The Content I'm Most Bullish On Creating in 2026: Access and Analysis Content
At a recent lunch among entrepreneur friends, I realized the way I approach content marketing is insufficient for today's world (noise! AI! algorithms!) and my current business (evolved from mainly selling keynotes to mainly selling services and trainings for clients and cohorts).
If you also sell your expertise, it might be time to make the same shift I'm making in 2026. This is the biggest change to my content strategy in quite awhile and the biggest "bet" I'm making next year. Along with the themes I espouse (storytelling, premise and IP development, public speaking), creating this kind of content might be the most defensible approach to marketing in the age of AI and infinite advice.
During my lunch with friends, I started swapping ideas for improving our podcasts with Lee Odden, CEO of TopRank Marketing and an OG in the B2B marketing/content marketing arenas. I blurted out, "I'm no longer convinced I need an interview show."
My podcast, How Stories Happen, features some incredible voices, and I consider myself an interviewer who's better than the average bear. (It helps I don't hibernate in the winter months. Prime podcast season, obviously.) No, my conclusion has nothing to do with my show's quality or my skill or even the glut of interview shows. Here's the deal:
If you're like me, you sell your expertise, and you share plenty of advice and thoughtful content.
Maybe people know your name or brand too.
But when it comes time for them to hire you or me and spend meaningful money on that, there's still a big missing step in the relationship- and trust-building journey, all because they've only ever absorbed our ideas. They can't quite picture us applying our ideas to them and their unique situation.
That gap—between "I like this person's thinking" and "I trust this person to transform my business"—is costing us time, making it harder to charge premium fees, and extending or even ending the buyer's journey with us.
And sharing more advice content won't fix things.
The interview show is a natural extension of our insistence that things get better when we broadcast advice. We share OUR advice, then invite others onto our platform to share THEIRS. We lean into what worked harder and/or differently, but the approach which got us here won't get us much further.
The reaction to my show illuminates what we need instead:
Right now, I mostly feature known names and people with an existing platform. They're very polished in how they communicate, and when I ask them to share 1 story per episode for us to analyze, the story feels almost TOO good, and the analysis is much more celebration than revision. In this format, I've interviewed folks like Seth Godin, Chase Jarvis, Laura Gassner Otting, Jay Baer, David C. Baker, Jessica Abel, Chris Ducker, and more.
But the episodes which people seem to love most are different. The guest may not be famous, but they resemble a client relationship (or they're an actual client), and so we actively develop their work in realtime on the show. Or if they are a famous guest, they're friends of mine, so we easily leap past all the trappings of success and all their storytelling polish to instead workshop something from their notebook. In other words, instead of advice, we end up recording process. Instead of merely absorbing good ideas, you get to hear me take the ideas I'm often espousing and actually apply them.
I told Lee about this, and we jointly realized it's because of that big hole in the middle of the buyer's journey, between "I like their thinking" and "I'm ready to hire them to do work with or for me." Lee and I and maybe you love to teach and inspire, so we tend to over-invest in "broadcasty advice" content and downplay how legitimately good we are and useful we can be when reacting in realtime, thinking on our feet, wrestling with tough problems, and generally executing the work alongside someone else ... for all to see.
Said a simpler way: We need to stop telling and start showing.
What about you?
I nudged my pile of fries. A couple tumbled out. Sucks to be you. Chomp, munch, munch.
"Yeah, this makes so much sense," Lee said. "This makes almost too much sense."
If you're anything like us, we all "came up" in the Advice Era. Merely sharing expertise, for free, consistently, and in creative ways, was rewarded. It was an advantage.
No longer. Informational experts are everywhere. We need to become transformational voices. I don't mean we spout pithy maxims on social media (though props if you've got some memorable lines). Instead, I mean we know how to transform others. We help them change from where they're at now to where they want to be.
Our content needs to show that. Not after the fact (a case study is fine, but it's a foregone conclusion). Instead, we need to show the process of transformation and all the tiny bits and bumps and breakthroughs we have when we analyze the work of others and/or actively improve their situation, recorded through content for others to experience too.
WOW, they might think. Not only do they have great ideas, but I can see how they'd navigate my actual reality to use their ideas with and for me. I need to contact them...
The Advice Era is giving way to the Application Age. Can you actually apply those smart-sounding methods you teach? Can you teach others to apply those concepts themselves? They'd pay for both. They won't pay for a wall of smarts. Not anymore.
