All right, today we are going to hit a subject near and dear to my heart: making money on social media, how to run a successful personal brand account, and everything that's changed so far in 2026. This week marks my three-year anniversary on Instagram, about three and a half making content total, and I have made a video every single day for over a thousand days now. In the event I didn't post for a day, I made up for it with two the same week, and although it was a rough start for any of you that were there at the beginning, it has significantly changed my life.
But in this video, I'm going to talk about what's different going into 2026, the commodization of faceless and carousels. With so many new creators, what's still working, and we're going to go through some specific formats and creators that are standing out. Then we're going to talk about how to zone in on a niche, if you have a niche that you want to go in on. What are the different content types? Now, how do you position yourself to design an offer that makes you money if you are selling a service, to position yourself to get more work? If you do want to set yourself up to get brand deals, what does that look like? And I'm going to talk about the traps that people fall into, what's happening with high production right now, where that's going, what happens to people that just copy and look the same as others, talk about the three levels of social media in 2026 for personal brands, and we're going to have a lot of fun along the way.
I am hosting a monthly community call, as always. This Sunday, February 22nd, I believe, the link is down below, is all about workshopping, creative strategy, and creative direction to be able to provide guidance on whether it's brands or personalities to get better at content. If you want to join us and workshop live on Sunday, the link to that is below. Let's lock in.
What's really interesting to me right now is just how adopted the short form really is. We have had a rash of new students in Cut30 who got the program recommended to them by their teachers. Their teachers in business school are saying, if you want to start a business, you need to go out there and learn how to make content and start learning now. That's the level of adoption we're seeing. We have journalists at major publications from around the world who join. Everyone's realizing that all of the traditional structure we had around attention is shifting. And whether or not you want to have a personal brand or not, understanding it is crucial.
I've been in the middle of this for a while, and it's interesting to watch. But one of the reasons I feel equipped to make a lot of these videos, and why I dislike watching a lot of other gurus' videos, is they don't have enough data points to really look at it. So we've had 2,000 people-plus through Cut30, the 30-day boot camp we do. And Colin Lamforce, shout out to the God, has all of them categorized in a video database that we've built. It tracks every person by cohort. It tracks every graduate and what outlier videos they have. Does it do 1.2x or 1.5x or higher of performance? It also tracks all of the accounts that I'm using for my creative strategy work, all the other accounts that we want to track around the web, in one centralized location that we can query and see trends from.
In addition, I'm obviously working with brands. We talk about my work with Morphe, what I did prior at Gelblaster or Liftfoils or any of these brands that are out there, where we are still doing active creative strategy and reviewing tons of briefs and competitive analysis each week. And I'm creating videos still every day in my own right. And as many of you know, I am partnered in the firm that manages me, DMG, that manages a bunch of influencers in different niches. And one of the biggest superpowers from this is the ability to see exactly what's happening. I know every single month, from the hundreds of creators that are in Cut30, exactly what being posted works. And then we have data to back it up from the aggregator. This allows us to actually have a finger on the pulse and then see, when we introduce new strategies or types, does it work? What's the adoption like? It's been critical for my work as a strategist.
But in addition to this, for the first time in December, we ran this thing called Cut30 Legends, which was for grads or large accounts only, where we were working specifically with people that had bigger social media accounts. And this was really interesting because a lot of the conversation was around, how are you monetizing? What does your funnel look like? What do your offers look like? Are you getting brand deals? How do you position yourself? How do you plan your content as a successful personal brand? And it was interesting to hear those questions and hear what those people are dealing with. I'm going to talk about a lot of it in this video.
First, let's talk about what's changing. So at this point, as of about three weeks ago, it's pretty official that the Instagram and TikTok algorithms, especially once US control took over TikTok, are now radically different. The same things very rarely work on both. We still encourage people to cross-post, but you will find it is a very different network to grow on.
But one of the key differences is how big carousels are, especially designed carousels on Instagram, and how much spam there is for simple carousels on TikTok. All of these software apps are spamming hundreds or thousands of carousels each day with AI in the default TikTok fonts. And there is just so much default carousel content on TikTok that it's really invalidated the formula if you want to grow a carousel account for anything but getting the cheapest of attention, eliminating a pretty powerful segment of the market there from being able to succeed. It only works for personal brand accounts now if it's in conjunction and tying into everything else you have going on as a personal brand.
