Profitable Ventures in AI's Ecosystem

0:00What's up everybody, it's Brettski and America is turning 250. And I can't think of a better way to celebrate that than playing on an American-owned social casino, SpinQuest.com. With all of your favorite games, live craps, bubble craps, live blackjack, there's no better place to play for free and win real cash prizes. SpinQuest.com. SpinQuest is a free-to-play social casino. Void where prohibited. Visit SpinQuest.com for more details. You're listening to a podcast right now. driving, working out, walking the dog. If you're into podcasts, chances are you have something to say too. With rss.com, starting your own podcast is free and easy.

0:42Upload an episode and we distribute it to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and more. Track your listeners, see where they're from, and start earning from ads just like this. If you've been thinking about starting a podcast, this is your sign. Start your new podcast for free today at rss.com. There was a really interesting article that recently came out on TechCrunch called The Haves and the Have-Nots of the AI Gold Rush. And basically it's covering who's making money, who's selling the picks and the shovels versus where the money is going in this industry. And I think this is interesting because we're kind of at this weird point.

1:19There's a really big news thing that happened this week where I think Eric Schmidt, famous technologist, I believe from Google, right? He was one of the the founders of Google or am I saying that wrong? Well, I'll correct myself in a second. If it wasn't, he was giving a big speech at a university. Is it like a commencement address? And he kept like bringing up, I watched all these clips. He kept bringing up how AI was like, all of these students were going to need to use AI to help them in their career and how they were going to help build AI, whatever. He was talking about all this AI stuff, trying to make it really applicable to students.

1:50Every time he mentioned AI, the entire auditorium was loudly booing him. He was getting super red in the face. He was super embarrassed. Obviously like he wrote this whole speech and he wasn't going to change it, but like it was just so awkward for him and they were completely roasting him and he's a billionaire. So I'm sure he's used to everyone like just loving everything he says. Anyways, it's at an interesting point where there is, I think a feeling from a lot of people, especially, well, I'll tell you why it's happening, but there's an interesting feeling from a lot of people that AI did have this negative sentiment towards AI.

2:18AI is less popular than at any time ever before the term AI, just from the general public, they don't like it because a lot of them feel like it's something that's going to come replace them or take their job. And we're not helping the fact that every single day there's a new major company, like literally every single day there's a new major company. I could pull up today's. Today's was standard charter is going to cut over 7 ,000 jobs and lean on AI to replace roles. Okay. That's for a big bank in the UK, but it was like, it's like Coinbase and it's like cloud flare. And it's like last week and like, and then Amazon was a few weeks ago.

2:53Like it's everyone and everyone's like, we're gonna cut all these jobs. And they're like, we're gonna use AI to replace people or we're going to take them. Sometimes they're like, it's not because AI is replacing people. We're just gonna take that money and we're gonna invest it into AI. But everyone's blaming layoffs on AI, whether it's to make more AI investments or because they're using AI to replace people or for a hundred different reasons. The real problem with a lot of this, I'm not sure what standard charters issue is, but most of the other cuts I've seen the last week have all actually come down to the cause of it is because people overhired during COVID and they basically, the unit economics didn't make sense.

3:28Their stocks are slipping. Like the people, they have way too many people, right? But they like to blame it on AI. Like, hey, we're so much more profitable. We're hiring people because of AI because then it doesn't make them look dumb. It's like, it's an industry change. It's an economic change, not like, oh, we made a poor choice. So anyways, that is coming down to a lot of negative sentiment. And a lot of people are now thinking about, like who's actually making money in all of this. So that's kind of the background on all of this. Before we get into this specific article though, I did want to mention every single week, Jamie and I record a bonus piece of content over on our school community.

4:01This week, I break down how I was able to get 100 ,000 impressions from a LinkedIn post and able to get 7 ,000 people to search Google for AI Box, my website, and end up there from a viral LinkedIn post, a viral Reddit post, and a viral LinkedIn comment. The strategy, how I used AI to do a lot of this because I had to reply to like 150 comments on my post, used AI to do that. I break down all the strategies there and how I was able to get so many impressions and so much traffic to my website. On the AI Hustle School community, if you want to check it out, it's$19 a month, and you get access to every single week, we break down the tools, strategies, techniques we're using, and an exclusive video every single week.

4:42So go check it out. There's a link in the description to the AI House of School community. All right, Jamie, tell me what is interesting to you about the AI haves and have nots happening right now. Yes. So there's a guy named Didi Das, not Adidas, but Didi Das. He's a partner at Menlo Ventures, which is a venture capital firm. He basically made this back of a napkin calculation and he projected that in Silicon Valley, there's around 10 ,000 people, different founders and employees that have hit retirement wealth above$20 million. So they're working at these companies, they're getting paid in stock, things like that.

5:22The stock goes up. So now their net worth is approaching$20 million, which is crazy. So there's around 10 ,000, it's his estimate of people like that. But then at the same time in Silicon Valley, there is thousands of layoffs because of AI and vibe coding, all that kind of stuff. So there's really just a big change here. There's lots of people who are losing big time. Lots of people are gaining big time. And there's been lots of talk of this kind of economic cliff of when it comes to the stock market where all these companies, their duty to the shareholders is to increase profits. And one way they can do that is by laying people off.

6:06Well, initially that works, but then if you have a bunch of laid off people with no jobs, they're not going to spend money and then it's going to come crashing down. So there's a lot of concern about this. I think all valid to be honest, but what do we do with this information? You listen to this podcast, you're interested in making money using AI. What do we do here? And I think the answer is, even though there's a lot of this doom and gloom type news, there's also more opportunity than ever for you listening to this to actually make money using AI and get ahead in some of these areas. So I have a couple of thoughts on that.

6:48One is, are you going to be selling a shovel to other people who are trying to use AI? That's like the higher up type people who are, let's say you're building some kind of AI tool, AI app that helps other businesses like a business to business software, or are you using AI to make your own business more efficient? Jayden, what are your thoughts to the people who are listening to this right now, what should they be doing? Yeah, I think this is fascinating. The number one thing I think that is important, no matter what direction you should be taking is experimenting with and becoming an expert of AI in your specific domain or niche.

7:31We talk about a lot on the school community about becoming an AI consultant. What's interesting is there's a lot of these companies that are doing layoffs, but I also know people that are consultants for a lot of these AI companies or a lot of, sorry, just regular companies, some of them doing layoffs and what are they still investing in? I've even spoke to some personally. They're like, look, you know, our stock price is down. I talked to a company recently, their stock price is down like 40 % in the last 12 months. They're like, we had to do a lot of layoffs, but they look to AI as the solution out of maybe like a drawback for them.

8:07And so they're like, we basically have an unlimited budget to spend on AI because it's what we believe will take our company, like turn our company around. But they pay people to help them with this kind of transformation. I know people that have signed million-dollar consulting contracts to some of these firms. I just spoke to someone a little while ago that they signed a million-dollar consulting contract to help a firm to do a bunch of trainings and do a bunch of things inside of their organization to help them with AI. So they're spending money. It's just the way that this money is being spent and the places are shifting.

8:44And I think it puts a bad taste in a lot of people's mouth. Didi, his post over on X, he had a point that I did think was interesting, which is he said, the mid to late managers feel paralyzed. Many families don't feel like they have the energy to network or just start a company. Middle management is being hollowed out in many companies. And I do think that's true. I think middle management is being hollowed out. It's being shifted. Things that AI can do, people are getting AI to do, but the companies aren't spending less money is what I think is the important thing here. And when a lot of people think about AI, they're like, they think, oh, it's kind of like a net loss.

