As you pointed out, you were not your brand in the last one. Sure, you still got plenty of suck up comments. But you lost two things. Your connection of us vs. them, and sympathy from many, perhaps subconsciously where all the real shit is happening.

You probably should not have been so flippant about using your parents. It is one thing to poke fun of people here being morons (especially when you at times reveal as you do that you are one of us), but the ease you had painting your parents as gullible probably hit some walls in many peoples program.

One problem with branding is if you deviate from it, people will say WTF is dis shit? Also, you are accepting applications now for others to be your worker bees in building your growing empire here, which would also be prone to turning off some of the more intelligent (or lazy) folks who think screw that, I have enough struggle putting in effort on my own shit. Calls to action are always a gamble where you never know how many will decide it is time to move on from snake oil salesman. No offense meant here, but many are wary when a call to sacrifice for some undetermined future benefit is the dynamic.

Overall you are a smashing success, your push/pull style an art form and joy to watch. I will be curious to keep watching just to see if you can walk anyone through their program and realize everything you are throwing out in parable can be summed up with the Nike phrase of Just Do It.

Of course, three words aren't effective at growing a base of hungry followers, so I applaud your ability to write what may be the equivalent of many novels before you are done that could all be narrowed down to those three words.