How to Build a Personal Brand from Scratch with Legacy Builder, Clifton Sellers

Clifton Sellers [00:00:00]

I think opportunities come from positioning yourself and putting yourself in situations where success can happen, right? Like, um, a lot of people try to rush things and try to force things. And when you try to force things, um, it doesn't necessarily equate to success.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:00:18]

That's Clifton Sellers, founder of the Legacy Builder Ghostwriting Agency and a popular creator on Twitter with more than THREE HUNDRED AND FORTY THOUSAND followers. But, what is truly remarkable is that Clifton's Twitter journey started only about TWO years ago!

Then again, to his credit, he has been RATHER obsessive about posting on Twitter...

Clifton Sellers [00:00:38]

I've posted every day on Twitter for the last 730 days.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:00:43]

And, for the most part, it has yielded pretty good results.

Clifton Sellers [00:00:46]

I grew about 8,000 followers in the first five months, which a lot of people would see as a success.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:00:52]

But, even he knows and agrees that his initial days on Twitter were a bit... hacky. Because he wasn't really posting true to his own self back then.

Clifton Sellers [00:01:01]

I would share my story a little bit, but I was, my principal goal was to make money. And I learned that if your goal is to make money, that you're not going to succeed on social media.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:01:12]

It took him a few months of trial and error but, around January of 2022, Clifton had a revelation...

Clifton Sellers [00:01:19]

And January of 2022, I started doubling down on starting to share things that I actually wanted to share, and it's gotten even more now that I've went un-anonymous on Twitter, on X, and now I'm full personal brand and I'm working with amazing founders and CEOs and creators doing the same thing for them.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:01:37]

According to Clifton, this revised and renewed focus on his personal brand was what resulted in him rapidly growing his followers on Twitter (or X, as it is now called) to three hundred and forty thousand followers - well, at least as of recording this episode anyway!

Incredible growth, isn't it? Wanna know his secrets? Well, let's find out!

Yong-Soo Chung [00:02:05]

The next generation of successful founders in this digital age of entrepreneurship will leverage their audience to launch, build, and scale their brands. First Class Founders explores this golden intersection of audience-building & company-building with proven strategies to grow both your audience, which is your distribution, and your brand, which is your product.

Because those who can master both will create a category of one.

Hi, my name is Yong-Soo Chung and I'm a serial entrepreneur who bootstrapped 3 successful businesses from $0 to $20 million over 8 years.

On this podcast, you'll learn timeless lessons from world-class content creators, startup founders, and CEOs. You'll also hear tactical tips & strategies from ME, Yong-Soo Chung!

Are you ready? Then, let’s begin!

My co-pilot for today's episode of First Class Founders is the ghostwriter-extraordinaire, Clifton Sellers!

Clifton Sellers [00:03:05]

My name is Clifton Sellers from Legacy Builder Ghostwriting Agency. I'm a proud founder of our agency built a insane audience on Twitter now known as X and I am a family man first. So I got two beautiful children, a wife and excited to be here today. It's crazy how far we've come in the two years that we've been doing it.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:03:26]:

I invited Clifton to join me on this First Class Founders flight because I was not only impressed with his growth on social media, I was eager to hear more about his successful ghostwriting business.

So, on today's episode of First Class Founders, I'm sharing everything I learned from my conversation with Clifton about how to build your personal brand on X. Over the next thirty minutes or so, Clifton and I will help you outline a clear path to grow your personal brand starting from zero followers!

And, to do that,

First, we will need to understand WHY building your personal brand is so INCREDIBLY important. Then, we’ll take a look at how Clifton built HIS brand in the past two years. Spoiler alert, Clifton was kind enough to outline, in detail, the EXACT onboarding process he uses for all his clients! I’ll also point out several critical actions and ideas in Clifton's journey, which you can emulate to build your OWN brand! Finally, we will hear from Clifton his thoughts about AI and how he has, rather cleverly, managed to harness it to speed up his fulfillment process!

I promise you this episode is full of incredible insights on audience building that I just can't wait to share with you!

So, jet-setters, buckle up and get ready to take-off!

