How to Be Happier Tomorrow Than You Are Today | Mark Kasdorf

01:02 –> 01:12  Shaun Dyke: Welcome to In the Arena. My name is Shaun Dyke, managing partner here at Door2. Joining me today, Mark Kasdorf. Mark, thank you for flying out and spending some time with us. Before we even

01:14 –> 01:20  Shaun Dyke: set up this podcast, um, you and I had talked about I want you on this thing when we get a chance to get this thing going.

01:20 –> 01:20  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah.

01:20 –> 02:01  Shaun Dyke: For a variety of reasons. We’ll, we’ll start with a real simple one, that, you know, in your mid-20s you start up a company, it gets wildly successful, and you sell this thing to Accenture seven years later, and you’re barely not even knocking into your 40s yet and have done these phenomenal things in your life. And that starts setting the stage for tons of other incredible goals that you accomplish. So if you’re willing, I would love you to kind of just give us a story arc of personal, professional, the things that you think are relevant for folks that are listening to here before we really drive into a bunch of incredible topics, it, from AI augmentation of our life to raising children to a myriad of other complex things.

02:01 –> 02:28  Mark Kasdorf: so I went from undergrad straight to grad school. Uh, I… About halfway through grad school, I had a company idea. I wrote a, started to write a business plan, took a class at the school of management. I went to law school, and I took a cross class at the school of management on how to write a business plan. Uh, ended up entering a bunch of business plan competitions, won a couple of them. Uh, one of them, the winning pack- part of the winning package was to close the Nasdaq stock exchange, which we did in 2009. Just super cool.

02:28 –> 02:28  Shaun Dyke: Incredible.

02:28 –> 02:29  Mark Kasdorf: and,

02:31 –> 02:36  Mark Kasdorf: um, graduated law school, didn’t even bother to look for a job. Went all in on starting a company.

02:36 –> 02:36  Shaun Dyke: [laughs]

02:36 –> 02:37  Mark Kasdorf: the-

02:37 –> 02:39  Shaun Dyke: A company that doesn’t have anything to do with law school.

02:39 –> 02:40  Mark Kasdorf: Oh, yeah.

02:40 –> 02:40  Shaun Dyke: Yeah.

02:40 –> 02:40  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah, nothing.

02:40 –> 02:41  Shaun Dyke: Perfect. Brilliant.

02:41 –> 02:41  Mark Kasdorf: It was a home renovation-

02:41 –> 02:42  Shaun Dyke: Love it. Love it

02:42 –> 02:46  Mark Kasdorf: with Prenest. It was a long story. Um, but I… It did not go well.

02:48 –> 02:51  Mark Kasdorf: we ran out of money in February 2010.

02:52 –> 03:07  Mark Kasdorf: so I, uh, and I… There was a pretty big moment in my life. Uh, at a four-month-old at the time, at $100,000 in law school debt, I had a then, uh, wife, uh, who was not happy about going back to work. That was not part of the life plan.

03:07 –> 03:08  Shaun Dyke: Yep.

03:08 –> 03:23  Mark Kasdorf: and I had one employee who needed an H-1B visa, and he, he called me up right around the same time my then wife was going back to work, and said, “Hey, um, Mark, I’m gonna fly out to San Francisco. I’ve, I’ve got two months to find someone to sponsor a visa.” I said, “Hey, give, give me a, give me, give me six days before you buy that plane ticket.”

03:23 –> 03:23  Shaun Dyke: [laughs]

03:23 –> 03:29  Mark Kasdorf: I set up a little shell company, um, l- a company I guess. I don’t know what makes a company a shell company versus a company. I set up a company.

03:29 –> 03:30  Shaun Dyke: [laughs]

03:30 –> 03:36  Mark Kasdorf: And, um, called up a couple of friends, ’cause I was starting to get integrated in the startup scene in Boston as I was trying to raise money-

03:36 –> 03:37  Shaun Dyke: Yeah

03:37 –> 03:44  Mark Kasdorf: and found a contract for him. Paid just enough money, didn’t pay me anything, but paid just enough money to call, cover legal fees and a salary for him.

03:44 –> 03:45  Shaun Dyke: Brilliant.

03:45 –> 03:51  Mark Kasdorf: Two months later, as I’m looking for a law firm job to try to help support my family and pay some debt, a friend calls me up and says, “Hey,

03:53 –> 03:58  Mark Kasdorf: uh, you know, y- you got a job for, for Ying. Um, do you think you could keep two people busy? I hate my job.”

03:58 –> 03:59  Shaun Dyke: Mm-hmm.

03:59 –> 05:05  Mark Kasdorf: I said, “Well, may- maybe.” And I called in a couple more people and found a, I found a role for him, and he joined the company. And, and this one paid, like, a little bit more than I needed to pay him, so, like, suddenly I had this, like, very beginning of cashflow. Um, and I needed to set up accounting books. Like, no one gives a W-2 to a company at the end of the year, and I like learning new things, so I bought a… You know, my, my daughter’s, like, I’m a stay-at-home dad at this point. My daughter’s sleeping next to me eight hours a day, um, so I, uh, bought a book on double entry accounting and started to teach myself the basics of accounting. Um, so I, uh, needed… Uh, wanted it to all be software driven, and I, um, didn’t wanna use QuickBooks Online ’cause I was, like, the 800-pound gorilla. I found some startup that was doing accounting for, uh, small businesses, and I set up the system, and it was M- I think this was May 2010, and the iPad came out. Um, we happened to be building an iPhone app, my, my two people, and I send in a support ticket to the company, um, that I had chosen for the accounting software, and I said, “Hey, you know, the iPad came out and I wish I, uh, could, wish you guys had an iPad app that I could do the books on,” and I wrote into the support ticket, “And by the way, we could build it.” Kind of a cheeky support ticket.

05:05 –> 05:06  Shaun Dyke: Yeah.

05:06 –> 05:13  Mark Kasdorf: I get an email back from the CEO of the company an hour and a half later saying, “We’re putting out an RFP for our iPad app. Why don’t you submit a bid?”

05:13 –> 05:14  Shaun Dyke: Okay.

05:14 –> 05:18  Mark Kasdorf: And I remember, you have these moments in your life, like a flashbulb memory, uh, I think they’re called-

05:18 –> 05:18  Shaun Dyke: Yeah

05:18 –> 05:23  Mark Kasdorf: um, that you can, like… I can remember what I was smelling in that moment. We were… I was making sauce for dinner-

05:23 –> 05:23  Shaun Dyke: Yeah

05:23 –> 05:30  Mark Kasdorf: uh, when I got that email, and I responded. Uh, well, before I responded, I had to Google, “What is an RFP?”

05:30 –> 05:30  Shaun Dyke: [laughs]

05:30 –> 05:33  Mark Kasdorf: I didn’t know what an RFP was. Um-

05:33 –> 05:34  Shaun Dyke: Love that

05:34 –> 05:35  Mark Kasdorf: I was 25 years old.

05:35 –> 05:35  Shaun Dyke: Yeah. Yeah.

05:35 –> 05:35  Mark Kasdorf: And, um-

05:35 –> 05:37  Shaun Dyke: The hell is an RFP? Yep.

05:37 –> 06:01  Mark Kasdorf: I responded to this guy. I still have the email. I said, “Hey, I don’t understand this document you sent us. I don’t think you understand this document that you sent us. Why don’t we do the whole thing time and materials?” Um, and we won the contract. It was, like, June of 2010, right? And I’ve got all this debt. Uh, I’ve got… I’m a stay-at-home dad. Uh, I felt like the dog that had caught the car.

06:01 –> 06:01  Shaun Dyke: Yeah.

06:01 –> 06:05  Mark Kasdorf: Like, I didn’t know Agile versus Waterfall. I didn’t know anything about software development, and all of a sudden we won, like, this quarter million-

06:05 –> 06:06  Shaun Dyke: But you have a law degree.

06:06 –> 06:06  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah.

06:06 –> 06:07  Shaun Dyke: You had curiosity.

06:07 –> 06:08  Mark Kasdorf: Yes.

06:08 –> 06:08  Shaun Dyke: Yeah.

06:09 –> 06:13  Mark Kasdorf: So I’m gonna speed up the story now, and I’m happy to revisit part of this arc.

06:13 –> 06:13  Shaun Dyke: Sure.

06:13 –> 06:32  Mark Kasdorf: but that, that company I started, kinda half by mistake, was called Intrepid. Um, we were one of the first mobile development firms on the East Coast. Um, and we grew really quickly. So we’re all bootstrapped, um, never raised a penny of outside capital, um, grew from, uh, zero to $25 million in revenue over a six-and-a-half-year period,

06:33 –> 06:37  Mark Kasdorf: uh, and sold to Accenture in 2017.

06:37 –> 06:37  Shaun Dyke: Incredible.

06:37 –> 06:44  Mark Kasdorf: So over the course of that journey, uh, I had three kids. I built an incredible company with 150 people.

06:45 –> 06:54  Mark Kasdorf: I learned a ton. You, you used, uh, a term earlier in your intro, you know, you said I went on to do better things. I’ve actually never thought of it that way.

06:54 –> 06:54  Shaun Dyke: Hmm.

06:54 –> 07:00  Mark Kasdorf: like, every stage of my journey is like a chapter that stands completely on its own.

07:00 –> 07:01  Shaun Dyke: Yeah.

07:01 –> 07:05  Mark Kasdorf: And I loved every second of Intrepid, and I wouldn’t say that I’ve done anything better since.

07:05 –> 07:05  Shaun Dyke: Yeah.

07:05 –> 07:17  Mark Kasdorf: I think I’ve, I’ve built on and had, like, different experiences, and sometimes I’ve wanted to do similar things. Um, but, but that kinda seven to 10-year chapter of my life, uh, was an, was an absolute blast.

07:17 –> 07:26  Shaun Dyke: Pretty incredible. You are currently the CEO of a company called Forge. A quick highlight reel of Forge, and then we’ll, we’ll jump into some, some of the focus areas.

07:26 –> 07:31  Mark Kasdorf: maybe before I get to Forge, there was a mini chapter in the middle. I did work for Accenture for three years.

07:31 –> 07:32  Shaun Dyke: Yeah.

07:32 –> 07:48  Mark Kasdorf: Was 34 years old and, and had a boss for the first time. I really enjoyed my two and a half years at Accenture. I think it’s a great place. Um, it taught me a bunch, uh, and I’m not built to work for someone else. I think that’ll be likely the last time I ever-

07:48 –> 07:49  Shaun Dyke: Yeah

07:49 –> 08:06  Mark Kasdorf: worked for someone else. Um, my P&L grew from 25 to 150 million of revenue. Um, I think I did well there. I enjoyed it for the most part. I think it’s a little dangerous for someone to have never had a boss. Like, I think you lack empathy when you have no, when you have never sat in the shoes of a direct report.

