“Innovation is an act of love.” So say’s our guest, Mauro Porcini, Senior Vice President and Chief Design Officer at PepsiCo. With over 1800 design and innovation awards having his name attached to them, if anyone would know, he would. On top of that, before joining PepsiCo, Mauro was 3M’s first Chief Design Officer, and was named one of Forbes’ 40 Under 40 (2012), Fast Company’s 50 Most Influential Designer’s In The USA (2011), and has received countless other accolades. Now he’s written a...

It’s not unusual for people to be a little on edge about AI, both where it is now, and where it could be in the near future. As a creative, will you even have a job in five or ten years? If AI can create art, where do we humans fit in? In this episode, Chris is joined by fellow LA Motion Design Director Kevin Lau to talk about the similarities between starting their careers with the beginnings of After Effects and Motion Design in the mid 90’s, and how it feels similar to this dawning of a...

It’s so common, especially amongst creatives, and manifests in so many different ways. Imposter Syndrome. That overly critical inner voice. That self doubt about your accomplishments, or your intelligence, or your skills. Sometimes it comes so naturally, people don’t even realize they’re going through it. For some, it starts in childhood, with overbearing parents. For others, it manifests as they grow and evolve throughout their career. In this episode, Chris talks to Jule Kim, a life coach...

Most of us have seen a TED talk, or attended a conference where someone was giving a keynote presentation. Many of us have probably thought they might like to do that at some point. The reason people don’t move forward with that, though, is they feel like they either don’t have a story to tell, or don’t know how to tell it in a way that can capture an audience’s attention. In this episode, Karen Eber, author of The Perfect Story, joins Chris to talk about storytelling and how you can use it...

In the modern world, there’s no shortage of carnival barkers trying to grab your attention. Everyone is looking to build an audience and become an Influencer, and social media has incentivized people to act a certain way to grab people’s focus and their follows. Many of us look at them and think “If I want to have influence in this world, that’s who I have to be”. Some look at them and think they can skip the expertise building stage and go straight to the authority stage. Leadership...

Some people are just natural entrepreneurs. Whether it’s in their bones, or they grow up with a positive entrepreneurial role model, they just feel that need deep down inside of them. But how do you become a positive entrepreneurial role model for others? Our guest, Jodie Cook, has started multiple businesses, as well as being an author (Ten Year Career and How To Raise Entrepreneurial Kids), powerlifter, and creator of Coachvox AI, a service that can help turn your knowledge and wisdom into...

Ayman Al-Abdullah is the former CEO of AppSumo, and now coaches CEO’s on how to scale their business from seven figures to nine. Graduating as an accounting major during the 2008 recession, Ayman saw a lot of his friends treading the battlefield of the job market. He had always been interested in entrepreneurship, so instead of working for someone else, he decided to begin his own business, but he kept coming up against a revenue wall - A monetary figure he just couldn’t get past. As time...

ADHD, or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, has been around a long time, but is surprisingly under diagnosed in the many that struggle with its symptoms. It can cause a variety of issues with concentration, finishing work, and following instructions (per the CDC). Those symptoms can then result in a variety of reactions, with one of the most common one’s being low self esteem. Our guest for this episode, Abi Lemon, believes that with self awareness and discipline, people with ADHD can...

Have you ever been curious what it would be like to talk to a business coach? To ask direct questions about the problems you or your business might be having, and get direct answers? Chris has been doing business coaching for years, but before he did, he had a business coach of his own - Keir McLaren. Chris hired Keir a few years into Blind’s existence, because he knew he needed someone to help him see what he wasn’t seeing, and could help him get to where he wanted to go. Unfortunately, we...

In everyone’s career there is a moment where you need to make the leap from good to great if you want to keep growing. There’s always a point where everyone wants to level up their brand so they can work on bigger projects, and boost revenue and profit. Working with clients is a skill, just like your art, and in order to make the leap from good to great, you need to have the skills to get from where you are to where you want to go. Some people make that leap quickly, and others struggle with...

Have you ever considered creating a workshop to teach others? Not just a single lecture that you’re going to give once, but a workshop you can teach in different situations, over and over again? Buckle up, because Rob Fitzpatrick, co-author of The Workshop Survival Guide, is here to talk to Chris about the in’s and out’s of designing a great workshop, and why it’s so important to treat it as your product. Rob shares some of the things he did wrong in his early workshop attempts, the...

Michael Margolis believes that narrative storytelling is the #1 superpower of humanity, and that the three most important, fundamental skills for the future all come from the exercise of storytelling. As the CEO of Storied, a strategic messaging and leadership firm, Michael and his team help leaders and teams stand out through story. But why is story so important? and what makes a great story when it comes to a product or a business? In this episode, Chris and Michael are going to talk about...

