Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / From Pizza to AI: Cas Maxwell's Entrepreneurial Journey Across Rural Ohio | Restaurant & Franchises Series

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From Pizza to AI: Cas Maxwell's Entrepreneurial Journey Across Rural Ohio | Restaurant & Franchises Series · The Inspired Stories Podcast

• 0:03
  Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast,
• 0:07
  where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from
• 0:10
  their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome
• 0:13
  adversity. My name is Anthony Kotaspodi,
• 0:15
  and today's guest is Kaz Maxwell.
• 0:18
  He's a visionary entrepreneur and community leader who grew up
• 0:22
  in rural Appalachia and has expanded his business ventures
• 0:25
  across Ohio with prospecting efforts in Poland and Jamaica.
• 0:30
  At the age of 23, he opened his first restaurant, showcasing his
• 0:34
  early commitment to hospitality and community engagement.
• 0:37
  He is the Co founder of AI OW, now a certified career College
• 0:43
  in Ohio specialized in AI training, software development
• 0:46
  and game based learning. The institution focuses on
• 0:50
  workforce development and innovative solutions for real
• 0:54
  world challenges. He also owns Enjoy Brands, which
• 0:58
  includes Maxwell's Pizza and River Valley Social, embodying
• 1:02
  his vision of being the cornerstone of enjoyment across
• 1:06
  all communities. Beyond his business ventures, he
• 1:09
  serves as a board member of the Citizens National Bank of
• 1:13
  Mcconnellsville and the Ohio Chamber of Commerce's Small
• 1:16
  Business Council. He has served on multiple
• 1:19
  community boards and is a passionate storyteller and
• 1:22
  photographer, sharing human experiences and untold stories
• 1:26
  through his YouTube channel. The rest of the story.
• 1:29
  Before we get into the good stuff, today's episode is
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• 1:59
  Now back to our guest today, the Co founder of Maxwell's Pizza,
• 2:02
  among many other ventures. Kaz, I appreciate you making the
• 2:05
  time to Share your story today. Thanks for having me on the
• 2:08
  show, Anthony. So Cass, you have a variety of
• 2:12
  different business interests. Maybe let's go through them
• 2:15
  chronologically. Which one did you start 1st and
• 2:19
  how did the idea come about? So the first one would have been
• 2:24
  Maxwell's Pizza that was open that in 2016 going on 9 years
• 2:31
  now here in just a couple months.
• 2:33
  So that started. I never really wanted to be.
• 2:36
  I didn't think I wanted to be an entrepreneur when I was in
• 2:39
  college. I always did at a young age.
• 2:42
  I've got several different businesses that we started, you
• 2:45
  know, from snow shoveling to lawn care to at one point me and
• 2:49
  my buddy like in 3rd grade were taking large erasers, drawing
• 2:53
  designs and stamping them on people like tattoos and charging
• 2:55
  $0.25 for those. So I've had AI didn't really
• 2:58
  realize that I was, I had that in me until I kind of got out of
• 3:03
  college and I realized, OK, this is something that has been in
• 3:06
  me. I've been around it a lot of my
• 3:08
  life as well. My parents have a sporting goods
• 3:11
  store that they opened when I was in freshman in, in high
• 3:15
  school. So I kind of been around it been
• 3:17
  in it. Then when I got out, you know,
• 3:20
  there was this opportunity with a a lot in Zanesville, OH, they
• 3:24
  decided to get that my parents helped me get that loan to
• 3:28
  secure the the building and start working on renovations.
• 3:33
  I was 23 at that time, had only experience I had in a
• 3:36
  restaurant, was working at Buffalo Wild Wings as a server.
• 3:39
  So not very much experience. Needless to say, it was a, it
• 3:44
  was a mess opening up. You know, we had a lot of school
• 3:47
  of Hard Knocks there before we opened.
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  I brought on two of my friends from college, Paul and Steve,
• 3:54
  who are still my business partners to this day.
• 3:56
  And so they kind of we divvied up and said, hey, you're in
• 3:59
  charge of this, I'm in charge of that, you know, you're in charge
• 4:01
  of this and got the doors open. And yeah, it was a hit.
• 4:06
  You know, we were super busy, like I said, had to learn
• 4:09
  through the school of Hard Knocks on how to make a menu,
• 4:12
  how to run a staff, how to train managers.
• 4:15
  And then from there, we opened up a couple more pizza shops, 1
• 4:20
  being kind of our flagship location, which is in
• 4:22
  Mcconnellsville, Ohio. It has rooftop patio seats
• 4:25
  about, you know, a hundred 150 people, just a full dining
• 4:29
  experience, full menu. And then most recently it was
• 4:33
  River Valley Social, which is it was an old bowling alley.
• 4:37
  We bought completely gutted it, renovated it.
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  You know, it was your typical crusty bowling alley, as you can
• 4:43
  imagine. And we turned it more into a
• 4:45
  family Event Center, added, you know, virtual golf, a different
• 4:48
  food concept, a bar, darts. You know, we're adding an arcade
• 4:52
  right now. Should be in in the next two
• 4:54
  months. And yeah.
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  And then came AI out after that, which is a that's a whole other
• 5:00
  story I'm sure we'll get into. Well, let's see in a little bit.
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  We've got a few things to unpack the pizza stuff here before we
• 5:05
  get into that, which I'm excited to dive into.
• 5:08
  So right out of college, your parents help you get a loan to
• 5:13
  buy a vacant lot. But what was the inspiration
• 5:17
  behind starting specifically a pizza place to start with?
• 5:21
  Was your family in that business?
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  Did you grow up around that? I know you said BW Threes was
• 5:25
  kind of your only related work experience prior.
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  I think it it was twofold. So food has always been a
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  passion of mine before in college, that was always kind of
• 5:37
  my secondary thing I wanted to do was culinary arts.
• 5:40
  I never pursued it just because it didn't, I guess, call to me
• 5:45
  as as hard as political science did.
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  I know that sounds completely random, but so I've always had a
• 5:52
  passion for cooking. I, I grew up, you know,
• 5:54
  alongside my mom in the kitchen and she'll vouch for me.
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  You know, I was cooking family dinners in like 6th grade.
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  So I've always loved the kitchen, always loved food and
• 6:02
  the creation around it. And then as far as the concept,
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  I think that probably spawned from my dad growing up, worked
• 6:09
  at a Dr. thru basically, you know, selling beer, alcohol.
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  And then also they had a pizza as well to where they made
• 6:18
  pizza. And so I think that kind of came
• 6:21
  that was always in the back of the mind.
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  And then, as you know, I got out of college, started looking at
• 6:27
  different types of restaurants and what's going to work.
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  Well, pizza, you know, being 23, pizza just sounded like, you
• 6:34
  know, who doesn't love pizza? And so I think having that
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  little bit of memory in the back of my mind and then also loving
• 6:42
  pizza and knowing that it's thought it was an easy business.
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  How about that? I thought it was, it's not an
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  easy business, I'll tell you that right now.
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  So I think that's kind of what culminated to to me choosing
• 6:54
  that Ave. So you didn't really know how to
• 6:58
  open a restaurant, but somehow you got it open.
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  Were there mentors or other people that you could kind of
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  lean on as you were going through those early steps?
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  Definitely, yeah. I tried to surround myself with
• 7:12
  as many people that knew more than I did.
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  You know, I, I was very aware of the fact that, you know, I knew
• 7:20
  nothing and that I needed to learn and absorb.
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  Still like that to this day, you know, anytime I can learn off
• 7:26
  somebody. So yeah, I mean, I surrounded
• 7:28
  myself with other restaurant tours that I tried to network
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  with our current food provider at that time.
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  I linked up a lot with them with their in house chefs to help
• 7:39
  design the menu, design the dough.
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  And yeah, I really just tried to surround myself with supporting
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  people that, you know, are going to at least guide me a little
• 7:49
  bit on how we can make this work.
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  But at the end of the day, you know, the the cards fall when
• 7:53
  the when the door opens for the first time.
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  So nobody can prepare you for that.
• 7:57
  I can get, I can tell you that. So you said that it did I hear
• 8:01
  you correctly that it was kind of a a hit right away like you
• 8:04
  guys were busy from the get go? Yeah, definitely.
• 8:07
  So where we opened up in Zanesville, it's in South
• 8:11
  Zanesville, which is a little less populated than the north
• 8:15
  side of Zanesville. So it's a very tight knit
• 8:17
  community. And so when something happens,
• 8:20
  everybody knows about it. So it's it's not like opening up
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  in the middle of Columbus where you have to have this gigantic
• 8:25
  PR push. You know, it's when you open up
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  in South Zanesville, you know, everybody knows.
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  So everybody wants to try it and you got to be on your, you know,
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  kind of your best behavior when you have those doors open.
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  So, yeah, I mean, when we open the doors, it was, I think
• 8:40
  everybody had a 10 mile radius, ordered a pizza in the first two
• 8:43
  days. So it was it was crazy.
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  It was a fun. It was a fun nightmare.
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  How's that? Yeah, you.
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  Jumped right into the deep end right away.
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  So was the pizza delicious from the start or did you guys kind
• 8:57
  of make some missteps and have to tweak it along the way?
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  Yeah. I mean, of course I'm going to
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  say it was delicious from the start, but yeah, there was,
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  we've had several iterations over the years.
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  I mean, we've try to listen to the customers, figure out what
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  they want. We've redone our dough a couple
• 9:13
  times. I have a lady that currently
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  still to this day does our dough in the mornings and she's
• 9:18
  actually perfected the recipe. So she took our original recipe
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  and was like, hey, Cassie, I'm going to do this that and we did
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  some testing. And so she's like, in my
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  opinion, perfected it. And so, yeah, there's been
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  several iterations. We've messed with the sauce a
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  little bit, changed up cheeses before.
