The NEW RULES of Personal Branding in 2025

They want to see someone building something or doing something it's like take me on the journey with you typically the biggest challenge for Content creators is themselves it doesn't matter how good you are it matters who's showing up for the audience if people discover you and they can't figure out how to describe you they're going to forget you like you need to be Distinctive people are starting to build like you know reality shows around their businesses people are starting to take you into their workplace um employees of workplaces are now making content of what it's

like to work in a company if you inject a bit of sensationalism around the emotion behind what it is you're talking about it makes it all that more attractive to share with others the framework I use for this is there's kind of seven key emotions that Tend to get the most viral traction when you share content and those seven things are in today's episode of the think media podcast we're going to be learning some gamechanging lessons from million personal Brands and why most creators and entrepreneurs are fighting the wrong battles heading into 2025 and the

hidden opportunities that 99% of personal brands are missing in the current landscape we're also going to be learning the counterintuitive truth of Why personal Brands build trust three times faster than corporate Brands backed by real examples from our guest work with Culture Kings and other iconic Brands plus he's going to be sharing his battle tested 90day framework for building your brand or your personal brand from scratch and there's going to be so much more now our guest today is danne Walker he's the CEO of the rapidly expanding digital media agency rival and he also is

the author of 90day brand Plan and uh he's a global Authority he has built multiple different brands consults with all kinds of different brands and personal Brands is really the go-to voice for entrepreneurs and in our case content creators so this is your opportunity to get your brand right for your YouTube channel for your social media presents to get your personal brand dialed in for a new year and there's going to be a lot of Juicy nuggets in this master class so I'm Excited for what's coming up Dane welcome to the show what's up man

thanks for having me dude and excited to be here yeah as we dive in I want to start off right with the three biggest enemies creators need to overcome for building a standout brand or really like what are the three like changes you you know we were just talking the game is changing when it comes to branding and personal branding in a 2025 land landscape and we wrote a few things down um the first Thing you said is you know people are tired of talking head content like expand on that like what's the bigger theme

there yeah I think you know for for me like when it comes to talking head content there's there's content creation comes in waves with personal Brands right if you go back five years ago on Instagram in particular carousels were like the hot thing that was popping off um you know now YouTube channels are finding that they you know they're got To make shorts they're going to make um epic like introductory uh kind of promo videos at the start of their podcast like everyone's just getting better and more Fierce at what they're doing and I think

you know just sitting down turning the camera on and and hitting record and talking uh is is now getting kind of moved into um a category where it's it's it's not taken seriously anymore I think what what people are looking for on on channels in particular around Entrepreneurship is they want to see someone building something or doing something it's like take me on the journey with you like the founder content is kind of a thing it's like okay you're talking about what you can do but like show me right so people are starting to build

like you know reality shows around their businesses people are starting to take you into their workplace um employees of workplaces are now making content of what it's like to Work in a company so I just think that it's getting more competitive more people are trying to enter the market um and you can't just you know get in front of a camera and pretend you have a business anymore people want to see proof and evidence that you're actually doing something substantial behind the scenes that kind of ties into number two where we do talk about Market

saturation you're talking about you got to be good what do you think has been kind of the Different eras in a 2025 landscape um is it too late to start or what's the different approach that you got to have I I never think it's too late to start I think you know there's people that are you know haven't even started a channel yet that are going to dunk on you and I uh with views and attention and conversion uh the likes that we've never seen right so so there's a Mr Beast out there that doesn't

even have a channel yet um and I think what's interesting Here is it's never too late to start I think it's just how you start and where you start is always changing you know one thing done in life and that's that change is inevitable platforms are going to change algorithms are going to change and I hear this all the time I talk to personal Brands and content creators like what I do uh kind of works but it used to work a lot better I'm like change they're like but I liked it how it was get

over it like I liked making Carousels doesn't work anymore maneuver change evolve do something else I love Instagram doesn't get the same reward that YouTube gives me now like I'm moving on so like I'm still going to do Instagram but I'm focusing on a different tactic like we have to be agile and we have to maneuver and I think the enemy is that like if you want to create I guess a battlefield scenario the enemy is like that that the ties are chaining like the weather's changing and I like in this in my book like

you know if you look at social media or content creation it's seasonal you know there's going to be Winters there's going to be Summers there's going to be autums there's going to be Springs and you can't get down in the dumps when there's a drought and you're like I'm not getting the views I used to get I'm not getting the comments or the engagement I used to get so therefore I'm going to slow down well if you slow down those That speed up in those Hard Times produce more content get more value try to be

more Dynamic when the season comes good again the algorithm comes good again the new wave whatever that is comes good again those that are preparing in the winter are the ones that are going to do well in the springtime so for me I just think that when it comes to content creation the enemy is like sometimes like people and themselves but if you look externally It's it's usually that there's saturation like people are getting really good at creating content now giving away value for free like if you go on to Google you can solve every

problem you want to solve right now on YouTube and Google what gives you the right to charge money to solve that problem you don't have a license to have their money what gives you license is like are you worthy of their attention and I hear this all the time people come Up to me and I do workshops with clients they're like our content's good I'm like great put it on social media I don't want to I want to sell it well if it's really good put it that there for free let's see if it's actually

good or not they're like well I don't want to give away my magic I don't want to give away my best stuff and it's like well if you give it away and they don't react to it you need to create new stuff anyway so I think that the social contract between Creators uh and social media right now is they expect it to be really good for free and there's a lot of people entering the market the same time trying to steal your lunch and eat it in front of you so we have to get a

lot better at creating content because every time you create a piece of content there's there's no like uh there's no more people on the social platform per se there's no more people spending money in a particular market like if you want to Gain grounds as a Creator you have to take attention of other people and that's why it's getting difficult it's because there's a lot of people out here that are really good at getting attention and you're showing up and trying to take it off them that's why you have to be better than ever man

we're coming out swinging on the podcast with two themes already I feel like we went zero to 100 real quick theme of the podcast is Drake do right And kill everything um and so uh number three though so we had so people are tired of talking head content kind of like Reinventing yourself maybe doing um show me what you're doing like show me the behind the scenes even reality shows or Innovative new ways of doing content um Market sat ation you got to be good and there's also Seasons so also if you're getting prepared in

the winter then if you can Outlast the competition then you also can ride those various Waves and we're going to be unpacking that throughout this entire episode with a lot of tactics to help listeners whether you're just starting or whether you're more advanced and so those will be coming up but we're talking about these three kind of big changes in branding and personal branding in 20125 and the third one is build a theme around yourself talk a little bit about that and maybe also what you're building around yourself in general maybe like Structuring teams in

regards to uh building a personal brand yeah there's a little time pack here so like feel free to nudge me around if if need be um yeah I think themes are like uh you know when you're when you're putting yourself in the market people try to put you in a bucket they try to label you right like like you might say well Seth godden's the marketing guy and Grant Conor's the sales guy and Tony Robbins is the guru and you know like we we tend to put like These labels on these characters even though are

they're more complex and nuanced than these things it's like you know Wim Hoff is the breathing guy right David gogins is the crazy guy with no [ __ ] that's always yelling and running somewhere like it's it's we we tend to simplify things and if someone was to radically simplify you what would they use to describe you and if that's not what you want it to be then how do you cause correct that reaction to be what You want it to be so for example for a long time I would go on podcast and people

