55:58Sweat Equity · Interview
Become a Dangerously Good Writer in 55 Minutes w/ Sam Parr
The Hustle founder Sam Parr unpacks the psychological mechanics of copy that forces people to keep reading.
May 28thThe argument in one line.
The first 30 days of a 100K-follower speedrun should be spent building the writing, visual, and format skills that make content hit, because growth tactics are useless until the content itself can carry them.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- You run or market a brand whose social page is sitting at zero and you want a day-by-day plan rather than a list of tips.
- You have made content for clients before and are surprised how hard it is to make your own account grow.
- You post inconsistently because you do not know which format to make next, and you want a weekly schedule to follow.
- You believe your days are too boring to vlog and want a reframe on how to package ordinary moments.
- You are a solo creator with a phone and a few hours a day, not a production team with a six-figure shoot budget.
SKIP IF…
- You already have a format that reliably hits and want scaling or monetization advice. That is promised for parts two and three, not this episode.
- You want paid-ads or SEO growth. Every tactic here is organic short-form on Instagram and TikTok.
- You are not willing to post every weekday for 90 days. The hosts are explicit that this is an intensive sprint.
The full version, fast.
Growing a page from zero to 100K in 90 days starts with a 30-day skills sprint, not with growth hacks. Days 0 to 30 are split into four parts. First, look, observe, migrate: pick five categories unrelated to yours, pull ten formats, and translate each one into your niche. Second, copy work: transcribe those ten videos and write them out by hand three to ten times over five to seven days, then write down every pattern you noticed. Third, visual copy work: shot-list the same videos, counting shots, angles, and how each shot maps to a line, until your videos pass the sound-off and eyes-closed tests. Fourth, post daily across five formats, the one shot, the ten shot, the yap, the carousel, and the vlog, run the first four Monday to Thursday and a vlog on the weekend, then repeat whatever worked and change one variable to double its views.
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00:00hostAlex Garcia
00:41cohostBrian Blum
Where the time goes.
00:00 – 00:41
01 · Intro
The bet is stated: copy work, visual copy work, five weekly formats, a testing method, and a growth piece of content. Promise of knowing your next 30 days by the end.
00:41 – 05:05
02 · How this model was built
Why the playbook exists: the host is launching a brand page from zero with a creative team but a $5K shoot budget instead of a $70K one. Proof points from agency work and a realtor who went 2,000 to 250,000 followers in five days.
05:05 – 13:17
03 · Days 0 to 30: skill development
Making content is a skill, and even pros reset when they move from client work to their own page. Detour into topics versus interests, how the algorithm decoupled from followers, and studying formats from unrelated categories.
13:17 – 14:11
04 · Look, observe, migrate
Step one homework: write your category at the top of a doc, pick five non-adjacent categories, pull ten formats, translate each into your niche, save every source video.
14:11 – 18:32
05 · Copywriting
Copy work explained with the music analogy: transcribe the ten videos, write them out by hand three to ten times over five to seven days, then write down the patterns. Stories of writing becoming effortless after enough reps.
18:32 – 22:55
06 · Great visuals
Visual copy work is shot listing: count shots, label them wide, portrait, or macro, and map each to a line. Pass the sound-off and eyes-closed tests. Stakes as the underrated retention device.
22:55 – 40:02
07 · Testing strategy and the five formats
Post daily across the one shot, ten shot, yap, carousel, and vlog. What each format teaches, the four levels of a yap, why distribution is the only moat, the Monday-to-Thursday plus weekend-vlog schedule, and doubling views by changing one variable.
40:02 – 43:01
08 · Their own experiences
The magic lands in the last 30 to 45 days; growth is incremental until a backlog video suddenly climbs. Marketing content is now crowded, so both hosts are reinventing and testing new formats.
43:01 – 46:25
09 · Killer examples
Creators who reinvented well: one who moved from marketing commentary to culture and consumerism, another running a hot streak of new formats. Vlogs are back on Instagram, and brand deals are paying six figures for a few videos.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- The algorithm has fully decoupled from follower count, so a page with zero followers has the same shot at reach as one with 20,000.
- A realtor went from 2,000 to 250,000 followers in five days off a three-part series, which is why the first 30 days are about skills, not tactics.
- Studying only your competitors keeps you derivative; pulling formats from five unrelated categories is what makes content feel novel.
- Copy work means transcribing a viral video and writing it out word for word, three to ten times, until the structure becomes muscle memory.
- The base of a good video is writing, even though the industry moved from text to video years ago.
- Visual copy work is shot listing: count the shots in a 45-second video and map every shot back to the line being said.
- A video passes the sound-off test if it is still worth watching muted, and the eyes-closed test if it is still interesting as audio alone.
- Stakes are the most underrated retention device; 'this might not work' holds attention longer than 'then this happened, then this happened.'
- The one shot is the lowest-barrier format that can still go nuclear: one seven-second clip and one line of text on screen.
- Distribution is the only moat left; a founder who can talk to a camera beats a competitor with the same software every time.
- The most dangerous creators on the internet are the ones who can pick up a phone, talk to it, and win without any visual crutch.
- A carousel is a video with no footage, so slide one must still be a hook that opens a curiosity gap.
- Your day is not boring; how you package the moments in your day is what is boring.
- Run four skill formats Monday through Thursday and give Friday to Sunday to one vlog, because the vlog is where fans get made.
- Week two is not more variety; it is two or three more of whatever hit in week one, with one variable changed to double the views.
- Most of the growth in a 90-day speedrun lands in the last 30 to 45 days, right after the point where most people quit.
- A bean-and-cheese burrito brand did a million dollars in a single state by vlogging the stakes of building the business.
Build the skills before you chase the followers.
THE 30-DAY SPRINT
The first month of a 90-day speedrun is spent studying other categories, hand-copying their scripts, shot-listing their videos, and posting daily across five formats until one of them hits.
02How this model was built
- Reach no longer depends on follower count, so a brand page at zero can compete on day one if the content itself is good.
- A limited budget forces you to borrow what works from well-funded categories and rebuild it at a scale you can actually execute.
03Days 0 to 30: skill development
- Making content is a skill that resets when you switch from client work to your own page, so expect a learning curve even if you are a pro.
