Simulation Troubleshooting Mini Guide
If you're ever stuck, you don't need more information.
You don't need another book.
You simply need to check your settings.
Reality is not random. It's a render. And if the output is wrong, the input is off somewhere. Here are five settings most people never think to check.
Easiest geo-expansion play in ecom: New Zealand.
Same language as your US funnel. Zero translation cost. Zero localization of creative. Same Shopify checkout. Same payment processing.
5 million people. High disposable income. Strong supplement and skincare culture.
And Meta CPMs at roughly half of what you're paying in the US.
Found a brand on gethookd called Restine scaling there right now. English-language ads, same direct response structure you'd run in the US.
The setup is basically: duplicate your US campaign, change the targeting to New Zealand, adjust shipping through a regional 3PL or ship direct from your US warehouse (shipping times are 7-10 days, which is acceptable there).
Total launch cost: close to zero if you're already running in the US.
Here's what most brands miss: if you're running profitably in the US, you should also be running in UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Same language. Same funnel. Four additional markets.
Most brands only run in the US and maybe the UK. Adding Australia, Canada, and New Zealand is essentially free money — same creative, same landing page, same offer.
The combined English-speaking market outside the US is over 100 million people. And the CPMs in all four markets are lower than the US.
Nothing new for advanced entrepreneurs but if you are only targeting US you are leaving money on the table. No translation. No localization. Same ad account and adjusted shipping. Set it up this weekend and thank me later.
Surrender is not weakness. There is great strength in it. Only a surrendered person has spiritual power. Through surrender, you will be free internally of the situation. You may then find that the situation changes without any effort on your part. In any case, you are free.
My company, Recharge, just acquired Skio for $105m. This is the largest private acquisition in the space ever.
Just 5 years ago I got a crazy phone call that nearly killed us...
Here’s the story I've never told anyone before:
Eastern Europe is quietly printing for supplement and skincare brands.
And nobody's paying attention.
Czech Republic and Slovakia. Combined population of 16 million. Growing middle class. Health and wellness spending climbing year over year.
I found three separate brands on Gethookd scaling aggressively in these markets right now. Senaria, Sivelis, and Korvanis — all running active ad campaigns with increasing spend.
When you see three brands independently scaling in the same region, that's not a coincidence. That's a signal.
Meta CPMs in Czech Republic: $2-5. Slovakia is even cheaper.
The populations are small individually, but the competition is near zero. You're not fighting 4000 other supplement brands for the same eyeballs. You're one of maybe 5-10 running proper direct response funnels.
Translation costs: $200-400 for Czech, and the same creative works in Slovakia with minor adjustments.
The brands I'm seeing there are running the exact same playbook that works in Germany and France — advertorial-style landing pages with VSL creative. Nothing exotic. Just proven US funnels translated and localized.
One translated funnel. Two countries. 16 million people. CPMs at a fraction of Western Europe.
The brands that figured out Germany in 2024 are now expanding east. Czech and Slovakia are the next dominoes.
If you have a team member or VA from Central Europe, put them on this immediately. The window is wide open and it won't stay that way.
Claude + SeeDance 2.0 = 550 videos per day
No actors.
No products in hand.
No ghost creators.
No missed deadlines.
Just viral Amazon/tiktok shop sales — 24/7.
Here’s the crazy part:
This system produces 550+ cinematic, product-ready ads per day from a single prompt.
Here’s the full pipeline:
→ AI generates a realistic UGC persona — face, voice, personality
→ Arcads clones a natural voiceover in seconds
→ Claude code auto-edits: captions, pacing, hooks — done
→ phone farm method pushes every finished video straight to TikTok Shop
→ Cruva Social 1 identifies which hooks are already winning in your niche before you film anything
The result: 500+ videos a month, per brand, at a fraction of what one UGC creator used to cost.
Most brands are still paying $300–500 per video.
Testing 10 hooks takes $5,000 and three weeks.
With this system, you test 100 hooks in the same timeframe.
The ones that win get scaled. Automatically.
AI is the new creative director.
TikTok doesn’t reward the best video.
It rewards the brand that shows up the most — with content that converts.
Static agencies are dead.
Creator dependency is a liability… and it’s soooo 2025.
No more waiting on creators.
No more $500 videos that flop after 200 views.
The brands that automate content at scale will be the biggest winners of 2026.
If you want the full breakdown:
Like & comment “SYSTEM”
I’ll send you the complete workflow, every prompt, and a step-by-step walkthrough. Free.
(Follow first so I can DM.)
"If your brand operates a warehouse, your growth was 4%. If you contract out to a 3PL, your growth is 30-35%."
I learned this the hard way. We had over 50,000 sqft at one point. Now we are totally virutal.
Running a warehouse is seductive. It's thrilling to see and feel your business humming. It strokes the ego to tour people through the floor and hear them ooo and ahh.
BUT - it's a massive distraction.
It comes with lots of headcount and thus HR (hire, manage, fire, etc). Carrier contract negotiations. Capex for shelves and forklifts. Pick/pack process optimizations. Lots of moving pieces of all types just to get packages out the door.
