Build a Business AI Can't Replace  🔗 **Source:** [Build a Business AI Can't Replace](https://share.snipd.com/episode/d89c3629-6395-4aa3-9dee-258ba3e03074) ## Highlights - **Emergence As An Inner Pattern** - Emergence means your true potential is a preexisting pattern that unfolds when conditions match that pattern. - Derek Rydall describes a near-death experience that revealed the acorn-to-oak pattern and led him from poverty to launching his life's work within a year. Transcript: Derek Rydall There's an understanding of the emergent property of things and you know that something emerges that is more than or different than the sum of the initial parts etc you know oxygen and What is it hydrogen that comes together to make water so you get water as an emergent property and and so that's one way to think about emergence. And what I speak of it, it's more about an experience I actually had after a near-death experience where I saw this and I began to see that in every living thing, it begins with a seed. There's a pattern. There's a pattern behind everything that is alive. And whether it's the acorn, the oak is already there in the acorn. And even from a quantum physics standpoint or a platonic form standpoint, the idea of the oak is a pattern in the field as a part of the superposition. So we can get scientific about it or not, but the bottom line is the oak tree is already there. And it's there in potential, it's there in a pattern, and the mechanics of its fulfillment are there. It's simply waiting for the right conditions. When the conditions are a match to the pattern within anything, that potential emerges naturally. And when I saw that, not just theoretically, but experienced it and began to consider there was a pattern in me, there was a seed pattern planted in the soil of my soul or whatever, and Began to ask what that was. And this really brings us back to the Oracle of Delphi and the OG success self-help guru when she said, know thyself. Or Socrates said, an unexamined life is not worth living. The fundamental pattern of knowing what I'm really made of and made for and learning what are the right questions to ask. And then to say, okay, this is what I am, like a gardener with a seed going, what are therefore the right conditions for that seed to thrive? And I began to cultivate the inner and outer conditions that were a match to the pattern that I was discovering within me. ([Time 0:02:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/14ab589b-8273-4415-ad2f-60091eff30d9)) - **From Suicidal Poverty To Multiple Six Figures** - Derek recounts being broke, suicidal, living on macaroni and cheese before his emergence shift. - Within 12 months he launched his life's work, grew to multiple six figures, and fell in love after cultivating matching inner and outer conditions. Transcript: Derek Rydall There's a pattern. There's a pattern behind everything that is alive. And whether it's the acorn, the oak is already there in the acorn. And even from a quantum physics standpoint or a platonic form standpoint, the idea of the oak is a pattern in the field as a part of the superposition. So we can get scientific about it or not, but the bottom line is the oak tree is already there. And it's there in potential, it's there in a pattern, and the mechanics of its fulfillment are there. It's simply waiting for the right conditions. When the conditions are a match to the pattern within anything, that potential emerges naturally. And when I saw that, not just theoretically, but experienced it and began to consider there was a pattern in me, there was a seed pattern planted in the soil of my soul or whatever, and Began to ask what that was. And this really brings us back to the Oracle of Delphi and the OG success self-help guru when she said, know thyself. Or Socrates said, an unexamined life is not worth living. The fundamental pattern of knowing what I'm really made of and made for and learning what are the right questions to ask. And then to say, okay, this is what I am, like a gardener with a seed going, what are therefore the right conditions for that seed to thrive? And I began to cultivate the inner and outer conditions that were a match to the pattern that I was discovering within me. And I went from broke, broken, literally suicidal in a one room apartment, living on macaroni and cheese, no kidding, to got very good at mac and cheese though. ([Time 0:02:36](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6b750b9e-cc17-437d-907b-488751e8877e)) - **Use AI To Amplify Thinking Not Replace It** - Learn and master AI tools but use them to augment, not replace, your capacity to think and create. - Derek warns MIT studies show outsourcing thinking to tech atrophies cognition, so keep practicing deep thinking daily. Transcript: Derek Rydall Obviously I think it's an important thing. We should learn AI. You should master the tools. You should know how to use them just like you can use internet and use a phone because you won't be replaced immediately by AI. You'll be replaced by somebody who's really good at it. But you are going to be replaced one way or the other. So you want to make sure you replace yourself with AI rather than being replaced by. But basically the approach is I've spent 25 years. I started off in tech. I was a computer nerd. I built programs. I watched war games. I thought it was a great idea to build a program to hack into the government and start global thermonuclear war. Don't ask me why. And so I was, and then I got into the brain and was going to be a neuroscientist. And then I had this opening spiritually, whatever you want to call it, near death. And I became more interested in consciousness and the deeper dimensions of us. But what I saw was that I've been practicing the inner technologies. That we have to understand that AI is an expression and a prosthetic of our capacity for intelligence. And from the Tower of Babel to Chachi PT, we're still just building these outer tools and that's okay. But with every new technology, we outsource a little bit of ourselves and so the on