The 10-Second Ad Playbook Behind this "Old School" Info Product's 845% Growth

Everyone's obsessing over building the next unicorn AI app.

Meanwhile, a Shopify store selling an Excel spreadsheet just went from zero to 330K monthly visitors in 90 days.

We broke it down from first click to last upsell inside the Funnel of the Week Members area.

Plus: We built an interactive dashboard with every ad they’re running on Meta and YouTube right now — every hook, every creative, every landing page. All filterable & viewable so you can learn from them and apply to your own business:

• Already a member? Go here to see the breakdown + dashboard

• Not yet a member? Go here to get access

Now let’s dive into today’s email…

The 10-Second Ad Playbook Behind this "Old School" Info Product's 845% Growth

This offer’s short form video ads look like 2026. The product is from 2010. The business model is from 2005.

And it's printing.

Let's walk through the whole thing, starting with the ads - but stick around for the funnel...

...Because the "old school" continuity play they run is genius.

(And if you're running any kind of info product there's a good chance you can plug in this approach somewhere in your business for a nice MRR boost.)

The Numbers

MindsetStack sells a Google Sheets habit tracker. That's it. A spreadsheet.

Here's their traffic since launching late November/early December:

And from Dec-Jan:

• November 2025: Near zero

• December 2025: ~35,000 visits

• January 2026: 332,787 visits

• 845% month-over-month growth

On the ad side:

• 192 ads running simultaneously across Meta and YouTube

• 99 unique Meta video creatives 

• 66 unique YouTube videos w/ 22.2 million ad views in 7 weeks

• Top single video: 5.7 million views on an 11-second ad

• Average ad length: 18 seconds

The Ads: Sub-20 Seconds, Insanely Creative

Here's what makes this wild. The product is a spreadsheet. Old school. But the ad creative is genuinely cutting-edge.

These are short-form video ads — most under 15 seconds — designed to look like entertaining native content, not advertising. They survive the scroll because they:

• grab attention

• entertain

• inspire

...before your brain realizes it's being sold to.

Let's walk you through the hook types they're running.

Hook 1: "POV: I literally turned my life into a game"

This is their bread and butter. Over 50% of their ads use some variation of this hook.

The laptop version: POV text overlay → MacBook desktop → Google Sheets habit tracker with progress bars and checkmarks.

The whole thing is 8-10 seconds.

But then they run the SAME hook text with completely different visuals:

Same text: "pov: I literally turned my life into a game." He walks into a walk-in closet. The aspirational lifestyle does the selling before the product ever appears.

This version has 5.73 million views on YouTube. It's their single best-performing creative.

The genius here: same hook, different execution. They're testing whether the CONCEPT works (it does) and which VISUAL wrapper converts best.

One hook. Multiple angles. Scaled relentlessly.

And again: just 10 seconds.

Hook 2: "What's your name?" / "Doesn't matter. Time to work."

This one is pure comedy + aspirational bait for the young male self-improvement audience.

A woman lying in bed looks directly at the camera. Text overlay: "how a 19yo ultra humble millionaire plan his day." He asks her: "Oh hey, what's your name?"

Cut to: "Doesn't matter. Time to work."

Camera pans to reveal a desk with dual monitors, DotCom Secrets on the shelf, and the habit tracker spreadsheet on screen. He's got the money. He's got the girl. And he's choosing the grind anyway. That's the fantasy they're selling — discipline as the ultimate flex.

5.52 million views. Second highest in their entire library. The highest like count of any video (34,000+).

Why it works: it's aspirational identity for dudes, packaged as comedy.

(1) The girl in bed — attention-grabbing opener aimed squarely at the target demo.

(2) "Doesn't matter. Time to work." — the dismissal IS the fantasy. He has everything and still chooses the grind.

(3) The desk reveal — dual monitors, success books, the tracker. The life you could have if you just start. Your brain can't stop watching because it keeps escalating.

Hook 3: "It's Friday, let's go out" / "Nah, I've got plans"

More comedy + grind format:

Then it cuts to the habit tracker spreadsheet.

