Transcription
In the last 18 months, I've grown my personal brand to over 3 million followers across all platforms. In this video, I'm going to share the five simple rules of content creation that I use to go from zero audience to getting over 100 million views a month today.
Rule number one: build your collection. When I started reading, a book that just transformed my life was "Think and Grow Rich." So, what I did is I found the 200-plus books that influenced that author and read those ones to add to my collection of knowledge. You need to go that detailed in your niche. New wisdom grows from ancient roots, which means there's nothing new; everything is a remix based on historical best practices. In many ways, a lot of modern-day philosophy came from the Bible, stoicism, or even poetry. If you want to create world-class content, you have to go back to build your collection.
I want to share with you the five formats of collection that I use every day. Number one is books. This is essentially what I'm learning in real time. As I'm studying books, I'm not just reading them; I'm writing the passages down in a note file. I'm rewriting them in my words and integrating them into my life because I'm trying to really become one with the knowledge that I'm acquiring from the books.
Number two is the questions I'm being asked. Think about it: what are people asking you? Those questions should give you insights into what you know about and help you try out and test different concepts, different insights, and different ways of teaching other people.
Number three is observation. What I see in my family, my friends, and people around me. I believe the world will show you where you're not free—things that frustrate you—so that you can use that as content to teach other people. There's a reason why, when you see somebody do something that you don't agree with, it resonates with you. It's actually meant for you to take that moment and share with other people—not the person that did it—how you would have done it differently, and it comes with the feeling that other people feel.
Number four is top content. Now, I know this sounds crazy, but I spend hours a day scrolling on TikTok to be inspired by other people—to see what the world is excited about, what the trends are, and what ideas are going on in culture. The other reason I do it is because I want to bathe in the language of the industry I'm in. I want to study the best. If you're not unfollowing all the ding-dongs on social media and then resubscribing to the people that are talking about your industry, then you're missing opportunities to use social as a way to teach yourself. The way I like to think about it is you want to use your feed to feed your mind.
Number five: I think about the young me. What I needed earlier in my life—what beliefs I had, the thoughts I had, the meaning I associated with different circumstances earlier on—and how did I overcome them? Because those lessons learned are what made you who you are. It's the thing that people are going to resonate the most with, so you have to share them. Too often, people don't want to talk about the things they went through that were hard, but I believe you're actually best equipped to help those people that you once were. It's why you went through those circumstances, so use those old stories of the young version of you to help people today.
Now that you've got your collection of ideas, I'm going to show you how to feed it into a content creation flywheel. If you want to see how this flywheel plays out in my videos that reach millions every week, hit subscribe.
Rule number two: the content creation flywheel. Now, when we start, we have to do everything because there's nobody else to delegate to. But as you grow and build your content, you want to focus on your zone of genius. You want to focus on the thing that only you can do, especially as it pertains to your personal branding and creating content. If you have an energy of frustration creating the content, trust me, it'll be felt by your viewer.
I love this fun quote by Peter Drucker: "Do what you do best and outsource the rest." I want you to be the talent, not the doer. You might have to at the beginning, but as fast as you can, hire somebody to record or edit your videos or review the first drafts of your blog posts so that you can just do the creation part and none of the other stuff that takes away from the energy of creating.
This is the content creation flywheel. Number one is you want to collect. You want to take all the ideas we were talking about earlier and put them in different places where you can review them to be inputs to your creative process.
Step two is to create. Now, this is how I wake up and start my days. I call it my creative process. I create connected to my Creator, and I review all of the different ideas. I think of outlines for videos I want to create, or tweets I want to write, or even my book writing. All my time writing my books is done in the morning because those are my creation blocks. That's when I feel most aligned with the universe and what God's got for me. I just pour it into my content because it feels perfect. Those early morning times, when my brain is fresh, and I have what I call the ability to pull vocabulary, allow me to come up and be inspired by ideas and situations and really add some depth to the content I'm creating.
Number three is teach. This is about finding opportunities to teach because some of you may not have a platform yet, but you want to get better at telling stories and teaching concepts. So, I would say look around you. It might be offering to do some team training, your coaching calls with clients. Maybe it could be offering to be on other people's stages—both virtual and in person—like podcasts or speaking at local business associations, or even offering to do interviews for other people that are creating content. Because then you'll be prompted to tell stories. You can even create other situations to teach.
I'm a big fan of creating containers where you have to teach. For example, I have this program called Kings Club, where I have the privilege of mentoring 15 to 20-year-old young men. I talk about success, draw out models, tell stories, and get to revisit past stories of who I was. I reflect on them and use those moments to share and teach other young men to be inspired to be more successful.
The goal is to spend as much time as you can in this flywheel as possible. But the big idea is that as you're buying back your time, you've got to make sure it stays sold. If you hire an editor, let them edit. If you hire somebody to post on your social media, let them post. Give them corrections if they do it wrong, but don't take the job back from them just because it wasn't done exactly the way you wanted it done.