- Classify every idea by a broad topic and a narrow interest; the topic sets the ceiling on reach, the interest decides who the algorithm hands it to.
- Study five categories unrelated to yours instead of your competitors, because a format borrowed from far away reads as original in your niche.
04Look, observe, migrate
- Write your category at the top of a document, pull ten formats from five unrelated categories, and write the translated version of each for your niche.
- Save every source video you pull so the swipe file is something you can reopen, not a memory.
05Copywriting
- Writing is still the base of good video, so transcribe your ten source videos and copy them out by hand three to ten times over five to seven days.
- Copy the whole script, not just the hook, because the transitions, pacing, and curiosity gaps live in the middle.
- After the reps, write down every pattern you noticed; those notes become your personal scriptwriting framework.
06Great visuals
- Shot-list your ten source videos in three-to-five-second increments: count the shots, label each wide, portrait, or macro, and map it to a spoken line.
- Before publishing, run the sound-off test and the eyes-closed test; the visuals and the writing each have to hold on their own.
- Introduce stakes early. A story where something might go wrong holds attention far longer than a list of things that happened.
07Testing strategy and the five formats
- Post daily across five formats because each one drills a different skill: hooks, shot selection and pacing, storytelling, script writing, and all four combined.
- The one shot is a single short clip plus text on screen, and it teaches you to find the one clip that carries a whole idea.
- The yap, talking to camera with no edit, is the format that proves you can hold attention without a visual crutch, and distribution is the only moat left.
- A carousel is a video with no footage: slide one is the hook, then tension, then a solution, and the copy work is what makes it land.
- Your day is not boring; the vlog works when you package ordinary moments with stakes, named details, and a reason to stay to the end.
- Run the one shot, ten shot, yap, and carousel Monday to Thursday and spend Friday to Sunday on one vlog.
- In week two, repeat whatever hit two or three more times and change one variable, aiming to double the views each round.
08Their own experiences
- Expect the first 30 days to produce maybe 5,000 followers; the steep growth comes in the last 30 to 45 days, after the point where most people quit.
- Growth is incremental for a long time, then a video from the backlog suddenly climbs. When it does, press the gas.
- Every category eventually gets crowded by people copying the winners, so plan to reinvent your angle rather than defend it.
09Killer examples
- Creators who reinvent well build credibility in one lane first, then test a new audience deliberately, five videos over three weeks, before committing.
- Make some content that is one of one and hard to copy, like production vlogs, because easy-to-replicate formats get replicated.
Terms worth knowing.
- Copy work
- The practice of transcribing a successful piece of writing or video script and copying it out by hand, word for word, repeatedly, to internalize its structure and rhythm.
- Shot listing
- Breaking a video into its individual shots and noting the angle, framing, and action of each one, plus which spoken line it supports. Used here as the visual equivalent of copy work.
- Look, observe, migrate
- A three-step study habit: look at content outside your category, observe what makes it work, and migrate the format into your own niche with a twist.
- Sound-off test
- A check on a video's visuals: if the audio were muted, would someone still keep watching?
- Eyes-closed test
- A check on a video's writing: if someone only heard the audio, would the story still be interesting?
- One shot
- A short-form video made from a single continuous clip, usually a few seconds long, with a line of text on screen carrying the idea.
- Ten shot
- A fast-cut montage of roughly ten half-second to one-second clips cut to a song, used to practice shot selection, pacing, and editing.
- Yap
- A talking-head video where the creator simply speaks to the camera with little or no editing. Variants include graphic, prop, and cinematic yaps that add overlays, a physical prop, or B-roll.
- Curiosity gap
- The space between what a viewer has been told and what they want to know, opened on purpose by a hook so they keep watching for the answer.
- Topics and interests
- The two layers algorithms use to classify content: a broad topic such as dating or New York City, and narrower interests nested under it, such as a specific neighborhood or ritual.
- TAM
- Total addressable market. Used here to mean how many people on the platform could plausibly care about a topic.
- Virgil's 3% rule
- A design principle attributed to Virgil Abloh: change an existing thing by about three percent and it becomes a new, ownable idea.
Things they pointed at.
02:15productCut30 (creator program)
09:20productSteady (cohost's brand, nervous-system and sleep category)
14:00linkVirgil Abloh's 3% rule
16:40channelThe Hustle (newsletter, cited as a copy-work success story)
27:49toolTribe (creator management tool for Meta ads)
29:45channelAlix Earle / Earle Meets World on Netflix
33:15channelArizona burrito brand vlog (name garbled in transcript), Softee's Burgers
39:28newsletterSweat Equity newsletter (full playbook with examples)
Lines you could clip.
00:00
“What if I could bet you that I could speed run you to 100,000 followers in the next 90 days?”
07:03
“The algorithm had fully decoupled from followers. Your followers before mattered zero to the performance of the content you're going to make.”
14:11
“Copywriting is the most important skill that you can learn. It doesn't matter that we've moved away from writing into video. The base of good video is writing.”
15:10
“Think about how anybody learns music. You don't just start making songs. You take a song, you learn how to play it, and then you change something about it.”
20:37
“The sound off test: would I still watch the video if I was only paying attention to the visuals? Then the eyes closed test: I'm not watching a single thing, but is what I'm hearing interesting?”
21:44
“One thing that's a retention hack that people underrate is stakes. Is this going to work out? I don't know. It might. Stay tuned.”
29:12
“Distribution is the only moat. If you can talk to a camera, no one can fuck with you. Nobody.”
29:36
“The most dangerous creators on the internet are the ones that can just pull up their camera, talk to their camera, and win.”
33:52
“Your day is not boring. How you're packaging the moments within your day is what you're not doing a good job of.”
40:18
“Most of the magic is going to happen in the last 45 to 30 days. It happens once you wanted to give up.”
Where the conversation goes.
