Stop scrolling, start creating, and put down that damn phone. Look at your screen time right now. No, really, like go and look at your screen time. Isn't it crazy to see the amount of time that you are wasting on scrolling? Time that you could have been spending on selling.
creating in this video I'm gonna break down how you can move from being just some consumer to a creator building more friction and space in your life so you can stop scrolling start selling and create systems around you to make your dreams come true
Now I'm not talking about totally ditching social media for the rest of your life. We're not going to go over any extreme implementation tactics here. I'm going to give you a sense of a few really simple, easy systems that you can implement today. So let's get into it. The first one is create, don't consume. now whether you know it or not you're a creator The question is, are you consciously creating out there? So on your journey now to become a creator and not just consuming all the time,
I think a big part of this is curating. You know, the best creators are the best curators i want to give you a behind the scenes look at how i go and curate amazing ideas and also get help with references for things like animations titles editing inspiration color grading, a lot more. So here you can see my YouTube playlist, right? Inside of here, I have playlists for animations, intros, lighting, POV, outros.
I have a bunch of different playlists all set up where when I go and see content that inspires me, say it's a great thumbnail, great title. I'll go and save that to the thumbnail playlist I've made in YouTube. or to the title playlist that I've made in YouTube. And the better the references I can find are, the more that I can become inspired and the better I become as a creator. So an example here is when I go into, say, lighting, these are a bunch of videos.
that have inspired me from a lighting standpoint. For me, you know, again, as the chief detail officer of FounderOS and of my personal brand, the details matter, right? So, you know, this video is an example. I love the color grading in this video and it inspires me with my FX3 to then work with my team to be able to achieve.
this sort of look. And it's not just this video I've saved, you know, there's a whole bunch more here. You know, here's an example from one of my favorite up and coming creative Alex Cease, amazing color grade here. This video is absolutely gorgeous. The shots he's getting are insane. I think I also saved this video to my editing inspo playlist as well. Great shot. cool cinematic vibe. This is what I aspire to really create inside of like the founder niche.
I think that there's an awesome opportunity to give founders the deep systems that they're after. while also giving them those cinematic, beautiful vibes to create this aspirational brand that I would like to see in the world. That's some examples from YouTube. Let's move on to Instagram. So on Instagram, some of the best places to curate are your Instagram collections. You can see my collections here. I got, you know, an Instagram collection, my brand, copy, hustle, health.
movement, discipline, YouTube style. So when I'm going and finding stuff that I love, I'm saving it to the respective folders. so say i'm looking to go and make amazing short form videos i can go to my short form video folder and inside of here i have a bunch of different references i'll save
for videos that really inspire me. You know, I'm not copying these videos. I'm just using them as a reference to say, you know, maybe I like the way they made their copy appear and how it constantly is changing. every one and a half seconds in this video. I want to go and have short form videos that have that snappiness to them that really hooks the viewer's attention.
and then drives them to becoming a part of the founder west community as an example you know similarly you know the lighting in this video and the use of tech really inspire me you know john someone i've come on my radar really recently and i'm really inspired by the way he uses his fonts his text
to really hook the viewer. And just, it's just awesome creativity. More than anything, right? These just get my creative juices flowing, right? They get me pumped up to go and create my next video, to create my next pieces of content because I'm just like, wow. these guys are setting the bar. And so the cool thing is now when I want to go and come up with some inspiration for my own short form videos,
Now let's move on to X, right? On the bookmarks tab of X, this is an excellent area to then be able to go and save content that really inspires you. This is an amazing graphic that I saw from the legend. Sean Puri, that really goes over the five levels of hiring. Tons of different things that inspire me. I'm constantly going and saving them so that I can go and reference these things later. Different visual styles, graphics.
different sort of imagery, copy. My belief is that X is really like a gym. for copywriting. And the best copywriters in the world, they're on X. A lot of the time, the best ideas that you see later on a platform like YouTube actually originated originally on X.
I use it often to kind of just source really cool ideas and then be able to kind of remix those or adapt those to what I'm building in any given week. Similarly, Pinterest is an amazing spot. So I was actually just using Pinterest this week. because I wanted to set the bar for our graphic design efforts at Founder Away.
