The Creative's Guide to Personal Branding (Full Playbook) – Transcript

00:00In this video, we are going to talk about the art of the personal brand. How to build a personal brand from beginner to advanced. So, I'm going to cover about 20 super critical concepts in here from levels of a personal brand to funnels, pillars, testing, what makes sense for who, the difference between personal branding and creator, how to achieve your goals, content types to do it. I am super excited about this because over the last few years of building a personal brand for the first time, I have messed up constantly done

00:28the wrong things. I've launched stuff and not followed up. I've blown money. I've gotten into bad content creation habits. But every single time I picked myself up and got right. And right now, I've been on this trajectory, having made content just a little bit under 3 years, coming up on a million followers, and headed to be one of the bigger personal brands in the space, if not in general. And I've had to actually think really critically about this because I've done workshops at companies who want their teams to develop it personal brands. I've trained now thousands of people in Cut 30 to make content for the

00:55first time. is I've had to distill so much of this down into actionable frameworks and that's really where the power is. And it's also something that I'm passionate about, especially for a younger generation of people to stand out and especially for creatives, marketers, people who have that special something. You actually really get to shine when you put yourself out there.

01:13There's a lot of ways to do it. People think about it the wrong way. And we're going to break it all down here. Let's lock it. So, first, it's funny. You will see clickbait on here and on social media that's like personal brands are dead. And what I think they really are meant to say is that being an influencer sucks and being a creator is not for everybody. But an interesting thing is promoting yourself is permanent. It's settled in. It's part of now our cultural fabric that we exist in an era of like AI resume generation and review.

01:40We're remote. There's less mentorship. There's gaps in training. And you can see an inevitability when the workforce just basically looks like little blips on an AI radar. And personal brand is a way to steer yourself out of that. And I like to always use this chart when I talk about this where basically we used to have these traditional lives. You have a job and then for many Americans usually there's a side hustle, right?

02:01But now with the creator journey for any creative that's become much simpler because basically you have so many ways to easily make money that don't involve having a whole separate business. The actual networks will pay you to post on them. You can do affiliate content and stuff like Tik Tok shop. But also what I don't even mention in this chart is that you get basically more enterprise value with a personal brand especially when you're recognized in your niche.

02:20companies begin to pay a premium for those people over time and that doesn't happen right away. But I say all this to say personal brand is permanent. We are never going back to a previous era. You talk to a lot of people that were in the workforce during co and they just want everything to go back simpler. You keep having this thought of like when are things going to be like normal again or easy or simple and the answer is they're not. They grow increasingly complicated.

02:40Things are increasingly noisy. One of the biggest things that holds people back from wanting to have a personal brand is it feels overwhelmed to be like in addition to everything else I do now I got to create content. And to me, that really feels like a channeling issue. You're overwhelmed because you're overwhelmed by sensationalist news and your phone. They are occupying so much of your brain power. You're going to be so much less overwhelmed by creating something you're excited about or promoting yourself in a way that then leads to rewards for you down the line.

03:06I cannot describe how big that shift is in what you do with some of your time. But one other critical aspect of modern culture to think about here is what I call the flattening of content or the views are down theorem. If you see social media content, you created it all now. see all the stuff online and views are down. I can't get views anymore. And one of the big reasons for this is there's more creators than ever, more personal brands than ever. More content popping out into the world. Also, with that comes algorithms that are getting way better at giving people content super relevant to their interests and needs. They do this by geography. They

03:34do it by interest. They do it by overlapping interest. If you are in Tulsa and you are into anime and real estate, you are getting an algorithm on multiple social networks, YouTube, Instagram, Tik Tok, X that is built around that. It also knows your political beliefs. It probably knows what you're attracted to. Terrifying. on one aspect, but on the other aspect, there's simply less of a market for everything. If you make big universal content, you're competing against way more niche stuff that may get less views, but is more interesting to the viewer. But that is the opportunity for small personal brands where people that are just trying to achieve something,

04:02make it easier for them in their lives is you can actually speak to a niche that's a,000 people or 2,000 people and achieve the objectives you want to achieve without having to create this huge thing. So, I actually really feel like the sweet spot for most personal brands and people that are making content is really in this like 3 to 10,000 views a video range where if you're doing more than that, it's kind of going outside of what you're trying to achieve. If you can consistently do that, you have a solid skill and you're able to reach people that are genuinely interested and invested in moving your personal brand forward. This is a good

