How to Ethically Steal Content

Where the line is

There is a trend right now of people using AI to hijack a viral video outright. Pull the transcript off something that did a million views, hand it to Claude or ChatGPT, ask for a rewrite, post it that afternoon.

The line gets crossed when you rip everything, word for word, from one video.

That is not really a moral problem. It is a practical one. If every part of it came from one place, you have made a slightly worse copy of a video the algorithm already served to everyone who wanted it. Nothing in it is yours, so nothing about it is repeatable next week.

If you copy from one author, it's plagiarism, but if you copy from many, it's research.

Wilson Mizner

The seven elements

Before you can take one part of a video you have to be able to see the parts. I learned this breakdown from Ava at @personalbrandlaunch. Every short is made of seven.

My process

This is how I do it, at a high level. Yours can look completely different and it should, once you have run it a few times.

1. 1

   Write down your niche and your sub-niches

   If you have been posting a while you already have these, you just have not written them down. If you are new, this is the first job. The niche tells you who is watching. The sub-niches tell you what any single video is for.

   Mine, for Preston Chin Speaks. Niche: communication, helping people communicate better. Sub-niches: executive communication, public speaking, interviewing, speaking on camera.

2. 2

   Pick the one sub-niche this video is for

   Not the niche. The sub-niche. Everything after this gets easier once you have narrowed it, because you are now searching for something specific instead of browsing.

3. 3

   Go and find the outliers

   Open Instagram and type the sub-niche into the search bar. You are looking for videos that clearly did far more than the rest of that account. Save every one you find. If you have been posting for a while, do the same pass over your own back catalogue and find which of your videos in that sub-niche already popped off.

   The two tests I use

   5x

   their follower count, in views

   Start here. A video doing five times the follower count went well past their own audience, which is exactly the behaviour you want to borrow. It is sharpest on accounts under 200,000 followers, and it works on any size.

   2x

   the account's median views

   My rule of thumb once an account is over 200,000 followers. Use the median rather than the average, because one runaway hit drags an average up and makes everything after it look like a miss.

4. 4

   Pick one video and take it apart

   One. Not a folder of forty. Write out all seven elements for it in a note. Watch it three times if you need to, once with sound for the words, once muted for what is on screen, once at 2x for the shape. Then ask the real question: if you could take any of these, which would you take?

5. 5

   Borrow everything except the value

   Topic, hook, angle, editing format. All of it is fair game. The value is the one that cannot be fully taken, because the value is what makes you you. Your call to action is yours too, because it points at a resource only you could have made. Your editing style is the third, and that one you grow into rather than decide on day one. Borrow a look while you are working out your own, and expect it to become yours inside a year.

6. 6

   Make the value your own

   This is the whole job, so it gets its own list. Take their idea and do one of four things to it.

   1

   Change the application

   Same framework, different room. Theirs teaches it in general, yours teaches it to executives, or to nurses, or to a founder pitching a seed round.

   2

   Expand it

   They gave four steps. You have run it enough times to know what breaks at step three, and what you do about it.

   3

   Push back on it

   You have tried it and part of it is wrong. Say which part, say why, and say what you do instead.

   4

   Offer the alternative

   Their way works. So does another way nobody is talking about, and you can show both and say when each one is right.

7. 7

   Script it, starting with the hook

   Lay out the core elements first. The structure of the hook, then the sequence it opens into, then the general shape of the rest. Once those are on the page, the blend melds into something that reads as one video rather than three stitched together.

How I actually did it

Here is the whole thing on one video of mine. Two sources went in, one for the idea and one for the shape, and the value in the middle is mine.

There's an amazing presentation mechanism that was actually created by a kindergarten teacher, and it's called FORMAT, and it's the why, what, how, now. There are four frames.
The why frame is: why is this important? Why is this important right now? I’m talking about global warming, and it’s important right now because all the rainforests are dying.
The second is the what frame. Well, there’s four pieces that affect global warming…
Now it’s the how frame. Let me tell you how each of these pieces are affecting you…
And then the next one is the now, or the next. So what do I do with all this information? All I need you to do is turn off your air conditioning at 6pm. What is the one domino that I kick?

I start from one video on the topic lens, because that keeps me close to what is already working in my general category. I saw plenty of other videos pop off while I was looking, but they were in a completely different space. This one was inside communication, which is my niche, and I already suspected I had a sharper version of the same framework.

So if something gives us more energy and it makes us more money, what are we going to do? We are going to prioritize this…

You’re going to protect this one. Even though it doesn’t make you money in a tangible way, it gives you energy, and you can’t make more money if you don’t have more energy.
Now we move below the line here. Let’s say something makes you money, but it takes your energy. What you’re going to do is you are going to delegate this…
This cute little box down here, the last one. If it takes your money and takes your energy… I want you to delete this.

The blend

The video that came out

So here’s how you explain anything to anyone clearly and persuasively. We use the format formula. This is a four-question framework that was developed by a kindergarten teacher in the late 1970s. And the key questions are: why is this important, what is this about, how does this work, and what if we did this?

The problem is that most people lose about 75% of their audience because they’re focused on just one or two of these quadrants. But if you address all four of these in order, you’ll hit everyone in the room.
So let me show you with a real example from an executive meeting that I led. We start off by asking our audience a question that’s relevant to them. For example, how important do you think it is for us to engage with this customer at the stage that we’re at?
Then what is all about giving them the facts. So for example, I met with the customer’s VP and I learned that they’re very focused on consumer prospects and they already closed in their beta. So our competitor got in the first wave.
Next is answering, how does this work. So in my meeting, I said, I reached out to two contacts there, but I’d love to leverage our networks across the company. So Johnny, could you send a brief note to this person?
And then last is what if. In this case, I asked our chief marketing officer, so what does this mean for us? Should we explore this or should we wait?

That is the whole framework. Find the outliers in your sub-niche, pick one, take it apart into seven, borrow five of them, and put a value in the middle that only you could have written.