You have to work on your offer. The offer has to be so good that somebody would feel stupid to say no. And at the beginning of your career, that offer will probably be for almost no money. And it's okay for you to do that. You need to prove and validate your idea. So what I would do is reach out to a bunch of people and say, Here's what I do. I would love to help you. For no money or for very little money, whatever it is so that they can say yes.
If you can't give it away for free, you don't have a business.
Hi, this is the marketing meeting and I'm your host Itir Eraslan. Every two weeks I meet with experts and we talk about topics related to brands, marketing, and businesses. We sometimes add random lifestyle topics too. I hope you enjoy the show. Welcome to the Marketing Meeting Podcast. I'm happy to host Chris Do today.
Chris is an Emmy winning, award winning designer, director, and CEO of the company Blind, and the founder of Future, an online education platform with a mission of teaching one billion people how to make a living doing what they love. Welcome, Chris.
Thanks Itir.
I'll start with one question. On your company website, you are wearing a Nike, a New York City Run Club Nike shirt. Are you a runner?
I am not. And I'm not even that big of a fan of Nike, but it just happened to be what I was wearing that day for that photo shoot. So there you are.
Oh, that's nice. Because my first marketing role at Nike was running brand manager. So I was there at the beginning of and we built the communities, the run clubs and so on. That's why I was just like, okay, I should ask this question if you are a runner or not. What are the sports that you do, by the way?
I don't do any sports to be honest, I stay fit by just working out in the gym and going on hikes and walks and that's how I stay fit. But if I were into any sports, it used to be in my adolescence, skateboarding and volleyball, but my knees and joints are a little bit too old now to be doing either one of those things.
But if you are going to the gym, it's like, it counts as you are doing a sport.
Yeah, I think so. It's how you maintain your body and, and, and stay fit and sharp and have energy, I believe.
Uh, I'm going to ask you a question, uh, before we, I start with the flow of the rest of the questions, but you started in brand design, which you are already also doing right now. Uh, and now your focus is also more on personal branding coaching. What inspired this shift in your life?
I want to just give you the update to the resume here. I'm mostly 100 percent focused on teaching period. I don't do any client work. I haven't done any client work since December of 2018. So the education company is doing just fine. We have a whole team that's helping us. And for, for me.
The shift comes from this idea of like needing to make money to validate the things I've learned in school and to apply them in the real world to know that they work and to get, I guess, critical feedback from the world, clients, etc. So that I can learn. But I reached a certain point where I didn't need to work to make money anymore. I'm okay financially. And so then I have to ask myself the bigger question is, what do you want your life to be? To mean, how do you want your life to be measured?
And that sent me around a very crazy and fun soul fulfilling searching kind of thing where I think my real, my most core deepest identity is. that of an educator.
It, it, uh, touches my heart because I have a similar thing. I mean, I used to teach at the school as well. And like my life, all my life, I want to teach people. Uh, but right now I'm not at that stage to stop the client work and then move to teaching. So, uh.
Maybe I can help you.
Oh, I mean, you never know. Yeah. Um, so. I started my company seven years ago and after like 20 years of global brand background, um, and A lot of my friends from big global brands are coming to me and asking me some repeat questions about, you know, how to start a business, how to build the business. And, uh, and I would like to, you know, structure the talk around those questions that I received, like real life questions that I received from my friends.
Uh, because I'm not the person to write the best person to answer those questions, because you have experience working with so many other people teaching so many other people about that. Uh, so. When someone starts a new business, first question I always receive from them, where shall we start? What's the foundation of this? Uh, what would you say to that?
So they want to start a new business or they've already started a new business? They
want to start a new business and they want to just go out from the corporate world and start a new business.
Okay, the first thing I would tell them is don't start a business. I would just say, don't, don't do it. What you want to do is you want to have the job security that you have currently and that affords you the ability to do anything that you want in life. And I think that's an important thing because the minute you quit your job and start a business, now you don't have that freedom anymore because now you have to make money.
You have to pay the rent and buy food and, you know, Electricity and all that kind of stuff. So what I like to tell people is sit there and just daydream a little bit and think about a problem that people are having, not a problem you're having, but a problem people are having and make a list of the things that you think these are gaps that exist in the marketplace.
And usually where there are gaps or opportunities, and you don't want to pursue any of them, or even the one that seems like the best. You want to pursue the one that speaks to you personally. And the question I usually have people ask themselves is something like, why are you more qualified than most people to fulfill this gap or to fill this gap? Because if you can't bring any real skill to it, then you're going to be climbing an uphill battle. So I'll give you this example.
Let's say you have an idea for an app that helps people with fitness. But you're not a developer, you know, to use that user experience designer and you don't really work out. You're not a fitness freak. So really what you're saying is I have an idea and ideas are cheap because everyone has an idea You don't bring anything to the table. Well, do you have money?
Well, no, I don't have money either So here you really don't bring anything specific to the problem someone else better suited for this will will beat you So let's use this time that we have to really think about a problem That is worth solving one that we have some skill or affinity or passion for And then pick that one find the overlap between those two things Mm
hmm
And I would start there. And the way I would do it is I would start to, to create an offer, whether, uh, it is to, uh, like it's B2B or B2C, create an offer and put a price point on it and think about who you're writing to and put that out there and stand up a sales page. And if, okay, now you got something going on. Now you need to direct traffic to this thing. And the only action could be, give me your email address if you would like to be notified when I launch a product.
