"Niche Down" Is Terrible Advice (For Smart People)

I (Had) No Idea What I Was Doing

00:00When I first started out in business, I had no idea what I was doing. I thought it was obvious if I have a skill, people need that skill so they'll hire me. I was ignorant to the fact that every single person could learn that skill, and the online freelancing arena was starting to become flooded with single skill commodities like web design.

00:21And so that was the first problem that I had to solve. And to cut to the chase, I bought courses on freelancing, Facebook ads, e-commerce brand building, copywriting and sales and client acquisition, at least 15 web development courses that are irrelevant but noteworthy.

00:32And I didn't see much success when I tried the business models in those courses, and that's on me, not them. That's my execution problem and lack of the distinction between knowledge and understanding. Right? I can learn, learn, learn all day and mentally masturbate.

00:51But then when it comes to actually executing and bridging that gap, so turning knowledge into understanding through experience and actually playing the game, like when I can read the rules of the game all day long and feel like I have a grasp on it, but unless I play that game for years, then I'm not going to get good at it.

01:04I'm not going to get good at the skill of making money. And even if I think I'm good at it, it's usually because I'm playing against a low level character right in the game. If I'm making $10,000 a month and I'm surrounded by people making ten, $10,000 a month, then it feels like I'm playing the game well.

01:22But then you get exposed to someone that's making a million a month, which yes, it is a thing. Then it's like, Oh, I suck at this game of business. And so even though I didn't see much success from the courses, I noticed a few patterns between them all.

01:33And the one was very apparent. I had to get specific on who I was targeting with a product or service. I had to identify a starving market like health, break that down into submarkets like bodybuilding, and narrow in on a niche market like minimalist training and then research the people within that market and collect data on them.

01:52That way I could hit their pain points and speak to them directly. And at this point it's like, Oh, it all makes so much sense. This was it. I had the secret. I knew I had to find a specific person, researched them, know exactly what they need, and then tailor a product or service to them.

02:10With the skillset that I've developed. And this is still it still works. But the thing is here is like just niche down, bro. That's all there is to it. And this is still common advice in the online business space, and I still feel like it sparks the most overwhelm, anxiety and uncertainty for beginners and people don't realize that business as well as any other domain of life.

02:29It evolves, right? If you get trapped in a paradigm of, oh, cold out reaches the best cold emails the best, this network marketing strategy is the best. And you don't realize the power of personal brands in the emergence of the creator economy.

02:41Then you're eventually going to get left behind because you can't change your beliefs around it. Just like religion, nutrition, health. As new things emerge and we understand human existence better, then you have to adapt to those times by consistently learning.

02:53And so beginners feel like if they don't find the most profitable niche, they're going to fail. So they spend their time flopping from niche to niche learning skills for that niche, which is not a bad thing and end up with no money or leverage to show for it.

03:06That's a bad thing. And I like to challenge common beliefs in more than just business. I feel like it's helped my personal growth a lot. It's allowed me to launch ahead of many people that are still in the same position they were business wise and health wise and every other domain of life wise.

03:23Quickly. They're still the same after three years while I've developed, changed and outgrown certain methods. And so the people that don't challenge common beliefs, they adopt the beliefs of others, like cold email or cold outreach as the best strategy and only strategy.

03:34And they get some they get effective, but not the best results for the landscape that we are in. And so that was a brief intro, but I just want to make it known here that this video is going to be very long. This was arguably the longest newsletter that I wrote because I like to bridge philosophy business and all that other stuff and I like to drag on a bit.

03:53So if you want to skip ahead to the actionable parts, it's usually going to be in the last section, maybe the last 10 to 15 minutes, and you can look in the chapters on YouTube and all of the stuff that we're going to talk about is important.

04:05But if you want to go to the practical parts, then I understand I don't recommend it. But in those parts, the last parts we're going to talk about treating the evolution of your brand as an actualization hierarchy so you don't have to niche down how to build each level of your brand from beginner to advanced in practical things to build at each level.

04:23So you know what to do right now. And that's in the last section. You are the infinite niche. I'm bringing a new concept to how you progress in your brand growth as a creator, freelancer, coach, consultant, online business owner and general agency owner.

04:36Anything in the online business space Because a personal brand is business model agnostic. So now we have to loop back a bit, go over my story again, because this is the mindset. This is the mindset shift that led to this, right? Mindset comes before everything and so if you're in this space and you can relate to it, then you'll be able to get further ahead.

04:54If you resonate with this mindset shift and hopefully, hopefully it can happen in you. So I don't know how or why, but I was scrolling Twitter one day after I deleted it from my phone for, let's say, eight years.

The Mindset Shift That Led To You Watching This Video

05:10The only time I remember using it before that was at like a movie theater. My friend told me to download it. I looked at it. I was falling, like to people. I'm like, This app fucking sucks, I'm deleting it. But when I logged back on eight years later, I noticed a tweet that caught my eye.

05:21I don't know how it got. Maybe it's the universe just giving me divine inspiration, but I saw a guy that was selling web design services and at that time I was selling web design and funnel services to service businesses. And so I'm like, Oh shit, okay, there's something here.

05:32Why is this guy on Twitter, of all places talking about this? And he was also talking about self-improvement mindset, harsh truths that I really loved at the time. And at the same time, I was conditioned into the mind that cold calls, cold emails, direct outreach was really the only way to grow my business without investing in something like paid ads.

05:49And so after years of trial and error, I never really saw the success that I wanted to see. I knew that it was possible if I would have stuck it out a bit more. But like a year of not seeing much results, I was seeing better results at this time because I had it locked down.

06:05I was make I quit my job and so I was working full time on this at this time. But I still it's like, how are these people making $100,000 a month? And I'm over here making six, eight, ten occasionally. And even further, I felt like I wouldn't be able to scale beyond one person, right?

06:18I felt like freelancing, like outreach itself took up 2 hours of my day and then client work took up the rest. And you guys know how big I am on the four hour workday. Now, Like you understand that this is kind of a necessity for that to happen is personal branding and audience building.

06:35And so when I saw people like the person talking about it was Jose Rosado was talking about web design, shout out to him, great account follow up. But when I saw people doing this and landing clients from it through their promotions, things started to click right.

06:47Because with cold emails and DMS, nobody knew who I was. There wasn't any prior trust. I didn't have a way of showing my authority or results from the start. I had to prove myself as one person. It's a lot of manual work if you want the messages to be personal, right?

07:01Not just robotic and automated. And every pitch I sent either led to a customer or nothing at all. I wasn't building leverage along the way. And with social media content, warm outreach to your audience and just promotions on the timeline, I create a reputation over time.

07:14I build trust with span and depth, short form and long form content. I can build trust in my audience without having to explain myself to them. I can generate interest in my products without trying. Nothing goes to waste. All content either contributes to data failures or growth successes.

07:32As I grow larger, I can evolve my brand. It is something I enjoy doing. I gain rather than lose freedom with time and effort. And so this is when I bought like a Twitter growth course at the beginning and I'm like, Oh, this is kind of easy.

07:40I'm going to start doing this. And then I saw growth because I actually stuck to the principles of the course, because I knew that in my past when I took courses, I never really applied what I learned then. I feel like that's a big problem with people that take, say, my courses, that they don't just do what I say.

07:58Now I'm kind of against prescriptions, but as a beginner, prescriptions are very good because then you get experienced by actually feeling confident and that what you're applying and then you start to create your own and realize, okay, this works better for me.

08:10And then you grow and so another problem with this and as I said, this is going to be long because there's a lot that goes into us is that when people start writing content, they feel like they have to stick to the one interest that they are niche down in the niche they chose, right?

08:24So they put themselves in the box from the beginning and they don't realize that you are interested in the topic related to what you sell. Obviously that's your niche, but you also follow 200 to 500 other people with other interests that are completely different.

08:36You don't only follow people that are in your niche. How in the world can you believe that you can't talk about other things when you yourself read potentially 200 or 500 different ideas across a plethora of different niches you're interested in more than one.

08:48Your clients are interested in more than one. And it's not that people won't be interested in your other interest is that you throw all writing advice and any other social media growth advice out the window when it comes time to writing about these things, because it's not about finding people that are already interested in it.