I just went and hired another graphic designer. That's now three on our team. And what I did was create a graphic design board in Pinterest where I'm going and saving all these references that to me really encapsulate the vibe, the energy, the copy, the look. the photos the imagery of founder os and what i'm looking to build i don't just go and bring on a graphic designer and say you know what go figure it out no no no no no
I go and I actually synthesize exactly the kind of references that I love. And then when I'm now looking to have that person go design a deck, have them design a social graphic, a story for Instagram. I can go and use this Pinterest board that I've gone and created to go then and reference specific examples.
of designs that I love that I want them to kind of use as a reference for what we're about to create. I may actually give them a few references and say, kind of combine these vibes along with our brand identity and our brand guidelines. to create something that's hard-hitting, inspiring, and makes each person that sees this thing want to share it with five friends.
The next tool that I love that's a hidden gem that most people don't know about, but now you do, is called My Mind. My Mind is like a database for your creativity. And so in here, I have spaces for copy, web design, my upcoming book. storytelling, short form videos. And so I can then double click into say a section, which is like the founder us brand identity. And these are a bunch of different graphics I've saved across the internet to my mind that allow me to kind of go and become inspired.
Similarly, I may go and save a bunch of stuff around different copy that I love out there, right? So that when I'm going and looking to come up with different copywriting for X, for LinkedIn, for my upcoming book, I have no shortage. of ideas when i'm inspired the key thing is i don't just scroll past it i'm not just mindlessly wasting my life away i'm not just scrolling anymore i'm not just consuming i'm curating and then i'm creating
And when you do this, you build leverage. When you do this, you build an audience. You stop scrolling and you start selling. You sell your ideas, you sell your message, and you can sell a lot of products doing this too. These are tools I love. Go and use these today and I can't wait to see you be great.
allowed me to quickly go from being a consumer to a curator to then a creator. Instead of just going and scrolling mindlessly all day, go and slow down for a sec and pay attention to the things that are inspiring you and then use that inspiration save those things
And next time you find yourself going and writing online, or the next time you find yourself maybe making a video that you want to share, go and pull up those as references. When you're just consuming all day, that is just energy that you are pouring into a platform and receiving. zero benefit, zero leverage, zero ability to change anything you got going on right now. On the other side, when you create
you build. When you create, you scale. When you create, you learn, you fail, you make mistakes. But as you keep creating, everything starts to transform. So the next principle here is to use friction tactically for habit moderation. One of my favorite purchases over the last two years is a little device called a brick. When you go and you tap this physical device with your phone,
It's going to go and it's going to essentially block all of the core social media apps. So I'll go and tap the brick, say around 11 a.m. And then from around 11 a.m. till 8pm. My social media is blocked.
The benefit here is that it really leaves me with a few options throughout my day. I can go and I can meet new people or hang out with existing people that I love. I can create or I can go and work out, go for a walk. My ability to actually just go and block these things to add friction really makes it more. effortless to create. and not consume. Another thing that you can use for this is just using your phone settings to go and set limit.
on the different apps on your phone. By setting these limits, you know, you start to go and create more space in your life and become more conscious of your scrolling habits, right? So that you can get out of that dopamine cycle you're on of just getting notifications and newsfeed. updates and comparing yourself to others all these things that are really destructive to your creative flow but all that space you know using it to write to build to work out to lift
to learn, to really level up. The same version that's just sitting on your ass all day scrolling is not the same person that's going to help you achieve the dreams that you're after. Something's got to give here. First off, you've got to give yourself space to become that new version of yourself. Saying no is one of the most powerful things you can do. My year here in 2025, I'm very dedicated.
to keeping things insanely simple. Simplicity isn't just something I made up, right? This is the same sort of thinking that Steve Jobs put into the iPhone. Over my travels over the summer, you know, I was really inspired by Steve Jobs. You know, someone that not only had revolutionized so many industries, but created products that we still love today. It's incredible then to go and study Steve and understand, okay, well, what was it that was so special about Steve?
