The 1 Skill I Learned To Become An AI Millionaire

Look, we have entered the new AI era and now the pathway to getting rich and becoming a millionaire has completely changed. And if we're being honest here, this new world that we're living in is creating new financial winners, but it's also creating new financial losers. And in this video, I'm going to share the number one skill that is separating people who are getting rich right now from those who are struggling. Because you see, lots of old advice on YouTube about how to become rich used to be based on this influential book written in the 90s, The Millionaire Next Door. The formula it taught was pretty basic. Step one, get a safe, good paying job, then step two, live frugally below your means so that you can invest at least 20% of your income, ideally more, into stock market index funds. And then step three, be patient and wait 10 to 20 years and boom, you are a millionaire. Simple, right? But as I said, everything has now changed because AI is now causing wages to not just stagnate but to decline even for good, high paying jobs. Yep, basically, unless you're in the top salary bracket in the top 10%, wages and salaries have grown very slowly in recent years. Yet, basic living costs like rent, mortgage payments, childcare, insurance, all of this is rising rapidly. And it's not just in the USA either. As someone who is living outside of America in New Zealand, I can confirm that it's happening everywhere globally too. And so you might be thinking, okay, Sarah, that's fine, I'll just focus on getting one of those top 10% jobs and then get rich that way. But here's the thing, while it did indeed, of course, work before, AI has made that much harder too because most of those top 10% jobs are knowledge worker jobs, which solve problems and find solutions for their employers based on their knowledge rather than their ability to work with their hands. Doctors, lawyers, accountants, financial advisors, tech coders, and developers, these are all examples. And these are the ones that are currently at the most risk for AI automation, since well, AI is a computer, and it can remember a lot more than our human brains can, which is why in studies, AI is already starting to outperform human doctors in diagnosing patients. Now, don't get me wrong here, I'm not some AI doomer that thinks that all jobs are going to get automated out to AI. There's still a lot that humans can do better than AI, at least for now. So no one knows exactly how many jobs are ultimately going to get automated. But even if it's on the lower end of the estimates, the fact of the matter is, is that that could still be quite devastating. And I say that because we're already starting to see this play out in the tech job space right now. AI in combination with offshoring is leading to an increasingly large number of layoffs. And so there is a big glut of laid off skilled tech workers, all competing for a smaller number of jobs, resulting in people having to take big pay cuts. Like I've been following this YouTuber here after her video went viral where she got laid off from her high paying tech job. She had planned to find a job within six months, but that six months has come and gone. Her unemployment benefits have ended and she still hasn't found a job. But guess what? She still has a mortgage to pay. She still has credit card debt to pay, and she has student loan debts to pay. It's a really unfortunate, difficult situation to be in, I'm sure. People were effectively promised that if they took on all of this debt, that they would get rewarded with a good paying job. But now AI is making that much harder than it was before. So then I propose this. If you want to become a millionaire, rather than trying to cling to the old ways of getting rich, that you instead focus on learning the number one skill that AI is bad at, which is opportunity identification. Because you see, here's my personal thesis, right? So the reason why this old model of getting rich is now collapsing is because those top 10% jobs that people strived for all rely on having a high level of analytical intelligence, which is basically the ability to problem solve by recalling and remixing preexisting knowledge that you have into solutions, which is exactly what AI is good at, isn't it? So then I propose to get rich, you should instead be focusing on learning opportunity identification, which is the skill of being able to spot opportunities that are missing and to take advantage of them. It's the skill that entrepreneurs usually use to come up with new or better product ideas or service ideas or content ideas, and at least for now, AI can't really do this. Because when you think about it, it's pretty much the opposite of what AI does. AI is incredibly powerful and very intelligent, but at its core, it is just remixing preexisting knowledge, and it's amazing at doing so. AI can scrape databases at lightning fast speed and easily beat a human at analytical intelligence, but this type of intelligence ultimately requires access to preexisting information, whereas opportunity identification is the opposite. Instead of learning about what exists, you're trying to create something new by spotting what is missing, and the human brain is much better than an AI at doing this, because to spot what is missing, you often have to tap into emotions and feelings which AI does not have. And so then you can do what Sam Altman talked about, which is to combine your skills at coming up with new ideas with AI's analytical intelligence to create a one-person, million dollar