This Mindset Shift Can 10x Your Income | Chris Do

21:17When you do biweekly live deal reviews with experts in the space and actually figure out what are the red flags, what are the green flags, how do you figure out the right business to buy? Well, then when the business you are supposed to own or part of the business you're supposed to own comes in front of you, you already know it because you've seen a million like it, which is probably why you're going to talk to our 35 advisors in M &A, have six or seven live calls a month with them, and have a way to figure out how to buy a business even when you're employed. Most of our members still have a W-2, but they're serious about buying within the next 12 months.

21:52If that's you, you can apply here at contrarianthinking.co slash academy. You know, it's interesting. One of my favorite mentors back in the day at Goldman said, the only reason anybody buys anything is exclusivity, timeliness, scarcity, relevance. And he's like, if you can figure out a way to wrap all four of those around whatever you do, you'll be able to sell more and more frequently and with less struggle. And yet, I think when we build products or we think about business, we forget about it. We just say, doors open, bring everybody in, because there's this fear that if we don't, we can't restrict, that'll mean less sales.

22:26But there seems to be some sort of law of the universe that is actually the more you restrict it, the more sales that you get. I'm curious for you, you also have a line that is really good. It's something along the lines of, I'm not the cheapest. And so if that's what you want, I'm probably not for you. I'm curious at what moment you drop that in a sales conversation.

22:49Chris Do:People ask me about this all the time. They're like, you can do what you do because you're you and you've done so many things. What they don't understand is the mindset comes before the results because otherwise how does one get the results? And it might shock some people. At the very beginning of my career, once I got out of design school, the first freelance work that I did was for some other designer, subcontracted work, designing brochures for a bank. Appreciate the opportunity, but you know, I did the work and they paid me 30 bucks an hour. I was thinking, I'm fast. How much money did I make on this job?

23:21Chris Do:I worked on it for six hours. And I was thinking to myself, I didn't go to four years of design school to be the best designer in the world to be designing bank brochures. This is boring. I could have done this work before school. So I really thought about that. Once I got into the right industry that was super exciting, doing motion design, working on commercials and music videos and feature films, I was like, let's play with this idea. And there's a lot more elasticity to price than you think. Okay. It does help if you're in a hot market in an industry where there are more buyers than sellers.

23:51Chris Do:So you have all the right side of arbitrage on that. So I started going and I was freelancing and doing contract work. And so they're like, what's your day rate? I was like, 300 bucks. Like, cool. I'll do the work. It's like, okay, they seem pretty happy. I know I'm better than the other people who are doing the work. Let's try 400 and 500 and 600. So with the same client who's contracting work, I was changing my rate every single time they called me, which is seeming like every third or fourth day. It got to a point where I was charging$800 a day, just barely out of school myself. And this is pretty wild because that's like 1995.

24:26Chris Do:Their executive producer called me out. And she said, Chris, you know, we see what you're doing. Like, what is going on with you? Like, I just approved your last invoice and it was this amount and now it's 800? I'm like, yeah. She goes, care to explain? I'm like, no. why don't you call the creative director who i was working for ask him if it's worth it and then if it's not have him talk to me and i'll adjust the rate invoice been paid so i learned really early on it's just a game like money is a construct like time and why do we feel like money is so concrete it really is not so we should play and we should try and we can do this it's interesting because you don't come from a background that was super abundant with money.

25:12So a lot of people might hear this and go, well, he was probably raised with a ton of money. He probably had money all the time. He never had a poor person mindset. But that's actually not true because you come from humble backgrounds and actually immigrated to this country before you started building. So I guess my question to you there is, were you always this way? And how could somebody train themselves to have this sort of rich with money mindset if they didn't come from it?

25:39Chris Do:Yeah. My parents and I, along with my siblings, were immigrants from Vietnam. We fled the country in 1975. So they lost everything. They lost everything, culture, language, heritage. Basically, they lost it all and started over. So when you lose everything, you kind of adopt that mindset. So my parents to this day, I love them. They're a little tight with money. Like my dad, the joke goes, buys his groceries where he buys his fashion at Costco. And the cheaper, the better. Now, here's where the confidence and the mindset comes from. When you're good at something, when you put in your 10 ,000 hours of practice, you develop a new self-story.

26:15Chris Do:And the beautiful thing is today you write that chapter in your book, tomorrow you write a new chapter. You know, it's funny. I remember my father, same thing. We make fun of all of his Costco clothes to this day. I kind of got him out of it a little bit, but you can see the pain on his face when he has expensive clothes. And I do think it comes from, I think a lot of that generation that worked really hard, they almost can't comprehend the things we spend money now. Yeah, they have a guilty conscience about it and they get too precious. And this is not a flex, but when I was able to buy the first real car, I bought a Mercedes CLK 430.

26:51Chris Do:And after a couple of years, I was tired of it. So I wanted a new car. And I was like, what am I going to do with this? I just gave it to my dad. And my friend's like, you gave your dad your Mercedes? I'm like, yeah, because he needs a car. Gave it to my dad. My dad did not know what to do with it. I think he drove it like three times, then he sold it. And he wanted to buy a van. And to this day, I think he still drives the same Honda Odyssey minivan. He sold it to my aunt, and then he used that money. And because he's like, I just don't feel good at driving it. Somebody might hit it. Somebody might break in.

27:18Chris Do:And it's like, I don't know how to deal with that. Yeah. My dad. Well, one of the cool things about listening to somebody like you is exactly this. You get an opportunity to reframe your brain, because I do think we are all programmed. I mean, I love a line that you said, which was basically, because of all your practice, you were able to write a new self story. And that idea of the 10 ,000 hours leads to 10 ,000 new neural connections in your brain seems to be really true. But I want to talk about one of the things that you get paid a ton of money to do, which is personal brand. I like starting to talk with the money stuff because I think if you're listening, sometimes personal brand sounds fuzzy.

