From Pizza to AI: Cas Maxwell’s Entrepreneurial Journey Across Rural Ohio

Anthony Codispoti: Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Kodespode and today’s guest is Kaz Maxwell. He’s a visionary entrepreneur and community leader who grew up in rural Appalachia and has expanded his business ventures across Ohio with prospecting efforts in Poland and Jamaica. At the age of 23 he opened his first restaurant showcasing his early commitment to hospitality and community engagement. He is the co-founder of AI Owl, now a certified career college in Ohio specialized in AI training, software development and game-based learning.

The institution focuses on workforce development and innovative solutions for real-world challenges. He also owns Enjoy Brands which includes Maxwell’s Pizza and River Valley Social embodying his vision of being the cornerstone of enjoyment across all communities. Beyond his business ventures he serves as a board member of the Citizens National Bank of McConnell’sville and the Ohio Chamber of Commerce’s Small Business Council.

He has served on multiple community boards and is a passionate storyteller and photographer sharing human experiences and untold stories through his YouTube channel, the rest of the story. Before we get into the good stuff today’s episode is brought to you by my company Add Back Benefits Agency where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. One recent client was able to add over $900 per employee per gear in extra cash flow by implementing one of our proprietary programs. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible.

To find out if your company qualifies contact us today at addbackbenefitsagency.com. Now back to our guest today the co-founder of Maxwell’s Pizza among many other ventures. Kaz I appreciate you making the time to share your story today.

Cas Maxwell: Thanks for having me on the show Anthony.

Anthony Codispoti: So Kaz you have a variety of different business interests maybe let’s go through them chronologically. Which one did you start first and how did the idea come about?

Cas Maxwell: So the first one would have been Maxwell’s Pizza that was opened that in 2016 going on nine years now here in just a couple months. So that started I never really wanted to be I didn’t think I wanted to be an entrepreneur when I was in college. I always did at a young age I’ve got several different businesses that we started you know from snow shoveling to lawn care to at one point me and my buddy like in third grade were taking larger racers drawing designs and stamping them on people like tattoos and charging 25 cents for those.

So I’ve had a I didn’t really realize that I was I had that in me until I kind of got out of college and I realized okay this is something that has been in me I’ve been around it a lot of my life as well. My parents have a sporting good store that they opened when I was in freshman and high school so I kind of been around it been in it then when I got out you know there was this opportunity with a lot in Zanesville Ohio that decided to get that my parents helped me get that loan to secure the building and start working on renovations. I was 23 at that time had only experience I had in a restaurant was working at Buffalo Wild Wings as a server so not very much experience. Needless to say it was a it was a mess opening up you know we had a lot of school of hard knocks there.

Before we opened I brought on two of my friends from college Paul and Steve who are still my business partners to this day and so they kind of we divvied up and said hey you’re in charge of this I’m in charge of that you know you’re in charge of this and got the doors open and yeah it was a hit you know we were super busy like I said had to learn through the school of hard knocks on how to make a menu how to run a staff how to train managers and then from there we opened up a couple more pizza shops one being kind of our flagship location which is in McConnalsville Ohio it has rooftop patio seats about you know 100 150 people just a full dining experience full menu and then most recently it was River Valley Social which is it was an old bowling alley we bought uh completely gutted it renovated it you know it was your typical crusty bowling alley as you can imagine and we turned it more into a family event center added you know virtual golf uh a different food concept a bar darts you know we’re adding an arcade right now should be in the next two months and uh yeah and then came AIO after that which is a that’s a whole other story I’m sure we’ll get into

Anthony Codispoti: yeah let’s see a little bit we’ve got a few things done past the pizza stuff here before we get into that which I’m excited to dive into so right out of college your parents hope you get a loan to buy a vacant lot but what was the inspiration behind starting specifically a pizza place to start with was your family in that business did you grow up around that I know you said BW3s was kind of your only related work experience prior

Cas Maxwell: I think it was twofold so food has always been a passion of mine before um in college that was always kind of my secondary thing I wanted to do was culinary arts I never pursued it just because it didn’t I guess call to me as hard as political science did I know that sounds completely random but uh so I’ve always had a passion for cooking I grew up you know alongside my mom in the kitchen and she’ll vouch for me you know I was cooking family dinners in like sixth grade so I’ve always loved the kitchen always loved food and the creation around it and then as far as the concept I think that probably spawned from my dad growing up worked at a drive-thru basically you know selling beer alcohol and then also they had a pizza as well to where they made pizza and so I think that kind of came that was always in the back of the mind and then as you know I got out of college started looking at different types of restaurants and what’s going to work well uh pizza you know being 23 pizza just sounded like you know who doesn’t love pizza uh and so I think having that little bit of memory in the back of my mind and then also uh loving pizza and knowing that it’s thought it was an easy business how about that I thought it was it’s not an easy business I’ll tell you that right now uh so I think that’s kind of what culminated to to me uh choosing that avenue

Anthony Codispoti: so you didn’t really know how to open a restaurant but somehow you got it open were there mentors or other people that you could kind of lean on as you were going through those early steps

Cas Maxwell: definitely yeah I um tried to surround myself with as many people that knew more than I did you know I I was very aware of the fact that you know I knew nothing and that I needed to learn and absorb um still like that to this day you know anytime I can learn off somebody so yeah I mean I surrounded myself with um other restaurant tours that I tried to network with um our current food provider at that time I linked up a lot with them with their in-house chefs to help uh design the menu design the dough and yeah really just tried to surround myself with supporting people that you know are going to at least guide me a little bit on how we can make this work at the end of the day you know the the cards fall when the when the door opens for the first time so nobody can prepare you for that I can get I can tell you that

Anthony Codispoti: so you said that it did I hear you correctly that it was kind of a hit right away like you guys were busy from the get-go

Cas Maxwell: yeah definitely so where we opened up in Zanesville it’s in South Zanesville um which is a little less populated than the north side of Zanesville so it’s a very tight-knit community um and so when something happens everybody knows about it so it’s it’s not like opening up in the middle of Columbus where you have to have this gigantic PR push you know it’s when you open up uh in South Zanesville you know everybody knows so everybody wants to try it and you got to be on your you know kind of your best behavior when you have those doors open um so yeah I mean when we opened the doors it was uh I think everybody had a 10 mile radius ordered a pizza in the first two days so it was uh it was crazy it was a fun it was a fun nightmare how’s that that was uh

Anthony Codispoti: yeah jumped right into the deep end right away so was the pizza delicious from the start or do you guys kind of make some missteps and have to tweak it a long way

