That’s how long someone takes to decide whether to click a title or keep scrolling.

So Netflix obsesses over thumbnails.

Dozens of variants for every show, tested against each other, different images served to different people.

One change can shift clicks by 20 to 30%.

The reason is simple. If the thumbnail doesn’t instantly say this is for you, people assume it isn’t, and they’re gone.

Your hero section works the same way.

The hero section is the first thing someone sees when they land on your page, before they scroll. It’s usually a headline, a line underneath it, an image, and a button.

So the hero section works the same way Netflix works with their thumbnails.

You get about five seconds before someone decides whether they’re in the right place.

Miss it and there’s no scroll, no conversion, and no second chance.

Most people think the fix is better design. Flashier visuals, more copy, a nicer animation.

After building hundreds of hero sections over the last decade, I’ve found the opposite. The ones that convert aren’t the most creative. They’re the clearest.

They do one job in the first five seconds: show the visitor they’re in the right place.

Here’s the four-part system I use, and three ways to check whether yours is working.

1. The headline

The most important part of your entire landing page.

If I had a one dollar budget, I’d spend 80 cents here. One good hook is worth more than thousands of words of masterful copy, because if you can’t grab attention in the first five seconds, nothing after it matters.

You get one shot when someone lands. You have their attention for a few seconds at most.

And plenty of other people are competing for the same seconds.

Get everything else right and the headline wrong, and the page is dead on arrival.

The 4 Us.

These are four questions your reader asks without realising they’re asking them.

Urgent. Why should I pay attention right now? No urgency and they scroll. It doesn’t have to be time-based. Situational works: “Are you losing customers to slow load times?” creates urgency because if the answer’s yes, they need it fixed now.

Unique. What makes this different from the last ten things I’ve seen? If it feels familiar, their brain filters it out. This is where most headlines die. “Email marketing made simple” could be anyone.

Ultra-specific. Who is this for, and what exact problem does it solve? Vague headlines get ignored. Specific ones feel personal. “Grow your business faster” says nothing to anyone.

Useful. If I give you my attention, what do I get? How does my life or business improve? The benefit, not the feature.

If your headline doesn’t answer all four, it isn’t strong enough yet.

Would you stop scrolling for it? If not, rewrite it.

And for what it’s worth, after writing dozens and dozens of these, it’s still hard. It doesn’t get easy, you just get faster at knowing when it’s wrong.

2. The subheadline

One job: elaborate on the headline and tee up the CTA. It’s the bridge between the two.

Most people either skip it or write three paragraphs.

It should answer how does this work, or what makes this possible.

Headline: Never miss a sales opportunity again
Subheadline: Get instant alerts when high-value companies visit your website, so you can reach out while they’re still interested.

That clarifies how the headline gets delivered.

Or it handles an objection:

Headline: Build landing pages in 10 minutes
Subheadline: No code. No designer. Pick a template and customise it.

That one kills “but I’m not technical” before it forms.

One or two sentences. And make sure it leads into the CTA rather than just sitting there.

3. The visual

Your hero image isn’t decoration. It’s doing work.

The principle that matters most: make your product the hero.

I see so many landing pages with beautiful landscape shots, lifestyle photography, abstract graphics, all trying to sell the dream outcome.

That’s the headline’s job. The image has a different one.

Show the product, the service, or the process, as the most prominent thing on screen. People need to see what they’re getting.

If your headline says “manage projects in one place” and your image is a stock photo of people in a meeting, there’s a gap, and the visitor feels it even if they can’t name it.

Show the dashboard. Show the interface. Show it being used.

Two things that work:

Product in action. The interface, the dashboard, the tool being used. Best for SaaS.

Process visualisation. The steps, the transformation, the before and after. Best for services and agencies.

Three things that don’t:

Generic stock photos of people smiling. Abstract shapes with no context. Landscapes that look nice and say nothing.

4. The next step

Your CTA is the last piece, and one thing separates a strong one from a weak one: clarity.

It should tell me exactly what happens when I click.

Watch 2-min demo. Get the cheat sheet. Try now, no card required. Book a 15-min call.

Each of those removes uncertainty. I know what I’m getting and what I’m agreeing to.

The rule: if someone reads your CTA and still wonders what happens next, rewrite it.

Then add trust signals. Underneath the button, logos of recognisable customers or trust badges. “Trusted by 10,000+ companies including [logo] [logo] [logo].”

Credibility without extra copy.

No big logos yet? Use the number of customers, a star rating with review count from a review site, or an industry certification.

The goal is reducing friction before the click, not after it.

How to know if it’s working

That’s the framework. Now the part most people skip.

The one-second test

The fastest way to find out.

Pull up your landing page and cover the screen with a piece of paper. Once it’s loaded, take the paper away, look for one second, then cover it again.

What stood out? Do you remember the headline? Where did your eye go first?

You’re biased on your own pages, so get other people to do it. Friends, family, colleagues, anyone who hasn’t seen it.

Then ask them three things: what stood out, what do you think the product does, and who is it for.

If they can’t answer after one second, the hero isn’t clear enough yet.

Screen recordings

Any heat mapping tool will do this (Like Hotjar, PostHog, etc.) Watch real visitors land on the page.

Good sign. They stay above the fold for five to seven seconds, then scroll slowly. That’s an interested buyer. They’re reading.

Bad sign. They hit the page and bounce within one or two seconds. The hero isn’t grabbing them.

Also bad. They stay one or two seconds, scroll fast, then leave. They looked, didn’t understand or didn’t care, and went.

Scrollmaps

These show what percentage of visitors make it past each section. Same tools.

If fewer than 30% scroll past your hero, the hero is failing.

Stay on it until you’re above 50%.

And here’s why this ordering matters. Why optimise what 20 to 30% of visitors see when you haven’t fixed the section 100% of them see?

Get above 50% scrolling past the hero. Then go and work on the rest of the page. Not before.

What most people do instead

They tweak button colours. They A/B test body copy. They add another feature block halfway down.

All of which is work on the part of the page that fewer than a third of visitors ever reach.

Fix the hero first. Get 50% scrolling. Then everything else you do actually gets seen.

I hope you find this useful. Till next time ✌️

Their restaurant was popular, but slow.

And every time they tried to speed things up, quality suffered.

So they did something strange.

They studied assembly lines from car manufacturing. They redesigned the entire kitchen.

They specialised every role, so one person grilled, one person dressed, one person finished the burger.

They pre-portioned every ingredient and choreographed every movement.

They called it the Speedy System.

The result was a burger in 30 seconds. Faster than any competitor, and better quality than they’d ever managed before.

They didn’t work harder. They redesigned the process.

Landing pages have the same problem

Creating a high-converting one takes a lot of work.

Hours of writing copy, tweaking design, second-guessing everything.

And when you finally launch, the conversion rate is below average anyway.

So you try AI to speed it up. Now your page looks like every other AI-generated page.

Generic copy, corporate jargon, cookie-cutter design.

Most people think you have to choose. Spend days crafting the perfect page, or use AI and accept that it looks like everyone else’s.

Quality takes time. Speed sacrifices quality. You can’t have both.

Except speed and quality aren’t opposites when you’ve got the right system.

I’ve built over 100+ websites in the last ten years, and the pattern is always the same: the best landing pages don’t overwhelm; they guide.

They follow a structure.

One framework. Three tools. Under two hours from concept to published page.

The framework: five sections

A landing page is the first step in a funnel. A system with inputs, processing and outputs. The input is attention, the processing is persuasion, the output is revenue.

Most landing pages fail because they bury the value proposition or confuse the visitor. They try to say everything at once. They overwhelm instead of guide.

Five sections fix that.

1. Hero hook

Your first impression. Hook visitors immediately so they keep scrolling.

If you had a one dollar budget, spend 80 cents on the headline.

Headline. Your boldest claim or most attractive benefit, tailored to your audience. Its job is to grab attention, spark intrigue and promise something specific. I use the 4 Us: urgent, unique, useful, ultra-specific.

Sub-headline. Elaborate on the headline and lead into the CTA.

Visuals. Show the product in action. Image, gif or video.

CTA. A concise incentive, with trust-building elements like recognisable customer logos.

One good hook is worth more than a thousand words of masterful copy. If you can’t hook someone’s attention, the rest of your copy doesn’t matter, however strong it is.

2. Old way

Your market is stuck with problems your product solves. Paint a vivid picture of that pain and expose the flaws in how they’re currently handling it.

Here’s where most people get it wrong. They nail the hero section and then jump straight to features. Here’s what our product does.

You need this section first. Agitate the pain before you offer the solution.

Skip it and your page reads like every other generic sales pitch. No empathy, no understanding, just buy our thing.

So: highlight the frustration and inefficiency they’re living with. Call out the shortcomings of the current approach. Show what happens if they stick with the status quo.

Start with a punchy intro summing up their struggle, then bullets to drive it home. Direct, easy to skim, and it gets them thinking I need a better way.

3. New way

The meat of the pitch.

Show how your solution eliminates the frustrations you just named, what the transformation looks like, and what measurable results they can expect.

Connect every feature to a clear benefit. Answer objections before they’re raised.

