Shashank Kakade is most useful for video sales letter and paid-social creative that fixes weak ads for e-commerce and wellness brands.
Best for
A DTC wellness brand already spending on Meta ads to improve cold-traffic conversion.
Not for
Enterprise B2B software selling compliance platforms through long multi-stakeholder sales cycles.
Key takeaways
Weak ads, not checkout flows or email sequences, can cause poor sales.
One store got 1,000 visitors and seven sales.
Wellness customers seeking a solution respond to direct psychology, not gentle messaging.
Check first: Ask for finished ads, campaign results, or client examples before hiring.
Main ideas
Paid-social losses are creative failures, not funnel failures · Wellness buyers respond to direct psychology, not gentle messaging · Video sales letter ads are the named specialty and deliverable
Audience
1,561 LinkedIn followers · 4 posts (3 distinct; two are the same text) LinkedIn posts available for audience assessment
Shashank Kakade creates conversion-focused video sales letter ads and paid-social creative for e-commerce and wellness businesses.
In the posts, they argue that weak ads—not checkout flows or email sequences—can be the real cause of poor sales.
They also tell a career story from civil engineering and hospitality to learning e-commerce and ad psychology from a brother.
Follow their work for direct-response views on creative and wellness marketing, especially the case for direct messaging over what they call gentle or “authentic” marketing.
Kakade makes marketing problems concrete, then takes a clear position on what to fix.
In one post, a store gets 1,000 visitors and seven sales; they contrast that result with familiar quick fixes such as discount codes and abandoned-cart emails, then argue that the ads themselves need attention.
A short career post makes the approach’s tradeoff plain: Kakade says wellness customers seeking a solution respond to direct psychology rather than gentle messaging.
That clarity helps readers understand the point of view, while raising a real question for brands whose work depends on a softer or more cautious tone.
Before hiring, ask to see finished ads, campaign results, or client examples; the posts describe VSL and paid-social expertise but don’t include that evidence.
Shashank Kakade's recurring argument is that paid-social underperformance is a creative problem before it is a funnel problem, and that wellness buyers in distress respond to blunt direct-response psychology rather than soft brand messaging.
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The named advertising work is video sales letter (VSL) ads and Meta creative for e-commerce and wellness founders.
They say their priority is helping hardworking owners scale rather than serving clients whose values they do not share.
These positions appear across three distinct posts, with the same career story published in two near-identical versions.
Paid-social losses are creative failures, not funnel failures
In a post about a store losing money on ads, Kakade lays out a familiar result — 1,000 visitors, 7 sales, $5,000 spent — and rejects the fixes a team usually reaches for: a discount code, another abandoned-cart flow, a copied pop-up.
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Those are "duct tape," in the post's word, buying about three days before the funnel collapses again.
The reasoning given is that no checkout flow saves a creative that fails to stop the scroll, and no email sequence fixes ads that make no one feel anything.
The post's conclusion is a single instruction: "Fix the ads."
The post contrasts founders "burning $5K a week on ads that never stood a chance" with the assumption it challenges: that their ads are already working while "louder competitors eat your market alive."
Wellness buyers respond to direct psychology, not gentle messaging
This is the clearest marketing position in these posts: customers actively seeking a fix respond to direct, urgency-led psychology rather than soft, values-led brand copy.
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Kakade says they now help wellness founders "escape the 'authentic marketing' trap," and warns that most founders are "closer to bankruptcy than they admit" and do not see it coming. The argument: fear of running out of cash is a stronger lever than reassurance.
The claim comes from experience: "desperate wellness customers respond to direct psychology, not gentle messaging." Kakade also says most founders misjudge their own runway.
The sharpest version of this argument comes in the shortest, most compressed post, which states the wellness stance in a single sentence. The longer origin story frames the same niche more warmly, describing wellness brands doing seven figures a month as "worth fighting for" — the same audience pitched as a mission rather than a warning.
Video sales letter ads are the named specialty and deliverable
Kakade describes the work as VSL (video sales letter) ads and names the commercial skills behind it: eCommerce fundamentals, Meta ad psychology, conversion-focused creative, and helping business owners scale.