Cas Maxwell: um yeah I mean of course I’m gonna say it was delicious from the start but yeah there was we’ve had several iterations over the years I mean we’ve tried to listen to customers figure out what they want we’ve redone our dough a couple times um I have a lady that currently still to this day does our dough in the mornings and she’s actually perfected the recipe so she took our original recipe and was like hey Cassie I’m gonna do this that and we did some testing and so she’s like in my opinion perfected it and so yeah there’s been several iterations we’ve messed with the sauce a little bit changed up cheeses before um you know everybody is very particular about their pizza you know everybody goes to the same spot every you know every week every month they order from their favorite spot and they usually don’t mix it up so it’s a it’s a hard industry to drive a wedge into a family and say hey you should try here instead of ordering at your the place you’ve ordered for 20 years so

Anthony Codispoti: but it sounds like you guys you sort of had a hook right from the beginning because you were new in this small town and so everybody tried you what in those first two days as you pointed out what was the repeat business like

Cas Maxwell: um so we definitely started at the highest highs like I said everybody tried and then from there you know it kind of to me it’s like working in these small smaller towns what we’ve seen is you start at the peak you start the busiest you’re gonna be and then it kind of you get to where you’re you’re going and then you start to increase again versus in the city it seems like you start kind of start down here and you’re working working working your way up it’s like completely opposite in these rural communities because everybody knows you’re the new guy in town um but yeah I mean repeat business I mean it was great you know we had a lot of people loyal to us we worked really hard on being the kind of a community beacon and just investing you know all of our extra money into whether it was Mazeville High School you know the sports feeding the teams whether it was breast cancer awareness you know fundraisers giving this guide you know $100 for ants funeral like whatever that was you know we uh very to this day very rarely say no to a to a fundraiser sponsorship and so I think that’s what really made us successful was just being a part of the community

Anthony Codispoti: interest the last one you threw out there was kind of an interesting one $100 for somebody’s ants funeral sure this is an employee this is just like somebody from the community

Cas Maxwell: just the community and I think if you’re a retail business owner and you have a storefront not even retail just anybody who has a brick and mortar I think they’ll resonate with the amount of people that you have come through on a daily weekly basis with flyers saying you know hey my you know mom my uncle whoever passed away we can’t afford the funeral we’re doing a fundraiser for them or you know my son needs a surgery we’re having a fundraiser so those happen I mean daily weekly basis and so if we can’t donate cash you know we always try to hey we can at least donate product we can donate gift cards for like a sign auction but that’s truly the in my opinion the game changer when you’re in small communities like that is just always being there showing up to the events supporting the events you know if there’s a if there’s a big brothers big sisters fundraiser showing up to the buckeye pep rally you know whatever that that is like just being there as the business that makes all the difference in those type of communities

Anthony Codispoti: let me play the cynic for just a moment how can you measure that ROI I mean this is the kind of thing that I think a lot of people do out of the goodness of their own heart yeah and that’s wonderful it’s a great way to do it but you talked about it being a game changer in terms of the business how are you kind of able to connect the dots to say that that drove more business yeah um

Cas Maxwell: so if you’re looking for a quantifiable answer I would say probably you know everywhere we go we tried to drop whether it’s coupons flyers you know that type of stuff so quantifiably I mean we can see those come through the door and be redeemed but I don’t think that’s how we measure success on that it’s definitely a good of our heart thing you know we of course yeah it’s a great it’s great that people are going to come in and give us business for that but I feel like at the root that’s not why we originally did it but I think to measure success we see it’s just word of mouth you know you hear you hear people coming in oh I saw you guys at this event or hey thank you for donating this or donating that so it’s very much a word of mouth and and in a small community you’ll start hearing that buzz and you’ll start hearing people ask you hey I know you were here would you be willing to do this so it culminates into a reputation that I think if you are to pull someone off the street in those areas and say hey what do you think about this company you’ll hear them say oh yeah they do a lot for the community they you know I’ve heard they’re a good place to work at just that type of stuff so I think that’s how I don’t know did I answer your question I think yeah

Anthony Codispoti: yeah thanks Cas you mentioned that running a pizza business is not easy what’s the hardest thing about it

Cas Maxwell: um the hardest thing about it um I would say I mean it’s there’s a couple things number one like I was saying everyone’s so particular about their pizza everybody knows what type of pizza they like where they order their pizza from so to disrupt that and try to get them to come in is a a very difficult thing and and pizzas are highly customizable as well and so the amount of ingredients you have to have on hand um and just managing the inventory and spoilage you know everything’s fresh you know it’s fresh vegetables it’s usually fresh meat um you know you can imagine one pizza has like 30 different items you can put on it so you have to have this huge amount of inventory just for pizzas not to count you know we have a whole menu so it’s like uh not to manage you know chicken wings and sub salads wraps you know all of that other inventory that comes along with it um and then I think just the the leadership side of things you know with uh the team you have you know it’s a very young team you know always you know it’s pizza shops and usually tend to attract people that are in path hey this is what a job looks like this is how you should conduct yourself in a job um need this is a time you know these are the times to go with the flow these are the times to push back um and also creating that middle management because usually those people are you know 18 19 years old so they’re still very young um first time leadership you know and so there’s a lot of mistakes made you know saying this or saying that and you’re like I maybe I want to set it like that but uh so I’d say those are the two biggest challenges in that industry

Anthony Codispoti: you know from what I understand Maxwell’s has built a reputation for a very welcoming atmosphere yeah curious if there have been any intentional design or customer service choices that you made early on that helped to kind of really foster this community feel

Cas Maxwell: definitely yeah um everything that we have ever done since day one has been customer focused I mean that’s like customer and team focus I should say as well we have always tried to you know any new training any new menu I mean you name it you know the customer is always at the front of mind and going okay how do we make this more of a welcoming experience for the guest do we always hit that on the head no I mean there’s plenty of times months years you know it’s an ebb and flow of just trying to you know keep everything where you want it to be but yeah I mean we have implemented just a huge set of core values that we did originally that we’ve really always stuck to and so it’s we call it our sauce culture and SAU, CED each of those stands for something and you know C stands for care you know S is service for the smile and so we tried to implement those core values into how we treat our team how we treat our guests you know if we’re designing a new store you know we even invoke that into designing that to make the guests feel that as well so yeah I mean it’s very much intentional um we want to be that type of a company

Anthony Codispoti: how far into the history of Maxwell’s were you before you said we’ve got something repeatable here I want to open up a second location

Cas Maxwell: uh before the first one even opened I know that sounds funny but I I just uh I don’t know I have this uh problem anytime I dream I dream way too big and so uh yeah after the first one’s open I was like all right let’s let’s go to the second one and so you know we open the second one very very quickly actually within two years of the first one um and so yeah to answer your question I mean it was a hit and I was like this is this is really cool I really like this and let’s let’s keep moving

