0:00 So look, let me be real with you for a second. There are so many free courses here on YouTube of people telling you that you're going to make money with this business model or they'll even show you everything that has to do with that business model. But in reality, a lot of it is just noise or just outdated and doesn't actually work anymore. Not to mention a lot of them just kind of sound like a sales pitch instead of just actually showing you how to do it and giving you genuine value. So this is going to be none of those things. What you're about to watch is something that is completely step-by-step from beginning to end. In this video, you're going to understand copywriting and you're going to understand how to use it in order to make money, ideally $10,000 per month or more. Now, I've made these types of videos before in the past and they have gotten millions of views on each of them. But in this video, it's going to be more updated to 2026, the actual most up-to-date things that are working right now, and also some
0:45 creative strategy as well. Now, don't worry if you don't understand what that even means. We're going to get into it shortly. But what's most important is that you actually know and understand that this is working for people right now. And I've done interviews with over a dozen of them here on this very channel, people who have hit 10K per month, 15K per month, and 20K per month plus. And each and every single one of them started at zero. They were watching a YouTube video just like you were watching right now. So realistically, what you're watching right now is the video that I desperately wished existed when I was first starting out as well. So with all that being said, clear your schedule, clear out all those empty useless tabs, take out some pen and paper, and let's get started. Okay, so ladies and gentlemen, here we are inside of the free copywriting course, more specifically the creative strategy edition updated for 2026 because there's been a huge amount of changes going on in copywriting. And honestly, right now is by far the best time I've ever seen
1:31 to genuinely get started. The reasons why is I'll kind of go over as we go on. But first I want to address the elephant in the room, which is why should you even care in the first place, right? I already told you about some people who are winning. I already told you that we had a huge playlist of student success stories, but I want to actually read out their genuine stories so that you can see what helped them, what they're actually sharing with other people, and where they are right now. So, this is Ethan for example. He said, "I am not going to lie. I have memorized/watched the creative analysis so many times, which is basically just creative strategy videos. And when I yacht about it to the lead creative strategist at this brand, bro was bamboozled. And bro just onboarded me for 2.5k for the first month and 5k per month after that from one client mind you. Let this be a lesson that you guys need to lock in with creative analysis and creative strategy. Someone else said, "Yo bro, hope all is well." I haven't talked to
2:17 this student for a little bit. He just said, "Just want to let you know that I reached my first 20k month. A lot more to come working with a new e-commerce brand doing north of 25 million dollars per month and of course the biggest info guy in the space as you know. Then we had another win recently. I actually have a interview with her coming up as well. She said, "Just closed another 6k per month e-com agency. Agreed to 6k cuz I impressed them with the brands that I've worked before in the past. Going to be handling campaign plus plus the flow emails as well." And then she said, "I'm officially at 20k guys. I cannot comprehend it. I'm literally in tears." Someone else also saying that they were going to be hitting 8.5k this month. So those are all big money wins. I wanted to also read out this one as well. This guy named Adrian. He posted saying, "Wish me luck guys. I have two interviews tomorrow and I am nervous. But I mean getting on interviews was my goal so what did I really expect?
3:03 Anyways, I'm telling you keep applying to creative strategy roles on X and on LinkedIn. I had both of these interviews without any experience so these would be my very first creative strategy roles. Again, you don't need any experience to actually make this work." My man Don Q also is talking about how he closed a test project that I helped him make and he I reviewed and he is at 2k per month and it can easily scale to $4,000 per month. 4,000 euros actually I believe that is per month plus. So he just wanted to give a thanks. Now look, we could go on and on and on and on. I actually have some more of these wins kind of peppered throughout the video because I love attaching proof to everything that I'm showing you and everything that I'm doing because there's a lot of people who just don't have the proof. They tell you all day, "Oh yeah, people are winning with this. People are doing that. People are doing this." But they again don't actually show it which is why I wanted to come out and be a a little bit different and actually prove it. So here is the
3:48 pre-course checklist. You're going to know everything and learn everything that all those people have already known and already learned. You're going to start exactly where they started because this is what I gave them as well. First things first, pay 100% attention. I recommend 1x or even 0.75 speed, guys. I'm not going to be talking super duper slow. I know that some people, you got to crank them up to 3x speed in order for it to even sound like 1x. This video is not going to be like that. I'm going to be going through things very quickly, concisely. So, I recommend 1x or even 0.5x speed so you can genuinely write it down. This video is meant to be studied, not just watched, not just consumed while you're just eating a bowl of cereal. You have to genuinely pay attention. Next is to take notes. And notes by hand is going to be a better by far. And again, I actually practice what I preach. This is my daily schedule. I write out by hand every single day. I could just do it on a computer. I could do it with some notes thing, but I choose to do it there. And then when I'm
4:34 taking notes and things, I like to just also write them by hand as well. I like to write them by hand in cursive so that they are extra extra extra extra slow. It forces me to slow down. And in a world where we are pressured and we are told to consume as much as possible as fast as possible. And your minds are literally just addicted to dopamine and brain rot, you forcing yourself to slow down is what's really going to help you learn and dig into all the things that I'll be teaching you here. Next is to bookmark this video for later. I have a example what this looks like. You can just go down and comment your timestamp cuz this is going to be a long video. I'm not going to lie. I'm going to be going genuinely in-depth with everything. I'm going to be doing demonstrations. I'm even going to be showing you actual interviews that I have had with real creative strategy brands and businesses. Interviews they're going to be asking me questions. I'm going to be answering those questions. I'm going to show you of how
5:21 I even got on those interviews, the portfolio that I've built, the test projects that I had to do in order to move on to the next stage of the hiring process, and everything in between. I'm literally showing you. I'm not just teaching you. I'm not just telling you what to do. I'm showing you what I have done, what I am actively doing. Next, ask all your questions below. Me, the team, and other viewers will be able to reply and answer pretty much anything for you. You can think of the comment section below this video as almost like a messaging board, like r/ copywriting creative strategy or something. Next, is to download the free resources that come with this video. So, not only are you getting the video, you're also getting the templates and some more lessons that didn't even make it to YouTube because I'm not going to lie, like I said before, YouTube is somewhere where you have to upload something that keeps people's attention and tons of views, etc., etc. But, if you want to really get into the weeds and genuinely look at
