Transcription
Most people are watching this because they want to better their personal brand, and in their mind, they want to better their persona online. Online allows us to magnify whatever it is we want to present to the world. So why don't we start with who we are? Too many people show up on social media to be that facade, not thinking that they need to go any deeper. There's a lot of room and opportunity for all of us to step up and say, "You know what? If 99% of the world is moving this way, that's an opportunity. If you just go this way, you're going to stand out."
The whole point of branding is to stand out, to differentiate yourself from others. There's a big gap between who you are and how you show up in the world. So what we want to do is just close the gap every single day, in every single way that we can.
Can you unpack how to discover more of who you are so that you have a more aligned personal brand?
Okay, before I answer that question, I think I have to address the elephant in the room, which is… I'm **Hey Department Family!** Omar here. Before we jump into this conversation, I just wanted to take a brief moment to pause for the cause and say thank you. This is episode 52, which means we've been doing the Department podcast for an entire year!
So whether this is your very first podcast that you're listening to or watching, I want to say thank you. It might be your 25th; it might be your 15th; it might be your 52nd! I also want to thank you. Without you, this wouldn't be possible, and my life has changed completely since starting this podcast. I'm grateful for you.
Excited to have back on the show Chris Doe, who, last year, our conversation got viewed over 500,000 times! So, personal branding guru, and I know you're going to get so much out of it. Thank you so much! Let's jump into that combo.
Chris, thank you for doing this episode 52! This is, you know, commemorative.
**Okay, yo, Chris! What's up?**
Omar: I'm going to include even the mess-up, but this is episode 52.
Chris: Yeah, crazy to look back. About a year from now, we had a conversation that I think, on YouTube, exposure-wise, had over 500,000 views. And then even from the clips that were cut from that, it really resonated with people on the hunt and search for personal branding, which I believe you're the face of that keyword.
Omar: Face. It's a good face.
Chris: Let's just start with the skincare routine. That was the number one comment. People were like, "50? How old are you?"
Omar: Sorry, yeah, to start with your age?
Chris: Yeah, I'm 52. But people were blown away.
Omar: What do you do?
Chris: I think people misread general vibe and style and age down, and that's a good thing because that means those are things we can change.
Obviously, when we think about genetics, there's not a lot you can do, but there are some basic things we all could do to preserve what we have. It’s much easier to do maintenance than it is to do repair. If we have a daily skincare routine that exfoliates, hydrates, moisturizes, and protects our skin from the sun, then you've done most of the work that you can do.
Turns out a lot of guys don't even do the basics. They literally throw water in their face and go to sleep. There are layers of oil and dirt. When I went to see a dermatologist, they talked about this: when you're younger, you grow a new skin suit every single day. Within 24 hours, you have a new skin suit.
So think about it: if you don't take care of what's happening here, a new layer builds above or below, and that's why you get blackheads and all kinds of skin problems. As you grow older, it takes longer. It will now be like a new skin suit every three days. You want to exfoliate less because then you're doing too much damage and your skin cannot repair itself.
I remember when I was in my early 30s, my older brother, who's four years older, said, "You need to take care of the wrinkles right now! I'm starting to see lines on your face!" I hadn't seen it myself, but he could feel that it was coming. So from that point forward, I started to do a little moisturizing around the eyes because anywhere where it's dry and thin, you have to protect and moisturize.
There you go, see? People got value already off of this, right from the drop!
Omar: Man, you know what you could do? You could take that and create a framework out of that.
Chris: Layers, dude. There's going to be a carousel coming!
Omar: Yeah, no, I mean, there was something that you brought up because we're in Downtown LA. Thanks for driving on a Friday.
Chris: Yep, beautiful studio.
Omar: Yeah, this is cool. This worked out.
Chris: Make up for the last video, right?
Omar: Yeah, people hated on the latter, which I'm like, I actually hid it. It's not in the shot anymore, so congratulations, you guys…won the internet!
Chris: You said this studio is so Hollywood, and I asked why do you say that? You said because it's literally bare minimum. When you get up close to it, it isn't as cool or as real as it looks from a distance.
I know the shot looks tight; your shot looks amazing. I gave you the better shot—you're welcome. But I think there's a correlation there as far as how people build their brands. There could be superficial.
I think most people who are starting out, they go superficial. This is where I really wanted to talk about the depth. You really connect, like: self-discovery when it comes to personal branding. I think what it is: you said personal brand is a process of discovering who you are. Can you break that down?
Yeah, I can. I want to address the LA comment before I get any hate from everybody. LA is the entertainment capital of the world. It's about facades and appearances. We're also known for plastic and plastic surgery.
So when you look at the studio on camera, it's going to look great as it's built to the standard in which it needs to be, but not one inch more. If you pan the camera up, you'll see unfinished edges or things that look a little funky to our human eye. But it's not going to show up on the camera.
So I applaud whoever built the studio and designed it because they knew what it's going to be intended for. It's not meant for you to live here; it's just meant to look good on camera, and they're very thoughtful in their design. So it served its purpose.
But if you were to try to live here, if you leaned against the wall, it would probably fall over. So it's all set and designed for optics.
Now, let's connect that to personal brand. Unfortunately, too many people show up on social media to be that facade, not thinking that they need to go any deeper. That's usually where the problem happens.
So when you meet somebody in real life, or you go over to their house, or you hang out with them for any period of time, or you take them out of their zone of comfort, they fall apart really quickly. It looks good from far, but it's far from good.
That's the thing that we're trying to work against, and I think there's a lot of room and opportunity for all of us to step up and say, “You know what? If 99% of the world is moving this way, that's an opportunity. If you just go this way, you're going to stand out.”
The whole point of branding is to stand out—to differentiate yourself from others. And what's funny is because it's like, it does take explanation. You could stand out for the wrong reasons.
When you hear personal branding, maybe in this context, people are saying online, but it's before online. Who are you? Because, online allows us to magnify whatever it is we want to present to the world.
So why don't we start with who we are? Now I'm going to grab my phone, not because I want to check messages, but I came across this account on Instagram, and they were showing quotes from Carl Jung, the psychotherapist. It so resonated with me, so I’m just going to read a few of the Carl Jung quotes.
“I didn't even know the privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.” That's one—I love that!
“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”
“Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside awakes.”
And I got one more for you: “To be normal is the ultimate aim of the unsuccessful.”
What we're doing as a society is trying to be normal—to fit in—because being ostracized or left out or not included is very painful for most of us.
To not feel like we have a place where we feel like we belong is so painful that we're willing to subjugate our true selves, internally and externally.
