Cum să fii autentic și original în online | BOABE DE CUNOAȘTERE | cu Chris Do

The more impact that you make in the world, the more money you'll have. The problem is most people want shortcuts. They don't want to do the hard work.

I want to be seen. I want to be validated. I want to have followers.

If you need a hug, go get a hug. Don't use social media for validation.

How can you start if you have zero followers?

Here's the hard truth: everybody who's waiting is making an excuse. You can make excuses or you can make progress, but you can't make both. Many of us wear a mask. I wear a mask. I just try to wear a very thin mask. Some people wear a mask so big you can't even see the person. I don't talk about how to sell more things. I'm talking about doing the deeper inner work. That is what I know about personal branding.

What's your enemy?

Oh shoot, you're going to put me on the spot. I don't believe all manipulation is bad.

Really?

You have to be good at what you do. You must always deliver more. You must always tell the truth.

That's clever.

I think so. Just be authentically you and people will love you for it. I tell people, sell how you buy, create how you consume. You speak Romanian with such passion and energy, I feel like I'm listening to a football broadcast. And then you must say, goal!

Omulete salut, Dr. Mihail Pautov. Nouvel épisode de «Pourquoi m'avez-vous choisi ?» Vous êtes bien des prétentions, ces gars, cette propre voix tient la chasse de l'humain sur les réseaux sociaux. Puisque nous avons dévoré un paradoxe: d'une part, nous avons toutes les plateformes pour pouvoir poster et exposer, poster des films, nous avons des caméras partout, des téléphones, c'est pourquoi l'humain est éteint. Tu peux tenir cette promesse-là, puisque chaque jour, nous rencontrons de nouveaux talents qui ont un travail à faire. Orushin' de a se expun' au fric de a fâcheux primo pass. J'espère sa putem se résolv'ma tches primo pass astes, pendo que invitato meu destes vine direct de Pesciana, FOMO, the Festival of Modern Owners. J'suis este Chris Due, il est designer primiat qu'au Emmy, este speaker international, este éducateur, j'suis fondateur de Future, o platforme globale d'éducation pendo créatif, j'suis professionniste indépendant. J'suis este un d'entre tchères mai écoutate voix, attend'ch'qu'on devine voir ba des construire brand, so as you reconstruct brand, so you need to have a proper voice. I think that's it for me. I think I've summed up the whole discussion in a single sentence. And this is how you get a proper voice for your PR. Chris, welcome to Booba the Connoisseur.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for coming. I've been at your conference yesterday. It was great. I've learned a lot of things, but for the people that are seeing you for the first time here at our podcast, can you describe what are you doing today for the living?

I guess I'm a full-time content creator right now, and I also do coaching. I create digital products that people can download and study and read and develop their personal brand or develop their business.

Yeah. And before that, you were— what were you doing? What was your job with brands and with all of these directions and changes of directions for the brands?

I've done a couple of things and my career has evolved. I started out working on commercials and music videos and that spanned about 18 years. Somewhere along that way I was teaching part-time at private art schools. And then in 2014 I started making content. I made the big shift away from doing client work and just making content.

How do you like it at FOMO? How do you like the festival?

Festival is great. I know it's early days for them. That's their second production. I think it's very ambitious. It's exciting for me to be here here to experience the culture, the people, the food, the architecture, the history that's here. But what really surprised me about the audience is how warm and receptive they were, and it is very shocking. I've been through many parts of Europe doing talks and firesides, and this is one of the warmest receptions I've ever received. And yes, as a public speaker, I, I work with energy, and so if I'm putting energy into the audience and they're stone-faced— you, you know that expression, stone-faced? Yeah. Yeah. And people don't give you any energy back, I will actually start yelling at them like, I'm not going to continue unless you guys want to engage with me. Really? Yeah. And I think about this a lot because I have opportunities to speak and I often ask myself, what's the difference between a presenter where you watch on a video or one that's live on stage? Yeah. So if you literally just go through your talk and don't have a conversation with people, why aren't I just sitting in my bed watching this? Yeah. So I try to think about things that I can pull the audience into it and they can help shape the conversation. So I know there are certain points in the talk that are kind of set and there are parts that are very flexible. And but that requires them to participate. And there's a little bit of danger, like we don't know where it's going to go. Yeah, somebody can say anything. I think that if I were an audience member, get a little bit more excited versus, oh, here he's going to say this now. He's going to say that.

Yeah. But you see, you told me that you were walking on the street in Bucharest. Yeah. And nobody was smiling. Right. But then you, you have them in the room. Yeah. A big room. In the hall and they are interacting. So I think that this is one of the, like, this is a good description of how a lot of Romanians are interacting with social media. Like, they have a lot of things to say, they have expertise in different domains, and they are so, like, they can explain you so well different stuff when you talk with them. But then they, when they have to talk with strangers, which is like Instagram, yeah, social media, you have to expose yourself there. They prefer to not do that, but they want to. Like, a lot of people are asking me, how can I start? Like young doctors and all kind of professionals, like people that are making furniture, different kind of professionals, they want to be heard.

Yeah.

And they like, they have to choose between paying somebody to show their work.

Yeah.

Like an influencer or becoming good in their niche, find they're afraid. So for those people that are watching now, well, how, uh, let's, let's make like a small guide. How can you start if you have zero followers, you have no content creation experience, but you are good at something and you wanna show it? How do you start?

Okay. This is gonna be a long and deep conversation.

Okay.

You interrupt, you ask follow-up if I'm not being clear.

Okay.

Uh, I wanna express deep empathy for the people who are professionals, who are experts, who see relatively young people, sometimes good-looking people, are very charismatic go on to social media and create this name for themselves. And you're sitting there thinking, they don't know anything, I know things, but no one's following me and no one's watching what I'm doing. So there's some frustration there. I've been on that journey myself. In the beginning, I was thinking social media is stupid, it feels very empty, very vacuous. And then I thought, but I don't want to be left behind. Yeah, FOMO, really, fear of missing out. Okay, different FOMO. And then what I do is I hire somebody who's like, hey, I'm good at social media, usually a relatively young person, and they start creating content for me. I'm like, great, problem solved. No, that's just the beginning of the problem, because what they do is they write in their voice and not your voice because they have nothing to work with. So I had a woman writing for me and it sounded like a woman was writing my post. Yeah. And her choices of flowers and colors like that is not even me. Where are we going with this content? So I was thinking, hey, wrong strategy. Let me try again. So I hired an agency. Now the agency is like, we have all these stats, we're professional, we have a team, and they didn't know my voice either. So I paid them both for months at end and thinking to myself, I'm nowhere closer to my goal. I'm creating some weird false engagement and I'm not really doing what I need to do. Number one, express my thoughts about the world and build credibility through that thinking and the art of articulating your thoughts is really beneficial to myself. This is how I began this journey. And now I realize something is you cannot export your thinking to other people, or in this case now machines. Like to AI, you gotta do the work yourself.

Yeah. That, that's like a bad part of using AI to create content.

It depends on how you use it.

Oh yeah.

It's not a blanket statement, but how most people are using, I would say it's not the right way.

Mm-hmm.

And so I think in a lot of things in life, The obstacles are an opportunity for you to grow, to change, and to evolve. So I tried this process of having other people create the content for me for about a year, and I said, no, I'm going to figure this thing out and I'm going to do it on my own. And that's when the change really happened. So a lot of empathy. Now we, now we figured out, we tried things, we tried to take shortcuts or we're not that interested. Now we've committed ourselves to wanting to express our thinking. That's the most important part and finding our own identity in that process.

Well, let me be the devil's advocate, okay? You said you need to express your thinking, yeah, about the world. You need to let it out, and nobody else can think for you. Yes. But let's say I'm a furniture, uh, uh, maker. Maker, yeah. I build furniture. I have no thinking about the world. I just make good furniture. It's not that expensive. I make it for your house and I don't have time for social media. So it's better for me to go to social media, let's say social media, uh, agency.

Yeah.

And pay €1,000 a month and they come and make this social media for me. Yeah.

Okay. So there's a problem.

Yeah.

Yeah. Potentially. When I say you need to express your thoughts, I don't mean about politics, about policy or things like that. I'm talking about your profession, what it is that you do and what you know how to do really well. You have a point of view and you need to talk about that. So let's say you're a furniture maker and let's say you're really like an artist or an artisan and you, you're a second or third generation furniture maker. Let's say you build tables or sofas, right, with wood and tools. So first of all, there's a whole story there that needs to be unpacked and told to people. And we can do this visually. We don't even need to speak to tell our story. It's wild because there's something called visual storytelling. Some of the best directors in the world know how to frame a shot, know what the movement needs to be with the camera, the action, so that it tells a story. There are actually complete films where there's no dialogue and you can watch it and understand a deep narrative. So what I would do if I was a furniture maker is start from the start, from going to the lumberyard, selecting pieces of wood and looking at it with a discerning eye and shaping it, you know, even with your mind or, or maybe doing a sketch and saying, this is what I'm going to build. And what happens there is the audience is going to watch and say, What is this person building? Where is this story going? You're creating a lot of tension, and this is necessary for storytelling. So as you watch, we can see them planing down the piece of wood, squaring it up, and joining pieces and building all little parts and pieces and snapping things in, building beautiful joinery. And people love this kind of stuff. Now, what I would suggest that they do here is to get a really good microphone, be in a quiet space so they can do ASMR stuff. So the sound of the wood scraping, the planing of the wood, how the wood creaks a little bit when it gets a nice tight fit and makes that satisfying sound when it locks in. That's how you start to tell your story, because no two furniture makers are going to build things exactly the same. They're not going to look the same. They're going to be different. Let's say this person has some tattoos and maybe they wear some jewelry and they're— they have like a heavy denim, really old apron. That's part of your identity. Somebody else might be very new to this, but you, you're a grizzly veteran and you got a little edge. Maybe you have like an unkempt beard and you're doing your thing. And then we make assumptions about who you are and where you come from, and we either connect or disconnect. And that's really powerful.

