You Can't Copy Your Way to Number One

Right before recording this, Krysta was scrolling and hit a Heather McMahon clip threatening to scream if she saw the "preparing for the Netflix documentary" trend one more time. A few weeks earlier, everyone and their mother memed the Empire State Building proposal flag, and she didn't read half of them. There's an acronym she learned from a journalism professor in college for exactly this feeling: MEGO. My eyes glaze over. Four clients in the last few weeks have asked her some version of "do I have to do the trend if I'm not feeling it?" This episode is the answer: people are bored, and the way we've been teaching everyone to make content is why.In this episode we dive into:• Why Instagram feels like the same hook, carousel, and handful of opinions repackaged• The difference between studying content and copying it• Where content ideas actually come from when they don't come from your feed• A seven-day challenge to break the scroll-first habitEveryone Is Pulling From the Same Pile of Ingredients• The advice is identical everywhere: look at what's performing, save the trending formats, download the hundred hooks, ask ChatGPT to adapt someone's viral reel• Krysta teaches some of these tactics. Studying content is a real skill and part of your job in 2026. The problem is when it's your only input• Add AI tools that all write with the same formulas, and everyone starts to sound the same• Here's the mindfuck: you're going to Instagram to find the idea that will make you stand out on Instagram• If you're consistently in the state of copying, you're always number twoStudying Content Isn't the Same as Copying It• Copying asks: what hook, what audio, what format, how long, what's on slide one• Studying the mechanics asks: why would someone care, what's happening culturally that makes this relevant, what makes someone send it to a friend• It's not about being a good student of content. It's about being really good at studying people• The trend isn't the problem, the copy-paste is. "Five things absolutely worth the money" was a fun trend. "Five inexpensive things I'll keep buying" rides it and stands outYour Material Is Not on Your Phone• The question Krysta asks clients to source ideas has nothing to do with social: what did you do this past weekend?• The cyclospora reel: a Slack thread with a client became a Bridesmaids bridal shop bit, "maybe you shouldn't eat a salad this weekend." Stupid viral, 30 new followers, and they laughed the entire time making it• The bar is lower than you think. She's made content out of her dog pooping on the carpet and turned it into a fat loss analogy• Three conversations about AI overheard in one coffee shop, AirPods out, gave her perspectives that don't exist inside the rectangle• The barrier to entry dropped, so the bar for taste, nuance, and actual opinion goes way upFix Tip of the WeekGo for a walk this week and raw dog it. No headphones, no podcast, no scrolling. Twenty minutes where your brain isn't processing another voice. Don't make it productive. Just take the walk.This Week's ExerciseFor the next seven days, when you sit down to generate content ideas, fight the urge to open Instagram first. Go to a client call recording, a Slack thread, texts with your friends, the news, something you overheard. Then DM Krysta the idea you found off your phone.No Such Thing of the WeekThere's no such thing as being number one if you copied your way there. You'll always be number two.Looking for more? Check out No Such Thing as One Take: EP3, where Krysta and Paige get into why AI has read everything and lived nothing: Want help getting your ideas onto your feed? DM ⁠⁠@thespreadmktg ⁠ on Instagram.Follow Krysta:⁠@thekrystahuber⁠⁠⁠⁠@thefitnessfyx⁠⁠⁠@thespreadmktg ⁠