how I beat the Instagram algorithm (and gained 968,000 followers) I EP 139

Right now, one of the most dominant content formats on Instagram is also one of the most underused.

You scroll Instagram, you've probably noticed carousels. They're showing up more and more.

Across niches and across all different styles and brands, they seem to work no matter who post them.

Carousels alone have driven over 10 million views, 50,000 saves, and generated tens of thousands

of new followers from my Instagram account, which is about to cross 1 million followers.

And you might think it's the design, or the aesthetic, or just great taste.

But what most people don't see is the amount of structure behind those posts.

And more importantly, what those carousels are actually doing when you're not online.

In this video, I'm going to walk you through exactly how we build our Instagram carousels,

not as simple social posts, but as leveraged assets that tell stories to deepen our brand,

provide enormous value, and flex our eye for design.

We'll start with four carousel styles we use, then move on to the actual design process,

and finally, I'm going to show you why these carousels keep performing weeks and months after we

post them. And here's the thing most people get wrong. If you only copy how this looks,

well, it's not going to work. So let's get into it.

Section one, the four carousel styles. So I'm going to walk you through the design workflow here,

okay? But first, you need to understand that we have four different carousel styles,

and each one serves a specific purpose. We have long-form carousels, white and paper carousels,

lifestyle carousels, and then we have black carousels. Long-form carousels are our newest edition,

they're mostly reflections, philosophical content about things like control, bottlenecks,

freedom, and overcoming perfectionism. It's content that inspires action and sparks reflection,

but it doesn't drive to a CTA. No cell, just pure vibes and intention. White and paper carousels

are our most popular and highest performing format. Timeless, minimal, clean,

precise taxing graphics, and a clear CTA at the end. This is something I work really hard with

with Yan, the designer on my team, and you know, we take a lot of pride in designing carousels,

and designing really things across the whole brand, right? That feel timeless, that feel beautiful,

lifestyle carousels are mostly iPhone shots. So behind the scenes moments, whiteboard sessions,

retreats, postcards from trips. The purpose here is where to inspire the lifestyle and the freedom

movement behind everything we do. You know, really get to know me just as a human, right? And so

I think that vulnerability, right, is really important, right? Showing you guys what's going well,

what's not going well, talking to you guys about the current things I'm thinking about, what I'm

reading. It's almost like kind of character development, right? And I think, you know, the whole

point of building a personal brand, right, is for it to be personal. And then we've got this

black carousel format, okay? These are our kind of Joker cards, right? We use them once or twice a

month. Candidly, these things take some time because there's a lot of intention that goes behind them,

and we typically would drive people to workshops or found retreats from these. They're much more

clean, they're tension grabbing. They've got that minimalist aesthetic that we really love, and

that, you know, we just think encapsulates how we do things at the brand. Each style really has

its own job, right? And knowing which one to use is half the battle. This is usually the point where

most people realize they've been using the wrong structure without even knowing it. That's exactly

why the carousel template system exists. It will show you which template is right for your content

idea. And if you want to apply this to your own content, you can go and download that exercise

and fill it out right after this video. Section two, copy to design workflow. Let me show you the

actual design process from start all the way to the finish line, all right? The most important part

is the copy. We finalize the copy in a Google Doc with the whole social team before we ever

move it over to Figma. This is not negotiable, right? Copy first and design second. Once that's done,

it's time to make the copy come alive with design and Figma. What we do then is copy and paste each

of these pieces of copy over to the individual slides in Figma. And then we go and layout the CTA.

And typically there's around 12 frames long. We want to make sure every single slide is built for

shareability and inspiration as well as obviously giving an insane amount of value. The first frame is

the hook. It's the most important one. We keep it slightly bigger than the rest to really go and

grab your attention, right? Around, you know, an 80 to 120 font size here because we want it to

really stand out, you know, as someone's going and scrolling their Instagram home feed, we want that

slide to immediately capture their attention. If you can't hook someone on the first slide,

you're likely not going to get them to read the rest of it. I like to keep things really clean,

the font, small, clean. I don't put too much text on an individual slide because we want to convey

one message on one slide and have it be standalone kind of value so that someone would be willing to

even share the third of the seventh slide on their Instagram story. That's the main purpose of

every slide, right? It's like to be highly shareable, right? We want people sharing this in the DMs,

in stories, and outside of Instagram to signal the Instagram, okay, this creator, this macray guy,

these guys know what the hell they're doing, okay? Oftentimes what I see work here is that the

copy from X that I see perform really well or maybe it's a LinkedIn hook that we've used to

generate millions of views will then go and give that a shot on Instagram as well. What we're going

to do now is go and create that framework in a more detailed way in the resource that we go

and give away inside of a playbook. Once I've read through all the copy, I start with a slide that

inspired me the most. In this case, it's the one that says you make 300 plus micro decisions per day,

90% don't move the needle, 10% build empires. This gives us a clear idea of how we can go and design

something using minimal and clean graphic elements like dots and lines. I go and I draft a circle.

