EPISODE OVERVIEW

Duration: Approximately 42 minutes

Best For: Trapped entrepreneurs who carry every decision, every worry, and every sleepless night alone, and have nobody to say it to

Key Outcome: You will see why the loneliness is not a weakness in you, and how to bring the human back to the surface while AI handles the rest

You started this for freedom. Somewhere along the way it became the thing you cannot put down.

THE BOTTOM LINE

You are the public face. Positive, tenacious, glass half full, because you have to be. Underneath that, you are carrying things you cannot say out loud. You cannot tell your staff payroll feels tight this month, because they will worry. You cannot tell your family, because you are trying to protect them. So you hold it. All of it. Amanda Knarr has spent her career sitting across from people exactly like you, and she names the part nobody says: the business you built for freedom can become your biggest prison. In this conversation she explains why that loneliness forms, why it is dangerous, and what actually shifts it. Roy shares the moment his own stress took him to the top of a 130 foot tower. The thing is, this episode is not about pain. It is about what happens when you stop carrying it alone, and how the human side of you becomes the thing that no machine can copy.

WHY THIS EPISODE MATTERS TO YOU

You will understand why you feel lonely even surrounded by people. Your team is passionate. They did not put their mortgage on the line. That gap is real, and naming it is the start of carrying less.

You will hear what happens when entrepreneurs stay silent too long. Amanda explains that the loneliest founders become the most vulnerable to people who do not have their best interest at heart. Knowing this protects you.

You will see how to use AI as a 60% tool, not a 90% one. The owners who lean on it for everything will produce work that feels hollow. The ones who stay the architect will raise the human and pull ahead.

If you keep holding everything yourself, the cost is not just the business. It is your sleep, your health, and your sense of who you are underneath the public face.

KEY INSIGHTS YOU CAN IMPLEMENT TODAY

The loneliness is not a personal failing. It is structural. You made the sacrifices nobody else made, so the weight sits with you. Once you accept that, you can go looking for the right room instead of pretending you do not need one.

A strong co founding team or a small group of people who genuinely get it shares the load that one set of shoulders was never built to carry. Amanda is careful not to prescribe one fix. She is clear that an outlet matters.

AI does not replace human connection, it raises the value of it. Treat it like a junior staff member. You stay the architect. You bring the heart. Throw something thin at it and you get something thin back.

Showing up unpolished is good psychology and good business. Amanda's strongest advice: stop hiding the mess. When you are disconnected from yourself, you drift toward burnout without noticing. Bringing the real you to the surface is the healthiest practice she knows.

Roy's own example shows the way through. He could not type, never could. Talk to text plus AI gave him his voice and his book. The effort was substantial, 20 years of knowledge bookended at the start, the middle, and the end. The tool did not do it for him. It massaged what he already had closer to what he meant.

GOLDEN QUOTES WORTH REMEMBERING

"This thing that you started for freedom becomes your biggest prison." - Roy Castleman

"They didn't put their mortgage on the line. They didn't make the sacrifices that you have as an entrepreneur. So it is extremely lonely." - Amanda Knarr

"It's not getting it to do it for you, it's getting it to massage what you have to be closer to what you're trying to put out there." - Roy Castleman

"Show up in the mess, in how it's working, and not be too afraid of being unpolished." - Amanda Knarr

"I don't think that there's going to be anything that replaces human connection." - Amanda Knarr

QUICK NAVIGATION FOR BUSY LEADERS

00:00 - Introduction: Why the emotional side of business is the part nobody talks about

03:30 - Amanda leaves corporate: the moment the systems no longer fit and she went deeper into the human side

07:00 - Honouring the entrepreneur: less than 2% ever start a business, and the underbelly of doing it all yourself

10:30 - The loneliness nobody admits: why your team can be passionate and you still feel alone

15:00 - The badge of honour problem: when running on no sleep gets celebrated, and where it nearly took Roy

