The Death Of The Personal Brand (& The Future Of Creative Work)

Summary

Highlights

• Personal brands have become less personal and more formulaic 🤨.
• The golden age of authentic content creation on YouTube 🎥.
• Influencers often focus on quantity over quality, focusing on superficial content 👎.
• Creators should focus on depth and meaningful engagement 🌊.
• The importance of leveraging social media as a tool for personal growth and expression 📣.
• Building an online presence by focusing on your unique ideas and contributions 🌟.
• Developing projects and products that solve real problems for people 💼.
• Creating a structured but authentic personal brand 🏡.
• Understanding the importance of audience engagement and content originality 🔄.
• Harnessing new technologies to showcase and monetize your work 💻.

Key Takeaways

• Personal brands are evolving: Once a beacon for creative freedom, now often superficial 🤨.
• Focus on meaningful, impactful work: Aim higher than being just a content creator 📈.
• Use social media as a tool: Amplify your voice, don't let it define you 📣.
• Embrace the creator economy: Create systems and products that resonate 🎨.
• Stay authentic: Be yourself but structured, creativity thrives on constraints 🔒.

Overview

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction The chapter discusses the evolution of personal brands, highlighting how they have transformed from individual expressions into broader creator identities. With the advent of the creator economy, more people aspired to become creators, leveraging the internet to pursue their passions and forge unique paths. Personal brands ceased to be solely personal, instead becoming a vessel for limitless creative and career opportunities.
• 01:00 - 02:30: Golden Age of Creator Economy The chapter 'Golden Age of Creator Economy' discusses the evolution of personal branding and the creator economy. It begins by highlighting how individuals used to showcase their skills and interests online, attracting a like-minded audience to support their work. This was seen as an opportunity to bypass traditional job market limitations. The chapter addresses how the concept of a personal brand and being a creator has significantly deviated from its original intent. It includes a personal anecdote of the author being engaged with the fitness community and following small YouTube creators as a teenager.
• 02:30 - 04:30: Personal Journey in the Creator Economy The chapter titled 'Personal Journey in the Creator Economy' discusses the early days of the creator economy, often referred to as its 'Golden Age.' During this period, authenticity was at its peak, with individuals picking up cameras to share their passions and teach others. Notable figures in the fitness industry, such as Matt Ogus and Chris Lavado, are highlighted as having had a significant influence, impacting not only the industry but also the direction of the author's life.
• 04:30 - 05:00: Reflecting on Purpose The chapter titled 'Reflecting on Purpose' delves into the protagonist's introspection about their life and ambitions during their formative years. It paints a picture of a childhood characterized by a seemingly ordinary routine of playing video games, subsisting on frozen burritos, and enjoying soda. Despite this mundane lifestyle, there was an undercurrent of ambition and a longing for something greater, though lacking the understanding or tools to achieve it. This sets the stage for the protagonist's journey towards self-discovery and finding purpose.
• 05:00 - 08:00: The Problem with Influencers The chapter titled 'The Problem with Influencers' explores the societal pressure on individuals to pursue higher education and lucrative careers, often without considering personal interests or passions. The author reflects on their own experience of being encouraged to become an anesthesiologist due to the financial benefits, highlighting how this influenced their educational choices and online research. It presents a critical view of how external influences, particularly societal expectations, can shape one's career aspirations.
• 08:00 - 11:00: The Role of Creators In this chapter, the speaker expresses gratitude towards creators who provided valuable information and insights about top-paying degrees. Initially considering a long path to become an anesthesiologist, the creators helped change their career direction, sparking a fervent desire to help others in a similar way. The speaker hopes to inspire a new wave of creativity and innovation, akin to a second Renaissance, through their own content creations. This drive to influence and assist others is a major motivating factor in their work.
• 11:00 - 14:30: Long-term Vision for Creators The chapter discusses the role of creators in society, emphasizing the importance of being a role model and sharing personal passions and learnings. It encourages creators to produce content and build products that they envision for the world, placing this vision above secondary skills such as marketing, sales, and writing. The chapter provides a lesson for aspiring creators to focus on manifesting their ideas and visions into reality.
• 14:30 - 17:30: Importance of Social Media The chapter discusses the dual nature of social media, highlighting its potential for both negativity and immense value. It notes that while social media is often criticized for its toxicity and time-wasting memes, it also serves as a vast library of valuable information, allowing users to learn and achieve almost anything. The chapter emphasizes that people are increasingly seeking depth and meaningful content online.
