How to Grow an Automated Personal Brand

Yo, what's up YouTube? So in this video you're gonna see a June 2025 event where I spoke to hundreds of business owners on how to automate growing your personal brand. Now you might think, how do you actually automate that? Number one is having the right content structure. Number two is knowing how to film that content. And number three is building the right content team so you don't have to get stuck in editing itself. So in this video you're gonna see me speak to hundreds of business owners, and if you get value from the video, I highly recommend you do exactly what they did, which is join my free school community called the Shine Through Social Academy so that you can shine bright through social media. But without further ado, let's get into the video. How y'all doing today? All right, so we had a question on how many people have a social media presence right now. Raise your hand if you feel like you can have a better social media presence right now. Oh my God, Robert, what's up, dog? All right, all right, all right. Well, that's exactly what I'm here to speak to you guys about. For people that don't know, my name is Carson Butler. I'm 21 years old, and I'm here to teach you guys how to grow an automated personal brand. And when we think about automated, the whole concept of automation is to save you time. And I'm gonna again ask you guys to raise your hands. How many of you guys watching me right now feel like you just don't have enough time to create content? Okay. Raise your hands if you feel like it would be a lot easier to create content if you knew how to make it take less time. Alright. So my presentation is dedicated to teaching you guys exactly how I've been able to take my following from 1,300 followers about 75 days ago, so about 2 and a half months ago, to just over 60,000 followers as of right now while only spending 15 to 20 hours a week. On content creation. Again, my name is Carson. I'm the founder of Keep Trying Media, a company where we help business owners grow their personal brand by only investing about 1 to 2 hours a week, at least for our clientele. And the results that I've been able to get at the age of 21— about 8 months ago, I had just started the business where I help people with content creation right now. I literally made about $50 my first month, which is my second month running my business. Thanks to content creation and thanks to us exploding over 60,000 followers, we're able to cash collect just under $30,000 in a single month within 8 months. Not only that, but I've actually been able to do it by only investing 15 to 20 hours a week, which helps me because I travel a lot. I was in LA, I was just in Miami, went to India this year, had a layover in Hong Kong. So there's a lot of things that I do on a daily basis that take up time, and I want to save you guys time as a result of me teaching you how to grow your personal brand as well. And these strategies don't just work for me, they work for my clients. We got Vincetta. Vincetta, say what's up. What's up, what's up, Vincetta. She's somebody that we've been working with for about 5 months now. She was able to generate about a million views within 90 days. I have my client Luis who's also back in Miami. He was able to drop his cost per lead by about 40% by running ads on our content. Basically think about it, if you are paying to get leads and it costs you $2, we were able to drop that to just under just over $1, which means you can basically get double the leads with the same amount of cash that you put in the ad spend. Marasha signing 2 high-ticket clients in 24 hours on only a $5 a day ad budget. Dejan, uh, my client that does taxes, he was able to close a $60,000 deal thanks to creating content that we were putting out for him. And the list goes on. But things weren't always like this. Before growing my personal brand, helping others do the same, And being put on this stage, you guys don't know this, but I was almost put in a grave. This was, uh, this is a— it's after something that happened. This is a car accident I was in at 19, but I actually have a scar right here, right here, because I was in a car accident at the age of 2. January 2006 was when I was in the car accident. I was in the accident that left me hospitalized for over a month. And my mom actually had to witness that accident in real time, which is very traumatizing. The accident left 6 scars on my body. You guys can see the one on the side of my head, my nose. I also have a scar on my arm, leg, chest, and shoulder as well as a result of the accident. And around ages 5 to 6, I was— I started to realize when I was different, right? Because A lot of times when you're only 2 years old, you don't know your differences until people make you aware of your differences. But I started to get questions in kindergarten like, huh, why did— what happened to the side of your nose? What happened to the— what happened to your head? Were you burned? Were you in an accident? Why do you look like that? Why do we look different than you? I started to get questions like that. And around the age of 7 was when I started to wear— I wasn't 7 right here, but I started to wear my tank tops backwards to cover the scar that was on my chest because I didn't want people to even see it if my shirt came down in real life, right? I