Less Famous, More Trusted

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

7-40 Challenge | Round 4, Day 34

Seth Godin dropped nineteen points about marketing in the age of AI. Three of them stopped me cold.

“Stop trying to be famous. The goal is not to get more famous. The goal is to get less famous and more trusted.”

I’ve spent most of this year building things. The volume has been relentless. But the question I keep dodging is whether the people I’m reaching actually trust me, or whether they’re just watching me build.

Those are different things. An audience watches. A community trusts. I don’t need more people watching. I need more people who’d notice if I stopped.

“Stop trying to reach everyone. Start trying to deeply serve someone specific.”

A few weeks ago I wrote about looking for my Soho people — the small group of readers who’d grab my work and carry it forward. I’ve been thinking about it wrong. I’ve been looking outward for them when some of them are already here, reading this blog, following the Bible pictures, checking in on the challenge. I just haven’t asked them what they need.

Serving someone specific means knowing them well enough to build something they’d miss. Not something they’d scroll past — something they’d miss.

“How do I become the kind of business that people would genuinely miss if it disappeared tomorrow? That answer is your entire marketing strategy.”

That’s the only question that matters. Not how do I get more attention. Not how do I go viral. Not how do I crack the algorithm. Would anyone miss this if it were gone?

I don’t know the answer yet. But I know it lives deeper with the people who are already here — not louder toward the ones who aren’t.

Intent

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

7-40 Challenge | Round 4, Day 33

Before you say anything — to your spouse, your team, your AI — there’s a question worth answering first: why are you opening your mouth?

Are you trying to understand something? Are you trying to be understood? Are you trying to win? Are you trying to find the truth? The answer changes everything that comes after it.

I’ve watched the same conversation go two completely different directions depending on intent. When I walk into a discussion at work trying to prove I’m right, I stop listening the moment someone pushes back. The conversation becomes a contest. The outcome is whoever talks louder or gives up first.

When I walk in trying to find the right answer — even if it means I was wrong — something different happens. I ask better questions. I actually hear the responses. The pushback becomes useful instead of threatening. And the outcome is usually better than what either side walked in with.

Same people. Same room. Same topic. Different intent.

This is just as true when I sit down with AI. If my intent is to get the machine to confirm what I already believe, I’ll frame my questions to lead it there — and it’ll oblige, because that’s what it does. I’ll walk away feeling validated and potentially dead wrong.

If my intent is to find the truth, I ask differently. I challenge what comes back. I say “push back on this” and mean it. I hand over my assumptions and ask the AI to break them. The conversation is harder. The results are better.

Intent is the cornerstone. Not the last thing you think about — the first. If the intent is wrong, every communication skill you have just becomes a sharper tool for manipulation. If the intent is right, even clumsy communication has a chance of getting somewhere real.

Get Them Out

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

7-40 Challenge | Round 4, Day 32

I went for a walk this afternoon with a small headache and vague tension in my chest — the kind that comes from knowing you have something to get out but not being able to see it clearly yet. By the time I got done, I had a complete framework for the communication course I’ve been circling for months. Ten principles. A product structure. A content engine. None of it existed in any organized form before I started walking.

The ideas were already in my head. They just needed out.

That’s the part most people skip. They sit with ideas swirling, waiting for the moment when it all clicks into place internally before they start. But it doesn’t click inside. It clicks when you get it outside — onto a page, into a voice recording, onto a whiteboard, into a conversation. The act of externalizing is what organizes the thinking, not the other way around.

I’ve written a blog post every day this year. The best ones didn’t come from sitting down with a clear idea. They came from starting with a half-formed thought and watching it take shape as the words came out. The writing did the thinking for me.

I left on the walk this afternoon with tension. I came back with details fleshed out. The only difference was getting it out of my head and into the air.

Grateful

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

7-40 Challenge | Round 4, Day 31

Some days the most productive thing I do is sit still long enough to realize how much I have.

A wife who believes in me. A son I get to watch turn into a fantastic godly man. Work that challenges me. Projects that excite me. A faith that holds me together when I can’t hold myself.

Not every post needs to be a breakthrough. Some days you just say thank you and mean it.

The Short Letter

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

7-40 Challenge | Round 4, Day 30

There’s a quote attributed to Blaise Pascal: “I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.”

Most people read that as a joke about editing. It’s not. It’s one of the truest things ever said about how real clarity works.

The simple version of anything is never where you start. You start with the mess — every idea you have, every angle you can think of, every framework and connection and tangent your brain wants to chase. That’s the long letter. It’s necessary. You have to write it.

But the long letter is not the product. The long letter is the process.

The product is what’s left after you cut everything that doesn’t make Monday morning better for the person holding it. That takes longer than the mess did. It takes focus, honesty, and the willingness to throw away things you’re proud of because they don’t serve the person you’re building for.

I’ve watched this play out in my own work this year. I cut nearly half my first novel in editing — not because the writing was bad, but because I was explaining things the story had already shown. Yesterday I wrote a closing line I loved — a declaration about what I was going to do next. The editorial pass cut it because the essay had already made the point. The line served me. It didn’t serve the reader.

I’ve been developing an AI education product for weeks. It kept growing — more frameworks, more depth, more layers. Then I asked myself what the simplest useful version looked like. The answer fit in one sentence. That is where I am headed.

Simplicity isn’t where you start. It’s where you arrive after doing the hard work of going through everything else first. The short letter takes longer than the long one. But it’s the only one worth sending.