Dan Martell - The Only 19 Skills to Make Money in the AI Era

00:00:00.000 AI has flipped everything on its head,

00:00:02.700 including the skills that actually make you money.

00:00:05.380 Concerns are growing about AI replacing some human workers.

00:00:09.220 I talk to CEOs who are replacing design departments, even coders.

00:00:13.300 Procter & Gamble saying that it'll cut up to 7,000 jobs.

00:00:16.940 If you think that it's not coming for your industry, think again.

00:00:20.440 I run an AI venture studio where I'm hiring people every single day.

00:00:23.940 And right now, I have 17-year-olds who run circles around people with decades of experience.

00:00:28.480 Not because they're smarter, but because they have the right skills.

00:00:31.660 So today I'm going to rank those skills from best to worst,

00:00:34.360 starting with social media management.

00:00:36.700 Social media is one of those problems that AI was built to solve.

00:00:40.580 Every brand needs a presence, so the work to do that has always been in high demand.

00:00:44.500 Every time I look at one of these skills,

00:00:46.340 I'm going to evaluate it under these three criteria.

00:00:48.960 The first one is barrier of entry.

00:00:51.040 Is it something you can learn quickly?

00:00:53.020 Is it easy? Is it understandable?

00:00:54.960 Is there a lot of content out there?

00:00:56.260 Can you learn it in a weekend?

00:00:57.620 It's low.

00:00:58.100 you could literally learn it right now second is defensibility if i learn this how likely is ai to

00:01:04.660 show up and replace me it's kind of weak because ai writes the posts and the captions and the hooks

00:01:09.140 and the calendar and honestly the future models will probably do that automatically and third is

00:01:12.660 profitability do people actually care and will they pay me top dollar to learn it and implement

00:01:18.100 it in their life people are paying less and less for this kind of skill because the ai is doing it

00:01:22.500 so for this one i'd probably say b next skill public speaking this is a good one essentially

00:01:30.980 standing in front of a room and yapping trying to get people to learn things and hopefully create a

00:01:36.020 transformation in who they are the people that suck at it you fall asleep the people that crush

00:01:40.340 it you walk away feeling inspired so barrier of entry huge because it's hard to learn defensible

00:01:46.580 can ai come in and get on stage and do it no you imagine a robot on stage trying to deliver

00:01:52.760 something passionate and motivating humans need to feel the human and then profitable how much

00:01:58.360 money can you make doing it well guess what speaking is the highest paid career in the

00:02:03.220 world i know people that get paid a million dollars to give a speech so very profitable

00:02:07.360 so because of that i'm gonna put an a tier because learning it makes you incredibly valuable it's

00:02:12.960 hard for other people to get. It could make you money and AI is not going to come and take your

00:02:16.440 job, but you're not going to learn it overnight. And that's the only reason it's not S tier.

00:02:19.980 Next skill, trades. Think about plumbers, electricians. In the day of the data centers

00:02:25.460 and AI, HVAC, you need to cool the chips, right? The hands-on work, the person that shows up. Again,

00:02:31.980 I don't have robots coming to my house to fix my pipes. There are people showing up. And the truth

00:02:36.700 is, is fewer young people are getting into these skills every year, which means if the demand's

00:02:41.760 going up and the people in there is going down, there's a whole lot of money to be made. It's the

00:02:46.720 work that everybody relies on that almost nobody wants to learn. Now the barrier of entry, you got

00:02:52.700 to go learn the skill. It's not easy. It's not a YouTube video on the weekend. How defensible is

00:02:56.840 it? Again, I don't see robots coming in and start wiring cables yet. Although, hey, Elon's working

00:03:03.240 on it. And then profitability. Yes, you can make a lot of profit. It's just, can you scale it? I

00:03:07.980 don't know but you can do it you can make some money i'm gonna put it as c because there's a

00:03:12.560 barrier of you because you're selling your time unless you build a business just learning the

00:03:17.060 trade ain't gonna make you a lot of money and it's hard to learn but it is defensible which i love

00:03:21.480 but i'm still gonna put it c because i'm ranking on can you make bank the fact that you're selling

00:03:26.060 your time is gonna cap how much money you can make and i wrote a book called buy back your time