started to wear bigger shorts to cover the scar on my leg because I always wanted to cover up who I was on the outside despite me having a knight inside of me on the inside. But when things started to change and I started to embrace who I was on the outside— or on the inside, despite how I look on the outside— that's obviously gotten me to be where I'm at now, where obviously I met Paul. I actually flew in from Miami to get here because I was on the Level Up podcast last week, by the glory of God. And not just being on with him, but having to speak and engage with you guys. Did about 3 extra podcasts while I was in Miami. Got recognition from some killer, you know, some killers in the business space like Brandon Carter, Paul himself. And I don't know if you guys know who Timbaland is, but he's one of the, um, he's one of the most popular rap producers, and he's you know, pretty up there. So he actually was able to— some— he was somebody that found me as a result of just my content on Instagram. And that's not only something that I take credit for. I don't like just talking about myself, but not just with my personal revenue I've gained from my business, my clients have made well over 6 figures from the strategy that I've taught them on how to grow their personal brand as well. Now, how did this all start? How did I get to the point to where I create content and I essentially walk in my gifts. Because for people that don't know, the song that was actually playing before I came up, that was actually a song that I was rapping about content marketing. So how did I think of that? How did that strategy come about? Well, around the age of 5 was when I discovered my passion for songwriting. I would write songs on my mom's Microsoft Word, and she wouldn't know it's a song until I said, "Hey, Mom, look, I wrote a song." And she would say, "Hey, that actually has some rhythm to it." At 5 years old. I kept my songs a little bit private because I was kind of introverted growing up, being somebody that I didn't really have that confidence in myself. I'll keep it private until the age around, you know, 13, 14, in 7th grade. Then I started to share my raps with friends. If a science teacher told me, "Hey, we need you to educate people through this project," I would always rap it, right? So I wanted to always be different in that regard. And little did I know that those educational raps where it might be a biology class, it might be social studies. Like, little did I know that would actually build the foundation for where I'm at today. Around the age of 15, this is when I got into high school. I was really— I've always been really passionate about basketball, and my favorite player was Kevin Durant. So I made a social media page editing his basketball highlights. That's how I got into video editing. And I also had a rap memes page where I would make memes about rappers and things of that nature. And then I started making also personal dance videos. I— that's how I even got into entrepreneurship. I would say, hey, I'll dance to your song, and they'll send me $20 in Cash App because I'm 16 and I was just hustling, right? Yeah, I know. Around the age of 17, that's when I joined a network marketing company, iMarketsLive, and I wanted to be the first person with a social media presence in the group since when it comes to network marketing, I don't know if anybody's familiar with the industry, but you're always marketing to your network. You're not marketing to the world. So I was somebody that always wanted to be global, and I wanted to get my face shown in front millions of people like I have the grace of being shown today, right? I bought my first mentorship at the age of 17, and the age of 18 was when I saw on a podcast that this girl that was 20 years old had made over a million dollars with her trading community, and it was as a result of her personal brand showing her face. At the time, I didn't have the confidence to show my face. I was posting things about business. I had a page that I would post business tips, I would make graphics. So that was also my thing with graphic design and other long run with creating content. But I finally mustered up the courage to post myself because I realized how much value I could get out of showing my face to the world and sharing my story and sharing my expertise with myself, right? So that was when everything changed. This was when I was 18 and I made a video about how I wake— how I wake up at 4:45 in the morning every day and how you can do it too. And this is just an educational video that I put out on my personal page. My friends from college are following me. I was anxious. I was like, what are they gonna think? Are they gonna unfollow? And I would always post pictures, but I was like, huh, is this going to be different than the pictures? It ended up getting 130 likes compared to the, the 50 likes I would get on a picture. More comments, more love. And that's when I committed to posting every day because I was able to see that if I could get out of my own head and stop feeding myself the head trash of nobody wants to learn from me, then the people that I'm gonna attract will be meant for me anyway, right? I don't even have to worry about that. So then at the age of 19, that's when I actually started going to a gym called Rich and Fit, which— this is a gym