"You have to be the first in line of your fan club. If you're not, I don't know how to like you. Because if you don't like you, why would I like you?" - Chris Do 

In this insightful conversation, Chris Do and Radim Malinic explore the intricacies of creative careers, personal growth, and the impact of environment on success. Chris shares his experiences as a first-generation immigrant and how it shaped his drive and ambition. They discuss the challenges of creative identity, the importance of self-acceptance, and the role of ego, ambition, anxiety, and insecurity in shaping a creative's journey. Chris emphasizes the value of articulating thoughts, the power of words, and the importance of embracing mistakes as learning opportunities. The conversation touches on topics such as the American Dream, the nature of success, and the concept of retirement for creatives.

• Embrace mistakes as learning opportunities rather than sources of regret. Regret is wishing to change the past, which creates negative energy.
• Your environment significantly impacts your ambition and success. The "fishbowl" you swim in shapes your perspective and goals.
• The four elements that can hold creatives back are ego, ambition, anxiety, and insecurity. Understanding and managing these can lead to personal growth.
• Articulating your thoughts and feelings, especially negative ones, can help release tension and reduce anxiety. "Your words shape your world."
• Success is often a journey, not a destination. Avoid comparing your beginning to someone else's end point.
• The concept of "retirement" may not apply to creatives who are passionate about their work. Finding joy in helping others can lead to a fulfilling career.
• Cultivate patience and give yourself grace. Success and skill development take time and consistent effort.
• Be the "first in line of your fan club." Self-confidence and self-acceptance are crucial for personal and professional growth.
• Understanding the power of autonomy in creative work can help prevent burnout and increase satisfaction.
• Continuously evolve your identity and focus on the journey rather than fixating on specific destinations or goals.

Mindful Creative: How to understand and deal with the highs and lows of creative life, career and business

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Chris Do: what was holding me back? And there's lots of reasons that are holding you back. And I think being an introvert was just one of them. want to just disclose to everybody, English is not my native language. It's my second language.

And I came to America as a first generation immigrant. We were refugees from Vietnam. So this is like a whole culture shock for my family. And this sense of not belonging has traveled with me for a number of years until I was able to come to peace. with it for myself, some kind of self acceptance.​

USBPre2-2: Welcome to mindful creative podcast. A show about understanding how to deal with the highs and lows of creative lives. My name is Ryan Martin edge and creativity changed my life by also nearly killed me. [00:01:00] In the season inspired by my book of the same title. I am talking to some of the most celebrated figures in a creative industry. In our candid conversations, my guests share their experiences and how they overcame their challenges and struggles. How they learn to grow as creatives. A creative career in a 21st century can be overwhelming. I wanted to capture these honest and transparent conversations that might help you find that guiding light in your career. 

Thank you for joining me on this episode and taking the first or next step towards regaining control of your creative life. You ready?​

Radim Malinic: Welcome to the first episode from the second season. And today I have my first returning guest, Chris Doe. And I believe the conversation you're about to hear is potentially his most personal interview to date. We discussed the true meaning of Bernard versus passion, delicate balance between confidence and arrogance, [00:02:00] and a valuable lesson from business mistakes.

Also why heaven, the courage to articulate your thoughts might be the most valuable superpower any creative can possess. So it's my pleasure to welcome back Chris Doe.

 Hello, Chris. Welcome to part two.

How are you doing 

today? 

Chris Do: Yeah, I'm doing great.

Radim Malinic: Fantastic start. So we've got nowhere to rush today. And I really want to follow up on the conversation that we had last time and kind of start at those elements that might be potentially holding creators back from their potential. At the moment, I say that the makeup of a creative is four elements, ego, ambition, anxiety, and insecurity. do you see that? Would you agree?

Chris Do: I think I know what three of those words mean. Ambition, anxiety, and insecurity. I'm curious what ego means to you, because there's so many different ways of describing ego.

Radim Malinic: Ego, I think ego in most cases is a [00:03:00] bravado. Like we always attach ego to people who are sometimes bold brash, sometimes driven in, not pursuing their ideas. And yeah, I think ego is a negative thing, but it's also the driver for, actually striving to achieve something. I think in my opinion, ego makes people leave their jobs when they don't get enough credit for the work. They say I want to get more. So that's how I see ego.

I think ego is often really misunderstood

yeah I think that for sure there's a sense of drive in me, this idea that I have ideas that are better than other people's ideas. Somebody can call that ego, I think we can do much better in our education system. We can do a better job of showing up online. And I want to hopefully beat the drum and lead the tribe, so to speak, and bring them to a better place.

So clearly some of it is ego. I'm very ambitious for sure. [00:04:00] And I wish, I guess my wife would wish that I was not as ambitious, because we're comfortable. Can we just go into retirement mode? Like, why are you working harder than you've, been working since you were in your forties? Because I want to change the world.

I want to make sure that my life has meaning and there's, something I do to contribute to the advancement of society. The other two words, anxiety and insecurity, not so much for me.

because quite openly you talk about being a loud introvert.

And you talk about like how many times you taught a class and then you needed to recover for a day. I

think, it's quite refreshing to actually talk about, about someone being an introvert actually ticking the boxes, because I think in our inexperience, in our younger age, lack of an experience, a lot of people claim to be introverted. But then they are really basking in the glory of doing a talk and they're like, yeah, no, like I've had great feedback and this is going well. And of course, this is adrenaline. This is another element of our creative careers that helps us move [00:05:00] mountains. But with the introversy. I'm not sure if we talked about it last time, but how did you actually identify it and say, I am actually an introvert?

Because we don't often know what's holding us back. Unlock that information.

​

Radim Malinic: which, Pandora box did you open? And it says introvert. That's me. That's, that's my, that's Tombola ticket.

Chris Do: There's a couple of different concepts relevant to the question that you asked, which is what was holding me back? And there's lots of reasons that are holding you back. And I think being an introvert was just one of them. want to just disclose to everybody, English is not my native language. It's my second language.

And I came to America as a first generation immigrant. We were refugees from Vietnam. So this is like a whole culture shock for my family. And this sense of not belonging has traveled with me for a number of years until I was able to come to peace. with it for myself, some kind of self acceptance.

