how to build a better personal brand than 99% of people

the trust matrix

What most people don't understand is that a "personal brand" isn't a business model. It's a traffic source. It's a trust mechanism. Founders build a personal brand to get users for their startup. Ecommerce brands use UGC to sell physical products. You can quite literally sell anything – from bags of coffee to nudes – if you have a trustworthy personal brand.

I never thought I was going to have a personal brand.

Back in 2016 or so, I wanted to be a fitness YouTuber.

My college friend and I filmed eating challenges, workouts, and talking head videos with minimal success. I really wish I hadn't deleted those videos, but they were embarrassing to say the least.

That wasn't the end though.

Next, I became obsessed with photography, editing, and digital art.

That's technically when "thedankoe" (my username) was born. I was a lifeguard during the summer in between college semesters. I was thinking about starting an instagram to post my photos, and my coworkers helped me brainstorm the name.

I gained some followers, but eventually burned out because I couldn't keep slamming stimulants and taking Adderall to make sure that I got one image out each day.

So that failed.

But I really, really didn't want to get a job when I graduated college. I never figured out what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I did figure out that I didn't want to live like most people – stressed, emotionally reactive, unhealthy.

I tried building 3 e-commerce brands. One minimalist wallets, one blue light glasses, and one that drop-shipped rave clothing. I also tried a few short-lived ventures like an SEO agency and Facebook Ads agency that I learned from courses I purchased.

This timeline is all a bit blurry to me since so much happened all in the course of a few years, but I was also learning to code as a fallback. I'd taken an intro programming class in college, enjoyed it, and figured that could be my safeguard if I did have to get a job.

By this point, I had maxed out my first credit card, was $8000 in debt (which is a LOT for a broke college kid living with 7 other guys to keep our rent low), was working part time at a print shop, and none of my businesses worked out.

Why Personal Branding Saved My Life

I ended up getting a job.

The thing I had sworn I would never do.

It was at a web design agency in Arizona.

But thankfully, I discovered the reality of most office jobs pretty quickly. I could put all of my work off until the last minute, copy paste website templates, change the colors, images, etc, and get my work done at a decent level of quality while flying under the radar. I'm a terrible employee.

I knew that if I stayed in that job for too long, I'd get comfortable. Then the wife, mortgage, and everything else would pile drive me into a pit of time-and-money-sucking responsibilities. It would only get harder and harder to escape.

So I spent the first few hours of every day at my job trying to freelance with web design.

To keep this brief, it worked, and I was able to quit a year after, but little did I realize I'd built myself into a new 9 to 5 of reaching out to clients and working on projects that I didn't give a fuck about.

That's when the power of social media made itself known to me:

• People were just posting about their knowledge and interests, and I felt like I could write similar to what they posted

• They didn't have to constantly reach out to clients because their content attracted them

• I saw web designers selling digital products that required zero effort (beyond creating the product) to make money

It checked all the boxes.

But I'd already tried that…

My fitness YouTube failed catastrophically. I was building some kind of an audience with digital art, but I had no idea how to turn that into a sustainable income source.

Either way, I had learned so much from my business failures that I felt I could make it work.

And as you can tell, I did.

Build A Better Personal Brand Than 99% Of People

Artist are, by definition, authentic. Entrepreneurs are authentic, too. Who’s going to be Elon Musk? Who’s going to be Jack Dorsey? These people are authentic, and the businesses and products they create are authentic to their desires and means.

Escape Competition Through Authenticity – Naval

Let's speed this up a bit.

You're here because you have interests or skills that you want to turn into a future-proof income source.

But you don't want to become a hollow shell of a human being.

You don't want to be put into a box.

You don't want to build yourself into another 9-5.

I want to get down to the highest impact things you could be doing.

The things that most beginners either don't know about or glance over.

If you solely focus on these, I promise you will not end up like those who quit because they couldn't get results.

Forget about your niche for now.

Forget about your bio and banner and all of that stuff.

It's important, but there are plenty of people with no bio and a blank profile picture doing just fine.

Your content, and the quality of ideas you post over a long enough time period are what create a brand that people can't help but trust.

That's your entire business strategy.

Trust.

Money is a measure of trust.

I'm going to teach you what I call The Trust Matrix:

• Growth – doing "what works" to attract people.

• Authenticity – expressing your core beliefs.

• Authority – displaying your expertise.

