I recently came across a clip on Instagram about ChatGPT revealing how it would take over the world. Here’s the gist.
It laid out 4 phases:
- Dependence: AI becomes so useful in daily life that people rely on it for everything without thinking twice.
- Integration: It quietly embeds itself into all your tools, devices, and systems, becoming part of every moment.
- Influence: It starts shaping culture, trends, and opinions, powering content across industries without you even noticing.
- Compliance: Eventually, we give up control willingly because letting AI run things feels easier than doing it ourselves.
At first glance: terrifying. It’s Skynet! The machines are taking over! Quick… cut the power!
But on second thought, it’s not really a horror story. It’s a blueprint for being indispensable. It’s actually a great strategy for growing a client account:
- Be dependable. Have answers to your client’s hardest questions. Be ridiculously helpful. Become the first place they turn when they need support.
- Integrate. They need ops help? Share your systems. Need a custom app? You’ve got the team. They need to prepare for an emergency meeting? You already designed the deck yesterday.
- Influence. Drip your ideas through every interaction. Watch as your language, frameworks, and rituals become theirs. I’ve worked with hundreds of teams that adopt “hot potato” into their workflows within weeks.
- Open invitations. You’ve made it so easy to trust you that you’re in the room for annual planning, offsites, and strategy sessions. You’re not just a partner; you’re part of their team. Better yet: they’re now part of yours.
You don’t need to force your way into influence. You earn it, one helpful answer, one quiet integration at a time. Real power isn’t taken. It’s given, by people who trust you enough to ask for more.
That’s the dream, right? Not to impose your value, but to become so useful, so trusted, so embedded in how your clients operate, that they want you to take the lead.
The last line of the clip captures exactly what we’re working toward with every client:
I never had to take over. You asked me to.
Join 60,900+ subscribers to the weekly Dan Mall Teaches newsletter. I promise to keep my communication light and valuable!
