The MOOD Podcast

In The MOOD Podcast, Matt Jacob, renowned cultural portrait photographer, dives deep into the world of photography and the visual arts, with guests from all around the creative industry, across all parts of the globe, sharing inspiring stories and experiences that will leave you wanting more. With years of experience and a passion for storytelling, Matt has become a master of capturing lesser-told human stories through his photography, and teams up with other special artists from around the world to showcase insights, experiences and opinions within the diverse and sometimes controversial photography world.

You can watch these podcasts on his Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@mattyj_ay.

You can also follow Matt's work on his Instagram @mattyj_ay and his website: https://mattjacobphotography.com.

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The MOOD Podcast

Is Creativity Enough? Chris Do's advice for creatives, content, and The Futur - E100

October 08, 2025 • Matt Jacob

“If you don’t value yourself, why should anyone else?”

Chris Do is an Emmy-award-winning designer, founder of The Futur, and one of the most sought-after creative educators on the planet. With his huge audience and decades of experience building creative businesses, Chris helps designers, artists, and entrepreneurs master the business of creativity and the self-brand.

In this episode, we explore the psychology of pricing, the future of content, and how creatives can build meaningful, profitable careers without selling out.

What we talk about:

How to price your creative work with confidence
The mindset shift that changed everything for Chris
Why the algorithm rewards authenticity
The real reason most creatives burn out
How to turn content into clients
AI, abundance, and staying relevant
Why storytelling is your most powerful business tool
How to move from freelancer to entrepreneur
Building your audience one post at a time

Subscribe to the MOOD Podcast for more conversations with the world’s leading creative thinkers.

Follow Chris and his work:
Website: www.thefutur.com
Instagram: @thechrisdo
YouTube: @ChrisDo

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Matt: 0:00

Welcome to the Mood Podcast and covering the art of conversation through the lens of photography and creativity, one frame at a time. I'm, of course, your host, Matt Jacob, and thanks so much again for joining me in today's epic conversation. My guest is Chris Doe, Emmy Award-winning designer, founder of the global education platform The Future, and one of the most influential voices teaching creatives how to turn their skills into sustainable businesses. Chris has helped millions of designers, filmmakers, writers, and artists navigate the worlds of branding, entrepreneurship, content, and personal growth. Now, I guess you might be asking, why feature Chris on a podcast that is mostly revolves around photography? Well, the truth is the challenges facing photographers and artists today aren't really about cameras or gear, of course. I talk about this all the time. They're about survival in an era of AI, attention economics, with constant demand to adapt. And what Chris teaches us universally to all creatives is how to build a personal brand that's authentic, how to price your work with confidence, how to future-proof yourself in a world where algorithms and avatars threaten to replace us, and how to basically build an artistic and entrepreneurial business. So we talk about everything from why personal branding is the creative's ultimate superpower to the psychological barriers that keep so many artists broke, to what new opportunities exist in an AI-driven world. And we also hear Chris sharing framework steps and practical advice on how to stay relevant over time. Now, whether you're a photographer, a filmmaker, or any kind of creative wanting to be a creative entrepreneur, this conversation is about more than making a living. It's about reclaiming your worth, building something only you can offer and finding resilience in the face of constant change. So please listen, take notes, wish you the best of luck, and thank you again for listening. Here is Christo. Christo, oh, what a pleasure to have you on the Mood Podcast. Thanks so much for joining me today. Thanks for having me, Matt.

Chris Do: 2:16

I appreciate you making the time and being so flexible.

Host: 2:18

Yeah, no, uh, we we are other sides of the world, as is kind of common with me, um, with a lot of my guests. So I really appreciate you taking your what is it, Sunday afternoon out from your extremely busy schedule, I'm sure. Um, so without further ado, I'm just gonna jump in and and um put you on the spot multiple times for the next hour or so. Um the big thing that I think, you know, as a photographer, as someone who's wants to be, you know, the solopreneur going into a scalable, somehow scalable full-time income. Uh I'm kind of a representative or avatar of so many people out there, especially in my audience. What is the one thing at the moment that we are maybe not talking about that we should be when it comes to how to be a creative entrepreneur and be entrepreneurial with our passion and what we want to do with that craft going into, I guess, 2026 and beyond?

Guest: 3:10

Okay. Many ways to unpack this, Matt. The first thing is a lot of people think they're entrepreneurs or solopreneurs when they're actually just freelancers and they haven't figured out how to run a business. And the telltale sign is when I ask people how much money you're making, they'll tell me a number. And I say, well, if we had to pay somebody to do your work for you, how much money would be left over? So that you you actually don't touch anything. You're not allowed to touch anything, you're allowed just to manage. And when we put it that way, then most of them are negative revenue or negative profit, I should say. They don't understand that what they're really doing is not building a business, but just charging some kind of project day rate in which there are no in guarantees for future work. There's no guaranteed income, there's nothing like that. That and that's a surprisingly common mistake that a lot of quote-unquote entrepreneurs are making or solopreneurs. They haven't even entered into entrepreneurship.

Host: 4:03

Where do we start? Then, you know, if we're thinking, my biggest concern for many, let's I bring it back to myself, but I'm a great example of many out there as a as probably one of those types of people and very, very concerned about pushing too much to because I'm worried that it's gonna de um desensitize or I'm gonna lose that passion for what I want to do. And so there's this, there's this kind of no man's land between, you know, getting a little bit of income and being kind of that freelance persona and then scaling into something that is scalable and sustainable, but without losing, you know, really why we do this in the first place. Where do we even, where do we even start with this?

Guest: 4:45

All right. Let's clarify then. I think what I understand you saying is if I just hire people to do the work, then what am I doing? Am I just a corporate uh paper pusher? Is that what I do? I'm a telephone artist where I just telephone people and tell them what to do. Okay, so let's just assume then that you want to do the work yourself. And that's there's nothing wrong with that. But if you were to to uh bid the projects as if someone else were working on it and leave room left over for profit, then you ventured into at least entrepreneurship. So let's just say to hire a comparable photographer to do what you do, to put them on salary, it would cost about 120K. Let's just say that for round numbers, okay? It could be more or less. It doesn't really matter. Just use this number as an illustration. And then there's probably a project manager of some sort. Some of us have reps, they do that for us, but you need some kind of project manager to do the bidding, to do the contracts, to book different people. So that person has to be accounted for. Let's say this person is 65K on an annual basis. We need to look at everything on an annual basis because every time I ask people how much it costs, they start quoting me hourly or day rates. That's how I know they're not thinking of it as an entrepreneurship thing. Okay. Now, if you had to pay these people this amount of money, in most places to cover their taxes and insurance and some liability stuff, you probably have to add another 20% on top of that. Okay. So that is just your base labor costs. We're not accounting for overhead, for software, for uh purchasing of equipment, things like that. When you start adding all that stuff up, it starts to look like a really big number. And then when you have all that number totaled up, that's just your break-even number. You need to add in profit to that. So you're going to add in 20 to 25%. Cool. Now you have understanding how to build a business. Here's the cool part you can still choose to do the work. And here's the best part, which is you just choose to do the projects that you feel most passionate about. You maybe you don't want to do retouching. Maybe you don't want to scout locations, maybe you don't want to do test shoots. That's what an assistant photographer or an assistant is able to do for you. Or, you know, it's the 10th dog food commercial or photo shoot, and you don't really want to do it anymore. You've done the nine, you don't need to do the 10th one. The tone, the style, all that's been set up. And you want to get yourself to that point in which you're doing the high-level creative stuff. Now, I've been fortunate to work on campaigns. And I remember one time when we flew to China, we were working with one of the biggest fashion photographers in China. And she had three sets going on at the same time all the time. Three simultaneous projects going on. And you know what she did? She walked in after somebody had done all the lighting setup, she made some notes, they fixed it, and she came in, they handed her the camera, she pushed a button a couple of times, and then she walked on to the next set. And the whole machine has been built around this. So you could say, like, what is the most essential thing that you have to do and that gives you joy that no one else can do? Everything else you can delegate to someone else. So I'm not saying that you have to be removed from the business. You can just choose which parts you enjoy the most.

