April 30, 2025 • 54 mins
Chris Do is coming to Singapore! 🇸🇬
Over the course of one unforgettable week, join Chris for three transformative workshops on personal branding, conversational selling, and an exclusive VIP experience designed to unlock your full potential as a creative professional or entrepreneur.
🗓 June 2–7, 2025
📍 Four Seasons Hotel, Singapore
👉 Secure your spot on the waitlist: https://chrisdo.asia/waitlist
In this high-impact episode, Chris Do sits down with Victoria Dior Wang—CEO of Goldzone Group and a trailblazer in experiential leadership education—to unpack why most professionals, especially in Asia, are selling all wrong. From cultural beliefs rooted in Confucian values to a widespread fear of self-promotion, Chris and Victoria explore why talented people keep playing small—and how to break free.
They dive deep into why traditional sales methods feel manipulative, the shame that comes with self-promotion, and how personal branding can help you sell with confidence (and integrity). This conversation is a must-listen for creatives, consultants, entrepreneurs, and anyone struggling with visibility, pricing, or imposter syndrome.
Timestamps:
(00:00) The Nature of Creative Struggles
(03:45) The Power of Branding in Business
(07:54) Cultural Preservation and Modernization in Japan
(19:22) Changing the Sales Mindset
(24:33) Cultural Perspectives and Personal Growth
(31:40) The Value of Experience
(35:16) Understanding the Value of Money
(39:51) Understanding the Value of Money (duplicate – consider editing or removing)
(46:15) Overcoming Fear in Business Decisions
(51:43) The Importance of Staying on Track
Check out today's guest, Victoria Dior Wang:
Victoria Dior Wang's Website: http://victoriadior.com/
Victoria Dior Wang's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/victoriadiorwang/
Victoria Dior Wang's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/victoriadiorwang/
Check out The Futur:
Website: https://www.thefutur.com/
Courses: https://www.thefutur.com/shop
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-futur/
Podcasts: https://thefutur.com/podcast
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thefuturishere/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theFuturisHere/
Twitter: https://x.com/thefuturishere
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thefuturishere
Youtube:https://www.youtube.com/thefuturishere
Check out Chris Do:
Website: https://zaap.bio/thechrisdo
LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/thechrisdo/
Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/BizOfDesign
Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/thechrisdo/
Twitter:
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Creative people are just funnylike this.
Something great happens and wedon't want to do it again.
Something horrible happens, werefuse to change.
So like, are we destined to suffer.
All of our lives when someonefeel desperate and have a fixated
agenda and chasing after themoney, they end up pushing away the
sales, even if the client isright for them.
Think of money as a thank younote that the more thank you notes
(00:23):
you get, the more you know theclients appreciate what you do.
And who here does not want tobe appreciated?
My name is Victoria Dior Wangand you're listening to the future.
Hey everybody.
This episode's a little bitdifferent because I'm talking to
my friend Victoria Dior Wang,somebody I met recently, earlier
this year, first time inSingapore, and her and her husband
(00:44):
Harrison put together anamazing event.
They said, let's run it back,let's run it back again just days
after finishing.
And so for those of you whoare like you were in Singapore.
What?
What?
Okay, look, I asked you tocome to me, but sometimes I'll come
to you.
I'll be in your time zone.
And so if you're curious aboutthe kinds of things that we talk
(01:06):
about, if you're curious aboutwanting to learn more, I think this
episode's for you.
So without further ado, I haveasked Victoria to kind of come at
me with a bunch of questions,especially to highlight some of the
belief systems that mightpersist in that part of the world.
And we're, we're going to doour best to break them apart and
hopefully answer those questions.
(01:26):
So Victoria, for people whodon't know who you are, just briefly
tell us your story.
So my name is Victoria Dioweand I'm the CEO of the GoZone Group.
One of my biggest passion iseducation and one of our business
is a running educational program.
And we create immersivelearning experiences to help leaders,
(01:47):
business owners as well as aprofessionals to go beyond success
and live an extraordinary life.
So you can hear from myintroduction, that's why we are,
we resonate with Chris so muchand we want to bring him to Singapore.
Yes.
So what's real interesting tome, just for some background context,
is people do reach out to meall the time and said, hey, come
(02:08):
to our city, come to ourcountry, come, let's do something
together.
And most of them are not super credible.
Most of them are not built toaccommodate me and to be able to
do whatever it is I need done.
And Victoria, to your creditand to Harrison, who I didn't know
at the time, you Put togethera plan, there's a spreadsheet.
Everything was above board.
And you said, we're going todo this super professionally.
(02:28):
And to your credit, you didexactly that.
You met me at the airport withflowers and a private car.
I'm like, hey, I feel like I'min Hawaii.
There's a vacation here.
And this feels a little bit different.
And from the beginning to theend, it was first class all the way.
And so you do thingsdifferently in Singapore, that's
(02:48):
for sure.
And I think I didn't have awhole lot of expectations coming
in, but leaving I was like,this is a pretty cool place in the
world.
Quite unique in that there'slike a highest earning per capita,
oftentimes number one, two orthree in the world.
In terms of education, I'mpassionate about education and it's
(03:09):
awesome for me to go to aplace where people like to learn
and to do self development.
This might be my new thing, Idon't know.
Singapore, let's go.
The interesting thing is whatmy intention is to create an experience
so that you want to come backagain and again.
I had a good time.
Awesome.
We had a good time, right?
We had a great time.
(03:29):
Let's kick it off.
All right.
Some of the things you want totalk about.
So one of the first thing Iwant to ask you is since we are going
to do personal branding andsales workshop, which are the key
things and a lot of businessowners and professionals have a lot
of challenge in that area.
And I want to this the firstquestion I'd like to ask you is how
(03:50):
does personal brandingsupercharge conversational sales?
And I say conversational salesbecause it differentiates you and
many other people will talkabout sales.
And why is this the secretsauce most people might overlook?
Very good way to kick it off.
So we'll talk about brand fora second.
(04:10):
Brand is the accelerant toalmost everything that you do.
And that's not to say that allbrands are created equally.
So you and I, we both havebrands and everyone listening has
a brand.
But not all of us are able toleverage that brand to create opportunities
for us to make things move faster.
I'll give you an example, reallife example.
A buddy of mine who is puttingtogether an event in Las Vegas which
(04:34):
I'm involved in.
He told me he's 89% ticketssold already for a thousand person
event.
He said last year it wouldhave taken me another two months
of selling to close and finishthis thing.
He thinks he'll be sold out ina week or two and he goes.
Because every year his brandbecomes more powerful and he can
(04:54):
leverage it more.
I think this is pretty awesome.
So he did one webinar that wasa multi hour long webinar, had a
bunch of guests on and heopened up the doors and people just
streamed in and purchased tickets.
And then he would then followup with a few people and retarget
the people who attended.
And the tickets are almostsold out at this point.
(05:14):
And he was just remarking thisis possible because of brand.
So if you're an eventorganizer, if you have a coaching
or sales program and you wantmore people to volunteer to join
without having to twist theirarm, start to think about how you
show up in the world, whetheryou give people an opportunity to
(05:35):
connect with you beyond thebusiness aspect and you'll start
to see that this is like theaccelerant to everything that you
want.
That's a very great storyabout branding and I do agree because
when people recognize yourbrand, it makes it easier for them
to want to move towards you.
And it's very hard whenthere's no branding.
(05:56):
And you're right about theleverage because I think people don't
think about leverage as much.
And in fact that's one of themindset that Asian and I believe
to a certain extent American,Asian American has similar thing.
We're so used to working hard,we feel that working hard is what
gives us the value and we feelmore worthwhile when we work hard.
(06:17):
And having leverage seems tobe something that is not in people's
top of the mind.
Yeah, I want to, I want to saysomething here so we, we know that
Singapore is a rich countryand quite brand conscious.
If you go shopping inSingapore, okay, everything's here
and what is happening here.
And this is something I wantto talk to the potential local listeners
(06:39):
about, which is why are we asSingaporeans, Asian Americans, expats,
whatever, so ready to giveextra money to Western or European
brands over the local alternative?
It bothers me a little bitthat there aren't as many, not even
close by a factor of a hundredof Asian brands that have translated
(07:04):
into markets outside theirlocal market.
We become too compliant, tooblending, too much, too much desire
to fit in, that we just don'tstand out and we become frustrated
and we feel like we don't havea voice because, oh, I got to, I
gotta cater to the society, Igotta cater to my parents, I gotta
cater to everyone else exceptfor myself.
(07:26):
Since you're such a welltraveled person, have you seen somewhere
in the world where there'straditional Asian cultures or culture
and values that are blendedwith Western ideas in harmony.
Honestly, not much.
I would say probably American.
Asian American is the closest,but still very much indulated with
(07:51):
Asian culture underlying the driving.
I'm talking about what'sreally driving us beneath the surface.
I think I may have an answerto that question, which is Japan.
Japan.
All right.
You go to Tokyo or Kyoto,you'll see men wear traditional kimonos
and, and suit, dress.
Walking in one of the mostmodern cities in the world, taking
(08:14):
the subway, and I'm like, ohmy God.
And they're wearing liketraditional shoes too, which don't
look that comfortable, likethose wooden shoes, like, so you're
in a metropolitan, like, fastmoving city and you're bringing traditional
values and dress into it.
And so Japan is a really greatmix of tradition and modernity and
(08:37):
preserving culture.
And they're very good atpreserving culture.
I don't know if this is true,but in, in, in a time when Japan
is being modernized, theykicked out all the Westerners and
drove out all the missionariesand said, you know what?
We need to preserve ourculture because we can see it slipping
away.
And so for a period of time,Japan develops in isolation with
some trade with the West.
(08:58):
But it's kind of interestinghow they're able to hold on to so
many Japanese traditions andhave done a really good job up until
recently about exportingJapanese concepts.
If you ask a lot of youngpeople in America, what do you like?
Manga, anime, and they'll listall the things they like.
Transformers and robots.
(09:18):
Those are all Japaneseconcepts, right?
Japanese ideas originally.
And the most successful comicsnow follow a very Japanese model
of developing storylines thatdon't take issues but take years
to play out.
So I think there's somethingreally beautiful and it's referenced
in Soft power, the ability toinfluence culture.
(09:40):
Currently, right now, thecountry that has the most soft power
I think is Korea.
K, pop, K drama, everything K.
So we, we can see that thereis a slow emergence of Asian influence
that will then be integratedinto Western culture.
Yeah, you're right, you're right.
(10:01):
In terms of their, you know,how they preserve the culture while
still being a very modernized city.
Like when I first went toJapan, I was very surprised by how
advanced their technology is.
In fact, like you said, theyare very self contained.
The challenge with thatisolation is that they lose a lot
of opportunities and economyhas been going down over the years.
So that, that's part of thechallenge of being too isolated while
(10:25):
trying to Preserve themselves.
They are also losing out tothe rest of the world.
The question now is, since youmentioned that, how do we help people
understand if they were tojoin us in the workshop, we can help
them to blend in more of theboth so that they don't feel like
they are losing out.
One of the biggest challengewith a lot of people is the idea
of changing something reallyfreaked them out.
(10:47):
If I go to a workshop, do Ineed to change anything?
Is that your experience too?
No, I would say don't show up.
Why?
Go to a workshop and promiseyourself you'll learn nothing and
change nothing.
Why?
I mean, we'll take your money,but I wouldn't show up.