• 17:30 - 21:30: Creating Your Life's Work The chapter titled 'Creating Your Life's Work' discusses the challenge of standing out with unique ideas amidst the plethora of influencers, creators, and personal brands that exist today. These terms often carry a negative connotation as they are perceived as similar and interchangeable - just people posting content online. The chapter emphasizes the importance of understanding these concepts in order to effectively differentiate oneself and avoid the clichéd stigma attached to them.
• 21:30 - 22:30: Experimentation and Persistence The chapter titled 'Experimentation and Persistence' examines the behavior of influencers, contrasting the lack of inherent value in their products with the attention they garner through appearance and gimmicks. This attention is often used to promote harmful products to an impressionable audience. The chapter suggests that influencers generally fail to educate, entertain, or inspire meaningful solutions to real-life problems, implying a critique of figures like 'Lunch Le' or 'Mr. Beast' who are mentioned as unnecessary influences.
• 22:30 - 23:30: Four Pillars of Creative Work The chapter discusses a societal problem where unhealthy food is widely consumed, contributing to obesity and sickness. It mentions a critical point in history where attention spans are decreasing. Despite influential role models having the spotlight, they aren't actively trying to change this trend. Rather than dictating what these figures should do, the author implies that to enact change, individuals need to attract attention and lead by example.
• 23:30 - 25:00: Understanding Brand In this chapter titled 'Understanding Brand,' the author discusses the importance of taking purposeful and fulfilling actions. The narrative emphasizes that selling a product is not inherently negative, as it can be a pathway to independence from working for someone else, which is framed as a job. Jobs are acknowledged as valuable stepping stones. The text underscores the idea that work is integral to life, and money serves as a means to move beyond mere survival, allowing for a more impactful existence. It concludes with a positive note on creators, highlighting an appreciation for their contributions.
• 25:00 - 31:30: Creating Meaningful Content The chapter explores the concept of being a creator, differentiating between being a content creator and a reality creator. It suggests that many people have a narrow view of what it means to be a creator, focusing on posting content for engagement and sales. This mindset often traps them in a cycle of survival mode, where their initial good intentions are overwhelmed by reliance on content templates.
• 31:30 - 35:30: Education as Marketing The chapter titled 'Education as Marketing' delves into how individuals often focus on mimicking existing models rather than innovating with original ideas. It criticizes the tendency to view social media algorithms as mere formulas to master, instead of understanding the underlying human nature that drives them. The chapter argues for a deeper exploration beyond surface-level understanding to achieve meaningful engagement and results.
• 35:30 - 40:00: Systems as Products The chapter 'Systems as Products' examines the tendency for individuals and entities to follow large accounts and participate in engagement groups not out of genuine interest, but to garner more followers by being noticed by the followers of these large accounts. The chapter emphasizes how this behavior reflects a broader trend in various areas of life, where superficial engagement overshadows meaningful interaction. The discussion suggests that there is a missed opportunity to understand the significant aspects of perspectives amidst these interactions.
• 40:00 - 41:00: Conclusion In the conclusion of the book, the author discusses the idea of 'engagement groups' by drawing parallels to various real-life situations. They argue that activities often seen as unproductive or undesirable, such as collaborating in an 'engagement group', are actually quite natural and beneficial. The author compares this to working with friends on homework in school or partnering in business to achieve common goals. Such collaboration and strategizing are central to growth, similar to working together in a game like Call of Duty to compete against other teams.