09:06It's about introducing and making people interested in it by making your interests interesting to other people. And so people feel like if they go broad rather than niche, they will dilute themselves to the point of not making any money. And I call bullshit on this early, like when I've been preaching this since I started on Twitter or any other social media, because if you look at every single YouTube or podcast or other social media, celebrity, public influencer, whatever, they go broad, like look at Iman Godsey or Hamza or Ali Abdul, like you, whatever you think about them,

09:37they're successful. They went broad. They focus on beginner level education on top of funnel social media, and then they niche down in their courses, newsletter, communities, etc. And they're at least somewhat holistic in the things that they talk about.

09:47Right, Because they understand if you want to be good at business and life in general, because that's why you're pursuing business in the first place. Health, wealth, relationships, you you should talk about all of them because you can't be you can't get to a certain level in business without getting to a certain level in health or mindset or spirituality.

09:59And so they're far ahead because they understand human nature. And so think of it like this. Most brands are a building within the community that is social media. I want my brand to be a community in and of itself, in the world of social media and my newsletter, content products and services are the buildings or the digital real estate.

10:21So while other people are building one building and occupying little houses inside of it, I'm building a community with multiple buildings and multiple houses inside of it, each building being its own audience and its own niche. Because the only reason you niche down in the first place for the sake of marketing is to sell more of your product or service.

10:38So niche down on your product or service, not your entire brand. But here's the thing is you clearly have to establish one building first. You can't just build an entire city. And so now let's open the can of human nature so that you understand this.

Stages Of Development, Natural Hierarchies, & How They Reflect In The Creator Economy

10:57So let's let's start by understanding hierarchies and stages of development. Hierarchies are the foundation of existence. And yes, even those that scream and cry about how hierarchies are the patriarchy is bad, they're still ranking, the hierarchy is bad, which is a hierarchy hierarchy within itself.

11:11If you want to learn more about this, read a Brief History of Everything by Ken Wilber. It will actually help you understand the whole patriarchy matriarchy and how most people screaming about it nowadays are idiots and they don't understand what's going on from like a universally large perspective throughout history.

11:32And so the fabric of reality is composed of units of mind. That's what I call it in my book that's coming out soon. The Art of Focus. Alan Watts has called them units of thought. Leo Gurus call them figments of consciousness. Ken Wilber calls them whole lines, which is like his word for the building blocks of reality.

11:45But I prefer the term units of mind because of the philosophy of mentalism, or that all is mind, because during animal life or before the emergence of human consciousness, there was no mind to label, interpret and create language so that everyone could be on the same page.

12:03An animal wouldn't. It doesn't call this a boom arm. It doesn't call this a mike. It doesn't call that a camera. It doesn't call this computer. Humans have constructed and layered and evolved language with time to distinguish and make sense of everything in reality, because animals, as an example, are mostly in the present moment.

12:16They see all of this as form information, information and energy. It's all information in the present moment. It's a happening, as Allen Watch would say. And so there's a few characteristics of units of mind that we want to understand here.

12:30The first is that units of mind are hierarchical and intimately connected with the world, like an atom to cell to molecule or a letter to sentence, to paragraph to book or content to product, to brand, to community, to social media or short form content to medium form to long form.

12:48And beyond that, any of those units are vertically and horizontally connected to everything by a proximal relationship. And you can think about this with anything, right? It can be a room to an apartment, to an apartment complex, to a city.

13:02It's literally everything. Everything is a hierarchy. But then they also connect to each other. So like, how short form content on the topic of bodybuilding, connects to the gym, connects to nutrition, connects to the work in your hand, which connects to the micro ecosystem in your gut.

13:14The second thing is that units of mind are whole parts. They are both a whole in and of themselves, like a human being and a part of something greater. Like humans having the desire to be a part of having a purpose or something greater than themselves.

13:25And so a whole personal brand or creator or online business is nothing without its parts. And most people neglect the need for each part in order to evolve or collecting parts and pushing to the next hole that they will evolve into. And we need to understand dominator hierarchies here, which are the ones that give hierarchies a bad reputation and make people want to dismantle the patriarchy.

13:45But they're classified. When a unit within the hierarchy attempts to dominate, like how a cancer cell can replicate in the body until it kills the host or dismantles the hierarchy by killing a lower level of it at the cellular level. What cancer does is it removes a whole part within your body that allows you not to exist or just to die.