So that made me horribly shy to be in [00:06:00] a world where very few people look like me. And in some instances in school, I was the only Asian person. So there were a lot of racist Asian stereotypes that are being thrown and people would make you aware that you're very different and you don't belong. And I think it's one of the hardest things to do while you're still figuring out who the heck you are, what kind of person you want to become, when it seems like everybody's actively trying to push you away.

That did not help. Maybe if I was an extrovert, I would have been more, I could adapt and be more flexible, but I just went inward.

And so I'm struggling with multiple things at the same time, but eventually I find to love myself, accept myself for who I am and just not care too much about what people say. Now I'm going to be tested. So actually been tested by a professional where we sat down for, I think an hour and I took this test.

And then they scored it and they told me what everything means and I'm an INTJ. And I've been tested a couple of times, maybe less formally, but it still comes up INTJ. But what's, what's really interesting [00:07:00] is, I believe there's this thing in the middle between introversion and extroversion that people describe as being an ambivert, because nothing is like really binary like that.

There's just scales. And so maybe I'm previously would identify as introvert, but I straddle that place in between those two, between introversion and extroversion.

Radim Malinic: You mentioned that you're a first generation immigrant. it's quite openly known that people in such situations build more resilience because it was the, you're dealing with extraordinary elements rather than the people who are native, who are at home in a

way. So would you say, That since has brought you on a journey, actually creating your own community. Because obviously what you've, what you creating and that's the driving ambition, obviously changing people's lives. Would you say, if your life had been different, would you have potentially find yourself this career path?

it happen? Because as we discussed in our first part, there was a lot of things that you did in your earlier life that influenced your [00:08:00] work and how you created, your career, your businesses But the people element, sometimes we are a bit like horses. And we talked about horses before too, is that. You want to be on your own, in your own space, but you're a herd animal, like we, vibe with others, we like others, only to the point where this is enough, can we change that, can the question is, How much of the early life had an aspect of, an element ofinfluence on what you're doing now 

Chris Do: hard for me to answer that question because this is one of those what if scenarios. And the best way I can answer this is, I can look at my own children, who are now native born Americans and I think identify as American. And the world has changed a lot since back in the old days, when people would literally point their finger at you and say, Go back to your own country.

to tell you to leave. And there's still some of that sentiment that's bubbling up. Maybe not so much where I live, because it's very diverse, but my children have grown up in America. English is their first language, even though [00:09:00] they speak multiple languages. And I can see like the path that they're taking.

And so if I look at my youngest son, he just turned 18. He's going to go to art school. He's been running his own business since he was 15 years old. He has over a hundred thousand dollars in his bank and he has clients and he's learned, he's teaching himself tools and he knows more about crypto and wallets and, making digital art.

And I think maybe if I look at him and say if I grew up. being accepted in the community, being raised by parents who supported the arts and allowed him to be himself, then I would be there. So the only way I can answer that is to look at him and say I think I would still be here where I'm now.

I would just would have started much, much earlier. I didn't even know I wanted to be a designer until I was 18. 

Radim Malinic: Because I'm equally excited and frightened about prospect of our children, knowing a lot more to what we did when we were, pretty much finding our feet. So you talk about your boy being a kind of crypto king by the end of the last three years. That's pretty impressive. And I've got examples of, some of my clients have done really well in [00:10:00] different industries and have made extremely successful businesses. And you speak to their children who aren't followed that. I think almost without a fail, they follow their footsteps and you get a kid who's like 17, talking to you about brand equity and strategy and stuff.

And I'm like, When I was 18, I really spoke in a language of MTV, death metal, having fun, getting lost in life and not necessarily caring that much. And I think we got, the sort of the age of innocence and then the actual opportunities that we can grow now. So yeah, I see my kids what they know already, and it's a totally different world, which yeah. It's exciting and frightening because would they burn out too quickly? Because I think our sort of long trajectory to taking off sometimes give us a lot of ways of growing patience and finding our own feet. And, people who've got their dream lists. They're like, Oh, I want to work with Nike.

I want to work with that. And I'm like, I mean, we've both done, high [00:11:00] profile work and after 20 years, you're like I can't, do I want to go on a St. Mary go round, it's that longevity. You once said that you lost yourself trying to please everyone and now you're losing everyone as you find yourself.

I think is that part of growing up, part of, not wanting to just please people anymore. How would you describe it?

Chris Do: I think it's a symptom of self acceptance, self awareness. and then building self confidence. I think initially it's, very frightening to be ostracized by a community in junior high and high school and college where I think you were running around listening to death metal and having fun and getting into trouble.

My thing is like, Hey, can I get a girl to be excited about me or something? So we're, our focus is somewhere else. And, to be ostracized, to be not included in the community is very painful thing to experience. One of my biggest worries in school was, I wonder if I have somebody to eat lunch with, cause I just didn't want to eat lunch by myself.

This is an ongoing [00:12:00] worry until I develop enough stable friends where I'm like, okay, I'm going to have lunch with you. But it was always a worry for me, like first day of school, and it was a problem. And Once you start to find yourself, you start to have opinions about all kinds of things. And you don't care so much to conform.

You're not trying to blend in with everyone. You're actually trying to do the opposite, which is, what makes me different? What makes me weird and unique? I want to lean into that. So I look a certain way, I dress a certain way. And some people are like, Oh, that's too weird. And I would never trust a guy who looks like you.

I'm like, that's fine. You don't need to trust a guy who looks like me because I'm not selling to a person like you. So this works pretty well for both of us, doesn't it? And so I have a different relationship now with the critics and the haters and the trolls. Bring them on. That's totally fine by me. And so the more I say something, the more likely that somebody is going to disagree.

And the only way you can get people not to disagree with you is to say nothing at all, which I'm not really interested in that.

Radim Malinic: That's very true. I think what you describe in some sense. [00:13:00] Sounds to me quite mature beyond the age that you were at that time. I think we say that people who are in such sort of position of trauma and negativity, like you have to grow up faster. So did you have, from your parents side, or did you have any help with those feelings and situations?

Because, at that time, emotional intelligence wasn't unearthed in most places.

I'm not saying, it wasn't invented. I

mean, it existed, but it wasn't unearthed. So did you feel open about, talking how you felt and what was happening in your world, or did you kind of metabolize it on your own?

Chris Do: I, I want to give credit where credit is due. I've come from a stable home. My parents are still married. They love each other, although they argue like old people do, old married couples. And never felt unsafe at home. I didn't have any kind of childhood trauma that I'm still working through. So from that point, I think it's fairly privileged to say that.