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  You know, everybody is very particular about their pizza.
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  You know, everybody goes to the same spot every, you know, every
• 9:40
  week, every month they order from their favorite spot and
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  they usually don't mix it up. So it's a, it's a hard industry
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  to drive a wedge into a family and say, hey, you should try
• 9:49
  here instead of ordering at your, the place you've ordered
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  for 20 years. So.
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  But it sounds like you guys, you sort of had a hook right from
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  the beginning because you were new in this small town.
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  And so everybody tried you what in those first two days as you
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  pointed out, what was the repeat business like?
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  So we definitely started at the highest highs.
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  Like I said, everybody tried. And then from there, you know,
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  it kind of to me, it's like working in these small, smaller
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  towns. What we've seen is you start at
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  the peak, you start the busiest you're going to be, and then it
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  kind of you get to where you're you're going and then you start
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  to increase again versus in the city, it seems like you start
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  kind of start down here and you're working, working, working
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  your way up. It's like completely opposite in
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  these rural communities because everybody knows you're the new
• 10:34
  guy in town. But yeah, I mean repeat
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  business. I mean, it was great.
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  You know, we had a lot of people loyal to us.
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  We worked really hard on being the kind of a community beacon
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  and just investing, you know, all of our extra money into
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  whether it was Maysville High School, you know, the sports,
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  feeding the teams, whether it was breast cancer awareness, you
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  know, fundraisers, giving this guy, you know, $100 for his
• 11:02
  aunt's funeral, like whatever that was.
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  You know, we very to this day, very rarely say no to a, to a
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  fundraiser of sponsorship. And so I think that's what
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  really made us successful, was just being a part of the
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  community. Interest the last one you threw
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  out there was kind of an interesting one, $100 for
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  somebody's aunt's funeral. This is like an.
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  Employee, this is just like somebody from the community.
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  Just the community and I think if you're a retail business
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  owner and you have a storefront, not even retail, just anybody
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  who has a brick and mortar, I think they'll resonate with the
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  amount of people that you have come through on a daily, weekly
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  basis with Flyers saying, you know, hey, my, you know, mom, my
• 11:43
  uncle, whoever passed away, we can't afford the funeral.
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  We're doing a fundraiser for them or you know, my son needs a
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  surgery. We're having a, a fundraiser.
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  So those happen, I mean daily, weekly basis.
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  And so if we can't donate cash, you know, we always try to, hey,
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  we can at least donate product. We can donate gift cards for
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  like sign an auction. But that's truly the, in my
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  opinion, the game changer when you're in small communities like
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  that is just always being there, showing up to the events,
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  supporting the events. You know, if there's a, if
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  there's a Big Brother's Big Sister's fundraiser showing up
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  to the Buckeye pep rally, you know, whatever that that is,
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  like just just being there as the business that makes all the
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  difference in those type of communities.
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  Let me play the cynic for just a moment.
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  How can you measure that? RO I I mean, this is the kind of
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  thing that I think a lot of people do out of the goodness of
• 12:34
  their own heart. Yeah, and.
• 12:36
  That's wonderful. It's a great way to do it.
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  But you talked about it being a a game changer in terms of the
• 12:41
  business. How are you kind of able to
• 12:44
  connect the dots to say that that drove more business?
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  Yeah. So if you're looking for a
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  quantifiable answer, I would say probably, you know, everywhere
• 12:58
  we go, we tried to drop whether it's coupons, Flyers, you know,
• 13:01
  that type of stuff. So quantifiably, I mean, we can
• 13:04
  see those come to the door and be redeemed.
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  But I don't think that's how we measure success on that.
• 13:12
  It's definitely a good of our heart thing.
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  You know, we're we of course. Yeah, it's a great, it's great
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  that people are going to come in and give U.S. business for that.
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  But I feel like at the root, that's not why we originally did
• 13:23
  it. But I think to measure success,
• 13:25
  we see it's just word of mouth, you know, you hear you hear
• 13:28
  people coming in. Oh, I saw you guys at at this
• 13:31
  event or Hey, thank you for donating this or donating that.
• 13:34
  So it's very much a word of mouth.
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  And, and in a small community, you'll start hearing that buzz
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  and you'll start hearing people ask you, hey, I know you were
• 13:43
  here. Would you be willing to do this?
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  So it culminates into a reputation that I think if you
• 13:50
  are to pull someone off the street in those areas and say,
• 13:52
  hey, what do you think about this company?
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  You'll hear them say, Oh yeah, they, they do a lot for the
• 13:57
  community. They, you know, I've heard
• 13:58
  they're a good place to work at just that type of stuff.
• 14:01
  So I think that's how, I don't know.
• 14:04
  Did I answer your question? I think perfectly, yeah.
• 14:06
  Thanks, Cass. You mentioned that running a
• 14:10
  pizza business is not easy. What's the hardest thing about
• 14:14
  it? The hardest thing about it, I
• 14:21
  would say, I mean, it's, there's a couple things #1 like I was
• 14:27
  saying, everyone's so particular about their pizza.
• 14:29
  Everybody knows what type of pizza they like, where they
• 14:32
  order their pizza from. So to disrupt that and try to
• 14:35
  get them to come in as a a very difficult thing.
• 14:37
  And, and pizzas are highly customizable as well.
• 14:40
  And so the amount of ingredients you have to have on hand and
• 14:45
  just managing the inventory and spoilage, you know, everything's
• 14:47
  fresh. You know, it's fresh vegetables,
• 14:49
  it's usually fresh meat. You know, you can imagine one
• 14:52
  pizza has like 30 different items you can put on it so that
• 14:56
  you you have to have this huge amount of inventory just for
• 14:58
  pizza. It's not the count.
• 14:59
  You know, we have a whole menu. So it's like not to manage, you
• 15:02
  know, chicken wings and Subs, salads, wraps, you know, all of
• 15:04
  that other inventory that comes along with it.
• 15:07
  And then I think just the, the leadership side of things, you
• 15:10
  know, with the team you have, you know, it's a very young
• 15:15
  team, you know, always, you know, it's pizza shops and
• 15:20
  usually tend to attract people that are in high school, you
• 15:22
  know, the first, first time jobbers.
• 15:25
  And so helping them carve that path, Hey, this is what a job
• 15:29
  looks like. This is how you should conduct
• 15:31
  yourself in a job. These are the time, you know,
• 15:35
  these are the times to go with the flow.
• 15:36
  These are the times to push back and also creating that middle
• 15:40
  management cause usually those people are, you know, 1819 years
• 15:44
  old. So they're still very young
• 15:46
  first time leadership, you know, and so there's a lot of mistakes
• 15:49
  made, you know, saying this or saying that and you're like, I
• 15:51
  maybe I wouldn't have said it like that, but so I'd say those
• 15:54
  are the two biggest challenges in in that industry.
• 15:59
  You know, from what I understand Maxwell's has built a reputation
• 16:03
  for a very welcoming atmosphere. Curious if there have been any
• 16:08
  intentional design or customer service choices that you made
• 16:13
  early on that help to kind of really foster this community
• 16:16
  feel? Definitely, Yeah, everything
• 16:21
  that we have ever done since day one has been customer focused.
• 16:26
  I mean that's like customer and team focus, I should say as
• 16:28
  well. We have always tried to, you
• 16:31
  know, any new training, any new menu, I mean, you name it, you
• 16:35
  know, the customer's always at the front of mine and going, OK,
• 16:37
  how do we make this more of a welcoming experience for the
• 16:40
  guest? Do we always hit that on the
• 16:42
  head? No.
• 16:43
  I mean, there's plenty of times, months, years, you know, it's an
• 16:46
  ebb and flow of just trying to, you know, keep everything where
• 16:49
  you want it to be. But yeah, I mean, we have
• 16:52
  implemented just a huge set of core values that we did
• 16:56
  originally that we've really always stuck to.
• 17:00
  And so it's we call it our sauce culture and SAUCED each of those
• 17:04
  stands for something. And you know, C stands for care.
• 17:07
  You know, S is service with a smile.
• 17:09
  And so we tried to implement those core values into how we
• 17:12
  treat our team, how we treat our guests.
• 17:14
  You know, if we're designing a new store, you know, we even
• 17:18
  invoke that into designing that to make the guests feel that as
• 17:22
  well. So yeah, I mean, it's it's very
• 17:24
  much intentional. We want to be that type of a
• 17:28
  company. How far into the history of
• 17:32
  Maxwell's were you before you said we've got something
• 17:35
  repeatable here. I want to open up a second
• 17:37
  location. Before the first one even
• 17:40
  opened. I know that sounds funny, but I,
• 17:44
  I just, I don't know, I have this problem anytime I dream, I
• 17:50
  dream way too big. And so, yeah, after the first
• 17:54
  one's open, I was like, all right, let's let's go to the
• 17:55
  second one. And so, you know, we opened the
• 17:58
  second one very, very quickly, actually within two years of the
• 18:03
  first one. And so, yeah, to answer your
• 18:07
  question, I mean, it was a hit. And I was like, this is this is
• 18:10
  really cool. I I really like this and let's
• 18:11
  let's keep moving. So rooftop patio in kind of
• 18:18
  rural Ohio, were you a little nervous about introducing
• 18:23
  something like that? I'm sure it was.
• 18:25
  Well, I'm assuming it was the first of its kind in the area,
• 18:28
  am I right? Absolutely.
• 18:29
  Yeah. OK.
