Every free offer creates a mental audit.
Every mental audit burns cognitive calories.

The brain doesn't calculate value by price.
It calculates risk by uncertainty.

Free maximizes uncertainty.

Free asks: "What's the catch?"
Free asks: "What do they want from me?"
Free asks: "Why isn't this worth charging for?"

The Coca-Cola of yesterday spent billions making sure you'd never forget them. The Coca-Cola of tomorrow will spend billions making sure you see them right now.

Because the memory palace is dead.

Long live the stream.

There are no more empty lots in our overcrowded minds. No foundations to build on. No walls to paint logos on.

Instead, brands must learn to swim.

To catch the current rather than try to dam it. To accept they're not building monuments anymore, they're creating moments.

The stream doesn't ask to be remembered. It doesn't need to be. It only exists in that moment, fully aware another will replace it in seconds.

Brands today can't rely on mental availability anymore.

There's no storage happening. No filing system. No carefully constructed memory palace with rooms and drawers and labels.

We just watch.
Half-listen.

There's just now. And now. And now again.

We stored what mattered in mental rooms, hallways, basements. Our minds were real estate, and brands fought for prime locations.

But we don't live there anymore.

We were once architects of memory, constructing cognitive cathedrals.

Our childhood phone number.
Our best friend's address.
Our one password.

The tab collectors are the last of a dying breed, still trying to grab handfuls of water from the stream of now.

Time to let go.
Close the tabs.

Join the flow.

It was about maintaining the illusion of control in an infinite content stream. A way to pretend we could catch and keep the important bits as they floated by.

But markets don't work like that anymore.

You can't collect what's flowing. You can't bookmark a river.

The forced restart. The browser update. The dead battery. And suddenly all those carefully curated possibilities vanish into digital dust.

The strangest part? We rarely even notice what's gone.

Because tab collecting was never about the content.

The tabs multiply like digital rabbits. 147 becomes 148, becomes 149. The browser slows to a crawl. The laptop fan whirs in protest. And still we keep them open, these portals to potential that we swear we'll walk through someday.

Until the crash.

They're digital aspirations, waiting patiently in Chrome.

We've become hoarders of maybe. Collectors of "I'll get to it." Each new tab a tiny act of hope, a bet placed against the future.

But here's the thing about tab collectors: they never actually collect anything real.

💯

When you have the courage to disappoint non-fits, everything changes.

Your signal becomes clear.
Your message gets through.
Your market self-selects for you.

When you disappoint the many, you delight the few.

And that’s all you need.

So don't clog the filter.

Every time you water down your message to appeal to more people, you weaken your signal strength to the people you're actually meant to serve.

Your market's mental filter operates on a simple principle:

Clear signals get filtered in.
Weak signals get filtered out.

It's scanning for pattern matches. For signals that say "this is for me." And you can't send that signal while trying to be everything to everyone.

It’s not a messaging problem.
It’s a courage problem.

we can agree to disagree ;)
and appreciate that!
so rare these days