And then on Instagram, so many people are dropping design carousels, and these accounts blow up and they get tons of followers. But all of them, I talked to a group of these accounts, are asking, how can I monetize? How can I make money? And for the most part, most of them can't because the content is so commodified. Brands don't want to pay for it. They don't have enough personality built up that people want to buy their offers. So they do monetize, but it's really hard.
And at the same time, faceless content's gotten taken over by all the AI accounts. There are awesome AI aggregator accounts who are making really beautiful-looking stuff. Whether you agree with it or not, the content is impactful. But what this means is there are so many of them, people are doing it from around the globe, that again, those views show up in the feed, but they don't build affinity. And what that has done is taken a lot of people who were able to build faceless accounts over the last few years and really made it very hard for anyone to get actual money at the end of the rainbow from doing it.
But what's good is the personality still reigns supreme in all of this. In a world where AI can manufacture a fake influencer that looks mediocre, or a fake carousel, or whatever it is, actual stories, actual tea, actual affinity, having real conversations with your audience is the separator. And you will see the people that are doing really well on TikTok, especially newer accounts, it's a conversation. They respond in every comment. They're doing reply videos from those comments. They are sharing the parts of their life. They are building that gauge, particularly on that social network, on personality.
But one thing that's happening that's crucial right now on Instagram is the proliferation of intelligent content. I'm going to call out Zoe here. She makes intelligent content. I believe she either works for or did work for a VC, and she's doing a format that we call a graphic yap. I'll talk about that in a second. But she is doing intellectual content, videos about real technology, hot startup rounds, AI agent social networks, Apple's acquisition, startup matrix. Far gone are the days of joke accounts or thinking social media is unserious. People are putting up major views, talking about real things.
And businesses are doing this too, right? Doing design history of a really specific stool or design format, walking through the particular choices of an item or the news that happened. Educational content is at an all-time high. She's doing an obsidian tutorial. We are getting obscure here. But people do not want surface-level stuff, the same stuff everyone knows. They want to go in depth. You're seeing content like how to be disgustingly educated pop off. Even this, it's this design talk series that she has. She's going into the manufacturing processes to work on metal and putting up serious views, right? So it's 10,000 likes for six-figure views.
We are in a hyper-intellectualized world where people who consume online, if you do want to reach an intelligent consumer, they are there waiting for you, and they want to be rewarded with really interesting stuff. So the format that appeals most to that is what you see here in almost all these examples I've had, what we call a graphic yap. or design format, walking through the particular choices of an item or the news that happened. Educational content is at an all-time high. She's doing an obsidian tutorial. We are getting obscure here. But people do not want surface-level stuff, the same stuff everyone knows. They want to go in depth. You're seeing content
like how to be disgustingly educated pop off. Even this, it's this design talk series that she has. She's going into the manufacturing processes to work on metal and putting up serious views, right? So it's 10,000 likes for six-figure views. We are in a hyper-intellectualized world where people who consume online, if you do want to reach an intelligent consumer, they are there waiting for you, and they want to be rewarded with really interesting stuff. So the format that appeals most to that is what you see here in almost all these examples I've had, what we call a graphic yap. A lot of people, including myself,
came up in the green screen era. You would talk over graphics on a green screen. That still works well, but a lot of people have found it effective and easier, especially now, to do this. Position yourself halfway on screen, eyes slightly above level in whatever setup you want, and put graphics over you while you talk relatively rapidly to help make your points aesthetically while you're talking over them. This is a format that I do as well. It doesn't matter if you do it on an iPhone or you do it on a ProCam, but for instance, this is me talking about couches in the same exact way and format and talking about what they mean from a luxury perspective.
I'm literally putting images over me while I talk in that same exact way. But there's never been a better time to do intellectual content on the internet because the algorithm is rewarded. And what's nice is when you follow or like content like that, it shows you tons of other creators. There are huge conversations right now going on around taste, going on around design, about startups and technology, and about hospitality, which we'll get to in a minute. They're just waiting for more experts and interesting people to join with algorithm support. But one of the biggest changes around this is this idea that I cannot state enough: personality is everything.
