My talk at the YouXAI Summit (the conference I organized last Saturday) was minimally about AI - it was more about how you can become known for something ONLY YOU can be known for.
And it all starts out with: what does AI say about you?
Does it say what you want it to say?
Are you distinctive and do you stand out from the crowd?
Do you have a Google knowledge panel?
Ok that’s great.
But it sounds like an exercise in vanity metrics.
So what if ChatGPT can cite you correctly?
Who cares if Gemini says you’re “...a marketing strategist, category designer, author, and entrepreneur based in Austin, Texas…” as it says about me?
Good question, and I’ll answer it now…
Become known for one unforgettable idea
I don’t think I have to tell you, we’re living in the AI age (how ridiculous to say this), and our timelines are flooded with AI slop.
A speaker at the YouXAI Summit said, “People want something that’s authentic…we don’t know what’s real or not.”
And there’s the answer. You, with 30 years of experience and expertise, are getting drowned out by the AI content flood (and the thousands of people becoming “influencers” everyday).
It’s “content shock” to the 100th degree (Mark Schaefer was prescient when he wrote that blog posts in 2014).
So how can you get seen, stand out, become known for something that only you can become known for?
The founder excavation
You’ve probably forgotten more than all the Gen Z founders founding AI companies today.
But they’re getting all the attention.
So how do you get all your experience, knowledge, wisdom, insights, hidden genius, out into the open and get it to spread like wildfire?
Through a founder excavation.
What is a founder excavation? It’s a type of applied cognitive task analysis, which is a fancy way to say a strategic interview that excavates your hidden genius, which will become your unique methodology, framework, model or category.
Get somebody in your company, a consultant or even AI (Claude Fable and ChatGPT Astra are so good I bet they could figure it out) to interview to uncover your tacit strategic knowledge. That’s the knowledge that makes you an expert, but you’re unaware of it.
It’s unconscious to you.
This methodology was perfected in a model called Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA), which requires hundreds of hours of courses and certifications.
But there was a new version created called Applied Cognitive Task Analysis (ACTA), which didn’t require advanced studies or certifications.
People in the field could interview long-time experts about how they do something to extract that tacit knowledge they have.
And that tacit knowledge is the most valuable knowledge an expert has.
Think about how a nurse can instantly find the right vein to insert an IV, or how a fire fighter can know - as if by pure instinct - when a floor is going to collapse in a house engulfed by flames.
When asked to teach a class about how they found that elusive vein, or how they knew the floor would collapse, they couldn’t tell you!
But an applied-cognitive task analysis interview can.
For example, an interviewer would ask the fire fighter to walk him through a recent scenario where he saved people from death by getting them out of the 2nd floor of a house that was about to collapse.
The fire-fighter would walk the interviewer through their thoughts, feelings, actions, and the cues they noticed.
And the skilled interviewer would note the patterns in the reply and turn that into the methodology that can later be taught to new practitioners.
Coin the term
The result of an applied cognitive interview on a founder (the founder excavation) can be turned into a:
New category
Model
Framework
Methodology
Out of all those, I like designing a new category the best, because that way you can eliminate your competition.
That tacit knowledge, made explicit, can become a unique way of doing something in your industry that differentiates you from the competition.
But you have to give it a name.
Jason Barnard coined the term Brand SERP to describe a Google Knowledge Panel for the personal brand of a founder.
Joe Pulizzi took the term “content marketing,” a term coined in 1996 by a journalist, and used it to describe a method of marketing that uses valuable, educational content to increase the authority and credibility of the person or company publishing said content.
My buddy Chris Stanley took a concept - Mini-Books - and applied it to an effective methodology he discovered during his insurance adjuster certification business as a way elevate and differentiate himself into the only educator in the space people would even consider.
You can see examples like these all over the place.
By coining terms (or taking forgotten coined terms and elevating them) to describe your new category or framework, you become the only provider on the planet that does what you do.
Your entity home
This next part is where AI comes in.
You want the AI engines, as well as Google - another AI engine - to cite you when people are asking how to solve their problems.
Create a personal website for you. Jason Barnard calls this your “Entity Home.”
Have it be something like “yourname.com”. I have labastida.com.
Then on the About page (e.g. https://labastida.com/about), describe yourself as the person who coined the term you coined, which solve the problem your framework solves.
Mine says:
Fernando Labastida is a marketing strategist, category designer, and author based in Austin, Texas. He coined the One Unforgettable Idea — the thing a founder does so naturally they’ve stopped noticing it’s rare — and founded the Viral Genius Institute to excavate it and build it into the brand that buyers, Google, and ChatGPT cite. He is the author of The Startup Book, The Viral Genius Playbook, and Nearshore Marketing.
