Author: Dan Koe

Translation: Deep Tide TechFlow

Capturing attention has always been the most profitable skill.

The reason is simple.

If your goal is to make more money, it doesn’t matter how good your software is. It doesn’t matter if you spent 3 years writing a book and threw away countless drafts. It doesn’t even matter if you work hard and improve yourself to increase your career opportunities.

If no one knows who you are or what you offer, why would anyone pay you?

So, no matter what job you do or what business you start, the ability to capture attention and attract clients is the number one factor that determines success or failure.

This holds true for your own business and for others’ businesses.

Moreover, others are willing to pay large sums for you to do this for them.

With job security decreasing, people are faced with three options:

• Complain about the unfairness of life and do nothing
• Learn new skills, retrain, and find a better job
• Start building the business they have always wanted to

There will be an absurd number of people choosing the third path.

You probably guessed it: everyone on social media is shouting that their way of doing business is through building a personal brand.

Why?

Because attention is a limited resource and is only becoming scarcer. Money can be earned again, but the attention that has been spent cannot be retrieved.

In this letter, I will teach you how to master the skill of capturing attention on social media. This way, at least for the next few years, making money won’t be a problem for you.

Once you learn this, you can use social media to ignite your own business or serve as a “one-person creative team” for other companies, who will pay high prices for this skill.

1. You either become a creator, hire creators, or get paid to work for creators

The data is there; it’s hard to ignore.

Goldman Sachs predicts that the size of the creator economy will grow from $250 billion in 2023 to $480 billion in 2027, roughly doubling.

By 2025, creators are expected to earn about $185 billion in advertising revenue, surpassing traditional media for the first time.

In 2021, American brands spent $13.9 billion on creators. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) in the U.S. estimates this number will reach $43.9 billion by 2026, nearly doubling in five years.

Ridiculous.

I myself am a creator, I have worked for creators, and I have paid for creators; so I understand how insane the current rates are. A 60-second ad slot in a Reels or YouTube video can command thousands of dollars (and 90% of the time has no effect).

The key is that all the attention is on social media now. Radio, TV, and news have long lost their audience. If you want to start any business, from a small one talking about your interests to the next unicorn startup, producing content is almost a standard for attracting paying audiences.

When companies want to expand, they spend millions on affiliate marketing and collaborative promotions. I keep seeing ads for Hormozi, stating they pay creators over $1 million a month to promote Skool. Plus, Hormozi himself is a creator, which greatly aids Skool's growth.

“Founder-led marketing” has become a buzzword in the entrepreneurial circle nowadays. In short, the latest and best way for startups to grow is... you guessed it, to build personal brands and produce content (by the way, most of them do it poorly; you should probably start using Eden for research, to establish differentiation, and to publish content).

What does this mean for you?

No matter whether you plan to go solo, already have a business, or want to work for another company, the most worthwhile skill to learn for making money is capturing attention. Translated into the digital world, the most profitable skill is creating content. To do well in content, don’t create endless garbage content.

Unfortunately, just because you are skilled at capturing attention doesn’t mean you have truly captured it.

A tweet or Reels that gets 1 million views with other posts only getting 1,000 views is not that useful. It indicates that your content is okay, but your brand is essentially zero. We need both.

You could chase viral hits for each post, which most people do (and this is also the reason most people fail). Or you could build a world of content that encourages exploration.

Let me teach you how to do it.

2. One-person creative team

The content industry is undergoing a massive transformation.

I am the founder of Eden. Creators and digital businesses use this tool to research trending topics, plan and schedule content, sell digital products, and manage email lists.

I'm mentioning this not to promote, but to illustrate that we have access to data that almost no one else has. We know which topics, openings, and content styles are effective among billions of posts.

Additionally, freelancers and agencies are also using it to manage clients' personal brands, from content to email marketing, to product launches and building sales funnels.

We’ve spoken with these content agencies and media teams, and their comments are similar (paraphrased):

“We haven't started laying off people, but we can take on more work without expanding the team because everyone's output has increased.”

“Creators and founders hire us because they don’t even have time to think about content. They have teams to manage and companies to run, and that requires focus. AI can write content for them, but they know they still need a strategist or creative director who can use AI better than they can. This still requires creativity and thought.”

“AI still cannot write the best posts; I believe it never will. But it can analyze which content performs well, understand strategies, and draft nearly accurate posts. My entire job now is editing and revising, taking only 4 hours a day instead of the former 12.”

In my view, there are two lucrative AI business models that one person can adopt.

First, you can be your own creative team. Build a personal brand, accumulate an audience, create digital products, build an email list, and so on. This is your only focus. Trust me, even with AI, this is a full-time job. If you are a creator without a team, you’re probably not going to create software.

Second, you can be someone else's creative team. Many companies, founders, and even creators lack the creative energy to produce irreplaceable content; you can help them. Most founders still produce “announcement” style content and have no idea what it takes to build influence online.

In other words, you need to become the creative director of your own brand or someone else's brand.

