How to win on Instagram in 2026

completed 43:57 Jan 21, 2026 Watch on YouTube

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In this episode, Alex breaks down the entire playbook to win on Instagram in 2026 after driving hundreds of millions of views for brands. There's 12 key elements to succeed. And the same tactics and playbooks that worked in 2025, won't work in 2026. If you enjoyed this, please subscribe. We're really tryna hit 100k by eoy. Timestamps: 00:00 intro 02:00 Brand Archetypes 15:09 How to test concepts effectively 19:38 How to refine a winning video/concept 23:09: Importance of average watch time 29:00 Your content narrative 31:20 The Content funnel 35:00 Content Buckets = Content Targeting 📱Follow Us On Social: -------------------- Instagram Alex https://www.instagram.com/alexgarcia_atx/ Brian: https://www.instagram.com/brian_blum/ Twitter www.twitter.com/@alexgarcia_atx www.twitter.com/@brian_blum1 -------------------- 🔥Want Free Game? Send us a picture of your Apple & Spotify reviews to podcast@marketingexamined.com and we'll make you a playbook in a future episode. -------------------- 🎥Checkout Brians Content Agency https://www.nibble.studio -------------------- 📈Growth Playbooks, Directly To Your Inbox For growth playbooks, deep dives, and marketing case studies, get subscribed at https://www.marketingexamined.com -------------------:

Summary

Generated by gpt-5.6-terra

At-a-Glance

Verdict: Skim
Core thesis: Winning on Instagram requires a disciplined organic-content system: choose and establish one brand archetype, test component-level variations against retention data, scale proven concepts, and make the resulting content immediately recognizable.
Why it matters: The video provides a practical operating model for turning Instagram from an ad library into a repeatable top-of-funnel and brand-equity engine, with useful metrics and examples for diagnosing why videos fail.
Best use: Use it as a checklist for designing or auditing an Instagram content program; skim for the archetype, testing, measurement, funnel, and familiarity sections rather than watching the repetitive conversation in full.

Executive Summary

The speakers argue that brands beginning on Instagram should not begin with a broad content calendar or product promotion. They should first select a primary social archetype—lifestyle, inspirational, aspirational, educational, documenter, entertainment, or fictional—and construct content around a coherent narrative that gives viewers a consistent mental association with the brand. Hybrid archetypes are appropriate only after one archetype is demonstrably working.

Their central operating recommendation is to build a testing system before a growth system. Rather than declaring a concept dead after one weak post, produce three sequential iterations, changing roughly one small variable set at a time: opening frame, camera angle, on-screen text, visual action, aesthetic, or script structure. Diagnose performance using the three-second view rate, average watch time, and retention graph, then use the findings to improve the next version.

For early-stage accounts, the recommended allocation is overwhelmingly top-of-funnel content designed to attract category-relevant followers rather than sell product. The speakers advise focusing exclusively on top-of-funnel until roughly 10,000 followers, then gradually introducing middle-funnel content; bottom-funnel calls to action should largely wait until the audience is established, except around launches. They position organic content as a long-term brand-equity asset that can increase strategic value beyond what paid acquisition alone creates.

Once a format wins, the objective is not continual novelty but systematic replication: vary cast size, text, setting, framing, and output format such as reels, carousels, or vignettes. Differentiate these repeatable concepts through cross-category inspiration and art direction, then reinforce memorability with recurring visual, character, location, host, opening, and set elements. The transcript is high on actionable heuristics but repeats several passages and offers anecdotal rather than independently validated metric thresholds.

Key Takeaways

Claim: Start with one clear brand-content archetype and earn the right to layer additional archetypes later. | Evidence: The video identifies seven archetypes: lifestyle (Sweetgreen and Bandit Run), inspirational (Everyday Better Club), aspirational (La Marzocco and Buck Mason), educational (Armour Drink TV), documenter (Bad Ombedis and Softies Burgers), entertainment (Mandy's Gourmets, Nitro Bar, Roomies), and fictional (Fern and Late Checkout). BPN is cited as a later-stage hybrid combining aspirational, educational, and documentary content. | Implication: Define the audience identity and emotional job of the account before commissioning formats; avoid mixing incompatible tones or personas merely to fill a calendar. | Caveat: The fictional-world route can require substantial production resources; the speaker suggests it is most feasible for brands with meaningful funding, such as $10M-$20M in capital.
Claim: A formal, sequential iteration process is more valuable than expecting a master content plan to win immediately. | Evidence: The recommended process is to develop a concept, publish three versions one at a time, and make a roughly 3% change in each iteration. For a 'History of Leather' series, an initial 10,000-15,000-view result became 100,000-plus views after changes to the opening frame, action, and shooting angle. | Implication: Treat each post as an experiment with recorded variables and a preplanned next variant, not as a one-off creative judgment. | Caveat: The framework requires enough posting volume and analytical discipline to distinguish signal from noise; it is not a guarantee that every concept can be fixed.
Claim: Use early retention metrics to diagnose the specific production problem rather than judging a post only by total views. | Evidence: The speaker calls a three-second view rate below 50% a failure condition, considers 55%-60% solid, and 70%+ exceptional. For dialogue-heavy videos, they say 12-13 seconds of average watch time is a danger zone, while an average that climbs from 14 to 15 to 16 seconds over subsequent audience cohorts signals that Instagram is finding better viewers. They also target more than 50% retention after three seconds as a personal indicator of a potential 100,000-view post. | Implication: Instrument a review loop: weak three-second retention calls for a better visual hook; later drop-offs call for a mini-hook, scene change, new character, or stronger narrative turn around the failure point. | Caveat: These thresholds are presented as the speakers' field heuristics, not platform-wide benchmarks; they will vary by account, format, audience, and video length.
Claim: The opening should be designed visually because many viewers consume with sound off. | Evidence: The speakers reduce hook testing to three manipulable levers: angle, aesthetic, and action. Their example changes a static hook into an action hook by having a participant turn a laptop toward the camera while the host speaks; they also recommend testing handheld versus fixed shooting and different zoom placements. | Implication: Build a modular hook library for each recurring format and test visual first frames independently of the underlying topic or spoken copy.
Claim: Early-stage brand accounts should optimize primarily for top-of-funnel follower acquisition, not conversion content. | Evidence: The proposed allocation is 90% top-of-funnel content generally; for accounts below 10,000 followers, the speaker advises doing nothing but top-of-funnel. After that, move toward 75% top-of-funnel and introduce middle-funnel content, while reserving bottom-funnel posts for later or for product launches. The speaker defines the funnel as content to get followers, content for existing followers, and content that gets followers to take action. | Implication: Separate audience-building formats from conversion assets in the editorial plan; a feed dominated by product announcements will likely fail to expand beyond existing followers. | Caveat: This is not intended to prohibit product integration when natural, nor launch-related sales content when the business needs it.
Claim: Scale winners through controlled variations and multiple native formats instead of endlessly reinventing concepts. | Evidence: Everyday Better Club reportedly added 110,000 followers and received 60M views in 30 days, with 25M from one video; its founder reportedly tests 8-20 text variations on trial reels before moving winners to the main account. The video recommends adapting a successful idea into a 10-shot video, vignette, carousel, and further variants; an example is changing a running format from one runner to two, three, or four, while varying text, location, and scenery. | Implication: Create a format-scaling playbook that separates invariant elements from testable ones, and use trial reels where available to cheaply screen variants. | Caveat: A successful format can be overextended; continued testing is needed to recognize when the audience has fatigued rather than assuming prior performance will persist.
Claim: Memorability is a strategic advantage in an overloaded feed, so repeat distinctive elements and build a recognizable content world. | Evidence: Subway Takes is cited for repeating split-screen framing, the line 'So what's your take?', a recognizable host, and subway locations. The speaker categorizes sets as existing locations, rented environments, or built sets; Sweat Equity seeks a dedicated set, while Matt Choi's Mob Challenge uses a track as its recognizable setting. | Implication: Specify recurring brand assets—host or character, wardrobe, framing, opening phrase, location, prop, and art direction—so a viewer can identify the account before reading the handle.

