I’m 44. If You’re Building a Personal Brand in Your 40’s or 50’s Listen To This

So in 2018, I was 38 years old, drowning in debt and felt like a failure to my family. Fast forward seven years later. I'm now a multimillionaire, get a ton of fulfillment from what I do and it's entirely because of my personal brand. So if you're in your 40s or even 50s and you feel like you missed the boat on this or you've been trying and just not getting the results today, I'm going to give you the five step plan that I use to make this happen. I've seen people use this to go from making low six figures to making 700,000, 800,000, all the way up into the millions of dollars per year. Let's get into it. Now, if you look at any industry, the income is no longer fairly distributed. Now I'm not saying this to complain, I'm just telling you this is a massive opportunity if you can truly understand it. Now here's what I mean. If you look at any industry, there's a middle group which is making anywhere from 75k to 100k. And now this is totally respectable. But then if you move up the food chain, there's this top group of people, the top 5% which is making 700,000 $1,002,000,000 for doing the same exact thing. Same industry, same service, but wildly different outcomes. The sad truth is most people spend their entire career in this middle muck area, just chasing opportunity after opportunity. Shiny object syndrome. And they never really get out of it. Now you're not broke, but you know you could be doing way better. I had this feeling inside for years, probably a decade, that I'm capable of doing way more than what I'm doing right now. And I was on this sales treadmill where I was just doing short term activities that benefit me today. But I really wasn't doing anything that would benefit the Neil necessarily next year or the year beyond. And when I finally switched from taking some of my time to doing things that would benefit me in the future, that's when the game changed. You need to be doing things that would compound over time. Yes, you still have to do the short term sales activities, but you want to be doing things that would make you the obvious choice in the future. This is the short list of people that get the most opportunities that make the most money. And this is exactly how you move into that top 5% category I talked about earlier. So before we get into these five steps, I just need you to understand that this isn't just about making better content or becoming A better marketer. The real goal is for you to go from one of many to becoming the one person, the one person that dominates the competition in your market, the one person that gets the most opportunity, the obvious choice, the person whose reputation walks into the room before they do. Everything in business becomes way easier when your personal brand, your name, your photo online, does 90% of the selling for you. Step number one is to define your position. What you want to do is make a list of all the attributes that you want to be known for. Now, if you think about it right now, there's a reason why people do business with you. There's a reason why someone would refer you, a client, or trust you with their transaction. Whatever industry you're in, you want to write out all those things. Maybe it's the way you do business, it's your ability to get things done, problem solve, hardworking, all those things, and even include some of the personal things. Why do people connect with you? Maybe there's a reason why they really enjoy talking with you or working with you. And it's the fact that you have a unique sense of humor or you're easy to get along with. Write all those things down on the list because we're going to be strategically inserting these into your content. Now, important part of this process is defining who do you want to speak to and how we can help them solve their problems. So you'll make another list of all the problems that people face in your business, in your market right now. So you would list out problems that you can help them overcome, problems that you've seen. If you, if you can't think of all these, you can use AI to come up with a lot of this, but you can look back at your calendar, look back at the last year and think about how did you help people? Like what, what, what did they come to you with? What were the issues that they had? How did you get over those roadblocks? Those are going to be unique pieces of content that we're going to insert into your overall plan. Remember, you're not creating a brand from scratch. You're amplifying what's already there. You do not need to create something brand new. You're going to be yourself. Everybody talks about authenticity and we want that to come through in your content. But what we want to do is just clarify all those things. A lot of people have all these ideas jumbled up in your head. We just need to package them correctly for the Internet. Remember, the smartest person doesn't win. The person who's best at the job doesn't win. It's the most known person who gets the opportunity. And so all we need to do is package these ideas in a unique way so that more people see the video. Now, when it comes to who you're speaking to, I do get one question a lot. And a lot of people have multiple people that they'd like to speak to. So it's important that you narrow this down to one individual. But if you're like me, there was no way around speaking to two groups. I had to speak