The Future Of Work (How To Become AI-First)

The top AI model is now smarter than 85%

of humans. By the end of 2026, it will

be smarter than 99.9% of humans. And you

think you will still have a job? That's

a post from David Patterson on X and

Elon Musk actually replied to this with

roughly correct. Now, let me overload

your brain for a moment because the CEO

of Fiverr, Micah Kaufman, sent out an

email last month to his team. So here's

the first part of it. You can read it if

you'd like. But the main things that I

wanted to focus on were the three key

points here, which is unpleasant truth.

AI is coming for your job and his job

and every job. Easy tasks will no longer

exist. Hard tasks will become the new

easy and impossible tasks will become

hard. Scream into a pillow, pick

yourself back up, and become

futureproof, as we're going to learn in

this video. And on top of that, other

CEOs like Shopify, the CEO sent out an

email telling his company that everyone

should become AI first. I mean, even in

this article, Dolingo is going AI first

and replacing contractors with

artificial intelligence. And so, that

scares a lot of people, right? Many

people don't know what to do. They don't

know what skills to learn. They don't

know what careers are going to be

around, what jobs are going to be

around. And while I have many thoughts

about this, in this specific video, I

want to give my main thoughts. How to

become AI first and what you can do

right now to prepare yourself for what's

coming. And I just want to say to start

this out, I truly believe that this is

one of the most incredible times to be

alive. You have so much opportunity

right now. You just have to one, find

out what it is and then take advantage

of it. And by the end of this video, I

feel like you'll have some clarity on

what you can do. So the first solution

here is to become AI first because there

are three types of people who use AI.

There's people who tried ChatGpt once a

few years ago and thought it wasn't

special. There's people who use various

AI tools for internet searches

summaries, and simple tasks that would

take maybe 10 more seconds to do without

AI. And then there's people who have

used it enough to see the light and are

using it in every place that they can.

Now, I have a lot of opinions on AI. I

don't think that it makes people

stupider. I don't think it takes away

your creativity, but I want this to be a

practical video, so I'll save that for

another. But what most people don't

understand is that the output of AI is

up to your skill and imagination. It's

not that AI isn't as good as you. it's

that you're not good enough at AI to

make AI better than you. Most people

think it's still just about typing

questions into chat GPT when that's not

the case at all. If you give an AI

extremely specific instructions on what

to do, and these can be long or short

it will do those quite well. Like I

recently posted on Substack how to

create a landing page for a digital

product and going through how to write

copy for that. And I included

instructions to create a prompt around

that to write copy. But there's so many

different things and moving pieces there

where if you ask the AI, hey, can you

help me write a persuasive landing page?

And then just expect it to spit stuff

out out of the box without guiding it in

a specific direction because you already

have the knowledge to do so, then you're

not going to get the best results.

You're going to get the best results if

you understand one how to find the best

instructions for AI because there's many

different ways to write a landing page.

You don't know which one the AI is

choosing. And then you have to have it

do a voice analysis of how you write so

it can write like you. You have to give

it your offer information. You have to

understand how to create an offer. You

have to put all of these little pieces

together for the output to be what you

would have created in the first place.

So it's still you creating the thing.

you're just doing a lot less work

because your prompts, the prompts that

you create and reuse and refine over

time are like your little employees now.

And of course, having AI do specific

tasks for you is only one piece of the

puzzle. And while it's not there yet, a

lot of people think like, oh, AI doesn't

give me that good of a response even if

I use a bunch of detailed instructions

it's not there yet. But it's going to

be. You may think like, oh, why should I

become AI first if it's not there yet?

And that's the exact point is if you get

to the point of understanding AI, then

by the time it does get there, you will

run laps around anyone else who didn't

learn it. So my biggest piece of advice

here to practice to learn how to use AI

is to try to automate yourself out of

work. And this will make sense, I

promise. But I want to start with a

quote. Being AI native isn't about

building features for your users. It's

an operating model for how to run your

company. It's how you work, how you

think, how you and your company breathe.

