07:47Sam Gaudet · Listicle
You Only Need 6 Months to Blow Up on Social Media
A creator who went from zero to 50,000 followers in six months lays out the exact system he'd run again from scratch.
August 11thThe argument in one line.
A full Instagram content strategy — purpose, avatar, competitive analysis, format, and scripted hook — can be built in under 20 minutes using Claude and a live countdown timer.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- Content strategists who want to watch a real-time live build of a full Instagram strategy from a blank doc
- Social media managers who use or want to use Claude AI in their client workflow and want to see a speed demo
- Creators and brand consultants curious what a $1M-level Instagram strategy process actually looks like step by step
- Anyone who learns better from watching someone execute under pressure than from a polished tutorial
SKIP IF…
- People expecting a deep breakdown of Instagram's algorithm — this is about strategy process, not platform mechanics
- Viewers who want a template to download — the output here is process knowledge, not a packaged deliverable
The full version, fast.
A high-performing Instagram content strategy is built on five sequential decisions made before a single post is created: purpose, avatar, competitive analysis, format selection, and scripted frameworks. This 17-minute live build uses Andrew Huberman's account as the test subject, working through a real Notion doc with Claude AI and Sandcastles for research while a countdown timer runs. The process surfaces that format consistency beats creative variety, that the competitive gap analysis reveals posting cadence and content-type opportunities most creators miss, and that purpose — what the account is actually trying to sell — must be resolved first or every content decision that follows is aimed at the wrong target.
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00:00 – 01:00
01 · The Bet
Friend challenges Sky on camera. Sky accepts, establishes the subject: Andrew Huberman, 7.8M followers, Huberman Lab Premium subscription as the offer. Timer starts.
01:00 – 03:35
02 · Step 1 — Purpose + Avatar
Opens blank Notion doc. Uses Claude Opus 4.7 to identify Huberman monetization. Lands on paid podcast subscription. Defines avatar: optimization-pilled 25-45 year old male professional. Explains why avatar clarity is the foundation.
03:35 – 05:36
03 · Step 2 — Market Research
Loads Sandcastles tool. Pulls competitor creators in the health/science niche: Bryan Johnson, Gary Brecka, Mark Hyman, Andy Galpin, Peter Attia, Rhonda Patrick. Filters for last 6 months, 1M+ followers, sorted by highest outlier score.
05:36 – 08:58
04 · Competitive Analysis Deep Dive
Reviews actual viral Instagram videos from competitor accounts. Watches creatine-shaming video, symptom-to-root-cause format, Brian Johnson meme content. Identifies the market gap: zero sophisticated creators are doing native short-form social — only podcast clips and talking heads.
08:58 – 11:46
05 · Step 3 — The 5 Formats
Derives five formats from the market gap and avatar: (1) Reaction video, (2) Science-backed day in the life, (3) Symptom to root cause, (4) Podcast clips volume page (5-10 per day), (5) Selfie QA from AMAs and YouTube comments. Each justified against the avatar and counter-positioning thesis.
11:46 – 13:17
06 · The Original Format Method
Map every step of what the creator does professionally. Each step is a potential format. For Huberman: crafting daily routines for specific avatar sub-niches (Ironman runner, busy entrepreneur, etc.).
13:17 – 16:25
07 · Step 4 — Scripting
Writes and breaks down a live hook for the symptom-to-root-cause format: weak knees point to hips. Dissects each phrase: avatar pain, pattern interrupt, social proof (LeBron/Ronaldo), doubt creation, open loop pause, scientific credibility cue.
16:25 – 17:21
08 · Wrap + CTA
Summarizes full deliverable built in under 30 minutes. Social proof: Pack Your Dogs 1M+ views per video, Steven Zara 500K-1M. Pitches Clipcut agency discovery call.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- The format is how the information is packaged — and the same information packaged differently can produce 10x more views with zero change to the content.
- If you cannot state the purpose of your personal brand in one sentence, there is no point building one because you will go in a thousand directions.
- Understanding your avatar's pains and subconscious thoughts so precisely that they feel understood is what converts viewers into buyers.
- Counter-positioning means finding the one spot in the market where your avatar can clearly see you without another creator blocking the view.