00:03:30.080 and it's hard to buy back your time if you got to do the thing manually that you're doing and show

00:03:33.940 up on location geographically constrained see what i'm saying or social media man you could

00:03:37.860 have 15 people helping you out behind you and you can just be on your laptop tap tap tapping but

00:03:41.640 it's definitely not an f tier like most people think next skill project management there's three

00:03:46.980 things project managers do they manage the scope they manage the budget and they manage the time

00:03:50.460 i think that ai will eventually do all of those the one thing that i continue to focus on every

00:03:57.160 day build agents around is change management and project management is it valuable yes do i think

00:04:02.920 AI can disrupt it fairly quickly? Yeah. So barrier of entry, a little bit. Defensibility,

00:04:09.260 I'm pretty sure most tokens being spent right now on AI is doing work that looks like project

00:04:14.080 management. And then profitability, I don't pay a lot for people that are managing projects. I pay

00:04:19.760 for change and people using AI to make changes where the money is. So I'm going to rank it in D

00:04:26.240 only because one of my best friends is a project manager and I don't want him to cry if he watches

00:04:31.060 this video. Next skill, sales. Ooh, the one way to make a lot of money. Sales is the ultimate

00:04:38.420 skill. It's the meta skill. If you learn sales, you can apply it to recruiting. You can apply it

00:04:41.820 to business. You can apply it to anything. You can apply it to having kids and getting them to

00:04:46.220 do what you need them to do. And the truth is nothing happens until somebody makes a freaking

00:04:50.820 sale. It is the oldest income skill there is. It's the highest paid in any economy. And the best

00:04:57.020 closers can literally write their own check in any market. So we get the barrier of entry. How hard

00:05:02.680 is it to be good at sales? It's actually not easy because most people are not willing to confront

00:05:07.320 their psychology. They don't realize that great salespeople go from rejection to rejection to

00:05:12.960 rejection with a f***ing smile, with enthusiasm. They never second guess themselves. The technical 0.83

00:05:18.380 part is easy to learn. You just need to do volume. The defense ability. Can AI take it over? There's

00:05:23.840 already been proof where ai is doing outbound calls dealing with objections can ai bring a

00:05:29.080 deal to close yes in my company atlas that's what they do it supports the process of sales

00:05:34.700 but the closing part requires nuance requires relationship requires understanding and it is

00:05:41.240 getting there so it's actually not as defensible as it used to be a couple years ago and i see a

00:05:46.160 trend line where it's going to be an issue and profitability you can make bank i literally have

00:05:51.720 18 and 19 year olds on my sales teams that make more money than both of their parents combined.

00:05:57.320 I still think it's highly valuable. Like, and here's the thing, it's a meta skill. So I'm going

00:06:02.440 to put it right behind public speaking, because it's almost like a salesperson is a public speaker.

00:06:07.760 Eventually, if they can get over themselves and learn how to command a room, then all of a sudden

00:06:12.060 you're taking the exact same skills used to one on one and you get on a stage, you do one to many.

00:06:16.020 So it's right behind, but it's incredibly valuable. And it will be disrupted by AI,

00:06:19.720 but it's gonna queue you up to kick out the mic.

00:06:21.980 And look, if you're a CEO looking to scale your business,

00:06:24.220 I have a gift for you.

00:06:25.860 I built an entire eight-figure business

00:06:27.540 without ever jumping on a sales call.

00:06:29.580 I did it all through chat, literally in my DM.

00:06:32.580 So I put that entire system into my sell-by chat playbook.

00:06:35.780 It's yours for free.

00:06:36.900 It's got all the scripts, what to ask, how to qualify,

00:06:39.500 how to deal with objections.

00:06:41.140 And if you want it, just go find me on Instagram

00:06:43.020 and DM me the words YouTube SBC,

00:06:45.680 which stands for sell-by chat,

00:06:47.020 and I'll send it right over.

00:06:47.860 Okay, next, SEO.

