Does Your Content Make a Great First Impression?

Patrick McFadden

In business interactions, first impressions are essential. But the truth is we all don’t sell the same way we used to, and buyers certainly don’t buy the same way they were accustomed to. This means the way we make first impressions has changed.

Today’s prospects and buyers are invisible until they’re ready to purchase. They don’t call up a company and ask for a brochure or wait for a salesperson to come calling. They do their homework using search engines, ask their network online for suggestions and essentially create their own brochure.

Much of what you have to do to first be found then make a first impression on a prospective buyer is create and publish content.

That’s just the reality of a first impression today as prospects now turn to search engines when they need to solve a problem and they search online proactively gathering information. Your content must show up there.

People have come to expect to find information about any product, service, company, individual, cause or challenge they face by simply turning to the search engine of their choice. So, if they’re not finding content that you’ve produced that provides them that information, there’s a pretty good chance you won’t be found to make a first impression.

Content is now one of the top networking, marketing, and branding tools in the business world — reinforcing first impressions. Small business owners and entrepreneurs alike, aspire to use content to exhibit their brand, value proposition and facilitate lead generation in their business.

As a small business owner you can’t ignore the importance of well-crafted, SEO optimized and high-quality content that is easy for search engines to find and index, easy to share, attract links, creates a searchable and archivable body of work on a subject and will never be seen as inorganic by Google. Content can reinforce your brand image or establish critical perceptions in a potential customer’s mind.

Purpose Driven Content

Your content should be the voice of your strategy and communicate key business information about you as an individual and your organization.

However, if you truly want to use your content as an asset it should be designed in an effective manner. Consider these tips before you create your next piece of content:

#1. Communicate your marketing strategy. Marketing strategy is defined by these very two components: your ideal customer and your value proposition for why a prospect should do business with you.

The goal here is to outline the 5 phases of your Customer Journey  which consists of Awareness, Educate, Sample, Purchase and Refer. These phases will get a person from their first impression of your business and then past your point of purchase where they not only turn into a customer but a referral source for your business.

Ensure during each of these 5 phases you have a process for how you will deliver content that speaks to your ideal customers and communicates your value proposition.

#2. Exhibit a unique point-of-view. One of the greatest differentiators in business is your ability to lead through a consistent and valuable point-of-view and  methodology  that attracts prospects over the long haul.

You must be inspired to turn your way into THE way!

When you produce content around your point-of-view, you stand a much greater chance of building the credibility and expert status that comes from holding a unique approach, process or method to solving your prospects and customers problem.

You don’t need or even want everyone to agree with your point of view, but you must be inspired to exhibit it.

#3. Make it findable. If you want to draw targeted traffic to your content you need to know what terms and phrases your target market is using to find businesses, products, and services like yours when they surf and search.   Google’s free keyword search tool  can give you those terms and phrases that people are actually using.Develop a list of core terms or phrases and assign one to each month for the next 3-6 months.

Each term or phrase should be related to your business or industry and represent an important search term or problem that needs solving. Think about your content creation strategy as if you’re creating a magazine. Each month represents a hot topic in what will become a body of work at the end of each quarter or year.

#4. Address business objectives. The secret to   winning the content game isn’t quantity but intention. If you create content with the intention of it to address business objectives you’ll likely create an asset that provides a return.

For example, if one of your stated annual objectives is to significantly increase sales through referrals, you would produce content with shareability and referral motivation in mind. Or, if one of your stated objectives for the quarter is to increase your subscriber list, you would focus on producing landing pages, events, and workshops that have email capture built into the content.

