🧑🏼‍🚀 Blueprint 029

Welcome back to Blueprint, a weekly series where I share an unfiltered, behind-the-scenes look into my journey as a full-time entrepreneur & creator.

It’s been 29 weeks since I went on my own full-time.

Today’s topics:

• 📈 | Week 29 recap and metrics

• 🌎 | Sets, props, characters, and uniforms

• 🙃 | The Happiness Project

• 📃 | Be The Office

• 🤑 | One person billion dollar companies

A reminder that this internet game is not zero-sum. Everyone reading this can win at an unlimited scale. I’m writing this for the internet astronauts building their own worlds. If that’s you…let’s ride 👩🏻‍🚀

WEEKLY RECAP

Recap

I had a ton of fun this week! 2 exciting things I did:

• 🎙️ | Recorded as a guest on the Sweat Equity podcast. Drove up from San Diego to Venice Beach to meet up with Alex Garcia and Brian Blum. The thing that consistently fires me up most is meeting other builders in person and chopping it up. Excited for this episode to come out. Also, if you like marketing at all, you should check out Alex’s newsletter, Marketing Examined. It’s free and dope.

• 🏗️ | Rebuilt my entire studio. My goal was to turn every angle into a film set and make it a place I wanted to flow creatively every single day. Took a few days longer than planned, but it looks sick now. Going to make a full-studio tour to walkthrough the gear, set-up, workflow. Also vlogged while building it (episode coming out in the next week or two on YouTube).

Here’s a quick teaser of the studio (still need to dial a couple things in and optimize the lighting for photos/videos from every angle):

My favorite part is the Batman spotlight. It will become a signature piece for the Kallaway brand as I build my visual world.

As I’ve referenced many times in Blueprint, my obsession is world building.

My only goal, for the next 50 years, is to create a world around the things I care about, full of people I enjoy building for, and launching amazing products within it.

In a meta sense, my aim is to build a world for world builders. The “who” is other world builders like me.

For any world builder, a key unlock is shifting the way you think about the elements in your life.

I view them as sets, props, characters, and uniforms.

Sets

Your office, apartment, city, car, coffee shop, commute, etc. Every place you spend time is a set.

Sets are influential in two ways…via inputs and outputs.

Inputs are how sets impact what you create. You’ll notice a stark difference in ideas generated from a cozy, dark coffee shop vs a bright, bustling co-working space.

Everything around you will subtly guide the way you think.

In a more obvious way, sets also greatly influence your output.

Sets act as backdrops, environments, and mood setters when you share anything visually.

To build a world means to literally build a visual world that someone can place themselves in when they think of you with their eyes closed.

This doesn’t mean you need to spend thousands of dollars redecorating every room in your house, but the closer your actual sets get to your desired visual aesthetic, the easier it will be to communicate about your world.

Using me as an example…

I’m going for this black, moody, batman style lair vibe, but I also enjoy golden hour in coastal locations with floor to ceiling windows. I like living in the juxtaposition.

My apartment in San Diego now has both, so I can quickly film across both aesthetics.

When I move back to NYC next year, I will lose the golden hour coastal look, which I’ll need to factor into my visual world. For me, I’m okay with this, because the primary visual aesthetic I like is the dark and moody.

I also like to use travel destinations as temporary sets that I don’t have to buy/build.

Props and Uniforms

Similar to sets, the objects you carry with you, products you use, and clothes you wear will be seen as props and uniforms by people in your world.

Again, using me as an example, I like everything I carry to be matte black.

I’ll pay extra to have the black colorway because I care that much about reinforcing my visual world.

Props and uniforms are conversion by a thousand touchpoints.

You may think nothing of me wearing a black hoodie for a weekend, but after the 20th day in a row, you subconsciously start associating me with the black hoodie.

So much so that when I don’t wear a black hoodie, it looks off.

As a world builder, this is what you’re going for.

You want your identity to be so tightly tied to objects and uniforms that people think of you when they see the object without you in it.

This is why clothing brands are so powerful to build as a world builder.

Yes, physical products have shitty margins. Yes, there are thousands of clothing brands that launch every single day…

…but is there anything more powerful than someone paying you money to wear your uniform and becoming a walking billboard for your ideas? No.

This is also why I’m so careful with the products I wear, carry, or endorse.

The minute I showcase a physical product outside of my visual aesthetic, dissonance starts to creep in. It feels phony.

It’s like that scene in Inception where the NPC characters start to notice something feels off and begin to attack the dream architects.

Visual consistency over years is how you world build.

Characters

This one is pretty self explanatory, but your partner, pets, kids, friends, and family are all characters in your world.

The more you showcase your interactions and create backstories for them, the easier it will be to world build.

A world without characters is just a deserted island.