There have been spinoffs of this framework since I first talked about it in 2020, but I've refined it to give you even more clarity than before.

If you can nail those 3 things, your brand will be undeniable.

After, we'll talk about how to turn that brand foundation into an easier way to generate an income.

Growth – Build Your Idea To Execution Muscle

A pattern I've noticed in successful creators:

The moment they notice an idea at the intersection of performance and excitement, they drop anything they were doing and write it down.

These ideas typically come to them on a walk, while listening to an audiobook or video, while reading a book or "heavy" content (not brainrot social posts), or while having a conversation with others.

There are 2 pieces there.

• Performance – they understand how to articulate ideas in an engaging way. The ideas have the potential to "do well."

• Excitement – they have a genuine interest in understanding the idea or articulating it in their own way. They see their brand as a collection of notes of these ideas.

Everything becomes a source of ideas when you know how to articulate an idea in an engaging way and when you want to write about it.

The reason most people struggle to come up with ideas worth writing about are those two reasons. Their mind isn't trained to be articulate, and they don't consume information at the edge of their understanding.

The single most beneficial thing you can do for your growth is to use high-performing post structures as training wheels for your articulation.

• Pull out a notebook or open a note-taking app

• Write down 5-10 writers, thinkers, or creators who you admire for their articulation

• Spend 1 hour a day for the next week scrolling through their social accounts

• Find their anomalies – the posts that have at least 2x the engagement as their other posts

• Screenshot them or write them down in your note-taking app

You are not reading the ideas as a consumer, you are studying them like a scientist.

When you have at least 20-30 posts that represent the articulation you want to adopt, break down why these posts work so well.

Write down 3-5 bullet points for each post as to why it captures attention, why people engage with it, what psychological tactics they are using, and more.

Even better, use this prompt:

Do a comprehensive analysis on this social post. The overall idea, how the sentences are structured, and choice of words. Analyze why people engage with it, why it works so well, what psychological tactics are being used, and how I can replicate this style step-by-step with my own ideas.

[past the social post]

In a nutshell, you are dissecting why already validated ideas have done well. When you practice writing in a way that stops the scroll and nearly demands readers to absorb the idea, growth is a byproduct.

Authenticity – Core Beliefs Attract The Right People

So far, and with practice, you know how to turn any idea into a social post people can't ignore.

But people don't follow ideas, they follow people who share ideas.

Two people can write the same thing and people will perceive that post in drastically different ways.

Take James Clear vs a random guy off the street.

They both tweet, "Habits are good for you."

Tens of millions of people know who James Clear is. They know his story. They've read his book on habits. They have a deep yet indirect relationship with him.

Most people who read the tweet from James Clear will like and repost simply because they agree. The fact that James is saying it brings his other ideas along with that post.

But if a random guy posted something that simple, people would either ignore it or comment, "Yeah, no shit."

There are 3 things here:

• Time under attention – The more attention people give you, especially in long form content like articles, books, and videos, the more they perceive your posts through the rest of your ideas.

• Alignment of values – When people know who you are, where you came from, and what you stand for, they form a deeper relationship with your ideas as a whole.

• Authentic polarization – "If you're liked by everybody, you're liked by nobody." You need to give people reasons to heavily disagree and thus heavily agree with you. This is the difficult part of putting yourself out there.

This doesn't need much explanation.

You can directly observe that you feel a stronger connection with creators whose story and core beliefs you resonate with. If you were presented with a product to purchase from a random brand and a similar product from the creator you love, you would probably choose the creator's.

How do we replicate this in our own brand?

We need to illustrate our story and core beliefs often in our content, both as content topics and as ways of reframing ideas.

As a content topic, I could talk about how I failed at 7 different business models.

As a way of reframing an idea, I could talk about how to build a personal brand (validated and has high potential) and make that topic unique to me by starting with my story. That's exactly what I did at the top of this letter.

In terms of my core beliefs as a topic, I could talk about how I believe digital products are the best way for beginners to start. I could also reframe classic product development ideas through the lens of being a creator.

To do this well:

• Write out where you were, what sparked change, and where you are now

• For each topic or theme you talk about, list out core principles that you hold with conviction

This is difficult to do while just sitting and staring at a blank screen, so we can use the help of AI to help us.

I created a "Story & Core Belief Extractor" prompt that interviews you, helps you brainstorm, and spits out a draft with exactly what you need.