27:52Chris Do:Yeah. And so people are like, what does that even mean? And I don't have time for this. And is this really a good use of my resources? and I don't want to be on the internet and, you know, Chris and Cody are yappers. I'm not a yapper. All the things, right? But it's really hard to sell a Zale diamond at a Tiffany's price with the Zale brand. And so I think brand in general is something that feels fuzzy, but is so important. So I guess, can you lay out in your mind what is important about brand, personal or otherwise, and why should everyone be really conscious of their brand? A lot of people would say like all the action and activity and the heat is in marketing because it could be measured.

28:35Chris Do:There's an ROI. You put money in, you put money. You can take money out. When it doesn't work, it's very clear. Is a brand just about impressions and feeling? And is it about a vibe? And it can be much more scientific than that. Here's how, here's what we know. When you buy a t-shirt and there's no brand attached to it, like literally it's in a plastic bag with three shirts, what are you going to pay? You're going to pay the utility price of the three t-shirts. In theory, the cotton, the construction and the packaging, the shipping to a place are not a dime more. So basically you've covered the cost of producing this thing.

29:09Chris Do:Now you take that t-shirt and you give it to three different companies with three very different brands. We'll define what that is in a second. Then that price skyrockets from$10 for three shirts to like$3 ,300 or even a hundred dollars why is that it can literally be the exact same shirt i want to point out to like maswell's hierarchies hierarchy of needs because at the bottom is just like food shelter that kind of stuff like am i going to be alive next is about can i have some abundance can can i buy some things and then do i have meaningful connections relationships and family and then above that is something called status and above that i would consider identity self-actualization so we we We live in a time of the greatest prosperity in human history.

29:53Chris Do:We live longer. There's less dangers to us. And now we're sitting around not thinking about, am I going to eat tomorrow? We're asking our questions about, do I belong? Who am I? And who to identify with? And how do people perceive me? These are very important things. So the kind of watch you wear, the earrings, the car you drive, the zip code you live in, And all that stuff signals to other people how you see yourself. And you can say it's superficial and it's vain and it's all those things. And I would agree with you because we are superficial, vain human beings. So what we understand is when we're able to achieve the status that we have because we're buying this brand of shirt or that brand of shirt, it signals to other people, I belong to this group of people and I've achieved this much in my life.

30:42Chris Do:So it's actually quite valuable. And I'll do this test in my talk later today. where I say, okay, is it the brand that's more important or is it because it's a better product? Most of us will lie to ourselves and say, well, I buy Nikes or Adidas because they're a better shoe. That's a bunch of BS. You buy it because your story is involved with theirs. So the brand creates the product. It's really weird. And then the customer creates the brand because it's in our hearts and minds that we determine collectively this company stands for these things. And the classic example is, I think, when Budweiser tried to do something that was non-binary, it said something that was, quote unquote, very woke.

31:24Chris Do:And there was a lot of backlash for that. Because we know that's not them. And they're just signaling, virtue signaling to people. And it was just signaling to the wrong core demographic. It was even them. Good try, I guess, but a horrible idea. Just horrible. So how about the world right now is – there's a lot of similarity to it, let's just say. You see a lot of people going out there with the same videos, the same ideas, the same looks on brands, even startups in Silicon Valley. They all sort of have the bright colors, the singular lines. Everything is getting simpler. But you've kind of famously said, don't try to be better.

32:04Be different. What does that mean when it comes to brand?

32:07Chris Do:okay that is a line i want to give credit where it's due sally hogshead which i have yet to meet but we're kind of professional lurkers of one another i think it's a brilliant way to sum up the core of branding the essence of branding is to be different because if you're the same by virtue of that you're moving towards commodity right so if we buy rice we buy sugar or we buy anything and it's the same as something else there's no reason why i'm compelled to pay more That makes sense, right? But you can look across the aisle way. There's so many options today for almost literally the same product at vastly different prices because the story that they tell makes them feel different.

32:48Chris Do:And do you have a favorite brand or maybe the listeners who watch your channel, maybe you're like, we all love this brand. You know, I have a favorite funky brand, Imogene & Willie. It's a sort of Americana, new age, let's call it hipster Levi's is how I would describe it. Okay. Do they charge that new age price? Oh, God, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. My husband, he's actually the one that turned me on to it, but their jeans are way too expensive. They're actually, talk about brands. They're actually uncomfortable because they're raw denim. You're not allowed to wash them. They have to go in the freezer.

33:23It makes no sense whatsoever, actually. There are Levi's that have existed since the beginning of Levi's that got washed and had all the things happen to them. So they've actually made the product more difficult. They've made it less comfortable. And that's part of the selling point, which I guess nails your point exactly.

33:40Chris Do:Yeah. Is it salvaged denim? Is that why? No. It's because it's raw, so the color isn't captured properly. It hasn't been heated. So if you wash it too many times, it bleeds. Oh, shoot. Because it's raw, it's never treated, so it's organic. There's some portion of that. I'm sure I'm butchering their sales pitch. But then also, it is really deep and dark, their colors. Okay. So when you buy that pair and you wear it, despite it being uncomfortable and hard to manage, what story do you tell yourself about this pair of jeans and you? Cool. Yeah. Yeah. It's, you know, I feel like they're cool. They do look different.

34:20They're a little bit more structural like jeans. They're rigid.

34:24Chris Do:They're stiff. And I think the brand has an identity I really like, American-based, important to me, and kind of have a throwback to some of the old ways. They have a lot of salvage stuff in their T-shirts, which I guess is me trying to signal that I am protecting the environment while we're flying all over Europe. So that's unreasonable too. Okay. So being eco-conscious is a luxury of the people who have means. Yeah. Because when you're starving, it's like, I'll get whatever I can get. All yes or not, it doesn't really matter. So perhaps the story you're telling yourself is American made, support America.

