Create, Teach & Steal Like Chris Do - Teacher: Chris Do

Creating content on YouTube has changed my life. It's changed my relationships. It's opened doors for me. I Could not have engineered in 2014 when we dropped our first YouTube video that this was going to happen 

This is Chris Do. An Emmy award winning designer and director who is the founder and CEO of The Future. An online education platform with the mission of teaching 1 billion people how to make a living doing what they love. Chris has over 27 years of experience in brand design, strategy, consultancy, working with clients such as Microsoft, Sony, Nike, and Starbucks, 

and today on Useful Content, Chris teaches us the good way to steal content. 

The good way of stealing is saying I want to honor the original creator, put their name, put their face. Say that this is where I got this idea from and I need to do one critical thing. I need to 

chris and I rank all of his social media platforms, and you'll be surprised to find out which one comes in dead last. 

last. 

why is it so low on the list? It's low on the list. I'm going to get in trouble for saying this 

And I'll just put it out there. 

Chris reveals his biggest source of content ideas 

and I'll tell you what it is, and it's going to surprise a lot of people. The biggest source for my content is 

And at the end of the conversation, Chris tells us the story of how we got cast on Amazon Prime's 60 Day Hustle. 

When I was looking into the environment, I saw the same number of people, this very red environment, not dissimilar to yours, and I was just like, my brain just completely froze. 

Today we are celebrating our 50th episode. Let's make useful content.

Hello and welcome to Useful Content. And today we have a brand new teacher. May I say a professor of creativity and business, Chris Do here with us. How are you, Chris?

I'm doing fantastic. Thank you very much.

Excellent. So Chris, I want to jump right into the questions and talk about some of your content, your process and everything surrounding that.

So let me just start off with a general question. So you consume a lot of YouTube. Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah. And I know you often speak to other creators. What is your point of view on the state of content In general, are we in a good place or a bad place?

I think we're in a great place. And what we're seeing is the algorithms continue to adjust such that if you're a new creator or if you've been creating for 10 years, you have an equal shot at reaching people. And I think that burned out a lot of creators on YouTube because they used to enjoy a lot of free traffic.

Thank you. But then I think what YouTube realizes, it's disproportionately sending traffic to a few big creators, and the big creators keep getting bigger. So it means that, although a small percentage, I think it's 10 percent of your audience, will see your new upload, the other 90 percent that you need to get, you have to earn.

And that makes us all honest, and to make sure that we're putting out the very best content that we can.

So do you see any specific, victories or dangers coming around the corner?

Yeah, I see the rise of. Multiple platforms to compete for creators and they all want exclusive content or or to have your content premiere on their platform first. And so they're all trying to figure out how to monetize now. So TikTok has a creator fund and so they give money to creators who are doing good content that are producing content consistently.

And then I think we see. Instagram trying not doing a great job of paying creators, but we know that YouTube is implementing a lot of different things including Educational portal now they have premier or premium memberships, which you can join to help support the creators I think what they're realizing is a few years in creators after the initial buzz of Building an audience need to really make money to be able to do this long term and sustainably

Yeah, and well, here's the thing, I think that even though these platforms are doing all, making all these efforts. In order to, um, pay creators, how can creators then make sure that it works in themselves apart from the platforms? What are some of the systems that it can build? Because platforms don't really pay that much.

And like for me in the Caribbean platforms don't pay at all.

Right

And so what are some of the systems that creators can build? And what have you seen that works, you know, around, monetizing and making sure that their business is sustained in content. Yeah.

I'm glad you asked that question. We know that ad rates are determined by the, probably the country of origin, and also where your biggest audience is. And ad rates are what pays for creators to make content. So if you're in a primary market where they're fetching the highest ad dollars, then you're gonna do really well.

So one thing I've heard about is that there are Americans who are creating TikTok accounts who will get them to 100, 000 followers. And then they will then broker them and sell them to someone overseas so that person can take over and appreciate the Kind of american origin created account. So I see that there's a probably a secondary market here Where there's going to be kids who are going to use probably ai to grow an account And get it up to a certain size and then auction it off And at first I thought a little shady about this like i'm like this is kind of weird But it actually serves a very real need that if you're in a In a second or third market that you can actually pay for this.

And it's not like they're selling to you for a ton of money, but it does, it does require a little bit of money. So the reason why I got over this is somebody's like, Hey, check yourself, man. When somebody owns a building on a primary street at for a retail front, you're paying for that too. So if they're getting you access on like, you know, you play Monopoly on boardwalk, you know, all the blue properties, park place, if they've.

So basically built that for you, why not buy that? So that's one way that you can go around this. The other thing that you can do, I think, is you can create content that has an appeal to a much broader audience in markets where there's a lot of competition for ad dollars and you can do that. I think the last thing that you can do is, okay, so AdSense is not going to pay you because you're in the Caribbean or something like that.

You can create educational content and put it under the educational portal and just sell that. So you have a big audience and then you can monetize by creating courses that people are happy to pay for or people can support you through memberships. That's another way around the AdSense block.

Yeah. That's good stuff. Cause I think that is continually a major challenge up to this morning. I was speaking with a friend of mine. She is Trinidadian, but she lives in Florida, in the U S and she was like, well, if you want me to set up the YouTube channel for you, I can do that. 

I really want to talk about too, something that you said back in the day when, uh, you first started your podcast, because I listen to your podcast all the time. And there's something that you said that was very interesting in the very first episode of the future podcast. So you said the podcast came from all our users who said, I love the content.

I just want to be able to hear you on my commute, because to me, if you want to be successful in business, you have to give the users what they want. This is called user experience design. Give them what they want in the fewest number of steps. Is that still a major driver of your content today?

