this point, the executive producer
had had enough with me.

184
00:09:31,654 --> 00:09:36,409
And she's like, Chris,
every time you just keep changing rate.

185
00:09:36,450 --> 00:09:39,203
I'm like, I know. And she goes.

186
00:09:41,664 --> 00:09:42,832
This is too much.

187
00:09:42,832 --> 00:09:44,083
And it's annoying.

188
00:09:44,083 --> 00:09:49,171
I'm like, okay, why don't you have
a conversation with the creative director?

189
00:09:49,255 --> 00:09:51,424
I won't say his name.

190
00:09:51,424 --> 00:09:54,427
And if he has a problem with it,
have him call me.

191
00:09:55,386 --> 00:09:57,388
He never called me. They just paid.

192
00:09:57,388 --> 00:10:00,224
So you were charging too little to start,
or you had the.

193
00:10:00,224 --> 00:10:01,642
You didn't look at it like that,
but you had

194
00:10:01,642 --> 00:10:02,727
you had the opportunity

195
00:10:02,727 --> 00:10:06,022
to charge a lot more,
and you just kept raising the price until.

196
00:10:06,188 --> 00:10:09,150
then when they had a problem with it,
or when they said they had a problem.

197
00:10:09,150 --> 00:10:10,067
Right.

198
00:10:10,067 --> 00:10:13,029
Did you raise it again after that,
or did you keep it at 800?

199
00:10:13,029 --> 00:10:15,406
Oh, this opportunity that for a part.

200
00:10:15,406 --> 00:10:16,907
But did you keep it going?

201
00:10:16,907 --> 00:10:18,784
Of course I never I've never stopped.

202
00:10:18,784 --> 00:10:19,994
Really? Yeah.

203
00:10:19,994 --> 00:10:24,040
Well, people don't know this,
but to book an hour with me, it's $5,000

204
00:10:24,832 --> 00:10:25,708
and they're an hour.

205
00:10:25,708 --> 00:10:27,251
I'm like an hour. Like, what do you do?

206
00:10:27,251 --> 00:10:29,086
Whatever I do, what comes.

207
00:10:29,086 --> 00:10:30,379
Do you promise? None.

208
00:10:30,379 --> 00:10:34,425
I promise you'll be on a call
with me for an hour and people book me.

209
00:10:34,425 --> 00:10:38,346
So it comes down to obviously
valuing your time

210
00:10:38,554 --> 00:10:41,932
because our time is infinite,
but it comes down to

211
00:10:43,351 --> 00:10:45,436
keep raising the bar until

212
00:10:45,436 --> 00:10:47,897
someone maybe objects,
which is probably hard

213
00:10:47,897 --> 00:10:51,442
for a lot of freelancers or creatives
that are just getting started,

214
00:10:51,776 --> 00:10:53,486
because a lot of them
don't like talking about money.

215
00:10:53,486 --> 00:10:55,571
They don't like asking for more money,
I assume.

216
00:10:55,571 --> 00:10:56,614
Yeah.

217
00:10:56,614 --> 00:10:57,948
Now, now that I think about it,

218
00:10:57,948 --> 00:11:01,661
when you say, when did you first
realize that you've charged too little?

219
00:11:01,994 --> 00:11:04,664
I it was not about a first time.

220
00:11:04,664 --> 00:11:07,667
Every time I start to feel pain

221
00:11:08,668 --> 00:11:11,253
from the clients being a dork,

222
00:11:11,253 --> 00:11:14,674
I'm like, I didn't charge them enough
because I want to love my client.

223
00:11:15,132 --> 00:11:17,843
And I always ask people this question
a lot.

224
00:11:17,843 --> 00:11:19,220
They're like, I hate doing this work.

225
00:11:19,220 --> 00:11:21,514
I'm like, okay, what have you got
paid? Double?

226
00:11:21,514 --> 00:11:22,390
Would you still hate it?

227
00:11:22,390 --> 00:11:25,226
Like, I would still hate it. Like,
what if they paid you ten times?

228
00:11:25,226 --> 00:11:27,978
As much as I love it?
So you don't really hate the work.

229
00:11:27,978 --> 00:11:30,481
You just hate that
you didn't price it properly.

230
00:11:30,481 --> 00:11:34,151
And so every time I have
this feeling like that pain, it's like,

231
00:11:34,193 --> 00:11:36,153
oh, I just need to charge them more.

232
00:11:36,153 --> 00:11:39,115
So let them learn. But we don't know that.

233
00:11:39,115 --> 00:11:42,243
So I don't go into it
assuming that I've charged a little,

234
00:11:42,284 --> 00:11:44,912
I just ask for what I asked
for. They agree. Cool.

235
00:11:44,912 --> 00:11:47,039
I do the work. I measure the level of pain

236
00:11:47,039 --> 00:11:50,918
that I'm feeling
and what people might be thinking.

237
00:11:50,918 --> 00:11:52,294
What kind of pain?

238
00:11:52,294 --> 00:11:56,006
Pain in the ass client
saying it should be read.

239
00:11:56,048 --> 00:11:57,299
And I don't like that typeface.

240
00:11:57,299 --> 00:11:59,176
I'm like, well, I'm firing you.

241
00:11:59,176 --> 00:12:03,139
I don't have time for this right now,
The headache is the client being a pain.

242
00:12:03,180 --> 00:12:04,724
Yeah, they're a headache. I don't want to.

243
00:12:04,724 --> 00:12:07,017
I don't have to deal with this.
So the test is this.

244
00:12:07,017 --> 00:12:08,894
And I borrow this from Blair,

245
00:12:08,894 --> 00:12:12,982
and even though he forgets this story,
he goes, how much do you love your client?

246
00:12:12,982 --> 00:12:14,942
If it's Friday night at 6 p.m.

247
00:12:14,942 --> 00:12:19,780
and they call you and you have caller ID,
you're like, does it fill you with dread?

248
00:12:19,780 --> 00:12:22,450
Or are you joyous to pick up the phone?

249
00:12:22,450 --> 00:12:24,744
If your joyous,
it means you've charged enough

250
00:12:24,744 --> 00:12:27,913
and you are filled with dread. It's
because you've not charged enough.

251
00:12:28,706 --> 00:12:31,834
And my goal in life
is anybody that ever hires me.

252
00:12:31,876 --> 00:12:35,963
I don't care when I don't care
why you call me, I'll be happy.

253
00:12:35,963 --> 00:12:39,383
And the only way I can guarantee that is
I just charge you so much money.

254
00:12:39,383 --> 00:12:42,094
I'm like,
it would be my pleasure to help you.

255
00:12:42,094 --> 00:12:47,600
Because of your patronage, I can afford
the life and the lifestyle that I have.

256
00:12:47,641 --> 00:12:49,602
So I genuinely appreciate you.

257
00:12:49,602 --> 00:12:50,936
there's a negotiation clip.

258
00:12:50,936 --> 00:12:55,441
Speaking of pricing yourself, that went
I think it went crazy viral on Schwartz

259
00:12:55,441 --> 00:12:58,402
when Schwartz were just going 
just getting started.

260
00:12:58,778 --> 00:13:00,488
When you look back at it now,

261
00:13:01,530 --> 00:13:02,573
revenue share

262
00:13:02,573 --> 00:13:06,076
or fixed price, what's actually better
for freelancers?

263
00:13:06,660 --> 00:13:07,870
Both can work.

264
00:13:07,870 --> 00:13:11,040
I'll give you a story I'm where am I here.

265
00:13:11,290 --> 00:13:14,293
I'm in Australia,
I'm doing a pricing workshop.

266
00:13:14,919 --> 00:13:18,005
One of the partners comes up
to me is like, Chris, I need to learn

267
00:13:18,005 --> 00:13:19,006
value based pricing.

268
00:13:19,006 --> 00:13:19,965
Oh, cool.

269
00:13:19,965 --> 00:13:22,927
I said, well, before we do that,
let me ask you a couple of questions.

270
00:13:22,927 --> 00:13:23,844
This is a walk and talk.

271
00:13:23,844 --> 00:13:27,848
We're literally in the street
walking from the venue to the restaurant.

272
00:13:27,848 --> 00:13:30,893
And in that short walk,
I was able to figure it out for him.

273
00:13:30,893 --> 00:13:34,647
So here's the series of questions
I asked him what is the lowest

274
00:13:34,647 --> 00:13:35,773
you've ever been paid?

275
00:13:35,773 --> 00:13:38,567
They do web design
and they're like ten grand.

276
00:13:38,567 --> 00:13:40,986
And what's the most you've ever been paid?

277
00:13:40,986 --> 00:13:43,697
He's like most, most like 800,000.

278
00:13:43,697 --> 00:13:46,116
But what is the average
high in the average low.

279
00:13:46,116 --> 00:13:46,992
Let's look at that.

280
00:13:46,992 --> 00:13:50,162
Let's say they say 30 grand and 150 grand.

281
00:13:50,204 --> 00:13:54,124
Let's just say I said,
what price would you be really happy with?

282
00:13:54,291 --> 00:13:56,335
All your clients paid you this amount.

283
00:13:56,335 --> 00:13:57,670
He thought about it for a little bit.

284
00:13:57,670 --> 00:13:59,421
He's like 100 grand.

285
00:13:59,421 --> 00:14:00,297
I said, why a hundred?

286
00:14:00,297 --> 00:14:01,298
Why not 150?

287
00:14:01,298 --> 00:14:04,093
Because most of our clients
are coming in at under 50.

288
00:14:04,093 --> 00:14:05,886
So that's more than double writing.

289
00:14:05,886 --> 00:14:07,721
So you don't need to learn value
based pricing.

290
00:14:07,721 --> 00:14:09,056
You just need to put on your website.

291
00:14:09,056 --> 00:14:11,058
Projects start at 100 grand.

292
00:14:11,058 --> 00:14:15,354
So now all your projects will begin at a
price point, which would be really happy.

293
00:14:15,437 --> 00:14:16,438
He goes, oh,

294
00:14:16,438 --> 00:14:20,150
so sometimes I think creatives
make it so difficult on themselves.

295
00:14:20,150 --> 00:14:22,444
Like they got to learn this whole pricing
economic theory.

296
00:14:22,444 --> 00:14:25,072
No, you don't find the price
that works for you and say,

297
00:14:25,072 --> 00:14:26,031
say with confidence

298
00:14:26,031 --> 00:14:29,201
and be willing to suffer the consequences,
which is

299
00:14:29,243 --> 00:14:30,911
you're going to hear a lot of nos.

300
00:14:30,911 --> 00:14:36,292
And so when you hear a lot of no,
it just means that there's a gap in

301
00:14:36,292 --> 00:14:40,379
perception and sometimes in skill between
where you like to be and where you are.

302
00:14:40,629 --> 00:14:44,341
So the perception part of it
is when you land on an Apple website

303
00:14:44,341 --> 00:14:44,800
and you're like,

304
00:14:44,800 --> 00:14:47,803
of course it's the most expensive version
of whatever I'm going to buy

305
00:14:47,803 --> 00:14:48,929
because it reads it,

306
00:14:48,929 --> 00:14:52,725
it looks it, and they spend a god awful
amount of money with photography,

307
00:14:52,725 --> 00:14:56,020
with copywriting, with proofing,
and they just get it just right.

308
00:14:56,020 --> 00:14:57,521
So we know we're going to spend money.

309
00:14:57,521 --> 00:15:01,609
I go to your website, it looks like
a WordPress template from 2004.

310
00:15:02,401 --> 00:15:04,236
How does that instill confidence in me?

311
00:15:04,236 --> 00:15:04,778
It doesn't.

312
00:15:04,778 --> 00:15:06,989
So that's the perception gap.

313
00:15:06,989 --> 00:15:10,117
The other part of it is the skill gap.

314
00:15:10,159 --> 00:15:11,702
Perhaps you just don't have the skills

315
00:15:11,702 --> 00:15:14,955
that the market values at that price point
in which you want to charge.

316
00:15:14,997 --> 00:15:18,459
The good news is
somebody has been there before

317
00:15:19,126 --> 00:15:23,756
and can lessen your suffering
and accelerate.

318
00:15:23,797 --> 00:15:26,008
Time to go.

319
00:15:26,008 --> 00:15:27,593
That's it. Yeah.

320
00:15:27,593 --> 00:15:30,262
And so what about rev share?
That can still work.

321
00:15:30,262 --> 00:15:31,013
It can work.

322
00:15:31,013 --> 00:15:35,434
But it's for sophisticated sellers
of services, not for the average person.

323
00:15:35,434 --> 00:15:38,771
So this person is asking me,
Chris, I'm interested in rev share.

324
00:15:38,812 --> 00:15:40,773
I probably will tell them you're not.

325
00:15:40,773 --> 00:15:43,442
Because the fact that we're having
this conversation means you're not.

326
00:15:43,442 --> 00:15:45,694
And what about that person
we just talked about who's

327
00:15:45,694 --> 00:15:48,155
anchoring at, let's say now 100,000.

328
00:15:48,155 --> 00:15:51,367
They keep getting no too many times.

329
00:15:51,992 --> 00:15:55,287
Like you said that signals there's a gap
should that they then just say

330
00:15:55,329 --> 00:15:56,789
okay let's go. Let's go down to 80.

331
00:15:56,789 --> 00:15:59,208
Let's go down to a number
where I start hearing some yeses.

332
00:15:59,208 --> 00:16:01,502
And then it makes sense for me, Possibly.

333
00:16:01,502 --> 00:16:03,921
But it doesn't look good, Right?

334
00:16:03,921 --> 00:16:07,549
Because once a brand starts to discount,
you start to question

335
00:16:07,591 --> 00:16:09,426
the viability of that brand.

336
00:16:09,426 --> 00:16:11,637
It's easy to raise your prices.

337
00:16:11,637 --> 00:16:13,347
It's really difficult to lower them.

338
00:16:13,347 --> 00:16:18,185
So be careful about how you do this and
you have to believe in his personal story.

339
00:16:18,227 --> 00:16:23,732
When I was starting to do brand strategy,
I had committed my mind $10,000.

340
00:16:23,857 --> 00:16:28,112
I wanted to be paid $10,000 a day,
and the reason why I got that number

341
00:16:28,112 --> 00:16:31,907
stuck in my head was a friend of mine
had hired David C Baker.

342
00:16:31,907 --> 00:16:34,243
He's a business consultant.

343
00:16:34,243 --> 00:16:36,829
And I asked him, how much did he charge?

344
00:16:36,829 --> 00:16:38,956
And he says he charged me $10,000.

345
00:16:38,956 --> 00:16:41,250
For how long? He's just for a day.

346
00:16:41,250 --> 00:16:45,504
He flew in, he consulted me for a day,
and then he left and I sent him the money.

347
00:16:45,629 --> 00:16:47,965
So were you happy?
He goes. Yes. Okay, cool.

348
00:16:47,965 --> 00:16:51,301
So I now knew that there was a benchmark
that I could hit.

349
00:16:51,510 --> 00:16:55,305
And so I live in the world of possibility,
not impossibility

350
00:16:55,305 --> 00:16:57,307
or improbability of possibility.

351
00:16:57,307 --> 00:17:00,269
If somebody could do it, then I can do it.

352
00:17:00,394 --> 00:17:02,271
I don't care what their experience is

353
00:17:02,271 --> 00:17:05,274
or what their story is,
but I'm going to get 10,000 bucks.

354
00:17:05,274 --> 00:17:09,069
So people would call and ask for help
and I'd say, look, before we get too far,

355
00:17:09,069 --> 00:17:10,195
it's going to be ten grand.

356
00:17:10,195 --> 00:17:14,074
I don't care if you ask me
to help you move a car or anything.

357
00:17:14,116 --> 00:17:17,286
If it's a logo or you need to do
a keynote, it's going to be ten grand.

358
00:17:17,411 --> 00:17:19,371
Like,
why ten grand? It's just ten grand, man.

359
00:17:19,371 --> 00:17:24,084
And so I got nose for one year
trying to sell brand strategy.

360
00:17:24,501 --> 00:17:28,589
And then one client said, yes,
it took me a year to sell it.

361
00:17:28,589 --> 00:17:29,965
Luckily I had other business to do,

362
00:17:29,965 --> 00:17:32,009
but I was just telling everyone
that it was new.

363
00:17:32,009 --> 00:17:33,302
It's going to be ten grand.

364
00:17:33,302 --> 00:17:36,889
It did not back down from this
and after doing the strategy work

365
00:17:36,889 --> 00:17:40,559
for ten grand, another person called
unrelated to this person.

366
00:17:40,559 --> 00:17:43,687
And then I said, it's ten grand, there's
no problem.

367
00:17:44,146 --> 00:17:46,065
So I said, okay, this is cool.

368
00:17:46,065 --> 00:17:47,149
I know what I'm doing.

369
00:17:47,149 --> 00:17:48,484
The next person is going to call me.

370
00:17:48,484 --> 00:17:50,152
It's going to be 30 grand.

371
00:17:50,152 --> 00:17:52,988
And it was 30 grand for a while
and then became a hundred grand.

372
00:17:52,988 --> 00:17:53,781
It's just a game.

373
00:17:53,781 --> 00:17:57,159
We play the game and your confidence
and your ability to deliver it,

374
00:17:57,326 --> 00:17:59,620
to be able to communicate
to others, to signal

375
00:17:59,620 --> 00:18:03,248
to them, you know, what you're doing
is the reason why they'll pay you.

376
00:18:03,540 --> 00:18:06,460
guys, we've been so passionate
about finding the biggest geniuses,

377
00:18:06,460 --> 00:18:08,545
and this is just one of the many episodes.

378
00:18:08,545 --> 00:18:10,547
If you want to make sure you don't
miss the next one.

379
00:18:10,547 --> 00:18:11,840
Make sure to subscribe.

380
00:18:11,840 --> 00:18:13,801
All right, let's get back to the episode.

381
00:18:13,801 --> 00:18:16,845
Was there a proposal
that you sent out in your early days

382
00:18:17,054 --> 00:18:20,182
at blind that makes you maybe cringe now?

383
00:18:20,432 --> 00:18:23,060
Yeah,
but not for the reasons that you think.

384
00:18:24,228 --> 00:18:24,937
When I learned how

385
00:18:24,937 --> 00:18:27,940
to bid, it's not proposals.

386
00:18:28,023 --> 00:18:31,735
There was a period in time
when I was between executive producers

387
00:18:31,735 --> 00:18:34,780
and this gentleman came in
and he was helping me out,

388
00:18:35,197 --> 00:18:38,200
and he put a proposal together, a bid.

389
00:18:38,200 --> 00:18:40,577
It's not a proposal, it's just a bid.

390
00:18:40,577 --> 00:18:42,704
It's for large telecom company.

391
00:18:42,704 --> 00:18:46,959
And he wanted to go and socialize

392
00:18:46,959 --> 00:18:50,087
at 5 p.m.,
have drinks, meet up with some people.

393
00:18:50,129 --> 00:18:51,046
I'm not cool.

394
00:18:51,046 --> 00:18:53,632
So he goes, you go with this,
I'll go with this.

395
00:18:53,632 --> 00:18:55,467
And he sends it off.

396
00:18:55,467 --> 00:19:00,305
And per our customer routine,
I would take all the bids

397
00:19:00,305 --> 00:19:04,268
and bring them home to show my wife,
because she's our financial officer

398
00:19:05,561 --> 00:19:08,480
and she's like,
have you looked at this bid?

399
00:19:08,480 --> 00:19:12,192
I'm like, yes, but I'm scared
because my wife don't ask questions.

400
00:19:12,442 --> 00:19:15,028
There's a problem. I'm like,
what's the problem?

401
00:19:15,028 --> 00:19:19,992
And she goes, this category is wrong
because it's all ours.

402
00:19:20,075 --> 00:19:22,369
Hours at the bid
and then this one is days.

403
00:19:22,369 --> 00:19:25,789
But they wrote it in like it was hours.

404
00:19:25,789 --> 00:19:29,501
So they wrote like 80 days or something
crazy in there.

405
00:19:29,626 --> 00:19:32,546
And I'm like, oh shoot.

406
00:19:32,546 --> 00:19:34,381
So the bid was off by zero.

407
00:19:34,381 --> 00:19:39,011
It was a zero higher than it should
have been because that number was crazy.

408
00:19:39,011 --> 00:19:39,970
And she was.

409
00:19:39,970 --> 00:19:42,181
What do you want to do? I'm like,
oh my God.

410
00:19:42,181 --> 00:19:46,727
So I called the executive producer
and said, bro, you messed up.

411
00:19:46,768 --> 00:19:47,936
He goes, oh, I'm so sorry.

412
00:19:47,936 --> 00:19:50,772
I wasn't paying attention to that.
It's my fault.

413
00:19:50,772 --> 00:19:53,025
I'll call them, let them know I messed up.

414
00:19:53,025 --> 00:19:55,110
I'm like, do no such thing.

415
00:19:55,110 --> 00:19:56,695
We're just going to lose a job.

416
00:19:56,695 --> 00:19:59,948
I'd rather lose a job
because we overbid it than to call them

417
00:19:59,948 --> 00:20:02,576
and tell them 
we don't know what we're doing with a bid,

418
00:20:02,576 --> 00:20:05,746
because that's like a sign that you're
not paying attention to anything.

419
00:20:06,371 --> 00:20:08,874
Lo and behold, we were awarded the job.

420
00:20:08,874 --> 00:20:10,792
We got the job with an extra zero in it.

421
00:20:10,792 --> 00:20:15,339
And this started to rewire my brain
like we imposed so many limitations

422
00:20:15,339 --> 00:20:17,299
on what we think
were worth in the marketplace.

423
00:20:17,299 --> 00:20:21,053
But the market will tell us
and and I had a strategy on

424
00:20:21,053 --> 00:20:25,182
how to explain that there were 80 days
when the job's only three weeks long.

425
00:20:25,515 --> 00:20:26,683
have a lot of people working on

426
00:20:29,728 --> 00:20:30,187
That problem.

427
00:20:30,187 --> 00:20:32,064
And how big was that project
do you remember?

428
00:20:32,064 --> 00:20:33,065
It was so profitable.

