Hi Reader - I was doomscrolling the other day on LinkedIn. Everyone was going on about RIP media buyers, RIP designers. …and how to write better prompts. how to get better outputs. Utterly fascinating stuff. All that stuff LinkedIn thought leaders love to post about between their humble brags about revenue milestones. And I noticed something that made me laugh. All of the AI prompting advice was also just… management advice. The exact same stuff people have been saying for 100+ years. So I...
4 days ago • 3 min read
Hi Reader - Del Close taught basically everyone who's been funny in the last 40 years. Tina Fey. Bill Murray. Amy Poehler. Mike Myers. The godfather of modern improv. He wrote a book called Truth in Comedy. The title is the lesson. His whole thing: nothing is funnier than the truth. The audience laughs when they recognize something real. The moment you abandon truth for something clever, you lose them. I keep coming back to this because ads work exactly the same way. We've all been in that...
15 days ago • 2 min read
Hi Reader - "Many a false step is made by standing still." - old jungle saying. So I did something kind of obsessive this month. I roasted 2 very different apps after pulling the entire Meta Ads Library for them. Headway. Book summary app worth $400M+. And Ladder. Premium fitness app backed by some serious names. On the surface? Couldn't be more different. Headway is static images and text overlays. What some might call 'cringe' ads - BUT a staggering variety(45 different angles across 730...
22 days ago • 4 min read
Hi Reader - There’s a 5-step death spiral that kills subscription apps trying to break past $100k/month. And the brutal part? Every single step feels like the responsible call. Every decision sounds smart in the meeting. Everyone nods along. That’s what makes it so lethal. Let me walk you through how it happens. $50k/month: Everything’s working. You tested your way here. Found some winners. Scaled them hard. You’re pumping out 15-20 ads a month, creative velocity is humming, performance is...
30 days ago • 3 min read
Hi Reader - “How did you go bankrupt?” “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” That’s Hemingway. 1926. Accounts are the same way. Some crash overnight, some bleed out over weeks while you sit there thinking everything’s fine. Same cause either way: staring at the wrong numbers while the whole thing quietly falls apart. We've come close to the brink on 3 accounts. Each time, the warning signs were there for weeks. Each time, we nearly missed them. The overnight crash. Account cruising at...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Hey Reader - Client calls us. ROAS is down. Nobody knows why. Welcome to subscription apps. It's fun here. Here's the thing. You only see trials. That's it. That's what Meta shows you. Whether those trials become paying customers? That data lives in some other system. Shows up days later. Sometimes weeks. So when ROAS tanks, you're staring at a dashboard that's basically shrugging at you. 🤷🏻♂️ But wait. It gets even more fun. Even when that conversion data finally rolls in, you can't just say...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Hey Reader - I've scaled multiple products to $100k/day in ad spend. You know what's funny? All that stuff everyone argues about on Twitter? All those LinkedIn bro 'hacks'? Cost caps vs bid caps. CBO settings. The latest targeting hack. Nobody at $100k/day is having those conversations. They're playing a completely different game. Here's what that game actually looks like. 1. They're always testing the next channel before they need it. Meta and Google are great until they're not. Algorithm...
2 months ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader - 2-year-olds don’t care about 0.2x ROAS. And unfortunately, 0.2x ROAS doesn’t care about 2-year-olds either. Last Saturday morning, my kid had just woken up. Still in bed. Eyes barely open. But he already knew. Saturday morning meant adventure time with Papa. “OUT,” he said. He wasn’t asking. He was ordering me. I was on my laptop. The screen glowed in the quiet room. 0.2x ROAS. Account bleeding. Ads that showed early promise had died. Nothing we tested had staying power. We’d...
2 months ago • 2 min read
Hey Reader - Most people think AI ads equal slop(and think it results in terrible performance). Weird hands. Dead eyes. Robotic voice. That uncanny valley feeling. And honestly? They’re not wrong. Most AI ads are garbage. …and perform terribly. But we just scaled one to $10k/day profitably. Not the first time we’ve done this. No UGC shoot. No creator fees. AI-generated creative. And it’s printing. So what gives? Here’s where I’m going to get a little philosophical on you. Bear with me. The...
3 months ago • 2 min read