34:57Chris Do:It's organic, so it's better for the environment. And it's tough to deal with because I'm tough to deal with maybe. And, you know, I can handle it. I'm a grown ass woman. I know how to deal with this stuff. And maybe it's a signal to other people like I'm in the know. You may or may not be in the know, but I'm in the know and I'm okay with that. And I will pay the freaking premium price to have this scratch my body and have to freeze it in the freezer. Because your husband's like opening the freezer like, why are there a pair of jeans in it? It's his fault. Because killing the bacteria, you know, it's necessary.

35:27Exactly. And you'll do that for the pleasure of that.

35:30Chris Do:This is why I think people make it hard to buy their products, hard to take care of. Because like we need some challenges in our life and we feel like we have to work for it. It's worth more. Yeah, that's very true. What do you think, how does this compare to the idea of fake it till you make it? Okay. Like, I know that there's real components of brand, but should we fake it till we make it? Or is there a different way to think about that? Okay, possibly two different concepts. You asked me to combine two things here, so let me try and figure this part out. Let me just share with you my take on fake it or make it.

36:07Chris Do:a lot of people think this is a horrible idea because the word fake is in it and no one wants to be fake it feels fraudulent it feels like a lie or deception but i gotta tell you everybody who's ever been great in in this lifetime of theirs has once thought of themselves higher better stronger faster more intelligent than they were at that moment in time ira glass who's the host of this american life one of the most beloved podcasts he said that for years he had been working on podcasting. He plays this tape. He's like, listen to this tape of me. I'm years into it. This is not my first year. He's stammering.

36:43Chris Do:His voice is all over the place. And he goes, you know, there's this distance between the taste level we have and our skill to actually make it. And it's that thing that, that gap that tortures us that say like, why aren't I as good as I know in my mind? I think this is a very healthy attitude to have, which is to be able to dream of something that doesn't exist, including your future self, your future goals, your future partner and your children, because we need to imagine it, because what's imagined in the mind becomes, turns into reality. So if we can't imagine it, the likelihood of us achieving it, it's not so high.

37:18Chris Do:I have no problems with that term, fake it or make it. But if you don't like the words and you like the idea, I don't know if I've coined this, but I just tell people, believe it till you achieve it. And then also they're like, oh, that's fine. Literally the same thing. So this is packaging. This is branding. Maybe it's a little bit of marketing. So words, turns out, are very, very powerful things. Now, when it comes to your personal brand, let's say you're not a nice person. You're curt. You're not very generous. And it's all about what you want to get in this life. And then you go on TV, on YouTubes, and you tell people, oh, I'm about generosity.

37:55Chris Do:about kindness and looking after people, that's faking it. And that eventually will reveal itself and it inevitably will not look on you, look good. Yeah. We've all met those people. Yes. They're everywhere. Yeah. You said something that I loved. You're like, you don't really have a, you've said before, you don't have a marketing problem. You have a positioning problem, which is sort of exactly what you just talked about there. You're not, it's the same idea. It's just poorly packaged. So what do you mean when you say you don't have a marketing problem. You have a positioning problem. And do most people who sell something actually have that as their problem?

38:30Chris Do:I have no way to verify this, but I suspect it to be that. Everybody wants more customers. To get more customers, you need more leads. And they think, if I wave a magic wand, I'll just get more leads and I'll be able to do this. Actually, there's lots and lots of problems. You probably don't have a great offer. You probably don't know who your ideal client profile is. And back to this whole thing. All seem to be more interested in things made specifically for a certain type of person. We understand this. Those jeans that you bought don't appeal to me. I'm not going to wear them. And it might not appeal to a lot of other people for a lot of different reasons.

39:03Chris Do:It's too woke. It's too hippie. I don't care if it's American or not. It's too expensive. So they're not into that. But the clearer they get on the person they're serving and what they stand for, the more likely it is they're going to find customers. It's counterintuitive. So when we talk to creative people, they're like, well, I work with entrepreneurs. Duh. Who else would you be? I work with people. Okay. That's really clear and specific. So they're afraid that if they were to become more specific with who they serve, then they're going to lose out on the market. It's a weird mindset. So they look at the total addressable market, say it's this table, eight and a half billion people on earth.

39:41Chris Do:I serve all of them. In fact, none of them are looking for you because they don't understand what you stand for. But in the surface area of this, where this cup lives, that's a gigantic amount of people. if we're just to focus on them and we talk about their problems their needs their wants of dreams and their fears those people become super interested these people could care less because they've never cared so instead of trying to capture nothing you're actually looking at something that's quite concentrated and that's why it's a positioning problem you had said before in our conversation scarcity being exclusive i mean think things that are hard to get they're not abundantly available that are only offered to a few people that we actually have to put in extra effort to get become more desirable to us literally i was at a shop here and i saw a skateboard i'm like no maybe i should get that but it's probably everywhere that night i'm like online trying to find i can't find it it's bothering me right now so much so and there's no room left in my luggage i'm thinking about going back to a skate shop to buy it because i think this is not available anymore had there been 3 000 of them available I'm like, I'll just order when I order it.

40:47Chris Do:The same thing is true about people in their business. They don't have a lane because they haven't thought about it or because they're afraid to commit. Yeah. You know, it's funny. We see this so constantly. We've taught about 15 ,000 small business owners over the course of the last five years. And if I have everybody raise their hands when I tell them the main problem that you're going to have in your business, it's leads. I need more leads. The problem is then you go to your website and your website doesn't really speak English. It says we're for transparency and building. And what is it actually a custom construction company?

