High school and college students everywhere need to take advantage of a “unique opportunity” that could help them land a job almost anywhere, according to billionaire serial entrepreneur and investor Mark Cuban.

Spend “your excess time” learning as much as possible about how to use popular artificial intelligence tools, Cuban advised during an episode of the “TBPN” podcast that aired on Aug. 20. Then, once you’re in the workforce, you’ll be able to help your employer and colleagues — especially those who are struggling to use AI tools and agents effectively — become more efficient and productive, he said.

“You don’t even have to be a software engineer,” Cuban said, adding that he tells his own kids, who are in high school and college: “Learn all you can about AI, but learn more on how to implement them in companies … Companies don’t understand how to implement all that right now to get a competitive advantage.”

For Cuban, learning about AI means experimenting with the many free tools on the market, he said — developing your skills for prompt engineering and customizing models for specific business scenarios. “Every single company needs that. There is nothing intuitive for a company to integrate AI, and that’s what people don’t understand,” said Cuban, adding: “That is going to be jobs left and right.”

DON’T MISS: The ultimate guide to using AI to communicate better

There are more than 34 million businesses in the U.S., and most are small businesses that don’t necessarily have the massive budgets of tech giants to implement AI into their day-to-day business operations. Many of those smaller companies could turn to younger, less expensive hires to implement their AI strategies, Cuban predicted.

Even the the larger companies throwing money at AI tools are still trying to figure out the best ways to implement that new technology into their established business processes, according to a recent EY survey. The results have so far been mixed: 95% of companies had not yet seen any measurable revenue return from their AI investments, according to a July report from Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers. 

The businesses that have had more success implementing AI, so far, are smaller, early-stage startups run by young entrepreneurs capable of customizing AI models to their specific businesses, the MIT report found.

The AI boom reminded Cuban of his own experiences selling software in his 20s, before every company relied on computers in the workplace, he said. “When I was 24, I was walking into companies who had never seen a PC before in their lives and explaining to them the value and having these guys going, ‘Well, son, I got this receptionist right there … I’m never going to need that s— ever,’” he said.

If Cuban were a teenager again now, he’d start a side hustle helping teach businesses how to use AI effectively, he told CNBC Make It in October 2024. “I would go to businesses, particularly small- to medium-sized businesses that don’t understand AI yet,” he said. “Doesn’t matter if I’m 16, I’d be teaching them as well.”

Cuban isn’t the only one offering similar advice: Use free AI tools at least 10 hours per week, and consider paying for some subscription-based models to constantly refamiliarize yourself with what they do well and what they’re not yet capable of, Wharton professor and AI researcher Ethan Mollick told CNBC on Oct. 7.

Employers “need to ‘crowd’ the best AI users and take ideas from the crowd and turn them into products that people use right away,” Mollick said, adding: “My No. 1 piece of advice is to pay $20 a month for [Anthropic’s] Claude or [OpenAI’s] GPT or [Google’s] Gemini and use it for everything you can use it for legally.”

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The most successful people have morning routines that set them up for greatness. Data shows that the way you structure the start of your day can have significant effects on your energy, creativity and happiness.

Arthur Brooks, a professor who teaches a class about managing happiness at Harvard and author of a happiness column for The Atlantic, has a set of practices that he can pick and choose from each morning to boost his mood for the rest of the day.

“I have used all of my background in behavioral science, and everything I’ve learned about biology as well, to put together a morning protocol that is enhancing of my well-being,” Brooks said on his podcast, “Office Hours with Arthur Brooks.”

Here is Brooks’ morning routine, and what he says we can all do “to start your day in the best possible way.”

To get a better understanding of himself, Brooks determined his baseline emotional state using a tool in psychology called the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS). After taking the test, people are placed in one of four categories depending on how intensely they lean towards positive or negative emotions.

Brooks would be considered a “mad scientist,” who experiences high positive affect and high negative affect. “I feel things very intensely, and that’s great on the positive side. But I need to manage the negative side,” he said on the podcast.

