The 2027 AI Play: One-Person Creative Teams That Sell Attention

Author: Dan Koe (@thedankoe)\n> Translation note: This article is translated from English text provided by the user, preserving the author's opinions, data claims, promotional content, and prompts. The predictions, revenue estimates, and product capability descriptions are the original author's claims and have not been independently verified. Links, videos, and accompanying documents mentioned in the original were not included in the provided text; the translation does not fabricate links.

The most profitable skill has always been capturing attention.

The reason is simple.

If your goal is to make more money, then no matter how good the software you build is, no matter how many years you spent on a book or how many drafts you discarded, no matter how hard you work or improve yourself to pursue more career opportunities, none of it matters.

If no one knows who you are or what you can offer, how exactly can they pay you?

This means that, regardless of your job or business, capturing attention and acquiring customers will be the primary factor determining your success.

This applies to your own business and to other people's businesses.

And others are willing to pay a high price for you to do this well for them.

As job stability declines, people face three choices:

1. Complain that life is unfair and do nothing.
2. Upgrade skills, relearn, and look for better job opportunities.
3. Start the business they've always wanted to start.

A surprisingly large number of people will choose the third path.

As you might guess, and as everyone on social media loudly proclaims, they will start this business by building a personal brand.

Why?

Because attention is a finite resource and will only become scarcer. People can earn more money, but they can never reclaim attention already spent.

In this letter, I'll teach you how to master the ability to capture attention on social media. This way, at least for the next few years, you won't have to worry about making money.

Using this knowledge, you can start your own business and use social media to grow it; or you can become a 'one-person creative team' for other companies and have them pay handsomely for your skill set.

Promo: The "Second Renaissance" Workshop I'm teaming up with Hussain Ibarra — whose Substack grew from 2,600 to 20,100 subscribers — to teach you how to write email newsletters and articles people actually want to read. If you've considered running a Substack or want to write better X articles, sign up here. The cost is $49, but it will teach you skills that will earn you far more than that.

1. You Either Become a Creator, Pay Creators, or Make Money Working for Creators

These numbers are hard to ignore.

Goldman Sachs predicts the creator economy will nearly double from $250 billion in 2023 to $480 billion in 2027.

In 2025, creators will earn roughly $185 billion in advertising revenue. That's the first time they surpass traditional media.

In 2021, U.S. brands spent $13.9 billion on creators. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) expects that to reach $43.9 billion by 2026, roughly tripling in five years.

That's outrageous.

I'm a creator myself, I've worked for creators, and I pay creators. From my experience, the rates are indeed astonishing. A ton of venture capital is being poured in, and a single Reels short video or a 60-second ad slot in a YouTube video can fetch thousands of dollars — and 90% of the time these placements don't even deliver results.

The key is that attention now concentrates on social media, not on radio, television, or news media. When you want to start any kind of business — whether it's a small side project around personal interests, a business serving your ideal lifestyle, or the next unicorn startup — posting content has become almost mandatory to attract a paying audience.

Companies spend millions on affiliate marketing and partnership promotions when they want to scale. I keep seeing Hormozi's ads. He says they pay creators over $1 million per month to promote Skool. Not to mention, Hormozi himself is a creator, which has greatly helped Skool's growth.

"Founder-led marketing" has become a buzzword in the startup world. It basically means: the newest, most powerful way to grow your startup is... you guessed it, build a personal brand and post content. By the way, most of them do it badly. You should probably start using Eden for research, differentiation, and posting.

What does this mean for you?

Whether you plan to work for yourself, already have a business, or want to work for other companies, the most valuable and profitable skill to learn is capturing attention. Put it in the digital world, and the most profitable skill is creating content — quality content, not endless junk.

Unfortunately, you can master the methods of capturing attention without actually capturing it.

If a tweet or short video gets a million views, but every other post gets only 1,000 views, that viral hit doesn't help much. It shows your content is okay, but your brand isn't built at all. We need both.

You can chase viral hits. Most people do that, and that's why most fail. Or, you can build a content world that people can't help but keep exploring.

