May 14, 2024 • 42 mins
Join the transformational journey with Chuck Rinker on Side Hustle City, as we traverse the fields of gaming and AI in the healthcare industry. Chuck, a former cattle farmer, shares his remarkable pivot to becoming a tech maven, revealing the inception of Personas and its mission to humanize patient care through innovative game engine technology. Our engaging conversation uncovers the intersections of gaming, social media, and patient advocacy, highlighting engagement as a key element that transcends industry boundaries.
We delve into the world of AI avatars with the emergence of iHealth Assist, thanks to NVIDIA's GPU advancements, offering a new horizon in patient communication, particularly for underserved demographics. Chuck discusses the intricacies of designing avatars that build trust without slipping into the uncanny valley, aiming to enrich rather than replace human interaction. The discussion also sheds light on the challenges and successes in creating relatable characters that resonate with patients, facilitating better health outcomes through improved communication.
Wrapping up, we touch on the essence of human-computer interaction and its invisible role in fostering connections, inspired by Walt Disney's vision of doing the impossible. Chuck explores the power of entrepreneurial problem-solving and the 'rule of threes' that underpins innovation at Prsonas. Emphasizing the value of a workplace culture that cherishes ingenuity, we conclude with insights on embracing risk and the significance of nurturing a creative, problem-solving spirit within the corporate environment.
As you're inspired to embark on your side hustle journey after listening to this episode, you might wonder where to start or how to make your vision a reality. With a team of experienced marketing professionals and a track record of helping clients achieve their dreams, we are ready to assist you in reaching your goals. To find out more, visit www.reversedout.com.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Side Hustle City and thanks for
joining us.
Our goal is to help you connectto real people who found
success turning their sidehustle into a main hustle, and
we hope you can too.
I'm Adam Kaler.
I'm joined by Kyle Stevie, myco-host.
Let's get started, all right?
(00:24):
Welcome back everybody to theSide Hustle City podcast.
Today, our special guest isChuck Rinker.
Chuck, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Absolutely Pleasure.
I appreciate you having me,adam Virginia, hokie Go Hokie.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
So we got a Hokie in the studio today and he was
telling me a little bit about EASports and he used to work on
that and he had a couple mascotsin there early on.
Some of the first mascots was aHokie.
So that was kind of interesting.
Right there a little triviahistory you gave me.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Always fun, always fun.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Yeah.
Well, now you've gone from the3D gaming world and getting
people addicted to video gamesto a company called Personas, so
tell us a little bit about.
Well, first of all, tell usabout your background.
Tell us, I mean, I was readingyour bio and it's like wow, this
guy's done it all.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
That's what people tell me.
Either it means I've done itall or I've been kicked out of
every place I've ever been.
Um, no, in all seriousness, Ido tell people that, um, I kind
of uh, uh, relate to, to thewhole walt disney mentality of
life, which is my.
My whole goal in life is tomake sure whatever I'm doing
tomorrow is not what I didyesterday.
That, to me, is what reallydrives and makes the fun out of
(01:42):
it.
So, um, a lot of that, I think,came from early on.
I was to give you that littlebackground.
I was a cattle farmer inVirginia, of all things.
So cattle farmer turned intohuman AI expert.
That's kind of logical,everybody says so.
I grew up, never even saw anairplane until I was 19,.
You know, just living the farmlife up in the mountains of
Virginia, up in the mountains ofVirginia.
(02:05):
And my dad was a farmer and heused to cut hair down in DC with
all the military what we callBeltway bandits doing all the
military tech and governmenttech around the area.
So he kind of went to a friendof his that was an executive at
one of those military simulationcompanies and basically said my
son is too smart to be a farmerand got me in that realm.
So I got into early militarysimulations trainings and
(02:27):
learned the power of fooling thebrain.
The brain, everybody knows here, is probably easily deceived
and the example I get is back inthe day and I'll show my age
here but back in the day whenMattel made these little
football games that had fourlittle LEDs on them, three on
the defense offense side, likeone on the defense.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
I had one for baseball.
Yeah, maybe it was a Coleco, Ithink is what it was.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Yeah, so the point is is that when people played that
, when you're really engrossedin that game, you don't need to
have photo realistic humans andall.
And that was its own form of AIalmost back in the day the hall,
and that was its own form of AIalmost back in the day, but
your brain turned that littlered LED into a halfback or that
little red LED into a linebacker.
So the brain has the power ofreally doing in the gaming world
(03:13):
what we call suspension ofdisbelief.
So I started getting into themilitary simulation, turned that
into commercial gaming and thensaw a great need that the
corporate world and inparticular now the healthcare
world, kind of misses.
The game industry always leadscommercial by 10 to 15 years and
we always wonder why.
And it's because of theengagement component, at least
(03:36):
in healthcare.
I mean, at least in humanengagement.
It's the gamers that reallydrive innovation around human
engagement.
So that's really where we'veended up, and I think it doesn't
surprise people when they findout that the root of our
personas, characters and ourdigital personality characters,
quite honestly, is a commercialgame engine.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Wow, so a lot of this , and it's not even just in
gaming.
I think the skill set you bringis something we see a lot in
social media too.
Was there some kind ofinteraction with the gaming
world and like, say, earlyFacebook, do you know?
Speaker 2 (04:16):
There's always engagements from people who are
either working in the marketingaspect or in social media.
I think the tie-in is lessabout the technologies, because
I can build a game engine usingraw JavaScript if I want or I
can, you know in my early days,again showing my age.
You know it was.
It was assembly code to getthem optimized.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Oh my gosh, assembly.
Whoa, I thought you were goingto say COBOL or something.
No, you said assembly.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Yeah, I'm talking to Andy.
You got to opt.
You really had to milk everysingle cpu cycle to make these
games run well and it's amazingthe piece there, but the common
tie I was trying to get to therewas actually more about human
behavior and it's really to me,it's less about what technology
you use.
I can teach you.
You said you had an animationbackground.
Do I really care whether youuse 3D Studio Mac you're an old
(05:04):
Silicon Graphics guy or whetheryou use Wavefront, alias
Wavefront, or whether you'reusing Babylon for 3D rendering
and WebGL, it doesn't reallymatter.
As someone who's creatingcompelling creative content and
to create a human engagementfactor with that community
you're trying to reach, whetherit's a social media community, a
gaming community or, for us,most recently, a patient
(05:26):
community, a patient advocatefor healthcare it's really about
what does it mean to be engagedas a human?
You're sitting there shakingyour head at me, nodding.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
We're gesturing back and forth.
Oh, I know all about yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
There's inflections in our voice.
There's so much beyond thewritten word that creates a bond
really, a kind of that humanengagement, that human intimacy,
that bond that creates thattrust factor that you miss by
just focusing on the technologyside of it.
So I think to your question,double back more directly.
It's really about people whounderstand human behavior and
(06:01):
human engagement that bring allthose worlds together, not
necessarily what tech stack youuse.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Well, you just reminded me of a of a memory of
frustration that I had withSilicon graphics and rendering a
32nd animation in I believe itwas, was it?
It might've been aliaswavefront, but it was a 32nd
animation and I ran it on 11different SGI machines over over
the course of I think it waseight hours.
So I was in this studio foreight hours sitting here making
(06:31):
sure nobody else came in andruined my rendering.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
It's pretty crazy.
They had full-time positions.
We called them render dogs.
You had to give your batch fileto your render dog and the
render dog would set up thenetwork, render nodes and all
that good stuff for you.
So no, it's a.
That's the kind of stuff you'redoing.
That's what people don'tunderstand.
They go well, this frame rate'sa little slow on this game, but
you're sitting there renderingscenes with a couple million
polys on you know 2k screens andyou're rendering 60 frames a
(06:59):
second.
In fact, what you werereferring to, you know it's
taking you three to five minutesto render one frame and then
you got to piece them alltogether.
So it's definitely an amazingworld.
Since the GPU has NVIDIA'sreally kind of revolution, has
that world?
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Oh it's, it's insane, Like what's happened.
And look at NVIDIA stock.
I think it's just been goinglike a rocket.
Now everything else isbenefiting from that Micron's
benefiting, AMD's benefiting,Intel's going to benefit.
I mean, it's nuts what's beengoing on.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
The benefit outside of the other chip manufacturers.
Really, quite honestly, just tobe selfish has benefited
patients, has benefitedcustomers, because we're now
able to create these healthcareavatars.
We call it iHealth Assist andwe've like well, take an example
We've got, we've done aclinical trial.
We've done about several ofthem, but a couple that come to
(07:49):
mind.
We did with RTI and the wholetrial outcome was going how do
you engage with an underservedcommunity?
The trial was trying to proveand trying to determine what the
long-term effects and outcomeswere for babies that are born to
opioid addicted mothers,specifically within the target
demographic of the underservedcommunities.
(08:12):
So that render technology that,like I said, it's not about
technology, it's about thebehavioral.
We took that render technology.
We created real-time 3Dcharacters.
We created a kind of a motherage young Hispanic female that
had a relatability but anauthority over the underserved
community members that wereHispanic.
We did that with the blackfemales.
(08:32):
We did that with the Irishfemales.
We did that with differentlanguages.
They spoke multiple languagesbut they created that
communication, bonding,connection and full gesture and
trust, trust, trust, trust isthat word that gets beat in your
head in that world of patientoutcomes and patient people just
don't trust the system, and sothat point you're making about
(08:54):
NVIDIA stock going up and GPUacceleration being through an
all-time high actually hasdirectly benefited outcomes.
Research for underservedcommunities and patients.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
So there's a broad impact broad impact.
Well, and I know there's beenresearch done that says certain
groups, minority groups, don'tnecessarily trust going to
doctors that don't look likethem or come from their same
experience, really.