Do you think you need to have like talent, like creative talent, artistic talent, the eye, like, I don't know, some special genes that make you creative? Or you think that anybody can learn doing that?

Mm, okay. Sir Ken Robinson, who passed away, he has the most viewed TED Talk ever, I believe. And he was asking this question, do we need to learn about creativity? Do we grow into creativity?

Yeah.

And he says we are all born creative. We grow out of creativity. So all of us, if you just have young children, you watch how young children look at the world. They're filled with imagination. They don't understand rules and they are dreamers. And through socialization, through education, quote unquote education, the creativity is drawn out of them. And NASA did this whole study about how children at the age of 5 had demonstrated at a 90% level genius-level thinking, abstract thinking concepts. But they studied this group of children into adulthood, and now they're like less than 5% expressing this ability to think abstractly. It is wild. So We don't need a special gene. We already have it. So what we have to do is we're not learning something. We're remembering who we were when we were kind of without those rules. Mm-hmm. Okay. To be a great artist, you need to be a great observer of the world. So first thing is to observe, to learn how to see. So if we see a piece of content, say your favorite Romanian director, art house style film, instead of just watching it as a passenger and not taking an active role, we should look at What was the opening shot? What was the sequence that happened? And if we want to go deeper, we start asking our questions about where was the camera, what was the lens, what was the lighting, how did this movement motivate the action or the storyline? And we start to study. You go even deeper, we, we pull the clip down from the internet, we cut them apart, and we organize the shots. I'm like, oh, I see what looked like 100 different shots was 4 master shots intercut in between each other. Now we become a student of the game and we're like, wow. And if you're a semi-creative person or curious person, your brain is like firing all the neurons, like, wow, this is amazing. I was in the furniture-making business, but I'm learning how to tell stories visually by studying great directors and doing what they do.

Okay, so you can like, you can train this abstract thinking, watch absurd things, and maybe grow it like a muscle. Okay, so Yes. So far we understood that. And now our guy, which is like the furniture maker or whoever it is, like an expert in something, he's determined to start.

Yeah.

And he is watching Instagram, watching TikTok, and he observes how other people are doing that. So at this point it's easier for you to copy.

Yeah.

To, to copy the voice. Maybe you are an introvert, yeah, and you are quiet and you're quite professional doing your stuff, but then you start to, hey, hello people, let me show you how I make a sofa, how I make furniture. And that, that is going to bring like a cognitive cost, yeah, to, to pretend all of the time who you are. How, how can this guy find his right voice that is authentic that is not cringe, and that is his own human original voice.

I would caution anybody to do anything that doesn't feel like what they would want to do. Find your way of expressing yourself, find the words and the energy level that matches you, and build around that. So whenever we talk about a creative brief, there are certain constraints and there are certain variables that we can play with. So there's like have-to-haves and nice-to-haves. We can call them checklists and parameters. A checklist is something that you cannot change. A parameter is open to interpretation. So if it means that it must be 60 seconds, that's a checklist, that's not a parameter. If it needs to feel cinematic, that's a parameter. So you can make a list for yourself. What are my checklists, my, my must-haves, which is I'm, I'm a quiet, pensive thinker, the editing needs to tell most of the story, or I really think my voice needs to be in there quite literally, but I don't want to be on camera speaking. So you can create rules for yourself. Now, the old— mostly from YouTube, we have these explosive personalities, mostly because there's not deep expertise there. They're just jumping forward to being an influencer. So they think, if I'm this big bombastic personality, I will draw the audience in.

Is that the red flag when you see somebody explosive?

No, not at all, because some people are just like that. Some people are, you know, those people have too much coffee in the morning and you walk into reception, it's like, good to see you, Mihail. How are you doing? What a wonderful night. The weather's amazing today. I'm like, oh my God, will you just calm down? I just walked into the office. And there are people just like that naturally. So I think there's going to be a spectrum of energy levels, at least the way we project to the world. Those types of people tend to be extroverted. They're very social. They enjoy being around other humans. But it turns out a lot of like really quiet thinkers don't like that kind of energy. I was at a marketing conference in Newcastle. Every person felt to me like they were screaming. Some people were literally screaming and screaming at the audience. As an introvert, I felt like every time they screamed something, I wanted to run. Every time they would do that, I'm disconnecting. And I was the last speaker, so I came up on stage and I said, you know, I suspect I might be at the wrong conference. Because every presenter does this. Do you mind if I just speak in my normal tone? Because I don't feel like yelling at you. And is that okay? And they all started nodding. I'm like, okay, wow, how many introverts are in here? Majority of people raised their hands. And then after I finished my presentation, a lot of people came up to me and said, Chris, we're so glad you did that. We enjoy and appreciate the other stuff, but we really needed this at the end of this thing. There was too much volume 11 going on. We needed a 5 or 6. And what happens there is they start to lean in. So a lot of professional speakers make this mistake. They either watch too many speakers or they hire the wrong coach that tell them this is who you need to become to be respected, to command authority. There's all that power posing, you know, hand gestures. If that's not you, don't worry about it. Just be authentically you and people will love you for it.

How can you search for that authenticity?

Okay. Give me—

make you different from others.

Okay, give me a profession and I'll tell you how to do it. Who are they now? We worked with a woodworker. I told you how to do that. That seemed pretty clear to me. Okay, give me a different profession.

I don't know, let's say a graphic designer.

Perfect. Okay. There are some content formats that we can study. And if you look at the formats, we can find one that works really well for you. My friend Brendan Kane, who got 1 million followers in like 30 days, talks about formats a lot. And so I like this idea. Some people might call it a template, but sometimes that feels off-putting. But we need to find a format. There's this guy, his name is Alan Peters. He's a graphic designer. Shout out to Alan Peters. He, for the most part, doesn't appear on camera. He has a heavy Midwestern accent, which is sometimes, depending on who you ask, not that cool. Okay. But he uses it anyways. And all of his video follows a very specific format. It's an overhead shot, pieces of paper, some colors and pencils, and he starts talking about the problem. He goes, so my buddy owns an automotive detailing place, and this is the name of the company. The problem with that is it does this, this, and that. It's not very scalable, repeatable, and all. You never see his face. He's just moving with hands. That's all he does. He goes, well, I start off with my nouns and I find some shapes, and then all of a sudden I saw this, and he's just changing pieces of paper, cut piece. It's quite beautiful to watch. As he explains the process. And then when he finds that one aha moment, instead of dropping the mic, he drops the pencil. It's a signature move for him. He just drops a pencil and then he shows you all the finished work. So 70-80% of the work is about solving the problem. 20% of it is showing you the finished product. This is a very important distinction to make. At the very end is when you can see his face. He uses the exact same, almost exact same ending shot, which is him to camera saying like, peace. Like that, and his logo's in the back. That's the only time you see him. You actually never see his mouth move. Okay. Why is this good? Most people make the mistake of showing you the finished product, thinking if I show you a really great product, people will love that. But they care more about how the product was made than the product itself. This is really important, especially like in developed countries. There's this thing called provenance. We need to know where things come from. So it's like when, when a chef comes to your table and says the carrots are grown at a farm down the hill, and we harvest them only during this time. And we got the potatoes from this farm. And Betty is the cow that we're eating today. And you're like seeing this meal, all of a sudden the meal has greater significance because you were told a great story about the meal itself. Yeah, exactly. You know what I'm talking about, right? Whereas fast food places, here's a picture of the meal. Just order whatever you want. There's no story. I will pay the lowest price. That's what happens there. So we can tell stories. We can talk about process. And then show the results. But the ratio of process to story is roughly 80/20, 80% process, 20% finished product.

You know those reels with delicious stuff? They usually start with the product and then you see the process because you want to make it at your home, you know?

Yes.

You see the cake, oh my God, so such a nice cake. And then you see the process, how you get there.

Yes, that's a format. There's a very good reason why that happens. A reel is usually under 60 seconds. If you don't get past the first 3 seconds, it does not count as a view. So they know what they need to do is hook you in the very beginning by showing you something very delicious. Usually they're cutting the sandwich in half, they pull it apart, the cheese escapes. You know the videos. Yeah. And it looks wonderful. And then they begin this whole process. They're kneading the dough, they're building it slowly, a little bit at a time. And you're like, wow, I know how it begins. Or I know how it ends in the beginning and now I need to watch the whole thing. So literally all they did was take a linear thing and chop the end, put it at the beginning just to play with the algorithm. Mm-hmm. It's a very simple process.

Okay, good. So now how can we make the difference between I want to serve people, I want to teach people something, I want to sell something. Yeah. Like professional reasons for my story, for my brand. Should it be even a personal brand? And I want to be seen, I want to be validated, I want to have followers. And can one serve the other or not? I mean, can you go the wrong way if your main reasons are to be seen, to be validated?

