Chris Do is many things, from an Emmy Award-winning director to the CEO and founder of The Futur to an incredible mentor to myself and many others! Chris has built his YouTube channel to nearly 2 Million followers over the past ten years. If you want to grow an audience and business doing what you love, he is the man to listen to!

Connect With Chris:

The Futur Pro Group: https://thefutur.com/pro-group

Chris Do Ikigai Workshop (YouTube): https://youtu.be/BAzs3amtEFA

Chris Do (Instagram): https://www.instagram.com/thechrisdo

Chris Do (TikTok): https://www.tiktok.com/@thechrisdo

Links:

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My Video Podcast Studio Setup: https://links.wearevideomakers.com/YouTube-Setup-Amazon

The tool I Use To Optimize My YouTube Videos: https://links.wearevideomakers.com/TubeBuddy

Mentioned in this episode:

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right it's going to take a second to go live on amazons we're going live

here we're live on youtube but a man three seconds will be alive on amazon

all right welcome everybody to another we are video makers life shore today we have

christo who is one of my mentors one of the people who's impacted me the

most in my career so appreciate coming on chris um i want to i want

to give an intro don't want to do the standard like i could mention your

award winning designer to blind you started the future all the good stuff but what

i wanted to share was impacted me you when i joined the future it's actually

almost been exactly a year ago today if you haven't had the program you need

to we'll talk about that but it i didn't quite know where i wanted to

go and know quite what i want to do and we are video makers actually

started three months into me joining the future per group and so you've taken me

from you lost and not knowing what i was doing to having a very i

mean hopefully it'll be a successful career but i've i've made so many connections and

had so much more success than i ever have in my life and i ate

to thank you and so cristo is mentor someone has changed my life more than

anyone else thanks for thanks for being here on the show tonight

thank you so much back thanks for saying that

oh

it means the world to me that you're having this experience and it's the intention

of why we created the group and i'm just i'm excited for you and excited

where you go

i appreciate that and your group is amazing we're were gonna talk about that but

the reason for our call tonight is you've hit between and actually put this preemptively

but you've had you have two mill and subscribers between the future as well s

your individual or your your personal outube account which is incredibly impressive especially for you

know i mean if you look at the things that you've done business owner designer

all these other things i don't know that you ever expected to be two million

on youtube or you know and you have a large audience all over the place

so i want o learn from you tonight and i know our audience does as

well so let's i wanted to dig in start at thirty thousand feet of like

why we should post content and then really get into some of your strategy that

i feel like you haven't shared before because i am in the pro group so

i know kind of what you shared so i wanted to start with um you

why you know most of my audience either their business owners their coaches consultants things

like that so they know they feel like they should post content but my question

is why should should they actually be posting content instead of focusing on maybe building

their business the traditional way i guess like is posting content really that important

well

oh

here's the thing i'm not

oh

alone by saying this i believe garry vaneruckis very prominently has said this in many

different ways that we're all media companies and

yeah

i like to add we just

yeah

don't know it yet so when social media platform started to pop up and become

intrinsically woven into our lives and part of how we communicate how we relate to

each other how we stay in touch we have to understand that the game has

changed and it's evolved from advertising which is paying for people to pay attention to

more organic earned media and we it changes our consumption it changes how we follow

and interact with brains that we care about so not that long ago a few

channels controlled the majority of the tension that we would give them mostly the big

three networks and throw a mount of advertise paying for it they can get a

message out there into the universe and kind of control the dialogue because the opportunities

for you and i to tell each other our own lived experiences with a brand

and a product or service it was very limited it was finite like the ability

to spread and share a message across platforms what we take for granted today wasn't

available and so then social platforms emerged and then all of a sudden the power

shifted away from companies individuals to customers so in many ways we control the brand

we own the brand because if nikicocacola afford start doing things that are incongreent with

the message they put out there we own the mind share like how we feel

about it if enough of us agree that there they're actually not standing for quality

that they've cut corners so they no longer represent the values in which we bought

into we also then determine collectively we no longer want to patron to be a

patron of those companies and so we get on social media we tell each other

as tons of social proof and this is really why it's important for every brand

whether you're a solo operator sola entrepreneur or you you run a multi billion dollar

multi national corporation to understand

oh

the game the converse and is happening online on social platforms youtube is one of

them i happened to have a very soft spot in my heart for you tue

because that's really how i got into social media but there is other platforms obviously

and so we have to start looking at our customers as intelligent people who can

have conversations with other intelligent customers and rather than trying to have a monologue we

should try to have a dialogue with them so we create content we invite them

to engage with us and we allow them to shape and co create with us

and i think that's probably why most people haven't already done so stepped step into

into social media into content marketing um and this is how the game is played

in twenty twenty two

like that like that a lot i think that there's a lot there and i

think listened to your podcast episode yesterday with daniel priestley which was

m

amazing

m

absolutely love that read the book the key person of influence and i think i'm

coming from i think you and i come from kind of two separate ways where

you've built very successful business and you're now scaling with social media and i like

grew up wanting to be on youtube and now i'm trying to determine like okay

so do i offer services doing not like how do i do this but i

think at the center of this is you need to use social media to share

a message and become a key person of influence ever it is that you're trying

to do

right

and i love i also have your book here because i read some of it

but one of the things that i love her that you said was that you

know one of the best ways to learn to teach and there's a whole page

on i was goin t read something but i think becoming a key person infants

becoming an expert requires you to create content and requires you to teach at scale

so i like that a lot so i guess i had a couple of other

questions but i

yeah

realy and to dig into how your strategy you know in you know if we

are trying to build a business bake person of influence or just really built an

audience what would your content tratergy be if you were starting in twenty twenty two

