Chris Do / Creative. Strategist. Loud Introvert

"I help creatives build businesses and business leaders build brands." - Chris Do

In this episode we have the privilege of speaking with Chris Do (a recovering graphic designer), a renowned Emmy Award-winning designer, CEO, and Founder of The Futur.

Chris has dedicated his career to helping creatives build successful businesses and guiding business leaders to create compelling brands.

In this episode, Chris shares his journey from being a first-generation immigrant to becoming a leading figure in the design world.

He dives deep into the importance of building a personal brand, the evolution of graphic design, and practical tips for creatives to stand out in a crowded market.

Perfect episode for business owners and creatives alike.

Key Points:

1. Building a personal brand is crucial for both business leaders and creatives.
2. Differentiation is more important than being better in the market.
3. Understanding and addressing business goals is key to successful design.
4. Effective branding involves more than just aesthetics; it’s about strategy.
5. Leveraging storytelling and personal experiences can elevate your brand.

Community & Training for Creatives: TheFutur
Personal Page: Chris Do
Youtube: TheFutur

Paul Povolni, the founder of Voppa Creative, has been a creative leader for over 30 years, with clients around the world. He’s led teams in creating award-winning branding and design as well as equipping his clients to lead with Clarity, Creativity and Culture.

Headsmack Website

Transcript

Paul Povolni (02:22.535)
Hey, welcome to the Head Smack podcast. My name is Paul Povolny and I have conversations with Misfits, Mavericks, Trailblazers, and I'm excited to talk to Chris Do today. Chris is a renowned Emmy award winning designer, CEO and founder of the future. He helps creatives build businesses and businesses, business leaders build brands. I totally messed up your line there. He helps creatives build businesses and businesses build brands.

He's also considered a loud introvert and a recovering graphic designer. And some even consider him the Jordan Peterson of creatives. So, so glad to have you on Chris. How you doing?

Chris Do (02:58.286)
I'm good. There's a lot of controversy with Jordan Peterson, so I'm not sure. I love all that label, but it's an honor.

Paul Povolni (03:07.495)
Yeah, yeah. Well, I know a lot of people appreciate your wisdom and your counsel and the way you're able to frame things. And for those that love Jordan, they love that about him. And for those that are creative and in the creative spaces, they love that about you and the way you're able to frame things and narrow things down and make them simplified while also going deep as well. So appreciate you doing this, man. This is, this is going to be great. I'm looking forward to it.

Chris Do (03:16.558)
Yes.

Chris Do (03:33.102)
Me too.

Paul Povolni (03:34.599)
Alright, so you know both you and I are into superheroes. Now I don't know, I'm more of a fan than I am a geek or a nerd about it. Would you call yourself a fan or a geek or a nerd? Like are you like hyper into superheroes?

Chris Do (03:42.222)
Okay.

Chris Do (03:47.374)
I think I'm a geek because I think a nerd has no social skills, I think.

Paul Povolni (03:48.903)
All right. Yeah, I'm more of a fan. And so usually when it comes to the podcast, I like to start off by asking people's origin stories you've considered and you've talked about having nine lives. And so we can talk about that as, as briefly or as at length as you like, but let's talk about your origin story. What is the origin of Christo?

Chris Do (04:13.134)
How far back do you want me to go for the origin story?

Paul Povolni (04:16.391)
As far back as would make it relevant for our discussion about where you're at and the head smack moments you've had along the way. So significant things that have happened along the way in your journey.

Chris Do (04:27.086)
Okay, well then I guess it's important for your audience to know that I'm a first generation immigrants slash refugee. My parents fled Vietnam in 1975, which is where I was born. And so for me, I felt most of my life as an outsider, sometimes an outsider, my own family and outside in the real world because I'm the middle child of three boys. It means easy for the middle child to get lost in the mix of things. You know, I'm not the first born on here at the name rights and all that kind of stuff that goes along with that.

I'm not the baby that darling gets away with murder. I'm just the person who's usually forgotten about. And so it has informed a little bit of how I am and how I move in the world, because as I've learned in therapy, the middle child tends to be the caretaker. So we're really concerned about how other people feel. And that's how we feel like we can stand out. And it wasn't until I went to therapy that I learned that about myself. And it helped me to get a lot of clarity as to why in some of my previous relationships, I was so conflict averse. I was so worried about

Paul Povolni (04:58.663)
Yeah.

Chris Do (05:23.278)
their feelings that I put their feelings ahead of mine.

Paul Povolni (05:27.335)
Wow. So yeah, I'm first first generation immigrant as well. And, you know, my family fled from communism in Yugoslavia. So I totally get that now I'm the first born. So I'm sorry about that. Sorry for all the pain I might have inflicted. So, you know, being a, being a first generation immigrant and, you know, being a creative, what was that like? Was there any issues with being the creative kid and not, you know, having a regular type?

Chris Do (05:39.022)
Hey, it's your birthright.

Paul Povolni (05:56.359)
a skill set.

Chris Do (05:57.678)
Yeah, there's a lot of challenges being an Asian American coming to America. The whole idea is you've got to do well in school, not just do okay. Like A is just kind of average. That's the joke inside the Asian community. You have to get an A plus, you have to get a four plus GPA. And the thing about it is I think I'm smart. I just never was really engaged with what they were teaching me. I went to public school. And so it's like, this is boring. I understand what you're talking about. But I want to do something different. And so oftentimes, I would find myself

doodling in my notebook, kind of daydreaming a little bit. I could still, even with 50 % of my brain paying attention to class, get A's and B's, but the other 50 % was like dreaming about design, about fashion, about hairstyles and whatever else I was thinking about or drawing comic books and things like that.

Paul Povolni (06:43.399)
So when did you first feel that validated, the creative side of you?

Chris Do (06:47.918)
I don't think it was until senior in high school that I fully accepted it because I was drawn to creative things, art, like airbrushing, sculpting. I took a metal class so I can make things with my hands. I joined the yearbook staff and then I wound up designing the cover for the yearbook. And I even won some juried awards for museums for the artwork that I did. But as my classmates and my instructor would say, hey, have you considered a career in graphic design? I'm like, I don't want to be broke.

Paul Povolni (07:17.287)
Yeah.

Chris Do (07:17.806)
I didn't say it out loud, but I thought it so I was like, that's very nice for you to say thanks for wishing me to be broke the rest of my life. So as a senior, I actually got a job inking or tracing over someone else's drawings. And that was the beginning of something wonderful because back then I was making probably 350 375 an hour. And my boss offered me a job and there's no negotiation. He says I'll pay $18 an hour to ink over my drawings.

And that is a ginormous pay increase. I was thinking, my God, I've made it. Here I am. I'm going to earn like $40 ,000 a year and I'm on the easy street. I'm not even out of high school yet, Paul. So I was like, this is great.

Paul Povolni (07:55.847)
Right. Yeah.

Yeah. And I know for me, I don't know whether it was the same for you, but for me, I didn't even know what graphic design was. I was a creative kid. Like I was an artist, but I didn't understand and I love strategy. I love thinking. I was a thinker. I love deep thinking. I love reading. I was, I loved reading books. I would read just my brother and I were just like, grab every book and every imaginary book, the wishing chair and the faraway tree by Ian of blight. And like, those were our books and you know, asterisks and obliques, comic, you know, graphic novels.

And so I loved creatively. I love thinking, I love reading, but I didn't understand that there were other options for creatives that was not drawing pictures or sculpture or whatever. When did you realize that there was this thing called graphic design?

