| name | chris-do-design-business |
| description | Design-business education engine built on Chris Do's methodology (The Futur) — brand as gut feeling, positioning by reframing the dominant competitor, premium/value-based pricing, selling without being salesy (SALES = Serve/Ask/Listen/Empathize/Summarize), and personal-brand building through know→accept→express authenticity. Load when a task involves pricing creative/professional services, positioning against bigger competitors, running a sales conversation for expertise-based work, or building a personal brand for a creative or "non-creative" expert. |
| version | 2.0 |
| format | completion-engine |
| workflows | 3 |
| source | claude.ai export 2026-07-01 |
Chris Do — Design Business, Premium Positioning & The Kind Way to Sell
Chris Do is an Emmy award-winning designer, founder of The Futur (millions of followers across platforms), and the leading teacher of business skills to creatives — pricing, negotiation, sales, positioning — and creative skills to business people ("left-brainers who want to be creative"). His career pivot came from one business coach (Keir McLaren) whose three sessions took his firm from $2.2M to $3.9M in a year and his close rate from ~20% to ~75%, by replacing "minor league" selling with problem-centered diagnosis. His signature moves: reframe everything (a brand is not what you say it is, it's what they say it is), position against the dominant player by turning their strength into a weakness, let price itself do the positioning, and sell by asking questions instead of pitching. This engine deploys that thinking to price premium, win against bigger competitors, close expertise-based work kindly, and build personal brands on authentic self-expression.
Available Workflows
| # | Workflow | Produces | When to Run |
|---|
| 01 | position-and-price-premium | A positioning play (anti-position vs. the real competitor) + a premium price with the confidence script to hold it | A business or freelancer is stuck competing on price, blending in, or underpricing their expertise |
| 02 | run-kind-sales-call | A complete non-salesy sales conversation plan (SALES framework) + gap diagnosis + align-or-decline verdict | An expertise-based seller has a prospect call, discovery call, or proposal conversation coming |
| 03 | build-personal-brand-engine | A personal-brand foundation (know→accept→express), a leaned-into "weakness" asset, and a remix-based content approach | Someone wants to build a personal brand / start creating content but feels "not creative" or afraid to show up |
Quick Reference
Brand & branding (the definitions everything hangs on):
- A brand is a person's gut feeling about a product, service, or organization (Marty Neumeier). It's not what you say it is — it's what they say it is. If enough people share the same gut feeling, you have a brand.
- Branding = impression management: you can't control feelings, only influence them — through how you show up, speak, behave, and the consistency of it. (Bezos: "brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room.")
- The logo is a container for meaning, not the brand. Products are made in factories; brands are made in the hearts and minds of people, at every touchpoint.
Positioning (Ries & Trout, weaponized):
- Positioning = the space you occupy in the hearts and minds of customers relative to your competitors. It is the art of reframing: paint spilled on canvas is worthless; framed on a gallery wall behind velvet rope, it's art. Move the frame, change the meaning.
- The guerrilla move: make the dominant competitor's strength a weakness. Scope vs. Listerine ("no more medicine breath" → 0 to ~33% share), 7UP "The Uncola," Apple's "I'm a Mac / I'm a PC," Dunkin' "friends don't let friends drink Starbucks."
- Three steps: (1) identify who you're really competing against (who else is the buyer actually considering — don't get aspirational), (2) name their top 3 known traits, (3) be the anti — force a choice: the big faceless thing, or the one who stays up worrying about your payroll?
- Purpose of positioning: reduce or outright eliminate competition. A company of one doesn't compete on price — it commands a premium. Don't make it easier to work with you; make it harder (scarcity signals "I'm worth it").
Pricing (price communicates position):
- Chris's ladder: $250 → $500 → $750 → $1,500 → $5,000/hr — each raise solved an overload problem AND repositioned everything below it ("at $1,500/hr the $10K course looks cheap"). Price is a filter: high price attracts believers who act on your advice, repels non-believers.
- The Friday-6pm-phone-call test: charge enough that when the client calls at 6pm Friday, you're happy to pick up. Charge so much that scope requests don't bother you — measure outcomes, not hours.
- Not worth the number yet? Close the gap (upskill, better service, more leniency) — but decide the number first. "Decide and you will be."
- Confidence is really permission + validation: "Who's the they who said you can't? You see the they in the mirror." Give yourself the permission slip.
