How to Systemize & Monetize Your Personality
Your brand is multidimensional.
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Your understanding of content creation is wrong.
“You can’t talk about whatever you want”
“People run out of newsletter ideas fast”
“You need an industry as a creator”
“Creating content is difficult”
“Finding inspiration is hard”
All of these statements have one thing in common - they make use of the same system that most writers and creators are using.
The good news? This system is outdated.
It teaches you that you have to talk about only 1 thing forever. It teaches you that struggling to come up with writing ideas is normal. It teaches you that monetizing your personality as a writer is not possible. It teaches you that to run a business you need to do daily tasks you hate doing. It teaches you that sometimes you have to post social media content, even if you don’t want to, because you have to make money.
It sucks (I should know since I’ve been there), but there’s an escape.
Imagine waking up, and spending only 4 hours a day on your business. Imagine being excited for every single newsletter issue you write. Imagine having endless inspiration for articles and social media media content. Imagine writing what you want to write about, and monetizing that, instead of…
Writing what you HAVE to write about, in order to monetize.
Imagine sharing your unique perspective, and making a living from it. Imagine loving the process of finding and working with clients. Imagine developing products & services you are passionate about. Imagine enjoying your writing process, instead of dreading it. Imagine being able to turn 1 idea, into infinite ideas, effortlessly.
That’s how my content creation system works.
And the best part? Your content will be be unique, because this system allows you to systemize your personality.
And you can get there too, using my system: “Singular Ideation”.
This is the outcome of reading this article.
Ready? Then let’s begin.
Writing
This is the most important skill you can master as a creator or business owner. The words I’m typing right now, your X posts, your articles, your Whatsapp messages. They would not be possible if you could not write to some degree.
Your ability to write, affects the outcome of almost every scenario in life. And its no different when it comes to building your brand.
What I’m about to reveal to you will teach you how to build a brand by being yourself. I’ve discussed this before in my “Nicheless Creator” article.
But this time we’re doing a full deep dive on how I pull it off. And how you can too
No niche, no industry. Just you.
Before we begin let me make one thing clear - this system is great for time management, productivity, and pushing out volume. And you can do all of those things while never running out of inspiration, without picking a single industry or niche you have to focus on.
But you will need to adapt to change.
I’m not about to show you how to “hack the algorithm”. Your content will suck at the start, and that’s okay. If you’re going to use this system, your job is to adapt.
Learn how to read what’s working and what’s not working
Content structure, content lesson, headlines, and subheadings
Analyse everything, and take note of what’s performing well
This system does not teach you how to get hundreds of likes on your posts.
It Teaches You How To Ideate - How To Turn One Idea Into Infinite Content.
Let’s get started.
The 3 Fundamentals
That’s the name of my newsletter.
But where did it come from? It’s based on what everyone should strive for: to make a living by doing what you love, and working as little as possible.
“But Ian, that’s impossible”, and I’d say you’re right. Until I came up with this system.
Over the years I’ve consumed a lot of literature. Thousands of educational posts, hundreds of articles, and nearly $1000 in courses. And nothing works as well as this, for me personally.
Everyone is different, but most business owners sacrifice a part of themselves, so they can achieve success.
They end up doing something they hate, because they need it to succeed. I don’t believe in that system, because it’s outdated.
“The 3 Fundamentals” system, is based on your personality. The same 100 people can use this system, and not ONE of them will write the same articles or posts as me. Yes, I’m serious.
I spent 2 years building a personal brand that did close to $10,000 in revenue, but I was never more lost than I was at that point in life.
At first I was just doing everything I could to make money, but as time went by, I started hating the process of finding clients.
I hated the hundred of DMs I had to send
I hated that I picked the webdesign niche and couldn’t do anything else
I hated what I was doing, and the way I was supposed to make money
I believed my funnel was supposed to be based on X, but the more I studied some outliers, the more clarity I gained.
I realized that your brand is a combination of these 3 things:
Your Goal In The Next 5 Years
Your Personality
Your Interests
Your Brand Is Multidimensional
Your brand is not niche based, but vision based. Your vision for the future is what defines what direction your brand goes. And unlike a niche, you are multidimensional.
You have different interests, different opinions, different worldviews. And different skills as a result of those 3. Your brand is YOU, its cannot be niche based
Everyone is nicheless, they just don’t realise it - Ian Pierre
Defining YOUR 3 Fundamentals
Sit down with a piece of paper, and write down your top 3 interests right now. For me it was a Webdesign Business, Psychology, and Philosophy. The goal here, is to identify everything you’re interested in and create an umbrella that everything fits under.