I'll show you how.

2. The One-Person Creative Team

The content industry is undergoing massive change.

I'm the founder of Eden. It's a tool creators and digital business operators use to research winning ideas, plan and schedule content, sell digital products, and run email lists.

I'm not saying this to sell, but to point out: we have relevant data that almost no one else has. Through billions of posts, we know which topics, opening hooks, and content styles work.

In addition, freelancers and agencies use it to run clients' personal brands, covering content, email marketing, digital product launches, and building marketing funnels.

When we talk to these content services and media teams, we hear similar things. Here's the gist:

"We haven't laid anyone off, but we can take on a lot more work without expanding the team because each person's output has increased." "Creators and founders hire us because they have no time to think about content. They have teams to manage and businesses to run, all requiring focus. AI can write content for them, but they still know they need a strategist or creative director who is better at using AI than they are. This still requires creativity and thinking." "AI still can't write the best posts, and I don't think it ever will. But it can research what performs well, understand strategy, and write drafts that are already close to the mark. Now my entire job is reviewing and rewriting drafts. It takes 4 hours a day now, whereas it used to take 12."

In my view, there are two directions for the most profitable AI business a person can run.

First, become your own creative team. Build a personal brand, grow an audience, develop digital products, build an email list, and so on. Just focus on these. Trust me, even with AI, this is a full-time job. If you're a creator without a team, you probably can't also develop software.

Second, become someone else's creative team. Help companies, founders, and even creators who lack the energy to produce irreplaceable content. Most founders are still posting 'announcement-style' content and have no idea what it takes to build influence online.

In other words, you become the creative director of your own brand or someone else's.

If you can do that, I don't see why you can't charge a fee equivalent to a fraction of the cost of a full team. Serving 1–3 clients and earning $10,000–$75,000 per month is not out of reach — provided you're good at this and practice consistently. Don't convince yourself this is another get-rich-quick opportunity. For business owners who pour millions into marketing, this price won't make them blink.

So what exactly does this one-person creative team look like?

What skills do you need to learn?

Responsibility 1: Brand Strategist

A brand strategist handles positioning and how people perceive the brand.

They'll tell you first: don't just chase trends, and don't try to make every post go viral. Growth and engagement matter, but not at the expense of trust and authority.

By the way, I'll show you how to do these well below.

Responsibility 2: Content Strategist

This is different from a brand strategist.

A content strategist researches what content performs well in different topics and niches, and proposes what the creator should post next. They dive into post formats, YouTube thumbnails and title structures, audience retention, and content shareability.

They're good at growing accounts, but if brand strategy isn't considered, then once the creator stops posting, nobody will ask where they went.

Responsibility 3: Content Writer / Social Media Manager

This person drafts tweets, YouTube or Reels scripts, X articles, and Substack newsletters, and handles scheduling and publishing.

They take the content strategist's ideas and the brand strategist's direction, and ensure the final content aligns with both.

You've probably already seen why most people can't create anything lasting with AI. They still treat AI as a get-rich-quick tool. They think that just by letting Claude generate scripts endlessly without direction or data, they'll magically connect with an audience.

Almost no one considers brand strategy.

Some consider content strategy.

Most people just turn random ideas into posts and pray they do well.

These are your competitors. Standing out from them isn't hard.

3. If You Were My Client, Here's How I'd Build You an Irreplaceable Personal Brand

Let's do a fun exercise.

I'll pretend you're my new client entering the onboarding process.

This way, if you want to become a creator, you can run this process yourself. If you want to provide content services for others, like ghostwriting tweets or writing Substack articles for brands, this is also how you onboard new clients. Later, I'll also share a great strategy for landing your first client.

Step 1: Extract the Client's Unique Thought Identity Through a Kickoff Interview

To differentiate a client's brand and content, you need a lot of background information about them.

After landing the client, schedule a call and collect all the information you need through the interview. Record the call, save the transcript, and keep it accessible for AI to reference later.

