I’ve met quite a lot of founders who show the pride they can’t quite hide along with their product.
And the products were really good — solid tech, complete features, design with decent taste. But ask one question — “Who would buy this? Where are they right now? What problem can they use it to solve today?” — and they tend to freeze for a beat, then say, “It’s so good that people will like it!” or “We’re fostering the market; give it some time and the customers will show up.”
I’ve heard those lines far too many times. Behind them is a mindset that’s natural but dangerous: before a product has truly faced the market, every one of them is the company’s “chosen one,” or “the village’s hope” in Japanese amine terms.
You’ve probably heard stories like this. But here’s an angle you may not have tried: what if that product is you? What if the thing you — maybe a marketer yourself — have to work with is “me,” the product that was The One back in school, or at your last company? What would you do?
That starting point is what a startup calls “product awareness” — the moment you suddenly realize the thing you made has to face the market. And everyone goes through the same awakening at least once in a career: the day you graduate, you become a product to be picked up from the shelf.
From that moment on, you have to think about how to position yourself in the market, how to sell yourself for a good price, how to find your place in a world you don’t yet know.
Q: At what concrete point does a startup finally realize how important marketing sense and product awareness are? What does that “moment of epiphany” usually look like?
The moment that triggers product awareness often shows up like this: you see a competitor’s launch or campaign and only then notice how glaring the “weakness” in your own SWOT is; or a friend looks at your product and says, “It’s nice, but if it could just…” — and you realize your product isn’t so wonderful, so world-shaking, so must-have after all.
This stage is less an “awakening of marketing awareness” than an “awakening of product awareness.” Before that awareness wakes, this half-finished thing is the “chosen one,” the creation everyone cradles in their palms, the surefire weapon that will crush the competition — a labor of love carrying an entrepreneurial ideal and a dream of commercial success.
But the day you realize it’s a “product,” it hits you: the essence of a product is selling and making a profit — and at least half its fate rests in the hands of customers and the market.
Q: You often say, “the day you graduate, you become a product.” What does that metaphor mean?
In school, what you cared about might have been only how to learn, to pass exams, even to enjoy the campus life. But the day you graduate and step into the real world, you truly realize that from now on no one will patiently steer you back onto the right track. You have to start thinking about how to position yourself in society, how to stand out through the countless years of competition ahead.
A product is the same. During development, it’s your brainchild. But the moment it faces the market, it becomes a commodity that needs to find a paid adopter. The market won’t pay extra for your passionate devotion; it only settles the score at the final showdown.
Product is the reality, marketing is the strategy, selling is the fight.
Q: If you only discover how important marketing is on the day “product awareness” wakes up, is there still time?
It’s never too late. But you may have to put in much more effort to catch up with those who woke earlier — who may also have more resources than you.
It’s hard to have full product-and-marketing awareness on your first day, deciding then and there what kind of “product” you want to become. But as you develop, the earlier you have that awareness — and gather data, find a direction, and seek resources around it — the less you’ll have to fix yourself by trial and error once you’ve become a product.
Here’s an example that may seem only loosely related: the U.S. Navy and Air Force have long had a saying drawn from hard experience — rookie fighter pilots are easily shot down in their first ten missions, whether from inexperience or plain bad luck. So in training programs like Top Gun, veteran instructors beat them again and again; but through the lessons and handed-down instinct of those simulated dogfights, their odds of survival climb sharply when they reach the real battlefield.
The role of a consultant is a bit like that Top Gun instructor: first, offering the experience that comes from real combat and from “being shot down,” so you take fewer wrong turns; second, offering the product and marketing sense you’d “best have on day one,” so the product’s odds run higher.
Q: Your career has taken so many turns — from programmer to marketer to magazine publisher to consultant. Did you design that path, or did it just evolve?
A career path rarely bends on your own intentions alone. Three factors usually shape it:
Yourself. As you learn and experience things at work, your sense of your own positioning keeps shifting — and that shift steers where you go next.
The external. Your employer’s direction, how the organization runs, its values, pay, competitors; plus your family situation, finances, a change of city — the “not up to you” factors.
Serendipity. At some key point you might meet the right company, the right event, even the right mentor — someone who lets you do what you’re good at, enjoy it, and maybe reroutes your whole future.
Everyone’s career feels all three; only the proportions and timing differ.
Before I turned twenty I was actually a programmer and computer-graphics artist, and I thought that would be my life’s work. But a few winding years later — work experience, what I chose to study, a growing read on my own abilities — I first stepped into marketing. Then came a few more turns: magazine publisher, digital-publishing founder, and finally corporate CMO and consultant.
If you ask me, I’d say my career came mostly from clear, deliberate decisions — but always while drifting downstream; I only chose which way to steer whenever I hit an obstacle.
Q: From the inside, what does that moment of “choosing a direction” actually feel like?
