The argument in one line.
Personal branding is not a content strategy -- it is a sustained act of self-excavation, and the creators who grow the fastest are the ones willing to stop performing for their audience and start expressing who they actually are.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- You have been creating content for 1-3 years and feel stuck performing for an audience that is not really yours.
- You are a skilled professional -- designer, consultant, expert -- who cannot figure out how to translate expertise into a content identity.
- You are afraid to pivot your personal brand because you think you will lose the audience you have built.
- You undercharge for your work and want a mental reframe around money and value, not just a pricing formula.
- You are a creator who has hit an emotional wall and is questioning whether the grind is worth it.
SKIP IF…
- You are looking for platform-specific growth tactics -- there are no hooks, algorithms, or posting schedules discussed here.
- You want a step-by-step business model -- this is a values and mindset conversation, not an operations playbook.
The full version, fast.
Chris Do argues that personal branding begins before the first piece of content: it begins with understanding your own story, your wound, your mask, and the unfair advantage buried in your background. The core mechanism is a shift from performance -- creating what the audience wants -- to self-expression, creating what is genuinely true for you. He traces this through his own arc: a decade building for designers, then a pivot when his interests evolved, and the discovery that authenticity attracted a larger, more aligned audience than optimization ever had. The pricing section reframes money as appreciation: every dollar is a thank-you note, which means raising prices is not greed but an invitation for more committed clients.
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Create a free account →Who's talking.
01:45guestChris Do
00:00hostJun Yuh
Where the time goes.
00:00 – 01:45
01 · Cold open
Montage of key quotes from the episode -- therapist line, crying on floor, dollar bill as thank-you note.
01:45 – 05:54
02 · Therapy first, story second
Chris explains why personal branding begins with inner work, not content. The mask metaphor introduced. The wound as unfair advantage.
05:54 – 09:50
03 · Finding your origin story
Three prompts for excavating your story. Impostor syndrome as a signal worth following. Why your origin feels mundane to you but not to strangers.
09:50 – 11:47
04 · Self-expression vs. performance
The distinction between creating what you love and performing what the audience wants. Performance is unsustainable.
11:47 – 14:45
05 · Stop creating for your audience
Chris describes his pivot away from audience-first thinking. How authenticity built a larger audience than optimization did.
14:45 – 19:53
06 · How to pivot
Three phases creators go through. Why pivots terrify creators but are part of the process. Gradual vs. clean-break approaches.
19:53 – 27:42
07 · Expertise into content (5 pillars)
Chris's system for turning a body of knowledge into a year of content. Chunking one idea per piece. The algorithm rewards standalone value.
27:42 – 31:42
08 · Personal brand vs. business
The tension between making money now and building a brand long-term. You can only serve one master at a time.
31:42 – 33:45
09 · Jun's $49 study guide
Jun's first product origin story. Serving the market you have vs. the market you want.
33:45 – 40:42
10 · Burnout, sabbatical, teaching
Chris's burnout after six years of commercial work. Teaching as the cure -- not rest, but the forced articulation of what you know.
40:42 – 50:12
11 · Identity and breaking stereotypes
Asian immigrant parent expectations. Jun and Chris compare notes on Korean/Chinese-American upbringings. The life plan your parents wrote vs. the one you would write.
50:12 – 56:47
12 · Chris's lowest emotional point
Chris describes crying for hours in the fetal position. Anger at his father. The transformation: the boy died, the man was born.
56:47 – 1:04:06
13 · Pricing: dollars as thank-you notes
The value pricing reframe. Asking about big problems, not time. Presenting a price confidently and holding silence.
1:04:06 – 1:08:48
14 · Buying an art school
Chris's goal to buy the art school he attended, fix higher education, and what it means as a goalpost vs. a literal target.
1:08:48 – 1:12:03
15 · Don't believe your own hype
Creator ego at events. Chris's social experiment of mirroring energy. Staying grounded at scale.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- Your origin story feels mundane to you because you have lived it -- that familiarity is exactly what makes it land for strangers who have not.
- Self-expression and performance are not the same thing. Performing a format you hate to chase trends will hollow you out before the algorithm rewards you.
- Chris stopped creating for his audience and they showed up anyway -- authenticity is a growth strategy, not a sacrifice of growth.
- The wound that shaped you is often your biggest unfair advantage in selling, because buyers recognize the backstory as proof you understand the problem.
- Burnout rarely comes from too much work. Chris burned out after six years by running out of things to contribute -- the cure was teaching, which forced excavation of what he actually knew.
- Every dollar bill is a thank-you note. The amount someone pays is a signal of how much they appreciate you, not a number you negotiate down.
- Most creators asking whether there is a shortcut to the end are asking the wrong question -- the person you become in the pursuit is the goal, not the destination.
- You can only hold anger in your heart for so long before it becomes cancerous. Spite is valid early fuel but it has a hard ceiling.
- The most qualified buyers can sense inauthenticity. You are not fooling them, only the people you do not want anyway.
- Chunking content into one-idea-per-piece is counterintuitive but correct: audiences do not need the full story in one sitting, and the algorithm rewards standalone value.
- Do not believe your own hype. Creator events are full of people who are the most important person in their own tiny world -- stay grounded or you become uncoachable.
- The pivot is not a crisis -- it is a stage. Almost every creator who lasts goes through three phases: building for audience, questioning themselves, then synthesizing both into authentic voice.
- Presenting a price confidently and then going silent is one of the most effective sales moves -- most clients will agree if you just hold the space.
- The goal of building a school or changing an institution is a goalpost, not a literal destination -- but having the audacious goal shapes every decision in between.
Authenticity is not a sacrifice of growth -- it is the mechanism.
WHAT TO LEARN
The creators who go the distance are not optimizing for audiences -- they are excavating themselves, and the audience follows because they can tell the difference.
02Therapy first, story second
- The wound that shaped you is often your biggest unfair advantage in selling -- buyers recognize the backstory as proof you understand the problem from the inside.
- The mask we build to survive difficult circumstances is not the enemy -- it is a clue. Recognizing it is the first step to authentic brand identity.
03Finding your origin story
- Your origin story feels mundane to you because you have lived it -- that familiarity is exactly what makes it land for strangers who have not.
- Impostor syndrome is a signal worth following: it often marks the edge of expertise the person has not yet learned to articulate.
04Self-expression vs. performance
- Creating what you genuinely find interesting and creating what the audience already wants are different activities with different long-term outcomes -- only one compounds.
05Stop creating for your audience
- Authenticity is not a sacrifice of growth -- Chris stopped optimizing for his audience and they showed up anyway, in larger numbers and with more alignment.
06How to pivot
- Pivots terrify creators because they fear losing the audience they built, but the audience is more adaptive than creators believe -- especially when the pivot is toward more genuine expression.
- The gradual pivot and the clean break are both valid approaches. The key variable is how misaligned the current content has become.
07Expertise into content (5 pillars)
- Chunking expertise into one-idea-per-piece content is counterintuitive but correct: audiences do not need the full story in one sitting, and standalone value is what the algorithm rewards.
- Experts underestimate how much they know because they have normalized it. The exercise of systematically chunking it into content reveals the full inventory.
08Personal brand vs. business
- You can only serve one master at a time: making money now and building a long-term personal brand require different strategies and different content.
- Building goodwill -- giving before you sell -- is the step most creators skip because they are focused on their first dollar rather than the person watching.
10Burnout, sabbatical, teaching
- Burnout is not always a sign of working too hard -- it can be a sign of having nothing left to contribute. The cure is not rest but reconnection with what you actually know.
- Teaching is the best form of continued learning for experts. The act of extracting and explaining what you know reveals things about yourself that staying in practitioner mode never would.
11Identity and breaking stereotypes
- Cultural and family expectations are a life plan written for you by someone else. The question is whether the life plan you would write for yourself is different -- and whether you have actually written it.
- The standards your parents instilled are not purely a burden. The drive and discipline they created are real, even if the specific path they prescribed was not yours.
12Chris lowest emotional point
- The anger phase -- building out of spite to prove something to a parent -- is a valid early fuel but it has a hard ceiling and eventually needs to transform into something more sustainable.
- Visible vulnerability from high-status creators does not erode authority -- it deepens credibility with audiences who have also struggled and have not seen that acknowledged.
13Pricing: dollars as thank-you notes
- Pricing is a measure of appreciation, not a calculation of hours. Reframing money this way removes the guilt that keeps skilled people undercharging.
- Presenting a price confidently and then going silent is one of the most effective sales techniques available. Most clients will agree if you simply hold the space.
- Asking only about the biggest problems the client cannot solve is not manipulation -- it is qualification. It filters for the clients who will actually value the work.
14Buying an art school
- Audacious goals function as goalposts, not literal destinations. The goal of buying an art school shapes every decision even if the exact outcome is different.
- The institutions that shaped you are more accessible at scale than they appear from the outside.
15Don't believe your own hype
- Ego compounds quietly at scale. Staying grounded -- remaining curious, remaining coachable -- is an active discipline, not a default state.
- Creator events are a mirror: the way other creators hold themselves in those rooms reveals exactly the trap you want to avoid.
Terms worth knowing.
- Self-expression vs. performance
- Chris Do's distinction between creating content that reflects your genuine interests and values (self-expression) versus creating content optimized to match what an audience already wants (performance). Only self-expression compounds over time.
- Origin story
- The formative experience -- often involving struggle, identity, or a wound -- that explains why someone does what they do. In personal branding it functions as proof of earned expertise and emotional credibility.
- The mask
- Chris Do's term for the coping identity people develop to navigate pain or expectation -- the persona layered over the real self. Recognizing and removing it is a precondition for authentic branding.
- Value pricing
- Charging based on the significance of the problem solved rather than the hours spent solving it. Chris reframes it: what the client pays reflects how much they appreciate you, not how long you worked.
- 5 Pillars of Content
- Chris Do's framework for organizing a creator's expertise into five thematic buckets, which provides enough structure to produce a year's worth of content without running dry. Full enumeration not given on air.
