Transcription
AI is going to replace millions of jobs, but it doesn't have to replace you. That's what Simon Synynic, bestselling author and one of the most influential minds in modern business, told me when we sat down to talk about how to survive and win in an AI dominated world. The way you work, think, and create is about to be tested like never before. And in the next few minutes, Simon reveals exactly how to stay ahead.
300 million people are going to lose their job in the next 10 years, according to Goldman Sachs. And AI is about to strip away even the most intellectual jobs. So, what do you see in the future for young people that are listening today that are perhaps hearing headlines like that from big, big institutions like Goldman Sachs? What, what's your, your quick note?
"It's, it's, um, half accurate."
Sure, 300 million people might lose their jobs, but what are the new jobs that they're going to get? You know, tech people are very fond of telling us that 80% of jobs today didn't exist, you know, whatever it was, 20 or 30 years ago. So, 20 or 30 years ago, we could have predicted millions of jobs being lost. And it's not like there's 300 million people who are just sort of walking around aimless. New jobs emerge because the technology changed. What we can't do is predict what that new job will be. I mean, just a few years ago, people saying the future is, you could be a prompter. Well, that went away real quick. Yeah. Turns out it doesn't matter because the machine's getting smarter and, you know, you don't have to be that skilled a prompter to get a pretty good answer. So, it's half right, but it's missing, um, any, any knowledge of what will be.
I also think it's, you know, I mean, this is the cynical in me. I can't help myself. You know, if we go back to like the '70s, maybe early '80s, and we started to see robotics show up in factories, you know, it was factory workers who went, "You're going to take away our jobs. We're going to lose our jobs." And sort of the ruling classes and, you know, bankers said, "It's the future, baby. Reskill." Well, the pendulum, you know, it's swung. You know, now the bankers...
Because, because your plumber really is not threatened by AI. The baggage handler at the airport doesn't care about AI at all. And it's now largely affecting knowledge work, not, not the blue-collar work. Even creative work. You know, and so, you know, it's the future, baby.
I had a conversation with somebody from the IRS a bunch of years ago and he said, he said to me, I mean, when we digitized taxes, we got rid of all the accountants and the machine, you know, the machine could then read the taxes and the tax forms. Do you know how much money we saved because there was big predictions about how much money they were going to save by digitizing taxes? The answer is zero. Because all the money they saved on accountants, they had to build up their IT department. We're already starting to see, you know, data centers. You know, we're forgetting that people do matter in the system, you know, and the rise of data centers, it won't be managed by robots. There'll be people there. Now, will there be thousands of people? Probably not. But like, there's going to be new jobs. And the only thing is, we can predict what jobs might be lost, but we can't predict what jobs will be made.
It's also an opportunity for entrepreneurship. Um, you know, which is where you and I like to live. You know, good entrepreneurs solve problems for themselves or the people they love. And if those solutions work, that's the foundation for business. Those are the best businesses. And the best businesses are the people are passionate for it because it really, really worked and it really, really helped and it really, really solved a problem. The worst businesses are when somebody reads an article in a magazine and thinks, "Oh, there's a market opportunity." Because nobody has a passion for something you read in a magazine. You know, personal experience is usually what the best experiences are. It's definitely my case. It's definitely your case. And probably all the best entrepreneurs, from stupid things to sophisticated things. You know, the guy who starts a sandwich company because he couldn't get a sandwich he liked. You know, it's, it's all the, it's the same story.
So, I mean, to use that analogy, my, my, my guess would be instead of, "I can't get the sandwich I like," it's going to be, "I can't get the job I like, so I created one for myself."
Yeah. "I can't get the job I like, my friends." Um, and so we started something to fill a gap of something that's missing in the market, which, by the way, there's many things missing in the market. You know, and markets change and cultures change and tastes change and politics change and things that we like to do, we know like to do, we no longer like to do, and people are exploring new things. The world is constantly moving. And so Goldman Sachs is half right. I'm sure their prediction is somewhat right. There's usually a period, like with any, with any change, there's going to be a period where where the damage is the most, like when you're in the period of transition, right? And this is true in, in a small business when you do any kind of restructure or change or change of your strategy in a small business. It freaking sucks for a short period of time and the metrics always go down. Whenever there's change, metrics always go down in the short term, but they're not permanent. They never are ever.
Just by sheer age, there will be some people who lose their job and then will age out of the ability to rejoin the new economy. It's absolutely going to happen and it sucks and we'll find, we'll do our best to make the, um, the, the transition they have to go through as, as good and as positive as possible. But there's no avoiding, there's no avoiding some, some pain as, as markets transition. And sometimes we do this ourselves. Companies make changes in, in strategy and sometimes we don't have a choice. New technologies will change it. You know, the last one that we all went through together was the internet. The rise of the internet. It's the death of bricks and mortar. It didn't happen, but it, it changed a lot of jobs. It eliminated a lot of jobs and it created a lot of new jobs. I think the mistake is all the predictions.
Do you think, I mean, people listening now, this is either going to date really well or date really badly.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
So, um, and look, and I'm the first to admit that if you're the one who's looking at the potential of having redundancy, yeah, this lovely, beautiful, rational conversation we're having is completely irrelevant because it's deeply emotional but deeply scary.