I think that's a shame because we wake up one day, we’re 40, 50, or 60 years old, and we have to ask ourselves, "Who am I, and what was I supposed to be doing?" Because my best years are behind me. Now I'm looking at the twilight of my life, the fall season of my life, and I'm still lost and still searching.
It's a sad thing.
I love that. It's like something that naturally happens to me is when I hear other people's truths, my brain goes to what I know from scripture.
There is a scripture Jesus says: “If you want to find your life, lose it. If you want to keep your life, you'll lose it.” Then another thing Jesus says is, “If you want to be the greatest, be the greatest servant.”
It's called kingdom paradigms because the kingdom's upside down. So many times, if you want to be first, go last. And if you try to go first, you'll become last regardless.
It's kind of introspective.
You have a framework when it comes to discovering self, and that is authenticity. What is it? I wrote it down for you.
Chris: I got you. You tell me.
Omar: You got me? Authenticity, empathy, and logic.
Chris: Oh, okay! That is not a framework for…
Omar: What did you say? For finding yourself or a framework for personal branding?
Chris: Oh, okay. That's the pyramid. It's called the Trust Pyramid, and it was coined by two women for a Harvard Business Review article. I'm spacing on their names right now—through due diligence and research, it's going to be right there.
So they said that if you want to have a high trust factor, there's a couple things you need to do.
One is, you have to be authentic; the person that shows up is the same person when the cameras are off and no one’s around.
There's a big gap between who you are and how you show up in the world. So what we want to do is just close the gap every single day in every single way that we can.
The next thing is, “do we feel like you're looking out for people?” That’s an empathy thing—it’s like, “Do I feel like you’ve got my best interests at heart?” Because if you do, then I'm going to give you more trust.
That's good!
The last thing is logic. And by logic, it means: do you have a way of thinking that's easy to follow? So if we look at the trust triangle and we remove one component, we start to see, like, “Oh, that’s not great.”
When we think of salespeople, do expert salespeople appear to be authentic? Maybe we don't know. Do we feel like they have our best interests at heart? Definitely not. They're logical, like “If you do these four steps, you'll make a million dollars.”
So that's what they're missing.
You can take pretty much everybody that you have funny feelings about and ask yourself which one of these three things feels off. A lot of people are logical and feel as if they're looking out for us, but we question, "Is that really you?"
That’s the problem: people who are too manicured, people who are too curated in their lives. We get a little suspicious.
This is a weird thing because we aspire to be more perfect, right? But in that pursuit of trying to be more perfect, we break trust.
The person who comes at you dressed in plain clothes, who's very honest and humble about what car they came in or how they're struggling with putting things together or maybe they got a bad relationship—they're dealing with abuse or alcohol or something like that—you automatically think that they must be more authentic.
Well, versus the person who comes in with perfect teeth, and their skin’s glowing, everything's all put together—even though they've given us no reason not to trust them, we start to say, like, "Something is off; I don't know why. You're just too perfect!"
For sure, yeah!
How have you—because you started creating content at 42, right?
Yeah, um, or posting content, I think. I think we're always creating, but as far as being intentionally posting…
How have you given yourself the permission to be who you are without waiting for somebody else to give you that permission?
Yes, that's a good question! I came upon this concept from someone who's deep in the metaphysical woo world, right? He's a channeler, and he talked about how we all are looking for permission slips.
It's the first time I heard it used that way. I was thinking, "Is that true?" And it turns out that’s kind of true for a lot of people.
We won't start something unless someone gives us permission. We won't change our habits or do something different because we're waiting for someone to give us permission.
So the key or unlock in life is to give yourself permission to do whatever it is you're supposed to be doing. Stop waiting around, because you could wait for the rest of your life, and you wind up being a waiter.
We don’t want to do that; we want to be persons who have a strong bias towards action.
Somewhere along in my life, probably my early 20s, I found design as my calling card—like, my thing, my zone of genius—and I'm working that space. As soon as you find that thing that you're really good at, start to build your entire identity around that because it's a really strong foundation.
And from that, I can branch outwards. It doesn't need to be a skill that people pay you money for; it could just be a conviction of your beliefs as you have.
I find that people who are very religious, who are convicted in their faith, have a really strong house to build on.
They stop wanting to prove anything to anybody, and they can exist just for the sake of existing. Then, they become, oddly enough, very attractive—not in a physical, like, lustful way—but attractive, like there’s a vibe, there's an aura about you that I like, and I don’t know why, but I'm just drawn to you.
Powerful speakers, pastors, teachers, mentors, those kinds of people tend to be very magnetic and draw people towards them.
Yeah, so that's the kind of thing I'm talking about.
Yeah, no, it's really good—I think there is something about—it’s very attractive when you give your gift away. Like, we've been gifted with something, and because you see the world from that point of view or you've obsessed over that thing, people haven't taken the time to obsess over it and people appreciate that.
I actually think that's the goal, honestly, of life: to figure out that thing, and then just give it away!
Like homie said…
Omar: Are you talking about Jesus or what?
Chris: Oh no, the guy's tweet you read.
Omar: Oh, Carl Jung!
Chris: Yeah, sorry! Carl… the great Carl Jung is reduced to "homie"!
**Hey Department Fam!** I wanted to take a brief break from this conversation. I hope you're enjoying it as much as I am. The first thing I wanted to talk about is that did you know that 75% of the people that watch this podcast on YouTube actually aren’t subscribed?
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And number two, if you can hit that subscribe button, that would be amazing!
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If you've been desiring to either get your business and brand more exposure or grow a YouTube channel—whatever it is when it comes to video—I would encourage you to jump into the Content to Cash Challenge. We'll be sure to post the link to the challenge down in the show notes or the description.
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So I'll see you on the Content to Cash Challenge! Now, let's jump back into the conversation!
Yeah, I think some people though, they’re not, because there's a buzzword, and that's like "niche." I don't want to niche myself down!
I think it's because people feel like they need to be a generalist.
Yeah, I think we can park on this idea of the gift—okay?
There's a great and powerful quote from Picasso. I'm not sure if I shared it with you last time. If I did, just bear with me:
“This is Picasso.” He says, “The meaning of life is to discover your gift”—part one; that's a big one—“and the purpose of life is to give it away.”
And then I’d like to add: "You are the gift."
So there are three parts: What is the gift? Give it away; and only to discover you don't need to find something—it’s within you! And you’re the gift!
I think we are all designed, created, evolved to have a very unique set of skills, and our journey through life is to figure out what that is.
