16:32Tom Noske · Tutorial
I'm begging you to sell digital products (they print money)
A $40 tube of cycling chamois cream becomes the case study for the five-question test that decides whether a digital product sells itself.
September 28thThe argument in one line.
How your audience interprets a piece of content is decided before they watch it, by the associations attached to your name and the context they already hold about your life.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- You publish consistently, your content is objectively solid, and it still gets less traction than creators saying the same things.
- You run a service or coaching business and want your content to make people think of you at a specific moment, not just deliver tips.
- You are the entire content operation right now and want a map of which role to hire first and roughly what it costs.
- You are good at the craft but have never deliberately decided what your brand stands for or stands against.
- You want a repeatable way to share your backstory that makes new viewers value the same post more than they did last month.
SKIP IF…
- You are looking for tactics on hooks, formats, thumbnails or posting times. None of that is covered here.
- You want evidence. The frameworks are asserted from experience, with no data, case studies or before and after numbers.
- You are pre-audience and pre-revenue. The last third assumes you can spend two thousand to ten thousand dollars a month on staff.
- You are uncomfortable with the explicit premise that people have to want to be you before they will listen to you.
The full version, fast.
Two creators can publish the same idea and get opposite results, because audiences read every post through what they already associate with the name on it. The fix has three parts. First, deliberately control five associations: the personal interests you let into your content, the term you want to own, the moment you want to be remembered at, the texture your brand feels like, and the things you publicly stand against. Second, widen the context people hold about you by telling your past, showing your present standard of work, and naming the future you are leading toward, because perceived value rises as context fills. Third, build a system where a team distributes work so your hours go into creating the ideas instead of publishing them.
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00:00 – 00:21
01 · The claim
Content quality, experience and intelligence are ruled out as the variable. Three frameworks are promised.
00:21 – 04:15
02 · Brand association
Associations decide how content is interpreted before anyone judges it. A Formula One team is used as the model: driver, sponsors, reputation, celebrity access and staff are all controlled inputs to perception.
04:15 – 06:02
03 · Personal associations
The easiest lever: the interests and life details you let into your content. Endurance racing, sim racing, wine, watches, marriage. The way you do one thing gets extrapolated to everything.
06:02 – 07:58
04 · Term and moment associations
Owning a phrase so the phrase retrieves your name, then owning the life moment where your name should surface first. Terms come from repetition, moments come from being genuinely excellent.
07:58 – 09:58
05 · Texture and anti-associations
How a brand feels, which requires a clinical standard applied to every output, and what a brand openly opposes, which requires picking a hill inside your industry's status quo.
09:58 – 13:00
06 · Forgettable versus recognizable
The absence of each association mapped to a failure state: hollow, messy, obscure, abstract. The presence of each mapped to depth, alignment, impact and reputation.
13:00 – 16:18
07 · Context fills perceived value
Framework two. The same post is worth more to someone who holds your full context. Illustrated with an iceberg, a Tony Robbins story, and the host's own family bankruptcy at thirteen.
16:18 – 20:29
08 · Brand width: past and present
The past is a relatable origin story, argued with Superman being written as a Kansas farm boy. The present is an admirable standard of craft that makes people respect you rather than just use you.
20:29 – 23:12
09 · The future is an inspiring purpose
Without a stated mission you are a tutorial creator with a shelf life. With one you become someone an audience follows rather than consults.
23:12 – 25:30
10 · You are only the driver
Framework three. An F1 driver who also built the car, changed the tires and called strategy would be badly underpowered. The founder's job is ideas and camera time, nothing else.
25:30 – 28:34
11 · Three requirements of the system
Runs without direct input, delivers high output per founder hour, and limits the founder to creating intellectual property while the team distributes it. Six personal hours a week is given as the live example.
28:34 – 33:46
12 · The hiring ladder
Solo creator to systemized brand, with each rung and its monthly cost: content manager at around two thousand, videographer or editor at five to six thousand, brand strategist at six thousand, creative director at ten thousand and up.
33:46 – 34:09
13 · Next video
Hand-off to a companion video on converting followers into customers.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- Your audience interprets identical content differently depending on what they already associate with your name, which is why some creators get outsized results from average posts.
- Five associations decide how a brand is read: personal interests, an owned term, a trigger moment, a texture, and the things you stand against.
- Owning a term means every time someone thinks of that term they think of your name, and that ownership is what makes an audience monetizable.
- Moment association is the highest-leverage one: when a specific thing happens in someone's life, you want to be the first name that surfaces.
- Texture is the only association you cannot build accidentally, because a premium feel requires rejecting everything that falls below the standard.
- Anti-associations require picking a hill in your own industry's status quo, which is why newer creators struggle to form them.
- With no associations a brand reads as hollow, messy, obscure and abstract, and the sum of those four is a brand nobody remembers.
- Perceived value increases as context fills, so the same post is worth more to someone who knows your origin story than to a stranger.
- An audience never assembles your backstory on its own, so every piece of context they hold is context you chose to publish.
