Make Your Business Work for YOU!

Welcome to Creative on Purpose Live, a show dedicated to helping advancing solopreneurs optimize their business to better fund and fit the life that they actually want to be living. I'm Scott Perry. I am the founder of Creative on Purpose, and I am the publisher of Transcendent Solopreneurship, which is also the home of the Solopreneur Success Circle community, a vibrant community of advancing difference makers who are all heading in the right direction and leveraging the power of Collective Momentum to help get clear about and closer to what they want with their business. And today is Labor Day. And so, uh, because I have nothing better to do, I decided that I was going to go ahead and talk a little bit today about some subjects that I've been talking about for a very long time. And that is what about work, labor, AI. And work that matters. And so I'm going to begin by just defining my terms. And there's a book by James Sussman that I have read a couple times now. It's called Work, and it's a great book. It's a, it's a fairly long book, uh, and I probably have gotten the most value out of the first 100 pages or so, but I recommend the book highly. And it really helped me clarify my definition of work, which aligns very much with what James Sussman talks about, which is that work is just the purposeful use of energy to achieve some sort of goal. And so the assertion that he makes is that work is about the exchange of energy. So all living things work. An apple tree extracts nutrients from the soil, water from the soil and the air, sunlight, and it puts all those resources to work to grow branches, create buds, buds that flower, get pollinated, and bear fruit, right? So an apple tree works. It works at appleing. Human beings also work in this way. We exchange energy, right? So, you know, we have— we take in calories so that we can go hunting, go farming, go swim in the ocean, do whatever it is that we want to do. We exchange energy purposefully to get closer to the things that we want, to achieve goals. The distinction for me between the kind of work that an apple tree does or a bumblebee does, uh, and the work that humans do is that humans are unique in that the work that we do informs our identity. We forge meaning and purpose from the work that we do. And so work is important, work matters. And I think that although you are not absolutely defined by what you do, I think, uh, it— we do have to acknowledge that how we do what we do and why we do what we do does reflect who we are. It is a reflection of our character. It is a display of our values in action, which is an expression of our virtue, values in action. So work is important, the way we think about work and what we do, why we do it, how we do it. These are all things that we would do well to do on purpose, with purpose, for a purpose, within, for people we care about. It's Labor Day. So I think it's appropriate to distinguish, uh, at least for me, uh, this is how I distinguish between work and labor, right? Because work is again, that transference of energy, taking energy and applying it toward a purpose towards a goal. And using that energy purposefully to achieve something. Labor, for me, and we're celebrating Labor Day because what was achieved by laborers during the Industrial Revolution was really important, right? They fought against injustice. They had to fight to make workplaces a fair, equitable, safe place. And for most of the last 100, 150 years, labor has been about doing tasks and expending effort to get a paycheck so that we can live our lives, take care of our financial responsibilities, purchase things, you know, that we want. And so the idea is that While work is that exchange of energy toward a purpose, towards a goal, labor is task-oriented. It's often very repetitive. And here on Labor Day, we are celebrating that workers have historically been treated unfairly. Laborers have been treated historically unfairly, and we're celebrating their fight to make work labor. Fair, just, uh, and equitable. Enter AI, which is a powerful tool that can be used for all sorts of purposes, positive and nefarious, but it is just a tool. It requires a human to employ it towards some useful purpose, hopefully. Or, you know, again, any tool can be used for good or ill. You can use a tool like a hammer to build a house that provides you with shelter. You can also use it to bash someone's skull in. The utility of the hammer and the purpose for which the hammer is used is up to the human employing it. AI is a tool that can take over most of the routine, rote, task-oriented work that we do, and it can often do it at least as good, if not better, than we can. And so I think that Labor, this idea of doing menial, repetitive, task-oriented things in exchange for a paycheck, is going to become something that is increasingly headed towards obsolescence because the arc of history has shown that, you know, when something can be done as well or better by someone else or something else, we will do that. You don't see a lot of ditch diggers these days because bulldozers and excavators and so forth can do that much more effectively and efficiently than a human being. And so, you know, again, the Industrial Revolution began— when it began, the pin makers of the world railed against the pin making machine because Making pins was a craft, a skill that could not be done by just anyone. You had to have some craft. You had to learn, learn the craft, learn the skill of making pins. And then when the pin machine came along and made perfectly good pins in much greater quantity and much less time, you know, people fought against the pin machine. Well, the pin machine won. And so if you are railing against AI and its ability to take over menial tasks or repetitive tasks or tasks that are easily automated, um, then I think you're probably headed towards more suffering than you really want to sign up for. At the same time, by doing some of those things that don't require a lot of skill or empathy, it frees up a lot of time for us to think about the things that we actually want to get better at. It frees us up to do more of the human work, the work that requires empathy and understanding and care and consideration and creativity. And so what I see us heading towards, and I'm thrilled about the way things are going right now. I recognize all