for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs. It's out in Atlanta, Georgia. And this was something that probably was the best thing that could have happened to me, because being somebody that I never really was confident in how I looked externally, despite how much of— despite how many gifts I had internally, when I started going to the gym, I noticed that all of them worked out shirtless. So they actually were the people that got me the confidence to show my scars for the first time. You can see it on my chest, on my shoulder, on my arm. And that's actually what— when I gained the confidence to start showing my scars in public, embracing who I was, that's when I actually started a clothing brand by the name of Scars Make Stars, right? Where scars make you stronger, not struggle. So then as I started to run the clothing brand, I'm still posting content because I've been doing that since the age of 18. It wasn't until I turned— it was right when I turned 20, this was like January of 2024, where I started finally having viral videos where I would showcase my brand. I had my shirts in the wagon, as you guys can see, and I was hitting, you know, videos that would hit like 70K, 180K views. People are like, yo, this is really good content. Editing it myself, people like, yo, the edits are really cold, right? And I noticed that I started to gain the skill of creating content around this time. But I stopped creating this type of content because I felt like it wasn't true to myself. It was staged content. I was scripted, and I knew it wasn't something that was true to me, even though the success was new to me, right? So I started to think, how can I make something that's true to myself? And I thought about rapping about what I teach people about. That's when I actually got my first 10,000 view video on a new account because I wanted to completely start fresh. And now, by the grace of God, me and my team— because it's not just me— we've been able to generate over 7 million views within the last 90 days, and 99.3% has been organic, right? And my, my message to you guys is that if I can do it as a 21-year-old that doesn't have the most experience— I haven't been on this earth that long, I used to not even want to show my scars out in public, I couldn't even muster the courage to talk about like who I really was, right? If I can do it, then I know anybody can. And not only do I know that, but I know especially if I've been able to do it and only invest 15 to 20 hours a week— because at the end of the day, I'm still an entrepreneur. Raise your hand if you're an entrepreneur in here. Raise your hand if you're a busy entrepreneur. Keep your hand up. All right, so just like you guys, I manage clients, I have a team. This is when I flew out to India this year to see my creative director. I take sales calls, I travel to countries and different cities to go to podcasts. I don't have the time, just like you guys don't have But I've been able to come up with a framework that makes things extremely simple for you to create content that also can get you clients, and I'm gonna make it tactical, practical, and actionable. You guys can pull out your pens, pull out your pads, because we're gonna go to school for content today. Now, I break down my content framework as the 3— I like to call these the 3 Ps of content. I want you guys to write this down. Content preparation, content production, and content perfection. Content preparation, basically turning your ideas into, I would say, viral sensations, or coming up with the right structure. Content production is how you actually produce the video. What camera are you recording on? What's your audio? What's your visuals? What setup you have, etc. How charismatic you are. And content perfection is essentially what takes a good video into a great video. So I'm gonna go ahead and dive in everything step by step. Content preparation. This is something that I absolutely sucked at. I was, I was hot garbage. Yeah, um, this is me when I first started making content. I was 18. I was on a study abroad trip to Puerto Rico, and I was so passionate about content, I would get up and just pull the camera out 5 in the morning. It was just like, you see, like, my, my, uh, my face at the bottom of the camera. I didn't have the right angling, but I was just so passionate about creating content that I just liked helping people, but I wasn't doing it the right way. I was coming with a lot of quantity, but not a lot of quality. Right? But thanks to, obviously, the content preparation that I've gained the skill set in now, that's why we have the views that we have. Across just my top 7 videos, we've done 3.4 million views organic from that alone. And that's the bulk of where the 60,000 followers have come from in the last 2 and a half months. Now, what is content preparation? It's pretty much just planning what you say before you record. I'm sure you guys have heard the phrase, "When you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail," or "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail." What is the framework that can give you guys the right plan for content so that you know exactly what to say when you get on camera? I've broken it down into a 3-letter framework, and it's how I've been able to penetrate the market today. I call it the STD framework. It's not