• 18:31
  I don't know if I was nervous, but there were nervous people,
• 18:34
  yes. You know, my big thing was, you
• 18:40
  know, I grew up in, I grew up in that area, you know, I grew up
• 18:42
  in Mcconnellsville my entire life.
• 18:44
  Love it to death. And I just felt like I knew what
• 18:49
  we were missing and I was like, there's so many people in this
• 18:51
  community that leave every weekend to go to Zanesville or
• 18:56
  go to Columbus anytime they want something that's slightly
• 19:01
  elevated, they leave the county and that money leaves the county
• 19:05
  because there's I mean, it's nothing for someone to drive to
• 19:08
  Columbus on a Friday, hour and a half drive from Mcconnellsville
• 19:11
  to go have a nice steak dinner. You know, that's that just, it
• 19:14
  happens every weekend. So the building that I
• 19:18
  remodeled, I had saw it and it was a old tire shop originally.
• 19:25
  I've been vacant for years. And it was just like just
• 19:27
  totally decrepit. And I called the gentleman who
• 19:30
  owned it and I was like, hey, you know, can I buy this?
• 19:32
  And he's like, well, if you buy this and this house.
• 19:35
  And he gave me like this sweet killer deal.
• 19:39
  And yeah, we built that up and it immediately took off.
• 19:42
  People love the fact that you could get that city experience,
• 19:47
  but in this country atmosphere this, you know, slightly
• 19:50
  elevated, you know, we, we don't ever want to consider ourselves,
• 19:53
  you know, pretentious. That's not at all we are.
• 19:56
  But it's just this casual fun. It almost feels like you're on
• 20:00
  the beach during the summer. You know, it overlooks the
• 20:02
  river. It's like, it's a really, really
• 20:03
  good vibe. So people lost.
• 20:06
  It. The Muskingum River, OK, which
• 20:08
  is a it's a pretty big river too.
• 20:10
  So it's it's it's a lot of fun. We have live music and.
• 20:14
  Is it the same menu as the original Maxwell's?
• 20:17
  It is, yeah. So we've both stores now have
• 20:21
  the same menu and we've, we've since expanded our original
• 20:25
  store to add more seating and a patio there and, and all the
• 20:28
  stuff as well. So.
• 20:31
  OK, so then at some point you decide that you're going to open
• 20:36
  kind of a very different concept, River Valley Social, a
• 20:41
  family Event Center. Tell me how the inspiration for
• 20:45
  that came about. So the rooftop patio location
• 20:51
  right next door is this bowling alley, right?
• 20:55
  And so you could almost sort rock from it, from the pizza
• 20:58
  shop and the family who owned it.
• 21:03
  I think they were just getting older and they were like, all
• 21:05
  right, I think I'm, I'm ready to retire from this.
• 21:08
  And so he had approached me and was like, would you be willing
• 21:11
  to buy this? Originally it was a no.
• 21:15
  And then, you know, we, we got to thinking more on it and we're
• 21:18
  like, hey, why don't we buy this, tear it down and build a
• 21:22
  parking lot. That was originally what we were
• 21:23
  going to do because we needed more parking for the pizza shop.
• 21:27
  And the more I personally got to think of it, I'm like, you know,
• 21:30
  I grew up in this bowling alley. This is a staple of the
• 21:32
  community. Kids have nothing to do around
• 21:34
  here. Families have nothing to do.
• 21:36
  Let's, you know, let's make this into a family Event Center and
• 21:41
  let's bring more people to Morgan County, which is where
• 21:45
  McConnell's was at. So I think the inspiration was
• 21:49
  just around building the community up more too.
• 21:52
  You know, it's my hometown. There's a lot of good people and
• 21:54
  good seats in that town right now that are doing a lot of
• 21:56
  great things from, you know, the brewery to the Bed and breakfast
• 22:00
  to Myers Market. I mean, there's so many fun
• 22:03
  things that are building up that community.
• 22:04
  And it's like this is just another nail in the coffin to
• 22:08
  just start dragging people into our community.
• 22:12
  So I think that's really where that spurred from was just
• 22:15
  community development. And how long has that been open
• 22:18
  now? A little over two years now.
• 22:21
  How's that going? Good, good.
• 22:23
  We're just slowly creeping up, you know what I mean?
• 22:26
  It's a whole different challenge opening a bowling alley versus
• 22:31
  a, a restaurant. You know, there's a whole
• 22:33
  different set of skills and learnings.
• 22:35
  You know, just, I was never a bowler, so I didn't realize.
• 22:39
  Once again, bowlers are very particular.
• 22:40
  There's a lot of stuff you have to do in that bowling alley to
• 22:44
  make it successful for them. And we're still working out
• 22:46
  those kinks. And we're very excited for this
• 22:49
  year 'cause like I said, we're adding the arcade, which people
• 22:52
  are pumped for and we're pumped for.
• 22:55
  And we've, you know, the beer gardens all built out.
• 22:57
  And so we're going to have, you know, full live bands this
• 23:00
  summer and it's, it's going to be a fun summer, so.
• 23:02
  When does the arcade open? They said within two months.
• 23:06
  So it's I'm kind of at the mercy of the the gaming company, but
• 23:10
  they it's looking like the end of February.
• 23:12
  OK. So we're recording this in kind
• 23:14
  of early to mid January 2025. By the time this comes out, it's
• 23:19
  going to be pretty close to being opened.
• 23:22
  Fingers. Oh, yeah.
• 23:23
  Right. Nice.
• 23:24
  Well, that's perfect. Yeah, that's perfect.
• 23:26
  OK. So you have done well with these
• 23:30
  pizza restaurants. You are getting some really
• 23:33
  great momentum with this family Event Center you have.
• 23:38
  I'm going to use the words you become kind of a cornerstone of
• 23:40
  the community there. It seems to me logical that you
• 23:45
  would kind of keep building out in this particular arena of food
• 23:51
  and hospitality. But you've got an AI company.
• 23:56
  Yeah. How did that come about?
• 24:00
  Yeah, the $1,000,000 question, what's the pizza guy doing in,
• 24:02
  in technology, right. That came about.
• 24:08
  So when ChatGPT dropped and November of 22, you know, I
• 24:13
  think everybody can agree it changed the world that day, you
• 24:17
  know, And so we recognize that when I say we, I mean me and
• 24:22
  Trace, who's my business partner in this and we started to just
• 24:28
  talk about it. And our, our late and great
• 24:29
  friend, Tom Johnson, who unfortunately passed away a
• 24:34
  couple of months ago, He's the one who kind of linked us
• 24:37
  together and was like, hey, guys, you know, this is
• 24:41
  something you look at, you know, there could be a business
• 24:43
  created around this. And so Trace is also an
• 24:46
  entrepreneur. And, and so I think we just kind
• 24:48
  of came together with our minds and we found kind of this Ying
• 24:51
  and Yang of, of what his strengths are, what my strengths
• 24:54
  are and said, let's do this, you know, let's create this program.
• 24:57
  There was, there's a government program out there that allows
• 25:02
  you to train people and, and they kind of reimburse for it.
• 25:04
  So we started looking into that, submitted our curriculum and got
• 25:09
  approved and that. So that was kind of the initial
• 25:11
  step. What?
• 25:12
  Did the company do? So we do several different
• 25:15
  things. One of the things is AI
• 25:18
  training. So we basically will go into a,
• 25:22
  a company. Let's say you're a not, let's
• 25:25
  just say you're a law firm, right?
• 25:26
  And you want to get your team trained up on how to integrate
• 25:30
  AI tools into their workflow. So you would call us in, we'd
• 25:33
  work with your team for about 10 hours, and we'll take them
• 25:35
  through the absolute basics, like let's say you've never even
• 25:39
  heard of AI. You know, we're going to take
• 25:41
  you through demystifying it, opening your laptop, you know,
• 25:44
  what are these tools? Where are they even located #1
• 25:47
  And then we go all the way through actually getting you
• 25:50
  interacted with those tools, creating custom products
• 25:53
  through, you know, something as simple as ChatGPT, you know,
• 25:57
  custom GPTS or all the way up into an actual developed AI
• 26:01
  product, depending on how far you want to take it.
• 26:04
  And like I said, that usually lasts 10 hours.
• 26:05
  And then we, we end the class with a 2 hour capstone to where
• 26:09
  they're actually creating a work solution and they work on it for
• 26:13
  two weeks and then bring it back to us and go, hey guys, look
• 26:15
  what I created. And we help them critique and,
• 26:18
  and analyze how they can best get efficiency out of, out of
• 26:23
  AI. So that's, that's one arm.
• 26:26
  The other arm is software development.
• 26:30
  So we've developed 2 products so far.
• 26:34
  One is a game based learning system.
• 26:36
  It's about a, once again, it's about a 10 hour long game, but
• 26:39
  it teaches high schoolers how to use AI through gameplay.
• 26:42
  So they actually start and they save the world pretty much
• 26:46
  through gameplay. So they start in ancient Egypt
• 26:49
  and they work their way all the way to the future where they
• 26:51
  launch a rocket. And through all of these periods
• 26:53
  in time they use AI to solve real problems that happened back
• 26:56
  then. So 1 is like they're in
• 27:00
  California and they're helping Atari launch the first game and
• 27:04
  they have to actually program the game for Atari to create a
• 27:07
  real game. And then in the future they're
• 27:09
  launching a rocket and they have to use material science AI, you
• 27:13
  know, platform and to analyze materials to figure out, you
• 27:16
  know, what's going to be best in that rocket to get it launched
• 27:19
  in to Mars pretty much. So it's a a lot of fun, you
• 27:24
  know, another product, Flash AI and it's a investigator's
• 27:28
  assistant. So if you're a detective and you
• 27:32
  know, you're spending hours upon hours analyzing body Cam footage
• 27:35
  and interrogation footage, jail phone calls, this is a all in
• 27:39
  one platform that digests all that information.