To avoid allowing the intensity of his negative emotions to affect his quality of life, Brooks has created this six-step morning routine:

1. Wake up before dawn: Research shows that getting up before the sun rises can improve your creativity, focus and memory, he said. Brooks wakes up at 4:30 a.m. nearly every day, and has experienced positive effects on his mental health as a result.
2. Engage in physical activity: “Fifteen minutes after I wake up, I’m in the gym,” said Brooks who has a gym in his home. He exercises for an hour a day, seven days a week, and alternates between cardio and resistance training.
3. Get metaphysical: Taking a page out of the Dalai Lama’s book, Brooks practices his version of analytical meditation each morning, by attending Mass or praying a Catholic meditation in his car, “calibrating the work of the soul,” he said. If you aren’t religious or into meditation, you can gain similar benefits from journaling for 20 to 30 minutes, Brooks added.
4. Delay coffee intake: “I love coffee for sure, but I don’t drink it when I first wake up,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I don’t have my first cup of coffee until 7:30 in the morning.” He finds that it prevents him from having a 3 p.m. slump later in the day.
5. Eat a high-protein breakfast: Brooks eats between 175 and 200 grams of protein each day, so he gets about 60 grams of protein for breakfast by eating unflavored, non-fat Greek yogurt with whey protein, walnuts and berries. “It makes me feel great. It keeps me full all through the morning and fueled up,” he said.
6. Enter a flow state: Instead of using the energy that his morning routine gives him to check emails, take phone calls or read the paper, Brooks starts working right away. “When I do that, I can actually get two hours of super high-quality creative work,” he said. “I’m in the flow for the rest of the day.”

Though Brooks encouraged listeners to try his morning protocol, he also suggested altering it to fit their personal experiences.

“Experiment on yourself,” he said. “This is the result of my experiments. You need the result of your experiments.”

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In his bestselling book “The Anxious Generation,” author and NYU Stern School of Business professor Jonathan Haidt discusses the societal changes that led to Gen Z’s spikes in anxiety and depression, namely the introduction of the smartphone and social media.

The book spawned the Anxious Generation Movement, a public health campaign “focused on changing policy, culture, and behavior,” according to its website. Led by Haidt, its team keeps track of legislature around child phone use and creates documents that offer policymaking ideas, among other initiatives.

Gen Zers aren’t the only ones affected by smartphones and social media. “We all feel it,” says Alexa Arnold, who serves as both the managing director of the movement and as Haidt’s chief of staff.

If you’ve felt your mental health take a hit in the last few years, here are Arnold’s tips for lowering anxiety.

First, decenter your phone in your life, says Arnold.

You can do that by turning off notifications and disabling the ability for texts to come through to your computer, she says. You can also try “putting your phone in the other room for hours at a time,” she adds.  

“I think the longer we can take breaks and have longer periods of deep work and deep focus,” she says, “the better our brains will be.”

Arnold suggests you start to think about using your phone in batches of time. For example, if you’re someone who likes to keep up with the news, block off just 20 minutes of your day to do that, as opposed to checking your news apps repeatedly throughout the day.

Arnold’s second tip for lowering anxiety: Do something that scares or challenges you.

Workplace challenges help you grow, Arnold says, especially when they put mental or physical strains on you. That principle also holds for doing something scary in social settings, like starting up small talk with strangers. And the effects are monumental, she adds.

“Doing hard things makes you more confident and capable and creative and confident,” Arnold say, regardless of where you are in life. Doing hard things can also help alleviate anxiety.

“We get this question in almost every room we go in: Who is the anxious generation?’,” Arnold says.

“And I think the truth is that it’s all of us.”

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In 2011, I walked away from a six-figure law career and retired at age 41. I thought I was prepared financially. But emotionally? Not so much.

After decades of working, I was used to the sense of purpose that came with a career, and I assumed I’d have to give that up once I stopped working. My biggest fear took the form of one major uncertainty: What would I do with all that unstructured time?

Fast forward 14 years later, and my days are anything but idle. My wife and I now live in Portugal, the No. 1 country Americans want to move to. I spend my free time enjoying local food with friends and hiking the wildflower-dotted coastal trails. Retiring early is one of the best decisions I’ve ever made … but I remember how overwhelming it felt at the start.

