Good morning. Right now, the best personal brands in the world are doing something that you are not. And it has something to do with your favorite movies, books, and TV shows. But today, I wanna apply it to educational content. And over seventeen years in building personal brands,
I have never heard anyone talk about this. Let's discuss what this is, why it is so powerful for your personal brand, and then I wanna walk you through these seven elements that I have for you to build a world that your audience never wants to leave.
And to start out, I wanna look at the entertainment world. I want you to think through some of your favorite franchises.
We've got Lord of the Rings, Star Wars,
Dune,
Marvel films. Let's look at Lord of the Rings for example. Uh, I wanna call out three different elements that make up this incredible in-depth world that Tolkien built. Now real quick, a caveat that I have to add is this is obviously very reductive. Tolkien did a lot. I mean, he spent years building an entire language. Okay? I'm just calling out three basic elements that have made up this incredible world that he has invited us into. You've got characters, settings, and magic. Characters, you got like Frodo and Samwise Gamgee. Right? You have Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, the the Three Stooges as I like to think of them. You've got all these amazing characters that make up this world. And then we have the settings.
We're in Middle Earth, but then within Middle Earth, we have the Shire. We have Minas Tirith. We have Mordor where we're taking the ring. And then we also have magic. Right? There's different elements of magic within this world that Tolkien built. You have all of these wizards.
Right? We have Gandalf.
We have Saruman.
We have Radagast, the the crazy homie running around with all his little woodland creatures. There's also other magic that makes up this world. We have the fact that elves live forever. We've got the one ring to rule them all. There's a lot of different elements
that make up this incredible world of Lord of the Rings. And the cool thing about these franchises,
these worlds,
is once you enter them, when you reenter,
when you go to rewatch or reenter that world,
you enter
with context and understanding
of the world that you are entering.
This is world building. We understand that there is this one ring to rule them all that gives unbelievable
amounts of power but comes at an extreme cost. If we were to take Spider Man in the Marvel world as an example, we understand that the backstory involves being bitten by a radioactive
spider
and then having a tragic
incident occur with his uncle Ben. This is context and understanding
that we have when we enter
this world that they are building for us. We're not just watching these movies, we are living in a world that they have created.
Now, why am I talking about the fiction and entertainment world if my normal subject matter and my subject matter expertise
is around educational content? Well, it's because world building is something that does apply to building a personal brand in the education space.
It's just executed
much differently. It doesn't look the exact same. It's still about building a world that your audience can live in, but it's more about developing
your own language and concepts,
your shared definition of terms.
It's about the characters that you're going to feature and have recurring in your content. It's about figuring out what are the setting that your content and your personal brand are taking place in.
It's being open about your weaknesses and vulnerabilities
that make you more human. And when you do this well, your audience isn't just consuming
your content. They start thinking in your frameworks.
They start using your terms in their own content,
and they end up feeling more like citizens of your world rather than casual viewers
in your audience. This ends up creating loyalty not just to the content that you're making,
but actually loyalty to how you see the world. Now, a question that you're probably wondering is, why have I never heard of world building within this context of personal branding?
I tend to believe that it is because most strategists and gurus
make a hard sprint to go straight to the content strategy phase. They wanna go straight to the amplification phase of this personal brand, but I'd be willing to bet that the majority of them, when they're doing this, have very little understanding
of what this personal brand stands for, what makes it different, why this person is worth listening to, and they've never done the work of constructing what this world will look like that they're going to invite the audience into. They fall into the trap of believing that the most important thing or the only thing that they should be focusing on is sharing useful information. Useful information is super valuable. I love doing my best to share useful information with you guys. But if you're just providing information and that's it,
I believe there is a lot that you are leaving on the table because I believe your expertise
does earn you trust. It really does. Uh, we we have to be an expert or have credibility
on something in order for people to wanna listen to us. But I believe it takes far more than just expertise
to create long term brand loyalty. Some of the elements that create loyalty and a close connection are shared language or shared ways of viewing the world
or concepts
that are named that we can actually take with us. And I wanna make a bet here that
probably,
more than likely, your favorite educator or expert online
has actually done this. Whether it was intentional or not, they have probably
named some concepts
and frameworks
that you reference in your everyday life or even in the content that you're producing. They've probably redefined terms in a way that is actually useful and operational for you that has changed the way that you actually act, the way that you operate in your daily life. A lot of them have built a cast of recurring characters and settings
and references
that start feeling familiar the more that you watch it. I'm sure some of you who are more regular, uh, audience members here have noticed that I reference my content director Trevor Odom a
lot in my content. We're building him up as a recurring character in this world that we are building to invite you into. And so over time, the more that you hear me reference Trevor,
I'm noticing that people are starting to DM me asking about Trevor or making jokes in the comments referencing how Trevor was holding a camera for probably eleven, twelve hours straight while we're walking through London. This starts to add familiarity
and almost like a a nostalgic element to the world that we are building. This is world building.