Yes, it is. And, and I know you've listened to it cause you're, you're pretty much saying it verbatim the way that I explained the story. So you, you can give the customers what they want or the way I was thinking of it at the time is meet them where they're at. So what I didn't realize is that there are a lot of people who are listening to our, are watching our YouTube show, but have really bad internet connection.

And this is a problem. So some, some kids in the Philippines don't have consistent internet connection. So they might go to a hotel or a library or something and then download episodes. But YouTube, unless you have a premium account, you can't download the episodes. So don't make it more difficult for people to consume your content.

So initially, to be totally honest with you. I was kind of reticent of making that content I really was i'm like here's another thing I need to do and I have Not enough people to do what it is that we're doing anyways But it's one of the best decisions because now the podcast has its own audience And we're we're top 20 in 50 countries top 10.

I think in 10 or something like that And so it's like it's remarkable that means that we have this incredible reach that goes way outside of youtube So it's, it's kind of shocking to me when we meet people in real life and we ask them, how'd you find out about us? Oh, the podcast. I'm like, that's not even my home base, but it's turned into its own thing.

So I'm, I'm delighted about that result.

Yeah. It's a great thing. And I'm so glad that you are thinking about how people consume the content in other countries because there are challenges.

Yeah. You know, one thing that you have to be careful about is If you always give the clients or your customers what they want, you wind up making products that don't really excite you, that divert your resources and dilute your energy and your focus, so you kind of have to have a balance.

Like, don't block them out, but don't do everything they ask for, because they ask for all kinds of crazy stuff, and then you over index on what they want, and you realize it was just a loud minority, and not what the majority wanted. So some part of you being an entrepreneur and a visionary is to think about the things that they want that they don't yet know that they want.

That's the key.

as a challenge for everybody, like the balance of what my audience consumes and what they want and what I want to make. And I know people tend to, some people tend to go on one side of, I'll just make what I want. And if you like it, you like it. If you don't, you don't.

Those people are like artists, I guess. But then you have to run a business as well. So you have to think about those aspects of, of how people consume content.

Mm hmm.

Yeah, all right. So the, YouTube channel, um, it's going pretty well, I suspect.

Yes.

That's only public content that people are consuming.

So there's a component to your content, which is future pro, which is a ton of private content, right? So how many pieces of content do you think future pro has at this time? Like,

Oh, I know.

many, you know, so

somewhere between 250 hours to 400 hours of Exclusive content. The reason why I know this is because we do two calls a month and sometimes we're doing two calls a week. And those calls last anywhere between an hour and a half to three hours long. And we're over, the last call I did was call 254.

So we know that there's at least 254 pieces of content that are at minimum an hour and a half long. So that's a lot of content in there.

how did you order all that content that it's, it's a massive body of content. How did you put all those, that those pieces of content in order? What was that process like?

So we organize the calls around what we feel are the biggest challenges that people are facing. So I might do multiple calls, like three calls on how to create an irresistible offer or how to design a love letter sales page.

And then once that's done, those calls are archived, they're indexed, and there are summaries and sometimes worksheets that are attached to it. That my team handled for me. They're all searchable and indexable. And so sometimes you're sitting there thinking, um, How to price and if you just type that in in our search bar, which took us forever to build Then it'll show like pretty much every video that has that phrase in it And it can only get better because with the use of ai you might not even have to write The exact phrase and it'll just figure out like I think you mean these things and we'll just show you what we think So now you don't have to watch all hour and a half.

It'll just jump to the time code in which that is being said. You so you can quickly search that way before we had a human being doing that. And that was exhausting to do to say, Oh, it's this video. And it's somewhere in the third part.

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What's the most popular, uh, topic

The most top popular topics center around personal branding, I think.

that's

brand strategy. Yeah.

I thought I might be pricing or that's yeah,

Well, inside the pro group is a little bit different, right? So a lot of the pricing content that you see is out there and we don't even talk about pricing that much inside the group because they're established entrepreneurs.

They can just quickly ask me a question and get some answers. But there are a ton of resources already inside and outside the group. We used to have this crazy curriculum map and it was like a lot of little boxes around different topics and how they're connected together. And each one of those boxes were linked to a specific video.

So someone brand new to the group who walks in is like 254 videos. I can't watch those. Well, you can look at the map. We also have learning paths that are designed around specific things and the people could follow along just the videos that they need to watch.

Do you feel like you can never really be fully compensated for all the time and creativity you put into putting together this massive body of content?

That's a really good question.

I don't, I don't know if I ever need to be compensated because I feel so fulfilled in doing what it is that I'm doing that I've already been compensated for that because. Creating content on YouTube has changed my life. It's changed my relationships. It's opened doors for me I mean, I don't I don't I don't want to name drop But I recently had dinner with Daniel Priestly he organized his dinner while he was here in LA And he told me a couple of his friends were gonna show up and I'm very anti social and introverted So I was like, do I really want to stay for this dinner?

But Daniel is my friend, and so we've always had wonderful conversations together. I'd rather just be dinner for two, basically him and I. And then later on he tells me who's going to show up, and sure enough, I don't know if you know who Mark Manson is. He wrote The Subtle Art of Not Giving an F.

It's a best selling book.

So he was sitting there! And then there was this guy, his name is Jesse, and Jesse runs a YouTube channel around basketball, and he has 20 million subscribers. He's just 25 year old kid just sitting right next to me and there there's Jackie there was Eric And I forget the other person's name, but they're all do really cool and important things I was thinking oh all of them are gonna be my guests on my podcast one at one point So this is pretty cool.

Now. The reason why I tell you that story is because I Could not have engineered in 2014 when we dropped our first YouTube video that this was going to happen But now I get to meet the people that Uh, whose books I've read and admired and recommend to other people, people like Marty Neumeyer, Blair Enns, David C Baker, Ron Baker, you know, all the bakers basically, you know, so I get to do that now.