the perils and all the dangers, and I would never advocate that you outsource the work that you want to do and your ability to connect and collaborate and create. I would not, never suggest that you outsource that to AI. If you want to become a better writer. Then you need to write, and you need to write poorly before you can write average, and you need to do a lot of average writing before you can do great writing. And you're not going to be able to become a better writer by outsourcing all your writing to, to AI. And we don't need a bunch of below average or mediocre writing in the world. There's plenty of information and content out there. We don't need more subpar or just barely tolerable writing. So if you want to be a writer, write. Doesn't mean that you can't leverage AI to help you with some elements of your writing practice, but don't outsource to AI anything that you actually want to get better at. Um, But if AI, if you can outsource menial tasks, admin tasks, organizational tasks to an AI so that you free up time to do more of the human important work of connecting and communicating and collaborating and caring and helping clarify and accelerate, helping people get what they want to accomplish, what they're meant to accomplish. I think that's going to be a really good thing. And so work is the exchange of energy purposefully done for a goal. Labor, those rote, menial, repetitive tasks that will increasingly be taken over by AI, whether you want it to or not. Now we are at a point in time where something that I've been advocating for a long time is going to become increasingly possible and increasingly necessary, and that is doing work that matters with people you care about. Because when all the tasks are being done by AI, when all the meaningless, unimportant work is being outsourced to AI and all that is left is the important human work of communication, connection, collaboration, creativity, and progress towards meaningful goals that bring us more flourishing, fulfillment, purpose, and prosperity. We are all at this inflection point. Where it's time to decide what work matters, what work matters to us, and how do we leverage AI and our unique abilities to create work that is significant, meaningful, that will help us live a legacy worth remembering, worth doing, worth, worth having done. And so That true work that matters, I believe, lies at the intersection of who you really are, what you're really good at, and where you really belong. If you don't have a sense of who you are, what your core values are, what your core beliefs are, what your guiding principles and what your boundaries and guardrails are, Now's the time to really get clear about knowing thyself because that's where purpose emerges from. It doesn't— purpose isn't the Simon Sinek why, where it was born in you and you have to excavate it by the time you're 20 or it's going to be too late and it's the one and only thing that you are meant for. I don't believe it. Purpose is an emergent quality that comes from understanding who you are and what you're good at and where you belong. And the more that you just apply yourself purposefully to the work and conversations that are right in front of you right now, purpose will continue to emerge, clarify, and you can step into it with greater confidence. What you're good at, what are your inherent talents? What are the things that have always kind of come naturally to you? Where are the activities that, that express your personality and your preferences? What are the skills that you learned in school or on the job that light you up and express those core talents and your core values and core beliefs? You need to identify the things that define you, light you up, where you feel the greatest sense of purpose and passion, and lean into those things. And then it's simply time to define where you belong. If you know who you are and what you're good at, then you belong with people who share your values and need your talents to enhance their lives. And where we're heading in terms of not just being able to continue to be prosperous, productive members of society is doing this work that matters with people we care about, work that expresses who you are, what you're good at, and where you belong, that expresses— that aligns with your personality, your preferences, and the kind of people that share your values and need you to show up to help them accomplish what they want to accomplish or solve the problems that they need to solve. And AI can be a collaborator in that process as well. If you, like me, are in the coaching domain, I prefer to call myself a corner man because I don't really think of myself as a coach the way most people think of coaches, but if you are a person that helps people close the gap between where they are and where they want to be in their lives or in their work or in their relationships or with their finances or with their business or whatever it is, then you better get good at that craft first. Because if you're going to try to outsource coaching to some sort of bot, those of us that have been doing this for a while and have earned the expertise and that can only come through experience while honing our skills in empathy and connection and communication and created our processes and our approach and our frameworks and all those things. Those of us that have done that, we're gonna use AI too. But we're gonna, we're not outsourcing our unique ability. We're not letting the bot coach for us. What we are doing is using the bot to help accelerate, amplify, and enhance the process that we have developed so that we can identify our own blind spots and misleverage in our thinking or in our conversations with clients to give them better tools, better feedback and be better guides in helping them achieve what they want to achieve. And if you've outsourced it all to a bot, you're not going to be around for very long. Those of us that are leveraging these tools to enhance our ability to make a difference are going to eat your lunch, period. Who are you? What are you good at? Where do you belong? What are your values? What are your guiding principles? What are your core beliefs? What are your boundaries? What do you do? What do you not do? Why do you do what you do? Why do you not do other things? Who do you work with and who do you not work with? How do you help them? What is the