Hit play, this ain’t gonna be a light read…

Your personal brand doesn’t need a bunch of recycled high performing ideas. It doesn’t require you to build the most premium funnel, or even for you to mindlessly start throwing shit at the wall until something sticks.

It’s needs you to live your truth, the kind that can’t be faked.
(type shit)

You must operate from this space...

A space where your actions and the way you show up
each day genuinely reflects your values, where you are
going, and that which you have to offer / give to this world.
(your 5D expression / 4D gifts)

This process is challenging for MOST, I understand that.

But if you have Skills
And You Are choosing to
Carry Yourself as a Writer.

Then You Are Already…
WAY MORE PREPARED…
(and ahead of the curve)

Than You Could Even Imagine.

I didn’t have a proper public offering for 8 years (I still don’t)
I’m re-writing and defining my narrative of as we speak.

But despite having 8X the experience of most of my “Theoretical Competition,” I’ve failed to articulate my own value over the years.

I’d attribute this SOLELY to one core limiting belief…
That I didn’t actually see myself as a writer…

That is the GIST of this letter, but please…

Do YOURSELF this favor…

Everything I poured my heart into was visually coherent.
I had no trouble drawing people in to my brand with aesthetics.

Yet, I would still find a way to fall flat on my face and not actually go anywhere because my brand inherently lacked substance.
(like a chic who’s gorgeous but has the personality of a sheet of paper)

I was leaning too heavily on the skills I’d learned as a brand designer. I started my professional trade my freshman year of HS back in 2011.

This ‘Substance’ I was lacking, simply put…

Was Just The Good Old-Fashioned Clarity / Coherence
That Comes Directly as a Result of Quality Writing.
(this wasn’t something I was capable of at that time)

I could’ve easily brought it to the table if I was patient / had more Belief.

But here’s where this share takes a darker turn...

I used to look down on my mother heavily...

I’d mentally labelled her as the “Least self-aware person I knew…”

This was because she was so opposed to doing any level of internal introspection.

I’d try persuading her to try start meditating,
and she would say “No, this is Anti-Christian.”

I would try to get her to start regulating thru
journaling instead, and she’d reply “I don’t like
journalling, that’s not something I’d ever liked.”

Ofc as she tells me this I completely innerstand that she HAD to have come to this conclusion when she was still in her adolescence.
and this belief of hers just stuck, and lives on with her.

This is what you could call a Debilitating Shadow, (one that would remain unchecked) and that’s exactly why observing it was so triggering to me...

My debilitated shadow wasn’t actually that much different from hers.

In Matthew 7:3-5 Jesus asks “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?”

Despite constant introspection…
NON-stop living out of my journals.
(what I thought was me utilizing my brain well

I was STILL avoiding the level of critical thinking that was required to actually Change My Reality. (actualize my vision)

This critical thinking I speak of, is called writing.
(it’s like lifting weights but for your brain)

I was doing all of the OVER-thinking
And None of the Outer Work.
(the action-based inputs)

Everything that Leads to Success in Today’s World Requires Writing.
(and I was allergic to it)

Sales / Persuasion: Writing Deepens Your Ability to Communicate

Website / Landing Pages: Copy-Writing, it’s just Human Psychology

Writing is Critical Thinking

And Critical Thinking
Placed Into Real World Scenarios
Is What Builds Real Wisdom (lived experience)

Not to be confused with Knowledge…
(witnessed testimony & generalized data)

Now here’s where that plot thickens…

In Hindsight, Everything is Crystal Clear.

So this is where it all went wrong for me, Identity-wise.

When I was in my High School TV Prod. Program
I was a bit of a creative prodigy. Yet, I’d felt so much
friction towards the writing part of the making videos.

But post production skills were unrivaled.

I’d gotten 15 different awards, some of which recognized at the national level, 1st place in my state for my Motion Graphics Reel

I’d found my love for creativity, design, and design in motion

I’d literally gotten hired to work my dream job as a Video Editor/Motion Artist at a local studio the instant I’d graduated.

But since I’d felt so much resistance towards the writing process…

This is where my brain went.
I’d unknowingly planted the seed of
A deeply disempowering idea within myself...

…

I mean it seemed sensible to me at the time.

I didn’t like the writing process because I found it challenging.
(no shit)

I met so much resistance towards this process because the short films that we needed to produce generally felt so meaningless to me
(uninspired slop)

Not to mention the fact that you couldn’t force me to read a fictional book let alone trying to make me sit there to write my own fictional stories. (loved movies though)

What it would have taken me to actually catch a Whiff of Flow through writing at that time in my life could’ve only been a Project that required me to critically think to craft, a deeper message, something with meaning.
(content with a purpose)

But all those shallow, meaningless stories that I was trying to force myself to produce had gotten the better of me...

It shifted how I viewed myself and how I felt towards writing.

I’d chosen to convince myself that writing was not a part of the creative gifts that God had given to me.

The Act (action) of writing became something I no longer wanted to even consider being a participant in because...

“You’re Not a Writer…”

(this is the title of one of the shorter books I’ll be writing)

This was the innocent lie.
The Crippling Belief that would
Haunt me for the next 11 years of my life.

I’ve been chasing my tail.
This whole time…

because this one limiting belief (idea)
went un-noticed / un-checked
un-corrected / un-interrupted
It was outside of my awareness entirely.

I’ve attached video to the end of this letter.
It is my senior final from 2015

A project that had required of me
To Forge Something With Meaning....

It was to be my final video in that program.
That program that’d completely changed my life,
This video HAD to be a proper reflection of me at my core.

I chose to base the video around a quote from
Robin Williams Bless His Soul. 🕊️ (ik how original)

It bleeds the same energy you will see in my work still to this day.

Unfortunately... this video didn’t make me awaken to the fact that intentionality was the only holding me back from really falling in love with the writing process

That all I ever needed, was to focus on projects with meaning...

So here I am.

Only after 11 more years of wandering in the wilderness was I able to fully develop my voice and acquire the levels of depth in skills, and success in my relationships / businesses / life…

That first part, of that last statement is a lie.
It didn’t actually take me 11 years. I already had the skills.
(the shift happened instantly)

On the 21st of May 2026,
I’d found myself locked into a coherent writing flow and observing
myself while doing so. (partially thanks to a bréz microdose)

As I observed this beautiful story unfold effortlessly through me. I was struck with an Other-Worldy Internal Knowing that in that Instant everything had just changed.

I understood that I’d always been a Writer,
I was now fully aware that THAT Specific Belief
was the ONLY THING In-between me and my Destiny

(if you’ve been following you may have heard I’m writing a book called “Forging Destiny”㊥, So it is now my publication/podcast title as well.)

This realization was also the key to freeing my inner child…
In that moment I felt a huge surge of emotion come over me.

It was my inner child had hit their emotional limit and it came bursting out of their eyes.

The type of sorrow and pain that you could imagine an immortal child would feel if you’d put them in timeout for the better half of a decade and didn’t even bother looking in their direction.

THAT child was me in that moment.
And I’d found myself bent over on the floor bawling my eyes out.
And my whole reality had just collapsed in on iteslf into this present moment.

An energy vortex just been opened.

My Inner Child (inner divine feminine / past self) +
My Outer Vision (inner divine masculine / future self)

Were now working in unison in that present moment and I realized that version of myself that I see in my visions was now perfectly synchronized on this timeline in this present moment

And I could not be more sure about that.

