Chris Do: 0:00

When you shout, you push people back. But when you whisper, people lean in.

Joeri Billast: 0:05

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Web3 CMO Stories Podcast. My name is Joeri Billast. I'm your podcast host. And today I'm really excited to be joined by Chris. Hey Chris, how are you? Doing great, Joeri. How are you? Happy to have you on the show. Guys, if you don't know Chris, Chris Do is an Emmy Award winning designer, director, CEO, and chief strategist of Blind and the founder of the future. An online education platform with the mission of teaching one billion people how to make a living doing what they love. So, Chris, yeah, in the podcast episode I released today, I spoke with Gary Vee about AI-driven discovery and the idea that creators need to publish everywhere. And today I want actually to stress test that a bit with you. Okay. So, first question, Chris: if AI makes it easier than ever to create and distribute content, what becomes the real differentiator for a personal brand now?

Chris Do: 1:12

What is the AI creating and does it reflect your voice, your vision, your ideas, your lived experiences? And that's the real dilemma that people are facing right now. Because with AI-generated content, I think it's doing kind of the middle of the road content. It's designed to speak in averages and to kind of ride that middle line. But the middle is really messy and noisy and really boring and very forgettable. So if you're not going to lean into figuring out your voice, your philosophy, and your lived experience and tell those stories which AA cannot do for you, what are you really putting out there? I think like many new technologies, it's really disruptive that the people who previously didn't have the resources to do something now are just pumping out AI voice, AI script, AI generated everything to grow an audience. And then you can do this for a little while. But the big problem with that is you yourself haven't grown or changed at all. You just use the tools. And so five, 10 years down the road, if this should crash, who are you and how are you different? How are you transformed? And that's the real big dilemma.

Joeri Billast: 2:15

Yeah, that's a great point. Gary also said he's talking a lot about creating content being everywhere to stay discoverable. Today, with the AI, with LLMs, it's important. But what is the danger, Chris, of going omni-channel too early before someone really knows what they stand for?

Chris Do: 2:36

What is the danger? The danger is really straightforward. It's like you're making a lot of junk because you haven't figured out how to communicate, you haven't figured out your voice, you don't know what resonates, you don't even know who your target audience is, and you're just putting out stuff. And I feel like there's this expression if you can't improve upon silence, don't speak. But right now, what you're doing is you're pumping out content, being omnichannel, you're taking up energy, you're consuming energy, you're taking up server space, you're choking down the bandwidth to just create more pollution. So there's noise and air and water pollution, and now I think there's ideal pollution, there's just too much garbage out there.

Joeri Billast: 3:15

Yeah, absolutely. Actually, I gave myself a talk about that, you know, there is so much noise with AI. Now, I think you often say branding is about mental real estate in a world of infinite content. How does someone earn a single piece of mental real estate without shouting?

Chris Do: 3:36

Okay. Shouting is intensity, and you can deliver the same message without yelling at people. You had reminded me that we had met at the Atomic Con conference, and you were asking me about my memories of it. And the thing that is at the top of my mind is that there are a lot of extroverted marketers yelling from stage. And I was just overwhelmed as an introvert. I'm like, is this what people want? So I don't know if you were at my keynote, I came on stage and said, hey, I just want to check in how many introverts are here because I might be at the wrong place. And I think the majority of them raised their hands. So I'm like, okay, this is good. I'm gonna have a conversation with you. So what we've done is we've assumed that the louder and more forceful we speak, the more important the message must be. So when we're sitting in the audience and we see people who are opening keynotes, prominent speakers, and they're just yelling at you the whole time. They're literally shouting. We assume that's what we need to do if people are to take us seriously. When you shout, you push people back. But when you whisper, people lean in. So I want you to process that and think about that idea. I can release a piece of content, not be bombastic about it, not be singing, dancing, and with lights everywhere, and just tell you a message that either is going to or not going to resonate with you, and I can do in a way that is in alignment with who I am as a person. And we can look at that as a literal thing, or we can look at it as a metaphorical thing, but we I don't think anybody needs to be shouting.

Joeri Billast: 5:13

Yeah, makes a lot of sense. Now, if a personal brand should own a word, how should someone choose that word without copying what already works for others? Because I've seen that also, that people are just copying.