41:23Nobody's walking around saying, I want transparency in my building process. They're like, I want to be on time on budget and it to be fucking beautiful. Those are the three things. And so it's interesting because I found with most of them, they think it's leads, they don't think it's positioning. And then when you finally get down to it, they don't actually know exactly who they serve because they've never actually pulled their top 50 or 100 clients and been like, who of these people do I love so much? And they love me so much that if I could just clone them, I would be thrilled to only serve this person forever.

41:57And so I think a lot of your work is about narrowing down to find the person who's already looking for you. One of the things I love about the way that you dress is the same thing. It sort of signals, I'm a creative. I'm going to do things my own way. Some of these things are even customized. You've got the tape on your hat, so you can't even just buy it like this because I've got my own addition to it. So probably if somebody comes to you and they're like, I want something really corporate, exactly how I want it, you're going to be like, I'm not the guy for you. This is not right. And so even the way you present shows who you are.

42:30But I guess I was wondering how you get over this idea of being like a people pleaser, basically, and just becoming sort of this amorphous thing that everybody wants you to be. You talk about avoiding the three monsters, perfection monster, the advice monster, and the people pleaser monster. I'm curious, how do you get over these? And especially how do you get over that people pleaser component?

42:56Chris Do:that's a tough one the people pleaser one afflicts so many people and it starts early on in our childhood so i got into a strange conversation with a friend of mine and she goes you know i'm really proud of you i said oh i know you mean that to be a compliment but i don't interpret as one she goes what do you mean he says well when you say you're proud you exert power over me like who are you to be proud of me and i'm not looking for you to be proud of me she goes she was like bent out of shape and we had this whole debate she was don't you tell your kids that you're proud of them i'm like no i don't i don't why would i do that because for them to for me to be proud it means there's times when i'm not proud i'm always proud i'm proud when you exist that's all that needs to happen you you get you get um love appreciation and joy just because you exist in this world.

43:51Chris Do:I bet you're proud of what you did. Okay, so I'm not really into all that stuff because I don't want my kids to grow up looking for the approval of another human being ever. And not to say they're not disrespectful or that they're disrespectful or not appreciative of anything. We deal with that, but those are things that don't hold over anybody. So I think when you're sitting here trying to please someone, it's because in your construct, in the way that you grew up, the way that you matter in the world is to make other people happy. And I'm a recovering people pleaser myself. I tell people I'm a non-people pleasing middle child.

44:28Chris Do:And it's something that I've had to work through, through therapy and through coaching, that I found that I would give in to my employees' demands. I would give in to demands of my clients. And I wasn't protecting the most important people in my life, including myself. And that really bothered me. So people who knew this about me would be very passive aggressive. And they would say, for example, no, that I didn't want to fund this venture. And then they would say to me, oh, I've already funded it. They're my employee. And if you want me to cancel, let me know. They would do that. And it would just eat me up inside.

45:06Chris Do:But I didn't have the ability to say, yo, that is so not cool. Cancel that. And you know what? Leave. You're done. Because that's super disrespectful. You knew I didn't want to do this. You did it anyways. Super passive aggressive. Well, your imagination doesn't need to go there. That person didn't last much longer after that. So once we start to learn to define our boundaries and not to be so scared of like making other people unhappy, we find that we can, again, write a new self story and start to reprogram and neural pathways. Just like, you know what? I could do this when it comes to a cup of tea.

45:38Chris Do:I can also do this when it comes to a million dollar purchase. I could do both. I love this part. Chris is talking about the advice monster, right? The voice that constantly makes you collect more input instead of making the call. Most owners I know have a version of that, not because you're indecisive, but because you're making real business decisions without anyone in the room that's actually done it at the level you're trying to reach. This is actually why I created the Growth Boardroom. It's an on-demand board of advisors for owners who already have a team who already have revenue and are done making high stakes calls in isolation.

46:14And you want to charge what you're worth. You're probably not right now. Most of our owners are underpriced by anywhere from 30 % to 300%. So the decisions were being wrong, cost you a year. Those are about to be done because when our deal coaches help you figure out how to do quarterly planning, how to actually price, how to hire, and how to do our operating system the way private equity does, then you'll find the exact lever to pull in your business next. Most of our members come back with supply chain fixes, new client acquisition systems, cashflow savings. They didn't even know they were bleeding.

46:46So if you own a business and you're tired of making million dollar decisions alone, you can apply at contrarianthinking.co slash boardroom. The thing about your friends saying that they're proud of you is such a fascinating insight. It's funny, I was chatting with my mom the other day and she said the same thing and I didn't have the balls actually to say anything back to her because we're very close and I love her dearly. And so there's some story I tell myself about that would really hurt her feelings. But I felt the same way. I thought, I don't do this business for anybody else to be proud of me.

47:16And it's a beautiful byproduct if you are. That's great. But it's actually not because of that. But it's quite hard, I think. How can you establish your constraints in business when you can't establish them in life? So maybe that is part of one of the ways to start it. If you're having a hard time sort of people pleasing your clients or your employees, start with the people who are closest to you that you know are going to love you no matter what anyways, and saying, hey, I don't really resonate with that.

47:45Chris Do:Yeah. Now I will say this because I don't seem like a jerk about it. My mom does say I'm proud of you all the time. What do you say to her? I say, I love you, mom. You don't say anything? I don't say anything because it has - Because it would make her too sad. Well, it might. I know her intentionality, which is you've done things that I just admire so much. And it's no longer a power move for her to say that. But she says it all the time, which is a difference. See, so some parents will say, I'm proud of you on the condition of. My mom is like unconditionally proud of me, unconditionally loves me.

48:16Chris Do:And that's what's different about her. She's a very sweet lady. And I'm not looking for it. So the reason why I don't have beef with my mom or dad is because I'm not a child anymore. I'm a grown ass man. You can say whatever you want. That's your world. That's your reality. And I respect you. I'm just going to do things my way. Now, when it comes, and if there's going to be somebody who's proud of you, it should be the people who brought you into this world who gave you life. I think they have a legitimate claim to say that, but I don't register it like that. So I would not encourage you to get on the phone with your mom.

