I recently came across some amazing work by Dan Koe who I’ve spoken about before. His work with AI prompting is fantastic, and I wanted to share it with you. This is the prompt that you can use to create prompts for your work, things you need to do, or services you’d like to achieve for people in your brand.

You can even use this meta-prompt to help build a professional interviewer and find out things about yourself to help you build content. How good! Here it is:

If you’re confused as to how to use this, plug it into your LLM of choice, and follow the instructions it gives you. Be as detailed as possible!

For most of my early adult life, my entire sense of worth was tied to football.

After graduating college in 2018, I spent the next year chasing professional opportunities with a level of obsession that bordered on self-erasure. I flew all over the country trying to get trials, drained most of my savings, worked two to three jobs at a time, and trained relentlessly on my own. From September 2018 to September 2019, my life shrank into a narrow loop: train, eat, sleep, work. Repeat. I was deeply committed - but beneath that commitment, I was directionless.

Football wasn’t just the goal. It was the only version of a future I could see. I had a psychology degree from Whitman College, but I wasn’t interested in more schooling, and I hadn’t yet learned how to imagine myself outside the sport. When I thought, “Surely I’m meant for more than this,” it didn’t feel hopeful — it felt confusing and unsettling.

Despite solid college performances and accolades, I kept running into the same wall: because I came from a Division 3 program, many coaches and scouts dismissed me before I ever had a real chance. Conversations ended before they began. Judgments were made before I stepped on the field. Spain was the one place that felt like a reset — no labels, no assumptions — but back in the U.S., it felt like I was constantly being told, implicitly or explicitly, that I was aiming too high.

That constant dismissal took a real psychological toll. Football was my entire identity, so every rejection wasn’t just professional — it felt personal. My mood rose and fell based on minutes played, training groups, or whether someone responded to an email. I felt invisible, frustrated, and acutely aware that I had more to offer — yet no clear way to communicate that to the world.

In early 2020, I moved to Australia after signing with a team. Ironically, the coach didn’t care where I came from — he just saw value. Eight weeks into preseason, COVID shut everything down. No team training. No matches. No distractions. Just silence.

Very early on, I had a sobering realization: if football disappeared tomorrow, I would feel like I had disappeared with it.

That moment didn’t feel like panic — it felt like clarity. I knew I couldn’t go through another period of waiting, hoping, and feeling stuck. If the world didn’t return to “normal,” I was going to create a future for myself — deliberately, intentionally — outside of football and outside the traditional 9–5.

That’s when I started my YouTube channel and was introduced to personal branding.

It felt like lightning striking. Not because it promised money or attention, but because it explained what had been missing the entire time. I finally understood that personal branding wasn’t self-promotion — it was context. It was a way to answer the question “Who are you?” before someone else decided for you.

I attacked it with the same obsession I once applied to football. I researched relentlessly. I filmed constantly. I learned editing, storytelling, optimization, and communication. I invested money into equipment, spent hours iterating, and told people — awkwardly at first — what I was building. I didn’t have perfect direction yet, but I knew the territory I wanted to land in: becoming someone who owned their narrative.

The most important reframe during this time was simple but profound: I am who I am, not what I do.

Football became something I did — not the thing that defined me. My personal brand became a tool for focus, clarity, and leverage. It helped me understand my values, articulate my future self, and stabilize my confidence in a way football alone never could.

There was imposter syndrome — a lot of it. Teammates questioned why I filmed sessions or spoke publicly. Some mocked it. Others misunderstood it. But over time, I learned a truth that changed everything: people don’t need to follow the best in the world — they follow those a few steps ahead who are willing to share the process honestly.

Today, my relationship with identity is completely different. I’ve built a name, a following, and a reputation — but more importantly, I’ve built internal stability. Transitions no longer scare me. I no longer wait for permission or chase opportunity. I create surface area so the right opportunities can find me.

Personal branding gave me agency. It gave me a filter for decisions. It gave me emotional resilience. It allowed me to separate my self-worth from outcomes and attach it to process.

My mission now is to help athletes — especially professionals — do the same: to stop being owned by a role, take extreme ownership of their future, and build a personal brand that carries them through sport and into whatever comes next.

Have you ever felt like there was something you HAD to do, but didn’t because you were afraid of the judgement other people around you would show? Who has that type of power over you? 

What pieces of this story give you confidence to start your journey into building your own brand? 

Share with someone you know if you found this valuable! 

Stay dangerous. Stay visible.