00:00 – 05:05steadyThe bet and why the playbook exists
05:05 – 13:17denseSkill development, topics and interests, algorithm decoupled from followers
13:17 – 14:11denseLook, observe, migrate homework
14:11 – 18:32denseCopy work and the writing muscle
18:32 – 22:55denseShot listing, the two tests, stakes
22:55 – 35:00denseThe five formats and what each teaches
35:00 – 40:02denseWeekly schedule and iteration loop
40:02 – 46:25steadyPersonal growth curves and reinvention
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metaphoranalogystory
what if i could bet you that i could speed run you to 100 000 followers in the next 90 days that if you follow the exact playbook that we're going to talk about in this episode that you would get there i'm talking about the exact copy work skill work that you should be doing to develop your ability to write amazing scripts visual copy work so you know how to make amazing videos the five formats that you need to be doing on a weekly basis how to start testing to see which piece of content has the most potential for you and your category the growth piece of content this is the piece of content that you're going to make every single week that you know is going to grow your account so at the end of 45 minutes, you're gonna know exactly what you need to be doing over the next 30 days to speed run yourself to 100 ,000 followers.
It's good to see you. It's been a minute. It's been a minute.
You moved and it changed the whole dynamic. It did not make this easy. The great separation.
Yeah, man. We've seen all those memes on IG. It's like you and bro before the great separation and it'll just feel like .
That's really how it's been. That's how it's been. I'm glad to be back in New York.
I'm glad to be doing some podcast episodes. I got a banger for us. So you did an episode recently talking about, I think, watch me build a $100 million brand in front of your eyes.
We're both embarking into that journey of building our own brands after being in the agency life for so long. Awesome. What it kind of took me back to is, I'm now looking at a page from a brand side that's at zero.
You know what I mean? With Onda and I haven't done an episode where I talk about Onda, what we're building there and whatnot. But I had to kind of put together a plan of like, if I want to speed run this thing to 100K followers, what am I going to do?
How am I going to do it? And so I really went pen to paper here that anybody could look at this. Anybody could look at this roadmap, take it, apply it and speed run zero to 100K in 90 days.
This isn't just built off of a bunch of guesswork either. This is built off of two factors. Factor number one, we've done this for brands.
We've built Malvin Holmes page to 20 ,000 followers in five days. You know what I mean? Like we blew up that page.
That performed exceptionally well. On the Cut30 side, you know, we've had hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of creators that have run through it and been extremely successful on it that have built. Dude, we had this chick.
She's a realtor who... She went 2 ,000 to 250 ,000 followers in five days. Three pieces of content that were all like a singular series kind of built off of.
Basically, she inherited this. What is that, 20 million views? Oh, yeah.
It was crazy numbers. Basically, she inherited this house in Ireland from her family that nobody had been inside in like 20 or 30 years. The hook is her standing at the door.
You can tell it's run down. She has this giant hat that she wears. And she's like, no one's been in this house for 20, 30 years.
And she doesn't go inside. She goes to go open it. And it cuts off.
And it's like, follow for part two. Bro, snaps. Just an absolute perfect storm of factors.
Has absolutely taken off her realtor career. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But long story short, it's like, All of this that I'm going to be going through is I'm taking what's worked on the brand side.
And the brand side for us is really from like a luxury positioning. You know what I mean? So I'm looking at it as a brand that's coming to market.
I have all the resources from the sense of I have a very good creative team that could go make a lot of content for Onda. At the same time... I don't have the funds to go world build at the level that, like, a lot of the brands that we work with can world build at, right?
Like, Malvin will go do a thing, spend 65, 70 racks on just the content. Right. Right.
On a weekend. Say it again. On, like, one weekend.
Exactly. On one weekend. Versus, like, I got to come into this and be like, okay, if I got 5K to make this shoot happen, you know, how do I stretch that budget that that's a lot of content but a lot of good content?
Right. So I almost have to look at, the worlds of luxury and the worlds that we really play within and then look at the creator side and be like, how do I bring what's working over here into this world and then make it happen from an operational standpoint and from an execution standpoint that lives in this world?
And so what I did is I built out the playbook zero to 100K. Again, it's fully tested. It's broken into 30 -day sprints and what somebody should be doing in those 30 -day sprints.
The caveat will be, this is going to be an intensive 90 -day period for anybody that wants to actually follow this. Because you're creating content for the next 90 days. And you're going to be spending a lot of hours the next 90 days being able to do this.
So I'll run through it. The first sprint that I want to look at is days 0 to 30. Days 0 through 30 are about three things.
Technically four. number one skill development making great content is a skill you know you and i have spent an insane amount of time making content for other people the second we started making content for ourselves we had to almost like revert back and look back at everything that's worked for brands but now twist it change it for ourselves and we both made a lot of mistakes as we even though we have the knowledge we made a lot of mistakes as we were making our content it still took a lot of time to get a banger off the floor right and then once you get one off the floor it's like okay how do i either a make it better b uh spin it into into into some other way right like that is skill development there is a legit skill to understanding shot selection to understanding hooks visual hooks title hooks to understanding how to script etc right like that is all skill development the second thing is topics and interests you have to understand especially you know based off even the conversation we just had with jack these algorithms are getting
much more specific with the topics and the interests that you are talking about for the categories you're talking about. You said something interesting a few months ago where like on TikTok, you're just talking about some like being a bro in New York City, right? Yeah, I've really just been .
Like, well, talk to me about that. Like, it's because it's relevant. Like, give me the 30 second spiel of what you're doing.
Because it's to show how you're targeting the right individual. Right, right. So for context, I obviously built my TikTok account the same way that I built Instagram, which was marketing content.
And so I had around like 20 ,000 followers in the marketing niche. And it was the same content that I posted on IG. It's like a brand breakdown, like how I'd grow this brand, et cetera.
And when I was training the community of creators that I was building, hit makers. which is like a community of UGC folks that we're teaching them the skills to actually print cash if you're going to make that type of content. I wanted to emphasize that the algorithm had fully decoupled from followers.
Your followers before mattered zero to the impact or the performance of the content you're going to make. And so to do that, I started just posting New York -based interest content. I looked at like...
All right. What are these different things that people are talking about in New York? Topics and interests, for example.
So a topic could be dating and then interest could be the West Side Highway. Interest could also be like, you know, first aid etiquette. It could be like how to, you know, text somebody.