- Share the past as a relatable origin story, the present as an admirable standard of work, and the future as a mission people can follow.
- Without a stated mission you are a tutorial creator, useful while someone needs the tip and forgotten the moment they do not.
- A content system is working when it runs without your input, returns high output per hour you personally spend, and limits you to creating ideas rather than distributing them.
- If you are involved in every step of publishing, you are the bottleneck, and no amount of effort will remove it.
- Spending all your time making content is an active decision to spend less time growing the business that content serves.
- The only part of a content operation that cannot be delegated is the ideas, which is the argument for buying back every other hour.
People judge your content before they watch it
WHAT TO LEARN
Audiences read every post through the associations attached to your name and the backstory they already hold, so the work is deciding both on purpose and then building a team that frees your hours for ideas.
02Brand association
- Two creators can publish the same idea and get opposite results, because the audience interprets each one through what it already believes about the person saying it.
- Everything near a brand shapes it: the interests it shows, who sponsors it, what it is known for, who it is seen with, and who it employs.
03Personal associations
- The interests you let into your content become character evidence, so pick the ones you want extrapolated across everything else you do.
- Audiences assume the care you show in one visible thing is the care you bring to everything, which turns small standards into reputation.
04Term and moment associations
- Owning a term means the phrase retrieves your name, and that retrieval is what makes an audience possible to sell to.
- Moment association is the real prize: you want to be the name that surfaces when a specific thing happens in someone's life, which requires being genuinely excellent, not just repetitive.
05Texture and anti-associations
- Texture is the feel of a brand, and it only holds if every single output is held to the same standard, because a premium feel cannot be built from inconsistent work.
- Anti-associations come from naming the part of your industry's status quo you refuse, which means being willing to pick a hill before you have the standing to defend it.
06Forgettable versus recognizable
- Missing associations produce specific failures: no personal detail reads as hollow, no owned term reads as messy, no moment reads as obscure, no texture reads as abstract.
- Add them all back and the same four slots produce depth, alignment, impact and reputation, which together is what being recognizable actually means.
07Context fills perceived value
- Perceived value increases as context fills, so the same post lands harder on someone who knows where you came from than on a stranger seeing you first.
- An audience never assembles your backstory on its own, so every piece of context people hold about you is context you decided to publish.
08Brand width: past and present
- Tell the past as a relatable origin story, because without it people will invent a motive for your work and usually get it wrong.
- Show the present as a visible standard of craft, because value alone gets consumed and discarded while admiration keeps people around.
09The future is an inspiring purpose
- State a future mission, because the alternative is being a tutorial creator who is useful during a problem and forgotten the moment it is solved.
10You are only the driver
- Treat yourself as the driver only: the hours spent publishing are hours not spent on the one thing nobody can do for you, which is the ideas.
11Three requirements of the system
- A content system passes three tests: it runs without your input, it returns high output per hour you personally spend, and it leaves you creating rather than distributing.
- If you are in every step of the publishing chain you are the bottleneck, and extra effort makes the bottleneck worse rather than better.
- Spending all your time on content is a decision to spend less time growing the business the content exists to serve.
12The hiring ladder
- The hiring order runs content manager first, then videographer or editor depending on which is the real constraint, then brand strategist, then a creative director who manages all of them.
- Budget roughly two thousand a month for a content manager, five to six thousand for a videographer or editor, six thousand for a strategist, and ten thousand and up for a creative director.
Terms worth knowing.
- Brand association
- Anything attached to a public name that colors how an audience reads its output. Interests, sponsors, reputation and the people allowed near the brand all count, and they operate whether or not the owner chose them.
- Term association
- Ownership of a single phrase or topic so that the phrase and the person become interchangeable in an audience's mind. Built mostly through repetition on one subject.
- Moment association
- Being the first person who comes to mind when a specific situation happens in someone's life. It requires genuine excellence at the thing, not just repetition.
- Texture association
- The felt quality of a brand across everything it publishes: premium or accessible, clinical or warm, blunt or gentle. It only holds if every output is held to the same standard.
- Anti-association
- A thing the brand publicly refuses or opposes, usually a norm inside its own industry. It sharpens identity by telling an audience what the brand will not do.
- Brand width
- A measure of whether published content covers the full span of a person's experience: where they came from, who they are now, and where they are headed. Narrow brand width leaves an audience guessing.
- High impact content system
- A publishing operation that runs without the founder's direct input, produces a large volume per hour the founder spends, and confines the founder's role to creating ideas rather than distributing them.
- Creative director
- In this hiring model, the senior hire who owns everything except being on camera. They manage the strategist, videographer, editor and content managers, so the founder reports to one person instead of five.
Things they pointed at.
06:18channelMatt Gray
06:22channelDan Koe
06:24channelJun Yuh
07:17channelAlex Hormozi
15:19channelTony Robbins
Lines you could clip.
05:44
“The way you do one thing is the way you do everything.”
06:26
“If you can own a term where every single time someone thinks about that term, they think of your name, you have a positive association with that particular term.”