Short intro positioning your product as the answer, then bullets for the benefits and outcomes.

Then add an additional section below it to show how it works.

4. Evidence

Social proof is what makes any of it believable.

Reviews with specific outcomes, ideally from third-party platforms. Testimonials from happy customers or experts. Case studies showing real people who had the problem and don’t any more.

Numbers stop people. Readers skim, and a stat is what makes them pause. The more you can show, the better.

Without strong proof, people hesitate, and hesitation is where conversions go to die.

5. Call to action

Deliver value without pressure or risk. Clear, straightforward, with a real reason to take the next step.

Primary CTA. Book a call, start a trial, buy. Address concerns upfront and reduce the risk with a free trial or a guarantee.

Secondary CTA. Not everyone’s ready, and that’s fine. Offer something low-pressure, an ebook, a guide, a mini course, that keeps them in the funnel.

And use exit-intent pop-ups to show the secondary CTA right before someone leaves.

That’s the framework. Five sections, forcing clarity, guiding the visitor from attention to action.

The three tools

The McDonald brothers didn’t make one person do everything. They specialised.

Same principle. You don’t need one AI tool that does everything badly. You need three, each doing one thing properly. Some examples of how I do it:

Framer for design

There are plenty of website builders. Framer is my favourite because it makes building almost effortless. Low-code, good for simple architectures, and optimised for speed.

It’s got AI built in now with Agents, so you can design pages on the canvas, iterate, set breakpoints, add effects, create components, write code, connect the CMS and organise styles.

Go to the template library, pick one that matches your layout, customise it. You’re 80% done in 20 minutes.

Best practice: screenshot websites you like. Go to saslandingpage.com to get the best inspiration, screenshot it and click the plus button.

Claude for copy

This is where the framework comes to life.

You don’t tell it “write a landing page.” You give it the five sections and let it fill each one. Grab us promt:

You are an expert conversion copywriter.

We are {{COMPANY NAME}}, a {{TYPE OF BUSINESS / INDUSTRY}} that helps {{TARGET AUDIENCE}} achieve {{CORE DESIRED OUTCOME}}.

I want you to write a **high-converting landing page** following this 5-section structure:

1. **Hero (Hook & First Impression)**  
   - Headline: Boldest claim or most attractive benefit.  
   - Subheadline: Expand on the headline and lead naturally to the CTA.  
   - Creative Visuals: Show the offer in action (e.g., image, gif, video).  
   - CTA: One concise incentive + trust signals (logos, testimonials, guarantees).  
   ⚡ *Your job: Hook them hard. If we lose them here, we lose them forever.*

2. **Old Way (The Pain)**  
   - Agitate the pain points your audience is stuck with.  
   - Expose the flaws of the outdated or inefficient methods.  
   - Show the stakes of doing nothing.  
   - Create urgency that makes them want change.

3. **New Way (The Solution)**  
   - Show how the offer solves those pain points directly.  
   - Connect features to tangible benefits and transformation.  
   - Highlight measurable outcomes that align with their goals.  
   - Make it easy to skim with punchy bullets and short, clear copy.

4. **Evidence (Proof)**  
   - Add social proof: reviews, testimonials, stats, or case studies.  
   - Highlight numbers or recognizable names to build trust fast.  
   - Make it feel real, specific, and credible.

5. **CTA (Action)**  
   - Primary CTA: high-intent action (e.g., book a call, buy, start free trial).  
   - Secondary CTA: low-pressure option (e.g., guide, resource, waitlist).  
   - Optionally include exit-intent CTA for last-chance conversion.  
   - Make both CTAs clear, benefit-driven, and risk-reducing.

Offer Type: {{PRODUCT / SERVICE / LEAD MAGNET / ETC.}}  
Target Persona: {{AUDIENCE / SEGMENT}}  
Core Benefit: {{DESIRED OUTCOME}}  
Tone of Voice: {{TONE — bold, clear, benefit-driven}}  
Primary CTA: {{ACTION — e.g., Book a Call}}  
Secondary CTA (Optional): {{ACTION — e.g., Download Guide}}  
Proof Elements: {{TESTIMONIAL / STAT / LOGOS}}

Before writing, ask me 3–5 questions to clarify offer positioning, pain points, proof, and CTA strategy.

What comes back is structured copy that follows the framework. Not generic AI copy, because you’ve given it a structure to work inside rather than asking it to invent one.

An LLM for images

Plenty of tools do this now. I use ChatGPT, because it’s the most accurate for what I actually want, and Gemini. Higgsfield AI is good for inspiration.

What I tend to do: go to saaslandingpage.com, screenshot every image I like, upload them and ask for something similar in theme without copying.

90% of media buying doesn’t matter if your creative is bad. Same applies here. You need a pattern interrupt, something that breaks the visitor’s flow. The visual hook, or the scroll stopper.

Before reaching for AI, try your actual product screenshots or photos of yourself. Authenticity beats generated every time.

And here’s the mistake. People generate one image, use it, and call it done.

Generate 5 to 10 variations. Different styles, compositions, colour schemes. Then pick the one that actually stops the scroll.

AI gives you speed. You still have to supply the judgment.

So: Framer builds the structure, Claude writes the copy, an LLM makes the visuals. Each tool doing one thing properly.

Quality control

You’ve got the framework and the tools, and you’ve built the page in under two hours.

This is where most people stop, and it’s where the page gets made or lost.

Readability

Consumption precedes conversion. There’s no point having a landing page if nobody gets through the copy.

Run it through the Hemingway Editor. It’s free, and it highlights whatever is hard to understand or overly complex.

I aim for a 5th-grade reading level or lower. That isn’t dumbing it down, it’s being clear. If your copy is complex, people bounce.

Design inspiration

saaslandingpage.com again, and this is the part I’d actually call a secret weapon.

These are companies spending millions on their sites. Look at how they structure hero sections, where they put social proof, how they position CTAs.

Not to copy them. To study what works. You’re borrowing the output of millions in testing and ad spend for free, and with Framer you can get close to that design quality in an afternoon.

Page speed

Fitting, given the Speedy System.

People expect a page to load in three seconds or less. Longer than that and they bounce. You can have the best page in the world and it won’t matter.

Framer is optimised for this already. Keep images and gifs under 1MB. Host video on Wistia or Vimeo rather than uploading it directly.

Then run it through Google PageSpeed Insights before you call it done.

What the difference actually looks like

Ask AI for “a landing page” and you get a headline like “The Best Solution for Your Business,” copy about leveraging cutting-edge technology, and no structure underneath any of it.

Use the five sections and you get a headline built on the 4 Us, copy that moves from pain to solution to proof to action, and a human voice.

One of those looks like every other AI page. The other looks like someone made it on purpose.

What to do with this

The McDonald brothers redesigned their kitchen to make a burger in 30 seconds.

This is the same move, applied to something that currently eats your week.

Open Framer, pick a template, spend thirty minutes filling in the five sections with Claude. You’ll have 80% of a landing page done before lunch.

Till next time,
Rachid

I looked at him and said, “You don’t.”

He was confused at first, so I clarified.

You don’t differentiate with marketing.
You differentiate with the best product or service.

Sounds like common sense, right?
Well, as they say, common sense isn’t common practice.

Look, I know most of you can’t change the product. I’ll get to what you actually control.

But it starts with understanding why he was asking the wrong question.

The rules of the game changed

There have been major shifts in the market. Buyers have evolved.

New technologies, AI, more competition, more noise.

And when there’s a lot of competition and commoditisation wth AI, you need a lot of differentiation.

You need to separate yourself from the crowd.

If there’s a red sea of sharks, you need to make sure you’re swimming in a blue ocean.

So you run slightly different marketing. So what?

It’s the businesses with great products that add real, tangible value that win.

It’s all about the product. And you know what? It’s always been about the product.

What’s happening now is the market has become more aware.

People don’t just look at how slick your marketing is and then decide. They look at the product.

They try it out. They check the proof, the reviews, the testimonials.

If it isn’t great, they won’t listen to you. They’ll ignore your marketing entirely.

Bad products kill marketing. Great products amplify it.

Both camps are wrong

I’ve come across two schools of thought.

The “product is everything” people. If the product is great, word will spread and people will come. Marketing takes care of itself.

The “marketing is everything” people. The product doesn’t matter as much. As long as the ads and funnels are dialled in, you can sell anything.

They’re both wrong. It isn’t one or the other.

It’s both.

Focus only on product and you end up with something great that nobody knows about. That’s the “build it and they will come” fallacy. Customers don’t magically show up out of nowhere.

Focus only on marketing and you get unhappy customers and constant churn. You’re stuck acquiring new people just to replace the ones leaving.

When you wow customers they stick around, they talk about you, and your lifetime value goes up.

You’re not in the order business.
You’re in the reorder business.

That relationship pays everyone. Customers are delighted, your lifetime value increases, and you can reinvest more into acquiring new ones.

Your marketing draws people in. Your product keeps them.

But the market beats both

Here’s the part I got wrong for years.

I used to think great marketing determined a company’s success.

It doesn’t. It’s not the marketing that wins. It’s the market. The demand for what you sell.

