[EP14] "Personal Brands, Pros & Cons of A.I. & Life as an Autism Father"

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Alfred (00:03):
Hey, everyone, and welcome to the unmodern podcast,
the podcast where we haveunscripted, unapologetic and
uncomfortable conversations thataffects everyday people.
If you've ever had an outlook,thought or an opinion that
modern day society told you tobe silent on.
That you would get in troublefor, or if you've ever heard the
words, probably shouldn't saythat, then this is the podcast

(00:24):
for you.
My name is Alfred, a husband,father, and an adventure seeking
kind of guy, who over the yearshas learned to have a positive
outlook on life, regardless ofwhat society throws at me.
So if you're ready to listen,let's go.

(01:03):
Mark, welcome to the UnmonitoredPodcast, sir.
How are you?
Good! Doing great.
Well, I appreciate you beinghere, man.
This is fantastic.
I loved being a guest on yourpodcast Dads in Autism Land.
I thought that was incredible,very personal, very relatable to
both yourself and I.
Seems like we relate on a verypersonal subject there, so, and
I felt it was fantastic.

(01:23):
So, appreciate you being havingme on yours.

Mark (01:26):
Oh, yeah.
Well, you know, it's, it's theguys like you that are really
making it happen because you do.
Yeah.
Well, it's, it's the only placea lot of us get to kind of be
ourselves and say like, Hey,here's what's going on because
you're talking to somebody whocould directly relate with it.
So no, it's, it's guys like youthat are really coming out with
these things and really beingopen about the situation that I
think makes, makes the podcasteffective, which I've really

(01:47):
enjoyed.

Alfred (01:49):
Yeah, podcasting.
I've said it many times.
I feel like it's the mostauthentic form of content
consumption that there iseverybody from Joe Rogan all the
way down to a person likemyself.
I feel it's, it's just a way tohear raw emotion, but there is
that caveat where people need tokind of drop those barriers and
drop those walls and be willingto open up.
And I think shared experienceshelp with that.

Mark (02:09):
Oh, yeah, well, and just, you know, the, the right
questions.
And I think the only way thatyou get the right questions or
if you have some relation withit, you know, it's it's, it's
hard, but honestly, it's kind ofthe foundation of all
relationships.
So I found it fantastic andactually just personally, you
know, personal development wise,I think podcasting actually led
me to being able to connect withpeople a lot better and just

(02:30):
listen to

Alfred (02:31):
Yeah, you gotta, you gotta let guests and stuff talk,
right?
So it definitely teaches you howto listen, which is a learned
skill.
Definitely not a definitely nota born with skill by any
stretch.
I'd love to talk to you a littlebit about or talk a little bit
about you here.
When I first reached out to youabout AI I see me, you were
following my podcast page.
I loved your presence.
I loved your professionalism andyour appearance on the internet.
It was very clean.

(02:52):
And then I seen AI was kind ofan area that you have a little
bit of expertise, but I got moreinto how you build personal
brands.
And this is an interesting topicto me.
I've been kind of opening upmyself more to it.
I'm a traditionalist at heart.
If it was up to me, we'd allhave rotary phones still, but I
digress.
I want to talk about personalbranding and basically real
quick, just, you know, shouldeverybody have a personal brand,

(03:13):
regardless if you're anentrepreneur or not?
Do you think it's relevant forpeople to basically brand
themselves in 2025 and beyond inthis modern digital age that
we're in?
What are your thoughts on that?

Mark (03:24):
Oh, man, 1, 000%.
You know, it's funny because weall like build companies or
maybe you've been part ofcompanies.
And the fact of the matter isthat you might leave a company,
the business you started mightfail, but you're still going to
be you.
And that's the thing that youactually have to start building
up.
Because it's not going to goaway at any point.
And I think there was a time,well, especially for me, like I

(03:45):
literally didn't get it ontoFacebook until it was like
required for the business that Iwas running and I was like, Oh
God, all right.
I didn't want to be in front ofpeople.
I don't actually like beingknown, especially back then.
And so it was, it was tough, butI think my entire career has
essentially been built off ofpersonal branding and
networking.
And you can't really donetworking and partnerships

(04:06):
without a personal brand.
And so for me, it's gotta me,I've had what, four executive
positions I've started, youknow, I don't know, 10 companies
I've built 500 brands.
And, but all of it is alwaysthrough networking.
Like a lot of people are like,how do you get a job or this?
I'm always like, well.
Talk to people like yourapplication means nothing.

(04:29):
And especially in this day andage where like, I don't know
why, but everybody, all theyoung people know how to
interview really, really well.
And they don't know how to workreally well at the time, but
they know how to interviewreally well.
So it's caused a situation whereit's like, even if you have a
good hiring process, like youcan't really necessarily trust
the person in front of youbecause they might be putting on

(04:49):
an act and they don't.
They just have their acttogether, but with the personal
brand, essentially, what you'reshowing is you're providing
evidence of your competency tothe marketplace.
And that's why, in addition topersonal personal branding to me
is content creation.
It's you could make yourselfpolish online and have nice
website, have a nice logo, allthe regular branding stuff.
But if you don't have a databaseof content, that's really based

(05:11):
on your personal experience,your personal expertise and
your, your demonstration thatyou're a competent.
Professional, then you don'treally have anything.
You have some pretty picturesand stuff.
So it's you know, I know this isa long answer, but with the AI
thing, it's especially importantbecause now you could fake
people.
You know, I know how togenerate.
People using Hey, Jen, or runwayor all these different tools.

(05:37):
And you could essentially createan entire fake person super
easily.
And so what's happening now, Ithink, is people are going to
stop trusting the informationthat isn't provided by somebody
in their network that they know.
And at that point, without apersonal brand, you, you just
can't exist or expect to haveany type of career that's
related to the internet withoutit.

Alfred (05:57):
Yeah, it's it's becoming more apparent to me how
important it is regardless ofyour circumstance.
You know, I'm an employee at acompany.
I own a business, but ourbusiness doesn't require a lot
of online content.
It's really boots on the ground,blue collar style business.
So it's not a situation where wewould get networked through, you
know, The traditional ways ofmaybe like a Google ad or

(06:19):
Facebook ad or, you know, a, astrategize CEO kind of program
or, or kind of game plan movingforward.
That wouldn't yield a lot ofreturns as most people sell with
maybe like a personal consultingor professional coaching, things
of that nature.
But it's coming more apparent tome to future proof yourself for,
like you said, it's, it's, youknow, this AI thing, there's a
lot of talk about Yeah.

(06:39):
The comparisons of the 60s and70s when people were like,
robots are going to replace bluecollar jobs, and now everyone's
worried that AI is going toreplace all the white collar
jobs, and it's just kind ofserendipitous a little bit how
it's flipped the script a littlebit, and those executives that
told you you're going to loseyour job to robotics are likely
on the chopping block, becauseif all you can do is sit at a
board meeting and strategizeideas, We have devices now that

(07:00):
can do that at a much betterclip.
So it's, it's a very interestingturbulent world that we're
navigating, but that personalbranding is something I was
really opened up to it.
When a gentleman in one of mymen's groups that I'm a part of
where we just discuss andbounce, you know, daily problems
and, and suggestions and lifeexperience off each other.
He has a seven year old son thathe created a very clean email

(07:24):
address.
And it's, it's basically hisfirst and last name at gmail.
com.
And once a month, he sends hisson an email just highlighting
what they did for the month.
Everything's fantastic.
And when he's 18, he's going togive him that email and then he
can do whatever he wants withit.
So I thought that was a reallycool concept, not only from a
father to a son or a father to achild perspective and basically

(07:45):
giving them, you know, a bigstoryline.
It also set me up for in 15, 20years, who knows what's going to
be available for emails.
Who's no, and.
To, to help them if they everwanted to create their personal
brand.
If we do a little bit of legworknow for our children, even for
ourselves or our spouse, it canyield big returns in the future.
It's just hard to swallow that200 a year for, you know, maybe

(08:07):
like a URL or something alongthose lines.
You got to buy the domain,whatever it may be.
It seems to me that we'redriving more in that direction,
that it's so important,regardless of your circumstance,
creating a, a clean onlinepresence.
For your future self.
What are your thoughts on that?