• 27:44
  You can then ask the the data questions.
• 27:47
  So you know, what was the psychoanalysis of the person?
• 27:50
  You know, what are they give me the timeline of, of events, you
• 27:54
  know, did they contradict themselves at all?
• 27:56
  From the body Cam to the to the interrogation.
• 27:59
  It'll actually give you a synopsis time stamp it create
• 28:02
  reports for you. I mean, it's a it's an amazing
• 28:05
  software that takes police work from basically hours to minutes.
• 28:12
  And yeah. And we're like I said, we're a
• 28:14
  career college now. So we're, we're jumping into
• 28:17
  some K12 post secondary education and some also working
• 28:22
  with higher Ed. So.
• 28:23
  OK, lots to unpack here. So I, I'm kind of understanding
• 28:29
  maybe 3 buckets. There's sort of the education
• 28:32
  component, which is now a, a credentialed college.
• 28:35
  Yes. OK.
• 28:37
  And then the software development, you kind of, you
• 28:40
  have two products at the moment. And so let's, let's talk more
• 28:44
  about the education piece 1st and then we'll get into the
• 28:47
  products. So what does it mean to be and
• 28:49
  tell me if I'm using the the wrong lingo to be a credentialed
• 28:52
  college? So basically what that means is
• 28:56
  we can offer post secondary credentials in the state of Ohio
• 28:59
  so we can develop curricula, be able to put people through and
• 29:05
  offer them certificates. We're working on getting CCP
• 29:09
  certified as well to where we can college credit plus to where
• 29:14
  we can work with high school students, get them, you know,
• 29:18
  college accredited classes that will then transfer to their
• 29:22
  university of choice, whether that's OSU or, you know, Kent
• 29:25
  State. I'm saying that because I'm a
• 29:26
  Kent State grad, but you know, we're working on, on that right
• 29:30
  now. We're at the complete infancy of
• 29:33
  that. You know, we just got approved
• 29:34
  as a career college about two months ago.
• 29:37
  So we're very much at the infancy, but it, it seems like
• 29:40
  a, a, a good road to be on. Was that a difficult process to
• 29:44
  go through? Yeah.
• 29:47
  I mean, you know, we had to go through director training, had
• 29:49
  to get approved and pass all those tests to, to run a college
• 29:53
  and, and learn all of the nuances and laws around, you
• 29:57
  know, how you advertise yourself, how you enroll
• 30:00
  students, how, you know, administrations are treated like
• 30:03
  all this stuff. And then we had to go through a
• 30:05
  curriculum process where he submitted our current curriculum
• 30:09
  and then several board reviews and then, you know, eventually
• 30:14
  interviews and, and approval. So it was probably a six month
• 30:19
  process I would say. So you guys were and still are,
• 30:25
  I presume, providing AI education to individuals and in
• 30:29
  corporate environments, people are like, hey, I'm hearing about
• 30:32
  AI all over the place. I don't have any idea what it
• 30:35
  is. I need to wrap my head around
• 30:36
  it. And so you guys have been
• 30:38
  providing that training. What was kind of the inspiration
• 30:42
  for still staying in the education space, but kind of
• 30:46
  branching off into wanting to be a credentialed college?
• 30:48
  What was the opportunity that you spotted there?
• 30:53
  So we saw we, you know, like I said, we work a lot in the K12
• 30:57
  space. That's a huge part of our
• 31:00
  company right now. And so I think we just saw an
• 31:03
  opportunity to be the first AI College in the nation as far as
• 31:10
  we know. And Intel's one of our partners
• 31:12
  and we we talk with them every week.
• 31:15
  And as far as they know too, we're the only one.
• 31:18
  There's some colleges. Athlete.
• 31:20
  That's right. Yeah.
• 31:21
  And that's the AI. College in the country.
• 31:24
  That's right. And we're, we're staking our
• 31:25
  claim on that as well. And so, you know, there's
• 31:28
  colleges having some AI classes, but our college is solely
• 31:31
  focused on AI. I mean, we do no other
• 31:35
  curriculum but AI. So we call it the AL Academy and
• 31:40
  we're setting up our first one right now at Hocking College.
• 31:42
  We're enrolling 10 students through this AI, you know,
• 31:48
  Academy. And yeah, I mean, we'll, we'll
• 31:51
  see how it goes. It's going to be, we think it's
• 31:53
  going to be great. I mean, we have some great
• 31:55
  projects laid out and it's it's fun.
• 32:00
  So is the idea that somebody would actually get some kind of
• 32:03
  a diploma from our AI or is it that they would get sort of a, a
• 32:10
  base of courses that would give them a certificate of completion
• 32:15
  or more that, you know, hey, you've got some credits here and
• 32:19
  now you can transfer those to Kent State or wherever?
• 32:22
  Right, Yeah. So the the latter is kind of
• 32:25
  where we are now. So these students are going to
• 32:28
  come out with basically a, a certificate #1 and that
• 32:34
  certificate's going to be, or I should say, a certification
• 32:38
  rather. And it's going to be in
• 32:39
  basically AI literacy, AI coding, no code programming, you
• 32:43
  know, all that stuff. And then, you know, they're
• 32:47
  going to also get credits to be able to transfer to, you know,
• 32:50
  whether it's Hocking College, you know, OSU one day, you know,
• 32:54
  like you said, Kent State, whatever.
• 32:55
  So like I said, we're very much in the embassy.
• 32:58
  We're working through that process of, OK, how do we
• 33:00
  become, how do we align with the, with the standards of other
• 33:04
  colleges? Because that's really what it
• 33:06
  is. The, the college reviews those
• 33:08
  and go, you know, does that match our curriculum?
• 33:10
  If it does, we'll transfer these credits.
• 33:13
  And that's usually a conversation you have to have
• 33:16
  with the college to make sure that your standards are aligning
• 33:18
  with their standards. And so we're going through that
• 33:21
  process right now. So hopefully one day you know
• 33:24
  all of our classes will be accredited and you can transfer
• 33:27
  them anywhere in Ohio and does that.
• 33:32
  Mean having individual conversations with each of the
• 33:36
  universities and colleges in the state.
• 33:40
  Yeah, that's what kind of what we're understanding is making
• 33:43
  sure, because the worst thing that happened is a student goes
• 33:45
  through and then, you know, OSU looks at it and goes, no, this
• 33:49
  isn't, we're not going to accept these, you know, that's not very
• 33:52
  good for us. So yeah, we're going to have a
• 33:54
  lot of internal conversations with at least the big guys
• 33:57
  because from what we've heard is if the big guys accept it, then
• 34:00
  probably everybody else will too.
• 34:02
  So I think they're kind of potentially paving that way.
• 34:05
  I don't want to speak for the colleges because I'm not sure,
• 34:07
  but yeah. Does it have to align with a
• 34:10
  course that they're already offering?
• 34:12
  Like years ago I spent a year in college studying abroad and
• 34:18
  there was this whole like back and forth process of like, OK,
• 34:21
  I'm taking these management courses.
• 34:24
  Does this course description sound very similar or the same
• 34:28
  to another course at Ohio State so that my credits could
• 34:31
  transfer back? Is it the same kind of thing
• 34:33
  here? Yes, that's what I'm learning.
• 34:37
  I don't want to say definitively, but that from what
• 34:40
  I've learned so far, yes, I think that's how that works is
• 34:43
  you basically need to, they need to find a, a class that it
• 34:47
  aligns with and and that will be in kind of replacement of that
• 34:52
  class. You see what I'm saying?
• 34:54
  But the the problem right now is it's a very much chicken or the
• 34:58
  egg because it's AI so new that not a lot colleges don't have to
• 35:02
  go out yet, right. So it's kind of a blessing and a
• 35:06
  curse. It's a blessing because we're
• 35:07
  really paving the way. But it's a curse because when
• 35:10
  you talk to people about AI, they're like, well, we don't
• 35:12
  even have that, you know, we don't have policy for that yet.
• 35:15
  Is there a path or a need for you guys to license your
• 35:20
  curriculum to other colleges and universities?
• 35:23
  That's they say, like, yeah, we think this is a thing, but we
• 35:26
  don't know where to get started with it.
• 35:28
  I think so. I mean that's, that's a a rock
• 35:30
  we've definitely flipped and we're trying to move into as
• 35:33
  well is kind of curriculum development and licensing.
• 35:38
  That's originally where we started the company was was with
• 35:41
  that thought. And so it's definitely something
• 35:44
  that we want to continue to have conversations with, but
• 35:47
  nothing's been locked down in in concrete yet with that.
• 35:50
  So then on the software development side, are you guys
• 35:54
  developing software for other folks or are you developing your
• 35:58
  own ideas for commercialization? It's our own ideas, yeah.
• 36:04
  Yeah. So these have all been kind of
• 36:06
  spawned internally. So the first one that you
• 36:09
  mentioned is a gameplay situation that teaches high
• 36:14
  schoolers how to use AI by kind of weaving through some
• 36:18
  historical events. How is this being used today?
• 36:23
  So right now it's went through about 100 students so far.
• 36:28
  And we're we're basically using one of the, it's called IMAP.
• 36:33
  It's an individual micro credential program.