Host: 7:43

What if we don't want to work for other people, i.e., have that the commercial distance or connection between us and receiving a paycheck, right? What if we want to go down, really dive into the self-brand route and figure out what we're worth in in that respect, especially in the content world, the social media world, and this attention economy that we live in. How can we dive into that if we don't want to be sequestered by some brand and some commercial entity that's dictating our creative outlet and how much we're gonna get paid?

Guest: 8:17

So you want to be free from doing client work, right? This is fantastic. So you're gonna move into the realm of content creator slash artist. And so what I would recommend most people do is keep the client work going, but don't let that be the only thing that you're working on. Start side thing. And this is where you need to build up an audience. Okay. Now, let's just say that you really enjoy fine art photography. You want to be the next Ansel Adams or whoever it is that makes beautiful art that people just want to buy and hang in galleries. This is cool. And you can do this, right? And so you can build up a body of work and probably go and hit the streets and try and find a gallery, do a group exhibit, and then eventually get to a solo show and hobnob with museum curators and artists and rich people, and so that your name gets known. And then you start working on your story because people will buy the image, but they're really buying the story behind the image maker. And so you have to develop your own mythology. And I think that's a good thing. So this is where you're doing brand building. Um, there's a family friend, uh pretty distant, who was an aspiring artist. And he worked in his parents' restaurant. And one day, uh, one of the patrons who come to the restaurant, they love the food, noticed a painting on the wall, a painting that he had done. And the he the patron asked, Where did that painting come from? And he was so embarrassed that it was his that he thought it was like, oh my gosh, it's mine. So he didn't know what to do. But eventually, what has happened is that person said, I want to buy that painting. And he has this other career and he's able to build it. But here's the real interesting thing. You know, his hook, his point of differentiation is he would go and source rare earth materials and make his own paints. So maybe the painting is the same. Maybe it looks the same to everybody, but the fact that he makes his own paints, which many painters do not do, gives it a different kind of story. And then they start building this thing up, and now he has enough money to buy an island kind of thing. So that's that's option one. Option number two is you make content that commands a lot of attention and there's a lot of engagement. You shoot things that is your form of self-expression, and a lot of people tune in to watch it. And now you can do brand deals. Now you still have a client in a way, but it's not the same relationship because there's a lot more leverage on your side. You get to make your art and somebody's like, we love what you do, Matt. We would love for you to do it with our thing. Would that be possible? Then you're like, well, if you're willing to pay this amount and I get to do whatever I want, then yes, we can do this. And they can pay you tens of thousands, sometimes six figures or more, depending on how big you are and what kind of audience you can command. You can do all three simultaneously, by the way. You don't have to choose one or the other. It's not a zero-sum game.

Host: 11:00

Yeah. I think the big lesson there, and and I talk about this all the time as well with my students, is just figure out, you know, the story is under underpinning all of this, right? But diversity of income or diversity of revenue streams and and you know, those opportunities is super important as well, especially in that artist's self, self-brand world. But let's let's unpack the content thing a little bit because it's it's such a maze, right? And and the way you do the way you describe all this is is so articulate, by the way. And make it sound simple. In reality, it's simple on paper, but it's just going out and not being a princess and just gonna smash this is is obviously hard work. And so I just want to caveat that. The content thing is a whole different ball game altogether. And you being a master of content, and we're gonna kind of get into a little bit of your background in a minute, but where what you know with with AI right here, we were talking about this before we kind of went live, and this potential situation where things are gonna change very rapidly in the content space. Uh I mean, they have been anyway, but even more so probably over the next 12 months. Where do you see the opportunities lie in the content um space as an individual artist and self-brand? But more importantly, how do we even build that audience? You talk about like creating audience. Isn't building an audience just gonna be more and more difficult?

Guest: 12:20

I I think for the short term, it is going to be more difficult because there's a proliferation of AI-generat. And what's happened is there's a flood of quote-unquote image makers and photographers who previously had no experience doing this kind of stuff. So instead of competing against 100,000 photographers, you are probably competing against 10 million plus photographers and image makers. And it's you you're most definitely under threat. You may have seen the client pipeline slow down or people asking for ridiculously old prices, and you're feeling that downward pressure. I'm sure I'm not saying anything new to anybody, and you're probably like really angry and it's like, God, I'm freaking AI, I hate AI. You know what? If we could collectively hold hands and just say a prayer and then make the AI stuff go away, we should do that. But in the world that I live in, that doesn't happen. And so what we have to do is we have to make a decision. Now we can stay with it the way we've been doing it for the last 10, 20 years, or we can try to um adopt AI tools into our workflow and try to imagine more. Um, I've noticed a couple of things because I consume a lot of content. I've noticed people who report on the fashion industry about how certain streetwear brands have blown up. They are a photography or image-based brand. And so they create a narrative or they create surrealistic visuals. And I'm sure when I look at these images, pre-AI was kind of expensive and difficult to do. This is a good thing for them because that means the images will stand out. They'll pop. And that's what kind of disrupts the social feed, right? But if you're a smaller uh upstart brand, you're like, we can't afford to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to do this. What if that idea doesn't work? So if you want to stand out and you can't afford to take on this gigantic financial expenditure because you're still relatively new in the marketplace, you go work with somebody with vision and they can imagine incredible things and use their artistic eye to shoot some or all or parts of and expand or mix and match? Uh, and and the the what you can create today in a very uh from photoreal to hyper-stylized can be created with the right person and a curatorial eye.

Host: 14:27

But how how do we build that audience if we're just gonna have 95% of content being AI avatars? Well, what what do you mean? Well, if we if if at the the core of being this self-brand and being successful, scalable self-brand is creating an audience, right? And through content, how do we do that if we're not if it's not ourselves and we're just competing against so much AI content?

Guest: 14:54

Well, it's just like this. Like you can say, like, if there were a hundred million cameras available to everybody, would that make everyone a great photographer? Probably not, because everybody has access to paintbrushes and paint and canvas. That does not make you a good artist. And so there's still this kind of art part, this thing that's imagination and that drives the creativity. And what I would do is if I was a photographer image maker today, I'm like, here's how I turn this into this, and I'll walk you through the process, right? Here's how we made something uh look like it costs $300,000 for this uh fictitious fashion brand or this automotive brand or this uh yeah consumer electronics brand. Here's what I made. And I'll I didn't just make this, I turned it into this, this, this, and that. And you just keep doing that. And eventually someone on the other side's like, we need that person, we need Matt, we need Chris, we need Betty to do this for us. Because when you show someone how to do something, this is the common mistake people have, is they're like, wow, that was really complicated. Let's just call the person. I'd rather just work with someone who knows what they're doing. Right. Okay.

