In a world of ever-expanding noise, the most dangerous thing an expert can do is try to do it ALL (or to do the opposite, NOTHING). If you’ve spent 20 years building your expertise in your field, you shouldn't have to spend 20 hours a week pretending to be a content creator. And if you've got that much wisdom to share, you don't want to keep it locked up in your mind so no one knows about it.

Marketing for experts isn't about being loud or silent—it’s about choosing a Posture (disposition) that matches your business goals. It's about doing the activities that will drive the outcomes you want for your business.

Clarity on your business context and goals will inform your posture.

The Three Postures of the Modern Expert

As you think about sharing and communicating your expertise, you must decide which of these three goals you are actually aiming for right now. Understand them and choose the one that best fits. And realize, you'll likely start at the first stage, and want to move into the final of the three stages.

Posture 1: Presence (The Defensive Moat)

The Goal: Verify my reputation.

If you already get 90% of your business from referrals, you don't need a funnel. You need a Moat.

In 2026, when a prospect hears your name, they will do two things: Google you and ask an AI (like Claude or Gemini) about you. If your digital house is empty, you are creating friction in a deal you’ve already earned.

• The Strategy: Passive verification.
• The Check: If someone looks you up, do they see a current, credible expert, or a ghost town from 2019?
• The Value: Presence is Generative Engine Insurance. It ensures you pass the Google Test without forcing you to become a full-time influencer.

In my early years of freelancing, this presence approach with something that worked really well for me. I was more active, regularly, when I first started, but as I got more clients, I throttled back that activity because I had less time to create and publish that content.

Eventually, over the years, I shifted into the pipeline mode of content creation and promotion, publishing while having many other things going on in my business and on the side. Building financial margin in my freelancing work was one way I made room for doing more creation work steadily.

Posture 2: Pipeline (The Active Acquisition)

The Goal: Control lead flow.

At some point, relying purely on referrals becomes a risk. You start to experience the Roller Coaster Effect I talk about in Path of the Freelancer. If you want to move from a defensive crouch to an active hunt, you need a Pipeline.

• The Strategy: Active capture.
• The Shift: You stop asking people to read your thoughts and start asking them to join your room.
• The Value: This is about Control. By moving rented attention (LinkedIn/Facebook) into an owned asset (Email), you kill the referral reliance and start winning predictably.

With so many articles on my website, I've created a content pipeline engine for lead generation. Regularly, I'm getting people contacting me about working together. Sometimes it's based on a technical expertise like Joomla, while other times it's my worldview and philosophy. My library of content acts as a salesperson telling the world about me. Those people migrate to my email list and, over time, become clients. Many have received those emails for years, before finally biting the bullet and working with me.

Posture 3: Dominance (The Market Gravity)

The Goal: Become the category default.

This is for the expert who is no longer just looking for the next client, but for Legacy. You want your frameworks to be the standard. You want your brand to have so much mass that the market is pulled toward you.

• The Strategy: Algorithmic omnipresence.
• The Shift: You use your entire Legacy Vault—past books, talks, and webinars—to saturate the market across text, audio, and video.
• The Value: This is about Monopoly. When you reach Dominance, you stop competing on price because there is no one else in your category.

This is the big shift I made from 2023 to 2025, as my content creation and publishing reached their highest level. This involved creating content here, podcasting, YouTubing, and posting consistently on social media. I've spent time regularly showing up across domains that matter. Having a vast library makes this stage of saturation much more realistic to accomplish and stems from my mission to create so much foundational content that I'd have depth to draw on for decades.

The Self-Diagnostic: Where are you standing?

Do I want the market to verify my reputation, control my lead flow, or monopolize my industry (or topic of focus)?

• If you’re losing deals you should have won, it's time to Fix your Presence.
• If you’re tired of the referral roller coaster, it's time to Build your Pipeline.
• If you want to define how the next 10 years of your industry look, Aim for Dominance.

When you're ready to act on this, contact me and let's talk about working together.

If you’re a small business owner and you’re trying to figure out how to get more leads (or sales) from Google and from the new wave of AI search tools (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, etc.), you’re in the right place.

I’m Jason Scott Montoya, and I work directly with business owners who want their website to become a real growth asset — not just an online brochure.

If you’re looking for a freelance SEO specialist, you can read this and quickly decide if we should talk.

The Big Picture: SEO Isn’t Dead — It’s Getting Filtered

More and more people are asking AI their questions instead of searching the old-fashioned way.

That doesn’t eliminate SEO.

It raises the bar.

Generic, copycat content is getting gobbled up by AI answers. The opportunity now is:

• Specific rich content for specific audiences.

If you can publish content that’s based on real experience, real point of view, real stories, and real clarity — you’re not competing with the internet. You’re expanding the edge of it.

And when you pair that kind of content with smart on-page optimization (especially title tags), you give both Google and AI systems clear signals about what your pages are actually about.

What I Actually Do (In Plain English)

When business owners hire me, I help them:

1. Create a plan (so we’re not guessing)
2. Prioritize what matters (so we move the needle)
3. Execute the high-impact work (so results show up in traffic, leads, and revenue)

Most small businesses don’t need every SEO thing.

They need the right SEO things, in the right order.

The 3 SEO Levers You Can Control (And the Ones I Focus On)

If you want more Google traffic, it comes down to three main actions you can control:

1. Publish rich content
2. Update that content over time
3. Optimize your title tags

If you do those three things well, you’ll get a massive portion of the results most people want. Then we can layer on more advanced SEO if and when it makes sense.

The Most Effective SEO Task (And Why I Lead With It)

If you already have a content library on your site — blog posts, service pages, landing pages — the fastest low-hanging fruit I’ve found (over and over) is this:

Update your title tags.

I call it title tag defibrillation.

Because a good title tag can shock a stagnant page back to life.

It’s high-impact and low-effort. And it’s often the first thing I do when I step into an existing website.

Why title tags matter (even in the age of AI)

Title tags are one of the strongest signals you can send about what a page is.

They help:

• Google understands the page and ranks it
• Humans decide whether to click
• AI systems orient themselves when they summarize or cite your page

I’ve led title tag projects where the result was 36% growth in Google organic traffic year over year — and that was largely from title changes paired with already-rich content.

Two Ways We Can Work Together

Every business is different, but most of my work falls into one of these two paths:

1) Targeted, iterative projects (fast wins)

This is the let’s move right now approach.

We identify high-impact, low-effort opportunities and execute them in small batches.

Examples:

• Title tag audit + updates on key pages
• Fixing the most damaging technical issues
• Refreshing content that’s already getting impressions but not clicks
• Identifying what content you should create next (based on real search demand)

This is ideal if you want momentum, visibility, and results without signing up for a massive long-term engagement.

2) Full strategic plan (big picture clarity)

If you want to take SEO seriously and build a durable advantage, we can do a deeper discovery process.

