00:00:00you want to make millions of dollars with social media, you need to master these five levels of
00:00:04content creation. The problem is that most people use level two tactics to try to get to level five
00:00:09and they fall flat. I've published over 32,000 pieces of content over the last 16 years and
00:00:14built audiences of over 14 million people by mastering each of these levels. Throughout this
00:00:19video, I'm going to be going through a bunch of different steps that you can take to get from
00:00:22level one to five and you can go and get a cheat sheet for this inside of my content mastery
00:00:27checklist via the link in the description. So go download that and follow along. Let's get into it.
00:00:32Level one is the wilderness. This is where you find your voice by making noise. When I was 20
00:00:37building my first company Bitmaker, I started posting online with zero idea what I was doing.
00:00:42Sometimes I sounded like a journalist, sometimes like an inspirational speaker, sometimes like I
00:00:47had no idea even who I was. But this is all part of the journey. The most important part at level
00:00:53one is just to show up. I've been there, been stuck in perfectionism, stuck not knowing if what I was
00:00:58even going to put out there even mattered. Stuck not even really knowing what my voice was or what
00:01:03my niche was. But the truth is that this is perfectly normal. I think that most people think they need to
00:01:09have it all figured out and then start posting online. The truth is oftentimes that you start
00:01:14posting online and then you figure it out. It's from the doing that you get the clarity. You need to be
00:01:20confident enough to go and just look cringe for a bit. Confident enough to go and just start putting
00:01:25your first pieces of content out there and start developing what I call the shipping muscle. It
00:01:29happens to me all the time. Nearly every piece of content, every video, I always feel like there is
00:01:34some piece we could have done better or some aspect that I could have made stronger. But that does not
00:01:40stop me from just shipping the damn thing. The problem is is that most people don't even make it
00:01:45to level one. They let their fear, their insecurity, their perfectionism, their procrastination get the
00:01:50best of them. And I'm here to tell you this is your opportunity to go and peer into that fear and drive
00:01:57right through it. So, what do you need to do today? I want you to start building up your 30-day streak.
00:02:0330 days of posting consistent content. That's it. We don't need to make perfect content. We don't need
00:02:08to grow an audience to 10,000 people. We just need to develop that shipping muscle today and stop with
00:02:13the excuses. Stop with the limiting beliefs. Don't worry about your mood, right? Just stick to the plan.
00:02:18Your only goal at level one is to go from silent to visible. Now, the goal here is not to go viral.
00:02:24It's to start putting yourself out there and gradually find your voice. Level two is the
00:02:28hamster wheel. When I first committed to X five years ago, I had no idea what I was doing. I had no editors.
00:02:34I had no social media manager to start with. And it was just me out there in the wild posting some stuff.
00:02:40I was just figuring it out as I went. Now, on the great side of things, I was consistent and I never
00:02:46missed a day. I had developed that shipping muscle. It's at this stage, right, that you start to get on a
00:02:52bit of a hamster wheel. And that's completely normal. You don't really have any systems in place.
00:02:56You're new to this thing. And what's inevitably going to happen is the creator dip. You have that
00:03:01initial piece of excitement, right, in level one. And now you're into level two and you start realizing
00:03:06the work that's involved here. And this is where 90 percent of creators give up. Google's 7-11-4 rule
00:03:12says you need seven hours of content across 11 touch points in four different locations to build
00:03:17trust with someone. So at this stage, you're just racking up that trust. If you find that some of your
00:03:23excitement starts to wane, just remember, right, this is all part of the journey. The things you want to
00:03:27start taking note of are in those moments where you're feeling some cognitive dissonance, some
00:03:31frustration, elements that you're like, oh, I think this could be better. Make note of those areas. These
00:03:36are going to be areas that we're going to want to systemize. We're going to want to get ready to go
00:03:39and delegate these areas so that long term, we're not just building content for three months, right,
00:03:44that we've got a sustainable system for three years. So your big challenge here, okay, is don't go and try
00:03:50to be on all platforms all at once. Inevitably, as you're growing at level two, the key thing is to
00:03:56develop depth, not just breadth. I want you to choose one platform, choose one format, and go deep. What
00:04:03platform are you going to focus on? What's going to be your one core format? And go deep and start
00:04:09developing your systems around that core thing. The benefit here is that you're going to be able to
00:04:14focus, that focus is going to lead to mastery, and it's also going to allow you to be known for one
00:04:19thing because you're the world's best at it in your given niche. Make sure that you keep on posting
00:04:25daily because truthfully, your growth across the platforms depends on it. The reality is is that
00:04:30building a business is hard, creating content is hard, growing a team is hard. But you know what's
00:04:35a lot harder? Giving up, stopping something you know you should be doing for three months, five months,
00:04:41and then in five months from now, having to start from scratch again. I can promise you that that
00:04:45regret that you'll feel is a thousand times harder than giving up. Level three is the platform master.
