Criando Criativos Para Infoprodutos Que Vendem 7D/Mês | Matheus Lourenço - Segredos da Escala #171

We don't need to produce the same volume of creatives that the Nutra and Black offer guys do. So, making a hundred creatives a day, whatever. We don't need that volume. In the white market, -- working with experts, what's actually different about the creative? The first thing is: If you want to nail ad copy, stick around. You'll leave here an amazing copywriter and make great money. That's where the difference comes in. Where the real million dollar creatives show up? It's the second level. The persona's consumption behavior. Studying the organic side. When you make creatives, you gotta

think more like Virginia than David Ogilvy. What do I mean by that? Man, you're a genius. I liked that. Loving that idea, guys. Disruptive formats like these come from one thing: Our best creative last year, which was actually Pri's masterpiece, That narrator one I mentioned earlier... She found it that way. Matheus Lourenço. He helps experts scale their operations with VSL funnels for cold traffic. And today he'll show how creatives are built for info products that pull in over a million reais a month. What advice would you give people on how to come up with these

really strong creative openings? For me, the hook formula is this: The angle. Plus the benefit. Or pain. What was the hook on Pri’s winning creative, for example? I've got a mental map of this too, I can share several angle examples. I think this podcast is probably pretty advanced for people in the info product space. I’m gonna share this hack with you guys. I'm seeing a lot of CPM complaints lately. We had a VSL with great metrics, but its CPM was getting really high. Here's what we did: So we made a whole batch of creatives, like

15 or 20 of them. Man, It crushed the CPM. Like, brutally. Across the whole account. That's the hack. Two hacks for everyone who made it to the end. Gotta have them. Today I'm sitting down again with Matheus Lourenço. This is actually his second time here on the podcast, folks. Last time he was here, we talked about how to build VSLs, and ever since then so many of you kept asking him to come back and talk about creatives, so I finally decided to bring him on today to talk about exactly that, about creatives, alright? Creatives are

a fundamental part of any direct marketing operation. Without good creatives, unfortunately, your offer just doesn't scale. Matheus believes most digital product creators see creatives the wrong way. And he says it was exactly when he changed the way he saw creatives that he managed to grow his revenue exponentially. So on this podcast, we've talked about a ton when it comes to creatives. So, for example, how to set up a creative department inside your operation, how the creative production line actually works, and also what the batches of creatives look like every time he produces some. And the

cool part is that Matheus has a different role in each batch, and he's going to talk a lot about that. And folks, he also walked through the step by step process he uses to create creatives that scale up to seven figures a month, plus a bunch of other stuff. Even some pretty counterintuitive things, like why constantly creating new hooks for the same creative isn't such a good idea. So, man, if you work with digital products, work with VSLs, or want to get into that, want to understand how this whole world works, I'm sure you're going

to really enjoy this conversation. And if you don't know it yet, this podcast is called Scaling Secrets. And here, folks, we bring on people who've already scaled Their offers, already scaled their businesses, so that you, at home, can walk away with one, two, maybe even three tips, assuming the podcast turns out good. And then you take those tips, apply them in your business, and scale it too. And this podcast was actually created by VTurb. If you don't know VTurb, it's a video hosting company built to boost the conversion of your sales video. Today, the biggest

companies in the world host their sales videos right here on VTurb. That's because they know VTurb boosts their conversion and gives them a solid ROI on the platform. The biggest companies in Brazil do this, like G4 Educação, Novo Mercado, and plenty of others. Even some of the biggest companies in the world, like Mindvalley, which is the largest VSL advertiser on the planet. So, man, if you've got a VSL, a sales video, or a webinar, and you want to boost the conversion on that video, host it on VTurb. Do that and you'll see your conversion go

up. And actually, there's even a video down in the description. Go check that video out, alright? Because these are super simple things, but you can apply them today, and they'll still boost your conversion and help you make more money. The link's right here in the description, okay? Just click there to watch the video. But enough talking, let's get this podcast started. So, here's Matheus Lourenço. Welcome back once again to the VTurb podcast. Man, you're... uh, you didn't quite get the hat trick, right? That's three times, but this is your second time here on the podcast.

In record time, right. How are you feeling? Privileged. Yeah, man? Cool. Honored. Nice. I used to think about it so many times, man, and that's exactly how it went, you know? I'd take the bus listening to podcasts just to get to events, to get to Some expert's house so I could record, and man, it happened so many times. Nice. Man, you know how to do upsells too? I do. That's right, The third podcast. Man, awesome! So, to start off, we're going to talk today about creatives So folks, Matheus recorded a podcast with us that's going

to show up here on the screen That one was about VSLs, and also about, well, how to find an expert, basically everything we found interesting But then people kept saying "bring Matheus on to do one about creatives, and so on." So you all could actually run your campaigns, with both the creative and the VSL. You need the creative, and then you need the upsell. And you need the upsell too. Man. It's a whole saga on its own. There's going to be a series, huh? The Matheus Lourenço series. But man, let's go ahead and start talking

about creatives then As you know, man... I'm also... Or I used to be... You are. I am, I am. Yeah, I'm a copywriter, right? I'm a copywriter. Because I still write some copy here for VTurb, you know? Every once in a while I throw out a headline idea, give some ideas over to Nicole Everybody's a copywriter deep down... I say that all the time. The only difference is that an actual copywriter is a little more intentional about using it. But everybody uses a bit of copy, right? Yeah, no doubt. You know what the measure of

a free society is? It's the level of persuasion that exists in that society. The more persuasion a society has, the freer it is. Interesting. Because there are only two ways to get a person... There are only two ways to get someone to do what you want, either you persuade them to do what you want, meaning you win them over with copy Or you go beat them up, you know? So it's cooler to just use copy, right, folks? So don't go beating up your friends But, man Man, this whole thing with, with VSL funnels right now

in 2026 is getting extremely popular in your market, all these digital product folks and everything Which is something that, man, I don't know about you, but since I've been in this market for 12 years, I've already done a ton of VSLs, I've been immersed in this for a long time And what I'm seeing is that these folks are starting to move over here, they're making their own VSLs, and they're getting a lot of results. And man, do you think for these folks to learn how to create creatives It's essentially the same principles people apply over

in Nutra, in affiliate marketing, over in black offers, in the other, in the other bubble of the digital market, or do you think there's... there's some changes? You, man, you're right in the middle of both worlds, you're in some Masterminds over there, other Masterminds over here Do you think it's basically the same stuff Or do you think there are specific things for these digital product folks, the launch crowd, who are just arriving now and still learning about this world? What do you think? Man, definitely not. Oh yeah? Definitely not. Yeah, what we've actually been seeing

is that it's a completely different world. Wow, man. From the people running Black offers, the Nutra guys, the launch crowd... because the launch crowd has their own creative biases too, especially when they’re running paid launches. And even with free launches, they still have their own creative preferences and patterns... And what do we do? I believe what we do is completely different. I'd even say it's a little more... systematic and analytical... Than what people do in black and in the traditional market. Completely, man? Completely. Really? Yeah. Wow. It's just... in my head, I figured there'd be

at least some similarity, you know? Man, I think the similarity is that we make creatives to scale and sell more. I think the principle and maybe a little of the fundamentals are similar, but... But in actual practice, they're pretty different things. They're quite different things. Man, my take is, and obviously you know more than me because you're in the game, but my take is... We have... the principles are extremely similar. But the way you all execute... It's a way that's a lot more a lot more creative, you know? It seems like the people selling to

the health market always do the same thing. They start off talking about the mechanism, and then, they throw in some social proof, a CTA. And it's always the same thing, and people just keep switching up the format. But you all, with this whole info product thing, since the niches are so different... It seems like you all come up with ideas that are kind of out of the box, you know? In fact... One example of that is the creative you just showed me back at the hotel. Uh huh. That you showed me. From one of our

consulting clients, right? Talk about that, about that creative. About what it actually was. Man, basically we have... I run a consulting program. And in this program, we help people out, especially with the copy side of things, right? And it's really interesting, because you actually mentioned earlier, you said the folks from this digital product market are moving into the creatives space now and all that... And what we've been noticing is that it's not just the digital product folks, but a lot of people from the more traditional, physical world too. So we've actually been working with e-commerce

folks, folks who run SaaS businesses... Yeah, so we actually have some clients who I think even found us through VTurb. And they basically have a SaaS, a tool, that's, it's kind of like a Netflix, but for Catholic kids. They've got some cartoons on there. That's wild, so bizarre. The business is bizarre, like, their business, actually, because there's more than... I thought it was pretty cool. I think it's cool, it's really interesting. Really cool. Between the kid watching a bunch of nonsense and... And getting to watch stuff with good values for life instead... The story of

Joseph from the Bible and stuff. Man, they've got a fantastic business. Honestly, if you're Catholic, go look up their business. It's called "Cateclub". Man, these guys are really good. And what happened was, they came on board. And they don't even run VSLs, just a static funnel, selling for two ninety seven. And one of... one of the pillars we found for optimization was the creative side, because their creatives were still at the level most of the market's still at, which is kind of that level... Very methodical, very strict, maybe. That's what everybody learned, right. But, it's

like you said, it's the script. Like, the creative is this, it's this way, this format. It's the standard script. And, uh, really... Just rigid. So what we did, right, is... I've got my partner, his name's João. Also João. Not João Campos though. Shoutout to João... Last name? João Francisco. João Francisco. That's João. He's our head of ads too. I think he'll come on someday to talk a bit. João, you're a beast, man. But look, if you come here, my friend, you'll get the chance to... To win... No way. He's terrible. Really terrible. No way then.

Not a chance. Look, even if he were good. He still wouldn't stand a chance, you know? Because now you know, right? Now you know, you feel me? Man, I looked for Wendell Lira's consulting, but couldn't find it. Gotta get consulting... He's playing Pro Evolution Soccer nowadays. For real? Yeah. Come on, Wendell, what do you mean man? Crazy. Dude, I'm launching an offer. Guys, my first offer in four years, "the FIFA trick". I'm buying it. I'm in. I'll be the first case study. I'll give the testimonial. Nice one. But what happens is... João's, like... Later in

the podcast, we'll talk about him a bit too. He works a lot with me on this. But man, he's brilliant at thinking through that kind of stuff, when it comes to creatives. So, what happens... He shared a creative model we'd already validated with one of our specialists, for those clients, which were creatives that he basically... took the format from, you know, Everybody Hates Chris, Everybody Hates Chris, that opening he had, like, look, this is Chris... Anyway, that opening from Everybody Hates Chris, with the voice of the guy who plays Chris. So he launched that creative

there, And man, they modeled it by telling the kid's story. So the creative's like, ah, this is Luísa. And Luísa, she... She went viral online... And she's shocking everyone... Because there's only one thing she wants to do: watch Jesus cartoons... While all the other kids are watching... regular cartoons and stuff... Luísa, all the time, only wants Jesus cartoons. It kind of tells the story, like, how'd she find this? Oh, because of this platform, "Cateclub"... Anyway. They made the creative that way. And the very first day it went up, it blew up. In under three days,

over fifty conversions. For their scale, that's something... It was extremely disruptive, you know? And it changed the game, big time. So that's what we did, for them and for other clients in the more physical world too. So, for example, one of them we've got, they sell flashcards... For kids too, and stuff like that... And literally the same game, the same formula. The same way of thinking about creatives. I think that's what people talk about most, the difference, like... the way we started seeing creatives after understanding your methodology and process is completely different. And that changes

the game a lot, right? We'll talk about that... Later in the podcast. But the way you see creatives completely changes the game, completely. And I believe that's actually what keeps people stuck to... to what the market, like nutraceuticals and stuff, does. And what the traditional market does too, it's the way they see creatives. I think that's the first thing that changed our game. Mm-hm. I think it's a good time to talk about this. Dude, for sure. Actually, I was gonna ask you exactly that, what's this whole way of seeing creatives? Alright, so here's what happens.

Ninety five percent of the market, sees creatives the wrong way. I say that because I talk to tons of people. Me and Thiago Roas We run a mentorship together, right. Me, him, and Leonardo Xerém, covering copy, traffic and funnels. Leonardo Xerém? Yep. Don't know him. He's our head of traffic. Really? Yeah. He handles the operations. Roas is the strategist, so he needed someone for the traffic side too, right? Got it. So basically, we're our own trio, our MSN. Roas is the funnel guy, I'm the copy guy, Leonardo's the traffic guy. "Our MSN." Today we've got

four hundred sixty mentees, man. People who paid over twenty grand. So we've got market intelligence that's well above average. And I see that... Both the folks, and a lot who come from Black, from the traditional launch market. And everyone sees creatives the wrong way. And so I'm gonna... Try to break this down here. And here's what happens: For a long time, the market made us see creatives like they were just a copywriter's task. So it's like this: I hire a copywriter, and one of their jobs is handing me creatives. So it's kind of like, there's

the copywriter, and below him is the creative. And for a long time, that's how it was. I'm a copywriter today, but a year ago I did even more of it, serving more clients. Man, I was literally a copywriter inside the company, with my own tasks, and one was making creatives. So I'd spend an hour a week, maybe two, doing a batch of creatives, delivering them, and that was it. And I'd repeat that every week. What changed our game the most last year, when we actually managed to scale to 100, 150, we even hit 200 grand

a day, was changing how we saw the world of creatives, the whole creative game. Because what we started to understand was: That creatives weren't a copywriter's task. Creatives had to be their own department inside the company. So there has to be... There has to be a creative department within a company. Why? Because it's the most important part of the Funnel. If we've got a funnel today, one focused on acquisition, what's the eighty twenty of that funnel? Acquisition. And where's the first point of contact with that customer? The creatives. So... We stopped having, for example, a

copywriter whose job included making creatives, and we flipped the order. Now we've got a creative department. And inside that department, we've got a copywriter to make creatives, an editor to edit them, and our specialists, whose main job is exactly delivering creatives. So creatives became their own department inside the company. So that mindset was the first thing that completely transformed our results. And along with that, when you change the way you see things... I always say, everything you need to make a decision, an idea, is often just changing the angle you're looking at it from. So

after we changed that angle of how we saw creatives... it made a lot of changes, including in our business model, in our structure. Because, one struggle I had was... And, look, I bet a lot of copywriters are listening, and if you're one, I think this is super interesting, why? I really believe mastering creatives today, for someone just getting into copy or into DR... or even someone already in DR who wants to move into working with experts, working on White operations... Man... Master creatives. Master creatives. Learn to make creatives, because if you're a copywriter starting out,

learning to make great creatives is what'll set you apart, make you stand out in this market, and put money in your pocket, anytime. Why do I say that? Which brings us to João... When we started seeing creatives this way, when I realized, man, I needed a copywriter dedicated to creatives, So I went after that. Before this mindset, for a long time I tried hiring copywriters to delegate tasks, because there was a moment I realized, man, I had to take on more strategic roles in operations, and I couldn't be the operational copy guy anymore, so I

needed to hire copy to delegate. And man, geez... I think you've hired a ton of copy in your life, right? Of course. For sure. The one who gave me the most trouble was Tiago Filemon. Talk about a headache of a copywriter, guys. His podcast popped up, right? He's got two or three podcasts, I don't know. And funnily, one's about creatives. It'll show up on screen. Man, hiring a copywriter, I think, is the toughest task any strategic guy has in this market. They're really hard to find. Because a traffic manager, you can judge his performance by

the results, and just by talking to him, you already know if he gets it. Designers are visual. You look at the portfolio, see if he's good. But copywriters are hard. There's no way to see a copy portfolio these days. Last time I hired one, I never ask for a portfolio, 'cause I won't even open it. I just say, send me your best copy, I wanna see what you've got. Man, out of fifty people, like forty of the copies were the same. It was literally the same copy, I was even like, dude, who wrote this copy?

Like, seriously, forty guys. Forty guys... All with the same copy. So hiring a copywriter is really hard, and I went through that struggle. And it was exactly when, like... Today I say the best way to hire, to build an efficient copy team, is having three things, which are, first, clarity, direction, and culture. Clarity of demand, what's the guy actually gonna do here? So back then, hiring a copywriter, I wanted the guy to jump right into the operation and handle everything I used to handle. I wanted him to manage creatives, optimize VSLs, do back-end stuff, webinars,

messaging, you name it. I wanted him to do it all. So he'd come in completely lost, not even knowing what to do. So we switched it up. We said, I wanna hire a copywriter just to make creatives. I'll keep handling the rest, keep optimizing the VSLs. Keep doing what I gotta do. But I want a guy to hand off the creative part. The guideline, which we'll get into more too, is like this: okay, what's the format he has to deliver? So, look, I'm really picky. Every copywriter who works with me says that. Even our mentees,

my clients, say I'm unbearable when it comes to reviewing things. Because like... There was even a time I opened a document and told the guy, man, we've got a template for exactly how a creative has to be delivered. That template has every specific instruction we need, for the specialist, the editor, whoever's recording... Anyway, everything has to be organized within those guidelines. This falls into one of the creative stages we'll get to shortly. If it's outside that, I don't review it. If there's info missing... And I even say the font matters, man. It's gotta be Helvetica

in the document. Helvetica 12, dude. If it's not the right font, I don't even read it. There was this one copy I told, like... he sent me the document, I opened it, it was all disorganized, Arial, whatever... And I just said, come on, man... Yeah, that’s not gonna work. I said, “Man, go back and redo the whole thing.” He said, “But did you see it?” “No, I didn’t.” “But why?” I said, “Man, you even got the font wrong, bro. I’m not even gonna read your copy.” So yeah, I’m that picky. That pisses me off too,

man. I’m that picky about the details. And actually, this document template is something I might make available to you guys later. We’ll explain how it works, and if you stick around until the end, you’ll find out how you can access it. Guys, there’s going to be a little secret, okay? We’ll be talking, and out of nowhere I’m going to say, “Document.” But it’s not going to be now, okay, Nic? Don’t put that in there yet. So, let me ask you a question. Yeah, so in... In the direct response marketing operations, having a dedicated creative department

is something actually pretty common, especially in more established companies. And um... I was, like, just showing you guys the podcast with Hugo and Derlan right? because these guys are insane and their podcast episode is going to appear on the screen.... They’ve optimized their entire company around AI and use it throughout their daily operations across the entire business. It’s really something pretty unique. And they test around 1,000 creatives a week, as you can see on the screen. But obviously, since they’re in Nutra, the creatives tend to be very similar to each other, so they’re not as

diverse or different from one another as you might see in other markets... That's where a, a difference comes in. From what I saw from you guys, they’re, much more varied and different in terms of creative formats... The way they’re built is very different. More creatives, basically. But for people in the info-product space, does the average team not have a dedicated creative department? They don’t really have that kind of structure in place... No. It’s usually like this, I have a copywriter, and one of the things that copywriter does is create creatives. Actually, building a dedicated creative

department was something I saw people doing in the Black offers market and brought over here. Because literally no one was doing that here. And even now, very few people do it. I say that because today we’re connected with people who are scaling really heavily as well, including experts, and even so, their process is still pretty Basic. It’s not that well developed yet. Why do you think that is? Why do you think they don’t have a creative department? It’s not like these guys are dumb, right? They’re smart. I think people just don’t understand the power of

it yet. I don’t think people realize how much a creative can make an offer scale. Sometimes the VSL isn’t that great, sometimes the funnel isn’t that great, but I’ve seen cases where one really strong creative was enough to keep an offer alive and sustain the whole thing, even when other parts of the funnel weren’t performing that well. Or sometimes everything is fine, but the creative is just bad. Exactly. Or sometimes the guy wins through volume, right? He makes a ton of creatives and just keeps working through them. But I think it’s mostly because of a

lack of education in the market. There just wasn’t someone like Matheus out there talking about this yet. I saw people in the Nutra space doing it, brought that approach over here, and just to wrap up that thought, I brought João in, who was the first copywriter I hired that actually worked out. It was João. I brought him in last May, actually, I think it was at the end of April. And that’s when I brought these three things to him. I said, “Man, clarity, I just want you to make creatives. Guidelines: you have to deliver this

every day, every Tuesday, this is a creative workflow that we build.” That’s also part of the process, and we’ll talk about that later. “You have to deliver it to me like this, using this document template, X number of creatives.” And when I talk about culture, it’s because for a creative department to actually work, just like any other department within a company, it needs to have a strong culture behind it. So what exactly do we mean when we talk about culture in this context? It has to have routines. So we have specific routines for creatives, including

expert routines and specific ways we analyze them. There are routines Specifically designed to make the whole thing work. So I was actually working on these three levels with him unconsciously, because at the time, I didn’t have this whole picture as clearly as I do now. So I gave him clarity on what the demand was, gave him the guidelines, and also told him, “Look, for this to work, the routines need to work like this. On this day, you need to deliver this, on that day, we have a meeting to do this,” and so on. Obviously, there

were things we discovered throughout the process that we needed to add. But at first, we had all of that in place. And once we had that, it started working really well, because I’d never been able to hire a copywriter and, for example, approve something without having to make changes during the review. With João, obviously, we had to make some changes to his first copies, but then, by the first month, I didn’t even have to edit the documents he sent me anymore. They went straight to the expert, and we recorded them. And you know what was

the most impressive part of all of that? There’s another thing that almost nobody does in the launch market, in the traditional market, which is actually paying commissions to copywriters. Did you knew that? Yeah, they’re exploited, man. It's a struggle. Launch copywriters really have it rough. And then I said, “Man wait, let’s change this.” And then I built a commission system for João. I said, “Here’s how our commission system works. I set a minimum profit target that the ad needs to generate, basically to cover the initial costs we had. Let’s say the minimum target is 15,000

in profit that the ad needs to generate every month. Once it goes above that number, you start receiving a commission on the additional profit.” And that’s exactly how I set it up. He started with a junior-level base salary of around 1,500. Which's pretty low. But with that commission structure, he was extremely motivated to get things right, make the creatives work, and really make the whole thing happen. In his first month, he made 11,500, and more than 10,000 of that was commission directly tied to the creatives he got right and that ended up generating profit. How

old is he? He is twenty-one, the same age as me. Man, you're doing pretty well. At 21, I think I was already making, actually, I was still in college, but I was already working in digital and making around R$1,000 a month. Yeah, I had a scholarship at college, plus I was working as a copywriter for email funnels. Man, so that was a really strong match that worked really well, right? But along with that, another thing that makes a huge difference in the creative space we have today is the role of the expert. I actually believe

that this is even more important than having a copywriter, or having the whole team there working on the creative side. What exactly is that role? Obviously, I’m gonna mention one example here, but out of every 100 experts, it’s really hard to find even one who’s like this. But it’s something that can actually be replicated and applied. So what is it? Today, we have Prisciane, who’s also my business partner. I’ll probably mention Pri a few times throughout the podcast, but Pri is genius man, she’s literally like the Einstein of creative work, when it comes to understanding

what makes a creative really work. She’s incredible. She even has an Instagram account she just started where she talks about creative production. I think it’s “Prisciane Criativos Virais”. You guys can look it up, or maybe it’s “Prisciane Pri Especialista,” I think that’s it. But why do I say she’s so exceptional? Because even this whole way of looking at creative work was something I discovered and learned alongside her, especially by watching how she approached and understood it. I really believe she was the most important catalyst for us to start looking at creative work in a completely

different way. Even things like format and all that, the way we think about and approach creative work today came largely from her influence. Even though people in the market were already doing this and talking about it, I really got to see how well this worked in practice because of her. Give me an example, man. What do you mean? So what happened. Our first creative that really broke through, the first one that I say sold R$1 million in a month, came from her scrolling through Instagram. She saw a different format, created the whole thing, and it

wasn’t even supposed to be an ad in the first place. She actually made it as content that she was planning to post. Then she sent it to me, and I said, “Damn, this turned out really good, man. Add the CTA and let’s run it as a creative.” Then she sent it over to our media buyer, Leo. Leo, man, he liked it so much that he launched it without even adding a CTA. And that creative just completely blew up. What kind of creative was it? It was a narrator-style format. At the time, nobody in our market,

the Side-hustle market we were running in, was doing anything like that. But what do you mean by a narrator? Like, a guy talking... It was an AI voice saying something like, “Hey, this is Prisciane, she...” Anyway, it was telling the story, and then in the creative, what did she do? Actually, I think it’d be really cool to have her come on one day and explain her process, because, damn... I don't know if you know, but her podcast is already scheduled. Damn, perfect. Shout-out to Pri and Gui. I was in Budapest when he called me and

said, “João, let’s record Prisciane’s podcast.” I said, “Okay,” and then I went ahead and created a WhatsApp group... Man, you’re gonna be surprised, okay? I think everyone else will be surprised too. Pri is brilliant. So I’m not even gonna get into too much detail, but she basically did this whole thing, just like I said at the beginning, a lot of what we were doing was very unconscious. And throughout the year, we became more aware of what we were doing and turned it into something that could be replicated, okay? But that first creative came from this.

