I Made ONE Change to My Personal Brand, Now Clients Come to Me

If you're posting content but struggling to turn followers into clients, this video is for you.

When I first started my YouTube journey, I played the role of a nice guy teaching sales tips. I posted consistently; I got some views, but people didn't stick around. They came for the quick tips and then they bounced. And I wasn't really building a real audience; I was just another face in the feed, easy to watch but also easy to forget. And that's when it hit me: I didn't have a real personal brand.

So six months ago, I made a complete shift. I rebuilt everything from the ground up: my content strategy, creative direction, and the entire vibe of my videos. And that's when things started to change. My content stopped getting lost in the sea of competition, and I carved my own lane. And with that, our views started to go up, subscribers went up, and more importantly, our sales actually went up from this shift.

So in this video, I'm going to give you the cheat codes, the biggest shifts that I've made over the last 6 months that made my personal brand go from forgettable into a magnet for signing high-ticket clients. So if you want to skip years of your life suffering from trial and error and trying to figure everything out by yourself and start building a personal brand that actually generates revenue, listen very carefully.

Now, the first thing we're going to cover is how to build your personal brand almost as if you were designing a video game character. So obviously, when you are filming videos, you want to be your authentic self. But the reality is, most of us are pretty boring. We have some interesting parts of ourselves, and we have some very boring parts that nobody cares about. Now, the key to this is to highlight the things that make you interesting, the things that make you unique, and put it on camera. Because if you document your whole day for 24 hours, right, chances are you're only going to have like 30 minutes of content that's usable. And those key moments or the key characteristics about your personality are the things that will attract your audience. So the first step, like I was saying, is build your personal brand like a video game character. It's not about being your authentic self; it's being your best self and putting your best foot forward.

Now let me explain to you what happens if you're not intentional about building your personal brand and you don't look at it like this from an almost video game character standpoint. One of the first videos I ever did was when I left my six-figure tech sales job to move to Thailand. And at the time, I was doing a lot of travel vlogging and making these little online courses and just trying to figure things out. So one of the first, uh, you know, talking head-style videos I made was actually in my little apartment in Thailand that I was paying like $400 a month for, but my backdrop was essentially just a closet. I put a desk in front of me, and then I didn't even have a tripod at the time, so I just used a refrigerator. I literally unplugged the refrigerator, moved it into the middle of the room, and put my point-and-shoot camera on top of it and used it as a tripod.

As you can see from this image, it wasn't as if I was very thoughtful in my personality. I mean, if you look at my hair—is that the hair of someone that you trust and respect in the first 5 seconds of looking at that person? Probably not, you know, but at the time I thought it was cool. Um, and I guess my overall look—it's it's okay, but it wasn't anything special. It's not memorable, and it's just not that strong. And so even when I made my first YouTube video—I mean, this was literally the first YouTube video—same hairstyle, same kind of look. And then I try to become a little bit better, uh, and trying to, you know, make the lighting better and all these things, but still, it's just an okay face. It's an okay personality, but it's nothing that actually stands out. Sure, it got me views in the beginning, right, and it did actually work, and I did get subscribers after, you know, posting videos for a whole year and getting like 30 views each video. But then that was just more grit and endurance, um, and just doing it for a long period of time. But off the bat, my personality and my personal brand at this time wasn't really thought out; I wasn't creating a character that was actually attractive.

And more importantly, especially when you're creating YouTube content, you know, a lot of times people aspire to be like the creators they watch. So if you look at this person—you know, my old version of myself—it's not necessarily someone aspires to be like, and that was the problem, right? So they would come for the tips. They would come for the "how to sell anything" kind of videos, right, "sell me this pen," or, you know, "the five top interview questions for your tech sales interview," which was basically my niche at the time: tech sales. But they weren't really sticking around. And that was the problem. Subscribers would come in, and they would they would stop watching videos because they weren't invested in my journey. They didn't care if I became more successful or not. It was just like coming in just to learn something and leaving. And in this day and age, if you don't have a personality that people can buy into, it's kind of like, why would they even watch you? Why not just go to ChatGPT and just get all the answers, right? So if you want to be a personality that stands out, a lot of times the messenger is just as important as the message. Especially if the message nowadays can be found on ChatGPT, and you can get the greatest experts to give you perfect answers, but it's not about that—it's learning from someone that you trust and respect and also want to be like. And that's why we follow people, because we, in some subconscious psychological way, want to be like them or we see ourselves in them.