This typically includes:

• Evaluating your content library quality and gaps
• Mapping your highest-value services/products to search intent
• Building a multi-month or multi-year SEO plan
• Setting a sustainable publishing + optimization cadence

This is ideal if you have larger goals (and you want SEO to become a real growth engine inside the business).

A Note on Content Merging (One of My Favorite Levers)

Sometimes the best SEO move isn’t to publish something new. It’s to take what you already have and make it richer.

Merging multiple weak or overlapping blog posts into one strong, authoritative page can create an exponential effect — like content fusion.

I’ve led consolidation projects where we merged hundreds of posts into a smaller library that was far richer, and it generated more search traffic dramatically.

And when you pair a good merge with a strong title tag update, you can supercharge the results.

How We Interface (And How I Charge)

I work with clients in batches of 10 hours. Those batches can be used on a bi-weekly, monthly, or quarterly pace — depending on your budget, capacity, and urgency.

To keep projects clear and moving, we’ll use a task/project system (Airtable is my preference, but we can use whatever you’re already using).

If you want to know my current hourly rate and availability, the next step is simple.

Who This Is For (And Who It’s Not For)

You’re a fit if:

• You own a small business and want more inbound leads from search
• You have a website with meaningful content (or you’re willing to build it)
• You want a specialist who can prioritize and execute, not just audit and disappear

You may not be a fit if:

• You’re looking for cheap SEO packages or generic deliverables
• You want to game Google with shortcuts instead of building durable assets
• You aren’t willing to publish and maintain real content over time

Want to Talk?

If you’re looking for a freelance SEO specialist and you want to work directly with the person doing the strategy and the execution, send me a message.

In your note, tell me:

• What your business does
• What you sell (and your best customers)
• Your website URL
• What you’ve tried so far
• What success looks like (leads, sales, traffic, etc.)

Then, if we're a good fit to work together, we can start with the highest-leverage next steps and build your marketing growth engine.

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Toxic empathy.

That’s the name of Allie Beth Stuckey's recent book and the topic of a fascinating discussion between her and David French. I very much appreciate that the two of them made this conversation happen; these types of rival discussions are an emerging pattern I’d like to see continue.

I'm writing this post because, watching their debate as it related to toxic empathy, I realized that French failed to land the plane, and Stuckey failed to see the runway he was aiming for. I wanted clarity on the core issue, for myself, regardless of whether they ever get there.

To rewind for a moment, this topic came up in my conversation with Pastor Steve Thomason. Here's a clip:

"What [those that use "toxic empathy"] are trying to say is that our generosity, grace and empathy can be used to manipulate us. It would be healthier if they just said that."

That gets right to my point: Stuckey's book should have been called Toxic Responses to Empathy. If she had named her book that, I would not have an issue with her title or rhetoric. My alternative title accurately describes what the book is about and reflects an author who wants to convey truth clearly.

But that's not what her book is named, and my issue isn't with her underlying thesis or how she makes it. My issue is with how she packaged it—and more deeply, that she chose to package it using the type of weaponized language she critiques her opponents for using.

Who Is My Neighbor Enemy?

To understand why someone would intentionally weaponize a word like empathy, we have to understand who they think they are fighting. Before diving into the linguistic specifics, it helps to look at the core dynamic between Stuckey and French, and where they locate the source of the problem.

Stuckey is acting as an outward-facing apologist, while French is acting as an inward-facing prophet.

Stuckey sees the primary problem as external. The enemy is secular progressivism assailing Christians. She is trying to bunker down, foster protectionism, and give her tribe the resources to stand their ground.

French is looking at his fellow Christians, seeing moral decay, and expressing deep concern. While Stuckey is criticizing progressives for being secular and sinful, French is trying to get her to see how secular and sinful their own group has become. To him, internal rot will do far more damage than any external rival.

Simply put...

• Stuckey keeps saying, "Look at how deceptive the other side is! I'm just trying to keep our side from falling for their lies."
• French keeps saying, "Look at how cruel our side is becoming! Your phrase is giving them an excuse to be meaner."

This brings us to the "Motte and Bailey" fallacy. In her debate with French, we see how Stuckey defends herself. She creates a highly aggressive, easily weaponized cultural catchphrase (the Bailey). But when challenged on the real-world damage the phrase causes, she retreats to the highly nuanced, easily defensible paragraphs hidden inside her book (the Motte).

In the end, neither side can win the debate because they are arguing from two completely different primary fears: French is terrified of a church consumed by cruelty, while Stuckey is terrified of a church consumed by deception. Because they lack a shared premise, the debate remains broken.

Definitions & Moral Relativity

When we are terrified of an enemy—whether that enemy is cruelty or deception—we often bend our language to fight them. One of the problems with moral relativism is that we all tend to become relativists when we get cornered. We twist words to avoid the harsh edge of truth. Defining toxic empathy as a toxic response to empathy seems to me like early-stage moral relativism.

Let me walk through it, as it relates to empathy. Here is the Merriam-Webster definition of the word:

"the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another"

Stuckey doesn't actually take issue with this definition. In her book (which I have not read), she describes it as standing in another's shoes. There isn't anything toxic about doing this, according to her (based on her discussion with French). The toxicity she describes is the response to the empathy, not the empathy itself.

So, what would actual toxic empathy be if we were to describe it accurately? How might we come up with a definition that is accurate?

Based on the definition above, and simply adding the word toxic (harmful or dangerous), it would be the act of misunderstanding another person. If I have a malformed view of how you see things, that is toxic empathy. If people are trained to think that empathy itself is toxic, they may opt for a distorted understanding rather than the real thing. This leads to distorted responses. That is a problematic dynamic as well.

Practically speaking, if you want the best outcomes in life, you want an accurate and precise understanding of others, even when you disagree with them. That's something I suspect Stuckey and I would agree on.

Conflation, Segmenting, Letting Go

Because our society is a mess and the national debate is broken, it is up to us to untangle the terms they are blurring together.

• Empathy is one thing.
• How we respond is another.

When they get conflated, Stuckey and I would agree: it can get toxic. But when we focus exclusively on empathy being the toxic element, it just gives us a convenient excuse to be cruel.

Stuckey wants the benefits of a viral catchphrase—book sales, podcast clicks, cultural traction—without taking responsibility for the predictable way that catchphrase behaves in the real world. 

Stepping back, we should care about toxic empathy as I defined it above (misunderstanding others), as well as toxic responses in Stuckey's explanation. We need to understand and clarify the differences and address them accordingly. If having a misinformed understanding of someone's perspective is toxic empathy, then many people have engaged in it, according to Stuckey's argument. At the same time, she poisoned the water by using an inaccurate and inflammatory phrase (toxic empathy) to describe something she's attempting to address (toxic responses to empathy).

In an issue like this, it's important to recognize our limits.

Writing (or reading) this blog post won't solve the national problem of people lacking empathy, but it may help me (and you) understand that problem better and make some local changes around the edges. We can be incredibly precise with our language, deeply empathetic to human suffering, and fiercely committed to the truth—all at the same time.