There was like a million different interests that you could layer underneath the topic. And essentially what you do is like the topic should be very high tam, you know, should be able to reach a tremendous amount of people. So like, you know, theoretically anyone in New York.
would be interested in a video talking about New York City. And especially if they're talking about something that everyone in New York City does, which is, for example, my first viral video was everyone in New York's first question is what neighborhood are you from? That's what everyone asks.
They're like, what neighborhood do you live in? Right? Because they're trying to like size you up, whatever.
And so it's like a universal lived experience. And then what you do after that is that's your hook. You know, you got people's attention because they're like, what's this guy's take about to be?
And then you sprinkle in a little bit of context and then you take a shot at somebody. So in that case, I sprinkled in a little bit of context. I said, they're trying to size you up.
And then God forbid, God forbid you say Murray Hill, right? Because Murray Hill is kind of like this meme in itself. It's where the finance bro, you know, lives.
And so I knew that I look like a typical like finance bro. So if I'm taking a shot at Murray Hill, it's like self -deprecating, whatever. So it really does go that deep, right?
Where you're like putting all these different components into a 15 second video.
How many views did that video get? Like 400 ,000. Yeah.
20 ,000 likes. And then, I mean, I've got like, I've probably gotten like, I don't know, 15, 20 million views and like 4 ,000 followers on this stuff. But like, again, it had literally zero to do with the 20 ,000 followers I had prior.
Right. And so you could just switch it up immediately and start geotagging, talking about the topic, talking about the interest and it'll hit a highly localized audience. I see this all the time with.
If I follow a new creator on IG right now or on TikTok, the feed will spam their last seven days, two weeks of content to you immediately because it's like, all right, well, we're capturing this person at maximum interest level in this new creator. Why don't we try and build their relationship, build that affinity? Because I think Meta's bet with that is if I'm interested enough to follow this person, they want to show me more content.
So I build more of a parasocial relationship with them. And then ultimately. I'll become, I'll spend more time on the platform later when that creator posts more stuff.
So, I mean, I think with brands, you're in a really unique position as well, where it's like, we think about this with Steady, where it's like, I'm very bullish on, I'm almost more bullish on our category than I am on our product right now. Like I'm more bullish on what we're about to talk about, the speed run content phase, because I know that I can dominate.
the nervous system regulation breath work calm sleep every single like adjacent interest cluster that we're going to be making content around i know that we can do very well um and so it's it's almost like more about nailing that product and the form factor to be able to do so but we'll dive into it because i have a lot about like understanding how to actually make the travel content and target the right person that's based off of that but So skill development is part one of this 30 -day roadmap.
Yeah. Right, which is the skill of making great content. So there's a few things that you should be doing here.
First, one is studying concepts from other categories. And I think that's a key thing where we get so stuck in just looking at our competitors, right? If I'm a marketer, I look at other marketers versus if I'm a marketer, why am I not looking at interior design and what interior design is doing versus like what's phishing is doing versus...
what runners are doing right because i could easily look at all the concepts and formats that they're doing see what's working and start bringing it over to my category and all of a sudden it's novel right and and that's such an interesting thing to do and such a skill to develop because all of a sudden the way you start looking at it you start only analyze like you're not just consuming aimlessly anymore you're like analyzing anything that you're you're consuming right an example would be in the in the baking space there's a lot of like the $1 cookie versus the $10 cookie versus the $100 cookie.
If I'm a runner, I could easily look at that and be like, okay, I'm going to buy the $1 running shoes, the $10 running shoes, the $100 running shoes, and the $1 ,000 running shoes. $1, I'm going to Goodwill. $100, I'm buying the cheapest pair at Nike outlets.
$1 ,000 or whatever I said before that, I'm now going buying the best pair of Alpha Flies and testing to see how much it affects my... my mile time all of a sudden i have like a very interesting concept that maybe hasn't been done in writing i'm sure that's you know that maybe has been done but overall like you you have an opportunity to make a new spin on that yeah there's a lot of spins that you could do off of that content so that's part one is and so i'm just going to basically even lay it down into one thing that i think might be helpful for people if they're watching this and they're like okay well what you just said sounds like a lot of time investment right and i think i think when you're scoping out your 90 day content strategy, you almost want to weigh different types of content by time investment as well.
So it's like, if you're going to post 30 times and what you just said, it's like, it's requires you to go to Goodwill, requires you to go to like different things. Maybe it's like a five hour, six hour video. Maybe you only want to do five of those a month.
Right. And then you have 10 yap videos, you know, you have 10, like one shot B B roll, like whatever it is. Are you thinking about it in terms of time allocation as well to remain efficient?
You'll see how I'm thinking about it. I feel like I put it in an interesting place, especially for 30 days versus 60 versus 90. The skill that I want you to develop here within this first 30 days is look, observe, migrate.
So you're going to look, you're going to study the game, you're going to observe what's working, you're going to migrate it over to your category, right? That's the goal. So the next steps for you, for that individual in this 30 days is you're going to write down your category at the top of the doc.
You're going to pick five categories that are completely non -jacent to yours. Then you're going to pull 10 ideas total. So there's formats, concepts, structures that you can bring into your category.
For each one, you're going to write the translated version of that idea for your category, right? And then basically save every source video. That is going to teach you mentally.
how to look at content, how to look at anybody's content and think about, how do I spin this? How do I tweak this? How do I apply Virgil's 3 % rule to this to make it unique for me?
That's how I want somebody to think about this. Part two within this 30 days is copywriting is the most important skill that you can learn. It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter that we've moved away from writing into video. The base of good video is writing. And here, I want you to understand.
in this this next uh portion of the 30 days how to write amazing content right the the the muscle of actually writing that is again there's another skill that you can develop the tool that you're going to use here is copy work this is nothing new that we haven't talked about in the past right copy work is brian has viral video i transcribe brian's video i write down brian's video word for word i type it out i write it out so that i feel i understand the structure of everything that he's doing that makes it a very very good video the best example of of looking at this because i think i i made a video about this and somebody was like like what the hell am i going to learn from writing something down that's that's not mine or something like that it's like it was like dude think about how anybody learns music you don't just get a uh yeah you like read sheet music off of a song exactly you don't just like start making songs like you you take Linkin Park song and then you're you're also like how do I how do I think apart?