and maybe you have a small audience five ten thousand but really you're you're just

at the beginning what what would you do now that's maybe different than what you

did then

okay i want to say a couple of other things since you you mentioned

oh

a couple of things people have a hard

m

time with the word influence are because the association is with i think young attractive

people doing silly

ye

things on the web and growing influence and commanding a large portion of attention in

a disproportionate amount of money then maybe kyle gender might come come to mind that

she's been able to launch a billion dollar company based on her attractiveness her association

with other pop culture people and tengentially related to some famous people and i think

that's what happens right so the media gets a hold of a turn influence or

social media influence and it doesn't exactly send the signal out to the rest of

us saying this is a person character experience of value but let's just take it

back let's take it back thirty forty years what is an old school influence and

we have a different feeling about these types of people you might think someone who's

done public speaking someone who has been on t v or on radio but probably

the best version of this i can think of right now is an author an

author writes a book with the intention of having lots of people read their thoughts

in order to spread the message in the better job you did at creating a

book that people wanted to read that they actually read the greater influence you would

have and i don't think we look at writers and authors as as rios on

society for some reason as we kind of use technology to amplify voices we then

mis label i think what an influence is and what contribution they might have towards

the greater whole so let's re frame that let's just think about who are influential

in your life you might start with your parents you might start with a mom

or dad or a teacher from from school high school from college and they influence

your thinking they shape your opinions they help you form ideas and they created a

lot of value for you so you are influential to me so if we continue

to have this negative state where we think about influences as being a it's just

people living fake lives looking good for the camera but not much substance then of

course we're not on to participate in this game so once we do that now

we can get started we can start to do the good work and it's essential

and you will see that it is often describe is the attention economy and that

attention is worth a lot you used to pay for it you used to pay

for in radio newspaper t v super bowl adds you paid a lot for it

you didn't question it then and so again it's just calling to question our bias

our preconceived ideas and there's a lot now that we can do so let's just

first say in order to be a key person of influence and influence or an

influential person a person of authority of tough leader you have to have some substance

and the substance can come from many different places it can come from a career

in teaching in academia don't discount people who know how to teach but don't have

experience you can also come from people who have never gone to school in any

real way and who have lived the life of experience doing mentorship trying they're just

taking their shot at the game and winning and hybrid version of those two work

for me so it has to be built on a foundation of knowledge so many

young people look at influences and authors and thought leaders and think well i can

behave like them and surely can but what you can't do is you can't replace

their knowledge and their experience those are things we all need to work on so

i'm not one here to champion people who don't have the experience yet who don't

know what they're doing who haven't studied it enough to then go out and amplify

that in that's another reason why i think a lot of people on youtube have

a give create a bad rap because they don't kno what they're doing they want

to be famous to be famous not because they have some

oh

something of substance to share with people so if i were starting out again what

would my content strategy be if i'm hovering around ten thousand followers or subscribers is

that what you're asking zack

yeah i mean essentially if you you're starting over in twenty twenty two

brand

and

new starting over from zero

i think let's say you let's say five thousand i want to assume

okay

that you've you've put in enough time to create good content that you know decent

content you can create decent content

yeah

so it's not practice content it what we need to do once we've gotten past

the kind of the beginning stages

and what is my motivation for for being on youtube what is my goal

you know and i think that that was actually something else i wanted to ask

i crept like twenty questions

yeah

because i thought we had more time and just because i kept goin throug things

oh i want to ask him this one this is those of you watching go

watch chriss guy that was actually the first video i saw and that s what

led me through joining

m

the future

m

pro group was finding your purpose finding

yeah

what you want to do and i think for as of this question you either

want to you want to build a business of some sort to offer some sort

of services like it's i know i

okay

feel like my personal question is alittledifferent but for sake of this for my audience

you want to make this a full time living and you like making content

okay

is that enough context

i think so let me answer this in two different ways if you have a

service based business maybe you're a logo designer web developer maybe you make marketing videos

something like that need to do some form of content marketing so that people who

are looking for you can actually find you and you want to make content to

build your authority in your experts we say that those who are able to articulate

their ideas either in writing blog form long form in a book or on a

video they start to establish credibility and they sort to earn trust on that episode

daniel previously talked about the seven eleven rule where it takes about seven hours of

close interaction with someone for you to get to know them to trust them that's

where trust begins and it takes eleven points of interaction for someone to buy something

from you and so if we could we could sit down and talk to every

single prospect every single potential customer but we would have no time left to eat

to sleep and

oh

do anything else so we have to be able to do that some form of

scale and that's what a book is the author works on something for three six

nine twelve months finishes it and then is able to then replicate that one on

one experienc so cross time and space so if they are an author of a

best selling book hundred thousand copies they have the potential of having scaled themselves a

hundred thousand times and i don't know about zach when i was a kid and

i was in trouble and i need to be two places that once my my

greatest wish was i wish i could replicate myself i wish

oh

one version of me can go and pay video games the other person can study

for the exam unfortunately for me the one who played games

m

one so i didn't

oh

prepare for the example

oh

but that's the neat thing about being able to articulate your ideas and to be

able to express it and and push it across multiple plot forms for people to

then consume it so that starts to count towards that seven hours and that's at

least one point of interaction if not more i'm goin t also imagine that zach

when you watched one of our videos it wasn't one video and you're in the

pro group you wanted

uh

to dig deeper you might

uh

have watched one another video and then eventually you're like hey there's a group and

there's programs maybe you look into you check it out so you're going through that