to consumers and also business partners who could refer me business. Now, some content would address both of those people. If I'm making a video for consumers, business partners are going to be also interested in that content. So you'll find a lot of overlap even if you're speaking to two groups. One thing I will say is when you make a piece of content that's for one group and not the other, the other group isn't necessarily turned off by it. So when I would make industry only content for my business partners, consumers may scroll past it, but honestly, they're seeing me as a thought leader in the industry, and now they want to work with the teacher, not necessarily the student. And so this just overall elevated my brand. Even though I was speaking to those two groups, it was under the same big umbrella of my industry, but it just had a little bit of nuance, speaking to two groups. So this is possible. It's a little more difficult, but, you know, if you can just narrow it down to one group to start off and then you can add the second group later. Step number two is to create content that builds your authority. Remember, the future belongs to those who can educate, not just advertise. And so what you want to do here is don't sell your service. Give them the blueprint. So what that means is every piece of content cannot be a sales pitch for whatever it is that you're doing. You want to give them something of value. You want to make it so it seems like they could do this on their own. So let me give you an example. If I'm in real estate, I might say, here are the ways that you can acquire a property. I might say, here's the best way to do X, right? But what I'm doing there is giving them the information as if they could do it on their own. I'm never going to insert a sales pitch into that piece of content. Now, there's different ways of doing this depending on which industry you're in. But you Almost want to assume the DIY effect. Think about this. People love going to Ikea because they can design their own things, they can pick out their own stuff and take it home. But once they open the box, now they need your help with the implementation. So what you want to do is always give it away, and then you can be the person to provide the implementation of whatever it is that you're offering. Now, the biggest mistake I see people make here is they don't think what they're offering is valuable. If you've been doing something for a number of years, you probably think, well, I do this every day and this is too basic. Everybody knows this. But think about the consumer. Most people on the Internet are not the brightest when it comes to what you do. They might do this once in 10 years, they might have never done this before. And so you're telling it to them for the very first time. How would you educate that person? Some of the things that are most powerful in our head are just discounted. Like, we just think that the audience wouldn't really find this valuable, when the truth is that might actually change someone's business, that might actually change someone's life. And so don't discount that information. I have a note on my desk that says, don't say no. For the audience, the most powerful pieces of content have been some of the most basic things in my head. What you want to do is give them those basics as a foundation, and then you can give them the next steps on how to get more advanced results. A huge misconception is thinking that you're going to run out of ideas. You do not need 100 or a thousand new ideas. You just need five to ten core ideas. And we're going to package those differently throughout the year. I've been saying some of the same things for the past six years, but I just say them in different ways. Remember, people need to be reminded more than they need to be taught something new. Remember, people are overwhelmed and stressed out. And so when you can clarify and simplify the information for them, that's what they're going to respect. Now, one big mistake I see people make with their content is they're lecturing the audience. You might be the expert. You've been doing this five, 10 years, and so you think, I'm going to teach everybody. But that comes across as overwhelming them or it comes across as a lecture. So what you want to do is just make observations. Instead, what you can do is talk about the things you've noticed, what you've seen. Your most successful clients do. Anytime I make an observation instead of trying to be the expert in the piece of content, it results in 5 to 10x the views. You can do this both in a written format or in a video format. Right now on Instagram, I've noticed that written content is crushing. We're getting way more views and followers from some of the written carousels as opposed to videos. So mix this up and make more observations. Not just expertise, content, just an easy example of this. Instead of telling people, here's what you should do, say here's what I've noticed there's a single piece of content that's the most ignored, but it's going to be the most powerful for your personal brand, and that is to share your purpose or your why. Why are you even building this personal brand? Why are you passionate about the industry that you're in? How do you love helping people? Like, what got you into this and what keeps you going? You can talk about this in select piece of content throughout the year and you'll notice people will really align with