Why Amazon Go Will Create More Entrepreneurs

Adapt or extinct.

Since the dawn of man, we’ve had to deal with this statement, which is more like a rhetorical question.

First we adapted for warmth, then food shortages, later protection, then disease, and lastly productivity. Aside from climate change and staving off the end of the Earth, we are now faced with an individual challenge: “How to avoid becoming automated by a machine?”

At the blue-collar job level, we are rapidly seeing new technology delete the need for humans. Since 2000 US manufacturing jobs have decreased 30% thanks to widespread automation. Next up is an estimated 3.5 million truck drivers at risk for automation.

Now, after launching Amazon Go, a grocery store that promotes no checkout lines, Amazon effectively targeted cashiers as another blue-collar job to be automated in the near future.

As if that weren’t enough, with Big Data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence in the picture, an estimated 47% of all jobs are at risk (even white-collar jobs). You can’t turn a page in the newspaper, or swipe to the next story on your phone, without reading a headline about another job that can potentially be taken over by robots.

The moral of the story which I have expertly ascertained is: Nobody is safe from automation unless you are an extremely productive cyborg (in which case, the military is probably already recruiting you).

It’s like in the movie Stand By Me, when the four kids are crossing a bridge and a train starts coming. They can either jump off the bridge and fall 100ft into water or attempt outrunning the train to the other side.

We can try and outrun the train which is automation, we can wait for Universal Basic Income to save us like a superhero, or we can take a chance on ourselves and leap into the water.

There’s no better time to be an entrepreneur. Yes, it sounds counter-intuitive to take a large financial risk right before you possibly lose your job, but entrepreneurship doesn’t have to be a blind leap of faith.

Entrepreneurship can start as a creative side-hustle that you grow over time; a pet project until you’ve gained enough traction to pursue it full-time.

Coming home from work, exhausted, ready to relax is a typical workday. Whether you spend time with your family, go out with friends, or watch Netflix and order Chinese takeout, we all have our routines that dictate our time before and after work.

Personally, I struggled to find time to do my side hustle because I always thought “How can I fit my creative outlet around work?”

I’d always be tired if I jumped right in after work, so I tried something different.

Revolving my creative outlet around my sleep schedule. I found that the most productive hours for my side hustle were the hour before bed and the hour right after waking up. During this time, I had relieved all the stress from work and was in a fresh frame of mind.

So, I challenge you to think about a passion of yours that you dream of doing full-time; a creative outlet which makes you giddy thinking of all the possibilities, and begin pursuing that passion around your sleep schedule.

While the future may take your current job away from you, the future also holds lots of opportunity for entrepreneurs. So, prepare yourself today by engaging in your creative outlet and growing your own side hustle.

We all have creative capabilities deep inside us, it’s just a matter of learning your unique process for getting those ideas out and bringing them to life. That’s why I created Quick Theories -- a brief, weekly newsletter filled with creative insights designed to inspire your next idea. So, if you feel that you aren’t your most creative self, you can sign up here: quicktheories.com