My older brother who's four years older than me [00:14:00] was like my surrogate father because he understood the culture. I could always lean on him and ask him for help in school. If I was being picked on, he'd said, you need to do this, or this is what people are really thinking. And he took an interest in, in trying to help me.

Mostly it's because my dad doesn't understand the culture. He was too busy working. And so we had this kind of different relationship, but in terms of my own feelings, and I'll give you an example. I was from a very early age, creatively curious, and I was interested in lots of things that would be in that age and time seen as being queer or whatever it is.

It's just it's too effeminate for you to think those things. Like I was really interested in patterns and textiles. I would read Sunset Magazine and GQ just because I wanted to see how people lived and I was observing things. One of my fantasies when I was much younger, probably 11 years old was the Easy Bake Oven.

Cause I thought, wow, if I bake cookies, I could sell cookies and then I can make some money. At least that was the dream that they sold us on the commercials. And I remember my brother saying that is not very manly or masculine of you to [00:15:00] do. And so he just killed that idea. Like men or boys aren't supposed to bake.

So there was a kind of like back then gender roles are very clear and you were in a box and if you're out of that box, you'd be ostracized. It's not so diverse and loving and accepting and very fluid as it is today, which is remarkable. When I see my own children talking about their friends, it's they, them.

everybody. It's non binary. it's wonderful to see this kind of level of acceptance. And I know this is going to be triggering for some people to hear, but hey, my philosophy in life to each their own. You do you. You have a right to express yourself any which way you want, and I should not impose my idea of what is right or wrong on you.

So this whole emotional intelligence and being leaning into me, it didn't come until much, much later in life. And it came from when I found a skill. And now I'm going to hang my identity on something. there's a great famous painting from Magritte, who is one of my favorite painters, the great surrealist painter Magritte, and there's painting he made where it's like, there's a [00:16:00] suit of skin hanging on a hanger in a closet.

And I think we're all looking to figure out who the heck we are. And we need to figure out our identity. And so for me, I didn't have anything to hang. It was just empty. I was just going to be whatever you wanted me to be. But when I found graphic design, that skin suit started to appear and I could put that on.

I could wear the label of graphic designer and say, that's what I am. That's what I must be. Cause this feels so natural and so wonderful for me. And so then you could start to build up from there. Yeah. Mm 

Radim Malinic: Correlate with that identity. Like I'm very happy for you I'm very happy to hear that, you had a safe home that you didn't feel, there was no childhood traumas. It's just quite interesting because we've got, polar opposite. I was never really felt that safe at home. But I was in the surrounding where I was accepted, And I didn't know what I was working out for a very long time because I wanted to be something, I was going after something. I'm just, in a way of desperately longing for a title or [00:17:00] for, that skin suit.

Chris Do: Being filled with something. So I remember how empowered I was in bands and I was empowered as a DJ, as a journalist, and then finding graphic design. It's just almost like you find a sort of Narnia wardrobe, like I can go for miles and miles and miles in this world. For the segway with the hangar, right? Miles and miles into this world, which can change every day. It can be anything you want. And if you look after your footsteps if you tread carefully, then actually that can turn into a proper world and proper universe where we can actually explore. I want to tie it back to an idea that you brought up about young people have such a strong idea of what the world is. We have too much information, so to speak. And so their age of innocence is compressed and then they grow up way too quickly. And maybe that's not going to change, but you asked this question about burning out.

Will they have that time to explore the way we did? And we know that it's a long life and a long career, [00:18:00] but I look at burnout as not so much related or tied to the concept of being super intense. I, find the connection between being super intense and doing something you don't care about versus being super intense and doing something that you love, like I love video games.

You love music.

Radim Malinic: Hmm.

Chris Do: I like comic books. I can get burnt down on comic books. I just don't know how. I'd like to be creative, so I don't know how it is that I would be burnt out being creative.

Radim Malinic: I think there was a slight nuance

to, to that motion that you find yourself creative every day. Whatever I do creatively is totally different to what I did 20 years ago, but I feel like when you open that Narnia, when you open that wardrobe and there's, everything exciting coming, coming, coming, your life is kind of like dialed up to 11, because you, especially now can have career as illustrious as much energy as you've got, as much curiosity and opportunities that you gather. You can do anything. Bop. That basically, [00:19:00] that goes up, up, up, up, up. So what I meant was more like a plateau

or, do you maximize the subject? 

 So it was more about shifting preferences and shifting interests because, you have completed era of your life where you were a motion designer, you were, that's what I meant.

Like you didn't burn out, but you switched. What I observe in a creative is like, if you feel you're going to be chasing Nike for the next 40, 50 years, you're not, you're going to give it 10 years of a really good goal when

you can produce really good work that's relevant, but that experience will take you somewhere else. more about maximizing this because I'm sure some people can stretch that curiosity of over 40 years and do it slowly.

Whereas I feel like with the turbocharged world,

you can be anything and more, 

And that comes at a price, that comes at the price of energy. 

You have to burn energy.

Chris Do: glad you brought up my motion design journey. Because Chris, you didn't burn out, why aren't you still doing motion design? And I think, it's different for each one of us, where we [00:20:00] define in our own mind what the terminal point is. So there's a point in your life, and maybe this goes back to ego and ambition, where I wanted to work with Nike, but then when I started working with Nike, I'm like, okay, that's not that special.

It's fine. It's just another client. It doesn't change my life. And then I'm like, oh, what if I can work with Sony PlayStation? And then you wind up doing that. And it's Okay, now I'm starting to see a pattern. All these goals, these, end destinations, when you get there, you're like, it's really not that special.

It's okay. I forget who said this here. Somebody said this, and I thought it was so profound. They said something like F celebrity. I think it was Will Smith who said this actually. And loath as I am to quote Will Smith, I think there was something that he said was profound. He goes, at some point in your life, if you're so fortunate to experience this, when you have no more desire to buy anything, like everything you've ever wanted to buy, you can buy.

You start to come to this realization that having more stuff doesn't make you happier. That money will not lead you to happiness. [00:21:00] So he had to get to the terminal point or the terminus and say now I've gotten everything I've ever wanted and I'm not that much happier than where I was when I was poor.

