The biggest professional disruption in our lives is going to be AGI.
That stands for Artificial General Intelligence.
An AI that can perform as well as or even better than humans on a wide range of cognitive tasks.
We have already started moving towards this - LLMs like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude have taken over thousands of jobs of consultants, programmers, copywriters and basically everything else under the sun.
Companies are continuing to have mass layoffs while posting record profits.
AI has allowed the best workers to 10x their output leaving those falling behind to no longer be worth being kept on the company’s books.
Usually, companies are scared to have layoffs or pause hiring since it sends a bad signal to Wall Street that the company might be in trouble, but the exuberance around AI has allowed firms to fire people while posting record profits, sending their stocks to the moon.
So what about these workers who’ve been laid off?
What about rising records of youth unemployment.
More and more people are choosing to go to grad school just so they aren’t classified as “unemployed”.
But there’s a better way.
According to Goldman Sachs, the creator economy is expected to be worth $250 billion in 2023 and almost double to $480 billion by 2027.
People think they are late to the party when it’s just getting started.
So how do you survive in the new economy, with companies getting leaner and leaner, whilst being more and more profitable?
What do they need you for?
The answer - they don’t
The key to surviving then becomes selling something yourself.
Close your eyes and try to imagine a salesman.
I don’t know about you, but for me it brings up images of sleazy door-to-door salesmen or Leo DiCaprio selling junk bonds to a naïve gullible blue collar worker.
Basically, slick men exploiting vulnerable people for profit.
This belief set me back a lot and I can now see this in everybody.
Not sure where this villainization of salesmen has come from, as if it’s some sleazy low-level job, but it’s completely false.
Investment bankers, consultants, lawyers, doctors, entrepreneurs are all salesmen to a certain degree.
Yep, Elon Musk is constantly selling ambitions and solutions to investors. Constantly selling his electric cars to the general populous (even if he doesn’t have a marketing budget on the books).
Once you understand that everybody you look up to is selling something to a degree, there’s one layer deeper that you must go.
Sales is Survival
Without selling something you cannot survive.
That’s not hyperbole, neither is it a metaphor.
The closest thing to hunting for your survival in the modern day is making money.
Money can only be made if value is exchanged - a product or service is sold.
Even if you are a software developer, you are simply involved in the creation of a product which is being developed as a means to be sold to someone that it can provide value to.
You cannot escape the cycle of selling.
The only question is - will you sell your own product or someone else’s.
If you do not sell something of your own, you will be assigned something to sell.
To sell something which isn’t yours is to relinquish control over your time, income, location and ultimately - freedom.
To sell something which isn’t yours is to constantly swim upstream and fight against the growing arsenal of tools incentivized to make companies leaner and profitable and put your job at greater and greater risk each passing month.
Sam Altman and the his tech CEO friends - basically the guys which are revolutionizing everything are literally running a betting pool to see which year we’ll see a one-person billion dollar company.
Every smart person has realized the fact that companies need fewer and fewer people to get work done but you really think your back-end server maintenance job or front-facing ‘research consultant’ (glorified PowerPoint presentation maker let’s be honest) job is off-limits?
It will all go, and sooner than you expect.
The only question is - have you bought yourself enough time to build something of your own and are you making the requisite progress towards it?
Are you giving away free value with regards to your domain of specific knowledge, building an audience using this method and selling them a product which makes their life easier?
If not, what’s holding you back?
Will you only act when your profession ceases to exist because of AI?
When you hear that layoffs might be coming soon and suddenly your boss schedules an emergency meeting with just you and someone from HR?
When you graduate college and realize even the biggest companies are only paying employees pennies on the dollar?
There’s million ways you can get going, but for today, I’d just recommend surrounding yourself with the right people and ideas who drill this concept to you the way I am.
You can obviously start with my community.
Or follow these people (my personal recommendations) if you’re not ready to commit :