So my life is more fulfilled and better and richer for it. So I don't think there's this whole thing where I'm thinking I need to be compensated for that. The reason why it's difficult for me to answer that question because there's a different component to it, which is, I believe this fundamentally that there's no amount of money you could pay me that I am not worth So it's one of these things where somebody's like, hey, we're gonna pay you three hundred thousand dollars to give a talk at this this event Great.

I'm worth 300 grand. I'm actually worth more than that because I will bring you more value than than what it is That you're paying me 

here's what I say about you. I say if standing on the shoulders of giants were a person, it'll be Chris Do. Um, because every single time you make a piece of content, I'm Almost certain most of your content you tend to reference or mention like those names you just call Keir, Marty, uh, David C. Baker.

Yeah, it's, it's, and I'm always amazed at that because I'm thinking, how are you keeping track of all these things that you're learning? Do you like write only thought somewhere and, and kind of fit it in? Or is it just naturally when you learn something it's in prints and it comes out in a context? How does that work for you?

I think it's the educator in me That citing sources is a very important thing and Austin Kleon wrote about this in Steal Like an Artist and he talks about like, there's a good way of stealing and there's a bad way of stealing. Let's talk about the bad way of stealing, which is you're kind of insecure and embarrassed that you're learning from other people.

So you use their content, you use their words and use their ideas, but you cite nothing and you try to cover your tracks so that no one can see that. Because your greatest fear is that people will say, Oh, you're just regurgitating someone else's content. And in fact, that's what you're doing. But by hiding it, you, you get really shady, right?

And this has happened to me a lot. So I post a lot of carousels on Instagram. And then what people do, they quite literally take the exact same words, phrases and visuals, and then they change the design. In my opinion, they make it much uglier because I think I'm a pretty good designer. And then they buried the fact that I'm even related to this thing at all.

Okay. They might mention it and bury the, oh, inspired by, and my name, that's not inspired by. That is, I'm redesigning somebody else's thing worse. And so I'll message them like, you know, it's not really inspired by. And if you're practicing recreating content, then practice on your own. Like, you don't need to post that publicly.

Right? We don't, we don't post. Our master copies like if I were to try to redraw my Leonardo da Vinci drawing and trace it like pixel for pixel or stroke for stroke, I'm not putting it out there and pretending like, hey, I just did this really cool thing. By the way, I was inspired by da Vinci. Everybody called me out on that.

Yeah, this is what people do. That's a bad way of stealing. The good way of stealing is saying I want to honor the original creator, put their name, put their face. Say that this is where I got this idea from and I need to do one critical thing. I need to transform it somehow. So if I hear an audio file and I Design a moving piece of motion graphics with type that's transformative And if I if I if there's like a moving piece of type, that's emotion graphics.

I might act it out with a friend That's transformative. And if you're really literally going to then just show the same thing Just reshare the freaking post Reshare the photo of the page in the book. You don't need to like redo it There's no point and it's because you're insecure. And so I want to cite the people It's a way to honor the ideas and I readily tell people this I barely have any original ideas myself But pretty much all the ideas that I have are parts and pieces of things that someone else has taught me Something I've heard something I've read a workshop.

I've been in And I've been able just to transform it just about that much. And I want to make sure that people understand that.

Yeah. That's good. That's good. Do you have a personal content strategy, or everything you do is just folded in with the future? Do you like, have some strategy personally?

That's another really good question. You're asking the hard questions here. So it looks like there are two companies or two entities. There's me and there's the future, but I know you're an OG person who follows our content. So you may remember there was this time when there was this company called the school.

Remember the school? And it was run with Jose, right? And, and Jose was really leading the content game cause I didn't really know what I was doing and I still, to this day, don't know what I'm doing.

But when I started the future, I was thinking to myself, what are we gonna do? It's just me. I had one unpaid volunteer to help me. Okay, that was just the two of us. And so when I was writing content, I had to make the conscious decision of like, Am I going to write in the we or the I? So if I write, we think this, we believe this, it felt disingenuous to me.

Because there is no we, it's just me. So, I don't want to pretend like I'm this big corporation, that there's this governing board or board of directors, it's just me. So I started writing in the I. And people were having like, Giving me a hard time about it's like oh, it's so self centered. Isn't it? Like shouldn't you be writing the we the plural?

I'm, like there is no we bro It's just I just me and aaron and we're gonna make some content together and I felt that that was the most authentic thing so it was just me and I'm writing I and I'm sharing my opinions, my thoughts and as the future, by the way, not as Chris Doe, I'm just writing in the futures account and it starts to grow and grow and grow.

And so for a period of time, the future was me. It was just that I, and I just wrote this way and there was just really one opinion. And then I started to work on my own personal account and we got a young marketing intern from the UK to help us create content for Instagram. But what she was doing, she was scraping. Content the things I was writing about the things I was speaking about and just making sure that there was some Version of that on Instagram, so there really isn't two personalities. It's just me writing But now what's happened is there's a team that's helping out with the future And so we're starting to diverge a little bit, but I still write from my own personal perspective

So are you going to have more? Let's call them personalities on the, on the channel solo. Or is it going to be mainly you still going into the future?

It is still going to be mostly me and the reason is most of my team don't want to be on camera There was a period in time when we had creative directors like Matthew Encina, we had Greg, Gunn, and they were making content, but the rate in which they're making content, because they want to do really refined, scripted, produced, edited, color graded, motion graphics, everything was really tight, their cadence was much, much slower than mine.

They might drop a video a month or something like that. So by volume. The things that I'm creating are going to just blanket the entire channel. There are still videos with Greg on the channel. There's still videos with Matthew, but they both have since left the company and are doing their own thing. So I don't currently have people who are excited to be on camera right now.