- The Futur
- Chris Do's education brand and YouTube channel, originally built for designers learning business, later expanding into broader personal development and entrepreneurship content.
Things they pointed at.
27:15bookJim Rohn (paraphrased)
1:04:06linkThe art school Chris attended (unnamed)
Lines you could clip.
56:47
“Every dollar bill is a thank-you note. The more they appreciate you, the more dollar bills they give you.”
50:11
“The boy died and the man was born and I've never been the same.”
1:08:48
“Don't believe your own freaking hype. I go to events where I meet other creators. They're a bunch of douchebags. I can't stand to be next to them.”
27:15
“The person who loves running will outrun the person who wants to win a race.”
52:10
“You can only hold anger in your heart for so long before it becomes cancerous.”
11:47
“I stopped creating for my audience and they showed up anyway.”
58:00
“We're two business people right now. Put on the business person hat, present a price, say confidently, and just hold. More often than not, they just agree.”
Where the conversation goes.
00:00 – 19:53densePersonal branding philosophy and inner work
19:53 – 33:45denseContent strategy: expert-to-creator translation
33:45 – 40:42steadyBurnout and teaching as recovery
40:42 – 50:12steadyIdentity, culture, and family expectations
50:12 – 56:47denseEmotional rock bottom and transformation
56:47 – 1:04:06densePricing and value communication
1:04:06 – 1:12:03steadyEducation, ambition, and ego
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00:00You had said something that one of the best first steps to building a personal brand is actually to go see a therapist. As as they're developing their personal brand, though your business might be growing, you are not growing. Emmy award winning designer, Chris Do has done over $18,000,000
00:15with this business, has worked with some of the largest brands in the entire world, and is a very familiar face within the personal branding landscape. When I talk about personal branding, it's an inner journey. It's about understanding your story.
00:26So I hit an emotional low point. I remember crying my eyes off for hours just laying on the floor in the fetal position. I think the boy died and the man was born and I've never been the same.
00:34You have this beautiful way of framing pricing and would you be able to share that with me? Every dollar bill is a thank you note. The more they appreciate you, the more dollar bills they give you.
00:42We're two business people right now. Put on the business person hat, present a price, say confidently, and just hold.
00:50More often than not, they just agree. For the people that are listening to this, is there a way to skip to the end? I would say that we should not even ask that question.
00:56I have two priorities in my life. The first priority is
01:00Chris Stowe, thank you so much for joining us. You're obviously a personal branding expert, icon within this space, and I actually have been studying your content now for the last six weeks, and you're so amazing at what you do, so thank you so much for making the time out to do this.
01:15The thing that I really enjoy about you the most is your perspective on content, and I've always been on record for saying that personal branding has been the best personal development journey for me. I've learned how to be introspective.
01:28I've learned how to be more empathetic. I've learned my own insecurities, and being aware of that has also made me a better creator.
01:35And you had said something that one of the best first steps to building a personal brand is actually to go see a therapist, and I freaking love that. So I want you to explain what that actually means to you. Okay.
01:45For me to be able to answer that question, I have to give people a little context to zoom out to a 30,000 foot view. There's a whole bunch of people out there who are proselytizing this idea of personal brand. And I think what they're really saying is how we can onboard more customers, how we can package our offering, how we can attract more people so we can make more money.
02:04Yeah. And that goes against everything that I believe in. Because as they're developing their personal brand, though your business might be growing, you are not growing.
02:12And I think to this to this kind of idea, what is the meaning of your life if you cannot develop yourself? And it's like, it's a pretty hollow pursuit.
02:21So when I consume your content that's been advised by these people, I might learn anything more about you. Are you sharing your values, and are you gonna get real with me, or is this all a scheme to sell more widgets?
02:32And that's the problem. So when I talk about personal branding, it's an inner journey. It's about understanding your story, being able to tell that to the world, not because you're trying to get more customers, because it's just your life force.
02:45Mhmm. I have two priorities in my life. The first priority is to be true to myself, and the second priority is to make sure I follow the first priority.
02:53And this is a big conflict for a lot of people. We're always out there being some version of ourself, never our true self, a persona,
03:01 Mhmm. That we carry so much so that we forget who we really are. What I've also learned is that it's actually sometimes our biggest unfair advantage.
03:13So what I mean by that is when I am selling my offers today, a lot of people that come in will always survey them as to what made you join Creative College, what made you join these offers, and it's rarely anything tactical. It's like, of course, he's teaching me, but it's the trust factor because they feel as though they have a level of rapport connection with me that goes beyond just the skilled stuff and they see themselves in me, which I think is brilliant.
03:34Now what's been a big learning curve is realizing that that introspection is actually a constant evolution. It's not necessarily a singular event.
03:42You have to constantly practice this and be aware. And I'm curious for you, do you have an active practice that you go through that allows you to stay connected internally as well?
03:52Well, I would say this, I'm a little bit older than you, maybe a factor of two plus. You literally look so young. Put that out there.
03:59So I think and and maybe we can measure life in decades. The first ten years, you don't know Jack.
04:05You're just trying not to fall over. Right? So when you're into your twenties and you're like, okay.
04:09I'm starting to figure out who I am in this world. I've acquired some skills. I've gone to school.
04:13I've learned how to live by myself. And I may have fallen in love for the first time, and you're starting to figure yourself out. When you get to your thirties and the forties, I hope through some level of introspection, some some inner work, and some intentional practices Right.
04:27You start to say to yourself now, now that I've kind of figured out parts of my life and I know how to make money, what is my life? What what is my identity? Who am I?
04:37What what am I supposed to do in this lifetime? How if I contribute to society or to the world, how do I make a dent in the universe? So it's in those moments in I think into your forties, you start to have a much deeper understanding.
04:49You stop showing up for who you're supposed to be, and you start showing up for yourself. This is not true obviously with everyone, but if you're in that state, then you start to ask yourself those kinds of questions.
05:00Because our first our first goal is just to survive. Yeah. Can I pay rent?
05:05And maybe after you figure that part out, can I support somebody else, my partner? Great. And can I contribute to my family, meaning my parents and my siblings gonna help to alleviate some of their pain?
05:15Now once you take care of the primary needs of survival, you start to move towards the higher part of Maslow's hierarchy of needs into self actualization.
05:24This is where we we kinda stay, and we're trying to figure out who we are.
05:28Are there questions that let's say somebody comes to you, and they're really struggling with finding their own story or their own identity. I see it all the time. People that think that they have nothing worth sharing, and they have this impostor syndrome.
05:40And it's important that we almost treat content like therapy. Before you start, you need an identity. You need to be intentional around your content.
05:46Are there questions that you advise people to ask themselves particularly that allows them to see their story for what it is? Yeah. There's three prompts I'll ask people, and they're all story based.
05:56And to get back to something you said earlier, there are people who can buy a course or a beverage or a product,
06:02but the one that you choose, you feel some alignment with Mhmm. And that's through the storytelling that they have done.
06:09Alright. So there's lots of people who can teach you how to make money. Accountants, business people, entrepreneurs, marketers.
06:14Why do you why does someone choose one over the other? The way you look, the way you sound, your story, your energy, your aura, they feel that.
06:23They're like, well, I'd rather take June's thing than somebody else's, or Bob's or Mary's. And that's the the battle that we're in. Anna Lappe said this, every dollar you spend is a vote for the world that you want.
06:33Very good. Right? So it's like, if I like you and I think I like your values, I would rather you win this race and the war because that means eventually they start to disappear.
06:44And this is true across all spectrums. So from restaurants to handbags to cars, we're trying to vote for the ones that we believe in. Mhmm.
06:51So the the there's a there's this trend that's happening in the last, I don't know, five to ten years when a brand decides to design a different car or change their logo, people are outraged by it because they feel betrayed by that brand. I used to go to war for you, and I'm questioning if I want to belong to that tribe anymore.
07:09So being able to tell your story in a way that people can say like, oh, I like your story, I don't like your story. That's a hard thing. First question I ask them is tell me your origin story.
07:18And the origin story is the easiest story to tell and often the most overlooked because it's so simple. Where were you born? Who are your parents?
07:26What birth order? Tell me a little bit about that. So those components tell us a lot about you.
07:32I'll give you example. Once you know your story, you reduce it down to a very simple phrase so that you can remember to tell your story. So my story is from Saigon to Santa Monica.
07:40It's just the two s's. Right? So we're refugees.
07:44We escaped Vietnam. And in terms of communism, we land in America, and eventually, I wind up working in the motion design space in Santa Monica.
07:51So without a lot of knowledge and information, what you're doing is you're trading on cultural capital because your culture says lot about you.
08:00You're Asian American. Are you Korean?
08:02Yes. Okay. So Koreans are different than Japanese that are different than Chinese.
08:06Yeah. For white people, thought we're all the same, but it we're drastically different. Very different.
08:10Very, very different. Right? And so when when you hear, oh, somebody's from Mexico or someone's German, you you're going to have assumptions about them.
08:17Right. And instead of running away from it, we play into them. And we can take what people think of us and, like, judo or jujitsu, flip it on them.
08:25Very cool. Right? Because you're atypical in your Korean Americanism, I believe.
08:30Yes. Right? You're a young man.
08:32You're doing content. You're not going into the traditional fields, so you're already upsetting certain patterns. But you have, from what I can just learn about you right now, which is strong family ties Mhmm.
08:42Which is deeply rooted within the Asian community. Right? And respect, and hierarchy.
08:48And there's things that you play to and things you play against. So when you tell people, here's where I came from, here's where I live, these are my parents, that's a whole story in itself, and we're starting to build the world.
09:00So the origin story is the first story we we learn.
09:03This is something that I always tell people, because a lot of times for them, the origin is actually quite mundane because for them, they've lived it. So they're thinking, why would anybody care where I've come from? And that is oftentimes what I see stops a lot of people from creating because they think to themselves, who am I to go and and show myself in front of the camera?
