Cut30 · private archive

Cohort 24, week 3. Guest session recorded 19 August 2026.

Anushka on brand breakdowns: 100K followers in two months, then a system

Anushka Chhikara (@anushcache), in conversation with the Cut30 coaches

The one idea

Go one step up from what you sell.

More context

Anushka doesn’t make videos about her services; she breaks down the brands, campaigns and internet moments in her category and lets the take carry the expertise. Alex made the same point with numbers: his niche ‘landing pages that convert’ video did 3,300 views, the same idea reworked around True Classic’s $3K-to-$150M story did nearly 5,000, and broadening it again into ‘True Classic’s $150M marketing playbook’ (no view count given on the call) was the version that finally cast a wide enough net, because each pass positioned the topic for a wider addressable market. A clinic, an orchestra or an agency talking about its own offer is bottom-of-funnel by default. Talking about the brands around it is how the same expertise reaches people who don’t follow yet. Anushka Chhikara took Cut30 a year and a half ago, quit her job, and committed to a video a day. Her first one, a customer complaint about Indian athleisure brands, did a million views in six days; she hit 100K followers in two months and is at 229K now. The content is brand breakdowns and Indian internet culture, plus a set of series she can run on low-energy weeks and is now selling to brands like Audible. Below: how she picks subjects, hooks a list, records in the window, survives flops, and what we could try with it on our roster.

It’s about me talking about things, not the thing that I talk about. That’s what I wanted to feel like, that it gets to a place where people are like, I could listen to her talk about anything.
Anushka

What this means for our clients

Read against the current client list. Check the dates before acting on one.

Marmur Medicalthis weekPut a brand-breakdown lane into the carousels workstream
  • Ellen or a practitioner breaks down a consumer skincare brand’s history and claims in 7–8 slides, take at the end; the Raw Clip Index (~940 rows) is the archive, so the pictures already exist
  • Neutral and positive breakdowns first (Anushka’s own rule after the negative ones ripped); disclose MM Skincare wherever a comparison touches it
  • Same fixed first line every edition so it reads as a series across the nine monitored accounts

A live retainer with a carousel workstream already open (three carousels queued for design) and nine IG accounts on the monitor. The format slots into work we are already doing.

Vos Collection / MSPnew offerMake the ‘timed news piece’ a monthly compilation
  • Deck 1 Part 3 still carries an unconfirmed ‘one timed news piece a month’; a What-The-Hell-Sure-style roundup of what happened in aesthetics this month is the cheap way to honour it
  • Craziest item first, the clinic’s offer as the last item rather than the subject (her Audible logic)
  • Run each edition as a trial reel and promote to the main feed on performance, the way she took a sick-day story video to 400K

The Comments Show proves Vos will sustain a weekly series; a monthly roundup adds top-of-funnel reach without new shoot days.

TSOnew offerGive Allan’s in-house team two archive formats, and quote the edit
  • Origin-story and lore carousels from the TSO archive (this week’s Cut30 homework format): a piece’s history in the hall, then what’s coming
  • ‘Six things to know before’ curation carousels per programme; bookmarkable, and text-over-image needs no design software
  • Bank talking-head bites at the Oct 2/3 Gustavo shoot so the carousels have a face; fold the ongoing edit into the editing scope Tat asked JI to price

TSO makes 85% of its content in-house and Tat has asked what an ongoing JI editor would cost. Formats their team can run, with JI on the edit, is the shape that sells.

Juniper Islandthis weekRun our own brand-breakdown series: the Canadian brands cracking organic
  • One step up from ‘hire us’: break down a Canadian brand’s organic playbook, history first, our take last, from the JI account
  • Anushka’s lens logic: nobody in the US creator economy will cover Canadian brands; we can cover both
  • Non-client brands and public numbers only; client data stays out of it

The JI account already ships Cut30 homework and the brand refresh is in flight; a series that shows the expertise beats another reel about our services.

A clinic can’t be the angry customer

Anushka’s first hit was a consumer trashing athleisure brands, and she found negative breakdowns perform best. A regulated practice breaking down a competitor invites claims disputes, defamation exposure and college advertising-rule trouble. For Marmur and Vos: histories and neutral or positive breakdowns, categories rather than named competitors when critical, and disclosure wherever MM Skincare or a Vos treatment is in the frame.

Low resistance is for capture, not the deliverable

Lying in bed with a bag mic works when your face is the brand and the audience already trusts you. For an orchestra or a B2B account the rule applies to getting talent to record in the window (mic in the bag, phone, two minutes) while JI keeps the edit, and the trial reel stays the gate before anything reaches the main feed.

The tactics

Ship the ugly first take

Her first video was a customer complaint she almost didn’t post. A million views in six days.

She had bought Indian athleisure with a beautiful Instagram and threads coming apart, written to the founders, and been told that’s just how it is. So she made a video as an ordinary customer: a cool Instagram can’t make a bad product good. Choppy edit, uncomfortable on camera, and she posted anyway because she had already decided on a video a day. The position that carried it: she spoke as the consumer, not the marketer, and that is a seat anyone who buys things can take.

Anushka, in the session

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Oren: um tell us tell us a little bit about yourself and your content journey as a starting point

Anushka: yeah totally i mean i think first of all like i was just writing this down for something else like I think the biggest privilege I've had is that I've had like tech and internet access since I was like eight years old. And I was just looking back at it, like my brother and I used to make vlogs. Like back in the day, we watched like Cribs on MTV. And we're like, what if we make like a episode of our own apartment? And I think like, because of that, as I kind of grew up as a teenager, I watched a lot of YouTubers, like I watched kind of just wondered, like, how do they make money, like just making videos online before I even understood how ads work. And so it seems kind of inevitable that eventually I figured out how to make a career on the internet. Even like in college, like I was like, why would I get into like, working for newspapers or like TV, like news, because I don't read a newspaper in the morning, but I do scroll my phone in the morning. So yeah, always just kind of attracted towards the internet. I think a year and a half ago when I did my cut 30 cohort I was just at a place in my life where I was like I just need to lock in right like you always wanted to be like a youtuber or like an influencer or whatever uh before that I'd like I have a business journalism background so I'd done a podcast for like a publication here um I'd done a couple of like you know walks pop reel series for another startup in Bangalore just done a lot of like internet projects like I'd even had like a cartoon page that blew up but then didn't really get me a lot of followers and I think yeah I just got to this place where I was like okay when are you gonna lock in and really make this happen and I was also quitting a job at the time so I had a little bit of that paranoia of like okay I need to make something happen and yeah like I'd set myself a goal which was try making a video like I was anyway gonna take a break from finding a new job for two three months so I said yeah like I'm just gonna try making a video every single day like show up to my brother's office sit for like eight hours research not hesitate to turn the camera on and just edit it on my phone and luckily yeah I mean like that started when I started cut 30 luckily my first video itself blew up it was me like it was a tweet had already made like kind of criticizing indian athleisure brand specifically because i just had an experience over the last couple of months where i love the way like a brand's instagram looks all their like um reviews and stuff but then once you actually get the product the threads are coming apart you can't actually work out in them and i'd even reached out to a bunch of like the founders of the teams being like hey i'm not happy with this product and they essentially got to a place where they're like that's just how it is right like this is before my page had blown up so I was just an average customer so I made a video just being like you know you can't make a bad product a good product by having a cool Instagram maybe you can make a good product a great product and yeah like I did not want to post that video like I thought it looked really bad like my editing was really choppy like even I wasn't very comfortable on camera but I was just like I just have to post it right like it's not like it's okay if it's embarrassing and it sucks and that video blew up like it got like a million views in the first six days I would say and I was already I'd already decided like I'm gonna be posting a video almost every day if I could so I just kind of rode that wave like I mean it was super validating it made it easier to make a video every day because I was like wow I'm getting all this attention for it and yeah like I just pretty much made about three or four video reels a week and I hit my like first 100k followers in the first two months which was quite crazy and then after that I was like okay cool like I need to kind of figure out what the system for this is because I'm not like I can't dedicate like 12 hours of my day just making content or I can't just make content when I'm feeling great about like the comments I'm getting or the validation I'm getting online. So yeah, like I've been doing it for a year and a half since then and just kind of focusing on what does it look like to be a full-time content creator, like as a job and a system.

Oren: Amazing. Thank you for the rundown. Yeah. After that, I love like the natural story of that, right? Where you're like, Hey, I had the experience I was going through. I wanted to like bring it out and tell it, tell it online. It resonated well. What kind of content started working for you after that? What were some of your first other wins?

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Start from an archive, not a blank page

Her brother’s BX Museum had the images already; she picked seven or eight and found the story.

Sitting down daily to make something, she needed a supply of subjects. BX Museum, her brother’s archive of Indian brand artifacts (packaging, posters, old ads), meant the pictures existed before the idea did. The format that came out of it: a chronological brand history, two or three campaigns worth seeing, then her take (this brand deserves a comeback; nostalgia campaigns should reference this). She never labelled it a series; it became one. Her packaging test comes from business journalism: would a viewer be able to repeat this at a party and sound smart? If not, say it differently.

Anushka, in the session

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Oren: Amazing. Thank you for the rundown. Yeah. After that, I love like the natural story of that, right? Where you're like, Hey, I had the experience I was going through. I wanted to like bring it out and tell it, tell it online. It resonated well. What kind of content started working for you after that? What were some of your first other wins?

Anushka: Yeah. So, um, I think one for me, given my business journalism background, I was a little bit like had this skill of just explaining really like boring or jargon concepts like to my friends. Right. Uh, so I was like, okay, that's, I'm gonna take like smart topics or like you know topics usually written about and turn them into video uh and at the time I also like uh my brother was working on this project which was called BX Museum so he was taking a bunch of like old Indian like legacy Indian companies or cool new Indian like companies and brands and making an archive of their like brand assets so like packaging or like merch they released and like posters like if there were physical posters for older brands and like online ads they did and stuff like that and so I was because my thing was just I'm just going to sit every day and try to make a video what do I make a video on and I was like okay this makes it easier because I almost have my pictures already like on this page I need to pick maybe like seven to eight of them and then figure out what the story is so that was kind of like I didn't label that explicitly as a series but I was just like okay like you know before India like when India was a socialist country like before the 90s there was a watch brand that was run by the government right and they have like these really cool like posters and ads and like designs from back in the day and I was just like okay cool I'm just gonna be like you know like they've kind of had a downfall since like India became like a capitalist society so I was like okay nobody really you know knows what this brand is but look at how swagful these like old vintage ads are and like this is why we should know about them so I started with a lot of these like brand breakdowns almost or like brand histories of old brands using tons of pictures and just kind of putting a chronological story together like this is how they started these are a couple of cool campaigns they did this is why like and then kind of getting my take in a little of being like I think this brand should have a comeback or I think like you know we should reference this more in our nostalgia like you know kind of campaigns that brands do and yeah I think like interestingly enough like I didn't plan on making like brand or marketing content because I actually don't have any background in like the advertising industry it was more you know I just think like we interact with businesses and literally every single action of ours in a day and we don't realize like how bombarded we are with brand messaging so I think everyone should have an opinion or have an idea of how they interact with brands and what they like and don't like so I was kind of that's kind of the pov that i bring my content with this kind of mirroring or voicing out the consumer pov of what's happening and i think also like once i started making videos i realized the negative ones obviously work the best but personally like i didn't love that like i didn't want to just make negative content so i was like okay like let me start talking about like indian brands i really like or like people I think are doing a really great job and also like my angle with all of these was like I don't want to talk about American media I want to build like a an Indian audience with like Indian content so what's happening on the Indian internet or what are like Indian brands doing or what's happening in business and only talk about that because I also just feel like yeah like we all consume a lot of American media, but the Americans are not going to talk about what's happening in India, right? Indians can talk about what's happening in America. So that's my kind of opportunity, like window of opportunity. And yeah, I think it's worked out really well so far.