Successful businesses have one thing in common. They either tapped into big, established markets with real demand, or they got the timing right and entered a market that was already exploding.

You could run the best campaigns of your life. If the demand isn’t there, your growth hits a wall.

So to grow big, you have to pick the right market.

We can’t control what people want. What we can do is position the product in a category people already know and already want.

“But I don’t own the product”

Right. Most of you can’t change the roadmap. You’ve been handed something built by other people and asked to go and win with it.

Here’s the thing: your job was never to invent a difference. Marketing can’t manufacture one that isn’t there. That’s what I meant when I told the CEO no.

Your job is to find the difference that already exists, and make sure the right people can’t miss it.

There’s no such thing as a boring product

As I write this, I work in cybersecurity.

Not the sexiest industry. But I believe you can make anything good.

Check out a few of my ads:

I’d die on this sword. I say it to everyone, whether it’s a CEO, a dev, a designer, anyone.

There’s no such thing as a boring product. Just boring marketing.

It’s my favourite line, because taste is a superpower.

Taste is the number one unfair advantage in marketing. In an AI world, taste is what cuts through, because every craft is being automated or commoditised.

Which is also why I try not to lean on the tactics thousands of other people are already running. I’d rather come at a market fresh and ask what unique value I can actually bring.

So here’s what standing out actually means, in three jobs.

Stage 1: Unique positioning

Give them a reason to pick you

Being different for the sake of it doesn’t work. Nobody is shopping for “different.”

People are trying to get something done, and they pick whoever removes what’s in the way.

So start with the job, not the product.

What are people actually trying to achieve?

Write it in their words, starting with a verb. Products change. The job doesn’t.

Then find the frustration nobody is solving. Not the obvious one, the emotional one. Big players treat buyers like spreadsheets and miss it every time.

And define your audience by that frustration, not by job title. Who feels it most often, and most painfully? That’s who you’re for.

One thing people get wrong here: they reach for a clever label. Don’t. Use the words people already search for, then add one qualifier that shows your edge. If someone has to work out what you are, they won’t bother.

Try this: read your last five posts or ads. Could anyone else in your category publish them unchanged? If yes, you don’t have positioning. You have a category description.

Stage 2: Distinctive brand

Be recognisable

People don’t pick a brand because of what its logo means. They pick whatever comes to mind first.

So build a small kit of things people can recognise. A colour. A shape. A face. A phrase. Then use them relentlessly, in everything, for far longer than feels comfortable.

Skip the hidden meanings. Clever symbolism competes with memories people already have and it dates fast. Recognisable beats meaningful.

And you’re too close to know what’s working. Ask a customer what one small thing they remember about you. Whatever they say, turn it up.

One test I like before committing to anything: does it make your team slightly nervous? If it feels completely safe, nobody’s going to remember it.

Try this: take your last three ads and cover the logo. Would anyone know they’re yours?

Stage 3: Continuous reach

Show up at the right moment

Most of your market isn’t buying right now. So you’re doing two things at once. Staying memorable for the people who aren’t ready, and being there for the few who are.

The bit most people skip is the trigger. People live with a problem for years and then act because something specific happened. A bad month. A new boss. An audit. Someone asking a question they couldn’t answer.

Find those moments and you know where to be. “Social media” isn’t a channel. A named community, newsletter or event is.

Then pick two or three places and actually stay there. Not because they’re optimal, but because you’ll keep going.

And you don’t need more ideas, you need more angles on one idea. One opinion, three trigger moments, three formats. That’s nine pieces of creative that all say the same thing and none of them feel repetitive.

The order it goes in

Pick the market first. Nothing else matters if you’re in the wrong one.

Then be honest about the product, because marketing can’t fix it and shouldn’t have to.

Then find the difference that already exists, make it recognisable, and put it in front of the right people often enough to stick.

That last part is yours. All of it.

There’s no such thing as a boring product.

Last week I wrote about getting attention. Ads people actually stop for.

Here’s the part nobody tells you: attention on its own is worth nothing.

You can hijack someone’s scroll, get the click, and lose them thirty seconds later. Because the thing you caught them with led to something boring, salesy, or exactly like they’ve seen before that’s not worth their time.

Getting attention is the first transaction.

This week is about the second one.

The market pays you in attention

Business owners are always looking at the same thing: how do I get more output for the same input?

That’s leverage. And right now we’re living through leverage inflation, where the cost of getting anyone to notice you keeps climbing.

But here’s the real threat, and it isn’t your competitors.

The internet is just a chaotic blizzard. You’re competing with:

That’s the market you’re competing in.

So understand what a sale actually is. The market pays you with their attention.

It’s not when someone fills out a contact form. It’s not when someone pulls out a credit card. It’s when they choose to spend their most valuable resource on you instead of something else.

And every single thing on that list above is more entertaining than what you’re trying to tell them. That’s the harsh part.

Netflix worked this out years ago

They’ve said their biggest competitor isn’t Disney+.

It’s sleep.

That’s why they test relentlessly. Different thumbnails for the same show, for different people. Nudges about things you’ve already watched. All of it designed to win a few more minutes against the alternative of you closing the laptop.

Everything competes with everything in one enormous arena. And when you step into it, you’re asking your prospect to choose you over all of it.

Which is why it’s not enough to know what your competitors are doing. You need to know where your prospects actually spend their time. What are they watching? What are they listening to? What do they scroll past without thinking?

You need to be a student of markets, not a student of your category.

Day trading attention

So let’s talk about what you’re actually running.

A sales funnel is simply a system with inputs and outputs.

The raw material is attention.

The processing of that raw material is persuasion.

The output is revenue, whether that looks like leads or sales or whatever it is for your business.

Regardless of what you’re selling, this stays true. You have to get attention first. Nothing happens until you hijack it.

Once you understand that, the game becomes: how do you hack that system to get more attention and more throughput?

Not just attention at the top end. Throughput through the whole funnel.

You do it by getting leverage.

The inputs are the time, money and energy you put into the system. The output is whatever outcome you’re after.

In a world where the cost of that traffic only goes up, the businesses that win are the ones that get the most leverage from the same traffic.

Because you’re competing with Coca-Cola. You’re competing with every brand out there. There’s only one newsfeed.

So: is this entertaining?

Go and look at every sales message you’re putting out. Email flows. Website copy. The thank-you page nobody reads.

Ask one question about each of them: is this entertaining?

Because that’s what you’re up against. Hyper-personalised content, algorithmically tuned, delivering dopamine to your target market on a schedule.

The first thing to consider is always the same. Why would my prospect even care about what I’m saying?

It has to be interesting. It has to be entertaining. And it has to provide real value, because skepticism is at an all-time high. There is a lot of clutter.

Your prospects have been burned. They doubt everything you say by default. And it’s getting worse as more people come online.

That makes every step of the funnel harder. Getting the click. Getting the opt-in. Getting them to watch the video. Getting them to book.

Because chances are they’ve already been through someone else’s funnel and got nothing out of it.

The second transaction

The way you beat that is a high-value content offer.

A lead magnet. A free report, a checklist, a template, something they get in exchange for an email.

And most people say the same thing: I tried that, it didn’t work.

Here’s why it didn’t.

This is the second transaction. The first was their attention. The second is when you give them something for free, and what you give them has to be as good as a paid product.

Most lead magnets aren’t. Most lead magnets are a stodgy white paper that tells people how great the company is. That’s promotional merchandise with a form in front of it. That’s not value.

Here’s the test: would anyone pay for this?

If the honest answer is no, you don’t have a lead magnet. You have a brochure.

I’ve run a lot of these across different markets. Videos, webinars, low-ticket products, free reports. Split-tested properly.

The free report consistently gives the cheapest cost per qualified lead.

Because don’t forget, in any given market, only 3% are ready to buy right now

Getting people to opt in and warm them up the pyramid above, using different touch points such as email nurture, is the way to go in terms of combating and converting scepticism.

How I built mine in an afternoon

Here’s the part that stops people. They think this takes two weeks, so they never start.

It doesn’t. Here’s exactly how I made my last two.

The first was a checklist on creating ad creatives 10x faster. The second was a checklist on using AI to make ads that don’t read as AI slop, by mixing AI and human finishing to produce ads at scale.

1. Step one: find out what people are actually frustrated about.

Not what you think they need. What they’re complaining about, in the words they’re complaining in.

If you already know people’s pain and issues, you can skip step one, but here’s exactly what I did:

I use Reddit Answers, which is more direct than digging through threads yourself.

And I run automated Grok tasks pulling from X, so problems people are posting about surface without me going looking. X is social media, so you’re getting real time problems, alerts, and updates from Grok ahead of tools like Google Trends, which takes a while to catch up.

What came back was consistent. Marketers are stressed about two things: not getting results, and running out of creative ideas when they’re trying to scale traffic and get clicks.

So that’s what the checklist answered.

Not what I wanted to talk about.

What they were already annoyed about.

2. Step two: talk it, don’t type it.

I use Wispr Flow for almost everything I write, and this was no different. I dictated the whole thing.

