129: Emmy Award Winner Explains Building a Brand in 2024 with The Futur Founder, Chris Do

Today, I’m talking with Chris Do—an Emmy award-winning designer and the CEO and founder of The Futur, an online education platform dedicated to teaching 1 billion people how to make a living doing what they love.

For many founders, content creation and brand building can quickly become confusing. Should all companies create content? What makes some content better than others? How do some companies build strong brand loyalty while others struggle?

Chris has over 27 years of experience in brand design, strategy, and consultancy, working with top clients like Microsoft, Sony, Nike, and Starbucks.

In today’s episode, you’ll learn how to create a brand that your customers will pay a premium for, Chris’s “911 Formula” for creating content that converts, how to go from a commodity to a category of one, and much more.

Inspiring Quotes

• “The brand with the strongest tribe always wins.” – Chris Do

• “The strength of your brand and your storytelling allows you to command a premium.” – Chris Do

• “When it comes to hiring, you only attract the kinds of people who are attracted to your beliefs and values.” – Chris Do

• “If you can’t predict where they eat, what channels they watch, what books they’re reading, what movies they enjoy, and where they’ll be next, then you’ve got no avatar.” – Chris Do

• “It’s better to be weird or different than it is to be better.”  – Chris Do

• Who is Chris Do?
• How to measure the value of a brand
• How branding changes from startup to enterprise
• What is the purpose of branding?
• Should all brands have a face attached to them?
• How attention to detail drives greatness
• The elements of creating strong content
• Educating vs. entertaining with your content
• How to create a deep customer avatar
• How will AI change marketing?
• The biggest mistake marketers make with AI

Brad Weimert: Chris Do, I appreciate you carving out some time. It’s great to connect.

Chris Do: Happy to be here, Brad.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. So, people know you for branding and for good reason because you came from a design background, but now have this laundry list of impressive names of huge companies that you’ve done, not only done creative for, but also award-winning creative, literally. So, I want to talk about branding, but for the sake of context, for those that don’t know you, can you give me sort of the background you got into design and how did that lead you to be known as a branding expert and have an oddly successful business around it?

Chris Do: Sure. I’ll try and make this as brief as possible. Feel free to pull on any of the threads, whatever may interest you. I am a traditionally trained graphic designer, and I’ve worked in the commercial advertising and music video business for 25-ish years before transitioning into my current role as the CEO and Founder of The Futur. So, I did client work for a really long time, mostly through advertising agencies. We would work on some of the biggest bands and the brands in the world, everything like Fortune 100 companies, mostly making commercials for them as a production and post-production.

Towards the latter part of that company, which I no longer run, we started doing client direct work, and we learned that there was this whole layer of agency client strategic management that we didn’t know anything about, so we had to learn all this stuff. So, when you’re interfacing with clients directly, it’s usually the chief marketing officer. And there’s a lot that has to be done between you and them to get their idea or their marketing objective through creative, through copywriting, through design, through all the touchpoints in which someone is going to come in contact with, that we had to learn and we were able to level up.

Now, more recently, I stopped doing client work in 2018. I am now a full-time content creator. I have a team of about eight people and we just make content all day long. And some of that is around branding. Some of it is around sales, pricing, negotiations, and things that people may know me for.

Brad Weimert: That’s awesome. So, I’ve dug into quite a bit of your content at this point and moving into, so you said a couple things there. One is full-time content creator. The other is The Futur. Can you delineate those two things for me?

Chris Do: Yes. Well, when we talk about full-time content creator, I am The Futur, The Futur’s me, we’re all connected. It’s not a separate thing. It started out as kind of an invitation to do something new and different from my friend Jose Caballer in 2014 to make YouTube videos. It’s taken on its own life and it’s turned into a real business. And so, we were at crossroads, so we stopped doing client work. And now, we do content. And so, my whole team is really built around supporting the content, creating educational products, marketing, and some public speaking stuff. But we don’t have any more clients. We have lots of customers, but no clients. And so, they support me, I support them. It’s the business that we run.

Brad Weimert: I love that. I think that it’s an important– so no delineation between content creation and The Futur. They go hand in hand, one thing, but for most business owners, there is a delineation between their business and content creation. And they look at most business owners are kind of forced in this bucket today of I feel like I’m supposed to be producing content and it’s supposed to drive leads to my business and create ROI. The people that are a part of The Futur and follow you, do they fit in that bucket? I know that you’re speaking a lot of the time to agency clients and creatives, but do they fit in that bucket? And how do you reconcile those two things? Should businesses be creating content for the sake of driving leads? Or should they only do it if it is tied indirectly to what they’re already doing as a company?

Chris Do: Brad, I love this question. I hope you have some time because I have to unpack this for you and for the audience, I think, because I have a very strong perspective on this. Okay? I think, first, we need to understand why it is that we’re creating content and if we should be creating content in the first place. It’s my theory and my belief that all companies or media companies, just most of them, don’t know it yet. And the reason why I say this is when we have a product or service has no story, we would describe that as a commodity.

If you look at bottles of water or pairs of jeans or T-shirts, it has no story attached to it. It’s a commodity. It’s sold at the lowest available price, and no one has a preference for it. They just buy because it’s the cheapest available option. The strength of your brand and your storytelling allows you to command a premium. This is how we can quite literally measure the value of a brand. And the example is this, I don’t know if they’re still in business, but let’s say JCPenney, if they put their logo on a T-shirt, does the value of the T-shirt go up or does it go down?

And some people might argue that might actually go down. I’d rather have a blank without a JCPenney logo on it. So, that’s the value of that brand as it is applied to apparel. But if I put a Nike swoosh, just a little swoosh, not even the Nike words, somewhere in that shirt, same exact shirt, does the value of that shirt go up? And many would argue, of course, it does. So, we can probably buy a generic, no name, no label shirt for about $3 retail. And then we go to the Nike store, when it’s not discounted, it’s probably $24. So, you could argue that the value of their brand, that adding the swoosh logo creates an $18 value in terms of what they can command as a premium. And you can run this across the board. If it’s Balenciaga, if it’s Gucci, if it’s Louis Vuitton, the price goes exponentially higher because that’s the strength of their brand.

So, when we come to understand this, so if you accept my hypothesis, then we have to kind of look at why people buy in the first place. Because clearly, now, it’s not about the garment anymore. It’s about something else. And it’s about status and it’s about identity. So, when we buy something, we’re signaling to others what is valuable to us and what our beliefs and our taste level are. So, there are circles when, if you hold a non-iPhone device up, people look at you a little bit differently. And I forget what color it is, but if you send a text message back and it’s not green, it’s like, “Oh, you’re using one of those other devices, aren’t you?” So, there’s a little bit of that kind of snobbery that accompanies this because we want to be associated with people who believe what we believe, who value what we value. So, to gain status to those groups, that’s what we need to do.

I heard something from a pretty controversial figure, Andrew Tate. Forget about his beliefs and his opinions, whether he’s guilty of crimes, alleged crimes or not. He said something that’s quite interesting. He goes, “I buy Bugatti, not because I like the Bugatti. I could care less about the Bugatti. It’s a fast car. It is nice, but I don’t care. But when I drive a Bugatti, people look at me differently and it gives me access to people who also own Bugattis.” He goes, they’re kind of split down the middle. Fifty percent of the Bugatti owners, or he’s like, nerds that I don’t care to be around. I think he’s talking about Silicon Valley startup types who are very smart with finance, managing money or tech. But he says, the other 50% of really interesting people who’ve built amazing businesses have a fascinating story. And in order to be in that club, to have entree into that, you need to have the Bugatti. That’s just the entry card or the entry price. And it’s quite interesting how he looks at the car, not as the car, but as access to a certain social status that allows him to have powerful networking relationships.

And this is true when you strip it down to whether you’re a Girl Scout or a Boy Scout in America, it says something about you. If you’re a part of a professional speaking organization, it says something about you. If you have a degree, if you have the PhD or a master’s degree or even a bachelor’s degree, it says something about you. So, we’re constantly signaling to other people what our values are and what our beliefs and accomplishments are, so that we can be accepted and to accept others. That’s the value of the brand.

