The greatest and most common lie told in society:

Employment is stable.

It doesn't take a genius to realize that AI and automation are about to replace most people's jobs.

Experts think AI will replace 300 million jobs by 2030.

Again, this isn't something new nor should it surprise you.

Technology has been replacing humans ever since the plow was invented.

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2 Million Years In One Calendar Year

January 1st — The Stone Age (2 million years ago).

Humans were primal and the concept of "work" had 1 goal: The survival of the tribe.

So all they did was hunt for food (enough for the day), find shelter, and procreate. They couldn't hunt for more food because they didn't have a way to store it.

November 19th — Fire (400,000 years ago).

We discovered fire and how to control it (to an extent). Now more people from the tribe survived because they didn't freeze to death during the winter.

Other than that, nothing else happened…

December 12th — The Agricultural Revolution (11,500 years ago).

This was one of the most important revolutions we had.

This meant humans had another way to find food (without risking our lives). This meant women were able to help as well (increasing production rate) by working on the farm. At the same time, the men went out to hunt (until the plow was invented and replaced women and the men who worked on the farm)—and since the farming process is seasonal, that meant tribes had to plan ahead of time (time management) and make sure plans were going according to plan otherwise there wasn't going to be anything to harvest.

Now, because most of the things that were grown were grains and seeds, it meant we could store them for a long time, tribes had a surplus of food—so they needed to find a way to defend themselves from other tribes who weren't doing so well and wanted to steal their food.

That's when the concept of a nation came about. Armies, diplomats, merchants, tax collectors, blacksmiths, craftsmen, slaves, peasants, and rulers became a thing (an organizational hierarchy was created to manage this new thing we now call a "nation"). This was also the time were social classes became a thing (but for now it was mostly just the Upper and Lower classes).

The survival rate of tribes is higher now because of the surplus of food, which meant we could now trade with other tribes (nations), and currencies had to be created.

December 26th and 27th — Republic of Rome & Roman Empire.

Democracy, rights, and representatives were a thing.

A Senate was established. 2 Consuls were elected every 2 years (basically having 2 presidents).

Shared power was the idea behind the Republic of Rome.

But then came Caesar who set the motion for an Empire.

His son Octavius, was the first emperor of Rome.

This led to a centralized government with one person having all the power (the emperor).

Tax systems, civil service, laws, engineering, math, technology, literature, art, and philosophy were common in both eras (thanks to all the technological developments that had freed up people's time).

December 30th — The Medieval Ages (1,500 years ago).

The Roman Empire fell.

Small nations emerged in the West.

Science didn't advance a lot in Europe (compared to the East).

Plagues, famine, and war ruled Europe for 1,000.

Royalty and nobles oppressed peasants.

The more land you had, meant you had more power.

Your life quality is determined from birth.

December 31st — The Renaissance (600 years ago).

Science was back.

Da Vinci and Michelangelo are some of the most famous people from this time.

Intellects talked collaborated, and debated each other.

The printing press was invented, and this meant big ideas were being spread and accessible to more people.

This lead to the next major event.

11:05 p.m. December 31st — The Industrial Age (300 years ago).

Because we could replicate knowledge, business owners wanted to do it on a massive scale now.

Factories became a thing and business owners started obsessing with making more money so they created 9-5 work days (you can thank Henry Ford for that).

The Middle Class was officially a thing now.

Factory workers were paid pennies. Their jobs were monotone. Repeating the same tasks every day to minimize human error and maximize profits for the shareholders.

Now, because factory owners wanted good workers (those who didn't make mistakes), they needed a solution.

So they created a factory but for kids—schools.

Schools had 1 job: To produce good factory workers when they became adults.

Specializing in a specific job made sense.

11:50 p.m. December 31st — The Information Age.

This is what we're living through right now.

The internet is born.

5.52 billion people are on social media.

Ideas are being spread faster than what a human can process—so AI and automation are now used to process all the data that is being created.

Why AI Will Replace Most Jobs

Now, why did I bring all of this up?

I wanted to show you, that since the plow was invented, humans haven't done anything to future-proof themselves from being replaced by technology.

Our concept of being "irreplaceable" was to specialize even further.

But obviously, this hasn't worked out because AI and automation are now replacing software engineers (the people who created AI and automation and thought they would be irreplaceable).

Think about it.

