“we did what we thought every consumer should do or you're told to do and we started putting money into Facebook paid and that was an utter disaster and we got just absolutely slaughtered in that experience we learned a lot”

Burning money on Facebook taught the product lessons no other way could

Ladder launched Facebook ads before the product was ready for cold traffic: onboarding assumed users already knew the coaches, price was $60/month, and there was no web quiz to route strangers into the right program. The spend was lost money short-term but revealed every product gap at once. Greg re-framed it: they paid for a clear diagnosis of what to fix — activation, price, and positioning — which wouldn't have been visible from organic coach traffic alone.