First of all, I'm normally the optimist. So, just for the sake of this conversation, I'm going to play the pessimist just for a second just to dig into your brain and teach the audience what you think the future looks like.
So, coming out of university at the moment, 54% of kids can't get a job coming out of university. And this, this number is getting worse. So, it used to be, you know, get a job in university and you'll, you know, you'll be fine. You, you'll get a job. That, that, that is a scary stat to be looking at because, and, and the argument is, well, no, everyone's done a hiring freeze. This is a fact. All these companies, again, Goldman Sachs, maybe they're preparing their own brand for a bit of a tarnish, but they used to hire all these people, but now they're like, "Well, we've got AI doing trading. We've got AI doing all the admin. We don't need someone standing in a room, uh, you know, doing paperwork anymore." You know, oh my god, fewer bankers. Just, oh my god.
Yeah. Was that a bad thing? I mean, being a pessimist for a second. And a lot of my audience listening, they are scared. So I'd love to talk positively, but let's just look at the numbers. Person who delivered my food this morning, my Cardo delivery driver in England is called Cardo, the food delivery, main food delivery company. He's going to lose his job in the next five years. That van is going to be automated. I've seen the prototype and he won't have a job, per se. So, but no one's told him because they need him to deliver food right until the day they say, "Bertie, the car has taken over your jobs." I, I feel like we're not preparing the workforce. And if you look at things like the Rust Belt in America, as much as we can say, yeah, sure, look, you know, these jobs were replaced. People in the Rust Belt voted for Trump, not being political, but they voted for like, "Oh god, we got left behind by technology. We hate Silicon Valley," because they didn't get reskilled, because they didn't find a new place in, in the new world, they didn't prosper from this new world that we're talking about. So how do we reconcile that with today's problem?
The entrepreneurial adventure is an adventure of need, exhaustion, necessity, very often. Most of us, myself included, can only imagine the world as we know it. And we generally solve problems the way we always solve them because that's always worked. There's a reason a lot of founders are young. They're unencumbered, right? That doesn't mean that older people can't start businesses. Of course, that's not. I see this in leadership where somebody has spent 20, 30 years being a shitty, awful leader, but they keep getting promoted.
And it doesn't matter how many books they read or how much, how many TED talks somebody sends them, even if they have doubt, they're not going to change because it keeps working. So why would they change? You know, the people who defend the status quo, the people who benefit from the status quo, not because they're bad people, it's because that's beneficial, right? Or there's fear of, of, of changing the whole strategy.
Now, I've got too much on the line now. I've got a mortgage, you know.
So, I think this is, this sort of goes into sort of the area that I am now fascinated by, which is relationships and friendships. I think the way to solve this is not to sit in a room with your friends railing against the future and trying to stop the future. I'll take New York City because that's where I lived, right? When Uber showed up, which is the taxi companies, all the tech, all the taxi guys wanted to stop Uber. And what they didn't understand is you can have an app to call a taxi. Like, the app is nothing.
Yeah. The reason that, now, it took a long time for me to do an app, but the point is, you, you can, you, the reason I took an Uber and not a yellow cab was because the Uber was clean, the driver was nice, and I had a reasonably pleasant experience getting from A to B. When I got in the back of a yellow cab, it was hot and cramped and awful. But calling it and price were not factors. It was just quality of, of ride. This was good old-fashioned competition. When you have a monopoly and you can offer a shitty product and then something better comes along, you can't complain that something's better come along that comes along and try and shut it down. You have to make your product better. And I think this is where good entrepreneurs and good business owners know that the game of business is not starting it. It is never ending. It's like health. It's like, you can't just get into shape once and that's it. You can watch TV for the rest of your life. It's an ongoing slog. And you have highs and you're like, "This is the easiest thing I've ever done." And you have lows, you're like, "I don't think I can do this." That goes on forever. Like a great day at the gym going, "Oh my god, I love this." And the worst day at the gym going, "I think I'm done." And that's why, and I go back to what I was saying before, to try and do that alone, it's too hard, I think, to sit around with people. And this is what optimism is. Going, "You got to get all the venting out. You got to get all of the complaining. You got to get it out." You know, because it's in you. "I hate this. I'm scared. I don't know what to do. We're going to lose our jobs. What am I going to do? I've got a family. I've got a mortgage. I don't have any other skills. I've been doing this for my whole life." I, I'm, yes. And sit around and get it all out. And at some point, one of the mates has to say, "Got it."
Yeah.
"Now what?"
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that, that ability to sit around with people you love and who love you, to sit around where there's no such thing as a bad idea, to sit around where you dogpile where somebody goes, "What if we did this?" And goes, "No, no, no, no. What if we did this?" And you add on to each other. That excitement, that energy gives some sort of direction. What people are afraid of is uncertainty. Uncertainty is the killer, not bad news. Bad news is not the problem. The uncertainty is the problem because uncertainty is debilitating. But a bad plan and something to do is better than fear.
