Defining Entrepreneurship

Let's begin on the same page with the basics. Per the Center for American Entrepreneurship:
"Entrepreneurship is the process by which individuals or groups pursue a commercial opportunity by bringing something new—or meaningfully improved—to market, most often through forming a start-up company designed to grow. It is a dynamic process that operates under uncertainty and risk and plays a central role in innovation, economic growth, and long-term productivity."

Characteristics of Entrepreneurs
This list combines insights from American Intercontinental University and Arkansas Small Business and Technology Development Center.

• Passion
• Business savvy
• Leadership skills
• Planning and adaptability
• Networking skills
• Money management skills
• Persistence or resilience
• Risk taker

Benefits of Being an Entrepreneur
triOS College shares this list:

• Freedom and flexibility
• Personal growth and learning
• Creative control
• Make an impact

Myers-Briggs and Entrepreneurs
This story in Inc. shares a study indicating there is an entrepreneurial personality type. The study cited indicates “The entrepreneurs in the group showed a significantly higher orientation for creativity, risk-taking, impulsivity, and especially autonomy than did non-entrepreneurs. Competitive ambition did not distinguish between those who were or were not entrepreneurs, but did relate to those who saw themselves as more entrepreneurial. People with a preference for extraversion, intuition, thinking, and perceiving tended to show greater levels of entrepreneurial orientation.”

Which personalities you may ask? N and P - Intuition and Perceiving. This article by Thryv goes in depth into multiple personalities and their nuances. 

The Value of Entrepreneurship
Economic Impact Catalyst notes "Entrepreneurship creates new businesses, which in turn create jobs, generate income, increase productivity, and contribute to economic growth. Entrepreneurship also drives innovation, which leads to the development of new products and services that can improve the quality of life for consumers." 

This article in USA Facts shares information about small businesses, generally considered that step above entrepreneurs or solopreneurs. A small business is defined as one with less than 500 employees. As of the article in December 2025, "Small businesses are 99.9% of all businesses nationwide. According to an SBA report from June 2025, the US had 36.2 million small businesses. These small firms employed 62.3 million people, or 45.9% of all private-sector employees. They were responsible for 88.9% of overall job growth from 2023 to 2024."

What About Nonprofits?
Nonprofits definitely have a large impact on the economy, directly and indirectly. This Philanthropy Roundtable post from September 2024 proclaims, "The nonprofit sector is a cornerstone of American society,..." The post further shares: "Since 2000, the number of nonprofit organizations in the U.S. has grown by 36 percent. Nearly 60 percent of the growth in 501(c)(3) organizations from 2002 to 2022 is due to an increase in human services and public and social benefit organizations." 

The American Society for Public Administration notes in October 2025: "Beyond direct employment, nonprofits foster opportunities for millions of others indirectly. For instance, child and elder care services provided by nonprofits enable family members to enter the workforce who would otherwise remain at home. Workforce training and job placement programs also help underemployed or unemployed individuals secure sustainable employment. This ripple effect illustrates how nonprofits strengthen the labor market well beyond their immediate staff."

Educating for Entrepreneurship
Geoff Woods, author of The AI-Driven Leader, notes our current education system continues to be based on the system initiated by John D. Rockefeller in 1902. Geoff notes in the transition from agriculture to Industrial Revolution, factories needed disciplined workers who followed orders. The goal of his General Education board was to produce "reliable workers rather than independent thinkers." As we enter the era of AI, a focus will need to be on "strategic thinking, creativity, communication, and collaboration."

Multiple episodes of The Artificial Intelligence Show echo this sentiment, suggesting a return to humanities studies, entrepreneur classes when available, and training in AI use in episode 171. 

​Get to the Point
I have to agree with Paul Roetzer on multiple episodes of The Artificial Intelligence Show that the way forward in this AI world is through entrepreneurship. 