Oren: Yeah. And I think a couple of things I want to call out is that this is a frequent through line and people that do really well in this, in Cut30 and out there is they do very similar to what you started with. So for everyone out there, like we've had a lot of people, whether it was the horse creator I mentioned before, the travel, hospitality, people that just do breakdowns of things in their niche, right? Of just like, hey, whether it's brands, whether it's events that happened, whether it's things or products like they enjoy, they'll kind of give their history and then their opinion. And what that does is it shows you to your niche, right? And it begins to establish you as someone that has an interesting take or point of view. And that kind of content goes really well and is a great anchor. And I think that a lot of people think too small, but be like, okay, hey, I'm just thinking about like, I sell this particular service. I do web design, I do Google ads, or I do this kind of thing, or I do construction, I do whatever. But going that one step up of like, hey, let me talk about this housing company or this siding or this, you know, like this, this trend that happened or this brand that was inside that category. And then showing a bit of your expertise is a really, a really good way to look at it. And I'm curious, how has your content kind of evolved from there? Because I know now, like over time, obviously you're back in here. What's worked? What hasn't? What have you kind noticed from there

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Claim a lens nobody else will cover

Indian brands and the Indian internet, for an Indian audience. The Americans won’t cover it; she can cover both.

She decided early not to talk about American media. Everyone consumes it, and the US creator economy will never explain what is happening in India, while an Indian creator can talk about both. Colin’s read at the close: this is what ‘be the niche’ means in practice, a lens flexible enough to hold brand histories, Twitter fights, tier lists and the book she just read. She also chose, after noticing negative videos performed best, to keep making positive ones about brands she likes, because she didn’t want a page built on takedowns.

Anushka, in the session

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Oren: Amazing. Thank you for the rundown. Yeah. After that, I love like the natural story of that, right? Where you're like, Hey, I had the experience I was going through. I wanted to like bring it out and tell it, tell it online. It resonated well. What kind of content started working for you after that? What were some of your first other wins?

Anushka: Yeah. So, um, I think one for me, given my business journalism background, I was a little bit like had this skill of just explaining really like boring or jargon concepts like to my friends. Right. Uh, so I was like, okay, that's, I'm gonna take like smart topics or like you know topics usually written about and turn them into video uh and at the time I also like uh my brother was working on this project which was called BX Museum so he was taking a bunch of like old Indian like legacy Indian companies or cool new Indian like companies and brands and making an archive of their like brand assets so like packaging or like merch they released and like posters like if there were physical posters for older brands and like online ads they did and stuff like that and so I was because my thing was just I'm just going to sit every day and try to make a video what do I make a video on and I was like okay this makes it easier because I almost have my pictures already like on this page I need to pick maybe like seven to eight of them and then figure out what the story is so that was kind of like I didn't label that explicitly as a series but I was just like okay like you know before India like when India was a socialist country like before the 90s there was a watch brand that was run by the government right and they have like these really cool like posters and ads and like designs from back in the day and I was just like okay cool I'm just gonna be like you know like they've kind of had a downfall since like India became like a capitalist society so I was like okay nobody really you know knows what this brand is but look at how swagful these like old vintage ads are and like this is why we should know about them so I started with a lot of these like brand breakdowns almost or like brand histories of old brands using tons of pictures and just kind of putting a chronological story together like this is how they started these are a couple of cool campaigns they did this is why like and then kind of getting my take in a little of being like I think this brand should have a comeback or I think like you know we should reference this more in our nostalgia like you know kind of campaigns that brands do and yeah I think like interestingly enough like I didn't plan on making like brand or marketing content because I actually don't have any background in like the advertising industry it was more you know I just think like we interact with businesses and literally every single action of ours in a day and we don't realize like how bombarded we are with brand messaging so I think everyone should have an opinion or have an idea of how they interact with brands and what they like and don't like so I was kind of that's kind of the pov that i bring my content with this kind of mirroring or voicing out the consumer pov of what's happening and i think also like once i started making videos i realized the negative ones obviously work the best but personally like i didn't love that like i didn't want to just make negative content so i was like okay like let me start talking about like indian brands i really like or like people I think are doing a really great job and also like my angle with all of these was like I don't want to talk about American media I want to build like a an Indian audience with like Indian content so what's happening on the Indian internet or what are like Indian brands doing or what's happening in business and only talk about that because I also just feel like yeah like we all consume a lot of American media, but the Americans are not going to talk about what's happening in India, right? Indians can talk about what's happening in America. So that's my kind of opportunity, like window of opportunity. And yeah, I think it's worked out really well so far.

Oren: Yeah. And I think a couple of things I want to call out is that this is a frequent through line and people that do really well in this, in Cut30 and out there is they do very similar to what you started with. So for everyone out there, like we've had a lot of people, whether it was the horse creator I mentioned before, the travel, hospitality, people that just do breakdowns of things in their niche, right? Of just like, hey, whether it's brands, whether it's events that happened, whether it's things or products like they enjoy, they'll kind of give their history and then their opinion. And what that does is it shows you to your niche, right? And it begins to establish you as someone that has an interesting take or point of view. And that kind of content goes really well and is a great anchor. And I think that a lot of people think too small, but be like, okay, hey, I'm just thinking about like, I sell this particular service. I do web design, I do Google ads, or I do this kind of thing, or I do construction, I do whatever. But going that one step up of like, hey, let me talk about this housing company or this siding or this, you know, like this, this trend that happened or this brand that was inside that category. And then showing a bit of your expertise is a really, a really good way to look at it. And I'm curious, how has your content kind of evolved from there? Because I know now, like over time, obviously you're back in here. What's worked? What hasn't? What have you kind noticed from there

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Be the person, not the topic

A friend who did strategy at Apple told her: build the personal brand now or fade out as ‘brand video girl.’

The warning came a few weeks into blowing up and reset the goal from being the place you go for a fact to being someone people will listen to on anything. In practice that meant testing the range: a video on the book she just read, founder fights on Indian tech Twitter, personal stories. The bio version is ‘brand, business and internet culture commentary’; the honest version is ‘I just talk about things.’ The commercial payoff she names: a personality creator can work with a fashion brand and with Audible, Google or OpenAI, while a utility account is boxed into one category.

Anushka, in the session

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Oren: there's a lot there I think there's something uh it's important for everybody to remember like energy you have like in that moment when you have the idea uh and I think that's a good time to how are you in general like uh sourcing or generating ideas right now you you have stuff that comes to you and you just let it fly um do you have other techniques do you have series you're running right now I haven't watched a ton of your videos recently tell us about that

Anushka: yeah so I think like naturally eventually I've run out of things to talk about as much like I don't have so many like things in the backlog that I'm like I've been wanting to talk about this uh so I think what's helped recently like it wasn't something I was very specifically looking to do but I ended up creating a couple of series so uh one and and that really helps like on a week where I'm like I don't really know what to post or I'm not really feeling the energy like again this is like a job right so even when I don't feel like it I do have to show up like some weeks I'm like okay I'm gonna rely on this series because it's like 50% of the work is already done the format is already fixed I just need to find things to fit into it so yeah like right now I have a series called Indian internet bangers which is just cool accounts on the Indian internet that I like right now and what they're doing so they could be like some comedy thing it could be like like one of the things in my list right now is like this guy made like a list of like five top make out spots in Goa which is like you know like city like on the coast and I was like what the fuck okay so I was like okay cool that's going into my list right so that it's also easier for me because I'm actually like scrolling and consuming this content so it I don't have to put in as much of an effort uh another series i have which was so random and accidental is called what the hell sure which is uh just me being like things i saw on the internet this week that made me go what the hell sure and there's this like meme of this woman just looking at this camera being like what the hell sure right and it's so hard to explain because whenever that reel like those reels blow up people are like i don't get it she's just saying things and then saying what the hell sure and i'm like yeah i don't know i don't get it either so that's just kind of a compilation of like crazy things i saw online right so like something like this guy with the five top make out spots like that could go in a what the hell sure as well another like i'm actually working on um a what the hell sure video right now that i'll probably publish today which has you know um this one state in india is producing matcha tea which i felt like is a what the hell sure thing because I thought matcha is just Japanese right then I get a little bit into like the business of it just give two three like quick facts about it the other one is like the make out spots in Goa another one is like this video game I found of like some like this really famous Indian actress from like 2009 that nobody knows about and this what the hell sure I've also like turned it into like something I pitched to brands so this video I'm posting today is going to be a collab with audible and basically like i'm just like hey like you know if i sit and make a brand video being like this is what this brand is doing or this is what their offering is doing nobody's really gonna watch it but if i make a compilation of like four five interesting like things that happen on the internet pieces and then just slip your thing in somewhere in there it's gonna work so yeah like the last piece in my what the hell short video that's going up today is like talking about greek mythology and something that like something from the new nolan's or or this check out this audiobook on audible they have an offer done so that makes it easier for me to also pitch to brands because i'm just like you know this is a concept that works and another series that i've recently started is a tier list so um i know it's like a super popular format and i'd never done it before but I just thought it would be really funny if I did like tier lists of things that people are like why is she making a tier list of it right um I had a tier list of like things you can get at the local dairy like each state in India has like a different local dairy so I was like you know like when people make like things you can buy kind of videos they do it for cool sexy brands but what if I'm like yeah like I love like this tier of milk and that tier of milk and I love when they do like this shake or this ice cream or whatever and that blew up so I was like okay like this can be a cool series except everything I put in my tier list has to be really funny and wacky it can't be like an actual sincere tier list because anybody else could do that so I think that also helps me exercise a bit of more of my comedy muscle because again as I keep making videos I keep coming back to this thing of like it's about me talking about things not the thing that I talk about like that's what I wanted to feel like that it gets to a place where people are like I could listen to her talk about anything like that's how I know like that helps me kind of also make my videos because I'm like I don't have to box myself into a niche I'm kind of trying to be like a personality influencer rather than just like utility of just like yeah I go to her when I want like this fact or that fact yeah and that also helps me like in terms of like brands that I work with because I don't have to only like I can work with like a fashion or beauty brand but I also can work with like an audible or like a google or an open ai or whatever right um so yeah like like those are my series so far um but yeah I'm still looking to kind of like expand what series I do but then also like all these series are very bottom up like I didn't decide like okay I'm gonna do this series and this is going to be a thing. I'm like, I made a video, it worked. And I'm like, can I repeat this again in a different way? And after like four or five times of me doing it, I'm like, okay, well, this is a series now.

Oren: Bottoms up is an interesting way to describe it. It's both that as well as, right? Your what the hell one is like, okay, I see random things and I like talking about them. How can I like give myself a vehicle to do that in a structured way? You're kind of like making use of something that's already happening in your head.

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Record in the window, on the couch if you have to

The concert-story video she shot under a blanket did 400K. Waiting for the setup would have killed it.

She found a kid selling $1 concert-story tags from fake accounts, DMed him, bought one, and was still on the couch buzzing about it when she realised the excitement would be gone by morning. So she plugged in the mic she keeps in her bag and recorded there. It worked because the idea was strong and nobody else had actually done the thing, only talked about it (Colin calls that quest content). Her kit follows the same rule: iPhone 16 front camera, a DJI Mic Mini in a zip pocket, a clip-on panel light, a big window when possible, edit on the phone. A YouTube project with an agency crew that took ninety minutes to set up never got off the ground.

