How to get rich in the AI shift: offense over defense

Executive overview

AI is eliminating jobs in three ways: one person replacing five, entire departments removed, whole business categories made obsolete. Most people respond by defending their current role. The winners disrupt themselves first — replacing their own workflows with AI before someone else does.

Wealth in the AI era goes to those who sell outcomes AI made possible, not tools AI made cheap.

Three categories of AI replacement

• One AI-enabled person outproduces five who aren't — those five are gone
• Entire departments (support, bookkeeping, content) now run without humans in the loop
• Whole business categories eliminated: translation agencies, basic tax prep, commodity software

Replace yourself before someone else does

• Write down every workflow in a typical week — not your role, the actual tasks
• For each item, ask: would I do this the same way if starting from zero today?
• Replace anything AI can handle first; the goal is to only do what AI can't
• Hard for computers, easy for humans: negotiation, tone, jokes, nuance, human relationships
• Competing against someone with 10× more AI experience — figure out how they'd beat you, then do that first

Sell impossible outcomes, not AI tools

• AI tools (chatbots, assistants, calling tools) will be commoditised within 18 months
• The real opportunity: deliver results that couldn't exist before AI — too complex, too costly, or technically infeasible
• Find a painful problem (hair-on-fire urgent), study how current solutions fall short, then use AI to do it faster and cheaper
• Pre-sell before building: if someone pays, build it; if not, you saved months of wasted work
• Two people, two weeks: a million dollars in run rate — because they built something previously impossible

Sell to agents, not just people

• AI agents are already making purchasing decisions autonomously, based on budget and goals
• Coinbase built agentic wallets — accounts controlled by AI, not humans
• McKinsey projects the agent economy will reach $3–5 trillion by 2030
• Agents can't buy from vague "contact us for a quote" sites — they need clear, structured offers
• Optimise for agents: spell out what you do, what it costs, what clients get, how fast
• Plain structured text beats animations — agents don't care about design, only clarity