Everyone keeps saying AI should make our work lives easier but is anyone actually working less? This week, Melody and Curt talk about burnout, why faster tech just puts more on our plates, and how even “delegating” can feel like another job. It’s one part therapy session, one part practical experiment in finding sanity as a business owner in the AI age.

What They Talk About:

• Why Melody felt instant relief when her whole company shut down for a day and what “freedom” really means with a team
• The women’s conference revelations: burn bright vs. burn out, a keynote on facing 100 fears, and why “comfort” is the real enemy of progress
• Curt's wild ride with AI—doing a month’s work in a day and somehow always being more exhausted
• When dashboards become soul-sucking rabbit holes (and the awkward truth about who actually uses them)
• The invisible job of being everyone’s safety net and why no one feels comfortable stepping away
• Micro-exhaustion and the “AI brain fry” phenomenon: more automation equals more fragmented days, not fewer headaches
• That laundry list of burnout symptoms (yes, irritability is there) and how recognizing them still doesn’t make the work less tempting
• Honest talk about work addiction, recovery, and the ambiguous dream of finally “taking a month off”

Key Takeaways:

• AI makes you more productive, but it also ramps up the speed and volume of decisions until your brain feels deep-fried
• The real relief comes from connection and proactively creating space, not just optimizing workflows or working faster
• Delegation is its own skill and even in a tech-powered world, it’s hard to let go without a serious mindset shift
• Sometimes you need to commit, out loud, to shutting the laptop and going outside.. even if you have to guilt yourself into it

Timestamps:

0:00 – Why “working less” with AI is not the reality

11:07 – 10 warning signs of burnout (and both hosts fess up)

17:32 – Curt's AI workflow and the mounting pressure to keep up

26:44 – The dashboard dilemma: building for everyone, used by no one

38:03 – The micro-exhaustion cycle and lost space for thinking

49:05 – Let’s actually commit: little changes for a saner week

57:22 – Wrapping up: spring mulching, Easter sunrise, and choosing sanity over speed

Actually, I've wanted to build true AI employees since two years ago. There was no capacity at that point. Right now there is, but I don't see people working less.

None of my friends who are deep into AI, they are not working less. None of them. And I hate that I think this way, but I don't want to work more. The whole point is I'm supposed to be working less.

I'm supposed to model less. And I know the trick. The trick is I'm almost there. I'm almost done with this thing, and then I'm going to be able to take my break.

I've wanted a vacation, a month vacation, for a year. Curt.

Welcome to the Sole Proprietor Podcast. I'm Curt Kempton.

And I'm Melody Edwards.

Each week, we dive into the ethical questions that keep entrepreneurs awake at night.

Whether you're building your own company or exploring life's big questions, you are welcome here. How's it going, Curt?

Hey.

Wow.

I like how you came in today with a fire.

I was doing your opening because you said you're tired.

It's a lot better than my opening. I am tired. I'm sorry, Mel.

Although I shouldn't be, because I just had a really good night's sleep last night, and I'm actually feeling a lot better than I have.

Well, I am feeling pretty good today. I was on a slump for a while, a couple weeks, I would say. And now I'm like, I'm back. I knew I'd come back. I just wasn't sure when or how or where.

You seem on fire. Like, where have you been?

Well, first of all, do you know why I'm on fire today? It's actually we're recording on Good Friday. And what that means is I have no team working and no virtual assistants working.

And I feel so free because every day, whether I'm in the business or not in the business, I'm just, like, feeling the weight of every human on my shoulders. I just carry everybody.

Isn't it funny? People hire VAs sometimes that they can feel free, and you're like, oh, finally. No VAs. Now I understand. The difference is you're managing the VAs.

I'm not managing, even if I have nothing to do with it. It's just the idea that I put my good name out into the world and people are relying on me.

So I don't know what's going on all day when people are working, but I imagine all the things.

So that's why I have to be on a vacation for long Periods of time where I just don't have any communication with the business that I actually can do that at times. And it's because I need to be all in or all out because my brain is all in.

Yeah, I hear that.

So that's why I'm happy, because it's like my company is shut down and that only happens five times a year. Oh, and this is one of those days.

Very cool.

I'm free.

Well, then let's just talk and talk and talk.

Yeah.

Well, the other thing is, I was at a women's leadership conference yesterday with 2,000 other women, including the great best friend of Oprah, Gayle King, which she didn't mention Oprah one time. You don't know her because you're Curt.

Can she come visit me under my rock? Who is this person?

She's, like, been a reporter for all her life, mostly. I think the reason why I relate to her, she used to be a reporter in, like, Connecticut near me.

But she works for CBS on the big news, so she's the big wig. But it was really interesting to listen to her talk about stuff.

But the main thing yesterday was usually when I'm going to events, I go in with an idea of what I want to take out of it. And so I'm really, like, dialed into the thing that I want to take out. And yesterday. I've never been to this event. It's gone on for, like, 30 years.

And I was like, I'm just going to go and check it out. What could they possibly teach me? That's not what I thought, but, you know.

Yeah, that doesn't sound very melody.

Like, no, no, no. I didn't know what I was going to learn, but I loved it.

So what did you love about being there?

I loved being surrounded by women. There were a lot of vendors there that were interesting, and I felt like I'm going to be a vendor there next year. That's originally what I wanted.

I wanted to be a vendor. But I'm glad I went as a participant to experience it, because now I understand what I would have to do for next year.

But what I loved is that there were only, like, there was a morning breakout session. There was a keynote in the morning, morning breakout at lunchtime, there was another keynote, and then there was a breakout, and they fed us lunch.

And then at the end of the day was this big star, the president of the college that sponsors this and the Gayle King, who was the main thing. Now, the breakouts that I went to were awesome. One was about AI in the workplace.

Now, I feel like I'm pretty good at understanding AI in the workplace at this point, But I wanted to see what the perspective of the than normal humans right now is, like, people who don't understand it yet, what are they doing?

And we're going to talk about this a little bit, Curt, because the first thing off camera that you said to me was like, how you're doing a month's worth of work with AI every day, and yet it's exhausting because it's never done. Right.

It's worse than that, actually, but we can get into that.

Yeah, it was discussed. And then the other breakout that I did, it was about, like, how to lead with some feminine word like spirit or energy or something. But it was really.

There was a list of burnout.

