ISSUE #57

Welcome to the Forward Obsessed Founder, my newsletter with insights, awesome tools, and real-world advice to grow your business and career.

GO FORWARD THOUGHT OF THE WEEK ➡️

Your Brand’s Dying in AI Noise. Design to Dodge Death & Dominate

We’re heading into year-end prediction season, so before it gets too crazy, I have this for you:

With GenAI creeping into every aspect of our lives, from social networks to documents to every app we touch having a sparkling "generate" button, the noise will only get louder. That’s what happens when the cost of creation is a single tap of your phone or laptop trackpad.

This isn’t an earth-shattering observation. You’re already seeing it. An ocean of bland, forgettable noise is churning out there, suffocating real innovation.

There’s a reason “brain rot” is the Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year for 2024.

And it's not just you and me drowning in a sea of content and ads. It’s our customers and prospects, too.

Consider this: the median number of online ads served to people daily is over 5,100, with the upper bound hovering around 10,000.

Interest-graph-driven algorithms are creating an endless stream of one-to-one echo chambers.

With endless options vying for everyone’s goldfish attention spans, a strong brand is the thing that gives you the bite to break out.

And the secret to creating a stand-out brand is surprisingly simple and consistent.

Good design always sells.

As a young art director coming up, I saw this over and over: my pimples and pixels could beat Brooks Brothers-sporting MBA McKinsey bros.

Design was always my differentiator.

I could cut down a McKinsey consultant’s MBA jargon and win the hearts, minds, and wallets of my C-suite audience simply because my presentations made sense. They didn't spew mounds of jargon that made executives fall asleep in their leather chairs.

Forget quantity. Forget trying to outsmart algorithms. Your focus needs to be laser-sharp: create content with soul, with an actual point of view.

Your brand must emphasize quality, context, and consistency to win in the distraction economy.

Smart strategy and thoughtful planning are essential for standing out and achieving key brand metrics.

But it's not just about tactics.

It’s about design.

Different is your ticket to better.

It's your secret weapon that can cut through the noise like a streaking coed during the NBA playoffs. By prioritizing thoughtful, intentional design that resonates with your audience, you can forge deeper connections and stand out in the sea of sameness.

(Maybe we should start a support group for brand managers trying to navigate this chaos? Just kidding... sort of.)

Here’s one of my core beliefs that holds more now than ever:

To be a great designer is to be a great problem solver. If you invest in design and can provide a brand and product experience that customers view as designed better than your competition, you will win.

​Research shows that design-led companies outperform the S&P 500 by 219%.

Mankind made the machine, and machines will accelerate mankind.

The same is true for the businesses we create and our lives.

We designed the machines.

Now, we must design their place in our future.

Not the other way around.

So, hit reply if you are trying to skip the brain rot and tap into these platforms and workflows to raise revenue and margins without raising your headcount. I’m here to help.
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- Pete Sena​

Tool of the Week 🧰

CALL TO CONTENT. Turn your mouth 👄 into money 💰💰💰

If you're like me, you probably spend more time than you’d like to admit on conference calls.

​You can’t summarize business success, but you can turn most of your outputs into value if you're smart.

My tool of the week is Call-to-content. I dreamed this up for one of my startup founders. After seeing it help them turn their sales meetings into SOPs, social media content, and an auto-populated content calendar, I thought it would be stupid if I didn’t offer this to everyone else.

So, I struck up a partnership with my favorite AI notetaker, Fathom, and got to building.

Mention my newsletter before Dec 25th and get $100 bucks off Call-to-Content.​
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This is a no-brainer if you want to monetize your meetings and time.

Thanks so much for reading this edition of The Forward Obsessed Founder — you can also check out this issue on the web [Link].
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