151. AI Is Changing Everything. Is Your Business Built To Survive? Activate The M.A.S.S. Effect Business Model

Speaker A: AI as we know it is changing everything. If you know that's from Toy Story, kudos to you. But for real though, all jokes aside, AI is changing everything. Mass layoffs, market instability, content oversaturation, massive brand trust issues, people questioning their careers, their identities and their livelihood, founders exhausted trying to survive, algorithms, inflation, and constantly shifting buyer behavior. And honestly, I've been rethinking my own business model too. Not from fear, but, uh, from awareness. Because I think we're entering an era where the businesses that survive won't just be the smartest, they will be the most adaptive. And it had me thinking about what makes businesses easier to scale and more profitable in this new digital, AI infused, AI empowered, AI accelerated world where a lot of the core monopolies and industries, infrastructures that we know to be as they are today are no longer and no more. And it really got me thinking about my own business. Like, not just what do I do? What does Troy do? What is. What's a strategy hacker? What is the strategy hackers business model? How do we help? How do we support? Why would anyone give me money in exchange for what? But more so, what kind of business can I build to actually survive the future? M. When a buyer asks AI for a solution like yours, does your business come up? Most companies have no idea. And by the time they find out, they've already lost the deal to someone who did. HubSpot's AEO helps you show up in those moments with the right answers buyers are looking for before the first click, before the first form fill. That's the moment HubSpot's AEO is built for. Check out HubSpot.com, the Agentic customer platform for growing businesses. I realized something very important. I haven't just been building a marketing business. I've been simultaneously building, constructing and expanding an actual ecosystem. And as the acronym king, I have a new one for you today. It's called the Mass Effect business model, which for me, in my world, my ecosystem has been built around media assets, strategy and systems. And today I want to unpack all of that with you. Not as someone pretending to have it all figured out, because I don't, but as someone actively navigating AI business evolution, identity shifts, both personally and professionally. Economic uncertainty, scaling pressure, mega massive burnout times a million, and sustainability in real time. Um, I'm just gonna come right out the gate and say it. The problem with most modern businesses is that they are constructed for today, not for tomorrow, not next month, not next year, not next five, 10 years. And what do you mean by that, Troy? Because yo, I'm thinking about my payday today, my clients tomorrow, my events, my sales calls, my kickoffs, all that. I'm not saying the busy work and or the productivity work. I'm not saying that. I'm saying we're building businesses who just take care of us in this moment. We got bills to pay, we got team and payroll to give off, we got to kill expenses, we got to put money aside for family, for vacation, for our stock and portfolio, whatever the case might be. Your combination of expenses and desires and wants and goals and milestones, you're using your business to do. One of the biggest problems is that a lot of businesses aren't sticky, A lot of businesses aren't designed to last without an exorbitant amount of effort or an intensive amount of onboarding and sales in ratio to churn and dissolution of contracts and opportunities over time. So, meaning translation here with you in this moment, metaphorically in your mind, answer these questions. Can customers stay? Can revenue compound? Can people continue buying without constantly restarting from zero? Those three questions does your business model allow for a customer stability and staying revenue to compound over time? And people continuing to buy without you being prompted, they get the value. They have that credit card on file, they're paying monthly, they're paying annually, or even if it's consumer based or product based or a one buy thing, they're continuously coming back to buy more without you doing a lot of investing, energy and effort in prompting them to do so. And to me, if I can be vulnerable, that hit me pretty hard because most businesses today are operating with temporary momentum, not sustainable infrastructure. What's up digital world? You're listening to the I Digress audio experience with Troy Sandy. Social media, marketing, storytelling, business culture and more coming to you in three, two, one. A lot of businesses are addicted to acquisition because they never built retention. Let's say with that, if you need to walk away, if you need to pray, if you need to eat some food, if you need to do what you need to do, to sit with that because I don't know about you, I'm sitting with that. I'm like, oh, that hurts coming out of my mouth and for me hearing that playback in my own mind. So let's sit with that. But let's say it again. A lot of businesses are addicted to acquisition because they never built retention. They're constantly, emphatically hunting for new leads, new trends, new algorithms, new tactics, new hacks, new spaces, new industries, but nothing actually sticks long term works Today doesn't work, tomorrow works, this quarter doesn't work, the next quarter, work this year, it's completely useless the next year. And honestly, having been in business, around business and adjacent to business for over 15 years, that gets exhausting the older you get. Especially now because AI is compressing skill gaps faster than ever. Information is being commoditized, execution is being automated at every which turn, even at points where you feel it shouldn't even need to be