Anushka, in the session

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Colin: also i just want to add to that i see like you have a pretty recent that's like very raw like you're literally like laying in bed and it ripped it's like 400k views i'd love to have you talk through that as well

Anushka: yeah yeah i think yeah firstly like after i made a couple of videos like a couple of weeks and like blowing up and stuff uh some a friend of mine who used to do like strategy for apple as well like had reached out to me and was like hey like I want to tell you that you really should build your personal brand now that you're kind of blowing up instead of just being fun fact or like brand video girl because it's very easy for you to kind of like blow up and then fade out right and I think that that's when I kind of realized where I was like okay how do I think about this because like virality is so ephemeral so for me like just mentally I was like you know I want to be like I want to be the person that people come to and be like I just hear her talking about things not like I want to hear like you know about a brand big dollar like a marketing video so I was like I think like I can talk about pretty much anything right and I was just pulling personal references because I think if you're sitting every day and trying to make a video there's only so much you can like kind of polish yourself to be like okay this is the smart thing to talk about or this is like you know everyone's gonna think I'm so cool for talking about this so I was like okay like I understand how to kind of make a hook how to put a story together so can I make a video on the book that I just read right now and that's maybe that works as a content style or can I talk about something that's happening on the internet like I made a couple of videos of just like oh yeah these are like fights like very local fights that are happening on like you know Indian tech Twitter or like brand founder startup like you know Twitter um so yeah like I think it started ended up being like internet culture things happening on the internet my content that I consumed um just personal stories as well and yeah like the stuff that like that's me in bed right so the first time I did that was I was lying on my couch uh and just like with my blanket and I was like I was looking at this uh I came across this page where basically like some Indian kid uh made this page where like if you pay him like a dollar he will put up a story at a concert like any like concert that's happening in India right now and tag you in it so that it looks like you're going for all these cool concerts and like technically like you could also just put up any video but then he that guy like has like a bunch of like fake accounts right with like hot girls and like dudes pictures and so it looks like it's also like a social proof thing and I saw someone tweet about being like wow like where have we come as a society kind of thing and I was like wait that's so cool what if I message that guy right now I messaged him he immediately replied and he's like yeah here's like my payment link like if here are my packages and you want a girl's account you want a guy's account here's like which city do you want to post from like these are the upcoming concerts and I was like okay cool like you know and I like did it for my personal account and he was also like yeah like do you want like a cafe story like do you want like a date night story at like a cool restaurant and stuff like that right so I I'm like just chilling on the couch and feeling so excited by all of this and I'm like okay like you know when I sit down tomorrow like in front of my setup properly let me film this but then I was just like I know I'm not gonna do that like I know the excitement's gonna go away and I'm not gonna like you know touch this I'm gonna overthink it so I was like fuck it if I'm not gonna do it anyway let me just lie on the couch right now and do it my only thing like is that most like 99% of the time i do use a mic so i just keep it in my bag with me all the time so i was like i'm just connecting my mic i'm just recording myself i just find this interesting so i did this is what's like i saw this thing i messaged him this is how it worked and like he posted this and like none of my friends really cared about it personally but also like here's my take on it like there's like a simulacra thing of like you know people don't even want to really experience things but they show that they want to experience it like what level of internet is this and that video blew up and I was just like oh okay so like sometimes I can just be lying in bed and make a video and it doesn't matter right like if the idea is interesting enough and also like I'd seen a couple of people talk about that page but nobody had actually messaged him and gotten a story up and I was like people just want to know how does it work right so yeah like since then I've kind of been like okay cool like you can just do like a in bed or you're in your cab or whatever kind of video this latest one that's on my page I'd actually put that as a trial reel because I was like this is not like it's just it was just this meme that was happening on the Indian internet that just became like a funny audio and I was just lying in bed I was actually sick for a few days and I just recorded myself put it on my story and then I was like I can just stitch it together and put it as a trial reel and once it blew up on my trial release I got like 400k I was like okay let me just publish this to my main feed because even though it's like not my brand or it's not very well lit or it's just like a joke right like it's not me really breaking anything down a view is the view so it looks nice that I have like a 400k video on my feed yeah

Oren: there's a lot there I think there's something uh it's important for everybody to remember like energy you have like in that moment when you have the idea uh and I think that's a good time to how are you in general like uh sourcing or generating ideas right now you you have stuff that comes to you and you just let it fly um do you have other techniques do you have series you're running right now I haven't watched a ton of your videos recently tell us about that

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A series is half the work already done

Fixed first line, fixed format; the list itself is the hook when it’s absurd enough.

When she ran out of backlog, three series appeared bottom-up: Indian Internet Bangers (accounts she likes this week), What The Hell Sure (things online that made her say it, craziest item first) and tier lists that only work if the subject is ridiculous (local dairy brands, forbidden smells). None was planned; each was a video that worked, repeated four or five times until it was a series. Every one opens with the same line (‘ranking ___ in a tier list,’ ‘things I saw online this week that made me go…’) and leads with the wackiest item. On a week with no energy she leans on a series because the format is decided and she only has to fill it.

Anushka, in the session

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Oren: there's a lot there I think there's something uh it's important for everybody to remember like energy you have like in that moment when you have the idea uh and I think that's a good time to how are you in general like uh sourcing or generating ideas right now you you have stuff that comes to you and you just let it fly um do you have other techniques do you have series you're running right now I haven't watched a ton of your videos recently tell us about that

Anushka: yeah so I think like naturally eventually I've run out of things to talk about as much like I don't have so many like things in the backlog that I'm like I've been wanting to talk about this uh so I think what's helped recently like it wasn't something I was very specifically looking to do but I ended up creating a couple of series so uh one and and that really helps like on a week where I'm like I don't really know what to post or I'm not really feeling the energy like again this is like a job right so even when I don't feel like it I do have to show up like some weeks I'm like okay I'm gonna rely on this series because it's like 50% of the work is already done the format is already fixed I just need to find things to fit into it so yeah like right now I have a series called Indian internet bangers which is just cool accounts on the Indian internet that I like right now and what they're doing so they could be like some comedy thing it could be like like one of the things in my list right now is like this guy made like a list of like five top make out spots in Goa which is like you know like city like on the coast and I was like what the fuck okay so I was like okay cool that's going into my list right so that it's also easier for me because I'm actually like scrolling and consuming this content so it I don't have to put in as much of an effort uh another series i have which was so random and accidental is called what the hell sure which is uh just me being like things i saw on the internet this week that made me go what the hell sure and there's this like meme of this woman just looking at this camera being like what the hell sure right and it's so hard to explain because whenever that reel like those reels blow up people are like i don't get it she's just saying things and then saying what the hell sure and i'm like yeah i don't know i don't get it either so that's just kind of a compilation of like crazy things i saw online right so like something like this guy with the five top make out spots like that could go in a what the hell sure as well another like i'm actually working on um a what the hell sure video right now that i'll probably publish today which has you know um this one state in india is producing matcha tea which i felt like is a what the hell sure thing because I thought matcha is just Japanese right then I get a little bit into like the business of it just give two three like quick facts about it the other one is like the make out spots in Goa another one is like this video game I found of like some like this really famous Indian actress from like 2009 that nobody knows about and this what the hell sure I've also like turned it into like something I pitched to brands so this video I'm posting today is going to be a collab with audible and basically like i'm just like hey like you know if i sit and make a brand video being like this is what this brand is doing or this is what their offering is doing nobody's really gonna watch it but if i make a compilation of like four five interesting like things that happen on the internet pieces and then just slip your thing in somewhere in there it's gonna work so yeah like the last piece in my what the hell short video that's going up today is like talking about greek mythology and something that like something from the new nolan's or or this check out this audiobook on audible they have an offer done so that makes it easier for me to also pitch to brands because i'm just like you know this is a concept that works and another series that i've recently started is a tier list so um i know it's like a super popular format and i'd never done it before but I just thought it would be really funny if I did like tier lists of things that people are like why is she making a tier list of it right um I had a tier list of like things you can get at the local dairy like each state in India has like a different local dairy so I was like you know like when people make like things you can buy kind of videos they do it for cool sexy brands but what if I'm like yeah like I love like this tier of milk and that tier of milk and I love when they do like this shake or this ice cream or whatever and that blew up so I was like okay like this can be a cool series except everything I put in my tier list has to be really funny and wacky it can't be like an actual sincere tier list because anybody else could do that so I think that also helps me exercise a bit of more of my comedy muscle because again as I keep making videos I keep coming back to this thing of like it's about me talking about things not the thing that I talk about like that's what I wanted to feel like that it gets to a place where people are like I could listen to her talk about anything like that's how I know like that helps me kind of also make my videos because I'm like I don't have to box myself into a niche I'm kind of trying to be like a personality influencer rather than just like utility of just like yeah I go to her when I want like this fact or that fact yeah and that also helps me like in terms of like brands that I work with because I don't have to only like I can work with like a fashion or beauty brand but I also can work with like an audible or like a google or an open ai or whatever right um so yeah like like those are my series so far um but yeah I'm still looking to kind of like expand what series I do but then also like all these series are very bottom up like I didn't decide like okay I'm gonna do this series and this is going to be a thing. I'm like, I made a video, it worked. And I'm like, can I repeat this again in a different way? And after like four or five times of me doing it, I'm like, okay, well, this is a series now.

Oren: Bottoms up is an interesting way to describe it. It's both that as well as, right? Your what the hell one is like, okay, I see random things and I like talking about them. How can I like give myself a vehicle to do that in a structured way? You're kind of like making use of something that's already happening in your head.

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Sell the compilation, slip the brand in

Nobody watches a brand video. Four wild items with the sponsor as the fifth gets watched. Audible bought it.

She pitches What The Hell Sure to brands as the vehicle: a compilation of genuinely interesting internet pieces with the client’s thing placed in the run, instead of a standalone video about the offer. The Audible edition she described posting that day (an Indian state producing matcha, make-out spots in Goa, a forgotten 2009 actress video game, then Greek mythology into an audiobook offer) was at 150K views the next morning, per her own #content-wins post in Slack. The pitch repeats because the concept has a track record before the brand is attached.

Anushka, in the session

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Oren: there's a lot there I think there's something uh it's important for everybody to remember like energy you have like in that moment when you have the idea uh and I think that's a good time to how are you in general like uh sourcing or generating ideas right now you you have stuff that comes to you and you just let it fly um do you have other techniques do you have series you're running right now I haven't watched a ton of your videos recently tell us about that