She was basically talking about how she's a type A person who always, like, was like my whole philosophy, my whole life was, if you work hard, you get what you're working towards. And that was what I experienced my whole life until I hit a certain point where life started breaking down. And. And she's not wrong.

I've always grew up feeling like if I just work hard, I'll get all the things, not recognizing how valuable our energy is. And then she eventually reached burnout. And she's a speaker, and she's been a speaker for a long time.

So she was speaking to how not to get to that place, basically. And then the third one I want to tell you about was the lunch one, was about fear.

And the woman who showed up to give this talk, I forget her name, but she showed up and danced on stage for a very awkward amount of time in the beginning. Like, I was like, wow, she's really going for it. And it was like, very awkward.

And that was her whole point of doing it was like being like, didn't that feel awkward, guys? And it really was. And she was correct. So her name is Michelle. I forget.

But her whole thing was she actually started out in school and she did this project that you had to do in this class. And it was, you have to do something for a hundred days. And so she did fear. She had to overcome one fear every day.

And she did it for a hundred days in a row. And she documented it on.

Can you overcome a fear in a day?

Yes. So for instance, she had a fear of, like, eating an oyster.

So she went out with her friends and she was showing a video where she had to, like, eat the oyster. And then she'd be like. And spit it Out. And her friends are like, you have to keep eating the same oyster until you finally eat that oyster.

And then she did. But it's like really her a fear of heights, her fear of jumping out of an air.

Well, hang on though. Like, so to me, overcoming a fear means like next time she walks in and grabs an oyster, she's like, sure, no problem, I'm happy to do it.

Well, her fear was trying an oyster because she was afraid of them.

So she can only try it once. So she did it.

But it's more about your head, what's happening in your head when you have.

Yeah, so that's my point though. Like, if you say I choked down an oyster and I got past it, are you not afraid of doing it again later? Like heights? Perfect example.

If I go to the top of a building and I look down, I've repelled off of cliffs and buildings and it's scary every single time. I haven't overcome my fear of heights.

I definitely don't feel that fear of heights, but I feel you. I'm trying to look at what she. Because all I heard her say was fear.

She faced the fear once a day. Because if I could overcome all my fears, that's a very different thing.

That's true. You can't probably overcome every fear. So she did a hundred fears for a hundred days.

Oh, that would suck.

Well, in the beginning, I actually was really like. She talked about some of them, some of them were crazy. But what she actually learned, it was very inspiring.

And the way she even did her own slide deck and things were just very melody. That's what it is.

I got a good visual on that one. Okay.

And she. So like, you know, people say the enemy of success is failure, but it's actually comfort. And I think I would agree with that. Right.

And she was talking about how there's different kinds of fears. There's like personal, cultural, there's like all different universal fears that we have.

And it was interesting because she said, when you're looking at what everybody else is doing and you're comparing to everybody else, you become one more person. If you're like doing what everybody else is missing or you're being different, you become one of a kind instead of one more. Right.

That's interesting because one of the things I thought of as we finished up that fear topic is I thought, okay, like a Navy seal, they just get good at being uncomfortable. Like, that was the word that you ended up using. That discomfort being the enemy of success and their ability to say of Course, I'm not comfortable.

I'm going out in the rain, I'm going to go run a billion, you know, whatever. You're going to do that mindset. And then when you talked about sort of presenting it more in a business format.

Yeah. You and I, we practice this. We wouldn't have businesses if we didn't practice being uncomfortable.

I do it every day, all the time, and I think I've gotten really good at it. She did a TED Talk on this, and then she got really famous for doing this thing. The press caught on to her.

And then this is her whole business now, where she just goes and gives inspirational talks about what she did. She has different talks she does now, but, like, she really was inspiring to me.

And I'm not easily inspired because, you know, I've been to so many of these things, as have you. Right. She said for her TED Talk, as she was, that was her hundredth that she did, like, conquering her fear of public speaking.

And as she was walking down the hall, she said the woman whose only job was to make her feel more comfortable. It's like, you've got this, Michelle, like, what's the worst that can happen?

And of course she's like, that is the worst question you can ask because then everything that you can imagine comes into your head.

Yeah. You're like, my tongue's tied up, my armpit sweat shows up, my. I forget my words, I freeze. Everyone's laughing at me. Yeah.

I can think of a few of things.

Yeah. Well, what she said is, now what she asks is, what's the best that can happen? So she really was super cool.

I'm going to add a link to her thing to the show notes because I think it was really great. And then the other one I wanted to just say, if I can find the slides of it is the one about Burn Bright not out was what it was called.

I guess I think of Burning Bright as feminine language. Would you agree?

Yeah, Yeah, I would.

So let me read you the list. And this is the 10 signs of burnout. And then let's say yes or no to each exhaustion.

Oh, yeah.

Same dread.

Yeah, well, yeah.

Yeah, I feel dread. Not at this instant. I mean, like, in general.

Yeah. I was going to say I've been burnt out without dread. It's just I can't go any further, but I can't go any further. As sort of a type of dread.

Yeah, yeah. Irritability at times. Not at this moment, but in general, typically it.

That's one that pops out like you're burnt out and, like, you'll have an outburst of some sort and you're like, oh, I think I might. Something's going on. Yeah.

Physical pain.

That's exhaustion for me. Yeah.

Poor choices. Meaning. I think what she meant is, like, your body is going to shut you down at some point. That. That's kind of the physical pain.

Like when you get to the point where you just keep pushing through, but you're burnt out.

Yeah.

Making poor choices that aren't aligned. Lack of motivation, isolation, less joy. Brain fog, inability to escape.

Yeah. Oh, man. I would say those are pretty accurate. And what's funny about them all is they kind of fade in and out.

Like, I don't have brain fog all the time, but I am like, golly, last few days just keeps coming in or making poor decisions. Like, I could go like a long stretch of making good decisions and then I make a poor one.

Well, and she said, you know, if you don't slow down, your body will do it for you. Very much. Body keeps the score. And it's true. That's happened to me many times. I won't slow down and my body will be like, okay, you're done.

I'm not on social media for lots and lots of reasons, but I.

One of the reasons, and it's not my best reason, but it is one of the reasons is that when I'm in like high work mode or burnout mode and I start feeling myself creep going on and scrolling is a, you know, going back to the last talk you're talking about, try and get comfortable. And it's like this coping mechanism that we'll do to like, just like, this is safe. Yes. There's a lot of stuff that I should be doing right now.