or is necessary. So the question now becomes what actually creates value right now? And I think and if you have additional thoughts, please at find Troy at any social media platform or go to Adress fm, send me a voice message, send me a message, give me some feedback. I want to hear from you. But anyway, I think the answer of um, what actually creates value now in this new era are these things. Brand resonance, experience, trust, interpretation, influence, clarity, systems. And I think the most critical and people sleep over that is essential that makes you true future proof even beyond artificial intelligence is community. I've had a realization for a long time. I just didn't have the words to associate with my realization until this moment. I'm a polymath. I am not a traditional worker bee. I uh, do not have a traditional career. It is not linear by any means. I have worked more jobs already in my lifetime than my parents combined. And I mean that in the respectful way of they were in a time where they may work a few jobs, but you get on a good job, you're locked in, you put in the hours, you put in the work, you put in the loyalty, you get paid with a pension, you get paid with all these different things if you make it to those thresholds and milestones to do so. Well, obviously in this new era it has flipped. The only way you grow is if you go after X amount of years because you hit a plateau, you hit a cap. Now, not all businesses, not all business models are the same way. But in my experience, a lot of places and a lot of people, the data will back us up on that, is that um, at this junction you do one to three years, you leave, there's your increase in pay, you do the same thing and you leave on a good note. You perform, you do your due diligence and once you hit a plateau, people leave. In my case, I have worked a lot and some of that struggle is because I get stuck in the boredness of doing the same thing. I am a polymath, I like to do a lot of different things in flow. So for years I struggled with feeling like I was doing too many things or was under the impression I wasn't doing enough things. I'd like to diversify my efforts and energy not to be placed under one industry. One thing to do, one name, one title, one role. And hoping that's going to carry me for X amount of years. As fast as AI is shifting everything, and as so many things have changed in how we consume, how we behave and how we navigate things, I can't leave it up to chance that this one thing that I'm good at in the moment is going to last me the next 20 years. History has proven it will not. I will have to adapt. You will have to adapt. You will have to evolve. So as I've looked at so many things that I've done, from podcasting that you're currently listening to, to public speaking, to consulting, content creation, strategy, branding, building systems, guiding workshops, social media, artificial intelligence, operations, business advisory. And sometimes that can feel messy compared to doing one thing forever. And me listing all those things can feel overwhelming to people who are not polymaths, who may be more neurotypical and focused to one specific thing. But, uh, then I started to realize something very critical. The modern economy may actually reward adaptive. Stay with me. Polymaths more than rigid specialists. Because the marketplace changes too fast now. And what I'm actually building isn't random, at least not anymore. It's interconnected. Everything feeds everything else. So my podcast feeds my speaking, my speaking feeds my consulting. My consulting creates the frameworks. My frameworks become the assets. The assets then become the products. The products create more trust and more credibility that, uh, trust and credibility attracts. And it creates more referrals. More referrals creates more opportunities. More opportunities create more partnerships that those partnerships can then come back to my podcast as promos and sponsorships. And it goes back and forth all the way through the frameworks, the assets, the products I talk about on the podcast. The podcast builds the reps for new ideas I want to picture speaking. The speaking elevates the awareness of my podcast. The podcast can be the nurturing of possible clients, possible engagements, without me having to talk with them verbatim. I'm nurturing all these different people from all around the world. If 1% of 1% of 1% of all of my listeners over the years bought one thing from me, that's significantly high profit margin with the same amount of energy. And 90% of this is built on my brain observation and talking, talking to the podcast, talking, speaking, talking and consulting. Then those verbal words become written Words that can be translatable, converted into frameworks, into tangible assets and products for other people to consume at a lower friction point if they can't afford to. My speaking rates and or consulting offerings. My book was 1999, it's not 1499 at the current time of this recording. Great deal. Buy it. Awesome. May be a blessing to you. Again, all of this is not random. It's called the Mass effect business model, where again, mass is about media assets, strategy and systems. And I'll get to why I'm building my business around that in a moment. Number one, media creates attention. So media being obviously this, podcast, social media, speaking, interviews, guest appearances, content, collaborations, partnerships, where you're out there in the world. This is discoverability. And honestly, communication is one of my most natural states. I can talk, teach, connect, explain, translate complexity into simplicity. And I can do it in a matter of moments in my own brain. That is where I am, at my happy place. And that matters because sustainable businesses should align with your natural activation energy. Nothing more, nothing less. It should be centered around