We are in a copycat world of content. A lot of content looks alike. It sounds alike. People literally put my scripts into ChatGPT and then put the output on the other end out and call it their own content with the same hooks. In a world of this, where that stuff can put up views, what do you do that actually resonates? How do you get to that bottom line of what makes you money? And personality-based content is the strongest point of this. When I look back at that thousand videos I made, what's the biggest regret I have? At several points during that on TikTok, I started making more candid videos where I'm talking about the vacation I went on or how I made money in this
or why I married an extroverted spouse as an introvert, and began to talk more and more about my life, build rapport with the audience, have them learn more from me than just value and advice. And every time I made a few, I just got caught up in my normal content flow because it makes a lot of money. And my biggest regret is I just did not continue that continually so people have more affinity with me in particular versus just the value I provide. And you'll see the creators that are succeeding now from day one are having a combination of those, right? You can put up a lot of views to that intellectual content, but if no one cares about you, it's just views
unless you have a great offer for them. But if you add that personality on top of it, where you're actually explaining a bit of what happens in your life, where people really feel like they get to know you, you can do really well with it. I want to call out Rye, who I met at a Cash App event, who does an amazing job of this on TikTok. So he talks a lot about his financial life as a younger person, credit cards he's using, financial decisions he's made, how he's investing. But at the same time, he takes you along on his life on every vlog, on every decision, on going shopping to replace an iPad. And you really feel like you know him. He's done an excellent job
at his core niche, which is educating you on financial products that I'm sure makes him a lot of money. And then also on the back half of that, making you really feel like he's a friend that you have in your life from the content that goes on screen. And if you are developing a plan for personal brand in 2026, that split I just outlined is extra crucial. The graphic yap format, where you are talking about true intellectual stuff, not just some low-grade bullshit. And you're doing your research and you're putting real work in to make a video or two a week in that style. And you are backing it up on the other half with actual content where people can get to know you
in different ways is what is going to make creators who actually generate money from social media. So next up, we're actually going to talk about finding your niche and doing that and the exact content types you should work on. And so I want to call my guy Brody here. Brody is a videographer and editor. He's been with me on my China trips. He was with me at Premiere Vision last year. He shot some of the videos you see on this YouTube. And he started making content maybe a year ago. He did Cut 30. He was making content about content, giving advice for making better videos. I remember at the time being, hey, there are a lot of people who do that. And I don't really think
this is going to be that amazing. You need to find something you're interested in or your niche. And what's funny is, at some point a few weeks ago, he started making videos about a thing that he's passionate about: gaming. And his gaming videos have way more views than the content videos ever did. Because you can tell he's really interested in it. It's compelling. And it's more of a niche than more people talking about content on the internet. But then it's also led to people reaching out to him in that niche to do the work that he is already good at. There is a superpower in talking about the thing you're passionate about. There is also a superpower in locality.
This is Sam. He's a friend of mine who was in Cut 30 recently, where he's following the easiest way to success right now, where he is talking about the area he lives in. He's talking about the South Bay, Redondo Beach, Manhattan Beach. And he is providing recommendations and starting conversations there around simple things: the best sushi, events that are happening, the best dumpling spot, what homes cost. Algorithms are built for localized content. You've heard me talk about this before. But that doesn't mean that you need to just be an OC food account or an Athens, Georgia, tour guide. That's a leverage point to bring in your expertise, right? So I've known Sam
from the internet for a long time. He's built tons of businesses. He had a really cool website business. He's done a lot of interesting stuff in tech. He's built apps. And so he has an interesting perspective as a business person, as someone who knows how businesses work, who knows how technology can impact them, to be able to take something like a localized audience, build an expertise, and have something interesting there. But if I was any person starting on social media right now who didn't know what I actually wanted to do, I would start as a local tour guide. So for instance, if I, tomorrow, could no longer make content about marketing, and I wanted to grow
as big as possible, I would be a design tour guide for LA. Go from a tasteful perspective. What should people do in LA? I would be critiquing the actual design and production of the stuff that's there. Going to the expensive shop, saying, are these jeans worth $2,000? Going to the new place that opened and critiquing the interiors, saying this or that. Or doing the tasteful person's guides to ice cream, sushi, coffee, boba, museums, bookstores. Relentlessly, until I figured out what I wanted to build on top of that. Because I would get an audience of people that live there and people that are traveling there, interested in that niche, and the algorithm is excellent
at showing that to people. And so for those of you that don't know where you want to build, that is 100% the place that I would start. And this ties really well into why hospitality content goes so well currently. I'm going to break down two of my favorite accounts in hospitality and the video formats that any expert can use here in a sec. But first, if you work in marketing or run content for a brand, then this free report from HubSpot is actually one you need to read. It's called the 2026 State of Marketing Report, and it breaks down where marketing is actually headed right now. Specifically, how to scale with AI without turning into a content farm
and how to build real brand trust when everyone's fighting for the same attention. Inside the report, they cover three big shifts. One, brand point of view is becoming a real growth engine. and people that are traveling there, interested in that niche, and the algorithm is excellent at showing that to people. And so, for those of you that don't know where you want to build, that is 100% the place that I would start. And this ties really well into why hospitality content goes so well currently. I'm going to break down two of my favorite accounts in hospitality and the video formats that any expert can use here in a sec. But first, if you work in marketing
or run content for a brand, then this free report from HubSpot is actually one you need to read. It's called the 2026 State of Marketing Report, and it breaks down where marketing is actually headed right now. Specifically, how to scale with AI without turning into a content farm, and how to build real brand trust when everyone's fighting for the same attention. Inside the report, they cover three big shifts. One, brand point of view is becoming a real growth engine. Similar to what I'm talking about here with personalities. As AI floods the market with content, brands with a clear perspective are standing out, and ones without a clear perspective are getting buried.