We'd all say, "Of course I can do all that stuff, Prospect! Step right this way!" But the ones who will win their business don't just say, "Of course I can." They say instead, "Let me show you..."
Show me. Don't just tell me.
In 2026, I'm betting big on what I'm calling "access and analysis" content: I'll give you access to the process as I apply my ideas and methods to others in real-time, and I'll analyze more work I find or others submit to me to workshop.
I began this test in 2025:
ON VIDEO: I started launching videos of myself, with peers or clients, reworking speeches in realtime. You can find several on my YouTube (along with a new talk I just published on how to craft stronger speeches, btw!).
IN MY WRITING: I started using my essays to offer suggested improvements to the premises of key projects, with drafts submitted to me by pals like Ann Handley (here) and Joe Pulizzi (here).
ON MY PODCAST: I've started to rethink what it looks like to actively develop things in realtime with others, so my next year of content will look different, deeper, more application-based ideas than evangelism of my ideas only, like this recent episode with entrepreneur Michelle Florendo.
IN MY SERVICES: I laughed to myself ("this makes too much sense now!") as I wrote new language beneath my mid-tier offering, Punchups (where I help you punch up your talk on calls and through a video review). I added this: "A bonus third call (1 hour, recorded) is included if you agree to let Jay edit the material and publish as content"
This test period worked, and as a major bonus, I looooved doing it. I get to nerd-out about the craft, get closer to the work, and put my favorite parts of the process on display ... as marketing? Sure!
Since it worked this year, in 2026, I'm doubling down. (Which is the phrase you say when you're a Very Confident Business Person Who Writes Newsletters and Discovers Something Obvious Only After Testing for a Year.)
I believe this type of content has other major benefits too:
It's AI-proof. You can publish monolithic pieces shoved *at* others through AI. You cannot use AI (or at least it'll be much harder, sloppier, and a waste of time) to try and show yourself going back and forth with a client or peer, putting your ideas and process on-display in real time, making adjustments, and tailoring your thinking to a specific situation or person or team.
It's competition-proof. Pretenders who compete with you but talk a big game have nothing to show behind the hype, while genuine competitors might be less confident showcasing this kind of process or work, whether because it's new and tricky to do well on-camera or in writing, or they believe they shouldn't show that much of the work as it unfolds. But it's not the process itself that matters. It's the back-and-forth. It's your ability to personalize and wrestle with things and think on your feet which causes someone to think of you first and pay you MORE than any-old competitor with basic competency in your space.
It's confusion-proof. It's easy to lose someone in the sales process because you can't precisely describe how you'd do something for them, or why you're different, or why you're worth paying 20% more than the rest. Or maybe your advice is too dense. Or maybe you're pinging your audience between too many topics or ideas to absorb, never moving them a layer deeper to help them apply those ideas—which is what they most desire. Of course, you should definitely still solve your messaging problem (start here; then go here). You should also ensure you show rather than tell, because it's very hard for anyone watching, reading, or listening to see you in-action and not understand precisely what you do and how you do it. You provide them a kind of "radical clarity." (Radical is the adjective you say when you're a Very Confident Business Person Who Writes Newsletters and Hosts Podcasts and...)
Oh, and one more rather addicting thing this approach unlocks: call it "range without losing focus." You might worry that committing to one methodology or one signature approach or one distinct premise traps you. You have to talk about the same narrow thing forever. But here's what I'm finding: when we show process rather than just share advice, we can apply that process to infinite situations. The through-line stays consistent (your lens, your premise, your IP), but every execution looks different because it's tailored to a specific person, business, or challenge. You're not trapped. You're distinctive. You're not overly narrow. You're memorably specific. You explore both the depth and breadth of what you offer, while continuing to draw a coherent circle around your entire platform, showing up in recognizable ways, associating yourself further with ideas that separate you. In the end, this means you're never on the spreadsheet of competitors evaluated on price. You're THE pick. The moment they think, "I need this," they think, "I need YOU."
Please continue to give great advice. Absolutely do that. Differentiate your ideas. Craft content that attracts the right people. Clarify your message. But remember, "IP" means "intellectual property." What makes something ownable is how you use it, and nobody can apply your ideas and your intellect ... like you.
Anyone can screenshot your framework. Anyone can mimic your list of tips. But your judgment—the way you read a situation, ask the right questions, tailor your thinking, make realtime adjustments—that's irreplaceable. And it's invisible until you show it.
The Advice Era taught us to broadcast good ideas. The Application Age asks us to put those ideas to good use for others and ourselves.
Isn't that the point?