After writing down these three things, you need to write down another 3 things.
Imagine for a second the original 3 things are subcategories. Now I want you to create the main categories, also in 3s. Let’s use mine as an example:
Webdesign Business → Business.
Psychology and Philosophy → Personal Development.
And the last Fundamental, is the first word in this article: writing.
As I mentioned before, writing is all encompassing. It can be used in almost every part of life, and it’s a vital part of human development.
Now I have my 3 pillars: Business, Personal Development, and Writing.
Take your time with this process, because it will define all content your produce.
Now what do you do? Do you see it?
The 3 we started with are subcategories. This means there are many more where those came from.
For example:
Business → Webdesign, Ads, Social Media, Courses
Personal Development → Psychology, Philosophy, Fitness
Writing → History, Mythology, Literature, Academics
Now let’s pick one from Business:
Social Media → X
X → Thread Headline Strategies
Now let’s pick one from Personal Development:
Fitness → Exercises
Exercises → How To Build 6 pack abs
Now let’s pick one from Writing:
History → The Roman Empire
The Roman Empire → Their indoctrination methods
Then you can break it down even further:
Thread Headline Strategies → Steal these 10 high conversion headlines
How To Build 6 pack abs → 1 Must Do Ab Exercise
Their indoctrination methods → How to use them to make more sales
How to use them to make more sales → 10 selling tips you can learn by studying the Roman Empire
Putting It Into Action
But before you start writing using this system, you need to solve the problems yourself. Assuming you picked your pillars correctly, the problems you solved for yourself will already be inside a subcategory.
Here’s What You Do:
Take your 3 MAIN pillars, and choose 1 subcategory. That’s what your newsletter topic will be. Recently I wrote an article called “Reaching Modern Enlightenment - Become A New World Philosopher”.
Using what we already know, this is what it looks like:
Personal Development → Philosophy → Personal Routine & Mortality Worldview
Then inside the newsletter, you break down this concept using the method I just showed you. When it comes to your newsletter, always follow one rule: some people have to say “yes”, and some people have to say “no”.
Make sure your newsletter article shares YOUR view, and that it’s educational. Some will not like what you’re writing because they disagree with it. That’s okay, you are writing to people who think like you. Who better to pay for your products or services, than some who thinks like you?
What matters the most is that you firmly believe what you are saying.
And you can only preach things, by solving the problem yourself, or actively trying to solve the problem yourself to a certain level based on your experience and knowledge.
Breaking Down My Process
Let’s look at my article again: “Reaching Modern Enlightenment - Become A New World Philosopher”.
The Problems:
Family members dying of illness due to a weak immune system
Family members passing away of old age
Family members taking their own life’s
All this stems from society living the wrong way
The solutions I am actively pursuing based on my experience and knowledge:
Lift weights and cold plunge to not die like family members from illness or old age
Keep track of my mental health by visiting the psychiatrist & therapist
Reject society’s false perception of the 9-5, and build a thriving business instead
Reject society’s outdated education system, and learn MY way
Notice how these things are all deep seated in my personality. It’s obvious from what you are reading that these are thought inside MY head.
So what does this mean? It means I have a lot of information at my disposal. Now it’s time to spread it over the internet.
Study Your Social Media Platform
Before you start repurposing content from your newsletter issue, you need to be aware of how content repurposing works. You can’t just copy & paste things to other platforms. You need to study what performs well on a platform CURRENTLY, then go from there.
X - Rewards short posts, storytelling, and now also 1 minute videos
Instagram - Rewards short quotes, storytelling using “stories”, and short videos
YouTube - Rewards someone speaking to the camera to educate or entertain
Spotify - Rewards educational and entertainment based audio
These are simplistic breakdowns, because as I said, the point of this article is not to give you a social media masterclass. Study your platform, because when you repurpose content, you need to change it based on what performs well on the platform.
Since I am personally working with X, I will give you my content strategy (it’s currently working, but still needs improvement). DO NOT just copy it, only learn from it.
Social media runs on 3 things, and this is especially true for X posts:
Entertainment
Education
Inspiration
You must’ve heard these words before. So what I do is go to my newsletter issue, and based on those 3 things, condense the ideas inside my newsletter by reading through it. I read a few sentences, then if there’s an idea to condense, I do it.
Then I ask myself, “Does it entertain, educate, or inspire?”