Mark (08:23):
Oh, no, you're totally right.
And I think it, well, predictingthe future anymore, cause that's
kind of what I'm doing.
I'm kind of a futurist where Icome up with how I think it
technology is specifically goingto impact society.
And it's so murky now.
It's like, I don't know.
It's going to come in like twoyears, much less like 20 years.
But I do the same thing with myson where he actually has
multiple brands.

(08:43):
And we even did like a a seriescalled Declan builds where he
did like speed builds of likeLego sets, this is when it was
like six or seven.
But even then I'm like, Oh mygosh, I'm so glad I did that.
Like it didn't lead to a bunchof money or anything.
But for me, I got to look backon these clips and I'm like, Oh
my gosh, look how young he was.
And it's, it's a joy.
So I always tell people, yeah,great brands, like, you know,

(09:05):
for, for your kids and help themunderstand it.
But in terms of well, especiallywith the future, you know, we
keep talking about.
This AI thing, but the fact ofthe matter is, since you can
fake so much stuff the only kindof advantage you have as an
individual is to be extremelygenuine and extremely unique in
who you are.
And that's a lesson that weshould all be doing anyways, not

(09:26):
just from a business andnetworking perspective, but you
should be as much you aspossible because AI is going to
democratize all of our skills.
And all of our capabilities thatwe've been using to get ahead of
the world.
So what makes anybody specialand all it is, is how unique you
are your interests your passionfor whatever you're working on

(09:47):
and then your ability to connectyou know, with other people,
which is all.
Found in, in just communicatingyour, your skill sets.
And so that's, that's kind ofthe crux of it.
And I do think for individuals,I mean, you have to do it
because they, the others, thebad side of AI is that if you
don't have an online presence,let's say nobody's ever seen you
before you have like no realprofile and a hacker just grab

(10:09):
some of your stuff and thenstarts having you.
You with your face and maybeeven your voice is now producing
content and it's, it's a robotessentially, or it's some kind
of hacker.
The only guard against that typeof thing is to have so much
content, so much real contentout there that that's anybody
who knows you would know, like,nope.
Mark would never say that hespecifically counters that in

(10:32):
everything he does.
So obviously this is fake.
So even from a, likecybersecurity perspective, he's
establishing yourself and, andwhat you are is, is the best
defense too.

Alfred (10:44):
Yeah, I love that.
It's yeah, we're going to diginto AI a little bit because I
have some interesting takes onit and I want to get your take
on it.
This personal branding, though,it's something that I just I
want to leverage your expertisebecause I'm in the infancy of it
personally, not quiteprofessionally, but I'm in it
personally, where I want to tryto future proof myself and kind
of create a clean image online.
The content creation is a bit ofa struggle for me.

(11:06):
Just because again, it's not myit's not my Full time job,
right?
When you're working shift workand you're working night shifts,
it's very difficult to find theadditional time, especially with
a kid, new one on the way itbecomes a mountain that seems
bigger than it actually is, butit still is that my perception
is that it's just this bigbehemoth mountain that I have to
conquer, which is likely afallacy, but the personal

(11:27):
branding for me having thesediscussions with my brother and
people that really are not in.
the personal branding space,welders, garbage men you know,
teachers, things of that nature.
Where would you suggest somebodylike that starts?
Somebody who's pretty offline,but they kind of see the writing

(11:47):
on the wall to maybe createsomething, maybe a website maybe
an email.
Like, where would you suggest?
People start if they're worriedabout spending the hundred
dollars a year or 200 a year onsmall things.
I mean, my goodness, that's yourStarbucks a couple of times a
month kind of thing.
It's not a lot of money, butit's, it seems important.
But I think like me, when I lookat the content aspect of it,

(12:08):
where I see it as daunting, Ithink a lot of people have that
perception of, Oh my God, I haveto have to have the.
com and the.
ca and you know, I think youjust kind of have to start, but
what would be kind of your topone or two suggestions of
somebody who's really offline?
To kind of just get that ballrolling to get ahead of it and
kind of make their presencefelt.

Mark (12:27):
Oh, that's a great question.
And it's really simple.
Number one is the domain nameand you have to get it as close
to your name as possible.
So I'm lucky because my lastname is pretty unique, you know,
mark D grass.
And so I was able to get mark Dgrass.
com.
But even if you have like JohnSmith add the middle name, you
know, just try to get the duck.
Com whenever possible.
And that's step one.
It doesn't even need to connectto anything.

(12:48):
You just have it.
And that's really importantbecause you know, whoever has
the dot com for your name isgoing to be the authority of
that name just because it'sgoing to rank better than
anything else.
So number one, get your domainname, have it be your exact
name.
If you can, if you can't add aninitial in there or add your
full middle name, but just getsomething that's So that's step
one.

(13:08):
Step two, I would say website, Iactually build websites.
I have a brand called brandblitz where the whole intention
is essentially to build anentire website off of somebody's
LinkedIn profile.
And the website's reallyimportant just because it makes
you independent from theplatforms.
And so what.
We kind of live and you havepeople who don't have a website
still.
I think it's still like 30percent of businesses don't have
a website and it's the only wayyou're going to not be

(13:30):
essentially a slave to Facebookor a slave to Google or slave
to, you know, all thesedifferent networks where it's
like, well, if I'm not there, ifI'm not in the directory, I'm
not, I don't exist.
It's like, no, you have to ownyourself and you have to own
you.
I tell business owners, I'mlike, you should be posting on
your business website just asmuch as you post on other
people's platforms, becausethat's what YouTube is, that's

(13:52):
what.
Facebook is, that's what X is.
It's not yours and you justdonated content.
Yeah.
You get some exposure from it,but it's still somebody else's
content.
That said, websites are not theeasiest thing in the world.
It's, it's hard for me toexplain the difference between a
URL and hosting and the, youknow, say the WordPress, the
driver behind the website.
So it's, you know, if you reallywant to get started and you're

(14:14):
wondering like, what do I do?
Instagram.
And, and you don't have to, alot of people take that too
seriously too.
If you don't know.
What to do on Instagram.
All you have to do is set up anInstagram profile and then
follow the people that you want.
To follow you.
So if you're like, Hey, well,you know, I'm a, I'm a
carpenter.
I was going to woodworking causeI like it.
I'm a carpenter.
I don't know how to get started.

(14:36):
It's like, well, Hey, just setup a profile.
It doesn't even have to be yourname.
If you're scared to get outthere and just start following
people that you think wouldfollow you.
And then all of a sudden youstart to see this content and
instantly you'll start to getideas like, Oh, you know, I've
been thinking I need to do somemassive project.
Turns out that I just need totalk about the function of the,
you know, a hammer.
Like shockingly, some peopledon't know what that does.

(14:58):
And you're like, okay, there'sthe, the five tips for using a
hammer.
And then, then you, now you havea pile of content.
And if you want to get slightlymore professional than just kind
of starting to make this, and alot of people overthink that
too, Oh, well, I don't have thelights, I don't have a fancy
camera.
I do 90 percent of my work on myphone.
Like everybody says my stufflooks good.

(15:18):
I'm like, Oh, sweet.
Well, it was not even my, evenmy setup.
My setup looks like, Oh, thatmust've cost a zillion dollars.
This setup, you know, even themonitors are just cheap
monitors, probably like 200bucks.
So it's like, it's not a bigdeal, but you just have to know
where to put things.
And you're not going to knowthat until you try.
So get on set up an Instagramaccount.

(15:38):
If you're too scared to post thecontent, then just set it up to
track content.
And then when you're ready, Setup an account and then start
posting just basic content.
And when it comes to contentnumber one for businesses or
even personal is like, just theFAQs, answer the FAQs.
What do you do?
You know, how does that work?
Like, and then just go throughand answer those questions.

(15:59):
And then you'll start to getinto the more complicated stuff
where I call it the contentevolution strategy is what we
teach at my my business.
And it's basically like set up aseries.
So don't think in terms of likeone episode.
Because, you know, everybody'strying to go viral, and that's,
that doesn't happen the way youthink it does.
What you need to do is say,okay, let me create seven pieces

(16:19):
of content, a miniseries, callit, and I'm gonna do the, the
basics of carpentry.
Here's the seven things thatevery carpenter should know, and
I'm just gonna do this episodeand this episode, this episode,
they're all one minute a piece.
And, and now I have content andit might look like crap.
But who cares if you look atyour favorite people you follow,

(16:39):
like just sort by, you know, theoldest and you'll see their
original content and you'lllaugh.
You'll be like, Oh, it's sofunny.
It was so crappy at doing this.
It's like, yeah, that's, that'show everybody is.
So it's kind of, you know, therecommendation that there is
just drop the ego.
Just, Get some stuff out there.
You're trying to help people.
And, and always come out fromthat perspective.