I pulled that I don't know even go you've a dude that just like walked by kind of like look like Chester Benefield Doppeldinger just walked in front of us. What was his name? Mike Mike Shimoda Mike sure.
Yeah, like Shinoda or minor or my crazy motion to remember the name on coach Carter. What's up? But like you would look at that song You would start to learn how to play that song.
And then you'd be like, I'm going to change something about it. And mom asks why you're screaming in the bathroom so much. So, again, we're going to look at homework.
How are you going to write great? So you're going to take those same videos that you pulled from those categories, right? The categories that we were just talking about before.
You're going to transcribe them. And you're going to write them out word by word or by hand in a Google Doc. Right.
And the key, the key here is word by word. You don't want to just, just do the hook. You want to do the whole fucking thing.
And I want you to just read it 10 times per video and really run this for five to seven days. I think this has happened to both of us where there's sometimes when just script writing clicks, where it almost feels effortless. That is when you've been writing a long time.
You know, when I did that 50 threads over 50 days on Twitter, there was a point where like the writing felt effortless. The hardest part was picking the topic to write about. But once I found a good topic and I started writing, it was simple, right?
At that time, it was like, it was almost like I was doing so much copy work. And the same thing with the newsletters, like Trung, who knows Jack and you know Trung and whatnot. Trung would finish, well, Trung also did a lot of copy work, but like Trung would finish, he wrote the hustle by himself.
He would finish in like two hours. You know what I mean? And like Trung's like a cracked out dude, just insane amount of energies when it comes to.
spending time on the internet. Um, but he was able to just crank out the hustle because it became such a skill. And like, again, writing great content can become muscle memory.
And so that's what I want people to understand here is like, you should always be doing some form of copy work like this. And this is something I've been integrating back into my, into just into my schedule of, Hey, I want my videos to pop. You know what I mean?
Like I had this, I had this moment where my videos weren't really popping. And when I really took a step away, I'm like, I'm just not writing the way I should be writing. Did a little bit of copy work.
All of a sudden, the video within the next five days performed exceptionally well. And I've been having a lot more, a lot better videos since then, right? So here's what I want you to do with this.
Same thing. You're going to take those 10 videos from part one. You're going to transcribe each one.
You're going to write each transcript out hand by hand or in a doc three to 10 times. Run this for five to seven days. And then at the end, I want you to write down all the patterns you noticed.
This is the key part. How did somebody transition from their hook into their first sentence? How did somebody introduce a curiosity gap?
What type of pacing? How did they add transition words, right? Like your notes are almost becoming your framework in this situation for how I'm going to become a great writer.
Now, part three is the other part of making good videos is having great visuals. Now visual copy work is the skill of shot listing Does that mean you make you need to make a storyboard? Does that mean you need to like get that crazy about it?
No, what I am saying though is There is tech and software that you can basically take I could take your video, right? I could take your high stats for a slow status video, which is probably one of your top performers I could plug it into the software and it's gonna give me the frame by frame And then I can alter it to either go frame by frame or frame by frame every few, like two seconds, right?
Or you do this with a vlog, right? That's the other thing. Do this with a vlog.
You do this with the app. It doesn't matter. What you're trying to learn here is a few things.
I like to really work in three to five second increments here. But what you're trying to do is you're trying to understand the different angles that people use, the different aesthetics. the different actions that they're incorporating into the shots.
You want to start counting the visuals. If it's a 45 -second video, are they using 45 -second shots? Or 45 shots?
Are they using 60? Are they using 75 shots? How many distinct shots are in the video?
What type of shot is it? Is it wide? Is it portrait?
Is it macro? How do you look at a visual and map back that visual to a line or a specific string of words that you are saying? This is how you're going to learn to say something like...
So I was walking down the street in New York when X happened. And you're able to say that, write it, and be like, okay, cool. It's going to start with a wide angle and then it's going to go to selfie mode.
And then I'm going to add something that just like jolts somebody on screen, right? I run into something. All of a sudden, that's your string of three shots.
that fits, I was just walking in the streets of New York when whoop happened, right? And it all now flows and it's telling this cohesive story. The goal of all of this is to pass two tests.
One is called the sound off test. The sound is off. Would I still watch the video if I was only paying attention to the visuals, right?
Is it still captivating? If I'm just watching what I see on my screen, is it captivating? If that passes, then...
The eyes closed test. This means I'm not watching a single thing that's on camera, but I'm listening to it. If it's a vlog, is what I'm saying in the vlog interesting?
If this is, hey, follow me for a day while I go on a campaign production for a $100 million brand. Everything after that, is that interesting? Or am I saying it, wording it in a way where, well, first we did this, then we did this, then we did this.
Or is it, so the first thing that we needed to knock out was this. But then it started raining. Well, shit, the whole shoot is outside.
I think we're cook chat. Wait, I think the sun's coming out. All right, cool.
We're back on track, but we just lost 30 minutes of time. So here's what we're going to do to get right. Like all of a sudden you're bought into this story because .
And I think you're also describing introducing stakes. You know, one thing that's a retention hack that I think people underrate is stakes. You know, what you just described is, well, maybe the shoot's not going to work, but it's got to work.
That's why he made this video. So now I need to see the outcome of what he's talking about. And that simple thought can actually keep a lot more attention than people think versus the, and then this happened, then this happened, then this happened, then this happened.
It's like, is this going to work out? I don't know. It might.
We'll see. Like, stay tuned, basically. And, you know, a lot of your different storytelling frameworks should be rooted in just stay tuned.
You know, stay tuned. At the end of this, there's going to be a payoff. So don't, please, for whatever you do, don't swipe away.
Like, that's kind of what you're going for. We've talked about them a million times. I love Sam to death from Bad Ambrose.
They built their following off raising the stakes and introducing stakes. Hey, this is day X or whatever. You know, this is day X of Sam and Hank building this burrito brand.
Everything's going good and we're about to hit a record day and then fuck our whole machine just broke right stay for part two Follow for to see if we fix it now that you've worked on this. It's part four of your 30 -day roadmap Is your testing strategy right like now you actually have to post every single day and there's five really different formats that I want people to to Take advantage of over the these next 30 days because and the reason for this too is The goal is maximum reps and minimum friction with these formats, right?