Clifton Sellers [00:04:38]

Hey, I'm Clifton Sellers. Let's get down to business.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:04:45]

Before we begin, we teamed up with HyperPods to bring to you a quick 3-min hyper-visual summary of this episode with Clifton Sellers on personal brand building to help you consume faster, understand better, and retain more key ideas and insights.

Grab the hyper-visual summary for this week’s episode at firstclassfounders.com/hypervisuals.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:05:07]

If you'd met Clifton Sellers a little more than two years ago, he'd tell you that he was doing pretty well for himself...

Clifton Sellers [00:05:12]

I was working a 9-5 job. Um, very successful, had three college degrees had worked my way up and the fundraising sector. So I was a major gift fundraiser at a large nonprofit...

Yong-Soo Chung [00:05:26]

...but, underneath all that success, were some pretty dark secrets.

Clifton Sellers [00:05:30]

I was in $30,000 of credit card debt, um, with no idea how I was going to get out of it.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:05:35]

One day, after putting his kids to bed, he was scrolling on Twitter...

Clifton Sellers [00:05:39]

...and I came across this post and this guy said, I make a thousand dollars a week from Twitter.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:05:44]

It was a tweet by a guy called "Risk Taker".

Clifton Sellers [00:05:50]

He was an anonymous account. Um, it was like a risk. His name was risk taker and I'll never forget.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:05:55]

Yeah, you've seen this kind of a post on your timeline too, haven't you? And you've probably scrolled right past it without giving it a second thought...

Any other day, Clifton might probably have done the same BUT not on this day...

Clifton Sellers [00:06:08]

...that night I was super desperate. I mean, I was, I was about as desperate as desperate can be. I was at a low point in my life, financially.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:06:15]

So, Clifton contacted Risk Taker, who then pointed him to a $29 course on Gumroad...

...and you're never gonna guess what happened next?

Clifton Sellers [00:06:23]

So I downloaded this $29 gumroad course and went through like a 10 page PDF document. Um, about launching an account, I launched an anonymous account because I was building it outside of my nine to five at the time. And I just started telling my story. Um, the first tweet I ever wrote was a thread about my story and, um, started sharing.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:06:45]

Yup, that $29 purchase actually turned out to be a worthy investment and helped Clifton to quickly build his following to... TEN followers! Heck, Clifton even messaged "Risk Taker" when he reached that quote-unquote "milestone"!

Clifton Sellers [00:07:01]

I still have the screenshot somewhere, but I told him, I was like, man, I just got 10 followers. Let's freaking go. I'm like, I got 10. I was so pumped up to get 10 followers.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:07:10]

Those 10 followers soon became a hundred, then a thousand, then five months later, Clifton had amassed a following of about eight thousand followers!!

It was around this time that Clifton had that revelation I mentioned about the importance of building his personal brand. And so, he started working towards it.

He observed the bigger creators and analyzed how THEY operated their accounts.

Clifton Sellers [00:07:31]

And learning what works, what doesn't work, the thing, the mistakes they made, the things they've gone through, um, the reason they're even doing the account in the first place. And what that did is it lessened my learning curve, right? And so I was able to diminish that learning curve and learn what's working for other creators.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:07:48]

He also experimented on his own and made his OWN mistakes.

Clifton Sellers [00:07:51]

I was obsessed with the platform. I would like send tweets and I would send like post out to see what works and what doesn't work.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:07:59]

...like writing a thread everyday for THREE MONTHS!

Clifton Sellers [00:08:03]

People thought I was crazy. They were, it was before everybody was writing threads every day. Um, now everybody's writing threads. It's a part of a growth strategy and threads are all over the place. And now we're seeing long form tweets take over from threads. But, um, before that people thought it was, it would exhaust your audience. And so people would, would DM me and they would say, you're going to exhaust your audience putting out all this content. Well, all I saw is every time I posted a thread, I would grow by a hundred to a thousand followers. And in March of 2022, I gained 40,000 followers in a month.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:08:40]

Let me repeat that number. FORTY. THOUSAND. FOLLOWERS. In a month.