But there's a big problem that so many people fall into, and it's mindlessly copying other people, which brings us to rule number three: be 100% you. I believe everybody's a unique fingerprint. When I was 17, I found myself in prison and eventually released to rehab. I didn't share that story for 15 years. The reason why? I had a lot of shame, fear, and concern that if people found out, they wouldn't think very highly of me.
It turns out the first time, 10 years ago, that I ever shared that story with anybody—including my fiancée, now my wife—did not know. Every person that came up to me after hearing that said, "I now feel connected to you. I feel like I understand you. I feel closer to you." It occurred to me that the worst thing that I ever went through could be the most powerful thing I have to help other people, which is my story.
I believe that if you have friends that know you—like really know you and like you—that who you are is the most unique thing you've got. Allowing yourself to be that person 100% is what makes you interesting. A lot of the people you admire—The Joe Rogan, The Rock, Oprah, Lady Gaga, Post Malone, Jelly Roll—what you love about them is that they are 100% themselves. They are so authentic: the good, the bad, the indifferent, the conflict, the kryptonite, and the superpower. All those things make them who they are.
So how do you figure that for yourself? Number one: I always talk about the struggle. What did you go through that you struggled with? In that moment of trying to figure it out, it allowed you to transform to be the person that's here today teaching those stories you have. It's what makes you not only unique but gives you the opportunity to transform other people's lives. Nobody's going to change unless you inspire them.
If you want to help people—if the people you love the most, you want to help change and transform—then you have to be willing to bear your soul. You have to be willing to share stories that feel a little uncomfortable. So what I like to do is combine my teaching with unique stories. I like to ask myself: when did I learn this? What beliefs did I have about that thing that changed? How did that impact me getting good at the stuff that I learned?
Using your unique story ends up being the glue, the vehicle for change in the people listening to you. Have you ever been in an audience and you see somebody on stage talking about being successful, and you're like, "What have you even done? What challenges have you ever faced? You look like you were born into the lucky whatever club." You just don't trust them. It's because they weren't willing to tell you about their journey. They're not willing to be honest about their struggles. They're not willing to be honest about their setbacks, and you're sitting there going, "You don't get me."
The worst part is you teaching other people and actually being just like them, and them not feeling that because you weren't willing to be 100% you. Authenticity means being 100% you on and off camera—all your quirks. Like for me: heavy on the protein, pretty jokey, very supportive to my friends. I like to give a lot of myself. I don't take myself too seriously. I try to give all of it—the high energy, the low energy, the emotion. I'm an emotional person. If I watch a video of a sad situation, I usually tear up, and I have no problems doing that on and off camera because it's who I am.
If that frustrates you or you judge me for that, cool, go find somebody else to follow. Every person that you admire does this. The more you learn to be yourself on camera, the more you will understand what makes you tick, and the more powerful you'll become. The cool part is you will take you with you for the rest of your life. You will take you in every situation, every communication, every interaction with another person—the more upgraded version of you—because you decided to put it all out there on the content side. You will become better for having created that content.
That is the coolest part that nobody talks about: who you get to become in the process of putting your stories out there. But the truth is, ideas and authenticity are not enough to grow your brand in 2025. You need systems to make it happen, which brings us to rule number four: build your content stencils.
When I started, I created everything from scratch—from blog posts to YouTube outlines to lists of tweets to Instagram ideas. Now, I model what's worked in the past and use stencils to create. I don't have to stare at a blank screen because I know those formats work. So, I repurpose the things that have worked in the past so that I can move faster when I create my content. I'm working within a structure, so I don't have to stare at a blank screen and hurt my brain trying to come up with new creative ideas when I already know it works. I just have to pull that forward.
The truth is, most people get frustrated with their content or their marketing before the market ever does. They're like, "I already talked about this. I'm not going to talk about it from this angle." Why not? It got you 100,000 views last time. Why don't you rerun the play? Why don't you give it a different twist? Why don't you ask yourself what else do I know about this topic? Why don't you double-click on it?
A lot of artists get it confused because they think constraints don't allow them to be creative. The truth is, those constraints, those rails, actually help them be more creative. Most artistic people haven't realized that they can write down their process for being creative. There is a methodology they're following; they just haven't audited it to see how it works. How do I get to this final book project or blog post or reel or YouTube video?
There's actually a method behind the madness, and if they took the time to reflect on it, then they could break the pieces apart to actually get better and create these stencils to give them structure to create more effectively.
So here's the big idea: a stencil gives you the structure to repeat an outcome. Just like if I had a stencil for painting a blue bird on a wall, having that would allow me to generate a bunch of blue birds that are just beautiful and perfect 100 times over. But if I had to sit there with a paintbrush and brush on a wall 100 blue birds, it would take me all day long.
You want to make sure that you don't hate the artistic process by doing the same thing that you don't have to do again. Create the structure, the stencil, the environment, the container where you can insert your art to have the best content.
This is my most valuable content stencil, and feel free to rip it off and use it as your own. This is my gift to you. This is going to make your content go viral.
Number one: you have to start with a clear problem—one clear problem. What is the hook? What is the pain? What's going to get them to stop scrolling?
Number two: story. What's the context that you found yourself in? What was the conflict that came up in your life, and what was the climax that you went through to try to discover the solution to the frustration you found yourself in?