In other other words.
It took me 11 years to mend that misled belief,
to fully give myself permission to see myself as a writer again...

Yes, the programming of society is something that every one needs to sit with so that they can un-condition / consciously reprogram themselves (this is especially important if you are newly graduated)

But what’s even more dangerous than an idea that was planted in your head by others... Is an Idea that was planted in your head by yourself.

It’s damn near impossible to catch these sometimes because it CAME “from YOU.”

but that was in fact not you...
One of the first things you will learn on Your Journey to Potential is that You are not Your Thoughts.

YOUR brains thoughts (ego), and YOUR essence (soul / awareness / presence) are two completely different entities that can learn to work together.

Adolescent you was none the wiser,
but knew to trusts their instincts
that internal voice of truth...

If you are to take away anything from this digital artifact, please let it be...

To Give Yourself Permission to Fully To See
Yourself As a Writer, Right Now Where You Sit.

If You Can Claim That Identity Part Alone,
True Belief Will Follow. I Can Assure You This.

Modern psychology let’s us know that the IDENTITY is the single greatest motivational force that drives human behavior.

I am giving you permission to become (the courage to believe in your a ability to become) a writer today; To Claim this Identity for yourself, so that Your Actions can Forge Your Beliefs, and Your Beliefs can Forge Your Destiny ㊥

This musing started off as an idea about “Frequency Funnels,” but that topic will need to wait for another day.

Please enjoy my senior final from 2015. Prompt: “What’s behind the door?”
(the same prompt we got in our first video was the same for our very last)

My Newer YouTube Channels Are:

Flow Creators Youtube Channel (@flowcreators)
Dan’s New YouTube Channel (@dantoruno)
Subscribe If you’d like to share your truth more effortlessly.

Peace & Wholeness

— Dan ㊥

X Version of this letter.

I came across two posts within the past 24 hours that are both deeply moving use cases of AI, but there is a distinct difference between them.

One left me feeling inspired and empowered, and the other left me feeling like I wasn’t doing enough, but both are extremely mind-expanding. They show you what’s actually possible with AI if you actually use your unique gifts.

Your human-powered creativity.

Creators Should Vibe Code

Sauce: Artificial.Isabel on Instagram (47s)

I’ve been overdue for sharing Isabel’s page she is peak using AI to enable creativity right now, and I adore this prime example of how to Art Direct your agent to literally build the creative projects of your dreams.

Maybe this is a sign to download your first code editor.

The one I use is VS Code with Github Copilot, but any of them will do.

Think Your Way to Success

Sauce: AndrooAGI on TikTok (32 Seconds)

I’m not here to tell you you should start a slop business with AI because there are a lot of ways this can backfire, but DO think critically and analyze how you could use your own unique business experience to become infinitely more leveraged.

Shoutout for the Existential Crisis

Stay Creative,
Thanks for tuning in.

— Dan ㊥

Spent my morning preparing this protocol for myself. It also happens to be a 33 Energy day today, so let us declare a new identity that will define the next level of our expansion. ~

// 𝐁𝐎𝐎𝐓 𝐒𝐄𝐐𝐔𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄 𝐈𝐍𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐀𝐓𝐄𝐃
// 𝐅𝐑𝐄𝐐𝐔𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐘: [ 𝟑𝟑/6 ] 2
// 𝐒𝐔𝐍: 𝟎° 𝐀𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐒 ♈︎

 Copy These Prompts.

ARIES_PROTOCOL_PROMPTS ♈︎

01. DECLARE YOUR IDENTITY
Who is it I am becoming this cycle?
What version of me am I ready to stop delaying?
“I am the version that...

02. ONE INITIATION POINT
What is the one form of output I am committing to?

03. ANCHOR THE FREQUENCY
Who precisely will my actions serve?
DECLARATION
What Version of Me Is Stepping Forward Now?

Ex Animo
— Runo 中

I think I dig this format where I drop a casual video like this every weekend.

It was going to be “Saturday” initially but Saturday—Sunday makes no difference just getting it done “every weekend” feels right to me.

Huge bonus that these can be completed start to finish in about 90 minutes.

Plus can cut these into smaller clips to redistribute to my other socials.

I definitely have some ammunition for the posting challenge with this and last weeks episode.

Talk soon :)

— Dan ㊥

Key Realizations:

Community as Foundation

• Joined a new yoga studio (Yoga Direction) but still felt ungrounded despite daily practice

• 30-minute meditation + 60-minute Dharma talk at Buddhist temple shifted everything

• The structured conversation format (not just preaching) created openness and dialogue

• Physical presence in community filled something that solo practice couldn’t

For Digital Community Builders

• You need your own physical Sangha to draw from before facilitating one online

• Conscious community building is a responsibility, not just a role

• Local + digital communities should complement each other, not replace one another

Action Items for Listeners

• Search Meetup, Eventbrite, Facebook groups for local spiritual/practice communities

• Find spiritually-focused groups (meditation, yoga, etc.) alongside hobby/sports groups

• Don’t outsource your introspection entirely to organized religion

Personal Practice Evolution

• Balancing LA Fitness + Yoga studio memberships (gym breaks down, yoga grounds)

• Exploring steel mace, calisthenics, kettlebells as gym alternatives

• Future path: Tai Chi, Qigong, Reiki, sound healing, guided meditations

• Possible project: Talk tracks mixing beats with mentor quotes (Mentor Synthesis?)

The Breaking Point

• Hitting an “upper limit” - self-sabotaging before a breakthrough

• AI assistant setup frustrations led to feeling drained and disempowered

• Reminder: Use technology, don’t let it use you (digital Zen philosophy)

New Discovery: The term “Zendo” (Zen Dojo) - might rebrand the Substack community from Dharma Dojo to reflect this

Invitation: Join the Sangha on Substack for deeper dives into topics like different Buddhist sects, the “don’t know mind” philosophy, and evergreen spiritual guidance

Closing Mantra: Keep flowing, stay growing ✌️

I recently bought a kindle paperlike. They usually retail $160 but I found a perfect condition one for $60 on FB Marketplace.

This was it. I was finally going to pick back up my consistent reading habit right?

I learned two things after owning it for two weeks

I prefer reading on my phone: Everything loads faster, I don’t have to carry a second device with me everywhere, I can highlight with multiple colors, etc.

I can’t jailbreak the newest models of the kindle: there’s no patch for it yet. I’m someone who really likes to have the ability to personalize my tech.

It’s okay guys I gave the Kindle to my mother she really was in the market for the exact same model and she was ecstatic to receive this one.

Reading on iPhone + Books App

Going back to reading on my phone I realized a handful of things that I’ll be sharing here.

The Books app on iPhone goes kinda crazy, I just realized that not only is it super intuitive to upload PDFs or EPUBs, but they will sync with all your devices and you can grab the original file back whenever you want from iCloud.

You Can Mark Up and Highlight PDFs and you already know how nice that is to have when these books sync to something like an iPad as well.

Which having the original files is really helpful if you are trying to build knowledge bases with AI to help you do perform high quality research.

So I think of these recent steps have helped me future proof my reading setup a bit.

The real sauce I want to share with you today is this workflow:

My new favorite PDF to EPUB Converter:*

https://convertio.co/pdf-epub/ The other ones I was using I ran into limits, this one does not have them.

