Social Media is Crazy

You only need 2 assets to build a personal brand.
   1. Your ideas (intellectual property)
   2. Hiring weapons (human capital)
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Asset #1: Your ideas (intellectual property)

I started paying more attention to my ideas when I heard MrBeast say:

"The idea makes up 90% of a video's success," (paraphrasing).

In the long run, a good idea beats anything:

• Hook
• Formatting
• Persuasive tactics

The best idea with the worst format still gets shared.

Marcus Aurelius wrote Meditations as personal notes to himself - no hook, no structure, just raw thoughts.

Plato's Republic & Aristotle's works are just lecture notes and dialogues. And it's not because they optimized their delivery. It's just that they (and other ancient philosophies) contain ideas that have stood the test of 2000+ years.

Create timeless art, not content.

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Asset #2: Human capital (hiring the right people)

Writers, designers, and video scripters are megaphones.

They can amplify your message. But they can’t change you.

That's why I stay involved in the ideation of almost all content to this day.

How I do it:

1) Once every 6 months, I rant down 100+ content ideas for newsletters, threads, etc. into a spreadsheet

2) I send the spreadsheet to my writers

3) My writers pick the best ideas and execute them

Put a great idea in front of a great writer, then get out of their way.

Now, a mistake I see many founders make is hiring generalists.

The world is becoming more and more niched. I started out with 1 writer, but as soon as I had the money, I hired specialist writers. Today, my team spans 5+ writers, each with their own specialty.

If you want to get attention on LinkedIn, find a writer who knows how to get attention on LinkedIn.

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The beauty of a personal brand?

Scaled serendipity.

• A billionaire with 9 followers might read your tweets
• A VC might share your thread with their portfolio
• A podcast host might quietly vet you for their show

You - literally - never know who you know. (Click to tweet)

But building a great audience doesn’t start with content

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Step 1: Create your $100M profile

It starts with your profile. Your profile is your landing page. So you don’t want to spend $10,000s of dollars on a content team only to drive people to a shit profile.

When I realized this 1 year ago, my profile converted 1% of my visitors.

But after optimizing my profile, I'm now converting 20% of visitors into followers.

That’s 20X the follower growth.

Profile Growth Velocity = New followers / Profile Visitors

How to find your Profile Growth Velocity:
  1. On LinkedIn: Divide your new followers by your total profile visitors
  2. On X: Use apps like Birdy.so (not affiliated) to A/B test different profile variations

And if you want to know how to optimize your profile, just study mine:

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Step 2: Write category-defining content

My current content strategy is simple:

• 50% is growth content - broader topics (leadership tips, books, etc)
• 50% is niche content - my unique expertise (building systems, etc)

To write growth content:

• Simply use a tool like Taplio (LinkedIn) or
• TweetHunter (X) to find the best-performing content in your industry

Then, learn from that hook. Turn it into a template like this: (template words in white, variable words in green)

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To write niche content: Write about the things you're doing every day. And I'm not talking about grabbing an iced latte at Starbucks. I'm talking about your work.

Write about:

• That weird lesson you learned from a client meeting yesterday
• The story of how you took 42 founders hiking
• A major breakthrough you had lately and how it happened

Point is -

Creating epic content is simple if you do epic stuff.

Step 3: Post consistently

The more shots you take, the more you win.

Yes, it IS that simple.

My posting schedule looks like this:

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In the beginning, choose 1 platform (I recommend LinkedIn) and post daily there. Only after you've "proven" your message there should you branch out.

Let quantity create quality.

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Great systems don’t fix broken people. But broken systems can break great people.

Systems lubricate your operations.

Every time you lack a system, it’s a point of friction in your business.

Those points of friction add up faster than you think. And they kill your deep work.

That's why you need to build systems.

There are 3 effective ways to build systems for your business:

Method 1: Build out SOPs yourself

Cost: $0, but can cost a LOT if your time's worth a lot
Best for: Solopreneurs

To build SOPs, follow this process:
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  1. Map out every single process in your funnel (like this)
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  2. Record a Loom video of you doing that process
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  3. Write a Google Doc with written instructions of that process
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  4. Turn it into a checklist

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I'll warn you though - SOPs always take longer than you think. I know because I've documented 524+ processes myself (I share all my current ones in Founder OS).

Method 2: Piece together online systems

Cost: Some templates cost $, but most are free.

Best for: Low-to-mid-6-figure business owners

You can also piece together systems from online content. How to do it:
   1. Google "Templates [Insert Your Process]"
   2. Get the template

I don't recommend this to many though. Standalone, the templates might do the job. But they won't integrate with each other. That will cost you dearly in time.

Method 3: Get all systems plug-and-play

Cost: $$$ (but saves you 100s of hours of your time)

Best for: Founders making $500,000+ ARR

No founder with an hourly rate above $200 should build their own systems. It's a low-leverage task that's a waste of your time. But you still need systems.

I created Founder OS+ so you can focus on making money instead of writing SOPs.

In the program, you get ALL the systems I shared in this email:

• Content Ideation OS
• Hiring Writers OS
• Newsletter OS
• Content OS

...plus 100+ more plug-and-play systems. You get access to a personal founder coach. You get invited to exclusive founder events (like that hike). And you get access to Talent OS, my pool of world-class talent (in writing, sales, video, etc).

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Click here to see if you're a fit for Founder OS+ (and get all my systems instantly)

(at the time of sending this, my team only has the capacity to take only taking 72 more calls before 2025 - so be quick if you're interested)

No pressure though.

I've also curated my entire sales system for you for free into Sales Revenue OS.

In the system, you get access to the systems you need to take someone from lead to close (including how to hire a sales team).

>> Access Sales Revenue OS

That's all for today. Two more weeks to build in 2024. What are you building?

Let's win together!
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PS. Did I mention to you that I wrote an extended, 82-page version about this?
That's the kind of system you get access to in Founder OS+. If you're a 7-, 8-, or 9-figure founder, see if you qualify.

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