But just like there's a ton of different elements that make up this world that we're living in here on earth, the same is true for your personal brand. There's many different elements that you can incorporate
into building the world around your personal brand. And right now, I wanna walk you through or cover
seven of these elements.
And the first one is one of the most powerful elements in all of world building within the educational space,
and it's naming your concepts.
This is a very, very powerful one that as soon as I explain it, I don't think you'll ever be able to unsee this, uh, in the real world when you're going out and consuming content from different individuals. This is where you're taking something
that you're already teaching. Maybe you're teaching it to your customers, your clients,
maybe it's something that you're sharing in your community,
or maybe not with anybody external, but it's internal. Maybe you're sharing it with your team, whether it's your company or your department. This is a concept, a framework, a playbook that you're already teaching,
not something that you're making up on the spot, but something that you're already teaching that you can give a name to to make it easier for people to take with them. This is something that I'm doing constantly.
I have the brand journey framework. I have the credibility bank, the seventy twenty ten framework. These aren't random things that I just came up with. These were things that I was already teaching.
I just wanted to give them a name to make it easier for the audience, for you, the viewer, to be able to take it with you. The the goal is to pass the three r's. I want it to be easy to remember, repeat, and reference in the future. I believe a name makes it a lot easier to reference and use in conversations
and in, ideally,
other people's content
that they are producing, and they can actually spread your message
on your behalf.
Think of all the frameworks and concepts that you use right now, okay, and you know the name of that you've got or learned from one of your favorite, uh, educators or experts online.
Now that you see this, you won't be able to unsee it. It's everywhere.
And I would encourage you to take the time. Don't just be lazy about it and just declare or walk through the framework. You need to name these things to make it easier for your audience to take it with them. Now before we go into
the element number two of redefining terms, okay, and this is a really powerful one that I think is gonna blow your mind and again, it's gonna be another one that it's like, oh my god, I can't unsee this anymore. Before we go into that, I just wanna make you aware,
I actually run a world building workshop. We're taking all of these seven elements. We have an entire workbook that I walk you through and guide you through in order to take these elements that you're learning about and use them to actually construct this world that you invite your audience into. If you've consumed any of our content, you've probably seen that we make these really robust in-depth workbooks.
If you've ever gotten value from that, I think this workshop will blow you the fuck away. And so if you want more details, can click the link in the description below. Now,
let's go on to element number
two.
Another powerful element that solves a really big pain point for people is redefined
terms. Every industry, every space, every niche has these vague terms that are widely used,
but nobody really knows what it means. I'm sure you can think of several within your space. Right? When you take those widely
used terms and often misunderstood terms and you actually provide a clear useful definition,
you create a lens,
a filter, or a way of seeing the world for your audience
that then is tied back to your personal brand. For example, I've done this with branding and brand. I define branding as the pairing of things, good branding as an intentional pairing of relevant things done consistently,
which then creates the byproduct brand when the audience inherently associates the two things together. I took a term or two terms that are often used. People talk about branding and brand all the time and have been for years
but everyone has defined it in this very pie in the sky, amorphous,
ethereal, vague way. They've talked about how it's feelings, colors,
typefaces,
logos,
fonts, all these things. Right? And what we did is actually gave people a useful definition. What I mean by useful definition or operational definition
is the definition
gives you the actions that you need to take in order to get the outcome you desire. It created a new way for everyone who has heard me share that to view
branding and what they need to do in order to do branding.
And then when they are doing that or thinking about that,
a lot of people then are able to associate.