- Every single top health creator on Instagram is doing podcast clips or talking heads — the gap for someone sophisticated who also creates original short-form content is wide open.
- The format is the winning variable — once you find it, you are not starting from scratch every week, you are compounding on a proven system.
- Reaction videos crush in broad niches because they borrow the virality of an existing clip and attach a creator's expert perspective to it.
- Volume beats perfection for podcast clips — five to ten clips a day from a dedicated clips page outperforms one polished clip per week every time.
- In one hour of recording, a well-positioned expert can produce 60 selfie-style Q&A videos that each require no scripting and minimal editing.
- If the framing is already strong — established authority, recognized name — the script and edit quality matter far less than most creators assume.
- The hook structure 'symptom → surprising location of the root cause' creates instant doubt in existing beliefs and forces the viewer to keep watching.
The format is the business.
Sky Tan playbook
Every struggling creator is writing a new script every week — the ones printing views locked their format first.
- Run the 4-step process before touching content: purpose → avatar → market → formats.
- Do your competitive analysis in Sandcastles or manually: filter last 6 months, 1M+ views, highest outlier. You are looking for the gap, not inspiration.
- Map your own professional process step-by-step. Each step is a candidate format — the one most visual or most counterintuitive wins.
- The symptom-to-root-cause hook formula is plug-and-play for any mechanism or authority niche: symptom → common fix → doubt → open loop → reveal → credibility.
- Volume is the multiplier: once you have a winning format, build an operational system to produce at maximum cadence. Separate clips page, 5-10 per day, collapse winners to main account.
- Use AI for speed on research — offer identification, avatar definition, competitor mapping. The strategic judgment is still yours.
Terms worth knowing.
- Avatar (marketing)
- A detailed profile of the ideal target customer — including demographics, goals, fears, and language — used to make content and messaging feel personally relevant to that specific person.
- Counter positioning
- A strategy of deliberately choosing topics, angles, or formats that differ from what dominant competitors are already doing, so a creator stands out clearly in a crowded market.
- Outlier score
- A metric used by content research tools to measure how much a video outperformed the creator's average views, helping identify which formats or topics have breakout potential.
- Sandcastles
- A content research tool for social media that tracks competitor videos and surfaces high-performing outliers by views, engagement, and niche — used here to analyze the health content market.
- TAM (Total Addressable Market)
- The total size of the potential audience or customer base for a given niche — a broader TAM means more people can relate to a piece of content, which typically increases its viral ceiling.
- Reaction video
- A content format where a creator watches and responds to another video in real time, adding their own expertise or commentary — the original clip provides built-in context and emotional energy.
- Symptom-to-root-cause format
- A video structure that opens by naming a common physical complaint (the symptom) and then reframes it by revealing the underlying cause the audience hadn't considered, creating surprise and a sense of exclusive insight.
- Winning format
- A specific video structure, style, or topic category that consistently generates above-average views for a particular creator and can be replicated repeatedly without starting from scratch.
- Open loop (hook technique)
- A sentence or phrase that deliberately withholds a piece of information — creating suspense that compels the viewer to keep watching in order to get the answer.
Things they pointed at.
03:35toolSandcastles
Lines you could clip.
00:45
“I am literally gonna show you each step of how to implement a million dollar Instagram content strategy in real rather than just making another video about theory.”
08:58
“Every single creator here is effectively using podcast clips or talking heads. None of them is actually doing social media short form style content. That is a huge gap in the market.”
16:30
“Once you have your format locked, you are not starting from scratch every single week. You have already done your research beforehand.”
Word for word.
Read-along
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metaphorstory
So I was talking to my friend the other day, and he didn't believe that I could build a $1,000,000 content strategy in less than twenty minutes. So what are you working on? Just doing content strategy for a client right now.
You even good at it? What the fuck are talking about? Of course I am.
Dude, I don't really believe it. You wanna make a bet? Alright.
So Sam and I just made a bet. He doesn't think I can cook up a really solid content strategy in twenty minutes. We're gonna prove him wrong.
