Mission Brief:

Hello builder, today we’re exploring

• the purpose of a scrollstopping hook

• the principles behind what makes a good hook

• how to create a good

Let’s begin…
The Purpose of the hook:

The purpose of the hook is to get somebody to watch the full video.

You get somebody to watch the full video by triggering an emotion & giving a promise for payoff.

This emotion is usually of

• curiosity (Here’s why you can’t keep customers longer than a month:)

• shock (The US government just eliminated federal income tax. Here’s everything you need to know:)

• disgust (Your Big Mac might have brain eating parasites in it:)

• or if you’re the mainstream media, fear (Every negative news story)

The psychological principle behind good hooks:

But what about the “giving a promise for payoff” part?

See if you’re just emotion, you give the audience a feeling but have nowhere to go with it. So they’ll just leave.

That’s why you need your videos need to have an open loop

An open loop teases an insight or conclusion that you only get by watching the video.

A perfect example of this is “Here’s how” content

“Here’s how I made $326,455 in 31 days with short video content:”

It opens with a dream state of making a ton of money, with the implication being “hey if you watch this you’ll know how to as well”.

Creating a hook

Now that we know what a good hook is, here’s some practical tips on actually writing one

• Clarity is always better than clever

• Write how you talk

• Once you have written your hook, think of ways to make it more engaging

• Always be thinking, “What is the most interesting way to frame this to a completely cold audience?”

• If you have an idea, but don’t have a great hook yet, write out the video idea before you tackle the hook

• Write it, then read it. If it takes longer than 3-5 seconds, it can likely be shortened

Final thoughts

Join the Cohort

I just announced my first Video Content Cohort for January.

The goal: learn how to use video to get your next 10 clients.

3 weeks. 3 group calls. Plus a 1:1 strategy call for everyone.

Details here for anyone interested:

Popular Tools

Capcut: the most versatile editor for short content. Useful on both phone & desktop

Captions: the easiest way to put high quality captions on your video

HeyGen: Create full AI videos from text. No shooting or editing required. NEW: automatic translation from English to other languages.

Opus Pro: Handsfree AI video content clipping. Automatic captions, cuts & titles.

Cinema P3: Turn your iPhone into a cinema camera

Canva: The easiest to use graphic design tool around. All our thumbnails & logos have been spawned from Canva. You can now make videos on it, too!

eleven labs: scary good AI voiceovers

That’s a wrap

You should probably burn this, now.