Okay. So I'm going to, , I want to do a tiny fun exercise here. At this point, um, so you are on how many channels as chris do right now

I'm on Tik TOK, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Pinterest. I don't know. I

Okay, let's, let's just call it five,

Yeah, five.

So let's do a tier ranking for those, um, channels, um, from A, well, let's go from S tier to S, A, B, C, D, S to D in terms of strategic importance of the channel. Uh, and let's see if you can give a ranking for each of those. And could you tell me like, why, why are those important?

So let's, let's run them. Yeah.

Yeah, there's actually six. I forgot to mention the podcast, because that's a different channel.

Oh, the podcast, but that's, that's, that's the future, right? Yeah.

Well, okay. You, yeah, you're right. You're right. I mean, it's only me, but it is, that's the future, correct?

It's only

technically, you're right. Yeah, so five. 

So let me just interject here as the host of the podcast. Chris was right. I should have let him rank the podcast as well, the future podcast, because he's the one hosting it, he's doing all the work on it, so it should have made it into this tier ranking. Because as he explained before, in the beginning, it was just him with just minor assistance.

Uh, I do think though, that the podcast would have ranked pretty high, maybe right after YouTube, Chris, if you're looking at this and you want to come in the comments and confirm that you can do it, I'll include it in the tier ranking, but I really should have let Chris rank his podcast as well. So we missed out on that tiny piece.

All right, onward to the tier ranking.

So, what is the most important to the least important?

Yeah. Yeah. Let's rank them, s tier is,

Shoot. Okay. I think the most important channel for us is YouTube.

okay. You too. That, that makes sense. That makes sense.

It's where we started. I have a deep connection and love for YouTube and it's our, our biggest audience to date. And number two would be probably probably LinkedIn.

LinkedIn. Interesting. Interesting. So, so why, why LinkedIn?

LinkedIn allows me to create content.

The way that I want to create content in the algorithm currently is The way that algorithms should be it's based on your followers and it's based on engagement So every time I make a piece of content, I can feel pretty confident that who is supposed to see it. Will see it

And there's a business audience there that are mostly real people.

There aren't as many weird fake accounts Posing as real people. There are still some for sure, but you don't have to worry so much about that on LinkedIn

Right, right. As a sidebar, I know you read comments on LinkedIn. Do you read the comments on YouTube?

Absolutely in the who you know who responds to them me

You everything

Still respond to them. Yes, and I I try to do them. There will be moments where I'm so busy I can't look at them, but I'll just go in and say look at Comments, I haven't responded to and just bang them out. I'll just go through them Now it's not always me.

There's somebody else that's in there somebody on my team who responds Sometimes he'll switch over as himself and not as the future, but most of the times it's just me So 90 of the comments that you see on the future by the future is is because I posted that

I have to ask, are you okay with that? I, I like, I know the comments can be brutal. Oh, yeah it all right?

Oh, yeah, they are brutal and I'll dance with them. It's fine You know what people don't understand is i'm 52 years old and i've been doing my business for 30 years So in many instances i've run a business longer than some of these kids have been alive So are they gonna say something to hurt me?

No If it hurts me, it means because I believe it to be true and then that's a check in for me like oh I wasn't being a good person there and I don't like myself. So when they call me out on that i'm like Yeah, okay. You have a point. I need to mind my temper, right? I didn't phrase that correctly But most of the times what they're saying is projection of their own world and their own world views And this has nothing to do with me.

So i'll engage with them Now, I don't know if you know who mo is he's on the

yeah. No more. Yeah.

He's on my team And Mo is like, I'm just here for the comments. I just want to see how you're going to respond to these people. He goes, I didn't even watch the video. I just read you. You're back and forth and he's like busting up and he'll screen capture and send it back to me.

It's like, dude, that was cold. How you respond to that kid. All right. I hope there'll be okay. And he just laughing. He's a good time. Yeah.

Okay. Back on track. So we have an S tier. We have YouTube and B tier. We have LinkedIn. What is C tier? instagram IG. Okay.

Yeah, and when we talk about the differences here in terms of how important it is to me, we're talking about little degrees. I'm not talking about like there's a ocean between them. It's just I love Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube.

I know Instagram is probably the place that you got the most traction first.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I was able to grow pretty fast on Instagram.

Yeah, yeah All right ig at C tier no a b. No B tier because yeah, because linkedin was was um above that. So let's go c c tier. What's c tier now?

So after Instagram. Um, I'm going to say probably X Twitter

Okay why x twitter at that level

because there are some really smart people on, on Twitter X and you can have a conversation with people really fast because they're all just hanging out there ready to talk to you. The crazy part to Twitter X is that if you want to talk to a large corporation, at mention them, and they will respond really fast because I think. It is a mature enough platform that they know customer service people are hanging by to make sure everything's cool. Somebody told me this before that said that if you have a problem with a company at mentioned the CEO of that company and you're going to get it resolved really, really fast. So if, if there's poor service, like say you get into a car accident and the insurance company isn't handling it well for you and, and you're, you've paid your, your, your monthly fees or whatever it is. At mention the CEO of the company, you'll see how quickly it gets resolved.

Right,

Now, I don't do that at the very first step. I want to make sure I can resolve it through proper channels. Cause it's not like I'm trying to drag everybody into the fight and I want to make sure I'm polite and clear. Like, Oh, this is disappointing.

I paid my fees and now the result is this. And, and I hope someone from the insurance team can help me resolve this. Cause. This doesn't feel right to me. I want to start it there. I don't want to start dropping bombs on people I'm, not trying to pick fights, right? We want to be Cordial and i'll tell you something.

Here's the real world example I own a volvo And it's like the top of the line volvo and i've never owned a volvo before and there was a manufacturing defect with Something that literally cut my finger when i'm driving And it was, I was bleeding in the car. I'm like, shoot. And then I was meaning to take into the dealership, but you know, I'm a busy guy and the dealership's not close by, so eventually I take it in.