429
00:20:33,065 --> 00:20:36,235
I don't remember the fight,
but the fact that they awarded it

430
00:20:36,235 --> 00:20:39,571
and we did it, it was like 90% profit.

431
00:20:39,613 --> 00:20:41,990
Like pure profit. It was amazing.

432
00:20:41,990 --> 00:20:46,286
And did that lead you to start
adding a zero to every new project

433
00:20:46,286 --> 00:20:47,246
that came through?

434
00:20:47,246 --> 00:20:51,208
We came up with many creative ways
that insert more money into the bid.

435
00:20:51,333 --> 00:20:53,543
We came up with this thing
called the creative fee.

436
00:20:53,543 --> 00:20:58,382
So when we were doing a five page,
a modified ICP bid form

437
00:20:58,382 --> 00:21:01,885
for a commercial work,
we couldn't get the numbers high enough

438
00:21:01,885 --> 00:21:04,846
because they want to see line by line
breakdown.

439
00:21:04,888 --> 00:21:07,724
And so we were like, well, what can we do?

440
00:21:07,724 --> 00:21:09,768
I'm like, add a creative fee.

441
00:21:11,478 --> 00:21:12,479
Like they will never buy that.

442
00:21:12,479 --> 00:21:13,689
I'm I just do it.

443
00:21:13,689 --> 00:21:16,692
So we would arbitrarily
just put in a number.

444
00:21:16,692 --> 00:21:19,695
So if the bid was $130,000,

445
00:21:19,736 --> 00:21:22,739
I might say add a $28,000 creative fee.

446
00:21:22,864 --> 00:21:24,074
Then what if they ask?

447
00:21:24,074 --> 00:21:25,867
Just tell them that's how we work.

448
00:21:25,867 --> 00:21:28,453
And you know what?
They almost never asked.

449
00:21:28,453 --> 00:21:32,082
They just look at the bottom line is a
number that they want to pay for or not.

450
00:21:32,082 --> 00:21:36,044
And so I use this word it's a $6 word.

451
00:21:36,253 --> 00:21:39,965
Our job when we're bidding on a
on a project like this,

452
00:21:39,965 --> 00:21:43,135
when they want to see
the numbers, is to obfuscate

453
00:21:43,135 --> 00:21:46,388
how we get there, to make it difficult
for them to figure out

454
00:21:46,388 --> 00:21:50,017
so they can comparison
so they can compare us to other people.

455
00:21:50,309 --> 00:21:51,268
This is important.

456
00:21:51,268 --> 00:21:53,437
So if three companies and oftentimes

457
00:21:53,437 --> 00:21:55,647
it's more than three
companies are bidding for a project,

458
00:21:55,647 --> 00:21:59,067
if we're all using the same bid form
which is more or less

459
00:21:59,109 --> 00:22:02,529
the same, they can then compare like, oh,
they're high here, they're low there.

460
00:22:02,529 --> 00:22:06,158
And so I want to make it impossible
for them to compare us to the next person.

461
00:22:06,199 --> 00:22:07,534
Either work with us or don't.

462
00:22:07,534 --> 00:22:11,288
But don't put your cost controllers
on this and try to take this down.

463
00:22:11,371 --> 00:22:14,499
We find creative ways
And I mean, this this goes from,

464
00:22:14,499 --> 00:22:17,085
I assume, most businesses,
not just creatives, right?

465
00:22:17,085 --> 00:22:19,963
It's you think most businesses
are just charging too little?

466
00:22:19,963 --> 00:22:22,966
No, because most businesses
are undifferentiated.

467
00:22:23,800 --> 00:22:26,303
Picking up
where we started their undifferentiated

468
00:22:26,303 --> 00:22:29,848
and they live in a space
of like commodity.

469
00:22:29,848 --> 00:22:34,519
So if they get out of that space
where they make it a little extra

470
00:22:34,519 --> 00:22:38,398
and special, then they can start to charge
whatever they want to charge.

471
00:22:38,440 --> 00:22:40,275
And you can look at luxury goods.

472
00:22:40,275 --> 00:22:43,070
It's the ultimate example of

473
00:22:43,070 --> 00:22:46,239
a basically a commodity
that's got a really good story.

474
00:22:46,239 --> 00:22:48,492
And so people
are willing to pay a premium.

475
00:22:48,492 --> 00:22:53,455
how much of winning a deal
is the proposal itself versus

476
00:22:53,497 --> 00:22:57,417
what already happened before it Define
what happens before.

477
00:22:57,501 --> 00:23:02,130
The sales call, building the brand up
to even be able to get on that sales call,

478
00:23:02,130 --> 00:23:05,884
everything that happened before it versus
maybe the proposal itself.

479
00:23:06,009 --> 00:23:08,178
Okay. The proposal is nothing.

480
00:23:09,137 --> 00:23:10,764
The proposal is almost meaningless.

481
00:23:10,764 --> 00:23:13,350
It's a business document.

482
00:23:13,350 --> 00:23:17,270
I can't attribute percentages
any kind of scientific way,

483
00:23:17,270 --> 00:23:22,609
but I think in a competitive bid
where they have many options

484
00:23:22,609 --> 00:23:26,655
to do the work, especially when the work
is in the hundreds of thousands,

485
00:23:26,655 --> 00:23:29,741
you open yourself up
to international talent and competition.

486
00:23:29,741 --> 00:23:33,495
Basically, at that point,
they may have decided beforehand

487
00:23:33,495 --> 00:23:36,748
they're going to give it a company
A, because they just really like

488
00:23:36,748 --> 00:23:40,752
the work of company A, but their clients
mandate they must triple bid this thing.

489
00:23:41,002 --> 00:23:41,294
Okay.

490
00:23:41,294 --> 00:23:45,799
So you already are potentially the shoe
in, but it's not a guarantee.

491
00:23:45,841 --> 00:23:48,385
It's not a lock
because the other two companies are hungry

492
00:23:48,385 --> 00:23:50,887
and they're going to go after it.
And so you have to show up too.

493
00:23:50,887 --> 00:23:53,932
If you take it for granted,
you might you might lose a client.

494
00:23:54,933 --> 00:23:57,144
Everything is dependent on the call.

495
00:23:57,144 --> 00:24:01,064
And there's two calls that you have
the initial briefing call and then the

496
00:24:01,398 --> 00:24:02,691
what are your ideas call.

497
00:24:02,691 --> 00:24:04,943
Now I'm talking about
in the commercial space here okay.

498
00:24:04,943 --> 00:24:07,112
Because there's
a lot of different examples of this.

499
00:24:07,112 --> 00:24:08,822
So we have an initial call.

500
00:24:08,822 --> 00:24:11,908
And the way we used to call was
it would be very short.

501
00:24:11,908 --> 00:24:13,785
They would walk you through the brief.

502
00:24:13,785 --> 00:24:17,122
Basically they would read the script to
you and say, do you have any questions?

503
00:24:17,122 --> 00:24:20,834
And you would ask questions and then
you would go away and create your ideas.

504
00:24:21,376 --> 00:24:24,087
So before I got coaching on
how to do this.

505
00:24:24,087 --> 00:24:26,298
That was a very tense call.

506
00:24:26,298 --> 00:24:28,550
They would say things and then you think,
oh my gosh,

507
00:24:28,550 --> 00:24:30,427
what am I supposed to ask them
about right now?

508
00:24:30,427 --> 00:24:32,554
And it wouldn't be that long.

509
00:24:32,554 --> 00:24:33,847
They got things to do.

510
00:24:33,847 --> 00:24:37,267
Once I learned
how to do these new business calls,

511
00:24:37,267 --> 00:24:40,645
we would tell them our calls
take a long time.

512
00:24:40,854 --> 00:24:42,856
If that's not a good time,
let's reschedule.

513
00:24:42,856 --> 00:24:45,942
Because my my EP at that time
would explain.

514
00:24:45,942 --> 00:24:48,820
Chris and team, they're going to ask you
lots of questions.

515
00:24:48,820 --> 00:24:51,781
And so they would go through their brief
and I would just ask some question

516
00:24:51,781 --> 00:24:53,200
after question after question.

517
00:24:53,200 --> 00:24:56,703
And I can tell
it was mentally exhausting for them.

518
00:24:56,703 --> 00:25:00,332
And then I know I've done my job
because they said,

519
00:25:00,373 --> 00:25:01,583
you asked really great questions.

520
00:25:01,583 --> 00:25:02,626
You got us thinking about things

521
00:25:02,626 --> 00:25:05,170
we never thought about,
and no one's asked us before.

522
00:25:05,170 --> 00:25:07,005
But what we did together on that

523
00:25:07,005 --> 00:25:10,258
call was we designed the solution together
over the phone.

524
00:25:10,800 --> 00:25:12,219
We got into their brain.

525
00:25:12,219 --> 00:25:16,223
We surface their desires, their fears,
their hopes, their dreams.

526
00:25:16,223 --> 00:25:19,768
What they tried before will won't work
and what they would love to try.

527
00:25:19,809 --> 00:25:20,727
An ideal world.

528
00:25:20,727 --> 00:25:24,022
And we were kind of narrowing it down
in the conversation.

529
00:25:24,105 --> 00:25:27,442
We demonstrate our expertise
by the questions that we asked.

530
00:25:27,442 --> 00:25:29,236
So Doctor DeMartini would say,

531
00:25:29,236 --> 00:25:32,322
the quality of your life depends
on the quality of questions you ask.

532
00:25:33,073 --> 00:25:37,327
So new business calls is the art of
learning how to ask great questions.

533
00:25:38,286 --> 00:25:39,996
So the second call would be

534
00:25:39,996 --> 00:25:45,168
we're now going to reflect back to you
what we understood what you wanted.

535
00:25:45,377 --> 00:25:49,005
And we used to do
like 17 different designs.

536
00:25:49,047 --> 00:25:50,799
Now we come back with two.

537
00:25:50,799 --> 00:25:52,259
Like here's what we think you said.

538
00:25:52,259 --> 00:25:55,136
And here's if you're like really brave,
let's try this one.

539
00:25:55,136 --> 00:25:57,681
And more often
than not we win those projects.

540
00:25:57,681 --> 00:26:01,560
And the proposal at that point
is numbers on a page.

541
00:26:01,560 --> 00:26:04,104
If the idea isn't good,
they're not going to hire you. Really.

542
00:26:04,104 --> 00:26:07,482
So it seems like that first call,
which maybe you want to label a discovery

543
00:26:07,482 --> 00:26:13,446
call, is really a them
seeing that you're interested

544
00:26:13,446 --> 00:26:17,909
and you're inquisitive and you're
diving deeper than everyone else has done,

545
00:26:17,909 --> 00:26:19,035
which shows like, hey,

546
00:26:19,035 --> 00:26:23,373
this person is taking this job
very seriously, and it's also the feedback

547
00:26:23,415 --> 00:26:24,291
you're getting from them

548
00:26:24,291 --> 00:26:27,627
with all the questions you're asking,
because then you then on that second call,

549
00:26:27,711 --> 00:26:31,006
you're coming to them with something
that the other people who bid

550
00:26:31,047 --> 00:26:34,217
probably aren't, because you've extracted
so much more from them

551
00:26:34,217 --> 00:26:35,302
during that first discovery call.

552
00:26:35,302 --> 00:26:36,636
So it seems that's one of

553
00:26:36,636 --> 00:26:39,306
the most important piece of the puzzle
is that discovery call.

554
00:26:39,306 --> 00:26:41,016
now you have to realize something.

555
00:26:41,016 --> 00:26:43,935
Most of the times
it feels like there's a casting director

556
00:26:43,935 --> 00:26:46,938
and we're an actor
trying to try out for a part.

557
00:26:46,980 --> 00:26:49,566
So we are auditioning.

558
00:26:49,566 --> 00:26:52,235
But once you understand
how to play the game

559
00:26:52,235 --> 00:26:56,781
and you believe in yourself
and your worth, that you believe that you

560
00:26:57,115 --> 00:27:02,954
what what Blair ends would say is
you are the prize, which means

561
00:27:02,954 --> 00:27:07,250
that you have more ways of making money
than they have options for solutions.

562
00:27:07,917 --> 00:27:11,087
And if you bring something
quite unique to the table,

563
00:27:11,129 --> 00:27:13,965
then you're not just auditioning,
you're auditing.

564
00:27:13,965 --> 00:27:16,176
So I'm auditing you right now.

565
00:27:16,176 --> 00:27:19,095
So we would ask them,
how many people are bidding on this job?

566
00:27:19,095 --> 00:27:20,138
How many times have you done?

567
00:27:20,138 --> 00:27:21,681
You know,
we would ask them weird questions

568
00:27:21,681 --> 00:27:23,850
like, whoa, we didn't know
we were going to be put on the spot.

569
00:27:23,850 --> 00:27:27,354
We'd ask them, how are you making
decisions on who you award the job to?

570
00:27:27,812 --> 00:27:29,522
What parameters are you considering?

571
00:27:29,522 --> 00:27:30,774
What is set in stone?

572
00:27:30,774 --> 00:27:32,609
What is the variable
you want us to play with?

573
00:27:32,609 --> 00:27:34,611
What is a nice to have?
What does it have to have?

574
00:27:34,611 --> 00:27:37,614
And some some people
will get all bent on the shape.

575
00:27:37,614 --> 00:27:40,659
And then we'd get off the call
and I'd say, we're not working with them.

576
00:27:41,618 --> 00:27:42,118
We're not going

577
00:27:42,118 --> 00:27:45,455
to proceed, get out of their job,
make up a reason.

578
00:27:45,914 --> 00:27:49,501
Because I just don't feel like
this is a person we can do good work for,

579
00:27:49,584 --> 00:27:52,504
or they've already made up their mind
or they're indecisive,

580
00:27:52,504 --> 00:27:55,965
they're unclear
or a lot of different things.

581
00:27:55,965 --> 00:27:59,469
So you kind of think about it
as for a very short

582
00:27:59,469 --> 00:28:02,639
period,
we are trying to project into the future.

583
00:28:02,639 --> 00:28:04,724
What's it going
to be like to work with you?

584
00:28:04,724 --> 00:28:07,519
And if we throw off that energy,
you're going to say, like,

585
00:28:07,519 --> 00:28:10,188
I don't care how good they are,
we're not working together.

586
00:28:10,188 --> 00:28:11,690
And the same with us.

587
00:28:11,690 --> 00:28:15,860
It's like, I don't care how much money is
on the table, we're not working together

588
00:28:16,069 --> 00:28:20,615
and we don't exercise that, that,
that, right, or that,

589
00:28:20,657 --> 00:28:24,411
that, that thought process
as often as we should, as creative people.

590
00:28:24,411 --> 00:28:27,789
So we've bowed out of many jobs before
because you know what?

591
00:28:27,831 --> 00:28:30,083
This is a bad gig. We're out.

592
00:28:30,083 --> 00:28:32,293
So part of that discovery call
is you interviewing them

593
00:28:32,293 --> 00:28:35,213
to see if they were a good fit
for you. Absolutely.

594
00:28:35,213 --> 00:28:38,967
And do you think most creatives, even
just as they're just first

595
00:28:38,967 --> 00:28:43,346
getting started, have the ability to do
Everyone has the ability to do that,

596
00:28:43,346 --> 00:28:45,724
but I wouldn't even rule out
just getting started.

597
00:28:45,724 --> 00:28:48,727
I don't think most creative entrepreneurs
do that.

598
00:28:49,269 --> 00:28:52,772
They feel beholden to the client,
they worship the mighty dollar

599
00:28:52,772 --> 00:28:57,694
and they think with, unfortunately
with their scarcity lack mindset,

600
00:28:57,694 --> 00:29:02,073
that if they don't get this gig at all
costs, no new opportunities will come.

601
00:29:02,532 --> 00:29:05,660
I just I'm patient
and I believe in it, in myself

602
00:29:05,660 --> 00:29:07,704
that something else
better is going to come.

603
00:29:07,704 --> 00:29:11,374
I saw a short you did about anchoring
and it got me thinking

604
00:29:11,374 --> 00:29:14,419
should you even be asking clients
what their budget is?

605
00:29:14,419 --> 00:29:16,880
Or do you just lead with your number?

606
00:29:16,880 --> 00:29:18,840
Like what's the play in 2026?

607
00:29:18,840 --> 00:29:20,925
There's so many different ways to do this.

608
00:29:20,925 --> 00:29:22,886
If you're asking me personally,
I just tell

609
00:29:22,886 --> 00:29:27,599
people at the first interaction,
which is a DM, how much money do you have?

610
00:29:27,640 --> 00:29:30,185
We get into the money conversation
right away.

611
00:29:30,185 --> 00:29:33,188
Okay, so somebody had sent me a message
saying, Chris,

612
00:29:33,188 --> 00:29:36,649
I've been told you are the person
to help me with my personal brand.

613
00:29:36,691 --> 00:29:38,067
I want to work with you.

614
00:29:38,067 --> 00:29:39,235
What's that? Like I said,

615
00:29:39,235 --> 00:29:43,072
before I get into any details,
let me tell you I have two prices.

616
00:29:43,198 --> 00:29:47,869
Price number one is I do the brand
strategy for you, I do deliverables.

617
00:29:47,869 --> 00:29:50,038
It's going to be $50,000.

618
00:29:50,038 --> 00:29:54,542
Price number two, I do the exact
same thing except for its $100,000.

619
00:29:54,542 --> 00:29:57,670
And then I write what's the difference
between price one and price

620
00:29:57,670 --> 00:30:01,758
two is price
one is you just do what I tell you to do.

621
00:30:01,800 --> 00:30:05,929
Price number two is you tell me what
you want to do, which one works for you,

622
00:30:07,013 --> 00:30:10,016
and just tell people,
because I don't have time for that.

623
00:30:10,058 --> 00:30:10,725
This is now.

624
00:30:10,725 --> 00:30:13,102
What I've discovered
is if you're willing to pay me

625
00:30:13,102 --> 00:30:16,105
100 grand, I'll put up with your nonsense.

626
00:30:16,856 --> 00:30:19,526
And you know the thing
and people are going to hear it is like,

627
00:30:19,526 --> 00:30:21,486
what is wrong with this guy? He's
so full of himself.

628
00:30:21,486 --> 00:30:24,239
Well, I believe in what I do.

629
00:30:24,239 --> 00:30:26,491
I believe
I have a unique perspective on things.

630
00:30:26,491 --> 00:30:28,827
And if you'd like to work,
I'd love to work with you.

631
00:30:28,827 --> 00:30:32,997
But it's one of these things where, like,
you're the aspiring tennis athlete

632
00:30:32,997 --> 00:30:36,835
and I'm the tennis coach,
so please don't hire me

633
00:30:36,876 --> 00:30:40,713
then to tell me how to coach you
because you already know the answer.

634
00:30:40,713 --> 00:30:42,006
Then you don't need me.

635
00:30:42,006 --> 00:30:45,051
And if you want to pay me to babysit
you through this process, I'm

636
00:30:45,051 --> 00:30:48,137
happy to do that for double the price.

637
00:30:48,137 --> 00:30:52,517
And so there are people who who know this.

638
00:30:52,559 --> 00:30:55,812
Like,
I want to try and say this objectively,

639
00:30:55,812 --> 00:30:58,523
so it doesn't sound so terrible,
but I've done the training.

640
00:30:58,523 --> 00:31:03,778
I've done the 10,000 plus hours over two
decades, won multiple awards, judge shows.

641
00:31:03,820 --> 00:31:06,823
I think I know what I'm doing
when it comes to design and esthetics.

642
00:31:07,115 --> 00:31:09,576
I think I know more about it than you do.

643
00:31:09,576 --> 00:31:12,912
So when people come to me and like, well,
I don't like those colors

644
00:31:12,912 --> 00:31:15,039
and I don't like this,
and shouldn't we do that?

645
00:31:15,039 --> 00:31:15,999
And can we explore that?

646
00:31:15,999 --> 00:31:19,002
I'm like, okay,
so why are we talking, friend?

647
00:31:19,043 --> 00:31:19,794
Do you get that often?

648
00:31:19,794 --> 00:31:22,839
It seems like when you're the expert
at what you do,

649
00:31:22,881 --> 00:31:26,175
you're in the point 1% of what you do.

650
00:31:26,175 --> 00:31:27,760
X client comes to you.

651
00:31:27,760 --> 00:31:30,471
not 99 out of 100 times
in that same position.

652
00:31:30,471 --> 00:31:32,682
they're like telling you
to change colors on a logo.

653
00:31:32,682 --> 00:31:35,101
Telling you to
I mean, is that is that common?

654
00:31:35,101 --> 00:31:35,935
It is common.

655
00:31:35,935 --> 00:31:39,314
And the reason why it's common is
because we think we can see something

656
00:31:39,314 --> 00:31:41,733
we over index on our confidence
that because we

657
00:31:41,733 --> 00:31:44,819
we know two things about it,
like we know what we're doing now.

658
00:31:44,819 --> 00:31:47,655
I respect each person's business.
I would not tell you how

659
00:31:47,655 --> 00:31:48,531
to run your business.

660
00:31:48,531 --> 00:31:51,534
I would not impose something on you.

661
00:31:51,784 --> 00:31:55,496
When you tell me there's a business case
for this to happen,

662
00:31:55,538 --> 00:31:58,291
I would not do that because I don't know
your business that well.

663
00:31:58,291 --> 00:32:02,337
But when it comes to things like,
oh, that is static isn't right and well,

664
00:32:02,337 --> 00:32:05,089
so you basically want more of the same,
which is fine.

665
00:32:05,089 --> 00:32:07,592
Here's an example a while ago.

666
00:32:07,592 --> 00:32:10,970
Big, big 
I think it's also another telecom company.

667
00:32:11,179 --> 00:32:14,349
They paid us the most we've ever been paid
to do strategy work.

668
00:32:14,390 --> 00:32:16,059
I think they paid us over 100 grand.

669
00:32:16,059 --> 00:32:20,021
Maybe it was 120, and they also paid us
like $100,000 to do the logo.

670
00:32:20,021 --> 00:32:23,900
The logo, objectively is 5% different
than their current logo.

671
00:32:23,983 --> 00:32:25,318
just 5% different.