48:46I heard someone asked, like, F you, mom.

48:49Chris Do:Take your pride and shove it up. I think one of the points of adulthood is making those realizations that maybe the things you did when you were a little kid, really trying to impress your parents. And they were great motivators in that way. It doesn't have to be what leads you anymore. So we have a lot more agency than we give ourselves credit for. People are like, I hate this town. I hate this job. I hate my partner. Well, who chose them? Unless you're chained to something with a gun to your head, you have a lot of agency. it's much easier for us to complain about something than to actually commit to change.

49:25Yeah. And part of the reason that things won't change, I feel like, is you continue to say the same. And then the universe, at least in my case, usually eventually has to drop kick you spectacularly in order for you to move. And that probably wouldn't have happened if you had just moved more quickly. So I love that. In a different vein, you've talked a lot historically about about visualizing. And of course, visualizing brand and graphics and some of the beautiful things that you create is really important. But you've talked about it broadly, how even gold medalists pre-visualize what they're doing.

50:00And so can you talk a little bit about this idea of the ritual that you do if you want to win or build the life you love?

50:09Chris Do:Yes, yes. So I want to connect it to this one idea before I forget. But my friend who is a design luminary, his name is Brian Collins, Seacoast designers, are futurists. We imagine all the possible ways that this can happen and we choose the most optimal path. I love that description. Brian is an intellect and he's intellectual and he's a designer and creative person. He just gives so much meaning and purpose to the kinds of things that my people do. So we sit there and we imagine like, what does the Cody Sanchez logo look like? What does the cover art look like? And we rehearse them in our mind and sometimes we make them on paper or on the screen.

50:42Chris Do:and then through our intuition and our experience we pick the one that's most optimal for you to achieve your result that's pretty cool so they can do that in that way and then they somehow shut off their brain for everything else in their life which is really bothersome to me design legend i think massimo vignelli had said something like how you do one thing is how you do everything so if you could design this you could do everything else so if you can see in one aspect of your life you could do this but in another aspect of your life you can't resolve those conflicts. Figure it out. Put them together.

51:13Chris Do:Okay? Really, just like, if I could talk back to my partner, why can't I talk back to the client? If I can ask for more with my children, why can't I ask more for this other thing? You can, and it works, because we desire to be consistent, right? It's like, you don't want to live multiple value sets or belief system. It's just too complicated. Krishnamurti said something like, the highest form of human intelligence is to observe without judgment. And I'm like, I'm aspiring to be that. Now, what I want to do is say to myself, okay, what do I want in my life? Where do I want to live? What kinds of things do I want to achieve this year, this moment?

51:50Chris Do:And I really focus on that. And I dream on it. I'm dreaming while I'm waking, just thinking about over and over again, rehearsing in my mind so that when those opportunities or choices are in front of me, my mind has already figured out that this seems like the most likely path. It's like if we sat in a forest and I said, let's go find the thing, the chances of you finding the thing are kind of impossible. Because what is the thing? But if I said if we find the mountain that looks like a witch's nose, that peak and it has all these things, now we can get really specific. And you may not even want to venture off into the woods.

52:26You might want to ask me a few questions about what direction is it in?

52:32Chris Do:Approximately how far away is it? So what we're doing there is we're making the abstract more concrete. The more that we can visualize that in our minds, I think the more likely we're able to achieve it. You know, it's interesting. I was talking to my husband today and he's a Navy SEAL. And they go through something called ground training, which is basically the Green Berets have perfected it, but they drop you off in the middle of nowhere. And you have to find a series of things with a very limited number of supplies. And you have to do it in a certain amount of time. And if you don't, you're kicked out of BUDS training, which is the preparation to become a SEAL.

53:05And we were just talking this morning about how he's quite good at this because he used to be a hunter with his kid, with his father when he was just a kid. And one of the ways that he was one of the fastest to do this during his BUDS training, which he would be embarrassed for me speaking on it, on here is something called terrain navigation. And we're not taught this actually in modern society anymore. You're taught to use maps. We used to obviously be taught by the stars. That was way back in the day. But terrain navigation is exactly that. So if you're in an environment, always anchoring yourself to some of the highest things that you can see.

53:44And it's interesting when you think about that in your life as well, like what is the terrain you want to navigate towards consistently? What is the highest point that you can imagine? Because a lot of times that's the easiest thing to find, as opposed to what do we obsess on instead? Daily rituals, what to do every morning. I've never really associated with that at all because the most successful people I know have nothing in fucking common about how they run their days. Like almost nothing. Some of them drink a lot. Some of them drink zero. Some of them get up early. Some of them stay up late.

54:14Like almost no similarities. But they all did aspire to do something really, really big or great. They had that like terrain, that monument in front of them that they wanted no matter what. So it's a beautiful way to think about it.

54:26Chris Do:I bet you they're really obsessive. I do think, I kind of think about it as that peak. Like they're always looking at that one thing that they want to achieve. Yeah. But some of them are obsessive in cycles. And some of them are obsessive in like a season and then not obsessive. Yeah. You know? Because I think there's an exceptional few who can be obsessed long term consistently without burning out. So obsession is one of these things that isn't, you just go and never stop. You go as far as you can go and you take a break and then you go again, but you just never stop. You take breaks in between.

55:03Chris Do:So it's something like if you care about your health, you become obsessed about it and you might have vacation time and then you're off, but then you're back on the system again and you're focused on that. Yeah. Yeah. You know, there's another quote I like from you where you talk about passion follows mastery and whether or not that is true or not. I'd be curious to take on that. Yeah, so a lot of people will say, there's multiple takes on this in terms of like, oh, don't talk about passion, passion, what is that even? And well, if we just focus on doing boring work that no one wants to do, we develop discipline, which is delaying gratification, giving up the things that you want to get ultimately what you need in life.

