Trying Gary Vee's $1.80 Instagram Growth Strategy

Summary

The video tests Gary Vaynerchuk’s Instagram “$1.80” strategy on a roughly one-month-old Tony Robbins motivation account with 94 followers. The approach is to find relevant Instagram posts and contribute a thoughtful “two cents” through comments, likes, follows, or DMs, rather than simply publishing content and waiting for discovery.

Playbook and execution

• Choose a niche and relevant hashtags. The creator selected 10 hashtags related to Tony Robbins, motivation, and personal development. Hashtag ideas came from Instagram search and a keyword tool.
• Engage with relevant posts. The initial approach was broad: comment on posts under the selected hashtags, add something useful, and like the post. The creator also checked recent posts to find users who were more likely to be active.
• Shift from volume to quality. After limited early results, the creator targeted 10–12 people and made more personal, specific comments, sent DMs, replied to Stories, and liked posts.
• Prioritize genuine interaction. The creator observed that generic comments such as “I appreciate the positive vibes” may be less effective when many accounts use similar engagement tactics.
• Give before asking. The strategy was framed as “jabbing” with value before making a “right hook” or asking for attention.

Results and metrics

• Starting audience: 94 followers.
• Early result: One new follower after about 40 minutes of focused engagement.
• End-of-day result: 100 followers, or six net new followers, after approximately 1.5 hours of concentrated work.
• The creator said the account received more engagement and that some people followed after seeing its interactions on other users’ posts, even without being directly engaged by the account.
• The creator planned to share a 24-hour update, but no final 24-hour follower count is stated in the subtitles.

The video’s description of the activity count is inconsistent: it refers to the original 90-interaction concept, then discusses doing 90 interactions per hour over a two-hour test. The reported follower result should therefore be read as a small, informal experiment, not a controlled comparison.

Takeaways and recommendations

• Niche down. The creator found that engaging with people using #running produced some of the most promising responses because the feedback could be tailored to their activity. They suggested a narrower page such as “running motivation,” rather than a broad motivation account.
• Make engagement specific and relevant. For a running-focused account, the proposed tactic was to find people posting about completed runs via hashtags such as #running and #5k, then congratulate them or send a relevant DM.
• Treat the work as relationship-building. The creator enjoyed connecting with people in the niche but emphasized that the tactic requires time and genuine interest.
• Combine community engagement with content. The creator described engagement as a grind for building initial momentum and said future videos would test Instagram Reels as a growth tactic.
• Treat the growth projection cautiously. The creator estimated that a niche account might gain about 50 followers per day with one to two hours of work, but this was a hypothesis—not a result demonstrated by the experiment.

Presenters and sources

• Presenter: Unnamed narrator from Across The Rubicon.
• Strategy source: Gary Vaynerchuk (Gary Vee).