"Real or AI?"

Bill asked me this at a conference in New York. Neither of us hesitated. Most firms are betting their next 18 months on the wrong answer to that question.

Bill asked me this at a dinner in New York.

“Real or AI?”

I answered without thinking…AI: He did, too.

We laughed. Then went quiet for a second.

That question is the question we’re all asking when we see your LinkedIn post, or X thread, or email. And most content is answering the wrong way.

The tools are not the problem. Most firms just skipped a step.

A study published earlier this year tracked 65,000 articles online. More than half were AI-generated.

LinkedIn engagement dropped 50% year over year across 1.8 million posts. AI-detectable content gets 45% less engagement than human-written posts.

The market did not gradually grow numb to AI content. It is already there.

And firms are responding the way you’d expect.

More posts.

More articles.

More emails.

The tools are fast, the cost is low, the output is high.

That’s The Efficiency Trap.

Chasing AI’s speed before you have anything distinctive worth saying puts you on the fast-train the ‘meh’.

Efficiency without effectiveness.

At scale, it doesn’t build an audience.

It trains people to scroll past you.

The firms that win over the next 18-24 months are not necessarily better at their work than those that don’t. They are better known for their worldview.

That’s always been true, but you could get away with it before… now things are changing, fast.

Bain published research earlier this year on how B2B buyers actually make decisions. 85% of them purchase from vendors they had in mind before they started searching. Before the Google search. Before the ChatGPT query. Before anyone knew they were in the market.

That list forms over time.

Through one thing: opinionated content.

The kind that can only come from a person with enough experience to take a position and mean it. And the guts to stand up and be a leader.

The referral game is changing, too.

Firms I talk to are still getting referrals. That has not changed.

What has changed is what happens after. The referred contact now vets the referral before they call. 29% of B2B buyers start their research in ChatGPT, not Google. What they find either confirms the referral or softens it.

For a firm with consistent, opinionated content: confirmation.

For a firm with AI-generated volume: doubt.

For a firm with no findable content: invisibility.

Content’s job now is to be the evidence that confirms what the referral promised.

The Edelman-LinkedIn research, a seven-year study of nearly 2,000 buyers, puts a specific number on this. 95% of buyers who are not yet ready to purchase are more receptive to vendors with consistent thought leadership.

Not ads.

Not outreach.

Thought leadership.

There are two wrong answers to this problem.

The first: “AI is ruining content, I won’t use it.” That hands speed and reach to competitors who figure out the right approach.

The second: “AI handles everything.” That scales mediocrity faster than any previous tool in history.

The middle way is not complicated. Just uncommon.

Develop the worldview first.

This is the step AI cannot do. It requires a person with a history, a set of experiences, and a willingness to take positions. What do you believe about your industry that most of your peers would push back on? What are you seeing now that your clients will not understand for two more years? That is the raw material. No AI can generate it, because it does not exist yet until you decide what you think.

Capture it in a form your AI can learn from.

A book does this most completely. Not because a book is a marketing asset, though it is. Because writing one forces you to externalize your worldview in a form that is trainable. Your AI then works from that foundation, not from a blank notepad every session.

A newsletter works too. When I started, the process was simple: brief AI on the thinking, let it write. The output was competent. But it wasn’t really mine.

What we built over time looks different. The thinking comes first. AI pushes on it, questions the logic, helps make the idea sharper before any writing starts. The structure itself was deliberately refined over many issues: the life texture opener, the named problem, the future-telling angle. When the thinking is solid and the structure understood, the writing reflects it.

I still edit by hand at the end. It is a collaboration at every stage, not a delegation at the last one.

Amplify efficiently.

Once the worldview is captured, the efficiency tools earn their place. AI that knows your positions, your voice, your examples, and the way you think can extend your reach without diluting what makes you…you.

Be everywhere they are.

Everywhere for the specific audience that matters to your firm. Wherever they gather, search, and vet referrals. The goal is not merely reach. It is to be unavoidable to the right people.

You do not need to be better.

You need to be known.

And the window to build that, before the noise gets any louder, is shorter than most people think.

Steve “known beats better” Gordon

P.S. The hardest part of this is not the AI. It’s sitting down and deciding what you actually believe. Most firms avoid that step because it requires taking positions, which means you might be wrong. That discomfort is the work. The AI is easy. The worldview is not.

P.P.S. When you’re ready, our team is standing by to help you:

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Where’s Steve:

• July 15-16 - Strategic Coach 10X Ambition - Chicago

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If you’re at any of those events, come see me.