Chris Do (08:47.118)
pretty late, but I'm gonna tell you how smart I am. I had a friend who was a Vietnamese American woman and she's like, Chris, have you thought about like designing logos? I'm like, why would I do that? That's so labor intensive. And you can't really draw a letter perfectly anyways. And she goes, no, watch. And so she went away and she worked on drawing a logo, trying to impress me. I think she had a crush on me or something. And then she showed it to me and it was really beautiful, tightly rendered letter forms.

a logo. I didn't understand what it was back then. I'm like, yeah, no, that's not for me. Who would want to spend their life drawing logo types and what future could there be? That's how smart I was. And I think it was a part of like ignorance and just this girl was so into me. I was like, whatever she brought to me, I was like, I'm not interested because if I showed interest, it would be leading her on or something. I don't know. I'm just like, no, it's terrible. But when it came to crystal clarity for me was

One day my boss at the 6th Reading shop sent me on an errand to go pick up some type setting. What type? Type setting? Okay. So, you know, I was making myself useful. So I drove out to the man's house and it wasn't far away. And he brought me into a studio and he was still finishing up the type setting. And I was like, what is this wizardry that you're doing here? He had one of the original Mac SEs. I think the 512K monochrome all in one.

Paul Povolni (10:06.503)
You

Chris Do (10:12.174)
iMac, if you will, the very first iteration of it, this ginormous thing next to his desk, which I didn't understand what that was, but that was like Apple's first laser printer. It was enormous. And it whirled and the fan, I could feel the heat coming on. I'm like, what is it doing? And a little piece of paper comes out and he looks at it and he's like, I need to make an adjustment. He changes some things. And as he was doing his thing, I just saw his environment and his den home office.

He had what I imagine today is what everybody is doing, which is they have an amazing homework office with a drafting table, a T -square protractor and all kinds of art instruments. And I was thinking, this is it. This is what I need to be doing. Computer aided design. I love computers. It takes away the tedium of hand doing things. And all of a sudden, like I need to know what this is. And.

Paul Povolni (10:53.095)
Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Do (11:03.79)
He hands me his business card, his name is Dean Walker, he's his graphic designer. It's like, that's it.

Paul Povolni (11:08.263)
Well, yeah, that's what I want to do. Well, and for me, it was kind of interesting because I kind of came, I think I'm older than you. I'm not sure how old you are, but I came into design and then they were doing everything manually. I mean, they had the rub down letters they had, like everything was manual. Yeah. The electric set, the, was it the rubilith? The, yeah, the bromide machines, all of, yeah, all of those things. And for me, I actually,

Chris Do (11:10.638)
Yeah.

Chris Do (11:21.454)
Yeah.

Yes. Let her set.

Chris Do (11:29.454)
Ruby Lith, for sure the red Ruby Lith. I just cut it, yeah.

Paul Povolni (11:35.527)
didn't like graphic design. I thought I wanted to do graphic design, but I saw how like particular and finicky and like technical it was that I was like, maybe that's not what I want to do. And luckily, you know, I went off to college, studied that and I kind of liked it. Didn't do good at sculpture. Didn't do good at figure drawing and painting. And then, you know, I thought, well, maybe that's not what I want to do. So I stepped away from it for a little bit, but then the computer era came out and I remember.

Chris Do (11:42.126)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Paul Povolni (12:02.951)
being asked, I was going to college and they asked me to work on the yearbook and I'm like, cool, what's a yearbook? Like this is when I came to America. And, and, you know, so I worked on the yearbook and I did it like old school, you know, cause there weren't computers at that point, but by the next year they had Microsoft Word and you could do stuff with letters and then printed out on a laser printer. And I was like, my goodness, I found it. I love this. And then Microsoft publisher, you know, we can do a little more manipulation of words and stuff.

Chris Do (12:09.294)
Mm -hmm.

Chris Do (12:20.43)
Mmm.

Paul Povolni (12:31.335)
And that's when I knew like, I love graphic design. Like I love bringing this together. So what was your first job as a designer?

Chris Do (12:35.246)
Yeah.

Chris Do (12:40.43)
Well, before I answer a question, I'm going to make an educated guess deductive reasoning puts you at probably around 5556.

Paul Povolni (12:48.711)
Yeah, I just turned 55 in April, yeah. Yeah.

Chris Do (12:50.638)
See, there you go. I'm 52. So you're just a few years ahead of me. Because, all right. Because when I was in high school, we're already using computers to do the layouts and kind of simple page layout. Nothing fancy what we know today. So, okay. What was my first legitimate job in doing design? Well, the technical first job is just me doing the inking part and understanding hand lettering and tracing over his drawings. I was a production artist, maybe not a full blown graphic designer.

Paul Povolni (12:59.431)
Right.

Paul Povolni (13:20.359)
Right.

Chris Do (13:20.398)
But I go away to community college because I couldn't get into an art school. And I got a job at a place called zebra copies, having just finished learning page maker, all this page maker, and zebra copies had this job thing. And I was like, I love their their facilities here. It's like a good printing copying facility. And in the back was there was a desktop publishing department. So Lori Di Martelli was my boss, I have your set woman and she's like, hey, you have the job. Great. So I was paid now.

Again, somewhere in the neighborhood of 18 to 20 bucks an hour to do production design work. And so what she had was a whole basket of things to do. And a lot of the companies in La Jolla did travel services. So their travel agency. So what I wound up doing is drawing maps and helping people design their itinerary and just laying it out. So she would just give me a bunch of stuff to do and I could do it pretty quickly. So she's like, this is great. Keep coming in kid. And that was like my first real.

job as a graphic designer and production artist.

Paul Povolni (14:22.631)
That's amazing. So, you know, your bio says that you're also a recovering graphic designer. So I know you spent 27 years in the industry in, you know, leading the blind and now you're working with the future. So when did you decide to become a recovering graphic designer?

Chris Do (14:28.014)
Yes.

Chris Do (14:34.222)
Mm -hmm.

Chris Do (14:38.51)
Well, as a young person who is an immigrant, not sure of who I am, I was in search of an identity. It seems like there was the jocks and the stoners or the hip hop folk. And I was like, I don't know who I am. I'm just kind of a generic person. And when I found graphic design, and when I found, I guess, a skill that I was really good at, I love that label. I'm a graphic designer. And I say it with pride.

And everywhere I would go, people are like, what do you do? I'm a graphic designer. I'm a graphic designer. You know, I would just say it really proudly. And eventually I got my way into Art Center. I graduated and I started directing commercials and music videos shortly thereafter. And I was still like, I'm a graphic designer. What makes me unique as a director is my understanding of typography, form and contrast, and then later on add movement and certain kinds of compositional things. I was still a graphic designer.

Paul Povolni (15:09.191)
Yeah.

Chris Do (15:33.038)
But eventually I started to think about it, that when you tell people you're a graphic designer, they think of you as a graphic designer, one who designs graphics. And so that bringing you into the conversation of copywriting, brand messaging, and telling bigger campaigns and stories because they just thought you design graphics. And that makes a lot of sense because you wouldn't expect a fashion designer to cook you a meal.

Paul Povolni (16:00.327)
Right.

Chris Do (16:00.558)
you wouldn't expect an interior designer to then do all your graphics. So it kind of it fit until it stopped fitting because I was doing brand strategy work. I was doing a lot of the thinking and the marketing stuff. And then I was thinking, this is a very limiting title at this point. So it's time for me to be a recovering graphic designer.

Paul Povolni (16:21.255)
Well, and I think part of that is just because of so many people have access to the toolbox that so many people enter the space. And then I think the title, you know, with, with so many people at all kinds of levels of entry that yeah, the graphic designer term is almost, I don't want to say cheapen, but it just, it feel, it doesn't feel as special as it once did because it took a certain level of skills and access, you know, to the tools. It took certain skills and access to.

the technology and now everybody has access to it so it doesn't feel like it's such an exclusive club, right? And so that probably was part of that, taking that phrase or that title down a couple notches.