04:29way to note start talking about the levels of personal brand. There are four levels starting with zero make it extra complicated and it starts with the difference between a personal brand and a creator. The goal of establishing a personal brand is different than the goal of trying to be employed as a creator. I want to distinctly do that because I made a lot of videos about becoming a creator. But a personal brand, your goal is to help you in your career or in future things that you want to do. Have a platform with which that will help. And everyone who's online intrinsically has a level of personal

04:55brand. So I call that level zero. But you can go through first two levels of this and make some content but not truly be a creator. You can casually make content. And the goal of this is not necessarily to make you money. It is to again build the brand. the perception others have of you when you're not in the room. Easiest way to define the brand. Then level one, this is the level of personal brand I feel almost everyone should aspire to, especially if you're in the business world at all, is a personal brand is an extension of what you do, but does not define you. You make content and you put things out there in the universe on whatever

05:23networks you choose that helps tell your story, show people what you do, why you're special, whether that's at work or personal, but again, it doesn't define you. You are not a creator. It's not a primary thing you aspire to. You're not trying to live off it. You don't think about it every single day. is just a thing that is in the habit of what you do. That is level one. And there are five archetypes I like to talk about in level one. The first is the carousel dumper. This is someone who basically posts mostly on Instagram and says, "I'm going to post carousels.

05:47Great format for this, of a bunch of the things that are happening in my life in rapid succession." So, I'll have 10 photos of a thing I worked on at work or multiple things that happened over the summer. Whatever it is, you can use that to begin to showcase to people what it is that's happening with you. And you'll notice that some people run this kind of to the moon. You'll notice that there's like creative directors with 70,000 followers who kind of just do this. But the stuff is cool enough that it's actually beginning to got them some serious traction. Do not underestimate this. Second is the documentarian. You are using social media to document your life milestones, your brand and career

06:14milestones and the things that you are doing regularly at work. Hey, I got this raise. Hey, I worked on this project. Again, you're not trying to be a creator. Maybe you're not doing this a ton. You do it occasionally. You're posting on LinkedIn. You're celebrating those milestones, whatever it is. The third is the hobbyist. You have something you're passionate you care about. Maybe you are a salesperson at a roofing company, but you're also a woodworker. You make content about the woodworking. and you begin to have some depth in your personality so that people that know you and you get closer on it know you for this other thing. This gets really powerful when there's alignment.

06:39Hey, you're a real but you're really into interior design. And so you're bringing that hobby into real life. You're showcasing mood boards. You're showing off stuff you like. You're doing some response content about that. You bring that hobby that's tangential to what you do into the social media that's around you. This is an excellent way to do that. You're just passionate about one aspect of that or a cross-section subculture of that. It can bleed over.

06:58If you're a cinematographer and you love cars and you are making cinematography, solid, really good-looking, real content about the cars in the free time, that's going to be a massive benefit to you inside your career to show off that you're good at content on social media. Develop a portfolio that's a side of your work while not having anyone question that this guy's really into cars. Then we have the casual poster, people that just document stuff in their life, especially if you're extroverted, like to yap to the camera. Or if you're funny, you like to do skits, anything like that. You are just posting. Not high production, not super thought through, but you are putting content on the internet. A huge chunk of Gen Z is

07:25just like this. They make some skits with their friends. They post some content. They're yapping about whatever it is they bought. That is a thing. It is an archetype. It is super useful to begin building a personal brand. Harder for older generations who just don't think like this. And then the journeyman or woman that is you are trying to accomplish a specific thing and documenting it. Learning to draw in 60 days. You're basically saying I am covering X in X time frame. I'm doing that online. You basically have gone from zero to one, but you have an actual plan of what you're doing for it because being having a personal brand like this

07:53helps you understand content, how it goes out in the world. This is a huge thing to think about. Everything we do now and almost every business comes back to content. What's going on the internet? What's going in the ads? This is inherently now how we consume. This is a a cultural thing that we participate in that you then understand more of by having this brand. It makes you intrinsically more valuable and makes more people aware of you. Most people who establish a personal brand don't need to go beyond this. Then we get to level two where having a personal brand is part of your life and begins to define you online and offline. You're

08:20known for it. This is the spot where you begin to develop a brand. You make some money off of it. Maybe you are a creator, you're being known for it, you're doing speaking gigs, whatever it is, and you begin to think, maybe I should be doing this full-time. This is the hardest thing you reach because what I found is a lot of creators don't actually want to do this full-time is an amazing compliment. And what will happen here traditionally is the first job or place this happens at. It gets kind of awkward. People are discovering it. It wasn't there when they started. They're like, "Wait, this person does this now.

