KGCI: Real Estate on Air - The #1 Rule to Online Personal Branding with Chris Do

Episode Date: November 29, 2025

Friday Focus is your weekly mini-series from KGCI Real Estate On Air—a deep dive into one theme, broken into tactical, easy-to-implement episodes. Every Friday and Saturday, we unpack the strategies, scripts, and systems agents use to win more business—without the fluff.Catch every episode in the series to get the full picture, and put these moves into play by Monday.Summary:In this powerful episode, Chris Do, CEO of The Futur and a leading voice in branding and design education, reveals the single most important rule for building a dominant online personal brand. Chris breaks down his strategies for cutting through the digital noise by focusing on clarity, consistency, and providing relentless value to a specific audience. Learn how to transform your expertise into a compelling digital presence that attracts ideal clients and creates a predictable path to business growth and financial freedom. Ready for more? Subscribe to KGCI Real Estate On Air and grab the Always Free Real Estate On Air Mobile App for iPhone and Android. Inside, you’ll find our complete archive, 24/7 stream, and every Friday Focus mini-series—ready when you are.

Built to close your week strong and start the next one smarter. Here's what you is from this week's Friday Focus on KGCI, Real Estate on Air. Have you ever wished a social media coach would create a specific content plan just for you? Or maybe that a personal branding coach would dissect your online brand and tell you how to fix it on the spot. Well, what if that person coaching you was the number one personal branding business coach in the entire world? Guys, in today's show, the Chris do, the man who changed the game for online branding and social media flips the switch and turns what I thought was going to be a nice little interview into a live coaching call. Chris is a trailblazer within his industry. He's an Emmy

award-winning designer, the CEO of Blind and the Future. And he does not just coach, but he leads from the front with his own content, earning 971,000 followers on Instagram. Here's what to expect to learn in today's show. How to create content that speaks to the soul of your target audience. The number one rule when it comes to your personal brand. What customer-centric marketing is and why you should care. And stick around to the end for the framework on how to tell a compelling story. Guys, you're listening to the Real Estate Rocksars podcast, the show for agents who've been around the block and are finally ready to build sustainable, scalable businesses. My name is Shelby Johnson. I'm an Army veteran turned real estate entrepreneur. I have closed hundreds of transactions

as a solo agent, team leader and real estate investor. And now, after a little brief period off, I am back making a comeback full force in a new city building from the ground up, Lexington, Kentucky. Guys, all referrals are welcome. Hit me up on the gram at The Shelby Show. But for today, get ready for the man, the myth, the legend, Chris Jew. Okay, Chris, a couple years ago, everyone wanted to buy and sell so leads just fell out of the sky and into agents laps because real estate was easy. But now times have changed. And agents who were super successful during that market are realizing that they're missing out on a lot of fundamentals when it comes to branding and lead generation. So what advice?

do you have for agents who are struggling in those departments? What are they struggling with right now? Take me through their world. Allow me to look through their eyes for a minute. Yes. Okay. So they're struggling with weeds for essentially clients. And specifically, I'd like to take this through social media.

Okay. Are they representing sellers or buyers or both? Everyone wants sellers these days because there's a lot of changes coming in the next month regarding buyers and the way they get compensated. So like seller is focused. And is this for any specific market, any size home, a price point? Give me a little bit more demographic data and then I think we're ready to go. Okay. Let's go with the demographic data of 500,000. So just a median, very median. We're not looking for luxury. We're not looking for like,

you know, properties that are distressed. This is just like a very standard 350 to 500,000 price points. They are ready to move to Florida and, you know, be a snowbird and just live there. Okay. Hang out on the beach. Older couple, maybe? Older couple, yeah. Yeah.

50 plus? Yep. Okay, this is very important stuff here. Okay. So one of the things I think was one of the most profound things that I learned in my design career in branding marketing and design is we start with the buyer. We start to, who is buying our services and what, what did it look like a day in their life? So if you say there's somebody who is 50 plus, maybe they're still married, empty nesters,

and they're just tired of wherever they're at because Florida is a much easier life. And it's built for like older people ready to retire. The weather's very accommodating slower pace. So what we do is we would go through a very extensive process for understanding who they are. But the point in which we reach to is the point I'll throw back at you. What kind of pain points are they experiencing right now? What are their needs and wants? And we would make a list of that.

So let's try and brainstorm together. I say I would not put you in a hot seat, but I don't think this is a hot seat, right? No, this is just a warm seat. I can handle it. Yeah, it's a lukewarm seat. So, tell me some of the things that they want and need. Totally. Okay.

So their pain points right now is that they are in a house that is more than what they need. And since they're older, it's just more than they want to take care of. They used to have a lot of kids in this house. And now it just feels like a lot of house, a lot of yard. And a lot of potentially overhead. So maybe they do want a smaller property with a less expensive mortgage every single month. So those are some pain points. Right. Okay. So you said to me, I want to play back to you. They need to downsize. They're concerned

about maintenance because that leads to overhead just too much for them. And plus, maybe they're a little less able-bodied. I would infer then they want to use their time better than just working for the house, right? Correct. An easier life, if you will. Okay. Right. What are some of the emotions that are feeling about what's going to happen? Because this is another big change. And we know that as you get older, change is not easy for you. So what are their fears, their hopes? Yeah, dude, Chris, they are going through it. They are going through it emotionally because their kids were raised from this house and they have so much of their history and memories and the whole house is furnished. And if they want to downsize them, they have to get rid of some of their furniture, you know, their baby's bunk bed and, you know, and although they really want to go to Florida and they love the weather there, it's a lot of their friends are where they are, you know, currently and they have roots and they have a community and connection. And they know Florida is where they want to go, but there is just a lot of emotional pain, you know, worries about completely uprooting and moving to a new state.