6:06 all this stuff, I wouldn't say it's boring, but it is more tactical than the stuff here on YouTube because YouTube, again, performance is huge here. So, all those things are within the free copy starter kit, which is down below. I'm going to show you more of what's actually inside that as we go on as well. And finally, let the people in the comments know that you're starting soon. I actually didn't even encourage people to do these on my last videos, but this is like half of the comments on all those videos is, "Hey guys, I'm starting on this course on February 18th, 2026. Wish me the best. We'll be back in April. We'll be back some other time." Because we'd love to hear your story and people want to know if it's going to work for them, right? It will help people invest their time and energy and have a better understanding if they go through the comments and see that it's working for other people. So, with all that being said, I want to start with copywriting, what copywriting is, and how it has changed in 2026. All right,
6:52 so copywriting in 2026 and what has changed. Let me just go over a quick definition of what copywriting even is for those who are just starting or just don't really know quite yet. Copywriting, essentially, is you writing marketing materials for businesses. And that is it. That's all. Now, it sounds extremely simple and it sounds too good to be true and it sounds too easy. You mean, I just have to write for a business and I can earn over $10,000, I can earn over $20,000 per month? That sounds way too good to be true. And it is if you don't understand copywriting properly. See, I'm not showing you how to become a copywriter. I'm showing you how to become a performance copywriter. And a performance copywriter is more of a marketer than just a writer. What that means is you are taking full accountability of the outcome for a business. And with more responsibility
7:37 comes, obviously, more, quote unquote, like risk, which is why a lot of people are not super willing to hire you for big numbers at first. You're going to have to work your way up, but that's also why you're able to make so much money is because if you're able to make a brand an extra $100,000 per month, which is not even crazy. There are a lot of DTC or e-commerce brands that are making over a million dollars per month. So, if you increase their revenue by 10%, that's an extra $100,000 per month. They're so happy with paying you 5K. They're so happy with paying you 8K because that's really a small portion of what you've already contributed to their bottom line. I'm going to show you how to do that with more specifically creative strategy copywriting as well. But, now you know what copywriting is. Now you know why it actually pays so much as well. So, look, if you are learning from content that's even two or three years old, you might be building on a foundation that doesn't actually reflect what the market actually looks
8:24 like today, which is why I would needed to make another version of the full complete free copywriting course. I asked my audience, "What is the best secondary skill for copywriting?" 34% said email marketing, 54% said creative strategy, and 11% said landing pages. Why is that important? That is so important cuz if I would have ran this exact same poll maybe like one or two years ago. First of all, nobody would even really know what creative strategy is, but if I would have ran this poll back then, everybody would be saying email marketing only. Creative strategy is a brand new thing that's just come about. And the reason as to why, one of the reasons why it's so powerful is one, you're able to really harness and use AI in order to build this and become more efficient at it. And also because there have been some changes in the algorithms on things like Facebook that actually makes this position, creative strategy, just that much more valuable. But, we're going to get into that here shortly So,
9:10 like I said, AI changed what the clients will actually need. Here's the shift that most people are going to miss. A few years ago, clients needed copywriters to write things. Emails, sales pages, social captions. The writing itself was the product. You were paid in order to give and produce a deliverable. Now, AI can write a passable version of most of those things, which means the value of just writing has compressed even more than it was back then. Because three years ago, 5 years ago, closer to when I started, I already caught on to if I wanted to make big money, again, I had to boost up my accountability and responsibility for these brands. So, not only would I write the emails, but I would also do the email marketing. I would also put together the funnels for them as well, and I would be responsible for the outcomes. And now, more than ever, the
9:55 outcomes is actually even more important. So, AI can write, but what AI can't do is think strategically about a brand, understand what makes a specific consumer or customer tick, and identify the gap between what the market is saying and what hasn't been said yet, and build a concept that actually converts at scale. That's all human skill, and that's what commands the highest rates right now. Copywriters who are struggling in 2026 are the ones who are still selling the writing. The ones who are thriving are the ones who are selling the thinking. Now, all you really need to know about this, right, is that you get paid for your thoughts. You get paid for the results, not getting paid for the writing. This is the first big barrier that people come up to when they think that, "Oh, well, copywriting sounds too good to be true," or "Copywriting is just about writing." And having those thoughts is why they
10:41 struggle. The reason why you're able to get paid so much and why anyone can actually do this is because results is what actually matters. And really quick, I actually wanted to go over some creative strategy position examples. See, there are so many people who know that they need creative strategy. The demand is right there in front of your face. You don't even need to believe me. And this is where I truly, truly believe in creative strategy and copywriting, because in all of these other business models, the demand is hypothetical. "Oh man, if you made this AI automation, everybody would want it." Okay, but why? And are they actually asking for it, or are you trying to convince them that they need it? You see, there's two main types of ways that you can make money. You can try to generate demand, or you can try to take a hold and use demand that is already there. And let me tell you, using demand that's already there
11:28 and not having to convince somebody that that need something is always going to be a such a smoother and easier path. So, let me actually show you. Creative strategy position examples. Here we have a guy named Jack Robinson. He's saying that they're hiring a junior creative strategist. So, not somebody with 25 years of experience, not somebody with a crazy degree. It could just be you watching this video right now. If you go through and practice all the things that I show you here in this video, you are going to be a junior creative strategist. So, this one is for you. Client spends over a million dollars per month testing direct response ads. And we're looking for someone obsessed with understanding why ads work. This role is ideal for someone who is early in their creative strategy career who wants to learn a performance D2C marketing team. You'll be responsible for all of those things. And we are looking for somebody who loves studying ads, naturally curious, wants to become elite, thrives
