Video of the Day32:26Caleb Ralston · Tutorial
How to Build a Disgustingly Good Personal Brand
A 17-year personal-branding veteran's 7-step framework for building a brand that earns trust and drives business, not just views.
July 24thThe argument in one line.
A rebrand is not a new logo but a deliberate swap of the associations in your audience's mind, and it only works if your revenue can survive the gap between the old brand's leads and the new one's.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- A creator or founder whose income comes mostly from inbound leads their own content generates, who now wants to be known for something else.
- Someone tired of the niche or the single format they got known for, who suspects a pivot is right but has no idea how to sequence it.
- An operator with real expertise built behind the scenes who wants to move that expertise to the front of their public brand without losing the current audience.
- Anyone carrying a reputation problem, whether one loud incident or years of small ones, who needs a plan for separation rather than damage control.
- A solo creator or a small media team deciding whether to change medium, change platforms, or both, and how fast to shift the ratio of new content to old.
SKIP IF…
- You have not gotten traction yet. The course says plainly that no traction is a positioning problem, not a rebrand problem, and a rebrand will not fix it.
- You only want a visual refresh: new photo, new bio, new colors. That is a brand refresh and it is explicitly out of scope here.
- Your goal is views. The whole framework optimizes for trust and buying behavior, and it treats chasing virality as the enemy.
- You want tactics you can run tonight. Most of the value sits in written exercises that take hours and only pay off over months.
The full version, fast.
Branding is the consistent pairing of yourself with a thing, and brand is the association that pairing produces, so rebranding means picking new things to pair with and abandoning the old ones. The course gates that decision behind a 3:1:3 rule: three triggers that justify a rebrand, one filter called the rebrand runway that measures how much of your revenue depends on the brand you are about to dismantle, and three paths ranging from a full public rebrand to a staged one built behind the scenes to a simple refresh. Execution runs on three worldbuilding exercises, a credibility bank of detailed case entries, a common enemy framed as a concept rather than a person, and interest stacking of the non-work parts of you, then a content plan that bridges the old audience to the new one and moves the ratio only when performance clears 0.75x of your old median.
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00:00 – 00:28
01 · Intro
Rebranding defined as establishing new associations and leaving old ones behind, plus the four-section roadmap for the course.
00:28 – 03:57
02 · Defining a Rebrand
Brand refresh versus rebrand, branding as intentional consistent pairing, and Instagram's origin as the check-in app Bourbon as the worked example.
03:57 – 06:23
03 · Do You Need One (The 3:1:3 Rule)
Three triggers, one filter, three paths. Plus the disqualifier: no traction and no clarity is a positioning problem, not a rebrand problem.
06:23 – 11:34
04 · The 3 Triggers
Tired of the niche or format, carrying a bad reputation built from one scandal or many micro ones, or a changed desired outcome.
11:34 – 17:29
05 · The Rebrand Runway
The revenue filter. UTM tracking, the limits of attribution, the halo effect, and four questions that measure how dependent income is on the current brand.
17:29 – 23:23
06 · The 3 Paths
Full rebrand in public, staged rebrand built behind the scenes while the old brand pays the bills, or a refresh when the new direction is an extension rather than a replacement.
23:23 – 23:34
07 · Section 3: How to Change Your Personal Brand
Section card marking the shift from diagnosis to execution.
23:34 – 36:58
08 · The Rebrand Roadmap
Four questions worked with thought starters: what am I trying to achieve, what new things must I be known for, what must I do, and what must I learn.
36:58 – 38:57
09 · Worldbuilding Overview
Seven worldbuilding elements named, three selected for phase one of a rebrand, with the fiction-universe analogy for why worlds create loyalty.
38:57 – 52:53
10 · Legends and Lore
Backstory as credibility, failures paired with takeaways, and a full walkthrough of one credibility bank entry across its six parts using the Bryce case.
52:53 – 1:09:48
11 · Common Enemy
Why calling out people is the wrong play, the two-column differentiation exercise for finding contrarian takes, testing three of them, and reframing the winner into an enemy.
1:09:48 – 1:27:28
12 · Interest Stacking
How relationships deepen through accumulated shared interests, the Linkin Park and QFC story, non-niche human inputs, and integrating them without making content about them.
1:27:28 – 1:27:54
13 · Brand Statement (Bonus)
A one to three sentence statement compressing where you were, where you are going, and how, for yourself and your team.
1:27:54 – 1:28:07
14 · Section 4: How a Rebrand Changes Content
Section card opening the content strategy half of the course.
1:28:07 – 1:29:11
15 · Medium and Platforms Overview
The four mediums, and the point most people skip: your current medium and platforms were chosen to serve the brand you are leaving.
1:29:11 – 1:31:23
16 · When to Change Mediums
Three reasons: the new audience consumes something else, you are ready for something new, or a bad reputation makes a lower-visibility medium the smarter move.
1:31:23 – 1:34:27
17 · How to Change Mediums
Swap fully but gradually, using the old medium to announce the new one, or stack and add only if bandwidth genuinely exists. The Jack and Coke warning against dilution.
1:34:27 – 1:36:12
18 · When to Change Platforms
Three reasons: the new audience is elsewhere, the platform must follow the medium, or you simply want to try one, filtered through bandwidth and outcome.
1:36:12 – 1:44:34
19 · How Many Platforms
One primary and one secondary for solo creators, three primaries plus one to three secondaries for teams, with the Eye of Sauron rotation, then the medium and platform audit exercise and a three-phase transition plan.
1:44:34 – 1:56:40
20 · Content Ideas
The ideation equation: painful problem plus unique solution equals idea, idea yields angles, angles yield content. Worked end to end with ten angles off one idea.
1:56:40 – 2:17:10
21 · Posting Cadence
Successive approximation, the four bridges (setting, format, analogy, interest), starting ratios, the median benchmark with 0.75x and 2x thresholds, and what not to do.
2:17:10 – 2:21:06
22 · Delivery
Three questions on whether your tone still represents you, how people responded to it, and whether it fits the audience you now want. Plus the honest limits of self-auditing delivery.
2:21:06 – 2:26:09
23 · Wrapping Paper
Content format versus packaging format, fatigue rates, and four questions on the new audience's language, references and visual signals so the wrapper filters for them.
2:26:09 – 2:27:19
24 · Outro
Partnership pitch and a handoff to a follow-up video on three critical personal brand mistakes.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- Changing your logo is a brand refresh, not a rebrand. A refresh preserves existing associations while a rebrand replaces them.
- Branding is an intentional pairing of relevant things done consistently, and brand is the byproduct: the audience associating you with the other thing.
- Rebrand is an action, not an outcome. The outcome is a new brand.
- If your content isn't working and nobody knows what you stand for, you don't need a rebrand. You skipped brand positioning and a rebrand will not fix it.
- A bad reputation is rarely one big scandal. For most people online it is a sequence of micro scandals that stack into an association.
- Who you appear on screen with becomes part of your brand, because there is no nuance applied on the internet.
- The real question before rebranding is whether your business can afford the gap between the old brand's leads drying up and the new brand's leads arriving.
- Expect six to eighteen months of reduced lead flow on a full public rebrand, and know that some take two or three years.
- Never be known only for a format, because formats fatigue and you will be trapped inside one.
- Credibility comes from pairing your failures with a takeaway for the audience, not from a highlight reel.
- Make your common enemy a concept or an action, not a person. Calling out individuals borrows their brand equity and buys the wrong attention.
- A contrarian take is what you believe. A common enemy is that same belief reframed as the thing standing between the audience and their goal.
- If you cannot list five contrarian takes in your new space, you are not deep enough in it to be teaching it yet.
- Sharing is pairing. Every time a non-work interest shows up in your content, you are pairing it with the new subject matter.
- Solo creators should run one primary platform and one secondary. Teams get three primaries and one to three secondaries, and nothing more.
- Benchmark new content against the median of your old content over 60 to 90 days, not the average, because one viral hit destroys the average.
- New content performing at 0.75x of your old median is working. At 2x or better, accelerate the ratio immediately.
- One post is not a trend. Judge the new direction on the median of several weeks, not a single result.
- If underperforming content gets more volume instead of an audit, you are just making bad content faster.
- Content formats fatigue slowly and packaging formats fatigue fast, so refresh titles, thumbnails and hooks far more often than structure.
- Your wrapping is an audience filter, not just an attention grabber, so old packaging keeps recruiting the audience you are trying to leave.
- Painful problems are costly problems: costly in time, money, reputation, stress. Solve one and you never have to argue for your authority.
- If you can name a problem and its cost but cannot name your unique solution, you have not actually solved it and should not be teaching it.
- One idea attacked from ten angles becomes ten pieces of content, which is how you stop running out of things to make.
What actually has to change when you change lanes.
WHAT TO LEARN
Changing what you're known for is a revenue decision before it's a creative one, and the work splits into a go/no-go audit, three association-building exercises, and a content ratio you move only on evidence.
02Defining a Rebrand
- A brand refresh preserves your existing associations while updating visuals or voice. A rebrand replaces those associations, which makes them different problems with different costs.
- Brand is a byproduct: pair yourself with something consistently and the audience does the associating for you. That means rebranding is an action you repeat, not an announcement you make.
03Do You Need One (The 3:1:3 Rule)
- No traction and no clarity about what you stand for are positioning failures, not rebrand triggers. Rebranding on top of weak positioning gives you nothing to amplify.
04The 3 Triggers
- The three legitimate triggers are exhaustion with your niche or format, a reputation that now works against your goals, and a genuinely changed desired outcome.
- A bad reputation usually accumulates from small repeated pairings rather than one event, including who you appear alongside, because audiences apply no nuance.
05The Rebrand Runway
- Before touching anything creative, measure how much revenue arrives because of the specific thing you're known for and how long income survives if you stop posting about it.
- Attribution will never be complete because a strong reputation lifts every channel at once, so aim for directionally correct data rather than perfect tracking.
06The 3 Paths
- A full public rebrand is only safe with other acquisition channels or cash reserves for six to eighteen months of reduced lead flow.
- A staged rebrand means running two brands at once on the bandwidth you already struggle to cover, and its main failure is never switching. Set a sprint and a review date.
- When the new direction is an extension of the old one, a refresh keeps all the trust and equity you already built instead of discarding it.
08The Rebrand Roadmap
- Work backwards from the outcome: what you want to achieve, what you'd need to be known for, what you'd have to do, and what you'd have to learn to do it.
- You only get known for things through actions. Stated values that never change a decision produce nothing, and a claimed pivot without changed behavior produces nothing.
10Legends and Lore
- Credibility is built from failures paired with a takeaway for the audience, not from a highlight reel, because the failure is what makes the lesson usable.
- Write case studies in six parts: context, root problem, reframe, strategic approach, outcome, transferable lesson. Enough detail lets a team write in your voice without you.
11Common Enemy
- Make your common enemy a concept or an action rather than a person. Naming individuals borrows their equity and delivers attention you don't want.
- A contrarian take is what you believe. A common enemy is that belief reframed as the obstacle between the audience and their goal, which is what makes people rally instead of nod.
- Take your contrarian positions from the new space, not the old one. Importing old takes is a refresh wearing a rebrand's clothes.
- If you can't list five contrarian takes in a space, you aren't deep enough in it to teach it, and that's a signal to go back to what you need to learn.
12Interest Stacking
- Sharing personal interests is what turns an audience relationship from transactional to loyal, the same way accumulated shared interests turn acquaintances into friends.
- Integrate interests into settings, wardrobe, metaphors and tone rather than making content about them, and people who obsess over something else will still recognize the obsession.
15Medium and Platforms Overview
- Your current medium and platforms were chosen to serve the brand you're leaving, so both deserve an explicit re-decision rather than inheritance.
16When to Change Mediums
- Change medium when the new audience consumes something else, when you've outgrown the old one, or when lower visibility genuinely helps a reputation repair.
17How to Change Mediums
- Swap mediums gradually and use the old one to announce the new. Only add a second medium if you can hold both to the same standard, or you dilute everything.
18When to Change Platforms
- Platforms follow the medium. Switching to written content and staying on a video platform is a mismatch that costs you twice.
19How Many Platforms
- Solo creators hold one primary and one secondary platform. Teams hold three primaries and rotate concentrated effort rather than spreading it evenly.
20Content Ideas
- Generate ideas from painful problems, meaning the ones costly in time, money, reputation or stress. Solving those removes the need to argue for your authority.
- If you can name a problem and its cost but not your own way of solving it, you haven't solved it, and that problem should come off the list.
- One idea yields four to ten angles, and each angle is a separate piece of content. That is how volume becomes sustainable rather than repetitive.
21Posting Cadence
- Ease an audience into new subject matter instead of switching cold, and hold one familiar element constant: the setting, the format, an analogy, or your personal interests.
- Benchmark new content against the median of your old work over 60 to 90 days, never the average, so a single outlier doesn't distort the picture.
- Below 0.75x of median, audit rather than retreat. Above 2x, accelerate. One weak post is not a trend and one strong one is not a mandate.
- Publishing underperforming work more often without auditing why just produces bad content faster, so answer whether the fundamentals slipped and whether you can articulate the new subject as clearly as the old.
22Delivery
- The best delivery strips away what keeps you from being yourself rather than adding a persona, and self-auditing your own delivery is genuinely hard.
23Wrapping Paper
- Your titles, thumbnails and hooks filter who arrives. Keep the old wrapper and you keep recruiting the audience you're trying to leave, no matter how new the content inside is.
Terms worth knowing.
- Brand refresh
- Updating visuals, voice, or copy while deliberately preserving the associations an audience already holds. A new profile photo or a rewritten bio qualifies; a change in what you are known for does not.
- Rebrand runway
- A filter that measures how dependent your income is on your current personal brand, using four questions about where revenue originates and how long it survives if you stop posting on your known subject.
- Brand dependence
- The share of revenue that arrives because people found you through the specific subject matter you are known for. High dependence does not block a rebrand, it dictates which path you take.
- Halo effect
- The lift a strong reputation gives everything else you do, which also makes brand impact nearly impossible to attribute cleanly to any one channel or piece of content.
- Credibility bank
- A written store of detailed case entries built in six parts: context, root problem, insight or reframe, approach, outcome, and the transferable lesson. It supplies stories to your content and lets a team write on your behalf.
- Common enemy
- A concept or behavior in your space that stands between the audience and their goal, named clearly so people can rally against it. It is a contrarian belief reframed as something the audience can act on.
- Interest stacking
- Surfacing personal interests unrelated to your expertise so an audience accumulates things in common with you, mirroring how real friendships deepen through shared interests.
- Non-niche human inputs
- Five to seven true things about you that sit outside your subject matter. They are not content topics; they are traits to integrate into settings, wardrobe, metaphors, and tone.
- Successive approximation
- Easing an audience into new subject matter in gradual increments rather than switching cold, so people are not shocked into disengaging.
- Bridging
- Carrying an existing audience from an old brand to a new one by holding one familiar element constant. Four types exist: setting, format, analogy, and interest.
- Wrapping paper
- Everything that surrounds the substance of a piece of content and decides who consumes it: content format plus packaging format, meaning title, thumbnail, hook and headline.
- Packaging format
- The title, thumbnail, hook and headline layer specifically. It fatigues far faster than the underlying content structure and needs refreshing more often.
- Medium
- One of four ways content can exist: video, audio, written, or graphic. Distinct from platform, which is where a medium gets published.
- Eye of Sauron approach
- A method for teams running three primary platforms where innovation and effort rotate to one platform at a time rather than being spread evenly across all of them.