• 36:35
  It's through the state. And so these students, you know,
• 36:38
  go through the class and then after they've finished, they get
• 36:42
  a micro credential from us through the state of Ohio that
• 36:46
  basically says they're AI ready. And that certification's backed
• 36:49
  by Intel as well. It comes with the Intel industry
• 36:53
  certificate. And so that's kind of how we're
• 36:56
  utilizing it now. I think in the future we'd like
• 36:58
  to weave that into maybe like summer camps or potentially, you
• 37:06
  know, getting it into a school as a part of a curriculum.
• 37:11
  Is, is the future for Jumper, I guess.
• 37:13
  And fun fact too, Jumper was developed by high schoolers.
• 37:17
  So we brought in several high schoolers through a high school
• 37:21
  tech internship program last year and we gave them this idea
• 37:25
  and they like, this was solely developed by high schoolers,
• 37:29
  which is absolutely crazy that a 10 hour game was developed by,
• 37:34
  you know, 17/18/19 year olds, which is really cool.
• 37:37
  So they're they're, they're an impressive group, that's for
• 37:40
  sure. I've got two boys who are 8 and
• 37:43
  10. Any plans to come out with
• 37:47
  something that would be a little bit more age appropriate for
• 37:49
  that bracket? I probably not in the near
• 37:55
  future. We're really focusing on 9
• 38:00
  through 12 right now. But what's funny about AI and
• 38:03
  education in general is that I'm sure you're already seeing with
• 38:07
  with your kids with AI, They're learning at such an advanced
• 38:10
  rate and they're going to be tackling 12th grade issues in
• 38:16
  6th grade very soon. Yeah, that AI gives the power to
• 38:20
  someone like our high school tech interns to do something
• 38:24
  that would usually take a A10 year tenured game developer to
• 38:28
  do. Now they just did it with no
• 38:29
  gaming experience using AI and and using that thought partner
• 38:34
  and all of that. So I would after this, I can
• 38:38
  give your kids access to this game, but I would challenge them
• 38:40
  to just try to walk through you maybe.
• 38:42
  How would you say they were? 8:00 and 10:00.
• 38:45
  So maybe the 10 year old in the next year or two, I think they
• 38:49
  would be able to understand most of the concepts in the game.
• 38:53
  I think you'll see that that education level is going to be
• 38:55
  pushed back and back and back, and you're going to have 8th
• 38:58
  graders working with, you know, hardcore material science and
• 39:03
  development stuff here in the next couple years.
• 39:05
  Yeah, fascinating. And I think you're probably
• 39:07
  right, the 8 year old isn't quite there.
• 39:09
  This was about a year or so ago. I introduced him to ChatGPT for
• 39:14
  the first time and I had the paid version where you could
• 39:16
  have a conversation, you know, dialogue with it on on my
• 39:20
  iPhone. And he was just enthralled with
• 39:22
  it. But he couldn't wrap his head
• 39:25
  around that. It wasn't a real person that he
• 39:27
  was talking to. So he kept asking questions
• 39:30
  like, you know, who are your friends and are you married and
• 39:33
  do you have any kids? And it's, he's giving very
• 39:36
  appropriate answers back that says, you know, I'm not a real
• 39:39
  person. I but it just, it keeps bouncing
• 39:43
  off of him. So I yeah, I think he's a little
• 39:45
  bit early in sort of understanding what it is and how
• 39:48
  it works. But isn't that fascinating
• 39:50
  though, what you just said about the questions that he's asking?
• 39:54
  Yeah, that's a, it's a big topic right now.
• 39:56
  And AI is the the ethical side of things and how?
• 40:01
  A child doesn't know that it's not a real person.
• 40:04
  And so, you know, we have to be very watchful as this stuff's
• 40:06
  developed in the future that there it's very clear that this
• 40:09
  is not a real person, that this is not someone that you should
• 40:13
  you take everything with a grain of salt kind of.
• 40:16
  So it's just, it's kind of fascinating you said that
• 40:18
  because that is a huge issue right now and understanding the
• 40:22
  future of of AI, especially with youth and, and everything
• 40:26
  surrounding that. So.
• 40:29
  OK, now I want to get into what is it called?
• 40:32
  Flash AI? Yeah.
• 40:34
  Is this the body Cam footage product?
• 40:37
  It is, yeah. This sounds beyond wild.
• 40:39
  Let me see if I understand it. So law enforcement officers, a
• 40:45
  lot of them, they wear body Cam body cameras, and we're
• 40:50
  recording all kinds of data throughout the day, right.
• 40:53
  And I have no idea. I I'm just guessing because I,
• 40:56
  I'm not involved in law enforcement.
• 40:58
  I don't know what goes on behind the scenes.
• 40:59
  But I have to assume that a lot of this data, a lot of this
• 41:03
  footage probably doesn't get used, doesn't get leveraged in
• 41:06
  any way, is not useful. Maybe it gets stored on a server
• 41:09
  for a little while and it would just be too time consuming to go
• 41:13
  back and to be able to leverage it in some kind of useful way.
• 41:17
  What I think I understand that you guys are doing is you're
• 41:21
  feeding all of that footage, video and the audio into an AI
• 41:26
  tool that analyzes that and can be, I don't know, like a like
• 41:34
  another law enforcement advisor. You can ask questions to it and
• 41:38
  say, hey, what happened on, you know, in this particular
• 41:42
  incident? Are there training opportunities
• 41:44
  available to where, you know, the officer maybe could have
• 41:48
  done something a little bit differently?
• 41:52
  You're recording interrogations, you know, did that person give
• 41:56
  the same consistent answer throughout, like trying to
• 42:01
  analyze like are there inconsistencies that might
• 42:04
  suggest that this is untrue? Like, I don't know, I'm just
• 42:08
  kind of rambling here, but it seems to me like the the
• 42:11
  possibilities are huge. Definitely.
• 42:16
  And that's what we think too. It spawned, you know, Trace, my
• 42:20
  business partner was training a set of law enforcement and they
• 42:24
  were talking about, hey, we've got these interrogations, we
• 42:27
  have all these files and it just takes forever to go through and
• 42:31
  we have to rewatch, rewatch. So that's really where it
• 42:33
  spawned from. And then we brought it
• 42:36
  internally and then Neil, who's on our team, really took it and
• 42:40
  ran and developed this thing. But Trace also mentions that we
• 42:45
  were in a meeting yesterday about this and he mentioned
• 42:47
  something that was really cool. He said he thinks this is the,
• 42:49
  the DNA of 2025, right to where? So when DNA first came out years
• 42:55
  ago, it broke so many cases and it just, it flipped the, the law
• 43:00
  enforcement world upside down. And so we're thinking this AI
• 43:03
  product is the is the same way DNA was back then.
• 43:06
  You know, you can not only feed current cases in there, but you
• 43:10
  know, imagine Anthony over as we look across 10 years from now,
• 43:14
  let's say, let's say this gets implemented today.
• 43:17
  Well, think about you have this closed loop server.
• 43:19
  You know, it's it's just the information here that it's
• 43:22
  looking at. It's not worrying about the
• 43:23
  Internet. You know, it has no clue there's
• 43:26
  even outside world. It's just focusing on the data
• 43:27
  you're giving it. And so over 10 years, you're
• 43:30
  going to have so many interrogations, so many body Cam
• 43:33
  footage, you know, so much stuff.
• 43:35
  And then let's say I bring you in for an interrogation one day
• 43:38
  and you start talking and I feed this into our main server.
• 43:41
  But then it clicks and it ten years ago, someone mentioned,
• 43:44
  you know, Anthony's name. Then it connects the dot from 10
• 43:47
  years ago. Wait, wait.
• 43:48
  You know, this guy was mentioned here 10 years ago.
• 43:51
  And so, you know, you've got this.
• 43:52
  It can scan this massive amount of footage and connect dots that
• 43:56
  we would not be able to connect. That's the long term vision.
• 44:00
  But yeah, I mean, in the in the near future here.
• 44:02
  I shouldn't say in the near future.
• 44:04
  I mean, today it's ready to go. But yeah, you can upload body
• 44:07
  Cam footage, interrogation phone logs and it's going to basically
• 44:13
  read all that stuff for you and connect the, the red rope and
• 44:17
  spit out and say this guy, you know, says it's here, but he
• 44:21
  wasn't there at 11:00 because on the body Cam footage, you know,
• 44:25
  he was here or, or whatever. So it's very deep, it's very
• 44:29
  analytical, very accurate and it's safe.
• 44:33
  You know, we're all, we're CGI compliant and we've, you know,
• 44:36
  on Amazon, Govcloud and you name it.
• 44:38
  So it's a cool product, yeah. So we sort of spitballed a
• 44:43
  little bit on where this could go, but you're telling me that
• 44:46
  there is a version of this product that is ready to go
• 44:49
  right now, today, January 10th, 2025?
• 44:52
  Correct. Yep.
• 44:55
  And we're we've got kind of a beta going on as well.
• 44:59
  So I have a dear friend at the Cleveland Police Department.
• 45:02
  He's in a gang unit up there and there they've got a beta
• 45:06
  account. And here in the next 30 days,
• 45:09
  they're going to start launching it and putting some cases in.
• 45:14
  And so he's excited to see this and he thinks it's going to be a
• 45:19
  big time help because, you know, he said with these gang cases,
• 45:22
  he's like, I can have 8/10/20 hours of interrogation footage.
• 45:26
  And he says, you know, when they're sitting in jail, he said
• 45:30
  there's nothing really to do. So people talk on the phone all
• 45:32
  the time. So he's like, as long as you got
• 45:33
  quarters. So he's like, they'll be another
• 45:35
  6 or 8 hours a day, a day of of phone logs.
• 45:39
  And he's like, so imagine being a detective because he said on
• 45:42
  these phone logs, these people are talking and they're talking
• 45:45
  to their mom, they're talking to their friend, their girlfriend.