The “One Unforgettable Idea” is my coined term. I will use this description on my “about” page, all over my social profiles, and in speaker and podcast description pages.
Make sure to use schema markup on your website. This tells the search engines and the various AI models what each part of your website is:
For a description of you - your biography - the schema markup is:
{ “@context”: “https://schema.org”, “@type”: “Person”, “name”: “Alex Morgan”, “description”: “Alex Morgan is an award-winning investigative journalist and author of three historical non-fiction books, focusing on 20th-century geopolitical shifts.”, “url”: “https://example.com”, “mainEntityOfPage”: “https://example.com”, “image”: “https://example.com”, “birthDate”: “1985-05-12”, “birthPlace”: { “@type”: “Place”, “name”: “Boston, MA” }, “jobTitle”: “Investigative Journalist”, “worksFor”: {
Where “@type”: “Person”, is the designation of you as an “entity.”
Your framework, methodology, or category is also an “entity.” The schema markup for this describes it as a “term.”:
{
“@context”: “https://schema.org”,
“@type”: “DefinedTerm”,
“@id”: “https://example.com”,
“name”: “The Agile Growth Framework”,
“description”: “A proprietary 4-stage business optimization methodology focusing on rapid iteration and cross-departmental alignment.”,
“inDefinedTermSet”: {
“@type”: “DefinedTermSet”,
“name”: “Corporate Optimization Frameworks”,
“url”: “https://example.com”
}
}
Note where it says “@type”: DefinedTermSet”,
And then underneath that: “name”: “Corporate Optimization Frameworks”,
That’s a made-up framework, obviously, but using this type of code on your entity home - your personal website - tells Google and the AIs that you are a person, with a biography, who named a coined term, which describes a framework.
Complex, I know, but this is another use for AI.
The models today can build you a personal website - your entity home - with the required schema markup, if you tell it to.
This becomes the canonical description of who you are.
Use your website to point to all the instances of you on 3rd party sites: author profiles, podcasts websites, conference websites.
This way you’re telling the engines: “this is me, this is how I want to be known, and these are all the instances of me all over the web”
Get the word out about you and your one unforgettable idea
It’s all fine and good to write about yourself on your own website, but where the real credibility comes in is when 3rd party sites mention you.
Write a book
I know, very “thought leader-ish.” But the book has been around for thousands of years, and it’ll be around for thousands of years more (maybe we’ll be living in climate controlled bubbles by then).
Encapsulate your new category or framework (your one unforgettable idea) so that your book becomes the manifesto for your idea.
I talk about this in detail in The Startup Book.
Become a guest on podcasts
This becomes your idea / book tour. You’re promoting your new category or framework, and your book as the vehicle to spread your idea.
There are millions of podcasts, and there are probably at least a dozen if not a hundred podcasts in your space, serving your ideal audience.
Get on the speaking circuit
Joe Pulizzi talks about the concept of “Platform. Speaking. Book.” (that hyperlink leads to a video of a livestream Joe did for me).
He says speaking is one of the three essential parts of what you need to get known as an expert in your niche. I’m just taking his model and repeating it here.
Again, this is where AI can help as well. I’m using a Claude Skill called “1000 rejections.”
My friend Victoria Westcott designed this skill so that Claude can find podcasts, speaking engagements, awards, and other things you can apply for.
I’m using it to find podcasts and conferences I can apply to so I can get the word out.
Eliminate the competition: design your personal category
The logical conclusion of everything I’ve talked about in this newsletter:
If you want to eliminate your category - if you want to be unopposed - design your personal category.
Perform an audit of yourself on un-logged in, incognito versions of the AIs to see what they say about you.
Become known for one unforgettable idea. This could potentially become your personal category (more on category design in another newsletter).
To find your one unforgettable idea, have somebody (or AI) perform a founder excavation, by applying the principles of applied cognitive task analysis to find your hidden genius that can be turned into a model, framework, or category.
Build your entity home - your personal website - and on the about page, write the canonical description of who you are, what your one unforgettable idea is, and what problem you solve and for whom
Get the word out about your one unforgettable idea. Your one unforgettable idea will become your new category - your personal category - to solve a problem for a specific audience.
If you’re serious about standing out, branding your company, and succeeding in the current era dominated by AI slop, this is the way to go!
If you want help with this, book a call with me here.
See you next week!
- Fernando Labastida