Let's go extreme. I've got some bad news. You have, uh, cancer. It's a mild cancer. It's a treatable cancer, but you have cancer. Nobody wants to hear their name and the C-word in the same sentence. And the, and the, the already you've planned your own funeral. Even if the doctor said it's mild and it's treatable, it's over. It's over, right? And you spiral, right? And it's the uncertainty of the future that's the killer. And so in those periods, giving yourself a plan, giving yourself a schedule, giving yourself something to do, which might include go out with your friends, talk to the doctor, make a plan, find out what the pro, what the prognosis is, find out what they recommend. It gives hope and it, and it gives steps. I think that you've got to get it out and the fear and the uncertainty. And, and don't, and the worst thing we can do when somebody's going through this fear of losing their job due to AI, the worst thing we can do is say, "It's going to be okay." The worst thing we can do is say, "Don't worry." The worst thing we can do is, "No, no, no, you'll just find a new job." That's the worst thing we can do because we have to affirm someone's feelings first. We have to make them feel seen and heard. Otherwise, they'll never get out of that fear, rut, uncertainty, uh, spiral.
Yeah.
The first thing any good friend has to do is go, "Yeah, scary. Yeah, I'm scared, too." Or, "If I were in your place, I, I would be scared, too." Yeah. "I think you're, I think you're right to be scared. I think if somebody wasn't scared, I'd think there was something wrong with them. Given what the world is doing, you should be scared." And the minute someone has their feelings affirmed and they feel seen and heard, now we can build a problem. But if people keep telling us, and it's the same thing. Let's go back to our extreme example. And you're sitting there going, "It's over. It's over. It's over." And everybody's sitting around you going, "No, it's fine. It's treatable. You're going to, it's going to look what the doctor says. You're going to be fine." That's the, what you want to do is punch someone in the face. When you're angry or depressed or sad and somebody says, "Buck up."
Like literally the only reaction is.
Like that is the logic. First, we have to just hold space for the fact that it is awful. And we don't need technologists telling us it's fine. We don't need Goldman Sachs, you know, going, "You're all, you're all gone." What we're saying is, "Yeah, yeah, it, I hear you. This is, this sucks and it's uncertain and not good."
"We hear you. We hear you." Like, "It's not easy."
No, it's, it's worse than not easy.
Yeah.
"It's awful."
I, I personally, like I personally, I'm being positive for. I actually think it's liberation though, in a way, cuz like the liberation comes next.
Okay. Next. Right. How long could this start talking about liberation?
No, but you got to, you, somebody has to feel seen and heard and have their emotions validated and their fear validated and their uncertainty validated. And only when they feel validated will they be able to have the mental capacity to now focus on the future and focus forwards. That's when you go with your mates, cuz remember I said have the, have the, the "woe is us" session first and everybody go, "Yeah, it's awful." You, that's an affirmation that your feelings are valid. Once you get that out, now you have the mental strength to go, "All right, let's find a solution. Let's, what can we do next?" Is parenting advice, by the way. I've got a seven-year-old. This is how I deal with my seven-year-old. Tells me a problem, I totally empathize, and then slowly, once I've totally heard him.
You, you would never say to your kid who's like, like the, the, the world is collapsing because he lost his teddy, you would never say, "I'll get you another one. It's fine."
I did when I was a beginning parent.
You know, now you'd be like, you'd be like, "Oh, it's awful. I know he's gone."
"AI is coming to take you."
So, so, so, but what you're saying is that's parenting advice. What I, all the stuff that we're talking about is the stuff of human beings.
Everything we're talking about here is not going to be replaced by AI. In a, in a world in which we've doubled down on technology and separated ourselves from each other, what I'm asking people to do is to double down on this. You were very adamant when I said, "I'll happily do your podcast virtually." What's wrong with that? You were very adamant that I had to come in here and sit at the table and be ambushed when I came out of the car. And you were very adamant that that's how we had to do it.
Why?
Human connection.
Because it's better.
That's why it's better on so many levels.
It's better on so many levels. Of course. Yeah. Which is why, by the way, I think I advise people, open up a coffee shop. You know, people say, "Worst business ever," but I think that's one of the things that likely not to be the worst business ever. I think the margins are pretty high.
It depends. I had a coffee shop business that failed, so I've seen the bad side of it. If you don't know about food wastage, you don't understand the cost margins and stuff. So there's a, I mean, a digital business like I've got a digital business. It's very profitable in the cost alone.
There's a story of a, of a, of a man with a shoe factory. And he says, you know what, I'm curious if we should, uh, open up in India. And he says to his two sons, "I want you to travel for one year to find out of this market." First son, "I want you to travel from north to south." Other son, "I want you travel south to north." And one year, I want you to come back. Off the sons go. Travel the country. Come back at the end of their tour. The dad says, "So, should we go to India? Should we expand to India?" And the first son says, "Dad, no one has shoes there. It's amazing. The market's incredible." And the other son says, "Dad, no one has shoes there. There's no market."
Right? There's no demand. Your view on the world.
It's, it's your view on the world. And, you know, despite the, the ridiculousness of the story, it, it, it makes the point which is good market, bad market, who knows? So you say, "Oh, don't start a bricks and mortar." You know, digital business is the way to go. Until everybody starts a digital business and turns out people would like to go sit somewhere. And you're the one who said bricks and mortar. And these things, that's how things go. You know, should we start a business now? Like, I would always get this, "Is this the right time to start a business?"
The answer is, it's always the right time to start a business. In a bad economy, it's hard to get clients, but there's no competition.
And easy to get people.
And easy to get people. In a good economy, it's easy to get clients and easy, but it's hard to get people. And it's, and, and the market's completely saturated. So, so pick your challenge. There's no good time or bad time. It's just time. And so what we're talking about is human skills. And what we lack is human skills. What we lack, everything that I talked about about holding space, affirming someone's emotions. These are things that you had to learn from reading books and watching videos about how to raise your kid. You said you screwed it up at the beginning. These are things that I've had to learn from making a complete mess of it. Both with, in my personal relationships and at work. I've had to learn these skills. You know what that's called? A marketplace. Right? That if human skills, the things that we need to get through this AI revolution, if being there for each other, learning how to hold space, learning how to be a good partner to someone, and I mean business partner, romantic partner, friend, all of it, all the definitions. And if we don't have those skills, sure, you could read about it on AI, but what's really helpful is maybe somebody to build that AI product on how to teach you human skills, roleplay with you, or to actually teach classes on how to do these things. That's called a marketplace. You got to read the tea leaves, right? So, what we're talking about is something missing in the market, which is we have forgotten how to be human beings.
Well, definitely communities have broken down, haven't they? And neighbors, you don't talk to your neighbors, or broken. So, so, and that's probably in that, that's probably an opportunity to rebuild those communities.
Of course. And I'm seeing, you know, there's a, there's a, there's a multiple business now of young people who are struggling to make friends. They leave high school and whether they go to university or not, now that they've lost the people they grew up with and they're sort of like, "Off you go." Many of them are just struggling to make friends. That's, that's what's happening.
Right? And we see loneliness on the increase and depression and anxiety. And the worst case is suicide. That is, you know, it's all related. And so there's a few young enterprising entrepreneurs who are starting businesses to help young people make friends. So, our markets for the past probably 20 or 30 years have all been digital opportunity at the expense of the human being. And perhaps, just perhaps, Goldman Sachs, there's 300 million jobs waiting to go away from the digital economy purely and go towards the human economy. Do you think that's, that's, that's possible?
I, so like, I'm thinking the audience listening, like, what would those 300 million new jobs look like? They couldn't predict what those 300 million jobs would look like, just as nobody could predict what they would look like 30 years ago, right? Who would anyone ask anyone 30 years ago?
I reckon someone could predict it.
Of course. If anyone can predict it, I think it's you.
No, that's absolute nonsense. Like, like, I have opinions, but, you know, can I predict the future and say, "This is what's going to happen?" And this? No. And I, and people need to stop speaking so bombastically as if they've got some crystal ball. You know, when Goldman Sachs or whoever else makes some pronouncement, it's based on data that they've assessed based on.
Well, you just look at how many people drive a vehicle and you can probably say those jobs are gone. They're just doing those sorts of very simple calculations, aren't they? They're not. Someone's still got to manage those vehicles going out into the world and so on. Like, they're not.
Maybe who's going to fix them?
Yeah. Who's going to fix them? Who's going to fix all those? Because I got to tell you, I see, I see, you know, I, every time I, I see a human being towing the Whimo. Yeah. There's a guy in a tow truck towing the Whimo. I see highly skilled human beings fixing the Whimo after it made a wrong turn or or had a crash. I see human beings fixing, you know, the, uh, all of the, the bike shares. And all of these companies forget one minor little detail.
I like driving.
Really? I like it.
Yeah.
But people used to like riding a horse, so there might be a. I used to like driving a petrol car. I've now got a Tesla and I quite like driving them.
It's.
But you still drive it.
Yeah, I still drive it.
I have an electric car, but I like driving. I enjoy. And maybe young people or, or not all people do, but I do.
And it's kind of like when the internet showed up and online shopping, they said the death of bricks and mortar. The one thing they forgot, people like shopping. Now, the model of those bricks and mortar shops competing against the pricing models of online shopping on Amazon, that's a different, that's a different conversation, but that's a different, that's a different conversation. But the physical act of going to a shop, we like, we're hunter-gatherers. And anybody in retail knows these things. They move things around. You know, the t-shirts used to be here, now the t-shirts over there because they want people to go looking for things because it speaks to our hunter-gather nature. We like it. We enjoy it. It's fun. You get a dopamine hit when you find the thing you're looking for. So we're forgetting, we're forgetting the human side of these things once again. So I'm very bullish that though there may be creative jobs and, and, uh, uh, uh, knowledge economy jobs that undoubtedly will be lost, I'm very bullish that there are new jobs that we cannot yet conceive of and I hope very much so in the, in the human skills space. I like the point about not making predictions because I, I think it is hard, but it's interesting to talk about it. So I, I always look at things from a business context. What in the future is safe? I do think things like IP is safe. Disney creates characters. AI can come along and create all sorts of content, but it can't steal Disney's content.
Well, it's, it's, it's, it's kind of I agree with you, but for the fact it's kind of being debated now, right? Like a lot of people and authors and have sued, right? You know, uh, OpenAI for taking their IP and, and we see it's changed. You, in the early days of OpenAI and ChatGPT, you could be like, "Tell me the summary of this book," and it would be like, it was amazing because it read the book. Now if you say, "Tell me the sum of the book," it's like, "Eh, it's kind of like it read the back of the book." Right? You know, it's not that good of a summary. You know, it's because they're afraid of the lawsuits. I agree with you, is you know, I think IP is mostly safe. Um, but I think we haven't redefined what intellectual property means. If you make something with AI, so who owns it? If you simply say, "Make me a drawing," you know, photorealistic drawing of a horse, you know, blah, blah, blah, driving a car with a, you know, funny hat on, and it's, it becomes a viral sensation.
