Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
You're listening to Mick Unplugged, hosted by the one and only Mick Hunt. This is where purpose meets power and stories spark transformation. Mick takes you beyond the motivation and into meaning, helping you discover your because and becoming unstoppable. I'm Rudy Rush, and trust me, you're in the right place. Let's get unplugged.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another exciting episode of Mick Unplugged. And today I have someone who I'm going to call the most interesting man, not only on LinkedIn, but at LinkedIn. He's someone I've followed from afar for a long time. His genius is communicating and articulating real world problems, but giving us real solutions to that. So please join me in welcoming
the game-changing, the authentic, the man in the mirror, Anish Rahman. Anish, how are you doing today, brother?
Good. Thank you for having me, brother. And I got to say, congrats to you. You were just like on the up, spreading the good word out there about how we can find our because. And I have been... following that and appreciating it.
And we're in this moment, I think the most disruptive moment to work in human history, but it is laced with such incredible possibility around all the things that you've been coaching folks to pursue. And so I'm just grateful for the work you do every day to inspire belief in more and more people and get them on a new path.
You know, we can't make change if we don't put forth effort, right? And I believe that the way that the world is now and everyone in a good way, I mean this very positively, everyone has a microphone or a video. And so how you use that, I think, Tells your character. And so for me, my character is always I want to uplift and I want to impact. So that's what this forum has done for me, man.
But I want to I want to flip it to you. You know, the question I always start with, like, what's your because? And so you've done a lot in your career. I mean, and you're continuing to do a lot in your career. And we're going to talk about this amazing book in a moment, too. But if I were to say a niche, man, like what's your because? Why do you keep doing it the way that you do it?
It's kind of the big existential question that's defined my career because it's shifted. I would say up until about 10 years ago, my because was to fit in. I'm the child of immigrants, grew up in this country wanting to succeed, saw that as both validation of why my parents sacrificed so much to come here, but also a way to feel accepted, feel a belonging in America.
And so a lot of the early chapters of my career were to fit in at the most basic level, to feel valued by this country. And that didn't mean I was doing it, I think, soullessly, like I was doing it with real purpose around impact. I was a war correspondent for CNN. I became a speechwriter to President Obama. Like it was all good work that was trying to impact the world for the better.
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Chapter 2: How can individuals take control of their career in the age of AI?
Don't mean everyone needs to go try and be a billionaire, but it means that you can work hard and get ahead. You know, with President Obama, we used to talk about that basic bargain.
And that just lit a fire under me because once I understood economic opportunity to be many things at once, economic agency, economic dignity, economic mobility, economic freedom, it just made it much more necessary to commit to this cause. And so that locked in as my because.
And then as we'll talk about AI arrives, and I just saw every reason to double down on that because of the opportunity to change systems. And so I feel so blessed that I found my fight. I found my cause.
And I don't think it has to be something as big as let's go build the third great movement in human history, because I think we've had a movement for democracy and political freedom, a movement for climate. I think economic freedom is sort of the third one that we can do globally. But it can be something in your community. It can be something that just drives your curiosity, like you talk about.
It can be about a sector you're interested in or a startup that you want to go and build. But I don't think I really locked into it until about 10 years ago, and it changed everything.
Wow. Wow, brother. Again, that's why I'm such a huge fan of you, because you just gave me reasoning, you gave me logic, you gave me philosophy. But what was most important was you gave me you, right? Like you talked about you and what you needed to do and how you needed to change.
And I think for everybody that's watching, everybody that's listening, the moment of impact, and we're in a world of AI, right? But everything starts with you and the decisions that you make, the choices that you make. And that's why I love Anish for what he does, because everything does start with him. And now, Anish, we're going to talk about AI, right?
Like, I can't have you on this podcast and not talk about AI. You challenged me in such a good way. You had a post where you talked about, is AI like electricity or is it like computing? Exactly. And I'm going to have a link to that specific post because everybody needs to watch that short. Talk to us about that a little bit.
Talk to us about AI being like electricity or thinking about it like electricity.
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Chapter 3: What are the three buckets that redefine your job?
And so I think we all start from a place of understandable fear, understandable skepticism. And I just want to show my math about why I came at it differently. But because I was coming at it differently, I sort of started to build this logic flow. And it starts with, OK, I think this is going to be big.
There's this term general purpose technology that folks may have heard about or not, but it basically describes technology that comes in, kind of changes everything, and then a lot of stuff builds off of that technology in terms of new businesses, new jobs, new economies.
And so if you look across sort of the history of work in the industrial age, you've got the steam engine, you've got electricity, you've got internet, and now we've got AI.
Right.