12:13 in a fast-paced environment. And $30,000 to $42,000 per year. That's about a three to four thousand dollars per month. And here's the great part about all of these positions is that they are usually extremely flexible hours. So, you don't have to work 9-5. You can literally just work whenever you get a free moment. You can do most of them, 99% of them, part-time. This might take you 10 to 20 hours per week. You get two positions just like this one, and you're already at what, 6K or 8K per month. Or, like this other guy for example, who's hiring four creative strategists at Hume Health over the next two to three weeks. They're remote, full-time, and they're $6,000 to $8,000 per month plus performance bonuses. You can make over 10K per month just with this guy. And he's hiring four creative strategists, not just one. Because brands are going to need multiple creative strategists to come up with the best ad creatives. Now, if you don't understand what this
12:59 position is, what it entails, don't worry, we're going to get down into the nitty-gritty details. But first, I just wanted to show you the actual demand that exists and it is genuinely out there. And then lastly, we have another example. This guy says he's hiring a creative strategist, full-time, and remote, looking for top-tier creative strategists. What you'll do is you'll create ads for 7-9 figure D2C e-commerce brands. I'm going to be translating all that very shortly. Don't worry if it kind of sounds Chinese to you right now. And some of these positions are saying that they want you to have worked with a brand before, or they want This is not a starting role, or this is not a junior creative strategist role. That's okay. So, two things here. The first thing is that I've seen so many people apply where this is like their first client or this would be their first client. Person saying, "Yeah, I want you to have a degree, a bachelor's in this and that. I want you to have worked with a brand making a bajillion dollars before." But because the person applied correctly,
13:44 kind of like I'm about to show you right now, because the application and the test project and the interview, all those things were so on point, they didn't care. They actually got hired anyways, first client for a senior copywriter position. It does happen. Again, quality is what's genuinely going to move you forward here, which I'll show you how to do. But first, I want to unpack why, again, why creative strategy is so important and what creative strategy really is. So, let me give you a quick definition of creative strategy. You are just making the ads for businesses. So, instead of just writing the ads, you are in charge of figuring out which ads are going to perform well. The only difference between you just writing the ads and you doing the ad creative strategy is just that. It's the strategy. You are creating a strategy, you're creating a hypothesis. So, all it
14:29 really takes is noticing patterns. You tested these five ads. Four of them didn't work very well and all those four were static ads, meaning just pictures. One of those ads was a user-generated content ad, meaning it was an ad where an actor comes on and talks about the product and whatever it was. And that ad did really well. We should do more UGC ads. Now, that's a very oversimplified version of creative strategy, but that's basically it. That's genuinely all and that is it. You are researching the personas, meaning the audience that you are writing to, you are researching the competitors and you're researching the brand and the business itself. Once you've done all of those things, you are now a creative strategist. You can now get paid upwards of 10K per month from a single client, especially when we learn about the Andromeda update and flushing this out a little bit more so you really understand how it changed paid
15:15 advertising forever. See, if you're going into creative strategy specifically, this is the most important thing to understand about the current landscape. Meta, which is the company that owns Facebook, rolled out the Andromeda update, which fundamentally changed how their algorithm works, right? And since Meta has done this, you can bet that pretty much every other social media platform is going to do this exact same thing as well. Before Andromeda, brands could get very precise about who saw their ads. Tight targeting meant you could have average creative. The creative refers to the video or the ad visuals or the ad itself, and still get decent results because you were showing your ad to exactly the right people every single time because you could just go into the settings and pick, "I want this ad to go to 31-year-old moms." After the Andromeda update, Meta shifted to much broader targeting. The algorithm now decides who sees your ad based on how much more
16:02 heavily on the quality of the creative itself. In plain language, the hook is now the targeting. The angle is now the audience selection. If you start the video saying, "Hey, 31-year-old moms, how's it going?" or "31-year-old moms who are busy, how's it going?" then that's who Facebook is going to show it to you. Whereas before, you could just target. You didn't even really need that call people out in the ad creative. So, if your creative speaks specifically and emotionally to one type of person, the algorithm finds more people like them. And if your creative is generic and speaks to nobody in particular, the algorithm has nothing to work with and your ad will die quietly. This is why creative strategy has exploded as a role and as a skill. Brands can no longer rely on targeting to carry mediocre creative. The creative has to do the heavy lifting, and the brands that understand this are investing heavily in
16:48 the people who can make this happen. And that's the version of copywriting that is thriving in 2026. And that's what this course is going to teach you. Not exclusively, but it's going to focus on it as well. And as you saw in some of the wins over there, people are still crushing it with emails. The people are still crushing it even with landing pages and building funnels. But I've already done tons and tons and tons of videos on all of those topics. So, in this one, again, we're going to focus on creative strategy. But if you want to understand emails, if you want to understand landing pages, dude, I have so many free courses ranging from 1 hour to all the way up to 16 hour courses right here on this video. Yes, I am a little bit crazy. I have done this like nuts. I've been pumping out the most value here on YouTube by far. So, let's go a little bit deeper into what creative strategy actually is by first talking about what it is not. And most
17:33 people hear the term, they picture something like someone sitting in a glass office at an ad agency wearing a turtleneck and drawing on the whiteboard. Ooh, creative strategist, they're like a graphic designer or something. That's not what it is. Let me break it down so something that a 12-year-old could understand. Imagine you own a company that sells a supplement. Let's say it's a magnesium gummy that helps people sleep better. You want to run ads on Instagram and TikTok to sell it. So, you hire a video editor to film the ads and put them together. You hire someone to run the actual ad account and manage the budget. And you need someone to actually come up with the ideas for what the ads should actually say and do. The last person is the creative strategist. Not filming anything, not editing anything, you're not touching the ad account or figuring out ad budget or any of the technical stuff. Your job is to come up with the idea, the concept, the angle, the hook, and what makes people stop scrolling through cat videos at 11:00 p.m. and
