Transcript 0:00 [upbeat music] Hi, I'm Justin Lokos, and this is the Design Shift Podcast, your weekly design guide packed with actionable insights, expert interviews, and bold ideas to help designers at every level lead with clarity, influence change, and shape what's next. 0:16 In this episode, I sit down with Carly Hart, a startup operator, educator, builder, and one of the most interesting examples I've seen recently of someone turning a moment of everyday frustration into real world impact. 0:29 Carly currently leads partnerships for Runway Startups at Cornell Tech, and has spent her career moving between startups, corporate innovation, community building, and product strategy for organizations like Techstars, Autodesk, and Business Models Inc. 0:44 But what caught my attention was Fix Hudson Link, a project Carly started after her commuter bus simply didn't show up one night. 0:53 Standing at the bus stop, she opened up Claude and WhisperFlow on her phone and started building. 0:58 Within weeks, she had launched a live ghost bus dashboard that tracked missing buses, organized rider reports, and gave commuters a way to directly pressure decision makers with data instead of complaints. 1:12 The project quickly gained traction, landed local news coverage, and led to meetings with New York State Department of Transportation and state officials. 1:20 Keep listening to hear how Carly thinks about building in the age of AI, why side projects and experimentation matter even when you already have a full career, 1:31 and what today's tools make possible for designers, operators, and everyday people willing to move quickly and learn in public. 1:38 And if you enjoy this episode, be sure to subscribe to the show and the Design Shift newsletter for more conversations like this. Thanks for listening. 1:46 [upbeat music] All right, everyone, here we are again, and as always, I'm truly excited to speak with my good friend, and sometimes colleague at different times in our lives, Carly Hart today. 2:01 To me, Carly is something of creative polymath. 2:05 She's an interactive artist, a designer, a maker, a builder, an educator, and a startup operator, an entrepreneur that also leads partnerships at Cornell Tech's Runway Startups program, and she's got a background across Techstars, Business Models Inc, where we worked together, and Autodesk, where we worked together. 2:24 And really, I also know her all by way of Instructables. This is where I first met you, Carly, I think. Mm-hmm. 2:32 And at that time you were forging a path, making everything from amazing costumes to recipes for cookies, to a suitcase picnic table, speaker system. 2:43 You name it, Carly's probably made it, knows how to make it, has talked about making it, or is moving on and making something else like it or even better. 2:53 When we were talking recently, and you had a LinkedIn post most recently where you have gotten a ton of press for an awesome civic app that you built called Fix Hudson Link, and this is a project that started with a missed bus and that quickly turned into a real-time system that got the attention of state officials in New York. 3:15 So I really can't wait to dig into this one and everything else Carly is doing. Carly, welcome to Design Shift podcast, newsletter, and all the rest. Thank you. 3:27 I feel real juiced up after that intro [laughs] so that's awesome. I try. I try. I try, and I... Of course, I dig a bit. So first of all, before I go on, we were just talking before this, and we... 3:37 I think we talked just a couple weeks ago as well. We both come from a place of a, it's like a, an octopus. We're always working on many things all at once. 3:49 Is there anything I missed in there before I go on that you're working on or have worked on? [laughs] I... Probably. I sometimes come across projects I forget I worked on, [laughs] so like I- Oh, yeah. 4:00 Yeah, that sounded pretty complete. Okay, cool. Let, let's just dig right in. So here you are, you've worked across startups, accelerators, large organizations, inside, outside partnerships, everything else. 4:14 Where is the through line? What is that through line that connects all of these different things in your career as a sort of multi-tenant builder, maker, entrepreneur? Yeah. I think it kind of start... 4:28 So I would say the word is interdisciplinary. Yeah. I... My undergrad major, I was computer science and visual art, and I kind of pieced that together and that's kind of what brought me to Instructables. I was doing 4:41 physical computing, which was like- Yeah... sculptures that moved with microcontrollers. 4:46 Yeah, and I just, I haven't even realized that I've pursued that through everything, but like DMBA is, it's like a business program in an art school. [laughs] Like it's just kind of... 4:57 So yeah, I feel like that's been like the, the through line of everything is like I, I don't, can't really squ- fair, or fit squarely in one category. 5:05 I just get too antsy and I just want to do a little bit of everything. Got it. Yeah, and when 5:10 you talk about this interdisciplinary piece, and of course you did go to school for interactive art and computer science that... And again, that's, I think when I first spoke with you, that was like the first thing. 5:22 I was like, "Oh, that's amazing." It's costumes and blinky lights, but also computer science. Have you always thought of yourself as a builder in that way versus someone who supports others who build? Yeah. 5:39 So I, I don't really think I discovered this until I was in college when I started building and making. It's really interesting. So my first job was at Instructables. I was a content creator. 5:50 Before, that wasn't even a term then. Yeah. It was like us- we were making user generated content. Nobody was saying content creator 15 years ago. And so I was making physical stuff, and now I make more digital stuff. 6:01 I do also still make physical stuff, but I'm not like-Building stuff at home like I used to. I'm like setting up supply chains in China to build, to make a children's book. So I still think sometimes people... 6:12 I get people asking me, "Are you still a builder because you're not... Are you still into that?" I'm like- Yeah... I think it's the same thing. I actually get- Yeah... like the creative like juices. 6:21 Like I, I've been finding it such a creative outlet to be... 6:24 I've been into entrepreneurship recently and building my own ventures, and I find that like incredibly creatively fulfilling, and that's building too even if you're not like building. Yeah. 6:35 How then did that shape the way you approach things, right? You started with content creation, user-generated content, building physical things. 6:44 And yeah, to your point, now you're doing mostly digital with a little physical in there for good measure. How did building things and maybe coming into your own as a maker builder, how did that shape 6:59 your approach to how you make today even in this AI digital world which you've really moved towards? Yeah. It's interesting. So after Instructables, I, and I... 7:11 When I was a content creator there, I was like we had to post a certain number of things every week. I found it really creatively draining. Oh. 7:17 And so that's one of the things that like I, I got really burnt out, and I realized that for me that was something that I wanted in my personal time- Yeah... not in my like work time. And I actually even now I... 7:31 There's certain things I still can't pick up anymore 'cause I'm just like I'm... I, I got burned too, [laughs] like too much from it. I don't know. I think being able to... 7:39 Now I'm coming at it from all of the stuff I'm doing on my personal time, and it's actually, actually starting to seep into my professional time, but it's all dictated by my interests and my schedule and whatever I wanna do. 7:52 And so I think there's something for me that's about being able to be in control of my pace of building and what I'm building. Yeah. I- that's a good one. 8:02 I think again you've got multidisciplinary, you're doing all this stuff. How with these new tools, specifically AI, right? We can talk about AI trail mates later in this interview, right? 8:18 You've got all these things popping up. 8:21 Given that where you started and even losing a little, maybe losing a little bit of steam or the creative steam with Instructables and the schedule, how do you now go from curiosity to actually using some of these new tools in a real project, right? 8:39 In a, in a, also in a really creative way, in a way that you're excited about rather than drained by or, "Oh, no. This is yet another thing." Yeah. Totally. I've been trying to... 8:51 So I feel like the last, what are we in, May now, so if I back it up, s- early March, maybe late February, I put like a stake in the sand and I was like, "Okay. I'm really gonna dive into these tools. 