Chris Do: 5:31

I see that too. I I don't think there's anything wrong with copying as a means to learn something. There's a difference between copying and not citing the source and pretending as if the work is your own. I believe that's called plagiarism. And so when people are like, oh, I'm just copying because that's the way I learn, but when you publish work and you don't source and cite where you got this information from and you're doing it in a public way, you're pretending this these are your ideas and it's not a good look for you. And I want to discourage people from copying in public. What you do is you copy in private. For example, if you're learning how to sing, you're going to try to emulate the vocal ability, the gymnastics of your favorite singer. And you're literally copying and trying to hit their notes, and you're trying to do as faithful as you can as a reproduction to the original. And so I remember in the early days when I was doing carousels on Instagram, it was like Attack of the Clones. People are literally using the same color, same typeface, same details, and I guess to a degree, that's fine. But they were literally using the same words and the same visuals. It's like, you have crossed the line. What are you doing? Why not just reshare my post and say, this resonated with me, and here's why? And have pride in being able to do that. I mean, I think everyone will look down. Like if I there's a couple books behind me, if I reach back there and I grab one of those books and I just literally copy-pasted those same words into another book and put my name on it, I think my career would be over. As soon as that information got out there, my career would be over. And that's kind of what it feels like people are doing. So, yes, copy the masters, learn how to draw like them, learn how to sculpt like them, learn how to build like them, but that's part of your learning journey discovery. It's not the end product, it's not what you put out into the world.

Joeri Billast: 7:17

Yeah. It's an input and you give your own take on it. And I love that. But you know, people are just trying sometimes to play the algorithm, and yeah, that's why also there is so much noise. But another uh question you push clarity and craft. You mentioned about clarity, about if you start something, know your personal brand, know what you stand for. Now, for an entrepreneur, for a founder, a marketer who has limited time, what is the right sequence to do? Start with clarity, what you said, or start to make outputs, and then you know, by creating the output, then become a clearer.

Chris Do: 7:53

That's a really tricky question to answer because it depends on the person, their intentionality, the time, the commitment. If we ask companies and we're to pull a bunch of different companies, what percentage of your resources should be allocated towards marketing? Some people might say 10%, some people would say 20%. Depending on the field that you're in, if it's highly competitive and it's highly commoditized, you might spend as much as 70% of your resources on marketing. But let's just take the lowest number, 10%. 10% of your time and resources, that means money, should be spent on marketing. You should learn how to communicate your message and then your reason for being to the world. So a lot of entrepreneurs look at social media marketing as a bane to their existence. It's like, I don't want to do this and I'm not going to put any energy and effort into it. If that's your intention, maybe you shouldn't do anything. But if it is your intention to establish thought leadership, to communicate your expertise, to help to transform the lives of other people, to be of service to other people, then it's the game of learning how to learn and how to teach. And I think that's a worthwhile pursuit that you can start someday and not know what you're doing and eventually arrive at a place where you know what you're doing. You can fast track that a little bit if you bring on a mentor team to coach and train you so that you're learning from their mistakes, you're gaining from their wisdom. And that's another way to do it. I'm not here to prescribe it's this way or that way, because lots of ways work. Find what works for you.

Joeri Billast: 9:18

And there's nothing wrong with pivoting. Like, you know, for my own podcast, I started, created content in a certain way, and then because of the input, because of interest, because of the world is changing, you know, I chose a certain direction. Now you mentioned already, yeah, don't put out content just for the sake of putting out this content and make it put out good content. Now, what could a simply uh weekly content system look like that protects quality but still creates enough frequency to win attention?

Chris Do: 9:53

There's a lot to unpack on that question. What I would suggest for people to do is actually don't think so much about quality. Quality gets in the way for so many people because for some people they interpret quality as perfect. And publish is better than perfect, done is better than perfect. And what we should think about is if no one was watching and we wanted to share our thoughts, like as in journaling, what would that sound like? And I want you to kind of reframe social media as public journaling. That's an idea from Austin Cleon in his book Show Your Work. So if I were to discover something, if I had an interesting thought today, if I saw something that inspired me or made me question something, I just want to write it down so that I have a document of my thinking at that moment in time. So I would say produce something that has a point of view, an understanding, or a big life question or dilemma. Put that out into the world and don't worry too much about the form it takes. As you get better and better at articulating your thoughts, you'll work towards the quality. So quantity precedes quality through the repetition, you become better. A lot of people are like, Well, I want to play like Michael Jordan. Well, have you put in the reps? Have you done the drills? The reason why Stephen Curry is so amazing is because he's made 100,000 shots already and he's practiced that many times, and that's what leads to excellence. So we got to put in the reps. We we imagine that we can just jump towards the end, but very few people can actually jump towards the end, and that's an impossible goal to achieve for so many.

