Jen McCready | Under The Influence

The cascade nobody is talking about When tech companies do mass layoffs: Office buildings empty out Janitorial contracts get cut Window cleaning schedules get reduced Dry cleaners near office corridors lose 40-60% of their customer base Lunch/Coffee restaurants close Parking lots empty Drivers lose routes Food trucks that ran specific routes to office clusters Catering companies lose revenue or close Happy hour bars lose revenue Convenience stores lose patrons Gyms lose memberships Hair/nail salons lose clients It just keeps going... That's not AI displacing those workers. That's AI displacing knowledge workers who were the economic engine for an entire surrounding ecosystem. #economy #tech #AI #layoffs

A plumber doesn't need to worry about an AI taking their job. They need to worry about the 200 households in their city where someone just lost a $120K job and is now delaying the bathroom remodel indefinitely.

I know that in SoCal there are many HVAC folks left with part time to no work. Building/construction is slowing to the point there's little work for them, for electrical, and plumbing unless it picks back up. What happens in tech with layoffs impacts everything else. There are now 7 empty buildings in Seattle due to tech that had a direct impact to thousands of people losing work like dry cleaners, restaurants, janitorial, drivers, etc. Tech companies and their employees have entire ecosystems built around them to support but it all goes away when layoffs occur. People are starting to do their own pest control because they can no longer afford the $150 for it, or for window cleaning. I'm not saying they aren't good avenues, but it's not a slam dunk, not in this economy.

How to profit from the AI boom without writing a single line of code: 1. Get into a trade or service-based business -HVAC -Plumbing -Electrical -Pest control -Window cleaning These need a licensed body on-site. Nobody has figured out how to automate a clogged drain at 11pm on a Tuesday. 2. Become the person who services AI's dirty work In 2024 alone, $455 billion was invested in data centers. These building all have real (expensive) problems that require trained electricians, plumbers, and HVAC technicians to fix. 3. Use AI to become the smartest person in your current job @amasad, CEO of Replit, told me about a guy at a skincare company who needed to automate 30-40 hours of weekly ops work. He was quoted $150,000 by a software vendor, so he spent $400 on Replit and built it himself in two weeks. His boss now pays him $30,000 a year for the software. He never quit his job, he just became indispensable. 4. Buy a cash-flowing boring business instead of building from scratch Two Contrarian Academy members, Anthony and Alex, just bought a 45-year-old window distribution company in San Diego. -High single-digit millions in revenue -Virtually no inventory -15-20% margins -4 employees That business has been running since before most AI companies existed. It'll still be running when the next model drops. 5. Do the unscalable human thing everyone else is automating away Every competitor you have is about to flood every scalable channel with 700 automated messages a day that nobody reads. The bar for standing out is getting embarrassingly low. A business that shows up, remembers names, and sends the handwritten note will out-loyalty every automated competitor in its zip code. 6. Get into the right rooms Two other Academy members, Anthony and Alex, met in a mastermind. That one relationship led to a hotel, a hard lesson on cash flow, and eventually a business that replaced both their W-2 incomes... Every single thing on this list is easier when you're around people who are actually doing it rather than just talking about it.

6 Skills. 90 days. Career Protected. stan.store/JenMcCready/p/… #AI #Career #Technology #Claude #Google #Microsoft #LinkedInLearning

@LuizaJarovsky Because they make more money if there is no cure.

Everybody wants AI to help cure cancer. Why isn't every AI company obsessively focused on that?

@thesayannayak Keeping or getting a job and so far 14K downloads! stan.store/JenMcCready/p/…

What problem does your product solve? Drop the link.

@MarindaVannoy1 I explain what I do as an advisor in big tech. It’s not every job with a computer. But it will be approximately 65% of knowledge workers before 2027-2028.

So basically ai is going to completely wipe out the middle class? This should be interesting.

Most popular post. #GenX

Tired of prompt lists that don't actually protect your career? I built a scorecard instead. Six skills, free resources, 90-day proof. 14,000 downloaded version 1. Version 2 just dropped. ♻️ Share with everyone you know who has a job or is looking for a job. #AI #Technology #Corporate #Automation #work

When you go to work tomorrow, see how many you check off for your role. ✅Your day is mostly repetitive and predictable. ✅You copy and paste information between systems. ✅Your decisions follow the same logic every single time. ✅You are not adapting, creating, or changing much week to week. ✅You are a bottleneck but you are not adding judgment. ✅Someone could record your screen and do your job step by step without knowing why. ✅You work alone or in silos. ✅You are not plugged into strategy. ✅You have not taken the time to learn what AI actually is. ✅You support processes but you do not shape them. The more you checked off, the more urgent this is. This is not about blame. It is about knowing where you stand before someone else decides for you. I work with companies to assess their partner ecosystems and figure out what stays human, what gets automated, and what moves into the Hybrid Zone. That assessment has real consequences for real people. If you want to understand how to protect your role, that conversation starts with you. #Tech #AI #CareerTips 🔗 Link in bio. McCready Solutions.