672
00:32:25,318 --> 00:32:26,945
Yeah. we explored all these things.

673
00:32:26,945 --> 00:32:28,404
We went down in so many different rounds

674
00:32:28,404 --> 00:32:31,950
and revisions
and tried different concepts, mock ups.

675
00:32:31,950 --> 00:32:33,952
All of it was great,
and the one they picked

676
00:32:33,952 --> 00:32:36,579
was just like 5% different
from the one they already had.

677
00:32:36,579 --> 00:32:39,499
And I respect that because they paid us
almost a quarter million dollars.

678
00:32:39,499 --> 00:32:41,584
I'll go with that.
That's what you want to do?

679
00:32:41,584 --> 00:32:42,335
Totally fine.

680
00:32:42,335 --> 00:32:43,711
But when you're paying me 50 grand

681
00:32:43,711 --> 00:32:46,839
and you're telling me this,
I don't know if I want to do that.

682
00:32:47,465 --> 00:32:49,008
Not really that interested.

683
00:32:49,008 --> 00:32:51,302
So you gave them concepts
that were a little different

684
00:32:51,302 --> 00:32:53,346
from what they had or more than. Yeah.

685
00:32:53,346 --> 00:32:54,764
And they just kind of kept

686
00:32:54,764 --> 00:32:57,809
narrowing it down back to something very,
very similar to what they already had,

687
00:32:57,809 --> 00:32:59,769
because that's probably
what they were just comfortable with.

688
00:32:59,769 --> 00:33:01,437
Yeah. And it's human nature.

689
00:33:01,437 --> 00:33:03,648
Change is hard
for us in every different way.

690
00:33:03,648 --> 00:33:05,858
If you move to another city,
go to a new school,

691
00:33:05,858 --> 00:33:07,944
if you try in different shoes
you've never worn before,

692
00:33:07,944 --> 00:33:10,613
or if you cut your hair differently,
it changes.

693
00:33:10,613 --> 00:33:14,158
Very difficult for us
because of inertia and I understand that.

694
00:33:14,158 --> 00:33:17,829
So I like to work with clients
who are clear thinkers.

695
00:33:17,829 --> 00:33:23,126
They make decisions like they're concise
and clear, their decisive,

696
00:33:23,126 --> 00:33:27,088
and they have really discerning tastes.

697
00:33:28,256 --> 00:33:32,051
They know good from bad, and they are also

698
00:33:32,218 --> 00:33:35,638
smart enough to know what they don't know,
and they get out of their own way.

699
00:33:35,972 --> 00:33:37,348
But is that rare?

700
00:33:37,348 --> 00:33:40,935
It is rare ish, but if you put the energy
out into the world,

701
00:33:40,935 --> 00:33:42,520
you will find exactly those people.

702
00:33:42,520 --> 00:33:45,690
Because literally people
have come up to me after a conference

703
00:33:45,690 --> 00:33:49,861
when I'm speaking, they're like,
I need to hire you to do my my fashion.

704
00:33:50,278 --> 00:33:51,362
Like I'm not available.

705
00:33:51,362 --> 00:33:54,615
Like I will pay
you like it doesn't matter.

706
00:33:54,866 --> 00:33:57,076
Like, well,
I'll do what you say. I'm like, okay.

707
00:33:57,076 --> 00:33:58,077
Those are the magic words.

708
00:33:58,077 --> 00:33:59,829
Now right?

709
00:33:59,829 --> 00:34:01,873
It's all positioning at this point, right?

710
00:34:01,873 --> 00:34:04,667
But when you're first starting,
that might be a little bit more difficult

711
00:34:04,667 --> 00:34:07,670
for someone who just financially, like,
I need this job.

712
00:34:07,670 --> 00:34:11,340
I'm not going to put myself in that
position where they're going to say no,

713
00:34:11,340 --> 00:34:14,385
because I want to charge double
because I don't want to hear any nonsense

714
00:34:14,385 --> 00:34:17,180
from them. So it might be a little harder
for someone just getting started.

715
00:34:17,180 --> 00:34:21,184
But that's the goal is get yourself
your and your skill

716
00:34:21,184 --> 00:34:24,812
and your confidence to where you can say
no to a client.

717
00:34:24,812 --> 00:34:25,688
Well, let me say this.

718
00:34:25,688 --> 00:34:28,399
Well, I'm
going to try and flip this on you, okay.

719
00:34:28,399 --> 00:34:32,570
Because you've said many times, is
the audience mostly just getting started?

720
00:34:32,779 --> 00:34:35,198
Both I would say, yeah, entrepreneurs.

721
00:34:35,198 --> 00:34:36,365
me let me tell you this thing.

722
00:34:36,365 --> 00:34:41,245
And maybe this will be a moment
that will change it for a lot of people.

723
00:34:42,038 --> 00:34:46,084
When we're first starting,
we're not sure about ourselves.

724
00:34:46,084 --> 00:34:50,421
And so we ask for less money
and then we do the work,

725
00:34:50,463 --> 00:34:53,382
and sometimes we feel quite bitter
doing the work like I'm worth more.

726
00:34:53,382 --> 00:34:56,052
But I resent not asking for more.

727
00:34:56,052 --> 00:34:59,305
And then I do okay in the job,
and I'm kind of bitter.

728
00:34:59,305 --> 00:35:02,266
And some of that rubs off
in the client interaction.

729
00:35:02,266 --> 00:35:05,937
So they might get a good product from you,
but they don't get a great feeling

730
00:35:05,937 --> 00:35:08,189
because you're not willing to go above
and beyond.

731
00:35:08,189 --> 00:35:11,484
You're not literally thanking them
and and filled

732
00:35:11,484 --> 00:35:14,487
with gratitude
because you under charge for the work.

733
00:35:14,487 --> 00:35:16,239
That's your fault, by the way.

734
00:35:16,239 --> 00:35:20,743
And so now you have in your in
your mind, like, I can charge this amount.

735
00:35:21,119 --> 00:35:25,665
And then that client tells two other
people, which means you've done a good job

736
00:35:25,665 --> 00:35:29,127
and they say you should hire Billy,
you should hire Jenny.

737
00:35:29,210 --> 00:35:30,586
They can do it for this amount.

738
00:35:30,586 --> 00:35:34,549
And so what you do
is you get more of this low price work.

739
00:35:34,590 --> 00:35:37,385
You're not attracting the kinds of people.
So it furthers

740
00:35:37,385 --> 00:35:40,388
this narrative in your brain, like,
maybe I'm not worth that much.

741
00:35:40,513 --> 00:35:45,685
And so what happens is you begin this
journey and it's called the vicious cycle.

742
00:35:45,977 --> 00:35:48,771
Imagine a vortex
and you're just going down the drain.

743
00:35:48,771 --> 00:35:51,357
I don't know if I'm worth much,
so I don't charge much.

744
00:35:51,357 --> 00:35:54,610
So then I confirm that I'm not worth much
and then I don't charge much.

745
00:35:54,610 --> 00:35:55,945
And you just keep going down and down.

746
00:35:55,945 --> 00:35:58,948
And this happens at the beginning.

747
00:35:59,323 --> 00:36:02,076
So what if we just flip the narrative like

748
00:36:02,076 --> 00:36:05,163
you got a little sprinkle of what it is
I'm putting out into the world?

749
00:36:05,204 --> 00:36:07,957
I was just starting to,
but I believe in myself.

750
00:36:07,957 --> 00:36:13,921
I worked really hard in school
and and I did way more

751
00:36:13,921 --> 00:36:17,258
than what many of my classmates
did in terms of output.

752
00:36:17,300 --> 00:36:18,885
And I knew I was good.

753
00:36:18,885 --> 00:36:21,846
So my first opportunity,
I just charged more.

754
00:36:22,221 --> 00:36:25,850
I didn't have the experience
or the confidence or the belief

755
00:36:25,850 --> 00:36:26,475
that it could work.

756
00:36:26,475 --> 00:36:29,604
I just tried it first
and they're both based on belief.

757
00:36:29,937 --> 00:36:33,274
So instead of asking for less,
which was scenario A,

758
00:36:33,399 --> 00:36:35,693
I asked for more
and so people paid me more.

759
00:36:35,693 --> 00:36:38,279
So then I told myself
I must be worth more.

760
00:36:38,279 --> 00:36:40,364
So let me try that again
and just do it again.

761
00:36:40,364 --> 00:36:44,368
So this time it's the same vortex,
except where we're going from the bottom

762
00:36:44,368 --> 00:36:46,204
and we're going up and up.

763
00:36:46,204 --> 00:36:47,997
That's called the virtuous cycle.

764
00:36:47,997 --> 00:36:49,832
So you just have to ask yourself,

765
00:36:49,832 --> 00:36:52,376
when is the most important time
to make this decision?

766
00:36:52,376 --> 00:36:55,379
When you're old and gray, when you're like

767
00:36:55,379 --> 00:36:58,758
a grizzly ten year
veteran into this, does that ever happen?

768
00:36:58,799 --> 00:37:00,051
I don't think so.

769
00:37:00,051 --> 00:37:01,844
It happens right at the beginning.

770
00:37:01,844 --> 00:37:04,472
You can choose what is harder.

771
00:37:04,472 --> 00:37:09,644
Is it harder to ask for more and get
everything you want and build up yourself?

772
00:37:09,644 --> 00:37:13,481
Or is it harder to ask for less
and then spiral into the darkness

773
00:37:13,481 --> 00:37:17,443
and then be bitter
about what it is that you're doing?

774
00:37:17,526 --> 00:37:21,322
I think it's much more difficult to ask
for less than it is to ask for more.

775
00:37:21,405 --> 00:37:25,534
And it seems like that self-confidence
and that self-belief was big.

776
00:37:25,534 --> 00:37:27,119
Where did that come from for you?

777
00:37:27,119 --> 00:37:29,455
Repetition, putting in the work.

778
00:37:29,455 --> 00:37:33,417
Nothing builds confidence like
looking at a problem a thousand times.

779
00:37:33,417 --> 00:37:34,835
You just keep doing the work.

780
00:37:34,835 --> 00:37:38,297
Now this is where that line comes in.

781
00:37:38,339 --> 00:37:40,591
Perfect practice makes perfect.

782
00:37:40,591 --> 00:37:42,260
That practice makes perfect.

783
00:37:42,260 --> 00:37:46,472
So having a guide, a mentor and structure
a coach, something

784
00:37:46,472 --> 00:37:50,851
where you can practice perfectly
that will build the confidence.

785
00:37:50,935 --> 00:37:51,936
So it's about the reps.

786
00:37:51,936 --> 00:37:54,647
Putting in the reps, putting in the reps
under the right direction.

787
00:37:54,647 --> 00:37:58,651
Because if you if you dig a hole
and you're not in the right spot,

788
00:37:58,651 --> 00:37:59,944
you will never strike gold.

789
00:37:59,944 --> 00:38:03,364
Was there a call where you walked away
and you were sure

790
00:38:03,364 --> 00:38:06,534
you understood the client
and then you were dead wrong?

791
00:38:06,534 --> 00:38:08,536
And if so, and what did you miss?

792
00:38:08,536 --> 00:38:09,578
And then what did you find

793
00:38:09,578 --> 00:38:14,292
I would consider the first three years,
maybe four years of running the business.

794
00:38:14,333 --> 00:38:17,336
It was just a lot of luck and randomness.

795
00:38:17,962 --> 00:38:20,381
And we were beneficiaries of

796
00:38:21,716 --> 00:38:23,426
high demand, low supply.

797
00:38:23,426 --> 00:38:26,262
There weren't a lot of people in the world
that could do what we were doing.

798
00:38:26,262 --> 00:38:30,766
And so I could survive based on numbers,
because there's just more opportunities.

799
00:38:30,766 --> 00:38:33,185
I can mess up a lot.
And I did mess up a lot.

800
00:38:33,185 --> 00:38:38,357
Had I known then, I mean, had
I known what I knew now back

801
00:38:38,399 --> 00:38:42,153
then from day one,
I would be sitting on millions

802
00:38:42,153 --> 00:38:44,947
and millions of dollars
because we've lost so many projects.

803
00:38:44,947 --> 00:38:49,410
We lost the project in Nissan to Sun
Microsystems.

804
00:38:49,493 --> 00:38:51,037
I mean, we didn't lose a project.

805
00:38:51,037 --> 00:38:53,748
We lost a project for Nissan, for Sun
Microsystems.

806
00:38:53,748 --> 00:38:54,457
Let's go.

807
00:38:54,457 --> 00:38:58,753
Janice funds just job after job,
hundreds of thousands of dollars

808
00:38:58,836 --> 00:39:00,004
year one out of school.

809
00:39:00,004 --> 00:39:02,631
Because I didn't know
how to play the game.

810
00:39:02,631 --> 00:39:05,968
I didn't know how to conduct a conference
call, a new business call.

811
00:39:05,968 --> 00:39:07,845
I didn't know
how to ask the right questions.

812
00:39:07,845 --> 00:39:10,639
And so there are many cringey things
that I did.

813
00:39:10,639 --> 00:39:13,059
I'm like,
what are you thinking, you idiot?

814
00:39:13,059 --> 00:39:14,435
And I was desperate.

815
00:39:14,435 --> 00:39:15,186
So if you

816
00:39:15,186 --> 00:39:18,939
can imagine being invited to a party,
but not being let in time and time again,

817
00:39:18,981 --> 00:39:19,982
you become depressed.

818
00:39:19,982 --> 00:39:24,070
You start to think,
I'm not cut out for this world.

819
00:39:24,653 --> 00:39:26,447
And so I ask for help.

820
00:39:26,447 --> 00:39:27,948
And I got really bad advice.

821
00:39:27,948 --> 00:39:29,617
So that did even more damage.

822
00:39:29,617 --> 00:39:32,578
And then eventually
I found the right person to help me.

823
00:39:32,578 --> 00:39:35,289
And we started to to do great things.

824
00:39:35,289 --> 00:39:38,042
Was that a mentor, a business partner?
Who was a business coach?

825
00:39:38,042 --> 00:39:41,212
So first you started trying to find help
and you got pointed

826
00:39:41,212 --> 00:39:42,213
in the wrong direction.

827
00:39:42,213 --> 00:39:42,505
Yeah.

828
00:39:42,505 --> 00:39:47,259
You kept going on down the wrong vortex,
have enough success to keep you going.

829
00:39:47,301 --> 00:39:51,972
And so the thing that I encourage
people is when you're young.

830
00:39:51,972 --> 00:39:54,392
This is the time to do it
because your overhead is really low.

831
00:39:54,392 --> 00:39:56,227
You don't have any commitments.
You don't have a partner,

832
00:39:56,227 --> 00:39:58,521
you don't have a family,
you don't have a mortgage yet.

833
00:39:58,521 --> 00:40:00,356
So why not take the risk then?

834
00:40:00,356 --> 00:40:02,691
So people
tell themselves a really great story.

835
00:40:02,691 --> 00:40:05,277
It's a lie in the word
belief is the word lie.

836
00:40:05,277 --> 00:40:09,073
So you believe that when it happens,
you'll take more risk.

837
00:40:09,073 --> 00:40:11,867
But what happens is ten years later,
you've got commitments,

838
00:40:11,867 --> 00:40:13,577
you've got car payments,
you have insurance.

839
00:40:13,577 --> 00:40:15,371
Maybe you have a little one
running around the house.

840
00:40:15,371 --> 00:40:18,874
And now it's like, when is
when are you going to take a chance?

841
00:40:18,874 --> 00:40:20,543
There's a book by Paul Arden.

842
00:40:20,543 --> 00:40:22,211
Is is whatever
you think, think the opposite.

843
00:40:22,211 --> 00:40:24,505
And in that book he says risky is safe.

844
00:40:24,505 --> 00:40:25,923
Safe is risky.

845
00:40:25,923 --> 00:40:26,799
To play it safe

846
00:40:26,799 --> 00:40:30,219
is the riskiest thing that you can do,
and that's what you're doing.

847
00:40:30,553 --> 00:40:32,555
That's what most people do.
Just play it safe.

848
00:40:32,555 --> 00:40:35,558
Everybody plays it 
And I always have to check myself.

849
00:40:35,558 --> 00:40:37,935
We're playing it safe. Let's change it up.

850
00:40:37,935 --> 00:40:39,478
let's go for a moonshot.

851
00:40:39,478 --> 00:40:43,983
And what's a signal on a call
that you used to trust as proof?

852
00:40:43,983 --> 00:40:46,068
You nailed it.
That you now know as a trap.

853
00:40:46,068 --> 00:40:50,448
I think you mistake
general general enthusiasm and people

854
00:40:50,489 --> 00:40:54,702
being cordial and amiable in the call
as like, you're going to get the job.

855
00:40:54,994 --> 00:40:56,328
I don't believe that,

856
00:40:56,328 --> 00:40:59,331
because now I've learned that
there are a lot of false positives,

857
00:40:59,331 --> 00:41:03,252
and you learned that through experience
and through coaching and guidance.

858
00:41:03,252 --> 00:41:08,007
So a lot of that coaching, it seems that
elevated you to the next level.

859
00:41:08,007 --> 00:41:11,469
Was that on coaching for that
discovery call

860
00:41:11,510 --> 00:41:14,722
or coaching on how you how you how
your how you're interacting with clients.

861
00:41:14,763 --> 00:41:18,058
Maybe the proposal itself
Just the discovery this discovery call.

862
00:41:18,142 --> 00:41:18,559
That's it.

863
00:41:18,559 --> 00:41:22,813
If you can nail the discovery call,
they'll see the value and they'll want to

864
00:41:22,855 --> 00:41:25,483
work with you even if your price is double
your competitors.

865
00:41:25,483 --> 00:41:26,233
Yeah.

866
00:41:26,233 --> 00:41:28,027
My goal is to be the most expensive

867
00:41:28,027 --> 00:41:31,030
bidding for use, to want to work with me
and be happy about it.

868
00:41:31,530 --> 00:41:33,949
Anybody can win the project
being the lowest bid,

869
00:41:33,949 --> 00:41:37,286
the challenge is being the highest bid,
and I've created

870
00:41:37,286 --> 00:41:40,915
uncomfortable situations for my team
and they were always wrong.

871
00:41:41,123 --> 00:41:42,625
I'll give you two examples

872
00:41:43,626 --> 00:41:46,629
in the line of
work that we were doing for commercials.

873
00:41:46,837 --> 00:41:50,716
If the clients changed
the scope, you asked for an overage

874
00:41:51,300 --> 00:41:54,803
and my my producer at that time
came in was like, what should we ask for?

875
00:41:54,845 --> 00:41:56,222
I've done the numbers.

876
00:41:56,222 --> 00:41:59,141
It's my time, this person's time,
and they're just calculating time.

877
00:41:59,141 --> 00:42:01,936
And so let's say they're like,
it's $1,200.

878
00:42:01,936 --> 00:42:04,897
I'm like, that's embarrassing.

879
00:42:04,897 --> 00:42:06,482
It's $180,000 job.

880
00:42:06,482 --> 00:42:09,485
You're going to ask
for another 1000 $1,200.

881
00:42:09,860 --> 00:42:12,154
I think we're nickel
and diming people at this point.

882
00:42:12,154 --> 00:42:13,906
So you're going to ask for a number,
ask for a real number.

883
00:42:13,906 --> 00:42:15,533
He goes, how much I ask for? Five grand.

884
00:42:15,533 --> 00:42:17,117
Ten grand, something like that.

885
00:42:17,117 --> 00:42:19,995
He goes,
how would I justify that? You don't.

886
00:42:19,995 --> 00:42:21,539
You just tell it to them.

887
00:42:21,539 --> 00:42:23,749
And if they have a problem with it,
you schedule a call

888
00:42:23,749 --> 00:42:25,334
and we'll get on the phone.

889
00:42:25,334 --> 00:42:30,714
And he's like,
whatever, you're the boss, I'll do it.

890
00:42:31,757 --> 00:42:33,008
And then he sends a number.

891
00:42:33,008 --> 00:42:35,511
He's probably
sheepishly sends out the number.

892
00:42:35,511 --> 00:42:37,721
And then moments later,
the clients approved it.

893
00:42:37,721 --> 00:42:40,140
He comes running back to me, just giddy.
He's like, Chris, they approved him.

894
00:42:40,140 --> 00:42:43,602
I'm like, I know,
I know how this game works, friend.

895
00:42:43,936 --> 00:42:45,813
And so I think he learned
a valuable lesson.

896
00:42:45,813 --> 00:42:46,772
I already knew the lesson.

897
00:42:46,772 --> 00:42:50,067
Then if you're going to just ask
for little bits, don't do that.

898
00:42:50,109 --> 00:42:52,736
It's super annoying.
We call it nickel and dime.

899
00:42:52,736 --> 00:42:56,282
You know, like when you buy a car
and like, you want a floor mat, 45 bucks.

900
00:42:56,282 --> 00:42:58,492
I'm like, guys, it's a $70,000 card.

901
00:42:58,492 --> 00:42:59,034
Don't you think?

902
00:42:59,034 --> 00:43:02,162
You could just charge it, build it in
so you don't nickel and dime

903
00:43:02,329 --> 00:43:05,457
include every option
that a reasonable person would want.

904
00:43:05,749 --> 00:43:08,419
I don't need ceramic brakes,
but other than that, like,

905
00:43:08,419 --> 00:43:10,337
put everything in it
and just charge me the right amount.

906
00:43:10,337 --> 00:43:11,255
I don't respect you.

907
00:43:11,255 --> 00:43:15,968
Then it's like we're not a bizarre
don't ask for those little things.

908
00:43:15,968 --> 00:43:18,178
So that's an example there.

909
00:43:18,178 --> 00:43:22,141
Another example is I remember on a call
it's a good client

910
00:43:22,141 --> 00:43:25,060
and we're talking to them
and they're adding things to the project.

911
00:43:25,060 --> 00:43:27,062
So you know what we need

912
00:43:27,062 --> 00:43:30,149
a keynote animation
because our CEO is going to be speaking.

913
00:43:30,149 --> 00:43:33,027
There's going to be 500 of us
there. It's going to be great.

914
00:43:33,027 --> 00:43:34,403
I'm like cool.