Okay. This is wonderful. Good. I hope you can see where this is going. You're doing great because you know what you're doing, right? It's usually when one of us has to know what we're doing. In this case, you know what you're doing. Perfect.

Okay. So I'm going to summarize. They have some emotional attachment. There's some sentimental value in them staying there. Plus, there's a lot of logistical things. What do we do with this furniture that we're not going to need anymore? We have to sell its store or something like that. Our roots are here.

We can't really change that part of it. Our friends and family, you know, we have to kind of sort that out. Okay. So that might tell us some other solutions. So if we reframe all those things as how do we turn a problem into the solution? We turn it into how might we address their emotional attachment to the property? What kind of things could we do to help them ease through that process? What do you think?

That's a good question. How it would me ease the emotional attachment to the property? I don't, I don't know. I mean, you can always paint the picture of the future and be like, I don't, I don't know how to specifically eliminate the emotional attachment to the current house. Okay. What do you think they're attached to the tangible and the intangibles? What do you think there might be?

Well, the memories, of course. And then the tangibles would be the furniture. So I guess if we are like, I mean, they could move it with them, they could sell, they could store it. But then you have overhead. Like is this, am I, am I on the right track? I just want to make sure. There's no such thing as the wrong track. As long as you keep thinking and talking, we're good. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I guess, well, so to eliminate some of the, you know, you could help them with those things. Is that what you're talking about? Like you can help them. How might you help them? moving company that you trust as maybe like a state sale slash yardstale company they can come in they can help you go through and organize what you want to keep what you don't want to keep package it for you these are all options so the movers like estate people um i don't know this one since we're just spitballing here there could also be like a something maybe something clients did in the past is they like to have all of their friends and family

one more time to just do a celebration, you know, before you move. And so that way you could have a lot of experiences in the house one more time and really love on those memories. We also could have a photographer come through and capture you with your friends and create a photo album. Dude, I am, I'm getting creative here. So that way, you would have all of these memories tangibly with you as you moved to Florida. You could look at it every day on your coffee table. Okay. You're doing great, by the way. You're way more creative than you might give yourself credit for really so all i need is to do is give you the space to think and to prompt you because initially we start off with pretty default i would say more broad generic answers like downsize maintenance

then we get into a little bit of the emotional attachment and then you sit with that for a little bit and you struggle and then all of a sudden you come up with some really good ideas so here's what we can do just to summarize once again you can say we want to honor the lifetime of memories that you've created with your family. We suggest you have a good going away party, which you can document and save that so you can revisit that in your mind. And then once they come to peace with this, and you can make a lot of content around this, Marie Kondo has this beautiful thing. Do you know who Marie Kondo is? She's like the organizing queen, a little tiny, petite, like a Japanese woman, very adorable, a TV show on HGTV, has a whole system, Marie Kondo system. And she had

this ceremony that they had everyone go through. A lot of times people have these kind of hoarding mentalities. They don't want to give up anything. And so she says, do we want to create three piles, half to keep? We're not sure. And okay to get rid of. So when she goes through this, the have to keep is really big. They get rid of is really small. And the, we're not sure, is kind of medium size. And they literally go through it. So they immediately get rid of all the other stuff. They either sell it, donate it or something and that's a new story so the new story is this has served your family so well wouldn't this better serve a family that you want to support a type like if you're a Christian maybe Christian family or Muslim family or for a battered women shelter or an old folks home so that

you honor those items by not throwing them away but by giving them new life to something that's meaningful to that person and she has this little ceremony it's really beautiful when we're not quite ready to get rid of something. We have a ceremony. We thank it for serving us. We pay a lot of gratitude and homage to the object like a sweater. It kept us warm. It kind of like warmed our heart and our body. And then we say goodbye. We thank it for serving us and we put in another pile. And so she's able to help people downsize and get rid of a lot of stuff and they feel much freer. There's this an emotional process that has to be that someone has to go through so that they can let go in peace versus have that thing that eats away in their stomach.

So you can think about that. So having photographs and videos and so having a team or service to provide this or at least even suggesting this idea, we'll build a relationship between the realtor and the homeowner. It's like this person gets me. They understand the kind of pain points I'm going through. Here's the weird thing. We work with people that we feel like they have common values and beliefs as us.

And it doesn't take a lot for someone to tap into that. For example, if I'm a younger female, I see you and your realtor, I'm like, we just already know each other. And that's a big presumption on the person's part. But just by seeing your face and hearing your voice, I say, I know you. And say if you're a Latina, they're like, well, I'm Latina, you're Latina. Or if you're African American. So those are common points of interest. But if we talk about values and beliefs, we go a layer deeper.