would say here's day the Instagram guy and I was like God damn it like I don't want to be the Instagram guy you know what I mean I was like I want to be the brand guy I was like well what what's giving my my uh community and my interactions and my engagement the impression that I'm the Instagram guy and I was like oh it says it in my bio oh every title of every piece of Content I make talks about Instagram this Instagram that I'm like well I'm throwing the language and the themes out

there and they're picking up on them so like you need to control the narrative like what other the themes that you're trying to own are you trying to own videographer are you trying to Own Story are you trying to own you know uh creative or you trying to own branding strategy like what's the thing you want to own and you have to be Conscious that you need to start putting monikas out there or putting labels out there in the Z guys for people to pick up on and go okay they're that thing and the easiest

way to test this is just you know ask your community like hey if you describe me in a sentence how would you describe me and just see what they say back and go okay cool I'm not mad at them for describing me the wrong way it's my responsibility to adjust what they think my brand is um you you know And I think coming back to the challenges it's like well all these people are flooding the market and entering the market like what should I do about it is it too late pull a little me the

algor than sucks like in my black blacklisted or Shadow B when you dial it all the way back to its simplest form typically the biggest challenge for Content creators is themselves like either a lack of self-esteem or a lack of personal belief that their stuff is Any good or I'm going to be judged or I'm not ready yet because I need to buy all this equipment and have this background and yada yada I I think just to keep it simple here man like if if people could just realize that there's someone on the internet right

now who has no idea about your industry and is like watching YouTube content that's going to start making content about your industry and get more viewers than you even though you've been doing this thing That you've been doing for four five 10 years it's like he who shows up and produces media gets the attention it doesn't matter how good you are and this is where the fallacy between people go well I'm better than that person why do they have attention and I don't and it comes down to the equation of like it doesn't matter how

good you are it matters who's showing up for the audience who's showing up for the community consistently giving them Nourishment going hey I'm here here's entertainment here's content they're showing up with a great personality great charm great style and they're able to romanticize Their audience like look at content like flirting content is you flirting with an audience we might not know if we're going to do business in the future right we can't go straight to going to bed together so if you look at the greats like Alex hosi Gary ve David Goggins you Know Lewis

how Dan Martel like whoever you're engaging with on social media we're flirting with them like man this guy's kind of interesting I wonder what their story is I wonder what they do I wonder what their business looks like you want to create a sense of like Charisma and exchange we we're starting a social contract together you can't just go straight to the purchase and I think too many people like produce social media content are only focused on I need the leads I need the sale outcome rather than I got to learn how to have some

rear I gotta learn how to create a bit of romance between me and the audience them they want to hang out with me and if they just want to hang out with me I'll sell them stuff later man there's a lot in there and one of my favorite things you said was also your biggest competition is yourself because we could get so stuck in our heads and somebody else that's less talented uh Less prepared maybe has less business Acumen less depth but just more Cavalier courage to just step out there and start recording might be

getting the viewership and I think sometimes we're guilty of watching somebody on the sidelines we're sitting on the sidelines and being like oh man that's not even right or picking them apart Meanwhile we're not taking action and there's something about taking action uh putting your content out there so you can at Least be discovered and man we need a little risen romance in our our in our Brands like we need a little bit uh contents like flirting so we really just hit these three kind of big themes that we can all apply going into uh

2025 and Beyond uh but I want to go a little bit deeper on that because part of your content strategy is having five core themes is that true can you break this down and then how we can maybe start identifying what that means and what Would you say if if Grant Cardone is the sales guy if you know I wrote the book YouTube Secrets if I think I'm the YouTube guy well that's only one theme who who do you see that's building out you know these different themes and this kind of gets in that Niche

conversation where do you get too pigeon pigeon hold if all you're talking I mean and now you're brand but what else are you and and how are people experiencing that and how could people follow along to develop A stronger brand as they're developing their five core themes that's a great question I I think like the core themes and and we talk about this in the book essentially it's like you want to rotate around five different object talk talking points right so like for example when I first started producing content on Instagram my original themes were

hey this is how to make content this is how to design content uh this is how to formulate content this is how to Brand your content like everything was about content and and the it it just pitch and hold me to be the content guide so when people would DM me or reach out to go hey can you help me it was always like can you make my content for me uh but my objective was I wanted to build their brand I didn't want to make their content for them so like what you create creates

a reaction so it's kind of like okay I plant this seed the fruit I'm bearing isn't the fruit I want I want a different fruit tree so then I have to go plan something different so the themes are kind of like you planting different I guess fruit trees in your Vineyard to get a certain result that you want the theme should certainly sit around the product Suite that you offer so when I started talking about brand strategy brand identity graphic design logos brand messaging marketing and advertising people started to DM me or go to website

and reach out and say hey Can you help me with my branding and it took a little while to get the stigma of being the content guy off and you focus on the so you have to have themes that sit in the vernacular of of what it is that you're trying to sell as a product or a service but you want to give yourself enough variety that you don't run out of things to kind of divulge um and if something's not working just swap it out you know what I mean I think people struggle to

get clear on what it Is that they do so having five themes forces you to get clear because you could be clever you could be charismatic you can be cool but if people land on your social channels and can't figure out what you do or why they should engage with you it's very difficult for them to hit the follow button so if you want them to hit the follow button and drop a comment and engage and pay attention they need to understand well what the hell are you who are you why do You exist why

should I care what's in it for me stop talking about how great you are and start sharing with me what I get out of this relationship we're in a social contract we're romantici izing each other you're romanticizing me we're sharing our Riz with each other what do I get out of this contract because a lot of times when we talk to people about starting their social content they're so focused on me me me me but they're not thinking about you the audience being of Service so the five key themes it just gives you I guess

a neighborhood to play in like just give yourself five topics it doesn't have to be anything crazy and what you'll notice is if hypothetically you post 30 pieces of content this month and you have five themes and you rotate what you talk about each day of the week right so then it's like today I talk about logos tomorrow I talk about color psychology the next day I talk about messaging then I talk about strategy Then I talk about advertising then I go back to the start do it all over again that means you post six

pieces of content per month one on each theme sorry six pieces of content each month uh on each five of of your five themes and then you go back at the end of the month you go which themes resonated the most I just look at the data like huh every time I talk about color psychology people nuts and I get a ton of leads from it let me just talk about that a Little bit more or let me sign try and find a theme that like supports that theme a little better so I just start

looking at the the themes I talk about like I'm like I'm a day trader like I'm an investor like I'm investing in a theme today let me see what the ROI of that theme investment was today and at the end of the month and then at the end of the month what I used to do is just go well this theme doesn't do anything I get no leads from it no one comments no One cares get no reshares no engagement on that theme let's just kick that theme and put something else in that place so