915
00:43:34,403 --> 00:43:36,322
Like we have 100 grand to do this.

916
00:43:37,406 --> 00:43:38,782
I said, okay.

917
00:43:38,782 --> 00:43:41,785
And so all my team smiling,
we hang up the phone.

918
00:43:42,202 --> 00:43:43,787
I'll put together the bid.

919
00:43:43,787 --> 00:43:44,663
What should I put?

920
00:43:44,663 --> 00:43:48,709
I'm going to put it for a hundred grand
like no you're not put it for 118.

921
00:43:49,168 --> 00:43:49,918
Like what?

922
00:43:49,918 --> 00:43:50,878
Why would we do that?

923
00:43:50,878 --> 00:43:53,547
They just told us it's 100 grand.

924
00:43:53,547 --> 00:43:56,550
We're betraying the trust.
Like what? Trust?

925
00:43:56,550 --> 00:43:57,801
You think that literally the person

926
00:43:57,801 --> 00:44:00,179
is telling you the exact amount of money
they have?

927
00:44:00,179 --> 00:44:02,514
I always want to find the ceiling.

928
00:44:02,514 --> 00:44:05,684
So they're like, oh, I'll do it

929
00:44:06,977 --> 00:44:09,355
because they're on the front line
talking to the client.

930
00:44:09,355 --> 00:44:11,482
They're they're afraid of the blowback,
right?

931
00:44:11,482 --> 00:44:13,400
Like, what are you doing?

932
00:44:13,400 --> 00:44:17,446
So sure enough, next day he's like,
they're not happy with this.

933
00:44:17,488 --> 00:44:18,989
Like, get him on the phone.

934
00:44:19,990 --> 00:44:22,326
This is presumed we're
sitting around a conference room table.

935
00:44:22,326 --> 00:44:23,786
No video. Just talking.

936
00:44:23,786 --> 00:44:24,453
Gets on the phone.

937
00:44:24,453 --> 00:44:25,204
It's like.

938
00:44:25,204 --> 00:44:28,916
So, guys, we told you we had 100 grand.

939
00:44:30,250 --> 00:44:32,961
What are you submitting 118 for?

940
00:44:32,961 --> 00:44:34,380
And you can tell they're upset.

941
00:44:34,380 --> 00:44:36,215
You can hear it in their voice.

942
00:44:36,215 --> 00:44:37,424
Like so.

943
00:44:37,424 --> 00:44:40,135
Here's how things typically work.

944
00:44:40,135 --> 00:44:42,012
We submit something, we beat it.

945
00:44:42,012 --> 00:44:42,971
We beat it to the bone.

946
00:44:42,971 --> 00:44:46,016
And then you ask for something
or something changes.

947
00:44:46,016 --> 00:44:48,268
And then we feel like
we bid it to the bone.

948
00:44:48,268 --> 00:44:50,104
I could ask you for more money.

949
00:44:50,104 --> 00:44:52,022
No project is ever a straight line.

950
00:44:52,022 --> 00:44:54,817
There's always these these ups and downs.

951
00:44:54,817 --> 00:44:57,778
The two things I'm trying to prevent
is us calling you every single time

952
00:44:57,778 --> 00:45:00,989
you want to make a decision,
and to your reluctance to call us

953
00:45:00,989 --> 00:45:03,117
because you want to make a decision
that's different.

954
00:45:03,117 --> 00:45:04,243
You want to make a change.

955
00:45:04,243 --> 00:45:08,122
So I price it in a way that we can do this
and you can ask me for whatever,

956
00:45:08,122 --> 00:45:10,457
within reason, we're just going to do it.

957
00:45:11,750 --> 00:45:12,042
It's like,

958
00:45:12,042 --> 00:45:15,045
okay, I said, look,
you tell me what you want to do.

959
00:45:15,129 --> 00:45:17,965
You can sign it for 118,
or you can sign it for 100.

960
00:45:17,965 --> 00:45:21,260
And just be aware when you sign up for 100
and you ask us something

961
00:45:21,260 --> 00:45:24,263
because they never really something
comes up.

962
00:45:24,346 --> 00:45:26,724
We'll ask you to go get more money.

963
00:45:26,724 --> 00:45:28,308
We're trying to prevent that.

964
00:45:28,308 --> 00:45:31,019
He's like, okay, calms down.

965
00:45:31,019 --> 00:45:33,480
They approved for 118.

966
00:45:33,480 --> 00:45:35,774
The most beautiful part is
they never asked for anything different.

967
00:45:35,774 --> 00:45:37,025
They just loved what we did.

968
00:45:37,025 --> 00:45:39,695
They never asked for anything else.

969
00:45:39,695 --> 00:45:43,866
Which ironic
because everybody always asks for extra.

970
00:45:44,241 --> 00:45:45,409
So those are two stories.

971
00:45:45,409 --> 00:45:49,288
I have an infinite number of these stories
where this idea about money

972
00:45:49,288 --> 00:45:52,833
and relationships and creating,
I think, necessary friction

973
00:45:52,833 --> 00:45:56,086
in the relationship to test
how badly you want to work with us.

974
00:45:56,128 --> 00:45:57,463
That's important for me.

975
00:45:57,463 --> 00:46:00,382
So you try to create the friction?

976
00:46:00,382 --> 00:46:04,720
Absolutely, because shows you
how far they're going to push

977
00:46:04,720 --> 00:46:07,598
and how far you can push
and where that middle ground is.

978
00:46:07,598 --> 00:46:08,766
don't look at it like that.

979
00:46:08,766 --> 00:46:12,186
I think there's unnecessary friction
and there's necessary friction.

980
00:46:12,394 --> 00:46:16,023
Unnecessary friction is
you taking four days is in a proposal.

981
00:46:17,649 --> 00:46:20,360
They call and you don't respond
for another eight hours.

982
00:46:20,360 --> 00:46:21,904
That's not being responsive.

983
00:46:21,904 --> 00:46:23,405
That's creating friction.

984
00:46:23,405 --> 00:46:25,324
You're not clear
about what they're getting

985
00:46:25,324 --> 00:46:27,451
and what they're paying
and what the milestones are.

986
00:46:27,451 --> 00:46:29,578
That's unnecessary friction.

987
00:46:29,578 --> 00:46:34,833
Necessary friction is I want to see how
strong our relationship is going to be.

988
00:46:34,875 --> 00:46:37,419
How bad do you want it?

989
00:46:37,419 --> 00:46:39,797
I want to know, before I commit
to doing this work

990
00:46:39,797 --> 00:46:41,965
with you,
that you want it as much as I want it,

991
00:46:41,965 --> 00:46:44,426
because we're going to be partners
for the period of time.

992
00:46:44,426 --> 00:46:46,553
And I want to I want to just know.

993
00:46:46,553 --> 00:46:51,558
So necessary friction is a price
point is asking for a concession.

994
00:46:52,351 --> 00:46:54,061
Those are necessary friction.

995
00:46:54,061 --> 00:46:56,438
Oh, you really do want to work with us.

996
00:46:56,438 --> 00:46:58,524
You're not just triple
bidding us right now.

997
00:46:58,524 --> 00:47:01,235
This is not a game for you.
You're serious right now.

998
00:47:01,235 --> 00:47:04,613
And you might say, like in
lots of games or coaches, they'll do this.

999
00:47:04,655 --> 00:47:07,241
Like, how bad do you want to win, Johnny?

1000
00:47:07,241 --> 00:47:08,659
You get back off the stool.

1001
00:47:08,659 --> 00:47:12,204
You go finish round three like you've
your life depends on it.

1002
00:47:12,329 --> 00:47:13,789
And Johnny is like, yes,

1003
00:47:14,832 --> 00:47:15,249
yes sir.

1004
00:47:15,249 --> 00:47:18,043
And they just go in there and they,
they do battle.

1005
00:47:18,043 --> 00:47:19,169
We want to know

1006
00:47:19,169 --> 00:47:22,714
And what are some of the different ways
you create that necessary friction

1007
00:47:22,965 --> 00:47:26,218
maybe other than price, other than price
and ask for concessions.

1008
00:47:26,343 --> 00:47:26,885
Yeah.

1009
00:47:26,885 --> 00:47:30,013
Well let's let's go
like concessions is a big word right.

1010
00:47:30,055 --> 00:47:32,474
Like what does that really mean.

1011
00:47:32,474 --> 00:47:35,394
Is the due date really the 27th?

1012
00:47:35,394 --> 00:47:37,980
Because we'd like a little bit more time
to work on this.

1013
00:47:37,980 --> 00:47:40,649
We won't charge more,
but we need more time.

1014
00:47:40,649 --> 00:47:41,525
Like the latest.

1015
00:47:41,525 --> 00:47:44,987
We can give you the 31st
the latest. Latest.

1016
00:47:45,112 --> 00:47:47,781
Well, yeah.

1017
00:47:47,781 --> 00:47:48,365
Okay.

1018
00:47:48,365 --> 00:47:51,827
Now I noticed that you don't pay
for like 90 days, net 90.

1019
00:47:51,869 --> 00:47:52,661
We can't do that.

1020
00:47:52,661 --> 00:47:54,162
We need to first 50.

1021
00:47:54,162 --> 00:47:55,956
Okay. We can do that.

1022
00:47:55,956 --> 00:47:57,165
So those are all concessions.

1023
00:47:57,165 --> 00:48:00,544
There's lots of different things you
can ask for to see that creates friction.

1024
00:48:00,544 --> 00:48:03,964
Or I see that you're asking for new ideas.

1025
00:48:03,964 --> 00:48:06,800
We don't do that.
I'll give you an example.

1026
00:48:06,800 --> 00:48:07,342
Okay.

1027
00:48:07,342 --> 00:48:10,721
Unbeknownst to me, at that time,
somebody had recommended us

1028
00:48:10,721 --> 00:48:13,682
for a gig, one
that we were not qualified for.

1029
00:48:13,724 --> 00:48:16,935
So we got an RFP, a request for proposal,

1030
00:48:16,935 --> 00:48:20,188
and they had all these specs
and it was $100,000 budget.

1031
00:48:20,188 --> 00:48:22,482
They just told us $100,000.

1032
00:48:22,482 --> 00:48:24,067
We need to see ideas.

1033
00:48:24,067 --> 00:48:28,155
It's like a large real estate
developer commercial.

1034
00:48:28,155 --> 00:48:32,784
And I looked at them like,
we can't do all that they've asked for.

1035
00:48:32,784 --> 00:48:36,455
And we're definitely not doing free ideas
because that's what they've asked for.

1036
00:48:36,747 --> 00:48:38,248
And they're like,
what do you want me to do?

1037
00:48:38,248 --> 00:48:43,754
My executive producer, I said, well,
tell them we can't do everything,

1038
00:48:43,754 --> 00:48:47,382
but we can do some things,
but we don't do free ideas.

1039
00:48:47,382 --> 00:48:51,345
But I can send it together
a capability stack, which we did.

1040
00:48:52,930 --> 00:48:54,514
That's what we did.

1041
00:48:54,514 --> 00:48:57,267
And they'd like to have a meeting.

1042
00:48:57,267 --> 00:49:00,062
So I think they invited seven people

1043
00:49:00,062 --> 00:49:03,065
to this bidding process because they were
looking for a new vendor.

1044
00:49:03,190 --> 00:49:04,483
We're one of seven.

1045
00:49:04,483 --> 00:49:10,238
So we go into the meeting
and I show them the capabilities

1046
00:49:10,238 --> 00:49:13,325
deck, and I walk them through the ideas,
and I can tell

1047
00:49:13,367 --> 00:49:14,785
we're going to get this gig.

1048
00:49:14,785 --> 00:49:18,121
And the reason why I know
this is because body language and tone,

1049
00:49:18,205 --> 00:49:19,623
everybody's relaxed in the face.

1050
00:49:19,623 --> 00:49:23,168
They're smiling, they're leaning in
because they're sitting on the opposite

1051
00:49:23,168 --> 00:49:25,462
end of the table,
a table twice as long as this.

1052
00:49:25,462 --> 00:49:26,672
I'm on this side,

1053
00:49:26,672 --> 00:49:30,050
monitored laptop driving the presentation,
and they're on that side.

1054
00:49:30,050 --> 00:49:31,635
There's 3 or 4 of them, right?

1055
00:49:31,635 --> 00:49:33,470
I'm trying to figure out who's the boss,

1056
00:49:33,470 --> 00:49:35,931
like who's making decisions,
what's the energy like.

1057
00:49:35,931 --> 00:49:37,683
And I'm doing what I do.

1058
00:49:37,683 --> 00:49:42,521
I'm sometimes a cervix or
and sometimes I'm just charming.

1059
00:49:42,521 --> 00:49:46,400
I just do whatever I do and I present
and then we get up and they did

1060
00:49:46,441 --> 00:49:49,403
ask this,
are you going to present to us any ideas?

1061
00:49:49,403 --> 00:49:51,738
I said, no,
I thought we were clear about that.

1062
00:49:51,738 --> 00:49:53,740
No, no, we were just asking.

1063
00:49:53,740 --> 00:49:57,202
And I said, the reason why we don't
present ideas is because

1064
00:49:57,202 --> 00:50:01,957
our whole philosophy and how we do what
we do, requires you to be a part of it.

1065
00:50:02,124 --> 00:50:04,251
I'm not going to make guesses
as to what you want

1066
00:50:04,251 --> 00:50:07,629
or what your customers want, and that's
where the real insights come from.

1067
00:50:08,255 --> 00:50:09,256
Okay, it's fine.

1068
00:50:09,256 --> 00:50:13,093
So we get up and the, the,
the one lady who brought us in

1069
00:50:13,385 --> 00:50:16,221
as part of their teams
like that went really well.

1070
00:50:16,221 --> 00:50:20,934
I'm like, okay, you just better me up
for a soft landing, I don't know.

1071
00:50:21,226 --> 00:50:22,519
We get in the car

1072
00:50:23,645 --> 00:50:26,648
and like
we're going to ward the job to you.

1073
00:50:27,524 --> 00:50:30,110
Six other people presented ideas.

1074
00:50:30,110 --> 00:50:32,154
We didn't present any ideas.

1075
00:50:32,154 --> 00:50:34,156
We still got the job.

1076
00:50:34,156 --> 00:50:37,117
That is necessary. Friction.

1077
00:50:37,117 --> 00:50:40,412
We're going to derail your bidding process
by doing it

1078
00:50:40,412 --> 00:50:43,832
differently, therefore making them
possible for you to compare us to others.

1079
00:50:43,832 --> 00:50:47,127
And what I did in that meeting
was I planted seeds of doubt

1080
00:50:47,169 --> 00:50:51,423
that every other idea that you're going to
see is based on assumptions.

1081
00:50:52,424 --> 00:50:54,051
I can't work that way.

1082
00:50:54,051 --> 00:50:56,136
And you should accept that either.

1083
00:50:56,136 --> 00:50:58,305
It's very smart That's what we do.

1084
00:50:58,305 --> 00:50:59,014
Let me ask you this.

1085
00:50:59,014 --> 00:51:02,934
What are the three elements
of like great design.

1086
00:51:02,934 --> 00:51:08,398
Can we narrow down what design or 
what's the application Let's say a logo.

1087
00:51:08,565 --> 00:51:11,568
Okay, a logo needs to be different.

1088
00:51:11,943 --> 00:51:15,030
It needs to be memorable
and it needs to be simple.

1089
00:51:15,197 --> 00:51:19,159
Was there a piece of content that you made

1090
00:51:19,159 --> 00:51:22,537
that was great at the time

1091
00:51:22,662 --> 00:51:25,791
and now you like,
oh, you cringe when you see it.

1092
00:51:25,916 --> 00:51:26,708
Yeah, absolutely.

1093
00:51:26,708 --> 00:51:28,585
All the time. Really? Yeah.

1094
00:51:28,585 --> 00:51:31,630
Every time I use a display typeface,

1095
00:51:32,589 --> 00:51:35,592
I'm like, I thought it was cool,
but now I'm looking at it.

1096
00:51:35,592 --> 00:51:37,844
It's like. That's why

1097
00:51:37,844 --> 00:51:42,224
Timeless Design doesn't veer away
from like, the 22 typefaces you could use.

1098
00:51:42,349 --> 00:51:45,477
You're supposed to use
every time I use one of them and,

1099
00:51:45,519 --> 00:51:49,356
you know, I fall for it, I'm like,
oh, maybe this time I'll get it to work.

1100
00:51:49,397 --> 00:51:51,733
I use some trashy display typeface.

1101
00:51:51,733 --> 00:51:53,110
And then the client

1102
00:51:53,110 --> 00:51:56,613
still using this day, I'm like,
oh, how do I get myself out of this?

1103
00:51:56,613 --> 00:51:57,697
But it's fine.

1104
00:51:57,697 --> 00:51:58,824
Do you want to go back to those clients?

1105
00:51:58,824 --> 00:52:01,576
I'm like, you need to change this,

1106
00:52:01,576 --> 00:52:03,370
but how do you know

1107
00:52:03,370 --> 00:52:05,789
what's timeless versus
what's not timeless?

1108
00:52:05,789 --> 00:52:08,375
Well, how long it's been around.

1109
00:52:08,375 --> 00:52:10,961
It was just event last year.
We don't know.

1110
00:52:10,961 --> 00:52:13,964
But if we're still using
the same typefaces that the Swiss

1111
00:52:13,964 --> 00:52:17,676
German masters have designed,
we're probably going to be all right.

1112
00:52:17,801 --> 00:52:21,930
Is there a framework that you taught
with total confidence for years

1113
00:52:21,930 --> 00:52:24,141
and then quietly stop believing in.

1114
00:52:24,141 --> 00:52:25,433
No, I don't think so.

1115
00:52:26,560 --> 00:52:28,395
I think
there's a framework that doesn't work.

1116
00:52:28,395 --> 00:52:29,855
It just evolves to the next thing.

1117
00:52:29,855 --> 00:52:33,024
And then we don't know where one stops
and one begins.

1118
00:52:33,024 --> 00:52:34,526
It just becomes the thing.

1119
00:52:34,526 --> 00:52:35,944
Is there something that you maybe

1120
00:52:35,944 --> 00:52:38,989
set on stage in the past
that you're not sure is true anymore?

1121
00:52:38,989 --> 00:52:41,491
Probably. I think that work is good.
I'm just kidding.

1122
00:52:41,491 --> 00:52:43,076
I don't think so.

1123
00:52:43,076 --> 00:52:49,499
pride myself on being fairly introspective
and going beyond the surface.

1124
00:52:49,499 --> 00:52:52,502
And so I do think about my thoughts
quite a bit.

1125
00:52:52,669 --> 00:52:57,757
I do regret, though, the tone in which
I say things, because I get caught up

1126
00:52:57,757 --> 00:53:02,137
in the heat of the moment, and my tone
sounds like I'm in a hole.

1127
00:53:02,929 --> 00:53:04,598
So I listened to some of those sessions.

1128
00:53:04,598 --> 00:53:07,517
I'm like,
oh, why am I so angry with the world?

1129
00:53:07,517 --> 00:53:08,518
And I know why.

1130
00:53:08,518 --> 00:53:11,646
Because freaking idiots asking me

1131
00:53:11,646 --> 00:53:15,066
stupid questions and then telling me
how I should answer the question.

1132
00:53:15,066 --> 00:53:16,776
And I was like, oh, that's why.

1133
00:53:16,776 --> 00:53:21,615
So I need to do like a daily prayer
meditation to calm them down

1134
00:53:21,781 --> 00:53:23,200
because my tone is not right.

1135
00:53:23,200 --> 00:53:25,076
Does that come from your childhood?

1136
00:53:25,076 --> 00:53:27,996
No. Well,
everything comes from your childhood.

1137
00:53:27,996 --> 00:53:30,498
It just comes from like a. You idiot.

1138
00:53:30,498 --> 00:53:32,667
You want to do battle? Let's go.

1139
00:53:32,667 --> 00:53:36,296
When somebody is, you know,
people always wonder, like,

1140
00:53:36,296 --> 00:53:39,758
why is it that it always feels like
I'm fighting with someone

1141
00:53:39,758 --> 00:53:43,220
and that they can never stand their ground
with me?

1142
00:53:43,637 --> 00:53:45,639
Because only idiots want to argue?

1143
00:53:45,639 --> 00:53:50,018
Because smart, intelligent people
have already figured out this, this logic.

1144
00:53:50,018 --> 00:53:54,439
And if they're on the fence, as soon as
you say to them, they conceded mediately.

1145
00:53:54,731 --> 00:53:56,191
I'll give you an example.

1146
00:53:56,191 --> 00:54:00,445
Buddy of mine is name is Fabian Greater,
fellow Arts Center grad,

1147
00:54:00,528 --> 00:54:04,491
and we were set up to debate
something about marketing versus branding.

1148
00:54:04,574 --> 00:54:06,785
And he was in a like branding so good.

1149
00:54:06,785 --> 00:54:08,036
And marketing is different.

1150
00:54:08,036 --> 00:54:11,831
And I asked him like three questions
and he conceded, that's

1151
00:54:11,831 --> 00:54:12,958
what intelligent people do.

1152
00:54:12,958 --> 00:54:17,796
When you hear a superior argument
or a case or a thought, you just let go.

1153
00:54:17,837 --> 00:54:21,424
So all those people,
we never argue like you never see me

1154
00:54:21,591 --> 00:54:24,970
go at tooth and nail
with someone who's smart

1155
00:54:25,387 --> 00:54:28,181
because we're both curious
and we're both in

1156
00:54:28,181 --> 00:54:31,893
pursuit of knowledge, like philosophy.

1157
00:54:32,060 --> 00:54:35,063
I consider myself an amateur philosopher.

1158
00:54:35,230 --> 00:54:38,400
It's like philos means love

1159
00:54:38,400 --> 00:54:42,362
and Sophie means wisdom or truth.

1160
00:54:42,404 --> 00:54:44,823
I like,
I love truth. That's what I'm pursuing.

1161
00:54:44,823 --> 00:54:49,369
So to be a critical thinker, it means you
critique your own thoughts first.