So the pursuit of happiness doesn't come from the collection or accumulation of things. It comes something from much, from a deeper place. And so when I was in motion design, I think I reached that terminal point. to say yeah, every year we do something a little bit better or interesting, but my joy from it is getting diminished.

And so now I know I need to explore something else. And as a creative creature, I think we follow our curiosity we let it take us wherever we want. Sometimes to the detriments of our own career, but that's an individual decision. I want to add one more thing before the internet gets really mad at me.

Cause they will say things like this. They'll say, Chris. I'm burnt out and I'm super passionate doing the things that I love. So fair play. I agree with that. And there, two other dimensions I can think of. If you want to avoid that kind of burnout, I think you have to have a level of autonomy where you're self directed, where somebody [00:22:00] can't just keep telling you what to do because that steals your sense of freedom. And the other dimension is that you're valued for this passionate thing that you're doing.

So if you're a logo designer, you're very passionate. No one pays you. Someone's always telling you what to do. I can see you running right into burnout. So I think those, at least those two other components have to be present for you to avoid that kind of negative burnout that we're talking about. 

Yeah. 

Radim Malinic: said one important word, which is autonomy, because you can be on that creative treadmill and a lot of people find out really quickly that shiny logo and a multi billion, international corporation doesn't necessarily warrant amazing work and creative Freedom and an amazing pay and can spend all of this podcast on the trading stories about how things were promised to be one thing and turned out to be something which was more of a nightmare. So you're chasing a dream and you come up with a nightmare, 

 I'm actually happier now because it's the autonomy, like things are just working out and [00:23:00] perfectly enough and I've never feel happier. Because I can wake up and do what I need to do whenever I want to do, not necessarily feel like you need to feed that hamster wheel, spinning all the time and like pour tons of petrol on it just to make sure that working. It's a different mindset and We don't talk about it, I think, enough, we talk about more clients, and we talk about more work, and more portfolios, and more successes. But, it's almost like celebrating the art of slower living a world that's really on steroids right now.

Chris Do: I think that's a very European mindset, because there's a long history of culture and that rat race and so society evolves. And so that we can learn to live our life while we're living it versus waiting to postpone living, which is like what Americans do, I think, where we're conceived to think, you know what, you have this moment, go conquer the world and you work like mad.

at the cost of many things. There are many sacrifices being made and there's no such [00:24:00] thing as enough. So we keep getting more and more and more. And I think that's part of the beauty and the curse of the American entrepreneurial spirit.

Radim Malinic: Did I hear somewhere, someone said that people chasing American Dream. mainly because it doesn't exist. 

Chris Do: guess, but I think I've gotten a piece of that American dream and I can tell you from my perspective, it exists and it's alive and well.

Radim Malinic: Speaking of our surroundings,

there was a great sentence in Derek Sivers book called Hell Yes or Nope. And he's got a chapter that says the goldfish don't know they live in water. 

And he said, I went to teach class in Singapore. And I said, Hey, who wants to start a business? And one person like timidly said, maybe me. And it was like, wait a minute. I'm from America. Everyone wants to start a business, especially on the West coast.

And realize because you, that fish. in the water, swim with another fish. You don't really necessarily know what the world outside is. So how much of your surroundings, at your younger [00:25:00] age was instrumental to your career development? And, obviously you see ambitious, ambitious people, you see everything, on steroids, as I like to say, and keep saying, and, There's an American dream to chase. 

Would you say, if you never moved, again, it's a what if question, I'm sorry about that, but yeah, how would you describe the surroundings and the effect on you?

Chris Do: I think there's a couple different factors. One is we're immigrants and so immigrants or children of immigrants want to do better. They left a country in pursuit of better and more or security or safety or something like that. And so we inherit that plan from our parents to do better than they did.

They make sacrifices so you can achieve more. And it's, really interesting for me to see some of my cousins who are native born Americans to see that spark, that drive that their parents had, that I have, it's not there anymore. It's totally gone. It's like in one or two generations of living in America, we settle into middle class [00:26:00] really, really fast.

So it's fascinating for me to observe this in my own family. And living in, on the West Coast, in Los Angeles in particular, because I didn't, grow up in Southern California. I grew up in Nor NorCal. I can feel the difference now because this is the land of broken hearts and empty dreams, because people from all over the world, not just from this country, come here to make it in music, art, fashion, and movies.

the part of entertainment capital of the world. And it's, hilarious. And comedians do this all the time when they're like, Oh, I'm in LA where the valet looks better than the model that was at the model at the agency. That's because they came here from wherever they came from to make it and couldn't.

So now they're parking your car and serving you food. And it's quite fascinating. And we don't take notice of this until we, step outside of that circle and we come back in. And I'll tell you what I mean. There's all these pretty generic nondescript buildings here. I drive by all of them. I'm like, I don't know what anybody does in their accounting.

I don't [00:27:00] know. And in each and every one of these buildings, potentially are multi billion dollar companies that you would not know anything about. But what happens is you go to Taqueria and you sit next to them. And the way they talk, the way they carry themselves, and you start to absorb that energy.

There's a little hole in the wall of Taqueria called Tacos Por Favor. Their Mexican food is okay. It's not even great, but people love coming there because it feels super authentic. It does feel like you're stepping into Mexico, but you'll see movie producers there. You'll see power real estate brokers there.

And it's just LA. It's how we do it. And when you go outside of this, you, then you start to realize everybody here is just not that driven and not that ambitious because they've adopted a different philosophy of life. And I'm, seeing that and feeling that difference, just like you're like Derek Ziver said, Oh, maybe not everybody wants to own their own business.

What a strange concept.

Radim Malinic: So it sounds like they've created a global fishbowl [00:28:00] now, because if you choose to be a goldfish in that fishbowl, you can actually just tune in into that world because sometimes, through, I'm sure for your courses and you come, across people from all different walks of your life, different, different sort of corners of the world. I think the instilling this more into people actually is then showing them there's a possibility if you apply yourself and if you deal with things differently, there's something about physical surroundings, 

So you can find yourself in a very narrow lane, we call it high shoulder, the slowest lane. And then you see all these people like in their flashy cars, hypothetically, just zooming somewhere. And sometimes you just Where are they even going? Do they even know what they're chasing? Because, it's the bigger and bolder the status, the flashier the car, the bigger the wealth, am I a better person?

