Do you like the struggle or the dream

In marketing and sales, you cannot avoid running into one of these two patterns: either you are confronted with a problem you are struggling with. Or you are sold a dream. Aspiration-based marketing, if you want the official term.
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This post is about the dream version. Because there is something in it we rarely name.
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The promise always sounds the same:
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" 𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘭𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘺 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘪𝘵 𝘪𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶. 𝘐𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘭𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦, 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘶𝘯𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘨𝘯𝘪𝘴𝘦𝘥, 𝘴𝘶𝘱𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘥, 𝘶𝘯𝘴𝘦𝘦𝘯. 𝘉𝘶𝘵 𝘐 𝘴𝘦𝘦 𝘪𝘵. 𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘱𝘢𝘺 𝘮𝘦, 𝘐 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘩 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘵𝘦𝘤𝘩𝘯𝘪𝘲𝘶𝘦, 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘥, 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘧𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘰𝘧𝘧 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘢 𝘳𝘰𝘤𝘬𝘦𝘵."
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Easy peasy. Just swallow a pil, red or blue, it works both ways.
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What that promise does is subtle and structural. It lowers the threshold to almost nothing. Everyone can do it. Everyone has the talent. The only thing that was missing was permission and a tool.
The democratisation of tools has accelerated this enormously. Writing, publishing, speaking, building, launching: access is there. And that is genuinely good. More people trying more things. More people starting.
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But this is where things start to flatten and to hollow out.
If everyone already has it in them, no one needs to develop it anymore. Just use the tool. Buy the product. If the technique is enough, the craft disappears. If the tool does the work, the difference between someone who has built for ten years and someone who started yesterday flattens out.
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I call it the "𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙮𝙗𝙤𝙙𝙮'𝙨 𝙛𝙖𝙢𝙤𝙪𝙨" syndrome.
(Everybody's Famous (Iedereen Beroemd) is a 2000 Belgian film by Dominique Deruddere, nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. I had a small role in it. The title aged well.)

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Don't get me wrong — there is absolutely nothing wrong with ambition or dreams. But words lose their meaning when everyone gets to claim them without the weight that belongs to them. Expert. Author. Speaker. Thought leader. The words are still there. The substance is not.
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And it does not only affect the people who believe too much too soon. It also affects the people who have actually built. Whose work actually stands. Because the field they operate in has become so flat that distinction is no longer legible.
Good has become good enough. And even that is debatable.
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The dream version of marketing sells access. That is its power and its damage. Because what could have set people apart-depth, consistency, time- becomes invisible in a world where everyobody gets to be famous.
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So the question is not whether you have it in you, but what you do with it when no one will see the difference anymore.

I consider myself a atypical marketer because I refuse to use either approach. I don't sell you a problem you didn't know you had, and I don't sell you a dream. I try to be realistic. Which is, commercially speaking, not exactly convenient. People look for recognition in the problem or in the dream. Realism offers neither.

But in the work I do, convincing someone is pointless. If you need to be convinced, we are starting on the wrong foundation. The work only works when you walk in because you decided to — not because I made it sound irresistible. It is a collaboration, not a conversion. And collaborations built on soap bubbles don't survive the first honest conversation.