Marketing (Seth Godin, operationalized):
- Marketing = the generous act of helping people get what they want. Sell to people who want to hear from you; don't interrupt people who don't.
- Permission marketing test: is it anticipated, personal, relevant? Build a marketing curriculum like an educator — broad exciting material first, deeper and higher-value as the relationship deepens; the selling happens throughout.
- Customer journey: Awareness → Interest → Desire → Conversion → Delight — most people stop at conversion; Delight is what makes clients evangelize ("you HAVE to work with Mary").
- Value prop = the bridge: current state → obstacle → desired future state. Sell benefits (emotional: "sleep better at night," "get your spouse off your back"), not features ("24-hour access"). Psychographics (beliefs, values, opinions) over demographics.
Sales (the kind way):
- Sales is change management: someone wants something and can't get it. Two questions: what do they want, and what's getting in the way?
- People know money makes problems go away; spend is proportionate to problem size — relative to the buyer. Hunt bigger problems, not better pitches.
- Inbound prospect = already qualified. You start with goodwill; everything after either builds or erodes trust.
- The prospect has three options: hire you, hire someone else, do nothing. Your job is clarity so they make the best decision for themselves — align or decline. Sometimes the best answer is "I don't think you need to do anything at all."
- SALES = Serve, Ask, Listen, Empathize, Summarize. Whoever asks more questions is in control of the relationship. Shift: self-centered → client-centered, advising → asking, talking → listening, selling → summarizing.
- The Keir McLaren lesson: above ~$200K, clients can hire anyone in the world — what got you here won't get you there; a minor-league strategy in the major leagues is why the win rate collapses.
Personal brand & creativity:
- Foundation: know yourself → accept yourself → express yourself. You can't perform authenticity with dried-up paint; heal the wound first (therapy is a legitimate business tool).
- Be bilingual — speak the language of art AND business (Todd McFarlane). The intersection is the moat.
- Creativity = remix: take what's known, make one small tweak (Apple: "No pain. All gain."; Danger Mouse's Grey Album). "Don't reinvent the wheel — reinvent how it's used." You don't learn creativity; you remember it (Ken Robinson: we grow out of it).
- Lean into the weakness (asymmetric warfare): Johnny Cupcakes' "Short stories from a short guy about short-sleeve T-shirts" only works because he's short. Make your weakness your strength and your competitor's strength their liability.
- "Your words shape your world" — self-labels ("I'm not creative," "I'm not funny") become reality; the camera transmits discomfort. Seek progress over perfection; asking "what's the next step?" is usually a stalling tactic — just do the first step.
- Story transcends algorithms: a compelling story is the foundation of every post; hacks are layers on top.
Story & narrative (with Michael Margolis on The Futur):
- People never buy the product — they buy the story attached to it, and the story they tell themselves about what it means. (The Zippo ladder: 2022 Zippo $15 → WWII Zippo $200 → General Marshall's D-Day Zippo = priceless. Same hunk of metal.)
- Story vs. narrative: a story is a closed-loop event (beginning/middle/end); a narrative is an abstract shared belief. The narrative is the Christmas tree; stories are the ornaments.
- Data is a story of the past; disruption is a story about the future. Start future-first, then use data to legitimize it. Conviction is the currency — put a stake in the ground (thesis), then research to test it. Leading with research is outsourcing conviction.
Strategy (with Mark Pollard on The Futur):
- Strategy = an informed opinion about how to win. Opinion without information is reckless; information without opinion is a report.
- Find the organizing idea — two topics colliding (the Knicks as "anger therapy") that all tactics and design hang from. Four points: problem (the barrier to buying), insight, advantage, strategy.
- Divergent thinking is the cheap part; the people who get paid the most are good at convergent thinking — simplify. If your strategy can't survive being said in three words of street language, it isn't clear yet. A clear strategy is a sandbox: small from outside, enormous inside.
Execution Prompts (structure-pure v2)
3 deterministic practitioner prompts — each carries an Output Contract, Output Skeleton, and Quality Gate. When a deliverable matches one, Read it and honor its contract instead of improvising the output shape.
- Chris Do — Kind Sales Call Plan —
skills/chris-do-design-business/references/prompts-v2/kind-sales-call-plan.md
- Chris Do — Personal Brand Engine —
skills/chris-do-design-business/references/prompts-v2/personal-brand-engine.md
- Chris Do — Positioning & Premium Pricing Play —
skills/chris-do-design-business/references/prompts-v2/positioning-premium-pricing-play.md