• 45:47
  And they just get so comfortable.
• 45:48
  They'll slip up and say, oh, you know, and then they don't even
• 45:51
  realize they're saying that. But for a detective to have to
• 45:53
  go through 8 hours of footage every day, yeah.
• 45:57
  I mean, it could be 100 hours of phone logs.
• 46:00
  Nobody has time for that. So this will all do that for
• 46:04
  them and and help them connect the dots.
• 46:07
  Then once again, it time stamps it.
• 46:08
  So it's not the AI making that final decision.
• 46:11
  You know, the detective clicks on that time stamp, actually
• 46:13
  listens to it. That's.
• 46:15
  Highlighting the data to bring to somebody's attention.
• 46:18
  It's not like it's judge, jury and executioner.
• 46:21
  It's just hey, 0 in somebody focus on this thing right here.
• 46:24
  This seems like it's highly relevant and then a human being
• 46:28
  gets involved and you know, can start their work.
• 46:30
  It just it makes everything so much more efficient for them.
• 46:33
  You says like police officer, they're going through all these
• 46:36
  like in person interrogations and they don't have time to
• 46:40
  listen to the phone logs, right. And, and to be clear, these are
• 46:43
  phone logs in prison. So they're, they're recorded.
• 46:47
  The prisoners know they're recorded.
• 46:49
  Sometimes they forget, but this is, this is this is a common
• 46:53
  thing. This isn't like a like an
• 46:55
  unknown privacy concern. No, yeah.
• 46:57
  And they, and as far as I know too, you know, they know that
• 47:01
  it's all a recorded line. I mean, when you're, when you're
• 47:03
  put in there that this is all this is being recorded.
• 47:07
  And then also, you know, if, if they get a subpoena to seize
• 47:10
  like cell phones, you know, it can also analyze text as well.
• 47:14
  So you can upload your, the phone's text messages and they
• 47:17
  can scan through that. And you know, so, so you can
• 47:20
  just imagine how many days, weeks, months it takes to go
• 47:25
  through all this information for a detective.
• 47:28
  And not to mention police forces are as short staffed as they've
• 47:32
  ever been. And so yeah, it's, we're, we're
• 47:36
  really hoping it's going to make things more efficient and, and
• 47:39
  help those guys get home quicker to their families eventually.
• 47:43
  So is the is the intent for this first beta test that they will
• 47:50
  upload sort of a combination of body Cam footage and these phone
• 47:53
  logs for specific gang related cases and let's kind of see what
• 47:59
  surfaces, is that the idea? Yeah, I mean the idea is to is
• 48:03
  to yeah, get it in the field like a real life scenario, not
• 48:07
  previous cases, like real time cases and, and have them upload
• 48:11
  this stuff and make sure that it's a critical thought partner
• 48:15
  for them and and assistant and that it gets their job done
• 48:18
  faster and better. So that's, that's the goal of
• 48:21
  this beta is, you know, we know the product works, we're very
• 48:25
  confident in it, but we're not detectives.
• 48:29
  And so do that. And then it also has a
• 48:32
  prosecuting attorney side too. You know, once the police
• 48:35
  officers get all their stuff, they hand it to the prosecuting
• 48:38
  attorney. Well, they've been going to do
• 48:39
  the same thing and make sure everything's accurate, make sure
• 48:42
  that they can, you know, sway a jury or sway a judge.
• 48:45
  And so there's a prosecuting attorney aspect too, where they
• 48:48
  can then go to them, they can type in questions and and verify
• 48:52
  all of the stuff the detective hands over.
• 48:56
  It's fascinating. It seems to me that there would
• 48:58
  be a tremendous amount of computing power required here.
• 49:03
  I mean, video takes up lots of space, audio less, but still,
• 49:08
  and then to have to run through it and analyze it.
• 49:11
  Am I correct? Like is the, I mean, you
• 49:14
  mentioned that you're on Amazon's government product, the
• 49:18
  the computing power, the infrastructure has to be
• 49:21
  enormous or am I, am I overshooting it?
• 49:24
  No, I mean, internally it's not enormous, but yes, I mean on the
• 49:28
  on the hosting side, which thankfully we don't have to
• 49:32
  worry about. But yeah, I mean on the Amazon
• 49:35
  Govcloud side, I mean, yes, they have is a mega system of not
• 49:40
  only servers, but just checks and balances, you know, making
• 49:42
  sure that everything's safe and secure.
• 49:44
  You know, I believe the FBI uses Govcloud as well.
• 49:47
  So you can imagine how big that infrastructure is, from
• 49:52
  backlogging data to firewalls to, you know, server farms to
• 49:56
  underground bunkers. I'm sure there's servers, you
• 49:58
  know, like all this data has to be checked, double checked,
• 50:02
  triple checked. So I can only imagine how big
• 50:06
  that network is. Assuming that of course you're
• 50:10
  going to learn things in this beta, right?
• 50:12
  They're going to be things that you didn't think about, blind
• 50:14
  spots that that's normal process of developing any new product,
• 50:18
  whether it's software or not. So you take that feedback,
• 50:21
  you'll refine the product and then are there already kind of
• 50:26
  like next steps that you have in mind for after this beta kind of
• 50:31
  concludes? Yeah, I mean, we during the
• 50:35
  beta, we're hoping so we've been working with the police
• 50:39
  departments to design this thing from the beginning anyways.
• 50:42
  And so hopefully, obviously not all, but hopefully 80% of the
• 50:46
  major kinks are worked out and then we can work out these other
• 50:49
  20. But yeah, I think the next step
• 50:51
  is, you know, really hitting the pavement and getting this thing
• 50:55
  to a national level and getting it into every piece of local law
• 51:00
  enforcement to campus law enforcement to you had mentioned
• 51:04
  training as well. That's a huge opportunity with
• 51:07
  this is it can re watch the body Cam footage.
• 51:10
  Listen what the officer said and give the chief some feedback on,
• 51:14
  you know, well, you know, Cass was saying this, you know, he
• 51:17
  probably should have said this or Cass did this.
• 51:20
  That's really good. You know, you praise him on
• 51:22
  that. So it will do all that as well.
• 51:24
  So yeah, we're definitely seeing just taking it to the hopefully
• 51:28
  the national and state state stage at least, but eventually
• 51:31
  hopefully the national stage here in the coming year.
• 51:35
  I'm probably getting the cart way in front of a horse here,
• 51:39
  but assuming that you kind of go on this trajectory that you
• 51:43
  envision, I wonder if at some point the US government comes in
• 51:48
  and says, hey Kaz, this is great.
• 51:51
  You cannot market this or license this overseas.
• 51:55
  You see foresee something like that happening I.
• 51:59
  Mean. I mean.
• 51:59
  What you're talking about is kind of mind.
• 52:03
  Blowing. I mean, yeah, I I could see many
• 52:07
  things happening with this product.
• 52:10
  I don't know. Yeah, I don't know, Anthony,
• 52:14
  that's a that's a great question.
• 52:15
  I I'm assuming they can do that, right?
• 52:18
  I I don't know, is that legal, you know, to do to stop a
• 52:21
  business? I don't know but.
• 52:24
  I would say that if you get to that point that you have been
• 52:27
  doing something really well and that you've got a lot of great
• 52:30
  forward momentum here in the States.
• 52:31
  I have bigger problems probably than that, but I mean, yeah, I
• 52:34
  mean the goal. Hopefully we grow it and you
• 52:38
  know, someone looks at acquisition one day.
• 52:40
  I mean, I think that's that's any, that's a very, that's a big
• 52:44
  goal of ours, hopefully so. What growth plans do you have
• 52:48
  for the hospitality restaurant space that you're in?
• 52:52
  Yeah. So we have we're, we're going
• 52:55
  through a a path of basically restructuring and figuring out,
• 53:01
  you know, who do we want to be when we grow up again.
• 53:03
  You know, we, we kind of did that once and now we're doing it
• 53:07
  again. So I think what we're looking at
• 53:08
  now is we're going to be very picky about our next spot.
• 53:14
  We want to make sure that the location, location to us is
• 53:18
  everything and that location as far as foot traffic, but
• 53:20
  actually is it overlooking a water source?
• 53:23
  Can we put a rooftop patio like a very unique specific location
• 53:28
  and building It takes, but I think we we just want to do
• 53:32
  slow, steady growth to, you know, potentially 10 stores.
• 53:37
  I think we're looking at for this next in total over the
• 53:41
  course of, you know, probably the next 5 to 10 years.
• 53:45
  We're actually all coming together here soon to
• 53:48
  everybody's kind of making their own predictions on what they
• 53:50
  want out of the company. And then we're going to come
• 53:52
  together here within the next 30 days to bring everybody's, yeah,
• 53:56
  right, right. And give and take and and make
• 53:58
  sure everybody's on the same playing field.
• 54:00
  You know, as you were describing some of the things that you
• 54:03
  believe has have made your concepts so successful, it made
• 54:07
  me wonder, like, clearly there have to be other kind of small
• 54:12
  rural communities like Mcconnellsville in other parts
• 54:16
  of Ohio or, you know, West Virginia, Kentucky's not too far
• 54:20
  away, where there could be sort of the same dynamic at play
• 54:27
  where, you know, if people want a little bit of a different
• 54:30
  experience, they're having to, you know, drive an hour or two
• 54:33
  out of town. But you could introduce
• 54:36
  something that keeps people there.
• 54:38
  And you, because of, you know, the way that you guys approach
• 54:42
  business and you get so involved in the communities that, you
• 54:46
  know, you very quickly become this, you know, trusted partner
• 54:51
  there that people just gravitate to.