seven eleven rule so if you're in the service space you're goin to make videos

and you're going to try to teach people about what it is that you have

an expert teas in number one mistake people do as they don't actually teach they

just promote and that's the one sure fire way of not getting anyone to pay

attention we have built and we have a built in reaction and aversion to anything

that remotely smells or sounds like advertising this is really critical so if you are

in it and you really want service work the best way you can do that

is actually give your ideas give your thinking away for free because this is how

people will start to recognize you and so if you are going to be known

for a building websites you're going to show people here the seven stages of how

you launch and build a successful website that gets you high conversions say that's your

specialty like i i create high conversion converting sites for my clients in the sports

industry so you want to feature brands that are in the sports space you might

want to do breakdowns and talk about different brands that are doing really well in

some miss opportunities you're going to keep talking about the same thing over and over

again by focusing one topic and eventually you get known and people are like wow

when i think of high converting websites in the east sports space i think of

think of zach and then people reach out they're goin to go down the rabbit

hole hey'regonna o t websitethey'r in t see a landing page they might sign up

for like a self study auditing quiz or something like that they might sin up

to do an initial call with you and and that's pretty typical about how you

might want to build this there's another side to this equation though that if you

want to be able to make a living doing what you love you don't always

have to make content to promote another service because those are two miss aligned things

i have to make content so that can sell this thing and earn money the

other side to this is if you become such a good content creator you can

actually make a living just being a content creator so there's no services to sell

into traditional definition so when your channel gets so well known as the person who

teaches people how to build high converting e com sites well there are platforms there's

affiliate marketers who might want to give you a piece of the action because you

command so much attention brands might want to get involved with you and do brand

sponsored content where you can make ten twenty fifty a hundred thousand dollars for doing

brand sponsored content and you can also then sell our own products um you can

sell things like a book templet a pre set or something like that and you

could build an ego system of products built around your personality and the things that

you you are known for

there's a lot there and you've i had this question down like at the end

of the cub but i want to jump here now because we talked on a

call where you know daniel prevosly did talk about building out eco system of products

and i fail like i had a real wrestle with this on the call that

we were on because for me when i was first starting i like okay i'm

going to build you know a small some sort of small offer whether it's a

mini course and actually that's what i chose worse and then you kind of go

up the ladder and you sell more things um and on the other side you

have people like alex or mose words like i'm just gonna give away everything even

the stuff he works really really hard on and focus on like bringing and just

the larger investment clients because he wants to i mean that's what really makes him

the money so as i think i think we're gong to have to go a

little more selfish here and ask for my perspective because i want to be a

content creator i would prefer not to offer client services i keep having clients approach

me like we love your stuff we like all this can we hire you in

fact right now i'm really a chief social media officer for marketing agency one person

marketing agency which is fun it's stressful a little overwhelming sometimes but i really want

to be a content creator so as a content creator if that's what i do

do i sell low ticket offers like you know ninety seven dollar course and then

move up this ladder and maybe give away one course and give away as much

information as i can or do i i just give as much as i possibly

can away and have some sort of big thing that i focus on and that's

where i make my money

yeah

if

well if you want to be a full time content creator the first thing that

you would do is just try to build the muscle memory and the formula for

how you want to create content that consistently attracts an audience so i don't i

wouldn't encourage you at five thousand followers the number that you were giving me if

i were in a position i don't think i'm going to be ready to be

a full time content creator i will burn all of my resources

oh

and my savings while pursuing that

hm

so i think what

yeah

you can do is you can you can ramp up to something with the intention

that that's going to be your main so right now you do service work and

then you do content creation and every free moment that you have energy for you

should put time and effort into making more content and then eventually you you'll wind

up on a formula that works for you and your audience in your community and

then you'l be able to consistently produce hits relative the size of your audience and

you just grow and grow and grow and that's the point and at some point

you're going to cry s maybe a hundred thousand subs it could be two hundred

thousan i don't know what the magic number is but at that point you're going

to start to attract the attention of sponsors i want you to begin with the

traditional amount of being a content creator not a person who has to yet sell

more products right and so sponsors

hm

go to probably give you anywhere between twenty to fifty percent of annfiliate deal depending

on how nice you are and how big and engage your audience the community is

you can do that you can turn on add sense and if you speak about

ways to make money especially around finance you're you're what they pay you per thousand

views as much higher ours is like twenty four dollars some people have thirty two

dollars and that's pretty fantastic so for every thousand views that you have on average

they're going to pay you thirty two dollars and at first en't sound like much

but it can actually add up to be quite a bit with youtube specifically with

a subscriber account of say probably a million and a half last year i think

what we did was we we got paid about three hundred and sixty thousand dollars

from youtube and so

that's awesome

if you think about it because this is passive

oh

income and you can make this while making whatever it is that you want that's

clean profit because you get to make what you want which is awesome that's your

art form and you get this thing where you don't actually have to sell any

adds you now hot to fulfillment

oh

you don't have to read any scripts for anybody you just get to make more

content so if you combine affiliate marketing with google ad cents because you're doing really

well in your channel i think you could make a decent living in for lot

of people even two hundred thousand dollars is more money than they can spend

ah that's awesome i like that and i think that's that brings the pure like

being a content creator in there and i do

m

i do want to address courses though where do you feel like those fit because

from my viewpoint on content creation i like working with thought leaders somebody that has

an expert someone that can share a skill or teach something entertainment side of things

i don't get as much so if i have a skill that i can teach

you do i do i sell courses or do i just continue to give it

all away until i really am at an authority level where kind of like flip

a switch i do these services until i can flip that switch

ah it's up to each person because there's a ot of diferent ways together and

there's no one way that's going to work for everybody i was talking to brendon

kane who wrote the book one million subscribers or one million followers in thirty days

