How to Build a Personal Brand in 2026 Despite AI

21 million 393,122 followers across all platforms for Leila, Sharon, and me in the ACQ brands. And I want to break down how to build a personal brand in 2026, both leveraging AI, but more importantly in spite of AI, and how you can actually prove yourself as somebody that people will want to listen to. And so, I think the big thing that has to be understood in AI is that AI will not equally disrupt all creators. And

so, creators actually sit on this continuum. You have low risk, and then you have high risk. So, how can you have a high-risk creator or low-risk creator? Well, it depends on what is being asked of the consumer. So, for example, if you consume a meme or you consume a stand-up comedy clip, the risk that you have is just the time that you're putting into consuming the clip, and the product of that creator is the clip itself.

It's self-contained. Meaning, when you consume it, if you laugh, the value's already delivered. You have a complete cycle. And so, these fall under the category of entertainers. And so, entertainers, and I define entertainment as one thing, which is the objective of the content is to be consumed. So, if you think about a perfect retention curve, if 100% of people watch 100% of a video, you would have a video that would go ultra ultra viral, right? But

there's nothing after that. It's just you consumed it, you have been entertained. So then, what are the other parts on this continuum? So, the next one you would have would be what I could consider a B2C educator. So, what does that look like? Now, to be fair, do you have to be only one of these things? Of course not. You're going to vary along this continuum. It's not like there's a box that you're like, "I'm only

this or I'm only this." The different types of content you make may correspond with different parts on this continuum, and you also might even have within the same piece of content a couple elements. You might have a little joke that you say that's entertaining in itself, but then you have a point that you'll make, which might lead to something else. We have to answer the next question, which is, "What's the point of education?" The point of

education is to change behavior, right? Like, you don't put your kid in school so that they act the same. You put their kid in school so they can start reading or they can start writing or they can start speaking or they start doing math. They can change behavior right? And so, uh the stakes are significantly lower for B2C educator. So, imagine uh a girl who's doing a hair tutorial or a makeup tutorial or a a fitness

thing for diet or for working out or somebody who's giving maybe relationship advice. The reason that I say it's lower risk is that let's say you start the diet and it doesn't work as well. It's not the end of the world, right? If you buy some lash extensions and it doesn't work as well, not the end of the world. Now, can these people drive sales? Absolutely. I mean, Huda Beauty built an empire off of just this

concept, right? And the thing is is that she had credibility within that domain because she could demonstrate it live, right? She actually used the product. You see a before and after in real time using the implement. You say, "I'm willing to take this risk." And so, you do it. Now, AI will be best suited to interrupt the stuff on this side. Why is that? Because if you see a clip of an AI avatar girl who's doing

her lashes or doing her hair and giving you tips on how to do it, the likelihood that you'll listen to it even if it's AI is probably decently high as long as the stuff seems like it makes sense. You may be like, "Oh, I didn't know that. Maybe I'll give that a shot, right?" Now, as you move along this continuum, when the stakes get higher, you're less and less likely to listen to someone who does not

have third-party proof that's as demonstrable. So, I'll explain. So, this middle tier here would be what I would consider a kind of B2 prosumer. All right? So, this is kind of where you get into your uh money stuff. So, you look at people who talk about savings and uh investing money. That's like is there certainly more risk to what you do with your savings and your money and investing than uh lashes and your hair and maybe

even a diet? Ask most people, the answer probably be yes, right? So, if you look at some of the top creators in the space, like let's think of some of them. So, you've got like Erica taught me, who's done an awesome job. Now, why do people listen to her? Because she talks about how to like make disputes and ask for refunds. It's all about money. What is she? She's an attorney, right? She has more real-world credibility.

