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Originality, Pricing & Success — What Creatives Get Wrong
Chris Do explains why chasing originality is a trap and how mastering storytelling is the true key to creative and financial success.
Chris Do
Founder, The Futur™ · July 18, 2024
Forget Originality. Just Be Good.
True originality is rarer than gold. So says Chris Do, founder of The Futur, in a statement that cuts through the creative industry’s most cherished myth.
The late American graphic design pioneer Paul Rand, known for his iconic corporate logos for IBM, UPS, and ABC, had a similar philosophy. “Don't try to be original, just try to be good,” Do recalls Rand saying, “cuz being good is really difficult.”
This obsession with originality is a trap. It's a misguided pursuit that paralyzes creatives, convincing them that their work is worthless unless it's unprecedented. The reality is that influence is inescapable. To claim your ideas are wholly original is, as Do puts it, “both ignorant and arrogant. Ignorant because you don't know what came before and arrogant because you think it was all you.”
Imagine being raised in a white room, devoid of any media, books, or human interaction. You could create something, and it might be technically original. But would it be any good? Most likely, it would be a naive cliché, an idea already explored a thousand times over.
The goal is not to invent from a vacuum. The goal is to contribute. “If you do something that's good and you've learned how to do this over time,” Do argues, “you might add to the canon of what original content there was.”
You stand on the shoulders of giants. Acknowledge it. Then add your own brick to the structure.
The Outsider’s Advantage
Do’s perspective is shaped by a life lived on the margins. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, he and his family fled the country when he was young, eventually settling in the United States. He describes himself as a refugee, an immigrant, and a cultural outsider.
This experience came with the familiar trappings of an immigrant upbringing: the immense pressure to succeed, the view of education as the only gateway to a better life, and the suppression of personal dreams in favor of stability. His parents, like many, were operating from a system built for a different time and place. “It's not because they want to punish you,” Do clarifies. “It's because that they care and they care deeply.”
He also describes his younger self as “painfully awkward and shy.” It’s a confession that might seem hard to square with the man who commands stages and has built a global education platform. Designer Brian Collins, founder of the brand strategy firm COLLINS, once called Do an “opportunistic introvert.” The label fits. Do explains, “I am socially awkward. I don't know how to have conversations with people… I've had this wonderful journey of self-discovery, learning to find my voice.”
This journey has been the engine behind The Futur and its Billion Dollar Mission, a vision to provide resources that help one billion creative professionals build successful careers. It’s an ambition born not from a place of natural extroversion, but from a deliberate, hard-won process of finding one's voice.
That process, for Do, was content creation. It was a path he started reluctantly, but one that transformed his life. It’s a discovery he believes holds universal power, a concept he explores in depth in What Successful Personal Brands Do Differently.
Content Creation is Gold, Figuratively and Literally
“If you discover gold in the hills and there's an abundant source of it, an unlimited source of it, you try and tell as many of your friends as possible,” Do says. For him, content creation is that gold.
The value is multi-layered. First, there's the figurative gold of self-discovery. Creating content forces you to learn about yourself, to articulate your story, and to build the kind of self-awareness that radiates into every other part of your life.
- It improves your relationship with yourself, fostering self-acceptance and confidence.
- It enhances your relationships with partners, children, and business associates.
- It allows you to connect with an audience on a deeper level, making them feel seen and heard.
For years, Do operated simply as a professional in motion design, competing with everyone in the field. It wasn't until he started making YouTube videos that he began receiving messages from people, particularly people of color, who felt a new sense of possibility just by seeing him. “I never thought an Asian person who looks like you, who talks like you could do this thing,” they would tell him. “You give me hope.”
This is the inclusive power of sharing your story. It empowers others by showing them what’s possible. It turns your individual experience into a beacon for a community.
Then there is the literal gold. Do is transparent about the numbers. His first company, the motion design studio Blind, which he founded in 1995, hit a peak annual revenue of around $6.8 million. The Futur, his education platform built on content, has reached revenues of $4.5 million in a much shorter time, with what Do sees as “no potential ceiling.” Venture capitalists have approached him, not to invest in a service business, but to invest in the audience, the attention, and the intellectual property he has built.
“They know the people who can command attention, who can direct eyeballs, and to move people, there's value there,” he explains. Speaking fees of $30,000 are now standard, a direct result of the authority and connection built through content. It's a clear demonstration of how creating value for an audience ultimately creates financial value for the creator, a theme echoed in how to scale a business based on your personal brand.
The First Step Is the Only Step That Matters
The results are staggering, but the process is anything but glamorous. When Do’s wife asked him how he got so good at speaking seemingly “overnight,” his answer was simple and blunt. “Overnight? Babe, 10 years is not overnight.”
The public speaking journey began a decade ago, but it was built on a foundation of 13 years of teaching before that. It’s the invisible work, the thousands of hours spent helping students, reacting to problems in real time, and honing the ability to communicate. It is the work no one sees, notices, or cares about.
The secret to starting is simply to start. “You just take the first step,” Do insists. This isn't a platitude. It’s a practical strategy for overcoming the inertia and negative energy that often accompanies ambitious goals.
He describes the drag of walking down to his studio late at night to work. If he frames it as “I need to finish these thumbnails,” the task feels heavy. But if he frames it as “I'm just going to go down and shut down the computer,” the barrier to entry vanishes. Once there, he might feel energized and end up working for an hour and a half, fueled by joy, not obligation.
The same applies to public speaking, a process that often invites intense anxiety. Overcoming this fear isn't a single act, but a series of small, manageable steps.
- The First Step: Volunteer. Say yes to an event, even if it triggers a panic attack. The commitment is the catalyst.
- The Preparation: Read books, watch videos, make notes, and stress out. This is part of the price of entry.
- The Failure: Show up, mess up, watch jokes fall flat. Feel like a loser.
- The Realization: Wake up the next morning and realize you didn't die. You survived, and now you have a handful of concrete things you can do better next time.
That is the opportunity. It is an opportunity that would never have existed without taking that first, terrifying step. It's a lesson on overcoming the mental barriers that hold so many creatives back.
The Operating System of the Human Brain
How does one get good at speaking? It comes down to mastering the art of storytelling. We are all born storytellers. As children, we recount events with breathless energy, reliving the emotion and making our friends feel it with us. “Stories are the operating system of the human brain,” Do says, quoting author Erik Edmeades.
But something happens. Society polishes us down. We are told to be quiet, to slow down, to raise our hand. The risk of being punished for our raw, energetic storytelling outweighs the reward. So we stop. As the late Sir Ken Robinson famously argued in his 2006 TED Talk, we don’t grow into creativity; we are educated out of it.
Creative people are simply the children who survived this process. They are the ones who held onto their imagination and their innate ability to tell a story.
Recapturing this skill requires understanding its structure. The most complex and enduring stories can be distilled into a simple, powerful framework. Character, Want, and an Obstacle.
Every compelling narrative, from Disney classics to Shakespearean tragedies, is built on this foundation.
- Pinocchio: The character is a wooden puppet (with a mischievous flaw). He wants to be a real boy. The obstacle is that wooden boys don't become real boys.
- Romeo and Juliet: The characters are two young lovers. They want to be together. The obstacle is their families despise each other.
- Dune: The character is Paul Atreides, a noble with immense power. He wants to fulfill his destiny, but the obstacle is that this very power corrupts, threatening to turn him from hero to villain.
The most interesting characters are never purely good or evil. They are flawed, nuanced, and relatable. This framework isn't just for fiction. It’s a powerful tool for marketing and communication. To connect with a client, you must first understand them as a character with a want and an obstacle. Speak to their pain, and you will earn their trust. This is a crucial element of building a narrative that sells.
The Hero's Journey in Every Story
This three-part framework is the condensed version of a more detailed structure observed by mythologist Joseph Campbell in his seminal work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Campbell noticed that stories that endure across millennia share a common pattern he called The Hero's Journey.
George Lucas was one of Campbell's most devoted students, and Star Wars: A New Hope is a perfect illustration of this archetypal structure. The formula is not a creative constraint; it is a time-tested blueprint for resonance.
The journey unfolds in distinct stages:
- The Ordinary World: The hero, Luke Skywalker, lives a mundane life on a desert planet, dreaming of adventure.
- The Call to Adventure: A herald, in the form of two droids bearing a secret message, interrupts his life.