20:00 - Vulnerability and manipulation: why the loneliest founders are the easiest to take advantage of

24:00 - AI overwhelm is real: the list that keeps growing instead of getting fixed

29:00 - The 60% tool: staying the architect and raising the human instead of replacing it

34:00 - Roy's book and finding his voice: how talk to text and AI unlocked a lifelong dream

39:00 - Conclusion: show up authentically, in the mess, and stop pushing for something other than what is

GUEST SPOTLIGHT

Name: Amanda Knarr

Bio: Amanda Knarr is a Senior Consultant at Slalom, where she helps organisations navigate transformation, change, and organisational effectiveness. With more than a decade of experience advising Fortune 500 leaders, she has worked with executives and teams on leadership, performance, resilience, and the human side of change. Amanda is founder of the Modern Finishing School, having completed her M.S. in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from the University of Kentucky, and she helps high achieving professionals build sustainable success without sacrificing their well-being. Her work sits at the meeting point of behavioural psychology, leadership development, and workplace performance, with a particular interest in burnout, perfectionism, and the challenges facing women in demanding careers.

Connect with Amanda:

Website: https://www.themodernfinishingschool.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amandaknarr/

YOUR NEXT ACTIONS

This Week: Name one thing you have been holding alone, the payroll worry, the decision keeping you up, and say it out loud to one person who genuinely understands. Not your team. Not your family. Someone who gets it.

This Month: Find your room. A small group, a co founder relationship, a therapeutic outlet, whatever fits you. The point is you stop being the only set of shoulders.

This Quarter: Pick one task you have been forcing yourself to do badly and hand 60% of it to AI while you stay the architect. Reclaim those hours for the human work only you can do.

EPISODE RESOURCES

Thinking Outside Your Brain with AI by Roy Castleman, available on Amazon.

The Modern Finishing School: https://www.themodernfinishingschool.com/

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READY TO ESCAPE THE TRAP?

Take the Freedom Score Quiz: https://scoreapp.atpbos.com/freedom

Discover how trapped you are in your business and get your personalised roadmap to freedom in under 5 minutes.

Book a Free Strategy Session: https://www.allthepower.co.uk/contact

Let's discuss how to build a business that works WITHOUT you.

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CONNECT WITH YOUR HOST, ROY CASTLEMAN

Roy is the founder of All The Power Limited and creator of The Owner's Thrive Method, a business coaching system for entrepreneurs ready to grow without burnout. As a certified Wim Hof Method Instructor and the UK's first certified BOS UP coach, Roy combines AI as a thinking methodology, wellness practices, and business operating systems to help trapped entrepreneurs reclaim their freedom.

Website: www.allthepower.co.uk

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roycastleman/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@allthepowerltd

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Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are in

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the world today. Quite an interesting subject. I'm here

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with Amanda Kanar. Did I say that right? Yes, you

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did. Thank you. And Amanda really sits at the intersection

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between the emotional side of business and the people side.

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Right. How do we, you know, how do we work

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through all these massive emotions that business owners have and.

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Yeah. Welcome to the podcast, Amanda. Thank you so much.

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I'm really happy to be here. So I'm going to

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take you back. You, you've been working previously in

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big corporate. Yeah. I love to hear that

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moment in time when you decided you weren't really employable

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anymore and you into your own, your own work. So

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tell us how that came. Yes, I was in corporate.

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I was also intersecting with government, which has its own

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level of bureaucracy and frustration. So I think I really

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felt that strain of having an entrepreneurial mindset and being

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frustrated with the systems in place and maybe some individuals

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within teams that are very well meaning but maybe didn't

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have the same kind of problem solving mentality or pace

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that I was craving. Um, so at that time I

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was working as a full time consultant, mostly with Fortune

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50 companies, doing team effectiveness work and I really

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thought to myself, I, I want to go a step

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deeper with these individuals than I am clinically allowed to

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and also which is within the sow of my work.

