Dear you,
I’m taking a breather from the normal newsletter for the week. I’ve had a lot going on with family dynamics, career transition, and startup life.
Sometimes the best move is to step back and let everything settle before the next push forward.
But I couldn’t leave you hanging without some updates. 👀
UPDATES
Here’s what’s been going on lately…
Working on a new newsletter design.
Let me know what you think! Would love some opinions while this is inflight. Mainly looking for style/design feedback.
Something I have been struggling with lately is how to balance my writing with both my personal growth and my entrepreneurial growth.
I realize they are both part of the same journey: my own.
Side note—I’ve had many men reach out saying they’ve started going to therapy because of my vulnerable reflections and advocacy there. I am so happy about that! The world needs more emotional intelligence.
But I want to continue with the main purpose I started with: writing for me.
I hope my future kids one day read these and understand their dad better and the sacrifices I made for them.
So I’m working towards a cadence where in a given month, I will write under a new umbrella called Self Aligned (new newsletter name) around my philosophy of Self-Alignment which I write more about here.
My format will generally remain the same:
Sometimes I’ll write with the ABC structure.
Other times I won’t when I feel the writing deserves an essay style format.
But EVERY time, I will write from the heart.
When I transition, here’s what you can expect:
3 build in public style newsletters weaving in my personal narrative. This will be ABCs for Building The Future (Align, Build, Culture) where I share my journey of building my startup dreams and in particular Clarity, to help everyone become their best selves. Example here.
1 personal reflection style newsletter weaving in my thoughts on my own growth around my physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and community health. This will be the standard ABCs for Growth style newsletter (Advice, Breakthrough, Challenge). I will continue sharing my learnings around communication, leadership and emotional intelligence—which is an ongoing pursuit. Example here.
Hit 100 YouTube subscribers this week.
It’s not a massive number, but it represents something real—100 people who chose to tune in. That feels like progress worth acknowledging.
I’m going to be on Teresa Torres’s podcast.
If you know her work in product discovery, you know this is a conversation I’m genuinely excited about. Teresa interviewed Jonathan and I on her podcast. I was SO STOKED. She’s insanely intelligent and asks amazing questions. I owe a lot of my product craft to her wisdom. More on that soon.
AI Native Product Development
We’re finding new ways to improve our throughput of quality customer interviews. It’s one thing to do great interviews.
It’s another to do them at lightning fast AI speeds.
We’re cracking that code, and it’s changing how we work. I basically have been approaching random strangers in the Self Help isle at book stores, ask them if I can interview them in exchange for me buying them a book, and get their feedback on the product. I record everything (with their consent). I then record a debrief after the interview.
After that, I upload the videos to Descript, get the transcription, and then use AI to parse through the priority features/bugs/opportunities I see and validated hypotheses we’re testing.
I then use Claude Code with GitHub MCP to upload them to GitHub issues into our backlog.
Teaching 1000s+ of people AI workflows
At Dayforce, I’ve been running weekly AI workshops for my teammates—over 1,000+ people now.
I love facilitating learning, so having 1000+ people I meet with regularly to learn AI has been very energy giving (though it does take energy too!).
Watching 1000s of people go from intimidated to curious to capable with AI tools has been one of the most rewarding parts of my week. Shoutout to my teammates for leaning in!
Clarity Logo Update
I find that many high agency founders and leaders LOVE Clarity.
It helps them align daily action towards who they want to become. It empowers their agency. So we’re doubling down on Clarity.
I’m even creating a demo for Team Clarity, because so many teams I’ve been on, lead, or transformed, have trouble aligning daily action towards business and product outcomes. Stay tuned for that.
We’re getting some traction, and I’m feeling like Product Market Fit is just on the other side of more hard work.
Here’s the new Logo in progress. Huge shoutout to my buddy Ben for taking this on, what a champ.
Training For 100 Mile Self-Supported Ultra
4 months ago, I started running.
Why?
I’m training for a 100 mile self-supported ultramarathon next May/June pending weather.
I don’t really like entering races or classes. So it will be self-supported. I don’t need the accountability.
I’m just doing it because I didn’t really like running and I wanted to push myself to do something big in the sport even if I didn’t like it.
Could I call myself a runner if I haven’t ran 100 miles consecutively? For me, no.
I believe winning at startups and entrepreneurship means you must push yourself to do (and enjoy) things you don’t like doing. I’ve learned that doing things you don’t wanna do, and learning to enjoy them, is a skill in itself.
Because much of it, you won’t initially like doing at all.
There are many CEO things I don’t want to do, but have to do, to succeed.
Here’s my progression so far.
1st week: tried for a half marathon, got to 12 miles.
2nd week: tried for a self-supported marathon, got to 22 miles and walked the rest. This was pretty gnarly but it also taught me that limits only exist in the mind.
Month 4: 20 miles is casual.
The past few weeks I’ve been dealing with a nagging injury. I went to a running specialist physical therapist, got some exercises and now I’m feeling bullet proof. He told me I should aim for a 25 mile long run 2 months out from yesterday.
Instead, I decided to just go for it the day he told me that.
I had to stop 3.5 miles shy because I had to run a Global All Hands.
That cut me short. Ah well, the effort itself is worth the reward.
Though, I feel like I could’ve gone to 40 actually which is a win in itself!
Note to self: leave time in between Global All Hands and 3000 calorie workout, to eat food. I was kind of dying during the All Hands. Just kind of. Still went well though.
Dog Dad Training With Kenji
Training is going well—he’s nailed recall, sit, stay, all the fundamentals.
Our early morning fetch sessions have become my favorite part of the day. There’s something grounding about those quiet moments before the world wakes up.
His last challenge? Discernment around who to kill and who not to kill. LOL.
Right now, Kenji thinks everyone who enters our home is a threat. He wants to kill them all.
He’s a great guard dog, and I think he just wants to protect his dad and his home after being a shelter boy.
He hasn’t learned yet that protection requires judgment, not just instinct.
We’re working on it. I’ve spent many hours training him and will spend many more to make him the best boy ever.
He needs to listen to his dad about who actually deserves the full guard dog treatment. w
It’s a work in progress, but we’ll get there! Just gotta keep getting in the training reps.
Next week: I’ll dig into Clarity’s design around our Self Alignment Index, building off this previous post.
There’s a lot to unpack about how we measure what matters, to align anybody’s being with becoming their best self.
And in case you missed these, here were some of my recent writings:
You’re Not as Good as You Think
Will AI Kill Us or Just Our Jobs?
See you next week.
—Robert & Kenji