The Death Of The Personal Brand (& The Future Of Creative Work) Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 personal brands are no longer personal what used to be a Beacon of Hope for those that wanted more out of life the personal brand or becoming a Creator was that thing as the Creator economy started to emerge more and more people wanted to become actual creators because they saw that it was a way to do what they want and with the power of the internet more people could do that a personal brand or a Creator was this thing that allowed you to go whatever path you want and embrace your care
• 00:30 - 01:00 curiosity and display your skill set your interests and attract people like you that wanted to support your work it was a way to take your current skill set put it online and remove all of the limitations that the traditional path and job market allow for so that's what we're here to talk about because the personal brand and being a creator has strayed far from what its original path was now when I was a teenager I was deep into fitness and I remember watching a few small creators online when YouTube
• 01:00 - 01:30 was first gaining popularity and I would consider this the Golden Age of the crater economy it was a peak in authenticity where people were just picking up cameras to share their passions and teach what they've been learning people like Matt ogus Chris levado and other people in the fitness industry at the time come to mind when I think of this and the thing here is the power behind this is that those individuals had such a strong influence in an impact on the direction of my life
• 01:30 - 02:00 I was just this kid who came home from school and played video games all day and cooked frozen burritos at night and chugged five Dr Peppers and then woke up early just so I could maintain my rank in Halo 3 so that my other friend didn't pass me I was a kid with massive Ambitions but didn't have the knowledge or even the awareness of how to make those Ambitions a reality I just knew that I wanted something more but the only thing that I knew at the time was
• 02:00 - 02:30 that I wanted to become an anesthesiologist because it paid a lot right I was just told my entire life you need to go to college you need to go to college and so that was what was on my mind that's what framed my perception and every piece of information that I soaked in everything at school and everything I did was directed toward going to college and becoming an anesthesiologist I my search history for like a week was just looking at different universities checking out their majors and then searching for like
• 02:30 - 03:00 the top paying degrees that I could potentially go into because I didn't want to SP spend 8 to 12 years becoming an anesthesiologist so I can't thank those creators enough for changing the direction of my life and I hope that I can be that person for a lot of people I would say that's one of my driving forces behind actually creating these videos and with this video I've kind of re sparked my desire to at least help create what you would call a second Renaissance
• 03:00 - 03:30 of these creators and not that I want to be the The Guiding Light of them I just want to be a role model and share my passions and the things that I'm learning throughout life and hopefully that changes the direction of some of your lives so my lesson for you if you want to join me on this path is to create the content you want to see in the world and build the product you want to see in the world all of the other skills come secondary all the marketing the sales the writing all of those things come under that Vision they help
• 03:30 - 04:00 actualize it but they are not the driving force because the thing is people are starving for this they're starving for depth on the internet they think it's just filled with toxicity and memes and all of these things that don't matter but they can't pull themselves away from it social media has drastically changed my life and how much I've been able to learn and do because it's just a library of value and information allowing you to learn and do almost anything that you want so that's what we're going to learn in this video it's not how to become a personal brand
• 04:00 - 04:30 but how to stand out with unique ideas and create your life's work because today we have influencers creators and personal Brands these are Concepts that have begun to carry a negative connotation with them in the eyes of the public there isn't really a difference between them they're just people that post content online and they're all relatively similar but when you hear the word influencer personal brand Creator a part of you kind of dies so if we want to avoid these things first we need to understand understand them we need to
• 04:30 - 05:00 create these Concepts so that we can move in a different direction or at least use them as some kind of frame to shape our decision-making so the first one influencers the defining characteristic of an influencer from what I've observed is that they don't sell a product of inherent value they Garner attention with looks and gimmicks to pitch often destructive products to the underdeveloped masses they don't educate entertain or Inspire toward solving a real problem in people's lives no we don't need more lunch Le or Mr Beast
• 05:00 - 05:30 bars that are just contributing to making the population obese and sick we're at this critical turning point in history where attention spans are decreasing processed food is just handed out like candy and the role models who have the most attention are not attempting to do anything about it now I'm not saying that they should I'm not one to tell them what to do I'm one to say that if we want to change it we also have to Garner attention and we have to become the people that try to lead in a
• 05:30 - 06:00 positive direction by doing something purposeful and fulfilling now with all of this don't get me wrong here you know that I don't think selling a product is bad it's the only way out of selling a product for someone else AKA working a job and of course jobs aren't bad either they're just stepping stones the point is that work is a necessary part of life and money is a tool that has allowed us to transcend our survival but the thing is at least try to have a shred of positive impact now let's talk about creators I personally love creators and