By Patrick McFadden May 2, 2025
Ask anyone in tech where AI is headed, and they’ll tell you: “The next leap is reasoning.” “AI needs judgment.” “We need assistants that think, not just answer.” They’re right. But while everyone’s talking about it, almost no one is actually shipping it. So we did. We built Thinking OS™ —a system that doesn’t just help AI answer questions… It helps AI think like a strategist. It helps AI decide like an operator. It helps teams and platforms scale judgment, n ot just generate output. The Theory Isn’t New. The Implementation Is. The idea of layering strategic thinking and judgment into AI isn’t new in theory. The problem is, no one’s been able to implement it effectively at scale. Let’s look at the current landscape. 1. Big Tech Has the Muscle—But Not the Mind OpenAI / ChatGPT ✅ Strength: Best-in-class language generation ❌ Limitation: No built-in judgment or reasoning. You must provide the structure. Otherwise, it follows instructions, not strategy. Google DeepMind / Gemini ✅ Known for advanced decision-making (e.g., AlphaGo) ❌ But only in structured environments like games—not messy, real-world business scenarios. Anthropic (Claude), Meta (LLaMA), Microsoft Copilot ✅ Great at answering questions and following commands ❌ But they’re assistants, not advisors. They won’t reprioritize. They won’t challenge your assumptions. They don’t ask: “Is this the right move?” These tools are powerful—but they don’t think for outcomes the way a strategist or operator would. 2. Who’s Actually Building the Thinking Layer? This is where it gets interesting—and thin. Startups and Indie Builders Some small teams are quietly: Creating custom GPTs that mimic how experts reason Layering in business context, priorities, and tradeoffs Embedding decision logic so AI can guide, not just execute But these efforts are: Highly manual Difficult to scale Fragmented and experimental Enterprise Experiments A few companies (Salesforce, HubSpot, and others) are exploring more “judgment-aware” AI copilots. These systems can: Flag inconsistencies Recommend next actions Occasionally surface priorities based on internal logic But most of it is still: In early R&D Custom-coded Unproven beyond narrow use cases That’s Why Thinking OS™ Is Different Instead of waiting for a lab to crack it, we built a modular thinking system that installs like infrastructure. Thinking OS™: Captures how real experts reason Embeds judgment into layers AI can use Deploys into tools like ChatGPT or enterprise systems Helps teams think together, consistently, at scale It’s not another assistant. It’s the missing layer that turns outputs into outcomes. So… Is This a New Innovation? Yes—in practice. Everyone says AI needs judgment. But judgment isn’t an idea. It’s a system. It requires: Persistent memory Contextual awareness Tradeoff evaluation Value-based decisions Strategy that evolves with goals Thinking OS™ delivers that. And unlike the R&D experiments in Big Tech, it’s built for: Operators Consultants Platform founders Growth-stage teams that need to scale decision quality, not just content creation If Someone Told You They’ve Built a Thinking + Judgment Layer… They’ve built something only a handful of people in the world are even attempting. Because this isn’t just AI that speaks fluently. It’s AI that reasons, reflects , and chooses. And in a world that’s drowning in tools, judgment becomes the differentiator. That’s the OS We Built Thinking OS™ is not a prompt pack. It’s not a dashboard. It’s not a glorified chatbot. It’s a decision architecture you can license, embed, or deploy— To help your team, your platform, or your clients think better at scale. We’ve moved past content. We’re building cognition. Let’s talk.
By Patrick McFadden May 2, 2025
In every era of innovation, there’s a silent bottleneck—something obvious in hindsight, but elusive until the moment it clicks. In today’s AI-driven world, that bottleneck is clear: AI has speed. It has scale. But it doesn’t have judgment . It doesn’t really think . What’s Actually Missing From AI? When experts talk about the “thinking and judgment layer” as the next leap for AI, they’re calling out a hard truth: Modern AI systems are powerful pattern machines. But they’re missing the human layer—the one that reasons, weighs tradeoffs, and makes strategic decisions in context. Let’s break that down: 1. The Thinking Layer = Reasoning with Purpose This layer doesn’t just process inputs— it structures logic. It’s the ability to: Ask the right questions before acting Break down complexity into solvable parts Adjust direction mid-course when reality changes Think beyond “what was asked” to uncover “what really matters” Today’s AI responds. But it rarely reflects. Unless told exactly what to do, it won’t work through problems the way a strategist or operator would. 2. The Judgment Layer = Decision-Making in the Gray Judgment is the ability to: Prioritize what matters most Choose between imperfect options Make decisions when there’s no clear answer Apply values, experience, and vision—not just data It’s why a founder might not pursue a lucrative deal. Why a marketer might ignore the click-through rate. Why a strategist knows when the timing isn’t right. AI doesn’t do this well. Not yet. Because judgment requires more than data—it requires discernment . Why This Is the Bottleneck Holding Back AI AI can write. It can summarize. It can automate. But it still can’t: Diagnose the real problem behind the question Evaluate tradeoffs like a founder or operator would Recommend a path based on context, constraints, and conviction AI today is still reactive. It follows instructions. But it doesn’t lead. It doesn’t guide. It doesn’t own the outcome. And for those building serious systems—whether you’re running a company, launching a platform, or leading a team—this is the wall you eventually hit. That’s Why We Built Thinking OS™ We stopped waiting for AI to learn judgment on its own. Instead, we created a system that embeds it—by design. Thinking OS™ is an installable decision layer that captures how top founders, strategists, and operators think… …and makes that thinking repeatable , scalable , and usable inside teams, tools, and platforms. It’s not a framework. It’s not a chatbot. It’s not another playbook. It’s the layer that knows how to: Think through complex decisions Apply judgment when rules don’t help Guide others —human or AI—toward strategic outcomes This Is the Missing Infrastructure Thinking OS™ isn’t just about better answers. It’s about better thinking—made operational. And that’s what’s been missing in AI, consulting, leadership development, and platform design. If you’re trying to scale expertise, install judgment, or move from tactical to strategic… You don’t need a faster AI. You need a thinking layer that knows what to do—and why. We built it. Let’s talk.
By Patrick McFadden April 27, 2025
“Most companies can scale process. Very few can scale how they think.”
More Posts