"Adopt or die."

Edition 131 - OR - How an Old Marketing Tactic is Creating New Chaos

There’s a quiet phrase that sneaks into boardrooms, strategy decks, tech demos, and keynote speeches.

“It’s inevitable.”

It sounds smart. Neutral. Historic. It's a big fave of the Zucks and Altmans and the Musks about their particular vision for the rorschach test of our age: AI. They've taught the messaging document to their tech bro sales guys on Linkedin, on the conference speaker circuit, and likely in your personal Mastermind group. All of it infiltrated with this free-thought killing monster masquerading as obvious sentiment.

But "inevitable" is not neutral at all. It’s ideological. It’s permissioned, a gate made and kept for those who will step in line and pay the long-gestating price of simply going with the flow. And it’s one of the most effective tools of marketing ever invented.

The idea that something—anything—is inevitable is rarely true. But it’s always useful. Especially if you’re the one selling it.

Y'all are underwater with change. I know that. I take calls everywhere hearing about the finer details of it in real time. And your strategic plans, career goals, etc. have been buried under the wave of "uncertainty" which doesn't seem to shake (it's not going to). Economic volatility, team confusion: whole markets restructuring around new heavily capitalized forces. In these moments of instability, the voice of inevitability gets louder. Not because it’s right, but because it relieves us of the two things that kill the leadership engine:

1. Mental overload - too many layers of complexity on too many challenges with too many unfounded opinions chiming in. The list that keeps you up at night is too long.
2. Psychological danger - Related to #1, you don't have spaces (even in your own mind) where you can wonder, ask the hard question, feel safe in your own lack of answers.

If AI is inevitable, then I can pull that out of my mental load. I can stop second-guessing about it, and I can tell my team: This is happening whether we like it or not. Adopt or die trying. Whole industries are being trained to believe they face existential threats to which AI is the only lifeline available. This is, of course, the primary selling point of AI: Without us you're f**ked.

This kind of fatalism is increasingly, in this economy and social regime, sold as realism. But that’s a lie. And it’s one of the most dangerous lies in modern leadership.

“Inevitability” Is a Sales Funnel

It's all much simpler than we're being told. Existential threat is a marketing technique called "problem evangelism." It's built for people who are out of market for your services. Since 12 months ago almost everybody was out of market for AI... it needed a lot of problem evangelism. And their certainty about both the great dangers of non-adoption and the only viable solution is not accidental.

The people who speak most confidently about what’s “coming next” are almost always the ones who benefit from you believing them.

We don’t talk about that enough.

Venture-funded tech founders who need a new wave of consumer behavior to justify their next raise? Consultants who sell panic-prep as a service? Influencers who build trust by naming a coming apocalypse only they can help you survive?

They all need inevitability.

They need you to skip over discernment. To believe that your only choice is “early adoption” or “irrelevance.” They need you disoriented, self-doubting, and eager to prove you’re not behind. So they package speculation as certainty, urgency as wisdom, and profit motives as “what’s best for everyone.”

Good news? None of this world-ending horror is right. A lot of the infrastructure that got us here (internet-based economy, social media, digital sales funnels) are being systematically dismantled, but businesses are never REALLY dependent on the external infrastructure. Though it may feel that way. You leaned into digital marketing, big websites, social media selling, and the like as a rising trend because steak dinners and seminars stopped working. And your business continued to grow. Now this is going to stop working (ironically because of AI, not saved by it), and you'll necessarily pivot to what's next.

Leadership Is Not Trend Adoption

When I work with founders and executives, I ask a lot of inconvenient questions. Not because I’m cynical, but because I’ve seen what happens when smart people abandon their own judgment in the name of keeping up. We have to get beneath the surface of the problem and the way its been framed in the prevailing debates.

Here’s what I tell them:

You don’t need to be early. You need to be clear.
You don’t need to be inevitable. You need to be preferable.
You don’t need to have it all figured out. You need to be in relationship.

The job is not to absorb everything the world throws at you and figure out how to metabolize it. The job is to name what matters and build around that. The inevitability narrative we've been given has been a killer for self-trust in leaders, training them to believe the sky is falling and only a massive infusion of someone else's cash and a big tech adoption can save the day. All of that is somebody else's marketing delivered to you at scale.

Yes, try new tools. Run experiments. But do it on your terms, not because someone else told you you’ll be obsolete if you don’t.

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: you can use new technology without worshipping it. You can evolve without abandoning yourself.

The Leader’s Real Work

The work now is cultural. Not technical. As the winds whip around your team and your customers, your job is to build an enclave obsessed with value delivery and reliable experience. Preferably, one that is not digitally dependent.

Leaders are cultural filters. Your team is watching to see what you name, what you resist, what you permit, what you refuse. They're watching you to see if the two-sided coin of existential dread/inevitable solution has creeped into your thinking. And if all they hear from you is, “We have to,” you’re not leading. You're allowing the rhetoric of inevitability to shrink your imagination and the vital connection between you, your team, and your clients.

I’m not interested in nostalgia. I’m interested in sovereignty. I’m interested in helping leaders reconnect with their own intelligence, their own pace, and their own vision for what kind of business they want to build.

While ten years ago the core problem of any business was how to use the cheat code of internet marketing to fast-track their growth, today it's almost the exact opposite. How do you clearly define and shape your offering and client experience so it can't be replicated or confused?

How can we make the most human experience possible where nothing is "inevitable?"

As always, the roadmap is clear, and you know what to do:

1. Understand you have options you can't see.
2. Diagnose your role in the challenges you face.
3. Ask for help on 1 and 2 because they're almost impossible to do alone.

To make this personal to your venture in small ways or large, I'm here for you.

I explored the "inevitability" of LLMs and the lies we're being told by invested parties on this week's Working/Broken, make sure you're grab it on your podcast app or by clinking the link below.