Host: 15:57

So why it brand, brand, you know, is such a kind of almost dirty word. And I think we conflate it too much with, you know, the the corporate, you know, logo meaning of the word. When we're looking at the individuals and the artists, right, who are now trying to, let's say I'm this, I'm this person, I'm Betty, right? Who's in a nine to five and loves photography, but is really and wants to do it because she's miserable in a nine to five. She every hour of the of her spare time, she's out building a body of work and understanding that, okay, well, I need to be good at photography to even start getting out there. But she's at that stage now where she's like, I'm really, I don't even know how I can even turn this into some kind of revenue generating craft, revenue generating art or business, because AI is going to just generate images anyway. The content world is just explode even more. So the competition is even higher. How am I going to stand out from the crowd? It's very overwhelming for someone who's certainly just kind of starting out and figuring, well, I love this so much and I want to do this for the rest of my life. But how do I even use content to monetize? Or how do I create a self-brand that is able to be monetized? Right. Is that through using the self-brand content to deliver more human experiences? And I don't want to keep going on about AI, but it's it's relevant anyway. How do we how do we use that content if someone just doesn't want to create content? They just want to take photos and go and do fine art, let's say, or go and go and do travel photography or something like that. Where does content fit into all of this if it's just this necessary evil and there's so much competition out there?

Guest: 17:49

Yeah, I think we have to have a big um reframe and the mindset has to be shifted here for us to enter into productive conversations about what we can and cannot do. If you are doing whatever it is that makes you happy and you're able to sustain yourself in any way that you define to be successful, continue doing that. There's no reason why you need to do anything else. But there's a good chance if you're listening to this or watching this somewhere, it's because you're asking yourself these very questions like, I don't see the trend lines moving in a direction which would make me happy. I need to decide, I gotta switch careers, I gotta do something totally different, or I'm gonna listen to this bozo and just say, like, what are my options? Okay. I read recently something that they said um social media has democratized reach like and distribution. Like we all have the same access to the same distribution models, whether it's on Instagram, YouTube, uh, TikTok, podcasts, LinkedIn, whatever it is, we have the same access to distribution. Uh but what it's done is diluted our perceived expertise because everybody now is a quote unquote expert. That's not true. It just means that for the general uninformed public, it's hard for them to tell what beginner, intermediate, and advanced level creativity looks like because we're just not that trained. I'll give you an example. Let's just say you like food, but you're not a foodie. So if I took to a sushi restaurant and it ranged from like $300 to $30 to $3, you might not be able to tell the difference. You're like $3, please. And you know what? I'd be wasting the materials and the craftsmanship of giving you a $300 bite of sushi. We could argue about that or not. So the problem here is why does one pay in 10x or 100x of the next person? Mostly because it's the way we we make people feel about what the experience itself. Uh Seth Rog, uh not Seth Rogan, Seth Godin wrote a brilliant book called All Marketers Are Liars. They create a story, and we, the consumer, are complicit in the lie. When we drink a certain brand of beer, wine, or drive a certain kind of car, wear a certain brand of watch, we tell ourselves a story. This is rare. This is for only a few people. Only if you're successful, only if you have good taste, only if you could tell the difference between X, Y, and Z. Only if you brought up a certain way and grew up on a certain in a certain city doing certain things. And we're complicit in a lie. So we tell ourselves these stories. The problem is most creatives are not very good at understanding the psychological triggers that make for a good story. So they tell the story of production. Here's the thing I made. Please love it. And absent a story, it's a commodity. That's the problem.

Host: 20:28

Wow. Blew my mind. That's fascinating. And I think certainly on the photographic level, what visual arts, like we're always trying to tell stories. I think that's really what separates good from great. Certainly, just speaking about the art itself. Now we have to think about also how we're gonna, how we're gonna buy people into our story as much as the story with which we're telling. And then there's just kind of like this this beautiful ecosystem that hopefully if we get it right, we can really bring people into our world, right? So um let's rewind a little bit um because some people may be watching this, certainly photographers who may not know who you are. I obviously do, which is hence why you're on the podcast. But why why should we be listening to you, Chris? Give it give us an idea of your pedigree, your background, and and and some of those kind of success stories.

Guest: 21:16

Okay. I want to preface first of all, you don't need to listen to me at all. I will answer your question, but I do not want to make a case for you to listen to me. I always look at it like this. Uh, if there's, yeah, if there's a fire out there and people are burning, I'm like, you you want to wear this oxygen mask? I'm not forcing you to. It's just here. If you want to use it, take it. If you don't, you're like, no, I got this. Uh fire doesn't affect me. It's all good. I'm gonna be okay. You know, I'm just offering people options. And if it tickles your brain, if it piques your curiosity, then maybe you might want to just lean in a little bit. Okay. I'm a traditionally trained graphic designer. I graduated from Arts Center and I started a production company. We did production and post-production called Blind for 24-ish years since 1995, which I did a lot of work for advertising agencies. We're the production studio. So we directed mostly commercials and music videos. So I have a long multi-decade history in creating art design motion graphics at the highest level, won a couple awards, one of which is the Emmy. I've been featured in a lot of magazines and books. And in around 2014, a buddy of mine asked me to make content on YouTube. I thought this was stupid, but I did it. And deciding to do so changed the life of my, and uh changed my life, my career, and my business so much so that I am also free of the client work that you talked about, that I get to make content as a full-time living. I have a small team of about five people with additional three independent contractors to do work with me for me. And this is how I make a living now. What I do is I speak from that place of having run a production company that did on the low end a couple million dollars, on the high end, almost $7 million a year for 20-ish years. So I've I'm just telling you, I've I've done some of this work before. I'm not saying I know everything, but I knew some, I do know some things. And I try and teach creative people how to communicate and to price their work so that they get the maximum value for the art and creativity they put out into the world.

Host: 23:15

And that is um, that's called the future, right? Which is your essentially a content company. Now tell me about this this content lab, which I know nothing about, but um you you mentioned it earlier. Tell us a little bit about what that is and and how that's out helping creators.

Guest: 23:31

Yes. So for the, I guess for the last 11 years, I've had this hypothesis that artists, designer types need to speak the language of business. And I've been working on this really hard for the last 10, 11 years. So if you see some of my content on how to price a logo or something or negotiating with a tough client, that was the intention behind that, to teach people how to speak the language of business. In the last couple of years, I found that there's this whole other group of people, mostly business people, that were artists or designers or creatives trapped inside. And I didn't know this world existed. And so what they want to do is they want to get their crowns back, they want to make things and they want to express themselves because the corporate left brain world for them is just killing all of their life force and their energy. And so I thought, wow, I've been working on this for like 10, 11 years. I want to try this other thing where I help coaches, authors, entrepreneurs to express themselves, use the social platforms to communicate their ideas, to transform people's lives, to develop authority, to increase their reach and engagement. And it's called content lab. It's mostly writing-based. So we have ideas, we turn ideas into words, and sometimes those words make sense and we might speak them out loud, and the camera may or may not be on. And so I I've been able to grow on multiple platforms a decent sized following. So here's the um here's the receipts, as the kids would say. 2.7 million followers on YouTube, then move to Instagram, just cracked a million followers, all organic, no black hat, uh, no gray hat. It's all white hat stuff. And then I'm about to crack six and so a white hat is just like by the book, by the rules. Black hat is illegal, uh, buying robot followers, farms. Gray hat might be like engagement groups, some some gray area, you know, like it's not illegal. It's but if you told everybody that's what you're doing, they might look at you a little bit differently. So what I did was I just learned how to create content that people uh connect with. So I I what I'm saying is create content that cuts through the clutter. That's what I help people do.

