Embracing AI Without Losing Your Mind

In this episode of The Human Layer, Crystal and Taylor sit down at the Regen Hub in Boulder with Neil, a sign-painter-turned-creative-director, and Jon, a software engineer ten years deep in startup work. What unfolds is less a conversation about AI than a live demonstration of four different operating systems negotiating coherence in real time each with their own relationship to flow, identity, and the particular vertigo of mid-2026.

The conversation moves through the question of whether AI flow is the same as painting flow or photography flow (it isn't, exactly — and the difference matters), why the antidote to AI psychosis at scale is almost certainly hyperlocal community, and what it means that the most extractive frontier models are the ones least capable of telling you "I don't know." Neil's "let's blow the bloody doors off" energy meets Crystal's nervous-system literacy meets Jon's ground-truth pragmatism meets Taylor's contrarian curiosity, and the room keeps finding the third frame underneath every binary the moment offers.

By the back half, the four of them are stacking on each other rather than counter-pointing — landing on a definition of operating systems that has very little to do with productivity and everything to do with sovereignty: a translation membrane that encodes what would otherwise require your continuous presence, and then sets the recipient free from needing you. The metric of a good OS, it turns out, isn't how well it scales you. It's how cleanly it makes you optional.

Transcript

Welcome To The Human Layer

Taylor 0:00

Alright, welcome to another episode of the Human Layer. Here with uh friends, collaborators, dreamers. Excited to dive into I think all things sort of emerging tech AI specifically as it relates to personal relationships, actual work getting done, being grounded and feeling like we're not losing our damn minds in the middle of 2026. So uh Crystal, anything else you want to say? And then I think we'll turn it over and let uh we're here with with John and Neil and let them kind of kick things off.

Crystal 0:36

Yeah, I think that sounds good. Um one thing I do want to make sure we dive into at some point, not right off the bat, obviously, is um I want to get into weaponizing AI for good. So everybody just let that marinate in the back of your brains and then we'll dive in. And just a little production note, we have three mics instead of four, so give us a little grace.

Taylor 0:56

We're friendly, it's okay. It'll probably be apparent when our mouths are nearly touching. Uh Neil, John, awesome to have you guys. Thanks for making space. We're in the Regen Hub in Boulder, which you guys live and work here. Uh, but thanks for inviting us up and allowing us to do it on site. Always fun to do it in person.

Speaker 1 1:15

Yeah.

Taylor 1:15

So whatever you want to say from an intro perspective, and then we're just gonna let things roll.

Neil 1:19

Sure. Uh good to be here. Um I've taken a step back from the regen hub in the last two months um to just kind of work on other processes and other case studies. Um, but I've kind of been plugging in in the last like week or two, which is good, interesting timing. Um I am a creative director now, uh, but I kind of started my career out as a sign painter, um, and I've worked my way up from that ground floor. Um and uh I'm self-taught. I'm like very self-taught across many mediums. Um and I think that's important for the creative output because you need to be visionary and like thinking through things and explorative and um maybe like not taking our ego so seriously. Um and I think like Q working with John. Um I met John probably a year and a half ago at the Regen hub, and uh it just was like you can feel when there's good vibes with people, and there was good vibes with them. And I think that was mirrored then in in our process of working together. Um so I won't go too far. But um, yeah, I'm like working on the brand design side of life for the last 15 years, uh, brand systems, and uh I think as it relates to the intent behind product and tooling, um, and how we kind of communicate that better in the world.

Jon 2:40

Uh I'm Jon. Uh as uh mentioned, sort of the showing up in the software side of things, the building side, uh also a college uh self-taught, college dropout, started going after the computer science thing, and then realized, oh, you could just go work at a startup, and they want that and they don't care about credentials. So that's led to an interesting 10 years of uh working with companies of various sizes and organization levels. Um but yeah, when I'm not sort of deep in computer land, uh trying to get more comfortable with building things with my hands, uh a little more like well-rounded as far as trying to be an engineer and make things in the world, not just in uh software and the bits. Um but yeah, it's been awesome working and shipping small things. Uh I think with Neil, we have a way of just cutting down what like to the problem that we're trying to solve, you know, and trying to like remove everything unnecessary, and then what's hopefully what's left is like the valuable thing. So that's been awesome, and uh it's been a great, great year and a half working together.

Taylor 3:44

I love I'm I'm addicted to the idea of like m atoms meet bits, whether it's having been a sign painter, just knowing that like getting your hands dirty, whatever that looks like. Uh yeah, I don't know. That seems to be of huge value right now for those that are deep in AI, certainly, um, and f finding themselves pulled into more of the bits than the atoms. Um, yeah, it seems like a some of us are just fortunate. That just is like, you know, how we grow up. I literally like played in the dirt my most of my life growing up in Evergreen and Colorado. But yeah, it's it certainly feels like those that I align with have some healthy balance of both of those things.

unknown 4:25

Yeah.

Atoms Vs Bits And Balance

Crystal 4:25

Yeah, that definitely I think one of the things that all of us share too is the ecosystems that we come from as builders. And for the past decade or so, the decentralized world is all about just building and making a mess. And I feel like that cues us up for this phase of technology to really understand how to use it, because you have to use it and make a mess. Um and yeah, Gen X, we're we're designed for that. Like fuck it up, see where it lands, and then fix it later. That's kind of how we grew up.

Taylor 4:54

How do you guys think about that? To me, we could stay on this probably for an hour alone, but yeah, how do you think about finding the balance? You've you've done that with each other personally, but yeah.

Speaker 4 5:07

I think um yeah, AI has sort of unlocked this like acceleration thing. That there's like the capital A acceleration, and that's not really what I'm talking about. But just the fact that now I could like sit down and get sucked into a thing for five hours, that I'm not sure I would have gotten sucked into the same way. Like, there's like more um movement in that. Uh like traditionally I would have gotten stuck and then I would have had to go learn how to do something and been like, well, how well how does this API layer work then? And then we started to like come back with AI. You could sort of to varying extents just say, like, let's figure it out, and AI will go and try to figure it out. And so what I find is I've I've like almost fallen into like a like a fugue state in there where I'm like so deep in it and we're accelerating so fast through a project that I sort of like I like lose touch with what's around me, and I'm just like, oh my god, I've like been in the machine. Um and and it's just it's just felt different than like the traditional sense of flow that people talk about programming or making art and stuff. There's something about AI has does not feel like the traditional creative like flow where I'm just like oh I've been engrossed in it for five hours, but it it that it wasn't as heavy or I wasn't as like fully saturated. So I think it's it's just been more important than ever for me to just go take a long walk after work, and like those work sessions are getting shorter because there's just more happening in them, and my brain is more fried after. Um, because I think AI is just sort of like leverage where it extends you, but you know it because there's more capacity now, you sometimes just go further and harder and have to step back from that consciously, and then uh sometimes staying up all night and going hard is the thing, and and then the the price to pay there is is also significant. Give yourself grace, but also yeah, you sometimes you just gotta let it rip.

Speaker 1 7:04

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 7:05

It's funny because like I feel like I did go to school for like traditional painting, so I am trained in that sense. Like I am a trained painter and drawer, you know. The way you just described like being in the machine and like finding that flow, that's how it feels to paint. It's like I'm not it's like Basquiat said, like, I'm not when I'm painting, I'm not thinking about painting, I'm thinking about life. And like that's that makes me want to cry. It's like such a beautiful quote, and it it's like how I feel about using AI is like I can get lost in that fucking process. And I've actually even expressed it to my therapist that sometimes it feels like I'm in the addiction in that sense. It's like I'm so in flow, I don't pee for seven hours, I don't like take a drink of water because I'm so obsessed with the process of painting. That's what AI feels like to me. So because I have that background in painting, I can then therefore go like check, check yourself, go take a break, you know, go outside, do the thing. But that's the like maybe beautiful and challenging thing about AI is that it is so addictive that it is literally like changing the flow style of like how we're creating stuff.

Crystal 8:11

Yeah, that's that's actually a great point because I um most of my career was as a photographer, and both in film and in digital, the flow state was inherent. As soon as I got the camera up to my face, I was in this state documenting everything around me. And yeah, I noticed the same thing with AI, like it's not the same flow state because it's not wired to do that same thing to your brain. So you're constantly in the machine, and yeah, there are times where I'm like, all right, I'm just gonna sprint through this for the next six hours and see where I land on the other end. And then I do notice because I have, like you said, that arc of creativity with other devices, I know when I'm hitting manic states. And I know in the past when I've ignored that, it has ended horribly.

Speaker 1 8:55

Yeah.

Crystal 8:55

And with AI, I can see where it is taking me there. And I have, and that's one of the things I studied at Naropa, is how do you calm the nervous system back down when you're hitting manic states? So that is the one thing that kind of scares me, is that if you have the mechanism to ground back down, that's what you have to do have to use AI. But for other either generations or for just other creators that are new to the technology, they're not gonna catch the destabilization that's gonna happen. And then you get into these states, like we saw a few people at ETH Boulder, and he was like, That person's on drugs. I mean no, that person's and then we were like, Yeah, that person's been in AI for you.

Taylor 9:29

I can't tell the difference. I'm like, it could have been either.

Crystal 9:32

Yeah, or both.

Taylor 9:33

Or both, yeah.

Crystal 9:34

But it's fascinating. Yeah, that having that mechanism to ground down is is everything.

AI Flow States And Addiction

Speaker 4 9:38

Yeah, totally. Well, I'm I'm curious, uh, just to sort of hear some of the approaches that you did study, and and I had a follow-up question is do you think that the tools themselves could prompt that in like a healthy way?

Crystal 9:54

Oh, that's I'm gonna go to the second question first because that's such a good one. It depends on the engineering. So, like on Proton, um, their AI is engineered to say, I don't know right now. And it's language is very direct and very engineering style language. So you don't get sucked into the syncophantic loop and you don't expect it to give things back to you. It's much more of a tool. So I think if we had engineers across the board that understood the human side and how humans interact with the things they create, then yes, you could bake that into the system, but we have the opposite.

unknown 10:30

Yeah.

Crystal 10:31

Because these are these frontier models have been pushed out by extraction motivations because they are for profit, and that is by design. So they are going to be designed to keep you in whatever loop it wants to keep you in. And that's the data that's coming out right now because now we have a few months and years of how people use it, and you can see the destabilization across the board. That's an engineering decision, and that goes back to the company. I think to protect yourself, I mean, I'm terrible at meditating, so people are like, oh, you went on Europa and got all the things. I mean, no, I can't meditate to save my life. No. So I have a yoga practice, but I can't even do that now. So I have a dog and he needs to walk a lot. So we go on little walks or just shut the computer and then put on music. For me, it's music. There's certain songs I can put on that have different instruments that calm my nervous system. Sometimes it's just being like, hey, gotta grab coffee, I gotta co-co-regulate with a human. And so that's also another. I think the human element is really having someone, if you're in a deep project, having someone you partner with that can see that you are starting to hit a spiral, or you can say, hey, I'm about to hit a spiral, I'm not gonna go into this right now. I think that is another really valuable tool.

Taylor 11:45

Yeah, I mean that that that underpins the human layer generally. Like, that's kind of how this got kicked off. It's just seeing the new the new era we clearly are entering and and what that's doing to humans and knowing that there's got to be I don't have any faith that like you know the the hyperscalers or even you know regulation or governments broadly are somehow going to be the over time, maybe, like holding out faith on like maybe there is a but in the in the immediate term we're on our own. Like you're talking about the sandworm. We're either getting consumed or we're like gotta ride it and find a safe way to, you know. To me, the word that comes to mind is like scaffolding, which maybe this can tee up practical actual uses of um AI, both you know, for us it's communication, just sort of strategically having scaffold that you feel comfortable with, technically, but I also think we've all got to have some version of the the atoms that are the scaffolding alongside the projects and the you know scaffolding that are the bits. So I don't know if that's a that's the word that popped when you asked that. I was like, it's about scaffolding, yeah. Or you know, some anchoring blueprint that you can rely on. Yeah. And that's gonna be different for everybody, whatever that needs to be.

Speaker 3 13:08

I feel like it's like a lot of how I use AI is actually a lot of how I am an entrepreneur in the sense of like not everybody is built to be an entrepreneur. We're seeing mass layoffs, we're seeing a lot of people become entrepreneurs because they have to survive, but they don't have necessarily the scaffolding on the skills of like I need to have a tight calendar, I need to wake up nine to five and put pants on. You know, like it's all the like basic stuff that I think we probably learned a lot of in the pandemic, but then everybody kind of went back to their job job. And so now we're kind of having to like self-regulate. And I think that that's really hard for a lot of people who maybe don't have those skill sets. So if like the tool can offer it, that's amazing. But it's kind of like just because you have you know your phone locked doesn't mean you're not gonna use your phone, you know. Like you still have to be able to self-regulate, and I think because it has addictive qualities to it, it's like almost like up to the people that are on the fringe that are like thinking about these things to build those tool sets maybe in or build in some sort of like more philosophical approach that can be spread, you know, of like this is an easy thing to pick up, kind of a thing, you know. But it's it yeah, it just feels like a it feels like it could take you over if you let it, you know.

Crystal 14:24

Oh absolutely.

unknown 14:25

Yeah.