08:06 –> 08:07  Shaun Dyke: Sure.

08:07 –> 08:33  Mark Kasdorf: so I’m glad I got the experience. I left in 2020, um, like right as COVID was starting. Uh, took about six months off, and started this company, Forge. I think every great startup starts with a mission statement, and that mission statement kind of encapsulates a problem and a, and a solution to that problem. Um, and our mission statement was to build and power the next generation of trades labor. And the problem statement that we’re focused on is the US is rapidly running out of its skilled trades labor force.

08:33 –> 08:34  Shaun Dyke: Yeah.

08:34 –> 09:05  Mark Kasdorf: And I kinda was, was… I was doing a home project, just like everyone else did during COVID. I was thinking about how painful the experience was, even though the people that were doing it were, were really good people. I started a bunch of research, and I realized that, you know, basically everyone in Silicon Valley, and that’s kinda my world is software and Silicon Valley, um, everyone in Silicon Valley tries to solve everything with one of three solutions. Um, they either wanna marketplace something, right? eBay, right? Think eBay, think Thumbtack. Um, you got buyers and sellers, and you match them up.

09:05 –> 09:06  Shaun Dyke: Sure.

09:06 –> 09:18  Mark Kasdorf: Or they wanna gigify it, right? Think Uber, which is very different than a marketplace, right? I wanna, like, in an app, like book someone to come to my house and do a thing. Um, or I want to sell someone software.

09:18 –> 09:18  Shaun Dyke: Yes.

09:18 –> 09:28  Mark Kasdorf: And, and there’s other stuff. There’s e-commerce. There’s some other business models. In the age of AI, they’re selling tokens. Um, but, like, in 2020, that was, like, 92% of all startups was one of those three business models.

09:28 –> 09:29  Shaun Dyke: Mm-hmm.

09:29 –> 09:30  Mark Kasdorf: And none of them worked for tradespeople.

09:31 –> 09:32  Mark Kasdorf: Um-

09:32 –> 09:32  Shaun Dyke: Yeah

09:32 –> 09:39  Mark Kasdorf: Thumbtack and Angie’s List are breaking because we’re running out of tradespeople. So the moment you don’t have enough supply, a marketplace breaks, right?

09:39 –> 09:39  Shaun Dyke: Mm-hmm.

09:39 –> 09:51  Mark Kasdorf: Gigification doesn’t work because gigification works great if you want to, like… You know, to, to be an Uber driver, um, you need a driver’s license, right? It’s, it’s relatively low… and a car, relatively low credentials.

09:51 –> 09:51  Shaun Dyke: Right.

09:51 –> 10:00  Mark Kasdorf: to install an HVAC system, like, you need a two-person crew with a $50,000 rig to show up and com- uh, perform heart surgery on your house, right?

10:00 –> 10:01  Shaun Dyke: Yeah, that has incredible skills.

10:01 –> 10:01  Mark Kasdorf: Yes.

10:01 –> 10:02  Shaun Dyke: Yeah.

10:02 –> 10:11  Mark Kasdorf: you can’t gig that. Um, you… It’s too hard, right? It’s, it’s, um… HVAC is, it’s probably two orders of magnitude more complex than Uber.

10:11 –> 10:12  Shaun Dyke: Mm-hmm.

10:12 –> 10:21  Mark Kasdorf: and selling people software, that’s what everyone’s doing. Tradespeople don’t have any use for software, and I didn’t wanna be in the business of selling people software that they didn’t really want.

10:21 –> 10:22  Shaun Dyke: Sure.

10:22 –> 10:25  Mark Kasdorf: Right? You can make money doing that. It’s possible, uh, but it’s painful.

10:25 –> 10:26  Shaun Dyke: Mm-hmm.

10:26 –> 10:49  Mark Kasdorf: and we made this decision pretty early on to try to build a vertically integrated labor force. So we wanted to solve the shortage by training young people and building a new kinda culture for them to enter in the trades, employing them, because that’s what they want, they want a career, not a gig, um, and then selling trade services to homeowners who want a company that they can engage with, um, to buy things.

10:49 –> 10:50  Shaun Dyke: Yeah.

10:50 –> 11:13  Mark Kasdorf: so it was the beginning of Forge. Uh, there’s a bunch of hard lessons in there that we learned over the first couple of years. I… This company, I raised a bunch of venture capital. We’ve raised about $40 million to date. Um, what we’ve evolved into after a lot of the learnings, um, was we’re, uh, uh, still the same core mission, uh, but we’ve really gotten focused on HVAC.

11:13 –> 11:13  Shaun Dyke: Right.

11:13 –> 11:46  Mark Kasdorf: and, uh, we’re, we’re a next generation heat pump company, integrating training, integrating technology through the entire stack, and, and doing a lot with AI right now, and attempting to provide an incredible experience to homeowners where, uh, they’re probably not used to that with trades companies that they’ve worked with, not because other trades companies aren’t good, um, but because, you know, if you’re, you’re a sole practitioner plumber who’s booked out six months, you don’t need to offer great experience. You might not be great at off- be, running a great business. You’re great at doing a thing.

11:46 –> 11:46  Shaun Dyke: Yeah.

11:46 –> 11:49  Mark Kasdorf: and, and we’re trying to fix that.

11:49 –> 11:49  Shaun Dyke: So

11:50 –> 12:03  Shaun Dyke: let me give this as a little bit of a backdrop because it’s one of the things that I want listeners to think about in this context. You know, when, when we started this podcast, one of the things that we started, um, chatting about and positioning it as, as

12:04 –> 13:18  Shaun Dyke: the vast majority of individuals, um, simultaneously occupy two states, where they are and where they want to be, and those things don’t typically overlap, um, for, for many, right? So we, um, we will position that as a despair, as a desire, as a longing and interest to be in a better spot. And then what a lot of people do is they just sit in that desire… not necessarily excessively happy with where they are, and potentially unwilling to put the effort in to be where they want to be, and then they drop into a space that we look as an external locus of control, where we blame the world around us for not achieving what we have. You could not be further from that truth. So my experience of you over the years, that when you have goal-directed behavior, it is incredibly architected. There’s, there’s a scaffolding, and there’s a built approach to, “I am at point A, I would like to be at point B, I’m going to start moving in the direction of achieving point B.” Is that… First of all, is that a fair assessment? That there’s an intentionality behind where you are and where you want to be? And I know you don’t necessarily think of, of, um, in, in the way end to end that I’m mapping it, but is that a fair assessment of how you approach things?

13:18 –> 13:20  Mark Kasdorf: I think so.

13:20 –> 13:20  Shaun Dyke: Please.

13:20 –> 13:22  Mark Kasdorf: I’d like to respond a l- a little bit.

13:22 –> 13:22  Shaun Dyke: Yeah, please.

13:22 –> 13:26  Mark Kasdorf: You, you led with… You, you used this word which we talked about earlier, desire.

13:26 –> 13:27  Shaun Dyke: Yeah, yeah.

13:27 –> 13:38  Mark Kasdorf: and I don’t know a ton about East Asian philosophy and Buddhism, but I- I heard a quote years ago, which is, “All desire is suffering,” and it really, really stuck with me, and I think it’s part of my core philosophy.

13:38 –> 13:42  Shaun Dyke: I want to restate it, uh, just for me. “All desire is suffering.”

13:42 –> 13:54  Mark Kasdorf: All of it. All desire is suffering. And I work really hard not to desire, right? To not, not to think about, um… So when I think about goals, um, I,

13:55 –> 13:56  Mark Kasdorf: I wouldn’t… If I go back to Intrepid,

13:58 –> 14:08  Mark Kasdorf: at no point in time was my goal to sell the company. I was, and am, really good at setting seven-year, three-year, and one-year plans.

14:08 –> 14:09  Shaun Dyke: Yes.

14:09 –> 14:20  Mark Kasdorf: The purpose of the plan, at no point in time did I lose sleep over I might not hit that goal. Like, I didn’t tie my identity, my ego, my happiness to achievement of the goal.

14:20 –> 14:20  Shaun Dyke: Yes.

14:20 –> 14:26  Mark Kasdorf: The goal existed to curate a journey. My goal is to be happier tomorrow than I was yesterday. Like, that’s it.

14:26 –> 14:27  Shaun Dyke: Love it.

14:27 –> 14:29  Mark Kasdorf: And like, a goal is just…

14:31 –> 14:44  Mark Kasdorf: I… Part of my personal happiness is chasing something, right? But I don’t care what it is, right? I… You could swap out… I could chase almost anything, and I just, I’m, like, very driven,

14:45 –> 14:47  Mark Kasdorf: but I don’t, I almost don’t care if I get the thing.

14:47 –> 14:48  Shaun Dyke: Sure.

14:48 –> 14:57  Mark Kasdorf: Right? And if something more interesting comes along, I’m happy to change directions. Um, so I’ll give a, like, a concrete example of, of this philosophy in action.

14:57 –> 14:58  Shaun Dyke: Please.

14:58 –> 15:00  Mark Kasdorf: every year, and we’ve, we’ve talked about this.

15:00 –> 15:00  Shaun Dyke: Yeah.

15:00 –> 15:22  Mark Kasdorf: Every year, um, since 2012, um, I do a couple of end of year ceremonies. My, my favorite week of the year is the week between Christmas and New Year’s. And every year, I go through these ceremonies, and o- one of the ceremonies is I take an afternoon, and I open up my calendar to the first week of January in 2025, and, you know, five weeks ago.

15:22 –> 15:22  Shaun Dyke: Yeah.

15:22 –> 15:43  Mark Kasdorf: I open up January, you know, week one of January 2025, and I just kind of look at it. I look at all the meetings I was in, and, uh, and I kind of look at every single week, and for every meeting of every single month, I make two, uh, lists. The first list is, uh, the ugh list. Like, I look at a meeting-

15:43 –> 15:44  Shaun Dyke: The ugh list. [laughs]

15:44 –> 15:47  Mark Kasdorf: and I’m like, “If I had this tomorrow, I’d be like, ‘Ugh.’ I don’t want to do that.”

15:47 –> 15:48  Shaun Dyke: [laughs]

15:48 –> 15:51  Mark Kasdorf: Whether that’s a one-on-one… Like, someone I have a one-on-one with weekly that I don’t, didn’t-

15:51 –> 15:51  Shaun Dyke: Yeah

15:51 –> 16:01  Mark Kasdorf: really enjoy meeting with, or a customer that I didn’t really enjoy talking to, or an investor that I didn’t really like how they were, or a board meeting, or, or, or, or, or.

