Scan time: 2-3 minutes / Read time: 3-5 minutes
Howdy rebel ideapreneurs 🦸♂️🦸♀️
Anjali 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, money calm comes from small habits, not a big salary.
And her readers? People in their 30s who feel behind on saving.
They want one clear move, not another scary spreadsheet.
⛳️ Problem:
Anjali ships every Sunday, and she's been at it for four months.
Most issues land flat — a few opens, almost no replies. Ouch.
She picks each topic by guessing what feels useful that week.
Some issues do okay. Most just sink without a sound.
Her struggle: she keeps guessing what to write, instead of knowing what spreads.
🔥 The recipe
➡️ Study the outliers
Think about a cook who wants one dish everyone asks for.
She doesn't guess at random.
She finds the one dish that got cleaned off every plate last time.
Then she studies how it was built — the spice, the crunch, the surprise.
She makes the next dish that same way.
Turns out the smartest creators do the exact same thing.
Jimmy Donaldson — known as MrBeast — is the most-subscribed YouTuber in the world.
His company Beast Industries is valued around $5 billion.
His snack brand Feastables does roughly $250 million a year.
His move: he never guesses what will work.
He hunts down the "outlier" videos — the rare ones that hugely beat the rest.
Then he copies their shape, not their topic.
A shape is the hook, the build-up, and the payoff — the bones of the piece.
And get this — he tests tiny things, like brighter lighting in the first seconds.
Brighter open, fewer people click away.
He doesn't copy what's said. He copies what made people stay.
🚗 The steps
🔎 Step 1 — Find the outliers in your niche.
Picture a shelf of books where one is worn soft from rereading.
That worn one is telling you something the shiny ones aren't.
Find your worn one — the piece that beat the rest.
Look through your niche for posts that hugely overperformed.
Way more shares, replies, or saves than everything around them.
Anjali scrolled the top money newsletters and posts in her niche.
One post kept showing up everywhere — "5 money lies your parents taught you."
It had ten times the shares of anything near it.
🧬 Step 2 — Pull out the shape, not the topic.
Think about a hit song you can hum but can't quite place.
It's the rhythm that stuck, not the exact words.
The shape is what travels — copy that, not the lyrics.
Look at the winner and name its bones.
The hook that pulled you in, the build-up, the payoff at the end.
Anjali broke her winner down by hand.
The hook named a belief and called it wrong: "lies your parents taught you."
The build-up listed them one by one, each a small gasp.
This is the human call — only she can feel which bone did the work.
🧱 Step 3 — Build your next issue on that proven shape.
A baker who finds a winning crust uses it for a whole line of pies.
Same crust, new filling each time.
The shape carries; the topic is yours to swap.
Take the shape you pulled out, and pour your own topic into it.
Same hook style, same build, same payoff — fresh subject.
Anjali wrote "4 money lies your bank wants you to believe."
Same shape that won. Her topic, her readers, her voice.
She kept the bones and changed everything else.
That issue got 19 replies and 22 forwards — her best ever.
Three readers asked her to turn it into a series.
Now we're talking.
The prompt below pulls the shape from a proven winner and rebuilds it.
You just paste in a post that hugely overperformed in your niche.
🧸 Copy the shape that won + pour in your own topic = a piece built to spread.
🏄♀️ 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 as is, your AI sidekick will use the example values and will give 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.
One outlier found, not a topic guessed.
One winning shape pulled out by hand.
One issue built to travel before you hit send.
That's it, my fellow trailblazers!
Yours 'helping you build your own AI sidekick, that works and makes money while you sleep' Vijay Peduru 🦸♂️