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They credit their brother with teaching them these skills after they left hospitality. This is the concrete service identity a name search turns up, rather than a general marketing practice.
The claim is about the ads themselves: "My VSL ads don't just convert.
They help good people win."
The same post reports earning three times the earlier bartending salary while working from their hometown.
A values-driven priority: help founders who risk everything, not entitled clients
The career story doubles as an argument about who the work should serve.
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Kakade describes bartending at an exclusive club in New Delhi on 14-hour shifts, serving wealthy families whose children, by their account, treated staff dismissively.
Top hotels were recruiting, but the job felt hollow.
A call from their brother — "lets come home and we'll build something here" — marks the turn toward building for small business owners instead.
The priority is autonomy and purpose over prestige: working from their hometown, living with family, sleeping eight hours, and serving people who have risked something of their own.
The contrast is drawn with figures: a ₹35,000 monthly paycheck against the members' children's ₹2 lakh weekly allowance, followed by a stated three-times income. The closing question to readers — what made you realise your skills deserved better — turns the story into an argument aimed at other founders.
The same narrative appears twice in near-identical wording and once more in condensed form.
The condensed version drops the emotional detail and keeps only the conclusion, suggesting the story serves as a standing introduction rather than a one-off update.
The financial results are self-reported; ask for client work or campaign data to assess performance.
This is the clearest statement of Kakade’s central argument and the quickest way for a newcomer to judge whether they want this thinking applied to their account.
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It is short, self-contained, and includes the numbers and diagnosis.
The post opens with a specific failure picture: a Shopify store gets 1,000 visitors, 7 sales, and loses $5K.
Kakade lists the fixes teams usually reach for — a discount code, another abandoned-cart flow, copying a pop-up — and calls each one duct tape: it buys three days, then the funnel collapses again.
Their correction to founders is blunt: “Your funnel isn’t broken.
Your ads are.”
The reasoning: no checkout flow can save creative that does not stop the scroll, and no email can fix ads that do not make anyone feel.
The post ends with one instruction, “Fix the ads,” after describing founders spending $5K a week on ads that “never stood a chance.”
For brands planning a campaign
For a DTC wellness brand assessing paid-social conversion, this is the thinker’s working thesis: creative is the bottleneck; funnel mechanics come later.
A brief built around this approach would likely start with ad diagnosis and scroll-stopping creative tests, not offers, flows, or landing-page optimization.
That is a strategic choice: if the brand believes its offer or checkout is the constraint, the work would start elsewhere.
This is the piece that explains where the conversion-first approach came from and why wellness is the niche.
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It answers the “who is this and why do they talk this way” question that a name search raises, and it is the post that carries the concrete commercial vocabulary — VSL ads, Meta ad psychology, conversion-focused creative.
Kakade describes bartending at an exclusive club in New Delhi, working 14-hour shifts for ₹35,000 a month while, by their account, the members’ children received ₹2 lakhs a week in allowance and treated staff dismissively.
They say top hotels were recruiting and their Instagram reels were going viral, but the work felt hollow.
A call from their brother brought them home, where they learned eCommerce fundamentals, Meta ad psychology, conversion-focused creative, and how to help business owners scale.
The post reports earning three times the bartending salary, working from their hometown, and sleeping eight hours.
It ends by naming the niche — wellness brands doing seven figures a month — and describing VSL ads as helping “good people win.”
The same text appears in a second post, suggesting it was republished; both versions carry the same figures and structure.
For brands planning a campaign
The story establishes VSL ads and Meta creative for e-commerce and wellness as the claimed specialty, rather than general marketing, and frames the work as advocacy for the client’s mission, not just performance. Wellness brands can use that framing to assess tone fit: the pitch takes the founder’s side, aims for scale, and is openly emotional.
This is the clearest single piece for understanding the position Kakade is selling: a career summary that ends with the sentence most likely to shape advice to a wellness brand.
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It is the most quotable summary of the approach.
This short post compresses the same arc — civil engineering, the switch to hospitality, top bartender, exhaustion, moving home, and learning eCommerce and VSL psychology from their brother — into a few lines.