Mm hmm.
Like, this is in a, a kind of pre launch phase, and if you can't build enough interest there, then you know you have a real problem. So what we want to do is kind of build the minimum viable product model to test to see if the market wants what it is that we're going to create, versus spending years of development investing hundreds of thousands of dollars into building something that no one actually wants.
The, the, oftentimes, uh, the other reaction that I get is that, you know, in corporate world is 724 almost like you sleep and you start working and then they're just like, I'm so exhausted that I don't know if I can, you know, start a sidekick even, even I cannot even take care of myself. So that's usually one other thing that comes up. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. So I'll tell you. I'll tell them this. I'll pretend like they're talking to me. And I'm gonna apologize in advance. I'm gonna say things that might be offensive to some of you or triggering or not very empathetic, but that's just who I am, okay? So I'll just say this. If you think corporate takes all of your energy and your soul, then you're definitely not an entrepreneur. Because being an entrepreneur is even harder than that thing that you said you have no energy for.
Okay. Now, I don't know how it works in every single country, but typically the company owns you for about eight hours and the amount of productive time that you actually can contribute in an office is probably three hours every day. Cause there's a lot of time wasted doing nothing. So if you can give them three to four hours of your highly focused productive energy, you've done them a good, you've done a good thing. You've earned your money. You can feel good about yourself.
But what you need to do is you need to establish very clear boundaries that because you're not the owner of the company, you don't bring the work home with you. You don't sit there and like, well, I have to really think about this campaign or this, this client I'm trying to help. And it's like, no, switch your brain off.
So the popular expression of this is, you have your nine to five, which is your eight hours of work, and then you have your five to nine, which you have to dedicate towards building your dream. Because dreams don't work unless you do. And so we have to figure this out. Realistically, it's not five to nine, it's like five to two in the morning, probably. And you have to sit there and you have to grind it out. Now, the one thing, hopefully, is you have weekends for free, that are free.
And you have to say, you know, you know, Those are the two days in the week that I get to work on my dream. If you can't get up for that, if you can't find the energy for that, there's two problems. Number one, perhaps the place you're working at isn't working for you. Then you need to find a different job. One that doesn't take all of your mental, spiritual, and creative energy away from you. That's fine. Number two, is maybe you're really just not cut out for this.
Not everyone who wants to start a business, should start a business, can start a business, and can run it successfully. That's just a sad, sad, harsh reality.
In my case, like my story was like, I did a lot of soul searching because I never figured out till I, till the day I left Nike, but I wanted to say like last year, I'm going to focus on what I love the most lurking at this company. And my first clients right after I left were Eventually based on the projects that I worked on the last year, like that I worked with really passionately and emotionally. So, but I agree. So, uh, finding the first client is another question.
So let's say, okay, we started the business, we found our idea, but how do I find the first client? Is there a way? Uh, and even like company owners that already work like for three, four years are asking this question to me. Where do you find your clients?
Yeah. The way that you have to do this is I said, you have to work on your offer. The offer has to be so good that somebody would feel stupid to say no. And at, at the beginning of your career, that offer will probably be for, for almost no money. And it's okay for you to do that. Especially if you, you need to prove. And validate your idea. So what I would do is reach out to a bunch of people and say, here's what I do. I'm a fan of what it is that you do. I would love to help you. And I have.
space to take you on for, for no money or for very little money, whatever it is so that they can say yes. And you need to be able to get, if you can't give it away for free, you don't have a business. That's the problem. So there are young people reaching out to me in the DMs all the time offering to help me for free to which 99 percent of them I say no to. That's how bad the offer is right now. And so they have to work on their offer such that I don't feel burdened by even receiving something.
And that's a big problem, right? So, you know that within your network of friends, family, and professional friends, like your colleagues, the people that you used to work with, you should be able to translate one of them into a actual gig that you do for somebody. And the money's not important, the experience is. The testimonial that you get from it is, and the ability to say, I helped X company achieve Y result. That is very important to trading up for your next paying gig.
That's kind of a really important thing to make sure that it's built into that client that you wind up working for, for very little money.
So it's not only about doing a pro bono, like without any money, uh, offer, but it's also like the content of the offer needs to be there, uh, you say. It has to
be. Yeah. And not just the, the content of the offer, but the transformation that you hope to achieve has to be something that you would retell in a story because you are trading your time, your energy, your creativity. And the lack of money for something else. And that has to be this transportable story that you can leverage into getting another client. Cause if you don't have that, you've got nothing in return and you've just given up more stuff. And I'm not an advocate for that.
But what if like, doesn't it's like lower your perception, uh, giving something for free and like, doesn't it. look a little bit desperate time to time like there should be some boundaries around that.
Yeah and and it looks desperate because you are desperate. You have no work, you have no validation and right now what you need is experience. So you're trading money and time for experience and that's what we have to do. Let's just take it a different way. Let's say I'm a master swords maker. I make beautiful swords, the best katana blades you can, can get, and it's revered throughout the world, right? And you are just a tradesperson and you don't know how to fabricate swords.