Whereas sometimes, we can go back to that suit and that coat hanger, what is in that suit? Because it's shiny and it's gold plated. Oh no, gold hanger. But it's this thing of like, how do you give people like a soulful nourishment? Like I'm saying, you know what, this is [00:29:00] actually almost the meaning of life that you can do with your, story.

It's almost feels sad to see people like putting material goals over, that would nourish the soul and actually satisfy the story.

Chris Do: can add a little bit more to this. I remember reading an interview of Bono from U2 and they asked him, you can live anywhere in the world. why do you live in Ireland? Because he goes, because people here remind me to not get too big. that if I step out and they will slap me in the head and say, Hey, who do you think you are?

I know at your, at one point they're the world's biggest band, but he wants to be kept humble. And that's a virtuous thing for him. And I noticed when I travel and I talk about these ideas that I feel like are part of my ethos, people are like, Ooh, we don't think that here. There's a term called tall poppy syndrome, there's an expression in Ireland that's, you're too big for your boots, too big for your britches, these kinds of things and humility and self deprecation and living a modest [00:30:00] life is considered virtuous.

And I'm seeing this in lots of different ways and sometimes very negative, harmful ways because I have friends who have an unhealthy relationship with themselves. They don't think of themselves very highly. They're always apologizing for things. They don't ask for anything and they just disappear.

It's Oh no, it's just everybody's thing. And then there's this idea of like American exceptionalism and achievement where we applaud here where people are like, Oh, I just moved into this penthouse and I just did this. And we applaud. We're like, good for you, young person, man or woman or other. And then in, in Europe and parts of Asia, it's I just moved into penthouse.

Oh, who do you think you are? You think you're better than us? It's this whole different attitude, right? We celebrate success here, and that can create a pretty toxic culture, but I don't look at it from that perspective. I just think you have to be the first in line of your fan club. If you're not, I don't know how to like you.

Because what I see is the opposite, where, Oh, I [00:31:00] just have such an unhealthy relationship, I'm full of imposter syndrome, and I become quite needy for you to affirm me. And so what happens is it becomes really unattractive. I can't be your fan because if you don't like you, why would I like you? So there's this idea and I know it's, mostly prevalent, like America versus the rest of the world.

In Canada, people are much more reserved. In Europe, parts of Asia. Maybe not Middle East, parts of the world seem like this is a horrible idea. But then I see all the kind of psychological and emotional harm that it's doing, and I'm not so sure that a better plan.

Radim Malinic: It reminds me of English comedian who went to America and he said, look, I've introduced myself. I said, look, I've won some awards. And everyone goes, Oh my word, you're amazing. Let's see what you, what comedy you can do. And he says, I came back to England. I said I just won an award and people said, Yeah.

All right. Then show us what you can do. Like they just don't accept that level of

achievement. Like people are skeptical and sometimes that can spill into so many [00:32:00] different walks of life and work that only when you really prove your status, you get more accepted in life, creative life or professional life becomes easier, in a way of like people earn your status, you earn your sort of, the authority,

 But you speaking about Bono, I think he really would fit all four of those initial elements, ego, ambition, anxiety, and insecurity, Sometimes we see people with anxiety and insecurity as arrogant.

And I think that's such an unfair way of treating people because, you see someone who's really uncomfortable about a situation they need to be in, and they're surrounded by people, he's an arrogant one.

And actually that's my personal experience. I was, a young DJ and always had to navigate like crowds of people to get into the DJ booth And I was really petrified and I would be getting these stories of Oh, no, this is arrogant. No, I'm not, I'm the opposite. And it kind of like, that goes. back into our creative careers, like sometimes our insecurity can manifest itself as an [00:33:00] arrogance because you don't always have the eloquence, the verbose gymnastics, that you can make it sound so eloquent that everyone's eating out of your hand.

Yeah, when I run a workshop, we talk about this a lot, especially outside of America, do need to set the stage for people to understand some of the things I tell them about, because when you don't think highly of yourself, then you're not likely to ask for what is fair. And you negotiate against yourself, but the client doesn't need an ally in the negotiation process.

Chris Do: You need to stand up for yourself. You need to say what I do is valuable. If you don't see it, no problem. I'm not going to try to browbeat you, but I think it's valuable. And in order for me to give you this value, you have to see value too. Otherwise I need to move on and you need to find someone who can do this for you.

So I set this up. I asked them this idea because I really don't like this word humility. And when you look up the dictionary definition and I'll probably get some arguments after this. It says something like to have a low opinion of one's own skills or achievement. I'm like, why is that a virtue? [00:34:00] Now we know that to have a high opinion of one's skill and achievement is not good.

How about we just have an accurate one? But then I asked the audience in the group that's in the workshop, is there ever a time when it's good for you to be more important than other people? And I, no, that's such a strange, why'd you ask us this question? I say, okay, here's the real world scenario.

Yeah. You're a director, you're shooting a commercial, it's a 30 second commercial, you're on set for one day. And during the break, agency who's there, who's paying you to do this, see you changing the lights, lifting heavy things, moving around. Do you guys think that's a good thing? Is that a noble thing to do?

And most of them would say yes. It shows that the director isn't so self important that they can roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty and do the work of the lowest person. I said, okay, now I want you to change the optics for a second. Forget that you're looking from this super kind of judging point of view and look at it from the lens of the clients.

Do you think the clients are impressed that you're so humble? [00:35:00] Or do you think they're thinking, why is the director doing the work that we've paid other people to do, when we need them to be focused on the scripts, thinking about different problems that we might encounter, having the vision so that we feel like the 200, 000 we just spent.

is going to be good. And here's the problem. After the shoot, you're in the edit bay, and then the, clients ask you, do we have coverage of this other thing? And you're like, no, we didn't shoot that. You know what they're going to be thinking about? Yeah, because you weren't thinking about that because you were too busy lifting things up and doing things versus letting the people do their job.

So there's a very different perspective of how to look at that. And let's just say you're on a submarine. Are there people that are more important than others? I believe so. The captain is pretty important. The people who control the ship are pretty important. The people who fix the engines are pretty important.

Without them, we all die. So there are certain situations where we can share importance and shift [00:36:00] our role. It's probably not healthy to walk around always thinking I'm the most important person all the time in all situations. But there are times sometimes when it's advantageous for you to do so and not to do so would be detrimental to everyone's welfare.