and it all comes down to simplicity and when you think about simplicity it really comes down to saying no more often Steve had the principle of saying no which is why the iPhone is so beautiful it's void of all of the distractions
that plagued products like Blackberry, which are now dust. As I've continued to develop this concept of being insanely simple, reading Steve Jobs' biography, from reading the book Insanely Simple, which I highly recommend, from reading the presentation secrets, of steve jobs innovation secrets of steve jobs you can't tell i'm a little obsessed because i've eliminated all these distractions in my life i now have
so much time to create. Over the past 10 days, as an example, I filmed over seven YouTube videos, over 20 Instagram reels, and you can imagine all of that content now and the ripple effect that that's going to create it's going to help me go and build the movement behind founder os it's going to help me get the message out there that there's a different way to build businesses you don't need to sacrifice your freedom to build a great business
You can build a business that actually gives you freedom as a founder. You can build a business around abundance versus suffering. I've essentially gone and reallocated all of that. scrolling time past all that time now that I have through the lens of being insanely simple and being insanely focused and now that's what's opened up my ability to go and create
So now I'm going and putting my message out there versus being this person that all I do all day is scroll through other people's stuff. So we talked a lot about lowering the friction to consumption. Let's also talk about lowering the friction.
to creation when you're going and deciding that you're actually going to start creating now you may actually start selling maybe it's just selling your ideas initially but later on maybe it's actually selling a product it doesn't matter what you're selling right it all starts as probably just selling an idea and when you decide that you're going to start
around your ideas, an important place to start is lowering the friction to creation. First off, you want to make it as easy as possible to go and create. If you're a writer that may mean going and having a pen and a notebook in your backpack while you're ripping around all the day. If you are someone that's into creating videos, it might mean actually having a consistent setup. Your lighting, your camera.
wherever you are so that it reduces that mental strain that's involved with actually going and getting in front of the camera, pressing play and putting your ideas into visuals. And I also keep things super simple on the ideation side. with my content. Most of my content ideas are all stored in Apple Notes. not some fancy Notion doc, not some crazy Pinterest boards. They're simply just
all jotted down in an Apple note. Go and create an Apple notes list, okay? Create one for your writing content, create another for short form videos and create another list in your Apple notes. for long form videos for YouTube. From there, start to populate these things, right? When you have different ideas, be sure to go and enter those ideas into the respective list. the next time you want to go and get into creation mode it's easy it's effortless it's frictionless
So now you've gone and you've reduced your screen time, you've increased the friction to actually going and consuming, and you have reduced the friction to creating. Well, now let's move on to the next principle here, which is create content systems. As I went and started building my personal brand, I realized that even being a creator at times, can be super exhausting. Without the right systems
you can easily find yourself on the content hamster wheel. This is why so many creators burn out. Well, how do you actually stay in the game as a founder-led brand and not just fall off the face of the earth? Well, the big thing here is through systems. Systems. equal freedom. If you want to live your dreams, build systems. If you want to work four hours a day on a business that you love, build systems. If you want to travel the world, work on things that you enjoy, build systems.
Systems give you the ability to go and create repeatable processes for the parts of your business or your own creation process that you don't want to do anymore because it feels... Like there's friction. An example of this is I went and recently created a whole document on how to create a viral YouTube video. It was a 15 page document on all of the learnings that we've had on YouTube in terms of what works.
and what doesn't. I went and documented all this stuff so that when we're coming up with new ideas, when we're editing content, when we're distributing content, I don't need to be involved in all these details any longer. Because there's a system. There is a repeatable process. We have repeatable processes for short form videos. We have repeatable processes for long form video distribution. We have repeatable processes for how we make Instagram stories.
Instagram carousels, long form LinkedIn posts, long form LinkedIn infographic. All of these systems, every minute detail, I document it in a Google Doc. I'll then go and film myself generally around five minutes or less in a Loom video, actually doing the thing that I'm trying to delegate. And then I'll make sure that I have the right person in place.
is a down motherfucker, is hungry, is coachable, and has a proven track record, I get that person to go and take my proven system and then go and run with it. Now, initially, where I see a lot of people screw up when they implement these systems is they delegate it and then they just...
C'est la vie. I go and I make sure that I'm closely monitoring the implementation of that system over time so that I essentially move from being the person that's always in the weeds to being almost the chief detail officer across my business. I'm looking at the details. You know, I'm going and reviewing a video before it goes out. I'm looking at our motion graphic guidelines.
