Employers hire based on your social media.
Creators hire based on your social media.
Brands hire based on your social media.
Clients hire based on your social media.
Customers buy based on your social media.
Social media is a necessity of modern life.
It is virtual reality.
It is a digital society.
It is the new economy.
Without a public resume, you close yourself off to global opportunities.
Most people still perceive it as an “app on their phone.”
And yet they spend a much-too-large portion of their life on it.
Scrolling away rather than building their future.
Once you see social media for what it is, a new world opens up.
You can learn skills that schools can’t teach you.
You can make friends that are doing bigger things than your local ones.
You can make money that isn’t capped by a salary.
You’re in the middle of the digital renaissance.
Take advantage of it.
The Fall Of The Nation
I was reading a Shortform summary of The Sovereign Individual last week.
I’ve read the book before, but I didn’t make an important connection.
The central argument of the book is that:
- “Nations” will fragment into millions of “city-states” and even individual “estates” with sovereign-nation status.
- Information technology is rapidly advancing to make resources available to more people.
- This will change the structure of society and how we relate to each other politically and economically.
- How people make the most money impacts the evolution of society. Society shapes itself around those jobs, careers, or businesses.
- Creating a new way of earning money or making businesses more profitable will have society adapt to increase its wealth.
The book predicted what I have been preaching for the past year.
That the future of work is play.
That individuals can grow a one-person business with the new technologies available to them.
That the one-person business model can make $1-$5 million a year with 90-95% profit margins, so society is adapting to reflect that.
That everyone is an entrepreneur, social media is the new society, and that personal brands or creators are the people of that society.
That there’s a reason everyone wants to be a “YouTuber” when they grow up. Although it may be exaggerated as a child, people feel the natural pull to do what they love and help others along the way. And there is a way for the majority of the population to do this (maybe not only on YouTube, of course, but we will see technology and social media continue to move toward this reality).
Evolution reflects human desire.
We solve problems to make that desire come true.
Social media solved so many problems that we have yet to realize its true impact.
That the creator economy is a decentralized entity composed of brands (or city-states) and creators (or individual estates) that maintain their own sovereignty.
If you want to take part in the next phase of human evolution, becoming a Value Creator is the answer.
The Importance Of Education
Education is the first step in value creation.
How are you going to create anything worth distributing if you don’t become a person of value?
Yes, to join in on the new, profitable economy you will need to do something with your life. Shocker.
But, conventional education won’t cut it.
The current school system is just that, a system.
A system that molds you into the workforce.
It teaches the obedience and skills necessary to work a job in the old economy.
If you want to make money in the new economy, then obviously you must seek education that teaches you how to.
Courses, coaching, and content from brands and creators that have created those ways of making money.
New jobs are being created left and right.
The ones where boomers will tell you to “get a real job.”
Every great idea started as blasphemy until it became the normal way of doing things.
This area is still developing.
It makes sense why many have bad experiences with scammers.
They are few and far between nowadays, especially if you have some critical thinking skills to avoid it, but there are ample people to learn from.
Lifelong self-education to adapt to the changing digital landscape is a necessity to do business in this space.
Education shapes the future because it shapes human behavior.
Education expands your perspective and allows you to spot opportunities in unknown territory.
The new education system is being built online before your eyes.
Set a goal.
Find creators you resonate with.
Drown yourself in the information they provide.
Watch new opportunities register in your awareness.
Act on them like your life depends on it.
The Rise Of The Value Creator
In short, Value Creators are those that:
- Earn with their mind, not their time (so they can stay as a one-person business without limiting their income). One man’s labor cannot scale, but their creative ability can.
- Research their obsessions and distill their learnings with writing, video, and other internet content.
- Get paid for aggregated knowledge and experience in the form of digital products (or physical products if you want, but everyone should have some form of digital product).
- Have a heavy focus on educating their audience (instead of posting memes, starting drama, or other things like that).
Value creators are those that dedicate themselves to their interests, take it on as their life’s work to explore them, and distill the information in the form of education.
This is the style of one-person business that I teach.
Creating social media content to build distribution under your name.
Targeting yourself as the niche. That’s who you sell to and create content for.
Building an education product or service that your past self could have used (like a course, coaching, or tutoring offer).
Then, when you reach however much you want to make ($100K – $3M a year… with time) you can build whatever else you are passionate about.
