Outlier mining and the idea funnel

Every strategist I rate starts ideas the same way. Find videos that did three or four times their own channel’s average, and study channels between 10,000 and 250,000, because on a huge channel fame carries the hit. Seb Losardo collects a hundred of them. Paddy Galloway takes a hundred ideas and cuts them to three or four. Kallaway pitches twice a week, and if he has nothing contrarian to say, the idea dies. Your ideas are your cap, so this is where the time goes.

How do I use it?

1. Search the niche on YouTube with Shorts filtered out, sort by most viewed, and note what established channels typically get.
2. List the channels of 10,000 to 250,000 in the niche, starting from one you know is good and its nearest neighbours.
3. Pull their videos from the last two months (7 or 14 days in a news niche), drop anything under 2% engagement, and sort by outlier score.
4. Collect about 100 outliers at three or four times their channel’s average, and for each write what made the idea and the packaging work beside a similar video that did not.
5. Write ideas as they come: the next version of your own outliers, translations from nearby niches, and crossovers of two outliers.
6. Cut for core, casual and new fit, then feasibility, then any idea you cannot title and sketch a thumbnail for now, then anything the creator is not excited by.
7. Write a one page pitch for each survivor: rough thumbnail, rough title, one to three reasons it will work, a log line and a views prediction.
8. Pitch them on a fixed call. Kill any idea without a contrarian take, and make the one with the highest prediction.
9. Back one idea in five on gut with no outlier behind it.
10. Grade every posted piece as a multiple of your 90 day median and put your own outliers back at the top of the list.

Whose method is this?

Built from the published talks and podcasts of Paddy Galloway, Seb Losardo, Kallaway, Jenny Hoyos, Caleb Ralston, written as steps to run.