And in that sense, it's maybe dangerous, but I think that that's something that we all face. And burnout, really, I think brings it on. Now, it doesn't have to be social media. Like, it could be all sorts of things.

Like there's times I'll go out to the kitchen and I'm not hungry. I don't need a snack. But I'll do anything right now to not have to do the thing that I'm burn out on.

Mine is bubble shooter, like where you just pop bubbles on your phone and you kind of shoot.

I do not need that in my life.

Well, it's the only game that I ever play and there are times when I just have to delete it because I will just revert to that.

It sounds so addictive.

Yeah, it is for the moments when I need to be comfortable. What she said is proactive rest leads to a 26% increase in performance.

I feel like this is deja vu, because we've definitely talked about this very topic. She really talked about how connection is not a luxury. It is the lifeline to getting out of that burnout cycle.

And kind of also how, like, that push towards ambition, that push towards finish, like, the way that you and I work is probably pretty similar. Like. And that's why I wanted to talk about all this stuff. And it all relates to what I heard yesterday for how much I know about AI.

And my first year was all, like, just doing so much stuff that didn't get used. And now I'm like, very much like, oh, but now I'm smart about it and I'm going to just focus on the things that I can do.

And, yeah, we can do a month of work in a day now, in a couple of hours sometimes, and invent things. But what's the problem with that? Like, we get it done and then we take the rest of the month off. No.

Yeah.

I have some really strong, even visceral feelings right now as you're talking about it, because there's so much that hits home on it, and I don't even know where to begin. I think that's part of my burnout, is that I'm in a web, I'm not on a line. And I think that that's where maybe I'll start here, just by describing.

There's a lot of pressure on me right now to get a lot of things done. The world's moving fast. I need to stay relevant in my software world by accomplishing a lot. Some of it's internal stuff. Some of it's external stuff.

I'm not talking about internally, Curt. Internal business stuff. I need scoreboards that I've got to build. I've got to do planning and all sorts of stuff internally.

And then I've got the external stuff I need to turn out to my customers I gotta get done. And a lot of it requires vision, and it's all connected.

And the pressure that I'm feeling to get it done is that there's people waiting on me to get stuff done.

Can I just ask why it's all on you?

Yeah.

One of the projects I'm working on, the ones taking up the most of my time, it's a pretty top secret project, and it does require me to build out a very extensive prototype so that it can be architected. It can be beat up in product.

Because it's your brain.

Yeah, it's. I need to get it out of my brain.

Yeah.

But also as the executive of the company, I don't have a CEO and I don't have. I'm actually operating right now as a CTO as well. And so technology. So yeah, operation officer, Technology officer. Just for people listening.

And so what's happening is, is that these scoreboards that have to be built that are more executive level, that ties multiple departments together. Like, you know, with AI, I can just knock this out.

And so I'm building this company wide app that takes all of our data sources, put it all together into this gorgeous, wonderful tool that right now is completely broken because I need to make sure the data is all integrity and that I'm following everyone else's workflows that they naturally follow to make sure that the data properly follows. Anyway, my point is, is that I'm kicking serious butt right now, but I just had to upgrade Claude 5x max to I just wanted 20x max.

How much is that per month?

200 Bucks a month.

Oh, that's the one. Oh. Because I'm going to have to be bumping it up. I was going to get a second cloud account, but I think I need to bump up to that.

You get quadruple their max amount for twice the price. It's a no brainer. It's the best $200 I can spend as far as efficiency goes.

But I'm maxing out the 5x account that if that tells you anything, like I'm working like 14, 15 hours a day. I am still working a bike ride in, but I'm really only getting a couple hours of sleep a night.

I'm still trying to stay really connected to my family and my church community and the other stuff that I'm integrated into. But this web of stuff, I've got meetings I handle during the day, I'm jumping in and out of cloud code, I'm maxing out my cloud code account.

So then I, so I used to just let my session direct me back to other stuff when it was full and like, nope, I can't have sessions timing out on me anymore. So I spend more money on it, which is, it's not that much more money. But I'm like, what the heck are you doing man that you're using this?

So anyway, my point is, is that when you work in AI, specifically the way I am right now, and I think this carries through for every other version of using AI, is that if you're leaning on AI from a cowork perspective, like it's reading your folders, or in my case I'm using code and co work. It means that you are constantly having to make a decision. Constantly. I'm planning with AI. Is this plan good?

I don't have time to read the whole plan. We got to implement this thing. I got to move on. Like I told it what I wanted. I've learned several hacks. I don't even type hardly anymore.

I just hold down a key. I use AI to like properly formulate my text so it's not like crappy Siri dictation. I'm using all sorts of hacks to get stuff done so fast.

And what's happening is I went from a hundred or two hundred decisions a day to like a thousand or two thousand decisions a day.

Then I go through and I find the bugs in it and I go through and I find the problems as I'm looking at the plan being carried out and I've got to dig into it and then I got to zoom back out and zoom back in and zoom. And it's mentally just absolutely draining. But you're moving so fast that you're trying to keep up.

And that is actually where between the pressure to produce and the pressure to keep up with what the AI is doing.

Like while it's building two weeks worth of software for me in 20 minutes, I'm bug testing what it just pushed and now I'm coming back with the bugs and it's putting a whole new feature out for me and it's going so fast that. And then people come up to you and this connection you talked about earlier, how the way out of burnout is connection.

My sweet wife, she comes up to me and she's like, I could tell, like you really gotta slow down. Something's like, you're pretty worked. She's like, what can I do to help you? Would you rather build prototypes, sell software, build scoreboards?

I don't say this out loud.

I know, I know, but I'm thinking.

To myself, like, how are you gonna help hun?

And after every meeting, Claude, I built it up so that Claude analyzes my meeting, tells me where all my efficiencies are, rates my meeting on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of accountability, efficiency. It gives me all this coaching.

At the end, I get down to my meetings, I spend about five minutes scanning it so I can be better and better at being more efficient with people. And it's burning me out.

Lady well, if your work has basically 50x'd, how do you think your brain is going to be less? It's 50xing your rate of burnout, essentially. And I feel the same way, Curt.

And in fact, I told you, I took a cloud cowork code class last week, and that was exhausting to me. To be in, like, just to have my brain in that space for that long was exhausting.

But one of the things that I've realized during that time is, like, how deep am I willing to keep going into this? How much does it actually matter? How much have I actually expanded?

Like, the main purpose of doing this in the beginning is not the purpose of why I do it now. How's it changed? My company, one thing that I have done is I've really taken the time to create courses for my team.