And this might be a bad habit of mine, but I decided to put it on a bet. So the person I'm gonna be building this content strategy for is Andrew Huberman. And I get Huberman has 8,000,000 followers and a full media team, but I think there's a lot of room for improvement for his current content strategy on Instagram.
So I know that his team and anyone running a business for that matter will actually get a ton of actual value from this because I'm literally gonna show you each step of how to implement a million dollar Instagram content strategy in real rather than just making another video about theory or giving you the top five most viral hooks that are working right now.
And the reason I'm so confident about doing this is because I've literally done this hundreds of times before. And this process and strategy has allowed us to generate some insane results. Pack the other dogs with his winning format averages over a million views per video, and Steven Zara, the CEO of podcast, averages anywhere from 500,000 to a million views per video for their podcast clip format.
And this was all using the exact same process. So the good news is this will work for you whether you have 500 followers or 8,000,000 followers. So let's start by creating Andrew Hewman's strategy on a clean Notion doc right here.
The first thing that we have to nail down when it comes to the strategy before I touch the formats, before I touch the scripts, before I touch the edits is the purpose. What is the purpose of Andrew Huberman's personal brand? In order to understand that, we're actually gonna ask Claude what does Andrew Huberman sell.
I know he has brand sponsorships, partnerships, all that kind of stuff, but I wanna see if there's any direct offers that we can pinpoint here. Paid podcast here with AMAs. Okay.
So we're trying to sell this. So the process and obviously, he has bought a ton of different offers, and what we won't really know exactly which offer he's trying to push the most without speaking to his team directly. Well, let's just say it's the human premium subscription, which is the paid podcast here with basically more support, more resources, more everything.
Next, have to understand the avatar. And before I move on to the next step, which is the avatar, the reason the purpose is so important is because this dictates everything you're gonna create. Is the purpose of a brand to inspire people?
Is it to get leads or clients? Is it to get low ticket leads and clients, or is it to get high ticket leads and clients? If you can't answer that question, there's no point in building a personal brand because you're just gonna be going in a thousand other direction.
Next thing we need to do is we need to nail down this avatar. Who is the exact person we're gonna speak to? And again, we get this information from the client during the onboarding process, but I'm gonna use Cloud to do some quick research to understand who his avatar is.
So let's do that. Who's Andrew Huberman's main avatar? He's selling his premium subscription to.
And the reason why the avatar is so important, when you know their pains, their goals, and you can speak their thoughts and emotions that they're thinking subconsciously to life, they're gonna feel like you understand them. And as a result, they're gonna build more trust and they're gonna eventually buy you. So we can see here, his core avatar is the optimized pills 25 to 45 year old professional.
Awesome. So the avatar is one of those things that you can't nail down right away. Number one, it just requires time for you to fulfill and see feedback loops, see what they respond best to, uh, and who is the most profitable customers that you have in order to really nail their avatar.
So it's more of like a holistic business decision rather than just content. But let's just say for this example, his core avatar is the 25 or four five year old male professionals who are trying to optimize basically everything in their life, be productive, maximize their life. Right?
Next, we have to understand the market. And so if you have hundreds and thousands of competitors trying to speak to your avatar, literally position yourself somewhere in the market where you're not blocked off by someone else, you're not standing too close to someone else, you wanna be ideally one spot where the avatar can clearly see that stands out from everyone else.
That is called our counter positioning. And the way we figure this out is we understand everybody, the top creators inside the space, know, the health niche is extremely big, we won't have time to kinda go into the entire thing. But we wanna understand as the biggest competitors in the space, what they're saying, what topics they're covering, uh, what angles they're typically using, what format they're going for.
And we wanna position ourselves to use either a different topic, different format, something different that allows us to stand out for memorial. So we're gonna use a tool called sandcastles to actually figure out who is in the market.
So I'm also gonna use Claude for this. What niche is Andrew Huberman in? I am trying to, uh, look up other creators inside the same niche so I can do market research.
Also, by the way, the way I'm using AI right now is just for the sake of speed. We use AI in a crazy amount of ways internally, but this is just for the sake of speed. Okay.
Cool. So we have a few competitors here. Let's look at a few of these top ones.
Right? Brian Johnson, that's a really good one that we can have here. Markets.