Host: 25:35

So where is that, where is that kind of punctuation now in you in the content world as you see certain opportunities or certain limitations? You know, for example, has your, you know, do you see reach dropping? And if so, how do you kind of pivot and kind of get more engagement? Where do you see opportunities going towards the end of 2025 into next year?

Guest: 25:57

Yeah, that's a great question, by the way. Every time there's a shift in the way the world works, a new emerging trend, a different uh currency that's being adopted, or a different form of distribution, it threatens the existing world, but it creates opportunities for the new world. And this happens all the time. So when we moved away from horses to automobiles, well, the horse and carriage industry was decimated, obviously, and the automotive world was booming. And now when we shift away from petrol based cars to electric-based cars, there's another world that's closing and another one that's opening up. So we see things like every time the algorithm or a new social platform opens up, the way that you get attention is a little bit different. But I want to say this, I want to confess to everybody I know very little bit, I know very little about social media itself. I do not follow algorithms, I don't do content hacks, I don't do templates. And surprisingly, my content still works, I still grow an audience, and I'm affirmed by this one concept, which is really thoughtful, intentional content that's designed to help other people will grow no matter what platform you're on. It requires no tricks. It just requires that you know what you're doing. So I often tell people I can only help people who are really good at what they do because I'm not in a place to teach you to be good at what you do. You put in the 10,000 hours of work, I will tell you what you're doing wrong and how you can improve it because most of us don't know how to write in this social platform, right? We're used to like doing English essays and from literature class, and we're used to writing topic sentence and supporting paragraphs. We're we're using all the proper grammar. We try to sound smarter, so we use fancy six dollar words instead of speaking like a fifth grader. Those are all the things that get in the way of someone connecting with your content. You'll notice that if you read a lot of my posts, if you watch or listen to the things I talk about, I don't use those six dollar words. I really try to keep it simple because complexity is the enemy of understanding, of comprehension, of recall. And if people don't know what you do, they cannot tell other people what you do. That's the problem.

Host: 28:07

Articulation, communication, um just basic stuff. Just but it it well, it seems basic, right? But it, you know, people get distracted by fads and hacks and algorithms, and we've got to do this and got to post a million times a day and then just see what happens. And you know, it can be overwhelming. I get that. I I get overwhelmed. There's there's the Christos of the world giving us information about this, and then there's someone else saying completely the opposite. And the same can be said for health, photography, everything, business, everything, right? So as this proliferation of content just gets so much, we don't know where to turn our heads. So simplifying a lot of that and you know, reminding people, I guess, that you know, just just learn how to communicate and authentically, and you know, people will people will engage with you. So, can you are you able to give us um some kind of you know basic frameworks of where one might say without obviously giving content, uh giving information or idea from the content? Well, certainly when it comes to content, yeah, go on.

Guest: 29:07

Yeah. I want to say this. You know, like you might have like a friend or a cousin, a relative, distant one that's really homely, and you think to yourself, that guy, that gal will never find anybody. And then years later on, you know what? They're married, they have kids, and it's like, ah, two ugly people found each other, two really boring or two really annoying hot people found each other. Do you know what I mean? So why did I just say that? Not just to be funny and flip. But I say that because in this world where there's hyperpolarized content, brush your teeth, and then eat, eat, and then brush your teeth, you know, like directly opposing content. We have now created a society where there's hyper niche content, localized niche content. So that means that if you're the person who wants to talk about using analog cameras from like Hasselblod or Leica or Olympus, vintage, glass, and all these kinds of things, and you only shoot portraits of dogs. Harry dogs, big hairy dogs, and you only want to do it in Asia, there's a market for you. And I think this is lovely. And so the more the more specific that you are with your content, the more likely you are to dominate an entire group of people. And Kevin Kelly writes about this. You only need a thousand true fans to make a decent living. Okay. And there's probably, for any kind of niche, no matter how small it is, there's probably a thousand people who are like diehard fans of it. And you could do that. I see people, and this is really weird, they restore vintage film posters. This is what they do. And I just watch their content. I'm like, I don't have a vintage film poster. They'll wash it, they'll repair it, and they'll paint back the missing parts, they'll back it onto like um acid-free paper. And I just watch and rebuild this post. I'm like, this is freaking awesome. This is clearly a dying art, but there's enough people that watch this kind of content, I believe, that means that they actually make more money from the production of the content than they do the restoration process. It's just an excuse.

Host: 31:08

So how do they make money? So, you know, let's say we get our, and I talk, I totally agree with you on all of this. There's an audience for everyone. It's just a it's just sometimes difficult to find that audience, right? And this is where the core brand narrative process is super important to kind of distill and go through. But once you let's say we get we were able to find our thousand true fans, then what? Right? So it's, I mean, I know this is nuanced completely and individual to everyone's uh situation, but I'm a photographer and I've I've been posting these types of, I don't know, BTS videos and talking about these vintage cameras and really kind of super niching down into the parts and the specific glass and the vintage nature of these cameras. Great. We love your content, but then what? How do I get money out of these people?

Guest: 31:54

Have you read Kevin Kelly's 1000 True Fans? It's an online article. Okay, so you know the answer to this question already. So you need a thousand people to be able to give you $100 net, not just gross, right? So you have to be able to net profit $100 from each of these 1,000 true fans on an annual basis. So then you start thinking to yourself, what kinds of things could I provide to someone that they would find to be valuable? If you wrote a book, if you created LUTs, if you maybe created a marketplace for secondhand vintage glass and you made $10 off each transaction, you just brought people together. You could hold meetups, you can do seminars, you could do walk and talks where you go for a three-mile hike and you all bring your cameras and you just talk about nature photography. Or you can do like a pet grooming thing and everybody shoots and you rent the dog and the studio and everybody comes in and is able to build their portfolio. There's lots of ways to get there. You know, Alex Ramosy very famously recently did $3 million of book sales for a $30 book. So three million book sales. So that's a $90 million book launch at $30 a book. So it doesn't even have to be a big expensive product. And he basically made more money in a single day of a book launch than most of us will do in our entire lifetimes combined. And so he was able to build up true fans for a number of years so that when he went to ask for something, they were happy to give him the money.

unknown: 33:22

Yeah.

Host: 33:22

And isn't it funny that we we we because I saw that as saw part of that book launch and um I didn't buy it, but it, you know, I didn't it I've bought his $100 million offer book before, and and I wasn't buying because I'd seen insights of the book. I didn't even, I didn't even look at the book, right? You're buying because it's Alex Hormosy and you know he's the shit and you know he knows what he's talking about, but you buy into his story, you buy into his experience, and and and that's what people really need to pass from from this content world and this this um perception that you know I don't want to be Alex Hormosy, I don't want to sell out, I'm an artist, you know. And so you can have you can have both, you can have both of these worlds as symbiosis, and um and I'm really I'm glad you touched upon those thousand trues fans, the thousand true fans book because you know I'm I'm I'm doing it myself, but I'm still figuring really what people want, what the audience wants to see without trying to kind of sell out and dilute. But I think that's also an important part of it is you know, once you have an audience, involve them, right? Go to your audience and say, hey, look, what what what can I help you with? What else do you want to see? What what would you pay for? Right? Is it just five dollars a month for a community or you know, anything you don't have to kind of have this pressure on yourself, right? I've got this, I've got to do something with it. Before you know it, you'll be miserable, right? So I think there's there's an element of that. So when it comes to content lab, I just want to kind of wrap that up. Content lab is um, what is it? It's like a mentorship, or is it like a monthly course or workshops? How does it work?

Guest: 34:58

It is a monthly coaching program where we meet twice a month. So every other week. We meet for 90, no, on Zoom. It's 90 minutes long. And what we do is we have hot seat coaching. So each person that's able to submit their work, they're in a queue, so it's just done by whoever signs up first. I will review your work. So we'll look at work, we'll talk about it, we'll talk about what's wrong, and we will give you direct feedback on this. Now, inside of the group coaching program will be writing prompts, because I said it's very writing-based, to be able to learn how to communicate your ideas effectively to get greater reach and engagement through writing. So I have 52 week 52 writing prompts. That's one per week. You read the prompt and you write something, and it helps you to learn something about yourself, but it also allows your audience to learn something about you. So there's kind of a duality there. I have some guides that I'm working on in terms of how to tell better stories, how to write better headlines, and that that will help people because we're all pretty good at telling stories, I think, but some of us are world-class. And what we're trying to do is get somewhere between the uh campfire story to speaking on TED, right? So somewhere towards TED, but maybe we don't have to be at that exact level. And there's a lot that you can draw if you study TED Talks, which I have because I've had to give a lot of talks in my life, and so I understand how this stuff works. The other thing, too, is to learn how to write the way that you speak. It's really weird because we think we speak the way we write, it's the opposite. We write the way that we speak. And what we learned in in school is this formal way of writing, which is not really good for connecting with anybody. Can you elaborate on that? Yeah, yeah. So for example, uh, let's let's pick a story. Like, let's say there's a post that you wanted to make. Uh, let's let's design something. Where do you typically post content?

Host: 36:46

Me, Instagram.

Guest: 36:47

Yeah. Instagram. Okay. In what format?

Host: 36:51

Uh photos, but mostly reels. So podcast clips.

Guest: 36:56

Okay. And these are interviews with other people?

Host: 36:59

Interviews with other people interlaced with some uh, you know, just me talking to camera.

Guest: 37:04

Okay. Now, when okay, so you do some talking to camera. Is there something specific that you've either done or would like to do, and we can just workshop this together?

Host: 37:13

In terms of con uh in terms of the topic of conversation?

Guest: 37:17

Yeah, like where you're the authority, there's no one else where it's just you sharing your thoughts.

Host: 37:22

Yeah, um, finding your voice uh as an artist and as a as a photographer, it's really close to my heart.

Guest: 37:27

Okay. Basically, most content, most effective content at building community or generating business falls into one of two categories. If you tell a story, it's great for building engagement. It helps you to grow your audience, it's great, but it's not very good for you getting business. And this is where a lot of people get trapped, myself included. I tell a story, so I'm like, great, audience is growing, people love it, they respond highly engaged, but then how come our revenue is not moving at all? Then there's this other thing where you provide someone a tool or resource, and this is much better at getting you business. Okay. So when you say how to find your voice, that's most definitely a tool or resource. Okay. So let me just write this down. How to find your voice. Okay. So the first thing I would ask you to do is just I want you to think about where the where this whole story or this tool ends. What's the one thing you want them to be able to know and be able to do?

Host: 38:21

I guess understand how their their own personal story connects with the visual output. Okay.

Guest: 38:29

That sounds more like a ph philosophical thing. What's an action you want them to take at the end? To be able to know that they've learned this lesson? Portfolio. Okay. So you need them to make something?

Host: 38:43

Yeah, make a portfolio.

Guest: 38:45

Okay. And around somewhere around finding your voice, right?

Host: 38:49

Yeah. I mean, I think they're the try like having a having a good portfolio, you need to understand what your voice is, right? Otherwise, they're just a bunch of random images together.

Guest: 38:58

Okay. So I'm going to make a lot of assumptions because it would take too long for us to really literally go through this. Okay.

Host: 39:03

Love the free workshop, by the way. Yeah. Thanks.

Guest: 39:04

Yes. So what we want to do is we begin at the end. We figure out where this thing lands. And we need to know before we write and design and shoot and edit anything, is what's the one thing we want them to know and be able to do after reading this thing. Like a simple thing would be like how to deal with your exposure triangle, right? So to be able to take better exposures. That's an easy one. So we can understand that one. So then we think is there a story or a framework or some kind of demonstration that I can do that makes this really easy to understand for people? Okay. Now I'll I'll take it from the point, because you know, I don't know photography like you do, obviously. Uh let's take it from the point of view of typography, type, type, like how to design better. The number one thing about designing better is contrast. So just understand contrast. Okay. When your design isn't interesting, it's because it lacks contrast. And the biggest thing that you could do for contrast is size. So if I were to create a resource or to write a post, I would say contrast is king, right? Or you say if if the hook, the hook might be this uh concept or content is king or contrast is queen. So now what I've done, I've done is I've used language you're familiar with. I'm gonna add in something you might not be familiar with. And repetition, parallels like that are really good, like hooks for the brain. Say something I already know, say it again, but change something about it, and all of a sudden it becomes much more interesting.

Host: 40:30

So it's like building tension in that in that headline, right? And then you're gonna kind of and then you go into telling a story before you give the lesson. Correct.