If you can do this, I can’t think of a reason not to set a price: just a fraction of a full team’s costs. Serving 1 to 3 clients and earning $10,000 to $75,000 a month is not unattainable (provided you're good at this and willing to practice. Don’t let your mind fool you into thinking this is the next get-rich-quick scheme). Business owners who invest millions in marketing won’t bat an eye at this price.

What does this one-person creative team look like?

What skills do you need to learn?

Role 1: Brand Strategist

The brand strategist is responsible for positioning and external perception.

They will be the first to say: don’t just chase trends, don’t think every post has to go viral. Growth and engagement are important, but trust and authority cannot be exchanged for them.

By the way, I will teach you how to achieve all of this below.

Role 2: Content Strategist

This is different from the brand strategist.

The content strategist is responsible for scouting which topics and subfields perform well and suggesting what creators should post next. They will delve into post formats, YouTube thumbnails and title structures, completion rates, and sharing power.

They excel at growing followers. But if they do not consider brand strategy, when the creator stops posting one day, no one will ask where they went.

Role 3: Content Writer / Social Media Manager

This person is responsible for drafting tweets, YouTube or Reels scripts, X long-form articles, and Substack newsletters, planning well, and then posting them.

They take topics from the content strategist and direction from the brand strategist, ensuring the content aligns with both.

You can probably see why most people cannot create anything lasting with AI. They still think of AI as a quick route to wealth, believing that as long as they make Claude churn out scripts without direction or data, it will magically connect with the audience.

Hardly anyone considers brand strategy.

Some consider content strategy.

Most people just turn scattered thoughts into posts and then pray they go viral.

This is your competition; it’s not hard to stand out.

3. If you were my client, this is how I would help you build an irreplaceable personal brand

Let’s play something interesting.

I will pretend you are a client to onboard.

This way, if you want to be a creator, you can follow this process yourself. If you want to do content business for others (ghostwrite tweets, write Substack articles for brands, etc.), this is how you can onboard clients (later I’ll give you one of the best strategies to land your first client).

Step 1: Conduct an onboarding call to clarify the client’s “thought signatures”

To make the client's brand and content stand out, you need to gather substantial background information from them.

After signing up a client, schedule a call to ask for all the information you need. Remember to record it, so you can save the transcript and refer it to AI anytime.

If you are doing this for your own brand, I have prepared a Quiz/Prompt along with a 30-day creator sprint course. It will help you devise a strategy by combining trending content and your uniqueness. You can try it here.

The following questions can be asked of clients or of yourself. You can also paste them into Claude, enabling it to extract information from you and save it as a brand document for future AI reference.

These questions shape your brand.

They can evolve into content topics that will keep you posting for 6 to 12 months. Some may be wondering: “How can I explain all this in one post?”

You can’t. This is a long-term game, and most failures stem from trying to quickly gain attention and authority. Good luck to them.

Because the content is lengthy, I have organized these and much more into a complete Prompt, which you can save or copy into your workspace.

Who do you help

• Who do you most want to help? Describe a real person.
• What does their worst day look like right now?
• What would they say when complaining to friends? Use their exact words.
• What useless methods have they already tried?

Your story

• What have you been through that your audience is currently experiencing?
• What moment marked a turning point (even if small)?
• What have you succeeded in, tried, failed at, or figured out? List them from largest to smallest; each should have weight.
• What results can you showcase of your own or from people you’ve helped?

Who shaped your thoughts

• Whose books, posts, or videos do you never miss? Write down real names and titles.
• Which viewpoint do you keep reflecting on? Why?
• Who has changed how you think, even if you don’t agree with them now?

Content pillars and unique perspectives

• What topics can you discuss for hours? List them all, even seemingly unrelated ones.
• Which 2 to 3 are most important to you?
• For each topic, how is your angle different from others? (e.g., “from a psychological perspective” or “as a former nurse”)
• What do others most often ask you for advice on?
• What do you constantly find yourself explaining to others?

Mission and beliefs

• In one sentence, what do you want to help people achieve?
• What do you believe that most people in your field do not?
• What common advice in your field do you think is wrong?

What do you oppose

• What lifestyle is harming the people you wish to help?
• What kind of life do you want to help them escape from? Answer in your own words.
• If possible, what myth or habit would you like to eliminate? (Focus on habits or ideas, not specific individuals or companies.)

Why now

• What change has just happened in the world that most people have yet to notice?

Where do you want to take them

• Five years from now, what will their daily life look like as they follow you?
• How will they proudly refer to themselves in their own bio?
• In their story, what role do you play? (The guide, the one documenting the journey, or the one who goes out and comes back with a map?)

Rules and terminology

• What does your ideal reader believe and do daily? List 5 to 12 rules.
• Have you named your viewpoints, methods, or problems? Write down each name along with its meaning.

Save this information in a secure place, such as a brand board in Eden, so you can reference it when brainstorming posts.

Step 2: If the client is already posting content, capture their best content

I think we can all agree that AI cannot replicate a person’s voice.

Even if it’s close, there will always be something that feels off.

We never intended to do this. AI has no problem handling corporate tone, but personal brands are personal for a reason. They require that unique essence.

We interview clients and collect their best content not to automate the entire process. You are building a knowledge base, capturing everything unique and noteworthy about this person. It’s far easier to brainstorm, draft, and ideate with AI after that than to start from scratch.