So what do I mean when I talk about the role of the expert there? The expert must actively participate in this creative sector. In this case, he feeds it with ideas. Not just with ideas, because when it comes to ideas, I wouldn’t even say it’s an 80/20 thing. They need to be there and understand what’s actually working and what isn’t, why it’s working, why it isn’t, and what they need to do to make it work or keep it from working. And what happens is, today I’d say that the creative industry tends to think like this:

let’s say you’re either an expert or a co-producer, and you want to build a creative department within your company, or you’re a copywriter who wants to make money by creating creatives. Think about it this way, for this to work, we have four stages that we’re going to work on, right? There are the fundamentals, the operational side, the writing, meaning how you actually create the creative in practice, the way you organize all of this throughout the week, which includes the routines and the culture of the business, and then finally, there’s the analysis, which is another important

part of the whole process for the creative team as well. When I talk about analysis, there are two levels that we work with. There’s the level of analyzing what’s working, and then there’s the level of going back and revisiting what we’ve already done. The expert needs to have a clear understanding of what’s working, especially that first part of the analysis, so that based on the things they record, they can keep giving us better and better materials and inputs over time. Because what’s the big problem that we run into? And this is a problem that comes

from the launch market. People in the launch market have always looked at creative work as a volume game. “I just have to make a whole lot of them,” because that’s what, especially the gurus in that space, taught them to believe. So they’d say something like, “Oh, man, you have a creative that works? Then you just need to make a bunch more variations of it, right? Do this: take that creative and record it wearing different clothes. Record it in blue, record it in white, record it in I don’t know what. Change the setting, just record everything

the same way. That’s what these guys learned about creative work. So in their minds, it’s basically just stopping at any moment, like it’s a story. And it is not, the creative has to be thought out. Awesome. It has to be really thought out. But for these people, it’s simply about stopping, trying to record something, and then all they care about is, like, did it sell or not? If it sold, they record a bunch more just like it. But man, I’m still not understanding what you mean here. Like, I get that Pri is really good at

creative work, but I’m not quite following the bigger picture yet. I don’t just believe that, I believe it strongly enough to bring her on here and have her talk about it, you know? Yes. In my mind, okay, what they do is help come up with ideas based on what’s going on, because they’re gonna be on social media, they’re gonna see what’s getting the most engagement there, and then they can actually take those ideas and execute the creative, actually making the creative themselves. Yeah. Because There’s something else that comes after that, we have to communicate well

and all that. As far as I understand it, those are the two main points, or is there anything else? There is the third point. Okay. I’d say it would be the expert’s proactiveness, because when they go to record, and I’ll give you an example here, because I don’t want to give away too much of what we’re going to... But you can give it, man. Look, let me tell you what I want to do here, okay? Sorry, go ahead. Look, I want to talk about this whole thing with the expert first, then I’m gonna talk about

the creative department, because that really caught my attention, and after that, I’m gonna talk about the technical side. Okay, alright, let's go. So... One of the things, and I’ll give you an example of why it’s important to have the expert involved there. When Pri goes to record, she has an incredible instinct for recording, right? A lot of that comes naturally to her, but we also built a process that allowed us to replicate that ability, and that’s where the copywriter comes in and becomes part of the process. She would do some tests on her own while

recording. For example, she’d record a creative wearing glasses, another one without glasses, another with her hair tied back, another with her hair down. Man, she would make all kinds of different variations. Sometimes she’d even record the exact same creative with and without glasses, just small, seemingly insignificant things like that. And then one day, we were on our third or fourth creative call of the month, since we have one every week. During the call, Pri turned to us and said, “Hey, did you guys notice that the last four creatives that validated, the ones that sold the

most, I was wearing glasses?” And obviously, nobody had noticed that pattern at all. And there’s actually a specific reason why none of us noticed it or even thought to look for it ourselves. I always say that a creative call has to be run in a very specific way for it to actually work. I’ve been in a lot of creative calls, including back when I was A creative copywriter myself, when my job was basically just making creatives and working on that side of things. And I’ve been part of a bunch of incredibly unproductive calls where we’d

spend three hours going through everything, and then, well... Man, I hate that so much. Yeah. Man, early last year, when all this creative stuff from the Black offers market started becoming more popular, we were trying to implement it, and I made a lot of mistakes while trying to figure it out. Because in my head, what was the process? We’d open a creative call, then go to the media buyer and say, “Man, show us the metrics for the creatives, how are they doing?” And he’d say, “Oh, this one was the best of the week, then there

was this one, and this one,” and so on. Then we’d stop and go through each one individually. Man, I still have some of these huge mind maps we created for every creative, with a ton of ideas for each one, optimization ideas, and a whole bunch of other things. Then the next week would come around, and it would be the same creative. Like, what was the best creative of the week? It was the same one. The analysis was the same thing. And then, okay, what did we actually do the previous week? Nothing, because the whole process

was unproductive and just created a huge pile of tasks that needed to get done. And consequently, that didn't lead to any continuity. And a lot of this was influenced by Rafa Marques, who joined us last year and said, “Man, let me see how you guys are doing these creative analysis and all that.” And then he completely challenged everything we thought we knew. He said, “Man, in this call, you don’t need to go through every single creative. You don’t need to keep looking at metrics like CPM. There’s a point later on where we review the sales

data. But in this call, you’re going to focus on just one thing: what worked? What sold the most last week? What brought in the most profit? That’s what you’re gonna focus on. You’re gonna play that creative and watch it, one, two, three, four, five, six, ten times if you need to. You’re gonna keep watching that creative over and over, because that right there is your Holy Grail. It’s what worked. You’re not gonna judge it. Like, “Oh, but what if...” No, there’s no “what if.” This worked, this sold. So what’s actually in it? That’s what the

analysis is really about, you know? And what happens is, we decided that for this call to work, there have to be three people there that I consider absolutely essential: the copywriter, the editor, and the expert. If the media buyer can participate too, it’s definitely good to have them there, but these three are especially crucial because each one naturally brings a different perspective to the analysis. The copywriter is gonna look mainly at the copy itself, focusing on what mechanism, what trigger, what argument, and what invisible structure they used. The editor is gonna look at the visual

side. They have a visual bias, so they’re gonna look at things like, “Man, what did I put in the soundtrack? What did I use here? What did I add? What transition did I use?” Things that the copywriter isn’t gonna notice, man. And the expert is gonna look at how she recorded it. So, how was she when she recorded it? Yeah. How did she speak? What was she wearing? And then, when she looked at those creatives, Pri noticed that she was wearing glasses in the last four. Nobody else had noticed it. The writer himself isn’t gonna

notice that, and neither is the editor. And that’s where... Because that’s not their thing, right? The copywriter is... And then we started trying to understand it. And one thing we discovered by breaking down that creative was that the creatives she recorded wearing glasses actually generated more retention on the VSL. You can see that through VTurb, for anyone who doesn’t know. That’s an incredible metric to look at, man. You go into Analytics, go to traffic source, filter for the UTM content, and you can see which of your creatives is getting the highest retention, and it’s not

always your winning creative. Nice. It’s not always. This can actually help you optimize the VSL later, too. We can talk about that, because there was a VSL where I did this, and we scaled it because of that. And what happened was, we saw that it not only had higher retention on the VSL, but it also converted more upsells. The creatives she recorded wearing glasses converted more upsells. What did we learn from that? Man, when she wears glasses, she comes across more like a teacher, like she’s teaching you something. What started happening? Man, we started recording

most of our creatives with her wearing glasses, because we... And is that why you came wearing glasses, man? Yeah, that's why... That was the reason. You know what's funny? I wanted to come here wearing a Juliet glasses. With those glasses on, you'd be a problem man. ...and then, man. She wouldn’t let me do it. She really wouldn’t. I wanted to but... Dude, why didn't you wear your Juliet's, man? That would have been so cool. Hey, editor, put together an AI edit of me with Juliette in the thumbnail so... He was going to be insufferable, okay,

guys? Man, I wanted to come in like Yamal, you know, to celebrate Spain winning the World Cup on Sunday, 3–2, with Yamal scoring the winning goal. Really? What? Ok then, go ahead, what’s your guess. I honestly don’t know, man. I really don’t. Come on, give me your prediction so we can have it on record. Ah, man, I think it’s gonna be Messi, man. I think Messi’s gonna win. I think it’s gonna be... There you go, VTurb bet now. Guys, here’s my prediction, okay? I think it’s gonna end 2–2 in regulation, and then Argentina’s gonna make

it 3–2 in extra time, with some kind controversial goal to win it... I am betting three to two, but for me it is three to two Spain. I think it’s gonna be 3–2. But, man, it’s just that he’s been so... He’s being a real pain, you know? He’s annoying everybody, man. But anyway, let’s not talk about that. But let's move on.... I don't even remember how we got on this World Cup topic. Man, you were saying you were gonna come in like Yamal. But look, let me ask you something real quick before we move on...

Let me just finish this, otherwise I’m gonna lose my train of thought. Please conclude. Man, so we noticed this in her creatives, and as a result, we started recording them that way. So if you look at our creatives, most of them are with her wearing glasses, and Pri doesn’t even wear glasses. But it was something she proactively started doing during the recordings, and we saw that it worked. Want another example? Because it’s not just Pri, we have another expert who’s done something similar too. We have an expert in the weight-loss area, and man, it was

the exact same situation. During one of our creative calls, she said, “Hey, did you guys notice that in the last three creatives we’re looking at, I’ve been recording them wearing black?” And we were like, “No.” Like, nobody had noticed that pattern at all, you know? Nobody was even paying attention to that detail. And then we went back and checked, and man, it was true. All of her creatives, she was recording them wearing black, basically the same black outfit, with her hair tied back. But she doesn’t record every creative wearing black, and she doesn’t always record

with her hair tied back either. We realized that was what was actually working. So what did we start doing? Man, let’s make more creatives. And as a result, man, how do you know if this is actually getting results? Your accuracy goes up. Our accuracy started to improve. For example, there was a junior copywriter working with this expert who, man, was taking a while to start consistently producing good creatives. As we started understanding these patterns, his ability to make the right calls naturally started improving. And that’s where I say the expert makes a huge difference, because

it’s not just about the expert saying, “Here, record this.” No. Go record and try a few different things, obviously small things. It’s not about changing the copy, but, man, just make a little adjustment here or there. Because that initial part you talked about, coming up with ideas, isn’t really something you can expect the expert to be responsible for. At least, that’s what I’ve understood from what you’ve explained. I can’t expect an expert to come up with ideas. I’d say that’s a skill on top of delivery. If they have that skill, like Prisciane does, for example,

that’s excellent. That's awesome..like, what does Pri do? Whenever she sees something cool, she drops it in the group and says, "Guys, I need a copy for this." She already sends the format idea she wants and asks the team to generate the copy. But not every expert will have that kind of vision. So, that's something that really needs to come from the copywriter. Now, regarding the actual recording, like the way you shoot it, well, that gets into the technical side of the copy, which is a whole technical topic we'll cover later on. There's also the point

where the specialist needs to direct the expert, because not every expert is naturally charismatic or comfortable in front of the camera, you know? But there are definitely ways you can boost that performance from your expert. Now, the main thing I see is that this guy needs to be at least a little proactive to test those small details. Like, shooting in different clothes. But like I said, it’s not about thinking: "Oh, I found the winning creative, now I'll just shoot randomly in red, black, and white shirts." No, it’s about small tweaks. Something like: "Hey, I'm shooting

a batch of creatives today, I’ll bring three different outfits and swap them around just to create some visual variation." And he keeps doing that weekly. Then, week by week, you start spotting the patterns, 'cause a pattern isn't something you catch on the first try, it's something that repeats itself. So you gotta do it consistently. And then, as you start understanding these patterns, things just start making sense, you know? So I believe that's the main point. For the expert to have that proactivity, he needs to be inside the process. He has to be involved with the

company, he needs to be on those creative calls, you know? 'Cause there are so many experts who just skip that and go like: "Man, I just want to shoot the video and be done with it." So that's where the difference lies for the expert, going back to that point: being inside the process makes him much more proactive in that regard. That's his 80/20. That is really interesting, man. I actually got excited for the podcast with Pri now! It's going to be awesome. I actually thought that was super cool, man. And dude, if anyone watching is

an expert, try shooting a creative wearing an eye patch. I mean, like a pirate, you know? Just put it right here, because there's like this David Ogilvy copy, "The Man in the Hathaway Shirt", which will pop up on the screen right now. Have you ever seen that copy before? Man, I think I have. He's wearing an eye patch in this dress shirt copy. I definitely have. I mean, it's a classic when you start writing and learning copy. I’ve read it for sure. I just don't remember how it goes, but I have read it. It's a

copy by David... I remember it because of the eye patch. Exactly, man. The hook was exactly that visual hook with the eye patch, and it worked really well, right? He even mentions that the whole idea was this eye patch thing, because it was heavily focused on branding, you know? It wasn't strictly direct response there. But look, you just explained to me about this ad review call. And you mentioned that you need the copywriter, the expert, and the video editor there, because everyone brings a different perspective. And then we can contribute to that analysis with different

viewpoints, and consequently, achieve a much better result, right? Man, I wanna talk to you about how to actually make creatives, like the technical side of it. How we put it together--But before we get into that, I want to talk a little bit about what we're discussing right now, which is this creative department itself, and how it operates, you know? And look, what do I know about this? Here's what I know: usually, folks in the info-product space who never even imagined doing this before, they set up a Kanban board on Notion, or Trello--basically an assembly line

with different columns, right? And then we have a team that is, essentially, just one copywriter and one video editor. So on one end, ideas come in, the copywriter writes, the editor edits, and on the other end, creatives come out--and we test them, obviously. So, what do I actually remember from those processes? I mean, I remember there's like usually a document that serves as a creative brief, where the copywriter will fill it out all nice and neat, you know, which I think is a bit like that document you mentioned to me earlier. And then the video

editor will grab that brief, edit the footage, and upload the ads right into the card for that specific creative. Generally, the output of that document is a core creative body matched with several different hooks. So like two, three, or maybe even four hooks right there, right? Wait, straight from the brief, or like... is there no actual copy section? How does that work? It's just that the document itself is the brief, and it already includes the copy. It outlines exactly what’s gonna happen, what the format is, all properly laid out--and the copy is already in there.

Then the team has a daily target, which depends on the operation. But generally, copywriters have a quota for writing creatives every day. And honestly, I don't remember how many creatives that usually is, man, if it's one, two, or three. But I guess that depends, right? Man, my copywriters, and even you, João, in those massive black ops, had to write like 20 creatives a day. Exactly, it's insane. The guy basically spends his entire day just doing that. And there are those routines you mentioned. Usually on Mondays, they hop on a call to review everything that actually

worked in the previous week. So, man, look, I want you to explain this, okay? Imagine there's someone watching us right now, and the guy is either an expert or a co-producer. He is building his direct response operation from scratch, right? And we are gonna teach him the technical part in a bit. Which I actually believe is the most important part, 'cause first and foremost, we definitely need ads that actually convert, correct? Yeah, for sure. But man, regarding this structure -- I mean, the structure of the creative department in terms of actual processes and daily routines.

How do you suggest this guy builds an MVP for that? Is it really just one copywriter and one editor pumping out 'X' creatives a day? Like, does the copywriter do it every single day, or is there a different dynamic you see, something you guys apply over there that differs from what I just laid out? Yeah. Because my whole idea is that before getting into the technical side, before knowing what to do, I really want these guys to start building this department in their companies, you know? Because man, we know how extremely important this is. like,

in my mind, that's something really valuable. So what tip would you give to put together this MVP for a creative department? How would that actually work, and what do you think should be the very first hires they need to make? Should they already bring in a project manager to hold people accountable, or can it just run with a copywriter and an editor and that's it? What are your thoughts on this? Alright, but I won't just give you a tip, I'm gonna deconstruct and do a full debrief on how we run ours here. And also how

it works in other pre-scaling projects that we're gonna deal with as well, right? But first, let me go back a page, 'cause I think this is super important. When we talk about the final result, the output... and I'll try to use fewer Technical buzzwords on this podcast, 'cause the first one didn't go too well, right?... anyway, when the creative is in the white market, it has a few key differences compared to black offers. Number one is volume--We don't need to pump out the same massive volume that the Nutra and Black offers do. And why is

that? Like, I hate the thesis that you can only choose between volume or quality. I believe it is possible to have both, right? No doubt. But like, with the volume those Nutra guys push, bro, like you just said, they pump out a thousand creatives a day. There are guys making a thousand creatives a week... thousand a day would be insane. A day would be insane. But man, I've seen people pushing out... let's say, a hundred creatives a day and stuff like that. We don't need that kind of volume, 'cause if we play at that scale,

then we end up losing quality, it's inevitable. But when we're talking about the white market, working with experts, what are the main differences in the creative? First of all: whether you like it or not, there's the branding factor, the reality of actually having a real face behind it. So man, if I'm pumping out creatives based purely on volume, and suddenly I lose quality because of it, that actually hurts the image of my expert, right? I mean, It ends up hurting the amount of sales I'll make later on in my back-end, you know? And, as a

result, I end up sacrificing a bit of that overall quality and dynamic. And I always say that those of us in the white offers market, who actually have an expert, we have two unfair advantages over the Nutra and black offers, the ones using AI, for example, or hiring actors and actresses to shoot their creatives. Mm-hmm. The first one is the format advantage. When we have an expert, I honestly believe—and I say this from experience—we can be way more dynamic with the formats we produce and test. Simply because it's much easier, for example, to grab an

expert and easily create a lot of format variations. Let me explain what I mean by format, right? It's basically how the creative is shot. It could be a podcast style, like we're doing now. People have probably seen this format, right? But it's always good to refresh the memory. I was about to ask you that. Look, we're sitting right here chatting on a podcast, and that is a format. We could, for instance, just be sitting in a single chair, making it look like a one-on-one interview. We could be on a late-night talk show set. We could

be in so many different environments. Just by doing that, you naturally change the format. When you have an expert, you get a lot more freedom to play with formats, whereas AI will often just limit what a person can do, right? Yeah. And the second thing is the dynamic you can apply when shooting the creative--like, when bringing it to life in practice. So having that real person there gives you those two massive advantages, you know? What does "dynamic" mean? The dynamics of the set, camera transitions, or things the person might be doing, like gesturing with their

hands while they speak. Basically anything that brings a visual dynamic to that creative, right? Yeah. With AI, for example, it's way harder to pull that off. Even with an actor or an actress, it can sometimes be difficult, 'cause you usually shoot them in a studio, so you have certain limitations with the set and props. With the expert, I feel like we get a lot more out of it. Like, we have more raw material and assets to work with. So I believe those are two huge advantages that we bring to the table. And consequently... and I

don't know if this is a pro or a con, but the fact that we produce at a lower volume... and what do I mean by lower volume? Like, There have been many times where we had scaled offers pulling in 40, 50, even 100k a day, and if you looked at our Ads Library, you'd see we only had about 20 active ads running. People sometimes think that having a ton of active ads, like 200 or 300, is a sign of scale, but it isn't always the case, you know? Because that's something the media buying actually influences.

When we talk about traffic and scale our strategy tends to be much more vertical—Roas came here and mentioned this, right? So basically, if I nail a winning creative, man, it's so much better to just ride that winner that's printing money, rather than blindly pumping out variation after variation of that same concept completely at random... and so, what does that actually mean for our process? When it comes down to the process, I don't need to demand my copywriter to hand me 20 creatives a day. I need him to deliver 20 a week, but 20 exceptionally well-built

creatives. Hm-hmm And when I said it could be a pro or a con, it's because we have a volume deficit compared to other operations out there, so we spend a lot of time analyzing the data, you know? Yeah. We're extremely systematic when it comes down to understanding what is working and what isn't. And because we're so systematic, with every new batch of creatives, we are substantially improving the elements inside them, whether it's the editing, the copy, or the shooting itself. And that naturally increases our hit rate over time. So, let's dive into the process now.

How does this process work in practice? First, thinking about hiring. Who are the three crucial people you absolutely need? There's the expert, which you naturally already have. Then, the copywriter, right? Some people might start writing their own copy, but the second they scale even a little, the first thing I say is: hire an ad copywriter. Creatives oxygenate the Offer--and you must have a dedicated copywriter for that. So, for any operation, step one is getting a creative copywriter, right? Yeah. Then the editor is an interesting point, because finding a genuinely good video editor is tough. But

I've realized it’s not that hard to train a guy to become great at it--Want an example? You talk a lot about your cousin, Samuel, right? Yeah. Samuca is awesome. Dude, my brother... shoutout to him, Gabriel, love you man! Um, my brother is one of those guys... and I know he won't get mad at me for this, right, 'cause he’s turning it around now. But for a long time, I always said he was one of the laziest guys I've ever known. Because look, he worked as an editor for years. Like, he's three years younger than me,

so he's 19 now and back in 2024, he was still in high school making about fifteen hundred bucks a month editing, man. And his edits were pretty rough back then, you know? So I told him: "Hey, focus on this and get good at it." But then he just quit, he didn't want to keep going. And now he just started college, and he finally got interested again, 'cause now that he's out of high school, he has to figure his life out, you know? So he's back at it. So I pulled one of our top editors aside

and said: "Look man, here's the deal. You are incredibly good, and you're getting a ton of demand now, both from us and from outside referrals. You need to train some guys to take the load off you. Just take my brother under your wing and teach him everything you know." And he actually did it. And I think it's much easier to train someone to be a video editor than a copywriter, 'cause editing is highly visual. Like, you just watch it, and you know if it's good or not. At the end of the day, you have specific

captions and transitions that work. So teaching it is a more pragmatic process. Dude, he took my brother in, taught him the ropes, and in his first month editing... actually, in his first week with us, he nailed the top-selling creative of the week. Wow, dude. Edited entirely by him. And the edit was fantastic...it was so damn good! And this guy had literally less than a month of editing experience. Still using an old, beat-up computer. I'm letting him grind through the process, you know? Nice, man. And guys, we actually have a podcast episode about this popping up

on the screen right now. It's with Gabriel Figueiredo, and he does top-tier edit—well, edits, right? He's a video editor. He crushes it! Yeah. Do you know him? Yeah man. Actually, a buddy of mine is an editor now too, cutting videos for some guys... I think for Six, maybe? Like, Arthur PC's crew, you know? Arthur PC? Yeah. 'cause Six belongs to Luísa now. Oh, not sure then. I forgot the name of Arthur's operation. Anyway, that friend is Gabriel. I think I mentioned him on the first podcast -- my buddy who worked a 9-to-5, then started editing,

remember? Bro, you talked for four hours straight on the first podcast. You're killing me here. Yeah, fair enough. Anyway, he's an editor too, making serious money cutting videos. So, I highly recommend it for anyone who doesn't want to learn copy, you know? I mean, if you're just starting out right now, either learn ad copy or learn to edit videos. But if you want to learn ad copy, stick around. You'll become a sensational copywriter and make a ton of money, just like João. God bless you. Yeah, but man... Copywriter, video editor, and the expert. Copywriter, editor...

the expert is already part of the operation. And obviously, the media buyer, right? You gotta have someone running traffic for this creative department to even function, 'cause he's the guy who tests, scales, and handles the media buying. So... But he wouldn't necessarily be doing exclusively that, right? He could be managing the whole operation, while the copywriter and editor, from what I gather, are strictly dedicated to the creative department. Yeah. The expert will do a bunch of things. Indeed, he will. And the media buyer too. Yeah, exactly... There's no such thing as a media buyer for

creatives, right? Nah, it's just one media buyer 'cause the only thing the guy uploads is creatives anyway, right? And the only front-end funnel we run is a VSL. So, the media buyer... He ends up being exactly that. Yeah, naturally... Now, inside that creative department, it's just the copywriter and the editor. If you're just starting out, you don't need a project manager, for example. We hired one this year, but it's not necessary at the start, you know. Right, like, once a guy has 10 copywriters and 10 editors, then it definitely gets complicated, right? Oh, for sure.

But let's be real, man... pulling three million a month solves life for most people, right? Even at Pri’s operation, we did four million with just one copywriter and one video editor. Actually, it was one copywriter and two video editors. Today, for example, if you look at our front-end structure—I divide the team into two macro departments, front-end and back-end, right? So my front-end department basically has three copywriters, and two of them are fully dedicated to creatives. Plus, we currently have four video editors over there. And that's the setup. Just for creatives? Yeah, exclusively. Inside this structure

you're talking about? Exactly. Now, if you're starting an MVP, hire an editor. one of each, right? Yeah, get an in-house editor. I always say it's better to have an editor in-house than a freelancer. Sometimes money is tight at the beginning, so you grab a freelancer. But even then, try to find a guy who can be kind of part-time, you know? Like, he might not be full-time, maybe just paid per project, but make sure you put him inside your company groups. Make him participate in your team calls. Even if he's not full-time, he needs to be

fully integrated, alright? That makes a massive difference. The video editor is the wizard. Having him present really matters. Same goes for the copywriter. Now let's break this down, okay? Like, what does the actual routine look like? There's something you have to build called a creative assembly line, right?... And what exactly is that? Well, what is the biggest problem most people face when running evergreen offers with an expert? It's volume. It's always: "Oh, my expert doesn't shoot videos, oh, this and that." And I usually just say: "Look, if your expert isn't shooting videos, or if he's

doing it poorly, that is your fault." right? Obviously, there are cases where the expert is bad, but then it's your fault for not firing him. There are many incredible experts dying to have someone help them. We see it in the comments, people constantly send me DMs. Plenty of dedicated experts want to make this work. But for it to actually work, you need a creative assembly line. What does that mean? It basically defines what gets done on each specific day of the week inside that department. Is it basically organizing the internal processes for that department? Exactly,

it's the organization of the workflow and deliverables. For example, you map out the day the copywriter delivers copy, and the day the expert Shoots. Like I mentioned in the first podcast, the expert needs one or two days fully dedicated to shooting. So you set a recording day, permanently blocked out on their calendar. It has to be a non-negotiable commitment. It can't be like: 'I've got 30 minutes free, I'll shoot.' No. They need a designated day. Waking up knowing: 'Today I shoot creatives "So you lock in the shooting day. Then, the video editor needs a strict

delivery deadline. I honestly hate it—man, I detest when guys are like, 'Oh, I'll just send them over as I finish.' No, dude. Give me one specific day where you hand over everything at once. And then, you set the day the media buyer uploads and tests those creatives. We don't randomly test creatives every single day, for example. Why? Naturally, this is something you might not know at the beginning, but as you run traffic, you start noticing that certain days perform much better. For instance, in some niches, weekends absolutely crush it, while in others, they perform terribly.

So, what happens then? I always... Yeah, nowadays, since we have some market intelligence, when I bring in a new expert, I already have an idea based on the niche of which days are likely to be best to launch. So I already have that figured out. If you don’t have that information yet, that’s totally fine, just launch on whatever day the campaign is ready. Then, as it runs, you’ll start identifying those patterns and seeing which days perform better. Man, I think within the first month of running traffic, you’ll already figure out whether weekends are performing better

or worse, and you’ll start seeing those patterns. Then, once you know that, for example, your best day to test creatives is Monday, right at the beginning of the week, Monday and Tuesday. The creative team has to keep feeding that guy creatives so that by Monday or Tuesday, he already has a batch ready to upload. Then the traffic manager decides whether he wants to upload everything or how he wants to do it. Man, I don’t even get into that part, I just want the creatives to be tested. I’d say my role here is to play midfield,

to get the ball there. Whether he finishes it directly, cuts it, or whatever, that’s up to him. I just want to make sure the ball gets to him, and gets there in good shape. And then, how do we break that down? Because that’s where I’m going to talk about the culture. That’s the big picture. So each of those three people we talked about who participate in the creative call has their own responsibilities, right? The copywriter has to deliver, let me give you an example. The copywriter delivers the creative on Tuesday. On... I think it’s Tuesday,

yeah, because it depends on the expert, so let me give you an example. On Tuesday, he delivers the creative, on Wednesday, the expert records it, and the editor has a set deadline every Friday. That’s because, for example, in the extra income niche, weekends aren’t that good for us. I think Roas even talks about this on his podcast, right? So, since weekends aren’t that good in the extra income niche, we prioritize testing creatives at the beginning of the week. More specifically, by Monday, I already want the creatives organized and ready for my traffic manager. So the

copywriter gives me the copy on Tuesday, the expert records it on Wednesday, and then the editor basically has the rest of the week to get everything done, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, so the creatives are ready for the traffic manager to test on Monday. So all of them need to have the dates. And after the dates, they need to have a specific delivery quantity. Today, I’d say that for someone who’s just starting Out, try to make at least 15 creatives a week. Fifteen creatives is already a good number. Obviously, you’re going to increase that over

time. There are some strategies and things we talk about here that can help you increase that number quite a lot. When you say 15 creatives, do you mean 15 documents that each contain a certain number of hooks and creative bodies? Or are you talking about 15 actual creative bodies, or 15 individual files, like 15 separate video files? What exactly are you counting when you say 15 creatives? Man, we have creative batch structures today for the copywriters to follow, and that is part of the process. We will talk about that soon when we get to the

technical part. But one thing we do to make it easier to analyze is that we consider every file a different creative, a new creative. Even if it is, for example, just a hook variation. Even if it is sometimes the same body, with a different hook. Because one thing that used to complicate things a lot back then was like, you had... AD1, G3, I don't know what. It was the creative's naming convention. And man, for you to know which one was the AD1, G3 with the Matheus hook and-- man, it was crazy to find that stuff.