We have, like, our AI power 90s that we used to do and that we still do sometimes. Like, that is where I know that the investment is worth it, is that I'm bringing people along with me.

But for the kind of work you were just talking about, which is the work I do all the time, very similar. And I love the data. I love it so much. That is an addiction, isn't it? Addicting because we think we can become the optimum efficient.

I've talked about this in terms of cycling. For me, data is the proof that what you're doing matters, that you're progressing.

How would a robot know if it matters?

What do you mean?

I mean, we're asking a robot that we have trained.

No, but a temperature gauge doesn't know what matters. It just knows that it's reading out the temperature. You can look at the thermometer and tell how hot or cold it is outside or how humid the data is.

What I can now internalize and say, I am running more efficient meetings, or I am using my time better, or I produced more of this, or cycling. I went faster with a lower heart rate. I was able to put out more power with less effort. My speed increased two seconds.

Today, all that data is like, sharpening and sharpening. To what end? I don't know. I'm not going to be an Olympic athlete.

I'm just playing devil's advocate because I live this every day with you, alongside you, Curt. And I've been deep in it for.

I'm about to go to that data science conference again, where I learned literally six months ahead of what people are like in terms of how training works. Like, some of the things I was learning six months ago are what is happening now.

And so to me that's intoxicating to be able to go and absolutely know and understand something that nobody else knows. But to what end? I almost feel like I'm collecting this knowledge and data for some ultimate power in the future that I don't know what it is yet.

Originally it was because I wanted more time. And here's one thing I will say Curt is for a long time I felt like nobody else in my company could think the way that I could think.

And the vision was really hard to get out of my head. As I'm testing things, I know exactly what you're talking about. Like it's so many decisions that how can you possibly explain this to somebody?

And what I learned is once I taught people there are two people in my company who can think that way. Not fully the way that I can, but it has taken some of the pressure off me. So let me tell you the experiment I ran the past two weeks.

I was training a new executive assistant. Originally it was because we were going to match her with a client she tested. Everything was perfect.

Like she was going to be the perfect EA and our client couldn't onboard yet. So I'm like, I don't want to lose this person.

And I wasn't involved in like any of the vetting or any of the testing of course, but I'm like let's have her work with me but let's make it on my side. I made it a data experiment. I recorded every call. I created a bot like I created a project.

It's only purpose was to figure out what was working, what wasn't so that it was more data for how we do this thing.

The recruitment process, every note she wrote me, every work she did, I'd give it the work she had worked on today and show what it was at the end of the day like can access all this stuff. And honestly my gut told me she was not a good fit. Pretty much right from the start she did not fit any of our values.

Like she wasn't very curious, she wasn't accountable, she wasn't not in the way we need somebody to be.

She said all the right things like absolutely Mal Shamel wasn't resourceful, wasn't emotionally intelligent as far as I can tell and she wasn't self motivated. And there were things every single day that showed me that. But I would never have trusted my gut.

I would have given her a whole nother week to for certainty. This robot, I'll just always call it the robot but it really did help me to make a quick decision.

And that's like one thing where I'm like, that was amazing because I hate making decisions. But that was still a lot of work. And I was able to give it on my team. And she inputted stuff for me. She knows how to train these for me at times.

And we were doing the conversations together. And so that's like what I would like it to be. But Curt, your project's going to get done in your dashboard.

Oh, I'm not going to tell you this, but something the lady, the AI lady told me yesterday in that class, I wish I had the data because I didn't know you were building a dashboard, but she said she has a client who is building a dashboard that had like 40 different metrics on it or something. And they analyze how much people are using it, how much time they spend using these dashboards. Like they're just data, data, data.

And then they have a dashboard for the dashboard. Right. And she said that for how much they invested in it. There's like almost.

There's very, very, very few people who are actually using this dashboard. And this is for like a multi billion dollar company. But yours is going to be different for sure. Is it for you or is it for them?

It's for our leadership meeting. That's the problem.

We had a dashboard that had a lot of cool metrics in it, but it was a sort of unreliable, which immediately makes it so people just stop paying attention to it. And then B, it wasn't integrated with all the different departments.

And that's where I've taken it onto myself because that isolation makes it less relevant.

And so now I'm trying to make it so that, look, when we have our leadership meeting, you can all go into your own individual places, but we have our leadership one and we can see who is progressing and who is not.

Do you feel like you were the only person not on your team, but do you feel like you're the only person who could have built this?

On my team, yes.

Right. But you could have outsourced it.

Well, I mean, yeah, but then I'd have to teach them how to use all my other tools that I'm pulling data out of.

Maybe. But as owners, we are so immersed in it and we think, I mean, Curt, this is what we talk about so much.

It is like how we have to delegate, delegate, delegate. And you're talking about something that is a big deal. You're not the only one who could have made this.

And even though you would have had to have taught somebody there are easy ways to like give people information nowadays. It's never been easier. We are in the same old cycle that we've always been as entrepreneurs, you and I, which is AI is new for us, for the world.

And because of the way that it works with our brains, it really hard to see how you can outsource some of this stuff. And I think it's pushing us into a new kind of hole where we are going to just burn out faster.

And like, what is the end result when you get this dashboard, your life chills out and you get like a month off because you did a month of work, right?

No, that's actually the problem with this whole web is that I'm moving faster because the crowd that I'm in is moving faster and I need to get to the place. So I'm keeping up with the crowd or ahead or ahead. But you can't get ahead and stay ahead. It's just not going to be possible.

So what happens is you get out to the front and then someone comes up with something new and cross you and then what do you got to do? You got to get out front again.

But like, you and I are leading teams and so we are trying to. It's not like one to one, I don't know about you, but I have different people in different departments and they all have different needs.

And my brain, I love saying like, yeah, this is obviously a melody thing right here. Like if they ask me a question, I'm like, I'm going to take this part on because I know exactly where this needs to go.

Because I have the vision, right?

Instead of just talking it through and giving them the information, which I could talk for an hour and teach you the thing that my brain knows, right, if you talk it out. But I will take it on. But it's for like, it's exponential because you have like a lot of people on your teams in different departments.

So how are we as one person supposed to stay ahead with our vision and our explaining and our data of like 10 people? It's impossible.

I guess I've just treated Claude Code as an agent, as the employee or the contractor. Like I explain it.