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So I was frustrated with this. Oh, we're touching on

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ways of working and topics such as the team agreements,

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but really this is a personality issue. We need to

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go a little bit deeper into what's happening internally for

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folks. And so I actually went back to school, got

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my degree in psychology, clinical mental health counseling and behavioral

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psychology. And since then I've been operating my own. I'm

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a founder of the Modern finishing school. So I've been

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helping not only those chief executives of on larger

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companies, but also the entrepreneurs that are new to the

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space, new to that. So I'm bringing the business acumen,

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but also we're able to pivot and be pretty nimble

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and two or three questions on that. Yeah, well, loads

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of questions on that. Right. But we'll go through it.

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So going into this, this the space for yourself, how

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long you been going now in. So I recently went

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back to school and I've been doing this full time

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for the past two and a half years. So fairly

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recently. Well, you, you've better. Yeah, the company's better than.

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Yeah. Was it 74% if you make it past the

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first year. Yeah. I love entrepreneurs. I think the entrepreneurial

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spirit is something that we don't honor enough. Yeah. And,

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yeah, we are. Get less. Less than 2% of people

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in their entire lives will start a business. And we

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look at the world, we see a problem out there

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in the world, and we think, okay, I think I

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can help with that problem. And then we do something

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different. We don't just talk about it. We get up

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and we do something about it. We get out of

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bed and we just get out of our comfortable world

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and we go and we step into it. And I

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think the challenge that I see in so many entrepreneurs

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is, is that they try and do it themselves. Right?

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Yes. There's an underbelly to that. Like, there's so many

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great things about entrepreneurs. I love this population. But there's

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also the underbelly of trying to take on absolutely everything

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ourselves. That's. That's one of them for sure. Yeah. And

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we. We believe we can. We can do it all

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ourselves. And, you know, one of the things that I

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hear so often is that it's lonely. Entrepreneurship is lonely,

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right? Because I think you go through this process of,

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yeah, okay, so let me tell my wife about it,

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Let me tell my kids about it. And after the

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third conversation, they. Can't

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speak to your staff about it, and you can't speak

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to your suppliers about it. So what do you. What

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do you recommend in that kind of space? Loneliness is

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huge. That's something else. It's fun because not only, I

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think, similar to. Similarly to yourself, you're not only your

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own entrepreneur, but you're also talking to. That's your clientele

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as well. That's the people that you're having on your

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podcast and you're interacting with. And I agree, it's a

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really fun bunch to be around. I'm also an entrepreneur,

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but working primarily as a therapist with entrepreneurs. And I

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agree with you on the positives. They are problem solvers,

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really. I'd say positive individuals. Very, very.

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You have to be. You have to be thinking glasses

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have full. You have to have this resilience that gets

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you back up again. The underbelly of that is that

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there can be a callousness that forms because holding that

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soft vulnerability, while also the resilience to keep getting back

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after failure is a really hard dynamic to balance. And

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you mentioned loneliness that I see that time and time

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again, because you can have a starting team or your.

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Your first employees that are very passionate, but it's not

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their baby. And at the end of the day, like,

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you're making decisions and the stress that's weighing on you.

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They didn't put their mortgage on the line. They didn't

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make the sacrifices that you have as an entrepreneur. So

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it is extremely lonely. And I think that there's been

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luckily more talk recently about communities, not only eo, but

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a lot of different communities for individuals to get together

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and have small groups practices to talk about all of

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that. But I do think that the, like, a therapeutic

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relationship can be helpful, especially if, if the executive coach

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or therapist understands both sides, they can speak the clinical

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lens and they also have the business acumen. But I'm

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curious, I'm curious to ask you as well. Do you

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feel like it is a gene? Did you feel like

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made that way to have the entrepreneur mindset, or do

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you think it could be learned? There's an element

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in this that I think is a gene. Right. I

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was born in Zimbabwe, I grew up in South Africa,

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and we had a slightly different set of drivers.

