I have noticed that a lot of times when a new creator comes on my feed, it’s usually when they have hit some milestone or they’re kind of flexing or something like that. One example is that some creator who got invited to some big show was posting a lot that, hey, I got here. So that makes me conclude that the person had been posting about something for a consistent time.
They got big in that. They got some recognition and Instagram decided that we should give wider reach to that recognition. So basically, aspiration is something that Instagram has concluded to have a wider appeal than the initial base.
And yeah, that is true. I won’t care much about some textile fabric researcher, but if that guy is getting a lot of recognition or received the award for best fucking textile researcher or something, I might pay attention to it.
Basically, it is aspirational. I can look at him and it can either make me want that or make me want it in my own field.
So we recognize now that aspirational stuff is good. It has wider appeal, and even the platforms themselves want to push it.
Next comes the monetization of whatever is aspirational because think about any B2C thing. Whatever sells in B2C, unless it’s a sustenance good, is aspiration.
And coming back to our previous example of people having their aspirational moments pushed more. One way I have seen people monetize this aspiration is by launching a course, how-to guide, or maybe coaching.
They will get big in some industry. They might hit some record, they might get some recognition, they might win some award, or they might set up an agency or business in a field that is really hard. Then they come forward and say, “Hey, I was able to do this. You want to do this too? I can help you do this.”
And this offering gains traction because it is aspirational. Who wouldn’t want what someone who has arrived has? The irony of B2C offerings is that they have to be so simple and idiot-proof, yet be so aspirational and outlandish.
So one clear monetizable strategy can be that you show that you have things or will have things that people aspire for, and just that is enough to sell a how-to guide or coaching.
One ad came on my feed where a guy had his own AI agency where he would install agentic systems for businesses. That is a tough business, getting clients for it is hard. So the ad he made was not about his own business but another offer that, hey, I was able to set it up. I can teach this to you.
So essentially, without learning anything new, he launched a new business. Basically, one where he’s actually doing the thing, another where he’s teaching the thing. That’s ingenious. The agency validates the course; the course funds the agency. Neither cannibalizes the other.
So if whatever you have done is aspirational because it makes money, because it’s hard, because it has status, because it’s prestigious, or whatever, people would pay you to know how you did it.
I mean, I can also talk about luxury products and aspirational goods. And stuff that, hey, companies make their products aspirational so people buy it. But that’s trite. I don’t think we need to discuss that.
At this point, we can conclude that aspirational events draw greater crowds, and that crowd might be more inclined to pay you. So aspirational events are actually a liquidity event for social capital. You have an illiquid asset in terms of credibility in a niche, right? Maybe you’re getting some sponsors or whatever. But the moment the aspirational event comes, you can have your liquidity event by the way of courses and coaching.
Just like a startup founder has a lot of equity capital in some startup, which he can liquidate only when the startup is being sold or getting IPO’d. A person who has social capital can liquidate their own social capital by sharing the know-how and aura in exchange for money.
Plus, after making videos that were pure information, even if they were really intuitive, but at the end of the day, they were purely just informational. And purely informational content is for a really warm lead. It’s not a top of funnel thing like Instagram Reels.
I don’t think that was the right thing to do. Just information is not valuable at all. Even coaching classes, which literally sell information, actually position themselves as aspirational that, hey, put your kid here, he will have a bright future. So it would have never been commercially viable to go down the intuitive way I was going for my AI series. I have to lean heavily into the visual stuff on the vibes and keeping things as simple as possible.
My friend just set up the Hermes agent and Discord connection. In my previous mindset, I would have thought about how to make a tutorial about setting the connection. But now I just realized that I can make that aspirational too. Instead of saying, “Yeah, I just connected a bot with Discord,” we can say, “I don’t need to even work from my desk anymore. I can just do it from my phone and experience the freedom. And I can teach you this.”
ChatGpt’s response
This is a pretty strong frame because it explains why “success posts” spread beyond niche interest circles.
Most niche content has bounded relevance. A textile researcher is only interesting to textile researchers. An AI agency founder is mostly interesting to people already inside that market. But the second there is a visible status signal — award, money, event invite, client wins, media feature, follower milestone, expensive lifestyle marker — the content escapes the niche and becomes culturally legible.