Anushka: yeah so I think like naturally eventually I've run out of things to talk about as much like I don't have so many like things in the backlog that I'm like I've been wanting to talk about this uh so I think what's helped recently like it wasn't something I was very specifically looking to do but I ended up creating a couple of series so uh one and and that really helps like on a week where I'm like I don't really know what to post or I'm not really feeling the energy like again this is like a job right so even when I don't feel like it I do have to show up like some weeks I'm like okay I'm gonna rely on this series because it's like 50% of the work is already done the format is already fixed I just need to find things to fit into it so yeah like right now I have a series called Indian internet bangers which is just cool accounts on the Indian internet that I like right now and what they're doing so they could be like some comedy thing it could be like like one of the things in my list right now is like this guy made like a list of like five top make out spots in Goa which is like you know like city like on the coast and I was like what the fuck okay so I was like okay cool that's going into my list right so that it's also easier for me because I'm actually like scrolling and consuming this content so it I don't have to put in as much of an effort uh another series i have which was so random and accidental is called what the hell sure which is uh just me being like things i saw on the internet this week that made me go what the hell sure and there's this like meme of this woman just looking at this camera being like what the hell sure right and it's so hard to explain because whenever that reel like those reels blow up people are like i don't get it she's just saying things and then saying what the hell sure and i'm like yeah i don't know i don't get it either so that's just kind of a compilation of like crazy things i saw online right so like something like this guy with the five top make out spots like that could go in a what the hell sure as well another like i'm actually working on um a what the hell sure video right now that i'll probably publish today which has you know um this one state in india is producing matcha tea which i felt like is a what the hell sure thing because I thought matcha is just Japanese right then I get a little bit into like the business of it just give two three like quick facts about it the other one is like the make out spots in Goa another one is like this video game I found of like some like this really famous Indian actress from like 2009 that nobody knows about and this what the hell sure I've also like turned it into like something I pitched to brands so this video I'm posting today is going to be a collab with audible and basically like i'm just like hey like you know if i sit and make a brand video being like this is what this brand is doing or this is what their offering is doing nobody's really gonna watch it but if i make a compilation of like four five interesting like things that happen on the internet pieces and then just slip your thing in somewhere in there it's gonna work so yeah like the last piece in my what the hell short video that's going up today is like talking about greek mythology and something that like something from the new nolan's or or this check out this audiobook on audible they have an offer done so that makes it easier for me to also pitch to brands because i'm just like you know this is a concept that works and another series that i've recently started is a tier list so um i know it's like a super popular format and i'd never done it before but I just thought it would be really funny if I did like tier lists of things that people are like why is she making a tier list of it right um I had a tier list of like things you can get at the local dairy like each state in India has like a different local dairy so I was like you know like when people make like things you can buy kind of videos they do it for cool sexy brands but what if I'm like yeah like I love like this tier of milk and that tier of milk and I love when they do like this shake or this ice cream or whatever and that blew up so I was like okay like this can be a cool series except everything I put in my tier list has to be really funny and wacky it can't be like an actual sincere tier list because anybody else could do that so I think that also helps me exercise a bit of more of my comedy muscle because again as I keep making videos I keep coming back to this thing of like it's about me talking about things not the thing that I talk about like that's what I wanted to feel like that it gets to a place where people are like I could listen to her talk about anything like that's how I know like that helps me kind of also make my videos because I'm like I don't have to box myself into a niche I'm kind of trying to be like a personality influencer rather than just like utility of just like yeah I go to her when I want like this fact or that fact yeah and that also helps me like in terms of like brands that I work with because I don't have to only like I can work with like a fashion or beauty brand but I also can work with like an audible or like a google or an open ai or whatever right um so yeah like like those are my series so far um but yeah I'm still looking to kind of like expand what series I do but then also like all these series are very bottom up like I didn't decide like okay I'm gonna do this series and this is going to be a thing. I'm like, I made a video, it worked. And I'm like, can I repeat this again in a different way? And after like four or five times of me doing it, I'm like, okay, well, this is a series now.

Oren: Bottoms up is an interesting way to describe it. It's both that as well as, right? Your what the hell one is like, okay, I see random things and I like talking about them. How can I like give myself a vehicle to do that in a structured way? You're kind of like making use of something that's already happening in your head.

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Read this part in the full transcript
One in five clears 100K; the rest is the mental game

After a 300K average, the first 50K video feels like failure. Her only answer is the next video.

Early on every post cleared 100K and people were, in her words, gassing her up; then the first 50K video arrived. Her recalibration: some videos flop because that is the pattern, roughly one in five clears 100K, so the job is to keep shipping until the next one instead of deciding ‘it’s so over,’ because that belief ends it. She looks at why a video missed, then moves her eye to the next one. Her own flop, a good-morning-message vlog format that did 30K, she dropped after one try and admits her heart wasn’t in it, which viewers can tell. Two more rules: the work you put in decides whether you post (researched and scripted means post it regardless), and a low-effort idea goes out as a trial reel first, promoted to the main feed only if it pops.

Anushka, in the session

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Colin: Amen. That's excellent advice. We're over time, but we're getting a couple questions now. I want to try and hit them briefly because they're good ones. Can you see the chat? Nushkar, do you want me to read this? Cameron said, are you willing to share videos and video ideas that have failed and what that looked like and how you recalibrated? Did you delete and archive? Do you reshoot the idea, move on, try new lighting setups or hooks, et cetera?

Anushka: yeah I think like one thing that I had to like really like change my mindset about when I started is that you're always going to have a dip like even if you're having like banger viral videos you're doing like because when I started out like I got like as I said I got like my first 100k followers in like two months and like you know I was kind of new on the scene like nobody had seen me so everyone was gassing me the fuck up and that was kind of carrying the momentum but then the and every video was getting above 100k views if not like you know 300k on average and then the first video hits where you kind of get like 50k views right and it's like yeah sure 50k is great but you're obviously feeling like a failure um and the only thing for me was like momentum like just keep going it doesn't matter and what i realized is actually like the some videos are going to flop because that's just how it is right like sure you should look into why it didn't work you did wrong but just naturally the pattern is that some videos are going to flop and for every like five videos I post at least one of them goes above 100k and so I just need to keep going so I can hit my next 100k instead of deciding it's so over because as soon as you mentally start feeling it's so over it is going to be over like it's such a huge mental game and you can't see I like sure another strategy is like don't let the positive validation affect you as much so maybe the negative doesn't as well but I love the positive validation so when the negative one doesn't work my eye is just on like okay what's your next video that you're working on and like kind of when do you want to put it out and let's just focus on that so you kind of have to ignore the flops a little bit to go on um a video that I worked on that failed and I can definitely take my own advice from this now is like uh like a vlog style like you know like video that I want to start which is just like you know starts from me in the morning and I'm like you know like how Indian good morning messages are like a meme so I'm like okay like I'm gonna start like good morning and I'm gonna take some corny good morning video do the saying and that's like my quote of the day and that's the beginning of my video and then the rest of the video and then I'm just kind of getting ready and I'm like, this is what I'm going to do in my day. And then it's just a bunch of clips from the rest of my day. And that's like my vlog style. I made one of those videos. It flopped. Like I got like 30K views on that, barely any comments. And I felt pretty bad about it. So I didn't do it again. But I think like, again, like you just have to keep going on with it and see if it works or not. But I also think like you have to like have fun doing it, which is why you're going to keep coming back to it. I don't think I have that much fun, honestly, like vlogging through my day. So I think part of that also is why maybe it's not working. Like people can sense that I'm not, my heart's not that in it.

Colin: All right. Last one here from Eric. How do you decide when an idea is too off topic or broad or doesn't fit into your personal brand you're building?

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Read this part in the full transcript

Who this is

Anushka Chhikara · @anushcache

Full-time creator in Bangalore. Brand breakdowns, business explainers and Indian internet culture, told from the consumer’s side. Bio: ‘fuelled by curiosity / indian internet, biz, brands / + funsies conversations.’

Business-journalism background (a podcast for a publication — The Ken, per her LinkedIn, not named on the call — and a reel series for a Bangalore startup), then creative director at 10kdesigners, the design school her brother Abhinav Chhikara founded (role, school and brother’s name per LinkedIn; not stated on the call). Took Cut30 a year and a half ago while quitting a job and committed to a video a day, edited on her phone. Her first one, a customer’s complaint about Indian athleisure, did a million views in six days; 100K followers followed in two months. Now ~229K on Instagram, running series she can sell to brands like Audible, and back in Cohort 24 as a repeat student.

Anushka Chhikara (@anushcache) is a full-time creator in Bangalore with a business-journalism background: she ran a podcast for a publication there (on the call she didn’t name it; per her LinkedIn it’s The Ken), then worked as creative director at 10kdesigners, the design school founded by her brother Abhinav Chhikara (also per LinkedIn), whose BX Museum brand archive fed her early breakdowns. She took Cut30 about a year and a half before this session while quitting a job, committed to a video a day edited on her phone, and reached 100K Instagram followers in two months. At the session she was around 228K (229K when we checked) and describes the work as ‘brand, business and internet culture commentary,’ focused on the Indian internet. She is on X and YouTube as @anushcache and turns her own tweets into one-shots. She joined Cohort 24 as a repeat student to get structure back and ship alongside a community, and dialled into this call at 7am India time.

Accounts they pointed at

The vocabulary

Brand breakdown
A brand’s history in 7–8 images, two campaigns worth seeing, then your take
Consumer POV
Speak as the person who bought it, not the marketer; anyone can take that seat
Lens, not niche
‘Indian internet’ holds brand histories, tier lists and a book review; the lens is the niche
Archive-first
Pick the pictures before the idea; a source collection makes daily posting possible
Bottom-up series
A video that works, repeated four or five times, becomes the series; don’t design it first
Absurd list hook
Same first line every time; the ridiculousness of the list does the hooking
Sponsor slot
Four interesting items and the brand as the fifth, not a video about the brand
Trial-reel gate
Low-effort or off-brand ideas go out as trial reels; promote to main only when they pop
Resistance budget
Phone, bag mic, clip light, window; every minute of setup costs you the video
Party test
Would the viewer repeat this at a party and sound smart? If not, repackage

The source

Streams from johnny’s own Drive copy, about an hour. If it asks you to sign in, ask him to share the folder.

Read the full transcript (69 passages, auto-transcribed)

Coach: it's been a while since i did that sound effect when we opened it up

Coach: yeah we haven't played them out either r.i.p sports how much the sports center shit's coming back it's getting used in so many references on calls now non-stop that this is like an animation just generate like a sports center style

Coach: should we do not top 10 videos from cut 30 i'm just kidding we do top 10 we can do

Coach: yeah i like this the sports center style recap actually be kind of hot the top 10 would be cool one shot of the week

Coach: yeah um i was kidding about the not top 10 what was it con who'd you post who had the ripper this week he was from like the last session ago. The bad guy.

Oren: Chris, who has a brand that is like dorm furniture accessories from a couple sessions ago. He's had a lot of stuff moving lately, but has like a half million view video from a week ago. He had a lot of good ideas. He just wasn't like packaging him right initially. And then he finally nailed it. It's also seasonal too. It's like back to school. That's like

Coach: guys we were talking about before y'all jumped on bad braces stories

Coach: yep does anybody have any start with mine i got my braces getting my braces to um to a basketball game got hit in the face with basketball and just lips swelled up

Coach: bring him with the topic go ahead

Student: yeah the teenage came out we're coming i'm coming face to face with my own mortality because my son got braces today So it's a, you know, these, these things happen. Just throwing it out there. I don't know if that's a good video hook, but.

Oren: No, coming to coming face to face with your own mortality is actually a great series. But we'll get there later. All right. I think we got, we've got enough in here. Still, still a handful straggling in, but we won't, we won't make y'all right here on time. Wait too long. All right. So week three, this is the, this is the turning point week, right? So usually the first two weeks, everyone's just like, you're drinking from a fire hose. You're trying all these new formats. but now you have a good foundation of like, I know what these video types are. I know roughly how long it takes to make. I've gotten, you've gotten some good feedback and you have like an idea of where you want to go. So we want to, over these next two weeks, help you get there to the promised land. So this week we try some new formats. I'll go through that in a bit. We also start talking about strategy. So Alex is going to start talking about how we think about content. We don't like to do this at the beginning because we want you to actually make some content before most people overthink it and then don't make it. So we want to make it first and now we'll start thinking about it. So Alex is going to break down the content funnel and how we think of content from that regard. We're going to talk about new formats and carousels and some new things to try. And then we're going to get prepped for next week because starting next Wednesday, we start the seven-day challenge, which is when we want everyone to post seven days in a row and really go for it. And so Colin will get some prep going for us there. But, yeah, on our guest this week, we have Anushka, some of you may have seen in here. She's repeating actually, but she was an awesome Cut30 success story early and has done some real savvy personal brand content around things happening in culture and lots of good topics. And so she's going to be talking through some of that here this week. And then we have a strategist friend of ours, another grad next week. We'll put some info on as well. So that's the agenda. Let's dip into it. Alex, you want to hit the funnel?

Alex: Yep, let's do it. Okay. Y'all can see my screen okay?