You actively create an evolving education system by becoming an expert in the skills and interests you are passionate about.
The government can’t and will not nurture a curriculum that gives individuals the tools that lead to the dissolution of the old economy.
Creators Are DJs With Ideas
DJs play music sets.
They mix together their own songs, other’s songs that fit well, and remix to craft a story for the crowd listening.
Technology has evolved to allow electronic DJs to create almost any sound they want (limited by their creativity, mind, and perspective).
With software and skill, they can blend together sounds, edit how they sound, and create music that people give their attention.
Creators are no different.
They collect ideas of their own, others, and remixes of their favorites. Then, they weave them together with the evergreen skills: writing, speaking, marketing, and sales.
With time, they attract an audience that invests their attention in those ideas. With that attention, they can benefit humanity and make an income doing what they enjoy.
One mistake that creators run into:
People want to hear the same sounds from their favorite artists over and over again.
If my favorite dubstep artist switched to country music, he would lose 90% of his audience.
Even if he tried to create a new dubstep style, he would have to condition his audience’s minds to enjoy it with time. Like how you don’t like a genre until you listen to it enough (the same goes for any interest, goal, or skill you are pursuing – passion comes from invested energy).
The same goes for value creators.
If your favorite creator stopped making the one-person business content that grew me to this point, my audience would fall off.
You can see this in my YouTube views. There are a select few big ideas that bring me traction.
Your job as a creator is to find this angle and milk it for eternity.
Notice how I am able to “remix” what I am saying with all of my interests. From philosophy to spirituality to evolutionary psychology.
Get creative.
People do not care if you repeat what you say.
The ones that are interested in your work prefer it.
You can’t and will not retain everything I say in this letter with one read. Content creation is programming. It is a requirement to be repetitive if you want to be remembered.
The number one reason people fail as value creators:
They’re afraid to put themselves on the market (because they don’t think they’re unique).
How many pairs of shoes do you have?
How many books on the same topic do you read?
How many artists in the same genre do you listen to?
Write what you would want to read.
Sell a product you would want to buy.
Make the videos you would want to watch.
Put your variation of what people want on the market.
Only then does your luck increase from 0 to 1%.
Reality Mining To Extract Value
How do we start our journey as a value creator?
By becoming a mental blacksmith.
Blacksmiths (in a video game, at least) will mine for ore to fuel their creations. They will smelt the ore and forge it into armor and weapons.
Creators mine a crevice of reality they are interested in.
They study, research, and obsess over topics to collect value they can distribute to their audience.
With those ideas, they create armor that they can both wear and give to others.
“Armor” is perspective to navigate the world in a better way.
Like how a book can “change your life” because it gave you the awareness of how to do so.
“Weapons” are tools for battle.
They are the actionable advice, tips, and strategies that people can act on to make progress.
Progress implies a challenge. A battle that individuals must overcome in their life. You pass down your lessons so others can navigate life more efficiently.
This is how you increase the rate of human evolution, through education and worldview programming opposing societal conditioning.
1) Create A Lens
As you are collecting information, ideas, and value – you need a way to apply this information to test against reality.
You need a filter to make your thoughts original. A vessel to channel your creative energy.
In other words, you need to build a project in alignment with a goal. One that leads to your vision.
Why?
- Because leaders attract followers.
- This is your niche and brand. It is how you frame everything you read and write.
- This is how you create something valuable. Value helps people overcome their problems or achieve their goals. We are aiming to attract people with shared goals.
This is how two people read the same book, article, or content and come up with completely different ideas.
If you are working towards better health, your mind is a magnet for ideas to aid in that.
Someone who is working towards better finances will register different ideas from the information they are consuming.
2) Pursue Curiosity To Collect Material
Don’t consume, research.
The best creators don’t stop consuming. Instead, they consume for the sake of learning and distributing ideas.
This perception shift alone will turn you into an idea-generation machine. Don’t just scroll the internet to entertain yourself. Scroll to educate yourself. This is more powerful than you think.
You must fall back in love with learning outside of the traditional education system that made you hate it.
- Read books, listen to podcasts, read blog posts and newsletters, and immerse yourself in information that aligns with your goals.