It's like saying, I'm gonna gowatch this new movie, but I'm gonna
keep my eyes closed.
Okay, that's one way toexperience it.
(11:08):
But why would you do that?
When we go and seek outinstruction, coaching, mentoring,
tutoring, whatever it is thatyou're seeking out, there's a future
state that we think we can achieve.
And the only reason whyanybody does anything is they're
motivated to change.
So sales is about change management.
So I'm trying to help you gofrom where you are to where you would
like to be.
(11:29):
So first and foremost you haveto identify, do I have a need?
If you have no need, stay home.
Additionally, if clients areelecting to pay you a premium, you
get no pushback.
They're, they're, they'llwillingly wait for you to be open
and available so that they canhave the privilege of paying you
the most amount of money.
(11:49):
And when you introduce anidea, they're like, yes, I love that.
And what else?
And you get no pushback on ideas.
Well, also stay home.
Or maybe don't stay home.
Start a course, create aconference and teach people how you've
done this.
Because this is amazing.
So we, we say this right.
Creative people are just funnylike this.
Something great happens and wedon't want to do it again.
(12:13):
Something horrible happens, werefuse to change.
So, like, are we destined tosuffer all of our lives?
And I do want to say this,Victoria, I'm not a sales professional.
I've had zero sales training.
I've taken zero courses in sales.
I've gone to see zero gurusteach me about sales.
(12:34):
So I have a little bit, tinylittle bit of self doubt when it
comes to, am I the person toteach people sales?
I could get customers, I cancreate content and they're happy
to seemingly pay me whateverit is I ask for.
What is it that I know.
So I'm in Dubai and I'm doinga talk on how to sell less and close
(12:54):
more clients.
But I'm standing in the lobbyof the hotel, and this gentleman,
older gentleman, walks over to me.
He goes, chris, didn't knowwho you were.
Sorry about that.
I'm like, you don't need to be sorry.
I don't know who you are either.
I'm not apologizing because Iwas at your thing.
I'm like, oh, okay, cool.
He goes, I've been doing salestraining for.
(13:15):
For two decades.
I'm like, oh, here it comes.
He's going to say, what yousay doesn't work.
It won't work here.
He says, I learned some newthings, and that was good.
He said, I share that storywith you because I find it really
fascinating that people whoare so called, quote, unquote, sales
training, professional ninjawizards, teach sales in a way that
(13:39):
I find disagreeable,distasteful, and dishonest.
And the reason why a lot ofpeople, especially creative folk,
don't like sales is becausethey've seen so many bad examples,
have been taught bad ways ofdoing it, and they've kind of resigned
to say, I don't want to do this.
And of course, if something isgrossing you out, creating that feeling
(14:00):
of ick and you keep doing itwell, it's not going to turn out
well because you're holding onto negative feelings about it.
I think part of what gets usjaded is, you know, a lot of the
people use very manipulativesales tactics just to.
Just to get their agenda met.
And we are becoming more andmore sophisticated, and we can tell.
(14:23):
We just can't feel it.
And most of us don't want tobe like that.
So we become from jaded tocosting ourselves.
And that's why your workshopmakes such a big difference, in my
opinion.
And I can honestly say I'm asales veteran, and I know exactly
what you mean.
I've been in sales andentrepreneurship because in entrepreneurship,
(14:43):
you are selling all the time.
You're selling people why theyshould do the job, why they should.
You know, whether we like itor not, as a leader even, we need
to sell people our vision.
We need to sell our team ourvision so that they feel more engaged
with what we are doing andthey can be more productive and perform
better.
And then, not to mention, weneed to sell to our clients why they
(15:04):
should engage with us ifthere's a fit.
But people get so resistant tothe word sales.
And this is the other part In Asia.
I can say that for Singaporeand I believe that's probably applicable
to the rest of Asia too.
Sales is deemed as if someonegets a sales job or go into a sales
(15:26):
profession is deemed as alower end kind of profession because
you are not a lawyer, you arenot a doctor, or you can't get a
job.
That's why you go to sell something.
So there's a lot of challengewith the word sales and how people
look at it.
(15:47):
Okay, let's, let's, let'sclarify here.
If you're an attorney andyou're trying to get a client, what
are you doing?
I believe that's called sales.
Yes.
If you do cosmetic dentistryand you need to get clients, what
are you doing?
You need to believe that'scalled sales.
Yes, exactly.
(16:07):
If you're a coach and you wantto help people be better, their partners
to their spouses or whoever,or their children, what are you doing?
I believe that's called sales.
So I think sales has a bad rapbecause there are so many poor practitioners,
poor examples, the Wolf ofWall street, all, all these kinds
(16:28):
of the Jordan Belforts of theworld, kind of like sleazy cheating
people out of theirretirement, those kinds of things.
And we think sales, we thinkof used car salesperson, we think
of timeshare salespeople,telemarketers who are bothering us
while we're trying to havedinner with our family.
Yeah, if that's sales, itdeserves all the spit and fire that
(16:49):
it's getting.
But we're all in the samebusiness and sales is about influence.
Sales is about transference of energy.
A friend of mine and an artcenter professor, his name is Errol
Garrison, he said somethinglike this.
He believes sales is.
I'm excited about something.
My job is to see if you'reexcited about the same thing.
(17:10):
And if you are, then we coulddo business together.
But if we're not, then I'm,I'm happy to go my way part ways
and we're good.
I love that.
The problem is when we do it,as a third party, neutral, objective
observer, I have nothing togain from this.
I'm just telling you about agreat restaurant or hotel car service.
And since I have no horse inthis race, I can full throatedly
(17:33):
say it objectively becausethere's no self interest involved.
When we, when we flip it andit's like, oh, I, I do logo design
and if I full throatedlyexpress what I think it's going to
do for you, oh, that's distasteful.
That's so self centric andthere's a reason why.
What we need to do is to haveone conversation, not two conversations.
(17:59):
So when we talk about thirdparty, we speak about it very objectively.
We ask great questions, welisten to what the other person wants.
And only if they're interestedin eating a certain type of food
or seeing a certain type ofsite would we then recommend something
to them.
Because there's no point in ustelling them, you must visit this
place where we're like, youknow what, I'm tired.
I don't really want to see anytourist traps.
(18:19):
I'm good.
And what we do is we switchgears and we go into selling, pitching,
justifying mode and having an agenda.
But if we adopt the firstmindset and have only one kind of
conversation, not two kinds,which is, I'm curious what you're
interested in.
Where are you in your business?
What do you need help with?
What have you tried and failed?
Who has wronged you?
(18:39):
What outcome would you like?
Oh my gosh.
It just so happens that whatyou want is something that I potentially
could provide to you.
And then it's a marriage of awant with a solution.
But we never do it this way.
And we watch people crash andburn all the time.
Victoria yes.
They go up on stage, theypitch each other and they're just
(19:01):
going back to their old what'sin it for me mindset.
And we're trying to breakthat, we're trying to change that
a hundred percent.
Yeah, that.
What's that?
What's in in it for me mindsetis what.
Yeah.
Create a lot of challenges for people.
And I thought, you know, a lotof the role play you do in the workshop
really makes a difference tobring that awareness up.
(19:22):
Like someone from the workshopdid a really great carousel and talk
about how what he thoughtabout sales was so different.
He really shifted the mindsetaround what's in the way of his sales
result before the workshopversus after the workshop.
And the what's in it for mewhen you feel desperate, that's the
(19:45):
worst.
That really cost a lot of people.
When someone feel desperateand and have a fixated agenda and
chasing after the money, theyend up pushing away the sales.
Even if that's the right fit,even if the client is right for them.
That's right.
I want to go back to aquestion that you brought up earlier
(20:06):
about cultural differences,east and west.
Now, I was born in Vietnam,but I grew up in America.
English is my second language.
I know some people arebothered when I say that, but it's
literally true.
And I struggled for someperiod of my life pronouncing polysyllabic
words, multiple syllablewords, because Vietnamese language
(20:28):
is single syllable.
That's why it sounds so choppy.
And I grew up in America as afirst generation immigrant refugee,
so I still have deep ties andconnection to my culture, my original
culture, while having thebenefit of being raised in America
and seeing this, the.
(20:48):
The kind of Socrates approachto life, exceptionalism, individualism,
understanding, ego, and whatdrives me.
So I straddle two worlds.
I'm not saying I'm the only,but I'm one of the few who can come
in and be a day walker.
That's a reference to Blade.
What I'm able to do, I think,is to understand Asian culture, our
(21:14):
habits, our routines, our needto be respectful, while also bringing
in Western concepts in yourface kind of style, teaching, putting
people in the spotlight alittle bit and blending these two
things.
And I think what I enjoyed somuch about our time together in the
workshop, Victoria, was I wasgiven time and space to be the me
(21:37):
as me I could be.
And to me, that is pure joy.
And if, if your teacher, yourinstructor is having a good time,
there's a chance, not aguarantee, that you'll have a good
time.
And what, what better way tolearn than.
Than to have a good time?
If I'm doing my job correctly,you'll look up and you'll look down
(21:59):
and you realize eight hoursare gone.
I'll make it fun.
Hopefully I'll make you laugh.
You're either gonna laugh withme or people are laughing at you,
but there will be some laughter.
And I like that part.
I like that we can play, wecan push and we can pull, and we
can straddle that line betweeneast and west, traditional and modern.
I, I think I'm able to do that.
(22:21):
But you'll have to be the judge.
Well, I can attest to that.
Yeah, it's true.
And that's why you get.
That's why you have a lot ofAsian fans and followers who are
really inspired by you to bean Asian.
And yes, you're Asian America,but you're still Asian.
And to stand out in the worldstage is really very hard, very tough
(22:41):
for Asian community.
And to address your.
One of your question that you.
Or one of the comment that youmade about why are we.
So why do we put pedestal onWestern branding?
Yeah, yeah, I think it's quite.
I think it's a.
It's part of what.
Well, you know, I like to Sayto my Asian friends that one thing
(23:05):
about American is that youguys are really great at marketing.
Whether you're confident.
I'm talking in general.
Right.
Whether you're confident ornot, you can market yourself so well.
The opposite is true for Asian.
So we are human being, and Ibelieve, from my experience, is that
we tend to buy into thesurface star, that as long as it's
(23:28):
popular, it looks good.
If everybody else like it, itmust be good.
Which I don't think is trueall the time, but that's how we are.
That's our default.
We are more geared towards popular.
Popularity, and anythingpopular, we listen to it, so we put
more attention to it.
And the challenge with Asianis that we can do a lot of good work,
(23:53):
but we have such a hard timemarketing ourselves and promoting
ourselves.
And that's the part that Ifeel that we can blend in with more
of the Western culture, whereby feeling more comfortable in sharing
of ourselves and with no shame.
So shame is a big culturalproblem from Confucius, that we are
(24:14):
being shamed into doing a lotof things, that the shame end up
costing us in other areas thatwe where we can excel.
But, you know, we are human being.
We are one.
We are a whole person.
We can't have shame in onearea and not have shame in another
area.
So promoting ourselves is likea big taboo.
Would you agree with that?
It is.
We have a couple thousandyears of Confucianism to unpack here.
(24:38):
Yeah.
So how much time do we havefor this podcast?
And how long is the workshop again?
Okay, but here's the cool part.
The minute you decide youdon't want to do anything or do it
the same way before it's aminute, your life can change.