I just would go back and forth with this with my clients until we can get a a stack of themes that actually work for their social media channel what's your philosophy on niching down if you look at like a a Gary ve case study you know Wine Library and wine was a couple years and then business content and social media and and then somebody today with a Brand as big as his might be like well he's like you are the niche that's a quote that gets thrown around and so it's like it might the Jets

it might still be wine it might be nfts and social and um you know anything in Social marketing Commerce um online shopping all this stuff but he's Gary ve and Cardone right was Niche sales and and then real estate and then business and they do like marriage conferences so what's also maybe part of The journey a and I notice your themes kind of orbit around a tip of the spear to cut through the noise but I'm curious some for some there's this a big debate some people are like you don't need to Niche down you

know you're just the niche talk about kind of whatever you want and you know in a YouTube context not a lot of people break out doing that but there's you know one or two odd stories and so some people think that's a way to go if someone's trying To unpack their multi-passionate are they trying to Niche down and then pick five core themes or if they start day one and they're like this is going to be my wine sales nft crypto um pickle ball Channel you know that's the kind of five themes unpack that a

little more yeah that's a great I got like four ways I could unpack this um so yeah like the whole thing around Niche niching or or niching like niches get the riches kind of toic Right like G I agree with Gary ve like you are your Niche um in in some aspects and I I kind of challenge it on other aspect so I think that's a radical oversimplification of a marketing strategy and and a deployment potentially because I think the two things I go to and and let's just look at this maybe a little differently

so whether like shall thou Nish or not let's just put that on the shelf for now and just go let's look at this a little Bit differently what I like to look at is like let's sit down what does greatness look like for you in five years like what are you building well I want to build a company or I want to do this or I want to do like get clear on like what is the Mount Everest that you're trying to clim and this is a difficult question to answer because a lot of times

when I sit down with people especially when they're starting they're like I want to do this and that and this And that and it's like cool but just like if you had to be the best and you were really good at like like one core business model what would that predominant primary Money Maker be for you for me it's an agency right I have a book I have courses I do seminars I do this and that and all the rest of it but I make my D running a company um so that's like my my

man Everest right I like doing this other stuff uh these are all different camps up the mountain Right but the my M Everest that pays for all this other stuff is you know running a company so back to like well you know what is your Mount Everest so like you need to figure out like where do you want to be in five years what does greatness look like um and look at the future you need to like really cost yourself out there at least five years then come back into the present and be like well

where am I now right so at the beginning I was like I work at telra I Have a $200,000 debt I'm depressed I hate my job I hate my boss I hate what I do every day my Mountain never was like Hey I wonder if I could build an agency make a million bucks a year and have five employees that was my m ofous at the very beginning six years ago and what what you need to ask yourself is like okay if that's my manover and this is where I am now this this there's one

frame of thinking that you need to have and it's split thinking right so I need To work from the current toward the future and I need to work from the future back to now I need to work from both ends and I need to figure out like how this pathway leads up the mountain and you can't just think current forward and future back you need these two to kind of work synergistically together within that what is that pathway for me it was like I gotta make content I got to generate leads for this agency uh

but then I realized like no one cares about Me and my manest they care about themselves and they manest so I was like well people are out here trying to you know produce content and get attention I'm going to start my pathway doing that I realized early on that my pathway was kind of and I was like I want to bet pathway up this mountain that's when I went and hopped into branding instead of talking about content creation the point is the niche is like well you're the character on The Journey and are you Interesting

are you charismatic do you have quirks and and like interesting things that make you a human being make you likable like why do your friends hang out with you there's something about you that they like you're a character in their Universe you're a virtual character in a virtual Universe for people you don't know right so back to the niche thing I think where you can go wrong is if you try to be for everyone quote unquote right so I See this all the time I sit down at a workshop and I've sat down with billionaires

millionaires startups and I hear this all the time I ask them who's your to a good audience and they say well D that's how a good audience is everyone huh well that's interesting explain how that works well we do this I'm we do that I'm like cool is it working no well I wonder why because if you try to speak to everyone we're speaking to no one like put 100 people In a room try to get them agree not happening it's like hurting cats so for me I guess to to to put a a full

stop on this is like you have to be a unique character you have to be you uh and you have to be a human being but you have to be clear on what your route to the top of the mountain is and you have to build themes around that because if people discover you and they can't figure out how to describe you they're going to forget you like you need to to be Distinctive and if you look at gr Cardone and if you look at these characters most big Brands started off Niche right Nike we

make shoes for people who run and Phil n was making shoes with a waffle iron and it was all about running that was it like you're going to remember like oh Nike sell shoes to everyone no they don't they started off selling to Runners they crushed that category they built brand equity and then they line extended They're like huh if we can Crush running can we Crush tennis can we move laterally into basketball and do the same thing well yeah because Runners want to win basketball players want to win tennis players want to win well

let's speak to the part of the athlete that wants to win so then they crushed the athlete market and they're like well athletes don't just want to win everyone wants to win Everyone's an athlete right so so Nike speaks to the part of you That wants greatness so if you're trying to build a brand you have to figure out what part of your audience are you speaking to are you speaking to their fired up part because a part of me likes David goggin's yelling at me but Another Part Of Me likes Simon Nick calmly talking

to me so there's different parts of me and there's different personal brand options that speak to different parts of me so what you have to realize is you have to Niche to what part of a Person are you speaking to and you have to be clear about it take that a little bit deeper before we go on so that's is that like a tone uh aspect of your brand meaning like maybe and this is like certainly the case I know for me I've gotten business advice from a lot of people I've been to a lot

of different business event events uh marketing advice from a lot of people but you said if we're going to speak to a certain part of me I also can learn from you Know call it that Grant Cardone energy but that's probably not my favorite energy and so there's others that bring it differently but he's got a lot of wisdom on one side so so when you just that was like that final nugget you just dropped sounds to me like tone is that what you're saying or can you expand on that yeah I'll expand on that

a little bit so like I think you know like a lot of things make the whole um so there's a Great book you can get on this and the book's called um no bad parts and it talks about how human beings aren't essentially always one format right so at work you might work in finance you might be like rigid and task oriented and like super methodical about your day-to-day operation and what you do in your career on the weekend you don't get that task you don't have any plans you just want to hang out drink

beer and go to the beach and Surf and figure it out As you go so you have two different parts you have the like radical weekend hang out with my friends part of you you have the going to go hang out with my parents part of you look after my little nephew part of you crush it at work part of you the dating flirting part of you so we have parts to ourselves and what I would say is to to tone like tone can speak to someone's part outfit style so like think about what stimulates

someone visual stimulation verbal stimulation um I guess emotional stimulation and then you have figurative stimulation so like a a concept when you get an aha moment or the penny drops in your mind like ah Goosebumps like these things need to be distinctive and if you're inconsistent with those distinctive uh triggers or mechanisms you look like a crazy person you're unclear you're unsafe it's like when you hang out with a friends and they're constantly flipping personalities constantly talking about Things that are irrelevant and confusing you just don't want to hang out with them I think a

lot of people on social media just scramble and it's unclear they're undefined they're they're UND distinctive and I think they do that because they just try to find out what the algorithm wants if they just focus on studying the greats and identifying what works for them and their style Grant conone figured out what works for him you figured out what works for you And you don't have to be like hosi you don't have to be like Gary ve and I think this is why Gary's like you are your KNE she's like just be you but

like you still also have to get clear on on what that is and whether it works or not I'll give you one last example so like if I'm on a sales call um people call me the smiling assassin so so on a sales call I have to in many cases talk to corporations you know I often times I'm in a boardroom and there's like 16 People the companies is worth $400 million and I'm trying to tell them why I'm the guy that should solve their branding problems right like what does this guy know about you

know his hat and his par of bands how can he help our cooporation you know what I mean so I have to use a tone that's like guys I'm here to help I'm here to support you I'm here to get to the resolution but we need to talk about the numbers so like I'm smiling but I'm hitting them with a Tone that's like slightly serious but I'm I'm I'm taking the edge off by smiling and using friendly cing approachable body language there's like layers to this so like and then again if I'm hanging out with

my kids I'm not doing that I'm not some have my kids and like telling them what to do around the house but you have to figure out what are the mechanisms that you as a character has to put together to get the audience reaction or to get the sales Mechanisms or or engagement that you want but back to the smiling assassin thing is I have to use T because I have to take the edge off but I have to be like we're seriously solving a problem here but I'm not going to be a dick about