What did we start doing? Every creative we just name-- our nomenclature is the number. So it is V1, 2, 3... V1, 2, 3, 4... Like video one, two, three, you know? Man, video zero one, video zero two, video zero three, that is it. We name the creative that way. So the copywriter will hand it over to me, like... If there are, in the creative, if there are in their doc, for example, three bodies and each body of The creative there, has... I don't know, uh, five hooks, for example. Man, that's fifteen creatives. Okay, that's fifteen

creatives, for me that right there is fifteen creatives, okay? But the way this guy structures the document, like I said, we have specific batch types, batches where I have more bodies, with fewer hooks, anyway, we'll talk about that. But to me, that's fifteen creatives, you know? Obviously, he's never going to give me, say, one body with fifteen hooks. It would be fifteen creatives. That would be fifteen creatives, but if he does that, he's messing around. But... that's it. So okay, he delivers it to me that way, the expert records these fifteen materials, delivers them to

the editor, the editor edits these fifteen materials. And so how do we organize this? Today we use a spreadsheet, Google Sheets, standard. We don't, uh, we don't use ClickUp, or, I don't know, Trello, nothing. We use a Google Sheets that works like this: everyone has access to this Sheets. This Sheets has, it has some columns there. I won't remember them all by heart, but there is a template, right, for that Sheets. I think I can share this Sheets with everyone too, depending on how the podcast goes. Uh, what happens? It will have the creative's status

there... So, if this creative is ready to record, if it's ready to edit... If it's already finished, right. Usually it's... Uh... usually it's ready to record, it's ready to edit... Oh, and is this how you organize your pipeline? Yeah, that stays inside the spreadsheet. There is a column there, and in that column it says: creative status. And then it shows if it's ready to record, if it's ready to edit, or if it's already finished, one hundred percent finished. But it is just an organization, right? Like, there are no links, no comments... No. It is just

for organization. It is a status that the guy just puts there, you know? Uh... Then there is... basically the creative's name... there's, uh... We add a... We add a line called “ad content.” That’s just so we can quickly identify which ad it is. So the copywriter writes something like... “Ad X, with whatever format,” just so we can identify it internally. But man, why don't you guys use a pipeline, like ClickUp? Was it just a preference, or did you actively, like- It is an archaic choice that has worked for a long time, and we just stopped

changing it. Because it is easy to—like, the spreadsheet, man, I access it here on my phone, everyone has access to it, you just need to have a Google account. I always say that when we build a process, it must always be accessible. It must always be very easy to introduce into the routine. So, the spreadsheet is. The spreadsheet, everyone has a Google account, the guy just logs in and edits it there. So, how are the columns set up? So there’s the status column, there’s the creative column and all that, and then there’s the traffic column,

which the traffic manager updates. He’ll indicate whether he’s already tested it or not. Basically, it’s something like uploaded, tested. It can be marked as not tested yet or validated, because there are different traffic stages and everything involved. Then he’ll indicate whether the creative was validated, moved into scaling, rejected, or eventually turned off. That way, we know exactly that it was tested, what happened with it, and whether it was ultimately shut down. Yeah, there’s the copywriter column. What goes in that column? The copywriter basically uploads the copy document there and adds the link, so that’s where

the copy link goes. So there’s a link there? Exactly. There’s a column where the copywriter adds the copy link. So he adds the copy link, which is usually the main document containing all the creatives. He adds that document, and then we can find everything inside it. So how do we organize the document? The copy document is organized into tabs, so each creative has its own tab inside the Google Docs document. You know, those tabs along the side. So he adds the copy document, then adds the ad content, which is what I explained earlier, just so

we can identify each creative quickly. The ad naming is automatic, right? It follows the numerical order, and then he adds the current status as well. For example, he can set it to ready to record, so everyone knows what stage that creative is at. Ready to edit. No, because we have a recording first, right? So once he finishes the entire creative batch, he adds all the creatives to the spreadsheet, and then the editor comes in. The last column is specifically for the editor, where he adds the link to the final creative. So the editor comes in,

adds the final creative link, and changes the status from ready to test to show that the creative is finished and ready to move into traffic. Actually, before that, there’s the expert. It’s not always the expert who handles this part, sometimes it could be someone filming with the expert, or it could be the expert themselves. Either way, that detail isn’t really that important. Once the recording is done, they upload the footage to Drive and simply update the status in the spreadsheet to ready to edit, so the editor knows the material is ready to be worked on

and can start editing it right away. Then he adds the URL, the editor comes in, edits the creative, uploads the final URL, and that’s it. Everything stays organized that way. Can I show you? I can Quickly open the spreadsheet on my phone and show you exactly how everything is organized there. Here’s what you can do, man. You send to me, and guys, it’s going to show up on the screen here, okay? That way, you can record a video. I’ll record a quick video. We can show this in the screen. I'll show the model... So, Nik,

then you... It's easier to find. Just remind us to get that from Matheus during post-production, okay? Then we can put it here for you guys to see. I think it’s essential to have this spreadsheet from the beginning and start tracking everything from the very first creative. Absolutely. The one thing you guys can’t do is let everything turn into chaos, you know? Personally, I prefer something like Notion. But a spreadsheet definitely works too. As long as you can manage the process properly, it can be a spreadsheet, Notion, ClickUp, whatever works for you. Then we also add

the name of the copywriter who created the creative and the name of the editor who worked on it. Like I mentioned, I’ve even thought about moving to Notion because it might give us more control. But everyone is already so used to this system, and it’s really easy to use, so there’s no reason to change something that’s already working well. Yeah, I think one of the most annoying things is changing your management system. It’s crazy, man, it’s such a pain. It’s awful. But Matheus, look, I know you told me you were going to talk about this

later, because I wrote it down here, but I think it makes sense for us to talk about it now. So let me ask you: in that document you mentioned that the copywriter is going to deliver, there are several tabs there. What do you recommend that everyone watching at home should have in that document, and how should they structure it... Tell the copywriter exactly how many hooks and how many creative bodies they should deliver for each batch. That doesn’t really scale in this situation, man, because obviously, we know you guys want to scale and make millions,

right? But if we’re thinking About the MVP, and someone has just one copywriter and one editor, you mentioned that they should produce around 15 creatives per week, right? Those 15 individual videos that are going into the testing process. Are we talking about, let's say, three tabs, with five hooks and three bodies in each one? Or would you recommend having more tabs with more bodies and fewer hooks? For example, three hooks combined with five bodies, giving us 15 creatives in total. What structure do you recommend for someone starting out? For those just starting out, five creatives

with three hooks. Five bodies with three hooks. You could even do, eventually, one... because I’m thinking about someone who’s writing their very first batch for an offer. When you’re creating those first batches, you still don’t have that internal knowledge yet, right? You don’t know what has already worked for you, what hasn’t worked, or which angles you should focus on, because you haven’t collected enough data from your own campaigns yet, and you’re still figuring out what works best for your audience. You have a general idea of what’s working in the market, what’s going viral, whatever, but

you don’t have your own internal data yet. So this is the moment when you need to figure out what’s actually going to work for you and your audience. And that’s where I say there are two main variables that determine whether a creative works or not: the format and the structure of the body. Those are the two biggest factors you need to understand when you’re starting to test. That’s what you need to validate, because once you validate one of those, it becomes much easier to create more creatives afterward. So the focus should be on varying those

two things. That’s why I always say, “Man, for your first batch of creatives, you’re going to make a batch like this.” I even have a name for these creative batches. I call it a validation batch. For this validation batch, you’re going to make five bodies with three hooks, or you can even make more bodies and fewer hooks. When it comes to hooks, we actually have a policy here. I tell the person, “When it comes to hooks, what can you do? At minimum, you should have one hook. Ideally, you should have two, and three is the

maximum. I don’t want more than that. I’m completely against making four, five, or even six hooks for a single creative. Why? First, there’s the whole Meta and Andromeda situation today. Meta wants fewer creatives and assets that are too similar to each other so it can optimize properly and have more variation to work with across the campaign. And there’s also the fact that, in my view, the hook is extremely important to the creative, without a doubt, especially when it comes to grabbing attention and getting people to keep watching. Matheus, let me interrupt you for a second,

because I always interrupt, you know? And I know you guys watching are already more aware of this stuff. But just to make it really specific and crystal clear for everyone, what exactly do you mean when you talk about the “hook” of a creative, and what specific part of the ad does that actually refer to when we’re talking about testing creatives? You’re defining the first three seconds. The first three seconds. So, basically, what we’re talking about here is that within those first three seconds, we’re going to have a completely different piece of copy, because the creative

hasn’t even had time to... Yeah, exactly, a completely different copy. Sounds good. So, for that different piece of copy, like I mentioned, you should have at least two different hooks, because that’s usually enough to create a meaningful variation and give you a solid test. You can do three as well. And obviously, there’s also the question of how you’re going to create those hooks and everything. We’ll get into that in the technical part, but honestly, the hook isn’t what’s going to validate a creative. What really matters for validation is mainly the body and the format, because

those are the biggest factors. So for your first batch, the validation batch, I’d recommend at least five bodies with three hooks, or two hooks per creative. That’s already a solid batch to start an offer. And it’s not only for the initial launch, you can run two, three, or even four batches like that during the first month of the offer to create more variables and gather more data. I always say that today, we don’t give up on a VSL without testing at least 50 creatives. Oh really, man? At least fifty creatives. So you're attached to VSLs

then? It's not that I'm attached, but I'm really good at making VSLs. Man, obviously, that’s not going to be a rule for everyone, right? Sometimes you launch a VSL and within 48 hours, you already know whether it’s good, you already... Man, mine was, basically an all-or-nothing approach from the start. Yeah. But someone came on the podcast and said this once, and I’d never really stopped to think about it before. But when I heard it, I was like, “Damn, that makes so much sense.” It was Arthur PC. He said, “Man, for me, it’s easier to get

a VSL right than an ad.” And I agree, because when it comes to VSLs, if you’ve watched my podcast, you know, and if you haven’t, go watch it. It will appear on screen There’s a structure there for you to follow, and it’s much more methodical, I’d say. If you do things reasonably well, understand what you’re doing, and follow that structure, it’s really hard for a VSL not to generate leads. I’ve developed a pretty high success rate with VSLs because the process is more predictable and methodical when you know what you’re doing. For example, if I

get a new expert, I write the first one. If it doesn’t validate, I can usually get it right on the second one. The first time, I might not know the niche very well, but from that first VSL that didn’t validate, I understand why it didn’t work, make the necessary optimizations, and the second one usually works. I think over the last, I don’t know, four or five months, for each expert we’ve created a VSL for, I probably haven’t made more than two. If it didn’t work the first time, the adjustments I made on the second one

usually got things moving. And then it comes down to the creatives. That’s why we say that sometimes getting a creative right, especially a truly disruptive one, is much harder, because with creatives, you have to rely heavily on volume and testing. And that’s exactly why, man, a lot of people end up giving up on a VSL that actually has potential, simply because they didn’t test enough of the right creatives or the right variations to really find what works. That’s why I say some creatives have the potential to scale an offer. But just as one creative can

help you scale an offer significantly, it can also give you a completely wrong impression of the offer and make you think it doesn’t have potential when it actually does. Sometimes you think the offer just isn’t good, but the real problem might be that your traffic costs are higher than they should be, so you’re not getting enough people to that specific offer and giving it a fair chance to perform. Or, that’s exactly where the problem can be. If traffic were free, every offer would work, you know what I mean? Or sometimes it’s because someone tries to

save money on creatives, cutting corners and throwing creatives together without putting much thought into them. Then people come to me saying, “Man, I’ve already tested, 30 creatives, and nothing has worked.” And I’m thinking, okay, but what did those 30 creatives actually look like? I said, “Okay, out of those 30...” And I always ask this question: “Out of those 30 creatives, how many different formats did you actually test?” I’ve heard people Say, “What do you mean by format?” And I tell them, “Man, you didn’t really test creatives.” When you test creatives, you’re buying data. A lot

of people simply ignore that data. And they don’t just ignore it, they don’t even have a clear understanding of what they’re actually testing. So you don’t even know whether you’re testing a format, a hook, or a body, because there’s still this very old-school mindset that creating a new creative simply means recording another video, changing the setting, switching the background, saying basically the same thing, maybe changing the color of the shirt, and then moving on. That’s not what creative testing is about, and that’s not how you actually learn what works. So there has to be a

clear process for knowing what you’re testing in your creatives. That’s exactly why we organize the batches this way. For example, I mentioned the validation batch, but there are different types of creative batches. How many batches are there? We basically have three types of creative batches: validation, scaling, and maintenance. Damn, that’s interesting, man. And are all three types of batches tracked in that spreadsheet? Man, in the spreadsheet itself, I don’t really define, like, “this is a scaling batch, this one is.” Because the copywriter kind of... It’s simply whatever you guys agree on during the meeting. Yeah.

But usually, our copywriters do one scaling batch and one maintenance batch every week. That’s generally how we do it. I’m mentioning this because the maintenance batch comes in once you’re already scaling the offer to some degree. By the way, guys, I wanted to let you know that Matheus has made a complete ad structure template available, which is the exact same one he uses to organize and manage his own creative production process. So in there, you’ll find a structure for defining the brief for your creatives, ways to give direction to your traffic team, editing instructions, and

recording Instructions so your editing team can create better and more effective edits for your creatives. And, man, there’s a whole lot more in there to help you organize the entire process. So if you’re already a client, okay? Your access to this material is already unlocked. Just go to the Academy, click on “Exclusive Materials,” and you’ll find Matheus’s bonus right there. However, if you’re not a client yet, just click the link in the description, create your VTurb account, and become a client. That way, you’ll not only increase your VSL conversion rate, but you’ll also get access

to Matheus’s material and be able to improve the conversion rate of your creatives too. And the best part is, I’m also giving you 15% off your first two months of your VTurb subscription. So, man, you’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain. Go ahead and create your VTurb account, alright? But let’s get back to the podcast. Matheus, tell me, what’s the difference between these three creative batches, both in terms of the concept and how is structured? Like, okay, I understand the validation batch, that makes sense, it’s obviously meant for validation. But I don’t really

understand the maintenance and scaling batches yet. So I want you to explain what each one means and, more importantly, what’s actually different about how they’re structured and what they’re testing. Because you told me the validation batch is five bodies with three hooks. Which gives you 15 creatives. But what about the other batches, how are those structured? Man, good question. With a scaling batch, like I said, we have two main variables that determine whether a creative can scale: the format and the structure of the copy itself, and those are the two things we focus on when

we’re trying to scale a creative. Here's what I always say: once you nail a creative -- I mean, one that's truly disruptive — then, you're holding two cards in your hand: the format of that creative and the structure of its body. So you've already got those two things, and now you need to figure out which one actually made that creative validate and scale, right? So, how do you figure that out? It's by isolating those variables. You take that format and replicate it while changing up the body, you know? Same thing the other way around —

you take that body and replicate it using different formats. Generally, those are the two types of variations that get the best results. So, for example, just taking the body structure from that winning creative and bringing it into a few different formats. I mean, I always say the first creative that works is almost never the best version of itself. There's always room to improve it, right? No doubt. Unless the guy got really lucky. Dude—we've had a creative that pulled a million in one month. Then the next month, branching off that same creative, we hit 1.2 million.

So, like, if someone isn't seeing results like that, it comes down to not testing enough, or not digging in to understand what made it work. So, in a scaling batch, what's the copywriter mainly doing? Well, he is basically balancing out bodies and hooks, you know. I mean, it usually ends up being something like five bodies and two hooks — roughly the same quantity as the first batch, right, but, with way more variation, especially when it comes to format. So, for example, you'll have five bodies, but each one in a different format. Let's say, one in

a podcast format, one in a narrator format, one in UGC format, and so on. There are a bunch of different formats you can run, alright? But you're keeping that same body, or something close to it. And you use the hook that's been validated, plus some light variations of it - 'cause in that winning creative, there's already a proven hook, and you just replicate it, since it already worked. And then, you've still got room to test out one or two completely different hooks...I mean, just to really help push the overall volume up. But man, that's basically

it. That's the entire concept of a scaling batch, right? You simply take what already worked incredibly well in a disruptive creative, and from there, you scale it up using those variations, you know? And the maintenance batch works like this: we have a process — like I mentioned before — that we call the recovery process. That falls under the analysis phase, right? So, to recap — basically we've got the fundamentals, which cover the technical writing side, then the batches, which is what we're talking about right now, and then comes the analysis part with this recovery process

-- which we can dive deeper into later. We will for sure...but dude, you just cannot do a short podcast, right? I was trying, like, I told myself, "today's episode's gonna be about creatives" — but we're screwed, man. Totally screwed. Hey Gab, how long have we been recording? We're screwed, man. Guys, this is gonna be another marathon episode — if we're not careful, this thing's gonna run five hours. I'm telling you. Are you tired? Do you need a bathroom break? Not really...I'm alright, man. Alright, let's keep going then. I'm good too — already had my energy

drink. Do you want one? No, thank you — energy drinks make me burp. I'm the same, man — but I just sit here like... Ah, I can't handle it. Alright, let's keep it going... Alright. So, we have the analysis part, okay? And in this recovery process, what are we actually doing? We're analyzing what worked and what didn't, and naturally, new versions of creatives come out of that, based on the data we've pulled and analyzed...And sometimes, even micro-ideas come out of it too. What are micro-ideas? It's like saying: Hey, there's a creative here that worked. I

wanna test something a little different in the body — maybe if I swap out the proof element, or the analogy I'm using, it could perform even better. That's what maintenance is. I'm keeping something that already validated, something that already worked, but making small tweaks, you know — basically doing maintenance on it, just to see if it performs even better. They're really minor changes, right? We usually don't change the format much in these batches. It's more of a copy-focused batch. So, what's our secret? And this is a cut to Nicole. Nice, Nic — get ready for

this one, huh? We have a secret, that the first time I talked about it... you remember that guy? You mentioned him to me, the one you met at Ladeira's mastermind... He was in our mentorship and we ran an exclusive event for our mentees, you know? When I said this, his reaction was like, "whoa." Because I asked, "Guys, how many creatives are you making a week?" And keep in mind, this was a room full of experts, right? People were like: 8, 10, 15... I said, "You know how many we made this week? Sixty." And everyone was

like, "Whoa, 60 creatives in a week?" And I said, "Yep." Because here's the thing — and this is where AI finally comes in — and look, for the first time, an hour and twenty minutes into this podcast, I'm finally gonna talk about AI...and this is one of the ways we actually use it, okay? Nowadays, we run these maintenance batches with AI, right? So, what exactly do we do? We clone the specialist's voice using ElevenLabs, then grab takes from Other creatives they've already recorded — just random takes we have on hand, you know. Something we've set

up now is categorizing those takes to make the editor's life easier. So, if you need one, let's say — a take of the specialist looking happy, or a take of her jumping around — it's all sorted into folders by that style. Then the editor basically clones her voice, takes the copy, and turns it into a narrated format. I always say the narrated format is basically our wildcard. Like, it's not the best format out there, but it gets the job done, you know? And it's also especially useful for validating copy. So, what happens in these maintenance

batches? The copywriter writes it, making variations in the body. Sometimes they'll include what we call "sticky names", you know? Those catchy little names used in the offer to grab attention. Things like, "the lazy way to do whatever," or "the reset method for XYZ" — stuff like that. Man, Derek deserves a beating for this. Seriously, somebody's gotta smack him. That blind copywriter's the one who came up with this whole "sticky name" thing. Shoutout to Derek, love you bro. Anyway, the copywriter tests whatever they want to test these little micro-variations, you know? Then, we send that body

straight to the editor – like we discussed earlier, remember? It skips the expert entirely. The editor just clones the expert's voice and drops it into that voiceover format. That's how we crank out a huge volume of these creatives. Yeah. So, why is this type of creative actually interesting? Because it basically lets us ramp up our testing volume, you know? And I always say — these maintenance creatives aren't built to scale, right? I mean, they're built to test if something sells, to validate it, to hit the CPA target our media buyer's looking for... At most, they'll

get to phase two, because honestly, I don't want– So you'd just take that and optimize its format later? Exactly Got it. And that's where the expert steps in to optimize the format. Today, our experts only shoot creatives that are already validated. But man, doesn't it eventually happen that the narrated format actually ends up being straight-up better than what the specialist recorded? It happens. It's gotta happen sometimes, right? Yeah, it does, and it's totally normal. And it'd be a great thing. And that's a good thing — actually, around New Year's, we had a creative that stayed

scaled for a whole month. It was our top-scaling creative, and it was exactly like that. Yeah. It literally had the specialist's AI voice, just using the takes — and it stayed scaled for an entire month. Interesting... But obviously, once I have that — going back to what I said earlier — the first version is rarely the one that scales best, remember that? So I'll have my expert re-shoot it in different formats until we land on something that really works. And this holds up, because if you look at last month, every creative we reviewed on our

call had first been validated through AI. So, what does that tell you? And that's where a really good incentive kicks in, 'cause the specialist, I mean, look, co-producers — be kind to your specialists, okay? Because recording is a lot of pressure, and sometimes the specialist gets stuck thinking, "man, this isn't working, is it my fault?" They end up getting frustrated. The specialist needs to feel like the stuff they're doing is working, that it's paying off, you know? So it kind of turns the specialist into someone really confident and on point. He basically turns into... Pri

actually uses this term in her presentations and her talks, and she'll probably covers it here too — but I like to say we turn the specialist into a sniper for the business. Like, you're only recording stuff that's been proven to work. And on top of that, it also optimizes my whole process, right? But just a quick heads-up, guys. These maintenance batches are really something you only start doing after you've tested a solid bunch of creatives, alright? I'd say probably at least 30 or so – I mean, once you actually have a baseline that's working. That

is when you should implement this whole AI process. Because before you're scaled... what do I even mean by that? Let's say you're running... A 297 ticket. Until you're consistently hitting at least 15, 20 sales a day, focus on validation batches, 'cause you're still validating, still finding your way. That's like 100K a month? Yeah, that's about right, give or take. 'cause 10 sales a day at 297 comes out to about 3K. Yeah, somewhere around there -- that's where you're at. Then, once you start hitting pre-scale, like doing 15 to 20K a day, that's when you're really

pushing hard, you know? So let me break down what a seven-figure operation actually looks like today. In a seven-figure operation, every week we run a scaling batch and a maintenance batch, right? And usually, every 15 days, we'll also throw in a validation batch, just to keep exploring new things, you know? That's exactly what I was gonna ask you, man. Like, where does innovation come Into play so we can find new stuff, you know? 'cause there was an episode. It's gonna pop up on screen for everyone, with Anthony, and it was all about creatives. In fact,

I've already booked another episode with him, 'cause today he has his own operation, he's an affiliate and he's crushing it. Anthony Carreiro? That's the one. Anthony's a legend. I learned a ton about creatives from him. The episode's gonna pop up on screen, guys, if it hasn't already — not sure what the editors did there. But anyway, he was talking about having these two batches: the scaling batch and the testing batch, you know? The testing batch was really about throwing new ideas and concepts out there to see what works. Meanwhile, the scaling batch was more about

variations to keep whatever's already working running as long as possible. And that testing batch is basically the equivalent of our validation batch, right? Like, that's where you drop in those new ideas. But here's the thing — as you start to actually scale up, those validation batches gradually phase out. Because, like I said, if you find something that truly works, man, you just gotta stick to it. Use it, and squeeze everything you can out of it. Respect the conversion. Yeah, exactly. Man, I said exactly that during Ladeira's talk. If you find something that works, there's no

reason to keep testing randomly. And that's why, looking at both scaling and maintenance batches, you'll notice you always keep at least one proven variable. 'Cause that's the point, right? I'll always hold onto what already worked, since I already have that data and know it works. So here's what happens, new ideas actually do sneak into these batches too. Like, in a scaling batch, you'll have formats I've never tested before, and that's what brings in the novelty. And if I validate that format, I'll go on to test different bodies within it. So little by little, I keep

finding new stuff. But there's no reason to spend even more money at the scale level testing something completely from scratch. So the rule of thumb is, once we actually hit that pre-scale phase, everything we do is basically built around keeping at least one proven variable, you know? I mean, usually that's the body, or elements within the body, or even just the format of the creative, right? I'll give you a quick example of how this actually plays out in practice. Let's say I nailed a creative. Then I split it into format and body, and start testing.

Within that, I manage to find a new format that works for that creative. I kept the body but swapped the format. It absolutely crushed it. Same success, different format. So now, man, I take that winning format and start testing new bodies in it, to see if the format can hold up, you know? Like, I run a batch with three different bodies in that format that we just validated. And it works again... Alright, cool. And now, within that batch, a different body ended up performing really well too. So, do you see where it's going? It's like

building with Lego blocks, piece by piece. We started with a validated creative, tested it in a new format, and that validated too. Cool. Then, I took it, and plugged three different bodies into that new validated format...and it kept selling. Still holding strong, right? So I'll keep running with that format, testing more stuff. But my batches won't become all about that one format, I'm gonna mix it up. And during this process, I found a new asset that's selling well, and it's a new idea, except I didn't just pull it out of thin air, right? I brought

it in, but I combined it with something that already worked first: the body. Because what's the risk when you do something completely from scratch? Sometimes I find a really cool format in organic content, and I want to model it 100% — the format, the structure of the copy, all of it. So I model it 100%, test it, and it flops. What do you usually think at that point? "Man, that format was bad." – But was it actually bad? What if I'd tested it with my own copy structure — the one I know that converts? Would

it have worked? And if it did, what if that format also works across other new copy structures? See what I mean? If I test something from scratch, with zero proven variables, it probably won't validate and just gets tossed out. But it could've actually been a killer format...Make sense? Yeah, but wait... So, this test... I mean, this whole small variation test,does that actually happen during maintenance, or during scaling? If it's a small variation, like, just body variation, that's maintenance. And that format variation you just mentioned, where does that fit into the process? In the scaling batches,

'cause those are the ones that get recorded by the specialist, and we're changing the format, you know? And format, well, might seem like a simple thing, but it's actually a massive variable in there. It's not just some small tweak — it's a complete overhaul. It's what I call a vertical adjustment, right? What do you mean by a complete overhaul? Are you saying it changes the whole creative? Yeah, basically, because it changes how it's being recorded. So what am I keeping in that case? (...) I'm holding onto the copy structure. Obviously — and I was actually

talking about this with a mentee the other day. When you change the format, your copy will need small tweaks to fit. Sometimes there's a line that's too long for the new format, so you have to adjust it. But, you know, as a general rule here, you're still basically keeping the spoken copy elements that you've already validated — you're just completely changing how it's actually being recorded, and sometimes even how it's being edited, alright? Now, the micro-variations in copy — which you were asking about — happen in the maintenance batches. Those are specifically for testing and

cranking out tons of copy. Whatever validates there gets pushed into format testing. Got it? Is that clear? Yeah, got it... Now, let me ask you something else... When you make these variations, what do you see working best? Like, do you land more wins on format, or more on the copy itself? What do you think people should focus on, if they had to pick... I mean, let's say, if someone doesn't have a lot of resources and only has one copywriter... Do you think they should focus more on varying the format, or more on varying the body

– once they've got a format that works decently well? Like, dude, my gut says the format is more valuable, 'cause it's actually easier to vary than having to come up with brand new copy, correct? And I mean, man, it's literally the very first thing people see, right? Like, what is the very first thing someone notices? In that very first split second. It's the format, right? Yeah. I mean, the specialist hasn't even had a chance to open their mouth yet. So that visual input is what buys you the next split second — and that buys you

the next one after that, and so on... That's why I pick format. What's your take? Man, I totally agree. Today, when we talk about the structure of a creative — and this is also how most copywriters were taught — we learned that a creative is Essentially the hook in the first three seconds, then the body, and finally the CTA. It's like a funnel, right? Hook, body, CTA. But nowadays, that funnel has a step before all of that, and that's the format. Picture a funnel. The format is at the very top. Like you said, it's the

first thing people see. Before they hear the hook, before you even open your mouth, it's the format. So yeah, format is a massive 80/20 thing. But if you're just starting out, like I said earlier, you'll probably focus on validation batches. I mean, basically testing formats until you find one that actually sells. And you'll also test your copy structures within that to figure out which one drives the most conversions for you, right? And once you're there, that's where the recovery process kicks in — which I'm dying to get into in a bit, 'cause it's awesome. You'll

start noticing things like, "okay, this format's decent, but it didn't sell that much — though if I put this body into it, it's gonna sell." So format variation really is your 80/20. I believe once someone has a creative that's validated, the first thing I tell people is: change the format, you know? I mean, dude, change the format, 'cause that's gonna matter a lot. That said, it doesn't rule out keeping the format and just tweaking the copy structure instead, 'cause that's not hard to do either. Let's say you've got a batch of 15 creatives. You could

do seven where you change the format, and the rest where you keep the format and change the copy. Something like that, you know. Yeah. But yeah, I agree. Once something's validated, focus on changing the format, because you'll very likely find one that expands the reach of that creative. That's usually what I tell people, even when they bring me creatives to review, you know? Yeah, very nice. Now, man... I want to get into the team's routines with you. Let me just jot this routine topic down real quick, but right before we do, I just wanted to

make a quick comment here. So, man... I think this podcast is getting pretty advanced for the info-product crowd, right? Guys, drop a comment if you think it is, okay? Yeah, the people running Nutra, the hardcore direct response guys who've been doing this for years, they're already doing this. Some operations out there are even more complex. A ton of copywriters, project managers, you name it. It's like, thirty copywriters cranking out ads nonstop. But the info-product folks, man. I mean, I was at Ladeira's mastermind recently, and funny enough, there's a podcast with Leandro that'll pop up on

screen... but anyway, a woman there told me, "Dude, I found this absolutely bizarre." And I was like, "Wow, that's insane." Shoutout to her, by the way. I forgot her name, no offense, okay? I'm just borrowing this insight. Anyway, we're talking and she said: "João, I'm running a VSL and last month I made... I think it was let's say, around 300k, and this month I made 400k, but my Roy actually dropped." And I swear to God, she actually said this: "What do you think I should do? I think that now I'm going to rewrite the whole

VSL." ...like, she was literally about to throw out her entire VSL, man. And she hadn't even tested the creative yet, you know? Dude, I've seen that so many times. Yeah, and I was like, "Oh my God, what do you mean? Slow down, you have to respect the conversion. You're not throwing away an asset that's making you 300 grand a month, right?" And she was about to completely scrap that VSL, one that was actually working. I mean, guys, building a VSL that works isn't trivial, you know? It's not easy to create that kind of money machine.

