How To Build A Better Personal Brand Than 99% Of People

I Failed Over And Over

00:00I never thought that I was going to have a personal brand back in 2016 or so. I was a freshman in college and my friend and I, who lived on the same floor, started a YouTube channel. It's actually this YouTube channel that you're watching right now, but all of the videos are deleted.

00:18So I've had this channel for that long, and in the past we made like videos on calisthenics. We did eating challenges like a 10,000 calorie challenge and other like talking head videos, and it didn't get anywhere. We didn't know what we were doing, but that wasn't the end.

00:34I always had this desire to do something creative. I didn't think it was going to be a personal brand by any means, but I wanted to do something and so naturally, I started experimenting with other things and I got into photography slash digital art, slash editing.

00:48I really liked the editing portion of it. And if you scroll to the bottom of my Instagram, you can see those edits. And that's technically when the name The Danko or My handle was born. I was a lifeguard over the summers, and I was trying to think of, okay, what should I named my Instagram page?

01:03And the my coworkers at the time were like, oh, what if you just shortened your name to this? And I'm like, okay, whatever. And it just stuck. Now I gained some followers doing the digital art and editing, but I eventually burned out because I tried to do one edit a day, and I couldn't handle taking Adderall every morning and busting out six hours staring at Photoshop.

01:25So that failed. But I really, really, really didn't want to get a job after graduating college. I was like my driving force. I never really knew what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I did know that I didn't want to be like most people. So onward to more businesses.

01:42I tried building three e-commerce stores. One was dropshipping rave clothes, the other was minimalist wallets, the other was blue light glasses. And after taking courses on Facebook ads and borrowing $8,000, not $8,000, barring $2,000 from my dad, I eventually racked up a total of $8,000 as a junior in college.

02:04And that was just after a bunch of short lived ventures like the three e-commerce stores and SEO agency, a content marketing agency trying to do web design, trying to do Facebook ads, trying to do all of these things, and being $8,000 in debt as a broke college kid who's already living with seven other dudes trying to lower their rent to like 203 hundred a month while working part time.

02:27That's not a good spot to be in. That's a lot of stress.

Why Personal Branding Saved My Life

02:30Now for the climax. I ended up getting a job. I had been studying programing because I learned that it was something that I could do without a degree, and I thought, okay, well, if I learn this, maybe that's my backup plan, right? I don't I'm not going to be able to get a degree in programing, but I know I can learn it very quick because I'm good at self educating.

02:50And so that's what I did. And I ended up getting a very base level web design job at an agency in Arizona, where pretty much I would spend the first few hours of my day working on my own stuff, because I learned the brutal reality of working a desk job early on is that most of your work is just procrastination.

03:11You're not really doing anything. Most people that work a desk job, I say most people I know, there's exceptions. Most people can work on their own stuff, procrastinate their work like I did until the end, and then just copy paste templates for the e-commerce stores that I was working with and call it a day and get paid.

03:28But I knew that if I stayed in that job for too long, I would get comfortable. The wife, the mortgage, the kids, the responsibilities. Nothing wrong with those things, but it would just like pile drive me into this state of not having any time, money or energy.

03:43My life at that point would then just go on autopilot. Now, to keep this brief, I ended up making freelance web design work. So while I was at my job and I procrastinated all my work, I would just try to land freelance clients for my web design stuff because that's what I worked in.

04:00That's what I understood. I had a general understanding of how to help people with web design, but after making the freelance web design thing work, I realized that I had just built myself into a second 9 to 5 because I was still working on client projects.

04:15I was still working on projects that I didn't care about. So with all of this stuff circulating in my head, it's not just like one decision of, oh, should I start a personal brand? I was in this job, or I was in a job that I hated. Then I went into freelancing, which I hated, and I had already tried so many different things.

04:33So I had like my brain was primed to make this decision. That's when I really discovered the power of social media. People were just posting about their knowledge and interests, and I felt like I could write similar to what they posted. They didn't have to constantly reach out to clients because their content attracted the clients.