Where do people fall into this? I think there are three primary categories. Number one is your service provider, or you make a product and you don’t really think about brand. And every time you make a piece of content, you’re like, oh, what am I doing? And it’s a vehicle for you to market your products and services. I think that’s the lowest level of marketing or branding that we’re talking about. It’s not very effective because everything you put out is a marketing message. It’s an ad. And people are very smart at picking that stuff up.

I don’t know about you or your audience, but every time you’re on a web page and you see all these pop-up banners and ads everywhere, we’ve become really good at ignoring most of it. I just read the content. I don’t even see the ads anymore. They’re kind of invisible to my eye. The next tier are people who are a little bit more sophisticated, the business is more mature, and they’re realizing that they need to build a brand story around what they’re doing, and they’re committed to making content. But there’s still a little bit split between I’m going to make some pieces of content, but I still need to market. It’s better than the first group, which is all marketing, but it’s not as good as the third group I’m going to tell you about.

The third group realizes that the strength of my brand, my storytelling, how I give value to other people will benefit my business, not in direct performance marketing ways, but in terms of the overall value, the talent that I can attract, the business opportunities and doors that open up for me. And they’re committed to doing this as an expression of who they are. Those are the types of people I’m most excited to talk to.

Brad Weimert: So, I love that. And I also think that I have to hit on the Andrew Tate thing, sunk in for a second there, which is, there was a lot to unpack, but as a consumer, there’s an interesting sense of self-awareness to say I am buying it solely for the brand value and the access. And I use the structure of self-awareness, the construct deliberately because I think that’s exactly what it is. Most people shy away from admitting that and don’t want to say, “Oh, I’m spending 2 million on a car because I want to look cool” or “I want access to rich people.” So, I like the self-awareness there.

From a branding perspective, I think it’s a good lesson for business owners to look at that and think about that and know that there is a segment there that you can sell into, that has that self-awareness, right? And I think this is a lesson for all businesses, but if you don’t put the super high-ticket item there, you’re definitely never going to sell it. And if you do, almost always somebody will buy it because it positions you differently that way.

Chris Do: Can we address this? I’m going to dig a little deeper, if you don’t mind, unless you’re going to ask a different question about the same thing.

Brad Weimert: No, keep going.

Chris Do: Okay, cool. So, you said that you love the self-awareness and whether people admit it or not, it’s happening. We buy into status way more than we are willing to acknowledge, and I think that’s just denial. Whether you’re aware of it or not, you’re doing this all the time. So, I was reading, I think, Alex Hormozi’s book, $100M Offers, and he feels, people buy into status all the time. And then he was sharing this story, and then he said that some lady says no, actually, if you drove up with a Ferrari or a Porsche to my group, you would be an outcast. And he goes, “Okay, so what do you drive?” She goes, “A minivan.” “So, why do you drive a minivan, because it’s convenient?” “No, because to your club, to the group that matters to you, the minivan is what gives you access. It means I’m committed to being a good parent. I’m going to schlep my kids around town. I’m going to be their Uber service for a good portion of life. And I’m really involved in engaging the nurturing of my own children.” That’s what signals to them.

So, you’re actually doing the same thing, but it’s a different vehicle quite literally. So, whether you’re aware of this or not, we’re making all these kinds of decisions. Whether you choose to eat at this hamburger place or to buy a good from this department store or that department store, you’re making lots of decisions. There’s a quote from Anna Lappé. She says something to the effect that every dollar that you spend is a vote for the kind of world that you want to live in. And that’s a really important thing. And I think we all know this. Every vote that you cast says this is the government I want to be part of. And every dollar you spend makes sure that that organization, that company, that business is in business tomorrow and they beat their competition because you connect more with them. And so, the expression goes, the brand with the strongest tribe always wins. The people who are willing to go to bat for you, who are willing to wait in line, who are willing to tell others about you to proselytize and to become an advocate for your business, you will win.

Brad Weimert: So, I generally believe that, from an outcome-oriented business perspective, and I think there’s a lot of other social layers in there, but from a business perspective of just trying to get to the outcome and grow, yes, the stronger tribe is going to win. If we go into the content creation side, you built this construct of three different types of content creators, right? Basically, all content has a CTA, buy my sh*t. Next content is like, it’s producing some value, but it still has an asking there or something. And then the third is all value driven, right?

And if I look at likelihood of immediate, well, I can’t even say immediate performance, but the latter one focuses on brand and building strength of brand. I think about enterprise companies versus startups and how they allocate dollars typically, historically, relative to brand building. And historically, brand has really been established through enterprise and they allocate a portion of their budget to brand building. This is like billboard ads, Super Bowl ads, stuff where they don’t expect an immediate ROI, but they’re doing it because they’re big and they want to make sure their brand is present. How do you see the necessity for brand and time spent towards it fitting into a 0 to $1 million company versus a 10 to 50 versus enterprise?

Chris Do: Okay, I think I can answer some of that in a broad sense because I don’t spend enough time consulting or coaching companies within those individual categories, so it’s just observations and anecdote. So, I want to just talk up a little bit about what you’re talking about is awareness marketing, which is one portion of brand building. And it used to be very effective pre-social media, pre-Internet, and that’s what the agency world lives in today. And they haven’t quite fully figured out the modern landscape of brand building.

When you put out a message that then can be refuted or the messages that we have with each other, the conversations that we have with each other, if it doesn’t align with what you’re saying, then we don’t buy it. And we already know this because if you buy a product, at least I do, on Amazon, I don’t care what the advertising says, I just read the reviews. Are there enough positive reviews? Are there enough critical reviews? Do this feel like real people, not just robots or people you paid to leave your review? And when I go to watch a movie, I look at the Rotten Tomatoes score. I don’t really care what the critics say. I don’t really care what the marketing machine says. If it has a low Rotten Tomatoes score, which is like a Metacritic, then I’m not really going to go see that movie either. I need enough people to say this is worthwhile of an endeavor for me to do it.

And so, the conversation in the control of the brand and the brand messaging has shifted dramatically from the corporations to the customers. So, if the corporations no longer control the brand, the customers control the brand. It’s a wild concept and it’s one that a lot of people still don’t fully understand or have not even been introduced to the concept. Now, brand is more than just the marketing part of it. It is the culture of the company, the people you hire because every time that a customer interfaces or comes in contact with your company, an impression is made. If there are enough of these impressions across multiple touchpoints that creates a positive feeling, then you have a brand. Otherwise, you have collateral damage or something else. You have some other thing that you have to deal with, right?

So, the argument is made in Delivering Happiness, a book by Tony Hsieh. He goes, if you go and hang out at a bar and a bunch of people from Microsoft or Amazon or Netflix are hanging out there and they’re total d-bags, they’re rude, they’re misogynistic, whatever it is, you go away thinking Microsoft, Amazon, or Netflix, that’s the brand. It’s not the term that comes up on your screen, because that means nothing to me. So, when we say we have to invest in the brand, we’re not talking about the media buy or the cute commercials or the viral videos that you make or the social media post because that only goes so deep.

You start by first taking care of your people. You develop a healthy culture, meaning you have to have clearly defined core values that you then hire and fire people for, and that everything that you do echoes out from that. I’ll give you an example right now. A gentleman messaged me this morning. He goes, “Chris, I’ve been part of your community for seven years. Something had happened, I didn’t pay, and I was kicked out. And to rejoin, they wanted me to do it at this rate. Like, what gives?” I’m like, “I will take care of that personally. I will resolve this for you.” And he goes, “Oh, thank you. You don’t need to deal with it right away. I’m just glad that somebody is taking care of it.”

So, today, the interaction between myself and someone determines what kind of feeling or impression they have for the brand. It doesn’t matter how great the videos are, but if behind the scenes, your actual real contact point is not a positive one, you don’t have a very good brand. So, when you’re at under a $1 million mark, it’s a very intimate bespoke thing that you’re doing. You’re creating a product or service for a small group of people. You should be very available and accessible, and everybody that you hire should be a reflection of you and your core values.