I kind of look at it like this: there's a story I'm telling now, so I'm going to tell you and your audience the story.
Now I want you to imagine this idea, and it's a crazy idea—just go with me!
The idea is this: you're actually not human. The rest of us were human, but you're an alien from another planet—not from south of the border or anything—you’re from another planet.
On this planet, they were facing a cataclysmic event, and so your parents had the foresight to predict that this was going to happen and wanted to send you off to save you.
Before they could save the rest of society, the whole planet imploded. But you were sent to a planet somewhere in the universe that would give you inherent strengths and advantages, and you land on Earth.
Then you’re discovered by human parents who don’t know what to do with you. Like, “Who's this little alien boy or girl?” They raise you with human ideas and weaknesses and conventions.
You grow up just like a human, but in fact, you have superhuman strength. You have superhuman capacity to do things that no human can do. You can think faster; you can see farther; you can do more.
But you forgot, and that’s the problem.
And if the story format sounds familiar, it’s the story of Superman—Superman was from a planet Krypton. On Krypton, every being is the same. He’s sent to Earth because the yellow sun gives Superman all his powers, and he is raised by human parents and is taught to be very human.
The interesting thing is the way Clark Kent hides himself in public is he’s fumbling, cowardly, nearsighted, and kind of an idiot. When the real Kal sheds his earthly uniform and switches into his Kryptonian uniform, he is one of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.
Here’s the problem: you are Cal, but you just forgot, and you’re living like Clark.
That’s the problem. So we have to go and figure out our gift. We have to go and rediscover what it is that we have that’s so powerful that we do better than just about anybody on Earth.
Sadly, very, very small percentage of people understand that that's the game.
Even fewer are able to find it, and once you find it, it’s really powerful stuff.
Right now, most people are watching this because they want to better their personal brand, and in their mind, they want to better their persona online—that's their point of view.
But you’ve been on, I think, this year has been “Who are you?”
Can you unpack how to discover more of who you are so that you have a more aligned personal brand?
Okay, before I answer that question, I think I have to address the elephant in the room, which is… I'm trying to really help people live more in alignment with who they are towards their highest purpose and their passion and to unbundle a lot of the socialized norms of how we're supposed to show up with a persona.
Carl Jung describes the ego as the thing that regulates between our shadow self (our true self) and the persona—the person we show up to be to be accepted by society.
Especially if you're raised here in the West, in America, there's a lot of fitting in to be part of the pack because there’s safety in numbers. We get that!
Every time I feel outside of the pack, I feel very unsafe, unwelcome, and super awkward as heck. So there are natural survival skills that are kicking in, that are thousands or hundreds of thousands of years in development, that we just have to realize we don’t live in those scarce times anymore.
Our survival isn't at risk, but we're still behaving like this unevolved person.
There's an artist who sent me a series of paintings, and he had this really beautiful poem. I forget his name right now, but he has this beautiful poem: "Be you till full! Beautiful! Be you till full!"
I was like, "Wow, that is—a bar!"
That's what Mo would say.
I think there's something about this. And if this message is resonating with you, if it stirs your heart and your soul, please lean into this conversation because I am going to take you on a very different path.
What I feel like 99% of the people who are in the personal branding coaching space are saying that this, I think on the surface, is going to be hard for you to hear, but on a deeper level, it should resonate with your soul, because all I'm asking you is to be more of you.
That's what I'm asking.
That's really good. The obstacle is that life feels like we need permission to be fully us, and we're looking for permission to be okay with who we are.
How do you remove the need for that?
Okay, more than just saying it’s okay to be you.
So we need permission, right? I think what's happened is our parents raised us with good intentions—most of them—with full of love and the desire to protect us and to lead us away from hurting ourselves and other people.
What we learned early on is if you want to pick your nose, they're like, “Don’t do that!” If you wanted to cut a fart or something, they're like, “No, no!”
So we start to get cultured or socialized into behaving normal, like everyone else.
There was something that was good about that, but then all of a sudden, there’s a dark side to this. I would say one word I think about is **programmed.**
Even “programmed” is a good word.
Yeah, programmed to be a certain way, or to be safe, or to not create discomfort for yourself or for other people.
It’s this really weird thing like we’re trying our best to be normal—like when you're misbehaving, when you're acting weird, somebody’s like, “Dude, why can’t you just be normal?”
And I went to the dictionary because I think words are powerful—words shape worlds!
When you look up the word “normal,” it kind of means like average, the standard. That seems okay on the surface, except for I remember in art school when you would create something, the worst thing that an instructor can say to you as a creator is not, “This is a piece of garbage!” or “I don’t get it! This is stupid! That was too wild! It didn’t work!”
The worst insult to me would be to say, “Yeah, it’s kind of average!” To love it or hate it is better, but the worst thing is to be average—to be normal—the standard.
In that, in the art world, the creative world, that’s a very painful word to hear.
But yet, in normal, polite society, it’s like we’re trying to do that. We’re trying to be normal; we’re trying to be average. And branding, in personal branding, is about differentiation.
What makes you different? What makes you unique?
You, by your shape, size, tone of your voice, your heritage, your parents’ story, your story—that's special!
But what we do is we take an eraser and we scrub all that away so that we’re normal. I think that's the tragedy.
**That's really good! What do you think about me? Am I normal?**
I don't know, that’s funny that I didn’t come up in the last conversation.
Omar: I’m throwing a curveball here!
Chris: I don't think you're normal. I think you're embracing all the parts of you.
You talk a lot about your faith; you embrace fashion as part of your identity, and you're doing some pretty atypical things.
You're mixing certain pants with boots and a cap, and beard. You’re not easy to put into a category or box, right? That’s cool!
You mentioned a quote Steve Jobs said: the goal of branding.
When we think about great brands, you think of Apple. He had a great point about what the goal of a brand is to begin with.
We have to realize we can argue about whether or not Apple has a great brand. It’s hard to argue that they’re a three trillion-plus company—the first trillion-dollar company, and now we’re three trillion dollars. So they’re doing something right!
Also, from a retail perspective, they make more money per square foot than Tiffany’s makes per square foot, and that’s hard to fathom, because, wow! They sell jewelry!
I came across this clip on social media—it’s an old interview. Steve Jobs was still a young man, and they asked him what brand or branding is.
He says, “Well, let me just make it real simple for you. Branding is trust. It’s how you build trust.”
He goes, “Think of it as a trust bank.”
He says, “Every time somebody has a positive experience with your product or service, if there’s a problem that goes wrong, how are you able to help them?”
