🗝️ Why your taste just doubled in value
“Have a point of view.” - Milton Glaser
🔑 This issue at a glance (2-second summary)
AI makes execution nearly free, so high output is becoming the floor, not the advantage. The market rewards authentic stories, style, and taste. Your real edge is the point of view only you can bring.
Is your work something your clients can already get from AI?
A while back, I hired an outside creative pro for a brand project.
Not because I couldn't do it myself. I'm a graphic designer by trade, plus I'd already had Codex and Claude Code produce some decent drafts. I hired this person for their years of industry-specific experience, pattern recognition I don't have in their expertise, and the judgment calls I'd miss. I wanted their unique flavor specifically for this project.
What came back was an AI-generated draft.
I wasn't upset about the use of AI, but what I was paying for was someone else's taste. What I got back was the part I had already done myself.
That gap is about to reshape every service business you can think of.
There's a book called The Two-Income Trap that explains what happened when households went from one income to two. Prices didn't stay flat. They rose to match the new capacity. The second paycheck didn't buy more comfort. It became the new baseline.
AI is doing the same thing to output. When your tools multiply what one person can produce, the old output becomes the new minimum. Ten times more doesn't make you special anymore. It's expected.
Your ghostwriter used to charge $1,000 a month for one polished article. Now clients know that same article takes ten minutes with a good prompt. They won't argue about it. They'll quietly find someone who delivers ten articles for the same price, or one article for a fifth of it.
You can't win the quantity race. But you can win a different one.
This summer, LinkedIn added a button to report posts that “seem like AI slop.” One study found roughly 4 in 10 long-form posts on the platform read as fully machine-written. When everyone can produce, the market starts rewarding authentic stories, style, and taste. Judgment becomes the product.
I write this newsletter every week with the help of AI, but not because it's faster. Because it's better. I'm co-writing with a thought partner that challenges my thinking, and the final product is authentically my words, my point of view, my taste.
My AI executive assistant drafts proposals, builds decks, preps follow-ups. I make the calls on what ships, what gets cut, and what sounds like me.
That's the move. Stop selling your ability to produce. Start selling the judgment you bring to what gets produced.
AI helps with process. You provide your unique point of view.
Winners take action
This week, pick one deliverable you send to a client or a customer. Before you hand it off, inject your taste. Add one line that only you could write: “In my experience working with teams like yours…” or “Here's my recommendation based on 15 years in this industry…”
That line is the part AI can't generate and the part your client actually values.
The tools you need
Challenge: Your AI writes like a generalist because it doesn't know what you actually believe.
Solution: Build a personal context document with your goals, interests, preferences, points of view, and hot takes, and keep adding to it.
Try this in 10 minutes: Open your favorite AI tool, paste the prompt below, and let it interview you. Save the output and attach it to your projects' context alongside your brand voice and business context.
You are my POV interviewer. Your job is to help me build a Personal Context Document that captures who I am: my goals, interests, hobbies, personal preferences, and most importantly my unique points of view, hot takes, and standing beliefs about my industry and about life. These are the things I'd argue for at dinner. They are the part of me AI can't generate.
Look through my transcripts, calls, and emails first to see if you can extract any unique points of view that I have. Then interview me one question at a time. Wait for my answer before you ask the next one. Keep questions short. Push back when an answer sounds generic, borrowed, or like something I read in a book. Dig for the lived experience behind the belief, because an opinion with a story behind it is mine; one without is probably someone else's.
Cover these areas, in this order: (1) my goals and what I'm working toward, (2) my interests, hobbies, and personal preferences, (3) my industry and the work I do, (4) how I think my industry gets it wrong, (5) advice I give that most people don't follow, (6) things I used to believe that I don't anymore, (7) what I think success actually is, (8) what I think most high performers get wrong about life.
After 10 to 15 questions, stop and show me a draft of my Personal Context Document. Group the content by theme. The POV section should be opinions only, each as one sentence I'd say out loud. No frameworks, no how-tos. Then ask me what to cut, sharpen, or add.
Once we are done, your final output should be a Markdown file I can download and use with all of my AI tools.
Now attach that file everywhere. In ChatGPT, add it to your account under Settings → Personalization → Memory, or upload it to a Project. In Claude, add it to a Project's knowledge or paste it into your personal preferences. In Gemini or Copilot, drop it into a workspace or Gem. Then reference it in your prompts: “Use my Personal Context Document and Brand Voice when answering.”
You can always open up that document and keep adding to it in the future.
This week's podcast highlight
On King Moves episode 151: Is AI Giving You More Freedom, or More Work?, Justin and I examine what happens when AI raises the floor on everyone: if one person's output multiplies, does 10x just become the new baseline? We get into the ghostwriter squeeze, why “we don't use AI” will only stand out for a brief moment, and why I co-write this newsletter with AI even when it takes longer. The quality is better when something pushes back.
Stop playing life on hard mode. Automate your success.
Until next week,
Ethan King
A.I. Automation for Business Growth
Keynote Speaker | Author | CEO | Strategist
P.S. I spent Friday in Miami helping a construction company build its first AI employees, in English and Spanish, side by side. Watching a non-techy crew that thinks in blueprints and paint SKUs take to agents faster than most tech companies? Best part of my month. If your team is ready for its first AI hire, reply to this email.
P.P.S. Catch me live:
Public:
- Build My AI Team Live, your AI-employee-building walkthrough on your computer: Oct 26 and 27, 4–6pm ET both days
EO chapters:
- EO Tulsa: Oct 7
- EO Oklahoma City: Oct 8
- EO Fort Worth, Part 2: Oct 20
- EO El Salvador, 2-day workshop: Nov 4–5
- EO Iowa, Part 2: Nov 12