So, when somebody steps out, you have to let them go. You have to say, “I don’t feel like you’re a good representative of our company. You’re not honoring our core values. And I’m not saying you’re a bad person, but you’re not a good person for us.” And you have to let them go. Otherwise, they poison the brand. It doesn’t take a lot to do that.

Professor Erik Garrison talks about this. He says, “Do a good job, a customer tells another person. Do a bad job, that person tells 10 people.” So, it won’t take a lot for you to help up your brand. So, when you’re in the $5 to $10 million range, now, the company has grown. It depends on what kind of business you’re building here, but you may have now more employees. It’s still manageable. Core values can still be intact.

It’s when you get into enterprise level, 20 million, 100 million plus, they’re now people that are being hired that the founders don’t even know exist. So, at that stage of the game, whether you’ve let your brand run out of control or you are not involved in it to begin with, usually, consultants come in, redefine what the company is about, go back into the history about why the company is created in the first place, what the core pillars are of the brand and the values, and so that they can ripple that across all touchpoints. So, from the product design to the packaging to customer service to the marketing, to the customer reps, and aftercare service, it has to be consistent. It only takes one weak spot in that chain to break the entire chain.

Brad Weimert: I’m a huge advocate of value-based hiring, firing, etc. And one of the lines that I typically find myself saying in interviews is– there’s probably a blog post somewhere of what you’re supposed to ask your interviewee when you’re looking for a job, probably a lot of them. But I get the same questions all the time. And one of them is to the end of, what’s your vision? What are you looking for? And so, when I get asked this, I go down the path of the future vision for Easy Pay Direct and where we are.

But the other thing I bring up is I hire and fire based on core values and KPIs. KPIs flash themselves out. You show up to the job and you don’t perform, we can see that. But the value side of it, the important part is that I’m not trying to get people to adopt my values when they come into the company. I’m trying to find people that live in a way that is aligned with how we already behave. And there’s a huge difference there.

And then through the interview process, of course, it is your job as the person looking for a job to see if you think you’re aligned. I just am in a better position to do that because I know our culture very thoroughly and I interview people all day. From a branding perspective, I’ve heard you say the point of building a personal brand is to get in touch with yourself. What is the point of building a company’s brand?

Chris Do: Okay, man, you ask really hard questions, and I’m sorry that when you ask a seemingly very simple question, I go on for 25 minutes because maybe…

Brad Weimert: No, it’s great, man. No, man, you have very interesting approaches to things. And so, I’m glad I’m asking you tough questions. It’s more fun this way.

Chris Do: My goodness. I just want to take a moment to acknowledge that, that Brad’s question is simple in its structure and ingenious in its design, and it’s like this key that unlocks multiple doors. And he just asks a simple question, bro, just answer it. And I can’t because we have to understand one to unpack the other. So, I’m going to try to thread the answer to hit multiple questions here.

When you build your personal brand, I think people think it’s like you’re marketing services again and they’re just getting this all wrong. It’s like, who are you? What makes you you? What is the true, authentic you that you’re afraid that the world’s going to find out? And authenticity, to me, is a strange word that is wielded around that I’m like, you guys are making it so complicated. Who are you when no one’s watching? It’s simply that. Who are you when no one’s watching? Everything that you put on becomes a persona. And all of us do this to a degree. The degree in which you do it determines how inauthentic or authentic you are.

So, some people, you and I, when the camera stopped, we could be talking one way. And as soon as the cameras are rolling, we could adopt a persona or personality. And the bigger the change, the more people are like, whoa, I’m not sure which is the real Brad, which is the real Chris. I endeavor to live such that whether the camera or the microphone is on me or not, I try to be as the same as possible, as similar as possible. Okay? And that’s what we talk about authenticity.

Well, when you’re out there talking about the things that you believe in, Brad, as part of your personal brand, you’re writing, you’re speaking, you’re creating podcasts or videos about what your beliefs are. When it comes to hiring, you only attract at a certain point the kinds of people who are attracted to your beliefs and values. And we’ve done this now. We’ve been making content long enough such that when people are looking for a job, I don’t want people looking for a job. I want people who want to help us build our vision, the mission. And they believe in their core values, like they’re fans before they become employees, they’re consumers before they become employees. And I love this relationship that we get to have. And I say this, and I realize that there’s some privilege that comes with this because lots of companies don’t produce any content like, well, how do we do that? Well, that’s part of the problem.

Now, to answer your question about like, what is the purpose of branding for a company? There’s a multitude of things, but it’s not that different than branding for a person, and that once you get to a certain level, whether you’re enterprise or not, and the level in which you get to is the point in which no one knows what you stand for anymore. They’ve lost touch, or maybe, it was never defined in the first place because you’ve never had that dialog. You saw a need in the market. You thought of a way to make the world a little bit better or a lot better. And you work on that mission and that vision, and you build that. And you don’t even talk about it because you’re just hands in the work and just trying to make things work. And then the market responds and you grow your company.

And at some point, people are like, what is our mission? Is it to make more money or is it to improve the world? Or what’s the problem? And this is usually where we have to get back in touch with the founder story. And so, in both cases, I say branding isn’t an act of creation. It’s an act of remembering. So, remembering who you are as the four or five-year-old with full of dreams and passions before the world told you you couldn’t do certain things. We have to get in touch with that. And it’s an act of remembering when, why did the founders, why did Mary found this company? What was she trying to sell? What motivated her? Was it to honor her grandmother’s recipe for pasta? Was it to build an inclusive tech company because she herself faced discrimination? What was it about? And we get into that and we try to tell that story so that everybody is dancing to the same beat. I think that’s the purpose.

Brad Weimert: So, first off, the content-first approach is what jumps out loudly. Some of the benefits of having a strong content approach, you highlighted, but one of them is attracting the right people, right? You have no hope of having raving fans that you can hire if you’re not putting out a strong message. And I like the jump-off point for our conversation being that you are a full-time content creator and that’s the lens that you look at it through. Yeah, there’s a business on the back end that’s super important and a community that’s super important that you’re serving, but your job is to create content and tell stories. I mean, that’s great.

One of the questions that I have here as the world has shifted, seemingly, or put more emphasis on the importance of personal brand is, should all brands have a face attached to them? So, you’ve got Tesla and all of Elon’s companies. Elon has a very strong personal brand, and have whatever opinion you want of him as a human. And there are lots of other companies that also have a very strong face. Then there are companies that exist without a strong face and without a personal brand tied to them. What’s your opinion? Do you need one? Is there a positive or negative, one way or the other?

Chris Do: Very good question. I am reluctant to say all because I have not considered all companies and positions, and I don’t think all companies need to have a face, but they need to be known for something. And oftentimes, like say, Starbucks, do you know who the founder of Starbucks is?

Brad Weimert: I do, but only because I’m a business geek.

Chris Do: Because you’re a nerd and you know all these things?

Brad Weimert: Yes.

Chris Do: And remind me his name because I’m spacing on his name right now.

Brad Weimert: Howard. Howard?

Chris Do: Howard Schultz, right?

Brad Weimert: Schultz, yep.

Chris Do: Yes. So, Howard Schultz founded Starbucks in Seattle and was able to grow this company into a global monster. And Howard’s face is not in the Starbucks cup. Howard’s story is not prescient in everything that they do because it doesn’t benefit the company to talk about that. There’s no point. But there is this idea that they wanted to create this European-like coffee experience, and they moved the culture, and that’s a powerful thing. They trained Americans to crave a $4 or $5 cup of coffee. And to have this little experience based on– I think, the story goes, based on his experiences traveling abroad and saying, I love this part about European culture, that they celebrate coffee as an art form and we can elevate the taste buds because before then, I think there’s drip coffee and Folgers instant. And you change the culture, which is a very powerful thing for a person to be able to do.

So, he tapped into an emerging trend, was able to create this. But Starbucks, that’s not what the brand is about, but they have a very powerful brand. Whereas say, Kentucky Fried Chicken or KFC, for the longest time, I thought that Colonel Sanders is a mascot like Ronald McDonald is not a real person, right? But it turns out Harland Sanders is a real person who started a business in his 70s. And it’s part of this…

Brad Weimert: Amazing story.