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If you didn't make money, you didn't eat. Yeah. So

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I often wonder about that for my daughter, getting her

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up and running and giving her that drive. But I've

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always, from when I was 11 years old, being really

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focused on how do I make money for myself, how

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do I get the independence, how do I get some

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freedom? And I think that's been. Every time I've tried

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to work for somebody, it's always felt wrong. You

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know, it's always felt like one of, one of my,

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one of my clients came through and said, you know,

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he would go into work and he'd try and fix

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all the problems. Yeah. And he'd see these problems and

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it's okay, we can do this and we can do

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this and we can do this. Yeah. So he'd try

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and fix the problems. Yeah. And the owner wouldn't. Why

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aren't we. Yeah, yeah. And that's. It just seems to

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be a wiring in how we think. And I think

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you're right, Tenacious, positive, all of these kind of things

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on top of the tree. And that's kind of why

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I love the community so much. You can go in,

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you can have a conversation, but having those deeper conversations

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about stress, about how do I deal with stress, how

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do I kind of look after myself first? Because I

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think that the deeper part of this is, yeah, this

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is our baby. Right. This is, this is, this is.

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We birthed this baby. And. Yeah. And we want to

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see it do well. And we believe that we're doing

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this for our families. We believe we're doing this for

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the community. But often we put ourselves second, you know,

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so yeah, the, the level of stress that I've ended

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up in with this. Yeah. I've ended up standing at

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the top of 130 foot tower getting ready to jump

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off. Yeah. And unfortunately that's, unfortunately that I, I've heard

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that more times than I wished is the case that

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it, the level of stress. I mean you, you also

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have it celebrated in parts of the community. People joking

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about having like a stress induced tick or

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not being able to sleep or having like bulging bloody

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veins in Silicon Valley. Like it's almost seen as a

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badge of honor to show, you know, how, how long

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have you gone without sleep or caring for yourself. And

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I, I'm fortunate to see that turning where there is

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a focus a little bit more on the holistic health.

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Because if you do care for, let's say, let's keep

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going with the child metaphor, if you're not at least

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taking care of yourself to some degree, that child's not

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going to fare very well in the long term. And

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the reason why I asked if you thought it was

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a gene or not. And I agree. I think that

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there's a piece of it which is just embedded and

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I think part of it is nature and nurture and

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mentioning Zimbabwe and growing up in South Africa and the

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poverty. Before we started recording, I was talking to Roy

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about, I grew up in a pretty depressed area myself

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and you know, very rural Appalachian background. And I think

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that I've heard a lot of very passionate entrepreneurs,

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maybe not necessarily coming from a humble background, but they

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have a why that is so deeply tied to their

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identity that they can't escape it if, if they tried.

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And that's why I think that looking inward, focusing on

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mindset, focusing on your self identity, self esteem, confidence is

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so critical because you can't, you cannot delineate between

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that line of self and the reason why you're doing

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this and, and why it means so much to you.

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So I think that in the future years we'll see

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entrepreneurs focusing a little bit more on that, on that

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holistic health focus on the health of their company as

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well. Yeah. And I think there's, there's something else that

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becomes a total disparity. Yeah. We, you,

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like you said. Yeah. Enthusiastic, positive. Yeah. But

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there's a, there's a public facing face. Yeah. Which is

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all of those things. And because of the loneliness element.

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Yeah. I'm not being able to share and not being

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able to have that connection with people. It can be

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so lonely and it can be so debilitating. When

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you can't get that stuff out, when you have to

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settle it because you can't share it with your staff

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because they get worried. You can't share it with your

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family because they get worried and you're trying to protect

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them. This has been the thing for me. I've always

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been trying to protect those people that are. I don't

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want them to start to think okay, I'm not going

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to be able to pay payroll this month so you

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just carry that all yourself. So you end up with

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this environment where this thing that you started for freedom

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becomes your biggest prison. Absolutely. I think that

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also when you're in that deeply lonely place and trying

