Scan time: 2-3 minutes / Read time: 3-5 minutes
Hey there rebel ideapreneurs 🦸♂️🦸♀️
Leah writes a weekly newsletter about money habits for people in their 30s.
Each issue takes one money mistake and shows the simple fix.
To her, being good with money comes from small habits, not a big salary.
Leah's readers feel behind on their savings — they want one clear move, not a scary spreadsheet.
⛳️ Problem:
Leah ships every Sunday, and she's been at it for four months.
She picks each topic by guessing what feels useful that week.
Most issues land flat — a few opens, almost no replies, then silence. That stings.
Her struggle:
She guesses what to write each week, instead of knowing what semi-viral posts to write.
🔥 The recipe
➡️ The Outlier Method
Think of a cook who wants to find out the one dish everyone would love.
She doesn't guess at random — she finds the plate that got eaten cleanly without any leftovers last time.
Then she studies how it was built: the spice, the crunch, the surprise.
Funny thing is, that's exactly how MrBeast works.
Jimmy Donaldson — MrBeast — is the most-subscribed YouTuber alive, and his company is valued around $5 billion.
He never guesses what will work.
He hunts down the "outliers" — the rare videos that hugely beat all the rest.
Then he copies their shape, not their topic: the hook, the build-up, the payoff.
The shape is the part that does the work — how it grabs you, and how it keeps you to the end.
He obsesses over the first few seconds, testing what stops people clicking away.
He doesn't copy what a winner said. He copies what made people stay.
Plot twist: the topic barely matters — the shape is the magnet.
🚗 So Leah tried it her way.
Remember Leah and her money newsletter for people in their 30s?
She'd been guessing a topic each week, and most issues sank without a sound.
So she went hunting for an outlier instead.
She scrolled the top money newsletters and posts in her niche.
Turns out, one kept showing up everywhere — "5 money lies your parents taught you" — with ten times the shares.
So she pulled out its shape: name a belief, call it a lie, then reveal them one by one.
She poured her own topic into that same shape.
Her issue: "4 money lies your bank wants you to believe" — same bones, her subject.
That issue got nineteen replies and twenty-two forwards, her best ever.
Nailed it.
She stopped guessing what might spread, and built on a shape that already spread widely before.
🧸 Don't guess what spreads. Find the outlier, copy its shape, pour in your own topic.
The prompt below pulls the shape from a proven winner and rebuilds it with your topic.
You just paste in a post that hugely overperformed in your niche.
🏄♀️ The prompt
Save this prompt as a Skill or add to Project in your favorite AI tool — build once, use often.
Update your input values in the prompt, or just run it as is. Your AI sidekick will use the example values and give you an output.
CONTEXT:
- (use what's available, fall back to the inline values)
- If my Voice Profile exists, write in that voice. Otherwise, write in a clear, warm, no-jargon voice — first-person, plain words, no startup-speak.
- If my ICP / Audience doc exists, target that reader. Otherwise, use the audience below.
Inputs:
The outlier piece that hugely overperformed in my niche (paste the post, title, or a clear description):
{e.g. a post titled "5 money lies your parents taught you" that got 10x the shares of anything near it}
Why I think it won (my best guess at what made people share it):
{e.g. it named a belief people held and called it wrong, then listed each lie as a small surprise}
My own topic for the next issue (the subject I want to pour into that winning shape):
{e.g. money lies the banks want you to believe}
For Audience: {e.g. people in their 30s who feel behind on saving and want one clear money move}
For Outcome: {e.g. a draft of my next newsletter issue built on the proven shape, ready to edit}
Outputs:
1. The shape, named — the hook style, the build-up, and the payoff of the outlier, in plain words.
2. What to copy vs. what to drop — which bones made it spread, and which details were just topic.
3. My next issue, rebuilt — the same proven shape with MY topic poured in, as a full draft.
4. The hook line — three versions of the opening line, each in the winning shape.
Then flag the one moment in the draft most likely to make a reader hit forward.
That's it, my fellow renegades!
Yours 'helping you build an AI sidekick that works and makes money while you enjoy life' Vijay Peduru 🦸♂️