How I'm Preparing For The Future Of Work

I'm thinking about the future

What will my business become? What will happen in the industries relating to my business? Trends I see coming and how I will follow.

The future of this business. Turning it into a company? Building a personal brand?

Obviously we're built around simplifying small business processes. Visualizing it helps differentiate because we give the automations where they reside within their workflow.

We can also embed the notion pages or sheets right there that the AI is processing. Then they can adjust that to get better processes by the automation if they feel the need.

So we make it easier for small business. But what does the company look like?

Is it a personal brand or a full service business or more? Products or just service?

I'm thinking probably both.

Five years out

The company will pursue infinite canvas and coordination. We'll hire specialists familiar with small business operations and AI tools specific to certain industries.

We'll become a service based business that connects AI agents and implements them into your small business at scale. We will be focused on doing it so that it is simple and flexible.

We'll probably have packages that are just products that clients can purchase to set up on their own. Also some arm that produces specialized software.

Lastly an education arm as I think education is going to become completely democratized.

Because AI can teach what professors teach, students can get that information. But they'll want to learn from those with experience running businesses. The AI will not be able to teach actual practice.

Why?

Because the AI can't experience what it's like to make decisions under pressure, handle difficult customers, or navigate cash flow crunches. These humans will be teaching how to run a business with AI collaboration and this will constantly be evolving.

Two years out

The personal brand business will be the Flo Letter. Two years from now I plan to have a ton of experience starting and operating a one person business. My belief is that there will be many people going this route and looking to learn how to do it.

So this is a little bit of a meta approach. I'm building a business based around making current service based businesses more efficient.

While doing this I am using the service I sell to make my business able to be ran by one person.

The brand will run under the principle that people don't care what we do, they care what we can do for them. So it will need to be high value.

Which I think it will as there will be so many proven systems.

Then in the future it'll be the one person business brand. Share my journey of building a one person business and what tools to use and how to do it.

My service is selling automation, visualization, and simplification but someone could be an artist or accountant and use these same principles to be a one person business.

That's the plan anyway.

Why a one person business?

People will be getting displaced by AI and college students will not be able to get jobs. They'll use platforms like YouTube and Skool to learn skills to apply to businesses where the owners refuse to use AI for efficiency.

For example I can see a business that uses AI to coordinate the most efficient routes for delivery of different bread to local restaurants. Or building specialized software. Or selling their art online.

Whatever it is, anyone will be able to use easy and intuitive software or build their own solutions if needed. Automations and personal agents will save so much time that they'll be able to focus on high-value work.

More on this later.

As I think about this shift, I keep coming back to something I wrote a while back:

"Don't make your future focus the future." 

The irony isn't lost on me here.

What I see coming

Let's go with what I see for the future.

Infinite canvas will be at the forefront. Everything in one place. The map will become the territory fully.

Change how your business runs from the map.

Infinite canvas will be the best way for AI and humans to collaborate to increase efficiency in their business. Both will see the same thing.

Bottlenecks can be circled and changed in a way that the human can process for the big picture. If they want detail they could drill into the report of the change. But the change of their business infinite canvas will show them the connection change.

One person business will be a big thing. Individuals can build software. Specialized software for everything from bookkeeping to posting on social.

Automation is easy. AI assistance for any knowledge work.

Growing businesses will hire solopreneurs using AI agents to coordinate rather than full time employees. The business wins because they have fewer people to pay and manage.

The solopreneur doesn't have a boss and they have their specialized systems they created to implement at maximum efficiency.

Here's a more detailed idea than the bread delivery, one from personal experience:

Recently I dealt with business brokers. They could be helped tremendously by a single person business who automates their campaigns so they can pump out better marketing content more frequently.

This person could also use AI and scraping to target better prospects. Even further I could see the one person business integrating the contacts that the firm has and giving the automation access to that.

One more step would be to track what kind of campaigns actually work for certain industries. Right now they're using the same generic campaigns regardless of the industry.

The brokers that I dealt with worked as two semi-independent entities but they're part of a large firm who closes the deal and gives them information for past business sales within the firm.

So they have those numbers but nothing about what marketing or sales strategies actually work. I believe a one person business with AI automation could help them and be paid much more than a livable wage for doing so.

AI will advance faster than I can comprehend

Will need to just stay up to date while also avoiding shiny objects.

How could this obsolete our business? Automations can be made so easy they don't need an installer.

I'll keep this in mind but obviously since I don't believe that I can predict it I don't see a point in trying rather than just keep this at top of mind.

Adjustments will need to be made but constantly adjusting I think is more likely to lead to failure.

Speaking replaces typing

Efficiency gets boosted so that means typing will be replaced by speaking.

People will speak to their AI and look at a visual canvas and see how their business is changing. There will be a platform that links their automations together.

There will need to be a way for the agent to know how to switch around integrations and double check for breaking things.

There will be things like when working in public places people won't want to be speaking the entire time, they'll still want to type. But speaking will be more efficient.

Random thought: Some sort of headphones will probably be designed to optimize for this.

Physical businesses get left behind

Physical businesses will operate the same in the physical world but back end operations will be optimized using AI.

Because their physical business isn't changed by AI they won't be as focused on learning it. Companies that are offering digital services will be forced to learn.

They will miss opportunities to become much more efficient. Solopreneurs or employees who learn and implement will be rewarded by these businesses.

Their margins are already razor-thin so anything to give them more backend efficiency to reduce head count will help.

Note: They'll be changed by robots eventually but my thought is that's 10+ years off.

Where this leaves me

I don't know exactly where this is all heading. But I know the direction feels right.

We're moving toward a world where one person can do what used to take a team. Where visual workflows become the actual business operations.

Where AI handles the repetitive stuff so humans can focus on the creative and strategic work.

The specifics will change. The tools will evolve. But the core need remains: turning chaos into clarity, complexity into simplicity.

That's what I'm building toward. Everything else we'll figure out as we go.

There's another thought that keeps surfacing as I write this: "We should make assessments about the future and allocate our time partially based off of those assessments. With that being said, we must not spend our lives waiting for the future to arrive."

What do you think?

Thanks for reading,

James

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