Brunson credits Jason Fladlien with a set of five "curiosity hooks" — five different ways to present the same opportunity so people want it.1
The premise: your new opportunity has to be positioned so people believe it and buy. The hook is the angle that makes them lean in.
And there isn't one right angle — there are five, and you pick the one that best pulls your specific audience out of the red ocean they're currently in.2
Each hook, crucially, is defined against an existing tactic in the market. They don't just describe your thing; they reframe the thing people are already doing as inadequate, and position yours as the escape.
Brunson runs all five through one example — weight loss through ketosis — which makes the structure visible.3
Little-Known, Big Differences. Show them something they're unaware of that changes everything. "There's this little-known thing called ketosis. Hardly anybody's talking about it." Enemy: ignorance of the key factor.
Well Known, Little Understood. Take something they think they know and show they're missing the crucial nuance. "Everyone's talking about low-carb, but almost no one understands ketosis — it's not restricting carbs that works, it's getting into ketosis." Enemy: shallow understanding.
This Changes Everything. Something new just happened; if they're not aware, they're missing out. "You need to learn about a new type of ketones that instantly puts your body into ketosis." Enemy: being behind.
The Crystal Ball Theory. What worked before is about to be obsolete; get in now. "Research is showing low-carb diets just aren't enough — the diet of the future is drinkable ketones." Enemy: the outdated approach.
Revisiting the Fundamentals. Things have gotten too complicated; go back to basics. "Diet trends have gotten out of control. With ketosis you only have to do two things." Enemy: complexity and overwhelm.
The pattern across all five is that each speaks against a current red-ocean tactic.4
That's not incidental — it's the mechanism. Brunson says changing your positioning this way pulls your opportunity out of the red ocean and into a blue one. The hook is how you differentiate, and differentiation here means naming what's wrong with the alternative.
So a curiosity hook is a small act of destruction before it's an act of attraction. Before you can make your thing appealing, you make the existing thing feel inadequate — outdated, misunderstood, incomplete, overcomplicated, or ignorant of the real key.
This connects the hooks to the whole new-opportunity apparatus: you're not improving on the current approach, you're declaring it the wrong vehicle and offering escape. The five hooks are five flavors of that declaration.
Watch what stays constant across the five: the actual claim about ketosis barely changes. Ketones, ketosis, weight loss — the substance is identical in all five.
What changes is the relationship to the audience's current belief. Hook one says you don't know about this. Hook two says you know the label but not the mechanism. Hook three says this just emerged. Hook four says your current method is dying. Hook five says you've overcomplicated it.
Same facts, five different accusations about where the listener currently stands. This is the real skill — not having five different products, but understanding your audience's current state well enough to pick which gap to open.
Because a curiosity hook works by opening a gap between what the listener believes and what they'd need to believe, and there are exactly five places that gap can sit: they lack the info, misunderstand the info, are behind on the info, are invested in dying info, or are drowning in too much info. Fladlien's five hooks map the five positions a listener can occupy relative to the truth you're selling.
Brunson's instruction is to pick just one — the one that works best for positioning your opportunity to your specific audience.5
The choice depends on where your audience actually is. If they've never heard of your key factor, use Little-Known. If they've heard the buzzword but don't get it, use Well Known Little Understood. If they're doing an older version, use Crystal Ball. If they're overwhelmed, use Revisiting the Fundamentals.
Getting this wrong wastes the hook. Tell someone "this is little-known" about something they already know well, and you sound ignorant. Tell someone drowning in complexity that "this changes everything" with a new complication, and you deepen their overwhelm.
So the meta-skill is diagnostic: read the audience's current position first, then select the hook that matches it. The hooks are tools; the diagnosis is the craft.
The hooks are legitimate framing and they're also a manufacturing process for dissatisfaction, and the line is worth marking.
Each hook works by making the listener feel their current approach is inadequate. When that's true — they genuinely are misinformed, or behind, or overcomplicating — the hook does them a service by opening their eyes.
When it's not true — when their current approach is fine and you're manufacturing a gap that doesn't really exist to sell them an escape they don't need — the same hook is manipulation. "This changes everything" is honest when something genuinely changed and a lie when nothing did.
The five hooks can't tell the difference, and Brunson presents them purely as positioning tools. The ethical weight rests entirely on whether the inadequacy the hook asserts is real. A skilled operator can make any current approach feel outdated or incomplete, whether or not it is, which is exactly the capability that makes the hooks powerful and dangerous.
You have an opportunity and need an angle that makes people lean in.
First, diagnose your audience's actual position relative to your key idea. Do they not know it (Little-Known)? Know the word but not the substance (Well Known Little Understood)? Miss that something's changed (This Changes Everything)? Cling to a dying method (Crystal Ball)? Drown in complexity (Revisiting the Fundamentals)?