it so we're going to have fun and we're going to enjoy the process so much wisdom there and a lot of insights to unpack for our own personal Brands and just to clarify is this book called no bad parts healing trauma and restoring Wholeness with the internal family systems model exactly right and you might say well what the hell has that got to do with branding so so that that book I think what it is is like um I don't know if you study like Kung or or like psychology or or NLP or anything of

that nature but all human beings have trauma every single one of us and and that trauma shows up in our personality traits and how we show up in day-to-day Life and again it's like when you are like I want to start making content but I'm scared and then you start thinking about people gonna judge me I'm gonna get bullied I'm gonna get ridiculed they're gonna laugh at me and like that's trauma coming up from your childhood from your parents or what have you doesn't mean it's bad it's just like we've had terrible experiences in life

and later on in life when you want to become a content creator that trauma Tends to show up and when I do workshops or inperson events everyone's talking about branding and content and out of the hood they're actually coming to terms with their trauma and I think that's a great book for anyone who's looking at building personal brand to understand hey what part of you wants to make content but what part of you is holding you back and how do you get those two to hang out here we are 2025 we're going deep on This

uh branding conversation and we'll of course link this stuff up in the show notes this is uh this is the number one bestseller in NLP Psychotherapy over 3,880 reviews looks like a legendary book and uh powerful tie-in to um how we could all grow in this area okay we're actually G to get into the brand fundamentals I mean I actually kind of want to get a definition of branding think about some of the next steps that we can do in regards to making a 90day Push to updating our brand I do want to encourage people

to uh check out Dane's book which we will also link up in the show notes the 90day brand plan and we'll talk about that later but before we get there one last kind of question in the introduction as far as my notes go so we're really still just getting started um is uh you You're great at creating content especially Instagram you used to really you know that sort like you mentioned you were the content Guy now you're the brand guy but um you focus heavily on creating sharable content that triggers emotional responses you have a

framework or how do you try to do this consistently and obviously listening to this podcast we can extrapolate that to be thinking maybe more about man is this content sharable how can we trigger emotions give us a few tips here yeah great question like again like I think when it comes to content when it comes to Content creation it's all emotional if you go through Tik Tok if you go through YouTube If you go through x uh if you go through Instagram just look at the reshares and look at the comment section of the most

viral content that shows up on your feet like right now I don't know see what's going on in uh New Jersey with all of the lights in the sky and everyone's freaking out about it so like you know there tends to be um you know whether we look at Media or or news or Whether we look at politics or whether we look at content creation it always comes back to emotionally L content the news and politics are great at this you know they sensationalize things that may be mundane or normal they make the everyday thing

seem like an exceptionally negative thing that you need to be focusing on so when you're making content if you inject a bit of sensationalism around the emotion behind what it is you're talking about it makes It all that more attractive to share with others so we tend to share things that emotionally grip us if we see a phenomenal movie you have to see this movie if we go Kendrick's just dropped the new album It's fire you have to send it to your friends because you emotionally reacted to it so we tend to share what makes

us emotional with those that we want to share our emotions with so if you if you look at content it's no different like content essentially is Just the social landscape of people sharing their emotions with each other full stop you can be like I'm sharing wisdom and knowledge nope the end of the day we do everything pretty much LED through our emotions the framework I use for this is this kind of seven key emotions that tend to get the most viral traction when you share content and those seven things are hey we're about to get

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no fluff High tactical free on demand training that's think masterclass.com essentially number one and we'll just get this out of the way is like sex you know things that are provocative um things that are promiscuous or sexy tend to get attention tend to get [ __ ] um not particular for myself but hey it exists it's out there uh number two is like really thinking about things that are Like hilarious or humorous or funny or they just make you laugh like Mr beast is just funny like I I like watching his content I think David

goggin's personally is funny it just makes me feel good I'm just like damn this guy's just humorous even though he's being dead pan serious I I I kind of get a kick out of it right super sharable next is like things that are inflammatory so things that like you know might uh trigger an argument you know we can Think of certain characters in the world right now that when they say or share an opinion there's two camps there's a camp that's for them and the camp that's against them doesn't matter that debate is interesting again

a lot of emotion there people like to argue people like to debate um so but most people aren't into the inflammatory piece next is things that are like strange or weird or odd like when you watch a piece of content you're like what the hell is Going on here like you see Mr Beast doing something like he's like we're GNA surround this Lamborghini with stuff that this guy spent $10,000 on at Walmart to try to protect the Lamborghini if he wins he gets to keep the Lamborghini like what like this is this is strange like

what the hell you want to watch um then we go into things that are like prolific so um they give you Goosebumps it's like Simon syic talking about you know uh start with Y And his Ted Talk it's just like deep it's immersive it's like interesting it's intimate and then lastly it's like looking at things that are aspirational like Feats of Strength like Red Bull doing stunts it's like you know um things that that give you a sense of before and after like here's the story of poverty and now they're rich like we like the

stories of aspiration if you just look at the reshares look at these things and ask yourself what cocktail of These things is in that piece of content that made it go viral is it sex mixed with humor is it humor mixed with aspiration is it weird and prolific is it um you know weird and aspirational like usually it's a mixture then you add a character then you add a theme uh then you add you know uh an audience that it's targeted to then you have a viral piece of content so when people say to me

you can't create virality I'm like yes you can look at liquid death look at Mr Beast they know emotion cells content and if you can get really good understanding human psychology like with that book I shared with you and understand how humans actually react emotionally to everything you can start to get pretty damn good at content if you can understand how human beings react man I'm loving this this is genius stuff but I got six of the seven emotions so there's one more which one are we missing oh I'm I'm sorry the last One is

danger things that are like uh terrifying that they could maybe um trigger vertigo you know when you're watching someone like fly down the mountain on a mountain bike you're like oh my God like this person could like fall a cliff or they're snowboarding off a cliff or something nuts I think danger tends to get our attention it's like when you're um you know driving on a highway you see a car accident you're like oh danger like it just seems to get Our our attention so how have you mixed these together that this tends to be

the human I guess emotional responses that get the most uh sensationalized reaction and the News tend to work really hard on danger like this is like danger here danger there it just keeps you locked in and and and focus and I think it's a primal reaction you know um these these emotions tend to drive our behavior in many ways you know this is really fascinating and I am curious though Because you're saying we can really architect virality if we mix these emotions have a character or theme in an audience but a lot of people listening

might be thinking okay though in maybe a business context um I I don't I'm not going to do something dangerous I could pull some of these in maybe and maybe also viral isn't the only goal of course I want the views but I also want the right views that are going to lead to leads and Customers so if you were to apply this to kind of your average everyday person who's a little bit stuck on like I don't I mean almost like I don't want to do these like I don't necessarily want to go inflammatory