55:45Chris Do:And that's really, really important. And then sometimes in that process, you're like, wow, I didn't know this about myself. I think I found my passion. The example for me is I didn't know I wanted to create content. I'm an introvert. I'm super socially awkward. I'm not a yapper. I pretend to be one. Okay. If you saw me at a party, I didn't know anybody. I just stand in the corner. I'm just like wallpaper. Okay. So when my buddy invited me to make YouTube content with them, I'm like, oh, I don't know about this. I don't know about this at all. Discomfort. hey what are we gonna do here now luckily for me he was very generous made me an offer i couldn't refuse so i'm like okay i'm gonna do this thing and it sucked for a long time but you know my obsessive mind was what can how can i improve what's one or two things i can change to make this better for our audience what can i do to get one more review 10 more views one more comment i would just work on that obsessively and eventually i discovered this other side a passion I didn't know that was really there.

56:45Chris Do:I think I am living my greatest life because I've discovered my gift. And I'm able to combine all these things that I'm really fascinated and the things I'm good at, the things that I can make money on, and they're all are exactly the same thing. And so what I get to do is I get to teach, I get paid to teach. And I think that's the best job in the world. What would you tell someone who wants to figure out how to combine their passion and their mastery? How do you go find the thing you're both passionate about and actually can be good at? We all go through different phases in life that there's convergent thinkers or like there's one way to do something.

57:24Chris Do:There's divergent thinkers. There's lots of ways to do something. And then there's these hybrids. And we can be somewhere in the middle, but it's not often when you're 19 years old. That's a mistake. I hear young people say, oh, I'm a polymath i'm like he barely just got a diapers are you kidding me there's no way and you don't have multiple degrees you haven't you haven't even done your first 10 000 hours let alone your next 10 000 hours so what usually happens is the first arc of our professional life i think we do either what we're told was a good thing to do or we found something and we played and we found that we're good at this thing and then along that way we become really good we have some level of mastery.

58:03Chris Do:And what's cool is the tree trunk in which you build your core skills on gets wider and wider. It could support more branches now. So now you can explore something else and keep exploring. So by the time you get into your late 30s, early 40s, I think you have maybe potentially two areas and they usually live very far apart. And this happens to a lot of creative people. There's something you do to get paid and there's a side hobby that you have. So here's the interesting thing. You have two things that you do. What if they were the same? So you can combine those two things. It takes some creativity to find that, but most people aren't willing to entertain that idea at all.

58:39You do just have to make sure that you're going to work hard enough at the thing in order to become good at it, I think. And it goes back to that original point you said in the very beginning, which is, are you underpaid or are you really underskilled right now? And if you're underskilled, let's make sure you don't just argue for more pay because it'll actually be more valuable long-term if you get up your skills as opposed to get up your pay in the moment. And I think that's the gift in that response. It would be a lot more popular on the internet if you just said, here's how to get your post to pay you$100 ,000 more.

59:09But the lifetime skill accumulation is going to be what actually pays you more long term. And so I thought that was a great response. Can I ask you a question? Yeah, please.

59:19Chris Do:I wonder if you have a lot of people you know that run businesses that aren't doing as well as they could. And the one thing they need to be doing is the thing they're not doing. Yes. Okay. So they have the skill. They have some kind of system in place to bring in clients and do the work. But then they're stuck. I know a lot of people that are entrepreneurs. And every one of them, if they were just to do this one thing, they would live in the land of milk and honey. But they don't. They just don't do what needs to be done. What's your experience with that kind of stuff? Well, I call it the rich owner versus poor owner mindset.

59:57And what I typically think, we say that there are basically 12 archetypes of entrepreneurs. And every single entrepreneur has a different archetype that is part of the reason they're kind of successful, like whatever your success comes from, and also the reason you're not successful enough yet. And so one archetype might be the founder, which we associate as a good thing. This was probably your friend. The founder is somebody who builds what they want, but not what other people want to buy. And they build what they want, which is why they've innovated in some incredible things. But they have this bias inside of them about why they won't build what people want.

1:00:37Or another one is the giver, which is the entrepreneur who can carry every burden. And so they do. And so all of us have this archetype inside of us. I sort of think about them like business horoscopes. And once you read all of them, you go, oh, God, that is me. I'm always underpricing. where I am always kind of coming up with this new thing that I want, but the market doesn't. And then you kind of have to do almost business therapy on it. Where do you think that comes from? You know, did you create something once that was so traumatizing for you to create that somebody wanted to pay you for that has meant that you never want to do that again because you're trying to avoid that one situation?

1:01:18And there's usually like one moment, one instance, one really bad thing that happened. You know, do you do everything in your business? Because one time you didn't, the person who you gave it to almost bankrupted you because they made a huge bad decision. Now you're never going to do it again. And so I used to think that if we just gave tactics to business owners, they'd crush. And I was like, I can give you the private equity playbook. I'll tell you exactly what to do. We've done this with, I mean, across my private equity companies now, hundreds of companies, and we follow it and it works. And that's why, you know, our companies double or triple every year.

1:01:51And it's not because we're so smart. I wish that was the case. It's just a playbook that's existed in finance for a long time. But the problem is, is that you will get in your own way as an entrepreneur if you don't see where your faults are.

1:02:04Chris Do:What's your archetype? My archetype? Well, it can change too. This isn't like moon and star shit. I don't know how that stuff works. It's not an actual horoscope thing. Exactly. Somebody else could tell me how to figure that out in Austin. Mine is either the founder, which typically again means I want to do what I want to do. I don't care what the market wants. I got over that in finance, but then my next one actually became the closer. And the closer typically means, which is why I like all your sales stuff, I'm the best salesperson so nobody else gets to sell. And I've really had to break myself of that habit, which is can I let other people be the front person?

