How a 45-Minute Recording Replaced My Six-Figure Content Operation

One afternoon I opened a Zoom room by myself and talked to a camera for 45 minutes (like a lunatic).

No audience. No script. Just me answering questions AI generated about my entire life.

That recording became the foundation of a million-dollar business.

Here's why it matters...

For the longest time, I dreaded posting on social media.

Like the very idea of sharing my life publicly sounded god-f#cking-awful.

As in "I'd rather get a root canal" awful.

So for 15 years, I stayed behind the scenes. Spent a fortune every month on contractors and ads.

Most months, we were profitable.

The months we weren’t? BRUTAL.

Days full of meetings, drama, and playing whack-a-mole with problems.

The part that kept me comfortable and stuck was simple: It worked.

I cared about the team. And honestly, I enjoyed the anonymity.

I probably would have just stayed where I was, if I didn't have a health crisis that nearly killed me in 2024.

So early this year, I resigned as CEO.

Still own the company, but I’m not running it anymore.

I finally answered the call to go from managing a business, to actually doing what I love.

Creating shit that matters, and serving people I enjoy serving.

I was already pretty advanced with prompt engineering and AI, but for 6 months straight, I went DEEP on AI.

Spent a fortune on training, software, platforms. Tried every automation system I could find (using Make and n8n for all my fellow geeks, along with a few others).

But despite my best efforts…

None of them could create content worth a damn.

What’s the point of automating mediocre bullshit?

Then I figured out a system that ACTUALLY worked.

It was simple. It cut my workday down to about 2-3 hours. And it gave me stellar results.

Content I could be proud of publishing. Graphics that looked like they were designed like a pro. And it all looked and sounded like me.

This process worked so well, I realized I could replace my entire content and design team.

So a few months back, I decided to launch my personal brand as a public experiment.

One person. No employees. Building a million-dollar business with systems and AI instead of bodies.

And it’s working.

Last week I showed you the numbers… how 53% of my workshop buyers came from the past seven weeks of content, and how they converted way higher than everyone else. (If you missed it, read it here.)

But those numbers only happened because I figured something out first.

You can't just magically expect AI to sound like you.

You gotta smack it around a bit.

Give it raw material. Your stories. Your voice. Your way of explaining things.

Otherwise you end up sounding like every other generic motivational guru slinging AI slop and calling it a f#cking day. (Bleh.)

AI went from "interesting tool" to "required infrastructure."

The people who figured out how to use it as leverage are already pulling away. Working less. Making more. Building audiences that actually convert.

The people who didn't are drowning in the exact same grind they were in two years ago.

You already know which group you want to be in.

Back to that Zoom room...

I opened my AI workspace and typed:

"Give me 20-30 questions that will pull my entire life and business story out of my head."

Questions about where I grew up.
Early jobs. Wins. Failures.
The businesses I regret.
The ones I'd do again.
Why I walked away from a multimillion-dollar company.
The work I refuse to do anymore.

Then I hit record and started answering.

For about 45 minutes I just talked.

No editing. No pretending. I told the truth about the good decisions, the idiotic decisions, the "beautiful prison" businesses that made money and made me miserable.

When I was done, I exported the transcript.

Then I fed it back into AI with a simple instruction:

"Turn this into a first-person story in my voice. Keep my rhythm. Cut the filler. Don't sanitize the rough edges. If I sound a little pissed off in places, keep that too."

What came back became my "Story File v1." (A simple text file.)

That's the backbone of my personal brand.

Not a logo. Not a color palette. Not a positioning statement.

My story.

People make "branding" way more mystical than it needs to be.

Here's how I think about it now:

Story: Where you came from. Why you do what you do. What you've tried, broken, rebuilt.

Stance: What you believe that most people in your market don't. What you refuse to do, even if people offer to pay you. (I've got a list.)

Repetition: Showing up with that same story and stance across time and channels.

Your Story File feeds all three.

It gives you language for your about page, your emails, your offers. It makes your opinions make sense because people see where they came from. It shows your scars, not just your trophies.

That's where trust comes from.

Most experts don't have a brand.

They have a collection of half-assed Canva experiments and a bio that sounds like everyone else's.

When you're running a one-person company and AI is your "team," that's not good enough.

You need something solid enough that a machine can follow it and still sound like you.

Something interesting happened.

The outputs started to sound like ME.

Not like "a marketer."
Not like "a personal brand."

Like an actual human with a military background, a martial arts brain, a bias toward short sharp sentences, and a low tolerance for bullshit.

It knew when to use fragments. It knew when to drop a parenthetical aside. It picked up on my tendency to twist the knife on myself when admitting mistakes.

The first time it dropped an f-bomb in exactly the place I would have, it was honestly a little unsettling.

But it was also the moment I realized: "Okay, this thing finally has some of my DNA in it. Now it's 10x more useful."

Most people never take the time to do this.