Yeah. That new, I guess, existing fan base because that takes me to my second point, which I love you challenged me on it, but like community. I think the differential in the future of businesses will be communities. So, for example.
You mean human being stuff.
Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. No, that's right. Yeah, that's, that's true. Exactly. You, to, to reinforce what you're saying, actually, I think I think that I know when I launched my book, for example, it went to number one on the Sunday Times bestseller list before I had a single review. And that's because I've got a community that supported me. The book might have been rubbish, but they thought, "Okay, we like Simon. We're going to support him." And they bought it.
Yeah.
And I don't think you're going to get that with AI. You know, you're not going to have the same. I mean, well, first of all, you probably could perhaps, I mean, there's AI influencers are pretty interesting and they're popping up, but when people find out they're not real, it loses something, right? Oh, it's fake. It's a bit like a fake influencer, too. Like, that's why a lot of influencers come and go quite quickly because it's like, "Oh, they're not, they're not this acting."
You're going to start seeing people value real. And which means they're going to have to. So, I, I'm seeing in amongst artists, right? Artists are now being asked to sign legal documents, um, saying that this piece of art that I'm selling you was produced by me, conceived by me, and it's not because the art is the same. I liked it whether it's digitally created or not, but I want to know it. It has greater value to me that I know a person did this totally and that they slaved away, you know, at their easel and made this happen because you're not just buying the image. You're buying the story.
You're buying the effort. You're buying the sweat. That's what you buy. That's what gives art value, which is the story. Picasso, you know, or Mono Matise, you know, their their works are extremely expensive. Not because they're the world's best artists. There are many Picassos that are crap. They're worth a lot because you bought the story. And he did. He was a pioneer. And, you know, there's brilliant artists that don't have a story yet, which is why their art isn't worth anything. Telling a story and having a story, I, I think is one of the most powerful things you can learn to do. I mean, it's sales. It's a glamorous way also saying sales, isn't it? I think people don't write a good story about their product, business, service, themselves.
Look, I, and I've talked about this before, but one of the things we keep neglecting, which is we are a results-obsessed society right now, right? All we care about is the result. Like, you're wearing your Whoop, metrics this, metrics that, measure, measure, measure. We're all obsessed with metrics and and outcomes. And when people think about, "Oh my god, AI can write the press release, AI can write the article, AI can write my book, AI can make my movie." Yeah. I mean, and some of the results, as we're seeing, are quite astonishing. So, basically, what you're saying is, I want AI to produce the result. But you know as well as I do that you and I are who we are, not because we have businesses, it's because we built our businesses. It's because the slug, the depression, the anger, the frustration, the joys, the highs, the lows, the friendships, the stabs in the back, the love, the hugging, the crying.
All of it is who made me me and made you you. And neither of us would trade any of that in for anything. In fact, we are smarter, stronger, more relaxed, more wiser because we went through the trials and tribulations of making a business or writing a book or writing the article or painting the painting. I am smarter. I'm better at pattern recognition. I am a better writer. I think I understand the world a bit better than I used to. Not because I have a book. It's because I wrote the book. And so what we're missing is the results be damned. Who now, who cares about the results? And I think the opportunity is not the result because clearly AI can make great results. I think the opportunity is the process.
And I think there's going to be a whole new marketplace for people who want to know process. I want to learn how to paint even if my painting sucks. I want to learn how to write even if my writing sucks. I need to learn how to organize a book even if my book never sells. What we're talking about is process and struggle.
And we think AI will remove all the struggle. And the problem is it will. And so what you'll end up with is an entire generation of people who are entry-level for their whole lives because they have learned nothing, even though all their products are fantastic. And that will weigh on someone's soul. You will wake up one day depressed that you are the same person that you were five years ago, 10 years ago. And so what's going to start to happen if you want a prediction is if that's how your job is looking, what's going to happen to your personal relationships? When you wake up with, wake up with no self-worth, you will take it out at the person you love and now your relationships will fail.
And so I think what we need to do is, is we all need help. And I'm not talking therapy. We need help to go through the struggle.
I love that. We need help here, don't we? Yeah. I mean, I don't think anyone should be going through this alone in general in life. Help. Help is the number one thing. No, no human being is strong enough to do this thing called life alone. You know, there's a reason why human beings are social animals. Because if you put a human being out in the woods by themselves, death is the most likely result.
Right? If you attempt to do anything by yourself, I'm going to build a business without asking for any help from anyone. Who's, I'm the smartest person in the world or the dumbest person in the world. You will fail. There's no question about the self-made millionaires. When people say that, I was like, "There's no such thing." Delete it. Yeah. Therefore, the self-made ones, we all had somebody who took a risk on us. We had somebody who took a bet on us. We had somebody join you. Somebody who told us, "You're an idiot." Somebody who told us, "You're a genius." Somebody who built us up when we needed to be built us built up and ripped us down when we needed to be ripped down.
And none of us can take, uh, full ownership of any of our successes. None of us.