That's how important being consistent is in this business of content creation!

But, to get back to Clifton's story, it was around this time that he reached out to Dakota Robertson - a highly successful ghostwriter - and landed a gig working for him.

Clifton Sellers [00:08:58]

I would write 20 to 40 threads a month for him. And at that point, a thread would take me anywhere from 15 to 20 minutes at a time. And so I would write, I would get to him and probably after a couple of months, I had thought I made it. I was making, I was making a couple thousand dollars a month. It was awesome. I was paying down my debt. I was finally seeing some fruit from this journey that, I mean, I made $0 for the first six, seven months of posting online.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:09:25]

And then, Dakota made Clifton an offer that set Clifton on the path that he currently is on.

Clifton Sellers [00:09:30]

and he said, Hey man, I can, you can do this yourself. And I was like, okay, tell me more. He was like, you can have your own clients. You can do this, this and that. Like I'll show you exactly what to do. I'm like, okay. So I paid him a little bit of money and he helped me get my first client, helped me kind of learn my business.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:09:49]

Clifton's first client, by the way, was a twenty-year old guy from the UK named Charlie...

Clifton Sellers [00:09:54]

And he was a fitness instructor and I charged him 200 a month to write his content and we did it for, um, three months. I'll never forget it. Great guy. Great guy.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:10:07]

Sure, Charlie was a great guy but, some other clients, well...

Clifton Sellers [00:10:11]

I had signed a client. They were paying me 3, 500 a month. Um, to grow their Twitter account. It was like probably one of my first big clients and I could not get them to respond to me. I couldn't get them to respond to me. I would send them content. I would email them. I text them and they wouldn't give me any feedback. I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't have any systems at the moment. Um, I just said, man, I need you to approve. And I got so anxious that they, that the next payment was coming and we hadn't posted anything. Um, so I went ahead and posted something and literally messaged me, on the spot, said I did not improve this post.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:10:54]

He meant to say "approve" and not "improve", of course...

Clifton Sellers [00:10:57]

...said I did not improve this post, um, blocked me on, like, everything like, ghosted me completely. Um, I need to reach back out to that guy and apologize, but, um, just completely dropped off the face of the earth. And the day that day I learned, it's like, man, communication really matters and not, and not just communication, but expectation setting in business.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:11:19]

But, the most important thing Clifton learned was that ghostwriting was a lot more than just writing content on someone's behalf.

Clifton Sellers [00:11:25]

...like matching that voice tone and direction, getting content right. Getting it comfortable where people are comfortable putting their name on it is it's an, it's an act of love.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:11:34]

All of these experiences shaped Clifton's current processes - specifically in terms of onboarding new clients. So, I asked him if we could dive a little deeper into his onboarding process...

Clifton Sellers [00:11:44]

I'm an open book buddy, you can ask me any questions you want.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:11:48]

And that's exactly what I will be doing a few minutes from now! Plus, later on, we'll hear how Clifton is harnessing AI to speed up his fulfillment processes.

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And now, let’s get back to our conversation with Clifton Sellers.

Before that short break, we talked about Clifton’s early days as a ghostwriter and how it shaped the current onboarding processes for his Ghostwriting agency - Legacy Builders.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:13:47]

Over the past two years, Clifton has helped nearly a hundred people launch and scale their brands on social media, specifically on X.

On the day we recorded our interview, he told me his agency was currently servicing twenty-one clients and that he had signed three new clients just before our call...

Clifton Sellers [00:14:04]

...so we'll have 24 clients by the end of the week, hopefully.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:14:07]

Twenty-four clients is a HUGE achievement, especially for someone who started with ZERO Twitter followers two years ago. I mean, if twenty-four different people are willing to put their trust in you, then you must be doing something right as an entrepreneur.

So, I asked him to go into a little bit of detail on how he onboards a new client who, for example, had zero followers on X but was looking to scale their following rapidly.

Clifton mentioned that the first step in the onboarding process is identifying the boundaries and constraints of the assignment...