- The Refusal of the Call: The hero is initially reluctant. Luke's sense of duty to his aunt and uncle holds him back. This reluctance is a critical dramatic element, seen everywhere from Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai to Disney's Mulan.
- Meeting the Mentor: The hero encounters a guide, Obi-Wan Kenobi, who gives him the knowledge and courage to proceed.
- Crossing the Threshold: The hero leaves his ordinary life and enters a new, special world. Luke leaves Tatooine to explore the galaxy.
- Tests, Allies, and Enemies: The hero faces a series of trials, learning and growing along the way.
- The Ordeal and Resurrection: The hero faces their greatest challenge, experiences a symbolic death and rebirth, and emerges transformed.
- The Return with the Elixir: The hero comes back to the ordinary world with a boon or new wisdom to share. Luke destroys the Death Star, using the Force, not technology, to save the day.
This formula is the engine behind billion-dollar box office hits. The creativity lies not in breaking the formula, but in changing the variables within it. Romantic comedies consistently succeed by using the same 'boy meets girl, they can't be together' structure, but changing the obstacle: their families hate each other (Romeo and Juliet), she's a maid and he's a politician (Maid in Manhattan), or she owns an independent bookstore and he owns a corporate chain (You've Got Mail). The structure is familiar, but the variables make it fresh.
The Creative Act: Connecting the Unconnected
Understanding storytelling is central to understanding creativity itself. Creativity is not originality. Creativity is connection.
It is the ability to connect two disparate things that no one has connected before. Do points to a classic BMW ad for a convertible. The car, shot in profile, was lit and framed to look exactly like a shark. The side air vents became gills, the windshield a dorsal fin. The creators saw a connection between the car's sleek, predatory power and the animal that embodies it.
This is what writer and designer Alan Fletcher called a smile in the mind in his book of the same name. The creator presents a puzzle. If it’s too hard, the audience is confused. If it’s too easy, they are bored. But when the difficulty is just right, the audience solves the puzzle and feels a jolt of pleasure. They feel smart. They are in on the secret.
This is the goal of a creative professional: to create that pleasurable moment of discovery. When we see a great idea, we don't say, “That’s so original.” We say, “That’s so clever. That’s so smart.” When you see it, you cannot unsee it.
This ability to see connections is what separates creative people from non-creative people. It is a trainable skill, honed through observation and a deep well of data points. Designer Brian Collins has argued that designers by nature are futurists because they imagine and rehearse multiple futures, then select the most optimal one. A logo design project is exactly this: imagining countless shapes and configurations to find the one that best represents the future of a brand, a core concept Do and Collins discuss in The Future of Branding.
Creative block is not a mystical malaise. It is a data problem. It’s trying to render a complex world with too few crayons. The solution is to get more crayons: observe more textures, colors, materials, and connections. Fill your mind with data so you have more to draw from.
We are all born with an infinite capacity for imagination. It is the world that strips it away. The creative mandate is to protect that inner child, to keep observing, to keep connecting, and to tell the stories that only you can tell.
Forget originality. It’s a ghost.
Focus on being good. It’s more than enough.
TRANSCRIPT
true originality is very very very rare more rare than gold all ran the late gr American graphic design and Pioneer and design he said like don't try to be original just try to be good cuz being good is really difficult everybody's so fascinated by trying to be original you know what if you
do something that's good and you've learned how to do this over time you might add to the cannon of what original content there was hi everyone I'm Felix welcome to today's adpis leadership series with Crystal Chris welcome to the show Hi Felix I just want to feel like I got to POS like
that picture so here I am thank you so much Chris ladies and gentlemen it is my pleasure to introduce Chris do CEO and chief strategist of blind and the founder of the future Chris is obviously no stranger to a lot of you here he's a Visionary who has transformed the design industry through
its in ative approach to education and business an Emmy award-winning designer and director he has empowered creatives around the world by blending his artistic vision and business acument Chris company The Future Has set a bold vision of what he calls the billion 1 billion Mission and we're going to dive into that later
which provides invaluable resources to help creative professionals build successful careers so please join me in welcoming Chris um Chris thanks for joining the show again and you know we met two years ago I believe on ADP list the first time in you also had graciously um you know accepted our invitation and came
here to share some really really uh you know great insights now we're back here a lot of change um but I want to start with but I want to start with you today um I know that you know uh from what we've read online that you had a uh you know challenging upbringing
as a refugee from Vietnam you're born in Saigon and your family has fled uh the country when you're young um and uh obviously you you you are now in the US um and I know that you know from what we've read as well you've always felt like a culture Outsider struggling to find
your identity and your parents saw education as a Gateway uh to success and I believe it's been quite a journey for you what what do I need to know about you today and your earliest years to understand the life that you have went on and the person you came to be today that's
a big question to begin the conversation with Felix I'll do my best what do you need to know about me well I think you need to know that I'm an immigrant and so I'm I fall under the trappings of most immigrants coming to a place like the United States the desire to do
better education is the gateway to a better life and the the stereotypical Asian parents expectations of you doing something legitimate that you you have to suppress your dreams and your desires to do something that is stable it's not because they want to punish you it's because that they care and they care deeply
but they're they're working with an operating system from an old country from a from a different time and era just like I don't want to impose on my kids what worked for me because it's a whole new world and we get to do whatever it is that we want the other thing you
probably need to know about me is I'm painfully awkward and shy um Brian Collins says I'm an opportunistic introvert he calls me like an Ambert and says I don't know why you're telling everyone you're an introvert because you're doing everything the extroverts do so I don't know but I will tell you I
I am socially awkward I don't know how to have conversations with people I was I wasn't that guy and I've I've had this wonderful journey of self-discovery learning to find my voice and I get to share this with the world wow thank you so much Tris I you know you would not come
across as an introvert but I think from the sense of that it it it it feels like that I mean you know considering the journey that You' have been through I I'm I'm curious you know we have not spoke in in two years after that that big interview you know what's been exciting
for you lately what's what has been some topics professionally or personally has been fascinating you has been interesting and exciting for you well since last week spoke I went on a European tour after the pandemic and that was wonderful what people don't realize is I I hate doing talks but I love doing
workshops I like seeing people and if there's common interest in how I can serve people I feel like at my most at my most self and and I feel so joyful and that so many different people came out to see us and to to attend one of our workshops and I got to
feel that energy and that love and excitement from the community and that was really awesome for me so I continue down that endeavor to do more in-person events and whenever I can I try and organize something like that but what has changed the most is the the emergence of AI as a tool
and and it is a tool and a lot of people in the creative industry are threatened by this and I think there's good reason for them to because it is an incredibly disruptive force that will create job displac some on scales we've never seen before and I always think of it like this
when the wave comes in and it it go it pulls back out you get to see who's wearing swim trunks so we have to learn how to swim here otherwise we'll get swept out wow thank you so much Chris we we're going to dive I think a lot on our conversation today on
on AI but you had such a fascinating Journey you you obviously sound like an adventurer because you went on the whole entire European t tour have you been to Asia I mean you know have you done an Asian tour or or or am I just not aware yet I have gone and spoken
in Asia before but I'm always curious if there's demand for and how to organize this uh I've I've spoken at four different universities in China pre-pandemic I've done workshops in Taiwan multiple times and I've I've been to Japan I've been to the Philippines doing workshops there and doing public speaking but not on
one continuous leg and uh in this same way that we did with Europe wow so um you know we we do quite a bit of in-person events and and and you know meetups as well across the globe so hopefully we can have you at at most of these events um you know if
you're traveling or just around the corner of your blog um yeah but I want to touch a little bit about your journey and your career that's that's where we're really starting with uh you know you you tweeted something I think it was maybe a year ago um that you said something online that
you know I'm 51 you started YouTube yeah 42 got serious on Instagram at 46 and now your YouTube subscribers is at 2.1 million IG followers around 800,000 LinkedIn is about 400,000 and Twitter about 100,000 and you said that yeah I did it and you can do um what did you learn from that
journey and and why do you think you know you made it work wo what I learned from this journey well I got to tell you something deciding to make content reluctantly agreeing to do this has transformed my lives in so many dimensions I can't even begin to tell you so pardon me if
I sound so effusive and so emphatic when I say like everybody should be creating content it's one of these things where if you discover gold in the hills and there's an abundant source of it unlimited source of it you try and tell as many of your friends as possible like you know there's
gold over there you just really have to go and just bring a bag a barrel empty pockets and go and scrape up that stuff and I I want to make this point there's a gentleman he's a pastor and he runs a mega church called Mosaic his name is Irwin mcmanis I got to
meet him at an event that I was speaking at and he's a powerful speaker now I knew of him beforehand but I didn't ever really see him speak and he has an incredible way of telling stories a Mastery over his voice and he told me uh I think fairly modestly and matter of
factly I can give a Ted level talk uh by 18 minutes on any subject you want with about 30 minutes of preparation and then believe this because he's been Pastor for 40 plus years I think okay I'm looking at him now observing and admiring him 40 years into his journey and I think
