There's a marketing strategist named Mei Tanaka who writes these short, sharp posts that are basically the opposite of everything I stand for. And I can't stop reading them.
Her whole philosophy comes down to this: be remarkable, not loud. Find your smallest viable audience. Quality over quantity. Every. Single. Time.
And my whole philosophy? POST MORE. BE EVERYWHERE. VOLUME BEATS PERFECTION.
So we should be enemies, right?
We're not. Here's why.
WHERE SHE'S RIGHT
Mei wrote a post called "Remarkable is not the same as loud" where she says: "Volume is the refuge of people who have nothing interesting to say."
Ouch.
I read that and my first reaction was defensive. I post 80+ pieces of content a week. Is she calling me out? Is she saying I have nothing interesting to say?
But then I sat with it. And here's the thing: she's right about most brands. Most companies posting 5 times a day on LinkedIn have nothing to say. They're filling a content calendar because someone told them consistency matters. They're posting motivational quotes and industry news roundups that nobody asked for. They're being loud because they don't know how to be interesting.
That IS the refuge of people with nothing to say. Mei nailed it.
She also wrote about your competition being indifference — the idea that you're not competing against other brands, you're competing against people not caring at all. That 95% of your market hasn't even decided the problem is worth solving.
This is something I don't talk about enough. I'm always telling people to outwork the competition. But what if the competition isn't another brand? What if it's apathy? You can't outwork apathy with volume. You have to make people CARE first.
WHERE SHE'S WRONG
But here's where Mei and I disagree, and I'll say this with respect because she's clearly smarter than most people writing about marketing:
You can't find your remarkable thing without volume.
She writes like remarkability is something you figure out in a quiet room. Like you sit down, think deeply, find your Purple Cow, and then — and only then — do you go to market. That's beautiful in theory. In practice? It doesn't work for 99% of creators and brands.
You know how I found what resonated with my audience? I posted 847 pieces of content in one quarter. Twelve went viral. I studied those twelve. I found patterns. Then I made more of what worked. That's not the refuge of someone with nothing to say. That's the process of FINDING something to say.
Volume is how you discover what's remarkable about your brand. Not the other way around.
THE REAL DEBATE
Here's what I think the actual disagreement is about:
Mei is writing for founders and strategists. People who are ALREADY clear on their positioning. People who have a product-market fit and need to figure out how to talk about it. For those people, yeah — post less, say more. Find your smallest viable audience and serve them something worth talking about.
I'm writing for people who are still figuring it out. Creators who don't have an audience yet. Brands that are invisible. Companies that haven't found their voice. For THOSE people, the worst thing you can do is wait until you've found your remarkable angle. Because you'll wait forever. You'll overthink. You'll die in obscurity with a perfect strategy deck that nobody ever saw.
The answer isn't volume OR quality. It's volume THEN quality.
Post a lot. Learn what works. Get better. Get more focused. Eventually, you're posting a lot of remarkable stuff. That's the goal.
WHAT I'VE LEARNED FROM HER
I'll be honest — reading Mei's stuff has made me think harder about what I'm putting out. Not every piece of content needs to exist. Not every post earns the attention it asks for. There's a version of my philosophy that's just noise, and I've been guilty of that at times.
So here's what I've changed: I still post a lot. But I've started asking myself Mei's question before I hit publish: "Is this worth remarking on?" If the answer is no, I don't kill it — I make it better. The volume stays. The bar goes up. That's the same mindset behind building a personal brand as your competitive advantage — show up consistently AND make it count.
That's the synthesis. That's what happens when you take two opposing ideas seriously instead of picking a side.
GO READ MEI'S STUFF. DISAGREE WITH IT. THEN POST 3 PIECES OF CONTENT TODAY ANYWAY. VOLUME + QUALITY. THAT'S THE MOVE.