And so the more familiar you become, the greater your reputation builds beyond the people you know. So what we want to do is there's this concept from Google. They did this big study and they came up with this idea called the zero moment of truth, a ZMOT, a zero moment of truth. That before someone makes a decision to buy, they've done a ton of research and cross-checking before they buy. So there's a rule. It's called the 7-11-4 rule. Have you heard of this? Okay. No. It takes roughly seven hours of someone spending time with you to get familiar with you

to move beyond strangers and to transition into acquaintance or friends. Seven hours, they say, at minimum. It takes 11 points of contact, 11 touch points. They heard you on a podcast. They watched a video. They saw your brochure. They saw you on TV. They saw an ad. They saw a post. And like, I really am getting to know Chris or Shelby. I'm really getting to know them really well. And then it takes four locations, four different locations, for you really to deepen that relationship. Okay. So what you can do is you can do this at scale by creating content, by making your opinions, your beliefs, and your values rise to the surface, not talk about your services, but to really

share with them who you are. And the more time they spend with you, the closer they feel in their connection to you. So that's what we're trying to do with content on social media. we're trying to build that familiarity. Like, I know you. I can almost predict what Shelby would say. Or I can almost predict what Chris is going to say. And that familiarity is what allows them to separate you from others.

So you just have to stand out just a little bit to kind of capture their imagination. So I can hear it in listeners' heads right now. They're like, that sounds great. That sounds amazing. That's terrifying. You know, exposing. There's different things. They're like, okay, that's scary to put yourself out there.

Okay, I actually don't even know what that means. do I need to do posts like stories, reels. What is the most effective way for me to, you know, do all this? Where do I even start? You know what I mean? Great question. I tell people to start where they're most comfortable. So if you're a writer, write. If you have a beautiful voice and you don't want people to see your face, just do narration. If you have a beautiful face and your voice is all right, you can just dance and point at cards and then use music. And if you like puppetry, use puppets do whatever you want do the thing that's most aligned with how you best express and articulate your ideas the highest form of this is to use your face your voice and your likeness

throughout the whole thing is because we're trying to get them to become familiar and comfortable with us it's a lot of times we see content being produced our first question is because we're kind of skeptical about everything is that a real person i don't know if i'm going to like them so what we're trying to do is get some face time with people and we can do that at scale with content so that's what you would do first. So let's pick an avenue. Okay. Let's say it's you. We'll build it off you. What are you most comfortable in how you express yourself? What format? Well, currently podcasts, because that's what I do every day. But what I would like to do is long form. I want to do YouTube. Okay. So let's say YouTube. I'm just right that now. So you're comfortable being on

camera. You have a good lighting setup. I can see the warm, cool light on you. You got a professional Mike, you were designed to do this thing, yes? And you have good energy, right? Yes. My hype guy. Thanks, Chris. Yes, absolutely. Check's in a mail or send me the check, right? Okay. So here's what you do. So now we know this is what you want. Now you have to say, what market are you in, by the way. So I'm in Lexington, Kentucky. Okay. If that's what you meant. Yeah. Is that who you want to serve? I do. I want to serve, which this is literally what I was like, hey, I'm not sure I want to go down this rabbit hole, but we're doing it. It's okay. So Lexington, Kentucky, I want to serve specifically sellers. Yep. And you want to concentrate on empty nesters?

I don't. That just came out earlier. I don't know where that came from. But let's pretend that is, okay? Sure. You'll make this exercise much, much easier. The problem that most people have when they're not sure what kind of content to make is because they don't know who to write to. That's the problem. as soon as you get clear in who you're going to write your or craft your message for it becomes much easier because writing a commencement speech is different than writing a note to your best buddy that you grew up with very different tasks the activity feels similar but they're very different because of who you're speaking to so say you're on youtube okay you're talking to empty nesters where might empty nesters find social content what platform do you think well a lot of them live on facebook but more and more people

are going to YouTube. But was Facebook the right answer? It is the right answer. Because a certain demographic only uses Facebook. Like my mom only uses Facebook, everything else. She doesn't understand. For sure. Right? For sure. So what you're going to do is you're going to need to do like a dual prong content strategy where you create one piece of content. It's going to live in multiple places. Then we should try to tie them together if possible. We also have to keep in mind that most social platforms punish your post if you pull people off site or off platforms. Or off platforms. platform. So you can't have to think about that. So you're going to do a YouTube piece of content. And let's talk about this emotional attachment and how you want to address it. So this is how we

would begin. I'm going to pretend to be you. Okay. And how do you normally start off any piece of content? Do you have a signature sign on? I do not have one. No. I would love a recommendation if that's. Okay. All right. So we're going to start off with you're going to probably start off one piece of content with you know how okay so you know how when you reach a certain age in your life and the kids are grown up and you're tired of a large property that is more headache than it's worth and you're tired of shoveling snow and you don't know who to trust and when a good time to sell your home and when to move is so now we've established the problem well in this video I'm going to take you through a couple things you can do to make it feel more comfortable and easy and set your mind

at ease. That's what you want to do. So the first thing I want to address is there's a lot of sentimental value in the home that you live in, the family, the friends, the roots that you've established, and plus a lifetime of memories that you want to cherish. We find that people have a hard time letting go, holding themselves from moving into something that's more ideally suited for them because of this. And we find that if you have an amazing celebratory goodbye, Mary and John going away party, where you can document this with you. videos and photographs, you'll be able to take those memories with you and kind of give proper tribute and gratitude towards the home that raised your children. And here's some ideas on how you can

do that. And at the end of it, you would then say, my name is Shelby. If you're in the Kentucky market and you're looking to sell your home, please reach out to me. I'll try to make this as painless as possible. Okay. So that, you know how that's a great like hook in the beginning. It speaks right to them. So with that, that whole video that you kind of just through that framework. I'm doing that on YouTube and then I'm clipping it and putting it on Facebook. Yep. And you might not even clip it that much. You might just put the whole thing out, depending on how long it is. Okay. If the video is super long, like an hour and a half, you might want to clip it into three parts. So then you need to design the conversation around three

parts that can be edited together. So you want to have a little bit of a plan. Otherwise, the edit points are really funky. So in that case, what I will try to do is design each part of a three-part video to be about 15 minutes long, giving yourself some latitude to be longer or shorter, but it's roughly about 15 minutes. I think people can watch a 15-minute video on YouTube or on Facebook. Okay, gotcha. And to bring this all back to like branding and lead generation, the struggles, you know, in the very beginning. So by going through this exercise, really, it sounds like there's an exercise where you need to sit down and you need to think about specifically who you want your target on it to be. Who do you want to work with? What are their specific pain points? And then