And the report shows which branding investments are actually delivering ROI right now and examples of what that perspective means. Second, AI is a baseline now, not the differentiator. 81% of marketers say this is the biggest disruption in 20 years, and 80% are already using AI for content creation. So the question isn't whether you're using it, it's how well. And third, human-led marketing is still what wins trust and revenue. The data shows that audiences reward brands that feel real and authentic, that are actually helpful, not just automated and optimized. And we see this play out on social every day. And my favorite part is the section on brand POV.
It lines up with everything I talk about on this channel. Having a sharp, distinctive perspective is what separates you from a sea of AI-generated noise. This report backs it up with real data on what's actually working. If you want to understand the shifts happening in marketing right now and make smarter decisions about where to put your energy, you can get this report for free at the link in the description. And thank you so much to HubSpot for sponsoring this video. So I want to call out one of my personal favorite accounts right now, which is First Class Jerk. Adam Lovick is his name on TikTok, and he is a travel and hospitality content creator.
Why I like his content so much is that he doesn't just play one note. He does multiple things that interest me and engage me around the niche of travel and hospitality in general. And one of them is he shares news, right? Virgin just brought back this specific thing. He's using the carousel format to share announcements and things that have been happening. This is where I love carousels. Carousels are a great content pillar if you're doing a lot of other types of content already. They can help you reach your existing audience well, tap into new localized audiences, and they're easy to create. He does these compilations of rules. He actually interviews famous people
that end up following him. He DMs them and asks them their favorite hotel location. He will put that into videos and carousels as well. So there's a community aspect to what he's doing. Probably my favorite part of that is the fact that he's seeing who follows him, engaging them immediately, and then putting that content on the timeline. It makes it feel like there's a flywheel in the community happening there. We DM celebrities who follow FCJ. Here are their favorite hotel stays, part five. Shut up, Bear Grylls. Absolute legend. But in addition to opinion pieces and curation, he's building credibility by going to these places, putting his face in front of them.
And this is a key thing. You will see on my channel I review products now, physically in hand. Because I've talked about enough stuff on green screen, anyone can do that. Anyone can make up those things. But if you have something tactile in your hands, or you go to a real place, the way I was going to China to talk about clothing production, back when that was something I was really interested in, it gives you a layer of credibility that other accounts can't have. When you look at all of the mass-generated stuff, everyone's making the same carousels, everyone's copying each other's videos. What they can't copy is having the personality, the resources, and the connections
to actually go show that you're in the streets, for lack of a better term, or inside the castle, in this case. Now, he does an excellent job with that, balanced with his other content. Day four of touring the best hotels in New York, in addition to the more timely stuff. This is a perfect example of the content pillar system I preach all the time, where he has multiple formats that he repeats, from news-based carousels, to curating from his audience, to talking about concepts and ideas in the niche, to actually going and doing physical tours of places. And so there's always something new and exciting there. And you might get reeled in with one format,
then learn a lot from the others. And so another account in the same niche, and Cut30 grad, I'm going to shout out Ryan, who does this in hospitality, and I want to break down what he does here, and how that leads to his offer flow as well. So he is a hospitality consultant. He is helping hospitality brands. So he has a lot of green screen takes, but following a similar formula, where he is doing versus videos, one of my favorite techniques, where you compare two things against each other. He's doing videos about how things are dying, and he's also doing videos about the future. This is a three-tiered strategy, I'll break it down again in a second,