04:50And I saw web designers selling digital products that required zero effort to kind of beyond creating the product to make money. So we checked all the boxes, but I had already tried that right with the YouTube stuff, and I had already built some kind of an audience with the digital art, but I had no idea how to monetize that.

05:09Now, as time has gone by, as you guys can see now, I have a rather successful personal brand, if that's what you want to call it. And I had learned so much from my prior business failures and my freelancing stuff and building web design, digital products and other things of that nature that I eventually started helping people with their brand.

05:27Right? I was a brand advisor for like a year or two, and I that's still kind of what I consider myself. If I were to label myself as two things, it would be a writer. Because I am an author, I write content. That's what I like doing, and then a brand advisor where I help people set up their brands to do what they want in the unique way

Build A Better Personal Brand Than 99% Of People

05:47that I've discovered. So part of that is what I'm here to share with you today. I want to give you the pieces that help you build a better personal brand than what 99% of people can do. So let's start with a quote from Nouvel. Artists are by definition, authentic.

06:01Entrepreneurs are authentic to who's going to be Elon Musk, who's going to be Jack Dorsey? These people are authentic and the businesses and products they create are authentic to their desires and means. That is from Navarro's piece called Escape Competition through authenticity.

06:17Now let's speed this up a bit. You're here because you have interests or skills that you want to turn into a future proof income source, but you don't want to become a hollow shell of a human being. You don't want to put yourself into a box.

06:30You don't want to build yourself into another 9 to 5. So I want to go over the highest impact things you could be doing. And these are the things that most beginners don't know because they haven't started, or they just glance over because they're told that other things are more important.

06:45Forget about your niche for now. Forget about your bio and banner and all of that stuff. It's important, but there are plenty of people with no bio and a blank profile picture doing just fine. Your content and the quality of ideas you post over a long enough time period are what create a brand that people can't help but trust.

07:05That's your entire business strategy. Trust. Money is a measure of trust. Now I'm going to teach you what I call the trust matrix. It's composed of three parts. There's growth. So doing what works to attract people, there's authenticity which is expressing your core beliefs.

07:22And then there's authority. So displaying your expertise. Now when I was a brand advisor a few years ago, this I called this the Social Matrix. And there have been spin offs of it since, which is great because it's going around. But this is kind of like the baseline of what you need to focus on.

07:38This is the big picture of personal branding as a whole. And then after we talk about the trust matrix, we'll talk about monetization. Like how do you start to think about monetization as a personal brand.

Growth – Build Your Idea To Execution Muscle

07:49So the first pillar is growth. And with growth you need to build your idea to execution muscle, a pattern I've noticed in successful creators, the moment they notice an idea at the intersection of performance and excitement, they drop anything they were doing and write it down.

08:06These ideas typically come to them on a walk while listening to an audiobook or video, while reading a book or heavy content, not brain right social posts, or while having a conversation with others. Now there are two pieces here. First is performance so they understand how to articulate ideas in an engaging way.

08:23The ideas have the potential to do well. And then second, there's excitement. So they have a genuine interest in understanding the idea or articulating it in their own way. They see their brand as a collection of notes of these ideas. So that's how you generate ideas to talk about under your personal brand is performance.

08:42So will other people like it? Does it have the potential to do well and excitement? Do you like it? Do you want to write about it? Everything becomes a source of ideas when you know how to articulate an idea in an engaging way, and when you want to write about it.

08:57The reason most people struggle to come up with ideas worth writing about are those two reasons. Their mind isn't trained to be articulate, and they don't consume information at the edge of their understanding. So the single most beneficial thing you can do here for your writing is to use high performing post structures as training wheels for your articulation.

09:18So when you have an idea, you can turn it into something that other people may like as well, and it will get shared and you may gain followers. So if you want to practice this, pull out a notebook or open a note taking app. Write down 5 to 10 writers, thinkers, or creators who you admire for their articulation.

09:36Spend one hour a day for the next week scrolling through their social accounts, and this part is important. Find their anomalies. The posts that have at least two x the engagement as they're other posts, and then screenshot or write them down in your note taking app.

