If you're a writer, creator, freelancer, or anyone else who is trying to "make it" doing something meaningful, you're probably on social media. If you aren't, you either have a method that works for you (this letter won't apply to you) or you're wasting your time and should probably be on social media.
The thing is, most creators have become content factories.
Glorified search engines.
Repositories of specialized knowledge in an age where anyone can find any information at the click of a button.
Most creators don't get anywhere because there isn't anything special about what they say, how they say it, or why they say it. They don't have an opinion that pushes someone to either change their mind or act. All they have is some boring piece of advice that looks like it's been said a thousand times before.
Choosing a niche used to be great advice when the internet was young and empty.
But just like any other type of specialist throughout history, they are the most likely to be replaced. If your content strategy can be written down as a series of steps on a piece of paper – research ideas, ideate content topics, use specific content frameworks – anyone can spin up an AI avatar and outcompete you any day of the week.
The good thing is, 99% of that content goes nowhere. Straight to the bottom of the barrel. The people worried about AI creating infinite amounts of content don't understand why the top 1% of creators do so well in the first place.
It's because people don't follow dictionaries, they follow humans.
They want raw opinions. They want clarity more than information. They want story and drama.
They want a point of view.
The most profitable niche is you
Escape competition through authenticity. – Naval
Every time I tell people they can talk about multiple interests, and that it's much better to do that, they get understandably worried.
Every single piece of life and business advice tells them to "focus on one thing," but they don't realize that their interests aren't this disconnected pile of ideas. The fear of being scattered prevents people from discovering what makes them irreplaceable.
Let's break this down. I'll try to make sense of it as best I can, followed by practical things to try in your own work.
Your experiences shape who you are. Your identity.
Your identity is composed of goals and values. The things you see as important.
Your goals and values shape your point of view. The way you filter specific information, which goes on to influence the decisions you make, which circles back to reinforce your identity.
Your point of view can't be replicated, because nobody has access to the exact sequence of environmental stimuli that has conditioned your mind to be as unique as it is today.
When you shift from being a repository of specialized knowledge to being a lens through which people see the world, you become a curator of many ideas across different domains and synthesize them under one body of work. You no longer own a category or topic, you own a perspective that creates a unique constellation of interconnected ideas that can't be replicated because they're filtered through your specific combination of values, experiences, and goals.
And that's just it.
People don't have an emotional connection with a dictionary. Instead, they feel pulled to follow people who have a similar worldview. You're worried about people not wanting to follow you because they won't like a specific interest you talk about, but you already scroll past hundreds of different interests any time you get on social media.
I don't talk about something like Bitcoin or crypto, but whether you're interested in it or not, I guarantee that I could write a persuasive, story-based post that would make a lot of you (and random people on the internet) care about it.
Plus, you aren't born with interests. You are persuaded of their importance, and they become interesting to you. This is how I write about deep ideas and still go semi-viral.
Not being able to talk about any interest you want is a skill issue.
Organic VS manufactured novelty
Animals cannot select their goals. Their goals (self-preservation and procreation) are preset, so to speak. And their success mechanism is limited to these built-in goal-images, which we call "instincts." Man, on the other hand, has something animals don't: Creative Imagination. Thus man of all creatures is more than a creature, he is also a creator. With his imagination he can formulate a variety of goals. Man alone can direct his Success Mechanism by the use of imagination, or imaging ability. – Maxwell Maltz
Like it or not, attention runs on novelty, and your independent work won't see a shred of success if you can't garner attention.
The most successful creators are dopamine dealers.
But that doesn't mean you have to manufacture drama and force manipulation tactics to get people to pay attention to you. It means you need to share something new.
When you are the niche, you are your authentic self in public. Most people think authenticity means "being yourself" in some vague, feel-good way when authenticity is the opposite of conformity. Authenticity is not conforming to a particular "niche" that you were told was the "best" for the sole purpose of making money. Authenticity, in this sense, is literally your content strategy. It's letting your worldview determine what you talk about.