• Noted in episode 185, it will be up to entrepreneurs to create jobs and work needed in small focal points to weather the transition of large businesses shedding employees. 
• Noted in episode 165 alluding to AI replacing young workers: "I would love to see growth and innovation and entrepreneurship as...the future engine of economies." 
• Who are entrepreneurs? You are if you're reading this! 
  • Solopreneurs and freelancers
  • Nonprofits, especially the small to mid-sized ones who are in the social services realm
  • Authors - entrepreneurs themselves and idea generators

Here's to the Entrepreneurs!
What made you decide to take a chance and start a business or nonprofit? It's hard work, but what do you like most about it?

Let's Chat! or find me on LinkedIn or Substack to share your thoughts! 

Viral Dueling Posts About AI

AI founder of OthersideAI Matt Shumer posted a long article on X/Twitter that has many buzzing. You should be able to view the original post on X/Twitter without an account there. The link embedded on his name is his LinkedIn profile where he also shared the article. 

I first saw the post as shared in a LinkedIn group. I learned more on episode 197 of The Artificial Intelligence Show. This link takes you to the show notes which also tend to be on most podcast players. Head to roughly the 8 minute mark for this particular story. 

Shumer's article on X/Twitter has over 83 million views and growing. I learned on The Artificial Intelligence Show that this post is one of the early articles X/Twitter is now encouraging, a style of writing new for the platform, that may also be behind it's "viral" status as X/Twitter is encouraging others to write long form content now. It's also rather an alarmist style post—always good for generating clicks. 

Always More Than One Side
As should be expected, a response questioning the intent and the content behind Shumer's post came the next day from an editor on Fortune, Jeremy Kahn, who himself is an author about AI - Mastering AI: A Survival Guide to Our Superpowered Future. 

The hosts of The Artificial Intelligence Show podcast know Shumer. They often raise similar alarms and concerns on their podcast about where AI is taking us and the divide in society between those actively using AI and those completely unaware or dabbling at most. 

I also caught this article from Robert Rose on LinkedIn with yet a different take on the points Matt Shumer raised. A more in depth version of Robert's thoughts are on his Substack post. 

The Truth is Generally in the Middle
Reviewing both Shumer and Kahn's pieces, I posit while there is certainly concern to be raised about AI—concerns on a variety of fronts—the alarmist nature and counter are both a bit over the top for me. 

• We are operating in a few bubbles of perspective.
  • The heavy users of AI racing to figure it all out seeing the huge potential for general job loss in the near future. 
  • A still large majority who don't or barely use AI tools with little interest to dig into its complexities. 
  • A rather First World perspective of access to this tech with the leaders of AI companies based in the US.
  • The rest of the world with controlled availability and use of AI (UK and Australia are early to build rules about AI), let alone Third World countries who are doing their best to survive.
• Will it help or harm?
  • AI will bring innovation and expand medicine, science, and more faster than only human brain power, hopefully bringing cures and advances for all.
  • Just as there is good, there is evil. AI has just as much capability to be used for nefarious reasons at local and international levels. 
  • AI is a tool trained to be helpful and come up with a response—any response. Many call potentially false responses "hallucinations."

Get to the Point
How do these posts and concerns raised about AI impact us in the nonprofit, solopreneur, and author spaces?

