There isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t see a non-technical mom in her 40s clear a million-dollar launch with a simple digital product.
We’re talking about a product like a 30-day challenge.
They create a waitlist.
They post validated content around that topic.
They launch to the waitlist and their Instagram account.
And people eat it up. For good reason.
Because nobody relates to someone with millions of followers (sucks for me), an out-of-touch luxury lifestyle, or a body that is so far out of reach.
They relate to someone who is in their shoes.
Someone who doesn’t have a flashy lifestyle.
So if you have a story to tell (no matter how boring), a small skill worth learning, or knowledge that could help someone improve their lives - please take advantage of the next 12 months.
Nobody wants to be an influencer anymore.
The world doesn’t need more “content creators”.
We need more original thinkers, more rebels more counter culturalists more people who can sit with something long enough to understand it before passing judgment.
That’s so rare these day and becoming more valuable by the hour.
– Benjamin Antoine
Just a few years ago, everyone wanted to be a YouTuber.
That is, everyone wanted to quit the job that put them in a box, mentally and physically, for 8-9 hours a day. Instead, they wanted to explore their interests full time. That was the dream.
After school, when I was younger, I’d get home and head straight to the family computer so I could watch the latest vlog from all the fitness influencers I followed at the time.
They were my role models. They made lifting a passion of mine that I still hold to this day. My life wouldn’t be the same if I hadn’t become obsessed with nutrition and training. I would have never learned that in school (to the extent I did through self-education). As I got older and became interested in business, the same thing happened. I found creators who shared everything they were learning as their own business grew. That taught me more than my 5 years of college ever could.
I believe social media has the potential to become a decentralized education system. Moreso than it already is. A place where you share your knowledge and interests from your own unique point of view, and those resonate with your personality can come to you to learn from. That is what I mean by “you are the niche.” You do the same thing you normally would when writing content, but the highest priority becomes your beliefs, opinions, and point of view.
I personally don’t relate with the 40 year old moms, I think that’s obvious, but they also don’t relate with me (however, I do appreciate the moms in my audience, I know you guys are there). They are much better off learning content creation, AI, gardening, or any other interest from someone who is 1-2 steps ahead of them.
That’s your opportunity.
Personal brands are no longer personal.
You’re an artist. You didn’t sign up to be an influencer. No shit. But unless you plan to stay broke and mysterious online, you’d better learn the business of being seen.
– Mauricio Ruiz
There are 3 types of creators on social media.
Influencers, personal brands, and what we will call “artisans.”
The difference between them lies in what owns them.
To the influencer, social media is their work. They are incentivized by attention itself, so the content must be optimized to be consumed and forgotten - cheap dopamine. This is highly entropic and ruins people’s ability to think far more than AI does. At least a conversation with AI has a throughline and potentially teaches you something useful or new.
To the personal brand, social media exists to monetize. Every post is a funnel step toward a course, a template, or a program. They started for the love of the game... then realized they had to survive. So, content is optimized for trust and conversion, which is better than the influencer, and frankly not a net negative on society - at least they have a product that is meant to educate or improve someone’s life - but I think there is something more.
The artisan uses social media to subsidize a body of work.
Think about James Clear, Jordan Peterson, or other public intellectuals. They have a personal brand, sure. You may even consider them an influencer, I suppose. They need attention, yes, just like anyone does when they need supporters of their work, but their sole goal is to get paid for doing what they love, in a way that massively benefits those who support them.
They have a book, a public speaking gig, research, a philosophy, or a body of work that outlives the algorithm. Even Alan Watts has a “personal brand” today, even when he’s no longer with us. Same with Marcus Aurelius among others. I mean hell, Jesus’ personal brand is off the charts.
Social media is simply a vessel (and an incredibly good one at that) to attract people to the work you see yourself outlasting you.
The ultimate goal with social media is to resist the temptation to optimize for anything other than the impact of your body of work - your products, writing, video, and most importantly: ideas that live on in the readers head and influence their behavior for the positive, rippling softly throughout humanity.
That does not mean that you ignore the need to garner attention and get paid for your work. It requires a shift in perspective to understand that when done well, attention and money are the byproduct of doing good work.
In this second renaissance we’re entering, I believe the future belongs to the artisan, because it already did. The influencer and personal brand started for this reason, but got distracted with short-term incentives.