your core neutral response, your neutral, definitive way of doing things. I can speak faster than I can type. I would rather explain something to someone for hours and write it down. And even though I'm a fast typer, I'd rather talk through it. I will jump in and do strategy for hours with at times forgetting to eat or drink or anything because I'm so obsessed and so in love with figuring out the solution, finding a problem and uh, removing complexities to create some type of solution. That's my vein. That's what I do. That's why I am the AKA strategy hacker, trademark and registered. Right? So again, it's not just about profit potential. You need to also consider that your business doesn't just make money, because some businesses can make the money, but psychologically destroy the founder operating them. I know many entrepreneurs, know many founders, successful seven figures and beyond, doing phenomenally well on the outside. Everything you could want from the outside. But internally they are suffering because they think just because I make the money from the business, I'm good. But they haven't taken vacation in three years. Their relationship with their partner, with their siblings, with their family, with their children is rocky. It's messy. But under the guise of the money, they think it all goes away and it doesn't. And that matters more than people actually want to talk about. But I digress. My point in saying media is one of those things where you can continuously make more profit margin by just doing it. I'm talking you're listening. This is what we do. This is the dance. 99 of you will not leave me review. But maybe today you stop that after listening and leave me a review. Rate it. Give me a comment. Follow me at. Find Troy on all platforms and say, hello, what's up, Troy? I actually listen to an episode today. Thank you for calling me out. Finally, I took your challenge and did it. But I digress. Anyway, we do this dance. You listen, you engage. You listen, you engage, you watch, you engage. You keep coming back. I'm so grateful. Thank you. Hopefully this brings you back value, but again, we consume a consumable product. All these entertainers, reality tv, sports, politics, business, education, all of it. If all you're doing is talking and you grow your following more and more, which creates more opportunities for more sponsorships and promos and a higher volume people to now have a higher chance of choosing, based off your own words, to click a link and buy a product, buy a service, whatever the case might be, you're at a threshold of infinite margin as you grow, doing the same energy that I've done. Starting this podcast in 2020, so almost going on six years ago, the effort of building a script, figuring out what you want to talk about, pressing record, putting a headline, a description, some tags, and submission for you to then get a notification and listen, hasn't changed in six years. But my community has changed. My followership has increased. The opportunities for the brands I've worked with, directly or indirectly, the clients I've been able to attract, both in the United States and abroad, let alone the speaking opportunities both in the United States and abroad, internationally, all from the same energy I've been doing. Have I gotten better at it? I like to think so. Better at the output, adjusting to the audience, adjusting to myself, and honestly adapting to what's going on internally and externally in my life. But it's media that's something that can expand your brand, build credibility and trust, feel like we know each other even though we may have never met. There's a lot of podcasters I listen to that I'm so ingrained and invested in what they think. There's people in the sports world, in the tech world, that until I hear what their opinion is, I'm probably not gonna buy it. I'm not gonna buy the trade rumor. I'm not gonna buy the product itself. I'm gonna buy it because I care about what they think. I'm so invested. I've never met them, but I'm invested in them. There's that trust that level there all for media at times where you can create a big enough audience with enough trust, value, it doesn't matter what you say anymore. There's people out here who've been saying the same thing for 10 years, but people still reference them because they built the community around the media and the media has established them as a namesake that they can't shift. They're associated with certain keywords, certain industries, certain standards that you just understand. That's critical too, because there are many people of great products, great services, carol rings around these top people, but their media is trash. Therefore we don't know you exist or we don't think you're credible enough. Without enough. Well, let me put you in Google search, AI mode and ChatGPT in perplexity. And Claude, if nothing comes up, you ain't worth my time or you must not be as good as you say you are because you don't exist. Worth my time to research and really see what's all out there, right? So if you put in who is Troy Saintich on any AI platform or Google AI mode, something will actually come up and you can do enough research and resources to see the things that I'm doing are credible. They're not embellished, they're clear, transparent, who I am, who I've done. The stats are, uh, real, they're true. Honestly, that's what it is. That builds the credibility. And if people don't have that, they won't get conversations, they won't get opportunities. So that's why media is so important. Now again, media is just a first domino to fall here. If we switch to assets, assets create scalability. Again, going back to my book, strategize up frameworks, um, prompt packs, GPTs, courses, templates, recorded workshops, all these things and more. This is where talking once becomes earning multiple times without me doing it again