So I think there's there'svalue in that, and we had talked
before the show started aboutwhy wouldn't you just use Siri
(09:26):
for something like this?
Well, it's exactly that Right,it's exactly the.
The perception that people have.
What happens in the brain whenthey see somebody that looks
like them automatically dropstheir guard and they feel, even
if it's a character, right, itcan still play into that a
little bit.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Well, it's funny you say that because the character
point we'll get to in a second,but you're absolutely 100
percent right.
You picked up on that prettyquick.
There's actually an interestingstudy and I don't have it off
the top of my head, but if youor one of your viewers are
interested, I can send you thelink that shows that patients
that engage through a believableavatar actually provide more
(10:04):
accurate information to theavatar than they do to the live
physician.
Specifically, the hypothesisbehind it is they don't feel
judged.
Specifically, the hypothesisbehind it is they don't feel
judged.
They don't feel they feel morea higher trust factor to your,
to your comment there, but theydon't feel judged.
So we're finding that even theinformation that's passed back
(10:24):
and forth between these AIavatars against what people
think is actually a betterengagement, a more accurate and
more positive and moreempathetic engagement.
And to carry that point farther,I believe Hollywood has done
everybody a slight disservice,but just out of the name of what
(10:46):
we're talking about here, andthere's a number of I won't call
them competitors, but that are,let's say, in the same space
we're in that have taken thistechnology and said, okay, well,
I can make it human, like wewant to replace humans.
Not only has Hollywood giventhat stigma behind oh, you're
not trying to replace humans.
Probably the number onequestion I get is well, you're
just trying to replace humans.
I go no, no, no, we're tryingto.
(11:06):
It's not about humanreplication, it's about human
communication.
So this concept of taking thesenew NVIDIA chips and trying to
create a character that looksand acts exactly like Adam
Kohler, has the same hairdo, hasthe same body shape, has the
same whiskers on his face, hasthe same mannerisms that really
(11:28):
is what we call the uncannyvalley, where it's almost too
human and it becomes creepy andyou really have to be careful.
Do you really want to replicatehumans?
Are we really trying to do that?
No, and that's what everybody'strying.
I shouldn't say everybody.
A significant amount of theinvestment in all is creating
these human avatars.
(11:48):
Matter of fact, we don't evenlike to use the word digital
human in our play.
Our characters, to be blunt, ifyou look at them, are more
Pixar-like.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Yeah, they totally look Pixar-like.
I mean Disney maybe, yeah,pixar kind of characters.
Yeah, they're very friendly andapproachable.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Yeah, and it's not about and people don't realize
they go.
Well, we're a serious company.
Our characters have to lookserious.
Our characters have to lookserious.
No, that's a deceiving stancethat people believe when they
put one of our avatars in, but Ican't tell you how many times
we've been twisted by them.
We can technically do it.
(12:25):
We've even done it.
Matter of fact, it was the vicepresident of Imagineering at
Disney that I was meeting with.
That's the first one that toldme to stay away from it.
He used to run a game companythat would take photos from
webcams and put them on gamecharacters before he became the
VP of Disney Imagineering.
He's since retired, but he'skind of the one that steered me
(12:46):
away from that back years ago.
So I can't even take credit forthat.
But you might impress peopletechnically, but you alienate
20% of your customers and youadd an additional lack of trust
into your avatars.
So our characters specificallylook like they are because
they're non-intimidating,they're empathetic, they're
approachable, they'retrustworthy, and so we're
(13:09):
finding really good success withthe mannerisms and look and
feel and being able to encompassa personality into these
digital we'll call them digitalavatars, and that's really what
we mean by personality.
What is a personality?
It's what knowledge base theyhave in their head.
It's not just what they looklike, it's not just their hair
(13:30):
color, eye color.
It's what mannerisms, whatgestures, what knowledge they
have on there.
Are they comedic, are theystraight laced, are they
sarcastic?
What's your brand identity?
So if I said, okay, company XYZ, if your entire brand was one
person, what would it look like?
Examples are like Geico you gotflow.
Geico.
(13:51):
Geico, you got progressive withflow.
What is your brand image?
What is that brand personalityyou want and that's really what
we're trying to create is apersonality, a digital
personality that would resonatewith whatever demographic you
need, whether it's for marketinga brand or whether it's for
attracting an underservedcommunity to a clinical trial.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Yeah, this is.
It's crazy interesting to methat, and you know, most of the
people that listen to our showare going to be, you know, side
hustle people figuring out howto do something, how to create
something, how to get out ofthat nine to five job of theirs.
What I see with folks like youwhen I interview you is you
worked for a little while, youpicked up certain skills, you
(14:32):
adapted with technology and nowhere you are the CEO of a
company like this, using allthose skills from gaming and
various other industries.
I mean you mentioned you knowmanipulating, like being able to
understand human behavior andthings.
I mean you weren't far from DC.
Who's better at understandinghuman behavior than than
(14:55):
politicians, Right?
I mean that's like you knowthat's the kings of manipulators
, kind of.
But I mean you're not talkingabout manipulating people with
this technology.
You're talking about giving thebrain a better experience than
just like a voice interaction ora text based interaction.
This brings several thingstogether and makes people feel
(15:18):
more comfortable and probablyopens people up to things.
And you mentioned you knowpersonas, right?
I mean I'm in the marketingspace.
I mean here I am in Cincinnatilike the, the capital of
fricking marketing, with Procterand Gamble and stuff here.
Speaking of people that know howpeople work right, how how the
brain works and how, uh, whypeople buy certain things
(15:39):
behavior modification big timeright, it's part of marketing.
Uh and and, and you saypersonas, I immediately think of
customer personas, Iimmediately think of you know
when you create a new product.
Yeah, exactly you build outthree customer personas.
You got Jill, who's astay-at-home mom.
You got Janet, who you know sheshops.
She's a single mom.
(15:59):
Then you got you know somebodyelse.
You know Bob, who you knowworks 60 hours a week.
He's a construction guy, buthe's still one of your customers
somehow.
So you build out these actualpersonas and a lot of thinking
and marketing and goes into that.
(16:20):
Are you?
Is this how you interact with alot of like the healthcare
clients and everything thatyou're working with, like
helping them to understandcustomer personas?
And then not only are youunderstanding those customer
personas, but now you'rebuilding personas on your end as
part of this experience.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Absolutely, and you keyed in on a couple of things
that we could probably spendanother three days talking about
, but one of it, on the digitalpersonas, is really
understanding that we're reallynot doing anything new.
As a matter of fact, ifanything, we're probably taking
stuff back hundreds of thousandsof years.
What I mean by that is we, ashumans, have evolved and we've
(16:55):
learned how to communicate.
Now, back in my early daysanother flashback to my why I've
got gray hair and I'm sittinghere behind the mic is you know,
when I first started insoftware development and
technology, we were using whatwe called ticker tape and punch
cards, which you know, paperstorage, and then you went to
magnetic tapes, then you hadfloppy disks and we didn't even
(17:15):
have CRTs at the time.
You would type in and it wouldcome out on the typewriter.
That's how you would get yourinformation into a computer,
into a system.
Then we got into CRT terminals,then we got into the use of
mice, and then from mice we wentto tablets, and now we've
evolved up enough to thegeneration of some
conversational AI interfacing.
(17:35):
So the only thing we've reallydone, if you think about it,
adam, is make it easier andeasier and easier for us to get
the information from our bodies.
We're a biological body and Ithink the term that people use
is human computer interface.
All we're doing is evolving thatHCI, that human-computer
interaction, into a more naturalway of communicating.
(17:55):
So what I mean by rolling itback is we've spent just
generation after generation, forthousands of years learning how
to communicate as humansprobably longer than that and
all we're doing is reallybreaking down that barrier and
saying, okay, well, you need toget information in and out of
these massive, complex AI-basedenterprise solutions and all.
(18:16):
And how do you let them knowwhat your intentions are and get
the information out you want?
That's all you're doing isasking, is requesting, making
queries for information andgetting that information back.
And all we're doing at the coreis saying we need to understand
how humans communicate and weneed to create that new next
generation of human and computerinterfacing so that you no
(18:37):
longer have to understand thetechnology behind it.
The technology understands howyou communicate instead of you
figuring out how the technologyworks, and you have to learn how
that technology works.
So all we're doing is trying tobe blunt.
We're trying to make technologyinvisible.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Yeah, well, and also accessible too, because I see
that you've got an API that youoffer to clients, I'm guessing,
or to other developers to helpwork with some of the technology
you've already built.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Yes, that's a great, great point.
Yeah, when we were asked to doa talk several years ago with
MITRE Corporation over inPortugal and the topic was we've
got all this great technology,we have all this great new AI
coming.
How do you scale it andanything that technology?
To scale it, you've got tocreate something that's reusable
across platforms.
(19:25):
So instead of us going out andeverybody building their own
enterprise solution with aavatar-based UX, we took the old
Microsoft term we call itdogfooding A lot of people may
be familiar with that term andwe basically said let's build a
couple of solutions with somepartners, but we're going to
build our solutions with our owntechnology.
(19:46):
So it's kind of like buildingout your technology but using
your technology.
That's what they calldogfooding.
So this API SDK that we'vecreated basically means, if
you're out there and you've,let's say, you're a visitor
management system or you're apatient check-in system or
you're whatever the case is wework with some financial
(20:06):
institutes as well You're abanking system you don't need to
be a communication expert.
You can basically come with us.
We'll take our SDK and API andwe'll create what we call a UX
layer, that user experiencelayer that we put on top of your
enterprise solution.
So in a sense, we become yournew keyboard and mouse Wow To
(20:28):
communicate with it.
So the ideal there is tobasically create a scalable.
How do you scale a newtechnology like this?