I would say that's trappings of social media. If you need a hug, go get a hug. Don't use social media for validation. If you need to find reasons for your existence, Don't go to social media. Don't export your feelings and self-worth to strangers on the internet and become a victim to the algorithm. That's a dangerous place to be. I believe social media was made for something. It was made for self-expression, to find out who you're supposed to be in this lifetime and to become that person. The benefit of it is you will be loved, you'll be validated, and you'll get opportunities. But if you do it for that reason, it generally doesn't work out. The classic way to look at this is if you talk to somebody young, late late teens, early 20s, and you say, what do you want in life? And they're like, I want to be rich, I want to make a lot of money. That's not really an idea, that's an outcome. So I think money is a scorecard based on impact. The more impact that you make in the world, the more money you'll have. I want to look at life that way. I know it's not always the case because people do inherit money, people do take advantage of other people and make money, and they've made a very low impact. But the world would be a better place if we all focus on impact and understand that money is a scorecard for impact. So I look at it as followers is the scorecard for impact. And impact could be divided many different ways. You entertained me, you educated me, you did something to lift me up today, and I will reward you with a view, with a comment, with a share, with a save, or a follow. That's how we should be looking at this. But the first part of your creative journey, especially if you're starting from zero, is to figure out who am I supposed to be in this lifetime? It's not going to happen on day 1. It might not even happen on day 100., but it's a worthwhile pursuit.

How can I find my voice? And you, you've had some slides yesterday on your conference, those three, three words, the enemy.

Yes. The Venn diagram, right? Yes.

Diagram.

Yeah. Yes. Should we talk about that?

Yeah. Because it applies to people that start, right?

Yeah. So I teach personal branding and I do multi-day workshops and I find that when I ask people to learn about personal branding the way I want them to learn, It is too hard. I want them to get into their shadow self. I want them to understand their brand voice. And what happens is instead of seeing breakthroughs, I see people with a broken head. It's like a headache. And I started thinking about how do we make this simpler so that you can get started on this journey of figuring out who you're supposed to be in this lifetime. So as far as I can tell, this is the simplest way I can explain it. There are 3 components and a Venn diagram is 3 overlapping circles and the sweet spot in the middle is you and your brand. The top part is what you want to be known for. We'll call this your keyword. So when people think of something, whatever that word is, they'll think of you. Yeah. Like if I say shoe, you might think of something. Well, if we play free word association, if I say sneaker, what would you say? Nike. What about glasses?

Like the one—

Ray-Ban. Okay. You see, you already have strong association. That's what we call a brand. What most people make this mistake is they don't want they don't know what they want to be known for in this life. So how can somebody figure that out if you don't know? So let's figure this thing out. What is the word you want to be known for so that it becomes synonymous? They can use your name or they can use that word. Yeah. Okay. Like, for example, what happens is something becomes so famous it becomes ubiquitous, right? So there's ubiquity. So when we say— when we make a photocopy, we're going to make a Xerox copy. So those two words are interchangeable because Xerox became so famous for photocopies that people use those two terms together. At least in America, if there's a tissue for your nose, you might say, hey, give me the Kleenex. Kleenex is the brand. And then a tissue paper is the product category.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know what we have in Romania? We have in Romania, like the sneakers. Yes. The sneakers in Romania, you say Adidas.

Adidas. Yeah.

Adidas.

Yeah. And I believe the correct pronunciation is Adidas, but, you know, everybody has a different way of saying it.

Yeah, but we say like, that's how we call sneakers.

Oh, you use that just like that? Yeah. Grab me Adidas.

Yeah, give me the Adidas.

Wow, they're that popular?

Yeah. Amazing. In the dictionary.

Yeah, I see a lot of that.

It's in the dictionary, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Like Nike, Adidas Nike.

Yeah, Adidas, yeah.

Oh, you hyphen?

Yeah, if you wanna buy some Nikes, you say this is Adidas Nike.

For any brand, they'll just use that.

For any brand, yeah.

Amazing. That's what we're talking about. So you want to have that level of recognition an association with a keyword. So yeah, can I put you on the spot? Yeah. What word are you associated with?

I always keep thinking about it, what word I would like. I don't know what word people associate me— like, if you can just comment, like, comment in the comment section, what word would you associate me with? And that will be really helpful. But I would say understanding the human body or understanding how the body works. Is it too many words?

Too many words.

Let's say understanding.

Understanding?

Yeah.

What? Too broad.

Too broad?

Yeah.

Yeah, I don't know.

So this is the challenge.

Yeah.

Okay, so we can get together with writers and strategists and creative people and we can start working on this. It's not going to be on the spot, you come up with this. Okay, so we gave examples, right? And I get into a lot more examples because I've written a little ebook on this about understanding what people stand for. So start asking yourself this question: when I think of this person, What do I associate them with? And you'll start to see the pattern. So my job is to identify patterns for you and lead you down this path. But there's still the work of self-discovery and figuring it out. So there's a couple of things we need to know about your keyword. Number one, is it ownable? Can you own this keyword within a 2-year period of time of creating content and speaking about over and over again? Good news and bad news. Not that hard to do, but it does require work from you. Okay, I'll give you exactly what I mean. I set the intention of being one of the high search results for the word personal branding, and that was just a couple of years ago. So every piece of content, it's about personal branding. I use the hashtag to talk about over and over and over again. And hopefully when you type into Instagram, I should be on the first page of the answer.

Okay.

How do I also know? Because the artificial engine AI robots are scraping the internet for content and trying to understand. So hopefully when you type into ChatGPT, GPT or Claude, hey, I want to learn from a personal branding expert, list 10 people that you think, my name should be there. So within a few short years of intentional work, if you think personal branding, I hope you think about me. Now there's a subword I want to be known for, which is unblend, because to me that explains everything. Because my point of view in the world is the key to you building a strong personal brand, or brand period, is to be different, to be anti-boring.

Yeah, okay, so a doctor may be a keyword, but is it too broad? Yeah, like when you type Google in Romania, in Google Romania, you say doctor, one of the 10 things that's gonna come are gonna be probably Dr. Mihail Pautov.

Depends what you've searched for because you're high on the search index. Yeah, probably.

Yeah, okay, too broad. But what— give me, give me like example of words that could be associated with—

well, the example we gave was, um, Brian Johnson, and his word is aging reversal.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, something like that. So it's like, that's a really broad thing, but it's specific enough. It's a really weird thing where it has to be broad but specific. Yeah. Okay. You follow? Yeah. It takes some time to work through, and I have some good news at the end of this process. Right. So now you know your keyword, what you want to be associated with.

So that's the first circle of the diagram.

Yeah. Keyword. Yes. Your keyword, what you want to be known for. Okay. It has to be ownable. And if it's not, then, then we have problems. Now, people will say something like, I want to be known for peace. Now, unless you're at the org or government level, that's such a big idea. And if you don't have the resources, it's going to be very hard for you to do. Okay. So that's just a pipe dream.

Okay.

Unless you're like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, or somebody who's got incredible resources or Richard Branson, someone who's got that kind of political and financial clout. It's going to be really difficult. So it's better for you to go a little bit more narrow and to own that. Now, the opposite side of this is I want to be known for this. And the opposite side is your enemy. Okay.

The opposite side. So the second circle is your enemy.

Yes. The enemy is— I'll phrase it this way. What are you on a mission to rid the world of? Something that really bothers you. It could just be like bad pasta. It doesn't have to be a person or organization. It could just be an idea. So some people, I don't know why, they don't like pineapple on pizza. So for some people, and they're very passionate about this, like it's sacrilegious for some people if you put pineapple on pizza. I think it's delicious, sue me, whatever, right? So that's what they want to be against. You got to find something that you're very passionate about that you want to right that ship, right? Because it's going the wrong direction for you. And they play off these two things. Back to Bryan Johnson, His keyword is longevity or anti-aging or something like that. Well, naturally, then his enemy has to be dying or death. They play off each other, so they're on the opposite ends. Okay. Makes sense so far. Yeah. Okay. The last one is a phrase. We can call it a call to action, call to arms, a slogan, a tagline. Doesn't really matter. It's a short 3 to 5 word phrase.

Slogan.

Yeah. Slogan that unites the two ideas. So it brings those two ideas together. So Bryan Johnson, his phrase might be, "Don't die." Yeah. So it brings in the enemy, death. Yeah. And what he feels about it. So oftentimes your slogan or call to action or arms or rallying cry, it has a strong verb. It's a command like, "Don't do this. Always do this." Okay.

Yeah.

Yes. It's usually like that because then people can rally together to say, we believe what you believe. And this is important. So this is the triangle. Now, like many of these Venn diagrams, they have to be in balance. Oftentimes one of the three things, or sometimes two of the three things, really weak or not ownable. So I find that once you figure out one, the other two become a little bit clearer and they have to be adjusted. It's like the game of rock-paper-scissors. Nothing beats everything, but they kind of work together as a system.

Well, how can this work be done for somebody that doesn't know his keyword, his enemy, his slogan, or maybe he feels them, but he didn't articulate them in this way. Yes. How can this work be done? Okay.

I have good news for you. A robot's been built to do this and I built such robot. So if you give the robot a short description of who you are, your customers, you tell enough about you. I'm a doctor. I live in Bucharest. I do—

Like any AI, or—

well, one specifically trained by me.