They're like, oops, you're out of warranty. I'm like, by how long? They're like 30 days or 22 days. I'm like, shoot, but this is a manufacturing defect. They're like, well, there's nothing we can do. I said, are you sure about that? You really and he's like it's gonna cost a thousand dollars to replace this not because it's expensive But because we have to take this whole component out and replace it.

I'm not happy about this at all So I go online and said, you know, it's very disappointing This is my first vovo and i've enjoyed the experience and this has happened and I think I showed my finger being cut

Ooh.

And he said vovo you want to step up here and somebody from vovo within 24 hours contacted me and said hey Tell us what's going on And They resolved it.

And they stayed on top of it and they gave me all the grace because they said, Oh, take it in and we'll take care of it. And again, cause I'm so busy, I'm traveling by the time I get in there, that ticket is dead. And so the guy says, Nope, we have no such message from Volvo. And I'm like, shoot. So I reach out again and they do take care of it.

right. All

That's a company that understands customer service and says, there's a lot of the law and there's an intention behind the law. And it's like, we don't want people, especially, probably they didn't say this, With your reach because the damage that I could do as an unsatisfied customer is not good. It's not good for them So fix the thing it doesn't cost that much to fix and they did the right thing and now i'm still a fan of volvo

Yeah. I was just about to ask that. I was just about to ask whether or not a big part of that response was because you are you.

Right

And, um, I mean, I guess that helps,

it helps

it helps, you

Yeah, but somebody else who told me that She she's an attorney and she works for Healthcare companies and she's the one who approves claims, right? And she told me that If they don't approve your claim, just add mention the CEO and you'll see what happens. And she's talking about regular people right now.

Because what she wants to do, even though she works for the, for the healthcare company, is she wants to approve and reimburse everybody. 

Yeah. 

But the policies are she can't. And she goes, just give them a reason so that they just send me a note saying approve it. And she's happy to approve it.

Right. Right.

Right? So you can still be a nobody and still get some help.

So that's the next one. Yeah.

of twitter and come bringing up the rear Yes, TikTok, of course.

Of course how come I 

of course, because that's the last one that's on the list, right? By deduction,

All right, you mean like you mean like you mean like that, but why is it so why is it so low on the list

It's low on the list I'm going to get in trouble for saying this

and I'll just put it out there. So, I think, pre pandemic, I was at Adobe Max, and I put out TikTok. Like how to build your social following on Instagram and tick tock was still a relatively new platform for folks And somebody asked me. Hey, what are you doing?

Tick tock? I said, I don't know anything about tick tock And I said, I'm a little nervous because Tik Tok is owned by a Chinese corporation, and sometimes you don't know what's happening, like, how some of these dumb piece of content get 300, 000 views on it, it boggles my mind. I just can't figure it out.

So, are we always certain that every view that you get is legitimate, or are they vanity metrics, or are there robots following you to make you feel like you're doing something important? And then they're like, Oh, this is not going to age well, so people in the comments are just ripping on me, you know, but they don't, they have the, um, the vision of force or hindsight, which is, well, now you're a year later watching that video clowning on me because TikTok blows up and it's like crazy viral machine, right?

But when I made that video, that's how I felt. So three years later, they're like, we're not going to age well. Yeah. And so I'm like, maybe I was wrong. And then what, what is, what is, uh, Congress going to do right now or the Senate?

Hmm

banning TikTok. Because why? Because they're a Chinese controlled company and they are concerned about privacy and data hacking and all kinds of stuff.

So it goes right back to that. Now, here's the other thing I know, and I don't have any proof of this, but there are people who are TikTok strategists who tell me TikTok's main mission was to make it the most addictive social platform on earth. And they have all kinds of things that they do to get you become addicted.

For example, when you post your 10th video, they send a disproportionate amount of traffic to you because they know it's like, that's a milestone. Yeah. There's little things that they do to keep you like, Oh, I'm about to forget about you. And boom, they give you something again. It's kind of like a crap dealer.

I want to get off this platform and, and I can't, and here's the thing hats off to them. I think they have the smartest. Algorithm I've ever seen

Hmm

And then I forget 30 minutes later who i'm trying to respond to because one video at the end I'm like, oh no, i'll finish this one and i'm done.

Nope. This one's freaking pretty funny, too And oh my god, I can't believe that's happening

Yeah, tiktok is like that. It's pretty addictive and I think that um, Like I I looked at your content on tiktok and I realized that it doesn't seem like a lot of effort is going in here

Yeah, not a lot

Yeah,

I post a couple of videos, you know, the weird thing that makes me upset Is My videos that I share in TikTok that someone else re shares is doing better than my video. I'm like,

come on guys. Come on. It's my video. And you know, what's interesting is, is, uh, Adam is that Adam was Sarah from Instagram, the CEO.

He said like from, from now moving forward, they're going to wait the original posts more than they do reposts. So the repost is going to direct the traffic back to the original post. And you get some views, but not as much as before. It's like, why did it take you guys that long? So I'm curious if TikTok will do the same.

I don't know. I think they'll do anything to get more, whatever gets the most amount of views and traction and so on.

Yeah. There's one more platform. Right, go ahead. It's threads. 

Threads.

Threads will be number six. Look at your face when you said that.

Yeah, I mean,

I don't know. Threads. Somebody, okay, when threads came out, there was somebody who was a digital content strategist, was coming out and was saying, Get on treads now. You, you know, you have to capture the early audience and I shouldn't have said this, but I went in their comments and I said, do not deviate from your current strategy.

Focus on what you're building. Do not jump on a new platform. Um, you know, if your content is good, it'll translate. And, um, and yeah, now it's, I don't know, I don't know how often I go on there. I don't know what's happening there. I don't know how are you enjoying there. I don't know.

