I just got back from ASOTU CON. Six to seven hundred people in Hanover, Maryland, and every major outlet in the retail auto industry was there too. Three days of content, connection, and of course, a lot of talk about AI.

As I took a few days to digest what just happened, some themes began to emerge.

We have a couple of neot signs in our office that have been up for about seven years. One says "Connection Agency." One says "Make It Meaningful." I put those up when I was running my creative agency, Congruent (now called "More Than Cars Creative", long before ASOTU, long before More Than Cars, long before any of this.

I walked back in after the event and looked at those signs and thought: "those aged really well."

Because everything that was resonating at ASOTU CON, every post people made, every moment people are talking about, it was about the humans. Not the AI summit. Not the tech. The people.

Meanwhile, the metaverse didn't age well. Zoom-only workplaces didn't age well. The CDP craze from 24 months ago didn't age well. They didn't age well because they were built on technology as the point, not the human.

Now we have AI. Not that AI isn't real and powerful. It is. It does belong on a shelf in our took room,  just not the top shelf.

Connection and meaning have been and will always belong the top shelf. That's what gets people out of bed. That's what carries you through hard times. That's what makes someone say "I see what you're building, and I want to be a part of it."

Hundreds people showed up to our event not because of the tech we talked about. They showed up because of what we're building together.

Pay attention to the humans around you. It's highly likely they'll be around longer than the latest tech. 

Pursue Clarity, Paul.

Connect with me at www.pauljdaly.com

Check out the More Than Cars Movement here. 

It was a tough one. We lost one of our dogs this week. His name was Remington, a full-size Australian Shepherd, and he was the troublemaker of the pack in the best way. Dug holes next to the foundation, ripped screens, played defensive back against the German Shepherd whenever anyone threw a frisbee. He was a character.

About five months ago he started losing weight. Then more weight. By the end he was down to 30 pounds from 70. We did what we could, but eventually the vet told us it was time to think about helping him pass with dignity. So we had the vet come to the house, my neighbor dug a grave, and we all said goodbye together as a family.

My four kids are 19, 17, 14, and six felt it...hard. 

What I didn't expect was how much I'd learn watching them grieve. There's something that happens in hard moments that you just can't manufacture in the good ones. You find out how your kids care for each other. You find out who they are when things hurt. And if you slow down enough to be present, you teach them more in those moments than you could on any vacation or at any milestone.

I'm naturally task oriented. My default is to make a decision and execute. But I made myself slow down this time and just let things unfold. My wife has  years teaching me how to do that better over our almost 24 years of marriage. I grew up in a house where you moved through things, you didn't sit in them. That shaped who I am in ways I didn't always notice.

I think the people who spend their lives avoiding hard things or suppressing them end up carrying more damage than the ones who let themselves feel it. Grief isn't the problem. Avoiding grief is the problem.

We're still not through it. I recorded this the day after. My six year old came downstairs with a big frown and asked why Remmy had to die. I didn't have a perfect answer. But I do have hope. Hope that one day all the broken things get made right. That's what gets me through. That's what lets you move forward with love instead of just moving forward.

Grateful you're here. These things are happening in your life too. I hope you find hope like we did.

Pursue Clarity, Paul.

Connect with me at www.pauljdaly.com

Check out the More Than Cars Movement here. 

"I don't know how to do that" used to be a pretty reasonable thing to say. Twenty years ago I bought a book called Small Business for Dummies because that was genuinely one of the only options. I read it cover to cover and figured out what I could.

That phrase doesn't have the same shelf life anymore.

I was just in Lexington with my good friend Glenn Lundy, watching high school students go through an entrepreneurship class, and it got me thinking about how different the path is now. Specifically because of AI. The gap between "I don't know how" and actually knowing how is now measured in minutes, not months.

That's a gift. But it's also a filter.

The people who are winning right now are the ones who land on "I can find out" before they even finish the sentence. And the ones who stop at "I don't know" are on a fast track to being replaced by the ones who don't.