9:19Like we're, you know, you're laying off, for example, the big bank today, standard charter, that's laying off 7 ,000 people. They're like, okay, standard charter is laying off 7 ,000 people. They're just going to spend that much less money, but they're not. They're actually going to probably spend a very similar amount. Most of these companies have have their budgets have been set for years. They're going to spend a very similar amount of money. They're just moving where the money is being spent. And so I think it's a really important question of where is the money being spent and how do you put yourself in a position to take that?

9:46And if you're, maybe you were laid off or maybe you're middle management or maybe you're concerned about your job, these are the things I would say start preparing for, which is probably get a consulting side hustle or prepare for that where you can help consult and move companies that are doing a lot of this work and also just become an expert in your industry. If you have to move jobs or if you're gonna move jobs or even if you're starting a company doing that, make sure that you know the tools that can help your job function succeed the most, the AI tools, how you can scale that up and how you can accelerate it.

10:16So I think a lot of it is like in the past, companies would pay for like continuing education or other things. I think really you have to be the one that takes control of what you're learning and what you're experimenting with and what you're doing. And the people that invest in themselves right now, I think, to basically upskill yourself inside your industry and understand what AI tools are working best inside your industry are going to be the people that are the best off in all situations. So that's kind of my advice that I give to people. And I think if you're listening to this podcast, you're already that person probably.

10:48You're like, I'm preaching to the choir. You guys are already playing with every AI tool and figuring out how to use it. You're already working on AI side hustles. I think all of these things are really important though. I mean, I think there's another element too that I just thought of, and that's like self-awareness in your own job. Like think about the job you do if you're not a business owner from day to day. And is that something, is it something that can be replaced or greatly reduced by AI? If so, you should try to start using AI now and then instead of just sitting back and relaxing at work, use that time to increase your productivity to show whoever's above you that you and maybe don't.

11:34I don't even think you would have to hide the fact that you're using AI. I think that it would actually be to your benefit to let your boss know that that's why you're able to accomplish much more. and I think honestly that would lead to a potential promotion or even consulting within your own company. I think if you can use some of these tools to increase your productivity at your current job, your chances of getting laid off in the future would be a lot less. That would be my thoughts. 100%. So it's an interesting time, but I do think there's a lot of picks and shovels being sold. I think there's a lot of incredible opportunities coming up.

12:12So sometimes that can be discouraging. I mean, even for myself, I mean, like full disclosure, I started a company called AI box. We're a no code AI and app builder and marketplace. We're in the process of doing, I don't want to say like a pivot, but we're definitely shifting. When we first started, we were the only people doing this today. Google actually has a product called Google Opal, which is basically an exact clone of our app builder that we have. And it feels like a lot of a lot of functionality. I think I speak for many, many software people and startups, A lot of functionality, Anthropic is rolling out with their Anthropic for small business and Anthropic for finance and Anthropic for law.

12:49I mean, you saw the stock price of LexisNexis, a huge law firm. I have a friend that works there and it cratered when Anthropic came out with Anthropic for law. So like, it feels like a lot of these big firms are also just like kind of eating the whole market. So it can feel discouraging. There's so many opportunities. I would just say like, you don't give up. You'll find something incredible to do. you'll find something to fall back on and make sure that you're, I mean, staying on top of everything that's everything that is coming out and is available. And that's how you're going to be able to succeed.

13:20Winners never quit and quitters never win. I don't know if that was the point of this podcast. That's a great way to close it off. Thanks, Jaden. Hey, if you guys, if you guys appreciated this episode or got any value out of it, we would love if you gave us a rating or review wherever you're listening. That helps us out a lot. And then also check out the the AI hustle school community, we really feel like there's a lot of value there and that you would really, we'd love to have you be a part of it. So thanks for listening and we'll see you next time. What's going on, everyone? It's Bluff here and we're driving through the States in the Bluffmobile.

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14:28Upload an episode and we distribute it to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and more. Track your listeners, see where they're from, and start earning from ads just like this. If you've been thinking about starting a podcast, this is your sign. Start your new podcast for free today at rss.com.