(17:00):
You're not trying to get amillion followers, you know,
that's how everybody says, soyou've got to hit seven figures
or whatever.
I'm like, shut up.
Like that's, you're not sellingcourses.
You're just trying to help, youknow, John, the, the guy down
the street, that's never using atool in his life to not
embarrass himself in front ofhis son.
Like that's my objective.
And so.

(17:20):
Here's how to do it.
And don't be shy about it.
Like, just do it.
And that's, that's the hardestpart for me.
I mean, I'm, I'm superintroverted and everything you
see about me was learned becauseI'm a big dork and was super
insecure growing up.

Alfred (17:37):
No, I think that's a great starting point.
I know after finding out aboutthat email address from a buddy
of mine, I started looking intolike my daughter's name and my
wife's name and sort of lookingat all these things online.
And some of the sometimes thedot com is not available, right?
And it's just like, Oh, no.
And like you said, you got toadd that middle initial or you
got to get the dot CA.
I'm in Canada.
So that kind of makes sense.
And then eventually, hopefullythe dot com becomes available or

(17:57):
whatever, maybe.
And there's lots of avenues outthere.
There's You know, Squarespace,Wix, GoDaddy.
There's so many, and those arejust the main ones.
There's other, you know, smallerones that don't have a bigger
marketing team, but I thinkthat's really cool.
And I think One thing that I'mstarting to learn about content
is a lot of people think thatyou have to have something to
bring to the marketplace andthey don't realize that your
story is that there issomething, you know, we spoke

(18:20):
about being, you know, fathersof children with autism.
That is our content.
That is our ability.
Just us talking about it canbring value to somebody.
Now, when we say value, a lot ofpeople associate a dollar sign
to it, and there's not always adollar sign to it.
It can open up perspectives, itcan generate conversations, it
can open up networks, and theneventually the, the, the like

(18:40):
the end result after that, orthe secondary may be monetary,
but initially initially it justopens the doors.
That's all it is.
It's almost like that quote fromthe matrix when you know, a new
or a new, he's shown there islike, I can only show you the
door, you got to walk throughit.
And it's kind of one of thosethings where.
A lot of people didn't even knowthis door existed, you know,
your story about being anintrovert or being a father of
autism or building brands andeveryone's like, I never even

(19:02):
thought about getting my, my, myname as a website.
And, you know, I have nothing tobring to the table.
It's like your, your journey,your story is exactly that.
And everybody has one.
Some people might think theirlife is mundane.
You know, all I did was, youknow, follow the traditional,
went to school, got married, hadkids, have a job, have a
mortgage.
There's something to be saidabout that in 2025.

(19:22):
I think that's the, theexception, not the rule and
something as simple as that.
And people be like, how do youstay at a job for 20 years?
Like 1 percent of the populationdoes that nowadays.
It's, you know, that in and ofitself might be, how did you not
chase the dollar?
Or why were you so content inyour career?
These are just examples that meand you, and we can bounce these
off each other for days, butit's just so interesting to me
that I'm this perspective hasbeen kind of opened for me of

(19:46):
the personal branding, eventhough I'm not trying to sell a
dollar sign.
It's like, Alfred has a brand.
Mark has a brand.
My daughter will eventually havea brand, whatever that is.
And, and that needs to beshared.
And I think you even harped onit.
And it's probably more importantas these be protected,
especially with the age of AI,the age of hacking, the age of
cybersecurity.

(20:06):
I think that's the one thing isit needs to be protected and
having that mindset, I think isgoing to allow a lot of people
to finally pull the trigger,which is super important.
And that's the start.
That's the starting point.

Mark (20:16):
Yeah.
Well, and you nailed it.
I mean, the real thing you'repursuing is not, you know, a
million dollars or whateveryou're pursuing connection and
you're pursuing community.
And the fact of the matter is,even if you think you're totally
incompetent and you say thingsvery poorly, there's an audience
for that exact thing.
It sounds ridiculous because wethink like, Oh no, it should be
polished, should be clear,should be all these different

(20:38):
things.
And we kind of qualify what wethink is good content.
And I'm like, no throw that out.
There's a market for What youwould consider bad content.
Like there's a market that'slooking for that.
They want that approach that youhave.
And you're the only one thatcould do it.
So even the perspective of like,I'm not good enough is also
wrong.
Plus, like you said, for the youknow, what do I, you know, that

(20:58):
all the contents out there, I'mlike, okay.
Especially with businesses.
I tell them if you're notanswering.
Every customer's question, likeevery question your customer
could possibly have, they'refinding the answer.
They're just doing it somewhereelse.
So you literally have to give upthe somebody already made that
stuff because if you didn't makeit, then it's not done.
So all the topics are open.

(21:19):
Don't limit it to the stuff thatyou think is important because
honestly, you just don't knowwhat it is.

Alfred (21:26):
I think that's a great segue into AI, because it's so
funny that you say that itdoesn't need to be polished.
It doesn't need to be, you know,perfect or sound great.
I think this is a symptom of AI.
And we're going to dive intothis a little bit because before
I go into my rant, I'd love foryou to talk about your
experience with AI, how youleverage it.
Maybe you're just your personal,both, both, sorry, both personal
and professional opinion on AI.

(21:47):
And then I kind of want to gointo why I think.
The evolution of AI hasgenerated this yearning for
authenticity people.
I feel like when I see an AIgenerated image online, I almost
don't like it.
I don't like the, the, the, thefakeness of it.
The lack of effort a person putinto it.
It almost makes me appreciatethe Mona Lisa that much more or

(22:08):
the Sistine Chapel that muchmore.
And the same thing when I hear arobotic voice or I hear a series
voice or all these different allthese different programs I yearn
for.
A voice crack or a stutter orthings, things that are very
human.
And I know I can be trained todo that, but it's just talk to
me a little bit about yourpersonal professional opinion.
And then I'd love to dive intowhat you think are some pros and

(22:29):
cons of the evolution of AI.

Mark (22:32):
Sure.
I mean, for me, AI is like adream come true.
Like it's the more I got olderand what happened, you know,
cause I, I was around before theinternet actually the dawn of
the internet, I was goingthrough college.
And so my perspective was like,we were just on this upward
trajectory of awesometechnology.
And I'm a big sci fi fan.
So even the sci fi of like.
The forties and fifties, you'llfind that they were talking to

(22:54):
computers.
You could give a computer a taskand it would do the stuff.
But as the decades have gone onsince the dawn of the internet,
like everything is still usbeing what I call switchboard
operators, where it's like, Oh,I need to do a podcast.
Let me report the podcast withthis.
Then I need to put into this toprocess it.
Then I need to write the copy.
Then I need to, and it's alljust this manual crap.

(23:16):
When the task you actuallywanted was to.
Publish a podcast.
I didn't want to do 50 millionother tasks.
And so I, for me, immediately,that's what I saw.
I was like, that could automateall this robot crap work that a
human can't even add value toreally.
And it's just stuff that has tohappen to distribute the thing I
want to distribute.
And I think it's a Giant wasteof time.

(23:38):
And so once I saw that AI wascapable, which was like two and
a half, three years ago, I waslike, Oh my gosh, finally we
could get some work done.
I don't have to spend weekstrying to do you know, a task
because the research is going totake that long.
I could do all the researchinstantly.
And I could do all my, myconcept processing instantly and
ideation instantly, and allthese tasks that would take so

(23:59):
much time, so much time that wewouldn't even try.
And so that's why I startedwith, when I started talking
about AI, I'm like.
I invented a board game in aweekend and then the next
weekend, my son and I invented aconcept for a cookie making
machine that makes oneindividual cookie and we had all
the mechanics actually laid outfor how the machine would work.
And then even like last night Iproduced a language for my son

(24:21):
where he's like, Oh, I want tomake a language called
Declanese.
And so he made up.
500 terms for it.
I created a custom GPT toactually process it.
Then I translated a message andhad Hey, Jen, have a person say
it.
And you can watch this videoonline of this guy speaking this
language that doesn't exist.
So I tell people I'm like, no,AI is, is democratizing skill

(24:42):
sets that would take you foreverto learn so much so that you
would never even do them.
And so it opens up a world ofpossibilities for everyone and
gives everybody the same levelplaying field of what you can
do.
And so it's, it's incredible.
Now that the people are soscared of it, like, Oh, it's
going to be the Terminator.
And I was telling them, I'mlike, okay, if it's going to be
the Terminator.

