Christian Ray Flores here, on a rainy and cozy Austin Sunday.
There’s a bloodbath happening in the market right now. We are witnessing in real time and slow motion as it grows in size.
Tens of thousands laid off. Whole departments replaced by software. It’s hitting people with education and expertise. Whole businesses are getting erased.
You can be swept by the wave of the AI revolution, or you can ride it.
Riding it comes down to three things. They can mean the difference between a massive hit to your business and the biggest growth of your life.
3 moves to thrive, not just survive
A year and a half ago, a friend of mine who owns a website design business asked me, “Do you think my job is going to be eliminated?”
I said no, as long as you upgrade to premium design, solve higher-level problems faster and better with AI, and start creating personal content sharing your best insights.
A year later, most of his business is gone, and I hope he pivots immediately because those changes can give him the greatest growth of his life. It’s heartbreaking to witness.
I know exactly why this happened.
Last week I built two full websites in about two hours. They are well designed, created by AI, reflecting my exact vision without the usual time and revision lag.
The same risk and the same opportunity are here right now in the careers of millions of people in the most white-collar industries you can imagine.
The people in those same professions who thrive will follow at least two out of the three pieces of advice I gave my friend.
1. solve higher-level problems
It’s a subtle shift in mindset for the business owner or founder on the surface but a profound one in reality.
Businesses sell services or products. Most of these are now increasingly easy to scale, automate and therefore commodify.
Unless you’re a multi-national with a monopoly in a space, shift from selling a product or service to solving a higher-level problem and selling the outcome.
The rule of thumb is:
If you want to make money, solve a problem.
If you want to make more money, solve a higher-level problem.
If you want to make a lot of money, solve a higher-level problem for a well-financed client.
You don’t have to overhaul your whole business. Start with creating a signature offer that checks those boxes and see how the market responds.
Most of the time it’s just a reframing, repackaging and re-messaging of a set of things you already do.
2. build a personal brand
You cannot be commodified by definition if…
People know, understand and trust your face, your personality, your lived experience, your opinions, your contrarian opinions, your view of the problems you solve.
Take it seriously and build an audience for whom you are the solution.
Most people feel weird about creating content. For most there’s a fear and a skill gap standing in the way.
Get over yourself and just do it.
Get help in the parts you’re not good at, but go and do it. You will be bad at it before you’re good at it. But there’s no downside to it.
The worry is usually, “What will people think of my pathetic attempts?”
The reality is no one cares, and everyone is too busy thinking about themselves.
The upside is you become a category of one to many more people, the obvious choice for a hire, a partnership, a joint venture, a keynote speech.
Humans trust other humans, and they make their decisions based on that.
A trusted founder we helped raise $1.9M in capital; much of the success was not the software he was building but being trusted by the investors.
A non-profit CEO I coached raised a record $1.2M in his yearly fundraiser because of how he spoke.
Would those things happen without trust at scale? From experience, that would be very unlikely.
3. become AI fluent
The future is now, and adopting whole workflows with AI tools is not optional.
We install AI systems for our clients that get them AI fluent in under 100 days.
An AI Project Manager that keeps your team accountable and never forgets an assignment or deadline.
A Competitive Edge Finder that helps you create your signature offer and keep refining it.
An Ideation Engine, helping you find weekly topics for content to create when building your personal brand.
The list goes on and on. We use these tools daily.
They massively increase the speed, efficiency and quality of what we do, and it helps me as the founder focus on the highest, most enjoyable part of the work.
The uncomfortable truth is that people are denial about. You can ride the tsunami wave that is AI or ride it.
Those are the choices you have unless… you’re already famous for a thing, a blue-collar professional impossible to commodify, or a Swiss watchmaker making only 50 watches a year by hand with a waitlist of wealthy buyers.
Those who ride the wave are experiencing the greatest surge of possibility and growth of their lives.
If you own or lead a business or non-profit, I’m offering a 45-minute 1:1 audit where I’ll recommend the best way forward with all three of the moves I just described.
A $500 audit, and for the first subscribers it costs $0 this week with the promo code “NEWSLETTER” Claim a spot here.
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