14:13And so the cancer cell has to be healed and reintegrated in order for the hierarchy to continue healthy growth and evolution. And so the third thing is that units of mind emerge, transcend and include. So by nature, fewer craters or personal brands or online businesses will reach the highest level of the hierarchy.

14:31Let's think of the highest level as Mr. Beast Joe Rogan The biggest people, right? Because there can only be so many people up there with millions upon millions of followers. It's just that's how it is. And it's the same with like even corporate jobs.

14:44Like you can only rise so high in the ladder. But the thing about the creator economy is that it's not corrupt. I mean, it can be corrupt, but there's very few people. It's decentralized. So people can't necessarily dominate one level of the hierarchy.

14:51Maybe for a time until they evolve. But think about it this way where the amount of creators with 100,000 followers are increasing dramatically, which is just that number alone is more than enough to make more than enough money than you could ever imagine wanting or needing.

15:06And so as the creator economy continues to evolve, these levels will continue to be created through emergence, transcendence and inclusion and more people. There will be new highs of that hierarchy and there will be new ways of development horizontally within the Creator economy, which means that you don't necessarily need to gain a metric ton of followers.

15:30There's going to be other opportunities available, and they're coming up every single day because it's not like you have to create a digital product business or have such a large following that you can get sponsorships or create a service. You can work for people within the creator economy.

15:42As an entrepreneur, unlike a job where, yes, jobs are accepting remote work work more often, but bigger creators are businesses within themselves. They have hundreds of other creators working under them to make that brand work. Like someone I was talking to the other day wanted to get into nutrition and they thought the only path they could go was like getting hired at a personal training thing or a dieticians clinic.

15:59And it's like if, you know, Meric Health with Derek, more plates, more dates, you can go work for them. You can go work for a nutrition coach and be their coach if they're big enough in their coaching business is successful enough, you can go work for really any other creator and offer your expertise that you've developed.

16:15But the underlying principles of creating a personal brand and a valuable in contributing to the actual creator, society and economy is that you need a brand to display yourself. You need content to show your authority. You need an offer where value in that can be a digital product service or just working for someone else.

16:33That's a service and marketing or promotion. You need all of that no matter what you're doing. I broke that down in the last video. You are a hole in a part of your network, which is a part of a community, which is a part of the creator economy, which is part of the internet and beyond.

16:45You must exchange value through money, which is the lifeblood of any society in order for it to survive, for the creator economy to survive and you to actually be a part of it, you need to be contributing value and receiving money and paying money like value exchange across the board.

17:01And so now let's understand your personal evolution,

Understanding Your Personal Evolution

17:07because this can get very tricky very quick. Everything goes through developmental stages. Even your personal brand, and I've written about this in depth the stages of creative development in the one person business roadmap video. Throughout all of this, go watch the one person business playlist.

17:18And so without overcomplicating this book on things like stages of ego development or spiral dynamics or really anything, let's just simplify this with two examples. First is just beginner, intermediate advanced. You have to start out as a beginner.

17:32You have to practice, you have to get results, you have to go to the intermediate stage and then the advanced stage because beginners won't have validated ideas. You're going to have to test ideas. You're doing different things at each stage, at the beginner stage, you're following a social media growth course.

17:46If you have problems with courses, go in, fucking sign up for a $40,000 degree and see if you get anywhere in the creator economy. Not going to happen. If you want to get a job, then you need to get educated by the things that are going to educate you for a job in a college.

17:57If you want to work in the creator economy, then you're going to have to be educated at a fraction of the cost by people that are in the creator economy and that literally created it. So the second example is just the pre rational, rational and post rational stage.

18:10That was kind of created by Ken Wilber, I believe. But this developmental progression is best explained by the Bell Curve meme. So here's the bell curve meme. And on the left you have low IQ, which is like I do whatever I want at mid IQ. It's like, no, you have to niche down.

18:24How are you going to learn clients if you aren't specific? All the agency owners say that you have to pick the most profitable niche. Being a creator is the same exact thing, no question about it. You're an idiot if you try to be yourself. And then on the right super high IQ, I do whatever I want, do whatever you want.