I'm not funny I'm not taking my shirt off and starting an only fans um you know maybe prolific because I've built thought leadership and maybe aspirational because aspirational for what I've achieved as a mom aspirational For what I've achieved as a business owner maybe I'm trying to show that off as building a family there could be practical things um just any like pull this in and maybe I don't go viral but I'm still getting more into this emotional Le mindset of the content that I'm doing you make a good point there and I think that

you know you can take all of these to an extreme um but if you know if you look at sex is like you're attractive therefore people are just More likely to subconsciously pay attention to what you're saying right um or you know humor might just be your kind of Joyful or cheeky or a little playful you know what I mean like you just dial it back a little bit you don't have to be hilarious comedian uh you could just be like oh this guy's kind of interesting and kind of looking at it in an interesting

light weirdo strange could be like you're wearing a quirky outfit you have an interesting Background you have a hat that says think on it like that's interesting like what's that about you know and then inflammatory might be like you're a little challenging you're like give me the better answer here so okay like a little little laboratory or you might even say like when it comes back to Danger it's like hey the three things to avoid when you're building a business oh what are the things I need to avoid sounds a little dangerous so it could

be A little could be a lot you know what I mean we don't have to turn the spice all the way up to Ghost Pepper it's like you just have a little sprinkle of little bit of something in there it has to be emotional uh and these tend to be the emotions that get the most traction if you were to ENT ER virality I for one don't like trying to chase virality I like to make content that I think is interesting and that can genuinely help people but I understand that if I was to Be

like hey this is how you build a brand a you do this B you do this C you do this or if I say hey there's three mistakes you definitely don't want to make when you're starting your Brands like oh okay a little bit danger tell me more so you just need to add a bit of drama or a bit of sensationalism just a little bit to your content to make it a little a little bit more fascinating a little bit more interesting yeah I see what you're saying and this could be the Very missing

piece you're listening to this right now of of why you're struggling to get views or why you're struggling to break through Dan you just said a quote it has to be emotional and I think 99% of creators actually are not sitting down and thinking about what emotions am I tapping into how am I tapping into this I mean your thought leadership is clear uh I've never heard anybody say that content is the social landscape of people sharing emotions and And it's an entirely different Paradigm Shift which is going to be so helpful to us at

the than media podcast creating content in this year and beyond all right well we've covered a lot but I do want to unpack a few next steps um for Branding and and we're already halfway into this conversation but I think branding is so weird for people because they're like is it just mean I have a good logo does it mean you know is it my slogan and so there's like there's like Your brand your brand in your brand strategy your brand identity so so what is your definition of brand that's a great question it often

gets confused and a lot of experts and Talking Heads can be like it's this it's that it's this it's that you know whatever I say here people going to challenge it um but there's a definition I like to adhere to and it's pretty close to Academia pretty close to what you would see uh as a discussion you know between Executives At Nike uh and Pepsi and so on and and I guess the Z guys in in the oper Stratosphere branding and in the oper echelons tends to be this your brand is what your Market says

or thinks you are so like your opinion of me and my opinion of you like that's our version of each other's Brands what do you think of liquid death you know I put a liquid death can in front of people I like to just watch their reaction some people go whoa what is this I've never seen this Before is this a beer I'm like it's water and like what sometimes I put it in front of people like God what is that I'm like it's just water no it's not yes it is like people have a

visceral immediate reaction just to a graphic design style the design style can elicit Brands tality can elicit Brands my outfit can tell you about who I am you walk into a room you scan people's outfits you judge who they are that's their brand in your head you decide what The world's uh brands are to you Eye of the Beholder for me if someone to sit in front of me here my Brand's this I'm like cool but tell me what your Market think it is well the market think it's great sh me proof share me receipts

give me testimonial give me quarts so I sit down with companies all the time they sit down in front of me to do our strategy sessions and they say to us we have a great brand I'm like great where's your case studies where's your Testimonials oh we don't have any okay cool well have what have people said about you well what do you mean well what's people's opinion of your brand well we don't know it's like well your brand isn't what you think it is it's what your Market think it is and if you don't

talk to the market and ask him hey what do you think our brand is you're Flying Blind so for me branding is what the market think you are or think your entity or company or Corporation is Branding is essentially I like to uh use a metaphor for what I think Brandy is and it's like well what's your Mount Everest well I want my agency to be the fastest growing uh agency in Australia I wanted to be I want to work with big fashion labels and um successful e-commerce Brands I want to have a team of

50 staff I want to have a really cool fun culture and I want to work with like f up excitable entrepreneurs that's my goal okay cool that's your anchor you're Casting to the top of the mountain that's the that's the outcome that you want branding is climbing to that Summit if it break you down a little further strategy to me is like uh like what's the route to get there like where's the M markers how do I know I'm going to hit him how do I implement it how do I make sure it happens and

have accountability for that system and then the brand tactics is like well what are those actions what tools do I need what Channels am I Distributing them through and how do I make that happen and brand identity is the visual identity that that elicits those outcomes so if I produce a piece of content or I put a product on a shelf or I build a website theity that people have when they immediately see the visual design and then they read the copywriting they're making a decision in their head so very much you're left with design

and um verbal language to train your audience To think of your brand the way you want them to think of it so you know how I said earlier I had social media content but every piece of content said how to build Instagram how to grow Instagram how to design Instagram content people see that messaging they see the design they decide oh Dave's the Instagram guy so how you kind of sprinkle your touch points into the marketplace elicits the brands but most cases people don't have a brand and this is what I mean if you Sat

down with with your target audience uh and I'm going to talk about personal brain I'm talking maybe more a company perspective if you have a service or you have a products and you survey 10 people that purchase said service of products and ask them how to describe it and they describe the features and benefits of the product you don't have a brand if they talk about the experience and how it felt and what it meant to them um you have a brand this is the Z guys that I Tend to sit in which is like

like if you can figure out how to understand well what is your branding destination what would you like people to say your brand is when you get there what the tactics and the strategy is along the way and how to figure out how to get this whole thing to work together and it's not easy that's that's that's what I tend to say is like if you can get good at those things or have someone on your team who's good at those things you're going To have a lot better success growing your company so I want

to unpack this is powerful you your brand is what the market says about you then your branding how do you want to be positioned then your brand strategy what's the road map to get there as well as tactics the actual activities and things you do brand identity then breaks down into the visuals things people see and the writing which may may also just in video especially show up as language the way You talk what you say so many people listening to this though are starting there may be kind of on the sidelines making their plan

they're in an early stage they're also just trying to figure things out and and so this question of like what does the market say about you it's like well nothing I don't have a market yet I don't even really have even maybe an initial audience or it's so it's not a big enough case study or I have a viral short and even by viral we Say it vfm viral for me I had a YouTube short get 22,000 views well vertical content that's cool and that's that's a really cool Milestone but like that's not impact that's

not like a level of depth of people would recognize you they're recognizing your logo some people listening to this one of my biggest pet peeves man their YouTube Avatar is still the letter of their name like I'm offended personally for everybody especially if you're on the YouTube channel today you need to actually like at least get that figured out and then get Dane's book to even take it to another level to figure out really what that should be but speak apply this a little bit if you're um not a corporation and you're a new personal

brand maybe you're also a successful business owner you got a product and service you've scaled to six figures multiple seven figures but your brand sucked the whole way like you didn't Really need a brand like because you had a good product and there's some word of mouth but your messaging wasn't super clear but the product solved a problem so if you're at a place where like man I I can't get much feedback here how do you start dialing this in and how do you think about this yeah you raised a good point there so so

