How to play the long game, fast
Enter the password
This one is for workshop members. Pop the password in to take a look.
The long game, played fast
The foundations are laid. Now you build your house. And right now it is possible to grow very quickly with the right approach. That approach comes from outliers.
- Study outliers →
- Pick your platform →
- Run analysis →
- Absorb it →
- Make the skill
The long game is still the game
Putting in the work consistently gets consistent growth. After that, we are looking for the leapfrog moves that jump growth up.
Accounts grow in jumps 🚀
An outlier is a post that escapes your existing audience, reaches strangers at scale, and converts them. And outliers permanently raise the floor.
The plan is simple. Post consistently, because that is the long game. Engineer the conditions outliers need, because they are engineered and never lucky. Spot the outlier fast when it lands, and double down on it.
Followers are not everything, but...
This is an incredible moment to build
Three things are true right now that were never true at the same time before. Together they are why a small account can grow very quickly with the right approach.
Reach stopped depending on followers
Platforms rank by interest now, showing your post to people who care about the topic.
Shares are the currency
DM and WhatsApp shares get several times the weight of likes. One post people send to a friend beats a year of posts people like.
You can see exactly how they did it
The fast growers' grids are public, numbers attached. Claude can read all of it from your browser in an afternoon. That is tab 3.
What this session gives you
Dissected growth stories, your own analysis, a skill to use forever.
People who grew fast, dissected
Different platforms, different niches, the same game.
Simon Alexander Ong: 130K subscribers in 12 months
One video did it: "I'm 40. If you're in your 20s or 30s, watch this." For its first three days it ranked eighth or ninth out of ten on his channel. On day four the shares started spiking. Then everyone on YouTube copied it.
Simon's on the left. The other three are copies, and they are still going up: two of these were posted in the week before this session, one of them by a Silicon Valley investor with his own audience of millions.
And then everyone copied him. Search that title today and YouTube is full of "I'm 41...", "I'm 45...", "I'm 49..." versions from channels of every size. This is the game, on every platform: formats that are proven to travel get copied, openly, and filled with each creator's own content and authority.
Dorie Clark: 22K to 200K, powered by outlier reels
Dorie posts one reel a day, in one clear format she repeats every time with different content inside it. What the format sells is her authority: decades of communication expertise, translated through famous faces. Her profile now shows 200K followers and 5M accounts reached, and the growth came in exactly two jumps.
More in the same format: Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Jennifer Lawrence (229K), Serena Williams, Dwayne Johnson. Not every one explodes. She keeps making them anyway, because two out of ten do.
The two outliers, and an ordinary day on the grid. Same face, same camera, same format. Different content inside it.
View this reel
View this reel
View this reel
The reel opens on the celebrity's actual interview clip, so the first frame belongs to one of the most recognisable faces on earth.
The title converts a celebrity moment into a skill you can use: say no, answer rude questions, recover from a blooper. The celebrity is the demonstration. Dorie is the authority doing the translation, and every reel includes a specific line that states her authority without apology.
Rude questions, saying no, job interviews, salary talk. Situations millions of people were in this week.
Between celebrity reels she runs "The 9 second trick to...", "The 30 second trick to...", "The 90 second trick to...". The format never changes. The content inside it always does, and the series now reliably does 20K to 256K.
One reel a day, with plenty of 10K to 35K misses between hits. She keeps posting anyway.
The compounding is the real prize. Before the breakouts, Dorie's ordinary reels did 10K to 30K. After 144K new followers arrived, the same ordinary formats do 60K to 130K. Outliers add followers and permanently raise the floor for everything posted afterwards.
Nat Berman: 292K on a baseline like yours
A structure anyone can use: a daily selfie-cam talking head with a big caption, and a baseline of 3K to 7K views. He grew to 292K followers on a handful of broad breakouts, and he pins every one of them.
Two breakouts, then the same format again this week, sitting at baseline. That third one is the whole strategy in one post: he runs the format daily, and every so often one of them jumps.
View this reel
View this reel
View this reel
His reels about habits, discipline and his first business do 3K to 7K. The breakouts step out into broad human psychology: net worth, jealousy, who fails.
A number, a "signs of", a "who statistically". Every breakout hook promises a reveal you can only get by watching to the end.
A comment keyword on every single post feeds a DM automation and a lead magnet.
His profile leads with his best converters, never his most recent posts.
Post daily, selfie cam, one big caption, a comment keyword on every post, pin your outliers, chase broad curiosity hooks. Two accounts, one playbook, both compounding.
One caution. Some of the comments say his content is lifted from other people. Copy his structure. Never copy anyone's ideas. Yours are the reason any of this works.