18:36When people start to develop themselves in any area of life, they latch on to specific teachings and principles and related ideologies that they are taught from the beginning that are conditioned into their minds. They're brainwashed. I'm not talking about just the Matrix or being in the Matrix.

18:48You can very well be programed into an anti matrix mindset by the people that are trying to get you out of the matrix. You just enter a new matrix. And so if you don't continue to evolve or question your beliefs, then you get trapped in that phase or that stage of development.

19:02And so it's like how religious people become Bible thumpers and regurgitate everything they've learned without questioning or understanding, and then they reach the intermediate stage or the rational stage. And this is where people start to question and rebel against the beginner stage.

19:14And so in spiritual domain of development, this is where atheists come into play and they're very bitter. They attack and they just argue all day. But in the creator domain of development, in the intermediate stages, this is where people get bitter at the game.

19:25And I've seen this more recently. It usually comes in cycles, like on the timeline where people are calling other people out. There's a lot of drama, there's a lot of people calling out scammers, which isn't a bad thing. But then there's also the people that just complain all day about how the game is not fair and then they lose followers and they get sucked into the cycle of their undoing or downward spiral of their own doing where they're like, Oh, like I have to write content this way and I'm not going to do it, and I'm going to go all against what everyone's saying.

19:50And then, Oh, why am I not getting engagement? You guys don't know what's good content. It's like you've just been exposed to it to the point as to where, like you haven't accepted the game in the system and how to maneuver yourself within it, and you weren't creative enough to turn it into your own thing.

20:03And so they see things like everyone is a copycat coaches selling, the coaches are running a pyramid scheme, which is just a lack of understanding of hierarchies. And another one is this high ticket sales is the best business model because everyone else is basic and not as smart as me.

20:16It's also my way of survival. So I'm deeply tied to it or else I feel threatened again. This can get very dangerous. And so lastly, you evolve to the post rational stage of development and in the siege you rediscover the principles and can approach them from a place of experience like how most developed spiritual people agree and embody the principles in the Bible, so to say, or every other pattern across all belief systems that point to truth.

20:43Because truth isn't limited by cultural understanding. But but, but, but they see the futility in preaching it as the one and only ideology like Christianity, or else you burn in hell. And so in the creator economy, we can note a few things.

20:54Is that many intermediates despise simple platitudes or cliches or just like quote, like advice, and they enter a bitter phase and try to rebel against the nature of business, which is which is good. But like a replicating cancer cell, you must take your discoveries and be reintegrated into the hierarchy so that you can advance to the next stage or you destroy your business like I've seen time and time again because you just get upset.

21:19And so advance creators see those things as a pillar of growth. And so with that long background, we can now come at creating your niche from a place of metaphysical understanding. So I've discussed how you are the most profitable

You Are The Infinite Niche

21:33niche many times before. Specifically in the video, the most profitable niche is you. And so this video doesn't add up longer than it has to be, which it already is. I'm just going to give you a brief overview of what I mean by you are the most profitable niche.

21:39Your brand vision is your vision for the future. This is what you're leading your followers toward your brand Identity is your story where you came from and how you transformed your content illustrates this By educating on the skills and interest you learn to get to where you are.

21:52Your thoughts, opinions and worldview are how you position your content in a unique way, your products or the systems you've created to help those behind you. So let's build on this idea by going deeper and hopefully this provides more clarity.

22:03So here's a graphic, right? We're talking about Don't niche down. View your brand as an actualization hierarchy. So this is the hierarchy of brand actualization and just keep this in mind as we go about. Right. I'm not going to break it down right now.

22:16That's what we're here to actually talk about. Screenshot it if you'd like, but you are complex. At least that should be your aim. The universe evolves toward complexity. That's what it's been doing. Like the information Age is the most complex age that we've ever been in.

22:29That's what I mean is before this, think of like years ago, centuries ago, thousands upon thousands of years ago, the universe was a little acorn, even though it looked physically the same. This is why I like the philosophy of mentalism, because now the universe is like an oak tree with a thick stump and branches and branches on that and leaves and everything with interconnections within the leaves and all of these little things going on in the mental realm.