Anthony Codispoti: so uh rooftop patio in uh kind of rural Ohio were you a little nervous about introducing something like that I’m sure it was well I’m assuming it was the first of its kind in the area am I right absolutely

Cas Maxwell: yeah okay um I don’t know if I was nervous but there were nervous people yes uh you know so my big thing was you know I grew up and I grew up in that area you know I grew up in McConnell’sville my entire life love it to death um and I just felt like I knew what we were missing and I was like there’s so many people in this community that leave every weekend to go to Zanesville or go to Columbus uh anytime they want something that’s slightly elevated uh they leave the county and that money leaves the county um because there’s I mean it’s nothing for someone to drive to Columbus on a Friday hour and a half drive from McConnell’sville to go have a nice steak dinner you know that’s that just it happens every weekend so the building that I remodeled I had saw it and it was a old tire shop originally I’ve been vacant for years and it was just like just totally decrefied and I called the gentleman who owned it and I was like hey you know kind of buy this and he’s like well if you buy this in this house uh and he gave me like this sweet killer deal and yeah we built that up and it immediately took off people loved the fact that you could get that city experience but in this country atmosphere um this you know slightly elevated you know we we don’t ever want to consider ourselves you know pretentious that’s not at all what we are but it’s just this casual fun it almost feels like you’re on the beach during the summer you know it overlooks the river it’s like it’s a really really good vibe so uh people love it which river the Muskingham River okay which is a pretty it’s a pretty big river too so um it’s a it’s a lot of fun we have live music and

Anthony Codispoti: is it the same menu as the original Maxwell’s

Cas Maxwell: it is yeah so we’ve uh both stores now have the same menu and we’ve we’ve since expanded our original store to add more seating and a patio there and and all of the stuff as well so

Anthony Codispoti: okay so then at some point you decide that you’re gonna open uh kind of a very different concept uh river valley social a family event center tell me how the inspiration for that came about

Cas Maxwell: uh so the rooftop patio location uh right next door is this uh bowling alley right and so you could almost throw a rock from it uh from the peachy shop and the family who owned it um I think they were just getting older and they were like all right I think I’m I’m ready to retire from this and so he had approached me and was like would you be willing to buy this um originally it was a no and then you know we we got to thinking more on it and we’re like hey why don’t we buy this tear it down and build a parking lot that was originally what we were gonna do because we needed more parking for the peachy shop um and the more I personally got to think of it I’m like you know I grew up in this bowling alley this is a state with a community kids have nothing to do around here families have nothing to do let’s um you know let’s make this into a family event center and let’s bring more people to Morgan county which is where McConaughey’s will set um so I think the inspiration was just around building the community up more too you know it’s my hometown there’s a lot of good people in good seats in that town right now that are doing a lot of great things from you know the brewery to the bed and breakfast to Myers market I mean there’s so many fun things that are building up that community and it’s like this is just another nail in the coffin to just start dragging people into our community um so I think that’s really where that spurred from was just community development and how long has that been open now a little over two years now how’s that going good good we’re just slowly creeping up you know what I mean it’s a whole different challenge opening a bowling alley versus a restaurant you know there’s a whole different set of skills and learnings you know I was never a bowler so I didn’t realize once again bowlers are very particular there’s a lot of stuff you have to do uh in that bowling alley to make it successful for them and we’re still working out those kinks and we’re very excited for this year because like I said we’re adding the arcade which people are pumped for and we’re pumped for uh and we’ve you know the beer gardens all built out and so we’re gonna have you know full live bands this summer and it’s it’s gonna be a fun summer so when does the arcade open they said within two months so um it’s I’m kind of at the mercy of the the gaming company but they it’s looking like the end of February

Anthony Codispoti: okay so we’re recording this in kind of early to mid-January 2025 by the time this comes out it’s going to be pretty close to being open

Cas Maxwell: oh yeah nice oh that’s perfect that’s perfect

Anthony Codispoti: okay so you have done well with these pizza restaurants you are getting some really great momentum with this family event center you have I’m gonna use the word you become kind of a cornerstone of the community there it seems to me logical that you would kind of keep building out in this particular arena of food and hospitality but you’ve got an AI company yeah how did that come about

Cas Maxwell: yeah a million dollar question what’s the pizza guy doing in technology right uh that came about so when chat gpt dropped in uh november of 2022 you know I think everybody can agree it changed the world that day you know and so we recognize that when I say we I mean me and uh Trace who’s my business partner in this and we started to just talk about it and our late and great friend Tom Johnson who unfortunately passed away a couple months ago um he’s the one who kind of linked us together and was like hey guys you know uh this is something you look at you know there could be a business created around this um and so Trace is also an entrepreneur and and so I think we just kind of my strengths are and said let’s do this you know let’s create this program uh there was there’s a government program out there that um allows you to train people and they kind of reimburse for it so we started looking into that submitted our curriculum um and got approved and that so that was kind of the initial step what does the company do so we do several different things um one of the things is uh AI training so we basically will go into a um a company let’s say you’re a I don’t know let’s just say you’re a law firm right and you want to get your team trained up on how to integrate AI tools into their workflow so you would call us in we’d work with your team for about 10 hours and we’ll take them through the absolute basics like let’s say you’ve never even heard of AI you know we’re going to take you through demystifying it opening your laptop you know what are these tools where they even located number one and then we go all the way through um actually getting you interacted with those tools creating custom products through you know something as simple as chat GPT you know custom GPTs or all the way up into an actual developed AI product depending on how far you want to take it um and like I said that usually lasts 10 hours then we we end the class for the two hour capstone to where they’re actually creating a work solution and they work on it for two weeks and then bring it back to us and go hey guys look what I created and we help them critique and and analyze um how they can best get efficiency out of out of AI so that’s that’s one arm um the other arm is um uh software development so we’ve developed two products so far um one is a game based learning system it’s about a once again it’s about a 10 hour long game that teaches high schoolers how to use AI through gameplay so they actually start and um they save the world pretty much through gameplay so they start in ancient Egypt and they work their way all the way to the future where they launch a rocket and through all of these periods in time they use AI to solve real problems that happen back then so one is like they’re in uh california and they’re helping uh Atari launch the first game and they have to actually program the game for Atari uh to create a real game and then in the future they’re launching a rocket and they have to use material science AI you know platform uh and to analyze materials to figure out you know what’s going to be best in that rocket to get it launched in uh two mars pretty much so it’s a lot of fun you know another product’s flash AI and it’s a uh investigators assistant so if you’re a detective and um you know you’re spending hours upon hours analyzing body cam footage and interrogation footage jail phone calls this is a all-in-one platform that digests all that information um you can then ask the uh the data questions so you know what was the psychoanalysis of the person you know what are they uh give me the timeline of of events you know did they contradict themselves at all from the body cam to the to the interrogation it’ll actually give you a synopsis time stamp it create reports for you i mean it’s a it’s an amazing software that uh takes police police work from basically hours to minutes and yeah and we’re like i said we’re a career college now so we’re we’re jumping into some k12 post-secondary education and some uh also working with higher ed so