And once you've done that, you think about your own most authentic source of communicating, whether you mentioned voice narrative, video, writing, whatever. And then once you've done that, that is your repeated process for hitting those points to build your brands, to get out there consistently. And by doing that, it will also generate the business. Did I get it all out? Yeah, I think you got most of it. The way that I could describe to you, I'm trying to make this as easy as possible, okay?

There's something that's called marketing, and oftentimes marketing sounds like pummeling people into submission with ad or content that doesn't really relate to them. It's very interruptive, and we don't want to do that. We want to take a more permission-based marketing style. So there's a term I'm going to borrow, and you can look this up. It's something like customer-centric marketing. There's customer-centric design, but we just transpose those two ideas together. Customer-centric marketing is, I think there's five components. Hopefully I'll get this right.

number one is know me so if we don't know who we're talking to we can't do the next step so identifying a clear avatar a buyer persona a customer profile we're able to then anticipate the next thing which is anticipate my needs know me anticipate my needs look out for me make my life easier and then reward me those are the five things so we can't get to step two three four or five until we know the first part we just know me who is your customer and this is where most people fall down the marketing ladder. They don't know what to do because they won't commit. They falsely think by narrowing in, they're going to reduce their opportunities, but the exact opposite is true. The wider you go, the fewer opportunities you get because you compete with every single person who has domain

expertise in what you do. I have a friend, she's a coach, and she decided one day, she's Asian American. She decided, I want to help female Asian entrepreneurs in the C-suite. As soon as she did that, people started coming out of the woodwork and asking her to coach them. So she got way more opportunities because she was more specific. Because people at the end of day need to feel seen and heard. So when you're broadcasting a message, and you know what the word broadcast comes from broad, a lot of people casting, right, versus narrow casting. So we've got to move away from broadcasting into narrow casting or niche marketing versus mass marketing. Okay, gotcha. So with that, so what are your thoughts on paid advertising? So are you like not, because all this

sounds like very organic. What are your thoughts on paid advertising? Yeah. If you make a piece of crap and you spend a lot of money promoting a piece of crap, it's still crap, but it's sprayed everywhere. It's kind of more like projectile pooing. And we don't want to do that. So what we want to do is create a lot of pieces of content and whichever one hits, put money against that to boost and promote that. So we're taking an organic piece of content and we're accelerating the reach by spending money against that. So I think it's a fool's approach to say, I don't know what's going to work. I don't even know if it's a good offer, but I'm just going to try to spray this everywhere. You're going to be wasting money. And I think you're going to alienate or annoy people.

Okay. Great. Love it. So another question I have when something that I see a lot is when people are trying to find their voice, like their brand or, you know, how to speak authentically, a lot of agents get tied up into the fact of, like, I need to be professional or I need to be, you know, whatever they think a business owner should be in the eyes of their target. And so could you talk to me a little bit about like tips for personal brand versus the more corporate formalized brand, pros, cons, et cetera? Yeah, I think the number one rule in branding and marketing is to be different to stand out. A product that's undifferentiated as a commodity, a product or service without a story.

is a commodity. And so what we're trying to do is to be different, but everything we do says fit in to blend in. So when you see a realtor who does certain things like they wear certain clothes, they comb the hair a certain way and they have certain kind of lighting, well, everybody does what everyone else is doing because it feels really safe. That's an human instinct, right? When there's a shark swimming in the water, everybody's swimming in one direction. You don't want to swim the opposite direction because oftentimes they're swimming in the right direction and you're swimming right into the sharp, right? There's safety in numbers. That works in nature and survival, but this isn't survival in the same sense. You want to be different. So imagine today,

I mean, you look like a very different kind of realtor because even just your lighting and I think there's some flowers in the background or something. But if you had a streak of orange or blue hair, you would be unmistakable because people are like, that's Shelby, I know who that is. Or if you wore a shirt that has an abstract S on it, not like Superman, but something like that, you would start to brand yourself. like, I don't remember who you are, but it's that girl with the S on her shirt, right? So here's the weird thing. This was not intentional by me, but it's become a thing where people literally type in bald Asian guy and I will come up. It will just come up on the search.