or exerting more energy of myself. Once I build it, set it up and push it out there, it can now generate money of itself, referrals, advocacy, community of itself without needing the input of me anymore. For an infinite amount of time until a revision, something breaks. Optimization. It's old news, whatever the case might be. And in this AI era, I don't make more assets because I just choose not to, because I've been lazy, because I ain't putting the time in, because I got a newborn that I need to put time and commit with. But if that wasn't the case, and if I was more focused and more disciplined and really put in the time, me and AI can make a lot more assets that could potentially make me more money without me needing to do anything else over time. Is there a learning curve to that? Yes. Is there an investment to that? Of course. But when you put it in perpetuity to what the opportunities are and how much time, energy, and effort you're doing, you're diversifying and scaling and spreading it out so you don't have to be the bottleneck. This is why assets matter even more now in this AI era, because they create leverage. And if you know my Clover business framework, the L meaning leverage. We don't leverage the things, the levers, enough time, huh? Resources. We have AI now, as Patrick said on, um, one of the oldest spongebob episodes. We have the technology, we have the AI. Why not embrace it? Why not learn it? Why not pay someone else to infrastructure it for you? If you do it right and do it well and be patient, it will pay off. Then, obviously, my favorite one, I'm the strategy hacker. So there's has to be strategy in there. This is the high trust layer, the consulting, the advisory, the fractional work, the workshops, the narrative architecture, the growth strategy. All these things. Yeah, AI can generate a lot of information, but it can't in real time have genuine human interpretation, not onto what you meant and what you need to do, but speak to your soul and your spirit, not just to give you a random list of things for you to consume. Did you get clarity from that long list of information? Are you able to make decisions from that information? And did you get the context? Did it get the context right? Does it understand the context? That not only are you trying to build this business model, but it understands the industry is messy. And on top of that, you have X amount of time you're internally with all these different variables in your life. It needs to be customized to you. That AI of itself doesn't have that context of observation with you. That's where our strategy still matters deeply, because you can make all these investments in all these different technologies and still fail. So you're losing more money than you're making because you didn't build a plan and built an infrastructure, built the strategy, built the roadmap, built the systems in place and the contingencies to modify and adjust to all those different things for you to grow. People don't just need answers, they need alignment. That's why strategy is so important. And strategy is true to me, so it comes naturally to me. So that, of course, is part of the magic. If you think about it, more than likely you Go for media. That's how people get introduced to me. Then they may not want to work with me directly, but they may consume an asset. My podcast is an asset. They may buy my book, strategize up. That is an asset. They may come to a speaker talk or watch a recording of a workshop or speak thing that I did. That's an asset. Then that may lead them to want to do a strategy talk with me becoming a client of mine or strategy. But now this is where the strategy hacker has to sign off and put on his systems hat because systems. This is where I think, not just where I think, this is where I know the future is going because it's already here. Systems reduce friction, AI workflows, automation, content engines, knowledge systems, operational structures, tech integration systems allow you to work when you don't have the emotional, the energy, the mindset, the willpower or the time to work. And if you build strategy and assets immediate then systems you can distribute a lot of different things to cover all four assets of the mass effective business model to your favor because you built the right systems in place. And this is where businesses stop depending entirely on human memory and manual execution and human error and lean in on certain things. And honestly for me, someone who is neurospicy, someone who is navigating new life additions and adjusting my timelines to things I was never conditioned for before, I don't need to become less creative. I just need systems that support my creativity sustainably over a period of time in a better way. I don't need to guilt trip myself because XYD didn't happen. I need to have systems that if this doesn't happen it shifts, the contingency activates. I feel better that it didn't happen this week, but that's not end of the world. Let's keep it moving. Let's make the shift happen and go forward for those who carry everything on their own. If you're an entrepreneur for one solopreneur, a small team, you're feeling the pressure you're feeling feeling you have to just exert more and more and more. As in my previous few episodes, I've echoed to that effect. More does not mean more money. Just the effort of doing doesn't mean it equates to more profitability. There's a certain threshold where doing more will not make you more and actually make you less. It will actually kill your profit. DTC Pod, hosted by Ramon and Blaine, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. The DTC Pod is a podcast about all things direct to consumer, AKA dtc. Ramon and Blaine cover everything for starting, growing and optimizing e commerce stores and direct to consumer brands. They talk with founders, marketers, platforms, creators