And one thing I want to reiterate is that it's not about being fake. It's not about being a character or somebody you're not; it's about putting your best foot forward. And by the way, if you actually need help building your personal brand, growing a following on social media—whether it's YouTube or LinkedIn—and taking your skills, knowledge, and experiences and packaging it into a high-ticket offer, you definitely want to check out founderx.net, where I teach people exactly how to do this through our coaching program. A lot of people that have come through the program actually were able to sign their first high-ticket clients literally in weeks of just working with me. So if you're interested in that, we actually have a free training over at founderx.net for you to learn more. But if you want to jump the line and just talk to me or one of my teammates directly, you can actually book a call there.

Back in the days, I didn't really have a personal brand; I didn't I didn't think about, you know, how to create this brand. But 6 months ago, I basically audited my YouTube channel and I thought to myself, okay, in this market, it's getting more competitive. A lot of people are teaching something similar to what I'm teaching. So what am I going to do? And so 6 months ago, I sat down with my team, and we came up with a strategy in order for, I guess, the Patrick Deng brand to differentiate itself from everybody else. And so I'm going to share with you some of these secrets and give you some of the sauce.

So the first step I took to rebuild my brand was creating a vision board. Now, this sounds pretty basic at first, but a lot of times most things in life are actually basic; it's just hard to do and execute. So what you want to do with a vision board is this: You want to ask yourself very deep questions to understand who are you—like, who is Patrick Deng really? What do I really stand for? What do I believe? What do I want to do? And how do I want to help people? If you don't have an answer to these questions, then there's no reason for why somebody should follow you, right? Because what is your mission? What is your vision? Why should I follow you? Why should I spend my valuable time watching your content? And also, when people do watch you, what do they feel when they watch you? Because at the end of the day, we all make decisions emotionally; it's not a logical thing, especially if you're creating content that's very aspirational.

So what is my goal? My goal is to inspire others. Because when I was younger, I was a loser; I was like this young, quiet kid that was too afraid to share who I was on the inside. And then that led me to a life of misery. But because other people inspired me and they passed some knowledge to me back in the day, it really changed my life. I want to do the same thing for others. So internally and with the team, that's what motivates us—is to inspire others. Now, how do we, you know, push this out into the world? Well, I know for a lot of people, they want to quit their 9-to-5 and start their own business. They want to build their personal brand. They want to create content. They want to sell their high-ticket offers. And these are all things that kind of fall into my wheelhouse, where whether it's content marketing and sales, so I can help other people and inspire them, show them that they're more capable than they thought they actually were, and teach them all the tools that they need and skills in order for them to create really good content, build their personal brands, and sell whatever product and services they want to push, right? And so if they're able to do these things and make a full-time online income, that completely changes their life. And I know it did for me when I quit my six-figure job to basically build my own thing. And so I want to do that for others, right? And so that is the mission. That is the driven. So everything that we do, all the content pieces we put out, all the messaging and and the scripts that we write, it all focuses towards that goal—to help inspire others become a better version of themselves.

So for you, when you're taking these lessons and applying it for to your content, do you even have a mission? Do you have a vision? Are you, you know, the leader of your movement that people can actually follow confidently? And if not, that is why you don't get views. It's not about having a magic, you know, thumbnail or title or script; it's first having a vision of what you actually want to do and how you bring value to the world.