There are Gary Brecka's a really good one. Kelly Star is more locked down. I'm just gonna get all these ones right here.
And I would basically wanna list around 20 to 40 just depending on how big your market is competitors here. Mic is good. Andy Galpin is good.
Okay. Perfect. We're also gonna search up a few other niches as well.
Account size. I mean, let's go for everything here. We'll go health and sciences.
Let's just add all. There's really no reason not to. Save videos.
Perfect. And then we're gonna go for at least a filters. Is gonna be channels.
Let's pick everyone here. When I'm looking for these videos, I'm looking for at least like a two x or three x outlier. Ideally, the higher the better.
So I'm just gonna go and I'm looking for a post at least within the last six months. Instagram only. I wanna sort this by highest outlier score.
And this will tell me what the best videos actually are. So we're just opening these up here. Medico here.
I do wanna say one thing. The bigger your account size is, the bigger your competitors are. Like, if they have, 2,000,000 followers, it's just gonna be impossible to get more than, a two x hour just because they're so huge.
I'll do like the million one later, open a few more here that I think are promising. So at least a million views last six months. Cool.
I'm just gonna sort by the most amount of views here and see what's cranking. I'm also looking for English as well. I don't want competitors from Spanish speaking because, first of all, I don't understand it, number two is also not really important for this matter.
Okay. Cool. This is a pretty good start here, so let's see what what I'm trying to look for here is the topics that they cover as well as the hooks and the formats that they use.
And the more marker research you do, the better. But, obviously, you only have twenty minutes. If the sides where those impressions are, if the tip of your tongue is blue, get dark blue, you have heart problems.
If the sides where those impressions are So like here, the format that we're using here is like symptom to root cause. Case was not playing for whatever reason. Made in labs.
From synthetic petrochemicals
and literal industrial pesticides. The labs that make creatine combine two industrial Okay. This is like shitting on creatine.
Shipment loves about creatine. Again, this is like one of those caption videos. I don't even even even play it and I know that video.
Yeah. That was more like just the top funnel video. This guy seems to be ripping.
Let me see his content. Okay. Yeah.
So you can see his format isn't looking too hot right now. Not getting crazy amount of views. Like, these ones are getting views, but, these are, like, super top of funnel.
For me, for his follower count, he's not getting as many views as it should be here. I will never go to a doctor ever again about my general health. All they wanna do is put you on pills.
Listen. I was at a place where I'd rather die. I had the best doctors that you could get from the best hospitals.
None of them could stop So this is really why the purpose is really important. In terms of where Andrew Newman stands, he's more of like a scientific guy and so like he probably wouldn't speak about honestly the ingredients or, like, what he thinks is gonna be.
Everything's gonna be, like, research backed. It's the brand that he already has. That was what we're in Double Down on the most.
Absurd. Natural flavors. Natural colors.
So the health benefit you think from getting the probiotic is not Alright. Cool. Let's take a look at Brian Johnson.
So Brian Johnson, I know his social media is actually pretty solid. He has, like, a whole team firm. Come here.
I think we need to have a pep talk. A peptide pep talk.
I actually think the top of funnel stuff would be a very interesting take for Andrew Huberman because he's a very scientific kind of guy. So when you contrast that with his top of funnel memes, it could be very interesting. That's what actually helped Brian Johnson dig himself out of, like, the trench hole, which was, like, everyone was calling him, like, a souls vampire.
The Top of Funnel memes really helped with that. So kudos. Yeah.
A lot of Top of Funnel stuff. It's always worse. Think what did you do?
How's this day? But, yeah, would say Jeff definitely lives more on the on the lifting and the bro science end, but he is more science based.
We're gonna go last one, Peter Tia, for the sake of time. And obviously, if, uh, this was me, I'll be doing research for, like, two, three, four hours. Because the better you understand the current social media landscape, the better you can actually put yourself in the mind of the avatar and know what they're seeing, so you can better know what to say and what not to say to counter position everyone else.
This works really well because he's in a huge niche. This will not work as well if you're in a niche niche. And so if we look at Peter Thea, he's also formed a very scientific sophisticated brand as well as it's very premium.