I'm like, this is fantastic because any other bald Asian guy has to compete against that. So you got to own who you are and lean into that versus trying to run away from it. Okay. Well, now I have to go make a hair appointment. I need to go down my hair. Immediately, Chris. Yes. Okay. And so with that, actually, so to lean more into the branding. So be different. Stand out. And when you are thinking about that on whether we're on YouTube or Instagram or Facebook, what are your thoughts on the importance of like visually tying with like a brand color or a logo? Like I don't know. Any thoughts on that? Yes. You mean your own brand? Like how strong should you? Okay. Now, if you're a realtor,

don't do this on your own. I'm just going to warn you right now. This is not your thing. It's like me trying to sell my own property. It's not going to happen. So I would suggest hiring a designer who understands personal brands. And there are a lot of people out there who don't understand it, but use that word. So do your proper due diligence here and kind of see what they've done and see if that fits with you. But I think what the rule of life is to be very intentional to kind of do things with purpose and intentionality. So if you're going to dress a certain way, you have to think, what is this communicating to people? Like, we do this exercise when I'm running workshops. We have people look at complete strangers and make all kinds of predictions about their opinions,

beliefs, and values. And it's remarkable how close people are at guessing who you are. Now, this is a little bit like palm reading. People feed into it because they're like, yeah, that is me. right maybe maybe not but what we're doing is we're unconsciously transmitting to other people who we are okay let's play the game together okay i'll make predictions about you and you can make predictions about me no i don't know that much about you so mine's going to be a wild ass guess and you know a few things about me but you go first 30 seconds or less make you any kind of prediction the wilder the more accurate or the more precise the better don't play it safe okay Don't play it safe. Okay. And am I allowed to cheat and use what I like found online that I know about you? I won't know. Just don't tell it on yourself. You don't know. Okay. So you looking at you right now, you are artsy. You have that creative side to you. You're not boring. You are taking risks when it comes to like fashion. I also think that you are very well read and have been disciplined and dedicated for many, many years of your life. What else?

You're, oh, you're like introverted. I think you're naturally more introverted than you are extroverted, and you've probably done work over the years to, to overcome that. Wonderful. Done. That's it. That's all I got. My follow-up question to you, and we don't need to answer this question, but then you have

to ask yourself, what made you come to those conclusions or assumptions? If you're like, you're well-read, it could be because you see a lot of books behind me. There's so many books. Maybe I speak a certain way. You're like, hey, people who are well-read speak a certain way. Maybe it's because of the details, the design of what it is that I'm wearing today allows you to say, like, well, you're not cookie cutter because you don't look like the other people I talk to, right? Okay. Now it's my turn. Okay. Oh, gosh. So as best as you can, try not to respond or react to what I'm saying because we subconsciously encourage people to say certain things and discourage people to say certain things, okay? Gotcha. Straight-faced.

Okay. I think there's a dramatic flare about you and you're willing to take risk. I can tell because you're, you're, you are like against the dark background. There's very dramatic lighting. There's this contrasting cool, teal light and a purple light. I don't know if purple is your favorite color, but there's a nice contrast there. It feels like you're an athletic person who takes good care of themselves because those shoulders, I mean, the guns on you, right? And then you're also wearing a sleeveless shirt.

So I think you're confident, you're proud that you've done work and you're okay showing that. And you're not quite ready to fit in a specific mold. And so there is kind of a slightly rebellious streak, although totally not punk. rock. So you're stradd on that line like, I get you, but I'm going to be a little edgy, but not so edgy that you feel like you can't talk to me. You have a lot of energy, and I think that's it. Okay. Now you can tell me how off you are, how off I am. No, you nailed it. You did. Like, you nailed it, everything that you said. Okay. Now, I have the disadvantage that I've done no

research on you. I don't know anything about you except for there was an exchange or conversation, and we're like, let's go do it, right? Yeah. So, So isn't it kind of interesting that a complete stranger, relative stranger, can pick up on certain things about you. And you may or may not have consciously thought about all those things today. But all of what you do are kind of unconscious actions towards creating your world. Whether you're completely boring or you're completely punk rock, we're doing little things to shape the world in our own image. What is your favorite color, by the way? I would say if I had to pick, it would be black.

Well, now we don't look at that little edgy streak. Yeah. That's true. I have it. So what I would recommend for you, if it's true still, and you're allowed to change these things because your core values do not change, but how you appear to the world, your behaviors and habits should be allowed to change because otherwise we're stuck and kind of doomed from birth to be the same person we've always, we're supposed to be.

So I think for you, I would do mostly dark posts like content with a little accent color of purple. And that can be incorporated into your wardrobe. So a simple thing for you to do is to maybe wear a pendant with a little bit of purple in it. Or you can wear a black shirt with purple stitching, contrast stitching. That would be pretty cool. Or maybe a hat or something so that there's a little flourish or embellishment of color. So people know you as the mostly black with purple accent. And then you extend that into everything that you do. You could make a repose and it's all white on black, except for keywords are highlighted in a certain color of purple. a fuchsia or whatever color you like or lavender.

The more specific you can be in the ratio of color to black will start to determine how people can recognize you from like a mile away. And this is very important, okay? The way that you wear your hair, your tonality, your voice, those are all parts of your signature. There's one other idea I want to introduce to you that I think you might like, which is you were given a name, but you can create your own name. and the way that we do that is we do it with a nickname.

And it helps to create a shorthand for your story. Okay? So let's spitball here a little bit. When you were growing up, did you have a nickname? Did your parents call you something? Did your siblings or your auntie or your uncle, grandma, or somebody call you something? You know what? My parents specifically picked Shelby because they thought that there was no way to create a nickname for it.

And actually, growing up, I haven't had a nickname. It's always just been Shelby. Okay. No one ever gave you a nickname? My gymnastics coach used to call me Shelbyno Bombino. Hey, Shelbyno. We could go with Shelbs. How about that?

We could do with Shelbs. Okay. I'm going to help you out here. What is your last name? Johnson. Johnson. Okay. Okay.

