The Instagram Gold Rush is Back (here’s how you can take advantage)

0:00The Instagram gold rush is back. Think about the last couple of years on IG. You posted something you actually thought was good. It got 200 views. You posted six more times, same thing happens. [music] In somewhere in there, you quietly decided that you were just bad at this. Listen, you weren't. The accounts eating all the reach were accounts that didn't make anything meaningful. They found videos that were already working somewhere else, and reposted them, and

0:26they collected and stole all the views. You were making original stuff and losing to people who weren't making anything meaningful at all. And earlier this year, Instagram killed that completely. If an account mostly reposts other people's content, it will be no longer eligible to be recommended. No feed recommendations, nothing in discover. Their own followers still see them, but

0:48nobody else [music] does. Reels already had that protection, and now it covers everything. So, all that reach had to go somewhere else, and it went to people making their own. Now, here's the part that actually matters. Those slots are earned per post, not by follower accounts. Every video gets judged on its own. So, the thing standing between you and your reach isn't the size of your

1:11account anymore. It's whether what you made is worth watching. This video is two things. The one skill that decides whether people watch, and the thing you point the watching at. Because views on their own don't pay you. Almost everyone who hears about this window [music] would do the first and skip the second. That's why almost

1:33nobody makes money from it. [music] Now, Instagram tells you exactly what worth watching means. It's in your own analytics. So, here's mine. Watch time is the big one. How long people actually stay. Then, sends. Somebody sharing your video into a DM. In my experience, that moves a video way further than a like does, because sending something to to costs you a little social credibility. A like really cost you nothing. And skip hurts

2:00you. Swiping away in the first second is a vote against the video. So, the whole game compresses into one sentence. Keep people watching. Before I teach you anything, I'll be straight with you. This accounts has a head start. I've been posting for years and that helps me in ways it won't help you next week. So, I'm not putting my follower graph on a screen and

2:20pretending that's the lesson. It's not. What transfers is the skill underneath it and there's only one. Ignore the 30 tactics that people sell you, posting times, hashtags, trending audio. If you have the skill, none of that matters much. And if you don't, none of it will save you. The only thing you need to know to grow on Instagram is how to balance curiosity against payoffs. Two words and I'll define both for you. Curiosity is [music] what stops

2:48the scroll. You've opened a question in somebody's head and now they want it closed. A payoff is when you close it. And here's the uncomfortable part. The payoff is also the exact moment that they leave. Think about the last thing you watched where you went, "Okay, I got it." And then you scrolled past. You weren't bored, you were finished. The

3:08answer was permission to go. So, there's this tug-of-war running the length of every video that you post. Curiosity holds them, payoffs release them. Most people lose it one of two ways. The first [music] is they never make you curious at all. So, nobody stops. The second is more expensive. And it's the one I'd bet is happening to you. I'll come back to it because the first one has to land before the second

3:34one makes sense. So, curiosity. Do this with me. Write down two topics that you know something about. For the sake of explaining this, I'll pick two of the most boring topics that I can think of. Dog training and meal [music] prep. Hold on to those both. They come back at the end of this video

3:50and not for the reason you're thinking. Now, watch what most people do with the topic. They just say it out loud. Here's how to train your dog. Meal prepping saves you time during the week. Both true. Both dead on arrival. Nobody stops for either one. And that's where people get the wrong idea about themselves. [music]

4:08Your topic isn't boring. You're framing it. So, here's the first move and it's most of the skill. Stop stating the topic. State the outcome your audience already wants. Dog training becomes your dog [music] isn't ignoring you and the reason is something you're doing about 3 seconds before you give the command. Meal prep becomes your meal prep goes

4:31bad by Wednesday. And it is not the food. Same topic, different door. Second move. Once they care, make it feel easy and make it feel new. Here's both moves stacked into one finished line. Your dog isn't ignoring you. The reason is something you do 3 seconds before the command and once you see it, you cannot unsee it. Your meal prep goes bad by Wednesday. It isn't the food, it's the order [music] you put in the

4:59container. And once you see it, you can't unsee this easily. You see, it isn't the food is new. Together, they're much harder to scroll past. And underneath all of it is one question. Not what do I want to talk about? What does my audience already want? Almost everyone answers the first one and wonders why nobody's stopping. And that finish line is your hook. It's the first 3 seconds and it decides whether the other 20 ever happen. So, [music] take one of your two topics and write the outcome version. Right now, before this video ends. Now, that's how you get somebody to stop. And stopping people is the half most

5:37creators are all right at. Here's the second way to lose them. The one I said I'd come back to. Payoffs. A payoff is the answer. And the answer is the exit. So, the mistake is obvious once you see it. Somebody writes a genuinely good hook and then immediately says the thing. Take the meal prep one. Good hook and 2 seconds later, so use

6:01glass containers. Done. Loop closed. Everybody leaves. They did the hard part and they threw the video away. So, how do you end up delaying that? You stop treating the payoff [music] as one moment. Instead of saying the answer, you say the things that lead up to it. What most people do wrong. Why the obvious fix doesn't work. What you tried first that failed. All of that is on the way to the answer. None