08:40
“If you want a premium brand, you will not get a premium brand by putting out anything.”
13:12
“Perceived value increases as context fills.”
19:55
“People need to want to be you in order to want to listen to you in the first place.”
21:34
“My mission is help younger Tom get rich.”
22:32
“These are tutorial creators. You probably had people that you used to watch all the time when you needed them, and now you don't think of them anymore.”
26:01
“If you're involved in every single one of those steps, you are the bottleneck in this system.”
28:23
“You get cut through with the quality of your ideas.”
29:36
“If you're spending all your time creating content, you are actively choosing to not grow your business.”
Word for word.
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metaphoranalogystory
What if I told you building a 1 % personal brand has literally nothing to do with how valuable your content is, how much experience you have, or how smart you are, and has everything to do with the three frameworks I'm gonna teach you in this video. Trust me, if you're willing to sit with me and watch this entire video, it will be the single most transformative video on personal branding that you ever watch.
The very first framework you need to understand is brand association. This is essentially the process of controlling what your brand is associated with. Because what your personal brand is associated with determines how your audience interprets your content without them even realizing it.
No matter what baseline of content you're currently making, it could be interpreted more positively or more negatively. purely based on the associations you have with your brand. You don't have to put any more effort in.
You just start controlling your associations and your brand will be perceived more positively. This is why some people are able to create what seems like the same content as everyone else, yet achieve significantly more results. It's because of their brand associations and the interpretation unconsciously that that's creating with their content that they put out.
To think about this metaphorically, I want you to . This is a photo of Max Verstappen. and his 2026 Red Bull because I am a Max Verstappen fan.
Tragic, even though I'm an Australian. I love Oscar Piastri, but I love Max Verstappen more. And the Red Bull Formula One team have a whole series of different associations that they're controlling with their brand.
The first and most obvious one is the driver. It might not seem like it, but the brand considers who their driver is as a person as much as they probably do their driving ability because it impacts the company's ability to actually be profitable. And so the type of driver that they hire, impacts the way that their brand is perceived.
If they hire a driver who's more funny than serious, that's going to influence how their brand is perceived. If they hire a driver who gets into more biffs and blues with other drivers on the road and is a little bit confrontational, that's gonna create a different brand perception than a driver who's clean and always respectful and never really gets into any scuffles with other drivers.
This all plays a role in how their brand is interpreted to their fans, to sponsors, to... other people, which brings me to the next one. And that's sponsors.
Sponsors and who a brand chooses to be sponsored by is creating an interpretation unconsciously of their brand. If one Formula One team is happy to have a gambling sponsor and another Formula One team is not happy to have a gambling sponsor, that is creating two completely different interpretations of that brand. And so a Formula One team like Red Bull is extremely stringent in who they accept as their brand sponsors and how that changes their interpretation as a business and influences how they're perceived by their fans.
Then outside of the car they have a bunch of associations and first one is reputation. What is their reputation? Do they have reputation of winning a lot of races?
Do they have a reputation of losing a lot of races? Do they have a reputation of getting in a lot of crashes? Do they have a reputation of inconsistency?
What is their reputation as a team? Then they have their celebrity associations. These are the people that they let into the garage.
Who do they let associate with their drivers? Who do they let on the track walk before the race? Who do they let wear their gear?
What celebrities do you see wearing Red Bull jackets? And who are these people and how is their character in influencing Red Bull's perception.
And then the final one, and one that's actually very poignant for Red Bull, is team. Who do they employ? Who's the engineer, the head engineer for Max Verstappen directly?
Who's the director of Red Bull? They had one fired last year for this particular reason. Who is in charge of this company?
Who is their staff? Who's their head strategist? Who's on the pit wall?
Who's working in the crews? Who are these people and how do these people influence the perception of the team? In terms of your personal brand, it's identical to a Formula One team.
You have a series of associations that you choose to or not choose. to associate with that influences your interpretation as a brand. Over my entire time on social media and having helped thousands of clients, I've found that there are five core personal branding associations that you should be considering.
The first one and the easiest to start influencing right now is your personal associations. This is essentially the things that you do that you choose to include in your content. And so as an example, this is Tom races Ironmans, and so he must be blank.
If I wrote that down, it's Tom does insert, so he must be blank. And that is the association. And so what are your personal associations that you show in your content, whether you mean to or not, that are influencing how your brand is perceived?
You wanna have a genuine think about this. And so when I sat down to think about this, I thought about endurance sport is a brand association that I'm happy to have. associated with my personal brand i talked about motorsport i'm a sim racer like i have a stupid like such over the top sim racing rig in my living room because i'm obsessed with sim racing i'm not but i would call it semi -professionally like i race in porsche cups every single week sometimes every single day that's something that i could include in my content that says a particular thing about me i'm obsessed with nice wines like i'm a wine snob i'm a self -admitted wine snob that says a certain thing about me.
I love fancy watches. I like nice things. Like all of these different things say things about me.