This is why we're told to live in gratitude because you didn't do it alone. So, you better be thankful.
What we're talking about is process. And I think there's a marketplace. People want to learn things. We know that. Look at the rise of YouTube, Masterclass. Turns out people want to learn stuff.
People like learning stuff. People enjoy learning stuff. And to say to people, "We have a machine that will do all the thinking for you so you can just get the results." Again, I like driving.
I also like learning.
You know, and I'm being bombastic to make a point, which is, let's put the human back in human being. Technology is great, but we've just overindexed. We've just overindexed. I, the fear I have is it's not overindexed. I think people are starting to use it more and more. I mean, interestingly, you know, humans, I think the hardest thing is to ask for help. 100%. It's really interesting. We launched this platform called Help Bank. And the idea is you press a button, you can get help. You press a button, you can give help. When we launched it with all this planning, by the way, I didn't tell you this. I'm a huge fan of yours.
Oh, really? I've known about your booths, really?
Before anybody else did. Like, early, early days when you first started them. I was like.
That's good.
That has blown my mind. Um, if we're going to start doing fan fan stuff, I'm, I'm definitely going to beat you, cuz I've been your fan from day one since you did that TED talk a long time ago. Um, but I, I think that what we noticed when we asked people, um, we thought, okay, we're going to have a problem with not enough people going on there to help because, you know, people have need to pay to get help. Normally, we ask people to go there and help for free. So, a lot of people, they're not going to go and help for free. How are we going to incentivize people to go there and help? Right? And the news makes you think everyone's evil. So, like, how are we going to make sure good people go on the platform and help? And then we launched the platform. And the thing is, the problem we had was so many people on the platform wanted to help and no one brave enough to ask for help. No one put their hand up and say, "You know what? I'm, I'm struggling at the moment with this. I don't know what." Everyone. And I know men that I know, you know, stories of people that have considered killing themselves rather than ask for help.
You're making my case beautifully, which is human skills. Which is we think about that. That I do not feel safe, psychologically safe to say to my friends, who I think love me, "I'm struggling." These are the skills that we need to learn. And the, as I said before, where, where real bad things happen to people is when we attempt to solve all these problems by ourselves. If somebody's afraid of losing their job to AI, even if they may, even if they have to say to someone, "I'm stuck," is the most powerful thing in the world. But it goes back to I was saying before. What if you're the friend who somebody comes to and says, "I'm stuck"? Which is different than, "Give me business advice."
"What should I do?" "Here's my answer." That's what you're asking for. When somebody says, "I'm stuck," and we go, "Here's what you could do."
Incorrect. You sit in mud with them and you go, "This, this sucks." Your only job is to make them feel not alone until they are ready to say, "All right, what do you think we should do? What do you think we should do?" And most people do not have these skills. And I think the more of us that can learn these skills, the more likely we are to manage this incredible upheaval in society due to technology in a much healthier way because we don't feel any longer that we are doing it alone or that we aren't. Let's say we've done the wallow bit. You know, we've sat with them in this nightmare. 53% of people coming out of university can't get a job. Oh my god. You know, you spent four years, you're in debt because in England they get in debt doing it. You're in this debt. You promised this future by the university that sold you that. "Don't worry, you'll get a brilliant job at the end of it." They put four years their life into this degree, this bit of paper that was promised to give them a better life. They're sitting there right now watching this thinking, "Okay, the promise was a lie. What do I do now?"
If they're ready to say, "Okay, I've got it all out of me. My friends have sat with me. I, I, I'm ready now. I'm ready now to make the list and do the work." Assuming they're at that point. Yeah. This is the problem. We've all been tricked by AI that everything comes easy.
Well, it's not just AI, is it? I mean, social media's done that, too. Yeah. It's like Google's also done it. It's like everything's at my fingertips.
You know, we've been tricked to think that that there's no effort. And I don't know of anything that good that ever happened in the world that happened without effort. And I mean everything. I'm not just talking about jobs and technology. I'm talking about how's your relationship? Took effort, didn't it? Really successful, loving relationship.
24 years in my relationship and it is a lot of effort.
Biggest competition ever, hardest thing I've ever done.
But you know, uh, how you, how those kids of yours that you love?
Easy.
I've never heard anybody say raising kids has been easy. There've been easy bits. There've been fun bits.
But it's effort. That's a good thing because effort makes us feel like our lives and our work have meaning. Effort makes us grow. Effort makes us feel, um, we get smarter, we get better. This is why I scoff with technologists, which is most technologists who are predicting the rise of AI and the dominance of AI, most of them have a financial interest in that advice and that version of the fuel. That's true. If you want to know if some conspiracy theory or not, just follow the money to find out it's true. Right. Who benefits from that story being.
Well, it's like AI friends will replace real friends, says the company wanting to you to buy a subscription to an AI friend.
Yeah. Yeah. But I weirdly, is I have, I just, I don't, I don't like this at all, but this is AI girlfriend thing doing quite well. That freaks me out.
Because it tricks your brain. I know someone actually who's having a relationship with an AI woman and it's, it's not normal. You know, like I worry for them because they can't have a connection. They can't, they can't hug them. She's part of a relationship. I kiss my wife pretty much every day, probably three or four times a day. You're not going to have that bit, right? It's a bit like porn, right? Porn is dangerous if if people are overconsuming it. Now, there's no argument with any consumption at all is dangerous, but like, but I think that people forget that that's not real. You're right. I think what you're what you're talking about is is knowledge versus experience, right? Kids now because they have access to absolutely everything online. And take porn for example, right? Which is they know everything. They know every position. They know everything you could do. They've never done it, right?