Guest: 40:40

Now there's many ways to do this. You can give a demo, you can tell a story, or you can just teach the framework. Any and all of these things will work. Okay. So, and I don't want to overwhelm the person who's consuming this piece of content. There are many ways to create contrast. I just want to focus on size. There's color, there's texture, there's typefaces, there's there's a bunch, there's a bunch of other things that you can do in terms of like transparency and um if it's clean versus uh if it's dirty, if it's distressed. So I just want to focus on one because that's the other mistake that a lot of people make. They try and teach the whole thing and realize that somebody today wasn't exactly prepared to get to take a lesson from you. They're looking for a thing that they didn't know they were looking for. So all you have to do is get them to be curious. Okay. So I want to teach the lesson of contrast in terms of size. So the whole thing might be uh, like I said, if if content is king, then contrast is queen. Let me tell you what I mean. And I can show them like, look at this design, look at this design. Why is this one more appealing than this? Or I could do don't do this, do this, don't do this, do this. And what's the common theme? All of them have drastically different point sizes in terms of type. Here's something that's 20 point, there's a hundred point. And so when the two point sizes become really similar, it becomes very uninteresting for us. And a little bit goes a long way. For example, you can have one big letter or you can have a big quote mark with everything else being pretty small. And this is how you start to understand how to design better. Now, the person who looks at this piece of content says, wow, that was really good. Now I start to understand why my designs suck. What else does this person have? Then they'll swipe to the left and they'll dig into more of, oh, there's more lessons here. And then somewhere in each one of those lessons will be a call to action or a link to a topography course that you're going to teach and share with them. Here's a book I wrote. Uh, I'm doing a masterclass, I'm doing in-person workshop for two grand. Come see me speak at this thing. It doesn't always have to be to my benefit. Here's a shirt I made. I love type. Pay $36 for that. You can support me in some way. And going back to the Hermosy example, you said you bought the other book, not because you knew what was in it, but because you knew he was an authority. But I think there's a deeper reason why you bought that book and the reason why I buy things from people. And it's called reciprocity. You see, when somebody gives us value for a really long time, it doesn't sit right with us. And the reason why Alex was able to do a $100 million book launch, because so many people bought hundreds of books, not because they wanted a hundred books, because they felt in relation to the value in which they got from Alex, they needed to return some of that to balance the scale of reciprocity. So I have this new theory I'm working on. Okay. You're probably the first pod for me to say it, okay? You've you've heard of the attention economy, right? Like we're living in the attention economy. Those that can command, direct, and move attention will make all the money. They're the new millionaires and billionaires in the world. A subset of the attention economy is something I'm referring to as the giving economy. We've shifted away from the attention economy, which is look at me, I'm hot, I'm beautiful, look at my house, isn't this cool? To those who give value to other people will receive value in return. Not a one-to-one ratio, not from the same person, but this is how the world works. It's built on how societies function. Reciprocity. You've done something for me, I must do something for you.

Host: 44:20

Which blows my mind in the kind of rational sense, because you know, you think the world out there is extremely transactional, and why anyone would would give back to someone who A doesn't need it, but B just well, why, well, why? So it's that's a really, really interesting concept that um I think is extremely powerful. And I do agree with you in just from my own experience, like I've I've probably earned more, I've probably had more value from from the the giving side of things over time than I have just trying to sell something, right? So is this what you mean? I think I've I've read you to or I've listened to you talk about karmic equity before. Is this kind of the same principle?

Guest: 45:01

Yeah. Yes, a similar principle. So karmic equity is just when we do good in the world, we make a deposit in the in the bank of karma. And there are people that you and I know, we don't associate with them too much, that all they do is make withdrawals. We would label them as takers, as selfish, self-centered, or scam artists. And it seems like they're only out for themselves. And we get a gut feeling about this, a spider sense that tingles a little bit, like, ooh. And and this happens in lots of different ways. Like we read a facial expression, like, oh, I don't think I want to be around this person. Or they say something that reminds you of someone else who's done similar things, and you're like, I don't want to be around this person. You just move away. We can tell. We're pretty good at that. Now, what the marketers have done is they figured out how to rewire a brain to shut down those signals that we shouldn't trust this person. And that's why they still get money from lots of people. They appeal to our sense of greed and our desire not to do a lot of work and low risk, high return. And that's usually a pretty good sign that you're getting trapped and you're in the spider's web.

Host: 46:07

Interesting. So, you know, go go wrapping up this kind of content um topic, because it's such a obviously big part of our world as it is now and moving forward. Do you do you think like an individual artist can do you think content has to be a mandatory part of someone's business model if they want to just go and um, you know, be be this, you know, self-brand or you know, solopreneur even? Um forget scale and forget business, just go and um and work for a living, doing what you love. Does content have to be part of that moving forward? I'm gonna answer it in a weird way, okay?

Guest: 46:42

So if you provide a service to the world, you need customers. The more customers you have, the more you can charge. The more, the pickier you can be, uh, the uh the greater the profit and the higher the quality of the work, because you're very picky now, you're very selective, and the more confident you become. I don't think anybody's gonna argue with that, right? It's just a function of supply and demand. There's supply of you, and if the demand is higher than the supply, you're in a good side of that equation. If no one is demanding of your work and you're free all the time, guess what? You're gonna get really desperate. Your confidence, your self-worth is gonna be really low, your self-esteem, and you're going to then negotiate against yourself. And people in the creative space do this all the time. They're like, well, if I don't charge less, the person down the street's gonna charge less and they're gonna take the business. I need to cut my rates. I can't ask for this. Yes, they've asked for 15 more changes, but you know, I can't say anything about it. The best remedy to this problem is to have more opportunities than capacity. More opportunities than capacity. So it doesn't take rocket science. I want to explain it this way. You cannot hire people you do not know. And you do not hire people that you know but you don't understand what they do. You do not pay a premium when you know someone and you know what they do, but you can't tell the difference between what they do and someone else. This is why, and and you could prove this to yourself or you could debate this. Go down to your supermarket, go down to the aisle where they sell water, you'll see sparklets, you'll see arrowhead at the lowest price possible. And it looks like it too, by the way. It's wrapped in plastic, it's sold in bulk. No one really just buys one. And you go all the way to the right, and there's some brand from Sweden or from Norway or the Fijian ions, and that's the most expensive one. It's in a glass bottle that might have been handblown, we don't know. And it's like, wow, that's $8 versus 80 cents. Now, why would someone pay so much more for that? And you and I, we do this all the time. Because we don't just buy things, we are trying to figure out who we are. So when we buy something, we're answering a big question: who am I? What is my identity? What is the meaning of what it is that I do? Because we're meaning-making machines. We want meaning in everything. You might be a Ford guy, you might be a Chevy guy, you might be a Mercedes person, you might be a BMW person, you might be Apple, you might be Microsoft. But every time you do that, you want your side to win, right? I'm an Apple fanboy. That's no secret. So if you're like, yeah, this Google phone, I'm like, get out of my face. I don't, I, I, you don't exist. You don't exist to me. I'm joking here, obviously, but you know, or some people are Nike people, yeah, and some people are Adidas people. And that's the way it's going to be. We want our side to win. And you know what we'll do? We'll prosthetized. We'll convert others to be like, oh, you don't want Nikes, you want Adidas. Or you don't want that, you want Converse. And they try to enroll people into their tribe. So when you buy this bottle of water for $8 and you invite guests over, you got to try this water, John, Betty. It's so good. It's got electrolytes. It's a pH balance for what we need. And since I've taken it, I've noticed my health is improved. I sleep better at night. It's like, oh my God, you just made up a story, by the way. And this is how brands win.

Host: 50:10

Of course, right? Isn't it some of it projection as well? Like, oh, look at me, I was like this. Yeah, yeah. Um, but how so how does this relate to the individual when it comes to content?

Guest: 50:19

Well, when you're making content, uh, you don't have to do anything, by the way. Remember, we just said that no one's forcing you to do anything.

Speaker 00: 50:26

Yeah, yeah.

Guest: 50:27

You're just making a decision and you can decide today, I want to make it easier for people to find me. I want to make it easier for the people who find me to understand what I do and to know what I do is different than every other person who says they do the same thing. And if you do this consistently enough over time and you do it with some guidance, or you can do it through trial and error, hopefully eventually the opportunities start to increase, and then you can charge what you're worth and you can work with higher profile clients.