00:06:49.720 seo stands for search engine optimization and essentially it's the skill to have companies

00:06:55.480 rank high in the search results of a search website like google altavista yahoo ask jeeve

00:07:03.760 how old are you man but now with ai who's searching anymore i'm in my ai chats searching

00:07:11.420 for things and having it go do the searches it's not clicking links in a result set so barrier of

00:07:16.860 entry, it's actually still a hard skill to do well. It's a technical skill and most people still

00:07:22.300 suck at it. Defensibility, how AI proof is it? Well, I don't know if people are going to be

00:07:28.220 searching in the future. I think Google realized that. That's why it has its AI search results.

00:07:32.620 And profitability, I haven't paid anybody for search engine optimization in a while because

00:07:38.100 it doesn't matter to my business. So I am going to rank it as F because I think search results

00:07:45.380 are the way of the newspaper and if that is your business i'm sorry to hear i just think there's way

00:07:50.980 easier better skills to learn that's actually going to make you money than do the equivalent

00:07:54.820 of selling ads in a newspaper for example the next skill aeo search engine ranking doesn't matter

00:08:02.820 anymore aeo stands for answer engine optimization back in the day it kind of was like in the q a

00:08:09.060 core space today it's ai because people are asking questions of their ai agents their chats and the

00:08:15.060 answers are coming back as a fully developed research beautiful answer but that is what aeo

00:08:21.060 is is how do i show up in there if somebody searches best book on productivity how does

00:08:26.180 buy back your time rank in the top three i don't care about being the first few links on google

00:08:31.380 i care about being the answer that the ai gives to the person it's searching so barrier of entry

00:08:36.660 incredibly tough all of our companies focus on aeo and it's changing right now every two days

00:08:43.060 because the AI models are updating themselves

00:08:45.760 as they continue to refine.

00:08:47.280 So then the rankings change.

00:08:49.020 Defensibility, I think the skill of educating the AI

00:08:53.740 to recommend a company is going to always be needed

00:08:57.080 because the AI models

00:08:58.400 are gonna be the future of purchasing.

00:09:00.540 And then profitability,

00:09:01.800 people pay top dollar to get more customers.

00:09:04.060 I'm actually gonna rank this S tier.

00:09:07.120 Is it really S tier though?

00:09:08.660 Hmm, no, no, no.

00:09:12.780 It's B tier.

00:09:13.540 It's almost like the new version of social media, right?

00:09:16.140 Because like I used to get paid

00:09:17.440 to create audience on social to sell stuff.

00:09:19.960 Now I got to learn how to get found in the results.

00:09:23.000 So it's B tier and it's above social media.

00:09:26.520 I think the money's capped

00:09:27.920 in regards to like how much you can get paid.

00:09:29.700 Whereas like sales and public speaking,

00:09:31.360 like that's more immediate.

00:09:32.840 The skill's easier to learn.

00:09:34.020 You can get paid more.

00:09:35.080 It's still defensible against AI.

00:09:37.420 That's why I'm putting it there.

00:09:38.720 I'm still unsure of like how defensible is long-term.

00:09:41.640 If the models get so good,

00:09:42.560 They don't even care what anybody's trying to do

00:09:44.140 to like go around and tweak the results.

00:09:46.980 So there's a little uncertainty there.

00:09:48.440 Next, we have data analysis.

00:09:50.680 Ooh, this one's good.

00:09:52.540 Essentially digging through the company's numbers,

00:09:54.780 trying to find useful insights

00:09:56.280 to help the people making decisions make better decisions.

00:09:59.740 Companies have always paid these people a lot of money.

00:10:02.420 They used to be consultants.

00:10:03.620 I always joke that a consultant borrows your watch

00:10:05.560 and tells you what time it is.

00:10:06.800 Now, what's happened is AI has created a massive opportunity

00:10:11.200 to use the data, the information,

00:10:14.440 to train the AI so it can make better decisions.

00:10:17.540 And when every business is still being run

00:10:20.080 off of spreadsheets,

00:10:21.440 somebody that can come in and organize the data

00:10:23.920 and make it make sense to feed it to the AI

00:10:26.400 so it gives better answer, I think there's value there.

00:10:29.460 Now, barrier of entry, it's very easy today.

00:10:32.300 Like the fact that you have a background in data

00:10:33.960 doesn't really matter

00:10:34.780 because my AI can do better than most people came

00:10:36.880 that have quant backgrounds.

