Dan Martell - August 12, 2025


6 High Income Skills That AI Won’t Replace in 2026


Episode Stats


Length

11 minutes

Words per minute

198.22443

Word count

2,337

Sentence count

148


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Whether you re switching careers or just starting, many people are about to waste years building skills for jobs that will disappear. But I m going to save you from that mistake. I ve been analyzing thousands of cutting-edge AI companies and market trends, and I ve outlined 6 highest-paying jobs that'll survive the next decade. These aren t just trendy jobs everyone s chasing - they re the ones that will still pay six figures without having to go to med school or learn rocket science.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 If you're scared that you might be on the wrong career path, you should be.
00:00:03.400 Whether you're switching careers or just starting, many people are about to waste
00:00:06.880 years building skills for jobs that will disappear. But I'm going to save you from
00:00:10.660 that mistake. I've been analyzing thousands of cutting-edge AI companies and market trends,
00:00:15.800 and I've outlined six highest-paying jobs that will survive the next decade.
00:00:20.160 These aren't just trendy jobs everyone's chasing. They're the ones that will still pay
00:00:24.220 six figures without having to go to med school or learning rocket science.
00:00:27.320 So now if you're done settling for mediocre pay,
00:00:30.480 these are the jobs that will make you real f***ing money.
00:00:33.380 Starting from the bottom, creative directors.
00:00:36.680 The whole philosophy is being a director over a doer.
00:00:40.680 In the artistic world of AI,
00:00:43.220 understanding the taste, the vision,
00:00:46.180 what are we trying to create here?
00:00:47.640 And getting people to move in a certain direction,
00:00:50.580 that's valuable.
00:00:51.540 When I think of like the three areas of intelligence,
00:00:54.180 you've got like analytical intelligence,
00:00:55.720 you have creative intelligence and you have emotional intelligence. The director level is
00:01:00.640 one of the most valuable because it challenges people to have a vision for the future that
00:01:05.140 doesn't exist yet that should. And when you can take taste and caring about people, the emotional
00:01:10.840 side, that's how you become valuable in this world. I mean, the truth is there's already
00:01:15.120 single person marketing teams taking over complete agencies. And the cool part is the salary for
00:01:20.880 those kind of roles are between 100K to 130K per year. Six figures. You can learn this.
00:01:28.900 The learning curve is medium. It's not that complicated if you work on you. And the
00:01:33.680 competition is also medium because not a lot of people are watching this video. They don't
00:01:37.960 understand what's available to them. So they're stuck in the past doing the same thing they've
00:01:42.100 always done. Hoping AI doesn't completely catch them flat footed and you're going to be first.
00:01:46.220 But if a creative role isn't right for you, then you might be interested in being a data analyst.
00:01:52.860 Essentially, you use data to figure out what's working, what's not, and how to guide strategy.
00:01:57.700 The salary is also between $100,000 and $130,000 a year in pay.
00:02:02.280 The learning curve is medium.
00:02:03.860 The competition is high because there's already a lot of people entering it,
00:02:07.260 but it's got stronger potential in regards to being defensible long-term than a creative director.
00:02:11.900 because every company is sitting
00:02:13.920 on thousands of terabytes of data.
00:02:16.580 Without data, you're just another person with an opinion.
00:02:19.920 I always say, I love what you're saying,
00:02:22.080 bring the data to back it up.
00:02:23.580 What data did you look at?
00:02:24.740 Which customer did you look at?
00:02:26.140 Show me.
00:02:26.680 But somebody needs to see that inside of the business,
00:02:30.040 the data, the reporting, the business intelligence,
00:02:32.520 the analytics.
00:02:33.440 Somebody has to look at the data, the numbers,
00:02:36.000 the text, the information, and make sense of it
00:02:38.680 so the business can actually grow.
00:02:40.080 The amount of data is always going up.
00:02:42.580 The amount of information companies capture about their customers, about the product, always going up.
00:02:47.980 And somebody needs to be able to look at it.
00:02:50.340 And somebody needs to come in and learn how to extract insights from the information.
00:02:54.980 But analyzing data might not make you as much as protecting it.
00:02:58.560 Which brings us to number four from the bottom, cyber security specialist.
00:03:05.220 As long as there's digital information, there will be people trying to hack it.
00:03:09.920 There are more people today empowered by the AI to steal your information than ever before.
00:03:15.740 I mean, it's gotten to the point where we have a key word that only people know to say that if
00:03:20.640 somebody calls acting as me in my voice or anybody else on my team, they have to ask them, what's the
00:03:25.780 word? Because AI can literally mimic everybody. Video. I mean, there'll be a day where somebody
00:03:30.620 jumps on a Zoom call and tells the team, hey, can somebody run down and order a new MacBook Pro
00:03:35.520 and ship at this address? And you'll be like, well, you asked me to do it. And it's like,