Anthony Codispoti: okay lots to unpack here uh so i’m kind of understanding maybe three buckets there’s sort of the education component which is now um a credentialed college yes okay and then um the software development you kind of you have two products at the moment uh and so let’s let’s talk more about the education piece first and then we’ll get into the products so what does it mean to be and tell me if i’m using the wrong lingo to be a credentialed college

Cas Maxwell: so basically what that means is we can offer post-secondary credentials in the state of Ohio so um we can develop curricula um be able to put people through and offer them certificates uh we’re working on getting uh ccp certified as well to where we can uh college credit plus to where we can work with high school students get them um you know college accredited classes that will then transfer to their university of choice whether that’s osu or you know kent state i’m saying that because i’m a kent state grad uh but you know we’re working on on that right now uh we’re at the complete infancy of that you know we just got approved as a career college about two months ago so we’re very much at the infancy but it seems like a a good road to be on

Anthony Codispoti: was that a difficult process to go through

Cas Maxwell: yeah i mean you know we had to go through director training had to get approved uh and pass all those tests uh to to run a college and learn all of the nuances and laws around you know how you advertise yourself how you enroll students how you know administrations are treated like all this stuff and then we had to go through a curriculum process where we submitted our current curriculum uh and then several board reviews um and then you know eventually uh interviews and and uh approval so it was probably a six-month process i would say um so

Anthony Codispoti: you guys were and still are i presume providing ai education to individuals and in corporate environments people are like hey i’m hearing about ai all over the place i don’t have any idea what it is i need to wrap my head around it and so you guys have been providing that training what was kind of the inspiration for uh still staying in the education space but kind of branching off into wanting to be a credentialed college what was the opportunity that you spotted there

Cas Maxwell: um so we saw we you know like i said we work a lot in the k-12 space uh that’s a huge part of our uh company right now and so i think we just saw an opportunity to um be the first ai college in the nation and as far as we know and entails one of our partners and we we talk with them every week and as far as they know too we’re the only one uh there’s some

Anthony Codispoti: colleges off the lead that’s right yeah and that’s the ai college in the country

Cas Maxwell: okay that’s great and we’re we’re staking our claim on that as well and so uh you know there’s colleges having some ai classes but our college is solely focused on ai i mean we do no other curriculum but ai so we call it the al academy um and we’re setting up our first one right now at hawking college we’re enrolling 10 students um through this uh ai you know academy and yeah i mean we’ll we’ll see how it goes it’s gonna be we think it’s gonna be great i mean we have some great projects laid out and uh it’s it’s fun

Anthony Codispoti: so is the idea that somebody would actually get some kind of a diploma from uh al ai or is it that they would get sort of a a base of courses that would give them a certificate of completion um or more that you know hey you’ve got some credits here and now you can transfer those to kent state or wherever

Cas Maxwell: right um yeah so the the ladder is kind of where we are now so these students are going to come out with um basically a a certificate number one and that certificate’s going to be um or i should say a certification rather and it’s going to be in basically ai literacy, ai coding, um no code programming you know all that stuff um and then you know they’re going to also get credits to be able to transfer to you know whether it’s hawking college um you know OSU one day you know like you said kent state whatever so like i said we’re very much in the embassy we’re working through that process of okay how do we become um how do we align with the with the standards of other colleges because that’s really what it is the college reviews those and go you know does that match our curriculum if it does we’ll transfer these credits um and that’s usually a conversation you have to have with the college to make sure that your standards are aligning with their standards um and so we’re going through that process right now so hopefully one day you know um all of our classes will be accredited and you can transfer them anywhere in Ohio and um yeah just you know build on that foundation.

Anthony Codispoti: Does that mean having individual conversations with each of the universities and colleges in the state?

Cas Maxwell: Yeah that’s what kind of what we’re understanding is making sure because the worst thing that happened is a student goes through and then you know OSU looks at it and goes no this isn’t we’re not going to accept these you know that’s not very good for us so yeah we’re going to have a lot of internal conversations with at least the big guys um because from what we’ve heard is if the big guys accept it then probably everybody else will too so i think they’re kind of potentially paving that way i don’t want to speak to the colleges i’m not sure but yeah.

Anthony Codispoti: Does it have to align with a course that they’re already offering like uh years ago i spent a year in college studying abroad and there was this whole like back and forth process of like okay i’m taking these management courses does this course description sound very similar or the same to another course at Ohio State so that my credits could transfer back is it the same kind of thing here?

Cas Maxwell: Yes that’s what i’m learning um i don’t want to say definitively but that from what i’ve learned so far yes i think that’s how that works is you basically need to they need to find a class that it aligns with and and that would be in kind of replacement of that class you see what i’m saying but the problem right now is it’s a very much chicken to the egg because it’s AI so new that not a lot the

Anthony Codispoti: colleges don’t have to throw out yet. Great um so it’s kind of a blessing in a curse it’s a blessing because we’re really paving the way but it’s a curse because

Cas Maxwell: when you talk to people about AI they’re like but we don’t even have that you know we don’t have policy for that yet.

Anthony Codispoti: Is there a path or a need um for you guys to license your curriculum to other colleges and universities they say like yeah we think this is a thing but we don’t know where to get started. started with it?

Cas Maxwell: I think so. I mean, that’s a rock we’ve definitely flipped, and we’re trying to move into as well as curriculum development and licensing. That’s originally where we started the company, was with that thought. And so it’s definitely something that we want to continue to have conversations with. But nothing’s been locked down and concrete yet with that.

Anthony Codispoti: So then on the software development side, are you guys developing software for other folks? Or are you developing your own ideas for commercialization?

Cas Maxwell: It’s our own ideas, yeah. Yeah, so these have all been kind of spawned internally.

Anthony Codispoti: So the first one that you mentioned is a gameplay situation that teaches high schoolers how to use AI by kind of weaving through some historical events. How is this being used today?

Cas Maxwell: So right now, it’s went through about 100 students so far. And we’re basically using one of the, it’s called IMAP. It’s an individual microcredential program. It’s through the state. And so these students go through the class, and then after they finish, they get a microcredential from us through the state of Ohio that basically says they’re AI ready. And that certification is backed by Intel as well.