if you look at his content on instagram you'll see that he

yeah

often analyzes vira videos and he talks about them and so asked him what his

business model is on a podcasthwerecorded yesterday and he says well i'm an analyst researcher

and i provide insight to people who want to make their content go viral and

so people pay into a group that he then posts a video week breaking down

what he sees are trends that are happening right now and how you could benefit

from knowing these things so he's not providing a service there's no course here he's

just sharing the same kinds of things that helped him to grow to million followers

on instagram and on facebookwithin paid wall kind of paid community and he has a

business doing this and so if you like making content and you like the whole

craft of making if you did some research and you were able to share those

insights and businesses want to learn from you then they're going to give you money

just to just look at that stuff that you already are doing so a lot

of different ways to get there of course you can sell courses you can sell

temples and pre sets peter mc kinnon celsus pre sets in in light room and

apparently he makes a lot of money doing that that's really cool and if you

want to make a physical product sure makes it easier for people who want to

support you to so while getting something in return

i like that i think that i think that answers answers my question for the

most part i need to do a little more digging on that but i think

it's you're right there's no there's no one way to get there

yeah

and i think it's i think myself included too many people don't have the experience

to say hey like i actually have enough i have become enough of an expert

in my thing to actually provide the value to do this as a full time

living so i need to think on that a little bit but another question that

i had so you you are a master story teller from every piece of content

i've watched you are one of the best story tellers i know and i've been

really digging into a lot of experts on youtube that help you know thought leaders

or experts really grow and one thing i'm noticing is that and i do this

in my contents i just teach the information too much and don't put it into

a story ark i don't tell stories enough and so as a master story teller

my question to you as in your content how often should we be weaving these

principles into our personal story as we share our content

m um

m

so before i made youtubevides i taught in a traditional brick and mortar school and

i don't know what inspired me to do this but one day i came in

and i asked people i'm going to tell you story and then tell me what

parts you learn from the most and in doing so they kind of revealed to

me that they're one predominantly one type of learner over another so some people can

learn things by read the title of a book and reading high level headlines and

summary ideas that's one type of learner the other type of learner is one who

threw story form pool meaning from the story and that's how i think most people

learn when your parents were raising you as a little kid i've told you fables

about the boy who cried wolf and to reveal to you lessons of life and

they've been been trained ferd from one generation to next since like sops time right

so people learn through story the third way that people learn is they learned through

experience there can esthetic learners he need to get their hands on stuff they got

to try stuff out because they can't understand the high level stuff they don't believe

it the story is kind of murky for them and until they do it they're

going to know that it either works or doesn't these are the types that kids

who you say don't touch the hot iron like whatever

oh

okay don't touch the hot iron they learn that way

yeah

and so we find that especially around creative i i'm a mostly logical fact based

person so i taught high level concepts like you should do this you shouldn't do

that and i was wondering like why students weren't getting it so i took a

pull and of the three types of high level learners story based learners and kenasthetic

learners which one do you think came up it's a number one type of students

at an art school

yeah probably story

that would be a good guess because that's how we're hard wired

yeah

but the answer was anesthetic and at first

okay

it surprised me but then i thought about it for half a second is like

of course how do you teach design how do you teach painting well you put

students in

m

front of a model and you say draw

hm

and in your drawing the kenasthetic act of learning the teacher would walk by and

like okay here's what you're not seeing so it's i you you do and there's

a lot of you doing so demo

hm

very little lecture demo you do demo you do and almost all the assignments are

critique based so that means you got to go away and do a lot of

work you gonna come back and we're goin to give you feedback on your work

and that's how they learned so here i am thinking i'm the world's greatest teacher

realizing i'm teaching this kind of way when they're this kind of person total mis

match

m

and misaslignment

m

so it's something that you want to think about as how you can tell stories

how you teach to address all three so you could say something like this in

this video i'm gonna tell you about the five things that i wish i never

done while starting my business right now that i okay there's five things i can

look out for that and then you can say so when i was starting my

business i always believed x have you ever been in that kind of position and

let me tell you the extent of which i believe that and you tell a

story and so now you're hitting a couple of different parts there right and then

you would come back and say so let me just quickly summarize the things we

just talked about today the five things are a b c d and e right

now we're missing the anesthetic part because they're only watching they're passively consuming the content

you might then give them a prompt to try something you might say okay um

download this work sheet try this out at home and let me know what your

thoughts are and post your results online

oh

and tag mate so you've completed that whole arc high level you're talking you're teaching

through story and then

ah

you give them something to do so depending on which icky guy thing that you

saw saw other people do it with me and you you also had the opportunity

to do it by yourself and that's when you realize oh this person has taught

before they know how to teach because i'm getting all of it together and it's

a really nice way to teach so think about that

i like that that's that i mean i like this because creating better content requires

a lot more effort and i feel like for me what more effort has equated

to is buying a new camera which i just did or spending twenty five hours

editing a video and it's i'm working harder but my content is looking better and

sounding better it's not necessarily actually getting bete an what you've

right

just described really allows you to create content that any audience as long whatever it

is your teaching actually is gonna help them can resognate with so

yeah

i like that a lot

so there's there's a couple other tips i want to give you if you're trying

to be a better teacher communicator in

yeah

video format start at the end start at the and ask yourself what's the one

or two or three things want someone to know and to be able to do

by the end of the video and that will make you select the best opportunity

just to learn those lessons and not allow you to go off on weird tangents

so you start then and it gives you a lot of comfort like when i

know what my audience wants to be able to do at the end of a

talk or workshop then everything becomes a lot easier to make decisions quicker and i'm

going to design exercises to feed that the other ting that you're going to want

to do as a teacher is you need to simplify and make personal complicated data

this is somethin that's very very important so i could read to you the dictionary

