"I've been burned by agencies before." I hear this constantly. And look — some agencies do suck. But blaming every agency is like blaming every barber because you got a bad haircut once. In this video, I tell the story of a guy who kept going back to his barber, kept complaining about his haircuts... until his buddy finally hit him with the truth. Sometimes the barber isn't the problem. Sometimes you're just bald. Translation: maybe your agency can't fix your brand because your offer isn't there yet. Not every agency is bad. But not every business is ready for one either.

you'll never be a good marketer if you're a rule follower. i mean that. i teach people to buy ads. i give them the fundamentals — the "why" behind how things work. and then i watch them turn principles into prescriptions. i say "it's probably healthier to scale 20-30% day over day" and they take that as gospel. they never break that rule. ever. here's the thing: i almost never follow that rule myself. when i launch something new and i like how it looks? i'll double the budget. triple it. sometimes quadruple it. because i have a feel for it. i know which risks pan out and which don't. last year we had a launch where i needed to spend $4M in a month. you can't do that scaling 20% day over day. it's just not possible. so you have to rework the framework in your mind. figure out what you CAN do to make it work. here's what most people get wrong: they think following rules IS the strategy. but rules are just guardrails. they're not the game. the game is understanding WHY the rules exist — then knowing when to break them. take campaign structure. i tell people: start simple. one campaign, multiple ad sets, test different creative concepts. consolidate where possible so the algorithm can learn faster. that's the principle. but i've got accounts where i'm running 15 campaigns because the business model demands it. i've got others where everything lives in one CBO because that's what's working. there are dozens of data points i consider when thinking about CBO vs ABO and it’s dumb to make a one-size-fits-all rule for that. the real skill isn't knowing the playbook. it's pattern recognition. when i look at an account, i'm asking questions: what's actually happening here? where's the drop-off? is the creative fatigued or is this a targeting problem? what does the sales team say about lead quality? i'm not looking for "the answer." i'm looking for signals. and then i test. big ideas first. i don't waste time testing button colors when the whole angle might be wrong. i test bold stuff — new hooks, new offers, new funnels.

Hey @Dakota Hermes Newbie in media buying here, I just launched an ad campaign yesterday for a call funnel I’m running and I left the targeting broad (Given that’s what everyone’s recommending these days) … we launched at $50/day … Maybe I’m just panicking here but so far it’s spent $60 and I’ve gotten 6 applications who are NOT in my target audience, thankfully they never get to see the calendar and the TY page so they don’t trigger the pixel/CAPI for the schedule event we’re optimizing for. My question is, is it normal for meta to show my ads to different audiences in the mean time while trying to figure it out? Or is there something wrong? It's a new account btw I know $60 is not a lot, and we’re just approx 800 impressions in, however I’m curious, I’m sure as hell my ad and funnel messaging is NOT the issue, and we have a robust application so it’s definitely not a messaging problem.

We've got an account with basically no calendar availability right now as they're transitioning sales teams. It's opt-in → VSL → book a call. Currently optimizing for Schedule, but would it make sense to relaunch and optimize for Lead while we can't get schedules coming through?

for this vid, I just wanted to think through every step of the high ticket funnel and what friction points can help get a high quality conversion. it's in the weeds, and heavily detailed, but for the right person, this video might unlock some real scale.