Why Embracing My Personal Brand Has Changed Everything

This is my vision for the next 10 years of my life.

Last week, I wrote about how 2024 has been a year of deep reflection for me. I was surprised at the amount of email replies and inquiries I received from it, and so I decided to go deeper.

I’ve had a few realizations during this year. Although these realizations are simple, they are also profound. As such, in today’s issue I will freely express these ideas that have been coming into my head.

Hopefully, you can see my ideas through your own lens, and they can create some clarity in your own life.

Let’s do this.

LFG. 🔥

I’m Ready To Level Up

A few month’s ago, Bryan and I got into an argument. At it’s core, the argument was about the distribution of responsibilities within Stodzy. Bryan is a brother to me, so he and I can argue without being mean and I think our honesty with each other helped us both.

I won’t get into the details, but essentially, our argument manifested a realization in me that I need to start letting go of control.

One of my mottos in life has always been “the only thing you will ever have control over is your reactions.”

I live by this ethos. I do not try to control other people and I’ve done well at living by the truth that everyone is simply doing their best to figure life out.

For whatever reason, I haven’t stayed true to that mentality when it comes to my work.

In business, I find comfort in control. Building my companies has been my life’s work and I get very anxious and uncomfortable about the idea of letting someone else run the show.

But it’s an illusion. The simple truth is that allowing other people to take on responsibilities is actually the best thing I can do to gain control over my life.

This entire experience was the catalyst for me to step down as CEO. I needed to do it, both for the company, but also for myself.

It’s been a few months now, and the dust is finally settling. I’m able to see all the empty space in my life. I’m able to appreciate the stillness and see that doing less is actually the best way to live in abundance.

Letting go of control has enabled me the freedom, spiritual strength, and mental bandwidth to go bigger.

I’m 38. I’ve already done so much in my life. My sobriety has blessed me with these gifts. I’m successful and I have wealth. I have a beautiful family and a super hot wife who I love to death. Most days I’m happy, and when I’m not happy, I still have serenity.

I’m grateful for how far I’ve come, but stopping now would be an insult to myself, my family, my higher power, and my ultimate purpose.

I envision a future that is miles above what I ever dreamed for myself when I was a kid. What’s scary is that I know this future for myself is possible. It’s frightening to think of how far I can go, but I’m no longer willing to let my fear of success deter me from shooting for the stars.

I’m ready.

My Personal Brand Is My Biggest Asset

For years, I’ve hated the idea of building an audience around my name.

The truth is that influencers are broke, YouTubers are anxious, and Instagram models are depressed. I want no part of that. I don’t want to be famous, I only want to be wealthy.

During Covid, I decided that since I had nothing better to do, I might as well start building a following on Twitter.

Since then, one thing has led to another and I’ve built a decent online following through social media. I have more than 100,000 followers and an email list of 20,000 people with a 50% open rate. I’ve built my entire email list through my personal brand.

I took inspiration from Dan Go and Charles Miller, and through their frameworks, I learned that it was possible for me to build a strong personal brand and social media following without being obsessed with myself, posting endless selfies, oversharing, and letting it consume me.

And guess what? It’s working.

Even though my personal brand doesn’t generate a lot of direct revenue, the value it’s brought into my life has been life changing. Through my email list, social media following, and online reputation, I’ve been able to …

• build a partnership with Chris and grow Cuppa.sh.

• book a deal with Charles and grow The Copyblogger Academy to almost 40k MRR.

• meet Louis which got me access to investing in Sparkloop which was acquired by ConvertKit

• booked a partnership deal with Hey Creator

• plus more …

What’s crazy is that I created all of this success while also acting as CEO of Stodzy.

The results have been awesome, but I think it’s time for me to step into my own power and start doubling down on myself.

Over the last few years, I’ve gotten dozens of requests from other business owners who want to hire me for coaching. I’ve never done it because I felt weird about it. My ego wouldn’t allow me to be a coach, because I thought that people would judge me.

I’m an entrepreneur. I build businesses. I’ve always been a little thrown off by people who do business coaching but haven’t actually built businesses that weren’t coaching businesses.

I don’t want to be a guru.

My friend Darren talked me into putting a coaching page on my website. So I did. What do I have to lose? The worst case scenario is that I can confirm to myself that I don’t want to do coaching and I can take the page down.

To my surprise, within the last three months, I’ve booked four coaching deals.

All of this is to say that my personal reputation is easily becoming my most valuable asset. In many ways, it’s more valuable than all of my companies because my name and my reputation gives me endless options.

So I’m all in. I’m now fully committed to sharing my journey, creating content, building my YouTube channel, and growing my email list.

It would be irresponsible for me not to go all in on this. It’s the highest ROI of my time.

Healthcare Is My Future

The last, and possibly most profound realization I’ve had is about the direction of my work.

First, a quick timeline.

2010 – I got sober and started my first blog.

2011 – I started Sober Nation

2012 – Bryan and I started Stodzy and we built a big company in the behavioral healthcare space.

2018 – I was getting burned out with healthcare. I decided to start doing “cool and sexy work”, like creating courses and creating online products. Also, I lost $100,000 in a busted investment in a behavioral healthcare center in Nashville. $100,000 is always a lot of money, but it was an even bigger amount of money to me then than it is now.

2020 – I bought full control of Copyblogger and decided to get into the creator space.

2023 – I started coming to grips with the fact that healthcare is boring but profitable. I finally shook off the imposter syndrome and realized how good I am at doing this work.

Also 2023 – I built systems and frameworks around all my companies. Now, Copyblogger is fully functioning, profitable, and high leverage yet it doesn’t take up a lot of my time.

2024 – Stepped down as CEO from Stodzy.

Current moment – I have gone through the entire spectrum of emotions, thoughts, and decisions only to come back full circle. I am old enough and mature enough now to realize that working in “cool” industries is vastly overrated and I am ready to completely dive back into the healthcare space and dedicate my life (or at least the next ten years) to doing this work and doing it well.

So what does that mean?

Currently, we are continuing to grow The Census and Stodzy is building out it’s sales team. Next week, I am also starting on a project in the space that I am extremely excited about. Additionally, I’ve partnered on a peptides company and we will be working on a longevity clinic. We will get into autism treatment, hormone optimization, IV treatment, mental health, psychedelics, and more.

I love the idea of people bypassing our completely broken healthcare system and taking ownership of their health, their emotions, and their nutrition while ridding themselves of cultural norms like drugs, alcohol, bad food, and sedentary lifestyles.

The bigger vision is to copy the model of Fitt.co, but to do it in the healthcare space. It will become a consortium of departments that offer …

• media

• funding

• deal brokering

• services

• products (like job boards and press releases)

• and more

Embracing The Discomfort

Recently, I have been extremely uncomfortable.

The answers are coming. They’re coming slowly, but they’re coming.

I’m in a good spot. Everything is coming together. I don’t anticipate everything to work exactly the way I envision it, because nothing ever goes according to plan.

But I’m making the right choices and I’m heading in the right direction.

I am walking my path and I feel good.