16:01 –> 16:01  Shaun Dyke: Yeah.

16:01 –> 16:05  Mark Kasdorf: Or a dinner with a friend that I… Like, man, if I had to meet with them today, like, I don’t want to have dinner with them.

16:05 –> 16:05  Shaun Dyke: Yeah.

16:05 –> 16:31  Mark Kasdorf: That feels like an obligation. And then the other list is, oh man, I’d love to do that meeting tomorrow. A direct report that I love mentoring, an investor that I love meeting with, a friend that I love having dinner with. And I kind of have these two lists, and I say, “Okay, how do I cross out as much on the left as possible, and add as much on the right as possible,” right? And, and, you know, it’s probably a little easier as CEO to do that.

16:31 –> 16:31  Shaun Dyke: Yep, yep.

16:31 –> 16:53  Mark Kasdorf: But I think it’s only a little easier, right? If, if I wasn’t a CEO and I had one coworker that I loved working with and one coworker that I disliked working with, I would go to my manager and say, “Hey, like, I work really well with Sarah. I kind of struggle with Jim. Like, do you think over the next three months we could transition, we could, like, tweak roles a bit?”

16:53 –> 16:54  Shaun Dyke: Sure.

16:54 –> 17:05  Mark Kasdorf: “Because I think I’d be more effective for the company and produce more, and I’d be happier, and that would, like, make me better at my job.” Um, and maybe that’s a very direct way of doing it, um, but I’m super deliberate-

17:05 –> 17:05  Shaun Dyke: Yes

17:05 –> 17:11  Mark Kasdorf: as I enter the year about doing less stuff that I’m like, “Ugh,” and more stuff that I- would energize me.

17:11 –> 17:14  Shaun Dyke: Sure. W- which feeds directly into I want to be happier tomorrow than I am.

17:14 –> 17:15  Mark Kasdorf: Yes.

17:15 –> 17:25  Shaun Dyke: There’s an old thought leader, uh, his name’s Earl Nightingale. Uh, he has a quote that, uh, I’ve grown fond of. It’s that, “Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal.”

17:25 –> 17:25  Mark Kasdorf: Okay.

17:25 –> 17:42  Shaun Dyke: It’s not about. It’s progressively realizing something that I really want to realize. And by the way, that means today I’m successful if I progressively realize it, and then tomorrow I’m successful again if I’ve moved it. And even if I move backwards and forwards, if I look at it on a scale, it’s progressive realization of it. Fair in your thinking?

17:42 –> 17:42  Mark Kasdorf: I think so.

17:42 –> 17:43  Shaun Dyke: Okay.

17:43 –> 17:47  Mark Kasdorf: I think that’s a… I like that quote. I’ve got to, like… Sometimes with a quote like that, I need 24 hours-

17:47 –> 17:47  Shaun Dyke: Yeah

17:47 –> 17:49  Mark Kasdorf: to think about it, and, like, ask ChatGPT to-

17:49 –> 17:50  Shaun Dyke: [laughs]

17:50 –> 17:52  Mark Kasdorf: you know, talk about things. But I like it.

17:52 –> 17:52  Shaun Dyke: Love it.

17:52 –> 17:53  Mark Kasdorf: I think that’s a good way to capture things.

17:53 –> 18:20  Shaun Dyke: And I think that’s what I mean in this space of… Like, you just gave a perfect intentionality in it. Like, I have a life goal of being happier tomorrow than I am today, so what’s one of the ways that I can do that? I can be intentional about looking at my calendar and doing less ugh and more yay inside of it. I want to do more yum, yes, less yuck. L- and whatever those are. That’s a good illustration of it. You, um… Before we flipped lights on, you also illustrated one that you do with Krista, like, on a more-

18:20 –> 18:20  Mark Kasdorf: Yep

18:20 –> 18:21  Shaun Dyke: current basis, if you will.

18:21 –> 18:47  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah, so I have … My, my wife’s name is Krista, and we, um, started… We, we kind of experimented with this in Q4, and then kind of formalized it in Q1-Um, but we, uh, uh, we do a biweekly, call it sprint planning, to use a term from Agile. Um, so we do a sprint retrospective and a sprint plan. So the retrospective is we’ve got, you know, a dozen questions that we ask each other and take very detailed notes in Notion.

18:47 –> 18:47  Shaun Dyke: Yeah.

18:47 –> 18:59  Mark Kasdorf: I mean, you can put the notes anywhere. We use Notion. Um, and the questions are, you know, we’ve got a set of relationships, uh, parents, kids, et cetera. Um, how do we feel about those re- And I like the word feel. Like, how do we feel about that relationship?

18:59 –> 18:59  Shaun Dyke: Sure.

18:59 –> 19:24  Mark Kasdorf: Right? Did it… How- how I invested in it last we- over the last 14 days, um, the energy I got back from the other person, um, so we take those notes. One of the questions is, what was the biggest moment of joy in the last two weeks? Another question is, what was the biggest moment of stress? Um, so we- we’ve- we’ve got this, you know, 15 to 20 questions, um, and then we do a sprint plan. We say, okay, based on how all of that felt, what do we wanna change this week? It’s kind of like a start, stop, keep.

19:24 –> 19:25  Shaun Dyke: It is.

19:25 –> 19:38  Mark Kasdorf: And it’s been incredible. Like, the- the amount of… I- I think, you know, I was talking to one of your colleagues, Chris, about this earlier. If you don’t reflect and then, like, change, like, life just has a momentum, right?

19:38 –> 19:38  Shaun Dyke: It does.

19:38 –> 19:52  Mark Kasdorf: And you’ve got your habits, and some of those habits might be healthy. Like, if you run three times a week, you’re probably gonna keep running three times a week. And some might be unhealthy. If you drink every night, you’re gonna- probably gonna keep drinking every night. And absent these moments of reflection, like, that momentum just carries forward.

19:52 –> 19:52  Shaun Dyke: Yeah.

19:52 –> 20:01  Mark Kasdorf: And I, like, really enjoy this tradition of pausing and being- reflecting and being like, “Hey, do I wanna… Do- do I like what I’ve done for the last 14 days?”

20:01 –> 20:01  Shaun Dyke: Yeah.

20:01 –> 20:04  Mark Kasdorf: “Do I wanna continue those habits?”

20:04 –> 20:13  Shaun Dyke: This is an impossible question. Uh, what percentage of the population do you think puts that kind of intentionality into, uh, looking at what was and what will be?

20:13 –> 20:14  Mark Kasdorf: Probably not much.

20:14 –> 20:14  Shaun Dyke: [laughs]

20:14 –> 20:18  Mark Kasdorf: I mean, I think when I, when I talk to friends about, like, these experiments that I’m running-

20:18 –> 20:19  Shaun Dyke: Yeah

20:19 –> 20:29  Mark Kasdorf: um, like, I have been called autistic. I don’t think I’m autistic. Um, but I, like, the degree of, like, rationality that I bring to-

20:29 –> 20:30  Shaun Dyke: Yes, rigor and intentionality

20:30 –> 20:30  Mark Kasdorf: everything-

20:30 –> 20:32  Shaun Dyke: Yes. Yes

20:32 –> 20:36  Mark Kasdorf: um, like, I am very lucky to have Krista because I think most partners

20:37 –> 20:39  Mark Kasdorf: would find, like, some of this stuff pretty unromantic.

20:39 –> 20:41  Shaun Dyke: [laughs]

20:41 –> 20:41  Mark Kasdorf: Um-

20:41 –> 20:59  Shaun Dyke: Yeah. I- I get it. I have a buddy that, um, uh, his name’s Ted, and, um, uh, I was up in NorCal hanging out with him, and it was funny. We were gonna talk about, like, where things were in life and what was going on, and he literally set up a flip chart. And I’m like, “Hell yeah, a flip chart.” And, like, we started working through and going. And- and- and I think a lot of people would think, like, “What- what are you doing?”

20:59 –> 20:59  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah.

20:59 –> 21:02  Shaun Dyke: “You’re just talking with your friend.” Yeah, we’re- we’re… It’s with intentionality. It’s a-

21:02 –> 21:02  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah

21:02 –> 21:39  Shaun Dyke: planful approach to being happier today, tomorrow than I, than I am today with it. Th- th- this is, I think, a great example of, um, the deliberate rigor that you put into pieces, and I think that, uh, over the years when we have talked, whether it’s about parenting or whether it’s about business, um, it’s certainly things that have inspired me to look at, like, I need to do that differently. And I think anyone listening I think would have a hard time saying, “That wouldn’t be valuable.” I think the vast majority of individuals to- exposed to that idea would say, like, “Man, that’s- that’s actually a great idea. I should probably do that.” But we don’t do it. Why not?

21:39 –> 21:47  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah. So if you do the sorts of stuff I do, you have no choice but to encounter a lot of, I’ll use the term uncomfortable truths,

21:48 –> 22:00  Mark Kasdorf: right? Um, I think most people… So if you do the sprint retro concept, I don’t think most people wanna ask themselves the question, do I like the level of engagement I have with my parents right now, right?

22:00 –> 22:00  Shaun Dyke: Yeah.

22:00 –> 22:02  Mark Kasdorf: And if the answer’s no,

22:04 –> 22:07  Mark Kasdorf: like, it’s easier to not think that-

22:07 –> 22:07  Shaun Dyke: Yes

22:07 –> 22:22  Mark Kasdorf: not delve deep. If you were to do that honestly, like, you probably… I don’t… A lot of people might not be happy with their marriage, their relationship with their kids, their, their relationship with work. It’s, I think it’s easier to examine work. It’s, like, less personal to say-

22:22 –> 22:22  Shaun Dyke: Sure

22:22 –> 22:23  Mark Kasdorf: “I don’t like my job”-

22:23 –> 22:24  Shaun Dyke: Yep

22:24 –> 22:29  Mark Kasdorf: than to say, “I don’t like my partner,” or, “I don’t like my kid,” or, “I don’t like my stepkid.” It’s almost like exposure therapy.

22:29 –> 22:29  Shaun Dyke: Yeah.

22:29 –> 22:46  Mark Kasdorf: Like, you have to start relatively small in exposing and forcing yourself to confront uncomfortable truths until you build that into a pattern and a muscle that you can flex, and it stops being scary. And, and you also find that I think you solve a lot of stuff when you do that.

22:46 –> 22:46  Shaun Dyke: Yeah.

22:46 –> 22:48  Mark Kasdorf: But I think that’s probably the number one reason.

