AI is a serious problem, 3 strategies to stay ahead

Summary

AI is moving faster than most business owners want to admit. a lot of jobs and a lot of business models are going to get eaten in the next few years. acting like that’s not happening is not a strategy.

what AI can’t do is be human. so the strategy is to lean hard into the parts of business that are explicitly human. three plays.

1. embrace human imperfections. people still want to be helped by other people. they want a coach who’s been through what they’re going through. AI can deliver information, but it can’t deliver lived experience. sell the lived experience.

2. build a personal brand. a personal brand is the one moat AI can’t replicate. it’s tied to a real face, a real story, real reps. companies without one are going to look generic next to people who have one.

3. do work that doesn’t scale. handwritten notes. real phone calls. small group dinners. one-on-one coaching. the things that don’t scale are exactly the things AI can’t fake. that becomes a competitive advantage.

the people who try to compete with AI on AI’s terms (faster, cheaper, more output) lose. the people who go the opposite direction (more human, more specific, more relational) win.

Transcript

discussion on swot analysis and its relevance in understanding AI’s impact on businesses

The most impactful business is the business that genuinely improves another human, a better human business. And to grow a business like this, you have to continually improve yourself. This podcast is a documentation of that thesis, scaling businesses and also personal growth. My goal is for you to shortcut this journey.

So if you’re ready to try hard, subscribe. If you like what you’re hearing, please share and enjoy. All right. I am now convinced AI is going to be a very serious problem for a lot of people. And so let’s talk about what you can do about it. This is the better human business podcast. I’m Jerred Moon.

And if you’ve been paying attention to AI at all, the only real thing you need to know is that it’s moving incredibly fast. It can do a lot of things. It’s very capable and it’s only going to get better and better. I think this is great for humanity. I’ve talked about AI in the past, like I’m here for it.

I think it’s awesome. But now that I’m, I like really pay attention to these things and I’m looking at, you know, just chatbots and operators and like all of these things that AI can do. And at first I was like, you know, I think humans are fine. Like I don’t know where this is going. But a lot of people are going to be in some serious shit in the next couple of years, if not faster with how fast it is, how fast it’s moving.

And so I want to talk about that today because I have been thinking about this a lot. And also from my standpoint, do I need to be concerned? Like is anything that I’m doing, do any of the businesses I run, do any of them, you know, are any of them threatened through AI? And that’s ultimately, you know, if you, if you take a look at your business, you do like a SWOT analysis, strength, weakness, opportunities, threats.

Is AI in that category? Is it a strength? Is it a weakness? Meaning you’re not paying attention to it and it might blindside you. Is it an opportunity? Meaning that you can, you know, ultimately capitalize, augment yourself or your employees, or is it going to be a threat in like it could take over what you do?

And I think for a large part of this, like AI, one thing that it’s doing is like knowledge is so easy to come by and really good knowledge. You know, we’ve always had Google and YouTube and I see ChatGPT being able to do that, but it can also add a little bit of context to your situation, but it’s never going to have the experience.

So there are certain things that like make me scared of AI, certain professions, but then others, not at all. So I recently posted something on Instagram, I don’t know, within the last couple of months and it was one of my worst performing things I’ve ever done on Instagram. And the funny thing behind it was I start off by saying like, you need to make your life harder.

And that hook just didn’t land with people. Nobody wants to hear that. That’s not content that people want. I think people who listen to this podcast are more open to that. They understand this killing comfort mentality, but ultimately you need to make your life harder. And I talk about the two different types of entrepreneurs.

There really are two different types of entrepreneurs. There are the entrepreneurs out there who are trying to make things a lot easier, scalable, more convenient. And I give the example of the creator of AI or the guy who made the refrigerator, anything that’s just trying to give you more convenience and more ease.

And that’s like one group of entrepreneurs. I think every entrepreneur does this to some degree, like, Hey, I hope you get out of pain easier than doing it on your own. Like there are all these like ways we’re all kind of in that, that world. But there is this second, uh, you know, set of entrepreneurs, better human business entrepreneurs, the ones who are actually trying to build better humans where we have to challenge the people that we work with.

We have to force them to do uncomfortable things. We have to get them out of their comfort zone so they can grow. They can do the things that they know they need to. And so I really split the entrepreneurs into these two different categories. There’s like the coaches, the consultants, the physical therapists, like all of these people who have to force people.