09:50The key shift here is you need to stop reading ideas on the internet as a consumer, and you need to start doing so as a researcher. You're doing it to generate ideas for your own writing. You weren't doing it for entertainment. Now, when you have saved or written down at least 20 to 30 posts that represent the articulation you want to adopt, break down why these posts work so well.

10:15So you have this note or document of other people's posts or ideas inside of it that you want to be able to articulate in that way. Under each of those, you write down 3 to 5 bullet points of why it did well, what psychological patterns are being used?

10:32How did it capture attention? What's the value there? Why do people care? Why did it do so well? Another thing you can do is just use this prompt where you can pause the screen right now, take a screenshot of it and then copy paste it or do whatever.

10:45But you paste this prompt in, you add the social post to it, and then it will break down exactly why that worked. How it's structured, and how to replicate it. Because it gives you a step by step way to replicate it with your own ideas. Now, the point with all of this is that you are dissecting why already validated ideas have done well.

11:06When you practice writing in a way that stops the scroll and nearly demands readers to absorb the idea, growth is a byproduct. So that's why this is called the growth pillar, because it helps with the growth of your audience. If your audience isn't growing, then you don't have an influx of traffic, so you won't get pain.

11:24You don't need to grow by thousands or millions of followers. You just need to be growing. Now the click with this growth pillar is that validated ideas or things that make people grow are already out there, and it's up to you to find those.

11:38Take those and make them your own and experiment until you see consistent growth.

Authenticity – Core Beliefs Attract The Right People

11:43Now pillar two is authenticity or the core beliefs to attract the right people. So far in the growth pillar, you know how to turn any idea into a social post that people can't ignore, but people don't follow ideas. They follow people who share ideas.

12:00Two people can write the same thing, and people will perceive that post in drastically different ways. So take James clear versus a random guy off the street and imagine they both tweet. Habits are good for you. Tens of millions of people know who James Clear is.

12:15They know his story. They've read his book on habits. They have a deep yet indirect relationship with him. Most people who read the tweet from James Clear will like and repost simply because it's James Clear. The fact that James Clear is saying it brings other ideas that the people are already aware of, that they're perceiving the tweet from.

12:34But if a random guy posted it, habits are good. People would either ignore it or they would comment yeah, no shit. So there are three things here. The first is time under attention. The more attention people give you, especially in long form content like articles, books, and videos, the more they perceive your posts through the rest of your ideas.

12:53So that's something to watch out for, is that I have two books now. I've been making YouTube videos for a long time. I have a lot of newsletter subscribers and get over 100,000 views on each newsletter article that I send out, so I can send simpler stuff.

13:08I can post simple content in people, read it through the lens of oh, Dan posted this. I know his entire philosophy. I know everything else. I'm going to like this. And that's a boost in engagement. Your engagement isn't only determined by the quality of the idea, it's determined by both the quality of the idea and your time spent in the game.

13:29That's why most beginners quit, because they never give themselves enough time so that people spend enough time with them. Now the second thing is alignment of values. So when people know who you are, where you came from, and what you stand for, they form a deeper relationship with your ideas as a whole.

13:46And then the third is authentic polarization, because if you're liked by everybody, you're liked by nobody. You need to give people reasons to heavily disagree and thus heavily agree with you. This is the difficult part of putting yourself out there.

13:59Now, all of these things don't need much explanation. You can directly observe that you feel a stronger connection with creators whose story and core beliefs you resonate with. Imagine someone that you hate on social media. Many people hate me, but they will go and look at someone else who is saying the exact same thing, the exact same idea, but they're saying it through a different story, a different set of beliefs, a different lens, and they love that person.

14:24So it's typically not that you hate or love the specific person that you're following, it's that you resonate with them more. This is why it's difficult for personal branding or the creator economy to get saturated, because everyone is talking through their own lens, their own story.

14:38It doesn't matter if that guy has already said all the ideas that you want to say, because they're brought to a completely different light when you say them and if you were presented a product to buy from some random brand and a creator selling the same thing that you love one, you're probably not even going to know that the other brand exists because you follow the creator.

