Did you know The Shawshank Redemption was a box office flop?

The beloved prison drama starring Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman earned about $16 million against a $25 million budget in its original theatrical run.

The reasons were mostly circumstance. It opened into a crowded movie release season that included Pulp Fiction and Forrest Gump. The title confused people. Finally, the studio kept Stephen King's name at a distance, worried audiences would mistake the movie for a horror film.

Seven Oscar nominations gave it a second life on home video, where it became the top rental of 1995. But what cemented the cult following was the cable channel TNT, which began airing it almost daily in 1997.

Why TNT?

Shawshank was produced by Castle Rock Entertainment. Ted Turner bought Castle Rock in 1993, a year before the film's release. Turner also owned TNT.

He already had another distribution channel when the first one failed.

Because the box office was so weak, the cable rights were cheap. TNT could run the film constantly and still charge premium ad rates. The failure in one channel is exactly what made it valuable in the channel Turner owned.

Distribution has always been king, but it seems we forget the lesson with each new technological revolution.

Even though social media and the internet removed or transformed many of the gatekeepers, the last few decades still produced many cautionary tales. Businesses and creators built entire audiences on the borrowed ground of social media platforms, then watched an algorithm change or an account suspension erase them overnight.

The lessons are the same, only the gatekeepers change.

The new one is AI, and it is the channel, the gatekeeper, and the platform all at the same time.

Gatekeepers have always decided how people reach your product or service.

Theaters decided which films to screen. Social media platforms decide whose posts reach a feed. Google decides whose page ranks after a search. Those decisions were somewhat discrete and rule based. They were often unwritten or unfair, but the same rules applied to everyone, and they slotted you into something visible: a time slot, a page rank, or a follower count.

AI is different.

Every answer is assembled in the moment for one person. It bends to who is asking, how they phrased it, and what they said three messages ago. Two people asking the same question get different answers. So might the same person asking twice.

When you ask an AI model a question, the answer comes back complete. There is no list of ten links, no page two, no visit to a website to get the answer. Fewer than one in three Google searches now sends a click anywhere at all.

In an AI world what does owning distribution mean?

You cannot buy this channel the way Turner bought a cable network, although some AI vendors have introduced ads. Yes, SEO and other social media metrics remain relevant. As do channels with clear ownership (for now) such as email. The bigger question is how do we interact with evolving AI channels where influence might be indirect and opaque?

By doubling down on direct channels, influencing how AI perceives your business and optimizing how your business interacts with AI agents and models going forward.

Tyler Denk, the founder and CEO of Beehiiv (the platform this newsletter is published on) posted on X how they’re keeping customer support a completely human function.

He’s smart to do so. Opportunities to interact with your current or potential customers could become more scarce as traditional channels are intermediated by AI.

Companies rushing to remove “inefficient” customer interactions might find they removed the only path to their customers they had left.

Whether it’s customer support, email, or live events, any channel where you have a direct line to your customers should be cherished, preserved, and guarded.

AI models are prediction machines as I have written about here.

They make predictions based on data they’ve been trained on and information they can find on the internet.

What will the models ingest about your business?

What will they find in reviews, listings, third-party mentions, and the plain language on your own site? You can’t control all of it but what you can control you should.

The biggest risk is inconsistency.

Are there three versions of your hours, offerings, or descriptions of what you do that are years out of date? The model doesn't resolve the contradictions or errors. It will either replicate or average them.

Consistency is the best defense. Ensure your website, socials, community groups, or wherever you have a presence is as consistent as possible.

Ted Turner showed a movie constantly for years and it became one of the most beloved movies of all time. Shawshank is always my answer to, “What is the one movie you’ll stop and watch no matter how many times you’ve seen it?”

Consistency is also king!

The Record is what AI finds out about you. The Way is how it obtains the information.

Businesses are increasingly building AI tooling and access into their websites and software.

The number one thing I look for now when signing up for software or services is whether they interact natively with AI agents. I recently decided on Attio as a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) for Valotare.

One of the main reasons I selected them was their AI first integrations, tools, and ability to interact with various AI model vendors and platforms.

It’s more than just tools. Agents are starting to do the work customers used to do themselves. They compare, check availability, narrow the list and increasingly they buy.

A human would read prose to get this information. Agents need structured data that is easily parsed.

Human readable prose is no longer enough. We have to write for both audiences now.

The Shawshank Redemption is an amazing product that risked withering into obscurity if Ted Turner not owned a critical distribution channel.

Distribution will always be king but castle’s gatekeepers are changing.

Protect the direct lines of communication with customers you already have. They will only become more valuable.

Fix what the machines may find and hand them facts in a form it can more easily use.

Here is a test you can do now. Ask an AI model about your business, product or service the way a customer would. For example, what problem question would they type in an AI chat? Something like:

“My furnace is not working, who should I call?”

What is it wrong about the answer?

What is missing?

Did your business show up at all?

Most owners I know have never run this test. Those that have rarely like the answer. Better to know now when you can do something about it.

My goal with The Leap is to provide you each Saturday with the knowledge, tools and lessons learned to help you get started and keep going toward building your future. 

Whether you are making the leap to startups, solo-entrepreneurship, freelancing, side hustles or other creative ventures, the tools and strategies to succeed in each are similar.