What's another example? Um Vivian Tu. So, she's a uh she's also she's uh somebody came from finance and so she has that credibility of kind of Wall Street, etc. And so she's leveraged that and she talks about saving and investing and stuff. Uh you think about like Dave Ramsey, right? He obviously has his big business success, uh which has big overlay on this and he's obviously been doing this for a really long time. So, for each

of these people, there's a little bit more proof that's required. Now, are there people who are making uh content in the space that have zero proof? Maybe. Are they the biggest? No. Why? Because listening to their advice is riskier than listening to somebody who has some visible proof. Hey guys, real quick, many of you guys are getting started in business and don't know, but other entrepreneurs have already tried to help. And so, 3.6 million copies were

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move along the continuum, we have our B2B creators, right? And so, I would consider myself in this category for a lot of my content, this included. I started this video by saying that we have over 20 million plus subscribers, followers, etc. across platform because I have to give some credibility as to what I'm saying, right? Now, me giving credibility around that an AI could totally replicate because if an AI has a lot of followers, for example,

then that AI would be able to talk about it because it would have proof about it. That all makes sense. Now, if an AI is saying, "Hey, do this thing in your business." until there are AIs that have built gigantic companies that no human was involved in, then the likelihood that the AI will have the ability to gain the trust of the audience so that they listen to the advice goes down. Right? And so like why

do we actually care about proof or demonstration in general to begin with, right? Well, we take it as a signal to decrease our own personal risk. And so if you have two people that you're listening to, one person that just GPT'd, "Hey, this is six things you need to do to scale your sales team." never sold anything in their life, never built a sales team, versus somebody who's built 10 sales teams and says, "Here are six

things that you need to do." If the content was the same, which one of these two people do you think would have significantly larger followings? This one. Why? Because people can actually believe it. They're actually willing to take action on it because they'll say, "Okay, this guy probably knows what he's talking about because he's done this in the real world." Now, there is a little bit of chicken and egg of the the six things this guy

comes up with versus the six things this guy's come up with. These ones will probably be a little bit better because he has in the trenches knowledge and so there is a little bit of chicken and egg, but assuming the information was literally identical, the person who has the most credibility wins and not just by a little bit, by a lot of it. Like why is Elon the number one business influencer in the world? Because he's

the richest man in the world, right? And so it will be it is it will be increasingly difficult for AI to create the proof required for B2B and higher-risk types of content. And so when we think about this, you're like, "How do I make my brand or build my brand in a world where AI can duplicate anything?" Well, we have to focus on proof. We You to focus demonstration. And if we're looking at this continuum, the

more you're this way, probably the safer you are at least in the short-to-medium term. Underneath of that, we get the next question, which is "Okay if that is indeed the case, what do I need to do in order to create content at scale that can compete with AI?" Well, it's going to come down to, "How can I do demonstration at scale? How can I provide proof at scale in real time?" For sure, it's great to have

accomplishments, accomplishments you can mention, right? You can say them one time, people can know that you sold a company or or you're scaled or you're doing $250 million a year in revenue, whatever it is right? You can have that stuff. But, demonstrating in real time is something that is incredibly difficult to fake, right? Now, is there a world in the future where AI can can can can take calls? Absolutely, it's probably a year or two away.

It's not even that It's not even that far. Maybe by the end of this year. But, to what are you going to do today, like watching this video? Well, I'm going to give you a couple things that have worked really well for me. So, number one is, instead of saying, "Hey, uh you know, of course you want to do epic and then document it and then do more epic and then document it." That's uh no no

question. That would be more of a content creation method. So, it's like you look at your calendar, you look at all your meetings, you put a plug-in for each of the meetings because you do them virtually, so you transcribe them, then you say, "Hey AI, tell me the interesting moments from these meetings." And then you can talk about them. So, rather than you making up stories, you actually give real examples, right? That is further along this

proof-to-risk spectrum. So, that's a good thing. But, is there something that's even better than that? And I think there is, which is, is there a way that you can engineer within your existing business motion, which is, "How do you service customers of whatever it is that you sell, that you can bake in components of proof?" So, how how would that work? Well, if I were selling hair extensions, I would probably have sweepstakes and lottery tickets inside

