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
​