Joeri Billast: 11:30

Yeah. Now, Chris, I follow you on different social media channels: TikTok, Instagram. Another person I'm following is Jason Yeager. I don't know if you know him. Now I interviewed Jason here in Lisbon at an event. And what he was saying about how, you know, his content journey that for him taste is important. He uses AI, but taste is important. Now, my questions to you would be like, how do you define taste in business terms? How can a non-designer actually build taste instead of just guessing?

Chris Do: 12:04

I I love the word taste. It is a very subjective word because what seems to be in good taste for some is in bad taste for others. But I really believe in this. There's some science that backs this up. We're visual processors. At least 51% of our brain is dedicated to visual processing. We learn about the world, about what is good and what is bad, mostly through our visual senses, right? And we understand that. It's the reason why when you look at somebody coming down the street far away, you make a decision. Are they a threat? Are they neutral, or is this somebody I really want to get to know? And it's all visual-based. When you go into a store and you're looking at a shelf full of products, competing brands, why is it that you pick up some and not the others? Shelf placement has a part to do with it, of course, eye-level, that's really important. They pay usually for eye-level shelf placement, but packaging, color, typography play a big part of this. Here's a test that everybody can do. Go to a place where they sell alcohol, whiskey, scotch, brandy, whatever they sell, and look at the price point and look at the packaging. The cheaper version of that brand exists, and it looks cheaper for whatever reason. It does look cheaper. The bottle is not as interesting, it's not set within crushed velvet, it doesn't have a golden tassel that ties around it, it doesn't have a wax seal, it's not as ornate or embellished, it doesn't feel as rich with history. And all of this is just achieved through packaging. And so I tell people that I know it's shallow to think this, that beauty is oftentimes skin deep. We can look at something and say, that's a great engineered car. That house was built. Well, we don't know anything, but we can just look at it and say, based on my previous experiences, that was designed well. And so, in the hands of an artist, a designer who has the intentionality to build something that's meaningful, that's of high quality over time, when we even touch plastic in cars, we can say that's high-quality plastic, which is a crazy concept because it's all oil-based, but you know, some plastics feel better to the hand, cost more money to produce. So taste and style play a much bigger role than we think. It signals to the audience and to your customers we should be at this price point, we should be a much lower price point. Um, I think Jordan Peters said something like this. He said something like, I'll put two thoughts together. We live in an increasingly dematerialized culture. We pay more for fewer things, but we still desire a transformative experience, transcendental experiences. Like when we're moved by a piece of music, that's why music's still so popular. When we stand in a cathedral that took a hundred years to make, we're just in awe. It's transcendent. And it makes what he refers to as human suffering possible. Like we can endure the human suffering because when we experience a piece of high art, it reminds us of the beauty of life. And so taste and style do play a big role in things that you're not even aware of.

Joeri Billast: 15:15

Yeah. Taste style, another word that comes back in every podcast, every social uh episode these days is trust.

Chris Do: 15:23

Yes.

Joeri Billast: 15:24

With AI-generated media and getting more convincing, what signals of trust will matter most for founders, entrepreneurs trying to build credibility online.

Chris Do: 15:34

Yeah, I think as more and more people are aware that an image may or may not be quote unquote real, and we have to kind of discuss that a little bit. I think the skepticism that people have and their ability to sniff out AI-generated images is actually a good thing because now we're questioning everything is is that real? And what is real? And so we have to dig deeper into the core of the personal brand or the person's brand, and if we have trust with them, it won't matter if it's real or not. The reason why I said we need to address the question of it of reality is this. I used to work in advertising. You hire a photographer, and if you're working for one of these large consumer electronics companies and you look at the image, it looks amazing. And then if you were to buy that thing and you put it on your shelf and you're like, why doesn't it look like the photograph? And there's a reason. And because I work with photographers and know how it's done. It's a lot of digital manipulation. They light the front, they like the buttons, they like the side, they light it in a bunch of different ways. Then they composite in painstaking, retouching ways an amalgamation of 15 different images, if not more, to create the perfect image. Because any photographer could look at that. It's like those highlights cannot exist based on the lighting of the front, right? But some client, on the other hand, says, I want to see the backside, or I want to see these buttons illuminated in a very specific way. And so that's not real. It's real. We just accepted it was, we knew it wasn't, and we're okay with that. But what AI is doing is it's asking us to all have this conversation in public. What is real, what isn't, and how important is real? We use mock-ups all the time to present ideas to people. Those are also not real. Books, of posters, of billboards to communicate an idea. And so I think we have to get beyond that and say, is this a good idea or not? Is this aesthetically pleasing? Is it tone-deaf? Is it on brand? Is this the right style? Does it have the right level of taste? It doesn't matter as much now how quote unquote real it is, because to be honest, it was never real. It was never real.

