Speed doesn’t matter if you’re running in the wrong direction

Hey, it’s Arik.

Over the past few months, I’ve seen two kinds of brand operators emerge:

On one side, you’ve got the ones using AI to sharpen strategy, move with speed, and unlock serious leverage.

On the other, you’ve got those using it as a crutch to mask weak instincts and messy marketing.

But let me be clear, speed doesn’t matter if you’re running in the wrong direction.

You can prompt it all day long, but if you don’t understand creative strategy, messaging hierarchy, or your market’s level of awareness, your output will still be trash. Just faster trash.

So, what actually separates the brands doing $1M a year from the ones doing $100M+?

The brands doing $1M are testing the waters, while the brands doing $100M are dialing in patterns.

They know what to say, who to say it to, and how to say it in a way that builds trust and drives sales. They also have taste, judgment, and strategic intuition—and that’s the part AI can’t replicate.

Let me break it down:

❌ AI can’t fix bad inputs
If you don’t know your audience’s emotional temperature, ChatGPT isn’t going to bail you out. It'll will just churn out the wrong copy at scale.

Great marketing still starts with clarity:
What does the customer already believe?
What stage of awareness are they in?
What’s the friction stopping them from buying?
What would change their mind right now?

These questions are more important than any tool prompt. Because if you don’t know the answers, you’ll just keep generating content that doesn’t work.


💡 The real unlock is creative strategy
The brands spending six figures a day profitably aren’t just posting content. They’re running structured creative tests by angle, hook, awareness level, offer positioning, and objections.

When they find a winning combo, they double down, then use AI to multiply that win across formats, channels, and audiences.

That’s how velocity and insight come together.


📊 Feedback loops are the cheat code
I’ve seen 8-figure teams with 1 media buyer and 1 strategist running the whole creative flywheel. And it works because they know what to look for.

They run post-mortems on every batch of creatives and have specific decision frameworks for when to kill or scale.

They’re not just “spraying content," they’re engineering growth through structured learning, and they use AI to accelerate the process.

If you’re not there yet, here’s where I’d start:
- Build a simple feedback loop: Launch → Learn → Adjust → Repeat
- Start tagging winning ads by level of awareness, hook type, format, and CTA.
- Use AI to speed up script variations, angle exploration, and research, but only after you’ve found what works.

Bite-Size Takeaways:

• The most valuable skill today isn’t knowing the best AI tool. It’s knowing what inputs will create the best outputs, and that comes from real market intuition.

• Creative that works is never just pretty. It’s precise. The best brands don’t guess what to say, they test different levels of awareness, hooks, angles, and objections until they find the winning message.

• Brands doing $1M still think in terms of “more content.” Brands doing $100M think in systems: message > test > iterate > systematize > scale.

• Speed beats complexity. You don’t need 10 tools. You need 3 core ones you can use with speed and intention.

• The fastest-growing teams I know run lean but tight. They don’t outsource thinking. They have clear roles, clear loops, and they take action faster than anyone else.

See you next Thursday,
Arik