They type "write me a post about consistency" and then complain when it sounds like the same generic bullshit you'd see on a motivational poster in a defunct WeWork lobby.

AI isn't the problem.

The inputs are.

So what should those inputs actually be?

Not a template. Not someone else's framework. Not "best practices for thought leaders."

Your story. Your scars. Your wins. The principles that actually work for you.

Your AI should be trained on that… not on "sound like a thought leader in the coaching space."

One of the best use cases I’ve discovered is leveraging AI as a strategic advisor.

It's seeded with my story, my principles, plus a collection of mental models from business strategists I respect.

When I get excited about something, I run it through my advisor and ask it to tear it apart.

Here's an example:

I had the idea for the “Create Epic Shit Workshop.”

The premise: teach people how to create content that doesn't suck, using AI and their own brand voice.

In my head, it sounded great. On brand. Raw. Fun.

So I pitched the concept to my AI advisor.

It came back with this:

A bit rude.

But also correct. (That's the whole point.)

That's what a brand system will do for you. It doesn't just help you write faster. It tells you when you're drifting into self-indulgent territory that won't convert.

AI is not your replacement. It's your sparring partner.

But it can only push back intelligently if it knows who you are and what you stand for.

That's what the Story File is for.

If you take nothing else from this email, do this part.

Step 1: Get the questions

Open your AI of choice and type:

"Give me 25 questions to help me tell my life and business story in detail. Cover childhood, big turning points, worst failures, biggest wins, clients I love, clients I regret taking, and the work I refuse to do anymore."

Copy the questions into a doc.

Step 2: Record your answers

Open Zoom, Loom, or whatever you use.

Hit record. Answer the questions out loud for 30-45 minutes.

No editing. No trying to sound smart. Just answer.

Step 3: Save the transcript

Export the transcript as a text file. Call it: YourName_StoryFile_v1.txt.

That's it. Done in under an hour. (Seriously. One hour.)

Bruce Lee refused to commit to any single martial arts style.

He pulled techniques from everywhere—boxing, fencing, wing chun, wrestling—stress-tested them, and built something that fit him.

"Absorb what is useful. Discard what is not. Add what is uniquely your own."

That's exactly what this prompt does.

It takes your messy 45-minute transcript and extracts only what's useful—your turning points, your beliefs, your rules. It discards the rambling. And what's left is uniquely yours.

Here's a prompt you can paste into Claude or ChatGPT once you have that transcript.

A quick note on prompts: most people write them like they're texting a stranger. Vague. No context. No damn clue what they actually want. Then they're shocked when the output is generic.

Good prompts do three things:

This prompt does all three.

Run this once:

You'll suddenly have a usable origin story, a belief stack, and a list of lines you never want to cross again.

That's the beginning of an actual brand.

And here's the thing most people miss:

Once you have this, you don't just use it once. You paste it into every AI project you create. It becomes the context that shapes everything your AI writes for you.

Your about page. Your emails. Your sales pages. Your social posts.

All of it informed by the same story, the same stances, the same rules.

That's how you get consistency without manually writing everything yourself.

Now let me balance this with a little humility.

Not long ago, I put together what I honestly thought was the most valuable thing I'd ever posted online.

I walked through, step by step: how I write with AI, how I keep it in my voice, how to build your own version.

From a "value" standpoint, it was loaded.

It should have gone nuts.

It did not go nuts.

My mom liked it. My wife liked it. My friend from elementary school liked it. (Thanks Shane).

That was pretty much the engagement.

Here's the point:

Not everything will work like you planned.

One flop post doesn't matter. One viral post doesn't matter either.

What matters is the identity people feel from you over time. The stances you repeat. The stories you tell and retell until they're associated with your name.

That's what we're doing here.

Not chasing "a good post."

Building a recognizable, repeatable you that your AI can scale.

Don't turn this into a three-month project. (Don’t "research" this for weeks and never actually do it.)

This week, do exactly three things:

Write those two lines at the top of your notes app.

From now on, when you ask AI to help you write something, paste those lines in first.

You'll be surprised how quickly the output starts to sound like someone real.

Over the next two emails, I'll show you:

If you want to skip ahead:

What you just built with that Story File is the raw material.

Inside The Magnetic Brand System, we take that raw story and—in about an hour—turn it into a reusable brand kit, a "Write Like Me" AI brain trained on your voice, and a creative director that can spin out graphics and posts on demand.

No designers. No guessing. Just a system you own that your AI can run with.

👉 Grab The Magnetic Brand System Right Here.

Oh, and if you already got access, I’d love to hear what you think about it.

Reply to any email or hit me up on the socials and let me know.

Until next time,

—Tim Erway

P.S. The most uncomfortable part of the Story File exercise is admitting the stuff you got wrong. The businesses that failed. The clients you should have fired. The decisions that cost you years. But that's also where the best material lives. Don't skip it.

P.P.S. Next week: the thing that determines whether your AI content builds your reputation or quietly destroys it. (Most people get this wrong.)