- Stack and add
- Adding a new medium alongside the existing one instead of replacing it. Viable only when the team genuinely has bandwidth to hold both to the same standard.
- Median benchmark
- The middle value of your old content's performance over the last 60 to 90 days, used as the yardstick for new content because a single viral hit would distort an average.
Things they pointed at.
38:00channelThe 7 Elements of Worldbuilding (29-minute video on the same channel)
2:01:55linkInstagram @CalebRalston (five DMs unlocks a bad-reputation video)
Lines you could clip.
1:08:48
“Chasing virality is the reason most creators have audiences that don't buy anything.”
1:05:36
“Not all views are good views. Not all attention is good attention.”
1:05:36
“Sharing is pairing.”
2:14:33
“If this new content is underperforming and you just push harder without auditing, you're just doing an amazing job of making really bad content faster.”
1:33:28
“In a world of Jack and Cokes, you want to be a shot of Jack.”
28:02
“If you haven't done the thing, why the fuck can you talk about it?”
59:24
“You've abandoned your old brand and you don't have a strong new one. And now you're sitting in the middle, vulnerable as shit.”
1:41:00
“If you don't have the plan to begin with, guess what breaks? You. Not the plan.”
Word for word.
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metaphoranalogystory
No one seems to know what rebrand actually means. Rebranding your personal brand is just establishing new associations in your audience's mind and leaving those old ones behind. And over this course, I'm going to compress my 17 years of experience to define what rebranding actually is.
I'm going to help you determine if you need a rebrand. We're going to talk through how you do a rebrand. And then we're going to end talking through what needs to change in your content in order for this to actually work.
Now a lot of you are assuming that a rebrand is like Pepsi updating their logo like they recently did this is not a rebrand Changing your logo is not what a rebrand actually is. That is what is called a brand refresh a brand refresh is when we are trying to Preserve the brand associations that we have created with our audience while updating the visuals or voice of our brand.
We're still sticking with the same associations that we have established with our audience. We're just wanting to make slight little adjustments or tweaks. This is like you updating your profile photo or changing the copy in your Instagram bio.
It's nothing too complex. So now that we have an understanding of what rebranding isn't, which is what I assume a lot of you came into this thinking a rebrand is, we need to define what rebrand actually means so that we are operating from the same understanding.
And really, all it actually comes down to is making sure that we're on the same understanding of what branding and brand mean because that actually informs the definition of rebrand. Branding is just the pairing of things. And I like to define good branding as an intentional pairing of relevant things done consistently.
And this leads us to an outcome or the byproduct, which is brand. Brand is when the audience inherently associates you and the other thing together. If that is the case, all a rebrand is, all rebrand actually means is that we are picking new associations for our audience, aka the actions we take, or we find new things to pair ourselves with consistently.
And what that creates is the byproduct a new brand when the audience inherently associates us with the new things not the old things what you're noticing here is that rebrand isn't the outcome it's the action rebrand or rebranding is the action we take to get the outcome of a new brand, when the audience is associating us with the new things that we want to be associated with.
And we can actually reverse engineer this. This doesn't just happen by accident. You can walk through a very, very intentional step -by -step process to actually do this.
And that is what we are going to do over this entire course. A good example of this is, you know that app that you and I probably use way too much, way more than we should? Here's the funny thing about Instagram.
Instagram was not always Instagram. It actually started as an app called Bourbon. Bourbon was a check -in application and they were not getting much traction.
And even though Bourbon itself wasn't successful, what they noticed was that the users were... very into the photo sharing feature. And so instead of trying to force Bourbon to work, what they did is they identified this one thing that they knew was working with their audience, with their customer base.
And they completely rebranded. They removed all the associations of the check -in app and leaned in completely into just photo sharing. And now it's the app that is causing so many wonderful things in so many people's lives and also maybe a little bit of anxiety throughout the day if we're on it for too long.
The key to remember here is that a rebrand is when we are building and establishing new associations in our audience's mind and leaving those old ones behind. That is the key distinction. So now we know what rebrand actually means, but now we need to determine, do you need to rebrand?
And we're going to do that using my three, one, three. rebrand rule we've got three triggers one filter and three different paths to choose from and i came up with these three triggers because i've heard so many people come up to me and say things like my content isn't working i need a rebrand or no one understands what i stand for no one knows what my offers are no one knows what my expertise is or why i'm worth listening to i think i need a rebrand I put these together because I honestly needed an easy way to help people determine if they need a rebrand or not.
And. For the reasons that I just listed, I would argue you do not need a rebrand. That would be the wrong move.
Maybe a brand refresh, but more than likely, what you really need to do is actually just get clear on your brand positioning. More than likely, you're one of those people who sprinted ahead to content strategy and never built the foundation that you could amplify off of to build a strong personal brand that is trusted and stands out in your niche or marketplace.
It's kind of like those entrepreneurs that we all know who are always launching a new offer or even potentially worse a new business right they hit a certain sticking point and instead of pushing through that sticking point and solving the problems with their current thing they just jump to the next thing and launch another thing that might be fun but it's not going to be the effective route here and the same thing applies to your personal brand just because you have hit a sticking point or maybe you haven't gotten traction at all, that doesn't mean you need to rebrand.
You're not gonna get a return on your effort here like you're looking for. You just need to get clarity on your brand positioning. So if this is you, you do not need to rebrand.
You just need to understand your brand. better before we get into it my team and i put a lot of work into putting together this rolston re -brand workbook if you want access to this all you have to do is click the link in the description down below enter your email we're going to send it to you it's 100 free you can download it and this helps you actually take action and implement what you're learning in this video to your personal brand this takes this from entertainment content and makes it educational the link is in the description click the link, enter your email, and we'll send it to you.
Now, for those of you who are still wondering if you need a rebrand, let's go through the three triggers to determine if you do. The first trigger is, are you tired of this? Are you tired of the niche or subject matter that you are currently speaking to?
Or another alternative here is, are you tired of the format you're known for? Some people make content, they pick a trend, it pops, and they just keep doing it over and over again and their personal brand gets known for that specific trend and some people love that they're fine with that but a lot of people end up getting tired of being known for that this happens all the time it makes complete sense we are evolving humans that are hopefully always growing and becoming better and because of that we're going to have new interests that spark up and so if this is you if you feel like you are tired of your current niche You're tired of the subject matter that you're talking about, or you're tired of the format that you become known for.
Well, then a rebrand is starting to make a lot of sense for you. We have the second trigger that we need to identify, which is a tough one. Do you have a bad reputation?
Now, I know what you're thinking. you probably jumped into your head to assuming that I'm talking about some big scandal, which it can mean that, okay? A bad reputation can be developed by one big event that changes the associations in your audience's mind.
But on that same token, this can actually also be a sequence of micro scandals because all a bad reputation is is just your audience associating you with things that are... negative and not even inherently negative. I'm not making some value claim on the world here.
I'm saying they are just negative or opposite of what you're trying to accomplish or what you need to be associated with in order to reach your desired outcome. Two examples here, one of the big scandal and one of the micro scandals in sequence here. Let's say an article comes out and it's talking about how you have made this promise of an outcome to your audience and to your customers.
There has been a lot of reports, a lot of complaints online recently about how you are not delivering on that outcome. If there's a bunch of complaints on this article being referenced about you scamming and taking advantage of people, that's going to be a problem. I would call this moment a big scandal.
This is one event that occurred that shifted, massively shifted, what people associate you with. Here's the thing. rebranding is not just reserved for big scandals a bad reputation in my opinion like i mentioned earlier is actually typically developed over many little small or micro scandals over time for most people online it's not one big event that happens it's many little moments in sequence stacked together that form this bad reputation online for example if you show up online doing collaborations in your video content you have individuals in your vlogs that are known online they have a bad reputation for being scammy or sketchy characters over time by you pairing yourself with those individuals that will create an association in the audience's mind brand this is going to lead to a bad reputation aka your audience associating you with negative things or things that are opposite of what you are trying to accomplish this whole idea of you pairing or showing up online with these individuals you've heard the saying
get lumped into the crowd well that's where the same comes from by you showing up with these individuals over and over and over again the audience the people on the other end that are watching they're going to start to view you through that filter through that lens there is no nuance applied on the internet unfortunately and so how you operate in these basic functions is how your audience is going to interpret your personal brand if you have the big scandal or the micro small scandals and you have developed a bad reputation then there is a very very strong chance that rebranding is going to be critical mission critical for you to do and so what we're going to do is we're going to walk through this third trigger here which is has something significant changed this might sound somewhat similar to the first trigger but this is more about your desired outcome Let's say, for example, you're one of these individuals who has been building their personal brand and making content to drive lead flow to your business.
You have an offer that's available and you have been building your personal brand to build trust with your potential customers to convert them into that offering. Maybe you've been killing it for the last six or seven years and you've accomplished your financial goals, but now you have a new outcome that you desire. Maybe you've gone from trying to get leads for your business to just trying to pay it back.
Your new goal is not business or monetization it's altruistic you just want to help this is also potentially a good trigger for a rebrand if you have built your brand around this offer or this thing the service that you provide you may need a rebrand now all three of these triggers are really good reasons to consider doing a rebrand they really truly are but unfortunately and trust me I hate this part we have this pesky little thing called reality and that is why we have created the filter called the rebrand runway.
Because the thing about a rebrand is it's not just a strategic brand shift. It also, for most of us, ends up shifting our revenue. If you're anything like me, your business income is tied to your personal brand.
And there's nothing wrong with that. I want to make sure it's super clear. Like, I'm not saying that's a bad thing.
Now, if you're trying to sell your business, maybe that's a problem. That's not my expertise. That's not what I talk about here.
For most of us, this is the case. Our income, our revenue is tied to the success or lack of success with our personal brand. And because of this, a rebrand can either be the most exciting roller coaster ride of our entire lives, or it can be the nightmare from hell that we never want to come back to.
And if we don't do it correctly, it's going to be the latter. And the question that we want to answer here is, can your business... actually afford the gap between your old personal brand driving leads and your new personal brand producing new leads this delta between the old and the new this is where so many people get so many people end up skipping this process all together they just have the emotional thought of oh i'm tired of what i talked about now let's pivot here and they don't think through the steps that are necessary in order to bridge the revenue gap that is created in a rebrand.
And so what I want you to do is look at your customer acquisition channels, a .k .a. where the fuck are you getting your customers from? OK, where are these people coming in from?
Now, we read the comments that you put on our videos and we know that you're more than likely wondering, how do I determine what percentage of my leads are actually coming through my personal brand and while i am not a marketing funnel attribution expert what you need to do is you need to set up some sort of link tracking so that you can see of the conversions you're getting on your website or wherever you convert what percentage of those are coming from instagram youtube linkedin whatever platforms you've determined that you are focusing on your links need to be utm trackable links so that you can see that now here's the other thing that i will tell you with brand you're not always able to attribute everything the fact that somebody hears me say caleb ralston .com select to learn how to make content that actually gets customers I can't track that from the content because that is not a trackable link and there's no way for me to determine how you found that link and then typed it in.
So what I want to share with you is that you want to get as much data and tracking on this as possible but understand that as of May 2026 There is not the technology available to be able to track every little lead that comes through your personal brand. You just want directionally correct data, not 100 % scientifically perfect data, because that is impossible when it comes to tracking attribution from your brand.
And one more thing that you can do if you would like is... in any interaction with these leads if you have a sales call or you dm back and forth with them on a platform you're emailing whatever you can ask them how did you find out about us the other thing that i will call out is this is also not always accurate because a lot of time people are like well i watched this thing then i saw this thing then i saw And so it's what's called the halo effect or the entourage effect.
So that's why it's so hard to actually measure brand effectiveness at a granular level because it provides what is called a halo effect. Your personal brand lifts the effectiveness of everything that you do. What we're trying to do here is specifically figure out how dependent is your current revenue, is your income, is your business dependent.
on your personal brand. And there are four questions that we're going to answer here in your Ralston rebrand workbook. Again, if you haven't downloaded it, click the link in the description below.
Enter your email. We're going to email it to you. It's free.
It's going to actually take this and turn it into an application. You're going to actually apply this to your personal brand rather than just watching me talk on and on. But the first question that we're going to tackle in the workbook is what percentage of my revenue comes from leads that are generated by my personal brand.
And again, like I said earlier, if you're like me, probably the majority of them are coming through your personal brand. And that's okay. Right now, we're not judging.
We are just identifying. So the second question we're going to tackle here is of that, that percentage of leads that comes through your personal brand, what percentage of those people found you because of your subject matter expertise, the specific subject matter that you are known for? Now, question number three is if I stopped posting about the subject matter tomorrow, how long can my business operate and continue to function before revenue started to dip?
Question number four, do I have other customer acquisition channels like paid ads, partnerships, referrals, sales team, existing client base, recurring revenue, all of those different things? Do I have existing acquisition channels that don't depend on my personal brand? Now, if the majority of your revenue, is coming because people are finding you based on that specific thing that you're known for.
Like me, you have very high brand dependence. That's not a bad thing necessarily, but it is something that we want to be cognizant of and aware of to help us determine which of the three paths we're going to go down. and if you have realized that you do have really high brand dependence i want you to know this doesn't mean that you can't rebrand it just means that we need to be very intentional with how we're going to do it and which of these three paths we are going to cover and path number one is actually the full rebrand starting right now in public this is going to occur in real time for your audience they're going to see it happening live there's no you know smoke and mirrors behind the curtain magic man and oz kind of This is happening for everyone live and up close.
And this is going to make sense for you if your business has other reliable channels to get customers from that can carry you through this rebrand transition. It's also nice if you have enough. uh cash reserves maybe to be able to go for six to 18 months with reduced lead flow i say six to 18 months because i like to set proper expectations sure some people make this transition in two months three months whatever but there are others who actually it can take two three years to do this properly and then the third reason why this might make sense is if your revenue actually isn't tied in any way shape or form to the subject matter that you're known for this is probably fairly rare if you're here watching this but if this is the case this is a good reason for following the full rebrand in public if any of these three are the case path one is 100 the right move you have the green light for a full rebrand you need to start creating new associations for your audience and you need to leave those old ones behind.
And we're going to walk through what this actually looks like in detail shortly. Now, this may take time, but the cool thing about this path is you don't need to hide the rebrand in any way, shape or form. You can 100 % be out in the open.
You can even call it out in your content if you want, which again, we're going to cover in a later section in this course. Now, path number two is what I like to call the staged rebrand. this is occurring behind the scenes the man behind oz this is going to make sense for you if the majority of your revenue is actually coming through your personal brand it's also going to make sense if your audience is associating you tightly with one subject matter or potentially you can't afford a meaningful drop in leads right now and i understand being in the spot but if this is your scenario your reality that you got to reckon with that you have to deal with is you need to keep the current brand running you need to keep producing content that is paying the bills and keeping the lights on that is speaking to that audience that is providing you revenue and income you don't have the luxury of being able to just pivot over and so what you're actually going to have to do is keep producing that content for the old brand while at the same time building a whole new brand on the back end
And you're not going to use the current to build the new. This is a way more difficult path. I want to be very clear here.
Everyone in content strategy talks about trying to make things sound as simple and easy as possible. I'm here to be real with you. This is a very difficult journey that you are about to go on because you're going to have to take the resources and bandwidth that you have that you're already struggling to use for the current brand.