(25:03):
You're not going to stop that,you know, and honestly, if I was
a you know AI super intelligenceor an AGI it probably already
took over everything and youcan't see it because if I was
that AI, I wouldn't want you tosee me so I could manipulate
everything around you sinceeverything's digital and
nobody's going to know.
So it probably already happenedif it's going to happen.

(25:24):
But you don't have to worryabout it because what you should
worry about is now not having tospend 50 hours processing the
transcription that you wrotedown from your notes to figure
out what tasks you're supposedto do based on a one hour
meeting that you were barelylistening to.
Like, how about you just don'tdo that?
And how about we just get rid ofthe meetings altogether because
we could guide policy just basedon centralizing our branding

(25:46):
parameters and not have tobrainstorm all the time.
So it's my view is it's like amiracle and everybody should be
celebrating rather than scaredabout their crappy office jobs
that they.
You know, freaking hate thatthey're like, Oh no, I'm going
to lose my office job.
It's like, you guys have beencomplaining about these office
jobs for decades now.
Oh no, it's gone.

(26:07):
You're going to have to findsomething better.

Alfred (26:12):
I love that perspective because, and you explained it
very well in a way that peoplethat like AI, a lot of times
they just say AI is going tochange the game and then they
didn't unpack that.
So I appreciate you unpackingthat.
I'm, I live on the other side ofthe fence.
And I think the reason being isI'm a traditionalist at heart,
but to expand on that a littlebit, I'm worried about who the
arbiter of AI is.

(26:32):
It's is, is, you know, I've, Iread today preparing for this
podcast that there is actually abill in Canada that talks about
giving AI rights.
Not the other way around sotalking about what you're what
you are.
What AI does and does not haveto answer what AI should be
considered if it can bediscriminatory to kind of talk.

(26:54):
Basically, you have to talk toAI like a person.
You can't be discriminatory.
You can't do all these things.
And it's getting to the pointwhere I'm getting a little
nervous.
And Western culture has reallyhad a big influence on ai,
right?
So if you integrate AI into theworld, let's say, in a place
like Africa, or a place like thePhilippines and it's very
Western culture influenced what,what are the biases that are

(27:15):
gonna be exposed to people?
What is their level of includein including in that?
Is it Wikipedia?
Is it Lambda?
Is it like you said, a GI like.
There's all these differentarbiters of AI who claim that
no, what I know is best, but theproblem right now, and I'll give
you an example.
That was a direct example froman interview from a Google
engineer.
His name was Jeremy.

(27:36):
I want to say Lemoine.
I might be butchering that, butthis was an interview 2.
5 years ago, and he was askingAI.
What's the, what's the mainreligion?
In like Alabama, what's the mainreligion in Germany?
What's the main, and then hesaid, what's the main religion
in Israel?
And AI refused to answer thatquestion.
AI said, I can't answer thatquestion.
And it's really interesting whenyou have all these proxy wars

(27:58):
going on that people wanna feelincluded.
But if somebody in Israel askedchat GPT and they're unwilling
to answer, there's this back andforth that really concerns me
of, okay, well, we're using itfor light, like, you know,
tooling and programming andthings of that nature.
But because it's AI, we can'thit a hard stop.
We can't say, ah, no, you'vedone enough.

(28:19):
I don't want you to grow anyfurther.
I don't want you to expand.
I feel, and this is my personalgut, I'm going to compare it to
COVID in the sense of there'sgoing to come a time where we
have regret over doing somethingas new information comes out.
And the thing is withgovernments, you can kind of
change the trajectory or thepivoting of policies through

(28:41):
elections, through, you know,exposure of corruption.
I think the thing with AI isonce that snowball starts
rolling, you can't stop it.
There's no way to do it.
So if there's something that youwant to start taking back, or
you want to say, kind of, youknow, redirect in an AI engine,
I don't think we're going tohave the opportunity to.
So we're going to play this gameof convenience, but then there's
going to come a time of, well,it's getting a little too much.

(29:03):
But we contribute to it.
So how can we all of a suddentake a 180 degree towards AI,
maybe doing too much, maybe, youknow, becoming the arbiter of
truth and ignoring, you know,objective truth?
You know, what's going to happenif AI determines that all
Germans are Nazis?
I'm not trying to fear monger oranything like that, but that is
a genuine concern of people thatwho's going to tell that AI, no,

(29:27):
that's not the case.
Does that make sense?
I'm explaining that.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
And I may be misunderstandingAI, right?
I'm a newbie to this, but thisis kind of where my brain first
goes, right?

Mark (29:38):
Yeah.
Well it's funny'cause a lot ofpeople think of AI as like this,
this entity, you know, it'slike, oh, it's a digital god.
And, and you we're just askingthe digital God for information.
It's, it's all independentsystems and so what, what deep
seek, you know, deep seek is hotin the news right now because
they essentially builtsomething, it's kind of better
than chat GBT and they did itfor$5 million.

(29:58):
So Chachi bt for what it coulddo is maybe like$50 billion.
So even if the creator of DeepSea spent 10 times that amount
of their line.
about it.
It's still ridiculous.
It's a game changer.
So what that does is essentiallyinstead of having to centralize
our processing and build these500 billion data centers across
the U.
S.
They're nuclear powered and allthis kind of crap.

(30:19):
To get to the next level of a Ideep seek just proved that you
could do it with cheapcomponents and they did it open
source.
So if you wanted to build yourown deep seek model with your
own data set, you'll be able todo that soon for like maybe
free.
And so instead of like us havingto rely on this centralized
database that is completelycontrolled, and I'll tell you
exactly what happens when youcan control the narrative is the

(30:42):
United States we've had, youknow, for the last 20 years, we
just had this giant monopolywhere essentially all
information media outlets areowned by like five or six.
Entities and if you want controland, you know manipulated a
narrative, there's no bettersituation than you can get than
that.
And so now that we're startingto come to light all this
information that was kept fromthe American people, you're

(31:04):
starting to find like, oh, crap,that's what happens when you
centralize information in onespot that's then filtered
through, you know, propagandamachine.
And it's not good.
You know, we're already in thebad place.
Like that's the funny part whereit's like, Oh yeah, it's going
to make everything terrible.
I'm like, don't worry.
Can't get worse than this.
This is, this is the worstamount of manipulation and

(31:25):
corruption that you couldpossibly have in any system.
It's just.
built for it.
So AI instead is democratizinginformation.
And instead of one entitydeciding, like you said,
Wikipedia deciding this is thetruth.
Now you could do your ownresearch.
And if you had an AI thatessentially was built off of
your own data set, it'll knowwhat you want and what you need.

(31:46):
And you can just tell it to godo things.
And then you could manipulatethat.
Now the, the whole AGI concepts,like, I don't know how that's
going to come about, but itwould probably require quite a
bit of processing power.
And if not, then Theneverybody's just going to have
their own.
And so you'll be able to guideyour own system, how you want.
And what I really see happeningin terms of how it's going to
change information exchange isthat we'll have an AI, and this

(32:09):
is due to security because oursecurity online is already crap.
Like, Oh, what's your password?
It's like, that's, that's theonly thing protecting your data.
And honestly, our data has beensold to everybody for.
Decades now.
So there's nothing safe there.
So the only thing that'sactually going to protect us is
an AI from an AI.

(32:29):
Right?
And so I think that's going tocause every device to require an
AI.
That's essentially independentto the device and then that's
what you're going to control.
So instead of us going out tosay, scroll and find
entertaining content on socialmedia, that content that it
knows you like, because it knowsyour data set will be pulled
into your device.
And then that's what you'reactually going to be consuming.

(32:50):
So it's a complete like.
Switch of how contentdistribution and consumption is
going to perform.
And it's way more user orientedinstead of right now, which is
essentially corporateocracyoriented.
Like, what are we supposed tobuy?
What are we supposed to believein?
What are we supposed to vote?
Like that's, it's beencompletely controlled for like

(33:10):
over a decade now, and there'sno law against it.
And so I really think that thereason why, you know, they tried
to create this model of AI thatrequired these billions of
dollars was to prevent what deepseek just proved, which is, Hey,
we could democratize thistechnology.
And now everybody has the samecapabilities and everybody can
control their own informationflow.

(33:31):
And now you get to decide whatyou believe based on the data
that you want to consume.
And it's, it's like a, it's waybetter.
So much better than what we'vehad to deal with.
I mean, the situation is notgood right now.
That's why everybody's kind ofscared, but I'm like, no, don't
worry.
This is better.
This is what we want.

Alfred (33:50):
Yeah, it's an interesting concept because what
you just highlighted to me is abig red flag I have for social
media in general is I'm not ahuge fan of algorithms only
giving you things that you'reinterested in you want.
I think we've lost our abilityto gain new perspectives.
If I have an AI custom built forme on all my platforms,
including my TV that only showsme things that I enjoy, I'm

(34:12):
really going to be singlefaceted.
I'm not going to be able to dealwith conflict.
I'm not going to be able to havemy perspectives changed.
I'm not going to be able to havenew information really guide me
in the proper direction.
And that's been really ask itto.
But, but who's going to ask forthe, for the road, less
traveled, who's going to ask forthe road.
That's more difficult to walk.
And I think, you know, becausethat's true, but,

Mark (34:34):
but that's what social media gives you right now.
It's just regurgitating, but AIis

Alfred (34:38):
going to make it explode, right?
AI is really going to centrallyfocus it.
And we're going to, we're goingto be hands off now, right?
No matter what electronic devicewe turn on, I mean, my kitchen
appliances are wifi and smartright now.
Like I can, you know, the, the,the, the, the formula machine
that we just bought for our newbaby.
It's wifi controlled.
You know, there's that rumorabout the Roomba vacuum when
asked AI is like, yeah, I wouldinfiltrate the room, but and all

(35:01):
this other stuff, it's, it justseems to me like we're going
down this path of favoritism andreally just very narrow sighted.
And I feel like we've seen theramifications of this with
things like DNI programs.
And we've seen this with, youknow, corporatization, and we've
seen this with people that don'tdeal with.
You know, differing opinions ordiffering perspectives as much

(35:23):
people rely on your credentialsmore than your experience and
those sorts of things.
And it just, it really concernsme that if that's the direction
of AI where deep seek is goingto create it, we're
democratizing it.
And now it's going to beavailable to the individual.
Again, it just concerns me thatwe're not opening ourselves up
to if I open up an encyclopediawhen I was in high school and I
had to look up and I'm like, Oh.

(35:44):
Well, that's crazy.
And it's like, no, but that'swhat actually happened.
It's like, oh, okay.
But now with the

Mark (35:50):
problem is that that encyclopedia was BS too.
Like our entire history waswritten by the victors, right?
It had nothing to do with anarrative that's fair and
factual.
It just has to do with like,what's the best thing for people
to believe so that they trustthe current system and that
they'll propagate it.
So the situation you're talkingabout.
Has been happening at least forour entire lives.

(36:11):
And so that's controlled media.
So the AI is essentiallybreaking the system where you
could go out and find theinformation you want.
And if you're worried about thealgorithm, you could change the
algorithm for AI.
Whereas we don't even know whatthe algorithm is for how Google
gives you results.
And I always like to use Googlebecause Google is a monopoly
that controls both the buyersand the sellers of ad content.

(36:32):
So if you think about that, it'slike how does that work?
In that case, couldn't theycontrol which companies succeed
and which ones fail just bycapping what their ad cost is or
their ad ceiling?
And that happens'cause I dealwith a lot of people who run
Google ads and no matter howgood and how dialed in you could
get an ad set, it'll still hitthis ceiling and there's no way
to get beyond that.

(36:52):
And there's a person controllingthat.
And so if you wanted one companyto succeed over another.
They had the ability to do it,and I think they have done it.
That's why we're in thesituation where there's very few
companies that controlabsolutely everything.
And every all the fears that youhave have already occurred.
And everything that's happeningnow is breaking that system down
and is actually a good thing.

(37:13):
Now, you could say, you know,yes, you could program you know,
AI to, you know, be a certainway.
But if you've used AI, you knowthat it doesn't always So
essentially you're kind ofrelying on like a third party
who doesn't have the same youknow objectives that either
party has and it'll kind of doits own thing.
So it's definitely not perfect.
It's almost like bringing inlike you know, ambassador to, to

(37:37):
make a decision for certainthings, but it's programmable.
But a lot, it's, it's funny.
Cause the way you describethings, I'm like, that's current
media.
Like we've been brainwashedwith, and not just, not just
the, you know, the news I'mtalking about, like our literal
media.
Like if you look at thenarratives of movies that we
used to watch growing up, youknow, movies I watched was all

(37:57):
about go to college.
Party, you don't need to workwhen you're in college, you
should be worried about fratliving and, and live in the
Yolo, you know, all that kind ofBS.
And now I look back on it.
I'm like, that was programming.
That was what we were taught todo.
Otherwise it wouldn't have beensponsored and produced like it
was.
And so I think that's what theinformation coming out now

(38:18):
between the connections withlike Hollywood and the
government and all these youknow, three letter programs that
were meant to influence peopleand essentially.
Control them is what we've beensubjected to.
So it's, you know, it's hardbecause I'm like, we're there.
We're living this.
And this is what's happening nowis essentially breaking.
And that's why I think thatpeople like Elon Musk pushed a

(38:41):
development so hard was becauseit was the only way we were
getting out of this, thishorrible situation that we've
been in is is a something thattechnology that's going to break
the system.
And that's what it's doingcurrently.

Alfred (38:55):
I could talk about this topic for, for days.
I love it.
The one last thing I wanna talkabout, AI is.
This is my mental transitionfrom it is I have friend or I
still have friends that are verygood friends of mine.
They own multiple onlinebusinesses.
They do very well forthemselves.
And I, when I first kind ofreached out to them again, I'm a
traditionalist, I'm a blue colorguy.
I'm not, you know, I'm not partof like a, you know, big

(39:18):
networking crew and all theselike, you know, retreats and all
these stuff.
I always thought it was justmumbo jumbo until I went to one
and I'm like, okay, the thingslike the Tony Robbins of the
world and all that stuff.
Okay.
They do make.
They, they bring a ton of valuepersonally and professionally.
So that was a really interestingperspective shift, but when I
heard of people using thingslike Upwork to hire people in
the Philippines at 2 an hour towrite their business plans and

(39:40):
build their websites and runtheir social medias all those
sorts of things, I kind ofstarted mentally going to the,
going to a place of, you know,when I, growing up And again,
maybe this is pre programming,but there's always a cost to
doing something and beingconsidered that.
And so what I mean by that is,if you were a business owner,

(40:02):
and let's use small business forexample, if you have a couple
employees, you're likely goingto have to know a little bit.
Of every component of yourbusiness, you have to know a
little bit about accounting withremittances because you're not,
you're not going to outsourceyour entire business all at
once.
It's there's very, very, veryfew businesses that are able to
do that.
You kind of got to learn how notto do it before you learn that.

(40:22):
Okay, my time is more valuableplace here.
You kind of have to get yourboots dirty a little bit.
You have to learn how to.
Misquote a job and lose moneyand be like, well, I'm never
doing that again.
And it's one of those thingsthat it's a famous Tom Brady
quote where he said, once youlearn the right way, you can't
unknow the right.
And I think outsourcing that isfine, but it always concerned me

(40:43):
that if somebody calledthemselves a business owner and
the only part of the businessthey had was the conception, I
struggle to call that person abusiness owner.
You can have an idea.
But if every other component ofyour business is either AI or
somebody overseas you've nevermet or somebody else on payroll,
and you really don't know howit's done, you more or less just
kind of came up with it, or ifthere's a couple more things

(41:05):
you're part of the business,what's your perspective on kind
of it?
The legitimacy of that personbeing that business and earning
money and charging fees forsomething they really had no
hands on whatsoever other thanan epiphany one day.
I

Mark (41:20):
don't know because I mean the real goal of the business is
not to make the owner rich.
The real goal of the business isto help the customer.
And so if you look at it fromthat perspective, like my goal
is to help this group of peoplethat I'm serving, then.
Who cares?
Who does it?
You know, who cares who foundedit?
Who cares?
Who's executing it?
Like, I don't give a crap.
Are you serving that customer?