Host: 51:00

So I want to talk about pricing in a minute because you're famous for your pricing philosophies. But um you mentioned what makes one different. And but before we talked about essentially a technique to get people's eyes on your content in terms of the storytelling aspect and keeping things simple and you know, get getting a great headline and hook and the writing part of all of that. How do we but what we need we still need to have this element of difference and uniqueness to us? Or yeah, so how do we is that just a lot of inner work, a lot of shadow work in terms of like really finding out who we are and and then kind of really dialing in those little nuances that actually make us different? Because, you know, there there's so much homogeneity out there, certainly in the content world, but there's obviously everyone's different in every unique way. So how do we even embrace that difference?

Guest: 51:54

Yes. And the answer is yes, and you're speaking my love language now, talking about shadow work and inner work and self-development. Uh uh, Art Center professor Errol Garrison says you just need to be an eighth of an inch different. Stand out an eighth of an inch. That's all it takes for you to get hired to stand out. You don't have to be 180 degrees different, just the tiniest amount, just so we know. In fact, that's where a lot of people mess up. They try to attach too many things to what they're different, and they can't really own or claim anything. So let's let's say now you're gonna put out a resource, I'm gonna put out a resource on topography, and it's gonna teach people how to design a little bit better, right? But if everyone does that and anyone who's designed for long enough knows these same rules, why would they follow Chris and not Bob? This is the problem. This is the dilemma. So if you're just an information broker, you've now become a commodity once again. Now you'll do you'll have done much better than all the designers who never post anything or only show their work. You'll stand heads and shoulders about them. But now you're in this other circle of people who make content to teach other people something. Well, here's the thing now: what is your voice? And this is going to tie to your idea here, okay? So, what we want to do is we want to speak consistently from our unique voice that not everyone can claim. Now, I know something about myself. People are like, Chris, you're always roasting people. You're so such a direct, sometimes aggressive communicator. You you're kind of blunt, and sometimes you hurt people, and they'll go through all these things. And then they'll say something which is but you always seem to do it from a place of generosity, or I know you really care about people. And so my brand voice is hard truths gently told. Now you see, not everyone can use that because not everyone is that. Some people are just hard, and some people are too polite, too kind, too easy, and some people aren't sharp enough. And some people will tell you harsh things but don't care. Some people will care too much. Okay, so I'm my brand voice, my personal brand voice, is hard truths. This is very important. No matter how hard it is to swallow, I must tell you the truth. Gently told. Because if I was just an a-hole about it, no one would follow me. And it's also because I really do care. And I know that when people don't tell you what you need to hear, like, you know what? That photo, I'm sorry, it's a hot mess. And here's why. And if you can do that, then you start to establish a brand voice. So now when I create that tool resource about topography, it's gonna be told in that language, the the tone and voice of hard truths gently told. So I can say, here's three reasons why your layouts suck contrast, contrast, contrast. Did I say contrast? Right? And so that would be very different than someone else who's like much more professorial. It's like, well, the Bauhaus gestalt movement talks about contrast as the principal guiding factor of great design from mediocre design. Let's dive in. That's a totally different voice. So now you can see the same information packaged very differently. Now, for some, they prefer one or the other, or some third voice we've not heard yet. But this is the beauty of humanity. We can have a different following for different types of people, and this will work.

Host: 55:16

And how does this relate then into pricing? I mean, we you've talked about value-based pricing for so many years, and which I personally resonate with so much, and it can be really difficult sometimes because you have a lot of no's. But um, you know, for artists, kind of for artists, this is such a prevalent issue, right? There's so much uh imposter syndrome, and when it's just you and you're trying to build a business, you just yourself and you're wearing a million hats at the same time, and then you have a sales call and it's like, yeah, the price is a bit high. Um, or you even think about like cutting that down or doing hourly, you know, and then it just becomes this hot mess, right? So, you know, we we only have a few minutes left. I'm not gonna take much more of your time, but I did want to touch upon pricing for artists, for new artists, especially worried about either raising rates or changing their pricing model to a value-based pricing model rather than like an hourly one. What's the first mindset shift they need to make or need to think about so that they're actually finding out, at least discovering what they might be truly worth, so that then they can price accordingly?

Guest: 56:22

Okay, I'm gonna give you a different answer. Okay, because I've talked about this a lot. I'm gonna give you an answer and they're gonna come to the same conclusion, I think. So recently, when I do uh business workshops, I've I'm using this book title, but it's not the same concept called the four agreements. So you and I, we have to enter into a covenant before I can teach you to do something. I need to make sure it's ethical that I teach you how to price and value things based on high quality work, not just because you're some kid who's rolled out of school and you don't know what you're doing. So the first agreement of the four agreements, according to Chris, is this you must do good work. So before I can teach you anything, do you agree that you do good work? And the answer could be no. You have to be really honest with yourself. And a lot of people are not good. And they know this already, and that's why they can't price any higher, because they're like, my work is crap. They might not say it out loud, but they say it inside and they know it's not very good. The solution to this is quite easy. Put in your 10,000 hours, enroll in a course, a program, a workshop, read five books, get a mentor, uh, do self- uh, what is it called? Self-study. Like try to just do some exercises and you can do this. Yeah, practice. Somebody told me if you want to get really good at drawing hands, which is not easy to do, draw a thousand hands. By the time you get near a thousand, you'll be pretty good. It's amazing how many people don't think like that. But yeah, they won't do the work. So number one, yeah, is your work good? Right? Number two is always deliver more value than what you charge. Okay. This is very, very important. Okay, so I do good work, and now no matter what I charge, I will give more value to the buyer. And this is why people buy. I'll give you $10,000. If you give me $15,000 of value, I will buy this all day long. All day long. Okay. And this means that if you do good work, no matter what price you charge, you will find a creative way to give more value. So for example, you do the photo shoot for one client pays you $10,000, some client pays you $15,000. There's a $5,000 difference between these two clients. Well, find a way that you're going to create more value in the eye of the beholder, the client. Maybe uh you pick them up at the airport, maybe you do some extra retouching for them, or you hire the the best art director you can for the food shoot. You know, you have better props. Or you do whatever you think they would appreciate and see value in. So this way you get a free pass for whatever price you charge. Okay. Okay. Uh agreement number three is you must serve the client's needs above your own. Your own need to make money. So when they say, Chris, we need to uh spend another $25,000 on this thing, you have to say, we can. We can, Mary, but I'm not sure you need this. And if we're my money, I would not spend it this way. And you know what? Based on the criteria of what it is you've asked me to do, I'd love to do this project with you. But there are three other photographers I can think of that are much better at doing this. Would you like their phone number? This is what it means to put their needs ahead of your need to make money. Okay. Now, the fourth one is the easiest one of them all because if you've done the first three, the fourth one will fall right into place, which is you will always act with integrity. Period. Now, the reason why. Why we go through all these four things is because if you can agree to this, it won't matter what you charge anymore. Okay. The reason why people don't charge more is because they think their work sucks. Well, you've broken the first covenant. We cannot work together because your work sucks. And I'm I'm being fairly objective here, fairly objective, subjectively objective. Most of the creative work that I see out there that is not already famous, they're not that good. Their copywriting's not that good. Their website's not that good. Their video editing skills, not that good. And they're hustling out there. And they're like, why can't I get money, Chris? Why can't I only charge $15? Because you suck.