Nobody watches the movie to see the island. They watch to see who’s on it and what they’re doing.

If you don’t believe me, they had to personify a volleyball in Castaway just to add enough visual intrigue 😂

What makes a world interesting are the characters inside it and the adventures they go on.

Again, this doesn’t mean you should stage phony interactions with the people in your life to drive home a certain vibe. Many creators do this, but that mirage becomes tough to maintain over years.

Your goal as a world builder is to lean into the authentic behavioral quirks and tendencies of the characters in it. And if you don’t like the characters in your world, befriend new ones.

— — — — — — —

To summarize all of this…the reason vlogging is so powerful (and why I’ve gone down the path to start doing it consistently) is because it gives you a canvas to world build visually across sets, props, uniforms, and characters.

Most content is created in fixed locations with controlled everything (e.g., most of my short-form content thus far).

This is helpful for establishing a single set of visual inputs, but it’s much more powerful when you can create visual consistency across many locations.

Someone that is really good at this is Logan Robles (Lough). Watch his vlogs for 5 minutes and you’ll immediately understand what his world is like.

THE HAPPINESS PROJECT

The Happiness Project

When I was younger, one of my many failed “business attempts” was called The Happiness Project.

During this time (early 20s), I often felt lost and sad.

I desperately wanted to “find happiness” because that seemed like the only solve.

This was a tough phase for me. I lost my hair, thought I had cancer, etc. Most of it was due to self-induced anxiety from the “aimless searching.”

The best way I can describe how I felt is that life felt kind of dim. I was certain there should be more, I just didn’t know where it was or how to unlock it. I’m sure many high achievers go through some form of this in their early years when they know nothing and want everything.

The Happiness Project, in theory, was a documentation of how I discovered my own happiness and a “system” for helping others do the same.

Silly, I know…(the ego of someone that thinks they could systematize finding happiness. Who do I think I am, Tai Lopez?)

That project eventually fizzled out, but that core idea anchored in my subconscious…what makes people happy?

Somewhere along the way, I realized I was consistently happier than I used to be.

After reflecting, I’ve realized why.

It was a simple mindset shift, but probably the most important one I’ve ever made in my life.

If I could go back and share anything with my 21 year old self, it’d be this…

This is how most people think happiness works.

Their “work” life is broken down into 3 phases:

1. The Work

2. The Achievement

3. The Coast

People believe they are meant to suffer and struggle through the work phase. They think, if they speed run it as fast and intensely as possible, they can “get to the success goal line" faster.

Eventually they will have some achievement. This will range in size depending on the person. Maybe it’s selling their company for $50M or getting promoted to a partner at their firm. Usually this is tied to money but it can be any sort of achievement (e.g., kids graduating high school, etc.).

After said achievement, they assume their happiness will slowly increase until they die. They’ve put in the work, their financial problems and stress should be gone, they have complete time freedom, and so happiness must go up.

Sadly, this is not how the brain actually works.

The real chart, when approached suboptimally, looks something like this…

People sprint through the work stage, burn themselves out, hit the achievement, have a temporary blip of happiness, and then get sad again.

When the achievement doesn’t lead to happiness, they get lost and wonder, “Why did I just spend 30 years sprinting towards that achievement only to be sadder now?”

This explains the common insight that billionaires are some of the saddest people in the world.

Their success goal line is unbelievably high, they find a way to hit it, and yet, are still sad.

How could this be?

It’s because of a combination of four factors:

1. The human brain is wired to want progress, not achievement

2. The desire for progress is a never ending game

3. Progress comes during “The Work” phase, not “The Achievement” phase

4. The Success Goal Line resets higher as you hit it

I’ll quickly explain each of these, but I believe they all map back to our ancestral genetic code.

Our brains work the way they work because they were wired for survival. To keep the species alive, and continue to push innovation forward, we had to become worker drones constantly progressing.

Our subconscious incentive loops were designed accordingly.

In other words, it is hard wired into us to not feel permanently satisfied after achievement.

Killing a buffalo didn’t lead to forever happiness…just a temporary period of celebration until the meat ran out.

The reason you feel off, and not happy, is because you’re resisting your nature and have stopped progressing.

I. Progress Over Achievement

People feel happiness when they get better at something, even if that thing isn’t what they like doing.

The work phase consists of constant improvement day by day. That’s progress.

The more you work at it, the better you become.

Achievement is merely a check-in on how your skills have progressed over a period.

In society, we use achievements as comparable benchmarks to measure skill development at a point in time.

But the reason you get sad immediately after hitting an achievement milestone is because the happiness actually came from the progress required to hit it, not hitting it itself.

After a few days/weeks celebrating the achievement, your brain starts to get antsy. It needs to feel progress again.

This dissonance, between you thinking you’d be “done” and your brain wanting to keep going is what causes sadness.