It's even more interesting is like, I think it's just the framing. It's I think it's how people perceive Peter Thea outside of the video themselves that's really interesting. So if you think about like Andrew Huberman, right, like within the videos itself, like he the device he gives isn't like super different.
It's more or less all kind of like, it's blended. There's directional correctness. But what's really interesting is the framing.
And so I'm wondering if we can actually just utilize that stronger, uh, I think that could really do it for Andrew. So one last one person I wanna take a look at is doctor Mike. He's a great example of someone who's crushing socials.
Doctor Mike is really only doing podcast clips, which is cool. Of chewing gum made for oil? No?
Sound gross? Well, surprise. Most modern gum is actually made for petroleum based polymer.
Thank you. And also something I'm I'm I'm seeing right now is every single creator here is effectively using podcast clips or talking heads. They're none them is actually doing social media short form style content.
Right? That's also very interesting to me. And so this tells me there's a huge gap in the market for people who actually are sophisticated but also create content.
Selfie videos are good. One of the most striking findings that you did not know.
There's a variety of Podcast clips rip. Okay. So once we know this, now it's time to dive into my favorite part, which is the formats.
The formats is where you really make your money because the format is basically how it's packaged. The information can be the same, and the way it's packaged is really important because people just learn things better in some scenarios. Some people like skits more, some like reaction videos, some people like dating lives.
And so there's always a handful of trending formats within any given niche. Our goal is to either hijack that attention and steal those formats for ourselves or steal it from a different niche. Alright.
So there's a few formats that come to mind for me that would work extremely well. First is gonna be a reaction video. So for these broader niches, I find reaction videos to be absolutely killer.
So if you look at it again, our our client pack lure dogs is really the best example of this. But again, I I need to reiterate his obviously, he's trying some q and a stuff now. But like before, when he was doing these reaction videos, I wasn't working on the operation side, which which is why he's not executing the reaction videos as much.
But if you look at what he was doing before, he was ripping like 2,500,000, 4,300,000, 5.2, 1.4, 1.7.
He was ripping million views per video with reaction videos because it's a very broad TAM. And so I think something like this where we're leveraging the virality of a video talking about health, morning routine, something like that where he's just reviewing like a normal person's day using science after the fact to give his take on it will be absolutely amazing.
So I think a reaction video would be great. You know? I also think some more personable formats would be great for him because Andrew Heumann is very authoritative, not very relatable.
A lot of the highest revenue generating business owners I know who are doing low ticket, they tend to do really well with more, like, relatable formats. So a day in the life is a really good one. But specifically, we are gonna do science based or science backed morning, nighttime, evening, sleep, lunch routines or just a full day in the life.
I think that would absolutely rip because that would take all of his information to still it down to like the practical steps that Yoshi takes. It also shows what he does within his day, right, which is kind of like the ultimate indicator of like what works and what doesn't work. And then we can break it down into like the different stages of his day.
But yeah, think day in the life would be absolutely amazing for him. Another type of video that I think would work really well for him is like symptom to root cause. So this read for one of our clients, Brienne Bird.
And this does really well with any sort of health niche that they have very unique mechanism like Chinese medicine or the framing is extremely strong, which is the case with Andrew Herman. Right? He's great at that.
So something where we're showcasing Here's why you constantly have throat mucus. Here's why you have constantly throat mucus. When your doctor can't And why your doctor can't figure it out.
Figure it out because phlegm that they see is the symptom, not the cause. So I think what Andrew Freeman can do is he can talk about more the root cause of certain symptoms that would absolutely crush for his end and it allows And he had basically has infinite content ideas because there's symptoms that 25 to five 45 year old male professionals would have.
Another format I would love for him to do is just continue doing his podcast clips because, obviously, there's a ripping for him, and it's just very easy content. They just take the best parts. But the thing I would do here differently is create an operational team to actually be able to spit out these podcast clips as fast as possible.
If I were him, would create a separate podcast clips page, which let's see if he actually has or not. Huberman podcast clips Instagram.
Let's see if he has one. If he doesn't, he's creating one. Okay.
He does, which is great. But let's see how often he posts here. Oh, he doesn't.
Okay. So if he doesn't have one already, definitely get like a podcast clips page where he dumps five to 10 clips a day. Would be absolutely amazing.