It's not the employee though, because you spend all of your time with this employee training it every single day on this project for 15 hours a day. I mean, not 15, but you know what I mean.

I mean, I am spending 15 hours a day between meetings and everything else. And I'm also splitting it between this visioneering project.

Visioneering that sounds cool.

Yeah. Well, that's the other big project that I've got to get out and prototyped and ready for.

Architecture sounds like Disney.

That's called imagineering. But, yeah, it's similar.

I'm not giving you a hard time. I'm actually counseling myself right now.

Yeah, I hear the wisdom in what you're saying, and I think this is the eternal struggle. Well, however long eternity is going to be with AI at the helm is that we can do more efficiently and so we can justify doing more.

Always.

Always. Yeah.

We are addicted to more.

Yeah. And I think entrepreneurship feeds that.

But if I could go back to that whole talk you were talking about with fear, I think fear feeds it too, because it's like, if I don't keep moving at breakneck speed and I stop for a second to train someone else, what is the cost of that? Not necessarily thinking about what the benefit is either.

Literally two hours ago, we don't have time to think. Yeah.

Yeah. Literally two hours ago, I just trained David on how to make his own meeting coach from Claude.

So whenever you get out of a meeting, you'll have this. He's like, that's cool. So I showed him how to do it.

We built it in zapier, took about 15 minutes to get it done, and he's like, Curt, we gotta do this for all of our coaches. I said, I agree. It's awesome. He's like, can you come train him? Like, you just got a video of me doing it. We recorded the meeting. Yeah.

So there you go. You have it. But I think that one of the things that is gonna just be really hard as we assimilate into the new AI life is this.

When we were farmers, when we're all hunters and gatherers, however many strong muscles you had were pretty tied to how your survival rate was going to be. You could take down bigger animals, you could farm more land, you could feed your family better.

And then we were like, hey, if we put our brains and our muscles together, we can get more milk out of a cow and we can get more harvest out of an acre. And, hey, that's pretty cool. And then we took it to the next level.

Then we're like, hey, if we add chemicals to it, like, we got chemical engineers that can make it so that the pests don't eat it. And, you know, if you follow the way that we've shifted from muscles to brains, then we kind of found this obesity that came with it.

And the mental health struggle, I think that came with it. But I really, at the end of the day, I think that this mental health and this anxiety and depression, these trends that we're seeing, you know, I'm.

No scientist, you don't need science for this one.

Don't quote me on this. But no, I think that this transition of moving from brawn to brains and technology, expanding our brains, has really messed with the human condition.

Of course it has.

And evolutionarily, I don't think our brain is equipped for the amount of decisions that we make every day.

I don't think that our anxieties and fears or depression, you know, mental health, I don't think it's equipped for the sort of strain that we're putting on ourselves and not having the physical outlets that we used to have physical outlets.

But also they're all very man made. Like going to the gym, that's something we had to create because we don't go to the field anymore.

You used to like go to your plow, now I'm going to go to the gym.

I used to go on a ladder and climb roofs like for my window cleaning. So like you and I have had that change and transition. All I dreamed about during that time was having a computer job.

And one of the things I think that's been hardest about this is when I was younger I had a good open brain that had still a lot of energy attached to it, didn't have as much responsibility and I didn't understand the how hard it would be as an elderly brain when you're working with it every day. There is so much exhaustion. That's where the burnout for me comes.

It's not just the decision making, it's the exhaustion of constantly trying to think clearly is. It's not decisions, it's clarity and space. There's none of that anymore.

And that's another problem with AI and computers is we have to be disciplined to create space for ourselves. You do it with your writing, I do it with something.

Going outside and holding a baby.

Oh, baby, Absolutely. I do not think about work during baby time. There are other things. My bike rides, I don't think about work during bike rides and building things.

I'm going to keep going with the decision. Like for me it is about decisions. So I'll just say that that that is a truth I'm sure of for me is that decision fatigue is real.

And if you've ever played that game called Beat Saber. So basically you put on a VR headrest and then you hold in your hands the two controllers and then these boxes come at you.

And it's music, so you gotta cut them in order for it to work. And it's to the beat. And then when you start, it's like, boom, boom, boom, boom. And it feels cool because you're like, I can do this. Awesome.

And you're doing it, but then it's like. And by the end, it's like, you know, and you're like, there's no way to keep up.

Great analogy, Curt. Because that's how it feels.

That's how I am feeling with my decisions. And the thing is, is that in beat, saber, hit it, hit it, hit it.

And you're making all these good decisions, and then, like, you only get to mess up, like, I don't know how many times, but, like a few times, right? And so what happens is like, oop, I missed one. Oop, I missed one.

And when that starts happening, it's like those bad decisions, you're like, oh, but I gotta make more decisions. I can't deal with that. I gotta make more decisions.

And so you're making em, and then you're like, I'm only making, like, half my decisions are good, and half of them I don't even know. I'm just saying something so that I can be done that.

And AI is throwing them at you really fast because there's this really fascinating, interesting thing where it's like, I don't have to think about that. I can just ask AI and get the answer. So there's part where my brain is like, cool, I'm going to defer these decisions.

I'm going to defer this learning. I'm going to defer this mental hardship. And you're like, cool, my brain's been craving that.

Then you flip that coin over and you go, I give a bunch of tasks to AI. It does make some decisions for me, but now I've got to go through and check it all out. And it's exhausting. It's a different kind of exhaustion.

People say, yeah, I can code something in 20 minutes. Yes, it normally would have taken you a week and you code it in 20 minutes.

But now you got to go through a month or a week's worth of code and understand why did it make that decision? How did it do this? And it's the same for if you ask it a question about spirituality and religion, which is another thing I like to do.

Like, you got to pick it up. Why did you say that about Jews? That's not necessarily been my experience with the way that Jews think of whatever.

You're not having enough basic conversations with AI, that's why you're going real deep.

Well, my whole point is, is that as we exacerbate and the speed picks up, there's the scrutiny that needs to happen and that it has its own level of exhaustion. There's the decisions that it does bring you in on that it can ask you questions all day. Like as it's moving through.

Yeah, it's making certain decisions, but then other ones that feels it's big enough that it needs to ask you about it and you've got it like, oh, this is going to affect things for a long time. Which decision do I choose? Where normally you might have sat down and had a lot more time to think about it.

And that's the mental exhaustion that I'm talking about. And also the mental training of. It's just, it's crazy.

Your brain's becoming a couch potato and a world class athlete that it was never designed to do. And it's a really weird conundrum.