9:02 I'm really gonna learn them." Yeah. And so I, I have a parallel path where I try to push projects forward while at the same time try to learn new AI tools and set up my, my AI set up to be 9:19 best practices. I'm learning best practices. Yeah. 9:21 But I realize if I spend all the time trying to make everything, like my Claude set up perfectly, my Obsidian set up perfectly, all of that stuff, I could spend all of my time trying to get that perfect, or I could spend all my time trying to build without any of the, the operations in the back. 9:36 So I'm trying to go a little bit at the same time, like a little bit on, in each path. And yeah. So I've been finding that helpful because every time I come across a new project that I wanna work on, 9:48 I am like, "Oh, I guess I've already made the back end infrastructure for this already." Yeah. It's keeping the discipline to move. But I, I do start stuff and then I'm like get bored with it, and then I just stop. 9:58 [laughs] Like it's, that's how I- Yeah. Sure... yeah. Sure. It... I think 10:04 in some ways this execution has become so easy i- in that it's changed the way we even think about making in the context of a new idea, a new project. It's certainly, again, a digital way. Yeah. 10:22 I don't know. I don't know if you, that means something to you, but it, for me making has changed how I think about everything and execution especially in the, in this age of AI. 10:33 I've been finding it interesting because I've had all of these ideas. I feel like coming from the DMBA or just our type of people, I've never had a lack of ideas. [laughs] Yeah. That's never been my issue. 10:45 It's been a lack of resources and expertise- Yeah... sometimes. And- Yeah... 10:50 I, and when we talk about Fix huts and Link, we'll get into that, but I've been finding it really empowering to be like, oh, I can actually see things through that I- Yeah... wouldn't have done before. Yeah. 11:01 And I got this adrenaline from doing Fix huts and Link because I'm, I feel like I'm trying to put a backlog of five years of ideas now into the world. And it's... I probably sometimes I 11:16 drop my kids off at school, work on my projects, pick them up from school, they go to bed, I go back on my [laughs] like it just... I feel like I have a 11:23 responsibility, I don't know, to my old self to be able to see some of these things through. So it's been, yeah, it's an interesting thing I feel like I've been like tasked with. [laughs] I, I totally get it. 11:35 And the seeing it through for people who have just a, a metric shit ton of ideas, the seeing it through is sometimes the h- hardest part. What do you find in all of that is your biggest challenge with 11:49 popping up new ideas or taking your backlog of five years and now forward, like trying to s- fit them through the meat grinder that is AI to turn them into something real? Yeah. 12:00 So this is actually a, a page out of Business Models Inc. Ah, yeah. Two years ago before all this AI... ChatGPT was just like you're just chatting with it. 12:08 But before the level of the personal AI tools are at now- YeahI did a design criteria canvas, which is what are my- Oh, cool... my musts, woulds, shoulds, and won't. 'Cause I was like, I wanna start a business. And in my 12:25 m- won't, I was like, I don't... My must was I need to be able to bootstrap it, so the won't was like I don't wanna raise any money. Yep. And I need to be able to launch something this year. 12:35 And so I had all of these things, and so that was really, I... really helpful for structuring which ideas I pushed forward. 12:43 And again, with brainstorming that we would do at Business Model Zinc, I had this notebook and I said, "Everything gets in the notebook, even if it doesn't pass my design criteria because- Yeah... 12:53 you need to get those ideas out." I was like obsessed with c- certain themes at some point, which I was like, I'm- Yeah... I need to just write these down even though I- Yeah... I absolutely don't wanna do these. 13:02 I just couldn't stop brainstorming around a certain area. But then it was nice to have that clear. So now I haven't actually written out a design criteria canvas, but I think that exercise has made me better. 13:11 I've been... I still have a lot of projects going now, but I've gotten a lot better at what should I kill, what should I noodle on for a little bit, but know I'm not gonna- Yeah... move forward. Yeah. Yeah. 13:20 Where do you write these things down? Where do you write your ideas down? So I... It was for a while in a notebook. And now it's... I have a, I... It's mostly I use AI. 13:34 It's connected to Notion and Obsidian, and I have it- Cool. Yeah... I just have a... I'm doing voice notes all the time on my phone where I'm saying like, "Okay, put this in my inbox in Notion. 13:42 This is an idea for this," and that's... But yeah, there's a certain level of I do have to sketch things out on paper at some point. Yeah. I'm the same. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So I have a... Mine is m- probably simpler. 13:53 I've got a Apple Note, right? That's truly now five years old or more, right? It- Yeah... it just, it's... I look back and I'm like, oh, these are, some of these are crazy, right? Yeah. Physical, digital, whatever. 14:04 But yeah, it, e- eventually you're right. I will noodle with them somehow in Claude or Lovable or something like that, and it rarely gets it what was in my brain the first time. And then I'm like, you know what? 14:18 I don't know why I'm even asking you. I can just sketch this thing, and here's the thing I'm looking for, and then maybe I do something with it. Maybe I don't. Mm-hmm. 14:26 But yeah, just getting it out is, it's cathartic just to, okay good. I don't even have to think about it. It's there. Yeah. Totally. Before I go on, and this is... 14:35 I've never asked anyone this, so I'm gonna ask you this, Carly, 'cause you are a maker in every way. What is your making tool stack look like in this digital world? You've just mentioned a few things. 14:49 Tell me just a little bit about what that looks like. Yeah. So I've gone deep into Claude. Mm-hmm. This is my, like couple months ago when I said I was transitioning, there was all these posts of 14:59 stop ChatGPT, go to Claude, and so I was just like- Yeah... I just did it. Yeah, so I'm using the desktop app mostly. But I'm mostly, I've actually, it took me a little while, but I'm 15:11 using Claude Code from the terminal mostly. Uh-huh. Obsidian, I've been trying. I've been using it. Trying to get into it a little bit more. Yeah. 15:21 A lot of smart people that I trust have been really, like advocating for it, so I'm... I unders- I understand it. I always say I understand it intellectually. Like I know how it works. 15:31 It's like a file of marked down folders. But like- Uh-huh... emotionally it's still at, I'm still having a hard time like [laughs] wrapping around like how... But I'm using it. Uh-huh. So Obsidian. 15:41 I, I do so much from those two, and then like through that I'm like, I have like my GitHub and like my Netlify- Yeah... where I like launch my sites and... But I feel like I'm like in the terminal all the time. 15:52 [laughs] Got it. Got it. Yeah. So when you're launching things, and this is just a little technical now- Mm-hmm... you are not, you're, it doesn't sound like you're going to Lovable or Bolt or something like that. Mm-mm. 16:02 Sounds like you're doing them in Claude Code a- and launching them to, and using Netlify or something like that to host. Is that right? Yeah. Yes. So I tried Lovable a little while ago. Yeah. 16:14 And I, I think it was long, it was last year. So I, yeah. Sure. Didn't stick too hard then. And then I've just been finding Claude really, like I can do a lot of the st- Like I feel like I- Yeah... 16:25 if I wanted to go back to Lovable, I'm like, I can just do that in Claude. I'm paying $100 a month [laughs] for it. Yeah, you're already paying for it. That's it. Yeah. I'm... 16:33 I was doing the $20 a month, and then I was like eating through that code like, or that, those credits like crazy. Yeah. I've only hit the limit like twice, but it refreshes after a couple hours. So yeah, Claude's... 16:45 I probably have more in my stack, but yeah, Claude's the biggest one. Okay, good. Yeah. I've never asked anyone. Oh, Whisper AI. Have you used Whisper AI? Oh, Whisper AI. It, yeah, amazing. Same. Like- I- Yeah. 16:54 I don't know how I c- I, I truly don't know how I could work without it. I had downloaded it once like- Uh-huh... at the end of last year. 17:00 Deleted it 'cause I couldn't get into it, and then a lot of smart people that I like- Uh-huh... they were like, "Download it." And I was like, okay, I'll be peer pr- pressured. And now, yeah, I, I can't work without it. 17:08 It's- So you are... Yeah. It sounds like you are using Whisper to transcribe your ideas into something, and then you're using this stack to then make bold and shape something out of that- Mm-hmm... something. 