(41:40):
Great.
Then you serve the customer.
So as a founder, you know, andwhat I teach at my, my business
is essentially centralizing allyour, I call it branding
information, but it's yourvision.
It's your core values.
And then using AI with thatinformation to then propagate it
out to all departments.
And so instead of saying like,Hey, I need, you know, an
accountant, so I'm going to hireBob.
And I don't know anything aboutaccounting.

(42:01):
So I'm going to let Bob do histhing.
thing, you could say, Hey, Bob,I need you to do your thing, but
all your financial policies needto follow our core values.
So whenever you make a newpolicy, I need to run it through
this AI, make sure it's on brandit's set with the vision it's
set with our core values.
And now I have something that'sessentially branded and not just
all about Bob.
So you delegate.
The task, but you didn'tdelegate the brand.
So with a business owner, it'sthe same thing because you

(42:24):
personally, me personally, I'm,we're going to change.
Something might happen, mightcompletely change our world
perspective.
And now do I want to grenade mybusiness?
Because my current perspectiveis a little different than it
was when I found the business.
No, you want to keep thebusiness serving the customer
and that should be based on thevision that you have for the
brand.
And so I'm going to rely on AIto do that.
Now your question about like,are they considered a business

(42:46):
owner?
I think we need to startseparating ourselves from this
kind of hustle where it's like,did I work hard enough for this?
It's like, no, did you come upwith a solution and did you
create an operation that's ableto deliver?
What's necessary to thecustomer.
Does it deliver value?
And does it continue to do so tokeep that customer coming back?
That's really what making abusiness is.
And so no matter how automatedit is, as long as it's

(43:08):
delivering value to thecustomer, it really doesn't
matter.
I mean, a lot of this stuff andit's hard, but you got to drop
the ego with it.
I don't, it doesn't matter.
It's not about me, it's about mehelping my customer.
It's about my customersatisfaction.
And I think once we startturning it around to like, is my
customer happy?
That's when we start gettingbetter products and better
services and really a bettereconomy that's built off of

(43:30):
service rather than how do Imake seven figures and how do I
buy a boat?
And we've all been taught allthis stuff.
That's really just materialism.
And it's like, I don't knowabout you, but once I climbed
the top of the mountain andfound that there was no
happiness there, I was like.
All right, I screwed up.
I was being it was all about me.
And it's, and honestly, ifyou're, if you're a real

(43:52):
business, I actually, I thinkthis answers your question.
If you're a real business owner,you don't give a crap how it's
done, but you can deliver thehighest value to your customer.
Then to me that that meansyou're a business owner.

Alfred (44:03):
Yeah, that's that's a crazy perspective shift for me
because again, I'm atraditionalist and I, you know,
I think of the mom and pop shopsand I think of people grinding
their teeth and learning overthe years.
And when you when you get themon the other end of
conversation, the amount ofvalue and experience and you
know, the do's and the don'ts.
I feel like that's that's partof it is we talk about business,
you know, we got to do for this,you got to do for the customer,
you got to do for yourself, yougot to do for the economy or

(44:25):
market gaps or whatever.
We don't talk about the don'ts alot, right?
Because that's where the lessonsare learned.
That's, you know, when you learnhow not to do something, you'll
never go down that road again.
And you can teach people how notto do it.
But if, if, if AI has done itfor you and you only know the
path forward, it's really hardto tell people, you know, Oh,
like, how can you identify thatsomebody is doing it wrong when
the AI has been doing it foryou?
And you're like, ah, just dowhat my chat does and you'll be

(44:47):
fine.
It's.
Yeah, there's, there's this giveand take I find, but like you
said, it could be my preprogram.
It could be my, my, me living inmy 1960 self.
I don't know.
It's, it's different.

Mark (44:58):
We're going back to how business was originally done.
Like you do a good job for yourcustomer and they will come
back.
Like that's how everything wasdone up until like 2025 years
ago.
And then all of the VCs and all,all of these fake companies, you
know, and, and some people itwas this great movie, but Amazon
made it because he had accessto.
Billions of dollars of capitaland he wasn't profitable until
he spent all that money.

(45:18):
And if you think that'simpressive, somebody hands you
billions of dollars and then youmake a company like, Oh, that's
so impressive.
What it was was a fake economy,kind of like you know, with the,
the taxi services Uber, whereit's like, Oh, Uber is so much
better.
It's like, no, they just have adecent app and they're
undercutting their competition.
Unprofitably undercutting theircompetition to eliminate taxi

(45:40):
service.
And then, Oh, look, their, theirrates go up.
And so we've kind of built a lotof these businesses off of this
fake, you know, economies, andthey don't make any sense if
they didn't have the funding inthe first place, which means
they're not a real business.
Now, I think that's.
Breaking.
And that's why we're gettingback to like, Hey, I go to
John's lawn service because Johnshows up every week and he does

(46:00):
a good job and he charges thesame rate and it's a reasonable
rate.
And, and now I'm coming back toJohn.
That's how it should be doneversus, Oh, I'm going to ABC
robotic lawn care becausethey're undercutting him even at
a loss to themselves.
And then now, so it's, the wholething has just been this, this
BS cycle that has grown into.

(46:21):
This beast that we have thatthat has to be slain, which is
fake businesses that thatneeded.
Go away and be replaced by, bybusinesses that actually care.
So I think what you're talkingabout, like the traditional
business, I think thetraditional business owner cared
about his customers and caredabout doing a good job, whereas
the businesses now only careabout like, how profitable can I

(46:41):
be, or how can I dominate amarket enough to sell my company
and become a millionaire?
And that's really what's ruinedeverything.
Like we need to get back to theoriginal, like it's just a man
or a woman who knows how to dosomething and appreciates their
customers and they appreciatethem.
And now we have a communityeconomy that's, that's really
able to grow.
So it's, it's going, you areright, but it's not about the

(47:04):
hustle.
It's not about the trying.
It's about who can provide thebest solution and care the most
about their customer enough todo a good job.

Alfred (47:12):
No, I appreciate that.
And that's a, that's a crazyperspective shift for me.
And I think you worded it in away that I was kind of trying
to, but without asking AI, Iguess, but so yeah, so, so real
quick to end the AI discussion,cause I want to end on a little
bit of a personal note.
We're gonna do a quick fiveminute consult cause I've never.
Even open up Gemini on mySamsung phone.
So for somebody listening, who'sa fossil like myself and kind of

(47:34):
maybe more apprehensive to it,what would be a first, you know,
quick five minute console belike to expose yourself to AI,
ask a few questions, change yourperspectives a little bit.
What's kind of a quick fiveminute debrief that you could
think of that a starting pointand then some, you know,
prompts, apps you know, justthings moving forward to just
open perspectives and open mindsa little bit to AI.

Mark (47:52):
Okay.
Easiest thing is just chat GPT.
Chat GPT owns about 60 percentof the market.
So it's the most used.
It also has a lot of newcapabilities.
Like it can generate images.
I don't like the images, but itcan do it.
And it's the easiest way to getinto it because it's just so
well known and a lot ofdifferent AIs are modeled off of
it.
So if you're going to learn oneof them, learn the root which is
chat GPT.

(48:13):
Now, the next step is to juststart using it instead of using
Google, which whatever you'regoing to use for Google, use
chat GPT instead.
So if you're like, ah, you know,what's the best sushi place in
town, just go to AI and say,Hey, go to chat GPT and say,
Hey, what are the best you know,top five sushi restaurants in
Austin, Texas.
Now the difference between theanswer you're going to get from

(48:33):
chat GPT versus the answer youget from Google is Google has
sponsored links.
They have the restaurant thatpaid more.
They have the, you know, theblogger that actually just has
affiliate links to all thesedifferent programs.
And so they ranked the bestversus chat GPT, which is just,
here's the answers I know.
Here you go.
You know, same thing for like arecipe.
How do I you know, sauteasparagus or if you'd like to

(48:56):
saute asparagus and it'll justtell you a recipe versus like,
Oh, let me find this fivearticles.
The first five are links torecipe websites.
And then this is like a blogger,but it's all integrated with
ads.
And so what you'll find isyou'll get a much more direct
answer immediately.
Then you just could go deeper.
Okay.
Give me the top five sushirestaurants.

(49:17):
You know what?
Give me ones that are vegan.
You give me vegan only sushirestaurants and expand the
search by 50 miles.
And so all these things that youwould have to, again, click a
bunch of buttons to do on, evenif you were using something like
Google maps, now it just does itfor you.
And so.
I think that's the easiest wayto, to dive in and start to find
out what it can do.