And bottom line is you eitherbuild it from scratch every time
or you leverage a middlewaresolution like an APR SDK and
we've wrapped it our ownsolutions with our own SDK.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
See, and this is interesting because it's now
common, I would say, forcompanies like yours to offer
this kind of accessibility toyour technology, to help the
technology grow faster, to helpthe adoption, to accelerate
(21:10):
adoption.
I would say, and you know youare a player in this whole world
where now you've taken, likewhat you said, this, you know
communication that we've beenevolving with over you know 200?
The interaction and thetechnology enabling this new
form of communication.
And here you are part of that,helping this new technology be
(21:42):
adopted faster.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Absolutely true, absolutely.
Spot on Yep, yep.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
And now you've got I mean, you're tying in IoT stuff
voice synthesis, speech to text,generative AI, I mean name the
technology buzzword that's hotright now and you guys have
already figured out a way tointegrate it into your stuff.
I'm actually interested in theIoT portion of it.
We were big into blockchain andstuff and we were thinking, oh
(22:08):
man, blockchain by itself, okay,it's great, trustless system,
you know things like that butyou need to tie it into other
technologies to make it valuable.
With your IoT stuff that you'redoing, how do you, how do you
integrate what you're doing withIoT?
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Yeah, Well, it's interesting you say that because
I'm not the CTO of the company.
So, if I misspoke, I considermyself a techie, but not as
techie as the smarter.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
You're not going to get in a grant.
Yeah, don't worry, I'm noteither.
Most of our listeners are not,so yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
But, but as far as that IOT insulator really that's
that's the word I was going tothrow out we're really an IOT
insulator.
Of course, you've got all theseInternet of Things floating
around, everything from naturallanguage parsing to question and
answer database, cognitiveservices, speech recognition,
you name it.
There's a billion and onepieces.
Now add on top of that some ofthe security, regulatory
(22:57):
compliance pieces you need to gointo health care and you've got
this tech stack that, if youwere to learn it, I would
venture to say you know there'sno less than 20 plus
technologies that are wrappedinto this wrapper.
So that's kind of I shouldn'tsay kind of.
That's exactly why we builtthis layer is because we were
building these solutions withother companies and going wait,
(23:21):
you know, there's a lot ofexpertise to your point that has
to come to bear, and eithersomebody has to be proficient
enough with all those diversityof IoT technologies that they
can bring the team together, orwe've given them a simplified
software development kit and APIthat leverages all that back
(23:42):
end.
We've been lucky.
We've had a long, probablyalmost a two-decade relationship
with Microsoft.
So I'll confess that, um, wedrink the Microsoft Kool-Aid.
Their stuff is pretty amazing.
Um, and a lot of the piecesthere are really wrapping um
some of our we'll call it ourintellectual property.
Some of the patents we have arearound sign language and stuff
like that.
(24:02):
Our, uh, our software not onlyspeaks the language as Microsoft
provides, but we do supply ouravatars have the ability to
communicate in unspoken languageBritish Sign Language and
American Sign Language right nowas well.
So the point is is we wrap allthose in, put our intellectual
property and then take ourgaming background, that whole
personality engine.
I'll tell you about what wecall our personality builder,
(24:23):
which is building thatpersonality.
So it's a combination of theaesthetics of a personality, all
the AI enablement thatMicrosoft brings to the table,
all the aesthetics and renderingtechnologies of the gaming.
Couple that with our ownproprietary knowledge and then
throw on top of that ourpartnerships with these
enterprise solution providerslike MappedIn has been a recent
(24:43):
integration of ours that dowayfinding solutions, and if you
put all those pieces togethernow, you've got this ecosystem
that truly, truly, has becomethe next evolution beyond Siri,
beyond Alexa, oh yeah, andthat's really what we're doing
here.
And if you want to tie it intoI know the name of the podcast
(25:05):
is you knowustle City.
I think the reason we've beenable to do this, even without
outside investment, is we havehad a professional services
business, but everybody here iskind of passionate about them.
Like my CTO was one of the leadMadden programmers, my CIO has
a background in game developmentas well.
We have a lot of gamers thatreally are just the problem
(25:25):
solvers of the world.
Have a lot of gamers thatreally are just the problem
solvers of the world.
So we really as much as itdoesn't sound like it, this
whole evolution of personasreally kind of was our own side
hustle.
We rolled inside of the companyand said, hey guys, let's,
let's stop doing and buildingall these cool systems for other
companies.
What can we do?
Speaker 1 (25:41):
Yeah, like, isn't that wild that sometimes you're
like man, we do all this stufffor other people.
I own a digital ad agency, sowe're building technologies for
all kinds of companies right now.
And I'm just now starting up mynext thing.
Like we built a company back in08 and we sold it to Zillow in
15.
And it's like I haven't doneanything since then and I'm like
I'm just running my agency,just kind of getting fat and
(26:02):
sassy, I think.
Once we sold and, uh, you know,now I'm just like.
I'm like I got the itch again.
You know, talk a little bit.
Talk a little bit about thatand what made you want to go
from this digital serviceprovider which it sounds like
you still do that but to do thisother thing.
And I want to bring this up onthe screen too, so people can
(26:23):
kind of see what the what thewebsite looks like.
And you know some of the stuff,because I'm sure, listening to
us, we're me and you were goingback and forth.
Here I am with a 3d animationbackground and a digital agent
and you too, right.
And we're sitting here, blah,blah, blah.
People were probably like whatthe hell's going on.
But this is.
You know, this is essentiallyit.
Like these characters you weretalking about Right and some of
(26:43):
this stuff, what made you wantto?
And you just you alluded to it.
We're building all this cooltechnology for people, but what?
Why this particular thing?
Like, why, why this?
You know, it's kind of ahealthcare focused right now,
but I'm sure you can do this ina ton of verticals.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
Yeah, it's interesting you say that and,
quite honestly, you can stopright there because I'll give
you two words and this this ishalf tongue in cheek but half
true.
As a kid, and as a lot ofpeople, do you really go?
What is the coolest thing thatyou've ever really done?
And I've been a devout followerof the amazement of Walt Disney
since I was a young kid.
(27:21):
I always wanted to be ananimator but didn't have enough
creative talent for that.
But the thing I remember andfollow Walt Disney.
My wife worked for about 11years.
I worked with the Imagineeringteam on their hospital system
and I probably go to Disneyabout six times a year.
The point is is when I deal withDisney, when I deal with any
company like that, there's thatphrase that Walt had said that
(27:42):
you know it's kind of fun to dothe impossible.
When I opened up theconversation I don't know if it
was before or after youintroduced me, adam, but if it
wasn't, it was before yourreaders I mean your listeners
came on board.
You asked me about you knowwhat I want to do and what my
journey and my answer was Ialways want to do tomorrow what
I haven't done yesterday.
You know it's got to besomething different.
(28:02):
It's that exploration, thatproblem solving, that doing
something that hasn't been donebefore, and Walt touted.
As you know, it's kind of fun todo the impossible and
everything's impossible untilyou do it, let's be honest.
So it's really this desire tosay what's been a big part of my
life, and a big part of my lifeis that human engagement
component, everything fromsimulation through gaming and
(28:25):
all and go.
You know what you get excited.
There's nobody here that candeny, whether you believe it
corrupts the mind of the youthor you're like me and I believe
games expand the mind of theyouth.
There's some cool stats thatyour listeners ought to look up.
Like you know, 55% of all CTOsand CEOs play games on a daily
basis.
It's really this problem solving.
(28:46):
It's this inherent desire andneed to solve problems that
makes good gamers, and those arethe people that run the
innovative companies of theworld.
So, yeah, there's the iHealthAssist version.
That's the healthcare providerwe're doing concierge, we're
helping patients.
Now we're helping clinicaltrials, we're helping recruit
for clinical trials, you know.
So it's really this inherentdesire to do something engaging,
(29:10):
but also to do something thatnobody's ever done before and
that that that can really make adifference to somebody, not
just who.
I had fun playing Madden forsix hours this week, but you
know what?
These have showed?
That we've attracted patientsfor opioid-addicted mothers.
(29:31):
We've done other trials wherewe've been able to help cancer
patients.
We've done trials where we'vehad pediatric imaging with
Celebration Health, where we hadkids that have to go through
the pains of a CT or an MRI scanand don't know what they're
getting into.
So we created an animated bearthat would talk to the kids and
(29:51):
we reduced sedation rates onkids that had to have MRIs.
So it's really, how can youtake this thing?
And I'm not saying make illnessand healthcare fun, but at
least make it engaging and lesspainful.
And people, behavioralmodification.
People tend to really want tofeel welcome.
They want to feel represented.
(30:11):
They want to feel like peopleare listening to him.
And when you fill out yourquestionnaire, when you go to a
doctor's office and they'reasking you your date of birth,
your social security number andyou're checking boxes, do you
feel like a number or do youfeel like a patient?
A number or do you feel like apatient?
When you talk to our charactersthat, that non-binary character
(30:32):
on the right, the hispaniccharacter in the center that
speaks spanish, um, do you feellike you're being listened to
and you're being um representedmuch more.
You're being addressed as aperson and a personality, not as
a number.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
yeah, that's really what drives us when you too I
mean you, you're somebody who'ssurvived cancer, and your wife
as well and going through thatwhole process, it's not like you
would ever, you know.
I mean, you understand whatit's like, and having a friendly
face, even if it's a littlecharacter to brighten your day,
could be a game changer.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
Absolutely.
Yep, yep, she's a two-time earlycancer survivor.
I was colon cancer and you're onmy late stage and it was just
the amount of information andwhat's going through your head
and having a doctor, anoncologist, who is trying to be
as empathetic as they can, butlet's just say there's just no
(31:29):
resource available to be asattentive as someone needs when
they're going through their ownpersonal health journey and so
to be able to create a smallpiece of the puzzle like the
current version we're doing inLondon for Princess Alexandria
Hospital is centered aroundsimple things like someone shows
up at the hospital and theydon't know where they're going.