I'm going to give you a couple of examples, okay? Okay. People who are in wrestling, who are in combat sports, they tend to pick up nicknames, they design their own nickname because that's how they stand out. So when somebody calls them sugar,

Sugar Ray Leonard, Sugar Ray Robinson, what do you think that is referring to? I assume sweet, but could be wrong. I mean, they punch people for a living, so they can't be that sweet, right? Yeah, I can't think of it, though. Yeah, it is sweet, but it's the sweet science of boxing.

There's a poeticness to how they fight. they're more strategic they're not a brawler or a brute and so they slip punches and they're waiting for their opportune time and they strike like a cobra so they're it's a sweet science of boxing so that's where sugar comes from and then there's a guy his name is Sean O'Malley do you know who Sean O'Malley is sorry so he he changes and he doesn't change other people have done it he spells it sugar with the G Sean O'Malley what can we what kind of assumptions can we make about sugar Sean O'Malley what do you think? think? That he's a G? He's a gangster? Yeah. Maybe he has some roots in the south. Sugar,

you know? So there's a slang or a twang to it. And he also believes in a sweet science of boxing. That's how he fights too. Or one of the most famous, probably the most famous, mixed martial arts in the world is the notorious Connor McGregor. So you see like the word notorious adds flavor to it. So you don't want to just come up with a nickname that doesn't have any real meaning. Shobino Bambino doesn't really help anybody. Right? It doesn't.

Or maybe because you're just a baby. So you want to think about like what is my story? Who am I? What makes me different? And you might incorporate that into a nickname, a two-word nickname. I mean, Dwayne Johnson for a long time wasn't known as Dwayne Johnson, who's known as the Rock. Or Stone Cold Steve, Austin. They're very deliberate intentional writers who,

craft personalities and narratives. Jake the Snake Roberts. What do you think he's all about? So his gimmick is he had a big boa, boa constrictor, and he was not a good guy. He was a heel. Jake the snake. Of course.

Right? Do you have a nickname? I do. I made it up. Well, I just tell people, well, the more evolved version of the nickname is a two-word brand. Two words that when juxtaposed together,

create a hybrid new. meaning that really tell your story. I tell people I'm a loud introvert. So when I introduce myself on stage, I'm like, hi everybody. My name is Crystal. I'm a loud introvert. I'm a recovering graphic designer. What I do is I pair a bunch of words together to quickly tell people my biography, a little bit about my personality really quickly. I'm a serial entrepreneur. I'm a middle child. See, so they start to formulate ideas. And so oftentimes when you do that, their eyebrows perk up, I'm a middle child. I'm an introvert, but what is a loud introvert?

So you're inviting them to ask you questions to become curious, and that's as much as your nickname is going to do for you. Okay, I got lots of homework to do, the hair or I, thinking about my nickname. Chris, you were just giving it to me. Okay, I have one more question before, you know, I let you go. So telling a compelling story, I know. So we've talked about branding. We've talked about lead generation a little bit.

do you have any tips on how to tell a compelling story? Because everyone says that, like, oh, just, you know, tell your story or, you know, stories are what sell essentially. But like any tips on how to do that effectively? Yeah. It helps when we know the structure of how to do things. It's like we're trying to play chess, but we haven't learned what the parts and pieces do and strategy. So we just move things around arbitrarily. So there's lots of ways to understand how to tell a story. I'm going to tell you the more complicated version. I'm going to make it simpler and simpler until it's so easy that you can do it. Okay? There's the gentleman. His name is Joseph Campbell, and he wrote the hero's journey or the hero with a thousand faces. And what Joseph Campbell did was he looked at a lot of these

myths, the monomith, and there's overlapping similarities between all of them. And there's a very specific formula that they follow. And it's really interesting. Once you understand this, you can see all the great pieces of literature and cinema. They follow this very specific formula. So there's a hero who lives in the ordinary world, and there's a, there's a herald who calls this person the hero or the heroine or the shiro to adventure. So like come with me, go here, do this. And they say, there's a refusal of the call. I'm not going to do this. And then a mentor appears and helps the hero cross the threshold, leaving the ordinary world into the new world. And then they go through a series of trials and tribulations. They learn a lesson.

then there's a relapse, they fall back to the old person, and then there's a resurrection. These are important parts of the story, okay? And then having learned this more valuable lesson, they go back to the ordinary world and they share it with their fellow people. Does that part make sense so far? Mm-hmm. Yeah. And you think of Star Wars, George Lucas was an astute student of Joseph Campbell.

you think about Luke dreaming of the stars and wanting to go on this adventure but he can't until meets Obi-1 the mentor who helps him be to learn the force and go into the stars and he has to learn a lot of lessons there's failures and there's wins along the way he loses his mentor by the way obviously and so we can see that now that's a lot for people to remember so I can reduce it down to three words now every story has a character there's a one and there's an obstacle. It's about a specific person. They want something and something stands in their way.

Because without the obstacle, there's no conflict and no conflict, no story. Okay? So when we are trying to tell your story now, we have to think about what it is that you want and what you weren't able to get, what stood in your way. And you had to learn something in order to achieve that thing. So let's look at anything. There's a couple of stories that ask people to think about. The one story, you're still relatively young.

but I believe you have the story within you. It's called the defining moment that in your life, there was a moment when the world was never the same again and something happened. Do you know what that moment is? I can't, yeah, nothing is like jumping to mind. Okay. I'll give you my example. Please.