of the hair, which then creates a marketing motion that I can put around it, which why not? Then the winners I can call in person to come to my salons where I can install them for them. And then all of a sudden I've got this beautiful loop, a self-licking ice cream cone if you will, of I sell, you know, customers come in, they buy products, those products generate marketing, that marketing gets more customers, those customers buy

more products, and around and around we go. That is a self-licking ice cream cone, and you want to install it at every business you have, especially in light of AI where proof is going to matter more than anything else. If you're in a B2B setting, it works the same way. Now, if you're like, "Oh, well, I, you know, this doesn't work for my business." You're not going to make it, dude. I I don't know what to

tell you. Like if you can't think, "How could I engineer a way for me to interact with my customers so that we could demonstrate the value of the products that we have in a real way?" I don't know what to tell you. Like I'm trying to think of like the the most basic, you know, version of this. It's like all consumer products are really straightforward. Like literally use the product. That's I mean it's that's that's that's

it's that simple, right? On the B2B side, it's going to be more around the proof that you can demonstrate around, let's say you're, you know, obviously your marketing agency. Okay, bring someone in, walk through the campaign, bring the customer in, and show it, right? Even if you're a small agency, do it with all your customers. Why not, right? And worst case scenario, you make a marketing motion that's Let's say you only have 10 customers. Okay, start

doing these these audits for people for free and document them. That's the trade. Hey, let me do a a whole bunch of work for free, I'll document it, and I'll just give it away. Who says no to that? Right? The big point here, zooming all the way out, is that AI is going to disrupt disproportionately the lowest risk to the higher risk people in that order. To protect yourself, you want to do things that AI will

be more difficult for AI to do. Now, is there a world where AI can literally do everything? Probably. Uh are we there yet? No. And so, in the meantime, what do you do? You win with what you got, right? Which is we demonstrate our expertise and the quality of our products and services in front of people ideally to our customers which we document and if you don't have enough customers to do it you do it for

everybody publicly. That's the game that I think is going to keep you ahead of the pack of AI GPT avatar driven content because the proof is going to be in the pudding and you want to make sure that you've got your first spoon in. I've talked publicly about my whole content strategy is live and interactive. That's what I'm doing. I'm showing you my cards. I'm telling you what I'm doing. All right, and so there's two types

of content that you'll be seeing more and more of and I'm trying to engineer more and more components of this into my existing business so that I can document while I deliver so that it's no extra added time, right? Cuz it's like how does how does Alex make so much content? It's the reality is that like I'm usually not making content. We're just capturing it. Right? That's what allows me to do so much more volume. And

so if you're thinking to you it's like like if you have to sit down to actively record every single thing and you want to make 20 pieces 50 pieces of content a day you're going to do nothing but stand in front of the camera. That's going to be really miserable for you, right? But if you do what you like doing like for me I love doing Q&A's with business owners. It's a lot of I've I've had

a lot of reps with it and I just like it fills me up, right? And so in person when we have events if I have time I go downstairs and I take questions. I can't do it all the time but whenever there is an event that's happening and I if I have a blank calendar I'm going to try and get down there, right? If I do like today when I do a recording I'm going to take

calls from people who are in our our newly launched million dollar plus community for business owners, right? And so all of this is like how can I feed the proof machine? Proof is both the third party these things have happened. That's the big exits, the revenue, all that like head count whatever. I have this many companies. And then there's the demonstration side of it which is um can I see this person use their expertise in real

life? Now to be clear this is a this is hardcore more along the services side but you can still do a demonstration with products. You would just physically demonstrate them rather than using your hands to do whatever service you have. And so hopefully that gives you at least a handful of ideas to think through like, not just oh well, I just sit in front of a computer all day, there's no way I can like document what

I'm doing. It's like, yeah, you got to create the opportunity. No And so, hold a sweepstakes, hold a a very limited thing where you email your whole list and say, "Hey." Or you just take the 10 customers or five customers you got right now, go to their houses. Like, of course there's a way to do it. Um it just takes work, but you said you wanted to win. So, welcome to the game.