There’s no, there’s no short cutting a rehab process. There’s no short cutting, you know, gaining strength or losing weight. Like while there are some like medical interventions or cheating, if you will, and like steroids or something like that, like you could do those things, but assuming you don’t want to go down that path, there’s always going to be a huge market for the people who want to do something that’s hard because they want the outcome.

They want to be healthy. They want to be fit. They want to be, have a good business, whatever. And so having said that, knowing that ultimately that’s the world I live in and I, am I concerned about, you know, AI kind of ruining this world or ruining my businesses and not necessarily. So here are the three things I think you should do if you’re worried about AI in any capacity.

The first thing is humans suck. And so you need to lean into that. Like humans actually suck. And I’m not saying you suck. I’m saying we all suck. I suck. Everybody sucks. We can’t 100% just do what we want. We know we need to do every single day without having to put in some sort of effort, a mental struggle, a battle.

insights on human limitations and the importance of personal support systems in business

We’re not robots. We’re not AI. We all suck a little bit, right? We all have a little bit of, you know, willpower. We have to muster discipline. We have to enforce to be able to do the things that we want to. So we need to lean into that as better human business entrepreneurs. That human problem is not going away until, um, AI really does get ingrained into the brain and maybe you can, there’s a switch that somebody can, can, can flip to where now you’re, you’re motivated, you’re ambitious, like you don’t have any problems with discipline.

But I think we’re really far away from that just because I think it’ll be a long time. Like it might not be a difficult thing for humans, the human race to do, to like find that area of our brain and to, to augment it with AI. But I think the human adoption rate of that is going to be, is going to take decades.

the critical role of personal branding in business and its significance in the AI era

So I think we’re pretty safe there. So humans suck. Lean into that. That’s the first thing. Like know that people need help. People actually need help from other people because I don’t care what AI chatbot you set up. If you don’t want to work out today or you don’t know what to do, like, yeah, you can ask chat GPT, but ultimately having some sort of community, a support group is going to go a long way.

People don’t just want this large language model to talk to them all day. Like that’s not going to really coach you through anything. You need a person to get you through tough times. You need a person to push you through these things that you don’t want to do. That’s the first thing. The second thing that you can do is you need to build your moat.

What is your moat? Moat is your personal brand. It is your competitive advantage. Okay. So content, I think the content game is kind of the, like kind of over the educational content game. Like whether you’re posting on Instagram or YouTube or whatever, you can’t just sit around and like rattle off information.

Like you just can’t do that. You can’t just be an educator. You have to start building your personal brand because people want to do business with people. Going back to like people need help from people. People want to do business with people. They don’t want to run up on some AI website, not know if this person exists.

They go to Instagram. There’s one post from seven years ago. These things don’t fly anymore. You have to start building some level of personal brand and it doesn’t, you’re not like trying to go viral. You’re not like having to post seven times a day. You don’t have to show your life in every meal and talk to your phone.

And that’s not what I mean by building a personal brand. I just mean consistently putting out content where you’re showcasing some of your personality, where you’re talking about your life to some degree. People don’t want necessarily a hundred percent of your vlog content where you’re just talking about things that happened that day.

But if you can provide helpful information, like I try to do on this podcast from over a decade and a half of, you know, online business experience. So I have the context, I have the educational side, I have the experience, but then there’s also the me side of like whether or not you resonate with what I’m saying.

personal insights on competing against AI through unique personal experiences and branding

You know, I’m Jerred Moon. I have been married for 15 years. I have three kids. I like to balance doing hard things with also being the best dad I can possibly be and also being the best entrepreneur I can, you know, highlighting those, telling my stories on my podcast, on social media, YouTube, Instagram helps people resonate with me and it’s not much different than things I’ve already been doing, but it’s putting those things out there because that’s my only real competitive advantage.

When I look at me versus AI, AI has more knowledge than I could ever, like ever have, right? Like they’re, it’s far smarter than I could ever be, but what does it not have? What doesn’t it have that I do have? Me, just Jerred Moon. It’s not Jerred Moon, right? Like so I have my personal experience. I have years and years of experience.

I have my personality. I have, you know, everything that I have is, is very unique to me. So I think a personal brand is becoming more and more of a, a must in the future of business. And I don’t see that going anywhere because another thing I think that comes with AI is the pushback against AI. Like AI, we’re going to embrace a lot of it, but I think the pendulum will swing a little bit too far and people will be like, I don’t want AI generated content.

I don’t want to see your Instagram video that was an AI bot. Like I want a real person and we’re probably gonna have to learn how to verify these things and there’s going to be a crazy part of it, but start building your personal brand now because you can always pivot with a personal brand. If you have a specific business that you’re trying to highlight with your personal brand, you can do that now.

You could pivot later and talk about something else, but start building your personal brand. You don’t have to go crazy with it, but that’s the second thing you could do. The third thing I would say is don’t be afraid to do work that doesn’t scale. This is like ultimately my goal for the future. Right now, all the businesses that I’m a part of, we are actively trying to scale, trying to make bigger, trying to make more operationally efficient, but at some point I will probably be done, right?

I will be done with trying to scale businesses. I don’t know when that will be, but I’m in love with the idea of just being good at something and not just being good at scaling businesses, like being good specifically at helping people solve problems, whether that’s in their business, whether that’s in fitness.

I love that idea, but that’s not going to scale, right? It doesn’t always scale, and I think being okay with that, learning how to charge a premium price and have fewer customers is going to be a safer route because I think if you do something that scales, because even the businesses I have that I’m scaling, I’m still not scaling in the massive amount of how these really large businesses with thousands of employees, that’s not the things I’m concerned about.

It’s just like the level of scale, at some point AI will be able to take over. If you’re trying to automate a process at a large scale, AI is going to either take that from you or augment, and we don’t know which one it is, and it could be different. I think that anybody could get blindsided. The place I don’t think you’re going to get blindsided are in most better human businesses.

If you have a community wrapped around what you’re doing, if you’re doing things face to face, in person, coaching, whatever, teaching, I think that goes a long way, but I think rattling off content or just trying to be educational or all these things, those don’t work. If you’re constantly trying to scale through any kind of automation, AI is either going to help you or hurt you in that process, so don’t be afraid to do work that doesn’t scale.

Don’t be afraid to get good at what you do for a living, right? I think that too many people are skipping out on that process because I’m producing a lot of content now, and I’ve been producing content for a long time, but it’s always been auxiliary to the thing, right? A lot of people, content becomes the thing, and I get it because it’s a lot of work.

Either if you’re doing it all yourself, it’s a shit ton of work. If you don’t have a team or can’t afford a team, it’s a lot of work for the team. It’s a lot to keep up with, but I do think that we’re missing out on just be good at what you do. There are so many doctors who are giving up practice so they can just post educational crap on Instagram, and it’s sad because I get it.

They want that lifestyle, and that’s awesome for them, but we’re missing out on these people who could be experts in a field. I think ultimately, don’t be afraid to do that. Don’t be afraid to do that in this better human business category because AI is not going to replace you. If you are the best strength and conditioning coach, you’re the best chiropractor, you’re the best physical therapist, those things aren’t going anywhere, and they’re not going anywhere for a very long time because you are helping another human being with what they ultimately suck at, which is doing the things they know they need to do.

emphasis on excelling in non-scalable, people-focused tasks and services as a strategy against AI disruption

That’s humanity. Whether that’s business coaching, whether that’s fitness coaching, it doesn’t matter. That’s always going to be there until, like I said, we get into our brains with artificial intelligence and learn how to turn that side of us off, but again, we’re really far away from that, so don’t be afraid to do work that doesn’t scale.

Don’t be afraid to get really good at what you do if you’re in this category of being a better human business. And that’s it. AI is coming. AI is a problem. It’s going to be a problem for a lot of people. A lot of people are going to be out of a job. A lot of people, even in the content creation world who don’t have a personal brand, who are just going to chat GPT and trying to like think about what’s viral, but they’re not injecting any of their personality.

They’re not actually building a brand. They’re not building engagement or community. They’re going to be in trouble too. Everyone’s going to be in trouble with AI, and I’m not trying to scare you. I’m trying to get most of the people who listen to this podcast to double down on what they already know.

Humans suck. Lean into it. Help them suck less. That’s coaching. That’s rehab. That’s everything. So that’s the first thing. The second thing, build your moat. Start building your personal brand. You don’t have to sell out and do all this crap you don’t want to do. Just start consistently posting content wherever you feel most comfortable and start building some of that personal brand so you’re there.

You have your uniqueness there that AI can’t take. And then the last thing, don’t be afraid to get really good at what you do. Master that. Don’t worry so much about scale all the time. Don’t be afraid to get really good at what you do. And no matter what happens with AI, try harder.