There's that pairing. That association is linked to the brand that we're building. This is one of the elements in this world that we are constructing for you. These are definitions that provide clarity on what you do. These are operational definitions. And when you redefine a term in a useful way, your audience starts using your definition. One, they start actually taking action on what you're sharing. But two, a lot of times, they will start making their own content referencing
your redefined term and what it actually means and what it looks like to take actual action. This is a massive competitive mode that you can establish
for extreme differentiation in your space. This puts you on a completely different tier and in a wildly different category than the majority of your peers or competitors.
Now, I'm honestly a little afraid to admit this, but I think I'm man enough to share it. I have been
scared to make content without wearing a hat, but I wanted to provide you a meta demonstration of this next element,
which is sharing your weaknesses or vulnerabilities.
In the fiction world, a character becomes far more relatable,
compelling,
and even more human
when they have a clearly understood
weakness
or insecurity
that they are dealing with. I believe the same is true outside of the fiction world and is incredibly important in the personal brand education space and the world that we're trying to construct that we invite our audience into. Many of your favorite personal brands online actually do this. They have shared a vulnerable moment or a weakness that they have with you, the audience, and a lot of them, that is one of the biggest reasons why they have such a strong and loyal audience.
People that are invested in them that can relate to them because they're not the one who's posturing and pretending that everything's perfect and everything's just dandy
and all perfection
all the time. Nobody trusts that individual. In the same way that you don't trust that individual in your everyday real life,
we're not gonna trust that person online. I wanna walk you through what a weakness looks like. I believe that it is one of three things And at a high level, it's either a flaw, a limitation, or a cost. Let me walk you through what each one of these look like. A flaw is something that you can
change. Okay? So one example here that I have is anxiety
around being on camera. I'm feeling a little anxious being on camera more so than I did maybe two minutes ago. Right?
Sharing and being a little bit more vulnerable with you guys. But what's really cool is you can change this. Okay? Maybe you are anxious showing up on camera,
but by doing it for
weeks and months
over and over and over again, we can actually become comfortable
and confident in doing it by taking the action. The second is a limitation.
A limitation is something that you can't change. You cannot change it, but you can adapt to. A really great example that I've actually seen a lot of different creators
mention
and leverage within their personal brand and the world they're building is maybe you have extreme ADHD.
And for your whole life, that's been viewed as a weakness. Maybe it's been labeled as a weakness by doctors, by family members, friends, teachers, whatever. Right? Bosses that you've had. But you're actually over time, maybe you're able to harness
this perceived weakness into your greatest strength, and you actually use that ADHD
to fuel the way that you operate and run your business or your department or the way that you pursue the passion or hobby that you have. A limitation is something that you can't change but can work around or adapt to. And the third one here is cost. And I would argue for at least me, this is the most interesting one. A cost is what your choices, the choices that you have made, require you to give up. In the fiction world, sometimes what this looks like is a character has unlimited magical powers.
Unlimited. They can do anything they want except for the fact that anytime they use those magical powers, one of their family members dies.
Okay? That's an extreme version of this obviously. The way this plays out in the real world is maybe you are an athlete who is completely obsessed with becoming the best in the world at your sport. You're trying to compete in the Olympics and win a gold medal. And so everything in your life revolves around
obsession
over improving your craft, improving your sport. But because of that obsession,
maybe the cost is that you don't spend time with your friends and family.
So you don't have relationship.
The cost of your obsession and the pursuit of greatness is the lack of relationship.
I've seen this with athletes, but also there's many entrepreneurs who make content online that talk about this, and this is something that you and your audience can hold in
common. This is something that not only you experience, but they also experience and can relate to on a really deep emotional level. We end up connecting more deeply with people who have real weaknesses.
We trust them more and oftentimes, we end up rooting for them more than the person who's pretending or posturing
like everything's perfect online. Vulnerability that is real,
not contrived. I'm not talking about, uh, when you fake cry on camera. I'm talking about real vulnerability
That creates deeper trust and loyalty
than any sort of perfect personal brand ever will. Now of course, every great world has characters and settings or places.
And in fictional worlds, a lot of times the characters are either the hero or the villain, the antagonist or protagonist. Right? Like, we've got Batman, we've got Saruman, we've got Sauron,
Uncle Ben,
we have Samwise Gamgee,
and then pulling out a left field here, one of my favorites, we have the wicked stepmother from the Cinderella story, which was one of my favorites growing up. Locations
are where the story now is occurring.