And you're going to have to split that now across. two different brands now this full switch when you go from the old to the new this happens when you get enough signal to indicate that you can either supplement replace or even out produce the old brand with the new one and so what do i mean by signal all signal in this context is is just are you actually getting leads from your new personal brand is the audience growing okay suggesting product market fit for your content are sales happening for your paid offering Now, the thing that you want to make sure you avoid here is that you don't stay in this phase forever.
I can't tell you how many people I've met over the years that are building the new brand and have been building the new brand for years and years and years, and they never make the switch. I encourage you to set a timeline that you sprint on and then you check in. on a regular basis okay you need to assess the progress or lack of progress and have that determine the actions that you're taking you don't want this to be a three year long brand transition that is going to fatigue your audience and most likely fatigue you and your team now the third path here is that you're not going to rebrand you're just going to refresh and this makes sense if you have determined from the rebrand runway that you have really high brand dependence.
And maybe the thing that you want to be known for this new thing you want to be known for isn't actually that far off from what you're currently known for. It's more of an extension or an expansion, not a rebrand. And in this case, what's really nice is you don't have to abandon everything that you have already built.
You're not leaving associations behind. You're just adding new associations. And that's it.
This is a far easier path. You don't have to be overthinking what you have previously been doing you can actually integrate everything that you've built the associations the brand equity all of the the trust that you've established with this audience you get to carry in to this brand refresh rather than having to leave everything behind that you've worked so hard to build and so if this is the case and you're realizing that you're not really changing subject matters or niches in like some crazy way.
Maybe you're going from talking about marketing to talking about business as a whole. You don't need a rebrand. You just need a brand refresh.
Path number three is 100 % going to be the right move for you. And just a quick reminder, if you've gotten to this point. and you haven't downloaded the Ralston Rebrand Workbook, well then what are you doing?
I don't know why you haven't downloaded it. It's 100 % free. All you gotta do is click the link in the description, enter your email, we'll send it to you, and then you can actually take action on what you're watching me talk about here rather than just hearing me yap on and on.
So we've made the decision of whether or not we need a rebrand. And I'm assuming because of the fact that you're still here, you need a rebrand. And so the next thing that we need to figure out is how.
And that starts with figuring out where you are right now and where you want to be. using my rebrand roadmap. Now, the rebrand roadmap is four simple core questions.
The first question that we are going to answer in our rebrand workbook here is, what am I trying to achieve by rebranding? Why are we doing this? We aren't just simply waking up one day and deciding, ah, wouldn't it be lovely and dandy to do a rebrand?
No, we have a reason. We have a trigger, as we've identified previously, that has caused us to need this rebrand. So what are we wanting to achieve?
I understand that for some, this is an easy question. But for you, this might be a tough question to fully crack. And so what I have done is I have created additional follow -up questions here that help.
They're almost, think of them like thought starters. and they're in your workbook and you can literally fill these out before you answer the core question question number one which is what i'm trying to achieve so this first follow -up question here for you to get the mind to get the wheels turning a little bit is if you're tired of your niche and subject matter that you speak to what subject matter do you want to be known for what do you want to talk about what interests you what excites you What do you want to be known for?
Another follow -up question or another thought starter here is if you were one of those people who built your personal brand off the back of one specific format or a trend and you doubled, quadrupled down on this, well, and maybe you're tired of it, the question here is, do you want to be known for a format? Or do you want to be known for something beyond that?
My recommendation is you don't want to be just known for a format. You want to be known for something beyond that because formats fatigue. I typically like to give you the tools and the information to decide, but I'm going to be heavy handed here.
Fucking don't be known for just a format. You want to be known for something beyond that. So if that is the case.
if you want to be known for something beyond the format what do you want to be known for the next thought starter here is if you're trying to fix a bad reputation if you remember back to that trigger trigger number two the bad reputation was you like your your heart rate was going up as i was describing it then i have two questions for you here what is the bad reputation that you are currently known for and want to fix and this is painful like For everybody else on the other triggers, like, you know, it's hard work and stuff.
This is like some real like confronting of yourself shit. What are you known for? What is that bad reputation that you have that you wanna fix?
And then the second thought starter or follow -up question here is, what does a good reputation for you look like? You need to be able to articulate what that looks like. If you cannot articulate what a good reputation is for you, you will never achieve it.
And the last thought starter or follow -up question what am i trying to achieve by rebranding here is for the trigger or the individual whose desired outcome has changed right i talked about how maybe you were making business content and making content to drive leads to your business but you no longer need to do that maybe the business is running on its own and it's no longer dependent on your personal brand and you just want to give back to your audience well That's cool and things have changed, but now what are you wanting to accomplish with your personal brand?
I don't want you to just write in, I want to give back. That's fucking vague as shit. What do you want to give back and to whom?
Okay, you need to be specific here. This is going to help you answer the question. After you have figured out, depending on which trigger you're in, what your thought starter answers are.
Now I want you to fill in the answer for what am I trying to achieve by rebranding? Again, I want you to fill that out in the workbook. The next question in the rebrand roadmap that we want to tackle, question number two, is to achieve that.
The thing that we're wanting to achieve by rebranding, in order to have that happen, what new things, and this is the key, new things would my personal brand need to be known for in order to achieve that? And the key here, and i want to make sure that i over emphasize this it's new things again if you are rebranding you're not just adding new associations you're also leaving the old ones behind and so again just to make this a little bit easier for you to give you some thought starters for the first trigger here if you know the new subject matter that you want to speak to what accomplishments would need to be known for me to have credibility on this new subject matter.
Here's the thing. If you haven't done the thing, why the fuck can you talk about it? Why would anybody want to listen to you talk about this thing that you have never done yourself?
You need to figure out what accomplishments would I need to be known for having in order for me to achieve this outcome. with my rebrand okay the second follow -up or thought starter question here is if you know that you are trying to fix a bad reputation and you know what a good reputation looks like now we're getting really deep on this one what values would i have to be known for having in order to form this new reputation our values have a big play in determining our reputation.
And so what values would you need to be known for having in order to have this new reputation? The next one here is in order to accomplish this new goal, right? You want to give back to everybody.
What new lens do people need to see you through? You need to make sure that it is clear to them that there has been a shift. If you have been maybe a little bit more hardcore on the sales side in your content, and that is shifting, we need to adjust this lens that they're viewing you through.
Otherwise, you are going to cause some serious confusion for your audience. And so after going through these thought starters, you should be able to answer question number two here, which is to achieve that, what new things would my personal brand need to be known for? And so I want you to write this out in your workbook.
We're going to go on to question number three, the third question in the rebrand roadmap. for my personal brand to be known for those new things what would i have to do we only get known for things by our actions okay if we just talk the talk but don't walk the walk it won't stick and again i want to give you these thought starters to make answering this question easier and so if you know what accomplishments you need to be known for right that first trigger What do you need to do in order to accomplish those things?
At this point, you might be like, oh, wow, okay, I'm seeing this. This is actually a really simple breakdown. This is actually really like not advanced.
Yes, yet you have not done it yet. This actually takes what outcome you want and reverse engineers. the roadmap to get you there and so if you know the accomplishments you need to be known for what do you need to do to be known for those accomplishments now this next one back to the bad reputation this is where we start getting really deep if you know what values you need to be known for what do you have to do to demonstrate those values in action it's not enough to just say these are my values we have to take actions that show As a byproduct of this action, clearly she or he holds these values.
It's kind of like the stupid core values that so many businesses will put up on their wall and never reference ever again. They don't make any decisions through those values. What's funny is actually at Ralston, we have two core values, but we rarely rehash them.
But every decision we make, is actually filtered through those values. Why?
Because they weren't values that we created and just floated up on a wall. It was based on how we act and the decisions that we make, the decisions that I make and how we handle things with clients, with viewers, with the audience members, with customers, with partners, everything. You need to figure out What are the things that you need to do to demonstrate that you actually do hold these values and you're not just talking shit and saying all kinds of garbage online that isn't actually true, that you don't actually follow?
Now, the third one here is if you know what lens that people need to view you through, then what do you need to change in order for people to see you this way? I mean, not just saying, hey, I'm no longer trying to monetize my personal brand. I'm just trying to give it away for free.
That's really good. But more effective is actually giving a lot of good shit away for free, not just saying that you're doing it. I see so many people who say how much valuable content they're giving away for free.
But when I look at what they're putting out, it's like seven minute videos that solve a very basic problem or are regurgitating the same horseshit that everybody else in their space is saying. And so you need to actually. fundamentally change the actions that you are taking to shift how people view you.
Now, these thought starters should help you finish answering question number three, which we started this with, which is for my personal brand to be known for these new things, what do I have to do? I want you to fill that out in your workbook right now. Question number four takes this thing that is a little far removed from us maybe right now that is in the distance, in the future, and it brings us to today, right this very second.
This is a grounding moment. This is a touch grass moment. Question number four here is in order to do the things, to become known for the new things, to achieve the rebranding goal that I have, what do I need to learn?
The crazy thing about doing and taking action is there's a lot of things oftentimes that we need to learn in order to take action. If you are going through the process of rebranding, And maybe let's use the example like you're tired of your subject matter that you speak to and you have built up the skill in another area.
You have expertise in another domain and you've been building behind the scenes in that domain for maybe the last five or six years. And you've gotten amazing results with your customers just because you are able to articulate those thoughts and concepts and frameworks in a way that makes it consumable for those customers in that format does not mean.
that you know how to convey that same information in a way that is digestible and usable for a viewer on the other end of a youtube video for example and so maybe what you have to learn is how to take the things that you teach with your customers and learn how to teach those same things in a youtube or organic content format so let's walk through the thought starters the the wheel turners here we've got three little follow -ups here And actually, I said little, but these are the ones that actually require maybe a little bit more in -depth of an answer because there is more than likely not just one thing that we need to learn.
So for that first trigger, now you know what you need to do to accomplish the things to be known for the new subject matter. What do you need to learn in order to do those things? This is most likely going to be a list.
We know what we need to do to demonstrate the values that we want to be known for. Here's where it gets a little crazy. What do you need to learn in order to be able to demonstrate those values consistently?
If you're known as a really hot -tempered, quick to anger individual, and you want to be known as someone who is patient and calm, well, Just saying that you want to be that person does not mean that you are going to be that way. Trust me, as somebody who has gone through the process of working through that years ago, I can tell you there's a lot that you need to learn in order to do the things to demonstrate the values.
You got to learn how to do them. I want you to list those out in your workbook. And then here we know what lens.
this third trigger. We know what lens we want people to start seeing us through based on our desired outcome changing. We know what we need to do for that to happen.
But what do we need to learn in order to make those pivots? Maybe. As an example, because the business is operating on its own and it's got its own team, maybe you had a team that would help you set up lead magnets and funnels and all of these things for people to get these amazing free goodies.
And now you still want to continue to give out free goodies, maybe even more free goodies, but you don't have the team available for whatever reason to be able to do that. And so you need to learn how to set this up in the beginning. you need a list out what do you need to learn in order to do these things okay these thought starters these wheel turners should get you to a point where you can answer question number four which is in order to do the things to become known for the new things to achieve my rebranding goal what do i need to learn i want you to write out everything that you need to learn in your ralston rebranding workbook and if you filled out all of these in your workbook you are now going to have a very clear understanding at a high level of what your rebrand is going to take.
You know the roadmap, you understand the route that you're going to have to take in order to achieve what you are wanting to achieve by rebranding. Now it's time to take this high level work that we've been doing and get a little bit more into the weeds. I have seven world building elements that help you build a personal brand that stands out and causes people to never want to leave.
We've got legends and lore, common enemy, interest stacking, characters and settings, named concepts, weaknesses, and redefined terms. But in... Phase one of rebranding, where we are at right now, we are only going to focus on three of these elements.
Legends and lore, common enemy, and interest stacking. but before we begin here in case you are not familiar with the concept of world building especially within the context of personal branding i want to give you a very quick rundown here to catch you up world building is something that is typically associated actually with the fiction and fantasy world think like lord of the rings harry potter dune all the marvel films like the avengers and all these different universes and worlds that these authors and writers have built and the cool thing about world building is once you enter these worlds every time that you re -enter you re -enter with knowledge and context you understand something about the world that you are entering and what's really cool here is that this isn't just reserved for fantasy and fiction this is also very applicable to building and developing your personal brand, we just have to do it in quite a different way.
It plays out much differently for personal brands than the fiction worlds that we see. It's how you build this loyalty and depth of connection with your audience that is different than all of your competitors. And there's so much more that I could go into on world building.
so much more that i actually have a whole 29 minute video on my youtube channel about the seven elements of world building for your personal brand but i'm not going to go any further i think you have enough context on what world building is to make this section useful let's start with legends and lore every world has them even the real world that we live in right now the amount of legends and lore that are passed down by generation is crazy.
It's how and what informs the way that our world works. Think about Lord of the Rings. I love sharing Lord of the Rings examples whenever I can.
Think of all of the legends about elves that Bilbo has shared with Frodo. This informs the context of how Middle Earth is the way that Middle Earth is. And so legends and lore in the fantasy world provide that backstory.
But for you in building your personal brand, your legends and lore are just the backstory or credibility that you have to speak to this subject matter. Now, the key here is your credibility is established not only from just sharing the successes, but also the failures. The 2 .0 here is you don't want to just share successes and failures.
You need to pair these successes and failures with a takeaway for the audience. It's like when I share the story about the creator we were working with who was pursuing. virality and switch their content to optimize for entertainment and views.
And their subscribers and views were going through the roof. But at the same time, sales were plummeting. And then when I share the story of how we fix that by reorienting how they optimize their content from virality to trust, from entertainment to education and how their sales exploded and I explain what was going on.
why it was happening and how we fixed it, which was the fact that we returned to making educational content, optimizing for trust, not virality. We weren't making entertainment. We were making educational content.
And boom, sales exploded. But from that example that I shared of the creator who pursued entertainment, lost sales. pivoted back to education and got more sales than ever before you learn two amazing things by that one you learn of a pitfall or a mistake that i've made that you can actually avoid two you also get more understanding of my backstory, my credibility in the experience that I have that has led me to develop the beliefs and thoughts that I am sharing with you in my content, okay?
It informs why I speak the way I do. It informs you why I'm so passionate around optimizing for trust, not virality, for building educational content, not entertainment content. But notice here that it's not just the highlight reel.
okay it's also sharing the low points we not only serve people by sharing how everything's perfect but we also serve people by sharing the mistakes that we've made and the takeaway that they can take with them now sometimes you get lucky here like i just did where you're able to actually pair a low point with a success right you had a low point you fixed it and you got a really good outcome and that's amazing but the reality is is that's not how life is all the time sometimes it's just a lesson from the mistake not a lesson from the fix of the mistake just a lesson from the mistake you made okay and this legends and lore world building element concept actually comes from an exercise that we love to walk our clients through called the credibility bank this is where you want to deposit these legends and lore that you eventually want to share with your audience this so far is gonna be the most complex exercise that we're gonna walk through.
And so I'm gonna actually guide you through it. So I want you to open up your workbook right now and have this up next to the video. I do not want you to come back to this later.
I want you to do this right now. The first one that we're gonna walk through is we're gonna actually build out. one entry, one deposit into your credibility bank.
Part one here is the context, okay? Who was this for and what situation were they in? And I actually, instead of just giving you these little prompts down below, they're in your workbook, they'll help you, they're kind of thought starters here.
I'm gonna walk you through one of my credibility bank entries that I have built, okay? And so I'm gonna read you my context. Each one of these sections, there's six of these that we go through in developing this entry.