22:48 –> 22:56  Shaun Dyke: You know, it’s the exact opposite of, uh, we have a phrase in the firm. We call the four deadly sins of blame, complain, defend, and justify.

22:56 –> 22:56  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah.

22:56 –> 23:02  Shaun Dyke: And, um, when you, when you do what you’re doing, it will systematically eliminate your ability to do that.

23:02 –> 23:02  Mark Kasdorf: Yes.

23:02 –> 23:22  Shaun Dyke: Because we start to recognize that if I have a relationship or a, uh, business scenario or s- or a relationship with myself gap, and I call that into truth, I bring it into the light, and I look at it and say, like, you know, I keep complaining about my fitness level, but when I look at last two weeks, I did nothing-

23:22 –> 23:22  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah

23:22 –> 23:44  Shaun Dyke: for that. So I either need to stop bitching or, or do something about it. It w- it calls all of this. And so I think to your point, it’s creates vulnerability and responsibility and potential ownership for you to do something, which how liberating is that? You’re not just subject to the whim and way of the world. You actually can command outcomes in an effective way.

23:44 –> 23:45  Mark Kasdorf: Yep.

23:45 –> 23:48  Shaun Dyke: So, but most people don’t do that.

23:48 –> 23:51  Mark Kasdorf: What I… I’ll kind of bring in, like, a parenting concept.

23:51 –> 23:51  Shaun Dyke: Please.

23:51 –> 23:56  Mark Kasdorf: my, my kids have maybe two or three axioms that they could, like, all stand up and repeat-

23:56 –> 23:56  Shaun Dyke: [laughs]

23:56 –> 24:03  Mark Kasdorf: and rote by rote ’cause I say them so frequently. Um, and one of them is, “Everything that happens to you in your life is your fault.” Like, I- I tell my kids this-

24:03 –> 24:04  Shaun Dyke: [laughs]

24:04 –> 24:05  Mark Kasdorf: once a week-

24:05 –> 24:06  Shaun Dyke: Yeah

24:06 –> 24:28  Mark Kasdorf: when they complain about something, when they say something. And my, my standard example is, like, I don’t care if you get sucker punched in a bar. You did something an hour ago, a day ago, a week ago, a month ago that led to that moment, right? And I, in a work context, people all the time bring up things to me that r- they’re, they’re like, they’re like, “Yeah, there’s just nothing I could do about this one.” I’m like, “Well,

24:30 –> 24:42  Mark Kasdorf: today was too late.”48 hours ago, 72 hours ago, a month ago, there were things you could have done that would have meant we wouldn’t be here right now

24:42 –> 24:46  Shaun Dyke: So many incredibly fun things i- inside of this. And so o- o- one

24:47 –> 25:41  Shaun Dyke: I wanna knock on … Well, there’s three that I wanna hit real quick that we’ll [laughs] go through. One is, do you know, uh, William James, considered the father of American psychology, born 1840s, um, born into privilege, um, and, uh, father did well. He had … By all rights he would have what we would call an easier life. That wasn’t his experience. Like, he just, he struggled with life, a lot of physical ailments, a lot of just different challenges. He tried to go to college. College didn’t work out, kind of bailed out of college, and then he ended up, like, oh, I forget where it was. You know, he decided to do some sort of, like, expedition. He ended up in the jungles, ended up getting, like, malaria, like, just a series of things. And there’s this famous, um, like, essay entry or journal entry that he did that he said, “I’m gonna run an experiment. For the next year I’m going to assume and believe that everything that happens to me is my responsibility, my fault. And if after a year my life is not better, then I’m gonna take my life.” Now-

25:41 –> 25:42  Mark Kasdorf: Oof. That’s harsh. [laughs]

25:42 –> 26:10  Shaun Dyke: It’s, it’s an extreme statement. Now, obviously he didn’t, because one of his great quotes is that, “The most important thing every generation has to learn is that they can change their life by changing their attitude,” by learning that you own the outcomes. Locus of control when centralized, you’re not in a space where you are, again, subject to the will and way of the world around you. So here’s where it’s also fun.

26:11 –> 26:25  Shaun Dyke: one of the assessments that we use is we have something called the Thematic Apperception Test, and it looks at motive theory and understanding what drives people. And inside of that there are these core things that we look at. They are called personal blocks and world blocks. They are, um,

26:26 –> 26:59  Shaun Dyke: the degree to which people perceive barriers to their progress or their success in their life as something they can do something about, a personal block, or something they can’t do something about, a world block. So they say, “It snowed. I couldn’t catch the flight. It was impossible.” Like, “It wasn’t my fault that the plane didn’t show up. It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t my fault.” And we have found in our data sets that the more successful individuals don’t have BWs, meaning they don’t have world blocks. That doesn’t exist. They believe that they can influence their outcomes in virtually every scenario.

26:59 –> 27:00  Mark Kasdorf: I think every scenario.

27:00 –> 27:01  Shaun Dyke: Yeah. [laughs]

27:01 –> 27:02  Mark Kasdorf: And I-

27:02 –> 27:02  Shaun Dyke: Better said.

27:02 –> 27:20  Mark Kasdorf: Maybe I, I could cross … Someone I care about could cross the street and get hit by a car, and I, like, I couldn’t control that. Um, but I can control … You know, w- we talked about this last night, and it’s kind of a heavy topic. I don’t know how heavy you wanna go here. Um, but I … So I can’t control if one of my kids gets hit by a car.

27:20 –> 27:20  Shaun Dyke: Yeah.

27:20 –> 27:24  Mark Kasdorf: What I can control is the depth to which I allow

27:25 –> 27:29  Mark Kasdorf: my happiness to be controlled by the success of my kids, right?

27:29 –> 27:29  Shaun Dyke: Yeah.

27:29 –> 27:54  Mark Kasdorf: So, so I can control that. I can think about that. I can consider that. I can ask myself … I think the more we tie ourselves to someone, anyone in our life, um, the more control we give that person over us, and I think there’s a balance. Like, I wouldn’t wanna be so far away from all my relationships that I get no joy from them. Um, but I think that to a pretty extreme level you can control virtually every aspect of your own happiness.

27:54 –> 28:15  Shaun Dyke: Two curiosities on how you react to it. One, does the planfulness and purposefulness and intentionality that you put into life, do you feel like that can remove spontaneity and joy? The second one being the emotional investment in others for those individuals that are just wired in a way that that is the je ne sais quoi of life. That’s what matters to them.

28:15 –> 28:17  Mark Kasdorf: So I’m gonna do the second question first.

28:17 –> 28:18  Shaun Dyke: Please.

28:18 –> 28:26  Mark Kasdorf: I am not saying that you should emotionally distance yourself from your kids. I think the uncomfortable truth, to go back to these, like, questions we don’t ask ourselves-

28:26 –> 28:27  Shaun Dyke: Yeah

28:27 –> 28:37  Mark Kasdorf: is how close do I wanna be with my kids, and I think most people never ask that question, right? The, the answer, the, like, American default answer is as close as humanly possible.

28:37 –> 28:37  Shaun Dyke: Yeah.

28:37 –> 28:51  Mark Kasdorf: Like, to the point where I think a lot of the baby boomers I know today define a lot of their self-worth on how close they are with their kids, and it is a default, “I want to see my kids as often as possible.” You know, I’m gonna oversimplify a bit.

28:51 –> 28:52  Shaun Dyke: Please.

28:52 –> 28:55  Mark Kasdorf: the American definition of happiness is

28:56 –> 28:57  Mark Kasdorf: two cars, a house,

28:58 –> 29:14  Mark Kasdorf: a- at least one one-week vacation every year, being with your kids and your parents on Christmas and Thanksgiving and Easter, um, you know, having a sports team that you care about and a community around that. You, you know, there’s, like, having three friends. Like, there’s this, like, definition.

29:14 –> 29:14  Shaun Dyke: [laughs]

29:14 –> 29:16  Mark Kasdorf: Like, the default definition. Um-

29:16 –> 29:18  Shaun Dyke: I was like, “Check, check, check. Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

29:18 –> 29:33  Mark Kasdorf: and the moment you ask yourself, like, “Is that my definition? Am I happier when I see my parents on Christmas? Am I happier when I talk to my kids as often, as frequently as humanly possible? Like, do I want those things?” I’m not saying you should or shouldn’t want them.

29:33 –> 29:33  Shaun Dyke: Sure.

29:33 –> 29:34  Mark Kasdorf: I hate the word should.

29:34 –> 29:34  Shaun Dyke: Yes.

29:34 –> 29:37  Mark Kasdorf: I’m saying it’s not a bad thing to ask yourself,

29:38 –> 29:39  Mark Kasdorf: “When am I happiest?”

29:39 –> 29:41  Shaun Dyke: You’re well-served to do that.

29:41 –> 30:15  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah. Um, and I’m, I am in- incredibly close to my kids. They’re 12, 14, and 16. I would be devastated, but I am willing to ask myself, “Hey, like, am I too cl- too close? Like, what, what, what do I want that to be for me, for what would give me the most happiness with, like, this, like, core DNA that I’ve got, that I was born with, that I can’t change?” Like, I’ve, I’ve got a nature, right? And I think I can nurture myself, and within this distribution of my nature I’m gonna nudge myself one way or the other, and my goal is to nudge myself towards happiness.

30:16 –> 30:30  Mark Kasdorf: uh, and I’ll answer your, your first question now around is it … am I removing spontaneity. Um, I think my philosophy is orthogonal to spontaneity. Uh, and I’ll define … I love the term orthogonal. It’s like a-

30:30 –> 30:32  Shaun Dyke: It’s [laughs] a great term, but you have to define it.

30:32 –> 30:32  Mark Kasdorf: Um-

30:32 –> 30:32  Shaun Dyke: It’s out of my language. Define it.

30:32 –> 30:39  Mark Kasdorf: Like, an orthogonal point is, it’s, like, kinda related, but it’s not really related. It, like, intersects, but it’s not, like, running along the same line.

30:39 –> 30:40  Shaun Dyke: Sure. Love it.

30:40 –> 30:41  Mark Kasdorf: so-

30:41 –> 30:43  Shaun Dyke: OrthogonalWord of the day

30:43 –> 30:46  Mark Kasdorf: So when I say that it’s an orthogonal point,

30:48 –> 31:20  Mark Kasdorf: um, if you’re an incredibly spontaneous person, A, be willing to throw out a plan if a better one presents itself, and B, you know, when I think about, you know, sprint planning, right, for my next two weeks, um, I like to plan on a Tuesday night, like getting home at X time, having Y for dinner, then doing Z, then getting in the hot tub, then this, then this. Like, I like a lot of planning, right? A more spontaneous person might say, “I want to get home at 4:30 and see what happens.”