He takes the winners collapser with his main page. That would absolutely rip for him. He just needs a lot more volume.
So like with our CEO, they do so much volume. That's part of why they've been so successful with their long form. This is gonna drive more people to podcast and then podcast will drive more premium subscription members here.
If I were to create an original format for Andrew Huberman, and this is like high level stuff here, but what I do typically do is I take a look at everything that Andrew Huberman teaches, what his service deliverable typically looks like. Now I would therefore, for Andrew Human, it'll be a little bit different because he's not necessarily delivering the product as much, but I would just I'll try to understand everything that he does and that he preaches on a daily basis and figure out what steps of that process.
So let's say, like, for me, I do content strategy. Right? I do ideation, scripting, editing, uh, then post for clients.
Strategy is everything I'm doing here. Any one of those steps can be a format. So, like, the format that ripped for me was within the ideation step.
Right? Because I literally doomscroll for content ideas and I just label stuff, which is absolutely ripped for me. So in terms of, figuring out a format for an average human, I think something that could work really well, I would say crafting daily routines for specific avatars.
Right? So I know his avatar here is 25 to 45 year old male professionals. I think we can do, like, slightly different flavors of that.
So we can do, like, 25, forty forty five year old males who are trying to run their next Ironman. Here's a perfect routine, uh, for the young man who, you know, like he's working really hard on his business, but he didn't have the time for his own fitness training. How would he create a routine for that?
So I think creating routines for multiple of these different avatars would be really interesting, and it's gonna get more people to be pulled in to his subscription model. So I'm just gonna put that here. So different routines for different flavors of Avatar.
And the last thing I want him to do is the selfie videos. So the selfie videos are great because it contrasts from his traditional, really highly produced podcast clips and allows to kind of get more of, like, a personal relatable feel with Entry Human. That's kind of what we're doing daily life.
I think that's why the selfie video just performs so well. It literally takes him two minutes. It's literally just gonna be really simple.
He's gonna take a list of all the top most asked questions from his q and a's or from his or from his AMA's or from his YouTube comment. You can do that with a scraper. It's super easy.
Then you're literally gonna answer top down with a selfie style prompted, no script, just let them rip. Like, within, like, an hour session, you can probably print out, like, 60 of these, a minute each. So I think that would just do wonders.
It's so simple. It's so easy. And we're letting all the the leverage of his framing do the work.
Because his frame is really strong kinda coming to this video, you actually the script doesn't need to be as tight, and the edit doesn't need be as good. They just need a post. So it's very similar with Andrew Kieberman.
He already has a ton of leverage with his framing. We just need to post more. And then in that scenario, I would just steal hooks from existing viral videos that are currently working for the month of May or April rather because it's May 1.
And then we just add that in, and it was on GoBob's Day. So within that last thirty minutes, we were able to come up with five formats, do a complete breakdown of the markets or at least a very a quite a decently thorough breakdown of market. Understands Avatar, understands its purpose.
And off of the format, uh, we can generate the scripts. Now the scripts become extremely easy because for reaction videos, it's literally just find a viral video that we can react to. Right?
It can be more of chains, can be some sort of health issue, and then we can just prompt him to say whatever he wants to say, chop it up. Because we already know he is a really good yapper, and the proof is in this podcast. The day in the life stuff, super easy.
This is literally just recording what happens in his day in the life, and then we just do a voice over on top of it, talking about why he made certain decisions for his health. The symptoms were root cause, and we would just find the most common symptoms that his avatar experiences. Obviously, if I have more time, I would script out complete scripts here.
I wouldn't just let him do it, but I think he's really good here. So he's able to do that. A different routine for different flavors of the avatar.
Again, I think the variations within the formats is just the different flavors of avatar. That's simple. Savvy format, again, very simple.
AMA, Savvy format, rip them. But, yeah, in terms of scripts, this is like a million dollar content strategy for sure. If you just build a good enough operations content team to execute this, you would absolutely make a million dollars within the next, like, thirty to sixty days.