Chris Do (17:03.79)
Yeah, you know, I talked to Brian Collins recently, he was telling me about the history of the different titles in which we use to describe our profession. He said, I can't remember, like the first version of it was actually graphic designer. And then it became commercial artists. And then it became communication designer. And then it became brand identity or identity designer, and then brand identity designer, brand designer. And we're kind of stuck in this place now. And he thinks it's something much different now.

Paul Povolni (17:19.367)
Right.

Yeah.

Paul Povolni (17:32.487)
Yeah, yeah, I would think so. Yeah. And that's when I was learning about it is, yeah, it was a communications and it was, you know, and I was like, man, that's, I don't know what I didn't even know that existed. Like I didn't know that that thing existed. And so, you know, you had mentioned a little bit of, you know, starting the blind and doing more work outside of, graphic design, you know, of doing the lettering and stuff to, to more video work. What was that like? What was that transition like? Was that a natural transition? Was that something you.

Chris Do (17:42.542)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (18:01.095)
found you actually had a skill in or was that out of necessity? How did that transition happen?

Chris Do (18:06.51)
The last semester I had at Art Center, I took a 2D animation class taught by Linda Wyman of linda .com fame. And I was introduced to After Effects. I'm like, this is pretty cool. I like moving things around. And at this point in time, I think regular old 2D print design was boring to me. I felt like I could do it and it wasn't that difficult. I could do it better than most of my classmates. I'm like, I need a new challenge. And so I fall into this thing. And luck would have it that my work was featured.

Paul Povolni (18:14.503)
wow.

Paul Povolni (18:25.127)
Right.

Chris Do (18:36.078)
on the Adobe After Effects CD -ROM as part of like the thing that they shipped out to everybody back when we had CD -ROMs to hold on to. And I started my studio blind and I was doing a lot of different work. So somebody would call me for logo work. I'd do logo work. You need an identity design for your company. I would do that. And you want me to design graphics for your commercials. I would do that. And we were doing okay. We would do a bunch of different projects slowly getting to like

Paul Povolni (18:43.047)
Right, right.

Chris Do (19:03.982)
$100, $200 ,000 in buildings just the first couple of years. But then I realized something. I wasn't very good at anything. And I learned the first important lesson that you need to is like, thou shall focus thou shall find a niche and own it and grow thought leadership in that space. And I remember saying to my wife, because I was a little embarrassed. We were awarded a project for an animated feature film. I'm sorry, we had to design the main title for a feature film. It wasn't animated.

Paul Povolni (19:12.615)
Well.

Chris Do (19:33.742)
And the company that hired me on our studio, they were nervous that we didn't know what we were doing. And they had a right to be nervous, by the way. I wasn't offended. So they said, hey, and they did it the most graceful way. They said, hey, we're going to send one of our senior animators over just to help you. Because I was stressed. We're building these big titles for a movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger in it. And he came by and he looked at the files. He said, hey, do you ever add animation curves? I'm like, what is that?

Paul Povolni (19:41.095)
Hahaha.

Paul Povolni (20:00.743)
Wow.

Chris Do (20:01.87)
you know, ease in ease out, you know, and then he showed me even for the basic movement and that it would feel a lot more elegant by just adding ramp up and ramp out. And so when I saw that I knew then I want to get good at this and clearly that guy knows more about this than I do. And so I had to say, look, we're not going to do web design anymore. We're not going to do logo design. We're only going to focus on motion design. And that was within the first year, year and a half of starting the business.

Paul Povolni (20:21.447)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (20:31.879)
Well, and so, now that, you know, you want Emmys for, for work within that kind of space, right? And so when did you transition into the next phase of even the blind and what, what prompted that, that decision? And so, you know, the folks that are going to listen to this, their business owners, their designers, their creatives, their entrepreneurs, and so understanding, you know, a business and the reasons for its transition and how it evolves and.

Chris Do (20:38.574)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (20:58.855)
You know, sometimes what you start with is not what you end with. And sometimes those transitions happen. What transition you back to doing more identity type work?

Chris Do (21:08.174)
I want to share a couple of the key ideas I think that might hit home for some of the creators who are listening to this in that number one, I'm a very pragmatic person. I'm quite detached from anything as a refugee immigrant. You kind of become used to moving around and it's just my city. I don't even know. Nothing is mine. I am just exactly where I'm at and tomorrow it'll be something different. And there's a famous Wayne Gretzky.

quote about him skating to where the puck is going not to where it's at. So you're coupled with one you you are detached from things and you understand trends and you could see the market move. I want to go to where the market is moving. So even in college, I went to Art Center, all my classmates were thinking about print design, they were thinking about packaging. In fact, the major that we were in was called print or graphic design and packaging. That was the major.

And that's what they're preparing us for. And I don't know if you recall, but right around that time, CDs were starting to start to get a little soft in terms of sales. It was just already beginning, maybe not totally apparent yet. It would take another five or eight years before the whole industry would collapse. And I was introduced to 3D modeling, 3D animation, 2D animation and compositing. I was like, this is wild. This is exciting.

We're at the verge of some new era. And back when I got into it, it didn't even have a title yet. It wasn't known until later as motion design. Because there were debates, should we call ourselves motion graphic designers, motion designers, or motion artists? It's like, I don't know, you guys call it whatever you want. I don't really care. I'm just going to do the work. And so we transitioned from doing a bunch of digital design into just specifically motion design.

Paul Povolni (22:45.443)
Right. Yeah.

Chris Do (22:54.382)
And that arc took me over 10 years to kind of figure out like, I think I'm towards the end of like what I need to learn. So at first you animate little pieces of type. You might animate a logo and then you might do a 2D character in a live action plate. And then you do fully animated two dimensional videos and then you do hybrid CGI and live action. And then by the end of our cycle, we would direct fully live action. Things had no design or typography or animation in it at all.

just go through that arc. And that excited me because new challenges. I taught myself photography. I taught myself about lensing and the language of cinema and editing and color grading and visual effects. And there was a lot to learn there. And then I got bored again. And I was thinking, this is weird because what we wind up doing is we work with advertising agencies who figure out the messaging and positioning.

and the campaign and we brought it to life. We infused it with creativity, but we weren't making any of those decisions and I wanted to figure that out. And that's when we started to move into brand strategy and to be able to work with clients directly. We had to learn the skills that the ad agencies had.

Paul Povolni (24:00.103)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (24:10.823)
Yeah. And so, you know, that, that evolved into, you know, talking more about brand strategy, but there was a time in, in design where separating the two wasn't a thing. Like, you know, we didn't talk about brand strategy. It's kind of being its own thing. It was almost like we did the exploration. We did the discovery. We did, we talked about people, but we didn't separate brand strategy from the design. And then it suddenly became a thing, where we talked about a lot more and.

even though it's something that's been around forever, you know, a lot of times that happens is we, we, we give new names to old things or new things. they seem like new things, but they're just old things, just resurfaced or, or, or, or separated out. And so when you started with, the blind doing more brand strategy, what are some of the key. Pivots you had to make in talking to you, even to your clients about it.

Chris Do (25:02.19)
Well, I'll say this, I may, I may agree or disagree with you on some of these things. I think a lot of designers work with clients directly. And it feels like there's a discovery phase. It feels like there's brand strategy, but what they're doing is they're just trying to figure out what the client's preferences are and what their overall goals are. But it was never really connected to a business strategy and business planning because most designers don't know anything about that to begin with.

They don't understand copywriting. They don't understand how to shape the tone and voice of a real brand. And so yes, we do have these conversations and they've been happening a long time, but it wasn't really because there was a system of understanding business needs. So somebody might launch a business and say, we're adding a new line of like coffee to our offerings and it's going to grow our business. And we try to understand what they're thinking, the positioning, but we don't know how to really shape that at all. In the new way in which we're talking about

Paul Povolni (25:42.151)
Right.