So we have the characters in the story, but then the locations are where this is taking place. Think like I referenced earlier, Middle Earth or Tatooine.
We also have my personal favorite. I'm a big Batman guy. I love Gotham. I think Gotham is an epic setting or environment
that that Batman world, that Batman universe takes place in. And And I think the the same thing here can happen with your personal brand. Let's take Gary Vee as an example. He had a hit series on YouTube called Daily Vee, was his daily vlog show, which is absolutely insane that he was able to do that for so long. But within that series, he established
this recurring cast of characters that we started to get attached to. I'm talking D Rock, Babin, Mike Boyd, his brother AJ, Claude, the chief heart officer at Vayner, Andrea,
James, all these different amazing characters that would show up throughout the many different years
that this show took place. And these weren't just random people,
they were elements
of Gary's real life that he brought in to the content to help establish the world that he invited us into. And what's really cool about this is a lot of times, we get attached to the main character, of course, but we can find ourselves actually getting attached to one of these side
or additional characters. Think about another example within the entertainment world, uh, a show that I've recently started rewatching for probably the fifth or sixth time, The Office.
A lot of us, we love Michael Scott. He's a hilarious character. But I would argue if you've watched The Office, the majority of you probably have an additional favorite character. Maybe it's Dwight, maybe it's Pam, maybe it's Jim, maybe it's Daryl. Think and flicker. There's so many different options. Right? But we don't just get attached to the main character, we actually find ourselves becoming attached to these side characters. There's so many different things and ways that you can borrow this strategy from the entertainment world in order to create more loyalty, more depth, more connection with your audience. A lot of people, when they're just featuring themselves
in this world, they're their only character, it's a pretty one dimensional flat world.
But by adding more characters
and settings
intentionally into this world, you are building one that has dimension and depth. Now this is something that I encourage you to actually be more intentional
than accidental about. I love some happy accidents. I love some Bob Rossin happy little accidents,
but in this case, I want you to be intentional about the characters
and settings that you are going to feature within this world you're building. And just a quick reminder here, I have exercises,
a whole entire workbook that walks you through how to use and leverage these seven elements that we're walking through to build a world that your audience never wants to leave. If you want more information on how you can attend that workshop,
go ahead and click the link in the description down below and let's get on to the next element.
This next element is actually based off of a concept that I teach called interest stacking.
We're talking about your hobbies, interests, and values here. And I want you to think about some of the relationships in your life.
If you were to label someone, think about like the acquaintance in your life, right? You wouldn't call them a friend, they're more of an acquaintance.
Why are they an acquaintance? Well, more than likely because you only have maybe one thing in common with them, okay? But as you begin
stacking
these interests, these values, these hobbies in common with people, they move closer to you on the relationship sphere. I would argue if you were to then look at maybe a friend, not your best friend, but a friend that you have, you probably have multiple things stacked
in common with them. And if you look at your best friend or your spouse,
you probably have a lot in common with them. I believe
that it works the same way in building your audience
and establishing the world that they're going to enter. You want to give as many opportunities
for your audience
to get closer
and feel more connected with you, not less. For example, people here in my audience who are regularly watching the content, if you're newer here, maybe this isn't the case, but the regular viewers know that I am obsessed
with my Harley Davidsons and I'm incapable
of making a single piece of content without ever referencing them. I always have to include it. Or the fact that I love dancing at hardcore shows and metal shows and getting punched in the face in the pit.
Or the bigger fact that this year, I lost my shit when the Seahawks won the Super Bowl because I am a massive Seahawks fan. Or on top of that, I love trash TV. The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives this year was an incredibly scandalous and dramatic show, and I love that shit, and a lot of the audience understands and knows that, and I tend to believe that if you are interested in growing your personal brand, you're gonna be interested
and like my shit.