• 06:00 - 06:30 I would consider myself a Creator at times but most people are content creators they're not reality creators most people have a myopic view of the word Creator they don't see it as the literal word creator that holds so much depth and meaning they see it as oh I need to post content today or else I'm not going to get engagement and then I'm not going to make sales and they're stuck in survival mode they start out with good intentions but then they quickly become slaves to content templates and they can't have a single
• 06:30 - 07:00 critical thought or original idea that allows them to stand out they don't have ideas worth copying they're the ones that do the copying they see social media in the algorithm as some formulaic thing that you need to study and dissect and understand and while that's true to an extent you're missing the depth behind it you're missing that all of that is shaped by human nature and by diving a bit deeper not only can you understand it more and get better results but you just open up this world of depth that allows you to find meaning and what most people see is superficial
• 07:00 - 07:30 and that's true for many areas of life the other things that they do are just comment under large accounts not because they like the ideas of the large accounts but because they want to get the people that are following the large accounts to follow them now of course again these things aren't bad I'm just saying for almost everything we're talking about we're missing the other half of the perspective we're missing the meaningful part of the perspective here the same thing goes with engagement groups engagement groups troups have become like the the weird child of the
• 07:30 - 08:00 crater economy that people just think are bad things to do but then when you actually zoom out and think about it when you were in school you worked with your friends on your homework you strategized with each other to achieve a goal when you're in business you find business partners to work with you reach out to your network and you get advice when you don't have it you help each other grow your own businesses or projects and that's what a quote unquote engagement group is it's like going into a Call of Duty Lobby and then arguing against other tribe and helping your
• 08:00 - 08:30 team do better and communicating with each other it doesn't have to be this shallow engagement group type thing it has to be and this is a requirement for your success not only online but in any area of your life is to make friends that you work with to grow whatever it is that you're doing the Lone Wolf mentality doesn't work in a social setting what sucks about this to an extent is that I'm partially to blame for contributing to this because I teach
• 08:30 - 09:00 social media I teach writing I teach how to capture attention but I do feel like I'm rather explicit in nuanced with how to go about these things and bringing this meaningful perspective to them so my challenge for you is not to write these things off but to try to find the depth behind not only my teachings but other people's teachings especially other people's teachings or especially on short form social media now that Twitter and Instagram and reals and Tik toks are taking off you have to understand that just by time and
• 09:00 - 09:30 character limitation constraints it's going to be shallow if you are going on top of funnel social media you have to be able to think with depth not them and as we'll talk about in another video and kind of in this video long form is how you actually stand out long form is how you actually make a change long form is how you stop relying on social media algorithms for the security of your future and you start owning your audience in something like an email list but we'll talk talk about all of those
• 09:30 - 10:00 things later now let's touch on the last one of personal Brands there's influencers creators personal Brands personal Brands seem to be an archetype that are simply obsessed with making money and don't care about anything other than that they become glorified search engines by choosing and sticking to a niche and their followers churn they don't actually grow an audience because they're so focused on the high performing topics or just the same topics over and over again that funnel people to their email list or their product or their funnel and whatever they say online doesn't matter as long
• 10:00 - 10:30 as that funnel is growing and as long as they're making money it's just a constant they're just like this The Vessel this empty vessel for people to run through and get put into a product and there's no depth behind it so before we move on of course this isn't necessarily bad but the question to ask yourself is are you helping people do something that actually matters because in order to do that you can't stagnate you must personally continuous ly improve and evolve because if you
• 10:30 - 11:00 understand entropy you understand that by stagnating or doing nothing or staying the same that you aren't doing any of those things you are declining into chaos you are unraveling and that thing isn't going to last very long you're going to be a flash in the pan sass like most people are building right now but again nothing wrong with that Temple Run and Flappy Bird were great games on your phone it's good quick pump and dumb cash but is that really what you're here for so let's talk about the
• 11:00 - 11:30 opposite let's talk about the vision where do we want to take this whole Creator thing what do we want to be what is the path to doing what you want and having a fulfilling line of work don't be a YouTube Creator don't be a personal brand don't be an influencer be you but in a place where your work can be discovered followed and supported right now and for the foreseeable future that's on the internet the internet is a tool social media is a tool software is a tool if you think these things are
• 11:30 - 12:00 toxic and negative that's a direct reflection of yourself algorithms show you more of what you pay attention to social media for the right people is the singular thing that will change their life if you believe it's toxic you close yourself off to that reality and you can't help but wonder why your life is so toxic so in a nutshell where we want to go with this is the ultimate goal of getting paid to be yourself these new forms of technology everything coming up AI social media in general the internet
