For us at Level Up, the big word for 2025 is AI.
We’re going through this transformation right now, and the choice is pretty clear.
Artificial intelligence will take us down one of two paths: either it’s going to kill our business, or it’s going to 10x our business.
We’re obviously working hard to ensure it’s the latter.
Table of Contents
Our Adaptation Strategy
We believe adaptation is essential. We’ve created an Ethan GPT that’s free on ChatGPT.
It draws from a couple of hundred thousand texts and hundreds of hours of video content (including some never-released material), and it communicates with the same candid, straight-talking style as Ethan.
I’d estimate it’s about 70% there in capturing his authentic voice.
Reimagining Our Business
We’re rethinking what our business would look like if we launched today as an AI-first company.
The core components that I believe will drive our growth are our commitment to providing free content consistently—blogs, podcasts, and YouTube videos.
Our YouTube channel now features over 320 videos, most running about an hour long.
Our Mission: Paying It Forward
The mission behind everything we do is, simply put, to pay it forward.
Ethan has enjoyed success in his career, as have I in mine, and we’ve learned that companies typically fail at training people to become effective leaders or people managers.
When you become a first-time leader, your team essentially becomes your guinea pig—for better or worse.
The Give-First Mentality
We operate with a give-first philosophy. Virtually everything we offer has a free version.
Our thinking is that if you want a condensed six-hour course with peer networking and live Q&A sessions with Ethan, then our paid courses are available.
But in the age of artificial intelligence, we believe human community will become the most valuable asset. Your network and warm referrals will increasingly determine your next career opportunity.
Building Connections in a Competitive Landscape
Think about it—thousands of AIs will compete for the next job. Many people will build in public, which gives you one filtering method.
But then what?
When you have 100 qualified candidates all building in public and showing results, who actually lands the job? It’s probably the one with some sort of referral or warm connection.
That’s the real value of community.
Fortune reports that 80% of all executive jobs are never posted publicly—they’re filled through recruiting firms and warm referrals.
We want to help people excel at making these connections, and we believe community is the key to making this happen.
Free Content in an AI World
With AI, we’re comfortable freely sharing our content. Many of our courses cost over a thousand dollars, and I frequently receive emails from people saying they can’t afford that.
I simply direct them to these 10 YouTube videos and suggest they read our free newsletters—you’ll find most of the same information there; you just need to invest more time.
Conclusion
The short answer is that we don’t know exactly how AI will impact us yet.
We’re actively trying to figure it out right now.