Change the Book Covers with This Tool:

https://www.prodocumenttools.com/change-epub-cover/ What sucks most about converting pdfs sometimes is that the covers don’t sync.

This one is so easy you just drag the Epub and then Drag the Image You’d like it to use as the cover.

If you big on aesthetics like myself you’ll be glad to know you can now upload your favorite version of any book cover to add to your collection with this.

*Update to Workflow: Calibre

https://calibre-ebook.com/

I realized convertio (and almost all other online converters) don’t always do a great job of converting the PDF files (corrupted spelling and random spaces) so I finally got it more consistent using the cross-platform desktop app Calibre. The Conversion works great and you can also update the book covers in this process.

On Mac mace sure you give the program full disk access in your privacy & security settings if you want it to be able to convert onto an external drive.

*Second Update: Kindle

I literally went through like 3 versions of a book that had weird formatting because it kept detecting the Name of the chapter and page number as text at the top of the page.

So if any books are being difficult to conver properly I just ended up purchasing it on the kindle store. I felt really silly yesterday 1.23.26 because the book I was struggling with was only $1.99 on the kindle store. So I just dual weild the kindle and apple books apps.

My Digital Library is now gorgeous and I find myself reaching for this > YouTube shorts in a pinch. It also helps to place reading/productive apps in an easy spot to reach on your phone and the distracting ones in a harder spot

Thanks for reading.

Keep growing, Stay Flowing.

— Dan ㊥

I have a tendency these days to get caught up in where I want to save quick notes on side quests like this. I’ve used nearly all the Personal Knowledge Management tools out there but there is clearly a strong pattern of procrastinating or bypassing creation by getting lost in the tools.

At the end of the day my main reason for using them is to assist me in documenting more things online lke this, so today I decided to save all my “open tabs” and thoughts on this topic into this letter.

This study has stemmed from two lovely intiators I’ve recently started following.

The works of Ana aka “UFOCaller” on Galactic Time. Plus her Incredible Calculator for Understanding Your Mayan Dreamspell Signature (A much more digestible introduction to your Tribe & Tone)

Read more

There is this quote from Nero Knowledge which has continued to live rent free in my dome that states something along the lines of.

It doesn’t matter which strategy or technique you use for manifestation, all of them work. The only factor that matters it the unwavering belief in whatever system you subscribe to or decide to use.

So this got me thinking.

1) This definitely resonates

2) If this is the case then what manifestation system do I most resonate with most and use as my north star for mastering the material aspects of reality.

That’s the basis for we are exploring today. I hope that this can give you some context and intentionality on HOW you design your reality.

Once you know which teacher or system, it’s should be very clear which bodies of work you can dive into to fully master these techniques.

If this chart visualization is not displaying properly on the substack app, you can view it on my main site here: dantor.uno/manifest

View On Publication

Please let me know if there are any teachers or schools of thought that I missed out on so I can update this chart.

I’m going to refrain from sharing my conclusions here because I don’t want to sway your decision I feel it is important you listen to your own intuition.

Welcome to the first official Find Your Tribe of The Dharma Dojo! (and 2026)

It’s a chance to support one other, find accountability partners, and re-introduce the latest version of yourself and connect with the right people that you can actually build with.

🗓️ We’ll repeat this thread on the 6th of each month so don’t sweat if you miss this one.

I was inspired to start this format by Musings by Mika, whose regular discussion threads are always thoughtful and engaging, and bringing writers together in meaningful ways.

For this month’s prompt, I’d love to hear:

What’s one project or personal life shift you are undertaking in 2026 and/or what Identity based belief can you adopt to make this change feel effortless? (You should keep one or the other private if it’s not something that is ready to be shared externally yet.)

Ok, here’s the practice:

👋 1. Go to the comments and briefly introduce yourself

✍️ 2. Introduce your Substack and the two or three topics you write about

💬 3. Answer this month’s prompt: One large project or personal life shift for 2026?

😊 4. Then, introduce yourself in the comments to someone you haven’t met

💻 5. Go to their Substack and leave them a comment

I look forward to meeting you in the comments!

If you are new here my name’s Dan. In my Dojo, we explore living your dharma, practicing digital zen, building communities in the consciousness economy, and personal brand actualization. I like to share resources and inspiration for modern artists and cultivate a space here for deeper reflection and community connection.

I’m a Teacher and founder at The Flow Creators Organization. Currently building out my public curriculum on a public platform while I write share my research here to build creative consistency and attract my Soul Tribe Maybe that’s you.

If you’d like to join my private Discord community, please fill out a dojo application here.

— Dan ㊥

This past week, I did something I should’ve done months ago: I grabbed a whiteboard and listed out the only tools I actually need to run my creator business. No more platform paralysis. No more endless research spirals. Just decisions.

…Okay, the Black Friday lifetime deals floating around may have forced my hand a little bit.

Here’s what I landed on

Email Marketing: MailerLite

I was very tempted to grab Flodesk’s unlimited contacts plan (at $38/mo) before it goes away forever today, I like flodesk a lot but I don’t have an urgent need to scale my email marketing yet but I could still highly recommend it.

If you were also on the fence about flodesk, you can use my link to get 50% off your first year which would be unlimited contacts and sends for $17.50/mo ($210

Most marketers I observe swear by ConvertKit, (which is also free until 10k subs with them placing 1 ad slot in your emails by default which I don’t f with)

Users are required to display three Smart Recommendations in their welcome emails and one locked Smart Recommendation slot that cannot be customized or removed without upgrading. — Perplexity.

I’v of the best copywriters and brand designers I know quietly use MailerLite as their secret weapon. Plus, their prices at scale are a bit better than the competition when your list grows bigger.

Link in Bio: Fourthwall + Bio.Site

After revisiting a dozen options and falling for Linktree’s infuriating “use premium design features and they reset all your editing progress when you don’t upgrade right away” trap twice… (Outside of this they are a solid platform)

This investigation led to me discovering Bio.site (by squarespace). Their design systems are beautiful, simple, editor has a dark mode, you can create multiple bio sites on one account, AND you don’t even need a Squarespace subscription to use it.

Two cons: you can’t remove their branding even if you pay them (I have a workaround for this), and all links either open in new tabs or none of them do because it’s a global setting you have to chose rather than being able decide on a per link basis like on beacons or linktree. (in the social media browser interfaces this doesn’t matter because everything opens in the “same tab” unless it’s a deep link taking you to a different app or social platform)

My Workaround: Another tool I’d been trying to fit into my toolstack is this platform called fourthwall. It’s basically Shopify and Patreon combined and it’s really easy to setup. It also let’s you sell print on demand products easily, completely free, a ton of other really powerful email/social shopping integrations (kit/beehiiv/zapier) which is why I’ve been keeping a close eye on their platform and have now finally found a good use for it.

It’s got an intuitive web builder as well as block for embedding custom code, which means I can embed my bio site as a page inside of my fourthwall website (Also my substack signup form). Effectively a completely non-branded website builder that I can add a custom domain to all for free.

Bonus Tip: I asked claude to modify the custom code for the bio.site embed so that it cut’s off the bottom 400-ish pixels, disables the scrolling, and limits the width so it always looks like the mobile version. So now you don’t see the bio site branding on the embed and it looks the same on mobile and desktop.