If it was easy, everyone would be rich, right? You watching us right now would probably already be rich if this was that simple. So I was actually surprised how people don't even realize they could just swap out the creative you know? I mean, just run a new batch of creatives, for example, and maintain the offer that way, right? Yeah, right, keeping that consistency... Because most people, mainly the specialists, really struggle to maintain those creative routines, which is actually the whole point we're digging into today. I believe keeping that up is essential, 'cause it's happened to

me plenty of times while analyzing offers with my mentees. People usually assume the first problem is the VSL, but sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's like — hold on, let's break down your funnel...Rafa Marques always says: Whenever you want to analyze something, first you've got to slice it up. Same thing with your funnel. You slice it up, and you'll see, man, sometimes your VSL conversion is the same as last month, retention's the same, but your traffic cost — your CPM — went up 20, 30 bucks. That might seem small, but it makes all the difference. Sometimes,

if your CTR drops from 3% to 1%, you're sending three times fewer people to your page. So the month you made 300k, you were driving 300,000 people to that page, now you're only driving 100,000. As a result, your revenue drops and your Roy tightens up. So yeah, traffic cost today is what determines whether you can scale an offer. And what has the biggest impact on traffic cost? The creative, 100%. I always say the creative is the only part of the funnel you don't fully control. I mean, like, after someone clicks your creative and lands on

your page, you control everything else, right? You optimize the VSL, the headline, and the page. Once someone buys, you optimize the upsell, the funnel flow - everything. You have full control -- but the one thing you can't optimize is the first click. The first click is the hardest one to win. A lot of people, when they make creatives — and we'll get into the technical side in a bit, okay? — but, I've had mentees send me stuff like, "Hey, I made these creatives, check it out." And the first thing I ask is, "Okay, where did

these ideas come from? What format were you going for?" And they're like, "Uh, I don't know..." That's when I go, "Man, I already know what you did." "You went to an AI, dropped in your VSL and your persona, and said, give me 20 creatives. Right?" "Yeah, pretty much." And I go, "Yeah, I noticed." So I told them: Look, I read the first one, I'm not reading the rest. Go back, redo it all, research the market, see what's going viral, do it this way, then come back. Later, that same mentee told me: 'Man, I did what

you said, and it annoyed me that day, 'cause I had to redo everything. But you were right, I remade the creatives, they came out way better, and now they're selling.' But here's the thing, a lot of people want to make creatives and only look inward. They try to create with AI based on their persona research. But the market is what actually dictates the creative. You need a market-first perspective to make creatives the right way. And sometimes people, even when they're cranking out a ton of creatives, are looking at it from the wrong angle — looking

inward. Just thinking, "What's my persona's pain point?" and pulling creatives out of thin air, you know? Sometimes, people think you need sheer creativity to pull off ads like the one I showed you. Personally, I don't like that word, I don't even like the concept, because to me, it's not really about creativity at all. Disruptive formats like these come from one thing: screen time. So let's get into the routine — what does a copywriter's routine need to look like to produce good creatives? They need screen time. I mean, first watching, studying and analyzing what's working. And

like, it's studying what's working on two levels. The first level being... It's the standard one. I call it the surface level — the one everyone goes to, the market level. like, checking the ad library, seeing what's scaling, and so on. That's the market level. Cool, right? But where does the real difference come in — where do the truly million-dollar creatives come from? That's the second level: studying your persona's consumption behavior, studying organic content. But it's not just about studying organic — people think that just means hopping on TikTok, searching what's viral, and calling it a

day. But it goes way deeper and denser than that. In fact, our best creatives were found exactly this way — and what way is that? Every copywriter on our team creates a profile. I think people working with Black offers have talked a bit about this too, like creating an avatarized profile and all that, you know? Like, you create a profile to simulate your audience's behavior. A burner Instagram account. Exactly. But here's the mistake people make when they do this -- like, they create a profile to understand what's working in the side-income niche. Then they start

searching a bunch of stuff about making money online. But man, nobody behaves like that, right? What I always say is: when you're making a creative, you've got to think more like Kim Kardashian than like David Ogilvy. What do I mean? Your side-income audience doesn't get on Instagram to learn how to make money. They get on Instagram to forget they're broke, right? And when they log on for that, what do they consume? They consume influencer lifestyle content, gossip pages, that kind of thing, you know. So your avatar profile has to simulate that — you need to

follow that same content, because that's how you'll understand what format influencer X is using, the one your audience actually watches and consumes. And that's when the format, once you bring it into your ad, will feel native to your customer, right? Just randomly opening TikTok, finding a viral video, and modeling it simply 'cause it's viral — that's a really shallow level of organic modeling. Why? 'cause you're seeing it go viral overall, but is it going viral within your audience's bubble? So how do you find what's actually going viral for them -- truly simulating their behavior? And

what is the easiest way to create that profile? Well, you take your persona research — which I'm sure you did, 'cause you watched my podcast and saw how important it is. You feed that into an AI -- and the one I like for this is Grok, 'cause it's plugged into social media, especially Twitter, so it actually reads people's behavior there. So, you prompt it like: "Based on this and assuming my persona is a woman of this age, what kind of influencers would she follow? what would she consume on Instagram?" And it'll send you the profiles...

Dude, you're a genius. I absolutely love this idea, guys — it's a good one, even for me...wait, no — for I? For I, right?... no, for me to look into. Damn, guys... Forgive my grammar right now. And that is some material for VTurb's meme team. It's just that grammar thing people always mess up, you know? The "me vs I" thing. Anyway man, great idea to find international influencers for VTurb...really nice and it makes total sense. Perfect. That's awesome. So why does this matter? Our top winning creative from last year—which was Pri's masterpiece, that narrator ad

I mentioned earlier—she found it exactly like this. She's got her own profile that leads her to these things. Like, her feed showed her a video from an influencer showing off her daily routine. It had nothing to do with side income, right? But she saw it and thought, "Whoa, that's a cool format, let's do that." So what did she do? We already had a video that was working, that was already selling. She just took that format and applied it. It's that simple, she did it herself. She grabbed the format and plugged in our existing copy. Damn,

solid expert, man. Usually experts are a huge headache — I only hear bad stories — but you just praise her. Yeah, she did it herself, man. She went to GPT and said, "Look, I want this — see this format? Do this and that." To GPT, dude? Yeah, GPT — no setup, no skill -- nothing. Man, how long has she been in the game? Man, Pri's got... About three years. Only three years? Four years, maybe. Congrats, huh? Yeaah...now, thinking about this from a copywriter's perspective... like, it's the same logic. So, as part of your routine, create

that profile simulating your audience's consumption behavior. And use that profile for at least 20 minutes a day, right? Like, 20 to 30 minutes max, dude. But use that time to interact and start getting fed that organic content that's working, that's going viral in your bubble. So specifically, you're recommending people create this profile on Instagram, right? But would you also recommend one for YouTube and TikTok? Sure. You can create one on TikTok and on YouTube — it's worth doing across every platform. You have to think: which social network is your audience using the most? That data

is important to analyze too. So learn that, create the profiles, and consume the content. Just 20 to 30 minutes a day. Yeah. Then we have this thing I created, which is basically a spying spreadsheet, you know. At the time, we called it a spy sheet, but I like to call it an idea lab. And how do I know my copywriter is actually doing this? I tell them: "Look, we have this spy spreadsheet." And it has specific columns for them to fill out, like where they found the video, what the traffic source was, and the video

link. I always ask them to download it too, to keep it in our internal swipe file, which is basically just a shared drive with all these winning videos, you know? And some info too, like the number of views and likes it got. That changes whether it's a paid ad or organic content. Like, for organic, we evaluate based on views, likes, and engagement, you know? Today, for example, if a video has at least 100,000 views, that might be already interesting within that niche and profile. And I tell them: "Every day, add five videos like this into

the spreadsheet -- into that idea lab." And the same way he does that, I also have him check Meta's Facebook ad library, you know? So, when it comes to keywords, man, a super simple way to actually find them is just doing this: take your VSL, or even your competitors' VSLs, drop them straight into ChatGPT or whatever AI, and just tell it: Hey, I need to find the ads Leading to this VSL. Pull the terms from this VSL, the words that repeat the most, list them out for me so I can find similar VSLs." It'll send

you a list, and that works incredibly well, man. Because like, a lot of people, when they search for VSLs on Meta, always go with the classic terms, like "watch here" or "watch the training.", you know? And that works fine for finding generic VSLs, but if you want results for your specific niche, you need to understand the kinds of mechanisms people typically use in their VSLs, right? For example, in the weight-loss niche, a lot of people use the word "reset" — gut reset, this reset, that reset. So put that term into the ad library. You can

even combine it, like "reset" plus "watch," and it'll give you videos that either mention that or have it in the caption. And that's how you'll find ads already in your niche. There are also extensions, like Adsparo, where you can filter by the number of duplicated ads for that same version. Generally, the more duplicated ads there are, the more likely it's a strong ad — one that's validated, that's scaling. But you've got to be careful with that, especially when we're talking about specialists, like I mentioned. We're not always dealing with high ad volume. So what do

people usually check to see if an ad is good? How long it's been active, and I'd say look for ads running for at least a week. A week already tells you it's selling something — nobody's going to keep an ad running for a week without it selling anything. At least a week, but sometimes you'll find ads that have been active for a month, two months. Those are really strong ads. Those have huge potential too, so grab them, download them, and add them into that idea lab, that spy sheet, you know? Yeah, right. So how do

I know my copywriter's getting screen time? He has to add those links Every day. Nice. That way I know he's actually researching and studying the market — because that screen time is what's going to make the real difference for him to start nailing it. So that's what he does. And man, do you actually subscribe to any of these swipe tools out there — like, you mentioned Adsparo, and here in Brazil we've got DeepTube. Do you guys really use those tools, or is the research strictly more organic? We do have subscriptions, but I usually don't use.

Your thing is more the organic research, right? Organic, exactly. Organic is the best, right man? I don't think you can beat it, honestly, 'cause you're grabbing real content that's trending right now... Yeah, perfect. And there's another thing — the core principle of an ad is it shouldn't look like an ad, right? What's the biggest issue? I think today it's not as big a problem as it used to be, but it's still an issue -- People who want to make good ads spend more time watching ads. But an ad that actually sells can't look like an

ad. That's a core copy principle, right? It has to feel like genuinely organic content — something that blends right into what people are already used to seeing. And that's becoming more and more necessary, you know? These days, I'd say even Meta, after the whole Andromeda update, has basically forced people to think in more native formats, right? 'Cause a lot of what used to work before — like hook stacking, which is basically taking a validated ad and just piling on more hooks — those kinds of things, or even just lazy tweaks, man, they just don't cut

it anymore... What do I mean by lazy tweaks? Things like changing the caption on the creative, you know? It never worked for me personally, but I know people who swore it used to work great — except now, after Andromeda, it's working less and less. And what's been standing out? The format. Because even if you keep the same copy elements that already worked, just changing the format alone can reach you a completely different audience size — I mean, completely different, man. We like to think of our market as a forest, right? Like, you're standing in this

forest, and inside that forest, there are a bunch of lakes, you know? And some lakes are small, some are big — there are all kinds of different lakes in that forest. Now, when you're running an ad, think of it this way: your bucket is basically your offer, your VSL, right? Your ad is the bait you're casting out there to fish. And when you're putting an ad together, you're essentially choosing which lake you want to fish in, you know? I'll give you an example. Say you're fishing in the lake of 9-to-5 working women. Your creatives speak

to that public, and so on — you're fishing in that lake. Cool. But you also realize that if you're only fishing in one lake, when you've got an entire forest out there, you're limiting how much fish you can catch — 'cause you're only fishing in one spot, right? So how do you change which lake you're fishing in? A lot of times, we only try to change our bait — our hook, for example. We'll just tweak the hook and say, "Alright, I'll put 'if you're a mom' or whatever in there." Fine, that's okay, it helps. But

what really moves the needle? Changing the format. And when you change the format, you change the positioning of that ad. So instead of just slapping "If you're a mom" into the hook, what do you do instead? let's break it down, okay? First, who are the influencers in the motherhood niche? What kind of reels do they post? What format do they use? That way, you look at what's working in that moms' lake, right? 'cause that's what shifts your Positioning to fish there. So if a dialogue format really works for moms — let's say a woman talking

to herself, you know — then, naturally, what do you do to fish in that lake? You change your creative's format, to cast into that lake, right? And why does changing the format work so well? 'cause on top of the creative actually looking completely different, sometimes even intriguing, it's also shifting the positioning. The whole format changes. In other words, you're changing where you're fishing — you're changing your lake. And by changing your lake, your scaling potential gets bigger. That's why format is so important, so crucial, like we talked about. You know? Yeah...Man, you just laid out

a whole routine...sorry, my phone keeps flashing the time, you know? So I keep seeing, "Dude, an hour just went by." Yeah, anyway...you literally just laid out this whole routine that copywriters really need to follow to stay current and actually be able to produce compelling copy. And honestly, man, in my opinion, that right there is the single most important thing copywriters can and absolutely should be doing, hands down. I call it keeping your finger on the pulse of the market, you know? Funny enough, I said this exact thing at Ladeira's mastermind. I said, "You guys need

to keep your finger on the pulse of the market to know what's going on." And I thought it was really interesting what you said — not just understanding what's working in paid traffic, but also what content is working, and what the influencers your audience follows are actually doing. I found that really interesting, dude, and it makes total sense...but anyway, man, now let's talk a bit about your management routines, alright? And after that, guys, we'll dive into the technical side of making the ad, okay? So on the management side, how does the department actually run? What

do you guys do on Mondays? I'm guessing it's a review call for the previous week, but you'll tell me...what do you guys do Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday? How does this whole thing actually run in practice? And if you can break it down day by day, I think it'll be even more interesting for everyone watching, right? Alright...so, on Mondays we do a more general call — I call it the front-end call. Everyone's on it, not just the creative copywriters, but also the traffic manager, the web infrastructure guy -- literally everyone. This call is basically where I

set the direction for the whole team for the week - what we'll focus on, right? But where's that focus from? Man, based on the funnel... Like, say I look at it and go, “Man, our funnel, for example, has a bit of a bottleneck at the lead.” I don’t run lead tests every single week or anything like that. I basically do it whenever I look at the funnel and see that it’s necessary. So I analyze the funnel, realize we need it, and I bring it in. And I like everyone, including the copywriter, to know that we’re

gonna be testing the lead too, even though the copywriter isn’t the one writing it, just so they’re aware of the test and understand what’s happening in the funnel. And they already know that, for example, if a lead validates, it could be really valuable to bring in new creatives that are built around that same angle... This is the call, like you said, for the entire front-end acquisition process, and interestingly enough, the ads team is involved in that call too. So, alright, guys, this is the focus for the week and all that. As for the ad side

specifically, they’re already pretty much self-sufficient. They already know what they need to deliver that week, which is what I mentioned earlier, the different batches, the scaling batch and the maintenance batch. That never stops. Yeah, that’s every week. And what we have is a tracking system. We have a delivery target that we keep track of. So, for example, right now my target is to have at least 60 creatives ready every single week. So I have my head of ads and my head of editing. And what I ask them is, “Man, tell me how the deliveries went

last week. How many creatives did we deliver?” That way, I can understand whether we were below target, above target, or right on target. And if we were below target, for example, figure out what caused the bottleneck. What I built, and this was really based on what we needed, you’ve probably heard of KPIs, right? Key performance indicators. Today, it’s very common, and really necessary, to have a funnel KPI, so I can understand how my funnel is performing and how everything is working. But as I started hiring more copywriters and more editors, I realized we needed a

KPI for copywriters and another one for editors, where I can basically measure how much each person is producing. So the head of copy and the head of editing manage these KPIs and keep track of how many creatives each person on their team produced. Sometimes it’s not just creatives, but... But it’s just a production volume. How many pieces of copy did this person write, how many videos did this person edit? Exactly, the production volume. But then there’s also something more specific, which is, how’s their accuracy rate based on the creatives they’ve produced, how many of those

actually performed well, and everything else? And all that still on Monday? On Monday. So, man, what’s their accuracy rate looking like? What’s their delivery volume looking like? Anyway, we have this KPI model with a few different points. And I basically ask, “Man, tell me how the KPIs are looking for your department, for production. How are things going?” And then the copy head says, “Man, here’s the deal. Last week we produced X ads, so-and-so did this many, this person did that many, and so on. Our focus was on X thing.” “Yeah, everyone’s accuracy is looking like

this.” Okay, editor. And sometimes, something comes up, like, “Man, the editing team hasn’t been delivering 60.” So one person delivered 15, another delivered 10. And I’m gonna try to understand, like, “Man, why did this person only deliver 10?” Why did this person deliver 15? Because it’s also about looking at the person, you know? Because behind the creative, there’s someone. So, that also helps me understand whether that person, that copywriter, is actually delivering properly, whether they’re delivering enough volume, and whether they’re delivering quality work. And if they’re not, because sooner or later, man, I’m gonna have

to let that person go. So this gives me the control I need to manage my operation, keep track of performance, and stay on top of that whole management side. So I have that, and I analyze it on Monday to understand how productive the team is as well, right? Because, man, it’s not a factory. It’s not like everything is gonna come out 100% perfect every week. There will be weeks when the guys are able to produce more, and other weeks when they produce less. What I need to understand is what’s happening in the weeks when they

produce more, and what’s missing in the weeks when they produce less, so we can figure out how to get there consistently. We have that call, and one thing I suggested to them, which they do, is having a call among themselves too. So the editors and the copywriters have a call among themselves. What’s the purpose of that call? For the copywriters, for example, to get organized. Like, “Guys, look,” usually on Monday, they come in and put together the ad brief and everything. And since they have a lot of ideas from the lab and from all the

things they’ve been researching, they kind of divide everything up, like, “Man, I’m gonna make these formats here, I’m gonna do this one this way,” so we have some variety and different approaches, you know? That way, they already organize how their production is gonna work throughout the week and know exactly what to prioritize. Yeah, and then they produce. When Tuesday comes around, they deliver the copy. Usually, the head of copy goes through everything carefully to review the work and see if there’s anything that needs to be adjusted, changed, or improved before moving forward. Once everything looks

good and gets approved, the copy is ready to move on to the next stage of the production process. And then, once the head of copy finishes the review, I always tell him to organize the material for recording. What do I mean by organize it? Usually, the guys create everything in different documents. I tell them, “Man, put everything into one document so it’s easier for the expert." Like, for example, this is actually something we had to address recently, because sometimes you have different copywriters creating these. One writes a creative for her to record with makeup, another

one without makeup, another one with something else. So I tell them, “Man, just organize everything for me. Put all the ones with makeup in one tab, make it a sub-tab, and put everything she needs to record with makeup there. Then put everything without makeup in another section.” Keep it well organized so that when you arrive at the recording, the session is productive. Is it that level of detail, man? Now you'll need to record wearing makeup. Damn, bro. Yeah. But it’s just a detail, it’s not really a rule. It’s something we realized we needed. Sometimes you

won’t need to do that, right? Yeah. Sometimes you won’t need to do it exactly this way, you know? So, but anyway, he just makes the document more organized so the expert can record more smoothly. For example, he’ll put the materials needed for the Recording right at the beginning. I tell them to put that on the first page, because sometimes she already knows what she needs to prepare, like, “Oh, grab a cup, get a stuffed animal,” whatever. She can get all of that separated and ready beforehand because she’s gonna need those things during the recording. That

already helps, right? So, okay, he organizes everything, and then the recordings happen on Wednesday or Thursday. Usually, we do the recordings on Wednesday and Thursday, depending on the schedule and how everything is organized that week, and what needs to be recorded first. So let’s say it’s Wednesday, just to keep the timeline nice and simple here. Okay, Wednesday comes around, we have the recording, and then the expert uploads all the footage. The editors basically have Thursday and Friday, and they also work over the weekend, so they have Saturday and Sunday as well to create the creatives,

finish the edits, and get everything ready for delivery and have it all prepared for Monday. So before that, the editor doesn’t really have that much demand from Monday to Tuesday. He’s basically like, “ I have meetings, and I’m taking care of a few other things.” They do, but what is it usually? Well, the guys usually edit... Since some edits are a little more complex, they’re editing almost every day. But, for example, we also have creatives that we make with AI. So the guy is usually working on those creatives and stuff. The only fixed thing he

has is the delivery deadline. Like, “Okay, on Friday, you deliver these creatives to me.” So, for example, whatever AI creatives were created the previous week, you have them ready this week. Basically, the production is always working about one week ahead. So basically, they’re produced this week, and then the following week, you’re already releasing those creatives. And then you also have the expert’s creatives, which is why it’s really important for the editors to stay organized as well. So they organize the workload, what each person is gonna take on and what each person is editing, so there

aren’t any conflicts, like I mentioned earlier. And then, as part of that organization, the editors usually deliver between Friday and Saturday. They upload all the finished creatives, add everything to the spreadsheet, and make sure the materials are properly organized and ready for the next step. Since we already have a very well-structured process and a strong foundation of what works, it’s pretty rare for us to have to make a lot of revisions to the creatives and things like that throughout the production process each week. But just to be clear, the copywriters usually look at the final

version of the creative to see if there’s anything that needs to be changed or adjusted, but generally, there isn’t really a formal review process with a lot of back-and-forth, multiple rounds of revisions, or a whole lot of unnecessary adjustments before the creative is considered ready. I’d say it’s not really that strict or formal, you know? Usually, the copywriter just looks at the final creative to make sure everything looks good, that it’s consistent with what they wrote, and then they approve it and just move on. And then the media buyer usually uploads everything at the beginning

of the week, either Monday or Tuesday. So, throughout the week, what do the calls usually look like? On Wednesday, we have a creative call. There’s not really any particular reason why it’s on Wednesday. We happened to have the call one time, it worked out that way you know? Which is the analysis call. Basically the creative analysis call. And how that works? So, this analysis call works like this: the first and most important thing is that it has to be objective, focused, and straight to the point. I used to struggle a lot with three- or four-hour

calls, like I mentioned. Man, I’ve had creative calls in the past that would go on for three hours, just analyzing one thing after another, and at the end of it, we weren’t really getting anywhere. Then Rafa Marques came in and said, “Guys, this call is 40 minutes, timed, and that’s it.” So I get on the call, I set a 40-minute timer on my phone, and we get started. The structure of the call is basically this: first, the media buyer already has the best-performing creative from the last seven days pulled up and ready to go. We

put that creative up on the screen, and then we start going through it together, looking at what made that specific creative perform so well. We watch it once, twice, three times, four times, basically replaying the creative over and over so we can really break it down. While we’re watching, we have an analysis document where we add the dates, and each date becomes its own tab. Then we create individual subtabs for each person, and inside my subtab, I write down my analysis and the things I’m noticing throughout the creative. There’s no specific rule. It’s simply an

analysis, man. You watch the creative, see what you think, and write down whatever stands out to you. Then we watch it two times, sometimes even ten times, or however many times we need to, depending on what that specific creative requires. Usually, we spend around 10 to 15 minutes just going over the creative, watching it again and again. Now everyone goes through what they thought. Each person gives a quick analysis, two or three minutes at most, and says what stood out to them. I always have the copywriter who created the creative and the editor who edited

it speak last, so they don’t influence the rest of the team, you know? Because otherwise, the guy might say, “Oh, I made this, I tested this hook,” and that can immediately bias everyone else’s analysis. So I say, “No, man, whoever made the creative speaks last.” Then everyone else gives their analysis first, and at the end, the other person shares their own take. And then, at the end of this call, I always say, “Alright, we’ve already come out of this with several patterns that we’re gonna keep an eye on throughout the week to see whether they

repeat or not.” And I always like to leave the call, like you said on the podcast, with no more than two or three practical actions to Actually implement, maximum. Like, “Alright, let’s change this, put this creative into a different format.” “Alright, let’s test something, maybe X on this creative here.” Three things at most, no more than that, just so we can keep track of everything and make sure those actions actually get done during the week. That’s it. We have the call, everyone gives their analysis, and at the end, the head of copy usually defines what

those three practical actions are going to be. Then everyone moves on and the call is over. That’s it, that’s the creative call. After that, we have the re-testing process, which usually happens the following day. But this re-testing process is normally handled only by the copywriters, since they’re the ones responsible for taking those insights and turning them into new tests. Which is what? So, basically, I have my media buyer, and I ask him... Is this reselection process on Thursday? Yeah, that's right. So what happens? On Thursday, they go through it. There isn’t necessarily a fixed day

for this, but in our process, it’s usually Thursday, because they’ve already had the creative call on Wednesday. So they sit down, and I tell the media buyer, “Man, think about the traffic as being divided into three different phases, right? We have validation, pre-scaling, and scaling. Each one of these phases has a different purpose, and we need to understand where each creative is within that process.” Bring me all the creatives that validated, meaning they passed the first phase but got stuck in the second phase and didn’t move on to the third phase. Bring me all of

those creatives from the last few weeks. Why? Re-testing. You guys are really smart, man. You just keep coming up with these names, don’t you? Man, and this... I think even this name, actually, was something we came up with with Kips one time. We were talking about it, and I think it was... Oh, really? Isn’t that from soccer, man? Right, Gab? Yes, there is something that works like that... The guy who wasn't... Usually, it’s the playoffs, right, that— Yeah, that could work, right? But anyway, what do we do? It’s actually a thesis that came up while