00:10:38.420 Defensible, I don't think long-term

00:10:41.160 when I look at what the model's gonna do,

00:10:42.820 I always ask myself in six months 0.94

00:10:44.100 how much better it's gonna be.

00:10:45.200 I mean, Claude launched a whole set of skills

00:10:47.640 to do financials, a whole set of skills

00:10:49.460 to do data cleanup, a whole set of skills

00:10:51.120 to figure out the insights from the data,

00:10:53.340 even how to visualize the data with visualizations

00:10:56.000 and now artifacts where you can build a tool

00:10:58.340 to like manipulate the data.

00:10:59.920 So defensible, not that high.

00:11:02.340 Making money, I honestly wouldn't pay that much

00:11:05.720 for that skill.

00:11:06.520 That's crazy for me to say.

00:11:07.540 I literally am a little taken back how I'm going to score this because I wouldn't have thought this

00:11:11.460 a year ago, but I'm putting a D tier above project management. Like I do need a data person over a

00:11:19.040 project manager, but the truth is, is most of my team members use the AI to do this work. So not

00:11:25.260 very defensible at all. And when I think of like where the models are going to disrupt people,

00:11:29.840 that job. Oh, next skill, media buying. You have a lot of insight in this one. I do. Media buying

00:11:37.040 is the skill of buying ads for a product

00:11:41.440 to get them customers, right?

00:11:43.180 And really just deciding the creative and the messaging

00:11:46.060 and what platforms you should use to get attention.

00:11:49.580 Almost every business needs advertising.

00:11:53.020 It is how people get new customers

00:11:54.820 from local shops to giant companies.

00:11:57.060 And oftentimes the media buyer is trusted

00:11:59.480 with millions of dollars in ad spend

00:12:02.040 to manage and direct and orchestrate.

00:12:04.440 Now, when I look at the barrier of entry

00:12:05.920 with the AI tools,

00:12:07.680 a lot of people can learn this over the weekend.

00:12:09.960 Now there's nuance,

00:12:10.820 and I don't think it's as easy as people think,

00:12:12.780 but it's very approachable.

00:12:14.520 Defensibility, low.

00:12:16.120 Can AI do my job in the future?

00:12:18.380 Oh yeah.

00:12:19.080 We've already built platforms that partner with AI

00:12:21.840 to generate creative, to run ads,

00:12:24.140 to manage the ad spend, and it's already happening.

00:12:27.160 And it would be happening even more

00:12:28.680 if Meta opened up their API to let people do it.

00:12:31.780 Profitability, do people spend money on media buying?

00:12:34.480 Yes.

00:12:34.920 is that going down 100 one of my friends recently fired like 40 of their media buyers

00:12:40.920 and those people are not finding jobs so where am i ranking this one i'm gonna put it c level

00:12:47.220 right behind trades i think you can make more money doing electrical to media buying right now

00:12:52.840 let's go crazy you can make 300 grand a year wiring up a data center in texas nobody's paying

00:12:59.300 that for a media buy a year and a half ago it would have been flipped next we got graphic design

00:13:04.960 Design is what drives the world, right?

00:13:07.200 We design it in our mind first, and then we create it.

00:13:09.420 And without a visual, it's hard to understand

00:13:11.060 what we're creating, so we don't wanna spend a lot of money.

00:13:13.660 Now, AI has changed the game

00:13:15.440 for anybody in the creative field.

00:13:17.180 So barrier of entry, how hard is it

00:13:18.680 for somebody to learn design?

00:13:19.620 It's actually hard.

00:13:20.580 Case can be learned, it can't be taught, right?

00:13:22.520 You have to just do stuff and try stuff,

00:13:24.460 and you gotta trust your gut.

00:13:25.400 It's like writing songs as a professional songwriter.

00:13:28.360 Hardest, defensibility, will AI come for that work?

00:13:32.640 Oh my gosh, let me look at my budget.

00:13:35.160 I have gone from spending tens of thousands

00:13:37.920 of dollars on designers.

00:13:40.560 I stopped sending stuff to my designer.

00:13:42.760 Why would I wait for the iteration

00:13:44.220 when I can just prompt it?