I go there from time to time, and Threads was created as an alternative to what seems to be a very right leaning Twitter, right, with Elon running it. And I think it's important to have competition, and what Threads did was it gave you a huge audience automatically from your current audience. And I appreciate that, and I'll put a post on Threads, and I'll see how it does, and I'll just, I'll keep playing.

The one thing I've learned in In the years in which I've been playing with social media is when there's a new platform Register your account put a little bit of effort in to claim your name more than anything else and in the event that you want to Invest more time in there. You at least have a stake.

Otherwise, you can't even get your own name

Yeah. Yeah.

So get on it and do a little bit and if it works it works and if it doesn't and if you enjoy it more so there was this general sentiment in the early days of threads like This is a much more positive inclusive and safe space and It just quickly devolves right back into Twitter, and it's, that's what it's become again.

It's the internet. I mean,

It's the internet. What are you gonna do?

I call that, that thing you described earlier, saving your seat

Yeah.

on a platform. Yeah. That's good. All right, your claim. take your claim. All right. So that's the good tier ranking. I like that. Hopefully that's going to be useful for people when they look at their own platforms and how they round them.

Okay. So I know some time ago, you, you, I'm going to quote you again. You said that your personal brand is not your, is it? Your personal brand is not your business is what you said. Right. Um,

Yes.

You, you, you used Elon Musk as an example and you talked about when he misbehave, it negatively impacts his companies.

Um, my thought was, was there ever a time when you wanted to say something publicly, but you know, you couldn't because of how it might impact the future.

I mean, there are some things, we're always editing ourselves, but I need to be clear about that. Because there are things that you might say amongst your friends or your family that are too unfiltered for public consumption But I steer clear from politics And there's a reason why I want to stay away from religion politics sex those kinds of things because it's not my jam I might talk to you about it in in a private location and we can we can chat because Maybe that's what we feel like talking about but because i'm not studied i'm not I'm not trying to build my brand around having an opinion on politics or religion or anything else.

I want to build my brand on helping creative entrepreneurs develop their business skills.

And so you can get, you can distract a lot of people because now all of a sudden you're talking about this other thing. And I think if that's what really you're passionate about, there are our political junkies.

They're the ones who should be talking about this because you know how I mentioned certain authors and ideas. Well, I know nothing about that when it comes to anything outside of the things that I'm mostly interested in. And for the same reason, someone who's a political junkie probably doesn't want to create like a lot of business and marketing personal branding content because that's not their jam. And if you're like a big music aficionado, well, you should create content around music and try and keep the other stuff kind of to the Thanksgiving dinner table, you know?

So you kind of stay in your lane when it comes to what makes sense for your business.

No, what makes sense to me? I'm not that interested in that,

right, right, right,

Right. Like I love fishing, but I don't love fishing enough. I want to talk about it and integrate into what I'm doing unless there's an appropriate metaphor for marketing.

Yeah. Is that like the difference between like, um, personal content and private content.

I think so. Yeah. But you know, I think based on what I've been doing with Instagram, once you create a lot of professional educational content, people start to wonder who's the person behind this.

Mm hmm.

And I know somebody said this to me, especially younger folks, Millennials, Gen Z, They'll say something like if I don't know who you are, I don't trust you.

Mm.

And the fact that you don't show who you are bothers me. I'm like, I didn't think it was interesting to anybody. And I think the sequence here matters a lot. So, you know, my son, my oldest boy, he's 20 years old. He's almost 21. He creates content about his entire life all the time.

Mm hmm.

I think that's how His generation creates content and it's very unfiltered.

Like he doesn't want to spend time color grading or making it too polished. He wants to tell a good story and that's what's important to him. For my generation, I'm, um, I'm Gen X. I want to just create value for people. So it's like two different generations coming together and meeting at this same digital space.

So I think it's kind of important for me to make sure I'm speaking to younger people as well. So that I want to incorporate some personal content and be less filtered and I think that helps them to relate

Yeah. Yeah. Have you guest starred on your son's content yet?

No, I'm in the background

He hasn't invited you on.

Yeah, no, I think it's both my boys Want to make their create their own identity around what they want and not pull me into it I am in the background of a lot of things or I might Be a little bit more than the background, but i'm not A person that he's not He doesn't want to leverage my account to build his account because he's got his own voice, his own identity, and I'm really happy that that's what they're doing.

Oh, yeah. That's good. That's good for the kids. Yeah. So what's your, um, your biggest source of content ideas recently? Um, and how has that changed since when you first launched 

Yeah. I don't think it's changed 

that much, and I'll tell you what it is, and it's going to surprise a lot of people. The biggest source for my content is conversations with people. When I'm at a really interesting dinner party, like the one I mentioned earlier, I'm hearing and seeing ideas or observations about that that I think What is my take on that?

And I want to share that where this works really well too, is if I'm in a, in a group of people who are eager to learn or people who are very curious, like yourself, who asked me questions about things I've not thought about before, that's an opportunity for me to like, huh, there's some, some dark space in my brain that now it was just illuminated because you asked a question that got me to think, what is my answer to that?

And if I think it's interesting. I'll write a note about it and then I'll turn it into a piece of content at some point in the future.

when I listen to what you, what you share, I often think about how much work has gone into, receiving it, processing it, and then turning it into something that people will understand. And I think you really have the heart of a teacher. Um, many people.

are not like that. They, they can't teach in that same way. What are some, uh, some ways people can, who don't have that gift that how they can create content, even if they are challenged by the fact that they can't explain it the way you can explain it.

I'm curious, are you a parent?

I am, I

Okay. Look at the way your face lit up there, I like that. And how many children do you have and how old are they?

Two girls, 10 and 12.