00:04:52When I first started my personal brand five years ago, X was my dojo. I studied the different creators
00:04:57on the platform, I studied the different formats. X being this Olympics of copywriting, I knew that
00:05:02I'd have to really understand the game to do well because it's not enough just to have great ideas.
00:05:07On any of these platforms, you need to know how to actually package those ideas. You need to be a
00:05:13student of the game. My mindset here in your mindset when you're at level three should be around mastery.
00:05:19It's not about the followers or the engagement or even the dollars at this point. It's all around,
00:05:24can I be the best possible writer in my area? If you can nail that, the score takes care of itself.
00:05:31One thing to think about too is as you start going and putting yourself out there, you want to
00:05:34understand your own signature format. So from going deep on one platform in one format, you continuously
00:05:40refine things. What I started to learn on X was it was these long form X posts combined with great
00:05:46imagery as well as great video clips that started to allow me to go and stand out as this triple
00:05:51threat. Sure enough, this helped me grow on X to over 180,000 followers in my first year. I went from
00:05:57virtually unknown to one of the top 10 creators on the entire platform. Now when people started
00:06:02thinking about systems, they thought about me. It was from all of these reps that I developed a ton
00:06:09of growth. And the beautiful thing is that from the depth on one platform, it's not like all that
00:06:14content goes to waste. Truthfully, through the content waterfall system, which is a system that
00:06:18I use to go and repurpose my content and maximize my effort, I was then able to go and take that
00:06:24exact content on X and bring that to LinkedIn long form as well as Instagram carousels and start
00:06:30growing from nothing to over 400,000 people organically on LinkedIn and from virtually unknown
00:06:36to over 600,000 people on Instagram. This is the power of depth and this is the power of developing
00:06:43that mastery mindset. Now the point of this level is that if you can understand, if you can be the
00:06:47best in your craft, right, the best in your format on one platform, you can make millions of dollars.
00:06:54You're going to be able to capture all of this attention and then effectively drive it to
00:06:58monetization leveraging what I call the content GPS. This is the most powerful system for going
00:07:04and being able to drive people from your rented audience across social media to your owned audience
00:07:10in an email list and then monetizing these people to your product or service through effective CTAs.
00:07:15If you're looking to go and get my help directly going and installing a content GPS in your business,
00:07:20you should definitely go and apply to founder OS via the link in the description. We'll get on a
00:07:2415-minute call, understand the one system that's currently keeping you stuck from growing on the
00:07:29given level you're at and then we'll see how we can help. So go book the call and look forward to
00:07:33connecting. So your goal really at this level is to go and pick one platform and study the top 20
00:07:38creators on it. From there you're going to want to go and study the different formats, the different
00:07:42posting times and all of the details, right? Your goal here is to be a student of the game. I think
00:07:48it's this mindset that allow you to set yourself apart. From there every single day with every piece
00:07:53of content you should be aiming to get 10% better. That could be getting better hooks, better value,
00:07:58better rhythm, better copy with video if you choose there. It should be better lighting, better sound,
00:08:03better scripting, better titles, better thumbnails, you name it. There's probably about 10 core
00:08:07variables that will allow you to keep on getting 10% better and over 100 piece of content that math
00:08:13is undeniable. It's 13,800 times better by the 100th piece of content you put out and that is the magic
00:08:20of compounding and that's the bet you're making at this level. The next level is where creators either
00:08:24scale or die. The personal media company. When founder OS started taking off, content went from
00:08:30being something on the side to being a full-time job and I knew that if I wanted to go and build
00:08:35the vision that I had for the company something would need to change. You need to shift at this
00:08:40level from just a creator doing everything yourself to a content CEO. Someone that has the right
00:08:46strategists, editors, writers to make sure that you're actually going and building a company because
00:08:53this is where most creators fail. A ton of successful creators will go, they'll get going and before you
00:08:58know it they're editing, they're writing, they're shipping, they're filming and while it all looks
00:09:03successful from the outside suddenly you know that YouTube creator that you've been following or that
00:09:07ex-creator you've been following suddenly just goes dark. This is creator burnout 101 and let me tell
00:09:13you here as a founder-led brand where you're both one part a founder and one part a creator you
00:09:19essentially double your risk of burnout. It's a real fucking thing and you have to go and be proactive
00:09:26about preventing it. So what can you do at this stage to be proactive? Across the first three levels
00:09:31you're starting to notice a lot of areas where you probably were getting some cognitive burnout.