Talking is about ten times faster than typing, and more importantly it sounds like you. You already know this material. You’ve explained it out loud dozens of times. So explain it out loud again and capture it.

3. Step three: build the corpus.

This is the bit most people skip.

I collected everything good I’d seen on the topic. Newsletters, articles, LinkedIn posts, X threads, plus screenshots of strong ebooks and ads from the LinkedIn and Meta Ad Libraries.

Then I uploaded the lot to an LLM and asked it to reverse engineer the patterns and give me the best possible prompts.

Same move as last week’s ad research, pointed at a different target. The proof of what works is already public.

4. Step four: add your own evidence, and weight it heaviest.

Then I uploaded my own material. Notes from past work, screenshots of campaigns that worked, things out of my Drive I’d never done anything with.

This is the step that makes it yours rather than a summary of the internet. Anyone can collate. Your own results are the thing nobody else has.

5. Step five: finish it yourself.

AI is for starting projects. Humans are for finishing them.

I gave the transcript and the corpus to Claude to clean up and structure. Not to write it. The thinking was already done.

One rule on the collating, while we’re here: if a concept came from someone specific, name them. Chet Holmes’ buyer pyramid is Chet Holmes’ buyer pyramid. Crediting people costs you nothing; it makes you look well read, and the people you credit tend to notice.

When it comes to the material/resoruce itself, I tend to play around with different tools and have them fight against each other.

For example, I got Claude to do the whole checklist pages, but I got Gemini to do the cover. It seems to do better illustrations for the cover.

Tip - Get in the habit of comparing tools and LLMs to do different variations when it comes to creative. I also use tools outside of standard LLMs, like Gamma.ai and higgsfield.ai.

That’s my checklist, and what worked for me.

Dictate, research, collate, add your own, finish by hand. An afternoon, not a fortnight.

And the reason it works isn’t the tooling. It’s step one. The content answered a problem people were already complaining about, in the language they were complaining in.

Value is the antidote to skepticism

That’s the lens I want you to look through:

How can I provide the most value to my market for free, and treat them like customers before they give me a cent?

That’s how you fight the skepticism that’s running wild right now. Not by being more persuasive. By being more useful than anyone would expect from something free.

Make the sale easy

Marketing’s job is to make sales easy.

You should be building so much desire in your marketplace that people are already sold before you ask them to buy.

Think about the Apple Store. The staff are order takers. Nobody in there is being sold to, because the selling happened long before anyone walked through the door.

Your job is to articulate the pain points, show how your product solves them, and present an offer that’s unlike anything they’ve seen.

And if you’re answering the same objection over and over, that’s not a sales problem. Your marketing isn’t strong enough yet. Handle the objections upstream so the conversation at the bottom is easy.

Don’t ask someone to buy until they’re already sold.

I learned all of this the slow way. I had a bad case of shiny object syndrome early on and got my ass handed to me, because I kept jumping from thing to thing.

Things only started working when I focused on the main thing:

Understand your prospect’s problem better than anyone else. Articulate it better than anyone else. Solve it better than anyone else.

That’s it. That’s the whole job.

Till next time✌️

When I first got started running ads online, I thought all the growth was hiding somewhere.

Some new ads course. Some account structure. Some secret optimisation that would unlock all this cash and make it fall from the sky.

None of that matters. Well, 90% of it doesn’t.

The creative is the thing that matters.

The creative is how you actually target people. It’s the messaging and the visuals.

You do not want to focus on the technology.

You want to focus on the psychology.

And this is truer now than it was five years ago, because the platforms have automated the part everyone used to compete on. They’ve put AI on the media buying.

Media-buying skill has a short shelf life now.

Creative doesn’t.

It’s a challenge I face myself, and where I spent weeks

I learned this the expensive way.

I had an account where the numbers were going the wrong direction. Clicks were expensive. CPMs were through the roof.

And I did what everyone does when that happens: went into the account and started pulling levers. Structure, bidding, audiences, budgets.

Nothing moved.

Then I stopped and looked at which creative had actually performed, took the best of it, and refreshed everything around it.

Cost per lead almost halved.

Not from a new campaign structure.

Not from a bidding strategy.

From new creative built on what was already working.

Most ads are rice soup

There are tens of thousands of ads that never get clicked.

Why?

Because most ads are like rice soup.

No flavour, no seasoning, just boiled rice and water.

If you go out there and say “this is what I’ve got to sell,” you’ll be one of those ads that gets ignored.

And you’ll pay a premium on every CPM for the privilege.

So you need to be polarising.

Being all things to all people is the fastest way to become invisible.

In the chaotic blizzard that is the internet, we don’t earn attention.

We hijack it. Then we earn the right to keep it.

And the first rule of fight club is to not make an ad look like an ad.

The second someone sees that little “sponsored” label, they scroll faster. You do it. I do it. The platforms know it.

Humans have around 50,000 thoughts a day, most of them repeats. The brain is an efficient pattern-recognition machine and it knows it’s a waste to relearn what it already knows.

Unless you do something different, you get filed under “seen it” and skipped.

That’s what a pattern interrupt is for. New, novel or disruptive breaks the pattern. Familiar doesn’t.

The framework for a killer ad

Three things. Every ad, every time.

1. Pattern interrupt. The lead-in copy and the image both. It needs to look unusual and make someone think “what’s going on here?”

2. Big specific benefit. Not a vague improvement. A specific one.

3. Burning intrigue. Behind the headline and behind the creative.

Get all three and your CPM drops.

The platforms monitor everything: how long people hover, how many hit “see more,” how many share it.

Disproportionate engagement signals to the algorithm that the ad is good, and good ads get cheaper distribution.

People only stop and read if it’s different.

Which raises the obvious question. If creative is the whole game, where do good creatives actually come from?

The best ads are public

Here’s the thing most people never use.

Both Meta and LinkedIn have public ad libraries. You can see every ad a company is running, and more importantly, you can see the date it started running.

You can’t see spend. You can’t see performance. But you can see duration.

And an ad that’s been running for three months or more is almost certainly working. Nobody keeps paying to serve a loser that long.

So that’s your filter. Anything live for 90 days or more goes in the screenshot folder.

Then upload the lot to whichever LLM you use and ask it to find the patterns.

That’s it. That’s the whole trick. You’ve reverse-engineered a category’s winning creative using nothing but public data and one prompt.

But there are two ways to run this, and most people only do the first.

1. Route one: your direct competitors.

Obvious, useful, and where everyone starts.

You’ll find the hooks that keep reappearing, the proof points the category leans on, the objections everyone is handling.

The problem is that this is how categories end up looking identical.

If every B2B security brand is studying every other B2B security brand, you all converge on the same blue gradient, the same padlock icon, the same “protect your business” headline.

Copying the category makes you competent. It doesn’t make you different.

2. Route two: B2C, and industries nothing like yours.

This is where the leverage is.

B2C brands compete for attention in a far more brutal environment than B2B does.

They’re fighting for a slice of the same feed as Netflix trailers, memes and people’s actual friends.

They’ve had to get genuinely good at stopping the scroll, because nothing protects them.

B2B ads are shielded by low expectations. Everyone’s ad is boring, so a boring ad doesn’t stand out as boring.

Which means the highest-leverage move available to a B2B marketer is to bring B2C craft into a category that has never seen it.

So screenshot the DTC skincare brands. The energy drinks. The fitness apps. The food delivery ads. None of them are your competitors and that’s the point.

Then ask a different question of the AI. Not “what do these have in common” - take this promt:

Here are ads from [category]. Identify the structural and psychological techniques they use to stop the scroll. Then suggest how each technique could be applied to [my product] for [my audience], without copying the visual style.

You’re stealing the mechanism, not the look. The mechanism travels between industries. The look doesn’t.

Then do it slowly, by hand, once a week

The bulk analysis gives you patterns. It doesn’t give you taste.

For that, I do something separate and much slower.

Every week I pick one screenshot and take it apart. Same 4 questions, every time:

1. What made me stop? Was it the headline? The hook?

2. What’s the weirdest choice they made, and why does it work?

3. What would the safe, boring version of this look like?

4. What’s the one specific move, word or choice I’d steal?

Question 3 does the most work. Most people never ask it.

But when you write out the boring version next to the real one, you can see exactly what the creator chose not to do, and that’s usually where the whole thing lives.

After eight or ten of these, patterns show up everywhere. You start recognising those moves in the wild before you’ve consciously analysed them.

That’s when taste kicks in. And taste is the thing the AI can’t give you.

Getting the creatives out

1. Start with a winning template. Don’t reinvent anything. Use proven layouts from high performers. This is what your Ad Library screenshots are for.

2. Lean on pattern interrupts. Bold colours. Red, green, yellow, strong contrast. Skip the dull stock photos.

3. Use memes and pop culture. Humour makes the ad relatable and less salesy. Adapt what’s trending and tie it to your offer.

4. Test variations. Different colour schemes. Product in use, results, testimonials. Keeps the algorithm happy and prevents fatigue.

5. Duplicate and tweak. Canva Pro spins hundreds of variations from one idea.

Now scale what’s already winning

Once you’ve got winners, yours or theirs, you stop starting from a blank page.