Not everybody can just go straight into making a blog. Not everybody could go straight into making the best green screen video. But there's reasons to test other different formats and see basically their skill sets rooted in these formats, right?
Because the difference between a good idea and a great piece of content is just the execution of a great idea, right? That is the biggest difference. So five formats that I want people to run through.
Format number one, the one shot, right? This is still a staple on TikTok. This is still a staple on Instagram.
The one shot video, which is the lowest barrier to entry to making like genuinely a video that can is a one shot. And it's as simple as, you know, Brian swinging the golf club and me putting text over screen. Seven second clip, text over screen.
That's all it is. But what you're practicing and what this teaches is it. teaches you how to find the most impactful clip that you have right if we're talking about let's say we're talking about golf and and it's like a little educational video to to so i stopped shanking left right where i start i stop shanking right and you could have a clip of me just like standing on the golf or like you know leaning on the golf club and you teaching me something Or we could do a clip where I'm shooting it right down the middle.
Or like you basically come up to me, right? I have my grip. My grip's bad.
Let's say it's bad. You adjust something. You walk out of frame.
I nail it. And then text on screen is, you know, POV. Your thumb was just in the wrong position.
You just want to double, right? It's almost like a confirmation of what the clip's about. But you can also make that like a very memeable format as well.
I think one shots are really strong with memes. um you know like yo v uh you know you got tired like i don't know you can make it about cramping or whatever with like onda for example but i mean you're just getting their attention with activity in the background a trending audio and then you know some nice copy work exactly the second part that a one -shot teaches you is how to tell a complete story in minimal words as possible right you have to tell something that's either educational relatable inspirational aspirational etc with a very small body of text that is a skill to learn number three is how to write a hook that actually stops someone right with with the title hook that that you're putting in there you're gonna have that visual that is absolutely key and you're gonna learn how to make a better and better visual then you're gonna have tell that complete story and then that's all gonna be told through the text that you have on screen cadence here is like i want you to make one to three one shots every single week right for the next four weeks
The second format is the 10 -shot video. The reason I love a 10 -shot video is because a lot of the skill development in a 10 -shot video kind of goes over to almost any other format that you do. 10 -shot video is typically 10 shots cut up very fast, depending on the song of choice.
It's between 0 .5 second clip to a 1 second clip. But you're going to focus on four things when you put together these 10 shots. The first one is the shot selection.
So, choosing the best clips. Two, eventually you're going to get into actual shot listing. The pacing at which you edit.
And then just the overall how to edit properly or how to edit well. It teaches you how to comb through a lot of footage and only use the most high -impact clips. Why I love the 10 -shot.
A lot of 10 -shots, again, the skill sets will move over into a green screen. It'll move over into a vlog, etc. Format number three is...
the yap a lot of people have been talking about how 2026 is the rise of the app creator etc the biggest thing to understand with yapping is you're going to be undeniably going to be able to win on social if you can just pick up a camera talk to the camera and make a piece of content go viral because now insert any of the other skills on top of it like you have the most fundamental skill The best stories will always win.
And so if you're able to just pick up a camera, talk to it, and it rips, good luck to everybody else that thinks they have a chance at being able to compete with you on social. Right. Right.
You know where I see this right now so often is, so I'm an investor in Tribe, the LucasFactors creator management tool for meta ads. And I see a lot of his competitors. And he's going to be like, well, there's no moat.
There's no moat around Trot. There's no, you know, the software they've built, whatever. And I'm like, their moat is the fact that Lucas is excellent at posting content about Trot and you're not posting.
So that's why every brand is flocking to their solution because they don't even know your solution does the same shit, you know? And so every time someone has anything negative to say, I'm like, tell you what, like I'm investing in the yapper. like you invested in Lucas.
Yeah. I invested in Lucas when tribe is like barely a thing. Right.
And so, I mean, it's like, he, he has crushed it so much in terms of being able to get eyeballs on his product. And he is just fucking straight to the camera. It's not like a heavy editing thing.
You know, he's just really, really good at it. bro sometimes he doesn't use a title hook sometimes he doesn't use a caption i just deadpan looks at you and calls you stupid yeah like he just he just puts up his camera he talks right to it no it's great and it's really good stuff but i mean it's a massive advantage for him as a founder in a category that like candidly i mean maybe there isn't a ton of differentiation even possible with this product right it's really like an execution category this just even goes to point like to prove our point on distribution is the moat you know it's the only moat It's the only mo left.
I mean, everyone's trying to talk about like software going to zero, whatever it is. It's like, bro, if you can talk to a camera, like no one can fuck with you. Nobody.
And, and so what this teaches you is exactly what we were just mentioning relative to, to Lucas factor, pure storytelling. This is the format where you learn to be interesting without any visual crutch. Right.
Um, and I'll always say this, the most dangerous creators on the, on the internet are the ones that can just pull up their, their camera, talk to their camera and win. You know, it's, it's. Kind of crazy to see like the rise of Alex Earl to the you know that she's on Netflix right now with Earl Meets World and she basically yapped her entire career.
Her Get Ready With Me were her yapping at screen while she's just doing her makeup. But here's everything that you're practicing. You're hooking someone with the first line.
You're creating curiosity gaps. You're understanding how to build tension. You're understanding how to set up a problem and introduce a solution.
And you're carrying someone through a full roller coaster without leaning on visuals once. If you can do that, I promise you, you will go zero to 100 ,000 very, very fast when we talk about the other layers that we're going to put into your content, right? There's four levels of a yap.
We don't got to go into them like into depth, but there's the OG yap, just phone, talk to it. There's the graphic yap, which is almost like, hey, I'm saying something and I needed a visual to like just make it better. And you just overlay a yap on top of you.
There's the prop yap, which is I'm going to build out a yap or I'm going to have some kind of prop that my yap is built off of. Like Briar, who used to work for me, he does it with the notebook. Poor Boy Coffee used to do it with like a poster that said the numbers and he would yap about the numbers, right?
Like I'm using some kind of prop. Then there's a cinematic yap, which is I yap to camera and then I overlay B -roll on top of it, right? There's just more higher production.