09:21And then I'll tell them to tell their stories, and they're like, why would I do that? Like, no one's going to engage with that experience. Now something that I always struggle with in terms of helping other people and something I've internally struggled a lot with as well is that there's a level of identity that you're trying to stay authentic to.
09:35So we wanna be intentional around our content, but almost too intentional becomes curation. And if you're curating an identity, you start to lose that attachment to it.
09:45How do you effectively curate a fine balance between those two?
09:49Okay. There's two two components here, self expression and performance. So let's say you love to sing and dance.
09:55Yeah. I would consider that self expression. But if you sing and dance a song that's very popular, but it's not the kind of song or dance type that you like, that's performative, and we we know it right away.
10:06So a lot of it is kind of underneath the layer of, like, what is it that makes your heart happy? Right. Do that, experience that, express that, and then you'll be okay.
10:15So for example, if you're a really messy person, but everywhere you look on the Internet, everyone is so tidy and everything looks so lit and and crispy or whatever the kids like to say, then you start to change your environment. It's like, this is not me. I have anxiety.
10:28It's like, oh, I just it's wrecking my whole workflow, and you don't wanna make content because So of what if you just like, this is my messy life. And then the messy people in the world like, oh, you're keeping a 100.
10:40I I love that you can still make content despite all these chaotic things. And someone who might celebrate that and say, all that chaos is really like seeds for ideas to grow from. So what we often wind up doing is we we change how we present ourselves Mhmm.
10:54Because we want a certain result, but it actually gets us the opposite result. When we lean into who we really are, the thing that we want becomes available. So it's like this paradoxical approach.
11:05Wow. I love that. And, again, this is why I'm such a big fan of you, because you think of content creation not just from the tactical, here's the format, here's the message, but there's a deeper understanding of content that you present to everyone else that I think is so valuable to this audience.
11:20Now, is it one thing to be aware of our own self. It's another to be aware of who's on the opposing side of the screen too, and I always think of demographic and psychographic, but psychographic being the struggles and desires has been the steadfast approach to my growth.
11:34It's always this idea of what are assumptions that I'm making about my audience, and how do I ensure that I'm actually getting real data from my audience to validate, or maybe it's contradicting, and I need to fix that at all times. How are you thinking about who's on the opposing side of the screen?
11:48Oh, okay. That's a really good question. Not so easy to answer because when I started out, I knew who our audience was.
11:54They were designers just like me, trying to figure out how to make a living in this world. They might not have the same training, but they have the same aspirations. There's a spark of creativity in them, and I know that path because I've walked that path.
12:07Yes, sir. But as we've been doing this now for eleven years, the audience has changed a lot. And and who I am and how I wanna express myself has changed a lot.
12:15Not in the sense that I'm a different person, but what interests me no longer what used to interest me is no longer what's interesting to me. So I would teach people, hey. Oh, here's how you do composition, move type around.
12:26But I found that that just showed one very small facet of who I am. There's a lot more there, and I'm interested in exploring those things. This is where I let go of being a slave to the audience than just being me.
12:38Mhmm. And when you start to change, the natural reaction is, oh, I followed you for this. Does this guy even talk about design anymore?
12:44I'm good with that reaction because I'm not going to change myself to make you happy. I'm not here I'm not in the people pleasing business.
12:52It doesn't pay a lot. So I'm not really interested in that. I'm in the Cristo business, and that's who I want to to be, and that's I'm I'm not gonna apologize.
13:00I'm just gonna be that person. And the funny thing you find is you magnetize yourself and you attract different people to you. So those hardcore designers, some of them are still there.
13:11Mhmm. A lot of them have gone on to the next design thing, and that's cool. But then I'm attracting entrepreneurs.
13:16I'm I'm attracting business owners. The funniest thing is I and I'm you you probably experienced this on a level in in which I don't even know about, is people approach you on the street like, hey. Hey.
13:26You know? Chris. I'm like, okay.
13:28Cool. I I watch your channel. I'm thinking you must be a designer.
13:31And they'll tell me, no. I lay tile work. I do tile work.
13:34I'm like, well, okay. That's really interesting. Or somebody else will say, I'm an investment banker.
13:39I'm like, how do you even find this channel? So it's wild how the audience changes.
13:44So now, as I've evolved, I don't create for that one audience, I create for me, and then the audience shows up.
13:51That's amazing. I always think that the evolution of a creator is so important for us to discuss, especially for someone like you that's been doing it for a decade plus.
14:00People don't realize that pivots are actually part of the process, and they get terrified of it. And for me too, when I was a student, of course, I was creating studying content, right, to help other students out there. But once I graduated, I couldn't stay in that world, and I had to evolve as a person myself.
14:16So the idea of becoming the niche was very important to me, the idea of curating for me, and I love the way that you've just changed that. The paradox between that is so beautiful. Now my question for you is tactically then, because you're still performing really well, and you're so good at what you do, you're obviously intentional about that process.
14:32If those that are listening right now are pivoting,
14:35how did you think about it? Was it just immediately you're you're ripping off the band and you're talking about different things right away that are more aligned to you, or are you doing more of a gradual approach? I wanna hear to the technique there.
14:45Yeah. I I have to provide some context. I don't start my first YouTube video until I'm 42 years old.
14:50I'm financially stable. I know what I'm doing. I've won awards.
14:53I all the validation, external validation that I think I need in this life, I have enough of that. And so I'm arriving at this place in a very different sense of self than we'll have somebody who's early on the journey, who still has to worry about bills and people canceling them and ruining their financial opportunity.
15:10So in this moment, I'm only serving one master myself. For them, they have multiple masters they need to serve, so I need to be sensitive to that. Okay?
15:18So as I tell you, like, from the day one, I didn't really care what you thought because I was just interested in the game of self expression about figuring out, is this a game I can play for a long time, or is this a hobby that I try and then I move on to the next thing? Obviously, when we start something new, we're not always super clear, like, this is gonna be a ten, twenty, or a lifetime plan.
15:39It just it is what it is. And then we find something that excites us, that sparks emotion and joy in our heart, and we continue down that path. But that's not true for everybody.
15:48And so if somebody is starting out, I think what happens is first we emulate, and we do this for a period of time, then we realize, where's my voice and all this stuff? Mhmm.
15:57So then we instead of copying, we might combine. Mhmm. So it's a little bit of this person and that person, and then eventually, we figure our own voice, and then we're able to transform.
16:07And people usually go through those three phases. If you could, you just go to the end. Yeah.
16:12But most people work through this. Is there a way to skip to the end? Because actually, I'm I'm very similar in what you're you're talking about because I've experienced that where in the beginning, you don't know the space whatsoever, so you're not gonna reverse engineer everything, but you're trying to figure out what formats and messages you wanna tackle on.
16:28Right? You wanna take inspiration. And you do that, then you start to uniquely find your own respective versions of those things.
16:33And then now, like, year six, I'm starting to transform to my own voice, but it did take me a while. It is a while. For the people that are listening to this, is there a way to skip to the end?
16:42I would say that we should not even ask that question. It's
16:45because there's a I I think a Jim Rohn quote, which is something like, goals are very important, but not as important as the person you become in the pursuit of the goal. Oh, very cool.
16:55Okay? So the person who loves running will outrun the person who wants to win a race. That's right.
17:00And there's many examples of this throughout history. It's like, if you love something so much, no one can stop you. Mhmm.
17:06But if you do it just for an outcome and you don't get the outcome, you wind up quitting and you move on. Simon Sinek talked about this in his start with why TED talk. He is the Wright brothers love aviation and that this dream that we could fly, and so they kept at it.
17:19And I forget the other person's name, but it had more resources. But as soon as the Wright brothers built their first plane, the other person quit. And the question that he he tips or touches upon, but walks away from, which is why didn't the other person continue to develop a competing technology?
17:34Or even say, great. You figured it out. I'll evolve.
17:37I'll continue to build this. They could have been as famous or as successful, but they just did it for the pursuit. And once the pursuit was taken away from them, they had to do another goal, and now no one remembers our name, including me.
17:49And so I think we should not be asking ourselves how do we shortcut this process. We should just learn that it's gonna suck, and that the journey is worth it, that the juice is worth the squeeze.
18:01And I'll tell you something. When when I try and coach and help people, people fall into two categories.
18:07Yeah. And I'm gonna be kind of violent in my description. Okay?
18:10There are stupid people, and they're smart people. Okay. Okay?
18:14Stupid people have an advantage. They don't know that they can fail, so they just do things. Right.
18:19They don't research, they don't think they're not really like students of the game. They just make stuff. And sometimes they burn out, they fail, or they're not thinking about it correctly.
18:27And then there's smart people. They analyze, they study, but they never make anything.
18:34Mhmm. Because they're always trying to prevent pain and suffering and loss that they actually experience none of it. K.
18:40So we're kinda stuck. You don't wanna be stupid, but if you're overanalyzing, overthinking everything, you're just gonna be like a like something who someone who lives in a theoretical space.
18:52So if you take the two letters from stupid, it's s t, and you take the last three letters from smart, it's just called start. So what we need to do is just to start.
19:03That was amazing. I'm gonna take that. I'm gonna yeah.
19:06I'm gonna quote you all the time. That was phenomenal.
19:09Holy cow. I I I'm gonna speak to this even furthermore because I'm gonna use your verbiage too.
19:15So let's talk about the smart people even more so. A lot of these individuals that I work with are skilled professionals. Right?
19:21They're very good at what they do. They're industry experts in its entirety. However, they have a really tough time communicating that knowledge in a way that's gonna be relevant to other people.
19:31So let's say that somebody has had ten plus years of experience in their work. They come on to social media, they're doing three and a half minute talking videos and Instagram Reels. And I'm like, ah, no.
19:39We we gotta start a little bit different. In order for you to make sure that you actually play the game social media, there's a little bit of skill that you have to learn in this initial process.
19:47What is your best way for these experts to start communicating their knowledge in a way that's actually relevant for people. Okay. Perfect.
