You have 3 years left before personal branding gets 10x harder

There are only 3 moats left in content.

• The craft (the act of filming, scripting, editing, etc.)

• The substance (the ideas, angles, and takes within the content)

• The persona (the character delivering/making and their proof)

As the supply of AI content continues to compound over the next few years, it will feel like a tidal wave that slowly evaporates each moat one by one.

I believe these moats will disappear in precisely this order: first the craft, then the substance, and then finally, the persona.

If you’ve been reading/watching my content for a while, you’ll know that I’m an optimist, a realist, and a strategist.

I believe many of us can win, but I also try to be extremely diligent about the reality of how the conditions are changing on the field (so that we can all make the right moves to keep winning over time).

To be very clear, building a personal brand and making video content in 2026 still has insane alpha.

I believe it is the single greatest marketing bet you could make right now for almost any business owner.

And it will likely stay that way for the next several years.

But it has become super clear that breaking through will get much harder…largely because of the collapsing moats.

Here’s why the moats are collapsing and what you can do about it…

Moat 1 — The craft (how to make content)

The “craft of content” was the first big barrier preventing most people from getting started.

Simply put, there just weren’t many people that knew how to set up a camera, get comfortable filming, edit a video, or write a hook.

And this meant that if you could climb over this wall, and power through to learn the fundamentals, you had a legitimate moat over those that couldn’t.

This is what I call the craft moat…you understood the craft of content and others didn’t, so you had an advantage.

But here’s the issue…

If you were relying on this to be your primary competitive advantage, this will be the first moat that evaporates (and we’re already seeing it start to happen).

The truth is, the craft of making content is getting significantly easier with AI.

• People can easily film on their iPhone and edit in CapCut without needing to learn new tools

• Tools like sandcastles.ai, the Meta Reels app and others make content ideation, research, analytics, and strategy 100x easier

• Script and hook writing skills exist in virtually every decent social media MCP.

• Claude with Remotion can now literally edit for you

Simply put, it is getting easier and easier to learn “the craft of making content” and so this will become table stakes and no longer a competitive advantage.

In order to play the game you will have to master the craft, but this alone won’t separate you like it used to.

My guidance, for anyone that is trying to scale their personal brand, is to speedrun the craft portion of the content game so that you can maximize this 6-12 months where it still can be a moat for you.

There are now tons of ways to learn the content game faster than before.

I’ve spent the last few years building and refining SFA (Short Form Academy) into one of the easiest ways to learn the content craft because I saw this tidal wave coming and I wanted to help as many people as possible lock in the advantage. If you want to learn content from me, this would be the path.

No matter what niche you’re in, the time to start mastering the craft is right now.

This “craft moat” will close in the next 6-12 months.

Moat 2 — The substance (what to talk about)

The second moat, the one that will endure beyond the craft, is what I call the substance moat.

Even if everyone in the world had the same ability for how to make content…the best ideas, takes, information, and expertise…the substance, will still bubble to the top.

This moat comes from the expertise, non-obvious takes, perspective that most people in your space don’t have.

There’s a great Henry David Thoreau quote that says something like, "How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live."

Same goes for your content.

Most people aren’t doing interesting enough stuff to create good substance. So, right now this still has lots of alpha.

But here’s the hard truth…

Even if you have amazing substance to share, if you don’t have the craft fundamentals of “how to make content” down, you’ll have no method for actually posting that substance to the world (which is why mastering the craft piece is always step 1).

This is why I think the most valuable personal brand alpha in 2026 are people that have legitimate defendable proven expertise, but haven’t yet master the craft of sharing it with the world. This is who I built SFA for.

The point is that this substance moat will last longer than craft, but it too will get commoditized, as more and more AI models have access to more and more of the world’s expertise.

Moat 3 — The persona (who is doing the talking)

The last content moat to fall will be the persona moat.

And this is simply the character of who is making the content.

If everyone on Earth had the same content abilities (craft), and the same information to share (substance), the differentiation would come down to the character and the proof that character has (the substance).

That's the final moat.

Now is there a world where we have 100 AI avatar characters for every one human, and all humans prefer to listen to the avatars over us?

Maybe.

But I think we’re a long way from that.

Directionally, I fully believe this is how the moats will fade.

Like with anything, timing for when this will all happen, is always an educated guess at best.

Based on all my work with the cutting edge AI labs, my best guess is that we have 3-5 years before the first two moats are mostly evaporated…starting with craft and then eventually substance.

The good news is…AI content hasn’t come close to evaporating any of these moats yet.

So the way I look at it…is that this is a generational opportunity to compound your personal brand while there are still moats to be had.

If you can believe it, 3.5 years ago, I had never posted a single video.

Now, I’ve built one of the largest personal brands in both the AI and content strategy spaces, with 1M+ followers and 1B+ views.

A lot can change in a couple years if you triple down at the right time :)

Keep going 🫡

P.S. If you’re ready to triple down on growing your personal brand, and you want me personally to help you to learn the craft, build your strategy, and review your videos 1:1, reply back with “moat”