Clifton Sellers [00:14:37]

...we identify what people want to talk about, what they don't want to talk about, their goals and what they want to be known for. Because at the end of the day, we're trying to establish people as an authority and something now it can be an authority in business. It can be an authority and family. It could be an authority, just in authenticity. Um, what we want to identify is what people want to be known for so that we can create their content pillars.>

He explained the intent behind this step by using the analogy of a lumber mill - an analogy that JK Molina - who is best known for his TweetHunter story - had shared with him. A ghostwriter is nothing more than a sawdust collector. Um, so every day our CEOs, founders, entrepreneurs are basically cutting wood, right? They're cutting wood through this saw and below that is sawdust dropping. And our job as ghost writers and as agency is to collect that sawdust that's dropping, which is stories, insights, and intrigue into these people's lives and share it on social media on their behalf.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:15:39]

I find that analogy interesting for two reasons.

One, it shows that good content doesn't always need to be planned and brainstormed in conference rooms - more often than not it is all around us.

Two, it emphasizes beautifully the 'ghost' in ghostwriting because Clifton's agency silently collects the material needed to build what their client wants.

Clifton Sellers [00:16:01]

And so the mechanisms we create can be as simple as voice memos, loom videos, sharing articles, sharing YouTube videos. Um, we usually, we use a very comprehensive approach to gather information.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:16:13]

The final step is to bring all these materials together and compile it using the most important ingredient of all.

Clifton Sellers [00:16:19]

...matching their voice tone and direction. Cause everything that we write, we want it to be seen as coming from our clients.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:16:26]

This, by the way, is where the initial discussion matters because Clifton's agency uses the boundaries and constraints from the initial discussion to craft the content that is most appropriate for the client.

Clifton Sellers [00:16:37]

...based on the direction they want to go, do they want to be known as an authority? Do they want to get more leads? Do they want to get on awesome podcasts like this one? Whatever the goal is, do they want to build their newsletter? Do they like, what do you want?

Yong-Soo Chung [00:16:48]

Because the goal dictates the kind of content that Clifton and his team will end up crafting for the client.

Clifton Sellers [00:16:54]

...because good content elicits emotion. And so we're like writing content to elicit an emotion into crescendo at a certain point, we have to know what the goal is for our content for the audience, for the people that we're creating content for.

Internally, Clifton and his team refer to this part as establishing the client’s "authentic authority." So we want people not only to know that you have, um, expertise in a certain field, but we also want them to know that you're a real person and we want to share the wins, the losses and the journey.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:17:27]

Having built his own personal brand, Clifton knows the importance of being honest and 'real' on social media - particularly X. So, he always insists that clients build a personal brand that is as close to their real lives as possible.

In fact, to drive home the point, he compared the premise of the onboarding process to his favorite fictional universe - that of none other than… Harry Potter.

Clifton Sellers [00:17:50]

I'm a huge Harry Potter fan. So I always tell people, I'm like, we want to start at the sorcerer stone and we want to end on the, on book seven. And we want to tell everybody from Dobby to the, to the sorting hat, to the goblet of fire and all that we want to create this entire journey for you. Because that is what's going to create an authentic fan base that you can sell to, you can connect with, you can pitch ideas off of, you can get money from, whatever you want to do, but you have to create that journey.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:18:20]

Let's quickly summarize that process, shall we?

Step 1: Clifton first establishes the boundaries and constraints that the client wants to operate in.

Step 2: Then, he sets up mechanisms to collect as much 'sawdust' as he can from the key stakeholders from the client's side.

Step 3: He and his team then work their special 'magic' (as per the boundaries and constraints established in step 1) on this sawdust and together they transform it into the content that the client needs.

Once this content is successfully created, Clifton and team focus on the next part of the pipeline - distribution. And, I'll be honest, when I heard Clifton's distribution strategy, I was incredibly excited and I'm sure you will be too once you finish listening to it.

Clifton began with a very important caveat.

Clifton Sellers [00:19:08]

Distribution will make great content greater and it will do nothing for bad content. So the best distribution strategy in the world on any social media platform will not fix bad content.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:19:20]

Right.

With that said, here are the three major parts of the distribution strategy employed by Clifton for his clients.