Okay, beautiful. So, you are a teacher. Anyone who's a parent is a teacher. Anyone who's had a younger sibling is a teacher. And you might not have thought of it this way, but there are things that you've done.

And first we have to adopt this mindset. The mindset is I'm looking after somebody. I'm trying to protect them. I'm trying to make their life better. So that they'd suffer less than they need to. So if you have a younger sibling, it could have been like, here's how high school works, and here's how you deal with bullies, or here's how you get into a certain college or university, or whatever it is that you want to do.

And so then you have to be able to explain it to them in ways that are very simple. And you don't want to overwhelm them with too much information. And that's the key. So as a parent, you You might, first of all, especially when your daughters were very young, you might have gotten down on your knees and then talked to them on their level.

And this is a really important thing that we learn from like, uh, parenting courses. Don't talk to them from up here, because all they do is look up at you. Go down to their level. Meet them where they're at. See it from their perspective so that they can feel like you understand them. Those are very important principles.

Now, you might have a very complicated idea, but you know if you explain it to your six year old daughter or four year old daughter at that time, they're not going to understand this. So what you have to do is you have to find something that they do understand and frame what you're trying to teach them around the things they care about the most.

So maybe they care about Powerpuff Girls or something, and you're like, you know how this character does that? Have you ever wondered why they do that and how they're able to beat that enemy? Then all of a sudden They're like, I get it, Dad. You're talking about this. So you have to reframe what it is that you want to teach them and wrap it around the things that they understand and are most excited about.

Right? Uh, there's a gentleman. I'm spacing on his name right now. I think his name is Sujit Mitra, and he has this beautiful TED Talk and this wonderful idea. It's called A Hole in the Wall computer, a computer in the wall or something like that. 

Basically, they literally go to some place that's really broken down.

He cuts a hole out of it and installs like a really old, uh, computer in it. And he lets kids in third world countries work on it. And, and he's like, he has this whole idea that we don't need teachers. We need facilitators because the kids are really smart. And the biggest challenge is to come up with the right question.

So he was sharing this example. He goes, Well, people wanted him to do, to teach about gingivitis. Then he's like, Oh, this was a tough one. What would the question be like such that the kids would be interested? And he says, here's what he came up with. He goes, kids, do you notice how sometimes you have teeth and they fall out and then you grow up and then they come back in.

But when they fall out again, as an adult, they don't grow back.

yeah,

Why is that? And then he let them go off. And later they came back. There's something called gum disease. Mr. Mitra. It's called gingivitis and it's what happens and they're like, and it's wonderful. And in this way, when he phrases the problem correctly in ways that they can understand, they're able to do math, science, uh, and, and physics and things, two, three, four, five grades above their level.

yeah, yeah.

So you have to just frame the problem so they can get excited about it. I

my heartstrings, man. Um, just mentioning the daughters.

I was that in your face.

that's like a hack right there. Um, yeah, I get what you're saying. You have to do things, um, meet people at the level of their, their current understanding and help build them up. Yeah.

And you know how, how I, the meta layer is? You asked me a pretty complicated question. How do you come, become a better teacher? And the first thing I was thinking, what do you know about, what do you care about?

Yeah.

So I had asked you, are you a dad? And you're like, yes. Well, that's going to be my entry point.

See, so my whole conversation with you was a way that you can understand, yes, I've been a teacher all this time because I have two little ones I have to look after. Yeah.

Yeah. I see you. I see you. A little dope there. You yeah, that's like what you did to Blair Enns one time. Um, when you sold him on, um, on, um, uh, he was talking about sales and being sold to and all of the DMs he was getting that were terrible and You basically saw them during the podcast. Okay.

This is a technique. This is like the Aikido of conversation. Yeah.

expecting it from me. So his guard was very like it was low.

Yeah. Yeah. It's God was like got caught. That's a good example. All right. So I, I guess we, we're going to come in for a very, um, very nice landing here. Um, what do I want to have? So many things I could ask you. But, but I want to just ask you probably a couple of fun things before we finish.

Okay.

So, okay, so you, you are, and I have something in common. Um, I, I consider myself a bit of a design snob as well. Um, so there are things I won't wear because I don't like the logo. Recently you did the podcast about the Under Armour logo. And, I did, I did. So.

I mean, come on, guys. Let's fix the logo. Come on.

I did. I did. Are there any other logos that fall into that category that you can

A lot. There are too many for me to say. It would be me calling out every industry. It's easier to point out the ones that are good and there are not that many. 

And what was the process for you in designing the future logo?

was very simple. Once I explain it, you're like, wait a minute. I get it now. So there's a handful of typefaces that I love. Like I really love. Helvetica.

I right now I'm using a champion Gothic or otherwise known as knockout. And I, I use Futura or I used to use Futura a lot. Futura is this really beautiful, powerful, bold, geometric typeface.

And it's used a lot in the advertising industry. So when we were making content as the school, our default typeface was Futura. Okay. And we would use that for everything for thumbnails, for our, you know, Keynote, everything, because it's such a beautiful, useful typeface. And then when Jose and I split up and I started a new company, I was like, what do I call my new company? And I couldn't figure it out. And I have a book somewhere. See, see, see what's happening here? Okay. Yes. So we're sitting there. I'm like, ah, I have a whole book full of names. And everywhere we would drive, I would just yell out, there's a street name. I'm like, Carlisle. And my wife's like, what? Ford, you know, no, I just like I'm just trying to come up with a name Junction crossing and she goes no.

No, these are terrible. I'm like, yeah, they are Jose and I kind of have a little bit of a high emotion not falling out But we're both not feeling great about the separation and we're having this kind of proxy war Because it's a community that's shown up for both Jose and me And so instead of speaking directly to each other We kind of are talking about some other entity, but we're, we both know we're just talking about each other, but we don't mention each other by name.