This episode is about that shift, what it means for people building businesses and careers right now, and why the real competitive advantage isn't the tools, it's the mentality you bring to them.

In this episode: the Small Business for Dummies origin story, what Sequoia Capital is saying about AI and the future of creative work, and why "I can find out" might be the most important phrase in your vocabulary right now.

Pursue Clarity, Paul.

Connect with me at www.pauljdaly.com

Check out the More Than Cars Movement here. 

I came across a LinkedIn post this week that stopped my scroll. Three clips of Steve Jobs talking about what it actually takes to start a company, from three different eras of his life. You could hear the difference in his voice across all of them.

What got me was how simple his answer was. Half of what separates successful entrepreneurs from the ones who quit is just perseverance. That's it.

And he's right. Because starting a company is a lot. The list he runs through goes from designing the product all the way down to buying a coffee maker. And even today, when you don't need much physical infrastructure to get going, it's still an enormous amount of work. You have to figure out what to build, how to sell it, how to service it, how to fix the things that will inevitably go wrong, and then build the systems to do it all again tomorrow.

I've been in business for over 20 years now. I've had plenty of moments where I genuinely did not know how we were going to pull out of it. That feeling never fully goes away. But I think that's actually the job. The entrepreneurial spirit isn't the absence of doubt. It's deciding to push through anyway.

We also get into why core belief matters so much, not just for motivation, but for survival. A business without a reason to exist beyond profit has a very hard time holding together when things get hard. And things always get hard.

I talk about the More Than Cars mission and why that idea, building something that enriches people and not just functions, connects directly to what Steve was building at Apple. Think Different wasn't a slogan. It was a belief system. And that belief was what made Apple magic for a long time.

Whatever you're building right now, the perseverance metric still applies.

Pursue Clarity, Paul

Connect with me at www.pauljdaly.com

Check out the More Than Cars Movement here. 

Three and a half hours of sleep, a cancelled flight near midnight, pouring rain the whole way home, and a 16-year-old in the passenger seat.

But somewhere in that trip I got the clearest reminder of what it actually means to think like an entrepreneur.

It's not about having all the answers. It's about NOT being willing to wait for someone else to decide for you.

We got on a train I wasn't sure was going to the right place. My daughter asked what we'd do if it was wrong. I told her we'd figure it out when we got there. 

Movement is life when you are an entrepreneur. Waiting for perfect information and guaranteed outcomes is a death sentence in business. 

Episode 266 is that story, lived out in real time, with my daughter watching the whole thing.

If you're an entrepreneur, an intrapreneur, or just someone trying to keep up while AI drops something new every hour, this one's for you.

Go make a decision.

Pursue Clarity, Paul

Connect with me at www.pauljdaly.com

Check out the More Than Cars Movement here. 

I almost didn't record this one. After six months of not being sick, I think I'm there. 

My voice is lower than usual and I've got that heavy-head thing going on. But it's week two of being back, and skipping week two wasn't something I was willing to do.

So I hit record.

Today I'm sharing the quotes and frameworks I actually lean on when I don't feel like doing anything. At risk of sounding like an overenthusiastic motivational speaker, I share some of the voices I come back to when things get hard or discouraging or heavy. Jocko Willink, Alex Hormozi, Seth Godin, Gary V, Steven Bartlett, and Will Guidara. I go through what they've each said, why it stuck with me, and how it all connects.

My son Miles also informed me that dad intros are out of style. So there's that.

Pursue Clarity, Paul

Connect with me at www.pauljdaly.com

Check out the More Than Cars Movement here. 

How many years does it take to record one podcast?

Apparently three.

Episode 264 is here, and I'll be honest, I wasn't sure this day was going to come. I've been talking about getting back behind the mic for the better part of a year. My team can confirm that. But today I just hit record, and here we are.

I started Clarity Compressed in February 2018 as a content series built around a book that genuinely changed how I thought about business. What started as something I made for my 150-dealer client base turned into 263 weekly episodes, guests I had no business landing, and a show I recorded week after week without ever committing to more than the next one.

