March 6, 2026
Clearing the Decks (pun intended)
Mkay, this is going to be a different message than usual.
It won’t have a specific business takeaway, so feel free to skip it if you prefer tactical stuff.
Anyhoo...
The past two weeks or so have been jam packed will a few unusual events at Casa Stark:
- 2026-02-22—I competed in my first serious black belt sparring tournament. I did better than I expected, but took a spinning back kick to the ribs hard enough that I had to go for an X-ray. Turns out there were no broken bones, but even two weeks later, feeling a sneeze coming on is terrifying.
- 2026-02-23—We got hit with a massive blizzard, which deposited a record-breaking 37+ inches of snow on Providence in a 24-hour period. It beat the previous biggest snowstorm of my life, The Blizzard of ’78. I love snow, so I thoroughly enjoyed ’78 and ’26. However, all that shovelling exacerbated my rib situation quite a bit, so the rest of the fam and a couple neighbors pitched in, which was amazing.
- 2026-02-26—Snowplows from Connecticut, Vermont, Pennsylvania, and Maine arrived in PVD, and the street our garage is on finally got plowed. Prior to this, we had barely left the house and certainly couldn’t get the cars out. Fortunately, we had a lot of food and firewood, so it was cozy.
- 2026-02-27—Thanks to encouragement/assistance from a couple of my coaching students, I got an OpenClaw server up and running. As I’ve written about previously, this was a mind-blowing experience.
The days since the OpenClaw thing have been a blur of late nights, snow shovelling, and popping pain meds.
Basically, I’ve devoted every free moment - and quite a bit of “I should really be sleeping right now” time - to exploring the possibilities of agentic AI.
Loads of people replied to my last message about this, asking what I’ve used it for, and I promise I’ll be writing more about it soon.
But right now, what’s important isn’t really about what I’ve used it for.
It’s more like this:
I’ve cracked open the door to a new dimension, and right now I’m just trying to get it open wide enough to see what’s out there.
But even though it’s only open a crack, I don’t see how this WON’T have a huge impact on pricing, productization, productivity, and a whole lot more, especailly for solo operators of expertise-based businesses.
Stay tuned for specifics soon... I’ma get some sleep... zzzz
Yours,
—J