The Set That Almost Didn't Play

6min Read

Freedom Builders, I planned this one for 3 months and almost lost it in the first 2 minutes.

Fourth of July weekend. The country turns 250, and I wanted to add something to the celebration, so I set up a DJ rig in a high-traffic downtown park. Permits pulled with the city. Gear staged. Everything ready to go at 5:58, 2 minutes before my start time.

I like being on time. I stood there feeling good about it.

Then my computer started acting up.

Why You Should Care:

• The tool points, you still have to move: AI can hand you the diagnosis in 30 seconds. It can't walk over and re-plug your rig.

• Community gets built in person: A dance floor in a public park does something no feed can. You hand people something real in the moment they're standing in.

• Don't quit at minute 45: The stuff worth building usually breaks first, in front of everyone.

80 Minutes, No Sound, Buddy's Obvious Question

The machine was overclocking, running slow as mud, and no sound was coming out of the speakers. I reset it. Reset it again. Killed every other program. Nothing.

This is a PC, not some steadfast Mac, and it was freaking out.

15 minutes gone. Then half an hour. I've got a full rig set up in a public park and dead silence coming off it.

Meanwhile the park had its own energy. A guy was singing at the top of his lungs, then decided he wanted to fight a group walking through. The cops got called. You can imagine the stress moving through my body while I'm crouched over a frozen laptop trying to keep it cool.

Then my buddy walked up. You know someone's a true friend when they look at you and ask, "but did you ask AI how to fix it?"

45 minutes in. I took some screenshots and fed them to Claude.

My wife showed up. Friends showed up. My people were there, and I wasn't going to give up with them watching, even with a few folks nearby wondering why I didn't just play something already.

Then it clicked. I'd daisy-chained too many cords to reach power all the way over to the laptop. It had enough juice to turn on, but not enough to actually run the DJ software. Underpowered, and freaking out because of it.

I'll give Claude the credit. It pointed me to look at power. I unplugged, ran it into a more direct source, and the sound came alive.

People started dancing. The whole vibe of the park chilled out. 1 hour and 20 minutes of fighting the thing, and then it was a party.

17 People and 4 Weeks

Same week I was troubleshooting a park, I wrapped my Claude Cowork cohort.

4 weeks, 17 people, walking each of them from "AI is a chatbot" to "AI is a coworker that gets stuff done." Most showed up thinking a chatbot was the whole story. They left running actual workflows.

One of them, Jim Hood, runs an IT business and put it better than I could:

Jim says he's still scratching the surface. It's already more than paid for itself. That's the thing I built the next room to keep going.

The Inner Circle Behind the Cohort

The cohort ended. The space it pointed to didn't.

The Freedom Builder Inner Circle is where the Cowork replay now lives, along with a daily signal out of the AI noise, a live workshop and a new AI skills every month, and the full vault I built for over 2 years, yours the day you join. 30-plus builders are already in there.

That's the whole point. People using this on their own terms, eyes open.

Tech Corner

Same week I fought a power cord, the models had a loud week too.

• The strongest new model shipped through a government gate: OpenAI is releasing GPT-5.6 to the public today after holding it back for a federal review, part of a new framework that lets Washington sit with "frontier" models for up to 30 days before you get them (CNBC, TechCrunch). Useful or not, remember the shape of it: the thing you depend on can be paused by people you didn't vote for. I'll spin it up and report back next week. Own your prompts and exports so you can walk.

• Voice just went full-duplex, and that cuts both ways: OpenAI replaced Advanced Voice Mode with GPT-Live, which listens and talks at the same time, catches your interruptions, and even says "mhmm" while you think (TechCrunch). Ditching the keyboard is where this is headed. A machine this good at sounding like a companion is also the danger. Use it as a tool, not a friend.

• The best model I've got is rented, and its access moved twice this month: Anthropic extended Fable 5 access after pulling it early, weeks after export controls yanked it offline entirely (Android Authority). I fed it 20 gigs of my brand this week, built dashboards for my wife's business, and stood up a client's website in a single meeting. Incredible tool. Still rented.

Quick one before the takeaways. Ever had your tech quit at the worst possible moment? Hit reply and tell me what you did, I read every one.

Today's Takeaways:

• Ask the tool, then close it: Let AI find the problem fast, then go make the fix it can't reach.

• Show up in person: A dance floor in a park heals more than another post ever will.

• Own what you can walk with: Models get gated, pulled, and rented. Keep your prompts and exports yours.

Keep your power direct.

If you're local in Bellingham, the pop-up park parties are just getting started this summer. Come dance.

Joshua | The Holistic Tech Wizard

The Three Doors

• Freedom Builders Inner Circle: The daily signal room. AI signal out of the noise, monthly workshops, skill drops, and a wingman with 15+ years building online.

• Work with Me: We build your business together, live, until it's live. Your offer, your site, your systems, running. Starts with a 15-minute call.

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