HOW SCHOOL WILL MAKE YOU BROKE

Go to school. Pick a subject. Study a course. Pick a career. Stick with that until the day you die.

Sound familiar?

We’ve always been told that this is the way to success. Pick one subject when you are 15 years old, then specialise in that one particular area for 40 years.

But the problem is, this doesn’t work anymore.

Do you remember miners a few hundred years ago? Or assembly line workers? They focussed on one thing, and then when technology advanced, they were easily replaced.

How many jobs have already been wiped out by AI? How many more careers are going to become extinct in the near future, as AI only gets better? This is the problem with school - it forces you to pick one particular subject area, and then tells you to specialise in that for the rest of your life.

You become a glorified search engine.

And with AI only getting better by the minute, being a search engine is not something you want to be. If you can learn a certain skill with a few YouTube tutorials, or become an “expert” in a certain area with a 3 year college degree, guess what - so can everyone else. You become replaceable.

So what is the solution?

Almost every hyper-successful entrepreneur and businessman agrees - from Dan Koe to Alex Hormozi. To become successful in this modern landscape of the business world, you need to become a specialist generalist.

Generalist in terms of the “subjects” or areas of interest you gain expertise in, but specialist in terms of the unique overlap of these interests targeted to one specific type of person. (if none of this makes sense right now, don’t worry - I’ll explain more later).

At school we go to a Maths lesson, then an English lesson, then a Science lesson. They are taught as completely separate lessons. But the truth of the world is that everything is connected.

The “philosopher” might drop everything else to specialise in philosophy. But one of the fundamental questions of philosophy is how to live a good life. So if the “philosopher” doesn’t know how to look after his health, build a business and sustain healthy relationships, all their “knowledge” is useless.

The “biologist” may find the most perfect method to optimise hormonal health. But if he doesn’t then know how to market it, if he doesn’t understand human psychology enough to be able to convince people to follow his method, his “expertise” is useless.

We can never win based on knowledge. Artificial Intelligence will always have the upper hand. If the only value you can provide is that you have memorised a bunch of facts, dates and equations, you will be replaced.

But what can’t be replaced is your unique overlap of interests, worldview and experience. Sure, 99% of people will likely choose the AI over your specific knowledge base. But there will always be that 1% that resonates with your unique combination of expertise and experience. That one specific audience, your dream customer, will be able to understand your way of explaining things so much more.

They will choose you over AI every time.

You’ve got to genuinely pursue your own interests. Don’t go learn some new “high earning skill” or business model because some guy on the internet told you to - because trust me bro, everyone else will do the same.

Go through your life, identify problems, fix them, then sell the solution. That is business summed up in a nutshell.

Your unique way of expressing the solution, of packaging and marketing it to that one specific type of person, is what will set you apart in a world full of NPCs hopping on the latest trend.

Hope this gave you something to think about.

Until next week,

Yvan