Every industry has its headline names, people whose strategies go viral, whose frameworks get screenshotted, whose one-liners end up in your swipe file. In marketing, that might mean Gary Vee, Caleb Ralston, Alex Hormozi, Katelyn Bourgoin or whatever talking head just turned a Canva carousel into a course.
And a lot of these folks? They’re good. They’ve tested, built, shipped, and scaled. They’ve earned their influence. They’ve helped thousands of people think differently.
So yes, pay attention to them. But don’t copy them. Especially not the Instagram playbook crowd who had one TikTok take off and are now suddenly “growth strategists.” Because building your brand off someone else’s win is like wearing their prescription glasses. Might look sharp. But it won’t help you see any clearer and eventually you’ll walk into a wall.
What Worked for Them Might Break You
Gary Vee can post 100 times a day because he has a small army behind him. Caleb Ralston can run sleek UGC because his audience vibes with that style. Hormozi can go hard on no-fluff business truths because it fits his brand persona, his model, his experience.
But you? You’ve got different ingredients:
A different audience
A different product
A different level of trust in the market
Maybe one freelancer and a calendar full of calls
That’s why copy-paste marketing rarely works. It doesn’t account for context. It skips the most important part of strategy…….thinking.
The Great Instagram Grift
Let’s talk about it. How many times have you seen this post:
“Here’s how I scaled my offer to $100k/month with just 3 emails”?
Sounds impressive, right? But zoom in and you’ll find:
No receipts
No insight into audience, offer, or industry
And often… no actual repeatability
What you’re getting is a success story with all the nuance removed, packaged as a shortcut, then sold back to you for $297. That’s not strategy. That’s theater. And worse, it convinces smart people to stop trusting their own instincts.
Templates Feel Safe — Until They Don’t
Formulas feel good. They give you a sense of progress. They make it easy to check a box, post the thing, hit publish. But formulas without understanding are fragile. Your brand isn’t built on the back of someone else’s bullet points.
It’s built on your:
Customer insights
Product truth
Brand voice
Risk tolerance
Long-term vision
Templates can be tools. But they are not your foundation.
Great Marketers Interpret. They Don’t Imitate.
The smartest marketers? They don’t blindly apply what they see. They decode it. They look at a viral framework and ask:
What’s really going on here?
Is this about tone, structure, psychology?
How would this look with my voice and my goals?
They treat popular strategies like raw material, not a checklist.
They don’t say, “We should do exactly what they did.” They say, “There’s something interesting here. Let’s see if it fits.”
Your Brand Is the Advantage
The truth is: your quirks are your edge. That weird product origin story. That oddly specific thing your customers always mention. The stuff that doesn’t quite fit a trend. That’s the gold. And no amount of templated swipe content will ever replace it.
So yes, study the greats. Save the frameworks. Watch the case studies. But then, shut the tab. Talk to your customers. And write your own damn playbook.
Final Thought
Inspiration is helpful. Blind imitation isn’t. Don’t build a brand that only looks like it knows what it’s doing. Build one that actually knows because it’s based on real insight, tested ideas, and a message that belongs to you. Think like them. But think for yourself.