your future vision. This is called building in public. You want people to know that you really care about what you're doing. I actually got this advice from Ed Mylett. He said, you don't need to convince people of all this stuff, Neil. You just need to make sure they know you're convinced. When you're convinced, they'll follow along. So I hope you're enjoying today's podcast. I want to quickly tell you about something that's really helping my audience. Once a week I send out my Forward Focus email. This is one tip that's going to help you move the needle in your business, your personal brand, your content strategy. And honestly, I've never received this much positive feedback from a single piece of marketing ever in my whole career. So I know this is really helping people. It takes you about 60 seconds to read and just gives you that clarity in a world of all this chaos and noise. So if you want to get access to this week's issue and get this every week from me, just check out the link it's in the description below and I'll shoot it over to you. And for now, let's get back to the episode. And now, when it comes to this type of content, there's one huge mistake. I see people make. It has this energy behind it of like, look at me or pick me. What you want is the energy of come with me. If you ever see people's content and you kind of cringe because it feels like they're showing off or they're just being super overconfident in what they do. It's because they probably have this look at me attitude or energy behind the videos. It's okay to share your success if it's about the people you've helped, if it's about the clients. But the thing that people need to see is that it's possible for them as well. That's the energy you want in every single piece of content, especially when you're showing your success. All right, step number three is going to be to pick your platform and go deep. Remember, you can do anything, but you can't do everything, especially if you don't have a team. This is going to be different than what most gurus will tell you, which is posting everywhere, post on all platforms ten times a day. It's just not realistic for the average creator. I started doing this in the beginning where I was trying to be on five platforms all at once, and I was just dabbling in each of them and not getting any results. Where I got real results was going deeper on my platform of choice. So for me, it was Instagram, which is linked to my Facebook. I went really deep on building my community on one platform. How does the content need to be packaged for this exact platform? What are the things that are working? What's not working? And as a result, I started to see big opportunities come my way from the platform. Once I got that rolling and I felt like it wasn't a huge lift for me, then I started writing on X. Then when threads came out, I just took my content that's already on X and started putting it on threads. Then once I got those going, then I added YouTube. And only in the last year, I've gone really deep on building my YouTube channel. Now, if I would have tried all of this all at once, probably would have failed. So doing it in steps is okay. Don't feel like you have to be everywhere. There's a guy in my group who's absolutely crushing on LinkedIn and I haven't posted on LinkedIn in years. Am I missing some opportunities there? Yes. But I can't be everywhere because I've chosen to go deeper on a few platforms than others. Remember, dabbling in 2026 gets you nowhere. You need to actually stand out on these platforms, and the only way you're going to be able to do that is to go deeper on one to start with and then slowly add the others. Now, a big piece of how you can scale this is going to be to add to your team. But a big mistake I see with people is when they want to scale their content, they hire a videographer. A videographer is someone who shoots events, might shoot content and then give it to you. Maybe they edit it, maybe they just give it to you raw. What you want to is hire a content creator, someone who can shoot, edit and post this content for you. You can then scale the content to multiple platforms. You can have that person edit it and post it on two or three platforms so that you can keep doing your job and keep creating new ideas, new content. This single hire has been the most powerful position for my personal brand because it allowed me to scale the amount of content we're posting every single day. People are really scared to hire somebody for say $70,000 a year, but you don't have to pay that all at once. You pay on a monthly basis. And guess what, if it doesn't work out, it just moves on, right? You don't have to commit for the whole year to this big expense. You can start on a monthly basis. And I don't know about you, but every single time I hire someone new, my revenue goes up because I end up working harder to cover that expense. So even if you're scared to make that hire, I would encourage you at some point in the journey, even if it's early, you should make that content creator hire because it's going to be the one difference that separates you from the other competitors who are just struggling in this middle muck. Step number four is to build a bridge, not a sales pitch. Remember, the best marketers are looking for signal, not sales. Most people on social media are not ready to buy. They're just in this middle area just thinking about it. They might be open to