About a year and a half ago I had a meeting with a vendor who pitched me an idea that, on paper, was going to make my agency a meaningful chunk of money for almost no work.
Over twenty-seven years we have collected a lot of data on small and mid-sized businesses. The companies we have served, the campaigns that worked, the patterns across industries. This vendor wanted to license access to a slice of it. Anonymized. Aggregated. All legal. The check would have been real.
I sat with it for a week. I talked to my leadership team. I prayed about it more than I expected to. In the end I said no.
The reason is harder to articulate than I expected when I tried to write it down. The deal was legal. It was lucrative. There was no specific principle being violated.
But every time I tried to picture the moment one of my long-time clients found out about it - even by accident, even years later - I could not picture them feeling good about it. They had given me their data in the context of working with me. Not in the context of becoming a line item in somebody else's marketing model. The fact that the contract permitted it did not change what it would have felt like to them.
I turned it down. I have not regretted it. The experience taught me a phrase that has organized a lot of my thinking. There is a difference between extraction and stewardship, and AI is going to make that difference visible in ways it never was before.
The era of extraction
For the last twenty years, the most successful companies in the world were optimized for extraction. Take attention, take data, take time, take engagement, monetize all of it, repeat. The platforms got rich. The users became the product. We mostly accepted this because the user had a free product to enjoy and could not see the cost.
That era is bending. Not because companies got more ethical. Because users got more aware. The cost is now visible. People are deleting accounts, abandoning platforms, and quietly downgrading their trust in any company that gives off the extraction smell.
Now lay AI on top of this. AI does not change the math. It just dramatically accelerates whatever direction you are already pointed.
If you are pointed at extraction, AI lets you extract more, faster, with less friction. Your customers are about to feel that more, sooner.
If you are pointed at stewardship, AI lets you steward better. You can take the work that used to be too expensive to do well - personal follow-ups, nuanced communications, careful long-term thinking - and you can do it at a scale that used to be impossible.
The choice has always been there. AI is just turning up the volume on whichever side you have already chosen.
action
1. Pick one decision in front of you where legal and stewardship answers might differ. 2. Sit with it for one full day before deciding. 3. Ask: would they be surprised if they found out next year. 4. Ask: is the value mutual, or does my gain depend on their loss. 5. Ask: would I be fine if this ran in tomorrow's local paper with no spin.
What is the one place in your business this week where extraction is tempting and stewardship is the harder, longer, better play?