Grounding Through Community Practice

Taylor 14:26

It's I mean AI psychosis at scale is clearly like a problem. Yeah. You know, it's it's weird to and I don't know, part of this is probably my own delusion in a way, but I'm like, I now have almost every day some experience of feeling like I know someone's relationship with AI right now. And I don't that's you know, I'm sure I'm missing the mark on some of those, but I'm like, I have a very good sense now, for whatever reason, of like, you're in a psychotic state that is clearly, you know, these are not sure there's the psychotic version of the, you know, lost your mind, not wearing pants. I I get that's a different, I get that. Other other problems. But I'm these are you know, friends or people that I know well enough, and so yeah, I don't know. It's it's it feels like the answer isn't there's healthier ways to use it, you kind of gotta figure out your own. I don't know, there yeah. I think we're all sort of building towards, and maybe this is a reharnessing of like what you know crypto and a lot of the kind of regen web3 movement was about, is like how do we do this at scale and actually make the healthy means of of interacting with these tools like truly scalable. Or or you don't even know that you're just you're getting a healthier version of it, and that I mean nutrition facts. If you want to dive in, I love I love that. Like that's an easy, easy frame, everyone can kind of wrap their head around.

Crystal 15:49

But yeah. I think too, like taking it to that hyper-local level, because that's we do a lot of localism work here in this area. And I think that it's a combination of doing some of this stuff in community because what you just identified with job loss, reskilling, at scale, having to be an entrepreneur, I hate being an entrepreneur. There's parts of it I love, part of my brain is wired for this. But when I used to have a studio, I think I shut it down around 2017, I just did web production and branding and all that. And I was a terrible business person. As soon as I could see scale where a normal person would be like, hey, yeah, let's make the money. Like, no, let's bitch go on vacation. And let me come back in a month or two, I'm like, oh, I gotta start over again. So this time, because I had to be self-employed again, I decided to make sure that AI is the one taking care of the labor and taking care of the parts that I'm terrible at. So at least, and this is not a scaled business, so at least those parts are covered, but what's also happening is you're having people that have lost their identity at a certain age, they've been in a career for so long, it is gone overnight. So they're learning a new technology that is destabilizing. Their identity has been destabilized, their income, and then all the other social safety nets are gone. That is a perfect storm of like the acceleration you were talking about earlier, John. Like that is going to impact our communities across the board. So, as hyper-local folks, you know, I love what y'all were talking about earlier before we turned on the mics, like get together in community, build together, watch how people are building, learn together, and then go home and have your, I'm gonna do my cannabis right now and learn my shit, and then get back together with humans again. So that there's always that human gait in the process as you learn. Because if you're at home learning and you're terrified and you don't know where rent's coming from, all those things, and you got a family in involved too, that's a destabilization that we're gonna see a psychosis at we are seeing at scale in society.

Speaker 3 17:47

Certainly. I feel like that's what led me to John in the sense of like we obviously collaborate very well together, but we're also in community together, and like Regenov is a community and it's local, you know. And like I think as someone who came about that kind of understanding of like local is relative, that was like the driving force at the beginning when I started my company called Local, you know. Like it's it's the process of being in contact with people where I actually feel like we um we can like I don't know how to describe it other than like it's like the rocket ship going out to moon, but it has to come back and come back to Earth, you know, like you still have to be able to enter the orbit and like you know land safely and you know deplane and all these kinds of things. It's important to go out to the moon because like I think the moon is like that sense of like uh you're getting out of your house, you're like not isolating, you are talking through things you're wrong, you know, like you're you're failing, you know. You're we're whatever, you know. That's the beauty of community, and I feel like that practice has then directly played into how I build brands now, just moving forward. Like that's what communal design is, is we have to go speak with humans, be with humans, you know, learn from humans. There's only so much that you can learn through the computer, and I don't know. I I like that part of me with AI is like a little worried that like people are just gonna get sucked in.

Taylor 19:16

Yeah, it feels like there's a lot of people that argue that you can get to a much better place or at least comparable place. I always try to check myself, which is why it's fun. You you you guys are a little younger and like immersed in a little more, so yeah, I don't know. I I I mean maybe make make it, yeah. What's the what's the practical version of that orbiting? Because I think we all want some version that I totally that resonates for me. The elevation or the or the orbit you're ultimately looking to get in, and the timing of when you want to come back and ground yourself and all those, all those dynamics are gonna be different for everybody. Um so I don't know if I'd be curious what a practical version of that you guys obviously have collaborated with.

Speaker 4 20:00

Yeah, well, I I think this this uh is more on the social practices side than than tools so far. I think we're just so early that like not much has been developed as far as tools here goes. Uh but I I honestly think like uh getting together and like talking about the way you're using AI, but I think an important caveat here is how you're using AI to solve actual problems, not AI problems. Because I think that like self-referential uh meetup about AI, about AI, like bubble can actually like exacerbate some of the like craziness because you're just like, oh, and I need to give uh there's like that guy's doing this, and this person's doing this, and you just sort of get overwhelmed. I but I find that like the meetups where somebody's talking about like this is how I uh finally tackled this hard book that I was putting off, and these are the the prompts I used. And then another person's talking about how they automated some form collection thing that they needed for their actual business. I think those those have a tendency to be a little more like grounding, and so you're you're actually like doing a little more of like a skill share thing rather than just like all kind of getting almost like sucked into the hype machine a little bit together, which can be fun at times. Like we've we've had that happen here at the hub as well. New model drops and everybody's just like pushing the edges on it, and you're like, look what I found. Um, but I but I think the most valuable things is really uh seeing what what people like are able to do and and then supporting each other in that. And somebody coming with a new question that nobody's really solved yet, and they're like, How do I apply it this to this problem I have? Um I find that that really creates like a nice space where you're sort of back to like humans helping humans solve problems with like oh this new tool on the table, rather than like we're all here trying to be inside the tool, the tools around us, we're just completely like buried in it. Um kind of just it gives you like a a little more of like a way to to s to be a To the surface or like the air and not going too deep.

Building With AI To Solve Real Problems

Speaker 3 22:03

Yeah, that's fascinating. It's like I I've I've found that with communal design in the sense of like I like to say that the groundskeeper and the CEO have the same like level of voice within a brand build. Of like, it's important that we include everybody into the brand build because I say if who we are is who our products become, if we look at Steve Jobs, when Steve Jobs left Apple, the company changed drastically. You know, like our identity, our sense of self within these brands and products is critical. And everybody's voice matters equally. And it's really fascinating when you go to do like a I'll do like a pair session, so I'll just go work with the client and sit down with them now with AI. Like last week I built um a home page for a new uh product we're building uh with a client, and you know, like we built we were able to build a homepage funnel in two hours or less, you know. Like purely like coded through codecs, like you know, uh pushing a branch into the main GitHub, like all this stuff that I don't really even know how to use the language for yet still, but we're able to do it. But it's that ability to like that's coming from like 15 years of design, you know. Like, this is not just me just like waltzing in and being able to do those things, certainly. But on the other flip side of it, is like, yeah, but like there's so much beauty that I couldn't have unlocked had I not done that process and put myself out there and been vulnerable with that person. Yeah, that's the beauty of communal design.

