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Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Journey podcast. It's me, Morgan. I'm back. Okay, so we've got some things to talk about because I just was talking to some of my team members and a lot of people online recently where people are feeling just totally overwhelmed. And I know these last few episodes I've been trying to give you guys different tools and ideas and how to use AI and technology to work smarter and not harder. But I want to talk about why this matters and, like, why it's important that you're paying attention. So you've probably seen the news where all these CEOs are doing layoffs and they're effectively saying, hey, we're going to replace our employees with AI. And we are using things like AI agents. I've talked about AI agents before, but for those who maybe aren't familiar, AI agents are autonomous chatbots that basically can function on their own, given your own restrictions and context that you've provided it, but it can make decisions on your behalf. So instead of you having to write out all the tasks, task 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, you can say, hey, here's the context, here's my end goal, and let it figure out how it wants to get there. So you might say, hey, I need more groceries and I want to eat healthy this week, and my budget is X, Y, Z. And then it's going to just go ahead and figure out what you should eat based off of your preferences, conversations you've had before, the context that you provided it. And then it might not take the action quite yet of actually checking out for you, but it might create your instacart ready for you to press the go button. Eventually it will go ahead and take the action for you. Just like if you had a personal assistant who was helping you in your house, or if you had a travel agent, a travel agent will. In the old school days, you'd be like, oh, I want to go on vacation, I want to go to the beach. My budget is this. I'm thinking about, we like adventure, but we also want to relax. And the travel agent will present, here's your three or four options. And then you say, I like this option B. And then you go ahead and the agent goes and books it for you. So an AI agent is basically an agent, just like a travel agent or a brand deal, partnerships agent. And it's everywhere, and it's a lot, and I know that it feels overwhelming. So I thought we should just talk about why this matters and in a way that is really honest. And also my intention is to help you decide how you want to engage with these tools, how you want to future proof yourself or take advantage of this opportunity in time. So let me just give you some stats. The anthropic CEO warns that I could eliminate up to 50% of entry level white collar jobs. That's a lot, you guys. I think I just saw the most recent jobs report was 7% of African Americans are unemployed currently. 50%. Okay, so what is a white collar job? A white collar job is a job that you and I have. It's the administrative assistant, it's the coordinator roles, it's the research roles that are entry level, it's the analyst roles that are entry level. It's the, you know, social media managers and associates that are entry level. You know, people who have zero to five years experience is considered entry level. And I will say anecdotally, I'm also seeing this quite a bit with our Afrotech clients. Afrotech has hundreds of clients that use our talent pool and our community to help them with innovation, to help them grow their businesses. And pretty much every year for the last three years, people have said, hey, we love that you guys have entry level folks here, but we really are trying to hire mid career and senior career people and the more that you can help us do that, the better off we'll all be. It's tough to hear because we know that there's a large age group right now entering into college and graduating from college and they're having a tough time. I'm sure you guys have also seen the TikToks where it's like, I graduated from Harvard undergrad and I don't have a job. And it's like, yeah, graduating from a good school isn't enough anymore to necessarily get a job. And currently the estimates are that by 2030 we will have about 20% of the population unemployed. I'm going to say that again. By 2030 there are estimates that maybe 20% of the population will be unemployed because they will have been replaced by autonomous agents. And people can do more with less. And that will be that first ring of workers will be the first to go, as well as middle managers, people who pass information above and below but do not contribute as much as an individual contributor anymore. There's another guy who used to work at Google who basically was saying like developers and even podcasters and people who are doing like knowledge work will also be disrupted because information will be more accessible to so many more people. That includes media companies and my team and I are constantly thinking about, okay, what if you don't need to go to Blavity or Travel Noir or 2190 or Home in Texture to get information anymore, then why would you click a website? What is your incentive to click a website? Which means that if you can't click a website and our main business is selling ads on a website or videos on a website, that's a large chunk of revenue. And that's not revenue that's going to be gone in by 2030. That's going to be revenue gone by 2027. Okay, I was playing over the last few weeks with Comment, which is Perplexity's new AI browser. Just like you have Safari or Chrome, Perplexity released comet. Comet's about $200 a month. So it's crazy expensive. A lot of people are like, I'm not paying that. I got my hands on it. And it's pretty darn good. It's pretty good, y'. All. So if you find yourself having ChatGPT open in one tab and doing the rest of your work and switching between tabs between ChatGPT and your tabs, this basically means you don't have to switch at all because the conversations are contextual and it can read your screen because it's your browser. So it's also has way more context than it would if you were just typing into a prompt, you know, and pasting the information or attaching a file. And it definitely has changed my perspective. It gave me a lot more concern to say, damn, I thought I was in the future. Like, I thought I was doing a good job protecting our business and doing retreats and training my team to think about how this is going to impact our company in the future and get us to get ahead of it. And I don't know that it's going to be enough. And if I'm already in the top 1% or 2% of people who are tracking this and reading this and participating in it and building in it, and I don't feel like it's enough. Oh, no, it's a lot show. It's a lot. So let's talk about what you can do. I think the first thing is just understanding the vocabulary. And if you understand the vocabulary and kind of what people are talking about, the jargon, it helps at least you be able to decide, well, how does that impact me and my role and my family and my skills or my team or my employee base or my customers? And let's just say that just assume for the sake of this conversation that Next year is a huge transformational year. In 2026, the adoption of AI is exponential, meaning it's hard to slow down once it's out. Which means by 2027, it's going to be everywhere, in everything. You can automate entire job functions by 2026. So that means you have effectively now. So September, October, November, December through the middle of next year to readjust. That's a long time. You could accomplish a lot in that short period of time. So first things first is I would, if you were working at a company at a 9 to 5, I would talk to your CEO, I would talk to your CFO, and I would talk to