So what are you going to do? You're going to go into my shop and you're going to be an apprentice, hopefully, if you can get in. And you're going to offer sweat equity to learn how to do the dumb stuff, like go grab the ore, fire up the oven, and just do basic dumb things. But those things build skill.
Okay. Cool.
And then you start to see how the master crafts a sword. And then eventually you become a journeyman apprentice and you go from one master to another until you develop your own style. And so when we look at it, like when you start your own business, you're kind of an apprentice. It looks like you're a professional person, but you're kind of an apprentice and you're looking to apply your craft to somebody. And so you're trading that.
For that experience and you need that because what are you going to show in your portfolio? What are you going to show in your body of work? A bunch of speculative fake student projects or whatever it is that you're doing. Okay. This is not the ideal way to launch. Like I said, work at a company. Develop content and a sales page such that there's interest and only start doing that when you reach a tipping point.
The other thing that you can do, and I didn't mention this is when you leave your job, you should leave in such a way that your coworkers think about how to give you work after you leave. So that's a great place, right? So when I stopped working at an ad agency and I started my own company, the first client I got was friends from that ad agency hired me. And that's how I started to get some work and make some money and validate that what I can do is good.
Now I had a lot to learn still, but it was a good way to kind of get some work. So almost everyone that I used to work for sent me work so that it kept me going until I could find my own clients. And it takes a while to figure that out.
Well, I mean, like it was the same case for me, for example, like anything that came to my table, which I would not do now, let's say social media management. Uh, I take it on. Uh, because I need to do and that helps me also structure what I'm doing next. Uh, so it was really helpful to get many things, although I was a quite experienced person. Uh, it helps me also to do things that I would not do now, uh, at the beginning.
Uh, so I faced this dilemma still after seven years, uh, but When some, a potential client approached me, the first thing most of them ask is, do you have a company presentation? Can you share it with me? So rather than meeting, and I usually try to turn it to a meeting first, because so that I can understand rather than sending a deck. What's your approach in the first client, uh, approach, uh, and then what would you do in that sense?
Okay. So the scenario is someone has seen something, heard something, and they're trying to protect their time. So they're saying, send me something before I agree to talk to you, right? Is that the scenario? Just send
me your company presentation so that I can understand what you are doing. And I can't decide.
Okay. So, what I would ask for is, before I send you my, uh, capabilities deck, may, can we talk for 10, 15 minutes so I can better assess what it is you're looking for? Because what I want, I don't want to do is send over a generic capabilities deck, but what I can do is curate and put the right kinds of things that might be relevant to your business or the problem that you're trying to solve.
Mm hmm.
I'd ask for a 10 minute meeting in the 10 minute meeting that you have, be mindful and respectful, get right to the business part. And if you do a good enough job in that meeting, that minute, that 10 minutes, they'll, they'll expand. They'll keep expanding. People can usually commit to a 10, 15 minute meeting. And that way you can learn a lot more about them, build some rapport and then send, send over that capability stack.
And then for example, in a meeting, when I, my first reaction in a meeting is to understand their problem of the potential client. And then, for them what I can do for them. So it's mainly making them talk rather than I talk. So I have also another dilemma, which is like, should I now open the presentation because it started so sincerely and then we started already talking about their problems.
And should I now open the presentation so it looks a little bit formal, uh, and then so that they see how I work. So it's the other thing that I face a lot is, is that.
Yeah, you know, I, I was listening to a podcast with Blair Enns and David C. Baker called The Two Bobs.
Yeah, I know.
And Blair is writing on his new, new book. And he said something like you can either be present or you can present. But you cannot do both. So when you're presenting, you're not present. Because you're thinking about what you're going to say next. You're thinking about your slides or the offer, the pitch, whatever it is. And you want to be present. And I would rather stay in the conversational mode for as long as I can to learn as much as I can about the person.
Because when you learn about them, they feel seen. Heard, understood, and possibly appreciated. And that's, those are like key things that you have to be able to build in order for you to have some rapport. This is going to be, believe it or not, your leverage, the, your, your secret weapon. So when someone else is really smooth and professional and formal, they, they present and they might say all the right things, might even show the right things.
And they would beat you on a portfolio competition. The other person, the client, the buyer, if they're smart, they would say, you know what? I don't feel that connection. I feel like you've done this before for many people, and I'm just going to be one of many. If they're a smart buyer, if they're a young buyer, they're going to get razzled dazzled by the power of the presentation. In that case, you're not going to be able to win anyways.
One of these things that you need to learn pretty quickly is you have to not compete with. Against other people where they're really strong and where you're really weak So Sun Tzu the art of war is about turning your weaknesses into your strengths So if they have a better portfolio and they have 25 years of professional experience When you try to show up and you try to put your portfolio together and compete with them against their experience You're going to lose almost every single time.
So you make the thing that your, your weakness and you have to turn it into strength. The fact that I don't have this ginormous portfolio, this body of work done over 10 years of, uh, or 20 years of work is I'm going to try to be a really good listener. I'm going to ask questions. I'm going to make sure I can problem solve, use my mind and my ability to articulate ideas. That's how I'm going to win.
