The Undeniable Leader with Rob Cressy

The Best Business To Be In A Post-AGI World?

• Rob Cressy

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What's the best business to be in when AI runs everything? In this episode of The Undeniable Leader, Rob Cressy shares why doubling down on humans, in-person experiences, and a written-down AI foundation is the smartest move you can make right now. He breaks down the coming authenticity problem, why agentic AI rewards the leaders who built the receipts early, and how to think about your business like compounding interest. This is how you plant the seeds today for the business you want to lead in five years.

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Before we get to today's show, the best version of your AI experience starts with one thing: making it yours. I built a free playbook called the Unlimited Method that walks you through exactly how to personalize your AI so it thinks like you, creates like you, and sounds like you. It's at robcresy.com backslash AI playbook. Go get it now for the show. One of the best businesses to be in a post-AGI world. I saw this tweet from Greg Eisenberg, and it really got my gears thinking in a good way. And I wanted to unpack this thing. So let me share my screen real quick to show the inspiration for this. So about a month ago, Greg sent that tweet, and I looked there and I asked myself, all right, a post-AGI world, what in the world does that even mean? For me, I'm like, all right, we're living like Neo and the Matrix. You just plug something in the back of your head and you're like, wow, I can learn Kung Fu. And maybe we got Jetsons flying cars, but everything is crazy, demolition man style. So you're like, all right, the robots have sort of taken over. There's a lot of tech, there's a lot of things that are sterile. It's wild. Where would you want to be placed from a business perspective? So before I give my answer, I will share the one thing that really got me thinking. And as I'm looking here in this thread here, I'm seeing all right, um, all natural men's skincare from Saheel Bloom with shout out. Uh, I saw him on Devin Levesque's uh Behind Closed Doors group. Love that guy, great book there. Uh, in real life events, sports, and I see Greg respond a thousand percent sports, and I'm sitting there and I'm like, huh, why would sports be a great business to be in in a world that is full of AI? And it's simple because you're not replacing Patrick Mahomes with an AI agent from Claude or Claude Code, right? Because there's going to be the human element, the experience element to what keeps sports great. And boy, did this open up my eyes because I ran a sports marketing agency for more than a decade. I was hired professionally as a host of shows in sports betting in fantasy sports, and my gear started to turn a little bit. I was like, well, wait a second. Are we about to make a comeback in the world of sports? Because I do know this to be true that there are few people out there in the world of sports who are speaking the language of AI. But uniquely, from where I'm positioned, I came from the world of sports for more than a decade. I've been a high performance coach for the last five years, and then I layered on AI when I used Chat GPT the first time it came out in December 2022. So my gears are turning, and the way that I answered this was where do I want to be from a business perspective? In-person workshops, live talks, and experiences that you can live together. And the reason for this is because in a world that is about to become very sterile, where we are outsourcing our authenticity in our connection, where people are wondering who wrote that email? Is that person real? Is this a deep fake? Hey, where'd this video come from? Right? There's gonna be an authenticity problem moving forward in the world. Well, when that's the case, you know what I want to be doubling down on humans, human experiences, because I want to be coming from that human first, heart first perspective. So for me, where I'm rowing my boat towards is creating the creative leadership studio. Think one part podcast and video studio, one part place to do speaking engagements and open night, open mics and in-person workshops, and all the things that I'm doing with coaching and creating in the world of AI. We're gonna have a ball pit, we're gonna have uh a sauna and a cold plunge and a Traeger smoker and a basketball hoop, right? All things that you would want in your ideal man cave, but we're gonna bring in together uh creativity plus leadership plus the world of AI. So that's my dream. That's where I'm going with all of this here. And I wanted to share this because um so much of the perspective that we're gonna hear in the world of AI is ways that we can do things faster, where AI can do things for us. And I get it, I am building an AI-first business with a human-first mentality. But we know by design, marketers and most people are going to ruin things, right? So when you're looking in this post-AGI world, that anytime you give someone an inch, they're about to take a mile. And that's gonna happen on outsourcing your authenticity and connection. And we already see this right now so much in the narrative of uh let's call it enterprise level business, where you're seeing both these mass layoffs, you're also hearing about AI doesn't work