power of discernment or perspective or talent or skill that allows you to help people get clear about and closer to what they want? And how are you putting yourselves into situations, into places, into conversations where you are colliding with people who share your values and need your talents to enhance their lives? The only way that any of us are going to continue to prosper— and what's happening now and what's only going to accelerate from this point is getting clearer about and closer to our unique ability. What is the difference that only you can make and the way that only you can make it? That is preeminent positioning. How are you the best in the world at doing what you do in the way only you can do it? You need to get clear about that and you need to put yourself in positions where you continue to hone that craft to practice those skills and talents and to continue to make the difference that only you can make and do that work out loud and in public. Because if you do your work out loud and in public and let them watch, your people will find you. We just had this great conversation with the Solopreneur Success Circle because lots of folks, uh, like me, share some ambivalence when it comes to this idea of niching and the digital marketers and the gurus on Substack and everywhere else. Many of them will tell you that the riches are in the niches. You have to figure out your niche and you have to niche down your niche until it's just absolutely plain and simply clear to anybody that reads your little power offer statement that this is the exact kind of person that you work with and this is the exact kind of result that you get for them. And this is the exact kind of things that they don't have to do to get that result because they're going to work with you. I will tell you from experience that defining your ideal customer avatar and your one and only niche and crafting that perfect power offer and learning how to launch an offer into the world and how to power it all with Facebook ads is a way that you can succeed. I made a lot of money using power offers, launches, and Facebook ads. I was profoundly happy. I was doing a lot of things I didn't like to do with people I didn't really care about. And the whole thing flipped for me when I blew up that business and I started my Substack and just simply started talking about what I believe. This is who I am. This is what I believe. Staring my core values, my guiding principles, my core beliefs, my boundaries and guardrails. And upon that, expressing the things I know to be true. The first principles. How to reason from first principles. How to define systems and refine systems. System reliability, system thinking, and system reliability. And how to micro-step your way into possibility so that you're not always setting yourself up gradually to be, uh, make sure so that you only succeed if you spin the roulette wheel and it lands on the number and the color that you chose. How can you micro-step? How can you micro-step into validating an offer, into launching an offer, into scaling an offer in a way that helps you at every point get clear about and closer to what you really want your business to fund and fit around by doing work that you care about with people that you like. The strategy, the tactics, the tools, those all come later. If you don't have the philosophy and principles right first, it's very likely that you're going to build a business that you really don't— that really does not fill you with any sense of fulfillment, and it probably won't lead to much flourishing even if you are able to make a fortune and become famous doing it. AI is something that can help you with all of this. AI, if you, if you ethically approach AI with intention, with integrity, and leverage it to help you identify your blind spots, your false reasoning, biases and cognitive distortions, the false narratives. You can use it to help you get clear about who you are, what you're good at, and where you belong. You can use it to help your clients get clearer about and closer to what they want with greater ease and velocity. So just to wrap it up. Work. Work is simply the exchange or transference of energy. It is the purposeful use of energy to achieve a goal. Check out James Sussman's book called Work. Labor. Labor are the task-oriented, repetitive, rote efforts, activities that we engage in historically. Laborers have not been treated well. Thank God we have Labor Day to celebrate their long and enduring fight for fair wages, for equal treatment, for equal opportunity and human treatment. But with AI, a lot of what are called, what we think of as labor, Task-oriented, repetitive, rote activities are going to get outsourced to, to AI. Thank God. Because now we can start thinking about the work that matters. We can spend more time on defining what it means to be human, what it means to be happy, and how you can be more of both by finding the work that you were meant to do, which probably lies in being more of what you've always been. Get clear on who you are. Get clear about what you are uniquely good at. Get clear about where you belong. Where are those people who share your values and need your talents to enhance their lives? And how can you continue to become the preeminent one and only choice for making the difference only you can make and the way that you can make it. Because if you can do those things and leverage AI to help you do that easier and better, faster, then the future is looking very bright for all of us. All right. That's my little riff rant. I appreciate those of you that showed up to listen to me on this Labor Day. I hope you have a glorious morning, afternoon, or evening. Depending on where you are in the world. If you, uh, if these ideas are interesting to you or exciting to you, uh, then please subscribe to Transcendent Solopreneurship. You'll get some insights and inspiration like this every week delivered to your inbox. If you want to take a bolder step into possibility, consider joining the Solopreneur Success Community, where we have amazing conversations like this with amazing people. Like Cato and Penny and Seth and some of the other people that have been showing up here. And we are all helping each other move forward, doing more work that matters with people we care about. So check it out. And yeah, until next time, be well, do good, have fun.