for coming up with video concepts that is amazing. He's also breaking down history. So he will go into a history of the Fairmont hotels, and he'll go into what their future looks like in the next video. So, almost like a mini-series. Carousels on what trends look like. This is how you position yourself well as an expert, and he's done an excellent job doing it. And what I like to call it for everybody is, you scroll down on his account. He's only been doing this for a few months, but he's been on a grind, posting lots of videos. And you'll see these. This is 60 days ago? 90 days ago? And he's getting 20 likes, a couple hundred views, and he's just yapping
in front of the bookshelf, and then he's moving into the green screen. Still not putting up great numbers, but he's staying consistent. Okay, now we're starting to hit. And then he starts getting thousands of likes, and then that stays consistent from there, where his views and his interest are doing really well. And the playbook I want to call out, this isn't about hospitality. There's plenty of hospitality content. If you're not already an expert, I wouldn't go back, hop into that niche. But in any other niche you're talking about, if you're in design, if you're in creativity, if you're in marketing, if you're in legal, you're in accounting, whatever it is,
and you're setting yourself up as a personal brand, this is the formula to work at. Versus content. Comparing one thing versus another. Old school versus new school. Cheap versus luxury. Gap versus accrual. Comparison beats explanation almost every time. Number two is history. Those deep dives and graphic gaps I presented before go into interesting things in the niche. I'm doing a video like this in two weeks about truffles. I'm giving the whole history of how truffles turned synthetic, China's production of truffles, how they impacted truffle supply chain, and why that means that most people have never actually really tasted truffle. It's a history video, right?
You're giving context, you're getting people in by showing them what you're passionate about. You can do this in any niche. In-person review. You'll notice Ryan's reviewing spots in Toronto. He's going to hotels where he lives and giving feedback. Toronto's not the most glamorous market, right? It doesn't matter where you are, but where can you show that expertise in person? What can you have in hand? It's a crucial differentiator as more and more people make review and content where they're giving opinion. How can you tactically show that you really do it? And then there's the future. Ryan's killer at this. He's always putting out what is the future
of this type of hospitality? What is the future of this hotel group? What is the future of bar consumption, if Gen Z's doing X or Y? Giving predictions of what things look like is a way to establish expertise. And more importantly, stimulate conversation, because people will have opinions on it. The thing I want to add on for anyone following this formula is to have a relentless CTA. So you will see Ryan in stories a lot being like, hey, I'm taking on a new project of this type or that type. I'm trying to learn about X, so I'm looking for a client in Y. And he's always asking for people that are looking for help restoring their bar, working on their hotel.
I know a lot of people make review and content where they're giving opinion. How can you tactically show that you really do it? And then there's the future. Ryan's killer at this. He's always putting out, what is the future of this type of hospitality? What is the future of this hotel group? What is the future of bar consumption? If Gen Z's doing X or Y? Giving predictions of what things look like is a way to establish expertise and, more importantly, stimulate conversation because people will have opinions on it. The thing I want to add on for anyone following this formula is to have a relentless CTA. So you will see Ryan in stories a lot being like,
hey, I'm taking on a new project of this type or that type. I'm trying to learn about X, so I'm looking for a client in Y. And he's always asking for people that are looking for help restoring their bar, working on their hotel. I know a lot of people who are running this, who run the email funnel, right? It's saying, hey, get on my email list, join the Substack, and then they'll begin to pitch their offers inside of there. When you're talking about making money, we're gonna get to this making money section now. There's really two key angles to do this. Brand deals is number one. That's a much harder road, not what I recommend for most people,
but we'll still walk through it. Second is creating content for other people. Easy. Media money. And then the third is having an offer. I'm gonna explain what an offer is. So first, let's talk about brand deals. The bottom tier of where brand deals are accepted is growing, right? 200,000 followers is the new 50,000 followers. If you want to get considered looking for brand deals, you have to be pretty big now because there's a lot of creators that are getting pretty big. But if you want to circumvent that, the number one way to do it is provide content that brands will want to whitelist and run ads for, and also get on those brands' radar. So, for instance, I was hit up.