Chris Do: Right. It’s an amazing story. But for the most part, in the 80s and the 90s and even the early aughts, that story was not told at all.

Brad Weimert: No.

Chris Do: It was like a mascot, like Burger King is not a real person. Ronald McDonald’s not a real person. Wendy’s is. Colonel Sanders is a real person. So, it really depends. Now, I think here’s the interesting thing that’s happened in the last, I would say, 10, 15 years is that because of the availability of social media for companies to reach out to consumers directly without a big media buy or an agency involved or network, the conversation has changed a lot. So, I think strategies emerge because of constraints. When there were three major networks to advertise on, we knew what we were getting into and those were the only options, so that would work.

But now, there’s so many different options. When you don’t have a strong brand or brand story or person or face behind the brand, you pay for it. You pay for it in advertising and marketing. I think somebody told me this. I don’t know if it’s true that Tesla spends $0 in marketing. There’s never an ad. And I’m thinking, like, is it true? And it is true.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. I think it’s not anymore. But it was for a long time. And even now, it’s very, very tiny. They’ve got a magazine ad or a billboard here or there, but I think that’s just sort, yeah.

Chris Do: They do? I’ve never seen a single Tesla ad before.

Brad Weimert: Yeah, just recently. It’s been like, but it’s still, I mean, it’s like a nothing percentage. But you know what they did differently than almost all other brands of their scale is they had a f*cking affiliate program, which is crazy, like major automotive companies don’t have affiliate programs. And Tesla had a hey, refer a friend and get a thousand bucks or get lifetime charging for free, like, wild. But your points are, I derailed your point which is still powerful, which is the brand for itself.

Chris Do: Yeah, so if you think about– okay, so when I was in the heat of advertising in the early 2000s, I found a shocking statistic that said that American Express spends half a billion dollars in media buy alone every single year, half a billion. So, here comes Elon. And Tesla is one of the few companies where creators are anxiously reporting on every little morsel, every little rumor, and doing all the marketing for them. There are literally multiple channels on YouTube that drop daily content about what’s happening with Tesla. And they’re eagerly anticipating the next drop.

The same thing is true about Apple, and also, with some of the AI companies like OpenAI. Here’s what’s coming down the line, here’s what we’ve seen, what will they announce next, and you need to know these things. And there’s this fervor, this appetite for content. We want to know what happens next. Therefore, it gives rise to the creators who tell us what’s going to happen and their wild predictions. And so, if you have a strong face and person, then the marketing budget becomes much, much smaller. And there’s mystery and there’s allure. And anytime they want to do something, they literally hold a press conference. They do a keynote presentation or something like that. Apple does this. And then the media come to them and they’re happy to amplify the message across the social channels.

And I think they’re all evolving and changing, whether you’re saying Tesla is now taking out some advertising. I understand now, Apple’s also working with some influencers. And they’re not just going to say like, we’re going to stay on our high and mighty perch and say we’re above all this. They can actually work with people to amplify the message. And I love this idea that there’s this affiliate referral program from Elon. He’s doing things so differently. I love this because instead of spending thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in media buy, he’s like, who gets to sell our cars than the people who are already owners? They convert their friends.

Now, I listened to this talk by Seth Godin. He says, “What you want to do is you want to create a company or products such that each person is incentivized on an individual basis, not monetarily, to get more of their friends to join it.” He goes, like, “What do you think the first person who had a fax machine did? They told their friends, go buy a fax machine.” I mean, literally, because the product becomes more useful and valuable if more people adopt it.

So, you and I, if we own a Tesla, we’re like, well, we need to tell four more friends because the more people that drive Teslas, the more charging stations there will be in the neighborhoods in which we live in. It behooves us to do this. And the more support services that we have and the more dealerships we’ll have and the more service centers. We don’t want it to be a niche product. But we can’t say that’s true with many products, right?

Brad Weimert: You can’t. And I think that there are– the first example, the fax machine, the network effects, I think there are lots of products like that. Tesla is in a unique class, like Apple is, where the network effects perhaps, where a driver Tesla obviously put a number behind it and said, hey, we’re going to pay you to do this. But both of them are so product forward that they are focused on the product and the experience being bad ass, right? Like, it is, they just– and honestly, Apple paved the way for this. Apple was the first company in my lifetime, right? I’m 43, but nobody made packaging like Apple, until Apple. And now…

Chris Do: Nobody still makes packaging like Apple, by the way.

Brad Weimert: Well, that’s true, but a lot of people try now, right? Now, there’s tons of companies out there that make unique boxes for you, and nobody would spend money on that sh*t previously. But Apple showed people that that was a part of the client experience, the consumer experience and part of their brand. And sure as sh*t, you talk about free advertising, the unboxing videos alone on platforms like YouTube, of course, the packaging matters in those and the presentation of opening it up and looking at it.

Chris Do: Yeah. So, I think the thing about Apple that still connects itself to Steve Jobs is this idea of insanely great. So, people think, like, the Apple slogan is really think different, but I think it’s insanely great. It’s something that he would start to say, and I think it captures his personal brand and Apple’s DNA in two words. And it’s why I’m a big proponent for this two-word brand thing. As you may know, Steve Jobs is not an easy person to work with, and his attention to detail is legendary, almost maniacal that he literally would fly to Italy and pick the slabs of marble that were going to go into the Apple Stores to then running this multibillion-dollar corporation. No detail was too small for him to get his hands in, which has its own kind of like negative effect.

And I understand, even on his deathbed, he was reviewing copy for ads from Chiat/Day, from Lee Clow, which is ridiculous to me. So, his attention to detail. And there’s a rumor that said something like when they were announcing their new laser printer or something and they connected it for Steve, and he’s like, why doesn’t it work with my computer? It’s you already know, this is ridiculous. Go fix it before we launch. And it’s that kind of stuff that it’s like, I have extremely high standards and we will not let go of anything. He got mad at his team that was running the Apple Store because when you went to the Apple Store, the products did not look like they do in the commercials. So, he had them change all the lighting in the store so that it would look like the way they do in the commercials.

What he doesn’t realize being a CEO of a multi-billion, trillion-dollar company is the photos that you see and the videos that you see are highly manipulated with 85 different lights and composited together to make the single image look great. I know this because I have friends who shoot for Apple. And so, he’s like trying to recreate this experience in a store. And the demand to do that, despite the impossibility of it, the feasibility, it didn’t matter to him. So, that was the insane part.

The great part is when you train your entire team to think and work that there’s no detail that’s too small, you can achieve greatness, right? So, insanely great is what drives Apple. So, they think about the packaging, like, you know what? Packaging is pretty much like a thing you have to do, not a thing you get to enjoy. And then they consult origami experts. They look at the friction of the box and making a satisfying sound the way enwraps itself. And now, the shrink wrap that drives people insane, you pull on one tab, the whole thing falls apart. Until then, it’s solid. And so, now, they’ve given something, an experience to me that I find to be delightful. So, a lot of people who buy Apple products don’t throw away the boxes because the experience…

Brad Weimert: The number of Apple boxes I have in my closet is ridiculous.

Chris Do: What are we going to do with it? Brad, why did we save all the boxes?

Brad Weimert: I don’t know, man, but I’ve probably got like six that are tucked away in my closet.

Chris Do: Yeah, same, at least six. And they’re displayed on my son’s shelf like a prize, like a trophy. And we don’t know what we’re going to do with them because when we are ready with our devices, we’re ready to give them to someone else, very rarely are we repackaging up in the original packaging, but I think what they’ve done is they’ve made such exquisite packaging that we feel horrible to throw it away.

Brad Weimert: Yeah, it’s sort of like throwing away somebody’s book. It’s this, we’re in an era where so many people write books, publish books, self-publish, or otherwise, and get them out, and they use it as a marketing. It’s like a business card, right? But it’s a piece of marketing material because nobody throws away somebody’s book. Whether you’re going to read it or not or even have an intention of it, it’s not going in the trash. And maybe the book is more useful than a box, but there’s a similar approach and mentality there, for sure.

