Entrepenuer Erik Hanberg

Erik's visit to class was definitely an eye opener. While Erik has multiple successes as an Entrepreneur, what struck my interest was how he used authorship as an Entrepreneur. I've talked to people who have had their work published, but only get paid pennies per copy sold. The fact that Erik was able to make $4-8 per copy was super impressive. Combining that with paid seminars about his book was another inventive way to make money of his writing. Not all authors are necessarily entrepreneurs, but Erik shows us that authors definitely can be entrepreneurs. "Little Book of Gold" really turned out to be Erik's own golden goose.

What I liked a lot about Erik's entrepreneurship is that a lot of his money was made through his own skills, rather than employing a lot of people. He does own a local podcast network, but it doesn't really make money off it, and it is more of a passion project. It's a small thing to most people, but for me, I really respect people that make their money off of themselves rather than off others.

The segment on AI was a welcome addition to his presentation as well. I think he makes a great point about how capable AI is becoming, and how much it threatens certain creative professions. I do think he, and the teacher that hosted him are not fully aware of the current potential of AI, however -- and it has a lot to do with prompting and editing generated work. For example, if someone wants to create a company logo, yes, they can prompt an AI to create them something. But it doesn't have to stop there. There are open models and programs that interface with them (such as Stable Diffusion, Krita and ComfyUI) that allow for things like "in-painting". In painting allows a user to designate a certain area of an image to be re-generated with a new prompt. This allows a user to collage and layer generations in a way that allows them to realize exactly what's in their imagination, or embark on a much more iterative process than simply trying one prompt after another, and creating a new work each time. Sure, ChatGPT might not be able to replace an artist on its own, but a skilled artist with AI tools can do the work of 20 other artists all while producing high quality professional work.