23:00And so if the universe evolves toward complexity, so do you, as you learn, implement and understand, as you age. And so the complexity of your character is determined by the goals that you've pushed through, and each goal you achieve requires a specific perspective and skill level to match and the higher your skill level across multiple domains, the higher your complexity of self.

23:18And as you increase in complexity, you can work to solve deeper and more meaningful problems in your life, in the lives of others. And if you are the niece, then your brand should go in complexity as your skills and interests evolve in the pursuit of your goals.

23:30Because your brand, what you're leading people towards is goal after goal after goal. That's how you evolve. And so as you learn and acquire skills, it is your duty to build real world projects that get results for other people. And that is how you both create a profitable product in business and fulfill your spiritual duty of feeling as if you were part of something greater than yourself.

23:51By helping other people at scale. So with here's the key point is that with every level of development that you reach, you will build a tangible product to reflect that. This is how you educate your followers and build authority. After I solve the productivity problem in my life, I created a power planner and I sold that and then eventually made it a free download after I got results with web design and freelancing.

24:12Then I solidified my knowledge and results and experience within that domain by making it tangible so that other people could learn. So I created a web design course how to create websites and to create a freelancing course of what I learned along the way.

24:23And this only furthered my understanding within these things and allowed me to transcend it. And so after I acquired a skill stack, I created a consulting offer for branding. I was a brand advisor because I had such complexity at this point where I felt like I could do it so well for other creators and influencers and brands.

24:41Now, what many people miss when it comes to niching down is this They don't realize that any newsletter, lead magnet, product or service you create is an audience. You're building an audience off platform. The problem is that most people are afraid.

24:54They don't publish anything. They create content and think that's good enough and they hide behind the service. They don't they don't put anything out there in public because they're so used to one on one work. And freelancing is like, Oh, this isn't in public, so I'm not going to be scrutinized or criticized when that's what leads to growth.

25:11And they don't realize that long form content products and services are the backbone of your entire brand. And I don't want to sound egotistical, but this illustrates the example well, because I've seen this very frequently right? People think Twitter is going to shit and they'll talk to me.

25:23They'll like, Dan, you have very good engagement. Like, how do you do it? All my Twitter clients are like, their engagement is going to shit. And it's like, Hmm, I wonder why I've been practicing what I preach for years now with writing long form newsletters, YouTube videos, podcasts, creating 8 to 10 lead magnets, products, iterating on those products, evolving them, creating a community, a service.

25:47I'm always building something literally every single quarter for the entirety of me doing this. The first hour of every morning, I was building a product or service and I was trying to sell it. And you know what that led to? Did it lead to me being overly salesy?

26:00No. It led to audiences consuming that information, changing their life because it's ten times more deep than anything on social media can be just by the nature of it. It's a hierarchy. And because of that, they read my content from a lens of more experience because I'm helping them gain that experience.

26:15People read my content from an understanding of who I am in my philosophy, anyone can copy and paste my tweet, but it's going to get half the engagement because I'm not the one posting it. You are the niche. And so here's the thing is that my brand is the vessel for my life's work.

26:32My brand is not a niche audience in the in the couple of years I'm getting into music production right now, I don't hold me to that. I may stop, I may quit. But at the same time, what if I created focused work playlists for my audience as content, right?

26:44Not the typical music production route where I'm trying to become famous and go on stage, create gym playlists, create focused work playlist, create spirituality, music, and help people integrate into my philosophy more. And so my brand is a city within social media, and it's a community of millions of people.

27:01So my power planner has a 70,000 download or niche audience around productivity. This is digital real estate I am occupying. My newsletter has 120,000 subscriber niche audience around deep philosophy in business. My products have a 15,000 plus student niche audience around writing, branding and business.

27:16When you niche down your brand, I see people maybe get to 100,000 total followers after three years. My power planner is a more niche audience than the niche audience that grew 200,000 over three years and it has 70,000 people on it. And so do you see what I'm getting at here by doing this?

27:29This is how you remove the boundaries around who you are online in the digital society and build whatever the fuck you want with time. So now let's let's take it back a bit here because we have to understand that everyone starts at level one because you aren't just going to build all of these things in a blink of an eye.

27:44As I said, it took me quarter after quarter after quarter. That's like three months where I would build, launch, iterate, get feedback and build the next thing. So you have to set your mind on building the first level of the pyramid. And then once that product emerges, you can you you can start to transcend to the next by building another product or project.