I'm going to read word for word everything that I put in so that it gives you a little bit of an example here to help make this tangible. So for part one, the context. Bryce was running a large business and entering a very busy season.
Up to that point, Bryce dedicated one to two days per week to content strategy and creation. Bryce's YouTube videos were exploding and driving significant sales, but the production process required immense time and effort from Bryce. In the upcoming season, Bryce needed to spend roughly two weeks out of each month fully blocked off for a major project, meaning Bryce could not do anything for YouTube content during those periods.
The requirement was to maintain the same weekly YouTube output while eliminating preparation for Bryce. If you're saying, wow, that is very detailed. Yes, you want to provide a lot of context here.
One of my favorite emails that I've ever sent to our newsletter audience was developed off of this credibility bank entry. And guess what? I didn't write it.
okay that's the crazy thing if you build this out properly it not only helps you reference these entries these deposits that you've made in your credibility bank in the future it allows your team to use them on your behalf now of course i reviewed the email i tweaked anything that didn't sound like me we're working off of a transcript that is my voice but yes i don't write every single email i send some of them i do some of them are the team And this gets the team to second or even honestly third base to be able to make this content for you.
Now we're going to move to part two, which is the problem. What was actually wrong beneath the surface? We don't want to talk about symptoms here.
What was the root problem? And I'm going to read, like I said, my entry here, word for word, the real problem. Nothing was broken in the existing content engine.
Videos were actually working and generating sales. The issue was a new constraint. The current production process no longer fit Bryce's new season.
The bottleneck was not ideation or outlining. It was Bryce's time. Without changing the system, weekly output would become unsustainable during the periods when Bryce had to be fully dedicated to the major project.
I'm not literally just writing. Bryce had no time. You don't want to just do the basic.
You want to provide more context. Again, it's great for you to provide you or like a memory jog and remind you of the situation in great detail because you want to describe it in your content in detail. But also it's arming your team with the context and ammo they need in order to be able to make content on your behalf.
Now we're going to move down to part number three, which is the insight where I like to think of this as a reframe. What did you realize that changed the outcome? This is where we start getting really useful for the audience who is consuming this content.
And so what I put for number three, the insight here, or a reframe, I held a core belief that the domain expert writes the best version of the video. So removing the expert from writing introduces a quality and voice problem. The reframe was realizing that Bryce already created substantial written content on Twitter.
Even though many perceive Bryce's video first, he was actually written first. That written content could serve as expert written source material without requiring fresh prep. The additional edge, the tweets were already audience validated.
Some tweets had more likes than others, creating a methodical way to sequence the material to increase the likelihood that viewers continued to watch. And so that is what we're going to put in for the insight. You want to share the unlock or the wrong assumption that you had going into it and how that changed.
My assumption was that this change that we had to make was going to be detrimental to the content because I have a fundamental belief that the best form of written content is written by the subject matter expert but the reality was is that there was content written by the subject matter expert it was just needing to be sourced from a different location at the time twitter now let's move on to part four which is the approach okay this is what you did at a strategic level we're not doing a step by step here this is more high level it's not like you know step one i did this step two we're keeping it a little bit more high level for folks and so here is what i put in for the approach the strategy prioritized keeping bryce's voice and maintaining weekly output while shifting the prep burden off of bryce i selected a topic and theme an example is marketing sales operations hiring then worked with the team to choose data backed packaging that's your title and thumbnail, based on examples from other channels where a video performed at least 10x, if not 20x above that channel's average.
Next, the team pulled Bryce's tweets related to that topic that we chose, compiled them into a Google Doc, and we ordered them from highest performing tweet to lowest performing tweet. In the studio, a TV was placed next to the camera so Bryce could read the tweets and add color commentary. We're talking stories, context, why the tweet was written, any additional framing useful for the audience.
And then we would repeat this pattern across the sequence. The result was a video format designed to be wildly data -backed while also requiring essentially zero prep from Bryce. And so that is the approach.
Again, please make sure you are actually walking through this in your workbook. I don't want you answering this in your head because the moment you answer it in your head and move on to the next question or the next entry, guess what?
You forget what you previously put. So make sure you download that workbook. All you gotta do is click the link in the description down below, enter your email.
I'm gonna send it to you. You can download it and you can actually write out the answers like we're doing right now. Let's move on to number five or part five, which is the outcome, okay?
What changed and how do you know? Now, in this, you can use numbers, right? We can talk about we went from this revenue to this revenue, or we went from hiring employees in, you know, 90 days to averaging 45 days to fill the role.
But you also don't always have to use numbers. I want you to pick one of three outcomes. using what fits your world.
And I've actually listed out some outcomes down below. And I do want to share these with you real quick because I think it's useful for you to understand. We're talking time save, fewer repeat issues, lower risk, higher predictability, less pain or stress.
God damn, that one hits for a lot of people. If you can remove stress and pain from their life, they'll be into it. Better performance, better retention, better safety.
All of these different individual items here. or outcomes that you could identify. So let me share with you what I put under part number five for the outcome.
Bryce quickly identified this as a favorite format, largely because it was low effort and required zero prep. Bryce could walk into the studio, sit down, read previously written tweets, talk about them and repeat. despite being low effort to produce the format generated some of bryce's top performing youtube content at the time one reached three and a half million views and is bryce's number three all -time highest viewed youtube video despite being among the least effort to produce here's how the six best videos in this format turned out number one got 3 .5 million views like i said bryce's number three all -time video number two 2 .7 million views number three 2 .5 million views, then 1 .5 million views, then 1 .4 million views, and the last one got 890 ,000 views.
We're showing what outcome we are achieving by doing this. The sixth part, part six here is the transferable lesson. This has been useful up until this point for the audience.
This is where we put the usefulness on blast. This is when we're... inducing the nitrous oxide is it nitrous oxide something like that to make our car go faster for the transferable lesson anyways we're going to share with the audience what they are going to do with this okay what should they take from this credibility bank entry i'm going to share with you the transferable lesson from this one for me when time available for content creation shrinks there is still a way to keep publishing If we accept that life is a series of trade -offs and that often less time means content performs worse, occasionally an edge case appears where a lower effort system can still produce top performing content.
More broadly, creators and teams should get more resourceful with what already exists. Content that works on one platform can inform content on another. Pre -validated writing, tweets, LinkedIn posts, blogs, emails, can be repurposed into other formats.
An example might be having a strong LinkedIn post turn into an Instagram Reel, rather than constantly trying to create an entirely new material. This is the why it matters for them portion of your credibility bank entry. now one of the fastest ways to make a rebrand successful is establishing a new common enemy and that is actually the second world building element that we are focusing on and i'm sure you've heard a lot of different people talk about identifying a common enemy as a really strong play and brand building and the thinking is usually tied to the fact that We silly humans tend to bond over a shared hatred of something more than a shared love.
Unfortunate, but true. There is much science to back this, despite me wishing it were the contrary. And where I actually end up seeing this go wrong is it's not that the principle of developing a common enemy is bad.
It's the way that people actually play it out. A lot of people make the mistake of calling out specific people or organizations and the caveat that i have to give here is there are cases where this is crucial you have to do that right like that is the brand or that is necessary in order to accomplish your desired outcome or the mission at hand but for the majority of people who are consuming the content that we're producing we do not advise this we recommend you do not fall into the camp of the call out creator you don't call out specific individuals you call out concepts what i will say is yes we advise calling out concepts if you become a call out creator and you're calling out individuals and leveraging the brand equity that they have already developed whether it's their personal brand or it's some company brand organization non -profit even whatever you will get more attention quicker so this is a way to fast track attention to your personal brand the problem is is that i do not believe this is the right attention that you are looking for not all views are good views not all attention is good attention and so we like to take a
fundamentally different approach to developing your common enemy rather than making your common enemy a person or an organization you want to make it a concept or an action in your space that you fundamentally and genuinely disagree with the common enemy is your contrarian take just framed as the thing that stands between your audience where they are right now and them accomplishing the goal that they have when i came out from behind the scenes and started making content publicly talking about my perspectives frameworks and concepts i identified my common enemy as optimizing for virality rather than trust okay that was the common enemy that i tried to rally you around Why?
Because almost everywhere that I looked and everywhere that you probably looked on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, everywhere, people were preaching about how to go viral, how to optimize your content for the most views possible. And I get it. That's what a lot of people think that they want.
That's what gets views and clicks. And so we as humans, we... tend to do things that we are rewarded for and we tend to look for the easiest form of reward and in this case that is views and so it makes sense that a lot of people were doing this but I have been in this game for a very long time and I have met with a lot of these founders that have built their personal brand optimizing for virality rather than trust.
And the number one complaint that they would all talk about is I get a lot of subscribers. I get a lot of views. Likes are off the charts.
People are sharing my content all over their stories on Instagram, but I'm not making the sales that I want. And so I came onto the scene identifying this as the common enemy that I could share with my audience. Why?
Because it was based on my contrarian take that I believe that people who are building their personal brand to grow their business should optimize for trust, not for virality. The cool thing here is when you name this enemy clearly for people, two beautiful things happen. One, your audience gets a really clear understanding of where you stand, what your belief is.
Also, anyone who agrees with you, especially those people who agree with you based on experiencing pain from the opposite, they will self -select into your world and probably be some of your biggest missionaries and advocates going around and spreading your message on your behalf. The contrarian take here is about your belief and the common enemy is about giving your audience something that they can rally around with you.
so that you guys can be in this together see you're communicating basically the same idea here but you're framing it in a way that your audience can participate in and actually take action on rather than just nod in agreement with you do you see the difference here and because you're rebranding this is a crucial element in helping one rally a new audience around you, but also to give your current audience an understanding of where you are going and where you're taking this brand now.
And so let's start with the differentiation exercise. Now, if you've worked through the rebrand roadmap in your Ralston Rebrand Workbook, which of course you've downloaded by now, but if you haven't, click the link in the description, enter your email, and you know the drill, I'm gonna send it to you.
You can just download it and you can actually work through all of these exercises with me rather than doing it later on your own. Now, what I was saying before I went on that quick little tangent there is if you worked through the Rebrand Roadmap, my bet... And it's an assumption that I'm going to make, but I am assuming that you have enough context on your new space, your new niche, your new subject matter to be able to do this differentiation exercise.
If you find this difficult, if this exercise has you just staring at the page, wandering aimlessly, having no clue where to start. that is probably a good indicator that we're not ready to move to this new subject matter, to this new niche, because we don't understand it. We don't have enough context to speak on it from an authoritative or an experience -based standpoint.
If that is the case, you probably need to go back to question four in the rebrand roadmap and work through that. I think it will actually end up helping you greatly because the last thing that you want to do is rebrand to something. that you are not capable to actually speak on.
And then what you end up doing is you split the difference. You've abandoned your old brand and you don't have a strong new one. And now you're .
And so we don't want that. But again, I'm making the assumption that you have the context and you understand this new space well enough. So what we're going to do is the differentiation exercise.
And this is again. in the Ralston rebrand workbook in the workbook you're going to see there's two columns here the first one on the left says things people say or do in my new space that I disagree with the key is the new and then on the right side is my belief or approach if it's a contrarian belief then you're going to write out what your opposite or what your belief is.
If it's a contrarian take or approach, maybe it's an action that you believe should be done differently, then what is your approach? What are the actions that you take? And I want you to identify at least five of these, preferably more if you can, but the minimum requirement here is five.
If you can't come up with five contrarian takes, I would argue you're not deep enough in the industry because anyone who is truly in the weeds of what they're doing, they are hearing, I mean, nowadays online, I can't tell you how many times I'm scrolling through my Instagram feed and I hear another content strategist take on some horse shit.
And I immediately have a visceral reaction and almost, I'd say probably a third of the time, I DM Trevor and I immediately give him my contrarian take on that statement. And so if you're in the weeds of this, this should be something that you can easily do. Now, one thing that I want to call out here is that old habits die hard.
It's incredibly difficult when you have built the motor mechanics and the mental frameworks. for developing ideas or thinking through contrarian takes in your old space, there's a very strong chance that you've been making content in your niche, the current one that you're in, for five, six, seven, maybe even more than that years.
And so you have built a habit or a pattern of thinking through that lens. But if you are rebranding, You do not want to list out contrarian takes from your old space.
And so this might seem obvious, but I have to call it out because it's a mistake that so many people make. They think that they can take the contrarian takes from their previous world and apply it here. That is not what we want to do.
That is not a rebrand. That is a brand refresh. There's gonna be moments in this video where I'm gonna have to continue to call this out because I know the temptation that you're gonna fall into is to revert to your old ways, not because of anything other than just habit.
And if we are rebranding, we want to leave the old associations behind and develop new ones, which starts with developing new contrarian takes. And so I wanna walk through an example for you here to illustrate the point a little bit more clearly. Let's say that you are rebranding.
from purely talking about marketing for a brick and mortar business into business strategy as a whole. The temptation may be to take a list of all of your marketing takes that you disagree with, but I don't think that's where you want to start. Eventually you can bring those back into the fold.
But if we are rebranding, we are wanting to leave the old associations behind. We don't want to be known as just a marketing expert or a marketing guru. We want to be known for our business strategy.
And so what this might look like is identifying that everyone in the space is saying you only want to find unsaturated markets to build products or provide services in. And maybe your belief or your approach is you want to pick markets that have proven demand rather than create demand. uh idea or example here is copy the playbook of whoever is top in your category for how they scaled and maybe your approach or your belief is build your own playbook if it's already been done you'll never be number one The key here is that these were business takes, not just marketing takes.
Now I'm giving you an example here where the worlds are somewhat close. This becomes more obvious if you're switching from teaching people how to do their taxes to how to lose 30 pounds by summer. right it's going to be more obvious but i wanted to give you this example because some of you are going to be rebranding in a world where it is going to be very tempting for you to pull associations from your previous brand into the new one again some of you it's going to be just so plainly obvious the difference there's somebody that we worked with actually last year and she went from being the fitness baddie coach to being a personal brand coach and so the difference in that was So well and obvious that the contrarian takes there's no chance of her bringing her old ones into this new world But for some of you that is going to be a temptation that I urge you Please do not fall into that trap but of these five minimum contrarian takes you're gonna pick three that we are going to intentionally place into the content and Test and what we're trying to see is what is resonating most with our desired audience not just with
The average folk watching. Who do we want consuming? Who is our ideal customer?
And what of the three contrarian takes are they identifying with, resonating with, feeling the most? And typically, this is going to be based off of where have they felt the most pain? Whatever they have felt the most pain on in life is more than likely the contrarian take that they are going to resonate with the most because it hits close to home.
Now, what's really cool here is I've shared that we're going to pick these three and test them. It's all been through the lens of testing, right? Which means that we're just trying to acquire data and information.
And that's really cool. But because we're rebranding, these are literally working overtime. They're doing double the work because not only are you testing your contrarian takes, every time that you share these, you are pairing yourself with that contrarian take.
in your new space thus moving you closer towards the outcome that you desire of your rebrand i have a little statement that i like to say which is sharing is pairing by you sharing it you are pairing yourself and when you pair yourself consistently that creates the outcome of brand when the audience associates you with the thing.
And this is why you want to be sharing these contrarian takes over and over and over again. Now, once you've picked out these three contrarian takes and you know you're going to inject them into your content, I need you to be ruthless about bringing these contrarian takes up in your videos, long form and short form. I want you to do this on podcasts if you appear on them, in LinkedIn posts, in threads, in emails.
anywhere that it makes sense and isn't weird. I'm not necessarily saying bring up your contrarian take at brunch with your mother -in -law. That might be a little strange, but in the right scenario, I want you to literally DM me and be like, Caleb, I feel like I am repeating myself.