But if you are into any of those things or many of the other things that I mentioned in my content, if we have more in common, if we've stacked more interests, more hobbies, more values in common with each other, you're probably gonna be really into the content that we're producing because we're not only helping you solve problems,
but we also have things in common, and so we get closer
on the relationship sphere. And so in order for this to happen, you have to actually share these elements. Okay? If you never share them, then no one's gonna know that they have it in common with you. And so you wanna identify the things that are outside of your expertise
that make you
you. And by sharing these, you give your audience more at bats, more opportunities
to connect with you on a deeper level, to build that loyalty that exists outside of your expertise.
Now, every world has its lore or its legends.
These are the stories that are passed down and shared that inform
how the world is the way it is now. How we've gotten to the point that we are at now. And in your personal brand, the lore or these legends
are the stories of your successes
and your failures
paired with the lessons that your audience can actually use to get the outcome that they're looking for, to get the outcome ideally that you just achieved. And we're not just telling these stories for shits and giggles and for the fun of it. When I share the story about someone who I worked with who was chasing views and started making much wider content aiming to go viral on every single piece and views and subscribers were going up, but at the same time the fact that sales were actually going down,
that is something where I explain
the problem that occurred, the mistake we made, and the lesson that I learned. And I believe what that produces as a byproduct for the audience watching is two different learnings. One, they're learning from the actual lesson. They're like, okay, cool. I'm gonna do my best to avoid making the mistake that Caleb made so that I don't have to repeat that and learn the painful way. But the really cool part that a lot of people don't think about is number two,
they're learning about my experience and expertise within this field. Your learnings and your expertise doesn't just come from w's. It doesn't just come from everything going perfect. It comes from failures, scars,
fuck ups that you've had along the way that allow you to learn
and not make that mistake again. Sometimes these are the most heavily convicted points that we can share in our content because it still maybe stings a little bit. Right? This is where we're not just sharing the highlight reel, we're sharing the highs and the lows. And this actually comes from an exercise that we like to walk a lot of our clients through, which is establishing your credibility bank. This is where you're gonna store
all of these legends or stories
that you are going to share with your audience to help build more credibility
as to why they should listen to you on this subject matter. Now you've most likely heard this
strategy in brand building called
identify your common enemy.
It's often in reference to the fact that humans tend to bond more over the shared hatred of something versus the shared love of something. I'm not gonna make any sort of value or moral claim on that, it just is what it is. And so far, this is checking out. It makes sense. It's a really good strategy. In my opinion, where this whole
common enemy strategy falls apart is when people make their common enemy a specific person or company.
Don't get me wrong, there are times where that is required. Right? There are several different, uh, scenarios where this is valid. But for 99.9%
of you watching this, this is not the case for you. And I would encourage you to avoid this at all cost. This puts you into the category that we like to call the call out creator. It's not being a contrarian creator, it's a call out creator.
And I don't think this ends up helping you in the long run. In the short term, it might be a fast sprint to growth, but in the long run, this will end up hurting you more than helping you. Instead of being that call out creator and identifying specific companies or individuals,
we like to take the contrarian take approach. This is a concept that I teach a lot that I reference at the top of this video that we like to identify what is your contrarian
take. Right? And then we want to convert that into your common enemy with your audience. See, your common enemy is just your contrarian
take
framed a little differently. It's framed as the thing that stands in between
your audience
and them accomplishing
their desired outcome. For me, when I came out of the gate and decided to start making content and being public online, the contrarian take that I identified is that I believe that the majority of
business owners
making or building their personal brand to impact their business should optimize for trust, not virality.
That was my contrarian take. And then I quickly defined
going viral or optimizing
for virality
purely as the only optimization metric
as the common enemy
that myself and my audience can participate
and share in. And the cool thing is is when you clearly name a common enemy, your audience understands two things. They understand where you fall, what your belief is, and where you actually stand, but also anyone who shares in that frustration will actually end up self selecting into your world.
The people who do agree, who do view that as an enemy, they're gonna join you, and the ones who don't, they're gonna stay away, and that is a good thing. You want this self selection,
uh, method or strategy to help in establishing this world. See, a contrarian take is around your belief,
but a common enemy is about giving something that your audience can rally around
together.
Both of these things are essentially communicating the same thing, but the difference is is that the enemy, the common enemy makes it something that you and your audience can participate in together. It can take something that starts as just a belief and actually turn it into a movement.
You now have the seven most crucial elements to building your personal brand world. Click here to watch my unfiltered advice on your personal brand.