Someone shows up at the hospitaland they're waiting.
They want to get a cup ofcoffee.
That's a burden that typicallyfalls upon the staff.
(31:51):
So we're not trying to replacestaff, but we're trying to give
them that extra resource so thatthe human capital that the
hospitals have invested in havethe time and resource to do what
only humans can do, that ourcharacters don't have the
capability of Our characters.
They're not human, they can'tdo what you and I do, but
they're really good at doing onething over and over and over
(32:12):
and over and over.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
This is very interesting because it's it's.
You know, I talked to a lot ofentrepreneurs and you know
there's a lot of people outthere who don't.
I'd say they could beentrepreneurs, but they don't
pay attention to problems.
They don't pay attention toopportunities, right, they don't
turn attention to problems.
(32:33):
They don't pay attention toopportunities, right, they don't
turn problems intoopportunities.
What you did is is you took allthis experience you had in
gaming and understanding humans,uh, in in personalities and you
took this negative experienceand you learned how the hospital
system, the weaknesses of thehospital system, your experience
that you had with the hospitalsystem, and you freaking turned
it into a business.
Yeah, I mean that's, that's Itell entrepreneurs all the time
(32:54):
and, chuck, I'm sure you couldprobably, you know, uh, second
this.
There's opportunities every day.
You, you may be working a nineto five business, you're working
and you're just some schlepsitting there doing something.
There is something in thatbusiness that is inefficient,
that could be improved somehow,and you just have to pay
(33:16):
attention.
And if you don't have theskills to do it, like you said,
hey, you can.
You can do dev, you understandtechnology, but you're not going
to sit here and write JohnMadden football.
You know you're not going towrite the code to build this.
There's probably somebody outthere that's way more efficient
at it than you, so find thatperson, partner up with them,
build a business.
You know that that'sessentially what you did.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Yeah, it's simpler than people think.
What's the old proverb?
Necessity is the mother ofinvention.
Yeah, you know, the necessityis I couldn't get enough time
from the doctors the necessityis we went on to this wild goose
chase of of of healthcareinformation.
That was just overwhelming.
We've been going okay.
Well, what, what is missing here?
(34:00):
What, what, what, what.
What do people need to do?
And they don't have thecapabilities of assigning a
one-to-one patient advocate.
You, adam Kohler, if you'regoing through a healthcare
journey, you don't have theluxury of having a patient
advocate at your side 24-7.
So that's that to your point.
That's exactly what I mean bynot patting ourselves on the
back at all, but it's reallysaying, you know, it's not like
(34:22):
we.
To your point, we didn't have tosolve a complex problem.
The solution is pretty complextechnically speaking, but the
problem we solved, are stillcurrently solving, is really the
simple problem that says wait,patients aren't being
represented.
There's a communication gapbetween all the scalable IoT
(34:43):
technologies you alluded toearlier.
There's a scalability gapbetween the healthcare
professionals all across theworld.
I think the UK we're probablywell represented in the UK as we
are in the US, because theyeven have a bigger struggle with
healthcare labor.
Those are top level, simpleproblems.
We need more people and we needa better way of getting vetted
information to patients.
(35:04):
The solution is pretty complex,but the problem is simple.
We need to improve thatcommunication with the patients
at all levels.
And so you're absolutely right,it's a simple problem to solve.
It's a complex solution, butit's a simple problem.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
When I'd love for you to tell if you were talking to
a young person thinking aboutpotentially being an
entrepreneur at this stage inyour career, looking back,
imagining yourself just being inthat nine to five and not
taking the risk of doingsomething, starting your own
business, you know, being theCEO of this company, being able
to affect people's lives in apositive way.
(35:42):
I mean, could you imagine thatright now, if you just if you
had never taken this leap inthis step in your life, oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
Yeah, absolutely.
And I've spoken at a fairnumber of little, you know,
smaller university graduationsand things like that, and I
talked to a couple of early kidson and on and I always give
them the mentality that I took,which is I grew up a pretty
modest lifestyle.
You know, I was a farm boy.
As I mentioned, Parents stillare.
My dad still owns the farm welived on growing up.
(36:09):
So it's been in the familysince, you know, 1971.
And what I mean by that is therisk, what seems like a big risk
to people.
I've got a job, I'm getting apaycheck.
I really can't do it.
I don't have enough moneywhatever.
I was kind of lucky because Iwas in a career that was kind of
in semi-high demand at the timethe whole software technology.
(36:29):
But I also knew that you knowwhat if you take a risk and it
doesn't pan out?
You're young.
You know what's it really goingto cost you and and what is
going to cost you is okay, yougot to go out and find another
job later.
So you know, don't be afraid totry something.
Don't be afraid to if you seean to your point about seeing an
(36:51):
opportunity.
If there's a necessity that'snot being filled.
Chances are you're not the onlyone that sees that necessity.
So all you really need to do issay, okay, well, if here's a
need I've seen and it's unfilled, I use in my company, quite
honestly, what we call the ruleof threes.
If you're asked as an employeeto do something more than three
(37:13):
times, you better tell me aboutit and you better tell someone
in the company, and we need toautomate that away so that our
employees focus on the creativeside.
What do you need to do to solvethe next problem?
So we have this rule of threesthat says, if you do something
more than three times, you knowwhat it's worth spending up,
because chances are other peopleare spending mundane time.
What that does for the youngpeople you're talking about,
(37:34):
advice, is not only does it comeup with these innovations, and
innovation isn't a oh, I flippedthe light switch.
Innovation is a step by step, alittle progress here, a little
progress there you earn.
You know what's the old adage.
You know how to eat an elephantone bite at a time.
You know you really got toidentify that elevator, all of
it and bite at it.
But what it's done, for mycompany at least, is we have a
(37:55):
small team, but these guys arecrackerjacks.
We jokingly tell people whenthey interview with us Adam,
you're interviewing with meright now.
I'm going to tell you right now, adam, one of two things are
going to happen.
You're going to leave thecompany in 90 days.
Are you going to be here for adecade or longer?
It really has held pretty true.
Where you either bite into thisculture that we've created and
(38:16):
you're a problem solver, andthat's the number one
characteristic of any employee,I say it's problem solving.
I don't care if you have 50years of AutoCAD experience.
If you can't solve problems, Idon't want you.
I don't want people who'velearned from rote.
I want people that when they'readdressed in a problem put in
front of them, they can getaround it without just throwing
up their arms and sayingsomebody else do it.
That's right and but thatcreates a satisfaction.
(38:39):
These people really feel likethey're making a difference.
They're really changing,impacting.
They're learning every day.
I'm learning every day.
That's fun, quite honestly.
That's just.
That's rewarding and fun.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
Yeah, and I think that's that also leaks out of
your company onto your customers, that passion that you have
internally, and it also, uh, ithelps you to move faster because
there's communication there,there's, there's a goal that
everybody's trying to hit and ifthere's a problem that a
customer brings up, people seethat as a challenge.
(39:12):
They don't see it as, oh crap,I, I go in tomorrow and mess
with this stupid customerproblem.
I mean, you know those kind ofpeople there's a down in the
dumps, people that really don'twant to be working.
It's not my job.
I'm not, you know, non-problemsolver type person.
And there's other people thatapproach that as oh, I haven't
done something like this yet,this, yet I'm going to go in
here and figure this out Likethey get excited about those
problems right.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
Yep, yep, absolutely, yeah, yeah I.
I jokingly poked you on the notmy job, cause that's like a.
That's a pet peeve of mine.
If someone tells me not my job,I'm going.
You're probably in the wrongcompany, that's right.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
We should probably close the door.
Yeah, let's, let's chat aboutthat.
So, chuck man, this has beenamazing.
I love the fact that you werein that industry.
I mean this is great.
I've never had anybody that wasin 3D.
So this is cool to sit down andtalk to a veteran who's
actually done something andworked on one of my favorite
games and probably everybody'sfavorite.
One of everybody's favoritegames.
(40:05):
If you're a sports fan whohasn't played, you know NCAA or
John Madden or one of thosegames you know.
So it was really cool talkingto you.
Tell people how they reach outto you.
Tell them about the website,maybe how they can reach out to
you on LinkedIn if they want toconnect that way.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
Sure, absolutely.
Linkedin.
I love, love, love and I,tongue in cheek, always resent
saying this, but I do it anyway.
Chuck Rinkert's LinkedIn.
My profile's Charles Rinker,but it tends to lead to a lot of
people propositioning me foroffshore development or trying
to sell me something.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
Oh God, I get those all the time.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
Please don't reach out to LinkedIn just to try to
sell me something, but thatreally is, in my mind, one of
the best professional networkingplatforms I've utilized, and I
do a lot of correspondencethrough LinkedIn.
So if you want to get to meindividually, linkedin is
probably the best bet.
As far as learning about thepersonality engine, if you're
like an enterprise developer oryou have an ideal for a business
(41:02):
solution you're talking about,you know and you want to start
something, but you need to kindof you really want to one-up the
game and sidestep the seriesinto the Fuel Avatar-based user
experience.
If you're interested in thatSDK, it's personascom
P-R-S-O-N-A-Scom.
If you're a healthcareprofessional and you really want
to see how digital avatars arehelping patients and healthcare
(41:25):
professionals, that'siHealthAssistcom.
That's a product line that wespun out from personas iHealth
A-S-S-I-S-T iHealthAssistcom.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
I love it, chuck.
It's been awesome.
I really appreciate it.
I think some people are goingto be interested in this.
I mean, I think you know justthe people I know in Cincinnati,
we got a lot of folks that aredoing focus groups for brands
and things like that that Ithink are going to be interested
.