Coach: not yet not yet

Colin: as as alex jumps into it guys i want to encourage everyone to throw questions in the chat as we go as they come up um don't be shy please it's good you can see it yeah you're good now

Alex: just by for a second i thought this was one of those land force pranks all right cool so one thing that we're going to talk about here and this is actually goes back to what we were just talking about with the the um good ideas packaged wrong right and so there's this idea of making something novel and essentially making an idea better. A lot of you are going to have good ideas that just aren't packaged and positioned properly, and that's going to tie into the content funnel. So we'll talk about that in a second. But I almost want to look at this example here, because again, it's going to relate to the content funnel and break down how this actually becomes a viral piece of content and a more top of funnel piece of content. The way that we do this is you apply what land force is called the land force law is the 3% rule. Okay, This is your ability to make something completely different by just altering 3% of that idea or that thing. So when you look at these three iterations of a video, these are three actual videos that I posted at the beginning of my content journey or my personal content journey, where one of the first green screen videos that I made was this one here on the left. That's like the secret to landing pages that convert. Okay, this video, I think I had, I don't know, a thousand followers, something along those lines. It got 3,300 views. Not terrible, but obviously, like I think when you're first starting out, everybody wants to get their first 10K view video. Right. So that's what I was on the hunt for. I was on the hunt for that at 10,000 views. OK, I thought this video was going to rip. I thought it was going to be an absolute banger. Only gets 300 or sorry, 3000 views. When I start to actually understand it, break it down, I'm like, oh, of course, like it only got 3,300 views. It is so niche. Like you have to truly, truly care about landing pages and probably boring. a lot of you right now talking about landing pages, because it is such a niche topic where even if I made the best of best video around landing pages, it's probably at max going to get like 100,000 views, right? And that's because a lot of different topics have different tam. They have different addressable markets that you can target. And so when I look at iteration number one, I'm like, okay, like this is, it is too niche. But when I looked at the analytics, The like to share ratio was very high. The specifically the like to share ratio was very high. But then the average watch time was very low. OK, so I was like, OK, there's there's something here. People are finding it valuable. Can I make it better? Right. Can can we make this just a better piece of content? At the time, I didn't give a shit about like repeating an idea or repeating a hook, etc. I'm just trying to get wins as fast as possible and learn as fast as possible on the personal side. And so I make the second iteration. second iteration is how true classic turned $3,000 into $150 million. It was kind of like the same concept. I mean, you could literally see the hook is the same, et cetera. But the difference was I like weaved parts of the story in there. Um, but it was mostly around their funnel. Um, and I was leveraging and saying like their funnel was the thing that really helped them grow. Okay. That's third, the second iteration, clearly it performs a little bit better. It gets nearly 5,000 views. Same thing. I'm like, okay, there's something here, but just not like, again, looking at like the share ratio, I'm just not packaging it properly. So I take one more stab at it. I'm like, okay, how can I make this as broad as possible within my category? So I take everything that I talked about in one and everything in two, and I'm like, okay, what is that? Basically, I'm just giving a playbook of how they did things. So I turned the title hook from True Classics 100 or from, you or 150 mil to this is true classics, $150 million marketing playbook. So all of a sudden I packaged an idea in a way where you can be a creator. And this is interesting. You could be somebody that's a founder entrepreneur. This is interesting. You could be a marketer. This is interesting. You could be any type of marketer. And this is like all of a sudden my TAM, again, total addressable market got much, much bigger just because of how I packaged and positioned the idea. Right. And so So I bring that up to say a lot of you are going to be continuing to put ideas into video sharing and the ideas are going to be packaged in a way where it is like ultra it is bottom of the funnel. Right. It's literally made for the few in your audience versus the many that want to be in your audience. And so when we think about our ideas, when we think about the different concepts we're coming up with, we want to take this in mind of like, how do we package this in a way that it has the ability to cast a wide net? Because there's really three forms of content you can make. And this is what we call the content funnel, what you'll hear a lot of people now talk about the content funnel, which is three types of content. A, content to get followers. That's top of funnel. Goal is reach. Goal is to get people in your ecosystem. B, content for your followers. People follow you. You want to build a deeper relationship with them. You make sometimes things like more specific vlogs or more specific content around specific interests and themes, etc. That's middle of funnel content. Bottom of funnel content is content to get your followers to take action. So the way I like to think about this, probably just because I'm a Floridian, is it's a lot like fishing. If you top a funnel is commercial fishing. You're trying to cast the widest net possible, right? It's like a thousand foot net by 40 feet. The goal is volume. Middle funnel is like fishing with a cast net. It's like a 12 foot, 10 foot net. You throw it, you still could catch a pool of fish, but it's not ultra, ultra specific. Bottom of the funnel is like fishing with a rod and reel. It's going to take a lot of time. have to go at a specific time specific dates but to catch a specific fish etc that is it's an easy way to understand content and in your ideas and if you could just think about okay what casts a widest net versus what casts or what's going to have the the lowest probability of catching or going viral in this case that is an easy way to think about it and so i'll tell you how we grew um this this spot called the collective here to to over five million in revenue literally just off organic content in a year and a half. We developed a content funnel. This was four or five years ago. And it literally followed like this. We had three different series type of funnel. We had this win the day series. This would go live every Monday. This was more so played into our inspirational pillar where, again, it played that the idea was to help people win the day. And so the whole series was built around that. We worked with one of the founders that had a good following at the time or decent sized following at the time we built that series around him that was our top of funnel we we wanted to uh for this to target this the specific people in austin at the time that that you know are motivated and inspired by content like this second one that you see here in the middle is another series that we created called uh cold hard truth put we put some of the the members the athletes entrepreneurs etc that were members at the collective into a cold plunge, ask them rapid fire questions. They're freezing their ass off. They're answering these things kind of chaotically. That was our other top of funnel piece. And then the third was kind of like this docu-series kind of vlog-like piece of content. Again, we would create with the members, influencers, creators, et cetera, that went through there. The whole goal, they're all different. They were all targeted towards the people we wanted to get into our ecosystem. We wanted to attract athletes, entrepreneurs, and creators to be in our ecosystem. So that's who we made the content with. And we positioned and packaged all these ideas in a way that was broad enough to target all of them. All of these concepts, I mean, you could see this one has 10,000 views, or sorry, 10,000 likes. This one has 6,000. This one has 9,000. These are all getting hundreds and hundreds of thousands of views every single time we created it. And that was our mark of being like, okay, this is our top of funnel piece of content. We know when we post this, aka it's like our growth content, we know we are growing the account. You know, myself, Colin and Oren, like we all have our top of funnel series. We know the type of content we can create that's going to get hundreds of thousands, if not millions of views. Right. And so when we when and it doesn't mean it doesn't change. Right. Like my good content versus bad content series was great two years ago. It now performs well, but it doesn't perform like it used to always get half a million to a million views. Now it'll get 100,000, still a great video, but it's not the same thing that it was before. if we're still running these, they would not be performing the same way that they were back then. And so that's another part of it.

Colin: But while we're right here, we got several related questions that I just want to tee up and have you touch on. We have a bunch of questions here about, about niching down or going wide from, from where you started there. And what I wanted to reiterate is, you know, in the example that Alex is talking through right now, right? This is a gym in Austin, Texas. Right. And so when they're doing bottom of funnel content, they're trying to get members through the door or something similar, right? When they do a video of Jamar Chase and an ice bath, that is the top of their funnel. They know that people that are not in Austin, that are never going to be members are going to see that. That doesn't mean they're like straying from their niche, so on and so forth, right? It's just a different piece of the puzzle. And I want to encourage everybody, if that makes sense, if there are any follow-up questions feel free to ask i don't want to feel like we're uh confusing anybody there

Alex: yeah i yeah i'll touch on that as well because i i'm reading the comment here something about like you know we were told to to niche down and it's exactly what what colin said we're talking about the topic versus like the actual hook as an example if me talking about marketing playbook is broad right even if i'm talking about landing pages if i position as like marketing playbook is broad enough to to be able to cast a wide net the second i say this is the the secret to landing pages i automatically cast like basically block a lot of people that don't even know what that is right

Colin: but then we're still talking marketing the whole time

Alex: exactly we're still talking marketing and websites exactly it's how you're packaging and positioning the actual topic. And so that's what you want to think about here. Because you can, and this happens where, let's say it's a supplement company. And I talk like, if I say, these are five supplements to lower your cholesterol is broad enough to anybody that's interested in that, right? It's for people that are, you know, have high cholesterol, maybe are overweight, want to lose weight, people that just have naturally high cholesterol in their in their family whatever if i go deep into like this is cognitique's like this is how it was formulated or or like very very specific into a specific supplement that only people that um are in that space know i'm blocking out the people that actually care about that topic or the information that i'm like we're both talking about the same thing but how i'm positioning the topic is what's changing there and is is giving me the ability to make it a a piece of content that has the ability to go viral, right? And so that's how you need to just think about this and like the topics that you come up with.

Colin: I want to answer Kay's question because I think it's a good example that might help it click for people. So Kay has a curry brand, right? Sells product. In this example, right? A recipe video where you show how to make something delicious, it probably has your product in it, but that's not what the video is, right? You're showing off a recipe. That might be your top of funnel. Whereas your, today we are announcing our new XYZ curry. That's your bottom of funnel. In this case, right, this all fits in this category of food and recipes and probably in a much narrower one of Indian food and food that you can make at home, right? Which is like really a small subsection of the broader food category. But hope that helps explain it some more. sorry to interrupt you Alex

Alex: no no I'm glad we we touched on it because I that has confused people in the in the past but good to always go into detail and so this is a perfect example though when we talk about middle of funnel here we get more specific on the topic right if here we're talking like general information general inspiration general entertainment here we're talking about specific recovery modalities, right? For people that either want to feel better day to day, we or that that want to recover from their workouts, maybe they're training for a marathon, triathlon, a high rocks, whatever the case may be. We're more specific in these conversations about those things, because like we attracted them, got them into our ecosystem here. Now we're going to educate them with specific information that is at as more with more niche topics or specific topics because that is again what colin said we're trying to get them in the door so by us talking about this we are basically telling them we offer this in a way that is not selling it right if if we just show it getting done it's like okay clearly they they offer it right so that's the middle funnel making that content for your followers because you're trying to work them down that bottom of the funnel then was it was it was more product driven content right it was and this is different for every the goal literally when we made this piece of content down here was to get someone to apply right and so with this here you know it was it was very specific to the facility the atmosphere what we had what we offered all that but we only posted one of these a week right so like the majority of the week we're building it up at one point in the week we're trying to funnel them down right that was our that's all we did and and obviously like we had winning content. We had a good funnel, all that jazz. But at the same time, the majority of the work's done up here. Now, you'll see a lot of our feedback this week was, hey, like you're making an ad, you're making an ad. That's because a lot of you are making this bottom of funnel content. You're trying to talk about the app. You're trying to talk about the product. You're trying to talk about your food, what you do, introduce yourself, et cetera. None of this, like this isn't going to work unless you're doing this. And this is where the majority of resources go. And this is the content to crack it like it really is it's it's hard to get a hundred thousand views it's hard to get a million views it's not hard to get 300 views you know or 500 views like we could all do that you got to aim to be able to create the concepts that that get the 50 the 100 the 200 the million uh view videos so that when you make this piece of content right here it's sending 200 people to your email list it's sending 500 people to your email list right and so that's the it's um that's like the the challenge and kind of the the thing that you have to understand about the con the concepts that you make and then how you package those uh the ideas and the topics and the interests within those concepts um there's a lot of examples that we talk about we have an entire piece in in the the course that runs through this as well that goes layers deep um but if you have any more questions colin's going to be going through a different portion drop all of your questions in the chat. I'll just, I'll be hitting them in the, in the meantime.

Colin: Guys, this, the content funnel is one of the reasons the answer to, should I make this video is often yes. Right. Because like most video ideas are going to fit somewhere into your mix. It doesn't make sense to exclude something because it does not have enough value or because it's not going to drive followers. Right. These all have different purposes. All right. For me, We're just going to run through what this week's homework is before we get into things here with Anushka.

Oren: We're going to do carousels, too, so far.

Colin: Yeah.

Coach: Wait, what?

Coach: We do carousels.

Colin: Yes, that's what I'm about to tell you. And you're going to show some, right?