to myself man I'm 10 years into my public speaking Journey what would I be like in 30 years well first of all I'll be 80 years old ancient but I I kept thinking about that and thinking I started at 42 what if I started at 32 what if I was 20 years deep
into this right now how how much better would I be not like not trying to be the in the world but relative to myself I would be at least two times better but I don't think it works on a linear scale I think I'd be like 4X better or something yeah and I
keep thinking about that right and I share that story because many of you are not even 25 or 30 years old yet so I think the thing I've learned in this whole journey is the reward is so worth the work and it is painful I'm not going to delude you yeah it is
painful it's it's excruciating it's losing sleep at night thinking about the talk and it's it's like walking around like a zombie trying to rehearse and remember what it is you want to say it's bombing on Sage it's having the cold sweats and an upset stomach all that stuff but that's the price of
Entry to get this thing that I think I've discovered for myself which is to find your voice to be able to to move people physically spiritually emotionally with the power of your voice and the energy in the that vibration the frequency that you send out and I think that's really wonderful so I
I say to everybody if you're contemplating on starting just start already my wife asked me this question last night and I gave her an answer and she's like why are you such a smartass it was a genuine answer she asked me how did you get so good at speaking howy like overnight you
just did this she's like overnight you you become so good at speaking and you can make money just using your mouth and I just never even thought that a person could do that and I said to her overnight bab 10 years is not overnight it didn't come from nowhere but she say but
the minute you decided to start it was great I'm like no it wasn't now what people don't know is I've been doing public speaking for 10 years but I was teaching at that point probably for 13 years prior to that wow so I started teaching when I was 26 I think five years
out of school 27 and so you put in the Reps and this is the work that is invisible to everyone the the work that no one sees notices or cares about that you don't even talk about you just do the work you show up you work with a bunch of creative students from
advertising design and illustration you help them manifest their vision and you learn to be able to react and respond to things in real time to be able to solve problems conceptual problems emotional problems and you just work through that that's the work that people don't see so I just tell everybody you know
what and the answer that I told my wife was you just take the first step she goes come on babe give me the real answer I said no it's the first step yeah have to take that first step right yeah and I give her this story and she goes yeah of course of
course so last night we we're talking in the green room um I have a studio it's it's detached from the house so I went downstairs into the studio at about 10 p.m. last night to mostly just shut down my computer but when I got into the studio I went to wake up my
computer go shut it down I saw a message I'm like let me respond to this message and I open up something else and then an hour and a half later I'm there and I finish doing a new thumbnail and then I shut it down I go upstairs the reason why I tell you
this story is because it is a drag to walk down to the studio to say I'm going go I'm going to go do work today but if I just said to myself I'm just going to go down and shut down the computer and whatever I feel like doing I do and whenever I
stop feeling it I stopped doing it so I do it with joy but if I went downstairs and said I need to finish these thumbnails I would have a lot of negative energy that would carry with me and so almost with everything in life just take that first step see how you feel
and then think do I want to take the next step and what does that feel like and if that feels good and you're energized by it take the next step and it's true with public speaking the first thing is to volunteer to say Hey you have an event coming up can I speak
at your event and then they say yes and then you have a panic attack but the first step is to say I'm interested in doing this and then it's like how does one start a talk then you read books and you watch videos you make notes and you stress out and you get
very anxious and you compare yourself and you have imposter syndrome and then you actually show up and you mess up and then people don't laugh at your jokes and people are a little confused and you walk away feeling like a total loser except for the next morning you realize I didn't die I'm
okay and you know what there are three things I could do better and then I Rejoice I'm like wow that's an opportunity to get better an opportunity I would not have seen had I not volunteered to speak all right there's my answer such a such a powerful answer and and and I love
how you take almost the moments just from last night and you know every moment that in your life it almost becomes like a lesson and I think one of the things that I have so many questions but one of the questions that I was so curious about when you say when you sort
of relate your content creation Journey um you know with gold I mean why would you say that right like is is content creation really something that you would encourage everyone to look into is there a specific type of person that should be into content creation or how do you look at that from
a point of view that to say that it is gold yeah a great follow-up question Felix thanks for asking that yeah your content creation is gold on a number of levels I speak about it like figuratively and then also literally now gold is only valuable because it's a finite resource in the planet
and it's the most rare element I think on the planet gold and that's why it has such value and that means that only so much of it can be extracted from Earth before our supply is deleted okay so if we think about it like that all right that's not a lot okay fine
now the reason why content creation is gold is because we have the ability to learn about ourselves to be able to tell our story so that we're more confident when we present we know our own history and we can share it with the other people which empowers them to say like you know
what somebody like me is doing this thing so we ask ourselves why not me this is the whole idea of in inclusion right and something that I'd never really thought about up until the last couple of years because when I was growing up there weren't a lot of people who look like me
on the other side of the TV screen on the other side of the newspaper or the magazines it was always usually white European folks and but I never thought that there was this difference between me and them because I just looked at as if a human can do it I can do it
if if a human can achieve this if a human can design this then I'm a human we have that in common so most of my professional career I never operated as thinking of myself as an asian-owned minority business I was just in the field of motion design making commercials and music videos so
I need to compete with every person who describes himself that way and it's not until I start making YouTube content that people will send me messages and I'm a little confused by it they say you know I feel so seen and heard right now I'm like how come was it something I said
they're like no it's just because of you and I'm still confused like what do you mean because of me cuz I never thought an Asian person who looks like you who talks like you could do this thing and you give me hope so for for anybody who's out there who was feeling left
out of the party maybe for some I give them that sense that we can do this and I'm finding a remarkable connection and kinship with people of color black and brown people and it's so exciting to me you know I was at the airport going through security yeah and this gentleman who's like
checking my bags he goes you're into hip-hop aren't you I said yes I am a fan and he just nodded and I nodded and I think it was because of what I was wearing and how I was wearing my cap too you know a little to the side and he's like I could
abide from you and I like that okay so it's gold because we we can learn about ourselves we can learn how to communicate and articulate better we can become more self-aware we can accept ourselves more and then that would lead to self-confidence idence and then think about everything that you do in your
life every relationship you have including the one with yourself where you love yourself more do your do your relationships improve with my partner my wife with my children with my business associates with my sponsors like people who sponsored the Channel with you folk when you come up to me am I a better
person because I've learned to love myself and I would argue with anybody I'll die on that Hill that the answer is emphatically yes wow and here's the beautiful part here's the literal part for all the the Asians who are still listening to that parent talk track in their mind you got to make
money doing this okay I'll give you a track uh like a history here so blind started in 1995 the most we ever build in one year was about I think $6.8 million we almost got to 7 million not quite I was like oh almost there and that was the height I think that
was 2007 okay now the future has been in business now for uh 2 eight years now we we at our height as are at $45 million but I see no potential ceiling for how big we can grow in the short time that we've been in business I've had two Venture capitalists approach me
three um not including okay two official Venture capitalists and other just business owner said we want to invest in your business can we give you money to do what you're doing because we believe in what you you're doing not only on a business level but on a spiritual level wow I've never had
anybody approach me as blind as a service company who wanted to invest in the company itself because they know it's a deadend business but they know the people who can command attention who can direct eyeballs and to move people there's value there there's value in the library that we've built up in terms
of the intellectual property there's value in me public speaking I keep it there's no secret about this but I get speaking fees of $30,000 to speak and that is more than a lot of professional speakers not nearly as much as some other celebrity speakers but I don't have a best-selling book I'm not
a New York 's bestselling author I'm just a guy who used his voice and learned to communicate that and share my ideas with people and people from all over the world feel this deep connection my podcast producer shared this data with me which I'm going to post about pretty soon which is he's
like I was just looking at your charts did you know that the future podcast ranks in the top 20 in over 35 countries now he produces lots of podcasts for lots of different bigname creators creators I can't tell you about but they're like celebrity business people he goes nobody has that he goes
you have this International Coalition of people and we're even number one in some countries which blows my mind countries I don't even know like they listen to podcast there wellow that's pretty cool that is so is there money in this is it gold Felix I think there is there is I I think
there certainly is you know I I've been following your contents and you know I myself post some contents as well every now and then and there's just a lot of I think you get a lot of opportunities by by voicing Yourself by voicing your ideas and I think it's exactly you know what