2.65 million views. Third highest performer.

This is the "relatable introvert" play. The dialogue format creates an instant character. The punchline reframes productivity from "boring obligation" to "deliberate choice." You're not staying in because you're lame. You're staying in because you've got a system.

Hook 4: "Don't blink" — The Pure Pattern Interrupt

A guy holds a red lighter to camera. Text: "Don't blink..."

He lights a firework. It explodes.

Then: "Keep your FIRE burning the right way."

Voiceover: "The strongest fire isn't the one that explodes and disappears. It's the one that stays burning slow and steady."

This has absolutely nothing to do with a habit tracker for the first 5 seconds. That's the whole point. Pure bait-and-switch curiosity. By the time you realize it's an ad, you've already watched the product demo.

They run a similar variant with "How a lighter works" — same concept, different execution.

Hook 5: "A winner is just a loser who tried again"

A hand pulls a silver MacBook from a backpack and sets it on a table. Text: "A winner is just a loser who tried again."

Voiceover kicks in immediately: "Don't take today off. Not today. Do not listen to that little voice."

The laptop opens to reveal the habit tracker.

Notice:

(a) the physical action of pulling the laptop creates movement that stops the scroll,

(b) the voiceover speaks to the resistance the viewer is feeling RIGHT NOW, and

(c) there are two simultaneous persuasion tracks (visual text + audio).

Why These Ads Work

A few patterns across all of them:

• They don't look like ads. Every single one could pass as organic creator content. They grab attention, entertain & inspire, and drive to a CTA, all within seconds. Speaking of that...

• They're all under 20 seconds. Most are under 15. The viewer sees the product in use within the first 5 seconds. There's no warm-up, no logo reveal, no brand intro. Hook → product → CTA. Done.

• Sound-off optimized. On Meta, the text overlays carry the entire message. You don't need audio to understand the ad. On YouTube, they layer voiceover on top.

• One CTA, one message, one emotion. Every ad ends the same way: "CLICK SHOP NOW BELOW! 85% OFF TODAY ONLY." Zero fluff.

The Funnel: More than Just a $6 Spreadsheet

Here's where it gets interesting. From the outside, this looks like someone selling a cheap spreadsheet. Look closer.

The #1 landing page (they're running 3 right now):

Three pricing tiers, but the "Most Popular" bundle is pre-selected:

• Task Tracker: $5.59 (75% off $29.99)

• Habit Tracker: $5.59 (75% off $29.99)

• Task + Habit Trackers: $7.99 (85% off $59.99) ← pre-selected

Countdown timer at the top: "NEW YEARS SALE — PRICE REVERTS IN 07:51:08"

Classic anchoring. The $59.99 "original price" makes $7.99 feel like theft.

But here's the sneaky part. Below the product options, there's a pre-checked checkbox:

"Join Momentum: FREE bonus templates, weekly newsletters, lifetime updates and 24/7 coaching — $7.99 every 4 weeks."

Pre-checked. On the sales page. Before you even hit Add to Cart.

That's forced continuity. And we'll come back to why it's actually brilliant in a second.

The cart:

Add to cart and you'll see 3 order bumps, all pre-toggled ON:

• Ultimate Money Planner Pack — $1.99

• ADHD Productivity Pack — $1.99

• 52-Week Savings System — $1.99

Subtotal with everything: $13.96

Plus after purchase, there are two more upsells:

• Upsell 1: 100-Pack Motivational Quote Phone Wallpapers — $1.99

• Upsell 2: Clear Mind PDF — $1.99

The checkout reveals the recurring charge:

Total: $13.96 one-time + $7.99 every 4 weeks recurring.

Add in the 2 upsells, and we're at a max day-zero cart value of ~$18. Plus $7.99/month recurring starting in 4 weeks.

The Back End: "old school" Email-Only Continuity (This Is the Sleeper)

Now here's what might be the smartest piece of the whole funnel.

That "forced continuity" $7.99/month "Momentum" membership?

