The Designer As Entrepreneur

welcome to the school where we talk about the design of business and the business of design I am also a blur this is Christo today we're talking about the designers entrepreneur let's do this this is a great topic I don't know what this means let's get into it you say we're gonna do so what else is here today yet let's do it let's do it so do it we mean you are a longtime entrepreneurs we you've had the studio for 18 years I've had it studio now an education company so are we crazy or why did we choose to do this why did you choose I chose to do this because I've always had this dream of creating and starting a business it just turned out that design was my thing and I could do that and I can do that relatively well and I've always wanted to create a business where did that dream come from though probably being a refugee and immigrant to this country you have that America so it's an F OB thing sure yeah so you you you so for some people we're gonna have to put down here what f OB f OC right we'll do the definition there Andrew definitely look it up so if the American Dream American Dream the American dream I want a piece of the American dream because what I find interesting is that when I talk to immigrant the chop the children of immigrants Hispanic and Asian alike there is that sense of you want to start something you're in America you can do it the world worlds is your oyster and it's infinite number of possibilities so but I also know something about myself I have an attention span that is limited to solving problems I know that repetition kills me so doing something over and over again to me is just for me I would go insane so I also knew that I'm pretty good at talking to people relatively speaking maybe not Jose a couple air style but I'm okay to talk about Apple so Lauren what I realize is you know thank you ESL I can go and talk to somebody and say and and then build rapport and ultimately trust get a job and that was the exciting part to me was getting people to believe in me and mind it my skills and then bringing people to help me accomplish those goals I don't notice that your videos had exciting you're very competitive somewhere yeah what you just described is I've noticed that yeah you're saying it's a game almost is like you want it the sales to setting it all up right you're competing I am interesting so competitiveness and desire to build something those are the two that I've seen well it's a challenge I like challenge I want to challenge myself so I think that's where I get it from but I also realize you know what if I can go sell something for $100 for example and then get it made or produced for $30 it would be insane for me in my mind and the way I looked at the world for me to do that work I'd rather just pay something to $30 and then pocket the $70 and go and sell more things so the damos the the the in Spanish is called neo Salo where you can actually like negotiate it I can sell this resource and mark it up make some money and not do it myself so it's a very entrepreneurial yeah and I don't even consider myself a good negotiator at least for most of my life so people out there have to make the decision as to whether they do the entrepreneurial route or they work at a company a lot of people are afraid to leave their companies to do it are we advocating for designers to become entrepreneurs or are we saying you know if you want to do it do it and here's how what are we saying I don't know there's a really good question I think being an entrepreneur is not for everybody obviously group there's a lot of risk and you may not be in a position where you can risk that so the first thing is you kind of have to look at when I started my company is barely out of school maybe I was like 21 22 years old I didn't have a whole lot to lose really I thought in my mind this is the way it worked was I've got I think that grace period of eight to nine months before student loans would kick in that was the best time to try something wacky and crazy because I had very little to lose yeah I was I just needed money for rent and I can eat Rob ramen it races top ramen and bread liverwurst or whatever you got to do to to make it work so I knew my runway was eight or nine months and I would be able to figure that out so that was the best time if you have a family and you've got four kids and then they're in private school and you want to go and venture off well god bless you do it but just know what your risky I know what you're risking yeah so that's a hard time to be making those decisions so it may be it's a young person's game I don't know it can be in a lot of ways I mean there are ways for people to dovetail it you know to have their job at an agency and begin doing some other things at the top so one of the rights that I've learned in that transition you know because I did that I had my agency and I was starting to build what my future was right on top of it I did it a very kind of smooth transition I had the group and then I did group school and group school taught the process that this group did for clients and then after a year of doing that or a year and a half or two of doing that I cut the group out and then you know a few months later the group is gone right and only the school was left so I was building the the new business in parallel to my existing business that's a hat trick to pull off but what drove all of it and and and not just