⚡ Speed Comes With a Tab
Hey Reader,
This week I watched something predictable happen in real time, and I want to talk about it because it touches something I feel very strongly about as someone who has been in and around media and technology long enough to have seen this particular pattern repeat itself in at least three different eras.
China blocked Meta's $2 billion acquisition of Manus, an agentic AI platform that a lot of entrepreneurs (including some people I know personally) have been using to build apps, automate workflows, and essentially construct entire arms of their businesses on top of. The deal got unwound in a single government statement... and overnight, the infrastructure those businesses were running on became politically entangled, legally uncertain, and operationally unstable.
I have watched this exact situation play out before with different tools and different platforms and different hype cycles... and every single time, the people who get hurt the most are the ones who moved the fastest without thinking about what they were actually building on.
This is the part you need to sit with and stop looking away from:
➡️ Speed without ownership comes with a tab.
➡️ And speed without resources comes with a bill you cannot pay.
I want to be very clear that I am not anti-tool and I am not anti-speed. I use AI every day. I move quickly. Anyone who has worked with me knows I am not sitting around waiting for consensus before I act. But there is a significant difference between moving fast with intention and moving fast because someone charismatic told you to, especially when that someone has enough money and margin to rebuild from scratch if everything goes sideways, and most of the people in the room with them do not.
I have been in spaces recently where people with very big platforms and very impressive resumes have been teaching rooms full of entrepreneurs to go all in on specific tools, to build entire client delivery systems around them, to productize them and sell them as solutions. And the energy in those rooms is electric and exciting and it feels like momentum. I understand the appeal completely.
But advice that ignores resource inequality is not strategy. It is recklessness wearing a hype cycle costume. It is the core systems problem I coached around for years in the Sensible Woo mastermind.
"Move fast and build on this" is very different advice depending on whether you can afford to rebuild when it breaks. And something always breaks.
👋 A platform changes its terms. (Facebook)
👋 A government intervenes. (Manus)
👋 A company gets acquired and the product roadmap shifts. (TikTok)
👋 A tool that was free becomes expensive. (Zoom)
👋 A tool that was stable becomes unstable. (ChatGPT)
This is not pessimism, it is just the documented history of every technology wave that has come before this one.
The Manus situation is not unique... it is just today's version of a story we have seen play out with social media algorithms, with podcast hosting platforms, with SaaS tools that got acquired and sunset, I could go on. The pattern is always the same: people build leverage on infrastructure they do not control, and then one day the infrastructure reminds them who is actually in charge.
So here is your diagnostic question, and I want you to sit with it honestly rather than spiral into shame about it: if the tool you are most dependent on right now disappeared tomorrow, what would still exist?
Your thinking? Your frameworks? Your relationships with your audience? Your ability to recreate the system somewhere else? Or would you be starting over?
Because that answer tells you whether you are building a business or building a dependency.
I have been in media and technology long enough to have a very specific relationship with slowness. Most of the things you love were in development for up to a decade before you ever saw them. That is not an accident. That is what it actually takes.
And outside of work, I like really good food and good food takes time in the kitchen. I like fine art and fine art takes time to create. I like long-form podcasts and books and conversations that go somewhere unexpected, and those take time to unfold. I consume my world at 1x as much as possible because I want to truly be inside the experience, not just through it.
And I have found, both in my creative life and in my business life, that the things I have built most carefully are the things that have lasted. Not because slow is morally superior to fast, but because intentional is structurally superior to reactive.
I do not move slowly. Anyone around me knows that my daily output is not for the faint of heart. I do, however, move at the speed my nervous system and my bank account can sustain, which means I can keep going when things break instead of having to stop and rebuild everything from nothing.
That is the only version of this that compounds over time. No, it is NOT the sexy path. But the outcome is so, very hot and steamy. 💋
The creator economy selects for this compounding ability in the long run, and the people who built something portable have a massive market advantage over the people who adopted the most tools the fastest. It is something that lives in their thinking, their voice, their relationships, and their body of work. More importantly, that something does not require any single piece of infrastructure to remain stable in order to survive.
The tools will keep changing. The platforms will keep shifting. The geopolitical situation will keep being the geopolitical situation.
What you own is what you think, what you know, and how you communicate it. Build there first. Build there most.
Let the tools serve that, and not the other way around.