PART 1 - DAILY ENGAGEMENT

Clifton Sellers [00:19:30]

So we identify like-minded accounts that have audiences that our clients could benefit from. And we approach them and place them into these pods of people that can get their message out, right? Whether it's through, um, commenting or sharing or helping, we, we encourage all of our people to do engagement 10 to 15 minutes per day. So we have this 10, we have this list of 50 to a hundred people that we want our clients to engage with on a daily basis because that adds a prioritization in the algorithm and that's on any platform that's on LinkedIn or X.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:20:04]

PART 2 - ENGAGEMENT BOOST WITH ADS & PROMOS

Clifton Sellers [00:20:08]

Twitter has a pretty robust ad platform on the backend and so there are reach and engagement, um, campaigns that you can use for some tweets to kind of get it kicked off a little bit to where it gets a little bit of prioritization in the algorithm. We deploy those tactics as well within the X ecosystem.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:20:27]

The interesting part isn't the use of Twitter/X's ad platform. The interesting part here is the use of X's ad platform to get PRIORITIZATION in the algorithm! I am not sure if the prioritization continues after the boost ends but it is an intriguing method for sure!

PART 3 - MULTI-ACCOUNT EXPERIMENTATION

Clifton Sellers [00:20:47]

And so the benefit that a client working with us gets is we're literally iterating across 20 accounts. And so as we identify something that works for one account, we can then deploy that across all of our clients accounts. Right. And that's our strategy. And so, um, we really encourage them to build an inner circle.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:21:01]

If that last bit sounds uncannily familiar to you, it's because Clint Murphy advocated something similar in episode 36(?) except he called it finding your ride-or-die partners.

EPISODE 36 - Clint Murphy (32:23)
"You're going to want to start finding large accounts that you respect in the area that you want to be known for and you're going to comment on their stuff. You're going to like it. You're going to quote tweet it. You're going to comment on it because people will see your comments, set them on notifications so that you're the first to comment, because then you get traffic, then you get eyeballs on you."

"Then you're going to use a certain number of those conversations to create your own circles, your own groups, your ride or die partners. Find those ride or die partners, build relationships, create your core group, and then you're going to have different cohorts over time, but have your core group.”

Just like it helped Clint grow and scale HIS audience, it also helped Clifton grow and scale HIS audience - especially in the early days.

Clifton Sellers [00:21:56]

One of the reasons I grew so fast is because I had a cohort, if you will, of eight to 10 accounts that we had supported each other through comments, through likes, through shares. Um, we really supported each other's content and that helps on the algorithm. By making sure you have people that you can ride with. What I do caveat people is when you find that circle, you want people that are dedicated and they're talking about the things that you're passionate about that resonate with your audience. And so that's what we do for our clients. We help them develop those, um, those social circles that will last and, um, really give some firepower behind the content that we're creating.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:22:34]

The sheer amount of thoughtful planning that Clifton and his team put into setting up the perfect content pipeline for clients, frankly, blew me away! But, at the same time, I couldn't help but wonder whether they could sustain this incredibly intricate and detailed process with AI looming large on the horizon...

Clifton Sellers [00:22:52]

I think what a lot of people, early adopters, the mass hysteria was, especially in the writing field and the creative field was they saw it as a replacement for people like me, um, and it's just not, in my opinion. Now, can it be? To a degree, yes.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:23:08]

The more I think about it, the more I do feel that AI is actually a THREAT to his business because most language models like ChatGPT and Bard are already able to do most of what Clifton and his team offer their clients.

And, as you may have already guessed, the word "most" does a LOT of the heavy-lifting in that sentence.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:23:25]

In fact, Clifton's explanation of how HE and his team have been harnessing AI - specifically Chat GPT - was actually quite eye-opening! It reinforced my belief that AI, if used correctly, is NOT a threat to any jobs. In fact, it is actually a great way to deliver 10X value to your customer!

And, a few minutes from now, I will tell you about it in GREAT detail but, first, I want to share with you something that is truly dear to me GrowthJet.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:23:57]

E-commerce fulfillment is a pain. One time, one of my customers emailed me asking me why we had shipped them an empty box. It turns out the 3PL had stolen the $1,000 product and shipped an empty box to my customer. Yeah, that was not fun.