Detailed Brief

Narrative, audience segmentation, and content pillars

Claims: A through line is the umbrella story every post should reinforce; it does not require identical formats, but it prevents the audience from forming conflicting impressions.; Content pillars need a qualifier tied to a concrete high-value customer segment, rather than broad labels such as 'educational.'; The speakers frame social perception as accumulated memory: repeated content builds the association people retain about a brand.
Evidence: Salt, an electrolyte brand, is used as a counterexample: alternating randomly among comedy, inspiration, BPN-style performance content, and scrappy documentary content would dilute its intended lifestyle positioning.; For Salomon, the suggested segment is not simply 'marathon runners' but people running their fifth or later marathon, potentially trying to qualify for a race; the resulting pillar would be educational content specifically for that runner.; BPN's 'Go One More' association is offered as an example of a message reinforced consistently over time.
Caveats: The transcript does not show a formal method for validating customer segments beyond business judgment and audience observation.; A strong narrative does not compensate for weak packaging, retention, or distribution; it is the boundary within which testing should occur.
Implications: Write a one-sentence audience-and-association brief before ideation, then reject ideas that may be individually engaging but do not compound the desired brand memory.; Build content pillars at the intersection of format job and narrow audience need, such as 'training education for experienced marathon qualifiers,' rather than generic topic categories.

Organic content as strategic brand-building, not just acquisition

Claims: The speakers distinguish art direction from content: a concept earns attention, while art direction makes the concept feel native to a particular brand world.; Cross-category concept transfer can create separation more effectively than copying immediate competitors.; Organic brand building may be strategically valuable even for companies that already have excellent paid acquisition economics.
Evidence: Fern's perfume content is described as a fully fictional House-on-the-Prairie-like world; its autumn 2025 'Wild Apple Heist' is characterized as a cinematic production and the account has about one million followers.; The suggested differentiation method is to find a format working in fashion, for example, and adapt its concept to a burger company rather than only studying other burger accounts.; Instant Hydration is cited as reportedly growing from zero to $125M in around two years through paid acquisition with little coherent organic strategy; the speakers speculate that a stronger character, ecosystem, and world could improve the eventual exit multiple.
Caveats: The valuation uplift example is speculative, including the illustrative claim that a $1M brand investment might move valuation from $150M to $300M.; Premium art direction is not a substitute for an audience-relevant, retention-capable format.
Implications: Evaluate organic spend against brand moat and strategic optionality—not only immediate attributable revenue.; Maintain a cross-industry swipe file organized by reusable content mechanics, then translate those mechanics through the brand's own visual world rather than copying surface aesthetics.

Notable Concepts & Terms

Brand archetype: The primary social role a brand plays—such as educator, documenter, lifestyle signal, or entertainer—which should guide its initial content system.
Through line / content narrative: The overarching association every piece of content reinforces, preventing disparate formats from producing a fragmented brand perception.
Three-iteration testing: A sequential process of producing an initial concept and two altered versions, using small controlled changes to identify what improves performance.
Three-second view rate: The speaker's first diagnostic for whether the opening frame, visual action, and packaging stopped the scroll.
Retention graph: The time-based viewership curve used to locate the exact point at which a video loses attention and therefore needs a narrative or visual intervention.
But/therefore framework: A storytelling device borrowed from South Park advice: replace flat 'and then' sequencing with reversals and consequences that create ongoing tension.
Trial reels: A testing mechanism the speakers use to publish multiple variants, especially text or packaging changes, before placing apparent winners on the main account.
Category separation: Differentiating by importing a proven content mechanic from another category, then expressing it through the brand's own art direction.

Operator Notes / Why Ken Should Care

Create a one-page Instagram operating brief with: primary archetype, target customer segment, desired memory association, three recurring visual identifiers, and explicit exclusions for off-brand content.
Set up an experiment tracker that logs each post's hook components, three-second view rate, retention drop-off time, average watch-time trajectory, shares, saves, and next tested variable.
Require every new recurring series to ship with at least three planned sequential variants and a scale plan across reel, carousel, and short vignette formats.
Audit the current calendar by funnel role; move standalone promotional or product-first posts into a limited launch cadence and increase audience-acquisition concepts.
Build a cross-category format library that captures mechanics—not just aesthetics—and routinely assign the team to adapt one non-category winner into the brand's own world.
Treat the stated performance thresholds as starting hypotheses; establish account-specific benchmarks from historical post cohorts before using them as pass/fail gates.

Source/Metadata

Title: How to win on Instagram in 2026
Transcript words: 10736
Duration seconds: 2637
Timestamp note: No usable timestamps or chapter markers were included in the transcript. The transcript also contains substantial duplicated passages near the end.