I'm married and I've been with my now wife for five and a half years. That says a certain thing about my character. One phrase you really want to think about with personal associations is .
And so your audience sees you do one thing and then interprets or extrapolates that experience of that one thing out over everything else that you do. And so if you don't think these things are influencing your audience, it's this perception of you, you are sorely mistaken.
The second brand association that you want to think about is term association. This is essentially ownership over a phrase. And so this is Tom is the insert term guy.
Tom is the personal branding guy. Tom is the digital product guy. Matt Gray is the systems guy.
Dan Coe is the one person business guy. Jun Yu is the you are the niche. guy.
Insert that term association. You want to associate your brand with particular terms. If you can own a term where every single time someone thinks about that term, they think of your name, you have a positive association with that particular term.
And you want to be conscious of this. You want to think about what these terms are going to be because it will influence your ability to monetize your audience. The next one is moment associations.
And we're getting harder and harder the higher we go. Personal associations are quite easy. Just talk about it in your content.
Term associations is reasonably easy, a little bit more tricky. You'll just include it with repetition. If you just talk about it a lot, it will become associated with your brand.
Moment associations, we start to get into reputation here. This is essentially where something happens to someone and who's the first person they think of. And so when something happens, I think of Tom.
And so for Alex Homozy, when my business is struggling, I think of Alex Homozy. And so for this one, you wanna think about what moments do I wanna have ownership over when my audience and my potential customers go through that thing. And so with my brand, I want someone who's a business owner, who's been wanting to make organic content to think when I wanna start making content and growing my personal brand, I think about.
tom when i want to scale my online business with organic content i think about tom when i want to launch a digital product i think about tom having ownership over a moment is so so powerful but again this is where we get into the world of you're just going to have to become excellent at that thing then we get into texture associations and this is where we really get into a level of control or a standard or a level of taste very few people possess this unconsciously for your audience is Tom's brand feels.
And so if I wrote that down, Tom's brand feels. What is the texture association that your brand currently possesses? Does your brand feel blunt or gentle?
Does it feel premium or accessible? Does it feel clinical or warm? Does it feel fun or serious?
What does your brand feel like for your audience? And again, this is now getting into creative direction. You have to have a clinical level of control over everything you put out and it has to uphold this standard.
You cannot do this accidentally. If you want a premium brand, you will not get a premium brand by putting out anything. And the final one is your anti -associations.
These are the things that you intentionally choose not to be associated with. This is Tom doesn't like, or Tom doesn't do, or Tom hates it when people do. insert.
What are the things that you're going to stand against in your brand? What are the things that you're not willing to put up with in your brand? What are the things that you don't want people to do?
What are the things you're going to throw stones at? Who are the types of people that you don't want to be associated with? What are the things that you're willing to stand against?
This is not political. This is the status quo in your industry. What's the status quo in your industry that you do not agree with?
And how can you make that an anti -association? How can you make it abundantly clear? that I am not at all associated in any way to this particular thing, or I actually poignantly disagree with this thing, and I'm gonna talk about that in my content.
Again, this is a little bit more difficult to do because you need to be willing to die on a hill. And if you're quite new to this and you're still kind of discovering what those hills even are, it's very difficult to choose what hills you're gonna die on. But these are the five associations, personal, term, moment, texture, and anti -associations.
In terms of what happens negative, if you don't do this. If you have no personal brand associations, you don't actually consider what gets included in your content and what doesn't get included in your content, you're gonna end up with a very hollow brand.
It's gonna feel very hollow. It's gonna feel surface level. It's gonna feel like there's nothing really happening behind the scenes.
You're a one dimensional character. If you have no term associations, your brand is gonna feel very messy. You're gonna have a very messy personal brand where people don't really know what hills you're willing to die on.
They don't really know what you're associated with, what you stand for, what you don't stand for, what you wanna be known for, what your brand even does. Then if you don't have any moment associations, it's gonna feel obscure because people don't know what to feel when they think of your brand.
People don't know what they associate you with and so they don't think of you very often. And then if you have no texture associations, your brand feels abstract. There's no consistency in your brand.
It doesn't feel reliable. It doesn't feel consistent. It doesn't feel like it's a product.
It doesn't feel like a well -oiled machine. And all of these together mean that you'll have a forgettable. personal brand.
In terms of the opposite, if you have positive personal brand associations, you'll have a lot of depth. It'll feel Like there is an enormous amount of depth to everything you say, because not only are you incredible at giving value in one particular area, but now you'll have all of these extra associations that mean that you can connect with people who watch your content.
Suddenly people can watch you and go, fuck, he also does this, and he's also doing this, and he's also obsessed with this same weird, quirky interest that I have. I love this guy. There's so much depth to his character, to this brand.
Then if you have strong term association, you'll have great alignment. People will feel an immense amount of alignment to your brand because they know what you're connected to. They know that this is the personal branding guy and I wanna grow my personal brand.