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to get things off the ground, trying to go for

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your first seed funding or trying to prove your or

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inward time is really of the essence with scaling. People

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are also very vulnerable to manipulation. So there are a

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lot of executive coaches or folks that may not have

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the entrepreneur's best interest in mind but because they feel

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this desperation and loneliness to feel heard personally as well

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as professionally, it can be a really dangerous time period

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as well if they don't have an outlet. And I,

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I'm not going to subscribe a certain outlet for every

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individual but I do think that obviously I see the

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benefits of therapy. I also do recommend not only necessarily

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a co founder but like a strong co founding team

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that is invested as well so that it's not solely

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on one person's shoulders. I also love small groups for

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individuals but I think that wherever you end up, whatever

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tools you end up using to get through these bats,

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it's also important to just name and speak to and

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I love that you're able to own your story now

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because being able to share out

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loud that it's, it's not always sunny and that and

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that you're struggling and normalizing that is also is also

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a big part of the behavior shift. And I'm just

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thinking about like the difference traditionally between PE and VC's

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firms and having like a VC be more interested

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in like the health holistically of, of the entrepreneur and

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those are the ones that we see really investing in

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coaching and manage and managing up for those companies. And

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yeah we, we look now let's move forward a little

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bit into where this world that we live in because

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there's a real challenge in what's ideal and what's going

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to happen. We're going into the AI space right. And

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AI overwhelm is a very real thing and but

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now you. There's these billion pound companies that Feel one

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founder, one, one person working there. I think there's not

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two that have come up and that have hit that

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one. Yeah. So now if you're starting a company now,

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what do you need? How do you actually gain that,

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that connectivity that, that, that human part that allows you

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to, to actually grow and scale. Right. And I spent

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a lot of time playing with AI. It's one of,

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one of the things I do and I know you

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do that as well. So how are you seeing this

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come into the space? Yeah, it's talked about a lot.

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I talk about this a lot publicly. I've, I just

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had a panel with song I'm in Nashville, so with

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songwriters I have the head of Sony Music on with

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just doing a panel. And it's typically goes as most

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things do to the AI discussion currently and you know,

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the existential dread but also excitement, people seeing it as

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a tool, individuals recognizing that me trying to

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create like a drum cadence on a record is going

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to be very different than a professional. And really in

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some ways I see it the same as a calculator.

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This is, it matters whose hands the tool is in

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and it is a very exciting time. But when you

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think about companies, I'm actually, I'm actually working with a

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couple clients right now that were saying, oh, maybe we

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could draft an agent that can talk through personal

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struggles that people are having and give them prompt advice.

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So I, I think that there is a place for

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technology and I think it can be really helpful in

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addition to relational dynamics. But I don't think that there's

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going to be anything that replaces human connection, personal connection.

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I think that's why people listen to your podcasts. I

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think it's because they, they are seeking out heart and

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soul and individuals and not just notebook. LM telling them

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information. I think flaws are going to be more celebrated

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and in terms of what a founder, if they have

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started a success, successful AI company as a solopreneur, congrats

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first and foremost. I don't think that that means that

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they can't have very important meaningful relationships with their partners

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with. And by that I mean personal and professional partners,

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their, even their clients talking in forums, being a mentor

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in that space. So I think that it doesn't take

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away the need for relational focus even

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if, even if you're having success. I think there's something

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that I believe to the core of myself, AI is

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a 60% tool. Absolutely. And the challenge

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at the moment is people are seeing it as a

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90% tool and trying to get it to do 90%

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of the stuff. We have to remain the architect, we

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have to know what it is we want, we have

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to treat it like any junior staff member and

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we have to answer business problems with it. And I

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think what will come out of the wash in the

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next year or two is that if we can bring

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the human to the surface, if we can have those

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connections with our clients, with our suppliers, with our staff,

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if you've got a 10 user company or a 50

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user company at the moment and you can turn around

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and say, right, yeah, I'm not going to get rid

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of the human, I'm going to raise the human, right.