18:19 actually watch your ad about a magnesium gummy. You think everyone else executes. Now, let me explain what it actually looks like in a day-to-day basis. Let's say you're working with a skin care brand selling a vitamin C serum. Monday, you're researching their ads, their competitors' ads, some Amazon reviews, Reddit threads because you're doing all this persona research as well. And you're building a picture of who the customer is and what language they use to describe their problem. Tuesday, you're concepting five or six different ad ideas based on everything that you found. They have different hooks, different angles, and different emotional entry points. Wednesday, you are writing briefs. A brief is just a document that tells the video team exactly what to make and why. They have to know what visuals go along with the ad creative as well. Because not only are you making an actual hook saying, "Hey, moms out of 31." But, what does the video show? Does it show a
19:06 31-year-old mom in a minivan? Because that would speak to their persona way better. But, how would the editing team know that or how would the UGC creators know that unless you specifically point it out? So, not only are you doing the scripting, but think of yourself as a director. It's like a screenplay. You have to say what's actually going on as well. Then Thursday and Friday, you're reviewing performance data. What's working? What isn't? What can be improved? That informs everything that you concept next week. Research, concept, brief, analyze, repeat. That's the whole job. I'm going to break it down and just demonstrate it in front of you here shortly, but that's what you need to know so far. Yo, what is up, everybody? It is your boy Tyson 4D and we are back yet again. And now, I want to move on to the next section. Different day, same course. Let's talk about why this is such a great opportunity in the perspective of the
19:51 math, okay? Let's make sure that the math is mathing. Let's make it actually make sense because I like to not only understand the opportunity from one way, but also get multiple different perspectives on this. So, we already heard about Andromeda. We already heard about marketing and why you are responsible for the outcomes. Now, I want to talk about those specific outcomes and how the numbers actually make sense in the form of an example. So, here's the thing you need to understand about e-commerce advertising in 2026. DTC brands, which means direct-to-consumer. That basically means that they're not being sold in Walmart. They're not being sold at Target. They are being sold directly to the consumer online. That's what DTC brands means. Basically, any brand that sells a product directly to the customers online are spending more on advertising than they ever have before. We're talking 50,000 a month, 200,000 a month, sometimes even millions per month as
20:37 well. And here's the problem that they all have. To run ads at that level effectively, you need to constantly be testing new creative, new hooks, new angles, new concepts because ads get fatigued. The same ad that was crushing 6 weeks ago is now invisible because people have seen it too many times. Okay, the ad fatigue is killing the ads and they need to come up with new stuff all the time and new stuff that's better and actually works better. So, the profit margins might look like this. They might be spending $600,000 on ads, but they're making 2.4 million on those same ads that spending $600,000 on. And if that's the case, then they know, "Okay, let's scale these ads. Instead of spending 600,000, let's see if we can scale while still maintaining profit." That might look like, "Okay, instead of spending 600,000 this month, let's spend a million dollars in a month and see where it goes." And now, instead of 2.4, they're getting 3 million dollars per
21:23 month just because they are scaling that one ad. Now, eventually, the relationship between what they're spending and what they're making back is going to decrease to where maybe they're spending 800,000 and only making back 850,000. At that point, you know, "Okay, it's barely even really profiting. So, now it's time to refresh something, make a brand new angle." Or, maybe the profitability gets even better over time. You never really know. That's why looking at the actual numbers and the data is so important, which we will be looking at here in this video. I don't want to get too much in the weeds on data because at the end of the day, you got to get a creative strategy role before you truly, truly get to use the data. But, don't worry, we're going to be going over some examples here where actual data is going to be shown for us. So, continuing on. The other big question is, how does someone with no experience and limited time become a
22:08 creative strategist? Because let's be honest, chances are you have limited time. Gosh knows that I did way back in the day. I was a carpenter. And I was also in the army as well. And on top of that, I was also a security guard doing all those jobs at once, trying to figure out, how am I going to make enough money on the side to where I can replace my main income with it? And then when I have that side hustle become my main hustle, my main income, how do I scale that? That is the main million-dollar question right there. And I was able to do it with copywriting. And here's how. So, the question I get more than any other, because I had no experience. You saw those three jobs that I had, they were not transferable skills. I know how to shoot a machine gun and clean a rifle. I know how to securely guard some stuff, and I know how to build a house. I know how to frame a house, at least. So, where does that leave me? That that leaves me as somebody who's just going
22:54 to be working in the trades for their entire life. The trades aren't bad, but it just wasn't for me. It just wasn't for me. The true version starts with a story. Imagine two guitarists show up for an audition for a band. Guy one has been playing guitar for 5 years. He's got the resume. He's been in bands before. On paper, he looks like the obvious choice. Guy two has only been playing for 3 months. But, when guy two picks up the guitar, he starts playing, the whole room stops. His technique is clean, his feel is there, and he understands the song. He sounds like someone who's been doing this for years. He's absolutely shredding. Who gets the spot in the band? Especially if guy one doesn't really sound that good. It's going to be guy two. Because the band doesn't care how long you've been playing. It might be a factor. They care more about how you sound right now. Are you actually going to be a great addition to this band? Let us see what
23:40 you actually have. And what you actually have is what you're going to be judged on far more than any other thing. And it's funny enough, I have an interview, which I'm going to be showing you here shortly. And in that interview, a business owner tells me the exact same thing. He owns a agency that does creatives for e-commerce brands. And he said, "I really don't put that much value on experience. Because the test project that you did is realistically what your experience, {quote} {unquote}, actually is." So, creative strategy works the exact same. This is what I mean when I say experience and social proof are two completely different things. Social proof is past clients' testimonials and years on a resume. You either have it or you don't. And you can't manufacture it overnight. Experience is what you actually can do right now. And that can build starting today. The guy with 5 years who's never
24:27 really studied the craft is equivalent to someone who's picked up a guitar, learned three chords, and then just played those same three chords for 5 years without ever really improving. The guy with 3 months who's been obsessively studying, practicing, and getting feedback every single day has compressed what would normally take years into months. That compression is exactly what's possible with creative strategy right now. Because the tools available today, the AI workflows, the ad libraries, the research tools, mean that someone who is genuinely focused can build more real-world applicable knowledge in 30 days than someone could in a year without those tools 5 years ago. You're not starting from zero, you're starting with a better instruments than anyone who came before you ever had access to. So, the bird's eye view answer to how someone with no experience and limited time can become a creative strategist is this, what I'm
