EDITION 160 | 90 days and counting
Next free training: (this one is for all of you building and launching expert businesses that don’t work as well as they should)
First, thanks to all of you who have purchased copies of The Damn Rules for yourselves, your clients, your teams… it means the world and the feedback coming back has been literally course-changing to read. You are making me better.
Couldn’t be more grateful.
If you still need a copy… we’re routing folks to bookshop.org as their first stop unless you’re a dyed-in-the-wool Kindle person and then… you know where to go.
I am also available to do free sessions with your teams or communities if you are doing read alongs or book clubs around The Damn Rules. I’m all in on helping everyone I can get the tools they need to be liberated from the “Doom Loop” of this Trustbroken Economy. And on that note…
The old tricks won’t just fail, they’ll destroy you
The CEOs of Microsoft and Open AI, in transcribed testimonies from them and their teams, admit that the entire model of the LLM undermines the content-rich internet and anyone who produces that content with the intent to grow a business. They acknowledge, now, not only that there’s a 10% chance they’ll destroy the world (a dubious and self-serving claim of course, regulatory capture is a tale as old as time)…
But you don’t have to be The New York Times, bringer of above said suit, to realize and finally accept – the web-based, “frictionless”, digital front door to the marketplace way of building a business was in some ways always a fantasy and is no only more so, and more importantly, given the presence of self-recurring web eaters that degrade truth and the appearance of expertise as a matter of course, now probably a recipe for fast failure.
I’ve been writing abut this for some time, going all the back to 2023, but the internet media is just starting to catch up, and more importantly, impacted industries lag behind.
Schwab, bastion of extracting maximum dollars for total monopolistic control from its Registered Investment Advisor clients, announced its “partnership” with Anthropic this week at the beach fest Future Proof, burying the lede: we’re going to give a known expertise killer and data privacy hater full access to your client data and portfolio behavior and their definitely not going to do that to create bot replacements for advice that create even more price compression, actively destroying the perception of expertise.
Why would they do that?
This is, of course, the wrong question. It doesn’t matter why. The behavior speaks for itself. Microsoft’s policy document on LLMs reads, “significantly disrupt the employment of the very people who generated the data on which the foundation model was trained […] LLMs are a product that destroys its supply chain.”
Schwab has been cannibalizing the relationship of its advisors and even its profits, competing directly with them to get clients to bypass human advice entirely for years. This AI play is one more “this one’s for the advisors for their efficiency” play that ends with more direct to consumer business for Schwab and giant data trove of trainable content for Anthropic to create more and more price compression on expertise. It’s what they do best.
But the issue isn’t AI. It’s likely your anchor to the recent past
The issue for founders though, beyond our responsibility as citizens and neighbors, isn’t the technical chaos of LLMs or even their destruction of content marketing as a viable way to grow expertise on the web/social. Most founders I know are happy to not have to think about blogs and social media content. What a relief.
What they often miss though, is that their own view of what must be done is anchored in the recent past, blogs or no blogs.
- They launched their business based on the successes of their past executive life and called it “fractional.”
- They brought their perceptions of how market growth works from their $100M previous company and are trying to apply it to their $3M startup.
- They look at a software launch with 2020 investor eyes, assuming the financial modeling is anywhere near the same (revenue multiples are now at 1/3 their COVID era peak)
- In short – they see the world through the lens of the free money, high-functioning internet, growth obsessed lens of the 2010s, with the skills that they honed within that hey day. We humans build reality and our decision-making narratives out of the past, while the present is busy playing by completely different rules. We soaked in the old stew, and now have to find a way not to get boiled alive.
And the real world of growing expertise in the market now and turning it into consistent revenue with clients you love and work that doesn’t betray your values at a fundamental level… escapes them.
AI isn’t the disruptor of their sense of reality, the overall trustbroken economy and its requirements. They simply built a powerful skillset and learned a playbook for a world that no longer exists.
Fire the employee within
When you are the owner, the driver, the founder of an enterprise, particularly one based in expertise, you’ve got to fire that old inner employee.
The one who made hay being an expert on how to grow things on the internet.
The one who was a genius at giving CEOs what they want
The multi-tool one that could warp herself into any situation.
Most expert firms are trying to monetize employee-grade strengths into ownership-grade outcomes and it doesn’t work. Particularly now, for all the reasons laid out above.
I want you to think about a few questions. And then if these questions spur something in you, I want to see you on Tuesday at noon ET. for our monthly free session: Real Founders Don’t Gamble –
- To what extent are you still gambling the growth your expertise business on a web that is rotten to its core?
- How are your relationships with your clients different than the ones you had with your old CEO? (they should be!)
- What structures for your soon-to-launch business or small shop lack the discipline of a single high-value offer, delivered in a completely managed relational way?
- How often are you customizing? Selling “bespoke” work as a cover for being unclear?
- How often are you outsourcing your thinking to an LLM as a way to pick up speed in a market that feels like its moving too fast for you?
If you sense any one of these are true for you, Tuesday is for you.
Forward, forward — Nick
PS – Yes, there’s been an uptick in emails and we’re working out the right cadence, particularly as I shut down LinkedIn and other access points to my work. You don’t have to read every one, but I hope with the research, unvarnished clarity, great jokes, and value, I continue to earn a spot in your inbox. I know how much that means.