✊ The slow, subtle decline into irrelevance (and how to avoid it)
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Hi friends, On Monday, I shared my thoughts about where everything is heading with AI, content, and marketing. In short: A dedication to Craft and authentic human creativity will be increasingly rewarded by consumers sick of AI slop, and the humans trying to win the AI-Enabled Content Arms Race. As I’ve been contemplating this new reality over the summer and thinking about how to respond to it myself, as a creator, marketer, and company of one, I’ve noticed some interesting trends in my own creative process. It started with an epiphany back in June. I realized that while I spent several hours a day writing, produced multiple podcasts, and had a bevy of other creative projects, it had been a long time since I’d had a creative project where I obsessed over the details for the details’ sake. A project I approached with a deep sense of care and Craft, in other words. Where the work was worth doing, not for the outcome, but for the work itself. As a dyed-in-the-wool Craftsperson, the realization was both surprising and troubling. In the past, I’ve applied a sense of Craft to projects ranging from music to photography to podcasts, articles, newsletters, sales pages, videos, long-form guides, brand design, and more. But over the past couple of years, my approach was starting to feel a little less Craft and a little more Content. Enjoyable enough to make. Helpful to my audience. Highly effective in attracting new clients to the business. No real problems to be found with it. And yet… The slow, subtle creep towards being a little less invigorating, a little less life-giving, a little less creatively fulfilling for me as the creator was clear. Which, once acknowledged, was a clear warning bell. Yes, on the surface, business was going well. But having seen it many times from other creators, I knew that once my enthusiasm for the work faded, once writing newsletters and creating podcasts became a box to check on my marketing task list, it would only be a matter of time before the business suffered. Before the lack of energy at the source (me) translated to a lack of energy at the terminal (the people who engaged with my work). Seeing this early writing on the wall, I’ve been reconsidering my approach to my work and my output. In the case of my new show, Killer Concept, for example, I decided to shift from a weekly release cadence to monthly, allowing myself more time and space to approach it with an expansive and obsessive sense of Craft, attending to the small details no one but me will notice… but which I as the creator, am convinced are worth the attention. Sadly, many Founders, creators, and business owners won’t see the writing on the wall in their own businesses in time to catch it, continuing with (or even doubling down on) a different approach. Outsource as much of the Craft as possible. Remove themselves from as much of the day-to-day work of their business as possible. Erect as many walls between themselves and their audiences, clients, and customers as possible. All while thinking they’re doing exactly what savvy business owners do to grow. Whether it’s AI or VAs and teams, this has long been the playbook for growing your business. Spend more time “working on the business than in the business”. And while I won’t argue with the need to spend significant time working on the strategic and visionary parts of the business… I’d argue that going forward, it’s going to be a competitive advantage to be as connected, grounded, and integrated into your business as possible. Savvy buyers will be increasingly hungry to pay handsomely to work with another human who truly understands them and their situation intimately. Yes, we need to set up boundaries and systems and bring on support to protect ourselves against burnout and overwhelm. Yes, we need to remove ourselves from parts of our business where others are more skilled, knowledgeable, and capable of achieving the results we’re after. But we’d do well to think long and hard before throttling back or removing ourselves from the primary places we interact directly with the other humans that make up our audience:
Instead of scaling back our involvement in these processes, going forward, perhaps it’s worth considering what it would look like to scale up our presence in the process. Something to consider.
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