I'm writing to you from paradise, St. John, USVI. We're holding my mastermind here this week.

(I've got a replay for you of the encore I did this week; more on that in a minute.)

As beautiful as it is here, driving on the island is a death-defying experience. I am not joking. There's a reason the speed limit for the entire island is 20.

You're driving along and suddenly you're on the steepest hill you've ever seen, and then you have to make a 270-degree turn left up another hill.

It is crazy.

But the view we have from up this mountain made risking our lives worth it. Pictures to come.

Today we went on a tour, led by a guide who has spent his whole life on this island, population 5000 and accessible only by ferry from neighboring St. Thomas.

I asked him, have you ever driven on a highway? Once, came his answer.

At one of our stops he spoke frankly about the challenges of living on St. John, where unsurprisingly everything is quite expensive.

"If you say to me that $9 for milk is expensive and you don't understand how I put up with it, remember: that's all I know," he said. He knows only the prices he sees every day.

Living in beauty requires sacrifice, he says. I need to make enough money so I can do that. So I just make it work. That's all there is to it.

That impressed all of us. I'd already tipped him in advance and I told my guys he'd been tipped, but they tipped anyway because they liked him and they liked his determination.

St. John is entirely about tourism. They don't really have anything else. So as a tour driver, he's safe.

But for a lot of people, who see the writing on the wall, it's a question of: what should I be doing right now to change-proof myself against a tumultuous future and the AI tsunami?

This week I delivered an encore presentation of my talk on how to take the technology that many fear will displace them and in fact bend it to their will, and use it both to generate income and to make their lives freer and less stressful.

Watch for yourself (but when the timer hits zero, it won't be available for free viewing anymore):

https://www.tomwoods.com/encore

Tom Woods