If you have interests, knowledge, or expertise that you can’t stop talking about - here is how you begin to take advantage of this opportunity.
Build a mind that is a magnet for ideas
The ultimate moat, or the final competitive edge worth paying for, in my opinion, is an opinion.
A perspective that only you can see, because the uniqueness of your life experience created it. That may just be the last thing anyone else can replicate. Especially when anyone can generate 1500 nice sounding words in 10 seconds with AI.
That’s your edge, and the incredible thing is that everyone has one.
They just can’t see the value in it, because they haven’t built a museum for it.
You’ve consumed thousands of ideas by now. Books, podcasts, conversations, arguments with strangers. Those are what forge your perspective, alongside a few life events that give you your own story. Each one added a connection in how you interpret reality, and that compounding is the only asset here AI can’t generate for someone else, because it can only think what it’s told to think. But right now it’s invisible. Not just to other people. To you. You can’t point at your perspective, so you can’t build on it, so you fall back on whatever’s trending because that’s the only thing you can see clearly. Worse, ideas evaporate within a day if you don’t capture them (it’s no wonder you can’t think of anything to write or post about).
Let’s fix that.
You can do this in any app you want. I use Eden, so that’s what I’ll show you, but Apple Notes or Notion work just fine. The habit matters more than the app.
In Eden, there is a strategy tab that asks you 7 questions about yourself. Then, it builds your content pillars, intellectual signature (what makes you unique), researches validated topics, and spins off dozens of ideas that you can take and run with to start posting content.
Those who have used it so far have mentioned how they finally have clarity on what to post about. Not just today, but for months on end. You can try it here. It comes with a 30 day creator sprint course as well.
Step 1) Build an idea museum
The secret of most creatives you love is that they keep a ruthless curation of notes, ideas, and sources of inspiration. A “swipe file,” as marketers call it.
You need somewhere to jot down ideas as soon as they come to mind, because the idea that hit you in the shower is gone by lunch if you trust your memory.
Don’t overcomplicate this.
Capture random thoughts, social posts that inspired you, video notes, and anything else. I personally like to save ideas into 2 types of boards called Validated Ideas and Favorite Ideas. Validated = posts that have gone viral. Favorite = ideas you love.
When you merge the two together, from your own point of view, that’s when you have a great social post.
In short, idea capture is the simplest yet most fundamental habit of any creative who stands the test of time.
Now, where’s the best places to find unique ideas?
Step 2) Curate ideas based on density
Most people’s inputs are the same as everyone else’s.
They watch the same news, look at the same trends, and write the same idea as everyone else. That’s why everything on social media sounds the same, and AI is only contributing to this.
If you want ideas nobody else has, you need sources nobody else is reading. Specifically, you need sources with high idea density. By that I mean books, articles, or accounts where almost every sentence is so good you can’t ignore it.
The most idea-dense sources are old or little-known books, curated blogs and accounts that pick the best ideas for you, and a handful of creators who always post something worth thinking about.
I keep those creators in a “list” in Eden (you add creators and it allows you to scroll and filter their feed, great for competitor research too) so I can check them without the rest of the feed getting in the way. When I don’t know what to write about, I open the list, find something I have an opinion on, and start drafting an idea in the scheduler.
How to stand out when everyone is saying the same thing
People don’t follow information, they follow perspectives.
10 people can talk about the same old topics, but one of them can say it in such a way that brings an entirely new meaning to it. That’s the person people follow.
Most beginners think they need something new to say. They don’t. People aren’t on social media for new ideas. They’re there to see what’s already being talked about, from a creator they like.
I wrote a post in 2019 that started with “how to get ahead of 99% of people.” Years later I turned it into a video, and it became my best performer at 1.7 million views. Then Mark Manson made a video with the same title. Then Alex Hormozi made one. Then Tom Bilyeu. Nobody owns a topic. To think that you own a topic or idea is foolish. You only own your perspective of said topic or idea.
Your best content will come from pairing two kinds of ideas, like we discussed earlier - the ideas you love (from your museum, your books, and your life) and the ones that are already proven to work (posts that did far better than usual).
I want to get you to the point of writing your first post.
Let’s do that.
Step 1) Study what’s already working
Pick 3 creators who aren’t celebrities, but aren’t nobodies.