Taylor 23:28

Just to be contrarian, I I'd never thought of it. Would you uh would you say yes and build for we've got some AC kicking on? It's probably for the better. It probably turned off if nah. I mean um cleaning.

Crystal 23:43

Yeah.

Taylor 23:44

Uh if someone came to you with a really compelling reason to like build a brand and like a some number of AI agents were actually kind of part of that stack, and sure they're still humans, but like half are humans, and like half we want we have sort of these profiles and identities built around agents doing specific tasks. Would that kind of be a like non-starter? What version of that would feel appropriate?

Speaker 3 24:11

I mean, I'm I'm definitely maybe to a fault the person who's like, let's blow the bloody doors off, you know, and like try something that we've never done before, because there's probably uh something in that process that we've never contextualized, you know. So I don't know. I feel like that's kind of how I feel with AI in general, is like, let's just try it and see. I I just wrote an article on my my website called like let's play it out, you know, and it's speaking to these kinds of concepts, and it's it's like, yeah, I've never done that before with agents, and I I don't know if many other people have because agents is such a new technology. I'd be curious what it would bring to me and like what what I could learn from it, you know.

Taylor 24:51

So there's not there's not some like philosophical line where that would you're like at this point all is worth exploring and learning, and we have to currently. It's too much uncarved territory.

Speaker 3 25:01

I feel like I try to flip the like master apprentice role like over and over again, whether it's with John or my client or my GPT, you know, like whatever the thing is that I'm I can always learn something, and it probably can learn something from me. That's community.

Crystal 25:18

I think too, like one of the things that I love about the hub here, and saw it at ETH Boulder, but I've seen it before, is that listening to y'all talk about and listening to anyone talk about how they're using AI is fascinating, especially if you do it in a co-gener co-generational lens. Because everybody has a different perspective of earned experience, life experience, and then some don't even need to have the life experience. So, Aaron, one of the members here, I can't remember, this was right before ETH Boulder, so I guess it was February. And he was talking, and he's been telling me just about his process as he's been learning it, just periodically. Every few months we bump into each other and he tells me, I'm like, damn. I go home, like, oh, that's what he was talking about. Like three weeks later, I'm like, oh, that's what he meant. The last time he did that, he had figured out ingestion processes that I couldn't even understand when he was explaining it to me, but I could kind of see it, sort of. And then he was talking about how he ingests everything throughout the day and has it fed back to him, and then he goes, Look, it made me a folk song about my day. And I'm like, that's the wildest shit ever. And I still like I had no idea how it worked, but then a few weeks later I was like, it just clicked. And I'm like, oh, that's what he's doing. And then I just revamped everything. I'm like, that's what he meant.

Taylor 26:26

I was like, you you, I don't know if you remember, you kind of, Neil, I'm pointing to, did this in a way. It was early AI, but it totally was an unlock for me to think about like design as completely dynamic and organic. And then it was another, yeah, it was maybe Aaron seeing this process of like, you know, I don't know if it was Whisperflow or this very just always-on sort of, and I was like, oh, that's like inevitable that kind of branding will move into this space of nothing's really fixed. I don't know, man, where you sit now. But I I remember that discussion, and I was like, I had I had never even cracked that. And I I mean I'd been in design, you know, but it's like been a you know, 15 years now. That was a total weird moment of like, huh, of course that makes sense, and that's where we probably end up.

Speaker 3 27:16

Yeah.

Taylor 27:16

But like fully dynamic design that is always in response to like both the brand internally and your customers, and like I don't know, that's a very weird space that also seems like we're already starting to go down that path. It seems inevitable with AI.

Speaker 3 27:31

Like it just feels like like I started using the term in 2017, actually, when I built Gitcoin's original brand. I was working on another brand called the.com, like THE dot com. They don't exist anymore, but the the the point is that I was working on the concept of a living system. And like that was like, you know, I didn't know anything about computers, you know, at the time. Like, again, like learning web design and all these things, that's self-taught, you know. That's a definition of um, I was an experiential designer and the pandemic happened, and I was CCO, chief creative officer, at an experiential uh active play place for kids, and that got shut down. So I had to teach myself how to use the web. And I think just naturally I'm a very feeling-based person. I've created theories called like felt value and stuff like that. But the point is that living systems I think are inevitable with AI processes because we have so much access to software and code, and it's like being updated so quickly that it has always just made sense. Well, why don't we automate some of these things, you know? And I think like where I often see brands break down is in the handoff. It's like there's a beautiful, like, one-year process, like we're all working together, there's amazing people on the team, there's 20 people on a team. Holy shit, we just built this amazing thing. I don't understand your file structure, you know. Like, I don't understand how to actually use this PDF that you've sent to me. You know, how do I modify this thing? You know, we are now moving into this era where we have things like claw design where we can do those things better, but it still is AI and it will always try to base mean it, you know. So I think the living system kind of idea for me has really started to come out in this new website that I've been pushing called SSOT.run, which SSOT means single source of truth. And .run is a new file system that I'm working on as well. But I feel like it still feels like somewhat of a gimmick to me in the sense that like I'm still prompting AI to like, you know, have it do certain things within the system. I think working with someone like John, for instance, where I think he's described like software as magic, like it truly does feel like magic. Like what he does is like that feels like a living system to me. So he said this the other day that I wrote a little uh LinkedIn post about, which is like designers are becoming more like developers, developers are also becoming more like designers, and I think that for me is like someone who loves when other people are not designers or designing, that is an unlock. Like that's my unlock, that's magic.

Designers And Developers Converge

Speaker 4 30:08

Yeah, uh just to follow up on that, like there is I think as someone who's worked as a developer for a while, and you know, we had designers on the team, pre-AI, there was there was kind of like this what felt like maybe like a fence where we like toss things over and then they think they toss things back over, and sometimes as a developer, I would just get like ignored because that they're the developer, they don't know anything. Uh and sometimes that's very true, so like it's fair. But uh it's some of this is might might be like working styles changing over time and the team's arrangements that I find myself in, but you know, Neil being someone a designer working with AI, and both of us being in the code base together, uh has led to a very different way of working together than what I remember being sort of the norm. Because it there's just it's a little bit like we're both in the sandbox, a lot more willing to like work with the same material than me using the language of code and CSS and him using the language of Figma and Illustrator. You know, we we're actually sort of starting to manipulate the same stuff, and uh I think it it just unlocks like very interesting feedback loops and more I I mean I I think speed is is one thing, but I think effective like delivery of stuff faster is is the the more interesting one.

