E49: The Five Stages of AI Grief: Identity, Market Meltdowns, and What's Left When Your Playbook Dies

George and John pick up right where the last episode left off — but this time it gets personal. George walks through the three playbooks he's followed over his career (raise capital and sell, build SaaS and scale, consulting on the side) and how AI systematically killed the first two. He talks openly about reaching the acceptance stage of grief after shutting down the SaaS business, watching revenue go to near-zero, and resisting the temptation to crawl back to what used to work.The conversation shifts to the market meltdown triggered by Claude Cowork's launch — over $1 trillion wiped from software stocks in roughly a week. George breaks down why he thinks the selloff is justified, not panic, drawing a direct line from killing his own SaaS company in December to questioning why his personal portfolio still holds software stocks. He shares the story of a non-technical consulting client who built a full-stack Next.js app without knowing what Next.js is, and how the design agency they've worked with for years has seen new projects dry up — not because they're bad, but because the speed gap has become impossible to ignore.The episode's strongest thread is on identity. George challenges the "what do you do?" culture — especially in places like San Francisco where your job title is your introduction — and makes the case that tying your identity to your role is a setup for crisis when that role disappears. He and John both reflect on what made them who they are before any job title existed, and why rediscovering that matters more now than ever. Amazon's 16,000-person layoff and the $700 billion being poured into AI infrastructure this year frame the urgency.Send your questions to [email protected] for the next episode. Subscribe on YouTube for the full video.