00:09:36Whether it was going and shipping the pieces of content each time or filming it and you want to
00:09:40start asking yourself how can I make this easier? What would it look like to make this more fun? We
00:09:45want to go from how do I do this and how do I do that to who do I need to bring on to help me?
00:09:51You're probably thinking well how do I go and afford all these people? This is why it's important
00:09:56to also have a scalable offer behind all your content. Too many creators are focused on ads and
00:10:02the truth is that ads is not going to make you rich. Ads is likely not going to get you to your millions.
00:10:07YouTube ads are nice and all but even at the level I'm at I think I make around three thousand dollars
00:10:12a month from ads and I can tell you that ain't gonna pay my team. So the core thing here is that you need
00:10:18to go and make sure that you actually own your own offer. I don't really care what your model is. Choose
00:10:23the thing that's in your zone of brilliance. The thing that you love that you know your audience is
00:10:27going to buy and that you can see yourself spending the next 10 years of your life on and then start
00:10:32refining and selling that thing. Now I get it right sometimes it can feel like you're spinning plates.
00:10:36You're growing your audience, you're building this community and you've got a product to sell. The
00:10:40beautiful thing here though is that when you have a good margin on your product you're able to start
00:10:44reinvesting those profits into your people, into the process and into your own peace of mind. It's from
00:10:52those profits you're able to start building this personal media company. Along the way too when you
00:10:56actually think about the content creation process you want to be thinking about how can I make this
00:11:01way more simple and enjoyable. We all know right from those of you that start creating. Creating is a
00:11:07ton of work. Running a company is a lot of work. You need to be meticulous about going and writing out
00:11:15every single thing that you're currently doing and then going and building systems for each of these
00:11:20things and delegating every single thing that you can. So you need to make sure you have the right
00:11:25people, process and systems in place to make this all a lot more sustainable and let me tell you it
00:11:31is possible. I help thousands of founders build systemized founder-led brands and remove themselves
00:11:36from operations. This ain't easy but there is a simple system and series of processes that you can
00:11:42put in place so that it's enjoyable, it's fun and you can do it long term right because like any
00:11:48great thing in life it's over the long term that the real return's happening and so what's most
00:11:54important is that you don't give up and you have the right systems and support in place so you can
00:11:58play the game long term. If you're interested in getting my help actually rolling up my sleeves and
00:12:03helping you with your business and your founder-led brand. In addition to that booking calls with me
00:12:08every other week and being able to text me anytime you need help is exactly what we do inside of
00:12:13FounderOS. You get support from me, my entire C-suite, my whole media company and team, over
00:12:1850 live sessions a month not to mention an epic community of other founders that are all scaling
00:12:24their brands. So if this is interesting you should definitely go and book a call via the link in the
00:12:27description and we'll see you there. So there's two main action steps at this level that I'm just
00:12:32going to distill to make it super simple for you. Number one is that you want to go and hire your
00:12:37first key team member. I want this person to be absolutely fucking cracked okay. We do not have
00:12:44time to go and make that first hire a B player. You need to go and find someone that is an absolute
00:12:49fucking beast. This is an example of someone that yes they're a fucking unicorn it may be really
00:12:54difficult to find but when you find this person you're going to get the leverage you need to go
00:12:59and scale it to level five and so I want to encourage you to hire that first person but
00:13:03be patient enough to say no to 10 people to say hell yes to that one person that hits that high
00:13:09bar of quality. The second piece here is to make sure that you're getting at least three hours of
00:13:15founder flow every single morning. Founder flow is the time that you have to work on the stuff that
00:13:20only you can do. You have two forms of time according to Paul Graham the founder of Y
00:13:25Combinator. You have manager time and maker time and what's likely happening at this level is that
00:13:31you're doing a ton of manager time but the first thing that starts getting cut is that maker time
00:13:36and let me tell you it's more important than ever. This is your time to go and develop a profitable
00:13:41offer. This is the time to start scaling that infrastructure in your systems and it's the
00:13:45time that you need to start getting support from mentors and other advisors. Make sure that you're
00:13:50getting that every single day. You know for me I block off my calendar from 7am to 11am and this is
00:13:56the one critical function that I do every single day that I would say is responsible for about 90%
00:14:02of my success. So I want you to go right now like literally right now and I want you to go and block