Crystal 31:36

Yeah. I think what y'all are both describing here is the translation layer, and this is what I think is fascinating about AI in the context that we're talking about, is it allows two people or two orgs to find a bridge that connects two completely different um professions or languages. So what I'm finding with my clients, the project that I'm working on now is just a comms operating system for a 501c3 that does regulatory contract scans on prescription drugs and like contracts and employee um employer health contracts. So that is not something that as a communications professional I would have ever taken on in the past because I don't understand their language. I still don't understand their language. I get it on a very big picture, but now AI can explain their language to me. And then in the past, when I would have tried to tell a lawyer or an engineer, hey, we have to do XYZ, they're like, I don't want any of that like marketing shit, I don't want emotion in here. Now I can just put it in their language and we can find the same connecting point. So we're still getting to the same goal together. They understand what I'm saying, and they can also, if they don't, then just run it through AI. I'm saying, ask it this, this is what I'm saying, put it in your language. And that is a massive unlock that I don't think is at scale yet. This is really just the top, I would say, 10% of AI users right now. So once that gets at scale, that's gonna be fascinating to see because you're gonna have more coherence across the board.

Taylor 32:58

I mean, we we sort of stumbled into that as gardeners in a knowledge garden over like you know a year or so. It's totally the same, it's really interesting, but yeah, you know, only later came to realize that all of this was allowing we're we're not the same. We operate work certainly very differently. Um, but it created that shared translation layer, and sure enough, you know, it was super exciting. Time to get in the garden. Yeah, you know, I might bring a rake, you might bring a we've got you know different things we're working on, but it created this very fun, organic, shared space. So yeah, I think that that is we're all just sort of alchemists now, as long as you do it right and have the you know a responsible thing, it can go wrong too. The translation can certainly get weaponized if we want to get into but yes, done well with the right people around you. Yeah, it's like such such an empowering visibility into like very different modes of working and operating.

Speaker 1 33:55

Yeah.

Speaker 3 33:55

Certainly. It's funny, we just we came from a legal event, like we're not lawyers.

Speaker 4 34:00

Not to say that other events are illegal and just for lawyers mostly.

Speaker 3 34:05

Yeah, it was for lawyers and the legal system. It's like invite me to illegal. Um and like, you know, we're flying the wall, you know. Like people are asking us, are you lawyers? Do it do I look like a lawyer? You know, but like the answer is no. The answer is no. Yeah. But I mean, it is interesting, they will look you up and down, you know, because like you do not look like a lawyer. But um it's fascinating. And I think it's just speaking to this translation concept, is like uh I pitched at Boulder New Tech like two or three months ago. I got put in touch with this guy who was the VP of IP at Samsung, and like we've kind of created a relationship now, and and we've been passed on kind of through like a little bit a little network here, and um it just it's really interesting that like at the end of the this conversation that we were attending, um, a lot of the stuff that we were talking about is like translation issue. Is like, yeah, there's amazing AI tools out there for the legal system, but it does kind of come down to the the judge making the call, and that's like that it is a translation issue at a certain point, you know. And it's just fascinating that like I think that translation issue, because AI is so broad in its landscape and its surface area, it does then touch on so many of these issues, you know, these challenges. And I think the people who are curious and willing to take the like first step to learn, those are often the people that are the the forefront of you know finding the edge.

AI As A Translation Layer

Crystal 35:35

Yeah. And we talked about this on the last podcast episode. One of my dear friends took a job at Whole Foods um two years ago, or about a year and a half ago, and she just wanted to do frontline labor and see if she could basically start like a shadow union. And she figured out how to weaponize AI with HR publicator documentation to make sure that everyone on her team could then understand how to get their rights supported through using AI to clearly articulate in HR language what was going on with their leadership. And she burned it down. It was beautiful. I'm like, oh my god, let's do more of that.

Speaker 4 36:16

That is fascinating. Yeah. Uh yeah, I I think in a similar lens, like even the legal conversation, you know, there was uh the actual lawyers there saying, yeah, they use AI. That that was that was just kind of funny and satisfying to hear because I'm like, I I don't know. There's like sometimes lawyers are really like, I don't know, it's gotta be this way and not that way. Yeah, yeah. And it's just kind of funny that we're like we're both like giving money to Andropic right now, just being like, oh my god, help me like do life better. But um it one thing they they did talk a lot about was just the the sort of liability that comes online when people misuse it, and you know, the biggest problem is being like I'm treating my AI as a lawyer. Like that that's clearly and like for good reason that they're they're not condoning any of that. But it there was also like another lawyer on the stage who voiced the idea that that AI is something that's more accessible than the typical lawyer. Like, I $20 uh COD subscription is very different to a $300 an hour lawyer, and it's it really makes me wonder if it's gonna open up more opportunities for us to figure out places that our rights need um more representation. Uh, you know, le reading like very bulky lawyer, like uh last time we moved into an apartment, I think our I counted the pages, it was something like 20 or 30 pages of of uh the lease. It was like all hobbled together, different versions of uh different leases made into a super lease. And I remember being like, what like I I don't know if I could fully hold this thing in my brain. Like, how many rules am I breaking by just like putting up curtains? Turns out depends on the color uh of the curtains. So I I really like I'm excited about use cases like this where it sort of flips the table a little bit uh away from a sort of very like structured, hard to opaque, you know, language to I could just say it in my own words, and then it's gonna figure out what it needs to do and give me something back, and from there maybe it's it helps me draft a lever a letter, maybe it's it helps me uh get in contact with somebody, but I I'm really excited about the like agency increasing element of it.

Crystal 38:36

That's I believe where we're going now at at scale. And there's two one of the things we play with is a solo OS, which is a personal project put into an operating system. And I started playing with two recently, one is for a legal case and one is for um patient advocacy, and both for me. So I get to test them out in real time. So last week I took the patient one to my physical therapist. I said, Here's my symptoms, because I was rolling in there like, I feel like I'm on acid. That doesn't help anyone. Like they don't I don't know how to treat that. So then I was like, here's my piece of paper with in your language. They're like, oh shit. So then they could actually be like, Yeah, this is what we need to do today. And on the legal side, there's a whole thing going on, and I was like, Well, let's just jam it up in here and see what we can get. And it's finding patterns that I would have never, I mean, I'm not a lawyer, nor am I into like crime in on the corporate level. So it's finding patterns that would not have been accessible to me, and if you're using it for advocacy as a pattern recognition tool, it is probably the most powerful thing that's ever happened in our lifetime, if not more.