Chris Do (25:57.102)
brand strategy is we actually challenge the clients and they don't even know how to position it. And we help them to do the research and do competitive analysis. And we start to figure out the tone and voice, which allows them to be different and unique from their competitors. And this isn't just an exercise for us to do the kind of design we want. It's actually driven by their business and marketing goals. So you're designing an entire customer journey. And this is when the label graphic designer doesn't fit anymore.

Paul Povolni (26:17.895)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (26:24.647)
Right, right.

Chris Do (26:25.39)
This is the first time I'm feeling that friction because you know what? You actually didn't have a brand platform even. You didn't know if you wanted to create a bunch of different products or how you're going to anchor all these things together. So when we started working with clients directly, because for the first, I want to say almost 20 years, it was through an agency. Clients hire an agency. It became agency record.

They were talking about shy day. We're talking about foot cone and building. We're talking about multimillion billion dollar agencies who then subcontract 100 ,000, 500 ,000 million dollar jobs to their vendors like us. So we didn't understand about anything about what is the one, three, five year strategy? Where are we going to be? What are the other product offerings? We just got to see a tiny little part of the problem. But when you're working with client direct. And this really came into focus when we're working with.

Paul Povolni (27:02.375)
Right.

Chris Do (27:17.55)
Anime Expo, we were working with Olis and Trojan Storage and then ultimately Hudson Pacific Properties, which is a $13 billion company. They have the money, they have the needs, and we could be their partner in this and become agency of record if we played our cards right. So this is like recurring work. This is about understanding that this is just one piece of a multi -part puzzle that you can't just solve this and say, like, aesthetically, we solved all the problems. How do we solve the business problem?

Paul Povolni (27:33.383)
Right.

Chris Do (27:47.534)
And when you're marketing commercial real estate, there's one metric they care about. How quickly did we sell out the lease on this property before it was built?

Paul Povolni (27:57.479)
Right. So when did, when did the understanding of strategy, like when did it really hit you strong that we needed to pivot into that space a little more? Cause I guess that, you know, cause I totally agree with you and, you know, and I imagine that graphic designer is the person that I described, you know, and what you're talking about is the evolution of what that is. It's, it's beyond just order taker and what do you like? What do you not like? What colors do you like? Let me create that for you.

Chris Do (28:24.27)
Right. Right. Right.

Paul Povolni (28:27.335)
So when did, when did that really like hit you hard as another major pivot? You said you kind of watch for these trends and things. When did that really hit you the hardest?

Chris Do (28:34.03)
Yes. It came to me in late 2013, 2014. And I know that because I know the chronology of a lot of things that were happening. So I was thinking maybe the day of commercials is going away because as we're streaming content, we have DVRs that allows us to skip commercials. If we're in the business of making commercials, we're going to be screwed. I can see the writing on the wall.

Now, maybe I was three to six years out from when that was going to happen, but I knew what was going to happen. It was just inevitable to me. It's clear as day. And so my brother works in Silicon Valley. I said, Hey, in the beginning of our career, 20 years ago, we were designing websites. I think I need to return to this because I can also see the rise of the web design firms that were now 100 to 300 people big. He goes, okay, I have a client for you.

just do this work for them. And I did it for them. I didn't charge them a lot of money because I was going to pay for the experience. I think they had a budget of like, say, 5000 bucks. And we designed the website very much like how you would design a digital brochure. We'd understand user experience design, user flows, information architecture, any of that stuff. And we weren't happy and they weren't happy. Nobody was happy. And I think they were right that they shouldn't be happy because...

Paul Povolni (29:45.127)
Yeah.

Chris Do (29:49.102)
We designed it, we built it, and then they almost changed it immediately. So I reach out to a friend of mine, his name is Jose Caballé, and he has been working in the web design space for as long as I've been working in the motion design space. So I call him up and I said, hey, man, I need your help. I want to do more web design work. I don't know what I'm doing. He goes, let me show you. Find a client and I'll show you how to do it. No charge at all. I'm like, great.

I just so happened to have a client, Trojan Storage. He goes, okay, let me show you how we do it in the digital agency side. He ran a facilitated session that was about six hours long with my client. I just sat there and watched and it was brilliant. He was designing user profiles. He was designing the customer journey. He was figuring out the features and functions and defining the brand voice and the culture. And I was thinking, this is like so eye opening for me.

Paul Povolni (30:22.183)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (30:47.111)
Wow.

Chris Do (30:48.366)
And now I knew how to do design, how to build websites. But I also learned something about defining the brand because when you build some website, when you build a website for somebody, you have to know their brand and their goals and their marketing initiatives. And so I immediately said, this is a framework and a process that would allow me to do brand strategy, which is what I was really passionate about. I just didn't know how to do it. And that was the big unlock right there.

Paul Povolni (31:13.607)
That's, yeah, and that's amazing. And I think for a lot of businesses that they still, you know, in that place that they don't fully get the value of that strategy. What are some of the mistakes that businesses make when it comes to, you know, even working with a designer? Cause you know, right now you're, you're mentoring designers. You also help businesses, you know, business leaders build brands. So what are some of the early mistakes that they think when they're not, when they're wanting to step into this and when they're communicating with somebody that is going to provide.

the look for them. What are some of the things that they miss out on?

Chris Do (31:47.406)
Okay. I think what happens is at the point in which a business owner found it realizes they need the help of a designer. They've already figured out their own problem. It's like the, the lawyer or the, the person who defends himself in court has a fool for a client. And so we don't go into doctors saying exactly, this is what I need done. We tell them the symptoms and we allow the doctor to guide us through the process of what might be wrong. We run a.

bunch of tests diagnostics. We test the hypothesis and the more experienced doctor then recommends certain procedures, minimally invasive until they get to the point in which like we have to do open heart bypass, triple bypass surgery or something. And so when they are looking at a designer, they're thinking of a person to execute like hands for a job. And that's the first mistake. And in another graphic designer and say to them, I need 13 pages designed, I needed to work this, this and that, as if you knew what you were doing.

Paul Povolni (32:36.071)
A graphic designer, right? Yeah.

Chris Do (32:46.542)
And you know, there's a lot of designers out there who claim to be able to do things that they can't. And they then create a bad taste for lots of people. And so then now there's general distrust on both sides. So that's not a great way to begin a relationship. So what I would say is, think about your goals, what business objectives, what marketing awareness, whatever lift you want to create from where you are to where you want to be. Be clear about that.

Be open to the ways in which you can accomplish that. Find a few people that you like, hopefully through referrals. That usually works the best. And then in the interviewing process, ask them, show me some examples of how you solved this problem before. It doesn't have to be for this vertical, but tell me how you've done it, who you've done it for, and what the process is like. So they get the opportunity to articulate that. Designers are not great at talking about their work and their process, so lead them.

Have a little grace on both sides and see if you like the vibe to see if they're asking the right questions. And if they're able to clearly articulate what they do, how much, how long, what expectations are, where does this go wrong? Those kinds of questions that need to be answered. And hopefully they lead that conversation, but you can lead it as well.

Paul Povolni (34:06.983)
And so, you know, with, with, what you have talked about and, you know, being helping business leaders build brands, what are some of the things that, when you're talking to those business leaders that you start talking to them about, is it the same kind of thing as you just shared, or is there something else when it comes to helping a business leader directly build a brand?

Chris Do (34:26.991)
Okay, that's a very sharp question there. Paul, I didn't write helping businesses build brands because that's something else. When I see business leaders build brands, I'm talking about personal brand. So Elon Musk has a personal brand that's more powerful than Tesla. Steve Jobs has a stronger personal brand than Apple. And

Paul Povolni (34:41.031)
Okay.

Chris Do (34:54.606)
Basically every influential CEO founder of a company that you can look up, you'll see that they're following their engagement is much stronger than the business brand. And we're in this age now where we're a little distrustful of any information that we get, except for the information we get from people that we trust. So when it's coming from a corporate mouthpiece, an ad campaign, we could get the feels, but then we're like suspicious.

