The Last Leisure Class

How Business Leaders and Creative Thinkers Reclaim Status in the Age of AI: Presence, Story, and Meaning as Strategy

Your calendar is packed, the office is empty, and AI now drafts in seconds what used to justify days “away.” The old proof—I’m not in the grind, therefore I’m important—has expired.

The Last Leisure Class is a sharp, practical survival guide for leaders, strategists, and creatives whose status is slipping in the Zoom era. Using Thorstein Veblen’s lens on honor and exemption, this book shows why “being away” once signaled rank—and why, after lockdown and generative AI, it no longer does. The new status move? Presence with consequence: being seen making real choices with others, signing the trade-offs, and delivering effects a human can feel.

Inside you’ll learn how to:

• Turn rooms into engines of trust and speed with the HERO meeting arc (Hook, Entry, Reckoning, Outcome).

• Replace performative busyness with Decision Cards, Proof Boards, and visible repair.

• Spend presence where it pays (one-way vs two-way doors) and keep everything else async.

• Use story—not as decoration, but as the operating system that aligns people to action.
  

No nostalgia, no HR scolding—just a playbook for regaining real status by showing up, making meaning, and signing work in daylight. If you want to move faster and further in the age of AI, start here.