My life has been full ofmoments like that where the road
or my lifeline branches.
(24:58):
Like that sacred timeline inthe multiverse.
It branched, and I chose thebranch that was most optimal for
me.
So can you unpack 2000 yearsof Confucianism in a day?
And the answer is, it depends.
And you're like, what does itdepend on?
Well, it depends on thatperson that you see every day.
(25:19):
Twice a day, the person looksback at you in the mirror.
It depends on you.
You know, I wanted to say thatmore people need to go through the
same process as you, becauseit is through that process that we
ask ourselves those questions.
Do I want my future to lookthe same?
(25:40):
No.
And the people who say no arethe people who take action.
On the other hand, the peoplewho give up are the people who just
don't do anything.
There's a scene in Good WillHunting, so when Robin Williams says
to Matt Damon's character,it's not your fault, because I know
it's not your fault.
I know it's not your fault.
(26:01):
I know it's not your fault.
You might experience one ofthose moments with me where I look
you in the eye and I'll say,you're enough.
And you'll say, I know you're enough.
I know you're enough.
(26:25):
So I, I, I, I jokingly say, Iknow everybody's about creating safe
space.
I create unsafe space becausein the unsafe space there's friction,
there's tension and I don'tknow another way to make a diamond.
Diamonds are made under a lotof pressure and heat.
I agree it takes tension andpressure to change.
(26:47):
And can I say, just from mypoint of view, even though you say
it takes unsafe space, butwhat you are doing is actually very
safe.
The reason why it's safe isbecause it might feel, the feeling
might be, oh no, I'm going togo through this.
Oh, Chris is going to roast me.
Which is, you know, peoplelike to, your followers like to joke
(27:09):
about that.
They love it by the way.
They love the fact that youroast them.
So it's not a negative anyway.
And they also know thatbecause of what you do, because of
how you do it, they get to transform.
And it is through the tensionthat people transform.
Nothing happen if there's notension, too comfortable.
(27:29):
That's why learning online hasa problem.
They are too comfortable.
They are just listening passively.
There's no real change becausethere's no tension.
No one challenged them.
And in my experience, mybiggest transformation come when
someone challenges me becauseit breaks me out of my, I call that
it's like a zombie mode whereI keep doing the same thing and I
(27:52):
thought that I should know I'mdoing it right.
Why is it not happening?
Why am I not, why am I notgetting the result I'm getting?
And it's a little bit like a,I don't know how to describe that.
It's like I'm being trapped inmy own ego of thinking that I know,
but I'm just not getting it.
And I can't change it untilsomeone come and challenge me and
(28:14):
I suddenly, it's like a wakeup call for me.
And that's what you, I feelthat that's what you do with people
that, that scramble them sothat they, they are not in their
default mode.
It's our default Mode.
That's the problem.
And that's why they keepgetting the same result.
And they can't be challenged online.
You can't, they can't, theycan't get it online.
(28:35):
I mean, if you can go get it.
There are people who, I'm not,I'm not here to prescribe to anybody
what's going to work, what'snot going to work.
I almost think it's betterthat people go to workshops or try
things online with lots ofdifferent people so that when they
experience something that webring to the table, they'll have
(28:56):
a point of reference.
I heard this from somebody Iwould like to coach people who've
been coached before, notsomeone who's never gone to see a
coach, because they'll knowthe difference.
They can see it and they canfeel it, and they'll be able to say,
oh, the last coach I talked todidn't say any of this.
It wasn't doing any of this.
And so I'm, I'm kind of alittle bit more bought in, in this
moment.
(29:17):
Whereas a person who's neverbeen coached, never gone to workshop,
never worked on themselves,never got any kind of training, they're
like, oh, yeah, this is howeverything works.
I'm like, let me tell you,it's not true.
Harrison said this after the event.
It's like, there's no pitch.
You know, what people don'tunderstand is people invite you to
(29:38):
go to a workshop, and thereason why they want you to go to
the workshop is because theyhave some exclusive mastermind.
And then you go to exclusivemastermind, then they have a platinum
one on one program, and thenafter that they have another program.
So it seems like they're justdesigned to extract more and more
money from you versus creatingmore value for you.
I, I, I take what I do veryseriously, even though how I do it
(30:00):
is not at all, which is you'veplaced a certain amount of trust
in us, made a commitment, andI need to honor that as a teacher
first and foremost.
So I want to make sure thatyou're having a good time.
That's important to me.
I want to make sure that thereare things that you, you want to
(30:21):
get resolved in your life andto learn relative to the subject
that we're teaching, to make progress.
Maybe it won't be perfect, butyou're going to make progress.
And to walk away saying toyourself, I enjoyed my time, I learned
something, and I can applysomething moving forward, that it's
going to have material impacton my life and in my business, that's
the first order, firstprinciples, whatever we want to call
(30:43):
it, I got to make sure of that.
And outside of that,everything else is good.
And that's one of the mainreason why we decided to work with
you.
That's why we want to bringyou to Singapore.
Because we are very, veryaligned with how you do that.
We don't like pitch too.
And we know because we havebeen in education industry for a
long time, close to 30 years.
(31:05):
And there are so manyworkshops or program out there that
really.
That do that, everything.
They even do it during breaktime, before, after.
And it's just.
It's just distasteful.
And that's the part that makesit unsafe because I'm supposed to.
I just paid money to come hereand learn so that I can apply what
(31:27):
I learned to get the result.
But here you are.
Every single session, you aretrying to pitch me the next thing.
And how am I supposed to feelsafe to open up myself to learn the
real stuff?
Yeah.
Where else do we go with this conversation?
I want to talk about value.
What makes this experience inSingapore command a premium?
And why are people stillsaying it's worth every single center?
(31:50):
It's hard for me to tell youwhy it's worth whatever you're going
to pay.
And it's because in.
In alignment with the things Itry and teach you.
It's not my job to prove toyou, to justify as to what the value
is.
The price is the price.
If you feel like if you gotsome of your problem solved, if you
can capture that value back,that's on you.
(32:11):
Like when I read a book, booksare in general here in America, about
$30 each.
Some are a lot cheaper, someare a little bit more, but on average,
I think it's about $30.
Every time I read a book, Ithink I can make 30 grand.
And that's conservative interms of the investment.
So you see all these booksbehind me.
If I were to read and be ableto apply and teach all the things
I've learned in my life, I'dbe sitting on a giant mountain of
(32:33):
money.
And so when we go to workshopsand when we hire a coach and a consultant,
my number one question is,will I be able to turn this into
value for me?
I think Jim Rohn saidsomething like this, that wealth
is.
And I'm modifying it a little bit.
Wealth is your ability toconvert knowledge and experience
into capital.
I can become wealthy if I cantake what I've learned and convert
(32:58):
it into some kind of capitalor currency or something else.
And that's what I do.
So I've read the books so youdon't have to.
And if you want to read allthe books and learn the way I learn,
go do that.
It's a lot cheaper.
But if you want to do itthrough the lens of someone who's
applied it and sort of figuredit out and can share in those experiences
(33:18):
to create a fun, dynamiclearning experience, and you think
I'm the person to do it foryou, then I'd be happy to be your
teacher and your guide for allof this.
Not somebody else will be orno one will be.
That's up to you.
I'm not overly invested inconvincing you to come to this thing.
Now, the best person to answerthat question are people who've come
to the workshop who can say,here's what I got from it, here's
(33:42):
why I would come back, andhere's why I want more.
Well, I know you have a noconvincing policy.
So do we.
It's not up to us to convince people.
And I would say that, youknow, at the end of the day, like
you say, they have to decidefor themselves what value and what
return do they want forthemselves if they were to join us?
(34:02):
And what are they willing tothe price they're willing to pay.
And yes, it's an investment,it's an investment in oneself, but
it's really not up to us to decide.
And we are confident that weare going to do the best job.
It's perfect.
Okay, so imagine that you showup to a Mercedes dealership and we
see the S class in America.
(34:23):
S class is probably between 80to 120ish k, depending on what you
add to it, right?
Maybe a little bit more, I'mnot sure.
And you walk into thedealership like, why should I pay
this?
Why is it worth this much?
And if I were running thedealership, I'm like, I don't know.
Tell me what brings you intothe dealership?
We just have a conversationabout it.
(34:44):
It's not their job to convinceyou at the point in which you walk
into the dealership to say,why is this worth it?
Their job is to tell you abouta story about who they are, what
they stand for and who thecustomers are so that you make that
decision before you even walkinto the store.
That's called branding, everybody.
(35:04):
So why are we teachingbranding and sales?
Like, what are.
What do these two things haveto do with each other?
Well, everything, friend.
Because if your brand isreally Strong.
You won't have to sell at all.
Okay, I have a question.
Let's talk about money.
You know how a lot of people,when it comes to talking about money,
they feel a little bit awkward?
Yes.
(35:24):
And if you.
Awkward, uncomfortable.
Oh, you know, what do I say?
How do I say it?
How does this experience helpthem turn talking about money from
something awkward intosomething natural and not to.
Not just natural.
They feel empowered.
I think money for a lot ofpeople in a lot of cultures, dirties
(35:46):
the conversation.
It creates a lot of tensionfor us because it takes something
that's more relational andturns into transactional thing.
But I think what money does isit takes away a lot of the ambiguity.
I heard Simon Sinek explainthis, and I love his explanation
of this, like, what is money really?
So we just rewind the tape.
I invite you over for dinner.
(36:06):
I'll cook.
And part of the bargain isyou'll do the dishes.
I cook, you do the dishes.
Pretty fair, right?
And this has been going on forsome time.
We're cool.
And then one day you're like,hey, I have to run my cool.
I owe you.
So, okay, I cooked and I'll dothe dishes.
So next time you come over,it's like, let me make good on that
(36:27):
iou.
I will cook and also do the dishes.
And so money has become anabstraction of this promise of an
iou, and it's much moreconvenient and transportable than
I brought two chickens to thedinner so that we're all even, Right?
And once we move into thisabstraction, we start to get away
(36:47):
from the feeling of what isour will, that what is the goodwill
that we're creating here?
What is the promise that are made?
So what I do is I give youmoney because I didn't do the dishes,
but you can use that money tothen have someone so close for you.
And so someone who's not partof the original deal can fulfill
(37:11):
that end of the deal.
And that's how we move as society.
So the problem has been, Ithink too many of us have negative
associations with money.
If you think back to yourearliest childhood memories around
money, there's a good chancethat one of your parents handled
money in a way that you foundto be distasteful.
(37:32):
I can speak to this.
I think you correct me if I'm wrong.
So I have memories of my momtaking me to the flea market swap
meet and her negotiating withother vendors and using certain kind
of negotiation practices thatI thought were dishonest, distasteful,
and somewhat manipulative.
Now, my mom's a beautifulhuman being.
She's like a saint.
(37:52):
But in Asian culture, that'show we feel.
Like we're getting our money'sworth by negotiating and hemming
and hawing about price.
And it's very much a culturalthing, right?
Especially in the Middle east too.
There's this idea that if youpaid full price, you're stupid.
So as a Westerner, I'm like,no, it's not.
I'm not negotiating with you.
This is not how we do it.
I gave you a fair price, andif you don't like it, you don't have
(38:12):
to buy.
I didn't artificially jack theprice up so that you can negotiate
me down to the price in whichI wanted to pay.
But this happens a lot in theeast and the Middle East.
So if you're a little childand you see this happening, like,
oh, this feels dishonest.
