- Storey Time
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- I made $500,000 with 0 followers
Up next on another episode of…
Brandon kills another sacred cow of copywriting
It’s time for…
The DEATH of the personal brand!
Personal brand? What’s that?
It’s a fancy new term in 2025.
It’s people who are intentionally spending time building their social media audience to grow their influence, business, careers, and more.
And according to the personal brand (PB) gurus…
You can’t build a business without a personal brand.
What exactly do personal brand-ers do?
Start social media profiles
Post social media content multiple times per day
Comment on 20-100+ other accounts per day to “engage”
DM and “hop on calls” with others in the space to network
And they usually consider Dan Koe to be some kind of demigod.
The premise of the “personal brand” is that if you build up your social media following, you can build your dream business (and life).
The truth is?
Dan Koe’s not wrong.
Content is leverage.
A following is leverage.
Your network is leverage.
The personal brand, or PB, is all about one thing…
INBOUNDS.
If you focus enough time and energy on building your personal brand…
You create a money magnet.
Clients will automatically show up in your DMs ready to throw money at you.
And all you have to do is post a few pieces of content a day, engage a bit, and “come up with your offer” and you’re set.
Sounds pretty nice, right?
Passive inbounds?
I think so too.
But this is BAD advice for 99% of people who want to build a $5,000+ per month online business within the one year
Why?
Because nobody’s going to approach a newbie and give them $1,000+ because of their followers or fancy tweets.
Content without case studies is futile
If you don’t have any proof (samples, results, testimonials) showing you took a client from point A to point B because of your copy…
You’re not going to make a dollar with your content.
Content (and the personal brand) only becomes monetarily effective once you have case studies to show off.
In other words…
You need to get clients FIRST before you can monetize via inbounds on social media.
“So, wait a minute, Brandon. If I need to get clients before I can monetize my Twitter, Threads, or Instagram… Then what the heck am I doing spending 1-3 hours per day making content and exhausting myself on the comment hamster wheel?”
My answer?
Wasting time.
Building a personal brand built on content and inbounds isn’t the fastest path to $100,000+ per year online.
And you know what’s reallllllly fascinating?
There’s a big missing piece of this puzzle that Dan Koe, Nicolas Cole, and Dakota Robertson usually won’t talk about…
(because today their businesses are all about content and inbounds)
You know what that secret is?
Their first six-figure business online weren’t built off the back of content or inbounds.
For all 3 of them?
Their first $10,000+ per month business were freelance service businesses built off of outbounds.
Dan Koe was a freelance web designer
Nicolas Cole was a freelance content writer
Dakota Robertson was a freelance ghostwriter
Their strategy?
Pick a digital skill
Offer it as a freelance service
Approach businesses (outbounds)
The result?
$100,000+ per year businesses.
And guess what?
That same strategy worked for me too.
I got to $500,000+ in profit as a copywriter without a single follower
I didn’t post a single piece of content online until 13 months ago (5 years into my copywriting journey).
It was ONLY once Cole, Koe, and Robertson (and myself included) built up six-figure digital businesses as freelancers…
That they decided to shift to content, inbounds, and info products (coaching/courses).
Some of the best advice that’s helped me grow my business online?
Don’t just listen to what people say. Listen to what they do.
You’re probably wondering…
“Okay, Brandon, so what do I do then? I was taught that I have to post content and engage and build my following if I want to make money online.”
Step 1: Stop spending hours a day on your personal brand.
Step 2: Practice your copy skills for 30-60 mins+ per day (Too many people think writing Tweets and Threads is copy practice. It isn’t)
Step 3: Go land clients in the DMs (high value audit/samples upfront).
Step 4: If you’ve already spent 1-2 hours on outbound outreach per day (and you really want to build your PB still), then just allocate 5-10 minutes MAX of your client-getting time on content/engaging per day.
Step 5: Don’t change anything until you reach $5,000+ per month as a freelance copywriter.
Step 6: Once you hit $5,000+ per month, go ahead and shift some more focus on your PB and pushing for inbounds (since you have case studies now to make it worthwhile).
If you have no idea how to land clients…
Or you’ve been stuck for a few months (without landing any yet)
(It’s re-opening for a few days on February 1, 2025.)
In it, you’ll learn the exact step-by-step outreach system that’s getting ~70% of my students their first paid client in under 30 days.
Without cold DMs or cold emails
Without aggressive sales calls
Without a personal brand
As brand new copywriters…
And by doing just ONE outreach per day.
Like C O., who just sent me this DM today about his first client for $200:
Or C J. who sent this yesterday about how he earned $1,200 in two weeks:
If you want results like that (without having to burn yourself out on the content hamster wheel)…
-Brandon “kill your personal brand” Storey
P.S. In the course, you’ll be guided step-by-step through 4 phases to six figures:
Master Copywriting
Land Clients
Manage Clients
Scale to Six Figures
Go from zero copy knowledge to good enough to land clients in just a few weeks.
Learn the warm outreach Sniper Bomb system to get your first client in 30 days or less.
Understand the strategies to scale your business to six figures in 4 hours per day.
All taught from someone (me) who’s done it all before (by building a copywriting business up to $100,000 per year in under 12 months).
So, whether you’re a complete beginner… or you’ve been studying copy for months…
And you’re looking for a complete roadmap to your first $5,000 month in 3-6 months as a freelance copywriter:
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