And it’s not really sadness…it’s just confusion because you set the wrong expectations.

So tactical lesson #1 is to realize that happiness comes from the progress in the work, not the achievement.

Also, as a side note, this is why I think parents feel consistently happy and more fulfilled than non-parents. Raising a child is constant daily progress with very little rest for singular achievement.

II. Never Ending Games

As I mentioned above, your brain is hardwired to want to keep progressing forever.

This means there is no single achievement. And there is no coast.

Life is a set of achievements that you continue progressing towards until you die.

If you resist this in your nature…you will get sad.

Realizing this will help you extend your time horizon and slow down the pace during your work phases.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t work with intensity, but sacrificing everything forever is suboptimal.

No one on earth can sprint forever. You shouldn’t either.

Tactical lesson #2 is to slow down the work phases from sprints to runs where you can enjoy progress by mixing in the rest of life. Sprinting because you think you’ll be “done” after achieving, is a foolish mistake that leads to sadness.

III. Progress Comes During The Work Phase, Not The Achievement Phase

I’ll keep this one short.

Achievement is a moment in time. Work can last for decades.

Progress takes time and iterative reps, so it happens during the work phase.

When you realize that your happiness actually comes from the work phase, you’ll start enjoying it more.

This is why picking the right thing to work on is one of the most important decisions you can make…your happiness depends on you enjoying that work day after day.

IV. Success Goal Line Moves Forever

Just as the need for progress will exist forever, so does the need to push the upper limit of where that progress can go.

This explains why you reset your success goal lines as soon as you hit an achievement.

Knowing this will happen, and accepting it, helps reduce the sadness cliff when you don’t feel satisfied after achieving something.

You’re not broken for wanting more after you’ve achieved the biggest thing you could think of…this is hardwired into you.

Again, by accepting this will happen, you’ll be less sad when it does.

— — — — — — — —

When you tie all of this together, it maps to a chart that looks something like this.

You’ll notice there is way more green than red. Once you realize how your brain works, you can extract happiness from the work phases.

This is how I’m trying to approach my life moving forward.

Of course, the green zones aren’t actually up only.

If I were to draw it with full detail, there would be lots of little ups and downs throughout each work phase. But in aggregate, work = progress and progress = happiness.

The combined lesson is that happiness comes from continuous progress for a lifetime, not blips of achievement.

THE WKNDS PODCAST

The wknds podcast

If you like reading Blueprint, you will love our wknds podcast.

We call it a live creative brainstorm.

Each episode, Roberto and I break down the latest trends in the creator world, and new things we’re trying.

If you’re a builder, creator, or entrepreneur, it’ll be your favorite show.

In this week’s episode (#012), we talked about our dream studios, creating with the Apple Vision Pro, how to play unfair games, tiktok vs youtube, and shredding the veil.

Also, I want our thumbnails to be better. If you can help with this, let me know

BE THE OFFICE

Be The Office

Several brands have reached out to me asking for consulting/advice around their content strategy.

Most of the ones I see make high quality products, but are storytelling about them in a boring way.

Their content works, but it doesn’t thrive.

If I was running my own brand, and wanted to figure out a way to cut through the noise, I’d run “The Office” playbook.

Here’s what I mean…

The Office was a cult hit TV show, which featured employees that worked at a branch of the Dunder Mifflin Paper Company.

The show is not about paper. It’s primarily focused on the inter-office drama, relationships, and complications of the office employees.

But funny enough, every person that’s ever watched the show can immediately tell you about the products they sell (paper) and who should buy them (businesses).

If The Office sold actual paper, I’d bet everything it’d be an 8-figure business.

The reason people feel connected to things is for the characters.

It’s why they watch, buy, and share with others.

Per my section above about sets, props, uniforms, and characters, if I had to rank them in terms of importance (for brand association recall), it’d be:

• Characters

• Sets

• Uniforms

• Props

So if I’m running marketing at a brand, and trying to figure out a unique content angle that only I can make, I’m leaning all the way into my characters.

What does that mean?

If people buy from people, and people watch because of characters, why aren’t brands constantly making content about the people that work at their company?

A few series ideas that would crush:

• Day-in-the-life of the product life cycle (through the eyes of all the employees that touch it to create it from nothing)

• Behind the scenes into the supply chain/manufacturing process of the item

• Fly on the wall of marketing/product brainstorm meetings

• Walk and talk with employees about new product ideas

I could go on forever with these ideas.

My sense is that most companies are afraid to show the behind the scenes of their brand because most brands are duck taped together beneath the surface.

They fear that by showing the WIP nature of the process, people won’t regard their brand in the same way they do now.

I think it’s the opposite.

There is so little content from brands around “the journey” and “the team” that this would become a significant tailwind. Fans would buy in more.