you say and and I want to touch on the point where where you talk about storytelling and your wife's question as to how do you get so good um did did storytelling you know come to you naturally um was or or was it a process where you kind of got better because of
content creation you know what came first right being good at storytelling and then going to content creation or was it something they learned throughout the way and also what makes a good story if if someone would to tell online because there's just millions of posts every single day what do you think is
a good story yeah okay uh multi multiart question again very good question okay here's the thing with storytelling we were all born natural storytellers because stories are the operating system of the human brain that's an Eric and needs quote there it means that we learn about the world through stories all of our
memories are baked on emotion and story and if you can if you can think back to when you were like five or six years old when you've developed language skills and you experienced life and you wanted to share something that happened to you with your buddy Timmy or Jenny and you'd go like
you'd come over oh my God oh my God you won't believe it this and this happen this dog chased me and this and that and then I climb this and then this happened and we're natural storytellers and then they're like reliving the experience with you because you're telling it full throated relieving the
experience and you're sweating just telling the story again your heart is racing and you can barely contain yourself because you're short of breath but something really weird happens to us Felix we lose the ability to tell stories we lose our ability to be creative and to imagine things that don't exist I remember
when my boys were really young um I bought him a diecast car it was about this big yeah okay and my my son I think he was like two years old was playing with a car and the doors open on the car it has operable doors and he tried to put his foot
inside the car he wanted to climb inside the car but his foot was bigger than the door but he's still trying to get inside that car cuz he doesn't understand spatial relationships and mass he doesn't understand that he's only two years old but I looked at him and I was marveling that in
the mind of a child even though he's eight 20 times bigger than the car he still wants to get inside the car and that's the beauty of imagination so I think something happens and the two go together we're told stop talking slow down I don't have time for this right now don't tell
me that story or whatever it is is like hey just take a deep breath you're you're hyperventilating and that child has so much energy and if you do this enough times children are really smart there's a risk and reward situation they're going through they would rather be rewarded and instead of being punished
so you tell people raise your hand before you speak it's not your turn yet I don't have time to hear that and so we start to lose this skill and it's educated out of us creativity imagination and storytelling Sir Ken Robinson the late Sir Ken Robinson t about this we don't grow into
creativity we grow out of creativity it's stripped away from us and it's a powerful idea okay so I think all creative people are the children who survived this process into adulthood who are not really good at listening to adults telling them what to do wow I they just survived I relate to that
so much and and I think you know the quote that you mentioned about you know we don't grow into we grow out of it that is something that you know it's so rarely talk about but it's so true and I I want to touch on this topic of creativity because you talk about
being in being in an environment that allows you to be creative when you're young and then you grow out of it there's a question that goes around and I'm very curious about what you think which is do you think that creative people are born or can they be nurtured right because you see
that some kids maybe look they look at the differently and some kids they look at the world you know in the way that they want to look at it so is creativity born or is it trained okay I'm GNA answer a question but I didn't answer your first question don't mind I'm gonna
answer your first question okay yeah because we talked about stories and so now we're like no one knows how to tell the story they don't have the emotion they don't have the same energy because we've learned how to be polite in polite society and so we don't do that anymore we've lost that
ability yeah to degree and there's definitely a story structure when I was teaching sequential design at Art Center in Otis College of Art and Design I have to help students learn how to tell a story so stories have some simple components and I've I've read books I've watched videos on this stuff and
the simplest way I could describe it is three words okay so if you have a pen and paper you just need to write this down every story every good story needs to have these three things without it there's no story you need to have a character that has a want and there's an
obstacle there's a character that has a want and there's an obstacle okay and if you think of every story and we look at like the the Disney Classics you know what does Pinocchio want Pinocchio is a really interesting character you have to have an interesting character that has to have character flaws and
desires and they're not perfect beings so Pinocchio wants to be a real boy that's his one because he's a wooden boy and what makes him interesting is because puppets aren't real they don't have thoughts and feelings but for some reason because Pinocchio was was under this pine tree and was carved out of
this tree that has magical properties he becomes his sensient boy but Pinocchio is a little mischievous and he tells lies that those are his flaws so he has his want and if he could just become a boy there would be no story there'd be no story and so there's the obstacle that wooden
boys don't become real boys and so there's all this conflict that exists in the story with him and his his father his his his maker and there's this love and there's this kind of distancing it's it's a sad story but a beautiful story at the same time Romeo and Juliet a classic story
from Shakespeare who's the character where Romeo and Juliet what do they want they want true love but they can't get it why because the obstacle exists that their families hate each other the monus and the capulets they hate each other and so now there's conflict again so every story has a character want
and an obstacle the more interesting the character the more flaws and more Nuance the more interesting the story becomes like recently we're watching Dune and it's it's like done really well at the box office and Paul traes is beautiful character because he's flawed he's got all this power he comes from a Noble
House everything's great but with this kind of power that he has it becomes intoxicating and a lot of people are going to die because of this right so now we want to love the character but he's walking that Razor's Edge now between becoming the hero and the villain and I think that makes
for the most interesting characters like no no really good character in in in in fiction is purely evil or purely good the evil characters have traits of goodness in them and the good characters have traits of Badness in them wow so when we create characters we need to think about that so when
we think about how to use this in storytelling or even marketing we can think who's the character that I want to serve who is my ideal client Avatar and if you create a generic very broad description it's kind of like you're making a really bad movie or bad story no one cares but
you know what the Avatar that you create this character that has all these flaws has a want they have fears they have hopes they have dreams they have desires and you can write copy to them so when I write stories on on social or I'm telling stories on the stage I think about
that person I think about what they're feeling I think about their fears and what's making them anxious and I speak to that I talk about the pain so they feel first seen and heard and they're like okay I think I might be able to trust you because you might have walked in my
shoes before the mistake that a lot of public speakers make is they forget and they pretend they don't have flaws they show you a perfect home and a perfect life and all business decisions working out for them well no one lives like that not even the person telling that story so we're so
careful to curate and edit and Photoshop everything out so to speak that we're no longer relatable to people so if you want to be an interesting character in your own story if you want to mark and serve people like real people you have to understand who the character is what their want is
and the obstacle that's preventing them from getting what it is they want solve that problem tell that story and you connect with them well that is such a powerful framework in free wordss character want and conflict and it it sort yeah obstacle and it sort of reminds me of the you know there's
a longer version of that I think they call it the hero's journey by just absolutely yeah it's you know it's kind of goes around than you know there's a moment of death and realization and you kind of Reser up from that and you became a you become a better character from it um
yeah how do you want to hear the long version or do you just want the short that was the short version I was trying to make it simple I could tell you the long version I would love to hear a little bit of a longer version uh I you know if if if
if you would love to you know share a little bit more details as well because I think this is helpful followup people okay you can ask as many follow-up questions I don't want to bore you or our audience so I will tell you the long version uh Joseph Campbell uh the hero's journey
a hero with a thousand faces is the person who starts to notice these patterns within mythology and stories that have endured over the test of time why do some stories carry with us a 100 or thousand or thousands of years later they they seem to follow a very specific pattern this kind of
thing he called the hero's journey so there's the character and live in the Ordinary World one that's very relatable to all of us and then there's a her old and the herald comes in to interrupt that person's life and there's a call to Adventure like uh join the Army or go on a
space adventure which is Star Wars by the way yeah and then there is the initial what they call the refusal of the call and there's always the reluctance the Seven Samurai Akira Kira salwat failed Masterpiece same thing it's like I'm here to recruit Samurai to defend against these Marauders for this Village they're
like no we're all going to die this is a dumb Endeavor this is not going to work out well there's always the reluct character a hero who's asked to help to do something or called to help but they just don't want to do it there's already conflict and then the character meets a
mentor and the mentor says we can do this you can do it so Mulan it's Mushu Mushu is like great Mulan let's go I'm sorry because there's a there's this initial idea that she has to join the Army but can't because she's she's a woman and she's not there's all okay anyways so
there's refusal to call the mentor helps to bring the character and it's called crossing the threshold where they leave the Ordinary World and they enter the new world so the classic is Star Wars which George Lucas is a big fan of Joseph Campbell Joseph Campbell has said if I recall correctly George Lucas
