RS-001 / MD
Download the full framework
The full guide, with all ten parts, the evidence labels, the research steps, and the scorecard.
RS-001 / Framework + Prompt
Creator Business Clone
Look beyond just a creator's posts and figure out how their whole business fits together.
Download or copy it
Download or copy the files.
Download the framework, copy the prompt, or grab the case study. You don't have to give me your email for any of it.
RS-001 / MD
Download the Deep Research Prompt
The same prompt I used for the research. Replace the names, paste it into a deep-research tool, and work through the results.
RS-001 / MD
Download the Nate Herk case study
My finished Nate Herk example, including the parts I could prove and the parts I couldn't.
Copy the prompt Open prompt
That's the full prompt. Copy it here or download the file above.
# Creator Business Clone Deep Research Prompt
Version: 1.0.1
Resource: RS-001 Creator Business Clone
## Use this prompt
Replace `[CREATOR]` with the creator or creator-led business you want to study. Replace `[TARGET PERSON/BUSINESS]` with the person or business that will use the adaptation section.
This isn't a biography exercise. You're trying to see how useful work becomes attention, how attention turns into an audience the creator can reach, how that audience pays, and how questions and customer activity shape the next round of work.
## Prompt
Deep Research Task: Work Out How the [CREATOR] Business and Personal Brand Fit Together
Research [CREATOR], their companies, personal brand, content channels, communities, products, services, courses, books, software, partnerships, sponsors, affiliates, events, team, tools, past businesses, and publicly documented business results.
The goal isn't to write a biography. The goal is to understand the whole attention and money system: how useful work gets noticed, how people move into an audience the creator can reach, how that audience is monetized, how customer or member activity feeds new products and content, and how the system has changed over time.
### Evidence rules
- Label direct evidence `FACT`.
- Label claims from the creator or company that haven't been independently checked `REPORTED`.
- Label your strategic reading of the evidence `INFERENCE`.
- Label a principle you might use in your own work `ADAPTATION`.
- Label anything the public evidence can't support `UNKNOWN`.
- Don't invent conversion rates, traffic percentages, internal software, margins, sponsorship rates, member pricing mix, or revenue.
- You can multiply a current public price by a visible member count as a scenario. Don't call that actual revenue.
- Give every material number a source, the date you saw it, and a confidence level.
- Keep current evidence, historical evidence, and estimates in separate buckets.
Start with the creator's own site, legal pages, checkout pages, and product pages. Then check platform pages, official partner pages, public interviews, reputable reporting, third-party analytics, and community discussion. Use somebody else's summary as a lead. Don't use it as proof when you can check the original source.
### Research questions
Produce:
1. One-sentence business thesis
2. Month and year timeline
3. Brand and entity map
4. Attention engine by channel
5. Content strategy and performance patterns
6. Artifact engine
7. Audience capture and activation model
8. Actual funnel journeys
9. Full product ladder with current and historical pricing
10. Revenue tree separated into confirmed, reported, scenario, third-party estimate, and unknown
11. Team and founder delegation map
12. Tool stack classified as uses, teaches, sponsors, affiliate, partner, historical, or unknown
13. Content-to-product flywheel
14. Moats and network effects
15. Strategic evolution, including what the creator stopped doing
16. Risks and vulnerabilities
17. Fifteen structurally reusable principles
18. Five things another creator shouldn't copy
19. A 1-year, 3-year, and 5-year adaptation for [TARGET PERSON/BUSINESS]
20. Open questions and unresolved evidence gaps
### Required analysis
#### Where it started
Find the smallest useful thing the creator became known for first. Separate that starting point from the brand they have now.
#### How attention arrives
For each channel, record audience size, cadence, format, discovery type, evergreen or trend role, destination, and strategic importance. Don't assign channel percentages unless public analytics support them.
#### What gets made
Separate topic choice, packaging, structure, voice, visual language, proof timing, CTA placement, resource placement, sponsor placement, series, repurposing, cadence, winners, and underperformers.
#### What the work leaves behind
Find the useful thing that comes out of the content: a template, workflow, repository, checklist, dataset, prompt, calculator, scorecard, course, report, playbook, or tool. Record what created demand for it, where it lives, what a person gives up to get it, and what happens next.
#### Where the audience goes
Follow the relationship after public discovery. Record the entry friction, free value, activation, retention, peer value, moderation, and whether the audience surface has become a discovery channel of its own.
#### What people can buy
List every free and paid offer in order of commitment. For each one, record price, timing, buyer, promised outcome, delivery, next logical offer, friction, and evidence of scale. Follow real public journeys instead of guessing a funnel from the navigation.
#### Money and economics
Keep visible prices and scale separate from creator-reported results, scenario math, third-party estimates, and unknown revenue. Explain why a scenario may differ from realized revenue because of discounts, grandfathered plans, annual pricing, free accounts, refunds, churn, comps, or timing.
#### How the work gets done
Separate what the founder still owns from what has been handed to somebody else. Classify tools as internal use, teaching, sponsorship, affiliate relationship, official partner, historical use, or unknown. A sponsored tool isn't automatically part of the internal operating system.
#### How one thing leads to the next
Map how real problems, experiments, results, content, artifacts, owned audience, questions, outcomes, new offers, proof, and authority feed one another. Score trust, owned audience, network effects, archive, IP, partner relationships, proof, team leverage, and switching cost from 0 to 5 when the evidence supports a score.
#### What can be adapted
For every strategy worth considering, ask:
1. What problem does this solve for the original creator?
2. Does [TARGET PERSON/BUSINESS] have the same problem?
3. What existing asset could do the same job?
4. What's the smallest useful version?
5. What should stay off limits?
Separate what maps directly, what maps after modification, what doesn't map, what should wait, and what should never be copied.
### Finish with these compact artifacts
A. Ecosystem diagram
B. Revenue tree
C. Audience funnel
D. Compact timeline
E. Tool stack
F. Business machine scorecard
G. Fifteen lessons
H. Adaptation map
I. Five things not to copy
Before you finish, run an integrity check:
- Every material number has a source and date.
- Current and historical pricing are separate.
- Self-reported revenue is `REPORTED`.
- Scenario math isn't described as actual revenue.
- Third-party estimates are labeled.
- Sponsored tools aren't treated as internal tools without evidence.
- Unknown systems remain `UNKNOWN`.
- Audience percentages and conversion rates aren't invented.
- Strategy is separate from evidence.
- Adaptation is separate from imitation.
When the public evidence runs out, say `UNKNOWN`. That isn't a failure. It tells you where the evidence stops.
## Practical usage note
Use this prompt in your own research. Change it when the subject or question calls for something different. If you share the original or an adaptation, give Paul credit, link to CC BY 4.0, and say what you changed. Don't pass the original prompt off as your own.That's the full prompt. Copy it here or download the file above.
What it is
A step-by-step way to break down how a creator's whole business works.
Look beyond just a creator's posts and figure out how their whole business fits together.
Use it when
You might want this if you're...
- Creators who actually want to see the workings underneath the brand.
- Researchers and builders who want evidence instead of guesses.
- People turning their work into useful things for others.
What you get
The guide, the prompt, and a real example.
- Ten-part framework for mapping a creator's whole business.
- Deep-research prompt for working through a real creator and a real sample.
- A finished Nate Herk case study you can compare with your own pass.
- Scorecard and adaptation guidance for using the ideas without copying the creator.
How to use it
The order's important, so use it as it's written.
- Pick the creator you want to study, then write down the one thing you're trying to figure out about their business.
- Start with the creator's own website, videos, interviews, product pages, and public accounts. Don't start with somebody else's view of them.
- Go through the ten parts in order. As you find something, mark whether it's a fact, something they reported, your own best read, an idea you could use, or something you still don't know.
- Be careful with prices and money. A public price doesn't tell you what every customer paid, and it definitely doesn't tell you what the business made.
- At the end, write down what could work for you, what would need to change, and what you shouldn't copy.
REAL EXAMPLE / NATE HERK
Here's what it looked like when I used it.
A compact example from the public-facing Nate Herk research. Download the full pass for the detail.
Download the Nate Herk case studyAbout this resource
The useful details.
Public kit
GitHub
I put the full framework, research prompt, and Nate Herk case study in a separate public kit. It has its own clean history, so you can clone it without pulling in my private project history.
View the public kit on GitHubUsage and reuse
Use it, then adapt it.
Use this in your own work, inside a business, or with a client. Change the structure where it helps. The public kit is released under CC BY 4.0, so you can use, share, and adapt it commercially when you follow the attribution and change-notice terms in its LICENSE file. Don't use it to copy another creator's identity, stories, voice, or private material. The license doesn't relicense third-party material.