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I'm going to let These guys work six hours a

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day or five hours a day and I'm going to

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do 20 times the volume. And we're just going to

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focus on the human element. Those are the companies that

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are going to go, right, those companies that just lean

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on AI and say you just do everything, they're going

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to feel AI sloped. You're going to be able to

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tell, yeah. And we as a society can tell already

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if there's something that feels a little bit off if

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the human isn't kept in the loop. I also believe

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that it's going to be really hard for companies that

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are now just focused on cutting and focused on efficiencies

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and not thinking about the long term strategy to rebrand

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and get over like they may. There's been some decisions

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made which show the innovation and then you say, and

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then you have the CEO of Nivea who's like, oh,

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we're not just a chip maker, we can do this

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and this and this and this. And they're in the

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vision, in their core, you can see that they're using

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it to expand and all that's capable. And so I

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think if you are an entrepreneur and going back to

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what we were talking about as entrepreneur mindset, this is

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seen as a positive. Sure, there has to be laws,

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there have to be, you know, some guardrails in place.

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But as a positive tool to continue to grow. And

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if you tend to see things as just a hindrance

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or negative or red tape, I think that those individuals

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will likely continue to view AI that way and companies

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that have leadership viewing that that way, you'll see that

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as well. So I think that this is really going

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to be the age of the entrepreneur that we're coming

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into. I think one of the challenges that I have

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is that as an entrepreneur I'm there to fix problems,

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but I'm also there to learn Right. I love learning.

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I think that's one of the core skills of what

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makes us a different breed of people, is we're always

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driving to learn. And the first thing that happened, we

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spoke, we touched on AI overwhelm and it's such a

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real thing. I think there's 62% of people struggling with

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a overwhelm. And this, this comes about because first of

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all, I've got a list of problems that I know

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I should fix. Right? Yeah, they've been a list that's

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been there for the last 20 years. Now all of

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a sudden I start doing stuff and I realize, oh,

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AI can help me with this. So that list just

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gets bigger rather than coming back and focusing on what's

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the actual problem I want to fix and just doing

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that. Yeah, that list just gets bigger and bigger. So

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we really have to guard against that. And I think

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that we're going to have to think about tools as

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well. So whenever I think of that, about over AI

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overwhelm. And also just like the fatigue of people struggling

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to think, it reminds me of long Covid. It reminds

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me of people struggling to adapt back to work with

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young children. And it's just we're going to have to

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navigate this from, from a health perspective. The same we

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have with other previous innovations. Just like we had the,

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the blue light mask or the Blu Ray masks for,

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for screen time. And we've thought through that there's going

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to be an entire new genre of health wellness that's

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focused on combating that AI fatigue, which is so real.

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But if people are feeling that right now, I would

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just, I would just normalize, continue to normalize like you

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are. That it's. All of us are, are struggling to

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think we want to go straight to it for, for

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idea generation as opposed to just thinking on our own,

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confused with sentence and then also just kind of needing

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to reboot. Personally, I know I have, I am. I've

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done a large number of strange things in my life

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and many people have said, no, you should write a

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book, you should write a book, you should write. And

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I don't type very well. I should have learned to

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touch type when I was in school. I didn't. Yeah,

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we didn't really even have computers in school. So when

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ChatGPT came out and I could talk to talk to

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text and that was effective, that suddenly started opening up,

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you know, everything that I was able to do. So

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the possibility of writing a book became real. So I

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started talking in. So talking and talking and start talking

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my stories in And I realized that, yeah, while people

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are very, very nervous about doing an AI document

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or an AI book or an AI whatever it is.

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Yeah, it's that level of 60% that you can do.

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Yeah, yeah. 60% tool that can help you. I've written

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my book. It's called thinking outside your brain with AI.