is one of my best students wow and if you look at Star Wars episode four a new hope it follows this perfectly Luke dreams about being in outer space right he wonders about the adventure life and then until he meets Obi-Wan he he he then realizes he can leave this planet and go
explore the Stars he wants to learn about his Origins his father Anakin Skywalker yeah there's a longing here and he's kind of an orphan raised by his uncle and his aunt okay it's beautiful right so you cross the threshold and you go on a series of Adventures there's um what they would refer
to as trials and tribulations little tests and then you grow but then there's a relapse so it's called the resurrection and the relapse or the relapse of the Resurrection until a certain point the hero learns a valuable lesson discovers something new and brings back to share with his fellow person so in this
way it's like he's fighting he's going to the Death Star he saves Princess Leia and then in his final mission in the X-Wing he flies in and he hears the voice of his mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi says Luke use the force your eyes betray you and so takes off the guidance system and they're
like what are you doing Luke he's like oh use the force Luke and he's trusting in his teaching he fires that one shot that goes into that little vent and it blows up the one week spot Saves the Day W that's the hero's journey you know it's thanks for sharing that it's such
a you know detailed I think breakdown of of of the three what you know that you shared earlier which I think it it really inspires a lot of people if only almost feels like we're all in our heroes Journey it almost all feels like we're all in the adventure we're all going through
shs and tribulations and you know we we almost are leaving the heroes Journey on a day-to-day basis which is interesting you mention about Josh Lucas because we have million dollar box office and we have billion dollar box office which is where Star Wars is what is the difference you know what is the
difference Pi if they're using the same formula or maybe they're not but but does this storytelling method of the Hero Journey actually makes the difference or is this something that helps the story to stand out even more it makes a big difference and there are formulas and they follow the exact formula I
would argue the more creative they try to be and not follow the formula the less likely it is to succeed wow because if we said like a thousand 2,000 10,000 years of human history and the stories that endure have these common traits and the other stories we don't talk about anymore then we're
kind of foolish to say well after 10,000 years of experimentation I'll be the one who changes that formula and I'll tell you something uh it used to be that when I was going to art center Art House films you know these small limited release small theaters where you can watch these Art House
experimental French Nuvo whatever it is you're like who okay let's go watch this and afterwards you're like um I'm not sure what I was watching there were plot threads that went nowhere there's characters that couldn't understand and there was an unsatisfying resolution to the story or I didn't see the character change I
didn't learn anything so when when people adhere to the formula it does really well the creativity comes in changing the variables and when you change one variable you have to make sure there's a meaningful counterbalance to that like if you just change one thing and you don't really address the rest of the
structure then you're going to be ruined but let's just take this whole character one obstacle thing right yeah the romantic comedy follows this formula to the T and romcoms have consistently done really well at the box office it's almost exactly the same story and I'll prove it to you right now okay uh
Romeo and Juliet two lovers they can get together why because their parents hate each other well in 2024 no one cares what their parents think anyway so that story is not as relevant today so two characters love each other but they can't because why because the girl is gay or the guy's gay
that's more relevant today okay uh boy and girl love each other they can't because they're interracial okay we can understand that story they love each other why because she's a maid and he's a rich guy that's made in Manhattan with Jennifer Lopez and and Ray Ray fines um they love each other but
they can't because he's a total loser and you know that's like Shipwrecked I think they love each other but they can't because she owns an independent bookstore and he owns a mega bookstore Mega bookstore chain I think that's called you got mail yeah you see what I'm saying it's literally the same story
structure but we're fascinated because we're trying to figure out do they get together or do they or do they not what is lava land you know it's the same thing over and over again and they just change the variables in their they creative comes not in changing the structure but just changing the
variables that's how this works it's always the same structure you you know back to the free wishes there's always a character there's a want and then there's obstacle and that that is exactly what you just mentioned about you know different characters and and I think about ROM Comm as well following that to
the te which is interesting you know you talk about being creative in the process and I think you have a quote somewhere that says the idea of being original is both ignorant and arrogant ignorant because you don't know what come before and arrogant because you think it was all you um and I'm
curious do you think there's ever such thing as being original being creative or are they all from some data points that we have all you know seen before heard before um you know from our intuitions I think true originality is very very very rare more rare than gold for a number of different
reasons because the longer we live the more likely that you could discover something brand new is diminished and the longer we live the more information and influence we have so the idea to say like this is an original piece of work is is kind of dubious to begin with okay and I've had
this argument when I was in art school so it's a an opinion I've had for a long time and no one's been able to convince me otherwise new things can be created via using technology and so I I I think there was this like um like one of these impressionistic paintings that somebody
turned into 3D sculpture so they transform the art so it was an homage to the original artist but what they did was they made a three-dimensional painting that you can literally walk through which is pretty wild because you're like I've always wondered if so that is an original thought but it's not wholly
original because it's built on somebody else's work yeah so when you take new technology you can create a very different experience for people if you do that there's some semblance of originality but it's not a wholly original idea so here's the thought experiment to say that I have original thoughts means that you
were not influenced by anybody cuz that's what original means so that would mean that if you were to grow up in a white room wearing white generic clothing with no media no magazines no books no TV no internet and you created something out of nothing you could say that's original the question is
would it be any good so does original make it good or is it good because it's it's good the chances are because you're basically inventing everything from scratch it's going to be pretty raw fairly naive and most likely a cliche that's been explored a thousand times already wow so so even the concept
of originality devoid of influence from others is kind of a weird concept that's like more a philosophical question right yeah yeah and I had a a friend a classmate who instead of capitalizing the first letter they made the lower the the first letter in the sentence lowercase right so everything was all caps
it's exact opposite and the first letter was a lowercase letter and and she's like this is pretty original I'm like yeah but it's a piece of garbage it's really illegible hard to read it feels like it's screaming at me and it's like I can't decipher this yeah you can make it difficult to
read but is it good I don't think so so that that there is always a difference between yes it is original but then is it useful for Humanity is it is it actually good for the people that are interacting with it or or using it which is interesting yeah because I I always
thought that you know being original just means that you're creating something um you might be using different parts um you know of the world and you're just coming with something new even though it is existing part and and that's that's kind of what people would call it original and as long as it's
not a direct copy of something yeah I mean think about it too like let's just say yeah we don't have to be so extreme in the white room and no influences let's say you created something and you you've never looked at anything else but somewhere across the world somewhere in Japan or the
United States or France or wherever somebody's been doing that for a long time you're like hey I did this brand new thing it's original and then remember it's like uh yo this has been done by the French artist blah blah for like a thousand years they're like what I didn't know that so
what does that even mean so I think I I hope I'm not quoting him incorrectly here but Paul ran the late gr American graphic designer Pioneer in design he said like don't try to be original just try to be good because being good is really difficult yeah everybody's so fascinated by trying to
be original you know what if you do something that's good and you've learned how to do this over time you might add to the Canon of what original content there was and it's okay to contribute something to this long lineage of ideas and we stand on the shoulders of giants as they say
so I'm okay with that you know like I find that there's things that I say that I think you know what I'm I don't know where I got this thought from I just have it and I put it out there and then I Google that and there's some other weird version that sounds
like it so like I I think there's this interesting thing that maybe as a civilization there are certain ideas that we find and we discover almost at the same time and that's how movements begin like that's how cubism begins George Brock and Picasso kind of are exploring this multi-dimensional perspective thing and they
had their own take on it so they co-create cubism and it's stronger because there's two people not just one person yeah and the impressionist and the abstract expressionist they're all exploring similar ideas living in New York City playing around with things going to each other's Studios like I love what you're doing I
got to do my version of it and then they create this movements and then we we uh get to appreciate the products of their creativity because they share these ideas that's why there's almost always an enclave of artists somewhere that becomes the pulse of creativity within a given City yeah what is What
is the relationship between or is there even a relationship between being creative and being original is there a difference you think or is there or is it just a difference in naming I think there's a big difference because we can be creative and and creative is we found a connection between two things
that don't belong together I can use more complicated Art School academic language like to find the connection between two disparate things and and that is a difficult thing to do when you say something like something is like something else you're making that connection and if you're the first person to see that people
are like wow that's really cool that's very creative and that is fairly original not in the technical definition of this but one of the best ads I've ever seen one of the best ads was for a convertible BMW and I think it was one of these sporty cars where there's only two seats