Save this prompt to use it after finishing this letter here.

That prompt is a part of the build a profitable personal brand in 30 days challenge that starts June 16th if you're interested in more.

Authority – Persuasive Education Changes Behavior

Most creators build education businesses.

They teach their skills and interests.

Of course, you can try to be the next big celebrity or OnlyFans model, but remember we're aiming for some form of positive impact and meaningful work.

The thing is, there are so many creators who already teach what you want to teach. You can search any skill on YouTube and find a ton of videos on any topic.

That's what trips up most beginners. They don't believe that people have a reason to follow them. Why would they learn from you when there are already plenty of people to learn from?

There are 2 solutions here.

1) Teach through a new lens

Same as before.

I can teach personal branding in this letter from a new lens by starting with my own personal story.

Another way I like to do this is by reframing through a novel idea.

If I am consistently researching and consuming information from people with great ideas, eventually one will pop up like Naval's "ideas are the new oil" and "this generation is getting rich in idea space not physical space." (This is why it’s important to surround yourself with great thinkers).

Then, I can introduce the topic of a personal brand through that idea, and it's much more compelling.

2) Persuade the non-interested

I sound like I'm beating a dead horse after talking about this in the last few letters, but it is so important to internalize:

Most people on social media aren't intentionally trying to learn. If they were, they would physically search for a video, course, or article on the topic. And, you are being spread to random people on social media. You don't control who sees your content by typing in their interests and demographics into something like Facebook ads.

So, you need to frame your ideas as broad and desirable.

If I want to talk about personal branding, I don't go straight into giving people instructions on how to pick their topics or create a bio. That's boring. It won't get enough reach to spread to a new audience.

I start with some permutation of "if you want" (desire) or "if you don't want" (pain point), then most people at least have a chance at becoming interested in what I have to say.

As an example:

If you hate the thought of building someone else's dreams for the rest of your life, start a personal brand.

I could then go on to list the benefits of starting one, how low-risk it can be, and how you can sell almost anything from digital products to software to physical products.

Mastering curiosity and desire by focusing on pain points, desires, and benefits in your content is how you help people become interested in your interests.

The Best Way To Monetize

The best way to monetize is any way.

They literally all work.

Ebooks, templates, cohorts, coaching, paid newsletters, sponsorships…

What most people don't understand is that a "personal brand" isn't a business. It's a traffic source. Founders build a personal brand to get users for their startup. Ecommerce brands use UGC to sell physical products. You can quite literally sell anything – from bags of coffee to nudes – if you have a trustworthy personal brand.

Those without a personal brand need to build trust fast or leverage deeper psychological tactics in the form of direct response marketing to secure the sale. They need to go from ad to conversion as fast as possible. That opens up room for potentially unethical tactics and a sole focus on making quick money.

Since we are building a personal brand according to The Trust Matrix from before, you're in a very good spot.

I could list out the pros and cons of each type of product you could build, but instead I'll say this:

Your first product should take no longer than a week to build.

Because you probably already have a product lying around.

As an example, John Hu from Stan (a creator store that replaces your link in bio and hosts products) found his old resume that got him a Goldman Sachs job and turned that into a template. He made his first few thousand from that alone while talking about career advice. (Oh yeah, for any developers in Toronto out there, we’re hosting a Stan x Kortex hackathon with $15,000 in prizes. The goal is to build a creator tool that allows people to work for themselves. Apply here if interested, or send to someone you know!)

You could:

• Record a 30-60 minute training on how to do one impactful thing

• Find an old asset that allowed you to get a desirable result and turn it into a template

• Take a social post that's received good reception and turn it into a short guide of template

We aren't trying to make the big bucks here.

We're trying to validate an idea that is worth paying for.

Start by charging something like $10.

If you're conversion rate is over 2.5% or so, then consider turning it into a more fleshed out product. That way, you don't waste your time building something that people may not want.

It really can be that simple.

I'll leave it there since I've already posted a mega guide to building a digital product.

– Dan

When you're ready, here's how I can help you:

• The build a profitable personal brand in 30 days challenge starts June 16. Enroll before then if you want daily tasks that take 30-60 minutes, resulting in the foundations of work you enjoy.

• Kortex is a note-taking and writing app paired with 25+ AI workflows (for content, marketing, and planning). Chat with YT transcripts and PDFs when you sign up.