00:13:45.620 Every tool that is in design,

00:13:47.840 literally all the tools have built AI into them.

00:13:50.640 And then profitability, people don't pay for it anymore.

00:13:53.340 When I can prompt a new website

00:13:55.120 and I can prompt a new ad campaign,

00:13:56.820 I can prompt a new mock-up, why would I pay for it?

00:13:59.620 I went from design dollars to token dollars.

00:14:02.300 Again, if you're great, you'll still get paid

00:14:03.920 because you have taste and you have design and you have care.

00:14:06.220 But I mean, it's a D tier above data analyst.

00:14:08.740 Next skill, cybersecurity.

00:14:10.480 The ability to keep bad people out of my company

00:14:13.220 from stealing my money.

00:14:14.480 It's the spoof emails.

00:14:16.120 It's the AI getting so good

00:14:18.440 that the bad people are using the AI to attack the companies.

00:14:21.560 So barrier of entry, it's a hard one to learn.

00:14:24.680 And if you can learn this, it makes you special.

00:14:27.860 Defensibility, we just heard

00:14:29.840 with the latest model from Anthropic called Mythos,

00:14:32.580 where it was starting to find exploits

00:14:35.180 and opportunities to attack software

00:14:37.160 at a scale that was so crazy,

00:14:39.340 they didn't release the model

00:14:40.640 so they could allow all the cybersecurity departments

00:14:43.380 to catch up in the banking and aviation

00:14:46.040 and infrastructure space.

00:14:47.640 So defensibility, yes, AI is gonna help it,

00:14:50.540 but if you're in it, I just think it's really defensible.

00:14:53.600 This skill is not going away anytime.

00:14:55.340 If anything, it's gonna require more smart people doing it.

00:14:57.880 And profitability, I'm assuming if you're great at it,

00:15:00.680 you can write your own check.

00:15:02.300 So I'm going to rank it B tier

00:15:05.680 because it's hard to learn.

00:15:08.380 Yes, it's defensible, I think, long-term.

00:15:11.100 Yes, you can make a lot of money,

00:15:12.660 but it is hard to learn.

00:15:14.540 Next, we got prompt engineering,

00:15:15.800 the ability to write prompts

00:15:17.520 that create outputs that companies value.

00:15:20.600 A year ago, incredibly valuable.

00:15:22.680 Today, I don't think anybody cares.

00:15:24.900 Most people figure out prompt engineering.

00:15:26.360 So barrier of entry, not complicated.

00:15:28.920 You can just copy patient.

00:15:30.200 Defensibility, AI is writing the prompts, not valuable.

00:15:33.120 Profitability, I haven't paid for prompt engineers

00:15:35.120 or any type of scripts in a long time.

00:15:36.940 So I'm gonna rank it prompt engineering.

00:15:40.720 I still think there's value there.

00:15:42.740 I'm gonna put it C tier above trades

00:15:44.520 because you're in the AI space.

00:15:46.420 Next skill, email marketing.

00:15:47.740 The ability to communicate a message

00:15:49.640 that gets opened by a viewer.

00:15:51.660 Barrier of entry, low.

00:15:53.460 Defensibility, low.

00:15:54.600 most emails are written or assisted with ai it's not hard you actually train on the previous emails

00:16:00.580 that worked best and then the ai will literally write more that look like the old ones that work

00:16:04.420 best profitability used to get paid a lot of money to do this now it's almost like an admin task

00:16:09.420 so low i'm going to put a d tier above graphic design because it's money people like to pay for

00:16:14.240 money but ai is going to do it in the future next skill video editing you're not going to believe

00:16:19.860 what i'm going to say on this one and i think because of the rise of social media it's just

00:16:23.640 become such a popular skill everybody needs their sand their creative director their editor their

00:16:30.160 clippers bear of entry i think like taste like design it's actually hard to learn how to do it

00:16:36.200 well sure there's tools to do it i still think it's not an easy skill to learn defensibility

00:16:40.960 i mean more and more i see ai take over that space it's a weak sauce profitability it's funny

00:16:48.640 one of my friends hired an editor yesterday and he's not even paying him he's paying him on

00:16:52.720 perform it. So that's how little bit of money you might make. Because if it doesn't perform,

00:16:57.180 you got zero. Here's why I'm going to rank it high. And most people are not going to understand

00:17:00.900 this. I think the skill of editing videos, if you get good at it, is up there with sales.

