I engineered how you’d experience that 4:29 AM post...

11ish hrs ago, I published this blog post: It’s 4:29 AM. I can’t sleep.

You may have thought it was just an afterthought blog post during a late night thought spiral.

It wasn’t.

It was part of a sequence…one you were already inside before you realized it.

Because on March 4, I posted this piece:
70% Better in 6 Weeks—Through Ruthless, Obsessive Self Destruction
—> a messy, unfinished breakdown of our homepage revamp, intentionally outdated.

And before that, on March 1, I posted this piece:
🚨 The viral TikTok ad raking in $10k+ while racking up $50k+ fines
—>a breakdown of a live compliance failure, happening in real time.

Each post wasn’t just an update.
It was priming the environment.

Because winning isn’t just about iteration.
It’s about sequencing.

Most people think execution is about relentless improvement.
It’s not. It’s about controlling how that improvement lands.

And when you're building a new category, this difference is everything.

Category Creation Is About Controlling How People See the Problem

If you’re in an existing market, you’re playing a comparative game:
Convince people your product is better, faster, cheaper.

But if you’re creating a category, the challenge is bigger:
You have to make people realize the problem even exists.

Category creation isn’t just about having a better solution.
It’s about shaping how people think so your solution becomes inevitable.

That’s metacognition.

Metacognition: Thinking About Thinking (And Why It’s Essential for Category Creation)

Most people think in first-order logic:

• “I need to improve X, so I’ll do Y.”

• “I need people to believe Z, so I’ll tell them Z.”

But that’s not how you get people to shift how they think.

Metacognition is second-order thinking.
It’s not just knowing the next move.
It’s structuring the next five moves so they land in the right order.

🧠 It’s shaping how people process information so they reach the right conclusion on their own.
🧠 It’s structuring communication so people don’t just hear it. They internalize it.
🧠 It’s not just presenting a new idea. It’s creating the conditions for people to accept it.

That’s what the 4:29 AM post, for example, was designed to do.
But before I could drop that?
I needed to prime the environment.

Why the Fire Drill Post Came First (March 1)

On March 1, I posted about a viral influencer post disaster unfolding in real time:

A TikTok ad hit 14M views, made five figures in revenue, and went viral on Twitter...
…because it was completely fake.

🚨 No Qatari prince
🚨 No 5 year affair
🚨 No secret elite beauty rules

The entire story was fabricated, and the creator openly bragged about scamming viewers.

This post did two things:

1️⃣ It made the problem feel real.

• Not a hypothetical compliance risk, but a live, high stakes failure happening right now.

• The moment you read it, you weren’t thinking, "This is something to worry about later."

• You were probably thinking, "This is actually happening. Right now."

2️⃣ It built urgency before I ever introduced SwayID.

• This post didn’t push a solution. It just made the problem impossible to ignore.

• The emotional imprint was the point.

Now, when you read the next post about how SwayID fixes these risks, your brain had already processed the stakes.

Why the Messy Homepage Revamp Post Came Second (March 4)

On March 4, I posted a raw, unfinished breakdown of our homepage revamp.

Why?

Because a homepage isn’t just a website—it’s your #1 sales deck. It’s how you present yourself to the world.

Most companies just drop a new homepage and say, “Here’s what we built.”
I showed you the process of constructing it.

And that’s 10x more powerful than just selling to you.

Why I did it this way:

1️⃣ I created a baseline for you
By showing you an earlier version first, the final homepage didn’t just look better. It felt like a transformation.

2️⃣ I made the leap feel bigger
If I had dropped the 4:29 AM post first, you would’ve thought, “This is impressive.”
But because you saw the unfinished version first, the final version felt like a mini breakthrough.

3️⃣ I showed you execution in motion
I didn’t just say, “We iterate relentlessly.”
I proved it.

You don’t just see a final result. You saw exactly how we got there.

And now?

You don’t just understand our work.
You internalize it.

How the 4:29 AM Post Was Engineered to Lock It In

By the time the 4:29 AM post dropped, your brain was already primed.

Here’s how it worked:

Step 1: Hook attention before logic can dismiss it.

Most people ignore what doesn’t feel urgent.
So I didn’t start with:
🚫 "Influencer compliance is important."
🚫 "Brands need to start paying attention to new regulations."

I started with:

"It’s 4:29 AM. I can’t sleep."

Emotional Contagion —> When we see someone hyper-focused on something, we want to understand why.

The post wasn’t just meant to be read. It was meant to pull you in.

Step 2: Make you question your own assumptions.

If someone already thinks they understand the risk, they won’t engage deeply.

So instead of just explaining compliance, I made people doubt what they thought they knew.

I wrote:

❌ "Most brands don’t even realize they’re at risk."
❌ "Every influencer post is a ticking time bomb."
❌ "You think you have compliance covered. Here’s what’s actually happening."

Now the reader isn’t just passively absorbing information.
They’re actively processing it.

Step 3: Make the risk itch worse than the worst mosquito bite.

People don’t change behavior based on data alone.
They take action when they can’t ignore the discomfort anymore.

That’s why I built the Fire Drill section.

💥 "Your TikTok ad just hit 14M views. The creator misled viewers. You're trending for all the wrong reasons."

If you hesitated for even a second while reading that,
you felt the discomfort.

And once the seed of discomfort is planted, it begins to itch like the worst mosquito bite of your life.

It lingers. It festers. It demands attention.

And the only way to stop the itch? You need a solution.

By the time you reach the bottom of the page, compliance isn’t just a concept anymore.
It’s a problem you need to solve immediately.

How This Ties Back to Execution

Most people think execution is about predictability.
It’s not (imo).

First, it’s about control.

—Controlling how the market perceives an unfamiliar problem.
—Controlling how the customer experiences the shift.
—Controlling how people are forced to respond.

That’s why leveraging metacognition frameworks isn’t optional when building a category.

And it’s why some observers never see it coming.

For example, if you think you can assess a founder’s ability to execute,
here’s what you can get wrong:

“Top tier” execution doesn’t always “look” the part.
Because it’s about playing a game 99.99% don’t even realize is happening for a very long time—years.

The work behind it is like a frequency of sound that only dogs can hear—for years.

👀 To the ordinary, it looks like nothing.
💡 But to the right people, it’s deafening.

And then one day—suddenly—it’s deafening to everyone.

That shift is violent.

What the outside world mistook for inaction…
…was actually years of hidden work that make the shift feel like getting hit by a freight train at full speed.

Not because it came out of nowhere—
But because they couldn’t register what was happening right in front of them for so long.

Because it’s not just about getting immediate signals that you’re “onto something.”
It’s about structuring the journey so people arrive at the realization at the pace they’re capable of.

And if you’re still reading?

You just experienced it again.