Perfect. It sounds I'm on the correct path. So, um, The next step is presenting the proposal, uh, which is another, uh, point where you can either send it via email in a document like scope of work, timelines, budgets, but you can also present it as, uh, especially for creatives, I think you can also present it through without any budget and then share the budget. It's like two different approaches. Do you have any preference over one or the other?
Um, yes. Uh, I've experimented with this a lot. When we get into, I wouldn't call it presenting proposal, but let's say we have first concepts, you know, they're like, okay, send over the concepts. We'll review and we'll call you. Or the other way is to present the concepts to them live. And I find that the best version of this is somewhere in between. And I'll tell you why in a second, okay?
So first, what I do is I send to them the materials to review the night before we're scheduled for a meeting. So if we're scheduled for a 10 a. m. call, I'll send it to them 6 or 7 p. m. with like an hour left of work. And I send a note, I say, take a glance at this, and I use the word glance, just look at this once over, and then forget that you even looked at it. Allow me to walk you through the thinking and the strategy so that we can guide you through the process.
The reason why is I want them to see it before I present it is because oftentimes when you're presenting for the first time, you're gonna get a very cold reaction because they're overwhelmed with what you're saying and showing. They don't know how to react. They don't know how to ask you a question. So that means you have to set up another meeting, which I don't want to do.
Okay. I don't want them also to simultaneously sit with the material for so long that they start to rule out certain ideas because they don't understand things. There's a lot of things that aren't shown on the page that I breathe life into when I present the work. This is really important. So that's, that's how we do it. So the morning of I say, hey, I hope you got the document. And I'm going to walk you through it.
All I ask is you keep an open mind and I'm going to point out some things that may not be apparent to you. So I go through a page at a time and then I say, if you have any questions in between, then please stop me mid presentation and I'll expand on that. Or you can wait to the end, but I prefer you just to stop me because I know that's where it's kind of sticky. Either they're confused or they really love it. And this has been the hybrid approach that we take that works really well for us.
In that preparation, like in that document that you walk them through, do you include pricing details and timelines? Or is it just like the conceptual of how we are going to work and the scope of work?
So the thing I just described to you is they've already hired us. So now when we get into the proposal, we generally don't send over customized proposals to people. And I'll tell you why. And that's why I kind of avoided your question. Okay. It's generally our policy not to do that. When I send over a capabilities deck. It's showing you case studies and it shows you general price points and things of that nature so that they have an idea.
I, I am trying my best to set expectations about what it's going to cost to work with us and what the process is going to look like. So if it's not a good fit, they can pull the plug early and I don't have to keep going. Inevitably what they do is like, can you create a proposal for us? I said, well, what is the proposal based on undefined scope? I can't do that. Unclear customer definitions. How do we do that? Abstract positioning and messaging. I cannot do that.
And so I, I refuse to do a proposal. All I can do is give them ballpark prices. And then they say, so what's the option then? I said, well, you can look at all your options and then you could choose to hire us if you want to. We'll go into discovery mode and we'll charge you at that time. You know, early on, I said 30, 000. And once we're done with the discovery. We'll put together a proposal for you and the proposal will include the discovery price should you move forward.
So we'll credit you back to 30 K it's baked into the price of this thing. But if you don't want to proceed, you don't have to no harm, no foul. We'll shake hands and we'll wish you the best of luck. You can use the discovery to do whatever it is that you want to do.
Okay. Yeah. Now I understand. But then at the beginning, they have kind of an idea of where they are probably, roughly, they want to know, uh, around, are you around like 10 or 100, 000 or 1 million?
Yes. We include a kind of a general ballpark pricing thing at the end of our capabilities deck.
Oh, that, that's, that, that's
it. And it's usually a range, right? So like, say we know it's identity system. We know it's discovery. We'll put it all in there. They'll see a menu and there's like, some things are fixed, like the 30K for discovery. And for logo and identity, it could be anywhere between 20 to 200, 000. It's big numbers. So then we add up the total. We say it could be as little as 60K and it could be as much as 600.
thousand plus, we always put the plus there because there's no ceiling to this, but there is a basement to it.
Yeah. Makes sense. Especially for, uh, if you are running a creative and design agency, then it's really, really makes sense. Um, In what, um, like I, I will come to the pricing point because we are already talking about that. And I watched a lot of your videos around the pricing and it can be tricky, especially for a new business. So what, how can I set my prices when I'm starting up my business? What's, what's, what's will be the starting point to that?
Okay. That's a very big question. And it's a very broad question. Do you want to narrow down who this person is?
Yeah. So I'm, I'm a consultant. I'm going to give a brand strategic services to my clients.
How much experience do you have?
I have 20 years of experience.
This sounds a lot like you.
Uh, yeah. Fastest example that I have is myself.
Right. Okay. So you're going to go out there and you're going to do consulting work. And have you done consulting work before? No.
But I've done strategy work.
Okay. So what is consulting? Like, how do you define consulting?
Consulting I define as building a brand strategy for a company. And then after doing the brand strategy, I help them, uh, on execution, on giving advices and direction while the team is executing it.
Like creative direction?
Uh, after the strategy phase.
All right. Do you know how much you want to charge to do this?