If you're doing this for your own brand, I've prepared a questionnaire/prompt you can use, along with a 30-day creator sprint course. It combines what's currently going viral with your unique traits to build your strategy. You can try it here.

The following questions can be used to ask clients or yourself. You can also paste them into Claude and have it extract the information through dialogue, then save it as a brand document you can reference with AI anytime.

All these questions shape your brand.

They can extend into content topics you'll keep posting for the next 6–12 months. Some might ask: 'How do I get all this into a single post?'

You can't. This is a long game, and that's why most fail. They want attention and authority quickly. Good luck to them.

Because the content is long, I've put these questions and more into a complete prompt you can save or copy to your workspace.

Who You Help

• Who do you most want to help? Describe a real person.
• What does a bad day look like for them right now?
• What do they say when complaining to friends? Use their exact words.
• What have they already tried that hasn't worked?

Your Story

• Of what your audience is going through, what have you experienced too?
• What moment changed your situation? Even a small one.
• What have you accomplished, attempted, failed at, and figured out? List from big to small; every item has value.
• What results can you showcase for yourself or for people you've helped?

Who Shaped Your Thinking

• Which people's books, posts, or videos do you never miss? List specific names and works.
• Which idea of theirs keeps coming back to you? Why?
• Who changed the way you think, even if you no longer agree with them now?

Content Pillars & Unique Perspective

• What topics could you talk about for hours? List them all, even if they seem unrelated.
• Which 2–3 of these matter most to you?
• For each, how is your approach different from others? For example, "from a psychology angle" or "as a former nurse."
• What are people most often asking you for advice on?
• What things do you find yourself repeatedly explaining to others?

Mission & Beliefs

• In one sentence, what do you help people achieve?
• What do you believe that most people in your field don't?
• What common advice in your field do you think is wrong?

What You're Against

• What lifestyle is hurting the people you want to help?
• What kind of life do you want to help them escape? Answer in your own words.
• If you could, which misconception or habit would you eliminate? Note: a habit or belief, not a person or company.

Why It Matters Now

• What just changed in the world that most people haven't noticed yet?

Where You're Taking Them

• After following you for 5 years, what does their daily life look like?
• What would they proudly call themselves in their bio?
• In their story, what role do you play? Guide, journey chronicler, or someone who got out and returned with a map?

Rules & Language

• What does your ideal reader believe and do daily? List 5–12 principles.
• Have you named any of your opinions, methods, or frameworks? Write each name and its meaning.

Keep this information in a safe place, like Eden's brand dashboard, so you can reference it every time you brainstorm a post.

Step 2: If the Client Is Already Posting, Scrape Their Best-Performing Content

I think we can all agree that AI can't fully replicate a person's voice.

Even if it's close, there's always some subtle detail that feels off.

But that's not our goal. AI handles corporate voice fine, but a personal brand is personal for a reason. It needs that unique flavor.

We interview clients and collect their best content not to automate the whole process. We're building a knowledge base of everything unique or notable about the person. When you use AI to brainstorm, draft, or ideate, this makes it much easier than starting from zero.

To collect the client's best-performing content across platforms, you can connect Eden to Claude or ChatGPT via MCP, letting it fetch the client's posts or other people's viral posts. Provide the client's social handles and use a prompt like this:

Fetch the best-performing content from [@handle list]. For each platform they're active on, extract 10–20 posts. Then, note the core ideas that set them apart, the personal stylistic elements in their writing, and infer the worldview or life philosophy that draws people in. In short, record all the factors driving their growth and compile them into a document.

You should also personally review their best-performing posts across platforms and identify reusable patterns.

Step 2.5: If You Haven't Started Posting Yet

For beginners, this might be the most worthwhile thing you can do.

You must understand that your thinking has been shaped by those who influence you most. Your best ideas — the ones that drive growth — come from how you interpret and reframe what you've absorbed from others.

It's a bit like 'steal like an artist,' except this is simply how thinking works.

When you encounter a new idea, being able to replace the old beliefs and thoughts that dominate your mind is a core sign of wisdom. Clinging to beliefs or ideas that don't produce favorable outcomes is a sign of foolishness.