and marketing and growth agencies to cover topics like like brand building, social media, influencer marketing, website conversion, paid media, Facebook ads, consumer trends, email marketing, and so much more. They have episodes like 360 degree brand growth, how premium brands crack the UK optimizer funnels, or from clicks to Bricks how digitally native brands go massive in retail. If you're interested in the stores behind your favorite consumer brands, this podcast is for you. Listen to DTC Pod wherever you get your podcasts. Um, again, revenue is what you make. Profit is what you keep. Yeah, there's some ambiguity there, but in a nutshell, that's where we're heading. And if you are exerting too much, the marginal money you might be making on top is not worth all the time you're not spending with family, with yourself, with vacation, with rest. Your business should not work you. You should be working your business. This is why agents and different things are very valuable and critical. You need systems again, that support your sustainability and infrastructure. So here's something else I've been thinking about deeply. Revenue, profit, effort and energy. Revenue is how much you make. As I said, profit is how much you keep. But we, we stay with that and we don't think about the other two. But then effort is how much it takes and energy is how sustainable it feels to maintain. I'm going to say that again. Revenue is how much you make, profit is how much you keep, effort is how much it takes, and energy is how sustainable it feels to maintain. And I think modern entrepreneurship, typically, if you're in a hustle, culture, environment, even with this AI, evolution here ignores energy. Way too dang much. Two businesses can make the same amount of money. While one destroys your nervous system, the other energizes your life. Which one do you want? And that matters because burnout changes performance. Doesn't matter how good the system is. If you're the bottleneck, if you're the cog in the wheel that keeps everything running and you're burnt out. The business is fried. And stress. Oh buddy, stress. Stress changes creativity. It actually blocks it. You don't have the magic. You don't got the sauce. You don't got the juju. You're basically the power taken away from you from Space Jam. It's been given to the monsters and you're useless. You have no talent. You're just there. You're just a bubble existing in outer space, like, yo, what's going on? And exhaustion changes leadership. When you're exhausted, you don't have any patience. When you have any patience, you lash out. When you lash out on your team, they don't feel like they want to work with you. They don't want to rise to vacation. They're competing views, they're looking at other opportunities because you're not creating a safe environment, sustainable for them to want to give more for you when needed. You're exhausted. So now people have to compensate for you all the time. More sprints, more effort, more energy, more problems. Sustainable entrepreneurship, sustainable businesses at large in general must account for human energy, human capital, not just financial metrics. And in this world, in this moment, with all the layoffs under the guise of AI replacement and all these different things to just make your profit margin look marginally better. But look how much legacy damage has been created, how much bitterness that could in, in theory hurt people later. We don't know. We'll find out. But I really think we need to do better in how we deal with our employees, our partners, our clients, our consultants, our contractors, the gig economy, the creator economy, all of it. And that leads me to this thing. If you remember, in my very first episode or my second episode, this podcast experience, I introduce the relationship status of Bay, which is buyers, advocates and elevators. Now, since then I've modified that name. I can't remember what the name is called right now, but the echo of what it means is still the same. But buyers, advocates and elevators, in conjunction with that, we have Beck, buyers, purchase, advocates, amplify and elevators create opportunities, introductions, collaborations and access. An elevator can become an advocate. An advocate can become a buyer. A buyer can also be an advocate or an elevator. It depends on how you navigate the conversation. And it's a win win for everybody because if they don't want to be a buyer today, they can still be an advocate. They don't want to be an advocate today. Everyone falls into default number three slot of being an elevator and work their way back. And then there's back where it's brand equity and community. Brand when you establish it properly reduces validation friction. Strong brands require less explaining equity compounds trust and perceived value over time. And community creates retention, resilience and belongingness. And honestly, I think community is one of the most underrated business assets in the modern economy still today that people still jump over. Not followers community, not likes and engagement community. Sure, those may be mile markers and milestones and indicators of an active community. But a community is there for you. When social media is turned off, when the platform is down and. And you have no way to reach them, they reach out to you, they check up on you, they wonder where you are, they wonder where you've been. Just how I'm sure many of you are wondering. Yo, you need to be more consistent with your episodes release. And I'm working on it. Give me grace. I have. I'm a newborn girl. Dad. Over here. Okay. We trying to make this work. Okay. But I, uh, digress. Nevertheless, community is a critical thing to have, because community survives. Platform changes, the algorithms may shift, platforms may die, and technology evolves. But trust, the communities compound. No matter