There's layers of storytelling infused there. you know in in copywork is really what goes into yap which i'll touch on in a second format number four is the carousel the reason i love having a carousel in here is there is a difference when the writing the actual words on screen are what what's carrying all the weight with a carousel that is what happens so a lot of that practice from the copyworks like the specific carryover is going to happen when we talk about a carousel you know you could be a little long -winded when you script if it's if it's you know all done properly can't really be long -winded with a carousel it really forces you to shorten um it really forces you to shorten the amount of stuff that you say so what it is in this case uh narrative carousel telling you their founder story product story some of the educational relatable but this is where again all that copy work is going to get deployed because this is where text drives the entire piece of content so the key though is you need to treat it exactly like
a video slide one is the hook introduce a curiosity gap introduce tension then take them on uh on the roller coaster right here's the problem here's me navigating it deliver the solution wrap it up okay carousel again that's where you bring a lot of that copy work over format five this is your home run piece if this is the one that's uh basically going to turn anybody that's aware of you into anybody that's a fan of you this is the vlog right like this is the bad ominous the softies burgers I forget the dude's name who did the bowling alley.
And when you really think about it, it's all the last four formats that I just mentioned combined into the best version of it, right? The vlog is powerful because it brings people, it invites people into their journey, right? It's probably one of the harder formats to crack.
You know, it's hard to tell a 60 second story in a vlog version and get a million plus eyeballs versus just like relying on a single clip. But if you can do that, Again, you will build fans.
Softee's Burgers and Bad Ombudist is obviously my favorite example of this. Mile Off Running is another great example of this. Bad Ombudist last year sold, for context, they're only in Arizona.
I don't know if you knew that, but they only sell their burritos in Arizona. They only sold them last year in Arizona. They did a million dollars in Arizona.
Selling fucking bean and cheese burritos. Just an AZ.
Their their fan base is like die hard. So what happens when they start open up to Cali, Texas, whatever? But here's how I look at right like the the vlog is really what comes what comes last And really in the one thing the one line that I want people to take away from this your day is not boring how you're packaging the moments within your day is what is what you're not doing a good job of and What I mean by that is Let's look at today I could have said you somebody could ask me like what'd you do today oh nothing I just flew to New York and like I'm ripping pods I'm gonna go to bed yeah which is like what 99 % of people would say it's a great point it's a great point what 99 % and like that it doesn't sound exciting right well all of a sudden if I'm like so come with me to New York to see my boy Brian who I haven't filmed a podcast with so the day started at 4 45 in the morning Well, it should have started there.
It actually started at 345 because I was anxious to get to New York. Right. Got in the Uber.
As soon as I get in the Uber, this happens. I get to the airport. All the overhead is complete, right?
All of a sudden, I'm just like making it interesting. You can even do like the most minor things. You'd be like, this is my TSA agent, Lisa.
Like, you know what I mean? Like you just introduce points where people feel like they're being taken along for the ride. I think another reason, another thing you could have said is like, I mean, I feel like I'm guilty of this in a lot of ways when I'm telling stories too, where I'm like, I kind of get out of this conversation, but like, you can't do that with content.
You know, you can't, you can't skip over the details. Like introducing stakes to that piece of content again, would be an example of saying we haven't filmed in a while. He's.
We have this studio. We don't know how the, we don't know how the studio is going to be put together. So let's go check it out.
Like you could have just said so many different things about it. I haven't eaten. I haven't had coffee.
Yeah. I hate being fasted. But when I, when I got to the, when we landed and we went to get our bags, like my bag was the last one.
I thought it was lost. Right. And just literally I was cooked for the most minor moment.
You probably don't even remember. Like a lot of people don't even remember that stuff. And I think when you're in that, um, documenter.
Which I think is an important reason why I mean having the videographer is also really helpful I mean obviously that budget, you know constrained but yeah, but a lot of people do a great job just with their iPhones. Yeah So the reason I have people running through those five formats is When you actually look at it from a like a level like if we took we just worked up different levels to the vlog You look at the one shot.
The one shot is the compelling visuals. It's the text hook It's the title hook. It's really leveraging a good hook.
You look at the ten shot It's pacing, it's delivery, it's editing, style, it's aesthetics. You look at Yap and it's storytelling.
You look at the carousel, it's script writing. Take all those combined, you put it into the vlog. Yeah.
So your whole goal over the next 30 days. Getting maximum value out of your content too. Over your next 30 days, you're looking at the one shot, the 10 shot, the Yap and the carousel is really the piece of content.
This is really the piece of content, the pieces of content, sorry. That are developing you as a creator. That are developing that toolbox of you as a creator.
And then what I want you to do is. That's Monday through Thursday. Right.
Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I want you to put out the best vlog possible. Right.
So I'm going to give you three days. To work on a fire vlog. Whether it's something you're doing that weekend.
Whether it's something that you're going to do that weekend. Or something that happened in the week. I want you to put together everything you're learning.
Every single time into the best vlog. Because it. As we go into...
And then there's one other part of it, actually. I don't want you to just basically check things off. Okay?
Week one, you're going to run through all this. Week two, look at the thing that worked best and do two or three more of those. Yeah.
So if it was a one -shot video, you're going to do two, three more one -shot videos. But not only that, when you do those, I want you to go into the analytics and... tweak one thing that says that basically is going to help you go from hey this one shot video got 10 000 views what can i do that helps it get 20 000 views right an example is if my one shot video was just like me typing on on a computer right like standard clip phone tripod um i'm just typing on my computer text on screen cool got 10 000 views awesome chances are the text was was hitting hard if it got 10 000 views and that was the visual so the next version of it being like okay how do i get this 20 000 views this visual needs to be 10 times more compelling what can i do here how could i how can i make a much much more compelling visual hook really for for this and so that is then what i would try to do in this this next variation where i'm going to try to double the views on this next video and that's how i'd want people to start thinking about it
If I got a vlog that got 20 ,000 views, how does my next one get 40 ,000 views? And it all goes back to all the skill work you're going to continuously do week over week. By the end of this, you should have pieces of content that are hitting regularly.