17:22 Is that right? Yeah. Okay. Cool. Cool. I've never asked anyone that, and I figured, yeah, there are probably people who wanna know that. I have something similar. 17:29 I did just start moving to Claude, and had to almost immediately up my subscription to the $100 thing 'cause I was like, oh, my ideas and the way I've been using it, like I eat through the $20 in 30 minutes. 17:44 And then, like that's in 8:00 I'm done. I'm like, 8:00 AM. I'm like, oh, I can't use this again for 24 hours? So that's, okay. Good business model, by the way. So yeah. Yeah. 17:53 I know there's been a lot of criticism recently- Yeah... because it's, like a lot of people are spending a lot. It's getting more expensive. Yeah. 17:59 I'm hoping that I can get to a point with some of my projects where I can cover the $100 a month. Yeah. Totally. So. Totally agree. Yeah. As a s- sort of a solopreneur, founder, so forth. Yeah. Love it. 18:13 Let's switch a little bit into the influence of things on each other, right?You are not just building, but you're teaching and advising startups as well. 18:24 How, in this multidisciplinary way, how do all these things influence each other? Huh. I don't know if I have a... I'm just... I have... This is maybe not answering your question, but it's what- Yeah... 18:39 came to my head, so I'll just say it. [laughs] Sure. So I've been working in startups and accelerators since 2018. Yeah, okay. 18:48 Um, and now I'm at Cornell University, and we're working with PhDs that are commercializing their research. But this is like deep tech. They're... 18:55 They spent six years on a PhD, never thought about a business model, and now they're like, "I wonder if this technology has like... It could be a product, or could be..." And what I've... 19:07 Had this epiphany a couple years ago, is like I'm personally more interest- I'm less interested on the deep tech side of entrepreneurship, and also on the venture scale side of entrepreneurship. 19:19 I love the people I work with. I honestly like... I'm in such a great working environment, learning stuff that I would never learn if I wasn't in this position. 19:28 But I've been more interested on kind of the consuming side of AI. So instead of building the tools that people are using, I wanna use those tools- Mm-hmm... 19:36 to do what I've been calling small businesses, which is like the stuff that I'm doing now I would've needed so much money to do, and so much- Yeah... time to do. 19:45 And now this is a small bus- like it's a small business, what would've needed like $3 million in like seed funding however many years ago. I did talk to a woman who was like... I tried... 19:54 She was like, "I had raised $1.7 million like in 2017 or something," and she was able to... It never got off the ground. She worked on it for a year and a half, and she was like able to build it in a week. [laughs] Yeah. 20:09 This is in February, and she's like... And so I'm like, okay, that's a small business now. Maybe you will need to raise money if you wanna go crazy. But 20:19 that, yeah, what is a small bus- So I've just been like finding myself more gravitating in that direction of I'm a little bit over venture scale, and I think that there's other types of- Yeah... 20:30 technology businesses that don't have to be venture scale. Tell me more about that. Tell me... And I'm saying this as a total proponent of what you're saying, and as someone who 20:41 completely, and you could see it in my face, completely believes in this idea that venture scale sure is perhaps still a thing for a little while, but 20:52 th- this idea of long tail solopreneurs, duos, trios, whatever, people who can just launch awesome businesses that have value, that aren't gazillion dollar, trillion do- who cares, right? 21:06 But also don't need to raise funding. Tell me a little bit more about your belief system there, uh, of maybe it's not eschewing venture scale, but it's yeah, okay, there's all this other room to move and create. 21:21 I think that like, yeah, I'm not saying venture scale. Yes, we need venture scale. Yeah. The startups I'm working with need venture scale. They, they- Okay... just do. 21:29 For the technologies that they're building, like they're building- Yeah... foundational technologies of this stuff. Yeah. But I, part of this epiphany that I had two years ago was like I... 21:44 In thinking about what a successful business is or what a successful career path is for somebody, people are just thinking about es- especially in the startup world, 21:53 can I raise money for this and can I build this to a certain level? Yeah. And in my mind I'm like, okay, that's cool, but then also what about lifetime income or personal happiness? Yeah. 22:04 I see all these people that are raising all this money, and then I'm here making between 100 and $200,000 a year slowly chugging along- Mm-hmm... 22:13 and I probably made more [laughs] than them in the last five years because they were taking no salary. I don't know exact- But you... I feel like- Sure... 22:21 people think it's basically like I'll roll the dice for the one out of 500 chance that I'll be a billionaire, or the 499 out of 500 chance that I will just not. [laughs] Or whatever the ratio is. 22:34 And so I think- Uh-huh... I did this exercise and I actually, when I start at NYU, which I don't know, I'm, will be starting at NYU. Okay. Um, I wanna get someone to maybe... I wanna do a little research around it of... 22:44 I did a really quick exercise with Claude. This was like in the summer of last year. Yeah. I was like, 22:50 if you were to compare someone building a venture scale business, someone building like a small to medium sized business, and someone working in like corporate life, 23:00 compare like average happiness levels, average like lifetime income- Yeah, yeah... average like control over their time. Yeah. And there was like a few different levels that I was looking at. 23:10 And maybe I was biasing the... because I wanted it to land in the middle. [laughs] Exactly. [laughs] But it was, I was really trying to be as objective as possible. 23:17 That's why I wanna have someone else look at, look at these numbers. But yeah, it was like I, I... My north star right now is owning my time, h- whatever that looks like. Yeah. I, um, this is 23:31 a side, but like I've had two kids. Yeah. Both pregnancies I gained 60 pounds, and then I lost 60 pounds after both. Oh, my. Yeah, wow. And my north star wasn't to get back to my previous weight. 23:42 My north star was like I wanna be able to play on the f- ground with my kids and run around- Yeah, yeah... and like... And so that's what like... 23:49 And so now when I think about with like I wanna own my time, that doesn't mean like I wanna like move to Hawaii and sit on the beach, but it means I wanna be able to be like, "Oh, this is what I wanna do today." 23:59 You know what I mean? Or within reason of like I still need to ha- you know, I still have a two and a five-year-old, and I still- Yeah... have like half, half the income of a house. That's my north star. 24:07 So like the decisions that I make now are like, okay, is this gonna get me to be able to say yes or no to things that I wanna do or don't wanna do? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I share the same. 24:16 I think of it as a portfolio career, right? Totally. This idea that-Just like you balance your investment portfolio, right? You don't put place all your bets on one thing. Yeah. 24:27 You place your bets on a lot of things, and some p- plan out, some don't pan out. But on the, in the long term, it all ends up kind of panning out in some way. And they're... And 24:37 that is not necessarily gonna make you a billionaire or whatever, but actually, yeah, you end up with a really nice balanced portfolio, but also perhaps a balanced life if you're thinking about it in terms of a career, right? 24:55 How do you have the energy to do all of this, right? [laughs] How do you have the energy to do all these projects, also working at Cornell Tech, but also now at NYU? How do you have all that energy? And also 25:12 you mentioned design criteria before. What do you have to say no to, and how often do you do that? Yeah. This is can you have it all? Now I always joke that... 25:24 'Cause when I was working on my book, Brushing Buddies- Yeah... last year, people would... I'd get this question a lot, like, "How do you find the time to do it?" And I'm like, "Some people knit after work." 25:33 [laughs] I- Oh, yeah... this is ac- it's not a stressful... It's, to me it's de-stressing. It's being able to- Therapeutic. Like- Yeah... like I actually find it 25:45 relaxing, and it's like a creative outlet, and it's like knitting's a creative outlet. To me, this is a creative outlet. 