00:14:08off your four hours for founder flow today. Now this is the final level and it is so fucking hard
00:14:14that most creators never reach it but I'm going to give you the cheat code here. You know this is not
00:14:18about entertainment it's about infrastructure it's about being omnipresent. At this stage you're likely
00:14:24going on all the platforms and so the key thing here right is making sure that you have that CEO
00:14:30mindset. I think at this part you're one part an architect and one part an investor. On the architect
00:14:37side you're making sure that you're working on the business and you're removed from the ops so you can
00:14:41continue to refine the machine. On the investor side you're very much a capital allocator. You're constantly
00:14:47thinking about who do I need to go and bring on the team and what is the return on investment from
00:14:53bringing this person on. If you can go and hire a social media manager that's going to go and relieve
00:14:57you of 20 hours a week of your time and that's going to then free you up to go and make an extra
00:15:0280k a month in profit well the return from that 8k higher is likely 10x ROI. It's these kinds of bets
00:15:09you need to be very confident in making. Another thing that's going to come up here right is this
00:15:13team gets bigger. One thing you need to focus on is decision velocity. You know you can't be that
00:15:19small-minded creator that's just making decisions super slow when you know if you're trying to move
00:15:24fast you got to be able to pull the trigger. You're going to have to quickly be able to refine your
00:15:28judgment and make the call. So at this stage too right aside from all the systems the infrastructure
00:15:34that architecture you also got to focus on your own health. You know it's your health that's going to
00:15:38allow you to build a healthy business. For me you know I focus on doing yoga four times a week lifting
00:15:43a few times a week my diet is always dialed in and I'm making sure I'm getting at least eight hours of
00:15:48sleep every night. It's all of those details on the health side as well that will help you stay in the
00:15:53game and the truth is that I think as I grow more on these platforms I think of myself as one part
00:15:59founder and then one part athlete and the reason is is that the more I can kind of just up level myself
00:16:04I'm able to bring that energy back to the team. I'm able to bring that energy back to the content because
00:16:10at this stage too your content is this transmission. For you guys what I'm always focused on right is a
00:16:15certain psychographic. The kind of person that's looking to build a company that they love, have an
00:16:20amazing life, be able to control where they work, when they work, who they work with and what they
00:16:24work on and they want to be surrounded by a community of people they genuinely love and have
00:16:28the freedom to do whatever the fuck they want with their lives. It's this kind of targeting of that
00:16:33core identity that has allowed me to build a movement around founder OS and that's what we're
00:16:38really after here. Now when you're going in marketing to someone's core identity there's a benefit to you
00:16:43and there's a benefit to them okay. The benefit to you is you're going to build an audience of people
00:16:47that you actually love to hang out with. Not to mention too when you go and put out something an
00:16:52opportunity a new business that they can get involved in gets this opportunity to go and build a lineup
00:16:57around the corner of people that are already pre-suited to what you're doing because you've
00:17:02built such a valuable brand. Organic content and building at this level of mastery is going to make
00:17:08you a category king or queen in your niche. I think that most content when it's insanely strong it
00:17:14spreads like a virus. Bit by bit people are going and hanging out with one another and it just
00:17:19continues to spread. Your message, your you know method, your different mechanisms and the overall
00:17:24mission of what you're doing are all now traveling without you doing a thing. So don't make the
00:17:29mistakes that a lot of people make at this stage. Don't fail to build a newsletter. Don't fail to
00:17:33refine your offer. Don't fail to not surround yourself with the right community and with the
00:17:38right advisors and mentors because the truth is you need all the support you can get. Along the way
00:17:44again make sure that you're building the right infrastructure and take pride in being the
00:17:48architect, the athlete, and the investor. If you enjoyed this video you should definitely go and
00:17:54check out the content mastery checklist via the link in the description. I want to go and help
00:17:57you get from level one to level five seamlessly so you can enjoy the journey and go from creator
00:18:02to CEO. Along the way if you want my help going and implementing these systems you should definitely go
00:18:07and book a call with my team via the link in the description. We'll get on a call, learn what level
00:18:11you're at, and help you unlock that next stage of growth. Thanks so much for watching. If you want
00:18:16to go and learn how I built an audience of 14 million people over the last 16 years you should
00:18:20go and check out this next video. Be sure to like and subscribe and let's win together.