And one important thing that I touched on earlier, especially if you're selling anything—B2C, for example, selling to everyday regular people, right, not necessarily to businesses—is that you need to create content where you position yourself as someone people aspire to be like. If nobody wants to be like you, no one's going to watch you, and no one's going to buy anything from you. And so for me, I sell coaching, and I also buy other people's coaching programs because I'm in the mindset of like, I want to learn from other people, right? Everyone has different experiences, and one decision-making process I have when I decide to spend thousands of dollars in someone's coaching program is: Do I want to be like them? So, you know, let's say I want to learn internet marketing, right? There's a lot of internet marketers out there who are really good at what they do, and they're making a lot of money. But sometimes when I see their content, it's just a little cheesy. It feels a little spammy. It feels very salesy. So I think to myself, of course, they've made money, and they know what they're doing, but do I want to be like them? If the answer is no, I'm not buying.

As you craft your personal brand and your messaging and and how you put yourself out into the world, you need to really think about: Are you actually somebody people aspire to become? Because if not, they will not watch. They will not subscribe. It's a hard pill to swallow, but that is reality, right? You have to look into the mirror to see where you really stand in society.

So let's get into some popular examples of really powerful personal brands that have made an impact on society. Obviously, everybody knows Steve Jobs. He's seen as an innovator, somebody that took, you know, boring computers and added some creativity and life into it, right? So chances are, if you want to be a YouTuber and create content, you're probably using a Mac, you're probably using an iPhone. It's like tech but for creative people, right? And he dominated that niche completely, and he positioned technology products as something beautiful, whereas everyone else was just like—it was just a commodity, you know, like Microsoft, for example. And so he's an iconic figure. He wears the same thing every day. He's very recognizable. Like, if you can dress up as somebody, then that means they have a real recognizable personal brand, right? So if everyone wore turtlenecks and blue jeans and like sneakers, everyone would know that is Steve Jobs, right? You're dressing like Steve Jobs.

Now, the next key point in building a memorable personal brand is you want to analyze the market and look at what's missing. So if you try to be like everybody else, you're not going to stand out because you're not going to win at their own game. So when I was thinking about this, I looked at the market to look at, okay, like who's in this like guru business niche teaching people about personal brands, right? And there's quite a number of people doing it, but they're all doing it in their different ways. Some people are more on the very internet marketing side. Feels very almost scammy in a way, or "scammy" is maybe not the right word, but salesy—very salesy, right? And I didn't really want to go that route. Other people are, you know, highly successful in what they do, and they're thinking about building a billion-dollar company. And so when I look at that, I'm like, well, the average person cannot relate to someone going for a billion because they're trying to make their first $1,000 online. So I looked at the market and I try to see, okay, like what's missing, you know, where can I fill this gap? So the gap I personally found was just being authentic. It sounds crazy, right? But it's so obvious because everyone's trying to flash like revenue numbers and this and that and, you know, trying to make it look like they're like super successful, right? It sometimes feels kind of fake, and it could be real, but you never know. And then other people are just so successful, it's out of reach. So then what's the best positioning for me? It's like having some level of success but almost feeling like you're a friend—like, "Hey, I just did it, and you can do it too. Let me show you how." And because of that relatability factor, you know, for the most part, when people, you know, purchase the Founder X program, that's what they feel, and I know it because when I'm on the sales calls, I can feel it, and they say it with their own words. And so that's a little pocket that I carve for myself, and over time the market will change, people will copy me, then authenticity will be more common, right? But for now, that's a unique advantage that I'm kind of taking advantage of—of just keeping it real.