If there's strong moment associations, you'll have incredible impact because people will think about you a lot. If you have incredible moment association where when something happens, they think of this person, you will be on their minds more than just when they're watching your content or when they're consuming your products.
And so the fitness creator who everyone thinks of when they have to buy pants that are bigger than the last pair that they bought will have incredible impact because those people will think about that person and then come and watch that person's content unprompted, meaning that their brand is working for them outside of the input hours that they actually contribute to.
And then if you have strong texture associations, you'll have an incredible reputation because people will know your brand as being a particular type of way. They'll think, oh, Grace's brand feels... ultra premium or Grace's brand feels warm and welcoming or Grace's brand feels so clean and precise and it's always excellent in terms of the level of quality that they put out.
It will create an incredible reputation and all of these combined create a recognizable personal brand. Framework number two. is you need strong levels of context.
So now that we've controlled our brand associations, you now need to control the context through which people view your content. Because perceived value increases as context fills. Your content will have more impact for the people who have more context.
What I mean by this is as people understand you more personally. as they have more of a picture, a complete picture of who you are, what you've been through, where you've been, where you're going, what you're trying to achieve, the entire picture, the better they can paint that picture themselves, the more value they'll perceive in every piece of content you put out.
And so let me frame it like this. If I put out a piece of content, and I'll give you some context a little bit later that I think will help this, but if I create a piece of content that talks about making money online, to you with no context, maybe this is the first time you've ever watched a piece of content, from me.
Don't give a fuck about that piece of content beyond the value it provides you. But some of you are watching my content right now and you have the full context. You have full context of everything I've been through, my childhood, my origin story, my upbringing, what led me here, why I feel so devoted to this mission, my mission.
You understand where I'm leading myself. You have that full context. And so suddenly that piece of content is now a colored picture.
It's clear where this piece of content fits into the wider universe. of all of my context. And so again, to think about this metaphorically, everyone's heard this analogy, but if you think about an iceberg, what you see on the surface of the water is usually only a small part of the entire iceberg.
And so if you disrespect as a sailor, the top of the iceberg, you're going to be punished. pretty badly but someone who understands this will understand well most of the body of the iceberg is going to be beneath the surface and having the understanding of what lies beneath the surface gives you stronger context for what lies above the surface and your personal brand is exactly the same where everything that's above the surface your day -to -day content is better informed by everything below the surface and so you need to give your audience as much context as humanly possible so their perception of your content is complete.
You value Tony Robbins' philanthropy more because on Thanksgiving when he was a kid, his stepfather turned down a donation in front of him even though his family was starving. He talks about this publicly and so you value, with that context, his philanthropy more than you would without that story. Now for some of you, you might not know this, but my parents went bankrupt when I was 13.
We lost everything. We lost our family home. We lost everything we ever had.
And my parents have never truly recovered. In fact, both my parents are still to a degree homeless to this day. And so we went from a family that was very well off, a put together home, the opportunity to do things that I didn't truly understand when I was a kid to now when I was 13 and everything afterwards, living in quite extreme poverty as a family.
And so With that context, I am now a completely different picture to you than I was previously. And so to do this in your own content, I have a framework that I call brand width.
This is basically the idea of does your content cover the full width of human experience? Does it cover the full picture of who you are as a person, where you were, where you are, and where you're leading yourself? And if it doesn't, you need to paint that picture better in your content.
Because here's the truth, right? Your audience will never figure this out by themselves and so anyone that you follow online that you feel like you've got a good picture of who they are because you're probably thinking about this right now you're probably thinking holy shit i do know a lot about x person or y's story and it's because they shared it with you and so you need to make a conscious decision to share these stories in your content as much as you can because that's what will create the perception of you and so in terms of sharing your past this is your relatable origin story this is everything that led you to where you are now you to make this content so people have a clear picture of what led to the content that they're watching right now as a great example a great analogy for this why do you think superman was written to be a country boy from kansas this seemingly infinite being with infinite powers who crash landed on earth as an alien baby
is so much more relatable to us as human beings because he was a country boy from Kansas. If you've never talked about your upbringing or what led you to where you are, please start doing that in your content because it is unbelievably powerful to increasing your audience's perception of you. If you do this positively, you'll be understood.
Your audience will understand what led to where you are now a lot better. But if you do this wrong and you don't do this in your content, you'll be misinterpreted. If you didn't know that I grew up with a family who went bankrupt and I have no backup plan, I don't have a family home that I can move back to, I don't have any inheritance coming and both my parents are homeless.
If you didn't know that, you would... probably misinterpret my motivations of being an online business coach. I'm a business coach because it's genuinely my purpose.
This is my calling in life. I value this more highly than anything. And the reason is because I feel such a strong responsibility to help other people in my situation.
But you would misinterpret that motivation if you didn't know my origin story. That is how powerful and how important this is. Number two is the present is your admirable character.
right now? How are you admirable as a character right now? This is the things you choose to spend your time doing, the people you choose to spend your time with.
These are all the brand associations we just talked about. But even more than that, this is your level of mastery, your level of excellence, the things that you clearly value very highly. I value teaching.