So, aha, you have one?

I have one. I, I, because I've developed this, and I'm like, okay, help me figure this thing out. And so all you need to do is tell it a little bit about you. You tell it your 3 words. It'll give you a score from 1 to 10. It's not a kind grader. Very, very, very few people score more than 5 the first try. Okay. It analyzes, it tells you why your words are weak or on, or too muddy or not clear enough, whatever. Because one thing that the LLMs, large language models, are good at is language. Yeah, it understands nuanced meaning of words really, really well, better than most people unless you, you are a professor of English or something, right? Yeah. And then it makes suggestions about where you might want to go. It'll ask you questions for clarity, and it'll make some suggestions about what your 3 words might be, and they might not be perfect, and it'll give that a score. Right? So then you could say, that's amazing, perfect. And it very rarely is perfect, but you can keep working with it. A couple passes in, you might get to an 8. I've seen somebody get a 9.9, which is crazy to me. Ridiculous. So anything above a 7 or 8 is pretty good.

What's the name of the robot?

How can people— there's not access available to the public yet. I have to figure out how to make it available. Oh, literally, I copy-paste in people's response, which is a very manual process. I send it to robot and then I copy-paste that responds to them. So I'm just gonna have my team build it so it's publicly available. So people follow me, eventually I'll tell you how you can use the robot. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. But otherwise, like an instrument they can use, like people can use now without the robot, is there any way to find the keyword, the anime, the slogan? What and how much should we think about these things until we figured it out?

You should think about it deeply and try not to rush the process. This could take you days or weeks of really hard thinking. And oftentimes for me, when I feel like I've done I've done so much work and I just walk away from it. It could be hours or days of work. Somewhere when my brain is relaxed, the answer will come. You can hire somebody to help you, copywriter, strategist, a branding person, they can help you.

What is your keyword?

Oh, my keyword? Oh, now you put me on the spot here. My keyword would probably be unblonde.

Unblonde.

Yeah.

And what's your enemy?

Oh shoot, you're going to put me on the spot? I know it's going to be that kind of interview. Shoot, I didn't come— Oh, it's getting hot in here. I was like, I don't know what happened. Um, I don't know off the top of my head right now. Okay, I do know it, but I just like— I— maybe we'll come back to it later.

You don't need— you don't need to speak them, you can just feel them. Yeah, I mean, you—

well, because— yeah, okay, I don't want to cop out here. I do what I do, it feels very natural to me, and it becomes very clear to people. The natural people are like, how'd you come up with this? I'm like, well, I didn't really use this method.

That's my question. Like, I mean, if you talk about Brian Johnson and his keyword is age reversal, his enemy is death, and his slogan is don't Yes. Is that all natural or did he has an advisor to map this thing or is it just natural and you can just like maybe copy his strategy if you're not natural?

I don't know for a fact, but I believe it's organic.

It's organic.

It's organic because he's a rich guy. I don't know how much money he has, but some people say a billion, some people say hundreds of millions, but I know he's really obsessed with this idea of age reversal. So his chronological age, I think, is 45 or something like that, and his biological age based on all the metrics which can be measured is going the other direction. Yeah, I think he's in his mid-30s now according to his biology. Looks like a vampire to me, but you know, hey, whatever makes you happy. So he eats certain things, he's having a lot of experimental procedures done, blood work, all kinds of stuff in excess of a million dollars so that he doesn't age prematurely. He wants to go the opposite direction. It seems like he is doing this. With taking supplements, with doing exercise, eating superfoods, those kinds of things. He's doing everything he can to be younger.

And he's pretty funny. He has a lot of jokes and he's very, let's say, mature about what he's doing because he is, is like he's speaking the truth, saying like, look, I don't know what these supplements are going to do. They're not tested. They can kill me. He's sure he's going to be like a bus is going to run over him. That's how he's going to die. Yeah. And yeah, so probably he's natural. He's organic, right?

Organic. I mean, there's very little that's natural about him, but his brand is quite organic. It grew from a passion and interest because what are the things, two things you can count on in life? There are only two guarantees in life. Do you know what the two guarantees are? You know what they are? What?

Taxes. Oh yeah, tax and death. Yeah.

So he's probably not gonna avoid taxes, but he's trying to cheat death. Mm-hmm. And the reason why is 'cause he has the money and the means and the interest. So when you have all the money in the world, you're like, okay, now what I wanna do? Well, it'd be nice if I don't die. That sounds like a pretty good way to spend your money, I think. Mm-hmm. To stay healthy for as long as you can, for whatever reason you want to.

Yeah. And it's very interesting to watch that.

I mean, it is.

It's like a bet for your life. I mean, everybody that is like watching Brian Johnson, like we all want to see how will he end or will he end or how will he get old? So like, that's a guarantee that I'm going to follow him for a long time, right?

Yes.

That's clever.

I think so. And what's, what's real interesting is he is, and it's arguable if he is, the tip of the spear of a movement, of an idea. And he's beginning something and he's putting his money where his mouth is. He's doing biohacking. So do you know who Timothy Ferriss is? "Four Hour Work Week," "Four Hour Body." Yeah, yeah, Tim Ferriss, yeah.

One of the greatest.

One of the greatest, I believe. And he did biohacking himself.

Yeah.

He went to somewhere in Europe, did a muscle core. He pulled out a chunk of his muscle. You remember this? Yeah. Yeah, this is pretty wild stuff that I would not do.

But the world was not ready for him.

That's right. But that was not his passion either. Okay, see, he wanted to do lots of other things, whereas Bryan Johnson is singular in his focus in like, I just don't want to die, man. And if you're interested in learning about what I'm doing, I will report back to you what I find. All of it is an experiment. I think he even took white blood cells from his son, which a lot of people think is quite unethical. So he's doing something like blood doping or something like that, but he's like, it was not worth it. Clearly my son is not meant to keep me alive longer, right? But he tried it, and I think some of it was designed— maybe not not organically to get that attention grabbing headline. Like I took my son blood and this is how it works. You know, he'll do stuff like that. And that's just being smart at creating content. Cause you have to say things that people become really interested in or they want to fight you. That's how you know your content is working. So here is, he's doing this thing and he has a conference. What is this conference called? Do you know?

Uh, uh, Bryan Johnson.

Yeah.

I don't know.

Don't Die.

Yeah, Don't Die.

Yeah.

All the answers. He has a movie also.

Yeah. I think he's doing all kinds of weird stuff. Yeah. So he's like, welcome to the Don't Die conference. Now it becomes a brand. Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah. So death and aging reversal. And I don't think he's sitting around on a whiteboard with a team of strategists like, Brian, here's our triangle.

He's not.

He's not. No, I don't think he is. But it's nerds like me who look at this and like, I'm like, what is the relationship between how he's presenting himself? Because he kind of vaulted out of anonymity in a very short period of time. 5, 10 years ago, nobody even knew who he was. Now when you say Bryan Johnson, everybody knows who he is. And he's often referred to as the most measured man on the internet.

Yeah.

Right, 'cause he spends so much money taking all the vitals and the stats. It's quite powerful stuff.

Yeah, but about Tim Ferriss, like Tim Ferriss was doing the same stuff, but the world was not prepared for that. And then he shifted his mindset because he's like, there was a point, He said, okay, I got all of these performance, all of these companies doing a lot of money. I wrote the books. I just want to chill now. I just want to be human. I want to chill. I don't want big stats. And by the way, he has a house here nearby in Brasov. Oh yeah, he has a house here. I saw him on the street once walking in Brasov. Yeah, I didn't approach him. I mean, I left him in his intimacy. So he's just living his life now. He's human. And, uh, in this world when everybody is rushing to make the views, make performance, make the followers, do you think we're gonna see businesses that don't follow this trend, that are like anti-trend, like are not having— don't, don't want to go there, they're just offline? Will it be cooler to be offline, to be just human with human interaction? Come to our shop to see stuff that we have.

Yes, but I don't think those ideas are in conflict at all. Now, if I— I'm just making a guess here. So if you really know who Timothy Ferriss is and what he's done, I believe he did exactly what he was supposed to do. If we just look behind the curtain, we can see the plan. It's quite clear. Tim, as far as I know, makes a lot of money selling books and everything that happens around his books and his ecosystem and his brand. Yeah. So he says, well, what would be interesting? What if I went on a year-long experiment for human optimization by doing biohacking because I'm going to write the book. Yeah, I'm gonna produce the video. So it's a very smart media play if you think about it. It's like, I'm at a product, how do I get people excited about the product? I have to make content, I have to make a documentary film, I have to make livestreams or whatever I'm gonna do, and I'm gonna document this. I'm gonna use myself as a subject matter. So once the book is written and it sells what it's going to sell, his interest is gone. And that's why he's not known for this, even though I think he was ahead of Bryan Johnson. But Bryan Johnson's mission is not to write a book book. His mission is not to die. Yeah. And then do everything he can. Now, here's the interesting thing. There's two paths viable here. One says, I have a plan and the plan is to launch a book. Here's the media marketing plan to build interest and excitement around this thing. And once it's done, it's done. The other person is like, you know, I'm really fascinated. I have all this money and money can't buy you love. And maybe it can't buy you more life, or maybe it can. I'm going to experiment with this. And because it's so exciting to lots of people, he can write a book. He can create a program. And so it comes after building the interest.

Yeah.

Okay. Right. Does that make sense?