27:59And most people never evolve because they stop building and they get stagnant. It's like, Oh, I'm only going to write content for the next three years of my life. I'm not going to create a new product, I'm not going to create a new service.

28:09I'm not going to contribute anything more to this new society that I call myself a part of. You aren't helping with the growth of the society by educating. You're the school system, right? The creator Society is everything. It's the school system, it's the governments, tribes, it's everything, and we are creating it.

28:28So now let's get into some actionable shit, right? This is the smart progression for authority and growth,

The Smart Progression For Authority & Growth

28:34and this is what I would recommend as a beginner level progression. So number one is to determine 2 to 3 topics that lead to your vision. Here's a graphic from the previous post I did on how to write social media content. And this is what I mean by choosing two or three topics and then being able to break them down into subtopics and just ideas that you can start writing about.

28:54And so what do these topics fall under? One, you should already know what they are. You have interests, but aside from that you have to determine what you're leading your followers towards. You have to understand at least somewhat what your vision for the future is or what the next goal you want to achieve is.

29:06Right. And health, wealth, relationships, happiness. And from there, what skills and interests are going to take you there because anyone can start working on their finances. But one person is going to be more interested in starting the e-commerce business or the personal brand or budgeting or just a physical small business like opening a coffee shop, right?

29:26That is your skill or interest to get you to that goal and that is unique to you. So step number two is to practice top of funnel writing and growth because your number one priority is consistent brand growth on social media. And the easiest ones to grow on are Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and other short form platforms like Tik Tok or Shorts or I don't recommend those, but it's because you're more in control of your growth.

29:51With Tik Tok, you're still relying on the algorithm With Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, you can network and help each other grow and build your tribe so that your tribe can rise to new levels of the hierarchy. Right? People are so against engagement groups or mastermind groups when again, you don't understand what a syndicate is, you don't understand what a tribe is within the community and you rising up in status.

30:12And the other thing with this is that you want to build a base audience where you can fuel your digital real estate and products and services over time and eventually transfer to longer form platforms. Right? You need an audience to fuel your newsletter.

30:25You need an audience to grow in YouTube potentially, if you don't want to rely on the algorithm. I like to be in control of my shit. And so I grew a Twitter audience and I'm like, Eventually I want to get on YouTube. I'm just going to transfer that audience over.

30:36And that takes time too. But I knew that if I just went straight into YouTube, I probably would never see success. It was a very low chance because I can see the market. I understand what's going on. And so I'm like, Twitter, I can control this.

30:48And so that made more sense to me. So as your audience grows, your leverage to build and talk about whatever you want does with it. So by bestselling books on your topics and devour them, follow social media accounts that talk about those topics and emulate them from the lens of a creator, not a consumer.

31:00Pay attention to what writing ideas and structures perform the best. That's how you practice writing and you're going to suck at first, so get it out of the way while nobody's watching. While you have 0 to 200 followers. And I talk about all of this in two hour writer write if you want to learn how I write or just writing in order to grow as a foundation of all social media, check it out.

31:24And so the third thing is to start a newsletter as a vessel to build your projects, because I always recommend starting a newsletter and you don't have to start writing one on a consistent basis. You just have to have the newsletter. You need to be practicing promoting it, marketing it so you can get subscribers on there, but you don't have to be consistent with it.

31:40And people procrastinate. Building a newsletter because all of these lemming beliefs come up and it's like, Oh, I'm not going to write Oh, this is too long term. I don't even have an audience yet. And that's because you you don't you don't see immediate results from it.

31:51So it's not enticing to you because you don't understand another perspective behind it. And so the benefits to starting a newsletter are that you can practice developing depth behind your ideas. This leads to original thought and struggle with writing you get better, faster.

32:01You can use it as a place to write modules or sections of your lead magnet or products. No, it doesn't matter if you send it out first for free and you show that you're providing value off platform as a beginner, which helps with perceived authority, you're selling something, helps your brand, not selling something, hurts your brand.

32:20And so whenever you create something in the next steps that we're going to talk about, you use your newsletter as a way to write the first iteration of it. And so you're getting this content out and you're gaining authority by writing long form content on it that some people can see.