But we also need to recognize that while we are fighting our rivals, we can become the very problem we are fighting against. While rightist Christians call leftists secular and pagan, we also fail to realize that we are often just as barbaric as the other side. 

And when trying to reform our own groups, we can fail to recognize that our deepest problems cannot be resolved simply by appealing to shared virtues we no longer possess. Power structures constantly push us to act more barbarically, all while we continue calling ourselves Christians. And the sin underneath it, that fundamentally wreaks the havoc.

I don't like being caught off guard about things that can have a major impact on my way of life and work. Since many things have major impacts on our lives, our best antidote to being caught off guard is preparing and responding proactively.

With generative AI, the world is changing.

I'm no developer, but I've been using AI to develop, including a Joomla plugin! I've since developed a second Joomla SEO plugin, an app for entrepreneurs, marketers, and people who want to get stuff done called Amplify OS. I've been working on an app for Movie Shapes and one for Space Base. Consider it a combination of exploration and potential business side ventures.

The point is that I'm now able to build things I could not have done before using AI. Many things that require humans are going to be doable using technology. And this means that what is valuable and unique to service companies is going to shift. And if we don't want to be caught off guard and fall behind, we should lean in and figure out how to maximize our advantages as this revolution unfolds.

I work with multiple law firms, and I was doing some research on their businesses, as it relates to this revolution, and this post is going to collect and share some of my findings. If you're not a law firm, but are a business that offers services (consulting, accounting, and other expert-type businesses), these insights will still apply.

If you only remember one thing, remember that if doing the work is why people hire your firm, that foundation is going away. You need to adapt. The more clear-eyed we become about how things are changing, the more ahead of the game we can move. We can build (or rebuild) around this new reality so we're not stuck with a mindset and toolbox built for the last reality.

Judgment and making decisions are going to be super important. That's your opportunity.

1) Shift from Doing The Work to Providing The Intelligence

A lot of what clients historically paid experts to produce will be produced faster, cheaper, and often good enough by machines. That doesn’t erase the need for experts. It just removes the illusion about what value we actually provide.

In my previous post advising younger adults, I said the way to flourish in the AI era is by becoming an AI super user and becoming someone who is a trusted advisor and translator of empathy and culture. In the AI era, the differentiator for service companies like law firms is not their ability to generate documents. It’s their ability to make sound, defensible decisions when:

• the facts are incomplete,
• the tradeoffs are ugly,
• the downside is asymmetric,
• and the consequences don’t fit neatly into a template.

For the expert, making tough decisions is going to be a differentiator.

When people go to AI for answers, they're going to face competing perspectives and situations where making the decision and acting in these challenging situations will be what's required.  The thing they'll need to do in a hard situation will be the thing they don't want to do (out of fear or some other reason). When facing a high-pressure legal situation, getting information from AI is not what a company needs. What they need is reassurance and support from someone who knows what to expect and how to actually help. Your firm should give clients something AI cannot give them. If AI gives your client advice, and that's all they face their challenge with, they're facing it alone.

As companies think about marketing themselves, they'll need to shift how they position themselves so that they become the go-to source when it matters most. Marketing your firm on your ability to draft contracts, run standard processes, or execute repeatable filings is not an option.

Market your judgment. Judgment is your ability to:

• clarify what actually matters (prioritize),
• see around corners,
• pressure-test options when everyone’s rushing to act,
• anticipate second- and third-order effects,
• and help a client choose the most responsible next step, not just the most aggressive one.

That’s informed and backed intelligence. That’s the part clients can’t afford to get wrong and can’t safely outsource to a bot. It's what gives people reassurance when they're scared or overwhelmed.

And remember, generative AI does not understand things like humans do. It simply runs a prediction machine. But as a mimic, it can only mimic what it's given. And relying on mimics is not a way to truly make producers and generate productivity. 

2) Solve Real Problems that Make Life Better, Daily.

To thrive in this next era is to find all the mini problems people have that need solving. Do you have anything your ideal client would use twice a day? Not because it’s sexy, but because it reduces friction, lowers anxiety, and gives them clarity. That's what I'm doing with the apps I'm building. I'm identifying problems I have and ways to solve them. The things that have the most value are the winners.

If you can leverage these types of things as small, focused technology-infused tools that help clients navigate the chaotic world, you'll have a powerful advantage in contrast to simply asking them to contact you. Here are some law firm examples:

• A compliance health check that flags risk weekly
• A regulatory pulse for a specific niche (healthcare, HR, fintech, construction)
• A decision-tree that helps a GC or founder see, early, whether a dispute is trending toward litigation

The goal isn’t to replace counsel. The goal is to be useful before the emergency—so when the emergency hits, you’re not a stranger; you’re already the obvious first call.

You want an established relationship so that when they need you, they call you.

3) Human Accountability

Focus on the human connection and the trust (through accountability). As AI makes it trivial to crank out more content, the world gets noisier. In that environment, the rare asset isn’t volume. It’s accountability. Clients aren’t just asking:

• “Can you do this?”

They’re asking, explicitly or not:

• If this goes sideways, who is on the hook for the judgment call?

It's easy to shift the blame. As I describe as a way to differentiate in my book, Path of the Freelancer, doing hard things is what makes us different and stand out.

The professionals who win the next phase of this transition will be the ones who can say, credibly:

We’ll move quickly. We won’t move carelessly. And we’ll own the consequences of the advice we give.

That is the opposite of what we used a tool and hoped for the best.

4) Use Speed as an Advantage—Without Becoming Shallow

AI makes it possible to respond faster than traditional firms have ever been able to. But speed without substance is just noise. The opportunity is fast + thoughtful.

What this looks like in law firm content

• Track your niche for real changes (rulings, enforcement moves, policy shifts), not just headlines.
• Publish expert-vetted analysis quickly—hours or days, not weeks or quarters.
• Lead with implications, not summaries:
• What actually changed?
• Who is now exposed?
• What’s the first smart, low-regret move?
• What should you resist doing out of panic?

The firm that delivers the first clear, responsible interpretation earns attention—and keeps it.

Personalization at scale

Generic business law marketing is dead weight. Market-specific outcomes for specific groups with specific pressures.

Examples:

• Legal resilience for AI-SaaS startups under regulatory uncertainty
• Employment risk strategy for PE-backed platform companies in year 1–3 post-acquisition
• Governance clarity for founder-led businesses entering messy, multi-entity growth

Clarity beats breadth. Specificity signals you actually understand their world, not just their industry label.

5) Become the Expert Guide (Educational Marketing That Actually Helps)

Most clients do not feel ready for what’s coming next. They don’t need more jargon or another AI is changing everything blog post. They need someone who can explain:

• what’s actually changing,
• what remains true even as the tech shifts,
• where the real risk lives,
• and what the next concrete step should be.
• What's alarmist and unrealistic, and what's a true threat?

This is where educational marketing becomes a powerful resource.

