Become the Center of Gravity

Fresh from a doctor’s appointment and back on the mic, Matt reinforces the throughline he keeps landing on: building a business in 2026 is about community and events. His evidence is a Verge interview with Ben Smith, editor-in-chief of the news outlet Semafor, which has turned profitable in just a few years by doing what Smith calls an “anti-scale” business. Instead of the old maximum-traffic playbook, Semafor makes roughly half its revenue from convening — real-life events — and deliberately targets a specific, valuable audience of decision-makers rather than the largest possible crowd. The thesis Matt takes from it: it’s not about a million followers, it’s about a thousand people who matter to your business, understand why you matter, and are genuinely dedicated to you.

From there Matt makes it personal and practical, drawing on more than thirty years in business development across everything from cold-calling to closing multi-million-dollar deals. Unless you’re selling a low-dollar commodity where price wins, you’re better off building a smaller, concentrated community and giving them things to do, places to go, people to meet. The goal is to become the center of gravity — the nucleus everyone interested in your topic orbits, the person they go to for information or an introduction, the one who’s there through thick and thin and refers people without being asked. That’s why “personal brand” feels too shallow to Matt; it’s not a brand you’re building, it’s a gravitational pull. And here’s the reframe that reorders everything: the content itself isn’t the pull. The environment is. The same post you’d have made six months ago performs better once there’s a gravitational field of real people around you talking about your work and sharing it. His prompt for the week: what’s the number one kind of value you can bring to your people with no sales motive, just service — because in that seed is a whole garden.