the on the one level the very real danger and it's already happening MIT has studies about this that We're outsourcing the thing that makes us us the ability to think to think for ourselves to think deeply the ability to create to communicate to connect etc And as you outsource something, If you study the technology history, you atrophy that capacity. Can't remember my phone number. Exactly. I don't even remember where I am right now. It's only been two minutes. No. And so I don't have my GPS to see where I'm going. And so I'm like GPS, our spatial cognition, our mapping capacity, all these things. ([Time 0:05:44](https://share.snipd.com/snip/09543d9c-0f3a-4511-94b4-de2639cba523)) - **Practice Hard Thinking Daily** - Intentionally practice hard cognitive and communicative tasks daily to prevent atrophy. - Derek recommends writing first drafts yourself, having real human conversations, and making your head hurt a little thinking each day. Transcript: Derek Rydall Well, yeah, you know, just using the tools, the danger again, yes, we're using these tools and the danger with AI first and foremost is you have to make sure you use the tool to become a Better version of yourself. Not like when we started to use power tool, you know, like the plow and all these different things or the automobile, they got us somewhere faster. They made us more productive, but we didn't have to walk anymore. We didn't have to use our muscles anymore. And you can study the increase of disease by the fact that we don't have to move anymore. And so we had to build other industries like gyms and exercise and running clubs to do the things. And that's okay. But as we start to outsource our cognition to these things, we just have to make sure, first of all, we are doing hard and challenging things on a regular daily basis because you were evolved And adapted to be chased by tigers and to chase woolly mammoths. And if you're not chasing and being chased a little bit every day, you're going to get fat and sick and cognitively decline much faster. But the great news is you can use AI to strengthen you. And I talk about that with each evolution. I mean, the first evolution is AI is going to think for you, think for yourself. So we have to deepen our ability. Right now, this is already happening with kids, happening with students. They're hitting a button, they're producing an essay, and over a semester, their cognition is falling off a cliff. And already, kids cannot read handwriting. They're losing that cognitive ability, let alone do it. So we have to make sure, and you can, and I show people how, to use it to know yourself better, to use it to become a better writer, a better communicator, a better creator, a better and a Deeper thinker. And again, thinking is what got us out of the trees on the savannah and up into the stars. And if we keep giving it to AI, there will come a day not too far in the future, we literally won't have the ability and we will be forced to bow before our AI overlord. That's not a science fiction trope. So we have to use it to think deeply. If you're writing a paper or doing research, do the first amount yourself. Write the first draft. Make your head hurt a little bit every day thinking. ([Time 0:10:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0373ab42-b84c-4431-bbd8-d9210c2f5a97)) - **Authentic Human Wisdom As The New Moat** - The long-term competitive moat will be authentic, embodied human wisdom and lived perspective. - Derek says lived wounds and purpose create unique taste and perspective that AI cannot replicate and can be scaled with AI. Transcript: Derek Rydall And it will make you irreplaceable. Right. Because your lived wisdom, your lived experience, your internal technology, that's the one thing AI can't do. AI will do everything else. But if you can embed that in your work, your words, your world, now you become valuable. The moat of the future is an authentic human being. Everything else will be commoditized. John Jantsch I believe that, and I've kind of made the case for saying, I think the people that are thriving in this right now are people that came from more liberal arts backgrounds instead of like A technical training to do a thing. Because taste and discernment, I think are going to be what's left. Derek Rydall Bingo, bingo, bingo. Yeah. Taste and discernment. And everybody has it they just haven't necessarily developed it yeah and you have a lived experience your greatest wisdom will come from your greatest wounds your deepest purpose Will come from all the pain and the problems you've worked through and it builds a story and it builds a perspective that only you have which creates taste which creates real embodied Wisdom. And that is the new Prada and the new Gucci of the brave new world. Because again, AI will do everything that we're going to see more businesses started than ever before in history until business loses all meaning. We're going to see more books published, more songs produced, more websites, more apps until it's a tsunami that makes everybody want to tune out and look away and become apathetic. But then there'll be those individuals who get to know themselves, know their excavate and harvest the wisdom of their life, have real taste, real point of view, real wisdom, and then Use AI to scale wisdom, to scale authentic taste, to scale a singular perspective, to actually scale and magnify an algorithm only they have. ([Time 0:13:11](https://share.snipd.com/snip/380f347e-4ec6-4795-9ea4-e4ea1b353ee7)) - **Evolve Yourself To Break Revenue Plateaus** - When stuck at a revenue plateau, change yourself or your model rather than repeating past tactics. - Derek notes what scaled you to $100k won't get you to $1M; embrace creative self-destruction and new paradigms. Transcript: Derek Rydall There's different reasons why you're stuck at a revenue plateau. Some of you are the biggest bottleneck usually, but sometimes, depending the business, there's, there's just different things. What got us to where we are isn't going to, at a certain point, isn't going to get us to the