This might be uncomfortable to hear…

But we need to have this conversation.

AI has changed the value of information forever. There was a time when people paid tens of thousands of dollars for expertise that can now be generated in seconds.

“Write me a course on how to bake a cake.”

Done.

That doesn’t mean expertise is worthless. It means the GAME has changed. And if you’re feeling the ground move under your career right now, this post is for you: what’s really going on, and exactly how to adapt.

I used AI to help me expand this post, working from my own video, my original post and my own stories.

TL;DR

• AI has changed the value of information. Expertise that cost thousands can now be generated in seconds.
• Many industries are going through identity death. It’s terrifying, and it’s normal to grieve it.
• The businesses that survive problem solve fastest. Not clinging, not crying, not pretending AI isn’t happening.
• Money follows real pain points: convenience, speed, cost, overwhelm, complexity and implementation.
• Your role may evolve, but your value can expand into guidance, strategy, systems, curation, leadership and community.
• Ask a better question: “What does the world need from me NOW?” Five steps and copy-and-paste prompts below.

What’s in this post

1. AI has changed the value of information
2. Many industries are going through identity death
3. The businesses that survive problem solve fastest
4. Step 1: Name the identity you’re clinging to
5. Step 2: Get obsessed with your customers’ real problems
6. Step 3: Find where your value expands
7. Step 4: Ask what the world needs from you now
8. Step 5: Test one evolved offer
9. Every evolution creates a new opportunity
10. FAQs

AI has changed the value of information forever

For most of history, information was scarce. If you knew how to do something that other people didn’t, they paid you for it. Lawyers, designers, writers, trainers, consultants, curriculum developers like me: we were all, at least partly, paid for what we knew.

Now anyone with a phone can get a decent first draft of almost anything, for close to nothing, in seconds.

So the value has moved. It’s moved away from knowing things and towards doing something useful with what you know: judging, guiding, simplifying, implementing and caring about the person in front of you.

Many industries are going through identity death right now

And honestly? That’s terrifying when your entire career has been built around a specific skillset.

I felt it too. As a curriculum developer. As someone who built courses for a living. Suddenly the world had ChatGPT, and I had to ask myself:

“Who am I now?”
“How do I stay valuable?”
“How do I evolve?”

It wasn’t a small wobble. After almost 20 years in a highly qualified profession, I was made obsolete in a day, and a few years later AI did it to my done-for-you tech services too. I tell the whole story, and the step-by-step way through, in What to do if AI is threatening your work.

If that’s where you are right now, please hear this first: the grief is real. Years of study, late nights and pride in your craft don’t just evaporate because a machine can now do the typing. Let yourself feel it. Then let’s get practical.

The businesses that survive are the ones that problem solve fastest

This is the real entrepreneurial skill.

Not clinging to the old model.
Not crying about the changes.
Not pretending AI isn’t happening.

Problem solving.

Because you must deeply understand your customers’ problems. That’s where the money will always be. The businesses that survive AI are the ones solving REAL pain points:

• Convenience
• Speed
• Cost reduction
• Overwhelm
• Complexity
• Implementation

How to adapt your work for the AI era

Here’s the process I used myself, and the one I walk my students through when their industry starts to wobble.

Step 1: Name the identity you’re clinging to

Write down your job title, or the thing you’d say at a barbecue when someone asks what you do. Then underneath it, write every task that title involves.

Now be honest. Which of those tasks can AI now do, or do most of? Circle them. That’s the bit of your identity that’s changing. It’s not the whole of you, it’s the tasks.

Step 2: Get obsessed with your customers’ real problems

Your customers didn’t really want a course, a logo, a report or a contract. They wanted what it did for them. And their problems haven’t gone away just because AI turned up. In lots of cases they’ve got more overwhelmed, not less.

Go and ask them. What’s frustrating them right now? What have they tried with AI that didn’t work? What do they wish someone would just do, or show them how to do?

Step 3: Find where your value expands

This is the opportunity. Maybe people no longer need you for the exact same thing. But they may need, more than ever before:

• Guidance: someone to tell them which way to go
• Strategy: a plan, not just a pile of AI output
• Systems: a way to make it all run
• Curation: what’s good, what’s rubbish, and what to ignore
• Personality: a real human they like and trust
• Leadership: someone to follow through the change
• Simplification: less, but better
• Community: other people going through the same thing

Pick the two or three where your experience gives you an unfair advantage.