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And the amount of time and effort that I took

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to do it was substantial. It's 20 years worth of

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knowledge. But you have to bring that to everything. You

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have to bookend at the beginning and bookend at the

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end and the middle. What is your project? What are

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you trying to do? How are you trying to get

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that out when you get it right, it's really empowering.

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This talk to text and AI has actually given me

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my voice, you know, it's incredible. Given me. Okay. Yeah,

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I went and I did a book writing retreat in

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Florida sometime last year. And yeah, I had. I'd

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gone through this process of talking my stories in and

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getting AI to get my spoken voice and then getting

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it to do my. My written voice. And yeah, that

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was. But it wasn't quite. It wasn't quite touching. Yeah,

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it wasn't. It wasn't being emotional enough. Right. Or I

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wasn't being emotional enough. And it wasn't. The AI wasn't

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being emotional. My input wasn't emotional enough. Right. And then

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I. I've been doing a program and I met this

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amazing guy called Daniel Dennis Ross. And Dennis Ross is

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a. He's a wordsmith of the most amazing capabilities. Right?

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Yeah. He. He sits on this call. There were two.

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Two and a half hours, 100 people on the call,

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and everyone was crying. And that's how powerful he was

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with words. And I said, I really want to be

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able to do that because I want to be able

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to talk to my audience. Right. But I don't have

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that skill, so how do I do that? And I

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went through the process of learning some of it. I

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spent some time learning it. Then I was like, okay,

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how can I get AI to use this? The skill

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that I know is out there that I need to

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help you write in a better way. So took my

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own stories. I spent hours and hours cooking those stories

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in. And I was like, okay, I'm going to apply

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these principles from Dennis Ross to that. And I literally

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sat there and I read the first one, and it

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brought me to tears. My own story that I've been

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telling people for years and years and years. Okay. And

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that, to me is the power of AI. It's not

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getting it to do it for you, it's getting it

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to massage what you have yet to be closer to

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what you're trying to put out there. Absolutely. And that's

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so empowering. I'd love. Is it available at this point?

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I'd love to see, to get you to sign a

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copy. I might shoot you one. Yeah, no, it's, it's

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on Amazon. It's. Yeah, yeah. And it's, it's just

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the lifelong dream to be able to go out and

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do something that I wasn't able to do and yeah.

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You don't need to make it difficult anymore. It doesn't

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need to take you. I mean I start the book

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and I talk about, you know, I'm an author, I'm

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not a writer. I've never been able to be a

429

writer. Right. But I definitely authored every single part of

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this book. I put my heart and soul into it.

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Yeah. And that's, I think that's really for me the

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power of AI. There's a thousand skills out there that

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we used to have to go out and we used

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to in such a deep way learn the stuff. We

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needed to put it into our mind, we needed to

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take it in and process it and then we'd maybe

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go away from that course that we just learned, leave

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it for, I don't know. Yeah, six months and start

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doing that work. And then we have to recall we

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don't need to do that anymore. Right. There's a thousand

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experts right at our fingertips. Absolutely. It's a relief. I'm

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doing the same thing. I've vibe coded my own check

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ins with clients. So how I'm using AI in a

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therapy space where in between sessions they have a place

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to remember how they're doing that day, things that are

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coming up, how they're feeling in different categories of their

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wellness. And so I can take that information, that good

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data similar to you telling your, your story in detail

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to AI and how and be and show up as

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a better therapist and counselor for, for those individuals. So

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it's, it's remarkable. I'm very excited for the next coming

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years. Yeah. I mean I've been going through this process

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now probably for about seven months now of learning the

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coding piece as well web coding and how it all

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works and, and you know, the reality is a lot

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of people are social media, social media that says, oh

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this is just easy, you just do this and it's

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not, it's very, very difficult. I've got two different sets

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of short code and codex and they do a lot

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for me they do a huge amount. They do social

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media posting, they do all sorts of stuff. But to

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make sure it's in my voice, the number of iterations

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that I've had to go through is insane. And it's