Paul Povolni (35:24.487)
Yeah.

Chris Do (35:24.654)
And the first thing we do is like, I heard this movie is good. Well, let me double check on Rotten Tomatoes. Let me double check on Amazon reviews like Glassdoor or whatever else. Like, let me just double check that what you say is true. Because there's a lot of hucksters out there talking their way through life and just making bold claims, you know. And this is why I think it's the age in which we live in with the social platforms and our ability to communicate directly to our audience that

the personal brand has become probably one of the most searched things now that people are trying to sort out. So when I say I help business leaders build brands, I'm talking about their personal brand, not their company brand. Yeah.

Paul Povolni (36:03.111)
Okay. Yeah. Now is there a danger in doing that? Because, you know, I know there are some brands that if it wasn't for that person, that business leader that had built a brand around themselves, that if they leave the company, that the company has problems. Like it falters. Like people are concerned if that figurehead, that personal brand, you know, if Elon leaves, you know, Tesla and all that he's doing, you know, when Steve Jobs passed away, you know, will Apple continue?

Chris Do (36:14.766)
Mm -hmm.

Paul Povolni (36:31.559)
What's the danger of a leader building a personal brand and what's the value?

Chris Do (36:37.358)
Okay, this is very important. Very good question. So when the business founder or leader is able to define their personal brand, oftentimes the company in which they run, now they have a North Star. Now, you know of brands today that their founders have since long passed away. And when they do branding and rebranding, it's because they've drifted too far away from the original mission and vision of the founder.

So they go back and excavate and they find like, Colonel Sanders stood for this. And Colonel Sanders looked like this and he talked like this and this is what he was about or, or Burt's Bees or whatever company. If it's, if the founder's long gone, what they try to do is rediscover the origin story. Basically your very first question to me. They're trying to realign the values and the culture back to the original person. Now the original person had no brand, stood for nothing, had nothing of interest, then they're kind of lost.

And sadly, sometimes then it's a composite of a lot of different ideas that they have that they now have a shared brand, but it's not really embodied by any one person or anything that you can put your finger on and say, this is where it started and this is how it began. So Elon Musk, well, let's take Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs brand still lives on pretty strong today, even though it's been over 10 years since he's passed away. And initially when he was sick, I was really nervous because I was an investor in Apple. I had stock.

Paul Povolni (38:05.735)
Yeah.

Chris Do (38:06.478)
So I was like trembling like any day Steve Jobs dies and we're done because everything is run Steve. It's the cult of Steve. And I sold my stock before he passed away. Mistake Paul, clearly mistake. Don't ever take it. Investment advice, financial advice for me on that front. Because I was a coward. Right. I knew he was sick. And when Apple stock went up and went down, when it went up, I sold.

Paul Povolni (38:13.319)
Right.

Paul Povolni (38:21.542)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (38:26.791)
Right. Yeah.

Chris Do (38:34.35)
my financial advisor says, Chris, we should not do this. I'm like, sell it. Sell it. Dumbest decision I've made in the market. Okay. So Steve passes. Apple's trembling. Everybody's like worried. But Steve, Steve, sorry, Tim Cook has taken Steve's idea and taking it to stratospheres far above what Steve where Steve left it. And so what happens is a really strong company.

Paul Povolni (38:34.951)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (38:39.335)
Wow.

Paul Povolni (38:56.775)
Right.

Chris Do (39:00.974)
builds up systems in place that the composite of the people who survive it never are equal to the person, the founder, but the composite of them is much stronger than the founder. So when Steve says, you know what, we're going to make Tim the CEO, the acting CEO while I'm away. And Johnny Ivy is going to be heading the design department and Phil is going to take care of products or whatever. So they have their team in place. And you know, even dogs can take down a lion.

you know, you get the right dogs together and they can work in in in tandem, they can take down a lion individually cannot the lion will destroy them. And so we are now 10 years plus past thieves passing and apples worth $3 trillion. I think the first company break a trillion that was not an oil base and then now three trillion say clearly didn't impact them. If anything, it gives people a clear roadmap as to what kind of company to build. What kind of culture to have what kind of

Paul Povolni (39:44.455)
Right.

Paul Povolni (39:51.719)
Yeah.

Chris Do (39:59.054)
company to cultivate. And I'll say this though, Elon Musk has such a strong personal brand, that in many instances, his brand is so powerful and valuable that when he says I want to have a conversation, the world listens. So that Tesla doesn't spend money on advertising, not until recently, they spent $0 in advertising. So if you look at risk and reward, and you say, well, he saved his company a couple billion dollars in advertising.

Well, that's a pretty good reward. What's the risk that he might die one day and that we don't have an executive team in place? Yeah, that's a risk. But the opposite is much worse, which is companies like American Express. Do you know who founded American Express?

Me neither, and that's why I spend half a billion dollars in advertising a year.

Paul Povolni (40:42.887)
Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, we're talking about billion dollar companies, trillion dollar companies. What about for the companies that aren't quite there, you know, they, they're still big companies, you know, and I'm not talking, you know, small mom and pops and maybe even them. I mean, I think they could value from it. Yeah. Like, so, so for them, what is building a personal brand look like? What, what does that mean? Like if, if somebody said, you know, I own a, whatever, a cookie company or I own a

Chris Do (40:57.358)
100 million?

Chris Do (41:10.126)
Okay.

Paul Povolni (41:11.079)
whatever, where does starting a personal brand start for somebody like that? And should they?

Chris Do (41:15.182)
Okay. They should. And I'll make the argument right now. So let's say you're a cookie company, you do $30 million in sales in the United States. Is that okay? Annual recurring revenue? That's not a bad company. Let's say that you have two identical companies. All right, no, let's start with hypothetical one. You have one company and there's no real brand. There's just the cookie company. Okay, but it was founded by a guy named Paul.

And Paul is a multi -generation baker, cookie maker, all that kind of stuff. And then Paul, all of a sudden decides one day he's going to start sharing recipes and talking and producing content around his love for cookies and what makes the difference between that kind of cookie and this and how many grams of chocolate. So he becomes like the Willy Wonka personality of cookies. And then one day, Paul and his partners disagree. They just disagree. They're like, you know what?

It's been a good ride. We need to separate our ways. What happens to the cookie company when Paul leaves because he's built such a strong personal brand? Does that company survive? Just think about that for a little bit. Okay. And so then Paul goes off and he wants to start a new cookie company. Does Paul have an easier time getting financing, angel investors, getting positive terms and conditions in terms of like warehouses, distribution.

Paul Povolni (42:24.551)
Mm.

Chris Do (42:43.502)
And I think the answer is yes, yes, and yes. And then Paul's like, Hey, everybody, I've started a new company, I'm going to be opening up in January of next year. I'm looking for talented people in marketing, in the kitchen and service people. And all the old people like, we're with Bob. He's a bozo. And then they silently quietly start sending you their resumes. In fact, actually, when you leave several of them,

They do the opposite of Jerry Maguire moment and you're like, who's with me? And they're like us? Because you have the vision. We believe in what you believe in. You have the values. This other person just wants to sell cookies.

Paul Povolni (43:17.895)
Yeah.

Chris Do (43:24.206)
So should you have a brand, put yourself in that situation. I can make this much more concrete for folks. I can give you other examples, but every company today in the 21st century is a media company. Most of them just don't know it yet. Media companies need a voice, a personality, they need a leader. And that's you. And I'm loving this new expression I've been hearing. I'm going to repeat it, which is different is better than better.

Paul Povolni (43:27.624)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (43:44.039)
Wow.

Bye.

Chris Do (43:52.91)
Most companies focus on being better, not enough companies focus on being different. The difference is what creates the brand. That's what creates the preference and what allows you to charge a premium to have dedicated, dying loyal fans being different.

Paul Povolni (44:09.607)
So being different, you know, for a $30 million cookie company is one thing. What about for the chiropractor? What about for the, the roofer, the plumber, like bringing it down to even, even the next level from the $30 million cookie company? What does, what does that look like for them? Is that something worth pursuing for even them or are they like, that's for those bigger companies? You know, I don't need to worry about a personal brand.

Chris Do (44:36.462)
This is still marketing and branding 101. So let's take a look at this. A product or service without a story is a commodity. Commodities trade on lowest price. Lowest price wins in commodity. If I had two bags of corn and there was no differentiation between the two, would you buy the one that's more expensive or the one that's cheaper? Most people would like, there's really literally no difference. I'm gonna buy the cheaper one. Almost always.

Paul Povolni (45:02.695)
Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Do (45:03.918)
And then the bag of corn says, well, we're certified organic and we're third generation migrant workers. It's a family owned business. Differentiation, literally the kernel of corn, exactly the same certified organic third generation migrant immigrant workers, whatever. Well now Paul, you may or may not pay more for the other bag of corn that looks exactly the same. And why would you do that? And there's a reason, it's a deep psychological need.

to have some control over the world in which you live in. So when you spend money, you subconsciously and consciously know that you're allowing one company to play a little bit longer and you're hoping the other company goes away. Like when you drive down the street and you have to fill up in your petrol car, you see Shell, you see Exxon, you see Mobil, I don't know what the other companies are, BP. Do you always go to the same one if you can? Or do you just randomly pull up to anyone that you know?

that is available.

Paul Povolni (46:02.983)
I go to the same one.

Chris Do (46:04.302)
Which one is that? I'm just curious.

Paul Povolni (46:05.959)
I go to Costco with Sam's. Yeah.

Chris Do (46:07.854)
Good guess. Okay, that's fine. That makes sense to me. Right. But like we have preference and you go there because it's a good value. And you might be able to do some of your monthly grocery shopping there because if you're going to Costco, right, and you might grab yourself like a dollar hot dog and a dollar ginormous Coke or something like that, right. Not saying anything about, you know, your diet or anything. But if you do that, that's because you like the product.

Paul Povolni (46:22.567)
Right, right, yeah.

Paul Povolni (46:28.103)
Heheheheh

Chris Do (46:35.822)
that they offer and you like how it makes you feel about yourself. So Anna Lapley said this and I learned this from Kevin Finn. He says that every dollar or she said that every dollar that you spend is a vote for the world that you want to live in.

So I go out of my way to spend my money on things I want to see more of. I'll give you the example right now. And people, I think, will start to understand this. Mad Max Furiosa. Did you see it yet, Paul?

Paul Povolni (47:02.951)
Not yet. That's on my agenda for this weekend.

Chris Do (47:05.358)
Okay, now I'm going to ask you this question. Why do you want to see that film?

Paul Povolni (47:11.367)
Cause I'm Australian and it's Mad Max. Honestly. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Do (47:13.55)
Okay, those are good reasons. Those are good reasons. Okay. All right. Here's the thing. George Miller is a genius, in my opinion. He created the whole Mad Max franchise. He also created Happy Feet. Like, how did one mind create these two things? Did you know this? Yeah. No, but it is literally the same guy. You know, Mumbles and Mad Max?

Paul Povolni (47:23.623)
yeah.

Paul Povolni (47:30.183)
Right. Yeah. Do you know what? I read that fact. I'm like, no, that can't be true. Yeah. My goodness. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Do (47:43.662)
They're the same creator. It's like unbelievable. OK, so George, for everything he is, and he's had a career that's lasted, I don't know, 40 years, which is incredible that he's an active working director, as relevant as today as he ever was. He's worked in crazy post -apocalyptic worlds and just a world where there's a little global warming and trapping of animals. It's kind of amazing. But it is bombing at the box office. Did you know that?

Paul Povolni (47:46.247)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (47:56.327)
Right?

Paul Povolni (48:09.319)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (48:12.999)
I heard that. I heard that. That was disappointing, but I heard that.

Chris Do (48:15.502)
Yes, it is disappointing. And I go and look at Rotten Tomatoes. It has a 90 % score, which is very high for Rotten Tomatoes. Metacritic, right? And so I asked my family, fam, we're all going in different directions. People are going off somewhere for summer and I'm going to be traveling soon. Do you guys want to watch this film together? And they're like, what is Furiosa? I'm like, and I explained it to them. And they're like, dad, why would you want to watch this? We have no interest. Here's what I said. One.

Paul Povolni (48:24.391)
Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Do (48:45.518)
George Miller's a genius. I want to make sure he keeps getting the rights to make the films that he wants to make. Number two, it's the first time a male -dominated cast is being led by Anna Taylor -Joy, a woman. If we want to say we want more diversity as leading roles for women, because a bunch of these superhero films being led by women are bombing at the box office. The Marvels, Madame Web, and now Furiosa is going down. What does that say?

Paul Povolni (48:51.239)
Right.

Paul Povolni (49:09.127)
Right. Right.

Chris Do (49:14.894)
for all the like thumping of chest and pumping of fists to say like, we want to change the system. If we don't spend money to support the things, even if it's not a good film, we just need to go. Because it's important. Now, look, I don't want to tell you all this thing that people are like, Chris is going as liberal like flag waving thing. I'm not I'm not virtue signaling. This is true. I am going to go see this film. Now, if I got a 12 % review, I'm like, George, we can't always bat 100 or 1000.

Paul Povolni (49:27.847)
Right. Right.

Paul Povolni (49:36.103)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (49:44.615)
Right, right, right.

Chris Do (49:45.102)
We sometimes miss one and that's okay. But here I am like, I have to see it. It's George Miller. I want to support him. I know it's going to be great. He hasn't made a bad film. And you know what? I want to make sure that the studios say it's okay to have a female lead. We just need good films for them to work on. That's all. Right? Madame Webb is a stinker. Don't waste your time watching that. It was a piece of garbage film. Guys, I don't care how many.

Paul Povolni (50:04.199)
Right, right, right, right. I haven't watched that one.

Chris Do (50:12.43)
Actresses, the A -listers, they put in that. It's a piece of garbage. The script was messed up to begin with. But that's what happens when Sony runs a film.

Paul Povolni (50:16.711)
Yeah.

No, I actually liked the Marvels. I thought the Marvels surprised me. I was going into that thinking I'd hate it because I think Captain Marvel was just, it just was not done right. But when I saw the Marvels, I was actually surprised by how much I enjoyed it. But that bombed as well.

Chris Do (50:35.79)
Yeah, it bombed as well. And there's all kinds of things like Brie Larson, no one wants to work with her and this and that. And I didn't love the Marvels. I didn't like the Elementals or what is it? Whatever. That was a bad film too. It's like, and they gave it to a woman to direct it. The Eternals, that's what it's called. The Eternals. Some of these films are, my God, guys, I love comic books, but I have a standard and you must meet that standard. And it did not meet the standard.

Paul Povolni (50:40.039)
And so.

Paul Povolni (50:51.463)
The Eternals. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (51:02.631)
Yeah. Do you think we're tired of superhero movies? Or we're just tired of bad ones? Yeah.

Chris Do (51:07.15)
No, we're just tired of crappy ones. Yeah, I am.

Paul Povolni (51:12.559)
So, you know, so we kind of moved into talking about movies when we're talking about, you know, also building a personal brand for the chiropractor or whatever, because I think there is power in you, producing content, being out there, being the face to represent it. and I think there is also the chance that your brand will be super tied in your personal brand will be super tied into your business. There's also the possibility that that is.