There was a huge Air One collab launching this week. It gets Function and Air One. They hit me up, Function did, because I've already made content about Air One smoothies, and they've seen, oh, successful content about an Air One smoothie launch? That's someone we should work with. When I bought my Human Scale chair, Human Scale was like, hey, we'd love to run an ad on this content. Same thing that happened when I reviewed the board, the game for my kids stuff. They hit me up being like, hey, let's make another version of this we can run as an ad. You have to already be making content and be on the radar for this. If you make a lot of content about Adobe Illustrator,
guess who's going to be looking at getting an Adobe sponsorship? Because those brands look at those people first. And one of the makeup brands that I work with, that is the requirement. They have to have posted about that brand organically prior, or they don't understand it enough. And they're a big enough brand where that's feasible. So the number one easiest way to get on the radar to do that is you have to be doing that kind of review and overview and showcase videos before you're getting paid for it. And you'll see a lot of those brands begin to hit you up, and all of a sudden you have an asset or two that does well. You do a couple cheap at first.
Those ads start running. It becomes a flywheel because the more ads you do, the more showcases you have, the more they come in. Brand deals is a hard game. As one of the biggest, certainly the biggest in my niche doing that, it is an absolute grind. You have to post a lot of content. It's actually hard to make good content for the brands as well. There's a lot of factors to consider, but obviously there's great money at the end of it. Number two, this is the best one, is being able to use that to be a creator for brands in your niche. When I was on tour the other week, I had a lot of people who had made that exact jump. There's a woman who had
made content on medical devices who got hired by a medical device firm to be their creator. I am constantly hit up by brands who are looking for creators, especially in intellectual niches. And if you are marketing creators who are looking for that kind of stuff, DM me on Instagram. The hard part about this is there's no real aggregation for it. It's not like there's a platform you can go on. Brands know how to ask. Creators know how to show themselves, but everyone wants it. And so with that, that's one of the things that you have to put out there on your email list or on your stories or in your CTA, like, hey, looking for a brand or two. Just like Ryan's saying,
looking for a hospitality client or two, you need to make the ask. Hey, I'm looking for a brand or two where I can make content for you on your feed. Putting that out on stories, mentioning it inside some of the content that you do, putting it in your newsletter, that's a worthwhile call to action to have. And what most creative people miss is they just never ask for the sale and then wonder why they don't get it. Run that back. Every creative person should just run that back. I want you to glaze over that point. And the third, we're going to talk about offers. So first, what is an offer? If you are a creative person who says, oh, I'm a designer,
I saw all types of designs, this is for you. Most people do not know how to package and sell their expertise. And so what they do is they say, I'm a consultant for X or Y, or I'm a designer, I'm a videographer, I'm an editor. That's not what people want to buy. They don't want to buy a big default thing. It's way easier to say, I sell X. I do brand sprints where I will develop a brand for you within 14 days. And every offer has to be based on one of the principles of sales, which is, are you selling speed? Is it going to be faster than the competition? Are you selling price? Is it going to be cheaper than the competition? Or are you selling skill?
Am I better than the competition? And you can't have all three, but you need to choose at least one you're going to market on. I'm going to give you the best brand identity possible in the same timeline as everyone else. I'm going to give you a brand identity in two weeks, and it's going to be solid. That's an amazing value proposition. And then look at what people are actually buying, right? If you are designing carousels for social media, like we talked about, that's a niche people are buying in right now. You need to decide, what is that offer that I have? I help hotels do X and Y in a workshop, and actually package that offer. And every single expert,
you're either looking for one of two things. You want to move up in your career at some point and leverage your social media to move up in your career, and we'll talk about that in a minute, or you are selling some type of consultation or service, and you should package that, not have that be default. Now, how to make this good? It least you have alignment with your niche. I know a couple of creators who sell something totally different. There's a lot of creators have video editing services, right? That's a thing that tons of people market, and they upsell people from the Philippines. But if your content is about restaurants, it has a little bit of alignment.
You could be like social media editing for restaurants, but it's not quite there. You need actual alignment. Ryan has alignment. He makes content about hospitality and the future of hospitality, and he will help bars, hotels, and restaurants who are trying to change their trajectory. So offer alignment is crucial to match to the content that you have. If you are selling content about AI, graphic design, but you have photography services, again, it's not aligned. Then specificity. Get to, I am selling you a specific thing. You have this package of these assets, right? I no longer do consultation. I just do programs. But before, it was like,
I will give you creative strategy for your campaign or for your social content. And you will get the ideas and the briefs and all the connections needed to execute them. And that would be the offer. And then what I also see is most people need two tiers. If you are selling a higher-ticket thing or an expensive thing, you should give people a way to try with a thousand-dollar, hey, we do a workshop, again, something cheaper or something smaller. It can get people in the door that you can then use to validate if they're the right client to have for something larger. That is the 122nd version of what offers are and what the offer stack matters.