08:44It's weird." The second scenario you get in where people knew about it from the start is probably part of the reason they brought you in is amazing. You get to have these two things that exist in symbiosis. there's value for everybody. Then you get to level three when it's larger than life. You build a personal brand that grows beyond just what you post to your initial audience. Other people talk about it that influences trends. It becomes something big. This is the Gary V's and all the kind of gurus you may know, people that are really respected within their niche or people refer to all the time used to be reserved for authors, right? And people

09:11that like had this more traditional cloud, the Seth Goden, Tim Ferrris, Cheryl Samberg like era personal brand. Now that is people that make stuff on the internet. And you may aspire to that. We're going to talk all the way through to that in this video, but I do recommend for most people just stick to number one. But before you even decide, decide where you want to go. Think about what you want. You can always change this later. But think about you, what your priorities are, where you want to go with this. And then I want you to know that there is no competition. This really smart kid, Brier, who did Cut 30.

09:37I saw his videos on TikTok. He made a video, it's actually I think this is someone else's idea, but it's a video about how there's no competition. And there's a like a model out there for this. I think this is a really important thing to think about and something that has become really apparent to me in my personal brand journey that I didn't really believe at the beginning. So, first you have a hundred people that say they all want to start a personal brand in your niche, whatever that is, hairdresser, sales, funnel, marketing, whatever it is, 80 of those people that say they want to do that will never even start. They will not break zero to one.

10:01So, if you break zero to one, you say you're going to do it, you make those first pieces of content, you establish a plan, beating 80% of the people that just the people that said they wanted to do it, not you're already over probably to the 1% of everybody. That's a crazy thing to think about. Then 10 more of them are going to quit early. They come in, they'll do something like that 3-day challenge we did, they'll never think about it again. Now you're down to just 10 of 100. Five of them are going to get shiny object syndrome. and they're going to say, "Actually, you know what? I want to do crypto." That's going to lead you down to there's now 95 of those 100 people are gone. If you have been decided to do this and you do it for more than like 60 days, of the five of

10:29you left, two of them are just going to be unlucky. Some shit's going to happen in their life. Stuff's not going to quite work out. They're going to break an arm. Whatever it is, life happens. Now, you're down to three. So, 100 people that started who want to do that same thing as you, three are left, and you are one of them. Those are going to be the only people in your niche creating content. Now, obviously, if there's tens and tens and tens of thousands of people in your niche that aspire to do it, there'll be a bigger pool. But in most likelihood, there aren't. And I think about that on YouTube. I look around on YouTube constantly like why are there not more marketing creators that I want to watch like marketing and branding. There's a handful and they're like my friends for the most part and some big ones have

10:57been around forever. But of like this in the last like couple years there's basically no one who's above like 50k besides like Kane Callaway who's a friend of mine but even then he's very focused in on like storytelling social media but there's really like very few people being like let's talk about campaigns. Let's talk about why this works. Let's do these thorough tutorials. Let's really approach this like a YouTuber. Which is just shocking to me being it's one of the biggest industries in the world. There's kind of an infinite demand of those people that who will consume it on YouTube. There is money to be made off of it and people just don't do it. Now, there's a whole pool. There's there's 100 people who do

11:24this on Instagram. They actually make marketing content. Of those 100 people, all of them, all hundred of them have been like, "Should I do YouTube? I want to do YouTube." That has been unanimous. And of that, I can literally call out the 10 to 20 that have tried and the 10 that quit too early, most of my friends tried, and made like two videos. I've got shiny object syndrome. And there's three left. And of like literally, it's Kane and myself and Mark now with open residency, right? It's a small group.

11:43And I say all that to say there is no competition. You, no matter who you are, can stand out. So something you've heard me talking about is that the marketing funnel is not flowing the same. Things are different than a year ago. 60% of searches now and without a click. Buyers do research with AI and attention is scattered. Moving people through your brand from awareness to consideration to decision used to be a funnel, but now it's more of a loop that's always evolving. And marketers have to think like this. That's why I wanted to share

12:10this new framework from HubSpot. Who I'm partnering with on this video is Products I've used for more than a decade. They understand this change and created Loop Marketing, a growth playbook for the AI era. And they actually put together some free, super useful marketing prompts you can put inside your favorite LLM. They're across the four stages of the new loop and I'm going to break that down with some examples. So, the first stage of this loop is express. This helps you build a brand guide book and apply it. The prompts in this stage tackle things from brand differentiation analysis, customer