Cabriolet I believe they call that and they photographed it from the profile like from the side view it was lit in such a way that it looked like a shark with a th because there were these side air vents that look like gills of a shark so somebody staring at this car was
like my gosh this car is fast it's Sleek it cuts cuts through the wind like a hot knife like it moves like oh my God if we just light this car very specific way and rake it so that it tapers towards the end and then you see side vent gills and then we
just see the part of the windshield that looks like the fin of a shark without cheating too much we can make a car look like an animal and that's really cool so that we're like and that that ad won a ton of awards if you're not familiar with this just Google BMW shark
convertible ad and you probably this thing will pop up you look at like damn that's smart and here's the thing when we see something like this it's written about in a smile in the mind right a book on creative ideas and wit y What's Happening Here is the creator of these ads or
these Concepts create a puzzle for us to solve if it's too difficult to solve we're like uh I don't get it if it's too easy to solve we say oh what a cliche so obvious but when it's the right combination of hard and easy to figure out we put it together in our
mind and it's this moment of the a smile happens in her mind we're like oh I'm in on the joke I'm smart enough to decipher the puzzle you gave me and I feel better about myself I feel like there's a secret society between the creator of the concept and the consumer of the
concept that only the people who get it will get it and it's an awesome feeling so as designers as advertisers as marketers and storytellers we try to create that pleasurable moment where the puzzle is solved by the person look looking at it and when we see a good idea we almost always say
oh my God that's clever how smart so obvious that I never could have come up with it but when you see it you cannot unsee it again and that's what we're trying to do and that's being creative that's being creative looking things differently you know one of the things that goes around in
Silicon Valley at least in some of the circles that I hear is that you know people take psychedelics to be creative and it's an interesting question I mean you know you are a full-blown creative obviously in my eyes and a lot of people's eyes what what are your views on psychedelics unlocking new
creativity and you know why why do people talk about that um if you can you know if you have some stories you want to share around that I'm just so curious as to why people look at that experience and say that it enhances creativity okay um there are all kinds of psychedelics like
acid like mushroom psilocybin iasa and things like that that can make your mind trip okay some of them have some benefits and I just want to fully disclose I'm open-minded about this but I've never used any drug in my life I've never drank any alcohol ever and I I've wondered this myself okay
now we know that the spectrum of light is wide but the visible spectrum is actually quite small that's why animals can sense fear in you because they can see you in a spectrum of of light and energy that we cannot see they have infrared vision they can see at night we cannot obviously
they have all kinds of abilities to see things so what some of these psychedelics allow us to do is to see temperature like a heat map like Predator vision and if you see people like that and you can see their blood vessels in their body you notice that people who take acid and
artist they paint these paintings and they could see through like can see their eyeballs and all their vessels and it's people who can paint paint similar pictures so I think that's what they're seeing now my concern is this and my friend said hey Chris consider doing mushrooms it'll allow you to see the
connection between all living things and appreciate greatness and the details of things right now here's the problem I talked to my wife about this she's interested in trying some of these things but she's like maybe you shouldn't I'm like I like how my brain sees the world I like my ability to observe
things and to notice things and and concerned that by taking it I will lose that ability I might gain something else but I'm not ready to lose what I already have and that's the thing so I'm not here to pass judgment on anybody who wants to try anything because it might make you
more grounded and rooted in what it is that you're experiencing but I make it to be a mindful practice on a daily basis to appreciate and also to acknowledge and understand and look at everything through the most critical eye that I have and I'll tell you the reason why and I'll answer the
question about nature versus nurture right now I'll integrate into this answer okay which is this is that creative people creative people have an ability to see things that non-creative people cannot they've attuned their senses to be very sensitive to noticing things that's only part one of being a creative person part two is
from their observations they were able to connect things that other people can see they can literally see things that have yet to have happened and I love Brian Collins he's he's given talks about the future of design and he says this he says there are multiple Futures not a singular future and we
can shape what the future is going to become there's an infinite POS number of possibilities here it goes designers by Nature are futurists because they imagine and rehearse multiple Futures and pick the most optimal one I've never heard of described like that before I was like that's profound I love that that's what
we're doing so when we look at a blank piece of paper and your clients are asking you to design an identity system for them quite literally that's what you're doing you're imagining a bunch of shapes letter forms configurations inspired by all things you've noticed about other logos and about other forms and you're
like I'll try this one I'll try this one I'll try this one and you're like this is the most optimal one sadly your inability to articulate this your inability to talk about why this is relevant and present in a way that's compelling to the client makes them say well I don't want this
optimal future I want this other one that you haven't thought about that's the friction that exists between clients and artists and vendors right and that's the problem we can solve for a different day so when we feel like we're not creative when we have uh creative block it's because we don't have enough
data points we haven't observed enough we haven't learned enough so we're just using too few crowns in the Box to render an image and that's a fear that a lot of creative people have if you didn't have a great mentor if you're not some autodidact like some self-learning genius and you didn't go
to a great school there's a good chance that you might be trying to render the world in 2 24 colors you know like when I was a kid we'd have a lot of money so we had a box of crown it was like 24 I think from cray up and whenever we go
through the supermarket it's not like a lot of money I don't even know why I put this constraint on myself but You' get that big jumbo box you know yeah and then there's the mega jumbo box which is like 256 and then 124 or whatever you go like out one day one day
I will be able to buy that so I look at that as a metaphor for us if you're able to observe textures materials colors justos how things are connected how they're built and finished you you have more crayons to work with you have a greater capacity to render the world and this is
an important thing because what you're trying to do is to articulate a vision of the future right so back in the day when I was trying to draw people which is generally what people do with crowns you know you render things you draw the house you draw the dogs you draw your mom
and dad and you know what because we're all different shades of brown trying to mix red yellow together to create the right shade it's like just shade of orange basically but when you have the flesh tone color and a three shades of mocha and coffee you can sit there and you can blend
with a little bit of yellow you can achieve the right Hue and shade and that's the vision that you had in mind so are we born creative or can it be nurtured I believe we're all born creative but we just lose our ability to be creative and the nurturing part and I have
to believe in this because I grew up relatively unsu icated uncultured in art and design and I was able to learn it through self-education and through formal education so I exposed myself to as many things as possible something that you don't know about me Felix is this sorry let me finish this thought
I'll land the plate okay is that for many years since I was in junior high even before junior high I would go to the library and I would look at magazines so when I was younger I'd look at Dynamite or highlight you know magazines for kids there's all these activities I would look
at Sunset magazine I would look at like Ranger Rick and those kinds of things field in streams and I was getting a little older or outdoor fieldsman or something field you know I would just look at boating magazines and car magazines what I was doing was I was augmenting my reality with this
pictoral representation of reality that I can consume safely from where I where I was pre- internet and I could expose myself to many things and observe many things so I was looking at Better Homes in Garden I was looking at L deor and I was consuming this like voraciously I would look at
advertising magazines and just look at what are the award-winning campaigns look like and when you consume enough with a very particular eye you elevate your sense of taste and style you understand the pallet in which you can draw from and it makes you a more creative person so can it be taught can
it be nurtured for sure but most people don't have that discipline and don't have someone to guide them along the process this is such a great story because a lot of it as you mentioned I think your answer is that yes it can be nurtured and you have to have the discipline and
I think the right environment for you to almost like you know back to the point of discipline you know carry yourself forward um which is interesting because it brings me to a question that I didn't put into my paper which is that if you had this exposure earlier in your life or if
he had more of this exposure I mean there there is always a version of more um do you think that there is a level of privilege to being creative in today's society is there a level of privilege because because the reason why I asked that is is because you mentioned that hey look
you know creativity is a you know you look at different things perspectives different experiences you combine all of that um and if you're more privileged obviously you have more access to different experiences do you think it plays a part it plays a part but I'll say this some rich people have the worst
taste in the world and you can see with the buildings that are built and their lavish apartments with gold inlay everything they don't understand anything because they speak the language of money so the idea that you have more resources would lead to being creative and having good taste it's a good concept but
in reality it's not look at all the newvo rich people in China they actually look at the new Vish people in any country and you know what they do is they copy the the images of of success without understanding it that's why they get goldplated Bugattis and they walk out with like shiny
