Business Lunch Podcast: Building Your Individual Empire – The New Entrepreneurial Shift

Podcast: Business Lunch
Host: Roland Frasier (A) with co-host Ryan Deiss (B)
Episode Date: January 22, 2026
Theme: Exploring the shift from building personal brands to creating sustainable, transferable businesses ("individual empires") around oneself and dissecting what it really takes to make this model succeed.

Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the emerging trend of entrepreneurs turning their personal brands and influencer followings into full-fledged businesses with value beyond just themselves. Roland Frasier and Ryan Deiss debate the viability, challenges, and essential requirements of the "individual empire" model, discussing scalability, transferability, bottlenecks, and the hard realities of going beyond visibility to true business architecture.

Key Discussion Points

1. The Evolving Landscape: From Personal Brands to Individual Empires

• Personal Brand: Defined as “fame and trust that can be pointed in any direction” ([02:55], Roland).
• The new trend is monetizing that trust—going from being an influencer or content creator to building an operating company with systems, teams, and transferable value.
• “More and more people are quietly trying to turn themselves into businesses. Not creators, not consultants, but actual operating companies…” ([01:00], Roland).

2. Case Studies: Influencer Businesses in Action

• Examples of success: Kylie Jenner (Kylie Cosmetics), Rihanna (Fenty), Kim Kardashian (SKIMS), Mr. Beast (Feastables, Beast Games).
• Influence is trickling down from celebrities to micro-influencers seeking to build empires rather than just personal brands ([04:56], Roland & Ryan).

3. Defining Media, Brand, and Business Models

• Ryan draws a line between “media” (aggregating attention) and “brand” (owning products/services).
• “Media is the thing that aggregates the attention and it's brands that want to advertise on the media…” ([05:18], Ryan).
• Monetizing via advertising and sponsorship is often a weak business model. Creating owned brands built on audience trust is far more lucrative.
• Major distinction: Many influencers remain in the media business and don’t grasp the complexities of running a product-based brand ([06:00], Ryan).

4. Monetization Models and Their Limitations

• Monetization tiers:
  • Ad revenue/shoutouts: Low-yield, unreliable ([07:53], Ryan).
  • Brand partnerships/joint ventures: Higher yield; seen with The Rock, Ryan Reynolds, etc.
  • Launching owned brands: High risk/high reward.
• “If you know your value...eventually getting equity, that's what you've seen Ryan Reynolds and The Rock and a lot of these other folks do.” ([09:00], Ryan).

5. The Bottleneck of Founder Dependency

• Most personal brands hit a revenue ceiling (often in the $1M–$5M range) because of the founder being a bottleneck ([11:17], Roland).
• “It's a lot of people that are in that $3, 4, 5, $600,000 a year range that...are doing that by themselves...that's where the bottleneck happens.” ([11:17], Roland).
• Scaling means building beyond yourself—media can birth other brands, or even other media ([12:10], Ryan).

6. How to Scale: Lessons from Media/E-commerce Hybrids

• “Media can birth brands...but the other thing that media can birth is media can birth other media.” ([12:10], Ryan).
• Ryan recommends creators follow the “talent label” model: nurture and launch new creators/products using their platform, akin to Barstool Sports or music industry labels.

7. What People Underestimate

• Building a genuine audience is slow and grueling—don’t confuse viral views with a real audience ([14:58], Ryan).
  • “The amount of time that it takes to actually build these parasocial relationships...that just takes time.” ([15:43], Ryan).
• Real commitment is required: experts say 13–15 weeks of repeated brand exposure is necessary; online, it’s more like 18+ months for traction ([20:06], Roland).

8. The Real Challenge: Building the Right Team

• Both hosts agree that team-building, not content creation, is the hardest part.
  • “You are going to cap out really quickly if it's just you. And it's really hard to find the people…” ([17:21], Roland).
  • The creator sphere is full of unreliable “service providers”—most have limited playbooks or outgrow their own capacity and provide poor service.

9. Platform/Channel Volatility

• The social/content platforms change—what works today (e.g., YouTube, X) may not work tomorrow. Discovery is getting harder ([21:04], Ryan).
• Requires creators to constantly adapt and understand shifting algorithms and audience habits.

10. Is the Individual Empire Model “Anti-Scalable”?

• “It's not anti scalable by default because so much of it can be systemized.” ([22:48], Ryan).
• Systematize content creation and backend processes, but the founder still needs to show up, especially as the brand’s face.