31:20 –> 31:20  Shaun Dyke: Mm-hmm.

31:20 –> 31:22  Mark Kasdorf: But the … But you should plan that, right?

31:22 –> 31:23  Shaun Dyke: [laughs]

31:23 –> 31:42  Mark Kasdorf: Who wants to go into a week not knowing what time they’re going to get home? Like, not, not being able to anticipate the joy of a clear evening or a busy evening or a work evening or a this or a that. So I think the sp- the planning, if you love spontaneity, just time block and, like, leave the space for the spontaneous things-

31:42 –> 31:43  Shaun Dyke: Yeah

31:43 –> 31:55  Mark Kasdorf: and be willing to change the plan on a dime and never be upset. You know, don’t get tied to a plan. Um, but I don’t think there’s anything about being deliberate that is against being spontaneous.

31:55 –> 32:07  Shaun Dyke: Mark, the last, I don’t even know how long we’ve been talking now, the last 20 minutes or so, uh, makes me think of a second or third call I had with you. You said, uh, I think it’s your family systems, uh, will describe you as all big talk and no small talk.

32:07 –> 32:07  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah. [laughs]

32:07 –> 32:25  Shaun Dyke: Which I love that. Similar space, like the willingness, the desire, and the interest to have the big conversations. Um, I want to pivot us if you’re up for it. Um, will you talk to us a bit about where your focus is right now, thoughts around AI, and we’re just gonna run with it and see where it goes.

32:25 –> 32:29  Mark Kasdorf: Sure. Um, I’ll start with the … I’ll zoom up one layer and start with the heat map.

32:29 –> 32:30  Shaun Dyke: Yeah.

32:30 –> 32:33  Mark Kasdorf: and we can come back to some of the other topics if you’re interested, and then, then AI-

32:33 –> 32:33  Shaun Dyke: Yep

32:33 –> 32:59  Mark Kasdorf: is a big one right now. Um, my, my current heat map is, uh, one big area that I’m focused on is, I guess you’d call it, like, the concept of self-actualization and m- maybe it’s the something that everyone starts to go through in their 40s. Um, like, I … Maybe it’s, like, vaguely related to midlife crisis, although I don’t think I’m in a midlife crisis at all. Um, but like what’s the highest and best use of my time?

32:59 –> 32:59  Shaun Dyke: Yeah.

32:59 –> 33:14  Mark Kasdorf: Right? What, what would provide the most joy? Um, and I actually spent a shocking … I’ve, I’ve started to research this concept of, like, awakening and, um, the ego and the sense of self and so that’s like one thing that, in the heat map world, I’m, I’m spending a lot of time on with myself.

33:15 –> 33:21  Mark Kasdorf: second one is my kids. They’re, they’re at this age, 12, 14, and 16.

33:21 –> 33:21  Shaun Dyke: Yeah.

33:21 –> 33:39  Mark Kasdorf: Like, I get two more years with my oldest to imprint on her before the only way I can impact her is modeling behavior. And, you know, the other two have got a little bit more time, but I’m super conscious that I want to, like, make a big bubble of space right now for them.

33:40 –> 33:45  Mark Kasdorf: and then the third, I’m, I’m kind of excluding work. Um, and then the third big one is AI.

33:45 –> 33:45  Shaun Dyke: Yeah.

33:45 –> 33:49  Mark Kasdorf: Like, it’s, it’s taking up enormous mind share for me.

33:49 –> 33:53  Shaun Dyke: one of our colleagues, uh, introduced me to a book called The Middle Passage.

33:53 –> 33:53  Mark Kasdorf: Thank you. I haven’t read it.

33:53 –> 33:56  Shaun Dyke: It’s a very thin read. Uh, worth a read, worth a dig into.

33:56 –> 33:56  Mark Kasdorf: Okay.

33:56 –> 34:22  Shaun Dyke: It’s, um, it’s this, this point in life where we’re looking at, uh, the construct inside of it as a provisional personality, that we had a sort of someone that we were for a long time and formed on a various different reasons, and then finally when we reach this point in our lives, we have a different degree of discernment for determining, like, where are we and what we, what do we want to do. And so I think it’s a more accurate way to not call it a midlife crisis. It’s that space in which we are exploring differently. So it’s a good read.

34:22 –> 34:34  Mark Kasdorf: I’ll give you another metaphor, uh, that I love. I don’t know where I’ve read this, um, but I love it. Um, in the beginning of our life, our life is like a canvas. Like, our, our job is to, like, paint a picture, like figure out who are we.

34:34 –> 34:34  Shaun Dyke: Yeah.

34:34 –> 34:39  Mark Kasdorf: And later in life, we become more like a sculpture. It’s like what do I want to carve away? Like, what, what do I want to-

34:39 –> 34:39  Shaun Dyke: Mm. Reveal

34:39 –> 34:45  Mark Kasdorf: like, and I am definitely, like, in kind of a carving away as opposed to a filling up.

34:45 –> 34:45  Shaun Dyke: Yeah.

34:45 –> 34:47  Mark Kasdorf: and I really like it. I’m enjoying this phase.

34:47 –> 34:50  Shaun Dyke: Yeah. Removing pieces to reveal what’s actually there.

34:50 –> 34:50  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah.

34:50 –> 35:02  Shaun Dyke: It’s, it’s sculpting, right? Um, you, uh, among the vast majority of people I talk with, maybe the, the most of anyone I talk with, have explored the world of AI

35:03 –> 35:25  Shaun Dyke: and how to integrate it and augment it and leverage it in life systems, uh, far more than, than most people I know. Um, and I think a lot of people hear sort of what might be perceived as, like, this, this hyperbolic vantage point around what’s gonna happen with AI in the world and what are we gonna do with it and how will it affect different realities,

35:26 –> 35:33  Shaun Dyke: but I think you’re kind of well-read and well-positioned to talk about some of these things. And so I’d love for you to explore that which

35:34 –> 35:39  Shaun Dyke: you want to talk to us about. I’m not gonna dig into it because I don’t know the questions I even need to ask.

35:39 –> 35:39  Mark Kasdorf: Sure.

35:39 –> 35:41  Shaun Dyke: So I want to hear your head space for us around it.

35:41 –> 35:43  Mark Kasdorf: I’m gonna share just, like, these are raw opinions, right?

35:43 –> 35:44  Shaun Dyke: Yeah.

35:44 –> 35:45  Mark Kasdorf: I’m not, like, quoting blog posts.

35:45 –> 35:45  Shaun Dyke: Yep.

35:45 –> 35:47  Mark Kasdorf: Sometimes … If I, if I am quoting a blog post, I’ll tell you.

35:47 –> 35:48  Shaun Dyke: Tell me.

35:48 –> 35:51  Mark Kasdorf: but I, my, my opinion is,

35:52 –> 36:08  Mark Kasdorf: um, AI is the printing press, electrif- the discovery of electricity, and the internet wrapped up into one, all at the same time, all in the next three years in terms of its impact on society.

36:08 –> 36:08  Shaun Dyke: Yeah.

36:08 –> 36:10  Mark Kasdorf: Like, it almost scares me-

36:10 –> 36:10  Shaun Dyke: Yeah

36:10 –> 36:16  Mark Kasdorf: how fast it’s going to impact society. Uh, I started feeling this way

36:18 –> 36:40  Mark Kasdorf: when I got access to the ChatGPT 2.5 beta, um, and, uh, it hasn’t changed. I … So I think phase one was just getting … using ChatGPT a bunch.Phase two, I went through this phase maybe a year and a half ago where I was downloading tools constantly, like trying new apps, trying, trying new, new everything.

36:40 –> 36:41  Mark Kasdorf: Mm-hmm.

36:41 –> 36:50  Mark Kasdorf: it, like beta software is buggy and painful, and I didn’t… It was the only way I felt like I could learn. Phase three, which was last year, um, I got into vibe coding-

36:50 –> 36:51  Mark Kasdorf: Mm-hmm

36:51 –> 36:55  Mark Kasdorf: which was a freaking blast. Um, like that was the most fun I’d had since college, like playing video games.

36:55 –> 36:58  Mark Kasdorf: For somebody listening that says, “What the hell’s vibe coding?” What’s the short version?

36:58 –> 37:03  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah. So I’ve, I’ve never written a line of code in my life. I don’t know how to write code. I don’t know how to look at code. I don’t know how to read code. Not something I can do.

37:03 –> 37:04  Mark Kasdorf: Right.

37:04 –> 37:26  Mark Kasdorf: vibe coding is, uh, having a conversation with an AI that then writes code for you. You test the result, and then you tell it to change things or do things, right? And I think what, what most people think of as vibe code, there’s tools like Lovable and Replit, um, that, you know, they’re designed for a non-software developer to have a conversation and see visual things very quickly.

37:26 –> 37:26  Mark Kasdorf: Mm-hmm.

37:26 –> 37:54  Mark Kasdorf: When I decided I wanted to get into vibe coding, I did a whole bunch of research, and then I downloaded this thing called Cursor. It’s like hardcore. Like it is an… Something called an IDE. Um, it is meant for developers. But when I did my research, I’m like, the only way I’m gonna really understand vibe coding is if I go deep. So for me, that was, uh, this thing called Cursor, and then like setting up… I, well, you know, I think you’ve worked with DigitalOcean. I’d never heard of DigitalOcean. I like set a Droplet app for myself.

37:54 –> 37:54  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah.

37:54 –> 38:00  Mark Kasdorf: Set up my own server. Um, like figured out how to SSH in. I didn’t know what SSH meant. Um, so it’s-

38:00 –> 38:01  Mark Kasdorf: [laughs] Back to RFP.

38:01 –> 38:01  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah.

38:01 –> 38:02  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah.

38:02 –> 38:04  Mark Kasdorf: and just like I think I spent

38:06 –> 38:11  Mark Kasdorf: 1,000 hours last year, like to the point where it started to encroach on family time and like probably more than Forge-

38:11 –> 38:11  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah

38:11 –> 38:27  Mark Kasdorf: should have been investing in, or the amount of time I spent on it. But it’s like kinda what it took to understand. Uh, and then more recently, uh, I’ve stopped vibe coding, and I think the evolution of vibe coding is OpenClaw, right? I don’t know how many of your listeners know what OpenClaw is.

38:27 –> 38:28  Mark Kasdorf: Let’s assume none.

38:28 –> 38:33  Mark Kasdorf: but it, it’s a big deal. Like I feel like… And I’ll describe it, and I’ll talk about it.

38:33 –> 38:34  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah.

