In 2002, I was that guy.
Cold-calling brands. Calling executives. Getting transferred — and transferred again — and then politely dismissed. And I understood the dismissal. My pitch sounded insane. I was basically saying: "Hey… people are talking about your products on the internet — and that's going to matter."
They looked at me like I was trying to sell them a fax machine subscription. To be fair — I kind of was. Because there wasn't even language for what I was describing. No "community management." No playbook. No conferences. No category on a slide deck where you could tuck me in so you felt safe enough to write the check.
It was just a belief: that public conversations were going to become the marketplace. Not ads. Not slogans. Not polished brand guidelines. Conversations. Real ones. Happening in public. And the brands that showed up there — that understood what was being said and by whom — were going to have an advantage the rest couldn't catch up to quickly.
We Weren't Smarter. We Were Earlier.
Most brands didn't listen. But a few did. Coca-Cola did. Disney did. Mastercard did. And that became the foundation of what we built at ICUC — one of the world's first community management companies, before the category had a name.
People love the headline version of that story: 400-plus people globally, sold it for $50 million, the highlight reel. And all of that's true. But here's what I actually want people to hear: we weren't smarter. We were earlier.
That's it. That's the whole thing. We showed up before the category was obvious. Before it was safe. Before every company had a VP of it. Before it became survival rather than strategy. Because in 2002, community management was optional. An experiment. A line item you could cut if the quarter got uncomfortable.
By 2015, it was oxygen. The brands that treated it as optional in 2002 were scrambling to build what we'd already built, hiring away talent, paying a premium for expertise they could have developed organically years earlier. The gap between optional and oxygen — that's where advantage lives. And the only way to capture it is to move before everyone agrees you should.
I'm Watching the Exact Same Pattern Repeat
Right now — in real time — I'm watching it happen again. Except this time it's LIVE.
Most brands are still treating LIVE like a science experiment. "Let's do one livestream. Let's test it. Let's try it for a campaign. Let's see if it performs." And I'm telling you — that's the wrong lens entirely. You don't evaluate a category by running one episode. You don't build a market position by trying something once.
The advantage isn't going live. The advantage is building a daily, structured, disciplined live show that trains your market to expect you. That's the shift. That's the thing most brands are missing right now while they're waiting for someone else to prove it out first.
The brands building that show today — in five years, they won't look innovative. They'll look inevitable. That's how it always works. The early movers get called crazy, then early, then visionary, then obvious — and by the time you reach obvious, the window has closed.
The Window Is Open
The brands that waited on community in 2002? They said it later: "Man… we should've moved sooner." The brands treating LIVE as experimental right now will say the same thing. I've seen this movie before. I know the ending because I've lived it.
The window is open. And if you don't step through it — someone in your category will. And then you'll spend years trying to catch up to a position that was available to you today at a fraction of the cost and effort.
So here's the real question this morning: Where are you being "too late" on purpose? What are you calling experimental because committing scares you? What are you waiting to validate that your instincts already know is real?
Early feels uncomfortable. Late feels safe. But late is expensive. I've learned that lesson twice. Let's not do it again.