- Have a notebook, app, or idea-development system to keep your ideas safe. No, you won’t remember them. This step is absolutely critical. I’m not exaggerating. Do it.
- Note down the ideas that raise dopamine in your brain. The ones rivet your attention to them. The one’s that change your perspective and bring you clarity.
- Contemplate different angles of the ideas you jot down and how they apply to your vision, goals, and problems in your life.
This is what you write about in your content.
Don’t limit yourself to specific topics (although they are good to write out so you have something to research and collect ideas from).
You are distributing ideas in alignment with a goal.
It doesn’t matter what topic that falls under because chances are it only falls under the topic that is you. This is how you make your content original.
If you don’t know what to learn, read The One Person Business Model 2.0 letter.
If you want courses that give you exact steps and strategies, check out 2 Hour Writer or Digital Economics.
3) Create Armor & Weapons
The ideas you collect will begin to shape your worldview, baseline perspective, and identity.
By programming your own mind, your actions will follow suit.
That’s how programming works.
Even if you are lazy, the pain of inaction toward the opportunities you know exist will outweigh the pain of doing nothing with your life.
Armor creation: Give people ideas, motivation, and inspiration toward their goals. This shapes their perspective and identity. They can be happier in life and achieve their goals.
Weapon creation: Give actionable steps, solutions, and advice
Writing, speaking, marketing, and sales are how you channel your ideas into impactful creations.
From there, you distribute them across social media platforms to build a community in the digital society.
Monetizing The Creative Ability Of Your Mind
We are shifting away from shallow promises and good looks as a way of building an audience.
The health industry grows unhealthy because their income is dependent on their looks.
And, this creates poor standards for male and female physiques, contributing to the lack of mental and spiritual health.
Value creation, again, is the answer.
Fitness influences (that can’t monetize their intelligence or creativity) have to maintain sub-optimal body fat levels and unhealthy habits.
If they don’t, their income decreases. I’ve heard this many times across podcasts and YouTube videos from coaches in the industry.
Business must be sustainable and healthy.
Monetizing your mind or intelligence or creativity is infinite.
Here’s how you begin, but first, let’s handle some limiting beliefs.
And yes, these are just beliefs. Your mind’s way of avoiding the action you want to take.
You can build an audience or readership.
Every single person on social media follows 300-1000+ people. Even creators. That’s more than enough to make a full-time income if you know what you are doing.
More followers are both a bonus and attainable for most people reading this (you are in the 0.5% of humanity that is aware of this line of work).
The market is not saturated.
It only seems saturated because you limit yourself to following 300-1000 people that all talk about your interests.
In reality, it’s so unsaturated that you can blow past most creators in that niche.
Pair this with my way of “niching down” and you’re gold.
Simplify Complex Topics
If we live in the Information Age…
And the average person is overwhelmed, anxious, and uncertain…
And education is what shapes the selves that go on to create a better future…
Value creation is sense-making.
Your job is to make sense of your life, the world, and bring clarity to the actions that others should take. The ones that follow your vision and want to make it reality.
This comes with time and action.
You will not know if your creations are valuable if you never get eyes on them.
You must post. You must get data. You must attract readers to your work, because if you don’t, that’s the first sign that you don’t have value to offer. Or you just don’t know how to play the game.
Marketing and sales demand people. You need to get your work in front of the market.
If you don’t work to get your content in front of people, you won’t know if your ideas are valuable.
If you get your content in front of people and it doesn’t do well, then it wasn’t valuable. You need to write better.
If you don’t work to get your products in front of people, you won’t make money.
If you get your products in front of people and no one buys, your product isn’t perceived as valuable. You need to sell better.
Perceive is the keyword there.
Marketing and sales are perception.
You have to write, speak, market, and sell in a way that resonates with the identities you are targeting.
A valley girl won’t resonate with meathead bodybuilding advice.
A soccer mom (probably) won’t resonate with philosophical musings on business.
Your language dictates who you attract.
It’s all so simple when you stop being distracted by your thoughts and think it through.
Building an audience over time is how you decrease the manual work necessary to get your content and products in front of people.
Okay, where do we start?
1) Start With Writing
Writing forces you to supplement your learning with writing, sales, and persuasion if you want to be a success.
It clarifies your thoughts.
It makes you more articulate.
It can be repurposed into any other medium (speaking, video, or visuals).
