YATM ✊ | The Business Advantage Nobody Talks About

Hi YATMers, I'm Matt Wilkinson and I've spent the last few years working out why good marketing keeps drifting away from the buyer it was meant to reach.

These days I help strategic marketing leaders keep their buyer in the room when the big decisions get made, using synthetic customers built from real voice of customer evidence rather than guesswork.

I co-host two podcasts, AI in the UK and A Splice of Life Science Marketing, and I've just brought out my first book, which helps commercial teams understand why their messaging stops sounding like the customer and starts sounding like themselves.

I’ve recently been listening to Welsh singer-songwriter/rapper Ren, and I just love his eclectic way of telling (often difficult) stories through song.

Let's make sure we connect today.

Here I am on LinkedIn

Where I work here

P.S My new book is called The Buyer in the Loop. It's for commercial teams who've built good messaging but can't work out why it's stopped landing.

The ebook is on special offer and costs less than a Costa-lotta Coffee 😊

Community can be designed, but friendship can’t.

Last Thursday, we finished the YATM year with our YATM Summer Party, it was a silent disco.

If you’d told me a few years ago that one of the highlights of a business community would be people dancing around with headphones on while friends were in charge of the channels, I’d probably have laughed.

On paper, it doesn’t make much sense. It isn’t networking and it certainly isn’t learning.

Yet I’m convinced it will become one of the moments people from YATM remember most this year. Not because of the music, but because of who they shared that moment with.

I was nervous beforehand. We’d never delivered a silent disco before and dancing feels very different to karaoke. Everyone was completely in the moment, knowing everyone else was too.

People were dancing indoors, and there were people outside on a summer’s evening, just enjoying what was happening in the groups they were with. It felt joyful because everyone knew they were part of something together.

As Seth Godin said recently, “If it’s worth our effort, it’s worth raising our standards.”

Here's your proof...

We Remember Moments More Than Content

I’ve spent years thinking about content. How to make it useful and how to show up consistently.

AI now makes creating content easier than ever, but that’s not a bad thing.

Content will always matter because it’s how people discover us. Increasingly, I’m finding newsletter subscribers through ChatGPT. When people understand your viewpoint and keep coming back, a relationship begins.

I’m starting to understand that something else matters even more. People remember the moments they shared more than the content they consumed.

Think about the business events you’ve attended over the years. You probably don’t remember every keynote, you might not even remember every speaker. I’ll bet you remember the conversations and people you spent time with.

Content starts relationships, shared experiences strengthen them.

Trust Gets People Through The Door

Trust is always big on the agenda when it comes to marketing. When you don’t have it, people won’t subscribe, join you, work with you or tell other people about you.

I now look at trust as the beginning of someone’s journey with you, it shouldn’t just be something we aim for anymore. What has deeper meaning today is what happens when someone has made that decision or small commitment. This is the moment when people stop feeling like strangers and relationships deepen.

Trust starts the relationship. Friendship transforms it.

For instance, a path could be someone who connects with you on LinkedIn, but rather than every interaction being there, they move over to subscribe to your newsletter and, when they start to feel familiar, commit to a live event.

Friendship Is Different

I’m not suggesting every customer or connection becomes a good friend, that would be unrealistic.

It’s something much simpler. The best businesses create the conditions where genuine friendships can emerge.

You can organise events, or create online spaces, or help facilitate conversations, but you can’t schedule friendship. This is what happens when someone forgets they have their work head on or thinks they have to show up with the business persona, always on.

Community can be designed, but friendship can’t.

You can’t automate it, manufacture it or force it. All you can do is create the conditions where it becomes more likely.

You give people a reason to spend time together where everything is centred on shared experiences. That’s why so much of YATM happens in person. Creator Day, Lunch Clubs and even a silent disco aren’t just events. They’re shared experiences where people arrive as themselves first and their business second.

Friendship isn’t something a business owns. It’s something people build with one another.

The Businesses We Return To Feel Different

We often say people buy from people. I’d like to add that we don’t buy friendship, but we often buy from people we’ve become friends with.

I see this happening inside YATM.

Matt King recently stepped into the role of Managing Director at Euroflo. Over the past few months, he’s brought people from the YATM community into projects covering digital, IT and communications.

It wasn’t because they happened to be in the same community, it was because they’d already spent time together.

Familiarity became trust, and trust became the confidence to work together.

The Competitive Advantage That’s Hard To Copy

Most businesses optimise for transactions, but better businesses optimise for relationships.

The best businesses help relationships happen between other people and that’s much harder to copy.

What people can’t easily replicate is years of shared experiences between hundreds of people. Products can be copied, pricing can be matched, and even content can be imitated. Years of shared experiences between hundreds of people cannot.

That’s why businesses that bring people together have an advantage that becomes stronger over time. It means we can all feel a part of progress. People decide to step into the space because it feels right with them and over time, as connections build, it becomes easier to reach out and for people to work together.

Friendship is a business advantage. Friends support, recommend, introduce, stay and help create momentum together.

Let’s Round Up

I am looking at a future where the question that is front and centre is, “What kind of experience would help two people leave knowing each other better than when they arrived?”

That’s what people remember, and that’s what they’ll come back for.

Your format and content might introduce them, but the memories they create together are what make a place matter.

The businesses and communities that will win will be those that won’t simply create content. They’ll create moments people remember together.

Friendship isn’t the by-product of a great business. Increasingly, it’s the advantage.

Share this with someone else 💌

youarethemedia.co.uk/friendship-business-advantage/

Time Wasting

Write an anonymous letter into the void, then a stranger drifts it back to you.

Letter To Nobody

This Week Around The Web

GROWTH, CREATION & YOUR INDEPENDENCE

AI changed everything (but this) - from Matt Ziegler

👉 What's freed up now is the story and the taste to know when something's off.

If it’s worth our effort, it’s worth raising our standards - from Seth Godin

👉 We don't have to accept Ai dancing people as the norm, we do it better.

THE COMMUNITY YOU CAN BUILD

AI videos are flooding sites - from Wall St Journal

👉 When content becomes cheaper, trust becomes more expensive.

Want to build audience through live events? - from Nieman Lab

👉 Set yourself up now for what’s important in the future.

GROWING YOUR NEWSLETTER

Beehiiv expands beyond newsletters into community - from GlobeNewswire

👉 another signal the market is moving from publishing towards participation.

Google's guide to keeping Gmail happy - from Spam Resource

👉 Google published a practical new help article: Top 10 Gmail sender issues.

People coming back to you...

A topic might explain what you know, but the problem explains why people come back.

If you keep coming back to it, you make a promise to the people around you and over time, the whole idea starts to make more sense to others.

An audience is not a group of people who consume your content, it is a group of people who recognise themselves in the problem you keep helping them solve.

10 places available for Creator Day '27 ...

10 places are now available for Creator Day '27 for £165.

When they're gone, it becomes £210 in September.

The date will be Thursday 6th May 2027. This is your work, mid year break, to go to the seaside and put it on expenses.

Creator Day '27 is here

See you on 27th August...

The YATM Summer Party was fantastic, we'll close every July with a Silent Disco from now on.

Every summer, I take three weeks off from the newsletter. Everything you see and read here, is crafted by me and it's always been that way. I'll be back here on Thursday 27th August.

Thank you for letting the YATM newsletter arrive in your inbox every Thursday, I love doing this and appreciate you being here. Have a wonderful summer ⛱️.