Every Story I Told Was About the Same Thing

Every story I told on that podcast was about the same thing. I didn't realize it until after.

I sat down with Patrick Hays on Episode 24 of The Beverage Club Podcast. We cracked a tomato juice, mixed in some Topo Chico, and talked for 49 minutes. The episode is called "Why Most People Will Fall Behind in AI." That's Patrick's title. It's not wrong, but it's not what the conversation was actually about.

It was about catching transitions.

Guadalajara

I told a story about being on vacation in Guadalajara. Tech hub for Mexico. Outdoor malls with AC blowing in the open air. Walk a few blocks and it's a different world.

I asked a woman selling fruit on the street how business was going. Terrible, she said. Revenue down. Economy getting worse.

Got in an Uber. The kid driving was maybe 22. Told me the economy was amazing. Best money he'd ever made.

Same city. Same afternoon. Same economy. One person caught the shift. One didn't.

I told that story to make a point about AI. But it's really a story about what happens when infrastructure changes underneath you and you don't move.

300 pounds

Patrick asked how I went from 300 pounds to where I am now. The answer is a transition I almost didn't catch either.

I was playing video games at a high level. Competitive Halo. My parents eventually said it was time to do something different. I started hanging out with friends who skateboarded, lost 20 pounds just from being outside, and thought, huh.

Then a buddy named George, maybe 140 pounds, told me he could beat me up. I laughed. He took me to his jiu jitsu gym and choked me out in about ten seconds.

I couldn't let that happen again. So I trained. Jiu jitsu first, then seven years of boxing. 6am to 8am, work, then back to spar 6pm to 8pm. The weight came off, but that wasn't the point. The point was learning I could take the obsession I had with games -- the thing people told me to stop doing -- and redirect it.

That's a transition. The raw material was already there. I just pointed it somewhere else.

The friend who said post more

After a breakup, I was trying to figure out who I was without the relationship. A friend told me I should post more. Share what I know.

I said I don't want to post. But I bet I can automate it.

That sent me into coding. Coding turned into AI systems. AI systems turned into building something that ingests everything I've written and connects it across domains. Not a chatbot. A system that holds context, pushes back, gets sharper the more I use it.

I didn't plan any of that. The friend said one thing. I caught it sideways and it became the next three years of my life.

Patrick's transition

Patrick is in one of these right now. He just doesn't frame it that way.

He's got a day job in manufacturing. On the side he's building Everyday We Drink -- 26 episodes, growing audience, a format that's genuinely his. The drink ritual, the multilingual cheers, the business card bottle openers. He brought up wanting to make his own beverage. He talked about our conversation at a friend's birthday party years ago where I told him about unit economics and reorder rates.

He's sitting on the same kind of shift. The raw material is there. The question is whether he catches it before it's obvious or after.

At one point I described how I'd scan his business -- check if his Instagram and his website tell the same story, whether the intent matches across channels, whether the brand is coherent or fragmented. His face changed. He'd never had someone look at his thing that way.

That moment is what I do. Not the AI part. The part where someone sees their own system for the first time.

What I'd do differently

I covered too many topics. AI agents, data privacy, crypto, bunkers, the Venezuelan designer who fled the country, Black Swan farming, Mars colonization. Forty-nine minutes, probably fifteen subjects.

The conversations that hit hardest -- the fruit vendor, the 300 pounds, the jiu jitsu humbling, the breakup -- those deserved more room. I matched Patrick's energy on tangents instead of going deeper on the threads that mattered.

Next time I'm on a mic, I'm picking two or three and staying there.

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Watch the full conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXNfJfw5pxw

Follow Patrick and Everyday We Drink: https://www.instagram.com/everydaywedrink