Transcript

8637 words en Processed in 382.7s

What's up, y'all? Welcome to another episode of Sweat Equity. In this episode, I packaged together essentially an entire guide on how to win on Instagram in 2026. It's going to cover everything that I've done as a creator, a lot of the things that we've even covered in Cut30 that we then bring over to the brand side. It's a lot easier to test things as a creator because you could flop and not have to answer to the higher-ups. Totally. So you're able to test a lot more shit, but essentially, on top of all the stuff that we do for brands, we work with 15 to 20 different brands at a time, developing their content strategy and producing a lot of the content. And so, with that, I've put together this. This is going to be a long episode. Which should not scare you because when you did this the first time, I remember it was your how I went from zero to 40K followers on Instagram. I would argue it was one of the most valuable episodes we've ever provided people. You literally just gave $200,000 worth of game over the course of a single YouTube episode. So even though this one's long, I would recommend note-taking and actually paying attention because it's going to be fire. I appreciate it. So we're going to go into the first element. As a brand, I want to preface this with these are for brands that aren't winning on social yet, or maybe they've had hints of success, but they're not the ALD. Yeah. Right. You're getting started. And so, if you're getting started and if you're starting to build out your content strategy, then you need to develop and understand what archetype you're going to fall into or develop, right? And there's multiple archetypes that you can essentially build out for your brand. The first one being a lifestyle archetype, right? If you're trying to be a little bit more of a lifestyle integration, integrating your product into a lifestyle, then you have to understand how to build content pillars underneath that. You could look at the Sweetgreens of the world, which honestly, I have a content playbook coming out about them. They're crushing. I would highly encourage you to look at their IG where Sweetgreen is fairly expensive for what you get, but it is more so about the lifestyle. It's the Lululemon individual. You know what I'm saying? It's the Lululemon individual. It's the person that works out at Collective, Equinox, et cetera, walking around with the bowl and means, you know. Yeah. It's a status. Nobody walks around with a Chipotle bowl. No. We have Chipotle on the way. Nobody walks around with a Chipotle bowl. No, I'm hiding that thing. We're hiding it. You can't even see it. My coat covers the Chipotle bowl. It's all in my passenger seat. I don't want anyone to even see it. 100%. You got it on the dash. Yeah. The lifestyle element of that is they look at the lifestyle that somebody that buys Sweetgreen wants to live or the things that are important to them, meaning they want to see the farm that the chicken was raised at, right? They want to see where their eggs are coming from. They want to see all of those elements that say, hey, I eat organic. I eat farm-raised, right? Right. And so, by focusing on a lifestyle archetype, you have to figure out the lifestyle that somebody wants to live. And then you have to understand how you're going to develop an archetype on social where you integrate that into it. Bandit Run was another one where it is this individual. It's not the person that's probably like, hey, I'm going to the Olympic trials. It's the individual that takes running very seriously, but at the same time, they wear a specific, they're more high-end. Let's just say they picked up running in the last five years. It's post-COVID. 100%. Yeah. 100%. It's a status signal rather than anything else. It is, but that's also a very powerful place to be as a brand. 100%. The next one is an inspirational archetype. So I have this friend, Kevin, who, he's the founder, one of the co-founders of Everyday Better Club. I don't know if you've seen them on IG. Added 110,000 followers to the brand account in the last 30 days. Sheesh. 30 days. That's a good day. Has multiple formats that he's just scaled. If you actually go to this page, you would see, you'd be like, oh, I've definitely seen these. Multiple videos have gotten 20 million views, 10 million views, 5 million views. Some got, I think one got 25 million views. But it's the same format, just changing the text, all playing into this inspirational archetype, right? And so at that point, you're looking at the individual that is aspiring to, or that needs to be inspired to become some kind of individual, live some kind of way. And therefore, you're the resource of inspiration. They see your brand as the brand that is going to inspire them to become that individual, right? It's the bridge from who I am to where I want to go. Totally. Third is the aspirational archetype. I don't know how to say this name perfectly, but La Marazocco, you know what I'm talking about, right? The espresso brand? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The aspirational archetype is you're playing into almost like that Buck Mason. I even put Buck Mason into there. The person that's, hey, I don't have an old classic Porsche 911. Maybe I can't afford a La Marazocco espresso machine for my house, but I want to live that lifestyle. I'm taking steps. I'm willing to be a fan. I want to put you on my mood board. 100%. 100%. Yeah. It's the perfect way to. You want to be on my mood board, but I can't buy it quite yet. It's the mood board brand. 100%. The aspirational archetype. Then you have the educational archetype. This is, I don't know if you've seen Armour Drink TV. I'll send it to you. Very good. Their whole thing is these beautiful cinematic how-to-make-this-kind-of-drink, how-to-make-this-kind-of-dessert-or-appetizer. But they play into the educational archetype where, hey, my page is a resource for you, right? You come to my page, you're going to learn how to make the best drinks. You're going to feel high-class when you do it. Same thing with appetizer. Are these mocktails, or are they cocktails? Some are cocktails, yeah. I love this Cupid logo they got going. It's sick, isn't it? Yeah. It's a sick brand. I have so much of their shit saved. Are they international? That I don't know. They look foreign. Do they? Just the fashion. You couldn't get away with it growing up in Texas, but they look flat. They look hella flat. Yeah. Next, back to educational archetype. Your whole goal here, and I should establish this for each one, your whole goal here as an educational archetype is to become the resource, right? As soon as you're the resource, then people are going to buy from you because it's the easiest way to build. And another way to think about that is, what are you optimizing for? Because Instagram cares about a few key things. So they care about watch time, they care about likes, but I think with likes, they want to see a one-to-one likes-to-shares as well as a one-to-one likes-to-bookmarks. Yeah. And so for this educational brand like you're talking about, I think they're much more optimized toward you want to see that one-to-one likes-to-bookmarks on most of your content. And people need to be more dedicated to looking at their analytics. I'm getting there. I'm getting there. And so, not to bury the lead there. And then for this aspirational brand, that's someone you want, you want a lot of shares, right? Right. Yo, babe, we got to get this thing whenever we make it. Like, oh my God, did you see this? We have to buy this eventually. So you're getting shares from that. But educational, I think you want to go more toward the bookmarking. Yes. Then you have the documenter. And this is, I would say, a newer archetype that we've kind of seen rise to the top in the last few years. And so the documenter is the individual who's basically opening the door and saying, hey, take a seat and watch the journey as it unfolds. Watch us build. Typically, it's a brand getting started versus a more established brand. Bad Ombedis, obviously one of the pod favorites, is goated at this. And so, not to bury the lead there. And then for this aspirational brand, that's someone you want a lot of shares, right? Right. Yo, babe, we got to get this thing whenever we make it. Oh, my God, did you see this? We have to buy this eventually. So you're getting shares from that. But educational, I think you want to go more towards the bookmarking. Yes. Then you have the documenter. And this is, I would say, a newer archetype that we've seen rise to the top in the last few years. And so the documenter is the individual who's opening the door and saying, hey, take a seat and watch the journey as it unfolds. Watch us build. Typically, it's a brand getting started versus a more established brand. Bad Ombedis, obviously one of the pod favorites, is goaded at this. You have Softies Burgers, who I've talked about as well, where Bad Ombedis talks about their journey of Hank quitting his nine-to-five job to build the frozen bean and cheese burrito company. Softies Burgers, they take a whole different approach where they document through the lens of, we're going to drop an episode, and that episode is going to focus on one specific lesson. So it would be money problems. It would be hiring, et cetera, right? It just has a central theme for each episode. And the whole goal of that is to build affinity out the gate, right? And so if you're developing yourself, or you want to be portrayed as this archetype, or develop this archetype, then you have to be essentially an open