‘We’re navigating a new world of work.’
This is a phrase that we’ve become accustomed to hearing since the pandemic, but this time it feels…different. When you step out from behind the rosy curtains on LinkedIn, the sentiment I hear the most across our industry is that work feels uncertain and urgent.
But despite this, it feels exciting.
AI has opened up the marketplace to a flurry of new founders with amazing ideas but were previously held back because they didn’t have the technical knowledge to bring their idea to life. The barrier that kept them on the sidelines is gone.
This means AI also just created a flurry of new potential clients, and most of them have never worked with a comms person.
The 80% starting line
Every startup founder with a following is doing comms right now. They just don't know that's what it's called.
The reality is that with the existing AI tools available, most can get 80% of the way to the finish line with creating their own comms programs. Don’t roll your eyes at me, you know it’s true! The problem is that 80% without comms judgment produces ChatGPT blog posts that disconnect them from their audiences, crisis statements that read like a robot wrote a ransom note, and pitch emails that are burying our journalist friends alive in AI slop.
The messes are coming, and it will be all our fault, not theirs, when we have to clean them up. These founders aren’t trying to cut corners. They're moving fast and trying to catch a moment before it passes, and we're not showing up in a way that makes working with us an obvious choice. Proposals take too long. Retainers are too expensive.
The sheer effort of finding the right comms person often stops a client from hiring one at all. We have an opportunity to open ourselves up to this new market of founders if we can speak their language and adapt to their needs.
The 20% finish line
What if the most valuable thing you can offer a founder is 30 minutes at the right moment?
These 30 minutes are a part of what I call ‘the last 20%.’ The last 20% is where the magic happens. It’s where the strategy lives, where we make the biggest impact, and can charge a premium for our knowledge to help these founders get over the line. It’s the narrative review before they walk into a room full of investors, the statement review before a bad response makes a bad situation worse, and the media prep call before their first big press interview.
The last 20% is where comms expertise has always been most valuable, we've just been packaging it wrong. We've been selling months when founders need minutes. We've been writing proposals while the moment passes.
The future of this work isn't fewer clients with bigger contracts. It's more founders, faster engagements, and a premium on judgment.
AI has expanded who needs comms help, and speed and adaptability will determine who gets it. Working in short engagements is the only model that serves this new market.
Our new work requires a new system. So we built one.
At Comms People, we’re solving for the last 20%.
Currently there’s 29.8 million solopreneurs, 33.2 million small businesses, and almost none of them have ever had to search for comms support. Strangely, there’s no real place to do this outside of LinkedIn. There's a Zocdoc for doctors and Thumbtack for contractors, but no open marketplace for finding communications expertise.
Our system is designed for when a client needs help right now, you are findable, bookable, and can get paid easily. It’s a marketplace, business builder, sales tool, and community.
Here’s how it works:
The Marketplace: We built an open marketplace for clients to find you based on your expertise. It helps clients find you based on moments they have, and not with general comms jargon.
Your profile: Your profile lives in the marketplace and helps you speak your audience’s language by describing the problems you solve in the words your clients actually use. It's discoverable by search engines and AI recommendation tools. Treat it like your first call deck and share the link anywhere: your LinkedIn bio, a cold outreach email, a conference follow-up. Here’s mine in case you’re curious.
Judgment Calls: This is the unlock, and is a new layer to reach clients that no one else is offering. Set your rates for 30-minute and 60-minute calls. Clients find you in the marketplace and book directly from your profile, pay upfront, and you approve before anything hits your calendar. Google Meet is created automatically. Stripe handles the payments. No more free "chemistry calls" that give away your IP.
Community: A private Circle community where we share wins, ask questions, find collaborators. Your network grows with every member who joins. Powered by the people doing the work, not watching from the sidelines.
And underneath all of it is a customized ecosystem that evolves as you do.
Positioning support to build your strategy
Custom Prompts pre-loaded with your voice and ICP ready to drop into any AI tool
Testimonial Requests that collect social proof to help validate your judgement and value
And we have new member pricing: $44 / month or $400 / year (save 20%)
The founders are already out there building and looking for help they don't know how to find and the comms people who figure out how to reach them quickly, clearly, and on their terms will define what this industry looks like on the other side of it.
If AI is rewriting the way businesses operate, then AI is also rewriting the rules of value for every industry. This is our opportunity to set the bar for what our future value looks like and start preparing for what our future of work looks like if we have to go it alone, together.
