Start Creating a Personal Brand that Pays, in the Next 24 Hours

Simple straightforward framework to begin building an audience that pays

When I say brand, something like this probably jumped into your mind.

Photo by wu yi on Unsplash

Let’s wipe out that image and think more like this…

These are a couple of more than a dozen or so folks that I can think of off the top of my head that make 6-figures or more from their personal brand.

All of them use a very similar model. Surprisingly, it’s one that you can create and launch in a matter of hours.

Of course, there’s a lot of sweat and effort put into executing this personal branding business model. But, honestly, the most important feature to its success is persistence.

So, enough talk, let’s outline the business model and plan of execution — then you can get cracking.

The personal branding business model begins and grows with content creation. The brand itself will evolve and at some point lock into your audience; often with a serendipitous moment of alignment and resulting virality.

Your starting point is to create your publishing platforms as quickly as possible. And, then create a content creation and editorial plan that is prolific, but sustainable.

1. Pick your publishing platform(s)

I recommend using at least a couple of platforms.

This will give you the ability to test across a few different ecosystems and see where you fit the fastest. Much like a product, you’re trying to quickly get to the personal brand to audience fit as quickly as possible.

Here are the ones that I and most of these folks use:

• Linkedin

• Twitter

• Medium

• Substack

• YouTube

These seem to be the most popular platforms for personal brand creators. I think this to be true because they are simple, require little to no technical skills, and have large audiences looking for pearls of wisdom mixed with entertainment.

2. Set up your sales and marketing stack

Justin Welch reveals his sales and marketing stack in this tweet and then opens the door for others to share.

Dig into the thread for a bunch of other potential stacks that might work better in your context.

Justin Welsh @JustinSaaS

My solopreneur tech stack: - Website: @carrd - Email: @ConvertKit - Analytics: @usefathom - eCommerce: @gumroad - Memberships: @outseta - Testimonials: Testimonial.to - Putting it all together: @zapier What's everyone else using? 👇🏻

testimonial.toTestimonial | Collect video testimonialsText testimonials look boring and less authentic. We help you collect video testimonials from your customers so you can better promote your business.

This Twitter thread is also a case study in engaging your audience and extending your reach into their audiences’ feeds.

By the way, this is what my stack looks like this:

• Website: Notion.so + Super.so —> BillRice.com

• Email: Substack

• eCommerce: Gumroad

3. Create templates and a publishing rhythm

My recommendation is to write/create and publish as prolifically as you can possibly sustain. In the beginning volume at a reasonable level of quality is the formula.

You can increase the quantity and quality of what you publish by adopting a simple editorial system. Your system should be consist of templates and a publishing rhythm.

Here is Justin’s:

Justin Welsh @JustinSaaS

A growing Twitter audience is an asset to any entrepreneur. I've added 14,547 followers in just 10 weeks. Here are the 4 very simple things I did:

Justin Welsh @JustinSaaS

And that's literally it. No gimmickss. No hacks. No tricks. No pods. TL;DR 1/ A "touch base" tweet each AM 2/ An educational tweet each PM 3/ A step-by-step thread once weekly 4/ Engage with 5 people in my niche each day

3. Create an ideation system

Design your daily habits and systems to help you spark, capture, and refine ideas into new content and products.

Here is how Dickie Bush does this:

Dickie Bush 🚢 @dickiebush

4 steps for my most potent writing sessions: • Brain dump 10 bullets on an idea before bed • Wake up and take a 15-minute walk thinking about the idea • Sit down, block all distractions, and write for 90 minutes • Come back the next day, read aloud, edit, and publish

And, here is Justin Welsh’s”

Justin Welsh @JustinSaaS

Step 1: Ideate rapidly What’s the fastest way to come up with ideas? Use systems. I created my own content matrix in Notion. - Choose a topic - Match it to a style - Write a quick headline - Repeat until you have 10 ideas Much of writing is about systems.

4. Create writing frameworks (templates)

Use templates to speed up your creative process and produce a ludicrous amount of content to publish.

Here is Nicolas Cole’s go to Twitter thread templates:

Nicolas Cole 🚢 @Nicolascole77

I started writing threads on Twitter in 2019. Since then, I've written more than 200 threads and accumulated over 50,000,000 views on Twitter alone. Want to know a secret? I (pretty much) use the same 7 thread templates every time. 🧵👇

Here is what Justin suggests:

Justin Welsh @JustinSaaS

Step 2: Choose a solid format Struggling to format your writing? There are so many tools out there to help. I am loving @typeshare_co They have beautiful templates built right in for inspiration. No better way to get started.

5. Publish to the crickets to build a base

You’re going to be creating and publishing into a void for quite some time. Be understanding of that and persist.

Dig into this concept more in my recent article: Publish for the Crickets.

6. Create a valuable product and give it away to surge the audience

Blake Emal is a master of audience development.

He has perfected the art of creating simple lead magnets — free, but highly valuable download — that give him repeated injections of new subscribers.

Here is one of his most recent:

Blake Emal @heyblake

I was stuck at 150 email subs for months. Then I grew my list by 1500 in 3 days. 10x your email list with this simple process:

7. Continue to nurture your audience

Finally, keep the flywheel gathering momentum by continuing to nurture your audience with valuable insights - short and long.

Have a great week!

-Bill