It is also a seamless, non-demanding, lever-moving task that you can schedule in the first block of each morning.
So, we prioritize growth and content on writing platforms.
Start With A Newsletter
Depth is what separates you from the superficial market.
No, you don’t need subscribers. You can also upload it as a blog post, use it to write lead magnets or product modules, or use it as a YouTube script like I do.
Subscribers will come.
Condense The Complexity Into Tweets (Or Threads)
Twitter, in my eyes, was an underrated writing platform.
It still is, but Instagram’s new Threads app is reminding me of Twitter in its infancy.
There is a world of opportunity and the community feel is incredible.
Threads has a lot of potential.
Why?
- You can post as much as you’d like (to test your ideas before you post them on other platforms).
- It’s writing-based, meaning you don’t need to be a 10/10 model living in Thailand sipping coconuts on the beach.
- It is like a forum, you can find like-minded people much quicker in the replies of your favorite accounts.
- The retweet or repost button is a low-friction share feature, that’s how you gain followers (other platforms are harder to grow on as a beginner)
- You can just screenshot your tweets to grow on other platforms (this is how I grew without spending hours creating new content).
The basics of growing on Twitter are simple.
- Post 1-3 times a day (and start getting your “failures” out of the way)
- If you are under 1000 followers, focus on networking with other people in the replies and DMs to leverage their audience.
- Have a clickable profile picture so people know you are a creator
- Use your big goal in life OR the interests you talk about as your bio (what are you leading people towards and how will they get there through your unique interests?)
- Write threads or long posts based on your story and personal experience (but make sure you have a network that will share it so it goes semi-viral)
Start with beginner-level educational content.
Make it actionable.
That’s what everyone does to grow at the start (on any platform) and 95% of the market are beginners.
Don’t try to be super clever or wise until you build a name for yourself.
2) Prioritize Ideas & Attention Capture
Attention is the currency of the 21st century.
Impactful ideas are how you generate attention.
The best tip I can give you is to read others’ content from the lens of a creator.
Why do their posts do well? What caught your attention? Why does it have so much engagement?
The answers aren’t always obvious.
Authors usually have high engagement because people know their ideas already. But, of course, they are still great writers and are worth studying.
In Digital Economics, we dive deep into the psychology of capturing attention, but here are a few principles so you can start now.
Problems – every good story captures attention by starting with a problem that the reader is facing. It opens a curiosity loop and makes them want to find the solution. Problems are at the root of human behavior.
Numbers – specific numbers are a pattern interrupt when you are scrolling on social media. “I read 347 self-help books so you don’t have to” is an example.
Statistics – similar to numbers, statistics set the scene quite nicely. “97% of the population has seen a decline in focus, here’s how to fix yours” is an example that could use a bit of work, but you see the power in it.
3) Treat Yourself As Your Ideal Reader
When someone is building a readership or audience for the value they are creating, common advice is to write to your ideal customer.
With the one-person business, you are your niche. You are your customer avatar. You are your brand, content, and product.
I have people go through the Myers-Briggs personality test in Digital Economics so they can understand themselves more. When you understand yourself, you can write to yourself. The test results are your customer avatar.
Now, what do you write?
- If you are going through a tough time, give yourself advice and write it online in your “public journal”
- Give your past self advice on overcoming the problems you faced, but faster
- Give your future self-encouragement to achieve the goals you are trying to achieve.
These are just a few of the many ways you can create content, but they are a great (and accessible) starting point.
4) Turn Your Personal Projects Into Products
You won’t have anything to write about if you aren’t pushing toward your goals (in any domain, even if building a brand is your goal, write about it).
Goals = project you are working on.
As you get results, you begin to understand what got those results.
This is the foundation of a profitable product or service.
If you have built a business, teach people how with a consulting service or digital product.
If you have built your body, do the same.
If you have built your mind, do the same.
Teach people how you got the results they want. It’s not that difficult.
You will have to study others’ products or services to see how they structured them. This is another bonus of purchasing courses in the new society.
Again, if you want to get a job, purchase the overpriced education that trains you into one.
If you want to become a creator, purchase the education from the people that form the creator economy.
I’ve discussed what type of product to sell first in this letter.
You can also binge-watch/listen the One Person Business Playlist on YouTube.
Happy creating.
– Dan Koe