• I've noted AI use often on prior blog posts for benefit to our market--here, here, and here. 
• My clients have understandable concern about AI in many cases between data and privacy concerns or simply not interested in dealing with the new tech. 
• Any time someone is "screaming" panic in the streets about anything, it's time to step back and ask questions.
• The Future Impact of AI (according to Lezlee based on significant research and education):
  • I doubt it's going away any time soon. It is helpful to many who use it. These folks will not sit by for the technology to be taken away.
  • We are making advancements in science, medicine, and technology faster due to the assistance of AI. It has its benefits. 
  • Many have no use or interest in AI at the moment and it's not all "older" folks resisting. My Gen Z daughters want nothing to do with it which is rather common for that generation. They've been scared by teachers of being accused of plagiarism and the hallucination that does exist. 
  • Job losses are happening attributed to the rise in AI capability and use, either with layoffs or lack of hiring. I anticipate a time soon where the job losses or lack will become felt enough that the public will push back on its use.
  • The rise of AI is often likened to the Industrial Revolution two centuries ago. We have no concept what that actually felt like. New and different jobs were created as many were displaced, but there was a definite "messy middle."
  • We are in no way sufficiently ready with the infrastructure needed to support AI to the level we're told "it's coming." Solutions are needed for water, electricity, and space to build data centers to meet the supposed demand. I anticipate social push back on this as well. 
  • Government involvement or regulation is likely. AI development is currently reliant on approximately six corporate founders in the US, impacting national and international markets. At some point, I suspect "for the good of humanity," use and development will become centralized. At the moment, it's the "wild west" of development and innovation in the US while other countries are beginning efforts to regulate use.

What Do You Think?
What do you see as the future impact of AI? Are you increasingly concerned about your friends and family not "getting it" about the impact AI is already having? Do you think Matt Shumer's post may have been more dramatic than needed?

Let's Chat Let's Chat! or find me on LinkedIn or Substack!

The Times, They Are A'Changing

As tech advances, marketing shifts are needed. Email remains one of the strongest ways to connect with your audience, but recent advances in AI and email servers are challenging how to get noticed. 

MailChimp reports according to a study on its behalf: 

• 95% of marketers agree email marketing has excellent ROI (return on investment)
• 4 in 5 customers prefer email over other forms of communication

Forbes shared December 31, 2025 that "email dominates as the most effective channel (72% of brands)".

What's Changed?
AI is increasingly impacting our inboxes. Pretty much all email servers have some sort of spam filter to "helpfully" set aside items you may consider junk or ads not worthy of your time. When those spam filters work, they're extremely useful and I'm glad not to see those messages. However, we've all had plenty of instances of "losing" emails our server identifies as spam that we actually want to see. It feels like it's more work clearing through multiple folders email is sifted into to either truly delete, actually read, or try to train the AI system what we want in our inbox - repeatedly - as identifying what we want to see never seems to stick.

Google shared in this January 8, 2026 blog post the impact their AI, Gemini, will have in inboxes.  The post reviews a variety of features—some may thrill you, others not so much. The generative AI options of helping you compose and edit may help some folks; summaries and search functions may be useful. As a marketer and the point of this article, there are concerns about Gmail "helpfully" re-ordering our inboxes to prioritize what it thinks has deadlines and dates (not always accurate) as well as prioritizing email from those it sees you interacting with more often. Interaction with emails is being picked up as someone you trust and relate to, someone you want to hear from. This reordering also messes with date/time order of messages you see. This omeda article from January 12, 2026 indicates Apple is going to the same email format beginning Fall 2026. 

How Do We Address These Changes?
This post was inspired by listening to a series of podcasts from Yale Keon—episodes 146, 147, and 148—which can be found here. Episode 148 is especially enlightening as she addresses email filtering and opening with the impact of AI. I definitely recommend a listen—15 minutes well spent. 

I've rounded up a number of articles with helpful suggestions as we consider getting eyes and opens on our emails. These are great if you have time for a longer read.

• cmercury offers a number of actionable bullets in their post.
• Forbes offers a number of suggestions.
• knak has an extensive review of the matter. 

Get to the Point
Let's get to some actionable highlights of ways to maximize your email reach as it will remain the best way to connect with your customers. 

