I Asked The Man Behind GaryVee and Alex Hormozi How To Build a Personal Brand In 2026 w/ Caleb Ralston

Brian Luebben (0:00)

So when you think of brand, what do you think is the 1% that is actually signal that people should be thinking about, versus the 99% that's noise?

Caleb Ralston (0:06)

What is it that you believe about your industry, your space, your niche, that is different than what other people are talking about? In the education space right now, everyone's doing the same s***. Everyone looks at the top person in their niche space industry and is copying exactly what they are doing. If you want to stand out, stop trying to look like everyone else. You need to figure out your own version of this.

Brian Luebben (0:28)

You arguably took two guys in the polar opposite ends of the spectrum. You have GaryVee that has a million thoughts a minute, to Alex that's like a very stoic dude. But you took these two really extreme versions of personalities and helped them package and frame their ideas in a way. It's almost like an art versus a science. Like you're saying that the identifier of this works. Now, how do I make that uniquely me?

Caleb Ralston (0:47)

Back to your 1%. That is the thing that is going to move the needle for everybody making their personal brand the most. I believe the 1% as you're articulating it right now is-

Brian Luebben (0:57)

Caleb Ralston, welcome to the show In The Flesh, man. How are you doing?

Caleb Ralston (1:01)

So good. I appreciate you having me on, man.

Brian Luebben (1:03)

Excited to rock, man. In a world now where there's a study that was conducted with everybody's children, I think it was like teenage children coming up to young adults. They asked them, what do you want to be when you grow up?

It wasn't doctors, it wasn't lawyers, it was I want to be a TikTok star, I want to be a streamer, I want to be a YouTuber. In a world now where brand has become more important than ever and more coveted than ever, we're going to have a lot more people flooding into the market. A lot of people that are now millennials or older, business owners, are now seeing that they cannot do the same business that they used to do without the brand. What is one thing that you've seen now with all of the saturation in the market, where do people go wrong with brand? Then where do they crush it with brand?

Caleb Ralston (1:54)

I mean, there's a lot of different ways we could take this, but something that I've been talking about a lot recently that I think is really important is, in the beginning, you need examples of what good looks like, and you need to replicate those examples, right? For me, when I got into photography, for example, years ago, I had a couple of photographers that I really admired. Dylan Furst and Aaron Brimhall are my two favorites, and I wanted to replicate their style. I looked at what they did and I tried to copy it.

The problem is, is the majority of people that you are describing right now, they're doing that and that's where they're stopping.

In order to develop your own photography style, to use that example and to keep going with that, you have to copy those people, but then eventually you got to figure out what's your version of this, right? What do I do differently than them? Otherwise, I will always at best be second to them, right? I won't have my own lane. What a lot of people right now in the personal brand, especially in the education, I talk mostly about education, entertainment, that's not as much my wheelhouse.

Brian Luebben (3:01)

Yeah, exactly.

Caleb Ralston (3:01)

In the education space right now, everyone's doing the same shit. Everyone looks at the top person in their niche space industry and is copying exactly what they are doing.

I think, again, to the point of learning, yes, that is a great way to start. But very quickly, I would encourage people, if you want to stand out, stop trying to look like everyone else. You need to figure out your own version of this. I know we'll probably go into detail of what that looks like. But I think that's the biggest mistake I'm seeing people make, is they're just becoming mini-mes, just little versions of the top creator in their space, rather than figuring out how can they stand out, how can they make their own lane that causes people to want to consume their shit versus other people in their space.

Brian Luebben (3:51)

Nobody can be you better than you.

But for somebody that's listening that doesn't understand packaging, that sounds fucking daunting. They say, okay, cool, I want to be me. I'm a quirky dude or I invest in real estate or I'm a business guy. You arguably took two guys in the polar opposite ends of the spectrum. You have GaryVee that has a million thoughts a minute, to Alex is like a very stoic dude, at least on camera, now that's coming across. But you took these two really extreme versions of personalities and help them package and frame their ideas in a way. It's almost like an art versus a science. There's a taste, like you're saying, that is the identifier of this works. Now, how do I make that uniquely me?