That's why I've put so much effort into everything I put out because I value teaching really highly. This is fun for me. Like what I'm doing right now, even the hour and a half yesterday I spent preparing this video, it's fun for me because I value.
teaching as a core value as a person and so that is an admirable character trait the level of excellence and mastery that i bring to my craft is admirable. If you do this positively, you will be incredibly well respected.
Again, the way you do one thing is the way you do everything. And so if you show a level of excellence with your work, they will assume that you bring that same level of excellence to everything else that you do. If you don't do this well, your brand will be incredibly generic.
You will have a very generic personal brand because everything will be surface level. The value you put out might be good, but no one cares because they don't admire you. This is one of the black hat things that you have to admit to yourself if you want to build a personal brand, but to a large extent, people need to want to be you in order to want to listen to you in the first place, which is why we will always, as personal brands, attract people who look like us, sound like us, behave like us.
If you don't look like me or sound like me or behave like me or have common interests with me, Why would you want to listen to me? You'll just find someone else who looks and sounds and behaves and acts like you more.
And so you'll relate to them more. You have to show this in your content. Otherwise, you will have a generic personal brand and probably have a very difficult time making any money or building any kind of business.
And the future is your inspiring purpose. This is where you're leading yourself. Where are you trying to lead yourself in your life?
What's your... purpose? What's your mission?
Why do you give a fuck? Genuinely, like, why do you care about this? Because if you've never thought about what your mission is, what your purpose is, why were you put on this fucking earth?
And why is the content that you're making the brand that you're trying to build? How does that contribute to that mission? If you don't know the answer to that, you're going to have a very hard time leading people.
Because in order to lead, you have to be standing in front. And to stand in front, you have to have a powerful mission that means that no one else has to stand in front of you. You can happily stand there and bring everyone along with you.
That's what it means to lead. And to lead, you have to have that mission. And so you need to figure out what's your mission?
What's your why? reason do you have for doing this beyond wanting to get rich, beyond wanting to do what you do? Now, if you want to get rich and that is your mission, you can make that very clear and you'll probably attract people like you.
You need to be clear about that from the get -go. My mission is help younger Tom get rich. genuinely.
That's my mission. And so when I say younger Tom get rich, I mean, help other people do it because I've been fortunate enough to create that for myself. And now I feel a responsibility to help other people do that.
That is my inspiring mission. I want to do that in terms of my internal mission. I want to write books that reach hundreds of millions of people.
I want to speak on stages to tens of thousands of people. That is my personally inspiring mission. You need to figure out what that is for you.
If you do this positively, you will have an adored personal brand. They will see you as a guiding light, as a leader that they can follow.
They will look at you as a point of value in their life. And if you do this negatively, or you don't do this, you fail to do this, you will have an overlooked personal brand. They will have watched all the content, they've gotten all the tips, they've received all the value, and they'll go, thank you very much.
I'm done with watching your content. I don't need you anymore. These are tutorial creators.
You probably had people that you used to watch all the time when you needed them, and now you don't think of them anymore. In fact, you're probably thinking of someone right now that you've thought about for the first time in like two years because you used to watch their content all the time, but because they weren't inspiring, you didn't keep up with them.
They didn't hold space in your mind beyond the very particular times that you needed them. in that moment. And so if you don't do this, your brand will have a shelf life, you'll end up overlooked.
And so that's how you do this past, present and future. Every single time you make a piece of content, people will know the entire picture of what led to the words that are coming out of your mouth right now. All right, framework number three, we're now getting to some systems thinking, and this is very high level.
So if you're someone right now, you're just starting out, you're brand new to this, this is gonna go way over your head, but it's good to have in the context of your mind because this is what you're gonna need to do eventually. You have to have a high impact content system eventually. And I define a high impact content system as one that allows you to focus on only the highest leverage ideas.
You should genuinely get to the point eventually where you are simply creating intellectual property, and your team is distributing. You have no involvement in the process outside of coming up with the intellectual property, which is stuff like this, and then filming that intellectual property and nothing else.
That is genuinely where you need to get to because the less involved you are in the process, the more your content can continue to create an impact without your direct involvement. And so at the beginning of this video, I used Max Verstappen in his Red Bull and the Red Bull team as the example. I now want you to think about yourself as an F1 driver.
You are just the driver. Now, imagine if an F1 driver was also the person who had to get out of the car and change the tires, who was also the person who had to... repair the car after a crash, who was also the person who had to strategize for a race, who was also a person who had to make the decisions on the pit wall, who was also the person who had to build the fucking car in the first place, who was also the person who had to do the engineering and the wind testing and all of the different things, they would be significantly underpowered.
They would be at a disadvantage because that one person is so dependent on so many of the different processes. But instead, as an F1 driver, your sole job is to drive the car and do the best job you possibly can while you're in the car.
And any time spent out of the car is spent maximizing how good you'll be next time you get in the car. You need to think about yourself as a personal brand, as a Formula One driver. You need engineers back at the head office.