Yeah. Different paths to the same goal.

Maybe similar results.

Who knows?

Mm-hmm.

Look, here's the point where I want to ask you a question. I think you're the right person to answer that because I saw your view about things yesterday at the conference at FOMO, and you were talking about cheap things, about stealing from big designers, the stuff that Zara, H&M, and IKEA and businesses like that are doing.

Yeah.

And selling stuff that has no value. And you've talked about luxury things that you see them differently now, that they have value, they're, they're like precious, they mean something to you. So yeah, this is a question about the marketing, because I have this feeling being in, uh, or watching many marketing conferences that at a point some marketing lessons are lessons about lies and how to manipulate people. I mean, some coaches are simply like telling you how to create a need in order to sell your product. You know, I have assisted at lessons about marketing. They're like, and there's no shame about talking that. He's just saying, look, You have a bunch of guys, they don't need your product, so you have to make them feel they are miserable without your product. And in order to be cool, to be good, to be valuable, they have to buy your product even though they don't need your product. Here is my lesson in 5 steps to make them think they want your product in order to make money. How did we get to this point? When all, like, a lot of marketing is about that. Or am I wrong about thinking that?

Well, you're right and you're wrong. Okay. It's not all right or wrong. So let's get into it. Yeah. You asked a very complex compounded question with many potential ramifications. So let's unpack this and let's thread this needle, if we will.

Yeah, let's go.

Okay, let's go. All right. First of all, what is marketing? Marketing is designed to sell more products, period. It's neither good or bad, it just depends on what we're using it for. So for example, if there's a campaign to clean up the city or anti-graffiti— I noticed there's a lot of graffiti around here. I think it's such a shame, people tagging up these beautiful buildings, right? Why are they doing this? So if you're head of the city commerce chamber, Chamber of Commerce or something like, hey, how do we solve this problem? And you put brilliant minds together and they think about it and they do something. That's a good way to manipulate people, to change thinking. I'll give you an example. The American Dental Association, I think in the 1900s, people had horrible oral hygiene. Yeah, right. Horrible cavities, rotting teeth and all that stuff. And so, like, how do we get people to brush their teeth? Because people are not brushing their teeth. And so the marketers and advertisers figured out this thing. Where they came up with a simple test. I'm sure you know what it means. Are your teeth squeaky clean? Do this test. Take your finger, rub it on your teeth. Does it make that eee sound? If it is, it means it's clean. Otherwise, it's full of plaque or things that have caked on your teeth. And so because of this, now we often say many decades after the campaign has started, oral hygiene is much better. People's health are better. They're living longer. Their breath hopefully smells better. But the idea is now we think of our teeth— is it squeaky clean or not? Mm-hmm. We can do a little self-check. That's a wonderful way to manipulate people.

Yeah, this is a good, good examples of marketing.

Yes. And there are unfortunately a lot more bad examples of marketing. And when marketing gets into total manipulation, it could be called propaganda. Mm-hmm. So there's things for public good And there's propaganda, which is lies designed to manipulate people. We can live in that spectrum.

Okay.

Okay. So each person decides what is ethical and what isn't. And then we, as the receiver of such messages, determine authentic or inauthentic. Are we being manipulated? Now, I don't believe all manipulation is bad. And I know this is controversial for people to hear. So when your lower back hurts, what do you do? Like, you get out of bed, you're, oh, something happened, it's spazzing out, and you walk like you're 75 years old.

Now you go to a chiropractor and he manipulates your body. Yeah, your spine.

Yeah, perfectly answered. He manipulates your body, your muscles, and your spine to get you back into alignment, to get the healing process to kick in. So when I've suffered really bad lower back pain, I wanted this to end because I couldn't even stand up straight to brush my teeth. Everybody was looking at me like, what's wrong with you? I'm like, I'm not that old. Something is wrong, right?

Yeah.

So manipulation for a positive result can be great. So manipulation itself is not bad if it's done by somebody who has your best interest at heart and is benevolent in trying to help you. Yeah. All kinds of manipulation. If you have children, you manipulate them all the time to do the things that you want them to do. That's good for them. Them. Are you aware of this, or can we get an agreement or no?

That's how I am aware my children starts to manipulate me really young age.

Okay, that might not be good. Yeah, but like, say for example, you tell them stories. Hopefully this is not a spoiler for anybody. How about Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny? We tell them all kinds of things. And think about the whole idea of the time around Christmas. Santa Claus has a list, he's checking it twice to see who's been naughty, who's been nice. That's manipulation, is it not?

Yeah, but that's right. But I like, we like, we know that.

He agrees.

Yeah, maybe I've been at the wrong marketing, um, you have workshops, you have, because they all start, what, how can you make the people desire your product? Let them think they need it. Yeah, I mean, it's so, it's not even like, they not even, uh, I don't know, uh put it behind the words. They just say it like big on the screen. Yeah.

So let's talk about that. Yeah. The problem is most people want shortcuts. They don't want to do the hard work. I think you can become very rich in this lifetime and every lifetime if you just tell people to get a result faster because people want it faster. That's why there's fast food, fast fashion, fast culture, fast cars. Everything is just faster and faster. It's what we want, right? We want instant noodles, instant everything, instant coffee. It's not better. We know this, but we want to be doing something else with our time. We're always seeming to be in a rush to do something. So what marketers have figured out, and I think the vast majority of people who talk about marketing, or in many instances personal branding, they're all talking about the same thing: how to sell more things to more people. They don't really care if you do anything good because that's not why you're paying them.

Yeah.

Yeah, right. We understand that. And so they use psychology and manipulation to get you to buy something that you may not want, need, or might not even work. So I have a general rule. If you want to work with me, if you want to be in my ecosystem and you want to be my student, I ask people to agree to my version of the Four Agreements. Okay. Yeah. Number one, you have to be good at what you do. I can only help people who are really good at what they do.

Yeah.

So if you come into it and you're like, hey, I'm a 17-year-old person, I've done this, I'm like, no. Yeah, agreement. Come back to me in 5, 10 years. Show me the receipts of how you've done this and how you become a, an expert at what you do, because I don't really want to help you because none of my strategies will help you. In fact, all they'll do is expose that you're not good and that you're a faker. Okay, so that's number one. That's the first agreement: you must be good at what you do. Number two, you must always deliver more value than what it is that you charge. So if they give you $100, you got to deliver $101. Just deliver more value. And I love this because this eliminates the problem that people think they're charging too, too much. Well, just deliver more value. You got that problem solved. Okay. Number 3 is you have to serve the client's need ahead of your need to make money. So you always do right by them. So if they're better off by going with a cheaper option, a different option, you must recommend that. That. This is what it means to have integrity. And yeah, number 4 is a really weird one. You must always tell the truth. Always tell the truth. So if you think you can't do it, say I can't do this. If you think that idea would hurt the company, you have to say that. You must speak your mind. And if you follow those 4 things, I can help you. So this is like a rule. We must make this agreement. And whenever I'm doing a workshop, before I teach them about sales or personal branding, everybody has to raise their hand and say I agree to these 4 principles. If you don't, we say you can get a refund and you can leave. Uh-huh. I don't want to do that. But I've been to enough conferences, enough workshops, enough online video tutorials, and they all focus on how you can sell more things to more people. Now, what you're talking about in terms of creating a problem, that's one way of phrasing it. Now, people are not generally motivated to take action unless you help them to get motivated. Mm-hmm. There are workout programs where the person is a drill sergeant, like from the Army. They yell at you, they tell you, do this, and they, they shame you into doing something that you thought you could not do, right? Because all of us stop short of reaching our full potential until we're properly motivated. So again, when it's done for the right reasons, it's fantastic. And you sign up. There's no victims here. They're just volunteers. You agree to pay somebody, a drill sergeant, to get your body in shape because you know what? In 40, 50 days, you're going to get married and you want to look good for the pictures. Do as I tell you and just do it. Yeah, we understand that. Yeah, right. So when we talk about marketing, we know that the person is in a state of inertia and we have to generate enough momentum or something to compel them to take action. Otherwise they won't do that. The way that a lot of marketing will teach you how to do this is to agitate the problem. If you can articulate the problem better than they can, They think you have the solution. So people go through 3 states: they're problem unaware, they're solution unaware, and they're product unaware. Yeah. So people start selling them product, which is what you do, when they don't even know they have the problem. So you have to educate them on the problem. Okay, I'll give you another history example here in terms of advertising. We know the term colorblind— people can't see certain colors.

Yeah.

And so there was a company, I forget what company it is, but they were like saying, you know, your house, your home, it stinks. I think it's Febreze where they spray some kind of chemical and it eliminates the odors. They invented a term called, are you nose or scent blind? You cannot smell things. Because then they said, did you notice every time you go to a home or a restaurant, it smells funny? It's got the dog odors. Yeah. But the owners never know that it smells. Yeah. That's a thing called being scent blind.

Yeah.

Yeah, right, you cannot smell. Yeah, it's like, oh my gosh, I've been just— is that what you're saying? Because we get so used to the smells, we can no longer smell it. And so now they can sell product because they've educated you, moving you from, I didn't know this was a problem, to there must be solutions, to I need to buy this Febreze cleaner or something like that. So that is a pretty strong and I believe ethical way to Yeah. As long as it delivers on his promises.

So it's just a tool, like, is creating a problem to sell objects is just a tool?

It's your— it's a tool.

Yeah. It's your choice how you use it.