Joeri Billast: 17:41

No, it was never real. It was just like people are not thinking about AI, they were just accepting it. Now, in my book, Chris, the future CMO, you also see it on the background, it's just actually endorsed by Philip Gottler. I talk about trust also, that it is a growth asset and not a pure soft metric. Now, what are for you practical behaviors that build trust, maybe before someone even buys?

Chris Do: 18:09

There is this thing called the trust triangle. There are two women who wrote about this in Harvard Business Review. They don't call it the trust triangle, but it is a triangle, and you can look at it like this, okay? At the top of it is authenticity. Are you who you pretend to be? This is true with brands and personal brands. We we know that people show up with a corporate mask and appear and speak and act a certain way because socially that's what is considered professional behavior, the corporate uniform, the suit, how we speak using inclusive language, whatever it is, it just goes through attorneys and strategists. And so we have, I guess, used the committee to communicate and it's gone through too many rounds of revisions for it to have any real weight or meaning. So as a personal brand, are you showing up as your truest self? That's authenticity. On the bottom right corner is something called empathy. Are you looking out for my best interests? Are you doing this for your benefit or for my benefit? And so the opposite of this would be a timeshare salesperson, a used car salesperson who knows that the car is a piece of junk, but it's just or maybe somebody's selling you some kind of cryptocurrency, they just want to make their money and they're really not concerned about you at all. So what we need to do in order for us to earn trust is to display through thought, action, and words that I really do care about your well-being. So if this isn't right for you, I need to recommend you not buy anything or buy something else that's cheaper or better than what we offer. The last one is something called logic. Can you talk and explain things in a way that makes sense, that's easy for me to follow? So people who have high trust are who they pretend to be, are looking out for you, they serve your needs above their own, and when they communicate, it's done in a way that you can follow and understand. So you can have one of three, you can have two of three, but you need all three to have high trust, according to the article, and I believe that.

Joeri Billast: 20:19

Yeah, I believe that too. Uh certainly in this new technologies, you know, we have a lot of tech founders these days that want just talking about their features, but not in difficult language, not about the problems, not what's in it for their clients. Now, I have another interesting question for you. So you teach about value-based pricing, Chris. Now, how should a market or a consultant talk about value when clients are asking for cheaper work because AI can do it?

Chris Do: 21:37

A couple different things. If AI can do it, why don't you just have AI do it and see what happens? Usually when people say to you, I'm interested in working with, but there's a cheaper option, that is just a negotiation tactic. It's an employ that they use. Because if they had a legitimate cheaper option of the same or similar quality, they wouldn't even talk to you in the first place. There's a very small percentage of people who just love to negotiate everyone to death and they enjoy doing this. And for the most part, though, people use that as a line to test your resolve. How confident are you with your pricing? How much do you believe in what it is that you do? So they throw out the line. I know someone who can do this for less. And then what happens inevitably, if you're not confident, is you start to lower your price to meet an imaginary line that they've drawn in the sand for you. They feel like they've won, and then you get to keep a client. Value-based pricing is a difficult concept to understand. It's even more difficult concept to apply in real life. But in marketing, it's pretty clear. What is the purpose of marketing? To help you increase some vector, whether it be engagement, conversions, gross sales, net sales, something, it's to increase some vector that. Matters to the prospect. If you are able to achieve that goal, there is some impact on the company, hopefully financial impact. And you can talk about the potential value of that and ask for a fair percentage of value created. So if I help you to increase gross sales by three million dollars, what is fair to pay for that? And I think marketers already work like this. You don't pay me, I'll run your ad campaign, I'll run your marketing campaign, and I will just take 10% of sales above a threshold. Because that's what you're doing without me. Here's the delta between what you're doing without me and what you're doing with me. I just want to make a percentage of that. That seems fair. We have shared risk. So if you don't perform, I don't pay. If you just give me what I was getting before, I shouldn't be paying either. And that makes you accountable. So if you share risk, as Peter Drucker says in business, all profit comes from risk. If we share the risk together, you should be able to reap the reward.

Joeri Billast: 23:46

Yeah, absolutely. Now, a question for content creators in my audience. What is the most common last mile problem that you see with content creators, Chris? Is it the hook? Is it the offer? Is it the fear of being judged?