11. Transferable Value and Exitability

• "Geese and eggs" metaphor: the influencer is the goose, the brands they build are the eggs ([25:03], Ryan).
• The brands spun off are acquirable; the personal brand itself rarely is—too much founder risk.
  • “I don’t know that anybody’s necessarily going to buy Mr. Beast...I think the eggs are acquirable but I don’t...that the geese are.” ([25:03], Ryan).

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On Shifting from Influence to Business

• “I think of a personal brand as basically fame and trust that can be pointed in any direction. And I think of a personal empire as monetizing that trust and fame.” — Roland Frasier ([02:55])
• “The best way to monetize media is through having your own owned and operated brands. The challenge is, is that it's a fundamentally different business model…” — Ryan Deiss ([06:00])

On Why Most Influencer Models Plateau

• “When you’re just one person...you’re going to run out of steam at, at some point, you're gonna run out of ideas, and it does just get tiring.” — Ryan Deiss ([10:23])
• “It's not like a band that can go on tour and just play the same hits over and over again...you got to sing a new song every day.” — Roland Frasier ([11:17])

On Sustainable Growth

• “If you're Mr. Beast, I think it’s your job to figure out who is the next Mr. Beast...and maybe you can partner with them early on and cut them in and nurture them up and have them be a part of your greater media network. I think that's the play and that's where things are going to go.” — Ryan Deiss ([13:16])

On Team Building

• “It's the team building aspect is the hardest, especially when you consider the number of just absolute chuckleheads in this space...I think it's higher than just about any other vertical in business right now.” — Ryan Deiss ([18:54])

On Burnout and Failure Modes

• “I think it’s burnout more than anything else. Just, just the grind.” — Roland Frasier ([32:48])
• “Running a media company and building a products or a services business. Those are two different businesses. And one of the hardest things you'll ever do in the world is run two companies at the same time.” — Ryan Deiss ([32:57])

On What to Fix First

• “I would go in and have them fully map out their entire production process...figure out what is the step or stage that is, that is taking them the most time and let’s see if we can’t get that off their plate to free that up to do something that’s higher leverage.” — Ryan Deiss ([34:14])
• “The first thing that I would look to fix would be the founder dependency. So that goes to the second thing that I would Fix, which is systems.” — Roland Frasier ([35:25])

On Takeaways for All Business Owners

• “...the new role of every founder CEO, whether we like it or not, it is to serve as that face of the business. And if it's not you, then my question is who?” — Ryan Deiss ([37:56])
• “If you didn't think that this relates to you because you're not a creator...I would just suggest to you that if you're a business owner...this absolutely still does apply to you.” — Ryan Deiss ([37:36])

Important Segment Timestamps

| Segment | Topic/Quote (Speaker) | Timestamp | |-----------------------------------|--------------------------------------------------|------------| | Defining personal brand/empire | “I think of a personal brand...” (Roland) | 02:55 | | Transitioning to owned brands | “Media is...brands want to advertise...” (Ryan) | 05:18 | | Monetization models | “The best way to monetize media is…” (Ryan) | 06:00 | | The bottleneck problem | “It's a lot of people that are in that $3-600K…” (Roland) | 11:17 | | Team building challenges | “You are going to cap out really quickly if it's just you..." (Roland) | 17:21 | | Burnout as failure mode | “I think it's burnout more than anything else…” (Roland) | 32:48 | | What to fix first | “I would go in and have them fully map out their entire production process…” (Ryan) | 34:14 | | Takeaway for all business owners | “The new role of every founder CEO...” (Ryan) | 37:56 | | Core lesson | “Building an individual empire is not about visibility. It's really about architecture.” (Roland) | 39:17 |

Host’s Final Takeaways

• It’s All About the Systems: Being the face is necessary, but without business architecture, it’s just a “very expensive job” ([01:00], Roland).
• Team Before Fame: Building and maintaining a reliable, competent team must come before chasing more visibility—this is the true foundation for scalability.
• Longevity and Transferability: The goal isn’t just attention or short-term wins, but brands that outlive the founder—"attention is easy to rent, but businesses are hard to build” ([39:17], Roland).

In Sum:
Building an “individual empire” requires much more than an audience. The real winners systematize, build teams, launch scalable brands, and avoid becoming their own single point of failure. Visibility is just a launchpad: architecture is everything.