It's a rearchitecture, a rewiring, a

philosophical shift from how do we scale

humans to how do we scale decisions

creativity, and action with machines.

Now, what sparked this video is a

culmination of ideas that have just been

building up over time. And one of those

ideas is the notion of the selfdirected

career. So before industrialization

free individuals were mostly artisans

and farmers. The mark of a free person

was that they were meant to act on their

own interest and do many things

throughout their life. Around 80% of

free workers were self-employed versus a

mere 10% today. Now slaves on the other

hand were expected to perform one task

for the rest of their lives. It was very

repetitive. It was very mechanical. It's

work that machines are going to do now.

But during the industrial age when

machines started to come in, we just

found ourselves trapped in Excel sheets

and algorithms and factories doing this

repetitive work. So the question then is

will this AI revolution further remove

us from autonomy and freedom to act on

our interests? And it's absolutely

possible that most people will shift

from autopilot living to autocomplete

living, from having work assigned to

them to having work done for them. But

for those who value creative work and

taking control of the choices they make

their agency, there's another option.

Normally during technological

transitions, humans adapt by developing

higher level skills and forms of

knowledge. We abstract up a layer when

skills inevitably become less valuable

through automation. Now with AI, this is

kind of happening again. We have to

abstract up a layer beyond most of the

skills that we've learned. We have to

transition from labor to mind. While AI

can now think and execute as well as us

we must think about how we think in

relation to systems that could do the

thinking for us. So, as we continue, I

want you to keep this question in mind.

When should I leverage AI and when

should I do it myself? And that leads us

to the second idea of becoming AI first.

So, this guy, Signal, is one of my new

favorite anonymous internet thinkers. He

just has a lot of good uh information.

Now, this is a paid post, so uh I had I

had to pay. I subscribe to him. Uh I

hope you don't mind, man, if I show

this, but I I just want to show a few

examples here, right? So, he just pretty

much says most companies are falling

behind. Not falling behind, already

behind because they aren't AI first.

they aren't hopping on this

technological wave that we're going

through. But I want to show you a few

examples of what it means to be AI first

because I think this is he just put it

in a very easy to understand way. So in

terms of product or building a product

uh

nonInative has slow feedback loops

manual research, roadmap debates based

on opinion and then AI native is

summarize all user interviews in

minutes, generate road map options based

on feature request clustering, simulate

user behavior before launching anything.

So even as a creator, as a oneperson

business, imagine when you're developing

your own products, if you were able to

do all of this because then you don't

have to spend any of the time actually

doing that. You get to focus on the more

important things. So prompts here as

examples would be summarize the last 50

user interviews and cluster the main

pain points by frequency and intensity.

Suggest three product bets with highest

signal to noise. Given the user feedback

and usage data, write a product spec for

a new onboarding flow. include edge

cases and counterarguments. Now

something on social media in terms of

social media is like, okay, digest these

50 comments from my latest post and tell

me what people's biggest pain points or

interests or questions were from that.

And you can have that delivered to you

to give you more insight on the type of

content that you should create. And it

gives you a lot more insight than that

because you can also build products

around that and you can steer your

business with more relevant information.