Start with the headline. The headline carries most of the weight in any given ad.

Take a headline that’s already working and run this:

Give me 10 variations of this Meta ad headline. Make it compelling, ultra specific and very direct. Each headline should include a big benefit and burning intrigue. Limit it to 45 characters. Here’s the example headline: [X]

Then the 11 words that do the heavy lifting.

There are 11 words that can triple response on a Meta ad.

Is it the headline? The creative? The call to action?

No. It’s the lead-in copy. The first 10 to 15 words.

The trick is to start with a quotation. A hair-on-fire question, or a real problem your audience is desperate to solve.

Reddit is a goldmine for this. Lift the exact phrasing your market is already using and put it at the front of your ad. Testimonials work the same way.

Change nothing else and watch what happens:

Give me 10 variations of this opener to a Facebook ad. Make it visceral, ultra specific and very direct. Limit it to 11 words. Here’s the example opener: [X]

Now you’ve got a stack of headlines and a stack of lead-ins. That’s your combinations.

The rules every ad has to follow

• Different at all costs.

• Write like you talk.

• Use stories. Don’t name your company. Speak as a user, or in first person.

• Make your ads valuable. The first sale is for someone’s attention. Over-deliver on it. If the ad is valuable by itself you get shares and reach for free.

• Your ads shouldn’t look like ads. They should blend into the platform and get likes.

• Short sentences. Five to ten words.

• Spark emotion. That’s what gets the comment, the share, the click.

Two more that are easy and almost nobody does.

Readability. Run your copy through the Hemingway Editor. It’s free. Aim for a fourth-grade reading level or below, and break the copy up, because people are reading this on a phone. Consumption precedes conversion. If you did nothing else, this alone bumps conversions.

One rule about the AI

The internet hates AI slop.

If it’s 100% AI generated, people can tell, and they’ll roast you for it.

So one rule: AI is for starting projects. People are for finishing them.

The library analysis, the variations, the bulk generation, all of that is the AI’s job. The judgment about which one to launch is yours. That’s what the weekly five questions are training.

Don’t make ads. Create campaigns.

Instead of sitting down and thinking “I need a new ad,” ask what the whole campaign looks like for the next 90 days.

Shoot multiple hooks for the same ad. Then instead of dumping everything out as one big promo, take all the assets and drip them across the quarter.

Work in sprints rather than living on the treadmill.

The part that actually matters

Here’s what I believe more than anything else in this.

One good hook is worth more than a thousand words of masterful copy.

If you can’t hook someone in this environment, it doesn’t matter how strong the rest of your copy is, how good the offer is, or what you’re charging.

And 80% of copywriting is knowing what to say. The other 20% is how you say it.

The winning is in understanding your prospect better than anyone else in your market, so you can articulate their problem better than they can.

There’s no such thing as a boring product. Just boring marketing.

There’s a war on for attention.

The question is what weapons you’re bringing.

Are you serving rice soup?

Till next time,

But what really makes someone say yes?

It turns out, marketing is more about psychology than most people realise.

Google defines psychology as:

Sounds a lot like marketing, doesn’t it?

Today, we face a significant challenge: the internet has made everyone incredibly skeptical and sensitive to marketing. It’s tougher than ever to get a yes.

There’s AI slop everywhere, and people are not happy about it.

That’s why understanding the psychology behind persuasion can set you apart.

Years ago read the book called “Influence.”

Edit again now, and it seems like everything is still pretty much the same it comes to actually influencing someone to do something.

From all my years in marketing, I believe it’s all about sticking to the things that are not going to change, and in my opinion, the things that are not going to change are:

1. Human psychology.

2. How people act online.

So instead of advanced tactics, here are the 7 concepts that have reshaped my marketing and made it more persuasive.

1. Framing

It’s not just what you say. It’s how you say it.

At an old job there was a guy everyone disliked. Blunt. Direct. He’d give feedback and tell you what something was in the worst possible way.

I thought he was rude for a long time.

He wasn’t. That was just his personality, and the feedback itself was usually right. It was the delivery that made people flinch.

Here’s the thing about that. You can give someone the harshest feedback imaginable, and if you do it gently, they’ll take it on board and act on it. Deliver the same words badly and they react before they’ve even processed what you said.

Now imagine you’re a complete stranger.

That’s your copy. Your emails, your landing pages, your ads. No relationship, no benefit of the doubt, no context. Just words on a screen being judged in a second and a half.

Small changes in wording lead to large shifts in behaviour.

Framing has a dark side, usually called glossing. A plummeting stock price becomes a “market correction.” An overpriced acquisition becomes “goodwill.” In management, problems get repackaged as “opportunities.”

That looks like wordplay. It isn’t. It taps into how people respond emotionally to identical realities.

Here’s how to use it properly:

Loss aversion. People react more strongly to a loss than to an equivalent gain. “Save £500” is fine. “You’re losing £500 a month by not doing this” is stronger.

The power of questions. How you ask shapes the answer you get. “What went wrong?” hunts for blame. “What can we improve?” hunts for solutions. Same meeting, different outcome.

Inversion. 99% fat-free sounds great. Contains 1% fat sounds worse. Same milk. 99% uptime feels safe. 1% downtime feels risky. Same server.

Speak their language. Frame it properly. Same message, completely different reception.

2. Pain, Dream, Fix

We’ve all tried to persuade someone who just won’t budge.

The truth is that for someone to act, certain things have to line up. Without them, getting action is nearly impossible.

For thousands of years humans have communicated through stories with a beginning and an end. As marketers we have to be engaging and persuasive. Shouting facts at people doesn’t work.

The Human Action Model says three things must be true:

• The person feels discomfort with their current situation

• They can picture a better state

• They believe their action can get them there

Pain, Dream, Fix is how you deliver that:

Pain. The problems your customers live with right now. Make them feel it.

Dream. Paint the better world. Let them sit in it.

Fix. Show how your product turns the dream into reality. This is where features finally belong, and not a second earlier.

Here’s why it matters: people need to feel “this is for someone like me.”

The problem with most copy isn’t a lack of product explanation. It’s an insufficient focus on who the product is for and why it matters to them.

3. Anchoring

We rely too heavily on the first piece of information we see.

Show someone numbers ascending, 1 through 8, and they estimate low. Show the same numbers descending, 8 through 1, and they estimate high.

That first number becomes the reference point for everything after it.

How it shows up in marketing:

Show the highest price first. List the expensive option at the top and everything below it looks reasonable. The mid-tier suddenly feels like the sensible choice.

Or the lowest, when the gaps are small. When the difference between tiers is minor, anchoring low makes the next tier feel like a small, justifiable upgrade.

Use unrelated high prices. Even an expensive product from a different category can make yours feel like a bargain.

Multiple unit pricing. “3 for $10” anchors people to buy more than “$3.33 each” does.

Quantity limits. “Limit 5 per customer” makes people buy more. The restriction itself creates the demand.

4. Triggers

A trigger is anything that sparks someone to complete an action.

For a behaviour to happen, three things must be present: motivation, ability, and a trigger. The action has to provide value, be simple to complete, and draw attention.

Miss one and nothing happens.

Even when someone has motivation and ability, they still need the prompt.

External triggers are all around us. They target our senses and tell us what to do next. A “click here” button. A push notification. The smell of coffee as you walk past a cafe.

Internal triggers come from inside. Memories, emotions, situations. Fear of missing a moment triggers the Instagram photo. Boredom triggers the scroll. Loneliness triggers the inbox check.

The goal is converting external triggers into internal ones. You bring people back again and again by attaching your product to their daily routine until it becomes part of the workflow.

So ask yourself: in what situation could this behaviour be triggered? Then put an external trigger as close to that moment as you can.

A few that do real work:

Pattern interrupt. Disrupt the usual thought process and people engage. But the interrupt has to connect to what you’re selling. Shock without relevance just attracts the wrong crowd.

The CTA itself. Copy, colour, position, size. Black & Decker got a 17% lift switching “Shop Now” to “Buy Now.” Two words.

Notifications and email. People unlock their phones dozens of times a day. Every one of those is a chance to be the thing they see. The requirement is being relevant, timely, and curious.

5. Tradeoffs and regret

Jeff Bezos had a good job. Stable. Clear path.

Then the internet happened.

He could stay, or quit to start an online bookstore that might fail. Most people would build a pros and cons list and never decide.

Bezos asked one question instead: when I’m 80, will I regret not trying this?

He knew he wouldn’t regret trying and failing. He would regret never trying at all.

That’s the Regret Minimisation Framework. Project yourself forward. Look back at today’s decision. Ask whether you’ll regret not doing it.

Yes, do it. No, let it go.

Everything is tradeoffs. Do I do X or do I do Y. You can’t do both. We all do this subconsciously, but doing it deliberately makes it useful.

And here’s the part most marketers miss: your customers are running the same framework.

They’re asking: will I regret buying this? What if I make a mistake? What will people think if it doesn’t work?

People are constantly trying to reduce risk and avoid regret. They’ll take the least risky option even when it isn’t the best one.

