I have a list of 17 live MRR / REBILL store URLs
โ Some are your favourite online gurus
โ Some are doing $500k+ a month
โ Some look like regular stores
โ Some have 300+ live ads on meta
Comment โ MRR โ + RT this post and Iโll send you the full doc
So much of why you struggle is because you're too smart. You know too much. In many ways, you were actually better positioned to succeed as the more ignorant, past version of yourself
Relationships used to be a matter of just spending time with someone you felt good around. Now, it's a laundry list of traumas and signs of a healed inner child that you hyper analyze in everyone instead of simply seeing where it goes
Making money used to be a matter of just helping someone with a problem. Now, it's neurotic awareness of all the risks to watch out for that lurk in the back of your mind instead of simply seeing how it goes
You may think it's saving you time, but it's actually the opposite. Nothing wastes more time than pondering from a place of protection, when you could've been moving forward. Two steps forward and one step back still puts you further from the start than not stepping foot at all
Learn, but don't forget that life is supposed to be fun. Go back to flow. Be more lighthearted. Realize that nothing has to be that serious, and consequences are only as detrimental as you falsely assume in your head. You're always your own greatest enemy
You suck at creative strategy because you're using your conscious mind to come up with ad ideas
And creativity doesn't work that way
Most people in ecom never even scratch the surface of how deep you can go with marketing and creative strategy
They don't study psychology. They don't study human behavior. They don't think about how to emotionally move people with their ads.
And when I say "emotionally move," I don't mean throwing some generic "this changed my life" bs in your script
I mean understanding how to get people emotionally invested in watching your ad. How to trigger the specific psychological states that lead from attention to action. How to tap into primal desires and fears that have driven human behavior for thousands of years.
This is how most "creative strategists" do their job:
>Ok let me come up with 5 ad ideas for this week
>Opens Facebook Ad Library
>Rips scripts from competitors
>Adjust it a bit using shitty ChatGPT/Claude prompts
>Prays it hits
This approach is very shallow and here's why:
When you force yourself to brainstorm on demand, you're using your conscious mind. That part of your brain can only process 7 pieces of information at once and is designed for logical, sequential thinking. Not creativity.
Your conscious mind is good for execution, bad for innovation.
Breakthrough ad ideas come from your unconscious mind
This is the part of your brain that makes unexpected connections and processes thousands of inputs simultaneously in the background (Example: When you get a sick idea while you're showering)
But
Your unconscious mind needs RAW MATERIAL to work with
You can't just sit in silence and expect winning ad ideas to appear out of thin air.
You need to feed your brain with high-quality information first by doing comprehensive market research.
And if you think you're doing market research good enough
I can GUARANTEE you can and should go deeper
Are you actually studying your market's language patterns by scraping Reddit threads and TikTok comments? Are you analyzing the emotional triggers in Amazon reviews of competing products? Are you mapping out the customer journey from problem awareness to purchase decision?
Are you researching how your target demographic consumes content? What influencers do they follow? What news sources do they trust? What language patterns do they use when describing their problems?
Are you thinking about how to make ads that people actually enjoy watching instead of "3 reasons why you need this supplement" garbage that makes everyone scroll faster? How to communicate the value of your product creatively? How to reverse engineer unaware ads and take people through market awareness stages so by the time they finish watching your video, they're ITCHING to buy your product?
Are you studying ads from other industries/niches not just to copy them, but to understand the psychological principles they're using? What desires are they targeting? What objections are they overcoming? What emotional states are they creating?
Are you diving deep into product features and benefits until you understand every possible angle you could do with your product? Every use case? Every transformation your product enables? Every desire your product can fulfil for your target demographic?
By doing all of this, you're feeding your unconscious mind the information it needs to create breakthrough concepts.
And the real sauce happens when your brain starts connecting dots between seemingly unrelated pieces of information:
Discussion about pain points you read about on Reddit + visual concept you saw while scrolling Instagram + emotional trigger from competitor research = winning ad angle
Product feature + customer language pattern + trending TikTok format = hook that stops the scroll
But you can't force these connections. You can only create the conditions for them to emerge.
The best creative strategists understand this.
Garbage in = garbage out
So you need to spend a lot more time processing and feeding your brain high-quality information.
The compound effect of this approach is insane.
The more diverse research you do across different markets, the more patterns your brain recognizes, the more creative connections it can make.
But this takes time. And most people aren't patient enough to let the process work. And it can't be automated to extreme efficiency with AI, there are no shortcuts.
Watch the video on YouTube from Rory Sutherland talking about "Are we now too impatient to be intelligent?"
And you can thank me when your entire creative strategy approach changes
This store literally just died on me all of a sudden and I was barely profitable on it. Had to cut it and move on instead bleeding out. The great thing about the business model of DS is that - the sunk cost of moving on is so low. Don't get too attached, use the advantages of DS.
Did 30k ish on this supplement brand
There's what I learned:
supplement brands are a pain in the ass to make ads for.
I've tested over 300 ads for this product and none of my VSL and edited got any traction. Only the rips did.