the STDs that you might think about, though. It's actually a framework for creating educational videos. It's what I like to call Stop, Teach, and Demonstrate. This is my client, Vegeta. Vegeta, say, "What's up?" We had a video for her that got over 250,000 views organically, and it followed this exact STD framework. You stop, you tell your audience to stop making a common beginner mistake in the first 3 seconds of your video. You teach, you explain why this mistake is harmful and what negative consequences it creates. And then third, you show them exactly what to do instead with tactical, practical, and actionable alternatives. Let's dive into "Stop." When it comes to the hook, this is the first 3 seconds of your video. I'm sure you guys have heard that the first 3 seconds is the most important seconds of every video. The most viral videos that I've gotten personally have all had a "Stop," "Never," It's always been something where I tell people to stop making this mistake. They did a study, this is actually at the School of Harvard, they said that negativity actually gets more attention than positivity, which is why in news headlines they typically start with things that are negative, because people want to avoid pain rather than gain pleasure. You have to tell this in the first 3 seconds of what your audience is doing wrong. Let's give some examples. We had Paul, he spoke— earlier today. He's somebody that teaches you guys about starting your own merchant services and credit card processing business, right? So let's say that I'm a merchant services coach. My hook could be, "Stop pitching standalone terminals as your only merchant services offer." Let's say I do credit and funding, like my client Vegeta, like Oscar, like Sam, etc. "Stop applying for business credit cards back to back." First 3 seconds. Let's say I'm in sales, let's say I'm somebody like Thomas or John that's speaking a little bit around maybe 350-420. Stop giving your price when your prospect asks for it. Notice how each example directly addresses a specific mistake in their industry, right? Now the next step is teach. Once you say stop, you have to teach people why this is even a mistake in the first place. So you tell people what they're doing wrong, and then why it's wrong. You provide context and you build credibility by showing people the why behind everything, right? So literally, visually, in this video I said why and I had a second face pull up because when I rap I have ad-libs. The ad-lib was the guy saying why, so I'm acting as the audience. Now, merchant services. Let's say that my hook again: stop pitching merch— stop pitching standalone terminals as your only merchant services offer. You're going to get smoked by your competitors that offer modern POS systems and online payment options, right? Credit and funding, like Majeda, like Oscar. Stop applying for business credit cards back to back. Every time you apply, it triggers a hard inquiry, which too many of these make banks see you as desperate and they'll deny you, right? Let's say I'm in sales like Thomas or John. Stop giving your price whenever a prospect asks for it. This makes them focus on the cost before they understand the value. And demonstrate, this is where you have, number 1, you taught people what they were doing wrong, number 2, you taught them why they were doing it wrong, and number 3, you tell them exactly how to do it right. So this is where you make your demonstration, it should be again tactical, practical, and actionable, easy to implement. Again, merchant services, you might demonstrate how to offer online payment options to a business. Hey, use this website for your online payment options. For credit and funding, you'll demonstrate how to apply for different business credit cards that pull from different credit bureaus so you don't get that many hard inquiries, right? Sales training, you give them the exact response to say instead of saying the price when people ask for the price, right? Word-for-word scripting of what to say on that sales call. And the bonus step, I obviously talked about the STD framework, but the bonus that I always end my videos off with is I tie the steps that I give back into solving the problem. Right? And when it comes to tying all this back in, you have the STD, you have the recap at the end of the video. You can automate all this. Once you have the right framework, You can automate things like this using ChatGPT. Input your topic, tell ChatGPT to create your content following the same stop, teach, demonstrate structure. And this is how I've been able to essentially automate my script creation because I can tell ChatGPT, hey, do this, do this, do that. And it actually gives me a better output because I gave it the right input, right? Now, the second step, content production. We've prepared the content, how do we produce the content? These are two videos with the same song, but this one got 100,000 more views. Why? Because these songs, even though they're basically the same, they were produced— you can tell the clear difference between this production and this production. Let me break down what actually improved within the production. There's essentially three things that I would say make up the production of the video. When you think about a video, it's actually split in half. A video are two words combined, visuals