Everyone Kinda Looks Like They Know What They're Doing

There’s a guy in my Olympic lifting class named Luca. Award-winning powerlifter in Canada. Looks like Jason Momoa walked out of Aquaman and into a squat rack. We train in a no-frills room where the speakers push heavy metal hard enough to rattle your ribs. Chalk hangs in the air. Plates kiss the floor. And every rep is a small argument with gravity.

Here’s what’s funny: in that room, the only person who truly knows what he’s doing… is Luca. The rest of us? We’re students at different stages of “less wrong.” We copy his stance, we try to time our hips like he does, we ask for corrections, and we learn—slowly—how to turn a mess of micro-movements into one clean bar path. From the outside, Olympic lifting looks like raw strength. But anyone who has tried to put a bar overhead knows it’s a choreography of ankles, knees, hips, core, breath, wrists, timing, and a dozen decisions you don’t notice until you botch one.

Last week, while watching the room struggle through snatch pulls, I realized this is exactly what business feels like. You look around and assume the other founders have it figured out—polished funnels, airtight messaging, bulletproof onboarding, retention humming. But backstage, most are just copying the one person they’re watching, hoping to mimic form they don’t really understand. In my gym, every cue is explicit: where your feet go, how far you squat, when to pull under. In business, the cues are vague. You’re told to “work harder,” “post more,” “ship faster,” and “make a killer deck,” without anyone showing you how markets actually behave, how decisions get made, or why your sequence matters more than your hustle.

And that gap—between looking strong and lifting well—is where founders burn out. They muscle reps. They grind. They get hurt.

Power Comes from Sequence, Not Force

Olympic lifts don’t forgive sloppy sequence. If your feet are wrong, your hips can’t open. If your elbows are late, you’ll chase the bar. If you pull too soon, you leak power and miss the lift. Strength helps, but it never compensates for bad timing.

Business is the same. Growth isn’t just “more ads” or “more content.” It’s the order of operations.

Promise → Proof → Path.

What promise are you making in the ad? Does the landing page continue that promise without starting a brand-new conversation? Does the product actually deliver the promised outcome? Are you helping buyers feel confident about the decision they just made—or stranding them with buyer’s remorse? Do your emails match the voice they first met in your ad? Does support know the story sales told?

When sequence breaks, friction multiplies. Misaligned expectations create churn. Confusing handoffs kill momentum. And the founder’s default response is to add force—more traffic, more offers, more posts—when the real fix is to clean up the form. You don’t need a bigger engine when your wheels are misaligned; you need an alignment.

I’ve been lucky (and a little obsessive) about this. I spend an inordinate amount of time understanding how things work and then applying those mechanics to real problems. Lately, that’s meant helping companies figure out why their marketing is broken and where their growth is leaking. Almost every time it’s not one big fracture; it’s 50 micro-tears: an ad that promises one thing and a page that pivots to another; a checkout that interrupts to “subscribe to our newsletter”; an onboarding flow that forgets what the sales page promised; a success metric nobody told support to measure. Little mis-timings that compound until the lift feels impossible.

The Clean & Jerk of Growth

If I mapped Olympic lifting to a go-to-market, it’d look like this:

• Foot placement = positioning. If your stance is off, every downstream movement compensates. Pick a clear problem, a defined buyer, and the exact language they use. If your feet wander, your knees and hips have to bail you out later.
• First pull = attention. Smooth off the floor. Don’t yank. In marketing terms: earn attention with a promise that’s specific, not vague. “Lose 10% churn in 60 days by fixing onboarding gaps” beats “Optimize your growth.”
• Second pull = timing and acceleration. This is where power happens. Your job is to match message to moment. If a prospect’s context is “I’m stuck after trial,” your acceleration is a crisp retention storyline and not a top-of-funnel webinar.
• Pull under = belief. Do they believe you? Proof beats poetry. Case studies, before/after, named wins, and transparent trade-offs stabilize the catch.
• The catch = experience. This is onboarding, first value, first “aha.” If you crash the bar, you lose it. Guide them to a quick win aligned with the promise that got them there.
• The jerk = expansion and retention. The dip and drive, then lockout ...clean operations, consistent delivery, and proactive lifecycle touchpoints that keep the bar overhead without shaking.

Pain shows up where form is off:

• Ads say “free” while the page whispers “credit card required.” (Trust torn.)
• Traffic lands on a popup asking for an email before seeing the thing they clicked for. (Momentum stalled.)
• A buyer finishes checkout and gets a generic “Thanks!” page with no next step. (Energy dumped on the floor.)
• Support scripts don’t know the promise sales made. (Bar crashes in the catch.)

You don’t fix these by yelling at the team to “push harder.” You fix them by tightening sequence and using the right cues at the right moment. In the gym, that’s “heels, hips, fast elbows.” In growth, it’s “specific promise, consistent proof, frictionless path.”

And yes, sometimes the best cue is as small as changing a headline, a button label, or the order of two emails. Small cues, big lifts. (Also: small sips of coffee between sets help more than they should.)

A Smarter Way to Load the Bar

Here’s the part I wish someone handed me earlier in my career: you can’t out-effort misunderstanding. If you don’t understand how people decide, you’ll keep muscling reps that you should be gliding through.

That’s why I built a simple reference I use daily: a compact guide to the 29 psychological triggers that move buyers from considering to committing. Not “growth hacks.” Just clear, proven levers—curiosity, specificity, credibility, simplicity, harmony, consistency, objection handling, proof of value, and more—that help you pick the right cue for the right moment.

I made it for myself, to check my form before I ship. I added some workbook exercises.
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Now I’m sharing it.

Download the Marketing Psychology Cheatsheet: 29 Decision Triggers — free, no pitch, no strings.
​https://books.matthewkantor.com/4/marketing-psych​

Think of it like Luca’s checklist before a heavy attempt. One glance can reveal the one cue that makes the whole lift click. You don’t need all 29 at once. You need the right one, right now.

If your growth feels shaky, download the guide, pick three triggers you’re underusing, and run a week of experiments. Tighten the promise on your top ad. Align your landing page headline to that promise verbatim. Add a 60-second proof clip near your “Buy” button. Move your best testimonial above the fold. Remove one step from onboarding that doesn’t create value. Small, specific shifts. Cleaner bar path.

No pitch here. just a tool that helps you build strength with better form, not more weight. If it saves you one mis-pull, one wasted campaign, or one churn-inducing mismatch, it’s already done its job.

To better timing, cleaner catches, and bars that actually stay overhead,

Matt

P.S. If you are looking to learn to sell and market to your ideal clients more easily, I'm launching something very exclusive that might be able to help. Let me know via reply and I'll send an overview.