I'm gonna hit this three different ways one is with a metaphor two is with logic and then three is maybe a few things that people Can do so so first and foremost like I guess the metaphor here is like if you're starting essentially you have to kind of imagine yourself like uh coming of age right so like it's like moving out from your parents house for the first time it's it's terrifying like I got to pay rent I got to organize food I got to do my own dishes got to do my own washing like

it's overwhelming the amount of stuff you have to do to like have a social channel that starts to get Traction but what you have to do is get obsessed with like finding ways to enjoy it that's the first step but to get over the fear it's almost like I liken it through stepping out to the Wilderness with a survival pack and going I'm just going to go tredge out into the Wilderness that is social media and find a spot to set up right my spot Camp I metaphorically set up I was like I'm going to

set up a camp and a little campfire here which was like I'm going To teach people how to make Instagram content I thought I was a genius I'm gonna teach Instagram content and how to do it on Instagram like who on Instagram doesn't want to learn this stuff I was like I'm a genius let's do it and it worked but it didn't get the reaction that I wanted we'll come back to this when I go into I guess breaking it into logic so back to the metaphor you're stepping out to the Wilderness you're setting up

a campfire we talk about this In the book and it's like well every campfire uh that you create one day could become an Empire but for sure every Empire that exists Once Upon a Time was a campfire so if you look at the great city of Rome Once Upon a Time people showed up put a little campfire in the ground and were like this is a great place to hang out and then that turned into Rome so so if you're trying to create your room understand that it always starts with literally a campfire Maybe in

the Modern Age maybe not but like if we use the an evil concept let's just stay there so for for the sake of this imagine building a personal brand like stepping out to the Wilderness picking a spot just anywhere just pick a camp to be like this is good enough for now let's just set up we might move later let's just try this set up a little campfire the metaphor of the campfire is you producing uh heat to attract people to go oh this is kind of Cool this is entertaining this is exciting what's going

on over here a little bit of content and every time you put a Log on the Fire that's a piece of content and the only way to stoke the brand fire is to put a Log on the Fire consistently you stop putting logs on the fire you stop producing content your never going to produce enough heat to build an audience to build a tribe to build an Empire so if you could just get comfortable just going hey man I'm alone I'm just going to keep adding logs of the fire no one sees it so what

I'm learning how to chop wood I'm learning what types of wood I want to use I'm learning how it kind of creates a reaction different wood creates different heat different wood lasts longer than others you're just getting comfortable with the process before long people start to show up and go hey we're kind of lost out here in the wilderness this is kind of cool can we hang out Here you're like sure they grab a seat what happens is the bigger the campfire gets the more heat it produces the more entertaining you are the more I

guess bells and whistles that your brand has the more attractive your campsite becomes and you can amplify your campsite by collaborating with others we're collaborating collaborating right now like your campfire your audience that are listening to this who love you who love hanging around your campfire Getting nourishment and insights and entertainment from you like who's the hell is this Dane guy now there's a pathway between the listeners of this podcast back to eventally my podcast or my event or my book or whatever I'm doing we're creating a pathway between us and you have to look

at building a personal brand like building a business you have to find other people to collaborate with you have to find events to go to and collect a new audience to Say I got a campfire if you want to come hang out at it for long if you get good at building a campfire you can turn it into a business and the metaphor here is like essentially build a campire first get good at making content get good at creating a social contract and emotionally engaging with your audience and then they'll tell you we're hungry like

great I can sell you I can sell you something what do you want you want a burger you know what I mean so like do You want to sell a book do you want to sell a course do you want to like don't start with the sale don't get out there in the wilderness and be like what am I going to sell there's no one out there like start a campfire first build an audience first and allow the audience to tell you dude we would really like it if you read like wrote us a book

Dan we'd really like it if you created a podcast all right here you go we would really like it Dan if you created us a course About how to build a personal brand okay well here you go hey dve we' really like it if like you could come out to the US and like do some speaking and some events all right here you go so like I've never decided I've just allowed my audience to demand what they wanted and I just give it to them kristo does the exact same thing he's like I just make

content I wait till the audience react I give what they want that's the metaphor the logic to this is that when you start Making content you're just trying to get data like don't worry about going viral or getting a fan base just like produce a piece of content look at the data the data is they like this piece they didn't like that piece they commented on this they shared that but they didn't like this you're just collecting data then you try to build enough data one week of content isn't a lot of data two weeks

of content is a lot of data two months content isn't really a lot of data I Think the reason I chose 90 days for the book was it's enough time to create enough data and create enough momentum the data is well how many people followed how many people engage what do they engage with you just start to look at the numbers and the statistics then the information above that is like well okay they like this what are the actionable insights well the actionable insights of you know the data to the information to the insights is

if I make More of that I get a better outcome okay cool let's do more of that then you learn okay well out of doing more of that this one did even better so the only way to go from data to wisdom is to look at the data cop the information get insights from that information do something about it and go through the cycle of like action low action low action low if you do that for 90 days at the end of it you'll have a little bit of wisdom you're like hm okay like I

Think my audience kind of like this I got some wisdom about how to solve their problem I got some wisdom about what products I could create next but you can't go from nothing to wisdom you have to go through these layers of collecting data making sense of the information choosing the insights that matter taking action of those insights learning what does and doesn't work that's the only way to get to wisdom man this is Rich and you're making complex things simple With this campfire analogy I think think media podcast listeners this podcast is really a

blueprint and I want to challenge us to really commit to the next 90 days whenever you're listening to this especially those that are on the sidelines um one week's not enough two weeks is not enough a lot of people make New Year's resolution sols but they only get three weeks in they they and they don't even get enough momentum or enough data so if you're listening to this Right now I just want to encourage you um we're going to get to a little bit more from the book in a bit but pick up the book

make a plan and really commit to 90 days of putting logs on the fire so that you also can get some data so you could get some wisdom and so you don't have to overthink about why didn't this work in month one or even month two but give yourself enough time to either commit or recommit to starting your Channel Because there's so much wisdom here and I do want to get to a little bit of the 90-day framework as we land the plane in a moment but I want to ask you personal Brands versus Corporate

Brands and business owners that listen to this podcast sometimes even wonder should they even be a personal brand should they hire somebody else in the company or appoint someone else to be on camera there's a lot of different approaches but you say that personal Brands build Trust faster than corporate Brands because they're about character while corporate brands are about capability can you explain what this is and why this matters yeah it's a great point I think you know like whatever it is that we do we tend to fall in love with people and human beings

um and then if we if we look at human beings human beings have a few things one is they have a story you know they have an origin story they had a defining moment They have the trajectory that their life is on they have enemies they have friends they have catchphrases they have outfits they have tality they have color um it's difficult for a company to have those things and this is why you see a Nike partner with a Michael Jordan or this is why you see famous celebrities like Tom zura partnering with liquid death

like you can use a person as as an emotional extension to your brand to add a sense of Personality right Harley-Davidson's the rebel Google's the sage right companies tend to have a personality and and I think the reason that we're more attracted to people and their character than we are to a company's capability well I don't need a company's capability every day but I like connecting the people every day you know what I mean so I would say that if you were to say which one do you need in today's day and age the landscape

is changing and and what I've been Witnessed to in the landscape is I've been working with entrepreneurs for about 10 years and when I started the company five years ago working with business owners the conversation was hey what's the deal with personal branding three years ago was should I start a personal brand two years ago it was hey I'm thinking about starting a personal brand and today most entrepreneurs are like I got to build a personal brand so like the the the the Landscapes changed Because people are starting to realize that these kids on social

media uh Millennials or whatever are making more money than them and they've been in an industry for a decade or more like how the hell is this guy on YouTube making more money than me and I've been doing this for 10 years you know the point is business own is a realizing that people that make media and produce content as a personal brands are stealing their clients they're taking the market by Storm because five years ago we spent a lot of time on social media but today we spend our lives on social media and I

think the social transaction between people is predominantly online and those that win online are going to win a business you can't just win business by Word of Mouth anymore so to really break these apart is personal branding is a lot more about character it's a lot more about you know style and presence and story whereas companies are typically About capability outcomes and producing some kind of you know product or service in the market it's it's not always interesting to look at products and services no one goes on Instagram to follow companies people go on Instagram

they go on Tik Tok they go on YouTube to engage with content from people that they align with and there's really only two reasons that we're really attracted to the personal brand is human beings like to be around people that they like And that feel like they are like them this is why you have a right and a left in politics is people like I align this way or I align that way or I'm a centralist or whatever it is like we tend to hang out with those we see the world the same way with

um the second thing is we follow personal Brands because we want to be like them you know you follow Alex hosi or Gary V or Chris doe because you're like man I want to be like that guy or that girl like we we Have part of ourselves that aspires to be more so that we're attracted to that companies just can't really do the same thing so if you're looking for an edge or an advantage on social media you need to think about how do I create founder leg content about the company that I'm building and

an example of this is a guy named poorboy coffee there's a guy who started a channel he had a cafe wasn't making money so he started making content about how much money he was Losing then he started making content about um how much it cost for the beans and how he was just like a warm interesting like wholesome guy he's kind of humorous kind of self-deprecating back to the emotion piece um and he's just like aspirational like it's just like I want the guy to win so what happened is if you go to his social