Now, if you're moving away from, let's say, the guru stuff and like, you know, teaching information online, let's use other examples outside of education to give you a more, you know, holistic view of things. So I'm going to use Blackpink, for example. Okay. Now, Blackpink is one of the most popular girl groups in K-pop, right? They're like internationally known for a lot of young people. You probably know who they are. Now, for Blackpink, you know, they really have an image of being a girl boss, right? So it's like, if you listen to their songs, it's about like, "I make my own money," and all that kind of stuff. So it does appeal to a certain type of demographic of like other girl bosses who want to be like them. Makes sense. Women empowerment, like these days, is a very powerful—it's a very popular topic and trend, and a lot of people aspire to make their own money and be like Blackpink. Okay. Now, this other group that became recently really popular actually and just came out of nowhere is—they're called NewJeans, and I think they rebranded to NJS. So they took a whole opposite approach, and instead of being the girl bosses and, "ah, I make my own money," they went more softer, more cute, more girl-next-door kind of look. Uh, a lot of 90s aesthetics and references, right? Very soft and very dreamy, right? And so if you put these two groups together, yes, they compete. They're both girl groups in K-pop, but because their personalities as a group—that whether it might be manufactured, it might not be, I don't know—uh, but my guess is it is manufactured, right? They compete in different ways, and they attract different people, and they'll have different super fans because of the differences in their personality. So in entertainment, in a space where, you know, it's like entertainment is kind of commoditized, so you have to do these crazy things to be different. You know, this is what they thought would be good. And so if you take those lessons and apply into niches that are not as competitive, like education, for example, you know, you can find these gaps in the market from a personality perspective. So if everyone's trying to be more like, uh, alpha male, for example, you could be more stoic or more chill. Right now, if everyone's more stoic and they're monk mode, ghost mode, they're always grinding all the time, you could take the other approach of like, "Hey, like, instead of working harder, why not work smarter?" And that will attract a whole different type of person. You know, no matter what market you're in, there's always a way to basically do the opposite of what's popular. And it always cycles. You know, one day girl bosses are in, next thing you know, um, you know, then it may not be cool anymore. It's possible, right? And so, you know, identify those gaps in the market to see where you can like fill in that void very quickly and just become that number one person known for that thing.

Now we're going to move into the next topic in building a powerful personal brand, and that is one of my favorites, which is creative direction. Now I'm going to show you a way of looking at personal branding that most people are not going to teach, especially in the business world and people that sell more sales and marketing type of stuff. Now this comes from my experience actually working in the anime industry, where I actually used to do a lot of creative direction, creating characters, creating vibes. And what I've learned from that experience is that a lot of people actually buy stuff just based on the feeling—when something's cool or, uh, you know, "anime girl is hot," or whatever it is—they just like, "Oh wow," you know, "that looks really cool," buying that—it's just like a very impulsive decision, right? And so I've learned from that experience, especially for consumer-type of sales, the key lesson I've learned from doing creative direction for, you know, anime and things like that, and this also applies to gaming and skins as well—if you ever play like, you know, Valorant or Counter-Strike or Dota or League of Legends, right?—people buy the skins—is that people are going to make these decisions very compulsively, and they're going to just make a quick decision based on emotions of whether they like it or not. So I've learned that one of the best ways to get people to buy is just to create the feeling of, "Wow, it's really cool. I want to buy it." Right? And this even actually works for high-ticket sales, believe it or not, if you're selling business-to-consumer, right? It doesn't work as well for business-to-business because businesses are more logical, a little bit, when it comes to decision-making. But when it comes to selling a coaching program, a fitness program, a relationship program, uh, these strategies definitely do work.

So I've analyzed a lot of the personal brands that are really popular right now, especially in the business niche. And what I found is that a lot of people model their personalities and their aesthetic and whole creative direction vibe from fictional characters, actually. So you shouldn't actually look at other gurus to see what they're doing and copy them. You should look at iconic movies, iconic video games, iconic characters, and see what characteristics are so attractive, and also look at these characteristics and see how they um are also copied in different movies, right? So, for example, a lot of people right now are using the James Bond kind of look, whether they want to admit it or not. So it's like very clean. Um, it's very like, "owed money." It's very like a lot of suits, button-ups, very cool, calm, collected, uh, you know, just got everything in control. Like, a lot of people do try to create this image, uh, in their personal brand, and it is an image because every single popular person in the personal brand space that you see on YouTube that's talking about business—100% they think about their personal brand. There's no, "Oh, it just naturally comes to me." They're all conscious of it. They dress a certain way. They speak a certain way because they're trying to create an entire mood to get you to believe something about them in order for them to sell whatever it is that they're pushing.