What Law Firms Could Publish

• What the 2027 legal reset means for [industry]—and what you should do this quarter
• The five compliance mistakes AI will quietly cause smart teams to make
• How to use AI internally without creating discoverable evidence you’ll regret later

Teach like a practitioner, not a conference panelist. Use plain English. Give simple frameworks people can apply with or without you. And close with a constructive, realistic next step, a defined action that moves them one rung up the ladder.

Key Takeaway

To survive—and actually lead—through the 2026–2027 transition, your content and positioning need to prove one thing:

• You use AI for efficiency.
• But clients pay you for judgment, responsibility, and strategic foresight.

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My first AI development project was a JavaScript project.

Then, I built a fully functional Joomla plugin using Google Gemini that allows you to share an article for review before it goes live. I've sold it twice.

That was all pretty cool, but I still didn't grasp the extent of how much this AI development was a game-changer until I started preparing to build an app for Movie Shapes.

As I was working on the Movie Shapes app, I discovered the importance of structured data, particularly in a JSON file. In my journey to find a JSON file viewer that also allowed for easy editing and collaboration, I discovered Replit, an AI development tool. It was incredible, but it was starting to get pricey, so I looked around and found Google AI Studio. After building a Movie Shapes app in Replit, I built it two more times in AI Studio.

The Movie Shapes matching engine is pretty complicated, so it's going to take some time to get it ready to roll. But I'm setting it up to solve two problems for me.

1. Prioritizing what I should watch next.
2. And finding out what a group (or couple) should watch together. It's a very simple task, but to get the engine created and effective, it's a lot of front-loaded work.

Two key lessons here for building a solution (as an app).

1. Solve real problems.
2. It takes a lot of work to make solving problems simple.

Amplify OS: Supercharge Your Work

That project opened my eyes and brought me to my next app. Amplify OS. I'm building an app for myself (and for others to use) that will enable me to achieve at a high level and do things with technology and AI that I (as an entrepreneur, content creator, and marketer) am unable to do (or do easily). I'm using Google AI Studio. The app is live, and there is a free version if you want to jump in and take it for a spin.

Amplify OS will be a collection of apps that allows entrepreneurs and marketers to supercharge their work. If they want to take advantage of the AI transformations but don't want to build things themselves, they can leverage my AI tools to get the advantages and avoid being left behind.

One of the ways to thrive in an AI world is to become a power user of AI. This system helps you do that. There are multiple apps inside Amplify OS, but I'll share about two that are done and working (and that I use every day now).

Habits

Ever since Irunurun shut down, I've not been able to find a habit app quite like it. I used Toodledo for a bit. Habitica was a fun one for a time. The main idea of Irunurun was that there are 3-7 things you can do every week that transform your life and work. Track them, do them (with others), and watch things (in your life and business) change for the better.

I wanted that type of power back. So, a replica of Irunurun was my first app in Amplify OS. It's called Habits. I took what I loved about Irunurun and made some tweaks and additions. It's live and working. Amplify OS will have a free version and a premium paid version. Habits will be part of the free version (with some premium functions available).

The Most Effective SEO Task

Next, in the Amplify OS, I looked at my mini course. I've got the Most Effective SEO task mini-course as a mini-training people can buy. It walks you through how to use search data to create title tags that will get you more traffic from Google. Clients pay me thousands of dollars to do this task. In the training, I teach you how. It's a one-time fee to learn how to drive a lot of Google traffic.

But, if you'd rather the task be done for you (or you'd like it done in a more streamlined way), and are willing to pay a monthly fee for Amplify OS, I've made the title tag generation from data a one-click process. You simply add your URL to the tool, and it'll pull the search data from your Google Search Console and generate a data-based page title tag based on my process from the training program.

If it's a new article, where you don't have data, simply paste your text and generate a title that way. A few months later, you can come back and update the page title with a data-based title. For content publishers and marketers who know they need to do a title tag but never get around to it when they publish, this one-click tool will do the one task that generates the most Google traffic (when the content is good).

I've been doing this SEO process for years, and this tool is so easy and frictionless, I can't imagine doing it for my clients the old-fashioned way. 

The Joomla Version (The Most Effective SEO Task)

What would make the Most Effective SEO task even better? If it could be installed and used on a website content management system (Joomla, in my case). In my and many of my clients' cases, that means another Joomla plugin. So, I used Google Gemini and built a version of the Most Effective SEO task as a Joomla plugin. Now I can click one button, and the tool generates title tags for the article (based on data [if old] or the content [if new]). The plugin is amazing, and I'm already using it for client SEO optimization projects.

Because of some technical hurdles, I don't yet have this plugin available for others to buy and use, but if you're interested, let me know, and we can work something out. I'm also interested in building a WordPress version, so if you're interested, contact me.

NOTE: One advantage of AI Studio (which I'm using for Amplify OS) is that the app it builds can be launched and live simply through chat prompts. But with a Joomla plugin, the files have to be created and packaged into an installer for Joomla. So I learned a new hack for streamlining the process. Ask AI to make you a Python script that will create all the folders, files and then zip it all up for you into an installer file. This was a huge time saver and workflow enhancer compared to when I built my first Joomla plugin.

Space Base

I'm a hardcore player of the board and dice game, Space Base. I've probably played over one thousand games of it, and have every possible expansion and promo card available. The game is incredible.

One of the things I did to get really good at the game was coming up with a way to rank cards based on how valuable they are. I made a database using Airtable, and it worked pretty well, but Airtable has some limitations for making the card ranker easy to use and share.

This past week, I decided to start building an app using Google AI Studio. And a version of it is live. You can see it here. I'll update it as I am able.

The goal is to "Moneyball" the game by figuring out what cards are best to station and which cards are best to deploy based on the number of rounds left and the number of players. And, by sharing the tool, it allows everyone to get really good at the game.

If you've not heard of Space Base, I originally got interested in the game years ago when I heard it was like Settlers of Catan. It's a more complex space version of that game. It's an incredible dice game, and I love every expansion they've added. My wife and I, along with some neighbors, play multiple times per week. Members of my family do as well. You can buy the base game on Amazon here. And you can use my Space Base app to figure out which cards are the best.

Note: This app is something that helps me get better at Space Base, but it's not an app I will charge to use and it's practically free for me to host it, so what's the advantage of me sharing it? This Space Base app is a tool that people may link to, so if they do, I get backlink and attention. That authority and attention can be something I leverage to grow me business. For example, I've been wanting to so a Space Base video series on youtube and I could use this app to help promote those videos (and vice versa).

Any Other Apps?

Part of why I wanted to create Amplify OS as a collection of apps is so that I can put any new micro-services in the app. Some will be free, but most will be premium or have premium elements. Some of the future apps I have in mind include.

• Business Brain
• Path of the Freelancer
• Publish & Promote Your Content With AI (prototyping now)
• Content Planning
• Content Library Architect

As I have other ideas that relate to business, freelancing, and content creation, I'll be loading them up in Amplify OS as my app collector. Movie Shapes and Space Base don't belong in Amplify OS, so they're on their own, so they've gotten spun off. 

All of these apps are solving real-world problems that I have. So as more problems arise, I'll probably be making more!