• 12:00 - 12:30 in general are tools to help and display your work your art and your experience so that others can benefit from it as an example Jordan Peterson isn't a content creator he isn't an influencer he isn't a personal brand that's not his title that's not his role that's not his identity he goes on tours he writes books he leverages social media as a base he uses all of the tools at his disposal to further his life's work he isn't worried about the latest content idea trend because his mind outperforms
• 12:30 - 13:00 any of those the quality of his ideas and his critical thought is what sets him apart and this is regardless of your opinion on Peterson's highs and lows over the years this just true you didn't start on this path to become a quote unquote personal brand on the internet you started because you wanted Freedom autonomy meaningful income the ability to write speak and create about the interests that spark a fire in your soul I'm not proposing that you quit because social media has become what it has that only means it's easier than ever to
• 13:00 - 13:30 stand out even if you feel like you're late I'm proposing that you aim higher because I personally don't see social media as this shallow place with online business models Galore and cheap advice I see it as a new way of life as I've Illustrated many times before in previous videos you're already online most of the day you're already here why not just change your perspective of it and change what you're doing so that it actually benefits you the problem is that you don't know what value you provide how to stand hand out and how to shift focus with the time you're already
• 13:30 - 14:00 spending on the internet to make your creative work a success you have knowledge and skill that other people can benefit from that's not a false statement you do you could help another person right now that's all you need now by the way in terms of creating your life's work or doing all of this stuff or seeing the Creator economy in a different life or building a oneperson business I would check out my course digital economics link is in the description for that the question now is how do you pursue your life's work on
• 14:00 - 14:30 the internet so if you understand the levels of purpose that we talked about in the last video the brutal truth about money you understand that your life's work at some point in the job to Career to calling Evolution will require you to start a business now if thinking of a business or a oneperson business as independent work helps you swallow that pill then please do that when I mention things like internet and business and these things that may cause you to close your mind off because you haven't been
• 14:30 - 15:00 exposed to the information that shows you what those things are that's when you should think about it more critically and try to see the depth behind those things is the internet just this shallow thing that you open on your phone and get distracted in all day no the first thing you need to create your life's work is a positive aim for your life because here's the thing you don't need to know what your life's work is right now and realistically your life's work isn't something you maintain 100% Clarity on at times times it's Crystal Clear but this is often hopeful delusion
• 15:00 - 15:30 which isn't bad but necessary for intense burst of progress at others you have no idea what you're doing but you're still moving toward a positive aim your life's work is an estatic sentence that you can articulate to others as that's impossible your life's work is in the unknown and by nature of the unknown it's unknown if it were known you fell off your path to find security in someone else's you create your life's work through experimentation and evolution your brand content and products won't stay the same they will
• 15:30 - 16:00 change as you discover new goals for yourself but you won't discover those goals unless you start and pursue your current ones so if you aren't sure on how to orient yourself in a positive direction deeply understand what you don't want in life an antiv Vision that brings Clarity to your vision is it a job you despise then your aim is to create more enjoyable work and learn everything necessary to achieve that anything else is a distraction is it being overweight and unconfident then your aim is the opposite of that get mad at yourself two quotes that explain this
• 16:00 - 16:30 quite well is that which you don't hate you tolerate by Malcolm X and no tree can grow to Heaven unless its roots reach down to Hell from Carl Young so the first thing you need is a positive aim for your life the second thing you need is a way to attract an audience now the thing here is that the term followers has lost its punch and we're going to talk about this in a future video about how followers don't matter anymore because it you see it all the time someone can go viral on Tik Tok make a million dollars and then just continue to repeat that and they only
• 16:30 - 17:00 have 500 followers so in terms of followers I prefer the term readers but since not everyone identifies as a writer let's just call it an audience because that's a first principle of business you need people in order to pay you for what you do in your business the value you provide if you don't have an audience you don't have a business now there are a few beautiful things about the internet itself first is how far your work spreads is a skill that can be learned and practiced not luck second is there are people who relate to your anti vision and for your future meaning you
• 17:00 - 17:30 can attract people to the things you talk about and the third thing is that it's free accessible and the majority of the population has access to it so if you're trying to attract people to your work and one of your first options isn't a free and accessible platform on the internet then you're doing something wrong unless you know exactly what you're doing that's this video isn't for you if you just know exactly what you're doing I'm personally of the belief that social media was created from a deeper desire for human connection sharing your