Radim Malinic: In our careers, we've got, a list longer than our arms of the good decisions and maybe even longer with the decisions that didn't go that well. With your, life story, your journey, your businesses, are the things that you regret doing?

Chris Do: I regret very few things, but I've made some dumb decisions. When I was a young boy, I had lots of regret. And I realized regret is not a helpful emotion. Regret is wishing you could change the past, which creates a lot of negative energy. And we know until time travel is invented, that no such thing can be done.

And so the story I like to tell people is when I was younger, During Lunar New Year, you get these little red envelopes in some Asian cultures, and it's like Christmas, New Year, and your birthday all [00:37:00] together. That's how you have money for the rest of the year. I remember it wasn't that much money, let's just say it's 20 bucks.

And I misplaced the red envelope and I was like running around just like super stressed. I wanted to cry and I'm like 9, 10 years old and I'm like running around the house asking my mom like, Mom, have you seen my red envelope? She's honey, there's red envelopes everywhere. How would I know it's yours?

And I said, somebody took it. Somebody took it. I didn't want to take responsibility for that. And she goes, do you think your dad took it? I'm like, no. Do you think I took it? No. Do you think your brother stole from you? No. And I kind of walked away dejected, defeated, just head hung low. Just, I wanted to cry.

But then in that moment, I got some clarity. It's what am I regretting right now that I've lost this opportunity? There's an opportunity because I actually didn't have the money before that day. And now it's not really going to impact my life. But what I did was I just thought regret is a horrible emotion.

I'm going to make a life change here. So from that day forward, I [00:38:00] have. a system of where I keep things. My phone, my chapstick, my keys. They're always in a very specific place. And it's almost like an OCD tick, but I know where everything is. And my wife is the exact opposite. She's always looking for her keys, always looking for her phone.

It's like the running joke in the house. Mom's gonna ask us three times a day, has anybody seen my phone? So when I make a mistake, I embrace the mistake as an opportunity to learn, not as a thing I wish didn't do. But now having said that, We opened a New York office. So we're in LA and our, reps tell us we needed East coast offices.

Why we're not getting work because they want to have a local footprint there. So we went through a couple of iterations of starting a New York office, half heartedly first renting the space from another company, and then eventually creating our own space and hiring a duplicate team of executive producers, office manager, and creative director.

It was a nightmare to manage. We didn't make any more [00:39:00] money, we just had double the expenses now. So the lesson learned there is, you know what, if you ask sales people what to do, they'll just ask for everything because it doesn't hurt them. There's no consequence for them to ask for more. They say, you should hire that director or you should hire that creative person.

And if you listen to people to tell you how to run your business, they'll help you run it into the ground. That was the lesson. I don't regret that because I appreciate that opportunity to learn. I'll give you one more example. There was a case when I did not read the fine print in a contract because you know why?

Because I didn't want to send it to my attorney. I was like, I got this. I've signed so many of these contracts. And in the contract for our sales rep, it says at the end of this, the cycle, it renews every year automatically unless expressly written. So we had a situation with our sales rep where.

She didn't like what we were doing. We didn't like what she was doing. So ultimately I guess you don't need me anymore. I quit. [00:40:00] Fine. So now we're busy looking for a new rep. She just kept silent for two and a half months. Didn't hear from her. Didn't get any reports on any new leads or anything.

January rolls around. She goes, hey, so what's going on? What are the new boards like? We're like, what are you talking about? You quit. She goes, No, I didn't. And you're still under contract. I'm like, how are we still under contract? We're done. There's witnesses. She goes, read your contract. Not reading that contract, me 30, 000.

That I had to sign a check over to someone who wasn't working, who just sat silently, not to provoke us. And she knew exactly what she was doing, because we didn't hear from her in two and a half months. She knew she had us because it was in the contract. So when I call up my attorney, I'm like, Stuart, what are we gonna do about this?

He goes, Chris, this is why you have attorneys. I would have never let you sign something that has an auto renewal clause. It benefits them. It does not benefit you.

Radim Malinic: It [00:41:00] happened to me recently, there was a debt collecting agency. I just, I was pursuing a debt, one of a kind debt. And there was a, yeah, renewal. So you can have unlimited services, but there's a renewal every year. I was like, okay, I need to make a note. I don't need, I don't need them for more than two weeks. I'll make a note. Of course, as things happen, you forget about them.

And. They only got themselves known because they wanted to raise the money. They're wanting more money next year. So it's

I'll be giving you 30 day notice that, or 60 day notice that our fee is going to go up. I'm like, you just reminded me to

cancel this contract now, literally now.

And paying attention to things is important. And as you said, regret is about wishing to change the past, but then there's dumb decisions. And I think in our creative careers or professional careers, We regret a lot of things. I think it takes so much of our energy. Whereas, That debt that I in the end had to sign off or write off in the end [00:42:00] was actually a dumb decision not pursuing my own sort of my processes, but you learn from it.

Do I regret it? No, I've learned so much from it. And I think, again, it's a part of that sort of self discovery and that sort of acceptance that you're like, you know what? It cost us money. But, have you learned here? More than we can tell anyone. I think that's, really, important, but it just feels so earth shattering when these things happen to us in our early days, that we feel like, the world is finishing.

never recover. This will have a long term impact on everything that we do. Doesn't really, we bounce back really quickly and actually, we have a, slightly more stronger armor around us.

it's quite remarkable, like getting older, I think I would say, would you say? it's always been one of the good things to happen to us.

Chris Do: To get older and learn things and have a different perspective.

Radim Malinic: Yeah.

Chris Do: I think so. But I think age is not a great predictor of wisdom because there are young wise souls and there's [00:43:00] old dumb fools and it happens both ways and it's just when you learn to see things for the way they are and you embrace what you can't change and then you work on the things that you can I think you come to some kind of Enlightenment.

I think I'm coming around to this idea that all we have is the present. What happened yesterday is a memory and what you project to be the future is something that you get anxiety over. That there isn't a lot of good productive output to sit there and relive the good old days or to beat yourself up for dumb decisions you've made.

That's just called life. Or to say tomorrow I'll do this thing. So you put off what you're going to do today and wait for those things to happen. I think all you have is the moment that you're in right now, the present.