Now there's engineering, there's design

but one thing marketing. So not AI

native, manual content, guessing what

resonates, slow campaigns, AI native

generate and test content at massive

scale, tune message to psychoraphics

not just demographics, live feedback

loops with creative optimization. So

example prompts are generate 10

variations of this blog post headline

tuned to five different founder

archetypes rank by project rank by

projected engagement and then write a

launch email in our brand tone optimized

for early adopters who have bounced from

the pricing page. So this is like crazy

right this is in incredible and you do

it with a sentence a single sentence

rather than hours of work. Now the last

one I want to go over is support. So not

AI native is human triage support reps

reanswering the same questions. AI

native is autosolve tier one issues with

247 LLMs summarize complex threads for

human escalations. Generate help center

content dynamically based on ticket

volume. I feel like a lot of this is

already happening in the support space

because we see these tier one issues

with 247 LLMs. What is really cool and

since I run a software startup Cortex is

that imagine just being able to

summarize a thread with a user that was

experiencing a problem and turn it into

some kind of documentation article for

the website that people can go and look

up at any time or that the 24 LLM 247

LLM can just feed to a person that has a

similar problem. So the question now is

how do you start so that you're ready

when that point hits? And my advice

again is to practice automating yourself

out of work. So how do we do that? When

you go to do any task, do this. Write

down the entire process in detail like

you were teaching someone how to do your

job, including thought processes or

creative processes. We're actually going

to talk about that specifically in a

future video where I'm going to talk

about the future of digital products

where I see information products going

like courses, coaching, freelancing

other things like that. what creators

have done for so long that are going to

see a drastic shift. The next step is to

assume that any task or piece of that

process can be done with a prompt. Then

you attempt to turn that task or piece

of that process into a prompt. Then you

test it, note where it doesn't do well

and refine the prompt until it's at

least 90% of the way there. Then you

store that prompt somewhere safe. And if

you don't know how to do that task, you

can ask AI for detailed instructions of

how to do that task. Now, this really

depends on the task that you're trying

to accomplish. For something like

creating content or a YouTube video, a

lot of the times you're just going to

get general advice because every creator

has their own way of doing those things.

It's a highly relative domain, right?

That's where AI isn't going to thrive

too much unless people give out their

own specific processes. So if Ali Abdal

and Alex Hormosi and I just started

asking AI without any direction like hey

how do I create my next YouTube video?

Here's the topic I want to talk about.

So on and so forth. We wouldn't get as

good results compared to if we were just

going to do it ourselves. So you need to

get more specific. You need to give

specific instructions to AI. So as an

example I can go to Ollie Abd Doll's

channel. I can take one of his highest

performing YouTube videos. I can spit

give it to AI and tell it to break down

the exact structure of the video. what

worked, what are the psychological

patterns he's using here, what's the

structure of the entire video, just

break it down in extreme detail, every

single line, why it works. Now, I have

detailed instructions that I can turn

into an AI prompt to recreate that with

my own ideas. And every YouTube video is

different. So, if you were to feed it a

video that didn't perform well and ask

for the same thing, then your video

probably isn't going to perform well.

And it completely depends on the topics

that you talk about and the types of

videos that you want to create so on and

so forth. So when people say like, "Oh

all of this content creator stuff is

just going to be automated out of

existence." That's not how this stuff

works. Another way to find specific and

useful information to feed AI in order

to do a task is just from a book or a

PDF. If you want to write uh copywriting

for a landing page or emails or whatever

it may be, you can upload the book

Breakthrough Advertising or Great Leads

or any other copywriting book and just

say, "Hey, summarize this. Give me the

exact very detailed way of writing

copywriting and then you have

instructions that you can feed AI turn

into a prompt to write that copy." Now

one of the most valuable things that I

have in my life right now is a very good

prompt that creates prompts. So, this is

actually a portion of what I taught in

that article that I posted on Substack.

But here's what I did really to write

landing to teach how to write landing

page copy or to turn copywriting into a

prompt that I can use over and over

again. Now, I could have gotten more

detailed with this, but what I did is I

used Gemini 2.5 Pro and I just said

"Research the book Breakthrough

Advertising and give me an extremely

detailed guide on how to write

persuasive copywriting." And it did just

that. It gave me an incredible guide to

for every step of persuasive

copywriting. Right? The reason this is

so incredible is because this would

usually take so long to learn in detail.

It takes a long time to be able to write

good copy. And if you don't want to

learn how to write copy, you want to

focus on your craft. You want to write

you want to build products, you want to

design stuff, whatever it may be, but

you know that you need to learn

marketing or sales or other things like

that. You can just create prompts, which

are little employees that do those

things for you that are 90% of the way

there, which is still much better than

0% of the way there. If you were to go

and write a landing page for a product

that you have without any of this

knowledge, it's not going to perform or

convert anywhere near as well as if you

were to do this. So, I had it spit out

instructions. And then from that, since

I like to structure my prompts in two

different phases

uh I said, "Imagine you were going to

write landing page copy for me using all

of these principles. What is all of the

information you'd need to gather from me

in order to write an incredible landing

page?" And so what it did from all of

this is it just wrote down all of the

context specific to me that it would

need. So the name of the product or

service, a description, the core

problem, the desired outcome and

benefit, the unique mechanism, the

unique selling proposition, target

audience, so on and so forth. So with

all of this, it's like I could continue

talking here and like somehow get it to

spit out a landing page, but it's so

much easier to take all of this

information, turn these into documents

that I can reference later, and turn

them into a metaprompt. So what I would

do here is I go to write incredible AI

prompts and I tell it what I want to do

right? So this is where I have the

prompt that creates prompts. So if I

want to turn something into a prompt, I

always go here and I do this very often

but I'll show you what it did.

So uh I want to create an AI prompt that

generates a 500 to 10,000word landing

page for a digital information product.

Structure your prompt in two phases.

Phase one context gathering acquire all

information you need according to the

information inside questions needed from

user. What that is is all of this this

second output. So all of the context

that it needs from me where I asked like

hey what do you need from me? So I gave

that here because I turned it into a

document and then I linked it so it can

reference it and then I just said ask

the user two to three questions at a

time to prevent overwhelm. And then in

phase two, write the actual copy. So use

the principles from how to write copy

which is the first answer to this

right? How to write copy is here. And

then it's very

long. So I save this as a document and I

fed it here. And then it says okay. And

then it created a prompt, but it did it

in a code block. And so I just told it

hey, do this in markdown format. And

then it broke it down into two phases.

So first it's going to interview me.

What does it need? What's my product?

What's my target audience? All of that

stuff. Then phase two, it takes all of

that and according to how to write copy

which it gives the or this is the

interview section of the

prompt. And then phase two, write the

landing page copy. So here's what you

do. Compelling headline, opening lead

problem desire intensification, so on.

benefits and proof, so on and so forth.

So, if I want to write a landing page, I

now have a prompt to do so. And all I

need to do is send that prompt, give it

my information, and then it will spit

out a first draft of a landing page

that's better than what most people can

create when they haven't learned

anything. So that's how I would become

AI first is just get really used to that

process is one figure out how to do

something. Write down the detailed

instructions, turn that into a meta

prompt so that you can run it over and

over again and refine the prompt over

time so it continues to get better and

then soon enough you have this library

of prompts that does most of your

workflow for you. But of course becoming

AI first isn't the only thing that you

need to do. That's just a skill that you

can practice developing right now. If

you do want to go deeper into that, uh

I have a free miniourse that I put out

that goes over multiple different

examples of kind of what we just did

but you can go and take that course so

you can just understand the process a

bit more. Now, on to the next section.

You have to understand that you're

probably going to have to change your

life, and that's a very good thing with

this section of the video. I'm not in

any position to tell people how to live

what they should do. I don't really

understand your situation. I don't

understand most people's situations. I

don't have kids to feed yet. I'm not

working two jobs. I'm just a 28-year-old

dude who likes to go on walks and write

and eat dinner out. Now, while I think

there definitely is something you can

do, you can still learn, you still have

some amount of time, and you can make

certain habitual changes in your life

that gives you more energy or gives you

whatever it is that you lack. And slowly

over time, you'll be able to get into a

better position. But to those people

specifically who have these very busy

lives, I don't know how to help you. So

this next section isn't really for you.