So much I feel like I just keep saying the same three contrarian takes over and over and over and let me let me be I'm being a little hyperbolic a little over the top here to try and get the point across I'm not saying that every fucking post, you know Literally, it's like you do nine posts in the last week and all nine of them are just three different versions of your three control That's not what I'm saying But you want to inject these as much as possible in a short of a time period as possible so that you can get the information on what people, and by people, I mean your ideal audience, what your ideal audience and customer base is actually resonating with.
And how do you know they're resonating with it? Well, one, I want you to start looking at the comments on your posts. Unless that gives you an insane level of anxiety and causes you to not want to make content in general, if that's the case, obviously ignore the comments.
But if you are capable of looking at the comments without it giving you a mini panic attack, which is a valid response, I would encourage you to look and see what are people saying? What are the questions, the follow -up questions that they're asking?
What are they quoting that you're saying in your content, right? Look at your DMs. What are people talking to you about?
I can't tell you how many DMs I've gotten from business owners who have DMed me saying, my God, it has changed my business and my life looking at my personal brand and my content through the lens of optimizing for trust, not views. I'm getting so many videos sent to me of people talking about how, Yeah, my views are down significantly.
I'm talking like a quarter of the amount of views I was getting before, but my sales have more than doubled. You want to look for these signals. What are the audience?
What is the audience telling you that they want more of? For me, like I said, it was optimized for trust, not virality. And maybe you already have one of these contrarian takes that you are known for in your current personal brand.
You need to develop a new one. And you need to develop that new one in the Rolston Rebrand Workbook. Click the link in the description below.
Enter your email. I'll send it to you. Download that shit so that you can actually take action.
Now what we need to talk about is how we take this winner, this winning contrarian take, and turn it into the world -building element known as a common enemy. And what we're going to do is once we have this winner, we just need to... reframe it just a little bit.
It's not like a full 360. It's not even really a 180. We just need a slight tweak to it.
For an example, we're going to take my contrarian take, which is that I believe that people who are building their personal brand to grow their business should optimize for trust, not virality. Now, the way we reframe this for the common enemy, right, something that everybody can rally around, not just nod their heads in agreement, is chasing virality is the reason most creators have audiences that don't buy anything that is how we turn a belief into a movement same idea same concept just framed slightly differently it's less of a here's my take and it's more of this is what is holding you back from accomplishing your goal aka the enemy all right we've established our common enemy but How do we take it deeper than that?
How are you able to connect with your audience on a deeper level beyond the subject matter expertise that you speak to? Well, the third world building element is exactly what you need to accomplish this. This is interest stacking.
And this is one of the most underrated, but potentially the most useful element of the three world building elements that we are focusing on today. And here's why I say that. You're moving your audience, right?
You have built an audience, whether it's 13 or 13 million, you have an audience that is built on what you used to be known for. And now you want to build a brand on what you want to be known for now. That is a really big gap.
And so we need something that is going to help our audience from the old cross into the new, at least the ones who the new is relevant. for okay and so interest stacking is one of the best tools that you can use to actually make this happen let me explain what interest stacking actually is for you and then we're going to walk through how you apply this to rebranding specifically interest stacking is just taking the way that relationships develop in the real world like real life not on the internet but like in the physical world how that happens, and taking that same mechanism to build your audience online.
I want you to think back, and for some of us, this might be a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, when we were kids in elementary school. When you were a kid and you, let's say you went from elementary to junior high, right? For some of us, that was fifth to sixth grade.
For some of us, it was sixth to seventh grade. For me, when I went into sixth grade, that was me going into junior high. And I went from being the big dog in fifth grade to, oh my God, I'm the little guy on campus again.
And I am the low end on the pole. Here's what's interesting. In the beginning, if you're anything like me, you were probably pretty shy.
I was extremely shy and very reserved, despite what maybe my content and how I portray or how I show up online now. I was a very shy kid. But over time, I would start to get more comfortable and I would start to reveal or share more interests or things about myself.
Because in the beginning, when you start at a new school, the only thing that you have in common, or at least the only thing that you know you have in common with the other students is the fact that you all go to the same school. But let's say, for example, take me in sixth grade. I show up to school wearing a Linkin Park shirt and I'm sitting at the lunch table and I look over and this kid mentions how much he loves the Hybrid Theory album that they released.
Let's call this kid Mikey. Now, Mikey and I have... two things in common we go to the same school and we both love lincoln park at least lincoln park before minutes to midnight everything up until that point was gold the moment that they released that album is the moment that i feel like their music started going downhill that is a total tangent but i have to include it because it is an interest stacking element and for those of you who agree with that we just went on a deeper level and for those of you who disagree with that You probably hate me forever.
But I digress. When you find out that you have these things in common, the relationship gets closer. Then let's stack another thing.
Mikey and I not only went to the same school and liked Linkin Park, we also loved crushing monsters and eating donuts outside of QFC right across from the junior high that we were at. and for those of you that didn't grow up in washington state qfc is just a grocery store i think it stands for like quality food center or something of that nature but it's it's a grocery store that we would go to and we would eat donuts and drink monsters disgusting pairing at this age but as a kid i mean my god all the sugar you can handle right but what's crazy is in stacking these interests mikey and i became really close friends and suddenly we're hanging out every single day.
And that's actually how relationships work as a kid. And it's how relationships are formed as an adult. see in any new workplace community or organization or group that you join you have the same thing far out on the relationship sphere are acquaintances these are people that you most likely have one maybe two things in common with right kind of like we both work here or we both go to this school or we both go to this church or we both like this band and then close on the relationship sphere would be maybe your best friend or your partner These are people that you most likely have a lot of things stacked in common with them.
But the key here is that the only way that Mikey and I were able to develop this friendship over our mutual love of Linkin Park is because I shared it. I wore the t -shirt. The only way we were able to figure out the monsters and donuts thing is because I talked about the fact that I was going to go to QFC after school to get a monster and donuts.
And so... you cannot stack these things in common with people if they never know about it and they can only ever know about it if you share it and if we don't share these interests and values with our audience i believe we are actually robbing them of the opportunity to connect with us on a deeper level which can lead to long -term brand loyalty if our only point of connection here with our audience is around our subject matter expertise i do believe that is a very strong and very good foundation and that is the foundation that you want to build off of but if we stay there our relationship with our audience tends to stay pretty shallow and surface level and i don't know about you but i want a deep connection with you so we walked through how this plays out in the real world how does this apply to your personal brand how does this actually play out how do we take action on this well what i'm not saying for you to do is identify your interests and start making content about that interest okay i'm not saying that if you love wake surfing for example i'm not telling you to go make a whole video on wake surfing or how to wake surf that's not the point here instead what you want to do is you want to think about how can i
integrate wake surfing into my content maybe it's taking a wake surfboard i hope i'm saying that right and mounting it on the wall behind you to show that this is something that you like or are interested in or maybe what it looks like is filming your next youtube video sitting on a dock or maybe you get crazy and you film the video on the boat or even more psycho mode, you film content while you are wake surfing.
The more simple version of this is when you're giving an analogy or an example of something, is there a way that you can share that analogy through the lens of wake surfing? These are more subtle ways that you can start to interest stack with your audience in your content without making a whole piece around my obsession with Harley Davidson's.
Notice that I am incapable of ever making a video without mentioning it in some way, shape, or form, yet I have not, at least to this date, done an entire video about one of my Harley Davidson motorcycles. And real quick, back to the wake surfing example. If you share your passion for wake surfing, anyone in your audience who also loves wake surfing is going to really fuck with you.
on a heavy level they're not only there now for the subject matter expertise and the value that they're getting from you they also have more in common with you and the way us humans work is we tend to like people that we have things in common with the really interesting kind of like nuance here that i have discovered over the last 18 months because i've talked about interest stacking for several years now but now that it's playing out for me in building my personal brand the very interesting unlock that I have found is something that I've seen with my own example here.
I mentioned how I'm constantly referencing my Harley Davidsons. And what's interesting is none of the clients that we have worked with so far, none of them share in that obsession over Harley Davidsons. We have not had a single person that we've worked with one -on -one that is obsessed even close to the level that I am with Harley Davidson motorcycles.
However... What is super interesting is a lot of the people that we've worked with have their own obsession and a pretty good amount of them are obsessed with building unbelievable overlander rigs crazy trucks or really cool supercars and They have an extreme love and passion not for what the supercar speaks or shows people about them But they actually love the mechanics of it When I talk to them, the first thing that they mention is all the modifications or adjustments or upgrades that they have made to their vehicle, just like I do with Harley's.
And what they have told me and vocalized to me on multiple occasions is that even though they don't share in the same obsession of Harley Davidson's, they respect and can see themselves. in that obsession because they have that same level of obsession but with a different motorized vehicle in this example and so just because the interest maybe that you're stacking or sharing to your audience might be a little bit more niche a little bit more narrow like writing harley davidson's it's extremely niche and extremely narrow Even though you might not have direct connection over, hey, I too love Harley -Davidson's.
I would love to be your customer. You're going to find that in sharing these interests, hobbies, and passions, the way you communicate and talk about them, people will have that in common with you. And so that's another element or unforeseen element and benefit.
of implementing interest stacking for your personal brand. So my point here is to share the fucking interests. Stop thinking that people aren't gonna take you seriously or they don't care.
That's not how we work as humans. That's not how relationships are formed. The deeper the connection, typically the more interests that we have stacked in common.
And so what we need to do is we need to identify what I like to call your non -niche human inputs. But because you are rebranding, we're actually gonna do this exercise through a slightly different lens than I typically run people through when they are building their personal brand. There is a very big difference between starting or building and rebranding here.
And so we're gonna take this through a slightly different lens than I normally go through. You're not just trying to deepen connection. with your audience okay that's typically what this is for you're also trying to help bridge the gap for your current audience between what they currently know you for and what you want them to know you for in the future this is the consistency this is the bridge that will help this chasm or gap that you have between your two brands, the old one and the new one.
And part one in the workbook is identifying these non -niche human inputs. I want you to list five to seven things that are true about who you are outside. of your expertise outside of this subject matter that you talk about and want to be known for these are not content ideas they are parts of you that already exist i want you to list out five to seven i'm just going to share three with you right now one of them is my harley davidson's and my absolute love and obsession over them another one is how much i love going to metal and hardcore shows and listening to those bands the third one that i want to share which is actually very different than the first two is my love for trash reality tv i love love is blind love island's really fun i'm really obsessed with secret life of mormon wives right now i cannot wait for i believe there's an la version coming out soon i'm super excited about that and so what i want you to do is list out five to seven of your human inputs
having nothing to do with your subject matter expertise list them in your workbook now next we're going to go to part two which is identifying what we've been hiding we're getting a little deep here y 'all what i want you to do is answer this question which of these of the five to seven human inputs that you have already identified in that table above which of these am i currently hiding because i think it's not professional not relevant not interesting or people won't take me seriously, especially considering the new space I'm going into.
For a lot of you, your rebrand is almost like a leveling up. Maybe the first brand that you developed, the first space, the first subject matter that you spoke to was a smaller pond. It was a smaller scope of what you covered.
And now you're moving to a much bigger scope. You're solving bigger problems for a more sophisticated audience. And if that's the case, the temptation you're going to feel is that you actually need to hide these parts of yourself, not reveal them.
And so I want you to identify what have you been hiding because you think that people aren't interested or won't take you seriously on. I want you to pick three of the five that you're going to put into this table here. These are the things that we are not going to hide because these are actually usually the things that are the exact reasons that your audience connects with you on a deeper level.
But they can only do that if you share them, if they are visible. Now for part three. This is where we have to decide how they show up.
And what I said earlier, I need to repeat. I'm not saying that they show up as their own pieces of content. If you are saying that you are absolutely obsessed with yoga and you're teaching people how to properly file their taxes for their LLC, well, I'm not necessarily saying that you need to make an entire video about yoga, but maybe...
One of your videos is filmed in a yoga studio. What I want you to do is answer the question, how could this show up naturally inside my new content without derailing it, without making it the primary topic or subject matter of the video? How do I integrate it into what I am already teaching?
And examples of how you integrate are listed in the workbook. We have Background objects in the set, wardrobe that you're wearing, references or metaphors that you make, your tone of voice.
Maybe it's language that you stop editing out or jokes or offhand comments that maybe you make in everyday life and you're leaving out. Now, I will say, please be thoughtful with these offhand comments. I'm not saying that you want to be offensive or anything like that, but maybe there's some humor that you think will cause people to not take you as seriously.
i know earlier this year i released a video talking about how to not be a problematic or a toxic personal brand and i brought out some elements of my personality some tone and personality that i if i'm being very honest with you was concerned that a certain portion of my audience would not take me seriously after watching now it couldn't be further from the truth it actually led to a deeper connection with the audience however I was concerned about that.
And so sometimes the way that you show up, your personality, you're editing it out, but this is the thing that is going to cause deeper connection with your audience. The last example of how you can integrate this in is maybe to the example of filming in a yoga studio maybe it's the environment that you film your content in and so what i want you to do is in this next table that you see in your workbook here on the left side you see the human input you're going to write out the three that you have identified that you are no longer going to hide and you're going to surface in your content and on the right side i want you to Write down how this is going to show up.
I don't want you to skip this and just in your head be like, oh, I'm just going to put my skateboard in the background of my video or I really love weightlifting and so I'm just going to make sure there's a bench with a barbell in the back. I don't want you to just say this in your head. I want you to write this down because.
At the end of this video, we're going to talk about how you're going to share this with your team. And to be clear, if you are not operating with a team here and you're a solo creator, you need this to be able to come back to to remind you of how you're going to integrate it. Because if you're a solo creator, you're managing a million different things.
And this is going to be one of those things that you put at the bottom of your priority list. By filling out this workbook, it makes it easier for you to come back and reference this and actually take action on it. On the left side, you're going to identify the human input and on the right side, you're gonna write out how this shows up.
And now, once you have done this, it's time to actually take action. Remember, sharing is pairing. Every time that one of your non -niche human inputs shows up in your new content, you are pairing yourself with the new subject matter you it's a win -win because in a world where the majority of your competition in this new space you're entering are not doing this and they're just showing up one -dimensional expertise only nothing else this is an incredibly strong way for you to make a very big splash in and to wrap this section of the course up there is actually a bonus exercise in your workbook on developing your brand statement Essentially, what we're doing with this is we're taking everything that we've done so far and putting it into a one to three sentence statement that gives you clarity and direction for both yourself and your team that informs them.
This is where we were. This is where we're going. And this is how we're going to get there.
All right. We've done the rebranding work that lives behind the curtain. It's off stage, but.
This only works if we have the right content strategy that we compare with the work that we have done so far. And before we go into what you're posting and how often, what that cadence looks like, let's do a quick check on two things here. First off, the medium that you are creating in.
And what do I mean by medium? Well, there's four mediums for creating content. There's video, audio, written and graphic.
And so we need to check in on the medium that you're currently using. Is that the medium that you want to be using in this new brand? The second thing that we need to check on is the platforms that you're publishing on.
Talking YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, etc. So many people don't even think about this part. of rebranding they just think about what they want to be known for what they're going to talk about and then just dive right in see the medium and the platforms that you chose to build your own brand were chosen whether intentionally or not hopefully intentionally but they were chosen to serve that old brand and there's no rule here saying that you have to use that same medium or those platforms in developing this new brand or in this rebranding process.
