The Secret To A Successful Personal Brand

Life is a game. And so is business. 

You have unlimited opportunities to level up.‍

• Unlimited skills to develop
• Unlimited problems to solve
• Unlimited adventures to go on‍

The opportunities are limitless.

You get to decide what you do and who you become.

Yes, you have some genetic limitations.

You can’t decide to become 8 ft tall tomorrow.

But pretty much everything else is changeable.

And it’s the same in the creator economy.

You get to choose who you want to become.

Yet most creators are NPCs.

They never achieve anything.

Not because they can’t, but because they lack clarity on what they want.

And if you don’t know what you want to do, you won’t be able to get it.

Success is a thin path, so the chance that you’ll stumble on it by chance is tiny.

The best creators in the world know this.

This is why they make a plan to win the game.

And as you know from any game you’ve played in your life, it all starts with the same thing:

The character you’re playing as.

In life and business, we don’t get a menu in which we can choose a character.

But this doesn’t mean that you can’t create one.

You just have to be more mindful of it‍

But once you are, you can literally design your ideal self from the ground up.

I call this your Creator Character.

It’s the digital representation of who you aspire to be.

It has 3 different components which I’ll explain to you in this article.

It will instantly give you clarity on what to do and it’ll help you to create a strong brand that stands out. Let’s dive into it.

1. Artistic Imitation

You are a copycat.

And it’s not just you - every human is.

We learn by imitating other people.

It’s how we learn to speak and act in the world.

Yet most of us stop doing this once we get older.

Especially in the creator economy.

Mostly because we want to be original and unique.

But we fail to understand something important that’s explained in the book ‘Steal Like an Artist’.

“Every new idea is just a mashup or a remix of one or more previous ideas.” 

There's nothing new under the sun.

Almost everything you think has already been thought about by thousands of others.

So new thoughts are extremely scarce.

And the best ones are found by combining multiple other thoughts.

Everything is interconnected, and when you start to notice this you can start connecting seemingly unrelated ideas to combine it into a new interesting perspective.

This is why I call the best creators Information Compressors.

They collect information from multiple sources and compress it into more valuable information by removing the inefficiencies and connecting the important parts.

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So start collecting the best ideas from people you aspire to be like.

I’d recommend picking 5-10 mentors that you aspire to be like and emulating some aspect of their brand in a unique way.

These are my main digital mentors:

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Combine them together intelligently and mix them with your own ideas, stories, skills, worldview, and personality.

This is how you create something valuable that’s proven to work and also authentic to you.

Don’t copy these people, but take inspiration from them.

Steal like an artist, don’t copy like a fool.

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2. Creator CV

In the regular economy, you usually have to show your CV if you want to get a job.

In the creator economy, you don’t.

But your profile IS your digital CV.

It’s made up of multiple things.

• Your bio
• Your pinned post
• Your brand colors 
• Your brand font(s)
• Your profile picture
• Your banner/background
• Your content and writing style

You want to make sure that these things give off your vibe and show people what to expect.

I use black and white because of simplicity, elegance, and power.

I combine this with green to emphasize growth.

Study color psychology to ensure you pick the colors that match your brand vibe.

In your profile, it’s better to be clear than clever.

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Your pinned tweet is the first tweet people see, so make sure it’s a good one.

I have an expertise tweet (a tweet in which you write about interesting ideas in your niche to show that you know what you’re talking about).

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Optimize all of these things to create a top 1% Creator CV.

3. Creator Skill Tree

As a creator, you’re on a journey. 

Whether you know it or not.

The journey is your route toward the goal you want to achieve.

Not having a goal is the equivalent of aimlessly wandering through the map in a game.

It’s boring, meaningless, and makes you want to give up.

That’s why you need something that you’re working towards.

Humans are aiming creatures.

Dopamine (the feel-good chemical) gets released when we see ourselves move toward a desirable goal.

The bigger the goal, the more positive emotion we’ll experience.

So you need a goal and a plan to get there to make the process enjoyable.

That’s why you need to reverse engineer your ideal future.

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Determine where you want to get to.

Then break it down into skills and habits you need to develop.

These will become the skill trees of your creator character.

I’m helping creators make $10,000+ per month while writing about their interests.

So for me, some of the skills in my skill tree are:

• Sales
• Design
• Writing
• Branding
• Marketing
• Storytelling
• Copywriting
• Video editing
• Emotional control
• Pattern recognition
• Human psychology

When I clarified the skills I needed to get to the desired outcome, I could break them down into smaller goals.

Then I could break them down into daily habits and systems I could repeat to get closer to the goal.

This is the equivalent of gaining EXP in game.

You gain EXP because your character moves closer toward a goal by completing a task.

You are the character.

Your daily actions are the tasks that bring you closer to your goal.

So get clear on your end goal, reverse engineer it to know what it’ll take to get there, and break it down into small steps so you know how your character can level up.

You are the hero of your creator journey.

Your mentors are the wise wizards who help you progress faster.

So create your creator character.

It’s the best thing you can do for both your personal growth and business growth.

Start to play the creator growth game.

If you want my systems and strategies to level up faster, check out The X Growth System.

Thanks for reading!

(Ein)Stijn