Your personal brand is stuck in one of these 3 stages

There are three stages every founder goes through to become an authority in their niche.

99% never make it past Stage One.

I know this because I've personally helped $50M, $100M, $200M founders go through this exact journey. And the path is always the same.

The problem is most founders don't even know which stage they're stuck in. So they keep doing the wrong things, wondering why nothing's moving.

Let me show you what each stage looks like so you can figure out where you are right now.

Stage One: The Invisible Expert

• You've built a real business. $10M, $50M, maybe more.

• You have expertise.

• You've solved problems.

• You have insights that other people in your industry would pay to hear.

But nobody knows who you are online.

You post something and nobody cares.

What hurts is your content probably isn’t even bad.

You just haven’t given people enough of a reason to listen to you. YET.

You watch Hormozi post some obvious take and get 500K views. So you post something similar, maybe even more insightful, and you get 14 likes.

It's not about what you're saying. It's about who's saying it.

And the cost of staying here?

You keep pouring time into content that nobody sees → You have no credibility → Your competitors lap you with their personal brand.

The longer you stay invisible, the harder it gets to break out because the window of attention in your industry gets smaller every single day.

I've watched founders with $300M businesses get a couple likes a post and be completely invisible despite running empires. It doesn't matter how successful your business is if nobody online knows you exist.

Stage Two: The Rising Authority

This is where it gets dangerous.

• You've got a few thousand followers. Maybe tens of thousands.

• People in your industry are starting to recognize your name.

• Other founders engage with your content.

• But you're not the go-to yet.

Your business is still more famous than you are.

And this is where most founders get comfortable. They think "I'm growing, this is working" and they coast. That's the trap.

Because Stage Two has an expiration date. If you don't break through to the next level, you plateau → Your growth stalls → The algorithm stops pushing your content → Other founders in your space start passing you.

The cost of staying here?

You become the founder that people kinda know but never think of first. When someone asks "who should I follow for X" or "who's the best in this space," your name doesn't come up.

I've seen founders sit in Stage Two for years because they’re comfortable enough to not feel urgency.

They don’t realize that they’re near the level where better opportunities show up.

Stage Three: Founder Influence

This is where everything changes.

• You share an idea and other founders screenshot it.

• You make a prediction and people listen because you've been right before.

• You talk about your offer and people rally around it.

• You get invited to speaking gigs

People talk about you when you're not there.

Most founders never reach this stage. Not because the path is impossible but because they never figured out the shift required to get here from Stage Two.

The cost of NOT reaching Stage Three? You have to work 2x harder to get leads, partnerships and opportunities.

The founders who hit Stage Three have opportunities to come to them.

They get to choose what to say yes to.

One of my clients closed $300K in sales in 90 days from X alone. Another one became the first name tagged every single time someone asks who to work with in his niche. Neither has millions of followers. Neither went viral.

But both sit at Stage Three.

⚡ Action Step

I just dropped a full breakdown on exactly what each stage requires, how to figure out where you are, and the gameplan to move to the next level.

1. Go to YouTube.
   

2. Search "Wiz of Ecom"
   

3. Watch the latest video.

If you're serious about building authority in your space, don't skip it.

Talk soon,

Wiz.