It's not a community. It's not a Skool group. It's not a Circle space. It's not an app.

It's just an email autoresponder.

Here's the welcome email. Day 1: "Block 10 minutes for your first momentum check-in." Links to the trackers. Teases tomorrow's email ("Stack Your First Win" framework). Day 3: Full Momentum Roadmap.

That's it. A drip sequence. Set it up once. It delivers forever.

No community moderators. No platform fees. No "engagement metrics." No wondering why nobody's posting in your Skool group. No paying for community management software.

And it's actually better for the customer. Think about it:

• The email shows up in your inbox. Zero friction. You don't have to remember to log in to anything.

• One action per day. So low-friction you'd feel dumb NOT doing it.

• The product (the tracker) actually gets used because the email tells you exactly what to do with it each morning.

• Consistent progress = the customer's life actually improves = lower churn, higher satisfaction.

This model has a lineage.

• @andrechaperon

  Andre Chaperon's Autoresponder Madness was the blueprint for email-as-product, generating millions for himself and untold millions for his students who have applied his "autoresponder emails as product" approach.

• @DJohanson

  Derek Johansson built copywriter training Copy Hour on exactly this — daily copywriting exercises delivered by email, recurring subscription. afaik multiple 7 figures in revenue.

• and iirc

  @lordianstanley

  Ian Stanley has done this in multiple verticals for 10+ yrs and is teaching this approach right now (low ticket front end + email as product), and has generated 8+ figures using this same simple approach.

And here's the surprising part: this email-centric approach is still working on Gen Z.

The MindsetStack audience likely skews 18-28, male, self-improvement-obsessed. These are people who some would suspect "don't use email." But they're paying $7.99/month for email accountability in 2026.

Pay attention to this model & see how you can potentially apply it in your business.

It's proven, it's cheap to run, and it clearly still works.

The Math

No idea how much this funnel is generating right now but let's run some conservative back-of-napkin numbers.

330K visits in January. Let's assume a modest 2% conversion rate and that most people just buy the front-end bundle — $8 — no bumps, no upsells. Just the spreadsheet.

• ~6,600 new customers/month

• ~$8 front-end = ~$53K/month day-zero revenue

That alone is a solid business. But remember — the forced continuity is pre-checked. Even if only half of buyers keep it, that's 3,300 people at $7.99/month kicking in 4 weeks later.

• ~$26K/month in recurring revenue after the first month

And that compounds. Month two, you've got January's subscribers PLUS February's new buyers. By month three you're stacking three cohorts of recurring revenue on top of each other.

The real number is almost certainly higher — those order bumps are pre-toggled on, the upsells are cheap impulse buys, and they're scaling ad spend aggressively (53 new ads in January, 73 in February). But even at the floor, we're talking six figures MRR within a few months of launch.

Selling a spreadsheet. With an email drip on the back end.

The Real Play

These guys' real moat is:

1. they are masters of short-form creative. 
2. they EXECUTE & didn't wait to build the "perfect" product

22 million views, 330K monthly visitors, thousands of email subscribers, and cash flow.

Whatever they want to build next — courses, coaching, apps — the audience is already there and they know exactly how to tap into it.

But here's what's brilliant: they didn't wait to build the perfect product.

So many of us get stuck perfecting something for months before we ever ship.

These guys took the simplest path to first monetization — a spreadsheet — and started scaling immediately.

And even if it's a simple product, it's genuinely useful.

(Plus the email continuity gets you to actually apply the tracker. If you apply it every day? There's no way it doesn't give you massive utility for the price.)

Kudos to this team. Inspiring execution & can't wait to see what they do next.

See the Full Funnel Breakdown

We broke down this funnel from first click to last upsell inside the Funnel of the Week Members area.

Plus: We built an interactive dashboard with every ad they’re running on Meta and YouTube right now — every hook, every creative, every landing page. All filterable & viewable so you can learn from them and apply to your own business:

• Already a member? Go here to see the breakdown

• Not yet a member? Go here to get access

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The Funnel of the Week Team

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