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GrowthJet is the 3PL that I wish I had when I launched my own brand, Urban EDC.
If you have an e-commerce shop, check out GrowthJet and hit me up!

Okay, now let’s get back to our episode with Clifton Sellers.

Right, before that brief detour, I began telling you about Clifton's thoughts about AI. Specifically, I told you that Clifton and team have found a way to harness AI and ChatGPT in a way that actually enhances their value instead of threatening their livelihoods.

It starts with acceptance.

Clifton Sellers [00:25:22]

First of all, I'm a huge fan of AI. I'll just go ahead and throw that out there. I think from, for speed to create and to ideate, it's one of the most helpful tools that has ever been invented.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:25:33]

Specifically, accepting that AI wasn't a threat to them as an agency...

Clifton Sellers [00:25:37]

I mean, we were replaceable before AI. I mean, you could bring somebody in house and do it yourself. Or you can't, I mean, that's the agency model to a T. I think all agencies are replaceable to a degree.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:25:49]

...but, instead, an incredibly valuable resource to implement in their existing pipeline.

Clifton Sellers [00:25:54]

AI when harnessed correctly can help you scale fulfillment. And streamline your processes. Um, and it does it really well.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:26:01]

One of the ways Clifton and his team use AI is to find accounts that are in the same quote-unquote 'pattern' as that of the client, usually with a prompt along the lines of...

Clifton Sellers [00:26:11]

...give us five to 10 accounts, not necessarily that are talking about what you want to talk about, but are talking in a way that you like the way their tweets and post are formatted. Um, how they present thoughts and ideas. And we've actually trained AI to take those tweet formats. And then we input our client, uh, onboarding documents and we do some other prompts with it as well. And we can generate a list of posts.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:26:42]

Clifton mentioned here that this particular step saves them at least an hour’s worth of time.

Clifton Sellers [00:26:46]

...that's 80, 90, that's 80 percent of the work that we just did. We probably saved ourselves an hour there. Right, because it takes anywhere from 1 to 3 minutes per post to write.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:26:54]

Now, even though using AI and custom prompts helps complete 80 percent of the work, Clifton says that the real magic is in the other 20%...

Clifton Sellers [00:27:03]

The 20 percent is when you really go in and you ensure that it's eliciting emotion and, and leading to the correct action upon the reader that you're trying to convey. And that's where our team comes in.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:27:16]

Clifton's team then carefully reworks the raw content generated by the AI and ensures that it matches the tone and voice that the client has asked for. The tone and voice that were discussed and established in the initial discovery call, when onboarding the client.

The biggest problem that Clifton has faced, however, is that AI can only be used to PREPARE but not in runtime. He explained it using an example from his -and my- favorite sport - football.

Clifton Sellers [00:27:41]

AI could generate a game plan. It can, uh, tell you when to run the play. It can tell you how to get to the field. It could tell you all that. It could even write your pregame speech for you. But what it can't do is it can't see on the field when the defense is blitzing and it can't audible for you. Right. And so what we see ourselves as is like, when there's a blitz, we see it coming and we can audible quick.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:28:08]

And, as we've heard from several other guests before, the ability to audible during a blitz and turn the game in your favor is what separates elite athletes and entrepreneurs from the rest. Remember Justin Gordon in episode 26?

EPISODE 26 - JUSTIN GORDON
"It's like being Drew Brees. You do all the training, you study the playbook and you prepare as much as you can for the game, but then when the game comes, it might be snowing, it might be really windy. You have no idea what those game conditions might be, but you just have to adapt to that and make those decisions on the fly during the game."

To summarize...