LinkedIn. The very name conjures a variety of feelings amongst people. Hard to believe, but the social media juggernaut has been around for over two decades, and has over 930 MILLION users worldwide. Needless to say, whether you appreciate it or not, it is a force in the business world, whether you’re looking for a new job, or you’re an HR manager looking for potential recruits, or you’re a CEO looking to connect with people in similar positions, there’s a LOT that can be done on this site....

A website is an amazing sales tool. It can tell people who you are, what you do, and act as a sort of virtual handshake to begin a relationship between you and a potential customer. Often times, a website might be someone’s first point of contact with you or your business. So how do you optimize it to boost its ability to convert potential clients? There’s a lot of data that you can pull from a website, but are you using it effectively? Amanda Webb is a Digital Marketing and ROI consultant...

AI has become such a buzz term lately. It was the mainstay of sci fi books and movies, for the longest time, and was something everybody thought of as being far in the future. And then Midjourney happened, and Stable Diffusion and ChatGPT. AI is definitely here, right now, and is growing almost exponentially, every single day. Through all of this, we’ve seen people create magical, non existent worlds, wild characters, and some very… weird stuff with AI like Midjourney. People have used...

It’s common sense to think “I have a business. I should sell as much of my product to as many people as I can”. So why do companies, like Rolex or Ferrari, make so much money by limiting the amount of product that they sell? Why would anyone throw up road blocks in front of their own potential customers? And why is creating tension in the supply and demand equation a way to get people to want to buy from you? Daniel Priestley returns to talk with Chris about his concept of being...

Orly Israel is a communicator who wanted to improve his conversational skills, and realized the best way to do that was to learn how to listen. His concept to achieve his goal, The Listening Table, is just that - A table that he has set up in various cities across the country, where he sits and listens to anyone who wants to talk. His goal is to create a space where the other person can share whatever they need to, in a zone that is free of advice and free of judgment. Those two things are in...

Chris Voss is a former FBI negotiator who is using his decades of knowledge to teach others how to negotiate in both life and business. His book Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It is a Wall Street Journal Best Seller, and Chris is teaching negotiation in classrooms, workshops, and through a popular series on the MasterClass website. In this episode, the two Chris’s (Do and Voss) talk about how negotiation works, whether it’s on a personal level or in sales....

In our final discussion on the 5 Core Business Principles, Mo Ismail returns to talk to Chris about Attraction Marketing. In todays world, few people are looking at your social profiles by random chance. They’re looking to see who you are, and what you’ve done. One of the strongest way you can attract potential clients is to use those profiles to demonstrate your skills and knowledge in your area of expertise. That way you’re not just building an audience, you’re building trust. In this...

In the second part of Chris’s discussion with Mo Ismail on the 5 Core Business Principles, he’ll be talking about The Irresistible Offer, and how to create it. It’s natural to feel like “the work should sell itself”, but competition has risen to a level where you have to start creating a product, or service, that is SO attractive to a potential customer or client, that they want to buy from YOU. So how do you do create The Irresistible Offer? Two ways - Either lower the price, or create more...

For much of human history, mankind didn’t have very much in the way of resources. If there was food to eat, we ate it, and we would eat as much as we could, because we didn’t know when our next meal was going to come. Fast forward to the 21st century, and we have an abundance of food and mass produced goods which gives us choice. With this multitude of options, we start to ask ourselves “Why do we choose one over the other?”. Why do people buy? What are the core, psychological elements that...

Whether you’re just starting out in a creative business, or pivoting to a new specialty, finding those first clients is one of the biggest hills you have to climb. So how do you build up your skills and get yourself seen by potential clients? If you’re adding a skill or a specialty, how do you get potential clients to see you as someone who can do more than just what you have already done for them? Mo Ismail returns to talk to Chris about how he went from being a student to landing clients as...

Money. How does that word make you feel? Some people hear it and think opportunity, success, maybe even happiness. Others have a much more complicated reaction. Chris has fielded a lot of questions and comments about money over the years, and the one thing that is consistent with these questions is that there is a surprising amount of negative attitude towards both money, and the people who have made a fair share of it. But, as Chris argues, money is simply “a score card of how much you are...

We’re back with our second episode with YouTube pro and entrepreneur Sean Cannell. Sean is the driving force behind ThinkMedia, a company focused on YouTube strategy and growth. He is also an international speaker and coach that helps entrepreneurs build their influence and income with online video.  In this episode, Sean and Chris continue their conversation about the importance of YouTube for entrepreneurs and business owners. Sean goes into topics like building a team, figuring out what...

Sean Cannell returns to the podcast to talk to Chris about why YouTube is the most undervalued social media platform, and how to take advantage of its amazing features. Sean is a successful YouTuber, and founder of ThinkMedia, an organization and YouTube channel focused on helping creators understand new technology, devise strategies, and create more success on YouTube. In the first part of a two part conversation, Sean and Chris talk about why being able to communicate is the most important...