book and give people a front-row seat to your journey every step of the way. Then you have the entertainment archetype. And with the entertaining archetype, you could pull some elements of documenting. You could pull some elements of lifestyle, right? But you could look at Mandy's Gourmets, who are very, very entertaining. You could look at Nitro Bar. You could look at Roomies. They're thoroughly playing into an entertaining archetype where there has to be a main character. You can have a lifestyle archetype and hire actors, right? Because you're just trying to put, it's more so, a lot of times, about the aesthetic and the world. Yeah. Whereas an entertaining or entertainment-driven archetype, it's really driven by the personality and the characters involved. And then lastly, you can create a fictional archetype, which is a lot harder and requires a lot more budget to do in a lot of cases. One of the best accounts I've seen at this, I don't think we've talked about them, Fern. Have you seen them? A few are. Ian. Look at them. While you look that up, I'll bring up the other one, Late Checkout. I've talked about them multiple times, when they built this entire fictional world, all these different characters. But Fern literally builds this House on the Prairie-type vibe for their perfume company. Yes. Where they're producing legitimate movies for their collections and for their drops. It's sick. But as a... Coming for Le Labo. Dude, I love their content. Good example of why that... One million followers. I'm asleep, I guess. But no, seriously, if they're coming for Le Labo, this is a point of differentiation that Le Labo will never nail. Yeah. Right? I think Sweetgreen, you brought up earlier, is an example of what this looks like at an enterprise level. That's probably a CEO who's cool with investing in the channel, and then that unicorn social person. Really hard to plan for having a unicorn social person. But if you're Fern, the way to displace these incumbent players is to really lean into your content strategy and meeting customers where they are, and not be in legacy. Let me send you probably one of the craziest video clips I've ever seen. You see the first... It's called the Wild Apple Heist. And they dropped this in autumn 2025. They dropped this 16 weeks ago. They literally dropped a legitimate movie for this. Yeah, this is crazy. Talk about a fictional world. Talk about a literal masterpiece of a piece of content. Yeah. That is just, you see this and watch as it continues to evolve. Look at some of the things that are happening with them climbing up the ladder and going into... this is a fucking cinematic masterpiece. It's cinematic brain rot, which is maybe something that people should be... I love it. Yeah. Cinematic brain rot. It is. It is such a good piece of content. And it goes to show why they have a million followers. They have another one, How to Steal Apples and Get Away With It, taken from the same production that I'm going to drop for you. I mean, it's just amazing, amazing content. But it's this fictional world that they've created around their brand that, again, requires a big budget. If you have an investment, right, if you have $10 million in the bank, if you have $20 million in the bank because you raised capital, go ahead. Go this route. And if you don't, take this as inspiration. I'm not going to advocate, I'm not a big AI creative person, but at the end of the day, this is an example of using AI to really create an association with people and entertain them in a way that's not going to come off as slop. Yeah. I feel like the appreciation for this is probably a little bit of the production quality, but it's more so what you just said. There's a lot of Easter eggs. They're climbing ladders midway through the run. It's weird. It feels like some Oompa Loompa shit. It's crazy. To be honest with you, it's crazy. But yeah. So again, as a brand is, hey, I'm going to tackle organic, you have to develop that archetype and understand what lane you're going to really run through. Now, second is, as you evolve, as you get more established, let's say you've nailed the educational side. Hey, we're growing very fast. We need to add more layers into it. Now you can add other archetypes into your content, right? You could add a second archetype. It's more of a hybrid approach. So I'll look at an established brand who does this very well, but they didn't start doing this very early. They didn't start like this. So I've talked about BPN a hundred times, right? But this would be one-on-one and for a different reason, where BPN is multiple different archetypes in one. They have the aspirational lens where Nick is aspirational, right? Everything that Nick does is aspirational to the individual that is doing Hyrox and doing marathons. There's an educational archetype where they break down, or he breaks down, hey, here's how I'm eating. Here's how you need to eat. Here's how you need to train. Right? There's a lot of how-tos. But then there's the documentary archetype, or the documenter archetype, where I'm going to try to achieve this in the next 16 weeks. Therefore, I'm going to show you step by step. Now, where it gets interesting as you become better with content, which is the key element here, you can integrate a lot of archetypes into one piece of content. Would you recommend they nail it first and then evolve, right? Yeah, yeah. That's what I said. So after you nail one, I nail, let's say we nail lifestyle archetype. You and I have nailed educational archetype, right? Maybe not the last three weeks for me, but educational archetype. Yeah, you nailed it. I'm just kidding. Yeah. Now I'm adding in the documenter. That's how you know your boy is actually down bad when instead of roasting you, I was like, no, you got it. You got it. And it hasn't been in. I was like, I can't kick him on the couch. So, but you literally saw me do it today. We're educational, dialed. Cool. I know what's working there. Yeah, I'm messing with different formats. Time to build the muscle. Yeah, bro. Yeah. Now I am adding, you walked in here and I said, hey, Brian, I need you to walk through that door again. I need you to get this clip. A little BTS for y'all. There's going to be a lot of documentary. We're going to document how we're going to get to 100,000 subs because we're going to get to 100,000 subs. Please like and subscribe because that's the goal. But you can add these different archetypes into your content, but you do that as you win. I was, no, you got it. You got it. And it hasn't been in. I was, I can't kick him on the couch. So, but you literally saw me do it today. We're educational dial. Cool. I know what's working there. Yeah, I'm messing with different formats. Time to build the muscle. Yeah, bro. Yeah. Now I am adding, you walked in here and I said, hey, Brian, I need you to walk through that door again. I need you to get this clip. A little BTS for y'all. There's going to be a lot of documentary. We're going to document how we're going to get to 100,000 subs because we're going to get to 100,000 subs. Please like and subscribe because that's the goal. But you can add these different archetypes into your content, but you do that as you win. Back at, I think when I talked about the zero to 40,000, at that point, I was not doing YouTube. I wasn't doing, I didn't post on Twitter. I didn't post on LinkedIn. It was, hey, I am only going to win on IG. So, therefore, I focused on IG. And then as I got better, I'm, okay, now I'm going to do YouTube, right? That is, you need to take that same approach. Now, the next element that you need to focus on is your testing strategy. No one talks about this because they go into a content strategy saying, hey, I need to win out the gate. And therefore, they think I'm going to put together this master plan. And that master plan typically crumbles within a week. I know how I can grow. I can rip a good content, bad content, green screen right now, and I know I'll grow. But guess what? I'm doing a testing strategy right now. There's things that are getting 10,000 views, 15,000 views, and then there's something that gets 100,000 views. I'm testing a bunch of stuff, and I'm testing religiously. I'm testing how close I am to the camera, how wide angle I am, where the text is. Val probably hates how many times I ask her to change the text from up here to here to the color. I'm testing so many things. And so as you develop your content strategy, you have to have a testing strategy. And the way I would tell you to do this is develop one concept, and then you're going to test it, produce it three times. And you're not going to batshoot it. You're going to produce it one at a time. That's key. You're going to produce one concept at a time, and then you're going to create that concept three times. And then every single time you make the next version of it, you need to make an iteration to it. So you're going to do three concepts with three iterations with a 3% difference every time. That is how you're going to test, that's how you're going to test your concept to essentially get it to perform very well. And I'll give you an example. There is a show that we created called History of Leather for a brand. First iteration of the content got 10,000 to 15,000 views on YouTube. We looked at all the things within the retention graph, three-second view rate, average watch time, which I'm going to talk about in a second. The next iteration of that all got 100-plus thousand views, right, for a brand that's never done that format, any content like that. So the things that we changed, our iterations were based on the opening frame, the action that was done, the angle that it was shot at, right, all of these different elements. But they were all added into the next iteration. And so as you develop these concepts, if something flops, that's okay. Look at the metrics, like you were saying, where something can flop and still have the right metrics to say this has potential. If I do good content versus bad content and I see that one-to-one ratio, but I just see the average watch time a bit lower than it needs to be, then it's, oh, okay, I have a scripting problem. It's not the concept. You had a good hook rate, but the watch time is low. Therefore, somewhere around the 7 to 15 second mark, you should have introduced something a little more juicy. 