Personal brands to the rescue

Let’s close out summer on a high note — a business doing it right. My wife signed us up for this summer camp-themed dinner at a local restaurant.

We were greeted with Old Fashioneds, served with the chefs’ high-end interpretation of camp food, and read a ghost story from the stage above. To remember the experience, we were all given souvenir vinyl records with the menu on the back and the autographs of the chefs who made it all happen.

There are no hidden lessons here. They simply over-delivered to the point where we had to sign up for their next few themed dinners. Well done.

I don’t think they’ll have any issues with branding but over 80% of businesses will, so I wrote this week about why personal brands are coming to the rescue.

Thanks for reading and welcome to the one true season.

— CJ

Elsewhere:

• “I’m not afraid of artificial intelligence, I’m afraid of natural stupidity.” — Guillermo del Toro
• “Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn’t matter. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough.” — Richard P. Feynman
• Rob Hope is currently working on a second edition of his landing page ebook, which I’ve found over the years to be the closest anyone’s ever gotten to explaining how landing pages work in the real world with real clients. I can’t wait for the updated version.
• Victoria Song explains why AI doesn’t belong in journaling. I don’t agree entirely. I believe constraints breed creativity. However, what defines a constraint varies wildly by person. For many, having AI give you a head start may be the difference between journaling every day and forgetting you even have a journal.
• I’m so glad someone compiled this list of Substack’s broken promises. I knew, after they took on their first big-time investors, that their promises made no sense for their business model. I stated it in this newsletter many times. Still, it’s pretty shocking to see it all laid out in plain text.