There's a guy doing a I ownthis coworking space here and he
was just doing a.
He was just doing a thing inthe conference room today, so
(41:59):
I'm going to reach out to himand tell him about this too, so
maybe you guys can connect.
Yeah, yeah, it's great, chuck.
Well, thanks so much for yourtime today.
I really appreciate you comingon the podcast.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
No, I appreciate the opportunity of having me on
opportunity having me on andgood luck.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
All right, Take care.
Thanks for joining us on thisweek's episode of Side Hustle
City.
Well, you've heard from ourguests.
Now let's hear from you.
Join our community on Facebook,Side Hustle City.
It's a group where people shareideas, share their
inspirational stories andmotivate each other to be
successful and turn their sidehustle into their main hustle.
We'll see you there and we'llsee you next week on the show.
Thank you.
Welcome to Side Hustle City and thanks for
joining us.
Our goal is to help you connectto real people who found
success turning their sidehustle into a main hustle, and
we hope you can too.
I'm Adam Kaler.
I'm joined by Kyle Stevie, myco-host.
Let's get started, all right?
(00:24):
Welcome back everybody to theSide Hustle City podcast.
Today, our special guest isChuck Rinker.
Chuck, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Absolutely Pleasure.
I appreciate you having me,adam Virginia, hokie Go Hokie.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
So we got a Hokie in the studio today and he was
telling me a little bit about EASports and he used to work on
that and he had a couple mascotsin there early on.
Some of the first mascots was aHokie.
So that was kind of interesting.
Right there a little triviahistory you gave me.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Always fun, always fun.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Yeah.
Well, now you've gone from the3D gaming world and getting
people addicted to video gamesto a company called Personas, so
tell us a little bit about.
Well, first of all, tell usabout your background.
Tell us, I mean, I was readingyour bio and it's like wow, this
guy's done it all.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
That's what people tell me.
Either it means I've done itall or I've been kicked out of
every place I've ever been.
Um, no, in all seriousness, Ido tell people that, um, I kind
of uh, uh, relate to, to thewhole walt disney mentality of
life, which is my.
My whole goal in life is tomake sure whatever I'm doing
tomorrow is not what I didyesterday.
That, to me, is what reallydrives and makes the fun out of
(01:42):
it.
So, um, a lot of that, I think,came from early on.
I was to give you that littlebackground.
I was a cattle farmer inVirginia, of all things.
So cattle farmer turned intohuman AI expert.
That's kind of logical,everybody says so.
I grew up, never even saw anairplane until I was 19,.
You know, just living the farmlife up in the mountains of
Virginia, up in the mountains ofVirginia.
(02:05):
And my dad was a farmer and heused to cut hair down in DC with
all the military what we callBeltway bandits doing all the
military tech and governmenttech around the area.
So he kind of went to a friendof his that was an executive at
one of those military simulationcompanies and basically said my
son is too smart to be a farmerand got me in that realm.
So I got into early militarysimulations trainings and
(02:27):
learned the power of fooling thebrain.
The brain, everybody knows here, is probably easily deceived
and the example I get is back inthe day and I'll show my age
here but back in the day whenMattel made these little
football games that had fourlittle LEDs on them, three on
the defense offense side, likeone on the defense.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
I had one for baseball.
Yeah, maybe it was a Coleco, Ithink is what it was.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Yeah, so the point is is that when people played that
, when you're really engrossedin that game, you don't need to
have photo realistic humans andall.
And that was its own form of AIalmost back in the day the hall,
and that was its own form of AIalmost back in the day, but
your brain turned that littlered LED into a halfback or that
little red LED into a linebacker.
So the brain has the power ofreally doing in the gaming world
(03:13):
what we call suspension ofdisbelief.
So I started getting into themilitary simulation, turned that
into commercial gaming and thensaw a great need that the
corporate world and inparticular now the healthcare
world, kind of misses.
The game industry always leadscommercial by 10 to 15 years and
we always wonder why.
And it's because of theengagement component, at least
(03:36):
in healthcare.
I mean, at least in humanengagement.
It's the gamers that reallydrive innovation around human
engagement.
So that's really where we'veended up, and I think it doesn't
surprise people when they findout that the root of our
personas, characters and ourdigital personality characters,
quite honestly, is a commercialgame engine.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Wow, so a lot of this , and it's not even just in
gaming.
I think the skill set you bringis something we see a lot in
social media too.
Was there some kind ofinteraction with the gaming
world and like, say, earlyFacebook, do you know?
Speaker 2 (04:16):
There's always engagements from people who are
either working in the marketingaspect or in social media.
I think the tie-in is lessabout the technologies, because
I can build a game engine usingraw JavaScript if I want or I
can, you know in my early days,again showing my age.
You know it was.
It was assembly code to getthem optimized.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Oh my gosh, assembly.
Whoa, I thought you were goingto say COBOL or something.
No, you said assembly.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Yeah, I'm talking to Andy.
You got to opt.
You really had to milk everysingle cpu cycle to make these
games run well and it's amazingthe piece there, but the common
tie I was trying to get to therewas actually more about human
behavior and it's really to me,it's less about what technology
you use.
I can teach you.
You said you had an animationbackground.
Do I really care whether youuse 3D Studio Mac you're an old
(05:04):
Silicon Graphics guy or whetheryou use Wavefront, alias
Wavefront, or whether you'reusing Babylon for 3D rendering
and WebGL, it doesn't reallymatter.
As someone who's creatingcompelling creative content and
to create a human engagementfactor with that community
you're trying to reach, whetherit's a social media community, a
gaming community or, for us,most recently, a patient
(05:26):
community, a patient advocatefor healthcare it's really about
what does it mean to be engagedas a human?
You're sitting there shakingyour head at me, nodding.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
We're gesturing back and forth.
Oh, I know all about yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
There's inflections in our voice.
There's so much beyond thewritten word that creates a bond
really, a kind of that humanengagement, that human intimacy,
that bond that creates thattrust factor that you miss by
just focusing on the technologyside of it.
So I think to your question,double back more directly.
It's really about people whounderstand human behavior and
(06:01):
human engagement that bring allthose worlds together, not
necessarily what tech stack youuse.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Well, you just reminded me of a of a memory of
frustration that I had withSilicon graphics and rendering a
32nd animation in I believe itwas, was it?
It might've been aliaswavefront, but it was a 32nd
animation and I ran it on 11different SGI machines over over
the course of I think it waseight hours.
So I was in this studio foreight hours sitting here making
(06:31):
sure nobody else came in andruined my rendering.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
It's pretty crazy.
They had full-time positions.
We called them render dogs.
You had to give your batch fileto your render dog and the
render dog would set up thenetwork, render nodes and all
that good stuff for you.
So no, it's a.
That's the kind of stuff you'redoing.
That's what people don'tunderstand.
They go well, this frame rate'sa little slow on this game, but
you're sitting there renderingscenes with a couple million
polys on you know 2k screens andyou're rendering 60 frames a
(06:59):
second.
In fact, what you werereferring to, you know it's
taking you three to five minutesto render one frame and then
you got to piece them alltogether.
So it's definitely an amazingworld.
Since the GPU has NVIDIA'sreally kind of revolution, has
that world?
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Oh it's, it's insane, Like what's happened.
And look at NVIDIA stock.
I think it's just been goinglike a rocket.
Now everything else isbenefiting from that Micron's
benefiting, AMD's benefiting,Intel's going to benefit.
I mean, it's nuts what's beengoing on.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
The benefit outside of the other chip manufacturers.
Really, quite honestly, just tobe selfish has benefited
patients, has benefitedcustomers, because we're now
able to create these healthcareavatars.
We call it iHealth Assist andwe've like well, take an example
We've got, we've done aclinical trial.
We've done about several ofthem, but a couple that come to
(07:49):
mind.
We did with RTI and the wholetrial outcome was going how do
you engage with an underservedcommunity?
The trial was trying to proveand trying to determine what the
long-term effects and outcomeswere for babies that are born to
opioid addicted mothers,specifically within the target
demographic of the underservedcommunities.
(08:12):
So that render technology that,like I said, it's not about
technology, it's about thebehavioral.
We took that render technology.
We created real-time 3Dcharacters.
We created a kind of a motherage young Hispanic female that
had a relatability but anauthority over the underserved
community members that wereHispanic.
We did that with the blackfemales.
(08:32):
We did that with the Irishfemales.
We did that with differentlanguages.
They spoke multiple languagesbut they created that
communication, bonding,connection and full gesture and
trust, trust, trust, trust isthat word that gets beat in your
head in that world of patientoutcomes and patient people just
don't trust the system, and sothat point you're making about
(08:54):
NVIDIA stock going up and GPUacceleration being through an
all-time high actually hasdirectly benefited outcomes.
Research for underservedcommunities and patients.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
So there's a broad impact broad impact.
Well, and I know there's beenresearch done that says certain
groups, minority groups, don'tnecessarily trust going to
doctors that don't look likethem or come from their same
experience, really.
So I think there's there'svalue in that, and we had talked
before the show started aboutwhy wouldn't you just use Siri
(09:26):
for something like this?
Well, it's exactly that Right,it's exactly the.
The perception that people have.
What happens in the brain whenthey see somebody that looks
like them automatically dropstheir guard and they feel, even
if it's a character, right, itcan still play into that a
little bit.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Well, it's funny you say that because the character
point we'll get to in a second,but you're absolutely 100
percent right.
You picked up on that prettyquick.
There's actually an interestingstudy and I don't have it off
the top of my head, but if youor one of your viewers are
interested, I can send you thelink that shows that patients
that engage through a believableavatar actually provide more
(10:04):
accurate information to theavatar than they do to the live
physician.
Specifically, the hypothesisbehind it is they don't feel
judged.
Specifically, the hypothesisbehind it is they don't feel
judged.
They don't feel they feel morea higher trust factor to your,
to your comment there, but theydon't feel judged.
So we're finding that even theinformation that's passed back
(10:24):
and forth between these AIavatars against what people
think is actually a betterengagement, a more accurate and
more positive and moreempathetic engagement.
And to carry that point farther,I believe Hollywood has done
everybody a slight disservice,but just out of the name of what
(10:46):
we're talking about here, andthere's a number of I won't call
them competitors, but that are,let's say, in the same space
we're in that have taken thistechnology and said, okay, well,
I can make it human, like wewant to replace humans.
Not only has Hollywood giventhat stigma behind oh, you're
not trying to replace humans.
Probably the number onequestion I get is well, you're
just trying to replace humans.
I go no, no, no, we're tryingto.
(11:06):
It's not about humanreplication, it's about human
communication.
So this concept of taking thesenew NVIDIA chips and trying to
create a character that looksand acts exactly like Adam
Kohler, has the same hairdo, hasthe same body shape, has the
same whiskers on his face, hasthe same mannerisms that really
(11:28):
is what we call the uncannyvalley, where it's almost too
human and it becomes creepy andyou really have to be careful.
Do you really want to replicatehumans?
Are we really trying to do that?
No, and that's what everybody'strying.
I shouldn't say everybody.
A significant amount of theinvestment in all is creating
these human avatars.
(11:48):
Matter of fact, we don't evenlike to use the word digital
human in our play.
Our characters, to be blunt, ifyou look at them, are more
Pixar-like.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Yeah, they totally look Pixar-like.
I mean Disney maybe, yeah,pixar kind of characters.
Yeah, they're very friendly andapproachable.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Yeah, and it's not about and people don't realize
they go.
Well, we're a serious company.
Our characters have to lookserious.
Our characters have to lookserious.
No, that's a deceiving stancethat people believe when they
put one of our avatars in, but Ican't tell you how many times
we've been twisted by them.
We can technically do it.
(12:25):
We've even done it.
Matter of fact, it was the vicepresident of Imagineering at
Disney that I was meeting with.
That's the first one that toldme to stay away from it.
He used to run a game companythat would take photos from
webcams and put them on gamecharacters before he became the
VP of Disney Imagineering.
He's since retired, but he'skind of the one that steered me
(12:46):
away from that back years ago.
So I can't even take credit forthat.
But you might impress peopletechnically, but you alienate
20% of your customers and youadd an additional lack of trust
into your avatars.
So our characters specificallylook like they are because
they're non-intimidating,they're empathetic, they're
approachable, they'retrustworthy, and so we're
(13:09):
finding really good success withthe mannerisms and look and
feel and being able to encompassa personality into these
digital we'll call them digitalavatars, and that's really what
we mean by personality.
What is a personality?
It's what knowledge base theyhave in their head.
It's not just what they looklike, it's not just their hair
(13:30):
color, eye color.
It's what mannerisms, whatgestures, what knowledge they
have on there.
Are they comedic, are theystraight laced, are they
sarcastic?
What's your brand identity?
So if I said, okay, company XYZ, if your entire brand was one
person, what would it look like?
Examples are like Geico you gotflow.
Geico.
(13:51):
Geico, you got progressive withflow.
What is your brand image?
What is that brand personalityyou want and that's really what
we're trying to create is apersonality, a digital
personality that would resonatewith whatever demographic you
need, whether it's for marketinga brand or whether it's for
attracting an underservedcommunity to a clinical trial.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Yeah, this is.
It's crazy interesting to methat, and you know, most of the
people that listen to our showare going to be, you know, side
hustle people figuring out howto do something, how to create
something, how to get out ofthat nine to five job of theirs.
What I see with folks like youwhen I interview you is you
worked for a little while, youpicked up certain skills, you
(14:32):
adapted with technology and nowhere you are the CEO of a
company like this, using allthose skills from gaming and
various other industries.
I mean you mentioned you knowmanipulating, like being able to
understand human behavior andthings.
I mean you weren't far from DC.
Who's better at understandinghuman behavior than than
(14:55):
politicians, Right?
I mean that's like you knowthat's the kings of manipulators
, kind of.
But I mean you're not talkingabout manipulating people with
this technology.
You're talking about giving thebrain a better experience than
just like a voice interaction ora text based interaction.
This brings several thingstogether and makes people feel
(15:18):
more comfortable and probablyopens people up to things.
And you mentioned you knowpersonas, right?
I mean I'm in the marketingspace.
I mean here I am in Cincinnatilike the, the capital of
fricking marketing, with Procterand Gamble and stuff here.
Speaking of people that know howpeople work right, how how the
brain works and how, uh, whypeople buy certain things
(15:39):
behavior modification big timeright, it's part of marketing.
Uh and and, and you saypersonas, I immediately think of
customer personas, Iimmediately think of you know
when you create a new product.
Yeah, exactly you build outthree customer personas.
You got Jill, who's astay-at-home mom.
You got Janet, who you know sheshops.
She's a single mom.
(15:59):
Then you got you know somebodyelse.
You know Bob, who you knowworks 60 hours a week.
He's a construction guy, buthe's still one of your customers
somehow.
So you build out these actualpersonas and a lot of thinking
and marketing and goes into that.
(16:20):
Are you?
Is this how you interact with alot of like the healthcare
clients and everything thatyou're working with, like
helping them to understandcustomer personas?
And then not only are youunderstanding those customer
personas, but now you'rebuilding personas on your end as
part of this experience.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Absolutely, and you keyed in on a couple of things
that we could probably spendanother three days talking about
, but one of it, on the digitalpersonas, is really
understanding that we're reallynot doing anything new.
As a matter of fact, ifanything, we're probably taking
stuff back hundreds of thousandsof years.
What I mean by that is we, ashumans, have evolved and we've
(16:55):
learned how to communicate.
Now, back in my early daysanother flashback to my why I've
got gray hair and I'm sittinghere behind the mic is you know,
when I first started insoftware development and
technology, we were using whatwe called ticker tape and punch
cards, which you know, paperstorage, and then you went to
magnetic tapes, then you hadfloppy disks and we didn't even
(17:15):
have CRTs at the time.
You would type in and it wouldcome out on the typewriter.
That's how you would get yourinformation into a computer,
into a system.
Then we got into CRT terminals,then we got into the use of
mice, and then from mice we wentto tablets, and now we've
evolved up enough to thegeneration of some
conversational AI interfacing.
(17:35):
So the only thing we've reallydone, if you think about it,
adam, is make it easier andeasier and easier for us to get
the information from our bodies.
We're a biological body and Ithink the term that people use
is human computer interface.
All we're doing is evolving thatHCI, that human-computer
interaction, into a more naturalway of communicating.
(17:55):
So what I mean by rolling itback is we've spent just
generation after generation, forthousands of years learning how
to communicate as humansprobably longer than that and
all we're doing is reallybreaking down that barrier and
saying, okay, well, you need toget information in and out of
these massive, complex AI-basedenterprise solutions and all.
(18:16):
And how do you let them knowwhat your intentions are and get
the information out you want?
That's all you're doing isasking, is requesting, making
queries for information andgetting that information back.
And all we're doing at the coreis saying we need to understand
how humans communicate and weneed to create that new next
generation of human and computerinterfacing so that you no
(18:37):
longer have to understand thetechnology behind it.
The technology understands howyou communicate instead of you
figuring out how the technologyworks, and you have to learn how
that technology works.
So all we're doing is trying tobe blunt.
We're trying to make technologyinvisible.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Yeah, well, and also accessible too, because I see
that you've got an API that youoffer to clients, I'm guessing,
or to other developers to helpwork with some of the technology
you've already built.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Yes, that's a great, great point.
Yeah, when we were asked to doa talk several years ago with
MITRE Corporation over inPortugal and the topic was we've
got all this great technology,we have all this great new AI
coming.
How do you scale it andanything that technology?
To scale it, you've got tocreate something that's reusable
across platforms.
(19:25):
So instead of us going out andeverybody building their own
enterprise solution with aavatar-based UX, we took the old
Microsoft term we call itdogfooding A lot of people may
be familiar with that term andwe basically said let's build a
couple of solutions with somepartners, but we're going to
build our solutions with our owntechnology.
(19:46):
So it's kind of like buildingout your technology but using
your technology.
That's what they calldogfooding.
So this API SDK that we'vecreated basically means, if
you're out there and you've,let's say, you're a visitor
management system or you're apatient check-in system or
you're whatever the case is wework with some financial
(20:06):
institutes as well You're abanking system you don't need to
be a communication expert.
You can basically come with us.
We'll take our SDK and API andwe'll create what we call a UX
layer, that user experiencelayer that we put on top of your
enterprise solution.
So in a sense, we become yournew keyboard and mouse Wow To
(20:28):
communicate with it.
So the ideal there is tobasically create a scalable.
How do you scale a newtechnology like this?
And bottom line is you eitherbuild it from scratch every time
or you leverage a middlewaresolution like an APR SDK and
we've wrapped it our ownsolutions with our own SDK.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
See, and this is interesting because it's now
common, I would say, forcompanies like yours to offer
this kind of accessibility toyour technology, to help the
technology grow faster, to helpthe adoption, to accelerate
(21:10):
adoption.
I would say, and you know youare a player in this whole world
where now you've taken, likewhat you said, this, you know
communication that we've beenevolving with over you know 200?
The interaction and thetechnology enabling this new
form of communication.
And here you are part of that,helping this new technology be
(21:42):
adopted faster.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Absolutely true, absolutely.
Spot on Yep, yep.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
And now you've got I mean, you're tying in IoT stuff
voice synthesis, speech to text,generative AI, I mean name the
technology buzzword that's hotright now and you guys have
already figured out a way tointegrate it into your stuff.