Here’s what I’ve learned so far in early retirement, and why I don’t regret it.

I followed a predictable path for most of my adult life: law school, summer associate gigs, and eventually a stable legal career. Then came the 2008 financial crisis. The firm I worked for collapsed — and with it, my sense of direction. I couldn’t picture myself doing anything other than practicing law.

I could’ve stayed in the industry. But instead, I chose the unknown. Most people think early retirement is about not working anymore. But it’s about redefining your identity without a roadmap. That required a mindset shift: I had to become an explorer.

That mindset brought us to Portugal, a country where we didn’t speak the language, didn’t know anyone, and had no idea what to expect day-to-day. It was disorienting at first. But the uncertainty became our motivation to grow, learn, and build a fulfilling life from scratch.

If you’re delaying retirement because you don’t know what comes next, that might be exactly why it’s worth doing. Uncertainty could be your opportunity to travel down paths you’ve never imagined.

When we first retired, my wife and I assumed we’d gradually draw down our savings over time and hope it would last. But something surprising happened: Our net worth kept growing.

A major reason is that living in Portugal drastically reduced our expenses. Here’s what we save annually compared to our old life in Washington, D.C.:

• $15,000 on state income taxes
• $25,000 on health insurance and deductibles
• $14,000 on property taxes
• $20,000 on food, entertainment, and daily costs

In total, we estimate that we save about $5,000 per month just by living abroad.

We follow the same financial strategy we did while working: We live below our means, reinvest the difference, and let compounding do the work. The only difference is that now, instead of salaries, our income comes from investments.

Retirement doesn’t have to be the end of building wealth. It can even be the beginning of a more sustainable, intentional version of it.

Whether you’re working or not, most of us want the same thing: to feel like we matter and are making a contribution.

When we first retired, we had a built-in sense of purpose as parents to a young child. We joined school activities, studied the local language, and built a new life in Lisbon.

But when our daughter went off to college, we were back to square one. Our schedules emptied out, and we faced the same question we did in 2011: What do we do with all this time?

Before diving into hobbies or commitments, we made a plan. We identified six core priorities that bring meaning to our lives:

1. Building and strengthening friendships
2. Personal care and physical health
3. Quality time as a couple
4. Travel
5. Volunteer work and giving back
6. Learning new skills

Once we had those priorities in place, it became easier to build a routine that felt fulfilling.

Today, my wife volunteers at our tennis club, takes pottery and Dutch lessons, and plays sports. I’m focused on writing, freelance retirement coaching, and helping a local nonprofit as a consultant. We host dinner parties, explore new recipes, and take short trips around Europe.

With the right mindset, early retirement can be the perfect new starting point. You just have to be willing to embrace it.

Alex Trias is a retired attorney. He and his wife have been living in Portugal since 2015. He writes about tax planning, investing, early retirement and expat life on Substack.

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Stacie Grissom and Sean Wilson lived in New York City for almost a decade, and then the covid-19 pandemic hit.

In early 2020, Grissom was pregnant with their first child and working in marketing at BarkBox, while Wilson was working as an orthopedic surgeon in NYC hospitals.

Seeing the state of the city during that time made Grissom realize she was ready to move back to Franklin, Indiana, their hometown, which is about 30 miles from downtown Indianapolis.

“We had a reevaluation that it’s the people who matter the most, so we wanted to move back to our hometown to be by our families,” Grissom tells CNBC Make It.

“We got our chosen family in New York, and it’s the best city in the world, but we had to go where our family was.”

A couple of months after their son was born, Grissom contacted a realtor friend in Franklin and told him to start looking at “weird old houses.”

“I told him the quirkier, the better, and to send us a fixer-upper,” Grissom says. “His dad saw a school for sale and immediately said, ‘Send it to Stacie.’”

Since Grissom and Wilson were still in New York City at the time, they asked her parents to check out the property instead.