25:53 One of the reasons that I'm excited about becoming a professor, and going back to I wanna own my time, is like- Yeah... 26:00 when I talk to the dean who's gonna be my boss and I tell him about the projects I'm working on, I'm noodling and experimenting, he's, "That's awesome." [laughs] Like I- Yeah, cool... 26:08 like to me, I'm in my mind preparing myself to be teaching the stuff that I know and working on the stuff that's exploratory and that I'm interested in. 26:18 And I specifically have been trying to get myself in a career path where that's encouraged versus earned a lot. Yeah. But yeah, that's where I'm like trending towards. Makes total sense. 26:31 W- how important do you think it is then, whether it's for you or for someone else, how important do you think it is to keep a... 26:41 I don't know if it's a career, but a job where you're paid by someone else, you work for someone else, like Cornell or NYU, right? Or for me, CCA for a little while. 26:51 How important is it to keep that paying job career while also building on the side? I think it's so important. Now I say that with the, within the context of my design criteria, Cam- Mm-hmm... versus I, if you're like... 27:07 Again, I'm working with peop- if you wanna join the Runway program, which is the program that we join, that we have at Cornell, you ha- you have to be 100% in it. You have to be building- Yeah... 100%. 27:16 And so there are certain- Yeah... things where you do have to, I think you have to... You can't build the next... 27:22 I'm just thinking of one founder, she's bui- building this AI imaging for breast cancer, and she's, that's what she's gotta be doing that full time. 27:29 But for me where I'm looking at these lifestyle businesses and the stuff that I'm wanting to do, I did have a conversation with my husband two years ago of like, "Can I just quit?" And he was able, would've been able to 27:43 take care of the household with his salary and stuff like that, and I was like, "No, I liked my job," and- Yeah... it's also hard to come back in. 27:51 But yeah, I think the best thing I did was not jumping out and being able to stay where I'm at. One of the things with, again, with NYU is you probably see this with CCA too, having the... 28:03 And I get this with Cornell, like having, being attached to that name and just be- Yeah... it's helped me in my personal stuff. It's actually like- Sure. Sure... 28:11 I, if I was just a solo agent, I wouldn't get the benefits of being attached to these institutions. Yeah. Makes total sense. Yeah. I'm gonna switch that around a little bit, and then I wanna move into like- Mm... 28:21 a, an actual project here. What do you think people miss if they, the opposite, stay purely in their roles and work, and then don't build things for themselves outside of tho- their roles and their work? Yeah. 28:38 This is I think something that bothers or you're like, "Ugh," it bothers me a little bit. I hear a lot of people complaining- Yeah. Yeah... of a lot of people complaining and not doing anything, and I think- Oh, yeah... 28:49 sometimes one of my favorite compliments I get isn't, "I like what you're working on," it's, "I like that you started it." [laughs] That's like- Yeah. Yeah... 28:55 when people are like, "It's really cool you actually made the book. You said you were gonna make a book, and then you made a book." And I was like, "Yeah." 29:01 Or people won't tell me their ideas 'cause they're like, "I don't want you to take your, my idea." I'm like, "I'm not gonna take your idea. I know how hard it is to start an idea. I'm not gonna just take your idea." 29:09 And so it, it's like an irritation for me when people are like, "I gu- I guess this is the next however much amount of time that I just have to be working on this." And I'm like, "You can start doing stuff on the side." 29:22 With this kind of transition that I'm in right now, two years ago I literally wrote down on a piece of paper portfolio career, and it was like teaching- Huh. Yeah... consulting, running my own businesses. Yep. 29:35 And it was like, I don't wanna get there by quitting my job right now. I wanna transition. And so I just over the last two years was meeting people and taking the projects to get me to where I'm at today, and it's... 29:47 It doesn't have to happen in two months. It could take a couple years. Yeah. But there, you just gotta start, and I, I don't know. That's a pet peeve of mine. Yeah. I totally agree. Yeah. Totally agree. I love that. 29:56 And it's just, yeah, m- making something. All right. Before I go on, 'cause I really wanna talk about Fix- Fit- Fix Hudson Link. Before I do that you mentioned it as well, right? 30:09 We all, we both come from this sort of design thing, right? 30:14 We, you came from Instructables, I came from other stuff before that, and then we were both at Autodesk for a while, which was not only design, but design software, right?And then we both went through this design MBA program, the DMBA, where at least for me it like solid- solidified like, oh, I'm a designer. 30:31 A different kind of designer, but yeah, I understand design to its core and what it means. How... What is design to you, and how does it translate to what you do? 30:46 And even how you tell people what you're doing or how they might start something. Yeah. So I actually don't use the word designer for myself. Okay. I, I don't know why. It's not because I'm like, "I don't want..." 30:59 I don't know, it just, it doesn't feel like it clicks. In the same way, like with my book- Cool... I don't call myself an author. I- I use the word creator more. Yeah. The creator, inventor. But that's... 31:08 And how it fits in my life is I think it's just completely changed how I think. I... When I'm like going to solve a problem, it's just how you solve problems. 31:17 I, I've never coded a day in my life, but I have a computer science undergrad degree, and I am like, that actually did change a lot how I think because I... You- you have a computer science background too. 31:28 I think in algorithms- Uh-huh... and I'm like, "What's the missing variable?" Right. And what are the pieces I need to put in this to get to the, this end outcome? And that's just how I'm thinking about everything. 31:35 And then bring in design strategy and design thinking, that brings in, it's okay, nothing happens in a vacuum. Who are the people around it? And so I know it is, I know everything I'm doing, but the definition is design. 31:49 I just, I don't usually use that word, but it's, it's how I think about everything, honestly. I just work backwards from where's- Yeah... the end outcome, or these are the pieces that I have, what's missing? 31:58 And I just, it never turns off. I feel like I'm always, okay, what... 32:02 I am, I'm always trying to solve for if I have something I've been trying to work through, I'm just always working through it, and then I'm like, "Okay, like I landed on something." 32:10 And it's the way you think through things now. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. Totally. I love that. Yeah. 32:15 I wanna talk about then something that you recently started doing where you are trying to solve something, not just for you, but po- potentially for almost everyone, right? 32:25 Which is, or anyone who rides transit for that matter. I'd love to hear more about Fit- Fix Hudson Link. Maybe start with, tell me a little bit about the moment that started and what actually happened that day 32:41 when your bus didn't show up. Maybe just give us that story, yeah. Yes. So I moved to the Hudson Valley- Mm-hmm... three and a half years ago. Mm-hmm. 32:49 And I live in a little town called Nyack, and we are this cute little village, and we're a bus ride from the Metro North to go into New York City. The county that I'm in is a commuter county into New York City- Yeah... 33:03 but it's not, it's not super close. It's not like Westchester. And we have to take a bus ride to get to the Metro. And I commute to the city, it's probably been like five, four to six times a month. Yeah. 33:18 But starting in the fall it's gonna be two to three times a week. You know? Yeah. Love it. It's just gonna change a lot. I've just generally noticed that the bus reliability's bad. 33:29 And then about a month ago I was commuting into the city, and my bus into the city and out of... 33:35 My bus to get to the train going into the city, and my bus coming home after taking the train, getting out of the city, didn't show up. It's a, they call it ghost buses. Hmm. 33:44 Said it was gonna show up, and it didn't show up. In the morning I was lucky because I picked a different li- I just was like, "Okay, I'll jump on this other line." Coming home I didn't have that option. 