The More Human Manifesto

Here's the short version: You can't beat big companies at their own game; scaling, spending, standardizing. So don't play it. Instead, be more human and use their technology to amplify your differences.

Being more human is not a shortcut or a trick. It's not nostalgia or anti-tech propaganda. It's a practical, competitive strategy that will take consistent effort over years. But it's your chance to thrive in a world of corporate sameness.

We'll get into more detail on those soon, but first, let's talk about you.

You're only human

Two hands, two eyes, probably. A couple of ears. Some days, barely even a whole brain. What does all that add up to against a company on their third investment round, or a national chain? They could crush you by accident without ever knowing you were there.

You might feel tempted to appear bigger than you are. Write about your "global team" (AKA your brother-in-law who makes websites) or become a LinkedIn thought-leader posting generative AI slop. Do all the things your competitors do, because you want to look like them.

It's all just the business version of puffer fish inflating themselves to look scarier to predators. Bigger animals are harder to eat; bigger companies are harder to defeat. They can splash out on advertising campaigns and hire bigger teams. They can afford to sell at a loss while they buy up the market. Their scale can bring cheaper prices and enable global support. It can provide a wider choice of products and allow for integrated services.

It's all just the business version of puffer fish inflating themselves to look scarier to predators.

You, a small business, or a sole contractor, or an independent creative…you cannot be more corporate than your competition. You can't out-spend them, you can't out-hire them, you can't win if you play on their field, under their rules. You probably don't even want to, not really, or you'd be reading about 4am workouts and bulletproof coffee instead of this.

So just give up, it's not going to happen. Especially right now, when every business is using the same set of AI tools to run down the same playbooks, automate the same processes, and churn out the same content.

But there is another way.

Be More Human

Be more human, not less. Make not being a huge business your strength, not your weakness. Big businesses mostly started out as smaller businesses run by people with interesting ideas and opinions, who really understood what their customers wanted. But scale strips a lot of that away. It demands repeatable policies and procedures, layers of leaders and lawyers. Scale is the source of big-business power, but also their greatest constraint.

You are not a machine, or a corporation. You don't have to make decisions that 200 people will accept. You don't need to worry about a process that will break if it happens 1,000 times a year. You can make decisions on a human scale, for individual customers. You can make judgements instead of blanket rules.

You can be the kind of business, and the kind of person, that other people actually prefer to deal with, and you can succeed in a way that is not available to huge businesses.

That's what More Human is about; holding on to your unique, authentic humanity and amplifying it using all the tools and technology available. It's not a new approach, it's a very old one adapted to a new moment. What does that mean in practice? Here are some practical principles:

5 Principles For Being More Human

1. People don't scale; that's your advantage

The flexible, personal, individual relationships that small teams get for free don't survive scale. It gives way to market testing, formalisation, processes. Not by choice, but because it must.

2. Corporate cosplay is counterproductive

Avoid adopting "best practices", process automations, or business jargon until you have to. Taking them on before it's necessary throws away your human advantages.

3. You can get bigger, they can't get smaller

Compete in the ways large companies cannot replicate. Genuine relationships over automated personalisation. Flexibility over bureaucracy. Quick, custom decisions.

4. Technology can amplify your uniqueness

Apply AI and other technologies to heighten the ways you are different, instead of automating them away. Don't avoid technology, leverage it.

5. People like dealing with people they like

Given the option, plenty of customers will prefer to deal with a real, helpful human they can understand.

How to be more human

Principles and puffer fish are all very well, but you can't pay your mortgage with them. If you're ready to be more human, here are some next steps:

• This is a real post
• Some other post
• A podcast episode probably

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