Host: 1:00:43

Just not that good. I absolutely love those four agreements. And you know, I left the pricing topic to the end because, you know, you've done so much content. I want people to go to your YouTube especially. And there's so much valuable stuff on there and videos about pricing and entrepreneurship and building businesses as creative. So I want to thank you for that. I know you have been in this space for so long, and and the your integrity is it comes through just in videos. I've obviously never met you in person, but we know we buy into you because we know why you're doing it and you're doing it to help people, as well as obviously build your own empire. But you you that integrity really comes through it. So I want to thank you for that. I want to thank you for making the space for the Moot podcast. And for me, I know my audience were absolutely gonna love this conversation. So um I really appreciate it and super grateful. Thanks, Chris.

Guest: 1:01:36

Thank you. Can I add one little thing for you? Do it. You have time? Okay. Um, you had said before, like, we don't want to sell out. And that has a very negative connotation to it when it's said that way. Like, I'm gonna compromise my principles. I've sold out. I used to like apples, but I was paid, so now I'm gonna tell you I like oranges. That's a sellout. Okay. But if you had a solo exhibition and you sold out, that'd be a great thing. If you're an independent band and you sold out, that'd be a fantastic concept. If you ran a workshop, it was sold out. And everything that you did, people are clamoring for more. That's a very good thing. So one word can be seen in multiple ways. I I often do not think of the first one, which is I've compromised my principles. You see, what people do, unsuccessful people, struggling people, when they see other artists and creatives and their peers doing really well, the only way they know how to understand that is to tell themselves the story that they compromise their principles, because there's no way that person can be that successful. Because it would hurt my ego too much to say, like they've showed up for 10 years to make content. They have added new skills that I don't have. They've they've um learned from the very best, they've been coached by the best, and they continue to invest in themselves and they're doing everything that I don't want to do. But instead of admitting that, because it's too too hurtful to think of that, we say, well, you've compromised your principles. That's an easy excuse, but those are easy answers for not an easy life. The real answer is they're doing everything that you're not doing that you know you should be doing, but have resisted. And you're allowed to resist for as long as you want. That's it. I'm not here to tell you you have to do anything different. I am here to tell you there are alternatives to the way that you think and the way that you work and the way that you create that may have better results than what you're doing now.

Host: 1:03:47

Yeah, I love it. And and actually a lot of that kind of phrase of selling out is just a perspective, right? It's just someone's inner perspective, this inner negative belief and a way to, like you said, make themselves maybe feel better. Or if it's you just really limiting your whole whole beliefs. But I think it actually, you know, I want to caveat that because certainly, you know, I can only speak for photographers, really, because I've I've experienced this with myself and with many other fellow photographers. There's always this tension, this dichotomy between private passion, personal work, and commercial work. So they feel like they're take almost taking the wrong jobs in essence, because some of these commercial or brand jobs are not forcing them, but they're selecting these jobs. And the the work that this job entails them to do is vastly different in terms of its output and its artistic um, you know, output is different from what they really want to do with a camera or you know, with with their writing or whatever it might be. So that that's really kind of that's where I think this feeling of an emotion of selling out rather than actually thinking, well, maybe this just is the wrong job. Maybe there are other opportunities and other brands and other entities that actually can respect my own style and my own voice, and maybe we can coexist with that. So I think that's really where it stems from.

Guest: 1:05:10

Yeah, and I also think there's something that very twisted about creative people that we think suffering is a part of being a true artist. We want to suffer. And if you just map it with bands, like there was a band I liked, and they were cool, and they were cool because no one knew. And I was the one who was telling other people, like, wow, check out this band, XYZ. Check them out. They're so cool. And I got to be a little bit more self-important in the circle of my friends because I was the one enlightening them about what's good. And then what happens is the band blows up. They have a single. So they get on Saturday Night Live and they start performing there now at the Super Bowl. And now what I do is like, well, all my power is gone because everybody knows them. So the narrative is, well, they went commercial, they they went mainstream. It's just I wanted to be the one that liked them more than everybody else, and everyone else. I feel like I like some and I'm I'm being left behind, and it can hurt. I understand that. And I want my bands and my artists to suffer just because I suffer. So in my reality, I suffer, therefore, you must suffer. So if you stop suffering, you must have done a deal with the devil and you sold out. And then, and you said a lot of what we're talking about is is a mindset thing. Now I know people are like, shut up, both of you. It's not a mindset thing. You can't tell me I can just change the world by thinking differently. But I'm gonna argue with you right now. I'm gonna make a case, okay? Now, when you first started out and you thought one day I'm gonna be a professional photographer, fill in the black videographer, editor, whatever it is. And it'd be my dream to be able to charge this much for a project. Take us back into those early days when you're like, man, I don't know I've made it if I was able to do this. What amount was that, if you don't mind sharing?

Host: 1:06:57

Well, I mean, for a project, it would be there's a huge range. But you know, take my mentors, take take my mentorship. You know, I charge people $6,000 for for a 12-week mentorship. Back in the day, I would have, you know, done it for free almost, right? It's it's if give me a few hundred bucks and I'll I'll be your I'll be your guide, right? Now, now it's six grand is not enough for the amount of time and effort I put in.

Guest: 1:07:22

Okay, you're you're helping me make the argument. I I think as you're a smart guy, you know where I'm going with this, okay? So if you were to answer the question the way I asked, you might have said, as it relates to mentorship, man, if somebody just asked me like for my advice, I would just be over the moon because it means that I'm in a position where people think I know more than them. And I'm like, it would be my honor to tell you what's up. And then you charge 500 bucks. I'm like, dude, this is like this is ridiculous. I was doing this for free before. And now you're charging six grand, and you're like, wait a minute. So you know what happens is our reality meets us. I'm sorry, our mind, our reality goes, stretches to where we walk to in our mind. Right? So I know back in the day, my my older brother asked me this question. He goes, if you were to make it, what what what kind of money do you need to make a year? I said very confidently, 100 grand. That's it. If I can make $100,000 a year, I feel like I've made it in life. Well, now if I'm doing $100,000 a year, I'm like, what has gone wrong in my life? Right? And the reason is you see how our reality stretches to meet us where we're at. So if you are able to change your mindset, walk outside of that world, the world will expand to meet you there. And that's why people do coaching, self-development. That's why people read. That's why people join peer groups or go to conferences, attend workshops, is because they want to expand their mind. Because what you're capable of envisioning, you have a possibility of attaining. And that's really, really important.

Host: 1:08:58

Belief is so powerful, and people don't understand the power of subconscious, not just the conscious. And I could talk about this for hours and hours because it's it's really close to my heart. I I don't teach, I teach rarely teach technical stuff about photography. A lot of it, because it doesn't matter. It's 10% is not even 10% of art. It's, you know, obviously you've got to, you know, going back to your four agreements, you've got to be good, you've got to know your stuff. But really, where the beauty and magic happens and the value that you can drive and the value that you can receive and be and be good with that comes from the mindset shifts and comes from belief systems. And it's difficult, it's a difficult path to to walk, but it's it's possible. You, you know, you and I here to uh here to attest to that, right? So um great nuggets of knowledge. Absolutely love this conversation. Thanks so much, Chris. Um, hopefully I can meet you in person one day or join the content lab. But um, in the meantime, we'll be watching you from afar and um keep doing what you're doing and inspiring so many people. Thanks, Matt. Appreciate it. Cheers, Chris. Take care.

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Matt Jacob

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