inside these organizations uh because they're not built for it, they're too slow. It's like turning around the Titanic because leadership and success rises or falls to the leaders at the top. So if the leaders at the top are not rowing the boat, everybody else is not going to. It's like, but Rob, it's so hard. There's so many people in the organization. Uh, start with this uh learning AI is a non-negotiable. If you do not do that, you will not be here. Oh, that's nice and simple, but we're not doing that because we actually care about AI. It's just faster, easier, and better. And the fallacy that, oh my God, if I learn AI, it's gonna replace me and I'm gonna lose my job. Uh, no, wrong framing. And literally, this has become a superpower for me that I always want to give everybody because it's the simplest thing in the entire world that is such a gift to how I've spoken on stages and done incredible things in the world of AI. It started minute one of using Chat GPT in December 2022. I was like, holy smokes, I felt like I just used the internet for the first time. I saw the next decade of business and where everything was going, and I was like, I want to be a part of that. I'm all in on the opportunity because high performers, we're never gonna get replaced by AI because we're a high performer for a reason. So for all the people sitting there being like, oh my god, AI is gonna take my job. Uh no, take control of the opportunity because there's a huge opportunity for each of us to leverage our own experience. The things that make you you, that make you unique. This is where that heart first perspective comes in. And so much of the uh market or the noise is misplaced focus. And I get it, we're just gonna slap AI on this thing and we're gonna call it this is what we're doing for our business. But the challenge so many of these companies are having is lack of an internal champion. Many of them is like, hey, let's slap on our computer guy or our CTO and have him be the one who's gonna AI enable our entire uh organization. When here's what we know to be true about tech people. Um, many of them are socially awkward, you can't connect to them, and they speak on a different language than you do. And that's the thing that's gonna be our key to success. And oh, by the way, 99% of the market out there speaks from a tech first perspective. They're tech people talking about coding and model upgrades and AI agents and all of that stuff. Cool, I got it, but that does not mean that tech people rule the world. Because for me, the advantage and the opportunity is not being technical, because all of those things that make us great at who we are as entrepreneurs, as leaders, as high performers, those of us who paved our own ways or went to college or have those social inklings inside of us. That social side of us is the absolute gift in an AI world that is heading towards outsourcing your authenticity and connection. So, in this post-AGI world where you don't know what is true or what's real, how about we double down on humans as the best business to be in in a post-AGI world? And I wanted to share that perspective because even if I have no idea what post-AGI actually means or what things are going to look like, I can at least have um a vision or make up some things that are like, all right, well, based on sort of the tea leaves that I'm seeing right now, in the next three, five, ten years, if we continue at this rate where there's just quantum leaps on pretty much a daily basis, things are gonna get wild. And if things are gonna get wild, where do I want to be? And I always say this um there's obviously a heavy dissenting opinion of AI out there in the market. And what I love to say is cool, place your bets and let the chips fall where they may, because that's the opportunity that we all have. I am not going to push a rock uphill trying to convince you or anybody else that AI is for you. That's not my job because I'm in the game. Whatever other people do, that's what they can do, right? It'd almost be like someone way back in the day is gonna go mine for gold. He's like, hey, why isn't everybody else mining for gold right now? This is the best way to do it. It's like, uh, no, I'm gonna keep mining for my gold. You do what you do. And we all have the ability to plant seeds right now. And this is something that I believe is a major missed opportunity for so many people and companies right now in the market. Because imagine taking the perspective today of wow, what's it gonna look like when everything's neo in the matrix in five or ten years? Where do I wanna be positioning myself? Huh? Well, guess what? Some of these things take a little bit of time in order to develop. So for me, that's why I'm continuing to do more live experiences, group programs, workshops, VIP half days, anything that can bring people together so that we can experience ourselves. Because for me, human experience is where I am going all in, and I want more of it in my life. Because uh, for many of us, we also work from home. We can feel isolated. If you're an entrepreneur, it can feel very lonely. There, you got a lot going on, and sometimes you just want someone to talk to. Cool. Hey, I get you. Hey, let's just talk about sports, let's talk about whatever. So start thinking about that for yourself in your own business. So maybe you're thinking about this on