1162
00:54:49,577 --> 00:54:53,665
So most people who aren't deep thinkers
never even think

1163
00:54:53,665 --> 00:54:55,125
that their opinion
could be right or wrong.

1164
00:54:55,125 --> 00:54:57,252
They just assume it's right.

1165
00:54:57,252 --> 00:54:58,753
I sit there and I'm like,
when is this true?

1166
00:54:58,753 --> 00:54:59,879
When is this untrue?

1167
00:54:59,879 --> 00:55:03,883
And in my life, in other people's lives,
can I just test it?

1168
00:55:03,967 --> 00:55:05,468
I'm looking for a negative.

1169
00:55:05,468 --> 00:55:08,930
So if it's a negative,
it means that this whole idea is not good.

1170
00:55:09,180 --> 00:55:11,308
So I battle test in my mind first,

1171
00:55:11,308 --> 00:55:14,311
and then I speak it to you
and you say, well, what about this, Chris?

1172
00:55:14,311 --> 00:55:18,273
And if you you present a superior
framework,

1173
00:55:18,315 --> 00:55:21,318
truth, new point I need to consider.

1174
00:55:21,943 --> 00:55:25,697
I'm like, okay,
I don't feel like I'm losing,

1175
00:55:25,697 --> 00:55:27,991
but I surrender to the superior idea.

1176
00:55:27,991 --> 00:55:29,451
And that idea will become my idea.

1177
00:55:29,451 --> 00:55:32,078
Now I just throw out the old idea.

1178
00:55:32,078 --> 00:55:33,204
I bring you the new idea.

1179
00:55:33,204 --> 00:55:36,374
It's like what many people would call
like, the learner's mindset.

1180
00:55:36,499 --> 00:55:38,460
I have a learners mindset. I'm curious.

1181
00:55:38,460 --> 00:55:42,505
And so when I get heated, it's
because people are being evasive,

1182
00:55:42,547 --> 00:55:45,550
they're being obstinate,
they're being obtuse, and they know

1183
00:55:45,550 --> 00:55:50,138
they're doing it
because they can't concede defeat.

1184
00:55:50,513 --> 00:55:53,350
It's like we're playing chess and you're
just going to keep moving your piece back

1185
00:55:53,350 --> 00:55:54,267
and forth.

1186
00:55:54,267 --> 00:55:57,312
A real chess player
just knocks over the king and says, I see

1187
00:55:57,812 --> 00:55:58,772
I cannot win this.

1188
00:55:58,772 --> 00:56:00,440
Therefore you win.

1189
00:56:00,440 --> 00:56:02,650
Okay, let's go back to blind.

1190
00:56:02,650 --> 00:56:06,363
What's outside of maybe discovery.

1191
00:56:07,113 --> 00:56:10,950
What's the most expensive mistake
you think you made

1192
00:56:11,451 --> 00:56:13,036
running blind for two decades?

1193
00:56:13,036 --> 00:56:16,539
The most expensive mistake
is not reading the contract carefully

1194
00:56:16,539 --> 00:56:19,542
and agreeing to a contract
that auto renews.

1195
00:56:19,626 --> 00:56:22,253
I have sales reps, and the reps

1196
00:56:22,253 --> 00:56:25,215
represent you
for different territories in the world.

1197
00:56:25,215 --> 00:56:29,260
So three in the US, East, West and Midwest
and also overseas,

1198
00:56:29,302 --> 00:56:34,724
Asia, Europe,
we have reps looking for work for us.

1199
00:56:36,559 --> 00:56:37,685
Our rep

1200
00:56:37,685 --> 00:56:42,065
had in her
contract that it auto renews every year.

1201
00:56:42,065 --> 00:56:47,362
Unless we explicitly write
or tell the person it's over.

1202
00:56:48,571 --> 00:56:51,032
The relationship was kind of on thin ice.

1203
00:56:51,032 --> 00:56:52,700
We're both questioning it.

1204
00:56:52,700 --> 00:56:54,411
They're questioning
us, we're questioning them.

1205
00:56:54,411 --> 00:56:59,249
And so we get into a moment
where the rep quits on us.

1206
00:57:00,041 --> 00:57:02,460
It's like, well,
you can find yourself a new rep then,

1207
00:57:02,460 --> 00:57:03,920
because I don't work this way.

1208
00:57:03,920 --> 00:57:07,215
So I'm like, okay,
she quit. It's all good.

1209
00:57:07,340 --> 00:57:11,219
So that's like October,
November, December.

1210
00:57:11,719 --> 00:57:13,054
We don't even talk to her.

1211
00:57:13,054 --> 00:57:14,472
We're just doing our own thing.

1212
00:57:14,472 --> 00:57:17,809
January rolls around and she goes,
hey guys,

1213
00:57:17,809 --> 00:57:19,978
you want to send me the bid forms
for November?

1214
00:57:19,978 --> 00:57:22,355
December? I'm like,
what are you talking about?

1215
00:57:22,355 --> 00:57:23,356
I'm still your rep.

1216
00:57:23,356 --> 00:57:24,899
It's like, no, you're not. You quit.

1217
00:57:24,899 --> 00:57:27,360
And she's like, no,
I didn't read your contract.

1218
00:57:27,360 --> 00:57:29,237
And we're trying
to look through our notes.

1219
00:57:29,237 --> 00:57:33,533
If it was more or less like October,
actually quit to have email.

1220
00:57:33,533 --> 00:57:37,036
We have no evidence of this, except
for two of us on the call and one of her.

1221
00:57:37,495 --> 00:57:40,957
And she goes, well,
what are we going to do here?

1222
00:57:40,957 --> 00:57:44,085
And I'm just pissed.
And I call my attorney.

1223
00:57:44,085 --> 00:57:45,170
He's like, what up with this?

1224
00:57:45,170 --> 00:57:48,423
And he goes, well, you can fight it,
but it's not worth it.

1225
00:57:48,923 --> 00:57:51,968
So she wants to audit every job

1226
00:57:51,968 --> 00:57:55,680
that we've got in the territory,
and she wants to make her commission.

1227
00:57:56,347 --> 00:57:58,308
She didn't call us once.
She didn't check out anything.

1228
00:57:58,308 --> 00:58:01,603
And I think it was extremely deceitful
and unethical.

1229
00:58:01,603 --> 00:58:06,399
What she did, but she knew were created
as we don't read contracts.

1230
00:58:06,733 --> 00:58:11,362
And so I had to pay her
to get out of the contract

1231
00:58:11,613 --> 00:58:14,699
for work
she didn't do for a job she quit on.

1232
00:58:14,824 --> 00:58:17,035
That lesson cost me 36 grand.

1233
00:58:18,745 --> 00:58:20,705
It was a bitter pill to swallow.

1234
00:58:20,705 --> 00:58:24,501
what changed from, like,
a five person studio

1235
00:58:24,918 --> 00:58:28,171
to a 21st studio
and kind of what fell apart?

1236
00:58:28,171 --> 00:58:31,174
well, obvious things are overhead.

1237
00:58:31,674 --> 00:58:33,301
You hire

1238
00:58:33,301 --> 00:58:36,804
based on anticipation of jobs
you don't have yet.

1239
00:58:36,930 --> 00:58:40,099
And so you're always measuring risk

1240
00:58:40,099 --> 00:58:44,604
because in order for us to do work
at the highest level, we need the team.

1241
00:58:44,646 --> 00:58:46,314
Those teams are very expensive.

1242
00:58:46,314 --> 00:58:48,483
And so you hire them when you can

1243
00:58:48,483 --> 00:58:52,028
because otherwise they're freelancing
and they never they always move around.

1244
00:58:52,028 --> 00:58:54,739
And they're not predictable in that way.

1245
00:58:54,739 --> 00:58:56,699
Not reliable.

1246
00:58:56,699 --> 00:59:00,119
And so you hire people
based on the assumption

1247
00:59:00,119 --> 00:59:02,747
that work will come in
and then work dries up.

1248
00:59:02,747 --> 00:59:04,165
You're kind of hose.

1249
00:59:04,165 --> 00:59:09,212
Unfortunately, this is the
the worst part of managing a company

1250
00:59:09,212 --> 00:59:12,924
is throughout the two plus decades
in which I ran blind,

1251
00:59:13,007 --> 00:59:16,678
I've had a layoff,
a good portion of my team multiple times.

1252
00:59:17,178 --> 00:59:22,183
It never felt good,
and it always felt like I betrayed them

1253
00:59:22,183 --> 00:59:24,519
or I've let them down.

1254
00:59:24,519 --> 00:59:26,980
My job
as a boss is if you show up every day,

1255
00:59:26,980 --> 00:59:29,274
give me your best,
that your job should be safe.

1256
00:59:30,817 --> 00:59:31,192
A couple

1257
00:59:31,192 --> 00:59:35,530
of times I had a lot
let go three of my staff of like eight.

1258
00:59:35,780 --> 00:59:39,534
It was because the market has changed
and I don't see them changing.

1259
00:59:40,368 --> 00:59:42,662
And so I had to let them
go to make room for new.

1260
00:59:42,662 --> 00:59:46,124
But a lot of times it was because
financially, like, we can't support this.

1261
00:59:46,207 --> 00:59:48,126
And let's talk about blinds shift.

1262
00:59:48,126 --> 00:59:49,168
Right.

1263
00:59:49,168 --> 00:59:52,171
You started to pivot into education.

1264
00:59:52,380 --> 00:59:54,674
Walk me through the exact moment

1265
00:59:54,674 --> 00:59:58,511
that that decision stopped
being optional.

1266
00:59:58,678 --> 01:00:00,221
I know exactly when it was.

1267
01:00:00,221 --> 01:00:03,766
It was December of 2018.

1268
01:00:04,267 --> 01:00:07,228
We were sitting around the table
and we're we're running

1269
01:00:07,228 --> 01:00:10,231
two companies
at this point blind in the future.

1270
01:00:10,398 --> 01:00:13,234
And I have all the managers in the room

1271
01:00:13,234 --> 01:00:16,279
and we're we're talking about
what are we going to do?

1272
01:00:16,279 --> 01:00:21,534
And, and it seems like blind is not making
enough money, and neither is the future.

1273
01:00:21,534 --> 01:00:23,620
But it was a very small team.

1274
01:00:23,620 --> 01:00:25,455
And so we said, let's do this, guys.

1275
01:00:25,455 --> 01:00:26,998
We need to generate some new leads.

1276
01:00:26,998 --> 01:00:31,085
Can you all just reach out to who you know
and let them know we're looking for work

1277
01:00:31,085 --> 01:00:33,379
and if anybody needs anything,
let us know.

1278
01:00:33,379 --> 01:00:39,177
And then one guy raised his hand and said,
do we really want to do that?

1279
01:00:39,260 --> 01:00:42,680
Because if we invest our time and energy

1280
01:00:42,680 --> 01:00:46,517
to making the future profitable,
it actually makes more money.

1281
01:00:46,559 --> 01:00:48,811
Net than blind did.

1282
01:00:48,811 --> 01:00:52,065
Back then, blind was doing somewhere
between 4 to $5 million a year.

1283
01:00:52,857 --> 01:00:55,568
And the future
is like doing a couple hundred grand.

1284
01:00:55,568 --> 01:00:58,946
But when we did a project for the future
and things worked like we did a product

1285
01:00:58,946 --> 01:01:03,451
launch, it might do a couple
hundred grand, but it's almost all profit.

1286
01:01:03,451 --> 01:01:07,330
So we would have to do probably

1287
01:01:08,748 --> 01:01:09,165
a little

1288
01:01:09,165 --> 01:01:12,418
over $1 million
to make that same amount of money net.

1289
01:01:13,127 --> 01:01:17,298
But the work was infinitely more
enjoyable, less stressful.

1290
01:01:17,298 --> 01:01:19,676
And we had great agency over the work.

1291
01:01:19,676 --> 01:01:20,677
Nobody told us what to do.

1292
01:01:20,677 --> 01:01:21,886
We did whatever we wanted.

1293
01:01:21,886 --> 01:01:25,139
So like,
why don't we just optimize the future?

1294
01:01:25,932 --> 01:01:27,517
Let's do that.

1295
01:01:27,517 --> 01:01:30,520
So I think that year we went from,

1296
01:01:31,437 --> 01:01:33,898
I think, around $1.2 million

1297
01:01:33,898 --> 01:01:36,901
a year to like 3 million or $2.8 million.

1298
01:01:36,984 --> 01:01:41,364
And that was the last time we took
on a new client work.

1299
01:01:41,364 --> 01:01:44,742
So I celebrate my Freedom Day
December 2018.

1300
01:01:45,284 --> 01:01:47,620
Freedom from clients.

1301
01:01:47,620 --> 01:01:49,914
And was a little sad?

1302
01:01:49,914 --> 01:01:51,708
Not at all.

1303
01:01:51,708 --> 01:01:54,836
I know people like client work,
but when you taste freedom

1304
01:01:56,129 --> 01:01:57,422
you don't like, you don't miss it.

1305
01:01:57,422 --> 01:02:00,425
None of them missed. It would shocked me.

1306
01:02:00,508 --> 01:02:03,344
So in December 2018 we talked about it.

1307
01:02:03,344 --> 01:02:04,721
So I said, let's just do this.

1308
01:02:04,721 --> 01:02:06,764
Everybody contact
whatever you can contact.

1309
01:02:06,764 --> 01:02:08,099
It will take you less than a day.

1310
01:02:08,099 --> 01:02:09,600
Let's do that and see what happens.

1311
01:02:09,600 --> 01:02:11,352
And then we will shift our focus.

1312
01:02:11,352 --> 01:02:14,313
And sure enough, just because you ask
for work doesn't mean work comes.

1313
01:02:14,313 --> 01:02:19,527
And I think a couple days after that,
one of our biggest clients called us up

1314
01:02:19,527 --> 01:02:23,531
for big consumer electronics company
in the entertainment industry, called us

1315
01:02:23,531 --> 01:02:26,033
and said, we have a massive job.
You guys want to do it.

1316
01:02:26,033 --> 01:02:29,287
And I went to the creative director
who's been working with a client.

1317
01:02:29,704 --> 01:02:31,706
What do you want to do?

1318
01:02:31,706 --> 01:02:33,791
I fully expected him to say, let's do it.

1319
01:02:33,791 --> 01:02:34,667
This is amazing.

1320
01:02:34,667 --> 01:02:36,836
We get to do another one of these projects
with them.

1321
01:02:36,836 --> 01:02:39,547
He's like, I think we're done.

1322
01:02:39,547 --> 01:02:40,840
I thought he was going to fight me.

1323
01:02:40,840 --> 01:02:42,383
I'm like, okay, we're done.

1324
01:02:42,383 --> 01:02:46,053
So we called him up and said, guys,
we're focusing on an education company.

1325
01:02:46,053 --> 01:02:48,097
We're not doing this work anymore.
Thank you very much.

1326
01:02:48,097 --> 01:02:49,724
Appreciate it.

1327
01:02:49,724 --> 01:02:51,559
Under
what conditions would you do this work?

1328
01:02:51,559 --> 01:02:53,603
That's called
necessary friction, by the way.

1329
01:02:53,603 --> 01:02:56,647
Not not that we
we intend for it to be that way.

1330
01:02:57,064 --> 01:03:00,777
And they're like, just tell us
what conditions you would do this.

1331
01:03:00,777 --> 01:03:02,695
We support you in the education business.

1332
01:03:02,695 --> 01:03:04,155
There are good friends of ours.

1333
01:03:04,155 --> 01:03:09,243
And my creative director at the time said,
we want to do just the ideas.

1334
01:03:09,243 --> 01:03:11,954
We don't want to do any production
and you're going to pay us this amount.

1335
01:03:11,954 --> 01:03:14,540
It was impossible for them
to say yes to that.

1336
01:03:14,540 --> 01:03:16,959
We cannot do this this way.

1337
01:03:17,960 --> 01:03:19,462
Thank you for trying.

1338
01:03:19,462 --> 01:03:23,132
And they tried one more time
to give us an even bigger project.

1339
01:03:23,132 --> 01:03:26,177
And that was the last time
we had to consider work.

1340
01:03:26,594 --> 01:03:30,306
Looking back,
though, what what is shocking to me

1341
01:03:30,306 --> 01:03:34,435
is when you don't actively
have systems in place

1342
01:03:34,435 --> 01:03:36,813
and are not signaling to the market
you want work.

1343
01:03:36,813 --> 01:03:40,149
The work disappeared so fast
because December 2008,

1344
01:03:40,149 --> 01:03:42,485
we decided we're going to take any new
client work. We're going to service

1345
01:03:42,485 --> 01:03:45,488
our existing clients,
want to let them all know we're done.

1346
01:03:46,322 --> 01:03:48,574
I think we had 2 or 3 new job

1347
01:03:48,574 --> 01:03:51,577
leads and then zero.

1348
01:03:51,661 --> 01:03:53,412
It just disappeared.

1349
01:03:53,412 --> 01:03:54,747
Kind of wild.

1350
01:03:54,747 --> 01:03:57,416
So what took 20
some odd years to build up?

1351
01:03:57,416 --> 01:03:59,293
It would disappear like that.

1352
01:03:59,293 --> 01:04:03,130
That's a cautionary tale for anyone
who's like, gets work and does work

1353
01:04:03,130 --> 01:04:05,132
and then thinks more work is coming in.

1354
01:04:05,132 --> 01:04:09,053
If you're not actively signaling,
working on and have systems in place,

1355
01:04:09,095 --> 01:04:10,388
the work disappears.

1356
01:04:10,388 --> 01:04:12,306
And the future just started taking off.

1357
01:04:12,306 --> 01:04:17,687
Yeah, if I'm not mistaken,
the futures model was giving away for free

1358
01:04:17,728 --> 01:04:19,355
what everyone else was selling.

1359
01:04:19,355 --> 01:04:23,401
That wasn't the big idea,
it just happened to be the way it Okay.

1360
01:04:23,401 --> 01:04:27,405
was there someone that told you like,
oh, this is a terrible idea, but it just

1361
01:04:29,198 --> 01:04:31,033
And the team told me every day,

1362
01:04:31,033 --> 01:04:34,078
of course, while you're making this video,
we have no products, right?

1363
01:04:34,287 --> 01:04:35,872
I'm like, I don't want to make a product.

1364
01:04:35,872 --> 01:04:37,373
Can you guys find me a sponsor?

1365
01:04:37,373 --> 01:04:42,128
Just a filthy rich patron of the arts
or education and just give us money?

1366
01:04:42,670 --> 01:04:44,171
Clearly, that wasn't the case.

1367
01:04:44,171 --> 01:04:45,548
And so what were those early numbers?

1368
01:04:45,548 --> 01:04:49,051
You talked about them a little bit
in terms of like revenue, audience.

1369
01:04:49,343 --> 01:04:51,387
When did it cross from like, okay.

1370
01:04:51,387 --> 01:04:53,639
Like this is an experiment to like,
we know this is working

1371
01:04:53,639 --> 01:04:57,310
that year, December 2018
I think we close that year doing something

1372
01:04:57,310 --> 01:05:01,188
like $1.2 million as the future,
which is a staggering number for me.

1373
01:05:01,188 --> 01:05:04,191
And we growing the company
300% year over year.

1374
01:05:04,567 --> 01:05:07,028
And the next year
we didn't quite do three six.

1375
01:05:07,028 --> 01:05:08,696
I think we did two, eight, three, two.

1376
01:05:08,696 --> 01:05:09,989
So I can't remember exactly number,

1377
01:05:09,989 --> 01:05:13,868
but it was great
because it was way more profitable.

1378
01:05:14,076 --> 01:05:16,245
Yeah,
the margins were completely Completely

1379
01:05:16,245 --> 01:05:19,665
The margins in the agency were what, maybe
2,025% or something, maybe even less.

1380
01:05:19,665 --> 01:05:22,668
Yeah,
And the margins on the new business are,

1381
01:05:22,835 --> 01:05:25,755
what, 80, 90, 70, 50?

1382
01:05:25,755 --> 01:05:27,298
In theory, maybe now it's different.

1383
01:05:27,298 --> 01:05:28,466
But when it first started.

1384
01:05:28,466 --> 01:05:28,841
Yeah.

1385
01:05:28,841 --> 01:05:31,844
In theory that that is true.

1386
01:05:32,428 --> 01:05:35,723
The problem is we had this legacy
building and system in place

1387
01:05:35,723 --> 01:05:38,017
that was very expensive to keep up.

1388
01:05:38,017 --> 01:05:41,228
We were in a building
was 9000ft² for a YouTube channel.

1389
01:05:41,270 --> 01:05:43,522
Made no freaking sense. Right.

1390
01:05:43,522 --> 01:05:46,484
So the the just the monthly

1391
01:05:46,484 --> 01:05:50,029
nut on the building itself
was just outrageous relative to us.

1392
01:05:50,029 --> 01:05:53,908
And all the guys were making six figures,
and it's like, what kind of YouTube

1393
01:05:53,908 --> 01:05:54,492
channel are we?

1394
01:05:54,492 --> 01:05:55,409
What are we doing here?

1395
01:05:55,409 --> 01:05:59,288
Because people are just in their
in their bedrooms

1396
01:05:59,288 --> 01:06:03,542
making content by themselves
with a freelancer from overseas.

1397
01:06:03,584 --> 01:06:05,586
Here we are with red cameras.

1398
01:06:05,586 --> 01:06:08,089
A stage like a stage
that's not this big. But it was.

1399
01:06:08,089 --> 01:06:11,008
It was a stage with all this gear,
all this overhead.

1400
01:06:11,008 --> 01:06:14,553
And like a team of 8 or 9 people,
it's like it was too much.

1401
01:06:14,679 --> 01:06:16,597
And when you made that transition. Right.

1402
01:06:16,597 --> 01:06:21,519
How much of that bet was conviction versus
just like we have no other option.

1403
01:06:21,560 --> 01:06:24,105
No, we have options.
We walked away from our right?

1404
01:06:24,105 --> 01:06:28,442
We burned the boats like, you know, if
we're going to be sellers in a new land,

1405
01:06:28,651 --> 01:06:31,404
the expression burned the boats is like,
you have no way to return.