Being a specialist means being a one-trick pony, only doing one thing over and over again—and what do AI and automation try to replace?

Exactly, repeatable tasks—aka, a one-trick pony.

So what should you do? Specialize even further and hope that AI can't do it?

Nope, because it's only a matter of a few months (or weeks) before AI can learn what you're doing and pass it.

Should you learn a different skill?

No, if you can learn something, that means AI can learn faster (and become better than you).

The Modern Renaissance

Back to the history lesson, the first Renaissance happened after the Medieval Ages.

It was the rebirth of great ideas, culture, and social change.

This is what's happening right now.

Before 2020 people buried their heads in the sand and went to school to become software engineers.

When they graduated they were rewarded handsomely, with $200k starting positions, remote work, and benefits that I can’t even name.

But once COVID happened, layoffs followed.

Since 2020 till now, 558,167 tech employees have been fired from their jobs.

I'm talking about those who went to university thinking they'd be irreplaceable because they're the ones who were behind algorithms, automation, and AI—but now they're the most unemployed graduates (their employment rate is worse than art majors).

The thing is, most people still don't want to believe that AI will replace them.

Because we've been programmed since we were kids that if you study hard, and focus on your work, you will be rewarded.

But this programming only worked during the Industrial Age, not the Information Age.

The worst part is when you try to change (for the better), people try their best to drag you down to their level—because it's comforting for them to see that they're not the only ones struggling.

However, I'm starting to see hope for the future.

After COVID people started catching on to this. They know that a job isn't as secure (or appealing) as it once was.

They know that money isn't the only way to become wealthy.

Wealth, true wealth, is made up of 4 categories:

• Time: You can work whenever you want without having to worry or stress about work.

• Location: You choose where you want to live and where to work.

• Financial: You can buy the things you want (including health).

• Relationships: Having people who care about you.

In the past, the internet and automation weren't a thing (that meant being with time and location wasn't possible), so being wealthy meant having a lot of money and a loving family.

There are 2 things I noticed that overlap from the first Renaissance and the modern Renaissance.

1) Becoming a Polymath Makes You Irreplaceable

A huge source of my inspiration is Da Vinci.

The guy was a scientist, doctor, engineer, philosopher, architect, sculptor, and who happened to be a great artist.

In times of war, he was hired by kings and rulers to build war weapons.

In times of peace, he was hired by the church to paint.

In his free time, he walked in nature, contemplated life, studied philosophy, and dissected the human body to understand how the human connected with nature (this helped him to paint and sculpt later on).

So when the head of the Medici family (the family that ruled Florence) was publicly assassinated, the French King hired Da Vinci and gave him the title Premier Painter and Engineer and Architect of the King.

It was in France that he painted the Mona Lisa.

Now, why did I bring up Da Vinci for this?

Because he was a prime example that having multiple interests allows you to thrive in life (no matter the conditions).

You see my friend, Da Vinci never saw people as his rivals. He was obsessed with perfection with how God worked.

So he studied everything he could and saw how he could apply it himself.

Think of being a polymath as an investor.

As a smart investor, you don't want to put all of your money in one basket and hope to hit the jackpot. If it fails, then all of your money is gone.

Instead, it's much better to put your money in different stocks and increase your chances of succeeding.

This is why when you're learning something new, like a skill, your goal isn't to become the best at learning that skill.

Because being the best at something (i.e. being in the top 1%) is almost impossible—just look around—everyone wants to be an F1 driver or an NBA player, but only a handful make it.

To make this more tangible, your goal is to be in the top 25% of people in that skill and move on to a different thing—it only takes you 6-12 months to be in the top 25% (the process of becoming someone valuable takes time).

But I don't want to think to become a polymath you need to "learn" or "study". Because when you see it from this lens, AI comes back into the picture.

Whatever you can learn, AI can learn it faster.

Another thing about being in the top 1% of a skill, is it means you're a tool, you're so deep in one area that you can't see the bigger picture anymore—you need someone who has a wider perspective (a polymath) to guide you and tell you what to do.

This is why you see so many smart people always working for someone who’s less intelligent than them.

They spent all their time and effort in becoming the best in one area, they forgot to improve their other skill sets, and now they’re dependent on someone to give them a job.