100%. Yeah. And so, I am an advocate for testing strategy because you want to have a testing strategy before a growth strategy. You've got to test, test, test. And then once you find things that work, then scale it, right? Then go into actually saying— And being comfortable with testing. The biggest problem with, I think, social is that when you put stuff out, you have this thought that everyone's going to look at it and also going to—everyone's going to see it and then also they're going to go back and reference it. And ultimately that's just not the case. People are inherently seeing new things every day. They couldn't tell you five things that they saw on their feed yesterday. So when you do create that outlier, that's when you can actually get their attention and make them have that lasting impression. But otherwise, bro, it's so much more about volume and ability to actually ship other than worrying about—and I think everyone's guilty of this. I overindex on a single yap TikTok video. And I'm, wait, why did I not just publish that? If it flops, it flops. Who cares? Who cares? The reality is, for me, if my video gets 10,000 views, that's not that many—it's a lot of people that watch it, but it's also a lot of people that didn't watch it. You get what I'm saying? Based on the size of my audience, just keep shipping. No one—it got ignored for— But even then, that's actually the perfect example of every single video being unique at that, right? 100%. If you have 160,000 followers and only 10,000 people see it, that's the exact example of what we're talking about. You should be creating anything because if the people who follow you aren't even going to see it regardless, right, every video will stand on its own anyway. 100%. So as we talk about three iterations, I need to break down number three, how to refine an actual view—or sorry, how to refine an actual video. The first thing I'm looking at is the three-second view rate. If that three-second view rate is not above 50%, you're cooked. That's the reality. If anything is below 50%, it is not going to be getting— I feel like 55 to 60 is you're in a good spot to do well, but you're not going to go viral. You're getting hundreds of thousands. Right. And then above 60— And then the best one is 70 plus. Yeah. Is where you're absolutely— 100%. So if you have a low three-second view rate, then what you need to be looking at or testing religiously is your hooks. And try to really change three things: the angle, the aesthetic, and the action. Obviously the thing that you say, but reality is most people are consuming without sound on. So either break a pattern with the angle, be visually appealing with the aesthetic, or capture their attention with an action. As an example, we just filmed a hook where I came in, put my hand on your shoulder, and hit a hook. I'm going to rework it, and we're going to film it again where as I say that, you're going to turn the laptop and show it to the camera. All of a sudden it's like, what is he doing? I'm saying something. Right. And that's a much better way of—or that's an example of how you can iterate the hook. If I would have published it, and it's different for a vlog, but if I would have published it and the three-second view rate is 45%, I'm like, okay, let me get this to 55%. All of a sudden, me adding in that action of you spinning it, it showing a number, me saying something is probably going to take it to 50%, 55%. But again, that is us iterating what didn't work based on the data. And then packaging the iterations, packaging the variables, right? So, I hate to use something that we haven't showed on screen. Maybe we'll superimpose it. But you put your hand on my shoulder, and then I turned to the camera, and I shook my head. Yeah. So variables that we could isolate from there is how data was shot. What if it was freehand, and it's a little shaky, and then there's a zoom in on my face when you say it's not enough, and then I shake my hand. I'm okay, let me get this to 55%. All of a sudden, me adding in that action of you spinning it, it showing a number, me saying something, is probably going to take it to 50%, 55%. But again, that is us iterating what didn't work based on the data. And then packaging the iterations, packaging the variables, right? I hate to use something that we haven't showed on screen. Maybe we'll superimpose it. But you put your hand on my shoulder, and then I turned to the camera, and I shook my head. Yeah. So variables that we could isolate from there is how data was shot. What if it was freehand, and it's a little shaky, and then there's a zoom in on my face when you say it's not enough, and then I shake my hand? What if it's freehand, and there's no zoom? What if the zoom is on you? There's different ways to maximize your time efficiency in the planning process when you look at it from this component-based view. Yes. When you look at your hooks with the right indexing of, okay, there's a first frame, there's an action, there's an angle like you're talking about. Now we're going to test three of each. And then that matrix of combinations goes, if you have three different things across those three different components, and you combine them to test in individual ways. You now have, what, 15 different variations? 100%. Which you can rip every single one as a trial reel. And I get that that feels like a lot of work, but at the end of the day, we're talking about trying to win. So yeah, I'm about to hit you with something sick in a second about trial reels from Everyday Ben and Pell who, again, added 100,000 plus. That's crazy. It's a crazy number. So it was 60 million views in 30 days. And to that point, most of those came from one video. 25 on one out of 60, that's just always what the game is going to be. You're searching for that whale. 100%. The other things that you can refine are average watch time. So what I found with my content and with brand's content, if it's more dialogue heavy, 12 to 13 second average watch time is where videos go to die. It needs to get above 13, and every hour or every few hours, it should be climbing second by second. Yes. So I've seen it where it starts at 12 to 13. I'm like, okay, cool. Come back the next hour, maybe two hours. It's at 14. Cool. If it starts to go back down, sorry, you're cooked. If it goes 14 to 15, okay. 15 to 16, okay. That's how you know the trajectory of that video is about to go. Instagram is finding better audiences. Yes. Over time. That's really what that number means, is every tranche of new views, because Instagram will be like, okay, here it is for a 50,000-view cohort of people. They're not watching it more. And so if they're continuously optimizing it, that means you got likes. 100%. And so when you're looking at your average watch time, you typically need to be able to look at it in segments. It's not just 1 to 12 seconds. Typically, things fall in buckets. So are you changing things every five seconds? Are you changing how many shots somebody is looking at? And so where that drop-off point typically is in a video that doesn't continue to perform, you need to be able to look at your average watch time and be able to be like, okay, do I introduce another mini hook? Do I introduce a new character? Right? And you have a 12-second drop-off and then a 15, 20. It really is. We talked about the but therefore framework a lot of the time too. You can't just and this and this and this and this. It's like this, and therefore this, but this, therefore this. When you can zigzag like that, I think that's another good way. And so that's something we, in our social shows, that we've been implementing heavy is at those. It's the most goated advice. But Therefore by South Park. Guys, it's actually so insane. It's great. Right. It's literally that element where we'll plan the script, and then we go to the script and we're like, okay, how do we add more attention? How do we add more hooks? And that's not being clickbaity. It is more so I'm reeling you back in. You're so used to just keep, you have to think about behavior. People are so used to just seeing something for a little bit and continue to go. Yeah, physiologically. You have to literally, yes, you have to literally get someone to stop for a minute, which is so hard to do. So you have to earn it. And so I have to think about all these little elements when I'm making a piece of content. People will like and bookmark something and then still swipe seven seconds. You saw how many people, Dan Coe had something go viral on Twitter, how to fix your life in one day. It was like 200,000 bookmarks. And I don't know, maybe, or not 200,000, maybe 20,000, or maybe it was. It might have been like 200. Yeah, 200,000 and like 80,000. Super, super viral. Yeah. Yeah. I think there's a move on Twitter as well to take anything that is very long form and publish it as an article. They're pushing