David Molina contrasts law's binary right-or-wrong thinking with marketing's continuum of "more right." He warns against "Nail Down Nathan," the perfectionist who endlessly refines offers instead of selling. A nine-figure Amazon seller taught him the real failure isn't a bad choice—it's doing nothing.
So I got in trouble. I got in trouble with lawyer Steve. Uh, Steve is my lawyer. He's helping me out with some stuff about my visa application, and he asked me to put together a plan, right? It's a, it's a business plan so that the Americans will go, yes, this guy has a, has a plan to start a business. We should totally give him entrance to our country. And I put one together that I thought was pretty solid. I liked it. I felt good about it. ChatGPT also did, and I sent it to him. 15 minutes later or so, he texts me, this is the exact opposite of what it should look like. Why did you send me this? And then on top, he said, I'm gonna charge you actually extra at the end of this process because it's taking a lot of time and effort. And that was pretty harsh. And lawyers can be harsh, but I appreciate it because law has this thing where you're either right or wrong, right? So it's like you go to jail or not, you get approved or not. With that little nuance and just, I guess, absolutism and law, I appreciate them telling me this is right or this is wrong. Marketing is different. So in marketing, it's not like things are right or wrong. I actually believe in marketing there is no such thing as wrong. I, I just believe that things are right or more right. Like, an example of this is one time I tested which of these price points would work better for me. And I tested low and high and the low number did well. The one higher did worse. Higher did the best. And then I raised it again and that did the worst. So it just kind of makes no sense, right? You would expect less price to get more sales and more price to get less sales. But things just don't make logic. We don't live in a 2D world. We live in a 3D world. So it's just really hard. Because marketing is rarely logical. And that's why marketing tends to be very confusing for people who need that logic and that certainty. Because in order to be really good at marketing, you need to believe in a little bit of magic. You need to understand that there's some things that might not make sense and be okay with it. Now, people who need certainty, they don't understand it. They don't, they don't get it. And that's why people like I call them Nail Down Nathan. That's why Nail— he's not real, right? Like, Nail Down Nathan, he doesn't exist. Like, he's a behavior. It's what I call people who always want to nail things down. You can find a Nail Down Nathan because they're always saying the same things, which are like, I'm nailing down my offer. I'm looking to nail down my messaging. I'm working on nailing down my content. And what happens is they are kind of working on it, but the truth behind their, behind their like nailing down insistence is that they're just avoiding action. They tweak the offer over and over again instead of asking somebody, hey, would you like to buy this? Like making the actual thing that makes you money, which is making offers. They avoid it because they're always nailing something down. And I remember one time when I used to do ghostwriting, I met this guy that sold like 9 figures worth of stuff on Amazon. He sold like shoes and outdoor stuff, and I was really inspired by him. I asked him, what are, what is like some good piece of advice you can give for any entrepreneur out there? Like, very vague question, to be fair, but But he gave a really deep answer, which I liked. He said, listen, man, in every situation where you have two options, you actually have three. So there will be option A and there will be option B. And those are the only two you see. Whichever you choose, option A is probably gonna be marginally better than option B, but it's still gonna take you kind of far. The only wrong option is option C, which is doing nothing because then you don't get moving, right? So I really like that. And what Nail Down Nathan doesn't understand is that same analogy. He doesn't understand that A is not the worst option in the world, neither is B. The only worst option is inaction. And Nail Down Nathan never gets past a revenue level because he's always looking for things to nail. Like he's always busy creating Notion dashboards and AI prompts and finding the key instead of making the offer and asking people for the sale and just saying, hey, would you like to buy this? He's always busy nailing things down in private instead of putting his offer out there and thinking, okay, well, I want people to buy this. Why don't I make them an offer and see what happens? He's always looking for the right components for an offer, for content, for strategy, but he doesn't understand that it's impossible to be wrong in marketing. There's only right and more right. The only wrong option is not choosing an option. It's staying at the same place. So you can find it in people who are always looking to nail things down. And honestly, I kind of pity them because I've been nailed down, Nathan, and it's very hard to move because you feel like you're doing— wherever you go, you're going to be wrong. But there is no such thing as wrong in marketing. There's only right or more right. And nail-down Nathans never build anything. They never build something tangible. Like, how can they? It's, it's too hard to build a house if you're always hitting the same nail. At some point, you just have to understand that things will need to be imperfect and just move. So nail-down Nathan lives or doesn't live in all of us, but avoid being nail-down Nathan. There is no right, there is no wrong in marketing. There's only right or more right. So just get moving.