You need engineers on your pit wall. You need a pit crew. You need a manager.
You need people involved in every step of the process so you can focus on being the best possible driver you can. In terms of content, You need people involved in every step of the process so you can focus on filming the best possible videos you can and coming up with the best intellectual property.
possible. Now, there are three requirements for a high impact content system. Number one is it needs to be able to run without your direct input.
There should be elements of your content system that do not need your participation whatsoever, whether it be documenting things that you're already doing in your business in regards to delivery, whether it be documenting the processes that you're already doing every single day, regardless of whether it's content and that stuff needs to be able to be documented and then sent to an editing team and then sent to your content manager and published without your involvement.
If you're involved in every single one of those steps, you are the bottleneck in this system and you do not have a high impact content system. Number two is it has a tremendously high output per hour that you're personally involved. And so for me, we post twice a day, every single day on Instagram, we post twice a week, every single week on YouTube, but my personal involvement is probably six hours a week.
to do that. And so we get a tremendous amount of output from my direct involvement. And that includes the time preparing the ideas, that includes the time writing the videos, that includes the time filming the videos and nothing else.
I have six hours of direct. time involvement that creates a massive distribution of content on every single platform. And if we wanted to scale that up, we'd only need to add one or two hours to potentially double the output.
And so we have an incredibly high output per hour that I am personally involved, meaning that we're operating on myself. I am operating at an extremely high personal hourly rate. Number three, it allows you as the founder to create IP and then have your team distribute that IP.
What I mean by this is that the only part of the process that you cannot truly be replaced is intellectual property creation, your ideas. What are the ideas that you're bringing to your clients? What are the ideas that you're bringing to your content?
And how can you spend the majority of your time? Like imagine right now, I said six hours. Imagine if I was able to recomposite those six hours and mean that I'm only spending...
two hours on content, so filming for two hours, and I had four more hours that I could spend on intellectual property, on ideas, on reading, on meeting people, on speaking to people that creates even better output. Again, this is the equivalent of freeing up a Formula One driver's time so they can spend an extra five hours a day on the simulator, meaning that next time they get in the car, they're even better than they were last time.
That's you in this situation. . that allows you to spend the maximum amount of time possible on intellectual property creation so your team can then distribute that intellectual property because your content will get shitter the more that you have to personally be involved because you can spend less time on intellectual property.
You need to be spending more time creating incredible IP because that's really how you get cut through. You get cut through with the quality of your ideas. And if you're not giving enough time to creating those ideas, it's going to be very difficult.
to have any kind of cut through. To give you an idea of what this looks like, this is a overworked creator. These are the people that are making all their own content.
They film all their own videos. They edit their own videos. They do their own brand deals.
They figure out their own products. They do literally everything themselves. And then up here, we have a systemized personal brand.
This is someone who has a really strong personal brand, but they have a team of people underneath them that facilitate that personal brand. They allow that personal brand to be as big and systemized as it is. Now I'm gonna walk you through where each of these stages are and how you can start to figure out where you're currently at and what your next hire is probably likely to be.
The first is the solo creator, obviously down here. And this. costs you no money, but I'm not gonna say the cost is no money because your main cost is time.
You spend all of your time on content. And so all of that time that you spend on content is you actively choosing to save money to spend less time on growing your business. I wanna just be black and white with that.
If you're spending all your time creating content, you are actively choosing to not grow your business. Now, the first hire you need to make to systemize your personal brand is a content manager. Now, this is someone who's going to be responsible for distributing all of your content.
This should mean that you never have to log into social media in order for your brand to continue posting content. This should mean that you've got someone whose entire role is basically responsible for your trial reel strategy, for your daily stories, for the content that gets published, for your reposting, for redistributing across multiple different platforms, for finding new platforms, for starting new pages, for maximizing the content that you're making.
This is how you create one piece of content and get the maximum distribution of that one input of your time. The cost of this is gonna be somewhere around 2000 per month USD in order to hire this person. Next, I would put these two on the same level.
This is a videographer. slash editor. Now these are going to be two different people, but I put them on the same level because you need to choose which one's more important to your brand.
If you have a brand where editing is really, really important to your particular type of content, then the main bottleneck might not be, well, the bottleneck is editing, but the main bottleneck to solve initially may not be editing because that might be a very difficult one to outsource. You could probably outsource the videography, reclaim that time and allow you to spend more time on editing, which is a high impact use of your time, at least for the time being and so you need to choose which one's more effective at least initially to outsource whether it's a videographer someone to shoot all your videos or someone to edit all your videos and in terms of cost this is going to be somewhere in the ballpark of five thousand to six thousand dollars a month usd then after that we have a brand strategist this is someone who's responsible for everything you put out before it gets filmed so this person is now researching for you finding ideas looking at what's working what's not working trial real strategies content strategies
things that you could be doing to grow your brand faster. Again, these are not necessarily things that you need to be doing because if you're coming up with good IP, this person could feed you ideas to put your IP on that could maximize the distribution of that idea. Again, better ideas attached to better packaging will create more distribution.