Channel now when he opens the door in the morning he has a line out the door he's making content about all these rad People that are supporting him and I was like oh make a little bit of profit now I can buy a better machine now and people are like rooting for this character we love stories there's something in us that is you know whether it's our ancestors sitting around a campfire we love stories we love human beings and I think if you want an unfair advantage over your competition and if you want to steal

you competitors lunch and eat it in front of them you need to Learn how to maybe use a personal brand poor boy coffee looks like he's got 59,000 followers on Instagram now I think I found him poor boy. coffee yeah that's it yeah and uh what a cool story there's so many nuggets in there and things we can apply to our personal Brands and if you have a more business brand you know it's when you were talking about Nike it just made me think that like influencer marketing is not new it's not it's been around

since like Like ancient times man like the word influence is just a new buzz word that we used to describe like what is it that makes it so that person can influence an outcome um and the word influencer isn't even cool anymore it's now about you found content that's the new thing it's like a they're a Founder so so I think I think it's it's not new like we've been following what others do since ancient times like cleop Patra wears that type of makeup I'm going to wear that type of Makeup right like it's uh

the Caesars dress a certain way I'm going to dress a certain way we tend to be influenced by the Zeitgeist of our cultures the populace that we live in and it's like a honic treadmill we tend to be like that which is around us you hang around people that complain andan all the time you start to complain you hang around with a grand card own long enough you start to get a little bit of energy you start to sell stuff like it's it's we Need to put ourselves in positions of success and if you're not

getting the success you want on your social channels on your Instagram and your business put yourself in an environment around people that are doing it and crushing it like we need to be close to people and those I think that have the most success in business are the most obsessed with building relationships with valuable people let's talk about the 90-day framework so as we kind of lay on the Plane give us some next steps now first 30 days 30 to 60 final Sprint um people can pick up your book highly recommended and definitely save this

podcast and you know work through all of these because uh My Hope and intent here was that we all level up Our Brands if you are established I know I got work to do if you are just starting now you have a a road map but what could happen for your brand for your reach of your content for your income if you dialed in some of These details over the next 90 days I love books personally by so many of them because it's actually pretty wild for you know 20 $30 how much wisdom you can

get from somebody and how impactful it can be you know it's that's a 10x return 100x return a thousand X Return of the wisdom you can have in a book when it's applied but if you kind of just walk us through 90 days what are we actually going to be doing over the next 90 days and some milestones we could aim for at Least at a high level and then again in the show notes is a copy of the book if you want to order that on Amazon um and we'll come back to some final

resources that Dan has as well talk about the 90 days thank you man yeah I I'm going to steal your plane analogy and kind of play with that a little bit um and also like I notice you got a hammer on your wall there so I'm GNA use that so I think I think you know there's there's this cliche or this phrase it's like um You know if um if you're a hammer everything looks like a nail right like if if all you're focus on is like uh I need leads then social media just looks

like a platform to get leads on like you need to stop looking at social media like a platform to generate leads on you need to goow okay this is a public library and people either want to get entertainments they want to get Harry Potter or Lo of the Rings or they want to uh they want to educate themselves on Like mathematics or science or people either want to learn or they want to entertain themselves or a mix of the two no one's going to the public library to get sold to to become your lead so

if you start respecting social media it's social and it's media so if you go okay how do I make something that's sociable and how do I make something that's media Centric just sit in that pocket the second thing is if you look at the 90-day brand plan like taking off in a Plane um so imagine you're sitting in the cockpit on the runway of a Boeing 747 you're the pilot this is what it feels like to start your 90day brand plan now it's the first time you're in that plane you've never played a plane before

and and to make it even worse the windshields painted black and it's your job to takeoff this is what it feels like you you're like oh my God is it going to work am I going to crash and burn am I gonna be am I gon to die like People literally think they're going to die if they just start posting content so what I suggest to them is like what happens is if you're in that cockpit and your family are on board uh and they're depending on you uh to succeed I kind of play these

games with myself because it makes makes life a bit more interesting and colorful but if you're taking off the the runway taxiing down the wrong way this is what I want you to expect for the first 30 days the first 30 days Of you producing content is you just taxiing to get to the start of the runway you know when you get on the flight and you're like driving it feels like you're driving around a car park and you're like well are we going to take off anytime soon like you need to tax it to

the wrong way the first 30 days is like you're like when are we going to take off like what's happening like nothing seems to be getting any traction where are the clouds you can't Expect clouds in 30 days so just imagine the first 30 days is we just t taing to the start of the Romy I'm just going to produce content hey we're moving we bought at the flight we're moving we'll get there eventually we'll take off at some point I'll get a hot towel and an orange juice at some point uh but let's just

focus on producing content now the point is you just want to get in the operating rhythm of producing a piece of content posting it looking at the data Forget about the results producing now the piece of content putting it up look at the data who cares about the results just get in the rhythm of being comfortable being on camera or becoming comfortable creating a piece of content become comfortable writing a caption and choosing the hashtags just get comfortable and if you're terrified of what people think just create a private Channel invite a couple people you

love and Trust make it private and don't make It public like just and if you can't even do that just film yourself every day for 30 days whatever your taxiing down the runway is just just start like that's the point it's just to get out of procrastination and get into the action get out of the data and information and into taking action because the only way you can learn is through action okay so just don't expect much in 30 days other than like I'm getting comfortable oh [ __ ] we're at the start of the

runway The plane engines roaring it's getting loud your windshield's painted black you're like I don't know where the tree line is I don't know if we're going to make it but at some point you can't gingerly hit that Runway at some point once you get comfortable you have to start taking it serious you go okay we can't gingerly hit this Runway it's pedal to the metal baby and you want to hit that thing as hot as you can as consistently as you can um and if you're Going hard in the paint and what I mean

by going hard is like don't just give him a random piece of content that you just thought of that morning like try to give them something really good the internet's full of great education great entertainment like try to make something that's worthy of being on Netflix or worthy of being paid for like make it that good and make it that interesting if you pushing that hard you're going to start getting wind under your wings and It might take another 30 days to get off the Runway 90 days tends to be the amount of time that

most algorithms need to get acquainted with your content format it tends to be enough time for your community to get comfortable with what your deal is what your stick is all about it it's you need to expect it to take three months to even start to get altitude um because here's the thing the 747 depletes about 40% of its fuel to 60% of its fuel just to get off the Runway and up to altitude think about this the next time you're on a flight dude like by the time you're 70% 70% up to 70% yeah