And so I always started from what does this mean for humans? And that was always a little bit of an outlier from the start because at the beginning of all this, a lot of technologists were saying, well, humans are done. We're cooked, like we had a good run, but this machine's gonna out machine us, like there's nothing left for us to do.
So the idea that there was even a role for humans at work in this age wasn't a given. And then there wasn't a lot of effort at the beginning to, if you think there is gonna be a role, start to understand what it's gonna look like. But that's where I went first. And so then I thought about, okay, we've had these three and now this is our fourth, let's say, general purpose technology.
I think it's at that level. And that was a step first. Because remember, at first it was like, is AI the internet or crypto? Is it a fad or is it actually here? And then if it's here, is it going to change overnight or over decades? We were just kind of like feeling our way through this. But I was like, no, this is big and it's gonna change a lot and it's gonna change quicker than we think.
Okay, now what is it gonna change? So then as I looked at steam engine electricity internet, one thing popped out. If you think about steam engine to electricity, that was a big shift. And we write about in the book how the companies that saw the gains of electricity understood that and rebuilt the entire workplace around the electric motor in a different way than they had from the steam engine.
But if you think about humans at work, it didn't change a lot. Like you were still at a factory as a human at work. You were doing different factory work, but you were still doing largely physical labor on an assembly line building things. Then the internet comes along and that kind of does change work in a big way, right? We get the knowledge economy. Suddenly college becomes a bigger deal.
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Chapter 4: How does economic opportunity relate to personal agency?
And we had a couple of guiding principles. One was that we wanted to help people. And that was like a real important point, which is because at the time there were a lot of books coming out that were sort of thoughts for thinkers to think about when it came to AI, which was appropriate.
It was early and it was a lot of like leaders talking to leaders or academics talking to academics, just people trying to get their head around it at this really broad societal macroeconomic level. And we just knew for every member because our vision at LinkedIn, which keeps us honest, is create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce.
And so we just knew for every member that stuff was like unhelpful. And so we wanted to make it really specific. And so there's a part of the book that helps you just get situated, that understands what's been and what's possible for us as humans at work.
But then we get super tactical about what you can do as you think about your job, what you can do as you think about your career for companies, for economies, and then ultimately for you as an individual. So that was a helpful push for us along the way. And then the other guiding principle we had is we're just like two dudes who've had kind of the careers we've had. We're not representative of
And it's hard to make anyone representative given that, as we've talked about, everyone's going to have to be uniquely themselves. But we knew one way to do that would be to have a really diverse selection of stories of workers from all backgrounds, from all stages of their career, from every angle. coming at AI.
I mean, we got Jonetta Grisham, like this 50-year-old person who starts with a hell no to AI. I mean, she talks about how she grew up watching Terminator, Terminator 2, Terminator 3. AI came and she's like, okay, it's now happening, the robot apocalypse. But she talks about how she pushed through that and she was taking a course where... They said, use this tool to update your resume.
And it helped her see her skills in a new way. And then she had to learn something for a certification. And she was like every one of us, someone who never found learning fit us. It wasn't built around our way of learning, our curiosity. So she told the tools, like, help me learn this thing in a way I like to learn with stories, with analogies. Helped her get that IT certification.
to stories like Jonetta, like Ume, like Taj, like Diego. I mean, it was really important for us to have that. And that is the book. And so our hope ultimately is that not only does it help you at a basic level, but it helps you by being really actionable. And it helps you by finding someone in this book. The humans of this book are the book.
Someone in this book that feels like someone that you could listen to and trust and believe that what they're saying is something that could work for you. Because ultimately we're in a battle of belief right now.
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Chapter 5: What does it mean to bet on yourself in the workforce?
If that one problem works, then it works. So again, I'd love to get your take on what I just said.
Well, it's so powerful. It's kind of the everything of the moment in the book, which is AI is not going to replace you unless you let it, right? Like it all starts with the agency we have as individuals and the strengths we start with. We have a neuroscientist in the book who has a great line. Everyone is amazing as they are.
So this is one of those moments where you start with strengths, no matter who you are, where you've been across your lived experience, your learned experience. Maybe you got resiliency, not from work, but from how you grew up. Maybe you've got adaptability because you have to shift jobs a lot. You're really curious. You're really creative. You know how to read the room.
You know how to build partnerships. Whatever it is, you start with strengths that are human strengths that AI can't beat you at. But if your day-to-day job is largely routinized tasks, summarizing this over here, analyzing quickly that over there, yeah, AI is going to beat you at that because your day right now is largely about efficiency work.