And even if you're good at it - you're not even close to the scale of a 3PL.
It's the same reason everyone runs AWS now instead of servers in closets. A 3PL can get better at shipping packages than you ever will. They can justify capex to save pennies and seconds that you never could.
Everyone who thinks running a warehouse is cheaper than a 3PL isn't looking at the fully burdened cost per package (rent, utilities, insurance, workers comp, HR overhead, etc).
And every second you think about the warehouse is a second you don't think about growing revenue.
I'm honestly totally unsurprised by the finding - but it's awesome to see it so clearly in the data.
This ad format prints for static ads. Can spend $1-3k a day profitably no problem.
Why? It looks organic to the platform (Facebook) and perfect for overcoming objections in a native way.
6 variations. From inspiration to creation to launch in 60 sec with https://t.co/BXgWx98ytQ
Scraped 60 active ads from our top 4 competitors using gethookd. Dumped all 60 transcripts into Claude.
Asked it to extract every distinct angle, group them, and rank by frequency.
Got back a 9-angle taxonomy. Plus a callout that all 4 competitors were running the same 3 angles at 70%+ frequency, and ignoring 2 angles entirely that the data showed had historical winners.
We launched 12 creatives this week into the 2 ignored angles.
Two of them are early winners. One is at $22 CAC on a $79 AOV after 4 days.
Knowing what your competitors aren't testing is more valuable than knowing what they are.
The whole game in 2026 is finding the angle the rest of the market has gone blind to.
One conscious breath is enough to make some space where before there was the uninterrupted succession of one thought after another.
One conscious breath (two or three would be even better), taken many times a day, is an excellent way of bringing space into your life.
100% amazing ad libraries:
Swipe files here for you:
1. Menopause And Me
https://t.co/SrcNNZSJBH
2. The Conscious Bar
https://t.co/AAXsoccx02
3. Pureskin
https://t.co/45UuymRuYM
4. Frøya Organics
https://t.co/CBif7zqCVj
5. Yuaia Haircare
https://t.co/23o2YWLGGz
A friend tried to launch in Japan in 2023 and burned $80k in 60 days.
He used Google Translate for his ad copy. Ran the same US-style direct response hooks. Pointed his ads at the same age range that worked stateside.
Comments section turned into a public roast of his brand within a week. Refund rate hit 14%. He killed it and walked away convinced Japan was a dead market.
He came back in 2025 with one change.
Hired a Japanese creative director before he wrote a single ad. She rebuilt the entire creative library from scratch — softer hooks, longer build-ups, visual storytelling, almost zero of the shock-claim-CTA structure that works in the US.
He's now at $700k/month in Japan on the same SKU that almost killed him.
Japan punishes the lazy translation play harder than any market on earth. The brands that survive year one earn margins almost no other market allows.
Not easy. Not untapped. But worth testing — for any brand willing to invest in a native creative lead before launch, the AOV and retention numbers are worth the friction.
Turkey is where I’d be looking right now if I wanted something outside the usual EU markets
~85 million people
median age around 33
huge demand for beauty, health, and wellness
and social usage is massive
CPMs sitting around $2–4 in most of these niches
way cheaper than Western Europe
not an easy market
but definitely scalable if you get it right
big reason brands avoid it is the currency
lira fluctuates a lot
the move is pricing in eur or usd
premium positioning still converts
translation is non-negotiable
start with DeepL
but native turkish copy is what actually drives conversions
people there notice instantly when it feels off
trust matters more than anything
clear offers, strong guarantees, simple messaging
brands winning right now are mostly EU operators
they got in early and adapted fast
US brands are barely present
if you’re already testing germany or france
this is a very different play
lower costs
high volume
but requires more precision
A friend in Dubai sent me his ad account screenshot at 2am last Tuesday.
$11k spent. $43k in revenue. CAC $38 on a $147 AOV skincare offer.
Same product he sells in the US for $89.
The UAE is the only market I know where you can run the exact same English creative as your US account, raise your AOV by 40-60%, and watch CAC actually drop because the audience is wealthier and less ad-fatigued.
The trade-off is everything operational. You need a local 3PL or refunds eat you on slow shipping. You need a payment processor that supports AED. You need to understand which products get held at customs and which don't.
Not easy. Not untapped. But worth testing — the AOV uplift alone justifies a 90-day pilot for any premium brand doing $1M+ in the US.
10 million people. The wealthiest 2 million spend like the wealthiest 20 million in the US.
That math is the whole post.
A 38 year old friend in LA sent me his P&L last month.
Last year he was at $11M in revenue. This year he's pacing $6M.
Net profit doubled.
He killed 3 of his 5 brands, fired 14 people, and cut creative production budget by 70% over the same 12 months.
The brands he killed were doing real revenue. $200-400k/month each. He just looked at contribution margin after refunds, returns, and team cost and realized two of them were burning money he was hiding from himself with top-line growth.
Now he runs 2 brands, 6 people total, and takes home more than he did at $11M.
Most ecom entrepreneurs are addicted to revenue.
This mfer just watches his bank account grow and doesn't care about anything else.