25:12 about to tell you right now. You don't wait until you feel ready. You build the skill while you're going after the opportunity at the same time. You study winning ads every day. You do the work before anyone pays you to do it. You apply before you have a perfect portfolio. And you let the reps compound faster than anyone thinks is possible because you're using every tool available to you to articulate the process. The guitarist who gets the spot in the band isn't the one who practiced the longest. It's the one who's practiced the smartest. And I want to bring it all home and wrap it all in, you know, the Tyson 40 way. A man Jonathan answered somebody's question. Somebody was was asking in the 40 boot camp, my private community. They were asking, "Hey man, should I just lie about my experience?" And while you might not have said or asked the exact same thing, many many many people are going to be wondering the exact same
25:58 thing. And his answer was this, "I got my first client by being honest that I didn't have a lot of experience, but I sent over my practice copy and he liked it." That's it. That's really as simple as it gets. Someone else here, a head of copywriting posted on LinkedIn. And I thought this was a very interesting post. She said, "I've probably screened a hundred or so copywriters over the last year as a hiring manager. One thing I've seen consistently is that years of experience means very little when it comes to actual skill set. I've seen career copywriters with over a decade of experience who couldn't name a single copywriting framework or clearly explain the strategy behind why they structured a landing page in a specific way. And you'll have a green conversion copywriter with maybe like two, three years of experience who's starting out with killer portfolios who can back up over 80% of the copy decisions that they made with solid strategic rationale. Mic drop. Okay? All the things that I'm telling you here is being affirmed with all the
26:44 information that's also available for anybody and everybody. Now, I'll give you some examples, then I'm going to actually show you me breaking down ads live. We're going to watch the videos together. Um then we're going to be doing some test projects together. Then I'm going to be showing you some of my live interviews. Then we're going to go from there. Here's a very simple, basic, easy example, and then I'm going to apply this structure example to two different types of ads. So, let's look over it. Structure. Fear hook to start. Okay, so you What kind of hook? See, there are many different types of overarching structures, and then there are many different types of substructures. And once you've been analyzing enough ads, you will have all of this within your head already. It's almost just like learning a language. The best way to learn that language is to submerge yourself in the culture. The best way to learn French isn't to sit on Duolingo or whatever and try to study it. It's to just go to France or Quebec or whatever
27:31 kind of dialect of French that you would like to learn. So, fear hook. As opposed to a promise hook, a fear hook is you could be missing out on $5,000 per year on your tax returns. That's a fear hook. A promise hook is I'm going to show you how to master the cello in 30 days and impress all your friends. That's a promise hook. And there are many, many, many different types of hooks, but a fear hook is the first one. I'm not going to spend this much time on each different part of the subject of the structure. Then we have an open loop or a big promise. So, fear hook, big promise. Then, authority intro. My name is XYZ. I've been doing this for this many years, that many that. Field alternative number one, two, and three. You've probably tried this thing, the other thing, and the other thing after that. Next is the hidden root cause. You think that the reason you can't get to sleep is because of your sleep routine,
28:17 when in reality it is your pillow. It is your sleep tracking or whatever. Next is the problem mechanism. So, this is definitely one I need to explain. A mechanism is simply just a method. A unique mechanism is a unique method. So, kind of like I was talking about before, let's go back to the Let's go to an exercise example. You want to burn the most amount of calories. What are most people going to do? They're going to walk, they're going to run, they're going to get on a Peloton and start cycling. But what if there was a way that you can burn maximum calories with the least discomfort possible, but actually making it fun. Well, the way that we do this is by using those >> [laughter] >> those like bungee cords that are hooked up to your pants and you're just flying around the room. All right, editor put a clip of that up on screen right now. That is their unique mechanism. That's their unique way to get to the goal that
29:03 you actually want. The reason why these unique mechanisms are so important is because it will differentiate yourself from everybody else. It will give people that actual light bulb discovery moment. Oh, this is actually what I need. A problem mechanism is what specific part is a problem that they don't think it is. So, you think everything is about your calories, all right, calories in and calories out, but that's an oversimplified version. Because if that was the case, then everybody would be um slim and have their dream body. So, if it's more than calories in and calories out, what is the actual problem behind it? The problem is the example I used last time is adherence, basically. How do you properly adhere to all this stuff? Well, you have to make it fun, you have to make it easy, and you have to make it enjoyable, and you have to make it whatever, right? That that's the
29:49 unique problem mechanism. Next is the cost of inaction. Every single week you go without doing this, it becomes harder to lose weight later. Because chances are you're not just stagnant and stuck at your weight, you're probably gaining even more weight and you don't even know it. Because the weight creeps up on you so slowly that after a week you won't even gain a pound. After 2 weeks you won't even gain a pound. Then after 3 weeks, you'll have gained 4 lb just like that. That's how it works. Next is the product intro. Introducing whatever the product is. This is very self-explanatory. Next is the solution mechanism. So, it uses special resistance bands technology to where normal weights only just use gravity and they're okay, but resistance makes it so that your muscle is at all times being stressed and stretched in a full range of motion and it gets harder the more
30:35 you're contracting. That might be the special unique mechanism for the solution. Transformation one, short-term. Transformation two, long-term. So, in the short-term, you're going to notice better workouts and better pumps. In the long-term, you're going to notice gigantic bulging biceps that are going to rip the sleeves off of your shirts. Social proof. Here are some examples. This guy did it, that guy did it, and these guys did it, and there are these studies from Harvard that also back up the same claim. Price anchoring. And you might be thinking, "Wow, this is like a thousand bucks." No, it's only 500. And then risk reversal. And if you don't like it, we'll send it back to you, zero strings attached in the first three days. Scarcity. Usually they're out of stock, but if you order right now and check, they could have it shipping to your country. Call to action. Click the link below and go watch it. Call to action is telling them what to do.