She had a slide that I just found on this.

It's the reality check, the productivity paradox, which is the excitement about AI was that people invested billions, enterprise companies now have it mandated it within their systems and it promised frictionless productivity. Right. But what's actually happened is she calls it micro exhaustion, which is the automation dividend. So why aren't we working less?

The daily reality is a fragmented workday, relentless context switching and unprecedented cognitive load. Like humans were not designed for this.

And so she calls it the AI brain fry phenomena, which is that there's two minutes is the average time between interruptions and the time saved by AI is not a lot. And the task scope always expands and the output expectations get raised and we deploy multiple tools to do it.

Like we only had cloud before, now we have cloud, cowork, cloud code. We can do all sorts of different things with it. Right.

And we're not short of information, we're short of uninterrupted thinking time, which is what I say all the time. We do not have good thinking time, at least for me.

I feel like I'm moving towards a finished thing most of the time, and I never am actually, because it's correct.

Whoa, you just hit me right between the eyes. I've told you, I'm really religious about meditating. Religious in the sense that I do it every day. I just realized I haven't meditated all week.

This weekend it's Friday and you talk about unearthed thinking time for me. I was about to say, you know What I really need is that uninterrupted non thinking, just clearing.

That's what they mean, though. That's what thinking means. It's like actually not thinking.

Well, yes, but also I think there is dedicated. Like, I'm not being assisted. I'm just sitting down and, like, really kind of weighing my options on something.

Because there are other ways of meditating. There's ways where you, like, sort of meditate on something.

Sure.

It's like meditating, like with like a clean mind.

So unclogging your mind. But also, when you bike ride, you have uninterrupted time, right?

Yeah. Usually you're thinking about how you're gonna get over this rock around this turn, and now you're gonna.

Right. So in a way that's a little bit meditative. It's not the same.

It's not the same, but it is helpful. And I think I actually do still ride my bike every day. And I still think that there's a lot of benefit to that.

But maybe that's why I'm doing okay right now. But my point was, is that I used to get up early and start my day with a clear mind. You know what's happened to me?

I wake up, I don't have time for meditation. Like, right now, no one's gonna bother me. I have got to use this time to get as much coding done as I possibly can. Guess what? Melody?

That is an ingredient to the problems that I'm talking about. This pressure.

Yeah, it is a pressure. I haven't thought of it as a pressure. I think of it as my mind. Like, in my mind, I'm addicted to the idea of finishing the thing.

And so if I wake up and I'm like, I gotta get this thing done. And actually, baby, time has interrupted my ability to do that because I won't wake up earlier right now than I am.

And I at night, I don't have the brain power.

I'm actually the laziest I've ever been, in a way, because I've allowed myself to let go of some things because my cognitive load, I know it's too much. I can't handle it. The thing that her answer, her solution was actually to create a chief of staff for yourself. And I've heard of people who have.

Course they have. I don't know if you have one, but do you have, like, your board of directors, as in AI and all that?

Oh, no, no, no. Not as a. I have actual board of directors.

No, no.

Like, I should set that up.

Having Like Elon Musk and God, as your board of director, you know, like, how they have those people will do that. I find it too artificial.

But she says the chief of staff filters the information, coordinates complexity, prepares decisions, and protects your time and attention. That's like, what it's supposed to do. And that's basically, if you use AI as this, you can do that. Actually.

I've wanted to build true AI employees since two years ago. There was no capacity at that point. Right now there is, but I don't see people working less.

None of my friends who are deep into AI, they are not working less.

No more working more, more.

And I hate that I think this way, but I don't want to work more. The whole point is I'm supposed to be working less. I'm supposed to model less. And I know the trick. The trick is I'm almost there.

I'm almost done with this thing, and then I'm going to be able to be take my break. I've wanted a vacation, a month vacation for a year, Curt. I've talked about it every month.

What do you want to do when you're not working more? You want a vacation all the time? Is that what you're saying?

No, I want my time back. I want my head back so that I can decompress. And I feel like at this point, a week is not enough. Two weeks is not enough.

I want a month to become Melody again, where I am just free. Like, I've had those periods of time where I'm just free. I don't think about the business it's running.

Things are cool, and I can get my creativity back and work on projects, build things, like, just become more creative again. I'm using creativity every day just like you are, but it's not the kind of creativity that we actually need. Are you coding right now, Curt?

No, my alerts are going off. Let me see if I can quiet them down.

Promise. I'm like, Curt's coding while we're on the podcast. No, I know I am not myself the way that I want to be right now.

I am not the sparkliest version of Melody to get back to her. I know that it takes a lot of open space and new adventures and the wonder of the world.

Not going to conferences and not going to pick up my kid every day. I mean, that's part of my life, but it's just like doing whatever the heck I want to, whenever I want to.

Part of my addiction is that I'm just going to be really honest right Now, Yeah, please. I want to work more. Not the amount I am, but I want to always feel this in my power. I want to feel this in control.

Even if it feels out of control, I'm the one at the wheel.

Yeah, I get that.

I want to wake up, and I want to slay a dragon every day. Now, I'm not arguing that that's healthy.

When's the last time you actually got to slay a dragon? Every day.

Now that I have AI, I have 10 big wins every day.

Are they big? If you have 10 big wins every day, is that a dragon?

Well, that's kind of the thing is, like, yeah, like, every day I'm like, I just did something would have taken a week to accomplish. I just finished it, you know?

Oh, it's so addicting. Yeah. I'm at a point where. And my life is different. I have, like, more family responsibilities.

But I recognize that the person who started this business does not exist right now.

And the person who comes up with the best ideas, and I still get ideas, but, like, to be truly myself at the best version of myself, I'm beyond burnt out.

Not every moment of every day, but, like, it doesn't take many hours to get me to burnt out, and I don't experience the joy in this work that I want to experience.

The other part of it, the last part, Curt, is that I know that when I back away, I have a much better view of what's actually happening versus when I'm in it every day. You can't see what you're in, like, when you're standing in it.

Amen.

Also, I am a workaholic who's recovering at all times, so this is part of my process.

So what are we gonna do about it? I think as I was just answering what you just said, and I was thinking about, like, I don't know what I'm gonna do about it.

I want to do a week's or a month's worth of work every day. What I've understood, and this is what I've been trying to build, and I'm very close.

I always say that, but I am, is I want to build my brain into AI.