One more thing to note here is that I still plan on using beacons specifically for their free and unlimited auto DM replies feature because it’s. The only catch there is that you can’t just attach your link you have to set your links up as external products then you can add it to the chat automations. Annoying but makes links really easy to be re-used.

Checkout/Course Builder: Whop + Teachery

I considered ThriveCart’s lifetime deal (15% off through November), link-in-bio tools like Stan.store/Beacons/Linktree, and even Skool. But I’m betting on Whop.

Why not Skool?

Skool is crowded. Too many massive communities throwing hella resources at hiring community managers, doing multiple calls a week competing for the attention of skool users. If my members have joined 11 other Skools, they’re not likely to complete any trainings on my platform without being pulled elsewhere.

Skool also lacks a serendipity network. No unified home feed for the communities you’d like to stay plugged in to. The only way back to your space is emails or if your members find you in that tiny notification popup that is always at +99 🔴 , and when it comes to emails I almost entirely zone those out too because I get so many of them and they just sort of blend together.

The majority of my work will be better at serving Gen Z creators, not Skool’s millennial-heavy crowd. I’d also rather focus on improving my content approach to improve my discoverability than competing for attention on skool.

Why Whop?

Whop has that unified feed that Skool lacks, plus fewer communities competing for attention, and it’s all built around a strong LMS on a platform optimized for selling and delivering high quality digital experiences.

I’ll be honest: I don’t love the culture around Whop’s founders, and there are bad actors abusing the platform. But I’m countering that with proper community housekeeping, guidelines, and removing my community from their discovery page so that only the traffic I direct from my socials will have the opportunity to join.

I also want to add that Whop is by no means a ready to go fully polished products there are definitely some rough edges in certain places like not being able to have a forums app with multiple topics, but they are iterating and improving at speed that makes me very optimistic about their long-term place in the creator economy.

I’m nurturing two distinct audiences: Creators Becoming and Creators Being. Whop serves both as a free community hub with easy upgrade options in the same ecosystem.

Backup Payment Processor & Members Area: Teachery

I’m also grabbing Teachery. This is their first Black Friday sale ever, since launching in 2014. They’ve cut the price in half: $280 with code “BF2025” (normally $550 LTD or $49/mo).

Teachery is a beautifully brandable course platform with checkouts, upsells, and membership features. Teachery gives me a backup branded platform built on Stripe that also has a native email integration with MailerLite so It’s also perfect for delivering lead magnets with branded dashboards that funnel people into my whop community and allows people to easily access past downloads.

Personal Website: Substack (for now) → Ghost (eventually)

I’ve realized I don’t want to settle for a mediocre personal website long-term. The tool I love most for an elegant, self-hosted blog is Ghost.org. Check out JeffSu.org or Hulry.com for examples of what’s possible.

This isn’t urgent. For now, I’m sticking with Substack and optimizing my About page as my primary introduction point since it’s where people land when they discover your publication anyway. I’ll use it to share my story, clarify my mission, and outline ways to work with me (still figuring that part out).

Thanks for reading. Full transparency: many of these links are affiliates, but not all. I just want to share the tools I’ve come to select myself after spending way too much time making these decisions for myself.

Writing this from a Starbucks in Tennessee while visiting family this week.

Wishing you peace, prosperity, and wholeness friend.
Thanks for reading, happy holidays.

— Dan ㊥

It has notoriously ONLY been available for people who have hundreds of paying subscribers…

I am obsessed with color psychology, and if you take cultivating top tier digital spaces + authentic self-expression seriously then, you may like it here welcome aboard.

Subscribe now

You’ve probably seen a handful of these.

There has been no official update about the sneaky release of this ability being given to non-bestsellers.

Even if you ask substack’s official support chat bot it will tell you—

On this platform where self-expression is everything, the custom branding feels like a MUST to me, to visually distinguish yourself from the sea of orange/gray.

After searching multiple dozens of profiles. I found a handful of outliers that weren’t bestsellers, yet they still had the profile color so I found hope.

What they all had in common was that they had these new flower badges that you now get when you grab a paid subscription to ANYONE’s publication.

Yes… pay to play sucks but if there is that one person you’ve been wanting to show your appreciation to for their writing this is a great opportunity to do so.

For me that would have been but my mans is ADAMANT about not monetizing on substack and will die on that hill so… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I gave mine to Ed at because it was only $5 a week and his posts have been super helpful to me over the past two years staying on top of the latest knowledge management tools.

• I’ve recently switched over to Tana after being a loyal Workflowy user over the past two years, I just needed something a bit more scaleable and neat.

I suggest you support your favorite writer on here but if you are on a budget and you don’t want to be paying $5-80/mo. I may have a solution for ya.

My pub is only $33/yr which comes down to only $2.78/mo so if you want a more affordable way to get your own custom profile colors. You can grab my yearly plan.

• There’s a bunch of other community bonuses coming like live workshops, challenges, and threads you’ll get access to by becoming a member.

This would greatly support my MASSIVE Ego’s dream of becoming a substack best-seller as well as my efforts in building The Collective Impact Network ㊥

• I have a slight obsession with verification badges & authority hacking

Thanks for being here.

— Dan ㊥

The Flow Creators Academy is Proudly Built On Whop ᯽

You will not meet someone more obsessed than I, when it comes to building high quality online community experiences.

I have tried MOST of the platforms out there…
And I’ve deeply investingated nearly all of them.

After my explorations I thought we’d be hosting our community space on Whop, the platform I’ve been experimenting with the past 6 months but…

I believe it’s time to say goodbye to them.

My Whop Experience

I’ve been following them closely for a year and I’ve had around 6 months on and off of iterating my platform there.

I love Whop as a product. They’ve seriously innovated the virtual communnity space and I want to keep making excuses for them but…

I can’t keep deluding myself in to thinking they a will come out on top.
I don’t resonate with the culture of the platform itself, or the way they run they choose to run their company internally.

Complete lack of direction and proper care for the user experience. I could shoot a whole video on this and probably will someday but I’ll summarize…

• This video will eventually happen because there many impressive things about the platform I want to publicly document and attach my affiliate to.

They’ve proven over and over that they don’t listen to community feedback but randomly ship things and make changes that no one asked for.

They innovate but they just think that consistently adding new features will make the product better when there is still vast number of things on the platform that are broken, don’t work, or one update breaks existing features.

Hoping for a product that you could just rely on is not something I was able to receive from them. It was just such a headache trying to be optimistic.

The biggest reason why I’ve decided to not use them though…

I wouldn’t trust that those that download Whop because of me would be safe.

There are just too many bad players on that platform, if they were to go out and explore other communities on their own they’d probably get scammed.

I don’t want my brand ends up being associated to with something awful happening to someone so I won’t host my space in a place where that is more likely to happen.

Sure scams *could* happen on Skool but the simplicity, reliability, and vitality (how active people are on there) just points to the idea that this is a place where the platform doesn’t get in the way and people will play.

Invites Coming Soon

I won’t be dropping the link to my new Skool today I need a few housekeeping things in place before I feel comfortable funneling tribe into there but I will use the rest of this post to share some of the reasons why I’ve chosen skool after trying so many platforms.

• I had a pretty well polished discord community I was building but I’m putting that on pause right now to prioritize the public facing portions of my community. The invite-only Dharma Dojo is not ready just yet.