definition of a concept that doesn't mean you've learned it and that i'm a good

teacher but if i can explain to you in a way that you understand i'm

much more ffective feature in the likelihood of you being able to do it afterwards

is much much higher right so this

yeah

gets into like things about like modeling like let me understand i will do something

and then hopefully you'll be able to do it but also just like trying

oh

to to test your different ideas through different frameworks or different different models that you

can design or just using much simpler language so someone can understand so to me

teaching is like what tony robins calls building report is there's something that you know

and something you don't know so i'm trying to connect those two things together so

you might know this you might believe this did you realize how much this is

like this i'll give you an example um i like to talk about fishing a

lot because i like fishing and fishing is a metaphor that could be used for

many different things so i'm writing this new sales play book and the first rule

of the play book is do not sell and you're like how is it that

our writing a book on sales

yeah

and that you're now going to tell me not to sell because selling isn't what

we think it is selling is the result it's not an action that we take

so a lot of people think selling is persuading and convincing and manipulating someone else

and creating false urgency that's not the case at all what you want to do

as a sales person is to be curious to ask questions to provide your prospect

clarity and to inspire them to take action to make a decision today sometimes hire

you sometimes it's to hire someone else so he said i love fishing

m

but i've never caught a fish here's my analogy

oh

i love fishing but i've never caught a fish like what it doesn't mean i

didn't go home with a fish but no one goes fishing thinking that they can

cast a line into the water and try to hook a fish out of the

water and that's what a lot of people think about fishing i'm sorry about sales

they think they can force an action to happen to create compel an event an

inciting incident and to create urgency where none exists now sometimes you can pull that

off but it's not very likely just like you can accidentally hook a fish on

the way up

oh

but not likely so you're job in sales like in fishing is to meet the

fish where they're at to present something to them that they desire for fish it

would be like like a scrumptious delicious meal and you have to put it in

front of them at the right place and at the right time otherwise you have

zero opportunities of catching that fish so when we start to understand how to catch

fish i also understand how to catch a client

i like that i think it's it brings up another question that i've been thinking

about quite a bit lately where in your example of fishing you need to know

what type of fish you're after you need to know what type of bait to

use like if you don't have the right you don't understand what kind of fish

or actually trying to catch you might bring the wrong bait and so for me

sometimes when i'm creating content like i've gone through this and coach clients to do

this where you create an avatar where it's not just this range like you would

in marketing it's the person has a name you can picture this person like an

acquaintance how old they are where they live what they do but sometimes i feel

like i'm talking about things that i want to talk about that are maybe related

and not actually picturing this person as much as i should so in creating content

you know to really serve a purpose do i need to know exactly who this

person is and always create content around that or if i feel like there's another

topic that sort of related that i'd like to talk about that i can also

create and on that

yeah i think what you're referring to is oftentimes referred to as an avatar represents

hm

a large group of people that think and feel the same way and it's going

to be mixed of psychographic psychographic data and demographic

oh

data but when i come to ou creating content on youtube u do it that

way you could think about the kinds of people that you want to attract to

the channel and you can do content for them unfortunately if you do it this

way you might wind up doing something that you don't really love you build an

audience you build a listen but it's like every day it feels like work to

you i think if you're gonna go out and make content the content should serve

you it should be a clear representation of your your opinions your values and your

beliefs and then allow the audience to find you because this has got to be

something that you want to do for a long time that gets you up in

the morning like i like talking about design i like teaching people how to run

their business and i like to argue you know i've joked before that i'm

oh

a master debater i like

okay

to debate with people right and so

hm

i want to create my channel and the content around these topics not because it's

what is popular emographic chart or is rising trend i mean i'm sure that would

help me but i would prefer just to teach and teach the things that i'm

very passionate about so if you're a brand you provide a service oh talk about

those things talk about what what stories are really interesting for you to highlight as

a representation of the brand experience or teach people the thing that you do and

how you do what you do and the funny thing is every time i watch

one of these videos where it's super complicated about how to do something i don't

go out there and think i'm never going a hire the person mostly i thinking

i just need to hire that person because they're so good at doing it there's

too many steps and don't really really want to do it admire them for their

talent their craft and their skill but i by no means want to do what

they're doing

like that that's th s very reassuring for me because it is i feel like

you hear a lot of people it's like the adage if you build it they

will come isn't true with content but i feel like it else is because i

look at your channel and you you do talk about design you do talk about

business you talk and you talk about you tube like you talk about all these

things that relate to what you do and what you believe in what you know

and you've built a very very successful social media presence as well as businesses so

i think that's something i need to emulate more and feel okay with and then

m

stop listening to people saying i have to

yeah

have to create it just for one avatar so like

everybody

that

just needs to remember this that

yeah oh

what might work for me might not work for you what hasn't worked for me

might wind up being the perfect solution for you so my only duty is to

try to report to you the thing i i've seen the things that i've done

and then allow you to walk away and like well that that works for me

or it doesn't and i'm not offended be it

i think the best experts i've listened to have always said something to the effect

of that where it's like i'm not gonna telyouwhatyou should do until you worked for

me so i love that you posted a short was yesterday or the day before

but this concept has come up a couple of times in calls and in your

videos but i couldn't find a long video

okay

really detailing this but the content here and are the i

yeah

think you also called it the trifecta where it's the utility and trend and experts

hm

and how they work together to create amazing content can you explain that a little

bit and how after you explain it you would use it as some one of

the smaller audience to

ah

make content

yeah so the content

oh

pyramid is just me trying to understand the commonality

m

between pieces of content that that work there is the viral pyramid which is a

little bit different but let's just talk about the content pyramid like too create something