that. They're pushing articles crazy. Yeah. I know. So I'm going to start publishing all these newsletters as articles. You should. Yeah. See what happens, because I've just wrote some bangers. Next, we look at the retention graph. What I found is anything over 50% after three seconds is going to get 100,000 views for me. That's been my go-to metric right there. So there's your golden nugget, ladies and gentlemen. That type of data, you just simply don't get anywhere other than Sweat After We Podcast. Sweat After We Podcast. But so over 50%, I'm aiming for that. That is why today I'm going to film good content or a bunch of iterations of my content, but I am test. I'm going to film multiple hooks. Not what I say, where I'm at, how I come into frame. I got to, I got to fix it because they've been flopping. I've never had a good content versus bad content get 15,000 views to the point where I archived it and I was like, let me just change. I'm changing how close I am to the camera. I'm testing everything because I don't want to continue doing just green screen, right? Fuck it. We have all this just to, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, totally. So that is how I would refine the videos and the content, is by looking at those metrics and then getting as crazy as I am and as we are about, here's how we're going to get our retention graph to be at 50% no matter what. Here's how we're going to get our three-second view rate to climb from 45% to 51%. All those things, those little iterations, can mean hundreds of thousands of more views. Right. Right? That is the differentiator between the whale. When I talked to Kevin from Everyday Better Club, he's like, I will take a video that has an angle, or an aesthetic, whatever, that I know works, and I'll test 8, 10, 20 different video iterations of the text on trial reels. And then when it pops, then I put it over to the main. So he's showing me his trial reels. He's like, look at these. These all have millions of views on trial reels. Right. So there's a lot that can be. Picking up followers there too. Oh, 100%. Yeah. 100%. Have you reposted any of your stuff on trial reels? Yeah. Yeah. The 2J's video went viral on it. A couple different bangers. Yeah. Yeah. Some didn't, though, which was interesting. Yeah. I did some of them. So they crack down on it now. So now if publish your trial reel again, it's like, ooh, Adam said. What's crazy is you ripped the podcast clip again. Did you change something, or what'd you do? No. You just let it fly. Yeah. I let it fly. I edit it in edits. Yeah. They love that. They love it. So I just. Edits is also sick. It is good. I literally just added text on top. Right. So there's a lot that can be. Picking up followers there too. Oh, 100%. Yeah. 100%. Have you reposted any of your stuff on trial reels? Yeah. Yeah. The 2J's video went viral on it. A couple, a couple of different bangers. Yeah. Yeah. Some didn't, though, which was interesting. Yeah. I did some of them. So they crack down on it now. So now if publish your trial reel again, it's like, Ooh, Adam said. What's crazy is you ripped the podcast clip again. Did you change something, or what'd you do? No. You just let it fly. Yeah. I let it fly. I edit it in edits. Yeah. They love that. They love it. So I just. Edits is also sick. It is good. I literally just added text on top. Yeah. Swiped it out of screen, and it popped. But they want to push the, this was made with edits, or whatever it is. Right. Right. Right. I've been seeing that everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. So next element is you have to have a through line. I talk about the content narrative. That content narrative is that through line for all of your content. Don't make a bunch of random shit. You need to have the through line where it's not that every piece of content has to match. It's every piece of content has to match this overarching narrative that you stand for or that you want people to perceive or associate with you. If not, you're literally creating a bunch of random shit and creating multiple perceptions in somebody's head. If Salt, who is the electrolyte brand, if they were super comedic and then one day super inspirational, that wouldn't work. They're literally trying to be for the person who parties maybe on a Friday, but they take work seriously. Right. It's more about the lifestyle of a specific type of individual. And so their through line and their content matches, sorry, matches that through line versus them trying to be BPN one day, trying to be element another day, and then trying to be more scrappy documentary style another day. Right. It wouldn't work. And so you have to have a through line that's like, hey, I stand for this. I have this story that I'm trying to tell. And so, therefore, everything I test is going to hit that and match that story. Right. That's how my perception, or anybody's perception, because how somebody thinks of you is literally just memory. Right. It's just a bunch of content to form some idea that then gets stuck and imprinted on somebody's brain. That is all it is. And so that through line is this overarching narrative that over time you create content, and it compounds, and it forms that through line or that message and that narrative in somebody's head. That's why everybody rocks Go One More. You know what I'm saying? That is why, because all the content feeds that. It doesn't happen on accident. Yeah. Then next is majority of brands, if you haven't won, you need to be focusing on top of funnel content. As you win, develop your content funnel. Top of funnel content in this case is content to get followers. It's as simple as that. It is fucking commercial fishing. I am trying to catch as many fish as possible within my category and get them into my ecosystem. It is not plugging product. It doesn't mean product can't be integrated naturally, but it's not trying to push. It's not trying to sell. I looked at Alex Cooper, I think it's Alex Cooper, the Call Me Daddy. Call Her Daddy. Call Me Daddy. Call Me Daddy. Damn. Call Her Daddy. Sheesh. Call Her Daddy. She started Drink Unwell. You looked me straight in the eyes and said that. I did. To be honest. And paused. Yeah. You let it marinate for a second. She dropped Drink Unwell. And for someone that's so good at organic content, yeah, Drink Unwell's IG is a fucking ad library. Same with you. I think Alex Earl did an electrolyte brand or something. Maybe that's what I'm thinking about. Yeah. That's what I'm. Yeah. Because the thing is they've reached macro influencer status, which is completely different. Once you kind of reach that upper level corporate stuff, you just believe in your distribution as the end game. Right. So you don't have this philosophy, what you're talking about, which is like you are looking at every single individual metric to a video. Yeah. As important. They do not do that. They fill up a content calendar and then let it fly. And what's sad about it is the art direction for the content, amazing. The actual content is bad. Art direction is not something that I think people are bad at. I think what we're describing is probably the biggest edge that people like you and I have on these traditional marketers, is the understanding of the watch time, the shares, the stuff, because they just don't get that granular. Yeah. And they just don't care because they don't make it themselves. And so what was the incentive to ever look into these things? Something either worked or didn't. But art direction is not necessarily as hard, I think, to acquire as an understanding. Because you could go literally on Pinterest for art direction and be like, I want this, hire someone. They build that. Right. Right. Versus, I want 10 million views. How? Yeah. It's hard to find the person that could get you 10 million views. Yeah. How do I package this top of funnel and create a strategy that allows me to do this over and over and over again? Yeah. So for most brands, spend 90% of your time doing top of funnel content. Mm-hmm. And don't, until you're at 10,000 followers, literally don't do anything but top of funnel content. Mm-hmm. Once you get past there, then you can go to 75% top of funnel and start mixing in middle of the funnel. I wouldn't even say do bottom of the funnel until you're, unless you have a launch, like you're launching product, it's different. Don't even start doing middle of funnel content until you're like 25,000, 50,000 followers. Mm-hmm. Hopefully it gets millions of views. Chances are it's not. But I'd be happy with 50,000 views that send people to actually care about the pod. Yeah. Right? That is the goal. Because those are people who will buy followers. Yeah. Those are the people listening. And then bottom of the funnel, how to get my followers to take action. This is more product-driven. Mm-hmm. Right? This is trying to get somebody to either sign up for a newsletter, go to an event, purchase products. I'm driving action here. And so when you look at content through that lens of content to get followers, content for my followers, content to get my followers to take action, it's very easy to bucket your ideas realistically to be like, oh, I've been spending all my time down here. I need to be here. No wonder shit's flopping. I can't get past my follower base. No shit. You haven't made anything that's truly top of funnel content. I think what people miss in this whole entire equation as well is the brand equity you're building. Yeah. By being so first and by having entertainment in your blood, the ability to get views on command as a brand and build brand affinity is something