00:17:05.840 So I'm going to have a controversial take, even though I know AI in general is going to do the

00:17:11.700 work. Understanding how to do it well, like selling, is actually a really important skill

00:17:17.320 because I think the future of business or life is media, trust, distribution. Video editing

00:17:22.520 is a great skill for that um and the ai tool is just gonna make you better that's where i'm

00:17:25.840 putting it right behind a problem is you're not gonna make a lot of money so i'm gonna

00:17:28.680 i'm still gonna keep it up there oh that's the proper rating i don't love it i don't love this

00:17:37.780 it's just gonna be less of the actual like doing and the editing part it's gonna be way more on

00:17:42.520 the creative input and the storylines and the the ideation of it that's gonna be valued all right

00:17:47.280 Next skill, lead generation.

00:17:49.360 The art of getting attention,

00:17:51.520 capturing some of that attention into a lead.

00:17:54.020 A lead is a contact.

00:17:55.660 It's an email, it's a phone number,

00:17:57.340 it's a follow on social media.

00:17:58.920 No leads, no sales, no business.

00:18:01.480 Now, the barrier of entry, it's still hard.

00:18:03.940 Most people still don't know,

00:18:06.300 even the ones that charge people to do lead gen,

00:18:09.200 how to generate a lead.

00:18:10.360 They think scraping a website 0.60

00:18:11.740 and getting emails is f***ing leads.

00:18:13.640 No, it's not.

00:18:14.360 To me, lead gen is having somebody raise their hand

00:18:17.300 and say, I have that problem

00:18:18.700 and I'm interested in learning your solution.

00:18:21.420 Defensibility, I still think even though AI will come

00:18:25.240 and marketers will ruin things,

00:18:27.120 the ability to shift and understand how to generate leads

00:18:29.540 is always gonna be valuable.

00:18:30.960 Does AI take over search?

00:18:32.740 Yes.

00:18:33.220 Does a person that knows how to use AI to generate leads,

00:18:35.540 are they still valuable?

00:18:36.640 Hell yeah. 0.67

00:18:37.420 And then profitability, people will pay for opportunities.

00:18:40.700 If you came to me and said,

00:18:42.000 I have 15 people that said they wanna learn from you

00:18:44.480 and they're open to having conversation,

00:18:46.520 I will pay for those opportunities.

00:18:48.120 Less than a sale, but I will still pay for them.

00:18:50.440 I'm gonna put it behind sales.

00:18:51.940 I think selling is a meta skill, lead gen is a great skill,

00:18:55.040 but if you actually had to pick one,

00:18:56.480 go sales and make more money,

00:18:58.220 lead gen you'll still make a lot of money.

00:18:59.880 Next skill, day trading.

00:19:01.420 Oh yeah, I'm gonna go there.

00:19:02.640 Day trading is the ability for you to make bets

00:19:05.140 on the stock market in a day based on your research

00:19:08.540 or analysis of your candlesticks,

00:19:10.840 which way the stock's gonna go up

00:19:12.420 and hopefully pick the right direction and make money.

00:19:14.780 It's probably one of the number one ways

00:19:17.160 that people want to make money by working very little

00:19:19.780 because they think they're gonna make a lot of money

00:19:21.500 for a little bit of time.

00:19:22.680 They forget it's got the word day trading in it,

00:19:25.300 meaning you have to work in that day to make a trade.

00:19:28.200 And the promise is total freedom.

00:19:29.980 Now I can understand the appeal.

00:19:31.680 No boss, no schedule, just a laptop traveling the world.

00:19:35.620 Let's look at it from the point of AI.

00:19:37.880 Barrier of entry.

00:19:38.800 It's still hard to learn to make money.

00:19:40.840 So the barrier of entry is high, the education's out there,

00:19:43.520 but not a lot of people make money doing it.

00:19:45.220 Defensibility, it's defensible today, long-term,

00:19:49.200 I'm still uncertain what's gonna happen in this world.