Oren: Yeah.

Colin: Yes. Cool. So, sorry, guys. Let me share my screen and go through the old homework here. So your homework this week, besides in general, to keep it moving and keep making stuff and keep posting, is to try two completely new formats to your accounts. We want one of those to be an origin story carousel. Warren's going to show you some examples of that. And then we want the other, again, to be something totally different. Some ideas and some references we'll show you are day in the life voiceover vlogs, which is kind of an extension of the 10 shot and the one shots you've already done. An intention yap, which is a yap video where you go through, maybe it's your brand's mission statement or something that you are particularly inspired about, so on and so forth. The point of this is to get out of your comfort zone, right? For a lot of you, you probably never saw yourself telling your backstory with a carousel or talking about why you show up every day in a yap. we always have somebody break through big time doing one of these formats that they never saw themselves doing. So if it feels uncomfortable, it feels weird, that is the point. Oren, let's look at some carousels, shall we?

Oren: Yep. So a couple things we're going to talk about around carousels, and I'm going to show a group of examples here. I'm also going to show you how to use video database, which Colin shared, to find good carousel ideas. So carousels are just like videos, except with still images, which means a few things. A, if you have a great video concept, it's also probably going to be a good carousel. You can basically get a second life out of it. And then two, you can basically say, hey, if I have the perfect footage, something I want to talk about, or if you feel more comfortable sharing that idea through still images, you can. So let's talk about what that means real quick and some examples. All right. So, and for anyone, I know we have a lot of repeats in here, so I try to keep these fresh. These are different examples, with the exception of one or two than last time, just FYI. every carousel has a hook the first slide of a carousel is a hook and a carousel is a collection of images we have in the sections here uh that you go through in the course the exact specs on these these are 1080 by 1350 you post that size on instagram you post that size on tiktok and everything will show up great um and you have to think of it the same way how are you going to hook the ugly career is in that is uh colin's hook here and then you actually go through basically very similar to a video arc. So for instance, he's telling his story here, what traditional career path looks like, when in reality, this is what it really was. He's put some anecdotes about today. And you'll notice this is a lot of pretty simple ideas, good imagery, some of it is more produced, some of it is more standard, but it's just kind of stuff from his camera roll that he is putting very readable text over, right? The general idea being you can look at the images that support it, You can get some basic text in there and tell a story. So I'm going to run through a couple different ways you can use carousel so you can get some inspiration on how to think about it. So first, just using the default text in TikTok and Instagram and then looking at some of the trends you see, right? So there was a trend called things that are worth it that many of you may have seen. It's a little bit played at this point, but she spun this off into things that are unfortunately worth it, kind of playing into the idea this might be a little bit played out, et cetera. But again, she's just using default text over pictures of the things that she is highlighting. This is a great way. Don't, I put this carousel in here to say, don't overthink the design. What you should spend your time thinking about is where the text is. Can you read it over the place you put it on screen? Is it not too far wide? And that is the main thing to think about is how do I put it in a place where people can read it? And how do I give good information on it? Not some like incredible composed design. And you will note here, she is calling out every reason that she likes these products very thoroughly coming from her position as someone about to have a kid. You will also see there's going to be lots of trends. This is one that's happening right now. Tons of people have gone viral in the last month with this about, hey, people only post their wins. Here's some recent flops. Something to see. If you are scrolling and you see a carousel lots of people are doing, if you haven't seen it before, it looks relatively new, these are the good things to hop on. Try it out. See if, because it's a format that's working, you have an opportunity to do it. But on the other side, if you see 100 people doing it, like right now, this carousel is kind of at the end of its life. So there are trends that work in these two, but you'll notice another layout note. This is all just very readable, very straightforward. There's always some space on the side, and it is a nice, simple look. So you don't have to overdo your carousels.

Student: I can't see. Can other people see? I've got a lot.

Coach: yeah i can see it may want to pop out and rejoin

Student: uh i've got an issue there oh thanks

Oren: all right so um another good one being able to kind of you want to highlight things going on in a career or as an expert you know it's great ways to actually show key information you have you'll notice i like to call this one out because she darkens this footage so that her text shows up uh curation is another one this one she's just highlighting a bunch of different essays very straightforward just literally pasting the sub stack on there for essays you should try this week so if you have a particular in your niche you're like hey you want to like learn google ads for your business in six days read these six things or watch these six videos whatever it is so that curation is uh is a good option concepts to learn another great one where if you are and again this is one design is not incredible on this but it is very readable and then they're just going into a couple key things people can learn people bookmark carousels and so it's a great thing to think about is how can i come up with a few concepts I know in my niche that'd be worth bookmarking. This is one from last session that ended up doing great. Basically just key information for people. So this woman was running a program where she helps people get their portfolio together for fashion school. And she just shared some of the insights about like what would be useful there with some examples, providing a really commonly asked question in your life or in your niche and answering it in a carousel. Like, you know, why would I buy $500 ski boots? What is the difference between Indian curry and Thai curry? What do I need to know to be able to do X or Y? Solving that in a carousel is a great way to think about it. Sam, another Cut30 grad, explaining basic concepts. We'd love to call this one out. We show this every single time because you'll need to overthink it. A lot of people have a lot of questions about what things are. They may have no idea what something you take for granted is, and you can very simply explain what it is, and it may go better than you expect. Same thing here, Orchid, another grad from Cut30, she's a very niche account. All she talks about is horse riding, and so she's responding to news in her niche, a company that only her niche knows. It's not a huge carousel, but it's really informative for her audience, and then talking about what that means for people that care about that niche. You don't need to have super high expectations. You can just be driving the conversation. I'm going to share a different tab here because the homework we want you to do is what's called an origin story carousel. And I want to call out if you haven't gone into video database that Colin's put together and shared yet, you definitely should. Because when you're in there, you can go here into the concepts and I'm sorry, formats, and you can select carousel. It will only show you carousels. And then there is journey documentation and there is origin story and origin story carousel that are options that you have. You can literally see high performing carousels from 30 grads and other people we have in here that you can pick from. And so you're actually able to scroll through and get some interesting ideas of how people do it. One, this one right here stands out. I spent 21 hours traveling by train to avoid flights. Was it worth it? That concept is excellent, right? Can you do something and then explain if it was worth it or not is an awesome way to look at a carousel. Then when you click those, it gives you some insight. So when we talk about origin story, this is a great example. My research journey as a scientist in marine biology. And he's literally explaining, I was an intern here. I learned about this. This is what my work looked like. This is why I fed the fish. This is how I dissected them. I have a paper being published. Then I went to grad school. That's his origin story, right? Legendary account, by the way. Legendary. Excellent account. But also, it goes to show you that it does not, everyone thinks, oh, this thing isn't interesting or that. Marine biology, research, whatever it is, just telling a very simple version of your story. People like to see people's different career arcs. Another kind of variation of that on here was a piece of lore. Like my grandma met this famous person at this time. Here's what she was working on. They're kind of curating something in their lore. And I believe she is just, this is an account that's like a tribute to the mother's art. Same thing with the business. Six months ago, this was an abandoned golf course. But now, you know, they're redoing it, right? Very simple. Again, they're not doing a ton of, like, it's not super nuanced. But they're explaining how they operate their business. And it's interesting and compelling to people about what they are. They walk through their major milestones. And you'll see in this too, reveal the vision, montage the process, reveal the milestone, tease what's coming next. You can use those outlines in this to help with your content there. But I would say I would go through Video Database, pick out some examples. We would love for you to do a carousel that explains your story this week, how you got to where you are in your career, how you started your business. And we have a bunch of examples in the curriculum. And I will post a bunch in Slack as normal as well. So you have a bunch to go from. But carousels are awesome. If you've never done this, just do them with the captions in the app. You don't need any fancy design software. It's almost better if you just use those default captions in the app. And that's all we have on that. Colin, anything else on homework before we get into it?

Colin: No, but really quick, guys, I put the invite link to Video Database in the chat. If you've not created an account, use that link to do so. It will set you up on the creator tier. If you already created a free account, use this link. It will upgrade you accordingly. We've got a question here. Would you say carousels are top of funnel, middle funnel?

Oren: Yeah, so it's not the format, right? You can have a top of funnel at one shot, a bottom of funnel at one shot. Top of funnel carousel, bottom of funnel carousel. It's about the topic plus the format, right? So for a lot of people, for me, for instance, my carousels rarely reach new audience. For me, they are bottom of funnel content. It's how I get people to my YouTube, on my email list, et cetera. because my type of content is very informational. It does not reach a new audience. But for a lot of people who post, like, you know, they do news in their niche, it's Top of Funnel, reaches new people that are interested in their area. So it really comes down to what the actual topic is. And that goes for anything, right? Like a lot of people look at one shots as Top of Funnel because they tend to reach a new audience. They'll get a lot of views. They're simple. But my friends at Ladder, it's like a fitness company, they use Bottom of Funnel. They'll do that. Basically, in seven seconds, they'll set up a challenge. Be like, this month, are you going to start your fitness, whatever? and they'll rip one shots on it and they'll get people to comment to like join the challenge and that's a very bottom of funnel type of content for them. It just happens to have a large amount of views. So again, the format has nothing to do with where it is in the funnel. It's that combination of format and topic.

Oren: All right. Without further ado, we are super pleased to welcome to the stage, to the screen here, forgive me, Anushka, but Anushka, if I'm butchering the name, I'm putting a link right now. She is a Cut30 legend, as they say. She's also in this session, so you may have seen her in video sharing or similar. But she's one of our home run success stories has, what is it now, 228,000 followers on Instagram. And I'm excited to talk to her because she's done a really good job of owning her version and her lane of talking about marketing and brand stuff, which there's a million people doing. um are you still in here i saw you earlier but i haven't seen you pop up yet

Anushka: hi hello good morning it's 7 a.m in india but i'm so glad to

Oren: thank you for getting up and making i feel like it could have been a lot worse than that given the time difference

Anushka: yeah it's okay

Oren: um tell us tell us a little bit about yourself and your content journey as a starting point

Anushka: yeah totally i mean i think first of all like i was just writing this down for something else like I think the biggest privilege I've had is that I've had like tech and internet access since I was like eight years old. And I was just looking back at it, like my brother and I used to make vlogs. Like back in the day, we watched like Cribs on MTV. And we're like, what if we make like a episode of our own apartment? And I think like, because of that, as I kind of grew up as a teenager, I watched a lot of YouTubers, like I watched kind of just wondered, like, how do they make money, like just making videos online before I even understood how ads work. And so it seems kind of inevitable that eventually I figured out how to make a career on the internet. Even like in college, like I was like, why would I get into like, working for newspapers or like TV, like news, because I don't read a newspaper in the morning, but I do scroll my phone in the morning. So yeah, always just kind of attracted towards the internet. I think a year and a half ago when I did my cut 30 cohort I was just at a place in my life where I was like I just need to lock in right like you always wanted to be like a youtuber or like an influencer or whatever uh before that I'd like I have a business journalism background so I'd done a podcast for like a publication here um I'd done a couple of like you know walks pop reel series for another startup in Bangalore just done a lot of like internet projects like I'd even had like a cartoon page that blew up but then didn't really get me a lot of followers and I think yeah I just got to this place where I was like okay when are you gonna lock in and really make this happen and I was also quitting a job at the time so I had a little bit of that paranoia of like okay I need to make something happen and yeah like I'd set myself a goal which was try making a video like I was anyway gonna take a break from finding a new job for two three months so I said yeah like I'm just gonna try making a video every single day like show up to my brother's office sit for like eight hours research not hesitate to turn the camera on and just edit it on my phone and luckily yeah I mean like that started when I started cut 30 luckily my first video itself blew up it was me like it was a tweet had already made like kind of criticizing indian athleisure brand specifically because i just had an experience over the last couple of months where i love the way like a brand's instagram looks all their like um reviews and stuff but then once you actually get the product the threads are coming apart you can't actually work out in them and i'd even reached out to a bunch of like the founders of the teams being like hey i'm not happy with this product and they essentially got to a place where they're like that's just how it is right like this is before my page had blown up so I was just an average customer so I made a video just being like you know you can't make a bad product a good product by having a cool Instagram maybe you can make a good product a great product and yeah like I did not want to post that video like I thought it looked really bad like my editing was really choppy like even I wasn't very comfortable on camera but I was just like I just have to post it right like it's not like it's okay if it's embarrassing and it sucks and that video blew up like it got like a million views in the first six days I would say and I was already I'd already decided like I'm gonna be posting a video almost every day if I could so I just kind of rode that wave like I mean it was super validating it made it easier to make a video every day because I was like wow I'm getting all this attention for it and yeah like I just pretty much made about three or four video reels a week and I hit my like first 100k followers in the first two months which was quite crazy and then after that I was like okay cool like I need to kind of figure out what the system for this is because I'm not like I can't dedicate like 12 hours of my day just making content or I can't just make content when I'm feeling great about like the comments I'm getting or the validation I'm getting online. So yeah, like I've been doing it for a year and a half since then and just kind of focusing on what does it look like to be a full-time content creator, like as a job and a system.