6:24of it closes the loop. And then you give them the answer. And here's the move that almost nobody makes. When you finally do pay it off, you open a new one in the same breath. Don't just say it's the order you put in the container. Say it's the order and there's one thing that should never touch the bottom of the container, which is the part everybody gets wrong. You paid one loop off and open another one

6:48immediately. That's how a 7-second idea turns into a video somebody watches twice. And rewatches count toward watch time. So, go back to that hook and list three things that lead up to the answer before you're allowed to say it. That's my own account and that's the structure in every post that has ever worked on it. Question first, everything in the middle on the way to the answer, another question sitting on top of the answer, which brings me to something I owe you. I've been doing this for the

7:15last 8 minutes. I opened on a claim about a gold rush and then I told you this video was two things and deliberately didn't tell you what the second one was. I've been holding that payoff back the whole time on purpose and it's part of the reason why you're still here. I'm not hiding that. If it worked on you, that's the best argument I can make that it'll work for you. So, let me pay it off. You now know how to get watched and how to get seen, which is worth almost nothing on

7:39its own. That sounds harsh, but it's true. Views are not money. Attention that isn't pointed at anything evaporates and a big following is not the same thing as a business. So, what do you point [music] it at? You can sell somebody else's product and take a cut. Fastest way in. I've taught it, it works. [music] The downside out loud, you don't own the product or the customer and the company that owns both can change the terms on a

8:05Tuesday. Or you can sell your own thing. And for most of the time I've been doing this, I wouldn't have told the beginner to start there because owning it meant building [music] it. The whole product, a website, payments, every customer with a problem, that's months and that's never why most people never did it. Here's what changed. The building part

8:23now takes an afternoon. And I'm using the same two boring topics from earlier because they were never random. Step one, pick the thing that you already know. Not how to make money, the thing your friends text you about, dog training, meal prep, how to get better at a video game. Nobody brags about those at a dinner party and that's exactly why

8:43they're wide open. Everybody chases the exciting topic, so the exciting topic is a bloodbath. And this is where most people stop before they start. Two objections, both completely wrong. The first is, I'm not an expert. You don't have to be. Nobody buys a guide because the author has a certificate. They buy it because whoever wrote it is standing exactly where they were standing six months ago and got out. Being two steps ahead is

9:09the qualification. Being 20 steps ahead can make you worse at explaining it because you've forgotten what it felt like to not know. The second is, somebody's already made this. Good. That's your proof people pay for it. If you search your topic and you find nothing at all, that isn't a gap, that's a warning. The one that wins isn't the most comprehensive, it's the one that sounds like it was written by somebody the buyer recognizes. Step two, check people want it before you make

9:38anything. And you already know how because you just watch me do it. Search your topic and look for the post doing several times the average. That's not a hunch. That's the market telling you out loud. In step three, open Claude or ChatGPT and say, "Here's exactly who I'm helping. Here's their specific problem. Write me the guide, not an outline, the whole thing." Then, fix the parts that sound like a robot you wrote them and

10:02add what you know that it doesn't. That's what makes it yours instead of generic. In step four, Canva for cover, 10 minutes. Packaging is the difference between a file and a product. Step five, put it on a storefront. A storefront is just a page that takes the money and hands over the file automatically. Upload it once, set a price, and you never touch an individual sale again. In

10:27step six, point your reels at it. [music] That's the loop. The skill gets people watching. The product gives the watching somewhere to go. Someone I work with did exactly this with the topic I'd never have picked myself and made her first sale with about 50 followers. She had one original thing to sell and she pointed original content at it. Now, the honest parts because I'd rather you hear it from me than work it out in month two. It isn't passive. Every sale is a fresh sale. Stop putting content out and

10:57it stops. The product takes an afternoon. The content is the [music] job and it's the job forever, which is exactly why the skill in the first half matters way more than the product does. So, look at what just happened. The reach that used to go to accounts reposting other people's videos got handed to people making their own. That's not my opinion. That's a policy change with a date on it. Reach is earned per post now. So, the only question left is whether what you made

11:24is worth watching. And that's one skill. Curiosity against payoffs. And the people who waste this window are easy to spot in advance. The ones who learn the hook and have nothing to sell, the ones who build a product and can't get anybody to watch anything, and the ones who spend the next 6 months

11:41collecting tactics instead of posting. If you want the long version, I recorded a free training that walks through the product selection, the content system, and the conversations that turn a view into a sale. It's going to be the first link in the description. It's a totally free training. And if you want to take

11:57one thing out of this video, take this. Instagram just stopped rewarding people for posting other people's work and it finally started rewarding people for making their own. Original content, original product. That's the best news you've had in 2 years and it's the only good news if you go and actually make something. So, go here, tap on this training to see exactly how to scale this business from scratch, and I look forward to seeing you on the training on

12:22the other side.