The Ladder Was the Trap

ChatGPT shipped on November 30, 2022.

Read that again. Sit with it for a second. Because if you are a coach, consultant, advisor, course creator, or any other variety of knowledge entrepreneur with real reps under your belt, the math you have not done is the most important math in your career.

It has been three years and change. Inside that window, the working identity of “knowledge entrepreneur in the age of AI” has been reinvented at least four times. I have watched the same person, in some cases people I meet with monthly, rebrand themselves as a prompt engineer, then a framework architect, then a custom GPT builder, then a context engineer, then an agent orchestrator. Each rebrand was sincere. Each one was correct for its season. Each season was shorter than the one before it.

I am going to argue that the people climbing this ladder are losing, even when they think they are winning. And that the durable position is not on any rung. It is the move you make when you finally notice the ladder was the trap.

Full article body would continue here — paste the rest of the markdown from the source file.