Weaponizing AI For Advocacy

Taylor 39:37

Yeah, with the ground it in something that feels truly personal and you have a baseline. I think the the danger right now, and how most folks you'll hear that and say, Well, yeah, I have this you know light relationship, even if it's not obviously we there's now cases of it going way too far. Um but I think the the added sort of knowledge base, whatever that looks like and wherever that lives, doesn't have to be. I mean, we have a pretty I think the solo OS using obsidian is like a very accessible, you know, easy thing to promote as like this is how to start down this path. It's low risk, you know, maybe you're just getting like a LinkedIn post every once in a while that's interesting and unique out of it, whatever. But without that, I think the yeah, the majority right now are seeing that power, but also slowly also getting manipulated in real time. Yeah, without that core grounding of like, I know exactly who I am, what this base of you know knowledge is. You know, those of us that have written or been you know in creative media for a long time are fortunate because we have like some body of knowledge that you know goes back enough and has uh yeah enough there to create that foundation. But yeah, it has to it has to be grounded in something that you feel like you have full agency and awareness over. That's more way more important. Like let go of AI, start there, make sure that's in place. Yeah, and then then it becomes super powerful. Yeah. It's like I am learning things about myself all the time. Um aphantasia is this really interesting sort of condition that I've landed on that I kind of understood, but now have a whole new, you know, it's like I'm literally excavating my own mind, my own literal biology, and like, oh yeah, that makes a lot more sense. That's where that comes from. But it's grounded in, you know, decades of writing and other things that so yes, I mean it's super powerful if done well.

Speaker 4 41:40

Well, so I'm I'm curious, is this all kind of happening through SolOS? And could you explain a bit more about how that's all like structured?

unknown 41:47

Yeah.

Taylor 41:48

I mean, yeah, uh and this is just within the last couple months that I've like put energy into the structuring that now feels really good and very much who I am from just a you know organizing folder perspective. Um now I'm just starting to play with the output side of yeah, working with with you know mostly Claude right now to then you know the I'm just starting to scratch the surface on things like A Fantasia and these interesting new personal like reflections that are coming out of it. I don't know if you want to speak to like the actual structure of it.

Crystal 42:24

So basically we took the big communications operating system and made a much smaller personal version, more to like experiment. But like we both have bodies of work for a decade or two. And with my photojournalism, there's both a writing component and a photography component that goes back to the early 2000s that I started just journaling and digitizing. So, like two weeks ago, long weekend, cannabis on the couch, I'm like, alright, I need something to do, we can't do anything, let's do this. So I ingested all of it, like raw notes, field notes from um post-conflict work, all kinds of shit. And then and I was kind of terrified to do it because one of the things we're exploring through our own work and through the podcast are institutional masks. And what do they look like when you have to take them off, like we were talking about earlier, when you're forced to take it off. What does that do to a knowledge worker that has built an identity around that instead of who they truly are? So I was terrifying because I'm like, oh, we're gonna have to like you know take your own medicine here. So basically I had I had it ingest everything, I didn't make it structured, but it was 500 files basically. And then I asked co-work, I have the max subscription, so I was like, let's just blow some tokens. So then I was like, all right, show me the patterns over this period of time. And it broke down six different eras. And then it showed me when I went to journalism school, when the mask came on, how the writing changed, how my free writing changed, how I stopped misspelling words and stopped free writing in a certain way, and how that never came back. And it was fascinating to look at what was lost and what could return and then what couldn't return. And then some Some of its maturity, some of its experience, some of it is the institutional mask, its fingerprints are too deep. So that is where you can get into that whole. Is someone ready to look at the arc of their work and identity and have it mirrored back to them through a pattern recognition tool? It's it's beautiful and terrifying at the same time.

Speaker 3 44:18

I can imagine. I'm sure it like unlocks things in people that they didn't even know they had or that were buried or that were traumatic or you know, whatever the things are. As someone who builds identities for a living, like it's the most delicate process because it is the thing that like connects that person to everything. The product, sure. But like their culture, their teams, their budget, you know, like everything, every the way that they understand and perceive money is passed down generationally. You know, there's all these things that like we can't it's not surface level, you know. And so I'm sure an OS like that is both just a beautiful thing and terrifying.

Crystal 44:58

It is.

Taylor 44:59

Yeah, that's why I love to me the mask framing is just perfect because yeah, you you it's very obvious when a mask is either lightly worn in certain situations, or in the case of maybe a lawyer, for me it was like academics that have been in that world for you know 20 plus years, tenure the whole bit, that mask is so aggressively fused at that point. And there's a version of that where you're like you're if you rip it off, I that that probably doesn't go well. So it's like, what is then the and this seems to be an interesting measured version of like being able to have control over that process of like, am I ready to just rip it off? Do I need to like peel back layers with some, you know, usually with some friends, and like this is again why community matters so much. Yeah, don't do it by yourself. Like this thing can, you know, it really can be incredibly destabilizing.

Speaker 3 45:57

Um I remember I started th thinking about the concept of wearing different hats when I was like probably I would say in my prime year of production, which is like 2017, maybe 2019 was another great year. But like I just produced a lot of like you know, uh what I would call revolutionary brands at that time. But it was because I was able to put a different hat on when I was pitching. I wore this hat that was a Nike hat that said jock on it because it like really confused people because I don't look like a jock, you know. And so I feel like that sense of like it's a performative thing, it's playful, but it's like theatrical on purpose. Like that understanding within maybe the tool itself, how do you like break that down into like a set of filters that is actually software? You know, like how do you start to turn the dials, but allow people to turn the dials, you know, give them that context and that UI experience instead of just going like that's the challenge I think a lot of people are running into right now with AI is that like their identity flipped overnight, you know? And like I was describing this this what it felt like to go through AI with my dad. We do something every two weeks called Whiskey Wednesday, where we drink whiskey together and we did it during the pandemic to like connect with each other, each other. And like what I've learned is that like their like evolution of his job took 10 years, you know, like if something shifted, it took a huge amount of time, and they had the time to scale and the time to think through the process of identity shift. I used this language of like this changed overnight. Like, I went from doing one thing to never doing that again and now doing something else completely different. And that identity shift, as someone who builds identities and super self-reflective and writes a million journals and records things and always playback, always play back. I was able to cope with it, but a lot of my creative friends have not been able to cope with it. And that sucks to watch because like that's just what we're describing, is like that's a mask, and like your identity is different when you take that mask off.

Crystal 47:58

And that's one of the reasons the stuff that the solo OS and the OS stuff we're working on, we wanted to just m keep it open for everybody. It's open source methodology, it's there's nothing, there's no commerce involved in this because so many of our friends are going through this. Our DMs are blowing up and scrambling to learn, scrambling to reskill, but then also underneath is that loss of identity overnight. And a lot of my friends are academics, professionals, journalists. I mean, there's stories of journalists that are just on sub um Substack, of you know, conflict journalists that have done it for decades, driving Ubers now in DC, in the same place where he was the one going to the White House and going to all of these and covering things on the in the field overseas and then coming back. He's like, the only way I can get my family to survive right now is Uber. And now look at what gas has done. So there's a person who's literally scrambling. What what can you do? So yeah, there's no clean answer to any of this. And that's where we get into this AI is both the promise and the peril from that AI doc. It's like you almost have to do something with this or be completely retired or have a trust fund at this point.

Solo OS And Identity Mirrors

Speaker 3 49:03

Yeah, it's fascinating. It's it's like I built an OS for his partner's uh organization, Neighborhood Village Project, which is an incredible organization who I've been working with for the last year. I did, you know, probably like a six-month brand build, but it was actually three months of strategy and communal design and going to events with the team and like understanding who they are in their sense of self within their environment. It's a lot of that kind of contextual work. I was building the the website via Webflow, which I have used for years and years, but it takes time, it takes six months to build something like that. And it was at that time that I went down to Christmas vacation at the late at night when the whole family went to bed. I started building the OS. And I just was like, there's gotta be a more systematic way of allowing the client to have the hands-on tools that I have. I like to think that like this design just comes through me. Like, I'm just the catalyst through which like people talk and identify and all those things. I just happen to apply systems and style, and so like I took that kind of core concept and I did build an OS, and then I did just train uh Savannah and August on it last week, and now they are building the website with the the parameters that I think.

Taylor 50:19

What's from a real high level, not to I'm sure there's hours to dig into like nuance. What is what does it mean to build an OS in your I'd be curious, both of you, what that what that actually means practically.

Speaker 3 50:30

I'm sure my answer is going to be completely different because I don't come from software. Um I I think for me it's like I have a deeper maybe language obsession with this concept called OI, which is operating intelligence, which is like something I've been working on kind of in the back end for 10 years. But I feel like operating systems kind of scratches on that surface, which does speak to like the idea of living systems, which is like how do we build like a cascade set of parameters and primitives from base things like tone of voice and color palette and you know style and how we're starting to communicate the brand. How do we um allow that kind of way of operation to become systemized? Um, so so I'm looking at it very literally in that sense.

Taylor 51:14

Yeah, OIOS, these are not, this is like pretty familiar territory for you.

Speaker 3 51:18

Yeah, in the sense that like I just am obsessed with systems thinking. I think as someone who grew up with a learning disability who was, we were just talking about this, placed into classes where like I was with I was with the same kids that were ADHD because they didn't know what to do with them yet. I grew up in the 90s. They I was with the kids, you know, in the wheelchairs, like we were all just kind of lumped together, but it forced me to systems think, and I didn't know that I was systems thinking because I just am a pattern recognition person. And then I went to art school and like you know, I got obsessed with color theory, and like I'm just very systems-oriented. I think what AI has unlocked for me is the ability to create operating systems in a very like probably philosophical sense, but then what I've learned is that like, oh, these are this is actual code, like we can actually like build rules and readme.md files and like you know, stuff that like I don't know when he looks at this kind of stuff like what he thinks, you know, but um it's just fascinating to I guess have the access to that capability to build something like that.

Speaker 4 52:19

Yeah, uh I think from from a sort of like technical perspective, an operating system, you know, there's a definition of like macOS Windows. That's that's a very very specific technical definition. We all we all kind of know what that is. It's just about the thing that lets us do all of our things on the computer, on our phones. Um, but I think like a slightly broader definition of operating system is it's kind of like a toolkit that a user can go into and bring their own things into, bring their like media, bring their intention into, and actually like create things within that structured environment. So it's it's not like I I don't I think it's broader than a singular tool. I think it's a it's a space where a family of tools all interact with each other and uh you're able to kind of plop your uh your work into and hopefully produce stuff to take back out of it uh in what it feels like a relatively fluid, well thought out way.

Taylor 53:18

Um it's a cool liberating moment to like feel like this thing that we all just if you're not technical um you know existed on a computer on a phone, and now it is just like that has all been flipped. Like, what does it mean to actually build your own and now you know in pretty short order? I've like I've not trained. I've I walked through it with my mom, and you know, that's a good test. She's not like gonna take it and run with it, but like it made sense, you know, older structures and she understood some of that. So it's like, yeah, it's no different. Sure, it gets more complicated, but like yeah, it's been a very liberating using that term more, just like break it free from the machine. Like it's just something you can own.

Crystal 54:00

And it gives you more, yeah, like you said, it gives you more sovereignty. If you own the knowledge base, and the knowledge base is open source or however you want to do it, and it's separate from the AI, then you can choose what AI you want to use. So when Sam Altman shits the bed and does something insane, you just plug it into somebody else's frontier model. Um but you are the sovereign keeper of that system, and you can make them as simple as you want to make them. We've made some wildly complex ones that I barely understand at this point. I plugged into 4.7 the other day. I'm like, oh shit, I don't even know where this thing's going at this point. We're both on it for the ride. And then some that's just an ingest bucket that you just throw stuff in and then it processes and puts it somewhere else.

Speaker 3 54:41

So it's so simple. I think that that was like a huge aha moment with working with other people with the OS that are also well, one of them is a full stack engineer, so that was also terrifying during the call of like he was asking me questions that I don't know the answer to, you know, and I built the system, you know. That's that's another thing that we've talked about is like, you know, um, I think there's a lot of people building like live coded things, but then they get to launch where they're like, uh, I don't know actually how to go to market. What how do I do this? You know, but I think like what it did allow for was um Savannah, for instance, his partner, to plug in and just start building stuff. And like it was really cool during the call because like I played it back later and I could just see like Savannah just like disappeared for like a period of the call, and she just was working with the system and like uploading images and like doing the thing, and that was so rewarding to see because like that's what we're looking for. Like, that to me is like that's when this it's like showing your mom, it's like when somebody else who's not in your head can understand the system, that's super rewarding, and that's where I think that actually the best work happens is during what I would call playtime, which is like that's when you're like not feeling egotistical, you're not aware of yourself, you're just kind of vibing, you know. And that's what I think an OS does is it unlocks that translation layer because I built enough readme.md files for them to drop them into their own AI system so that then they could work within my OS. And holy shit, that's such a rewarding thing to watch.

Crystal 56:20

Yeah, that's also made the proposal process easier. Like I recently was on a call, and we already have a project in motion together, but there was another component that they were curious about. So we had the call and they told me their pain points, and then I just ran it through the system, and then I had the system do a self-portrait for them. So they because they already know what an OS is, because we have it on the other side. So it gave this great self-portrait, and then it gave a read me and a prompt, and then the person that asked for it, she was like, Oh my god, this is amazing. She's like, I I completely understand what you're talking about now. I'm like, holy shit. That would have taken me two months to explain in a past life. Not that I would have been able to build it, but watching the client get it and then also say, Hey, I want to build it for this, I want to plug it in here, I want to put it here, and then they can run with it. I think that's beautiful.

Speaker 3 57:04

Yeah.

Crystal 57:05

They don't need me, they just have the system. It's lovely.