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also energetics. I think it's how you show up, even

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with that first input or those first prompting questions. It

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really is a lot, especially with social media about how,

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how you're showing up to it. The audience can, can

468

tell. So yeah, if you just throw it out there

469

and say, give me something, you're just gonna something. If

470

you throw your heart into it, then you'll get hot

471

out, right? Absolutely. And I felt that with certain creators,

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I can tell and I don't know exactly how. It's

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the same with images where you just know and it's

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not, it's not as simple as like the three, like

475

the this, this and this, or like some of the

476

pros, because I know that people can speak over that

477

at this point or they know how to take out

478

the ampersands. But there's something that you can tell and

479

I think that that does get across to people. Yeah,

480

that's a double edged sword. Right. Because a lot of

481

people are saying, oh, that was written by AI and

482

yes, you can tell it was written by AI but

483

you, where do you draw the line between. I wouldn't

484

have written that before. Right. We have word

485

on our computers where you can double click to have,

486

oh, did you mean this word? Which is a better,

487

you know, a better synonym for what you were trying

488

to say. And we use that tool and technology to

489

rework. Or you have a ghostwriter. I think that, yeah,

490

the same can be said. It's definitely a scale. So

491

where do you see before we wrap up, where do

492

you see the next six to eight months going in

493

this space? The same rapid growth that we have been

494

seeing up until now. I think that the past, if

495

you look back a year or two ago, what was

496

happening to now, I think that we can anticipate the

497

same vast scale of growth. I think that we can

498

also anticipate the same levels of burnout and

499

loneliness and craving for human connection and authenticity

500

and flaw that we, that you have seen popping up

501

recently. I think that we'll see that growing as well.

502

And then that's, that's aside from everything geopolitical and going

503

on in the stock market, but a lot of change,

504

a lot of excitement to come. I think that it's

505

an opportunity to grab life by the horns and look

506

in play really in a way that we haven't had

507

the luxury of before. So personally, I'm, I'm looking forward

508

to the six next six or eight months. And I

509

think there's also a release of control where I don't

510

know. I don't know what the future holds. I don't

511

think any of us do. And I think that, that,

512

that letting go is also a really healthy practice that

513

some people are not ready for. A lot of people

514

that I work with or have worked with are not

515

going to be ready for, but it's probably, probably extremely

516

healthy in the long term for us as a society.

517

Yeah, I see a world in the future that has,

518

you know, AI doing the repetitive tasks and humans connecting

519

more, going on more holidays, working on art, creativity. Absolutely.

520

Yeah, those, those things. I mean, we've all done a

521

nice chatgpt picture or a nice banana picture. And you're

522

right, it just doesn't have. Doesn't have a heart. Right.

523

There's a lot of these training courses now. Okay. Just

524

go and walk around outside with a camera and make

525

it messy and it's going to be this wave of

526

us finding our feet again. Absolutely. So if

527

you were to give your entrepreneurs, the people you're speaking

528

to, one bit of advice from a psychological point of

529

view, from a point of view of how they look

530

after themselves, what might that be? I think that

531

it's from a psychological point of view, but also good

532

business practice is to show up authentically, to show up

533

in the mess, in how it's working and not be

534

too afraid of being unpolished. I think that that's

535

missed a lot and it really connects to your consumers.

536

So seeing the building, being brought into the building of

537

something as well as for yourself, if you're not being,

538

if you're being disingenuous, if you are disintegrated from self,

539

that leads to a really unhealthy place where you are

540

going to a place of burnout without connecting into your

541

body. So I think the more that you can just

542

try to take somatic practices in, try to show up

543

authentically recognizing where you are, even if it's not great

544

and just being okay with, with what it is and

545

not pushing for something else, that's the healthiest

546

practice I can imagine. Well, Amanda, thank you very much

547

for joining me. It's been a pleasure talking. Absolute pleasure.

548

No, thank you. And I can't wait to read the

549

book Magic.