To a creator of a movie or TV show, a radical new direction looks like a necessary leap of faith.

But to an audience standing on that bridge, it doesn’t feel like progress.

It feels like sabotage.

To understand why a movie choice feels like a home invasion, we have to look at the Law of Diffusion of Innovation.

This framework isn't just a business theory; it’s a map of human temperament. It describes how much certainty we need before we trust a new idea.

People generally fall into five groups:

• The Innovators and Early Adopters: These are the explorers. They love the New because it's bold. They are comfortable with risk, and they like it when things are weird.
• The Early and Late Majority: This is the massive center of the curve. They are practical. They value stability and continuity. They don't jump until they see a bridge; they need to know the New won't break their Safe Base.
• The Laggards: The traditionalists. They value the past above all else and only move when the old way literally stops existing.

The most important part of this map is The Chasm—the deep gap between the Explorers and the Majority.

Creators are, by nature, Innovators. They are growth-minded, culturally ahead, and exist on the far left of the curve. The Mass Audience, however, is the Majority. They are seeking refuge in the known. When an Innovator runs too far ahead without looking back, they don't look like a leader anymore. They look like a deserter. This is why the audience feels antagonized—they haven't been led to the new idea; they've been abandoned by it.

The Blueprint Conflict (The Measurement Gap)

This Deserter Dynamic happens because the two groups are measuring the movie with entirely different yardsticks. In the Movie Shapes framework — which explains why we love or hate movies — we see this played out as a conflict of expectations.

Think of it this way:

• The Innovator (the explorer) scores a movie based on Novelty and Depth. They are asking: "Is this something I’ve never seen before? Does it challenge my perspective?" To them, a 10 out of 10 is a movie that breaks all the rules and leaves them questioning everything.
• The Majority (the center of the curve), however, is scoring for Clarity and Investment. They are asking: "Do I understand the world I'm in? Can I safely invest my emotions in these characters?" To them, a 10 out of 10 means the Emotional Contract was honored—the movie promised a certain feeling, and it delivered.

They aren't just disagreeing on whether a movie is good; they are speaking two different languages. When an Innovator calls a movie masterful because it deconstructs a hero, the Majority calls it trash because the hero they invested in was dismantled.

One side is looking for a Frontier to conquer; the other is looking for a Home to return to. Without a bridge, the Innovator’s Frontier just looks like the Majority’s "Home Invasion."

The Kegan Bridge (The Cliff)

Developmental psychologist Robert Kegan describes this transition as a Bridge. The mistake Innovators make is standing on the far side and shouting, "It’s great over here! Come on over!"

But the Majority will not adopt a new idea just because it’s novel; they need to feel safe. For the person in the Safe Base, there is no bridge—there is only a cliff. They see a creator asking them to leave the solid ground of their identity and walk off into thin air with no proof they will arrive on the other side.

The cliff is created when a creator abandons what Movie Shapes calls the Anchor Element. For a viewer, this is often the lead character or a specific tonal consistency. When a show like Vampire Diaries or Call the Midwife loses its central protagonist, the bridge doesn't just feel shaky—it feels like the destination was moved mid-journey. The Safe Base is gone, and the audience is left standing on a pier that leads to nowhere.

The "Hey Ya!" Sandwich (Dressing the New in Old Clothes)

So how do you build that bridge? In The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg explains how DJs saved the song "Hey Ya!" by Outkast. It was too different, so they sandwiched it between two established hits. They dressed the New in Old Clothes.

This is what we might call a Strategic Masquerade. It’s the art of using a high-clarity framework—like a period piece, a sports movie, or a medical procedural—to hide a radical core. By keeping the Setting and Genre Norms traditional, the creator earns enough trust to innovate elsewhere. They keep the Old Clothes of the setting so the audience is willing to try on the New Clothes of the theme.

This is the secret history of Star Wars. The Empire Strikes Back was a bold, deconstructive Hey Ya! moment, but it worked because it was sandwiched between the familiar hero's journeys of A New Hope and Return of the Jedi.

J.J. Abrams used this same Strategic Genius for The Force Awakens. By making the unfamiliar seem familiar, he brought the Majority across the chasm so that Rian Johnson could take the next bold step in The Last Jedi. People need to be brought along; baby steps are the only way to move a massive group with strong opinions.

The Deserter Dynamic & The Marketing Map

We see this mismatch in real-time with Starfleet Academy. The showrunners see themselves as Innovators, finding a new audience to ensure the brand lasts. But the Early Majority—the legacy fans who sustain the subscription base—feel the bridge of continuity has been burned. As one reviewer put it: "Chasing a YA demographic alienates the fans who sustain you."

This dynamic is aggravated by a Marketing Mismatch. Take the trailers for Project Hail Mary. They sell a Space Adventure (Old Clothes), but the movie is actually an investment in Radical Cooperation. When marketing lies about the map to get people in the door, it’s like drinking sweet tea when you expected a Coke. You aren't building trust; you're creating an offense. In this pressurized environment, Innovators have stopped building paths and started setting traps — at least the audience feels that way.

This is an Alignment Mismatch. Marketing sells the audience on a specific Movie Shape—usually one built on Clarity and Impact. But if the actual film is an exercise in Ambiguity and Novelty, the audience feels they’ve been sold a map to a city that doesn't exist. The Firefight isn't caused by the film's quality; it’s caused by a breach of the Narrative Contract.

The Laggard’s Virtue (The Forced Move)

But we have to be honest: some people will never pay the Discovery Tax. These are the Laggards. They aren't looking for a frontier; they are the people who keep their flip phone until the towers literally stop broadcasting.

We often frame Laggards as the problem, but there is a virtue in their resistance. A Laggard’s refusal to move is a check against adopting New ideas that are actually Bad ideas. For the Laggard, decommissioning the Safe Base feels like an execution. If you're going to force that move by letting the old signals fade, you have a massive responsibility to the story you tell next. Without trust, you have to demonstrate your endpoint from their starting point.

Let me give a high-profile example of this. Quentin Tarantino talked about how much he would not watch Mad Max: Fury Road because Mel Gibson was not cast as Max. Eventually, after constant interventions from his friends, he saw the movie. He loved it so much that he watched it three times in a weekend. But he points out a key change that would have changed everything for him and removed all of his resistance.

"If they had just said he’s the feral child [of Max] grown up, and that’s why he doesn’t speak... all my problems would have been solved". - Quentin Tarantino about Mad Max: Fury Road

Tarantino gives us a clue about how to bring the audience along while continuing to tell incredible stories.

The Miller Intervention (The Fortress)

Stephen Miller’s intervention is the ultimate expression of this mismatch. He is speaking for a segment of the Late Majority so abandoned by creators that they are appealing to the highest levels of power to stop the clock.

They aren't just asking for a bridge back to the past; they are demanding that the past be reconstructed as a Fortress. For Paramount, the dilemma is structural: if they pivot to satisfy Miller’s base, with Star Trek Academy, they risk turning the franchise into a hollow, pre-chewed artifact of Vanilla Slop. If they ignore him, they stay in the Firefight, but they retain the chance to actually build something that speaks to the terrain we are living in now.

