Hi!
Writing this one still full from a week spent in the same room with some of the smartest consultants and authors I know.
The Level Set:
AI made information pretty much free this year. That changed what is actually scarce in your business, and I rebuilt every LevelUp offer around what is scarce now: being in the room.
Expert Insight of the Week
"Your most profitable work is unpaid." Chris Taylor, founder of Actionable, said this at our LevelUp Retreat last week. He means the relationship work outside any contracted scope.
The call with nothing to pitch. The thoughtful note when a client's dog dies. He has watched that kind of connection, built over years, turn single projects into seven-figure relationships.
You cannot automate it. That is the point.
From virtual by default → to in person on purpose
A few editions ago I told you I was rebuilding LevelUp. Here is the biggest change: we now sell zero things that do not include working together in person.
Zero. If a client cannot meet in person yet, we will work together when they can. Here is the reasoning. Ask yourself what becomes more valuable as information becomes abundant.
Your frameworks are now a chatbot answer.
Your research, same. What a client cannot download: → your judgment, applied to their exact situation, in real time
→ the trust that only gets built in shared physical space
→ the relationships you convene around them Personal value carries twice the weight of business value in B2B buying decisions. Buyers are humans choosing a human. It used to be enough for your services to be rare, valuable and hard to copy. That is table stakes now.
The premium sits where only a person can go: judgment, exclusivity, access and relationships. In-person work hits all four at once, which is why the appetite for it right now is unlike anything I have seen in my career. And I will be honest about the other reason. I do my best work in person. I feel the most fulfilled when I am in a room with the people I serve.
For years I built a business that kept me on Zoom ALL DAY, and designing this next chapter around the work that lights me up is the most clarifying decision I have made in a long time. So we are writing everything in pencil. Smallest experiment, real data, next decision. And this is the bet: AI does more of what AI does well, so I can do more of what only I can do.
What This Looks Like in Real LifeLast week I hosted our LevelUp Retreat here in Colorado.
| 