Yeah. But I'll tell you something, hope marketing doesn't work either. Sitting here saying, here's my product, buy my product. Here's my product, buy my product. There's a reason why they don't sell those things. Why it doesn't work. That's not marketing.

Yeah, good. So we can use that as a personal brand. Yeah. Like you can start, like you want to present your products, but you want to sell it. So you may start thinking about how to make people aware of like of a problem or what they need is and what is the solution.

Possibly. No. If you sell something, right? Well, no, I think we're all selling something. We're selling ideas, we're selling services, we're selling products, we're selling ourselves. We're always selling something. It'd be naive to say we're not selling. Yeah. But where I differ from the, the church of marketing and branding, and I may be a blasphemer here, is they want to sell products and have that drive most of your decisions. I don't want to be involved in that at all. So for here, I'm saying to people, I want you to focus on you, figure out who you're supposed to be in this life. Life and learning how to express that so that you understand who you are. In that process, you'll sell more products. Okay, it's just like Timothy Ferriss and Bryan Johnson here. So Timothy Ferriss did something, I think, to sell books. Bryan Johnson is like, this deep thing stirring within my body, something that I feel so convicted on, I'm going to spend a million dollars plus every single year to figure out, and hopefully other people benefit from my experience. And then a movement is created and people fall in line. They're like, you love him, you hate him, but the ones who love him will say, this is brilliant, what supplements do you recommend, what else should I do, what kind of exercises have you found to work, what doesn't work, separate fiction from fact, help me out, I'll go to your conference, I'll give you money because I support what you do. Big, big difference here. So the woodworker isn't sitting there thinking about, oh, I need to sell more chairs That's the wrong motivation because you're like, hey, this is a great chair, has 4 legs and it won't fall over and it's made of wood. Gee, thanks. That's how a lot of marketing and branding goes. So for me, it'd be like, you know, I'm a 7th generation woodworker. My parents came over from Russia, wherever it is. You just tell that story as you're working on this thing. We're like, God, what a compelling story. What great craftsmanship. I want to buy from this person. How do I? Then they look up your profile and they'll figure it out. Out. Every once in a while have a call to action, but don't do it that often because it becomes really annoying.

Yes, so make people aware of your story, make them like your story, and they will want to have probably one of your products.

Why not?

One of the problems that people, uh, get into is this perfectionism. They are like in the waiting room for a great idea, great lights, great day. Sure. Yeah. And that stops them from doing stuff. How do you— where are you— where do you situate yourself in, in this problem? Should you wait for a better video, for a better idea, or you should start and film and start wherever you are?

Yeah, one thing I talked about during my keynote is my brand voice is hard truth gently told. Yeah, here's the hard truth: everybody who's waiting is making an excuse, and it's just, um, a way to avoid the work. It's an avoidance strategy to say, I'm not ready, I don't have anything to say, no one will show up, I don't have the right light, the camera. It's all excuses. My business coach used to tell me this: you can make excuses or you can make progress, but you can't make both. So if the excuses feel great to you and your progress feels great to you, don't change anything. It's fine. And so when we say like, oh my gosh, I need a new light or a new camera, and I need the latest XYZ, and I'm saving up money to do that's just an excuse for you not to do the work. I don't think it's anybody's— like, there's not a revelation. MrBeast is the biggest content creator on YouTube, maybe the biggest content creator ever. His hundreds of millions of subscribers or followers. The kid started out with his iPhone, or his— he didn't have— I don't know what he did, but he did it with the lowest tech thing that he could. And his videos, they look like trash. Yeah, but they have tens of millions of views per video. Why is that? Because he's mastered the game of telling a story to get people to be interested in what he wants to talk about. He's done really well for himself, obviously. And so we're just waiting for an excuse like the right time. Oh, the light's wrong. And I know why, because we don't want to do this because this doesn't feel like fun. We tell ourselves a story like, this is stupid, I don't want to do this. And so when we record a video, our body translates that into something. I'm not having fun right now. This is stupid. I don't want to be here. And so when people watch your video, they're not going to check it out. Right. I'll ask you this question. So you sat through some part of my presentation yesterday? Yeah.

Okay. All of it.

Yeah. Okay, great. Wonderful. And so I'm feeling the energy from the audience. They're feeling the energy from me. And it's a silent dance between our exchange of energies, right?

Yeah.

And I had such a great time, not because I thought I was great, but because the audience was great. And people would send me DMs, love your energy. And if I came on stage tight, unwilling to have conversations, just being in my own head thinking about my talk, do you believe that the information would be received differently or would be received the same way? Like if I was just like, ooh, tight, what do you think?

It would be different, but I would like to tell you that I loved yesterday that in the beginning of the show you was a little bit nervous.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, you were. And you were honest about it. Yeah. And you started by saying that you're an introvert, and also you said that you have this slice for neurodivergent people. We have a vlog about that, but people don't really know what is that in Romania, right? And I really appreciated I mean, I felt connected to you because you were honest with your emotions on the stage. And then you catch them and you, like, you were vulnerable. Yeah. On the stage. And that made, I think that made the connection, you know?

Okay. That's fantastic.

You were not wearing the mask. Like, come on, people, who is here with me? Bikoresh! Hello! Mutsumes! That was not that kind of stuff, you know?

Yeah.

It was more like, like a honest guy with his own emotions to share here and to us to have something to learn from that. So that was making the connection. And you were open from the beginning. Yeah, that was nice. And that bring a lot of connection.

Yeah.

On stage.

Okay. You answer that question in a way that I could not have predicted. And I love that you said this. So this, I believe you're making my case for me. For me. Okay, maybe, maybe my word isn't personal branding or unbrand. It's just the true, authentic, unvarnished yourself.

Yeah.

Okay. And the opposite of that is masking.

Okay.

And many of us wear a mask. I wear a mask. I just try to wear a very thin mask. Some people wear a mask so big you can't even see the person. So one of the things I've learned, and if you, if you follow me, the Four Agreements is always tell the truth. Yeah. So part of that is if I'm feeling weird I'll tell you I'm feeling weird. If I'm aware that the room is really quiet, I'll just say, this room is really quiet. I just say whatever's on my mind. And at first it felt really uncomfortable to do that because people were like, aren't they going to judge you poorly? That's fine, judge me poorly. I don't really care. So I've moved beyond caring. And the funny thing is, the less I care, the more they care. It's really weird. So I walk on stage and I say, hey, I've got 227 slides, deal 'Cause people groan, people are like, "Oh my God, that's too much." And what I've heard is people who are ADHD or neurodivergent in some flavor, some form of spiciness, they're like, "We just love that because I can focus actually because you're showing me something new every 3 seconds." And they're going fast. Some people who are more visual learners love that there's a visual against what it is I'm saying. So it's all there for you. And I'm trying to serve my audience and I do that. So I'm able to be open, to be real. And what happens is, is, and I think we know this, in the first few seconds, people determine, can I trust you or not? Are you gonna be real with me, right? If I came into the room in our conversation today and told you I'm going through a divorce, um, I'm close to bankruptcy, whatever it is I'm going to say, and if you don't feel like it's an act and it's not performative, you're going to say, wow, Chris is such a real dude right now. Okay, I'm not going to ask him these superficial questions. I need to be equally real with him because otherwise because we don't match each other's energies. So I say I'll take the first move because I want the audience to be real with me. So I must be real first. And if I do that, the ones who are ready for it will be there. I saw a couple of people leave right away. I'm like, cool, not for you. Not offended. Glad. Let the rest of the people interact with me. Not offended at all. And so it's cool. So a lot of people see that as a signal, as I'm disconnecting. I think I'm really connecting with the people who want to be there.

Oh, this is nice shift of the perspective.

Yeah. Right? Yeah. And I know many people who are on stage, when they see that happen, they'll start to break down. Like, did I say something wrong? So we're so trained like dogs almost to serve our master at all costs. And we lose ourselves in that process. And that's what I'm trying to stop.

Yeah. And that's what happens in social media because people start to serve things that will, uh, will get some more engagement and they, they may lose themselves. We're gonna get back to that. But you, you know, like one of the biggest problems that people have when they start the social media and they, they start exposing themselves is the shame. And you said your story with your first YouTube channel 12 years ago, and probably you were feeling something, uh, similar to the shame. So how can you go through this shame? And is it vanishing anytime or it comes back and you have your tools to fight it?