00:19:51.800 And profitability, if you decide to master this skill,

00:19:56.160 you can make profit, okay?

00:19:57.760 But it's like saying being a professional athlete

00:20:00.160 or an entrepreneur.

00:20:01.180 Most people in both those categories that play sports

00:20:04.080 or go into business, don't make money, same bucket.

00:20:06.880 So in regards to like my recommendation for skills

00:20:09.280 that people just go learn to make money,

00:20:11.460 I'm not putting it very high.

00:20:12.560 I'm literally gonna put it above SEO

00:20:14.540 because SEO is essentially dead.

00:20:16.320 Day trading is still a thing, F tier.

00:20:18.560 All right, next skill, copywriting.

00:20:20.460 The magical world of words.

00:20:22.560 A copywriter's job is to get you to read the next sentence.

00:20:26.560 That's it, done well, world-class.

00:20:28.480 A single page of copy can generate millions of dollars

00:20:31.640 for a business.

00:20:32.480 So barrier of entry, easy to learn.

00:20:35.520 A lot of education, AI supports it, you can learn it.

00:20:39.100 defensibility, you know, it's interesting because AI does a lot of copywriting, but I don't know

00:20:44.440 if AI on its own can generate the kind of copy that converts at a high level yet. I think it's

00:20:50.760 medium level defensibility and then profitability. People are spending less and less money on copy

00:20:56.060 because the default copy you get is good enough. So they don't care about paying five or 10 grand

00:21:00.360 for copy for a website when the copy that generated through AI is there. So again, it's like graphic

00:21:04.680 design, the budget, the budget, the budget, the budget, the budget. Because of that, I'm not going

00:21:08.940 to rank it very high. It's D tier behind graphic design. No, I'm not going to do that. I'm going

00:21:14.220 to flip it because when I think of where I'm spending money, I'm still spending money on

00:21:16.940 copywriting. I'm spending more copywriting than media buying. Nope. I'm putting it D tier at the

00:21:22.120 front. Next skill, software development. Now this one's near and dear to my heart. I'm a 17 year

00:21:27.040 old. I learned how to code. It literally saved my life. Whole backstory there. You can Google it,

00:21:32.620 Google it. You can AI it, but let's talk about it. Okay. Building apps, building tools, building

00:21:38.080 scripts. What's crazy is that it takes less time to build an app than it used to take to go in a

00:21:43.480 meeting to talk about the app. In the last six months, AI has made it approachable to everyone.

00:21:49.580 Barrier of entry, so approachable. Yesterday, I had my 12 and 13 year old at my office writing

00:21:55.580 code in the meeting room. One built a website for his new business, the other one built the game.

00:21:59.940 Neither of them knew how to write code. Easy peasy. Defensibility, I see AI coming for that

00:22:07.560 role the funny part is is that it's less the developers that are gonna have opportunities

00:22:11.800 the person knows how to build great product that would mean it's not very defensible and then

00:22:16.280 profitability the cost for engineering is dropping so i think it's an incredible skill to learn i

00:22:24.440 think it's a lot of fun i think you can make a lot of money and i think it's more approachable

00:22:28.920 and i am actually gonna put it beat here right behind cyber security i think cyber security and

00:22:35.480 and software development are similar.

00:22:37.080 I just think people are gonna pay more to not get scammed

00:22:39.540 than they are to build apps that they can build themselves.

00:22:41.880 Last but not least, the skill of AI automation.

00:22:45.060 Automation is essentially taking a process,

00:22:47.740 step one, two, three, four, five,

00:22:49.520 and getting the AI to run that process for you automagically.

00:22:53.520 Back in the day, we used tools like Make,

00:22:55.540 and Zapier, and N8N to do this,

00:22:58.060 and everybody was talking about it,

00:22:59.520 and everybody was selling AI automation courses,

00:23:02.120 and I can do AI automation,

00:23:03.380 and I can do this for you, and you, and you.

00:23:04.940 And all of a sudden, agents came

00:23:07.040 and nobody's talking about AI automation anymore.

00:23:09.020 They're talking about agents.

00:23:10.320 The truth is they're kind of all the same thing,

00:23:12.380 but in regards to just AI automation,

00:23:14.740 right now with AI, you can build your own AI automation

00:23:18.220 by having the AI do it.

