Hey there,

I want to finish a thought I started in my last email, because it's why I think the dinos matter more this year than any year before it.

The internet rewards confidence. It does not reward experience, and it does not always reward being right.

Type a question into your browser of choice, and these days you don't even have to click through 10 websites to find your answer.

You read the AI summary, and whichever paragraph catches your eye, that's the site you visit.

And a lot of people don't even bother with the search engine anymore — they're going straight to their favorite AI assistant to get the answers.

Internet, social algorithms, AI — they are great at surfacing ideas. But they are terrible at telling you which ideas have actually held up. Which ones survived five years, 15 years, 50. Because algorithms reward things that read as "authority": speaking in absolutes, naming your framework, keeping the language simple and the win quick. The posts that spike in the first 45 minutes are the ones that spread. The posts that take three weeks to earn real interest hardly get the chance.

People with real experience almost never talk that way.

They hedge.

They say "it depends."

They say "I used to think this, but then I learned that."

It’s not because they lack confidence; it’s because they've been around long enough to know there are no absolutes. I get told sometimes that I hedge too much, that I should "step into my power."

But insecurity isn't why I do it.

I hedge because I know 80% of what works for everyone else will work for you, but 20% won’t because it’s not fit for your specific circumstance.

That's a hard thing to build a following on. It's a much harder thing for an algorithm to surface for you.

Which is exactly why I think this matters more in 2026, not less. The tools got faster. The confident-sounding answer got easier to generate. But the thing that actually tells you whether advice holds up — time, reps, having been wrong and facing the consequences — that part didn't get any easier to fake. It just got easier to bury.

So here's a question for you, whatever industry you're in:

Who are the dinos in your world?

The people who've actually been through the down cycle, the failed launch, the client who left, the strategy that didn't work — and are still standing? Are you listening to them, or to whoever showed up first in your feed this morning?

I built Been There, Homeschooled That as my answer to that question for one very specific audience. Every speaker has actually launched at least one homeschooled child into the great, wide world — no exceptions, no matter how good their content looks.

If you want to watch that principle play out Sept. 1-3, I'd love to have you there.

1. Register here https://dinosummits.com/homeschool/​
2. Or help me put these dinos in front of more people by become a promoting partner: https://learn.tonyakubo.com/products/affiliates​

Talk soon,

Tonya

This email was written by Tonya Kubo (not AI). If you're receiving it, it means you have signed up for one of my offers in the vast expanse of the internet. Some links here are affiliate links, meaning I might make money if you use them to make a purchase.