Pick the single hook that matches where they genuinely are. Don't tell the well-informed their key factor is little-known, or the overwhelmed that here's another new thing.
Write the hook as a statement against the current red-ocean tactic — name what's inadequate about the alternative, then position yours as the escape. The negation is the engine.
Then run the honesty gate: is the inadequacy your hook asserts actually real? Are they genuinely misinformed, behind, or overcomplicating — or are you manufacturing a gap to sell an escape they don't need? If the gap is real, the hook is a service. If you're inventing it, the hook is a con, and it'll feel like one eventually.
A legitimate hook names an inadequacy in the audience's current approach that genuinely exists — they really are missing the key factor, misunderstanding the mechanism, behind on a development, invested in an obsolete method, or drowning in complexity. Opening the gap serves them.
A manipulative hook asserts an inadequacy that isn't really there, manufacturing dissatisfaction with a fine current approach to create demand for an unneeded escape. The gap is invented, and the hook is selling relief from a problem it created.
The test is whether the "wrong" you're naming about the alternative is true. The hooks are identical in form; only the truth of their accusation separates service from con.
Attributed to Jason Fladlien, illustrated with one example, no data.6 The hooks match well-established copywriting and curiosity-gap principles, so the direction is sound; the specific five-part taxonomy is Fladlien's via Brunson.
Tension: the hooks work by making the audience's current approach feel inadequate, which is a service when true and manipulation when manufactured — and the same skilled operator can produce either. Brunson frames them purely as positioning, with no attention to whether the asserted inadequacy is real.
Second tension: the diagnostic skill (reading the audience's position) is where the real difficulty lies, and Brunson treats it lightly. The hooks are easy; knowing which one matches reality is the hard, underexamined part.
Open question: is there a version of the diagnostic that also checks whether the gap is real before opening it — or does the hook-selection process, focused on what will convert, systematically skip the question of whether the inadequacy it asserts is true?
Convergence with the Prolific Index and curiosity-gap material is strong — the hooks are the tactical delivery of a curiosity gap, and the "against a red-ocean tactic" logic is the message-level version of creating a niche. They connect directly to the new-opportunity and improvement-offer pages: each hook is a way of declaring the current vehicle wrong.
The tension is the recurring one — these are framing tools presented without an honesty check, and the vault's own standards (provenance, real inadequacy vs. manufactured) sit uneasily beside a technique optimized purely for what makes people lean in.
To Mystery, Surprise, and the Curiosity Gap. That page explains why an information gap compels attention — the mind treats an incomplete pattern as an itch it must scratch. The five hooks are five standardized ways to create that itch.
Held together they show the hooks aren't five different techniques but five templates for one cognitive exploit: each hook opens a specific kind of information gap — missing, misunderstood, outdated, emerging, or overcomplicated knowledge — and the mind's compulsion to close gaps does the rest. The curiosity-gap page supplies the why; the hooks supply the ready-made whats. Neither states it alone: Fladlien's contribution is recognizing there are exactly five positions a listener can hold relative to a truth, and therefore five gaps you can open.
To Status as the Only Mover. Each hook implies a status stake: not knowing the little-known thing, misunderstanding the well-known thing, being behind on the new thing — each is a small status threat, and adopting your opportunity is the status repair.
The insight neither reaches alone: the hooks convert by pairing a status threat with its resolution in one move — "you're behind/ignorant/overcomplicating (status down), but here's the escape (status up)." The curiosity gap gets attention; the status threat supplies the motive to act. This is why the hooks feel urgent rather than merely interesting — they don't just open a knowledge gap, they make the gap a status problem the listener needs to solve, which is far more compelling than curiosity alone.
Sharpest implication. The five hooks aren't five techniques — they map the five positions a listener can occupy relative to a truth (they lack it, misunderstand it, are behind on it, cling to an obsolete version, or drown in too much), and each opens the matching information gap paired with a status threat. That double action, curiosity plus status, is why they compel rather than merely interest. But every hook works by asserting the audience's current approach is inadequate, which serves them when true and manipulates them when manufactured — and the same operator can produce either, with the hooks themselves blind to the difference. The craft isn't the five templates; it's the diagnosis of where the audience really stands, and the honesty about whether the gap you're opening is real.
Generative questions.
Does hook-selection, optimized for what converts, systematically skip the prior question of whether the inadequacy it asserts is true — and can any version of the process build that check back in?
If each hook pairs a knowledge gap with a status threat, is the status threat the part doing the real persuasive work — and would a hook that opened curiosity without threatening status convert at all?