Today’s edition is tariff-free. I’ve compiled a few thoughts, ideas and links that I hope you’ll find useful, rather than a super in-depth reflection this late-August week.

Scroll through and enjoy. Tell me which one stopped you…

FEATURED INTERVIEW 
Why so much talk of "content"? Recently I was invited onto a podcast to talk about what's working with founder-led content, thought leadership and visibility for business growth. All of this is about being visible to the right people. You’ve likely read about this topic in this very newsletter, and there’s more on the full episode of the show, available here on all platforms. They gave it a bit of an interesting title: The Founder Signal: Why Generic AI-Generated Content Is Destroying B2B Brand Trust.

FEATURED
Guess who’s paying big for events and community roles.

It’s AI companies. They’re the ones paying a premium for events and community leaders right now.

That includes Anthropic, OpenAI, a16z New Media, Gamma, NVIDIA, Harvey, Ramp, Fluidstack, Agentio, Notion, Snowflake, and more. They're all hiring expensive events, community, field, or experience roles.

But this isn’t random. AI adoption is not only a product problem, I think there’s also a trust problem there. Only a small percentage of American households are paying for AI services today. Getting the next wave to understand and trust the technology will require more than demos and ads.

People need rooms. They need peers, and they need questions answered.

Content creates familiarity.
Community creates belonging.
Events create conviction.

So yes, AI adoption is a trust and behaviour-change problem, making events and community strategic growth functions.

I think the lesson is not to treat events as one-day activations, but as high-trust moments.

Just posted a short video about this on my YouTube if you’re not subscribed.

MY SHIFT
Back to brand?

Long before I got into content strategy, my focus was brand.

I never stopped, though you've seen me posting a lot about content strategy lately.

Without that foundation in branding, brand strategy and personal brand, I don’t think I could give businesses the full picture.

There are a lot of consultants and freelancers who jumped straight into content tools and best practices without first building a foundation in branding.
A key part of branding is messaging. Going through a proper brand strategy process helps you get clear on who you are, who you’re speaking to, who your work is for and what actually makes you different.

All of that affects the content you create.

Even with my Clarity Content clients, the first month of an ongoing engagement is called Foundations. We work through brand positioning and messaging before getting into the content production.

I’ve led a lot of brand workshops and strategy sessions over the years, and I’m currently working on a couple of brand projects.
But on my own social media, that part of my work has mostly stayed in the background.

It’s very easy today to jump straight to the final output.
Create a one-off post. Launch an ad. Respond to a trend.
Recreate something that someone sent you as inspiration.

And with a few prompts, you can spin up something that looks like a brand pretty quickly. But the meaning behind it still matters. The purpose, the motivation, the point of view, and the things that are genuinely different about your business are what make a brand resonate and stick with people.

Those are also the things that can turn a quick view, like or one-off purchase into a longer relationship.

So I’ll continue going deep into content strategy, particularly what’s working in B2B and thought leadership.
But I’ll also be sharing about branding, messaging and positioning.

When there’s this much noise, going back to the basics feels more important than ever.

Back to brand. Back to clarity.

TRAINING
Privacy and visibility aren't opposites.

Can you be private and seen at the same time?

This is Rose. She was one of the first episodes released from my Moment of Clarity series (video below). Now, she’s running a program for people who have a story to tell but hold back because they're private. You get to decide which parts of your story are public or not, while still being seen.

If you've ever let “I'm a private person” be the reason you stay invisible, she built this for you. There are a couple of days left to enroll in Private and Seen here.

FRESH VIDEO

Your strongest content might already be in the room with you.

I recently read a State of Brand article shared on LinkedIn and had to highlight it for you. It featured Heike Young, who spent more than a decade leading content at Salesforce and Microsoft.

Her takeaway is simple: Your people are the content strategy.

So much B2B content still sounds like it was written by a committee trying not to offend another department. We've all seen it:

• The insight was probably interesting at the start.

• Then it went through the comms framework

• Then legal, then 3 rounds of executive edits

• Eventually, a real point of view was lost...

I remind leaders and marketers during my workshops and talks:

• Employees have customer conversations.

• Leaders have hard-earned opinions.

• Customers have language your marketing team could never invent.

• Creators have trust you can’t manufacture.

But then some brands try to turn all of those voices into the same polished corporate tone.

When everyone has access to the same tools, the same AI models, and the same content templates, what's the differentiator?
It's the specificity of your people.
That’s what makes content worth paying attention to.

This is already part of what my team and I are doing: Draw out the real expertise already inside the business, then turn it into clear, human content that builds trust over time.

Can’t believe it’s already Friday.
Have a wonderful weekend.
Thanks for reading.
I’ll leave you with this: