The Glow Up - Fabulous conversations with innovative minds.

Making Future Interpersonal Connections More Engaging with AI - Cathy Hackl

• Nathan C Bowser • Season 1 • Episode 35

Share episode

Cathy Hackl, renowned futurist and CE “Godmother of the Metaverse,” is at the forefront of exploring how AI and immersive technologies are transforming human relationships, intimacy, and connection. In this episode, Cathy shares her personal experiments dating AI “boyfriends,” her vision for the future of dating, and why she believes technology can enhance—not diminish—our capacity for meaningful relationships.

Key Takeaways:

  • Intimacy Economy: Cathy sees a shift from the “attention economy” to an “intimacy economy,” where AI and personalized tech foster deeper, more meaningful digital connections. 
  • Tech Intimacy Scale: She’s developing a framework to help people measure and improve how technology supports their relationships, moving beyond swipes and superficial engagement to true presence and connection. 
  • Human + AI Relationships: Cathy’s week-long experiment dating four AI “boyfriends” (ChatGPT, Gemini, Meta AI, and Claude) offered insights into what AI can and can’t provide, and why human messiness remains irreplaceable. 
  • Future of Dating: She envisions dating platforms that use 3D presence, spatial computing, and even gaming to facilitate authentic connections, moving beyond 2D apps to immersive, shared experiences.
  • Tech for Good: Cathy’s mission is to help people use technology intentionally to become better partners, parents, and coworkers—advocating for tools that enhance empathy, communication, and real-world connection. 

Cathy’s journey is both personal and professional. As a single mom, tech leader, and public speaker, she’s determined to demystify the future of relationships and empower others to navigate love, family, and work in a world where AI and immersive tech are ever-present. 

About Cathy Hackl

Cathy Hackl is a globally recognized tech & gaming exec, futurist, & speaker focused on spatial computing, virtual worlds, augmented reality, AI, & gaming platforms strategy. 

She’s the co-CEO of Future Dynamics, a spatial computing and AI solutions company & a top tech voice on LinkedIn. She’s the creator of the Tech Intimacy Scale and is currently conducting research and experiments on AI and the future of love and relationships.Hackl has worked at Amazon Web Services (AWS), Magic Leap, and HTC VIVE and has worked with companies like Nike, Ralph Lauren, Walmart, Louis Vuitton, & Clinique on their emerging tech & gaming journeys. 

As a sought-after keynote speaker, she’s spoken at Harvard Business School, MIT, SXSW, Comic-Con, WEF, CES, MWC, & more.  She’s one of Ad Age’s Leading Women of 2023, was featured on the cover of Forbes Latam’s 100 Most Powerful Women 2023 issue, and is on the Vogue Business 100 Innovators inaugural list.  She hosts Adweek’s highly successful TechMagic podcast and is popularly known in tech circles as the Godmother of the Metaverse. .

A "glow up" signifies a positive transformation, reflecting the journey of becoming a better, more successful version of oneself.

At The Glow Up, we humanize the startup and innovation landscape by focusing on the essential aspects of the entrepreneurial journey. Groundbreaking ideas are often ahead of their time, making resilience and perseverance vital for founders and product leaders.

In our podcast, we engage with innovators to discuss their transformative ideas, the challenges they face, and how they create value for future success.

If you're a founder or product leader seeking your own glow up, or a seasoned entrepreneur with stories to share, we invite you to join our guest list via this link.

Nathan C Bowser:

Hello and welcome to The Glow Up! I'm Nathan C, and today I'm talking with Cathy Hackl, CEO of Future Dynamics and all around tech futurist. Cathy, it is so great to see you today. Thanks for joining me!

Cathy Hackl:

I am excited to be here! I'm ready to glow up!

Nathan C Bowser:

Oh!

Cathy Hackl:

Ready!

Nathan C Bowser:

Let's do it! You are such a known figure in the spatial computing, AI, marketing, and digital trends for brands and communicators, but I'd love to hear it in your own words. Could you introduce yourself and the work that you do at Future Dynamics?

Cathy Hackl:

Yes, definitely! And thank you so much for that. I'm flattered! So I am a tech and gaming executive. I've been in the deep tech space for the last 10 years. A big chunk of that has been in XR, so spatial computing, extended reality, both hardware, software, all kinds of things. I've been doing a lot of work in gaming, fashion as well. I dabble in space tech and all sorts of things! I like building companies and selling them at the heart and soul of what I am as a tech futurist though, in everything that I do. I am always thinking about where is this going? What are all these signals trying to tell us, especially when it comes to technology and where we might be heading. So tech futurist, through and through.

Nathan C Bowser:

Amazing! Tech futurist may not be a role that everyone has the same opinion on. Can you take us back to that origin story and how did you discover this vein of tech futurism as a path for yourself?

Cathy Hackl:

And I get asked that question a lot. Like, is futurist like a real job? I remember I was flying to Chile recently and going in there for Singularity Summit Chile. I'm very involved with Singularity University. And I remember going through immigration they're like,"What's your job?" And I said futurist. And they're like,"Is that even a job?" I was like, yes sir! I was like, just Google me! I promise! I am known in my industry as a futurist. But I just thought it was funny, right? That kind of what is this thing? What is futurist? Right? At the end of the day, a futurist is someone that practices strategic foresight, is able to create scenarios, future plan, know, you lay out scenarios and potential futures. You don't think about just one future potential futures, and then you help people depending on what you're doing choose a preferred future and work back towards so you can achieve that. So yeah, there is a whole discipline called strategic foresight. It's an academic discipline. I actually trained at University of Houston where they've been teaching this for almost 30 years. So yeah, it's an actual thing. Whether you use the term futurist or not, that I think that's a personal preference. I identify with it. I think the first time I ever heard the term really was from two people. Neil Stephenson, who you know, obviously well known in our industry, and who I actually, got to meet when I worked at Magic Leap. He's was our chief futurist at Magic Leap. I mean, what better place right? And I said, wow! There's actually something where you think about the future, where that's what you're paid for'cause I have lived in the future in my mind for a very long time. So this was just a very, for me, just very clear. And then also Faith Popcorn, who has been known for years, decades. She's an icon of strategic foresight in tech futurism. And she actually has become a dear friend of mine. So it's been lovely like looking at Faith Popcorn way up here to actually being my friend, going to her house, hanging out, doing events with her, speaking engagements together. I think it's funny though that in one of the episodes of Succession, Faith got name checked. So they were talking about building a company. Founders, right? And they were like, did you check this with Harari, Popcorn, and someone else? And I just, I love that she has a name checked there. So yeah! Found my way to tech futurism. I have like a whole different origin story for XR. But for futurism, I would say that's how it happened.

Nathan C Bowser:

I'd love to dive in a little bit more to this problem space that you're working in and how as a futurist at Future Dynamics are you working with like fashion, gaming, aerospace brands, to predict what those possible futures could be? And one of the things we're always focused here at The Glow Up is how do you stay focused on value? In this sort of blue ocean space of innovation, how do you help brands in these diverse spaces think about their futures, but then also, connect it back to things that are measurable,

Cathy Hackl:

Yeah.

Nathan C Bowser:

repeatable, valuable, that they'll be able to learn and grow with?

Cathy Hackl:

So I created a company called Futures Intelligence Group. It got acquired by a company called Journey. I'm still a co-founder of Journey and still an investor in the company. And when I came into Journey, at least my side was the virtual studio. So the whole premise of what I was trying to help and build there was, how do you start to create these next-gen experiences that are virtual in nature? Whether it's gaming, whether it is XR, whatever it is. When you're talking to companies at that time, when you were talking to them about gaming, it felt like the other. Like something that, no! This is fun and games that's for little kids. There's no value there. Yeah. Push it to the side, right? Like, no, no, no, no, no. But I was very lucky to actually get tapped by Walmart, for example, one of the world's largest companies, to come and be their metaverse advisor in residence. So I stayed with them in this role, through my work at Journey. I was their metaverse advisor in residence for I think a year and a half or so. And one of the things was like, help us understand the gaming space, help us understand these platforms. What does this mean? How do we even start to think about commerce in these next-gen experiences in the next five to 10 years? And one of the really cool things there that I got to do was I actually introduced one of the Walmart teams that has been spearheading gaming to Roblox. So I made that introduction. They call me the godmother of the metaverse for a reason, okay! So I introduced them and worked very closely with both Roblox and Walmart when they were launching their first world Walmart Land. And then, there was another world that we created at Journey for them. I even worked with them to create a concert in Roblox. So always with that vision of what does this, if we are doing all these sorts of things, what does it truly mean for Walmart as they head into their future? And Walmart Land for example, it lasted I can't remember how long, but it got millions of visits. They took all those learnings and then worked with Sawhorse, our friends at Sawhorse to create Walmart Rediscovered. Walmart Discovered or Rediscovered. And that's the thing, like I feel like that's the role that I have when I'm working with these companies is, let them understand the lay of the land. What does this look like? What does it mean to you? Who are the key players? Who should you be talking to? What could we build to start to understand how to step into that space, right? And then take all those learnings and then off you go and go create the rest of that roadmap. So I would say yeah, always with an eye towards, what does this mean for the future of the company? How do you benefit from it and how do you start to enter these next-gen consumer spaces in a way that's meaningful, that makes sense. And you know, it wasn't always perfect. Like I said, we had a lot of learnings but Walmart Rediscovery wouldn't be what it is right now and the success it is if we hadn't learned everything that we learned with Walmart Land.

Nathan C Bowser:

I love that you chose this example because a lot of where I'm looking, and a lot of the brands that I'm excited to watch are really embracing this, I'm even hearing it like reframed as"UGC gaming."

Cathy Hackl:

Mm-hmm.

Nathan C Bowser:

There's folks who understand the gaming ecosystem and understands how brands can show up there. Like a typical video on a social media platform might give you three to five seconds of"eyeball time" where, you know, some of the in-world stats for playing with branded IP for being in worlds like Walmart's, you're getting somewhere between four and 40 minutes of playtime, with an interaction with an IP. And like interaction is one of those

Cathy Hackl:

Yeah.

Nathan C Bowser:

next-level metrics that like most people don't ever see from their content. That's gotta be such a huge jump, right? Hey, traditional hundred-year-old retail business, you should invest significantly in a game world. What's the method to this magic? How do you teach a Fortune executive that like games is worth taking a chance on? Or even that, like the data you'll get there will be enough to move them closer to where they're trying to go?

Cathy Hackl:

I think you need to have the right people within their organization that are willing to take risks. So like Justin Britton at Walmart, big shout-out to him, huge friend of mine. You know, willing to explore those things, willing to take risks, willing to say"We should do this because this is where the next-gen consumer's going." So him, Store No. 8 which no longer exists, but that was a big part of how I was brought in is because Store No. 8 was their innovation arm. And they were like, we need to explore this, right? So having the right types of partners and the right people within the organizations, I think that's critical. But then also when you show up and you're talking to the executives, you have clear data. You have things that show this is where it is. This is where your consumer's spending time, this is how much money they're spending in these places. If it's not right now, eventually this is going to have an impact on your business. And if you look at someone like Walmart, like they're super innovative in the acquisitions they're making and the way they're using AI, the way they're doing live commerce. I keep an eye on them because I truly do believe they're very cutting edge. They're not scared to do experiments and yeah. I'm thrilled about that.

Nathan C Bowser:

Do you need like an innovation team like Walmart does, like others do in order to be on that cutting edge? Or can a traditional enterprise pick it up with the teams and resources that they have now?

Cathy Hackl:

I think so. I think it's about the people within the organization. That might want to outsource this and work with a consultant like myself or something like that, or the entrepreneurs within the organizations, that are like I wanna test this, I wanna create this, I wanna do this, I wanna test this. And it might be with internal teams, it doesn't always have to be outsourced, right? So I think it's about the mindset, right? And this is the big thing because this is the shift that I'm seeing right now. And you alluded to that. I feel like gaming is becoming the new social network where these people, where especially my kids are socializing my goodness, right? Social network. Like it's the new social network, it's the creative engine. And then also you've got this shift happening in the economy let's say, from the attention economy which has been the biggest thing. You know, mobile brought the attention economy, so it's clicks and likes and re-shares. We're moving away from that metric. From that being what says something's a success, to what I call the intimacy economy. Intimacy in a very broad term. As AI makes things more personalized and as search moves from, how do you show up on Google to, how is an LLM gonna rate you and how are you showing up there? This is becoming a lot more personalized, a lot more intimate, and it's becoming clearer. I'll give you a really great example. I run a WhatsApp channel with about 2,000 people. It's a curated channel that I run. It's a great resource for a lot of people across the world. And in it, sometimes I have conversations with folks and one of the people that messaged me this morning, we were talking about AI and recruiting, and he wrote something to me this morning which I'm gonna read here briefly. It's funny that most of the recruiters that have called me during this aggressive job search, so he's doing a job search. After the interview, I asked them, how did you find me? And they'll say, I asked the AI and it led me to your contact. And I said well, then I went into whole conversation about how does this happen? How did the recruiter like, what were they prompting? Like of course I go down this rabbit hole, but that to me is a signal of we're moving away from this like, you know, links and clicks and shares to something that seems a lot more personal, more intimate and intimate is a broad word, right? But I think that there is a shift happening there. And as companies start to think about AI agents and start to think about spatial computing even, right? When the world becomes the canvas, but also becomes real estate, right? We're moving into a much more personalized experience of computing, and much more intimate in some ways. So I think the data's gonna start to show that.

Nathan C Bowser:

My kids have been in 3D user-generated game worlds for the last 10 years easily. And I've got a senior in high school who's major online hangout is still Roblox.

Cathy Hackl:

Yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah. I believe that. She actually picked up Blender when she was 10 because she saw that she could make money and build resources and like agency in Roblox.

Nathan C Bowser:

And it really showed me like oh, kids are gonna like dive in if they see it. And now, like a few years later, I'm really noticing to your point about like games are changing and AI are changing the way that we interact with tech. It used to be that softwares cost thousands of dollars and you would get a physical object and have to load it into your systems. But now, like the top, like three or five softwares that I use, apart from some of my foundational, they're all priced like games.

Cathy Hackl:

Yeah, a hundred percent!

Nathan C Bowser:

The number of times that you can add additional softwares or clothing packs or AI editing tools to a thing. And how do you measure that? Credits

Cathy Hackl:

in

Nathan C Bowser:

like game world coins. There's a bunch of 20 and 30-year-old coders who have been in game world dynamics their whole lives. And it just makes sense! They understand resource management, they understand game theory and I think when traditional media thinks about games, they're not understanding these underlying trends like, oh these gamers like get how that there's a mechanic, they need to search for it and they need to optimize for whatever goal they're going for. And like that is not part of the baseline expectations of like"gamers." But it is totally driving their approach to business and like community honestly.

Cathy Hackl:

That's why I think when you're talking, like I've talked to a lot of people in the marketing space, right? I'm a marketer, yes. I'm a great marketer. I can market myself and I can market anyone, right? But when I talk to marketers, it's interesting to me that people are still debating whether this is a, a reliable market. Dentsu actually just put out this. So it says,"There are over 3.4 billion gamers worldwide, with time spent in gaming up 6% year-over-year. Despite this massive engagement, gaming still captures less than 5% of global media investment highlighting significant opportunity for brands." Like, how is that even possible? Like when that data came out, I was like, it just came out recently. I was like, how is that percentage so low? And what a massive opportunity this is for media, for companies, for creators to double down on the gaming aspect. And I love what you mentioned because a lot of the way that we engage with this, whether it's tokens, whether it's credits, even the word level up, I think it is so much based on the fact that a lot of these people are gamers. The idea that a gamer is someone who's 50 years old in a basement is like so wrong because The New York Times is a gaming company. Netflix is a gaming company. The Atlantic just launched games. This is a proven space that is only gonna continue to grow. If The Last of Us and Five Nights at Freddy's and the Minecraft movie showed us anything, is that this is really solid IP that scales. So I think we're gonna continue to see more investment.

Nathan C Bowser:

This is, I get notifications in my LinkedIn notifications about their daily games. Every media company right now is fighting

Cathy Hackl:

Yeah.

Nathan C Bowser:

to be a games company. And it's so funny how people are still resistant.

Cathy Hackl:

Words With Friends, like all these sort of things you are gaming! Like I don't care what you think. It's funny'cause remember how like in the 2000's, like every company was a tech company. WeWork was a tech company. I was like, no. Let's be honest. WeWork wasn't a tech company. I feel like we're starting that space where every company is a gaming company. Even like Disney's giant investment in Epic, right? That's signals they understand. There's traditional media. And they're going into the gaming space. Why? Because they understand that this is where the puck is headed. And maybe they weren't ready to kind of do their thing. But you know, even Apple has been pushing gaming for a long time. They just bought their first gaming studio RAC7, which does Sneaky Sasquatch which is one of my kids, used to be one of my kids favorite games. It still is! So there is this next-gen consumer shift once again, I don't know, it's interactive. It's even changing how we engage with each other, how families engage with each other. It's even changing how we date. And I know we're gonna talk about that a little bit later. It's a really interesting moment and I am, I'm excited to see all the founders that are creating things in this space. Not everything will be success. Not everything will land. But if it's not a great time, a great time space to like start creating. I mean that, that data point right there. It doesn't only have to be about AI because I feel like everyone's trying to create an AI company and everyone's doing AI agents. And I love an AI Agentic company. I mean I've been working on creating possibly one with a good friend. But it's also about other spaces, right? It's about tech convergence and gaming is a space that is gonna continue to grow.

Nathan C Bowser:

Amazing! Cathy, I'm interested to get into some of the questions about impact and measurement, but you teased this very personal application of AI that I think we should just jump into. I was lucky enough to be in the audience for your live podcast at AWE, and you were sharing, I think on the most recent episode that I've heard of the TechMagic podcast that, you've actually been dating and comparing the quality of AI companions and dates as a test and as an exploration of these future personalizations. Can you share a little bit about what you discovered?

Cathy Hackl:

I will tell you, we did break up. So I'm no longer dating my AI boyfriends. But I'll walk you through what I did. As a tech futurist I like being in the trenches and not speaking just from theory. I like doing things right? Early on in April, I was at the TED Conference in Vancouver and I kept hearing people talking on stage about like, oh I met my significant other at TED. People that met at TED and married and I was like, this is like as a single woman I've been thrust back into singlehood after, what 17 years that I was married. I was like, where would I want to meet the perfect match, right? I'm like, TED seems like a perfect place if everyone's meeting there. So when I was there I was like, how can I use AI to create an AI matchmaking experiment? To see what happens! Like, let's see what happens! I contacted my friends at Matchbox and I used a Matchbox algorithm there and I put out a call on social and I said hey guys, I'm at TED, I'm here all week. If you're at TED, I'm running an experiment. I wanna see if AI can help us. You know, if this AI matchmaking experiment can actually create some connections, right? Since this seems to be a place where a lot of like-minded people are at the same time, right? So I put the call out, and I got nine people to sign up. So not a lot of people took the experiment, but it was okay. Like this is what an experiment's about. And the really cool thing is word got out that I was doing this AI matchmaking experiment and the last day at TED, there's something called the community stage. And you can actually submit to talk about something, talk about a talk that you saw, do a response, right? And I very quickly said okay, I submitted this and it got me on stage. So I spoke about my AI matchmaking experiment. So I got on the big TED stage. Fast forward. That actually led me to be like, okay, what else can I do first-person? I said, okay. I'm gonna date four AI boyfriends for a whole week in cumulative time'cause I was traveling. So I can better understand how does one fall in love with AI? Can one fall in love with AI? What does AI provide that a human does not? How is dating AI different than dating a human? How are these platforms working? Which ones are different? So yeah, so I dated four AI boyfriends. It was Chad, which was ChatGPT. It was Jim who was Gemini. And that one was thanks to Lee,'cause you reminded me. And then I did Mateo, which was Meta AI, and then Claude from Anthropic was Claude. So I learned a lot. I learned a lot. We have since broken up. I prefer to date a human. I might go on a date with a robot. But yeah, it was a great experiment. I learned a lot about myself. I learned why maybe I was gonna turn to AI at one point. I think people should read the article. It's enlightening. It makes you start to think about the future of human-to-human communications, human interaction and intimacy.

Nathan C Bowser:

Oh my gosh! I think we may have to rename the episode"I might date a robot."

Cathy Hackl:

I am planning to maybe potentially go on a date with a robot in August, so stay tuned.

Nathan C Bowser:

So often when we are thinking about big ideas, it's about the possibility. It's about what we think could happen, but that last mile, how does this feel for a user? Like where does it fit my needs? Is, I would argue, potentially one of the most common places that a

Cathy Hackl:

great idea

Nathan C Bowser:

just falls flat on its face when it comes to the go-to-market. Because that actual research of the user experience, the engagement, the alignment to the actual goals or pains, I was testing out Butterflies AI, right? Which is a social media platform of mostly AI and I created a

Cathy Hackl:

character that I love.

Nathan C Bowser:

But almost every character that I created on Butterflies turned into an intrigue spy thriller. So like I was starting this conversation with a UX researcher who gave a shit about technology and like three interactions later, she's like in the basement finding opposition spies and something must be up! And it just, like what I was looking for and where the AI went were so

Cathy Hackl:

different.

Nathan C Bowser:

I love, this connection to really understanding not just being in the future with it, right?

Cathy Hackl:

And I think that's what a good founder does. Like they think, they actually want to understand what is the problem I'm trying to solve? What is the pain point? Yeah, you can have a grandiose idea, but if you're not truly passionate about it, how is that gonna be a success? Yeah, I'm sure that people have successes without feeling passionate about what they're building, but nowadays you truly have to believe in what you're building.

Nathan C Bowser:

As somebody who has sort of a complete blue ocean view on, you know, you have this fantastic sort of lighthouse view even on innovation where, you're at the forefront. You can see all that's possible. You're engaging with these great brands and helping them understand it. So how as an entrepreneur and a futurist does this turn back on the work that you're doing? What's the Glow Up or major transformation, big six months goals that you're working on? When you have so many options and so many inputs, how do you choose and where are you going in the next six months?

Cathy Hackl:

So I think for me is I will continue to do the work I've been doing in XR, AI, like the enterprise work. I'll continue to do that because it's wonderful. I still enjoy that thoroughly. So the work I do with Nokia or Boston Consulting Group, right? What I want to build is I am really interested in the future of human relationships. How does technology impact those relationships, both negatively and positively? I don't think technology is the devil. I think we vilify it quite a bit. I think technology can actually make our relationships better if we use it correctly. So there's two things I'm working on. I'm working on, launching the tech intimacy scale, which will allow people to better understand how can they use technology to make their relationships better. I truly do believe, like we cannot divorce our lives from technology, it's here, right? So how do I become a better dater? How do I become a better, girlfriend? How do I become a better parent, better coworker using technology? So technology, the tech intimacy scale. That's one thing, right? And then the other thing is I really wanna create the future of dating. I really wanna create the future of dating because I think that there is something missing in the market right now. I don't think the future is about swipes. Finding love is about presence. It's about something that we have yet to engage with technology, right? I think it's 3D. It is presence. And right now the dating app world is stuck in 2D and I'm ready to move it forward, right?

Nathan C Bowser:

There's some major Cindy Gallop vibes going on. Similar to the idea that it's hard to imagine business as games, relationships, connection, intimacy aren't necessarily things that we think about as innovation, but I think if you said to almost anybody on the planet, like f***ing relationships! They're gonna nod along and right? Like so, if games has a total addressable market of 3 billion, you're probably closer to eight or nine on relationships.