Right. And so Jose writes this thing and he's very good at writing when he's focused, he writes his manifesto and the manifesto is really good. He goes, the role of the design in the 21st century has changed. We no longer need order takers. Like, uh, do you want fries with that? We're transitioning to a thing where we have a seat at the table in the C suite helping decision makers.

Design a better future. In the future. This is what's going to happen in the future. This is what's going to happen in the future in the future in the future I know he's calling me out because he was taking any idea that I had He was trying to write the opposite of it and just like stab at me a little bit And I was like what i'm going to call my company.

I know what i'm going to hijack his post I'm going to call my company the future because he says in the future this will happen So then that becomes a free publicity for my company the future And what typeface should we use? Futura Futura for the future. And so people who know the deep cuts now, you know?

it's like it was written. 

Yeah. It was a whole, there's a whole reason, you know, nothing is arbitrary,

Alright, it's so, so cool. It's so, so cool. That's, that's so, so cool. Okay, okay, that, I, I, I'm Now you know. 

Now I, now I know, now I know. Every time I see the logo, I'm gonna think about that.

Yes.

Uh, okay. Okay, very last thing, and then we're closing off, I promise. Very, very last thing, alright. Um, one of the things that I really took hold of for the future was the Building a Brand series. As with Ben and all that drama, Webflow, etc, etc. Um, so that was the series that you did. I saw recently that you were on 60 Day Hustle.

Yeah.

Right. Unfortunately, in my part of the world, I have Amazon prime, but I can't look at it.

All right. How, how was that for you? And are you planning to do anything in the future that is series based, uh, coming up soon?

Yes. Okay, really good question. Great way to kind of wrap up the show here. By the way, if you have a VPN, I believe you can watch it.

I'll try. I'll try.

Yeah, I don't know how to do that kind of stuff because I get whatever I want here, but okay, here we go. Um, one of our, our partners in the platform that we use as part of our tech stack is a company called teachable.

And I have a wonderful relationship with the team over at Teachable. So Olivia is my contact over at Teachable, and she reached out to me and says, Chris, there's an opportunity here for you to be on a TV show that's going to premiere on Amazon Prime. Is it something that you are willing to do? And I said, what's involved?

Well, you just need to show up for one day of taping. I'm like, I can do that. So they just want you to be a mentor to these contestants. And I, I arrive on the day of, it's in Burbank, it's this big production, there's a stage and everything. And I walk in and I'm like, what do I need to do? They're like, well, we'll kind of just wing it.

I'm like, what? Well, you were talking about branding. And there's a challenge. I'm like, shoot. like to be a little bit more prepared like I don't know enough about the characters the challenge or anything And sure enough that I can three two one come and welcome my friend chris. I'm coming there I'm like what the fudge and the lights are on me and they're they're all the contestants i'm like shoot And they're like, okay, this is what we're doing chris.

What are your ideas? I don't know. Have you ever done that? Have you ever parachuted into a total foreign environment and just was expected to start talking with a bunch of cameras on you? And so here's the weird thing. This is what people don't know. I start talking and all of a sudden, like, I was having déjà vu.

The strongest feeling of déjà vu I've ever had. When I was looking into the environment, I saw the same number of people, this very red environment, not dissimilar to yours, and I was just like, my brain just completely froze. Not so much about the pressure, I just could not think anymore and I was just stuck there for like what seemed like an eternity probably like five seconds.

I'm like, um, I I don't know what i'm saying guys. Hold on a second and luckily There were there was enough time to recover and we figured it out and then we finished the taping And then later on they told me I was really good and impactful And I'm I'm at the finale And then I see this thing air on tv My part after taping for an hour and a half Was three minutes long.

Wow Yeah,

I was like, My kids are there with me. I'm like, Oh, this is going to be a rough one. I'm like shaking. I'm like, Oh, what am I going to say? Because it's the first time that in a long time that I've made a piece of content that I have no control over the edit. No control. So you know how reality TV is. They can cut it any which way. Are they going to edit around the part where my brain is freezing? I don't know. So I watch it and it's cut out of sequence. It's very interesting to see like what you said, but how it's presented. So they're trying to tie certain ideas together to hit a three minute window. The good thing that came out of that was I met the producers, Chris and Michelle, um, from, from the, uh, the production company. And they're like, do you want to do stuff together? I'm like, yeah. So my mind has been and continues to be on serial content. That is at the highest level of production that allows the audience, the community to step into a real design practice.

I have a couple of different ideas, but I have so many things going on. It's like, I don't know when that's going to see light of day because it requires a lot of energy, money, and resources to make it happen. So in fact, after today's call. In a little bit at one o'clock. I'm going to be going to do a pickup part or some other additional promotion For the 60 day hustle.

So i'm going to go to Burbank later today

That's great, that's that's great that's a great way to kind of just tie

Yeah, you have like up to the second information here

Excellent. I wish you all the best with that. I mean, I know it's good to hear that you still get stressed out over things like that. I mean, it's, it's, it's because I see you and you're so very ice cold all the time and delivering these classes. So, you know, humans are humans Yeah that's, that's good stuff.

All right, Chris, so much for joining us here on the useful content podcast. , if people want to find you online, where should they go?

The easiest thing to do is just find me at the Chris Do, and Do is spelled D O, on the social platforms that we mentioned on today's show. YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and Threads.

Yeah, I was thinking of doing a t shirt that says do it like do,

Heh heh

but I didn't think it would translate. People would say do it like do, so they would have to know the context, you know.

Yeah.

Thank you students for joining us today on the Useful Content Podcast, Useful Content Classroom. Dismissed.

Wonderful, let me hit stop.

And we're clear.

Yeah, normally we have an after show talk, but we've gone for a long time, so, so let's wrap it on up like a gift.