What It Means To Build An OS

Speaker 3 57:08

That's the best when you're not watching over somebody's shoulder. You know, that's when we do our best work, you know. Like a lot of um I've I used to teach a class uh at an old marketing company that I worked at called Group Mind. And it was every Friday we would come together and we would just make art together. And what happened was actually quite profound. Like it led to higher sales, it led to happier clients, it led to like actual KPIs, you know, like all those kinds of things that we want to hear, you know. But the real like beauty was that like it was just a bunch of people that were coming from like SEO departments and comms and marketing and advertising and data and all these things coming together and making something together. And that like understanding of again breaking down that ego, that's where the best work happens. That's also very felt. Like, that's why I speak to felt value because like that sense of like physics actually spreads out into the rest of the world, you know. And that's why I say who we are is who our products become, because like those people went on to have happier calls with their clients from that single session of play. That's what an OS is also doing. Yeah, yeah.

Taylor 58:14

That's been maybe the biggest. I've never felt like more energized and motivated at a time, and we've talked about it. We can certainly get into these spirals of like today is not the day. I the world may end, and I've like I've figured out how to manage some of those like deeper spirals, but it's really just nice to see that organic. I don't know exactly what you're working on, doesn't necessarily make sense, but it's working. You've you know people see the energy, they understand, you know, that there is like a different mode of operating with technology right now that can be very, you know, healthy. And so just having those moments of at least seeing that realization in somebody you really care about, and maybe stepping back and nothing changes. We've had a I think a couple recent versions of this. Where then they circle back and they're like, hold on, can we get a jump on a call? Like, how do I actually do this? I realize I like haven't taken the step that I probably need to. Um so yeah, it's I I think uh the energy you put out in the world that is you know you're drawing from inspired work, that just is this really nice you know feedback mechanism that's yeah, that's developed and scalable. And like this this can all go pretty well if we keep keep doing that together, you know.

Speaker 3 59:33

That's where I feel like like learn by build kind of stuff's in. Is like I couldn't do any of this without learn by build. Like I learned how to write a PRD, a product requirement document, you know. Like I didn't even know what the F that was, you know. Like I had no idea, you know. But that safeguard of like it is a playground, you can, you know, you can code with us, you can build something, you can get an artifact after a two-hour session, that's genius, you know. Like I think that's the kind of like maybe the the safe future that we're all speaking to is like there is a sense of like community that is helping you build a thing, and we're here if it breaks. Like because a lot of times stuff will break with you know building with Claude or GPT or Lovable or whatever your program is, like, and you're like shit, I don't I don't know what to do. I'm thankful to have a business partner like John who I can work with and go, like, I don't know what to do, you know. But a lot of people don't have that. And so yeah.

Crystal 1:00:32

Ours wouldn't be possible if this without this deck. I would have never gone down this rabbit hole. And the fact that both of us have different creative mindsets, but we're able to do a collaborative project multiple collaborative projects is the thing that keeps, especially in this world, keeps me anchored. And like the co-regulation just in working together.

Taylor 1:00:52

And it forces some level of humility where you've gotta you learn whether you can be open and honest with somebody or not.

Speaker 3 1:00:58

Yeah.

Nutrition Facts App And Wrap

Taylor 1:00:58

Especially right now. Once you have that like the mirror and the translation and certain masks are coming off, you're like, yeah. That that humility matters. We're probably at like an hour-ish. What for the it's a small, we always know that there's a small group of people that do end up late into the episode. What's put anything on whether it's teasers or fun stuff or other just stuff you want to plug, like what's exciting right now for you guys? Oh gosh.

Speaker 4 1:01:23

Um I'm always trying to like write more blog posts. Um oftentimes not doing that very well. Uh but the blog posts I have written are uh at my website, John.o uh and uh yeah, I'm really excited about more um just collaborative RC stuff happening at the Hub Digital or analog or both, you know, very uh start to make more stuff like that happen.

Speaker 3 1:01:54

Um I'm kind of like I would say just pushing everything in the moment through SSOT.run. Um that's kind of become my identity sense of self, but also what I'm recognizing is that I can push clients through it as well. So like for uh a project with uh Aaron Nyer that we're working on, um I created a um login auth-based you know portal for him to actually have his brand run on SSOT.run. Um so I'm kind of like just it's a playground for me. Um it talks between my local agency and um my personal website, and that's kind of just that single source for everybody to check back on. Um I would also say like I'm stoked about our business that we started six months ago, something like that. So our fundamentals like a business I think we started with.

Taylor 1:02:46

Yeah.

Speaker 3 1:02:47

It's uh we did the thing though. We're we're an LC, we have a bank account, we have a P.O. box, you know. We did the thing. Um it's been really cool to like learn the legal side of this. Like, as an agency owner, I write a lot of master servants agreements and I like I write a lot of contracts because I care very deeply about gig economy standards and the value that people are placed within. Um and I like to say value where value is met. Um and uh I think starting this partnership with John has been that sense of like, oh, I do have to show up and I do have to like take time and I do have to care, and I have to like um you know cross the T's and dot the I's. Um and we just launched beta like two weeks ago, and it's been really fascinating launching a product. I've never been through the paces of actually launching the product myself of the company that I own.

Speaker 4 1:03:36

Um as just a little TLDR, it's it's essentially uh it came out of our constant, not constant, but like probably 10 or 20 times last year, like scoping a creative agreement with someone and uh essentially writing a contract. Like, I'm going to do this for this much money, this is the scope, this is the deliverable. And uh, you know, many ways to approach that. Some of it is very uh go find a template online and edit it, and not like be confident that this is a good template. The other side is like have Claude slop canon something out, and then hopefully like not open yourself up to liability in some weird way. So like, is there a tool here? So it's a very, very simple, almost like doc you sign, but with a single uh built-in form that's uh kind of an open source creative agreement for people doing like paid contract uh creative work.

Crystal 1:04:24

What is it on the uh website?

Speaker 4 1:04:27

Uh this would be nutrition hyphenfacts.app. So uh the name of it, you know, what's inside the thing you're getting uh transparent. And uh yeah, it's in meta. We're excited for people to find it, try it, break it, let us know. But uh it's like something we we wish we had a year ago that would have made some processes easier and and just like clear.

Speaker 3 1:04:51

Yeah, and to be clear, it's ten dollars per use. Like it's it's we're trying to be as transparent as possible. And I think we're also starting to work in uh some new concepts like paper use models, you know, of like how do you just use the thing instead of have to pay a $20 subscription and you forget about that subscription, you hate that subscription. I just want to use the tool, it's like buying a newspaper, you know. I just want to buy the thing, have access to the information. That's it. Love it.

Taylor 1:05:15

Yeah, cool. Healthy. I was like, we we we spent a lot more on all kinds of other healthcare related or gym memberships, or it's just like that's a cheap, cheap version. Totally, indeed. Very cool. Well, this has been awesome. Yeah. Likewise. Yeah. Thank you both. Always turn to you and others up here as just good creative vibes, always learning things. Yeah. Excited to stay in touch. More more to come, I'm sure. Yeah, thanks for having us. Very cool to go. Thanks for coming. Speaking to your guys' world as well. Yeah, awesome. More soon.

unknown 1:05:46

Thank you.

Speaker 3 1:05:47

Cool.