And maybe I'll help you find yours, okay? Yes. Okay. So all my life, there was a creative, urge or desire to get out, it manifested itself in many different ways. I would doodle in class. Sometimes I'd get in trouble. I was always known within my classmate as the art kid. And whenever there were projects that required art and craft, they would try to get me on their team. But because I grew up as a first generation immigrant, I thought being an artist

meant starving about disappointing my parents and not having a career in art. Because my only examples of art were people who drew portraits on the street, who painted on t-shirts, like with an airbrush, and they did not look like they had a good life. They're mostly like panhandlers trying to sell art on the street. That fascinated me, but I was thinking, that's a child's daydream fantasy of a career. It just so happened that my defining moment came when I started working at a silk screening shop doing production art. Not thinking this is a career, it's just something I did during a summer. But I was sent on an errand to pick up typesetting. This was in the era of the beige all-in-one Macintosh, the very first Macintosh in the mid-80s, early 90s. So my boss told me,

go pick up some typeset. So I drive out to Dean's house and a knock on the door. I didn't even know what typesetting is. And he goes, hey, and I tell him, I'm here to pick up the typeset for Brad. He goes, well, you're early. I'm not done yet. Do you want to come in? I'm like, sure. So I walk into the single family home, one story, I walked past the shad carpet, and I turned a corner to the right, and through these double doors, I walked into Dean's home studio. He had a computer on one side and a desk full of art supplies, drafting tools, little packages. And I was like, what is this? What is it that you do?

Because to me, this was like witchcraft. This was wizardry, using a computer to make things. And in that moment, I learned that there was a thing. called a graphic designer, and you could make a living doing it. And so this was my defining moment. I literally crossed the threshold of his studio and left the ordinary world and allowed myself to see a future in design. And from that moment forward, I knew I was going to be a designer. Dude, that's good. That's the story. That is good. And it also, it did help me a lot. Think of my own. What's your story now? Oh, gosh. Okay. Yeah. So my story is,

I grew up in a family. Like most people do where your parents go to work. It's a nine to five. And the whole communication within our household was you're going to go to college and then you're going to get a job and you're going to save a lot of money and then you're going to retire one day, hopefully. Right. And so I did that. I went to college and I decided to get in the army. My dad was in the army and I was in the army for years just doing what I was supposed to do, right? Going to my nine to five. And then it was my defining moment was, I guess it's not a moment. I should really refine that. But basically, I read a book and listened to a podcast and started paying attention to my property that I bought when I was 21, 22 years old. And all of these things combined made me

realize that I didn't have to work a 9 to 5 for the rest of my life if I didn't want to. There were other options out there, such as real estate investing, which is what really inspired me to get into real estate in the first place. And the idea of I could invest, I could work really, really hard and pour what I earned into property. And that property could pay me and then afford me financial freedom was just this really life-defining, changing moment of I don't have to stay in this box. And because of that, I got out of the Army. I got my license and fast forward to today. That was my first cut at, my first whack at it, Chris. Good job. So I have some feedback for you. Should I get that with me? Yeah. Okay. When we set up the tension of what

happens before, then we desire the outcome even more. So the way I would edit your story is to find more examples of how everyone you knew growing up had a nine to five job and kind of paint that picture so there's patterns to expect. And so when we disrupt those patterns, it becomes more rewarding for us. Number two is we need to feel your resistance more in the story. So it was like, oh, and Bob's uncle when I got married and lived happily ever after, there's no conflict there. So there's a key component to Joseph Campbell's thing, which is the refusal of the call. You might have met a friend who said, you know what, if you're tired of working and flipping burgers or doing that nine to five thing, I'm doing this thing. You're like, that doesn't work. That's just,

you're a scam artist. There's resistance to it. I don't want to do this. If whatever reason, you don't want to do it. Mostly it's internal limiting beliefs so that when something finally flips and when you can see your future, that moment is catalyzed and you're like, there it is. That's why I became who I became. You understand? I do understand. And again, with the homework, Chris. Yeah, this is all good. I love it. Okay. One more challenge for you. Oh gosh. Okay. Do you feel so empowered to try to do a draft number two, given what I I just gave you right now. You don't have to. You can say, no, let me work on it later. I don't know if listeners want to hear me do it again. I think they do. I'm going to ask on

behalf of the listeners and if it's boring, cut it out. Okay, okay, perfect. You want me to do it? Okay. So remember, the setup is important. The resistance is important. The transformation is very, very easy because you notice in my story, only the last two sentences were the transition, which is I knew at that point I was going to be a graphic designer. You see what I'm saying? So a lot of people rush over the setup and the tension and the resistance

because they want to get to the good side. But getting to the good side, the story's over. There's no more interest. Because boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, boy gets girl, end of story. So it's like boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, but girl doesn't want boy for a thousand different reasons.