And so I also wanna just script out, hopefully, just to show how the format really just informs the script in itself. Let's script out like a symptom for root cause. So we can use a very similar structure to Brehin where it's like, if you're struggling with weak knees after workouts and you're facing them, you're looking at the completely wrong place.
You should be looking at your hips instead. And the reason why I'm making the hook like this is it'll probably reveal information in the most interesting way possible. So first, I'm talking about sharp pain in your knees.
I'm relating to 25 or 45 year old people who are trying to optimize their lifestyle, typically they're working super hard and they have knee pain because they're getting old. And then icing is a direct is a is a common medication for that. LeBron and Ronaldo, because sports are super popular among that crowd, you're looking at the completely wrong place that's creating doubt, and that allows us to break existing limiting beliefs.
You should look up at your hips instead. I didn't say so the reason why I removed you should be looking at your hips instead is because I want it to be one at a time. So you should look up, pause, creates an open loop at your hips instead and then you can lead into the body with in a research article, this builds the brand of like being scientific.
So that's basically how I script the hooks as an example for a symptoms root cause. Cool. So that was only thirty minutes.
We covered avatar, markets, brand, formats that they can do, the first scripted hook, all done. Now I know some of guys are thinking, oh, this is hypothetical.
This would never work in real life, and he's never worked with human. You're right. I haven't.
It was the same process that we use for our clients for Lucy to get her first million view video, Pack Your Dogs average a million views per video and run his entire business off organic content. The framework doesn't care who you're applying it to. It works.
And once you have your format locked, you're , and you're not stealing just what went viral or what's working today or tomorrow. You've already done your research beforehand. So if your founder was supposed to run on getting nothing back, the biggest problem that's gonna solve everything is finding your winning format.
You don't have your format yet, And that's exactly what we build at Clipcut. Every single month, we work with our clients to test two to seven different formats so they can find their winning format as soon as possible. Because when you find your winning format, you can average a consistently high amount of views and use that to predictably build your business.
Because we know the views are gonna come in. It's not gonna be a viral video here and there. It's gonna be consistent.
And if you're interested in working with us, the application is below. Fill it out. Get on a call with me and my team, and we'll audit your brand live just like we did here.
I'll see you there.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Sky Tan sat down with a blank Notion doc and a countdown clock ticking from twenty minutes. His friend Sam had bet him it could not be done. Seventeen minutes later, Andrew Huberman had a five-format Instagram strategy, a scripted hook, and a counter-positioning thesis built from live competitive analysis — all on screen.
Named ideas worth stealing.
01:00list
The 4-Step Content Strategy Process
- Purpose — what is the brand selling?
- Avatar — who exactly? their pains, goals, subconscious emotions
- Market / Counter-Positioning — top 20-40 competitors, find the gap
- Formats — hijack proven or derive original; scripting follows automatically
A repeatable process for building an Instagram content strategy from scratch. Purpose dictates everything. Counter-positioning is where the gap lives. Format is the unlock that makes scripting systematic.
Steal forany client onboarding, personal brand buildout, or new content pivot
11:46concept
Derive Your Format From Your Own Process
Map every step of what you do professionally. Each step is a potential content format. Sky doomscrolls and labels content ideas — that became his winning format. The format that is most visual or most counterintuitive wins.
Steal forJoe mapping JoeFlow or MCN build steps into content formats
14:00model
Symptom-to-Root-Cause Hook Formula
- State the symptom (avatar pain)
- Name the common solution (pattern interrupt)
- Add social proof
- Doubt creation — you are looking at the wrong place
- Open loop — pause before the reveal
- Body — scientific or credibility cue
A 6-step hook anatomy for any health, mechanism, or authority niche. The open loop delay between setup and reveal is the key retention device.
Steal forany video where the value is a counter-intuitive root cause or mechanism
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
16:50product
“If you are interested in working with us, the application is below. Fill it out. Get on a call with me and my team, and we will audit your brand live just like we did here.”
Soft sell after delivering full value. The demo IS the pitch — no explicit urgency or hard close. Discovery call booking via iClosed. Works because the viewer just watched Sky do exactly what the agency sells.
MENTIONED ON CAMERA
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
AFFILIATECommission earned if you click.
OTHER LINKSAlso linked in the description.
Visual structure at a glance.