That's how every expert needs to think about what they sell. And if you make content, you don't know what to sell from it because it's a niche that doesn't have alignment with something you can sell, you probably have a gap there. You need to think about what am I really doing on social media? for your campaign or for your social content. And you will get the ideas and the briefs and all the connections needed to execute them. And that would be the offer. And then what I also see is most people need two tiers. If you are selling a higher-ticket thing or an expensive thing, you should give people a way to try with a thousand-dollar, hey, we do a workshop,
again, something cheaper or something smaller. It can get people in the door that you can then use to validate if they're the right client to have for something larger. That is the 122nd version of what offers are and why the offer stack matters. That's how every expert needs to think about what they sell. And if you make content, you don't know what to sell from it because it's a niche that doesn't have alignment with something you can sell. You probably have a gap there. You need to think about what am I really doing on social media? Why am I making content like this? And then think about, do I need a new account or a new approach
that allows me to align an offer I can deliver with the content I'm making that's popular? Next, we're going to get into the two biggest traps that are happening right now. Probably three, two and a half. We're talking about the three levels of making content for a personal brand in 26. We'll wrap it up. So the traps you need to avoid. First is the sameness trap. You will see now, someone makes a popular format, people hop on it, they make the exact same thing extremely quick, and you can pull up views that way. But as you'll notice, there's a lot of people that knock off the product versus brand content I do. There are 11 people, I have a list,
who have made multiple versions of this video. One of them at least asked and had a conversation about it, and we're friendly. And so that was fun. Some tagged me a few times, great, whatever. But one thing that's noticed about all of them is that they don't get the same level of sponsorship or flow that I do because at the end of the day, it's someone else's idea. People don't want the second person on the idea. They want the originator of the idea. Now, if you have your own ideas to supplement that, that's a different thing. And people may want to check in and clock into that. But you are not going to get to the monetization as well from someone else's thing.
And so instead of copying, look at how do you put your unique spin on any of these. And it's really not that hard. But with that sameness trap comes everyone being like, how can I do this with AI? Can I use collage to write my scripts? Can I just put their content in ChatGPT and make a new version of it? Can I automate these carousels with X or Y? If you are flooding spam onto the timeline, the only money you get, if you get any money at all, is going to be money that goes away quick because everyone else who wants a cheap and easy version is doing the same thing. And that gets commodified first and commodified the fastest. It's why you don't see nearly any people
that are actually using AI-generated content to have any form of success beyond maybe driving some leads to a SaaS product. And as more and more of it rises, the only thing that stands out is what I mentioned before: personality. Connection with the audience. The last one is the high-production trap. I know a lot of people that are in this right now because high-production content had a huge moment in 2025. We're talking about social shows, all those vignettes of different carousels that were popping. Everyone's making beautiful-looking films. Brands are doing all these things. But now, when you actually watch people scroll and consume that content,
you begin to realize it was exciting at the start. People would really like it. They'd find it funny. They'd engage with it. They'd go to the brand. Now it's noise. Now there's so many high-production brands doing their version of that that it doesn't perform as well. And if it does put up the likes and views, you're not getting that click-through and that connection. It's basically looking at, okay, they're watching Hulu and they never get to the ad. They never click through and go to the call to action. And there's a lot of people who specialize in that who are struggling right now because they're like, these things that we're launching don't work. When they do work,
we're not getting the results and the sales that come on the other end. And it's funny because I remember when Adam Osseri from Instagram mentioned this and he was like, hey, we've seen in AI-generated content, it's actually easier for us to call out real generated content than it is AI and actually believe it's going to lead to lower-fi content overall and more natural, candid conversations. I remember at the time being like, I don't really know if that's right necessarily. And then now I'm like, oh, he was actually 100% right. Whatever you were doing to form that personal connection is the only thing that matters, and everything else is this wide, expansive noise.