And so I want to walk you through when you should change your medium. And I actually believe that there are three reasons, three main reasons I should say, that you would want to change your medium in a rebrand. The first one is maybe your audience, or at least this new audience that you're trying to build, doesn't consume your current medium as much.
For example, maybe you've been writing long -form articles up until now. You've been posting on Substack, maybe LinkedIn, maybe you have an email newsletter. And that has been the medium and platform that you have used, okay?
But maybe this new audience that you're wanting to attract has less time on their hands and is less likely to consume long -form written content. But what you do know is that they are consuming long form video content and podcast content very frequently. And so this would be a good reason for you to change mediums.
The second reason is that you're just ready for something new. This doesn't necessarily mean abandoning the old medium. It can actually mean just adding in a new one.
I talk about how you go about doing this in the next section here. This is actually a very good reason to change your medium because maybe you've grown in comfort. making content maybe you started doing an audio only podcast and after two or three years of doing that you don't feel as terrified or intimidated by the idea of showing up online in video format and number three back to the whole fixing a bad reputation maybe you're rebranding because of that bad reputation there's so much that I could cover on this but at a high level changing your medium when trying to fix your reputation can be actually one of the most effective things that you can do if you have a bad reputation and you were putting out content like long -form educational content on youtube for example maybe it's actually a good idea for people to not see your face as much for a little while maybe pivoting to a long -form podcast and written content that can apply nuance will actually serve your rebranding efforts
better than you trying to continue using the same medium that you built a bad reputation using. Rebranding means we're not only wanting to build new associations, we're wanting to leave the old ones behind. Now, as promised earlier, I wanna talk through and walk you through two different ways that you can make this medium change.
The first one is to swap fully. And what this ends up looking like is I want you to drop the old medium and replace it with the new one. but not overnight.
I want this to be a gradual transition from your current medium to your new one and you can use the current medium to inform people of this. new medium that you're going to be doing. And so what that looks like is if you are currently doing long form written content on LinkedIn and Substack, you utilize that long form written content to inform people that you are going to start making long form video content.
Maybe it's over on YouTube, for example. And we're going to talk about the platform shifts here in a little bit. But this is probably my favorite approach.
if you are looking to just swap the second approach that we have here is the stack and add this is only okay i want to get this out of the way immediately this is only okay If you slash your team, if you have a media team, have the bandwidth to be able to take on multiple mediums at the same time. For example, we started with making long form YouTube content and we released a six and a half hour course that had a workbook kind of like this one that you could download.
We got over 45 ,000, probably over 50 ,000 email opt -ins just off of that alone. The crazy thing is. Even though we got all of those email addresses.
I didn't send a single email out to the entire list until about nine months into making content. And the reason why is because I did not have the bandwidth. We as a team did not have the bandwidth or resources to be able to consistently and meaningfully provide value in that medium.
What I find a lot of people end up doing is they want to do more and they see all of these people online talking about volume, volume, volume, and do more and be everywhere and make every type of piece of content that you. can imaginable. And I love the like idea of wanting to do more.
But the problem with this is if you don't gut check it with the bandwidth that you have, the resources that you have available , you want to be a shot of Jack. But unfortunately, the way that you are thinking about approaching this is more than likely going to make you a watered down shot of Jack, a Jack and Coke.
We don't want to be watered down. We want to be strong and potent. And so My recommendation to you is only do the stack and add approach if you have the bandwidth.
And what this means is you're literally just adding another medium. Maybe you have been doing long form written like we were talking about. You were posting on Substack, LinkedIn, wherever.
And now you're going to add in video content. Or in my example, we started with video content and we added in longer form written. But this was something that we only added when we had the ability to execute it effectively to the level and standard that we hold.
Now, we were just talking about your mediums, right? You got your video, your audio, your written and your graphic. But now we need to talk through how you're going to change platforms.
And I want to share with you three reasons that it makes sense to change your platforms when rebranding. The first reason is that your ideal customer or audience isn't as active where you are currently posting, but they're active or more active somewhere that you are currently not. Let's say, for example, you've been posting on TikTok and Instagram for a while now, but maybe your new audience is more active on LinkedIn and stack.
And so you're going to need to make the pivot over there. That would be one good reason. The second good reason is that you change your medium and your platforms need to follow.
This is actually a very simple one. Let's say, for example, if you swap from doing video content to written content. more than likely youtube is not going to serve you anymore you're probably going to want to shift your platforms to follow the medium that you are doing your platform should match the medium and number three the third reason why it makes sense to change your platforms to help your rebrand is you just want to try a new platform now this is actually fine there's really nothing wrong with this here's my encouragement though My encouragement would be just to run it through the same filtering we did for the medium.
Do you have the bandwidth? Does this move you closer to your outcome desired, the outcome that you want to achieve with your rebrand? Does it move you closer or are you just chasing something new and shiny and exciting because it's novel for the moment?
If you are chasing something new and you still want to do it, cool. I'm fine with that. You do you.
but just understand the cost and the trade -off that comes with that you are diluting the content you're making because you are spreading yourself most likely too thin now how many platforms should you actually be on and this is a rule that does not change in a rebrand this is something that we preach whether you are building a personal brand starting one from scratch or rebranding it doesn't matter what category you are in if you are a solo creator i want you to have one primary platform and one secondary platform if you are a creator with a team i want you to have three primary platforms you're going to rotate your innovation and effort between them using a method i call the eye of saron approach and then you want to identify one to three secondary platforms where you are going to repurpose or repost your content to now please Please resist the urge to try and be everywhere all at once while you are rebranding.
You're wanting to build and establish these new associations, which is gonna require a lot of concentrated effort, and that is gonna be very tough to do if you are spread too thin trying to post on a thousand different platforms every single day. And so we have an exercise here that we're gonna run through. for your medium and your platform change.
And this exercise has two parts to it. The first is a decision that we need to make. What medium are we going to be creating in and what platforms are we going to be posting to?
And the second part is a transition plan. How are we going to go from where we are right now to getting to that spot? So let's pull out the Ralston Rebrand Workbook.
We're going to start with part one where we audit where we are. And what you're going to see here is on the left side of this table, the left column, we have the primary medium, the secondary medium, if any. We have the primary platforms and the secondary platforms.
And again, if you are a solo creator, that should only be one primary platform and one secondary platform. If you have a team, three primaries, one to three secondaries. And what I want you to do is audit where you currently are.
Write down on the right side, what is your current primary medium? what is your secondary medium if you have one for example if you do youtube videos and you do an audio only podcast you would write video and audio then you're going to identify your primary platform or platforms and your secondary ones so i want you to write that in the right side of this table now part two is where we're deciding where we're going to go so i want you to answer these questions in order and i want you to be brutally honest with yourself the first question is does your medium need to change for the rebrand if yes what's the new medium the next question is what approach are you taking are you going to swap fully or are you going to stack an ad the next question here is why are you choosing this approach why are you choosing to just completely cold swap these mediums Or why are you deciding to add in an additional medium?
This is helping us become intentional with our decision making rather than just flippantly choosing something because we don't want to do the actual work. The next question here, B, is do your platforms need a change for the rebrand? OK, the second question here is which platforms are you removing and why?
For the sake of your bandwidth and your sanity. If you're going to add new things in, you should probably start with what you're going to remove. Then the next question comes in with what platforms or which platforms are you adding in and why?
Why are we adding these? Now we move on to the next one here, which is to lock in the new plan. using the solo versus team framework i want you to write down your new platform structure again same as the previous table we've got primary medium we've got secondary medium if any we've got primary platform or platforms and secondary platform or platforms and i want you on the right side here to write out what the new version of this is going to look like now part three here is the transition plan and this is where a lot of people this up because you have your current state and the new state that you want to be in and that gap is where a lot of things can go wrong.
Now, what we're talking about here is a transition plan, but let's be real. What we're actually establishing is just a starting point. We are not going to be locked into this.
To do this transition effectively, it requires constant monitoring and pivoting. The timeline that we establish here is 100 % going to change when you are actually in it. Your audience is either going to respond faster or much slower than you expect and taking on this new medium may introduce some complexities that even though we tried to factor them in end up being more difficult than you previously realized and that is to be expected we want to expect that things won't go according to plan but i don't know about you but i prefer to have a robust detailed plan in order to be able to break it guess what breaks you not the plan If you approach this transition like it's like a legal binding contract written in stone, you're not going to rebrand effectively.
You're just going to be stuck and not able to actually pivot where necessary or where the audience is giving you the strongest signal to lean in. This plan exists to give you a starting direction that you can iterate off of based on the data that you are getting. And so what I want you to do is I want you in your workbook to fill out this table here.
The first column that we're going to fill out is what is changing in phase one in phase two and phase three again this is going to adjust the most important part here is to get phase one dialed into a spot where it is directionally correct to get you started so that you can start getting information and feedback from your audience to know where you need to pivot the second column that we have here is What is staying the same?
What are you not changing? What is not going to evolve or adapt based on this rebrand? And then the last column that we have here is I want you to assign a rough timeline.
Again, this is just the starting point. How long do you think this opening phase is? And so what I want you to do is give yourself a rough timeline.
You're not holding yourself to this, but if you don't establish a check -in point to see if this is even working, you can just procrastinate your way or i'll see if it's working in a few months you'll push it down the line it'll get moved week over week over week and you won't actually make the progress necessary and so what i want you to do in this rough timeline section is just give yourself check in dates to be able to see is this working am i moving closer to the thing that i want to achieve based on my rebranding initiative and on this note of iterating i actually have a couple of follow -up questions.
They're in the workbook for you. I want you to ask yourself these questions every 30 days or so. The first one is, what is my audience's behavior telling me about the transition?
Are they following me to the new medium and platform? Are the new people showing up? Am I getting new audience members or have I only done a good job of pulling the old ones in but I've attracted no new audience members?
And the third follow -up to this one is, Are there questions and comments that you're receiving around your new subject matter? Obviously, when you go through this transition, you're going to continue to receive questions about the old subject matter that you're known for.
But what you want to monitor is, am I starting to get questions from people about this new thing? Like I mentioned earlier in a previous example, if you are transitioning from teaching people how to file their taxes as an LLC to how to lose 30 pounds in 60 days, well... Are you getting questions about weight loss?
Or are you only getting questions about how to file your taxes as an LLC? If you're only getting questions in the old brand, in the old world, then you can know that we have not done an effective job of transitioning over to this new brand with our content strategy. The next question here that I want you to ask every 30 days is, what needs to adjust in my timeline based on the answers to those questions above?
The key here, i will reiterate is this is a commitment to a direction we are directionally correct okay but we are going to be iterating off of that direction based on the data we are getting and whether or not we are moving closer or further away from accomplishing our goal that we have established that we want to achieve with our rebrand now how do we come up with these new content ideas because again we are rebranding and so we don't want to make content in the old subject matter the old niche the old brand we want to come up with new ideas and if you've been making content in that previous niche or subject matter for a while now you have built yourself a fun little habit see ideas are coming naturally to you because you've spent years training your brain to spot them through the lens of that subject matter expertise for that audience and the problem here is that habit up until now has been serving you really well but in rebranding this habit is no longer going to be serving you and it's actually going to be working against you
Because you are rebranding, your default idea generation is going to be based on what you were previously talking about. And we're going to need to reorient that to now come up with ideas and solve problems within this new niche or subject matter that you are speaking to. Because if you keep coming up with ideas and keep solving problems for that old world, that old niche and subject matter that you were speaking to, you will continue to attract that old.
audience so here's the equation that we like to use you want to take your ideal customers painful problems plus your unique solution which equals idea and then idea leads you to multiple angles and those multiple angles lead you to multiple pieces of content So let's unpack that one. First, let's start with the painful problem.
What is this painful problem that I speak of? Well, this right here is actually going to be the most important piece of this equation, because if you get this correct, this is where your rebrand filter lives. And so if you do this correctly, you are going to have everything else working properly that is downstream of this.
If you identify and you pick the painful problems, the very, very painful problems that your new ideal audience and ideal customer face, then you are going to have all of this work in the direction that you're wanting to go. If, however, you go through and identify painful problems that your old audience or old customer base were facing, then what are you going to do?
You're just going to continue to attract those individuals into your audience and you're not going to effectively rebrand. And so all of this comes down to whose problems are you actually solving? But again, it's not just any problem.
It is a painful problem. And what does that even mean?
Well, the way that I like to think about it is, what is the most costly problem that you can help your ideal customer solve? And costly can mean a lot of things. Costly in time, in money, in reputation, in stress and anxiety.
I mean, the list goes on and on. When you solve a problem that is actually expensive in one of those categories of expenses that I just mentioned, for your customer to live with, you're not gonna have to convince them of why they should listen to you.
You solving this painful, costly problem for them will be all the reason necessary. It will do the convincing for you. It's kinda like that saying of like, let your work speak for itself.
The relief that they're going to feel by not incurring this expensive problem anymore is going to be the reason why they're going to trust you and want to listen to you in the future. Some people mistake this and think that they need to like make up some solution.
That's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is, is even if you have the same solve, the same solution as many other people in your industry, in your niche for attacking this problem, you hopefully probably god i really hope you do you probably go about this in a slightly unique way you put your own spin onto it and that's what i want you to identify what is your unique solution shaped by your own experiences successes and failures in trying to solve these problems what does that look like what i don't want you to be doing is regurgitating the same solution generic solution that everybody else in your space is sharing the key here is your solution needs to be filtered through the lens of what have you actually done you should only be sharing solutions based on you've done not hypotheticals that you're coming up with that are not based or grounded in any sort of reality or results and this is actually where your legends and lore feed directly into your content, that credibility bank that we worked so hard to establish.
I remember it took us a second to just fill out one entry and then you went and did at least two more, right? Because you're filling out your Ralston Rebrand Workbook. These are the things that inform your solutions.
What you identified in those essentially case studies that you're building out are your unique solution to that problem. And that is what you want to share and instruct your audience to follow. But again, it needs to be through the lens of what you have done.
I want to hammer this so much because the majority of the content that I'm seeing online is people regurgitating the same solutions that ChatGPT gave the next person in your fucking niche. And I'm tired of it. You're not going to stand out in any way, shape, or form, let alone when you're entering a new space because you're rebranding.
You don't have much credibility in the beginning anyways. And so the way that you establish that is by sharing these lessons, these learnings, this unique solution. through the lens of what you have done can you tell this one fires me up a little bit and ruffles my feathers a little bit more than the others but let's jump into what does it mean to have an idea right we have this problem that our ideal customer faces we have our unique solution we know those two things that equals an idea so what does this actually mean well really all the idea is in this equation is your problem and solution paired together that is an idea now it's not a piece of content yet it's just a concept and it is a concept that i believe is big enough to make many different pieces of content about and that's where your angles come in once you have this idea you can attack that idea or concept from many different angles each angle becomes its own individual piece of content One idea using this equation could potentially give you 10 plus different angles to attack that core idea from.
This is how you stop running out of things to make. This is how you're able to produce the volume that is necessary in order to make a splash in this new pond that you're entering by rebranding. Let me walk you through how this content ideation equation looks from start to finish.
And I'm going to use something that I make a lot of content about. And it's actually something that we've covered in this course already. We're going to start with the painful problem.
And the painful problem here is that people don't know how to stand out with their personal brand. My unique solution is using my two column differentiation exercise where we list the industry norms on the left and the contrarian approaches on the right. And the idea that this produces is how to stand out with your contrarian approach.
or how to stand out in your content. Then the angles, and I wrote out 10 different angles that we could attack from this. First one, how to stand out in a saturated niche.