1:02:46Can I let other people talk to the customer? Do I always have to know best? Can I not learn from them? And can I build real companies where a bunch of other people do this for me? And so if you think about it like the giver, the closer, the founder, those are all really nice words. We like those words. But they have this dark side to them too. What do you think you are? Do you think you have a bias as an entrepreneur?

1:03:08Chris Do:I probably do. I'm sure I do. There is a cure to the closer, something that I do all the time. Tell me. When you're good at doing things, the tendency is for you to do everything. So I tell people I practice some form of intentional incompetence. Okay? I could do it but I'm not going to do it. Someone else do this. And what's really cool is when you work with people, whether they work for you or whatever, they're around you, they want to serve, they want to help, they want to build something and you strip them of that ability if you just start doing everything. And the weird consequence is you make them feel really bad about themselves.

1:03:43Chris Do:In a design situation, if somebody's designing something, oh yeah, let me just do this, I'll show you. You know, you think, oh, it's like a real lesson for them. Their lesson is I suck. I'll never be this good. And so every time I'm given an assignment, I'm going to do a little bit less because I don't want to be disappointed. Because my stuff never gets picked. It's never good enough for the boss. And so you have to just be like, I don't want to do anything. Can you do this for me? And then they do it. And they're like, wow. And they feel great. And then they get to grow. And like, I'm contributing to this company.

1:04:13Chris Do:The way you need to do this, you need to take good care of them. And you also then need to use that free time that you have to do something that only you can do. So in terms of my archetype, I don't know what it is. But I have probably symptoms of every single one that you've talked about. Yeah, you know, I think it's interesting. I have found with entrepreneurs that, like there's a saying that, you know, becoming an entrepreneur is part of a trauma response, which always makes me chuckle. And I understand that in some way. But I don't think it has to actually be miserable. I think you can really enjoy being an entrepreneur.

1:04:48Chris Do:I enjoy it. I know. I love it. Thank you. I'm glad you said that because I think it's become cool to say that it has to be miserable. And when we put these people on pedestals who are kind of miserable, probably through nothing to do with entrepreneurship, actually, just deeper seated things, then we start to think that that is the only way to get where we want to go. And I love your work because it's really none of that. You know, it's a lot of do the things that you feel like you are inclined to do and thinking about things like, no, don't do networking if you hate networking. In fact, you don't even like networking.

1:05:25It's like stop doing that and start doing something you might like, like help people instead. And so I think we need to like raise up more entrepreneurial voices like that to have totally unique businesses where you do say no to a lot of things you don't like.

1:05:38Chris Do:Yeah. And you can still make a ton of money doing that. Yeah. Fact. You know? So maybe I have like two things I want to end on. Let's talk about the other reason why I think we people please and we lower price and we don't sell as well and we have all of these entrepreneurial problems is haters. We're scared not in just pleasing people, but it's scary to think about what if people just not only don't like you, but they come at you. And so I'm curious, like, was there ever a moment for you where somebody said something really tough that stuck with you? And what do you do when somebody does hate on you?

1:06:18Chris Do:How do you push through that? Now, when it comes to the trolls, I have a pretty good sense of self. In fact, I tell people, you know, the little story here, which is, I remember one time I was showing my wife, because I was starting to make content. Somebody wrote it like, Chris, I'm your number one fan. She goes, no, no, she's not or he's not. I'm like, what do you mean? She goes, I'm your number one fan. I'm like, well, that's babe. I didn't know. I'm like, gosh. You know, get out of here. I said to her in my smarmy way or whatever, you're not my number one fan. She goes, no. I'm my own number one fan.

1:06:54Chris Do:And she goes, God, this guy loves himself. And we got a whole conversation about that. I said, I do love myself. I have to be my own number one fan because a person who doesn't love themselves is hard to love. Okay, so let that sink. So when people make negative comments i'm like great i love you too i love the trolls they make me think harder i think a troll is someone who actually wants to like your content but for some reason their self-story is challenged because you're saying something that would wreck their world and i want to understand like how do i communicate to you better so that i can bring you to this party because i want to include you you bring so much fire and venom it helps me make more content it gives me clarity on where I can improve.

1:07:38Chris Do:And if it says like, I want to punch your face, that's not, that's a different kind of level. That's just hate. Or like, oh, you're an idiot. I'm like, okay, cool. There's no more information to extract from that. But they're like, you know, no one can apply this because the world doesn't. I can work with that. I can definitely work with that. And that gives me an idea for a new piece of content. Oftentimes, our most viewed content is because I said something that struck a nerve, either because they knew, because they told me, or I just had a sense like, okay, there's going to be a fight and people love us fighting because it allows us to find peace of truth.

1:08:12Chris Do:I had heard earlier on my European tour, another speaker say, an opinion that everyone agrees with is not an opinion. So in this world where it's the sea of same or the sea of lame, you have to figure out a way to say something that people are not going to be 100 % in agreement with. Not to do it to provoke them, but because you finally found something to say that's worth listening to. So good. Yeah, I remember listening to another speaker say that the truth is like a tuning fork when you don't hear it. When you hear it, you don't just hear it, you feel it. And you know how you get the little goosebumps when you hear the truth.

1:08:46But I always thought that was incomplete because it's not just, if it was just truth, I don't feel tuning fork when I say this is a white chandelier. It has to be like when it's a deep truth or an uncovered truth or an uncomfortable truth, then I do get the goosebumps. And I think, oof, that's tough, but it's actually true. And so there is something, you know, we were talking in the beginning about corporations and I often wonder why they partner with creatives or creators, but then they want to pull it back to come all the way to their brand. And we were talking about how they have to be careful of risk.

