What
…YOUR CONTENT IS ABOUT
Now if you already have your offer built out, the majority of your content will be valuable stories based on that niche topic.
BUT, in order for you content to stand out, be authentic to YOU, and not feel cookie-cutter we need to root your content in:
Things you genuinely like
Your story / life (this is were you mantra, Ikigai, and dream avatar come into play)
THE WALK AROUND TEST
Make a note on your phone called “Interesting.” For one week, just live your normal life. Anytime you find yourself talking about something for a while, write it down. Doesn’t matter what it is. Could be football, AI, sneakers, cults, whatever. Don’t filter it. Just track what you naturally gravitate toward.
At the end of the week, you’ll probably have a long list of things your generally intrigued by.
Then cross off anything you wouldn’t spend 24 hours straight reading or learning about. Imagine you had a full day to deep-dive into one of these topics. If it sounds boring, it’s not the topic for you.
If your down to 2 things use the 100 person test:
If you had to hangout with a group of 100 people who were big fans of A or 100 people were big fans of B, which group do you think you’d enjoy spending time with more?
Think about the kind of person each topic would attract. Could you vibe with that audience?
Let’s say you’re torn between content about casinos and content about baseball. Ask yourself: If I had a room full of 1,000 people who loved this topic, who would I rather hang out with?
That alone might break the tie. And if it doesn’t, you could think about brand potential—but honestly, that’s too early. It’s easy to get lost thinking about the future and money and brand deals and all that. But if that distracts you from actually making content and sticking with it, you’ve already lost.
When figuring out what you want to make content about, keep in mind the importance of understanding what your potential niche’s content looks like so you can take those concepts and improve upon it.
HOWEVER, we do not want to over consume other people’s content because it will subconsciously influence every decision we make within our own, and end up making your account feel copied.
…IT LOOKS LIKE
You need to understand the core that is driving you to create at a fundamental level and use that understanding to express yourself visually.
If you don’t you’re going to rely on copying aesthetics.
We want to avoid this at all costs because if you’re copying aesthetics your just contributing to someone else’s brand.
Think about it, if you started being coached by me and I told you to…
make cinematic storytelling content about content,
wear a beanie, jeans, and a white shirt,
and demonstrate your ideas using notecard drawing cutouts
using warm tones
your content would be nothing more than an extension of mine.
This is because as creators grow they fill out their content “buckets.”
The largest bucket being that of Mr. Beast.
Because he is one of the most well known YouTubers in the world, he is one of the most copied YouTuber in the world.
And while these clones do see some success, all their doing is filling the Mr. Beast bucket.
When people see videos with over the top scale, CGI integrations, and impact font captions they just think of Mr. Beast, not whoever is creating the poor copy. (this has also been known as the Mr. Beast-ification of YouTube)
So while we build out your aesthetic we need to make it feel like we took a slice out of your brain and put it on display for the world to see.
This is also the reason I use note cards in the first place. Not only because they’re very helpful for demonstrating ideas but also because I’ve drawn all my life and doodled my way through everything I’ve ever done. My style of drawing is an extension of myself thus the videos feel like an extension of me.
So how do we manufacture your content in a way that
Doesn’t copy others
Feels like you
By creating a…
BUILDING YOUR PERSONAL BRAND KIT
COLORS (2 Minimum)
The first thing your brand needs to have are recognizable colors. These will play a massive role in the “feeling” of your videos.
WHAT COLORS MAKE PEOPLE FEEL
red → excitement, strength, love, energy
orange → confidence, success, sociability
yellow → creativity, happiness, warmth
green → nature, healing, quality
blue → trust, peace, competence
pink → compassion, sincerity, sweetness
purple → luxury, spirituality, ambition
brown → dependability, simplicity
black → formality, drama, sophistication
white → clarity, innocence, honesty
Use this PALETTE FINDER to find a set of colors you like the look of.
Note that contrasting palettes will make your video feel more alive while neutral palette will make your videos feel calmer. Have this be a reflection of your energy.
Keep in mind not every video will exactly match this specific color combination and that’s ok! We just want the colors of things like your title fonts, landing pages, freebies, etc. to stay congruent across your brand.
Also take note of the colors already around you. I chose my yellowish orange and white combo because those were just the colors of the lamps in my room.
FONTS (2 Minimum)
Best practice here is one cinematic / bold title font and one font that you personally like. Stay away from cartoony fonts as that has been done to death (think back to Mr. Beast) and they make your content feel cheap. We want classy and cinematic.
There are over 100,000 free fonts across these websites:
IF YOU WANT YOUR OWN HANDWRITING FONT
Go to CALLIGRAPHR and make an account
You can get a 75 character font for free. (more than enough to start.)
Download a template, I chose “Minimal English”
Fill it out either on paper or digitally with any software where you can write on a PDF
Upload it back to Calligraphr
Before you export make sure you fix the spacing of your symbols!
You do this by going to MyFonts → selecting a symbol → adjust baseline
You can also make any last minute adjustments by pressing “edit symbol”
Press “Build Font” in the top menu bar.
BOOM. Sick custom font.
BUILDING A PERSONAL MUSIC LIBRARY
Music is the greatest form of universal communication. Music taste is something very personal to a lot of people and that’s why we need to include your favorite songs within your personal brand. In my editing tool kit there are over 100+ viral songs for you to use, but those are songs from my music taste.
You want to curate your own long list of songs that have different moods and feelings associated with them. This is so when your editing you can match the tone of the song to the emotion that section of the video is supposed to convey.
For example if I said: “I was so overwhelmed. I felt like a failure.”
It would feel wrong to have some upbeat jazz playing in the background. Keep this in mind while you curate your background music list.
The best practice for music in video is instrumentals:
HOW TO DOWNLOAD INSTRUMENTALS
Go to YOUTUBE
Look up the title of a song you like and add the word “instrumental” after it. (make sure to listen to the instrumental to ensure its quality.)
Paste: https://cnvmp3.com into Google (the owner renews the site so it’s never tied to one link.)
Copy and paste the youtube video link into the bar and set the Bitrate to 320kb/s
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
Now we need to tie this all in a nice authentic bow so it fits everything we’ve talked about so far. (mantra, Ikigai, etc.)
Write down these questions and answer them in relation to your brand aesthetics
What spaces / locations are around you that you associate yourself with
What objects, brands, etc. do you like the look of and feel personal to yo
What is imagery is associated with your niche
Once you have your answers, your font, music, colors, and overall look of your brand should be pretty well established in your mind.
CREATING A VISION BOARD
The last step is to curate everything in a vision board. This is going to be massively helpful when planning shots and understand what your videos generally look like. Use PINTEREST to curate your aesthetic according to what you did in the previous steps.
This is what mine looks like: JACKSON SWORD VISION BOARD
