The Only 19 Skills to Make Money in the AI Era

About this video

Martell ranks money-making skills from best to worst using three criteria: barrier to entry, defensibility against AI, and profitability. He says he runs an AI venture studio, is hiring every day, and has 17-year-olds who run circles around people with decades of experience because they have the right skills. He puts public speaking in A tier, saying speaking is very profitable — he claims he knows people paid a million dollars to give a speech — and that AI cannot get on stage and do it. Sales sits right behind public speaking as a meta-skill, though he says AI outbound and closing in his company Atlas shows it is less defensible than before. He gives social media management a B, AEO (answer engine optimization) a B above social media after first calling it S tier, and cybersecurity, software development and AI automation B tier as well. Trades and media buying land in C tier, prompt engineering in C above trades, project management, data analysis, graphic design, copywriting and email marketing in D tier, and SEO and day trading in F tier, with SEO described as the way of the newspaper. He concludes he ranked nothing S tier because no skill is simultaneously easy to learn, defensible against AI, and highly profitable for a long time, and urges viewers to ask AI to teach them a chosen skill.

Key takeaways

• Martell evaluates every skill on barrier to entry, defensibility against AI, and profitability.
• He ranks public speaking A tier and sales just behind it, calling sales a meta-skill that applies to recruiting, business and other areas.
• He ranks SEO F tier, saying people are searching inside AI chats instead of clicking search results, and ranks AEO B tier above social media management.
• He says trades are defensible because robots are not yet fixing pipes or wiring, but caps them at C tier because selling your time limits how much you can make.
• He ranks no skill S tier, arguing nothing is easy to learn, defensible against AI, and highly profitable for long, and advises using AI itself to learn a skill.

Episode details: published July 6, 2026 · 25:58 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Dan Martell’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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