00:03:38.480 i was on vacation what are you talking about there needs to be somebody that is using the ai
00:03:43.520 to counteract the bad people using the ai to try to steal and if you're kind of that person that
00:03:48.000 likes to like protect stuff and like you got this like bodyguard mentality this is the perfect role
00:03:52.320 for you you can literally spend your day protecting digital assets from breaches people doing ransomware
00:03:58.160 where they're asking you to send bitcoin to unlock the computers or internal threats from literally
00:04:03.440 people inside the company that are sneaking around and doing sneaky deaky stuff and you
00:04:07.440 you got to be like, oh, you did something you shouldn't been doing. And here's the deal. You
00:04:10.760 might go, that sounds so boring. Guess what? Boring pays well, extremely well, which leads us
00:04:16.820 to the salary. It's between 110 and 140,000 a year. The learning curve is higher, a little bit
00:04:24.340 more difficult, but the competition is low. Most people want to go do the very creative activities
00:04:29.620 like directing and analysts versus the hard stuff like security. But that's why it makes the
00:04:35.360 competition low because most people are not going to be doing it. One moment of vulnerability can
00:04:39.680 bring the whole business down to zero. But if you want to work in the most exciting industry,
00:04:43.980 you're going to love robotics engineering. You might not have seen some of these demos,
00:04:50.320 but let me tell you this. You essentially have the opportunity to design the machines that will
00:04:55.180 automate the physical world. I'm talking about picking up after your kids, loading the dishwasher,
00:05:00.620 going and getting groceries, driving the cars.
00:05:03.900 Everybody's talking about self-driving cars.
00:05:05.600 What about when the robots just drive the cars?
00:05:07.480 Then every car that isn't even set up with the sensors
00:05:09.960 just can drive because the robots do it.
00:05:12.400 And you go, oh, that's science fiction.
00:05:14.200 That won't happen for years.
00:05:15.720 Go search the Optimus Robotics from Tesla.
00:05:18.260 There is literally 10 robotics company in the world.
00:05:21.280 Three of them are from China that I monitor every week
00:05:24.660 to see what's coming so I can get ready.
00:05:27.240 If you want to get paid top dollar
00:05:29.480 and future-proof your life, get in that field.
00:05:32.600 And the cool part is the salary starts at 115 to 150,000 a year.
00:05:37.140 The learning curve is high
00:05:38.360 because you might need a degree to get into these companies,
00:05:40.740 but the competition is only medium.
00:05:42.740 And that's why it's way more desirable
00:05:44.420 than the security role.
00:05:45.900 I had a friend that got a massive order,
00:05:47.640 20,000 boxes for their jewelry product,
00:05:49.960 and they needed to pack the jewelry into those boxes.
00:05:52.620 And I told them in the future,
00:05:54.400 you'll be able to rent a robot and just show it once.
00:05:57.480 And they will do that over 48 hours
00:05:59.260 and you'll bring the robot back.
00:06:00.540 That's going to happen in the next six months.
00:06:02.880 So if you want an opportunity
00:06:04.320 to be at the forefront of innovation,
00:06:06.900 then you got to get into robotics engineering.
00:06:09.420 Here's why I think it's stable.
00:06:11.200 Robotics engineers combine the hardware
00:06:13.200 and the software, making it hard to replace.
00:06:15.720 See, most people just focus on like AI prompts
00:06:17.720 and automation, and that's all fun.
00:06:19.280 But dude, you want to be defensible?
00:06:21.560 Be the guy that understands the hardware and the software.
00:06:24.860 And then what happens is labor costs rises,
00:06:27.660 robotics become the need.
00:06:29.260 Not a nice to have.
00:06:30.400 You know, Brett, the CEO of Figure, he said it.
00:06:32.760 The future is selling work.
00:06:34.720 That is his North Star metric.
00:06:36.400 But I get it.
00:06:36.920 If you're not interested in a degree,
00:06:38.640 you can still create massive value with number two,
00:06:41.500 full stack software engineer.
00:06:45.760 This is the person that not only knows
00:06:48.260 how the code can get written,
00:06:49.560 because AI is writing 90% of the code today,
00:06:51.580 but they understand how to design scalable systems.
00:06:54.500 That's the part.
00:06:55.140 You can't just like ask Lovable,
00:06:56.860 which is an AI company that build an app
00:06:59.220 And trust that that will just be like secure and deployable and have the ability for people to log in and create accounts.
00:07:05.860 No, you need somebody that understands the security infrastructure, the digital foundation of great software and platforms and manages that.
00:07:12.960 And that's what a full stack software engineer does.
00:07:15.140 The median salary for that rule is $120,000 to $160,000 a year.
00:07:20.040 And that's what they're making today minimum, but some are making way more.
00:07:24.540 And the cool part is the difficulty is only medium.
00:07:27.520 So that's awesome.
00:07:28.460 and the competition is higher because a lot of people are being retrained and replaced
00:07:32.940 in these big companies to be a full stack engineer. Back in the day, being a specialist made sense.
00:07:38.600 No, today you need to be a director of engineering, understanding all the different things you can