I was talking to Kips. He brought this idea to me, and I said, “Man, that makes a lot of sense.” Basically, everything that works has a reason behind why it worked. And everything that doesn’t work also has a reason why it didn’t work. What do I want to do in this phase? I want to understand what worked and what didn’t work, because that’s how I optimize. And remember when I said, “Man, when we want to analyze a funnel, what do we do? We break it down into pieces.” It’s the same thing here. When I want

to understand the finer details of the creative, what do I want to do? I break it down into parts. So, in this re-testing phase, I tell the media buyer, “Man, bring me those ads that got stuck in phase two, the ones that validated but couldn’t really handle being scaled.” Usually, I ask him to bring me around six to eight creatives. I don’t want too many either, so I’ll have him bring me the best creatives from the re-testing pool, the ones that showed the most potential. Let’s say we’re gonna work with six here. And then we

have a spreadsheet specifically for this, a re-testing spreadsheet where we keep everything organized and track what we’re gonna work on. So there’s no Notion, right? Everything here is in Google Sheets. We put the creatives there, and inside that spreadsheet, there are some specific metrics that I want to look at. What are those metrics usually, and what exactly am I looking for when I analyze them? I put the creative’s play rate, which is the percentage of people who stopped scrolling long enough to watch the creative instead of just scrolling past it. Is that on Facebook? No,

that’s a custom metric you have to create yourself. If I’m not mistaken, you take video starts and divide them by impressions, something like that. Or impressions divided by video starts, whatever, just ask ChatGPT, and it’ll tell you. So, the hook rate, which measures what happens during the first three seconds, the hold rate, which is basically the retention rate at 75% of the creative, and those metrics are already available on Facebook too. We also look at CTR, which is the overall click-through rate of the creative, and CPM, which is the cost per thousand views. CPI, which

is the cost per checkout, right? Those are the six main metrics, I think... and then there’s CPA too, which would be the seventh metric. So those are the seven main metrics that we look at, so we have everything organized in one place and can compare the performance of each creative more easily. The first thing I do is look at what worked in the creatives and what didn’t work. I think we can also put the little video here showing how I do this inside the spreadsheet. So, the first thing I look at is what actually worked

in the creatives and what didn’t. I’ll give you an example of a guy who was in my consulting program. He came to me and said, “Matheus, man, I had this creative here, and I was absolutely sure this creative was gonna scale like crazy, but it just didn’t scale.” And he was like, “I don’t know why.” I said, “Man, let’s figure it out.” So we put it into the re-testing process. I always like to use the best creative as a reference, kind of like an OKR, basically the winning creative. Put that one there too, along with

its secondary metrics, so we can compare it and understand what worked. So, man, we put it there to analyze, and we realized that this creative he thought was gonna scale had better metrics overall. In fact, out of those seven metrics, around five of them were actually better than the metrics on his winning creative, which made it even more interesting to understand why it still wasn’t scaling. So, the hook rate on the creative he thought was gonna scale was higher, the hold rate was higher, and the CPM was much lower, basically half as much. His cost

per checkout was pretty similar, I think. The CPA was the one metric where he lost, it was a little higher. But when we actually looked at the creative itself, what was the main metric that really stood out and was noticeably different from the winning creative in that comparison? The CTR. While his winning creative had a CTR of around 3%, almost 4%, this other one was much lower, almost below 1%. It was around 1.2% or something like that. So the CTR was about three to four times lower. A little more than one. It was 1.2, something

like that. And his winning creative was around 3%, almost 4%, I think it was about 3.6%. So the CTR was less than half. This creative was sending three times fewer people to the page, even though it had a lower cost, better retention, and several other positive metrics. So we started asking ourselves, “Why is this happening?” We sat down, went through the creatives carefully, and compared them side by side to understand what was really causing that difference. So what do I do first? I go into the columns in Sheets, and basically, all the metrics that I

consider positive, I highlight in green. Anything that’s okay, I highlight in yellow, and anything that’s really bad, I highlight in red. Then we identified, “Man, his CTR is red here. Let’s figure out why.” So we watched his winning creative. How did he structure the CTA in that Creative? He did it like this: “Oh, by the way, I recorded a training where I explain all of this. This guy here watched the training and got this result. Diego here also watched the training, and he sent me this screenshot showing me the result he got from it. And

I’ve opened up a few spots again for you to watch this training, so you can see exactly what I’m talking about.” “So if you want to watch this training too, if you want access to the same training that helped them get these results, click the button below and watch the training." Alright. Then I said, “Let’s look at the other one now.” In the other one, his CTA was basically like this: he showed two testimonials and said, “So, man, if you want to learn how to get results like this, like this one here, click Learn More

to watch the video I made.” That was it. So, the CTA structure was completely different. While in the first one, he made people believe that the results those people got were directly connected to watching the training. He put a strong emphasis on the training and specifically called people to watch it, and that creative ended up with a CTR of almost 4%, which was significantly higher. The other one was just, “Click here to watch the video,” and its CTR was... It was sloppy. Then I said, “Man, we figured out why this creative couldn’t handle the scale

it could’ve handled.” Then I don’t even know if he recorded it again. I said, “Man, record this again and do it.”. Man, this... But dude, how do you do that thing where... How do you determine the benchmark for what’s green, yellow, or red? Because you need some kind of reference point to compare against. Are you comparing each one to the ad that scaled the most, or do you have an actual market benchmark that you use? How does that whole thing work? Man, I always say that with creatives, it’s really difficult to define specific metrics, especially

when it comes to these ideal benchmarks we were talking about. For example, what’s the ideal hook rate? Honestly, it depends. First, you can’t access your competitor’s hook rate, at least not yet. And, man, like I always say, it’s much more about your own account and your own funnel than Constantly looking at what other people are doing. So it’s much more like an OKR, basically comparing your performance against yourself. So, you might ask, “Man, how do I know whether my hook rate is good or not?” You compare it to the highest number you’ve ever achieved. For

example, if you’ve had a creative reach an 80% hook rate, that tells you that you’re capable of hitting 80%. So if your hook rate here is 40%, naturally, that’s low, because you know you’ve already reached 80%. You know your average is sometimes around 60%. So if this one is at 40%, it’s bad. It’s below average, it’s not good. Then, when it comes to cost per checkout, for example, that’s basically offer math. Roas says it should be around 10 to 20% of the cost per checkout. Man, if it’s at 10% or less, alright, that’s looking good.

If it’s above 20%, then, hold on, something’s off here, this isn’t right. So it’s basically an OKR that you check based on your own creatives. When you say OKR, are you referring to objectives and key results? Yeah, basically. And these OKRs are based on what the person is actually... Or are you talking about the KPI? No, no, the OKR is really the target result. It’s the goal, it’s the objective. So, if I’ve already had a creative hit an 80% hook rate, that becomes my target. If I have a creative that’s below that, I know I’ve

already proven that I can hit that number, so I could’ve done better. You know what I mean? So I rely specifically on what I've already done within the context of that expert. I don't bring in other market intelligence to make comparisons in this salvage process. And then the copywriters do this process, they analyze it, and based on that, they define what optimizations need to be made, right? Usually this comes in as a maintenance wave, these alterations that they make, because sometimes it's copy stuff, usually this comes in as maintenance Items to record. And that's it,

sometimes an insight might come out of there that ends up becoming a scaling creative, because sometimes-- let me give you an example. We can even break down these metrics later, but man, yeah, all these metrics I mentioned are driven by some copy factor... For instance, CPM, which is the cost per thousand impressions, is heavily driven by the creative format. Native formats tend to have a lower CPM, you see? So if you have a creative that you actually see is struggling because its CPM is higher than your average, the format of that creative can probably be

optimized, improved right now to bring it down to a lower CPM. So naturally, alright... So if what's holding this creative back is the format, let's change its format. Then sometimes that becomes a resource, an input for the guy to use in his scaling wave that he's going to write. Got it? So we look at that. So I say that, roughly speaking, it's analyzing and understanding what these metrics mean at a copy level for the guy to make the optimization. Uh-huh. CTR, like I said, is usually CTA structure. Hook rate is usually copy structure, you know,

the copy angle that you actually used. What do I mean by angle? There are two different levels of angle, which is the copy angle, like, man, sometimes it was a news tone... sometimes it was really a problem tone where the guy started right off by talking about a problem. Sometimes it was a tone where he started as if it were a warning, anyway, there are these copy angles. So... I think Filemon talks about this on his podcast, right? Like, he talks about that... He talks about a bunch of angles. He mentions like six or seven

angles there. Yeah. And there's also... like, what was the pain or the promise or the benefit that you used there? So, like, alright.. Yeah, what was the... Okay man, you mentioned a specific benefit right there... like, maybe you brought up a problem in that hook, did you pull the person in more with the promise or more with the problem, what did you actually use there? So copy hooks are the first three seconds, and it really comes down to what you said in those first three seconds, the way you said it. And then when we get

into, for example, the hold rate, which is the body retention of the creative. That's where, for example, editing plays a huge role as well. So, man, what were the inserts the editor used, the takes, the caption style, how dynamic was this creative? Did the shooting have a lot of take changes, or was it a more static recording, like, he just sat down and recorded versus switching takes? Uh-huh. So all of this becomes input for the guy to be able to actually optimize that piece, right? Like I said, today we really have a map that shows

me what each metric means at a copy level... so the copywriter can make that decision right there. But a lot of it is just intuitive, man. Like, if you look and see your hook isn't good, man, you're going to have to change the hook. You look at which hook of yours is working, compare it, alright, I'll make a hook very similar to this one that's already validated for this creative. So a lot of things end up being intuitive, but you need to have clarity. So that's it. Yeah, no doubt. So man... We talked here about

this salvage process that happens on Thursday, right? Uh-huh. Let me ask you a question, okay? I want to explain how I used to do it back when I was active and creating my offers and... All my creatives, which was a long while ago, guys, right? Obviously, I don't run anything anymore because I own VTurb. So to avoid any conflict of interest with you guys, like: "My God, João is looking at my VSLs." Obviously I don't run anything, I could pull some dirty tricks, but I don't do that, I'm not stupid. I'm focusing on the long

term here. But man... I'm going to tell you how I do it, and I want you to... I mean, how I used to do it, right? Uh-huh. And then I want to hear your opinion on this process. Cool... so, back in the day, man... A little after the Big Bang era, right? Back when I... Like, Back when I was still active. and then I never... I mean, I never really looked at secondary metrics, like, at the beginning of my analysis process, you get it? and what did I do? I just threw the creatives out there.

And man, it was super simple. If it sold, it's good; if it didn't sell, it's bad. It was literally-- I swear to God, guys, it was solely based on that. And man, I just couldn't really find a pattern necessarily regarding, like, oh, you know, this creative had a higher CTR, a lower CPM, it, um, brought more people over there. This one had a lower CTR. It was kind of like, man, that I, I just couldn't see, like, oh, higher CTRs with lower CPMs, they generate more sales. Somehow, for whatever reason, that creative just sold, and

that was that. And it had its own metrics. So then what did I do? Once I found a creative that actually sold, regardless of what its metrics were, then I'd check to see which metric of its was the most messed up... And I'd try to change that specific thing right there, you know? So, for example, man, this creative sold and its CTR is right at X. Or whatever, it's actually stopping people a certain way, right? Like, fifty percent of the people here are hitting the first three seconds right here... Then I'd see where the lowest

metric was among those, and I'd try to change that thing. But the weird thing, man, is that, yeah, sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't, sometimes the metric actually dropped and it sold even more. So like, I could never really be sure, like: "Man, this is a change that I make and it delivers results." And I reflected a lot on this, and man, my conclusion was like, look, when I make a different hook, I capture a different audience, a different level of awareness. When I launch this in another campaign-- back then there was no Andromeda, right--

so we launched campaigns and, man, if you launched 10 campaigns with the same creative, each campaign yielded a different CPA. Some sold more, some sold less. But it ended up selling because the creative was validated. Yes. And I could never take a creative that wasn't selling, that had a terrible CPA, and tweak a secondary metric to make it sell. So that's why my conclusion was: "Man, I'm going to take the creative that sells, this winner right here. Why does it sell?" I don't know 100%. It has good copy arguments, but I don't know why this

specific one sold. And I tried to tweak things there, and after tweaking those points that were theoretically the worst... I'd check the CPA. Yeah. And that was the process, got it? I never went specifically after a metric like, oh, I made the CTR increase and sales increased too. It could be that the CTR went up because, let's say, I made a more clickbait hook. But man, when the guy actually got further in right there, I don't know, it bombed... So, what do you think about that, man? Do you think I missed out on selling even

more than I could have? Because in practice, I don't think I was going that deep into optimization. And do you know if anyone in the market does it this way? Man, I don't know if anyone in the market does it this way, at least I've never talked to anyone who did it like that. But what's the point? I see that when you do that, it's valid, because in theory it's almost the same-- virtually the exact same thing we do in this salvage process, except it's with your winning creative. Alright, that's valid. But then I lean

heavily on that 80/20 rule, which is: man, what are the absolute minimal actions I can take to exponentially multiply the results? So man, I know that nowadays, in the current market scenario, if I have a validated creative, making format variations of that creative is already my 80/20. Within that, I will most likely be able to scale that creative exponentially. So there's no reason for me to slice it up and keep doing micro-tests. I go for the exponential tests. Now, for the salvage creatives-- and that's why in salvage creatives I will never use a creative that

didn't sell. It's always creatives that sold, moved on to a second stage, and hit that exact point-- the creative that hit a ceiling. Even if its CTR is great, its retention is great, it won't go into salvage right if it didn't sell. No. No, got it. If it doesn't sell, it won't reach salvage; only what passed stage two gets salvaged. What passed stage two, which is that thing where I say, the one that sold, you thought it was going to scale, and it didn't. It's the one that stalls in stage two. It's the one that

hit the ceiling. Because the ones that hit this ceiling usually have two or three metrics pulling them down. It's rare for it to happen like that other time with that account where it was just one specific metric like CTR. Usually it's two or three. Two or three things that are easy to optimize. And that actually gives me input for that maintenance wave, which is a wave I really need to produce in a high volume, you know? And right there I can turn that input into practice, you see? Because that insight I pulled right there actually

serves to build new ones, even adjust new ones there, etc. And my validated creative is my Holy Grail, like I said, man, I don't really care. That combination worked. Sometimes its CTR isn't really the best, but that thing worked, so I'm going to tweak it at an exponential level... I'm going to touch the macro, which is mainly the format, and there's also the body of this creative where I can actually create some variations of that body, not format variations, but testing different hooks and stuff, but especially the format, right? And I'll focus on what's exponential

for that creative that sold. The ones that didn't sell and got stuck in this second stage, those go through this filter. Got it. and dude, has it ever happened to you that... Like, you actually ran the test, the creative didn't sell, but you were like: damn, this hook grabbed a lot of people, it had a hook rate of, let's say, 90%-- it was really insane. And then you take that hook right there and drop it into a winning creative and it works even better? Because that's happened to me before. It happens, yeah, it definitely happens

from time to time. Usually we spot that when we do the salvage process, like, man, there's a hook pulling in huge numbers here. And then eventually I'll repurpose that hook to make some variation, or like we say, some optimization-- to the main creative. Because, look, how do we do it? When we validate a creative, I say we now have our scaling protocol, after validating the creative, where if the media buyer flagged it: "Man, this one is Good, I'm gonna scale this, I'm gonna put money behind it." What is the scaling protocol? It's when we start

pumping out specific variations of that creative, you know? What are those variations? These variations actually fall into two levels, which are vertical variations and horizontal variations. Vertical variations are variations designed to scale, the ones the guys build for the scaling wave, which are variations of what? Mainly format. Sometimes variations right within the creative structure. So sometimes, precisely, man, take a different hook right there, add a different hook to that creative. Sometimes add, you know, elements within the body structure of that creative that's actually working. So those are my vertical variations of the angle right there.

How do I identify these vertical variations? They're everything my expert will actually have to, like, re-record. Either he'll have to re-record the body in different formats, or he'll have to re-record the format with different bodies. Those are... alright, those are the verticals. And then there are horizontal variations, which are variations that usually go straight to editing. These variations, sometimes the editor changes the editing style of the creative, sometimes he changes things in the soundtrack, sometimes he does, even though I say: "Guys, it's not the 80/20, it's not what drives big results," but he does it

anyway, like stacking hooks and so on. He does a few things there. They're little things that I already know will hardly scale, that won't blow up. But sometimes these horizontal variations, which is where this angle comes in, like, man, a hook that's performing really well here and plugging it into this one that isn't doing so great. Or maybe the hook On the creative is already good, but I want to, man, I have a better one, I'm going to plug it in front. But what do these horizontals do? They extend the lifespan of my creative. So

vertical variations scale. They have the potential to take a creative that's already selling, say, half a million, and push it to sell one or two million-- a month. That's happened to us. Yeah. But horizontal variations extend the lifespan of that creative, meaning, instead of saturating in, say, a week, by making these vertical variations, we stretch that out a bit. Sometimes they keep selling for, say, a week and a half, for example, it bumps it up a bit. These are variations that will bring in a little bit of profit, two, three, four, five thousand in profit,

but it's already something, you know? So we already-- like, most of the time these horizontals don't even validate. But we still do it just for peace of mind, you know? Like, man, we actually did it. This scaling protocol, we activate it whenever a creative hits stage three in traffic, we trigger this protocol. And what I say is: "Man, make at least 10 of each." Like, make at least 10 vertical variations and at least 10 horizontal ones here so we can move forward with it. Got it. Nice, man. And besides that, right? On Friday, is there

any meeting, any management process you do, or is it more relaxed? Man, no, there isn't. More laid-back? There isn't. As a rule, what happens are the weekly engines, right? The editors will be editing, the copywriters will be producing, spying on competitors, planning their-- they already think ahead. Man, our copywriters here today do something quite different from what I used to do, because I usually did this: If I had to write on Tuesday, I'd usually sit down on Monday to study the market, do briefings, and so on. Man, they kind of do that throughout the week,

you know? Uh-huh. So throughout the week, they're already building their little briefings, and then, like, they sit down on one specific day to write the creative. It's also individual to each copywriter, right? Some copywriters might want to write: "Ah, I'll write one a day." Others, anyway, that's up to the copywriter. But the big picture for the week is just the delivery date, that's what matters most to me, that it's getting delivered and that's it, you get it? Got it, man. Yeah, awesome. And man, finally, right? My last question-- to wrap this up once and for

all, right? In terms of numbers, okay? You told me: "Man, the starting number I find interesting here is, look, if the team is producing 15 video files per week, you consider that good." Yes. It's a good number to start with, right? Yeah. Less than that, do you think a copywriter and an editor should be able to handle it? Oh, definitely. Really? because I also think, right? If by any chance you're doing less than that, man, I think you could raise the bar a bit... you definitely can. The bar there, right? Whoa, hold on, let me

pause the podcast. Man, if you could pick anyone in the digital marketing space to be here on Scaling Secrets interviewed by me, who would it be? Who is the person you'd love to have here opening up their numbers, strategies, and operational backstage? If you actually know who that person is, man, we created a super quick form that's linked right down in the description for you to nominate them. It takes just a Single minute to fill out. You just drop their name right there, we'll look into them, figure out how we can fit them in, and

if it makes sense, we'll bring them onto the podcast for an interview and deliver that content to you right back home. So man, if there's someone you think is worth interviewing, go down to the description, drop their name, and it'll help us know what kind of content is worth creating for you, deal? Alright, back to the podcast. Man, the technical side of ads, right? How are these guys actually running the ads? Because we can have the best management system in the world, meetings here and there, whatever. If the guy messes up, it's going down the

drain, right? It's basically just going to... Like, waste our dear listeners' money, you know? And in my mind, right? I think there are three variables that make an ad work. Which are.... like, man, what's the copy we're using? And what's the format we're running, right? And what kind of editing are we putting into this copy? Because we can have visual hooks and all that. So essentially, I see it coming down to that. And from my perspective, I believe that if the copywriter maximizes these three fronts-- well, not just the copywriter, right? I mean, The whole

team, but the copywriter specifically, maybe handles the copy and format side more. Yeah, if he maximizes those two things, he'll be able to produce good ads. And on the copy side, right? I break that into two parts, which are the hook and the body, meaning the guy knows how to write two good hooks and solid ad bodies. So, we could say that the copywriter's responsibility includes picking the format, hook, and body... Man, to produce a great creative, do you think that's it? Yes or no? And if yes, where do you think people should start? Do

you think they start with the format, the hook, or the body? How do you handle it? First thing, I'm going to deconstruct that. Great. It's not three elements we consider, It's five. That's not something I made up, it's something I identified. Across all our creatives that generated at least seven figures, those creatives share five components, five recurring elements. Uh-huh. What are those elements? And now, copywriters, listen up, because I'm on your team. Nice. Right? You copywriters already in DR Black, transitioning to copywriting now, or running Ads wanting to learn creative production, or even non-copywriters wanting

to learn copy. From here on out, this is where you learn how to make serious money with this stuff. So listen to this, this is going to be a real masterclass, I'm going to break down the step-by-step for you to build killer creatives and do what João did, because João started out as a junior and today he's an absolute beast, man. The kid is crazy good. Not me, guys. João Francisco. João Francisco. Exactly. Man, do you know what my middle name is? It's not Francisco, no way No, it's not. But do you know what my

middle name is? What? Nobody knows? No, Campos is my last name. Do you know my middle name? Lucas? guys, I'm João Eduardo. Wow, I've never met a João Eduardo in my life. Here it is, guys, look. Like, I've seen João Otávio, João... That's the one. João Francisco. João Lucas is super common, I've never seen João Otávio-- I mean, I've never seen João Eduardo before. I've seen a few João Eduardos. Man, I've never seen one. But anyway, tell me, what are the five elements? What are they? What are the five elements? Let's go. First thing, a

viral or curiosity-driven format. So our creatives that sold over seven figures had specific formats-- they Were either viral formats, we'll talk about that in a bit, or curiosity-driven formats, anyway, I'll break that down. But the point is: the format variable exists. The format variable exists. So, viral or curiosity-driven format. Second thing, that's where the copywriter comes in. Dopamine-driven writing. What is it? Actually, let me run through all five first, and then I'll break them down. So, dopamine-driven writing. Second one: João Francisco calls this the copy-expert union. I think that name sucks. I told him, "Man,

you gotta change that name, 'cause you're teaching this to everybody. We need a cooler name." Copy-expert union? I told him, "Man, that name sucks..." It sounds like biology. Yeah, and I said, let's call it the creative's tone of voice. It's the expert's tone, right? That's better. Yeah. Then we have dynamic recording. And least but not last, we have editing. Alright, so now let's break these pillars down, in a more practical way – the format is literally the format choice that was used in that creative, okay? Hold on a second. Format, dopamine-driven writing, tone of voice,

dynamic recording -- what was the last one? Editing. Disruptive editing. Man, you love a good mechanism, huh? I love a sticky name. Hey, Derek. Man...I mean...seriously, Derek should be actually sentenced to life in prison, dude. Or maybe, you know, hanged. Seriously, the amount of trouble that guy causes me, man. Cut it, guys. Don't cut it, show the reality of this podcast. You gotta know what goes on behind the scenes here at the VTurb podcast. Because Derek causes so much trouble, man. When he makes this stuff up, dude — you should've seen when he came out

with CSL. That screwed me, man. Like, the VSL is dead, now it's the CSL. Bro, it was the exact same thing. And people were hitting me up on WhatsApp: "João, what are you gonna do with VTurb now that the VSL is dead?" And I was like, "what happened?" "Oh, Derek said it's CSL now." I'm like, "Okay, but it's still a video that sells, right?" Come on... He's screwed, man... Actually, he already got beat. He's another guy who got destroyed at FIFA right here. He talked all this trash about how he was gonna beat me, and

he got smoked. Then he looked at me and said, "You're brutal, man." I simply replied "I sure am, dude." Man, I 'll go after it. I'm competitive as hell too. Bring it on, dude. You can try. Today, I'll admit it, I'm not that prepared. Last time was... But I'll be back, okay? I'll be back. Look, I wanna see a real challenge, alright? If you're coming on the VTurb podcast, practice. It won't be enough, but go ahead and practice. Anyway...format, dopamine-driven writing, tone of voice, dynamic recording, and dynamic editing. Disruptive editing — you gotta get that

difference right. Right, disruptive, man. Alright, so these are basically five characteristics, five qualities that you identified in ads that actually work in your operation, right? Yeah, they worked like crazy. They worked To the tune of a million a month, okay? Yeah, got it. Nice, man. So you don't see this as niche-specific. You see these as principles that are working right now, in 2026. Principles, exactly. Got it. Alright, so- Let's start with format, then. When I talk about format, like I said, think of the creative as if it were the design of a funnel. And usually

we're taught that it's a three-stage funnel: the hook, the body, and the CTA — the call to action, right? These days, that funnel has a stage that comes before all of it, which is the format. And I mean, the format is nothing more than the way that creative is being delivered, the way it's being recorded, you know? So, the same copy can be recorded in totally different formats, okay? Yeah. So let me give you a quick example. Let's say I've got this copy, and it goes something like: "Hey, you wanna learn João Campos' trick to

blow people out at FIFA and all that?". Alright, so we can run that in the podcast format. I can just turn to you and say, "Dude, João, did you know you've got this really good FIFA trick? here's how it works." Okay, cool, now I'm in the podcast format, right? But we could also do it in a dialogue format. What would a dialogue format be? Me walking up to the door and going, "Hey João, can you help me get better at FIFA?" And you go, "Dude, did you know there's a FIFA trick I use to blow

everybody out?". Cool — I just changed the format. You can do this, like, we could be out on the street...you've seen those street-interview formats people do, right? And then I would simply turn to you and say something like, "Hey man, alright, let's do this." — just like Albertone does, you know? Shout-out to Albertone, By the way. Rafa? No, Albertone is that guy who films people on the street, like, Are you W-2 or 1099? You've seen that? Nah, I haven't, man. He's the guy with the beard. Actually, I think I have seen him. Yeah, I've seen

that. He's interviewed Cariani, Luciano Hang, lots of people. We could record in his format, and the opener is obviously, "Are you W-2 or 1099?" You go, "Well, I'm 1099." "Okay, and what do you do?" "Dude, I beat people at FIFA." "What do you mean?" "I found a trick that lets me blow out everybody who plays me, and yada yada". Anyway, cool. I'm running the exact same idea and just changing how I record it. That's the format, right? We could do it in UGC format — put Gabriel, who's back there, on camera, put João in the

background, and Gabriel goes, "Yo, this guy is going viral because he's destroying everybody at FIFA with this one trick and so on." Again, I just changed the format. Dude, that's the best example we've ever had here. Like, guys, the podcast turns three years old next year, and that was hands down the best example. I love it. Sweet. Dude, quick side note, do you know who's really good with analogies? Kayoan, from The Group. Oh, really? The kid is a genius with analogies. Shout-out to Kayoan. I don't think I ever told you, but Kayoan was in my

mentorship early last year, before The Group existed. Actually, The Group came out of an insight he had there. Before that, he was my junior copywriter in one of my operations. I'd always tell him, Damn, man, you're so good at analogies. He comes up with awesome ones. But anyway... So, format is that: it's the choice of how that video gets positioned at the recording level, you know? And how do you... I mean, how do you actually find these formats? Good question. First method... Actually... not "find," 'cause I think you're gonna naturally see it, right? What I

mean is, how do you know, like, "okay, so this is a format that I wanna test," or... "this format right here is something I really think is gonna work"? Man, first thing: don't be biased against a format. Like, looking at it and going: no, that won't work. You don't have to guess anything. Marketing isn't guesswork, marketing is psychology plus data, right? So you have to test, you need the data to know if it works or not. So never skip testing a format just because you think it won't work. Now, if you've seen something that's working,

then obviously you can have parameters to figure out if that thing is worth it or not. On organic, one parameter is the number of views, the engagement that video has. So a video, from any niche, that has, let's say, a hundred thousand views — man, that's a video that hit a certain level of engagement. And videos with a million views? Dude, those ones hit hard, right? So the format of that video was decisive for that. And inside TikTok, you can run the same process I described for Instagram, and there's also a tool on TikTok called

Sorter that people use. It's Sorter for TikTok Ads, something like that — it's an extension. S-O-R-T-E-R. You can look that up on Google, in the Google extension store. That tool shows you how those videos are performing. And there's Kalodata, which a lot of people use for TikTok Shop. It's the same thing. Actually, here's a recommendation. I have a training, um, it's a bit old, but this part still works. It's on my YouTube channel: Matheus Lourenço. My name, right? And on there I've got my most-viewed training, I think, around ten thousand views, in which I teach

how to make creatives. And then there's also— We can post this podcast as a collab with your channel, if you want. Oh, nice, I appreciate that, man. Just like we did over on Instagram, you know? Sweet, I'm in. So, in that training, I walk you through this process of using Kalodata to see which videos went viral on TikTok. And here's what I always tell people, like, I just showed you how to find what format is trending within your audience, right? But if you want truly disruptive formats, so you can fish in different ponds — you've

got to look outside your bubble. That's when you tap into what I call cousin niches. So, what is a cousin niche? Let's say your target is women over forty who want to lose weight. A doctor talking about menopause? That whole menopause space is a cousin niche. Make sense? Same thing in the make-money and side hustle space: if you know your buyers are moms, then creators making everyday content for moms become your cousin niche. So that's where it really pays off to have that algorithm dialed in — what I call the organic spying algorithm. You build

the profile like I described before, but you also spy on a macro level. Like, you're not just checking on a profile level; you're filtering for what's going viral. Why? Because when we talk about viral formats, the best ones break through those bubbles and cross into different ponds, right? Want to hear an example? Earlier this year there was a format going viral where people recorded like they were completely unenthusiastic. Like, If I made a TikTok for my training in that format, it'd be: Hey, so, I've got this training, if you wanna watch it. It's about how

you make creatives. You can check it out if you wanna, but only if you need... That's true, yeah. I've seen that format, like: My dad's store has this thing, if you wanna buy... And once again, Pri... She's brilliant, spotted that format. It popped up on her feed. Honestly, man, I hadn't even seen it yet. And she just told me, "Hey, this format is going viral." And she just went for it. She had the guys write up the copy and... well, she Basically used the copy from a validated creative as a baseline, and just brought it

into this format. Literally the same copy, just inside that viral format. So she was saying the same things as the winning creative, just adapting it to the format. For example, one characteristic of it was that "couldn't-care-less" delivery. Like: Ah, if you want it, cool, if not, whatever. So she brought that in, but kept the validated copy structure. Man, I think that creative beat our all-time champion. It was a phenomenal creative. Phenomenal. It was an insane creative. So, that right there is an example of a viral format, the kind that breaks through the bubble, you know?