it, they may not be. Now there's going to be lucky opportunities where you post something and they're ready to go. Right now. This is cool when it happens, but it's not the majority, it's not the normal process. The normal process is people are on the Internet to be entertained or informed and then they see a piece of your content. And if you're selling or hard selling in that piece of content, it's a complete turn off and they scroll past you. Now a lot of people talk about this indecisive group as a big problem, but I see it as the biggest opportunity right now because most people are so transactional that they don't get it. If you're the one person who actually serves that group, you'll have so many people in your funnel that you'll never have a problem getting sales at the end. Now, is it okay to sell directly in your content? Yes. You could do that every once in a while. But just don't do it too often because when you do this all the time, like say every single week, 52 weeks a year, it kills your brand positioning. What you want to do instead is sell the next step. So what's that next step for you? It could be your email newsletter. It could be a longer video where you get people to opt in and you explain things on a deeper level. It could be a webinar, it could be a conversion event. Right. Just sell the next step, not your service. The best content creators, the people who are making the most money online, are not selling their service. They're selling this next step instead. Like, for example, I might post content and then at the end of that content, make a call to action to join my email newsletter. So now I'm not selling my service, I'm selling the email newsletter. Because that thing is what's really valuable in this particular post. That is a specific thing that somebody who's not yet ready to work with me would want from me. This is because they can consume this on their time, not mine. They can watch or read this content at 1am in their underwear if they want to. Right. It doesn't matter because it's on their time, it's on demand. If the only way to work with you is to contact you or book an appointment with you, you're gonna miss 95% of the audience on social media. If you look at most of your competitors, this is the one thing that they're offering is book a call or start the process for everybody who's not yet ready for that, they just ignore that entire group. And that's where you're going to see the opportunity. Your content's job is not to sell. It's to make you the obvious choice for whenever they're ready to buy. Now step number five is going to be to sell behind the curtain. This is the way you convert people from followers to clients. The best way to convert people is off of social media. What you want to do is sell them the next step. This could be a webinar live event, longer video, known as a vsl, where you get to go deeper with them. You get to show them your expertise and then make a call to action at the end of that. So think about the customer journey. They're watching a piece of content. Maybe they see your content 2, 3, 4, 5 times. Now you offer them the next step. This could be a webinar. Now they come onto that webinar. On the webinar, they have another 30 minutes with you where they learn how you can really help them. They get a bunch of valuable information. At that point, they have so much more respect for you. And then if you make a call to action on the next step to actually starting the process of buying, then so many more people are willing to do this. Because if you did this cold, just straight out the gate on social, it's going to fall on deaf ears. But when you do it after these few steps, it works. It just works so much better. I've seen people just get incredible performance by going through this process, which is just a few extra steps than your competitors are willing to do. Now, what are the different types of conversion events? You could host a dinner, you could host a live thing. This could be a small group or a large group. I used to host these small business events for business partners. Started off with 10 or 20, eventually went to 40, 50. Now we have a thousand people in our business events. But in the beginning, it was just a small group of people that would come to learn from me. The cool thing about some of these events is you can just host the party. You don't have to beg for a seat at someone else's table. You can build your own, right? So I think about this. In the first few events I did, I was not the expert, I was not the thought leader, but I still wanted to get the benefit of hosting the party. So what I did was I hosted an event for 20 business partners. I invited somebody else to speak at that event. That person was going to do the heavy lifting. So for me, I got to do the intro, maybe teach for 15 minutes, and then I get this other guy to speak for 60 minutes. And then I still get the credit because I hosted the thing. And at the end, I was able to make a call to Action to get four or five business partners to start working with me on a consistent basis. Again, you can do this live or you can do this on Zoom. It doesn't have to be that complicated. There's an easy way to set up a Zoom webinar. It's just called a Zoom meeting with a Zoom registration page. This is the simplest way to get started with this process. And again, if you are not the person who can hold this meeting for the whole period of time, just bring