and audio, right? We have visuals, audio, and we have your setup and background, right? So the visuals, the first one I shot on an iPhone 11. This— and I know a lot of you guys, raise your hands if you're filming on iPhone with your content. Okay, cool. So I filmed on an iPhone. It didn't give me the best quality, but as I started to get better at content, I actually discovered how to make your iPhone quality better. So we're going to do a quick little activity. You guys can pull out your iPhones right now. I'll give you guys some quick, quick settings that can make your video quality better. Y'all ready to do that? We taking action? Yes. Action takers are money makers, right? Okay. All right, cool. Let's go. So the first setting that you guys can do right now to improve the quality within your content, you want to go in, you want to go into your settings, you want to type in the word camera or scroll down until you see camera. And then when you type on camera, you want to tap on record video. When you tap on record video, you'll be able to see an option that says 4K at 30 FPS. You want to click that option. A lot of people might say 24 FPS. What I've seen is that that gives a more cinematic feel that people typically don't necessarily prefer on Instagram. They want to see videos, they don't want to see movies. And 60 FPS, it just It's the same quality for more storage, right, that I've seen personally. Second setting, you want to go back to the camera settings and you want to type on Formats, right? You guys see Formats? Yes? All right, cool, we got yes. You want to select Most Compatible. Now what Most Compatible will do is it will give you the highest quality video possible. High Efficiency is typically where Apple will compress your footage and make it easier to store within your phone, which makes the storage less, but it makes the quality less as well. So go with most compatible. Third setting, we have activating grid mode. Most people don't know that when you film a video on your iPhone, you can actually have the grid appear where you have lines in like a tic-tac-toe type of interface, right? You want to turn this option on. Once you go back into settings, turn this on. So that you can align your eyes and your chin and your mouth within the right way when you actually film yourself and you look at yourself when you film, right? Now, visuals. We helped you guys improve the visuals. That's 3 settings that can help you improve your iPhone visuals. The second part is the audio. That's the 2 things that make up a video. Now, audio. The first time I recorded this song, it was on voice memos. My mouth was at the bottom of the phone because that's where the mic is actually built inside the phone. And it didn't sound that good because if I was too close, it sounded like I was on top of the mic. If I was too far, people couldn't hear me, right? So the thing that made this video better was when I actually rented a recording studio. But I know a lot of you guys can't do that. So this is personally the mic that I use right now to record my videos on my new camera. You guys can screenshot this. Pull out cameras. I'll make way for y'all. 3, 2, 1, cha-ching! All right, cool. Now that's the mic that I've been using. Full transparency, that last Rode mic, I lost it. I don't know where it is. Traveling too much, I guess. Lost in the Uber, the plane, TSA might have it, I don't know. This is the mic that I'm actually getting next. Um, that last mic that I showed you guys was a wireless mic. This mic is a static mic. So it depends on the type of creator you guys are. If you guys like going outside, moving around, that mic that I just showed you guys, Rode, it's a really good mic. If you guys are more so the studio type of person, you like staying in the crib, like getting, you know, like getting cute, getting your studio or whatever, I recommend this Shure SM7B microphone. It's rich, very rich sound, broadcast, podcast level quality. You don't have to recharge it, and the best part is it also makes you look pretty professional when you got a big mic in front of your mouth. I'm just being honest, right? Now, set up an environment. This is something that I actually improved a lot. If you guys remember the video that I showed you guys on my iPhone, you probably saw it— blank white background, absolutely no vibes. Like, the, the, the environment was— it was no environment. But now I've been able to structure my environment to where— I won't say this is the best environment in the world because I have coaches who I personally look up to, they have a better environment. But this setup is manufactured to be a lot better than it was at first, and I'll show you guys a little bit about how I improved it right now. This— the first thing that you guys probably can't even see in that picture that I just showed you, the things that make my lighting look pretty good, is this mount— these Mountdog lights right here. I bought two because what I have in my setup in my room, one light is turned off, one light is turned on, because I want the light to show on my face but not on the other side of my face, which gives it a more cinematic feel. Right? I also have a little light in the background. It's a gold RGB light. You guys can again screenshot this if you want to get that. What I personally have, I made this color