33:52 So I was stuck in White Plains at this really crappy bus stop for 40 minutes. Oh. And it was like the bus was supposed to come in three minutes, it didn't show up. 34:01 I looked at an Uber, I was like, "Okay, maybe I'll take an Uber." It was gonna be like $45. I was like, "Ugh, I'm not gonna pay that." It wasn't that much of a rush. 34:08 If it was a rush I would've, but I was like, "I'm not gonna pay that." So I was like, okay, I'm gonna... I just had this idea. I had been thinking about it for a while. 34:17 I had actually tried to get this letter-writing campaign going a couple months before. Hmm. Didn't really pick up steam. Sure. It was too manual for people to do. It was too much of a burden on getting people. 34:27 I was like, "Message..." I was like, "Message the MTA." Nobody was, like, gonna do it. So I- And specifically about the, this Hudson Link- This Hudson Link... yeah. Yes, exactly. Uh-huh. 34:36 And so then I'm sitting at the bus stop and, yeah, I u- Whisper AI and Claude on my phone. The first thing I started to do, I was like, I used it for research. So I was like, well, I'm at the bus stop. Hmm. 34:46 Who's, who controls all of this? I've never really thought about that [laughs] before. Yeah, yeah. I'm like, who controls the bus? Right. Who do I... 34:53 I didn't even know who to call because I had called Hudson Link before, and it was some disgruntled person being like, "I don't know why you're annoyed." 34:59 Some pr- oper- phone operator, they're not getting paid- Yeah, sure... for all of this. They're getting paid nothing to talk- Yeah... take my phone call. So who literally is in control? 35:08 So I spent some time figuring out who was, like, how the process worked of New York State Department of Transit puts out an RFP, a private company gets the bid, they operate the bus. 35:20 I figured out who all the players were, and then I was like, okay, I wonder if we could have two f- I, I wanna create a campaign where it has two features. 35:28 The fe- one was like, make it one, two, three clicks for someone- Uh-huh... to email those people. Yeah. And it will auto-generate an email for you. Yeah. And then one, two, three clicks for you to basically, 35:40 users to, to say when a bus doesn't show up, when a ghost bus happens. Hmm. And so that's what the first iteration of the thing was. 35:48 I built the structure of the site in 40 minutes standing at the bus stop, and then I came home and I was like, to my husband, I was like, "I, I need to put my head down for three hours and like really..." 35:57 [laughs] I was like, "I have the shell of this. I have to act..." You know what I... You know when you have to like stay silent- I know... and just figure it out. 36:02 And you're not talking about putting your head down to take a nap. You're like, "Oh- No... oh, it's on." Yeah. I was like, "It's on." [laughs] I was sitting right there. Yeah. I was like, I... 36:08 And then the week, then the rest of the weekend I was like, "It's really on." Okay. And I spent 40 bucks basically on getting the domain name, and printing out, I printed out these little business cards at Staples. 36:20 And-I posted on all-- I posted the campaign on all of the Facebook groups- Yeah... the lo-the local, everybody's always talking about stuff. 36:29 And then I printed out 100 of these business cards, and I started going to the bus stops and passing them out and talking to people. And then I also used Claude to help me write media pitches to local news. Yeah. 36:42 Um, and I had it be like, "Who's written other transit stories, in Rockland County?" And so I got two newspaper write-ups, and then I was on Channel 12 News. 36:52 It was really funny because one of the newspapers, they did like a little film... It was like an online newspaper, so they did a little video also. And when I would go to the bus stops, I'd appo-approach people. 37:02 People are like, "Ugh," they're like, "I don't wanna talk to you. Don't approach me." [laughs] This is how I would be. I don't want anybody to approach me. Yeah, sure. 37:08 But then when I would start talking to them about what I'm doing, it... I didn't get one person that was like, "Don't talk to me." Everyone was like, "Oh my God, this is such a big issue." 37:16 [laughs] It was like the most bipartisan- Yeah... most, every single person had a story. So that was the first iteration. And then what I realized was like I was still getting a hard time getting the... 37:29 We were getting a little gaslit by the bus operator. Sure. They're like, "It's not that bad. It's not that bad." And I was like, "No, it's really bad," 'cause they were like, "You're putting your own missed bus..." 37:40 It was like the community writing when the buses were missed. Yeah. And I was like, "I need the real data of like when the buses are missed. I need to know even if I'm not out there and it's-" Yeah... "you know, 37:50 9:00 PM, I need to know that the bus is gone." So I tried to get the, the API for the real-time transit data- Mm-hmm... which they're supposed to publish. Sure. They don't. 38:00 After a bunch of iterations, days and weeks, I, they, I realized they didn't, which I'm submitting a FOIL to get freedom of information. Yeah. 38:11 And then I was, what I did was I just, now I have a, a script that scrapes the data from their, from their site, 'cause they don't have a feed, so I'm just going to the website every two minutes. 38:23 I have a database that's comparing the numbers. About... Dan, I could check it right now. I wo- I won't. I'm curious now. 38:31 [laughs] About eight, about 15 to 23% of the buses, maybe even to 25% of the buses are just not showing up. That's an insane- That's insane... insane number. Let's see what it- Yeah, that's insane... 38:44 it's loading right now. But once I had these numbers, there's something about da- 22% today, 29 canceled bus trips. 38:53 Once you have that data, I've been on the phone with a few different politicians where they've been like... Our mayor, he was like- Huh? 38:59 I'm, I'm getting his attention and I was like, "No, just check the dashboard right now. Go on your phone, go to Fix Hudson Link." And he's, "These numbers can't be right." I'm like, "This is correct." He's, "This..." 39:09 So having the data has made it a lot easier to push this forward, and I don't think I could have- Yeah... made this dashboard without AI. There's no way. It's amazing. 39:19 Okay, so for people who haven't seen it, right, you, you started this, you started [laughs] with Whisper Flow and Claude and everything. You basically, you... It sounds like you, you put together, coded, whatever, right? 39:31 You created the first version of this really in a day, right? Standing at, at the bus stop- Mm-hmm... waiting for your ghost bus, [laughs] right? Get home this, it's on, I'm gonna make this. 39:43 For people who haven't seen it, what is it today? What is it? If they went to Fix Hudson Link, what is the thing they see and what are, maybe what are the features and the value proposition behind it? 39:55 So yeah, a bunch of the things I just mentioned. So there's report a ghost bus. So if your bus doesn't show up- Got it... at the bus stop, you click- Yep... you report ghost bus. So there's a feed of all the missed ones. 40:04 You can email, I forget the CTA, but it's like email the people in charge, and that will- Uh-huh... email Kathy Hochul, our governor. [laughs] Yep, great. And New York State Department of Transit. 40:13 We're on all the radars of the m- people we need to be on, but I still kept that feature up. Sure. And then the main thing it's doing... Oh, and then also the dashboard, so the, the scraping every two minutes. Yeah. 40:24 It collates that into what's the past week. It's like a report of the past week, essentially. Got it. Yeah. And of the day. So it's like of the day and of the past week. 40:34 What I'm pivoting to now for the site is making it where it used to be more let's get attention from the politicians and let's like- Yeah... gather data. 40:44 Now it's more kind of sharing the project with people just to say, "Here, this is what we're doing." Mm-hmm. Keep updates on what we're doing. 40:51 It's just more of an overview now of what the project is, and my goal is to, I wanna open source it so we can... I've had other people be like, "I wanna do this for my town." I wanna be able to give them 41:03 a, all of the code that we've done. Yeah. And then like everyone's town's different, so I wanna put, create a chat or a Claude prompt that they can- Mm-hmm... 41:12 put in to their Claude that will basically then interview them and pull the right stuff for their town- Yeah... so they can do this for their version of it. Yeah, I love that. 41:21 I like the idea that it, yeah, it's, you know, it's this thing of it's n- it's not just complaining, right? It's data. It's showing these- Mm-hmm... 41:30 it's showing whoever the politicians are, the whoever owns this problem, it's showing them, "No, this is the problem, and here's the data." And so actually, I'm gonna ask a question about that. 41:45 What have you learned then about the difference when it comes to getting attention? What have you learned about the difference between the complaints from people and, "Ah, this sucks. 