Um, when I look to the market, people are around between 20, 000 to 50, 000 for the brand strategy part of it, not the retainer part of it. Uh, but I see, I hear numbers between 20, 000 to 50, 000, uh, for a three month strategy project.
Okay. Where would you like to be in that?
I would like to be in the, uh, forties.
Okay. So like 45? 40,
45, 000. Yeah.
Okay. You just say a number.
45.
What number works for you? 45. Okay.
Okay,
so that would be your price.
Okay. Thank you so much.
But I have a question for you. Okay. It didn't take that long for us to get there. So the question is, what are you questioning? You didn't need me to tell you that. You already knew this.
I think I needed some validation, uh, of my pricing and, uh, when I'm presenting this big number to the clients, I'm afraid that they would, they would say, Oh, it's so high. And then I would lose the client.
Yeah. So let's get into that. First of all, I didn't, I don't think I gave you any validation. I just asked you a bunch of questions and you told me, and I just said, okay, that's what it is. I have no proof. One way or the other, right? So let's address the bigger thing, which is the fear that you're going to lose a client because you're saying a number that's too high. If the number's too high, it's possible there's a couple of reasons why. Number one, the client's not big enough for you.
Number two, they have the money but they don't believe you're the person to do it for them. Let's tackle this one at a time. So what we do is a lot of times when we're going through our fears and thought process, we should just outline what are the possible outcomes and what are the reasons for that and see if we can't see if they're legitimate or not or how we can fix some of those problems, okay? Now you probably already know this, But I'm gonna ask you this question.
How much of a company's revenue do they typically spend on marketing? What percentage do you know this
Well, usually the first reaction is 10% from mainly all of the marketing people.
Yes. Yes. It's usually about 10%. Mm-Hmm. . So for people who are listening, if it's a million dollars in revenue, what is 10%?
A hundred thousand?
Yes. And then if they are a $10 million company, what's 10% of that
1 million?
Okay, let's keep going. We'll do a hundred million dollar company. What is their marketing budget? Ten
million.
Yes. Okay. Now what, what people are here are like, wow, this is fantastic. I'm only asking for 40k. And if they're a million dollar company, they'll hire me. What you don't understand is that's their entire marketing budget. For the year across all the things they need, including internal management. So they have a project coordinator that that person's going to eat 40 K. And so now they have 60 K and they're not going to spend 45 K of their 60. Just for you to do brand strategy.
So that tells me if you're looking to speak to anybody that's in the million dollar range or the multi million dollar range, it's not gonna work. They just can't afford what you do. So what we do is we reverse engineer. Just think, you're just one of many things that they're doing. So here's a rule of thumb. Take the brand strategy, the execution, the creative direction, and add all that up, what number does that land you at? What do you think?
You mean my number yearly?
Your number plus what it costs him to execute the idea, plus the printing of it because that's part of the execution, or the the programming, whatever it is, plus you doing a retainer creative direction consulting thing. What do you think that number is? Just throw out a ballpark number. It's
usually per year, it's 1. 5 million.
Okay. If I'm in the world, yeah. Well, I'm not talking about per year, like say for example, if they ask you to do brand strategy and you're developing their, their, their identity system, their, their voice and tone, some marketing campaigns, social media, there's a lot of stuff you're doing. What is that initiative going to cost them?
Around still one, 1. 5 million.
Okay. 1. 5. Together with my services.
Yeah.
Okay. So my rule of thumb is you have to multiply that by four. I'll tell you why, because that's not the only thing they're doing this year. I promise you they've got other things to do. So we're going to multiply it by four because it's going to be four quarters of this. So that means their marketing budget for the year has to be around six million dollars. Okay. So that's a rule of thumb. And we go backwards and we multiply that by, by 10. So how big does the company need to be?
Like around a hundred million?
Yeah, between 60 to 100 million dollars. Okay. And so here's the weird thing. I've already done this work for you, because I figured it out pretty quickly. In order to work with us, a company needs to be north of a hundred million dollars in revenue annually.
Now, there's also another reason, because I find that entrepreneurs, and it's weird for me to say this, because I don't have a hundred million dollars myself, that haven't broken a hundred million dollars are still stuck in doing certain kinds of things. Once you break past a hundred million dollars, those people think on a whole different level than the people that are under a hundred million dollars.
And the people who gross more than a hundred million dollars, they've learned a very valuable lesson in life. They would rather put money into something, dump money into a problem to solve it versus time. People who are under a hundred million dollars would rather dump time into a problem versus money. And I'm a person who you need to dump money into, not time. So that's how we know.
So we can just quickly say that when you scan a company that they need to be, for you specifically, 60 million dollars plus. Or it's not going to work. It just will not work. They just can't afford it So that will help you avoid one of the no's so you could put on your website. We work with Companies who gross more than 100 million dollars a year So the way that you can change that is you can just look at the number of figures So six figures seven figures is a million eight figures.
So we work with nine, you know It's like something like that companies that gross above 100 million dollars a year to help them do their brand strategy and to Help them ripple that across multiple touch points.
Yeah.
So that way you're, and then the site needs to look like kind of corporate, like you need to reassure people that you are not going to be a flight risk for them.