So make the regret cheap:

Address the obvious worry. “What if I don’t like it?” Return policies, free trials, try-before-you-buy. Give them the exit.

Use guarantees for the big purchases. “If X doesn’t happen, we’ll do Y.” It doesn’t have to be a refund. A discount, a credit, extra support, an opt-out clause. The point is that the burden sits with you, not them.

6. Scarcity

The harder something is to get, the more we want it.

People link availability to quality. And we’re more motivated by the fear of losing than the desire of gaining.

You’ve done this with a flight.

You find a good price. You think, I’ll wait, it might drop next week. You check back and it’s gone up. Now you’re booking immediately, not because the price is good, but because you’re worried it’ll climb again.

Nothing about the flight changed. Only your sense of what you might lose.

That’s scarcity doing the work.

Limited stock. Booking.com showing “only 3 rooms left.” Some sites go further and show how many people are looking at the same room right now.

Deadlines. Amazon telling you exactly how long you have to qualify for next-day delivery. I’ve bought things purely to make that window.

Shorter free trials. Cutting a trial from 30 days to 14 tends to increase usage. Less time means people actually open the thing instead of forgetting they signed up.

Scarcity is FOMO. Loss aversion is the fear of losing something you have. Scarcity is the fear of never getting something you don’t.

7. Loss aversion

Closely related, and the reason scarcity works at all.

People feel losses more deeply than gains of the same size. Losses carry roughly double the psychological weight.

So stop leading with what they’ll get. Lead with what they’ll lose.

Negative headlines outperform positive ones. Nobody wants to lose something of value.

Free trials work because of the ending, not the beginning. When the trial expires, users feel the removal of features they’ve been using. That’s the conversion moment.

Lazy registration. Let people use the thing before they sign up. Once they’ve put effort in, they’ll register rather than lose the progress.

Alerts and bookmarks. Price drops, new features, saved posts. All of it is built on not wanting to miss something.

Pre-filled carts. Removing the discounted item feels like giving up a discount, which is harder than never having had it.

What actually stays the same

Seven models. None of them requires a tool, a trend, or a budget.

Framing changes how a message lands. Pain, Dream, Fix gives people a story they can see themselves in. Anchoring sets the reference point. Triggers turn intention into action. Regret shapes every decision your customer makes. Scarcity and loss aversion are the two sides of the same fear.

That’s why Influence reads the same eight years later. The platforms changed. The tools changed. The people didn’t.

Learn the psychology and the tactics take care of themselves.

Right off the bat, my new boss called me into his office.

As soon as I sat down, he dove straight into explaining things, and I was trying to absorb every word.

Then, mid-sentence, he suddenly got up, walked behind me, grabbed a pen and started writing on the whiteboard.

I stayed quiet.

He wrote three words: “Good,” “Cheap,” and “Fast.”

He circled them and said:

“You can’t have all three. If you want something done well and quickly, it’s going to be expensive. If you want it done well and affordably, it’s going to take time. And if you want it fast and cheap, well, don’t expect perfection.”

He looked me dead in the eye and added:

“This is how I want you to approach every project. You always have to choose two. Try for all three, and one will suffer.”

That simple lesson changed the way I thought about my work and shaped how I handled projects, tasks, and campaigns from that day forward.

The circle you can’t escape

Every project comes with a trade-off. There’s no way around it.

Here’s how the overlaps work:

Good + Cheap = Slow: You’ll get quality work at a low cost, but it will take time.

Good + Fast = Expensive: Want something done well and quickly? It’s going to cost you—either in money or resources.

Cheap + Fast = Low Quality: You’ll get it done quickly without spending much, but don’t expect it to be great.

All three = Impossible: The center? That’s where everyone wants to be. But it doesn’t exist.

When the boss or customer asks you to do something, you’ll be tempted to aim for all three. But it rarely works out that way.

You end up having to ask for more money, more time, or a change in scope.

How this applies to everything you do

Once you understand this, you can approach every project with clarity.

Want to work faster?

Be clear about what you want from the start. Avoid changing plans mid-project—that slows everything down. Know your hard deadlines, and if needed, move them earlier.

Think in terms of minimum viable product (MVP). Identify what’s non-negotiable and be ruthless about cutting the rest.

If you must fail, fail fast. Small, early mistakes are easier to fix than big, late ones.

Need to keep costs low?

Plan ahead. Schedule with as much lead time as possible to allow for flexibility. If things go wrong or need adjustments, having that buffer will save you from costly last-minute fixes.

You can also lock in longer-term deals for better pricing.

Want better quality?

Clarify why you’re doing the project in the first place. Break it down from there. Small uncertainties at the start can lead to major issues later on.

Don’t hesitate to ask for advice. Experts can often show you easier or better ways to achieve your goals.

Lean on your boss, mentors, or colleagues for insights on improving quality.

The choice is yours

Good, cheap, or fast…which do you choose?

You can have two, but not all three.

The moment you accept this, projects become easier. You stop chasing the impossible and start making smarter trade-offs.

New features. New models. New hype.

But here’s what doesn’t change: human psychology. Marketing fundamentals. The problems your customers actually have.

Most people chase tools. The ones who win build systems.

You can swap out any tool. But if the system is solid, the foundations remain.

I spent 12 months testing this. Here’s what actually matters.

Use AI as a strategic partner

Here’s what I learned after integrating AI fully into my work:

The people who hire you don’t care whether you use AI or not. They just want the outcome.

They don’t have the bandwidth or expertise to do it themselves, even with AI. They need you to do it.

That’s the shift: AI isn’t a replacement. It’s a strategic partner.

You bring the judgment, the taste, the understanding of what works. AI brings speed and scale.

You don’t need to be an AI expert. You need to be the person who solves real problems people are already complaining about.

Here’s how.

Part 1: How to use AI to solve problems (3 steps)

Step 1: Find the work everyone hates

People love to complain. That’s your goldmine.

I started paying attention on Slack, Reddit, X, Instagram. Each complaint became an opportunity.

I’d head to TheresAnAIForThat.com and search for AI tools that solve these exact problems. Test them myself first. When I found something that worked, I’d approach whoever complained.

The key: You’re not hunting for tools. You’re hunting for pain points. Then you map tools to those pain points.

Step 2: Build a prompt library they’ll actually use

I created a prompt library for our team’s most common tasks.

But here’s how I made everyone use it:

Instead of just sending a link, I recorded a 5-minute video showing exactly how to use it and dropped it in our team Slack.

Within a week, everyone was using it.

The key: Don’t just build it. Show people how to use it. Make it impossible to ignore.

To save you time, I spent hours building this library of marketing Promts.
Grab it here

Step 3: Create Custom GPTs

Custom GPTs are like prompts on steroids.

I built one with my manager that transforms anyone’s writing to sound like our company’s messaging and language. Our company’s tone.

Now anyone on the team can write something, run it through the GPT, and it comes out sounding like us.

The key: You’re not just using AI. You’re building AI assistants that solve specific, repeatable problems.

To recap:

1. Find AI solutions (hunt for pain, not tools)

2. Build a prompt library (and show people how to use it)

3. Develop AI assistants (Custom GPTs for repeatable tasks)

That’s how you use AI as a strategic partner to solve real problems.

Part 2: Why systems beat tools (every time)

Here’s the thing: most people collect AI tools.

They chase new software. New features. New updates. Without ever integrating any of it into how they actually work.

That’s why nothing compounds.

You can change a tool, but the system and foundations remain the same.

The fundamentals of marketing, psychology, and philosophy aren’t changing. Human behavior isn’t changing.

What’s changing is the speed at which you can execute on those fundamentals.

That’s where AI comes in.

The power isn’t in the tools. It’s in the systems you build around them.

The people who win with AI aren’t the ones using the most software. They’re the ones building systems that compound over time.

AI tools link lockdown

Below are the exact tools that power my three core AI systems.

System 1: Discovery/research

Prompt Library - Ultra-specific prompts to 10x your creativity. Fill in the placeholders and never need to edit the prompts again.

There’s An AI For That - Map pain points to solutions. I use this after spotting complaints on Slack or Reddit to find tools that actually solve problems.

Grok Alerts - Daily trend radar. Monitors X conversations and sends me a summary of what mattered yesterday. Two minutes keeps me ahead.

NotebookLM - Extract insights from podcasts, books, and videos. Hours of content distilled into minutes. Get the juice faster.

System 2: Visuals

Gamma.app - Turn messy thinking into clean presentations and documents. Removes design friction.

Google Nano Banana-First image generator I trust for real marketing assets. Sharp text, consistent branding, professional visuals. Chat GPT now does it almost as good too.

Fal.ai - Generate brand visuals, thumbnails, and campaign assets at scale. LORA training for repeatable visuals.

System 3: Production and execution

Claude - Claude generates the first pass: structure, rough copy, and initial thinking. Then I make ChatGPT and Claude “fight” each other. I feed the content to ChatGPT for feedback, pass that feedback back to Claude, and ask whether it agrees. Pro tip: always ask Claude to be brutally honest.

Lovable.dev - Build internal tools, prototypes, and landing pages in plain English. Ideas become working products in hours, not weeks.

