🤖 TREE 670: Easy for everyone

Two important facts about the things that are easy for you and difficult for most everyone else:

1. Difficult things can become easy.

2. Difficult things can become less desirable.

I quit freelance design in 2006 to become a pastor then returned to it 10 years later. Before 2006 I worked for a lot of small businesses and mostly did design for print. While I was busy pastoring, the way small businesses promoted themselves changed.

Canva gave people the ability to do good-enough design work themselves for free. Fiverr made okay branding incredibly cheap. Things that were easy for me and difficult for most everyone else became easy and cheap for everyone.

Small companies moved their advertising from the local paper to Facebook. They no longer needed me to design print ads that would stand out in the newspaper.

I couldn’t get enough work to do freelance, so I got a job at a creative agency where my skills were still desirable. Now I design almost exclusively for screens.

I tell you this story because – you know what’s coming –

AI.

AI is in the process of making a gazillion things that used to be hard really really easy.

So ask yourself:

1. What is easy for me that will continue to be hard for most other people? (For me, it’s my ability to communicate someone’s message in a fresh creative way.)

2. What skills do I need to update? (I’m learning how to create usable AI illustrations by writing prompts.)

3. How can I help my clients/boss/colleagues/audience understand the value of what I do? (Thanks for bringing this up, Beth.)

Get your Tuesday moving.

Grow slowly
Jeff