back because I just I don't want to repeat the immigrant ethos of like you can do anything okay almost everybody has the same thing but but but but the other driving point in building you know the school from what was the group was reading the 4-hour workweek from Timothy Ferriss so you know he talks about a lot about what do you have now value that you can sell in a replicatable way without it being you so I said well the processes that we developed at the school at the group I could sell those and kind of that's what it became the school then so fundamentally it's really an issue of not it's what you're exchanging value-wise is it your time or is it something that's a product that you can replicate without a lot of effort especially digital stuff right that's the the thing for those people that are at a job read the 4-hour workweek well there's another way to look at this and I want to share a friend and we're probably gonna have to have her on our show at some point is yo-yo Santos a-- shillings ferroconcrete right and her her way of doing was she worked somewhere a staff job at you and company and she heard of an opportunity there's this new kind of place that everybody's buzzing about it's yogurt place frozen yogurt and she went and took a vacation went to meet with them gave him a proposal won the job quit her job won the account quitter course that's an awesome story who is a yogurt place Pinkberry Pinkberry right right so there's others other ways you don't yeah it is a cinderella story so she was able to launch her practice without risking too much so she dinner really wisely she did it right and that my judgment was my employer Razorfish that was my first client with a nice fat gig when I started freelancing right after that so here's the thing though let's talk about it from a point of view of not you want to start a non services business when we first started meeting and talking about us working together or just even just catching up you there were several with things that you read you know well let me let me tell you some observations okay look at where we sit in the food chain okay we service traditionally advertising agencies so if I want to move up the food chain I want to be an advertising agency but who are their clients Nike Microsoft how do I actually rather be those guys you cannot keep looking at like where does this terminate it ends up being a person who makes product or content mm-hmm so then I can hire the ad agency because you got to think about it and you know everything is a percentage of something else so if you're a company and you have a hundred million dollars in gross revenue you'll spend say ten percent on marketing so the agency's going to get ten percent of 100 million so math people crack me so that's 10 million dollars that ten million dollars thing gets broken down into a lot of little design companies into tiny little pieces let's say five hundred thousand dollars out of time that's where we are right on the value chain I'd rather be the person that has one hundred billion dollars in revenue just looking at a numbers game right each time the pie gets a lot smaller yeah and it will continue to get small but you know the thing is and this conversation seems to be having out there as as we kind of talk about what we do there's this weird reaction to it that when we talk about money and being successful as a businessperson you've sold out you've become evil in the real evil way and not the way you work yeah you would not be popular in Portland my friend right so well maybe not in in most design communities where you're seen as a sellout so to be successful to have money to to to to provide for your family or provide jobs for people that you like that's a sellout look keep it in mind here's the thing there's a reality this is the truth the reality is that there is a ten percentile of people just like your and I out there they don't talk about it there there don't have a show on YouTube talking about the business of design but I know them those are our friends we probably have far more entrepreneurial friends and creative than most people do because we're entrepreneurs so here's the thing fundamentally in the arts in general whether it's fine art and I've served this in the fine art world because I've had an interesting insight into it in design we have what I call third third world country mentality so we've been subject to industry we've been at the behest of industry you said it Nike you know Microsoft hires an agency then hires us down here you're at the bottom of the food chain meaning that we're used to that feudal system of corporations having the primary control over what we do and we've never had the opportunity to compete against them directly so the culture of the 20th century has always been nice designer you know come over do what you love and will sponsor you will pay you to do just art yeah just the craft now we're in a 21st century we're going through a very hard transition into realizing holy we don't have to be beholden to the feudal lords of corporations we can become feudal lords we're uncomfortable with it but you know why why because we were programmed to be uncomfortable in the programmed us our education system which education we came to you went to school here in America right yes Art Center even programs you for it your program to do crack your program to work by yourself now it's starting to get more collaborative