that is going to double, triple, quintuple your enterprise value. Because I think a lot about these brands that I know that are ripping on IG ads, and then they are also crushing on Amazon. And they're really healthy P&Ls, right? Maybe doing like 120, 130, 150, whatever. And I think there's an argument to be made at that level too that, why even invest in brand until nine figures in revenue sometimes? I know an electrolyte brand that literally went zero to 125 million in like two years. Who? Instant Hydration. Oh yeah. They're cranking. Really? Yeah. It's doing really well. And they don't have, there's nothing, there's no art direction. There's no coherent, real organic strategy. They're just incredibly dialed at paid acquisition. And they do it better than anybody. Really? And now they're going to take that growth story into retail. And I think when that brand goes to try and sell, had they invested in a character, in an ecosystem, in world building, in a lot of these different things that we talk about that scrappy brands do first. Yeah. What does that do to the exit multiple? And that's really where you see that investment come through. It's not necessarily like, oh, we're just lighting $50,000 a month on fire. brand that literally went zero to 125 million in two years. Who? Instant hydration. Oh yeah. They're cranking. Really? Yeah. It's doing really well. And they don't have, there's nothing, there's no art direction. There's no coherent, real organic strategy. They're just incredibly dialed at paid acquisition. And they do it better than anybody. Really? And now they're going to take that growth story into retail. And I think when that brand goes to try and sell, had they invested in a character, in an ecosystem, in world building, in a lot of these different things that we talk about that scrappy brands do first. Yeah. What does that do to the exit multiple? And that's really where you see that investment come through. It's not necessarily like, oh, we're just lighting $50,000 a month on fire. It's like we spent a million dollars on brand building this year, which brought the valuation of our business from $150,000 to $300,000 because we have a diehard group of people that love what we do. Couldn't agree more. I'm going to try to speed through because I'm halfway, which is crazy. Wow. Next is your content buckets. Content has gotten so good at targeting the right individual that your content buckets is actually knowing your customer, taking your customer segments and saying, this is who we're going to make content for. I'll give you an example that I wrote about in yesterday's newsletter, where if we take Solomon, right? And Solomon's, let's say their top customer segment is the marathon runner who is running their third to fifth, or sorry, their fifth or more marathon. You can't just say, we target marathon runners, right? If that is your top customer segment, then you have to understand, okay, if that is it, how do I develop a content pillar for that individual? It's too broad to say I have an educational content pillar. So I'll actually take this into the next one. You have to add qualifiers now to your content pillars, whereas, okay, our top customer segment is the marathon runner who's running their fifth or plus marathon. Maybe they're trying to qualify for a race. Therefore, my content pillar is educational for the individual running their fifth or more marathon. So now you understand, hey, we're going to develop a series. We're going to develop a concept around that, speaking to that individual because that's who we're going to target with the content. And so your content pillars can't just be educational. It has to be educational plus X. And so your content pillar now needs a qualifier. It needs that thing that goes a layer deeper to say your content is going to target this individual. We're going to build a concept around that top customer segment, around that content bucket. The next element then is how to scale. When you find the winner, you then need to be able to distribute it amongst multiple formats. So if good content versus bad content, if a performance lesson that you like, a more classroom setting for Solomon, is the thing that works, et cetera, you need to then understand, okay, how do I take this and make it a 10-shot video, a vignette? How do I make it into a carousel format? How do I make it into, right? You have to think about how I can take something, or sorry, how I can take a winner, scale that across multiple formats and content types. That is absolutely key, right? And I think that's also something that brands or individuals that are winning on social don't think about. Everyday Better Club, watch what he does where he got one video that worked very well with one person running. Then he's like, what if I add two people? What if I add three people? What if I add four people? What if I just change the text? What if I just change the scenery, the location? All of these different elements where he just found something that's like, look, I'm going to keep reworking and repackaging this idea, this concept, right? That is our content pillar. I'm going to scale that content pillar until it doesn't perform anymore. Whereas everybody tries to think about reinventing the wheel. What about just fucking more wheels? More wheels. Just more fucking wheels is all you need to be doing there. 100%. I mean, anytime you crack something that actually works, it feels like it works. That's the thing that a lot of people don't appreciate enough. And honestly, you can really get drunk, you can get high on your own supply with that too. Or you think it's something, you can just use it over and over again. Boy, you're ready for Friday night. You get high, you can get drunk on your own supply. I'm not going out this weekend. You're not? I'm too old, bro. No, this is what happens when you hit a bender the last weekend and you're absolutely wrecked. You're going through everything. Everyone's on this dry January shit, which I think is a psyop. I think if you need dry January, you have a severe problem that you should address year-round. Yes. You should not be isolating your treatment, your rehabilitation for one month of the year, motherfucker. You need to go check yourself into a facility, or else you should be able to manage that shit. Boy, I was set. Which I'll be checking into mine within the next seven days. Yeah. Lastly, or the last few elements, the last few elements, is then how to differentiate. So there's category separation where if something is working within fashion, how do you bring it over to your burger company? Right? It's not looking at all the burger companies and being like, how can I do the thing better that they're doing? Cross-pollinate. 100%. Again, talking to Kevin, Kevin was looking at all the different categories and finding things that work and then spinning it to get it to work for him. So you want to look at category separation. Then you want to look at art direction. Art direction is not the content. It's how you differentiate the content. It's how you get someone into the world to be able to feel the content. It is not the content itself. And so those are the two things I'm looking at, is one, concept essentially, or category separation via concepts. Take the concept, add the art direction to then make it very unique to the world that you're trying to build. The last two elements, I think I've said the last two elements four times, is you need to build familiarity. That is the most important factor, I think, going into 2026, is becoming memorable. Making and adding unique and distinct elements that make your content memorable and familiar to the individual scanning at rapid paces. You take subway takes. Subway takes always start split screen. And he goes, so what's your take? As soon as he does that, it goes to the individual that's going to respond. Every single episode. It's always in the same location. Yes, he changes sometimes to a London subway. Sometimes it's New York subway, whatever. But it is always all the elements in it, all the repetitive elements, whether it's the visual hook, the title hook, whether it's the location, the characters, the host. These are all elements that make your content extremely familiar to the individual that is consuming thousands of pieces of content every day. So when you do this, you have to think about the repetitive elements that are going to be in your content. If all you have is a character that can be repetitive, fine. But then think about, okay, what's one element that I can add to myself as the character that is repetitive? Is it what I wear? Is it how I open the video? Is it the angle I start every video, right? Find these little elements that make it very, very familiar to the individual consuming it. Then lastly, if you have budget or you understand those repetitive elements, then it goes into set building, right? We are trying to build a set for sweat equity. So when you see it, you know it's sweat equity. As subway takes, their set is a location. Matt Choi's Mob Challenge, the location of the track is the set, right? And so you can think about sets as either locations, things that you rent, or things that you build. Those are the three variants that you can have as a set. So if I do it on the street style, if you've ever seen Street Hearts, I don't know if you've seen that show on IG, it's like a dating show thing that literally starts on the sidewalk, and it's the same host, right? It is a location that they're using. It's not something they built. It's not something they rented. So therefore, you have to think about the location