Its distinctive conclusion: Kakade writes that, in their experience, “desperate wellness customers respond to direct psychology, not gentle messaging,” and that they now help wellness founders “escape the ‘authentic marketing’ trap.”
It ends by warning that most founders are closer to bankruptcy than they admit and do not see it coming.
For brands planning a campaign
This is the sharpest signal of how Kakade would pitch a wellness creative strategy: direct-response psychology over soft brand messaging, with the stated belief that gentle, values-led marketing underperforms for customers actively seeking a fix.
Brands whose positioning depends on sensitivity, medical caution, or a soft tone should resolve that tension before briefing.
Brands comfortable with aggressive direct response will find a clear signal of alignment, backed by the same eCommerce and VSL vocabulary as the other posts.
Diagnoses paid-social problems as creative problems1
Direct psychology over “authentic” brand messaging1
Diagnoses paid-social problems as creative problems
In a post about underperforming funnels, Shashank Kakade walks through a familiar result — 1,000 visitors, 7 sales, $5,000 spent — and rejects the usual responses: try a discount code, add another abandoned-cart flow, copy a pop-up.
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Those are “duct tape,” in the post’s phrase, good for about three days before the funnel collapses again. The stated fault is the ads themselves: no checkout flow saves a creative that does not stop the scroll, and no email sequence fixes ads that make no one feel anything.
Opens with a concrete dashboard outcome, lists the fixes a team might propose, dismisses each with a reason, then redirects the reader to the ad.
For brands planning a campaign
A brand assessing Kakade for paid social should expect the first pass to focus on ad creative, not landing pages or lifecycle email. Bring the offers, claims, and creative assets that need reworking.
Kakade describes the work as VSL (video sales letter) ads, the format the posts name as what converts and what they now sell to business owners.
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One post states that these ads “don't just convert” and pairs them with the claim of earning three times the earlier bartending income while working from home.
The result and income figures are self-reported. Ask for client names, campaign data, or third-party confirmation before relying on the claimed outcomes.
For brands planning a campaign
For a direct-response consumer offer, VSL-style ad creative is the concrete thing to test. Ask for sample scripts or finished VSLs before planning a campaign; none appear in the posts here.
Direct psychology over “authentic” brand messaging
One post states the central creative argument plainly: desperate wellness customers respond to direct psychology, not gentle messaging.
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It describes the target clients as wellness founders escaping the “authentic marketing” trap and adds that most founders are closer to bankruptcy than they admit.
Frames the reader’s problem as urgency and fear of running out of cash, then positions blunt direct-response messaging as the answer.
Ask for examples of how they handle compliance-sensitive or substantiation-heavy claims.
For brands planning a campaign
Expect soft brand copy to be pressure-tested and urgency-led claims to be pushed. A wellness brand in a regulated or claims-sensitive category should agree on substantiation and tone before production starts.
The posts address founders running consumer offers, with wellness brands called out specifically — one line speaks to “your wellness brand doing 7 figures a month.”
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The skills named are e-commerce fundamentals, Meta ad psychology, and conversion-focused creative. One post closes with a question inviting fellow founders to describe when they realised their skills deserved better.
For brands planning a campaign
The clearest fit is a consumer brand with existing paid-social spend and a conversion problem. Brands considering B2B, enterprise, or non-commerce campaigns should ask about relevant experience.
The longest pieces open with a hook — “I used to serve drinks to billionaires' kids” — then run a short-line narrative through the bartending job, the brother's offer to build something at home, the skills learned from him, and the contrast between the old work and the new.
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The same narrative appears twice in identical text and once more in condensed form, serving as both introduction and proof.
Hook, then one-line beats, then a then-and-now contrast, then a closing question that invites founders to reply.
For brands planning a campaign
The structure transfers directly to story-driven ad creative: strong first line, short beats, contrast, closing prompt. The story is about Kakade rather than a client, so ask for client results to assess performance.
The four posts name one past job and no sponsorship, affiliate, investment, or client relationships.
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Kakade writes that they tended bar at an exclusive club in New Delhi, located at House Society, working 14-hour shifts for ₹35,000 a month before leaving roughly three years before writing.