Two more, in one line each
Outlier at 2.3M: real microscope footage of a neuron rewiring, translated through her one lens. Borrowed footage plus a clear lens is her whole engine.
View this reel
Chris stopped me with one big question: "How much do you charge an hour?" Posted as shared content, it did many times the views of the reels around it on his grid, and it added about 3,000 followers to my account. One outlier, two audiences, exponential reach.
View this reel
What every outlier shares: the six traits
Across all of these accounts and the 2026 platform data, the breakouts share six traits. The outlier uses the same face, the same camera and the same length as the posts around it. The difference lives in the first three seconds and the packaging.
| Trait | What it means | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| 1 · Borrowed attention | The first second features something strangers already care about: a famous face, striking footage, a big number, a big question. | Julia Roberts 5.8M, neuron footage 2.3M, "How much do you charge an hour?" |
| 2 · A named audience | The first line tells a specific person this is for them. | Simon's title names its audience outright: "If you're in your 20s or 30s" |
| 3 · A concrete promise | "The 9 second trick to X" beats "thoughts on X". Payoff and price are clear before anyone commits. | Dorie's trick series: 20K to 256K sustained |
| 4 · Send-to-a-friend utility | It resolves a situation the viewer's friend is in this week, so it gets sent. Sends outrank likes several times over. | Simon's 200K+ shares grew the whole channel |
| 5 · A series wrapper | The post is an obvious episode of a franchise, so following makes sense. One-offs convert far worse. | Dorie's franchises, Nat's "Comment BETTER" close |
| 6 · Native, raw production | Selfie cameras and real footage beat studio polish. Branded title cards read as adverts. | Every account here, and podcast-clip layouts at 181 views in my own analysis |
Now find yours
Your niche has its own fast growers and its own breakout anatomy. The next tab finds them: your numbers first, then theirs, read by Claude straight from your browser.
Analyse your activity
Works for whichever platform you are building on. Claude runs in your browser: your numbers first, then the fast growers you choose. You end up with a report on exactly what works in your niche.
What you need
Claude with browser access. The Claude desktop app with the Claude in Chrome extension connected, so Claude can work inside your browser. Cowork with browser access does the same job.
Logged in. Be signed in to your platform in Chrome, so Claude can read your private insights and analytics, never just your public profile. The insights are where the real findings live.
An hour, roughly. Run the three prompts as three separate goes rather than one giant request. Claude is reading real posts and real numbers, and focused chunks produce sharper reports.
Pick your platform
One platform, the one where your audience already lives or the one you have decided to build on. Your choice fills the prompts below.
Fill this in once
This fills the prompts below and your skill file on the next tab.
Run the three prompts, in order
Prompt one reads you. Prompt two reads your fast growers. Prompt three turns everything into a report you keep.
Prompt 1 · Your baseline
What your account is doing now, and what your own data already proves.
Prompt 2 · The comparison set
The fast growers, studied one at a time: ones you named, ones Claude finds, or both. Their baseline, their outliers, and what the breakouts share.
Prompt 3 · The report
One HTML report: your numbers, their numbers, the anatomy of an outlier in your niche, five experiments designed for you, and the math to your goal.
Read it like it's your job
The analysis will be AI-generated. That was the easy part. The report only becomes valuable when you can say, in your own words, what creates outliers in your niche.
Read the full report once through, without skimming. Then write your five takeaways: what creates outliers in your niche, what your own data already proves, and which traits your posts miss. They go into your skill word for word.
One thing missing: your takeaways
The skill file below has a placeholder where your takeaways should be. Run the analysis on tab 3, read the report properly, and write your five takeaways there first. They are what makes this skill yours instead of a template.
Create the skill
The analysis is a snapshot. The skill is what you use every time you have an idea. Run /outlier and any idea comes back with specific guidance, scored against the anatomy of your niche. Your judgement stays in charge.
Build once. Use every time you have an idea.
The file below is already filled in with your details and your takeaways. Download it, install it, then run the customisation prompt in the same conversation as your analysis. Nothing to attach.
Run this in Claude after installing the skill, in the same conversation where you ran your analysis. It fills the evidence section from what Claude just found, checks every placeholder, and tests the skill on one idea.
- Have an idea →
- Run it through /outlier →
- Post →
- Log the numbers →
- Double down
How to use the skill
"/outlier I want to post about the day I fired my best client" recommends the exact hook, the opening visual, the beats, the ask, and a score against the six traits with a projection of baseline, solid, or potential outlier.
"/outlier why did Tuesday's post flop?" comes back as a diagnosis against the same anatomy: which trait it missed, and the rewrite.
"/outlier plan my next two weeks" maps your experiments onto a posting rhythm: what to post, which days, and why.
Build and ship
In build order. Once the skill is installed and the loop is running, this page has done its job.