Chris Do: 24:03

Well, there's so many things. For content creators, usually the biggest problem is they don't believe in content creation. They want to just do their work, and they look at this as a hindrance to their financial status, to their joy of life. And so they approach this with the wrong attitude. They think, let's make content to get more clients and customers. There's already a great vehicle for that. It's called marketing. You can pay for it, you can buy it, and it works really well. There's certain things called funnel conversion optimization. You can do that. You can look at your customer retention andor optimization. You can do all those kinds of things. But the last thing you want to do is create content as some veiled form of advertising. Because I'm not here to show up online to give you my time and intention to read your ads. So if you want to build an audience and to establish your expertise and your authority, what you need to do is you need to learn how to teach and share what it is that you know with the world. If you can do that, you will grow. And every once in a while, you can ask. But if you give enough and you give enough value, you won't even have to ask because they'll figure it out.

Joeri Billast: 25:13

Yeah, you give value, you get a conversation started, people are asking questions. I live in Portugal now. When we met, I was still living in Belgium. I'm organizing your retreat around AI marketing. So let's say you are with a group of marketers, entrepreneurs, and you're thinking you're discussing AI marketing, discussing personal brands. What would be an important message you would give them, like a takeaway that they could take home?

Chris Do: 25:39

The message I would give to everybody is whenever new technology enters the scene, it creates a massive disruption. And there's all kinds of reactions with it. The early adopters, the innovators have already done it. And the laggards on the opposite side of the adoption curve won't wait until grandma or grandpa knows about it. And you don't want to be in the laggards category, but you want to be an early adopter, which is keep an open mind, don't be threatened by the tools. The massive disruption is coming. It's better to surf the wave when it comes in than to fight against it because you're going to get pulled out to the sea. And with all things, if you just look at the kind of disruptive technologies like the automobile, the airplane, the internet, the telephone, they displace all kinds of industries. And the reason, and this is something I will share. Guy Kawasaki talks about this. He says, in the companies in which he's observed, he was an Apple evangelist, 2X Apple Evangelist, he said that you can't jump the curve by making iterative changes. He goes, the company that made the Daisy Wheel printer didn't make it to the dot matrix printer era. The dot matrix printer era gave way to the laser printer and then the inkjet printer and then the 3D printer. It just keeps evolving. And he says, you would think that the person who's dominating that market in that space would be the most likely to dominate moving forward, but that doesn't happen. Now, if you're all like, what is Chris talking about? Printers, we're too young, we don't even know what a printer is. Let's talk about Netflix. Netflix is perhaps one of the most powerful movie studios in the world. Where do they start? They started off by renting DVDs of movies in a red envelope. Reed Hastings is the CEO, and they were competing against Blockbuster. So Blockbuster's problem was late fees. And if you've ever rented from Blockbuster, you know what I'm talking about. And so he looked at what customers were complaining about. The new release is never available, and then you have these exorbitant late fees when you inevitably forget to return the movie when you're supposed to. So he created a company. You can keep the movie for as long as you want. It's always available to you. And as long as you watch it and return it, you get new movies, and that's how it worked. So he disrupted a multi-billion dollar industry and put Blockbuster out of business. Now you would think, okay, great. Reed is done. He is not done. He says, Well, what's the next problem? Oh, the delay between receiving and shipping things out. I still have to go to my mailbox. And it's there's well, why don't we stream the content to you? Because we're right at that time when streaming technologies and internet speed is fast enough. So he then disrupts his own company by creating the Netflix that we know today. But if you're old enough, you'll remember people protesting over the fact that they want their DVD discs still. He saw the future, he was able to jump the curve, and he didn't do it in an iterative way. He didn't try to ship you more discs or ship it faster to you. He reinvented a business, went to streaming, reinvented that business, and started making original productions and not just licensing content. That's how you jump the curve. AI is that curve, everybody. Ask yourself this one question Do you want to be Blockbuster? This nostalgic memory for many people, or do you want to be Netflix, one of the world's most powerful entertainment companies? You get to decide.

Joeri Billast: 29:11

I love that. That's a great moment. You know, we are coming at the end of this podcast episode, Chris. Thank you so much for sharing all this value. If now my listeners they want to follow you, where is the best place that they can do that?

Chris Do: 29:26

Okay, I'm very active on the three major social platforms that I'm on. Um, LinkedIn, you can just DM me, you can comment on my post, you can engage with me, you can also find me on Instagram and also on YouTube. I'm at the Chris Doe, and Doe spelled D-O. The Chris Doe.

Joeri Billast: 29:44

Yeah, thanks so much, Chris. It was a real pleasure to have you on the show. Thanks, Yuri. Guys, what an amazing episode. I'm sure this episode is useful for people around you. So be sure to share this episode with them. Other entrepreneurs, marketers, founders, maybe your neighbor. If you're not yet following the show, this is a good moment to do this. Hit the subscribe button. If you haven't given me a review yet, this also helps me a lot to reach more people. And of course, I would like to see you back next time. Take care.com.