41:56 Where's the bus to," showing the data, for instance, even to the, the mayor of Nyack, right? What have you learned there? 42:05 So I've like kept a whole, my whole approach to this has been like not complaining, but w- I wanna help. I love transit. Yeah. I'm pro-transit. I, our demands aren't crazy. 42:19 We just, if you can't operate a service where the buses aren't showing up, lower the number of buses. I wanna know when I get to the bus stop- Sure... 42:26 there's gonna be a 97% chance the bus is gonna show up, if that means you have to run 50% less buses. Yeah. Whatever the number is. I don't want that to be the case, but-It's like a trust thing. And I'm like, I... 42:36 And I've... In all the letters I've written to the New York State Department of Transit and to TransDev that runs it, it's like- Mm-hmm... "Hey, I d- I will sit down with you and we can talk about this. 42:46 I have other smart friends that might wanna sit down with you." Got you. [laughs] "And like, we will volunteer our time." So I've really come at it very clearly, trying to be collaborative. 42:55 Something interesting that I've had an epiphany on with this project too, is that I'm using technology that I've never used before. And so I'm empowered by technology that's new for me. 43:08 But I have 15, 16 years of partnership skills and those soft skills, all the stuff that everybody's saying now those are the skills that you're gonna need moving forward. 43:19 I'm like, I've never been more convinced that part of the reason why this is... I don't toot my horn at doing the c- the AI stuff. 43:26 I think that being able to do that, but then being able to be like not scared of calling up the New York State Department of Transit, kn- knowing how to talk to them once I'm talking to the senator. 43:34 Like, all the soft skills that I've learned with facilitating workshops and- Yeah... talking to senior people that I'm now not nervous about 'cause I talk to the deans at Cornell all the ti- Yeah... 43:45 like, those are the skills that I'm like, I think that's why this is s- And reaching out to media, and I'm really good, not... I'm really good on camera. I can like- Yeah. Yeah... 43:54 they're like, "Put this in 40 seconds and give us a soundbite of this." And I was like, I just turned it on. [laughs] Uh-huh. Uh-huh. That's... I'm actually, I'm convinced that with all the... 44:02 They're like, "What skills are we gonna need moving forward?" I think that's been the thing, is having both of those together- Yeah... has been what made this work. That, that's... 44:12 That's extraordinary to me, because what you just answered for... And I was thinking about a question there. We talked about tools before, and AI tools, and Claude, and Obsidian, 44:22 and and WhisperFlow, and all these things, right? 44:24 And what you just said is, yes, the tools, but the impact comes from making something, but that also your soft skills, your people skills, from talking to people about it, from showing them, from being able to speak to 44:40 perhaps one of your neighbors, to a politician, to a news reporter or whatever, right? That's pretty amazing, right? 44:47 You've got these AI building skills that you're still building, and you have all these people skills that have set it apart. Is that right? Yeah. No. And I... That's exactly right. 44:58 And you read all these thought pieces, think pieces [laughs] I guess- Yeah... out, right out of like- Yeah... what are the skills? And it was the first time where I'm like, oh, that, that's what that is. 45:07 This is what that is. It's all coming together. Yeah. Yeah. Where do you think, then... Where do you think people slow themselves down unnecessarily today when they're building something? 45:18 And it doesn't have to be a civic app like you're building or a civic solution like you're building, it could be anything else that they're building to solve a problem that they have, their family has, that they see someone else having. 45:30 Where do you think people slow themselves down today unnecessarily? I think it's the... Some of the classic stuff that's launch bef- la- get your stuff out there- Yeah... quickly. 45:43 I didn't have FixHudson like perfect before I launched it, but I was like- It's not... Yeah... I need to get something out there, or else I could be- Mm... working on this forever. I've gotten better- Right... 45:53 at just launching things. I think there's also... I definitely get sometimes people are like, "Oh, you're vibe coding." Almost I think there's like a little bit, not embarrassment about it, but like 46:08 are you just trying to do like a trendy thing or- Yeah... you're doing what everybody else is doing. And I'm like, I don't... I, yeah, I let that go. I think that's maybe where people hold themselves up, is like they 46:20 ... I don't know, they either think if they're, what they're gonna do isn't gonna be perfect, or they think if they're talking about their stuff too much it's gonna be embarrassing. I don't really know. 46:28 But that's, yeah, I think that's probably where people get hung up. Yeah. Y- yeah, that perfection piece. Yeah, that, that perfection piece, I agree, is sort of- Yeah... seems to be where people get hung up. 46:39 And I wonder even if... Here we are in this age where execution is becoming easier and easier. And for people like you and me, who are solopreneurs, portfolio managers of all kinds of cool stuff, 46:54 I wonder if as people jump on board and are vibe coding, they're creating these things... Oh, no, that's not right. Mm. Just a little bit longer, a little bit more chatting with this thing to get it right, versus... 47:06 I don't know. You knew, you knew enough to maybe even be dangerous with it, but you knew enough to say, "You know what? 47:13 I'm going home, I'm buying a domain for $40, and screw it, I'm putting this thing out there, and we're gonna start, and I'm gonna print business cards, and we're gonna start making something happen," right? Yeah. 47:24 I wonder if that's the big difference here, is just the execution, but for real. No, we're putting this out and we're gonna get it out there. Yeah. No. And I think that's... It's such a hard skill. 47:36 I didn't really go anywhere with this, but I was almost gonna start a... I, I might start telling... I... It was... 47:42 I'm gonna start a blog called Finally Starting, and just the tipping point between having an idea to start it. Yet, yet another, yet another thing, by the way. [laughs] Yet another thing. 47:48 I actually have a different blog that I am gonna start. [laughs] Sure. For sure. Which is... But I am curious, what is the... I have an idea. 47:57 From people that are, have an idea, to I'm actually gonna start and see it through. I don't know. I'm interes- like, as a... I'm interested what makes those people different. 48:05 I'm not talking about what makes a Steve Jobs versus a Carly Hart. I'm talking about just the... I... It's, it still seems a rare thing for someone to be like, I... 48:15 Even if it's not like I'm gonna start a startup, but I'm just gonna do that thing. I don't know. I'm very... Who, who just finally starts? I, I think it's a very interesting concept of who just does it. Yes. 48:26 Yeah, I agree. And I think then there's the who finally starts, and then there's the who finally starts and actually gets it out there in public. Yeah. Totally. Right? 48:36 I think that's something that you are y- y- I think that's something that you-... really good at. And I, 48:43 if I'm looking at you and even being honest about myself and the things that I start, I look at you and go, oh, Carly is really skilled at not just starting and building something, but actually pushing it out into the public sphere, 48:58 warts and all, for people to start reacting to, building, using in some way. 49:02 Where even someone like me, I'm pretty good at building things and getting them out published somehow, but I'm not always really good about taking the extra step and saying, "Hey everyone, here's the thing. 49:14 Start throwing the rotten tomatoes at me. I'm ready to catch them." Sometimes I just end at the, thank God it's now on a domain, it's out there. 49:21 Okay, I can move on to the next thing knowing that no one's gonna ever see that domain. I feel like you put a lot of stuff out there, though. I don't know. I, I do. But I, yeah, I do. 49:30 And at the same time I feel like that's one of your superpowers. You do it and put it out there and start making it. And maybe I'm being too hard on myself 'cause I do a lot of that too. [laughs] Yeah. [laughs] Yeah. 49:41 Anyways you also mentioned you're interested in putting this thing out there, but kind of open sourcing it, right? 49:50 Which is really cool because now it goes beyond the idea and, and Carly Hart owning Fix Hugs- Hudson Link and building a business out of this whole thing as part of your portfolio career. 