The Hawley Exception (The Dialogue)

It doesn’t have to be a firefight. There are creators like Noah Hawley who have learned how to play with Holy Relics without burning the bridge. Hawley describes his process not as an attack, but as a Dialogue.

"I just tried to pay respect to it, but then to tell the story that I want to tell with it... It’s a conversation that I’m having with the work that I love." - Noah Hawley

The MacIntyre Synthesis (The Spectrum)

"...able to include its rivals within itself, not only to retell their stories as episodes within its own story, but to tell the story of the telling of their stories."

• The Invitation (The Wachowskis / Prometheus): It invites you to wander. If you want a manual, you’ll be frustrated. If you want a frontier, it’s a masterclass. Prioritizes Novelty and Atmosphere over traditional Story Clarity.
• The Bridge (Christopher Nolan): He hits you in the face with his themes, but he does it to build a massive, reinforced bridge so the Majority feels secure enough to enjoy the complexity. Reinforces Clarity and Believability to make the Depth feel accessible.
• The Challenge (The Last Jedi / Matrix Resurrections): These require a Discovery Tax. It’s a hard tax to pay, but for those willing to work through it, there is a singular statement on the other side. Deliberately breaks the Investment loop to force a new perspective.

The Firefight isn't caused by a strong Point of View. It’s caused when the Vice Grip—the structural fear of The Room—forces a creator to stop building a bridge and start filing a defensive brief. When we lose subtext, we lose the Safe Base.

We have to stop asking if a movie is Good and start asking if its Shape matches our needs. Because a bridge, no matter how bold, is only a path if you can see the other side. If we want to cross the chasm, we need creators who stop being deserters and start being architects.

In our next part, we’ll look at the Physics of the Fall—how storytelling entropy is turning our favorite myths into disorder. But first, we have to recognize the limits of the bridge. A path, no matter how well-constructed, is only useful if someone is willing to walk it.

Ultimately, the creator can provide the coordinates, but they can't force the journey. We have to decide if we are willing to leave the safety of the Fortress to meet a movie for what it is, rather than what we demand it to be. Because if we refuse to cross the bridge, we shouldn't be surprised when we find ourselves left behind on a shrinking island.

Today, you could start YouTubing, podcasting, or both. And if you did, I'd recommend you make it simple and easy!

The goal is to make it happen consistently and build the habit. Growth and success will be future goals, but will ultimately come from doing the work and getting a little better each time you do a video or episode.

To start, you'll need a camera. Use your smartphone or computer web camera. Sound matters more than video. I used a crappy webcam on my podcast for years before upgrading. If you don't have a decent smartphone camera or you want to buy a camera for your computer, I'd recommend getting the AverMedia PW513. It shoots up to 4K and is a great value for the cost.

If you're going to record on your phone, get the DJI mini mic set. It's incredible, easy to use, and sounds great. It's plug and play. If you want a microphone for your computer, buy the AverMedia USB microphone.

If you're going to record video with your smartphone, I'd also order the DJI Osmo SE gimbal and use it as a tripod. By going with their smartphone gimbal as a tripod, you can also get all the other benefits of the device for making videos. It'll make shooting videos by yourself much easier and nicer.

With a camera, tripod, and microphone in place, you can now record and start editing. Depending on how easy you want to make the editing, how much control you want, and what type of output is needed, you'll want to pick an editing system that gives you those things. But to start, find an easy way to edit your video footage.

With smartphone editing tools like Edits by Instagram or CapCut, you can record the video on your phone and edit it in one of those tools, or one of the many others. I'd recommend checking out Riverside. It allows you to record from your phone or computer and is ideal for interviews (it's what I use for the Share Life podcast and some of my YouTube videos). Riverside has AI tools for automatic editing and other automatic video and audio improvements.

If you want to edit on your computer and are willing to learn, check out Davinci Resolve. It's more involved and complicated, but if you want more control, it's what I use. I'll sync my videos from my iPhone to Amazon Photos in the cloud. This creates a backup, and then I can download the files to my computer for editing.

If you're doing a podcast, I'd recommend doing it as a video and audio podcast so you can publish the videos to YouTube and build your channel (to eventually get monetized). Riverside has the functions built into its system to publish a podcast, where it'll automatically put it on Spotify and other places. Spotify also has a tool you can use for the distribution if you don't want to use Riverside.

One last tip about getting started. Just start doing it, but don't publish. I played around with my podcast for 2 years before getting serious. I privately journaled in my Evernote for 4 years before I started blogging publicly. If you want to start a YouTube channel, just start recording yourself doing videos on your phone. You don't have to publish them or share them, but it gets your hands wet to try out the process. If you want to publish them, you can decide that later, but the key is simply getting started with the habit and seeing how it feels. This is a great test to ensure you want to do it, and to build the habit muscles required to make it happen.

We're entering a creative renaissance, and with AI, everything is getting easier for creators to make cool things. If a podcast or YouTube channel is one of the cool things you want to make, it's easy to get started.

In this episode of Cast of Shoot, we go fishing in the morning and at night to catch our first bass. I also unbox my new reel and rod, along with some other accessories.

Links from Episode

Fishing Products

• KastKing Megatron 5000 Spinning Reel
• Fiblink 4-Piece 7-Feet Carbon Fiber Boat Fishing Spinning Rod
• KastKing SuperPower Braided Fishing Line
• Seaguar Fluorocarbon Line
• Shaky Head Jigheads
• Floating worms for Shaky Head Jigs

Video Production Products

• Recording & Editing Platform
• AverMedia PW513 Webcam
• FIFINE Dynamic Computer Microphone
• Ailun 3 Pack Camera Lens Protector for iPhone 16 Pro
• DJI Osmo Mobile SE, 3-Axis iPhone Gimbal
• DJI Mini Mic (for iPhone)
• DJI Osmo Action Cam 5 Pro
• TELESIN Lens Filter Set for DJI Action 5 Pro
• Fixed Lights // Amazon Bluetooth Recessed Lights
• Light Diffuser Fabric 

Cast & Shoot YouTube Series

This is a series I'm producing for YouTube, where I'm tracking my journey towards an upcoming Canadian fishing trip. The series dives into my fishing history, preparing to fish for Muskie and Pike in Canada, mastering shore fishing on Lake Lanier, and learning to make great fishing videos for YouTube. Click here to view all episodes of Cast & Shoot.

Jason's family is in town, and they're touring Betty, the book bus. Plus, Cait brings Juniper & Jones to the local elementary school literacy night to give books away and read to the kids.

• Click here to subscribe to my YouTube channel.

Product Links 

Products From Video

• Buy Broken Wings (Cait's Book)

Video Production Software & Equipment Links

• Riverside Video Editing Platform
• DJI Mini Mic Set
• DJI Osmo Mobile SE, 3-Axis Phone Gimbal
• DJI Action Cam 5

About Juniper & Jones

My wife and I have embarked on an incredible journey to ignite a love for reading and bring comfort to our community's children. I'm documenting the entire journey in a video web series for YouTube!