31:20 Scarcity is simply just telling them why it's hard to get right now. Okay? So, there's limited time scarcity, meaning, "Oh, this is only going on for the next one week." Or scarcity in the terms of there's only a hundred left. Or they're sometimes out of stock. That's what I think. Risk reversal is just like how it sounds. Um there's risk there. They feel like, "Well, what if I get it and it doesn't work?" Fear of risk. The risk, money back guarantee, don't worry about it. Price anchoring. Oh, yes. Price anchoring is when you give them a price to anchor at. Like, "Oh, you know when you know something's like, oh, it's like seven grand." And then like, "Well, now it's six grand." Right? I just told you it was seven grand. That was the first uh price that I gave, but now I'm telling you it's six. That's always going to be better than just telling somebody it's straight up six cuz I feel as though they are getting a deal. And then the format itself. So, there are many different types of formats. This one is an authority-led VSL. So, it might be a founder UGC ad. Founder
32:07 meaning the person who actually founded the company, owns the business. UGC means user-generated content. Literally just a video like one of me right now talking to you. That is a very short example of a script structure. Okay? This is the script. It's not necessarily the brief. The brief is more like you directing it. What videos and visuals are going to come up on screen? That's the brief. We're going to be talking about that a little bit later. But, that's it. You just learned how to do creative strategy. You just learned your very first structure. Um you You literally take this, like copy it, paste it somewhere, and then use it for whenever you are making ads for a product. Okay, so I just gave you a ton of like off-the-dome examples, but now I have some real examples. So, one is for a mattress brand. The fear hook. What if your mattress is the reason you wake up exhausted every single morning? Open
32:52 loop. In the next 60 seconds, I'll show you why thousands of people are sleeping deeper without pills, expensive gadgets, or changing their bedtime routine. Authority intro. I'm a certified sleep coach, and I've been over the last decade helped more than 8,000 people improve their sleep quality. Build alternatives. Maybe you've tried melatonin or blackout curtains and white noise machines. Or maybe spending thousands on a luxury mattress that felt great in a showroom, but not 6 months later. Bro, so true, dude. So true. I picked the softest mattress I could. Couldn't sleep on it. Literally every night. This is a side note. When you lay on a mattress, it's completely different than when you sleep in a mattress. Cuz when you sleep in a mattress, right? If I were to sleep in a mattress with my wife, then first of all, it's both of our weight on the mattress, and we are
33:38 under a blanket, so our body heat warms up the mattress, which makes it sink even more. Dude, by the time I wake up, I like got scoliosis. It's insane. Hidden root cause. This is actually a perfect ad for me. I'm I'm walking myself into it. The problem usually isn't that you can't sleep. It's that your body never reaches deep restorative sleep because your mattress isn't properly supporting your pressure points. Mm. Very unique mechanism. Problem mechanism. When your hips and shoulders sink unevenly, your muscles stay slightly engaged all night instead of fully relaxing. That means your brain keeps you waking up to reposition, even if you don't remember it. Cost of inaction. Over time, poor sleep doesn't just leave you tired. It affects your mood, recovery, focus, productivity, and even long-term health. Product intro. That's exactly why I created the Dream Rest Hybrid Mattress.
34:26 Mm. Solution mechanism. Its zoned support system keeps your spine aligned while pressure-relieving memory foam cushions your joints, helping your body stay comfortable throughout the night. Transformation one short-term short-term. Most customers notice they fall asleep faster and wake up feeling more refreshed within the first week. Long-term. Over the following months, better sleep becomes your new normal, and giving you more energy, better workouts, and more productive days. Social proof. Over 25,000 customers have already switched to Dreamrest with 5,000 five-star reviews praising its comfort and durability. Price anchoring. Instead of spending thousands on a luxury mattress or years of trying different sleep products, risk reversal. Try Dreamrest for 100 nights. If you don't love it, we'll pick it up and give you a full refund. Scarcity. Our current sale ends this Sunday, and inventory is
35:12 limited. Call to action. Click below and see why so many people are finally getting the sleep they've been missing. Easy. You're literally just filling in the blanks. That's basically all it is, filling in the blanks. Now, you're going to need to come up with multiple of these per month, probably like 20 to 30 per month per client more most likely. Like, the people I know might come up with like five to 10 creatives in total every single day, every day. So, you're going to need a lot of ideas, right? The writing is not really the hard part. The harder part is figuring out which angles and ideas and formats you want to use, and that all comes out down to research as well. There's different types of research. There is brand research, as in this research for the brand that you're currently working with or working for or writing ads for. Competitor research, where you're researching the market, your close competitors, and then also their farther out competitors. So, if
35:58 it's this mattress company, their close competitor might be another mattress company. Or, a little bit farther away of a competitor might be the Aura ring that helps you with your sleep. But, a very far competitor might be Dr. Squatch deodorant, where they're not necessarily competing each other, but they also have really good ads, too. So, what ads and ideas and formats and angles can you get from there as well? And then, finally, you have persona research. Who is this ad specifically talking to? Who is it targeting? Well, it's not going to be targeting kids who are like 11 and 12 because they obviously don't care that much about sleep. They sleep like babies anyways cuz they basically are babies and they don't have the money to buy a mattress, okay? We ideally want people with some disposable income, enough disposable income for a mattress. You don't want people who are, you know,
36:43 completely dead broke. So, you might talk about how hard it is working a corporate job with not having enough sleep. Or if you're making a testimonial UGC ad, remember that means user-generated content ad, say something like "I'm a busy 30-year-old professional with two kids and sleep is just that much more important." Or "We just have newborn baby and sleep is the most important thing. Yet, doesn't matter how much sleep I get, I still feel like I'm extremely tired." So, who are you targeting? Just just by saying those words, you're going to be targeting the people who are going to be relate to the things that you're talking to, okay? So, that was a little bit of an aside, but still you're going to need to know a lot of these or all of these things. And I have another one. I want to show you how this one structure can be used for different things. So, here's the second one. This is the meal delivery service, the fear hook. If you're eating takeout three or four