Step 4: Ask what the world needs from you now

So stop asking: “How do I protect my old identity?”

Start asking: “What does the world need from me NOW?”

That question could completely change your future. It did mine. When AI took my curriculum work, the answer was to teach people to create their own courses with AI. When it took my done-for-you tech services, the answer was to teach people to connect their AI and prompt it from their phone. Same expertise. Different delivery.

It’s the same question I asked in 2014 when a single phone call wiped out my business, which you can read about in Everyone has something to teach and Business crisis survival: how to stabilise, pivot and rebuild stronger.

Step 5: Test one evolved offer

Don’t disappear for six months to reinvent yourself. Pick one small, evolved offer that combines your expertise with one of the needs in step 3, describe it in a paragraph, and show it to five people who used to pay you, or would.

• A designer might offer a brand strategy session plus an AI prompt kit so clients can create on-brand graphics themselves.
• A writer might teach small businesses to train AI on their own voice and then edit what it produces.
• A trainer might turn their best workshop into a course and an AI assistant that works from their own material.

If your evolved offer is a course, program or membership, I walk you through planning, packaging, pricing and launching it in Sarah Cordiner’s Concept to Course with AI live workshop.

I want to adapt my work for the AI era without losing what I love about it. Use only what I tell you. Don't invent anything about me.

My work: [your role, business or profession]
My experience and qualifications: [list them]
My customers: [who they are]
What AI now does that I used to be paid for: [be honest]
What I love about my work: [the bit you never want to lose]

1. Tell me what I'm really FOR, beyond the tasks.
2. List my customers' biggest problems right now, grouped by convenience, speed, cost, overwhelm, complexity and implementation.
3. Show me where my value can expand: guidance, strategy, systems, curation, personality, leadership, simplification or community. Pick my top three and explain why.
4. Suggest three evolved offers I could test in the next 30 days, with who each is for and what I'd say to five past customers about it.
5. Keep it practical, direct and kind.

Every evolution creates a new opportunity

COVID changed everything. AI changed everything again.

And while everyone was panicking, the smartest businesses were asking:

“How do I adapt?”
“What problem can I solve now?”
“What do people need next?”

This is how innovation happens. Some of the biggest businesses are born from frustration. Software costs exploding. Systems becoming too complicated. Businesses needing simplification.

Pain creates demand. Demand creates opportunity.

Here’s the truth… you cannot build a future-proof business by refusing to evolve.

The people who survive the AI era won’t necessarily be the smartest. They’ll be the most adaptable. The most human. The best problem solvers. The fastest movers.

And a word on the slop, because I know it worries people. Using AI isn’t the problem. Using it with nothing of yourself in it is. When AI works from your own material, your transcripts, your training, your stories and your lived experience, it isn’t slop. It’s you, faster.

FAQs

Is AI going to replace my job?

AI is already doing many tasks that people used to be paid for, especially producing information, drafts and first versions. It is much less able to replace judgement, trust, lived experience, leadership and the ability to solve a specific person's real problem. The safest move is to shift your value towards those things rather than defend the tasks.

What skills matter most in the future of work with AI?

Adaptability, problem solving, understanding customers deeply, strategy, curation, simplification, leadership and the human skills of building trust and community. Being able to direct and check AI well is quickly becoming a core skill too.

Why does losing work to AI feel like an identity crisis?

Because for most of us, what we do is tangled up with who we are. Years of study and experience turn a job title into an identity. When AI takes the tasks, it can feel like it took you. Separating what you do from what you are for is the first step out of that.

How do I stay valuable when AI can generate expertise in seconds?

Stop competing with AI on information and compete on what it cannot give people: guidance, strategy, systems, curation, personality, leadership, simplification and community. Solve real pain points such as overwhelm, complexity and implementation.

What should I do if my industry is being disrupted by AI?

Get hands-on with AI in your own work, talk to your customers about what they now struggle with, and test one evolved offer that solves that problem. Ask what the world needs from you now rather than how to protect your old role.

Is using AI in my business the same as creating AI slop?

No. Slop is content generated from nothing: no original thinking, no lived experience, no real expertise. When AI works from your own material, such as your transcripts, training and stories, and you review it, it is a tool for your expertise, not a replacement for it.

Sarah x