It feels gross.
Okay?
That's the one thing.
And money, all of a suddenthen has certain power.
(38:33):
Like, if you want to buy a toyor outfit, a dress, something, shoot,
I gotta go make money.
And someone controls the money.
I don't have the ability tomake money.
So we take these two powerful things.
The concept of what money cando in terms of liberating us, giving
us what we want, and whilesimultaneously saying the.
The negotiation, thetransactional part of money is very,
(38:54):
very distasteful and has allkind of tension built in.
What we don't know is thatwhen we're little kids, we don't
have the ability to processcomplicated emotional experiences.
So we all put it into two categories.
One, it was good or two, itwas bad.
Right?
If you see your mom or dadyell at somebody, you're, ooh, bad.
(39:16):
Don't want that.
Now, we're adults.
We.
We have the ability to transact.
We're carrying around oldstories with us.
And so I think also, if you'rean artist or a creative person, you're
like, well, I just want tomake art.
I want to get back to the IOU system.
But instead we have thismonetary transactional system that
I just don't like.
(39:37):
It feels cheap.
Feels like this heart, thissoul, this energy I put into the
making of this thing is nowreduced down to an abstract thing
that can be transferred tosomeone else.
It doesn't feel right.
So I think the first thing weneed to do is understand what money
is and have a new relationshipwith it.
And I think I heard this fromBlair Enns, the writer of the Win
(40:00):
Without Pitching manifesto.
He said, think of money as athank you note.
That the more thank you notesyou get, the more you know the clients
appreciate what you do.
And who here does not want tobe appreciated?
Well, everyone wants to be appreciated.
We may not want to charge alot, but we want to be appreciated
a lot.
And so I think the bigger thestack of thank you notes, the happier
(40:21):
I am, the more I know I foundthe right client to do the best work
of my life for and that I knowthat I'm being appreciated.
And if you'd like not to beappreciated, charge a few bucks and
see what happens.
They will tell you they willnot even pay you enough to buy a
sandwich.
So we have to have a differentrelationship with money.
(40:43):
And what happens with all ofus is we feel a lot of tension.
And instead of focalizing whatwe're feeling, we internalize it.
And he just gets worse andworse inside of us that.
That negative energy compoundsinside of us.
And so what a lot of creativepeople do, even business types, they
delay the money conversationto the very, very end and they awkwardly
(41:04):
because time's running out.
Oh, yeah, by the way, it mightcost this.
You can't just blurt that out.
Then it's super awkward.
Really freaking awkward, man.
So your inability to talkabout money signals to the other
person you're not a goodbusiness person.
(41:24):
And conversely, your comfortin talking about money is a sign
of good business acumen.
And all I ask everyone to dois to relate it back to an experience
in your life when you walkedinto a business and you wanted to
buy something, but they'rereally uncomfortable telling you
(41:45):
what it costs.
No price tags, long process.
At some point you're probablygoing to punch somebody and you're
going to leave.
When I go into a store, I wantto know exactly how much it costs.
If you want to do me a giantfavor, tell me what it's been selling
for three months ago and whatit might sell for in three months.
So I know when I want to buy this.
(42:07):
So since you mentioned that,because a lot of the conversational
sales that we do that you, youhelp people with, it's about pricing
and how do you positionyourself, how you charge premium.
And this is, I know this isespecially for the creative industry,
but I think the Inc.
(42:28):
Many business owner have asimilar challenge.
So it applies quite across the board.
Like how do people knowwhether they are charging the right
price and feel great about it?
Because that's part of whatgets in the way of people asking
for the price they Want am Icharging too high, too low or is
it, you know, that or theyfeel good about what they are charging
(42:52):
because if they don't, theyknow they are doing good work, but
they don't necessarily knowwhether it's the right price or not.
Right.
Well, we're, we're kind ofintroducing some concepts here that
I want people to be aware of.
The, the processes of sales tome leads naturally to a pricing conversation.
When you're not good at havingthe conversational, the conversation
(43:13):
around sales, the pricingconversation is really, really awkward.
If you do this correctly, theprice will present itself.
I don't want to get into valuebased pricing because that's a whole
nother workshop, a wholenother day.
But what I will tell everyoneis this is if you can do a few simple
things.
Let me lay it out for you, okay?
Number one, if you could helpto determine what a person's desired
(43:38):
future state is like wherethey'd like to be X days, weeks,
months from now.
Where are they now?
What's getting in their way?
You've done a lot of goodthings already.
So where are you now in your business?
Where would you like to be?
What's getting in your way?
What if you tried, what hasworked, what hasn't?
Tell me about that.
And you start to understandand unpack all this information with
(44:00):
the, with the client.
What do you think will solvethis problem?
A lot of questions, basically.
So if you got this solutionand it got you this result, it would
be worth this amount of moneyto you?
It's a lot of questions.
And then you said yes.
Am I missing anything?
(44:21):
No.
Okay, so if you were presentedwith a solution that costs a fraction
of the value that was created,would you be excited to move forward?
And their answer, if you'vedone this correctly, yes.
Well, I have good news for you.
May I share some insights?
Yes.
Why?
(44:41):
Notice X, Y and Z.
And instead of doing A, youdid B, you would get there twice
as fast.
Would you like to move forward?
They say yes.
So the reason why you don'tknow what is fair is because you
don't get to decide what's fair.
The person you're selling todecides what is fair.
(45:03):
You can decide what's fair for you.
So what you want to do is youjust want to have a conversation.
So all of us say, say itdoesn't have to be complicated.
Let's say you sell a $10,000coaching package.
That's a pretty good amount, right?
$10,000 coaching package.
If you don't have aConversation about the value, the
impact that you create.
10,000 is a lot of money.
(45:24):
That's like two and a halfLouis Vuitton bags.
I think that's a lot or that'sa fifth of a down payment towards
a 3 or 5 series now fully loaded.
It's a lot of money.
And I learned this from mybusiness coach many, many years ago
is value is contextual.
Nothing is too expensive ortoo cheap.
(45:46):
Against nothing you need context.
So the part that most peopledon't understand is how to structure
the conversation around whatis the context.
They're so focused on the saleand the ask and the pitch that they
forget about all this other stuff.
What's the context?
And that's all I try to do isI try to teach people how to ask
(46:07):
the questions to get the context.
And by the end of theconversation, you know, it's a good
fit or it's a terrible fit.
And that's totally okay.
One last question because thisis a very common Asian mindset, especially
in Singapore, because you, youasked me before about Singapore mindset
and since we are going to dothe workshop, workshop in Singapore,
(46:28):
I'm going to address that.
You might laugh at me becauseyou know, in Singapore, fear is one
of the predominant emotionthat drive everything.
Okay, so we have this sayingin, in Chinese that says that in
Singapore we are driven byfear of the government, fear of their
wife, fear of, fear of losingout, which is formal and fear of
(46:52):
death.
Everything is fear based.
So what would you, what wouldyou say to these people when it comes
to people being so drivenaround the fear of what if something
goes wrong?
Essentially that's what peopleare afraid of.
I'm going to tackle this maybethree or four different ways again.
My, my business formerbusiness coach K, he used to work
(47:16):
as a lifeguard and he said bythe poolside.
He's, his job is to make surekids don't drown.
He goes, it's the weirdestthing he's ever seen.
Kids in the pool, the deep endstarts a panic fierce.
His death is imminent.
He says it's really weird.
All they have to do is reachout and grab the coping of the pool.
(47:39):
But you know what they do?
They swim to the far side andof course they're going to drown.
So then he has to jump in andpull their butts out.
So he goes, when we'repanicked, when we're operating in
a place out of scarcity, whenwe're nervous about what other people
are thinking, we're not makinggreat decisions.
We're swimming to the wrongside of the pool, we will drown and
(48:01):
your business will drown.
Figuratively, I think.
What if.
What if this happens?
I like what if questions, butmost of the what if questions are
pointed in the wrong direction.
What if this doesn't work out?
What if this is a waste oftime or money?
What if a client says no?
What if they have a betteroption that's all pointed in one
(48:23):
direction, the negative direction?
Let's take that same thinking.
Let's orient ourselves 180 degrees.
What if this is a bargain?
What if they've been dying towork with me?
What if they had so many badexperiences that this is going to
be a relief for them?
What if this solution allowsthem to really focus on their business
and grow it to a level inwhich they've never seen before?
(48:45):
What if they let me drive theentire engagement?
What if they refer me to alltheir rich friends?
What if this becomes the pointin my business history that is the
beginning of something amazing.
What if in a year from nowwe're celebrated for the incredible
work we've done and arestanding on stage accepting a lifetime
achievement award?
(49:06):
What if we're on the COVID ofa prominent business or social magazine?
What if our account blows up?
So I like, what if it's justpointed in the right direction?
Why y'all focus on so much negativity?
Next one, you're afraid ofnegative outcomes.
That's a normal human response.
(49:26):
So when somebody asks me,should I do something?
They're asking a questionagain in the abstract, should I invest
in this property?
And they don't know what to do.
So I say, well, what else doyou want to do with your money?
Well, I could leave in a bank.
Okay, that's one thing I caninvest in this other kind of thing.
Or there's a lot of differentthings where I can invest in myself.
(49:49):
So, well, given all thepossible options, what has the highest
upside potential with thelowest potential for downside?
Act accordingly.
So people usually just ask onequestion, like, should I do this?
I'm like, I don't know, should you?
What are the alternatives?
So we consider thealternatives and then we decide accordingly.
(50:13):
There's a very easy answer toall this stuff, which is, what if
nothing changes 3, 5, 10, 20years from now?
Do you see that version ofyourself being happier than today?
And if the answer is yes,don't change anything.
Stay on that winning track.
Very few people are motivatedto change when everything's working
(50:36):
really well.
For example, if you have sixpack abs, you're not going to change
your diet and your workoutroutine because you're at peak performance
physical condition right now.
If you're the world champion,you might tweak a few things here
and there, but you're notgoing to go and wholesale change
everything.
You're not going to.
You shouldn't change yourtrainer, your habits, your diet,
(51:00):
how you process the game day rituals.
You don't change all that.
This is why athletes have alot of superstitions, because they
wore that sock, they touchedthis emblem, and they said this prayer,
and they counted to 55.
And then they entered thefield and they played the game, and
they played the best game oftheir lives.
Sports psychologists will say,what is your re?
What is your winning routine?
(51:21):
Do that again, retrace the steps.
And a lot of this is mental.
But as we've learned, the mindinfluences the body.
So when you get your mindright, the body will follow.
So you can imagine a negativeoutcome and say, well, if nothing
changes, this is what I'vesigned up for.
If you're content with that,do not change anything.
(51:41):
It would be crazy for you to.
If you're living your bestlife, doing your best work for the
best clients, making afreaking ton of money while working
less, stay on that track.
So there's a.
There's a quote.
I don't know who said it.
I'm gonna say Zig Ziglar, butit's probably not.
I'm not sure everybody.
And the saying is, if nothingchanges, nothing changes a hundred
(52:02):
percent.
And it would be insane tothink otherwise.
That's cool.
I think that's a great way toend today's session.
And I really.
Yeah, I think it's a, youknow, really, the what if is such
a great question, but itdepends on where we are, how we look
at the question.
Yeah.
So I will say this.
The.
The podcast goes out to 10,15, 20,000 people.
(52:26):
Some people are interested inwhat we're talking about.
