Transcription
What is one thing that you want more of right now that's going to help your life and your career? What do you want? Money?
Money, money, money is not what you really want. You want to do something that, by doing that thing, people value so much that they give you money. What's the maximum that you can charge? It's limitless, everybody. It is only limited by the value that you can generate. If you do good work and you're really good at what you do, what's a theoretical limit? I don't know; I haven't found it.
The problem with some of these scammer influencer people is they take more money than the value they give. People who have mastered building a personal brand have created outsized influence that their company benefits from directly and indirectly.
So, if you focus all your energies on marketing and doing more advertising, you might be using your money not as smartly as you could.
What I would do is always amazing for me. When we throw out on the internet that we're going to be somewhere, some people show up, and then more people show up, and it gets really hot in here. But I'm always excited to chat with you.
Usually, the construct of the meetups is to provide a different side to what we do that you normally don't get. I'm borrowing concepts that I barely understand, but I package them in a way that I think might help you apply it. So, if there's anybody who knows much more than the surface level of this, I welcome them to join in on the conversation.
When we see people post content on social media, most people use social media as a form of advertising. Advertising is so dominant in popular culture that we think the only way we can talk to people is to advertise to them.
What I ask people to do is reflect on the content that you post on a regular basis. How much of that content is selling and positioning you as an expert? How much of it is you promoting something that you're doing, where you're going to extract more value than what you're giving into the world?
Then you start to see there's a disproportionate amount of content that you're putting out there that is thinly disguised as advertising and marketing for your professional service firm. Yes, that bothers me a bit. I say that also because we did that at the beginning of our content strategy.
So, if you're there circa January 2014, I'm a babe in the woods. I don't know what I'm doing, and I'm posting content. Almost all of it is like we tease the course material such that you would be left wondering, "Oh, I need to learn this; therefore, I must buy this from you."
Can anybody predict what happened then with the content and how the audience felt? There's only one answer: a sales funnel. It is a sales funnel, absolutely right. Somewhere in the back, we are advertising and selling to people in a very interruptive way. Almost no one wants to open up their email to read an ad or to be sold to. Almost no one shows up and looks through a magazine or newspaper or watches TV to see the ads.
When I say almost no one, there are always a few weirdos, like the ad people, who show up to watch the ads because it's part of the tradecraft, which we understand. That's part of their cultural language to understand what XYZ brand and what XYZ agency is doing. But the rest of us have become pretty good at tuning that out.
I come upon Carl Jung's philosophy or therapy, right? So, there's this thing called "The Shadow." Unlike Freud, Jung has a different relationship with the ego. The ego regulates between the shadow—the things that you have anxiety about, that make you nervous, that give you some sense of shame or guilt—and the persona.
The persona is who you show up in the world to be accepted. Yes, so in Jungian ideology, the ego regulates these two. Make sense so far? Most of us live in the persona, and we don't even know it. We live in the persona; we dress a certain way, we speak a certain thing, we pursue a professional career because someone told us that's what you do to be accepted.
It's kind of important to understand this. To not be accepted by society, to not feel like you have a tribe, is a very scary thing. You feel really isolated and alone. As social creatures, we need to feel connected to other humans, intimate in small circles and also in larger circles. If you go to work and you don't dress the way that people dress, you're going to be isolated.
So, we've gotten really good at blending in to become like everybody, to be "normal." And I'll tell you why there are problems with this. If you look up in the dictionary the word "normal," it kind of means average—the standard.
So, we have the ego, and we have it regulating between your shadow self and the persona. We talked about the persona as you show up to be accepted, right? To be "normal." And normal is just another word for average.
So, we're okay saying, "I want to be normal." I don't think we're okay with saying, "I want to be average." Does anybody here want to be average? But that's what we're doing. We're showing up to blend into being average.
This seems counterintuitive if you want to build any kind of social media following. If you want to be any kind of thought leader, in fact, to be a thought leader, to be a 1%er, according to Mark Manson, you have to be a contrarian. You have to go against what everybody believes.
To be a contrarian, you could say, "Well, it's a flat Earth." So, we have to add one more word: you have to be a correct contrarian. You have to find where everyone goes this way, and you're going to go this way, but you have to be right.
That's the difficult part. A lot of this is you developing your point of view of the world, sharing your lived experiences, and finding the angle where almost everybody believes it to be this way, and then you're going to go this way.
How many of you have been struggling to write consistently good posts and stories? Probably everybody in the room is because you don't know what defines your character. That's why this is just the first step.
What happens is, "I don't want to write." So, you might get through post 1 through 10 or 1 through 100, but by 101 or whatever, you're kind of stuck. You know what to do.
So, I'm going to make a prediction as to what you mostly do. You follow some person, a social influencer, who says, "Oh, you're stuck? Use this headline. Use this hack. Here are 10 content ideas."
So, you're creating pieces of content that are not tied into the larger version of who you are. You're just writing little stories. They're like standalone episodes that don't tie back to this universe that you're building around you. Does that make sense?
The problem with this is it might work at the beginning. You get a hit, you get a hit, and you get a dud. Then you're like, "Who am I writing for? Who am I? What's the story I'm trying to tell?"
So, in your world, as the main character in your universe, you kind of have to have a pretty clearly defined character.
Let me ask you something: What is one thing that you want more of right now that's going to help your life and your career? What do you want? Money? Is that what you said? Okay, all right.