14:58But either way, if you're presented with both, you're going to buy the one from the creator because you trust them more. So how do we replicate this in our own brand? We need to illustrate our story and core beliefs, often in our content, both as content topics and as ways of reframing ideas.

15:15As a content topic, I could talk about how I failed at seven different business models as a way of reframing an idea. I could talk about how to build a personal brand which is validated and has high potential, and make that topic unique to me by starting with my story.

15:31That's exactly what I did at the start of this video. I started with a story, and that's what makes me talking about personal branding unique. Now, in terms of my core beliefs as a topic, I could talk about how I personally think that digital products are the best way for beginners to start, while other people think differently.

15:49But I have reasons behind why I think that is, or since that's a belief of mine, is like digital product. I could also reframe classic advice on building a product. I could go and learn how Steve Jobs builds a product, and I can frame that under a new lens, either for digital products or just for being a creator as a whole.

16:09Rather than building a fortune 500 company. So to do this well, write out where you were, what sparked change, and where you are now. For each topic or theme you talk about, list out core principles that you hold with conviction. Now, the thing about this, this is always difficult when you're just like sitting in front of a blank screen and trying to spit your beliefs on paper because they don't all come to mind.

16:31They aren't just all sitting in your conscious mind. You have to dig them up from your unconscious. You have to think about this for like a week. You need to go and listen to content and let the ideas from that bring up ideas for you to write down along the way.

16:46But another way to do this is to just use AI to help guide our thinking. So I created a prompt that helps you extract your story and your beliefs, and then it tidies them all up nicely in like a singular document for you. So link to that is in the description.

17:01And also just while we're talking about it and I know this is the same topic as the YouTube video. That's for a reason if people are actually interested. But if it is a goal of yours to start a personal brand, then I am running a challenge, a build, a profitable personal brand in 30 days challenge.

17:15Every single day you get an actionable lesson similar to what we talked about today, and you get the action steps for that lesson. It takes about 30 to 60 minutes a day, but by the end of the 30 days, you will have a foundation. You'll have an incredible personal brand that is ready to monetize.

17:29That starts on June 16th for those interested.

Authority – Persuasive Education Changes Behavior

17:32Now, pillar number three, and arguably the most important is that persuasive education changes behavior. Most creators build education businesses. They teach their skills and interests. Now, of course, you can try to be the next big celebrity or only fans model.

17:47But remember, we're aiming for some form of positive impact and meaningful work. Now, the thing is, there are so many creators who already teach what you want to teach. You can search any skill on YouTube and find a ton of videos on any topic.

18:01That's what trips up most beginners. They don't believe that people have a reason to follow them. Why would they learn from you when there are already plenty of people to learn from?

Teach Through A New Lens

18:10So there are two solutions here. The first is to teach through a new lens, which is similar to what we just talked about. I could reframe a topic through your personal story or your core beliefs, like how I can talk about something as basic as personal branding, but I can frame it with my story.

18:28Or another way that I like to do this is by reframing through a novel idea. If you're following the instructions I gave you in the growth pillar, then you're consistently consuming or researching information to find ideas. For me, when I do this, something like novels, ideas on ideas are the new oil and this generation is getting rich in idea space, not physical space.

18:49Then I can introduce the topic of a personal brand through that idea, and it's much more compelling and unique. So this generation is getting rich in idea space, not in physical space. So then I can say, okay, here's the traditional business models of the past.

19:03You need a physical location, you need all of these things. But with an online business, with a personal brand,

Persuade the non-interested

19:09you just need ideas. Now the second solution is to persuade the non interested. This answers most of your objections when it comes to building a personal brand. Most people on social media aren't intentional trying to learn. If they were, they would physically search for a video course or article on the topic and you are being spread to random people on social media.

19:32You don't control who sees your content by typing in their interests and demographics into something like Facebook ads. So you need to frame your ideas as broad and desirable. If I want to talk about personal branding, I don't go straight into giving people instructions on how to pick their topics or create a bio that's boring.