silver metallic pants and Snak skin boots and I'm like um I know they cost a lot of money but it just shows me how much you don't know like the way you carry yourself the the eyeglass that you bought and the way that you take care of your body so lots of rich
people don't have any taste at all in fact some of the most famous people celebrities need stylist the idea of stylist is confusing to me right because you're already rich and famous why don't you have any style because you know what you don't spend any time trying to put yourself together you haven't
learned the language of of clothing and fashion and proportions and textures and Silhouettes you just have it so when you see celebrities walk on the street and those those tabloid magazines take pictur pictures of you and you're like that person's a hot mess it's because their stylist didn't tell them what to wear
to people with taste and you can see that I don't want to name any names but it's easy to go up and down the list of not I'm not even talking about b-level celebrities I'm talking about a-level celebrities that you think look so good on the screen are so stylish have such Charisma
outside they look like garbage so you can be rich and famous have access and still have bad taste it's because you haven't being able to make that connection thanks so thanks for sharing that and I I I know that you know we have a lot of people has a lot of questions on
this but um you're an expert in business and uh at least the business of design and and I think you're you're one of the best in the world your YouTube video uh I recently went to check it out uh pricing design work and creativity the guide is your top video of all time
I think it's about 4.5 million views today it's three million more views than your second trending video um why do you think people watch that so much why do you think people want to price their you know learn about pricing their creativity so much um you know through through through your video what
what draws people that I mean you obviously have a lot of stories so I'm curious why do you think people are particularly drawn to this subject okay um I can tell you the theory behind this but obviously if I knew how to do this every single time every video we would make would
have four million views but there is a special moment in time when all the right variables were in place to make this video popular and it is our most viewed video by far but the cutdown of this video has 40 million views the short and the the recut of the same video as
a short has 20 million views so the combined view on this thing is ridiculous it's like over 64 million views it's the number one video which people recognize me for like literally on the street like I know you I seen you before I'm like uh have you I play innocent like have you
I don't know and they're like yeah logo guy pricing right I'm like yeah that's me okay cool we know each other so from the airport to the Embassy or to wherever else on the street to the fast food server that's a video that people know why did it hit why did it strike
a nerve with people not that talking about money or pricing a negotiation is is uh exciting because there are Universal Concepts in that video that have grown way Beyond designers cuz I don't even know if there are like four million designers or 40 million designers out in the world but people in the
trade like plumbing and tile work they watch this video like damn that's a much better way of understanding this and you presented when I say you I mean I presented an idea that was a take on a existing belief that they had that challenged it in a way that they felt was either
going to make them really angry or to reframe the relationship with charging for the hour and understanding that charging based on time is a dumb idea we didn't get into the theory of it but what happened was I had the right a sparring partner to work with my friend Jung who who used
to teach he he since passed away in the video you know rest in peace he's the right kind of person that dances dances with me that I haven't been able to find someone who is very passionate who's emotional who's angry but can't figure it out either who doesn't have great logic makes for
the great counterbalance of the two of us and we know each other in real life we were friends before he passed and we can go at each other full throttled like full throated like no punches pulled and what people got to see was a pretty good sparring match between two people who had
very different opinions of things because people who I do role plays with who capitulate too quickly like oh that's a very reasonable argument you're right Chris but the fact that he was so weird about his answers not trying to be but just because he is it made it such good content you're like
give me a bag of popcorn like where is this going and those videos tend to be the best so we're in a real environment with a real group of people he's passionate and angry I'm passionate and angry he's not easy to convince neither am I and we're g to go at it and
what happens is Magic now if I have enough stubborn angry sometimes ignorant people every video would be for 4 million views wow I was just thinking that you know now that you say that you might get a B more stubn and angry people at your workshops um so hopefully we we try to
invite that those type of people to our workshops oh I love them I love them you know what happens they literally question me during the workshop this has happened I love this because I get to incorporate this yeah yeah wow they're like uh Chris I don't believe what you're saying I'm like cool
okay let's go at it what's your belief and I said uh and they'll say something and they'll directly challenged me in the opposite way and I say to them little little cheeky you know how this is going to end right like no what do you mean everybody in the room giggles and I
said um and at that time was like Dave I'm like Dave make sure you have a tight shot on this person and a shot on me let's make sure they're miked up because this is the video that will get me a million views I thank you in advance please continue with the argument
and they're like um never mind I retract my statement oh God they back down too easy they back down to back down CU they know this doesn't end well like in the moment they're like I made my case look at it I'm so smart later you watch the video you're like oh my
God I was a jackass and now I'm helping Chris get three more million views on his videos and I thank you in advance so if you want to argue with me I welcome it I'm not shy of argument and heaven forbid if you have a better point of view backed by reasonable logical
explanation I've learned something I will change I'll adopt your opinion that that is such a cool concept I mean you know to take sort of like a debate Fierce debate into something exciting for people to be a part of and learn from that conversation I think that that is ultimately what it's about
you know it's it's obviously you know as as mention it's insane 64 million views almost um around the internet uh just on that one single video alone what is the key Takeaway on the guide you know on how to price your design and your creativity what do you think is the one key
take away for designers and creatives listening today about pricing if they haven't watched this video yet yes I'll explain it to you I I since learn many more things that I can explain a more nuanced way I want you to do this this is an experiment I would probably run in my workshop
I'd ask everybody to do this thing I say think about an urgent problem that you would like to have fixed one that is really bothering you right now okay and then say now you think of the ideal solution for this thing is it more or less value Val to you that it takes
more or less time so if it takes more time is this solution more valuable to you or less valuable to you they have to really sit there and think about it in no instance when you have an urgent important problem to solve that you care about then you want it to take more
time in fact if you could do it quicker you'll pay more okay let's wrap this in the real world y cuz I've been both both a buyer and a seller of creative Services probably more a buyer because i' I've bought a lot of creative services but um I have a building and I
need it to be renovated and it's projected to take one year I'm going to spend over a million dollars renovating this building and I'm concerned because every day that goes by I'm paying for a space that I cannot use it's costing me money so I have it written in the contract the project
must be finished on this date for every day that you're late you will pay me now unless I I do something that changes the scope of this and you need to tell me in advance this is written in the contract it will be done at this time and in fact if you could
deliver earlier I'll give you a bonus get the job done and so the person says right I got it signs of documents I W the job a year later we have a space because what is their incentive well it's a fix fee bid meaning they're not charging me hourly y so the longer
they drag this out the more it's going to cost them so what they need to do is organize a project in such a way that they have all the trades people just coming in at Clockwork and all the materials and and all the decisions that need to be made are done well in
advance of when they need them and the shipment accounts for or the the project management accounts for delays and potential permitting issues all of that I want it to be run really well so in our line of business what do we do we say well you know it should take four weeks and
why are we motivated to make it take four weeks because we can justify it takes longer more creative human hours it's going to be of higher quality so we make the thing take longer on the other side the business person the buyer of the service like I don't want it to take four
weeks charge me what you're going to charge me but can you do it in two weeks in fact it'll be worth more to me so what you're asking from the vendor at that point is prioritize my project I need it done it's got to be good I would like it to be done
at this time and for that privilege of you prioritizing me as a client I would pay you more so the idea of tying value to time is a really stupid idea I can't think of many situations where you think something takes longer is more valuable to the buyer heart surgery no haircut nope
car wash no waiting in line for restaurant no concert tickets no almost everything you want done faster and we'll pay a premium for that now the counterargument Felix that people like to make to me is like well uh it's always better when I work on it longer you get a higher quality product
yeah in some instances yes but in most instances no I'll give you example here's the last example and I think I need to get off this call pretty soon which is this let's put me against a young designer who just graduated from school let's let's say they didn't even go to a good
school like say they went to a b tier school and they're an average student okay you put me in front of a client the client gives me the brief gives them the brief just by Nature because of my experience I'm going to ask better questions pull out some insights from the client understand
their motivations their goals their business objectives the the new designer who doesn't know anything is like oh you want a logo no problem I'm going to make you 400 logos I go away in my studio I think about the solution then I devise something I think is going to work I show them
one example and it takes me a mere couple hours to figure out the solution because the rendering of the form is not hard for me it's the coming up with the right idea that's the hard part and my experience allows me to come to that conclusion faster and so a week in I'm
