Nobody Wants Your Polished Content. They Want YOU.
The pendulum is swinging, and most people won't notice for two more years...
I said something on a call this week that I want to repeat here, because I think it's maybe two years ahead of when most people are going to actually realize it.
There's a total trend shift happening in content right now.
For years, the game was polish. Over-edited videos. Effects everywhere. Perfect cuts, perfect lighting, perfect everything. And then AI content came up on top of that, and the whole feed started feeling... produced. Canned. Like everyone was wearing the same costume.
And now the pendulum is swinging HARD the other way.
Start paying attention when you scroll TikTok or Instagram or Facebook. What's working right now is raw. It's a person talking into a camera with their head half out of frame. People are calling it "yapping," which honestly doesn't do it justice. Because what it actually is... is raw, organic, vulnerable, authentic content.
That's what people want. That's what's winning.
We're moving into a trust economy. When anyone can spin up a website in five minutes and AI can build the same product for everybody, the product stops being the differentiator. YOU are the differentiator. People buy from people. They can't trust the polish anymore because polish is free now. What they can trust is watching you actually do the thing, day in and day out, unedited.
So here's the takeaway, and I mean this genuinely.
It has never been a better time to make content than right now.
Three reasons:
- It's easier than it's ever been. No production team. No editing marathon. The "flaw" of being unpolished is now the feature.
- Repurposing is basically free. You record ONE podcast episode or one talking video, and you can ship it to every single platform. One recording becomes ten pieces of content.
- Most important: what people want is you. They want YOU. And not everybody is going to like you... but you're not trying to appeal to everybody. The people that click on the stuff that you click on, the algorithm will carry them to you. Those are your people. And that's all that matters.
Think about the scale here for a second. There are 8 billion people on this planet. A community of 900 true fans paying $100 a month is a million-dollar business. Nine hundred people! You don't need everyone. You need a tiny sliver of humans who like watching you be you.
And you can't fake it, by the way. Unless you're a professional actor, you cannot keep up an act for very long. So don't build a content strategy that requires you to perform for 12 hours a day. Build one that's just... your actual life, documented.
So if you've had even ONE little thought about creating content, this is me telling you: do it. Get the camera up. Start writing. Go live while you work. It's ugly at first and that's fine, because ugly is what's working.
The gatekeepers are gone. The editing excuse is gone. It's just you and the record button now.
Stay in the fight, Kevin