One of the things that you said that I think is a really big takeaway is this idea of setting a standard that is impossible, but whether it’s impossible or not, having the standard is what drives people towards excellence. And even if they never hit the mark of perfection, they’re driving in that direction. And it creates a different culture, community, and set of values than if you don’t set that really high standard. Have you read the newest Elon Musk book, the Walter Isaacson version?

Chris Do: No.

Brad Weimert: So, great book. But one of the recurring themes is Elon, I can’t remember the exact language he uses, but it’s something along the lines of irrationally urgent. And it’s like a core value for Elon’s companies that everybody does things and they’re on the same page that we have irrational urgency. And again, it’s one of these notions of even when you use that language, you realize that this is not rational, but we’re all on the same page that we’re doing this sh*t now, right? And when we find a problem, we are fixing it now. Does it have to be done tomorrow? Well, in this culture, it does. And whether that’s irrational or not, that sense of urgency allows them to drive innovation quicker. And so, I love that framework of, yeah, set the bar up there, put the highest priced product, make the standard impossibly great, and then see what the company does to follow and see what kind of culture you create in doing that.

Chris Do: Yeah, I think that mantra, I hope that’s the mantra because I like it a lot. It’s a very much a Silicon Valley thing. Was it Facebook that says move fast, break things or something like that? So, it’s this idea that everyone is out to destroy us. We need to pretend like tomorrow doesn’t exist and we fight for each and every day. But if you tie that into the larger narrative, one that I think Elon mastered years ago when he was talking about Tesla and why are we doing what we’re doing, I remember the press conference quite vividly in my mind because my wife had a very different reaction, one that I was like, well, this is really interesting. He’s done something.

So, Elon goes in stage and goes– and he’s not a very awkward presenter in the way he says things. I think he’s an expert or whatever, right? And some people think it’s an act. I’m like, I don’t think it’s an act. I just think we’re not used to seeing someone behave and talk this way, especially someone who runs such a big, powerful company. He goes on stage, he’s talking about something about the next car and he goes, “Wait, wait, I’m off track. I need to talk about what’s important.” He goes, “Okay, we release the Roadster so that we can then make a more mass consumer product friendly vehicle, the model S, and we’re glad that you bought that so that we can make an even more affordable car than the 3 or whatever and we’re working towards that.” And that’s where he was in the story. And he goes, “Well, why does any of this matter anyways?” Because he says, “Climate change is the biggest existential threat that we have to humanity. We cannot wait.” He goes, “But people think that this is a talk and we can’t do anything about it.” He goes, “Well, I’ve done the calculations.” He goes, “This is how many square miles of solar panels we need to feed the entire grid in the United States.” He goes, “That sounds like a lot, but relative to the land mass that we have, it’s a tiny fraction of one state, and all the technologies available, it’s all possible. And where would we put it? Where we get a lot of sunshine and we’re not prone to earthquakes or things.” He’s explaining this whole thing. So, he then concludes that part of the talk by saying, “I want to thank you because every car you buy allows us to do this, the next thing, and the next thing and then we can rapidly deploy this thing because we cannot wait.”

Some scientists say that, whether you’re a climate denier or an evangelist doesn’t matter. Some scientists say we’re almost past the tipping point where it’s irreversible. So, this idea of irrationally urgent, it’s like we may not have all the data, but we need to act as if because if we’re wrong, we’re okay. But if we’re right and we don’t do something about it, we’re F’d. And so, my wife said, “I’m all in.” And it’s the first time she’s ever responded to any car company in the world. I’m in. I bought into the vision.

Brad Weimert: Well, for me, I think it’s incredibly uncommon for an entrepreneur to have such a grand vision. And Elon is one of one. No question about it. In fact, his master plan is literally on his sight as the master plan. And it is laid out exactly what he’s doing, what order, how, and then there’s the master plan part 2. And I mean, he’s a very interesting character, but I think that one of the takeaways is you don’t need to have this grand vision or plan to set a bar that is high that you can pursue, that will inspire other people to follow you. And you don’t have to have the concrete path to get there, to get inspiration to flow through your organization or your clients. But you do need to set the bar and set the standard if you expect anybody to do that in the first place.

Chris Do: That’s right. I think Simon Sinek said something about this, like, not everybody has to have a grand vision or mission. We will join other people’s mission and vision. We can support that.

Brad Weimert: So, as a full-time content creator, tell me the elements of strong content and how some of these fit into how you think about creating content.

Chris Do: Okay. Just keep in mind that all strategy is autobiographical and that what I’m about to say has worked for me may not work for you. And there’s lots of bias and affirmations in terms of like what it is I do. I believe…

Brad Weimert: Is that a little disclaimer?

Chris Do: Yeah, a little disclaimer. The best content creators, the best brand builders are the best educators. They go hand in hand. If we think about what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to improve the lives of people, whether it be about transportation, about being aware of the footprint, the carbon footprint that you’re leaving in the world, or just trying to improve your business so that you can have a rainy day fund so that you can take your partner on a vacation or support an elderly parent, it doesn’t really matter. So, in order to transform people’s lives, we must be the most effective educators that we can be.

So, if you’re out there proselytizing products and services as a means to get people in your funnel and to extract value from them, I think you’re approaching it from the wrong point of view. You should be thinking about how do I put money in your pocket, such that your pockets are so full, the change that falls out of it is something that you’re willing to reciprocate back to us so that we can continue to do this, so that you’re making an active decision to vote for the kind of world that you want to live in.

But we start with the premise, give value to a point in which a person starts to feel guilty. And then they’ll go turn around, they’ll become a sustaining member. They’ll join your coaching community. They’ll buy product that they don’t need or they’ll gift it to their friends because they’ve been so transformed and they’ve been moved emotionally to do so. And we do this in a way that I think feels congruent with my values.

And I’m not saying I’m not out there pitching, I am. I’m not saying there’s a zero call to action. There are. There has to be because at times, people just don’t know what to do, and you need to give them the opportunity to say, I’d like to give back. Thank you for allowing me to do this. And I’ve been really shy about this before. I’m not so shy about it anymore.

Brad Weimert: So, let’s go with the call-to-action theme here. If you’re looking at, let’s use a use case. Let’s say you’ve got a– and you can use yourself if you want here. Let’s just start there. What’s the breakdown? If you’re putting out X amount of content, what percentage of it has a CTA in it? And how do you decide?

Chris Do: Yes. I’m working on something new right now. And I want to just put this out there and I’m not 100% committed to it yet. So, this is a fairly new idea I’m trying out. If your social feeds have just basic there is on life support, like no one engages, no one shares, no one talks, and you’re just creating work and you’re feeling really burnt out about it because you’re not getting any return, I say that we need to act quickly before the body goes cold. And so, we’re going to call 911 and we’re going to do some CPR on your content.

The 911 formula is nine pieces of value, ask from nothing, educate purely, demonstrate what it is that you do, help people. One piece of content that’s really personal, something about you, about what you do. Show them a behind-the-scenes moment so they know there’s a real person behind it because all education, then it starts to feel really distant, like I don’t– where’s Colonel Sanders again? Like, wait, Steve who? Elon what? So, we find that mix.

And I think that a lot of people lean in on the education part, and then they get no traction because it’s like, well, who the hell are you? I don’t know anything about you, your life, your story, about your perspective, about your experience. And I want to connect with the human behind it. So, nine pieces of value, one personal thing that has nothing to do with anything except for, you know what? This is my life. I’m going to turn the camera around and I’m going to show you what it looks like, just for a moment.

And the last one is a call to action. So, that one is one where you give a full-throated pitch on whatever it is that you want, and you can do this without trying to mask it as a piece of content or value. You can just say literally, I have a new program that I’m launching. I’d love to have you in it. Thanks for considering it. And now, back to the regular program content. So, nine pieces of value, education base or inspiration, one BTS, behind the scenes, and then one strong call to action so that you can make money so you keep doing this.