They describe their current work by client category—wellness brands and e-commerce founders—but name no companies.
Shopify is the only platform in a concrete work example; Kakade states no commercial relationship with it.
Meta, Instagram, and VSL ad work appear as skills and tools, not brands they represent.
House Society
Employment
Kakade writes that they bartended at an exclusive club in New Delhi, which the post places at House Society.
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They worked 14-hour shifts for ₹35,000 a month while building a following for cocktail reels. They describe the role as past employment, roughly three years before writing.
Kakade uses a Shopify store dashboard showing 1,000 visitors, 7 sales, and $5K spent to illustrate a leaking paid-social funnel.
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They argue that founders patch discounts and abandoned-cart flows instead of fixing the ads. No commercial relationship with Shopify is stated; the example shows the kind of storefront their clients run, not a brand they work for.
Shashank Kakade's posts are easiest to explore by theme.
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Start with their argument that paid-social losses are usually creative failures: one post walks through 1,000 visitors, 7 sales and $5,000 spent, then rejects discount codes, abandoned-cart flows and copied pop-ups as short-term fixes.
Next, read the posts that identify video sales letter ads as the deliverable and argue that distressed wellness buyers respond to blunt psychology rather than soft brand messaging.
A longer bartender-to-ecommerce story offers context on the founder audience they say they serve.
Ask for dated client examples before assessing their work for a campaign.
Both write first-person ecommerce operations posts that start with a specific account symptom, quantify it and end with a practical rule.
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Raymond's posts about a vendor switch wiping email images and reactivating a dormant Klaviyo list follow the same diagnosis-to-instruction structure as Kakade's paid-social post.
Raymond's material covers email lifecycle, deliverability, list hygiene and flow auditing. Kakade's focuses on paid-social creative, Meta ad psychology and video sales letter ads.
Both treat creative strategy as a distinct, testable discipline for paid social and DTC brands, drawing on hands-on campaign experience.
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Papon argues that every DTC brand needs someone asking why an ad worked and what the data says to test next. Kakade makes a similar case that the ad, not the funnel, is what needs fixing.
Papon focuses on the creative strategist role, ad-account learning and industry networking. Kakade focuses on direct-response psychology for wellness founders and VSL production.
For a DTC wellness brand weighing a paid-social engagement, Kakade’s posts show reach but not audience composition.
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The only measured figure is a LinkedIn following of about 1,561, recorded 11 October 2026; the posts publish no platform demographics, engagement rates, or past campaign audience reports.
Across three distinct posts from August to October 2025, they address founders and owners of e-commerce and wellness brands who spend on paid social, with funnel math (1,000 visitors, 7 sales, $5K gone), video sales letter ads, and a closing question to "Fellow founders" about when their skills deserved better.
That suggests an operator audience rather than a consumer one, making Kakade a potential fit for creative and strategy aimed at brand owners, but not necessarily for a product campaign targeting wellness shoppers.
Before committing budget, ask for demographics behind the 1,561 followers and the audience breakdown from a recent paid-social campaign for a comparable wellness client.
For professional attributes such as employer, occupation, and job seniority, ask whether they have audience survey results or another documented source.
LinkedIn followers
1,561
Follower count recorded on the LinkedIn profile linkedin.com/in/shashank-kakade in the account record; no engagement rate or audience breakdown was provided alongside it. · 2026-10-11
LinkedIn posts available for audience assessment
4 posts (3 distinct; two are the same text)
All four LinkedIn posts, published 3 August 2025 to 21 October 2025. None carries follower, impression, or comment counts, so they show the topics written for rather than who reads them. · 2025-08-03
The four posts describe Kakade’s client work—video sales letter ads and paid-social creative for wellness and e-commerce brands—but publish no sponsorship package, rate card, deliverable list, usage or exclusivity terms, or partnership inquiry route.
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They disclose no brand partnerships, sponsored placements, or affiliate arrangements.
Kakade’s work for paying clients includes direct-response video sales letter ads aimed at wellness founders and ad creative built around scroll-stopping hooks rather than discounts, abandoned-cart flows, or pop-ups.