but look at it it's an industrial model they're isolating you in order to give you control they give you ego Art Center people are you gonna stir this thing up huh yeah - Reza we're meeting with our Center tomorrow oh that's all right what is this airing I think is they really they know you know you know what's the interesting thing to me I've had this conversation with them right that's cool the interesting thing to me is there are a lot of people out there that are listening to show kind of almost in secret it's hilarious it's hilarious because there are some people out there and they come up to me in private their private message me love what you're doing I'm so happy that you're exposing this I'm glad that you guys are talking about this because nobody wants to talk about it there's a lot of risk by being so transparent putting it all out there and we do that that's why I'm wearing a disguise okay it's working because I could barely recognize you nobody dude this listen that is a serious issue though yeah like the issue that we're not willing to or open to the conversation station and that me and you actually even rub people the wrong way in our community I want to get to the why okay so why is that let's pontificate on that certificate studio I think what do you think that the the design community or creative community doesn't talk about it the flakies well it's not fine do you want to talk about it they find that when we talk about it it's uncomfortable and it's distasteful oh yes and it's a stronger word than just uncomfortable dan that's lame I wait hold of that that is super deep and that's that's really great what can you say that again she did she said that what happens if people are used to things being the same and when they see change it disturbs their paradigm of what the reality is and it makes them extremely uncomfortable but look at this as designers that's what we do for living for living we tell people to change and being uncomfortable with this because we're gonna move you into the very place we're gonna rebrand you yet when it comes to our own understanding what that means and how we apply it rebranding right what about what is our own problem with that you see what I'm saying it's this chicag it's like the rapper has no shoes the shoemaker has notion and his children have no shoes but like one person was talking about entrepreneurship and then being able to apply that consistently and then talking about weight loss for say and being able to follow through with it what's the hold up I need to lose weight I don't know yeah okay okay forward from that topic it's all like in your head and that's it's in the head in general so let's move it to this point so to be a successful entrepreneur as a creative person really requires you to do what I call a full Phaedo to have the ability to have the execution ability to have the creative the business the technical aspects and the marketing aspects of your business executed so I mean I drew a little flower here that you will not be able to see but it has four quadrants you know as the technical side the product the marketing side in sales you have operationally you know kind of a business so I've seen you execute your business and you're very tight and very polished and how you do everything and very like almost come on but now I'm sorry about your flattery or your your your apps your apps talking about I'm talking about the business yeah but and then I'm the opposite I'm a little bit more like white and sloppy and kind of girl you see even the GUI yeah listen um I gotta yawns about that my god it's hot in here um so moving on from that now here's the point though that what's happening right now fundamentally in addition to to the fact that you need to learn all these four things is that we're also being forced to go into entrepreneurship by a lot of reasons and forces to strong words strong word but that it's becoming a better option sometimes than the alternative that make sense a because they're not how about this how about we make a little analogy here like one an island and their volcanoes going off yes some of us are building boats other people like we've always lived in this island let's just stay on this island yes so the rest of us wouldn't get off on the boat and travel to new island where there isn't an active oh yeah okay so we'll be little movie times good movie times and entrepreneurship design under Republic both build boats this weekend so what is so you're saying that that and we're seeing it because we're having lunches we're meeting with friends in the industry who have had longtime careers and jobs and agencies right and those jobs are going away and they're going to continue to go away so they have no choice almost they have to either find other opportunities in the same profession and compete for less jobs or make their own opportunities yeah and we talked about that in the trends we've talked about in that a lot of research place that happening oh I just want to throw something out there and I want to try to see if I can bring this back to the designer their point of view is if we're talking to entrepreneurs then we're preaching to the choir writing they're already kind of gobbling this stuff up yeah I'd like to really kind of get to the point about why designers have this hang-up and I want to admit I'm not a terribly good business person I've had to learn business things mostly because I hate