Well, I mean, I think that's really connected to marketing as well, because it's at the end of the day, personal branding and your company branding, but it's about understanding the market. And the customer and who you are targeting. And that's exactly where I see that companies after a hundred million, they are ready to take off like between 50 to a hundred, they are about to take off, but a hundred is like the point where it's breaks for my business.
Actually, of course, for other businesses, it can be something else.
You could do a little research too, and you can, you can write some articles about this. Some posts and you can share this on social and you can call them between zero to 50 million. They're in the foundational series between 1, 500, 000, 000 they're in the pre growth phase and then a hundred million plus they're in this and you can just create things and we work with people in the growth phase of their business.
So it's like an indirect, uh, messaging. Yeah,
you can, you, you can kind of label it, define it, and you do some research, because I'm making up some numbers here. And you can say, according to a Harvard Business Review article dated da da da da, these are the phases of companies I like to work with, high growth phase companies. And here are some of the metrics that define them. And if this sounds like you and you need help with brand strategy, um, for whatever reason, take this self assessment quiz. Let's see if we're a good fit.
Now I'm going to say something here. Okay. If you look at you and you look at me, I'm not in a phase where companies want to give me a hundred, you know, uh, one and a half million dollars to help them with brand strategy. Because today I showed up in a t shirt, I've got my cap on, you know, whatever. I look a certain way. Whereas you, you look like a person I can trust with a million and a half dollar project.
You know, you look like a professional person who showed up for something and, and that's the right thing because how you you. Dress for the job is the kind of job you're going to get. So you need to dress for the job that you want to have, not the job you have.
Mm-Hmm, . Chris Do: And right now I'm literally in a T-shirt and chain. I just got outta bed a couple hours ago and this is just my day . Itir Eraslan: But I mean, like, if I were to give, get, uh, creative services from someone, I would definitely get it from you because you look cool. you look different. So you're, and that, that's what I'm looking for in a creative person.
So we send out different energy. So we just need to be sure, like who we're talking to. Right. And, and that's something that you can control. So be mindful of that, everybody.
Um, what do you think about hourly versus project based pricing? Um, because I, I only give project based pricing because I think about a project at any time of the day when I'm into it and there's no hour to that, but especially for creatives that are doing like copywriting, graphic design and so on. They are having to sign them off hourly versus project.
Yeah, there are a lot of articles and books you can read on this. You can watch videos. So I'll just give you the snapshot version of this, how you charge tells people what to pay attention to. So when you charge hourly, what are they paying attention to? They're paying attention to the time that you spend on something. And I know this because I've paid and I still continue to pay people hourly for different things So I had a guy who come out here to service our air conditioning unit.
I know it's hourly So if he's asking questions, he's poking around like what are you doing? What are you doing? Are you sure because I know i'm gonna get a bill from him and it makes me feel really uneasy That he's not doing it in the most efficient way possible, right?
So you're sitting there like chatting away or Uh, I don't know doing whatever then I feel like i'm gonna get a bill for something that wasn't really productive You So, the unit in which you charge determines what people should focus on. So if you do project based pricing, which is a flat fee, you have to assume some risk. The client is not looking at your time because you didn't sell them your time. You're selling them the deliverables.
So I'm going to write a brand strategy document for you, I'm going to create a design bible for you, whatever it is that you do. So they care more about the deliverable, which is kind of where you want the attention to be focused on, not on how you spend your time. This way you don't have to do time sheets.
You're not logging your time and you're not even away every time It doesn't even matter because you know then today you have to deliver a product that's really good So here's the example we go out we buy a car brand new car. We go to a lot Let's say it's audi you go to the audi dealership You look at the models and you're kind of looking at features and functions of each model, right?
And you're like, oh, I like the design of this more the headlights of that you just really focus on the product Nowhere in the conversation. Did you ask how long did it take to build this model? You The seven series, uh, or versus the three or five, whatever it is. I think I'm messing up the models right now. The eight, nine to eight, seven, whatever it is, you don't really care and you don't need to know. It could have taken them one hour to build it. It could have taken them 10, 000 hours.
That's irrelevant to you because you're focused on the features and functions and the design, the aesthetic. of each one of these plus what each model brings to you in terms of the status that you achieve. You're buying a premium brand and you want to be able to feel like when you're driving the road confident and you're signaling to people, I've made it or I'm a douchebag or whatever it is you, it is you want to send out to the world, right?
Yeah. So there's another model, there's actually many more models to price, not just hourly projects. The next one is you can do it based on value. So now we don't even look at the deliverable. We look at the impact or the, the result of having that work done. So now we say, well, what is the impact that this initiative is going to take? Then they need to articulate to you. Well, we're going to get more sales. We're going to have a better customer experience.
I'm going to feel better about myself, whatever that is. And we need to be able to quantify it somehow value to client. And then we charge a. percentage of value created. That seems pretty fair. And so at that point, they don't care how many deliverables you make. They only care that the impact is achieved. Let's put that in the real world because it's a little bit abstract for people. I have multiple content teams working with me.
And what they do is they cut videos that I make, they add graphics, they title things, they create the thumbnail, the description, and they schedule the post. I do not care how many videos they make. I care that the metrics that matter to me are moving in the right direction. Subscribers. watch time, and then AdSense revenue. So they can spend a gazillion hours making something. And if it doesn't work, that's terrible for me. They need to be fired.