1406
01:06:31,404 --> 01:06:32,738
you had conviction, you're confident.

1407
01:06:32,738 --> 01:06:35,700
And obviously it started taking off
pretty much right away.

1408
01:06:35,700 --> 01:06:38,828
So that led you to be like,
okay, I need to pour my time into this.

1409
01:06:38,828 --> 01:06:39,036
Yeah.

1410
01:06:39,036 --> 01:06:40,830
I think once we hit $1 million in revenue,

1411
01:06:40,830 --> 01:06:42,373
I was like,
I think there's a real business.

1412
01:06:42,373 --> 01:06:43,332
We can do this.

1413
01:06:43,332 --> 01:06:46,752
It didn't support everybody
in the overhead, but we did Okay,

1414
01:06:46,794 --> 01:06:51,674
give me your most boring
piece of business advice.

1415
01:06:52,341 --> 01:06:55,803
Like the unglamorous thing
that built more wealth for you

1416
01:06:55,803 --> 01:06:57,138
than any clever tactic would.

1417
01:06:57,138 --> 01:07:01,100
And tell it to me in your most boring way
possible The most boring piece of advice

1418
01:07:01,100 --> 01:07:02,518
that can give you is

1419
01:07:03,477 --> 01:07:05,646
keep your expenses low.

1420
01:07:05,646 --> 01:07:08,524
I think people,
when they start making money,

1421
01:07:08,524 --> 01:07:12,361
they want to reward themselves
by falling into all the trappings

1422
01:07:12,361 --> 01:07:16,782
of buying a fancy car, 
fancy watches and things like that.

1423
01:07:16,824 --> 01:07:19,827
This is how rich people
keep poor people poor.

1424
01:07:19,994 --> 01:07:21,746
The rich aren't concerned about this.

1425
01:07:21,746 --> 01:07:23,622
So there's this idea that I have.

1426
01:07:23,622 --> 01:07:25,249
It's called the game of money.

1427
01:07:25,249 --> 01:07:27,376
The game of money goes
something like this.

1428
01:07:27,376 --> 01:07:30,379
You need to make enough money
so that your money makes you money.

1429
01:07:30,463 --> 01:07:32,631
The problem is, we get close to that.

1430
01:07:32,631 --> 01:07:35,051
And what we do is
we have low impulse control.

1431
01:07:35,051 --> 01:07:37,636
We have short term thinking,
so we buy things.

1432
01:07:37,636 --> 01:07:42,058
Now, back where I grew up,
I grew up in Norco

1433
01:07:42,058 --> 01:07:45,644
and Silicon Valley and immigrant culture.

1434
01:07:46,145 --> 01:07:47,438
People went to flex.

1435
01:07:47,438 --> 01:07:49,774
They went to flex with a Gucci Fendi bags.

1436
01:07:49,774 --> 01:07:53,736
They're expensive shoes and sunglasses
and their BMW or their Mercedes,

1437
01:07:53,736 --> 01:07:56,906
and they live in a tiny little house
somewhere.

1438
01:07:56,947 --> 01:08:01,077
And this is unfortunately part of
like the mindset that traps poor people.

1439
01:08:02,078 --> 01:08:02,870
What happens

1440
01:08:02,870 --> 01:08:07,124
is the rich saloon idea
of what it's to be like, what it's

1441
01:08:07,166 --> 01:08:10,836
what it's
what's like to be rich by selling you

1442
01:08:10,836 --> 01:08:13,839
little fragments
and artifacts of real wealth.

1443
01:08:13,923 --> 01:08:15,508
So we can't afford the helicopter.

1444
01:08:15,508 --> 01:08:19,970
We can't afford the European
Italian vacation in the private mansion.

1445
01:08:20,012 --> 01:08:23,057
So what they do
is they sell you the symbols of that life.

1446
01:08:23,099 --> 01:08:27,978
The fragrance, literally the clothes
or the bow tie or whatever it is.

1447
01:08:28,020 --> 01:08:30,523
They sell you little pieces of that life,
and then they create

1448
01:08:30,523 --> 01:08:32,525
ads to sell you the fantasy.

1449
01:08:32,525 --> 01:08:36,237
So what we do is we part with that money
so that money helps them

1450
01:08:36,237 --> 01:08:39,240
to make more money,
but it doesn't get you out of the hole.

1451
01:08:39,532 --> 01:08:42,827
So you want to hit escape velocity on this
by making enough money.

1452
01:08:42,827 --> 01:08:46,288
So your money makes you money
because now you're

1453
01:08:46,372 --> 01:08:50,126
you're going to be freed
from exchanging time for money.

1454
01:08:50,543 --> 01:08:54,380
So if you have enough money, you put
in the market, and the market makes money,

1455
01:08:54,839 --> 01:08:58,759
or you use that money to develop
different ideas and app,

1456
01:08:59,093 --> 01:09:02,012
you flip properties,
you do something else with your money

1457
01:09:02,012 --> 01:09:04,682
other than how you made that money
in the first place.

1458
01:09:04,682 --> 01:09:07,101
That's what all rich people do.

1459
01:09:07,101 --> 01:09:11,105
So if we can delay gratification
and have some impulse control,

1460
01:09:11,105 --> 01:09:15,818
then what we do is we live modestly,
keep our expenses low,

1461
01:09:15,901 --> 01:09:20,322
and we build up enough of that money
so that we can hit escape velocity.

1462
01:09:21,157 --> 01:09:21,448
Right.

1463
01:09:21,448 --> 01:09:23,325
So people don't understand this.

1464
01:09:23,325 --> 01:09:24,743
And I'll share this right now,

1465
01:09:25,953 --> 01:09:28,205
2 or 3 years into the business,

1466
01:09:28,205 --> 01:09:32,251
I made enough money
because rent was 1000 bucks.

1467
01:09:33,043 --> 01:09:36,714
I remember that
and had not a lot of things.

1468
01:09:36,714 --> 01:09:41,093
I drove a used car hand-me-down
from my older brother until it broke,

1469
01:09:41,093 --> 01:09:45,890
and so the first car I bought with my own
money was a Honda

1470
01:09:45,931 --> 01:09:50,769
Civic hatchback SC no frills at all,
thank God had air conditioned.

1471
01:09:50,853 --> 01:09:52,938
Other than that, no power windows,
no nothing.

1472
01:09:52,938 --> 01:09:56,358
And my girlfriend later my wife.

1473
01:09:56,358 --> 01:10:01,280
We bought a house in Venice
that was $510,000.

1474
01:10:01,280 --> 01:10:05,075
We only able to buy the house
because my wife's parents

1475
01:10:05,284 --> 01:10:08,037
gave us the deposit $100,000.

1476
01:10:08,037 --> 01:10:11,582
A few years later,
we sold that house for $2.2 million.

1477
01:10:12,166 --> 01:10:15,586
That's how your money makes you money,
So we bought our next house,

1478
01:10:15,628 --> 01:10:18,797
was millions more and sold it for millions
more than what we bought it.

1479
01:10:18,797 --> 01:10:21,383
So our money just keeps making us money.

1480
01:10:21,383 --> 01:10:25,012
And we
we use our money to buy real estate.

1481
01:10:25,346 --> 01:10:27,973
So we bought a building for million
dollars.

1482
01:10:27,973 --> 01:10:30,434
Is the first million dollar
building up of purchase.

1483
01:10:30,434 --> 01:10:33,771
That building is worth somewhere
between 3 to $6 million right now.

1484
01:10:34,647 --> 01:10:36,106
I know multiple buildings.

1485
01:10:36,106 --> 01:10:37,524
This is how you make.

1486
01:10:37,524 --> 01:10:38,817
This is how you build wealth.

1487
01:10:38,817 --> 01:10:41,570
All right,
let's talk about the hourly model.

1488
01:10:41,570 --> 01:10:46,951
Who actually benefits from the hourly
rate, the client or the creative?

1489
01:10:46,992 --> 01:10:50,371
Because you have a clip,
if I'm not mistaken, that has over

1490
01:10:50,371 --> 01:10:54,291
100 million views, where you completely
destroy the hourly model.

1491
01:10:54,291 --> 01:10:58,128
And meanwhile,
most creatives are still doing it.

1492
01:10:59,255 --> 01:11:01,674
Why is it so hard to let go?

1493
01:11:01,674 --> 01:11:05,552
Our whole society is built on this idea
of of your

1494
01:11:05,552 --> 01:11:08,555
your worth is built around a unit of time.

1495
01:11:08,597 --> 01:11:12,977
didn't know this, but I read in
Implementing Value Pricing by Ron Jay

1496
01:11:12,977 --> 01:11:18,440
Baker, he says an acre was amount of land
an ox could plow in a day.

1497
01:11:18,774 --> 01:11:22,987
So we have like really 100 year

1498
01:11:23,028 --> 01:11:26,865
long practices of understanding person's
value based on time.

1499
01:11:26,907 --> 01:11:28,867
I mean, that didn't make sense.

1500
01:11:28,867 --> 01:11:34,039
Like, wow, an acre is measured
by how much land an oxygen plow in a day.

1501
01:11:34,248 --> 01:11:35,374
That's nuts to me.

1502
01:11:35,374 --> 01:11:39,128
And so when we're getting
in the industrial revolution

1503
01:11:39,128 --> 01:11:44,174
and we're having low skill laborers work,

1504
01:11:44,383 --> 01:11:48,387
when there was a plentiful
supply of humans who needed money

1505
01:11:48,554 --> 01:11:51,390
management businesses, entrepreneurs

1506
01:11:51,390 --> 01:11:54,101
kind of figured out,
okay, you clock in, you clock out.

1507
01:11:54,101 --> 01:11:57,104
And we evolve
into the professional practices.

1508
01:11:57,146 --> 01:12:00,941
The hourly billing thing
is actually developed by lawyers.

1509
01:12:01,317 --> 01:12:04,695
They're the professional service people
whose like, you know, this is our rate.

1510
01:12:04,695 --> 01:12:07,531
We just charged by the hour
and that's what they do.

1511
01:12:07,531 --> 01:12:12,119
And so then we think, well, if lawyers are
pretty smart, they're successful.

1512
01:12:12,161 --> 01:12:14,163
Maybe that's the way we do everything.

1513
01:12:14,163 --> 01:12:16,749
And so everything is measured
against time.

1514
01:12:16,749 --> 01:12:19,960
It doesn't take into account
what we're really doing.

1515
01:12:19,960 --> 01:12:25,758
And the Marxist theory of labor is that
things should only cost what is necessary

1516
01:12:25,758 --> 01:12:31,096
for it to produce, that everything else
is the evils of capitalism.

1517
01:12:31,263 --> 01:12:35,893
So if it costs $4 to make something,
you should charge $4.

1518
01:12:35,893 --> 01:12:38,896
But if you charge $8,
that's capitalism at play.

1519
01:12:39,438 --> 01:12:42,441
Taking advantage of the labor of people.

1520
01:12:42,691 --> 01:12:44,735
And that's kind of why we're stuck here.

1521
01:12:44,735 --> 01:12:47,571
So, so much of our culture
is built on this.

1522
01:12:47,571 --> 01:12:51,658
And I understand in some instances
it's actually actually a lot better

1523
01:12:51,658 --> 01:12:55,537
for you to hourly, for example,
you don't have to think about it.

1524
01:12:55,621 --> 01:12:59,500
And if you're tracking your time
carefully, then everything works

1525
01:12:59,500 --> 01:13:00,250
just fine.

1526
01:13:00,250 --> 01:13:04,713
And it doesn't require a lot of friction
in terms of the the client relationship.

1527
01:13:04,713 --> 01:13:06,256
I have somebody coming over.

1528
01:13:06,256 --> 01:13:09,009
They're going to build me
30 bucks an hour.

1529
01:13:09,009 --> 01:13:12,846
My cleaners work on hourly rate, they
clean the house, you clean, you don't.

1530
01:13:12,888 --> 01:13:14,181
That's what we pay them.

1531
01:13:14,181 --> 01:13:17,476
And it's
because in order for you to move away from

1532
01:13:17,476 --> 01:13:20,562
that model,
you have to differentiate yourself.

1533
01:13:20,562 --> 01:13:24,566
And you have to provide
some intangible thing that then creates

1534
01:13:24,608 --> 01:13:26,568
a feeling that I want to pay more for.

1535
01:13:27,653 --> 01:13:29,947
That's where it becomes really tricky.

1536
01:13:29,947 --> 01:13:33,283
So we just built hourly
because it's convenient, it's cultural,

1537
01:13:33,283 --> 01:13:36,703
and we're not comfortable
thinking about any other way.

1538
01:13:36,703 --> 01:13:38,163
And there are a lot of people

1539
01:13:38,163 --> 01:13:41,125
who will fight me tooth and nail
in that video that you talked about

1540
01:13:41,166 --> 01:13:43,961
who was like, this is evil. This is about
I'm like, well, charge whatever you want.

1541
01:13:43,961 --> 01:13:45,587
Use whatever system you like.

1542
01:13:45,587 --> 01:13:48,674
If it's working for you,
don't listen to me, I don't care.

1543
01:13:48,882 --> 01:13:54,304
What's the strength of yours
that people praise you

1544
01:13:54,304 --> 01:13:57,641
for that has cost
you more than it's made you.

1545
01:13:57,808 --> 01:14:00,102
People praise me for my generosity.

1546
01:14:00,102 --> 01:14:02,354
I'm willing to sit down
and talk to people.

1547
01:14:02,354 --> 01:14:06,483
How? I'm willing to give up my time
to help people, that I'm a real one.

1548
01:14:06,567 --> 01:14:10,404
And clearly
I'm not charging anybody for that.

1549
01:14:10,446 --> 01:14:12,114
So that will just cost me money.

1550
01:14:12,114 --> 01:14:15,868
But I believe in there's
a higher currency, not

1551
01:14:15,951 --> 01:14:20,581
dollars and cents, but the currency
of karma, of goodwill, of energy.

1552
01:14:20,581 --> 01:14:23,667
And so that that will tend to pay off way

1553
01:14:23,667 --> 01:14:26,670
better than here's $4 for my time.

1554
01:14:26,670 --> 01:14:27,754
You truly believe in karma.

1555
01:14:27,754 --> 01:14:29,298
Like if you do something good for someone,

1556
01:14:29,298 --> 01:14:31,008
something good
things are going to happen to you.

1557
01:14:31,008 --> 01:14:35,053
Yeah, there's my friend Jose, who's

1558
01:14:35,179 --> 01:14:38,599
my my my former partner.

1559
01:14:39,308 --> 01:14:41,560
He would call it karmic equity.

1560
01:14:41,560 --> 01:14:45,647
So there's a ledger somewhere of energy,
and you put it out there.

1561
01:14:45,647 --> 01:14:47,232
It doesn't come back to you
the way you want.

1562
01:14:47,232 --> 01:14:49,109
When you want, it doesn't work like that.

1563
01:14:49,109 --> 01:14:50,402
It's not transactional.

1564
01:14:50,402 --> 01:14:55,157
So you try to do good things in the world
and sometimes good things happen for you.

1565
01:14:55,157 --> 01:14:59,161
Yeah, I actually truly believe in karma
because I've done some really good things

1566
01:14:59,161 --> 01:15:00,579
and had some really good things
happen to me.

1567
01:15:00,579 --> 01:15:02,372
When I was younger,
I was doing some things that weren't

1568
01:15:02,372 --> 01:15:04,500
so good, and I was having some bad
things happen to me.

1569
01:15:04,500 --> 01:15:06,001
So truly believe in karma.

1570
01:15:06,001 --> 01:15:07,461
Let's talk about personal brand
for a second.

1571
01:15:07,461 --> 01:15:11,215
When you watch someone's personal brand,
what's the exact

1572
01:15:11,256 --> 01:15:15,636
tell that it's maybe a performance
and not who that person really is?

1573
01:15:15,677 --> 01:15:16,803
And does that matter?

1574
01:15:16,803 --> 01:15:19,348
yeah, I want to restructure the question
a little bit.

1575
01:15:19,348 --> 01:15:21,183
I don't watch people's personal brand.

1576
01:15:21,183 --> 01:15:25,312
I experience them as a human
and I develop opinions about them.

1577
01:15:25,354 --> 01:15:28,148
What I see on Instagram,
what you're talking about

1578
01:15:28,148 --> 01:15:30,692
is someone doing something
or something on stage.

1579
01:15:30,692 --> 01:15:32,778
And we can tell it's performative.

1580
01:15:32,778 --> 01:15:37,241
It's like because we've evolved over
however many years you think humans

1581
01:15:37,241 --> 01:15:41,453
have been on Earth to notice
certain things purely based on survival,

1582
01:15:41,870 --> 01:15:45,582
body language, tonality,
micro expressions.

1583
01:15:45,624 --> 01:15:50,629
There's little things that we all do that
betray what we're really thinking.

1584
01:15:50,837 --> 01:15:54,341
I think I heard Vanessa Van Edwards
talk about this,

1585
01:15:54,383 --> 01:15:59,471
and it says the mind lives in fantasy,
the body lives in reality.

1586
01:15:59,763 --> 01:16:01,265
You can tell lie with your mind.

1587
01:16:01,265 --> 01:16:03,600
You can believe something
to be true in your mind.

1588
01:16:03,600 --> 01:16:06,436
But your body tells the truth.
Your body keeps the score.

1589
01:16:06,436 --> 01:16:10,524
So when somebody like, let's do this
and they shake their head, it's

1590
01:16:10,524 --> 01:16:12,776
because they know
they don't want to do this.

1591
01:16:12,776 --> 01:16:14,570
And then you pay careful
attention to that.

1592
01:16:14,570 --> 01:16:18,448
So turn off the voice
and just look at your body in this way.

1593
01:16:18,448 --> 01:16:21,785
It would be better if you wore earplugs
and just said, like, what am I seeing?

1594
01:16:21,785 --> 01:16:24,496
How is this person behaving right now?

1595
01:16:24,496 --> 01:16:28,000
There's also another theory
that I have in the body that keeps

1596
01:16:28,667 --> 01:16:31,753
your body keeps the score
is that units, when you look at someone,

1597
01:16:31,753 --> 01:16:33,046
you have a feeling about them

1598
01:16:33,046 --> 01:16:37,009
like they're trustworthy, they're honest,
they're giving, they're kind, and it's

1599
01:16:37,009 --> 01:16:40,137
because they're facial features
you've kind of figured out over time.

1600
01:16:40,262 --> 01:16:41,513
Kind people do these things.

1601
01:16:41,513 --> 01:16:43,056
Kind people say these things,

1602
01:16:43,056 --> 01:16:46,059
and let's pretend like
you're not trying to pick up somebody, but

1603
01:16:46,059 --> 01:16:49,062
you look at somebody
like you have really kind eyes,

1604
01:16:49,187 --> 01:16:52,566
or you look like you're giving soul
or your patient.

1605
01:16:52,566 --> 01:16:56,445
And the reason why I think that is
because if I worry a lot,

1606
01:16:56,486 --> 01:16:59,072
I will furrow my eyebrows
and there will be a line here.

1607
01:16:59,072 --> 01:17:00,657
Your body keeps a score.

1608
01:17:00,657 --> 01:17:01,617
If you smile a lot,

1609
01:17:01,617 --> 01:17:05,412
you have a lot of smile lines
around your eyes and run around your jowl.

1610
01:17:05,454 --> 01:17:08,206
Right?
And you have that and it keeps the score.

1611
01:17:08,206 --> 01:17:11,251
So when you look at somebody
and they look grumpy, frumpy,

1612
01:17:11,293 --> 01:17:13,920
mean, like they look shifty
because their eyes are like,

1613
01:17:13,920 --> 01:17:15,422
man, we're doing this kind of thing.

1614
01:17:15,422 --> 01:17:17,049
It's like, why are you doing that?

1615
01:17:17,049 --> 01:17:22,220
So what we learn,
unless they're really, really good at

1616
01:17:22,846 --> 01:17:28,435
faking it and some people are
sociopaths, are is calmness

1617
01:17:28,435 --> 01:17:32,189
in spirit and energy and body and movement
projects a certain confidence

1618
01:17:32,189 --> 01:17:35,192
and energy to the room where like, wow,

1619
01:17:35,275 --> 01:17:37,778
I'd like to get to know this person.

1620
01:17:37,778 --> 01:17:39,112
They figured out something.

1621
01:17:39,112 --> 01:17:40,614
It seems like they have inner peace.

1622
01:17:40,614 --> 01:17:43,742
So if I'm nervous I will be jittery.

1623
01:17:43,784 --> 01:17:47,537
My eyes will be darting around the room
because I'm not secure in my place

1624
01:17:47,537 --> 01:17:48,497
and myself.

1625
01:17:48,497 --> 01:17:51,458
And you can see that right away
if you're paying attention.

1626
01:17:51,458 --> 01:17:54,461
So those are the kinds of things
that we kind of pick up on.

1627
01:17:54,461 --> 01:17:57,297
And so we know when we watch.

1628
01:17:57,297 --> 01:18:00,300
Is your house really always that beautiful
and that clean?

1629
01:18:00,676 --> 01:18:05,722
Is your face real right now because,
you know, there's it's hilarious becomes

1630
01:18:05,931 --> 01:18:10,060
because it becomes a viral moment
when the filter glitches out

1631
01:18:10,560 --> 01:18:13,480
and you see the real person
for half a second year. Wow.

1632
01:18:13,480 --> 01:18:15,440
The technology has gotten so good.

1633
01:18:15,440 --> 01:18:18,110
I noticed this
because people will take selfies with me

1634
01:18:18,110 --> 01:18:20,696
with their A camera and I'm like,
I know I don't look like that.

1635
01:18:20,696 --> 01:18:21,947
Everything is blurry.

1636
01:18:21,947 --> 01:18:27,077
So for them,
the the beauty filter is always on.

1637
01:18:27,285 --> 01:18:29,204
I step in and I'm like,
I don't want to look like that.

1638
01:18:29,204 --> 01:18:30,956
Just present me as is.

1639
01:18:30,956 --> 01:18:34,084
Now if I got a giant pimple, clone
that out because that's not normal either.

1640
01:18:34,084 --> 01:18:36,128
But normally this is what I look like.