Here's the process of becoming a polymath:

• Identify a goal: Quitting your job, building a business, launching a product, getting fit, finding a partner

• Start unprepared: Most people get stuck in tutorial hell because they think they need everything planned before they take the first step. But this means you're learning things you don't need or won't use. So the only way you make progress, fast progress, is to start with what you know, hit a roadblock, research, and repeat the process.

• Chase your curiosity: Let your experience guide you to where you should be going and learning. Not every goal you have will be something you want later on (because now you're really thinking for yourself about what you want, not what society told you you should want).

These will eventually all intersect and get gobbled up together.

When I started my self-improvement journey, I started with fitness.

But that slowly turned into experimenting with diets, sleep, running, workout splits, and new lifestyle changes.

Before I knew it I was writing online and helping people become better—at first, it was through fitness, now it's through building a life that makes you excited to wake up every day to work (that's a mix between writing online and business).

So once you become in the top 25%, move on to work on a new project.

Slowly, you'll start building a portfolio of projects that forced you to learn skills (which made you a high-value person).

2) Niching Down is Stupid

A piece of advice I hate hearing: "The riches are in the niches."

You're human. You have multiple interests.

You're interested in psychology, human behavior (why humans do certain things), history, art, fitness, and almost everything else in life.

You don't just think about the same thing over and over again.

You have multiple thoughts and things you want to explore and experiment with.

If you only talk about one thing your audience will get bored of you.

People want to follow people, not glorified search engines.

Look at the people you follow. Do they only talk about one thing all the time?

Or are they talking about what they're reading, seeing, experimenting with, and sharing their opinions, beliefs, lessons, and knowledge and presenting it in the form of content that helps you move forward in your life?

Exploring new interests is how you stay creative, develop a wider perspective in life, and gain new experiences that otherwise you wouldn't have had.

Your unique combination of interests, skills, and experiences is what allows you to identify and solve problems in a unique way (and create a Niche Of One—The Niche of You).

How To Thrive As A Polymath—Creators Are The New Polymaths

The first thing you need to realize is that you can't box yourself in a space that puts a label on you.

It should be hard for others to say who you are.

When there's a label on you it's easy for others to box you in. Then it becomes part of your identity, now it's hard for you to start something new—because it means you need to go into the unknown, cut people out from your life, and start from scratch again.

As I said, you're now in the modern renaissance.

Social media is the new Florence and Milan.

Creators are the new polymaths.

They're the new philosophers, entrepreneurs, poets, artists, writers.

Value creators are the new educational system.

They're the students and teachers at the same time.

Your grades are determined by how well you build your projects and their impact on people's lives.

Being a creator means taking your values, beliefs, and perspectives you have and expressing them in the digital world (instead of being a bench warmer, waiting for others to tell you what to do, you're taking matters into your own hands).

Set goals for yourself. Creating projects to achieve them. Identifying problems. Developing the skills needed to solve them. Creating a repeatable process for others to follow (which you can sell and get paid for improving your life).

Since you're following me, this tells me you're also following other creators who are helping you make your life better by talking about ideas, beliefs, and perspectives that you haven't heard of before.

If you're not, then you should start.

Your attention is already going somewhere, you might as well fuel it to something that helps you build what you believe in (and want to become).

Build an echo chamber that helps you thrive and build the life you want, not drown and numb yourself with cheap pleasures hoping things will turn out the way you want.

I guarantee you, your life will start to turn for the better and you'll be ahead of everyone.

"Ok, but how do I start to make a living as a creator?"

Building An Audience—The Most Valuable Skill You Can Learn

As I said, I hate the idea of "niching down" and attracting a targeted audience..

It boxes you in and slowly suffocates you.

Writing about Tips & Tricks and How To's quickly gets boring—there's only so much you can talk about a specific niche (not to mention ChatGPT can pump this type of content faster and better than you can in a matter of seconds).

This was one of the reasons why I struggled so much with creative blocks.

It was because I was forcing myself to only see the world is a specific lens (which is limited).

Now, I'm a fan of helping as many people as I can achieve big goals and using whatever topic, idea, belief, story, or skill I'm interested in to help them achieve it.

"But why is having an audience so important?"

Having an audience is a business cheat code.

When you have an audience you can start a clothing brand without relying on paid ads.

When you have an audience you can start a music career without selling your soul to music labels.

When you have an audience you start a company without having to sell pieces of it to investors and venture capital.

The reality is, we live in the attention economy.