It comes with the Intel Industry certificate. And so that’s kind of how we’re utilizing it now. I think in the future, we’d like to weave that into maybe like summer camps or potentially getting it into a school as a part of a curriculum. Is the future for Jumper, I guess. And fun fact, too, Jumper was developed by high schoolers. So we brought in several high schoolers through a high school tech internship program last year. And we gave them this idea. And they, like this was solely developed by high schoolers, which is absolutely crazy that a 10 hour game was developed by 17, 18, 19 year olds, which is really cool. So they’re an impressive group, that’s for sure.

Anthony Codispoti: I’ve got two boys who are eight and 10. Any plans to come out with something that would be a little bit more age appropriate for that bracket?

Cas Maxwell: I’d probably not in the near future. We’re really focusing on 9 through 12 right now. But what’s funny about AI and education in general is that I’m sure you’re already seeing with your kids. With AI, they’re learning at such an advanced rate. And they’re going to be tackling 12th grade issues in sixth grade very soon. AI gives the power to someone like our high school tech interns to do something that would usually take a 10 year, 10 year game developer to do. Now they just did it with no gaming experience using AI and using that thought partner and all of that. So after this, I can give your kids access this game. But I would challenge them to just try to walk through.

Maybe how would you say they were? Eight and 10. So maybe the 10 year old in the next year or two, I think they would be able to understand most of the concepts in the game. I think you’ll see that that educational level is going to be pushed back and back and back. And you’re going to have eighth graders working with hardcore material science and development stuff here in the next couple of years. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti: Fascinating. I think you’re probably right. The eight year old isn’t quite there. This was about a year or so ago. I introduced him to chat GPT for the first time.

And I had the paid version where you could have a conversation, dialogue with it on my iPhone. And he was just enthralled with it. But he couldn’t wrap his head around that it wasn’t a real person that he was talking to. He kept asking questions like, who are your friends? And are you married?

And do you have any kids? And it’s giving very appropriate answers back that says, I’m not a real person. But it keeps bouncing off of him. So yeah, I think he’s a little bit early in understanding what it is and how it works.

Cas Maxwell: But isn’t that fascinating, though, what you just said about the questions that he’s asking? That’s a big topic right now in AI is the ethical side of things and how a child doesn’t know that it’s not a real person. And so we have to be very watchful as this stuff’s developed in the future that it’s very clear that this is not a real person, that this is not someone that you take everything with a grain of salt kind of. So it’s just kind of fascinating you said that, because that is a huge issue right now and understanding the future of AI, especially with youth and everything surrounding that.

Anthony Codispoti: OK, now I want to get into what is it called, Flash AI? Yeah. Is this the body cam footage product? It is, yeah. This sounds beyond wild. Let me see if I understand it. So law enforcement officers, a lot of them, they wear body cam, body cameras, and recording all kinds of data throughout the day. And I have no idea. I’m just guessing, because I’m not involved in law enforcement. I don’t know what goes on behind the scenes. But I have to assume that a lot of this data, a lot of this footage probably doesn’t get used, doesn’t get leveraged in any way, is not useful. Maybe it gets stored on a server for a little while.

And it would just be too time consuming to go back and to be able to leverage it in some kind of useful way. What I think I understand that you guys are doing is you’re feeding all of that footage, video and the audio, into an AI tool that analyzes that and can be, I don’t know, like another law enforcement advisor. You can ask questions to it and say, hey, what happened in this particular incident? Are there training opportunities available to where the officer maybe could have done something a little bit differently?

You’re recording interrogations. Did that person give the same consistent answer throughout? Like trying to analyze, are there inconsistencies that might suggest that this is untrue? I don’t know, I’m just kind of rambling here, but it seems to me like the possibilities are huge.

Cas Maxwell: Definitely, and that’s what we think too. It spawned, Trace, my business partner, was training a set of law enforcement and they were talking about, hey, we’ve got these interrogations. We have all these files and it just takes forever to go through and we have to rewatch, rewatch. So that’s really where it spawned from. And then we brought it internally. And then Neil, who’s on our team, really took it and ran and developed this thing.

But Trace also mentioned, we were in a meeting yesterday about this and he mentioned something that was really cool. He said he thinks this is the DNA of 2025, right? So when DNA first came out years ago, it broke so many cases.

And it just flipped the law enforcement world upside down. And so we’re thinking this AI product is the same way DNA was back then. You can not only feed current cases in there, but imagine Anthony over as we look across 10 years from now, let’s say this gets implemented today.

Well, think about you have this closed loop server. It’s just the information here that it’s looking at. It’s not worrying about the internet.

It has no clue there’s even an outside world. It’s just focusing on the data you’re giving it. And so over 10 years, you’re going to have so many interrogations, so many body cam footage, so much stuff.

And then let’s say I bring you in for an interrogation one day and you start talking and I feed this into our main server. But then it clicks and 10 years ago, someone mentioned Anthony’s name. Then it connects the dot from 10 years ago. Wait, wait, wait.

This guy was mentioned here 10 years ago. And so you’ve got this, it can scan this massive amount of footage and connect dots that we would not be able to connect. That’s the long-term vision. But yeah, I mean, in the near future here, I shouldn’t say the near future. I mean, today it’s ready to go. But yeah, you can upload body cam footage, interrogation, phone logs, and it’s going to basically read all that stuff for you and connect the red rope and spit out and say, this guy says this here, but he wasn’t there at 11 o’clock because on the body cam footage, he was here or whatever. So it’s very deep, it’s very analytical, very accurate, and it’s safe. We’re all CGI compliant and we’ve, on Amazon, GovCloud and you name it.

Anthony Codispoti: So it’s a cool product. So we sort of spitballed a little bit on where this could go, but you’re telling me that there is a version of this product that is ready to go right now, today, January 10th, 2025. Correct.

Cas Maxwell: Yep. And we’ve got kind of a beta going on as well. So I have a dear friend at the Cleveland Police Department. He’s in a gang unit up there and they’ve got a beta account and here in the next 30 days, they’re going to start launching it and putting some cases in. And so he’s excited to see this and he thinks it’s going to be a big time help because, you know, he said with these gang cases, he’s like, I can have eight, 10, 20 hours of interrogation footage.

And he says, you know, when they’re sitting in jail, he said there’s nothing really to do. So people talk on the phone all the time. So he’s like, as long as you’ve got quarters. So he’s like, there’ll be another six or eight hours a day, a day of phone logs. And he’s like, so imagine being a detective because he said on these phone logs, these people are talking and they’re talking to their mom, they’re talking to their friend, their girlfriend, and they just get so comfortable, they’ll slip up and say, oh, you know, and then they didn’t realize they’re saying that. But for a detective to have to go through eight hours of footage every day, yeah, I mean, it could be a hundred hours of phone logs.