Radim Malinic: Sometimes we feel so scared of it. Sometimes we just don't know how to deal with that, moment. And then

we wish, we regret. You mentioned a word on our, both, conversations and the word is retirement. You mentioned before that, you retired and then you're retiring now. What does your future look like?

That's a scary word to think [00:44:00] about when you're 50. Is that right? 51.

Chris Do: I'm 52. Yeah.

Radim Malinic: 52.

So every time I speak to you, I get a sort of sense That there might be element of slowing down as there's a change. Is that right? But what does retirement sound like at 52?

Chris Do: I don't think about retirement at all. The day I, retire is the day I'm, getting ready to die, I think. Because I've heard this piece recently about our identity is something that can evolve and change and grow. that we should really focus on that and not so much on the destination of where we're going.

It's just the journey itself is really fun. And if we learn to embrace that, there's very little that will set us back. So if I'm not doing what I'm doing now, I just don't know what else I would be doing. I'm in a privileged place where I don't have to work for money anymore. So I get to choose the things that light me up most, the things that ignite my passions and stirs my soul and gives me great joy.

And one of the greatest things that I think anybody can experience is the act of helping others is its own [00:45:00] reward. Like you feel good to do it. They express gratitude to you. And if you can build a business around helping other people, That's a pretty good career to have. And I keep telling people with apologies to everyone in the room, I think I have the best job on earth.

I get paid well to help people. And if I can just keep doing that, don't see why I would retire. Now, if I cannot, like if my memory fades and I can't articulate my thinking, or I just get so bitter and jaded, I'm yelling at everybody all the time, that's time for me to do something else.

Radim Malinic: So would you say your personal circumstances are one of the biggest drivers that you see your students wanting to emulate? I think it's an ultimate win at life when you say, I do things that light me up and I get paid for them, I don't have to work for money. I just choose the right opportunities, which is indeed very privileged position.

How is that translatable do you see that, obviously your status and your achievements, mainly [00:46:00] achievements. How do you teach that? How do you distill it?

Chris Do: Very good question. I try and remind people of a timeline. Because what people do is they often compare my ending to their beginning. You're doing X, Y, and Z, and this is where you're at, so I'll do that. I said you have to look and unpack 30 years of work experience and certain decisions being made.

I just want you to have realistic expectations and to understand this is not instantaneous. I have no get rich quick scheme. I don't know how to make you brilliant in one night. It's just, it's a lot of work. If you're willing to put in the work, we can accomplish lots of things and we can probably do it.

On accelerated timeline, given your penchant to do the work and how well you take direction. If you can do that, we can get pretty far. And this is a wonderful thing. But just for context here, started my company when I was 22. This is in 1995. No, that's 23. And I've been working in the motion design industry for [00:47:00] 20 plus years.

I started making YouTube content when I was 42 years old. So when people are like, Oh, it's easy for you to say, it's, you're just you have to remember you're only 30 and you're already making content. And I didn't start until I was 42. I didn't know I wanted to be a designer until I was 18. You started when you're 14.

So you're already on an accelerated timeline, but be patient. Give yourself some grace here and work through this. Because that, grit to be the ability to do something over and over again, until you get good at it and not quitting is something that you really need to get good at. That's a life skill.

Radim Malinic: it certainly is. I always feel like we grow into patience. I think that's the biggest asset that we can ever have because, 

 patience, the p word, like how, you comfort people in such a turbocharged world that kind of makes you believe that you need to be something, someone so quickly? how do you get people to slow down if that's even possible?

Chris Do: I don't think it's possible to convince somebody of something that they don't believe to [00:48:00] be true themselves. So first we have to move their belief system and ask them, is this consistent with how you see the world? And what kind of evidence do you have that this is true? Outside of this one example. I share this, kind of insight or my way of thinking with you.

And it might be shocking to some people. I do some coaching. I do some sales role plays. And the way that I'm able to win or defeat the other person, if you will, is I just make the assumption that people haven't really thought about what they think about. Some people think about what they say. Very few people think about what they think about.

Whenever somebody asks me a question, I don't want to be patient, I want to achieve this. I just assume it's a dumb idea and they haven't really thought about that. They just woke up one morning like, I think this, I believe this. What we do in critical thinking is we try to look at this from a number of different angles and see if this is consistent with reality, if it's consistent with your own behavior and we find that there's many inconsistencies.

So there's an overwhelming mountain of evidence that this isn't true. So now all I can do is what decision do you want to [00:49:00] make? That's up to you at this point. What I can do is help you help to facilitate the thinking by asking you certain questions so that you can come to your own conclusion. So if somebody wants to work out and get really fit, they've already decided they just need a permission slip from you so that they can get started.

If somebody doesn't want to get fit and doesn't want to work out, I don't care how powerful your rhetorical skills are, they're not going to move. It just doesn't work.

Radim Malinic: I think we haven't listened, I think we haven't really learned, I think we haven't mastered listening to ourselves. So the world listens to us. I think when, especially with the point of sort of anxiety and security, taking those two forward, it's so easy to try to finish people's sentences.

It's so easy to try to sort of bat in, it's so easy because we try to validate ourselves in the room. Okay, you know what? Look, I'm clever. I know what you're trying to say. No, it's not what I was trying to say at all. the book that we both like the title of, which is What Got [00:50:00] You Here, Won't Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith, he talks about the exercise of count to 50, close your eyes and count to 50, and just realize how quickly your mind will come and derail you. And I started doing it in, agency workshops with creatives and I borrowed it. It's so clever. It's one of these things I wish I came up with that because it's so good. And you get people to sit down, close their eyes. Count to 50. I think about 90 percent of people don't make it past six. There was only one guy who made it to 20. No one makes it to 50. And you're thinking it seems quite simple. Let's try it. And if anyone wants to try it, they should, because it's really hard to let yourself just be focused 

And I think if there's one thing that I'm always talking about, and I always try to encourage people to do more of It's okay to sit back, listen to the wrong argument, take it all in, just make sure that you know what's going on, because if you've got the answers, it's much easier, to actually then enrich the situation and fix problems.

And I [00:51:00] think that's the problem of our current lives we are led to believe that everything could be done quickly now, and you talked about it last time, people being under the gun because we got faster tools, better, technology, everything's better, yet our fragile minds sometimes go what do I do with this?