19:54I've actually talked about this. And this is a great segment I would love to talk to because we we go through stages. Right?
20:00And I was having a friendly debate conversation with somebody from social media, and we wound up talking. We go through stages. First of all, there's an amateur.
20:08Mhmm. They don't know anything. Cool.
20:11Then then if you put in the intentional practice, Malcolm Gladwell's ten thousand hours of deliberate intentional practice, we become an expert. And if you're an expert amongst the experts, they call you authority.
20:22So, like, within your vertical, like, you're the best known doctor for this kind of surgery, and you've risen to the top 10, not just in the city, but maybe in the country or the world. That's the status we want to get to.
20:34And then if you're an authority, but people know you outside of your vertical, we call that an influencer. Sometimes they'll use the word thought leader, but I I like the word influencer. To me, that's not a bad word.
20:45But for a lot of people, they hate that. I don't wanna be an influencer. I hate freaking influencer.
20:49Influencers ruin everything. Freaking influencers trying to get free hotels and flights and meals, you stupid rat bastard. Right?
20:55They'll say things like that. And they have a lot of anger in their heart because why? Because of the expert that hasn't been able to achieve that, they don't get the rewards of that.
21:05And unfortunately, a lot of times, they're the amateurs who understand how to play the game to social, and they jump past them, they move straight into influencer status. There is a lot of depth behind what they say.
21:15They haven't explored anything. They haven't studied anything. They just have been able to copy patterns, and they're they're quite good.
21:21That's a skill in itself. And in any other world, we would call that acting. They're great performers.
21:26Right? Either on the stage or on on the big screen, because the actors don't write the scripts. They just show up.
21:32They're magnetic. They're charismatic. They know how to emote through the camera, through the lens, and we love them for that.
21:37Right? So that's that's okay. So what I love to do is to work with experts and the authorities to get them to the influencer level, but they can't get there because they don't know how to communicate their ideas.
21:50There's a term, it's called chunking. Okay? How do you eat an elephant?
21:55One bite at a time. So if you take your vast knowledge and you chunk it down, and there's a magic number, it's five.
22:02Chunk it down to five discrete things. Mhmm. Okay?
22:05So take everything that you know and try to to kind of organize it among five pillars. What are the five things people need to know in order to know what you know? And then you look at those five, and you say, those are pretty complex.
22:17Well, break each five thing down into five subcategories, like, get into the subatomic level. And you keep going down until it's one phrase, it's one idea, and now it's really good.
22:28And then you can now look at that could be your content plan. So we take a big idea, we chunk it into five, and we keep breaking it down. And if you post one thing a week, this is, like, enough content for for a year, and you'll never run out of things to say.
22:40So we we're we're kind of building the building blocks of your authority, and we need to explain it to people really simply. I love that because
22:48a lot of these experts come on to social media, and they don't recognize how the algorithm functions. A big part to this is that once you do craft a piece of content and you do chunk your information, people think, but if they watch this one piece of content, they don't get the full story, so they feel this level of detachment from that work.
23:06But that's not how the algorithm works, actually, that if they, say, retain for that piece of content, they'll be shown your other contents as well. And so I always think about a catalog or a library of content where you're showcasing your knowledge and your expertise, and I think that's a brilliant way that you're talking about it.
23:19What what's fascinating to me is now that I have, since you went with stronger verbiage as well, I'll I'll match you here.
23:28As I've been meeting a lot more people in person, there has been this really big disconnect where people did skip that, let's say, immediate step of of becoming experts or depth in their content. You speak to them in person, and they can't hold a conversation as meaningfully as you'd like.
23:45I'm sure you've probably seen that at 10 times my scale as you've gone through all these different events. How does that personally make you feel when you're trying to have these discussions with people? Well, I try not to have too too much expectation or judgment on people.
23:57Everybody's going through their own struggles in their lives, and I don't wanna hold my set of values to be like a universal truth. Everybody is allowed to walk this earth with their own ideas, but I think I'm not that smart. So if I see it, I wonder how many other people see it, and I think they become very self conscious of this.
24:13Mhmm. That they took some kind of shortcut to get there. I'll give you an example.
24:17Okay. I'm not gonna name names, but let's say, for example, you're working with a content strategist for your YouTube channel. Pretty standard thing.
24:24And they're like, you know, we use ChatGPT. We use a claw to kinda scrape, and people in your space are saying these kinds of things, and you start doing listicles, right, which are a very popular format of content.
24:35And then they pretty much give you the outline, and you get on camera, and you do this because you didn't research it. It wasn't your idea, and you just performed it for the camera.
24:45Later on, like, say that video blows up, I have questions for him, like, hey, you know that video that blew up? Yeah. Cool.
24:50Cool. What'd you mean by this? And you have nothing more because you don't even remember what you talked about.
24:55Mhmm. Because they're not deep in your heart, and it's not a a thing you thought deeply about as some kind of philosophical statement, a truism, it starts to fall apart.
25:05So I've encountered this a lot as I do my own podcast. I have to warn people, especially when we're doing live in front of other people.
25:14Yeah. I I wanna tell them, you're walking to the crucible. This is a chamber of truth, and the truth will come out.
25:20So come correct, be ready, don't lie, because it will be problematic. I'm not here to do gotcha things, but if you say something that doesn't clock, I'm gonna ask you about it. And the more I ask you about it, the more you're going to unravel.
25:31It's happened many times, and I don't want people to come in having that experience because my job in that moment is to make you look good. But all I can do is shine a light on who you pretend to be. And if you're pretending too much, it's gonna be a problem.
25:45So I need to, like, have strong language to warn people about this because otherwise, people don't come out looking good.
25:52I actually love to give credit to the consumer a lot more than most creators tend to do. Actually, I think most people can sense it, at least the more qualified people. Right?
26:03The people that you would hope buys into your offers or go to your in person events, not the young kids. Yes. Maybe they're influential, but the ones that actually you wanna work with, they can smell it from a mile away.
26:15And that's why I always state that your lived experience is the best content you can curate on because you don't have to do all this external research every single time you post a piece of content. And that's the hamster wheel that I find people. They will go ahead and they'll talk about something they don't understand, and actually, you're right.
26:30The worst part is when it performs well because then they get stuck into that world because they're thinking like, oh, that ain't gonna work. Let me do it again and again and again and again. And they become known for something, and then you have a conversation with them and they can't hold their own.
26:41And there's this disconnect between the work that they have and the work that they have actually physically done. Something that I'm very curious to hear your take on because you've been in this space for a while, and it's the one that I hear the most from traditional business people. A lot of times, they'll come into my space, and they'll ask me about what social content strategy do I need, and they're still in the head of the business page.
27:02Right? Right. But you've seen the evolution of of people buying into people, but I still feel as though industry's lagging behind that idea.
27:09And so they'll come and these, let's say, one person coaches or one person business owners, they're like, I wanna go the Canva logo route. I'm gonna design this beautiful logo. It's not gonna have me in it.
27:18I'm just gonna take photos of my work. I'm gonna have a nice camera and beautiful lighting. Gonna hope that that piece of content is actually gonna blow up and drive traffic to my product or offer.
27:28But it tends to not perform that well, right, because there is no human connection. If someone is coming to you and they're saying, hey. I'm I'm going into this because I do want to promote something.
27:36It's not gonna be all of it, but I do wanna promote something. Are you recommending a business page, or are recommending a personal brand? This question comes up all the time.
27:44So I need to make money,
27:46I got to do something that moves the needle, and then I wanna build my personal brand. I tell people this, you can serve one master. Do you need to make money or you wanna build your personal brand?
27:54Because I don't know how to do both. I really don't. And so I need to make money.
27:58Talk to these marketing funnel conversion people, they're very good at doing that. They'll get you a sales page, a lead magnet, get a business coach as to what you really need.
28:07But when you're ready, when you have enough money or you feel confident enough, I'd love to help you work on your personal development as it as it exists within their personal brand. They're very different.
28:18And they're like, no, Chris. Chris, I promise you have enough money, enough resources. We we get into the work, like, but how to make more money?
28:24I'm like, okay. So you lied to me then. So one of my triggers is disrespect.
28:30So you're saying you think I'm so dumb that I don't realize you're lying to me. So I take this personally now.
28:36I'm like, let's try this again. Do you need to make money? Because go do that.
28:39Here's a refund. Get out of here. And no.
28:41No. I really so you can never bring that up again. Because I'm here for you.
28:45I'm here to help you understand your story and to be able to tell it to the world. It would not have any immediate business effect in the short term.
28:54In the long run, it'll be worth more than whatever you could possibly sell here. I promise you, but you have to put in the work. So now they have to make a big decision.
29:03So the way I found success in creating my personal brand and my business brand is this. Okay. When I wrote my business brand, when I wrote for the the company, it sounded generic.
29:14It sounded like press releases. Mhmm. Because I was afraid to say something and have an opinion.
29:19So it's constantly like, oh, check out this cool project we did. This cool result that we got for said client? Congrats to this client.
29:25Amazing. You're cool people. There was nothing there.
29:28Where am I? Where are my values? Where are my beliefs and opinions?
29:30Not there, obviously. So when I started the future, it was just me.
29:35I think I had one unpaid intern, and I'm clearly not gonna ask him what he thinks because he's looking to me to see what I think. So I just start writing.
29:42And I write in the first person. As I write in the first person and the posters are starting to take off, people would criticize me. Like, aren't you supposed to use we language, not I language?
29:53I said, well, there's a we writing this, I will use we language. But right now, there's an I. I keep writing, and the and it keeps growing, keeps growing.
30:01And then I discovered something. Very difficult for me to write pretending to be an amalgamation of lots of people with no opinion. It's very easy for me to write just as me.
30:10I don't like this. I'm gonna write about this. This pisses me off.
30:13I'll write about that. I love this. I'll write about that.
30:15Very easy for me to express my true thoughts and feelings without concern for how it's gonna affect the business. So this is the the the paradoxical approach.
