Do shit that doesn’t scale.

I get questions from marketers all the time about what to do as more and more of their work is eaten by AI.

They see their clients happy with AI content, even if conversion rates and sales go way down. Why? The amount of cost-cutting involved is so massive, the client willing to take a big hit in sales.

This is short-term thinking in the extreme.

Their clients are well aware this could lead to company-ending decreases in sales and reputation in the long term, but the client doesn’t care. Why? The client for most marketers is usually a middle manager who’ll be on to the next job in a year or two. They’ll take the cost-cutting win now and dip out before their boss’s boss figures out that sales aren’t decreasing just because of “the economy.”

My advice has been the same for years: do shit that doesn’t scale. 

What does this mean in practical terms?

• Elicit replies to your email newsletters and reply to the replies.
• Show up in person more.
• Get people to subscribe to your content in person, at any kind of event where like-minded meet — not just conferences.

Here’s some real-life examples:

• I’ve seen an author put his phone number on the front cover of his book.
• I’ve seen newsletters set up booths at events just to subscribe a few dozen people — because both parties know each other are real and engaged.
• I went to a bar to meet the inventor of podcasting. He asked people to show up to discuss his podcast and what was on their minds — maybe a dozen or so did. That was more than a decade ago and we’re still telling our readers about it.
• I traveled seven hours to meet at a bar with two like-minded content creators. It led to several podcast episodes, countless blog posts ideas, and an event.
• I went to concert where I thought several of my readers would likely be. I walked up to the front row and started chatting up random people. I discovered several were readers, and we talked until the band started to play.
• I took two publishers' offers to meet with their subscribers in short Zoom calls (it must've been recommended at a creator conference somewhere). Both publishers have grown their businesses into empires since those meetings. I’ve shared their articles dozens of times, and they've shared mine, because we've all met in person now and know we can trust each other’s taste in content.

All of these examples led to outsized successes for everyone involved. None of them “scale,” but somehow all of them scaled beyond expectations.