We're going to end with the three levels of personal brand here. The first that everyone watching this should do is create to escape. And there are tons of people doing this. When I launched my video, I think it was The Art of the Personal Brand, maybe four or five months ago. I've never had as many people DM me within a few months saying I started to make content and were successful. It was 50 plus. A lot of them have really popping accounts. It was kind of crazy to see. If you've not watched that, go back and watch that video if you need an exact roadmap, if you don't have the tools you have from this. But that video is about creating to escape. Once you start doing it
and you get your first couple thousand followers and now it's a skill that you have, you never have to worry about where you're going to work again. You are going to be able to, when you need to turn it on and put your foot down, it's going to get to level two in a second. You can. You can do it. You now have the power because you began to build an audience and you have the skill set that whenever you need to turn it on, you can. That's where we're going to go to for level two, is turning it on. If you are actually selling something right now, you want to generate business right now, or if you're at level one where you created and you're at a current job
and you didn't really have a goal, but now you're like, oh shit, I lost my job, or what, I'm tired of this, or hey, I want to take a change, and then you put the foot on the gas and you have the ability to because you started. You can generate affinity for your service. You can generate leads. You can tell people you're open for employment. You can put it down. That's level two of content. You're doing it with a reason. I encourage everyone to get into level one. Everyone thinks, oh, there are so many creators. How can there be room for more? We're still battling against the worst news media ever. Terrible television experiences. There's more consumption happening here
and there's only more to go, and you don't need a bunch. You need a couple thousand followers and the ability to know you have a video that can get 20,000, 50,000 views, and then you have that ability. Again, whenever you want to turn along and be like, I need leads for my consulting business. I want to find a new job. I'm going to X place and I want to meet people. All these objectives you have in your life, it is a tool to achieve those objectives, and it is the biggest superpower you can tap into in our modern time. And level three, if you want to scale that, you want to go beyond this. Okay, you got your first 10,000, 20,000 followers, or you got a couple
hundred thousand followers and it's kind of scaling, but you don't have that affinity. You're like, okay, people like the content, but it's not doing anything for me. That's all about personality. People have to get to know you. They have to like and love you. There needs to be storylines and plot lines and things that come with that, and that's not for everybody. It totally doesn't have to be, but that's the third level if you want to get there. So quick housekeeping: I'm doing another community call. It's going to be this Sunday, where we're just going to be live workshopping. I'm going to be teaching a bunch about creative strategy. You can find that
in the description down below. We don't have another New Cut 30 until March. You can get on the waitlist for that on the link below as well if you want to do short-form content with people over 30 days. And we have our state of content report where we break down all the trends and stuff in the written version. I'm going to link that below. There are a whole bunch of things happening. We're going to keep these community calls going every month. I love chatting with y'all. If you have questions, And plot lines and things that come with that, and that's not for everybody. It doesn't have to be, but that's the third level if you want to get there.
So, quick housekeeping: I'm doing another community call. It's going to be this Sunday, where we're just going to be live workshopping. I'm going to be teaching a bunch about creative strategy. You can find that in the description down below. We don't have another New Cut 30 until March. You can get on the wait list for that on the link below as well if you want to do short-form content with people for 30 days. And we have our state of content report where we break down all the trends and stuff in the written version. I'm going to link down there below. There are a whole bunch of things happening. We're going to keep these community calls going every month.
I love chatting with y'all. If you have questions, you're trying to decide what kind of content to make, what you would want to yap about, comment your niche, comment what you have down below. We can workshop some. Once they get to about 500 comments, I usually give up. I try to hit as many as I can while getting into it. So if you have that, drop them below, and I will get to them. Thank y'all so much for watching. Again, whenever you want to turn along and be like, I need leads for my consulting business. I want to find a new job. I'm going to X place and I want to meet people. All these objectives you have in your life, it is a tool to achieve those objectives
and it is the biggest superpower you can tap into in our modern time. And level three, if you want to scale that, you want to go beyond this. Okay, you got your first 10, 20,000 followers or you got a couple hundred thousand followers and it's kind of scaling but you don't have that affinity. You're like, okay, people like the content but it's not doing anything for me. That's all about personality. People have to get to know you. They have to like and love you. There needs to be storylines and plot lines and things that come with that and that's not for everybody. It totally doesn't have to be but that's the third level if you want to get to there. So quick housekeeping,
I'm doing another community call. It's going to be this Sunday where we're just going to be live workshopping. I'm going to be teaching a bunch about creative strategy. You can find that in the description down below. We don't have another New Cut 30 until March. You can get on the wait list for that on the link below as well if you want to do short form content with people over 30 days. And we have our state of content report where we break down all the trends and stuff in the written version. I'm going to link down there below. There are a whole bunch of things happening. We're going to keep these community calls going every month. I love chatting with y'all.
If you have questions, you're trying to decide what kind of content to make, you know what you would want to yap about, comment your niche, comment what you have down below. We can workshop some. Once they'll start to get to like 500 comments, I usually give up. I try to hit as many as I can getting into it. So if you have that, drop them below and I will get to them. Thank y'all so much for watching.