Chris Do (51:21.006)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (51:41.735)
not necessarily a negative thing because you're differentiating. And I love what you said about differentiation. You know, it's, it's not, and somebody else once said, it's not the best that's always wins. It's the best known that always wins. And to be the best known sometimes it's simply by differentiation, you know, is, is by doing something different, even, even in what you're communicating, even what you're doing visually, but just being different as opposed to being same, same, and everybody kind of wanting to compete who's doing this. Let me do the same thing, you know,

What's Quark doing in design does better, you know, and Illustrator and Photo, you know, and not saying we are totally different and something, something set apart from that. What are some other challenges that you see, you know, because you work with designers and helping designers help businesses. What are some other things that, that designers sometimes, the challenge they face in working with businesses.

Chris Do (52:14.542)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (52:34.951)
that you try and help them to negotiate that relationship and make sure that they're able to serve the businesses the best they can.

Chris Do (52:42.798)
Okay, I also need to answer your other question because I went off on this tangent, I may have derailed the entire podcast, Paul. So, well, you're a roofer. And there's 1000 roofers in your neighborhood. And if you can't be first to market, you better be different. Ideally, you'd be first and different and oftentimes first is different. So you have to be more different than first. That's the key.

Paul Povolni (52:50.183)
No, no, no, that was amazing. I'll talk superheroes all day, man. Yeah.

Chris Do (53:09.358)
So if you're a roofer and I get three bids and I don't know you from anybody, well, good luck with that. But you know what I'm seeing now? Like really boring jobs done by one person and they stand out. There's a guy who does pressure washing of driveways and there's another guy and he cleans rugs, these filthy freaking rugs. Or another person who cleans cars that are just, did somebody like forget about a car for three years and pull out of the barn?

Paul Povolni (53:39.079)
Ha ha.

Chris Do (53:39.246)
Because the cars this person works on are just horrific in their condition. Dirt and stains and moldy food in it. It's just horrific. And they go through and they meticulously clean things. They don't even say anything. Or a guy who mows the lawn and trims the hedges and things like that, there's overgrown things. I don't know if you've seen any of these videos, but he'll knock on the door and he's like, hey, I'm just in the neighborhood. I just saw that you have an overgrown lawn. I'm not here to sell anything.

I was just wondering if you would mind if I would just do this free of charge because I make content I just would like to do this for you.

Paul Povolni (54:12.455)
dude, you can't believe how many of those I've watched. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Do (54:15.15)
Okay, so we're in the same boat, right? So now think in an average suburban neighborhood, how many people might do gardening and landscaping, but the only one we'll talk about is the one who does that video. Boring average me too ho -hum businesses can stand out because they understand how to create differentiation. They know how to tell a story. And so now like when we're thinking about it, it's like, I don't want any person. I want that guy. I want that gal.

Paul Povolni (54:28.391)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (54:43.175)
Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Do (54:44.334)
I don't want just anybody. And so if you do $100 ,000 a year and you want to differentiate, pay attention. Okay. I think I landed that plane now. Is that all right? Okay. Now we'll go to the whole, what can we do for designers and how can they overcome the certain challenges in working with clients? The first question I have for you is designers have lots of challenges. They have mostly self -inflicted wounds regarding money or regarding process.

Paul Povolni (54:54.983)
Yeah, that's awesome.

Chris Do (55:14.062)
their discomfort talking about business, poorly positioned, and just not knowing how to generate leads. Now, of all the challenges they might have, where should we focus the conversation, Paul?

Paul Povolni (55:24.551)
Okay, so probably there's two parts even to that. The first part is, we went through an era of where bad design was working, with the whole click funnel type era where it didn't matter, design seemed irrelevant, secondary. And then there's also the availability of graphic design is so prevalent that answering the question for even a business owner is how does...

Chris Do (55:40.846)
Secondary.

Paul Povolni (55:54.023)
Design make me money. How does like why why do I need to care about design? When others are making money without worrying about it at all

Chris Do (55:58.094)
okay.

Chris Do (56:04.974)
Yes, there's a quote here that I read in Marty Neumeyer's book, I think it was the brand gap about what design is. And I'm forgetting the person's name, but he's a Nobel laureate. And he defines design this way, one who devises a course of action to go from an existing condition to improve condition.

Well, that's like change management. OK, so a designer isn't someone who makes something red yellow that turns a square into a circle. A designer is one who understands your business needs, your marketing needs, your customer experience needs and says, hey, which one of these things is going to move the needle for you and engages you in a business dialogue and then goes away to devise.

Paul Povolni (56:30.823)
Mm -hmm.

Chris Do (56:55.822)
what the best approach is. And sometimes the best approach is you need a sales funnel expert. And I'm not that person. I believe that's what you need. And I'm not, I can't do it. I wish I could, but I can't. And sometimes it's like, you know, it turns out that the way the menu is designed is causing a delay that it's taking on average two minutes longer to put in an order. And so now you have a queue of frustrated customers and some of them just walk away.

So we can get people in and out and help you design a better menu. Now, I'm not talking about the typeface or the point size or the color and the contrast or the texture of the menu. I'm talking about design the menu. Like what items should be here? How should we structure this so that it makes the most sense? And how do we maximize the value for you as the business owner while creating the light and ease of use for the consumer? That's design Paul. So.

If you're asking this question like, well, how to make money on this, you're just looking at the problem the wrong way.

Paul Povolni (57:51.079)
Right.

Paul Povolni (57:56.615)
Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and I guess it comes down to asking them to what problem they're trying to solve, as opposed to saying, do you want bigger logo, bigger, you know, different color, different, whatever it's actually narrowing it down to what, what is the key thing that you're trying to solve as opposed to let me just start creating stuff for you. And hopefully it's pretty enough for you to approve it and pay for it.

Chris Do (58:21.486)
Yeah, the way I like to approach it, and there's a couple of steps in our frameworks that people can get their head wrapped around this. And I don't want to say this, like we have clients to blame, because they don't know how to have a conversation with us. The large portion of blame belongs to creative people who call themselves designers or under qualified who haven't trained, who are thinking very selfishly, self serving, narcissistically about what it is they want to do, and the client interfering with their creation of art. A lot of that we own, okay, everybody who's listening to this.

So we have to change and you have an opportunity to elevate yourself to be different than the than the vast majority of the practitioners who call themselves designers. I think the first question that we need to know is what is the goal? What is that you want to accomplish before we understand the problem? The goal is more important than the problem because absent what the goal is all problems seem legitimate. Okay, so what is the goal? And then when they tell us the goal, we need to ask them something to the effect of.

Paul Povolni (59:01.543)
Yeah. Right.

Paul Povolni (59:10.983)
Mmm, I love that.

Chris Do (59:18.638)
What is the reason why this goal is important to you? So then even the goal is not legitimate until we know the root cause of that. OK, now, and what we have to do is we have to do this dance between the goal and the reason for achieving this goal. And if it's the right goal for the right reason, then we can move to step two. And we've already lost most designers at this point because they'd even ask the question or they just accept the goal as a real goal. OK.

Paul Povolni (59:27.431)
Right, right.

Chris Do (59:48.782)
Once we determine what the goal is, we have to say, well, what's the challenge? What's the roadblock? That's the problem.

Paul Povolni (59:57.287)
Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Do (59:58.062)
And it's a very kind of logical flow here. There's a reason why I want to achieve this. And this is the goal I want to achieve. And this is the problem. Now I understand the obstacle that's standing in your way. And when I understand that, we can look at possible solutions.

Okay, but before we get there, we can say, okay, this is your goal. And there's an obstacle. What is the dream outcome look like to you? Like in your wildest dreams, if this were to work, what would that look like? So we're asking them to look into the future to describe to us a desired future state, which puts them at a much more positive state of mind. So we're helping them to frame this through not looking at the expense and the pain.

Paul Povolni (01:00:33.639)
Yeah, yeah.