Oren: Amazing. Thank you for the rundown. Yeah. After that, I love like the natural story of that, right? Where you're like, Hey, I had the experience I was going through. I wanted to like bring it out and tell it, tell it online. It resonated well. What kind of content started working for you after that? What were some of your first other wins?

Anushka: Yeah. So, um, I think one for me, given my business journalism background, I was a little bit like had this skill of just explaining really like boring or jargon concepts like to my friends. Right. Uh, so I was like, okay, that's, I'm gonna take like smart topics or like you know topics usually written about and turn them into video uh and at the time I also like uh my brother was working on this project which was called BX Museum so he was taking a bunch of like old Indian like legacy Indian companies or cool new Indian like companies and brands and making an archive of their like brand assets so like packaging or like merch they released and like posters like if there were physical posters for older brands and like online ads they did and stuff like that and so I was because my thing was just I'm just going to sit every day and try to make a video what do I make a video on and I was like okay this makes it easier because I almost have my pictures already like on this page I need to pick maybe like seven to eight of them and then figure out what the story is so that was kind of like I didn't label that explicitly as a series but I was just like okay like you know before India like when India was a socialist country like before the 90s there was a watch brand that was run by the government right and they have like these really cool like posters and ads and like designs from back in the day and I was just like okay cool I'm just gonna be like you know like they've kind of had a downfall since like India became like a capitalist society so I was like okay nobody really you know knows what this brand is but look at how swagful these like old vintage ads are and like this is why we should know about them so I started with a lot of these like brand breakdowns almost or like brand histories of old brands using tons of pictures and just kind of putting a chronological story together like this is how they started these are a couple of cool campaigns they did this is why like and then kind of getting my take in a little of being like I think this brand should have a comeback or I think like you know we should reference this more in our nostalgia like you know kind of campaigns that brands do and yeah I think like interestingly enough like I didn't plan on making like brand or marketing content because I actually don't have any background in like the advertising industry it was more you know I just think like we interact with businesses and literally every single action of ours in a day and we don't realize like how bombarded we are with brand messaging so I think everyone should have an opinion or have an idea of how they interact with brands and what they like and don't like so I was kind of that's kind of the pov that i bring my content with this kind of mirroring or voicing out the consumer pov of what's happening and i think also like once i started making videos i realized the negative ones obviously work the best but personally like i didn't love that like i didn't want to just make negative content so i was like okay like let me start talking about like indian brands i really like or like people I think are doing a really great job and also like my angle with all of these was like I don't want to talk about American media I want to build like a an Indian audience with like Indian content so what's happening on the Indian internet or what are like Indian brands doing or what's happening in business and only talk about that because I also just feel like yeah like we all consume a lot of American media, but the Americans are not going to talk about what's happening in India, right? Indians can talk about what's happening in America. So that's my kind of opportunity, like window of opportunity. And yeah, I think it's worked out really well so far.

Oren: Yeah. And I think a couple of things I want to call out is that this is a frequent through line and people that do really well in this, in Cut30 and out there is they do very similar to what you started with. So for everyone out there, like we've had a lot of people, whether it was the horse creator I mentioned before, the travel, hospitality, people that just do breakdowns of things in their niche, right? Of just like, hey, whether it's brands, whether it's events that happened, whether it's things or products like they enjoy, they'll kind of give their history and then their opinion. And what that does is it shows you to your niche, right? And it begins to establish you as someone that has an interesting take or point of view. And that kind of content goes really well and is a great anchor. And I think that a lot of people think too small, but be like, okay, hey, I'm just thinking about like, I sell this particular service. I do web design, I do Google ads, or I do this kind of thing, or I do construction, I do whatever. But going that one step up of like, hey, let me talk about this housing company or this siding or this, you know, like this, this trend that happened or this brand that was inside that category. And then showing a bit of your expertise is a really, a really good way to look at it. And I'm curious, how has your content kind of evolved from there? Because I know now, like over time, obviously you're back in here. What's worked? What hasn't? What have you kind noticed from there

Colin: also i just want to add to that i see like you have a pretty recent that's like very raw like you're literally like laying in bed and it ripped it's like 400k views i'd love to have you talk through that as well

Anushka: yeah yeah i think yeah firstly like after i made a couple of videos like a couple of weeks and like blowing up and stuff uh some a friend of mine who used to do like strategy for apple as well like had reached out to me and was like hey like I want to tell you that you really should build your personal brand now that you're kind of blowing up instead of just being fun fact or like brand video girl because it's very easy for you to kind of like blow up and then fade out right and I think that that's when I kind of realized where I was like okay how do I think about this because like virality is so ephemeral so for me like just mentally I was like you know I want to be like I want to be the person that people come to and be like I just hear her talking about things not like I want to hear like you know about a brand big dollar like a marketing video so I was like I think like I can talk about pretty much anything right and I was just pulling personal references because I think if you're sitting every day and trying to make a video there's only so much you can like kind of polish yourself to be like okay this is the smart thing to talk about or this is like you know everyone's gonna think I'm so cool for talking about this so I was like okay like I understand how to kind of make a hook how to put a story together so can I make a video on the book that I just read right now and that's maybe that works as a content style or can I talk about something that's happening on the internet like I made a couple of videos of just like oh yeah these are like fights like very local fights that are happening on like you know Indian tech Twitter or like brand founder startup like you know Twitter um so yeah like I think it started ended up being like internet culture things happening on the internet my content that I consumed um just personal stories as well and yeah like the stuff that like that's me in bed right so the first time I did that was I was lying on my couch uh and just like with my blanket and I was like I was looking at this uh I came across this page where basically like some Indian kid uh made this page where like if you pay him like a dollar he will put up a story at a concert like any like concert that's happening in India right now and tag you in it so that it looks like you're going for all these cool concerts and like technically like you could also just put up any video but then he that guy like has like a bunch of like fake accounts right with like hot girls and like dudes pictures and so it looks like it's also like a social proof thing and I saw someone tweet about being like wow like where have we come as a society kind of thing and I was like wait that's so cool what if I message that guy right now I messaged him he immediately replied and he's like yeah here's like my payment link like if here are my packages and you want a girl's account you want a guy's account here's like which city do you want to post from like these are the upcoming concerts and I was like okay cool like you know and I like did it for my personal account and he was also like yeah like do you want like a cafe story like do you want like a date night story at like a cool restaurant and stuff like that right so I I'm like just chilling on the couch and feeling so excited by all of this and I'm like okay like you know when I sit down tomorrow like in front of my setup properly let me film this but then I was just like I know I'm not gonna do that like I know the excitement's gonna go away and I'm not gonna like you know touch this I'm gonna overthink it so I was like fuck it if I'm not gonna do it anyway let me just lie on the couch right now and do it my only thing like is that most like 99% of the time i do use a mic so i just keep it in my bag with me all the time so i was like i'm just connecting my mic i'm just recording myself i just find this interesting so i did this is what's like i saw this thing i messaged him this is how it worked and like he posted this and like none of my friends really cared about it personally but also like here's my take on it like there's like a simulacra thing of like you know people don't even want to really experience things but they show that they want to experience it like what level of internet is this and that video blew up and I was just like oh okay so like sometimes I can just be lying in bed and make a video and it doesn't matter right like if the idea is interesting enough and also like I'd seen a couple of people talk about that page but nobody had actually messaged him and gotten a story up and I was like people just want to know how does it work right so yeah like since then I've kind of been like okay cool like you can just do like a in bed or you're in your cab or whatever kind of video this latest one that's on my page I'd actually put that as a trial reel because I was like this is not like it's just it was just this meme that was happening on the Indian internet that just became like a funny audio and I was just lying in bed I was actually sick for a few days and I just recorded myself put it on my story and then I was like I can just stitch it together and put it as a trial reel and once it blew up on my trial release I got like 400k I was like okay let me just publish this to my main feed because even though it's like not my brand or it's not very well lit or it's just like a joke right like it's not me really breaking anything down a view is the view so it looks nice that I have like a 400k video on my feed yeah

Oren: there's a lot there I think there's something uh it's important for everybody to remember like energy you have like in that moment when you have the idea uh and I think that's a good time to how are you in general like uh sourcing or generating ideas right now you you have stuff that comes to you and you just let it fly um do you have other techniques do you have series you're running right now I haven't watched a ton of your videos recently tell us about that

Anushka: yeah so I think like naturally eventually I've run out of things to talk about as much like I don't have so many like things in the backlog that I'm like I've been wanting to talk about this uh so I think what's helped recently like it wasn't something I was very specifically looking to do but I ended up creating a couple of series so uh one and and that really helps like on a week where I'm like I don't really know what to post or I'm not really feeling the energy like again this is like a job right so even when I don't feel like it I do have to show up like some weeks I'm like okay I'm gonna rely on this series because it's like 50% of the work is already done the format is already fixed I just need to find things to fit into it so yeah like right now I have a series called Indian internet bangers which is just cool accounts on the Indian internet that I like right now and what they're doing so they could be like some comedy thing it could be like like one of the things in my list right now is like this guy made like a list of like five top make out spots in Goa which is like you know like city like on the coast and I was like what the fuck okay so I was like okay cool that's going into my list right so that it's also easier for me because I'm actually like scrolling and consuming this content so it I don't have to put in as much of an effort uh another series i have which was so random and accidental is called what the hell sure which is uh just me being like things i saw on the internet this week that made me go what the hell sure and there's this like meme of this woman just looking at this camera being like what the hell sure right and it's so hard to explain because whenever that reel like those reels blow up people are like i don't get it she's just saying things and then saying what the hell sure and i'm like yeah i don't know i don't get it either so that's just kind of a compilation of like crazy things i saw online right so like something like this guy with the five top make out spots like that could go in a what the hell sure as well another like i'm actually working on um a what the hell sure video right now that i'll probably publish today which has you know um this one state in india is producing matcha tea which i felt like is a what the hell sure thing because I thought matcha is just Japanese right then I get a little bit into like the business of it just give two three like quick facts about it the other one is like the make out spots in Goa another one is like this video game I found of like some like this really famous Indian actress from like 2009 that nobody knows about and this what the hell sure I've also like turned it into like something I pitched to brands so this video I'm posting today is going to be a collab with audible and basically like i'm just like hey like you know if i sit and make a brand video being like this is what this brand is doing or this is what their offering is doing nobody's really gonna watch it but if i make a compilation of like four five interesting like things that happen on the internet pieces and then just slip your thing in somewhere in there it's gonna work so yeah like the last piece in my what the hell short video that's going up today is like talking about greek mythology and something that like something from the new nolan's or or this check out this audiobook on audible they have an offer done so that makes it easier for me to also pitch to brands because i'm just like you know this is a concept that works and another series that i've recently started is a tier list so um i know it's like a super popular format and i'd never done it before but I just thought it would be really funny if I did like tier lists of things that people are like why is she making a tier list of it right um I had a tier list of like things you can get at the local dairy like each state in India has like a different local dairy so I was like you know like when people make like things you can buy kind of videos they do it for cool sexy brands but what if I'm like yeah like I love like this tier of milk and that tier of milk and I love when they do like this shake or this ice cream or whatever and that blew up so I was like okay like this can be a cool series except everything I put in my tier list has to be really funny and wacky it can't be like an actual sincere tier list because anybody else could do that so I think that also helps me exercise a bit of more of my comedy muscle because again as I keep making videos I keep coming back to this thing of like it's about me talking about things not the thing that I talk about like that's what I wanted to feel like that it gets to a place where people are like I could listen to her talk about anything like that's how I know like that helps me kind of also make my videos because I'm like I don't have to box myself into a niche I'm kind of trying to be like a personality influencer rather than just like utility of just like yeah I go to her when I want like this fact or that fact yeah and that also helps me like in terms of like brands that I work with because I don't have to only like I can work with like a fashion or beauty brand but I also can work with like an audible or like a google or an open ai or whatever right um so yeah like like those are my series so far um but yeah I'm still looking to kind of like expand what series I do but then also like all these series are very bottom up like I didn't decide like okay I'm gonna do this series and this is going to be a thing. I'm like, I made a video, it worked. And I'm like, can I repeat this again in a different way? And after like four or five times of me doing it, I'm like, okay, well, this is a series now.

