I see people saying, "No amount of marketing can save a bad product."

And I used to be one of those people. It's one of those things that sounds good but isn't actually true.

Just take household products. Detergents, soaps, and cleaning sprays. The biggest brands do not have the best products.

Most are filled with chemicals and other garbage.

The reason they are so popular is that the margins on their products are so high, they are able to outspend the competition by a mile when it comes to marketing.

You see them running Super Bowl ads, paying A-list celebrities, and running commercials all day.

Other brands that do use "better ingredients" have much smaller margins because the ingredients cost way more to buy. Which is why they have to charge a higher price.

So there's no doubt that having a great product is crucial, but it really depends on the industry. If you're selling food, then your product has to be at least pretty good. You can't be selling food that gets people sick all the time.

But if you're selling commodities, then it doesn't really matter all that much. People just don't really care.

Q4 for us at Nutré is a slower time due to the holidays.

Most people really aren't worrying about meal delivery during Thanksgiving and Christmas.

They're probably stuffing their faces and spending time with family.

But that doesn't mean we just sit down, drink espresso martinis, and do nothing.

We have so many plans for 2026 - right now we’re making sure we have a strategic plan to implement everything.

Right now, we're looking at our growth in all the markets that we serve and seeing which ones have the biggest potential to scale.

And then from there, we're going to be launching a new market expansion strategy that I'm currently building out a playbook for.

These are some pieces of content that I felt inspired to write about.

In case you missed it, SweetGreen launched its Power Max protein bowl.

The protein wave is very real.

I'm pretty sure it's just four times the amount of chicken in a normal salad, but still, them doing this means that people want more protein.

It's funny because a few months back, I was saying to my beautiful, awesome, hilarious, sweet but sometimes spicy girlfriend Jes, that SweetGreen needs to add more protein, and a week later we got an email saying that they're increasing their chicken scoops.

Not saying I am single-handedly building their marketing strategy, but some could say that.

Contrary to what most gurus want to tell you, you do not need a personal brand to grow your business. The people who are probably saying this are teaching you how to build a personal brand.

Having a personal brand is definitely important, but your entire business should not be built around it. Otherwise, you'll be a dancing monkey in your forties.

People are so engulfed in the internet marketing world because a lot of these personal brands are popular, but there are so many billionaires and people that are extremely wealthy that you have never heard of, and they don't post anything on social media.

Tool/Prompt I'm Using: Lindy AI automation that monitors competitors' Meta Ads libraries, extracts high-performing hooks and angles, then generates 50+ tested hook variations filtered through my newsletter voice and Feed the Funnel brand positioning - automatically delivered every Monday morning.

Step 1: Competitor Ads Library Setup:

• Identify 10-15 direct competitors running Facebook/Instagram ads

• Configure Lindy to scrape their ads libraries weekly (Monday 6am)

• Set filters for ads running 30+ days (proof they're working)

• Focus on competitors targeting DTC/subscription brands ($1M-$50M range)

Step 2: Hook Pattern Extraction:

• AI categorizes hooks by type (pain point, aspirational, contrarian, curiosity, etc.)

• Identifies which hook categories get longest ad runs (= best performance)

• Extracts the psychological trigger in each hook (FOMO, status, efficiency, etc.)

• Maps hooks to stages of awareness (unaware → problem aware → solution aware)

Step 3: Feed the Funnel Brand Filter:

• Upload your newsletter voice guidelines (operator-focused, anti-fluff, tactical)

• AI adapts competitor hooks to your "scrappy but scaling" audience

• Filters out anything that sounds like "guru speak" or motivational BS

• Ensures hooks speak to operators doing $500K-$50M, not beginners or enterprise

Step 4: Hook Variation Generator:

• Delivers 50+ newsletter subject line variations every Monday

• Organized by: Funnel stage, Psychological trigger, Content pillar

• Each hook tagged with the competitor it came from + estimated performance

• Includes "why this works" analysis for each hook category

How to use this approach:

• Start with 5 competitors, scale to 15 once you refine the system

• Focus on competitors with similar audience size/stage (not Gary Vee types)

• Track which generated hooks perform best in YOUR newsletter opens

• Feed winning data back to Lindy to improve future recommendations

Pro tip: Most marketers just copy competitor hooks word-for-word and wonder why they flop. The secret is understanding why a hook works (the psychology + positioning), then translating that to YOUR voice and audience. Your AI should learn the pattern behind "Here's how we increased retention 65% in 90 days" isn't about the number - it's about specificity + credibility + operator proof. Apply that pattern to your own case studies and tests, don't just swap in your numbers.

Working on some pretty crazy AI for Nutre that's going to revolutionize the meal delivery space.

Hope you guys got value out of this email.

If you have any specific questions or want me to cover any topics, just respond to this email and I'll do my best to get to them.

See you next week!