that feels substantive that has an opportunity to attract a large audience that should be

built around three pillars the first pillars and experts like you need to know something

have put in the necessary hours to learn that thing

oh

that you're super super passionate about so if we have no extra pats it doesn't

mean that you can't make content and the content won't take off it just means

you just have to work that much harder on the other two parts the next

part is utility

oh

and utility is about the usefulness the desirability that someone else has for your piece

of content so if you showed me how to build a planter box and i'm

really interested in planter boxes especially right now i don't know why then the utility

to me would be

yeah

very hot but to someone else it would be very low and so if you

can score high on your expertise i'm a master carpenter i've built two thousand planter

boxes before i've tried every material i know what works at what doesn't and today

i'm goin to teach you in this video how to build a planter box for

twenty five as that you can finish in two hours either i'm into that or

i'm not and that's totally okay

m oh

and so then you go and do that so if you have expertise and you

provide a lot of utility to your audience you will grow and you'll just find

the component that i often miss and don't tappen to as much o this is

one of those ones do as they say not do it's to tap into trends

trends are basically patterns of consumption patterns in

m

culture certain pieces of music or an editorial style that for some reason a portion

of society has agreed that this is really cool nd there like this a lot

and so if you can tap into a trend you can surf on that and

you can power your content exponentially let me give you an example um ob one

just wrapped up not too many weeks ago and so there's a ton of star

worse content that's out there right now and if there were an important battle between

dart peter and ob one b and you were able to somehow draw parallel to

sales and how to deal with clients and you taught um actionable things that people

can learn then you're topping into the trend or worse because that's what people are

searching for and your experteses and sales and the utility you give is something that

would truly benefit the audience you then hit the content trifecta in terms of hitting

all the notes

i like that i need to i need do better about adding trend as well

i'm terrible

um

at it

so with the content period pyramid try a fact that how how much do you

incorporate this into your planning is this just like a high level idea that you

understand you want to make sure that these are there or do you actually before

you create content makes sure that you are using these as much as you possibly

can

ideal that you plan for it prior to recording

m

because then you can shoot and you can edit making sure that you have the

shots that you need so for example if you knew that it was going to

be about spider man or something else you might wear spider man costume you might

oh

do something with webs

oh

or you might film the whole thing upside down as if you were on the

ceiling talking to the audience

oh

so there's lots of fun ways but you need to plan for that before you

do it otherwise you're going try and take a square and you're gonna try and

squeeze it into a circle

gotcha okay like that i tend to like i do a lot of product reviews

or principal so it's like i'll start the video and plan the hook then i'm

just off the cuff because

yeah

this is what i think about all day what i do all day or i've

used the product so much that i just go but there's not that structure there's

no story arch there's no like these elements that really keep people's attention so i'm

seeing why so am i content that i feel like should do better maybe isn't

doing as well as i think it should so

yeah

i appreciate that

if you can figure out a formula that works and replicate that formula you will

grow your channel really fast and you don't have to say and re vent things

i forget that there's a couple of different people that i follow on tik tok

because i'm studying how content one guy he's like lots of tattoos and he offers

give people a free haircut on the street so it's a little

yeah

bit of an adventure each every time because he has to approach the stranger and

says can i give

oh

you hair cut and i think

yah

his name is vick blends i'm not sure and and sometimes it's a kid so

he's like let's make sure it's okay with your mom and then the interesting

oh

thing isn't the haircut itself but it's about how he interviews and talks to people

sitting in a chair if you think about it personal ving a hair cut to

do how much hair they have you have their undivided attention for about ten any

five minutes right so they're sitting there if they're relax and they're talking to you

they're forgettin the fact they're etting hair cut on the street he films all this

and he has millions of followers i think that's really cool and you want to

find your formula there is another person who offers to take a photograph of people

in the street so he finds somebody interesting

yeah

and it's challenging for him sometimes because he sometimes they just say no and a

lot of them do say yes is why he has content and he's able to

share with his community lie i came up with isn't a school and you you

get to see like normal lighting and then get to see the lighting and framing

through his eyes and it's very very different

yeah like his content specifically i loved one of them that was he wanted to

take a picture of batman batman's like

i saw

no

that

paid him two hundred dollars and he gave him back because it was like

it was so

i

good

like this is awesome yeah

yeah

so i feel like we need everyone should feel that way after watching content

would that be cool

it would be

yeah

i think so my question here is wait talked a lot about how to make

your content better and what i like to dig into is kind of you know

structure and you know creating content that i don't know plstalgrithm may be the best

way to say it but if you are you know that five thousand follower creator

how are you structuring your strategy around creating content in twenty twenty two as far

as long form con and short podcast like what what would you do personally to

really grow

there's a couple different ways to do this

m

if you are more prone to like writing and building really big things i would

start with recording long form content like this interview would be considered long form content

and then having a team go back and cut an adbroleand just pull out the

best pieces the ones that are going to be like minds blown emogi right

m

you would do that and that would work really well but a lot as that's

really difficult to sit there and create a masterpiece of content and air quotes how

are you goin t be able to do that if you're still relatively new

a

gonna

yeah

be very so here's here's my advice to do that on how to do that

you an to create in the way that's the least amount of friction for you

so that you can create at a high velocity the way that you would do

that is you would probably share different ideas thoughts means whatever it is that you're

interested on twitter and if it works and it pops off take that same idea

and through very rigid character limitation you can go and take that to linked in