He thinks, “At Apple, we are not thinking weeks or days. We’re thinking about minutes. How quickly can we resolve this for our customer?”
When you do that right, you make a deposit in the trust bank. Conversely, if your products fall apart, it's frustrating on any level; your customer service response takes too long—it’s a withdrawal from the trust bank.
So he goes, “At Apple, we don’t talk about branding; we don’t care about that. What we care about is obsessing over making amazing products and delighting the customer along the entire customer journey.”
That’s how we build our brand.
I just love that!
Maybe branding is building trust at scale. That’s really good!
I love the idea of the bank part because there is a financial upside to building a personal brand that takes care of your needs and, even more so, potentially becomes more lucrative.
When it comes to the idea of building trust and asking, "How do you gauge that?" I’ve heard you talk about 911.
Yeah, let’s go back to the trust bank. Every time you ask, it’s a withdrawal.
One thing I didn't mention is like a bank account—over time, if you consistently make deposits, it compounds with interest. It’s not a linear thing, right? It compounds; it grows exponentially.
What you want to do is you want to leave as much trust in the bank as possible and to make as few withdrawals as possible. The reason why some of your brands are culturally bankrupt is because you give, and you ask; you give and you ask—so there’s literally nothing to compound.
Let me give you a piece of value: sign up for my webinar! Sign up for my webinar! I'm going to upsell you! Upsell—go into my mastermind! Mastermind—go join the platinum club!
It’s just—it’s non-stop!
I'm very allergic to this myself; I'm like, “Woo! I know the game! I can see where it's going to go.” Obviously, it works on lots of people, but I can see it…it's super transparent to me.
On the flip side, artists are very good at doing this—“I’m going to give value, value, value,” up until this point. They’re bankrupt and living at home now, so what we’re trying to do is to find a pragmatic, practical way for you to build trust at scale while putting food on the table.
We need to balance those two things because we want to play this game for as long as possible. We're trying to play the infinite game.
The way that we do this is we say, “You know what? If people aren't engaging with your content, if they're not responding or following, and you don’t feel like you have that connective tissue—you’re not building any community—it’s because your social accounts have gone comatose! The body is blue; no one’s breathing; the signs of life are low.
At least here in America, if there’s an emergency, somebody’s breaking into your place or your grandma’s falling down and not getting up, you call 911. Don’t call Life Alert; you call 911!
This is your operator: “911, what’s your emergency?”
“Uh, my brand sucks! No one cares! I just keep posting and it feels like it’s cruel and unusual punishment.”
So let's break it down.
911 is just a mnemonic for you to remember something. Create nine pieces of value. Give wholeheartedly without any expectations or asking of anything.
Just give! Teach! Improve someone’s life! Make them laugh! Give them a hack! Do something. Provide value!
And then if you do that for too long—which is what creatives, like myself, do—it creates a feeling of mistrust. Like, “Why is this person just giving value all the time? There must be some play that I can’t see, and I'm not seeing the person behind it.”
So I'm not making an emotional connection; it’s just faceless, educational product.
The one is for one thing—something that’s personal, something that’s weird, something that shows you in your light.
If you like Dungeons and Dragons, do that! If you like doing cartwheels or break dancing, include that!
I’ve seen this in my own account. I teach, and they get pretty good engagement—not through the roof. Then I show up and do a dance or weird pose or just do something silly, twerk… and then there it goes!
Well, we haven't done that yet!
Come on, kid!
There’s nothing to twerk back there; that’s just work!
Those reels get hundreds of thousands of views; so that’s an order, four or five times the analytics that I’m getting from the other stuff.
The engagement—the last part is now, “Okay, we’ve shown personality; we’ve given tons of value. Well, now you can ask for something.”
You can ask for people to join your mastermind, to buy a product and info product or to attend a workshop or just to do a meetup with you. You’ve earned the right to ask, and now you can ask unabashedly, and you don’t have to disguise it in a piece of content or value.
We’ve created so much value that today, I don’t even care. I will do ten posts asking for people to buy stuff, and no one’s mad at me. They’re still highly engaged because they feel the bank is so full I can pull a little bit out!
I think people get excited that you asked.
Yes, you're right!
Get excited for reminding me of that!
Thank you for the opportunity!
We wanted to support you!
I was just like, “Tell us how.”
I think of this: if you make a billion dollars—if you have a billion dollars in the bank account—that gets you on a pretty low-risk, high-return account. You could probably make 8%.
So what's 8% of a billion? Like, $100 million?
So that would be like $80 million!
**Can you live comfortably on $80 million a year?**
**Omar:** $100 million!
Oh, you want $100 million? No, I'm just kidding! $80 million!
So once the trust account has grown to such a degree, you're riding on the residual income or interest of the trust account.
I’ve been doing content for 10 years—very little of it has been asking anybody for anything in any serious way.
I feel like I’ve gotten permission and encouragement from the community and the fans to ask for as much as you want. That’s what I do now.
I think something that allows people—this is why something I’ve been talking about this year is that people over 40 should start creating content.
It’s because a lot of people in their 2.0 era in life have leverage. They have something already kind of paying the bills so that they can give without asking.
You actually create from a euphoric place because it’s like there’s no transaction. There’s nothing to ask for.
Did you have leverage when you started creating content at 42, and what was it? Was it like your agency and stuff?
Well, I see what you’re saying. I didn’t think of it as leverage.
I think what you’re talking about is credibility. So I’m 42 at that point, so I’m 20 years into service work—probably $60-70 million in buildings at that point cumulatively.
I know what I'm talking about, and I’m not saying I needed to leverage that because we didn’t talk that much about the agency.
I just wanted to create content. I’m at a point once you’re in your 40s, I think you start to know who you are, and you’re giving fewer Fs about what people think.
So I'm just working from that place. I’m going to make content; it might help some people, it might not, but it's not for you; it's for me.
I’ve worked 20-plus years making someone else happy; now I’m going to make myself happy!
I didn’t trade in a commercial client paying me lots of money to then have a lot of faceless internet jockeys—keyboard warriors telling me now what to do. I don't want that boss for this boss. That's a much worse boss!
So I’m going to show up for me now, and the cool part is some people like it, and some people don’t. I’m cool with that.
I don’t know why people want to take the time to tell me how to walk off a bridge. I get it; I’m not for you—find whoever works for you.
The best part for me as a creator is when those people who wrote you off come back. It's like, "You know, it took me two years, but I was wrong about you! I get what you’re doing now, and I’m a really big fan!"