50:05 Why does that matter to you that you just teach other people how to do this or even open source it? And how do you see this maybe even scaling to other communities? 50:14 And maybe even what have you heard from other people who want something like this? Yeah. So it's part... It's not all so altruistic. I- Yeah... wanna see if I can do it. [laughs] That's- Yeah, sure... 50:25 that's honestly the first thing. Sure, sure. Is like c- could I? It would be really cool. Is this, as far as learning something new, could I open source this? Is that something I'm, like, I'm able to do? Mm. 50:35 Can I make something that's repeatable? It's part of my interest is like how far can I take this at a- Yes... curiosity level. Yeah. 50:44 I think it'd be very cool to see another county, another transit system repeat this, even if it's just one other one. I don't think it's that much of my time to do it. 50:56 It's gonna be like a weekend project or a week project whenever I get around to it. I wanna see my, I wanna work through my problem right now of getting the New York State Department of Transit to like... 51:05 I, I'm trying to focus on that first. Yeah. But, but yeah, it seems so... I've just talked to so many people. I actually talked to one guy who's helping me with this, and he doesn't use tech and he's a teacher. 51:18 I don't know exactly what he teaches, but in, in public school. Mm-hmm. 51:22 And he has been fighting the fight of local public transit for decades, and he has all the institutional knowledge that's been really helpful for me that I don't have. Wow. Yeah. And I have all the tools to build. 51:35 And so I'm like, if I could get this in the hands of that guy in different towns, that would be awesome. And like- Yeah... I, I wanna do it in a way that's not, that's approachable. So I think that's the hardest part. 51:46 I think there's... I'm even t- I'm even... S- there's things, things in AI that I know I could do, but I'm like a little too scared to start 'cause I'm like is that approachable? Mm. 52:00 And so I definitely think that this project could seem like that for someone that's not technical, and I would love to- Got it... one day open source it. 52:06 Maybe even use a different word, because open source already sounds too technical. Yeah. And make it something that people could just use. So yeah, it's a mix of all those things. That makes sense. 52:14 Having come from this big tech world where open source... Open source used to be a ba- by the way, for anyone who's sort of techy and even non-tech, right? 52:24 It used to be this big term where you created this thing and it was part of a society or group. Right. And like all these people had to vote on what happens next. 52:34 Man, it used to be a total pain in the ass, and I'm sure it still is for giant open source projects. Whereas, it seems like what you're talking about is, ah, actually we're gonna put it on a, a repository, right? 52:44 We're putting it in an open- Yeah... place, and you can, if you wanna take it, here's the code. Yeah. Go do something. Ha- have fun. Make your own thing. Roll your own. 52:52 I'll keep contributing and making something cool 'cause I need it. Mm-hmm. But you can, you can benefit off of me doing that and yeah, fine, have it, right? It's something more like that. Is that right? Yeah. 53:00 So I guess not open source in its truest. But yes, totally. It's exactly like just o- making it public or- Public. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's making it public. 53:09 For someone, and we talked a little bit about this before, but now I really wanna solidify it. For someone who's listening or maybe reading the newsletter and has an idea, whether it's 53:22 a Fix Hudson Link or something else, but and hasn't started, what's the simplest thing you think they can do to start, to begin building that thing? I guess it de- definitely depends on the thing, honestly. 53:38 'Cause I've done physical products and then I've done digital. I'm trying to think, now I'm trying to think what's the first thing I do no matter what the project is? Yeah. What's the first thing you do no matter what? 53:45 Yeah. Ugh. What is the first thing I do? I just... So what I've learned with using Whisper, Whisper Flow is I'm, I'm, I'm a really good just like... What's the word? Just, just mumbling and talking- Yeah... 54:02 and like just... So I just, I kinda just dump it all into Claude. I just talk through it. I'll wa- I'll walk around the neighborhood. Uh-huh. I'll just talk through my phone. Mm. 54:11 I'll put in a bunch and I'll say, "Can you organize all these thoughts that I have around this idea?" I'll just stream of consciousness. That's the word I was looking for. There it is. Yeah. Yeah. 54:18 Stream of consciousness. Organize my stream of consciousness. I'll sketch it out on a piece of paper or something like that. 54:25 And the thing that's cool with AI is you can mock it up in minutes so you can just be like, "Can you just build like a mockup of what this would look like?" Once I see stuff, I can react to it a little bit better. Yeah. 54:37 So I, I find it helpful. So I, I'm very back and forth like 1,000 times. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Got it. But it sounds like you just get the idea out there and into-Your buddy, in this case it's Claude, right? Right. 54:51 And it's through this pipeline called Whisper, which I'll publish- Yeah... on the, the blog or, and everything else. 54:57 But yeah, you have this virtual buddy that you're telling this stuff to, but that virtual buddy also can start helping and co-creating things with you so that you can start seeing it, reacting to it, and then maybe moving forward. 55:10 Is that right? Yeah. I, yeah. There's a project that I put on ice for a little bit that I like- Oh, okay... 55:18 socked for a couple hours and I'm like, "This is just doesn't fit in with what I'm doing right now, but I don't wanna delete everything I just did on this. Let's put this in like an archive somewhere." Uh-huh. 55:27 And so that's sometimes that's just where I land. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I do it all the time, put something on ice and let it sit there. Yeah, agreed. All right. What... 55:37 And I know a little bit about this 'cause we just mentioned it earlier, what are some of the things you're building and exploring now, besides Fix Hudson Link, that you're really excited about? Okay. 55:48 So I got Fix Hudson Link. [laughs] I've got AI Trailmates. Um- Yeah. Tell me, what's AI Trailmates? Yeah. So it's, it's a community, a peer-to-peer AI learning community. Oh. Um, I- 56:02 I follow all these AI influencers and I watch all these videos- Mm-hmm... 56:05 and I tinker by myself but w- what I realized that really gets me to move farther along is to just have conversations with other smart people, and so I feel like the riffing part of- Yeah... of learning. 56:14 So it's bringing the riffing part of education, so it's gonna match people up to work on your own projects. I also don't like being assigned a curriculum or a project and working on... 56:23 I just wanna work on my project- Yeah... um, but I want... and I wanna see what you're doing in your project. We can work next to each other, not literally, but we can come in every week and be like, "What did you learn? 56:33 What new tool?" So that's AI Trailmates. And I'm really... It's for intermediate AI users, not... We're not trying to train from the ground up. So it's up-leveling intermediate users. I'm working on a personal project. 56:49 I have 15 year... I'm gathering all of my medical records from 15 years. Oh, yeah. Um, every s- like clinical notes, lab tests, imaging, absolutely everything. 57:01 I've seen 30-plus specialists [laughs] in the la- not all specialists, but doctors. Yeah. 'Cause I have all these different symptoms that are q- so I'm seeing if I can use AI to get to the bottom. 57:11 My cardiologist isn't talking to my dermatologist. [laughs] Yeah. Yeah. Maybe if AI can create some... And then I also wanna, in the database that I create of all my stuff, plug in some, find some papers that I can have, 57:27 academic papers or stuff like that that I can have- Mm-hmm... I cross. And then I... The goal is to bring it to a doctor eventually. Yeah. Eventually. But to get to diagnosis. 