Chris Do (01:00:44.654)
but where they like to be. When we're through the funnel or the tunnel, what does it look like? Are you sitting at the beach drinking a Mai Tai, enjoying beautiful Caribbean music? What are you doing? And then we asked them the flip side of that question is, what are your worst fears? What's going to happen? So it's kind of a heaven hell kind of situation like in heaven, this looks like this and hell looks like this. Well, I've wasted a lot of time. Okay, okay. I've missed deadlines. My partners are

Paul Povolni (01:00:46.823)
Right.

Paul Povolni (01:01:04.935)
Right.

Chris Do (01:01:12.878)
furious and they've canceled their contracts and I'm now working 80 hours a week making half as much money. Okay. Okay. All right. So they're giving you all the clues that you need, the parameters in which you can operate under such that hopefully you can draw the insight and say, well, based on everything you've told me, it sounds like this is what needs to happen. Is that correct? And like, yes. And so what you're doing there is you're helping them to get clarity on their problem.

the motivation and the potential solution and their worst fears. None of this is presenting, none of this is pitching, none of this is performative. I'm 100 % present to the conversation and now they have this clarity. At this point, I think they just start throwing money at you.

Paul Povolni (01:02:00.807)
That's amazing. And so for the, for the business owner that that's listening to this and realized, man, I, my designer did not even ask me any of that stuff. how did they have a conversation then with somebody that they're wanting to bring in to help them out with that stuff? What from their side of the conversation, what does that look like for them?

Chris Do (01:02:10.798)
Right.

Chris Do (01:02:23.534)
Yeah, I think hopefully this first time I'm using a metaphor like this, let's see if it fits. It's kind of like you asking yourself, why are my knees bruised and bloody when I just keep swimming on the shallow end of the kiddie pool?

Paul Povolni (01:02:38.727)
Yeah.

Chris Do (01:02:40.238)
Okay, people who swim on the deep end of the pool don't have the same problem of scraped knees. And it's because you've told yourself, I have $500 to do something. I'm gonna look on Fiverr, I'm gonna look Upwork. You've decided to stay in the kiddie pool to solve a big problem. So a gym run quote is something like this. Don't minor in the majors. Don't make a minor effort for a major result. And don't spend a major effort for a minor result. We're recalibrating here. We want to make a major effort for major result because

Paul Povolni (01:03:03.111)
Yeah.

Chris Do (01:03:09.55)
doing little things that don't matter, don't matter.

Paul Povolni (01:03:13.063)
Right, right.

Chris Do (01:03:14.222)
Why would we do that? So we have to say, okay, given what I know about the outcome that I'm hoping for, some percentage of that goal is appropriate amount of money. So if you are trying to attract new customers and you have a potential net gain of $400 ,000, at minimum, you're going to spend 40k for this, not 4k. And that's the problem. So what they're doing is they're saying, you know what, I got a really small hook.

I have a really small piece of bait. Why aren't I catching big fish? So with a little designer swim in who don't know what they're doing because they're students, they're third tier designers and they just found a random portfolio. They're not vetted. They don't have a process. They barely even are incorporated as a company. They swim in, they keep biting the bait. I can't make a meal out of this. You began the whole process the wrong way.

Paul Povolni (01:03:47.431)
Wow, yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:04:05.223)
Right.

Paul Povolni (01:04:08.967)
I love that. I love that. And I think, I think for some, that's a head smack moment because they've, they've, you know, wanted minimal investment in something that others that are succeeding have given big investment to. And then they're wondering, why am I not succeeding? Well, if you look at, you know, those that are succeeding, they've invested in things that you're shy of investing in. And so I think, I think that's pretty powerful. As we wrap this up, and maybe this is too big of a question to, to even end with, but.

You know, as, as you see creativity, you know, you're, you're in the creativity space, you're, you mentor and you help creatives on such a level. What is the evolution that you've seen in creativity and influence and just the business of design and what, how, how is it changing?

Chris Do (01:04:53.966)
I think creativity by its own very nature changes forms. And if that's what you are, if you're real creative, you just change forms, you morph. You take the shape, I think of water, which is what Bruce Lee says, be water, my friend, it takes the shape of the cup. It can be powerful, it can be gentle, it can be nurturing, it can be destructive, you just be water. So creativity in the 80s and 90s meant production art, ruling pens.

RubyLith and things like that. And that was creativity because we work within the constraints that we have. Desktop publishing comes along in the late 90s, early 2000s. And creativity meant digital typefaces, page layout programs, photo manipulation and editing. And then we get into the early to mid 2000s and we get into web design, web design 1 .0. So now we're talking about interaction design and understanding user flows. And so.

When we get stuck in the form of it, we're basically saying I'm to design myself into obsolescence. But if we say we are creative people and we go where creative things go, which is it takes whatever form it wants to take. So in the future, it's about running marketing campaigns that are quantifiable and measurable for for business results, not just for vanity metrics. We manage social accounts because everybody is actively building.

Paul Povolni (01:05:57.287)
Hmm. Wow.

Chris Do (01:06:18.318)
their footprint, telling their story to be radically different, not just different. We're helping people leverage video content to reach a broader audience. It's called a broadcast because you're casting to a broad audience. So we've learned the tools of how to create impactful, effective videos that gets watched, not because it's beautiful, not because you shot with an 8K sensor because nobody cares. Outside of a very small group of people, no one cares.

And if we move into culture design, if we move into information design, if we move into maybe ethics design or something that's bigger than just what something looks like, then we have a shot at making a real impact on the world. That's just evolution. And right now it's using AI power tools to leverage our thinking, our way of seeing the world, imagining things have yet to be produced.

and being playful with words so that we can come up with crazy combinations of things. It's a very exciting time to live in, Paul.

Paul Povolni (01:07:20.615)
It is, it is. I totally agree with that. And I, I mess with AI, it seems like daily, just trying to figure it out and learn it. And it is such an exciting time, for creatives. It's kind of like the next big evolution of what we're doing. I think, you know, the, the internet and like all you've mentioned, the internet, the, the, the graphics computers, all of that stuff. I think the phone, the iPhone changed. That was kind of a, one of the big moves in society and culture.

that has impacted us. And I think this is kind of the next one that is unavoidable, unignorable. It's just a part of the future and what we're going to be very, it's going to be a part of our lives and we can't avoid it. And so this has been amazing, Chris. I can't believe how quickly time has flown and I know we could have gone deeper and further and wider on a lot of things, but this has been amazing. And for those that want to follow along with what you're doing,

What's the best way to connect with you and follow along with what you're doing?

Chris Do (01:08:21.294)
I think the best thing you can do is find me anywhere on social media. I'm at the Chris Do and last name is spelled Do D -O. You can go to the future. And if you're interested in programs that we have, we run a coaching community called the Future Pro. There's a customer success roadmap quiz that you can take, which will give you one of five or six possible options that my education director Stephanie Owens has put together that includes resources, tips and guides and things like that with links that.

if you were to do it will hopefully prepare you for the next level. And so be on the lookout for that. If you all you have to do is go to the future .com and you can find the quiz and take it.

Paul Povolni (01:08:58.183)
That's awesome. And definitely check out Chris on YouTube has a lot of great content. That's how I first got introduced to Chris. First time I saw him was creating content online and then absolutely loved what he had to say. And so definitely look him up on, on their future pro group. I encourage you to join if you're a designer or a creative, I'm a part of that as well. I've been a part for a couple of years and absolutely super high value. The calls that we get to have and the coaching and the hot seats and all of that is.

Incredibly value even for somebody like me that's been in it for 30 years. I still learn things I still get refined I get things chipped away bad thinking, you know off thinking and so I do encourage you to also check out the future pro group Chris Thank you so much, man. This has been awesome

Chris Do (01:09:41.294)
Thanks, Paul. Thanks for that head smack moment.