Some people aren't.
That's totally cool.
Some people are in a placewhere they'd like to come.
Some people aren't.
So this really is just amessage for the people who are curious,
who've determined that theirbest days are ahead of them.
But it's going to require some action.
I do want to say this.
The workshops in Singapore,it's in June, and if you want to
(52:51):
come, read the description inthe show notes.
We are passionate andcommitted to make Cristo event in
Singapore the best of the best.
And you are going toexperience the best of the best,
the, the best of, of the best,Chris, because that's what we want
from him.
And we love for you toexperience him with us.
(53:13):
Can't think of a better way tosay that.
So on that note, Victoria,thank you very much for having this
conversation with me.
And dear listener, thank youalso for indulging me and sharing
some of my thoughts andphilosophies on personal branding
and sales.
If if you walk away withnothing else, I just want you to
think about this.
If your business could use alittle extra boost, work on your
(53:35):
personal brand, because thataccelerates everything that you do.
And if your personal brand isreally strong, learn how to do a
little bit of sales.
And if both suck, I have goodnews for you, because I'm going to
teach you both.
That's the best that I can do.
Until next time, take care of yourself.
Creative people are just funnylike this.
Something great happens and wedon't want to do it again.
Something horrible happens, werefuse to change.
So like, are we destined to suffer.
All of our lives when someonefeel desperate and have a fixated
agenda and chasing after themoney, they end up pushing away the
sales, even if the client isright for them.
Think of money as a thank younote that the more thank you notes
(00:23):
you get, the more you know theclients appreciate what you do.
And who here does not want tobe appreciated?
My name is Victoria Dior Wangand you're listening to the future.
Hey everybody.
This episode's a little bitdifferent because I'm talking to
my friend Victoria Dior Wang,somebody I met recently, earlier
this year, first time inSingapore, and her and her husband
(00:44):
Harrison put together anamazing event.
They said, let's run it back,let's run it back again just days
after finishing.
And so for those of you whoare like you were in Singapore.
What?
What?
Okay, look, I asked you tocome to me, but sometimes I'll come
to you.
I'll be in your time zone.
And so if you're curious aboutthe kinds of things that we talk
(01:06):
about, if you're curious aboutwanting to learn more, I think this
episode's for you.
So without further ado, I haveasked Victoria to kind of come at
me with a bunch of questions,especially to highlight some of the
belief systems that mightpersist in that part of the world.
And we're, we're going to doour best to break them apart and
hopefully answer those questions.
(01:26):
So Victoria, for people whodon't know who you are, just briefly
tell us your story.
So my name is Victoria Dioweand I'm the CEO of the GoZone Group.
One of my biggest passion iseducation and one of our business
is a running educational program.
And we create immersivelearning experiences to help leaders,
(01:47):
business owners as well as aprofessionals to go beyond success
and live an extraordinary life.
So you can hear from myintroduction, that's why we are,
we resonate with Chris so muchand we want to bring him to Singapore.
Yes.
So what's real interesting tome, just for some background context,
is people do reach out to meall the time and said, hey, come
(02:08):
to our city, come to ourcountry, come, let's do something
together.
And most of them are not super credible.
Most of them are not built toaccommodate me and to be able to
do whatever it is I need done.
And Victoria, to your creditand to Harrison, who I didn't know
at the time, you Put togethera plan, there's a spreadsheet.
Everything was above board.
And you said, we're going todo this super professionally.
(02:28):
And to your credit, you didexactly that.
You met me at the airport withflowers and a private car.
I'm like, hey, I feel like I'min Hawaii.
There's a vacation here.
And this feels a little bit different.
And from the beginning to theend, it was first class all the way.
And so you do thingsdifferently in Singapore, that's
(02:48):
for sure.
And I think I didn't have awhole lot of expectations coming
in, but leaving I was like,this is a pretty cool place in the
world.
Quite unique in that there'slike a highest earning per capita,
oftentimes number one, two orthree in the world.
In terms of education, I'mpassionate about education and it's
(03:09):
awesome for me to go to aplace where people like to learn
and to do self development.
This might be my new thing, Idon't know.
Singapore, let's go.
The interesting thing is whatmy intention is to create an experience
so that you want to come backagain and again.
I had a good time.
Awesome.
We had a good time, right?
We had a great time.
(03:29):
Let's kick it off.
All right.
Some of the things you want totalk about.
So one of the first thing Iwant to ask you is since we are going
to do personal branding andsales workshop, which are the key
things and a lot of businessowners and professionals have a lot
of challenge in that area.
And I want to this the firstquestion I'd like to ask you is how
(03:50):
does personal brandingsupercharge conversational sales?
And I say conversational salesbecause it differentiates you and
many other people will talkabout sales.
And why is this the secretsauce most people might overlook?
Very good way to kick it off.
So we'll talk about brand fora second.
(04:10):
Brand is the accelerant toalmost everything that you do.
And that's not to say that allbrands are created equally.
So you and I, we both havebrands and everyone listening has
a brand.
But not all of us are able toleverage that brand to create opportunities
for us to make things move faster.
I'll give you an example, reallife example.
A buddy of mine who is puttingtogether an event in Las Vegas which
(04:34):
I'm involved in.
He told me he's 89% ticketssold already for a thousand person
event.
He said last year it wouldhave taken me another two months
of selling to close and finishthis thing.
He thinks he'll be sold out ina week or two and he goes.
Because every year his brandbecomes more powerful and he can
(04:54):
leverage it more.
I think this is pretty awesome.
So he did one webinar that wasa multi hour long webinar, had a
bunch of guests on and heopened up the doors and people just
streamed in and purchased tickets.
And then he would then followup with a few people and retarget
the people who attended.
And the tickets are almostsold out at this point.
(05:14):
And he was just remarking thisis possible because of brand.
So if you're an eventorganizer, if you have a coaching
or sales program and you wantmore people to volunteer to join
without having to twist theirarm, start to think about how you
show up in the world, whetheryou give people an opportunity to
(05:35):
connect with you beyond thebusiness aspect and you'll start
to see that this is like theaccelerant to everything that you
want.
That's a very great storyabout branding and I do agree because
when people recognize yourbrand, it makes it easier for them
to want to move towards you.
And it's very hard whenthere's no branding.
(05:56):
And you're right about theleverage because I think people don't
think about leverage as much.
And in fact that's one of themindset that Asian and I believe
to a certain extent American,Asian American has similar thing.
We're so used to working hard,we feel that working hard is what
gives us the value and we feelmore worthwhile when we work hard.
(06:17):
And having leverage seems tobe something that is not in people's
top of the mind.
Yeah, I want to, I want to saysomething here so we, we know that
Singapore is a rich countryand quite brand conscious.
If you go shopping inSingapore, okay, everything's here
and what is happening here.
And this is something I wantto talk to the potential local listeners
(06:39):
about, which is why are we asSingaporeans, Asian Americans, expats,
whatever, so ready to giveextra money to Western or European
brands over the local alternative?
It bothers me a little bitthat there aren't as many, not even
close by a factor of a hundredof Asian brands that have translated
(07:04):
into markets outside theirlocal market.
We become too compliant, tooblending, too much, too much desire
to fit in, that we just don'tstand out and we become frustrated
and we feel like we don't havea voice because, oh, I got to, I
gotta cater to the society, Igotta cater to my parents, I gotta
cater to everyone else exceptfor myself.
(07:26):
Since you're such a welltraveled person, have you seen somewhere
in the world where there'straditional Asian cultures or culture
and values that are blendedwith Western ideas in harmony.
Honestly, not much.
I would say probably American.
Asian American is the closest,but still very much indulated with
(07:51):
Asian culture underlying the driving.
I'm talking about what'sreally driving us beneath the surface.
I think I may have an answerto that question, which is Japan.
Japan.
All right.
You go to Tokyo or Kyoto,you'll see men wear traditional kimonos
and, and suit, dress.
Walking in one of the mostmodern cities in the world, taking
(08:14):
the subway, and I'm like, ohmy God.
And they're wearing liketraditional shoes too, which don't
look that comfortable, likethose wooden shoes, like, so you're
in a metropolitan, like, fastmoving city and you're bringing traditional
values and dress into it.
And so Japan is a really greatmix of tradition and modernity and
(08:37):
preserving culture.
And they're very good atpreserving culture.
I don't know if this is true,but in, in, in a time when Japan
is being modernized, theykicked out all the Westerners and
drove out all the missionariesand said, you know what?
We need to preserve ourculture because we can see it slipping
away.
And so for a period of time,Japan develops in isolation with
some trade with the West.
(08:58):
But it's kind of interestinghow they're able to hold on to so
many Japanese traditions andhave done a really good job up until
recently about exportingJapanese concepts.
If you ask a lot of youngpeople in America, what do you like?
Manga, anime, and they'll listall the things they like.
Transformers and robots.
(09:18):
Those are all Japaneseconcepts, right?
Japanese ideas originally.
And the most successful comicsnow follow a very Japanese model
of developing storylines thatdon't take issues but take years
to play out.
So I think there's somethingreally beautiful and it's referenced
in Soft power, the ability toinfluence culture.
(09:40):
Currently, right now, thecountry that has the most soft power
I think is Korea.
K, pop, K drama, everything K.
So we, we can see that thereis a slow emergence of Asian influence
that will then be integratedinto Western culture.
Yeah, you're right, you're right.
(10:01):
In terms of their, you know,how they preserve the culture while
still being a very modernized city.
Like when I first went toJapan, I was very surprised by how
advanced their technology is.
In fact, like you said, theyare very self contained.
The challenge with thatisolation is that they lose a lot
of opportunities and economyhas been going down over the years.
So that, that's part of thechallenge of being too isolated while
(10:25):
trying to Preserve themselves.
They are also losing out tothe rest of the world.
The question now is, since youmentioned that, how do we help people
understand if they were tojoin us in the workshop, we can help
them to blend in more of theboth so that they don't feel like
they are losing out.
One of the biggest challengewith a lot of people is the idea
of changing something reallyfreaked them out.
(10:47):
If I go to a workshop, do Ineed to change anything?
Is that your experience too?
No, I would say don't show up.
Why?
Go to a workshop and promiseyourself you'll learn nothing and
change nothing.
Why?
I mean, we'll take your money,but I wouldn't show up.
It's like saying, I'm gonna gowatch this new movie, but I'm gonna
keep my eyes closed.
Okay, that's one way toexperience it.
(11:08):
But why would you do that?
When we go and seek outinstruction, coaching, mentoring,
tutoring, whatever it is thatyou're seeking out, there's a future
state that we think we can achieve.
And the only reason whyanybody does anything is they're
motivated to change.
So sales is about change management.
So I'm trying to help you gofrom where you are to where you would
like to be.
(11:29):
So first and foremost you haveto identify, do I have a need?
If you have no need, stay home.
Additionally, if clients areelecting to pay you a premium, you
get no pushback.
They're, they're, they'llwillingly wait for you to be open
and available so that they canhave the privilege of paying you
the most amount of money.
(11:49):
And when you introduce anidea, they're like, yes, I love that.
And what else?
And you get no pushback on ideas.
Well, also stay home.
Or maybe don't stay home.
Start a course, create aconference and teach people how you've
done this.
Because this is amazing.
So we, we say this right.
Creative people are just funnylike this.
Something great happens and wedon't want to do it again.
(12:13):
Something horrible happens, werefuse to change.