19:50They won't get enough reach to spread to a new audience. What I would recommend going to research is the five levels of awareness and marketing. You have to know what level of awareness you are speaking to. When you create a product, you're speaking to a much higher level of awareness because they were aware enough of their problem to buy the product.

20:08So you don't have to start with all of that introduction and broad stuff that is better suited for social media. You just get straight into the details for what they purchased. But on social media, nobody is thinking about that. They're not trying to scroll for ten minutes to find, okay, here's how I build a personal brand.

20:25Oh, here's how I design a website. Oh, here's a they're discovering new things. So the best way to practice this is to just start thinking and pain points and desired outcomes. So I could start with some permutation of if you want, which is a desire, or if you don't want which is a pain point, then most people at least have a chance at becoming interested in what I have to say.

20:46So as an example, I can say if you hate the thought of building someone else's dreams for the rest of your life, start a personal brand. I could then go on to list the benefits of starting one. How low risk it can be, and how you can sell almost anything from digital products to software to physical products.

21:01I can make a compelling argument as to why people should start a personal brand

The Best Way To Monetize As A Beginner

21:06and present it as an option for them, so that was the trust matrix. Now let's talk about quickly the best way to monetize as a beginner. The best way to monetize is any way they literally all work ebooks, templates, cohorts, coaching, paid newsletter sponsorships, freelancing, selling a physical product, whatever.

21:23What most people don't understand is that a personal brand is in a business. It's a traffic source. Founders build a personal brand to get users for their start up. E-commerce brands use UGC to sell physical products. You can quite literally sell anything from bags of coffee to nudes.

21:39If you have a trustworthy personal brand, those without a personal brand need to build trust fast or leverage deeper psychological tactics in the form of direct response marketing. To secure the sale, they need to go from AD to conversion as fast as possible.

21:54That opens up room for potentially unethical tactics, and the sole focus on making quick money. So since we're focused on building a personal brand according to the trust matrix that we just went over, you're in a very good spot. You already have people that want to buy from you.

22:09You don't need to worry about the optimization of your landing page or your headline or whatever it may be, because your content has already done the selling. Now, I could list out the pros and cons of which kind of product you should build first, but instead I'll say this.

22:22I'll just give you a metric. Your first product should take no longer than a week to build, because you probably already have a product lying around. As an example, John Hugh from Stan, which is a creator platform that allows you to host digital products and so on and so forth.

22:37He won. Congratulations to him. In the Stan team. We've grown closer over time, but they recently got Stephen Bartlett from a diary of a CEO podcast on as a co-owner, which is incredible. And they're going to continue growing. So if you need a creator platform to start out on, I would bet on Stan, and they're the most affordable and well-rounded option to go with anyways.

22:57But John Hugh started as a creator on TikTok, and he made career advice videos, and he realized that a lot of people were asking him, okay, what did you do to get the job at Goldman Sachs that he got? And he mentioned his resume here and there, and he eventually just realized, oh, I could just take this resume, put it up for ten bucks as a template.

23:18And he made thousands of dollars doing that. He didn't overcomplicate it. So here's some ideas of what you could do. You could record a 30 to 60 minute training on how to do one impactful thing based on the topic that you talk about. Or you can find an old asset that allowed you to get a desirable result and turn it into a template.

23:37Or you can take a social post that's received good reception and turn it into a short guide or template. Now, we aren't trying to make the big bucks here with this strategy. We're trying to validate an idea that's worth paying for. So start by charging something like $10.

23:54Then if your conversion rate is like 2.5% or higher, then consider turning it into a more fleshed out product. That way, you don't waste your time building something that people don't want. It really can be that simple. Thank you for watching.

24:06Like, subscribe. Remember the Build a Profitable Personal Brand in 30 Days challenge starts on June 16th, and if you'd like deeper letters sent to your inbox every week, consider joining my Substack. The links to both of those are in the description.

24:21Thank you for watching again. I'll see you in the next video. Bye.