Welcome back! Thanks for giving me the opportunity to win your trust.
At what point do you see the audience that you've created online?
Okay, let me just backtrack a little bit.
I like to say there are two ways to build an audience online:
1. By building a media company where the goal is mass viewership, and then you sprinkle in some ads or you get sponsored or AdSense or something like that—brand deals.
2. The other side is like the marketing engine for a business.
Where do you find yourself on that tandem?
Omar: I feel like you cracked the code on, like, right in the middle.
Chris: Yeah, but I think my answer to that is yes.
We make money in a lot of different buckets.
No one bucket is the all-end-all and be-all.
I looked at our stats from YouTube: ten years in, we've grossed a million dollars from AdSense, which is like—what?! A million dollars from AdSense? Can you even believe that?
Omar: I can’t!
Chris: I know! Mr. Beast is like, “That’s a day!”
Omar: You know your RPM, though; it’s probably pretty good!
Chris: Yeah!
I was just shocked! I’m like, “Dang!” And you never know because it’s a couple dollars here, a couple dollars there.
There are people that will not make a million dollars in 10 years, and you did it pouring out!
Isn’t that so cool? Incredible!
That is the most beautiful form of passive income!
If I was doing it by myself and didn’t have a family, that was pretty good money!
I remember when I was a kid—like 18 years old—saying, “One day I’d like to make a million dollars.”
Yeah, and making stupid YouTube videos—I did it by accident about pricing! You just do it by accident! How cool is that?
We also do brand deals, and some of our brand deals are six figures.
We have courses that people buy that have generated a million dollars—multi-million dollars for us!
I do coaching, and I run communities, and I do private, one-on-one coaching and public speaking.
All of it is built on the engine of goodwill! So good!
If you can live this way, why wouldn’t you do it?
And you get to help people!
I go on stages, Omar, and I tell people, "I’m sorry, but I’m going to tell you I have the best job in the world! I get paid a lot of money to help people achieve their dreams!"
So good!
I think it's crazy because something that blows me away is people who have followed my content and my stuff for a while come up to me and they say thank you.
You know, I’m in the journey of entrepreneurship, and the thing that goes through my mind is they're thanking me for finding them!
Or like, I was marketing my business, and you thanked me for it!
You know what I’m saying?
It’s kind of like, it’s the best thank you for marketing your business is essentially what they're saying, right?
Yeah, if you do it the right way!
Let me explain that in marketing for some people.
Okay, yeah. Most businesses look at the cost per acquisition—CPAC or something like that—and lifetime customer value.
So they go against the lifetime customer value that might be $3,000, so they can spend up to $2,000 to buy the customer in ads and incentives and bonuses and things like that.
I say, “It’s cool; that's a business fundamental. You’re looking at that.”
I said, “How cool would it be if people actually paid you to market to them?”
So they can become your customer!
That’s the beauty of what we’re doing right now!
Somebody asked me before, “What’s your ad spend?”
I’m like, “I don't know! Is it that bad?”
I messaged my team like, “What have we spent?”
And they're like, “$222,000!”
I’m like, “$22,000?!”
They're like “No! A year!”
They spend $100,000 a month or $200,000 a month.
It’s not an easy, quick solution to anybody. I just want to be clear about that—it’s ten years of showing up day after day, week after week, consistently giving.
You don’t have to pay for anything!
When we send an email to announce a product—like, “Yay!”—that’s how it is!
So good!
I found the way you've chosen to show up is very—I'm going to teach, I’m going to have a conversation, and we're just going to turn on some cameras.
I like to say you be the content; you don’t make the content.
And that’s been resonating really well!
Your long-form videos do really well, and is there a reason why you went that route as opposed to…?
I think what it does is it gives people permission to just turn on cameras because you’re probably already teaching.
You’re probably already having conversations, but you don’t really do like direct-to-camera as much.
Type stuff?
Yeah, the cool thing about if you love to teach—which is my core identity—and I didn’t understand that until I went down this path.
I thought it was always my core identity as a graphic designer. But it’s really as an educator.
I love having conversations with people. It's stimulating. I’m always looking for a good problem to solve because I feel like they learn, and I learn twice as much because they’re asking me a really good question.
I’m starting to think like, “How would I solve that problem?” It’s an opportunity to play!
I just wish there were more cameras on me when these things were happening.
Because these spontaneous conversations are so fun and valuable and different.
It allows me to go into areas that aren't scripted, obviously, but just a natural flow in conversation that I just really enjoy.
So we’re trying our best to create those moments for people on the internet to see.
I always feel like when we get in the studio, and the whiteboards are up and we turn the cameras on—it's like, "What are we talking about today?"
It feels constructed.
I try my best to be as natural as possible, but it's not as natural as you and me on the side of the road after eating tacos together and saying, “Hey, what are you thinking about X?”
We just talk!
Those are the kinds of things I'm hoping the next year is about.
Now I want to date this episode—I want to date this episode because some have argued that the reason why Trump won over Kamala is because he was willing to go on these long-format rallies, unscripted interviews, but most importantly, these three-hour podcasts.
Yep!
It's hard to hide who you are in three hours of talking!
If you’re evasive, people see you’re evasive! If you’re funny, if you’re interesting, intelligent, or whatever and likable, people vote for you!
Now, I’m not saying I wanted one outcome or the other on camera, but there’s something to take note about this.
I’m shocked as anybody that our long-form content outperforms our short-form content because that’s not the trend!
The trend is the exact opposite!
In truth, I was sitting at this summit for creators, and they said it’s the return of long-form content. Long-form is getting its due again, which is awesome for people like me!
Yeah, dude, so good!
I mean, even like—yeah, I saw he played golf for an hour and some with Bryson DeChambeau, and it speaks to—I’m glad I started a podcast a year ago, that’s all I’m saying, you know?
But yeah, I think it’s so easy to say, “Yo, here are three tips for one, two, three,” and so you get XYZ.
But like, “Hey, can you talk for 30, 45 minutes on the thing that maybe you’ve spent your life obsessing over more than the average person?”
I think I’ve been trying to unpack that because I've been—I don’t want to say I called it out, but something I noticed early was like the overstimulating content is just getting overplayed.
People just want human! They like—we still want to consume like we’re listening to a person or watching a person.
I think the classroom—I think if you are a teacher, it is a huge opportunity right now to just teach. People want to learn.
Maybe that's a larger factor of the larger pattern that we're seeing.
We're going from fast food, fast culture, fast fashion, fast living to slow eating and slow living—taking time to talk to each other.