They can create 100 videos for me that don't work. That's terrible for me. They need to be fired. But I leave it to the individual to figure out how much they need to make and the quality of that to achieve the results that we set out. If they can't do that, then I'm not interested in working with them.
So it's not task based, it's value based, actually. For example, in your work, can you
achieve my result?
How about the timelines? That's the last part of it. Uh, because the other day I had an interesting conversation, a friend of mine, she would like to have her horoscope looked, you know, there's like a famous person that she approached to and so on. And the person that she Charged a very big amount of money. Like he says, like, okay, my budget for your horoscope is this, and I can only take you at 2020, 2026, which is like two years.
It's like the scarcity, it's like a very famous person in my country. Uh, so, I mean, there's that scarcity, which is like, you know, you give like two years of scope, uh, and you can only reach me in two years. I'm so busy. But there is also like most of the clients that I. get involved, it's very last minute, unfortunately. And the thing is that for me, for example, things have certain times. It cannot be shorter than two months for me, for example. That's my sweet spot.
Two months and best is three months. How would you approach that? I mean, should we push ourselves too much or is it like a good amount of scarcity is good?
This is the elasticity that exists between the supply and demand of any product or service. The more demand and the lower the supply, what happens in that situation. So you can just look at three ways of this, right? No demand, a lot of supply means very low price. High demand and low supply means usually very high price. And then there's all the versions in between. So we have to be able to communicate.
Our capacity to an audience and let them know that when they decide to work with you, isn't always when you're available. And we know that every single creative firm has finite capacity and you could be, I can take on two clients a month. For projects that look like this, but what we don't do is we don't communicate that publicly. The fortune teller has done this publicly to say, you will pay more money than you think you can afford. And my next opening is in 2026, two years from now.
And so what they've done is they've created, they've communicated this very clearly to you, whether it's true or not is besides the point. The fact of the matter is they're getting you to commit now for a future change that you want to have. So you, if you can only take two clients on a month and you're full until December, you should tell people. I realistically can only onboard two clients a month. And the next opening that I have available is in December.
So if you'd like to be added to the waitlist, tell me about your project and I'll add you to the
waitlist.
And what happens is, let's say a client drops out in October, you can say, Mary, John, I see that your name's on the list and I have good news and I have bad news, you know, which is I have an availability and it's earlier than you think. If you're ready to sign right now, I can give you that spot. Otherwise I'm going to move down the list and ask the next person. And you have six hours or a day to respond.
Thank you so much. Um, you've established your presence across so many multiple platforms, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn. Um, What's next for personal branding in the digital world? Like, which, because there's like so many, you know, discussions around is LinkedIn going so bad and Instagram not going good and so on. How do you see the future of personal branding in the digital world?
I, I don't see any change in that at all. The platforms are not the digital brand. The digital brand is, or your personality or your personal brand is you. And a lot of people don't understand this part. I think I'm fairly counter to what the prevailing thoughts are on personal branding. And I think a lot of people look at personal branding as how you can grow on a platform. And so that you can offer more services, sell more courses, or launch a book.
And the distinction I like to make with people is your personal brand is not what you do, it's who you are. I'm going to say that one more time so that people can hear this all the way in the back. Your personal brand is not what you do, it's who you are. So a lot of the people, the coaches, consultants, and the people, I think they're well intentioned, but what they're really doing is they're putting a package on an old product that they're selling.
What they're selling is sales and marketing, and they're changing the language to personal branding. So a lot of this is about funnel building to have a full waitlist and, and to have more conversions or do something like that. That is not personal branding to me because that doesn't help me to know who I am at all. It doesn't help me to communicate my values, my beliefs, my opinions to the world.
And I think What happens is, if you do something with an agenda other than just to do it, it's called an ulterior motive. It's beneath the surface, right? So if you write a post, and it's okay that you do this, I'm not judging anybody, that's intended to drive people into a funnel so that they can buy a product or service that you're selling, then when we read it and we get to the point in which you ask for the sale, All of a sudden, I have a different feeling about this thing now.
I feel like a lot of information was written in a way to influence me to do something that you want me to do. And especially here in America, people do not like being told what to do. So when we smell a rat, we know a rat exists. So I have a solution around this because I'm not saying that you need to be altruistic, that you just create content for content's purpose. And then while you and your kids are starving. I don't want you to do that. So there's a formula that I like to tell people about.
It's called the 911 formula in the United States. When you have an emergency, like somebody's bleeding or somebody's hurt or somebody's breaking into your house, you call 911 and the operator dispatches security police paramedics to you right away. Okay. So your content is on life support. No one cares about it. It's a disaster. So you need to call 9 1 1. And what I do is I tell people to create nine pieces of content that are value driven. With nothing underneath it at all.
Just to try and help people. To explain an idea. To share your point of view. Or to entertain them, that's okay too. And then one piece of content that's personal. Because some people get too caught up, myself included, in the teaching mode that people never learn about who you are. And so the one post should be something wacky. It should just be you and your family, your hobbies, whatever it is, just so that they know there's a real person there.
