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Free Ownership Assessment

Conversations about ownership

AI, Work and the Assumptions We Live By

You’ve built a business around what you know, what people pay you for and what you believe will make the work worth it.

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Ryan Tansom and Kim Clark

Episode Summary

You’ve built a business around what you know, what people pay you for and what you believe will make the work worth it. Kim and I talk about how AI can remove limitations you’ve worked around for years, then what you’d actually want to do with that freedom. We get into the pressure to rethink how work gets done when competitors can deliver it differently, and the uncomfortable reality that an exciting new capability can also threaten someone’s livelihood. Your company’s knowledge and your judgment still matter. So does knowing when a familiar belief is protecting your identity more than helping you see clearly. That takes us into money, purchasing power and whether all this effort is moving you toward the time, cash flow and wealth you want. We make room to question those assumptions without needing to agree on every answer. I describe AI as feeling like jetpacks. Kim talks about learning a new skill and immediately thinking of the people who do it for a living.

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Top 10 Takeaways

  1. AI can remove a limitation you’ve built your whole way of working around.
  2. The value of getting time back depends on knowing what you want it for.
  3. Your competitors can change your market’s economics before you’re ready to change with them.
  4. Rethink how the work gets done, starting with the outcome your business actually needs.
  5. You can be excited about AI and concerned about the people whose livelihoods it affects.
  6. Your company’s knowledge should remain useful as the AI tools you work with change.
  7. Knowing what good looks like matters when you’re directing AI and reviewing its work.
  8. Changing your mind gets harder when an old belief supports your identity or income.
  9. Working harder doesn’t tell you whether you’re getting closer to the independence you want.
  10. You can explore new ideas without accepting every claim that comes along with them.

Sound Bites

“I feel like I have jetpacks right now.” — Ryan Tansom

“And then every time I acquire a new skill from using it, I feel badly for different people that I know that that’s their job.” — Kim Clark

“And unless we have those clear about what we want to do with our time, how much cash flow we need, and how much wealth needs to protect our cash flow, no advisor, no coach, no AI will ever be able to give anybody good advice.” — Ryan Tansom

“your brain’s just going to make stuff up based upon the data that it currently has, which is why I’m always trying to find more data.” — Kim Clark

Resources Mentioned

  • Claude. AI tool discussed in our writing and company-work examples. Claude.
  • ChatGPT. Referenced in our discussion of AI-supported work. ChatGPT.
  • HighLevel. The CRM in the discussion about interacting with business software through AI. HighLevel.
  • Fathom. Meeting recordings and transcripts in Kim’s video example. Fathom.
  • The Growth Playbook. Kim Clark and Alan Beaulieu’s podcast, referenced in the content-production discussion. Listen to their rates-of-change conversation.
  • All-In. Referenced in the discussion of investors and AI. All-In.
  • The Diary of a CEO. One of the podcasts mentioned during the conversation. The Diary of a CEO.
  • Huberman Lab. Referenced near the close while discussing awareness and personal choice. Huberman Lab.
  • The Fourth Turning. Neil Howe and William Strauss’s generational-cycle framework. Neil Howe’s follow-up book, The Fourth Turning Is Here.
  • Ray Dalio. His work on debt cycles and changing economic systems. Principles.
  • Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. The story we discuss about familiar beliefs and new information; Socrates presents it in Plato’s Republic. Background on Republic and the cave.
  • The Big Short. Referenced in our discussion of financial incentives. The Big Short.
  • Margin Call. Another film mentioned in that discussion. Margin Call.
  • Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. The documentary referenced alongside those films. Enron.
  • Silo. A fictional example of questioning the world you know. Silo.
  • His Dark Materials. Another story referenced during the conversation. Official HBO trailer.

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