Then I recorded episode 263, signed off, and didn't come back for three years.

A lot happened in those three years. ASOTU became the More Than Cars movement. My creative agency congruent got merged into More Than Cars Creative. My son went from 16 to 19 and is now taller than me. More gray in the beard. More wins, more lessons, same energy.

The thing I said at the end of episode 263 has stuck with me the whole time: you win or you learn. Jalen Hurts said it after the Eagles lost the Super Bowl. Then he went out and won one. I think about that a lot.

The world is also a fundamentally different place than it was in 2022. AI is reshaping what it means to build, to communicate, to have a career. And the more that changes, the more convinced I am that the human stuff, real conversations, real thinking, real connection, is about to become the most valuable thing any of us have.

That's what this show is about. I'm not here as an expert. I'm here as a student who's been in the arena long enough to have some things worth saying.

Clarity Compressed is back. I'm glad you're here.

In this episode:

• The origin story: a reconditioning company, a book, and 150 dealers
• What happened in the three years between episode 263 and today
• The merging of congruent into More Than Cars Creative
• Why "you win or you learn" has only gotten more true
• How AI is changing what it means to build, communicate, and connect
• Why human conversation is about to become more valuable
• What's coming for the show: guests, structured thinking, writing, and more

Quote from this episode: "If you become a student long enough, you might start to sound like an expert, and that's because you've tried things, you've lost, and you've learned."

Follow me on:

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/pauljdaly

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/paulthedaly

I also host the daily, Automotive State of the Union Podcast (ASOTU)

My auto industry media company and creative shop is More Than Cars

Connect with me at www.pauljdaly.com

Check out the More Than Cars Movement here. 

Clarity Fam,

I just crossed the line on my 20th year of being an entrepreneur. It is so strange to think about how different my life was back in early 2003. I was in my first year of marriage, we were renting a small place, and I had this crazy idea that I could start and run my own company with nothing more that a "Small Business for Dummies" book and a Quickbooks CD Rom. There was no YouTube or touch screen phones, or even Facebook!  It's true, I'm that old.

Today I talk about one of the biggest distinctions I've observed in running a company. That is the difference between the "organization" and the "business". How does one balance the people and the profit?

I started this train of thought in this LinkedIn post and go a little deeper on this episode.

Here's to another 20 years!

Pursue Clarity,

Paul

Connect with me at www.pauljdaly.com

Check out the More Than Cars Movement here. 

Clarity Fam,

I was on a plane ride a few weeks ago that I will never forget. The leg room was tight, I had to pay for my beverage, the seat was a little more uncomfortable...and I LOVED IT.

All of this was because of one woman's extra bit of empathy and attention. It reminded me how one person can make all the difference.

I tell the story this week.

Pursue Clarity,

Paul

Connect with me at www.pauljdaly.com

Check out the More Than Cars Movement here. 

Clarity Fam,

As we roll into March, I start getting very excited about the changing of the seasons. Sure, in Upstate NY we likely have at least another 4-6 weeks where it could snow, however, I know that we are close to the nicer weather!

All of this has me in the 'spring cleaning' mentality when it comes to making changes for the better and it has me thinking about how much progress is good enough.

Often it is easy to let incremental improvement get overshadowed and shut down by the "best" improvements. In reality, the 'best' is a fantasy.

I dig into it a bit in this weeks episode as I anxiously await our first 60 degree day in Syracuse.

Pursue Clarity,

Paul

Connect with me at www.pauljdaly.com

Check out the More Than Cars Movement here. 

Clarity Fam,

Aside from my Eagles losing a heartbreaker last week, it's been a really great week. Mainly due to the fact that I was disconnected.

I took my family on our first intentionally disconnected vacation in quite a while. I spent 6 days unplugging from my hectic regular life and making new connections with my family.

I talk about it and share some of the things I learned in this week's episode.

Disconnect to reconnect and get that clarity,

Paul

Connect with me at www.pauljdaly.com

Check out the More Than Cars Movement here.