Episode#77: Let's Talk Being Informed with Kira Shishkin, CEO of informed.now

Tune into Episode#77 of M.A.Y.A and meet Kira Shishkin, who is the CEO of informed, the news concierge designed specifically for leaders. Kira is passionate about helping people overcome information overload and get to the essentials without all the typical noise of media. At informed, he’s building a minimalist approach: news with no clickbait, ads, or bias, delivered by an AI and human team via text. It’s a space where people can know more while reading less, which I think fits well with the ambition of your podcast.

Kira is a 4-time serial founder who brings thoughtful perspectives from all stages of venture building. He’s led ventures in technology, crypto, venture capital, and publishing, drawing on experience as an immigrant and community maker. His leadership at informed is rooted in years of building things that last and tackling the challenge of media minimalism for busy minds.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The information shared on this podcast is for informational and
educational purposes only and is not intended to be a
substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. While we
discuss topics related to mental health, well being and emotional support,
we are not providing therapy or medical services. Always seek

(00:20):
the advice of your physician, psychologist, psychiatrist, or other qualified
mental health provider with any questions you may have regarding
a mental health condition. If you are in crisis, feeling unsafe,
or need immediate support, please contact a mental health professional
or emergency services in your area. The views expressed by

(00:41):
guests and hosts are their own and do not necessarily
reflect those of any affiliated organizations or institutions.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Get in Spined, Get Motivated with Maya account and the
Maya My Ambition, Your Ambition Podcast.

Speaker 3 (01:03):
Something that I take pride and is trying to be
forward thinking, thinking outside the box, challenging myself and as
I challenge myself, hopefully I challenge you.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
Find Maya on Twitter and Instagram at Maya underscore a
Kai on Facebook at Maya Akai Presents.

Speaker 3 (01:16):
We're going to talk health, wealth, fitness, mental health, financial,
lots of different things that can empower you as you
seek out the ambition that you're pursuing your career or
get everything.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
Maya at Maya Akai dot com.

Speaker 3 (01:36):
Now I'm Mistay. Everyone. Welcome to what is Like the
seventy seventh episode of Maya My Ambition, Your Ambition, which
I like to say that this is a podcast that
looks to embrace the topic of mental wellness from a
fresh and forward thinking perspective. The focus of my podcast
is to pull back that bill of self doubt and

(01:57):
sabotage that so many of us have in our lives
to be able to help us to identify the ambition
and harness the motivation more than anything else, to motivate
us to help yield that satisfaction that you want to
have success and not just life but your every day life.
So with that being said, if you are a first
time listener and or viewer, it's okay. I always just

(02:20):
say buckle up for safety, not because you know we
get rough here, but you know you might have an
unexpected epiphany in the conversations that I have with my
guests and you'll go, wow, I didn't think about that.
I always like to say things make you go hmmm. Now,
if you're my age, you know that song, but if
you're not, you don't. So I'm gonna tell you go
and go Google see and see music Factory and then

(02:43):
they'll come up for you. Good song, by the way.
But with that also being said, if you're a returning listener,
you know how we do things here pretty much. You
carve out this thirty to sixty minute of your time
to discuss something that's really important and forward thinking. So
I always tell people, go ahead, grab a pencil and paper,
jot down some thoughts or things you may have. And
of course when I have guests on, they're definitely going

(03:04):
to be sharing some really good things with you, So
just make sure that you go ahead and you jot
some things down. That is the big thing. Now, Like
I said, we are pretty much like into episode seventy seven,
so that means we've covered quite a bit of ground.
If you happen to miss any of those episodes, don't fret.
You can always find episodes Maya on iTunes, Apple, Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Amazon, Audible,

(03:29):
Spotify if it's a podcast platform, most of the time
you can find my podcast there to search Maya, My Ambition,
your ambition, you should be able to find it, but
I'm gonna tell you just go ahead and make life
easy on yourself and subscribe and share my YouTube channel
which is Maya speaks to You, And I would say,
you know, finally, people who know me, I got my
social media game up to speed, so now it's a

(03:51):
share platform. So whether you are on Facebook, IG or X,
you could always just go ahead and search Maya speaks
to you and you can follow me that way as well.
Of course, I'm gonna be shameless and tell you that
you should subscribe them like my website, which is Maya
dash speaks dot com for all things that are Maya.
There's two things on that website that I particularly am.

(04:13):
I'm just really really passionate about one. I do an
inspirational blog only once a week, so I put a
thought up there that I just want you to process.
I'm not gonna throw something at you every day, just
once a week, so new postings go up on Wednesday
as well as I have my me on Pause blog
for everyone who knows me. I am the poster child
for menopause, so I created a blog for all of

(04:35):
my ladies who are experiencing menopause. But some really really
insightful things that could be very helpful as you are
going through the transition more than anything else. So you
can always find those particular things on my website. Now,
before we jump into our next guest, I absolutely have
to say if you did not get a chance to
see our last episode, it was fantastic. It was about

(04:58):
understanding the wealth gap, and we had a fantastic guest
on who shared a lot of key things. I always
tell people, you know something, this is why you're taking notes,
but we always tell you how to find our guests afterwards.
So if you happen to have missed the episode last
week that I had on episode seventy six with Paul Wilson,
who is a veteran investment expert who really has wrote