• Feel free to comment if you’d like access to it early

Leave a comment

Why Skool

• Simplicity & Calendar Integration Is One of the Most Intuitive Way to Upsell via Sincere & Regular Community Connection.

  

  • These Calendar Events Can Be Paywalled So that Everyone Can View Them But Only People With Access to A Specific Course or “Class” Can Click The Event Links.

• $10 plan makes the subscription significantly more affordable

  • If you don’t want to pay their 10% transaction fees you can process the payment externally and use zapier to zap access to specific products

• Their courses and forums support Loom video embeds (You’d be surprised how many platforms don’t for some reason)

  • This just means is that it makes it extremely easy to iterateand produce your educational content

• People are very active here. Which is a pro and a con.

  • Pro is that people will keep coming back to visit other communities and there’s a solid chance they can visit yours

  • Not as much friction because your members have probably already created a skool account

  • It’s con where it’s quite a bit of work to maintain, especially when other communities can be a lot more noisy than a solo-creator’s level of output

• Forums are very user friendly and much easier to navigate.

  • This format really does serve the modern day polymath so you can make regular and short written entries each time you explore a certain topic and it’s easy for your community to find.

  • I realized It would feel weird putting technology updates, or specific news about digital tools on the substack because it would dilute the main themes of “Mentor Synthesis Posts or Flow Creators Podcast EP being found on my Substack “Website”

• Gamification I’m not a huge fan of but it enables your diehard members to get great incentives so it’s definitely a pro.

• Free Community Posts can be FULLY open and public.

  • This is a big deal because platforms like whop and others they have to have a whop account to view posts and be a fly on the wall.

  • I’m all about ungatekeeping here.

My Creator Funnel

I feel called to share my full community tool stack because I’ve spent the majority of the past two years deeply investigating my solo-creator systems.

Substack

The best social media platform. Full of creatives and deep thinkers. I’d like to make this my personal website to streamline my distribution network. Multiple Podcasts, Newsletters, and topics hosted neatly in one place with a fully integrated social sharing ecosystem is a place I could see myself producing on long term.

Skool

Yeah we talked about this. Coming soon. I really do like this in tandem with substack because If I have virtual events coming up I can distribute an email from substack & skool at different times in case someone didn’t see the first.

• I know I’ve missed a lot of events because I just tune out skool notifications in my email because I get so many of them

Polar

A Powerful & Beautiful Stripe Wrapper for Non-Developers That Will Actually Deliver Your Products and Give the end User a Beautful Checkout Experience

• Includes a dashboard that will let users sign in to view all the products they’ve purchased from you.

• They are like 1% more expensive than stripe but you can actually effectively serve your community the products and resources they’ve purchased.

LemonSqueezy

I may use this if I need a united storfront for digital products was thinking of utilizing this for a shop specifically for “Mentor Synthesis” related products.

Beacons + Carrd

Free Link in Bio + DM Automation Platform and I’ve embedded my Beacons into a Carrd Site so I could embed my substack signup into it + add a custom domain using carrd.

• Will probably be making a paid letter exploring this process + my favorite website building process, resources, & templates using Carrd/Beacons

Trial Period

My trial ends on October 30th if all things go well and I like what I’m able to put build on Skool we should be staying over there so I’ll be keeping you in the loop.

Thanks for tuning in

— Dan ㊥

As a matter of fact I’d say I’ve reached a new low point when it comes to self-confidence since I’ve been consistently not following through with the promises, objectives, outputs that I’ve been setting for myself.

I’ve been too comfortable…

I had to write this because I could not go another day where I sit back and find some way to distract myself from producing something.

Creation needs to be a daily practice, so I can pay my dues.

I am so over this survival pattern I’ve been tolerating.

We mystics understand the laws that this reality operates on, yet sometimes we let our old vibration take the wheel for too long without that conscious re-alignment.

I’m over this addiction to my old frequency.

Elimnate the non-truths & distractions…
AFFIRM WHO YOU ARE

I write this for myself today. As a small step in taking my agency back.

I hope this reaches a soul who it needed to hear this today.

Maybe that soul is you.

Subscribe now

Personal/Community Updates:

• Handle is Now “@MentorSynthesis” in most places. It’s a bit of a personal brand pivot to lean on this “niche” of wisdom synthesis to share my explorations in a fulfilling and easier to understand way.

• I believe I should re-visit my most foundational books

  • The Power of Now - To Live Deeply In Presence

  • Atomic Habits - Identity Based Systems

  • The Way of The Superior Man

• My biggest objective in this moment is re-doing my about page here on substack. I’d like to treat this like my personal website and directory so my new offers and “manifesto” of sorts must live here.

• I’ve been reading Nero Knowledge’s book recently Outsmarting Reality, and I love his No-BS Approach to Manifestation and Vibrational Alignment

  • I highly encourage you to explore his body of work on youtube.

    • I should probably also revisit the works of Dr. Joe Dispenza

• I’ve recently met a new friend and “spiritual teacher” from Inda who I am immensely grateful for. He goes by Shub and we’ve consistently been having weekly accountability calls and mutual guidance sessions and it’s been really refreshing being able to have this soul tribe level connection and mutual support virtually.

• We have a neat new animation for the publicaiton banner here
  

Leave a comment

Thank you for being here.

— Dan ㊥

Today’s, August 8th (8/8), also known as the Lions Gate Portal. A time when astrology says the Sun, Sirius, and Orion align to unlock abundance. I’m not here to break down the Astrology, that’s not my lane. But as someone who works deeply with numbers, the 8/8 amplification captures my focus.

In numerology, 8 is the number of power, prosperity, and infinite cycles. But what most don’t acknowledge is that deeply tied to Karma.

So instead of just thinking about what you’d like to Attract, Manifest, etc. Remember to get clear about what you will give in order to receive.

Cause and Effect.

Whether or not you buy into the Lions Gate, there’s power in choosing a moment to reset, re-focus, and inject some clarity to your mission.

Today can be that day, simply because you choose it to be.

I’d nudge you to leverage this energy.

The numbers don’t lie.

Going to refer to an Astrologer who’s Energy I trust to share a ritual suggestion for today portal. Brooke from Arcanum

The Threads post also had exactly 33 likes so it felt right.

Bonus:

Namaste Hoe,

Get after it.

Yesterday I announced a daily writing practice. A few souls showed interest in joining, but I noticed a disturbance in the force that I needed to share.

Many creators are posting with only the intent of consistency. But I also want to apply emphasis on publishing evergreen bodies of work that are worth coming back to and re-distributing often. Not just daily posts rooted in repetition— full-blown resource hubs and conversation threads.

That’s why I created The Org after all.

Before I explain more, come with me on a small tangent.

Things Are Changing Here

Saw this post yesterday and whilst I didn’t want to fully agree with it, there’s no denying that the app is getting noisier and there are gonna be some mixed updates knowing that substack recently got a round of VC funding.

Utilize a Custom Domain

I’m attaching dantoruno.com to my publication and going all in on treating it like my personal website.

I see great long term benefits of this seeing how people like Austin Kleon use Substack. (he has a personal site too, but it just mirrors and points to his Substack where real community conversation is happening)

Utilize your personal substack domain instead of the app links.

❌ https://substack.com/@dantoruno/p-170279159

❌ https://dantoruno.substack.comp/stop-lying-to-yourself

❌ https://open.substack.com/pub/dantoruno/p/stop-lying-to-yourself

☑️ https://dantoruno.com/p/stop-lying-to-yourself

If you don’t utilize a custom domain, your substack URLs will force open inside the mobile app experience, which is noisier, and the content is nerfed.

