Very thoughtful, Shaun. To your point, one of the great challenges of inexperienced folks is the inability to discern what’s legit and what’s shit. That ends up being costly in the long run but sadly it’s also one way we learn. Ow. Really. When I was in my twenties and barely an entrant in the business world I had a massively inappropriate notion of what I had to offer. It wasn’t until much later, after I’d suffered the slings and arrows and the potholes that I began to see how little I knew and had to offer.

Here’s an analogy: online dating. Here’s your key line:

It would have never happened if not for great marketing ads selling false dreams to the nine-to–five day job slaves during a bad economy.

In precisely the same way: all the Tinder and Match profile writers putting stuff out there that sucks in the gullible to their first dates, and then who are met with massive disappointment, because the goods don’t live up to the hype. It’s what we do: the marketing is ever so slick, but the end product is pap. All I gotta do is point to the number of men who showed up with forty plus pounds of “athletic and toned” around their guts, with no personality, but who shelled out a small fortune for a fortune teller to weave a bullshit story. Happens to us all. In business, in dating.