RagnarDrees

Two things you need to know as a creative strategist: 1. Pain-state creative talks to someone feeling the problem right now. 2. Prospective-state creative talks to someone who is *thinking* about the problem right now. In my experience, about 90% of ads are built for the first state of mind...but most impressions land on the second! Here's a 20-min diagnostic to fix this: 1️⃣ STEP 1: Pull Hook Rate and Hold Rate side by side. 2️⃣ STEP 2: Read the pattern. High Hook + High Hold → Right state. In this case, your hook matched the viewer's internal narrative, and the body of the ad continued it. High Hook + Low Hold → Most common problem. In this case, your hook grabs attention but body pivots to features too quickly. Don't pivot to product info, just continue the narrative. Stay in the movie. Low Hook + High Hold → Most promising. In this case, substance works, the opening doesn't. It's too polished for a feed of creators speaking directly. Choose hooks that sound like thinking, not pitching. "I keep coming back to this idea that..." (you want internal dialogue, not advertising.) Low Hook + Low Hold → It's a dud. In this case, you want to look and see if the brief was built from pain-state research (like reviews, or tickets) or thinking-state research (like Reddit, comments, organic). If it was pain-state research, everything downstream inherits the miscalibration. 3️⃣ STEP 3: Pull retention curves for your top 5 and bottom 5 ads. If you see... Sharp drop at 3–6s → State mismatch. In this case, the Prospective mind expected a good story, but got a pitch too quickly. Time to upgrade your story angle. Gradual decline → Register slightly off. In this case, you're probably using too many pain words (i.e.: frustration, "nothing works.") instead of thinking words: (possibility, "I keep imagining what it would look like if...") Steady retention, drops at end → Losing them at the CTA. In this case, "Shop now" is a state break and it's probably causing some scroll behavior. A better option: "This is what it looks like on the other side" would work well here because it doesn't breaking the mental flow...it's just offering a continuation. 4️⃣ STEP 4: Before anything goes live, ask yourself three questions: 1. Is this hook for a problem being felt or a problem being thought about? 2. Does the body stay in the same register or pivot? 3. Does the close keep them in the story or rip them out? 📌TLDR: The ad content winning right now is *prospective* (they're ads that sound like someone thinking out loud). Pain-based concepts are unstable in the ad account because Andromeda evaluates creative first and matches it to global behavioral signals for each person it sends the ad to, which includes their organic engagement!

Hot take: SDR is not the hardest job in tech sales. Mid Market AE is. Here’s why:

Chris Williamson just shared his "nuclear" sleep stack that's quietly changing his life—and Andrew Huberman breaks down exactly why it works: If you're lying in bed at 2 a.m. scrolling or staring at the ceiling, this 4-minute protocol combo might be the fastest way to shut your brain off without pills. The two killer techniques Williamson swears by: 1. The Mind Walk (visualization on steroids) - Imagine walking a route you know perfectly (your house → front door → street) - Do it with insane detail: feel the shoehorn, hear the key turn, feel the door handle, pressure of the pavement - It's like reading fiction for your nervous system—engages the brain just enough to stop problem-solving loops, but not enough to keep you awake 2. Resonance breathing with the Ohm stone lamp - Bedside lamp with induction-charging stone that has a built-in FDA-cleared HRV sensor - Hold the stone → 3/6/9/12-minute guided sessions with silent tactile vibration (no sound, no light, partner-safe) - Guides you into true resonance frequency (max vagal tone) → the stone knows when you hit it - Williamson calls it “the sickest” sleep tool he’s ever used—currently in stealth (ohmhealth, not widely available yet) Huberman adds the neuroscience: Looking down + eyelids lowering activates parasympathetic circuits and deactivates wakefulness-promoting brainstem nuclei. It’s literally pedaling the sleep pedal while shutting off the alertness arm. Williamson: “Some days you need the adventure story (mind walk), some days you need the physiological hammer (resonance breathing). Stack them and I’m cross-eyed into sleep.” Already trying one of these? Or is your nighttime routine still a war zone?