uh an industry or company level. Cool. Where do I want to position when everything is AI? Or you start to think about this of what seeds do I want to plant right now that will put me in a position to succeed in the next three to five years? For me, right now, without a doubt, the number one place you can do for that is your AI infrastructure. And what I mean by that is your second brain, your single source of truth. So for me, that is notion. And when I look forward to the next three, five, ten years, one separator for those businesses who are crushing versus those who are not is who's written everything down. You're like, huh? Yeah, it's literally that simple. Why? Because in order for AI or an AI agent to do something for you, it can't be living in your head, it can't be in Dropbox and Asuna and Apple notes, and an intern has something here, and some of it's half baked. You can't put that together. But the way that AI works is if you write something down, it can look at it and then it can do something with it. So God forbid, we write down every single thing we do in our business that's important. And then you say, Wow, imagine if I wrote this in a way that was going to be accessible for future AI and AI agents moving forward. So when then they saw that they could do it. And you're like, Oh, well, what needs to happen now? Step one, write everything down. Step two, write it in a way so that agentic AI can take advantage of the opportunity. Because every single day something new happens with AI that we've never seen before. And it's like, oh my God, look at this. How in the world are people capitalizing off of this thing? Uh, we know this is going to continue to happen. So you say, What do we need? And it reminds me of the quote uh that has just been foundational to my life and my entrepreneurial journey that I learned from Ed Milette: the bigger the dreams, the deeper the foundation. So I get it. We live in a world that likes the quick fix, the easy, the simple, that I don't gotta do anything. Well, guess what? That is not going to work in the show me your receipts AI era. Instead, how about we spend some time building that personalized foundation, who you are, what you do, and what that looks like in all areas of your life. Because one of the things that is going to separate everybody in this world is who you are. And who you are is a series of thoughts and ideas and experiences and things that you've learned. And if you document it, your AI can then become part of that essence. It can leverage that there, and then it can collaborate with you. Remember, you are the leader and the boss, AI is your creative assistant or your companion. That's contrarian to what the majority of the market does. But I'm just saying I'm speaking the fundamentals out loud. So when you understand this personalization layer and you see this as infrastructure, now this starts to stack on top of each other like Lego blocks. Rinse and repeat. And the thing that's super top of mind for me right now, and I've been saying this with my clients all this week, is I'm thinking about my business like compounding interest, one connected system. So you open an interest bearing account and you're like, here's one dollar. You go to sleep and you're like, wow, I woke up in the morning and I had one dollar and one cent. This is great. So you keep doing it. So the more time in market, the more that this grows and compounds. Now imagine building the same for your business. So what would need to be true for me to have my business grow while I am sleeping? Huh? Probably means that AI is gonna be doing some stuff for us. Cool. What needs to happen for AI in order to be able to do stuff for us? Gotta be written down. There's gotta be a system and a process because either you're doing it or someone on your team is doing it, or an AI is going to do it. No matter what, a system and a process has to be written down. And then from there, oh well, how many different areas of my business or my life can I write down what that system and process is? And this is why I call this the ultimate show me your receipts era. Because by design, when you build a business that has receipts every step of the way, that's what building an AI first business does. Because it's an infrastructure. It's what it looks like. And this to me is going to become my ultimate competitive advantage for the next decade plus of my life, and why I want to share this with you. And oh, by the way, I'm super excited about this because I love people, I love being social, I love connecting, I love creating, I love laughing. I love all of the things that makes us human because I'm great at being a human. I love to do hard things, I love to laugh, I love to do things I've never done before, I love helping people, I love collaborating, I love sharing. So, how about we do more of that? So, this is just a little perspective that I want to plant out there for you. And I'm curious to hear your answer to this question. When you heard what is the best business to be in in a post-AGI world, how would you answer that for yourself? There's both the what was the first thing that came top of mind, and then there's the how are you feeling about that answer right now? Hit me up on Instagram or LinkedIn at Rob Cressy and uh sending tons of love. Goodbye, Trey. Hope you have yourself an amazing rest of the day.