Brad Weimert: That’s awesome. First of all, I am a huge fan of– I think everybody needs concrete structure. I think everybody is served by concrete structure, I should say, and so, I love the framework. The other is any time, this wasn’t an acronym, but it was the same sort of device where you latched on to 911, which I think is awesome. Super memorable. In terms of the nine pieces of content that add value, the thing that jumped out to me is sort of the variations that I see of that currently, and some of it is teaching, the value is teaching. And some of it, the value is entertainment.

And I think that some humans are better fit for one versus the other. From a personal brand perspective, that all makes sense to me. Hey, my character is capable of doing– I am just a funny person, or I want to be on stage or look at me or whatever, right? From a company’s brand perspective, I immediately think, like, we sell credit card processing and merchant accounts. It is a fundamentally dry topic and subject matter. It’s also super important because businesses, if they can’t accept payments, they’ve got a big problem.

In the scheme of something like that, when you think about education or entertainment, let’s take that brand. Where do you think those nine pieces of content should fit? What type of stuff? And obviously, you don’t know our space, right? But do you think it should be all educating around it? Do you think that, with dryer brands, you should focus more on entertainment or humor or other types of content in those nine? How does that strike you?

Chris Do: Okay, good question. I think it requires a couple of different things, some variables to be ironed out before I can make a recommendation. Number one is who’s the ideal client avatar. We focus on the minimal viable audience and we kind of understand who they are. And when I say that to people like, well, it’s entrepreneurs and that’s not a minimum viable audience. If you can’t see them and then at the end, it says is you can’t predict where they eat, what channels they watch, what books they’re reading, what movies they enjoy, and where they’ll be next, then you’ve got no avatar. So, we kind of have to reduce it down to your ideal client avatar.

And once you have that, then you can make some predictions about what are their hopes and dreams, what is the pain point they have. And there’s an exercise that I do in my brand strategy workshop where we say, okay, what are all the jobs to be done that this person has to deal with on a daily basis? Make breakfast, drop the kids off at school, or check in on Johnny’s homework, and then answer 55 emails and then write a report. Just go down the list and then see where all the gaps are. So, what are the gaps connected to each one of those tasks?

So, the job is to get done. So, preparing breakfast, well, what is the obstacle? What’s the gap there? Well, there’s not a lot of time. What’s in the fridge isn’t always like what I want to cook and providing good, healthy meals for my children. So, you just write down as many gaps as you can think of. Okay? So, you attach each job with a gap and then you ask yourself, what is the opportunity? What, if anything, can we do in our line of work that would make their lives a little bit easier? And some of them we have no answers to, but we try to answer them as best as we can. And if it’s a resource that we can provide to people that have nothing to do with us, even better, because that’s very altruistic.

So, in the case of your business, the one other thing we have to identify is who are you? What is your proclivity? Are you more like a straight, buttoned-up guy? Do you want to do humor? Do you sing opera? Do you write music? And we bring that into the mix because otherwise, it’s just a generic person. We take your avatar, we take your personality, and we add into your gifts, whatever your creator gave to you as a human being. Now, I can’t tell how tall you are, but you look kind of tall to me. You have a longer neck. I feel like people with longer necks can sing. They have a larger instrument. I don’t know if that’s the case. Can you sing?

Brad Weimert: I don’t think there’s a causal relationship there.

Chris Do: All right. Okay, I just say that, I don’t know, whatever it is, you know?

Brad Weimert: Maybe you could catch me rapping sometime, but I don’t know.

Chris Do: Well, I just made the assumption, you got the mohawk, you got a vibe going on that maybe there’s some punk rock thing going on there. Okay? Whatever it is, that is your gift, you take that and you try to put those two together. And the reason why we need to do that is because we live in a time that we’re overcommunicated too and we’re drowning in information. But people are still hungry for information. And why is that?

And the idea that you can actually say or do something new, it’s a dumb idea. But what we can do is we can take the information, we can package the way that we see the world through our lived experiences, through our personality, through our very specific lens, and utilize the gifts that we have to communicate that piece of information such that it becomes different than the way other people communicate that same piece of information. That’s what people show up for.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. I think one of the things that hit me right away when you were talking about that was, first off, know your avatar. But second, when you looked at the content you’re creating, that could add value to your avatar’s life, you immediately went to how they live, and through their day, what are the problems they run into through the day? And what are the experiences that they go through, through the day? And so, the content that might add value to them isn’t necessarily just educating about your product and how it adds value to their business life through the lens of your product, but it could just be content that speaks to that avatar, period, right? It’s hey, we know, if you know that your avatar, like in our case, were– obviously, not everybody fits in the bucket, but you look at the ideal client profile, they’re doing at least a million a year. That’s probably a 25 to 40-year-old man, and its card not present, which means that they’re probably tech focused. They’re better online than others. We can make assumptions about how they spend their days, right? And so, we can push content around those things. I think those are awesome takeaways for people.

Chris Do: Have you built the user profile of your ideal client avatar before? Have you ever gone through that exercise?

Brad Weimert: Yes. Yeah, we have a few different ones that we target for different things. But I think that one of the things back to kind of structure and framework, I think that it’s the type of exercise that is fun to go through and sometimes eye opening to go through a different time through somebody else’s framework because it’s sort of the notion of you can read the same book 10 different times at 10 different points in your life, and it’ll be a different book each time. You have new information, right? Yeah, you as a human…

Chris Do: You’ve changed. The book hasn’t, you’ve changed.

Brad Weimert: You got it. And the same thing is true of companies, right? You go through the life cycle of a company. And years later, you look at it. And even if the change isn’t radical, little tiny one-degree shifts puts you in a new place a year from now, five years from now, 10 years from now.

Chris Do: Yeah. You don’t know this about me, Brad, but I used to teach sequential design at art center for about 15 years, and it’s with a bunch of creative folks. And so, one of the things we get people to do is to act in their mind as the characters in the story, so that they can create a world that’s world building, right? And it’s an exercise that we do. And then it has real world implications into unlocking creativity. So, I say, like, whenever we draw a storyboard, right? What did you just say?

Brad Weimert: I said, I’m going to make my staff do that.

Chris Do: Okay. So, when we ask people, when we look at their storyboard sequence, it’s very predictable as to what their first take on it’s going to be. It’s going to be shockingly, not surprising, if the point of view is almost always from the person that’s exactly the same height as they are, and oftentimes, the same gender as they are. But when we’re talking about creating a title sequence for a serial killer, well, hopefully, you’re not a serial killer. So, how do you get in their mind? What are they doing? We have to kind of leave our lens and we have to adopt this thing. And I consider, like, that classic movie, it’s called Manhunter. I don’t know if you’re old enough to see that, but he’s a…

Brad Weimert: I know the name, but I don’t…

Chris Do: A criminal profiler, right? So, the beginning is starting this, I promise I’ll make sense in a bit. So, he’s retired, and there was a crime in this person’s house, and it feels like it’s a serial killer. And they call him. And he’s like, no, I don’t want to do this. He goes, we need you. He goes, you know what happened last time? So, there’s this question like, what happened last time? So, he profiles criminals so well that he starts to see the world through their eyes, and he gets all messed up himself. He’s that immersed in the profiling. And I think that’s what we need to do for a little bit without becoming a serial killer.

So, I asked them, if you were to tell the story from the point of view of a toddler who’s yet to walk, what does the scene look like? And we have them redraw it. And they’re seeing the bottoms of tables. They’re noticing chunks of gum, or they’re playing with something on the floor like a tear in the carpet. And it’s a very different lens and perspective. I said, “Now, what happens if you’re a fly?” Like, literally, a little fly flying around and you’re looking in the exact same sequence, “Well, how would that look like to you?” Well, probably, a wide-angle lens and being able to see everything with the field of view that we’re not used to, because I believe flies can see almost 360 because of the way their eyes are oriented and the lens, and we’re probably seeing it from a place and an angle in which it’s sometimes high, sometimes it’s low. We can literally fly through a little loop and what that would create and the sensation. We can swing around a plant and frame the shot that way. So, we start to look at the world in a different way.