• Engagement is key: Elicit open, click, and reply. Consider buttons for easy reply to your email, polls—some reason to interact with a response to indicate you want these emails. 
• Focus on priority over creativity: Create a clear call to action, deadline date reference, and no vague language. These will trigger the AI layer to alert to your important message.
• More text/less images: Rethink placing your logo at the top—try to look more like a personal friend than a brand. While gifs are fun, adding a bunch starts looking a bit spammy with less real content. 
• Personalize your domain: Invest in a service to send as [email protected]. (rough example) Google Workspace offers a reasonable monthly payment service and adds features to your gmail experience. There are other vendors who provide a domain name service you can connect to your website and email tool. It took me years to bite the bullet on this expense but now find it well worth the (currently) $8/month investment that also enables a Gemini Pro tier, more Google Drive storage, and much more. 
• Clean your email list regularly of those not engaging in 90-180 days: The more emails unopened or without engagement, the more email servers will begin to treat you like spam. I personally differ on this one. While it may help your numbers and potential (potential!) delivery rate, there's also something to be said for showing up in someone's inbox to be there when the time is right to connect further. 

How Has Your Email Engagement Been?
Are you monitoring your "open" and "click" rates from your email distribution? These aren't gospel but they do offer a bit of insight into engagement with your messages.

Any tips or tricks to share that you've used that resonate with your email list? Love to hear what's working to share with others! Let's Chat or find me on LinkedIn or Substack!

AI Slop

There is a growing backlash against so much content or even full works being created by AI and shared. Some isn't hard to spot - pretty average sounding words, little emotion.

Others are harder, from just being hard to distinguish as Human vs AI to even stealing author's names and publishing books for sale! This is being seen in just about any profession, but we'll focus on authors today. 

Labels
Some are leaning into labeling themselves to note "Guaranteed Human" or some percentage of what is human vs AI work. Others are date and time stamping posts on socials to confirm humanity, in case material may get swiped by AI or people. You may also be in a rapidly evolving field where your date/time reference helps put perspective on the post you made. 

​Stolen Property
Some authors are going through the time and expense of trademarking their name. This is a fascinating story with step-by-step cues on the process. 

Dave Malone shares an article on Jane Friedman's blog suggesting categories of AI usage to post - AI Assisted vs AI Generated. Many use AI these days - most have no problem accepting that. The thing that's useful to know is how much is AI vs Human.

Jane Friedman shared her fight in August 2023 against books posted on Goodreads and Amazon with her name as the author that she never wrote, stealing her name and reputation. She regularly updates the post as this evolves.

Amazon has developed Content Guidelines in an attempt to curb the flow of AI content. Amazon announced in September 2023 a new limit of 3 per day self-published books by the same author in an attempt to control a flood of AI content. That does not appear to have been updated or changed. 

Lean into Human Value
You are uniquely you in all your amazingness, flaws, quirks, life experiences, stories, and lousy first drafts. Your human factor is what sells. Be Human in as many ways as you can.

• Events: Show up. Network. Be a speaker and authority. You are fully human here.
• Share the process: In newsletters and on social media, share behind the scenes tales of your process which will help bring your book to life with your audience and develop your following. 
• Website and email: These are your owned property. Develop a regular, consider weekly, habit of blogging. This will give you material to populate your email news to those who subscribe or follow you or have requested your information. 
• Social media: Each platform has a different approach and vibe. Focus your energy on 2-3 at most as your go-to social spot. This is a great way to share more frequent insights or communication with followers, daily to 3x/week. These posts can be pure text, text + image (photo), or short video. It would not surprise me if we begin seeing tags at the end of posts noting "100% Human Created Content" or something similar. 

Human Branding Sells
Use AI. It's a useful tool. But be aware of how much of your work is you vs the tool. At the end of the day, it makes a difference the level of Human in your work. If you have a pro AI account, you are able to toggle an option not to make your chat public which may be extremely useful to protect your content.

This isn't intended to be an all or nothing perspective. The best option is often a blend of human and AI. It's a tool we can use to improve our words and how we share experiences. This May 2025 article encourages a blend. Even Google suggests a blend of AI and human content is successful. The article also suggests human content outperforms AI by 47%. I definitely appreciate that.

Human Branding
How much are you creating as human generated content? Are you feeling a need to label it as such?

Love to hear your thoughts - Let's Chat or find me on LinkedIn!