32:31And so step number four is to create a lead magnet as your first niche. Because I've built and tested 8 to 10 different lead magnets from just a simple web design video is literally an hour long video and how I create websites to the basics of marketing, to the power planner, to seven days to genius ideas, to the internet, profit starter pack, to the Path to power, which was like an e-book on my life philosophy because people with a niche brand consistently have to talk about the one topic that they're niche down into.

33:04And so let's take video editing as an example. And this applies to any other interest from health, nutrition, marketing, sales, philosophy, anything. And so if I create a lead magnet on the basics of video editing, do I always have to worry about writing content on that, or can I branch into something new?

33:16Because if I incorporate some video editing content here or there, I just plug my lead magnet and then people have everything I could ever want to say about that thing right in their hands. And it's extremely valuable. And I build my newsletter along the way because I'm capturing emails.

33:30And so here's a short example of lead magnet ideas is just checklists that get results, like a web design checklist notion templates for systems like writing or habit formation, beginner level e-books that go over the fundamentals to get people up to speed with more advanced stuff that you talk about or video tutorials or screen recordings of the same beginner fundamentals.

33:50So create a lead magnet to establish authority in the area that you want to monetize, or at least you think you want to monetize because you can always create another lead magnet. It takes like a day. And so over time you will build a niche audience of downloaders under your much broader audience of your brand.

34:03And then over here is upon years, if you want to branch in the health, then you do the same thing. If you want to branch into music production, then you do the same thing. You are the most profitable niche. And so step number five is to sell a minimum viable service offer to gain experience.

34:16Right? We I showed you that complete self or brand actualization hierarchy earlier, but we're creating a much shorter one here where it's content lead, magnet service and then you're going to fill in product or and so what we're doing here is we're creating a smaller hierarchy to start and then we can add levels along the way.

34:41So we're doing content newsletter, lead, magnet service, and then we can eventually add in product coaching event, whatever you want to add in and the reason we're doing this is because you need a next step or a monetizable way to help the lead magnet downloaders that want more.

34:54What's the next logical step after the lead magnet they download and how are you going to help them do that with a minimum viable, viable freelance or coaching offer? And so I've discussed this before in its own video, which is the best online business model to make $1,000,000 in 2023.

35:13But you're doing a single skill freelance or it's like web design or a single interest coaching service, like health coaching and then you charge 500 to 1000 and you slowly evolve that hierarchy by increasing your prices, increasing your experience, systematizing your process, getting results, etc.

35:24And with this, you can replace your income with just like 3 to 4 clients and then go full time and then start developing your brand further. So step number six is to evolve, transcend and include because at this point you've developed authority in one niche, whichever you created the lead magnet and service around, right?

35:45But you're still able to talk about whatever you want in your content or newsletter because you've already established, you've already written the content before and can plug that with the lead magnet. So to deepen your authority and open up room to explore new interests, you should complete your brand actualization pyramid, turn your freelance or consulting service into a cohort based course, get results at this level, productize that cohort into a digital product, get results at this level,

36:07repeat the process of lead magnet service cohort in product until you have a holistic synthesis of content products and services. And if you want to talk about certain interests, you need foundational content like a lead magnet or newsletter in place to get people up to speed.

36:20And if you aren't getting engagement, when you start talking about a new interest, it's because you haven't developed depth under, you haven't you don't realize that your audience is not on the same page of understanding as you, and that's why you need to start beginner level and introduce them to it in a persuasive manner.

36:32Study Persuasion. So with it, with time and effort, within one or two years, you can really start doing whatever you want. And so this is really the way to become a modern polymath or a digital renaissance man by exploring reality through your interests and distributing your discoveries through content and making a living, doing what you love by creating something worth charting for, so flow with the direction of the universe and bask in the enjoyment that comes with it and enjoy the rest of your day.

36:59Because that's the end of the video. And if you liked it like the video, if you liked it again like the video. Subscribe Description for to our Writer Course Digital Economics Masterclass. The lead magnets that I talked about throughout the actual thing.

37:10Hopefully you watched as far if you did I appreciate you let me know how you like this new set up in me like looking this way. It feels kind of weird, but we'll run with it. It's peaceful.