30:26The less I cared about what people think about me, the more people cared about what I thought. It's and it's a really weird thing.
30:33So as I'm starting writing, it's very freeing. It's liberating. I keep writing.
30:36It keeps growing. So now we're like, well, what does the future write about? Well, I was currently writing under the future, and now, Chris, you have your own personal brand, so I continue to write as myself.
30:45And then we get some young person who's savvy with marketing. She comes in. She's like, oh, I'll just read what you write, scrape it, and pull out the highlights.
30:54And, like and that to me is the perfect model for how you run a multichannel brand, where you have your thoughts and your beliefs, and you have a company that needs to be able to be a little bit more careful with what they present. So are we linked together?
31:09Most definitely.
31:11Because the future is a echo of what I say. That's how that works for me. Yeah.
31:16I love the idea of building goodwill, and that's something that I think a lot of people skip because they'll go into it thinking, how do I make my first dollar? They forget that there's an actual person watching this piece of content, you have to earn their trust.
31:27I can tell you a little bit of how I went ahead and started monetizing myself. I first started creating content. I really didn't monetize at all for about the first three years, and I was just creating to learn the skill of content creation.
31:38And over time, I built this audience where I thought, okay. There is deep resonance. What's fascinating is I I don't think that I'm a business mind by any stretch of the imagination.
31:46I never read a business book before that first product. That first product, I thought, was going to be a clothing company because I thought it was a cool thing to do. So I asked my Super cool.
31:55Yeah. Was very cool. And I asked my audience, especially if you rear drip, but I went ahead and I asked my audience.
32:00I was like, hey. Do you guys even want a clothing brand? And they're like, no, because we don't know you for that.
32:06I was like, are you sure? And I remember asking them for a few weeks, and finally, I did. Instead of a poll, I did an open q and a thing, and I asked them, hey.
32:14What is it that you guys want if I was to actually develop a product? And they're like, I want more help studying. That isn't the cool thing to do by any stretch of the imagination.
32:22It's actually quite lame. And they're like, no. But we actually learned the fact that you went from a bad student to a good student.
32:27Like, we love that journey. Can you teach us more about it? And I was like, okay.
32:31Fine. Potentially. So then I did more surveys, and everyone affirmed that thought in my audience.
32:36So that's why I decided to develop a 62 page guide. Right? It was a PDF, and, again, that was I'm a horrible designer, so it was a terrible illustration and and some text that I was writing that I revising for a long period of time.
32:48I released it, and the first week, it did $30,000. The first month did a $100,000, back to back to back month of 100 thousands.
32:56And I was someone that never had money growing up, but it completely changed my understanding of business. It was this idea of you need to build goodwill. You need to build a personal brand, and I love the way that you said it.
33:05It's like, once you do it right, ultimately, it's gonna pay for itself in the long run, but you can't skip those immediate steps. You have to go through the pain of building that audience. And it's fascinating because a lot of people now think of social media and content as a get rich quick scheme, and they hear all these different people getting rich very quickly, so they'll immediately start doing that.
33:22And then those are the individuals that tend to burn out. That's a big question that I have for you because you've been creating for such a long period of time. Right?
33:28And for you, it it it is an echo of who you are. It doesn't feel fraudulent in that way. Have you ever dealt with burnout?
33:35And if not, do you think it's an attribute attribution to who you are? Like, you're actually showcasing your lived experiences and that's why you're not burning out?
33:43I have experienced some form of burnout before, but it's not related to content creation. I think it was six, seven years into running my original business, which is making commercials and music videos, that I felt like I didn't have anything left to contribute to the world.
33:59Mhmm. I'd hired these young people who are really talented, smart, and they knew how to do things they did not know. So I felt very self conscious, like, are my employees better at this than me?
34:09Mhmm. And sometimes I would suggest an idea, and they'd give me a look like, shut up.
34:13That was cringe. They didn't say that, but I felt that. I'm like, oh, shoot.
34:17So I took a three month sabbatical. I needed to clear my head. I was like, okay.
34:22We all have about five years in the sunlight, and once your five years are up, you're kinda washed up, and the new generation is gonna lead the way. They had a different approach, a different aesthetic, a different way of looking at the world, and they had five years of learning while I was doing my thing trying to figure it out so they can leapfrog you.
34:39It happens like that. So I'm like, I don't know what to do. I'm just gonna sit at home.
34:43Coincidentally, I got a call to go and teach at Otis, and I'm like, oh, hey.
34:48I got nothing else to do. I'll go and teach. And this is my first time teaching, and I'm nervous as hell.
34:52I'm like, what do I have to offer the world? And I remember just, like, being so nervous, like, my voice was shaking. I'm like, I wonder if they can hear that.
35:00I'm pretty sure they could, but I just pushed through it. What happened at the end of the three three months of taking time off work was I found something in myself that I didn't know.
35:11Mhmm. And this is a gift. The student showed up with no expectations, and they look at you as the master.
35:17Whether you deserve or not, they'd look at you like that. It's like the love and respect you get from a dog, you get from these students. Like, you just exist and you're good.
35:25I'm like, wow. Feel pretty good about myself. And they were so hungry to learn.
35:30And things that I didn't know I knew when they asked me a question, like, so how do you do this thing that you just did? I'm like, oh, Fudge. Let me think about that.
35:38Okay. Here's how I did it. And the more they asked, the more I learned about myself.
35:44Hence, that expression when one teaches, two learn.
35:48Mhmm.
35:49So I taught them and I taught myself. Because oftentimes, teachers will say this, my students have taught me more than I've taught them. That's a really strange statement because, like, what?
35:59What they really mean is when they extracted this information about me, I discovered something wonderful about myself that I knew how to do. Mhmm. Because historically speaking, we, our own worst judgments, are judges of our own value in the world.
36:13We're horrible. Like, everything we know is stupid. It's easy.
36:16It's obvious because it's the only thing we have ever known how to do. It isn't until someone asks you a question that they surface that knowledge within you, hopefully, and you start to acknowledge, like, damn, I know a couple of things. So here's the cool part.
36:29I come back out of my sabbatical renewed, like the phoenix rising from the ashes, and I've never been insecure about my ability since that point. Mhmm.
36:38Right? Because I knew I have a lot to offer the world. The kids know the new trends, they know they know the new tools, but I know something way better than them.
36:46I know how to problem solve, I know how to articulate ideas, I have a much broader perspective because I've lived a life. So now that I create content, I don't ever feel there's a a burnout factor because I get to express my thinking and people reward me for that.
37:04That's pretty cool. It's like the world says we care about your opinion. I'm like, damn.
37:08Okay. I like that. So why would I burn out over that?
37:13I've been posting for the last six years every single day, and that's the number one question I get asked all the time when I do podcasts. It's the idea of how did you not burn out?
37:22And was I like, burnout has never even been at the forefront of my mind, not one bit. And even to this day, I feel lit up about this idea because they see the tactics. They see the setup, the camera, talking in front of but they don't see the introspective work that's happening.
37:35And I always find myself teaching, and teaching makes me fired up. We did an event in New York, and we wanted to do it a little bit differently.
37:43We didn't want it to be just a meet and greet. Like, I wanted to actually sit there and start teaching stuff, and I was just through the roof. Like, I felt so good because there's a level to your thinking, and the moment you start forcing yourself to teach it, you do it in frameworks.
37:58It actually makes you more efficient in your own work. Yep. So for me, when I went ahead, I was teaching at at the creative college programs, and it actually changed my way of producing it because I had to make it super simple for other people to understand.
38:10I thought to myself, why am I making it so difficult on my own end? Do you find yourself to do that as well from the actual content creation process where it's like, you're teaching this, and you're teaching all these people how to build personal brands. It's actually changed the way that you build your own?
38:22Absolutely.
38:23I can tell you that I can tell that you're a real one because what you're saying is literally what happens. You have to organize your ideas, strip away the nonsense, and try to explain it in the simplest form so someone else can do it. And in the way they respond to it, in their ability to apply what you teach, you learn like, okay.
38:40That was still too complicated. Mhmm. It's not like you're dumbing it down.
38:43I just need to make it simpler and simpler. I'm not sure if Einstein said this something like this, but if you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it So well it's like, there's a lot of truth to these ideas.
38:54So these experts or these authorities that come to you for help, it's like, bruh, do you really understand this or not? Because you have to understand in a way that you can explain it simply. And the world seems to respond to this.
39:06The biggest influencers and creators online, like Jefferson Fisher, he's able to explain complex human dynamics and communication in the most simplest way. Mhmm.
39:15So I I understand that. Like, yeah. I totally get it.
39:18And and doctor Julie Smith, who explained psychology using visual metaphors, like, yeah. She gets it. She's not trying to tell us how the prefrontal cortex works.
39:27She's like, this is how you manage stress. You exercise. You meditate.
39:31You have affirmations. Simple. I get it.
39:34And then if you need to go really deep, that's the stuff that happens behind cameras that isn't sexy, and it's not, like, easily clippable. Mhmm.
39:42But we we have to understand that that's the game. I'm curious about your background. What did you study in school?
39:47Biomedical engineering. Okay. Where does this kind of pedagogical
39:52mindset and learning about learning and teaching teaching comes in? So I got my bachelor's in biomedical engineering, and my school had this additional program where you can get your master's at the same time in the same field, but you have to choose a different concentration, and the concentration was neuroengineering. So my entire five years of school was mixing in internships and doing my master's program and my bachelor's, but neuroengineering was my research.
40:13And once I did that and I started sharing that's actually where a lot of my content came from and people saw that they wanted more. And when did you graduate school? I graduated
40:22now two two years ago. Damn, dude. Yeah.
40:25Two, three years Yeah. Why? Why do you say falling into so many stereotypes, I love it.
40:32Bruh, what are you doing? Take it easy so the rest of us don't look so bad. No.
40:36I I think that Jesus. Double major this biomedical
40:39what? I went to art school, man. I what's fascinating and I was gonna actually bring this up.