Number three is the teach. What framework did you use to come through this? What was the quote that inspired you? What are some of the metaphors that you think about when you reflect on that lesson learned?
I use this across all my videos. I always start with a clear problem. I always go to a story so I can build the glue, and then I teach from that point of view and make sure that it's concise and clear.
The story could be a personal story, which I love, or it could also be repeating a story of somebody else's situation. I call this the report order frame, where you're reporting on a client, you're reporting on some history, or you're reporting on something you might have seen or read in a book. But you have to start with a great story.
I use this across all formats: video, written, podcast, speeches—not only my YouTube videos but on my shorts. I always start with, "Here's a problem I want to talk about. Here's a story, and then here's the way I'm going to teach you so that you can get some value."
Now that you see this, go check it out across all my platforms—from TikTok to Instagram to my email newsletter. It's all there. Even in this video, I've used it several times to really get my point across that the way I've edited this video is problem, story, teach.
But none of this will work unless you stay consistent, which brings us to rule number five: make it easy.
Here's the truth: content used to be secondary. It used to be the thing I had to do, not the thing I enjoyed doing. I used to brag that I would sit down and batch 16 videos in two days and create a quarter's worth of content. When those shooting days came along, I hated it. It was so frustrating, and the truth was it didn't produce my best work.
Because of that, I didn't trust myself to show up and do what I needed to do. What I've learned is my confidence, my ability to communicate, comes from repeated activity over long periods of time. That trust that I built is when I showed up consistently, and doing it once a quarter was not frequent enough for me to do the reps to finally get it to be easy.
So don't force yourself to do the work you hate. Design the machine to do it in a way that you love. The truth is, I've seen it all the time: when people get busy, the first thing that gets dropped is the content. They don't make it a priority, then they get backed up, then it's a thing they have to do, and then it's like a chore. They don't want to do it, and then the energy of frustration comes across in the content.
It's not light; it's not fun. They're not enjoying themselves. You can feel it, and the energy you feel when you create is felt by the viewer. The energy you feel when you write is felt by the reader. Think about how powerful that is. If you're trying to rush it, it doesn't work like that.
One of the core strategies that I teach and use is called the buyback loop. Anytime I feel pain in my life around content creation, as an example, I go to auditing my calendar. I look at where I've been spending my time creating content and how I'm creating that content, and I go, "Okay, if that's red, how do I make it green? What would need to be true?"
So I think of containers. Is there a way that I can take the thing I have to do but change the way it's done so that I want to do it? For example, if I need to create content of people asking me questions, can I do it while I'm on my scooter? Can I do it while I'm hiking? Can I do it while I'm working out? Can I do it while I'm driving one of my supercars? It turns out you can.
That energy shift changed everything for me. What I do is audit my calendar for things I'm doing in the content production process that I don't enjoy, then I transfer it. For example, a lot of the scripts and the work I do on my books, I work with other people that fill in the blanks because I want to edit. I don't want to author. I'm a writer that speaks, not a speaker that writes.
So I have other people that take my words from my videos, transcribe them, put them in a book format, and then I edit it from there to save myself a ton of time. With that new time, I fill it up with becoming better by collecting more, like I mentioned, by doing the work to become more so I have more to teach.
If you're somebody in a person's life that keeps growing, they're going to want to keep plugging in to learn from you because they're going to wonder, "What are they up to now?"
The truth is, people are impressed by consistency. If you just show up every day for a thousand days and be consistent, you will be impressive to other people. I don't know if you know this guy, Kaady. He's one of the top streamers; he's got millions and millions of views. Anyway, he was on with Benny Blanco, one of the music producers, asking who's done the longest subathon. They found a girl named Emily who had been live for three years straight and hadn't missed.
They were so impressed by that consistency that they reached out to her—not only put her live on his stream but invited her to join them at the streaming, which is the number one award for that industry, and changed her whole life. Your audience wants to see that you're consistent.
If you say you're going to publish every week and you miss a week, you just proved that you're not consistent. If you say you're going to do Q&A every Friday, you got to show up every Friday. IG Live every Monday, you got to go live every Monday. That's what I've been doing.
Don't hear what I say; watch what I do and copy that for yourself. The truth is, success is not achieved in bursts. A lot of people get inspired and think success is achieved in bursts, and it's not. It's in sustained effort over time.
A lot of people are scared to be consistent. They're like, "Well, if I start sharing my life on Instagram, I'm always going to have to do it." Here's the deal: it's not forever. You can do it; you can build it up, you can set it up, and then you can give it to somebody else. They can manage it. You can just live your life, record your thing, and have them edit the videos and publish it.
Here's a crazy idea: everything you see from me, I do not review or approve before it goes live. I just sit down, do my thing, talk to a camera, it gets edited, and it goes live. Why? I know what I said; there's nothing wrong with it. I trust the people on my team. I decided to make it easy so that I didn't hate doing it, so I could do it for the rest of my life.
My goal is to die empty, meaning everything I know I'm going to give it to you for free right here. If you want to learn the 13 simple rules of business that will make you rich, click here, and I'll see you on the other side.