1641
01:18:36,128 --> 01:18:38,964
And let's talk about AI right.

1642
01:18:38,964 --> 01:18:42,259
Five years ago where you sure.

1643
01:18:42,300 --> 01:18:45,637
AI could never touch certain types
of creative work.

1644
01:18:45,637 --> 01:18:49,057
And now today it's being able
to create things that you never thought

1645
01:18:49,141 --> 01:18:49,891
were possible.

1646
01:18:49,891 --> 01:18:52,936
No, I think people have written
about this.

1647
01:18:52,936 --> 01:18:54,229
They said that the first job is

1648
01:18:54,229 --> 01:18:58,150
that we worried about AI taking over
or manual labor,

1649
01:18:58,567 --> 01:19:01,820
and the first job they took
away were creative things.

1650
01:19:02,571 --> 01:19:04,030
So early.

1651
01:19:04,030 --> 01:19:07,159
Midjourney version
1.0 kind of post-pandemic.

1652
01:19:07,409 --> 01:19:08,618
It's making art.

1653
01:19:08,618 --> 01:19:13,206
I'm like, wow, it's not perfect, but
it's amazing and you can already see it.

1654
01:19:13,206 --> 01:19:17,669
And then coding, okay,
this is not going to be a thing anymore.

1655
01:19:17,794 --> 01:19:18,920
And we're seeing all that.

1656
01:19:18,920 --> 01:19:23,133
Just a few short years later I drove here
I drove here today

1657
01:19:23,133 --> 01:19:27,429
and my Tesla was full self-driving,
and I didn't touch the wheel

1658
01:19:27,679 --> 01:19:31,683
and just had back and relaxed
and just making all kinds of decisions.

1659
01:19:31,683 --> 01:19:34,394
I pulled in the other lot
and it recognized something.

1660
01:19:34,394 --> 01:19:35,312
It started to back out.

1661
01:19:35,312 --> 01:19:38,315
I'm like, well,
let me just figure this thing out.

1662
01:19:38,356 --> 01:19:40,108
It's remarkable.

1663
01:19:40,108 --> 01:19:43,612
And do you think that creators
should be worried about this?

1664
01:19:43,612 --> 01:19:47,532
Because, for example,
they're creating a logo, a website,

1665
01:19:47,574 --> 01:19:51,036
they're writing content,
they're creating whatever that may be.

1666
01:19:51,077 --> 01:19:52,621
Sure, they be worried that.

1667
01:19:52,621 --> 01:19:56,333
The business can just go use
an AI agent, use AI themselves,

1668
01:19:56,333 --> 01:19:58,126
and they're not going to need my work
anymore.

1669
01:19:58,126 --> 01:20:01,087
I'll ask this question back
and then I'll answer the thing.

1670
01:20:01,087 --> 01:20:06,092
The question I asked back is, has worrying
ever changed anything for the positive?

1671
01:20:06,426 --> 01:20:08,220
No. Well, I'll rephrase that.

1672
01:20:08,220 --> 01:20:11,181
Instead of worrying planning,
I'm planning for the future.

1673
01:20:11,181 --> 01:20:13,058
I'm a logo designer. I'm a website.

1674
01:20:13,058 --> 01:20:13,934
I'm a website designer.

1675
01:20:13,934 --> 01:20:15,894
I have a website design agency.
I have a bunch.

1676
01:20:15,894 --> 01:20:16,812
I have a big team.

1677
01:20:16,812 --> 01:20:20,190
And more and more
we're hearing from clients.

1678
01:20:20,232 --> 01:20:23,360
Oh, I just use
Claude code to create my website.

1679
01:20:23,360 --> 01:20:24,027
I just use

1680
01:20:25,070 --> 01:20:27,864
AI to create my website that more and more
their clients.

1681
01:20:27,864 --> 01:20:30,408
That business owner has to plan
for the future.

1682
01:20:30,408 --> 01:20:30,700
Maybe.

1683
01:20:30,700 --> 01:20:31,576
Yes, staying up at night

1684
01:20:31,576 --> 01:20:35,080
worrying all night isn't going to,
you know, get him to his ultimate goal.

1685
01:20:35,121 --> 01:20:38,166
But he has to plan.
And so he has headcount.

1686
01:20:38,208 --> 01:20:39,376
He has people.

1687
01:20:39,376 --> 01:20:42,337
Where is this business going to be
in two years and five years and ten years?

1688
01:20:42,587 --> 01:20:45,674
Maybe not worrying about AI,
but figuring out

1689
01:20:45,715 --> 01:20:48,718
a path forward for for him and his family.

1690
01:20:48,760 --> 01:20:52,556
Okay,
I find that humans are oddly complicated

1691
01:20:53,682 --> 01:20:57,477
species and that we always define normal
as what we see.

1692
01:20:57,769 --> 01:20:59,813
So anything before is old fashion.

1693
01:20:59,813 --> 01:21:01,731
Anything that's beyond is like crazy.

1694
01:21:01,731 --> 01:21:03,108
It's just this is normal.

1695
01:21:03,108 --> 01:21:05,318
And I'll give you the example.

1696
01:21:05,318 --> 01:21:10,073
When I was in school,
in going to Art center, people always talk

1697
01:21:10,115 --> 01:21:13,952
about like the the students who were here
before were hard working.

1698
01:21:14,536 --> 01:21:19,291
And then the kids today are like less
talented and more entitled.

1699
01:21:19,291 --> 01:21:21,710
And so this is me
going to school in the 90s.

1700
01:21:21,710 --> 01:21:23,503
And every time I go back and teach,

1701
01:21:23,503 --> 01:21:26,047
it's like they're saying the same story
every single time.

1702
01:21:26,047 --> 01:21:26,840
Like, so

1703
01:21:26,840 --> 01:21:30,927
are we objectively getting worse and worse
and no one's getting any better?

1704
01:21:30,969 --> 01:21:33,805
That can't be true because I'm seeing
remarkable work being done.

1705
01:21:33,805 --> 01:21:38,101
But it's just the perspective was better
before and it's not as good now.

1706
01:21:38,268 --> 01:21:39,644
And so things are changing.

1707
01:21:39,644 --> 01:21:42,856
So let's just say there's a
it's a cliche at this point,

1708
01:21:42,856 --> 01:21:45,859
but I'll say it,
the only constant is change.

1709
01:21:45,942 --> 01:21:49,404
And as creative people we champion ideas

1710
01:21:49,446 --> 01:21:54,200
like innovation, being versatile,
being flexible and adapting to changes.

1711
01:21:54,242 --> 01:21:56,870
And we can look at the past
and that's really old fashioned

1712
01:21:56,870 --> 01:21:58,204
and we're beyond that.

1713
01:21:58,204 --> 01:22:01,291
But the future is like something radical
and we can't accept it,

1714
01:22:01,333 --> 01:22:04,544
which is really odd. So let's go back.

1715
01:22:04,753 --> 01:22:09,257
Let's go back to the
to the early 90s, pre-internet, like

1716
01:22:09,299 --> 01:22:13,094
I remember going to work at an ad agency
and they're talking about the internet.

1717
01:22:13,094 --> 01:22:17,140
I literally had to call my brother
up on a landline and ask him,

1718
01:22:17,223 --> 01:22:20,518
his older brother,
what is the internet is like?

1719
01:22:20,518 --> 01:22:24,898
I feel like Morpheus asking neo, like,
what is the matrix? Neo?

1720
01:22:24,940 --> 01:22:25,982
So what is the internet?

1721
01:22:25,982 --> 01:22:26,316
He's like,

1722
01:22:26,316 --> 01:22:29,444
it's a series of interconnected computers
developed by the by the military.

1723
01:22:29,444 --> 01:22:31,363
I'm like, that didn't help me.

1724
01:22:31,363 --> 01:22:33,198
I don't even know what this is.
This thing is.

1725
01:22:33,198 --> 01:22:37,827
And for a lot of people,
AOL was the internet and it was wild.

1726
01:22:37,994 --> 01:22:42,749
So we say if we look back in history
and we say what kinds of technologies

1727
01:22:42,749 --> 01:22:48,296
have disrupted whole industries,
and we kind of can draw a pattern

1728
01:22:48,296 --> 01:22:53,593
from that and extrapolate, okay,
so the internet comes and is this little

1729
01:22:53,593 --> 01:22:58,139
known company called eBay
that does auctions on a personal level.

1730
01:22:58,890 --> 01:23:00,850
That's a radical idea today.

1731
01:23:00,850 --> 01:23:04,688
Is this common that we're auctioning and
selling things on a digital marketplace?

1732
01:23:04,729 --> 01:23:05,939
It's wild.

1733
01:23:05,939 --> 01:23:09,567
there's a store called Amazon
and they sold books.

1734
01:23:09,818 --> 01:23:12,737
Weird that you wouldn't
want to buy books through the mail.

1735
01:23:12,737 --> 01:23:14,030
This doesn't make any sense.

1736
01:23:14,030 --> 01:23:18,368
And then moving forward,
there's a company called Netflix

1737
01:23:18,368 --> 01:23:22,414
who wants to rent you DVDs
and ultimately stream them to you.

1738
01:23:22,539 --> 01:23:26,084
All these technologies
have displaced things before,

1739
01:23:26,334 --> 01:23:30,630
but I'm just blown away
that at two in the morning

1740
01:23:30,630 --> 01:23:33,341
when I order something on Amazon,
it's here the next day.

1741
01:23:33,341 --> 01:23:37,387
It's more convenient for me to order
from Amazon than for me to get my car

1742
01:23:37,387 --> 01:23:39,681
and drive to target or whatever
and buy the thing.

1743
01:23:39,681 --> 01:23:41,266
We live in wild times.

1744
01:23:41,266 --> 01:23:44,269
The level of efficiency
that they're running at,

1745
01:23:44,269 --> 01:23:46,980
the kind of transformation
they're creating is incredible.

1746
01:23:46,980 --> 01:23:49,107
No one is complaining about that.

1747
01:23:49,107 --> 01:23:51,818
AI is coming. It's here.

1748
01:23:51,818 --> 01:23:53,194
Rapid change is happening.

1749
01:23:53,194 --> 01:23:56,239
It always happens. It's our choice.

1750
01:23:56,489 --> 01:23:59,367
So it's like changes, inevitable.

1751
01:23:59,367 --> 01:24:01,494
But growth is an option.

1752
01:24:01,494 --> 01:24:02,620
Change is coming.

1753
01:24:02,620 --> 01:24:04,748
It's been here. It's been here forever.

1754
01:24:04,748 --> 01:24:08,418
So people who use computers,
what do we do?

1755
01:24:08,418 --> 01:24:11,713
Before we had computers,
what do we do before we had phones

1756
01:24:11,713 --> 01:24:13,298
that could take pictures of things.

1757
01:24:13,298 --> 01:24:14,632
We had film.

1758
01:24:14,632 --> 01:24:17,093
Is anybody crying about film?

1759
01:24:17,093 --> 01:24:21,639
Send me
crying that you don't have a Garmin GPS?

1760
01:24:22,724 --> 01:24:24,726
No one's complaining about that.

1761
01:24:24,726 --> 01:24:29,981
So the best way that we can prepare for
the future is to embrace it head first.

1762
01:24:30,023 --> 01:24:32,025
Figure out how we adapt and grow.

1763
01:24:32,025 --> 01:24:33,818
Yes, your clients are going to try.

1764
01:24:33,818 --> 01:24:36,988
Some of your clients are going to use
AI to do the writing,

1765
01:24:37,030 --> 01:24:41,117
to design the coding, and if you can't
provide greater value than that,

1766
01:24:41,159 --> 01:24:46,206
then I dare I say you've designed yourself
into oblivion obsolescence.

1767
01:24:46,206 --> 01:24:47,207
That's what you've done.

1768
01:24:47,207 --> 01:24:49,542
So I use AI all the time.

1769
01:24:49,542 --> 01:24:54,839
I command even more money today
for the same work that I'm doing from pre

1770
01:24:54,839 --> 01:24:58,802
I, and I'm working less
so that 50 to $100,000

1771
01:24:58,802 --> 01:25:02,097
that I was telling you about
used to take me weeks to do with the team

1772
01:25:02,097 --> 01:25:05,183
of writers and strategists
figuring this thing out.

1773
01:25:05,225 --> 01:25:08,269
Now I tell the machine what I want
and it does it for me.

1774
01:25:08,770 --> 01:25:10,271
I'm still charging the same amount.

1775
01:25:10,271 --> 01:25:11,773
Actually, I'm charging more.

1776
01:25:11,773 --> 01:25:13,858
So you're saying we should embrace AI?

1777
01:25:13,858 --> 01:25:16,361
We should figure out how to use it
to elevate our skill set.

1778
01:25:16,361 --> 01:25:20,156
Let's say if you're a creative,
but we don't know what the future holds

1779
01:25:20,156 --> 01:25:23,993
for some industries,
they might get demolished by AI

1780
01:25:23,993 --> 01:25:26,996
or might take over
certain creative industries.

1781
01:25:26,996 --> 01:25:29,624
And that's the evolution.

1782
01:25:29,624 --> 01:25:33,044
Well, let's look at it like this
Tesla has the cyber cab

1783
01:25:33,044 --> 01:25:36,548
and they already told you
you can own a Tesla now and soon

1784
01:25:36,548 --> 01:25:40,051
you'll be able to rent out
like without you being there.

1785
01:25:40,343 --> 01:25:43,346
It's the first car company, in theory,

1786
01:25:43,805 --> 01:25:47,809
where they'll pay you back
so you can get dropped off at work,

1787
01:25:48,476 --> 01:25:50,270
put your car to work and it'll run
all day.

1788
01:25:50,270 --> 01:25:53,439
It'll charge itself,
and it'll put $300 in your bank account.

1789
01:25:53,481 --> 01:25:55,191
That's pretty cool.

1790
01:25:55,191 --> 01:25:56,985
Should somebody be worried? Yes.

1791
01:25:57,944 --> 01:26:00,655
Taxi drivers, Uber drivers.

1792
01:26:00,655 --> 01:26:01,906
They should be worried.

1793
01:26:01,906 --> 01:26:06,369
But now they need to make a plan, as you
said, and to do something different.

1794
01:26:06,411 --> 01:26:09,497
Maybe they need to save enough money
while they still can

1795
01:26:09,539 --> 01:26:15,128
to go and buy a fleet of cyber cabs,
and now they're going to be free to do

1796
01:26:15,128 --> 01:26:20,216
gardening or whatever they want while
their cabs are making money for them.

1797
01:26:20,717 --> 01:26:22,677
So change happens all the time.

1798
01:26:22,677 --> 01:26:26,723
We just have to ask ourselves,
are you going to embrace change?

1799
01:26:26,723 --> 01:26:27,891
Because change is happening.

1800
01:26:27,891 --> 01:26:29,726
Today's AI
tomorrow will be something else.

1801
01:26:29,726 --> 01:26:30,768
I don't know what it is,

1802
01:26:30,768 --> 01:26:34,647
but change comes at us
no matter whether or not we want it.

1803
01:26:34,647 --> 01:26:35,315
That makes sense.

1804
01:26:35,315 --> 01:26:35,815
Okay.

1805
01:26:35,815 --> 01:26:39,402
Over 30 years
in the business of creativity.

1806
01:26:39,694 --> 01:26:41,446
What do you understand now?

1807
01:26:41,446 --> 01:26:47,118
Teaching it that you genuinely couldn't
see while you were inside of it at blind?

1808
01:26:47,202 --> 01:26:50,955
I've come to realize that
I learn a very specific way,

1809
01:26:50,997 --> 01:26:54,542
and if I teach people
how I learn, it's totally ineffective.

1810
01:26:55,877 --> 01:26:58,630
I may give me the topic sentence
title of the book.

1811
01:26:58,630 --> 01:27:01,507
I'll figure it out
kind of guy, please don't hold my hand.

1812
01:27:01,507 --> 01:27:07,347
I don't want to be micromanage, but I'm
learning that people can't learn this way.

1813
01:27:07,972 --> 01:27:10,975
I can't just say to you,
charge more anchor,

1814
01:27:11,142 --> 01:27:13,728
do bracketing, and then you're good to go.

1815
01:27:13,728 --> 01:27:17,232
You literally one step by step
and that stuff kills my brain.

1816
01:27:17,440 --> 01:27:20,777
But if I want to be an effective teacher,
I have to meet people where they're at,

1817
01:27:20,777 --> 01:27:22,028
not where I'm at.

1818
01:27:22,028 --> 01:27:24,530
You came up under Kyle Cooper.

1819
01:27:24,530 --> 01:27:28,534
And this is before imaginary forces
even existed, if I'm not mistaken.

1820
01:27:28,534 --> 01:27:33,414
What did you learn watching them
that you'd never be able to teach?

1821
01:27:33,623 --> 01:27:35,667
I had limited exposure to Kyle.

1822
01:27:35,667 --> 01:27:40,880
I only worked with him for in totality,
probably no more than three weeks.

1823
01:27:40,922 --> 01:27:43,216
Spread out across some time.

1824
01:27:43,216 --> 01:27:45,468
Most of the times,
if I was working with him,

1825
01:27:45,468 --> 01:27:48,805
I was working in my studio
sending him work, and he either

1826
01:27:48,805 --> 01:27:50,306
said, that's great or not.

1827
01:27:51,266 --> 01:27:53,893
But I will tell you something I don't know

1828
01:27:53,893 --> 01:27:56,896
if I've if I've ever witnessed something
I could not teach.

1829
01:27:58,022 --> 01:27:59,857
So if I didn't see it, I can't teach it.

1830
01:27:59,857 --> 01:28:01,693
And so there are lots of things
I could not see.

1831
01:28:01,693 --> 01:28:04,696
But there's something quite remarkable
about what he did.

1832
01:28:04,862 --> 01:28:09,784
He had just left imaginary forces and
was trying to figure out his next move.

1833
01:28:09,826 --> 01:28:10,702
So he didn't have a studio.

1834
01:28:10,702 --> 01:28:14,205
He didn't have a plan, but he knew
I had a studio and I had people.

1835
01:28:14,455 --> 01:28:18,334
And so we were working on a pitch for Van
Helsing, a movie,

1836
01:28:18,376 --> 01:28:21,838
and we were working on it
like day and night over the weekend.

1837
01:28:21,879 --> 01:28:23,464
It's just like a lot of work.

1838
01:28:23,464 --> 01:28:26,551
And he brought his team there,
and they were working next to our team.

1839
01:28:26,551 --> 01:28:30,972
And then he comes in and he tells me,
print everything out.

1840
01:28:31,556 --> 01:28:35,685
And back then it was like quite expensive
to make these photo

1841
01:28:35,685 --> 01:28:38,896
glossy prints, you know, and we're like
putting on this giant printer.

1842
01:28:38,896 --> 01:28:40,773
And then he's like, cut them all up.

1843
01:28:40,773 --> 01:28:42,150
And he would lay them across the table.

1844
01:28:42,150 --> 01:28:45,069
I had this really long table, conference
room table.

1845
01:28:45,069 --> 01:28:49,532
He lay him out as a sequence
and he was like moving things around.

1846
01:28:49,532 --> 01:28:53,536
So he was doing I don't know if it's
called this, but I call a paper edit.

1847
01:28:54,037 --> 01:28:56,372
He didn't know how to use the machines,
but he was editing it.

1848
01:28:56,372 --> 01:28:59,000
So he's moving things and it's like he's
trying to build the sequence.

1849
01:28:59,000 --> 01:29:01,210
And he was like, where's the gap?

1850
01:29:01,210 --> 01:29:03,087
There's something that's missing here.

1851
01:29:03,087 --> 01:29:06,049
So he's like, print me this thing again,
but crop it like this.

1852
01:29:06,049 --> 01:29:08,718
I said, but Kyle,
the resolution would be terrible.

1853
01:29:08,718 --> 01:29:11,012
He goes,
it doesn't matter. Just print it out.

1854
01:29:11,012 --> 01:29:14,390
So I print it and I could see now
the camera move and the flow.

1855
01:29:14,432 --> 01:29:19,354
You can literally see the story
unfolding from frame to frame.

1856
01:29:19,354 --> 01:29:21,564
And then there were frames
that didn't work.

1857
01:29:21,564 --> 01:29:23,399
He just threw them away.

1858
01:29:23,399 --> 01:29:27,528
Some of those frames we spent a day
working on, literally one frame whole day.

1859
01:29:27,695 --> 01:29:28,571
Just throw them away.

1860
01:29:28,571 --> 01:29:31,908
And the attachment that you have for that
frame was like,

1861
01:29:32,283 --> 01:29:37,789
would that override the narrative,
your attachment to the work you've done?

1862
01:29:37,872 --> 01:29:40,291
Objectively, you can walk in
because he has no attachment to it.

1863
01:29:40,291 --> 01:29:43,002
He didn't do any of it.
He can just throw it in the trash.

1864
01:29:43,002 --> 01:29:44,170
It's like,
we don't need that frame anymore.

1865
01:29:44,170 --> 01:29:47,090
I'm like, oh, it hurt, but that's okay.

1866
01:29:47,090 --> 01:29:49,384
And I could just see
how he was making decisions.

1867
01:29:49,384 --> 01:29:52,428
He came in like the Tasmanian devil,

1868
01:29:52,470 --> 01:29:55,473
cut up things, asked for things
and then left.

1869
01:29:55,515 --> 01:29:57,517
He's like, I'll be back by dinner time.

1870
01:29:57,517 --> 01:29:59,727
I have to go spend time
with the kids or something.

1871
01:29:59,727 --> 01:30:01,145
Okay, great.

1872
01:30:01,145 --> 01:30:04,190
So I got to witness
how many working at the highest level,

1873
01:30:04,273 --> 01:30:07,318
and I learned a lot
just by watching that process.

1874
01:30:07,318 --> 01:30:07,944
But, like,

1875
01:30:07,944 --> 01:30:11,322
I'm the kind of guy who can learn
just by watching a couple of sentences

1876
01:30:11,322 --> 01:30:14,492
here and there, and I can walk away
and extrapolate all the lessons.

1877
01:30:14,492 --> 01:30:16,035
That's one of my gifts.