1:09:21And I think that's true. Budweiser is a great example of that. But simultaneously, I think you've got to be careful about stripping the soul out of things. And in our society today, I'd be curious your take, but you come to Europe and it's just been around a lot longer. And there's a lot less commercial strips inside of the city center. And there's a lot more rules about how you can build and what companies can go in. And so there's more what I would call soul, at least differentiation. appreciation. And I'm curious if somebody out there right now is like, I want to infuse a little soul into my personal brand.

1:09:54I want to infuse a little uniqueness. What are the things that you're like, here are a few thoughts or tips for somebody who doesn't want to die in the sea of sameness? Could be aesthetic or it could be verbal or it could be written.

1:10:08Chris Do:Number one, the easiest thing that you can do to insert a little soul is to say, what are cliches that everyone in my space is already saying and just make a long list what are phrases expressions and then what you do and this is like from advertising copywriting take a common phrase a cliche and then do something with it so you'll take a phrase and you just flip it a little bit so that expression here's an example it's from the economist magazine some of the best copywriting in the world something like the expression of great minds think alike we've all heard it if i said it you're like yeah and then what so they just took that expression change it just a little bit by changing the order of the words great minds like i think and it's enough for you to make what and years before he was involved in politics they had this line that says trump donald beat the man in his game because this is a magazine for tycoons and entrepreneurs and intellectuals so they had so many lines in there i'm like wow So find what the cliches are, look at them, stare at them, and play with them, stretch them, bend them, change the order, change the word, make it rhyme with something else.

1:11:16Chris Do:And then you now have an asset that people will then refer to you. And when we're building brands, we don't just think about building a brand, we build worlds. The more assets that you have to play with, not just words and ideas, but visual systems, it allows you to be easily identified, to stand apart from your competitors, but it also allows for beautiful collaborations. And I think about this. When Marvel and DC do a crossover, all the fans from both sides are so excited because they get to answer the question, could Superman beat this other person, Thor? Right? It's because Superman has a rich history, a visual language, and an arc that we understand.

1:11:56Chris Do:And then Thor has something different on Marvel. And when they get together, like, wow, what's going to happen? when Louis Vuitton collaborated with Supreme. Supreme had that future bold italic typeface. They had the red. They had skate culture. They had a lot of cachet with just being cool. They had this idea of doing a drop and never doing it again. Louis Vuitton has this rich heritage of bags and trunks and things like that and also high fashion. When the two got together, it made for a beautiful collaboration because Louis Vuitton would not use red. they would not make a case for a skateboard deck and they did all this together and to this day their collaboration sells used for more than the things that you can buy new from louis vuitton that's wild to me it's enduring because it's a cool collab it happened once it's gone if you can find it find it so i wanted to buy this trench coat that was a lv supreme collab it was nine thousand dollars.

1:12:53Chris Do:I don't like it that much. I like it a lot though. Well, it's interesting because I also think it's creatively liberating in a lot of ways. You don't have to sit alone in a room and come up with an independent idea that's never been done before. And in fact, a lot of the times with my team, I'm like, why are you coming up with a completely new idea out of nothing to start? And in some ways, this is a little controversial, but I'm not even sure you should be allowed to do that if you're not good yet. Like my point to them is often it's first you want to imitate, then you iterate, then you innovate.

1:13:28And so, you know, you don't, you could, I suppose, learn to draw having never drawn anything before and then just think that I'm good at drawing because I've drawn this thing and it's amorphous. But typically if you want to learn to draw, you learn to draw lots of different types. You learn to master those varying skills and then you can come up with something completely unique because you've got this overlap. Now, of course, it's not always true, but I do find that sometimes people get so confused about where to start with creative because they don't realize that you can play with what's already been in existence and almost everybody does.

1:13:59Chris Do:Yeah. There's one other thing I want to share with you about the visual part. I want to make sure that when somebody sees me, they can recognize me really fast. You know, there's probably borderline racist to say this, but for a lot of Caucasians, all Asians look the same, right? And there's a joke about this. Like white people can have blonde hair, brown hair, black hair. They can have blue eyes, green eyes, all colors and all shapes and sizes. And the rest of the world, all the people of color have one color, dark hair and dark eyes. And so it's harder to tell us apart. So I want to make sure if you're like, is that Chris?

1:14:32Chris Do:Yes, it is me. And there's a little story here. Years ago, much smaller following. I was in Toronto in December, I believe. It was colder than heck. I am bundled, but you cannot believe. Long coat, gloves, scarf, like my hat. And just basically about this much of my face was visible. I'm walking across the street, crosswalk, and somebody is walking the other way, slows down and turns back and follows me across the way. And it's like, are you Chris? I'm like, and then Ralph, I'm like, yes, I am. I'm like, how can you tell? It's like, I could just tell, bro. I can just tell. So here's the power of personal branding.

1:15:07Chris Do:If I were to take off my glasses and leave on the table and somebody saw the glasses, would they know that's me? If I took the hat off and I start to strip down the layers. I'm not at that level, but there are people who We're at that level. If you saw a glitter glove on this, you would know it's Michael Jackson. You would just know. And like if we were to put Gandhi's glasses on the table, you would just know it's Gandhi. Seth Godin's yellow glasses. Yeah. They all have something. And this is why to kind of put a bookend on it, different is better than better. To be different. Because different is recognized.

1:15:38Chris Do:Different is remembered. And oftentimes, different is what creates brand. Christo, thank you so much. This was amazing. Thanks, Cody. I like to follow you on YouTube and Instagram, but what's your favorite platform for people to follow you? Probably Instagram. I'm trying to grow that. It's super hard these days. And also LinkedIn. Fun. Okay, great. Trying to get to a million on LinkedIn. I like it. All right, then let's try LinkedIn today. Okay. All right. Thanks, my friend. Thank you.

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