People no longer need to understand the craft to understand:
“this person won.”
That changes distribution dynamics completely.
The platform also has incentives to push this. Aspirational content performs well because it activates multiple emotional loops simultaneously:
- envy
- admiration
- curiosity
- hope
- comparison
- fantasy projection
A random tutorial may interest 5,000 specialists.
A “I made $100k/month doing X” post interests:
- specialists
- beginners
- dreamers
- lurkers
- spectators
- haters
- people from adjacent industries
The TAM explodes.
And your “liquidity event for social capital” analogy is genuinely sharp.
Because credibility normally sits trapped inside reputation:
- followers
- respect
- authority
- perceived competence
That’s illiquid until there’s a conversion mechanism.
Courses, coaching, masterminds, templates, communities, guides, software — these are basically financial instruments built on top of perceived competence.
The aspirational moment acts like a pricing event.
Before:
“maybe this person knows something.”
After visible recognition:
“this person clearly cracked something.”
That delta massively increases willingness to pay.
What’s especially interesting is your observation that the second business often requires no fundamentally new skill acquisition.
The agency founder already:
- gets clients
- closes deals
- fulfills work
- built systems
- developed positioning
The education business is mostly repackaging operational knowledge into:
- explanation
- structure
- proof
- aspiration
So the “teacher business” parasitically feeds off the “operator business,” while also reinforcing it.
That loop becomes:
- Build competence
- Publicize wins
- Aspirational moment occurs
- Audience expansion
- Sell knowledge
- Revenue funds further competence
- Bigger wins happen
- Bigger aspirational moments occur
A flywheel forms.
And importantly, the educational product does not necessarily compete with the operator business because many buyers are not realistic competitors anyway.
Most people buy aspiration partially as:
- entertainment
- identity reinforcement
- hope
- proximity to success
- emotional momentum
Not purely as vocational transformation.
Which is why aesthetics and aura matter so much in B2C monetization.
You also touched on something deeper:
aspiration is transferable across domains.
A person may not care about AI agencies specifically.
But they care about:
- independence
- money
- recognition
- leverage
- competence
- escape velocity
So the field itself almost becomes incidental.
That’s why people watch:
- startup founders
- traders
- athletes
- musicians
- creators
- luxury vloggers
Even when they have zero intention of entering those fields.
They are consuming symbolic proof that “advancement is possible.”
And this is probably why milestone content often outperforms pure educational content:
education requires effort from the viewer,
while aspiration gives emotional payoff instantly.
The strongest creators usually fuse both:
- aspiration creates attention
- education legitimizes attention
- personality retains attention
- products monetize attention
A person searching:
“How to connect Hermes agent to Discord”
is already highly qualified.
They already:
- know the problem
- care about the problem
- are motivated enough to solve it
- are willing to spend mental energy
That’s an extremely warm lead.
But Instagram Reels throws your content into chaotic cold traffic where people were previously watching:
- gym edits
- relationship drama
- luxury cars
- memes
- celebrity clips
So your content is competing emotionally, not intellectually.
Which means the first job is not:
“teach.”
The first job is:
“make them care.”
That is why top-of-funnel content is usually:
- aspirational
- visually punchy
- emotionally charged
- identity-oriented
- outcome-focused
Not detail-heavy.
The details come later once curiosity and desire exist.
This is also why many creators mistakenly think:
“people don’t value information anymore.”
People absolutely value information.
They just don’t consume it at the discovery layer.
Dense information often creates cognitive load too early.
Meanwhile aspiration lowers friction because humans process status and fantasy extremely quickly.
That’s why:
“this AI agent books meetings for me while I’m outside”
is a better Reel than:
“tutorial on webhook integration with Discord.”
The first creates desire.
The second assumes desire already exists.
And once you see this, you realize many massive creators are essentially operating a layered funnel architecture:
- Reels/TikTok = aspiration + identity
- YouTube = explanation + proof
- Newsletter/community = depth
- Product/service = extraction
Each layer handles a different audience temperature.
Trying to make top-of-funnel content maximally educational is often like trying to close a sale during a billboard impression.