The Introducer Economy · Part 2 · Columbus Day Special

You Are Not Who You Say You Are

October 11, 2026 · By Peter Ciaccia

Reality is warped right now. Somewhere along the way, people decided that saying you’re something makes you something.

It doesn’t.

I keep meeting “mentors.” Everybody’s a mentor now. Let me ask you something: what the hell is a mentor? A mentor is someone who has done the thing — bled doing the thing, failed at the thing, figured out the thing. A mentor has scars, not slogans.

But today? A mentor is anyone with a Canva graphic and a quote about “positive energy.”

And that’s the other disease: toxic positivity. “Good vibes only.” “Positive energy.” It’s not optimism — it’s delusion with better branding. There’s a difference between believing things will work out and lying to yourself about why they haven’t. The first one builds businesses. The second one builds pathological liars who can’t tell what’s real anymore.

Here’s where it gets dangerous: it spilled into the business world. Now you’ve got people who have never closed a deal calling themselves closers. Never built a company calling themselves founders. Never risked a dollar calling themselves investors. They say it with a straight face, they post it every day, and after a while even they believe it.

But here’s what they don’t understand: you don’t get to declare who you are. Your record declares it for you. The deals you closed, the money you risked, the things you built — that’s your identity. Everything else is a costume.

And the pattern is this: the loudest people in the room are usually the ones with the least to show for it. The real ones? They’re too busy doing the work to tell you about it.