Yeah, I think as an introverted person, English is my second language. As a person who didn't have social skills, still working on it, and a person who never felt like I belonged anywhere in any group, it's something that I've just got to live with the rest of my life.. And I say, instead of fighting it, instead of pushing it away or trying to defeat it, I have to learn to dance with it. I wouldn't use the word shame because there's nothing I'm shameful about. Yeah, it's just self-consciousness, to be too self-aware. See, dumb people, they're not aware at all. They just do whatever they do. They're in the room, they're loud, they put their feet up and like, whoa, you just tracked mud into my house, you didn't ask me how I'm doing. They have none of those skills, but they get stuff done. Really smart people overthink everything and overanalyze everything. And so they are never getting stuff done and they're just sitting there, well, if these things happen, the conditions aren't right. They're waiting for all these things. There's an expression, calm seas do not make great sailors or steady seas. It's like you need to be in the pitch. It needs to be throwing you around. And that's how you become a great sailor. Right. And so we have to learn to move between these two worlds. So I know what my demons are and I've made friends with them and I've made it my identity. I don't go on to the stage like, hey everybody, I'm Smooth Talking Joe. I'm going to sell you this X, Y, and Z. And if you don't understand it, blah, blah, blah. I don't care. Move on. I'm not going to be that person. I just lean into all of it. I understand many of you are neurodivergent. This is a neurospicy friendly presentation. They might even know what those words mean. I have 227 slides. Let's go. We'll get it done. I know we will. And we'll have some fun if you let me. I'm just going to lean into all of that is me, not just some parts that are me. I have this graphic. I'll tell people, you feel so ashamed of yourself that you become this fractured person that you only want to show the positive parts to you. And there's lots of pieces missing. Yeah, yeah, right. We all do this. We're like, oh, I don't like the way I look. I don't like the way I sound. My, my backstories, I feel a lot of shame or guilt around. So we, we just present a shell of who we are that's paper thin, this mask, and that's what I'm trying to stop. But when we lean into— using the Jungian term shadow self— if we make friends or come to, to some level of peace or resolution with these dark parts, and the light parts can come together, so we become a cohesive person. We become the full person. So I'll tell people, you are a whole person, not a hole person, a person with holes in it. You are complete, but you have to do this inner work that's really hard, that's going to be healing, and you develop your own self-story. So you see, like, in our entire conversation here, I don't talk about how to sell more things. I'm talking about doing the deeper inner work. That is what I know about personal branding, and that's what's different about what I would consider 99% of people who use the same term.

Yeah, that's so nice because like in this podcast we can understand that having like a new social media account and exposing yourself is not just some followers, it's like true inner work when you can find your demons, find what you're ashamed of, find what you want to hide, and search for how can you reintegrate that into who you are and build your personal brand this way. For somebody that is looking on, on, on the stats, on the engagement and the number of followers and stuff like that, how can we go beyond that and maybe find, find our niche? Like if I am doing something that is not for the broad public, but maybe some— I don't know, I am a teacher of geography and I want to make a YouTube channel for students that are curious about geography. Yeah, how can, how can we avoid the feeling that we are closing so many doors? Or how, you know, like how that we are closing the doors for everybody else just, and we say just into the niche, uh, how can we balance that? Because if you're too general, the niche will not follow you, but if you're going too deep into the details, you will only stay into that niche. How can we negotiate Okay, if you're too general, no one follows you.

Yeah, not even the niche. There's no one will follow you. I have a very simple answer, and it's, it's more of a question than an answer. If we look at how life works and we're just observant, we turn the lens away from us and we turn it outwards and we look at the world. The world tells us what we need to know already. So when you go to a food court, a place where there's lots of different kinds of options, do you look for the one who serves pizzas, tacos, sushi, Chinese food, Romanian food, and a salad bar? Is that the place you choose? Or do you choose the place that's like voted the best pizza in Romania? Yeah, for sure. Or do you get the coffee from the best roaster in that food court? Or do you just go and get everything from one place that sells everything? So very rarely does the place that serves all of the different types of food— are they very good and they have a loyal following? Very rarely. It happens at buffets and things like that, or where people don't have a lot of taste. Literally, they don't have taste. Like, they don't know, they don't care. They're looking for volume. They want to eat by the pound and not by the quality of the food, right? It happens a lot in America. And so we say, well, we would never choose those places. And in fact, when someone says, give me a recommendation for a great place to eat or somewhere to take my kids, you think of a handful of places, and they're usually the very best. Unless they're your enemy, you'll tell them to go to somewhere else, right? And so when we go to position ourselves, why do we do the opposite of what we do? So yeah, I tell people, sell how you buy, create how you consume. For some reason, when it comes to us, we don't follow our own rules. So we don't like to be sold to, we don't like advertising. But what's— what is their content like? Like we're selling and we're advertising the entire time. That, that's like a really strange phenomenon for me. So if, if you want to attract people, we should look at, uh, Kevin Kelly's paper. And he wrote a paper many, many years ago, pre-internet, called A Thousand True Fans. Do you know about what I'm talking about? No. Okay, Kevin Kelly is the founding editor-in-chief of Wired magazine. Okay, okay. And he wrote this thing a long time ago. It's so weird that he predicted so many of these things. He He says you don't need 100,000 fans, you don't need 10,000 fans, you need 1,000 true fans. And he makes this measurement. What is a true fan? Someone who's willing to spend $100 with you a year because he says depending on where you live, $100,000 a year is a decent living. Yeah, you're not going to get rich, but your lifestyle can be supported. So if you make pottery If you make t-shirts, if you make pins or hats, if you can make $100,000 a year net, you'll be just okay. Now you can't live in New York or LA or Paris, but you can live in lots of places in the world and make $100,000 a year and be just fine. So he goes, another sign of a true fan is they buy the book and they buy the audiobook and they buy the ebook of the same book. That is a true fan. Okay, so we don't need all these people because those people don't even want you. To. And the mistake that everybody makes is if I cast a really wide net and attract everyone, the market cap is ginormous. But we look at the reality is no one calls you, no one wants to pay you, and you're haggling for pennies all the time. However, if you happen to be, oh, I don't know, a specialist in like liver surgery, and you build a name for yourself, then people are like, wow, you're amazing at this thing. And everyone who needs this will want this from you. Right. And at some point you transcend the category and you just become a doctor for people. And that's a wonderful thing. But that comes at deep expertise, doing that hard work that no one wants to do. That's the problem.

Yeah. And that's a good reason to not be a generalist at the beginning and to find your niche. Yes. Think about what you're offering, like about the good coffee. Go to specialty coffee shop. We have a lot in Romania. You saw that? Yes. Oh my God, I don't, I don't know if there's any other European country with so many good quality coffee shops.

Yes, I had heard an unsubstantiated rumor about you have more coffee shops per capita, uh, in the city here than, than anywhere else in Europe. I don't know if that's true, but I heard it.

That's amazing.

Yeah, it is. It is. Drigo's like, maybe Italy. I'm like, I don't know, we'll find out.

No, you won't find it in Italy.

Hey man, I didn't say that. I believe you.

You're right.

Yeah, no, he's not.

The irony is he's at the coffee shop downstairs.

The bastard is having coffee downstairs.

You cannot find a good coffee in Italy. No, there's like—

you know what though? He agrees with you. He says Italian's known for coffee, but he hates Italian coffee. It's very bitter.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's burnt. I will have my, my last question. Maybe you can tell us more about your story, because yesterday in the conference you said that you were like, the obstacles were, um, were the moments when you learned, yeah, the most. So you see an obstacle and you transform it from something that is bad and something that like, it's like the opportunity for you to learn. Yes. Can you share some of like most obstacles that you had in your career and how that helped you?

Yeah, so many obstacles. For example, I was poor. It seems like an obstacle. So it taught me about the value of money and it really created a hunger, a fire in my stomach to go make my own money. Yeah, that's a small obstacle, right? Another obstacle would be in the very beginning in our business, I didn't have a focus. So I'm not telling you things I've not experienced myself. We used to— when I was first starting Year One, do logos, do animations, do packaging, do brochure design, basic, and web design. I did everything. And I quickly found out that when I was hired to do something, I felt like a rookie because I didn't have that deep expertise. So when we were doing animations, I knew how to use the tools, sort of. And when we were designing identity systems, I had a system in design, or in mind, a process, sort of. And then it wasn't until I decided, my gosh, This is going to be really hard for us to pick one thing. And if we just pick one thing, what would that thing be? And I decided to clear the table and say, we're going to focus on motion design. Doing that allowed me to go on a very long, multi-year journey into the depths of motion design, which then created opportunities, which by the time, I don't know, 5 years out of school, I was already making $1 million. I made that decision. And the last obstacle, which is very, very relevant to why we're talking right now, is, as I've said, I'm a shy, introverted person who has low social skills. I sweat under the light figuratively and literally, right? And I don't want to be on camera. I'm a behind-the-camera talent. In fact, I hope this never surfaces. I was judging a show for the— I think it was for the BDA— and after the show, they wanted to interview me. They, they said, okay, can you please introduce you to camera? Camera. I had to say it so many times because I could not even say my name and what I did. I stumbled and fumbled through all the words. So many years later, when my friend José appears out of the woodwork, maybe as a sign from the universe, this is something you need to do. So we kind of fought. He's like, let's make content. I'm like, I'm not interested in doing that. There's no way I would do that. I said all the things that many people who are watching this said. I don't know what to say. Oftentimes I say the wrong thing. I have a real business that would be in jeopardy if I messed this part up. So for me, the risk was very high. The reward was not even something that could be articulated. Why are we even doing this? And that was a lot of reasons to say no. Yeah, but I did say yes. And as I've said, my life has changed for the better in so many dimensions. I can't even tell you. Another one would be I don't like public speaking at all. And my business coach would say, "You know what? Why are you busy being the world's best-kept secret? You need to get out there and you need to teach. You need to talk because people would love to hear from you. You've got good stories. You have a lot of important life lessons and you have the right energy to do this. And from what I can tell," he says, "you're a fantastic teacher. Go do that." So I bombed my first few presentations. It was horrible. Everything that could go wrong went wrong. And I felt so bad that it took me another 6 months to try again. But eventually I started to get better and I learned how to dance with the fear, to become friends with the demons. And I'm here now.

That's so nice said. And that's so motivational for somebody that just is afraid to start. He's afraid of like his friends or colleagues are going to laugh.

