When you say Venn diagram, can you talk a little bit about how we should think about the circles? Are the circles skills? Are the circles interests? Are they something else? In the book, you sort of lay out the different frames with which you can think about the circles of the Venn diagram, but I'd love for you to talk a little bit about how each one of us can construct our own Venn diagram.

So this is an excellent question.

The idea of the Venn diagram is really rooted in the ability to define yourself, to craft your identity separate from your current job title.

Certainly here in the U.S., we really closely build an identity to our jobs.

And certainly the higher you go up, the more successful you are as a leader.

I think the more calcified that identity becomes.

I am the CEO of, the CMO of, the leader of.

Can you talk a little bit about what these are? And more importantly, how should we think about picking one of the three? Are some of us better suited to one of the three? Or are all the three equally applicable to all of us to consider at different points? Yeah.

They're

not.

Baby, they're not reading your resume at all.

That's shopify.com slash daily.

Hi, I'm Christina Wallace, author of The Portfolio Life, how to future-proof your career, avoid burnout, and build a life bigger than your business card.

I'm a human Venn diagram who's built a career at the intersection of business, technology, and the arts.

That's how I've been introducing myself for the last decade or so.

Why? Because on the surface, my resume makes basically no sense.

[upbeat music] Most of us are heads down using AI, figuring it out as we go.

A, a tiny bit of not being afraid of the technical side of things when you're trying to connect APIs or in some ways get these different functions to talk to each other.

You do have to get into the code, but you don't have to be a software engineer to do this.

She also, it turns out, builds AI agents.

I mean, I think the number one personality is instead of throwing money at the problem, which is what especially venture-backed startups might do in a previous era, this is someone whose default reaction is, is there a way I can build this through a series of AI tools? Like, how do I check that first and tinker with that and try to build it myself before I go to the point where I bring in an expert or I go in and hire a full-time person for it? So it's just this fundamental shift of let me try to do it first, which has always been in the DNA of founders.

So I don't think it's materially different, but it doesn't require you to be a technical founder to build any of these, right? A lot of these tools are really quite user-friendly.

And I mean, I was building some agents for my Broadway production company.

I have two partners, but we don't have any operating staff.

Why do people do this? Why is this a trap that we fall into and how do we step out of it?

Yeah, so this is, first off, everyone does this.

So it's not even just like in the Western world.

I now speak all over the world.

I've been in China and India and Europe and everywhere people are like, yeah, I do that too.

So I started to feel better that it's not just like the American capitalism system that is destroying us.

No, so it is in two parts.

chill.

Yeah, yeah.

Like, when LLMs first came out, and we were all like, "Oh my gosh, ChatGPT is so powerful," the, the default usage was sort of like, "Well, let me just ask ChatGPT instead of doing my Google." Um, and it was good for short-circuiting, you know, research.

Of course, you have no idea if you can trust that research, but it, it allowed you to do things a lot faster than you used to, write an email, um, process a set of data, whatever.

Um, but that is still very much in the era of AI as a co-pilot, or as I think of it as my intern.

It helps me remember I need to review its output.

[chuckles] Um-

Yeah.

And, and about a year ago, I started seeing a lot more of this shift toward AI agents, where you're not using it to process information and give it to you so you're making decisions, but instead you're setting up key operating systems in your organization so that the agent ta-takes in the information from some sort of a sensor or input, does something to it that you have defined, and then makes a decision based on the output of, of that analysis, all without you having to intervene.

Mm-hmm

... of, um, I can see the fear, and I-- It's valid, right? As you think about the last big, um, uh, strike in Hollywood, one of the big sticking points was whether studios would be able to use AI-generated extras.

Because up to this point, that was one of the ways you got your leg in in the, that world as an actor, right? As you're trying to network your way around, you're trying to get an agent, you're working on your, your craft, getting that day rate of a couple hundred bucks to be a stand-in in the back of some big studio film was how you paid your rent.

It might be how you end up at the craft table with, you know, someone important, and you start up a conversation, and it gives you, it gets you in the room, right? So it is both a sustainable piece, and it gives you some sort of access.

It's never a guarantee that anything is gonna come, but at least it creates the possibility for luck.

And the second you recreate all of those extras with AI, because there's no great artistic intent required in having a background of a crowd, then you've cut out that entry point, in the same way that we're seeing some fear for even our MBA students who have historically been really valued by management consulting, by investment banking as that first layer of work.

That work, a lot of that work can now be done by both co-pilots and agents.

Mm-hmm.

... does AI now provide you with the opportunity to become an entrepreneur easier than in the past?

Yes, fundamentally, and, and as we were just talking about, like, what sets successful founders apart in this future world is proprietary data and insights.

Mid-career professionals versus these 26-year-olds coming out of school have experience, have an understanding of a customer, have access to a network.

They likely have proprietary data in a space that they have been working in, and using that can now go and build the good enough with basically no resources now, right? Like, you don't have to raise money to get somewhere meaningful with, you know, the first iteration of what you're building, uh, even to the point where you could take it to a pilot customer and get some real revenue, right? Like, it is so much easier to get started now.

Um, and I liken it to, you know, if you look at in, like, the 2000s, Pets.com, bless their hearts, um, they were selling pet food over the internet, and it was a total bust.

And in 2017, Chewy comes out and sells pet food over the internet, and it's a huge, successful public company, and you're like, "Uh, same idea.

What was different?" Everything was different.

Hmm.