But dude, how do you actually go about and decide whether you're gonna look at the creatives — and I mean, the organic formats, through those tools you mentioned or, like, through the spying itself — versus the formats that are right now being scaled with paid traffic? Because, you know, realistically, they're not necessarily gonna be the exact same thing, right? No, they're not. They can be different. A lot of the time they are the same, because we know you can take something that works on organic and push it into paid. That's kind of a well-known pattern

at this point. But honestly, I think the paid traffic format is sort of the cream of the crop, like, it's the most important thing — because organic only guarantees that it validated on organic. It won't necessarily validate on paid traffic, right? So do you think a paid traffic format that's scaling is more valuable than an organic one, or not? No, not at all. For me, when we're talking about format, organic is always gonna be superior. 'Cause that's what's native, that's what people click into, that's what they're actually consuming. So it's what really avoids looking like

an ad. Something that's already being used by your competitors starts to look like an ad as more and more people use It. On a macro level — remember I said there are two main variables, which are the formats and the body structure. Generally, when we talk about body structure, if you try to model the body structure of an organic video, it's really hard to get that to validate on paid. So sometimes, for body structure, it's smarter to look at what a competitor is running at scale, dissect that, and pull out the invisible structure behind it.

So, like, how did he open that creative? What did he say next? How'd he build out his arguments? Did he use social proof? So for the structure itself, the copy, the arguments, you look at how the guy who's putting money behind it did it. But when I'm talking about format, it's way better to look at organic. So today, I'd say our production, when we're thinking about format, is — I won't say a hundred percent, but it's ninety percent looking at organic. We keep one eye on paid too, but we're looking at organic a lot more.

Way more. Really? Because paid has validated that people actually buy. Organic only validated that it got views. Right. But when I talk about format, that's exactly where views matter, because the format is what opens up the mouth of my funnel. Inside the creative funnel, the format is what opens the top of it, it's what brings people in, you know? Now, does format impact conversion? It does. But for conversion, it's not always the 80/20. I like to say conversion comes way more from your copy structure than the format itself. What does the format do? It amplifies.

If your copy structure is bad, it can be in any format you want, it's not gonna sell. The format won't make it sell. The format makes it show up for more people. It amplifies. It's like, you've got a really good ad, and a lot of people are gonna see that ad -- they're gonna see that storefront. But it's rarely gonna convert just because of the format. In fact, take those formats I mentioned — like, the narrator format. So we had the first Roas event, and Pri showed that to everybody there. What did everyone do? They

copied it. They ran the exact same format. Man, I don't know a single one who came back and said, "Wow, I copied that and I got great results." Most of them copied it and didn't get good results. Why? Some guys even said, "Man, my CPM was great, but it just didn't sell." Why? Copy structure. That's exactly why we look so much at organic for format, because we want the format to open up the mouth of that funnel, you know? And eventually, as you keep testing, you'll notice that some formats do amplify your conversion. Yeah. Cool.

So, if I'm getting this right, could I say that your recommendation to your copy team is basically like: "Guys, the actual format you're gonna look at is definitely not your competitor's format." You're gonna do something new in paid traffic, but old in organic. You look at what's working on organic, what's getting the most engagement — stuff that's already consolidated over there — and then you innovate on paid by bringing it in. So there's never a case where you use your competitor's format. Or do you actually do that sometimes? Yeah, I do. Like, if you're spying

every single day, and you see this guy is scaling a ton of creatives with one specific format, and you're seeing it day after day, there's no reason not to test it. Especially because he might be doing the exact same thing you are. Like, he could be watching organic every day, and he might've just been faster than you and pushed it out first, right? Exactly. And honestly, it Happens. I mean, man, whether we like it or not, we know what people are seeing out there in the market. We know exactly when someone's copying one of our

creatives. And sure, sometimes we'll spot a creative we find really interesting, and we'll just model it too. Like I said, the creative game is the market, so you gotta see what's working. Like, there have been times I saw a competitor validating a format hard. And it wasn't even theirs — just some other guy's organic — but we'd never run it. So what did we do? "Let's test it too." And it worked really well. But like I said, the best formats, their origin, the raw material, is in organic. That's why, when I say look at format,

I really mean look at organic. And don't limit yourself to just what you're seeing, because like I said, you've got the algorithm as a way to find good formats, which is that avatar profile and all that. But you can also do the research outside of that, using those spy tools to get even more ideas, to feed more raw input into it. And you can look at what's working abroad too, in the United States. Like, what's going viral over there? Because thinking at a market level, the most viral formats tend to work over there first, and

then people bring them here — especially at the content level. All the content guys do this, you know. I mean, just think about podcasts, man. In the US, Joe Rogan had been doing it for years, and then the guys from Flow did it, and then it became this huge craze here in Brazil, right? Yeah. You can also look at formats working abroad, like the US. Or even Latam; people out there have really interesting formats. We've got a guy in our mentorship — maybe Venezuelan, not sure — but he runs Latam. I checked his creatives and

said, "Man, these are awesome. I've never seen this here." Why? It's a behavior that exists over there, and sometimes looking outside is worth it just to adapt it, 'cause the content guys do exactly that. I think Alan Nicolas, when he was on the podcast, talked about how sometimes we're consuming vomit, right? I don't know if you remember, he says, "Man, sometimes you—" Yeah, I certainly remember. Man, that one really stuck in your head, huh? Guys, Alan's podcast is gonna pop up right there on the screen. That guy is nuts, man. He's a beast. His vomit

example was about content, right? Like, there's the original content — the guy who wrote the book. Then the guy who read it and made a talk. When you consume that talk, you're basically consuming the vomit of the vomit of the vomit. With formats, that happens too. If I grab a format my competitor is scaling in the ad library, they usually took it from an organic video, and that guy took it from somewhere else, which probably came from somewhere else before, right? And if I'm the first guy to test it, naturally I tend to come out

ahead. So look at that when you're doing your research. And like I said, copywriting requires screen time. You've got at least five working days in your week to do this. Thirty minutes a day is easily enough to check the algorithm, to look at those outside sources, and to see what's working in the ad library. And then when you build your batch, you have those variations. So, let's say I've got a batch here with five different creative bodies. I'll take one format from the ad library, two from viral organic, and two from abroad. There's no hard

rule, but it comes down to the copywriter having the instinct to build those variations. You know what I mean? I totally get that there's no hard rule here, okay? But if I could actually step in and give just one piece of advice, like, what do you think about the recommendation I'm about to make? I really wanna hear your opinion on it. Yeah, sure. We could basically tell everybody listening at home this. If you want formats with a higher chance of working, but without an explosive result, then you Just look at paid traffic, because it's already

selling out there. So if it's selling for someone else, it'll probably sell for you too. But since you're not the first guy doing it, it's probably not gonna be a huge spike in sales, you know? It's more predictable, right? Exactly. Yeah. Your validation batches, for example, are a place where you can do that. But, if you want innovation, then you gotta look at organic content. Because if you're the first guy to bring in that format, something completely different, It's boom or bust, right? It either crushes or flops. If it flops, fine, move on. But if

it hits? Man, it scales like crazy. Just an insane win. So you agree? Man, that's a really solid thesis right there. The way I see it, just taking what's already working on paid in your market definitely gives you a nice safety net. But like I said, don't expect an insane, exponential creative to come out of it either. But like, even if we change the structure? Because I mean, we could take a paid traffic format and actually change the body, you know? But being honest, I don't know if that would work either. Man, I think it's

the same scenario: it can work, it can perform, it's just not the eighty-twenty. The 80/20, in my view, is this: if they’re investing money into traffic, obviously that format is working. So you can take that format and model it, right? I’d even say you should. The body is also a copy structure, an argument structure that’s clearly working. You can pull out the invisible structure behind it, model that structure, and then write your own creatives based on those same principles. But like I said, the format itself is, man, the visual presentation, the way the creative is

actually presented to the audience. So, basically, what’s gonna make you sell more? If something is converting, you want to put it in front of more people. Let’s say you have a creative here where 4% of the people who come through that creative end up converting. What’s gonna make it sell more is simply getting that creative in front of more people and driving more visitors to it. Rafa Marques says, “Man, you don’t scale sales, you scale visits.” What is a visit? Man, it means getting more people to see your offer. If you Have an offer that

converts at 4%, your mindset shouldn’t be, “How do I make this sell more?” Because like you said, man, respect the conversion. It’s already converting. Your mindset should be, “Man, how do I get more people here?” Because this is already the standard that’s working. How do I feed this conversion machine? So the format is what brings in that whole idea of, “Man, how do I get more people to stop scrolling so they can watch this creative?” That’s basically the dynamic behind it, you know? So when I think about scaling, I see it as using an argument

structure that works and converts in the body, while using the format to get more people to stop and watch. That’s really the way to scale. Your competitor’s format can bring you a certain volume of people, but that volume is ultimately limited. So that’s why I say, don’t expect this to be something you can scale way beyond what he’s doing. Probably not. You’re playing the same game he is, you know what I mean? I understand, man. Do you think we could tell everyone watching that if someone wants to scale and actually break their company’s records, then

they really need to approach this innovation process with more intention, dedicate more time to it, and keep actively searching for new opportunities and new ways to improve, instead of just repeating what has already worked and expecting the same results? But on the other hand, if someone is just starting out, the safer bet is to focus on paid traffic. They’ll have less room for mistakes, and they might have limited cash to work with. So they can get it right and grow steadily, but it probably won’t give them that huge breakthrough, that massive jump in results you’re

looking for, you know? Yeah, I’d say that in the validation phase we talked about, let’s say you have five bodies there. Man, make three or four of those based on what you’re seeing in the market, especially if you’re still a little unsure at first and want to model what’s already working. Make one of them more innovative, even if the innovation is only in the format. Sometimes you can keep the body that’s already working in the market, but change the format a little bit. That way, you have some safety to start selling, and as you validate

your ideas, you gradually build more confidence to test different things as well. And even having a body that you already know sells, because it’s much easier to get the format right when you already have an argument structure that converts, instead of trying to test both at the same time over and over, you know? So, as a general rule, that’s what the viral or curiosity-driven format would be, and that’s the best way to look at it, by looking at organic content this way. Alright, I understand, man. So, the second point you mentioned here, you called it

dopamine-driven writing, and I’ll tell you what I understood from that, okay? I understood that we need to write our ads in a way that activates the person’s dopamine system, so they stay engaged longer, understand what we’re saying more clearly, and become more persuaded by the message we’re delivering, because the way we structure the writing can keep them curious and engaged throughout the entire ad. And within that, when it comes to writing, that’s how I see it in my head, okay? If I’m wrong, correct me. We basically have two main variables, the hook and the body.

Is that actually how it works? So you kind of, you’re looking at those two elements and, uh, trying to understand how they work together to keep the person engaged throughout the ad... Within the writing itself, you teach your copywriters to create dopamine-driven hooks and dopamine-driven bodies. How do you actually connect the body and the hook within this whole concept of writing, or is that not really how you recommend approaching it? This is actually going to tie directly into the next two stages we’re gonna talk about, which are tone and recording. So, let’s get into it.

First, when we think about the structure of a creative, what exactly does that structure look like? Like I said, we already talked about the format, and now we’re gonna break the creative down into its individual parts. We have a hook, a body, and a CTA, which stands for call to action. And when we say “body,” or “body copy,” we’re talking about the body of the creative, right? Exactly, we wanna take these guys out. The hook is the hook, and the body is the body. It’s the hook, the body, and the CTA, think about it this

way, okay? When we talk about the hook, the hook is the first three seconds of the creative. Sometimes it can be three to five seconds, but that’s basically what it is, okay? The hook is simply the introduction to the creative, and it’s important because it’s what grabs the person’s attention, stops them from scrolling, creates curiosity, and gets them to keep watching the rest of the creative. That’s usually where we tend to see the biggest drop-off in the creative. It’s almost like a VSL... Where you usually see the biggest drop-off right at the beginning. So that’s

basically what the hook of the creative is. And within the hook, there are two important things you need to be aware of when you’re writing the copy, because they directly affect whether people keep watching or scroll away. What I call it is this: to me, the hook is basically a formula. It’s an angle that you’re using combined with something else. So think of it like math, like an equation for the hook. You have the angle plus the other element that makes that angle compelling to the audience, and that gives you the hook... Benefit. Or pain.

So... an angle is basically angle plus a problem or desire, benefit or pain. Let me give you an example. When I talk about an angle, I’m talking about how I’m positioning my copy. Because I can take the exact same copy and position it in completely different ways. Let me give you a practical example. If I’m running an ad for menopause, for example, I could say... “Man, researchers at Harvard discovered this hormone that’s literally been changing the lives of women going through menopause, and, like, the results have been incredible for women struggling with menopause symptoms. And

when I frame it this way, like, “Man, these Harvard researchers, whatever,” I’m presenting it as news. I’m bringing it in like, “Wow, new research from Harvard shows...” “Man, did you see that new research from Harvard that just came out?” So I’m bringing in a specific angle here, a specific tone, with the copy positioned around a news story to make the information feel fresh and relevant. But I can also frame it around, for example, a gossip angle. Like... "Hey... Come here... Did you see that the people at Harvard discovered some molecule, some menopause hormone that’s getting

rid of menopause symptoms?” I’m bringing the exact same idea with a more casual, gossip-style tone, like I’m telling you something I just heard. I’m not presenting it as news, like, “Researchers discover...” No, I’m bringing it from more of a gossip angle, more like a casual conversation. An example I like to give when explaining angles is this: Imagine Anderson, who isn’t here right now, suddenly shows up at the door right? And then he comes up to me and says, “Hey, Matheus, come here. Matheus, wait, wait, let me tell you something. Uh, your wife is calling you

over there.” And I’m Like, “Alright, I’ll get up and go over there.” Now, he could come to the door and say, “Hey, Matheus, come here, man. Dude, your wife is calling you over there.” Bro, if he comes in like that, I’m gonna jump up without even knowing what’s going on, you know? But the message he gave me is exactly the same. What did he change? He changed the angle of the communication. That’s basically what a copy angle is. The copy angle doesn’t necessarily change how your copy is written or what you’re saying, but it changes

how you present it. So you can use an angle like I mentioned, a news angle, or you can make it more of a gossip angle. And... I think Filemon has something like that. That he shared on one of his podcasts about creatives, something with a bunch of different copy angles and stuff like that. I also have a mind map about this that I can share with everyone, with several examples of different angles you can use when it comes to copy. So, if you get access to this mind map, you can look through all the different

angles listed there, find one that makes sense for your message, and then choose which angle you want to use for your hook. Sometimes the angle is already there, right? Let’s say you come across a competitor’s creative. They may already be using a specific angle, so you can simply model that same angle. And then you have the copy element of that creative, which is usually either a pain point or a benefit, and that’s what you combine with the angle to build your hook. So, it’s either gonna be something where I say, for example, “Hey, this hormone

has been helping women eliminate the symptoms of menopause.” Here, I’m focusing on the benefit, getting rid of those symptoms. But I could also turn around and say, “Man, this hormone can help you if you suffer from insomnia during menopause.” In that case, I’m shifting the focus toward the pain point, specifically the struggle with insomnia during menopause. So, at the end of the day, the hook is basically the combination of the copy angle you chose and the benefit or pain point you used in those first three to five seconds. That’s the formula I use for creating

hooks, and it’s been working really well for me. And how do you actually differentiate between these different types of copy? Let’s say I have a copy where I say, “Man, if you’re experiencing these menopause symptoms, watch this creative, because it could completely change your life and help you finally feel like yourself again.” “There’s this solution, this and that.” That would be the first one. The second would be something... like, “This is Maria. Maria suffers from this, this, and this.” We tell a little more of her story. “Maria struggles with these menopause symptoms, because of this

and that, and then she watched this training and discovered this solution.” And then another one would be structured more like this: “If your menopause medication is on this list, pay close attention. A new study found that there’s something new that’s really, really effective and has no side effects, and so on.” So we’re gonna have three completely different creatives, each built around a different topic and angle, but all of them are gonna send people to the exact same VSL. In my mind, the angle was basically that. That’s how I defined it in my head. That’s how

I’ve always thought about it. What do you call these different types of communication? The story-based one, the problem-solution one, and that other one I mentioned that I completely forgot, the... Damn, what was it again? Damn! It was from the... medicine. The medication one. Do you have a word for that? What do you call it? Man, we actually have a name for that, but I don’t like it. I really don’t like it. I even talked to Francisco about it and said, “Man, we need to come up with a different name, because I honestly hate this one,”

which is basically the big idea behind the ad, the main concept that the whole creative is built around. Damn, the big idea of the ad. I even said, “Man, what if we called this the ad thesis, like Derick does? People would be like, "Wait, what’s the ad thesis?" and all that.” But, what do I mean by that? What are we trying to say with this? These ads, at least the way you structured them, are basically different variations of the same idea. But for example, the first and second ones, to me, you only changed the angle.

You talked about the same symptoms the person experiences, but in the first one you said, “If you’re experiencing these symptoms,” and in the second one you said, “This woman, Maria, was experiencing these same symptoms.” So to me, you just changed the angle of the communication here, while the underlying idea stayed the same. You only changed the angle at the beginning of the ad. So, let’s say you listed the same symptoms, that would be focused on pain. So you used one angle here. In the first one, you used a targeting angle, like, “If you’re experiencing these

symptoms...” In the second one, you used a story angle, like, “Man, this woman Maria, she was experiencing this, this, and this.” So, you changed the angle, but you kept the same pain-focused message. This creative can lead into the same body as the other creative. The expansion can be exactly the same, because the expansion, which is basically the body of the creative, can take you into the same message and continue with the same body of the creative. But it could also be different, right? I could... It can be different, yeah. Totally. It can be different too.

And then, alright, there’s the CTA. In the other one, you already presented the CTA in a different way. You brought it in like this, man, I could even try to lead it into the same creative if I wanted to, but it would end up being really long, because you started with more of a problem-solution approach. You started saying, “If you take this medication here, researchers discovered this new thing…” Man, you’re already expanding it, you’ve already brought in a completely different benefit, which means you changed the angle as well. So, anyway, what happens from there as

we move forward with the creative? What’s gonna be the big difference here from our perspective? It’s gonna be the way you expand this creative afterward, which I’d say is basically the thesis of the creative. Why is that? In those first few seconds, I can list the symptoms and then say something like, “Man, how does this actually work? How does this thing help you get rid of these symptoms and make you feel better?” And then you can send them to the VSL to learn more about how it works and why this approach could help with those

specific symptoms. The medication one, for example, is already different. Since I brought it in as a problem-solution approach, I could say, “Man, why isn’t taking this type of medication, or similar medications, actually a good thing? What really solves the problem?” Then I could explain that there’s a natural formula, and that a new natural formula has been discovered, and I’m gonna show exactly how it works in a training, along with why this new approach could be a better solution. And so on. So, what happens here? In the first two examples, my thesis, my big idea for

the ad, could simply be this: I showed the symptom, explained that it can be eliminated, and told them that if they want to get rid of it, they can watch the training to learn how. In the second one, I expanded it more. I talked about which medications she may have tried, touched on other frustrations she may have experienced, said there’s a new solution, that I have a natural approach, and then told her to watch it to learn more. And then I’m gonna send her to the same VSL. Why do we call this the creative thesis,

or the creative’s big idea? Because we realized, and this was something we started doing unconsciously, that naturally you end up creating different bodies. Sometimes you explain more, sometimes you explain less, and so on. And as we started creating these different bodies, we realized that, man, there’s a certain type of body that tends to sell more and generally converts better. For example, one thing we noticed was that whenever we had a body structured as a step-by-step, basically a mini tutorial within the creative, those bodies tended to convert better. It even helped us sell more upsells, because

it usually brought people to the VSL who were more willing to learn. We were basically giving them a mini tutorial in the creative, like, “Man, if you want to learn how to do this, let me break it down into three steps. Step one, do this. Step two, do these three things. Step three, do this. I recorded a training explaining how to apply this step-by-step process, so click here and watch it.” We call this, for example, a step-by-step creative structure. So, basically, this is a structure we have, a thesis, a big idea, and it can be

applied to any creative we make, you know? So, what happens is, in this case, I have several of these different structures, different theses, and different big ideas that can be applied across the creatives we’re making. And then, man, it really comes down to whether I want to apply it to creative X or Y. But the hook I used isn’t really gonna interfere with that, you know? I Can use pretty much any type of hook. The important thing is which argument structure I decided to use for that creative. Whether it was a more step-by-step structure or

sometimes a more direct structure. Like I said, we have some structures that have already been validated, that we know tend to work better, but it’s completely possible to create new ones based on those structures and keep developing new variations from what we’ve already learned works, you know? So— For a long time, I saw this as more of an angle. But at some point, I realized that, especially when I was trying to explain it to other people, it could feel a little too subjective, and they didn’t really understand the concept or how to actually apply it

when creating their own creatives. They’d get confused and ask, “Man, what exactly is the copy angle?” What is the angle of... Yeah, that’s pretty annoying. So I said, “Man, no, the only angle you’re gonna have is the copy angle you determine here. Everything else is the structure of the creative. The rest is the thesis of your creative, and that’s what’s gonna change from one creative to another.” You see? Because even if you chose, for example, the medication angle for your creative, you can still choose how you want to expand it. You don’t necessarily have to

explain all the frustrations and everything else. If you want to make a more direct explanation like the first one, you can absolutely do that too, you know? You can do that, no problem. You’re simply applying a different structural big idea here, a different thesis for the creative. And that’s it. You know? So basically, we think about it more this way than thinking about different angles and stuff. I understand the concept, but like I said, I found it really difficult to explain to people exactly how this worked, you know? But the final result that copywriters produce

ends up being this anyway, because it’s a creative either way, right? And what advice would you give people to consistently create strong, attention-grabbing openings for their creatives? Because we’re gonna have several different types of openings, depending on the angle and structure we decide to use, and each one can require a slightly different approach. We can talk about the medication, we can talk about symptoms, we can tell a story. And either way, regardless of what you call these different approaches, or what Pedrinho and Jose call them, they’re gonna perform differently, because each approach can connect with

the audience in a different way. If you use a story-based approach, it’s gonna convert X. If you use problem-solution, it’s gonna convert Y. How do you recommend people approach that decision? How should they choose between, “Man, I’m gonna go with this, I’m gonna go with that, I’m gonna use this approach”? Are there certain concepts you see working consistently? For example, there’s that contrarian approach, which I think is really interesting. That one, yeah man. I scaled that one like crazy. Problem-solution too. But what can you tell me about this? How do you recommend people approach the

decision of which type of opening to use when they’re creating a new creative? Man, don’t try to reinvent the wheel. I was actually talking with João Francisco about this whole hook thing just last week, and we were discussing how important it is to build on what’s already working. Man, Joãozinho been absolutely killing it lately, huh? Damn, dude, he's seriously on fire. We did a training, I have a community. There’s a free community on WhatsApp with almost a thousand people. If anyone wants to join, just go to my Instagram, I share it there. It’s called Copycave.