Buyers considering a creator partnership should ask Kakade directly about deliverables, timeline, rights, and budget; no official channel or policy is published in the posts.
A direct-to-consumer wellness brand already spending on Meta ads wants to improve cold-traffic conversion. Its creatives are running, the offer converts on the landing page, and the team has already tried funnel mechanics such as abandoned-cart flows, pop-ups and discount codes.
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Conditions
Agree on claims and substantiation before production. Kakade's posts do not explain how they handle regulated or substantiation-heavy wellness claims, so the brand should provide a claims file and sign-off route rather than assume that process is covered. Their direct-psychology position shows the tone, not a compliance process.
Expect the first pass to focus on hooks and scripts, not media buying, audience structure or landing pages. The stated argument puts creative upstream of funnel mechanics. A brand that sees its offer or checkout as the constraint is briefing a different job.
Kakade's posts publish no partnership package, rate card, deliverable list, usage or exclusivity terms, or inquiry route. The commercial relationship shown is client service work, not a creator sponsorship offer. Scope terms, rights and timeline directly; they are unverified.
Audience evidence is thin: the only measured figure in the posts is 1,561 LinkedIn followers, recorded 11 October 2026, with no demographics or engagement data. If the plan includes distribution through Kakade's own channels, ask for audience composition; if it is for creative services only, that matters less.
The performance and income figures in the posts are self-reported. Kakade's posts include no client names, campaign data, sample scripts or finished VSLs. Ask for examples or references if you need to verify outcomes before hiring.
Verdict
Fit: a creative and script engagement. Kakade's posts support their stated position directly. In one, a Shopify store takes 1,000 visitors, makes seven sales and loses $5K; discount codes, extra abandoned-cart flows and copied pop-ups are dismissed as duct tape that buys three days. The stated conclusion is that the ads, not the funnel, are the constraint, and the closing instruction is "Fix the ads". Across the other posts, the named deliverable is the video sales letter ad, described as what converts and what they now sell to business owners. It draws on eCommerce fundamentals, Meta ad psychology and conversion-focused creative. The niche is explicit — wellness brands doing seven figures a month — and one post states the working belief that desperate wellness customers respond to direct psychology rather than gentle messaging. For a brand whose creative is not stopping the scroll, that thesis is the thing being bought.
When to choose a specialist
An enterprise B2B software company selling a compliance platform to finance and IT decision-makers wants help generating qualified leads through a long, multi-stakeholder sales cycle.
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Reasons
The channel does not match the stated craft. The described work is paid-social video sales letter creative for direct consumer purchases. A compliance platform's buyers are reached and qualified through a different motion, and no post shows experience in that area.
The argument works against the brief. Kakade's core position is that urgency and direct psychology outperform gentler, values-led messaging for customers actively seeking a fix. That approach targets a consumer in distress, not a committee weighing risk, integration and procurement. Either the framing is misapplied or dropped; in the latter case, the specific thing being bought is gone.
The audience evidence cannot support a B2B claim. Kakade's posts show 1,561 LinkedIn followers but no demographic, employer, seniority or engagement data. Ask for audience composition before relying on that audience, even on a professional network.
A wellness brand seeking a soft, sentiment-measured brand-awareness campaign with no direct-response mandate would also be a poor fit. Here, the mismatch is the stated creative philosophy rather than the market. Kakade's posts offer no example of sensitive or soft-tone work to weigh against it.
Verdict
Poor fit based on the posts. Every post addresses consumer and e-commerce operators: the audience posts speak to founders running consumer offers, name wellness brands, and list e-commerce fundamentals, Meta ad psychology and conversion-focused creative as skills. The posts show no work in B2B, enterprise, procurement-led buying committees, LinkedIn demand generation or long-cycle nurture.
A worked campaign example
Angle
Treat the ad as the product to fix. Kakade's posts make the case with one worked example: a Shopify store takes 1,000 visitors, makes seven sales and loses $5K. The fixes teams reach for first — a discount code, another abandoned-cart flow and a copied pop-up — are each dismissed as three-day duct tape. Build the campaign around that argument: rewrite the opening seconds of the highest-spend creative, keep the offer and landing page frozen, and let the test isolate the hook. That single-variable change gives the brand a clear read and matches the working thesis that no checkout flow can save creative that does not stop the scroll.