If you've got a good idea, and it's specific enough to solve a problem, you have a business opportunity.

My first book, Path of the Freelancer, is the blueprint I use to work part-time and earn six figures. It's a broad solution to a problem I was facing.

Out of all the insights from the book, it's the chapter on building a steady stream of paying clients that gets the most attention. That's a more specific problem. It's the problem most freelancers want to talk to me about.

As a freelancer who works with companies to help them get their content ranked on Google, I've discovered there is one simple task that makes the biggest difference when doing SEO. It's updating the title tag on a page a certain way. That's a very specific problem.

And that very specific problem is the product creation opportunity of the current moment (for you and me). When you create a digital product, you can sell digital products and make money while you sleep. Right now, I'm using Payhip to help me run the checkout selling process (but more on that in a minute).

Why I Stopped Relying on Marketplaces

When I first started dabbling with online courses, I launched them on Skillshare. It was a helpful experiment. I earned a few hundred dollars. I proved (to myself more than anyone else) that I could ship a course and earn money from it.

But eventually, Skillshare raised its performance requirements. My programs didn’t have enough students to reach the new thresholds, and my courses were archived.

Students were watching my program, but now it was shut down! Where do I put the program now? That was the moment the lesson landed: If I’m going to build a body of work—books, courses, frameworks, systems—then I need a way to sell it that isn’t dependent on an algorithm, a marketplace, or someone else’s priorities.

I wanted a dependable way to:

• keep offering my existing courses
• sell digital copies of my books outside of Amazon (because Amazon takes a big cut)
• build something that grows with me as I get more serious about monetizing my content creation

With clients, I’ve used (and seen them use) a range of tools: Gumroad, Shopify, Samcart, and plenty of other shopping cart systems.

But Payhip stood out for two reasons that matter a lot more than they sound like they should:

1. It’s easy to use. When you’re trying to ship consistently, ease matters.
2. The pricing model makes sense. You can start by paying a percentage of sales, and as you grow, you can switch to a flat monthly fee—so you’re not paying an arm and a leg before you’ve earned anything.

That combination made it an easy place to start—and a platform I can stick with. I've since referred it to others as a great, simple system for packaging and selling digital programs.

When it comes to selling books, a friend of mine launched her book, excluding Amazon. She created an exclusive window to buy the book directly, outside of Amazon. And that's likely something I'll test out with my next book.

A Step-By-Step Launch Process For Digital Products

If creating and selling a product feels overwhelming for you, let me give you a simple breakdown of the process so you can take that next step of exploring your next mini business opportunity. Let this get your ideas flowing.

Step 1: Choose Something You Can Sell Directly

When I say digital products, I’m usually talking about:

• Books (especially if you already have an Amazon version and want a direct-to-audience option)
• Courses (especially if you’ve been burned by marketplace dependency)
• Digital downloads that support your audience (templates, guides, checklists)

For me, Payhip became the place where I could sell both online courses and digital products in one system.

Now, before you consider building out a big course, the trend in the marketplace is shifting, so I'd highly recommend you shift to creating a mini-course instead. That's why I gave those examples above, getting more and more specific. Find a very specific problem and solve it as quickly and effectively as possible for the student.

My most recent creation on Payhip was The Most Effective SEO Task. It's a simple, focused mini course that it is highly actionable. I want someone to start doing the action immediately, so I designed it that way. When you create an article, do this one SEO task. When you revisit that article 3 months later, do this other task.

Because the program is specific and focused, someone who wants to make an immediate impact can do it within minutes of signing up for my mini-course.

Step 2: Start with Value—Not Tech

Before we touch software, we want to establish clarity.

1. Discover the value.
2. Write about it.

That sounds almost too basic, but it forces the most important work to happen first.

For a digital product, what makes it valuable comes down to some basic questions.

• What problem does this solve?
• Who is it for?
• What’s the outcome someone gets after they use it?
• Why is it worth paying for now?

If I can’t answer those questions simply, the rest of the launch gets harder. A good product is easy to sell. A good product sells when it's hard to buy.

Regarding my SEO course, clients pay me thousands of dollars to do the SEO task I'm teaching. Those who have a library of blog posts can now learn how to do that task themselves for a few bucks.

Step 3: Build a Landing Page

You want one place you can send people to learn about your product. Create a landing page on your website to create this spot. You can use my landing page framework here to structure it and make sure you've done everything needed to make it work for you.

If you don't have a website, Payhip lets you make landing pages on their platform, so that removes a barrier, if that is what's stopping you. The landing page links to the Payhip checkout page, and they take care of the rest.

People buy, and you get deposits from Payhip into your account.

Easy. Simple.

Let's talk more about that. 

Step 4: Use Payhip as the Place You Sell (Checkout + Delivery)

Once you know what you’re selling, you need a dependable way actually to sell it. The most critical element is ensuring a seamless and reliable path from interest to purchase.

If selling your product feels complicated, you won’t promote it consistently. That's part of why creating the landing page is great. It's one place to send people.

Linking that landing page to Payhip also simplifies the selling process.

For example, I have Path of the Freelancer available for $8.99 on Payhip (instead of $9.99 on Amazon), and I’ve made sales that way. Some people prefer to buy directly. Others don't want to buy from Amazon. Payhip now allows me to provide both options.

Note: One nice feature of Payhip is that you can work with friends and partners to help promote your products. Run a collaborative promo for your book like I did with my friend—Payhip tracked his sales so I could compensate him for helping me sell copies to freelancers.

When you're ready to sell digital products, Payhip is an easy and reasonably priced way to make it happen.

Step 5: Promote Like a Human

I’m not interested in hype. I’m interested in consistency. For me, this process of promotion is about creating products that will stand the test of time and then continually promoting them in my content and emails.

It's always a delight to see an email when someone has purchased from my store. These sales are an important part of my journey towards building a content creation business that earns $100k per year.

If you want to get more tactical, you can run small experiments and then double down on what works. One thing I'm testing out is creating YouTube videos to talk about different topics while also highlighting my related products. It becomes a win-win for helping me get monetized on YouTube and sell my products.

If you have something awesome, you'll want to share it with others. You'll want to make it even better. And others will want to tell everyone they know about that awesome product.

Step 6: You Don't Have To Be Perfect. Just Keep Making Things Better.

I treat each product like a living asset. Once it’s selling (even a little), then I improve:

• the landing page
• the product description
• the product itself

The goal isn’t perfection.

It’s forward motion.

For the Most Effective SEO Task, I've recently rebuilt the curriculum to be better. I've included AI prompts to make it more valuable. I started with a simple blog post as the landing page, and then I did an upgrade to make it better. Next, I plan to record a handful of videos to add to the program to make it easier to digest and act.