One final great benefit of not notifying your audience via substack is if you make tweaks to your letters. The initial outdated email with the errors won’t be permanently in your audience’s inbox. (In my case the base body of work)

If you’ve ever heard the term “We’ll fix it in post” this is peak that.

I can publish my writing and beautify it later. Add fine details, add greater context to the story. And since this is my personal website I’ll put extra love into it.

That’s the whole point of this after all… To Create Art is it not?

You may not know this, but that “Read In App” Button on Desktop doesn’t do anything. It is just an ad for substacks mobile app. It’s not the end of the world, though most of your readers are reading on mobile anyway but here’s how we take control of the flow.

Leveraging Gumroad Automations

If you don’t already know, Gumroad has a very generous and robust email marketing suite built in their free platform. So not only will you have more power over redistributing your work, now you have a New Sidequest to complete that Lead-Magnet you’ve been putting off via Gumroad.

How Do We Apply This?

• Release your work without hitting the notify button.
  You Want to schedule it out via Gumroad instead.

  • You can use an image or experiment with different hooks to get the email reader to view the full post on your substack domain…

  • Or include the whole post right in Gumroad. I can’t stop you.

• Create Emails with a button CTA that opens on your publication in its website instead of the app

• Set Email Up Flows to Automate Sharing Your Best Work to Anyone That Downloads Your Lead Magnet at an Intentional Interval.

• My Current Idea Is to Have Two Flows

  • First One is for your evergreen promotions. A Flow that recycles your best work on a recurring basis.

    • I’d probably schedule these out for the whole month at the start of every month.

  • Second One is an Intentional User Journey that your reader is put into after downloading your primary lead magnet that shows them your best work in the specific order of context.

    • I don’t have enough of these yet so I’m gonna stick with that first flow to post this newsletter.

Evergreen Post Ideas

With the distinction being made from Reps to Formats & Evergreen Bodies of work. Here are some example resources that you can produce to create redistributable bodies of work that work for you in the long run.

• Reading List — Self-Explanatory

• Your Stack — Fav Tools & Affiliates

• Start Here — Share Your Story/Mission

• Offerings — A Pinned Post w/ All Your Offers

• Mentors List — Defining Your Brand Inspirations

• Content Formats — Define a Recurring Letter Format

Thanks for Reading

Have a great one.

Subscribe now

Todays Letter is on starting a Daily Newsletter practice.

I've told myself for a long time that I “was” living this truth The Way of The Superior Man.

"As of now spend a minimum of one hour a day doing whatever you are waiting to do" In this context I am waiting to post creative work consistently

I've been in this endless cycle of optimizing, and tweaking my messaging, funnel, recording process, etc… I'll spend most days from sunrise to sunset finding something ELSE to work on towards making this vision happen. No writing has actually been getting done. Branding and systemizing processes I love these two aspects of the game but I've been using them to avoid the real work.
This was especially obvious when I told myself the past two days let's just do 600 words on Substack every day and I managed to find a way to procrastinate around that, to work on other things.

In order to change this I used 100% of my free will today to decide that we are gonna start posting a daily letter. Here's a screenshot from my GPT convo this morning on deciding the ideal newsletter length.

No more of waiting for my publication to be “polished” or for me to have completed enough quiet writing to be “ready” it’s go time.

looking forward to our continued becoming.

Godspeed ㊥

My publication has undergone another rebrand. It’s now to dantoruno.com I’ve chosen this new insignia ㊥ to represent my personal brand “Dan Toruno”. At it’s core the symbol represents balance, the balance of being and doing in order to live a life in peak flow.

This is the first letter of a new monthly series documenting my recent community developments, discoveries, and ideas related to creative evolution.

📧 Email Marketing Developments

June 11th of last year, I shared my thoughts on all the email marketing platforms in a tier list format. You can check it out here.

✍️ My Email Marketing Playbook Mid 2025

The beginning of this year, I thought I’d rely on Substack for my primary email marketing to keep it community-focused and driven (which I still am)

The appeal was having free unlimited email sends.

However….

One small detail changed everything. The profile photos for email sends.

The only email software I can get behind are the ones that let you properly set up your email profile photo so people get to see your pretty face in their Gmail inbox.

This is very important for building brand awareness while you practice writing, sharing stories, and giving value through email.

Substack used to have a workaround for being able to set a custom profile photo, using the “multiple email senders” in Gmail, but when trying to help my friend set this up earlier this month, I’ve realized it’s been patched and doesn’t work anymore

In my mind, this means I can no longer rely on Substack as my primary source for email distribution.

I have spent too much time revisiting my favorite email marketing platforms. I really dislike email marketing plans that get infinitely more expensive with more subscribers.

Kit(.com) is goated in so many ways, but I can’t stand their pricing model. It gives me growth anxiety, where I don’t want to be stuck paying them thousands a month once my list gets big enough. I know 75k subscribers is only $499-663/mo, with a list that size, it IS reasonable but why pay that when on Flodesk, $38 is the max I will pay and the builder gives me landing page marketing functionality straight from my readers’ inboxes.

Almost every email platforms have this annoying practice like convertkit so I’ve opted to go with flodesk for my endgame but since I have under 5k subscribers I purchased Sendfox’s Lifetime where currently have unlimited sends for a list to up to 5k subscribers so I’m going to keep cruising with this one until I pass that limit.

🌮 AppSumo Lifetime Deal PSA

My favorite digital whiteboarding app in the screenshot above is back on AppSumo, so instead of paying $99 on their website, you can grab it for life for $59! Save $40 and $12-18/mo indefinitely instead of paying for something like Miro. (BMix also has native dark mode)

💌 Email Marketing End Game

$38/mo for Flodesk is still not a small subscription for beginners, but if you are using it to practice your writing/copywriting by sending daily letters and schedule flows to send people back to your best work for people that may not have been following you that long or seen them the first time.

This works better than Substack because you can send shorter emails that just serve as a quick hook to your larger bodies of work. In my use case, maybe an evergreen article that I spent a while crafting on my Substack publication.

I believe from a marketer’s perspective, it can be much better to post your Substack letters quietly and use your recurring email marketing flows to systematically promote your work. These email marketing platforms allow you to have more control over the email sends, having a custom profile photo, email sender, and whenever they click a button, you can segment those readers into lists because you know they are an engaged reader. These engaged readers are much better for sending/testing offers to because you’ve already built rapport.

Substack isn’t out the window, it’s publication pages are still powerful islands of content separate from the noisier parts of the platform.

I like to see publications as cozy corners of the internet where you can publish your best work. Plus it has a genuine and high-quality community aspect where people can comment, engage and quote, and reshare your work.

It also has two unique features that other platforms don’t…

You can copy a link to a specific section in the article since Substack has a Table of Contents that you can grab the links from. You combine this with the fact that you can add a custom domain to your Substack publication, and now you have a viable platform to house your affiliate links because a lot of affiliate platforms require you to use your own custom domain.

I must also note you can bypass this step by using a domain shortening service attached to your custom domain. For example, Rebrandly is quite popular but it’s $12/15/mo so I picked up this Lifetime Deal Alternative called Linkila and have been loving it the past year or so. It even has a domain 404 page redirect so if someone types any combination of characters after flowcreators.org it will still redirect to my primary redirect page www.flowcreators.org.