Brief
DTC wellness brand, existing Meta spend, flat conversion. Two-week creative diagnostic, then one scripted test.
Steps
Send the brand's three worst and three best creatives by cost per purchase, the current offer, the claims and substantiation file, and the audience targeting in use. State that offers, flows and landing pages are frozen for the test window.
First deliverable: a written diagnosis of why the existing openings lose the scroll, in the blunt register of the posts. The original failure post opens on the dashboard result, then rejects each proposed fix in turn — a usable template for the write-up. Kakade's long-form posts show a story-led alternative: a hard first line, one-line beats, a contrast, then a closing question to founders.
Second deliverable: one full VSL-style script plus three alternative hooks for the top-spend creative. VSL ads are the named deliverable in the posts, and wellness is the named niche, so the posts support this need.
Run the new script as a single swap inside the existing ad set against the current control. Set the decision point in advance — for example, fourteen days or a specified spend, whichever comes first — so the creative judgment is not debated against funnel metrics mid-test.
Get legal or regulatory review of every script claim before production. Kakade's posts show a direct-psychology position for wellness but no worked example of a compliance-sensitive claim. Have the brand's own reviewers handle this unverified area.
Before committing budget, ask for sample VSL scripts or finished ads, one client reference, and the audience demographics behind the LinkedIn following if Kakade's own channels are part of the plan. The posts include none of these. Ask directly to scope the unpublished partnership terms: deliverables, timeline, rights and budget.
When the brand wants creative decisions grounded in what the numbers show, rather than an immediate rewrite.
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The posts argue that a DTC brand cannot afford to go without a dedicated creative strategist in 2026 because paid social is the fastest way to test creative and learn from real consumer behaviour.
They say someone should ask why an ad worked, what patterns the account shows, who is actually buying and what to test next.
For a wellness brand with flat cold-traffic conversion and no agreed explanation, that points to a diagnosis-first engagement: interrogate the live ad account before commissioning new scripts, and treat every existing ad as a source of learning.
The posts also show an industry-facing side of the work: attending Cannes Lions 2026 without a pass and deliberately placing themselves in rooms where performance and creative leaders gather, a signal of where the strategist sits in the wider creative conversation.
The posts make a case for the role, alongside industry notes, but offer no worked creative: no hook rewrite, script, creative teardown or before-and-after conversion number.
A brand would be buying the case for a creative strategist and whatever deliverables it scopes directly, rather than documented output it can inspect first.
The stated position is general to paid social and DTC, while the posts name wellness brands and a direct-psychology stance for that market; a brand specifically seeking that wellness stance won’t find it here.
The posts also omit partnership terms, audience data and examples of wellness or regulated-claim handling.
When the brand’s numbers point to the funnel rather than the ad.
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The two posts describe client cases.
In the first, a brand switched email vendors and every image in every live flow disappeared.
The breakage had been live for a month before a customer noticed; the old vendor had hosted the images, so leaving took every sent email down retroactively.
In the second, a brand returned to Klaviyo after nearly a year of running campaigns straight out of Shopify.
The stated plan was to build a baseline from repeat openers in the last three months, run a 25% random sample, watch roughly 50% open rates from repeat openers against roughly 10% from everyone else, hold a blended figure near 40% as the line, and keep sampling across six to ten campaigns before suppressing the rest.
That is the flow, automation and deliverability ground Kakade’s funnel post dismisses as duct tape.
If the wellness brand’s data shows the leak in welcome, abandoned-cart or post-purchase automation, or in sending reputation, this is the better choice for addressing the campaign problem.
The posts say nothing about creative, hooks, ad scripts or paid social, so this is not a substitute for hiring Kakade when the problem is creative that fails to stop the scroll.
Choosing it would leave that complaint unaddressed and shift the job to retention and deliverability work.
The posts also omit commercial terms, audience data and examples of wellness or regulated-claim messaging.
Ask for those before scoping the offer and claims for a wellness campaign.
This is a fork in the diagnosis, not a like-for-like swap.
