30 years from now, will your job even exist?

Big O Tires has a problem. In 30-50 years, electric cars will be ubiquitous. What then? What happens when the only techs that can work on a Tesla are Tesla techs?

We can look back and see the same thing happened to the record companies. They had the perfect model in place. Here is a song on the radio, if you want to play it when you want, you will need to pay $15 for a CD. And if you lost it, you would have to do it again. Then Napster came along and broke the model. Netflix did the same thing to Blockbuster.

The internet and technology and systems and network effects break giant markets into smaller ones. Again and again, pulling them apart.

The person that can break the monopoly on working on high tech cars, that a multi-million dollar idea. So, what does Big O Tires do? You can start breaking the model now preparing for the transition. That requires vision and seeing the world as it is. (Berkshire Hathaway, the 8th largest company in the world, started in textile.) You can also bleed the market dry and sell pennies on the dollar when the industry ends. You can also abandon ship now and do something else.

What we can’t do is wish for things to be different. The point isn’t to live forever but to live with yourself forever. Do work you are proud of. When a chapter closes, you can look back and smile.