In last week’s post, we discussed the answer to the age old question “What Should I Do with my Life?”

In the answer, I talked about how the best solution is to find out where you fit into the world. Meaning, you need to figure out where it is that you’re adding the most value.

In this week’s post, I’m going to add onto that by suggesting that everyone needs to start looking at themselves as at least a freelancer in our new economy and how you could capitalize on that.

I’m going to say it right now – in the future, jobs won’t be about working for a company. Instead, they’ll be geared towards working with that company.

In my chat with Dr. Joe Albano, we talked about how the employee mindset no longer works in today’s world. His reasoning was those people who can think outside of the box and act on their own are much more desirable than those who have to be told to do – and how to do – everything.

Automation is Happening Whether We Want It Or Not

According to Michio Kaku, there’s another reason why we need to get ourselves out of the traditional employee mentality that we’re all used to:

Automation.

Everywhere you look, you can see that what he’s saying is true. It’s been happening for several decades already in many of our industrial areas.

In fact, the most recent big news about automation happened just this past week when President-elect Trump nominated Andy Puzder as Secretary of Labor. If you don’t know Andy, let’s just say that he’s pretty favorable of automation in the fast-food industry.

But this shouldn’t be big news! Remember this scene from Back to the Future 2?

That movie came out in 1989. Talk about delayed!

Needless to say, I think it’s just a matter of time before automation in general changes everything up that we’re used to.

Automation is going to happen. It’s not a matter of if but when.

Adjusting to the New Economy: Freelancing

More automation means we’re going to see a lot more people out there looking to make an income in new ways.

The problem is, there’s only so many traditional jobs that those folks can have. And, as we heard from Michio, even those aren’t safe from automation.

So what do all those folks do that are out of work and looking for a paycheck?

Typically speaking, they become a freelancer.

They give themselves the freedom to work with multiple companies at once or one for a prolonged period of time as a contractor.

Whether or not they’re a consultant, an Uber driver, a Rover dog sitter, or a Airbnb host – freelancing is picking up. In fact, by 2020, 40% of American workers will be considered freelancers.

But Why Stop There?

Remember, Michio mentioned that those who are going to benefit the most from this new world are going to be those who engage in intellectual capitalism.

Again, these are people who use the following to do their job: creativity, imagination, leadership, analysis, telling a joke, writing a script or a book, or doing science.

Now, don’t get me wrong. You can be a freelancer and do work you love. But the one thing that many people don’t think about is that freelancers trade hours for dollars.

That’s not really leveraging the power of the internet.

The big companies I already mentioned (Uber, Rover, and Airbnb) do leverage it in a SaaS (Software as a Service) format.

There’s several ways of doing that, but one of the most common and easier methods is to simply bottle up your talent into little informational robots – or as they’re more commonly known –  books, audio programs, courses, and videos.

Having these products out there working for you will allow you build passive income streams so you won’t have to trade hours for dollars.

Don’t think you can call yourself an expert yet? Ha! An expert is only a person who knows more than their audience. You can be 10 steps ahead of them, or just 1. Either way, they can still learn from you. So that means that anyone can become one. It’s just a matter of putting your mind to it once you decide if it’s something you want to really pursue.

Are You Cut Out to Be an Expert?

The next question is this: are you made of the right material to be an expert? Is it something that you should be pursuing as part of your career? Cause you might have the knowledge, but if don’t have the correct mindset, then you’re not going to be too successful at it.

So to see if you have the right mindset, let’s see if this list from Brendon’s Burchard’s book, the Millionaire Messenger, vibes with you:

1. You’re willing to do work based entirely on your passion and knowledge. You’re going to be the engine behind this train. Do you like helping people by being an educator?
2. Your work activities center on “relating and creating.” This means that you focus creating products that are useful for your audience.
3. You work anywhere and anytime, starting now. Armed with a laptop, phone, and a broadband connection to the web, you’re ready to work anytime, anywhere.
4. You work with whom you want. It’s up to you to make your job as easy, fun, or complex as you want. This means that you can hire and fire any help you have as well as getting rid of annoying customers.
5. Your promotions are based on your promotions. The great thing about this field is that if you make a product that is in demand, the hard part is going to be getting the word out there. Find out what people want and deliver, deliver, DELIVER!
6. Your pay equals the value you deliver, not the hours you work. We already covered this one. But make yourself valuable and the products will work for you.
7. You don’t need or want a big team. Eventually you’ll have to hire your own help to cover your own blind spots or to simply do the work that you shouldn’t be doing. However, as an expert, your team will be small. You’ll need help with media, marketing, and admin – and that’s about it.  This is not something where you need many bodies to do all kinds of work – so don’t get them involved until you need them. Also, starting out as a solopreneur might even prove to be beneficial so you can properly scale your business over time and create systems to help your future crew.
8. You like using simple and inexpensive tools to achieve success. Each successful expert has basically had to go through the same path to become that expert. In the past, the jobs that needed to be done had to be done by the expert or by hiring out those jobs. In today’s world, many of those jobs can be done by simply, cheap, and often free online tools and software.
9. You like the idea of making more income on your efforts than you could in any other industry. Instead of letting the robots work against you, you let them work for you. The more people you help, the higher value your work is perceived to have. The higher the value your work has – the more people will want it.

If you’re ok with all of these points, then you should look into becoming an expert at something that you could teach others about.

If you’re not ok with them, then you might want to consider doing something else. Maybe like building a software solution for a particular industry.

Action Steps:

So, you’re now aware that the expert industry exists. I’ve given you 9 criteria to help you determine if it’s something you might want to consider as a career.

If it does, then there’s a few things you can do next.

1. Get Brendon’s book: The Millionaire Messenger. It goes deeper into what this world is like.
2. Join us in The Expert Community and start networking with other like minded people.

If you feel like it’s not necessarily something that fits what you want to do, then there’s other options. There’s a total of 10 different online businesses you can pursue. Maybe something like The Foundation is in your future?