yeah this is all great but most designers will never even be in a room with someone that might offer $50,000 for a [Music] design let me respond to this this is a mindset problem if you confine yourself to certain physical space and you say well there's nothing beyond the edges of this universe that Beyond it is monsters and Peril and and certain death and doom and despair you'll never Venture forth Beyond a certain perimeter and we can understand that there's a story of fleas that a flea can jump X number of times it's height and
if you put fleas in a jar and you put a lid they jump and they hit their head they jump and they hit their head eventually you can take the lid off and the fleas will no longer jump beyond the confines of the jar so it's kind of interesting how we can learn certain ideas and behaviors and then predestin ourselves to never achieving more than that so if you confine yourself to saying I will never never get on a plane I will never marry someone before this age I will never be able to be in
a room where people will consider the things that I do to be worth of x amount of money we have to change this kind of finite scarcity fixed mindset to being open to anything that's possible and the way I look at it is like there was a time in my life I I didn't like sushi I didn't like raw fish and I ordered a large plate of tuna Sashimi I didn't understand that's what I was ordering and then I tried to eat it and I almost wanted to get and throw up in the bathroom now
today if you ask me what is my favorite type of food to eat I'll tell you point blank look you right in the eye and say sushi so the first time you do something is guess what the first time that you do it all you have to do is approach life with a curious and open mind which I think most of you would think if I were to ask you and we bumped into each other on the street how open-minded are you in a scale of 1 to 10 are you going to tell me one
are you going to tell me 10 or 12 this is what I talk about when I talk about this kind of fixed mindset so when somebody say most of us creatives will never be in a room where someone has a $50,000 problem for us to solve you are absolutely you're right because you manifest it into your life you say I'm not worth this so then you therefore you don't associate with people that are in a position to pay you more than $50,000 to do the work that you do you don't seek out a peer group
who thinks like this because you feel like they're fake there must be something wrong you don't you don't go to Workshop you don't read books you don't take courses on how to do this because you've resigned yourself to the fact that this is not possible and I know this idea is so offensive to so many people that they comment with such great vitrio saying this is not possible I'm a scammer I'm a liar easy for you to say this is all fake I'm not here to prove you otherwise you can do whatever you want you
can have the life that you want that's up to you but for me the way I look at it is design solves problems my job is to get into a room when someone has a big enough problem that they're willing to pay a certain amount of money to make that pain go away and I want to be there for that conversation and I have been so I'm going to take you on my whole Arc because I think some of you might falsely assume easy for Chris to say he's got a silver spoon he's got a
trust fund set up for him he's got all the advantages set up in life I would admit to one of them specifically and the other are totally untrue the greatest advantage that I have in my life is I was raised in America that I have to acknowledge because here through opportunities for anyone you can create the kind of future that you want despite your Origins despite your backstory because my family and I we came to America in 1975 as poor refugees who didn't speak the language didn't understand the customs and the cultures English is not
my first language we move through the lower socioeconomic strata to being I think to the time my parents by the time I was 18 upper middle class so I don't know what I'm not capable of and I I don't know what I'm capable of all I know is just try and see what happens and that Mantra has carried me pretty far so when I go to Art Center I've got a scholarship 50% scholarship I have some loans no grants so I was able to get a Stafford Loan and some contribution from my parents and a
credit card and through the combination of those four things I was able to get myself through college with quite a bit of debt in student loans and credit card debt I think I had maxed out two credit cards this is all Financial context for everyone who's listening to this when I was in school I did some freelance work and I think the most I was paid was $30 an hour doing Bank brochures I didn't let how my life began determine how it's going to end every part of your life there's a chapter and it's Unwritten
and you get to decide how it's going to play out and that's entirely up to you soon after earning $30 an hour I was thinking this is the most I've ever made in an hour I wonder what the limit to that is and I'm going to try it out so for most of you $30 time8 8 hour a day is $240 that's the day rate so when I started freelancing I'm not even a year out of school yet first started freelancing I I tried $300 a day and they said yes then I said if they
said yes to that what will they say no to so I kept playing this game with Myself by increasing the rate whenever possible any new job opportunity any new client so it went to $400 $450 500 650 $700 and I think I met a theoretical cap and I didn't say to myself the most I will ever be paid is $700 a day which is an outrageous sum of money by the way I want to acknowledge that I just kept asking myself what do I have to do what do I have to know who do I
have to become such that people would say it would give us great pleasure to give you this money so I want to fast forward a bunch of bumps in the road here because I don't want to bore you with all that stuff but then we get to this point now where people happily pay me $30,000 to have me speak for 45 minutes I've traveled all the way from $30 an hour to quite literally $30,000 an hour but I'm not the same person I have the same curiosity I have the same willingness to do the hard
work and it's built on Decades of experience personal stories and actual examples of things I've done to put myself in a position where someone will pay me $30,000 to speak for less than an hour if you're new to this channel you don't know who I am my name is Chris I want to introduce myself I'm a loud introvert I have this really big mission to teach a billion people how to make a living doing what they love in a previous life I was a motion designer and director I worked on commercials and music videos for
some of the biggest bands and brands in the world like Coldplay like jet like Justin timberl and worked on commercials for Audi for Microsoft and I use this experience to build up a financial Nest Egg for me so such that I can pursue my deepest passion which is education and my true identity is an educator so I'm here leveraging 20 plus years of working in industry in the most competitive market Los Angeles to help translate some of those experiences so that you wherever you are in your creative Journey can apply some of the principles that
I'm talking about in creativity and business design mindset leadership so that you can have some of that success that I've been so fortunate to receive that's who I am I'm sure some of you are sitting here thinking okay well you were blessed fortunate whatever the word you want to use in that the experience then allowed me to have this mindset and normally I'd like yeah you're probably right but natur I think you're totally wrong it's that I have this mindset that the experience happens without the mindset The Experience doesn't happen when someone posts on the