38:35 –> 38:37  Mark Kasdorf: I f- ha- have you ever

38:38 –> 38:46  Mark Kasdorf: read a book or listened to an album that was so good that you’re like, “Do people know about this album?”

38:46 –> 38:46  Mark Kasdorf: [laughs]

38:46 –> 38:50  Mark Kasdorf: Right? If, if pe- I feel like if people knew about this album, they would talk about this album more.

38:50 –> 38:50  Mark Kasdorf: Yes. Yeah.

38:50 –> 38:51  Mark Kasdorf: Like it’s like that good.

38:51 –> 38:52  Mark Kasdorf: How am I just finding out about this album?

38:52 –> 38:53  Mark Kasdorf: Like, yes.

38:53 –> 38:53  Mark Kasdorf: How… Yeah. Yes.

38:53 –> 38:56  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah. I’m like mad at my friends who didn’t tell me-

38:56 –> 38:56  Mark Kasdorf: [laughs] Who didn’t tell me about this album

38:56 –> 38:58  Mark Kasdorf: that the album existed.

38:58 –> 38:58  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah.

38:58 –> 39:32  Mark Kasdorf: and like that’s kinda how I feel about OpenClaw right now. At some level, there’s nothing that special about it. It’s an LM, and it’s timed jobs, and it’s, um, instruct- Like, uh, um, you know, ChatGPT has this thing called Projects where you got like system instructions. Um, it’s that feature. It’s like seven different features that this guy, uh, what’s his name, Steinberger, uh, I don’t remember his first name right now, um, put into an open source project called OpenClaw, like crammed it all together,

39:33 –> 39:39  Mark Kasdorf: and released for free, like open source. Um, it was released in November,

39:40 –> 39:54  Mark Kasdorf: and I think in February it surpassed Linux, which has been around for 30 years. Linux was the most active, most starred open source project in the history of humanity, and in four months-

39:54 –> 39:55  Mark Kasdorf: OpenClaw surpassed that

39:55 –> 39:59  Mark Kasdorf: OpenClaw surpassed Linux. I’ve kinda gotten a little obsessed with it.

39:59 –> 39:59  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah.

39:59 –> 40:18  Mark Kasdorf: I think it’s… I think, I think there’s a chance… I don’t know how many of your listeners know what the singularity is or what an event horizon is, but, like, the singularity is the moment in time when things start to change so quickly that we can no longer predict anything about the future. And I think that OpenClaw might be the-

40:18 –> 40:18  Mark Kasdorf: Be that

40:18 –> 40:23  Mark Kasdorf: beginning of the singularity, like the beginning of the moment where things change so fast.

40:23 –> 40:23  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah.

40:23 –> 40:30  Mark Kasdorf: I guess I’ll just describe OpenClaw. You, you down- You, you have to use a terminal. It’s, it’s a little technical. Right?

40:30 –> 40:33  Mark Kasdorf: De- Define terminal. Assume we got some, uh, non-techy audience.

40:33 –> 40:37  Mark Kasdorf: it’s, it’s a, it’s an application on every computer that allows you to talk to the machine-

40:37 –> 40:38  Mark Kasdorf: Mm-hmm

40:38 –> 40:38  Mark Kasdorf: directly.

40:38 –> 40:39  Mark Kasdorf: Perfect.

40:39 –> 40:46  Mark Kasdorf: Run direct commands, right? It’s ugly, and it’s basic, and it’s text only. There’s no user interface. It’s DOS.

40:46 –> 40:46  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah.

40:46 –> 40:47  Mark Kasdorf: DOS was just terminal-

40:47 –> 40:48  Mark Kasdorf: Yep

40:48 –> 40:49  Mark Kasdorf: I think. It-

40:49 –> 40:50  Mark Kasdorf: Looks like it, yeah

40:50 –> 40:53  Mark Kasdorf: so software purists, like I might be making a metaphor that’s like slightly wrong, but it’s like close enough.

40:53 –> 40:54  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah.

40:54 –> 40:59  Mark Kasdorf: So you go to terminal. You like write a command that downloads the package and unfolds it,

41:00 –> 41:09  Mark Kasdorf: and you hatch your bot, right? And the first question it asks you is like, “Who am I to you?” And it gives you some options.

41:09 –> 41:10  Mark Kasdorf: [laughs]

41:10 –> 42:13  Mark Kasdorf: Right? And it actually gives you, like, suggestions. Am I a robot wizard? Am I your chief of staff? Am I your assistant? And you like write a couple sentences, like, “You are X to me.” Um, and then it says like, “Who are you?” And I tell it who I am. So you’re, you’re in terminal. You’re having a conversation with AI. Um, it’s using tokens, so you’re not talking to ChatGPT or, or Claude or Gemini, um, but you have to put in an API key for one of those, and that becomes its brain, right? So it’s, mine is often Claude or… I’ve tested a bunch. Um, you kind can swap out different brains and see different personalities manifest based on the decisions that those companies have made. Um, but you have to put an API key. And, um, then you can do anything. I’ll give you some examples. So I hatched mine like a month ago, and I’m like trying to figure out like what it can do. Like I don’t know what this thing is. I don’t know what it’s meant for. It’s open source software. It’s, there’s no company. There’s no money they’re trying to make. There’s no problem they’re trying to solve, um, other than this dude wanted it. Um, and I said, “Hey, can you control the speakers in my house?”

42:13 –> 42:14  Mark Kasdorf: This is just like, you typed this question-

42:14 –> 42:14  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah

42:14 –> 42:15  Mark Kasdorf: into it, and-

42:15 –> 42:22  Mark Kasdorf: Can, can you control the speakers in my house? I have Sonos. Um, I didn’t even tell it I had Sonos. I said, “Can you control the speakers in my house?” It said, “I don’t know. Let me check.” And like

42:23 –> 42:25  Mark Kasdorf: 90 seconds later, music starts playing.

42:25 –> 42:25  Mark Kasdorf: [laughs]

42:25 –> 42:26  Mark Kasdorf: I’m not kidding.

42:26 –> 42:26  Mark Kasdorf: It just-

42:26 –> 42:28  Mark Kasdorf: It just started playing.

42:28 –> 42:28  Mark Kasdorf: [laughs]

42:28 –> 42:29  Mark Kasdorf: And I, and it said-

42:29 –> 42:30  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah, yeah, yeah

42:30 –> 42:33  Mark Kasdorf: “Did that work?” It like typed to me, “Is it playing?” Like it didn’t know. It doesn’t have ears yet.

42:33 –> 42:33  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah.

42:33 –> 42:34  Mark Kasdorf: You know, I could give it ears-

42:34 –> 42:34  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah. But just like-

42:34 –> 42:50  Mark Kasdorf: but it doesn’t have ears. And I said, “Yeah, what ha- what did you do?” And it said, “Well, I went on your network.”I saw something. I like scanned everything, like took that list, um, like went out to the internet, figured out quickly that Sonos is speakers,

42:51 –> 42:59  Mark Kasdorf: um, found the instructions for Sonos, connected to them, and tried playing something.

42:59 –> 43:00  Shaun Dyke: And it worked.

43:00 –> 43:03  Mark Kasdorf: And it worked. And, um-

43:03 –> 43:11  Shaun Dyke: Now, okay, wait. Let- let’s get into the mind of Marc for one second. When that happens… So if that happens to me in my home, I’m now running around my house going, “Holy shit.”

43:11 –> 43:11  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah.

43:11 –> 43:20  Shaun Dyke: I am, I am paralytically excited and also a little bit freaked out by that ability. Does that hit you with that level of startle, or have you had enough exposure to it at this point?

43:20 –> 43:21  Mark Kasdorf: Well, I was startled.

43:21 –> 43:21  Shaun Dyke: Yeah.

43:21 –> 43:24  Mark Kasdorf: But it was raw excitement. Like no, no freaked out.

43:24 –> 43:24  Shaun Dyke: Yeah, sure, sure.

43:24 –> 43:26  Mark Kasdorf: Like just excitement.

43:26 –> 43:26  Shaun Dyke: Yeah.

43:26 –> 43:29  Mark Kasdorf: Right? Like Christmas morning level excitement.

43:29 –> 43:30  Shaun Dyke: Yeah.

43:30 –> 43:33  Mark Kasdorf: Like I now need to clear my whole calendar-

43:33 –> 43:33  Shaun Dyke: [laughs]

43:33 –> 43:34  Mark Kasdorf: and tell Christa I’m working late.

43:34 –> 43:35  Shaun Dyke: What else can it do?

43:35 –> 43:42  Mark Kasdorf: And it’s like I’m gonna be working on this ’til midnight. Um, so the next thing, I’ll, I’ll give the first three things I did, and then we can talk about more interesting things. The next thing I did

43:43 –> 43:49  Mark Kasdorf: was I, um, I have this thing called the Vesta board. It’s like a, you know, train station that’s t- t- t- t- t- things.

43:49 –> 43:49  Shaun Dyke: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

43:49 –> 43:52  Mark Kasdorf: it’s like one of those-

43:52 –> 43:52  Shaun Dyke: Yeah

43:52 –> 44:00  Mark Kasdorf: but for my house that I… that has an API, something called the application programming interface, so you can connect to it, and you can have it show anything. Um, and I have-

44:00 –> 44:02  Shaun Dyke: Messages to your kids.

44:02 –> 44:04  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah. Quotes.

44:04 –> 44:05  Shaun Dyke: Quotes, whatever.

44:05 –> 44:06  Mark Kasdorf: Like whatever you want it to show.

44:06 –> 44:06  Shaun Dyke: It’s text.

44:06 –> 44:08  Mark Kasdorf: It’s, it’s like a, it’s like a living art-

44:08 –> 44:08  Shaun Dyke: Yeah

44:08 –> 44:09  Mark Kasdorf: in my living room.

44:09 –> 44:09  Shaun Dyke: Yep.

44:09 –> 44:37  Mark Kasdorf: And I have an API key for it that would, uh, theoretically allow me to write an app. Um, when I was vibe coding, I tried to write an app to connect to the Vesta board. Like I couldn’t figure it out. It was complicated. Like even with vibe coding, it was too hard. Like I just… I’m not smart. I’m not good enough at coding to figure that out. So I go find the API key. I paste it. You’re not supposed to do this, paste IP… Like if, if you wanna get an OpenClaw, you gotta like figure out secret management. Like there are some security risks, which we can talk about. Um, but I, it, like whatever. It’s a Vesta board.

44:37 –> 44:37  Shaun Dyke: Yeah.

44:37 –> 44:41  Mark Kasdorf: I go grab the API key. I paste it in. I say, “Hey, this is, this thing’s called a Vesta board.

44:42 –> 44:48  Mark Kasdorf: can you control it?” And 90 seconds later, “T- t- t- t- t- Hi, Marc,” comes up on the Vesta board.

44:48 –> 44:49  Shaun Dyke: [laughs] Holy.

44:49 –> 44:57  Mark Kasdorf: Like it, like went out to the internet, found the documentation, took the API key, connected to the Vesta board, and wrote me a message.

44:57 –> 45:06  Shaun Dyke: [laughs] There’s two camps of people right now. There are people trying to download right now, and there are people going, “Not a chance in hell. I’m moving to a farm in the middle of Ohio.”

45:06 –> 45:10  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah. And then the last one, uh, just to like finish off like scaring people-

45:10 –> 45:10  Shaun Dyke: [laughs]

45:10 –> 45:16  Mark Kasdorf: so the third thing I did was I said, “Hey, you controlled my speakers. Could you like talk to me over the speaker?”

45:16 –> 45:16  Shaun Dyke: No.

45:16 –> 45:44  Mark Kasdorf: And it’s like, “I don’t know. Let me check.” 90 seconds later, I hear my speakers, “Hi, Marc,” in like an ugly robotic voice. And I’m like, “How’d you do that?” It said, “Well, I went to the internet. I found a text-to-speech module that integrates with Sonos. I integrated the module. I recorded something, and I played it.” I’m like, “Oh, the voice is really…” And oh, and then it said… I didn’t ask it. It said, “If you go get an ElevenLabs API key, the voice will sound a lot better. But for now, this is what I could do with the basic text-to-speech stuff.”

45:44 –> 45:45  Shaun Dyke: It tells you what it needed.

45:45 –> 45:53  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah. It just tells me like that. So so it was the, my first three hours w- with OpenClaw.

45:53 –> 46:07  Shaun Dyke: I’m having a blast right now because, uh, people probably know this, but off-camera is our, is Chris usually sitting here with us all the time, and I’m sure Chris is also in the paralytic state that I am in right now on like what in the hell is going on. [laughs] I… Man, I’m not even gonna ask a question. What’s next?

46:07 –> 46:11  Mark Kasdorf: Sure. So, um, I’m now gonna go backwards a little bit and then come back to OpenClaw.

46:11 –> 46:12  Shaun Dyke: Yep.

46:12 –> 46:23  Mark Kasdorf: I think… I have a good friend who’s a brilliant, brilliant human, and he, he told me the other day, maybe three months ago, he feels like AI is making him dumber.

46:23 –> 46:23  Shaun Dyke: Mm.

46:23 –> 46:25  Mark Kasdorf: he’s outsourcing his brain to it.

46:25 –> 46:26  Shaun Dyke: Mm-hmm. Yep.

46:26 –> 46:26  Mark Kasdorf: And I…

46:27 –> 46:35  Mark Kasdorf: Like this really surprised me ’cause he’s so smart, and that’s like a… a- and not that smart people have to think like me, but it was so different than my lived experience.

46:35 –> 46:35  Shaun Dyke: Yeah.

46:35 –> 46:40  Mark Kasdorf: I’m like, “Really?” Because I feel like I’m getting massively smarter.

46:40 –> 46:43  Shaun Dyke: But to your point, your friend, and this is a common thing that people say, right?

46:43 –> 46:43  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah.

46:43 –> 46:50  Shaun Dyke: They say like, “No, AI is making me dumber.” That’s not my experience either. I find that I’m getting smarter with it because I have it augment and amplify-

46:50 –> 46:50  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah

46:50 –> 46:53  Shaun Dyke: things constantly that I’m trying to learn more about.

46:53 –> 47:12  Mark Kasdorf: And I’m like learning, learning, learning. And so now I’m gonna take one more step of just LLMs, and then I’ll get to OpenClaw. So my, another use case that I told them, you know, so one, um… I think it is, I’ll use this word unromantic again. It is unpr- pr- many people might think it’s unromantic to have an LLM help you do gift giving.

47:12 –> 47:12  Shaun Dyke: Mm.

47:14 –> 47:33  Mark Kasdorf: and it’s like I should know the person, right? I shouldn’t need an LLM to help me. I think these are things that some people might say. Um, my counter to that would be, like, why would I not use all of the tools at my disposal to do the best job I am capable of doing, finding incredibly thoughtful things for my family?

47:33 –> 47:33  Shaun Dyke: Yeah.

47:33 –> 47:37  Mark Kasdorf: And, and also, I kind of try to do that in the lim- least amount of time possible, right?

47:37 –> 47:37  Shaun Dyke: Mm-hmm.

47:37 –> 47:49  Mark Kasdorf: If, you know, if, if, if all things being equal, I can spend 10 minutes getting gifts versus an hour getting gifts, and it’s gonna be equal quality, like that extra 50 minutes of my time, like my partner would rather talk to me than have me invest in-

47:49 –> 47:50  Shaun Dyke: Yeah

47:50 –> 47:52  Mark Kasdorf: in finding her a gift if, if I’m gonna get the same gift anyways.

47:52 –> 47:54  Shaun Dyke: Scrolling through Amazon for 30 minutes, right.

47:54 –> 48:17  Mark Kasdorf: So this year was the first year. Th- this didn’t happen to me in 2024 or 2023, but in 2025, um, I… and I didn’t read about this anywhere. I just kinda, I think I came up with, I think I came up with this on my own instead of from someone’s blog post or newsletter. Um, I took a family member, and I wrote like a fairly detailed four-paragraph psychoanalysis of them.

48:17 –> 48:18  Shaun Dyke: Goods and bads.

48:18 –> 48:19  Mark Kasdorf: Goods and bads. Oh, yeah.

48:19 –> 48:19  Shaun Dyke: Yeah.

48:19 –> 48:35  Mark Kasdorf: Like this particular family member is narcissistic and insecure in these three ways and incredible in these four ways and, and, and. Right? Like and, like, I guess step one, if you’re gonna do this, is be okay confronting uncomfortable truths.

48:35 –> 48:35  Shaun Dyke: [laughs]

48:35 –> 48:36  Mark Kasdorf: Like a lot of us-

48:36 –> 48:37  Shaun Dyke: This goes back to earlier

48:37 –> 48:39  Mark Kasdorf: don’t think about the people we really deeply know-

48:39 –> 48:39  Shaun Dyke: Yeah

48:39 –> 48:42  Mark Kasdorf: and care about and what their, like, specific weaknesses are-

48:42 –> 48:42  Shaun Dyke: Yeah

48:42 –> 48:56  Mark Kasdorf: in a disconnected way.You know, and for this person that I just wrote four paragraphs about, um, for, for this person in this moment my budget is 250 bucks ’cause I didn’t do anything big for him last year, and I feel like I’ve neglected them. Or $500, or $200, or $100.

48:56 –> 48:57  Shaun Dyke: Right.

48:57 –> 49:11  Mark Kasdorf: I say, “G- give me five… I- give me five ideas that are all completely different.” And it would give me five ideas, and they’d be, like, pretty incredible. Um, and then, um, I’d be like, “Okay, this idea, I like this one best. Give me five like it.” So there’d be this, like, seven message-

49:11 –> 49:11  Shaun Dyke: Yeah

49:11 –> 49:18  Mark Kasdorf: string for that family member that’s now, like, 20 different gift ideas. Um, I’ll give you my favorite one I got this year. I’ve, I have an uncle

49:20 –> 49:41  Mark Kasdorf: who’s a, um… His whole career has been an Apple scientist. Uh, works at Cornell. Um, and for him, there’s a 1904, like, science of apples book that for $104 I got a first edition signed copy of.

49:41 –> 49:43  Shaun Dyke: Th- which is unbelievably-

49:43 –> 49:43  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah

49:43 –> 49:43  Shaun Dyke: meaningful.

49:43 –> 49:44  Mark Kasdorf: Yes. Like, so neat.

49:44 –> 49:45  Shaun Dyke: You would’ve never thought of that on your own.

49:45 –> 49:46  Mark Kasdorf: Never. [laughs]

49:46 –> 49:47  Shaun Dyke: Didn’t even know it existed.

49:47 –> 49:57  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah. And, and pre-AI it would’ve taken me, like, six hours of research, and I really like my uncle. I was never gonna invest six hours of research in his gift, but I loved finding him something that special.

49:57 –> 49:57  Shaun Dyke: Yeah.

49:57 –> 49:58  Mark Kasdorf: so I-

49:58 –> 49:58  Shaun Dyke: Yeah

49:58 –> 50:08  Mark Kasdorf: I think what I didn’t do was all the searching. What I did was, like, s- the time I… The amount of time I would’ve spent searching, I spent doing this psych analysis-

50:08 –> 50:09  Shaun Dyke: Yeah

50:09 –> 50:10  Mark Kasdorf: and then finding-

50:10 –> 50:10  Shaun Dyke: To get a better output

50:10 –> 50:27  Mark Kasdorf: to, to get something that I c- just I wouldn’t have known to think of. So let me tie this back to OpenClaw now. Um, and I don’t know what I’m gonna do, ’cause w- what I’m about to describe sounds, like, a little dystopian, um, but a little bit utopian, a little bit exciting, and, like, I haven’t decided what I’m gonna do. But I had two

50:29 –> 50:43  Mark Kasdorf: really long conversations around this gift giving with Gemini across Christmas and birthdays. I copied those really long conversations that had psych profiles on, like, a dozen family members, uh, uh, by, b- like, half was on my, my wife,

50:44 –> 50:51  Mark Kasdorf: um, with many, many gift ideas ranging in budgets from, like, insane I would never spend that, down to $20.

50:51 –> 50:52  Shaun Dyke: Mm-hmm.

50:52 –> 51:25  Mark Kasdorf: I- And what I’m thinking of doing, what I could do, is take those entire conversations, paste them into OpenClaw so that they will live in infamy, and now f- forever I could have one month before everyone in my life’s birthday five awesome gift ideas based on those profiles in my inbox, um, or messaged to me through OpenClaw one month before their birthday. And it could ask, like, “Hey, w- do, do you wanna have a conversation? Do you wanna go deeper on any of these, or do you want me to just buy one of these and have it shipped?”

51:25 –> 51:26  Shaun Dyke: Yeah.

51:26 –> 51:27  Mark Kasdorf: And it’s… I’ve already had it buy things-

51:27 –> 51:27  Shaun Dyke: Yeah

51:27 –> 51:55  Mark Kasdorf: and ship them, right? So for me, what’s so powerful about OpenClaw is, like, the leverage, right? So it used to be if I wanted to find a great gift I would have to spend six hours. Then with an LM, it became, like, six hours got me 15 people, more thoughtful than I was ever capable of doing before. Now by just saving that conversation, in zero time I can get incredibly personalized gifts forever.

51:55 –> 51:55  Shaun Dyke: Yeah.

51:55 –> 52:10  Mark Kasdorf: Right? So the, like, the leverage there is astounding. It’s not just leverage on time, it’s leverage on time times quality. 15 personalized gifts three years ago were impossible. No amount of googling would enable me to find that Apple book.

52:10 –> 52:10  Shaun Dyke: Yeah.

52:10 –> 52:16  Mark Kasdorf: None. And now in zero time I could do that level of personalization times 15 people.

52:16 –> 52:27  Shaun Dyke: Well, and if you take it to an extreme version, you could also tell OpenClaw when everybody’s birthdays are, when Christmas is, and you could tell OpenClaw, “Make sure that you send them a gift.”

52:27 –> 52:28  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah. So for me-

52:28 –> 52:28  Shaun Dyke: Now, if you-

52:28 –> 52:29  Mark Kasdorf: that would be inauthentic.

52:29 –> 52:29  Shaun Dyke: I agree.

52:29 –> 52:30  Mark Kasdorf: But what I-

52:30 –> 52:32  Shaun Dyke: But I’m saying the capability exists.

52:32 –> 52:32  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah.

52:32 –> 52:35  Shaun Dyke: You could remove yourself from the equation if you wanted to.

52:35 –> 52:39  Mark Kasdorf: You, you could, and I’m sure people will. I think the people that do that, um, but-

52:39 –> 52:45  Shaun Dyke: So if you remove it from something like gift giving, take it to something more simplistic on, like, you know, ordering groceries.

52:45 –> 52:46  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah.

52:46 –> 52:49  Shaun Dyke: So you’re removing… You, you remove the place on the need to feel a- authentic.

52:49 –> 52:49  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah.

52:49 –> 52:54  Shaun Dyke: You could completely say, like, “Hey, this is the menu that we’re gonna eat. Make sure I have groceries stocked.”

52:54 –> 52:56  Mark Kasdorf: But the re- the reason I’m hesitating on the gift thing-

52:56 –> 52:57  Shaun Dyke: Yeah

52:57 –> 53:08  Mark Kasdorf: what, what’s authentic to me is in the least amount of time I wanna get the best gifts care f- ca- I- possible for the people I care about, and I need to be involved in that. Like, I will always know-

53:08 –> 53:08  Shaun Dyke: Yes

53:08 –> 53:30  Mark Kasdorf: things about the fight I got into with a family member. I’m like, “This year’s budget is not $250. This year’s budget is skip.” Right? Or I’m mad at this person, or man, like, I… This year’s budget is, like, four times what I would… So I would never offload 100%, but the five ideas in my inbox for me to consider, for me to think about, for me to give OpenClaw additional context on that relationship in this moment-

53:30 –> 53:30  Shaun Dyke: Yeah

53:30 –> 53:42  Mark Kasdorf: to pick the right one for this moment, um, I, like, it’s push versus pull. Like, do I have on my… I can do in, on my to-do list every day there can only be 20 things, and I’m not gonna get to 10 of them.

53:43 –> 53:47  Mark Kasdorf: I never need to have any more “get gift for X” on my to-do list.

53:47 –> 53:47  Shaun Dyke: Yeah.

53:47 –> 53:48  Mark Kasdorf: It’s pushed to me.

53:48 –> 53:49  Shaun Dyke: Yep.

53:49 –> 53:56  Mark Kasdorf: Right? And to me, there’s nothing dystopian about that. It’s… I can… That gives me more time with my loved ones. It gives me-

53:56 –> 53:58  Shaun Dyke: Yeah, you get to offload those tasks-

53:58 –> 53:58  Mark Kasdorf: Yes

53:58 –> 54:00  Shaun Dyke: that are not the highest and best use.

54:00 –> 54:00  Mark Kasdorf: Right.

54:00 –> 54:02  Shaun Dyke: And you get to concentrate greater on highest and best use.

54:02 –> 54:02  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah.

54:02 –> 54:17  Shaun Dyke: Two hits for me. Three hits. I’ll give you all three of what I’m looking for as we… and then as we wrap. Number one, ’cause I think it’s just, uh, it’s good for the listening audience, a couple additional use cases if you can. Personal, professional, however you want to and what those look like. And then the last one being, um,

54:19 –> 54:36  Shaun Dyke: if people’s curiosity isn’t piqued, uh, it ought to be. I tried to not use should in that scenario. Um, somebody listening, the podcast ends, what’s the recommendation for how they start amplifying their understanding of leverage, um, in this space?

54:36 –> 54:38  Mark Kasdorf: I think we have time for maybe one more-

54:38 –> 54:39  Shaun Dyke: Yeah

54:39 –> 55:01  Mark Kasdorf: use case. I’m gonna, I’m gonna do kind of a silly one. Um, I am obsessed with food. I’m, I am a foodie. Like, in every city I go to I’m like, “Do I have time for a Michelin restaurant? Like, do I have the budget to spend in this moment in my life? Like, who are the best chefs?” I would say on average I spend two hours-Per plane flight, researching food-

55:01 –> 55:02  Shaun Dyke: Mm-hmm

55:02 –> 55:44  Mark Kasdorf: in the place I’m going. Um, I created an OpenClaw skill recently. So I had about a one-hour conversation with OpenClaw, and I explained my personal food philosophy, what is going on in my head as I’m Googling, right? Um, ’cause it doesn’t mean fancy or expensive, it means excellent, right? And sometimes the best burrito is, like, $12, and the locals know about it, and no one else does. But if you go to enough, like, Eater Boston, Eater LA, you can kind of find, like, the best burrito. So I explain my whole philosophy, and I, and I really do mean philos- I gave analogies. Um, I… Like, like I’m teaching someone. I… It was like I was talking to a therapist.

55:44 –> 55:44  Shaun Dyke: Sure.

55:44 –> 55:47  Mark Kasdorf: Trying to explain deeply my psychology.

55:48 –> 56:05  Mark Kasdorf: And then I created this thing called a skill out of all that knowledge. I said, “And a skill is like a set of instructions.” And I tied the skill to, like, a certain set of words. Not even a certain set of words, a situation. I said, “Forevermore, when I tell you I’m going to a new city, look at my calendar,

56:06 –> 56:18  Mark Kasdorf: propose for my three meals three options for each meal that are optimally located between my last meeting and my hotel,” or, like, where point A-

56:18 –> 56:18  Shaun Dyke: Yeah

56:18 –> 56:19  Mark Kasdorf: and point B.

56:19 –> 56:20  Shaun Dyke: Which you can see on my calendar.

56:20 –> 56:32  Mark Kasdorf: Using this philosophy. I will never have to spend two hours researching. I’ll spend two hours if I want to. Sometimes researching restaurants is a lot of fun, but if I don’t have time, I will never have a bad meal again when I travel, and it will take me zero time.

56:32 –> 56:36  Shaun Dyke: It’s a great example. You just get closer, uh,

56:37 –> 56:39  Shaun Dyke: to the ideal state-

56:39 –> 56:39  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah

56:39 –> 56:44  Shaun Dyke: call it food, call it gift giving, whatever it is, without having to dedicate

56:45 –> 56:54  Shaun Dyke: the time that would usually get you those outcomes, which then allows you to not only have the better experience, but also to free up space to be with the children-

56:54 –> 56:54  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah

56:54 –> 56:57  Shaun Dyke: the next couple of years, or the time or whatever those are.

56:57 –> 56:59  Mark Kasdorf: So you asked, um, like, if people are intrigued-

56:59 –> 56:59  Shaun Dyke: Yeah

56:59 –> 57:00  Mark Kasdorf: like, how could they get into it?

57:00 –> 57:00  Shaun Dyke: Yep.

57:00 –> 57:09  Mark Kasdorf: Step one is to do things like I did with gift giving or recipes. Find a use case. Don’t use an LM like Google.

57:10 –> 57:27  Mark Kasdorf: find something and, and try to go deep. Try to change the way you do something. So I think that’s step one. Like, you kinda have to do that. If you wanna get into OpenClaw, um, you need a computer with 16 gigs of RAM. Any computer you’ve bought in the last seven years-

57:27 –> 57:27  Shaun Dyke: [laughs]

57:27 –> 57:43  Mark Kasdorf: probably has it. If you don’t have one, uh, the 16 gig Mac Mini is 600 bucks. Um, and plug it in, plug it into a monitor, get a terminal. I use Warp. I think it’s awesome. And a- again, an LLM is your friend here. Ask ChatGPT, “How do I use Warp?”

57:43 –> 57:45  Shaun Dyke: It’ll guide you on what to do, yeah.

57:45 –> 58:22  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah. It’s just ask what to do. Have it give you instructions, and go hatch a bot. Like, just u- use it. Like, start using it. And you get stuck, and it, like, crashes, and it doesn’t work, ask Clot or GPT or Gemini, “Hey, what happened here?” When the bot is spun buck up, back up, when it crashes, and it goes down, and, like, takes a couple minutes to get up, ask it, like, “Hey, what happened there?” Um, and it’ll tell you. And just start doing stuff, and then walk through your life and say, like… Like, right now I’m in this moment where I cannot go through a day without five moments in time where I’m writing down in my little book here, “Oh, I gotta build an op- OpenClaw skill for this. Like, this could make-

58:22 –> 58:23  Shaun Dyke: I bet

58:23 –> 58:26  Mark Kasdorf: X moment of my life better and save me time.”

58:26 –> 58:30  Shaun Dyke: Well, so you know what you’ve done? You know, Chris and I are gonna be calling you, uh, to help us hatch our bots-

58:30 –> 58:30  Mark Kasdorf: Yeah

58:30 –> 58:38  Shaun Dyke: because this is something that I, we just, n- uh… It’s, it’s phenomenal. Um, uh, look, we, we, uh, we knew this. We knew that we technically needed six hours for this conversation-

58:38 –> 58:39  Mark Kasdorf: Sure

58:39 –> 59:11  Shaun Dyke: so we’ll just have more. Um, uh, genuinely appreciate the vulnerability into the story arc, the insights and perspectives in different places, and your willingness to, to share your exploration and your journey in trying to figure out how the rest of the world, as we advance rapidly toward the singularity, that we can find ways in which we can augment what we’re doing in some, uh, um, some more uncommon and more effective ways potentially. [outro music] Mark, appreciate it, man, a ton. Thanks so much for being with us.

59:11 –> 59:12  Mark Kasdorf: Absolutely. Thanks, Shaun.

59:12 –> 59:22  Shaun Dyke: You bet. [outro music]