When I talk to people about marketing, I see the same reaction every time: confusion. A blank stare. “What the hell is this guy talking about?” It’s not that they’re unintelligent. Many of them are engineers, doctors, skilled professionals who’ve spent decades perfecting their craft. The problem is simpler and more fundamental: the middle class doesn’t understand distribution.

The Value Chain Trap

The middle class has mastered one thing brilliantly: building products and services. They know how to engineer solutions, develop prototypes, manufacture goods, and deliver quality work. What they don’t have is distribution power. This single gap forces them into a specific role in the economy, one that extracts value from their labor while keeping them perpetually dependent.

Without distribution channels, middle class professionals become vendors and suppliers in B2B relationships. They serve the big corporations, the conglomerates run by elites who have mastered the art of reaching customers at scale. The middle class creates the value. The elites capture it.

My father’s story illustrates this perfectly. He was a VJTI engineer, a skilled technocrat who ran his factory as a vendor to MDS Switchgear for 45 years. He had other prestigious clients: L&T, Siemens, major corporations that depended on his expertise. He was good at what he did. But he was always dependent on these businesses for his survival.

When he finally developed his own product, a line of melamine crockery, he had no idea how to sell it. I remember watching him load plates and cutlery into the dickey of his car, driving from hotel to hotel, trying to make sales one establishment at a time. Here was a man with four and a half decades of manufacturing experience, reduced to being a traveling salesman with samples in his trunk. It looked ridiculous because it was ridiculous. He had the product. He had the quality. What he didn’t have was distribution.

Status as Survival Mechanism

This is where status enters the equation. The middle class craves status, not out of vanity, but out of economic necessity. Status is their substitute for distribution. When you can’t reach customers through marketing channels, advertising campaigns, or established distribution networks, you rely on your network of friends, relatives, and professional contacts. Status is what makes that network valuable.

A middle class professional needs status to signal credibility to potential clients. They need the right degree from the right institution. They need to be known in their community. They need to maintain relationships with people who might, someday, throw business their way. A relative in a government position who can award a contract. A former colleague who remembers their work and makes a referral. A family friend who needs exactly the service they provide.

This explains behaviors that might otherwise seem irrational. Why do middle class families stretch their finances to buy bigger cars, bigger houses, branded clothes they can barely afford? Why do they spend disproportionately on weddings, on maintaining appearances, on status symbols that eat into their savings? Because these signals matter. In the absence of marketing budgets and distribution channels, personal credibility is everything. Status is distribution.

The non-meritocratic throw off false signals even more aggressively, displaying wealth they don’t have because the appearance of success can generate actual opportunities. That impressive car might help close a deal. That expensive watch might make a potential client take you seriously. In an economy where personal networks determine business opportunities, perception becomes a form of capital.

The Generational Challenge

I’ve spent years trying to make a generational jump, attempting to move from middle class to elite by mastering distribution. I wrote a book. I’ve sold seven copies. I gave away a hundred free copies, though I have no idea how many were actually read. People told me what everyone tells the middle class: “If your product is good, it will sell.”

This is perhaps the most damaging myth in existence. Good products don’t automatically sell. Distribution sells products. Marketing sells products. Access to customers sells products. The middle class is trapped by the belief that merit alone will win, while the elites understand that controlling distribution is what matters.

My book was a test product, a stepping stone to learn these lessons firsthand. If I could crack distribution with this, I’d have the formula and the encouragement to create something bigger. But the fundamental problem remains: I don’t know how to reach people at scale. I’m living the same challenge my father faced, just in a different industry.

A Data-Driven Approach to Distribution

This is why I created GTMLab. I’m betting on probability theory to crack the distribution code. The concept is straightforward: analyze various marketing channels, calculate customer lifetime value and cost of acquisition for each, and predict which route to market will be most effective. Instead of guessing or relying on personal networks, use data to determine where attention and resources should be focused.

Right now, I’m using this framework to help businesses and startups measure their distribution options. It’s my way of learning while providing value. For every client who needs to get their product or service to market, I can analyze their channels and identify the most cost-effective path forward. It’s the solution I wish my father had when he was loading plates into his car.

The Democratization of Distribution

But something fundamental is shifting. Social media is democratizing distribution in ways that were impossible a generation ago. Traditional media—television, print, radio—were controlled by a small number of gatekeepers. If you wanted to reach millions of people, you needed their permission and their infrastructure. The elites held a monopoly on mass distribution.

Now, creators can build audiences directly. A YouTuber can reach more people than many television networks. A Twitter account can have more influence than a newspaper. An Instagram creator can launch products to hundreds of thousands of engaged followers without a single retail partnership. Distribution is no longer exclusively in the hands of those who own the channels.

This is why the established elites are genuinely fearful of social media. It’s not just about the spread of misinformation or the decline of traditional journalism, though these are the reasons typically cited. The deeper threat is economic: social media breaks their monopoly on distribution. When anyone can build an audience, when creators can tell stories that resonate and build direct relationships with customers, the old gatekeepers lose their power to extract value from the middle class.

The middle class finally has an opportunity to escape the vendor trap, to build distribution power without needing permission from the corporations they’ve spent generations serving. Those who learn to tell stories, create content, build communities, and master these new channels can break free from dependency on B2B relationships that capture most of their value.

The Path Forward

The challenge now is one of education and execution. The middle class needs to understand that status, while useful within personal networks, is a limited form of distribution. Real power comes from mastering scalable channels, from learning marketing not as an abstract concept that provokes confusion, but as a practical skill that determines survival.

My father spent 45 years as a skilled vendor because he never learned distribution. I’m trying not to make the same mistake. The tools are different now. The opportunities are greater. Social media has created possibilities that didn’t exist in his generation. But the fundamental lesson remains: technical skill and product quality are necessary but not sufficient. Distribution is what separates the middle class from the elite. And for the first time in history, distribution is becoming something the middle class can actually learn to control.

The question is whether we’ll seize the opportunity or continue to rely on status signals and personal networks while the elites maintain their grip on the value we create. The monopoly is breaking. What we do next will determine whether the middle class remains trapped or finally breaks through.