Ed (35:05)
I first just want to clarify who should actually be worried. There is no question AI is taking Jobs, but it might not be taking your job or it might be taking your job. So I think the question you have to ask is like, okay, who is actually at risk here? Who should be worried? So Microsoft had this AI report where they basically did this giant study and looked at all of the jobs that are most at risk of being replaced or having the tasks done by AI. And I just want to go through a few of these jobs because it's important. If you have one of these jobs, the point being you should probably be worried and you should probably be listening and thinking about ways that you can protect yourself. So just going to go through the list here. Sales representatives, customer service representatives, ticket agents and travel clerks, telemarketers, public relations specialists, management analysts. Here are my favorites. News analysts and also market research analysts. So in a lot of ways, me, there are many other jobs that they have in this report, but they are kind of smaller jobs, jobs that don't really have high employment. But the jobs that I just outlined there, these are very, very common jobs in our society today. There are more than 1 million sales representative jobs in America today. There are more than 2 million customer service representative jobs in America today. So these are big, big occupations. They employ a lot of people. And according to Microsoft and I agree with the report, they are most at risk of being replaced. So those are the people who I think you should, if that describes you, I think you have real reason to be worried. We'll come back to what you do about it. Now I just want to go over the jobs that are actually not at risk and which I think are going to be rewarded in the future. So some of the jobs that are described in the report, water treatment plant and system operators, roofers, industrial truck operators, tractor operators. So a lot of jobs that are, that are vocational and that honestly require use of your hands, things where you have to be getting in there physically and have some technical and physical expertise. And then the other side is there's a lot of human care work that is not at risk of AI. So nursing assistants, housekeepers, phlebotomists, massage therapists, those are the kinds of jobs that are least at risk of AI. So when we think about this, you want to think about who are the AI winners. And it's construction, it's physical maintenance, it's healthcare, it's surgery, you know, human care work, vocational, physical, technical work. And then the AI loses. It's all of the sort of, I mean, just think it through logically. It's, it's, it's the, it's the jobs that AI can do. Sales, administrative support, data analytics, computer science, mathematics. Those are all the jobs that are that are most at risk. So I think the question then is, what do you do about it? And if you are an AI loser, I will just go through some of my recommendations that I think are very similar to yours. So the first thing that I would recommend, if you're about to see layoffs, you want to be the person who is close to the guy who decides the layoffs. So what you got to do is you have to identify the decision maker at the company and you have to establish a personal relationship. I mean, Scott, you said it. Don't hide. If you're invisible, then it's very easy to cut you off. Second thing I have on my list here, try to become the AI person. That might mean you adopt some fluency with AI tools. You start using them, it makes your work more productive and more efficient. But also, quite importantly, you want to brand yourself as the AI person. You want to communicate to your peers. I'm the guy who knows about this stuff. And that might mean you start writing blog posts or you talk about it on LinkedIn or you send podcasts to people about AI you want to show to the decision maker, I understand this stuff. So if you're cutting people, you don't want to cut me, because I'm the one who's going to help turbocharge your business with AI. I have two more. Have an opinion. AI is very good at analytics, but it's very bad at having an opinion. So if you can figure out a way to develop a position on issues, if you can weigh both sides of the argument and then ultimately take a side, because AI is bad at doing that. All it says is, here are all the different things that are going on. But if you can be the person that says, yeah, I know all the different paths that we can take as a company, but I believe that this is the one that we should take, because this is my opinion on the issue. That's alpha. That's something that AI can't do. And the final thing here, and it goes back to what you said, and I think it fits with also your career. I think you need to be willing to reinvent yourself. And I don't think you should be ashamed of reinvention. That's what a lot of people are going to have to do here. If you're being laid off at many of these tech companies, you're kind of being faced with this decision of like, do I go out into the market as the same thing that I was that got fired or do I rebrand and do I reinvent? And I think there's a lot of shame in reinventing, but I just want to highlight that many of the most successful people in history completely reinvented themselves. Just some great examples here. Vera Wang, who is the legendary designer, she was a figure skater before she got into design. Martha Stewart was a stockbroker before she became the media mogul. Reed Hastings was a math teacher and then he founded Netflix. Ray Kroc was a door to door equipment salesman before he built McDonald's. My favorite reinventer is Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was a bodybuilder who then decided he wanted to be an actor and then he decided he wanted to be the governor of California and he was able to do all of it. I think that, my point being, there are many people who were incredibly successful who reinvented themselves and who leaned into it, who were not afraid or ashamed to say, I used to be this and now I'm this. And as I say it, I think you're a good example of that too. I mean, you were an analyst and then you said, okay, I'm gonna go to business school and I'm gonna try something completely different. You started companies and then after you started your company, you said, now I'm going to be a professor. And then after you're a professor, you said, now I'm going to be a podcaster. So I think a lot of this is also about reinvention. AI might take your job and let's just acknowledge that. But as you say, take stock of your talents and your abilities and don't be afraid to reshape them, to rebrand them, and to reinvent yourself.