Here's the thing that'll save you a few years. Your obsession with "creating a brand" is backwards. Brand isn't up to you.
Can you actually create a brand?
No. Brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room. You can influence it, but it mostly arrives by intentional accident.
Gary Vaynerchuk didn't sit down 20 years ago and decide to build a brand around high-energy wine content that turns into business advice. He shared opinions, showed up, and over time became known for how he said things. Alex Hormozi ground away on Instagram and podcasts for years before YouTube made him famous. And you know what made his brand stick early? A Fu Manchu mustache he kept on a whim. People started going, "oh, you're that guy." That's not strategy. That's authenticity that caught on. If I tried to engineer that for him, I'd fail. The magic was never in the plan.
What are the only 3 types of content?
Three. Not seven, not twelve. Every creator worth watching runs some mix of Show, Grow, and Get To Know.
| Bucket | What it does |
|---|---|
| Show | Demonstrate what you know. Teach. Prove it. |
| Grow | Flex, hot takes, big results, the stuff you disagree with. Emotional and shareable. |
| Get To Know | You. Where you're from, what happened to you, what makes you weird. Builds trust. |
Different people slap different labels on these (Educational, Flex, Transformation is the same three). Hormozi hits all three in a single post, which is why he's so effective. You don't have to start there.
What's the right content mix?
It depends entirely on your goal. Education-heavy to build trust and sales. Emotion-heavy to blow up.
If you post 3 times a week, run 2 Show and 1 Grow or Get To Know. Daily, run 3 Show and 2 of the others. Want reach and account growth? Invert it. More flex, more transformation, because algorithms reward emotional content. The "I was broke, now I'm rich" story eats. But if you're using your profile to reduce friction with buyers who are about to hire you, which is most of you, stay education-heavy. You're not trying to blow up. You're trying to be trusted by the right 100 people.
How do you position yourself?
Position yourself or get positioned. Before you write a word, answer who you serve, their awareness level, their real fears, and where they get their info.
Most people learn the three buckets and immediately start typing "5 ways to get more sales by tomorrow." That's not positioning. That's vomiting generic advice. A client of mine sells to MSPs, but rookies who've never had a salesperson are a different animal than shops with a sales team that need process help. His sweet spot is the middle, the ones who know they need sales help but don't know where to start. So his content speaks to exactly them, not "sales tips for everyone." Your positioning becomes your content filter. Every piece gets written for one specific buyer with one specific problem.
What's the biggest branding mistake?
Trying to sound like everyone else in your industry. Formulas make clones, and clones don't build brands.
80% of people want me to hand them the exact words. But you have a way you say things, and I can't invent that for you. The people who win are the ones who say "just tell me what topics to cover and get out of my way." Be weird. Be opinionated. If you're trying to appeal to everyone, you connect with no one. And when you're starting out, go easy on ChatGPT. I love AI, I use it every day, but lean on it too early and it'll make you sound like everyone else before you've found your own voice. Learn to think first. Then use AI to multiply it.
Your brand isn't something you create. It's something you reveal. It's coming whether you force it or not. Might as well make sure it's the real you.
Want your brand revealed on purpose, not by accident?
That's the positioning work: name the lane, build the filter, and run content that reveals the real you. One call to start.
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