I think it’s an important moment in human history as everything's speeding up—AI and social and internet and all that kind of stuff—maybe what we really want is just to reconnect.
I’m a big fan of science fiction series, and “Dune” is one of my favorites. In the Dune universe, AI has been banned. Thinking machines have been banned!
So maybe that's our future! And there are these people called the Mentats, and they have a mental ability to calculate super difficult things—they’re basically human computers.
We no longer use the machines or trust machines, and they've been outlawed.
It’s kind of an interesting thing that maybe that’s a reflection of things to come, but we’re maybe experiencing some of those things today.
**Do you have a framework for creating a talk or a teaching?**
Because you’re really good at teaching!
I do, actually! I call it—it’s like a five-step recipe. Five is the magic number!
Despite what Schoolhouse Rock says, it’s not three—it’s five!
Take any concept, chunk it down to five components. What are the five key components that you need to be able to execute that?
Within each of the five, chunk it down until you get to your first actual step.
It forces you to organize and prioritize the things that are most important. Like, "What are the five things that someone needs to know to produce really good video, Omar?"
“Alvs, that's four: audio, lighting, visual, video setup, post!”
Okay, and then people are like, “Well, audio—tell me about audio.”
Then you would chunk that down to five, and you keep chunking it down until it’s like, “Okay, here’s my first actionable step.”
I can do that!
I find that sometimes when you do three or seven—that's too many steps, it gets overwhelming.
We can’t remember seven!
Three is oversimplification, and you have to make hard decisions about does it belong in group two or group one.
So five seems to be the magic number, so chunk things into five and then work off that!
That’s game!
Do you know what the effective span of management is?
I’ve never heard those words put together!
Okay! It’s about the rule of delegation! You can effectively manage five people on one hand. There’s the five thing again!
Right? This is why there’s middle management and the way government is structured. One person has five C-suite executives, and those five C-suite executives have five VPs or SVPs.
Then they keep doing that, so we can all manage effectively about five people.
This is a business management concept.
That's good!
So it’s not all that different; when you get to seven or 17, you're not managing interests anymore; it's like a house on fire at that point!
That's really good!
Have there been any key books you read to be—or I don't know—like resources that you're good at drawing?
I read a book called “Draw to Win” because I want to be good at drawing.
Are you good?
No!
Are you winning?
I'm not winning!
What I’ve learned—the principle of the book is any kind of visual is better than no visual, okay?
Because most people are visual learners, and some, by drawing a stick figure, it’s better than saying, “Let’s just say you are—draw the stick figure.”
I don’t know!
Well, before we invented words, we invented pictographs. Think of the hieroglyphics, right? They're ways of representing a story. The caves in Lascaux that they discovered were stories of what happened that day—the mammoth, or the fire, or whatever it is that they drew.
That's kind of really interesting!
I love to draw! I’ve been drawing all my life and I’m also trained to draw from going to a formal art school and doing figure drawing and just consuming comic books and looking at panel design structures.
It’s an excellent way to tell stories visually!
What are your top three things from 10 years of creating content as you go into your next 10 years of creating content?
Top three things?
Top… I’m so sorry, top five!
Now you're putting me on the spot!
**Number one thing that I think I’ve learned?** I’m just going to freestyle this, okay?
I don’t know if I’m going to land on five. Number one thing is when you stop making ads, people will start showing up.
Number two is to put in the time and intention behind your content. If you’re going to do an hour’s worth of content, it’s roughly ten hours of prep.
The way I used to do this—pre-pandemic—was I would ask my team, “What are the relevant hot burning issues that you want to know about or our community wants to know about?”
Having interacted with the fan base, they would put a bunch of topics down, and I would say, “This one’s interesting! Let me circle this. Let’s have a conversation about it.”
We would do it in real-time; I would just try and solve the problem—see where they’re stuck—and that would become the blueprint or the outline for the call or the talk we’re going to have the next day!
Literally, that’s what I did.
I said, “You guys, can you take pictures of this, send it to me? I’m going to go home; I’ll work on the deck. I’ll organize this sequence in a way that makes sense.”
The way that I like to do it is I said, “What is it I want them to know and be able to do and to feel about doing it? How will I know they know how to do it?”
We’re going through this very pedagogical teacher rubric stuff, and then I would then organize information. I would say, “If I don’t know what I know, where does this break for me?”
I try to design it like inventing the rules to the game.
I’m fascinated by game design—like the person who invented Monopoly or chess. How do they find the rules?
They were looking for ways to make it fun. Open but both people understand within very rigid parameters.
There’s a lot of flexibility in how you play the game. That’s brilliant game design!
So you can think about teaching on YouTube or in person: “What are the rules? What are the variables? How does this fail?”
You design for ways to box them in, but you give them a lot of room to play in between!
Dungeons and Dragons is arguably one of the best board games ever invented.
The thing is you can play many different ways. There’s no wrong way, but there’s just ways that are just more fun.
I think that’s an awesome thing.
**So stop making ads. Put the time and attention behind the work.**
**Number three is practice your craft of delivery.**
You know Phil Feris—Bueller’s Day Off!
The teacher is like, “Anyone?”
“Anyone?”
“No one!”
You don’t want to be monotone in your delivery!
Good!
You don’t want to be bombastic the entire time; you want to have a flow between high energy, mid-energy, and maybe sometimes like some quiet.
The mixture, the variety of that is dependent on each person and their own individual style, but it is what keeps it interesting!
Let’s make an analogy here: if a dish came out, and you had multiple dishes that had the exact same flavor profile, it's all spicy and hot and all had the same texture and color and mouthfeel, I don’t care how good it is—you eventually get bored of it.
So when you have a salad, and I like to eat salads—really good salads are hard to come by! They understand we need something savory or something that's umami; we need to have a little crunch factor; we need to have something soft and buttery, like avocado.
You can do rock salt on top of it, and we need something that has acid in it, tomatoes, vinegar, something like that.
When you eat that, even though you're not consuming a lot of calories, you feel satiated!
That's really important!
You feel like you had a meal!
So when you think about your presentation of the materials, you want them to be satiated when they’re done.
Here’s what we do: we have three components to it.
Component number one is you telling them what's the big idea.
The big idea is personal branding is building trust at scale. It compounds daily; put as much value in as possible—that’s the big idea.
So high-level thinkers are like, “Got it! I don’t need to watch the video. I might keep it on because it might entertain me.”
Number two is you tell a story! Like, “Steve Jobs did this; then he said that; and then this happened, but then that happened…”
The last thing is you just do a recap with a framework, if you can, or an exercise for people to do.