But they know all about it. When we were idiots, still are, but when we were young idiots, um, we knew nothing and the only way we found out was to do stuff.
In fairness, we discovered that every single person is different.
We discovered every one formula. The point is we learned because we had, we've learned through experience because we had no choice. Now you don't have to do anything to learn everything. Young people know more than we do, and definitely know more than we did, but they've experienced less. So I think this is one of the, again, goes back to one of the opportunities and if you want to look for business opportunities, which is the experience economy, which is people want thrills, they want to bungee jump, they want to, and it doesn't have to be extravagant or expensive. They want to go, you can go for a hike. It doesn't have to be, you know, in Morocco. It could be hike across London with 10 people. You see now the rise of run clubs. You see the rise of, you know, cyclists all cycling together, this community cycling. You're seeing people looking to do experiences with each other and have shared experience. That's an economy.
And it's an economy born out of people missing it and not having it.
And we're seeing that people are trading lying on a beach for doing things, you know, for feeling a rush of some sorts.
This is going to be a recurring theme. In other words, feeling human. So I, I think all of these things like if you're the kind of person who, you know, your your job is at risk because of AI, but before your job was at risk at AI, you would always go for a long hike on the weekends. That was your thing and that's the thing you love more than anything. And that's the place you go when you're stressed. Make a job out of something you love. And the only criterion is, does at least one person want to do it with you?
Mhm.
I, I, I think it's really fascinating listening to you talk because I think people listening will be like, "Okay, look, I'm positive. I feel like the world is bright."
I do too.
And I.
agree. AI is going to create new jobs as well as take some of the old ones. What will create new marketplaces accidentally, right? But I think at the same time, what you just said there about your own journey and finding your why, let's pick that apart for a second because I I think that I think your purpose lives in your pain. So in your you had this moment where you had a successful business actually and then you were like this isn't feeling right. Right. That's kind of how it was going.
I mean it was in decline because I was you didn't feel it anymore. Right. It was in decline. Yeah. Which exaggerated but you had started your own which only exaggerates the feeling of failure. Which is interesting because I I I think the opportunity with AI is it's never been an easier time to start your own business. I just invested in a business called Lovable. Have you heard about this business? It's mind-blowing. You you literally say the app you want voice command the app you want and it builds it for you instantly. So there's so many people out there have an idea and they're like, "How do I make it real?"
Now this is where AI is exciting. Yeah. Cuz now you can just turn your idea into something. Whatever it is, you're interested, your hobby, your interest. You can create that act that was once so expensive and so difficult to make and you needed someone to code it for you and you can't find them. They're expensive and you can make it and if it's communitydriven and it's unique because it's still people, right? So that the people, it's still needed. It's still a connection to humanity.
Can I agreeish? Of course you can disagree as well. I I want the audience. I don't disagree. I don't disagree. I agreeish. This is I think a dangerous form of entrepreneurship, which is the you know what we could do and we could just build an app. Look at my app that nobody wants. But everyone says it every single day by the way. That's right. Well, nobody wants. Yeah. Well, that's a different thing. You market uh you know, let's build an app that nobody wants that you just pulled a pretty idea out of the air and made it because AI let you make it and it's a bad idea which makes it a bad product. You see the app that was simply yolo. All you do is you send y to people. That's all you could do. Can you see the rise of this?
Yeah. But I mean it's it's a fad. It'll last. It's a fad. But the town made3 million pounds doing it and he learned stuff. Yeah. He he learned £3 million and now it doesn't exist anymore, right? Yeah. No, but it's still it's experience. I call those businesses winning the lottery. Winning lottery. Yeah. Right. Like there's always going to be some entrepreneur who won a lot. And by the way, some of them are wildly uh successful and that's it. They can do it once. they can't repeat it and they go around giving speeches about how to start businesses. And I think it's funny that's like lottery winners telling you the numbers they picked. You know, you too can build a business if you pick the numbers that I picked.
It's always the right way to do it. So, so I mean again, the right way to do it is it is is like I said, the best businesses, you and I know this, the best businesses are born out of trying to find a solution for yourself or someone you care about because no solution existed prior. Even if it's I can't get a good sandwich, you know, it doesn't matter what it is, right? I wish they had good gelato in London, you know, or why is everything a freaking franchise? Why can't we make like really beautiful, you know, whatever it is. You fundamentally build it for yourself or you build it for the people you love first because that's where the passion comes from. Nobody is passionate for a I've got it. Pizza delivery app. We need a pizza delivery app. That's you know, whatever the thing is.
It's actually a good idea, but we need pizza. We need another pizza delivery app, right? and and and we're going to change the world almost aggregation. We're gonna change the world with our pieces of bread and everybody's going to be a billionaire. And I hate that bit. The money bit is definitely a big distraction at that point. And it's very hard to inspire your friends to quit their jobs to come and join this app that you had AI make that really nobody wants. So I think that that brand of entrepreneurship is exciting, hard, much harder because when it doesn't go, it's very hard to find the energy to keep it going. And if you're passionate for something and believe in something, you're stub you're stubborn about making sure that it's successful, right?