• 17:30 - 18:00 knowledge and solving problems at scale and now that it's here and because of shallow human distractions taking over not too many people see it as that they don't see it as a vessel to pursue their life's work you're telling me you have indirect access to nearly everyone in the world and you don't think any of them can benefit from what you have to offer yes it takes development and skill acquisition but once you truly see the potential for everyone to have a business in this global decentralized economy it's hard to pursue any other path and as nval said there are almost 7 billion people on this planet someday I
• 18:00 - 18:30 hope there will be almost 7 billion companies now of course this is just speculation for the future but it seems to be the way things are going and you can also have a company/ business and work a job or do what you currently do or whatever it may be we don't know if we're going to end up in a world with Ubi but even then you're still going to want to work because it's a natural part of life so the only option then is to actually finally pursue your passions what I'm trying to encourage you to do right now the point here is that the internet is how you attract an audience
• 18:30 - 19:00 to your life's work an audience large or small with small being enough to make more than enough money to be fulfilled is not optional because you weren't working for a company that attracts audience for you that you just play this specific role that you were hired for and that you can be replaced for and the audience doesn't have to come from social media but it's going to come from media like paid ads or podcast sponsorships or whatever it may be social media is just the free and readily accessible route that I believe should form the foundation of all the
• 19:00 - 19:30 other things because you can test content on social media before you decide to blow money on ads with it so you have a positive aim for your life you're improving you're developing you're gaining value and then you're two attracting an audience to that value now the third thing you need is a project turned into a product projects are how you achieve the goals in your life projects are how you build a solution to a problem projects are how you guide experimentation education and skill acquisition profitable products provide a transformation they solve a problem to
• 19:30 - 20:00 help you get closer toward a goal like I talk about in mental monetization so if you aren't building a project every single day that pushes you toward your vision for the future you are playing a losing game and your attention automatically gets drawn to the projects of others so you can make money and survive build more projects it can be a program that helps you get in shape it can be a planner that helps you stay productive it can be a cortex or a notion system that helps you write content take notes track progress almost anything and either way templates are
• 20:00 - 20:30 always beneficial to include in some kind of a product so if you want to include a template or a worksheet or whatever it may be consider using cortex especially when we eventually offer an affiliate program and it's just a free app it's free for Life unless you have a team or other things the point here is that if you attract an audience with a similar personality and a similar vision for the future as you AKA You Are The Niche then the projects that you build for yourself to achieve your own goals can easily be turned into products that
• 20:30 - 21:00 other people pay for that's how you productize yourself the second point is that if you're just using other people's Solutions throughout your life and not experimenting with your own or creating your own like a fitness program or a meditation program or a writing system or whatever it may be you need to start experimenting with your own way so that you can pass down better ways to do things and that's how things improve we're not creating products to completely solve the problems in
• 21:00 - 21:30 people's lives because that's not on us that's on the person that has the problem it's up to them if they want to solve the problem we're simply giving things to people to experiment with to make that process more efficient over time we're gradually increasing the efficiency that comes from Evolution and helping contribute towards that so you have a positive direction you're making progress you're becoming valuable you have an audience that you're attracting you have a product so you have a way to actually make money the fourth thing you need is experim exp mentation iteration
• 21:30 - 22:00 and persistence because throughout this entire Journey you never land on the one specific thing I've launched 10 products 10 free downloads I've had a few hundred YouTube videos 50,000 plus tweets I think like 1200 Instagram posts I've done thousands upon thousands of iterations on my content you don't just post one tweet and they get famous you don't just make one product and then get rich the first thing of anything that you do is going to suck and the longer you delay that the longer you're
• 22:00 - 22:30 delaying actually creating something good the most powerful mindset you could adopt here is to just put the thing out just publish the thing get the feedback and then improve once you publish the thing your journey isn't done that's the start of the journey okay we understand very big picture how to pursue your life's work now as a personal brand or Creator or these things that we talked about that have lost their punch and lost their direction we need to learn how to to set ourselves apart we need to
• 22:30 - 23:00 learn how to not become those things in essence we need to learn to be ourselves but in a structured way so that it actually makes sense to people because you can go and be yourself when you're talking to someone else but they may not like it you need to learn how to be creative and constrain things creativity is in the constraints creativity isn't freedom and Chaos it's the limitations that you impose to create that art so to start with this the four pillars of creative work are brand content product
• 23:00 - 23:30 and promotion these are the things that are shaping how you distribute your value to the world these are the boundaries in which you can start to get creative because most people focus on the skill and then they have no idea how to monetize it so they become a starving artist the second problem is that most people just don't know how to stand out they start they buy a few courses and then they never Branch out of what the courses teach the courses aren't meant to be your mind they aren't meant to take over they aren't meant to be an