@eliana_jordan So refreshing to hear this as I think many people end up feeling behind when they see people on TikTok and other social platforms claiming to have replaced their corporate income in 90 days... LOL. It's important for long term credibility to share what reality looks like. 🙂

I’ve been building for 2 years and none of my products make “good money” yet But I’m still here

What I see happening is that companies are building the agent before they redesign the workflow. I have 20+ years in partner ecosystems and now an advisor to Fortune 500, and too many of even the largest tech companies are taking broken, human designed processes and adding agents on top. It's negatively impacting employee, partner, and end customer experiences. As an extra added bonus, none of these programs have AI Governance, nothing to account for agents being used, sharing of partner and sensitive end customer data or use of AI assisted scenarios. Vendors have created huge legal risk for themselves.

The real reason AI is failing inside companies? Let’s say it. A company decides to go all-in on AI. The CEO announces the vision. The CTO aligns. The CIO gets the budget. Then the real transformation begins. Chief AI Officer. AI Center of Excellence. AI Ethics. AI Governance. AI Steering Committee. AI Committee for the AI Committee. Soon, you have 12 people managing AI. And one person using it. The intern. The only one actually shipping anything. Everyone else is busy… aligning on the prompt. AI doesn’t fail because of the technology. It fails because we turned it into a meeting. So here’s a thought: Are you building with AI… or scheduling it? #ArtificialIntelligence #AITransformation #Leadership #FutureOfWork #Innovation

The “check-the-box” partner program era is GONE. Success equals proven business impact. Partners are now co-creators, not distributors. The economic model is shifting. Your competitive advantage is ecosystem orchestration ability, not individual vendor relationship strength. Partner leverage is increasing rapidly. Partners have more options. Vendors are competing for mindshare. #AI #Technology #Partnerships #Channel #Ecosystem

@davidpattersonx Most aren’t finding work. Where are you getting your data?

There will be four stages in the economic transition to a post-labor, post-scarcity economy. In the first stage, AI will more than double economic output. Many people will lose their jobs, but most will find new work, and real incomes will more than double. Some people will leave the workforce, either by retiring early or by receiving unemployment benefits. (AI implementation stage. 2026 to 2029) In the second stage, AI and robots will exceed the abilities of all human workers and will expand quickly to replace all remaining jobs. Everyone who becomes unemployed will receive universal high income (UHI) payments. (Full unemployment stage. 2030) In the third stage, the economy will continue to grow rapidly, as the quantity and quality of human labor will no longer limit growth. UHI payments will be extended to all adults, and their value will grow tenfold as prices drop rapidly with increasing production. (Continuing economic expansion stage. 2030 to 2035). In the fourth stage, economic output will continue to grow, reaching 100 times current output. UHI will be worth 100 times the current average salary. The demand for most products and services will reach a maximum beyond which people don't need or want any more. We will have reached post-scarcity for most things. Most people will not use their full UHI allowance. We may switch to an economy without UHI, where everything is given away for free. (Post-scarcity transition. 2035 to 2040)

@ceraliza Medical device sales.

What job pays surprisingly well but nobody talks about

@the_Fitcode Find me on LinkedIn

if you are in Tech let's connect and engage 📈🎀🎀

Majority of companies have no access for employees to use AI tools or use what they may have tried to learn at home and apply at work. I’m on the inside advising in big tech and unless you’re in a specific engineering team with a specific title, good luck. The tools that are available are limited b/c of budgets and so limited most cannot even use them to create dashboards. There is no Claude + Excel for example, unless you’re at home or are lucky to work for a company that is empowering and enabling its employees.

@christiangori96 The first ever Substack written by dogs. My dogs, an English Bulldog and French Bulldog who are journalists with opinions. open.substack.com/pub/disjustin/…

Drop your project URL Let’s drive some traffic Curious to know what you all are building 👇🏼