Ikigai & Branding Workshop
Your ikigai gives direction. Your content earns attention by solving visible problems for real people. AI helps you translate the invisible part of you into something others can recognize, use, and remember.
90 minutes · what you walk out with
Five tangible artefacts you can paste, post, or schedule
Every module produces something you can ship before you stand up. The Coach holds the conversation; each module sharpens one of the artefacts you walk out with.
- 01
An audience problem map
Three candidate audience groups with their visible problems, hidden tensions, ambitions, and what they’d actually pay for or follow.
- 02
Your content angle in one sentence
Who you serve, the painful state they’re in, the future state they want, and the distinct mechanism you bring.
- 03
A 30-hook bank across 15 formats
Mistake, contrarian, before/after, curiosity, identity, hidden-cost, strong-belief. Best 5 ranked, strongest sharpened to 5 variants.
- 04
A 30-day publishing plan + your first LinkedIn post (in 3 versions)
Four Monday anchors + mid-week posts + an end-of-month artefact. Then one post written today, plus 3 alternate voices, plus a hybrid that combines the strongest parts.
- 05
A premium image-gen prompt + your face annotated with your statement + a proactive content partner
A scroll-stopping LinkedIn visual. An annotated portrait with your ikigai sentence in handwritten ink over it. And a chat that turns any rough thought you paste later into a publishable artefact.
How we use AI here
Mirror, explorer, researcher
Your AI is the most patient thinking partner you've ever had — but it's not authority. You still own the judgment. The point of this workshop is to teach it who you are, across all future sessions, so it gets sharper at reflecting you back.
mirror
Returns what you’ve shared, sharpened
It restates your own words back to you, more specific. You hear yourself differently.
explorer
Pushes for the moment you skipped
When you answer in categories, it asks for a named moment, a real date, a first name.
researcher
Finds the humans already doing it
Three real names with sourced links. Anything it can’t verify is marked “unverified” — no fabrication.
Not ground truth. Context engineering, not authority. We train it across sessions — every new conversation starts a little less from zero.
Operating rule for every prompt below: if it asks for input you don't have, the AI infers it from your context. State your assumptions, proceed. You correct course; it never waits for perfect input.
The framework
Four questions. One word at the center.
The four-circle Venn is the entry point: where what you love, what you're good at, what the world needs, and what pays meet.
The spine of this workshop
Open the Ikigai & Branding Coach
One prompt. One conversation. Your AI runs ahead — infers what you haven't said, makes strong assumptions, and hands you publishable artefacts at each step. You correct course; it never waits for perfect input.
Then drop into the 7 modules below to sharpen any phase.
opens in a new tab · no signup required
The broader practice
Where this workshop sits
Four threads run alongside this workshop. Glance at them now; come back after the modules to extend the practice.
research
Blue Zones, Ikigai, and the AI Era
The flagship research grounding this workshop. Twelve minutes. Sourced and FAQ’d.
patterns
The Prompt Library
Drop into one each morning. Red-teamed, MIT-licensed — fork what works for your own daily practice.
library
The Library — books, annotated
Kamiya, Mogi, García & Miralles, Buettner. Read one chapter a month. The lineage of the word.
workshops
Other live workshops
AI in 2026 for graduates, Sovereign Leadership, the bespoke ones. The same hands run the next.
Pick your path
Three ways to run this workshop
All three paths use the same prompt library below. Pick the one that matches how you want to work.
Run it yourself with AI
Six prompts. Your favorite AI assistant. Forty-five focused minutes.
For self-serve attendees — paste each prompt into ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini and ship.
Follow along with Frank
A facilitator runs the deck. You follow along on your phone.
For workshop attendees — open the prompts here, follow Frank's pace.
Use the manual wizards
Browser-based wizard for each module. Saves to your device.
For attendees without an AI subscription — every module has a manual fallback.
Module 1 · 15 min
Audience Problem Map
Your ikigai gives direction. The content is for them, not about you. Three candidate audiences with visible problems, hidden tensions, and what they’d pay for.
Module 2 · 12 min
Content Angle
Five angles scored on clarity, usefulness, originality, credibility, emotional pull, and commercial potential. The strongest one written as a one-sentence positioning.
Module 3 · 12 min
Hook Bank
30 hooks across 15 formats — mistake, contrarian, before/after, curiosity, identity, hidden-cost, strong-belief. Best 5 ranked, strongest sharpened to 5 variants.
“Ikigai is the most universal feeling of meaning we have — the quiet sense that one's life is worth living.”
From hooks to a publishing plan. Module 4 ties the bank to your reader’s actual week.
Module 4 · 12 min
30-Day Plan
A publishing rhythm tied to your audience’s month. Four Monday anchor posts rotating across pain / observation / framework / myth-bust / build-in-public / proof / question — plus mid-week posts and one end-of-month artefact. Doable for someone with a job.
Module 5 · 14 min
Publish — Post + 3 Versions
One strong LinkedIn post written from the best content idea, then three alternate voices (useful / personal / bold), then a hybrid that combines the strongest parts.
Module 6 · 14 min
Premium Visual + Annotated Photo
Two prompts. First, three visual concepts for your post plus a ready-to-paste image-gen prompt. Second, upload a portrait or sketch and have ChatGPT or Gemini overlay handwritten-style annotations of your ikigai statement, your reader’s name, and your three pillars.
Module 7 · 8 min
Proactive Partner
Turn this chat into your ongoing content partner. Any half-thought you paste later becomes an audience problem, an angle, 5 hooks, a draft, a visual direction, and a publish-or-refine recommendation.
Stay in the loop
Join the workshop list. The Coach is yours forever; this gets you the next workshop date and a Day-7 nudge from Frank to check on what you shipped.
Prefer the chat-only path?
The free Ikigai & Branding Coach GPT runs the same arc as one conversation — Coach prompt prefilled.
Open the Coach GPTIkigai is not a workshop. It is a way of opening tomorrow morning.
The modules end. The practice begins tomorrow. The four threads at the top of this page are your next stops when you're ready.