next level. What got you to a hundred thousand, won't get you to a million, won't get you to five, won't get you to 10 or 15, et cetera, et cetera, depending. And that's the same thing even in not just business, but I know this is business, but you know, you all have relationships too. What got you to the first year in your relationship is not going to get you to year five, et cetera. It's something about you that has to change, a new model, a new paradigm, somewhere where you have to either delegate or outsource or dig deeper. And, you know, the biggest challenge with businesses, it's going to be that now, is, you know, it's the Kodak experience, the Blockbuster experience, the businesses that were in denial, That were holding on to an old model because it worked and it was still working up to the moment it wasn't. And so we have to be willing to do creative destruction on ourselves, but not just on our business, but really, you know, this is what could be one of the, it's the biggest existential Crisis we're going to face, but it's also, I think, one of the greatest opportunities to become the people we're meant to be and to have a whole new renaissance. So you have to, again, understand that there's a guy that just launched, just started, just built a billion dollar business. He didn't know anything about the business he built. He used AI and he built a team of agents, but he had a perspective and he tapped into a current zeitgeist. So he had a bit of wisdom and intelligence to identify that, which is what a great entrepreneurial creative mind does. And then he was able to scale it and build a billion dollar business. I think he just hired his brother because he was getting lonely. So you're going to see a lot of the potential for that. ([Time 0:15:34](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f8881f6b-c5af-40ae-bd57-2e70f52b3578)) - **Adaptability And Perspective Outlasts AI Commodities** - AI will commoditize many capabilities, so the remaining advantage is adaptability, perspective, and founder-like flexibility. - Derek points to rapid startups built with AI agents that scale fast but lose margin once copied. Transcript: Derek Rydall But that required somebody to have a couple things that were human, which is a perspective, a bit of intuition, a lot of courage, some grit, the willingness to work hard. And the problem is once you build something, especially nowadays, again, that's going to be completely competed away, that particular margin. The worst thing he ever did was have a New York Times article told about him, because everybody's now aiming their arrows at him. John Jantsch Is that the company called 11 Labs? Derek Rydall No, 11 Labs is something else. I think that's about more than one person. This was all about Ozempic and stuff. He just sold Ozempic, but he's not a doctor. He just was a middleman, built a billion dollar business. I think he did it in like a year. So there's a lot of opportunity if you're creative and entrepreneurial and you're willing to trust your taste, your intuition and perspective, and of course AI can help you there. But when you understand, just follow the logic that everything is going to be commodified because AI is just units of cognition and intelligence. It can do everything a human can do. And with embodied humanoids, it'll include the physical. You just have to keep going down the stack or up the stack or whatever and ask, well, what's left? And you want to go where the puck's going, not where it already is. And, and like I said, you're going to, you're going to, unless you have the chips or the CapEx, money the energy the only thing that's left is the humanity of it all and if you're a company Or a person you the most authentic unique bold willingness to be and and be creative and intuitive and and also be very flexible like all of those things that are our natural state as children And as people until we calcify around something or a business. ([Time 0:17:27](https://share.snipd.com/snip/04c329bb-1cb5-4ad1-b43b-028efbc8efb5)) - **Return To Handcrafted Humanity** - Rediscover the original humanity and founder energy in your business to remain distinct. - Derek urges returning to handcrafted humanity: story, community, live authenticity over polished, AI-produced content. Transcript: Derek Rydall And just you might have a really good brand. And so you'll have loyalty up to a point until they can get the same thing for half the cost or less. So you have some time. But again, you's, you got to think about community, real humanity, real authenticity. Yes. People want stuff cheaper and faster and better. There's no doubt about it. Amazon built Amazon over that. But ultimately we have, you have to ask, what is it about me or the thing I do that is truly irreplaceable? And you have to start to really be looking at, and what's interesting is you'll find the way you built your business in the beginning often had a lot more, for most, a lot more of that humanity In it, a lot more of that touch. And we're going to have to, it's like what I call a handcrafted humanity. We have to return to that where people, what's going to be a differentiator. It's why like on YouTube, the people that are the most successful now are the live streamers because it's live, because it's in depth, because people feel like they can trust you. They know you versus all of the AI slop and the highly polished and produced stuff. So something that feels real and authentic and raw and live is going to win above all the polished stuff over and over and over again. So this is the kind of thing we have to start thinking about. Again, if you look back to your roots, a lot of the ways you lived and the things you valued and the things you did, what made you successful? Then you started building a machine and it became all about scaling the machine instead of scaling the original core and heart of why you were doing it in the first place. Get back to the story. Get back to the humanity. ([Time 0:20:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/08b843d0-f9c0-4dcc-8c1a-f49d90c23c9f))