or you can create an instagram cares out of and stretch it a little bit

so now from one piece of content you have three pieces of conte a longer

form blog post the same idea or a care cell which is a visual translation

of the idea and if the car so does well the linked in thing does

well you might want to aggregate all the thin parts that you think are the

most valuable to people and then you use that to make a video in this

way then you've mitigated the risk of no one wanting to see it because these

are things that started off strong as a tweet as a linked in post and

then as an instagram caracel so one of the videos that we made i think

prepandemic was matthew seeing a caracal that made matthew as a former created factor mind

he saved the cars men he said chris should just do a whole white board

session based on this okay i'll do it and that one was about

oh

the difference between price cost and value

i like that so you would so and this sounds i mean very similar to

what i've heard alexormosi say is basically test first and then your good ideas based

on data not based on what you think is good

yep

then create longer contents for you are you with you tube being kind of the

center of what you want to build if it was how often i guess how

many platforms are you posting on and how often are you creating like are you

creating a lot of shorts to test ideas are you just mostly doing what you

said with getting some the longer videos cut and i guess no and where where

are you posting

okay

how often are you posting

yeah

you explain some like

ah

i want i want like a number maybe i

okay

guess everybody needs a number but

sure

m

there's two different strategies that i'm doing simultaneously right now i've recorded a lot of

long form content meaning an hour plus and there's so much of it that it's

not really a need for me to make new content right now and so my

team will then go and take a long form piece of content and cut out

as many shorts which are under sixty seconds as possible and they create it vertical

video with subtitles built in so that i don't even have to deal with the

captioning part

yeah

and then from that i can post that short on two places i can post

it on on on new tube or i can post it as a real instagram

and i forgot tiktok i would post it on tiktok as well so from

okay

one piece of content we have three are are that are identical to each other

but because of the way each platform is set up some i can write a

little bit more and somebody can't write at all or very little and so the

thing that changes is actually the caption i write for it and um that's so

that's that's the one one strategy right now but i'm also producing probably uh let's

see here in the numbers i think at one point we're saying two shorts a

day so that's ten a week and then forty a month and we started to

notice that medium form and long form content was no longer being watched

yeah

cause we weren't making it so we're constantly shifting that around terms of likecarcels that

i make if you create a care cell for instagram and you

a

export as a p d f you can upload it as a document on linked

in same piece of content probably different caption or maybe the same so there's a

whole team that's helping me to make certain things my main responsibility is to write

and record the new content so that takes me to the next part i try

to keep an ear on to the ground terms of like where people's pain points

and challenges are and when i hear someone having a very strong negative emotion to

something that i think i can solve

oh

well that usually it's pretty good genesis for a new video concept

okay so it sounds like you i mean my next question was gonna be should

we focus on quality of content or like the quantity of content it sounds like

you found to really answer both in you know doing you know quality high quality

content

yeah

in this long form and then getting the quantity by having it cut up and

and

yeah

different things like that from from your team so

yeah

if you're a five thousand you know sub count creator though you don't have a

team so would you still focus on those long form and maybe try to cut

some of the shorter ones

yeah

or would you spend some of that time creating the shorter ones and focus on

quantity over the quality oh

ideally if you can record native purpose driven

oh

content i would choose that option every time meaning if you're on instagram you should

just try to use their program to create the content itself i think that's kind

of important so when you start repurphasing too much

oh

when you're not looking at

m

the camera directly or if it's said in a way that is hard to understand

and the drawing is unclear then you're going to want to re do that so

something i'm telling my team right now is if you come across an old video

and you're trying to cut it up and it's just requiring too much time energy

and creativity to produce give me the trans ep i'll re record as a vertical

video straight to camera you have to do very little editing what you have to

do then is just adding the subtitles and the graphics and it's going to be

a better experience i found that video that i make specifically for a platform versus

pouring over content from something else

ye

generally performs

oh

better than the ones that were not purpose made

m okay and that was that was part of my question was like the quality

i feel like feel like the quality focusing on the platform and really addressing people

on the platform makes a lot of sense because you know that you speaking to

them on that platform but it's really hard to do multiple tik tok in a

week and multiple vertical videos and these big long form videos so it sounds like

i know as that creator you just got to find a balance of what works

and i mean that's essentially wha you've been saying the whole time i just figure

out what works for you

yeah

so

there is potentially a small

yeah

content optimization trick if you were to write seven chapters for a video for for

you tube each one you design to to take no longer than one minute

yes

each and you sprinkle that throughout your your videos on youtube no one will be

the wiser like we this cool great content and then if you take it out

of that context and you use use that to attract different kinds of people like

for example you take these short pieces of content that are strung together to make

a long form video for you tube then pretty much you can extract that and

just drop each one of those seven pieces on to tiktok and on to instagram

and to use for short so a little pre planning allow you to do that

that's awesome that i like that tip a lot i think that's again planning your

your content is a theme i'm hearing that that i need to to really focus

on so

i want to i want to add this one thing zack

m

that

yeah

when you're at the five thousand mark you you're you're probably just exploring right now

and i would say to everybody who's at that five thousand mark just keep exploring

try lots of things fail a lot and learn about who you want to show

up as in terms of your voice your tone does subject matter and start to

work on that and don't get into any kind of automation content production pipeline where

you're just banging out content way ahead of time like you shouldn't have like a

three month content calendar because it means

yeah

you're not really learning and adapting you're just going to go full

yeah

force doing whatever it is that you want to do most people

m

great content want the content to be seen that should be probably your general goal

i need people to see this idea spread faster if they're spread through people right

who watch the content and so

yeah

experiment try things out and then i when you reach twenty thousand subs start thinking