Selling Digital Products

Payhip has made it easier for me to sell digital products, when I didn't have a way to do that before, and I was in a bind (needing a place to put my courses). When it comes to selling my mini-course and books directly, it's my go-to option.

If you want a simple way to sell your books, courses, and digital downloads—without building a complicated tech stack—Payhip is worth exploring.

If you have a question, feel free to drop into the Share Life Academy and ask me or others in the group who use it.

AI is rapidly changing things, but change is hard. So how can we, in the short term, adapt to this changing world while we get our bearings for the medium and long term? I've got a handful of ideas.

This post will give you some direction and ideas on how to adapt today, so that you're riding the technological wave, not crushed by it.

Do more for your clients by leveraging AI. Think of it like the difference between sending someone a letter by physically mailing it and sending someone an email. Technology lets you accelerate the process and do more. Just be careful not to get distracted by doing easy things that don't help your client or you.

Think about how you can streamline what you are already doing to do it faster. To do it better. Content management systems like HubSpot, Joomla, or WordPress let us do awesome things with a website without the technical development skills required to code a system like that manually. You can put a nail in a piece of wood with your hand, or you can use a hammer. Better yet, you could even use a nail gun. AI is a tool that can enable you to do more and better work than you could have done without it.

Think about how you can accomplish more for clients, not just in output, but in OUTCOMES. Don't just think about activity and raw output, but consider the importance of strategy. How can you ensure the things you're doing are actually helping accomplish the business objectives? Let AI help you analyze data sets that you can't do or would let you take a lot of time to do. Let AI help you adjust your activities so that it can more effectively generate results.

Become invaluable. Make it stupid for clients to stop paying you to do the things you're doing for them (a Path of the Freelancer insight). Both in activity and, more importantly, goal achievement, make it stupid for clients to stop working with you. AI extends capabilities, so be thinking about how working with you is something they still need to do in a world of AI tools. Going forward, it won't necessarily be about doing the actual tactical work, but rather it'll be about making sure the work gets done. It's essentially a move where many individual freelancers will be their own agency. But instead of a bunch of employees, it'll be a bunch of AI bots (agents) and AI tools.

The first 2 person billion dollar company now exists. With a systems thinking mindset, this opportunity is now possible for anyone. The gold rush has begun. Grab your pan!

Knowing all this, what type of business will you build for this new AI era?

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AI is changing the world we live in and the way we work. In the ways my generation (born in 1984) grew up with Google, this and new generations will grow up with AI.

But young people are the most vulnerable to the dynamics of this new AI era. In this article, I want to talk about how they can orient themselves for the best possible future.

To understand why this positioning matters, we have to set the stage for how young people make meaning in their lives.

There are five stages of meaning making (according to Constructive Developmental Theory), and the 2nd and 3rd stages are how young people in their teens and young adult years make meaning (I'll explain below).

Thriving in an AI era is going to require a shift from content mastery to contextual positioning because AI is going to take away many of the motivational tasks that young people do.

Stage 2: The Black and White Mind (Teens to 20s)

The 2nd stage of meaning-making is for someone who is self-sovereign. They're focused on personal needs, goals, and agendas. They're wondering how a thing or person helps them. Young people move into this stage fully around middle school and remain somewhat until they move into stage three in their late teens and early twenties.

But, AI is a better doer than a Stage 2 individual. It can follow instructions and execute tasks with zero ego.

Individuals in this imperial mindset must shift from being competitors with AI to being power users. Here are two ways those in this stage can do this.

• The SoloPreneur Model: Stage 2 is highly motivated by self-interest. They can use AI as a force multiplier to build micro-businesses or freelance empires that previously required a staff.
• Prompt Engineering as Leverage: They thrive by viewing AI as a tool to get what they want faster. Their success depends on their ability to manipulate the machine to achieve a specific outcome, essentially becoming a manager of one.

Stage 3: The Socialized Mind (20s to 40s)

Once someone enters their early twenties, they've likely moved fully into the stage 3, socialized mind, where they find belonging in their group. Most people stay in this stage until their forties or fifties (that's the midlife transition, or crisis if it goes bad).

Those who make meaning through group belonging are driven by relational harmony, industry standards, and being a good professional (according to peers and mentors).

Those in this stage are most at risk of AI. People at this stage find safety in the right way to do things (within their group or workplace). AI has now mastered the right way (the average of all human knowledge). So now they're competing with something that can easily beat them at that game.

The way forward for these folks is to lean into what strengths humans have that AI fails at: Genuine Interpersonal Connection.

Here are two possible roles.

• The Trusted Advisor Role: While AI can provide the information, Stage 3 individuals excel at building the trust required to deliver that information. People still want to buy from, work with, and be led by humans they feel a connection with.
• Empathy and Cultural Translation: AI struggles with the subtle vibes, office politics, and emotional undercurrents of a team. Stage 3 individuals thrive by becoming the glue that holds human systems together while the AI handles the data.

Trust, empathy, and translation are powerful points of value for those in the socialized mind in an AI world. If you can do these things and also become a power user of AI (stage 2), you'll excel in an AI world.

A Safety Net for Level 3: External Scaffolding

• The Solution: They don't need to become mavericks overnight. They can thrive by becoming translators. They take the AI's output and use their Socialized Mind to ensure it aligns with the values and harmony of the group.
• The Shift: Instead of "I am the expert who knows the answer," they become "I am the person who ensures this answer works for us (our business, group, etc)."

The Reality Check

The transition will be painful. In the past, young people could make a very good living being a Stage 3 expert who followed the rules and produced high-quality documents. Now, that is the baseline. Although there will still be places in the real world where AI is absent or weak, the old approach will still be an opportunity in those places.

Otherwise, thriving today requires younger folks to move from doing the work to holding the space for the work. For a Stage 3 person, this means finding the courage to have an opinion that isn't just what the textbook says, because the AI has already read the textbook. And that means the ultimate pathway for young folks is to become self-authored. It's figuring out your personal convictions and doctrine about things, even when they come into conflict with those in your group. This transition takes decades, so make sure to move towards this long-term goal while you traverse the short-term (stage 2) and medium-term (stage 3) goals.

The Political Void

One related sidebar here. After I wrote that above, it made me think about how many people are getting involved in political issues because they're looking for an outlet to make meaning, as other outlets, like meaningful work, fade away or are taken away.

The normal ladder of success for people to climb is fragmented and disappearing. People are seeking alternatives. Those are being offered to people by toxic individuals and groups in the political realm.

Those in stage 2 end up as online trolls and mercenaries using a political movement to fill their void. Those in stage 3 become true believers, so that they maximize their belonging and take any attack on the group as a personal attack on themselves (unable to see the group separate from their personal identity).

This era of transition will require innovation for those in both the self-sovereign (2) and socialized minds (3) to find places that will allow them to be in their current stage without falling victim to the toxicity.

And, this will become a duty of those in the latter stages, 4 (self-authored) and 5 (self-transforming), to create those places for them. Otherwise, younger folks will end up in toxic spaces, since the healthy options are dwindling.