Grissom says the building was a school for local children between 1914 and 1934. After the schoolhouse closed, it was used as a barn.

Since Grissom’s dad had experience running a commercial real estate business, she knew he would give her an honest and expert opinion on the school’s state.

After getting her parents’ approval, Grissom and Wilson made an offer on the schoolhouse without ever seeing it in person themselves — and it was accepted within 24 hours.

“We wouldn’t have bought it if my parents hadn’t agreed because we knew with this kind of project we were going to need the entire village,” she says.

A week after Grissom and Wilson closed on the former schoolhouse, they saw it in person for the first time.

“I think back then I was a lot more naive than I am today, but I was so excited to see it and its potential,” Grissom says. “You could see that there could be giant windows, tall ceilings, and open spaces for a big family to come together around the holidays.”

“It’s like a Midwestern castle in the middle of some cornfields of Indiana. It’s a beautiful little brick building that is home now,” she adds.

After the couple closed on the former schoolhouse, the real work began. By the fall of 2021, the couple got the school down to its bare bones, but a renovation they thought would take two years ended up taking three.

The couple was still living in New York City at the time.

“Things were a little slow to get going but then the new roof started going in February 2022 and things started to move but it ended up taking us three years because we were basically building a new house inside an old shell of a building,” Grissom says.

Grissom declined to comment on how much the couple spent on the renovation but says they are still getting through it and not completely done yet.

While cleaning out the property, the couple and their contractors found random things, including a board that would hold old chalkboards with the words “Chicken coop” written on it.

“It was really cool to see because this is such a beautiful little school built by farmers for the kids in this rural area. The community was really proud of the school,” Grissom says.

Though the couple had to almost start from scratch with the schoolhouse, they were able to keep the floors in one classroom, all of the brick, the original doors and a water fountain that they are trying to restore.

“The time it took was definitely a big challenge and having to renovate from afar was tough. I don’t think we were naïve going into it, but now I know we’re not renovating anything again after this,” Grissom says. “We did it, and we’re glad we’ve gone through, but no more old buildings for a while.”

Despite how hard the renovation was for the couple, Grissom says her favorite part was getting to work alongside her dad.

“It’s been really cool to go through my dad’s renovation boot camp, from how to work with other contractors to how to do the work ourselves. We learned a lot of trade-like things over the three years,” she adds.

To pay homage to the former school, the couple used the same colors that were originally painted on the walls back when the school was still open. Grissom also made two mosaics for the entrances with the name of the school and its date of creation.

Of the décor, Grissom says they’re “trying to get as much school furniture as we can put back into the school.”

Grissom admits that nothing about the renovation has been easy, but a highlight of the experience has been being able to focus full-time on being a content creator and sharing the schoolhouse journey on social media.

“It has been fun to document this process and find this old home renovation community online. I never thought my house could be a job,” she says. “It’s nice to be able to make an income from some of the storytelling while also getting advice and having a community of people who like restoring old stuff.”

Amid ongoing renovations, the couple and their now two kids moved into the home in September of this year.

“Moving into the schoolhouse was easier than moving into any New York City apartment we ever had,” Grissom says. “It was nice to wake up and see the sunrise over the cornfields. It will be a tornado in here for a while, but it was really crazy to finally set up a place that we’ve been thinking about for three years and pouring all of our money, energy, sweat, and tears into.”

The schoolhouse now has four bedrooms and two and a half baths, all on the 4,000-square-foot upper level. The couple still has a lower 4,000-square-foot sub-basement that they are trying to figure out what to do with.

The best part of finally moving into the schoolhouse and being back in their hometown, Grissom says is that her kids will grow up around their families.

“After living through the pandemic and all of the stress and anxiety, we all had a confrontation with our mortality at a much earlier age than most generations do and that totally shifted stuff in my brain. It’s beautiful to see my parents are healthy, our kids are happy and just appreciate the small things,” she adds.

Since moving in a few weeks ago, Grissom says that while she realizes it was a long road to move in, she would go through it again.

“I never want to lose the naivete of whatever made us say that we wanted to buy a school and it was going to be our house,” she says.

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