What is your Instagram again? It's @matheuslourenco._ It will appear on the screen, guys, Matheus Lourenço, for those... We do live classes there every week. I did a class with João about creatives, and everyone started roasting me. Have you seen that dictator Mbappé meme? Everyone kept saying I was the dictator, because, man, we started teaching... Mbappé the dictator... Then João started showing them, and before long, he started opening up some of our creatives and showing them. And I was like, “Bro, what are you trying to do?” So I cut his screen off and said, “Alright, that’s

enough. I think everyone already gets it,” you know? Then everyone was like, “Let him show it. Matheus, you dictator.” Apparently, I’m the dictator over there, but anyway. We were talking about this, and he said, “Man, you know what I’ve been noticing? There’s no reason to keep trying to come up with completely different hooks for a creative. There are already hooks that have been validated, and you have competitors using hooks that are already proven to work. When you take, for example, a viral creative, usually the hook worked really well, because that’s actually what made the creative

go viral. So why would I try to reinvent it and come up with something completely different? I’m just gonna take it, model it, and use it.” So what do we mean when we say, “Don’t reinvent the wheel”? You look at your competitor, see that they have a hook that works, and usually, if they know what they’re doing, they’ll repeat it across other creatives, and you’ll notice that pattern. Or maybe you saw a video that went viral with a specific hook, in that case, model that one. Why do I say you should have two, and at

most three hooks? Because two is basically this: you can take one hook that’s already been validated in paid traffic by one of your competitors, and another that’s been validated organically, from a video that went viral. And then you open a third one so you can do something kind of in the flow, something you think is actually gonna work and all, using that formula I talked About, using an angle, yeah, another... a different pain point or benefit and that's it. But don't try to reinvent the wheel on the hook. On the hook, look at what's actually

working and model that. No, there's really nothing to invent here. Uh-huh. You know? Yeah, and don't make too many hooks either, because I know that became really common for the nutra or black offers crowd, to make creatives with five, 10, 15 hooks. Man, no. Two at most, maybe three max. Yeah, they do that a lot, right, man. But I think they actually need to do that, look, because their operation-- They have to, because they end up winning on volume, that same point, right. For us, it just doesn't make sense anymore, especially because it usually stops

working if I start doing it too much. So for us the magic number is two, and sometimes three. Man, you just kind of said the single word that... I hate the most in copy, right bro? Which is big idea. I don't like it either. The big idea, right? And man, in reality.... I mean, the truth is that, like... Man, the big idea, out of infinite ways people define it, right, where everyone kinda says something different. And bro, in my view, it's solely the core topic of the thing, right? The central topic, man, perfect. Perfect. Exactly,

it's about, like, what we're actually talking about. So João, our term for that is gonna be central thesis, okay? They ditched Big Idea over there, it's gonna be the creative's central thesis. Central thesis. Because then, like I said, shall we talk about the body now? I think that covers the hook. Just let me explain... I want to get your opinion on this big idea thing, which I'll actually explain to you right here. About this central thesis here. Well dude, back when I used to make creatives, right. I did it like this: I'd take it and

I always had the central thesis, the big idea of what I wanted to talk about, Which usually comes from copywriting principles. So, like, promising some benefit with some unique proof and some curiosity. Telling the person they're Kind of doing something wrong. There's that super classic headline, you guys actually know it. Do you know the headline "Do you make these mistakes in English?" Have you heard of that one, or no? Do you make little mistakes here and there? No, not that one. He was the first guy who used "these". Like, oh, if you're watching, like, oh,

do you make these mistakes? Then the guy goes: "What mistakes?" Like today, any crazy guy posts that on Instagram, but back then, boom! Man, these what? My God, it was a total revolution. My absolute favorite one ever is from... John Caples? No, David Ogilvy. Which one? Oh, how does it go? At 70 miles an hour, the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock. That one I think is brutal. Man, the funny thing is I don't really like that guy, bro. Because I think it's too much... I mean, he has his elegance,

he's an elegant, classy man. I like Gary Halbert, bro. Gary Halbert, uh.. John Carlton. My favorite killer headline... The man who was jailed for his copies, Gary Halbert. Man, yeah, I like John Carlton. Put it on the screen right there, Thiago or Renata, whoever, the headline about the one-legged golfer, bro. Wow, that one is really good too. The one-legged golfer, man. What the hell is that? Man, I have a headline framework, which is a set of headline instructions that I pass on to the guys, to my mentees, and that one is actually one of the

ones I use as an example. Because, man, it is brutal. Because, like, he has the benefit-- The one-legged golfer who beat everyone in the whole thing. Yeah, the secrets of the one-legged golfer that make you hit better, like, but it has that benefit... This one and that one. Yeah. It was three benefits with that angle of the one-legged Golfer. That one is so good. But then, like, I come from that school of copy, bro, of having something where the guy says: "What the hell is this? What is that? How so?" Something incongruous with proof and

benefit that borders on crazy, but has enough of a grain of truth to catch the person's attention right there. So like, bro, my creatives always had a completely defined central thesis, and then I'd vary the communication, the actual way of saying that thing right there, you know? So, for example, there was one... I used to sell collagen, right? I actually sold a ton of collagen back then. And there are specific types of collagen out there. There's collagen for bones, which is type two, and there's collagen for skin, which is type one. So I went ahead

and kind of made a list of type two collagens. And I printed out the list, right? Yeah, and my copy went like this: "Man, if you're taking this collagen right here, stop taking it right now because you won't look any younger." Essentially, that was my central thesis. You shouldn't be taking this collagen here, you need to take this other one. And then I made creatives about it. And I made several. There was a creative that was a video saying: "Look, a list of collagens came out, if your collagen is on this list here, you need

to stop right now because it won't rejuvenate you, it's a collagen that's strictly for bones. If you want, you can click right here to watch this video and stuff." It was an advertorial back then, wow, that was a long time ago. A long time ago, for real. You click right here to see this advertorial that will show you which collagen actually rejuvenates you. So it's actually the exact same thesis, same topic, just in a video. Then there was another one over there... where I printed the list out on physical paper, right? Then I grabbed my

phone, took a photo of the list, and the list was like this, it had three rows, it was an Excel spreadsheet, right? It had three green Rows, four yellow ones, and all the rest were red. And then I said: "If your collagen is on this list, stop, stop taking it immediately." Right away I make the person wonder, man... what could possibly be wrong here? Yes. Am I gonna die? What's going on? So it generates extra curiosity. Uh-huh. And it was the same concept, except it was an image creative and all I changed was the headline:

"If your collagen is on this list, stop taking it immediately." Then the person clicked, went to the advertorial, and it said: "Look, if you want to rejuvenate, you don't take type two collagen, you have to take type one collagen." Same topic, but now it's an image with a headline, you see? Back in those days, man, honestly, I didn't even think about body or hook, it was just like, what's the core idea of the thing and how do I make different versions to deliver this communication so it converts. Yes, uh-huh. and dude, do you think that's

something simpler or more advanced? Do you think this is applied nowadays in the market, man? Or do you think it's not applied out there? Because in my mind, it was kind of all about what the thesis was, and each thesis yields a different creative length. And you can do it in image or video... like, Bro, that's how I did it. And it worked, you know? Yeah, I think it's something that does work, but it's a bit advanced. I think given the current market level today, especially with the amount of people coming in, I think maybe

it's something a little more advanced-- You gotta have the idea of the... of the thesis, right? Yeah, I think the copywriter, especially the guy who's more advanced, will think about that a lot. Someone who's more of a beginner or not even a copywriter is much more about looking at things. And then I talk about more tangible and simple things, which is what? Man, look at what creates curiosity, what engages, for example. Man... one thing... I think it was Alef over at Hannah who said this somewhere, right, that he'd seen us talk about it, you see?

I recorded a podcast with him last week. Uh-huh. And dude, he mentioned something like, how they looked at what people were commenting, what had likes on comments, because that brings-- Yeah, he mentioned that one, he said that. Man, that, for example, is something you can bring to your hooks. Like, what are people commenting, bring that into the creative hook, not just in your creative, but sometimes in organic comments that your audience leaves, that your audience likes and engages with... Because let's suppose, what was the hook for Pri's winning creative, for example? And bro, it was

a hook that didn't have any of that, right? The hook was like: "Man, this is Prisciane. It's not Priscila, nor Cristiane." Because people kept joking around with her name right there, like, her name is Priciane, so guys would call her Priscila, some people called her Cristiane, people kept commenting on that kind of stuff. And she simply brought that little joke into the hook. But it was something that was really engaging, you know? People comment and all. I saw a guy posting the other day saying that he had a creative with a high CPM, so what

did he kind of do? He had a little headline on the creative, and he just wrote that headline with a Portuguese typo so people would comment: "Oh, that's wrong, whatever." And then the CPM on the creative totally dropped. So I think the easiest way for a guy to think is like: man, put in a term or something you know will be curious or engage people in some way, right? And like I said, if you don't wanna mess up, look at what's working in your organic stuff. Go to organic, go to the guys who produce organic

content, there are several really good guys. And there's a guy there... Like that Arthur Paek type from "Bora Fazer" whatever, which is a hook that works like crazy. We did that, man, back in like 2024, we made a creative with that hook that worked like crazy and still works to this day. To this day we have creatives like that that work. There's that guy whose handle I think is Marcola, Marcola Maia, something like that. And he makes videos where he usually has these hooks like: look, 30 days, 30 ways to make money with the internet.

Today I'm gonna show you whatever. Man, simple, and it works like crazy. You get it? yeah. So much so that you see these content creators usually repeating their hooks a lot, right? awesome, bro. Exactly... so that's why I say that just like format, looking at those organic hooks also gives you confidence, because, man, the organic folks think about the hook a lot. I was shocked by that. I think even more than the... Man, way more, so much more. than the paid traffic guys. That's why I knew it. When I saw Hannah's piece for the first

time, I said: "Holy shit, when this girl makes a VSL, she's gonna blow up." Because she really knows her stuff. Yeah, so Albertone, who I actually mentioned from the interview, I was talking to him once, and he was saying that, man, they build their videos over there and they think like crazy about the hook, about the visual appearance of how it's gonna look right there, about what they'll say and etc., because that kind of 100% determines the virality of his ad, you see? Including an insight he pulled from organic, I don't know if this is

still applying to paid traffic yet, but he told me, let's say, we were having lunch at the beginning of the year and he was talking about this, he said: "Man, we did a study here and realized that nowadays the hook on our videos isn't three seconds anymore like it used to be. Now it's 1.5." Now it's 1.5 seconds. Why did I realize that? 1.5 seconds? Yeah, Because the peak retention we get at 1.5 is being more relevant than at three seconds. And then we realized our videos weren't hitting the view count they used to, so

we started taking what we did in three seconds and bringing it down to 1.5, and then it started improving and all. So, man, those guys study that like crazy, you know? So there's nothing better than simply taking it and modeling what they've already gotten right in terms of hooks over there. So I think the hook is pretty straightforward. It's uncomplicated. Just follow that line right there. And man, If you're enjoying the episode here, if it gave you any kind of insight to make money, to scale your company, whatever it might be, man, just check out

the screenshot that's about to pop up here on the screen. That right there is a guy who liked the episode and he took the link and shared it right here in a WhatsApp group. So, it costs nothing for him to do that. He just thought it was cool, picked it up, and shared it. And I'm asking you to do the exact same thing he's doing, copy the link to this episode right here and throw it into a WhatsApp group over there. show it to more people, right? To a friend, to a business partner, to any

kind of person. That might seem super simple, right? And in fact it is, it's 100% free, but doing that allows more people to find out about our podcast here, and consequently it grows, allowing me to bring more and more people on to create content for you and help you grow your business even more. And like I said, it's 100% free, there's no cost for you to do it. The only thing you'll be doing is helping out another entrepreneur, the exact same way you're being helped by this episode right here. So, go ahead and do that,

share it, because then the VTurb podcast will keep growing and I can bring more people to produce this free content right here for you, alright? So let me get straight to the episode. Man... I think a cool insight to pass along to people is that we have to... I mean, the creative has to execute a job. Which is, man, it has to stop the person, right? Like, actually get the person to consume the creative so they can click, you know? Exactly. And that's it. And then the way for you to do that here is what

we're talking about, folks. And there are so many ways to do this. The same way that if you want to, let's say, dig a hole, you can dig with a shovel, you know? There are multiple ways to do this right here. The absolute easiest way of all is for you to look at: man, what's the piece, the function, the material that's already doing this job of stopping the person and grabbing attention, and replicate it, right? That's the easiest of all, but what we actually have to do is this job right here. And what I said

back then, man, about the list thing, right, I think that's advanced. Yes. I think that... because, like, it's as if it were a mini VSL for each creative. So much so that my creative volume wasn't high, it was low. It was a small number of creatives, but it was purely original creatives. Purely hard-hitting creatives like that, like the list one, you know? Which you cannot even vary that much, because it's a kind of more closed-off idea out there, you see? But you don't actually need to do that, man. You can use any other... right, you

don't need to. So you can use any other kind of these little pieces that execute, as long as they execute these functions: stop the person, retain the person so they can click, you get it? Exactly. And a lot of times you can manage to do that, look, inside an image. Right? Because you don't need to have copy. Maybe the very first frame of the video is already curious enough to make the person click. and it's important to highlight in this case it's an image, but it's inside the video. Because nowadays our creatives are 100% video,

right? I think that's the rule, but it's worth reinforcing because sometimes people ask: "Do you guys do static ads?" No, we don't. It's 100% video Uh-huh. Why 100% video? Because we run a VSL flow, and naturally with video I bring a lead that's already in a better frame of mind to watch the VSL. Sometimes it's hard for me to bring a guy who sees a static creative and make him stop, at least nowadays. So nowadays our productions are 100% video. But man, yeah, so regarding the hook, majorly that's it. And then even expanding so we

can talk about the body, by the way, talk about the body... See, folks? The podcast is bilingual, right? Yeah... I really lean into that idea you mentioned that... Man, what is the job of the creative? It's to break through the barrier of the first click. And that's it. Like, it's to break through the barrier of the first click. What I have to do is that, because the first click is the hardest one, right? Like, it's as if it were... it's the first date, like, it's the hardest one to get. So when you do that, then,

right, part one-- the first thing is having a hook that's good enough to do that, and the hook, like we said, you don't need to rack your brain to make it, there are several things already validated that you can simply model. When we move into the body of the creative, there's also a lot of that, because what is the body of the creative gonna be? I say there are those elements, several copy elements right there. And like, I'll be completely honest that I'm not that great at remembering this off the top of my head. There's

a little document, we have a little document that, like, I say I'm gonna print this thing out. Every time we hire a copywriter, I'm gonna send it to his house. What do you mean? But what elements are you talking about? You don't need to know everything, but... So man, curiosity, promise, problem, argumentative copy elements, right? Analogy, demonstration, mechanism spoiler, anyway, those are the copy elements. So we have a document where we have those elements listed. What is the structure of the creative? It's nothing more than a union, the... the body of the creative, right? What

is it? A union of these elements. A sum of them. Exactly So some creatives will have three of these elements, some will have two, and some will sometimes only have one, it's shorter content, there's gonna-- And how do you know how many it's gonna have? If it'll have one, if it'll have two, three, or five. Good one. That comes a lot from what you're gonna... from the way you're gonna build that creative. So let's take the most standard ways here, at least the three ways I consider the most standard. First thing: if it's a creative

that you're gonna model from paid ads. So you saw a competitor of yours running it, I want to model the body of that creative. You're gonna download that creative, you're gonna transcribe it. Nowadays there are tools, and I don't remember which tool I use over at the library to download it, but there's one, maybe later I can send it or put it on the screen for the folks. But there's a tool where I download the creative, transcribe that creative. Today, to transcribe a creative, you just send it to any AI and it transcribes that thing.

You transcribe it... and then, you have its copy right there, you're simply gonna grab that structure, and seek to understand what the guy said at each moment. So like, ah, first he talked about a problem, then he put in proof, then he put in an analogy, anyway, you dissect what elements he used. Sometimes if you're a beginner and have a bit of trouble with this, you can even ask an AI: "Man, help me understand what element this guy used here, where did he use a problem, where did he put a promise, where did he bring

in a spoiler for his mechanism." But look, you guys have to know that, okay? You have to know that stuff, folks. To me, that's already a beginner, right? If you don't know that... Yeah. It's just identifying it, man. Yeah, like I got mad, bro. And then from the moment you identify it, you're gonna think like this: "Man, I'm gonna make a creative, and in this creative I'm gonna repeat these elements. So I'm gonna start off talking about a problem." Does it need to be the exact same problem the guy used? It doesn't need to be

the same problem, it can be a different problem and this we call the invisible structure. I'm gonna talk here, then I'm gonna put in proof, then I'm gonna, anyway, bring in this structure. Done, right there you have the body of the creative. So, the first way, then, is this way, it's not you who creates them. They already come built, you just identify them and position them, right, according to your creative, you know? When we bring stuff from organic, for example, then it enters a case of... usually the body structures like that from organic, they aren't

the best, right, which is what I said earlier. Without a doubt. So, usually what's really valuable in organic is the format. But the structure itself, does it work? Not always. Usually, to grab that structure from organic-- Has it ever happened to be one of your top ads, for example? The structure from organic... Man, copy structure... Because I think their structure is pretty weak. I don't remember an ad like that where, like, that was... because usually what do we do? We grab the format, we have that structure from that video, but then that's where we tweak

it the most, that's where, like it or not, the technical ability of the copywriter comes in, to take that existing structure and modify it. Modify it, whether by removing things or by adding things. Yeah. And then, what are these things, right, that he's gonna add or that he's gonna remove? Those principles, you mean? Yeah. Those things are gonna be based on: if the guy is starting an offer right now, it's gonna be heavily based on what's been working for his competitors in his library over there... Like, those elements, those arguments. If the guy already has

an offer that's running, already had a few creatives that validated, and then he identified, for example, during analysis calls that, man, every creative where we make promise X, that creative works. You're gonna replicate that promise X that way right there, you're gonna replicate that analogy that way right there. We talked about the creative thesis structure. Let's suppose the guy has a structure where every time I mention three steps in the creative, where I build a little three-step structure, that creative works. So I'm gonna add this to this structure right here. From this organic structure, a

lot of times we'll keep the format a lot, but we'll give that little tweak to the copy structure itself. So that would be the second way, where I bring it from organic, where I maintain the format, but then I tweak the structural part of the copy in the creative itself much more. And then there's the third way, which I think is already something a little bit more advanced, which is when the copywriter, based on what he already knows works, the time he has in the market, builds the creative, which is doing what we used to

do back in the day when it was more hardcore, when there wasn't so much of this thing of looking at organic and stuff, where sometimes you'd think, sometimes an autonomous idea came up. Uh-huh. That's when this person actually knows the elements and understands the formats that work, so they can build something. Oh, there's a format that works... I'm gonna build a different structure. But I'll mix and match the elements I'm gonna use... The order they're in, and so on. Just that, like I said, usually it's more of a thing for a copywriter who's already more

advanced, who's in the day-to-day grind and all. More advanced. Yeah, in the beginning, for the first batches, I recommend doing it in those two primary ways. And then later, once the guy starts hitting the mark, he starts taking that Freedom right there. "ah, I'm gonna kind of create a different body right here." The only recommendation I have is this: you can create different bodies, but try to keep at least the invisible structure, which is that first point we mentioned that works... And what are you gonna do in practice? You can mix up the way you

make that concrete right there. Let's suppose, a problem. You know that the invisible structure of your creative is gonna address the problem. And then, for instance, you actually know the problem you address there is the guy... Earning just a minimum wage out there. Earning a minimum wage is really tough, right? I mean, that's the problem. The structure there is the problem. But if I want to make a different body, for example, I can bring an exposure of that problem in a different way, but still keep talking about the problem. I could say, for example: "Man..."

In that case, increasing the intensity of the element. If I'm talking about a problem like: "My salary isn't cutting it." Then he'd say: "The worst thing in life is not being able to put food on the table for my kids." Something like that. Just like that. He's keeping the problem. Exactly. It's still a problem, but he intensifies it. Man, I used to do that all the time. sometimes you don't even need to intensify it, sometimes you just swap it out. I'll give you an example: But intensifying it, in theory, is better. Or do you think

it's not? Man, I don't think there's any strict rule. At least I never stopped to see if intensifying or just swapping it out makes a difference. It might be. Like this, look... sure, man, take a creative you have where the structure is A promise, a proof, and a CTA. The absolute basics of all. "Did you know this thing right here can work for you?" Then if your proof says right after: "Yeah, it worked for Maria." That's one thing. But if you put: "It worked for 10,000 people here and was featured on the cover of Forbes

USA." I'll give you an example right here. We had an expert, we actually still have her right now, a health and weight loss expert, where in her creative we kind of said that the reason a person couldn't lose weight out there was because her body was inflamed. So we hit that problem: "Your body is inflamed, that's why you can't lose weight." What did the copywriter do? He took that problem right there and then, instead of just putting that she was inflamed, he added what we call a mechanism spoiler, which was the mechanism itself, and that's

the trick right there that I think is absolute genius. That's actually something I encourage copywriters to do during maintenance batches. Sometimes they put catchy names or mechanisms in the creative that aren't even in the VSL yet, just to see if it works. What happened with this expert? We kept hammering on: "Your body is inflamed because of certain foods you eat." That's what we used to say. Then he actually tested putting a different problem mechanism right there... He started saying something like: "You can't lose weight out there because you're actually eating these seven foods, which are...

I can't say the real mechanism name right now, so I'll kind of invent a random one here... the CIF foods. What are these seven CIF foods? They are chronic inflammatory foods that inflame your system every single time you eat them." Before, in the validated creative, we actually only said: "You can't lose weight because your body is inflamed by certain foods," but I didn't specify the exact amount of foods. So what did he do right there? He gave it that extra boost and also added that element showing they are the CIF foods, which are those chronic

inflammatory foods. And based on that idea right there, this creative validated big time and sold like crazy. And then, what did we actually notice from that creative? It was a creative that sold a lot, but it didn't retain people on the VSL as much. Its retention compared to others was lower, yet it sold heavily. Why? Because in the VSL we didn't mention those CIF foods, so we lacked congruency, but everyone who made it through bought it anyway. So what did we do? We simply added that to the thesis right there—went into the mechanism, the VSL

thesis structure, and added it. If you don't know what a thesis is, watch my VSL podcast episode. We added that element, and it became a perfect match out there. The creative was selling, the VSL was adjusted, the VSL metrics improved, and we scaled. I mean, that's why I like giving copywriters freedom, especially in these maintenance batches right now, to pretty much add those different little things to the body elements to run these tests. You get it? Man... I consider that an intensification, you know? like... Intensification? Could be. Because, I mean, of course, man, he added

a term that acts as a proof element, you know? He's proving it even further through specificity, showing that the body really inflames. So much so that there's a specific name for it: chronic inflammatory foods, so there's a reason behind it. Exactly, he gives a reason why. Yeah, a reason why. Now you nailed it, man. He increased the level of proof. Exactly. it's definitely an intensification. Good call right there. Yeah, that's it... like, I think this intensification thing... is a really... Man, you can straight up smash it right there, bro. Tear it wide open. Hey Gab,

how long is the podcast now? Man, you managed to pull off two four-hour podcasts. Holy crap. He's pulling our leg, guys. He managed to do two four-hour podcasts, that's insane. And he only went to the bathroom once, the guy doesn't even pee. He drank like three waters, two waters, plus an energy drink. that was just once, right? That was just once. Awesome. But man, at the end of the day, in my view, it's all about ''AIDA''. You gotta grab attention, generate interest, make the person want to click, and tell them to click. It's practically the

core foundation. It's the foundation. That's the core principle. Then the ways to execute this are endless, like which format generates interest and all that. Uh-huh. But once we have this working right here, and, man, if you see a creative scaling, it means it's actually working, right? So you can intensify those... I mean, those little pieces of this conversion machine. And dude, if you put an element there that fulfills its job better than the other, like you said: "Damn, Mechanism Spoiler, in my view, that's the greatest proof element of all, because it creates hope for the

person." Yeah, it builds hope. So if a testimonial says something like: "Did you know this thing right here can make you a lot of money?" Like: "For example, Maria made money with this." Man, a testimonial element is way weaker than a mechanism proof element, because the mechanism gives people real hope, it has a solid reason why the thing actually works, and it previews a bit of what appears in the VSL to build curiosity. So it has all these elements that a plain testimonial just lacks. So if you go ahead and insert that proof element, why

wouldn't it work? Totally. I mean, I'd say that a solid creative body doesn't need every single element out there, because there are so many. As I said, inside our company right Now we have documentation detailing all elements, explanations, and examples that copywriters use as reference to build their ads. But... as a general rule, what I say a good creative has, what elements does a good creative usually have? Let's see. The hook, following that core idea we covered, and then, frustration. First thing is calling out the frustrations the person is facing. What is frustration? Listing everything

they are trying to solve their problem that isn't working. You highlight those frustrations and explain why they fail: "If you're trying to make money online, stop trying Pix bots, affiliate stuff, none of that works." That Pix bot thing really scaled, didn't it? It's been three years and people are still talking about it. They still talk about it today, man. It's crazy. "Stop trying that stuff right there because it actually just throws your money in the trash. The best way to make money online right now is kind of doing this exact thing." Then I present my

solution. So: frustration, solution. Then I specify that solution, so I bring in some specificity, which is what gives the guy a reason to watch my VSL. I say: "There's a right way to do this right here," which would kind of be the mechanism spoiler, for example. There's a right way to do this right here. Something that actually works really well for us right now is the three-step structure, expanding it into three steps. You say: "I'll teach you real quick in three steps," because it kind of gives that infotainment vibe where the viewer learns while watching.

Step one, step two, step three. "I recorded a class Explaining how to do all this. Click learn more and watch." That's solid right there. That's really good. So what do we do? Hit the frustrations, present your solution. In a health niche, you can lead with the problem first, you know, like chronic inflammatory foods, explain the problem, then kind of move to the solution. In make money online, hit the frustration and go straight to the new solution. Uh-huh. Show that you have something unique, which kind of serves as your mechanism spoiler. Then... I go ahead and

do the three-step framework, right? I put those three steps in there just like I mentioned in the tutorial, followed by the CTA. All right, so the creative body pretty much revolves around that structure right there. It completely revolves around that. Got it. Good stuff. And then we wrap it up with the CTA. calm down okay? We are gonna talk about the CTA. But still on the body, man... uhhh.... dude, you mentioned that three-step thing, right? Damn, I actually miss being a copywriter, man. I was really good, you know Gab? I was really good at this

stuff. I studied this topic a lot... yeah, I liked it, it was awesome. But man... Do you know Frank Kern? Have you heard of him? I know him. He used to say something, that I found really interesting, you know? Which is a core principle that... that I've always carried along with Gary Bencivenga's teachings—the ones that talk about constantly increasing the proof in your sales messages. He says this: Man, the best way to prove to someone right there that... that your message is worth their time is to actually make your message worth their time. You see?

And it's kind of obvious, right, man? So if you tell someone something and they realize it was worth their time, they will want to consume more because that will be worth their time as well. So in your creative, if you want to prove to the person that it's worth clicking on your VSL, that it's worth watching this video right here, the best way to do that is inside your creative, proving to them that watching that creative was worth it, you get it? Yeah. And... you did that with that list thing, right dude? Because, like, you

delivered real value in the creative, you know? It wasn't like... It wasn't that pushy salesperson image, because people already get the feeling like: "Wow, I already learned something right here in the creative, imagine in the..." The person watches the creative and says: "Damn, I liked this. This stuff is interesting, I want to know more." You get it? That concept right here is a core principle that needs to stay sharp in people's minds, because it stops a guy from making a creative where he just crams a bunch of copy principles that the person won't even want

to watch. And if they are a little bit more sophisticated, you know, they'll say: "Damn, this guy is just wasting my time." "If you have this problem right here, today I'm gonna tell you a solution that will change your life. My name is Little Pete, I've done this and that, and the solution I'm gonna share can completely change your life, so click here to learn more." My brother, what value did you deliver to that person? Absolutely nothing, zero. So you just wasted their time, while in your head you think: "Oh, I grabbed attention, I converted

to interest, I dropped the CTA." But did you prove to them that you can actually help them in the VSL? You didn't prove a thing, man. So that's why what you said about the list is extremely powerful, and I think that's a core principle everyone needs to keep sharp in their mind. Yeah, and that's just one example. There are many ways to cite that list or build that step-by-step framework. But what is the core principle? Deliver value. Exactly. If your creative delivers value to the person, you're set. And it doesn't necessarily have to be in

the content itself. It can be in the format, it can be an engaging format, and like.. And while you explain those steps, you can open a few open loops in the person's mind that will make it worth their time to watch your VSL. Let's suppose you're running a weight loss offer. I'll use an example from that analogy I made earlier. If I told the person: "Look, there are seven foods that are those CIF foods, which are chronic inflammatory foods." I could even say I have a class explaining them, without even dropping a CTA yet, just

saying: "Actually, I have a class where I break them down." You know? Like: "In fact, the fourth food on the list, I'm sure you eat it every day without even knowing it." Right there I opened that loop. Later, during my CTA—we'll talk about CTAs in just a second—I can reinforce those open loops I created, driving the person even more to watch the class. For instance, I can say: "So, if you want to watch the full class... and in this class I reveal what that fourth CIF food is that you eat every day without knowing it."

"I recorded a class showing exactly what they are." So I add even more value for the person to watch the VSL, building on what I explained within those three steps. They can serve to open loops that will motivate the viewer even further to jump straight into your VSL and watch it right there. Uh-huh. Got it. Good stuff... And Tell me about this CTA topic. What is important in a CTA? Man... the CTA is the cherry on top you know? It's like the offer section in a VSL, right? But a lot of people mess this up.

