Archive

What’s the value of a marketing agency in the age of AI?

New AI tools push marketing production costs toward $0. As a result, the value for marketing teams—or really most knowledge workers—shifts from production toward coordination, judgment or strategy, and trust or relationships. Even further still, I’d argue it’s always been and will ever be about telling

A theory of knowledge

Over the last three years, we’ve experienced a grand experiment in the use of AI—what it can do, what it can’t do. Everyone has a theory, but I’m convinced that the Great AI Apocalypse, which is supposed to cause mass unemployment, will never happen. Perhaps swathes

The need to write

After a spiritual experience in college that led me to change majors from business to creative writing, I entered my first writing class. The professor asked about everyone’s favorite books and authors. Chuck Palahniuk, someone said. Slaughterhouse Five, another said. I had never heard of these. All I could

Non-violent language

Over the past year my business partner Parker has gently corrected me when using phrases like “You killed it!” “You nailed it!” “We’re crushing it!” These corrections have helped me develop a new imagination. Even to “execute” a task sounds wrong to me now. You know how ubiquitous these

The entrepreneur’s equation

I wrote the following for our company newsletter and thought it belonged here too. Sign up at snapmarket.co. Every entrepreneur faces the same fundamental challenge: how to grow sustainably while maintaining quality and meaning. Last week, while Jarrod and I worked through our “coordination problem,” I realized this tension

Vision, virtue, and vocation via the Placial-Modal Frame

Our generation confronts what appears to be an epochal shift in the world order. That may sound grandiose, but consider the convergent mega-trends facing us over the next several decades: energy and water crises, challenges to constitutional democracy, climate change, potential stagflation, AGI and superintelligence, digital currencies, mass inequality, mass

Why I left Substack

For clarity and simplicity to respond to the times

The order of the dollar

God created the world with a certain order: day and night, seasons, birth and death. I'm learning that money and morals also have an order to them.

Placemaking the balance sheet

A well-ordered capital structure can create a sense of refuge and opportunity. Building what JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon calls a "fortress balance sheet" allows you to pass through the valley of the shad

Should Christians use LBOs?

Perhaps LBOs are moral decisions. In other words, the assumptions embedded within financial transactions are made with an implicit or explicit moral framework or worldview.

The entrepreneur's prayer

After eighteen months of running my own business, I've learned that the challenges you face while doing so aren't business problems.

God, money, and the soul

What I’m learning about all three

Introducing Snapmarket 🎉

On Tuesday, I launched my new company called Snapmarket, a hyper-efficient marketing subscription to support and scale your business. Pause or cancel anytime. No contracts, no meetings, no hassle. Just great work. We already have one client and solid conversations lined up today and next week. I’m excited about

What to do in an up-and-down economy

Last week, one investor wrote on LinkedIn that Fed chair Jerome Powell could be hailed as the “most successful and important central bank governor this country has ever had.”  High praise. Why? If the U.S. economy can attain what pundits are calling a “soft landing,” which is when inflation

Is everyone indebted to China?

“Japan, Japan, Japan,” JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon once said in an interview. When he was coming up through Harvard Business School in the early 1980s, it seemed to be what everyone was talking about. Now, it seems, everyone is talking about China. Why? The last few decades have witnessed an

Why efficiency is everything

At the top of an income statement sits revenue. That income filters through expenses to leave net income, or profit, on the other side. What happens in between is where efficiency plays a crucial role. If a firm can create more net income by lowering its cost of goods sold,

To raise the (debt) roof

Lawmakers in the United States are debating options for the country’s national debt, or more specifically, the debt ceiling. It goes like this. Imagine you’re in high school and you’re already committed to going to the spring dance. Unfortunately, it costs $50 to go, the money helping

One Person’s Spending Is Another’s Income

Last week, the Department of Labor released its latest data on unemployment insurance claims. The weekly claims increased by 7,000, which is good news for the Fed: It means their policies are working. However, at around 198,000, jobless claims are still near below the pre-pandemic 2019 average of

AI and the four-day work week

Commentary on AI and the four-day work week often underestimates the point made in the famous poem by William Carlos Williams called “The Red Wheelbarrow.” so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens In the latest example I read from an analyst

Silicon Valley Bank: Is it our crisis or isn’t it?

During a press conference Wednesday, Fed leaders agreed to raise interest rates again. This has been happening for months now, so that’s not news. But what is news is that they implied they may soon stop raising rates. Why? Because high interest rates are destabilizing the financial system and