job board at Art Center looking for designer $30 an hour to work on Bank brochures I tear that thing I take the phone number I call a person I show them my portfolio they say okay you're hired we'll give you some work to do so the market told me $30 an hour that's my experience and if I left it there I would have just stayed at $30 an hour I might have after a year of doing this might thought like to myself like maybe I should charge $40 an hour but it was my belief system
My Philosophy to ask myself I wonder what the limitation is of what someone would pay me to do the work that they're asking me to do so then that allowed me to take a different set of actions because your belief system determin what you're going to say and what you say is more likely going to indicate what you're going to do and when you have the result of what you do they inform or reinforce your belief system and so we can be stuck in this thing where we're only PID $30 an hour and then it
tells us that's the maximum what I'm trying to tell you right now the biggest fundamental change that you're going to have in your life isn't necessarily to change what you're going to say or do but it's to start with what you believe to be true what you believe you're capable of doing now I also need to say this because people will get up in arms about it and say well not everybody can do what you do that is true thankfully not everybody can do what I do not everybody went to a four-year private Art School
University and did everything they could to be at the top of their class to work on their portfolio to have some Mastery of craft most of my videos make the assumption that you've done the work I'm not here to sell you shortcuts I'm not here to tell you about life hacks about how you don't have to have any skill you have to have skill you have to put in your 10,000 hours of deliberate intentional practice at working on your craft once you've done that you'll find out that doing another 10,000 hours of practiceing your craft
will only create incremental improvements in your financial well-being that after you did after you've done that initial work the rest of the transformation is going to happen believe it or not in your mind and not the craft itself about how you position yourself about how you think of your work and the kinds of problems you're trying to solve improving your communication skills understanding things like marketing in sales how you handle objections when they come in the buy s cycle if you have a healthy attitude about the work that you do and the value that you
create built on a foundation of skill and deliberate intentional practice then we should be having this kind of dialogue and this is who this video is for so it's your belief system that informs how you're going to behave it's not the other way around if you're listening to this and you're still here with me and you're thinking okay if the belief system is the thing that creates the path for you you what does one need to do to be able to have this kind of mindset okay there's a there's a couple of simple steps all
right first I want you to ask yourself is my current belief system my identity my world view is it serving me right now and if you're watching this video chances are it's not serving you right now because you're like why can't I achieve these things so in order for you to achieve these things you cannot use the same operating system you can't continue down the same path there's a quote somewhere that says the thinking that created the problem can't be the thinking that solves the problem because you created the problem you've designed a beautiful luxurious
prison for your mind and you live in it so if you've decided enough is enough I don't want this thing that I keep getting then that's the first step to say like okay I've tried it my way for months years or decades it's not working for me I want to try something else you have to be open to this thing and the thing that you're going to hear is going to challenge your core fundamental beliefs it has to otherwise it's not worth pursuing it has to be such a radical idea it feels like a slap
in the face and it's something that challenges your perception of reality and the rules of life this is why so few people are able to make the kind of progress that they need to make in their life to improve their standing because they hear an idea that's foreign that challenges their belief systems and they systematically just reject and push away and there's many forms that this will take place because it's deceptive one form will be well that will probably work for some people but it won't work for me you have the the exceptional rule it'll
work for everyone except for me there's the other thing that says you know what I'll do this tomorrow so that's the procrastinator speaking in your ear saying you know what we do believe this we believe we're capable of doing this but today's not the day I have too much at stake we'll we'll put this off till tomorrow there's the third voice in your head that's going to say well we need a perfect plan and proof before we should do this because we have too much to risk this is the perfectionist voice that tells you everything
must be lined up because the fear of failure is enough for us to not want to take action well I read something from Leila hosi that said the risk of being humiliated or failure is the cost of entry for the growth that you seek in your life so we have to risk failing which might seem like humiliation and ridicule and that's just the cost of playing the game and you have to surrender you have to let go of your old identity to say like you know what that got me here I'm grateful for all my
beliefs and my culture my customs and my habits but now in order for me to go and Ascend the next Mountain I have to release myself of some of this baggage to make myself lighter physically spiritually mentally so what we do is we seek people who we trust and just need to be me seek whoever you want who can say something to you and say do this next step and for us to be able to accept that and hold it in our heart and say okay I don't understand it I don't have a perfect plan
I believe I'm capable of doing this I don't have any Assurance it's going to work but I'm going to do it just going to do it and I have countless examples of people who approach me up on the street at a convention at a coffee shop say you know Chris I didn't think it was going to work the thing you said for us to do I didn't think that whole double your rate thing was going to work I didn't think saying no or making myself less available is going to work and I did it you
know what I sit there and I smile like what pray tell it worked Chris I'm like you don't say you don't say the thing that I've been telling you to do for the last 9 years over and over in every form that I know how to say it in in words in role plays on a whiteboard on a keynote present on a prescripted talk I was trying to say in a different way so you can hear me and so the only thing you need to ask yourself today are you ready to hear me are you
ready to cast aside your limiting beliefs your self-doubt and your need for perfectionism and procrastination as defensive tools to achieving the life that you want if you're ready I'm here for you and the step forward not that complicated act in spite of any assurances that anything's going to work C Seas don't make great Sailors you want to go out there and explore the world be an Explorer you have to Brave be brave enough to face some unknown things some potential Peril you have to risk something but uh as another quote if you think I'm expensive
wait till you get the bill from someone who doesn't know what they're doing