To capture the client’s best content across platforms, you can connect Eden to Claude or ChatGPT using MCP, allowing it to pull posts from the client or trending posts from others. Give it the client’s social accounts, and use a prompt like this:

Capture the best content from [@account], taking 10 to 20 pieces from each platform they are on. Then note down their unique core viewpoints, the elements of their voice that have personality, and speculate on what worldview or philosophy they have that can unite others behind them. In short, document everything that has contributed to their growth and organize it into a document.

It’s also worth directly looking at their top-performing posts across platforms to identify reusable patterns.

Step 2.5: If you haven’t started posting content yet

For beginners, this is arguably the best thing you can do.

You need to understand that your thoughts are shaped by those who impact you the most. Your best ideas, the ones that will drive growth, come from how you interpret the perspectives absorbed from others.

It’s a bit like “stealing like an artist”; it’s just how the brain works naturally.

Being able to replace the beliefs and ideas swirling in your head when encountering new perspectives is a hallmark of intelligence. Clinging to beliefs and ideas that yield poor results is a hallmark of foolishness.

Most of my thoughts are a blend of perspectives from Naval, Leo Gura, Mihaly C (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi), Steven Kotler, Ken Wilber, and others. These perspectives collide in my mind, combined with my own life experiences, to form my own thoughts.

So, if you haven’t started posting content yet, make a list of the 5 to 10 people who have influenced you the most.

If they are creators, even better. Put them in a list so you can see all their content or engage with that content.

Then use the prompt from above, substituting their social accounts. If they don’t use social media, have AI extract their best ideas from the web and their books. Save it as a document, and keep it safe.

Step 3: Create a data-backed content map

So far, we have:

• Obtained enough brand background to create something unique
• Documented the best viewpoints that can be reused, repositioned, and replicated

Now, we need to put on our marketing hats.

In fact, this isn’t even a marketing hat; it’s an artist's hat.

Most “creatives” feel uncomfortable at the thought of studying viral posts, the best-performing YouTube titles, or creating content that’s more likely to succeed… but you’re just viewing the problem from a different angle that obscures what you’re genuinely doing.

You’re collecting references.

This is what artists do. They have inspiration boards and reference materials to shape their works. They don’t copy them one-to-one; they extract the patterns and principles to make their work more likely to succeed.

To be honest, you want your work to succeed. You just feel a bit nauseated looking at data, as if it doesn’t count as part of the creative process. Wake up.

You need to do this.

(Disclaimer: I mention Eden multiple times in this letter because, frankly, no other tool can accomplish this. Social platform crawlers cannot see which content performs well across multiple accounts; applications like GrokBot are fantastic but can only be used on X, while to find unique topics, you’d better research platforms where you don’t publish content.)

It’s simple. Use the prompt below to incorporate the two documents you’ve created:

I want you to create a data-backed content map: 3 to 4 unique and broad content pillars, each extending out to 5 to 7 topics. These topics should be based on already validated viewpoints while filtering through my unique perspective based on [@brand document] and [@content document]. Each topic can extend to 5 to 10 potential subtopics, with each subtopic further extending to 4 to 5 angles. Read through my brand document and content document to extract possible pillars and my perspectives, and then use Eden to research which content performs well on these topics across platforms. We need a unique content map that also incorporates proven patterns from the past 6 to 12 months. Organize the results into an easy-to-read document.

Now you have roughly 6 months' worth of content topics. You can let Eve or another AI draft based on the background we’ve outlined earlier and then verify post structure against high-performing content.

I find it hard to believe this process won’t yield results; it will allow you to leave those who haven’t done this far behind.

As mentioned before, there’s a replicable document/prompt here that contains the entire process. It will take some time to read through, but the content is thorough.

4. How to land your first client

A few years ago, my friend JK Molina (he basically started the trend of Twitter ghostwriting) sent me a direct message.

It went something like this:

“Dan, I know you don’t want someone else writing for you, but I wrote you 10 posts anyway. Try them out; if you like them, let me write more, or you can just give me a recommendation.”

Before getting into social media, I was a freelancer, and cold outreach was hell; I hated it.

But when I received that DM, I realized that wanting to land a content client for $2,500 to $5,000 a month is definitely one of the best strategies. You can target creators, founders who are currently overwhelmed with work, or those struggling to grow.

You can use a prompt to do all the above for them by having it draft 10 posts, polish them up, and send out 10 DMs each day.

If you really do this, it’s hard to believe you wouldn’t land at least one client within a month.

This is the “Permissionless Apprentice” strategy.

You do free work for dream clients and then do everything possible to put your work in front of them.

If DMs aren’t working, go public, like the example below, which can work on X, Substack, or other platforms:

In that Reels, he hooked people with one line: “Grant Cardone needs a new creative director; this is my application. His content seems stuck in 2016.”

Grant Cardone replied, “Come find me; I really am stuck,” and together with the interaction this post generated, I think it already demonstrates most of the content in this letter. Now is a huge opportunity. You have all the tools to land clients, onboard clients, and create stellar content for them.

I hope this helps you.

Dan

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