about okay do i have a hypothesis right now something working now all that goes

out the window if you create a piece of content and goes viro and brings

you a couple of thousand followers based on that one piece of content then i

was in all bets are i actually did find something at work

m

really well can i replicate this can i do this again and you just try

to do it again

okay like that i think it's and that's kind of how i feel right now

it's kind of this wandering testing doing a lot of things and when you do

find things that work really well double down and i feel like sadly and this

is the way i feel i feel like youtube is harder to break out on

but you've proven through your channel i mean it took a long time like again

i'm going to link some videos of chris and you're growing on youtube but you

made content for years before you really took off but once you found out what

really worked you doubled and tripled and quadrupled down on the we're able to grow

really really quickly so

yeah

um i love that there i did have a question came in from someone when

i said i was going to be interviewing you they said is there a topic

that maybe you don't get to talk about on youtube that you wish you could

talk about more

it's not so much that i wish i could talk about it more because there

is really nothing stopping me from making any kind

oh

of content but so i'll look at it like this there are topics that i

am not asked about and

oh

but i feel equally passionate about and there's lots of things like let's talk about

game of thrones let's talk about the marvel cynematic universe as it relates to the

printed comics let's talk about licensing and topics i'm also interested in is how to

raise an entrepreneur of child let's talk about parenting skills and things i've learned maybe

things from therapy and how they translate or how to be

yeah

at a better coach or facility or i could do those kinds of things so

i generally go wherever our audience wants to go i'm not in the business of

just making content specifically because it feels fun to make content when no one shows

up

yeah

so the thing that i missed the most right now zach is it's been a

little over two years since i've been in the studio with a live audience with

hungry minds that want to be fed i

oh

get the most enjoyment

oh

from doing that and it also turns out that usually winds up as being our

best content

oh

our two highest viewed videos have a live audience in session with me the first

one is a short about to price the logo where there's a group of people

who signed up for my money mind set course it was not of course it

was a workshop i did a three hour workshop talked about stuff and the best

it came out through that and that video almost has fifty million views at this

point

oh

i think the second high speed video is another short wherein i'm arguing with my

friend mo where he's playing the role

oh

of a really just jerk client who's super cheap and i was given the task

of not

a

saying goodbye to the client i had to finish negotiation and so really tested me

and that piece of content went up doing really big numbers as well over five

million vas i think

it's incredible i love those vides well i feel like you're you have a new

level of energy when you have a live audience like

yeah

you just come alive which is amazing to see so

yeah

i do want to respect your time for about three minutes before the end of

or so

hm

i do want to ask you though and i don't know how much content you've

watched or mine or you know some smaller creators in your circle maybe i think

of any one of them is there any piece of advice that you would give

someone who is just really trying to make this work and just kind of feels

like they're treading water spinning their heels but they they know it's going to work

just it's getting a little frustrating

yeah i think if you just walk in the door with your experts it's not

going to be enough so if you know a lot about video and channel optimization

and if you talk about that people are going to fall asleep so you have

to compete against uh i think it's mostly like calory preservation which is what i'm

told is when you're like deep in thought you're burning a lot of calories and

so when sitting in a lecture hall in the the professor who you really want

to learn from is siting fact after fact what happens to you in a dark

and air condition environment you fall asleep because i'm trying to pay attention this is

super and and your burning calories and your brain says we're not going to die

meaning there's no danger present we're going to shut down the computer and your brain

will go to sleep and the way that you combat that is you pull people

into a story no it's not often that you're at the theater and it's a

good movie and there's a compelling plot line where tension is being created and you're

like i'm going to all asleep now no because you put yourself in the film

and that's what the power of worries does for people when when you're able to

tell a story the person not just listens to you but they're walking next to

you re experiencing and reliving those moments with you so whenever possible tell stories and

you might have to find some a gemic and i don't say gimic in a

bad way a gimic in that you know instead of just being straight forward like

everybody else speaking to camera talking about tips and tricks on whatever it is that

you're doing that you get some kind of visual aid and you're doing demonstration you're

creating metaphors you're building models or something like that so that people can really understand

and for us the break through on some of our life contents when i start

drawing and having these white board sessions and tearing sheets off and like okay this

is what it is and

oh

i get to exercise a little bit more of some that my skill sets whereas

sitting here locked in front of a camera

m

you're getting

m

my intellect but you're not getting a lot of my personality my body language my

mannerisms and what i enjoy the most me making fun of people who are in

attendance

yeah gotcha i like that thank you i feel like that's i need to do

that more i'm going to be planning content a lot better and trying to remember

that the facts facts aren't enough so

yeah

where you've got a lot going on where can people find you on social pro

group all that kind of stuff and connect with you

you can find me on most social networks pretty much everywhere and you can find

me at the chris do do is spelled d o and there are fake versions

of me somewhere where they misspell

okay

this or they add a weird underscore

oh

please don't follow them i'm active on instagram linked in twitter on you tube i

read all the messages and sometimes i get backed up but eventually i do make

through my way through all the messages and so when some it's responding replying to

you for my account it's me

yeah

i think there's a whole team behind

ah

it there isn't it's just me

oh

responding and so i beg you please keep your message

yeah

short because i cannot read long messages

oh

because of the volume right and you're live because you

yeah

know exactly what i'm talking about and

h

you can find out more information

m

about our products courses and our coaching community all out the future dot com and

that spelled f u like the f u t u r there's no e at

the end of it it's just the future if you will

ye

com

yeah perfect and i'm gonna link all of this down in all the videos that

we posted this so thank you so much chris for being so generous with your

time teaching us all these things and then you know making sure that we can

we can grow on you tube and twenty he too thanks for impacting my life

as well and changing everything for me

thank you as i said zac i just can't wait to see where you go

on this journey i'm

oh

very excited for you

appreciate that all right everyone have a good night and we'll see ou next time