Clifton Sellers [00:28:47]

We're trying to be, uh, the people that are on the cutting edge and making sure that we understand the strategy. It would be, um, silly of us to ignore the existence of AI and try to bootstrap and not utilize it. It's a huge, massive advantage for companies, agencies, and everybody to use, but I think it makes human communication and emotions even more prevalent in our society than it's ever has. And the people that can continue to engage and elicit that emotion are going to continue to rise above it because people are going to continue to become more dependent on computers and technology to deliver results.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:29:25]

I like this approach to AI. Sure, it is more or less in line with what most creators who work with AI are currently doing. But the clarity of thought in Clifton's pipeline impressed me a lot. I loved the fact that he has a clear plan to work AI into his pipeline and he's already using it to speed up fulfillments for his clients, WITHOUT losing any of his special magic sauce!

Yong-Soo Chung [00:29:46]

Finally, I asked Clifton what advice he would give to young entrepreneurs and ghostwriters who were just starting their journey but before I share his thoughts on that, I want to quickly remind you that premium members of First Class Founders are currently listening to Clifton sharing really juicy details of his agency setup...

Clifton Sellers [00:30:02]

So we have, uh, packages rate ranging from as low as  **** a month, all the way up to ****  a month, depending on the KPIs and the leverage and different things like that.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:30:12]

We also went into great detail about what he did to overcome the 'fulfillment wall' he hit after reaching 12 clients.

Want to become a premium member? Go to firstclassfounders.com/join.

This was the perfect opportunity for me to ask him what advice he would give to young entrepreneurs and ghostwriters who were just starting their journey.

Clifton had three specific bits of advice.

Clifton Sellers [00:30:35]

The first thing I would say is find one to three problems that you want to be, that you want to fix, or you want to be known for and talk about those, um, whether it's problems or solutions or things you want to be known for. Just pick those two to three things and never steer away from them. Unless an opportunity presents itself.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:30:53]

CLIFTON'S ADVICE FOR ENTREPRENEURS NUMBER ONE: Find one to three things you want to fix and focus entirely upon them.

Clifton Sellers [00:31:02]

And then start collecting emails on day one. Um, that's one thing I haven't done crazy well. People want to launch digital products all the time. Um, the only successful digital product launches that you're going to see is on the back of a solid email list and newsletter that's been grown organically over time.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:31:17]

CLIFTON'S ADVICE FOR ENTREPRENEURS NUMBER TWO: Start building an email list from day one.

Clifton Sellers [00:31:23]

And then, finally, just don't be too serious about it. I mean... I think a lot of people, I think a lot of people could get, can get very tunnel vision when it comes to posting on social media and they forget that it's, it's a social platform. Um, you're supposed to have fun. You're supposed to connect. It should be an energy transfer and a life-giving energy, energy transfer. Uh, it should convey and it should be a positive thing in my opinion.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:31:51]

CLIFTON'S ADVICE FOR ENTREPRENEURS NUMBER THREE: Have fun on social media. Emphasis on FUN.

You can reach Clifton on X, that is, on Twitter at...

Clifton Sellers [00:32:00]

my handle is @LegacyBuilder__ on Twitter because an insurance agent took LegacyBuilder, 15 years ago and won't relinquish it. So, he's has seven followers and no profile picture. If you're out there, please call me. And on LinkedIn, I'm, it's Clifton, parentheses Legacy Builder. And then on YouTube, which we're dropping content, so don't go there right now. But when you do go there, it's Clifton at Legacy Builder.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:32:26]

…and, by the way, if you liked what Clifton had to say about ghostwriting, then I have a feeling you will LOVE what Colin Chung had to say about copywriting!

Back in episode 39, Colin outlined his special 3P framework, which he uses to draft great direct response copy for his clients. Colin’s work has driven an estimated $250M in direct sales for clients such as Agora, Jim Kwik, John Carlton, Brian Tracy, and Ava Jane’s Kitchen. Yeah, that’s a quarter of a billion dollars.

So, go ahead and queue up the episode in your podcast player right away! I’ll also leave a link in the show notes, in case you want to bookmark or download it and listen to it later.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:33:10]

Alright, that wraps up today's show!

In the next episode of First Class Founders, I’m going deep on my Personal Holding Company. I’ll share with you my PHC philosophy and why I think this will be the next huge wave of entrepreneurship. Don’t miss out!

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I'll see you on the next episode of First Class Founders