If the answer is yes, I like to use this format:
Condensed thought - 10:00
Condensed thought - 12:00
Niche Based Tip - 14:00
Now I know what you’re thinking, “what is a niche based tip?”. Since you don’t have niche, your products or services have niches, and your niche based tip comes from your current projects.
A project is a solution you are working on productizing or turning into a service. This represents a problem you have already solved to an extent, so you use this Niche Based Tip, to establish yourself as an authority ON that niche.
IMPORTANT: You can have many niches and products or services based on those niches.. But you should only have 3-5 projects you are working on at a time.
Condensed thought - 16:00
Condensed story based thought - 18:00
That’s 5 posts a day, and I schedule it for 5 days of the week. Currently, I create content manually for Saturday and Sunday.
Schedulers you can use: Tweetdeck, Tweethunter, and Hypefury
While I develop my strategy, this will most likely change with time. And that’s only one platform.
If you follow this process for multiple platforms, you can create over 38 pieces of content, and you can even create an entire months worth of content without running out of ideas.
Using this system is the same as using a muscle. It’s going to be difficult at the start, and you will have to perfect it using your own judgement, but with enough time, you will turn it into your own.
A quick note: this week I created the most content I’ve ever created in a few hours.
The newsletter issue (longform)
a 10 min YouTube Video - Repurposed from Newsletter issue (longform)
a 10 min podcast - Repurposed from Newsletter issue (longform)
35 X posts for the whole week - Repurposed from Newsletter (shortform)
And next week I’m continuing with my Instagram posts as well (short form). Eventually I can use this system to create more than 100 pieces of content a week.
Again, do not steal my content strategy, instead find one that works for you. The point of this article is to teach you how to build a brand around yourself by only using your personality, interests, and skills as a result of those interests.
Your brand is multidimensional. Your interests will change, your goals will change, and your skillset will grow. Your products will improve more and more, and the services you’re offering will improve more and more. This is part of the process.
Services and Dead Projects
And now you might be thinking, “But what happens with the products & services I eventually stop offering to my audience because I moved on to other things?”
That’s where your service offer comes in. For example, what if these are your “abandoned” projects which also had products or services:
AI automation
Email Marketing
Podcasting
Networking
Selling On Phonecalls
So you’re no longer developing products or services for these, so here’s what happens.
Number 1: Your Newsletter Is Evergreen
Unlike regular emails, a newsletter issue can also function as a blog post, which also functions as a landing page.
Now all you have to do is promote your articles on the timeline under well-performing posts (promotion method depends on the platform), and you will be sending people to static pages where they can see all your teachings, and when they get to the bottom of the page, there it is: YOUR OFFER.
Think about it - if you got to the end of this article and I told you about a 45-minute video course showing you how I do everything in this article, step by step, do you think out of 100 people seeing it, no one will buy it?
What about 1000 people? What about 10,000 people?
The sales will increase more and more the bigger the number is. Meaning, your products will keep selling forever and ever. All you need is traffic.
Number 2: Consulting and Coaching
At the bottom of that list was “Selling On Phonecalls”.
If this person says they’ve sold $100,000 worth of products over the phone and you’re trying to sell a product over the phone, would you jump on that call? Yes you would.
In fact, you probably wouldn’t mind paying them money to jump on a call with you.
Now imagine that same person who achieved that with phonecalls also built 10 sales funnels that did a combined revenue of $80,000.
Would you pay them money to consult you on building your Sales Funnel? Yes you would. And the list goes on and on and on, until one day, when you say something, everyone just listens.
Do this long enough, and you will become THE authority. In other words, the products and services you sold to people after solving problems allow you to stack one thing: LEVERAGE.
Then next time someone wants to jump on a call with you, you show them all your case studies, all your testimonials, all your achievements, and suddenly the value of your service goes up.
You become irreplaceable.
And if you were wondering what main fundamental this article was based off, it’s all three: Business, Personal Development, and Writing.
In conclusion, I’ll leave you with these words:
Systemize & Monetize Your Personality.
Thanks Ian!
👇 What are your 3 fundamentals? Tell us below!
Coming right up
On Thursday, I’ll be talking to paid subscribers about how to fortify your mindset against rejection as a writer. Super important.
And of course, at the weekend you can settle down with Saturday Morning Coffee Edition #8. ☕
A little something extra
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Thanks team. Interesting read.
David and Ian - excellent clear post with great fundamentals - thank you!