During last month’s zoom call with Dan Kennedy, he brought up something that, on the surface, had nothing to do with marketing, automation, or growing a business. He started talking about tulips.
Not markets. Not media. Not AI.
Tulips.
At first it sounded like one of those strange historical detours Dan sometimes takes before he makes a point, but within a few minutes everyone on the call understood exactly why he went there, because the story of Tulip Mania is really the story of what happens when otherwise intelligent people stop thinking and start following excitement.
In the 1630s, the Dutch became obsessed with tulip bulbs. Ordinary flower bulbs began selling for prices that made no rational sense at all. A single rare bulb could cost more than a house. Entire estates were traded for the promise of owning something that everyone believed would be worth even more tomorrow. People who had never speculated on anything suddenly convinced themselves they were investors. Neighbors compared prices. Deals were made in taverns. Fortunes appeared to be created overnight.
For a brief moment, it felt like a shortcut to wealth. Then buyers stopped showing up.
Prices stalled, panic set in, and the same bulbs that had been treated like treasure were suddenly worth almost nothing. Nothing about the tulips changed. The soil didn’t change. The bulbs didn’t change. What collapsed was belief, and once belief cracked, the value vanished with it.
And this isn’t history. This is human nature. And it’s happening again right now.
Only this time it isn’t tulips. It’s AI.
Dan’s words, not mine.
He called it “AI Mania,” because the behavior around it looks exactly like every mania that’s come before it. Everyone suddenly feels like they’re behind. Every headline promises revolution. Every tool claims to replace entire departments. Every vendor says if you don’t adopt this immediately, you’ll be irrelevant.
You can almost feel the panic in the marketplace.
Business owners who’ve never touched their systems in years are now ripping everything apart. They’re replacing software that works. They’re chasing every new platform. They’re buying tools they don’t fully understand because someone on LinkedIn said it’s “the future.” Money gets spent fast. Teams get confused. Processes get messy.
And underneath all that activity, very little real improvement happens.
It feels like progress because it’s new. But new and useful are not the same thing.
Most businesses don’t fail because they lack opportunity. They fail because they abandon discipline. They stop doing the simple things that already work and start chasing whatever everyone else is excited about.
The irony is that real growth almost never looks exciting from the outside. It doesn’t come from the latest tool or the newest tactic. It comes from boring consistency. It comes from answering every lead. Following up every time. Nurturing relationships. Measuring numbers. Improving conversion a few percentage points at a time. It comes from systems that run quietly in the background while everyone else is distracted.
There’s nothing sexy about that, which is exactly why most people don’t do it.
Tulip Mania was fueled by stories. So is AI Mania. Stories about easy wins, overnight leverage, and magical shortcuts. Stories spread faster than math ever will. But stories don’t build stable businesses. Systems do.
A steady follow-up process will outperform a flashy new tool every time. A clear message will outperform clever tech. A reliable marketing engine that runs every week will beat any “next big thing” that depends on hype.
That’s why inside eLaunchers the conversation is rarely about chasing trends. It’s almost always about plugging leaks. Where are leads slipping through? Where is follow-up inconsistent? Where are opportunities being lost simply because no one responded quickly enough or stayed in touch long enough? Fix those, and revenue goes up without adding anything complicated at all.
It’s not dramatic or exciting. It doesn’t make for great cocktail party stories. But it works. And it keeps working long after the mania burns out and everyone else is scrambling to explain why the miracle tool didn’t save them.
The businesses that quietly win year after year aren’t the ones chasing flowers or algorithms. They’re the ones building machines. They focus on fundamentals, stack small improvements, and let compounding do the heavy lifting while everyone else jumps from trend to trend.
That was really the takeaway from Dan’s comparison. Don’t confuse noise with progress. Don’t confuse motion with growth. And don’t assume that just because everyone is running in one direction that they know where they’re going.
Sometimes the smartest move is to slow down, look at what already works, and strengthen the foundation instead of chasing the crowd.
If you’d like a clear, grounded look at your marketing and operations without hype, without buzzwords, and without the pressure to buy the latest shiny object, we’re always happy to have that conversation with you.
You can start here: www.meetparthiv.com
To steady, predictable growth,
President
eLaunchers.Com