or even billion dollar business. And I'm convinced that this is the new pathway to getting rich. Let me show you an example. So you take this video here, right? In this case study, I showed how I scaled a one-person print-on-demand AI business. Essentially, what happened was one day I was browsing through Etsy looking for clothing specifically about dog breeds such as Huskies, and I noticed that very few clever designs for specific animals and breeds existed that I wanted to buy. And when I had this realization, I thought, huh, you know what, I bet other people feel the same way that I feel. And I was ultimately right. Essentially, you could say that I used my opportunity identification skills to spot this, a gap in the market. I found a new business opportunity. And the really cool thing is my brain did it in a way that AI can't. It tapped into my feelings and my intuition about what I could feel that I wanted and what I could feel was missing. And so now that my brain had done what it is good at, I then used AI for what it is good at, which is analytical intelligence. So to create my design, I now needed to remix information about Huskies to come up with slogan ideas. So rather than try to do that myself, I got ChatGPT to help me come up with some clever ideas. And then I used MidJourney, an AI art generator to generate the pictures for me. And I used Canva, an AI-powered graphics editing app to help create the designs. And then I came to automated print-on-demand apps like Printify and Printful and uploaded my designs onto their print-on-demand clothing. And then I listed them on Etsy for a markup price. And to market them, I used ChatGPT and another chatbot, Claude, to optimize my product listings for Etsy's AI recommendation algorithms. And now that business runs itself on autopilot. Each time someone buys clothing from me, my print-on-demand app sees the order, prints it onto the item, packages it up, and ships it out to the customer. While I get to keep the difference as profit. And of course, if you are interested in learning more about how my store runs and how it makes money, I do have a free print-on-demand ebook, which you can download in the video description below. But anyway, regardless, hopefully you can see my point here. The old ways of getting rich by relying on knowledge you learned from school or college or university to get good paying jobs is going to get harder and harder. So rather than face it, I say lean into it. That's my personal plan. Get good at what AI is bad at and then leverage AI skills to work for you rather than against you. In saying that though, I bet a lot of people will be thinking, okay, Sarah, that sounds simple in theory, but in practice, it's actually so much harder. A lot of people who watch my videos and see my case studies where I spot business opportunities say to me, but Sarah, I just can't seem to see any myself. And you know what? I totally get it because here's the thing, right? Not only does school and society basically condition us to rely on analytical intelligence, it also makes us bad at opportunity identification. So you're going to have to learn the skill yourself. I mean, you think about it, right? For pretty much all school subjects, you rely on analytical intelligence to get good grades. Like you take maths. In maths, you solve equations by recalling formulas. And in literature class, you write essays by recalling themes of books that you have read, that sort of thing. And it's perfectly fine for school to teach you this. I'm not complaining, but here's also kind of the thing, right? There isn't really a place in the school system for opportunity identification since it is this skill that makes you go, you know what? I'm actually pretty good at maths class and my friend is really good at literature class. So we have an opportunity here. I'll do my friend's maths homework and they can do my literature homework. This way, the work can get done while we both save time. It's a win-win, right? And the funny thing is that in the world of business, the home of opportunity identification, this is considered a win-win. But in the world of school, the home of analytical intelligence, it is considered cheating. And I'm not saying that this isn't cheating in school because it is, but you get my point here, right? There is no real place in school for this skill. And so in most people, it just doesn't get fostered. So if you've ever struggled to come up with new business ideas or content ideas, don't worry, you are an excellent company. Most people struggle with this because you were literally conditioned to not develop the skill. Luckily though, at the end of the day, it is just that, a skill. It isn't magic and pretty much all skills can be self-taught with enough time and practice. And honestly, in my experience, one of the simplest, easiest ways to do it is to read books and to watch videos and case studies on places like YouTube, such as the Make It channel where entrepreneurs share how they spotted their gaps in the market and then created products, services, or content to fill them to spark creative inspiration. Plus there are lots of other ways too. How to actually develop the skill could be a whole video in of itself that I make. So if you'd like a video on that topic, let me know in the comments. And in the meantime, if you would like to see a case study of me spotting a gap in the so that you can get creatively inspired by that too, be sure to watch my next video here on screen. I'll also link to it in the description below and I will see you in the next video.