When we talk about building client avatars, we need to do the same thing. We have to forget we’re Brad or Chris or Mary or Jenny. I want to say, forget about that. This is not about us. It’s about them. Let’s inhabit their mind, their world, and their space. What color pants are they wearing? Do they wear pants? Or is it only a dress or a skirt or leggings or joggers or whatever it is? Are they wearing shoes? We try to do this and we build really deep psychological profiles of the person, so much so that we can draw them. We know where they shop. We know what brands they like. We call it brand affinity. It’s like what brands are they most connected to? We can understand or make an educated guess about where they went to school, what they majored in if they finished their degree or not.

And when you have that deep psychological profile, your avatar is going to be really, really good. And this is a creative exercise in figuring out there are new products and services that we could create that could triple our revenue this year. Or the content we create will be much more hard hitting or the engagement will go through the roof. And that’s what we’re trying to do. So, starting with a really good deep customer avatar is the starting point.

Now, good news is, with the advancements in AI, you don’t necessarily have to call brand strategists and spend a full day workshop doing this. You can literally prompt it to, because it knows create a buyer persona or customer avatar and you describe your business, and you can say, I’m running a credit card processing thing, my revenue is this. It’s remote based. I’m targeting customers who do million dollars a year in revenue, are tech focused, da, da, da, build me the ideal client avatar. Tell me the demographics as well as the psychographics, and then format that as a table. It’ll just do it for you.

And then, once it does it for you, you can check with yourself like, does that sound like our avatar or not? If it’s not, that means you need to give it better data and we’ll do it again. But sometimes, and I’ve done this many times, you read them, like, my God, that is spot on. I’ve done a test, done this test, and it’s worthwhile to share with you. I was doing a workshop in London. I asked it to identify the top three most likely people to be at the workshop with their pain points and challenges, or with the hopes and dreams, where they struggle in their business, how much income they have. And it gave me three different profiles. So, I went to London and said, hey, I like to just take a poll to see if– I’m working an experiment right now. How many of you identifies this, this, and this? The room was split in third. To the tee, each one of the three profiles.

Brad Weimert: Wild. Well, so I want to dig into that, specifically. And also, I want to highlight a couple of things. One is the depth of the avatar and how much that impacts, potentially, everything in your company, how you speak to them, what your advertising looks like, what kind of content you create, what your sales scripts are like, how you behave in general can be in better alignment if you have a better grasp, not just the external avatar, but sort of the psychographics, right? Who they are inside, how they think, how they behave, what they do, where their time goes. That’s a really valuable takeaway.

The other is that you are likely to have multiple avatars in your company. And so, like for us, I brought up that people do in a million year. Well, we have a huge chunk of clients that are doing much less than that, that are on the come up, on the upswing, but we don’t spend advertising dollars towards them. So, that avatar of a brand-new entrepreneur, a solopreneur that’s trying to get things done, how we built what we do with that information is going to be different, right? The outputs are going to be different. And it tells a different story internally of how we need to interact with them. So, I think it’s a really good exercise all the way across the board that adds a lot of value.

You brought up AI. It is 2024. I think we’re in sort of like the initial beginning seasons of crazy, ridiculous change, but it’s the first time ever where we’ve got a really functional robot to talk to, which is not– now, there are a bunch of them, right? These initial, big models, language-based models. How do you see AI impacting marketing agencies at large?

Chris Do: Whoa, I think, I sometimes watch channels on discovery about futurists talking about their predictions, and they ask them, and almost always, they say something very similar, which is what’s the biggest challenge of being a futurist? And the answer is something like, to not be limited by my human imagination, that everything I think can be done will be done faster and on an exponential scale, better than I think. And so, when you’re asking me, the longer the timeline for prediction, the crazier I have to be in terms of predicting what’s going to happen because humans tend to look at linear progression and say, well, it’ll be twice as good every two years, and so, by eight years, it would be 16 times as good, notably 64 times as good. It’s not even in the same kind of league.

So, how will the world of marketing change because of AI? I think it’s already changing right now. Not that long ago, you would literally need someone who’s schooled in facilitating a brand discovery. Building avatars for you would take sometimes multiple days. It could take months depending on the size of organization. You could spend tens of thousands into millions of dollars doing this, and then you arrive at a conclusion, and then you have to test it, and then you start to ideate on products.

So, what it’s done is it’s compressed this entire cycle from months to minutes, which is freaking crazy. You can ask it to generate copy ideas for you to build sample products and say, you can ask it to do things like, if Disney were running my company, what would they do? And you can generate ideas and brainstorm with potentially the smartest person you’ve ever talked to. And if you are good at prompting and making sure that the logic flows and you instructed not to make up data and not to hallucinate and you tell it to do those things and stick to data or things that can be cited and verified, you get some really amazing results.

And so, we see that there can be massive job displacement, but we also see a 10-person agency being able to do the work of 150 people, like a 15x in productivity. If the organization is nimble, if they are of like-minded people embrace and thrive change and they understand how to work with the data part and the communication aspect, so all of a sudden, skills that I think weren’t super valuable in the marketplace are going to become very valuable. Fields of study in humanities like philosophy, sociology, human behavior, cognitive sciences, communication, critical thinking, rhetoric, art history, just history in general, so that you can make references to things that the computer already knows but you don’t know, I think those skills are much more valuable, so the hiring of people to staff up in these marketing firms probably will change if they’re smart.

Having a person who studied 8 or 10 years of copywriting, you may need one person like that, but you don’t need a whole team of people like that, because that person can work with a different type of team to ensure that the copy is of a certain tone and there’s artistry in it, but it doesn’t need to be done by one person. It can be done in concert with people who don’t have the exact same skill set, but can leverage the intelligence of the machine to do this at scale.

Brad Weimert: What do you think the biggest mistake somebody can make with AI in marketing today?

Chris Do: Okay. Biggest mistake is to believe that it will just do the work for you, that you don’t have to do anything. And that’s what a lot of people do. The initial reaction I get from most of the people who try AI, who aren’t happy with the results, who dismiss it, it’s because they actually gave it really bad prompts. They didn’t understand how to give direction to people. And this would exist with human-to-human relationships. It’s just being done with a computer so the computer doesn’t know enough to ask you yet. It probably will very soon.

So, if you told one of your team members to go out and make a marketing campaign and that’s all you gave it or that person all the direction, what do you anticipate is the result of this? It’s probably pretty, pretty bad. You didn’t tell it for what audience, what the KPI was, what initiative that you’re wanting to launch. You didn’t give any parameters for what success looks like and you didn’t give that person permission to ask you questions, ask clarifying questions before they gave you an answer.

And I’ve done this experiment many years ago, pre-AI, I said to my class, like eager design students, they said, “Hey, everybody, I want you go out sign and come back with a leaf because we’re going to draw a leaf today.” And they all just laughed. I’m like, “Wait, wait, wait, wait. Did anybody ever stop to ask me what kind of leaf I want? What if I told you it had to be a Canadian maple leaf? You’d be out there for a long time before you came back, maybe days. But you’re so eager to take action that you haven’t stopped to think, what is the request that’s being made of me? Am I capable of doing it? And what parameters exist for success? You didn’t bother to ask questions, so we need to be much more inquisitive before we got there.”

So, marketing directors think, “Oh, just have Jimmy and Mary go make stuff.” Well, they’ll make stuff. You get that, but you won’t get something that’s good. So, I know that people have varying degrees of success, some bordering on brilliant. To some they’re like, yeah, that’s pretty bad AI, isn’t it? And so, what AI won’t do currently is they won’t give you what you don’t know what to ask for. So, when you learn how to ask the right way, it will give you exactly that. So, it’s a learning curve there. So, quality in, quality out, crap in, crap out.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. I think that for me, my general take on it at this moment, mid-2024, is it’s a tool to interact with, not somebody to delegate an outcome to. What is the biggest mistake you think you’ve made in building The Futur?