Before we go there, because I always ask people what they want, they say money, and they say lots of it, right? Okay, money is not what you really want. You want to do something that, by doing that thing, people value so much that they give you money.
Money is the result, not the pursuit itself. Because I've seen lots of people pursue money, and they're neither happy nor rich. It's kind of weird, right?
I believe this: Money is a metric that measures impact. The more impact that you can make in life, the more money you will get.
So then, the real question is: How can you create this impact? What is the impact you want to create in the world?
What money does is it buys your freedom. That's the whole point of money, right? To be rich means you can afford to spend time with whoever you want for as long as you want, doing whatever it is you want. That's what we all want.
You don't always need money to get there. Sometimes we think we need more money, but what we want is more freedom. Not just freedom, but freedom to do what gives us joy ultimately, right? Because sometimes more money doesn't actually do that for you.
All right, so the reason why I suspect—and I'm not casting any judgment on you right now—if you're unclear about the impact you want to make in the world, there's a good chance that you're not going to make a lot of money, and you're going to have less freedom.
If you shoot photos, photographers are pretty upset right now because there are so many people doing it. So, you have to innovate a little bit in what you do.
But what is going to help you? It's hard for me to tell you this because you're looking at your primary need, your first order, which is, "I got to feed myself."
So, what you do is the very thing that is not going to help you grow your authority. That's the problem. I don't know how else to tell you that.
Everywhere I go, I'm like, "Work on who you are. Tell that story." And then people go right back to, "Here's what I do. I need a client."
So, I wrote this little document. It's very little, and we call it "The Four Agreements." It's a play on the same idea, but it's a different idea.
Okay, number one is: You must do good work. I'll explain what each one of these means. You must do good work. There are a lot of people who look at the concepts in which we teach and haven't put in the energy and effort to do good work.
So, they're just living on top of a lie. If we can just agree in this room that you've put in the time, practice, and intention behind doing good work—like the Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours of deliberate, intentional practice—you do good work.
Does anybody not do good work? Who's so new into their field or pretending right now? Then no one will raise their hand, but I'm sure there's one or two people. There always is.
You do good work. Next, you charge a fair price for this good work that you do. Charge a fair price. People are like, "Well, what is fair?" That's a complicated word; I understand.
So, what you have to do is just give more value than what you charge. That's it, right? So, if you charge $100 for something, all it has to be is $101 or whatever it is. Does that make sense?
So, the question I have for all of you to think about is: What's the maximum that you can charge? What's the maximum that you can charge? Is there a maximum? I don't know. Is there? It's limitless, everybody. It is only limited by the value that you can generate.
All right, watch this. It's not a magic trick. If you do good work and you're really good at what you do, what's the theoretical limit? I don't know; I haven't found it.
Your clients value you. No, no, no. I can charge whatever if they don't value it. That's a whole other story. I'm just saying, if you pay me a million dollars, I give you a million plus. The more I can give, the better I can sleep at night, right?
So, number three is: We act in service of others. This one's really tricky for you guys—not you specifically, but mostly for creatives. If we serve others ahead of our need to make money, we can be honorable in how we run our business.
That means very rarely does the client have a problem that you can solve. If you accept that, you'll take away most of the pressure in the buy-sell cycle with the prospect.
So, when you hear a problem that is not to your benefit, you must recommend to them. You must pursue that. It's my recommendation, based on what I've learned from you today, unless things change, that you pursue this other option.
Unfortunately, I don't do that. I can help find you somebody, or at least this is what I know. Somebody else might tell you different, but I'm telling you this based on what I know. That's it.
The last one is: Always act with integrity. That means you're willing to do the difficult things.
Over there in the back by the door, I was going to ask if there were ever any occasions where there could be two works.
I think if you're teaching something, perhaps you've become so good at teaching that the skill that you're working on, as well, you put your 10,000 hours into. They can combine in a very, very positive way. Yes, the answer is yes.
If you can teach what you're doing while you're doing it, you've advanced to the next level. Very few people know what they're doing, how to do it. Even fewer people can teach others how to do it.
So, teaching is a critical part of your own development. If you can teach other people how to do what you do, number one, you become much more efficient. You become seen as an authority, and you get to help other people.
Chances are, when you help other people, you make the kind of impact that you want to make, and your audience grows.
I make my marketing department have the same philosophy.
And try to combine your skills with learning these different streams and marketing and work with it.
Well, whenever we ask a question like that, we search in our mind: What company's been able to pull that off? If we can find zero companies, then we say, "Probably not."
But if we find a handful, even just one where it's possible, maybe not probable, but it's possible. I live in the state of mind where I think if it's remotely possible for anybody, the first thing is, "Why not me? Why not me?"
And I'll be the first. I'm okay, or if I'm the second, that's fine too.
The question I thought you were going to ask is a little bit different. So, let's say this: Your company, right? And the company mostly talks about what they do because they're mostly getting new clients.
So, when you start to build your personal brand, your PB, it doesn't feel that connected. So, what do you do? You wind up talking about more of what you do.
So, you just become more of the same, become super noisy, right? But I know this: If you were to look up on Twitter and see how many followers Apple has versus how many followers Tim Cook has, huh? It's disproportionate.
Tim Cook has way more followers, as does Elon Musk versus Tesla, as does Richard Branson versus Virgin.
So, it's telling you something here that the people who have mastered building their personal brand have created outsized influence that their company benefits from directly and indirectly.
So, if you focus all your energies on marketing and doing more advertising, you might be using your money not as smartly as you could.