🐷 Buy Your Domains Here.

If you need to buy custom domains, please do yourself a favor and use/switch to Porkbun. Best prices these days and very intuitive platform with fun branding.

Namecheap used to be my go-to choice, but the only direction they evolved over the years is increasing their prices, making their name not hold any weight.

(Namecheap also screwed me for years because their payment method on file never let me add my card for years support couldn’t resolve the issue either. I could only use PayPal which wasn’t compatible with auto-renewing, so I accidentally lost many of my domains by forgetting to renew them manually. Should be pretty obvious why I left.)

New Posting Schedules

The mission for Substack is to create a library of public evergreen content to support the Flow Creators Collctive.

Shortform content is the real priority that will enable community growth, so these bodies of work are actually more aimed at being enticing CTAs for the shortform content so that my new audience can comment to get instant access to any of these letters, which will be very synergistic when I talk about any of these topics in my shortform content.

⚙️ Workflow Wednesdays

I will be documenting and sharing valuable step-by-step walkthroughs of how to set something up. Think things like productivity, creativity, or AI-related workflows to try for yourself. Some current ideas I have for this: Walking Through My Digital Journaling Setup, My Browser Productivity Frameworks, Favorite Chrome Extension Demos, etc. How I’m using X Tool.

🧬Sunday Synthesis (Weekly 3-2-1) 💬

A simple Micro-Letter that contains a James Clear-like format so that I can build consistency. I haven’t decided 3-2-1 of what yet but we will get there.

🎬 Scattered Shortform Videos (3X wk)

I am aiming to be posting 2-3 shortform videos a week, distributed to all platforms, but in the earlier stages to re-establish my editing proficiency. I plan to have different recurring video series, like the “Using Your Phone, Instead of Letting it Use You Series” that I am in the middle of. However, I will likely be participating in some sort of 30 day posting challenge to experiment with more style and produce some foundational content that informs the audience about my story, experiences, and the vision.

Not currently at this level of output, but this is where I am aiming to upgrade my skillset to be at. It’s more a skill issue of re-building a new editing workflow and a mental battle of me getting out of my own way. Need to re-face some of the shadows most creators will face like the fear of success, visibility, and judgment that results in overthinking and self-sabotage.

The way I see it, shortform video is “The Real Work,” the highest ROI output and skill to be developed, which is content production and commanding authority on social media. ie. The ability to grow an audience on social media which includes many subsets of skills like, editing, outsourcing, time management, storytelling, copywriting, leveraging AI, etc.

Making good content consistently is the real superpower in this modern era and is the real work every creator needs to systemize for their unique style. AKA Creating Your Flow, which is the whole premise of what I curate my content around (for now).

🏹 Community Patch Notes (Monthly) 💬

The second Sunday of the month is the Community Patch Notes (This Post)

🗿 Other Content Formats

Contents fully documenting how to use, set up, and optimize creative platforms for building your brand and community. Evergreen Guides that will get regular updates for tools like — Whop, Substack, Discord, OnlySocial, Boardmix, & More. These will be pretty much mind dumps of my most valuable advice and educational resources for using these platforms so I may end up paywalling these letters that will act like courses.

Have some website platform developments but I’ll save these for another post. I’m currently using 3 different web builders, maybe I can showcase this upcoming Wednesday.

Other formats will be experimented with over time and will likely be released randomly as I finish them.

I posted this story to medium back in October and I’ve found myself coming back to it over and over again.

Why is that?..

I had this one litte experiment that I did. I tested which notes/writing apps you could simply copy/paste Text + Images without losing the images directly into a the editor inside of medium or substack.

Making Notes of which apps are viable for Drafting letters and blogs.

Knowing an app can do this gives me peace of mind that I can effortlessly publish my work.

Let us dive into the updated results —

Updated 5.24.2025

✅ Pass: Timestripe, Superlist, SuperNotes, XTiles, Google Docs, Craft, ClickUp, Lex.Page, Lattics, Amplenote, SmartSuite (SmartDocs), Kortex, Walling, OneNote, Roam Research, Coda, Tana.

❌ Fail: Notion, NotePlan, Asana, WorkFlowy, Appflowy, Capacities, Obsidian, DayOne, Motion, Miro, Apple Notes Web, Zoho Projects, Milanote, Logseq, Affine, Remnote, Octarine, Heptabase, Evernote.

Revisiting This in Q2 2025: 6 Months Later: Tana, Kortex & AnyType Now Pass the Test, where they failed last time. ✅ I feel oddly proud of them 😂 🎓

I plan to pin or feature this post for reference + you all can also drop comments to let me know if I missed anything or if something has changed.

Today I mostly just write in lex.page because their free editor is incredible for doing ai grammar checks after I’ve written the article instead of something like grammarly nagging me as I’m writing.

My heart however, yearns for an experience that has an integrated calendar and some sort of folder-like hierarchical structure where I can nest one article inside others. In order to plan out and schedule articles and curriculums that share context with one anther.

Honestly waiting for Notion to step up to the plate but…

The tool that looked really promising to me for this level of organization, visualization, and planning was Lattics, but I have nitpicks where the app doesn’t feel 100% there for me quite yet.

Lattics recently added a cross-device sync feature but… The whole app needs to reload to sync and when it does the global sidebar opens up another level deeper and I have to manually close it on top of waiting for the page to reload.

So having to deal with that when I’m constantly switching from my PC to Mac setups feels rather annoying to me. Despite the app being nearly perfect and do things in a way I’ve never seen any other app do.

Maybe I’m being to harsh but It’s the little quality of life things like that this that can make the experience a bit less joyful.

Last night and this morning I revisit some old tools to see if there are any of them that could rival my current setup that I’ve got within workflowy. (Because workflowy doesn’t pass this test and I don’t expect them to becuase images have always been second class citizens in their app experience)

Two Apps that stood out to me that passed this test are.

Amplenote, Tana… They both have a similar experience to workflowy and a calendar experience natively built into them.

However I really wish Notion would just fix this issue already because it would actually make it undisputably the best because of how powerful Notion Calendar is… but because it doens’t. I am forced to use databases and include links to other writing experiences which just feels like way too many steps.

Another mental sidebar, more notes apps need to support embedding loom videos 😭 Notion & Craft do this well but notion can’t paste to substack and craft doesn’t have an effective heiarchical structure where I can nest documents inside one another intuituvely from the sidebar.

Anyways, hope this was helpful.

— Keep Growing, Stay Flowing

he best tasks have an assignee and a due date. Most tasks can be completed in a matter of minutes or hours. If a task is going to take weeks or months, or has no end date, it should be a project.

Starting With My 7 Favorite Books

I’ll be making more niche lists and individual book breakdowns in the future but these are the foundational ones for creatorpreneurs I’m called to write about first.