So, like, are we destined tosuffer all of our lives?
And I do want to say this,Victoria, I'm not a sales professional.
I've had zero sales training.
I've taken zero courses in sales.
I've gone to see zero gurusteach me about sales.
(12:34):
So I have a little bit, tinylittle bit of self doubt when it
comes to, am I the person toteach people sales?
I could get customers, I cancreate content and they're happy
to seemingly pay me whateverit is I ask for.
What is it that I know.
So I'm in Dubai and I'm doinga talk on how to sell less and close
(12:54):
more clients.
But I'm standing in the lobbyof the hotel, and this gentleman,
older gentleman, walks over to me.
He goes, chris, didn't knowwho you were.
Sorry about that.
I'm like, you don't need to be sorry.
I don't know who you are either.
I'm not apologizing because Iwas at your thing.
I'm like, oh, okay, cool.
He goes, I've been doing salestraining for.
(13:15):
For two decades.
I'm like, oh, here it comes.
He's going to say, what yousay doesn't work.
It won't work here.
He says, I learned some newthings, and that was good.
He said, I share that storywith you because I find it really
fascinating that people whoare so called, quote, unquote, sales
training, professional ninjawizards, teach sales in a way that
(13:39):
I find disagreeable,distasteful, and dishonest.
And the reason why a lot ofpeople, especially creative folk,
don't like sales is becausethey've seen so many bad examples,
have been taught bad ways ofdoing it, and they've kind of resigned
to say, I don't want to do this.
And of course, if something isgrossing you out, creating that feeling
(14:00):
of ick and you keep doing itwell, it's not going to turn out
well because you're holding onto negative feelings about it.
I think part of what gets usjaded is, you know, a lot of the
people use very manipulativesales tactics just to.
Just to get their agenda met.
And we are becoming more andmore sophisticated, and we can tell.
(14:23):
We just can't feel it.
And most of us don't want tobe like that.
So we become from jaded tocosting ourselves.
And that's why your workshopmakes such a big difference, in my
opinion.
And I can honestly say I'm asales veteran, and I know exactly
what you mean.
I've been in sales andentrepreneurship because in entrepreneurship,
(14:43):
you are selling all the time.
You're selling people why theyshould do the job, why they should.
You know, whether we like itor not, as a leader even, we need
to sell people our vision.
We need to sell our team ourvision so that they feel more engaged
with what we are doing andthey can be more productive and perform
better.
And then, not to mention, weneed to sell to our clients why they
(15:04):
should engage with us ifthere's a fit.
But people get so resistant tothe word sales.
And this is the other part In Asia.
I can say that for Singaporeand I believe that's probably applicable
to the rest of Asia too.
Sales is deemed as if someonegets a sales job or go into a sales
(15:26):
profession is deemed as alower end kind of profession because
you are not a lawyer, you arenot a doctor, or you can't get a
job.
That's why you go to sell something.
So there's a lot of challengewith the word sales and how people
look at it.
(15:47):
Okay, let's, let's, let'sclarify here.
If you're an attorney andyou're trying to get a client, what
are you doing?
I believe that's called sales.
Yes.
If you do cosmetic dentistryand you need to get clients, what
are you doing?
You need to believe that'scalled sales.
Yes, exactly.
(16:07):
If you're a coach and you wantto help people be better, their partners
to their spouses or whoever,or their children, what are you doing?
I believe that's called sales.
So I think sales has a bad rapbecause there are so many poor practitioners,
poor examples, the Wolf ofWall street, all, all these kinds
(16:28):
of the Jordan Belforts of theworld, kind of like sleazy cheating
people out of theirretirement, those kinds of things.
And we think sales, we thinkof used car salesperson, we think
of timeshare salespeople,telemarketers who are bothering us
while we're trying to havedinner with our family.
Yeah, if that's sales, itdeserves all the spit and fire that
(16:49):
it's getting.
But we're all in the samebusiness and sales is about influence.
Sales is about transference of energy.
A friend of mine and an artcenter professor, his name is Errol
Garrison, he said somethinglike this.
He believes sales is.
I'm excited about something.
My job is to see if you'reexcited about the same thing.
(17:10):
And if you are, then we coulddo business together.
But if we're not, then I'm,I'm happy to go my way part ways
and we're good.
I love that.
The problem is when we do it,as a third party, neutral, objective
observer, I have nothing togain from this.
I'm just telling you about agreat restaurant or hotel car service.
And since I have no horse inthis race, I can full throatedly
(17:33):
say it objectively becausethere's no self interest involved.
When we, when we flip it andit's like, oh, I, I do logo design
and if I full throatedlyexpress what I think it's going to
do for you, oh, that's distasteful.
That's so self centric andthere's a reason why.
What we need to do is to haveone conversation, not two conversations.
(17:59):
So when we talk about thirdparty, we speak about it very objectively.
We ask great questions, welisten to what the other person wants.
And only if they're interestedin eating a certain type of food
or seeing a certain type ofsite would we then recommend something
to them.
Because there's no point in ustelling them, you must visit this
place where we're like, youknow what, I'm tired.
I don't really want to see anytourist traps.
(18:19):
I'm good.
And what we do is we switchgears and we go into selling, pitching,
justifying mode and having an agenda.
But if we adopt the firstmindset and have only one kind of
conversation, not two kinds,which is, I'm curious what you're
interested in.
Where are you in your business?
What do you need help with?
What have you tried and failed?
Who has wronged you?
(18:39):
What outcome would you like?
Oh my gosh.
It just so happens that whatyou want is something that I potentially
could provide to you.
And then it's a marriage of awant with a solution.
But we never do it this way.
And we watch people crash andburn all the time.
Victoria yes.
They go up on stage, theypitch each other and they're just
(19:01):
going back to their old what'sin it for me mindset.
And we're trying to breakthat, we're trying to change that
a hundred percent.
Yeah, that.
What's that?
What's in in it for me mindsetis what.
Yeah.
Create a lot of challenges for people.
And I thought, you know, a lotof the role play you do in the workshop
really makes a difference tobring that awareness up.
(19:22):
Like someone from the workshopdid a really great carousel and talk
about how what he thoughtabout sales was so different.
He really shifted the mindsetaround what's in the way of his sales
result before the workshopversus after the workshop.
And the what's in it for mewhen you feel desperate, that's the
(19:45):
worst.
That really cost a lot of people.
When someone feel desperateand and have a fixated agenda and
chasing after the money, theyend up pushing away the sales.
Even if that's the right fit,even if the client is right for them.
That's right.
I want to go back to aquestion that you brought up earlier
(20:06):
about cultural differences,east and west.
Now, I was born in Vietnam,but I grew up in America.
English is my second language.
I know some people arebothered when I say that, but it's
literally true.
And I struggled for someperiod of my life pronouncing polysyllabic
words, multiple syllablewords, because Vietnamese language
(20:28):
is single syllable.
That's why it sounds so choppy.
And I grew up in America as afirst generation immigrant refugee,
so I still have deep ties andconnection to my culture, my original
culture, while having thebenefit of being raised in America
and seeing this, the.
(20:48):
The kind of Socrates approachto life, exceptionalism, individualism,
understanding, ego, and whatdrives me.
So I straddle two worlds.
I'm not saying I'm the only,but I'm one of the few who can come
in and be a day walker.
That's a reference to Blade.
What I'm able to do, I think,is to understand Asian culture, our
(21:14):
habits, our routines, our needto be respectful, while also bringing
in Western concepts in yourface kind of style, teaching, putting
people in the spotlight alittle bit and blending these two
things.
And I think what I enjoyed somuch about our time together in the
workshop, Victoria, was I wasgiven time and space to be the me
(21:37):
as me I could be.
And to me, that is pure joy.
And if, if your teacher, yourinstructor is having a good time,
there's a chance, not aguarantee, that you'll have a good
time.
And what, what better way tolearn than.
Than to have a good time?
If I'm doing my job correctly,you'll look up and you'll look down
(21:59):
and you realize eight hoursare gone.
I'll make it fun.
Hopefully I'll make you laugh.
You're either gonna laugh withme or people are laughing at you,
but there will be some laughter.
And I like that part.
I like that we can play, wecan push and we can pull, and we
can straddle that line betweeneast and west, traditional and modern.
I, I think I'm able to do that.
(22:21):
But you'll have to be the judge.
Well, I can attest to that.
Yeah, it's true.
And that's why you get.
That's why you have a lot ofAsian fans and followers who are
really inspired by you to bean Asian.
And yes, you're Asian America,but you're still Asian.
And to stand out in the worldstage is really very hard, very tough
(22:41):
for Asian community.
And to address your.
One of your question that you.
Or one of the comment that youmade about why are we.
So why do we put pedestal onWestern branding?
Yeah, yeah, I think it's quite.
I think it's a.
It's part of what.
Well, you know, I like to Sayto my Asian friends that one thing
(23:05):
about American is that youguys are really great at marketing.
Whether you're confident.
I'm talking in general.
Right.
Whether you're confident ornot, you can market yourself so well.
The opposite is true for Asian.
So we are human being, and Ibelieve, from my experience, is that
we tend to buy into thesurface star, that as long as it's
(23:28):
popular, it looks good.
If everybody else like it, itmust be good.
Which I don't think is trueall the time, but that's how we are.
That's our default.
We are more geared towards popular.
Popularity, and anythingpopular, we listen to it, so we put
more attention to it.
And the challenge with Asianis that we can do a lot of good work,
(23:53):
but we have such a hard timemarketing ourselves and promoting
ourselves.
And that's the part that Ifeel that we can blend in with more
of the Western culture, whereby feeling more comfortable in sharing
of ourselves and with no shame.
So shame is a big culturalproblem from Confucius, that we are
(24:14):
being shamed into doing a lotof things, that the shame end up
costing us in other areas thatwe where we can excel.
But, you know, we are human being.
We are one.
We are a whole person.
We can't have shame in onearea and not have shame in another
area.
So promoting ourselves is likea big taboo.
Would you agree with that?
It is.
We have a couple thousandyears of Confucianism to unpack here.
(24:38):
Yeah.
So how much time do we havefor this podcast?
And how long is the workshop again?
Okay, but here's the cool part.
The minute you decide youdon't want to do anything or do it
the same way before it's aminute, your life can change.
My life has been full ofmoments like that where the road
or my lifeline branches.
(24:58):
Like that sacred timeline inthe multiverse.
It branched, and I chose thebranch that was most optimal for
me.
So can you unpack 2000 yearsof Confucianism in a day?
And the answer is, it depends.
And you're like, what does itdepend on?
Well, it depends on thatperson that you see every day.
(25:19):
Twice a day, the person looksback at you in the mirror.
It depends on you.
You know, I wanted to say thatmore people need to go through the
same process as you, becauseit is through that process that we
ask ourselves those questions.
Do I want my future to lookthe same?
(25:40):
No.
And the people who say no arethe people who take action.
On the other hand, the peoplewho give up are the people who just
don't do anything.
There's a scene in Good WillHunting, so when Robin Williams says
to Matt Damon's character,it's not your fault, because I know
it's not your fault.
I know it's not your fault.
(26:01):
I know it's not your fault.
You might experience one ofthose moments with me where I look
you in the eye and I'll say,you're enough.
And you'll say, I know you're enough.
I know you're enough.
(26:25):
So I, I, I, I jokingly say, Iknow everybody's about creating safe
space.