what, they may go to a different platform. They stay connected, and they stay together. And so I don't think I'm building a traditional business anymore. I would argue I never was. Inadvertently, I think I was building this without naming it, not realizing it, testing all these things out, doing all these things, hoping something will stick to drive sales a little bit more. Little more opportunity, little more pipeline. But when I look at it now, in perpetuity, I've been building an adaptive ecosystem around me, around what matters to me, around what I'm good at, around who I serve and how I can help more people. So for you, what does an adaptive ecosystem around your business look like? What does that look like for you? Flexibility, sustainability, creativity, systems trust, authority, and human connection. And honestly, I'm still figuring out a lot of these parts. Some parts are very sticky. They're working. Some parts are sucking. There's just a lot of charm. I'm in this phase right now where I'm aggressively more than I've been in the years, pursuing new clients and new opportunities. It's not being attracted as much as it used to be, not being seen as much for these opportunities to just naturally progress themselves. And sometimes, as someone who's used to a certain way of doing business, when you feel like you have to do so much more for a sale or for a lead, it doesn't feel good. It feels icky, cold. Outreach. It does work if you do it right. But if you're not someone who's used to that environment, you may feel like, oh, my gosh, I'm doing the worst thing ever. But you're not. You're trying to survive. You're trying to maintain the money for your business to do and create the life that you want to live. Some of my systems need refining and some assets need building because, honestly, I could be Doing more with building assets. I could do more with creating more systems. I could be doing more with AI in general. But not. AI is not going to be the savior of my business or the expansion pioneer of my business. It will be a tool, a partner, a collaborator if I use it properly and ethically. But nevertheless, I think all this matters to future proof your business, it's not no longer about being a rigid career. There is no linear direct path, there's no singular identity. But it's interconnected ecosystems that allow people to evolve without starting over every single dang time. The market wants to shift, change, adapt, modify, uh, destroy itself, rebuild itself or expand. And maybe one of the biggest realizations of all in this moment, for me, maybe for you as well, is that modern businesses, it's not just about making money anymore. It's about building something sustainable enough that you can continue becoming who you are while doing it. I think that's the real mass effect. Let me know your thoughts. Let me know what you think. Let me know how you feel in this moment. So, again, um, as I'm thinking about my business model, maybe you've been reflecting on your business model. Are you leaning toward retention? Are you seeing people staying? Is your brand? Is your identity positioned where people can understand? Are you integrating, building or launching systems to help you deliver more consistent even without you? Are you leaning more towards emotional and cultural fit where people feel comfortable connected to you? Like people will actually miss you if you're gone. They will miss your posting on content, they will miss your newsletter, they will miss your podcast, they will miss your YouTube post. They will miss the interaction seeing you show up in person in certain sectors and settings. And is your business scalable? Can it grow without breaking? Everybody wants more profit. They want more clients, they want more products sold. They want more all these things at a lower price point. But will it break? I always throw everyone off when I ask the question to my clients. Okay, cool. If I were to give you the opportunity to get you the desire of your business hard today, could you handle it though? We need to prepare and build for as if it's going to come, not wait for it to come and hope we figure it out and we lose it all. Our brain is tarnished and we're actually worse off than what we were before this great growth even happened. People don't stay because your product exists. They don't stay because your business exists. They don't stay because you have a cool brand. They stay because the experience that you create emotionally, psychologically and practically fits and Integrates into their life in some way that holds true to them enough to care about you. And that all comes back down to the perception of you, the sociology, the psychology of everything around you, how you interact in conjunction with human behavior and cultural resonance. And when you understand your audience and you reverse engineer it. Now, what was confusing offers are uh, no longer there. What was weak positioning are no longer there. They're strong. Now what was once disconnected messaging are fully integrated like you're speaking. How did you know? You're reading the tea, you're reading the receipts. Before I even knew the words that were coming out of my mouth that I needed to say for the help that I needed, you already spoke the words into me. M that filled my cup to tell me where I actually needed to go, what I actually need to do and how long it would take me to get there. I definitely need to work with you. Buy your product, buy your service. Because I see it, it's speaking my language. Leverage language to launch leads. Remember that boom, done. What was once no onboarding system, no consistent output, uh, inconsistent experience, a poor customer journey. You're solving that now because you understand what they need by listening, by modifying, by adjusting and recognizing. You can't do it all yourself. You need systems. This