But for the majority of people who have

at least a few hours to spare and are at

least somewhat financially stable and

generally have a comfortable life

what's the issue? Why are you

complaining? Even though it's overblown

at this point and somehow still sparks

controversy, the average 9to-ive jobs

suck. And I'm not talking about

the 01% who can nap and sleep pods at

Google. We've collectively hated jobs

for decades now. Evolution solves

problems. And now that one of the most

painful problems in your life is being

solved, working a job, you are mad, you

don't really have any room to complain

here. You're presented with one of the

greatest opportunities of a lifetime

and you're still falling into the most

cliche trap of comfort and playing

victim and trying to hold on to your old

way of life when all good things aren't

permanent. You still don't realize that

if you work a job that a machine can

replace, your life probably lacks

novelty and meaning and fulfillment and

challenge and complexity and continuous

growth and learning. That alone is a

massive signal to do something new. And

this isn't an opinion. Those things

aren't opinion about things being

meaningful or fulfilling. That's

documented psychological patterns.

First, you fulfill your basic needs and

then you pursue your actualization

needs. And in order to stay in some kind

of a flow state, you need to gradually

increase the challenge that you can take

on over time because that demands that

you develop skills to match that

challenge. But if you get stuck in this

repetitive line of work where there is

no more challenge after a specific

point, you're just repeating the same

day day in and day out, that's not

fulfilling. That's not enjoyable. You're

not learning anything. you're not

evolving or growing as an individual.

Especially if you're spending 8 hours a

day, a third of your life there and

you're spending another third of your

life sleeping and then you're spending

the other third of your life scrolling

because you don't have anything better

to dedicate your time to because your

life is just set. You're doing the

repetitive work every day. There's

nothing more that you need to go after

or pursue. So for those who are amply

convinced now, you need to start

building things. The first point I want

to cover here is that what's left is

mastery and meaning because you have a

few years before you are either let go

or you keep your job and are eventually

let go or you upskill endlessly to take

on new roles in the company you work at

or you have to fend for yourself. AI

isn't just coming for companies and

programmers. It's coming for everyone

that has a brain. Now, I'm sure

somewhere in the far future we'll live

in a world where we don't have to worry

about money. But for now, we do. And

we're going to go through an acclamation

period where people are going to lose

jobs. We don't have anything in place to

help them out like UBI, whether you

agree with that or not. And that's going

to be painful for a lot of people. So

I'm trying to show you that there is a

way to do something other than your job

in order to make money. And what this AI

first world leaves us with is a mastery

and meaning economy. In other words

discovering and pursuing your life's

work. you know, the thing you could have

and probably should have been doing all

along. Now, I don't know if we're going

to be doing this in VR or on Mars or

somewhere in intergalactic space, but

for now, we do it on the internet. You

choose something you deeply care about.

You study, research, and master it

ruthlessly paired with an AI first

mindset. And you shamelessly share what

you know, what you do, and why you do it

in public. Because the only real safety

net in today's world is a body of work

that's impossible to ignore. And that

leads to the second point here, which is

attention is the only differentiator. As

the world is filled with more AI, trust

attention, and signal become more

scarce. Yes, the dead internet is

growing. There's a lot of content being

pumped out. There's a lot of bots on the

internet. Anyone can go into AI and be

like, "Hey, write me a tweet." And then

they can post it. Or create a YouTube

video and have the voice over in AI and

someone on the screen or some kind of

B-roll and they can post it. But from

the example before with the YouTube

title generation, that doesn't mean much

because they're not going to get good

results. They're not going to be able to

pivot and iterate and make those things

better to actually compete. It simply

means that the level of market

sophistication will continue to increase

rapidly. People will get bored of the

cookie cutter and the cookie cutter will

change every month. people will lose

trust in most content and that doesn't

account for the fact that you still have

to know what you're doing in order to

have AI create something unique and

compelling. Now, my advice is to use AI

to do the things you don't want to do as

a oneperson business. And the second

thing is don't give AI complete control

over the things you deeply care about.