I'm looking at the different design templates we're creating in Figma. I'm looking at the different content that's being written to make sure that all of it is on brand. My goal is to create the best founder content in the world to inspire millions of you. to go and create the businesses of your dreams, to inspire you to achieve freedom in life.
location freedom, mental freedom, financial freedom. Freedom is what it's all about. And I think that content is an amazing vehicle to inspire people just like you. But I wanna live this myself, right? I don't wanna be creating all this content and find myself on a content hamster wheel. So. I've shifted from just being some personal brand to being a personal media company. I am the CEO of a media company with a team of amazing people around.
social managers, editors, writers, newsletter writers, and together we form this entire media company that helps founders achieve freedom. First off, you need to have a succinct brand strategy. So we have a really solid brand identity and brand guidelines for my personal brand as well as FounderOS. That allows us to go and bring on new people, but they all have the same brand guidelines. Because I believe that great brands
should feel like they're basically coming from one person. A unified brand guideline, identity is essential. The next aspect here is that you need to have knowledge of what great content looks like. I talk often about taste is the ultimate. competitive advantage. Making sure that you go and set the bar for others on your team in terms of, This is the best content we've ever created. If you're going to go and create, you know, a short form video for us, make sure it's better than this.
You're going to go and create a YouTube video and edit it. Make sure it's better than this one that we made that got over 500,000 views. You know, in life, you get what you tolerate. And I think when you're building a personal media company, it's important that you set that bar and set it high. All of you have a dream. You have content. You have brands that inspire you. Don't put off.
Set that today the same way that I encourage people to go and have a 10 year, three year, one year vision in their personal lives and in their business. You should have creative references for the kind of brand you're looking to create. That brand ain't going to make itself. You need to be the chief detail officer and you need to detail out.
that are gonna allow you to hit that bar. And the combination of those references from my stuff, from others, from just my own vibe and what I wanna put out there, it all mixes up to create something that is uniquely me. And I think that people inevitably gravitate to you.
And so when it comes to then actually creating content, you can make it really easy by leveraging this founder OS content idea machine. What you want to do is you want to go and you want to think of what are your content categories. So for me, my content categories are things like.
systems, personal stories, audience growth systems, monetization systems. Those are my categories. I'd encourage you to go write down what your categories are. And it could be anything, right? Just the kind of categories that you want to speak about. Go and take a sec and jot down the ideas that exist. around those categories. You can create lists, playbooks. You can create tools, roundups. you can shout out the best entrepreneurs in those categories.
You can shout out the best references, the things that are inspiring you there, the mistakes you've made. You know, again, the list goes on. You get the categories that you want to go and create stuff around. Then you double click into that and come up with your content ideas. And then from there, you just go and get busy. If I'm going and making content for X, I use Hype Fury to go and schedule out my content for months to come so I can get off the content hamster wheel.
On LinkedIn, I post directly because I see that the algorithm favors that the most. On YouTube, we go and we aim to batch our content on YouTube. So we'll go film, say, four or five videos in a few days. and then load up YouTube for a couple months. so that we can kind of take a step back and then get back to ideation, creation, and not feel like we've got to kind of keep up with the pace.
On Instagram, I have a social media manager, same with TikTok and a lot of the other platforms, right? So I don't need to actually go and post all this. this content. I think a social media manager is probably the most underrated hire when you're building a personal media company. It's that person that's going to allow you to go and delegate the distribution of that content. I think of a social media manager kind of like your chief distribution officer.
that person that's in charge of helping expand your reach. helping you get in front of more people. And if they're doing their job right, they're coming up with ideas. They're helping you understand what's working and what's not working. My social media manager, Nick, big shout out to Nick, is an absolute legend. And this is someone that's, you know, making sure that seven days a week that content is going out.
spicy, it's hitting hard, and it's providing a lot of value to people just like you. Finding a social media manager early on in your business, I think is one of the most important hires that you can make. If you're serious about selling, you're serious about growing an audience, and you're serious about really transforming your business.
So here's my challenge to you. After this video, you can keep on scrolling or you can start selling. Go and choose two things from this video that you can go and implement right now. Now, along the way, if you want some help building your brand online, be sure to apply to FounderOS via the link below. Welcome to the Founder Freedom Movement. Like and subscribe.