The Futur podcast is a show that explores the interesting overlap between design, marketing, and business.Our host (and CEO of The Futur), Chris Do, holds candid conversations with inspirational people from the worlds of design, technology, marketing, business, philosophy and personal development.These conversations go deep. With the aim of understanding who these incredible people are, what drives them to do what they do, and what can we—the listener—learn from it all.Visit thefutur.com/podcast for show notes and additional information from each episode.
They must have really promoted the heck out of that event. They must have a 100 marketing nerds there, apparently. Something like that. Right? Something like that. Alan, for people who don't know who you are, could you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit of your backstory? To be honest, I'm still trying to figure out what I wanna be when I grow up, but, What I tell people, I'm an author. I'm an entrepreneur. I'm a marketer. I'm a tech geek. And look, objectively, by any measure, you'd have to conclude that life is rigged in my favor. So a lot of people don't acknowledge that, but the role that luck has to play in their success. A lot of times people go on podcasts and things like that. And it's kind of the rags to rich story. You know, I was sleeping in my car or on the street, and now I'm a mophie millionaire and you know, there was some magic in the middle, but I think for a lot of us, especially people living in countries like the United States and Australia, luck is such a massive factor. And I've got a similar background to yours in that my parents came to this country when I was pretty young, and I was lucky to be exposed to so many amazing opportunities as were you, and we get to do what we do right now. So my background is I was born in Syria. Came to Australia when I was a few years old with my parents. They immigrated. I was a student. I was not very bright, but I ended up winning one of the top schools in the country. I didn't do that well. I ended up trying many different things. I studied music in university. I studied law. I studied finance. I op data of all of them. They've had very, very good grades. I definitely consider myself an introvert. I know you're you're a loud introvert. I'm definitely a quiet introvert. And so that makes a lot of what we do as I hate to use the word as kind of a cringe thought leader or whatever, but it makes it a little bit harder, but that's okay. When I got married, I got married to a wonderful woman when I was pretty young, and my net worth at the time was $300. And then, of course, do you do with a 300
Their work, people will come to them but the consumers are somehow aware that brands are marketing their products to them with their content. And that's one truth. The second truth is that people trust people. And from my perspective, people trust more people than they trust brands. And here's this guy, Nick Huber, who wrote a tweet a few year, I believe last year, when he said that all his accounts, all his companies that are having their Twitter profile, he changed his brand name with their CEO names. And now he can see a boosting in their sales, in their engagement, and even in their followers, because people don't want just to connect with brands on social media. People want to connect with people on social media, and that's very interesting when we are looking around how people are consuming the content that people are publishing and also the brands are publishing. And the 3rd truth is that people follow more people on social media than they follow brands. So here's somehow this balance that brands they want to be in front of people, but people don't want to consume their content if it's not, let's say, a more likable content, a more engaging content, or we all know that inspiration or entertaining or even educational. So here's a challenge for you and I somehow want to challenge you right now because if you take your phone and you are looking, let's say take Instagram, or take TikTok, or take Linkedin, whatever it doesn't matter, just look at how many brands do you follow right now on social media. Just look at your following. How many brands do you follow on social media? And this doesn't matter like your company that you're working there or maybe the ones that you are consuming everyday. The brands that you like, the type of content they are consuming versus how many people do you follow on social.