Final thought

Tools don’t compound. Systems do.

That’s why my 2026 stack is small, intentional, and system-first.

You can swap out any tool in this stack. But the systems remain.

Because the fundamentals don’t change. Human psychology doesn’t change. Marketing principles don’t change.

What changes is how fast you can execute on them.

AI is your strategic partner in that execution. Not a replacement. A multiplier.

If you want leverage, stop adding tools and start locking systems.

Hunt for pain. Build prompts people will actually use. Create AI assistants that solve repeatable problems.

The market doesn’t reward depth anymore. It rewards range.

Deep expertise in one narrow thing? AI can do 80% of it already. And it’s getting better every month.

But understanding how everything connects? Seeing the whole picture?

Moving fast without waiting for six different people to approve something?

That’s what separates you.

There’s a story that explains this better than anything I could say.

Dr. Dre didn’t become a billionaire by being the best rapper

He became a billionaire by refusing to stay in his lane.

Watch ‘The Defiant Ones’ on Netflix. But the most important scene isn’t the big sale.

It’s the first time Dre walked into Jimmy’s office with a CD.

Jimmy Iovine was already a legend in the music industry. He’d started by sweeping floors in recording studios, then became an assistant, then an audio engineer, then a producer working with the biggest artists in the world. He knew what great work sounded like.

When he heard Dre’s CD, he couldn’t believe it.

“This is incredible. Who mixed this? Who produced it?”

Dre: “I did.”

Jimmy pushed further.

“Wait, you wrote the lyrics? Created all the sounds? Produced the entire thing? Did the artwork? Packaged it for sale? Even figured out the marketing angles?”

“Yeah.”

That’s when Jimmy knew he had to work with him.

Because Dr. Dre wasn’t just a rapper. He wasn’t just a producer. He understood the entire process from creation to customer.

He was what we call full stack.

Why this story changed everything

That scene with Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine fundamentally shaped how I approach marketing and business.

Because I realized: I’m naturally like this.

I always seek to understand the whole business, not just my piece of it. The big picture. The details. How everything interconnects.

Throughout my years in growth marketing, I’ve asked “why?” so many times people probably wanted to kill me.

• Why does this campaign work but that one doesn’t?

• Why does finance calculate ROI that way?

• Why does the product team prioritize features like this?

• Why do customers churn after 90 days?

• Why does support get these specific questions?

There’s actually a formal problem-solving technique called “The 5 Whys.”

You ask “why” five times to get to the root cause of any problem. I basically did this with everything in the business until I understood how it all connected.

And here’s what I learned: That curiosity is what made me valuable.

Not because I was the absolute best at any one thing.

But because I could see how everything fit together, spot bottlenecks before they happened, and move fast without waiting for six different people to approve something.

When you understand the full stack, you don’t get stuck.

You don’t say “that’s not my job.” You just figure it out and keep moving.

The pattern is everywhere

Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

• Steve Jobs didn’t just understand software. He mastered hardware, design, consumer psychology, supply chain, retail strategy, and storytelling. Not the best at any single thing, but the combination made Apple unstoppable. He refused to make just an operating system and let someone else build the computer. He wanted to own the entire experience.

• Leonardo da Vinci studied chemistry to mix better pigments. Learned optics to understand light. Studied geometry, mathematics, and dissected human bodies to understand anatomy, all to become a better painter.

• Michael Jordan didn’t specialize like most NBA players (defense, three-pointers, or scoring). He mastered all three at an elite level. That’s what separated him from everyone else.

• Michael Jackson wrote his own lyrics, created songs and sounds, choreographed his own dances, designed costumes, controlled the lighting, and produced everything. He owned the entire experience from creation to stage.

The pattern is clear: The people who win don’t just go deep in one area. They build expertise on top of broad foundations.

What full-stack actually means

Being full-stack doesn’t mean being mediocre at everything.

Think of it like a T:

The horizontal bar: Broad competence across many domains. You understand how businesses make money, customer psychology, copywriting, design fundamentals, how funnels convert, basic finance, what good data looks like.

The vertical bar: Deep expertise in 1-2 areas where you’re genuinely excellent.

You spend 80% of your time in your zone of genius. But that other 20%, instead of stopping and saying “not my job,” you just handle it.

This is what Google calls “T-shaped people.” Deep and narrow in your specialty, wide and informed everywhere else.

What it could look like for marketing

The fundamentals haven’t changed, but the essential skills have evolved dramatically. Here’s what matters now:

1. Practical AI Fluency

You need to:

• Spot the broken workflows in your marketing process where AI could actually help

• Build prompts that handle real work, not just polish your copy

• Show your team how to use these tools without needing you every time

• Filter signal from noise as new capabilities emerge weekly

The pattern: Identify the problem. Deploy AI to fix it. Train others to do the same.

2. Tech Stack Fluency

You’re not a developer. But you can’t be helpless around technology either.

You need to:

• Map out which marketing tools exist and how they talk to each other

• Assess new platforms quickly

• Collaborate with technical teams without needing a translator

• Grasp enough about how data moves through systems to be dangerous

3. Experimental Mindset

This is about velocity and judgment combined. You need to:

• Launch rapid tests of unconventional ideas

• Distinguish meaningful signals from random fluctuations

• Move winners to scale immediately

• Balance what the data shows with what your instincts tell you

The Foundation (Still Critical)

You still need the basics:

• Customer psychology (understanding why people buy and what messaging resonates)

• Business fundamentals (how companies make money, P&L basics, CAC vs LTV)

• Copywriting (selling with words, writing emails that convert)

• Design thinking (what makes images and pages convert)

• Data literacy (reading analytics, knowing what metrics matter)

• Marketing mechanics (funnels, conversion rates, attribution modeling)

• Finance basics (the difference between cash and revenue, contribution margin, payback periods)

• Platform knowledge (how social algorithms work, what drives distribution)

Why AI makes this more important, not less

AI is making specialists less valuable and full-stack people more valuable.

If you only know how to do one narrow thing, AI can probably do 80% of it already and it’s getting better every month.

But if you understand how everything connects, you can use AI as a force multiplier to move 10x faster than before.

The full-stack marketer who understands psychology, copywriting, design, data, and strategy can now use AI to:

• Generate 50 headline variations in seconds (then pick the best ones using their judgment)

• Analyze campaign data and spot patterns instantly

• Create visual concepts without waiting for a designer

• Write and test copy faster than ever

• Automate repetitive tasks and focus on strategy

They’re not being replaced by AI. They’re becoming unstoppable because of it.

The specialist who only knows how to “run Facebook ads” is in trouble. The full-stack growth marketer who understands acquisition, conversion, retention, economics, and can orchestrate AI tools? They’re worth 10x more than two years ago.

Tools change. Psychology doesn’t.

Here’s what keeps me grounded:

Focus on the psychology, not the technology.

The fundamentals of marketing, human behavior, and decision-making aren’t changing. How trust is built. How people make choices. What drives action.

These don’t become obsolete just because the tools evolve.

You can swap out any tool. But the system and foundations stay the same.

So don’t be obsessed with the tools. Treat them as a means to solve problems. Master the psychology. Understand the systems.

That’s what survives.

Final thought

Don’t be the person who says “that’s not my job.”

The market doesn’t need more specialists who can only do one thing.

It’s desperate for people who can see the whole picture and make things happen.

Be that person in 2026.

P.S. If you haven’t watched “The Defiant Ones” on Netflix, do it this week. It’s the best documentary I’ve seen on what full-stack actually looks like in practice and why it’s the difference between good and unstoppable.

But I always proved I was the right choice.

How?

Well, whenever I’d read biographies or content online, I felt like they were leaving out all the juice.

When are they gonna get to the tactical stuff?

Like the exact sentences I can say. The specific funnel. The secret ad strategy.

They always spoke in generalities and frameworks.

I was like, “Yeah, that’s all good, but give me the juice dude. Give me the actual specific things.”

“ Yeah cool, give me the tactics now. Give me the shiny tactics.”

Then I realized something.

After reading lots of books, speaking with lots of people, these advanced people always did the fundamentals every time.

If you just do the fundamentals and you do them exceptionally well, you will wipe the floor

Here’s what actually matters:

Always believe in your ability to figure it out

I’ve built a deep trust in my ability to figure things out, no matter the challenge.

Whenever I encounter an obstacle or feel uncertain about completing a task, I remind myself that I’ve always found a way through in the past.

There’s a powerful confidence in knowing that, even when the path seems unclear, I can break down the problem, adapt, and come up with a solution.

It’s not about having all the answers upfront.

It’s about trusting in your resourcefulness and resilience to push forward and find your way.

Doing > Talking

Doing is the only way to get things done.

Stop talking about it. Stop caring about others’ opinions. Do it until it’s done.

The best way to learn is by playing in reality, not abstractions. Doing things, experimentation, iteration, trial and error.

Make sure you spend most of your time observing reality and then doing things that have a real measurable effect in reality.

Everything else is noise.

It sounds common sense to say “Doing in the only way to get things done”.

But common sense isn’t common practice.

Most of my success has come from simple common sense things executed properly, not abstract theories, meetings or power lunches.