👉 Check out the Dojo, below...
🗞️ Gossip From the Creator Trenches
🚨 Portability Is Not Optional
If you needed a real-world demonstration of this week's main article, Substack just handed you one. The platform that positioned itself as the thoughtful, writer-first alternative to the attention economy has algorithmically boosted Andrew Tate, a man facing criminal charges including rape and human trafficking in multiple countries, to the top of its New Bestsellers list. And here is the extra layer of irony: his 1.1 million subscribers appear to have been artificially inflated with fake accounts, fake metrics, and borrowed infrastructure. Sound familiar? I have been skeptical about building on Substack for a while and this is exactly why. When a platform's financial incentives outweigh its stated values, the platform reveals itself. This is that moment. If you are on Substack, now is a very good time to make sure your list is portable and your delivery system lives somewhere you control.
🔗 Trigger warning... for real
🎙️ Overproduction Is Killing Your Podcast
The best lesson I learned in Hollywood was how much work goes into making something look effortless, whether that was hair and makeup or the photo and video product. Casual is a craft, not an accident. And yet most creators are either overproducing their content into something that looks like everyone else's bat cave setup, or under-investing in the one thing that actually matters, which is audio. Natural light, pristine sound, and a human being who is actually present on camera will outperform a heavily produced studio every time. Your earbuds are not the shortcut you think they are. Neither is the dark backdrop with the ring light. What your audience wants is you, clearly.
🔗 Let the human shine through
👑 You Are Not Chasing Fame. You Are Hiding From It.
Here is the pattern I see constantly and almost nobody talks about honestly... You say you just want to sell your course or your service, and meanwhile you are going quiet on social media, shrinking your presence, and calling it boundaries. For some of you it is guilt about being seen. For others, especially my female creators, it is over-giving, undercharging, and justifying the whole thing as generosity when what it actually is, is fear. Your competitors are showing up consistently while you are having an internal debate about whether you are allowed to take up space. That gap is costing you deals you will never even know you lost.
🔗 Long live the celebrity queens
🎤 Built or Borrowed?
If this week's newsletter hit a nerve, that diagnostic question is still sitting with you for a reason.
The Creator Economy Dojo is where we build the answer. Because if you keep getting outpaced by people with half your depth and twice your visibility… that's not bad luck. That's a systems problem, and it's fixable.
Inside the Dojo, we build the things that are genuinely yours and cannot be unwound by a government statement or a platform pivot: your message, your consistency, your ecosystem, and the body of work that compounds over time regardless of which tools are hot this quarter.
The infrastructure exists. The only thing left is doing the work. And that is exactly what we do in here.
Being visible without structure is just burnout in a cute outfit. And I'm not interested in helping you burn out faster.
I'm still offering a limited number of founding member spots at $197/month, but I do plan to close those by mid-summer.
👉 Join the Creator Economy Dojo
🌙 This Week in Woo
The Wheel has turned — and this week's reading wants to know if you are actually ready for what this cycle is bringing, or still set up for the last one. Pluto stations retrograde, the integration work gets real, and the Ethereal Tarot delivers a spread split right down the middle between what you are feeling and what you are ready to cut through. The Fool reversed is in your nervous system and it has something to say about the leap you already know is coming.
✨ Tap into this week's energy... ⤵️
Want the whole thing?
Join the Woo Crew for $7/month and get the full reading. Because the next chapter doesn’t need more from you… it needs a different version of you.
Let's Hang Out
Borrow My Brain is a 60-minute strategy session for when you’re stuck in the spiral and need a sharp, honest outside perspective. No bloated package. No weird detours. Just one focused hour to figure out what’s not landing and what to do next. If you’ve been circling, second-guessing, or avoiding hitting publish… this is for that.
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$197.00
Borrow My Brain: Talk Me Out of My Content Spiral, Mary
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Participate + Join In:
In case you missed The Awkward Handshake this week, we kicked off mental health awareness month by having our friend Micah Freeman come and share his wisdom. We have seen so many entrepreneurs struggle with relationships & social skills... and Micah has a free handout for you (check the show notes). But wait! There's more! I wanted to make sure you had access to his upcoming cohort:
Designed for people who are insightful and self-aware — and still repeating the same patterns. Understanding yourself was never the finish line.
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