Technology Won't Fix Your CHAOS: Why This One HABIT Matters More

When the pandemic hit America in 2020, a law firm in the Atlanta area contacted me through my website. Their site was quite outdated, but they found me because it was built on a platform I specialize in called Joomla. As we talked, they explained that with everything going virtual, it was time to "take advantage of this internet marketing thing." In 2020, they were finally getting serious about their website and content marketing.

A Pandemic-Driven Shift

This situation reminded me of the law of diffusion of innovation, which identifies five stages of technology adoption: Innovators, Early Adopters, the Early Majority, the Late Majority, and Laggards.

The critical leap for scaling a business, often called "crossing the chasm," is moving from the early adopters to the early majority.

The pandemic had an interesting effect: it pushed many laggards forward, and this inquriring law firm was one of them.

The Power of an Existing Habit

Ironically, as far behind as this firm was technologically, they were doing one vital thing right: they were creating content consistently. For decades, they had written and created a monthly newsletter. The problem was their distribution method: they were printing it and physically mailing it to a list of thousands of people.

My role was to help them publish these newsletters on their website and distribute them through an email platform. The key insight here is that the habit of content creation is more important than the technology used to distribute it. They had the difficult part down. It's much easier to add technology to a client who already has a content habit than it is to instill that habit in a client who only has the technology.

I often struggle to get clients to create content, even though it is the lifeblood of any business wanting to grow its online influence and income. A client can have all the technology in the world, but if they aren't creating content, there are limits to what I can do. My job is to amplify the content they are already creating. Building and maintaining that habit comes down to having the right mindset and a commitment to creating content as a necessity for business growth.

Structure Before Scale: The Role of AI

This brings me to a key insight from Lex Sisney, the founder of Organizational Physics, regarding AI. He says, "AI won't fix chaos. It reveals it. Your structure, not your stack, decides whether agents scale execution or get thrown out."

When he talks about agents, he’s referring to AI agents that can perform tasks for you across applications. His point is that AI is an amplifier. If your processes are chaotic, AI will only create more chaos. If you have order and structure, AI will help you scale and grow beyond what you could accomplish on your own.

You must have a foundation of structure, order, and clarity for AI to tap into.

Without that foundation, AI will only reveal the problems that prevent you from taking advantage of it.

The Foundational Takeaway

The key takeaway is to first understand what you are trying to accomplish and identify the foundational habits required to succeed. Then, think about technology like AI as a tool to amplify those efforts. If you try to use technology to amplify your work and end up with a mess, it's likely an indication that your foundation is weak. It’s an opportunity to revisit and clarify your core processes.

For anyone who creates content to amplify influence and grow income, the habit of creating is the key. Whether it's writing daily, creating weekly podcasts, or doing bi-weekly webinars, the process is to choose your medium, commit to it, and execute consistently. That consistent output becomes the raw material you can then repurpose, publish, and distribute.

When you have that foundation in place, technology will help you do it more effectively and at a much larger scale.