• 54:53
  Is do you think about it in the same way or do you want to keep
• 54:56
  it a little bit closer to home like in terms of geography?
• 55:02
  Yes, I think we want to keep it closer to home and that's just
• 55:07
  better to with just marketing, you know, just organically
• 55:11
  growing close to each other, you know, kind of having that name
• 55:15
  recognition. You know, Marietta is a very
• 55:19
  close community to us. It's only 45 minutes away from
• 55:22
  Mcconnellsville and people know us down there because we have
• 55:26
  some people that travel back and forth and you hear all the time,
• 55:28
  hey, you guys need to bring one of these down here.
• 55:30
  So keeping it close and keeping it just far enough to where it's
• 55:34
  not really affecting your current business, but close
• 55:37
  enough to where people can recognize the name as you come
• 55:39
  in. You know, that's, that helps
• 55:43
  just the reputation of the marketing spend tremendously.
• 55:46
  So I think, yeah, we we want to stay close.
• 55:51
  Sorry, I'm just bringing up maps on my computer here because I'm,
• 55:56
  I know the area a little bit. I I live in Columbus, which
• 55:59
  isn't too far away, and I'm just kind of curious to understand
• 56:02
  the geography to see, yeah, what else is nearby.
• 56:05
  Obviously you guys know that this area, well, way better than
• 56:08
  I do. And you've already spotted out,
• 56:10
  you know, where those other growth opportunities could be.
• 56:13
  Is, is Athens like another community?
• 56:17
  That would make sense. Yeah, definitely.
• 56:20
  And Athens is, you know, we're very close to Hocking Hills as
• 56:22
  well. So you know, that whole Athens
• 56:26
  Nelsonville area, you know, we've, we've talked about, we've
• 56:31
  talked about another location in Zanesville as well.
• 56:35
  There's, yeah, there's, there's several little communities down
• 56:38
  there that we're all like, you know, it's all Athalacian
• 56:41
  communities. Like, you know, there's all
• 56:43
  that, I don't know, it just seems like Appalachian people
• 56:47
  stick together. You know, we're all kind of the
• 56:49
  same in some way. I found that getting to Columbus
• 56:51
  as well and networking, It's, it's kind of, it's cool.
• 56:55
  It's a cool community. Because Pecansville is, it's a
• 56:57
  pretty small town. It is big enough where you guys
• 57:01
  have done really well with it. And as I'm if, if Google Maps is
• 57:05
  accurate in terms of like the size of the font, you know,
• 57:08
  indicating the size of the town, you have lots of opportunities
• 57:11
  around there. Yeah, it is very small.
• 57:14
  We're the town itself is 1600 and our whole county only has
• 57:19
  15,000 people. But we're a big, a big Taurus
• 57:22
  county. We have huge amounts of outdoor
• 57:26
  recreation, hunting, fishing. We've got Jesse Owen State Park
• 57:30
  in the county. So it's we get a lot of that
• 57:33
  traffic throughout the summer. To draw people in.
• 57:35
  Cass, I want to shift gears on you now and ask about the
• 57:38
  serious challenge that you've overcome, whether it was
• 57:41
  something personal, professional, maybe something
• 57:43
  that intertwined the two. I thought that was like getting
• 57:47
  through it and some lessons that you learned.
• 57:52
  So the, I think the biggest, the biggest challenge I ever had in
• 57:57
  business would have been I tried to open a restaurant actually up
• 58:01
  here in Columbus. As a matter of fact, it opened
• 58:04
  and it did not succeed. And so that was a huge, as you
• 58:09
  can imagine, blow to everything. And it was what really sucked is
• 58:15
  I, you know, I borrowed money from my mom's four O 1 Ki
• 58:18
  borrowed money from my grandma's, borrowed some money
• 58:21
  off my brother-in-law. My grandpa actually took a home
• 58:25
  mortgage to help as well. So that was a, you know, they
• 58:31
  they all invested in me, but it didn't succeed.
• 58:34
  And so I'm not the type of guy that's going to go, OK, sorry
• 58:36
  about your luck. You know, it's it's I got to
• 58:38
  repay that. So to this day, you know, as of
• 58:41
  here just recently, pretty much everybody's paid off, paid back,
• 58:44
  which is great. But that was a that was a hard
• 58:48
  time. You know, I was like 20, what
• 58:51
  I've been 27 and you just think it's the end of the world.
• 58:57
  Like seriously, you know, is just spiraling depression.
• 59:00
  You're just like, you know, you feel like a failure.
• 59:02
  You don't want to tell anybody because, you know, you just feel
• 59:06
  like you're going to be judged. And maybe some people did, but
• 59:10
  it's, you know, it's, it's hard to understand if you've never
• 59:14
  ran a business or and but what it taught me was number one, as
• 59:21
  cliche as it sounds, it's just money.
• 59:22
  You know what I mean? There's always a way out.
• 59:23
  Like don't ever let yourself get in depression because of a
• 59:27
  financial hiccup. Like you can always dig your way
• 59:29
  out of a hole. Don't let it define you.
• 59:33
  You know that that happened and I think also that you don't
• 59:40
  really realize how much you learn on those failures.
• 59:43
  Like it was, I say it's the best, worst thing that ever
• 59:46
  happened to us because the amount of stuff we learned from
• 59:49
  that is, I mean, from negotiating out of a lease to
• 59:54
  how to get certain loans, you know, when you're low on cash
• 59:57
  like that, how to. Refinance I mean, it taught me
• 1:00:02
  so much and just a location, you know, we the the problem was we
• 1:00:06
  went to a bad location and I still stake, you know, the claim
• 1:00:09
  on that. It was just a, it was a we were
• 1:00:12
  led into that location by some people that were probably saw
• 1:00:15
  some young 20 year olds and I was like, all right, you know,
• 1:00:18
  we can get them to sign. And they did paid way too much
• 1:00:22
  for lease, you know, didn't understand, you know, triple net
• 1:00:26
  and you know, you know what I mean?
• 1:00:27
  Like I learned so much. And so now, you know, it's
• 1:00:30
  definitely helped develop myself and Paul and Steven to the
• 1:00:33
  business owners we are today. We know what a good deal versus
• 1:00:36
  a bad deal looks like, and you can't, you can't learn that
• 1:00:40
  stuff in school. I'm telling you, that's the the
• 1:00:43
  best learning experience a guy can have is failure.
• 1:00:45
  And, and I want to give some context to this because, you
• 1:00:47
  know, you talked about spiraling depression, you talked about,
• 1:00:50
  you know, you, you can't understand what it's like unless
• 1:00:52
  you've been through. And that's right.
• 1:00:55
  Like for folks who haven't been in a position where they've
• 1:00:59
  started a business that hasn't worked out, you know, because
• 1:01:04
  I've been in this situation before, I've had some successes,
• 1:01:06
  I've had some failures too. And it is not an overt
• 1:01:11
  exaggeration to say that it feels like a death, like it
• 1:01:16
  feels like the death of a person.
• 1:01:20
  But in I'll, I'll speak for myself, it, it, it seems to
• 1:01:24
  linger even longer, right? Because it, it feels like it is
• 1:01:30
  a complete reflection of who you are and your, your worth and
• 1:01:34
  your value as a person. And it's really hard to shake
• 1:01:37
  that feeling. Would you feel the same way?
• 1:01:40
  Absolutely. I mean, it's, if you, if this
• 1:01:44
  podcast would have happened four years ago, let's say even three
• 1:01:49
  years ago, I probably wouldn't even have brought it up.
• 1:01:51
  You know, it was it was such a, and it still is kind of a sore
• 1:01:54
  subject even when I'm in that area of Columbus.
• 1:01:57
  You know, it makes you irk a little bit.
• 1:02:00
  Yeah. And it is a defining moment.
• 1:02:02
  You know, it really is. It truly is a defining moment in
• 1:02:06
  a entrepreneur's life when you have a failure.
• 1:02:07
  I mean, it it, you know, it takes you like a man, it whacks
• 1:02:13
  you like a baseball bat, you know, and, and but you know
• 1:02:17
  what, I think what Teddy Roosevelt had that man in the
• 1:02:20
  arena quote, you know what I mean?
• 1:02:21
  Like it's all about it's the people who stepped up and
• 1:02:24
  actually got into the arena, whether they win or lose versus
• 1:02:28
  just standing on the outside of the arena pointing fingers.
• 1:02:30
  And and so I, I, I wear it as a honorable badge.
• 1:02:34
  Now that got through it, you know, learned some stuff, but
• 1:02:36
  yeah, it it hey, lingers. That's that's a fact.
• 1:02:40
  Yeah, I love what you're talking about with Teddy Roosevelt
• 1:02:43
  because I made a decision a long time ago that life is not meant
• 1:02:47
  to be a spectator sport. And so take the good, take the
• 1:02:52
  bad, take the UPS takes the downs, but I want to be in the
• 1:02:55
  game. Coach put me in.
• 1:02:56
  And it sounds like you're wired. The same kind of way,
• 1:02:59
  definitely, yeah. And if you hadn't taken that
• 1:03:02
  experience, if you hadn't had that significant set back those
• 1:03:05
  losses, right, there's like you said, there were so many things
• 1:03:08
  that you learned from it. There were probably other
• 1:03:11
  mistakes that you would have made in some of your businesses
• 1:03:15
  if you had not gone through that previously.
• 1:03:18
  Yeah. And so when you were going
• 1:03:21
  through those struggles, realizing that you're going to
• 1:03:23
  have to close this down and then closing it down, then having to
• 1:03:25
  live through the the aftermath, what were some of the things
• 1:03:28
  that got you through those difficult times?