looking at the numbers and this is going to sound terrible but I don't like looking at numbers so I know I need to make a ton of profit so I don't pay attention to the numbers it's this one way to look at it that's a great way right so it's like in most businesses in America if you're making 10% net profit you're doing a fabulous they're doing cartwheels and shareholders or like you know shouting out your name and all that kind of stuff right but let me bring it back to the designer for a second all designers from from the first person I mean as a student to whenever they had this I had this idea they want to be an art director because that title sounds good like I direct art oh you're amazing I told our don't make fun of them come on no no no that's okay that's okay what they don't realize is as an art director yeah you have to have communication skills yeah you have to manage your team oh so I'm gonna sound like a business person again you are business what's going on here we have the manage team we have to have have a shared conceptual framework of what with the work that the clients want then I have to be a conduit between the people that do and the people that have have needs right so the clients say we need X Y & Z they're great I understand what X Y & Z is I'll go talk to design team design team XYZ means the color red graphic geometric shapes and black and white photography sign team gets it guess what you're ready becoming an entrepreneur you're already becoming this person who's connecting people so the idea really isn't that crazy but there are those out there and you know you are they just want to talk about fonts kerning and they obsess over I was just at our Center a couple of weeks ago and there was this whole topic 3x3 about OCD and designers almost like one of those hug each other about who can be more obsessive-compulsive than an X God you understand I'm saying now I understand that to degree because we do news you're like that tuba I just don't okay that's fine I am OCD yeah but I have right I'm it that I'm not throwing stones I was thrown right back over so yeah that's fine meaning but I'm just saying this let's not celebrate that as a virtue it's like it's something we got to work through yeah you know because we've heard this so many times don't let perfect be the enemy of good good yeah that's it and that's a big problem designers this is a big problem you're advocating a revolution to some degree here of a mindset okay start throwing stones no but you know what it's happening across the board and it's happening across many industries what you just said totally makes sense I'll admit it also and people are going to be like super shocked and surprise for us here emitting this on it on a show about the business as well it out if it's too problematic no no it's good no no that I'm I am the same but the number stuff and about the business of I'm not necessarily the best business person there is I surround myself with advisers with people help me I'm entrepreneurial because I'm willing to take the risk and I want to build something bigger than myself what drives me and motivates me might be different than one drives motivate it's true we already found out Nicole done that out but but the point though is that fundamentally you know if you're interested in becoming an entrepreneur if you're interested in doing something on your own the fear of the risk of the financial risk is very big that can be mitigated there are many ways in many books and many okay people on the internet tell me if I'm wrong here let us know in the comments also the Internet all right I don't mean that I don't think people are worried about the risk they're not motivated by money at all it's it's like something totally different what is it that's what we're trying to figure out what does it so answer this question in the YouTube comments if you're at a job or if you're wanting to be an entrepreneur what's holding you back like what's the fear that you have we need an OCD designer in here to really really talk about the fear like I'm going on the internet then maybe that watch maybe it won't but maybe they'll say something I don't know hopefully we'll draw you out and you guys will comment right because I think the idea of just even talking about money negotiating it is like deluding who you are and it's cringe-worthy for them do you understand I'm saying I'm like leave me alone I want to be in my room surrounded by my toys my things and I would just want to I want to work on that I'm gonna challenge any of that because I don't you I'm seeing more people very being more comfortable and people following references by the way and I want to say that a lot of people follow us as an example meaning that they say oh look these guys are doing something they're in deep trouble and you're screwed don't do what we're doing but yet actually take the risk and it's all experiments fundamentally so for me as an entrepreneur there's two things that are fundamentally necessary one is the willingness and the ability in the understanding of how to kill your own prey all right that's not it a little violent of how to hunt and how to make money I'm good at two things making noise and sit and selling ideas right one of those statements is true no listen trust me trust me yeah yeah a guy says you're drunker yes yeah alright so but bouquet jasmit that's not the point the point is that you have us we're willing