Always exceed expectations

Whether it’s with customers or colleagues, always underpromise and overdeliver.

I like to call this the best, and possibly the only acceptable lie in business.

It might sound weird and counterintuitive, but it’s a great feeling to always set low expectations and pleasantly surprise people at the end rather than set high expectations and risk disappointing them.

I first learned this lesson from a millionaire I worked with over a decade ago at one of my very first jobs.

He was absolutely obsessed with customers and had the mantra “always exceed expectations” plastered across the walls of all his offices.

That simple concept left a lasting impression on me, and I’ve carried it with me ever since.

It always worked in my favour.

It transformed the way I approach work, building stronger relationships, trust, and building my reputation when delivering.

First impressions last

Whenever you’re working somewhere you have to build moats from the start.

So whenever I started working at a company, I dominated.

I would come in before everyone else and leave after most people have gone.

People thought I was working 100 hours a week.

Now, nobody questions my ability to get the job done.

First impressions last.

No matter how much you build on top, if the foundation’s weak, it’ll never stand strong.

Communicate more. OVER-communicate.

This is about adding transparency to your projects.

Share updates, show progress, and keep people in the loop.

Over-delivering and over-communicating are critical.

Here’s why:

People pay for results, but they stay for the experience.

Most people under-deliver and under-communicate.

And if you only deliver results, clients may see it as the bare minimum and think they can find better elsewhere.

So, over-deliver. Show consistent progress. Over-communicate.

And, of course, get results.

Never let customers or employers wonder where their money is going or what you’re doing with it.

90% of the time, more volume is the answer

When people aren’t seeing the success they want, it’s simply because they’re not doing more of the actions that they know they need to be doing.

Instead, they’re looking at some new thing that they need to do at a lower volume than just taking the core fundamentals and cranking that up.

90% of the time, more volume is the answer.

More outreach. More content. More reps.

Stop looking for the next shiny thing.

Just do more of what already works.

Do the boring stuff and eat that frog

You don’t need more data.

You already know what needs to be done.

Just flipping do it.

You don’t need to go validate anything else. You already know what needs to be done.

Go out there and do the boring work.

Not because he was broke.

Because he was obsessed with focus.

A chest of drawers. A mattress. A folding table. Folding chairs.

That’s it.

He also wore the same outfit every single day:

Black turtleneck. Jeans. New Balance sneakers.

Why?

Decision fatigue.

Every decision you make drains your mental energy. What to wear. What to eat. Where to put things. Which project to tackle first.

By the end of the day, you have nothing left for the decisions that actually matter.

Jobs understood this.

His minimalist lifestyle wasn’t about aesthetics. It was about preserving his decision-making capacity for building Apple.

And it worked.

Jobs didn’t build Apple by doing more. He built it by doing less—but doing it better than anyone else.

The power of leverage

The word “leverage” comes from the lever—a simple tool that lets you move a massive object with minimal force.

Give me a lever long enough and I can move the world.

In productivity, leverage means getting more output from the same input.

More with less.

Scenario 1: Arrows pointing in every direction—up, down, left, right, diagonally. Your energy is scattered across a dozen projects, tasks, and priorities.

Result? You move an inch in every direction. Barely any progress.

No leverage.

Scenario 2: One arrow pointing straight up. All your energy focused in ONE direction.

Result? You move a mile forward.

Maximum leverage.

Same amount of energy. Completely different outcomes.

This is the core principle of Essentialism:

Scattered energy = no leverage = scattered results.

Focused energy = maximum leverage = exponential results.

Most people are stuck in Scenario 1. They’re busy. They’re hustling. But they’re not moving forward.

They have zero leverage.

Here’s how to fix it.

Do 1-2 things properly (not 10 things poorly)

Most people spread themselves thin.

They’re working on a dozen projects, chasing every opportunity, saying yes to everything.

And they wonder why nothing moves forward.

Here’s the truth:

Quality results come from fewer tasks with consistent effort—not scattered energy across a dozen projects.

This comes from Greg McKeown’s book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less.

The idea is simple:

Do 1-2 things properly instead of many things half-heartedly.

You make significant progress in what truly matters rather than tiny strides in every direction.

This is how you create leverage: concentrate your force.

Here’s how to apply this:

Select fewer opportunities – You can’t pursue everything. Trying to do too much destroys leverage. Concentrate your energy in one direction.

Prioritize the essential – Determine your purpose before eliminating options. Focus on key tasks and make tough decisions about what matters most.

Clear obstacles – Identify what truly matters and remove any barriers standing in your way.

When you say no to the good, you make room for the great.

That’s leverage.

Elimination over addition

This is where Steve Jobs’ empty house makes sense.

His minimalism wasn’t just a lifestyle choice. It was a philosophy:

Remove anything that clogs or clutters your mind.

Why? Because of decision fatigue.

More things in your environment = more decisions = fewer quality decisions.

This means less productivity. Less efficiency. Lower-quality output.

Less leverage.

You don’t have to live in an empty house. But you can start small:

• Simplify your workstation: Minimal desk setup. No clutter.

• Organize your desktop: Delete those messy screenshots. Clean it up.

• Limit browser tabs to 4: If you have 47 tabs open, you’re not working, you’re drowning.

The goal isn’t to have less for the sake of less.

It’s to channel all your energy into what actually moves the needle.

More with less. That’s leverage.

Remember the diagram:

Scattered arrows = no leverage = scattered results.

One arrow = maximum leverage = exponential progress.

Focus. Clarity. Discipline.

That’s how you produce higher-quality output that compounds over time.

The bottom line

Steve Jobs understood something most people don’t:

Success isn’t about doing more. It’s about eliminating everything that doesn’t matter.

Point all your arrows in one direction. Create leverage.

Do 1-2 things properly. Remove the rest.

Your focus is your most valuable asset. Protect it ruthlessly.

This week, pick one thing to eliminate from your life. One distraction. One project. One commitment.

Make space for what actually matters.

That’s how you get more with less.

P.S. If you want to master this concept, read Essentialism by Greg McKeown. It’s the manual for doing less but better.

It compared bad chefs to the best ones.

I thought the best chefs were the best because of their preparation, methods, and tactics.

I was wrong.

The top chefs are the best because they source the best ingredients.

Simply put:

Ingredients (inputs) → Chef → Meal (outputs)

The quality of what you start with determines the quality of what you produce.

In tech, they say: “Garbage in, garbage out.”

This applies to everything.

Your work. Your career. Your growth.

So here’s the question: What are YOUR quality inputs?

Most people focus on methods and tactics. They’re obsessed with the recipe.

But if your ingredients are mediocre, your results will be too.

Here are the two quality inputs that separate good from exceptional:

Input #1: Brutal, honest feedback

I used to take criticism personally.

Every time someone gave me feedback, my ego would scream. My feelings couldn’t handle it.

I’d get defensive. Make excuses. Shut down.

Then one day, someone I respected tore apart my work.

Not to be mean. To make me better.

It hurt. Bad.

But something shifted.

The anger I felt? It turned into fuel. A massive desire to prove them wrong.

That energy made me obsessed with getting better.

And here’s what I discovered:

Without constant feedback, I can’t produce anything exceptional.

Feedback is a quality input. It’s one of your best ingredients.

Most people avoid criticism because it’s uncomfortable. That’s exactly why they stay mediocre.

The people who become great? They actively seek it out.

You need people around you who will call out your mediocre work. Not to tear you down. To help you grow.

Constructive criticism is the fast track to quality work.

Input #2: Experience that builds mastery

There’s a lie everyone tells you:

“Follow your passion.”

Find what you love, then build a career around it.

Sounds great. Doesn’t work.

Here’s what actually works:

You don’t do what you love. You learn to love what you do.

This comes from Cal Newport’s book So Good They Can’t Ignore You.

Experience—real, committed, deliberate experience—is a quality input.

When you put in the hours, when you master something, passion follows.

The key is acquiring three things through experience:

• Autonomy: The feeling that you control your day

• Competence: The feeling that you’re good at what you do

• Relatedness: The feeling of connection to other people

Michael Jordan said it best: “Fall in love with the game.”

He became passionate through mastery.

To achieve mastery, you don’t need passion first. You just need the willingness to put in committed experience and seek feedback along the way.

Experience is your second quality ingredient.

The bottom line

Just like elite chefs, your output is only as good as your inputs.

Most people focus on tactics and methods—the recipe.

But if you’re starting with mediocre ingredients, you’ll get mediocre results.

The two quality inputs that matter most:

Brutal, honest feedback: Seek it constantly, even when it hurts

Committed experience: Build mastery, and passion will follow

These are your ingredients.

Source them well, and you’ll become so good people can’t ignore you.

Start with the feedback exercise this week.

Takeaway:

Try this now:

Email 8-10 people (professionally or personally).

Ask them to reply with:

1. 3 areas you need to improve

2. 3 of your strengths

3. Context for each

It’s brutal. Your ego will hate it.

But it’s worth it.

Because feedback is a quality ingredient. And quality ingredients produce quality results.

P.S. If this resonates, read So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport. It’ll change how you think about mastery and passion.