• 23:30 - 24:00 ideology or Dogma that you stick to they're supposed to help you reach a certain stepping stone like a job and if you become a slave to the teachings from a course or a video that you learn it's the same you're you're not out of the Matrix you just put yourself in a new Matrix so the first one brand brand is an environment so stop thinking about your brand as just your social media profile picture or your banner or your bio or the designs of your website it's everything it's the world that your
• 24:00 - 24:30 readers are coming into with you brand is an environment where people come to transform you attract people to a vision for the future you help people move away from an anti Vision you illustrate your worldview story and philosophy for Life across every single touch Point your banner profile picture bio Linkin bio landing page design pinned content post threads newsletters videos and the rest brand isn't Illustrated right away when the person just visits your profile brand is the accumulation of ideas in
• 24:30 - 25:00 your reader's mind after 3 to 6 months of following you just have some self-awareness when you follow someone else you're like interesting okay I'm going to follow and then you start to get their content you start to form an opinion about them you start to identify with certain things that they say and then you can kind of decide hm am I in alignment with this person's goals should I continue following them or am I not and are they ruining my life so when you're thinking of ideas or creating content or Building Products whatever it may be you have to filter that through your brand Vision people will buy from
• 25:00 - 25:30 you even if you have the same products at a higher price point as your competitor so that was brand it's kind of abstract it's out there but you just have to understand that brand is created as you do things as you launch products as you write content it's not just your static like when people look at your profile that's not what your brand is your brand is the little digital house that you are inviting people in and the rooms are your content and everything like that your profile picture and your banner are the door of the house so the
• 25:30 - 26:00 second thing that we need to understand is content how do we write good content that stands out because content you need that to build an audience even if you're doing paid ads you need to write the content even if you're creating a YouTube video you need to write the content of the script if you want to learn how to write any of those things consider joining the writers boot camp that starts October 28th for cortex people don't follow information they follow perspectives 10 people can talk
• 26:00 - 26:30 about the same old topics but one of them can say it in such a way that brings an entirely new meaning to it perspectives are infinite sometimes it's not about coming up with a completely different idea sometimes it's about talking about the same idea but from a deeper lens this is what I've done with my YouTube videos and I think that's a driving part of My Success is that I take these ideas that perform really well that seem kind of shallow on the surface but I know there's something deeper and then I write to disect that and I form a deeper philosophy around
• 26:30 - 27:00 that and that's what people have told me they like they like that my content leans more toward the depth so if you want to stand out find ideas that are already working save ideas from books social media podcasts and videos then turn them into an original idea by changing the perspective but how do you change the perspective for knowledge work and creative work and doing all of this stuff you need to learn how to think with impact so along with cortex the second brain software note taking writing software that we built we have
• 27:00 - 27:30 created this system called cor notes now this is nothing new if you've taken my 7 days to genius ideas free course that won't be a thing anymore you have to take the second brain course for free inside of the cortex Community but over 70,000 people have learned this system and it helps them turn any idea into their own original Deep idea this is a note-taking system for writers creators and marketers not people who just want to save the same information that they read they want to transform the ideas
• 27:30 - 28:00 into their own creative Firepower that can be used as Legos for whatever content they create albe it a newsletter or whatever it is so here's what you do you don't need to use cortex it's free and there's templates and stuff but you don't need to you just need to learn how to think like this so the first thing you do is you have an idea this can be from conversation this can be from a a video you watch pull something from this pull the death of the personal brand as an idea pull brand as an environment or content is novel perspectives or how to
• 28:00 - 28:30 think with impact just take any idea and now you're going to pick three to four of the following things and flesh that idea out with these the first thing is problem so illustrate a problem associated with the idea and how it impacts people's lives second is goal so write out desirable goals people want to achieve to overcome the problem third is example a personal experience or tangible example to help people understand and ground the idea the fourth is benefit so the benefits of overcoming the problem and achieving the
• 28:30 - 29:00 goal the fifth is process a step-by-step process for overcoming the problem and achieving the goal and the sixth is concept so a word or name that helps make sense of everything above take an idea fill out three to four of those things write it down right now and you'll see how much more powerful it is for thinking in that way I almost always start anything I think about with a problem if I have an idea I immediately think what's the problem related to that and that leads to so much good content
• 29:00 - 29:30 ideas because problem is the Inception of gold that's how you frame someone's mind that's how you capture attention that's how you show whether or not the idea is valuable from the start when people are receptive to an idea they understand the problem when you watch a video like this you usually start with the problem because it qualifies whether or not the video is for them so they can stay or they can leave so if you understand persuasion or content or marketing you understand how powerful this thinking system can be and if you do this with multiple ideas and you