Meaning instead of doing AI with my brain, I want my brain to be available to my team in a different way so that I can trust that they are taking things in the right direction on my behalf and that they can actually do some of these things that I am doing right now, because they can. It's not like I'm the smartest person I know you don't know my team.

It would be easy for me to feel like I'm the smartest person all the time because I technically know all the things. Right.

But when I've stood back and people learn from me and really, like, even just voice memos and then transcribing that into things that they can read or videos that they can watch or whatever, if I can get them to that place, then I can have more freedom and they can still create the things I want with AI Or I can work on getting the bot that actually. The agent that actually will take over for me.

It won't ever take over for me, but the one who can do the agent, who's managing the agents for me, which is totally doable right now. It's not perfect.

I'm definitely thinking about it right now and saying I would have to hire someone. I couldn't figure out a way to tie what I'm doing into someone else's workload right now.

Well, you need a tech officer who can really understand how your brain works. I hired a kid.

He's working part time on projects, but I spent three hours, one day working with him on something that I knew nothing about and that he knew nothing about, which was building an AI thing for my grandma, which I think I've talked about before.

Yeah.

And it was the best way to learn if this person understood the way I think, if he thought the same way. Because he doesn't need to know all the things I need to see the way he thinks, and he does think the way that I think.

He's not trained in it yet, but I can see that he has that potential and he's able to make decisions. You know, he's building our funnels right now. My whole customer journey, my dream customer journey.

For three years, I've had this thing, and he's finishing our last step right now. And that's pretty amazing because for three years, we've been stumbling around with it. I've met with him two or three times.

Denise is the one who knows the vision, and she works with him on it. She's not the tech person, but she knows how I think and she knows what I want.

So I would just say, Curt, like, I'm afraid of the trap that we're falling into, which is we already were working too hard before in many regards, even though we were supposed to be recovering. But with AI now, there's fear attached that we will.

We have to outrun this thing and be knowing all about it, even though nobody knows all about it all the time.

Or the picture in my head is, since I already know, I'm not going to outrun it. My fear is, is that I'm running down the train track watching the train go off into the distance without me. And it's not fomo.

Like, it's not like, oh, man, they're having so much fun on that train. It's like, oh, there was all my food.

Well, and it's harder for you, I will admit. Like, you have a software company. It is gonna hit you harder. But technically, you need to keep up with it in order to keep clients.

And if you didn't, then you could probably lose clients. Right. So I get that. But, like, what do we actually want here? I want other things than this.

I do, too.

So we don't have to solve all of our problems today. But I bet you, our audience this has been a Curt and Mel therapy session.

Because even though it sounds like I'm giving you a hard time, Curt, I'm just talking out what I live every day, too. And I bet you our audience, many of them not your mom, but like most of our audience, the rest of.

Them, if there is more audience out.

There, yes, but they're probably living this right now, too. Or they're doing the opposite. Like my son is, which is like, anti AI just because he's the contrarian.

But, like, this is something every person has to struggle with right now and figure out. And I just want peace. And AI does not give us peace, Curt.

Yeah, it does not. Let's do this. Let's commit to something that we can do right now.

Like we're committing right now.

Yeah, we're committing right now.

What's something that we can commit to that doesn't require us to change in a grandiose way that we can't maintain, but is something that will make a meaningful difference in either a progression or maybe just a long term. Like, just changing this one thing will make a difference. What do you think?

Honestly, it just goes back to the Mailbot and it goes back to my authentic voice. So I have my social media manager who does all of my posting. She does our podcast posting, too. Thank you, Jean. Versus And Ivan, of course.

She needs to understand my voice better. And AI loves doing the tropes. It's not this, it's that. And I hate that. I hate all of it. And I just want to be Mel.

But that's so easy to train away from now, so it doesn't matter.

It is, but it's not, because, like, I Know what I don't want? I've trained it out of all of those things in my cloud project, and it still will bring it back to me.

Oh, really?

Yes. I want to give other people the opportunity to do the work that I know I don't have to do. But I keep finding myself.

And for instance, with Jean Ver, I hate words. I will look at words, and that's like a brain drain for me.

If I'm looking at words and figuring out what does Melody actually want to say here and editing my words, I can't do it. I need her to do it for me, but she can't do it on her own. She's doing a great job. But the other thing is my Melbot, it has been training on me.

It has everything it could ever need. But that's not where I spend my time. I don't spend time really dialing in that training so that it can actually act on my behalf at times.

I don't want it to be me. That's not what I'm saying. But having a chief of staff that thinks like me, that's what I'm going to build. I'll say I'll do the chief of staff first.

That'll actually be easier for me to do. And I'll let you know what happens with that. Because I need a central point where I don't have to make 10,000 decisions a day anymore.

Curt, the way you make decisions is not unique. You do have a thing. There's a thread into the way that you make decisions. And a robot can learn that. I know you're thinking.

No, yeah, I'm just thinking about the way I make decisions is very algorithmic, but a lot of times when it comes to really fast, you have a tendency to be like, algorithm out the window. What's your gut say? Move on. And you can't hand your gut off. And frankly, probably shouldn't be trusting the gut anyway.

I can't commit to that kind of a thing.

I'm saying what I am committing to.

I know. I'm saying you're a better person than me. That's what I'm saying.

Not true.

I can't commit something that big. But here's what I can commit to.

Okay. I know it's going to be meditation or something.

Well, I was committed to that. So that's back on. Like, I can't go another day without that. I need to get it back, and I need to put it back in the priority it had I got to get.

And that's small, but it is big. It's a small thing with a big dividend.

Yeah.

So I'm committing to be back on that. The second thing I'm going to commit to, actually it is even smaller, but I'm going to commit to after dinner not going back into the office. Woo hoo.

Because it always starts the same. I'm just going to make sure that I'm going to go do some bug testing, I'm going to get another round going and then I'm going to go to bed.

And it goes so fast that by the time I do the bug testing, it's already pushed more code and I'm back in my cycle again. Yeah, I'm not going to come back in the office after dinner. That means I'm going to miss hours of productivity.

Well, I mean, don't go to sleep, Curt, because you're missing hours of productivity. Can I just say something though? I am somebody right now who does not go back to office after probably 5 o' clock at 6 o'. Clock.

It's very rare right now. And it was so hard at first. So hard.

Well, Melody, I already did this. I already did what you're saying. I'm back in cycle. I have personal lived experience. I know what you're talking about.