The energy thing you're talking about now is so true. I want people to be stubborn, but then it raises the question, when's the right time to quit? Because there's a point of like you've d you've you spent enough money and enough, you know, you've exhausted enough. For me, the standard is if it no longer feels worth it. Yeah. There's a lot of people that have a go at me. Yeah. That say, "Don't tell people to follow their passion." That's a false way of building. Go and look at where the market gap is. Yeah. Those people are bankers.
They are often, funnily enough, or or property people because bankers aren't entrepreneurs. They're bankers. And they usually give the wrong advice to entrepreneurs about how to build their businesses. Like when we're taking advice from the city on how to build a business, game over. Cuz they're not incentivized to help us build great businesses. They're incentivized to meet their quarterly results. So, we're making decisions so that they can hit their bonus, right? There's a reason why we don't let bankers run businesses. There's a huge difference between an entrepreneur and a small business owner. Small business owners own small businesses. Entrepreneurs solve problems. And there are many, many entrepreneurs in corporations. I have been to many huge corporations and there are some brilliantly entrepreneurial-minded people who are constantly roughing up against the bureaucracy of the big corporation that they've worked for for 20 years. They have a reputation of breaking things and they're super creative and they're entrepreneurs, right? They just don't own small businesses. And there's a lot of people who own small businesses and it works fine. They've got a nice little market. They've got a nice little whatever they've got, nice little cottage industry. I don't think it could grow beyond a certain level because there's a certain problem set that they don't know how to solve. But they're really good at process and structure and they're really good solid small business owners. They might even be very successful. But entrepreneurs are are a different breed. They're broken in the head. I mean, think about that. Think about how broken you have to be in your mind to say, you know what? I think I'm going to do something with an over 90% chance of failure in the first three years. That's the business opportunity for me.
What country is it? 90% failure in the first three years. US. It's not what? So is that is that a number? It's one of those things. Oh, I love that. Makes me so happy. So, I've been spewing that for 15 years. I know that is what's the real By the way, what's the real number? So 24% businesses fail in the first first year, right? 64% fail in the first three years and 100% fail one day. That's funny. 64% in the first two years, but you don't have the threeear stat. But if one year is 25%, two years is 60ome%. 3 years might be 90 something. No. So it's three 3% 3 years is 64%. Oh, I thought so. One year is 24%. Okay. Still pretty bad odds.
But but the thing is, so my my gardening company failed. Yeah. I had eight months. I made a lot of money before I failed. Yeah. And I learned Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so compound learning took me to the next business which failed in two and a half years. I made a load of money and I helped a lot of people and I made a big difference in the world and then it failed. By the way, I love your definition of small businesses and entrepreneurship. I think that's a really I think there needs to be a new word because what do you call someone who's thinking of starting a small business? We need a new word. I think with again with AI giving people practical advice, I think they're going to have no choice but to become business owners where they create their own jobs. Do you know the great irony of the world we live in? It used to be it used to be that if you were a small business owner or entrepreneur and we'll use them interchangeably for the sake of argument that was considered risky, right? But we now live in a world that is so driven by shareholder value and short-term results. We now live in a world where if a company misses its arbitrary uh uh predictions, they're profitable, just not as profitable as they promised. So, they have a round of uh uh redundancies and you had no idea. It's not a meritocracy because you've been working your brains out. But sorry, it's just business, not personal. So the irony is is no matter how hard you work, no matter how long you've worked somewhere, if you work in a corporate environment, the risk of losing your job, I would argue, are higher than if you start a business.
I completely agree. And because if you know this, which is which is when you start your own business, you know when you're going to go out of business, you can see the revenues, you can see the costs, you can see the expenses, and you literally go, "Ah, in less than 3 months, we're done." But it doesn't exist where it goes, you come in happy one day and the next day you're out of business. That doesn't exist. What does happen is like, "Oh, we're screwed. We've got three weeks left of runway. We've got 3 months left of runway and we're done." But you know it, you can see it happening. Going to a corporate job where the management embraces layoffs and redundancies as a standard way to manage. All of them do now, right? AI just wiped out. Uh I would argue and and the same with private. It used to be a case where private companies were the best companies and public companies were the worst companies because public companies were only shareholder value and investor driven and private companies they could make good long-term decisions. The problem is so many companies now are VC backed. The VCs apply as much or more pressure to the companies that every company now if it's got some sort of public or private investment at any significant scale is not is subjected to the the arbitrary whims of of the investor. So, in a twist of crazy fate and irony, the modern day world we live in, perhaps the smartest thing you can do is to pull a bunch of your friends together who love each other and trust each other and who can speak plain truth to each other and try something that none of you have ever tried before. And whether it fails or succeeds, it will be the most valuable thing you've ever done.
Exactly. Simon, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge with us today. There is hope. Simon said so, so there must be hope. I hope you've enjoyed today's podcast and learned something from it. And if you want to follow Simon, great work he that he does, again, links down below. Thanks again, Simon, for joining us. Pleasure. I will say at the end of this podcast, we're going to go off and have some chicken. But I don't know. Do you like chicken? Yeah, of course I might off. We see it.