Don't have it do the work for you. I

personally like writing. That's my

craft. not necessarily like the grammar

aspect of it or writing something that's

super poetic, but putting ideas on paper

in the way that I want them to uh be put

across or to be articulated. And when I

have AI take over that entire process

it doesn't feel mine. It doesn't feel

like I created anything. It doesn't feel

like I've given something that I care

about to someone else. Right? That's

where the meaning comes into play. But

for all of the other aspects, this is

why this is an incredible time to be

alive for many writers or creatives in

general is because you can focus on your

craft and people will see your unique

content and trust that thing. But now

you can do everything else that a

oneperson business or a business in

general needs to survive like the

marketing, the sales, the support, the

design, however big your business grows

it depends on that. But you can have AI

handle those things so that your writing

gets seen by more people. so that you

can sustain what you want to do with

your life. That's not inauthentic.

That's authenticity at scale. It's the

same thing as hiring employees to do it

for you. Because either way, you're not

doing that work. It's just necessary for

you to achieve your mission. Now, what

does that mean? It means you are the

niche. You are the differentiator, your

mastery, experience, and way of looking

at the world through a perception forged

by every bit of information you've

processed over the entirety of your

life. When AI makes 90% of the products

the same, nothing really changes. People

continue to buy from people and brands

that they know, trust, and care about.

It's less about building a salesunnel

and more about building a world that

people can explore. I wrote an article

about that as well. It's called How to

Build a World: The 2our Content

Ecosystem 2.0. So, I'll leave a link to

that in the description to check it out.

And now the third and final point here

and arguably the most important, is that

1,00 true fans is increasingly relevant

because most people don't want to be

famous. And even if you do, save that

goal until you're actually making a

living. That's what most people want.

And you don't need millions of followers

to get anywhere close to that. You need

about a,000 true fans. And honestly

it's even less than that because if

you're good at what you do, you can

charge $5,000 per client for a service.

You can charge $10 for a paid

newsletter. And yes, I'm on the Substack

kick now. Maybe I'll make a video on

that in the future about my thoughts on

Substack and where I think it's going.

But for now, it seems promising. You can

charge anywhere from $50 to $150 for any

type of product. And then you can create

spin-off products like a book or

software since anyone will be able to

code up an app that solves a specific

problem for buyers to buy again. Now, I

would argue that most people can live

just fine off of $5,000 a month. And if

you have a family and more

responsibilities than $10,000, $15,000 a

month, that's three clients. That's

three clients a month. I know if you've

been in the online business space, this

is like a cliche thing. It's like, oh

land one client or land three clients

and you replace your income. But it's

true. And if you have something like a

$10 subscription, which I really don't

recommend as a beginner, watch my last

video, which was a Q&A based on creator

tips. But if 500 people buy that

subscription, then that's $5,000 a month

recurring. It takes a lot more time to

get there because you have to sell a lot

more, but it's just an example of what

you can do. 500 people on an internet

that has four to five billion people

there isn't that much to ask for. You

can take a piece of your pie. And now if

over the course of a year you build out

an offer stack where you have a high

ticket product, you have a low ticket

subscription and you have a product in

between then you need like one person to

buy the high ticket a month. You need 10

people to buy the subscription. You need

10 people to buy the actual product. And

considering how attention flows on

social media, how people go on to follow

new people and other natural

fluctuations that those outside of the

game can't see, there's really more than

enough attention to go around. The key

here is that you treat it as the

opposite as your job. It's work that

evolves. It's work that demands

continuous learning. It's work with a

prerequisite that you have at least some

of your life together. The minute you

stagnate is the minute entropy

increases. And that's a wonderful thing.

Staying the same is the enemy of a good

life. Thank you for watching this video.

Check out links in the description to

Cortex, which is our note-taking and AI

software with all models and 25 plus

workflows in one place. You can

subscribe to my Substack for two free

weekly letters or you can check out the

premium version of that that has some

more bonuses. And other links to the

resources I mentioned throughout this

video are also in the description. So

like, subscribe. Thank you for watching.

Bye.