But What is the one thing before we close up, what is the one thing that you wish every new creative or every season creative actually had?

 if you could give one super power to everyone to enrich the creative world, what would you do?

Chris Do: I would wish for people to have the courage to say what they think. This is a communication skill with your personal relationships or your, partner in life with the children that you might have, the siblings that you might have, and with your parents. with clients, and especially with yourself.

There's something very powerful about language and words, and I heard someone say this recently, that your words shape your world. And we've heard this expression, like when you were teased as a [00:52:00] kid, somebody would comfort you by saying, Sticks and stones break your bones, but names will never hurt you.

I'm like, no, names will hurt you, because words are how we understand things. Words are how we code our experiences, how we tell stories, how we communicate and share ideas with each other. And so there's this idea that it came upon recently about why it's so important to, to learn to articulate, to choose the right words to code your experiences and to be able to speak the things into existence.

So the idea goes something like this. There's a pool of energy that we draw upon. that when we do something and when we say something, it comes from the same pool of energy. And person goes on to posit that there are doers and there are sayers or talkers. There are people who make things and there are people who talk about making things, but usually there's not a lot of overlap.

Hence the whole, there are career professionals and there are career academics and that's usually how it works. Now there are exceptions to this and I don't 100 percent believe this, but there's this pool [00:53:00] of energy. And they go on to explain this idea that if you have negative energy, you have negative emotion, maybe you feel like you're being taken advantage of, or someone's crossing boundaries with you, and you don't say anything.

What happens is the energy just grows. It festers. It rots from the inside. It magnifies and amplifies. And the best thing that you can do is you should speak it out, which takes It's like opening the pressure valve. So like some of that negative energy can be released. So the whole doing and speaking. So this is where speaking actually comes in, play, where if you can speak up the negative things, the things that you're concerned about, your level of anxiety and stress will go down.

This is really important with client interaction. So if I'm sitting around talking to a prospect and I want to know the budget, I want to know how many people are bidding on this project. I want to know if I'm the third mandatory bid I have no chance of winning this job at all. Used to be I would hold that.

If I didn't know the budget, I'd [00:54:00] just hold it. And then later on, we would guess. And so many creative people do this. So my business coach gave me permission to go ahead and say those things, to say what you think. I'm like, okay. So we're looking at the storyboards. What kind of budget do you have for this?

And then they would say something, they'd tell you something, they would tell you nothing, or they'd make you guess, and I could play all three roles and it's fine. But what I didn't want to do was go away and not to know. Let's talk about positive emotions. You have lots of positive emotions, ambitions, dreams, desire.

If you speak those into existence, you your brain gets confused because you're affirmed by other people like, yes, you could do that. You're amazing. I know you're going to go on that diet. I know you're going to write that book. And you feel all the feelings that you would if you had done the work.

So you don't need to do the work anymore. So positive things, some exceptions, hold on to them. Negative things, you got to release them and speak them. And what we [00:55:00] do is we learn to say in ways that are non judging, non violent, non aggressive. That's a skill. But the first step is just, I have a thought, I have a feeling, I want to release that.

And I've done this experiment before. I've asked people to think of a situation that's very stressful for them, that creates a lot of anxiety, to really hold that in their brain, right? We do this kind of little exercise. And I say on a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is the most painful emotional experience you can have, not physical pain, but emotional pain, what would you score that at?

Okay, lot of them will say 7 or 8. They say, okay, now I want you to pair up and I want you to tell the other person and describe in all the crazy details, what it is that stresses you out, creates anxiety and makes you angry. And they would say it. So everybody turned back to me now. That same thought on a scale of one to 10, same scale, where does it register?

Some people say it's a half point lower. Some people say two points and some people is it's mostly gone. It's pretty incredible. [00:56:00] So there must be some connection between your brain, your emotion and the words that you choose. And so I just want to tell everybody, whether it's someone has crossed lines with you or you want to know something, speak it, let that pressure go.

Radim Malinic: think, I that what you just said has a lot to digest. And I think anything I would like to try to segue and go forward might not do any justice because if I was listening to this podcast right now, I think I would just replay the last five minutes, about three or four times and, and try to learn from every single word you just said.

So I thank you for that because it's, Yeah, verbalizing things is our gift and sometimes we are so scared to say what we really think because as children we are unfiltered in our creativity, in our expression, but then we learn how to think and how, be accepted and not try to be accepted and not tread on anyone's toes or, try to be political even in some situations. And I think what you described. [00:57:00] It's liberating, just let it go. and especially in a business situations, you don't even have to feel like you're brave to speak up. We just need to ask good questions because just like my kids, they're like, why, why, why, why, why? And I'm like, this could be really annoying. But I'm going to use it as an opportunity to actually satisfy my own curiosity and actually grow as a person. You know what? Let's ask more questions because it's when you get to that point of authority and the self acceptance, you're like, I'm going to ask these, especially the prospect am I the third mandatory bid? And it's, it doesn't hurt because you've actually saved yourself and everybody else time. Okay, we'll give you a proposal if you want one, it's not necessarily, going to be our best one because you seem like you've already made your mind up. And I think it's that going after the things that you want and hold that steering wheel when you drive, like it's liberating because that shift in the mindset, in the energy and that courage is sometimes minuscule and it produces incredible things. So Chris, thank [00:58:00] you so much for. Seeing you for the second time on this show, I think there's a lot of value in this conversation that we had today. And I purposely wanted to have a second conversation just so we can step away from sales. We end up with sales again anyway, but it's my sort of aim with the show to actually be on a more on a human side and actually share the stories that. iUniversal, Evergreen and whoever listens to this in a few years time or whatever, we will be still thinking in the same way and hopefully we'll, enrich people's lives. So thanks for what you're doing and thanks for coming on again.

Chris Do: Thank you for giving me the opportunity. I'm glad we could do this without the time constraint of the previous conversation. I really enjoyed it.

Radim Malinic: Thank you, Chris.

Chris Do: Thank you. 

USBPre2-7: I thank you for listening to this episode of mindful creative podcast. I'd love to know your thoughts, questions, or even suggestions. So please get in touch via the show notes or social channels. This [00:59:00] episode was produced and presented by me, write and manage editing. An audio production was massively done by Neil McKay from 7 million bikes podcast. And the theme music was written and produced by Jack James. Thank you. 

And I hope to see you on the next episode.