Whether that's your 10 shot, whether that's your vlog, whether that's your carousel, you're going to find something that is going to perform exceptionally well. And then the whole goal will go, we're going to run short on time now so we can break this into three episodes. Or maybe two episodes?
I think three episodes is perfect. And this was dense enough. Very dense, yeah.
Sweet. In the next one, then, I'm going to talk about scaling content and how to scale the content properly because there's ways of doing it as well. Stick around for part two.
Yeah, stick around for part two. It's almost like we meant to do that. And we do have a Sweat Equity newsletter that's going to be dropping.
This whole playbook is going to be part of that with a lot, a lot of examples. This is... Just this first 30 day run is 10 pages of notes.
So this next, uh, probably all in all, it's going to be like a 30, 40 pager. Yeah. Which should be fine.
I mean, look, I think, I think someone, you know, obviously the other big thing with what we're describing right now is like, just get started, you know, like they won't know what they're doing until week three of like executing on what you just did for the 60 day periods, even be an effective piece of advice. Yep. So.
That was a wrap on this episode specifically. This was the first 30 days for the 0 to 100K series. In the next one, we're going to go over the next 60 days and the last 90 days for your speed runner.
What I will say is most of the magic, and this has happened to both of us, most of the magic is going to happen in the last 45 to 30 days. Oh, yeah. You might go maybe 0 to 5 ,000 first 30 days.
It happens once you wanted to give up. like once you feel like it's not working and you push through, you will be rewarded. I had one month where I went, I don't remember the exact number, but I know it was like 10 ,000 to like four or 50 ,000.
I remember. And it was like, I just had bangers, you know, and it, and it all clicked. And now I'm kind of like back in that same spot where like, I want to run that same thing.
Right. Um, so don't give up on it because you, it's when you're first starting out, it's all about incremental growth. Yeah.
I don't go from 5 ,000 views to 7 ,000, 7 to 10, 10 to 12. I remember getting fired up about like the first couple of videos that went from like 30 likes to 150. Then you get one to hit like 200, 300.
Then like eventually one of the ones in the backlog will just start climbing. And you're like, wait a minute, what's going on here? Press the gas.
And then, yeah, now I feel like, I mean, like you said, we kind of just know, but. Um, you still have to reinvent yourself. Like that's the biggest thing that I've, I've seen as well.
Or like, you know, getting back to the drawing board sometimes is just so needed because you think you got it like that, but then you never know what got to . That's a, that's a, that's a great point because I feel like I'm in that inflection point for myself. Back to the drawing board.
It's back to the drawing board because it's gotten so easy to make the marketing content and so easy to make the content of content. meaning when you and i first started doing it and even i started like i don't know 10 10 months maybe before you i was one of like probably five people doing it well right now i'm one of 50 people doing it well because it's so easy to just like brian made this video let me just make a little twist on it all of a sudden it's like it's the same topic and it happens I mean, people listen to us telling them to rip our scripts and then they rip the scripts and we're surprised.
Yeah, exactly. And it happens in cut 30. Like all there's also, there's always that, you know, people are like, well, what if I just do like good marketing versus bad marketing?
It's like, well, like, yeah, but whatever it is, it's the name of the game, but it's forcing me to go. Even if I have, like, I've had some videos lately perform really well. Those videos that are performing quote, quote, very well are getting 250 to 300.
Yeah, they ain't getting a mil. A year ago, they were getting $500 or $750 to potentially a mil. Right.
You know what I mean? Unless you take a really hard stance on maybe something. And so, you know, like, Oren's done a good job where he's reinvented himself where, like, he doesn't talk about content, really.
He's just kind of a character. Like, he kind of just... He's just like a macro commentary guy.
Yeah, like, he's just, like, making his intellectual content about culture and psychology. Right. You know, at a high level.
It's culture and consumerism. And I think, like, what he's done a really good job of is he built the credibility stack first and then now he's able to kind of demonstrate the ball knowledge but it's like you it's funny to watch him do stuff in real time knowing what he's doing right where it's like oh he's testing a format right now oh he's gonna test this five times oh it's like this you know he's trying to branch into this new tam it's like oh he's gonna actually like Target this new audience that he wants to reach.
And he's going to do it five times in the next three weeks. Like, and seeing him actually live in the moment. I mean, he's just kind of like the poster child for what, like testing and entering new corners of the algorithm.
For sure. Because like you said, like he got his start doing product versus brand. That is strictly a marketing commentary.
And then now he's talking about like. the macro status of being hot in our society and what that means for brands in the future. Like if you just think about what that does to his positioning as a consultant, you're going from giving talks to, or you're going from D to C brand owners trying to listen to you and maybe giving a keynote to Unilever, right?
And that's a different bag entirely. And that's why he's doing it because he has management that's helping him understand like, this is how we need to package you as someone that can get bigger contracts. And so that's something I'm heavily looking at and working on right now is like the content of content.
The issue with me is it's what funnels to the agency. Right. So it's like I got to do it at some degree.
What probably should be like 20 percent of the content, you know, like I want to be doing. I want to do things that are one of one. So a lot of the things like I want to be doing more vlogs come with me on this production, things that people can't.
replicator i know we've talked about that endlessly on the pod but doing it in a way that it's a very creative format somebody else that's been killing is jt like jt's been crushing new formats i don't know how much you've been on his his page like jt's been doing an amazing job of introducing all of these different format like dude he had a one shot that got a 300 000 like so you know i mean he's on a run since can huh he's snapped yeah he has snapped in the last in the last three four months that's awesome exceptionally well um but do it again a lot of different formats a lot of vos a lot of kind of vlog style content i think vlogs are back heavily on ig big time um so yeah it's an exciting time to be a creator very exciting time there's people want to pour money into it i was talking to somebody that doesn't have that many more followers than us or maybe double triple like in that ballpark but 200 racks for three videos yeah You make a lot of money.
Go get that AI bag. It is AI bag. Yeah, it's always AI.
Join your racks for three videos. Part two, coming soon.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
The episode opens on a bet: follow this exact playbook and you hit 100,000 followers in 90 days. What follows is not the full 90 days but the first 30, a dense skills sprint the host built for his own brand page that is still sitting at zero.
How they asked for the click.
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