Contesting the Arena: Power, Labor, and the Illusion of Competition
It’s damn hard to compete with tech businesses. Let’s state the truth up front—any founder or director who believes they’re going toe-to-toe with entities like OpenAI. The resources, the data, the capital, the teams—they’re playing a very different game. Most of us build with what’s in our pockets and heads. So, who wins? Gary Vee has been circling this question, and while I don’t agree with everything he drops, a good chunk of his perspective lands tight on the nail.
Big players leverage scale and systems in a way most smaller organizations, collectives, or individual artists never will. Once OpenAI or Google adopts a technology, the definition of intellectual labor changes, the meaning of “property” shifts, and the workflows in creative sectors—the supposed “safe” zones away from automation—get upended overnight. There is almost a fatalism to it: do you keep fighting in a game where the rules change mid-play? Yet that’s the old paradigm talking: power accumulates upward, risk gets distributed downward, everyone dutifully performs under the idea that a sufficiently unique logo separates you from annihilation.
Brand Out—Personal In: Survival Isn’t a Hashtag
Gary Vee insists on building a personal brand, but the term itself is misleading. No one buys because you chose cyan blue for your banners. At its core, a brand is a structure—a system of values, vision, mission, added value, delivery, presence. It’s not trivial: it’s the philosophy that underpins every decision when institutions, labor, and revenue are up for renegotiation.
For directors and artists alike, this means literal forward thinking: Which philosophy sits at the heart of your work? What solution-based thinking do you bring to increasingly mechanized environments? That’s a better brand than any clever trademark. It’s not about signaling uniqueness, but about clarity—seeing exactly what you bring to the table as a creative leader, and knowing how to interpret, monetize, and communicate that without apology or need for permission.
Labor Redefined: From Factory Mindset to Creative Autonomy
Anyone waiting for validation from dominant systems will soon meet disappointment. The paradigm shift is real: across sectors, executives and founders repeat the script of ‘AI-first’ environments. Tackle the truth—whenever you hear “AI is improving our process,” it’s code for labor being absorbed, restructured, or made obsolete. What we previously called “training” in a corporate sense? Today, it is resource transfer (your know-how, your style, your problem-solving) from humans into automated agents.
So decide: do you play victim under the bulldozer, repeating the familiar chorus that “nobody cares” about your history, your previous contributions, or your job security? Or do you pivot? The aim for businesses is unchanged—profit sits at the core. Creative founders and directors must ask: how does my solution-based practice generate profit—for me, my communities, my mission—when the rules flex without notice?
Tool: The Inventory of Offerings
Practicality matters. Here’s something to adapt—an inventory exercise that applies regardless of scale:
- Philosophy Audit: Write down, in plain language, the philosophy governing your organization or practice. Cut the jargon.
- Value Translation: Take each element—vision, mission, style, process—and translate it into direct value for your audience. How does it solve real needs, or transform experiences?
- Monetization Pathway: Map out at least two routes through which this translated value could drive profit, not only through art sales but workshops, collaborations, limited-use licenses, or unique digital experiences. Think infrastructure, not one-off wins.
This exercise shifts mindset from reactive (“Will AI steal my job?”) to generative (“Where does my value originate, and how shall I structure it for autonomy?”).
Mindset, Power, and Moving Past the Enemy Narrative
AI isn’t the enemy: the real adversary is a mindset hung up on loss and scarcity. Scarcity of platform, of attention, of meaningful income. It’s the paradigm that convinces artists and creative founders their survival rests on guarding tradition tight or railing against technology. This thinking dissipates creative autonomy and muddies decision-making.
In most sectors, this shift won’t arrive as a tidal wave—it’ll seep through interfaces, contracts, behaviors. The last ones in are those who refuse to question whether their systems reflect their values or just inherited templates.
You don’t need OpenAI’s payroll or Altman’s reach to reset the balance. What matters now is honest recognition of where your personal—and institutional—value originates, and a willingness to shape systems around that understanding, not the other way around.
Question for Reflection
Whose values are truly embedded in the infrastructures you build: yours, or those of institutions whose incentives are out of step with your vision of creative labor?
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