gold because that's my brand color, but depending on you guys' brand colors for your websites, your business, you can make it a different color, right? And the power of lighting— the, uh, the Mountain Dog lights will help you guys so much because as you can see, you see the ring light glare on my whiteboard. You will not have that problem if you have a soft light because it won't have a harsh glare on a whiteboard or something that will contrast, right? I don't like natural light either because it changes throughout the day. It's inconsistent. It's on one time, it's off the next time. And it can— let's say you're filming a YouTube video, it could go up and down within the video, which isn't good, right? So that's why I choose softbox lighting. I recommend you guys, um, look up Mountain Dog Lights so you guys can get the right lighting for that. And obviously Doing those two— doing those three things, the visuals, the audio, the setup, that's what took this video from originally doing 1,500— it's actually at 1,700 views now— to doing 225,000 views. This is actually an old screenshot, which is essentially a 132x multiple on how well that video was able to perform, even though the songs are the exact same thing. Until you know, I'm basically saying the same song. Right now. Content perfection— this is the final touch. I'm sure a lot of you guys may not have seen my videos before, but with me helping business owners with their content, one of the main things that we help business owners with to take a lot of pressure off them is we help them with the editing of their content. They don't have to worry about that. And thanks to the edits that we put out, not just for my clients but also for myself, a lot of people ask They DM me, "Who's your editor? Hook me up with the editor." And that's essentially the last step upon perfecting your content, taking that good content that you already have and making it great, right? Now there's two, in my opinion, there's two steps to approaching, you know, perfecting your content. You can either do it yourself, right? So you can use green screens, you can maybe flip your phone and show things on your computer. You can even learn how to edit yourself. You have apps like CapCut, then more advanced Premiere Pro, After Effects. You can learn how to do that yourself. Or— that's why I asked you guys before I even got this deep into the presentation— how many of you guys are busy? Very busy, right? What I personally have done for not just myself but my clients is we hire professional editors to enhance their content with the right graphics, animations, and visuals so that you can save up to 100 hours per month. Right, on creating content. Now, when it comes to hiring quality video editors, that's what a lot of people ask. Where do I hire editors from to edit my content after I've filmed the footage? One of the platforms we use is ytjobs.co. It's actually a platform owned by YouTube, and the best part about ytjobs.co is you can post a job and you can see exactly who the editor edited for previously. So you can see the little icon this might be their client, and then you can go to their client's page and see the edits, 'cause it's owned by YouTube, so it's meant for hiring editors from this platform. Another platform that we personally use for hiring editors is behance.net. The best part about Behance is it's actually owned by Adobe. So like, YTJobs owned by YouTube, this is owned by Adobe. Adobe, essentially a company that has multiple creative softwares. You have Photoshop, Premiere Pro, Illustrator, at that After Effects, so many different platforms that these editors are very experienced in. You can just go straight to Behance and find people that are experts at that specific software or that specific skill, right? And Twitter. This is not a job posting platform technically. I'm sure you guys— or X, right? I'm sure you guys gonna call it X or not. But this is one of the main platforms we use for hiring editors as well. Since you can search up hashtags like #videoeditor and #shortformeditor, and you can find people that are already posting jobs. They'll be in the comments, or you can put up a job yourself, right? And this is the complete content creation system: preparation, production, perfection. That's allowed me, my team, to grow our page from 1,300 to 60,000 in 75 days, only investing 15 to 20 hours a week, right? Now Now, this isn't— again, this isn't just working for me, it's working for Majetta. Same strategy has gotten her a million views in 90 days, produced over $100,000 in client revenue, $100,000 in personal revenue for my own business in the first 6 months of this year, and produced 7 million total views in the last 90 days across our page using the 3 Ps that we've essentially broken down just in this presentation. Now, there's a way that I help my clients that they typically might offer to pay me up to $10,000 for one-on-one support with these 3 Ps, which would be personalizing the strategy. But what I've actually done is I wanted to create a community for you guys where this community that I normally would have and charge, let's say, $997 for or $97 monthly, as a result of Paul having me out speaking, allowing me to speak here, I want to actually make this community free of charge for you guys so that all of you guys can now get better at content.