Community Is the Hedge Against AI

AI can scale content and automate tasks, but it can’t scale relationships.

And I really believe that community is one of the few remaining ways to protect your business from the rise of AI.

Getting attention is becoming easier with AI (because now you can scale content like crazy), but I think keeping attention is the new game. In my opinion, that's where community is hard to beat.

But what does that actually look like?

What does it mean to join a community? Or to become the person who builds one?

A community might be centered around a product, service or shared interest (i.e. run clubs).

But the value is in the people.

I personally know people who created a community, and monetized it to 6-figures, around the most odd, unique, and unpredictable things ever (example later in this post).

If you're going to add community as a layer of your marketing strategy, the ultimate goal is to have members feed off the value of other members.

So how do you start?

You start at the bottom.

Every community I’ve ever seen works the same way. The people who end up being trusted and influential didn’t start that way.

They started by showing up, helping others, and contributing over time. And because of that, they earned a real spot.

I recently shared, in this newsletter, that I joined a marketing club in college. I didn’t know anything. I was a nobody. I just wanted to learn.

A year later, I was running the entire club of 400+ members.

The same thing happened to me when I got invited to join a private entrepreneur group that I'm still a part of now.

Again, I joined as a nobody, started answering people’s questions about SEO and slowly people started to recognize my value as a community member.

Now I’ve made friends, gotten SEO clients, and become one of the people others reach out to in about a year.

Building trust within a community obviously takes time, which people seem have no patience for in a world of AI.

But it's so obvious to me that community and mutually beneficial relationships are super effective ways to keep attention.

A weird niche where community led to $100k+ revenue

I met a guy named Sean a couple years back.

He's one of my favorite examples as someone who built a profitable business by leveraging community.

His product? He sells fluorescent rocks.

He's always been interested in lake beds where there was volcanic activity so one day he drove out to a lake and started collecting these rocks that glow under a certain kind of light.

Then, he joined seven different rock and mineral clubs. Within a year he was a board member for all seven of them.

He became the go-to person in that little world.

Shortly after, he started selling the rocks online, made his own custom flashlights to go with them, and built a six-figure business outside his full-time job.

All because he leveraged community and showed genuine interest.

The potential of combining community, solving real problems & directories

If you saw my latest YouTube video with Filipe, a member of our SYD Pro community, you know that he made $100k with his focus group directory.

The biggest takeaway for me was that he got there by immersing himself in communities where people were already participating in focus groups.

That’s how he validated the problem.

That’s where he tested his product ideas.

And once he saw traction, he used social media to get it in front of even more people.

He wasn’t guessing. He was listening.

So yeah, relationships can’t be scaled. But that’s the whole point.

As AI grows, automates, and speeds things up, the things that can’t be replaced will only get more valuable.

Real human connection to solve real human problems (which there are plenty of). Community is the space where that happens.

If you want to protect what you’re building from becoming irrelevant, start by finding a group of people you actually care about.

Join them. Help them. Solve real problems. That’s how you build something that lasts.

Keep Building,

Frey

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