I gave the example of that consulting client of mine who had a creative with every reason to blow up, but he made a half-assed CTA, and that ruined the creative's CTR, it ruined the click-through rate. So I always say that in the CTA it's important to have that clear vision, because let's break it down. When you launch a creative on Meta, I mean, what are you actually buying right there? Dude, you're buying the click. right? Meta basically sells click inventory for creatives, that's what they sell, you know? And what actually drives that click right there?

It's the CTA, you know, it's that call to action that you make. So I always recommend this to my copywriters, and, man, I used to do this all the time back then, especially when you're running validation batches and maintenance batches, which is really the perfect place to actually test different things out and build various, like, CTA styles. So, there's a more direct CTA style right here, which is a CTA that I don't really build out too much, you know? I simply go ahead and say: "Man, want to learn this? Click learn more below and watch

the video." Bro, hold on, just to make it crystal clear for everyone, okay? I mean, CTA stands for Call to Action, which you already know, right? But just in case you don't. If you don't know, it's that final little part of the creative, you know, where we tell people: "Hey, click right here." But damn, if someone made it through three and a half hours of a podcast in the world, they definitely know what a CTA is, right? Sure, they know. But just in case, right? So alright. You have the direct CTA, which is simply: "Click

learn more, click the button below and watch." And within the copy, I can create variations Presenting my VSL as a lesson, inviting them to watch a lesson: "Click here, I recorded a lesson explaining this." Or I can frame my VSL as a video: "Click here, I recorded a video about this." I can... frame it as a challenge sometimes, you know? Because I mentioned that in the podcast episode about formats, man, during the VSL podcast where I talked like about the challenge format we run in VSLs. I said: "Look, I recorded a challenge showing this, click

right here." Or I can say: "I recorded a presentation demonstrating this." There are several ways you can frame it. Usually, framing it as a lesson works best. Lessons generally perform the highest. But in some niches, calling it a video might perform better, which is why I recommend testing those subtle differences in structure. So you have that kind of direct CTA. There's also a CTA where I actually build more urgency, which is what? I add an urgency element while building the pitch: "Look, I made this lesson available." The classic line is: "But it could go offline

at any moment." Because it really can. Sometimes the landing page goes down. The account can get banned. Yeah, so it's not even a lie to say that. So watch it right now. I've seen people do this... I've never personally done it, but I've seen people say: "I made this lesson available, and there are only about 150 spots left." That's more scarcity than urgency, but it's still a scarcity and urgency element that makes the person want to watch that video or lesson right away. Uh-huh. You can frame it that way as well. Some people use time

limits right there: "This Lesson will actually stay open for the next 24 hours, click and watch." That's when I kind of add an urgency or scarcity element to prompt the viewer to watch. I've also seen: "Look, I used to sell this lesson for x amount of dollars." So if you can't say you sold it, you say: "I could easily sell this lesson for $97, in fact people who watched it told me that. But I'll leave it available for free for a little while longer right there. So hurry up and actually watch while it's still free."

You didn't lie about anything there, so that works great. And there's also a CTA style that I build which is what I'd call, you know, like, a more complete CTA, where I combine that urgency element with a mini-list of things the viewer will actually learn inside the VSL. Curious points. Curious points, exactly. In that video or lesson, I actually basically run a double CTA right there, you know? What is a double CTA? I drop a direct CTA first, then I build out a list framework before dropping the second CTA. For example: "To watch a lesson

explaining this, click learn more right now, because in this lesson I'll reveal the seven foods that inflame your body, including the fourth food that every nutritionist recommends, which you eat every day and might be the biggest enemy behind your inflammation. I'll also show you how to reverse that inflammation with... a 100% natural gut detox, kind of, you know, that you can apply at home starting today. So, look, I mean, I could easily charge $97 for this lesson alone, right? But I'm keeping it free right here for a little while longer. You see? So If you

want to watch it, click learn more and check it out quickly." Alright, so I dropped two CTAs within that creative. That double CTA structure Allows me to insert a list and even add proof inside that gap between calls to action. So I can say: "In fact, these were the results from someone who watched this lesson. Here is his before and after." Like: "He sent me this message right here." And inside that double CTA, we can also add a commitment closer, which removes... That's the exact word, man: closing commitment. Exactly Closing commitment. What is a commitment

closer? It's a way to differentiate your offer from what people usually see out there. You can say: "Look," let's suppose I showed a proof element. "He watched the lesson, look at the results he got. I want to challenge you to do something: go watch this lesson, then come back here and leave a comment, or send me a DM letting me know what you thought." That completely shifts the focus away from a sales pitch and establishes a commitment right there. Yeah. right? We know one of the most important concepts in copy is commitment, right? That mental

trigger of commitment and consistency from psychological principles. So if I do that, I'm showing the guy I'm not just trying to sell him something. Just go watch it, see if it works, and come back to thank me later. Execute that right there. Did you notice? That's it, that's exactly it. Did you notice that... All the elements you mentioned They are... The same closing elements as the VSL? Yeah, it is. You noticed? Yeah. It's just that you mentioned one... One of each. Like, for example, There's this list for you, like... when we tell the guy, "you'll

learn this and that in the product." It builds curiosity so he wants to see it. There's also that whole challenge thing, you know, which in theory works kind of like a guarantee. Like, check this out, see if it's actually real or not. If it's not, just message me, right? Have you ever thought about... Really... applying all the closing elements... In your creative? Adding a guarantee in there... which you kind of added... Like... You added the list, right, which is basically the deliverables from the product. Adding the two paths at the end. So you can say,

"watch this video"... You can just ignore me, scroll past, or you can click and watch. You can click and see what happens, got it? It's free. Because this is really a closing, right? It's a closer. But in the creative, for some reason, we add fewer elements than a VSL. It would be challenging to add... Not everything, but we've tested it, actually we test that stuff, since we produce a high volume of creatives, we test a bunch of things, including changing the CTA format. I won't say what it is, but our main CTA, It's not even...

It's not about telling people to click "learn more" or whatever. It's an urgency element, an extremely subtle urgency element, but I know it works. We didn't know it worked, but we tested it and started using it. You know? So, yeah... Urgency is also in the closing. Same exact thing. Exactly. So yeah, we apply the same concepts and principles in those maintenance batches, and once we validate it, we bring it into the recording. You run webinars, right? So you know that, once we make the pitch, The more you talk after the pitch, the more it converts.

If you talk for four hours, people will still be watching. And people just keep buying. I remember doing my VTurb webinar every Thursday. I'd end it in an hour and a half, but the webinar was three hours. I'd spend that time answering questions, reinforcing the pitch, and people kept buying more. Totally, yeah. So, man, since it's a creative, there's no time limit. Have you tried the first CTA and... and then stretching out that... That second part, doing multiple CTAs. Like what you said, "click here, I prepped a class". CTA number one: in this class, I'll

show you this and that. CTA number two: "check out Maria's result, look what she said." Then you add the testimonial. CTA number three: if I were you, I'd check this out right now, because it might disappear, that's scarcity, and then CTA number four: "And now you've got two paths, scroll past this or come over here." CTA number five: Keep going, man. Ever tried that? You'd end up with a longer creative, but your CTA's already up front, so it doesn't matter. Yeah. I called it CTA stacking. I've done it, not like five, but three at most.

Yeah, but... The copy guys probably test that stuff too. So yeah, I don't recall a winning ad doing that. Me neither, actually. But yeah. I've tested with three, sometimes putting a call to action at the start. Today our creatives average about a minute to two minutes... That's our typical length. I think that, in theory, When we talk about persuasion, it's going to increase, I believe so. But the problem... Yeah, for sure, man. But what's the problem then: The problem is, we gain on persuasion, we're definitely increasing the persuasion level of the message, since we're raising

the level of proof, But we're going to lose on delivery. Because I think the platforms, Instagram, YouTube, aren't going to like shoving a giant video up there, you know? And that's the problem. I don't think it's the psychology, the problem is the platform will mess you up. Since it prefers shorter videos. Agreed. And now we're getting into it. Since we've wrapped up these three copy elements... which brings us to the "dopamine writing" point. At this point, I say that the copywriter nowadays... has to see beyond just the copy. Because a lot of times, the guy

might be good at copy, But... He has to organize the best way to present it. So the expert can record it. You know? And that's where dopamine writing comes in. What do we mean by dopamine writing? It's about building and structuring it in a way that, first: No long paragraphs. So the copies always have... Paragraphs, or sections that are more to the point. So he's not gonna have a four-line paragraph in the creative, no. It's more like two, three lines max. And between those lines, Usually the copywriter indicates it. They put it in the creative

brief: b-roll swaps. So you record this first part, these two lines, then visual cuts. Record this line, visual cuts. He marks those changes to guide the recording. And inside the document, there’s also a specific format for the document we send. So what do we include in that Google Docs format: we basically create that little table in Google Docs and put everything in there. And in that table, first, what's the creative's format, What's the reference... for recording. So I always say... What’s the reference? Where did you get this from? And attach the link there too, whether

it came from a library or from organic content... There always has to be some kind of reference. I always say, “Man, there always needs to be at least one reference here.” So, the reference. A briefing for the recording. If there's something specific we want done during the recording, that's a note for the recording. An editing brief, how you want the editor to put it together. Usually, they add those editing instructions as comments directly on the creative. So they’ll add a comment saying “In this take, use a split screen...” They put those instructions directly in the

comments. And that's part of dopamine writing. Because dopamine, at the end of the day, is about creating anticipation that keeps people hooked, and it mainly happens first when someone does good work on copy and format choice, and second, when he presents it, which is really about delivering that text, that copy, in a way that's That’s not too long, since it’s a creative. So it should be dynamic. With those... Those visual cuts, you know? And with shorter copy constructions, like I mentioned... So two to three lines max. With those visual cuts happening, and having the copywriter

indicate where each one should happen. So the expert will already know while recording. Like, if they record the first part in one take, they’ll already know to switch the take and do it this way. So, that will obviously depend on the creative, but I put all of that on the copywriter to indicate. That's interesting. So that's dopamine writing, above all. This is also the dynamic recording, right? And that’s where we get into dynamic recording. Oh, yeah? Exactly, because that writing is what drives the dynamic recording. So how does dynamic recording happen? Once that dopamine writing

exists. But between those, remember I mentioned the expert's tone. What is that expert tone? That's something I always paid attention to when writing for launches. It's like this: It's really important, when you have an expert, that you're able to explore that expert's advantages. So what are those advantages? I'd say they're the traits that only he has. Sometimes it's his accent, sometimes it's just, man, the way he talks. Anyway, everyone's got something that sets them apart. There's a phrase I love that goes, "you are you, and that's your superpower," because you've got your own traits. So

it's important to preserve that when writing for the expert. So what do I always recommend? I used to do this a lot. When I get a new expert, I'll check out their stories to see how they talk, if they have any speech quirks, which sometimes isn't even bad, or how they address their followers, So basically how they usually talk. What kind of analogies do they like to use, that matters. That's why I always tell the copywriter, "study the expert, watch their stories, check their organic content." If they have a podcast, listen to it, try to

get that down. And naturally you start picking up on that. You could also send it to an AI, for example, right? Grab some of the expert's organic videos and tell an AI, "identify the patterns of" Words... Language... That usually show up in those videos. Then, when writing the copy, they’ll adapt it to the way the expert writes. Actually, the way the expert talks. I think that was one of the things, back when I made a ton of creatives. Especially early last year... And so, like, basically, I just did it kind of naturally. And my copywriters

would go, "how do you even write like that? Because it already sounds like the expert's talking. Like, if there’s a "Hi" in the creative, like "Hiii, how are you?" It’ll be something like "Hiii"... You know? The tone. That’s generally how I write it. Yeah, sometimes I add grammar mistakes, if that person speaks with... grammar errors, if they talk with... Some kind of metaphor, a language slip, that's fine, you can add it. If they have a specific accent, put that in too, reinforce it. No reason to try to hide it. So the expert's tone exists for

this, "you're not giving the expert some AI copy full of dashes, you're giving them copy that sounds like them." So how do you build that? It's something you gain over time. But one exercise I recommend, a basic copy exercise, is reading your copy out loud once you're done. Read it out loud, see if it flows. Because sometimes you'll notice a paragraph that doesn't need to be there. Something that can be trimmed. So every time I finished a creative, I'd read it and act it out like I was the expert. I’d use the same tone when

saying it. And that’s when I’d realize, like... “Man, I don’t think this paragraph needs to be there.” Because this word's hard to say... So I'd replace it with something simpler, and so on. And that brings out the right tone. And once you bring that dopamine writing and you've got the tone, it naturally boosts the dynamic recording. That's where I say, "if you're complaining your expert "records badly"... That's on you." Because you're probably not giving him good material. Once we started doing this, even experts who were a bit more stiff started producing much better stuff. Like,

actually better on camera. Because that’s usually the biggest objection everyone has. People see Pri’s creatives, for example, and say, “Damn, but Pri is so articulate...” And I’ll say, “Go look at some of her old videos.” I’ve even told Pri: “We need to show this at your talks and stuff,” because if you look at her old videos, she used to talk way more stiffly too. And obviously she's got her own advantages, she's amazing on camera... But... the fact that copywriters hand her better put-together material makes the recording so much more productive. First, one thing we really

emphasize is that our experts shouldn’t become dependent on a teleprompter. Nowadays, most of our experts don't use a teleprompter. Since the lines are short and there are visual cuts, the expert simply reads the sentence gets it, internalizes it Looks at the camera, deliver the line, done, next take. Not a teleprompter, stiff and frozen. And then in editing... with the cuts and all, it looks like it was recorded straight through. Super natural, really good. So basically, with that, we nail the dopamine writing, the expert tone, and dynamic recording, all from how we hand off the document.

Nice. Got it. And then we get to the last step, which is making the edit disruptive. And that depends on the format that was... set up there. That’s why I always tell the copywriter: include references. But don’t just include references, tell your editor exactly what to do. The copywriter has to act like a film director. You know? Like, put in what you want, which element, because the editor won't guess either. If you want a split screen, write it down. Want some motion, an animation? Write that down too. So, build out that dynamic using the comments

there and everything. And since we have operations where we have more than one editor, with Pri, I even told the copywriters: “Guys, come on, You know the editors we've got here. you know each one has their own editing style and their own way of editing. When you're making the creative... You'll know who should edit this. So they send that creative straight to that editor's workload. They don't do this for every creative, but for these specific ones, they route it to the editor they want. So above all, the editor needs a reference, man. Reference. If the

editor gives you bad material, or too many revisions, it's probably a lack of input, like with an AI. If ChatGPT gave you something bad, it's because the input wasn't great. Same with the editor, give him good input, good references. Give good examples. And he'll probably deliver much better material. You know? So... We basically go through those five steps, right. That I... mentioned earlier. That's it. So... Does your copywriter actually go as far as thinking about visual hooks? Because that briefing for the editor can be really strategic. Yeah. And that’s where they add these visual hooks.

Because these visual hooks can either come from the recording or be added during the editing process, and the copywriter is the one who decides that. They’ll define it directly in the document. Because the document spells out what he wants, right in the comments. If he wants a specific visual hook, he puts it there for the editor. And... one thing that... Really motivates people to deliver good work is... And that's where the management side comes in... Is that they get rewarded for good work, right? We pay them... Actually, I think we're still the only white operation

using an expert that pays commission to copywriters and editors. You know? Yeah, the experts are gonna have to level up. If they want to, you know, pull in the crowd. But that makes a huge difference, man. Guys put in insane effort to deliver something, like, absolutely incredible. Yeah. Yeah, I'm excited to see what happens with this market. I think people are gonna get way more professional. So, man, one last question for you... How long have we been podcasting, Gab? He did it again, folks. I told you. I did it again. Did it again. He never

stops, -- drop the meme. Man... Let me ask you something. And it’s totally fine if the answer is no. Okay. The answer can be no. Do you have anything to tell me about... Hiring... influencers... who have formats... that are... replicable. Like that guy's thing, "W-2 or 1099?" And you drop your expert in. And you build a creative based on that? For example: There's this guy, Albertone, right? He asks, "W-2 or 1099?" Pri says, "neither, I'm a business owner." "How much do you make then?" "I make good money, and I've got a class here if anyone

wants it" Any thoughts on that? If you've got the budget, it's totally worth it. We've done this. There's a Pri and Albertone creative running. Really? It sold really well on Meta. But... You know where this creative... really gained a lot of traction, where it actually performed the best by far? It was on Google. Like, that creative on YouTube... Literally Albertone interviewing Pri... did really well. So we say, if you've got the budget, it's really worth doing, because We talked about, like, that traffic-source thing and stuff... And, man... I've seen a creative I thought was genius,

with a famous influencer in the weight-loss niche And she was talking in her own format, in her own way, but then at the end, she was sending people to a VSL, you know? And I thought it was genius. I was like, “Dude, this is like fishing in a different lake.” Oh, right! That's true. You can hire the guy to funnel traffic to your VSL. That makes a lot of sense. Exactly, man. We did that once, but unfortunately, that creative, if it hadn't been rejected, would've scaled like crazy. There's this guy... This guy who makes some

creatives... He makes organic videos with action figures, like a Spider-Man figure, doing dialogue between them, like, "hey there, arachnid," making little stories, you know? So, we hired that guy to make a creative for us. It turned out really good, the Spider-Man figure saying he was selling stuff on Shopee. "oh, I'm selling this," and so on. Like, it turned out really good... We ran it, but that creative got rejected... I think it ran a little bit, but it... It didn't scale because of the Spider-Man copyright issue, you know? That's what killed it, but like, the psychology

of grabbing an influencer with a great format.. Sometimes you don't have the budget for the influencer, so you model his format, nothing wrong with that. Or hire micro-influencers, the UGC creators. I'll drop a hack, since I've seen people complaining about CPM. The hack is only coming after more than four hours of the podcast. Oh my god. You’ve gotta save it for the end, right? Man, a lot of people are having CPM problems. We had a VSL with amazing metrics, but its CPM was getting brutal. So what'd we do? We went over to the 99Freelas website,

We posted a UGC job there because we were hiring UGC creators, and we paid people around 50 or 40 reais. And we built a creative that was... well, it is a completely UGC-style creative. Not just the hook, since I already gave the hook example, right? Like: "look, this guy here, whatever," then it moves into the creative. We hired the guy to Make the video, saying like: "hey guys, I'm testing out a..." It was a finance niche, saying, "guys, I used to never have money left by month's end, until I found this way to organize myself.

I found this spreadsheet where I just log my expenses and it works. Everything I spent, I started tracking, and believe it or not, I started saving 200, 500 bucks a month. I didn't even know that was possible. Now I'm already at..." Like, with 2,000 saved up... I'll be able to travel with this money. All of this was thanks to a class I watched. So, if you want to watch that class, click here. I’ll leave the link here and share it with you guys, so click here and watch it. So we did a whole batch of

creatives like that, like 15, 20 of them... Man, it crushed the CPM, like, brutally, across the whole account. It brought down the entire account's CPM, man. Just from that one UGC batch. And obviously none of them really scaled or took off, but they crushed our overall CPM, man. And it was great, other creatives started performing and we got the traction we were missing. So this whole thing, this creative, it actually improved the other creatives in the account? Exactly, yeah Interesting. And there's also this thing... As a rule it's always worth doing occasionally, for people at

home to try: Man, you made creatives back in January. Sometimes it's worth it, every few months or so... To retest some old creatives. Retesting old ads from a few years back can work well. Take ads that... Like, the black offers crowd says it's about clearing the ad's metadata, speeding it up a second, tweaking something small, retesting it, and reuploading the offer. So those are little things a traffic manager should keep in mind sometimes. And, for you to get an idea: This is an interesting fact. Go for it. I saved this for now... Because the folks

who tuned in early won't even see it. But over at Pri's these days... Since I've got so many other responsibilities, I don't have time to write creatives for Pri anymore. So... plus, we've got three copywriters over there just for that, you know? So there's no reason for me to stop and write creatives. Every once in a while, I'll get an idea and toss it in there... but anyway. Even though I haven't written a creative in over a year... Our manager, midway through the year, pulled up something like... Which creatives are... Which of our creatives sold

the most that year, and which copywriters had generated the most revenue." Man, I was like in third or fourth place, something like that. Whoa. Without writing creatives. And one ad of mine was sitting in the top five, you know, best sellers of the year. And all because he keeps retesting it. He even told me, "Man, you gotta thank me for this." Because he just takes it, retests it... And that's that. I even joke around with the copy guys, telling them, "Dude, you're so lucky, because I was playing nerfed the whole year here." Because back then

it wasn't Leo or Thiago running the traffic. It was a different manager and all, that whole story I told in the first podcast. And back then, we didn't have the creatives methodology we have today. So things didn't really pop off... I was playing nerfed, you know? And even playing nerfed, there's still ads of mine selling out there today. I generated a ton. But... But that's it... So retesting some old ads is definitely worth it, and doing that metadata cleanup before reuploading is also really good. So, there's two hacks for the folks who stuck around till

the end. Gotta always have those. Man... now that you mentioned the hacks... How are you feeling after talking for... how long was it, Gab? Four hours. Damn. Relieved. On the last podcast, guys, I left here feeling frustrated. João knows. I was like, "Man, I wish I’d talked about creatives..." But then you'd have killed me, man. You'd have killed me and Gab too. Gab's little fingers would've fallen off from switching the camera so much. Then you said, "man, don't worry about it"... No, but Gab's fingers are trained, right? Played a ton of Rainbow Six, right? That

finger's not falling off, man. Now I'm relieved. Nice, man. Wow, dude, honestly. Check this out, everyone. Matheus, all together, generated... More than eight hours of content here for you guys. That's crazy, right, man? That's a ton of content. It's insane. Did you know that next month the VTurb podcast turns three years old? I heard you tell Anderson earlier. Congrats, VTurb. Everyone, three years of the VTurb podcast. That's insane, dude. I didn't even know... And Gab, how long have you been here? Working here? Has it been a year already? Take care, alright? Because I’ve already seen

like three people in your position here. People keep getting let go... So stay sharp. Ask Anderson. There are like three or four people who’ve already been let go. Average of one a year. Your time's coming, so watch out. Slip up on that finger and see what happens. But, man... Damn, I'm speechless. Thanks for agreeing to come on. And sorry for being late, man. I was over in Brasília. So I got here at two, which is usually when we start, right, guys? And now it's almost nine at night, man. Your wife's back at the hotel. What's

her name again? Duda. Duda... sorry for holding your husband hostage here for so long, honestly. But man, I'm seriously speechless, okay? Thank you so much. Everyone, Matheus's podcast is gonna show up on screen. If you wanna learn from Matheus, go check out his Instagram, it's @matheuslourenco._ That's it. Nailed it. Dot underscore. It'll show up on screen. In case you want to learn from him, okay? But you've already learned a ton here. If you want to learn even more, with more one-on-one direction... If you're into info products, I highly recommend joining some kind of consulting, mentorship,

implementation program... I don't know, man, something like that. Whoa, that's gonna be my ad. Do something to level yourself up. And why am I even saying this? So you become my client, okay? And Matheus's client too. But, man, with all due respect... mainly so you become my client, okay? Help me pay the bills and pay Gab... because you're gonna need a hosting service, right? I also want them to become your client too. I want that. Because then they'll become your client, and then we'll optimize VSLs, make VSLs... and it's all a system that feeds itself,

right? Everybody makes money, exactly. You're gonna make a ton of money too. Honestly, that's probably the coolest part. Yeah, no doubt. You're actually the one making the most money out of this whole thing. Actually, I only make money if you do a good job. Yeah. Because if you don't, I'm screwed. The guy will just pay you and leave, you know? So you gotta deliver, man. But I know you deliver, and that's why you're here. And... That's about it. During the podcast, we talked about some bonuses. I'm gonna put ads in the episode... Specific ones, at

strategic points... so you all can grab those bonuses, and Nicole's gonna send us the details later. Any idea when that's coming out? I don't know, man. But you can ask Nicole and work it out with her, you know? She handles the schedule, I just show up here and talk nonsense. My job's just to show up and record. And man, leave a message for the VTurb audience, say something cool to them. I wanna leave a message for my wife, okay? Duda, I love you so much. You're the most important person in my life... that's it. I

think it's important to say that out loud. Today she didn't come, poor thing. She stayed at the hotel, didn't wanna come. Now we're in a nice hotel, right? We're staying in a good hotel now and everything... But... that's it. And for the podcast audience: everyone... I'm really happy for those who stuck around again... listening to this... This mountain of content. I'm truly grateful, honestly, because like I said, the VTurb podcast was one of the biggest turning points in my life. I believe a lot of the results I have today came exactly from the hours I

put into listening to this podcast. I think this past year I was, I don't know, top 5% of listeners on Spotify... so, that's proof that, honestly, man, I believe things like this really do make a difference. So, man, I'm really grateful to João too. I wanna thank you, João. Thanks, man. I believe that... yeah, this work that you do here, puts the spotlight on the work of so many great people. And being able to help people who struggle in some way, and it's normal to struggle. And if it weren't for people like you bringing this

content here, putting it out there and giving a voice to good people too, And I believe a lot of families and lives wouldn't have been transformed the way they are. So I think, above all, this whole thing of giving a voice to good people, whether here on the podcast or by helping them get these kinds of extraordinary results, it's a really important mission. So, like... I believe that, across the entire digital market, I want to thank you for that. And again, I'd like to thank you for the invite, and thank everyone listening to us too.

And man, that's it. Keep doing good work, studying, consuming from good sources... trusting in God. Because, man, it's gonna pay off. It's gonna work out. And, yeah, that's that. But everyone's timing is different. Like I said, everyone's timing is definitely different... but... it's something certain, right, it's basically math. I believe that, like, if you avoid doing the things you shouldn't be doing, and put yourself in the path of listening to those who got the results you want, and you follow that person's direction... you also get access, obviously, to the tools that person is using, and

as a result, you do good work, execute it the best way possible, there's no way it goes wrong. So keep studying, keep applying... and that's about it. Nice. Everyone, that right there was another episode of the VTurb podcast. Scaling Secrets. If you watched all the way to here, man, what are you gonna do is share this episode with someone. Take a screenshot, send it in a WhatsApp group, a mentorship group... send this to someone, okay? Whoever you think would find it cool, because that way we can reach more people, we can bring even more people

on here for us to interview, and create more content for you guys... that really helps the channel grow, and as a result helps us create even better content for you too. Send it to me on Instagram. On my Instagram. Go there and send me the most valuable insight you got, so I'll know you actually watched. And then I'll give everyone a surprise gift. Whoa. Whoever sends a message will find out. Cool. Not even sure myself, but... But there'll be something. Man, let's put a... I'm gonna raffle off this trophy I'm getting from João, everyone. You're

not getting this one, man. You could win these little plaques here, look. Man... you're gonna win that hundred million plaque before you ever get this trophy, okay? Man, that's true. This right here, man, this is the real VTurb prize, okay? Gab knows, right, Gab? Check out that tongue... You know it, right? But everyone, a big hug, and thanks. Man... Thanks so much for watching another episode of Scaling Secrets. If you liked the episode, don't forget to like it, subscribe to the VTurb channel, so you get more episodes straight to your inbox. That means a lot

to us. And, if you do that, I guarantee I'll bring the best guests here to share content with you, alright? And if you're looking for more episodes to watch... man, I'm gonna leave two Scaling Secrets episodes somewhere on the screen for you to check out. So click and watch those episodes too. It's worth it. A big hug, and see you next time.