Creating content is getting easier. Building trust still takes time.
Read time: 3 minutes
Lately, I’ve been thinking about what becomes more valuable as AI makes content easier to create.
When I started writing my book, I thought the hard part would be finishing it. I was wrong. Writing the book was difficult, but it was a finite project. One day, the manuscript was done, the files were uploaded, and the book went live.
What came afterward turned out to be much harder.
In the weeks after launch, I found myself checking rankings multiple times a day. I’d look at sales, reviews, category rankings, newsletter subscribers, and website traffic. Some days I would check in the morning, again during lunch, and once more before bed.
At first, I thought the challenge was visibility. But over time, I realized something else was happening.
Most people don’t buy a book simply because it exists. They buy it because someone they trust recommended it. A review is really a form of trust. A referral is a form of trust. A reader sharing an article with a friend is a form of trust.
The experience made me realize that creating something and earning trust in that something are two very different challenges.
Around the same time, AI tools became dramatically better. I use AI regularly and find it incredibly helpful for research, brainstorming, and refining ideas. In many ways, it has lowered the cost of creating content.
The more I use AI, the less I worry about content becoming scarce. What I’ve been thinking about instead is what remains difficult.
A few weeks ago, I came across a story about a coffee company. The founder realized that competing on coffee alone was difficult because coffee is a commodity. Someone else can almost always sell something similar. Instead of competing on coffee, they focused on creating something unique around it.
The product still mattered, but the brand mattered more.
The story stayed with me because I think many of us are facing a similar question. Not with coffee, but with knowledge. For most of my career, information had value because it was relatively scarce. If you wanted to learn something, you had to spend years studying, reading, and accumulating experience. Today, knowledge is becoming increasingly accessible.
As a finance professional, I find that fascinating. As a writer, I find it humbling. Because if information becomes easier to access, information itself becomes less of a differentiator.
Looking back, many of the opportunities that changed my life did not come from having information that nobody else had. My parents borrowed money so I could come to the United States for graduate school because they trusted me. Investors allocate capital because they trust the people managing it. Friends make introductions because they trust your character.
The older I get, the more I believe that trust is a form of capital.
Like financial capital, it compounds slowly. It can take years to build and minutes to destroy. Unlike information, it doesn’t seem to scale instantly.
Maybe that’s why I’ve started thinking differently about writing online.
When I first started the newsletter, I focused on producing useful content. I still do. But increasingly, I find myself thinking less about content and more about relationships.
A book can introduce someone to your ideas. A newsletter can keep the conversation going. But neither creates trust overnight.
AI may accelerate content creation, but it doesn’t accelerate the rate at which trust compounds.
At least so far, trust still seems to grow the old-fashioned way: one interaction, one conversation, and one relationship at a time.
The hardest part isn’t writing the book.
The hardest part is earning the trust that makes people want to read the next thing you write.
And perhaps that’s also why recommendations matter so much. Most of the books I read, podcasts I listen to, and newsletters I subscribe to came from someone I trust. If this essay reminded you of someone, feel free to forward it to them.
P.S. I’d be curious what you’ve noticed. As AI becomes more capable, what do you think becomes more valuable? Just hit reply and let me know.
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