Complexity Is Not a Skill

Every day I wake up to an expert who has posted a funnel diagram with a hundred tool logos on it. Enrichment here, intent data there, three sequencers, a warehouse, a reverse ETL, an orchestration layer for the orchestration layer. It gets hundreds of likes, and then it echoes on every other platform.

The message under all of them is the same: GTM is rocket science, you are behind, and the way to catch up is one more tool. Or one more agency that knows the tools.

I think that's wrong.

Complexity sells

A diagram with a hundred boxes does two jobs. It makes the person who drew it look like they understand something you don't, and it makes you feel like you're missing something. Both of those sell. Tools, courses, retainers.

Someone in a Reddit thread put it better than I did: lots of people showcase complexity as skill when the same things can be done very simply. Another remembered the influencers bragging about monstrous n8n workflows. The workflow screenshots were impressive. Whether the workflows did anything you couldn't do with a list, an enrichment, and a sequencer was never the point of the post.

What simple looks like

Most teams don't have a tooling problem. They have a few tools they use at a fraction of what those tools can do, and another one on the way because someone saw a diagram.

Start there. Learn what your CRM already does. Find out whether your sequencer can take the field you've been exporting to a spreadsheet. Ask what the tool you pay for does with a webhook. Most of the time the answer is already on your invoice.

When you do add something, ask one question: does it remove complexity, or add it? A tool that replaces two others and a manual step is worth looking at. A tool that needs a new tool to connect it to your other tools is not.

Simple is harder

None of this means GTM is easy. Picking the one signal that matters out of dozens is hard, and so is writing a message a buyer actually wants to read. That's the work, and neither gets easier with more boxes on the diagram.

A simple system is the harder thing to build, because you have to decide what to leave out. That's the skill. The diagram with a hundred logos is what you draw when you haven't decided yet.