40:45I actually think that my and I was gonna I'm curious about this as well. My
40:50Asian Look him recover. Look at him try to recover from this. No.
40:53No. No. It's, like, a real thing, Like,
40:55the idea of identity, though, I think it does push me. As in, I I have these standards that my parents had put on to me when I was young Yeah. And it does influence the way that you view yourself.
41:04And I know the stereotypes are there for a reason, I think. I I've met a lot of Koreans that are high achievers, but I've also met a lot of Koreans that aren't. And it's interesting because with identity, you have to choose what it is that are your own standards, and it's only then that your fulfillment or your execution kinda takes to the next level.
41:20Is that something that you also go through as in the idea of identity now in your stage in career where you've achieved so much? Is this something that you actively have to think of too of, like, I wanna be this person. I still have a lot of learning left to do, and therefore, I'm gonna go ahead and do this next pursuit?
41:35I love your question. I may not answer it the way that you're asking it, but I'm one of three boys.
41:44I'm the middle child. And so those expectations from Asian immigrant parents is you must do well.
41:52Education is really important and be a pillar of society, follows the traditionally safe things that are going to get respect on the family name kind of thing. Luckily, I get to dodge that bullet because my older brother fulfills that the role of the chosen one.
42:05Right? He's the oldest male. He goes to ultimately Stanford, gets his degree in computer science, and is in startups in that space.
42:13And I feel like every time they had another child, some of the brainpower just fell off. So by the time my brother gets around, I'm like, bro, what are you doing?
42:21This do you are you gonna get out of high school? What's the deal? Right?
42:23And so I'm sitting here doing my thing, and I was thinking, get rejected at every school I apply to. I don't know what I go to community college. This is like purgatory for Asian parents.
42:33Like, you never escape. You just wind up being a trade person learning, like, I don't know, mechanic. Yeah.
42:39Something like that. And I started to think about this. Once I let myself be free of my parents' expectations of me Mhmm.
42:47And they're fairly modest in imposing what their ideas are for their children, and I'm grateful for that, that I said, I'm just gonna be a designer. I'm gonna figure out my way to get into an art school, and I'm like, art? What what?
42:59Like, are you gonna start? What is the deal? And for the longest time, my parents and the rest of my very large extended family could not understand anything I was doing.
43:07Zero. Like, so he he paints. He draws.
43:10Right? I'm like, no. I'm a designer.
43:12We work with computers. We solve a communication problem. It's very, very different.
43:16And so I always feel like, maybe it's intentional or not, that I'm always trying to break stereotypes. I wanna go against everything that you think of a person, and I'm just gonna be that person.
43:28Just to mess around with people. I'll I it's really weird because I'm an introvert. I'm really socially awkward, so it would seem very surprising that I'm interested in these social dynamics, but it's really weird because I'll do something.
43:40I'll wear something, and I'll see how people respond, and I'll just giggle inside observing this observe what's happening, this dynamic, and I find it fascinating. And I like to provoke people to respond or to react Mhmm. Just to kinda wake them up.
43:54I'm a fan of Dune, and Paul Atreides, his father, Duke Leto Atreides, he he says to him, the sleeper must awaken. The sleeper must awaken.
44:03And reading those words and watching it in the original release in David Lynch's film, I was like, what does that mean? The sleeper must awaken.
44:11I feel like most of us are sleepwalking through life. We're just the the question of what's real, is your dream state the reality or is life reality?
44:22And I I just like, I'm starting to wonder this myself, and I think we need to wake people up. I need to wake myself up.
44:29And so when I do things that provoke people, not in a negative way, but just like, oh, I didn't notice I didn't know you could do that. I'm like, well, who told you you couldn't?
44:37And then that burrows a hole in their brain. They start asking themselves these questions like, what is real? What have I made up?
44:45And what are the rules anyways? And this is not air that you're breathing. This stuff is fascinating to me.
44:51So I'm just gonna try to explore this thing. And I I joke with people that it seems like my job in life is to confuse my parents as to what I do.
45:02K? So, like, so you're not gonna do anything legitimate. You become a designer.
45:07Yes. Okay. They start to understand that.
45:08I'm gonna do motion design. They're like, what is that? Like, you don't do logos anymore?
45:12I make things move, mom and dad. Okay. So we start doing that.
45:14No. No. I I I shoot live action.
45:16I'm a director. Mhmm. So they're never sure what the heck I was doing.
45:20And then as I was approaching the the the apex of what I what I do in my industry, I'm like, I'm a do brand strategy. It's back to the logo and the identity system and the messaging.
45:33And then as soon as I started to figure that out, I'm like, I'm gonna do YouTube. So you're a YouTuber. No.
45:39I teach people. I consult. So you're a consultant.
45:42So it's like, it's a game we play. So now they just give up. Like, they just ask, honey, where are you traveling to now?
45:48That's the extent of our conversation because they just can't understand,
45:51and and I love them for that. You know? So I encourage every single person who's listening to this, there is somebody's life plan for you.
45:59The question is, if you wrote your own life plan, would is that is that what you would write for yourself? If not, get get into it. Tear that thing up, rewrite your life plan, align your life towards that because you have this one short beautiful life to live.
46:11I love that. How about your mom's influence on you? Because when I was doing my research on you, I saw that you are right split in the middle, as in your dad is more of the traditional engineering, more that STEM background, but then you also have the side to your mom, which is more of the creative side, the starving artist side.
46:27Did she also have the expectations for you to go the more traditional route, or was she inspiring you to actually chase a little bit more creativity?
46:34I think she was conflicted. Mhmm. She wanted me to go to a legitimate school and to do legitimate things, but there was this kind of this recognition that my child is artistic.
46:47I need to say that correctly. And she she would go out and get me art supplies. And it's the and it's like, I don't wanna take it for granted because my parents had money, but we never acted like we had any money.
46:58And so I was like, oh, you got me something? Oh my god. I can't believe it.
47:01So she brought she bought me an airbrush and a compressor. Mhmm. I didn't even know she was paying attention.
47:06Like, my mom is a pretty typical Asian mom. Like, she never gets it right. You know?
47:10The joke is I asked for Nike, she got me Mikeys. And it's like, mom, are you trying to embarrass me right now? And just to put in perspective, she enrolled me into the Cub Scouts and decided she's gonna make my uniform because it was more cost effective.
47:23I'm like, mom, you're trying to get me beat up by my own troop. What are you doing? So the fact that she could recognize this part, this artist in her son, and support me this way, I thought that was pretty dope.
47:34Later on, I find out many, many years later, when I decided to go to art school, my mom and dad were having some arguments. My dad is super logical. He's like, the tuition exactly the same as Stanford.
47:44Why couldn't he go to Stanford instead? Because, dad, my GPA ain't there. I'm not a Stanford I'm not a Stanford man.
47:51I couldn't even get into UCLA. Forget about Stanford. Right?
47:54But his brain was like, it costs the same. Private art school is very expensive. And so my mom did this thing, and she only told me this, like, ten years after I graduated school.
48:04She's a small woman, and she's very traditional in their relationship and the patriarchy, if you will. But she told my dad he's not allowed to criticize or question what I'm doing.
48:14And I like to think that his strong will as a the rebel in me would have ignored him, but I'm glad he didn't have to test that idea.
48:25So for those years, he never mentioned anything about it. And he gave me and my mom, with the grace, time to become successful before they express their true opinion.
48:36But then they didn't need to because once you're successful, like, oh, we word for nothing.
48:43That is something that I very much resonate with. I mean, the idea of having traditional Korean backgrounds. My dad and my mom were always in this conflict.
48:51My dad was never a good student himself, but he thought that that was the way to earn. And so when we were here in The States, and he was getting taken advantage of his entire life, he he came here, didn't speak the language, he still doesn't speak English very well, and he struggled a lot. And so he would go from I would go with him to Home Depot, right, and we would pick up construction material.
49:09In my entire life, what I saw was all these people making fun of him, all these people taking advantage of him because he couldn't understand. And I was, like, eight years old doing that with my dad. I was the one communicating and trying to get, and it showed me a lot in terms of why my dad feels a certain way, and same likewise with my mom.
49:25So my mom actually left us, so I was very close to her, but when I was about 13 years old, she left to Korea overnight, and I lost contact with her for ten years. And there's this maturation that I've undergone in the last few years where I have to realize it's my parents' first time living too, and all these assumptions that they're putting on to me are assumptions of how they made sense of their own reality.
49:45And I'm curious for you, have you found that you're more empathetic towards your parents', let's say, standards for yourself, or were you always the type to be like, it is one thing for them to hold it, but I'm gonna have firm belief in myself?
49:58I asked that because I was not that strong. Like, I was not somebody that could go and be like, my dad is is discounting what I could potentially do. I would be lying to you if I said, oh, it didn't, like, hurt me.
50:07Like, it actually did hurt me quite a bit. Were you able to get over that quite quickly, or was that something you had to grow into?
50:14Yeah. Thanks for sharing your your story here. I I could not imagine how it would have impacted my psyche, my sense of identity, or worth if one of my parents left.
50:23I'm like, oh. Because, know, children take that burden on themselves. Like, it's my fault.
50:27Mom left or dad left because of me because I was talking too loud or I'm not smart enough or not good enough, and then that wrecks us. So congrats for you coming out the way you did. For me, when I was 18 years old going to community college, I had a trifecta of, like, not so great things happen all at the same time, and I felt like my life was being blown up.
50:47Somewhere around here, I'm living with my older brother, and he and I are arguing, and we're very good friends. And so why are we arguing? And it's because at that time, his girlfriend found me to be a burden to them.
50:58And and, like, I'm stealing time from him, and he's supporting me, and she doesn't understand that relationship. And so our our our relationship is really frayed at this point.
51:07And then I had found out my girlfriend was cheating on me at that time, so I was like, god, I thought we were in a relationship. And she's like, no, we broke up.
