Coaching & Web3: patterns for 2024

Coaching is one of my favourite roles, that I have recently returned to due to demand. People are seeking guidance: how to make the next move, how to enter the tech industry, or just how to navigate the uncertainty that we are all experiencing.?

As Web3 accelerates and we enter 2024, these are the patterns I’m learning through coaching.

Re-thinking traditional career paths?

I give talks to students on “Careers in tech - not just for techies”. I show growth charts and ask the students to match them to the vendors - Amazon, Salesforce, Meta etc. They get it: tech has been a gold mine. Web3 is its biggest reinvention yet.

Most of the students believe the industry is just for engineers. They aren't mapping their skills to the intellectual and financial opportunities that the industry offers, now more than ever. You’re studying art? Couldn’t do my job without designers. Law??Compliance! Linguists? LLMs, and so on.?

I’ve learned that colleges fill careers talks for medicine, accountancy and law without addressing the AI-led elimination of elements of these professions. Collectively, we are not opening students’ minds to the connection between their passions and intellect and a fully digitised world. Most are unaware of the opportunity for asynchronous work for example. Even PhD grads may struggle (although help is at hand), in a non-linear world still run by straight lines.?

Career creativity is required. How do my skills, aspirations, personality type and beliefs lead me to work that I may not have considered? Who in my network can help me to unlock the potential in my skills and passions that on paper I am not suited to? Alex Bouaziz, co-founder and CEO of Deel nails the opportunity perfectly in his article 2024, the year the American Dream Goes Global.

Your AI narrative

True story. I’m at a Tech conference, vendor panel. Host: who’s not using ChatGPT? One person from a reputable software company actually put their hand up. Not a good look.

Avoid the noise and get your head into AI. My thesis: the web up to now has largely done what we always did, only better and digitally (buy/sell stuff, learn, share information, manage a business etc). Web3 technology delivers true invention, vs reinvention, e.g., creating financial systems that run themselves 24/7 (tokenization, blockchain, digital assets, smart contracts) and robots that manage your health, home and happiness.?

Whatever your field, learn what AI is doing to improve or change your profession, how it will impact your industry. Use free resources like Google’s 12 days of generative AI. Have fun building presentations with AI apps like https://www.synthesia.io; be fluent in AI, for you.?

In Web2, resistance sounded like “I’m not putting customer data in the cloud”. In Web3, the only resistance is ignorance and avoidance.?

Engagement

Lack of engagement is an outdated concept. Example: how can recruiters not respond to applicants? (A common story from coaching clients). The Application Tracking System you use (they are all pretty much the same) make it as easy to decline a candidate as a swipe to the left on Tinder. A polite, personalized email will at least let the person know they have not been successful.?

How can anyone not engage when WhatsApp, Telegram, even LinkedIn messenger make it so easy? Just say no, no thanks, appreciated, sure, whatever. Networking has never been more accessible and it’s totally free. Get on it. Engaging, even with a no, is a form of closure that enables all participants to move on.?

Engagement is also growth hacking. Check out how Bogomil Stoev, CEO of commenter.ai, made $8000 from a comment - a form of engagement, on LinkedIn. Wow.

Results (and honesty)

This incredibly moving post popped up in my feed as I was drafting this blog. A young man posted two photos 9 days apart: one holding a trophy, the other of him crying, suicidal.

An award trophy is a great result. I review CVs with lengthy explanations of what the person did in a job, whereas what I want to see is data: growth percentages, product adoption/satisfaction increases, ARR uptick, cost reduction, etc. Bots (or time poor recruiters) are handling your resume; keep it punchy and real.

The flipside of this coin is the honesty and humility of failure. The award/suicide post blasted the veneer off the social media myth.?

LinkedIn is an increasingly rich and useful platform (content, connections, employment, learning etc) yet it too is falling foul of the social media perfection complex. Where middle-aged couples post marital bliss on Facebook, and flawless physiques flood Instagram, companies and individuals turn to LinkedIn to make everything “great”.?

Through coaching, I learn that all of us, without exception, are struggling somewhere. Answer honestly: what went or is going wrong, what needs to improve, and what you are doing to get there? Progression (key) beats perfection (which doesn’t exist).?

In 2024, Web3 will accelerate. Web3 is not just blockchain, tokenization and AI; it’s also decentralised ownership, community governance and interoperability - the concept of DeFi in more industries, if you will. What I’m hearing in coaching maps to these concepts. The world is asking for connectedness, horizontal lines of constant communication, and shared risk/reward, not ladders of corporate dominance and win/lose paradigms. We’ll see these trends develop in technology; let’s build them between humans too.