Chris Do: I think we’re going through right now, I think the biggest mistake that we’ve made is that information and the premium we put on information is racing towards zero. There’s a lot of people who say information is worthless at this point. And I was talking to one of my friends who was an educator at a university, and she pointed out something I thought was pretty insightful. She said, universities used to be the source of information. That’s where you went to learn. It wasn’t available anywhere. And now, the information is available everywhere, yet universities are still able to command a premium for what they do, especially the good ones. And it’s become where the curators of information now.

So, there are 3,000 books that you can read in marketing. Here’s the three and we’re going to have a deep discussion about it. So, we’ve read the thousand and we’ve decided these are the three you need to read. And we’ll help you go through it so that you can extract maximum value from it. So, the mistake that we’re making right now is we make information products as a way to make a living, but information is available everywhere.

And we’re actually contributing to our own demise, and that we produce ungated content, that is what we should be charging money for. And so, when people can’t keep up with the kind of content we’re producing, I think it’s impacting them and their ability to say, well, I can’t follow the stuff you give away for free, and I enjoy it. Why would I buy a course from you when I know I can’t even do that? Is it going to exponentially change my life such that I’m willing to give you my hard-earned money? So, we’re struggling with this right now because our friends who are in the information product space are all having challenges around selling purely information.

Brad Weimert: Interesting. Okay. So, God is a designer type ampersand ICON, but not really. How many f*cking hats do you have?

Chris Do: You are paying attention, Brad.

Brad Weimert: How many fucking hats do you have?

Chris Do: Too many.

Brad Weimert: I like the ICON hat. The ICON hat with it crossed off is fantastic.

Chris Do: Yeah, I love it.

Brad Weimert: No, it took me a while to figure out what was going on. And now, in this particular lighting, I can see it a little bit better, but how do you think about those hats playing into your personal brand?

Chris Do: Great question. For a long time, I didn’t wear a hat and I just thought I didn’t look good in them. It’s not because of any other reason. And I was at one of my students wedding and there was this– he’s a Filipino guy, and there was a guy walking around that just had the coolest style. Turned out he was the DJ and he was wearing a flat brim cap. And when I saw him wearing, I’m like, that’s how you wear a cap. So, I started wearing a cap for functional reasons, but then it became branding reasons. Functionally, it’s because I’m bald and I have a shiny head. I don’t have dry skin, so when the light hits it, it’s like a chrome ball.

And the story I always tell people is like, my team is very politely dancing around the subject that it’s too shiny, so they’re flagging off lights or adjusting things, so that just doesn’t become like a burning white spot on my head. And I see them moving things about. I’m like, “Guys, what’s the problem? Why aren’t we recording yet?” They’re like, “We’re just adjusting lights. Standby.” I said, “Would it be better for you guys if I wore a hat?” Like, “Yes, please. Thank you.” Then they moved all the lights back and everything was cool again. I just went out in my room, grabbed a hat, put it on.

And then one of the things that happens is when you do something consistently becomes part of your brand, so be careful what it is that you do. Because what I want to do is when you see me for a minute, absolutely– when you see me for a second, whether it’s on a stories or reels, I want you to quickly know that it’s me. Not just for my voice, not just for my glasses, but every part of it needs to be me. And I wanted to carry that into the real world because I’m an introvert. I enjoy talking to people, but I don’t know how to begin conversations with people. So, now that I appear a certain way on camera, I need to appear exactly the same way in person so that somebody down the street or at a conference will say, “Hey, Chris, we saw you from across the aisle away.” And that’s really critical for me from a branding recognition point of view.

And there’s a phrase I’m liking a lot now. It’s better to be weird or different than it is to be better. People focus too much on being better, but it’s better to be different. Indifferent is just another word to say weird. So, anything that makes you a little bit deviation from the norm helps you to stand out. So, initially, the cap that I wore was from a brand I love. It’s called G-Star. And it says Raw. And when we’re doing live streams, which is usually where people would see me, like, I’m coming in hot, I’m going to say what I’m going to say. I have a strong opinion, and you might feel raw about it afterwards. And so, people are like, “Great, except for when we see you, Chris, who says war and not raw because it’s flipped in the mirror.” I’m like, “Okay, I’m not promoting war, obviously. Let me try to change that.” So, then I bought this hat and it says Type. Literally, it’s Helvetica, it says Type, and I wore that hat. So, that’s the hat that I became known for.

And then somebody from the internet, a friend of mine reaches out and says, “Hey, I’ve got this company called God is a designer. Would you wear my cap? No obligation, but I’m going to send it to you.” I’m like, “Well, no obligation. If it’s not cool, I’m not going to wear it.” I get it. I’m like, “That’s cool. It’s Helvetica, justified left. I’m cool with this.” So, I start wearing the hat and that becomes the thing. I’m not even religious. That becomes a thing. I help his company. He’s a friend. It all works. So, now, I just have a rotation of different hats and it’s weird. You wear one hat for too long, and then that’s what everybody says, “That’s you now. It has to be you.”

So, the reason why I started wearing this hat, Brad, is because when I was traveling in Porto, my luggage was stolen. I lost half of my luggage. I lost a bunch of hats and clothing. So, I was capless. And I’m speaking. And so, I’ve got the shiny head syndrome. I’m like, “As early as possible, take me to some stores and I need to go find a new hat.” And this hat spoke to me because the brand Dsquared2, it says ICON. And I just felt like I can’t wear a hat that says ICON. That is a little bit too self-important, but what I realize is there are these Italian Canadians who have a sense of humor. And so, there’s some sarcasm irony in it. But I found the one with the tape on it, it spoke to me. So, I’m like, “I have to get this.” And now, this is the hat I wear all the time.

Brad Weimert: Did the hat come with the tape on it or do you put it on there?

Chris Do: 100% with the tape on it.

Brad Weimert: Oh, interesting. I thought you put it on.

Chris Do: Yeah, I mean, there are like probably three dozen hats on the shelf. I walked in there. I’m like, “That one. Can I have that one?” And I’ve tried applying tape to my other hats because I think it’s really cool, but the way this is fused on there, you can actually see some of the lettering through, but regular tape sits on top of the letters and it’s a different effect.

Brad Weimert: Yeah, totally wild.

Chris Do: This is fused in there.

Brad Weimert: Well, as a man with a mohawk, I get it. And as an introvert, also, I get it. There’s no question that if you have something that’s unique, people come to you to open dialog. And if you stand out, people come to you to open dialog. And again, be careful what you ask for. But from a business perspective and a connection perspective, there is no question that that is an asset. And then you get to do what you can to control that.

Chris Do: Yeah. Funny thing in the real world, when I wear that God is a designer hat as walking down the aisle way of a southwest flight, and on that flight, three different people talk to me and they had three very different reactions, which is exactly what I want. First one says, “Yes, he is.” Second person says, “Is she?” And the other one’s like, “Does God exist?” I’m like, “All three are welcome. And I’m willing to have conversation with you if you want to.” So, people assume that it means one thing, but it’s actually open to many interpretations. And it’s just a fun way to provoke a conversation, which I need help with.

Brad Weimert: Yeah, well, you want to amplify it more, wear a shirt that says I’m not religious while you’re wearing it.

Chris Do: Or atheist or something, right?

Brad Weimert: Yeah, totally. Totally, yeah.

Chris Do: And I would wear that too. I would totally do that.

Brad Weimert: Yeah, I love that. Chris Do, I appreciate you carving out time, man. It’s been awesome. It’s super fun talking to you. And I think there are a lot of good takeaways for people. You wrote a book called Pocket Full of Do, which I want to mention just because I like saying the title and I think it’s great, but where do you want to point people in general? What’s your CTA for this episode?

Chris Do: I would love for people who are interested in either personal branding or joining a coaching community of creative entrepreneurs to go look us up at TheFutur.com. It’s F-U-T-U-R, there’s no E at the end, so it’s TheFutur.com, and there’s a quiz that you can take and it will help you identify like what might be right for you. We call this the Success Roadmap. So, if you can go to that, that’d be awesome.

Brad Weimert: Love it, man. I appreciate it. Well, until next time.

Chris Do: Okay. Thank you very much, Brad.

Brad Weimert: Thank you, man.