Oren: Bottoms up is an interesting way to describe it. It's both that as well as, right? Your what the hell one is like, okay, I see random things and I like talking about them. How can I like give myself a vehicle to do that in a structured way? You're kind of like making use of something that's already happening in your head.

Anushka: Yeah.

Oren: Which is excellent.

Coach: I have a question for you about that. Have you, like, do you have any, like, similarities to how you hook those videos? When every week it could just be about anything. Like, have you figured out what works when you're talking about headlines to hook? And each of those videos, to clarify, is, like, four or five different topics, correct?

Anushka: Yeah.

Coach: Do you just hook with the biggest headline or, yeah?

Anushka: like luckily for me like i just have the same like first line in every in in every series of mine so like if i'm doing a tier list i'll say ranking blah blah blah in a tier list like ranking um like i did a video which was like forbidden smells like ranking forbidden smells in a tier list which is just i can't even like like just the smell of like an old car's ac or like the smell of like homeopathy medicine because I grew up with like homeopathy medicine you know and like just like really random like but kind of cultural things as well like you know like when your mom puts like eucalyptus oil on your like pillow when you're sick like I know that's like in a hook is just me saying ranking so and so and the thing that I'm ranking or like the list that I'm putting together itself is the hook because it's so absurd like why would somebody make like a you know list of that even like the what the hell sure series I'm just like things I saw online this week that made me go what the hell sure and the first piece I put in has to be like kind of the craziest piece so that people are just like oh yeah what the hell like what is that about um and I think also like Indian internet bangers as well like I'm just like things I saw on the Indian like you know i can't remember what it is i think that changes a bit of just like uh things i saw on the internet that were really cool and then immediately just get into like the most wacky or most interesting like piece in the list first up

Oren: and i'm gonna call out one of the things you mentioned uh before that's another good and just if you're taking stuff from this like uh as a creator tier list stuff obviously like worth trying the cultural combination like what yvette mentioned in the comment she's like oh i know you know this is also a mexican thing i'd love to compare mexican indian that's exactly the way to think about this right anytime we hear anything someone says and sparks an idea is great and one of the early ones that she mentioned i want to go back to is a format we call a quest content which is basically like i did this thing and here's whether it was good or bad and so if you see buying one dollar shout outs from a concert i did it here's how it goes here's what i think about it because it's more than just talking about it online but it can be simple you can be you buying a one dollar thing reading 10 articles eating the new food at the new place uh but it's a great method with which to think about content like inside your niche or inside your city i encourage people to try i think we've got time for maybe one if anyone has a question or anything probably one more and if and if not i'm sure we'll be happy to hop in with one this has been great Anushka especially like shout out to you at 7 a.m just ripping and running I love it and I appreciate it

Anushka: yeah totally I think maybe like my day in the life video like I'll take I've made like clips of me talking here so the first thing in my day in the life today can be like did I cut 30

Coach: there you go perfect

Colin: I have one one question to close this out here uh has your tool stack cameras so on and so forth changed much since those very first videos now are you still um just phone and a mic and and and rip

Anushka: yeah just a phone and a mic honestly like i just think like the most important thing is like reducing the resistance to recording a video because even now like i don't necessarily like on a no on a normal day like i don't love sitting down and recording a video you know like it's just work like you just need to sit down and get started and it'll be fine um I think so I just have like an iPhone 16 I record from my front camera I have like a DJI mic mini that I always like this is like my purse bag I just keep it in this zip so I always know where it is because yeah sometimes you're out like you're on a walk and you get an idea and it's important for me that like I like unless I need to sit and research it sure but sometimes idea that you can just share I'm like I want to be able to be on my walk and just record for like two minutes and then be able to go home and edit it one thing that I have changed like so when I started like when I used to go to this office I always used to sit in front of this like huge big window with natural light um which like the lighting is super important like I've noticed that in my videos when I don't put in an effort or it's looking kind of blurry I feel like it doesn't perform that well uh so yeah definitely if I'm able to sit in front of a huge natural light and be in a slightly darker room so there's a contrast and if not like right now it's like 7 30 a.m so there's not a lot of light I've gotten this like I don't know if you can see it but I've just gotten this like panel light off of Amazon that I just yeah keep in front of me like it has a little clip so you can just hook it on I just keep that this also I just carry in my bag like along with my charger bag and that's my stack like I did everything on my phone and yeah like I keep it simple so that I can do it again and again um I tried doing like this YouTube project actually with this like ad agency in Bangalore because I was like oh maybe I should do a more like legit formal thing and they just like brought a whole production crew who take like an hour and a half to set up and like you know like for a youtube video and it just takes forever to do it and it kind of that project didn't end up working out and it brought me back to this thing of just like I'm not like a tv production studio and like we are not an advertising agency you just need to like sit down and be able to make it as easy for you as like a single person to record a video because that's the only way you can keep coming back to it every day and post like as frequently as you can.

Colin: Amen. That's excellent advice. We're over time, but we're getting a couple questions now. I want to try and hit them briefly because they're good ones. Can you see the chat? Nushkar, do you want me to read this? Cameron said, are you willing to share videos and video ideas that have failed and what that looked like and how you recalibrated? Did you delete and archive? Do you reshoot the idea, move on, try new lighting setups or hooks, et cetera?

Anushka: yeah I think like one thing that I had to like really like change my mindset about when I started is that you're always going to have a dip like even if you're having like banger viral videos you're doing like because when I started out like I got like as I said I got like my first 100k followers in like two months and like you know I was kind of new on the scene like nobody had seen me so everyone was gassing me the fuck up and that was kind of carrying the momentum but then the and every video was getting above 100k views if not like you know 300k on average and then the first video hits where you kind of get like 50k views right and it's like yeah sure 50k is great but you're obviously feeling like a failure um and the only thing for me was like momentum like just keep going it doesn't matter and what i realized is actually like the some videos are going to flop because that's just how it is right like sure you should look into why it didn't work you did wrong but just naturally the pattern is that some videos are going to flop and for every like five videos I post at least one of them goes above 100k and so I just need to keep going so I can hit my next 100k instead of deciding it's so over because as soon as you mentally start feeling it's so over it is going to be over like it's such a huge mental game and you can't see I like sure another strategy is like don't let the positive validation affect you as much so maybe the negative doesn't as well but I love the positive validation so when the negative one doesn't work my eye is just on like okay what's your next video that you're working on and like kind of when do you want to put it out and let's just focus on that so you kind of have to ignore the flops a little bit to go on um a video that I worked on that failed and I can definitely take my own advice from this now is like uh like a vlog style like you know like video that I want to start which is just like you know starts from me in the morning and I'm like you know like how Indian good morning messages are like a meme so I'm like okay like I'm gonna start like good morning and I'm gonna take some corny good morning video do the saying and that's like my quote of the day and that's the beginning of my video and then the rest of the video and then I'm just kind of getting ready and I'm like, this is what I'm going to do in my day. And then it's just a bunch of clips from the rest of my day. And that's like my vlog style. I made one of those videos. It flopped. Like I got like 30K views on that, barely any comments. And I felt pretty bad about it. So I didn't do it again. But I think like, again, like you just have to keep going on with it and see if it works or not. But I also think like you have to like have fun doing it, which is why you're going to keep coming back to it. I don't think I have that much fun, honestly, like vlogging through my day. So I think part of that also is why maybe it's not working. Like people can sense that I'm not, my heart's not that in it.

Colin: All right. Last one here from Eric. How do you decide when an idea is too off topic or broad or doesn't fit into your personal brand you're building?

Anushka: I think, yeah, like for me, I'm just like, I want to make videos of what I talk about. And I'm always experimenting to see like, will people listen to me talk about this? So everything is like, I think like the amount of work I put into it kind of validates like if I should post it or not. If I've sat and kind of researched and put together like a good storyline of a couple of points and like my hook and everything, then I am just going to record it and post it. if it doesn't work sure it doesn't work if it works I'm just like whoa okay people will listen to me talk about that okay like let's go because again like I'm just like I don't want to be like the marketing girl or the brand girl I'm want to be like oh that girl who talks about things and just yeah like talks about like even now like sometimes like when people come up to me and they're like oh like I love your videos but by the way what do you make videos about again and I'm just like yeah like I don't know like I just talk about things like things so like for my bio what people like when I kind of want to sound like a little smarter put together is like yeah I do like brand business and internet cultural commentary videos so I'm more kind of talking about what I see happening around me and that's the lens through which I understand the world and I mainly focus on the Indian internet because that's the space I want to grow in and that's like my serious grown-up answer but like honestly for me and like even people who already know me I'm just like yeah like I just kind of talk about anything uh but yeah like it's it's like you know curator kind of vibes like I share a lot of like content or like pages I follow book series like podcasts I'm listening to but also like breakdowns of like industry or like brands or like trends that are happening online because I also think another I'll just wrap this up like another thing that I learned from my business journalism background like with the publication I worked with is like you know everyone wants to be smart but nobody like wants to really sit and do the boring thing so like how do you talk about things that someone can say in a party to like flex about right like oh like did you know this or that right so that's also how i kind of like like package my information is like if i say it this way would this stick in a person's mind to be able to talk about it in a party so that they sound smart like that's a very clear motivation so yeah like whatever I talk about kind of it needs to give the person something that they can remember and talk to other people about rather than be like oh like I'm just talking about myself or like my opinion is like you know the coolest and everyone should listen to me.

Oren: Thank you so much for joining us I'm gonna drop a link to you here in the chat for everybody. Indian internet is hot, by the way. I think a lot of what you touched on there is like you hear people say, to be the niche. And that can be confusing, but I think you're an excellent example of it. And Indian internet is a really dope lens that's very flexible for you to do whatever. I just dropped a link to Anushka in the chat.

Anushka: Thanks Anyone hit me up on Slack if you want to talk.

Coach: Yeah, she's in Slack.

Colin: Amen. Excellent. All right. Thank you again, Anushka. For everybody else, again, homework this week is try two new formats you've never done before, one of them being an origin story carousel, one of them being something else. Tons of examples of that in the course content. And let's keep getting after it. We'll see you all in video sharing and beyond. See you guys.

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Cohort 24, week 3. Guest session recorded 19 August 2026. Open the owned video