I'm actually interested in theIoT portion of it.
We were big into blockchain andstuff and we were thinking, oh
(22:08):
man, blockchain by itself, okay,it's great, trustless system,
you know things like that butyou need to tie it into other
technologies to make it valuable.
With your IoT stuff that you'redoing, how do you, how do you
integrate what you're doing withIoT?
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Yeah, Well, it's interesting you say that because
I'm not the CTO of the company.
So, if I misspoke, I considermyself a techie, but not as
techie as the smarter.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
You're not going to get in a grant.
Yeah, don't worry, I'm noteither.
Most of our listeners are not,so yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
But, but as far as that IOT insulator really that's
that's the word I was going tothrow out we're really an IOT
insulator.
Of course, you've got all theseInternet of Things floating
around, everything from naturallanguage parsing to question and
answer database, cognitiveservices, speech recognition,
you name it.
There's a billion and onepieces.
Now add on top of that some ofthe security, regulatory
(22:57):
compliance pieces you need to gointo health care and you've got
this tech stack that, if youwere to learn it, I would
venture to say you know there'sno less than 20 plus
technologies that are wrappedinto this wrapper.
So that's kind of I shouldn'tsay kind of.
That's exactly why we builtthis layer is because we were
building these solutions withother companies and going wait,
(23:21):
you know, there's a lot ofexpertise to your point that has
to come to bear, and eithersomebody has to be proficient
enough with all those diversityof IoT technologies that they
can bring the team together, orwe've given them a simplified
software development kit and APIthat leverages all that back
(23:42):
end.
We've been lucky.
We've had a long, probablyalmost a two-decade relationship
with Microsoft.
So I'll confess that, um, wedrink the Microsoft Kool-Aid.
Their stuff is pretty amazing.
Um, and a lot of the piecesthere are really wrapping um
some of our we'll call it ourintellectual property.
Some of the patents we have arearound sign language and stuff
like that.
(24:02):
Our, uh, our software not onlyspeaks the language as Microsoft
provides, but we do supply ouravatars have the ability to
communicate in unspoken languageBritish Sign Language and
American Sign Language right nowas well.
So the point is is we wrap allthose in, put our intellectual
property and then take ourgaming background, that whole
personality engine.
I'll tell you about what wecall our personality builder,
(24:23):
which is building thatpersonality.
So it's a combination of theaesthetics of a personality, all
the AI enablement thatMicrosoft brings to the table,
all the aesthetics and renderingtechnologies of the gaming.
Couple that with our ownproprietary knowledge and then
throw on top of that ourpartnerships with these
enterprise solution providerslike MappedIn has been a recent
(24:43):
integration of ours that dowayfinding solutions, and if you
put all those pieces togethernow, you've got this ecosystem
that truly, truly, has becomethe next evolution beyond Siri,
beyond Alexa, oh yeah, andthat's really what we're doing
here.
And if you want to tie it intoI know the name of the podcast
(25:05):
is you knowustle City.
I think the reason we've beenable to do this, even without
outside investment, is we havehad a professional services
business, but everybody here iskind of passionate about them.
Like my CTO was one of the leadMadden programmers, my CIO has
a background in game developmentas well.
We have a lot of gamers thatreally are just the problem
(25:25):
solvers of the world.
Have a lot of gamers thatreally are just the problem
solvers of the world.
So we really as much as itdoesn't sound like it, this
whole evolution of personasreally kind of was our own side
hustle.
We rolled inside of the companyand said, hey guys, let's,
let's stop doing and buildingall these cool systems for other
companies.
What can we do?
Speaker 1 (25:41):
Yeah, like, isn't that wild that sometimes you're
like man, we do all this stufffor other people.
I own a digital ad agency, sowe're building technologies for
all kinds of companies right now.
And I'm just now starting up mynext thing.
Like we built a company back in08 and we sold it to Zillow in
15.
And it's like I haven't doneanything since then and I'm like
I'm just running my agency,just kind of getting fat and
(26:02):
sassy, I think.
Once we sold and, uh, you know,now I'm just like.
I'm like I got the itch again.
You know, talk a little bit.
Talk a little bit about thatand what made you want to go
from this digital serviceprovider which it sounds like
you still do that but to do thisother thing.
And I want to bring this up onthe screen too, so people can
(26:23):
kind of see what the what thewebsite looks like.
And you know some of the stuff,because I'm sure, listening to
us, we're me and you were goingback and forth.
Here I am with a 3d animationbackground and a digital agent
and you too, right.
And we're sitting here, blah,blah, blah.
People were probably like whatthe hell's going on.
But this is.
You know, this is essentiallyit.
Like these characters you weretalking about Right and some of
(26:43):
this stuff, what made you wantto?
And you just you alluded to it.
We're building all this cooltechnology for people, but what?
Why this particular thing?
Like, why, why this?
You know, it's kind of ahealthcare focused right now,
but I'm sure you can do this ina ton of verticals.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
Yeah, it's interesting you say that and,
quite honestly, you can stopright there because I'll give
you two words and this this ishalf tongue in cheek but half
true.
As a kid, and as a lot ofpeople, do you really go?
What is the coolest thing thatyou've ever really done?
And I've been a devout followerof the amazement of Walt Disney
since I was a young kid.
(27:21):
I always wanted to be ananimator but didn't have enough
creative talent for that.
But the thing I remember andfollow Walt Disney.
My wife worked for about 11years.
I worked with the Imagineeringteam on their hospital system
and I probably go to Disneyabout six times a year.
The point is is when I deal withDisney, when I deal with any
company like that, there's thatphrase that Walt had said that
(27:42):
you know it's kind of fun to dothe impossible.
When I opened up theconversation I don't know if it
was before or after youintroduced me, adam, but if it
wasn't, it was before yourreaders I mean your listeners
came on board.
You asked me about you knowwhat I want to do and what my
journey and my answer was Ialways want to do tomorrow what
I haven't done yesterday.
You know it's got to besomething different.
(28:02):
It's that exploration, thatproblem solving, that doing
something that hasn't been donebefore, and Walt touted.
As you know, it's kind of fun todo the impossible and
everything's impossible untilyou do it, let's be honest.
So it's really this desire tosay what's been a big part of my
life, and a big part of my lifeis that human engagement
component, everything fromsimulation through gaming and
(28:25):
all and go.
You know what you get excited.
There's nobody here that candeny, whether you believe it
corrupts the mind of the youthor you're like me and I believe
games expand the mind of theyouth.
There's some cool stats thatyour listeners ought to look up.
Like you know, 55% of all CTOsand CEOs play games on a daily
basis.
It's really this problem solving.
(28:46):
It's this inherent desire andneed to solve problems that
makes good gamers, and those arethe people that run the
innovative companies of theworld.
So, yeah, there's the iHealthAssist version.
That's the healthcare providerwe're doing concierge, we're
helping patients.
Now we're helping clinicaltrials, we're helping recruit
for clinical trials, you know.
So it's really this inherentdesire to do something engaging,
(29:10):
but also to do something thatnobody's ever done before and
that that that can really make adifference to somebody, not
just who.
I had fun playing Madden forsix hours this week, but you
know what?
These have showed?
That we've attracted patientsfor opioid-addicted mothers.
(29:31):
We've done other trials wherewe've been able to help cancer
patients.
We've done trials where we'vehad pediatric imaging with
Celebration Health, where we hadkids that have to go through
the pains of a CT or an MRI scanand don't know what they're
getting into.
So we created an animated bearthat would talk to the kids and
(29:51):
we reduced sedation rates onkids that had to have MRIs.
So it's really, how can youtake this thing?
And I'm not saying make illnessand healthcare fun, but at
least make it engaging and lesspainful.
And people, behavioralmodification.
People tend to really want tofeel welcome.
They want to feel represented.
(30:11):
They want to feel like peopleare listening to him.
And when you fill out yourquestionnaire, when you go to a
doctor's office and they'reasking you your date of birth,
your social security number andyou're checking boxes, do you
feel like a number or do youfeel like a patient?
A number or do you feel like apatient?
When you talk to our charactersthat, that non-binary character
(30:32):
on the right, the hispaniccharacter in the center that
speaks spanish, um, do you feellike you're being listened to
and you're being um representedmuch more.
You're being addressed as aperson and a personality, not as
a number.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
yeah, that's really what drives us when you too I
mean you, you're somebody who'ssurvived cancer, and your wife
as well and going through thatwhole process, it's not like you
would ever, you know.
I mean, you understand whatit's like, and having a friendly
face, even if it's a littlecharacter to brighten your day,
could be a game changer.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
Absolutely.
Yep, yep, she's a two-time earlycancer survivor.
I was colon cancer and you're onmy late stage and it was just
the amount of information andwhat's going through your head
and having a doctor, anoncologist, who is trying to be
as empathetic as they can, butlet's just say there's just no
(31:29):
resource available to be asattentive as someone needs when
they're going through their ownpersonal health journey and so
to be able to create a smallpiece of the puzzle like the
current version we're doing inLondon for Princess Alexandria
Hospital is centered aroundsimple things like someone shows
up at the hospital and theydon't know where they're going.
Someone shows up at the hospitaland they're waiting.
They want to get a cup ofcoffee.
That's a burden that typicallyfalls upon the staff.
(31:51):
So we're not trying to replacestaff, but we're trying to give
them that extra resource so thatthe human capital that the
hospitals have invested in havethe time and resource to do what
only humans can do, that ourcharacters don't have the
capability of Our characters.
They're not human, they can'tdo what you and I do, but
they're really good at doing onething over and over and over
(32:12):
and over and over.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
This is very interesting because it's it's.
You know, I talked to a lot ofentrepreneurs and you know
there's a lot of people outthere who don't.
