Most entrepreneurs think they have a marketing problem.
In reality, they usually have a vision problem.
Not because they lack passion or ideas, but because the future they are trying to invite people into doesn’t yet exist clearly enough to be followable.
When vision is incomplete, marketing feels hard. Sales conversations stall. Hiring feels uphill. Alignment never quite sticks. Founders experience this as frustration, disappointment, or self-doubt.
But the issue isn’t tactics.
It’s that the thing they are trying to market hasn’t been fully invented yet.
Marketing is not primarily about techniques, channels, or messaging frameworks.
Marketing is the act of getting other human beings to move toward a future with you.
It is persuasion, influence, and invitation. It is seduction.
And seduction only works when what you are inviting people into is genuinely compelling.
We are always marketing—whether we realize it or not. To customers. To employees. To partners. To funders. Any time you ask someone to commit time, money, energy, or reputation, you are marketing.
Here’s the part most people miss:
If your vision is vague, you present as uncompelling.
If your future is fuzzy, you present as uncertain.
If you don’t really know where you’re going, people can feel it.
No one wants to follow a leader who doesn’t know where they’re going. Even if they can’t articulate why, people sense it immediately.
This is why so many capable entrepreneurs share the same experience.
They work hard.
They care deeply.
They believe in what they’re building.
And yet:
They don’t experience this as a “vision problem.”
They experience it as irritation, disappointment, or confusion.
They think they’re struggling to find the right words.
But that’s not what’s happening.
What’s actually happening is that the future they’re trying to describe doesn’t yet exist as a clear, coherent object.
It exists as a feeling.
A direction.
An intuition.
A sense that this could be something.
That’s not enough.
When someone truly understands where they’re going, they can describe it in thirty seconds, two minutes, or an hour. The length doesn’t matter. The coherence is already there.
When someone can talk endlessly about their business but can’t explain it clearly in two minutes, that’s not a communication issue. It’s a signal.
It means the business does not yet exist as an integrated, whole vision in their own mind.
And people can feel that.
When coherence is missing, people don’t push back. They don’t debate. They don’t object.
They hesitate.
They disengage.
They keep their options open.
They feel it as a lack of conviction.
They feel it as internal contradiction.
They feel it as something that doesn’t quite add up.
This is why marketing problems are first vision problems.
This is why employee problems are first vision problems.
This is why leadership problems are first vision problems.
Until the future you’re committed to exists with enough clarity and coherence for others to locate themselves inside it, no amount of marketing technique will solve the problem.
You can’t seduce people into a world that hasn’t been fully invented.
Most entrepreneurs are working incredibly hard on the wrong layer of the problem. They’re trying to optimize how they communicate something that doesn’t yet fully exist.
That’s why the results never quite match the effort.
To get the outcomes most entrepreneurs want, you have to dramatically improve your capacity with language.
Not copywriting.
Not persuasion tactics.
Language as a tool for inventing reality.
That discipline has a few core components:
First, simplification.
Most founders create expansive, infinite visions that sound inspiring but confuse everyone. Clarity, crispness, and coherence are what make a future followable.
Second, iteration.
Whatever future you articulate will be incomplete. It must be tested, spoken into the world, refined, and corrected. Coherence is not achieved in one pass. It’s achieved through contact with reality.
Third, listening.
The same future is heard differently by customers, employees, and partners. Leadership requires understanding how to speak into each of those concerns without fragmenting the vision itself.
After working with entrepreneurs for over two decades, one pattern stands out.
Every once in a while, you meet someone who is genuinely extraordinary. Not just successful, but unmistakably so. People trust them. People follow them. People organize themselves around them.
Almost without exception, what sets these people apart is not intelligence, hustle, or tactics.
It’s their mastery of language and their understanding of human nature.
They know how people actually decide to follow.
They know what creates trust and conviction.
They know how to invent a future clearly enough that others can see themselves inside it.
That is the difference between businesses that do okay and leaders who build something exceptional.
This capability is not optional.
And it is not taught nearly often enough.
You can’t market something that doesn’t yet exist. Most marketing, hiring, and leadership problems trace back to an incomplete or incoherent vision, not a lack of tactics. Until a future is clear enough for others to locate themselves inside it, persuasion won’t work. Real marketing begins with inventing a future that people can sense, trust, and choose to follow.