And the one, the last one, is when it's a hard sell. Don't even pretend. Anybody who wants to enroll in my program, I have an opening in November for two potential clients. If you'd like to get on a waitlist, let me know. So this is the combination. So feed them nine times, show them who you are one time, then ask for something one time. This way you won't have any guilt of asking. You don't have to hide it behind something. And this is where a lot of creative people get messed up.
They're so afraid to ask. That they sneak it into other things and it becomes really weird. This way, if you know you delivered nine pieces of value, and you ask one time, the ratio is very good. Now you don't have to literally do this exact formula. You can do like six to one, but when you get to two to one, it starts to get like, every other third post is like a sales pitch from you. It's a little bit too much.
And so my friends who are going to watch this, look at your own content, be honest with yourself. How often are you selling? Here's the truth. Either what percentage of people or what percentage of people's content do you think is selling versus giving value? What do you think it is? How often are they selling? What percentage?
The ones that I'm exposed to, it's 80 20, 80 percent selling.
Yeah, and I think you're being very generous. I think it's almost like 90 99%. Because I'm trying to find a post where they're not selling anything.
Might be.
They're almost always selling something. Now, people are going to say, Chris, you hypocrite. I just saw six posts from you and it's all about selling stuff. Yeah, because I've made a thousand pieces of content. I think people are okay with me selling some stuff, but when you're 10 years deep into creating content, building community and showing up, then people afford you a lot of ask and you can ask for a lot now, which I do.
So what is next on the coming months, September, October?
Yes. Well, I want to tell people if you're in Miami or London in October, I'd love to invite you to my sales workshop. I'm working on a book called Natural Born Seller, and I want to teach you the art of conversational selling, how introverts sell without pressure, without manipulation, just by having a conversation. And that's happening October 12th in Miami, and October 29th and 30th we're doing a two day workshop in London.
So there's only 30 seats for either one of these things, and some tickets have already been sold, so I want to let people know. If you want to show up, you want to learn from me, I'd love to teach you how to be a better salesperson, close more jobs with less friction and to make more money.
Thank you so much. I was about to ask you if there's a book coming up, uh, which apparently there is, uh, There's two
books coming up.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, I'm a busy boy.
When are they coming up?
Well, the first one that I'm working on is on personal branding. It's a workbook. It's not a book you sit there and read page after page. It's a book that you read some things and you start to write because I want to help you learn who you are and to be able to communicate that to the world. That one is the first one and I'm, I would say 75 percent done with it. It's going through some design phases right now, and then I have to finish the writing.
But it's based on a lot of the principles I've already taught in videos, plus some ideas from real life workshops that I've run, so that it's all going to be put together. It'll be a digital book, so you'll be able to download that. It'll be probably around 25, I'm not sure yet. And then the next book, after I finish that book, is a book on sales. similar thing. It's a workbook. It's going to teach you. So it's kind of like workshopping a book.
Maybe there'll be printed versions as well?
Depending on the demand. Right now I'm thinking mostly digital. Printing has its own challenges with distribution. And getting books to Europe and other parts of the world is just a pain in the butt. But eventually I'd like to make them into like real books.
Because I'm like the, one of the books that helped me, uh, while I was soul searching in corporate was artist's way. And they had this also workbook that you can write and. I did all the questions. It's all over the field. And then, you know, I'm also a fan of, um, hardcover books, actually. That's why I was asking. Uh,
I learned my lesson by the way, from the first book, this one will be one color, black and white on regular paper and hard cover with a slip jacket. I, I will follow the conventions because not following the conventions creates all kinds of problems.
Yeah, I can imagine. But if you could recommend one book, what would it be?
What's the subject? Uh,
business book,
I'll, I'll go to The Godfather. I'll go to Jim Rohn's book Seven Strategies for Wealth and Happiness. I think we both wanna be rich and be happy, so he's the person who's influenced everybody, including Tony Robbins, Gary Vaynerchuk, and just about everybody else. I
haven't read that. I'll, I'll You haven't? No, I haven't. I read Okay. Read a lot of books, but Interesting. I haven't read that. No.
A lot of the business books, if you've read. Uh, the compound effect by Darren Hardy.
Uh, yes.
Um, and I, I can't remember what, how many other books, but if you, if you read those books, especially in the back, they usually say something about Jim Rohn. So the thing I like to do, and this is something that, um, uh, Austin Kleon writes about in his books, or this idea of like the genealogy of ideas. So you, you map your family tree. But you don't map an idea tree.
So when you, when you think about who influences you, you ask who influenced them and you keep going up and up and up until you get to the very top. And for many people, the road ends with Jim Rohn. So read that book. I will.
I will. And last question. What's your favorite coffee place in Santa Monica or LA?
You know, so here's the thing. I don't drink coffee.
What do you drink?
I just drink tea.
What's your favorite tea place?
Well, it's, it's, it's not, it's not a fancy tea place, but I, I, I buy my tea. Usually it's a matcha latte, which I shouldn't be drinking, but I do like it very much. I usually have it at this place called Sunrite Tea and they have a couple of locations. I think it's a Taiwanese based tea shop. And so I know that the tea is, is good.
Perfect. I'll check that out on my next trip, which is coming in two weeks.
All right.
Thank you for being a guest on my podcast and I'll drop the links on the episode and, uh, I hope to speak to you soon.
Thank you very much.