What if I told you you can make six figures a year by creating content about the things you love? Better yet, what if I told you you could do this by only spending five to 10 hours a week making short videos that you would share online?
Sounds too good to be true, right? This is exactly what I thought before I started to help over 200 business owners create their own personal brands over the last four years—brands that combined have generated over $20 million in sales collectively.
Here's the thing: there are thousands of people just like you who are doing exactly that on social media, all while working a full-time job, raising a family, and living life as usual.
The difference between you and them is that they're documenting what they love and what they know and are posting it online every day—and getting paid to do it.
Breaking Down Personal Branding
A personal brand is how you appear to the outside world, and ironically, everybody has their own personal brand already—they just don't realize it.
Most people think about personal branding as having a logo, website, or how your social media posts look. But that's truly not what a personal brand is. Those are all things that fall under visual identity or a logo system.
A true personal brand is how people think and feel about you, your product, or your business when you're not present. It's more about feeling and knowledge that comes from the content you produce than how a personal brand looks.
We can see this with many content creators on social media and YouTube—90% of them don't have a website or logo, yet you know exactly who they are, what they stand for, and what they teach.
Why Personal Branding Matters
The core thing with a personal brand is that it builds trust between you and the people who are consuming your content. Unlike paid ads or any type of advertising where you have to pay money to get views and impressions, organic content created through a personal brand will convert people to buy your product or service for free.
Most businesses struggle to sell their products or services at a profitable rate because the cost of advertising to acquire customers has skyrocketed in the last couple of years.
The No. 1 way for them to overcome this is to build a personal brand where they're making short-form content daily on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn.
The Power of Connection
At the end of the day, a personal brand is just putting yourself online in a capacity where people can look at you, relate to you, and say, "You know what? If I met this person in real life, I think we would be best friends."
That's the core thing you want to start building—a connection between you and the people you're creating content for.
This creates what's known as a parasocial dynamic, meaning they may not know you personally, but they consume so much of your content that they think they know you as if you were co-workers or went to high school together.
I definitely feel that way with creators whose content I've consumed, like Dan koe and Ali Abdaal. I've never met them in real life, but I know them and their life story because they're putting out thousands of pieces of content.
How a Personal Brand Makes Money
A personal brand makes money in one of three ways:
1. Advertising Revenue: Through platforms like YouTube Adsense and TikTok's Creator Fund. While this is the easiest way, it typically generates the least amount of money and requires significant viewership.
2. Products or Services: Creating something that goes on the backend of your content. For example, I made content about graphic design and branding, which led to business owners hiring me for logo design and branding services.
3. Affiliate Marketing: Promoting other people's products through affiliate programs. This is a great middle ground between advertising revenue and selling your own products.
The Master Format for Content Creation
Here's my process for creating unlimited content for your personal brand:
1. Start with a long-form YouTube video (10-45 minutes)
2. Transcribe the audio into a newsletter
3. Post the audio on podcast platforms
4. Chop the video into 30-90 second clips for social media
5. Use AI tools to rewrite key points into social media posts
This process allows me to create:
- 3 long-form pieces of content (video, newsletter, podcast)
- 6-20 pieces of short-form content
- Multiple social media posts
All from one initial video.
Getting Started: Your Action Plan
1. Brain Dump: Write down everything you have above-average knowledge in and could talk about for more than 10 minutes straight.
2. Research: Go to your chosen platform and study successful creators in your space. Analyze their content structure and presentation style.
3. Create Your First Post: Your first video probably won't be great—and that's perfectly fine. The goal is to improve 1% with each piece of content you create.
4. Build a Content Backlog: Aim to create 30-60 pieces of content in your first 30 days. This gives new followers something to binge when they discover you.
5. Engage With Your Audience: Even if you only have one fan, start learning about their goals, dreams, and challenges. Ask them what content they want to see from you.
Remember: You Already Have a Personal Brand
The biggest takeaway is this: you already have a personal brand—you're just not documenting it yet. All you have to do is take your iPhone, point it at your face, and start recording whatever you want to talk about.
As you make more videos and share more things with people, you'll start to understand the process and collect a community of fans who want to watch more of you and connect with you.
Your personal brand is a lifelong journey. It's about taking what you love and what you're knowledgeable about and turning it into something that can potentially generate significant income.
But more importantly, it's about building genuine connections with people who share your interests and want to learn from your experiences.
The most successful people in life are successful because of their network and the people who trust them. If you're not out there making content every day and building your personal brand, you're missing out on expanding your network in a way that could help you grow exponentially over time.
Start today. Pick up your phone. Record something. Share it with the world. The only thing stopping you right now is caring too much about how you sound or look.
Give up on perfectionism and just make that first video. Because once you do, you've already started building something that could change your life.
Remember, this is just the beginning. Building a personal brand is never-ending, but it's a feedback system of creating content, seeing how it performs, learning from the response, and continuing to provide value to your audience.
That's how you take what you love and what you're knowledgeable about and turn it into a successful personal brand.
