Ruby Hoenderdos

direct response creative strategist | building AI brains for fast-growing d2c brands

[Ruby Hoenderdos @rubyhoenderdos]

P.S. when did you last read your own reviews properly?

[Ruby Hoenderdos @rubyhoenderdos]

I’m 29 and I’ve been doing creative strategy for 6 years

and most of what I do isn’t creative

people hear the title and picture someone in a room full of ideas

the actual job:

[Ruby Hoenderdos @rubyhoenderdos]

I help companies like Icon, Supplend, Mother’s Earth scale their creative

usually by fixing what they say, not how it looks

Love,
Ruby

[Ruby Hoenderdos @rubyhoenderdos]

give your AI these 4 files and it stops sounding like a generic robot:

business.md (positioning)
customer.md (objections)
offer.md (the mechanics)
voice.md (tone)

structured files are the whole brain. once the model has them, everything it writes sounds like you.

[Ruby Hoenderdos @rubyhoenderdos]

UGC is dead. Static ads are dead. Meta is dead. Agencies are irrelevant. AI killed the creative strategist.

my feed told me every single one of those in the last 7 days.

meanwhile I’m making all of it work for brands right now, and the accounts are doing fine.

every single one of those posts is written by someone who got a bad result once and decided the problem was the format. or just for hype.

maybe the thing isn’t dead.

maybe you just never learned how to use it properly.

Love,
Ruby

[Ruby Hoenderdos @rubyhoenderdos]

lore-maxxing, strategizing, experimenting. this is the core of building effective AI for DTC. it's not just about models, it's about creating a brand narrative that AI can amplify, testing constantly, and embracing calculated risks. that's how you differentiate in a crowded market.

https://t.co/12KLD8BrkE

[DAN KOE @thedankoe]

You need to be lore-maxxing. Taking risks. Failing miserably. Relentlessly strategizing and experimenting. Nobody wants to die with a story that isn't worth telling.

[Ruby Hoenderdos @rubyhoenderdos]

creator monetization comes down to unique value. for DTC brands, your AI systems *are* that unique value if built correctly. it's not about hoping, it's about engineering a repeatable system that scales your brand voice and operations.

https://t.co/DKngvdoZDY

[DAN KOE @thedankoe]

If you're a creator who doesn't want to hope and pray for brand deals and platform monetization to make a living off your interests, read this:
https://t.co/SjGbywSkkN

[Ruby Hoenderdos @rubyhoenderdos]

This applies directly to building AI for DTC brands. A '6-month commitment' means committing to refining your company brain, not just dabbling. That consistency is what separates generic AI from a system that actually understands and serves your brand.

https://t.co/VNtRciKLTz

[DAN KOE @thedankoe]

All you have to do is commit for 6 months.

That's not a lot. It's actually very little.

6 months is 1% of 50 years, and most people can't stick to something that will change the trajectory of their life for 2 weeks.

[Ruby Hoenderdos @rubyhoenderdos]

every dtc founder struggles with generic AI output until they build a "company brain" to ground their models. the real challenge isn't the AI, it's the context. what's your biggest AI challenge?

https://t.co/xzdBK7UGG7

[Pascio @IAmPascio]

Every founder has at least 3 of these.

Which ones are yours?

[Ruby Hoenderdos @rubyhoenderdos]

this resonates. building AI systems for dtc brands feels exactly like this. it's problem-solving on a new level, optimizing for conversions instead of high scores. the game changes, but the drive to win stays the same.

https://t.co/NhOLqcLir3

[Pascio @IAmPascio]

Never stopped gaming... just changed the games.

[Ruby Hoenderdos @rubyhoenderdos]

this is so true for building AI systems. you don't start from scratch; you study what works for top dtc brands, then adapt. the 'company brain' isn't just about feeding an AI data, it's about feeding it *proven strategy*.

https://t.co/RZZj0GnWwD

[Jay Yang @Jayyanginspires]

A wise mentor once told me: "Before you play the game, study the winners. Before you build a company, study the founders who came before you. Before you write a book, study the authors you admire. Originality comes after apprenticeship, not before it."

[Ruby Hoenderdos @rubyhoenderdos]

teams abandon AI tools when fixing robotic copy takes longer than writing from scratch.

once you give the model a company brain with customer objections and positioning, the first draft is actually usable and people keep using it.

[Ruby Hoenderdos @rubyhoenderdos]

I'm bad at selling the thing I'm selling

for creative strategy I never have to explain myself.
people come to me, they already know what I do, the conversation is easy.

company brains are different

nobody knows I do this yet

so someone asks what I'm working on, I give them a version that's too technical or too vague, and I can see the moment they stop listening

I've lost conversations I should have won. not because the thing doesn't work. because I haven't figured out how to explain it yet.

what makes it worse is I know the problem better than almost anyone.
your team explains the same brand to AI 50 times a week and still gets slop back.

I burned a max plan in 2 days.
I spent 4 months building the fix.
I use it every day.

and I still can't say it in one sentence on a call

so I'm a beginner again, which is apparently just what I do with my life

but I'd rather be bad at selling something that works than good at selling something I don't believe in

Love,
Ruby

P.S. what's the thing you're best at that you're worst at explaining?

[Ruby Hoenderdos @rubyhoenderdos]

a company brain solves generic AI ad copy by grounding the model in your real customer objections, voice guidelines, and offer mechanics.

writing from your own markdown files makes every hook sound distinctly like your business.

[Ruby Hoenderdos @rubyhoenderdos]

most of what I'm paid for is being willing to be embarrassed

I help companies like Icon, Supplend, Mother's Earth scale their creative

usually by fixing what they say, not how it looks

Love, Ruby

P.S. what's the ad you almost didn't run?

[Ruby Hoenderdos @rubyhoenderdos]

I'm 29 and I've been doing creative strategy for 6 years

here's the weirdest part of this job:

[Ruby Hoenderdos @rubyhoenderdos]

the hard part isn't making the ad.
it's the 10 minutes where you have to say "I know. run it anyway."

and you can only say that if you're not scared of being wrong