1878
01:30:16,035 --> 01:30:19,497
You're on a mission
to teach a billion people

1879
01:30:19,747 --> 01:30:24,085
how to make a living doing what they love,
which is amazing.

1880
01:30:24,335 --> 01:30:27,255
What do you actually believe is true

1881
01:30:27,255 --> 01:30:30,633
about people
that makes you think that's possible?

1882
01:30:30,800 --> 01:30:32,343
Oh, I know it's possible.

1883
01:30:33,469 --> 01:30:34,387
I don't know if it has

1884
01:30:34,387 --> 01:30:37,390
anything to do with people, but

1885
01:30:37,390 --> 01:30:42,061
if I'm on your pod and I say something
that transforms somebody's life,

1886
01:30:42,061 --> 01:30:46,482
and you broadcast this out to 1000
or 10,000 people, however many people

1887
01:30:47,150 --> 01:30:49,652
I have the opportunity,
the opportunities there,

1888
01:30:49,652 --> 01:30:53,072
it is not as audacious as one might think.

1889
01:30:53,239 --> 01:30:57,118
And I knew that teaching a million people
was like, I think across that already,

1890
01:30:57,535 --> 01:30:58,661
it's pretty easy.

1891
01:30:58,661 --> 01:30:59,996
Like you said, one of our videos, I don't

1892
01:30:59,996 --> 01:31:02,582
I haven't checked the stats,
but it has over 100 million views.

1893
01:31:02,582 --> 01:31:04,125
If someone learned something,

1894
01:31:04,125 --> 01:31:07,295
if they're open to receive
that information, that's 100 million.

1895
01:31:07,336 --> 01:31:11,757
I just need to do that ten more times,
right, to to reach a billion.

1896
01:31:11,757 --> 01:31:16,888
But I also consider the secondary effect,
which is if you learn something

1897
01:31:16,888 --> 01:31:20,433
and you teach somebody else
something, I'll take some credit for that.

1898
01:31:20,475 --> 01:31:21,893
And if they teach somebody else.

1899
01:31:21,893 --> 01:31:24,604
So you have this,
It's like you plant the seed

1900
01:31:24,604 --> 01:31:28,399
and the children of the trees
and it just keeps populating.

1901
01:31:28,399 --> 01:31:29,734
We can get there.

1902
01:31:29,734 --> 01:31:34,947
I believe in species ability to learn
to be curious and to adapt and to grow.

1903
01:31:35,281 --> 01:31:38,326
The question is just
how long you want to suffer for.

1904
01:31:38,367 --> 01:31:42,455
I coach people, some people do it
instantly and they get results right away,

1905
01:31:42,455 --> 01:31:46,083
and some people wait for years to then
to tell me I fought it for four years.

1906
01:31:46,125 --> 01:31:48,169
I'm so sorry.

1907
01:31:48,169 --> 01:31:50,004
And they're like, I see, I see it works.

1908
01:31:50,004 --> 01:31:53,841
I'm like, I know, I never question
if it worked, I just question,

1909
01:31:53,841 --> 01:31:55,510
when are you going to see it? That's all.

1910
01:31:55,510 --> 01:31:58,221
What do you think is the difference
between someone that takes that advice

1911
01:31:58,221 --> 01:32:01,349
and takes action immediately, versus
someone that waits or maybe watches?

1912
01:32:01,349 --> 01:32:05,061
Some of your content could take value,
but never actually takes any action on it.

1913
01:32:05,144 --> 01:32:09,065
Okay, I have two answers for this
a kind answer and unkind answer.

1914
01:32:09,440 --> 01:32:12,443
The kind answer is
people have been through crap.

1915
01:32:12,443 --> 01:32:15,571
They've been led the wrong way.

1916
01:32:15,905 --> 01:32:19,575
They've been criticized
for being impulsive and doing things

1917
01:32:19,575 --> 01:32:22,995
and so once burned, twice
shy kind of thing.

1918
01:32:23,120 --> 01:32:27,875
But then the not kind
answer is ego and attachment.

1919
01:32:28,501 --> 01:32:32,129
It's like our identity is so strong
that if we do this thing,

1920
01:32:32,129 --> 01:32:33,631
who are we in the process?

1921
01:32:33,631 --> 01:32:36,592
And you have to let go of an old identity
so that you can build

1922
01:32:36,592 --> 01:32:39,595
a better one, we're not willing to let go.

1923
01:32:39,845 --> 01:32:42,598
We we over index on confidence.

1924
01:32:42,598 --> 01:32:46,060
And the problem is people
who are a little bit lost,

1925
01:32:46,102 --> 01:32:49,814
they think they have the answer
on how to get on to be found.

1926
01:32:49,814 --> 01:32:52,692
And you typically do not.

1927
01:32:52,692 --> 01:32:54,860
I know where the things I do not know.

1928
01:32:54,860 --> 01:32:58,573
So I just spend money to hire coaches
and buy into programs.

1929
01:32:58,573 --> 01:33:03,953
I learned I just grow,
but obviously not everybody applies that.

1930
01:33:04,036 --> 01:33:06,664
Do you think it's part of it
as people are just lazy?

1931
01:33:06,664 --> 01:33:07,915
I know, I don't want to say that.

1932
01:33:07,915 --> 01:33:10,543
I think people are dealing
with own demons.

1933
01:33:10,543 --> 01:33:14,672
Like I said, maybe you've had a traumatic
experience as a child with a parent,

1934
01:33:14,672 --> 01:33:19,468
an educator that makes you feel like,
if I do this and I'm wrong, I'm not worthy

1935
01:33:19,510 --> 01:33:25,099
and I have feelings, rejection and shame,
and that's a hard thing to overcome.

1936
01:33:25,266 --> 01:33:27,476
I don't necessarily think it's laziness.

1937
01:33:27,476 --> 01:33:32,189
However, we're fighting impulse control
once again and delayed gratification.

1938
01:33:32,315 --> 01:33:35,526
My dad said something to me
when I was in my teens.

1939
01:33:35,526 --> 01:33:38,321
He goes, your life is long.

1940
01:33:38,321 --> 01:33:40,865
Your time to enjoy it might be short.

1941
01:33:40,865 --> 01:33:42,867
What we do is
if we put all the work up front,

1942
01:33:42,867 --> 01:33:44,702
we get to enjoy the rest of our lives.

1943
01:33:44,702 --> 01:33:47,705
But some people, what they want to do
is they want to do a little work, enjoy,

1944
01:33:47,705 --> 01:33:50,207
work, enjoy,
so they never get to that place.

1945
01:33:50,207 --> 01:33:52,501
Back to the game of money.

1946
01:33:52,501 --> 01:33:57,214
They spend their currency,
their capital, their energy.

1947
01:33:57,840 --> 01:34:03,387
Foolishly, they want to go to the club
and hang out with friends and party

1948
01:34:03,387 --> 01:34:08,893
and do spring break into their 50,
and then they're going to do the work.

1949
01:34:08,893 --> 01:34:13,439
But now your body doesn't cooperate,
and it's much harder to do that,

1950
01:34:13,481 --> 01:34:16,484
because now you have way
more responsibility than you did before.

1951
01:34:16,567 --> 01:34:20,029
Let's take that person
that, for example, maybe

1952
01:34:21,322 --> 01:34:22,406
they had something with a teacher,

1953
01:34:22,406 --> 01:34:25,534
a parent, a loved one, a friend
when they were growing up.

1954
01:34:25,534 --> 01:34:27,703
And so they have that fear.

1955
01:34:27,703 --> 01:34:31,332
They have the fear of rejection, failure.

1956
01:34:32,166 --> 01:34:35,086
What do you think it takes to for them
to make

1957
01:34:35,086 --> 01:34:38,255
that mindset shift where, you know what,
I'm going to take a chance on this.

1958
01:34:38,255 --> 01:34:40,383
I'm actually going to go
try to build something.

1959
01:34:40,383 --> 01:34:41,676
Try to do something.

1960
01:34:41,676 --> 01:34:45,596
Buddy of mine introduced me
to this framework that I later discovered.

1961
01:34:45,638 --> 01:34:48,641
It's part of cognitive behavioral therapy.

1962
01:34:48,641 --> 01:34:51,811
And if you just look at a triangle
and just imagine the three letters

1963
01:34:51,852 --> 01:34:56,023
be a are bar, one is a belief,
one is action.

1964
01:34:56,023 --> 01:34:58,401
And then the result.
So you have this belief.

1965
01:34:58,401 --> 01:35:02,321
It's fear based that if you do something
then you'll have bad outcomes.

1966
01:35:02,321 --> 01:35:04,448
The action that you take is no action.

1967
01:35:04,448 --> 01:35:07,702
The result is nothing
has changed supporting your belief.

1968
01:35:07,868 --> 01:35:08,494
So he goes.

1969
01:35:08,494 --> 01:35:10,079
It's very difficult to tell

1970
01:35:10,079 --> 01:35:13,457
people to change their belief systems
because they're stuck.

1971
01:35:13,916 --> 01:35:16,043
Ask them instead. What result do you want?

1972
01:35:16,043 --> 01:35:17,044
So we go backwards.

1973
01:35:17,044 --> 01:35:20,673
Instead of going bar, we go Rab,
we go Rab.

1974
01:35:20,715 --> 01:35:22,258
So what is the result that you want?

1975
01:35:22,258 --> 01:35:23,759
Well, I'd like to make more money
this year.

1976
01:35:23,759 --> 01:35:25,052
How much more money? Okay.

1977
01:35:25,052 --> 01:35:26,387
Or I want to grow my social following.

1978
01:35:26,387 --> 01:35:28,139
Or I'd like to get this kind of client.

1979
01:35:28,139 --> 01:35:32,017
What action would a reasonable person
have to take in order to get that result?

1980
01:35:32,059 --> 01:35:35,438
Although they would have to post some
content, they'd have to call some clients.

1981
01:35:35,438 --> 01:35:37,648
They'd have to
just be brave enough to say this thing.

1982
01:35:37,648 --> 01:35:41,902
So what's the belief that
that would be required, that I'm worth it?

1983
01:35:41,944 --> 01:35:44,613
That failure is just a learning
opportunity.

1984
01:35:44,613 --> 01:35:46,741
Failures? The tuition for success.

1985
01:35:46,741 --> 01:35:51,746
Okay, so what happens is
if we instead of focusing on the belief,

1986
01:35:51,746 --> 01:35:54,707
we just focus on the action,
We know what the result is.

1987
01:35:54,707 --> 01:35:55,624
We take the action.

1988
01:35:55,624 --> 01:35:57,793
It will change our belief.

1989
01:35:57,793 --> 01:36:02,381
So you say I can't charge more than $500,
I said, yes, you can.

1990
01:36:02,423 --> 01:36:05,009
And then your belief system
would have to change.

1991
01:36:05,009 --> 01:36:07,052
But I'm like,
I just want you to say these words.

1992
01:36:07,052 --> 01:36:08,721
You don't even have to believe it
to be true.

1993
01:36:08,721 --> 01:36:11,265
Say these words, take this action
and you do that.

1994
01:36:11,265 --> 01:36:13,309
All of a sudden the client says yes.

1995
01:36:13,309 --> 01:36:15,060
Then your belief system changes.

1996
01:36:15,060 --> 01:36:19,064
Like I thought, my cap,
my ceiling was 500, now it's 1000.

1997
01:36:19,732 --> 01:36:22,610
You do that enough times,
you start to enter into the virtuous cycle

1998
01:36:22,610 --> 01:36:26,781
and you say, well, what is the theoretical
ceiling for what I can charge?

1999
01:36:27,782 --> 01:36:28,282
You know,

2000
01:36:28,282 --> 01:36:31,994
one of my friends is a much sought
after public speaker.

2001
01:36:32,077 --> 01:36:34,121
for one hour, 45 minute talk.

2002
01:36:34,121 --> 01:36:35,080
What do you think he charges?

2003
01:36:35,080 --> 01:36:37,958
Well, going to guess a high number
based on what you just said.

2004
01:36:37,958 --> 01:36:38,918
just a regular guy.

2005
01:36:38,918 --> 01:36:41,170
What do you think? He gets paid per talk?

2006
01:36:41,170 --> 01:36:45,382
For context, I get paid 30 K based on
the context of what you just said.

2007
01:36:45,382 --> 01:36:46,842
I'm going to guess 100 K.

2008
01:36:46,842 --> 01:36:48,886
Yeah, that would be an outrageous
amount of money

2009
01:36:48,886 --> 01:36:51,639
to step on the stage
and to open your mouth.

2010
01:36:51,639 --> 01:36:54,308
$170,000.

2011
01:36:54,308 --> 01:36:57,561
People hearing this will have
a couple different reactions.

2012
01:36:57,561 --> 01:36:59,480
One, no one's worth that too.

2013
01:36:59,480 --> 01:37:01,857
What is he doing? Three
he sold his soul to the devil.

2014
01:37:01,857 --> 01:37:04,860
Or four if he can do it, I can do it.

2015
01:37:05,110 --> 01:37:07,196
Choose whatever option works for you.

2016
01:37:07,196 --> 01:37:09,448
What does enough look like for you
now? Right?

2017
01:37:09,448 --> 01:37:11,158
When did it stop being about money?

2018
01:37:11,158 --> 01:37:12,535
had enough for a long time.

2019
01:37:12,535 --> 01:37:15,913
Yeah, Right now
it's about personal development, and

2020
01:37:17,081 --> 01:37:18,499
trying to

2021
01:37:18,499 --> 01:37:21,627
make a dent in the universe
leaves a place better than I found it.

2022
01:37:21,669 --> 01:37:24,797
This is about impacting
the lives of people I never meet.

2023
01:37:24,880 --> 01:37:29,385
You spent your life
decoding other people's worth.

2024
01:37:29,593 --> 01:37:32,304
Has that changed the way you see?

2025
01:37:32,304 --> 01:37:33,264
You see yourself?

2026
01:37:33,264 --> 01:37:34,598
I don't think so.

2027
01:37:34,598 --> 01:37:37,601
I tell people
I have an infinite money mindset.

2028
01:37:37,643 --> 01:37:38,769
What does that mean?

2029
01:37:38,769 --> 01:37:41,647
There's different games
we're all playing. Right?

2030
01:37:41,647 --> 01:37:44,817
So people live in an abundance mindset.

2031
01:37:45,067 --> 01:37:47,278
It's the opposite of a scarcity mindset.

2032
01:37:47,278 --> 01:37:51,991
Scarcity mindset says there's
only so many options or opportunities.

2033
01:37:51,991 --> 01:37:54,952
And every time we take one,
there's one less that we can take.

2034
01:37:54,952 --> 01:37:57,121
And so we have to be careful
about how we do this.

2035
01:37:57,121 --> 01:37:58,664
That translates
to lots of different things,

2036
01:37:58,664 --> 01:38:00,082
like the relationship with money,

2037
01:38:00,082 --> 01:38:02,793
the relationship with relationships
and opportunities.

2038
01:38:02,793 --> 01:38:04,086
It's all the same.

2039
01:38:04,086 --> 01:38:07,756
You're afraid of losing things,
so you're just holding on to things.

2040
01:38:07,798 --> 01:38:09,133
Another friend of mine, Sean.

2041
01:38:09,133 --> 01:38:12,219
Sean Kanwal, says scared
money don't make money.

2042
01:38:12,511 --> 01:38:16,515
And so if you live in a scarcity mindset
that scared money,

2043
01:38:16,557 --> 01:38:19,393
you don't invest in things. You don't buy
in things you don't believe in programs.

2044
01:38:19,393 --> 01:38:20,728
So you just stay where you're at.

2045
01:38:20,728 --> 01:38:23,022
And this is the vast majority of people.

2046
01:38:23,022 --> 01:38:23,397
Then there's

2047
01:38:23,397 --> 01:38:27,026
something called abundance mindset,
which is like, there's more opportunities

2048
01:38:27,151 --> 01:38:29,987
if I lose this one,
another one up here, two more over here,

2049
01:38:29,987 --> 01:38:31,572
this low client disappears.

2050
01:38:31,572 --> 01:38:33,324
A better client will pop up.

2051
01:38:33,324 --> 01:38:35,910
But I believe there's
an extreme version of that.

2052
01:38:35,910 --> 01:38:40,539
And I practice
some form of radical optimism or delusion.

2053
01:38:40,539 --> 01:38:44,710
I just believe anything that I want in
my life will happen.

2054
01:38:44,877 --> 01:38:47,463
It's just,
am I willing to put in the work?

2055
01:38:47,463 --> 01:38:49,006
And I'm a worker.

2056
01:38:49,006 --> 01:38:51,133
And so of course,
everything always happens.

2057
01:38:51,133 --> 01:38:52,760
I just have an infinite money mindset.

2058
01:38:52,760 --> 01:38:55,846
And I was telling somebody,
I love my wife.

2059
01:38:55,930 --> 01:38:58,182
Heaven forbid
something should happen between us.

2060
01:38:58,182 --> 01:38:59,767
And she wants a divorce.

2061
01:38:59,767 --> 01:39:01,602
And it's like, okay, cool.

2062
01:39:01,602 --> 01:39:04,605
I said I would give her
whatever she wants.

2063
01:39:04,813 --> 01:39:08,359
It doesn't matter to me
because I it's built on two beliefs.

2064
01:39:08,525 --> 01:39:10,819
This is the mother of my children,
somebody I love.

2065
01:39:10,819 --> 01:39:14,239
And if I love somebody,
I don't know if I can love somebody.

2066
01:39:14,573 --> 01:39:15,616
I just want to put it out there.

2067
01:39:15,616 --> 01:39:21,121
If you love somebody, it means in my mind
I'm willing to die for you.

2068
01:39:21,372 --> 01:39:22,206
Like of a bullet.

2069
01:39:22,206 --> 01:39:24,708
Coming was coming
or a train was about to hit you.

2070
01:39:24,708 --> 01:39:26,335
I would sacrifice my life easily.

2071
01:39:26,335 --> 01:39:29,505
And you do this as a as a parent,
you test as easily.

2072
01:39:29,546 --> 01:39:33,175
You would easily, quickly exchange
your life for your child's life.

2073
01:39:33,217 --> 01:39:35,344
You may not do that for your partner.

2074
01:39:35,344 --> 01:39:38,681
It's a little bit different,
but I put it into that same place.

2075
01:39:38,681 --> 01:39:40,474
I love my wife. I love my children.

2076
01:39:40,474 --> 01:39:43,852
I would without hesitation
give up my life for them.

2077
01:39:44,561 --> 01:39:47,648
So if she wants the money, take the money.

2078
01:39:47,648 --> 01:39:51,068
It doesn't really matter to me
because I can always make more.

2079
01:39:51,443 --> 01:39:54,154
And to me money is like oxygen.

2080
01:39:54,154 --> 01:39:55,114
It's like water.

2081
01:39:55,114 --> 01:39:58,033
It comes from everywhere.

2082
01:39:58,033 --> 01:39:59,618
You can make it anytime you want.

2083
01:39:59,618 --> 01:40:03,539
Where did that radical optimism come from,
I've had it for some time

2084
01:40:03,539 --> 01:40:06,000
when I found myself,
my identity around design,

2085
01:40:06,000 --> 01:40:08,836
and I started testing my worth
into the marketplace.

2086
01:40:08,836 --> 01:40:11,755
It seems like everything I've ever wanted
has worked out.

2087
01:40:11,755 --> 01:40:15,259
I remember being coached by my late
coach.

2088
01:40:15,592 --> 01:40:22,057
He's like, you can't mistake your charmed
life for the way people have suffered.

2089
01:40:22,099 --> 01:40:26,478
Everything you've done is worked out,
but this is not how the real world works.

2090
01:40:26,478 --> 01:40:28,689
So he had to ground me at that moment.

2091
01:40:28,689 --> 01:40:31,400
I had to really think about that
because I thought,

2092
01:40:31,400 --> 01:40:33,318
whatever you want, you must get to.

2093
01:40:34,361 --> 01:40:36,822
I just am brave enough to ask for it.

2094
01:40:36,822 --> 01:40:39,700
And then I have the ethic to work for it.

2095
01:40:39,700 --> 01:40:42,745
And that's the difference between me
and some other people.

2096
01:40:42,953 --> 01:40:47,750
a talented creative who's watching this
right now is about to quit.

2097
01:40:48,333 --> 01:40:50,127
What would you say to them? Quit?

2098
01:40:50,127 --> 01:40:53,130
I can't want you to want it
more than you want it.

2099
01:40:53,338 --> 01:40:57,760
People ask me all this time, ask me
this all the time, how I'm putting out.

2100
01:40:57,801 --> 01:40:58,761
I don't want to do this more.

2101
01:40:58,761 --> 01:41:00,262
Help me find my passion.

2102
01:41:00,262 --> 01:41:02,556
I'm like,
you don't have the passion for it.

2103
01:41:02,556 --> 01:41:05,267
Because the difference between
you and a world champion

2104
01:41:05,267 --> 01:41:08,270
at what you do is their passion never goes
away.

2105
01:41:09,271 --> 01:41:12,232
You've heard of the term gym rat.

2106
01:41:12,232 --> 01:41:14,568
They just spent all their time in the gym.

2107
01:41:14,568 --> 01:41:18,322
The people who are really good
at what they do, they just keep doing it

2108
01:41:18,322 --> 01:41:19,114
over and over again.

2109
01:41:19,114 --> 01:41:22,326
They're shocked that they get paid
for this and they're celebrated for it.

2110
01:41:22,367 --> 01:41:25,412
That's the difference
between a champion and a pretender.

2111
01:41:25,412 --> 01:41:28,665
So find something that you love
that you will never quit,

2112
01:41:28,665 --> 01:41:31,668
and you would just keep doing it
until you're successful.

2113
01:41:31,752 --> 01:41:33,337
There's an acronym focus.

2114
01:41:33,337 --> 01:41:35,422
Follow one course until success.

2115
01:41:35,422 --> 01:41:36,673
Focus.

2116
01:41:36,673 --> 01:41:39,093
Chris, thank you so much
for coming on to Kota, genius.

2117
01:41:39,093 --> 01:41:40,761
My pleasure. Thanks for having me.