Atomic Habits — James Clear

Identity-Based Habits, Systems > Goals

Made me realize that our systems (habits)
Make Time your Enemy or your Greatest Ally

The factually the greatest self-help book of all time.
Has over 1.2M 5 star ratings and it’s not overrated

Affiliate Link ✧ Book Summary on YT

The Power of Now — Eckhart Tolle

This book found me when it needed to. I had lost everything and discovered that being physically and mentally fit was only 2/3s of the equation

Its Headline is “A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment.” some belief systems don’t believe that enlightenment is even attainable in this lifetime but I think Tolle does a great job of demystifying this notion and helping you ask yourself the difficult questions that will help you do the inner work to discover your truth

It's not an easy read but a seriously profound one. If you identify with any religion the egoic part of your mind will likely reject its teachings

This book is here to heal the divine feminine in each of us.
Teaches presence, gratitude, radical acceptance, how to feel deeply alive

Affiliate Link ✧ Watch this Book Summary on YT

The Way of the Superior Man — David Deida

This book has much spiritual wisdom for young men. The overlapping insights from this book plus The Power of Now had a major impact on my initial spiritual development. If you don’t currently have a partner just the insights from the Part 1 of the book is enough to leave it’s mark on your life.

Core Lessons: Learned about masculine and feminine polarities, deep presence, authenticity, living at your edge, and a valuable reminder about your dreams

This book is here to heal the divine masculine in each of us.

Affiliate Link ✧ Watch the Book Summary on YT

Millionaire Success Habits — Dean Graziosi

This was the book that finally convinced me to take action on changing the people I was hanging around. After reading this in 2018, I had one of my most massive years of growth in 2019 so many networking events, traveling all over the world to do creative work for successful entrepreneurs.

He actually has a 30-day “Better Life Challenge” that is completely free and will help you apply all the teachings of this book via your email inbox. I highly recommend it.

Affiliate Link ✧ 30-Day Better Life Challenge

Steal Like an Artist —

Powerful reminders for artists starting out, it’s got lots of pictures. It’s a very easy and enjoyable read. The whole trilogy of this series “Show Your Work” + “Keep Going” are also full of gems for artists ✧

Affiliate Link ✧ Watch the Book Summary on YT

$100M Offers — Alex Hormozi

I’ve not seen any other book make creators more money than this. The science behind making offers is so good that your audience will feel stupid saying no.

Affiliate Link ✧ Watch the Book Summary on YT

The Creative Act — Rick Rubin

This book is so mindful, and inspiring. I believe it helps artists naturally connect the dots between art and spiritual wisdom. All of the pages resonate in my soul.

Affiliate Link ✧ Watch the Book Summary on YT

Bonus: Book Summary YT Channel

BestBookBits is one of my favorite YT channels, that does thorough book summaries and has been uploading consistently for the past 7 years. Highly recommend you check out Michael’s website and channel.

Real Education is Free

Alright now here’s the lightning round. I’ll be sharing the Mentor’s name and attempting to encapsulate their work into a few words + a Mystery Link to what I believe is their most valuable resource or favorite platform to study them.

Tony Robbins: Self-Mastery, Physiology
: The One-Person Business
Edmylett: Maxing Out Your Life
Alex Horomozi: Offer Building
Jose Rosado: Copywriting, Digital Products
Leo Gura: Actualized.org, Wisdom
Naval Ravikant: Modern Philosophy
Nero Knowledge: Manifestation, Spirituality
Mino Lee: GenZ Social Media Sauce
Ben Kaluza: Creator / Streamer Tools
Dr. Chris Lee: Practical Self-Regulation
DR22: Anon Spiritual Cult Leader on X?
GaryVee: Social Media News & Motivation
Chris Do: Designer/Creative Biz Mentor
Stephen G Pope: Content Automation
HealthyGamerGG: Recovering Gamers

A Tangent On College

I was fortunate to have found my creative gift early on, I excelled in my high school film program (15+ awards) and got my dream job as a full-time Video Editor and Motion Graphics Artist as soon as I graduated.

This luxury afforded to me gave me the confidence to take a bet on myself. I didn’t even finish my first semester before dropping out of college, and realizing it was a waste of my time and money.

Up until that point, I learned every other valuable skill through YouTube, this skill of being able to teach yourself whatever it is you want is essential in modern life. Very soon I will be sharing my productivity and knowledge management tools and workflows with you all in The Academy.

College is robbing today’s youth of this intellectual independence + throwing them into criminally large amounts of debt before they have the experience and common sense to see through it, and it doesn’t help that most parents are also subscribed to this notion. Even worse, it might even be “their dream” to send their kids to college.

Please do not fall for this. If you already have don’t wait any longer to start doing / building the life you want.

I’ve seen the life, independence, and potential of so many stunted by the general college. It’s so twisted. This realization was the first I push I had to start the Flow Creators Academy, a public educational resource for creators.

Welcome To The Movement

If you made it this far then you are clearly a student of life and understand what it means to be obsessed with uncovering / living your personal truth so I want to thank you for being here.

I’ll catch you in The Society

Today, we are exploring how to personalize your GPT experience and various other AI workflows to simplify your content creation/personal alignment processes, tailored to your goals.

02:22 Aligning Your GPT Agent
ChatGPT empowers users with the ability to personalize their AI experience, from communication style to specific interests. By defining traits and responses, users can tailor ChatGPT to suit their unique needs, fostering a more engaging and productive interaction.

05:55 AI Empowered Self-Discovery
Integrating Human Design readings with AI tools like ChatGPT opens doors to deeper self-understanding and valuable insights. By combining these resources, users can gain personalized perspectives and enhance their decision-making processes.

I encourage you to learn more about these systems to actualize your potential

• Human Design Type https://myhumandesign.com/

  • Uncover your life strategy unique to your design

• Numerology (Life Path #) https://seventhlifepath.com/

  • Remember what you came here to learn / do.

  • I use it to understand in which places and which
    lines of work my students are more likely to thrive in.

• Chinese Astrology https://horoscopes.astro-seek.com/chi...

  • For navigating relationships and timing-aligned action

12:12 Really powerful AI Clip Example
Instagram Clip - https://www.cosmos.so/e/1177432021

14:36 Merlin: How I Summarize My YouTube Videos

16:47 Readwise Reader AI

20:47 Leonardo AI Image Gen

30:39 Bonus Subscription Bundle Service

Resources Mentioned

ChadGPT https://chatgpt.com/
Human Design https://myhumandesign.com/
Cosmsos https://www.cosmos.so/toruno/flow-creators (Inspiration)
Merlin AI https://www.getmerlin.in/ (YouTube Video Summarization)
Leonardo AI https://leonardo.ai/ (Image Generation)
Perplexity https://perplexity.ai (AI Search)
*Redacted* https://flowcreators.org/stealth

Forgot to Mention NoteboolkLM by Google: https://notebooklm.google.com/
Upload Docs, Text and train AI off of up to 50 different files, and generate auto-podcasts off of the data if you please. My Use Cases: I like to paste weeks of my journal entries in here to reflect or upload multiple resources from specific mentors to use AI to learn more effectively from their strategies.

Subscribe now

Reflections on this Format

I probably need to start writing out these articles first and then making the YouTube Video around this. I’ve just found it easier to “write” via channeling on video with a rough draft, especially because I’ve been waiting until the last day to start working on these uploads.

I want to be able to serve you all better so I’m vowing to change this.

If I flesh out more coherent letters here and then choose from the most completed drafts to serve as my video recording outline I feel like these articles will have a better chance at standing out.

Probably just need better video topic research, I have so many ideas that I need to get off my chest that are community pillars before I start pandering to the algorithm and talking about more trending topics

Foundations → Performance

Thoughts and feedback are welcome,
Thank you for reading.

— Toruno