37:29 times a week, it may be costing you far more than just money. Open loop. In the next minute, I'll show you how busy professionals are eating healthier while actually spending less time thinking about food. Authority intro. "I'm a registered nutrition coach and I've helped thousands of clients simplify healthy eating without restrictive diets. Maybe you've tried meal prepping every Sunday or downloading calorie tracking apps or promising yourself you'll cook every night after work. The real problem isn't motivation, it's decision fatigue. By the time you've worked all day, your willpower is already depleted. That's why grabbing takeout feels so much easier than grocery shopping, cooking, and cleaning. Those small daily decisions add up to thousands of dollars spent on takeout and make it much harder to stay healthy
38:14 long-term. That's why we built Fresh Fuel Meals. Every meal is chef-prepared, high in protein, portion controlled, and delivered directly to your door, so the healthy choice becomes the easy choice. Then the first week, you'll spend less time on cooking and wondering what to eat. Over the following months, healthier eating becomes effortless, helping you lose weight, feel more energetic, and stay consistent without relying on motivation. More than 100,000 meals have already been delivered with thousands of customers saying they finally stayed consistent after years of struggling. Instead of spending $20 or $30 every time you order takeout, try your first box risk-free. If you're not satisfied, we'll make it right. This week's introductory pricing is only available while meal slots remain open. Click below to claim your first order and make healthy eating easiest part of your day. Pretty fire. And you know what
39:01 I love about creative strategy is that you can pretty much always relate your personal experience and add that in here as well. So, me personally, when I tried Factor meals, right? This is the Canadian version. I don't know if they have it anywhere else, but it's the exact same thing, meal delivery service, and you just microwave them. The problem with those is they tasted all right, but the fat was insane. I hate in 2026 how every company slaps high protein on everything, but nobody understands macros, and the fat is just too much. I'm talking like 20 g of fat per meal, brother. >> [laughter] >> Yeah, it's insane. Um but and also the sodium is nuts, and they're somewhat pricey, and sometimes the stuff that you get doesn't taste very good. Sometimes you forget to set which meals you want, so then they send you the random meals, and you're sent
39:47 one nasty-looking meal, but you have to eat it anyways cuz you got it. So, what else are you going to do with it? So, those are my problems. Now, the reason why I bring that up, right? Is that I can do persona research partly on myself. Now, I shouldn't just use just myself. I should at least corroborate it with other people as well. Here's the other thing. You need to be locked in with your persona. You need to know exactly what they are thinking. Let me go up and and show you why this is important. When we go to the field alternatives, if you get these wrong, or if you get how they're actually feeling themselves wrong, then they are not going to identify with your ad. It just will not happen. So, here is what you need to do. You need to understand their problem better than they do, because when you do that, they will naturally look to you for the solution. So, you need to know this spectrum. You need to know their
40:33 fears. Fears is like the long-term downside. You need to know their problems and obstacles. That is like the short-term things that they're dealing with every single day that's annoying, right? The fears is like the cost of long-term inaction. Then, on that next side of the spectrum, you need to know their wants. What are the things that they wish that they could get rid of or the things that they want and can experience on a daily basis in in a short term. And then what is the long-term dreams? What is the real desire? They're able to make more money, focus more, be more present in their life, these sorts of things, okay? And being able to be hyper-specific of them, for example, maybe you've tried meal prepping. That's a specific. Maybe you've tried meal prepping every Sunday. That's hyper-specific. That's like you need to be locked in, Jim bro, to actually know that. Or downloading calorie tracking apps. Mhm. See, the vague and the overused, you might think
41:19 you understand the persona, but if you say something like, "You've probably tried dieting." I mean, that's just too vague. That that's not specific enough. "You've probably tried losing weight. You step on the scale and it doesn't say what you want it to say." I mean, that sounds like a Jenny Craig ad from like 20 years ago, okay? We have to be hyper-hyper locked in. When you think you know the persona, you need to do another 3 hours of research at least. When you think, "Okay, I think I got this." you need to do more. And and only then do you know. And as you make more creatives, you have to keep continuing to do the research. It never actually stops. I'll show you how to do the research and more research here. Again, all that stuff's coming. But for right now, I want to go over some copywriting and creative strategy basics and terms, okay? This is not just the copywriting basics on persuasion and technique, but
42:06 also on data as well when it comes to creative strategy, because the data is going to tell you the feedback, okay? So, if you were doing email marketing, you have to look at how many opens you get. That will tell you how good your subject line is. You have to look at how many people clicked on the call to action. That will show you how great your CTA is or how persuasive the email itself was. And then, you have to track how many people actually purchased. That will tell you how good the offer and how good the landing page is converting. And then, with all of those pieces of data, you're able to infer what you can do to improve them. What is the bottleneck? Maybe everything was good, but there wasn't many people who opened. Well, how do we get those open rates up? Or a lot of people opened, and a lot of people clicked on the page, but then nobody really bought. Well, how do we fix that? Then, you understand which variables to focus on. And you're only ever going to
42:51 be able to improve variables that you put all of your focused time and attention on. So, that was with email marketing, so don't worry about that. But, it's just another example. It's just a chain of events that you need to analyze and figure out how to manipulate in your desired way. So, before we go into the how, we need to make sure that we're speaking the same language. Because, when it comes to creative strategy, especially copywriting, too, there's legitimately a language barrier. Because, creative strategy has its own vocabulary. And if you walk into an interview or test project not knowing these terms, you're going to sound like someone who just showed up to the guitar audition not knowing what a chord is. So, let's go through the core ones. Simple and fast. First one is the hook. It's the first 3 seconds of an ad. There's a visual hook, meaning what is on screen? What's happening right now? Then, there is a spoken hook or a script hook. Hook has 2 seconds, like I said. Its only job is to stop people from