It will out-efficiency you, but you are more than that. But you got to decide that you're more than that. You got to believe that. And then you got to shift the tasks of your job in that direction. We have this statistic, 70% of the skills for the average job will have changed by 2030. That's a lot, seven zero.
So that means even if you aren't changing jobs, your job is changing on you into an entirely new job. Now, what's exciting about this moment is in a past era of technological disruption, the way it worked was it played out over years and top down.
So if I was telling you about the internet or the electricity and telling you that 70% of your job was gonna change, I'd kind of be like, okay, and then like, Wait until you hear how it's going to change, because at some point your boss, your boss's boss is going to come tell you, OK, we figured it out. Here's how we're using the technology. Here's what it means for you. Maybe you get laid off.
Maybe you get moved around. Maybe you get hired into something that's a new job of that economy. But you didn't have much control over how it was going to change your job. It was kind of decided for you. The opposite is true now. You know who has less idea than you about what you do all day? Your boss, your boss's boss. Like, you know what you do all day. And that 70% is yours to change.
And we have a chapter in the book about this for how we can all just approach our jobs today about this tool. Take the dozen tasks you do in a week Forget your job title. And you could be CEO or the newest hire at a company, and I'd say the same thing. Forget your job title. You do about 12 tasks every week. What are the tasks that AI can do now?
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Chapter 6: How is AI compared to previous technological advancements?
Could do that with the tool. So bucket two is what are you doing that's new with it? Not assigning it, but building with it. And then bucket three is stuff that's you. I mean, I need a minute to think about this. I want to challenge my assumptions on this. I want to come up with a new way for us to approach this.
That stuff that is you on your own as a human, ethical judgment, critical thinking, that also, that bucket is doing something with other humans. going and brainstorming something, going and partnering in a new way. As you move your job like a conveyor belt and the tasks you drop across those buckets, that's the opportunity because bucket one task, you don't got to do anymore.
You've got a tool now that's going to do it. Bucket two tasks, you get to become smarter and build better without having to go back to school or hire a bunch of people to create the content you want to create. You just got to do bucket two. And then bucket three is, oh, my God, all this cool new stuff you get to do.
And never forget, everything that's led us to do anything good in the world as humans has come about because we've done it together. There is no story of positive impact, big change, even building a successful business that is just about a lone genius. In the book, we talk about Einstein. We talk about Da Vinci. We talk about Mozart, like all these people that
came to be who they are because of people around them and because of the space they had to think creatively or to be curious. So go find your people, go learn with other people, go brainstorm with other people. Never before has more been possible and as easy as it is to do it as it is now.
For anyone who still is like about the tool, this is the easiest to use technology that humans have ever created. You literally just have to talk to it like you would another person. And it's getting easier by the day to do more and more bigger, cooler stuff. So don't let yourself get in the way. Again, AI isn't coming for you unless you let it. Anish, man, I could talk to you all day.
I know how busy you are. We might have to do a part two because I freaking, I want to pick your brain on so much and you have so much to give to the audience. But if there's one thing that you want people to truly know about this book and why they need it right now, what would that one thing be?
I would say we have all deserved a world of work where we could bet on ourself and feel like the systems of work would help us make that bet pay off. And that is true for any human who's ever worked a day in their life. And until recently, I wouldn't have been able to say to any of those humans, bet on yourself and let's get going on building a world of work that lets that bet pay off.
And that's sad. That really rips at me if I think about it. The billions of humans who have had so much potential who could have done so much, who could have come up with so many new ideas and new industries who just weren't born in the right zip code or at the right time to hack their way into what they needed to succeed. But we're in a different moment. And so on behalf of all of them,
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Chapter 7: What practical strategies can help individuals thrive with AI?
So it would be fun to do a part two where we go through just how we constructed our offering, you know, of what makes us us, the five C's in the book, the sort of habits of resilience and adaptability that lead to an entrepreneurial mindset and just how folks can take that as a to-do as well to build that human capability.
Absolutely, brother. We will make that happen. Anish, again, honored. I'm going to have connections to Anish in the show notes and the descriptions. I will have links to the also in the show notes and description. If you're watching or listening, also your local bookstore, support local bookstores. Great way to go get it.
But obviously I'll have links to Amazon Books, A Million Barnes and Nobles and all that too. But if you can go get at a local bookstore, that's also a big one. For all the viewers and listeners, remember your because is your superpower. Go unleash it.
That's another powerful conversation on Mick Unplugged. If this episode moved you, and I'm sure it did, follow the show wherever you listen. Share it with someone who needs that spark. And leave a review so more people can find their because. I'm Rudy Rush, and until next time, stay driven, stay focused, and stay unplugged.