your CMO. They're probably doing all hands, they're probably doing large messaging or emails. And I would not be shy about setting up that meeting with that leader and saying, hey, can we have a skip level? Or hey, can I get a group of like, you know, my whole department together so we can have a skip level to talk about the future and what you need from us. Because what I see is people who, they're feeling the crunch, they're already tired, they're already burned out. And another thing feels like a lot. And I can tell you in the conversations that I have with other founders and other CEOs, that something they're not going to tell you, which is that they're like, they are watching who is adopting this stuff and who is resisting. We understand, and people understand that there is no incentive to adapt AI tools, that you take on more work in less time as a salaried employee. Everybody, that's like, obvious, right? What is your incentive? Well, let me reframe it for you. Your incentive is job security. Your incentive is being a part of the team that helps figure this out for the company. Being a part of the team that's helping innovate through the company as opposed to being a liability on that P and L. And that is something that you have to seriously consider. And if you are listening to this and you're like, I don't like it. I don't like what she's saying. This is giving me anxiety. I ain't got it. No, thank you. That's fine. I'm okay with that. You need to be okay with the reality that that means that you may be at a higher risk for losing your job. And I, again, I'm saying this knowing I'm going to get a lot of heat for saying this kind of stuff publicly. But I have always committed to be transparent with you guys about the behind the Scenes of building a business. And this is one of the things that I am seeing as a trend is basically the erosion of value for certain roles unless that role continues to evolve and adopt and expand. And I would encourage you to have that mindset if, if you care deeply about having a direct deposit every two weeks. Now let's go back to the original stat that I gave you, which is that potentially 50% of white collar workers will not have a normal 9 to 5. What does that mean? That means they're not going to not work. That means that they're probably becoming a fraction of them will become entrepreneurs and solopreneurs and they will be working for themselves. And so they will become fractional workers where that job used to require 40, 50 hours a week, which is why it made sense for it to be salaried. And now it's like, you know, honestly you can do the same thing in less time because of AI. So it's 30 hours a week or it's 20 hours a week. So now you might have two clients where you're doing two 20 hour a week jobs. And that is a huge mindset shift if you're used to working in a big company where you have people who do one role per function. You know, if I'm an HR coordinator that looks at benefits, that's all I do. If I'm a this person, that's all I do. So you have to decide, okay, do I want to offer that service to a variety of companies or do I want to expand my skillset. So regardless of the outcome, whether I find myself unemployed or not, I will be prepared to be able to sustain my income and go find clients as a fractional worker. Fractional CFOs or fractional CMOs have been around for a really long time. I don't know that the word fractional is going to stay. I think people will be consultants, advisors, people will figure out fancy ways to call themselves self employed. But being self employed is a very different animal because you only eat what you kill. You go on vacation for a week, you don't make money that week. You know, that is something that people need to consider is how do you, if you were in a situation where you could do your same job but you're now self employed, what would you change about your lifestyle? What would you change about how you manage your personal finances? And just go ahead and walk through the what would you do if that happened? Where maybe you still have the same income but you have a lot of other things to think about. Health Insurance, life insurance, et cetera, so that you can be prepared. Because in that moment of anxiety, it's better to have a plan than it is to be caught off guard. Let me tell you one thing that is really important. Human skills will still matter in the future. Yes, I'm a little doomsday because I want you to take action. I don't want you to wallow, I don't want you to sit and listen to my podcast and watch my videos and be on my newsletter, but not take action. But I also want you to remember that you can never replace being a human, like, ever. No matter what super intelligence arises, no matter what happens in the future. Human emotions, empathy, real relationships and connectivity, shared memories, shared experiences, that is not going away. Okay, so storytelling, even you know, they're, they're thinking about, you know, how AI is going to disrupt the creation of stories. But you still have to have a concept of humanity to create stories and lived experiences to create stories. So something to consider is basically all those kind of soft skills that they told us in college don't matter. Our creativity, emotional intelligence, narration, charisma, network building. Get the hard skills, don't just get the soft skills, actually become more important. Creatives, artistry, having taste. And you got to remember that AI can only be created based off of the past. Everything that AI creates related to the future is a reflection of the past. It's a reflection of the data that's inputted into that AI system from the past. It's a reflection of the data and the information that we have given it from the past. Everything that I just said is now the past. Humanity is about the future, and trends and conversations are about how you manage and create the future. And that is inherently human. And that is where we all need to continue to think about how we enhance our ability to think strategically using these tools so that we can help make a better future using these tools. So you don't need to be first, you don't need to be the first person to know how to use this new function, this new tool, this new thing that's coming out. But you do need to be intentional. And that is my challenge to you. Listening to this podcast is be intentional with your personal strategy on how you are going to leverage AI. Protect yourself, protect your family, develop your skill sets so that you have options. And again, if you are a 9 to 5 worker, if you're part of that white collar population, be proactive in your conversations, be proactive in the questions you're asking, be proactive with your senior leadership team because I can guarantee you they are trying to figure it out, too. And they have some time, but they don't have that much time. But they got more time than you. The people at the top, they're not going to cut themselves first. They're not. They're going to cut themselves last. So protect yourself, be proactive, be intentional, and don't worry about being first. All right, Yours truly, from another doomsday topic. I love you guys so much. I really hope this stuff is helpful. And I do feel hopeful about the future. I do feel hopeful about the advancements in health care, the advancements in environmental sustainability, the things that I can help us solve faster. I do feel really, really good about that future. I also deeply care about humanity and how the future of work looks. And I think it's a dialogue we all need to be having from a proactive approach as opposed to let's slow this down. It is not slow down at all. We cannot slow it down. So we need to have a conversation about how do we handle what's going to happen next, like, and subscribe for more.