43:37 scrolling. Stop the scroll and get them to watch. That's it. It doesn't need to sell anything. It doesn't anything. It just needs to make someone pause long enough to see what comes next. Think about how you scroll through Instagram or TikTok. You're moving fast. Something catches your eye, and your thumb stops. That's the thing that stopped your thumb, it's the hook. Everything else in the ad is irrelevant if the hook doesn't work, because nobody sees the rest. So, if your hook sucks, it doesn't matter if you have amazing rest of the ad, nobody's going to see it, and nobody really cares. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, so last time we were talking about the hook. And now, moving on with the rest of our definitions, we have the angle. And the angle is the specific lens in which you're looking at the product through. What angle are you using? Same product can have dozens, hundreds, thousands, of infinite amount of angles. Take a simple product like a
44:24 water bottle. You could angle it as a productivity tool for busy professionals, or as something that helps you drink more water and lose weight, or as the sustainable alternative to plastic, or as the thing that finally makes hydration a habit. There's so many different angles that you can look at it. Right now, I want you to do a really quick exercise. Think about how many more angles that you could use for a water bottle. So, for example, you could use it as a something to just make you more healthy, something to stop yourself from getting cramps or headaches. A lot of people think that they're just random and they pop an aspirin, when in reality they're just dehydrated. Or whenever you wake up in the middle of the night, you don't want a glass of water by you because a glass of water is going to get warm and dust is all going to form in it and you never know your dog could be like licking out
45:10 of it while you're sleeping. But if you have a water bottle, it stays cold and then you know that it's actually clean, right? I mean, there's an infinite amount of angles. So, you understand an angle if all that made sense to you and you can come up with more angles off the top of your head as well. Next is the brief. A brief is the document you hand the video editor and the video team and tell them exactly what to make. Now, um a lot of the times businesses are going to hire video editors that are like from second world or third world countries and that's not like necessarily a bad thing, but their comprehension and their comprehension with English might be lower. It might be harder to get the point across. You might have to make more revisions. There might be typos and things. So, you have to really, really, really be a great director and tell them exactly what is going to happen on every single second. So, it's not just a
45:56 script. A strong brief includes the angle, why you chose it, the hook, and what it's designed to do, who is the target person that they are looking for, and what emotional state they're in when they see the ad, the key message, the rough script direction, and the CTA. The brief is how your thinking becomes someone else's execution. So, basically, you're handing them the entire screenplay, the entire everything, and then also some reasoning behind why, okay? That way someone can look at it be like, okay, this is their hypothesis, this is why we're testing the ad, this is who the ad is going for, this is what the actual ad's going to say, and this is what the ad is going to do and what it's going to look like. UGC. UGC stands for user-generated content. It's ads that are designed to look like organic content. You know, when you scroll through your phone, you see some person just so just so happens to be reviewing
46:42 a product, or oh my gosh, guys, I was going to gatekeep this, but this is just so good. That's all UGC ads. Like a real person talking to their phone camera, not a polished brand commercial. Think someone holding up a product in their bathroom saying, okay, I've been using this for 2 weeks, and here's what happened. UGC performs incredibly well right now because it blends into the feed. It doesn't feel like an ad, and people are more likely to trust someone who looks like them than a brand talking at them. A huge portion of the brief we will be writing as a creative strategist will be the UGC style concepts. And then there's different types of variations of UGC. So, there's AI UGC. It's just like AI video of someone, right? Old people can't even tell the difference between AI and real life anyways, so you can just skip paying the UGC writer and waiting on them and trying to give them revisions, etc., and just go into Higgs
47:28 Field or one of these other AI video creation tools and just do it up there. There's also founder UGC. There's also like couples UGC. So, founder UGC, mentioned it before, the founder coming on and talking about what their actual experience was building the product, why they built the product. Relationship UGC is like two people in a relationship, and they're just like, it looks like they're making very organic content. Hey, babe, what is that you have there? Oh, this is my new gummies that boost my productivity or something, right? There's There's tons of different formats that you you go about. Next is hook, right? So, we learned what a hook is, but how do you measure how good the hook is? Well, this is hook rate. Hook rate is the percentage of people who watch past the first few seconds of your ad. If your hook rate is high, your opening is stopping the scroll. If it's low, your opening or people are seeing your ad and immediately swiping past it. They don't care. This is one of the first metrics you look at when you're
48:14 analyzing the performance because if your hook rate is bad, nothing else matters. Nobody is seeing the rest of the ad. Your hook rate might be just like okay. Like if it's a a 50 and you have a different one that is a 60, then you want to make sure that you try to reverse engineer. Why did this one get a 60? You put that 60 on your 50. Like let's say the 50, the one with the the lower hook rate, which is still okay, but not great, got a really high ROAS. Well, a easy way to boost up that ROAS is to give it the hook rate or the hook from whatever had the best hook rate. And then that way you were meshing the ads together, right? You're you're making these inferences in order to boost the ads results. And that's exactly how you do it. I mean, it's 1 + 1 = 2. It's a little bit of patterns and problem-solving, but it's really not rocket science. Next is ROAS or return
49:00 on ad spend or kind of like ROI basically, but ROI referring to the ad
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