Here’s your takeaway, everybody: ask yourself, “What brands have earned your trust consistently over time?” Distill down the three things they've done that have impacted you, and see how you can abstractly apply those to your life and your business.
We can reverse engineer everything!
So there’s a big idea, there’s a story, and there’s something for them to do—because some people are kinesthetic learners. They need to do it in order for them to learn it.
Some people can learn through story, and very few small, select groups of people can learn just by reading the table of contents or the book title itself.
When you do that, you hit everybody multiple times!
It’s called multimodal learning; if you can do that, you can do really great!
**Number four:** Because I'm going to hit five now, this is good. Number four is you have to make sure ahead of the video quality is the audio quality.
They will forgive you if it’s low res, if it’s poorly lit, if it’s out of focus, but they cannot forgive you if the audio is scratchy.
If the tone of voice feels like you’re in a cave, you can’t really connect!
So if necessary, turn off all the lights and just have a conversation with a person and make sure that what you’re saying works.
I’ll tell you why: sound is just energy transmitted through waveform. Feeling, emotion is the waveform form tuned to a certain frequency.
When we say, “We’re not on the same wavelength; we’re not connecting,” it’s not literally the sound levels, but our energies are misaligned.
You can usually tell when someone’s speaking, that they have depth—they have experience, they have empathy, or they’re trying to impress you, or they're trying to trick you or fool you.
We can tell because long before we developed skills to understand words, we understood waveforms and sound quality.
Really good!
That’d be number four!
**Number five:** You have to learn how to play the title and thumbnail game.
Those two things are going to be the biggest drivers to whether or not anybody sees your video at all!
I see people do this. They have a template that some designer made them, maybe it’s Canva, and they just crank out literally the same thumbnail.
They change typeface and put up the same headshots. It’s literally episodes one through 1,000, and they just do like that.
You're doing the bare minimum, and what they don’t understand is in this age, only 10% of your YouTube audience will actually see a video who are subscribed to your channel!
That’s not going to be very good for you!
Even if you get 10%, that’s great! What you’re trying to do is fighting for the 90% who never, ever see your content!
So you need to make a lot of effort in the title design and the thumbnail so that they work off each other. That’s really important!
There’s a big $12 art school word called **semantics**—that plus that equals something else, A plus B equals C.
So title and thumbnail equals some hybrid new meaning. When we put those two things together in our mind, that creates this hook.
It’s really good!
Those are five!
I love it!
Let’s go personal branding for YouTube. How involved—because I think a lot of business owners or people that feel like “I’m going to create content to check off the box,” they’re not involved in the title and thumbnail.
They just think, “I’ll just shoot the video; you guys do it.”
How involved are you in the packaging of your videos?
I’m less involved, and there’s a reason why! In the beginning, I’m super involved because I need to do this.
Once you start to figure out the formulas, the next thing you need to do as an entrepreneur is to teach someone else to do that!
You have to, like, find out what the secret burger recipe or how you make dough, and once you figure that out, you need to write the recipe, and you need to train other people.
If they can’t get it, the recipe is not strong!
A person of average intelligence should be able to follow the instructions you put and see the examples and be able to do that.
I, as the CEO of my own company, cannot be the guy who’s constantly designing the thumbnails and the titles—it doesn’t work that way.
However, I'm creatively writing; I have an overview over this.
When it feels off, I send a message or I'm like, “This feels off to the video, to me, guys!” or “This word is too complicated for our audience to understand; let’s tweak this!”
Or let’s watch the click-through rate and the retention to see what’s happening and let’s tweak it as necessary.
Luckily, I have two different video teams; they both understand the drill.
They have independent teams, but they arrive at the same place—so I know we’re doing it right!
Dang, that’s game right there!
Something I found that, you know, they talk about click-through rate and average viewer duration—that’s what like the two things that are most important.
Yes!
And most people say they think it starts with click-through rate, but it actually starts with average viewer duration because with good titles and good thumbnails, you start their viewer duration because they’re thinking, and they’re processing what you just put in front of them.
Yeah!
I think it’s good that you started it out and then figured out, “Okay, here’s the formula, guys! Here, take that!”
It’s really good!
We’re not as good at making videos as the people who take this super seriously!
Jimmy and his team over at Beast Central—they think about the title and the thumbnail long and hard before they actually make the video.
Like you said, we’re not making content; we just are who we are, and we turn on the camera.
So we make videos, we talk, and then we're like, “Okay! What is this video about? What’s the key idea?”
Then we do it kind of reverse engineering!
I'm okay with that!
Sometimes our videos pop, and sometimes they don't, but I'm in it for the long haul!
Yeah!
I was not ever setting the intention in my mind: “Let’s make the most clickable viral video we can.”
Some of them wind up being that, and I’m delighted, but it's not the point!
The point is to be an effective communicator and teacher and do things that spark my interest and joy!
That's really good!
It really—kills the pressure!
The pressure to make stuff that you feel good about, so you can make it again!
And the pressure and the permission that you’re going to make it again later!
Yeah, you know, as far as being repetitive, what are your thoughts around how often you repeat yourself?
Because there’s an assumption that most people aren’t going to watch your stuff—not even an assumption; that’s true.
But is it just when you feel like you’re moving on from an idea?
Like, does that make sense?
No, I know exactly the question!
I’m trying to figure out how I want to answer your question!
So the question really is about do you feel like saying something over and over again makes you crazy?
Or is it a good thing? Is it bad, or is it good, or somewhere in between?
Let’s look at it like this: the first time I say something is not going to be the best way I can say it—every once in a while, I’m lucky, but still, I think I could do that better!
And we know if we do something over and over again, it gets sharper, more refined, and the delivery becomes smoother.
We’re more confident in saying it!
When you see someone who’s really good at speaking and being able to think on their feet, I guarantee 100% that’s not the first time they said that!
Very rarely—right?
Unless you're a freestyle hip-hop battle artist, but even then they still write and they figure things out ahead of time!
They know certain hooks that they can drop in, and it’s their lifeline!
So, with the…what the hell were we talking about? Repeating yourself?
Oh, about repeating yourself!
Yeah! So I think that I will say things as long as people want to hear from me—over and over again!
And every once in a while I’m on a sunset, and I’m like, “I think I’ve said it the best way I can say it. I'm kind of tired of saying it now!”
And now I’ll move on to the next thing!
So for years, I used to talk about pricing, value, hourly, and no one’s asking me any questions about that anymore because I'm kind of done.
