Hi Reader!

Welcome to Week 1 of Content Camp🏕️

Here's how this works all summer: every week we drop a new lesson on socials, then go way deeper right here in your inbox. The feed is the trailer. This is the full episode — the examples, the stories, and the stuff we usually only share with paying clients.

This week's lesson is live on the feed here. Watch it for the quick version, but everything below stands on its own.

Okay now time to dive deep into your personal brand.

Why this comes before hooks, filming, or editing

You can have a perfect hook and a beautifully edited video and still get forgotten in 3 seconds. Because content without a recognizable brand behind it is just a post, not your post. A strong personal brand is what makes someone think "oh, it's them" before they've read a word. That recognition is what turns a viewer into a follower, and eventually, a follower into a buyer. Everything else we cover this summer will build on top of this principle!

The system, in three tiers

Your personal brand stacks in three layers:

Your mission statement: The one thing you want people to take
Your content pillars: The 3-5 topics you post about on repeat
Your content ideas: The individual posts under each pillar

Tier 2 is where almost everyone goes wrong and it’s because most people build their pillars from their hobbies and interests. But the thing is… a list of things you like is not a brand. Instead, you want to flip it and start by thinking about who you want to attract, THEN build the pillars from there. Sometimes your interests and your strategic pillars overlap, but most of the time they don't! You're just want to remember that you’re building a brand, not a personal diary.

Your Week 1 Field Guide is here 📋

Every week, we will drop a new section of the Camp Seventh House Field Guide to go with that week's lesson. By August you'll have the whole thing filled out and your entire content foundation in one place.

This is Week 1 of 8: Personal Brand. Inside you'll build your mission statement, pick your angles, map your pillars, and run the test (pretty much everything we just covered, but as fill-in-the-blanks so you can actually apply it to your content plan)

Fill it out however fits your style:

Print it and go old-school with a pen
Type into it right on your laptop
Screenshot it to your phone and mark it up in your Notes app on the go 📲

Click here to download your Week 1 Field Guide

Do the work, then hit reply and send us your pillars, we'll respond to a few and let you know if they get the Seventh House stamp of approval✨

Next week: where to actually find content ideas to fill those pillars. My 5 unique sources of inspiration, and not one of them is "scroll for an hour hoping something hits."