57:36 So that's something that's going in the background. What... I, I know I have a few other- You have Brushing Buddies. Brushing Buddies. Yeah. [laughs] So that one's been an interesting one. So for the people that are... 57:48 So I wrote this children's book. Uh-huh. It plays music from the book. It's like electronics. Kids sing along to brush their teeth. I, I have 2,000 copies at my house right now [laughs] that I need to sell. 58:00 I've realized I have actually a really interesting direction I wanna take the business. I just don't have enough time to do it. Got it. 58:07 And so what I wanna do right now is just sell all of the books and I'm deciding between h- how to do it. And the two different ideas that I have are 58:18 I try to sell B2B which is I just kinda dump them wholesale with like- Sure... there's been like dental offices that have been interested, or I use this as a case study for me to see if I can use AI for a D2C 58:31 product and see if I can just get... There's all these AI tools out there to help with- Yeah... like SEO and like- Yeah... so I'm... That's lingering. It's not like a... Yeah. 58:41 It's like a, a g- another lingering in the background. Um, and I... And then the last one I mentioned, the s- blog substack that I'm starting to think about is... So [laughs] this is so mu- so much stuff. 58:57 I feel like I'm like- [laughs]... throwing a lot out there. Yeah. Um, it's... I think I'm gonna call it What Are We Building? That's what I have it- Uh-huh... titled right now. 59:06 W- the inside term that I use when I'm just writing about it and I'm talking to AI is ex-tech moms. Mm. Which I've seen this interesting pattern, 59:16 I started noticing it two years ago when I started working on the book, of women in their late 30s and 40s who have kids and worked in tech and have left tech to start a lifestyle business, like a non-tech business. 59:32 Things. Yeah. And but so it's... So I started doing in- I started interviewing a few people two, like a year or two ago- Yeah... not knowing where I was gonna take it, but I know I've wanted to do something with it. 59:43 One of the women, she literally launched Uber Eats. She was like the- Wow. Yeah... she launched the product. She was a- Yeah... a very impressive person. She now runs a business where she... 59:55 It's like she makes baby clothing that- Mm... then they have a buyback program so they upcycle the clothes. And, and then this other woman who worked at Squarespace and she, I met her through my book. 1:00:06 She has a dual language s- audio sound books for little kids where it's Spanish-English. My friend used... She was the head of HR at Wellfound, which used to be AngelList. Yeah. And she was a kind of also 1:00:22 COO-ish type role. She just, she now runs this brick and mortar like play space- Mm... for kids that she launched. And I, I've worked backwards from what makes these w- these women, and I think they're... 1:00:36 I don't think it's just it has to be women, but there's something about moms when you're in l- your late 30s. You can like... You have some perspective on life 'cause you're like, "What do..." I've, I've had kids. 1:00:47 I, I don't know. I just had this big hit ofWhat do I really wanna be doing with my time? Yeah, yeah. And it's, I think all these women, it's like owning their time, owning their income streams. Yeah. 1:00:57 They all have such impressive careers that they aren't start... It... A lot of people say, "Do this when you're 24." But when you're 24, you don't have anything to fall back on if you wanna get- No... a different career. 1:01:07 So all these women are like, "Yeah, I was like the d- SVP of whatever at Uber. I could like..." And they all have connections, um, so like they're... And they're not building these lifestyle businesses. I... 1:01:20 And I don't use... I feel like lifestyle businesses sometimes is derogatory [laughs] you know? Or lifestyle. But they're like they're using tech to build these businesses. Right. 1:01:30 And they have amazing networks, and they usually have... Yeah, there's just, I have this list of 10 things that I've noticed. Yeah. And so I'm collecting stories. 1:01:40 I was like, it could be a book one day where I just like, stories of different people and these like- Yeah... these themes that I've been seeing throughout. So that's something I wanna start soon. I love that. 1:01:50 I can't wait- Yeah... for that one. That, that one, it feels like it's needed and necessary, but also it, that's... It used, we used to call that encore careers, right? And an encore career was 1:02:01 you went all the way to your 60s, and you retired from whatever the big j- job was. You're like, "Oh, now I have, I have time. I need something else to do." And now you have your second career. But at the same time 1:02:14 things have moved so fast that many of us have multiple careers, and in this case what you're, it sounds like what you're talking about is, yeah, these are people, once you f- have those connections and you have some, 1:02:25 some footing and foundation to even fall back on, you start the thing that makes you feel good. [laughs] And that's, yeah, is gonna pay you, but enough to live- Yeah... a nice life. 1:02:37 But yeah, perhaps you're not gonna become ultra, super wealthy off of it, but yeah. You, you- Yeah... you afford the things you want, but also afford the ability to spend the time in the way you wanna spend it. 1:02:50 Yeah, that's- Yeah... that's awesome. I would love to read more stories like that. Yeah. I think we need those, by the way. That's a good one. Yeah. So those are the main things that I can think of right now. 1:02:59 [laughs] Okay. I'm excited to be at least part of one or two of those. I- Yeah... AI Trail mates, you sent that to me this morning. Yeah. Yeah. The answer is yes, I'll sign up for that to- Nice... immediately. 1:03:10 I might hook you in for another thing, but we can talk about that offline. Always. Oh, yeah. [laughs] Yeah. Yeah. It's always, it's like hot potato. Fine. All right, I'm gonna move to a quick lightning round. You ready? 1:03:20 Okay. Yeah. Okay. This is one that I ask... I don't know if I ask everyone, but I'll ask you. 1:03:26 What's one book that you'd recommend to everyone, e- especially makers, design strategists, people who wanna start something, right? Or have the propensity to start something, like you. Okay. 1:03:40 Almost done with it, but The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. Have you heard of it? The top five regrets of what? The dying. Oh, the dying. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I've been getting really inter- interested in 1:03:51 s- regret psychology. Yeah. And I think that's part of the path that I'm on right now, is to not live with regrets. 1:03:58 And one of the biggest regrets a lot of people have is you don't regret stuff you do, you regret stuff you don't do. So I think that with people that are builders and makers, it's start now. It's, yeah. 1:04:09 So I've, that's, that's one that's been propelling me a lot. Got it. Awesome. All right. Top, the top five regrets of the dying. Great. Yeah. Okay, amazing. 1:04:18 We had, we already talked about it, so I have this in my notes anyways, but is there something else you're personally excited to explore next? It sounds like you, you have a few of those things, so if you- Yeah. 1:04:29 Teaching. [laughs] Teaching. I think that- There you go. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Teaching. And you are teaching at NYU coming up. Tell me, tell us what you're teaching. Yeah. 1:04:37 The School of Professional Studies, NYU, professor of entrepreneurship. I'm gonna be... 1:04:43 I'm s- getting my course load right now, but I'm gonna be teaching a funding class, so just a high level overview on venture capital, angel investing. Yeah. I've realized I should get Micah to talk for angel investing. 1:04:56 You should. Um, [laughs] and then the other one is gonna be like ideation and like all... It's gonna be like an ideation customer discovery, like 101 type class like that. 1:05:07 And then I'll be, I have another title, it's faculty director of industry impact, where we're gonna be giving the students more programming to connect with industry and real world type activities. Awesome. 1:05:23 All the things that you are already doing and, yeah- Yeah... an expert in. Fantastic. All right. And finally, this one's easy, how can people reach you, ask you questions if you want them to do that? Yeah. Reach out. 1:05:35 LinkedIn's probably the best- Thank you... Carly part. Yeah. Yep. Okay. I think that's the- Easy... the easiest way. All right. Fantastic. Carly, I truly appreciate you being here today. 1:05:44 I'm always so excited to talk with you and, and share ideas. So yes, ping me. I'll sign up for AI Trail mates here today. And then when you're ready for the next thing, you know me. I'm always game for the next thing. 1:05:57 So cool. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you. All right. All right, thanks so much, Carly. Talk to you soon. Bye. Thanks for listening to Design Shift. 1:06:06 If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to like, subscribe, and leave a quick rating or review. It really helps more designers like you find the show, and it helps me make better shows. 1:06:16 And if you're not already subscribed to our awesome newsletter, head over to designshift.me. See you next time. [outro music]