so up to 70% of the fuel in the flight could be gone when you're at altitude so remember the next time you hit altitude 70% of the fuel gone right but you can go halfway around the planet on that other 30% the point is when you're at scale like you or I am it becomes a lot easier it's like oh this is almost auto pilot I can Hire people to come in and help me do this I can run my company this is [ __ ] fun as like no nothing to stress about it's the

beginning that's terrifying most of the work for the pilot is in the takeoff and in the landing so most of your work that you'll ever do in creating social media content is in the first probably 12 months like you got to give it everything you got to give it enough momentum and if you're not posting every day or by days a week You're just not going to have enough momentum to ever get off the Runway so that's such a great vision and I think man when we compare ourselves to others which is not a good

idea but we do it and you know my friend John Acuff says don't compare your beginning to somebody else's middle because what we see is the person that's getting the views and the shares and like they're one year in five years in 10 years in and then we're two weeks in and we're like man this isn't Working and and I really felt the emotions when you're talking about taxing because not only do I feel like man when are we going to take off but but anyone who's flown has mightbe been in a situation where something

happens they're like sorry guys we're out here there's a few other things sorry and like sometimes you're you know it's an extra 30 45 minutes an extra hour and you're like what's going on in fact I've spent a lot of time in Las Vegas and Sometimes you're sitting on the runway and it's 107 degrees oh yeah and they're like sorry guys and they're like the like no matter how hard the AC is blowing you're just getting destroyed they're like please keep the windows down and that's sometimes kind of how it feels at the start posting

content you're just like man when is this thing going to take off and even the fact that we got to burn so much fuel to even get a little bit of altitude well of course You get much more tactical in the book and so um we'll uh I encourage uh listeners to pick that up and I am actually curious as well clearly you're uh a student you're a learner you're a reader I'm just curious if there's other business marketing or strategy books that especially for Content creators if you had if you had a friend that

you were like oh man you want to start a YouTube channel and you want to get into this creater economy thing and you want To have a personal brand and these are some of the books that I think would really be helpful from any angle really is is there anything that are some of your favorites yeah some personal favorites that I like um you know I like the 10x rule um that book means a lot to me and I I think it's a very simple book but it I guess Grant conon who wrote that book

just talks about like you have to think 10 times bigger than you're currently thinking and you have to think It's going to be 10 times harder than you think it is to get there um it's just it's just coming to the T with the reality that you're probably not thinking big enough and you're probably not thinking it's as hot as it actually is going to be like taxing down on Runway is hot posting content every day and your mom's the only person at comments sucks and then you go to work and your friends are making

fun of you for making content uh it's brutal but You just have to realize that like the only way to get off the Runway is is just keep doing it and like if you look at a guar or hosi they're like they're in their private jet at like 880,000 feet going into the stratosphere spping on champagne and you're not seeing the 16 years it took them to get to that point so like again you can't compare your St to someone else's middle like that's just that's crazy um but I think you know in any case

when you're trying To build something you got to realize like it's going to be tough um another book I like is is zag uh from a guy named Marty new uh zag was Steve Jobs favorite book and um some say it inspired him to to create the iPod but basically that book just says what everyone else is doing do the opposite if everyone's doing talken head content go do something different if you look at anyone who gets crazy viral traction it's usually like the Market's going this way and Ed just go I'm do the opposite

everyone's serious about business I'm gonna be nuts about business everyone's formal I'm GNA wear aian sneakers like whatever the zist is try to hit a different direction um another book I think you know what I'm enjoying at the moment is buyback your time from Dan Matel um recently have the the privilege of meeting him um just a just a great way to get unstuck and just figure out like we need to take action We need to we need to start thinking about like how do I use time as an investment am I using my time

wisely am I putting it in the right place um the last book I would say that's kind of a hidden J um is the richest band in Babylon um a great book about the I guess how money Works um I no matter how many times I read that book it just hits me different uh and it's a really old book uh a lot of people don't realize how actual how actually old that That book is um but it just teaches you that money has this the way of working and and if you can get familiar

with how money kind of operates and how to handle it um if you can think bigger like gr C if you can win your time back like d Mell and if you can do a little bit differently like might newm I think I think that's a great stack of books to get started oh man that's the level up list for 2025 plus your 90day brand plan um and uh Dan I'm super grateful for you I have one more question but I want you to shout out anything you're doing the stuff that people could get uh

you know more from you what if they want to go deeper we'll make sure to uh list all the resources the books recommended Dane stuff in the show notes but uh break it down how can people connect with you yeah question man you can just go to danw walker.com or just follow me on Instagram um and uh my company is rival R.com um but what I'll do man for for anyone who's listening to this right now um I'll send you a code and you guys can have my online uh personal branding program for free um

I'll give you a code so that your listeners can just get immediate access to that it's different to the book I think um you know if you wanted to T in the book with the with the online course go ahead if you just want to do one or the other whatever but um but yeah it's it's about a 4 Hour Program on actually how to build what I'm talking about D that's sick people are going to be pumped so you're you're going to be giving away your personal branding course for free so if you're on

the audio or video podcast we'll make sure that that code is in the show notes uh as well as the website link to get to that as well as all the other resources Dane super grateful for you the final question is send us off 2025 uh you're listening to into this What's the mindset you need uh in this current landscape you've given us a lot of Juicy tips but if maybe there's a final tip a perspective shift um to uh crush it this year especially for those that want to start or grow a profitable YouTube

channel what do you want to leave us with yeah I think something I've been really sitting with recently uh and it's helped me a lot is uh thinking wildly creative uh but being ruthlessly Comm And and and try to find a way to make the two meet in the middle CU I think I think to build a business and to succeed as a personal brand as a content creator you have to be wildly creative and this is what I'm talking about like engineering emotion understanding the Z guys to what's popular in pop culture right now

and leveraging that trying to stay away from what everyone else is doing and doing something different try to be wildly creative but also be Ruthlessly commercial like where is the attention um you know I want to I want to build a business for startups or why because I was a startup and it was hard and it sucked well cool there's a hole in the market but is there a market in the hole right like sell to the rich they got money for you um you know what I mean and and and take that money and

then give something else to those that are getting started right like I chase Big branding projects that pay me quarter to half a million dollars um and we do other projects that are smaller than that but that's the ones I'm chasing and then I'll take that that capital and I'll go write books or I'll give your program or your community a free online program like you know what I mean so like if you can go chase where the money really is you can go do the other things you're passionate about doing um but I just

think yeah if if you Want to win you have to start thinking like an athlete you have to start thinking like an entrepreneur and it's like yep we could be creative and passionate but we have to become really commercial know our numbers and we have to know how to invest our time and make money with that quote is going to go down in history for the th media podcast because we always live here at this tension of the artist the creative but oftentimes the starving artist and even Why our tagline is helping you build a

profitable YouTube channel as I'm always talking about you need money for the mission and there's always this tension where sometimes the money and the business Acumen and the practicality feels like it you you know uh chokes out the creative soul of some but unfortunately if all you're trying to do is be an artist and be creative and you run out of cash then uh you can't feed yourself your family and You can't really scale so the tension in the middle you summed it up for 20125 think wildly creative but be ruthlessly commercial Dane super grateful

for you I appreciate you taking the time and adding so much value to our community uh want to acknowledge all the value you've put out there in the world and grateful for all these resources and all your wisdom truly grateful and thankful for you to take the time today and then think media podcast thank you as usual Like share rate review if you're still listening this deep into the podcast wherever you watch or listen my name is Sean canell you're guide to building a profitable YouTube channel we will connect with you in future episodes