to go out and sell yourself and and make the income not having a dependency and somebody else to do that the way you said that you have to go out and sell yourself does that sound horrible to designers it is positive to sell yourself if you do it every day I know but wait what you're saying is we're not gonna convert it but I like the way you say things avocation for yourself advocates reason fight again keep in mind you've been programmed by 20th century education to be academic about design to worry about kerning to worry about this because that's what we've been programmed for major design programs do not incorporate entrepreneurship into their curriculum period well the same as much broader than that major education doesn't incorporate entrepreneurship which is a small sad is true right so entrepreneurship is still a weird thing and it shouldn't be should be yeah so that's okay so you know but you said something before and and I thought I said to you I'm risk-averse and you said no you're not you would you say your calculated risk I take calculated I am always what's the risk and reward I talked to my kids about this right and there were you guys in who is it a what is it a mr. Jeff Bukowski who is this book ask you from Alex Bogusky that's Alex Bogusky order you know visionary leader behind CPB right in an article I read about him they asked him like what is it that you do like why do you take all these chances and why do you win all these awards so well my dad literally to ask me what's the worst that can happen what's the worst thing happening he wasn't just it wasn't a rhetorical question he made me go in my room and write down these are the worst things that can happen and what happens is when you when you actually write it down like black and white in front of you it's never as bad as what you think it is in your mind so the emotional context of the fear that it's causing what you think is going to happen if you go out there you do your own thing it's a lot less than what it probably really is yeah so what I did was you know my kids I'm trying to teach them to be a little bit more outgoing so I say you know I need you to go up to the counter and ask them for a fork that's all my kid wouldn't do it good so I said what's the worst that can happen my little boy he said I'm gonna there kill me they're gonna kill me so they're gonna kill you for the fork really and and then said you know what the worst that's going to happen is gonna say scram kid we don't talk to little kids like you and God here and then you said I chase him away and then of course he regarding Lee goes there I see a little conversation he's he's out of like earshot he comes back and he's thrilled he's like I got it I got a fork got it so this is do that this is a part of a problem I don't know what it is it's about this idea that you know we go out there and we sell ourselves or advocate for ourselves and we create value in how we demonstrate that to other people that that's an evil idea it is see there's a problem it's valuable that's how it's perceived that's totally true I'm the biggest nerd introvert out there and he's probably the biggest extrovert to actually go and do it yeah it was early on it was because he started blind right out of school or like fairly alright so to wrap it back up let's wrap it around back to that point that you just said about you know what's the worst that can happen and going out there my philosophical framework and what I've been doing and what I'm doing today you know the reason why we're even sitting here meaning the school as a whole is to really provide a place where people can actually take those smaller risk and define who they are and kind of play with you know the idea not necessarily just at an entrepreneurial level but I'm going to tell you crazy an insight at South by Southwest I did my workshop which you know well the strategy the core strategy workshop I did it us up by Southwest with 70 or 80 people and there was a lot of agency people in there and I asked them why they're here and I was writing it down and I went a little deeper and they were well we want to provide a strategic framework for our agency and do better job for our clients was it oh and I want to leave my agency so all of them had this subversive aspect of wanting to go do something for themselves because they're already that guy that wanted to be the art director he's already managing people so now he's like well I can do this when I cannot do it on my own right so there is a natural inclination for leaders yourself myself in a community of whatever it can be doctors it could be lawyers in our case designers who start businesses and provide employment the whatever the Republicans call it the triple battle creators trickle-down economics economics we provide a framework and a structure for that what my understanding became was that the agency wasn't going to be able to sustain that over the twenty first century and that you needed to create a subset of that with the same value on how to hunt how to go out how to package yourself how to deliver your services needed to be provided to the individuals and to the aggregate to the agency but in a broader way of doing it versus just I go work at an agency I learned how to do it I say you and I'm gonna go start my own agency okay well let's talk about this for one second here we have a general role as a you and I would that we don't plug any products