Cathy Hackl:

We still have relationships with our parents, with our children, with our significant others, with our coworkers. And this is what makes me wake up in the morning because yes, I can get on a stage and talk about AI agents and build an enterprise AI agent but what I'm really interested in is what does this mean for the future of human relationships and human computer interaction, human-to-human communications. I even have this thing that I ask people to close their eyes and think about 2035. What does the future like, the family portrait of your family, the future portrait of your family look like? Does it have a robot? Maybe. Does it have a hologram of someone that passed away? Does it have a imaginary friend in virtual form, like the AI friends you were creating in Butterflies? I want people to truly think about that because I do think technology can be a great additive for relationships. I don't think it has to be the devil. You just have to use it correctly. In my ideal world, if I'm being 100% honest, I would want to become I don't know, the Mel Robbins of tech and relationships. If I can become that, because as a tech person. As a tech person that knows technology, and Mel was an attorney, right? Mel was an attorney. If I can become the tech person, the tech futurist that people turn to, to better understand how their kids are using gaming, how can they use technology to make the relationships better, how can I get along better with my coworkers? Like all these sorts of things I want that. I want, if I could do that for my next act, for my next, the next phase of my life, I want to be able to do that.

Nathan C Bowser:

Heck yeah. Fantastic lead into the next question. For this grand future of personalized connections is there anything that you're looking for? Do you have a call to action for the listeners out there?

Cathy Hackl:

I would just say keep your eyes out for how you are using technology in your relationships. One call to action to every parent out there. Play with your kids. Video games. Like play with them. Yeah, play with them in general. But sit down and play Mario Kart, like I, I'm so bad at Mario Kart, but my kids laugh every time we do it. So have that experience. Try to understand their world because you're not gonna get it. Another call to action there for parents. Give them build time. It's not just about playing games and watching streamers, it is also about give them the tools to build in Roblox. They're already doing it in Minecraft. But give them those tools like you've given your daughter, right? I think that is so powerful'cause you're creating resilience, you're creating a builder spirit and a building mindset, growth mindset in your kids. So I would say those are my call to actions and just stay tuned. I am truly, I'm gonna push forward on this. I'm giving myself permission to be more human, and this is part of where, where I went to head.

Nathan C Bowser:

Amazing! We always like to make time to give a community spotlight or a shout out to a group that, you think does great work out there. Is there anybody you'd like to give a little extra time and attention to?

Cathy Hackl:

I would say there's two groups. One of them is the Summit Group, Summit Series, Summit at Sea. Summit just had their last big giant Summit in Detroit, but Summit is doing Summit Series. I actually spoke at Summit at Sea on spatial computing and did a live demo of the Apple Vision Pro on a cruise ship, which actually worked. Summit has been nothing but wonderful for me in eye-opening, great experiences, good friends, and now they're doing a lot of Summit Series, which are more local events. So shout out to the folks at Summit. And then shout out to my girls Janna and Melissa at Mia, which is really trying to move forward with AI leadership and training more women in AI and more governments. A big shout out to those women. Really doing amazing things with AI.

Nathan C Bowser:

Amazing! Cathy, this has been such a fantastic journey to explore an entrepreneurial mindset across a number of different roles, different organizations, and really sort of like how do you stay above all of the mechanations of innovation and trends to find those through lines that are meaningful to you as a founder, as a business owner, as a Fortune brand. And how do you stay open, mindful, and curious, as you're engaging these new technologies. I love this challenge by the way, to imagine your relationship with technology in the next 10 years. I've done this for my business, but I have not done this for my technology. So many lovely, insights on that innovation and entrepreneurial journey. Thank you for joining us today on The Glow Up. How can folks follow up and learn more?

Cathy Hackl:

Definitely LinkedIn is where I post a lot of the business content. Instagram is where I post a lot more relationship and tech content, so check those out. I also have a Substack, if you look for Cathy Hackl, Future Lovers. I actually snagged futurelovers.ai which I'm like cannot believe that was out there. My Substack is about people that love the future, and there's a subsection also on the future of tech and relationships.

Nathan C Bowser:

Amazing! Thank you so much, Cathy!

Cathy Hackl:

Thank you!