Now, some key questions that you need to ask when it comes to doing creative direction for your personal brand is: Who are you taking inspiration from? So who are these key iconic figures, right? Whether it's James Bond, someone you admire, Steve Jobs—it could be a fictional person, it could be a living person, it could be a dead person; it doesn't really matter as long as there's like these um iconic characteristics that you want to take. Now, I'm not saying you have to be that character. We're not cosplaying. I'm just saying like, look at why they're attractive and take pieces of it and apply to your own personality. Sometimes you might find that other characteristics that you may not have but you want to develop, you might see it. So like, being calm under extreme pressure—very James Bond-like, right?—maybe you want to adopt that into the way you show up on camera. So break down these specific characteristics—whether it's the style, the way they dress, their aura, their energy, their vibe, how they speak—all of that, and see what you can learn from it.

So when you put this all on the board, right, you should have a vision board. You know, you can use any software for this. You can put it all in a folder or something, but you need to have an aesthetic vision of how they do the lights, how do they dress, what is the music going to feel like? You know, all these things play an important role in video content, especially on YouTube, right? So for me, a lot of times in the Founder X program, I'll look at someone's YouTube channel, and they're trying to grow, but they're not getting many views. And a lot of times when I click on their video, they're like, "Yo, Patrick, check it out! Like, what do you think?" In the first five seconds, if the vibe is off, the camera's not in the right angle, the lighting's weird, they're dressed weird, the background's weird, I'm not going to watch it. Even even if they're my client, I'm like, "God, like, I don't want to watch this because it's just not presented well." And obviously I do because they're my clients and I want to give them feedback. But if I feel that and I'm their coach, just think about the average regular person. They're not going to watch, right? And so these are all things you have to pay attention to in order to get views.

And so now I'm going to give you some sauce of what we did over the past six months to kind of like build this personal brand of like, what is Patrick Deng. Now I'm going to give you some of the secrets, but I won't give you the whole thing unless you join the FounderX program, which you can apply on founderx.net. But um, let's get into it. So one of the characters that I actually use as inspiration is this guy named Sung Jin-Woo from an anime or webtoon called Solo Leveling. Now he is a fictional character, right? And so normally I wouldn't really mention him in the videos, but there are key certain characteristics in this character that I thought was really cool that I wanted to bring into my personality. So let me share with you what they are for this particular character, right? The the whole show is about this character who was weak, and he, with grit and determination and having heart and doing the right thing, he became one of the strongest. And so he just trains, trains, trains, trains, trains to become the best version he can become, inspires others around him. So essentially, he just goes through a lot of struggle. He trains, and then he becomes the strongest. Essentially, why I chose this character and took characteristics to apply to myself is: Number one, people can relate to when somebody starts from like a noob, a beginner, or like someone who's just like everyone looks down on, which was basically me when I was a teenager, right? And then they really love seeing that progression of becoming a better person. So progression is something everybody can relate to. It's growth, right? If you're not growing, you're dying. In this video, if you noticed in the beginning, I showed videos of when I first started making videos in Thailand, and I really tried to take that image and compare it to where I am now. And so obviously, over the past, I think it was like 7 years or something, you see the progression and evolution of how far I've come—from my presence on camera, my physical appearance, the way I speak, the production quality—it's just leveled up a lot, right? And because of that progression, from the audience perspective, they're like, "Wow, like, it's actually doable." If Patrick started, you know, like in Thailand in this random room using a refrigerator as a tripod, maybe I can do it too. And so those are all things that I'm consciously doing in order to create this entire vibe.

Now, the other thing I'm using from this character is that after he became so strong, he becomes almost godly-like, right? Like, he's incredibly strong—almost almost out of reach. So everyone respects him; they look up to him, and when things go wrong, everyone's looking at him for the answer. And so if you're—if I'm combining this like progression of like, "I used to be like you, and now I'm here," but I'm also, do you know, really good at what I do. So you also might think like, "Hey, I want to do what Patrick's doing," right? So it it doesn't feel so out of reach. Now, if you look at other creators who are, you know, extremely successful and they're trying to make a billion dollars, it really does feel out of reach because, you know, it's just—they're not as relatable as they were when they were starting out. And so for me, that's my unique advantage because I'm not at that place where I'm saying, "Hey, I'm gonna make a billion dollars," you know? I'm somewhere, you know, let's call it in between—from beginning and that—and that makes me a little bit more relatable, I hope, to you know, everybody else.