for people or anything on the show right we do not we don't but I do want to do this one thing here's the experiment Jose believes you believe yeah in that I can make money off a process that I can replicate to other people right I do so we are going to test this theory you've been working on this concept for a year and a half little over a year and a half it's called to school right and you're teaching people to do this thing so you guys are going to be part of this live experiment where we're going to see how much value we can create and Jose is taking all of what he knows and packaging it into something that he can this sell to other people see he's moving into the product category I think in the educational space and we're gonna find out if they gonna work is it going to work can we can we charge enough money to make it valuable and something that we can do full-time Linda has figured that out lynda.com/diy at it out as a writer he makes money from an agency that okay but so he uses the books and the lectures and all that kind of stuff but I should do lead gen right yeah okay you you you criticize me whatever you want to call it for not being a graphic uestion you a question me I'm not being aggressive enough on the monetization so what I learned from Linda and from my conversations with her was this issue of figuring out how to deliver value consistently and she believed at a very reasonable price like a $35 description that's about we're building a subscription business which we do have subscriptions for for people that join us every week but plug plug but that's not what my focus is my focus isn't is this valuable so that's what I've been testing the money will come if you really prove the value this is great this is great so we want to know what the value of this thing is so we have an idea of what the value is the market will tell us what the values right it's much too so trained in this thing so as an experiment recently I was speaking in front of a group about a hundred people at a HEA right and so we did a post event survey and we asked people how valuable is this to you I wish there were a dollar amount that they put in there but they did they just either said very valuable or not and we talked about business and I got to be honest with you I was really surprised at the people that showed up the kind of questions they asked and the amount of interest there was in business as it relates to design that kind of blew me away that was very unexpected because typically people who show up to these events want to see your portfolio where do you get your inspiration from as if to be able to replicate all that stuff right and we've seen worse events ever and we've seen that a thousand times those are events are great when when pre-internet yeah now that the internet is there it's all available you don't have to look for it it just comes up you know Vimeo staff of the week or pick up the staff of the pic or whatever pick of the staff yeah it's out there and you can see it yeah you don't have to look for it it comes to you anyway you're saying we knew wrap up what boat so in conclusion is their conclusion is there is any I said ongoing dialogue I would like to hear from our viewers first of all this issue of designers entrepreneur this issue of you know fear like why do you not trend you know what's holding you back so we do all topic on it here yeah fear liners in the air huffing okay we can do that so fear as a topic so you know we're doing you know equity we're doing designers entrepreneur we're doing fear we're really really getting deep into the business of design that's actually a pretty good thing and you know ask us questions you know tweet us there's a Twitter right here somewhere in front of the table that uh you're going to put on there hopefully in the Edit but just the dialogue to understand what the needs are of the community because at the end of the day and with the timer at the end of the day my personal mission is to really help us as designers make this transition into the 21st century and and I think good tester mission yeah and to make some money added to the money will come okay well I don't I don't have any wrap up to this but every week we make promises about things we're going to talk about sometimes we don't so if we don't hear from you or some other thing that you guys comment on seems more urgent and pressing then we then we just totally change topics and we'll talk about that yeah let us know we appreciate your feedback and your comments guys subscribe i'm christelle that's jose couple air thanks for joining us see you guys later because I can then just make $70 and then go and get another sale so you're marking it up what's one on there hello hey Dan let me can I call you back in about ten minutes I came taping a live episode I can't believe this

Channel: The Futur

Views: 41,127

Rating: 4.976387 out of 5

Keywords: designer, jose caballer, chris do, design industry, design entrepreneur, design entrepreneurship, graphic design entrepreneur, web design entrepreneur, innovation design entrepreneurship academy, designer entrepreneur, the skool, entrepreneur designer, design thinking (field of study), entrepreneur design, designer as entrepreneur, designer entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship design, entrepreneurship

Id: nFm3uzNYQyU

Length: 29min 41sec (1781 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 19 2014