00:07:43.160 build and directing that code. And I saw this firsthand. One of our portfolio companies at
00:07:47.680 Martel Ventures, Revio, the founder of Veve, built a whole platform by himself. One developer,
00:07:53.840 full stack, engineered it, not only solving our problem, but solving it for hundreds of other
00:07:58.960 customers. I'm seeing companies start today with a business and a technical person. Two-person
00:08:04.340 companies build 10 million a year companies, and they need somebody that's going to be able to do
00:08:08.560 the full stack engineering. And if you weren't aware, code is one of the highest forms of
00:08:13.060 leverage. And this is why it's stable for today and into the future. This role creates immediate
00:08:17.400 and massive business value. High leverage productivity built with the new AI tools is
00:08:22.580 what companies want more than anything. Many businesses are realizing they have a ton of stuff
00:08:27.160 that they built in the past that need to go away to create a new experience for their customers
00:08:31.740 that's simplified and leverages AI, not an if-then statement in the code, so that they can be way
00:08:37.040 more productive with a leaner team, but they need the person to understand the full stack.
00:08:41.920 But the best way to make sure AI won't replace your job is to be the one building it, which makes
00:08:46.340 AI and machine learning specialists our number one job on the list. This person is a very special
00:08:52.040 person. They understand how to build models that power recommendation. They understand how to
00:08:56.340 diagnose problems, to develop autonomous systems, essentially agentic systems. This person is
00:09:01.800 special. I have dozens that work for me at Martell Ventures because that person's going to allow me
00:09:07.080 to scale at levels that no other company in the past has ever done because they understand the AI
00:09:12.200 at the core level. See, most people just play with the AIs talking to it, generating images and videos
00:09:17.720 and text. If you actually go on a website called Hugging Face, you will see all the language
00:09:22.640 models, all the different data sets, all the weights, all the inference systems, all the
00:09:27.060 vector database structures, all of the tooling needed to build innovation. That person is going
00:09:33.700 to make a lot of money. And the minimum starting salary is 130K. Six figure minimum, but they're
00:09:39.500 making 180 plus way more. If you can literally master these tools, you'll be highly sought out
00:09:45.740 for and highly compensated. The learning curve is high. The difficulty is there and the competition
00:09:50.940 is low. Have you seen what Zuck just paid his top engineers for his new AI team? A hundred million
00:09:56.360 dollars a piece, 18 people. It is wild. Why? Because these people know how to build the future.
00:10:01.380 So yes, that's where it's at right now. But if you decide to master this craft and go all in,
00:10:06.380 you will be valuable next year, in 10 years, in 50 years. The way I like to think about it is that
00:10:12.000 like normal developers and engineers,
00:10:14.100 they use AI tools like Chef uses a recipe, right?
00:10:17.140 They just follow it, but AI specialists,
00:10:19.700 they create entirely new recipes.
00:10:21.860 When I look at Omer, the founder of Atlas,
00:10:24.380 one of our portfolio companies,
00:10:25.960 he looked at a completely broken system
00:10:28.320 of manual lead follow-up and built an AI platform,
00:10:32.480 built to automate the entire lead follow-up process
00:10:35.760 and honestly, every other aspect
00:10:37.660 of the customer interaction.
00:10:38.840 He built this because he understood how to use the models.
00:10:41.460 And think about it this way.
00:10:42.340 If you want to elevate yourself,
00:10:44.240 understand that million dollar companies
00:10:45.940 are not built off $10 problems.
00:10:47.980 The bigger the problem, the bigger the business.
00:10:50.260 You have to use AI to be able to solve those problems
00:10:52.980 because you can't do it with basic logic anymore.
00:10:55.760 Demand is rising in every sector,
00:10:57.740 including the laggards like government,
00:10:59.760 agriculture, and education.
00:11:01.740 They want this.
00:11:02.860 They need innovation.
00:11:04.240 These are the jobs that are driving real product innovation.
00:11:07.280 AI isn't a trend.
00:11:08.520 It's literally the new foundation.
00:11:10.060 There's this great quote by Kevin Kell and he said,
00:11:12.260 what can be electrified will be cognified,
00:11:14.900 meaning it will have memory.
00:11:16.420 The person that knows how to write the code for that
00:11:18.900 is going to be in a really great position.
00:11:21.280 These six jobs will make you incredibly wealthy.
00:11:23.600 The reason I create these videos
00:11:24.840 is because I wanna ensure that you understand
00:11:27.120 where the world's going.
00:11:28.440 Don't put your head in the sand.
00:11:29.920 Don't pretend like it's not happening.
00:11:31.600 If you're inspired by anything I share, just go learn.
00:11:35.720 Ask the AI to teach you, talk to it,
00:11:38.200 make it part of your habits.
00:11:39.540 the more you do that the more competitive you're going to be in any job now if you want to learn
00:11:44.060 the laziest ways to make money with ai click here and i'll see you on the other side