00:23:19.360 So in regards to like learning how to do it,

00:23:21.580 I still think it's hard.

00:23:22.800 Most people don't understand like the infrastructure,

00:23:25.000 the business systems and companies are still trying

00:23:27.360 to figure out just how to chat with AI,

00:23:28.900 let alone set up automations.

00:23:30.320 Defensible, will AI come in and start automating more?

00:23:33.500 Yes.

00:23:34.420 So I think it's like a four out of 10 defensible.

00:23:36.860 It's not very defensible.

00:23:37.920 And then profitability,

00:23:39.020 you can still make a lot of money

00:23:40.660 helping companies do AI automation.

00:23:43.020 Now, what you do once you sell it, that's up to you.

00:23:45.640 But are people paying to have somebody come in

00:23:47.680 and AI automate things?

00:23:49.160 Yes.

00:23:49.620 In the business world,

00:23:50.600 we call that a forward deployed engineer, okay?

00:23:53.580 Where they're engineering business workflow

00:23:56.060 and processes and automation, essentially.

00:23:57.960 I think in a year from now,

00:23:59.180 people that understand automation will learn agents

00:24:02.000 and agents will be the future.

00:24:03.480 so i'm going to rank it in b tier and that's b tier because i think of the defensibility i think

00:24:10.740 ai is going to build all the automations i'm hoping you learn agents i'm not sure if you will

00:24:15.120 and i just don't think people are going to pay a lot of money because every employee is going to

00:24:18.560 know how to do this themselves so it's funny is i didn't rank an s tier because i think ai is so

00:24:24.300 disruptive that if you think that everything that could make you a lot of money is going to make you

00:24:29.200 a lot of money for a long period of time 0.99

00:24:30.600 and it's easy to learn, you're crazy. 0.93

00:24:32.440 There's no world where it's easy to learn, 0.98

00:24:35.600 defensible against AI,

00:24:37.000 and is gonna make you a lot of money.

00:24:39.160 So I couldn't use S tier because it's hard.

00:24:42.160 If you look at a Forbes richest people list,

00:24:44.420 most people made money building businesses

00:24:46.620 and it wasn't an option.

00:24:48.580 So here's the truth.

00:24:49.420 This might feel overwhelming,

00:24:51.840 but all I'm gonna ask you to do

00:24:53.280 is spend more time in the AI.

00:24:55.740 Take this list and go like,

00:24:57.380 ooh, AEO, that's interesting.

00:24:59.020 or, oh, cybersecurity, I've always thought that'd be fun.

00:25:01.680 How would I learn it?

00:25:02.580 Ask the AI to teach it to you.

00:25:04.460 You can do this.

00:25:05.720 I've watched young people do it all around me.

00:25:08.360 I mentor a bunch of young people

00:25:09.700 through my King's Club program.

00:25:11.020 I teach them how to use AI to build these high value skills.

00:25:14.340 That's why I have firsthand experience

00:25:15.640 on where the money is being made.

00:25:17.320 And I know you can do it yourself.

00:25:19.060 Now, I'm not saying to go try all of these.

00:25:21.000 I'm just giving you some options

00:25:22.240 so you can go be curious and know which direction to go in.

00:25:25.360 My philosophy is simple.

00:25:26.380 I will always disrupt myself before AI disrupts me.

00:25:29.840 I want to use the AI to do stuff.

00:25:31.920 I don't want the AI to be using me to get it done.

00:25:34.260 So leave a comment and let me know

00:25:35.700 which skill are you gonna go all in on this year

00:25:38.560 to change your life, comment below.

00:25:40.960 And remember, if you want my sell by chat playbook,

00:25:43.200 just find me on Instagram and DM me YouTube SBC

00:25:46.180 and I'll send it right over to you.

00:25:47.960 Now that you know which skills are worth your time,

00:25:50.300 here's the next move.

00:25:51.440 If you wanna see how to build

00:25:52.600 a $10 million solo AI business with zero code,

00:25:55.900 click here and I'll see you on the other side.

Dan Martell - July 06, 2026

The Only 19 Skills to Make Money in the AI Era

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