So now that you understand the way I think about personal branding, let's talk about how you can actually execute and pull this off. So when it comes to executing, you know, doing the actual work to create this whole vibe, the first step is actually creative direction, and you want to think of yourself as a media company now, right? You're not just a creator. You're not just a coach or whatever it is; you are a media company if you are creating content. That's just how the game is nowadays. So it's going to come down to things like the music, the color grade, the camera angles, the B-roll, the lighting, you know, the vibe—everything, right? Everything stacks up together. It's almost like you're creating a movie. And this is just how competitive the the space is becoming. Now, if you're in a niche where no one's doing it, if you just put in a little bit of work, you're going—

To be the best, right, production quality-wise? I remember when I was starting to make, uh, tech sales content, nobody was putting any production quality into anything. They would just use their iPhone or something to film. And so when I started putting a little bit more effort into that, I stood out because nobody else was using, you know, like a two-camera setup, for example, right.

But in niches where it's competitive, like online marketing, personal branding—which is kind of what I'm in now—you're basically making movies to stand out. Now the next thing is how you actually show up: from how you dress, your tone of voice, your facial expressions, the pacing of your speech, your emotions, how you pause, your overall energy in the first 5 seconds of the video. These are all things that matter and will determine whether or not somebody will watch you.

And I'm going to give you a hack that I recently tried myself: when you are picking outfits—which is actually pretty important when you're on camera—what you want to do is you want to take a picture of yourself, put it into ChatGPT, and ask it to give you a rating of 1 to 10 to see how good it is that you're dressing. Now the key tip to making this work, and I've done this myself, is you want to give it some kind of archetype. So you have to tell it what you're going for. Are you going for the girl boss look? Are you going for the girl next door? Are you going for alpha male, or are you going for something more stoic, or like monk mode, ghost mode kind of vibes, right? So tell it what you're going for, and then take a picture of yourself, or even give it the video that you filmed, and ask it, you know, "How are the vibes?" And it will actually give you a step-by-step, you know, instructions on what you can do to improve. I've done it myself, and we actually changed the setup a little bit off of that advice. Um, and so, you know, because I've used it, I know it's going to work for you.

Now the next tip here is actually just becoming a better version of yourself. So if you look at, like I said before, if you're not growing, you're dying. So you're going to want to consistently challenge yourself with new experiences, whether it's dating, learning how to fight, and overall just doing difficult things to build character. So if you look at, let's say, me back in the day when I had a tech sales job at Oracle, right, I actually gave this a ChatGPT, and I said, "Hey, give me a rating on attractiveness 1 to 10." It gave me a six, and which was like technically above average. Um, but it was like it said, "You look like a nice guy who smiles to get the validation from others." And I was like, "Dang, that actually cuts deep." It's not wrong, right, but you know there is some truth to that.

And so if you seen the evolution of when I started—I mean, this picture was actually taken 10 years ago, right—so it's a 10-year transformation, believe it or not. I know I look young. So when I look at my progression over the last 10 years, it's like what's changed? A lot of things. For example, you know, having different work experiences, having the pressures of leaving my stable six-figure tech sales job to become an entrepreneur and starting over from zero again, getting humbled by failing and moving back in with my parents until I figured it out. You know, all these challenges actually made me who I am. A lot of failures, and even when it comes to dating as well, you know, dating different people, getting burnt, getting heartbroken, finding love again, getting heartbroken again—like all these experiences build up your character.

And one of the things that helped me a lot over the past 6 months, and this is when I actually did the rebrand, was when I started learning how to fight, uh, boxing specifically. Because, you know, when you are a man, you think you know how to fight instinctually, right, and you probably do to a degree, but then when you actually train and you learn a martial art, whether it's boxing, Muay Thai, or anything else, you'll start to realize how much you don't actually know and how ridiculous it is if you did try to fight because you would just get hurt. And so like being humbled in the boxing ring, for example, is something that teaches you, or taught me at least, a lot of character and also taught me that, hey, like I'm not going to be the best in a room all the time, and I'm usually not. Just going through that experience just changed me as a person. And also learning how to fight also built the confidence because now I know I can fight in certain situations, I can beat certain people, I know other people I'm going to lose to for sure, I'm not going to fight at all. Right, and just knowing these things is very primal and instinctual. But at the same time, we're all animals at the end of the day, and we do judge people based on our subconscious. Right, so these are all things that actually make a big difference. Right, like fighting, for example, or playing sports, or lifting weights—it's going to change the way you move, it's going to change the way you speak, and it's going to change the way you carry yourself 100%.