is where you do need AI. But in conjunction with this media assets strategy systems, the mass effective business model. I was just sitting with this and sometimes it's a vulnerable thing to be scared about. Where is my business going? It could be making me massive amount of money today and not as much tomorrow. And even though that is happening, all the greats had bad months, had bad years, had bad seasons. They're not forever though. They either power through until everything flipped and they're back on track, or they adapted and adjusted to survive, reset, thrive and scaled again. Many of the people who you look up to failed. Don't think because you made big money over the course of your career or in your business and your entrepreneurship pursuits that it's going to last forever. And you're not a fraud if things fail and falling apart and you got to pick the pieces back up and rebuild something new because society, the environment, the industry, the model, the infrastructure collapsed. It's not always your fault and it's not always preventive. But what you did to do that, you can expand and do something else. And whatever it you did still counts as relevant to your identity and your impact and your growth. It's not just about what have you done for me today. We can't acknowledge or ignore what you've done in the past. But if you want to future proof your business, if you want to scale your business in ways you haven't before. So sometimes it's simply not just about running a business, it's reimagining. What type of business do I need to become to create the life and the business experience that I want to have? Not just profit again. There's a lot of people who make money with their business runs them. There's a lot of people who have great brand visibility, but they're not happy internally. You can have this and that and then some if you build it the right way. This is why I think going with media, to assets, to strategy, the systems is a good way for me to go. If you're more linear, more traditional, if you're in markets that people are always going to buy that type of product, you're in markets that they're always going to be a subscription model forever. Most people pay insurance, they're going to pay it for it forever, doesn't matter. People will buy consumable products that they need forever. Water, toilet paper, makeup, medicine, but then other things. That's why when you go to education, there's a threshold two year degree, four year degree, master's degree, PhD, there's a graduation period because you are not going to always do education payments forever. You're going to evolve to other things. So that's where they have certifications, they have subscriptions to continuous learning and those are lower profit margins, but still ways to feed the funnel. But if you're going all in on these things, you need a business model that can survive and expand and adapt to continuously bring you money in. So. So if you don't have that, media gives you the highest profit margin with the least amount of energy and effort. The big investment might be camera, audio, team, editing, whatever, but in conjunction, it can scale as much as you put in, as much as you put out, as much as collaborate. It's not easy. The people who grew and made massive money during the COVID season, many of them are not here today. They're not big media players anymore. But the people who understood the process even before COVID didn't matter what platform they transitioned. The platform changed, they grew another one. They grew another one because they did. They were agnostic to the platform. They knew how to build the community, get people to stay, get people to watch, consume, engage, click, listen and trust them enough to buy the products, the services, all the different things. They're invested in their life, they're invested in their business they're invested in their story. So that causes us to question ourselves. What business model do we need to become? Not just how do I make more money in Q3 and Q4. Is this business model sustainable and scalable board? Will this create the experience that I want? Those are the real questions. Those are things you really need to sit with and think about and, uh, ask for help and do the math, do the logic, do the workflows, do the wireframes and deal with the reality of what is as, uh, I'm navigating this myself. How do I build a better model for myself in this new way of life that I'm trying to build for myself with new variables, with new challenges, with new obstacles, new desires, new goals and a shorter timeline and or friction and energy points to do so Those are the hard things. That's what we have to do. That's what we have to navigate. So I challenge you to do the same thing. And maybe we should compare notes, see if we can help each other grow our business together. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for your patience. Thank you so much for your support. To everyone who's ever followed me, who gave me a review, who liked, who listened to one download, thank you. We're transitioning, we're adjusting, we're modifying. Let's just do it together. See you next time. And that's a wrap. We hope you enjoyed this episode of I Digress. What was your takeaway? Care to share your thoughts and tag Troy on social media? You can find him on all platforms. FindTroy. Don't forget to like, subscribe and leave a review or comment for this episode from wherever you're listening. Looking for a marketing strategist to build the structure, strategies and systems you need to get the success you want and the ROI you desire in your business book? A discovery call to talk with Troy@findtroy.com and as Troy's philosophy goes, imagination is the engine, content is the fuel. Social media is the highway. Marketing is the roadmap. Sales is the destination. Culture is the gps. Thanks for listening. M.