already done the presentation here it is this is the work I thought through the the campaign the life cycle of this logo work the inexperienced designer is still in research the first week hasn't even created anything creates 100 ugly ass logos shows client eight of them client likes none of them it's redirected
time and time they're going back and forth back and forth and eventually land on something that's just whatever because through attrition they're just beaten down by the process they feel like their their Vision has been watered down and they're feeling frustrated and angry in the meantime the client has already paid me it's
done has moved on with their business the client on the other side is just worried like this is taking really long they're starting to run into deadlines of their own because they need their logo for a number of different applications and they're still paying they're like what am I paying for right now
right so is a is more time on something valuable we're not comparing Apples to Apples here if you have two equally skilled people to create something the idea is if you can get to a faster solution everybody's happier in fact many of you who have a service to offer should pose the question
to your prospect and ask them would this solution be more valuable to you if it could be done in half the time I ask cuz some clients ask for this right and if they say yes you could charge a premium and you'll learn something new about what people value there is there's so
much learning from what you just say I I know that you running short of time uh Chris and you know it's I got five more minutes okay yeah I wanted to ask three more questions because I think it's more generic for anyone who might not be designer as well but just to W
wrap up that that part which is really a lot about it's it's almost a myth that sometimes longer means higher quality as you said in is quite the opposite a lot of things similar quality can be done in a shter time it's just really what the buyer wants and and in in your
in your case as you mentioned you it's almost like a sense of opportunity causes that people always almost wants it faster hair cut construction whatever so and so forth so um thanks for sharing that that concept Chris now I want to move on to the last three questions which is really more about
yourself as a human being and um you know how you look at the world and obviously you know some of the message you want to share to everyone today as well you you have been CAU many things obviously by your community by the world design Guru marketing WIS but as cisto what do
you want to be remembered for I want to be remembered as a good father that's all I care about that I raised two boys and gave them the resources they needed in the world without trying to impose my vision of the world on them to to do as little harm to my own
children as possible do you know the guru saguru is an Indian Yogi sad Guru have you heard of this person before I have not heard of saguru okay he he's a beautiful human being he goes you know children are born perfect its parents who screw it up wow he goes something to the
effect of you're trying to correct the mistakes you've made in your own children so let's say you didn't get to a good school because didn't work that hard you want your children to go to an IB League school let's say that your parents wanted you to be a doctor but you just didn't
have the passion now you all sudden you want your children to be a doctor or you married poorly or you made bad decisions in your life and now you're trying to tell your children don't do this don't do that so for some reason it's like you couldn't get your life together and now
you make your children pay for it so there's a style of governance it's called La Fair like hands off I think that's what it means in French and I want to raise my children this way give them a stable supportive loving home and try to influence them as little as possible as to
who they want to be in the world if they interested in something let's support that if not let's not you know we just we just move around and outside of some core values I want nothing for them it is a very radical way of parenting right I'll share the story really quickly I
was telling my cousin who came to visit me recently I said 'you know what what's the crazy thing is with our two boys we've never had to tell them to do their homework we've never checked on their homework we don't even look at the report card yet they get straight A's and they
do their homework and they're they're studious and they care about how how well they do in class and my cousin's like CU he has a young boy he's like how did this happen he said well you set the standard you don't want to be that kind of parent was like do your homework
let me check it because then they just do it for you yeah I want my children to do it because they want to do it if they don't want to do it we put them in another school they don't want to go to school we don't go to school I don't care and
then they find out what they want and they get to be who they want to be so I'm trying as much as I can to do as little harm to my children as possible because everything I try to impose upon them is more about what I want in my life and not what
they want and I think that's how parents f up their children thanks so sharing that Chris I I I hope that your kids you know listen to this um you know once it's out and the next question I want to ask you is you know what is something that you thought was important
while you're younger but no longer think it's important for you as you grow old in life I'm going to have to rewind the tape uh up until probably around high school so in high school I thought it was really important to be accepted by a social structure because I've always felt like an
outsider and there wasn't social or psychological safety for me and some of my own quote unquote friends would betray me in weird ways and being mean-spirited so I had a lot of distrust and I just wanted to feel safe and I learned that the more I love myself the more that I find
who I am find my voice in everything that I do the less I care about what anybody says and ironically or paradoxically the more people accept me so your P your desire your pursuit of acceptance from others makes you less accepted you giving up this idea of being accepted and wanting that from
people makes you more attractive it's a really weird concept it's wild it it is wild sounds sounds wild to me I mean I haven't I probably haven't realized that enough yet as well Chris but thanks for sharing that and now if you were to put on your wife s head I think you
have done that for the past hour uh last question right if you were to put on your your wife Sage head what advice would you give to Young audience in their 20s to their 30s on creating a life or a career that they can be very proud of okay I'm going to answer
this question I think I'm going to book end this whole conversation from where we started to right now the number one thing and this is a Picasso quote that I believe so deeply in my heart I hope I get this right uh the the purpose of life is to figure out your gift
and the meaning of life is to give it away so each one of us has a unique set of characteristics or traits that we're born with that we don't fully Embrace and we're trying to chase to be more like other people so we kind of do disservice our own gifts I'm 5 fo8
I'm not 6 foot s if I was six foot s I'd be doing something different right and I have a certain shape tone of my voice structure Aesthetics color of skin ideas influences cultural I'm Asian-American I love design comic book skateboarding I love mixed martial arts I like a lot of weird stuff
I'm not shy to talk about money I love myself fully and bringing all those aspects together is my gift so I discovered this kind of along the way when I was able to combine my love for teaching which I did for 15 years my love for entrepreneurship which ran my company for 23
plus years and my uh my fascination with design and Aesthetics and production and storytelling which is how I made a living when I put that together with my genuine desire to help other people I find my gift so I combine my skills of teaching my love for design my experience in design my
understanding of Entrepreneurship and my desire to genuinely help people that's where the future is it's the intersection of these multiple circles these overlapping circles so each one of you most likely are denying or running away from your gift because someone told you that's not a good thing I can't tell you how many
times I run into somebody who has the most amazing voice but they don't use it or who writes Beautiful poetry but never publishes it they literally send me examples I'm like has anybody seen this like no I'm like why would you withhold this from the world I don't understand that so find your
gift share it with the world and the way we share it with the world is we need to get into creating media not for other people for ourselves to figure out what it is that we need to know about ourselves and it's extremely therapeutic you learn about who you are and I'll ended
on this Vin Jang said this friend of mine it says what is the point of telling stories you think telling stories is so that we can capture people's imagination and attention you might be right you might think of telling stories as a way to market products or make yourself seem more likable but
telling stories according to him is our ability to remind us ourselves of who we are such that when people are questioning us we're affirm because we've told that story to ourselves this is my story this is who I am it's unshakable it's undeniable yours is just an opinion of me so we need
all to get into practice of telling stories because it's a dynamic way for people to remember but also because it just reminds us of who we are in case we get lost in the wilderness of a people's opinions wow Chris thank you so much for ending today's interview with that powerful advice on
fighting your gifts you know letting the world see your gifts as well and so um Chris I I can't thank you enough for joining us today I'm sure there's 2,000 people that join actually more than that 2.5 um and I really appreciate you for spending time here and just sharing um I'll reach
out to you separately in terms of what kind of links or what would you like to promote but you say anything that you know um you want people to check it out from from the future or from blind any anything that that you might be working on yeah I would love to say
this is that my mission is to help creative people who struggle with finding their value their voice and if you need help go to the future.com it's spelled f u t r and uh I would just say this if you ever see me in the street please don't don't be like me don't
be shy come up and say hi I'd love to shake your hand to hear a little bit of your story and if you want to take a picture with you so this is why I do what I do when I hear your story how you achieve something your success a win it lights
me up it gives fuel to my fire so please don't be afraid to share in in other circles people might condemn you for sharing your wins I celebrate you and I salute you and thank you for being here thank you so much Chris and I'll write my story to you over the weekend
as well um and I hope to hear yours um you know alongside that so thank you so much Chris I really appreciate your time thank you my pleasure if you want to equip yourself with the right Community training and resources to take your business to the next level I want to personally invite
you to check out the future PR group and our membership specifically created for experienced business owners ready to scale [Music]
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