Producing something novel or new comes down to pattern recognition.
Pattern recognition is deeply tied to survival and identity. When our ancestors would hunt, dopamine would signal to their brains that an opportunity was worth paying attention to, like new berries growing on a plant or the sound of prey in the forest.
Now, you don't have to worry about hunting for food (except that grocery stores and Uber Eats are simulated and hyper-optimized hunting grounds), but the same thing still happens in your brain. When you read a book with the goal of learning how to make money, the ideas in that book take that shape. You notice new ideas, and if you share them with people online from that same lens, they are presented with a new idea that captures attention. If you read a book with the goal of becoming happier, you would notice different ideas from that book.
It's like a philosophical refraction. Just like light changes when it passes through different materials, ideas transform when they pass through different points of view.
In other words, becoming a better creator is as simple as having a meaningful goal and sharing ideas that excite you. Excitement-first content creation. Much more fulfilling than trend chasing.
As an example, if you are fascinated by the concept of "compound interest," you could talk about it through the lens of building wealth. But when another person talks about it, it's refracted through their worldview, and they may talk about it through the lens of habit formation. There's a reason why James Clear's "1% better every day" philosophy has garnered so much attention, and it's for this exact reason. He took an old idea and made it new by framing it through his unique mind.
This is why a point of view can't be replicated.
AI can regurgitate any idea, but it can't refract it through its non-existent lived philosophy toward a goal it consciously chose.
The attention economy VS the care economy
In Adlerian psychology, there is the concept of "lifestyle."
Not lifestyle as we commonly think of it (cars, houses, vacations), but as your fundamental orientation toward life. The unconscious blueprint of beliefs, goals, and strategies you use to navigate existence. It's formed early and becomes your lens through which you interpret everything.
So far, we understand that your point of view is your unique niche and sharing ideas that excite you is how you create novelty in a sustainable way (and without selling your soul).
The final piece of the puzzle is your personal vision.
Your ideal lifestyle.
That's what ties it all together and unifies all of the content you share under one brand, because brand is what you associate yourself with over time.
Your ideal lifestyle is your north star. Meaning, if you want to succeed in the future of work, you can't just sit around and do nothing. You must merge business growth and personal growth. You actually have to do something, and that doing something allows you to notice ideas worth sharing with others to help them do something similar, because they resonate with your goals and values.
That's what makes people care about you rather than see you as a quick piece of information they can swipe past and forget about. People remember you. People want to buy your stuff. People care about those who changed their life, and you change their life by providing a body of work that changes how they think, and therefore who they are and how they act, preferably toward an overwhelmingly good outcome. I wrote a guide on just this, how to build a world with a content ecosystem.
When you are pursuing a life you care about and sharing ideas that interest you, your content has an energy signature. More conviction. More clarity. People can sense that. They love your work because with every idea, they feel as if they are learning something new that can be adopted as a part of their own worldview.
To make this tangible and give you something to try:
- Don't focus on a topic, focus on everything you determine important for reaching your ideal lifestyle
- Curate interesting ideas from books, videos, podcasts, articles, and more as a daily research habit (note down what excites you)
- Post those ideas as short-form content, like your social profile is your note-taking platform
- Choose one of the most interesting ideas every week for a long-form newsletter or video
- Fill that long-form post with personal experiences, relevant ideas, and tangible takeaways
If you get stuck on the first step and don't know what your ideal lifestyle is…
Well, you need to look at your life. You need to always be contemplating what kind of life you do and don't want to live, otherwise you aren't living with consciousness or intention. You are sleepwalking.
That's all you need to do. Clarity will come.
The simple act of thinking about what you do and don't want, every single day (try going on a walk and thinking of only this), slowly creates a point of view.
Then, you can make decisions and notice ideas that move you away from what you don't want and toward what you want.
I hope this letter was helpful.
– Dan