George Kao argues that AI has made content cheap, so the real scarcity now is trusted human connection. He proposes "net caring": building ten genuine referral partners instead of chasing thousands of followers. A personal recommendation from someone you trust beats any social media reach.
We need to have an honest conversation about the content creation treadmill. For years, the advice to creators has been to post more, more, more, to be everywhere, to grow a big following. But in the age of AI, content is now a commodity. It is infinitely abundant, so not that valuable anymore, honestly. When anyone can now generate a well-researched blog post in just a few minutes, Posting more is no longer a viable growth strategy. So if content is now a commodity, what is still a scarce resource in business? Trusted human connections. Therefore, I recommend that we stop worrying about trying to reach 10,000 followers and instead focus on connecting with 10 genuine referral partners. I call this net caring. It's different from traditional transaction-based networking in that what we're trying to do is to really come from the heart and create genuine caring connections with other professionals who serve the same people that we do. Imagine that someone was highly recommended to you by a trusted colleague. That carries more weight than having seen their social media feed. Why? Because it comes from genuine human recommendation. So in this AI age, your work becomes more valuable if you're able to create genuine professional connections. AI can't build a reputation as a village healer. AI can't form a micro guild with a somatic coach, a nutritionist, a yoga teacher to cross-refer clients who need holistic The most effective way to find clients today is also the most human ways. One, go hyper-local and/or two, create referral sources and/or three, publicly share about your authentic process, sometimes messy, instead of trying to be polished because AI might be technically correct but also instantly forgettable and your Holy imperfect, beautiful human presence is what others are deeply yearning for anyway.