They did, by the way.

They did.

They did laugh. My own coach laughed at me for creating content on YouTube. He's like, so you're like an influencer now? I'm like, I was like, wow. And you know, I didn't know this at the time, but I found out later on. So I'm working in the motion industry and I'm also creating this content, teaching freelancers how to charge more. Yeah. So I would go to industry parties and events and I felt the energy, but I couldn't put a word on it. There was some negative dark energy. And later on people would say, we're really upset at you because you're teaching people how to charge more and we're having now a hard time dealing with them.

Yeah, exactly.

Right? I said, well, I don't know this. And later on, you know, there's a Gandhi saying, I think something like, first they, um, what is it? First they hate you, you go through this whole process, then they ignore you, and then you win or something. Yeah, first they ignore you and then you go through this process, right? Then they get angry and then they, they do something, they fight you and something, then you win. So at the beginning people ignored me, then they got really angry, and now they're asking to be on the podcast. So they've come full circle because they were really angry. And I would say if anybody had the balls to tell me, we don't like what you're doing, I'd say, well, you won't have a problem if you treat people ethically and you pay them well. Because nothing I'm doing is teaching them to do something that's unethical.

Yeah, that's so, so nice that we had this conversation because like, uh, people need to see that it's not necessarily easy. Like, you're not necessarily a natural born, and so easy for you to teach stuff on YouTube loop. There's some hard obstacles you need to go around, and you can like learn from those obstacles. Um, is it hard work or is it luck, or how much of each of them?

What is luck?

What is luck? Yeah, finding the right people in the right place, uh, having the right obstacles, not too heavy that you cannot overcome them, but you still have Maybe some genes that make you, I know, a hard worker, hustler.

Yeah. Okay. Well, some form of luck is involved because I'm not successful if I'm not in Los Angeles.

Yeah.

In 1995, when the industry of motion design was brand new.

Okay.

But what got me to LA, the desire to be in the most competitive market. At the entertainment capital of the world and throw myself into the fire and figure out how to survive in that environment. Is that luck? I don't know, right? I'm on, on camera, I'm on stage. If I had a speech impediment, if I was literally blind in my eyes, this would be much more difficult. Not impossible, but something to work through. So there are certain things that you're given, and it is my belief that each and every single one of us has been given at least one thing that makes us better than most people on this planet. Most of us ignore this. So each and every single one of us not just has a power, but a superpower. And it's your lifetime that you're supposed to discover this power. Picasso has a great quote on this. He goes, the meaning of life is to discover your gift, and the purpose of life is to give it away. Mm-hmm. I might have transposed those two. The meaning of life is to discover your gift your superpower, the one or two things that you're really good at, that you can do better than most people with very little effort. And then, as all gifts are, they're not meant to be kept. They're meant to be given. So you must now give away this gift.

Yeah.

Okay. Most people don't know what their gift is. They didn't even know that they had a gift. So part of my message is to help you realize you have a gift. And then once you discover that gift, you must share it. So all this personal brand stuff isn't to sell stuff. It's about to find out who you are to become the person you were meant to be. And when you do this, it's like all the roads organize themselves neatly for you and they're paved with gold. All you have to do is walk down it and life is amazing. And if you do this, I think what happens is the surface area of luck increases. And also because luck is the residue of hard work. So all those things put together make me a really lucky person.

Such a nice answer. Oh my God, such a nice— because we can leave, uh, leave the audience with this thought: what are you best at, right? What is your gift? And the meaning of life is the search for it. If you don't know what it is, that's not a problem. You at least know now that probably you have a gift, something you're best at. Let's go and search for that.

Yes, and there's a technique to do this too, by the way.

Whoa, there is? In this podcast or the next one?

Some other podcast. Yeah, but they're really— it's like I'm not just throwing people to the wolves and saying go figure it out, right? So you can figure it out. Now I'm going to answer the one question that you asked that I said please come back to me later because I needed time to— you put me in a spotlight there, which is what is Chris's Venn diagram?

Yes.

So I just need a moment to think it through. Okay, what I would probably say is it's very clear for me what my enemy I— you can call it masking or corporate mask and, and just trying to be like the masses. So I like plays on words like a mask and masses. So we want to move towards that. We want to move the opposite towards that. So if I were to be known for something, I would say authenticity, but it's such a generic word. So I would say authentic personal brand.

Okay.

So that's what I want to be known for. When you think of authentic personal brand or people, I want you to think of me, Chris Do. Yeah, and lastly, the call to arms, the call to action is unblend yourself. Put some flavor into it. Mm-hmm. Now we'll make a joke as we travel around Europe and everybody thinks their cuisine is great. It is not. I have a British friend, he was hanging out with us in LA, he's like eating his food, he's like, wow, this is really delicious. I said, you know why? We have this thing, it's called flavors. If you eat British food, it's very bland.

Yeah.

If you eat Polish food, it's very bland.

Yeah.

German food, bland. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So not all cultures have seasoning, but because we're aware of things, we can try and add things, spices, flavors, and seasoning. And that's why I think all of us, you might start out as steak and potatoes, you know, or cheese and potatoes. I get it. But you can add other things. You can add salt, you can add peppers, you can add add vegetables, heaven forbid you add vegetables to things, and you can have a lot of flavor.

So nice. I'm so happy for, for this talk because it also helps me, and I think everybody that is watching is going to be helped. Not necessarily for the purpose that we started to, like, to start a social media account, or, but for, for searching for the gift for Yeah, the unblend yourself, that's so nice. Thank you. Thank you so much for coming to our podcast. Did you try— my colleague is asking you, did you try mici from Aboar?

What is mici?

You have to go there. Actually, yeah.

Is it really good?

Oh wait, hold on.

I want to say this. If it's not good, I'm going to post on social media that this is terrible.

You have to go there.

Yeah.

Really, like, if you have time, it's, it's like a cultural immersion in Romania. So it's like local market, the biggest market where people, villagers come from all over the country, to farmers coming, they sell stuff. Yeah. And there is this old, very old place where they make mici, mix of, uh, sheep, beef, sheep, and pork all together. All together. And they are on the grill This is Mihail Pautov. This is— look, my colleague is Lucci.

He—

this is his wallpaper. Yeah.

Okay, I'll say this. I'll say this. I'm going to insult a lot of people. It's totally okay. Everybody always tells me about something I must try, and it's mostly from nostalgia because they grew up eating this and everybody tells themselves it's really good. Because I'm an international world traveler, I eat lots of things. I'm like, that ain't good. I promise you. Yeah, I know. Like, oh, you must have schnitzel. I'm going to insult a lot of people. Schnitzel has no flavor at all. Yeah.

This one has flavor.

It's like cheese, gnocchi. It's like, what is this?

I didn't grow up in Romania. Yeah. So this is not my early life food, but it's good. So you take this mici, you have to take the mustard, and you need to take some bread. Yeah, with the bread. It comes with the bread and a beer. You won't want to leave.

Yeah. It's good, but if—

I'll try after the workshop. Yeah, because after that you can only be happy and sleepy. Exactly. Okay, thank you so much for coming and for sharing all of this knowledge. Thank you. Yeah, it started as, uh, how to create your own social media brand, personal brand, but it, it got so philosophical, and, uh, it's like a podcast about the meaning of you and the meaning of life and what you do in life. That's Great. Thank you so much for coming and telling us all of this stuff.

It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me. I enjoyed the conversation very much.

Yeah, me too. Thank you so much. And I will switch to Romanian now for our public. Muito obrigado, Mihail Pautov, por ter estado conosco. Espero que tenham gostado de outro podcast em que nós chegamos à conclusão de que a gente não é um bonito, a gente não é um propulsante, mas a gente é formoso como todo o lucro que vocês conseguem através dele. De fait, ça se gâchait, cette voix-là, en social media, non pas pour faire un gimmick ou pour caler la brincade à ses followers. On ne savait pas de fait si ça faisait s'intercuter dans un truc. Donc on s'est dit que ce fil humain, ce fil homme, on ne savait pas s'il pouvait être bon, s'il pouvait être serré, s'il n'allait pas nous faire baisser le salaire. On s'est dit: «Bon, on va garder les salaires.» Et puis ça a gâché ce mode d'unir tout le monde entre eux. Et ça, c'était vraiment bien. Inclusive, il y avait un dar nebonuit, la galerie de Tchermobyl, iel, she scopre le vieilles hypothèses de FIES, de scoprir à chaque, à chaque dar, à chaque kirpe, car on a, grâce à M. M. Dino Tchelardi de la FOMO, Pentrefabtouk, à vos facilitateurs, à Justin Tellier et à ce podcast, M. M. FOMO, Robert de la FOMO en spécial, M. M. Fortemout, she, she, M. M.

Kounikreditbank, Pentrefabtouk, ce prix génial podcast, le Bob et les And he's going through like, like a, uh, his Mexican radio. You sound just like that, by the way. And I don't know why, when you speak it, Romanian sounds a lot like Portuguese to me. It's a whole— the time I'm like, is he speaking Portuguese? No, it's Romanian.

It's very similar. Yeah, it's similar.

Yeah. Oh really?

Yeah.

Okay, very good. So I'm not like crazy here, but some people speak it and it feels— it sounds more Russian for some reason.

I don't know. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. Okay. Very good.

Thank you. You— thank you for for that mention.

She—