I'd say they could beentrepreneurs, but they don't
pay attention to problems.
They don't pay attention toopportunities, right, they don't
turn attention to problems.
(32:33):
They don't pay attention toopportunities, right, they don't
turn problems intoopportunities.
What you did is is you took allthis experience you had in
gaming and understanding humans,uh, in in personalities and you
took this negative experienceand you learned how the hospital
system, the weaknesses of thehospital system, your experience
that you had with the hospitalsystem, and you freaking turned
it into a business.
Yeah, I mean that's, that's Itell entrepreneurs all the time
(32:54):
and, chuck, I'm sure you couldprobably, you know, uh, second
this.
There's opportunities every day.
You, you may be working a nineto five business, you're working
and you're just some schlepsitting there doing something.
There is something in thatbusiness that is inefficient,
that could be improved somehow,and you just have to pay
(33:16):
attention.
And if you don't have theskills to do it, like you said,
hey, you can.
You can do dev, you understandtechnology, but you're not going
to sit here and write JohnMadden football.
You know you're not going towrite the code to build this.
There's probably somebody outthere that's way more efficient
at it than you, so find thatperson, partner up with them,
build a business.
You know that that'sessentially what you did.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Yeah, it's simpler than people think.
What's the old proverb?
Necessity is the mother ofinvention.
Yeah, you know, the necessityis I couldn't get enough time
from the doctors the necessityis we went on to this wild goose
chase of of of healthcareinformation.
That was just overwhelming.
We've been going okay.
Well, what, what is missing here?
(34:00):
What, what, what, what.
What do people need to do?
And they don't have thecapabilities of assigning a
one-to-one patient advocate.
You, adam Kohler, if you'regoing through a healthcare
journey, you don't have theluxury of having a patient
advocate at your side 24-7.
So that's that to your point.
That's exactly what I mean bynot patting ourselves on the
back at all, but it's reallysaying, you know, it's not like
(34:22):
we.
To your point, we didn't have tosolve a complex problem.
The solution is pretty complextechnically speaking, but the
problem we solved, are stillcurrently solving, is really the
simple problem that says wait,patients aren't being
represented.
There's a communication gapbetween all the scalable IoT
(34:43):
technologies you alluded toearlier.
There's a scalability gapbetween the healthcare
professionals all across theworld.
I think the UK we're probablywell represented in the UK as we
are in the US, because theyeven have a bigger struggle with
healthcare labor.
Those are top level, simpleproblems.
We need more people and we needa better way of getting vetted
information to patients.
(35:04):
The solution is pretty complex,but the problem is simple.
We need to improve thatcommunication with the patients
at all levels.
And so you're absolutely right,it's a simple problem to solve.
It's a complex solution, butit's a simple problem.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
When I'd love for you to tell if you were talking to
a young person thinking aboutpotentially being an
entrepreneur at this stage inyour career, looking back,
imagining yourself just being inthat nine to five and not
taking the risk of doingsomething, starting your own
business, you know, being theCEO of this company, being able
to affect people's lives in apositive way.
(35:42):
I mean, could you imagine thatright now, if you just if you
had never taken this leap inthis step in your life, oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
Yeah, absolutely.
And I've spoken at a fairnumber of little, you know,
smaller university graduationsand things like that, and I
talked to a couple of early kidson and on and I always give
them the mentality that I took,which is I grew up a pretty
modest lifestyle.
You know, I was a farm boy.
As I mentioned, Parents stillare.
My dad still owns the farm welived on growing up.
(36:09):
So it's been in the familysince, you know, 1971.
And what I mean by that is therisk, what seems like a big risk
to people.
I've got a job, I'm getting apaycheck.
I really can't do it.
I don't have enough moneywhatever.
I was kind of lucky because Iwas in a career that was kind of
in semi-high demand at the timethe whole software technology.
(36:29):
But I also knew that you knowwhat if you take a risk and it
doesn't pan out?
You're young.
You know what's it really goingto cost you and and what is
going to cost you is okay, yougot to go out and find another
job later.
So you know, don't be afraid totry something.
Don't be afraid to if you seean to your point about seeing an
(36:51):
opportunity.
If there's a necessity that'snot being filled.
Chances are you're not the onlyone that sees that necessity.
So all you really need to do issay, okay, well, if here's a
need I've seen and it's unfilled, I use in my company, quite
honestly, what we call the ruleof threes.
If you're asked as an employeeto do something more than three
(37:13):
times, you better tell me aboutit and you better tell someone
in the company, and we need toautomate that away so that our
employees focus on the creativeside.
What do you need to do to solvethe next problem?
So we have this rule of threesthat says, if you do something
more than three times, you knowwhat it's worth spending up,
because chances are other peopleare spending mundane time.
What that does for the youngpeople you're talking about,
(37:34):
advice, is not only does it comeup with these innovations, and
innovation isn't a oh, I flippedthe light switch.
Innovation is a step by step, alittle progress here, a little
progress there you earn.
You know what's the old adage.
You know how to eat an elephantone bite at a time.
You know you really got toidentify that elevator, all of
it and bite at it.
But what it's done, for mycompany at least, is we have a
(37:55):
small team, but these guys arecrackerjacks.
We jokingly tell people whenthey interview with us Adam,
you're interviewing with meright now.
I'm going to tell you right now, adam, one of two things are
going to happen.
You're going to leave thecompany in 90 days.
Are you going to be here for adecade or longer?
It really has held pretty true.
Where you either bite into thisculture that we've created and
(38:16):
you're a problem solver, andthat's the number one
characteristic of any employee,I say it's problem solving.
I don't care if you have 50years of AutoCAD experience.
If you can't solve problems, Idon't want you.
I don't want people who'velearned from rote.
I want people that when they'readdressed in a problem put in
front of them, they can getaround it without just throwing
up their arms and sayingsomebody else do it.
That's right and but thatcreates a satisfaction.
(38:39):
These people really feel likethey're making a difference.
They're really changing,impacting.
They're learning every day.
I'm learning every day.
That's fun, quite honestly.
That's just.
That's rewarding and fun.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
Yeah, and I think that's that also leaks out of
your company onto your customers, that passion that you have
internally, and it also, uh, ithelps you to move faster because
there's communication there,there's, there's a goal that
everybody's trying to hit and ifthere's a problem that a
customer brings up, people seethat as a challenge.
(39:12):
They don't see it as, oh crap,I, I go in tomorrow and mess
with this stupid customerproblem.
I mean, you know those kind ofpeople there's a down in the
dumps, people that really don'twant to be working.
It's not my job.
I'm not, you know, non-problemsolver type person.
And there's other people thatapproach that as oh, I haven't
done something like this yet,this, yet I'm going to go in
here and figure this out Likethey get excited about those
problems right.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
Yep, yep, absolutely, yeah, yeah I.
I jokingly poked you on the notmy job, cause that's like a.
That's a pet peeve of mine.
If someone tells me not my job,I'm going.
You're probably in the wrongcompany, that's right.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
We should probably close the door.
Yeah, let's, let's chat aboutthat.
So, chuck man, this has beenamazing.
I love the fact that you werein that industry.
I mean this is great.
I've never had anybody that wasin 3D.
So this is cool to sit down andtalk to a veteran who's
actually done something andworked on one of my favorite
games and probably everybody'sfavorite.
One of everybody's favoritegames.
(40:05):
If you're a sports fan whohasn't played, you know NCAA or
John Madden or one of thosegames you know.
So it was really cool talkingto you.
Tell people how they reach outto you.
Tell them about the website,maybe how they can reach out to
you on LinkedIn if they want toconnect that way.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
Sure, absolutely.
Linkedin.
I love, love, love and I,tongue in cheek, always resent
saying this, but I do it anyway.
Chuck Rinkert's LinkedIn.
My profile's Charles Rinker,but it tends to lead to a lot of
people propositioning me foroffshore development or trying
to sell me something.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
Oh God, I get those all the time.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
Please don't reach out to LinkedIn just to try to
sell me something, but thatreally is, in my mind, one of
the best professional networkingplatforms I've utilized, and I
do a lot of correspondencethrough LinkedIn.
So if you want to get to meindividually, linkedin is
probably the best bet.
As far as learning about thepersonality engine, if you're
like an enterprise developer oryou have an ideal for a business
(41:02):
solution you're talking about,you know and you want to start
something, but you need to kindof you really want to one-up the
game and sidestep the seriesinto the Fuel Avatar-based user
experience.
If you're interested in thatSDK, it's personascom
P-R-S-O-N-A-Scom.
If you're a healthcareprofessional and you really want
to see how digital avatars arehelping patients and healthcare
(41:25):
professionals, that'siHealthAssistcom.
That's a product line that wespun out from personas iHealth
A-S-S-I-S-T iHealthAssistcom.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
I love it, chuck.
It's been awesome.
I really appreciate it.
I think some people are goingto be interested in this.
I mean, I think you know justthe people I know in Cincinnati,
we got a lot of folks that aredoing focus groups for brands
and things like that that Ithink are going to be interested
.
There's a guy doing a I ownthis coworking space here and he
was just doing a.
He was just doing a thing inthe conference room today, so
(41:59):
I'm going to reach out to himand tell him about this too, so
maybe you guys can connect.
Yeah, yeah, it's great, chuck.
Well, thanks so much for yourtime today.
I really appreciate you comingon the podcast.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
No, I appreciate the opportunity of having me on
opportunity having me on andgood luck.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
All right, Take care.
Thanks for joining us on thisweek's episode of Side Hustle
City.
Well, you've heard from ourguests.
Now let's hear from you.
Join our community on Facebook,Side Hustle City.
It's a group where people shareideas, share their
inspirational stories andmotivate each other to be
successful and turn their sidehustle into their main hustle.
We'll see you there and we'llsee you next week on the show.
Thank you.
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