01Personal branding · Content strategy · Scripting

How I helped a founder go from 609 → ~6,000 followers in 3 months with multiple viral videos and zero paid ads.

609 → ~6,000 followers in 3 months

Where it started & the problem

The client: Waris runs a growth marketing agency for EdTech startups and has been in the startup world for quite some time. He helped build and sell a company when he was 20, and since then he's been helping startups in alternative education and EdTech grow.

Waris had been on Instagram for ~9 years, but never as a personal brand. Whatever he posted was just quotes, random facts, and bits of his life, posted inconsistently. He'd wanted to build a real personal brand for a long time that felt true to himself, and even attempted it himself 3 years earlier, but it didn't stick.

1He had stopped posting almost entirely.
2The views on what little he shared maxed out around 500.
3Zero inbound and no real results.

What he was missing was clarity. He didn't know what to talk about, or how to turn his expertise as a growth marketer into content people would actually pay attention to. His goal with the personal brand wasn't leads necessarily. It was credibility. He wanted to be seen as someone worth trusting in the startup and tech world.

How I helped him: the strategy I built

How I made him realise what he wants to talk about

When we started talking, Waris did not know what he wanted to talk about, or if he had anything worth saying at all. So before touching strategy, we started with him. On the first call I asked him a lot of questions about his goals, and what he wanted to achieve with a personal brand.

The questions I asked

1“What do you love talking about with your friends, off-camera?” What actually comes up naturally, unprompted. The topics people talk about for free are usually the ones they can talk about forever.
2“What do you stand for? Your values, your opinions, the things you won't compromise on.” This surfaces the point of view a personal brand actually needs. Expertise alone doesn't matter that much; opinions and story with expertise are what make someone worth following.
3“What do you want people to actually think of when they hear your name?” The destination question. It keeps every piece of content pointed at a single reputation instead of a scattered feed.
4“What are the mistakes or failures in your journey you'd be comfortable talking about?” People don't connect with polish. They connect with the messy middle.
5“If you had to teach someone everything you know for free, what would you start with?” This finds the expertise he could talk about endlessly without running out of material, the actual core of the brand.

Where the answer lives

The real content pillars usually live at the intersection of all three: what he loves, what he stands for, and what he wants to be known for. That intersection matters because the internet doesn't need another guru reciting advice. It needs a human someone can actually relate to, who still manages to teach them something and leave them a little inspired.

Personality: the part that makes it unmistakably him, not a template
Storytelling: the personal moments and journey behind the expertise
Value: real, usable insight, not just motivation
Relatability: the honesty that makes people feel seen, not lectured to

Building the content pillars

With clarity on what he loved talking about and what he wanted to be known for, building the pillars wasn't the hard part anymore. I mapped everything cleanly onto 5 content pillars his entire strategy would revolve around.

1. Startups, Tech & Marketing (Expertise): insights and frameworks spanning startups, tech and marketing; breakdowns of trends, tools and strategies; simple explainers that make complex concepts accessible.
2. Unpopular Opinions on Startups & EdTech (Hot takes): calling out what's broken, contrarian takes on “best practices”, predictions on where the space is heading.
3. Building HIM: The Real Story (His story): how he actually built his agency: the decisions, pivots, near-failures, client wins and disasters told honestly.
4. Waris, Off the Clock (Personal life): hobbies, beliefs, day-to-day personality. The human side that makes people root for him.
5. Lessons from Others: breaking down what other founders, marketers or companies are doing right (or wrong). Near-infinite material, since there's always someone else's move to analyse.

Execution: how we actually did it

Cadence: 2 posts a week, not daily. Consistency at a sustainable pace beats a burst of daily posting that dies out in three weeks.
Formats: a mix of talking-head + b-roll videos, carousels and reels; some low-effort, some high-effort, deliberately balanced.
Filming & editing: Waris filmed himself with light direction from me. I handled scripts, hooks and how to film for maximum engagement, and edited every piece.
The system: a shared Airtable content calendar, always a week ahead. He wrote his own scripts at the start, intentional, so he could find his real voice before I took over writing for him.
The hook formula: every video had to deliver real value in the first 3 seconds, paired with something unexpected enough to stop the scroll.
The breakout moment: a resource-based reel pointing to free YouTube channels for learning skills. 800K views, strong saves, and multiple follow-ups in the same format going viral too. The hook: “Skills I taught myself from YouTube that now pay my bills.”