Steve Jobs famously said: “Musicians play their instruments. I play the orchestra.”

‍Let’s not forget the rationale behind that statement: In the early days of Apple, Wozniak was the technical one. Walter Isaacson's biography of Jobs makes it clear that at first, non-technical Jobs’ place in Apple was anything but secure.

‍Without a genius partner like Woz, Jobs surely wouldn’t have become one of the world’s most influential people.‍

But as time went on (and perhaps in self-justifying defense of himself), Jobs started to see and value exactly what *he* brought to the table.

‍Sure, he couldn’t solder microchips and code assembly, but it became clear that introverted Woz wouldn’t have been able to build Apple by himself, either.‍

Now? “Vibe coding” is the rapidly-expanding practice of using AI to code, instead of writing code manually.‍Many dyed-in-the-wool programmers understandably look down on this practice.‍

But love it or hate it, we’re entering a world in which all of us will have countless minions (basically for free) to do our bidding.‍This means that all of us will increasingly be the players of the orchestra, and the musicians will increasingly be AI.

‍We’ll all be a lot more like Jobs, and we’ll all be a lot more like entrepreneurs have always been: in charge of finding novel ways to get musicians to play in harmony.‍

Some people in this world are musicians, and some people play the orchestra.‍

To thrive with the rise of AI, every musician needs to learn how to play an orchestra of their own.

Do you ever go down Wikipedia rabbit holes? Where you keep clicking and clicking, until you’ve learned about something new?

On one such journey years ago, I remember discovering the “Rare Earth Hypothesis”. The basic idea is: if there are trillions of stars and trillions of planets out there, surely there must be other life forms out in the universe, right?

But if we haven’t heard from anyone yet, are we actually alone? And if we are alone, how could that be in a universe of near infinite possibility?

The Rare Earth Hypothesis suggests that, while any one of our planet’s characteristics could be common, we have a series of unlikely traits that might have led to life developing on this planet and nowhere else. Not only are we the right distance from a star of the right size, we have the right-sized moon in the right orbit with the right gravitational pull to create tides and to shield us from asteroids, and the list goes on... Each individual trait of Earth might be common, but stack them all together? And the probability of finding another Earth shrinks, exponentially—maybe a trillion planets isn’t enough for another Earth to exist.

At least, that’s the theory…

In people it’s the same. In business it’s the same. Any one of your traits can be replaced easily. But stack your many common traits and skills together, and you have a truly irreplaceable person in a sea of billions.

One day, order will be restored

The money will be returned.

The mess will be cleaned.

The chaos will subside.

The cycle continues.

Or: It's not the AI kitchen, it's the human cook.

In the future? Your taste will be what matters.

We’re approaching an era where AI can do most tasks better than most humans. Already, we can get a draft of an email written, or a blog post, or a video script in next to no time.

All we have to do is prompt. Today I want to tell you that taste is the future of human work, and I’ll explain why.

Let me tell you a little story. For a long time, I wanted to be a music producer. But at a certain point, I recognized the gap between my appreciation of this art and my ability to create it was too large: it just didn’t come as naturally to me as it did to some of my peers who were born with a piano in their hands, so to speak.

If you’ve ever watched an expert music producer or songwriter create a song—you’ll see that they quickly get to a place that is pretty good, maybe even commercially ready. But at the point where 9/10 people think a song is finished, a great producer will say something like “well it’s a good start, sill sounds pretty rough to me!! I’ll need some time to improve them.”

And you think “what things, it already sounds great!”

But that’s just it.

They hear things we don’t, so what sounds right or good enough or wrong to you is what separates you from them. Their taste and talent create a gap.

So in a world where anyone can ask ChatGPT to write anything, the gap won’t be the raw outputs of AI—Steve’s ChatGPT agent vs. Linda’s.

Some people will look at that output and say “that’s good enough, ship it!” And others will say “that’s a good start but needs some work.”

That difference, in all fields, is taste.

When is an app, a website, a song, a movie good enough to release? When is anything ever good enough to publish?

Those with better taste will always get more value and better results from the same tools.

I recently went to a large trade show and asked over 100 attendees: “Are trade shows worth it?”.

One of the common phrases I heard was: “This trade show will be worth it if we close even one sale.”

With modest booths costing well upwards of $40k, one sale only makes sense when dealing with big-ticket items or large volumes.

In my experience, companies take for granted that in-person trade shows are something they must do, while often being hesitant to invest a similar amount in their digital efforts.

I think it boils down to expectations: If mid-sized companies hoped for one sale from 40k of investing in their website, they’d almost certainly be pleasantly surprised by the lasting effects of improving their positioning and digital storytelling. After all, a website can keep silently selling for years.

Conversely, if they really drilled down on trade show effectiveness, they might find it not to be worth it after all.

Bill Gates said: “Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.”

My modification would be: "Most people overestimate what trade shows will do for them over a couple days and underestimate what branding and positioning will do for them over five years.”