However deeply you’ve thought about the “self” and “external” factors, the final call still comes down to intuition. But sometimes there are factors too important to ignore — an urgent money problem, a company culture you can’t stand — that matter more than intuition in the moment. So it’s a question of proportion, different for every person and every situation.
Sometimes you have enough slack to give up an already-good path and chase a grander one; sometimes you leave first out of dissatisfaction, then trust intuition to tell you where to go.
And sometimes the reason for taking a road is simple and brutal: it’s the only way to survive.
I’ve been in all of these. But if you trust your own ability, hold a strong will, and see the risks clearly, you can still push past the grip of “survival” and open a new path of your own.
Q: Have you deliberately used a marketer’s eye to position yourself? How is marketing yourself different from marketing others?
Once I realized marketing would be the theme of the back half of my career, I kept asking “how do I market myself?” — and kept updating my positioning and my answer. Over the past thirty years I’ve pivoted and “sold” myself successfully several times.
But along the way I ran into a bind: for the companies and clients I serve, I can freely pick whatever marketing skills and tools fit best; when it comes to marketing myself, my own traits shape what’s actually right — and sometimes work against me.
I’m not someone who enjoys being on camera, and I prefer plain, tight writing to long, elaborate narration. And my own strict demand for truth and genuine connection limits how far I’ll go in selling myself.
So honestly, when it comes to marketing myself, I know exactly “why I’m not more aggressive” and “what would actually sell better” — but from another marketing consultant’s point of view, I’m not that successful at it.
Still, I’m lucky to have the freedom to work in a way I can accept, without forcing myself. And that temperament has quietly become part of my positioning: low-key, communicating through words, letting readers find me on their own.
Q: If someone has just graduated, or is at a career crossroads, and wants to think about their positioning like a marketer, what question should they start with?
My suggested order would be:
Your interests. Your interests usually track your abilities; things you’re not interested in, you rarely do for long or do well — they turn into a daily grind of self-erosion. That doesn’t mean you should only take work you love; it means aiming for that kind of work while weighing whether partly, or fully, giving up an interest is a price you can accept. As long as you have some success ahead, an interest can always be picked back up.
Your ability and value. From your schooling, your interests, or resources already in hand, take stock of your inventory and find your PMF (product-market fit). As a product to be chosen in the market — yes, even if you start your own company — the higher your score here, the more you can ask. But be objective and honest with yourself; feeling good about yourself gets you nowhere.
Your assets and possible directions. Do you have several jobs waiting? A family business to inherit? Enough cash in the bank to tide you over? Are you the household’s breadwinner? The answers all shape your positioning: can you hold the castle for years, or do you have to get out to raid and loot for food tonight?
The financial return. Is pay your top priority, or would you rather trade some income to do what you truly love, or to serve society? Whenever money is involved, weigh direct cost, opportunity cost (what you lose by giving something up), and marginal cost (what each additional unit costs you). For example, “trading some income to do what you love” — what you give up is the opportunity cost of the higher pay, and each year in that work fetches you that year’s marginal cost. Think it through and your decision might be “grind for money for ten years, then pursue the real interest,” or “do what I love for a year, then head obediently back to work.”
If you already grasp marketing sense, you’ll notice all four map onto product positioning, features, advantage analysis, and the mechanics of value (hint: see the “FFAB” and “USP” frameworks from my first book).
But note: these four aren’t really for deciding your future career — they’re for finding your positioning. Not “which way you should go,” but “where you set out from.” Those are two different things; pick the wrong starting point and even the right direction leaves you a longer road than everyone else.
A closing thought
The “chosen one” is an emotional shelter, not market validation. The real test only begins the day your product — or you — faces the market, and that’s the day most people first notice marketing even exists.
You can’t know everything on day one, but you can choose to find a “Top Gun instructor” a little earlier and get shot down once on a simulated battlefield — instead of getting shot down on the real market after your resources are truly spent. The earlier product awareness wakes, the less catching up you’ll have to do.
Hardcore Insights
The “chosen one” is an emotional shelter, not market validation. Development builds internal conviction; the real test only starts on launch day.
“Product awareness” is often triggered by a single sentence. A competitor’s launch, or a friend’s “it’s nice, but if it could just…,” is worth more than a chorus of praise.
The day you graduate, you become a product. No one steers you back on track anymore; you find your own positioning and set your own price. The market gives no credit for how much you poured in.
Ask four things when you look for your positioning: interests; ability and value (your PMF); circumstances and fallback; financial return. Decide where you set out from before you decide where to go.
Waking late still leaves time, but costs more effort. The earlier the awareness, the sooner you gather data and find direction — and the less you fix by trial and error.
A consultant’s greatest value is letting you get “shot down” once in a safe place — before your resources run out, not after.
