These days I’m reading a book about the early days of Netflix, written by one of its founders, Marc Randolph. I came to the Netflix game in 1999, a few years after they started. At that point, internet speeds weren’t good enough for streaming, so they would drop your DVDs into the mail. I loved the service. In my mind it was one of those no-brainer subscriptions — “Are you kidding?! All the Sopranos episodes and Kirsten Dunst movies I can binge-watch for $20 a month? Sign me up!”
One of my favorite chapters in the book is “Nobody Knows Anything.” It’s astounding how much they didn’t know, and how they were wrong more often than they were right, especially when they first started in 1997 and 1998. Now, however, the idea seems obvious and Netflix is one of the largest companies in the world.
Lesson: Humans give the big money to the people who are willing to live at the edge until it’s not the edge anymore.
A shift of gears now. You’ll see how it’s connected in just a moment, I promise…
The other day I was talking to one of my clients about AI. He was showing me an AI video production service he was testing out (he’ll recognize that I’m talking about him here — he’s a regular reader of this email).
Afterwards, I was feeling philosophical, and I was wondering what use there will be for us humans in the future. A phrase was running through my head, so I grabbed a piece of paper so I could write it down before I forgot it. This is what it was:
“AI can only do what we can do. It is an echo chamber. When we need someone who is not echo chamber, we can’t use AI. So it must be our job to not be echo chamber. In fact, it is more than our job, it is our duty.”
You might wonder what any of this has to do with presentations and communications. And it’s this: The next time you’re about to get up in front of a bunch of people to pitch an idea, don’t ask yourself what to do with your hands, and don’t worry about whether you used the right shade of blue on your slides.
Instead, ask yourself if you have something to say. Ask yourself if you’re about to rock the worlds of the people you’ll be talking to. THAT’S the question to be asking.
Remember, the world gives the big money to the people who are willing to live at the edge until it’s not the edge anymore. Don’t just puke out what’s safe, we have AI for that.