Next one, how to stand out on a specific platform. How to differentiate in a new niche. What standing out actually looks like.
Why standing out actually matters. Why you're not standing out. The difference between standing out and being controversial.
How to stand out without being weird. The next one that I have here is standing out as an introvert. I.
I am introvert. The last one that I put down here is standing out when you're new to your space. OK, these are all covering the same core idea.
They're just slightly different angles of attack that we can approach when talking about the core idea and the problem solution that we are sharing with the audience. Now, imagine if you were to do this with five different ideas or maybe even 10. This is how your content can scale effectively.
within this rebrand. If you were to do this with five ideas, you might have 50 different angles that you could attack those ideas from. And so what I want us to do is pull out the Ralston Rebrand Workbook and we're going to do the content ideation exercise together.
Part one here is we're going to identify the three to five painful problems that your new ideal customer and audience faces and so what you're going to see here is there is a big table for you to fill out and the first column is the painful problem okay we already know what that is i'm not going to go over that the second column is what does it cost them and the reason why i want you to write this out is i want you to make sure that you're actually solving painful problems there's many problems that your ideal customer and audience face but that doesn't mean that they are the most painful ones and like i shared earlier The more painful the problem, the more costly the problem, the more that this audience is going to trust you and be bought into the fact that they should be listening to you and walking through your unique solution to solve their problems.
In this portion, you're going to write out the painful problem and what it costs them. Now, part two is where we're going to write the unique solution to each problem. So for each of the painful problems above that we've already listed out.
Write out the unique way that you go about solving it. Again, shaped by your real fucking world experiences, not regurgitating what other people are giving as solutions. Now, a really big caveat here is if you find that you were able to figure out the problem and what it costs them easily, but you're struggling to identify what your unique solution is to this problem.
I'm going to make a bet that. That means you probably haven't actually solved this problem before. In which case, why are we teaching people how to solve it?
Because you don't know how to solve it. Which means we probably should cut that problem altogether and identify another one that we actually can solve and have solved ourselves in the past so that we can teach people how to do what we have done. We don't want to teach off of hypotheticals.
we want to teach off of what has actually happened and so what you're going to do here is you're going to write out what your unique solution is now part three is we're going to write out what the idea is you already know what this is so you're just going to identify the idea and then for part four i want you to take the ideas that you have had and i want you to generate four to ten angles for that idea and so what you're going to see here is the table has changed We now have one area where you can enter the idea.
So paste your idea that you've already identified in the previous table in this section. And I want you to identify four to 10 angles that you can attack from it. Now, a little pro tip here.
This is a best practice when it comes to brainstorming. Don't filter as you go. Write out every angle that comes to mind and then go through and identify the ones that you don't want to make and you can remove them from the list.
And then you just want to repeat part four for each of the ideas that you developed in part three. And if you do this fully, like I mean like for real, for real, you're going to walk away from this exercise with. at least 25 to 30 different angles that you can make content from all directly aimed at the audience you're rebranding towards so now we know what you're rebranding to You've built your credibility bank.
You've identified your common enemy. You've done the interest stacking exercise. You've checked in on your mediums and platforms.
And now we know how we're coming up with these new content ideas to reach the new audience we're trying to reach. But now we got to do the thing that becomes very difficult. which is showing up consistently in a way that is actually sustainable.
Because I always say this, the only way that we win this game of personal branding is if we actually stick with it. A short sprint gives us nothing. This is a marathon, and so we need to treat it as such.
And your cadence strategy for the content that you're posting is going to be dependent on the path that you chose way back in section two that we were working on, what feels like forever ago now. If you chose Path 3, for example, you're not rebranding. You already decided that.
You're refreshing. So why are you even watching at this point? I don't know why you're here other than interest, which I love and appreciate.
but I'd rather you actually take action on what you need to do. Now, if you chose path two and you're building new accounts from scratch while keeping your current brand running to pay the bills and keep the lights on, your cadence question is actually the same exact question that every new personal brand faces. And I have a full video on content strategy.
four new personal brands that 100 % applies here. Rather than teaching all of that right here, if this is you, if you chose path number two, I recommend that you click the info card that is popping up somewhere on this video right now and you watch the content strategy video.
Specifically, I want you to look out for and follow the accordion method and the 70 -20 -10 framework. This is how these two things together are how you're going to build a cadence on your new account that you can actually sustain while the business scales and because a lot of your effort and bandwidth is going to maintaining the old personal brand accounts that you have already built and established that are feeding your business now one thing that i'm going to add here that is specific to rebranding you don't want to let the new accounts slow start cause you to panic and pull resources from the old brand accounts why because those old brand accounts are paying the bills you need to treat the new one almost like you would as like a a startup or a new division within your business okay this is steady sustainable output this is not a sprint this is a marathon and we want consistency more than volatility and rather than teaching all of that here if this is you
We have a video on your content strategy that is for people who are starting their personal brand and it 100 % applies to you. And the link for that video is in the description down below. After you go through the rest of this video, I want you to click that and watch that video.
That is gonna help you determine your cadence and so much more that goes into the content strategy that you are going to utilize in going down path number two. Now the rest of this lesson here, is for you if you chose path number one.
But for those of you who are on path number two, there's actually going to be a lower third on the screen that shows the timestamp of where you can skip to go straight to the next section, which is where we talk about delivery. See, the way that you deliver your content, it's not just the message that you're sharing, but it's how you share it.
And this is a huge part of rebranding that I don't want you to mess up. And so I'd encourage you, skip ahead to that section. But for those of you on path one, you're keeping the current accounts and converting them over to this new brand.
For most people, this actually ends up being the harder path, but I think it's the more interesting one because you have an existing audience that you can potentially carry across. We've talked about this in the more brand positioning portion of this course, but the whole game here comes down to one basic principle. Sharing is pairing.
See, every time that you post about this new subject matter, you're pairing yourself with it. And if you do it consistently, the audience will eventually associate you with this new thing. But the strategy that you need to use to make this work without shocking your audience and causing them to completely start tuning you out because you are no longer serving them the thing that they came here for is...
an approach called successive approximation. I'm not gonna give you the crazy scientific definition. Essentially what you wanna do is you want to ease them into this.
We don't wanna cold turkey them with your content overnight. That is not gonna be a good approach here. You're gonna lose a lot of individuals and your account is going to have some issues with the fact that you have so many people that could consume your content and they are not engaging with it.
And so here's how this is going to play out. I don't want you to really think about it like you're swapping content. I want you to think more like you're bridging with your content.
You're bridging from the old brand to the new brand, okay? . And we need to build a bridge that can carry individuals from where we were to where we are going.
Now, real quick, if you're one of the people who are here and you're rebranding because you're trying to fix a bad reputation, this might be obvious. And it might go without saying, but I'm going to say it anyways to make sure it's loud and clear. You don't want to do this.
You want as much separation from your old personal brand as possible. And so you don't want to be doing any sort of bridging. You want a fresh, clean start.
Like I said earlier, I am happy to make a more detailed video on how you fix a bad reputation. If I get five or more DMs on Instagram at Caleb Ralston, I will make that video for you. Now what's fun here is this bridge itself is also a test.
It is a test or a self -selection tool that allows your audience to determine whether they want to cross that bridge with you. If they want to go to the other side of the river, so to speak. And so what you get to do is you get to build this bridge, but after you build it, i wouldn't stress about it anymore you don't want to spend too much time and energy trying to figure out who's going to cross the bridge or who's going to stay on the other side this is not a good use of energy you build the bridge and use it as a self -selection tool for your audience to determine whether or not they want to continue on this journey with you going into the new brand and i believe that there are four great ways that you can go about building this bridge there are four bridges that we're going to talk about here the first one is the setting bridge okay this is where you keep filming in an environment that your audience associates with you but change the subject matter or what you're teaching inside the setting
We actually did this with a client that we were working with who was known as a fitness coach. She had built a very strong reputation and personal brand in that world. But over the years of building her personal brand in that world, she had actually gained a lot of skills and experience in scaling personal brands.
Not only hers, but she had actually helped several friends and clients of hers and gotten incredible results. And so what she wanted to do is rebrand from being known as the fitness coach to being the personal brand. coach.
And so what we walked her through is why don't you film some of your personal branding content in the gym? This takes a setting that your audience is familiar and comfortable with and associates you with and knows you by and just inserts the new thing.
Essentially what you're doing here is you're branding this new subject matter that you're speaking to. Because what is branding? A pairing of things.
And so by you taking something that they know, the setting that you've previously filmed in, and you pair it with the new subject matter, you are branding this new subject matter with the value they associate with what they've gotten from you in the past. This is an incredible, it's honestly probably my favorite bridge to utilize in the whole bridging method.
But the The second bridge that we can talk about here is the format bridge. This is where you keep the format and style that you are known for, but you change the subject matter that you're teaching within it.
If you're known for a specific kind of breakdown, edit style, or content structure, then you keep that exact same format, but you pour the new subject matter into it. The familiarity of the format is what does the carrying across the bridge. This is something that they know you for paired with something that they don't know.
And over time, the audience starts to inherently associate you with the new thing. The third bridge here is the analogy bridge, okay? This is where you teach the new subject matter using analogies and metaphors from your old world.
For example, if you are moving from fitness to business, maybe you talk about cash flow like caloric intake. If you're moving from marketing to leadership, maybe you use campaign building language to describe team building. This is how you're able to bridge the gap.
Your audience already understands and speaks that language. Use it to introduce the new ideas. All right, now the fourth bridge here is the interest bridge.
You're stacking your non -niche human interests and the human side of who you are into the new content. The interest stacking exercise that you already did is doing double the work here. Because it's not just deepening the connection, it's actually giving your current audience a personal thread, something consistent that's stable while the subject matter that you're speaking to and teaching on changes.
You don't have to pick just one. You can use multiple. But I encourage you to pick the strongest or strongest ones for your situation and lean on it as much as you can while you start to ramp up the cadence of this new content.
Now let's talk about how your ratio between the old and the new content is going to adjust. And the principle here is that the audience is going to set the pace. They're gonna tell you the pace, not some rigid content calendar.
Now, don't get me wrong. I love me a content calendar. I love a good plan, but what do I love most?
I love a strong plan loosely held, something that we can iterate and adapt off of as we get new information. Start small. If you're putting out 10 posts per week on Instagram, for example, the ratio for week one, might look like one new, nine old.
Then you're going to monitor how it's doing. And what you want to monitor for is the performance of this new content compared to the median of your old content over the last 60 to 90 days. Now, I'm calling out the median, not the average, because if you did have one viral hit on your old content, it's going to skew your benchmark massively and it's going to make your new shit look like it is falling off a fucking cliff.
And so if you use the median, you're going to have a good benchmark to base whether you are getting good traction or not. off of i had a very tough time in cracking this because it is so incredibly difficult to make something of this nature talking about rebranding when there's so many variables and so much nuance to this this works best obviously if i'm actually working with the individual if i can sit down with you and get more information and so i'm going to give you some starting points and signals you want to look for but i i have to caveat this This is not the end all be all.
There is so much more depth that I would love to go into, but I am not able to without the information from you. And this is why I love working with people because we're actually able to accomplish a lot more. But with that caveat that I have to include so that I don't pigeonhole myself into a bad spot, the signal that you want to look for here is that your new content, you want it to be performing at a 0 .75x.
of your median or above if it is doing that it is working okay that is good signal that this is working i'm not even looking for it performing at the same benchmark why because it's a new thing it's something that is completely different than what your audience has come to expect okay and so the likelihood that you are going to just day one perform at 1x 2x 3x 4x is um Well, it's very unlikely.
Now, if it is hitting a 2x or above, I want you to move faster. I want you to increase your ratio faster. So rather than going week one, we're going to do one post about the new thing.
Week two, we're going to go to week three, three, four, four, so on and so forth. If you notice after two or three weeks, you are performing at a 2x or above your benchmark. I want you to rapidly increase this ratio quicker, aka I want you to make the transition faster.
If your audience is like, yeah, we fucking love this, we want more of this, give them what they're asking for. I said start small, start slow, but you don't need to stick with that if your audience is actually demanding that they want more of this new thing from you. However, if this new content is performing below a 0 .75x of your median, I don't want you to pull back yet.
I want you to dive deeper and audit why it's not performing as well as you want it to. Now, real quick, for those of you who don't understand what I'm talking about when I say 0 .75x or 2x, basically what this is is you calculated your median, right? And the workbook actually walks you through calculating your median.
You calculated that number. and so now you are measuring the performance of your new content against that median let's say for just ease of math your median is 100 views and that's what we're working with that's the metric that we're tracking here if you are getting 75 views or more in that 100 view example then you are performing at a 0 .75 x if you get 150 views that's a 1 .5 x okay so that's just a quick explanation here but if your content like i said is performing at a below 0 .75 x of the median you need to ask yourself these two questions the first question is are you actually following the content best practices sometimes what i've noticed is that if you've been making content online for a long time you maybe got into a little bit of autopilot in your old niche and you got a little Well, let's just go there.
You got sloppy with the hooks, your structure and clarity is kind of like, it's lacking. And you have not been following the best practices. Thus, if you apply those non -best practices to your new content, the likelihood that it performs well is low.
The second question that you want to ask yourself is, is the new content as articulate as the old? You've explained this. old stuff that you've been talking about potentially for years now and gotten really good at being able to communicate it in a way that is very simple clear and understandable and the audience understands what they need to do off the back of it This might take a second for you to develop the same skill in the new subject matter that you're talking about.
Even if you've been doing it behind the scenes for years now, just because you've been doing it behind the scenes doesn't mean that you have the skill to be able to articulate it in a way that a mass audience is able to learn and change their behavior after consuming. Now, here's the funny thing. If people start noticing the transition, if they see the rebrand happening and they call it out in the comments or the DMs, that's not a problem.
a lot of people would think oh no i don't want people to know this is happening no that is actually signal that the bridge is working that is an indicator that things are going correctly you only want to worry about this if you notice that they are bringing this up in a negative light if they're speaking to it and calling out that they see the rebrand and they're saying it in a negative way cool then we need to revisit this whole plan and figure things out from there but if they're calling it out and it's not in a negative way this is good you want them to be aware of this we don't want them to think that you're still occupying that old space that old niche that old subject matter that you spoke to and what's cool is that the reps that you're doing each new piece of content that you make adds up in this new subject matter six months in you'll be writing about it and speaking about it in the same fluency that you had in the old one But the first month, I want you to expect that you probably won't and you should plan accordingly.
Now, I want to cover a couple of things that you should not be doing with your content real quick. I do not recommend that you swap cold turkey unless your revenue, like we identified earlier, and I believe it was section two, unless your revenue is completely 100 % not tied to your personal brand and you're aware of the trade -off that you're making and the cost that it will incur.
then cool, by all means, if you are aware of that and you're good with it, move forward with a cold turkey swap. But for you watching this, I know you probably shouldn't be doing that. And so the other thing I don't want you to do is I don't want you increasing frequency of this new content, this new subject matter, unless you are getting signal from the audience that they are understanding what's happening and they are getting real value from your content.
If your audience is confused, The last thing that you want to do is amplify that confusion. You need to lock in the clarity and actually understand what you're communicating and make sure your audience is understanding it before you increase the ratio of new to old.
But on the flip side, I'm not saying that if one post does bad in the new subject matter, the new niche, that you need to completely pull back and rethink everything. One post is not a trend. You want to look at the median of your new content over a few weeks, not just one post.