in a collaborator, bring in a guest to do this with you. They'll be pumped because you did all the heavy lifting, you got the call organized, you got the people on there, and now all they have to do is just show up and speak. But you get the benefit of not having to come up with all the content for the actual event. Now if you don't want to host an actual event either online or in person, another thing you can do is just get them onto your email list. I have so many people that we convert on our email list behind the curtain, because now once they've opted in for any lead magnet that we offer, which is a freebie that we give people to give them a solution to one of their problems now, they might need us for the opportunities in the future. So what we do is we email them on a consistent basis. I send out one email every single week. Every once in a while in those emails, we'll make a call to action to start the process with us. And so many times, because people have been consuming the content now consuming the emails, they're willing, they're ready to go to the next step. And so those calls to action work great. And I'm not even doing that live. This is all done through automation. Another underrated conversion strategy is going to be to go through partnerships. So if somebody else already has an audience or a platform and they bring you on, you could do an opportunity to offer your service on their platform. So in this case, trust is transferred. They already have a relationship with that particular host and then now as that person brings you on, they introduce your product, your benefit, and you get to bypass the whole trust building process in just one line. I've seen the biggest lift in my business through collaborations and partnerships. Somebody else brought me on as a guest speaker on the webinar. Somebody else brings me onto their stage to speak to their group. Now you can do a direct call to action or you can do the selling behind the curtain, but either way it's highly profitable because these people already trust you and it makes the selling process 10 times easier. Now, one last opportunity you have with this is not one to many selling is going to be one to one selling through DMs. This is again behind the curtain because it's not public in your content. What you want to do is leverage your content, leverage your social media profile as a way to sell, reduce the sales process time. So people go from not knowing you to trusting you and wanting to work with you. People go from indecisive to I'm ready to buy. How does that process happen and how can we move that process quicker the way you can do this is through your content, but then now offer them the next step in the DMs. So for example, if I want to reach out to someone who I could work with, if I want to reach out to a potential client or business partner, I would send them a dm, right? I would react to their content, to their stories, to their. I would comment on their posts, right? And then now they're going to come see my content. So the trust building process is coming through. Even though I haven't posted something and gone viral in the beginning I thought, hey, you build it, they will come. But the truth is you can post content and then get people to come see it. So when I meet people at events instead, instead of giving them my business card, I'll give them the link to my ig. Or if I had my profile really up to par on LinkedIn, I would give them the link to my LinkedIn. Whatever your platform is of choice, but you want to use what you've already built and use this as leverage to get them to trust you quicker. Anytime I connect with a new potential client or referral, I will send them the information I'm going to email them, but then also include a piece of content. When you do this correctly, their opinion of you goes from 0 to 80 on a scale of 1 to 10 quickly. So you just bypass the whole trust building process with the content that you've already posted. One of the biggest mistakes I see people make with their content is waiting for people to see it. You don't have to do that. You can actually DM people, you can email them the link to your video. And when you do this correctly at the right point in the process, you can convert way better. Now one more thing before we wrap this up is if you're watching this and you're like, man, I missed the boat. I wish I would have done this sooner. I'll just tell you this. Opportunities don't care how old you are. Money doesn't care how old you are. And just think about this. Just trust everything that you've done in the past has led you to what you're going to do in the future. I used to just be super bummed that I didn't start doing this in my 20s or 30s and I didn't start till my late 30s. And now I've missed the boat. When the reality was everything I had done in there had led me to the type of content I'm going to make now. The experience that I can provide that separates me from my competitors I've seen people do this in their 30s. I've also seen people crush it in their late 50s. Just trust that everything you've gone through has prepared you for to really take it to the next level right now. Now, if you want me to go deeper on any of the five steps I talked about in today's video, just leave a comment below. I read every single one of these and this is how we come up with the ideas for future videos. So make sure to comment on that and we will see you on the next video.