This person's basically responsible for taking your good ideas and distributing them as far and wide as they can. And this person's probably gonna cost somewhere in the ballpark of $6 ,000 per month.
And then finally, you have a creative director. And this person is basically the 2IC. of your personal brand.
This person is responsible for everything that isn't you sitting on camera and filming or coming up with an idea. This is essentially the first leadership position that you'll hire in your personal brand. This person is responsible for every single person underneath them.
And so the creative director will be in charge of the brand strategist, who will be in charge of the videographer and the editor, who will be in charge of the content managers and the people who are distributing your content. Your creative director will take control, so you only report to them.
You only work with them directly, and they're in charge of distributing. everything below them and making sure that all you have to do is show up at a certain time at a certain place and talk about ideas that you have already prepared and maximize the amount of time that you can spend on camera. Again, I only have a certain amount of hours per week that I can spend on camera.
And so orientating everything else that I do around maximizing those hours is how we get more distribution out of one singular person and take something that is seemingly non scalable personal branding and make it very, very scalable. And this person's probably going to be 10 ,000 plus per month, minimum.
I've heard creative directors making anywhere between 15, 20, $25 ,000 a month at the moment. It is a very coveted position for a lot of people. But this is basically how you go from an overworked content creator to a systemized personal brand, in my opinion.
Again, this is quite high level, but this is, or at least should give you a bit of an idea of what your next hire or what your first hire is. probably likely to be. If you enjoyed today's video and you found it extremely valuable, I think you should watch this one next.
It walks through my entire framework for creating content that converts a higher percentage of your followers and viewers into customers for your business. And so after today, since you're now ready to build your personal brand, you probably need to learn how to monetize that personal brand. So this is gonna be the perfect video to watch next in your viewing session.
I'll see you in the next one.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
The opening move is a denial: your content quality, your experience and your intelligence are not what separates a 1% brand from everyone else. What follows is thirty-four minutes of hand-drawn whiteboard arguing that the difference lives entirely in what people already believe about you before they press play.
Named ideas worth stealing.
04:15list
The Five Brand Associations
- Personal associations
- Term associations
- Moment associations
- Texture associations
- Anti-associations
Ordered easiest to hardest. Personal associations are interests you include on purpose. Term associations are owned phrases. Moment associations are the life events that should retrieve your name. Texture is the consistent felt quality of everything you publish. Anti-associations are what you publicly refuse.
Steal fora positioning worksheet before writing any new content pillar
01:08concept
The Formula One Team
- Driver
- Sponsors
- Reputation
- Celebrity access
- Team and staff
A racing team controls perception through who it hires, who sponsors it, what it is known for, who it lets into the garage and who runs it. A personal brand has the identical set of levers.
Steal forauditing which third parties are currently shaping your brand without your consent
09:58model
Negative and positive outcomes of each association
- No personal = hollow
- No term = messy
- No moment = obscure
- No texture = abstract
- Sum = forgettable
Each missing association produces a named failure. Their inverses produce depth, alignment, impact and reputation, and the sum of those is a recognizable brand.
Steal fordiagnosing which association is missing from a brand that feels flat
16:18model
Brand Width
- Past: relatable origin story
- Present: admirable character
- Future: inspiring purpose
A content library should cover the full width of a life. Past done well means you are understood, done badly means you are misinterpreted. Present done well means respect, done badly means generic. Future done well means an adored brand, done badly means an overlooked one.
Steal forplanning a quarter of content so every month carries one past, present and future story
25:30list
Three Requirements of a High Impact Content System
- Runs without your direct input
- High output per hour you are personally involved
- You create IP, the team distributes it
A test for whether an operation is scalable. The stated benchmark is twice-daily Instagram and twice-weekly YouTube on roughly six hours of founder time per week, covering ideas, scripting and filming only.
Steal forauditing whether a founder is the bottleneck in their own publishing pipeline
28:34list
The Personal Brand Hiring Ladder
- Solo creator (cost: all your time)
- Content manager (~$2,000/mo)
- Videographer or editor ($5,000 to $6,000/mo)
- Brand strategist (~$6,000/mo)
- Creative director ($10,000+/mo)
A ladder from overworked creator to systemized brand. The content manager removes the need to log into social platforms. The videographer or editor choice depends on which is the bigger bottleneck. The creative director is the second in command who manages everyone below and reports to the founder.
Steal forsequencing hires for any founder-fronted content operation
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
33:46next-video
“If you enjoyed today's video and you found it extremely valuable, I think you should watch this one next. It walks through my entire framework for creating content that converts a higher percentage of your followers and viewers into customers for your business.”
Clean sequencing rather than a pitch. The next video is framed as the logical second half of the same job, build the brand then monetize it. Nothing is sold on camera at all. The only commercial links sit in the description, which keeps the watch experience uninterrupted but leaves the offer easy to miss.
MENTIONED ON CAMERA
Visual structure at a glance.