I create unsafe space becausein the unsafe space there's friction,
there's tension and I don'tknow another way to make a diamond.
Diamonds are made under a lotof pressure and heat.
I agree it takes tension andpressure to change.
(26:47):
And can I say, just from mypoint of view, even though you say
it takes unsafe space, butwhat you are doing is actually very
safe.
The reason why it's safe isbecause it might feel, the feeling
might be, oh no, I'm going togo through this.
Oh, Chris is going to roast me.
Which is, you know, peoplelike to, your followers like to joke
(27:09):
about that.
They love it by the way.
They love the fact that youroast them.
So it's not a negative anyway.
And they also know thatbecause of what you do, because of
how you do it, they get to transform.
And it is through the tensionthat people transform.
Nothing happen if there's notension, too comfortable.
(27:29):
That's why learning online hasa problem.
They are too comfortable.
They are just listening passively.
There's no real change becausethere's no tension.
No one challenged them.
And in my experience, mybiggest transformation come when
someone challenges me becauseit breaks me out of my, I call that
it's like a zombie mode whereI keep doing the same thing and I
(27:52):
thought that I should know I'mdoing it right.
Why is it not happening?
Why am I not, why am I notgetting the result I'm getting?
And it's a little bit like a,I don't know how to describe that.
It's like I'm being trapped inmy own ego of thinking that I know,
but I'm just not getting it.
And I can't change it untilsomeone come and challenge me and
(28:14):
I suddenly, it's like a wakeup call for me.
And that's what you, I feelthat that's what you do with people
that, that scramble them sothat they, they are not in their
default mode.
It's our default Mode.
That's the problem.
And that's why they keepgetting the same result.
And they can't be challenged online.
You can't, they can't, theycan't get it online.
(28:35):
I mean, if you can go get it.
There are people who, I'm not,I'm not here to prescribe to anybody
what's going to work, what'snot going to work.
I almost think it's betterthat people go to workshops or try
things online with lots ofdifferent people so that when they
experience something that webring to the table, they'll have
(28:56):
a point of reference.
I heard this from somebody Iwould like to coach people who've
been coached before, notsomeone who's never gone to see a
coach, because they'll knowthe difference.
They can see it and they canfeel it, and they'll be able to say,
oh, the last coach I talked todidn't say any of this.
It wasn't doing any of this.
And so I'm, I'm kind of alittle bit more bought in, in this
moment.
(29:17):
Whereas a person who's neverbeen coached, never gone to workshop,
never worked on themselves,never got any kind of training, they're
like, oh, yeah, this is howeverything works.
I'm like, let me tell you,it's not true.
Harrison said this after the event.
It's like, there's no pitch.
You know, what people don'tunderstand is people invite you to
(29:38):
go to a workshop, and thereason why they want you to go to
the workshop is because theyhave some exclusive mastermind.
And then you go to exclusivemastermind, then they have a platinum
one on one program, and thenafter that they have another program.
So it seems like they're justdesigned to extract more and more
money from you versus creatingmore value for you.
I, I, I take what I do veryseriously, even though how I do it
(30:00):
is not at all, which is you'veplaced a certain amount of trust
in us, made a commitment, andI need to honor that as a teacher
first and foremost.
So I want to make sure thatyou're having a good time.
That's important to me.
I want to make sure that thereare things that you, you want to
(30:21):
get resolved in your life andto learn relative to the subject
that we're teaching, to make progress.
Maybe it won't be perfect, butyou're going to make progress.
And to walk away saying toyourself, I enjoyed my time, I learned
something, and I can applysomething moving forward, that it's
going to have material impacton my life and in my business, that's
the first order, firstprinciples, whatever we want to call
(30:43):
it, I got to make sure of that.
And outside of that,everything else is good.
And that's one of the mainreason why we decided to work with
you.
That's why we want to bringyou to Singapore.
Because we are very, veryaligned with how you do that.
We don't like pitch too.
And we know because we havebeen in education industry for a
long time, close to 30 years.
(31:05):
And there are so manyworkshops or program out there that
really.
That do that, everything.
They even do it during breaktime, before, after.
And it's just.
It's just distasteful.
And that's the part that makesit unsafe because I'm supposed to.
I just paid money to come hereand learn so that I can apply what
(31:27):
I learned to get the result.
But here you are.
Every single session, you aretrying to pitch me the next thing.
And how am I supposed to feelsafe to open up myself to learn the
real stuff?
Yeah.
Where else do we go with this conversation?
I want to talk about value.
What makes this experience inSingapore command a premium?
And why are people stillsaying it's worth every single center?
(31:50):
It's hard for me to tell youwhy it's worth whatever you're going
to pay.
And it's because in.
In alignment with the things Itry and teach you.
It's not my job to prove toyou, to justify as to what the value
is.
The price is the price.
If you feel like if you gotsome of your problem solved, if you
can capture that value back,that's on you.
(32:11):
Like when I read a book, booksare in general here in America, about
$30 each.
Some are a lot cheaper, someare a little bit more, but on average,
I think it's about $30.
Every time I read a book, Ithink I can make 30 grand.
And that's conservative interms of the investment.
So you see all these booksbehind me.
If I were to read and be ableto apply and teach all the things
I've learned in my life, I'dbe sitting on a giant mountain of
(32:33):
money.
And so when we go to workshopsand when we hire a coach and a consultant,
my number one question is,will I be able to turn this into
value for me?
I think Jim Rohn saidsomething like this, that wealth
is.
And I'm modifying it a little bit.
Wealth is your ability toconvert knowledge and experience
into capital.
I can become wealthy if I cantake what I've learned and convert
(32:58):
it into some kind of capitalor currency or something else.
And that's what I do.
So I've read the books so youdon't have to.
And if you want to read allthe books and learn the way I learn,
go do that.
It's a lot cheaper.
But if you want to do itthrough the lens of someone who's
applied it and sort of figuredit out and can share in those experiences
(33:18):
to create a fun, dynamiclearning experience, and you think
I'm the person to do it foryou, then I'd be happy to be your
teacher and your guide for allof this.
Not somebody else will be orno one will be.
That's up to you.
I'm not overly invested inconvincing you to come to this thing.
Now, the best person to answerthat question are people who've come
to the workshop who can say,here's what I got from it, here's
(33:42):
why I would come back, andhere's why I want more.
Well, I know you have a noconvincing policy.
So do we.
It's not up to us to convince people.
And I would say that, youknow, at the end of the day, like
you say, they have to decidefor themselves what value and what
return do they want forthemselves if they were to join us?
(34:02):
And what are they willing tothe price they're willing to pay.
And yes, it's an investment,it's an investment in oneself, but
it's really not up to us to decide.
And we are confident that weare going to do the best job.
It's perfect.
Okay, so imagine that you showup to a Mercedes dealership and we
see the S class in America.
(34:23):
S class is probably between 80to 120ish k, depending on what you
add to it, right?
Maybe a little bit more, I'mnot sure.
And you walk into thedealership like, why should I pay
this?
Why is it worth this much?
And if I were running thedealership, I'm like, I don't know.
Tell me what brings you intothe dealership?
We just have a conversationabout it.
(34:44):
It's not their job to convinceyou at the point in which you walk
into the dealership to say,why is this worth it?
Their job is to tell you abouta story about who they are, what
they stand for and who thecustomers are so that you make that
decision before you even walkinto the store.
That's called branding, everybody.
(35:04):
So why are we teachingbranding and sales?
Like, what are.
What do these two things haveto do with each other?
Well, everything, friend.
Because if your brand isreally Strong.
You won't have to sell at all.
Okay, I have a question.
Let's talk about money.
You know how a lot of people,when it comes to talking about money,
they feel a little bit awkward?
Yes.
(35:24):
And if you.
Awkward, uncomfortable.
Oh, you know, what do I say?
How do I say it?
How does this experience helpthem turn talking about money from
something awkward intosomething natural and not to.
Not just natural.
They feel empowered.
I think money for a lot ofpeople in a lot of cultures, dirties
(35:46):
the conversation.
It creates a lot of tensionfor us because it takes something
that's more relational andturns into transactional thing.
But I think what money does isit takes away a lot of the ambiguity.
I heard Simon Sinek explainthis, and I love his explanation
of this, like, what is money really?
So we just rewind the tape.
I invite you over for dinner.
(36:06):
I'll cook.
And part of the bargain isyou'll do the dishes.
I cook, you do the dishes.
Pretty fair, right?
And this has been going on forsome time.
We're cool.
And then one day you're like,hey, I have to run my cool.
I owe you.
So, okay, I cooked and I'll dothe dishes.
So next time you come over,it's like, let me make good on that
(36:27):
iou.
I will cook and also do the dishes.
And so money has become anabstraction of this promise of an
iou, and it's much moreconvenient and transportable than
I brought two chickens to thedinner so that we're all even, Right?
And once we move into thisabstraction, we start to get away
(36:47):
from the feeling of what isour will, that what is the goodwill
that we're creating here?
What is the promise that are made?
So what I do is I give youmoney because I didn't do the dishes,
but you can use that money tothen have someone so close for you.
And so someone who's not partof the original deal can fulfill
(37:11):
that end of the deal.
And that's how we move as society.
So the problem has been, Ithink too many of us have negative
associations with money.
If you think back to yourearliest childhood memories around
money, there's a good chancethat one of your parents handled
money in a way that you foundto be distasteful.
(37:32):
I can speak to this.
I think you correct me if I'm wrong.
So I have memories of my momtaking me to the flea market swap
meet and her negotiating withother vendors and using certain kind
of negotiation practices thatI thought were dishonest, distasteful,
and somewhat manipulative.
Now, my mom's a beautifulhuman being.
She's like a saint.
(37:52):
But in Asian culture, that'show we feel.
Like we're getting our money'sworth by negotiating and hemming
and hawing about price.
And it's very much a culturalthing, right?
Especially in the Middle east too.
There's this idea that if youpaid full price, you're stupid.
So as a Westerner, I'm like,no, it's not.
I'm not negotiating with you.
This is not how we do it.
I gave you a fair price, andif you don't like it, you don't have
(38:12):
to buy.
I didn't artificially jack theprice up so that you can negotiate
me down to the price in whichI wanted to pay.
But this happens a lot in theeast and the Middle East.
So if you're a little childand you see this happening, like,
oh, this feels dishonest.
It feels gross.
Okay?
That's the one thing.
And money, all of a suddenthen has certain power.
(38:33):
Like, if you want to buy a toyor outfit, a dress, something, shoot,
I gotta go make money.
And someone controls the money.
I don't have the ability tomake money.
So we take these two powerful things.
The concept of what money cando in terms of liberating us, giving
us what we want, and whilesimultaneously saying the.
The negotiation, thetransactional part of money is very,
(38:54):
very distasteful and has allkind of tension built in.
What we don't know is thatwhen we're little kids, we don't
have the ability to processcomplicated emotional experiences.
So we all put it into two categories.
One, it was good or two, itwas bad.
Right?
If you see your mom or dadyell at somebody, you're, ooh, bad.
(39:16):
Don't want that.
Now, we're adults.
We.
We have the ability to transact.
We're carrying around oldstories with us.
And so I think also, if you'rean artist or a creative person, you're
like, well, I just want tomake art.
I want to get back to the IOU system.
But instead we have thismonetary transactional system that
I just don't like.
(39:37):
It feels cheap.