In the last couple years, I embarked on personal branding. I made a point to myself like, “Can I be the guy that when people think personal branding, my name is attached to that?”
In a very short period of time, I’d say about a year and a half of intentional action, if you search for me on IG, the For You page for personal branding, I should pop there.
If you Google it or chat GPT it, I think I should pop.
That's remarkable!
With a certain amount of focus and intentionality, and being able to consistently show up, anybody—because I’m just anybody—can achieve anything!
**What do you think your next phase is going to be?**
It’s a good one!
It should probably be sales!
Yeah, that’s dope!
I’ve been on a sales journey!
I think the exposure first—first it was just realizing that, like, removing what we think of sales.
I think naturally, we've been programmed to think that selling is sleazy!
We think about the forceful purchase or being forced to buy something.
But no, selling can be beautiful when it's done right!
When it’s done right, yeah!
You could persuade for good!
Because you mentioned that you’ll let people know, “Hey, I’m doing this workshop! Go sign up!”
You know something I’ve learned about sales is there are people that need that—are most buyers, especially people who invest in themselves.
They could be in their own way of buying something that they should do because it’s going to be good for them!
Being good at helping somebody get out of their own way to see if this is the right decision is a skill!
What have been your biggest discoveries as of late with sales—what you used to think of it and where you're understanding it now?
I used to hate this idea of pitching and selling, and the reason why I hated it was because there were bad models for me to follow.
Just like with personal branding, I said now 99% of people who are teaching other people, or thought leaders in the personal branding space, don't get it and don't understand it.
I'm anti everything that they do, and so that’s an opportunity for me to go Zig when they’re zagging.
I think sales is very similar. I think it’s not quite 99%, but like 80-85% of the people who do sales training do it in a way that's out of alignment with me.
I'm sure it’s effective, but it makes me feel gross! It feels unethical; it feels manipulative.
It feels like you’re applying a lot of pressure to get somebody to do something that’s not good for them, but it’s good for you.
I want to take this approach of like, “What is sales like? That’s permission-based?”
That's an active generosity—more invitation and helping the other person solve their own problem more than it is your need to make a sale.
It’s like the introvert's guide to permission-based selling—that's what I think!
I love that!
I think I’ve developed a process that’s been very effective for me, and I’m trying to teach as many people how to do this, especially creative humans, who have a problem with selling, undervaluing their own thing, and artificially pushing an agenda that they don’t even realize they’re doing.
I literally got off a sales coaching call earlier today as part of our London recap, and it's still like, “We need to practice!
You’re all—you still don't understand it! I can show up 1,000% and want to serve you and not want to sell you anything!
At the end of it, you will ask, ‘How do I buy from you?’ That's wild!
The less I want to sell you something, I find the more you want to buy it from me.
I'll give you an example, right? So when we talk about consultative selling, it means I’m in a diagnostic phase with you, trying to help you find what it is that you really want: what your real problems are.
To reconcile any logic breakdowns, to make sure it's aligned with what it is that’s going to get you the best result with the least amount of risk, and then discover I’m not the best person suited to do it.
I will tell you straight-up, Omar, “You know that thing that you want to do? I think that’s what you really need to do. Unfortunately, there are people I can just even think of that can do it much better than I could.
So I don’t think I’m going to be of service to you by saying you should work with me.”
Usually happens is you’ll say, “Chris, but I don’t trust them! I trust you! Could you hire them and just manage them? I’ll pay you what you need to manage them!”
It’s pretty wild!
Then I said, “Well, why don’t I think about it? Because I’m not sure it’s worth it for me financially to do that.”
You would say, “Put in whatever you need because I’d rather work with you.”
It’s pretty wild!
Now I said, “Well, why don’t I think about it?”
Because I’m not sure it’s worth it financially for me to do that.
And you would say, “Put in whatever you need because I’d rather work with you!”
So this is all about open and honest and transparent communication, and my highest order is to serve you before my need to make money!
Good!
In that, I'm creating micro-transactions of trust!
That’s what we’re doing, dude!
I’m pumped for that era—next era, next year! The Andy Elliott, Chris Doe era.
I don't know what that means, but I like it!
Dude, thank you so much!
You know, if we can do a part three, that'd be really cool!
We will do a part three! We'll do a part three!
Something a big unlock I've had as far as repetition is having a podcast doesn't mean, number one, I always need a guest.
Number one, I actually love doing solo episodes!
But the other unlock is—you—like why not have people back?
You don’t need to have brand new guests every time; you can actually have resident guests on a podcast!
It’d be really cool if you’d be a resident guest maybe two times a year!
Sounds good, man!
Dude, I appreciate you! Thank you so much!
Appreciate you!
**Omar:** Oh, K! Starbucks!
Nice!
**Chris:** Oh, you just saw that; you got fast eyes, bro!
Can I tell you about this watch?
**Omar:** Please!
**Chris:** I just got a Hulk, by the way!
**Omar:** You did!?
**Chris:** Yeah, the Hulk is all green.
**Omar:** Are you wearing it?
**Chris:** I’m not wearing it, no!
Here’s a story: all watches tell time—even a broken watch, right?—twice a day!
But this watch tells a story!
This is the Rolex Submariner with date, and it is the Starbucks version of it or the Kermit, I think—sometimes they call them different things, right?
I think it’s the Starbucks.
I didn’t want to buy this because I didn’t want to buy into Rolex’s game of false scarcity or artificial scarcity!
And there's a woman from Neil’s community; her name is Anna, and she wanted me to speak at her event.
I said, “For me to speak at your event, it’s like $330,000!”
She goes, “Chris, I can’t afford it; it’s my first event!”
I said, “Okay, I wish you the best; I need to get paid though.”
She goes, “But I heard from a friend that there’s something that you haven’t been able to get!”
I’m like, “Yeah!”
She goes, “There’s a certain watch I believe!”
I’m like, “Oh no, I know who told you! I know what’s going on here!”
And she goes, “I had to make a bunch of phone calls to see if I can get it for you. I can get it for you now, even though the watch isn’t worth my speaking fee.”
I said, “You know what? This lady really wants me to speak and is willing to make the effort and energy, and I think the story is worth more to me than the money itself.”
So, in lieu of my speaking fees, I got this watch!
But what I get in the watch is not the watch; I get to tell the story every single time somebody asks me.
“Nice watch, bro!”
“I love it!”
Sometimes the story is more valuable than the money!
I’m going to tell you right now—the story is going to be worth $100,000, and it’s going to be more than my speaking fee.
**Let’s go!**
That’s beautiful!
**Thank you!**