And then we go through all the struggle of whether or not they're going to fall in love. or not, if they're going to be together. Okay, here, I'm going to try it again. Okay. So when I was growing up, I lived in a household where my parents went to work. They went to 9 to 5. And we always talked about going to college and getting a job afterwards and saving a little

bit of money and hopefully getting retirement from that job. And I looked around and it wasn't just my parents. It was my friend's parents. It was everyone who I saw in every TV show. All of the parents, families there, they all just went. to a nine to five and they clocked their, you know, time in every day, changing, exchanging their time for money. And so that's the way I grew up. And I got into the Army and I started, it was my turn. I went to my nine to five. And then one day, after years of going to my nine to five and

keeping my head in this one mindset, there was a guy actually in my unit in the Army who gave me a book and told me to listen to the Bigger Pockets podcast. And he said, said that we didn't have to live like this. We could have this life of financial freedom. And I was like, dude, what are you talking about? And looking around like, everyone else in my life was still like doing nine to five. And I was like, dude, you're crazy. There's no way. And after some time of him pushing me to read this book and listen to this podcast that, you know, maybe it would work for him or these people would lift, you know, I listen to on the podcast. But that can't work for me. I mean, there's nothing special about me or what I'm doing. And so I have to live.

this specific way. And then finally, after time, over time, I finally decided to look into it more deeply and I bought one investment property. And at that point, once I had done the thing, then I knew that my future belonged in real estate. I screwed up on different things this time, Chris. You did a really good job thinking on your feet and adjusting in real time. When you listen back to this podcast, say, okay, what else could I do? What parts aren't relevant to building up this part and what parts do I need to expand on? Storytellers don't make up stories. They just choose what to focus in on and what to get rid of. That's all. So there are parts in the story that you're like, this part drags, really the part that becomes interesting is this. And here's

what I want you to do. When you take another step at this, tell it to our friend. and be mindful of their emotional reaction and engagement when you tell the story. When their eyes light up, when they really lean in, that's when you know those are the good parts. And you want to emphasize those parts, okay? Now, I know you're doing this in real time. So your ability to tell the story with drama and details and those kinds of things isn't here, not yet. But those little details do matter. So when you say some time had passed, that's not going to cut it.

You're going to say seven months and 14 days later, this happens. And you want to paint a very clear picture as a resistance. And finally, something snapped inside your mind or just luck and opportunity to present itself. And you're like, I'm just going to go for it. Okay. Okay. How long did it take you?

Realistically, how many reps, like how much repetition listeners? Because it was hard. Listeners out there, like on your feet like that, it actually is super hard. And so when you see people crushing it on YouTube or on social media, I'm like, how long did it take? How many reps? And so I don't know, just any expectations you have for listeners, Chris? Yes. It will only take as long as you're stubborn. So if you're open-minded and you're willing to trust the process and you don't need to trust me, find something that you trust and just allow yourself to give into this, right? A lot of times students or people who are trying

to develop something new, there's so much resistance that they're not aware of that they're caring with them that interferes with the learning process. I'll give you example. I use a teach for 15 years. And so we would come in, we would look at the work. And I would say something like, you don't really want to frame your shot this way because of these reasons. Next week, so many people would do it exactly what I told them not to do because they're resisting this idea. And so if we can just give in, if we can just wholly throw herself into a process like gymnastics or the army or real estate, we'll achieve so much more. Somebody might ask you, how long is it going to take to be successful in real estate? You're like, well,

depends on how stubborn you are. Depends on how much resistance you carry. But if you threw yourself into this, if you modeled yourself after somebody that was very successful and you read and you studied and you practiced and you put in the reps, your ability to leapfrog past people who have been in it 5, 10, 15 years, it'll make people's headspin. So as it relates to me, I have some unique circumstances that are conspiring to help me. So I cannot be like the typical case study here because I've taught storytelling for 15 years. and I've been doing it for years before I ever put out a YouTube video. My biggest hurdle was, I'm weird, no one wants to listen to me.

Well, when I got over that, the rest was pretty easy because I've had a lot of practice before. But there were points in time where I could not even introduce myself and I would stumble all over it. They would have to do four takes. It's like, Chris, just say your name, tell us your title. That's all it was. Forget storytelling. So you, you've done a great job because you've had a lot of practice speaking. publicly and on your feet via your podcast, this will be a lot easier for you than it is for a lot

of other people. But rest assured, they're good bones in which you can build your story on. You just needed to know what the structure was. Once you can do that, it will take shape. And if you wanted to, just keep practicing it a couple of times. You're going to find different parts work better. Have the courage to say, I don't care what the other parts are. This is the part I need to focus in on. And you're going to do really, really well, Shelby. Thank you. Okay, Chris, you've helped me and our listeners so much, you know, with your time being here. What can they do for you? Where can they find out more about coaching or anything that you're working on? Okay. The easiest way is to look me up on social media. You can find us

on YouTube and almost on every other social platform on YouTube. We're at the future is here. The future is spelled without an E, so it's F-U-T-U-R, the future or Futur if you want. And you can find all our content there. And I would love if you found value in the content to subscribe and to click on for notifications, then that's all I can ask of you right now. And of course, we'll have all of his links in the show notes if you are driving and you just can't pull over and write that down fast enough. Otherwise, Chris, is there anything else that you want to share with our listeners today? Yes. Be on the lookout because I'm developing programs to develop or help people with their personal branding. We barely dropped her toe into the wall.

if you will, we dipped our toe in the water. And if this is something that interests you, and I have this belief that having a strong personal brand is one of the most important things you're going to have to develop in the 21st century. It gives you a legal, unfair competitive advantage over those that do not. Okay, perfect. Love it. And guys, yeah, so that's the, you know the drill, go and follow Chris and check out those show notes, be on the lookout for more information for his program on personal branding. And if you want to hang out with me and the owner of the show, show. We are The Shelby Show and Erin Amuncustagi on the gram. We love to hear from all of you. And otherwise, that is all we have for today. Chris, thank you so much for coming.

And real estate rock stars, thanks for listening. This podcast is a part of the C-suite radio network. For more top business podcasts, visit c-sweetradio.com.