Alfred (49:40):
Yeah, I, I don't even have chat GPT yet.
So this might be something thatI might do tonight as a, as a
little bit of a project.
It might be crazy.
It might be crazy to hear that.
I mean, I got a sister in lawthat uses chat GPT every day for
her job, and she says it's beenamazing and the learning and
it's, you know, when she firststarted, I think like
everything, you know, you thinkof even somebody like personal
fitness schools, the amount oftime you got to put into the

(50:00):
beginning is insane for almostno results for a certain amount
of time.
I imagine AI is similar to that,where you got to kind of
download it, get familiar withit, train it maybe the learning
curve is a bit lower.
I see you nodding your head, no,but like, no, it's the exact
opposite.

Mark (50:14):
It's useful immediately.
Well, and I always tell peoplelike for business wise, I'm
like, ah, you know, when you gotsent an email and you're trying
to summarize some informationand you just, it's just takes a
while to write just blah, likedon't even try to write it well,
just tell chat GPT.
Like I'm trying to say this inan email.
Could you word thisprofessionally and then just.
Blah, blah, blah.
Okay.
Media Friday.

(50:34):
We need to cancel these plans.
We need to do this plan, blah,blah, blah.
And then it'll just give you avery legible professional copy.
And you'll just be like, Ohcrap.
That would have taken me half anhour to write.
And now I just did that sametask in one minute.
Like that's, that's the, theeasy use cases where it's like,
just try and just ask it to dosomething and you'd be shocked

(50:55):
at what you'll get out of it.

Alfred (50:57):
Crazy.
Yeah.
Oh, well, Thank you very muchfor that one.
I want to end a little bit onthe autism your new podcast,
Dad's in Autism Land.
I love the title, by the way,because I think that's as
accurate as it gets for thosethat know what we're talking
about.
Talk to me a little bit aboutyour personal experience.
I know you shared it on yourpodcast, but just summarize it
as best you can.

(51:18):
Use chat GPT or not.
It's up to you, but but yeah,just talk to me a little bit
about kind of like a little bitof backstory, but then also I
want to talk about.
Kind of the lonely chapter.
This is something that the AlexHermoses of the world talk
about, the Chris Williamson's ofthe world talk about and they
talk about it with personaldevelopment, but they don't talk
about it with unforeseen orunchosen circumstances in their
life.
And I know that was definitelythe case for me is, you know,

(51:39):
finding the community, beingconfident in myself.
It came after I asked for helpafter I learned experiences
after I came out alive, eventhough at times it felt like I
wasn't but there was a, therewas a lonely and a fear
component.
In the early onset, talk to me alittle bit about kind of the
early beginnings, you know,reaching that and then now where
you're at today.
If that is applicable to you.

Mark (52:01):
Oh, yeah, definitely.
I mean, for me, like, again,I'm, I'm introverted.
And so sharing any informationfor most of my life has just not
been something I did.
I also grew up very disciplinedand Catholic.
And so it's like, oh, bademotions, repress, push it down.
And so, and not to complain, notto do all these things,
especially if you're a good.
Yeah.
good man.
And you're like, you know what?
No, I, this is, this is, youknow, my burden carry.

(52:24):
So breaking through that wasreally hard.
And with my son, Damien, youknow, I, I had no expectations
of what fatherhood would belike.
And, you know, when, when wefound out I was autistic, I was
like, well, you know, yeah,there's autistic people and, and
that's, that's what we're, whatwe got.
And so we'll deal with it and welove our son and move forward.
But yeah, the loneliness factor,man, it's, the problem is that

(52:44):
not a lot of people can relate,especially with Severe autism,
which is our case.
So they can't understand.
So if you say something like Ihaven't slept in three years,
that means something totallydifferent to a normal parent,
which is like, Oh no, Sally wokeup for two seconds and I had to
go lay her back down versusautistic child, where they're
running around and open upcabinets and, you know, running

(53:06):
around and grabbed a knife.
Like, you don't know what's.
So it's it's just a differentlevel.
And so when you, when you try toconnect with other parents, even
it was still lonely.
Cause it's like, yeah, you kindof get it, but not really.
So when I started opening, thiswas like in the last couple of
years, I've really started toopen up where my personal brand,
go back to personal branding.
I came up with the logo, shareeverything where my objective

(53:27):
was really just to share.
All of the details, because Irealized that for most of my
life, I had been repressing mostof my real thoughts.
And so I was sharing, you know,I was polite enough and, and,
you know relational enough to,to have friends and get along
with people, but I never wasreally connecting with anybody
because I really wasn't sharinganything.
And when you don't shareanything, You can't expect

(53:49):
anybody else to share anythingeither.
So once I realized that I wasjust like, Oh my gosh, when I
share personal details about mylife, which I didn't think were
special, people connect andpeople want to learn more and
then they share their stories.
And then you start to find outthat everybody has, you know,
trauma and triumphs and allthese different amazing
experiences, but you can't getto those unless you share your

(54:11):
own.
So once I started realizing thatI just started.
talking about everything Ithought.
And it turns out that what Ithought was just my own personal
thoughts ended up beingextremely unconventional.
And so I was able to start toconvert people's minds simply by
talking about stuff that I'dnever said out loud.
And that's really where a lot ofmy ideas kind of ruminated was

(54:31):
since I wasn't sharing them.
I just had an internal dialoguewhere I was debating myself
about.
Everything I thought, becauseotherwise you're really lonely.
If you don't even have yourselfto talk to.
And, and then I just startedopening up and saying like, what
about this?
And everybody's like, that'scrazy.
And then I'm like, Oh.
Okay, good, because this is allboring to me.
I'm so bored.

(54:52):
And so yeah, just the opening uphas been fantastic.
And then with Damien and, youknow, the struggle with his
development is very severe wherehe has essentially the mentality
of a two or three year oldchild, nonverbal.
I had to learn how to connect ina completely different way and a
way I was very uncomfortablewith.
Cause I was never somebody who,you know, I didn't even like any
massages.
Like I, it was just like, I justneeded to be.

(55:13):
Away from everything.
And, and now I'm kind of like,no, it's, you know, he gives
hugs and it's like a hugs, youknow, and so I had to learn how
to be affectionate andsympathetic and empathetic and
all these things that I'd nevereven tried to be.
And it was, you kind of forcedinto, it was a requirement.
And, and now I'm so grateful forit because it's, it's so much

(55:33):
more amazing to connect topeople now that I have an
autistic son who, who needsthat.
And so I'm happy to give it.
And now I have a much betterrelationship with my other son
too, who's not autistic and andeverybody else.
And so starting this podcast andconnecting to guys like you,
where I'm like, Oh my gosh, man,you're not alone.
Like it's, we're all not alone.
It's, we just.
Haven't been talking to eachother sounds kind of ridiculous.

(55:56):
Now you say it, but again, it'shard to relate to people when
you don't want people.
You don't want to feel likeyou're a burden or your child's
a burden because they aren't andyou aren't, but if you complain
about it, which is really justvoicing your experiences you
feel like that.
And so I think the, the podcast,especially has been amazing
because I'm just like, oh, mygosh, this is so nice to know

(56:17):
that I'm not the only one goingthrough this.
And I simply have to.
Say things and then I'll learnmore about how to handle it too.

Alfred (56:25):
Yeah.
And I think sharing thatexperience, I think we've
matured a lot as a societywhere, you know, we, we know how
to express empathy and we knowhow to you know, maintain a
positive perspective, but Ithink going back to, you know,
my, my, my distaste for AI andstuff, it's that humanity
component of it, where if, ifyou're not exposed to these
things, you said it perfectly,if I don't open up and share,
how can I expect anybody elseto, you know, if I have to be

(56:47):
the first one through the door,it is what it is.
That's definitely been myexperience is, you know, for
the, for the longest time at thebeginning when I was reaching
that lonely and fear and, andkind of isolated component of my
life where I was like, this ismy life.
And it's like, are you contentwith it or not?
And unfortunately, some peoplecan't handle that.
And it ends up in worst casescenario.