as the set and then think about the little familiar elements that you can add to it that make it unique and distinct to you. Putting all of that together, that's how you're going to win on Instagram in 2026. And if you don't, then you didn't watch this episode six times. And so you can think about sets as either locations, things that you rent, or things that you build. Those are the three variants that you can have as a set. So if I do it on the street style, if you've ever seen Street Hearts, I don't know if you've seen that show on IG, it's a dating show thing that literally starts on the sidewalk and it's the same host, right? It is a location that they're using. It's not something they built. It's not something they rented. So therefore you have to think about the location as the set and then think about the little familiar elements that you can add to it that make it unique and distinct to you. Putting all of that together, that's how you're going to win on Instagram in 2026. And if you don't, then you didn't watch this episode six times. Yeah, you should watch this episode as many times as possible because there's a lot of little things. We'll use chapters. You can skip around. Hopefully. Yeah. We'll use chapters. If you enjoyed the episode, as always, please like, subscribe. We put a lot of effort into these things, and the metric that people who want to pay us for these things look at is engagement. So we really appreciate it. Leave a comment. Like if you think Alex, you're evolving into a new look now. I think. I know. I wonder. There's no commentary on the hair. I was going to say, I wonder if listeners notice that I cut the bun off. I cut all the hair off. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. And if you think I should get rid of the mustache, I get it. I get it. It doesn't stand out as much as you think it does, or as it needs to. What you got? Keep it? All right. That's settled. All right, guys. I'm going to keep ripping this 2026 guide for growing on Instagram. But please, if you like this, subscribe. We're trying to get to 100,000 subs by the end of the year. If not, we're going to figure out something painful to do. But please, 100,000 subs. We're going to build a concept around that top customer segment, around that content bucket. The next element then is how to scale. When you find the winner, you then need to be able to distribute it amongst multiple formats. So if good content versus bad content, if a performance lesson that you like a more classroom setting for Solomon is like the thing that works, et cetera, you need to then understand, okay, how do I take this and make it a 10 shot video, a vignette? How do I make it into a carousel format? How do I make it into, right? Like you have to think about how I can take something, take the, or sorry, how I can take a winner, scale that across multiple formats and content types. That is absolutely key, right? And I think that's also something that brands or individuals that are winning on social don't think about. Everyday Better Club, watch what he does where he got one video that worked very well with one person running. Then he's like, what if I add two people? What if I add three people? What if I add four people? What if I just change the text? What if I just change the scenery, the location? Like all of these different elements where he just found something that's like, look, I'm going to keep reworking and repackaging this idea, this concept, right? That is our content pillar. I'm going to scale that content pillar until it doesn't perform anymore. Whereas everybody tries to think about reinventing the wheel. What about just fucking more wheels? More wheels. You know what I mean? Like just more fucking wheels is all you need to be doing there. 100%. I mean, anytime you crack something that actually works, it feels like it works. That's the thing that a lot of people don't appreciate enough. And honestly, you can really get drunk. You can get high on your own supply with that too. Or like you think it's something, you know, you can just use it over and over again. Boy, you're ready for Friday night. You get high, you can get drunk on your own supply. I'm not going out this weekend. You're not? I'm too old, bro. No, you just, this is the, this is what happens when you hit a bender the last weekend and you're like absolutely wrecked. You're going through everything. Everyone's on this dry January shit, which I think is a psyop. I think if you need dry January, you have a severe problem that you should address year round. Yes. You know, you should not be isolating your treatment, your rehabilitation for one month of the year, motherfucker. You need to go get to check yourself into a facility or else you should be able to manage that shit. Boy, I was set. Uh, which I'll be checking into mine within like the next seven days. Yeah. Lastly, or the last few elements, the last few elements is then how to differentiate. So there's category separation where if something is working within, you know, within fashion, how do you bring it over to your burger company? Right. It's not looking at the burger, all the burger companies and being like, how can I do the thing better that they're doing? Cross pollinate. 100%. You know, again, talking to Kevin, Kevin was looking at all the different categories and finding things that works and then spinning it to get it to work for him. So you want to look at category separation. Then you want to look at art direction. Art direction is not the content. It's how you differentiate the content. It's how you get someone into the world to be able to feel the content. It is not the content itself. And so those are the two things I'm looking at is one concept essentially or category separation via concepts. Take the concept, add the art direction to then make it very unique to the world that you're trying to build. The last two elements, I think I've said the last two elements four times, is you need to build familiarity. That is the most important factor. I think going into 2026 is becoming memorable. Making and adding unique and distinct elements that make your content memorable and familiar to the individual scanning at rapid paces. You take subway takes. Subway takes always start split screen. And he goes, so what's your take? Soon as he does that, it goes to the individual that's going to respond. Every single episode. It's always in the same location. Yes, he changes sometimes to like a London subway. Sometimes it's New York subway, whatever. But it is always, there's all the elements in it, all the repetitive elements, whether it's the visual hook, the title hook, whether it's the location, the characters, the host. These are all elements that make your content extremely familiar to the individual that is consuming thousands of pieces of content every day. So when you do this, you have to think about the repetitive elements that are going to be in your content. If all you have is like a character that can be repetitive, fine. But if then think about, okay, what's one element that I can add to myself as the character that is repetitive? Is it what I wear? Is it how I open the video? Is it the angle I start every video, right? Like find these little elements that make it very, very familiar to the individual consuming it. Then lastly, if you have budget or you understand those repetitive elements, then it goes into set building, right? Like we are trying to build a set for sweat equity. So when you see it, you know it's sweat equity. As subway takes, their set is a location. Matt Choi's Mob Challenge, the location of the track is the set, right? And so you can think about sets as either locations, things that you rent or things that you build. Like those are the three variants that you can have as a set. So if I do it on the street style, if you've ever seen Street Hearts, I don't know if you've seen that show on IG, it's like a dating show thing that literally starts on the sidewalk and it's the same host, right? Like it is a location that they're using. It's not something they built. It's not something they rented. So therefore you have to think about the location as the set and then think about the little familiar elements that you can add to it that make it unique and distinct to you. Putting all of that together, that's how you're going to win on Instagram in 2026. And if you don't, then you didn't watch this episode six times. Yeah, you should watch this episode as many times as possible because there's a lot of little things. We'll use chapters. You skip around. Hopefully. Yeah. We'll use chapters. If you enjoyed the episode, as always, please like, subscribe. We put a lot of effort into these things and the metrics that people who want to pay us for these things look at is engagement. So we really appreciate it. You know, leave a comment. Like if you think Alex, I mean, you're kind of evolving into a new look right now. I think. I know. I wonder. There's no commentary on the hair. I was going to say, I wonder if, you know, listeners, if you notice that I cut the bun off. I cut all the hair off. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. And if you think I should get rid of the mustache, I get it. I get it. It doesn't stand out as much as you think it does or it needs to. What you got? Keep it? All right. That's settled. All right, guys. I'm going to keep ripping this 2026 guide for growing on Instagram. But please, if you like this, subscribe. We're trying to get to 100,000 subs by the end of the year. If not, we're going to figure out something painful to do. But please, 100,000 subs.