Nobody has time for that. So this will all do that for them and help them connect the dots. Then once again, it timestamps it. So it’s not the AI making that final decision. You know, the detective clicks on that timestamp actually listens to it.

Anthony Codispoti: It’s highlighting the data to bring to somebody’s attention. It’s not like it’s Judge Jury and Executioner. Correct. It’s just, hey, zero in somebody focus on this thing right here. This seems like it’s highly relevant. And then a human being gets involved and, you know, can start their work.

It just makes everything so much more efficient for them. You said like, police officer, they’re going through all these like in-person interrogations and they don’t have time to listen to the phone logs. Right. And to be clear, these are phone logs in prison. So they’re recorded. The prisoners know they’re recorded. Sometimes they forget, but this is a common thing. This isn’t like an unknown privacy concern.

Cas Maxwell: No, yeah. And as far as I know, too, you know, they know that it’s over a recorded line. I mean, when you’re put in there that this is all this is being recorded. And then also, you know, if they get a subpoena to seize like cell phones, you know, it can also analyze texts as well.

So you can upload your, the phone’s text messages and it can scan through that. And, you know, so, so you can just imagine how many days, weeks, months it takes to go through all this information for a detective and not to mention police forces are a short staff that they’ve ever been. And so, yeah, it’s we’re really hoping it’s going to make things more efficient and help those guys get home quicker to their families eventually.

Anthony Codispoti: So is the, is the intent for this first beta test that they will upload sort of a combination of body cam footage and these phone logs for specific gang related cases and let’s kind of see what surfaces is that the idea.

Cas Maxwell: Yeah, I mean, the idea is to, is to, yeah, get it in the field like a real life scenario, not previous cases like real time cases and have them upload this stuff and make sure that it’s a critical thought partner for them and assistant and that it gets their job done faster and better.

So that’s, that’s the goal of this beta is, you know, we know the product works, we’re very confident in it, but we’re not detectives. And so do that and then it also has a prosecuting attorney side to, you know, once the police officers get all their stuff, they hand it to the prosecuting attorney. Well, they then got to do the same thing and make sure everything’s accurate, make sure that they can, you know, sway a jury or sway a judge. And so there’s a prosecuting attorney aspect to where they can then go to them, they can type in questions and verify all of the stuff that detective hands over.

Anthony Codispoti: It’s fascinating. Yeah, it seems to me that there would be a tremendous amount of computing power required here. I mean, video takes up lots of space, audio less, but still, and then to have to run through it and analyze it. Am I correct? Like is the, I mean, you mentioned that you’re on Amazon’s government product. The computing power, the infrastructure has to be enormous. Or am I, am I overshooting it?

Cas Maxwell: No, I mean, internally it’s not enormous. But yes, I mean, on the, on the hosting side, which thankfully we don’t have to worry about. But yeah, I mean, on the Amazon, gov cloud side, I mean, yes, they have is a mega system of not only servers, but just checks and balances, you know, making sure that everything’s safe and secure. You know, I believe the FBI uses gov cloud as well. So you can imagine how big that infrastructure is from backlogging data to firewalls to, you know, server farms to underground bunkers. I’m sure there’s servers, you know, like all this data has to be checked, double check, triple checked. So I can only imagine how big that network is.

Anthony Codispoti: Assuming that, of course, you’re going to learn things in this beta, right? There are going to be things that you didn’t think about blind spots that’s normal process of developing any new product, whether it’s software or not. So you take that feedback, you’ll refine the product. And then are there already kind of like next steps that you have in mind for after this beta kind of concludes?

Cas Maxwell: Yeah, I mean, we, during the beta, we’re hoping so we’ve been working with the police departments to design this thing from the beginning anyways. And so hopefully, obviously not all, but hopefully 80% of the major kinks are worked out and then we can work out these other 20. But yeah, I think the next step is, you know, really hitting the pavement and getting this thing to a national level and getting it into every piece of local law enforcement to campus law enforcement to you had mentioned training as well. That’s a huge opportunity with this is it can rewatch the body cam footage, listen what the officer said and give the chief some feedback on, you know, well, you know, Cas was saying this, you know, he probably should have said this or casted this.

That’s really good, you know, you praise him on that. So it will do all that as well. So yeah, we’re definitely seeing just taking it to the hopefully the national and state state stage at least. But eventually hopefully the national stage here in the coming year.

Anthony Codispoti: I’m probably getting the cartway in front of the horse here. But assuming that you kind of go on this trajectory that you envision. I wonder if at some point the US government comes in and says, hey, Cas, this is great. You cannot market this or license this overseas. You see foresee something like that happening. I mean, I mean, what you’re talking about is kind of mind blowing.

Cas Maxwell: I mean, yeah, I could see many things happening with this product. I don’t know. Yeah, I don’t know. I think that’s a that’s a great question. I’m assuming they can do that. Right. I don’t know. Is that legal, you know, to do to stop a visit? I don’t know.

Anthony Codispoti: But I would say that if you get to that point that you have been doing something really well and that you’ve got a lot of great forward momentum here in the states.

Cas Maxwell: I have bigger problems probably than that. But I mean, I mean, the goal hopefully we grow it and, you know, someone looks at accusation one day. I mean, I think that’s that’s any that’s a very that’s a big goal of ours, hopefully so.

Anthony Codispoti: What growth plans do you have for the hospitality restaurant space that you’re in? Yeah.

Cas Maxwell: So we have we’re going through a path of basically restructuring and figuring out, you know, who do we want to be when we grow up again? You know, we kind of did that once and now we’re doing it again. So I think what we’re looking at now is we’re going to be very picky about our next spot. We want to make sure that the location location to us is everything and not location as far as foot traffic, but actually is it open?

Overlooking a water source. Can we put a rooftop patio like a very unique specific location and building it takes? But I think we just want to do slow steady growth to, you know, potentially 10 stores. I think we’re looking at for this next in total over the course of, you know, probably the next five to 10 years. We’re actually all coming together here soon to everybody’s kind of making their own predictions on what they want out of the company. And then we’re going to come together here within the next 30 days to bring everybody’s yeah, right, right. And give and take and make sure everybody’s on the same playing field.

Anthony Codispoti: You know, as you were describing some of the things that you believe has have made your concept so successful. It made me wonder like clearly there have to be other kind of small rural communities like Mcconnowsville in other parts of Ohio or, you know, West Virginia, Kentucky is not too far away where there could be sort of the same dynamic at play where, you know, if people want a little bit of a different experience, they’re having to, you know, drive an hour or two out of town. But you could introduce something that keeps people there. And you because of, you know, the way that you guys approach business and you get so involved in the communities that, you know, you very quickly become this, you know, trusted partner there that people just gravitate to is do you think about it in the same way, or do you want to keep it a little bit closer to home, like in terms of geography?