When I was a gamer and I was just playing video games—Dota specifically—like 10 hours a day, I had a hunchback, and just like gaming all day, I show up very differently. It's no surprise that girls didn't like me back then, right, because I wasn't an attractive person; I wasn't doing anything that progressed myself in a competitive world. And I know a lot of gamers might, you know, say negative things about this, but for a lot of people—what I observed as someone who was, you know, chronically addicted to video games in the past—a lot of people do it because they get lost in this fantasy because life, real life, gets too hard. And so it's easier to level up in the game because there's progression, and it's designed to make you feel that way and release dopamine to have you to dedicate your life to it and continue. Whereas if you apply the same skill set but in real life, you would probably get extremely far too. But because life is difficult, you don't get that quickness of dopamine hit; you don't get that, you know, instant win. Sometimes you have to do things for a long time and get hurt and learn a lot of lessons along the way until you get the reward. And sometimes the reward, you won't feel anything after—especially in entrepreneurship, that's what it is. Um, and so if you do things that actually progress you as a human being, you will be naturally more attractive on camera; you will be, you know, just a more insightful person that people want to listen to. But if you haven't done anything with your life, you're not putting yourself in difficult situations to actually learn and grow, then why would you expect people to listen to you? That's just ego at that point of like, "Hey, I got a story to tell. Everybody listen to me." But maybe your story is not good enough, and maybe you haven't been through enough to actually start teaching.

Now the next thing I'm going to share with you is going to be incredibly important. Now there's a lot of creative people out there who are broke, right? They make these videos, it gets views, but they can't make money; a lot of starving artists out there in the world, right? And here's the thing: I'm talking a lot about creative direction, but I want to share with you this important lesson: Creative direction is useless unless you have a goal. When I used to do a lot of creative direction in anime, what is the goal? It's to sell product, right? So I'm not being creative to express myself or just to create art. It's the difference between art and design. Art is just an expression of oneself; design is actually kind of like creating something with the intent for someone to do or take a certain action. Right? So when I do creative direction for anime, I want people excited, hyped; I want them to buy. Similar to if I make a video, right, I want people to sign up for a free training, check out founderx.net, get inspired to build a personal brand. You know, I do this with an intent. Of course, it is to help. Not everyone's going to take me up on the offer, but a certain people that actually are serious about building their personal brands will take the next step and join the program, right? It's a numbers game at that point. So you want to find the intersection between creative and commerce. If you're just creative alone, it doesn't pay the bills, and you're going to starve, and it's not going to be fun; you're going to quit eventually. If you focus so much on making money and you're just like pushing and selling, you're just going to be like every other sales internet salesperson on the internet; no one's going to watch you because they've seen it before.

Now if you combine creativity—you know, expressing yourself—but at the same time creating a vibe that leads to someone spending dollars, and you have that business acumen, the sales and marketing ability to get someone to go through your funnel, get on a call with them and sell them—that is where the magic happens in this day and age. So not only do you need to be good at creating content, you need to be creating content with the intent to get someone to buy because, at the end of the day, you need revenue to sustain the business, to pay your team, and also to pay yourself to make it worthwhile to even build this personal brand to begin with.

And so if you made it this far, probably you're pretty serious about building your personal brand, which is why I invite you to apply and book a call on founderx.net. You'll either be talking directly with me or one of my expert advisors to see if the program is right for you, to see what your goals are, what kind of personal brand you want to build, and ultimately see if it makes sense to work together. So founderx.net is the place you want to go to check that out. And the last thing I'll leave you with is this: When I started out, I was literally just a person that quit my 9-to-5 job, filming on a point-and-shoot camera in Thailand. If I was able to figure it out, then you can too.