My thinking is largely a blend of ideas from Naval, Leo Gura, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Steven Kotler, Ken Wilber, and others. The interaction of these ideas in my head, plus my own life experiences, makes my ideas 'mine.'

So if you haven't started posting, list the 5–10 people who have influenced you most.

If they're creators, even better. Put them in a list so you can view all their content in one place, or chat with AI about it.

Then, use the same prompt as above, just swap the handles with theirs. If they don't have social media accounts, have AI collect their best ideas from the web and their books. Save the results in a document and keep it safe.

Step 3: Create a Research-Backed Content Map

So far, we have:

• Gathered enough brand background to create unique content.
• Recorded the best ideas that can be reused, repurposed, and re-shared.

Now, we need to switch to a marketer's perspective.

Actually, more precisely, to an artist's perspective.

Most 'creative professionals' recoil at the thought of researching viral posts, best-performing YouTube titles, or creating based on what's likely to perform well. But that's because your perspective obscures the essence of what this is.

You're collecting reference materials.

Artists do this. They build mood boards and collect references to help shape their work. They don't copy one-to-one; they extract patterns and principles to give their work a better chance of performing well.

Because at the end of the day, you want your work to succeed. You just find looking at data a bit distasteful, as if it doesn't belong to the creative process. Stop thinking that way.

Here's how to do it.

(Note: I mention Eden many times in this letter because, frankly, nothing else can do this job. Social content scrapers can't see which content performs well across multiple accounts; apps like GrokBot are great but only for X. And to get unique ideas, you're best off researching platforms where you don't post.)

The method is simple: use the following prompt, and provide the two documents we've already created.

I want you to create a research-backed content map: set up 3–4 distinct, broad content pillars, each branching into 5–7 topics. These topics should build on proven ideas and incorporate my unique perspective from [@brand document] and [@content document]. Under each topic, extend into 5–10 likely performing content ideas; under each idea, extend into 4–5 angles.

Read my brand document and content document, extract potential content pillars and my perspective, then use Eden to research what performs well on different platforms for these topics. We need a unique content map that also incorporates proven patterns from the past 6–12 months.

Compile the results into an easy-to-read document.

Now, you have roughly six months' worth of content ideas. You can have Eve or AI draft content based on the background we've compiled, and reference high-performing content to validate post structure.

I think it's hard to deny that this process produces results; it also puts you far ahead of those who don't do it.

As mentioned, here's a copyable document/prompt with the full process. It may take some time to complete, but it's comprehensive.

4. How to Land Your First Client

A few years ago, my friend JK Molina sent me a DM. He basically started the whole ghostwriting-on-Twitter trend.

His message went something like:

"Dan, I know you don't want someone else writing your content, but I wrote you 10 posts anyway. You can try posting them. If you like them, let me keep writing for you, or give me a testimonial."

Before social media, I was a freelancer, and cold outreach was hell for me. I hated it.

But after receiving that DM, I realized this is one of the best strategies for landing content clients paying $2,500–$5,000 a month. You can target busy creators, founders, or people struggling with growth.

You can combine everything we've covered into one prompt, run the process for a target client, have AI draft 10 posts, polish them carefully, then send 10 DMs a day.

If you actually do this, I find it hard to believe you won't land at least one client in a month.

This is the 'Permissionless Apprentice' method.

You first do some work for your ideal client for free, then find a way to get it in front of them.

If DMs don't work, do it publicly like below. This can be done on X, Substack, or almost any platform.

In that short video, he grabbed attention with this line:

"Grant Cardone needs a new creative director. This is my job application. His content looks stuck in 2016."

Grant Cardone replied, 'Contact me, I'm stuck.' I think that reply and the post's engagement prove most of the points in this letter. Right now, this is a massive opportunity. You already have all the tools you need to land these clients, start working, and create excellent content for them.

Hope this helps.

—Dan

Again, the workshop on how to write newsletters/articles people can't stop reading will take place on November 10. If you want to turn long-form content creation into a skill, you can sign up here.