• 1:03:31
  What were your What was your support network, your coping
• 1:03:34
  mechanisms like? Yeah, Well, I mean, definitely
• 1:03:41
  my parents, I mean, they were, they're a huge, they're just a
• 1:03:44
  huge supporter of everything, you know.
• 1:03:47
  And so I mean, talking with them just and everybody, I think the
• 1:03:53
  biggest thing was the fact that I, I borrowed money off people
• 1:03:56
  and I failed with their money. That that if it had been my
• 1:03:59
  money, it'd probably be a little different.
• 1:04:00
  But the fact that I used somebody else's money, that's
• 1:04:02
  what really, that's what really hit me hard.
• 1:04:05
  And so I think talking to all those people and just assuring
• 1:04:09
  them, hey, you know, it may not be tomorrow, but in the next
• 1:04:12
  5-10 years, I will get you paid back.
• 1:04:14
  Like that's my, you know, I am going to get you paid back.
• 1:04:17
  And I think just for them to say, hey, you know, yeah, sucks,
• 1:04:19
  but it's OK. You know what I mean?
• 1:04:22
  It happens. We we gave you this with
• 1:04:26
  understanding that this could potentially happen and that we
• 1:04:29
  were just, you know, happy to see you try.
• 1:04:32
  And then obviously, you know, happy to hear we're gonna get
• 1:04:37
  our money back too, you know, so I think that support network
• 1:04:40
  held and my dad as well. I love my dad to death, but he's
• 1:04:46
  not, you know, he's your typical daddy.
• 1:04:48
  We don't really have a lot of heart to heart things.
• 1:04:50
  As he gets older, we're having more.
• 1:04:52
  But you know, he, we had some heart to hearts and he always
• 1:04:56
  said, he said they can't eat your son, which I don't even
• 1:04:59
  know what that means. But he, he always just said they
• 1:05:00
  can't eat you. And basically like they can't
• 1:05:02
  take who you are like they can, the bank can foreclose.
• 1:05:05
  They can take everything from you, your other businesses, you
• 1:05:08
  know, you can whatever, but they can't, you know, you're still
• 1:05:10
  you and you can always get out of it and you can always, you
• 1:05:15
  know, make yourself another day, you know what I mean?
• 1:05:17
  So. Yeah, no, that's great.
• 1:05:19
  They can't eat you. Yeah.
• 1:05:21
  I get what he means. Yeah, just exactly the way that
• 1:05:25
  you explained it there. Before I ask my last question, I
• 1:05:30
  want to make sure that we give voice to your YouTube channel.
• 1:05:33
  Tell us about that. Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 1:05:35
  Thank you. Yeah, I got a little rest.
• 1:05:38
  Of the story, which for an old guy like me, reminds me of Paul
• 1:05:43
  Harvey, old NPR guy. Does that ring?
• 1:05:46
  Do you know that connection? No.
• 1:05:48
  Does he? Did he have a show that was
• 1:05:49
  named that? On NPRI, don't remember if it
• 1:05:52
  was the name of his show but at the end of it he would always
• 1:05:55
  say and now you know. Oh, rest of the story.
• 1:05:59
  That's a. There you go.
• 1:06:00
  Have to look that up. But tell me, tell me what your
• 1:06:03
  YouTube channel is about. You know, it's a, it's just a
• 1:06:07
  passion project, but I have always loved travelling.
• 1:06:12
  I've always loved culture. You know, I've always, I grew
• 1:06:16
  up, like I said, in rural Appalachia, never made to the
• 1:06:19
  city, never, you know, never got out of the county growing up
• 1:06:22
  really, except for like Myrtle Beach vacations.
• 1:06:25
  So I always had like a huge curiosity of the world, like
• 1:06:27
  what's out there, you know, And so when I finally got older and
• 1:06:31
  got to the age where I could afford to travel, you know, I
• 1:06:34
  finally made it to Europe, I think not until I was 30, but it
• 1:06:39
  just sparked this, you know, fever of, I want to check out
• 1:06:41
  all these people. I always loved watching Anthony
• 1:06:44
  Bourdain from every iteration of, of shows that he had.
• 1:06:49
  And I was like, I want to be that guy, you know, I want to
• 1:06:52
  understand people on a different level from all around the world
• 1:06:55
  because at the end of the day, we're all the same in some way,
• 1:06:57
  shape or form. And so that's what I kind of set
• 1:07:00
  out to do with this was I took a camera.
• 1:07:03
  It's, it's in my opinion, well produced for a kid that doesn't
• 1:07:06
  know anything about editing. I'd take it very seriously.
• 1:07:08
  And I bought nice cameras and mics.
• 1:07:10
  And yeah, I interview people, I travel and try to bring that's
• 1:07:18
  the the unique parts of the world to your desktop, you know,
• 1:07:21
  places that people wouldn't usually travel.
• 1:07:24
  Yeah, I'm not going to Paris, France and interviewing someone
• 1:07:27
  from the Eiffel Tower. Like that's not what this is
• 1:07:29
  about. It's about.
• 1:07:29
  Off the beaten path. Yeah, nitty gritty, putting
• 1:07:32
  myself in situations that people are watching on.
• 1:07:34
  I would never do that, you know what I mean?
• 1:07:37
  So yeah, you're. Truly channelling your inner
• 1:07:41
  Anthony Bourdain, it sounds like.
• 1:07:43
  Yeah, that's my, that's my game plan.
• 1:07:45
  Sell all the businesses one day and then just, you know, travel
• 1:07:48
  and make travel vlogs. All right, Cass, I've got one
• 1:07:51
  more question for you. But before I ask it, I want to
• 1:07:53
  do 2 things. First of all, for everybody
• 1:07:55
  listening today, I know that you love today's content.
• 1:07:57
  Cass has been awesome. So please hit the like share
• 1:08:00
  subscribe button on your favorite podcast app.
• 1:08:03
  Cass, I also want to let people know the best way to get in
• 1:08:05
  touch with you if they're just want to meet you as a person or
• 1:08:08
  they're curious about some of the different business ventures
• 1:08:10
  you've got going on. What would that be?
• 1:08:13
  Yeah, I mean, the best way you can obviously find me on
• 1:08:15
  LinkedIn. I'm on there.
• 1:08:16
  Just Cass, Maxwell CAS, you can e-mail me.
• 1:08:21
  I've got two different emails either Cass at Maxwells pizza,
• 1:08:26
  that's Maxwells with an s.com or Cass at AIL.
• 1:08:31
  You know, AIOWL dot dot org. So either one of those you can,
• 1:08:36
  I mean on Instagram too, YouTube, whatever, you can hit
• 1:08:40
  me up and I'll I'll definitely respond back so.
• 1:08:42
  Great. So last question for you, Cass.
• 1:08:45
  You know I generally ask this question of people who are sort
• 1:08:48
  of focused on a particular industry and asking, you know,
• 1:08:52
  what you see are kind of the big changes coming in the next
• 1:08:54
  couple of years with you kind of having, you know, your hands in
• 1:08:58
  a few different things. Maybe just pick one of them and
• 1:09:02
  tell me what you think kind of the the changes that are coming
• 1:09:05
  to that space are going to look like in the next couple of
• 1:09:07
  years. That's a great question.
• 1:09:14
  Both the industries of men are are definitely going to be
• 1:09:16
  changing. I'm probably going to pick the
• 1:09:17
  AI side just because of its disruption right now.
• 1:09:23
  The changing thing that I think is going to happen is, you know,
• 1:09:28
  AI is not going to take your job, but somebody who knows how
• 1:09:30
  to use AI is. AI is not going to replace
• 1:09:33
  humans in the next several years, but that is going to
• 1:09:37
  streamline and it's going to take a instead of knowledge,
• 1:09:42
  like people are really going to have to push themselves to keep
• 1:09:44
  up. And the people that don't do
• 1:09:46
  that are really going to suffer from it, which is unfortunate.
• 1:09:52
  But at the end of the day too, it's easy.
• 1:09:54
  You know, you can take classes, you can literally just go on
• 1:09:57
  YouTube and learn as well. So that's going to be the
• 1:10:02
  disruptor and from, from hearing what open AI and Google is
• 1:10:05
  saying that what we've seen so far is just a mere scratch of
• 1:10:10
  the surface of what we're about to see in the next 5 years of,
• 1:10:13
  of how this AI and AGI is going to start to revolutionize
• 1:10:17
  things. So it's, you know, buckle up.
• 1:10:21
  I think you know what I mean. Buckle up and, and try to stay
• 1:10:24
  on it. I mean, just do your best to
• 1:10:28
  learn and educate because if you can integrate this stuff, it's
• 1:10:32
  it'll really change your change your life for sure.
• 1:10:34
  Yep. And remember folks, it's not a
• 1:10:36
  spectator sport. That's right, get in the arena
• 1:10:40
  job. According to CAS.
• 1:10:41
  But somebody who knows how to use it will so the time to get
• 1:10:45
  involved and educate yourself about it.
• 1:10:47
  For sure. Well, CAS, I want to be the
• 1:10:48
  first one to thank you for sharing both your time and your
• 1:10:50
  story with us today. I really appreciate it.
• 1:10:53
  Thank you, I had a lot. This is my first podcast so I I
• 1:10:55
  had a lot of fun. I appreciate you inviting me.
• 1:10:58
  Absolutely. You did great.
• 1:10:59
  You should do more of them. Thank you.
• 1:11:01
  Folks, that's a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories
• 1:11:04
  podcast. Thanks for learning with us
• 1:11:06
  today.