A celebrity get’s millions of views on every post. That’s not a good judge of “what works.”
Save these creators somewhere safe. Save a URL to their profile in your notes app.
Or paste a prompt like this in Eden or Claude connected to Eden (so it can search viral posts and creators):
I talk about [topics]. Research mid-sized creators who are doing well in those topics, then reverse engineer their strategy from their best posts. Put the posts on a swipe file board, each with a note explaining why that post did well for them. Then, interview me for my own perspective and beliefs so we can start to formulate my own strategy.
Notice something important there. You aren’t taking the idea. Just like you learn any kind of writing or craft, you take the principles that make it work and apply it to your own strategy. You research. Every creative uses a reference as a starting point for their work.
Step 2) Find your angle
Pick one idea you’ve saved. One that you love.
If you post it the way you found it, then you’re posting something that’s probably been said a thousand times. You have to change the perspective.
I do this by writing 5 angles on the same idea:
How would [a thinker I love] say this?
How would I say this to my past self?
How can I redefine the idea?
What is the common perspective, and what do I disagree with?
Why does this matter to the everyday person?
There are thousands of angles you can write for one idea. Brainstorming with AI may be helpful here too.
Let’s say you saved the idea “constraints make you more creative.”
When you disagree with it, you have something new, like - constraints don’t make you creative, they make you decisive, because the blank page is a decision problem disguised as an inspiration problem. Now you’re posting something only you would have said, and you can say it eleven ways this month without repeating yourself.
If you want help finding angles, you can use this prompt:
Help me find new angles on a common idea. The angles should come from my thinkers, interests, and life, not generic advice. If you don’t know enough about me, ask me first.
The idea: [the common idea]
-
Name the universal truth underneath it: the pain or desire my reader already feels.
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Give me 7 angles, each in 1 or 2 plain sentences, and name the lens for each. At least 2 from thinkers who shaped me, 2 from other fields, 1 from my own life, 1 that redefines the idea, and 1 that disagrees with the common view.
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Flag the strongest 2 and say why, using relatable, novel, and simple.
Tell me when an angle is weak. Don’t write the posts.
How to monetize your life’s work, surprisingly fast, with AI
This isn’t a course about content, but I think the section above gives you something to try. Have some fun with it.
But that’s only the content side. AKA how you would attract people to your work, and eventually get paid.
Now, your life’s work isn’t a static sentence you can articulate to others. You create it through experimentation and iteration, so I want to get you to a first iteration fast.
I’ll make this quick.
Products are exactly like content.
The products that do the best are based on what people are already signalling that they want + a problem you’ve solved in your own life.
In other words, when you research content and see what’s going viral, that is the best market research you could ever do.
If I talk about focus, productivity, and psychology, and notice a pattern that posts around “how to focus for 1 hour a day on your side business” are going somewhat viral, that’s an opportunity.
I could create a low-ticket paid community for people who want a 30-day challenge to “lock in” on their business with everyone else in the group, with a little focus tracker alongside it.
I already know that would do incredibly well, and since that topic is going viral, that means my own content around that topic is likely to do well. The biggest problem people face when trying to make money is not having an audience of people who could potentially buy it. You already have that solved, because you’re writing good content.
With that, I’ll leave you with a prompt to start building your first product. Again, in Eden or Eden connected to Claude. Eden hosts products, communities, and your email list - so it can help you build it out once you’ve decided on what product you want to build.
It’s a long prompt, so I’m not pasting it here. You can copy or duplicate here.
How to start your life’s work in the next 30 days
Quick recap.
Here’s how I’d put all of this into practice over the next month.
You can do this as fast or as slow as you want, I’m just listing it as weeks here, but you could do it all in a day.
Week 1: build your museum. Set up capture on your phone, make your list of 5 creators, and save one idea a day.
Week 2: find 3 mid-sized creators and reverse engineer their strategy. Write 5 angles on one idea a day and post the best ones.
Week 3: keep posting and pay attention to which posts get the most replies and questions.
Week 4: pick one question, make a one-page guide that answers it, and put it out as a free guide to collect emails, then build a a larger version with the product prompt.
Then, keep doing it for the next 12 months.
The influencer optimizes for attention. The personal brand optimizes for conversions. The artisan builds a body of work, one idea and one project at a time, and lets social media pay for it.
Thank you for reading.
– Dan