• 29:30 - 30:00 start to connect them together you're like holy crap I know so much more than I thought I did and I finally feel like I can write about this stuff articulately if you want to see examples of those I have the cor notes template and an example in the description another thing with this is that one of my most popular YouTube videos that led to 200,000 subscribers in just a few months was the onep person business model how to productize yourself the oneperson business is a concept from the cor notes how to product I yourself is a process from the cor notes so in order
• 30:00 - 30:30 to create my content I just pull from those blocks it's like okay one person business sounds cool how to productize yourself put them together in a title fill out the content of the video with the notes now you don't just you can just write one sentence for each of those things like problem goal benefits example process concept but of course it helps to just continue expanding on it these notes aren't done once you're done with them you're meant to capture more ideas in into them and flesh them out deeper and make more connections and
• 30:30 - 31:00 then once you have them you just string them together into your writing or you take individual elements and turn them into uh social media posts so we've talked about brand we've talked about content both of those I have other videos on if you want to go more in detail with them the next is how to think which is kind of how you write content in it of itself now the next thing we need to understand is that education is the new marketing you can't write or sell whatever you want because you don't understand how becoming interested in something works people
• 31:00 - 31:30 aren't just born interested in something they're slowly exposed to ideas from beginner to Advanced until they become interested in that thing first they're exposed to why they should care about the thing second they're exposed to how a paino or problem is affecting their life third they're exposed to a solution or goal that creates a desire to change so in other words people don't find your topics or your writing or your content interesting because you don't use the corote system that we used earlier you don't talk in problems goals examples
• 31:30 - 32:00 benefits processes and Concepts when you start talking about a new topic establish interest by writing content about why it's important to your brand Vision making people aware of pain points in their lives giving actionable steps to overcome those pain points create a free guide that goes over all of the above turn parts of that guide into posts threads newsletters videos Etc your job isn't to find a niche set of customers on something like social media where most of your content is being shared to random people who don't care about about you your job is to create customers with constant education
• 32:00 - 32:30 and brand awareness that's what a lot of people don't understand is that you're being spread to random people on the internet having a niche isn't going to help you much aside from picking a few people up from that what if I just pick up more people by talking a bit more broadly and then educate them into a niche now the last thing we need to understand is that systems are the new product so we understand a brand we understand content how to attract traffic we understand marketing how to Market a product and now systems are the new product we need to understand how to
• 32:30 - 33:00 create a product that people actually want at this point in time we're in the systems economy people don't want a solution to their problems they want your solution to their problems there are tons of writing products out there but what makes something like to our writer special it's a system that I created through experience it is novel and original and sure it's pulled and learned from other people's teachings but the way that I created it through my own experience is what sets it apart it doesn't teach a bunch of academic
• 33:00 - 33:30 writing nonsense that didn't help me at all I'm not including things that didn't help me in my journey because I had a few problems when I started writing first is I had trouble having an endless source of content ideas and then second I didn't want to waste a ton of time creating content for all platforms so I had to start experimenting with my own system my goal for the system was clear right all of the content I need to in under 2 hours a day that way my audience growth is handled and I can focus on building better products and enjoying life so that's the first step to creating a system is having an extremely
• 33:30 - 34:00 clear goal what is the desired outcome in what time frame what's the problem you're solving so I started testing solutions to have more content ideas I created swipe files steps to generate ideas and templates if I still couldn't think of anything I mapped out exactly what I was going to attempt to write each week three posts a day one thread a week and one newsletter a week during that process I realized I could crosspost my writing to all social platforms this is a public thing you can see it happening right before your eyes I do it every single day I also realized
• 34:00 - 34:30 that threads could be turned into carousels and newsletters could be turned into YouTube videos if the system didn't flow I would try new things the next week from there I realized I could copy paste my newsletter to my blog embed the YouTube video in that blog promote my products in that blog and turn that blog into more content ideas then I could link that blog under my content each day this led to more newsletter subscribers YouTube subscribers and product sales I realized that if everything I did was newsletter Centric that's all I had to worry about for both growing my audience and
• 34:30 - 35:00 promoting my products so that's how you stand out in a world of copy paste products Brands and content yes it takes time and experience but now that you have the awareness you can actually start to work towards it you may not Escape what we talked about earlier about influencers personal Brands creators Etc but you have something to work towards that's what you do this doesn't change in an instant so that's it for this video thank you for watching like subscribe links in the description check that stuff out bye