51:15I'm like, well, funny, you never told me, but now I find out you're, like, hanging out with some other guys, like so I was heartbroken, and she was my first true love, and I was like, it was it was messing me up. And I remember talking to my mom who always thought, mom's always in my corner. She's like the rock.
51:30And I was telling her, god, I just hate my brother and my girlfriend. I'm just, like, crying, sobbing to her, and she's like, you know what? Maybe this dream of yours to go to this art school, maybe we don't need to do that.
51:42Why don't you just come home and go to San Jose State and study art here? And I think she was being sort of supportive, but what I heard from her was, you know what?
51:51This big ambitious thing, maybe you don't guide it in, you kid. Mhmm. Just go to this other school because it's cheaper.
51:56Let's minimize our expenses here. And that ripped my world apart. So those three things really messed me up.
52:02So I hit an emotional low point. I remember crying my eyes out for hours just laying on the floor in the fetal position, thinking, I'm a loser.
52:10There my life is not worth anything at this point in time. And you and then what happens, and if I could describe it to people because I'm very visual, if you can imagine yourself on the floor in this totally dark empty void, and the light shines on you, and it leads to two paths, and then these two doors open up, and and the voice beyond each door tells you a very different story.
52:31Stay in your path. Waste your life. Who knows what you're gonna be?
52:35You're actually everything people thought of you, and you're a total loser. Become super self determined, self disciplined, and go down this path and prove them all wrong. That morning, woke up.
52:45I'm like, I'm gonna choose the second door of these two options, and I'm gonna prove them wrong. So once I adopted that they're all wrong, and I'll show them that I can do this, and I don't care what's in my way, I will climb over whatever obstacles are in front of me, I will do this thing.
53:00At that point, and I tell people this, I think the boy died and the man was born, and I've never been the same. So at that point, I stopped caring what people think.
53:12Thank you for sharing. That actually makes me quite emotional because I remember a very particular moment that was very challenging for me, and I remember being I wasn't in a fetal position, but I was at the corner of my bed, and I know that moment like it's yesterday.
53:25And I remember sitting there thinking how difficult everything was, especially seeing my dad go through the mental health that he was going through, and also feeling like as the youngest, I had this weird sense of responsibility to be the one to take care of my family. And when I was in that moment, I also had those two paths in front of me, and for me, at that point, it didn't feel like I even had an option to go the other route of the traditional.
53:47It was like, I need to make a lot of money, and I need to provide for my family because I can't take this suffering anymore, and it was, like, breaking me inside. I wanna ask you this because if we are sharing that similarity, I'm I'm curious if you also share this.
54:00After a long period of time of going and thinking, I'm gonna prove everyone wrong, I found myself to be quite exhausted, and I started to change it to be, I wanna prove myself right.
54:11Has that been a change that you've also evolved into?
54:14Yeah. I think so, and I'm glad you brought this up because . Yeah.
54:21And initially, was like, yeah, I'll show them spiteful, vindictive, whatever it is.
54:27Like, you're wrong. I'll be successful, and you'll see what happens. And that is all the momentum you needed to, like, flip that switch and get your life right.
54:35Because what happened is shortly thereafter, I changed. I started focusing on my studies.
54:40I would do get my portfolio together. I was moving down a path, and I was outproducing on on levels in which I never even thought I could do.
54:47So in a short, I think a month and a half, two months, I got my entire portfolio together. I was doing 10 assignments instead of, like, the one that everybody else was doing, and everybody else started to change.
54:57And then I realized something. I apologized to my brother. I said, I've been a d.
55:01I've taken advantage of this situation. I'm an ungrateful little rat, and and I'm so sorry.
55:07And he's like, we're good. We're good. And we've we've been good since.
55:10And then once I got the momentum, said, mom, I finished my portfolio. I'm gonna submit it. We're good too.
55:14And she's like, okay. Good. And nobody's there to hurt you, but they can only put up with so much nonsense.
55:20And it's that growing up that this was not about them. This was about me.
55:25They're reflecting to me the waste of opportunity and the waste of potential, and that's how they expressed it.
55:33So once I got right with myself, my relationship with my brother, my mom, and everybody else has been solid except for the ex girlfriend. That is done. Just wanna put that out there.
55:42Yeah. Lucky, two out of three.
55:46Think that's worth know, hey. One thing I'd say, yeah. Alright.
55:49I think it's it's something I would be vindictive of around as well. Oh my gosh. Like, woah.
55:56Where do we just go with this? No. But but there there is something I I wanna speak to because you're you're very well known for this, and I've actually just sent your videos and your interviews about this topic, but it it bleeds me into this.
56:07The reason why I always tell people to be around this concept of intentionality and purposeful around their work is because I had to be back then, and it's given me so much clarity in my life. You know how you said how the moment you felt like you were focused on yourself, everything changed, like, from a production level as you became better, you became more aware?
56:25I think of content very similar to that. A lot of people head into it with this idea of personal branding, Without and that level of clarity, no matter what I help them with, who cares that they're successful for six months if they can't sustain it for six years? Right?
56:37You wanna give them that level of clarity and purpose. There's another part to this that I know that you're quite famous to talk about, and I wanna bring this up. When you think of value, there's no other way that I can imagine that clearly highlights our lack of self worth than pricing.
56:55And especially as a creative, and I felt like this in my core soul, especially as I was dealing with all this stuff, and I launched that guide to academic success, I was like, should I just give it up for free or a dollar or $2 or $10? I felt like even $20 was way too much. You know what I did?
57:09I literally asked my audience, and I I know this is not a very good business move, but I just asked them. I like, what would you be willing to pay? And I just took the average of all the numbers, and that's what I ended up going with.
57:18It was about $49. But even then, was like, am I charging too much? You have this beautiful way of framing pricing, and would you be able to share that with my audience?
57:26Yeah. And and my relation with money, should you want to know, I'll tell you a little bit later. But
57:33in society, it's often shunned upon to talk about money.
57:38Whether you are not making it or you're making too much of it, there seems to be never a right amount. Yeah. It's like you want everyone to be successful, but a little bit less successful than you.
57:47That that is a truism, I believe. Right? I'm rooting for you to win, but not so that you're better than me, which is a really twisted way.
57:54And we have expressions like money is the root of all evil. And if you just pursue money, it's like money is your god. It just becomes all these negative things.
58:02And so when we're given frames like that, of course, we're uncomfortable talking about money. Now artists especially are particularly vulnerable, that's what makes them good artists, have low esteem.
58:14They don't know what their things are worth, or they have an inflated version. It's like, we just want the real version.
58:20Neither extreme is good. And so when you put your price into the world, what we're looking for isn't money, we're looking for validation to say, I like you. You're good enough.
58:29And it's because we have mom and dad issues, and we have some esteem challenges that we're working through with this internal wound that we hasn't healed.
58:38So what we do is we trade our value for affirmation, for validation, and it's a really twisted circle.
58:45Right? So if you've ever been a service provider for a client, if they pick up on these energies around you, then they know how to manipulate you.
58:56And it's because we have lots of models. So I I always refer to this like the the mean uncle who manipulates you to do stuff.
59:04And everyone probably in their life has an uncle like this who's like, oh, that's not that good. I bet you can't do 35 logos. And you're like, oh, I'll show you.
59:12I'm gonna do 30 I'll do 38. I I bet you you you probably need sleep. No.
59:17I don't. No. I'll stay up all night.
59:19I bet you you know? So we're very easy to manipulate because we volunteer for it. Mhmm.
59:24Because all we're looking for is a little pat on the back. Johnny, you did a good job. Now luckily, I've arrived as myself, so I'm like, I don't need you to validate me.
59:33In fact, if you try to validate me, we're gonna get into a fight because I don't you don't hold power over me. Right? I don't care what you say.
59:40And so I have a different relationship with money. So I always think of it like this, and a friend of mine said this brilliantly. His name is Blair Enns.
59:48He said something like, well, we'd like to be appreciated for what we do. Of course.
59:54Mhmm. And so he's like, . The more they appreciate you, the more dollar bills they give you.
1:00:02So we have to abstract money to thank yous, and we'd like to be appreciated. So I tell people, I only wanna work with people who trust me enough to allow me to do my best work Mhmm.
1:00:14And who are grateful enough that they'll pay me the most that they've ever thought they could ever pay anybody. Because that's a vote for, like, we trust each other. You, on the other hand, not you personally, but you, audience, are so worried about anything.
1:00:27You're like, yeah, I'll do it for half because you just need some validation, and they'll give it to you.
1:00:34And they'll control you, and they'll manipulate you, and they'll torture you because they know what you want, and they're not gonna give it to you. And that's a dangerous game to play, and I prefer not to be in that space.
1:00:46So the thing I always tell people is your lack or your inability to talk about money is a sign of poor business acumen. We're two business people right now.
1:00:56There's an artist behind you, but leave that person behind, put on the business person hat, present a price, say confidently, and just hold. See what happens.
1:01:05More often than not, they just agree.
1:01:07This whole inner dialogue that you have about the reaction that you're gonna get is usually a false narrative. Something I've heard you talk a lot about, which I think is incredible, is this idea that a lot of times us as creatives or service providers imagine trading time for money, but instead it's value. And it's the significance of the problem that ultimately dictates how much someone is willing to depart with their money with.
1:01:29Something that I wanna ask you is for these first time founders, right, they don't know necessarily how to identify the weight of somebody's problem. That concept is a bit foreign to them. What are questions that you ask a potential customer to get an understanding of how significant that problem is?
1:01:44Okay. I will show you a number of ways that we can do this. And then if it sounds like it's too hard or not it's too complicated, you let me know.
1:01:52Okay? Okay. I I love radical transparency.
1:01:56I'll just tell people. I only wanna help you solve a really big problem that you've been unable to solve. What problems should we focus on?
1:02:04So by asking that question, they're only gonna tell you the big problems. And they kind of in a way, I mean, it's not a trap, but they're tying significance to whatever they're going to say.