Cas Maxwell: Yes, I think we want to keep it closer to home. And that’s just better to with just marketing, you know, just organically growing close to each other, you know, kind of having that name recognition. You know, Marietta is a very close community to us.

It’s only 45 minutes away from Mcconnowsville. And people know us down there because we have some people that travel back and forth and you hear all the time, hey, you guys are going to bring one of these down here. So keeping it close and keeping it just far enough to where it’s not really affecting your current business, but close enough to where people can recognize the name as you come in. You know, that helps just the reputation of the marketing spend tremendously. So I think, yeah, we want to stay close.

Anthony Codispoti: Sorry, I’m just bringing up maps on my computer here because I know the area a little bit. I live in Columbus, which isn’t too far away. And I’m just kind of curious to understand the geography to see what else is nearby. Obviously, you guys know that this area will way better than I do. And you’ve already spotted out where those other growth opportunities could be. Is Athens like another community that would make sense?

Cas Maxwell: Yeah, definitely. And Athens is, you know, we’re very close to Hawking Hills as well. So, you know, that whole Athens, Nelsonville area, you know, we’ve talked about, we’ve talked about another location in Zanesville as well. There’s several little communities down there that we’re all like, you know, it’s all Appalachian communities. Like, you know, there’s all that, I don’t know, it just seems like Appalachian people stick together. You know, we’re all kind of the same in some way. I found that getting to Columbus as well and networking, it’s kind of, it’s cool. It’s a cool community.

Anthony Codispoti: Because McConnisfil, it’s a pretty small town. It is, yeah. I think it’s really big enough where you guys have done really well with it. And as I’m, if Google Maps is accurate in terms of like the size of the font, you know, indicating the size of the town, yeah, lots of opportunities around there.

Cas Maxwell: Yeah, it is very small. The town itself is 1600 and our whole county only has 15,000 people. But we’re a big tourist county. We have huge amounts of outdoor recreation, hunting, fishing. We’ve got Jesse Owens State Park in the county. So it’s a, we get a lot of that traffic throughout the summer. Just to draw people in.

Anthony Codispoti: Cass, I want to shift gears on you now and ask about a serious challenge that you’ve overcome, whether it was something personal, professional, maybe something that intertwined the two. Yeah. What that was like getting through it and some lessons that you learned.

Cas Maxwell: So the, I think the biggest, the biggest challenge I ever had in business would have been, I tried to open a restaurant actually up here in Columbus, a matter of fact.

It opened and it did not succeed. And so that was a huge, as you can imagine, blow to everything. And it was what really sucked is I, you know, I borrowed money from my mom’s 401k, I borrowed money from my grandmothers, brought some money off my brother-in-law. My grandpa actually took a home mortgage to help as well. So that was a, you know, they all invested in me, but it didn’t succeed.

And so I’m not the type of guy that’s going to go, okay, sorry about your luck. You know, it’s, it’s, I got to repay that. So to this day, you know, as of here just recently, pretty much everybody’s paid off, paid back, which is great. But that was a, that was a hard time. You know, I was like 20, what I’ve been 27. And you just think it’s the end of the world. Like seriously, you know, is just spiraling depression. You’re just like, you know, you feel like a failure.

You don’t want to tell anybody because, you know, you just feel like you’re going to be judged. And maybe some people did, but it’s, you know, it’s, it’s hard to understand if you’ve never ran a business or in, but what it taught me was number one. As cliche as it sounds, it’s just money.

You know what I mean? There’s always a way out. Like don’t ever let yourself get into depression because of a financial hiccup.

Like you can always dig your way out of a hole. Don’t let that define you, you know, that that happened. And I think also that you don’t really realize how much you learn on those failures. Like it was, I say it’s the best worst thing that ever happened to us because the amount of stuff we learned from that is, I mean, from negotiating out of a lease to how to get certain loans, you know, when you’re low on cash like that.

How to refinance. I mean, it taught me so much and just a location, you know, we, the problem was we went into a bad location. I still stake, you know, the claim on that it was just a, it was a, we were led into that location by some people that were probably saw some young 20 year olds and was like, all right, you know, we can get them the sign and they did paid way too much for a lease, you know, didn’t understand, you know, triple net. You know what I mean? Like I learned so much. And so now, you know, it’s definitely helped develop myself and Paul and Steven to the business owners we are today.

We know what a good deal versus a bad deal looks like. And you can’t, you can’t learn that stuff in school. I’m telling you, that’s the best learning experience a guy can have is failure.

Anthony Codispoti: And I want to give some context to this because, you know, you talked about spiraling depression, you talked about, you know, you can’t understand what it’s like unless you’ve been through.

And that’s right. Like for folks who haven’t been in a position where they’ve started a business that hasn’t worked out, you know, because I’ve been in this situation before I’ve had some successes. I’ve had some failure failures too. And it is not an over exaggeration to say that it feels like a death.

Yeah. It feels like the death of a person. But in I’ll speak for myself, it seems to linger even longer. Because it feels like it is a complete reflection of who you are and your worth and your value as a person. And it’s really hard to shake that feeling. Do you feel the same way? Absolutely.

Cas Maxwell: I mean, it’s if you if this podcast would have happened four years ago, let’s say. Even three years ago, I probably wouldn’t even have brought it up. You know, it was it was such a sort and it still is kind of a source subject.

Even when I’m in that area of Columbus, you know, it makes you a little bit. Yeah. And it is a defining moment. You know, it really is. It truly is a defining moment in a entrepreneur’s life when you have a failure.

I mean, it, it, you know, it takes you like a minute, wax you like a baseball bat, you know, and but. You know, I think what Teddy Roosevelt had that man in the arena quote, you know what I mean? Like it’s all about it’s the people who stepped up and actually got into the arena, whether they win or lose versus just standing on the outside of the arena pointing fingers. And so I wear it as a honorable badge now that got through it, you know, learn some stuff. But yeah, it it lingers. That’s that’s a fact.

Anthony Codispoti: Yeah, I love what you’re talking about with Teddy Roosevelt because I made a decision a long time ago that life is not meant to be a spectator sport. Yep. And so take the good, take the bad, take the ups, takes the downs, but I want to be in the game coach put me in. And it’s like you’re wired the same kind of way. Definitely.

Yeah. And if you hadn’t taken that experience, if you hadn’t had that significant setback, those losses, right, there’s like you said there were so many things that you learned from it. There were probably other mistakes that you would have made in some of your businesses if you had not gone through that previously.