The more attention you have on you (or your brand), the easier business becomes.

If you take a step back and observe, you'll notice that everyone is out to get your attention. They want you to do something that benefits them.

So the first step to getting what you want is getting people's attention.

There are 2 main ways you can get people's attention.

1) Paid Ads: I'm not a fan of this method for many reasons. First, it has a high barrier to entry, you need to be skilled at marketing and copywriting. Second, you need an established business, which means having a validated offer (so you can start making money), knowing your audience, nailing down your messaging and A/B constantly to keep iterating on what's working, and a lot of money to keep paying for people's attention.

2) Building An Audience: As you can tell, I'm a fan of this method way more. It has a low barrier to entry, you don't need money to post content on social media, and you don't need to have everything figured out before you start. All you need is an internet connection, a few big ideas that you believe in, and the skill to make your ideas interesting and that attracts people to you. This is what I'll be teaching in The Modern Creator.

How the plan looks like:

• Set a goal for yourself: Your role as a value creator — someone who's focused on improving their mind, body, relationship, and financial standing and their audience's

• Connect The Dots: What are topics you need to talk about to help people achieve the goal? These can be objections, beliefs, potential problems, skills, ideas, and interests.

• Make Your Interests Interesting: The biggest problem I see people do when doing this method is they suck at communicating the benefits and importance of their goals. People don't care about going to the gym, they care about how going to the gym will help them feel confident about themselves and be in a relationship.

For me, I have 2 big goals I'm helping people achieve:

1) Finding meaning in their lives

2) Financial Freedom

But I talk about history, writing, self-improvement, human potential, creativity, and psychology to help people get there.

For you, it could be different. I can't tell you what goals you should have.

But you probably already know what you should be doing—so start with that.

Then comes the second step.

Amplifying Your Singal

Most creators struggle to start because they don't know what to talk about.

1) Just start. You're still a beginner, you have little to no following, which means you have the freedom to try new things, fail, fail hard, and no one is noticing you. You'll quickly learn that 1 failed post isn't the end of the world—every failed post is just a data point that you can leverage later on.

2) Make noise. A lot of it. Write about every idea you have. Write about the goals you're trying to achieve. Write about the books you're reading. Write about everything that's on your mind. Make social media your public journal. Then let your audience decide what's valuable. Double down on it and see where it leads you.

And if you end up not liking it?

Pivot.

Find something else to do.

But when you find something you enjoy the signal?

Amplify your signal. Do more of it. Crank the dial all the way up.

You're building a creator business because you want to be free, not trapped, and be told what to do (this time instead of your boss, it's your audience).

Every week review your content, see what did well and what didn't.

Stop doing what didn't do well, and do more of what's doing well.

Your audience is telling you what you should be doing, you just need to listen to the signal.

Build Authority Assets

The internet made degrees worthless.

Most people who follow the traditional path claim they have 10 years of experience, but what they actually have is 1 year of experience repeated for 10 years.

But on the internet, you can have 10 years’ worth of experience in 1.

How?

By building projects—authority assets.

From the goals you've been chasing, you must've stumbled on a few problems and solved them.

Create a product (or blog posts like this one) for others to use and solve the same problems you've solved so they can move to the next stage of achieving the same goal you have.

You'll see how building a product forces you to truly understand what you've been doing and how you're doing, explain it well so others can find value in it, learn how to write landing pages, create a marketing strategy, launch a product, write sales emails, and much much more.

Not to mention the perceived authority you'll have because of all the products you have.

When people see you have a range of products (or offers), they automatically assume you know a lot.

Repeat The Process Until You're Getting Paid To Do What You Love

I don't want you to see being a creator as a job.

I want you to see it as a lifestyle.

A lifestyle where you're constantly improving your mind, body, relationships, and finances and you're just helping others get to where you are faster.

(even if you're a beginner, there's someone who still looks up to you and could learn from you).

Now, if you felt overwhelmed by the process of building an audience still think "I don't know how to do it or where to start".

You might wanna join 14 other creators who are on the waitlist, there I break this all down into actionable steps and help you make 6 months of progress in 1 month or less (and this is a promise I'm confident in making because my clients have seen better results). Just click here and you’ll be added to the waitlist.

And that my friend, is how you become an irreplaceable polymath in the digital world and make a living.

Thank you for reading and enjoy your weekend.

:)

— Hussain