Feels like this heart, thissoul, this energy I put into the
making of this thing is nowreduced down to an abstract thing
that can be transferred tosomeone else.
It doesn't feel right.
So I think the first thing weneed to do is understand what money
is and have a new relationshipwith it.
And I think I heard this fromBlair Enns, the writer of the Win
(40:00):
Without Pitching manifesto.
He said, think of money as athank you note.
That the more thank you notesyou get, the more you know the clients
appreciate what you do.
And who here does not want tobe appreciated?
Well, everyone wants to be appreciated.
We may not want to charge alot, but we want to be appreciated
a lot.
And so I think the bigger thestack of thank you notes, the happier
(40:21):
I am, the more I know I foundthe right client to do the best work
of my life for and that I knowthat I'm being appreciated.
And if you'd like not to beappreciated, charge a few bucks and
see what happens.
They will tell you they willnot even pay you enough to buy a
sandwich.
So we have to have a differentrelationship with money.
(40:43):
And what happens with all ofus is we feel a lot of tension.
And instead of focalizing whatwe're feeling, we internalize it.
And he just gets worse andworse inside of us that.
That negative energy compoundsinside of us.
And so what a lot of creativepeople do, even business types, they
delay the money conversationto the very, very end and they awkwardly
(41:04):
because time's running out.
Oh, yeah, by the way, it mightcost this.
You can't just blurt that out.
Then it's super awkward.
Really freaking awkward, man.
So your inability to talkabout money signals to the other
person you're not a goodbusiness person.
(41:24):
And conversely, your comfortin talking about money is a sign
of good business acumen.
And all I ask everyone to dois to relate it back to an experience
in your life when you walkedinto a business and you wanted to
buy something, but they'rereally uncomfortable telling you
(41:45):
what it costs.
No price tags, long process.
At some point you're probablygoing to punch somebody and you're
going to leave.
When I go into a store, I wantto know exactly how much it costs.
If you want to do me a giantfavor, tell me what it's been selling
for three months ago and whatit might sell for in three months.
So I know when I want to buy this.
(42:07):
So since you mentioned that,because a lot of the conversational
sales that we do that you, youhelp people with, it's about pricing
and how do you positionyourself, how you charge premium.
And this is, I know this isespecially for the creative industry,
but I think the Inc.
(42:28):
Many business owner have asimilar challenge.
So it applies quite across the board.
Like how do people knowwhether they are charging the right
price and feel great about it?
Because that's part of whatgets in the way of people asking
for the price they Want am Icharging too high, too low or is
it, you know, that or theyfeel good about what they are charging
(42:52):
because if they don't, theyknow they are doing good work, but
they don't necessarily knowwhether it's the right price or not.
Right.
Well, we're, we're kind ofintroducing some concepts here that
I want people to be aware of.
The, the processes of sales tome leads naturally to a pricing conversation.
When you're not good at havingthe conversational, the conversation
(43:13):
around sales, the pricingconversation is really, really awkward.
If you do this correctly, theprice will present itself.
I don't want to get into valuebased pricing because that's a whole
nother workshop, a wholenother day.
But what I will tell everyoneis this is if you can do a few simple
things.
Let me lay it out for you, okay?
Number one, if you could helpto determine what a person's desired
(43:38):
future state is like wherethey'd like to be X days, weeks,
months from now.
Where are they now?
What's getting in their way?
You've done a lot of goodthings already.
So where are you now in your business?
Where would you like to be?
What's getting in your way?
What if you tried, what hasworked, what hasn't?
Tell me about that.
And you start to understandand unpack all this information with
(44:00):
the, with the client.
What do you think will solvethis problem?
A lot of questions, basically.
So if you got this solutionand it got you this result, it would
be worth this amount of moneyto you?
It's a lot of questions.
And then you said yes.
Am I missing anything?
(44:21):
No.
Okay, so if you were presentedwith a solution that costs a fraction
of the value that was created,would you be excited to move forward?
And their answer, if you'vedone this correctly, yes.
Well, I have good news for you.
May I share some insights?
Yes.
Why?
(44:41):
Notice X, Y and Z.
And instead of doing A, youdid B, you would get there twice
as fast.
Would you like to move forward?
They say yes.
So the reason why you don'tknow what is fair is because you
don't get to decide what's fair.
The person you're selling todecides what is fair.
(45:03):
You can decide what's fair for you.
So what you want to do is youjust want to have a conversation.
So all of us say, say itdoesn't have to be complicated.
Let's say you sell a $10,000coaching package.
That's a pretty good amount, right?
$10,000 coaching package.
If you don't have aConversation about the value, the
impact that you create.
10,000 is a lot of money.
(45:24):
That's like two and a halfLouis Vuitton bags.
I think that's a lot or that'sa fifth of a down payment towards
a 3 or 5 series now fully loaded.
It's a lot of money.
And I learned this from mybusiness coach many, many years ago
is value is contextual.
Nothing is too expensive ortoo cheap.
(45:46):
Against nothing you need context.
So the part that most peopledon't understand is how to structure
the conversation around whatis the context.
They're so focused on the saleand the ask and the pitch that they
forget about all this other stuff.
What's the context?
And that's all I try to do isI try to teach people how to ask
(46:07):
the questions to get the context.
And by the end of theconversation, you know, it's a good
fit or it's a terrible fit.
And that's totally okay.
One last question because thisis a very common Asian mindset, especially
in Singapore, because you, youasked me before about Singapore mindset
and since we are going to dothe workshop, workshop in Singapore,
(46:28):
I'm going to address that.
You might laugh at me becauseyou know, in Singapore, fear is one
of the predominant emotionthat drive everything.
Okay, so we have this sayingin, in Chinese that says that in
Singapore we are driven byfear of the government, fear of their
wife, fear of, fear of losingout, which is formal and fear of
(46:52):
death.
Everything is fear based.
So what would you, what wouldyou say to these people when it comes
to people being so drivenaround the fear of what if something
goes wrong?
Essentially that's what peopleare afraid of.
I'm going to tackle this maybethree or four different ways again.
My, my business formerbusiness coach K, he used to work
(47:16):
as a lifeguard and he said bythe poolside.
He's, his job is to make surekids don't drown.
He goes, it's the weirdestthing he's ever seen.
Kids in the pool, the deep endstarts a panic fierce.
His death is imminent.
He says it's really weird.
All they have to do is reachout and grab the coping of the pool.
(47:39):
But you know what they do?
They swim to the far side andof course they're going to drown.
So then he has to jump in andpull their butts out.
So he goes, when we'repanicked, when we're operating in
a place out of scarcity, whenwe're nervous about what other people
are thinking, we're not makinggreat decisions.
We're swimming to the wrongside of the pool, we will drown and
(48:01):
your business will drown.
Figuratively, I think.
What if.
What if this happens?
I like what if questions, butmost of the what if questions are
pointed in the wrong direction.
What if this doesn't work out?
What if this is a waste oftime or money?
What if a client says no?
What if they have a betteroption that's all pointed in one
(48:23):
direction, the negative direction?
Let's take that same thinking.
Let's orient ourselves 180 degrees.
What if this is a bargain?
What if they've been dying towork with me?
What if they had so many badexperiences that this is going to
be a relief for them?
What if this solution allowsthem to really focus on their business
and grow it to a level inwhich they've never seen before?
(48:45):
What if they let me drive theentire engagement?
What if they refer me to alltheir rich friends?
What if this becomes the pointin my business history that is the
beginning of something amazing.
What if in a year from nowwe're celebrated for the incredible
work we've done and arestanding on stage accepting a lifetime
achievement award?
(49:06):
What if we're on the COVID ofa prominent business or social magazine?
What if our account blows up?
So I like, what if it's justpointed in the right direction?
Why y'all focus on so much negativity?
Next one, you're afraid ofnegative outcomes.
That's a normal human response.
(49:26):
So when somebody asks me,should I do something?
They're asking a questionagain in the abstract, should I invest
in this property?
And they don't know what to do.
So I say, well, what else doyou want to do with your money?
Well, I could leave in a bank.
Okay, that's one thing I caninvest in this other kind of thing.
Or there's a lot of differentthings where I can invest in myself.
(49:49):
So, well, given all thepossible options, what has the highest
upside potential with thelowest potential for downside?
Act accordingly.
So people usually just ask onequestion, like, should I do this?
I'm like, I don't know, should you?
What are the alternatives?
So we consider thealternatives and then we decide accordingly.
(50:13):
There's a very easy answer toall this stuff, which is, what if
nothing changes 3, 5, 10, 20years from now?
Do you see that version ofyourself being happier than today?
And if the answer is yes,don't change anything.
Stay on that winning track.
Very few people are motivatedto change when everything's working
(50:36):
really well.
For example, if you have sixpack abs, you're not going to change
your diet and your workoutroutine because you're at peak performance
physical condition right now.
If you're the world champion,you might tweak a few things here
and there, but you're notgoing to go and wholesale change
everything.
You're not going to.
You shouldn't change yourtrainer, your habits, your diet,
(51:00):
how you process the game day rituals.
You don't change all that.
This is why athletes have alot of superstitions, because they
wore that sock, they touchedthis emblem, and they said this prayer,
and they counted to 55.
And then they entered thefield and they played the game, and
they played the best game oftheir lives.
Sports psychologists will say,what is your re?
What is your winning routine?
(51:21):
Do that again, retrace the steps.
And a lot of this is mental.
But as we've learned, the mindinfluences the body.
So when you get your mindright, the body will follow.
So you can imagine a negativeoutcome and say, well, if nothing
changes, this is what I'vesigned up for.
If you're content with that,do not change anything.
(51:41):
It would be crazy for you to.
If you're living your bestlife, doing your best work for the
best clients, making afreaking ton of money while working
less, stay on that track.
So there's a.
There's a quote.
I don't know who said it.
I'm gonna say Zig Ziglar, butit's probably not.
I'm not sure everybody.
And the saying is, if nothingchanges, nothing changes a hundred
(52:02):
percent.
And it would be insane tothink otherwise.
That's cool.
I think that's a great way toend today's session.
And I really.
Yeah, I think it's a, youknow, really, the what if is such
a great question, but itdepends on where we are, how we look
at the question.
Yeah.
So I will say this.
The.
The podcast goes out to 10,15, 20,000 people.
(52:26):
Some people are interested inwhat we're talking about.
Some people aren't.
That's totally cool.
Some people are in a placewhere they'd like to come.
Some people aren't.
So this really is just amessage for the people who are curious,
who've determined that theirbest days are ahead of them.
But it's going to require some action.
I do want to say this.
The workshops in Singapore,it's in June, and if you want to
(52:51):
come, read the description inthe show notes.
We are passionate andcommitted to make Cristo event in
Singapore the best of the best.
And you are going toexperience the best of the best,
the, the best of, of the best,Chris, because that's what we want
from him.
And we love for you toexperience him with us.
(53:13):
Can't think of a better way tosay that.
So on that note, Victoria,thank you very much for having this
conversation with me.
And dear listener, thank youalso for indulging me and sharing
some of my thoughts andphilosophies on personal branding
and sales.
If if you walk away withnothing else, I just want you to
think about this.
If your business could use alittle extra boost, work on your
(53:35):
personal brand, because thataccelerates everything that you do.
And if your personal brand isreally strong, learn how to do a
little bit of sales.
And if both suck, I have goodnews for you, because I'm going to
teach you both.
That's the best that I can do.
Until next time, take care of yourself.
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