A few examples of brands that have done this well:

• Midday Squares

• Elwood Clothing

• Represent (George Heaton Behind the Brand)

• Minted (Marcus Milone’s Behind the Brand)

There’s time for marketing around a product, but real marketing return comes from:

• Creating characters around the type of people that will buy your products

• Creating characters around the people that make your products

Almost all content dollars are going into the first bucket. The second is extremely undervalued.

ONE PERSON BILLION DOLLAR CO.

One person billion dollar companies

Sam Altman, founder of OpenAI, had this gem clip circling the internet a few weeks ago.

In it, he talks about how his friends have a betting pool for what year we’ll see a one-person billion dollar company.

In a pre-AI era, this would have been impossible because of the max cap on labor leverage.

With AI, and the rise of agents/bots/characters, I agree with him that this will happen.

A single human with dozens of AI agents acting as employees that never get tired, never need breaks, don’t ask for pay raises, and perform tasks perfectly every single time.

Pretty crazy to think about.

So in the spirit of YOLO energy, here’s exactly how I’d build a one-person billion dollar company.

1. Picking a business model/market/industry: Step 1 is to pick a business model, market, and industry where you can sell super high ticket products with high margins. This is so that you’ll need to sell the fewest of them to hit the number. Ideally we need something with recurring revenue. We’d also like to have a high revenue multiple, so we need less annual revenue to get to a billion dollar valuation. B2B SaaS. Let’s assume the revenue multiple for high growth B2B SaaS is 8x. So we’ll need to build a company that generates $125M/year in revenue to be worth $1B.

2. Picking a product: Step 2 is to pick the product. It needs to be something that is hard to replicate with human engineers, but easier for AI. Probably some sort of data-based knowledge product. For example, if I could have hundreds of AI agents ingest every court case ever filed, create a “stay out of court” SaaS tool for X industry, then I could sell that to every company in that industry. The hard part is picking something that can’t be easily replicated by another idiot trying to build a one-person billion dollar company. I think I’d go with some sort of consumer sentiment software based on real-time social monitoring. Essentially, Twitter/X has more data than they know what to do with and is not interested in repackaging and selling it. Maybe I could use AI to build an industry specific sentiment tool that can be sold back to brands. I give this product idea a C+, but let’s roll with it for now. Let’s assume I can sell these subscriptions for $50K/year to B2B clients. To get to $125M in revenue, I’ll need 2,500 customers

3. Automating sales: Okay, so assuming our product is great, and needed by the world, how the f*ck do I sell to 2,500 accounts with a single person? AI agents of course. I will create an AI bot based sales force that proactively identifies target brands based on our customer segmentation, finds the right buyer role, gets their contact, reaches out to them via an email sequence, and ultimately talks to them on the phone via a script that I hone for them. It will take a while to get this process dialed, but it’s possible. Legal, account services, and contracting will all be handled by AI bots and AI workflows as well. The only way this works is to leverage the content strategy in #4

4. Automating content creation: To spin the flywheel, we need to be #1 in the category at creating compelling content that attracts the right buyers to us. A cold reach only strategy will be a slog to get to 2,500 accounts. So my main role, as the human, will be to deeply understand the type of content that is working for this category and then using my content bots to produce it at scale. Maybe I’m still the face of the content, or maybe not. Ideally, I’m using something like Synthesia to be the face on my videos as well. My content engine is producing hundreds of high quality pieces of content every single week, being placed in the channels where my buyers live. Slowly, I’m building up authority for said category (e.g., social listening). This way, I’ve got inbound interest coming in to complement my cold outreach. On a long-enough time horizon, given a compelling product that solves a real need, this flywheel will work

It’s relatively straightforward to be honest, just requires extremely coordinated execution.

You’ve got pods of AI agents for product development, account management, sales, and content creation.

My role, as the only human in the flow, is to spend all of my time building and tweaking the AI workflows so that they do what they’re intended to do.

As I write this, I realize that a) this will for sure happen and b) what a dystopian world it will be to have a group of three 22 year olds running 9-figure software companies.

CONTENT FROM THIS WEEK

My best content from this week:

1. 🤔 | Should I keep or return the Apple Vision Pro? Watch

2. 👀 | Taylor Swift generated this HOW MUCH money for the NFL this season? Watch

3. 🥽 | Apple Vision Pro (Initial Thoughts, Main Use Cases): Watch

4. 🦖 | wknds podcast (012) - Dream studios, creating with the Apple Vision Pro, how to play unfair games, tiktok vs youtube, and shredding the veil.: Watch / Listen

5. 🧑🏼‍🚀 | Blueprint 028 - Content vigilante, buildalongs + manychat is gold, content experiments, identity dissonance, apple vision pro, wknds: Read

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