So you know that it's hard at first, but then it's easy.

But I'll tell you the reason it's so hard is because I feel so much pressure. Every hour that goes by that I'm not moving forward is another hour I should have gotten something else done.

Now if I get back up to six hours of sleep a night or maybe even like, like last night I got seven and it was, it was good. If I can get back up to more hours of sleep, I know that there's gonna be dividends for that.

And frankly the dividends that I think I'm missing out on after dinner is the family time. Like I need to get back to what I know I can do and I'm gonna do it.

And I am being good about my bike ride and I'm just hoping that the pressure will stay at bay. Can I be so effective during the day that I can tell myself? Because normally I know I worked hard.

I could look myself in the mirror and say I worked hard today. I have no reason to feel like I got to keep going. And then I wrote down all the things that I need to push through till tomorrow.

I got my brain clear, all my ideas are down. I don't have to worry about holding any Mental space. I've been there.

But now the problem is I've got 14 different threads going, and I'm afraid that if I stop spinning one plate, they all come crashing down. And I gotta come back in the office the next day.

And I don't know where to begin because I can't plan at the speed that I can move, even if I have Claude doing all my planning.

Well, couldn't you just have it tell you? Like, just say, I'm ending my day right now. Tell me where I need to start tomorrow.

Well, the problem is, is that when you're eating dinner and you're like, I need to change my action events to this.

And if I did an action event, we need to draw a plan, a map to follow those action events to allow things to come in and out of the process at the right time. And those action events need to be these six things. Don't forget those six things. And then what happens at the end of dinner?

I need to go write those six things down. Get down the plan. I get it down the plan. And what does Claude do? Does Claude just write a plan?

A lot of times you put it in and then it says, do you want to authorize the plan? I'll do it right now. And what do you do? You authorize the plan. He does it right now.

And then you're like, oh, let me go test the bugs on that real quick. So all I'm saying is not going to do that next week. I'm not going to do any more next week.

Isn't like this the season where we're supposed to give something up or something for Christian stuff.

Lent it is. I am not a Lent. Like, it's not part of my religious tradition.

Me neither. So that's why we're going to practice a variation of Lent by giving up. I'm going to give up my chief of staff role to a chief of staff.

AI to a chief of staff. And you're going to give up. You're at working after for just in next week. When we come back, life is going to be different.

Yeah. I'm going to see how I feel after a week of that, I commit to it. Okay, so meditation. Yeah, I'm going to get back to that again.

I can't believe I forgot that I hadn't been doing it.

I can't believe you forgot either.

That's the most disturbing part, is that I was moving so far past it that didn't even register that I'd passed it. And that's like a Habit of me. And then. So I'm going to get back to that, and then I'm going to get back to family time after dinner.

Okay. I like it. And I might text you sometimes and be like, don't do it. Or I might in the morning say, did you do it?

Did you meditate? Yeah.

Yeah.

This has actually been a little helpful because, of course, I came from a place of being removed from work yesterday, listening to these people telling me things that I understood in a different way. Even though I've been living this and understanding it, being away from work allowed me the freedom to be like, yeah, I don't have to live this way.

You and I have both experienced it before when we didn't have burnout and we had more freedom. It actually made us. I mean, for me, I become more productive when I free myself up from these things. So I'm excited to see where we're at next week.

Do not let anybody in your company or anything that happens ruin your pledge to me right now. Curt, crossed your heart and hope to die.

Cross my heart, yes. I have committed it. And that is one thing about me is I'm not a flake. I do what I say I'm going to do, so I'm going to do it.

I'm a flake. So if I forget it, that's why, Because I'll forget. Like, what did I say to Curt last week I was going to do? But no, I'm going to write it down.

Okay.

And the last thing I'll say is, Curt, do you know I'm hosting the sunrise service for the local church on our property this on Sunday.

Easter Sunday, yeah. Is this their evil plan to have you at church? No, to bring it to your house.

We have a great sunrise view where I live. And you can also see the church across the river from our backyard. So I love that we get to do this for them.

I always go early and get Dunkin Donuts for coffee and stuff. And it's just like, I love that community of people. It feels like an honor that they use our property to do this.

And I know that I'm always welcome there if I want to go back.

Well, I just had a really spiritual moment on the bike last night as the sun was going down. I saw the sunset and, golly, I can't believe I want to share this with everybody. And so it's a wonderful moment.

I'm glad you're going to be able to share that with your community. Easter is a really special day at our house, and We've never done the Easter bunny or the Easter baskets. I did as a kid.

We did it, but Rachel and I just never did it. And then we went somewhere and they did an Easter egg hunt, and the kids did the Easter egg hunt.

And all the other kids were like, what'd you get in your basket? And my kids just stared at them like, huh. I thought we were just talking about Jesus in the morning.

Anyway, the point is, this Easter, it's gonna be really cool to, like, spend some time just not doing cloud coat, soaking it in. Yeah. You know what? In my religious tradition, we observe the Sabbath. That has been a very important thing for me is that I don't work on Sunday.

And that's been a very important reset for me as well over these last few months. I mean, my whole life, really. But these last few months, I think it's been more critical than ever. You know, I'd probably be in the funny farm if.

If I worked seven days a week, for sure.

Yeah. Well, I appreciate this conversation. I'm feeling also, it's spring.

Just got a mulch order and I'm going to be outside putting that, throwing that mulch around.

You are going to be in your meditative spot.

I am. I'm excited to be outside again, so.

Oh, Melody, that's great.

It's here, Curt. Life is here again. All is restored. Although you said it was like a thousand degrees where you are last week, so.

Yeah, it's actually. I can't believe our high today is 84 and it is currently 79. It is beautiful, but, man, we were like at 100 and like 10 last week.

Crazy brutal. Well, I hope that you have the best weather, the best Massachusetts type spring weather that you could have, and I.

Hope that for you.

Thank you.

Well, it's been a good one.

I'm glad we've been thinking about these things and I hope that our listeners are also thinking about some things that they could be doing or not doing.

If you guys are experiencing anything like what Melody and I described today, hopefully being intentional about the way that you spend your time will help you to break free of the cycle that I think is going to be only increasing in strength. The magnetic pool to AI and what its effects are on society and yourself individually are only going to get stronger.

So the new addiction, being intentional, is going to be a key.

Agree. Have a great week.

Thanks, everybody for joining us at the Sole Proprietor podcast. It has been an absolute pleasure having these discussions with you.

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