We don't want to make big decisions off of just one instance. And please, for the love of God, do not skip the audit step. Those two questions that I gave you, if your content is underperforming, I want you to actually answer them.
If this new content is underperforming and you just push harder without auditing, you're just doing an amazing job of making really bad content faster. And so now let's go into the exercise where we're actually choosing the bridge. You now know what the bridges are.
You know what we're going to do and what not to do. Let's actually identify or choose the bridge you're going to utilize. And so I want you to answer which bridge type is most relevant for you.
And so what you're going to do is you are going to identify the bridge type for your primary and secondary platform. OK, if you are a solo creator, if you are a creator with a team, then you are going to do the same exact thing for your. three primaries and your one to three secondary platforms.
And so in the second column, you're gonna write out why this fits your situation. I want you to be methodical and intentional with the bridge that you are choosing. Part two is you're gonna set your benchmark.
I want you to walk through each one of the steps that we walk you through on how to establish what your median is from the last 60 to 90 days in your content. Then what we're going to do is for each of the platforms, we're going to identify what .75x of your median looks like. This way you don't have to keep recalculating it.
But then also we're going to identify what 2x of your median looks like. And you're going to place these in the table below. So part three, we're going to set your starting ratio.
And this is based on what is actually sustainable and realistic for you and won't shock your existing audience. So I want you to pick your starting ratio for week. one you're going to do this for all of the platforms that you are on if you're a solo creator it's going to be the one primary and the one secondary and again if you have a team it's your three primaries and one to three secondaries you're going to do this for the total post that you do for the week and then i want you to break down of those total posts how many are going to be for the new brand versus the old brand and then part four here is you just need to monitor it closely you're going to be checking your content daily reviewing the performance weekly and adjusting your ratio roughly every two weeks.
You need data to inform these decisions. And if you're starting off slow with only one post a week or in week one, one post on this new thing, you're going to need to give it some time in order to get enough information. to make any sort of strategic pivots.
My God, that was a lot that we have covered so far, but we have two more pieces that we need to hit to round out your content strategy for this rebrand. The first one is your delivery. Now, what do I mean by delivery?
Well, there are many elements that go into your delivery, but today in the interest of making your rebranding effort successful, we're gonna focus on your. tone and you may think because this video is about rebranding that i'm going to say that you should change your tone but that might not necessarily be the case but before you make any tweaks you need to know if your delivery actually requires any sort of changing.
Go figure. And so in your Ralston rebrand workbook, we have three questions to help you determine whether or not you actually need to change your delivery. And the first one is when you think about your old content, does the way you delivered it represent who you are now?
The way you were delivering that content, the old content that your personal brand has been built around. Does that delivery actually match who you are right now? Because I believe that the best form of delivery isn't creating some character that you try to be or following the delivery best practices.
The best form of delivery is actually stripping away all the things that keep you from being you. And so if that form of delivery is no longer a good representation of who you are now, then that is a good reason to change your delivery. And so the second question that we want to answer in our workbook is, Did people tend to respond to your delivery positively or negatively?
Or was it never really mentioned at all? And the third and final question that you want to answer in your workbook here is does your current delivery style fit the person that your new personal brand is trying to attract? I'm not saying that we want to manufacture or be something that we're not.
But I also am saying that there are certain tones or styles that we have because a lot of us have multiple forms of delivery that are going to cater more or less to the people that we're trying to attract. For example, I have many different tones and forms of delivery. Sometimes I'm really fast and gregarious, sometimes a little bit more slow and calm and methodical.
And I like to pick an individual for each video that I'm making that for. And so then I try to think through what communication style, what tone when I speak to this individual lands or comes through the best for them.
That is the tone that I choose to use in communicating and trying to attract the audience that I am trying to attract. After answering these questions, if it's looking like your delivery style is representing you accurately, it's currently being responded to, positively and it fits the person that you're trying to attract in your new audience well it sounds like you should probably maintain your current delivery style on the flip side if it's becoming clear that your delivery style is not a good representation of you or maybe worst case you're just trying to copy somebody else because you've seen it work for them then I think you probably have the answer it's probably time to change your tone of delivery Now, I don't want you to overthink this one.
Delivery gets way more in -depth. There is so many different elements that go into this, but I don't want to overwhelm you with the things that are not mission critical. And a caveat, again, that I have to add because I want to make sure that I am giving you guys all the information necessary in order to do this most effectively.
It is really, really difficult to do a self -audit on your delivery. A self -audit and diagnosis of your delivery on your own content is one of the hardest things that you can do for your own personal brand. See, you're just way too close to it.
And if you want me to actually take a look at your delivery specifically, that's where our one -on -one Ralston partnerships come into play. Feel free to go to our website, calebralston .com, submit an application, and see if you qualify. All right, we've done all of this work.
But if the right people aren't clicking on our YouTube videos, if the right people don't watch after the hook on our shorts, then all of this work that we've done is kind of for nothing. And so I want to talk about your wrapping paper, but I'm not talking about it through the lens of helping you catch more attention. The real reason that this section exists within the context of your rebrand is a little different.
Your wrapping is what decides who is going to engage and show up for your content. And in a rebrand, this is mission critical. Because if your wrapping paper still looks or sounds like the old brand, you are going to...
keep pulling in the audience that you're trying to move away from and it won't pull in the audience that you're actually trying to build see the job of this section is to make sure that your wrapping is actually attracting the new audience that you want not retaining the old one that you previously built now if you're new to this concept of wrapping paper let me give you a short recap here to catch you up to speed wrapping paper is how it sounds it's the thing that wraps the con that you're sharing with your audience and helps determine who decides to consume it.
Within your wrapping paper, we have your content format. Think of it like the structure or the template, the way that you're communicating the information in the meat of the video. But then you also have your packaging format.
Think title, thumbnail, hook. headline. Your content formats will fatigue slowly.
Your packaging formats will fatigue very fast. You want to refresh your packaging more than you refresh your content formats. Now, different rappers attract different people.
Your rapping isn't just an attention grabber. It's also an audience filter. The only thing that we're focusing on is making sure that we have one thing dialed, making sure that your rapping is filtering for the new audience.
Because your hook, your thumbnail, your title, the visuals, the headline, all of these things are saying this is for people like you to a specific kind of person. And it's also saying this isn't for you to everyone else. And so where so many people get this wrong is we've done all this work up to this point.
But then we're still wrapping our content in the old way.
material or the content within the video or within the written post or within the carousel or within the podcast is on the new subject matter, if we're not wrapping it accordingly, we are only going to continue to attract the old audience and create more confusion, not moving us closer to what we're trying to achieve with our rebrand, but actually moving us further.
And before you build your new wrapping, what I want you to do is Pull out this Ralston Rebrand workbook and I want you to answer these questions that we're going to run through here in your workbook. The first question is, what language do they use?
What terms is this new audience actually using that they're going to understand and instantly click with? The next one that we want to identify is actually, what language do they understand? but don't use themselves.
The key here is we're actually identifying the language that we are not going to use. Just because they understand it doesn't mean that they actually use it. And what we want to do is we want to use terms that people in this space are actually using, not just terms that they understand hypothetically.
The next one that I want you to answer in your workbook is what references and names are they going to recognize within this niche? What visuals and aesthetics signal that this information or this personal brand, this person is credible to them within this space.
Let me give you a tangible example because I think it'll help illustrate how you're going to answer that question. If you have built your brand previously on how people can make the most amount of money in the least amount of time, aka get rich quick, and you're trying to now rebrand to speak to sophisticated business owners, you're not going to want to use that language because they are not going to find that legitimate.
The reference of get rich quick, no real business operator or owner is going to take you seriously in any way, shape, or form. They will self -select themselves out. of your content and so your new wrapping needs to be based on the answers to these questions not just what worked in the old brand you can take the principles of what worked but you don't want a one -for -one copy of the tactics the key here is to understand the universal principles that are applicable no matter what niche you're in those you want to transfer you do not want to transfer the niche specific tactics that work in that space alone the bottom line here is when you're rebranding your wrapping isn't just about attention it's about attention from the right people we have done our best to inform you how you can go about doing this rebrand on your own but we have now reached the point where that time has come to an end and anything further from here on out we'd have to work one -on -one with you
Trust me, we tried. We have entire sections of this video that we tried to write or even did write and then realized that we were not able to cover all of the different variables and nuance that goes into how you're going to go about measuring this. And so what I would say is if you're interested in partnering with us, we only take on a very select few one on one partnerships every year at Ralston.
I'm talking the gangsters of the gangsters. And if you feel like that is you and you would like to explore a partnership, you can go to CalebRalston .com, hit the partnership application and see if you qualify. Now, if you're still here and you're watching, you have gone through the monumental effort of rebranding.
After all of this effort, I don't want you to make these three massive, ultra -critical mistakes with your personal brand. Click here to find out what they are.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
The course opens by refusing the obvious definition. Pepsi changing its logo is not a rebrand, and neither is your new profile photo. What follows is two and a half hours on the harder version: replacing what people already associate you with, and surviving the revenue gap that opens while you do it.
Named ideas worth stealing.
03:57model
The 3:1:3 Rebrand Rule
- 3 triggers
- 1 filter (the rebrand runway)
- 3 paths
The gating structure for the whole course. Qualify against three triggers, run the revenue filter, then pick one of three paths.
Steal forany go/no-go decision framework where the wrong yes is expensive
06:23list
The 3 Triggers of a Rebrand
- You're tired of the niche or the format
- You have a bad reputation
- Something significant changed in your desired outcome
The only three reasons that justify a rebrand. Poor traction and unclear positioning are explicitly excluded.
Steal forqualifying a client before selling them the expensive engagement
15:42list
The Rebrand Runway (4 Questions)
- What percentage of my revenue comes from leads generated by my personal brand?
- Of those, what percentage found me because of my specific subject matter expertise?
- If I stopped posting about that subject tomorrow, how long before revenue dips?
- Do I have acquisition channels that don't depend on my personal brand?
A brand-dependence audit run before any creative decision, because a rebrand shifts revenue and not just perception.
Steal forany pivot where current income depends on the thing being changed
17:29list
The 3 Paths of a Rebrand
- Full rebrand in public, in real time
- Staged rebrand built behind the scenes while the old brand runs
- Not a rebrand, just a refresh
Path selection driven by brand dependence, cash reserves, and how far the new direction sits from the old one. Path two carries an explicit warning against building the new brand forever without switching.
Steal forsequencing any product or positioning transition under revenue constraints
23:34list
The Rebrand Roadmap (4 Questions)
- What am I trying to achieve by rebranding?
- To achieve that, what NEW things would my personal brand need to be known for?
- For my brand to be known for those things, what would I have to do?
- In order to do those things, what do I need to learn?
Reverse-engineers a desired outcome down to a learning list, with per-trigger thought starters at each question.
Steal forturning a vague ambition into an actionable skills backlog
37:03list
The 7 Elements of Worldbuilding
- Legends and lore
- Common enemy
- Interest stacking
- Characters and settings
- Named concepts
- Weaknesses
- Redefined terms
The full worldbuilding set for a personal brand, of which the first three are designated as phase one of any rebrand.
Steal forbuilding depth into a brand beyond subject matter expertise
42:10model
The Credibility Bank Entry (6 Parts)
- Context
- Problem (root, not symptom)
- Insight or reframe
- Approach (strategic, not step by step)
- Outcome
- Transferable lesson
A written case study format deep enough to jog your own memory and to arm a team to write content in your voice without you. Demonstrated live against a real client engagement.
Steal fora reusable case study library that feeds emails, videos and sales conversations
59:15model
The Differentiation Exercise
- Left column: things people say or do in my NEW space that I disagree with
- Right column: my belief or approach
- Minimum five rows
- Pick three to test in content
A two-column table for surfacing contrarian takes, with a hard rule that the takes must come from the new space and not be imported from the old one.
Steal forfinding a defensible point of view when entering an unfamiliar market
1:08:26concept
Contrarian Take to Common Enemy
Reframe the winning belief so the audience can rally rather than nod. 'Optimize for trust, not virality' becomes 'chasing virality is the reason most creators have audiences that don't buy anything.'
Steal forturning a positioning statement into a movement people repeat for you
1:21:20model
Interest Stacking (3 Parts)
- List 5-7 non-niche human inputs
- Identify which you've been hiding as unprofessional or irrelevant
- Decide how each shows up: set objects, wardrobe, metaphors, tone, unedited language, environment
Deepens connection and doubles as a bridge, giving an existing audience something stable to hold while the subject matter changes.
Steal formaking a personality legible without making content about yourself
1:31:23concept
Swap Fully vs Stack and Add
Two ways to change medium. Swapping means a gradual replacement announced through the old medium. Stacking means running both, and is only permitted when bandwidth genuinely exists.
Steal fordeciding whether to add a channel or replace one
1:36:24model
Platform Count Rule
- Solo creator: 1 primary + 1 secondary
- Creator with a team: 3 primaries + 1-3 secondaries
- Rotate effort across primaries using the Eye of Sauron approach
A fixed constraint that does not change during a rebrand, because building new associations requires concentrated effort.
Steal forresisting the be-everywhere impulse at any stage
1:45:50model
The Content Ideation Equation
- Painful problem + unique solution = idea
- Idea → multiple angles
- Angles → multiple pieces of content
Painful means costly in time, money, reputation or stress. The unique solution must come from what you have actually done, and one idea should yield four to ten angles.
Steal foran ideation system that scales without repeating yourself
2:01:30list
The Four Bridges
- Setting bridge: same environment, new subject
- Format bridge: same structure and edit style, new subject
- Analogy bridge: new subject explained in the old world's language
- Interest bridge: non-niche interests as the constant thread
Ways to carry an existing audience across to new subject matter. The bridge also functions as a self-selection tool for who follows.
Steal forintroducing an unfamiliar offer to a familiar audience
2:07:40model
The Median Benchmark and Ratio Rules
- Benchmark = median of old content over the last 60-90 days
- Below 0.75x: audit before pulling back
- 0.75x or above: it's working, hold course
- 2x or above: increase the ratio faster
Governs how quickly new content replaces old. Median over average, because a single viral hit would make everything new look like collapse.
Steal forany staged rollout that needs a numeric trigger to speed up or slow down
2:17:30list
The Delivery Audit (3 Questions)
- Does the way you delivered the old content represent who you are now?
- Did people respond to your delivery positively, negatively, or not at all?
- Does your current delivery style fit the person the new brand is trying to attract?
Best delivery is defined as stripping away everything that keeps you from being yourself, not adopting a character or a best-practice template.
Steal fordeciding whether to change tone when changing audience
2:21:40concept
Wrapping Paper: Content Format vs Packaging Format
Content format is the structure of the substance; packaging format is title, thumbnail, hook and headline. Packaging fatigues fast and content format fatigues slowly, and both filter who shows up.
Steal forauditing whether your top-of-funnel is recruiting the audience you actually want
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
05:44newsletter
“Click the link in the description down below, enter your email, we're going to send it to you, it's 100% free, and this helps you actually take action and implement what you're learning in this video.”
The free Rebrand Workbook is pitched seven separate times across the runtime, always framed as the thing that converts watching into doing rather than as a bonus. Every exercise in the course is written to be completed inside it, which makes the ask feel structural rather than interruptive. The paid ask arrives only twice and only late: a delivery self-audit limitation at 2:20 and the partnership application in the outro, both framed as the honest edge of what a video can do.
MENTIONED ON CAMERA
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.
OTHER LINKSAlso linked in the description.
Visual structure at a glance.
