If you have watched even one of my videos, you already know how I close every single one of them. I say the same three things every time:

Be real, be human, be authentic.

A lot of people hear that and treat it like a nice little catchphrase, a warm way to wave goodbye before the screen goes dark. I am telling you today that those three words are the most important business strategy I know of right now, and I believe they are about to matter more than anything else you do, because of the strange new world that artificial intelligence is building around all of us, whether we asked for it or not.

Here is what is happening, and I think most people can feel it long before they can put words to it:

The cost of producing things has collapsed.

It used to take real effort to write a polished email, build a decent presentation, put together a website, or sound like you knew what you were talking about. That effort was a filter. If you showed up looking sharp and sounding competent, it usually meant you had invested something real to get there, and that investment helped people figure out whether you were legit or not.

Today, that filter is gone. Anybody with a laptop and a subscription can generate a flawless email in nine seconds, spin up a slick landing page over lunch, and flood a thousand inboxes before dinner with messages that look thoughtful and personal and are nothing of the kind. The machine can imitate polish now. It can imitate warmth. AI and technology can even imitate the little personal touches that used to tell you a real human being sat down and thought about you for a minute.

So what does that do to all of us on the receiving end of the spam onslaught?

Our brains and inboxes are full. Our feeds are full. Our voicemails and our text messages and our connection requests are full, and a growing share of all of it is manufactured by something that has never met us and never will. When everything looks personal, nothing feels personal. When every message sounds confident and polished, most of them stop meaning anything at all. We have all gone a little numb to it, and honestly, we should have, because most of it is noise dressed up to look like a conversation.

Now here is the part that gives me real hope, and it is the hill I want you to plant your flag on:

The more the machine floods the world with imitation, the more valuable the real thing becomes.

If you’re interested in taking your business a step further, head over to my Substack to read the full article and subscribe to Can I Borrow Your Car.