1:02:14And let's just say they tell you about this big thing they're trying to figure out, like, oh my gosh. Last year, we did half 1,000,000. I know if we fixed the website, we could do $3,000,000.
1:02:22So they know this writing. Right? And only by asking, can you help them to relive the past, the pains, and they dream of this desired future state.
1:02:30You ask questions. And so eventually, get to this. So what feels fair to spend against that?
1:02:35Mhmm. What are you willing to invest against that? What percentage feels fair?
1:02:39And they can say, well, $5,000? And this is where you have to be firm and not emotional.
1:02:48Say, what? It sounded like you had 2 and a half million dollars to gain. Does 5,000 feel an appropriate amount to invest against?
1:02:58Because that feels or sounds disproportionate to me.
1:03:01Say on the low end, we do 10% of 2 and a half million, that'd be $250,000. So you're a fraction of that.
1:03:11And then I would use a Jim Rohn quote. It's like, we don't wanna major in the minors, and we don't wanna minor in the majors. Mhmm.
1:03:18So we don't wanna put a minor effort into a major result, and we don't wanna expend a major effort for a minor result. We have to get those aligned. Does that sound right?
1:03:27And they're gonna say, yes. They're logical. And the problem that we have usually around this kind of stuff is we don't understand how to ask the questions.
1:03:35Our motives are transparent, and they're they don't seem to be, like, in sync with what they're talking about. So they're smart.
1:03:42They're actually more savvy at negotiating than you are. So they can see the game, then they they don't play the game. You're like, Chris, this doesn't work.
1:03:49I'm like, yeah. Because you didn't play the game the right way.
1:03:52That's the problem. There's this really big commonality between the two of us, and I'm gonna bring it up right now. It's the thing Our biceps.
1:03:59I knew it. Biceps are larger than mine. Know your biceps are bigger than my legs.
1:04:05The the commonality and the thing that I respect so much of you is actually something that brings dear to my heart of what Creative College ultimately is going to get to in my head, which is I want it to be a physical school. I wanna go ahead and actually change education in that way because for me, a biomedical engineer, I saw so many things that went wrong, and I find that I had so much difficulty in school not because I didn't get it, but because the way that it was being taught wasn't necessarily relevant.
1:04:30And now that I'm in it, I fully get that. I'm like, oh, if this was just taught this way because I'm a teacher and educator myself. And I know you have a very similar goal as well to potentially buy out the art center, if I'm not mistaken.
1:04:40And
1:04:40is that goal still relevant for you? It is. And it it's a goalpost.
1:04:45It's not may it may not be literally that goal, but the idea that the the school that I once learned from that I thought was too big, it becomes a thing where I can just buy.
1:04:56And there's a sad thing that's happening, and we we found out that color what is it? College of arts and crafts or something like that had closed down and it got bought out by Vanderbilt. So they flipped the art school in San Francisco to becoming a business school.
1:05:10Oh, wow. I know. Yeah.
1:05:11It's happening. It's happening everywhere. And it's it's like what is it?
1:05:15The chickens have come home to roost. So what has happened in the private art school space is that the tuition is on par with the most expensive other private universities.
1:05:26It's wild. You think you're gonna study art? It should be affordable because the amount of money you can make as an artist is pretty low.
1:05:33But if you look at the tuition for USC or Stanford or Harvard, it's gonna be almost the same. Actually, they might be cheaper because they have an endowment. So last time I checked, tuition for a single semester at Art Center was, $24,000 a semester.
1:05:46Holy cow. Okay. So now we got some problems.
1:05:50And so what happens is when the market isn't there anymore, and what you're asking for people to pay when the students can't bear it anymore, the whole system falls apart. So historically speaking, the people who pay the most for school are foreign students, international students, because they receive no financial aid.
1:06:10And in order for them to even apply, they must state they can afford to go to school. And so you have wealthy parents from overseas, from all over the world, Asia, a lot, and some Europeans.
1:06:20So, like, oh, our our daughter or son, a debutante or good for nothing, let's send them to art school. They'll have a social skill because they're gonna ultimately inherit the family business anyways. Who cares?
1:06:32But now, because of all that's happening in the politics and how America is seen throughout the world, it's not as prestigious as it used to be. Mhmm. So there's lots of problems.
1:06:42So they're they're having, like, record low enrollment. They're having all kinds of financial challenges. So even though I've expressed this really lofty goal that seemed kind of unattainable, it's becoming more attainable every day Because the old paradigm, the old business models are crumbling as we see.
1:06:57And you're gonna send your your child to go to school, and if you're like a regular American person and you don't have a ton of financial aid, what is eight times $25,000? A lot of money. It's a lot of money.
1:07:08It is a lot of money to get a job that's gonna pay you what? That's gonna be replaced by AI. It doesn't make any sense anymore.
1:07:15So the prestige is gone. The economic opportunity might not ever been there, and the price to acquire this opportunity has gone too high, so it's a problem.
1:07:25So potentially, just buy real estate, but I'm not sure. So I say, you know, hang in there, guys.
1:07:31I need to fix my business. And once I get my business roaring, it might become a reality.
1:07:36For me, it's funny that you're calling it a goalpost, not necessarily the exact thing, because it is how I envision Creative College as well. Like, I have this ultimate goal, and it just allows me to proceed that way. Obviously, who knows exactly what that's gonna look like logistically?
1:07:48Is it gonna be high res? Is gonna be in person? Am I gonna do an actual set of buildings?
1:07:51I don't know. But the idea that changing education is such a huge priority for me, and, hopefully, we can start exactly where I am now, maybe do this podcast, get to more people, it keeps me ambitious but also very humble because I know what I need to still work on.
1:08:05And that has been really cool to watch your content. You've had so much success. It'll be so easy for you to just walk in and have a ton of ego and and whatever the case may be, but I don't see that in your content.
1:08:14I don't see that in our conversation. You've been so kind, and you've been able to share stories with me that, I mean, you probably didn't share it before publicly. I'm so appreciative of that.
1:08:22That's something that I very much respect about you. Because what I've noticed is that the ultra talented are ones that can remain humble and know what they're going to work on next and be humble enough to say, I'm gonna do it even if I am a beginner for it. Right now, with everything that you've achieved, what is that thing?
1:08:37Because this is my final question because I wanna know what is next for you. What is on your plate right now you're thinking about, I wanna improve upon this skill set? Okay.
1:08:44For me personally? Alright.
1:08:46I do wanna say something about that last observation you have is, I just wanna say this to everybody, don't believe your own freaking hype. I go to events where I meet other creators.
1:08:56They're a bunch of douchebags. I can't stand to be next to them. Because in their little world, they're the most important thing, and everybody adores them for this thing, and they're just insufferable.
1:09:05Like, when we go to dinners, I'm like, oh my god. Is it really are you gonna talk about that again? Are you interested in anybody else's ideas?
1:09:12Do you wanna involve anything, or it's just like you wanna talk about how you crush that 10,000,000 view video and how much YouTube's paying you. It's like, ugh. Just kill me.
1:09:21The problem is, it's almost like and I hate to say this because I'm gonna offend two groups of people. Influencers feel like homeschooled children. They have no freaking social skills.
1:09:30My god. Develop a skill. Learn to make it about more than just you.
1:09:34Be of service to other people because it's unbearable. You're not that talented. I promise you.
1:09:38And when it goes away, everybody will be dancing on your grave. That's a problem. So the skill that I want to improve upon right now, and it's a critical one, is if you and I are teachers and we want our form of martial art to win, we have to learn how to bring in students.
1:09:55And so that's always a challenge for me, Like, to learn how to market and to bring people in in a way that feels ethical and aligned to who I am without it being too salesy or too predatory is a tricky thing. I know how traditional sales funnels are built. There's some great documentation on this.
1:10:10I just don't feel like it's aligned. But at some point, I'm gonna have to slap myself in the face and said, suck it up and do what you gotta do because the people who who are in your orbit that you are able to teach will benefit from the people who are good at the marketing part but have no substance.
1:10:27So I might have to play in a game. I'm not sure.
1:10:29Chris, I look up to you in so many different ways. And now in this conversation, it's genuinely been one of my favorites because I thought I was looking up to you just for the personal branding side, but, I mean, I look up to you as a person.
1:10:40I mean, the idea that you've curated so much alignment to your work, and you've obviously shown that here in this conversation. I mean, what people don't realize is that with these podcasts, and I'm learning it, it's like you come in and immediately you sit down. We start doing this interview.
1:10:51It's like we don't have time to get to know each other in that background. So it's this uncertainty of if someone's gonna come on, like, what is their personality going to be like? But immediately, you made me feel comfortable, and you've taught me a lot of things from a character standpoint that I hope to carry on.
1:11:05I know that the viewers and everyone that's listening to this are gonna appreciate all the knowledge that you've given. With So that being said, Chris, thank you so much for your time. Thanks for having me.
1:11:13I do wanna say something, though. I'm just a mirror to you. It's
1:11:17like when you throw a negative energy, I just throw it right back. It's part of the social experiment that I call my life. So I have been in in meetings where people are, like, puffing up.
1:11:26I'm like, okay. This is how this is gonna go. Or or how people ask superficial questions, I give them superficial answers.
1:11:32I just mirror right back because I think I think this is the life in the world you're trying to build. I'm entering into your world, and I'll follow your rules, and I'll do your thing. So if I'm anything today, it's because you created the space to do that.
1:11:44Oh, wow. And you're willing to share, so I'm willing to share. And if you're willing to I'm willing to laugh at yours.
1:11:50This is how we how we roll. And so I appreciate that. Thank you so much.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
The best first step to building a personal brand is not picking a niche or buying a ring light -- it is going to see a therapist. That is where Chris Do starts, and it reframes everything that follows: the origin story prompts, the pivot away from audience-first thinking, the pricing philosophy built around appreciation instead of hours. This conversation is not a content playbook. It is an argument that the inner work IS the strategy.
How they asked for the click.
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