Yeah. And so when you were going through those struggles, realizing that you’re going to have to close this down and then closing it down and having to live through the aftermath, what were some of the things that got you through those difficult times? What were your what was your support network, your coping mechanisms like? Yeah.

Cas Maxwell: Well, I mean, definitely my parents, I mean, they were they’re a huge, they’re just a huge supporter of everything, you know. And so I mean, talking with them just in everybody, I think the biggest thing was the fact that I borrowed money off people and I failed with their money. That if it had been my money, it’d probably be a little different. But the fact that I use somebody else’s money, that’s what really, is it really hit me hard? And so I think talking to all those people and just assuring them, hey, you know, it may not be tomorrow, but in the next five, 10 years, I will get you paid back. Like that’s my, you know, I am going to get you paid back.

And I think just for them to say, hey, you know, yeah, it sucks, but it’s okay. You know what I mean? It happens. We gave you this with understanding that this could potentially happen. And that we were just, you know, happy to see you try and obviously, you know, happy to hear we’re going to get our money back to, you know.

So I think that support network helped. And my dad as well. I love my dad to death, but he’s not, you know, he’s your typical daddy. We don’t really have a lot of heart to heart things. As he gets older, we’re having more, but, you know, he, we had some heart to hearts and he always said, he said, they can’t eat your son, which I don’t even know what that means, but he always just said they can’t eat you. And basically like they can’t take who you are.

Like they can, the bank can foreclose, they can take everything from you, your other businesses, you know, you can whatever, but they can’t, you know, you’re still you and you can always get out of it and you can always, you know, make yourself another day. You know what I mean?

Anthony Codispoti: So, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that’s great. They can’t eat you. Yeah, I get what he means. Yeah. Just exactly the way that you explained it there. Um, before I ask my last question, I want to make sure that we give voice to your YouTube channel. Tell us about that.

Cas Maxwell: Oh yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Um, yeah, I got a

Anthony Codispoti: little rest of the story, which for an old guy like me reminds me of Paul Harvey, old NPR guy. Does that ring? Do you know that connection? No.

Cas Maxwell: Did he have a show that was named that?

Anthony Codispoti: On NPR. I don’t remember if that was the name of the show, but at the end of it, he would always say, and now you know, the rest of the story. That’s a, there you go. You’ll have to look at that. But tell me, tell me what your YouTube channel is about.

Cas Maxwell: Um, you know, it’s a, it’s just a passion project. But I have always loved traveling. I’ve always loved culture. You know, I’ve always, I grew up, like I said, in rural Appalachia. Never made it to the city.

Never, you know, never got out of the county growing up really, except for like Myrtle Beach vacations. Um, so I always had like a huge curiosity of the world, like what’s out there, you know? And so when I finally got older and got to the age where I could afford to travel, you know, I finally made it to Europe, I think, not until I was 30, but, uh, it just sparked this, you know, fever of I want to check out all these people.

I always loved watching Anthony Bourdain, uh, from every iteration of shows that he had. And I was like, I want to be that guy, you know, I want to understand people on a different level, uh, from all around the world, because at the end of the day, we’re all the same in some way, shape, or form. And so that’s what I kind of set out to do with this was I took a camera.

Um, it’s, it’s in my opinion, well produced for a kid that doesn’t know anything about editing. I take it very seriously and I bought nice cameras and mics and, uh, yeah, I interview people, I travel and, um, try to bring. That’s the unique parts of the world to your desktop, you know, places that people wouldn’t usually travel. Um, yeah, I’m not going to Paris, France and interviewing someone from the Eiffel Tower. Like that’s not what this is about. It’s about off the beaten path. Yeah. Nitty gritty, uh, putting myself in situations that people are watching. I’ll never do that. You know what I mean? Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti: So yeah, you’re truly channeling your, uh, inner Anthony Bourdain. It sounds like. Yeah.

Cas Maxwell: That’s my, that’s my game plan. Sell all the businesses one day and then just, you know, travel and make travel vlogs.

Anthony Codispoti: All right, Cass. I’ve got one more question for you. But before I ask it, I want to do two things. First of all, for everybody listening today, I know that you love today’s content. Cass has been awesome. So please hit the like, share, subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. Cass, I also want to let people know the best way to get in touch with you. If they’re just want to meet you as a person, are they’re curious about some of the different business ventures you’ve got going on? What would that be?

Cas Maxwell: Um, yeah. I mean, the best way you can obviously find me on LinkedIn. I’m on there. Just Cass Maxwell. C A S. Um, you can email me. I’ve got, uh, two different emails either Cass at Maxwell’s pizza. That’s maxwellswiththeNess.com or Cass at AI. You know, AI, O, W, L dot, uh, dot org.

So, uh, either one of those, you can, I mean, I want to Instagram too, YouTube, whatever, you can, uh, hit me up and I’ll, I’ll definitely respond back. So great.

Anthony Codispoti: So last question for you, Cass. You know, I generally ask this question of people who are sort of focused on a particular industry and asking, you know, what you see are kind of the big changes coming in the next couple of years with you kind of having, you know, your hands in a few different things, maybe just pick one of them and tell me what you think kind of the changes that are coming to that space are going to look like in the next couple of years.

Cas Maxwell: Um, that’s a great question. Uh, both of the industries that men are definitely going to be changing. I’m probably going to pick the AI side just because of its disruption right now. Um, the changing thing that I think is going to happen is, you know, AI is not going to take your job, but somebody who knows how to use AI is, um, AI is not going to replace humans in the next several years. Um, but that is going to streamline and it’s going to take a set of knowledge. Like people are really going to have to push themselves to keep up in the people that don’t do that are really going to suffer from it, which is, uh, um, unfortunate. But at the end of the day too, it’s easy. You know, you can take classes.

You can literally just go on YouTube and learn as well. So, um, that’s going to be the disruptor. And from hearing what open AI and Google is saying that what we’ve seen so far is just a mere scratch of the surface of what or about the scene the next five years of, of how this, um, AI and AGI is going to start to revolutionize things. So it’s, you know, buckle up.

I think you don’t have any buckle up and, and try to stay on it. I mean, just do your best to learn and educate. Um, because if you can integrate this stuff, it’s, it’ll really change your, change your life for sure. Yep.

Anthony Codispoti: And remember folks, it’s not a spectator sport. That’s right. And I’m going to take your job according to Kaz, but somebody who knows how to use it will. So the time to get involved and educate yourself about it. For sure. Well, Cass, I want to be the first one to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.

Cas Maxwell: Thank you. I had a lot of, this is my first podcast. So I had a lot of fun. I appreciate you inviting me.

Anthony Codispoti: Absolutely. You did great. You should do more of them. Thank you. Folks. That’s a wrap on another episode of the inspired stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.