Lead generation, then it doesn't matter how good you are. And on the flip side, you could master lead generation, and you'll be able to fix everything else. So if you've got hundreds of leads coming in, you're gonna be able to make sales. You're gonna be able to pick and choose the best clients. You're gonna be able to recruit amazing people. You're gonna be able to get investors if you need investors. Everything just kinda magically happens after the lead generation. And as a thought experiment, I always ask people if Kim Kardashian decided to get into your business, into your industry, and she wanted to come in and compete with you and she would launch today, like, how much money would she make in the next 12 months? Probably, like, a $100,000,000 because she's got a big audience. She would have to just ask that audience to signal intent, and then she could pick and choose the clients and and away you go. So this idea of lead generation is so fundamental to the success, and we pretend that it doesn't exist. It's like we forget about gravity, Gravity is pretty fundamental to to everything we do. I was a little scared when you set up the Kim Kardashian model because not only would she generate 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars in revenue, but it would probably wipe you out. Yeah. It'd just cause such a you know, it'd be everything would happen in the wake. The fundamentals of entrepreneurship, if you think about just the basics of economics, the first lesson in economics is that demand and supply is everything. Demand and supply sets the price. And if you go back to Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, his first example is this example of why is water for free and diamonds cost a lot of money. And he basically says water is everything. You can't live without water. It's the most valuable substance theoretically on the planet. And yet because there's plenty of supply, we don't value it very highly. And because, essentially, we don't feel that it's running out, so the the demand and supply curve is stacked in the favor There's plenty of supply and not, you know, not an excess of demand. But on the flip side, in the book, he talks about diamonds, and he says, even though not many people are interested in diamonds, that relative to the demand, there's less of them. So we have not many diamonds and a lot more people who want them.
Yes. And they would rent these amazing hotels, and then we would play swing dance music or local variations as Carolina Shag. And that was what the couple loved. And after about an hour, the guests were like, okay, we've had enough of that. Let's go back to what we know as a traditional wedding celebration. And they're like, no, we're gonna stick with our music. And I'm like, we can, but let me try 2 songs that please them. And the crowd fills the floor and they're like, oh, maybe you know better. So then I started quit being a vendor and being an expert in the area of serving couples. And I started to question, well, I know you want EDM and your group will have it. Let's have your guys dance for 20 minutes here. We'll give them a break, go to the bar and then we'll dance EDM later. So sometimes years later, in fact, a friend of mine, his name is Paul. He He came back a couple of years later, now I get what you were trying to do. Yeah, you spent $60 down in Charleston on the bay throwing this amazing wedding and I wanted to keep people there. So my guarantee used to be, again learn from you, if 80% of the people aren't there at the end, I haven't done my job. Maybe I owe you money out of the talent fee. Let's talk about that. Who's gonna guarantee you the guest's date of the end? Nobody. And they lean in and listen to that. And I would have family members come up and go, Well, how do you know this couple? Oh, they're my students at Clemson. Man, this is a great wedding. Oh really, what's different about it? I don't know, it's just different. That doesn't help me. And I'm on the job, in the job. I can't explore that deeper, so I started shadowing other DJs. And I actually worked for a multi op, which means they have, you know, 20 DJs.
Nike's brand at its best and the athletes that they partner with, a lot of people miss that there's a rebellious spirit within Nike that is what gives it its edge and what makes it so great. And I felt like Nike would embrace and welcome a rebel like me and my story, and I didn't tell that story publicly for about 13 years until I was into recovery and 5 years into my Nike career. So halfway through my marketing career at Nike, I finally came out and told the story that I just told you in the first five minutes of talking to you. And the lesson that I learned there, Chris, is that we admire people through our strengths. So people are like, oh, wow. This guy's great. He's in brand marketing at Nike. He seems cool. He's very creative. I had shown those skills to this point. But they really connect with us through our struggle and our story. And I started to connect with my teammates, my leaders, the people that I worked with day in and day out on a much deeper basis because I was willing to be vulnerable, I was willing to risk hurt or injury. I thought that I might be committing career suicide, But I had been clear on my values that I wanted to help inspire people, and I felt like my life purpose was to help inspire people to achieve freedom out of addiction and or incarceration. And so when I was presented with an opportunity to do a film publicly, a 10 minute short film telling my story with an organization called I Am Second, I had to take them up on that and it was a decision that I'm really glad I made. So what I heard from you, and I believe this, is a good dose of determination and delusion are a pretty good recipe for success. And when I hear people who have an addictive personality, addiction is just one path of that determination and delusion. But the other part is, like, deep rooted passion that you can't deter.