All the dots represent the micro decisions, keeping 90% of the dots one color,

and then sprinkle a subtle color for 10% that build empires. Now that color code tells the story.

I don't need more text, I don't need more explanations. Then I can draft graphics like this for

every single slide and then translate them into the final slides. The core thing here is to keep

adding details that make people want to swipe from one slide to the next so they can reach the end

which has the most important part, the CTA or the call to action. We have the CTA here. We're

driving people in this case to this founder infrastructure guide. We've got a little bit of copy

up top and then we've got the mock up there which again is using our core color and then with the

right trigger word here. That word being guide, nice, short, and sweet, driving people then to

the many chat automation which is going to then compel people to enter their email, get the resource

and then now they're also part of our email flow. We're not just growing an Instagram to grow a

bunch of followers here. We're trying to actually go and monetize so we can reinvest in people

in our product and likely as a founder and your own lifestyle and goals you have for your life.

We want to go and be insanely generous with the resources that we give away to people on Instagram

and the key thing here too is that those resources are contextually relevant to the carousel

that someone's viewing. The carousel is on deep work. You may want to go and give someone a deep

work checklist at the end. You're not going to go and give someone some call to action to just

join your newsletter generically at the end of a carousel around deep work. You can do better than

that. It's a clear framework you can use every day. We're offering people these little

playbooks on every slide that they can save and use everywhere. Once this is done I select everything,

I export it and then it goes into our main drive. I can then go and schedule this in a sauna for

a social manager who's going to then publish this on Instagram and well that's the whole design

process from start to finish but we're not done. When someone saves your carousel that's not just

engagement. That's a signal to Instagram that this content has lasting value. When someone goes

and shares that to their story Instagram is going to see that as social proof that the

content is worth then distributing through the algorithm. When you're going and generating

all of these DMs from the trigger words that drive people to the lead magnet at the end of the

carousel it's inherently going to make that given post that much more viral. But here's the part

where most people miss. Carousels aren't just performing in the moment. They're performing weeks

and months later because every time someone new discovers your profile they scroll through your

feet and if you have a valuable carousel that's timeless and easy to save they're going to engage

with it even if it's six months old right because the information is timeless. One thing here just to

kind of go one step further and the idea of being just insanely generous with you is to really show

you guys six of our best carousels ever and give you just some quick patterns I'm seeing across

the best carousels I've ever posted or that we've ever posted as a team. Is I'm 35 if you're in your

30s or 40s read this one pattern we see a lot is using numbers in that first slide so bring that

with you to your own niche and your own brand you can see here now they're very minimal right that

white background little highlights over it right and keeping everything nice and chill simple and

on brand right so this post as you can see here got over 25,000 likes same deal here 9.5 K likes

and the cool thing here is that as people swipe through it gradually tells a story in this case

how people can go and really get clear on their goals and take action towards their long-term vision

okay now at the end of this we drive people to a workshop that I was running okay and so

the workshop is a systemized founder workshop and so when they go and enter in coffee in this

specific post they go and get driven to a link to join that monthly workshop I was running

and go and learn how to build their founder led brand without burning out core thing here is that

you know you're going to want to drive people to the thing that's the logical next step

from you know Instagram so you have Instagram being your rented audience because you don't own it

right that's Mr. Zuck but you want to drive them typically to some sort of thing where you can

own that member now which typically my recommendation is driving them to your email list

which is going to allow you to build a valuable appreciating asset over time now this next one

is how to set a company strategy you'll actually use okay pro tip here I see how to hooks crank it

and how twos are also great not just for you know reach but typically they also indicate educational

content that's also likely to go in convert right entertaining content while neat and all just

serves dopamine whereas educational content oftentimes drives people to actually take action

which is what you need if you're eventually hoping to monetize their attention you know on this

one the best founders do one thing brilliantly build systems that replace them okay you can see that

we're also creating a lot of intrigue and curiosity on that first slide every slide is super simple

that's a tip with whatever you do is try to get whether it's the slides or your videos or whatever

down to the most important core concept right simplicity wins okay and the last example here

same deal right we're using a number right we've got minimal beautiful design right and you know

just really helping people understand the core tools to use to get ahead with AI and so these are

the examples of some of the best of the best ones the benefit of carousels just like the benefit

of YouTube videos right is that they keep working for you long term here's what I want you to take

away from this what looks effortless is structured you're not inventing every time you're executing

and if you want the carousel templates that I used here you can go and download them via the

carousel template system it helps you select the right templates and understand where content might

be misaligned step two is then bringing that output into a call with my team so we can pressure test

your choice your ecosystem fit and what you should stop doing if you want that next level of clarity

the link is below thanks for watching and see you next one