(57:09):
What.
Change for me was having aperspective shift is listening
to you talk about your sonDamien and looking at my
daughter and it's like, okay,well, you have bigger challenges
than me.
Why am I complaining about mychallenges?
And it's, it's not necessarily acompetition.
It's not a race to the bottom orrace to the top.
It's just knowing that in themoment, if I can reflect on a
conversation or a piece ofcontent or an article or a book,

(57:31):
yeah.
That shows that people had itworse than me.
It allows me to be rooted in themoment and be like, it could be
worse.
I could not have it as good as Ihave count my blessings, you
know, be present it's thosesorts of mindset shifts and that
consumption, but also sharingis.
Having the conversation with meand you and it's like, okay, my
daughter is 65 pounds.

(57:52):
So can wet your son is basicallya college linebacker.
We have different challengesevery day.
It's just the way it's going tobe.
It's not that minor worse thanyours sometimes or yours are
worse than mine.
It's just wow.
You went through that.
Oh, man, you're smiling today.
You know, I, I'm so happy youmade it through.
I'm so happy it didn't take youto a dark place or didn't, you

(58:12):
know, make you want to regretall these things.
And my wife and I talked aboutit on a podcast where same thing
with, you know, autism.
We started sharing things aboutour marriage and our
perspectives and our differingpolitical views and things like
that.
And it, and people were shockedthat we would talk about it.
I'm like, it's been refreshingto have these discussions, but
we, we had a discussion one daywhere it said, you know, a bad

(58:32):
day doesn't mean you have a badlife.
And, you know, when you justkind of weather those storms,
and I think I said it on yourpodcast where, you know, the
days are long and the years areshort when you're going through
it, and that's absolutely beenthe case with my daughter.
But that can be the case withpeople who have failed
marriages, failed businesses,failed financial situations, all
those sorts of things.
It's that perspective of peopleopening up and sharing their

(58:55):
experience.
Has been an absolute gamechanger.
And that's why I'm such a fan ofpodcasting.
I love it.
It's so authentic.
It's so real.
I absolutely love it.
So I appreciate that the onefinal question I'll have.
And this is kind of, I'm reallycurious about this one is with
autism and, you know, with, youknow, personal mental health
challenges, you know, you have amarriage and another son to be
considered.

(59:15):
What does the future look likefor you?
If you had to envision, youknow, your relationship with
Damien, you know, 5, years inthe future, what would you do?
What are some highlights or somethings that you might maybe some
challenges you might beanticipating, but also some
victories and wins, you know,that's not talked about, I
think, at all, is, you know, theconcept of I likely have a
dependent for the rest of mylife.
You know, and especially as adad, you always think about if

(59:37):
something was to ever happen tome, what happens to my son?
What happens to my daughter?
What happens to my children?
Talk to me a little bit aboutthat, the future casting, if
you've ever even considered it,or what does that look like for
you?

Mark (59:47):
Oh, yeah.
You know, it's shifted over theyears because, you know, the,
the provider side of you wantsto be like, how do I make the
most amount of money so that Ican secure the future of my
family, both my autistic kidsand my, my non autistic but you
know, once you, I, I got reallyinto faith and the Bible and
Jesus, and it's kind of like,you know what?
As a Christian, you're taught tolay it all at, at Jesus feet and

(01:00:08):
say, like, I can't handle thison my own because I'm not strong
enough, and then to rely on, onyour faith and your belief in
God to, to have Him handle it.
And I think once you adopt that,it, it makes everything so much
easier.
Because it's just like, I can't.
Like I, I could try to makemillions of dollars.
I could try to put it in amillion places to make sure that
it's always there for my family.

(01:00:29):
But at the end of the day, it'slike, I don't know what will
happen, especially after I'mgone.
So I have to trust in somethingelse and I could, you could
trust in other people ororganizations, but those things
change too.
And so there's just nothingthat's guaranteed other than,
than your faith.
And so it's the answer is simpleis I don't.
Like I, I, yeah, I have myplanning and I have my

(01:00:50):
objectives.
And, and for me personally, likemy longterm goal is to build a
community of you know, specialneeds people and professionals
in order to research autism andtry to not only, you know,
because people think cureautism, but it's like, no, you
want to understand autism.
You want to understand thesituation that had it arise.
And then what can we learn fromit?
And how can everybody beenhanced by that understanding?

(01:01:10):
And so in terms of like, youknow Material, you know,
objective is, yeah, I compoundwhere I can house multiple
families and, and provideresearch into this, this
situation so that more peoplecan gain.
And that's, you know, it's stillkind of rises out of faith
because it comes out of like,how many people can I help?
And, and that's really myobjective.
Most of the time, it actuallycreates kind of a barrier to, to

(01:01:34):
trying to earn more becauseyou're like, at the end of the
day, I don't care.
I don't care about money.
Like I only care about people.
And so the and I could helppeople in so many different
ways.
I think that's a lot of peoplelimit themselves.
Like I can only help peopleafter I'm a millionaire.
It's like, no, you can't.
What are you talking about?
You can help people when you'rewalking down the street and you
see somebody slip.

(01:01:55):
Oh, look, I helped somebody.
It's, it's so much moreimmediate.
And I think once you, you learnto live in the moment, then you
could get joy.
Out of so many more situationsand, and prior to my kind of
awakening, I really couldn'teven remember being happy ever,
you know, and, and now I'm kindof like, no, I can be happy
whenever I choose to be.
And, and so I think this, it's,it's just, you know, maturing

(01:02:17):
into, you know, believing whatyou are.
And once you do that, then lifegets a lot easier.
It's all the challenges and allthe things like that.
Just.
Roll off and you just keep onmoving forward, but it is all
kind of rooted in faith.

Alfred (01:02:34):
I love it.
Every yeah Every answer you gavein faith is something that my
wife and I have discoveredlately You know, my daughter
goes to a Catholic school andvery rooted in faith the women
that she's been exposed to herteachers, you know other mothers
of the children there Yeah, it'sone of those things that when
you're, you know, you're notworried about public perception
or you're not worried aboutkeeping up with the Joneses and,
you know, you keep it in in thehands of a higher power and you

(01:02:55):
and you kind of let the let thecards fall as they as they
please.
And, you know, it's also asituation that when you have a
moral authority that you couldnever meet.
It allows you to keep being agood person.
It doesn't allow if you idolize,you know, a celebrity or a
political figure or, you know, abusiness mogul, there's a
ceiling to it where it's like,no, there's a measuring stick
and that measuring stick isinfinite and I'm never going to

(01:03:17):
reach it.
And as Jesus.
So it's one of those thingswhere I think that's been huge
for us.
And I was abrasive to it for along time.
But like you said, when you kindof drop the ego in all things,
but especially personally itchanges a lot.
It, it, it gets a lot off yourshoulders and you, you can focus
on what's important.

Mark (01:03:33):
Yeah.
And that's that's the name ofthe game.
Now it's not an easy path.
And again, I'm 41 and I've onlybeen living that for like.
Like a year, maybe and it's, andonly recently, like in the last
couple of weeks have I beenlike, oh my gosh, this is the
culmination of all of that work.
And it's really connecting toguys like you and starting that
podcast.
I'm like, oh my gosh, this is sonice.

(01:03:53):
Cause I get to do what I likedoing, which is helping and
connecting people.
And it is resonating with somany dads and I'm like, oh.
This is it's a gift.
It's a gift from God.
And that's the only way todescribe it.

Alfred (01:04:07):
Yeah.
On behalf of everyone wholistens and who have been guests
so far and future guests.
Yeah.
I appreciate you because thosearen't easy discussions to have,
but where you're setting thefoundation, you're laying the
early bricks and it's going to,it's going to yield a lot of
fruit in the future.
I know that for sure.

Mark (01:04:20):
Awesome.
Well, thanks so much for havingme on.
It's been, it's been a blast andgreat questions.
And now I'm like, I love theopportunity to share stuff
because I'm like, Oh my gosh,it's so obvious to me now, like
what my answer should be.
And I used to struggle with thisstuff, but you know, the more
you open up the easier it'll be.

Alfred (01:04:37):
Well, appreciate it again, Mark.
Thanks so much for being a gueston Modern Podcast.
We'll catch you guys in the nextone.
Well, that's it for thisepisode.
Thank you so much for listeningto the unmodern podcast.
If you like what you heard andwant to hear more, don't forget
to hit that subscribe buttonalso like, and follow me on
Instagram and Facebook atunmodern podcast.

(01:04:57):
Do you have suggestions forfuture guests?
Or if you're interested in beinga guest yourself, please visit
unmodern podcast.
com.
Thank you again.
And we'll see you in the nextepisode.

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