(05:19):
this fantastic book called The Capital Offense, Why Some Benefit
at Your Expense, fantastic book. He also has a blog
that you can follow as well, And the reason I
love that is because the blog gives you all this
knowledge on a continual basis, and the book just brings
a lot of concepts together. One of the things he

(05:39):
talked about and people came back and gave me great feedback,
and they said Maya. I didn't realize there was a
difference between the idea of money and capital. Now think
about that money and capitol are not the same thing,
and Paul did a fantastic job of breaking that down
for us in that episode. So I'm doing something new

(06:00):
with the show as well. And people be like, oh,
you're adding all these little bells and whistles to make
it easy to find things in the upper corner. For me,
it is my upper left. Not sure it's going to
be your right. If you scan that QR code, it
will take you to Paul's blog as well as how
to purchase his book that he has that's on Amazon
and all kinds of other places. So you can always
scan that QR code and you'll be able to connect

(06:23):
with Paul. Sign up for his blog, which is absolutely
one hundred percent free. It's a written blog as well
as there's an audio version as well. So go ahead
and scan that QR code and you will be able
to connect with Paul in all the financial information he's giving.
That to me is something that if financial literacy is
not top of your list or not top of mind,
shame on you, because it really needs to be. So

(06:46):
you can always start here. Don't wait to the new year.
Everybody start right now. Scan that QR code and check
out what Paul is sharing with everybody. Okay, So with
that being said, so now you know how to find
former episodes. I am sooner or excited to have on
our next guest. And the thing is, many of the
guests have come out just finding out about my podcast,

(07:09):
and they reach out and express wanting to be in
the show, which makes me feel extra special because I'm
not famous, so I love when people reach out and
want to share. But I do have to say I
have some great followings for all the people that I'm
picking up, not just in the US that are watching,
but we have some newcomers on board as well. Internationally.
I'm liking the fact that people are starting to embrace
the idea of mental wellness. And what do I tell

(07:30):
everybody about mental wellness? It is not just about how
you think and how you feel. It is, but how
you think and how you feel is going to impact
every aspect of your life. So that financial decision that
you make, even how you decide to vote, is going
to be fueled by how you think and how you feel.
So I'm trying to get people out of that comfortable

(07:50):
to thinking that mental health is just about the idea
of depression and anxiety. And if you ever needed tools,
if you ever needed tools, you need them now to
decipher a lot of things that are happening within the
United States at the moment. And I always say, what's
more important being informed versus being influenced, because when you're influenced,
you're out to make a lot of choices that are

(08:11):
not really gonna resonate with who you are, or maybe
you just don't understand enough. Well, our next guest is
absolutely amazing, and in today's world, just attempting, let's be honest,
to even be able to get news that you actually
actually want to hear becomes difficult. Well that's what our
next guest is going to help you with that. Kiro

(08:33):
Shniskin is ultimately the most amazing person for me information wise,
because once I dove into informed dot com, it blew
me away because one of the things for me that
I was having burnt out with was just too much
news and it was too much influenced or bias news
for me. So I got to the point where I
stopped watching news on a regular basis, but I all
start saying to other people, you know something, why don't

(08:54):
you take a break from the news, because I understand
that can heighten your depression or anxiety or if you're
struggling with the government shut down. That was like, that
was very stressful for people, and so what they were
getting in the news, I'll be honest, was not really
all that transparent or honest. Well, guess what I'm about
to share a resource with you that's gonna change that.
This Informed dot com is a news concierge service that

(09:18):
is not designed specifically. They would say for leaders, but
I'm gonna say it's for those people who want to
be informed and they don't want biased or influenced news.
Here is passionate about helping people, but more importantly about
overcoming that information overload that I frequently talk about with
people to get the essentials without the typical noise of media,
and media has become very lot at this point for

(09:39):
many people. At Informed, he has focused on building a
minimalist approach, so which means gonna like eliminate the clickbait,
the ads, but more importantly the biased that so much
of the news you get, and Informed is delivered by
AI but also humans, so you're getting a human touch
in there as well. So without further ado, let's bring

(10:00):
to the ambition stage. Kira, just Kim, Welcome to Maya.
How are you?

Speaker 4 (10:06):
Thank you so much for having me. It's delightful, delightful
to be welcome on your show, Maya.

Speaker 3 (10:11):
Yes, So, first of all, I cannot tell you that
you finding me, which I love, came in a nick
of time because I was really getting to the point
here where I was having just information burnout and I
didn't even feel like it was truly like good information.
It was just an overload of just a lot of
stuff that I don't have time within my day honestly

(10:32):
to short out facts all the time about things. So
tell us a bit about before you get into informed, first,
tell us about you, because I like for my listeners
to learn about our guests, because almost everybody is coming
from a place where they have a passion that then
turned into their purpose. So tell us a bit about you.

Speaker 4 (10:48):
Absolutely, it would be a pleasure. I mean, I love
that you phrase it as you know, passion turning into purpose.
I think that's that's very relatable to sort of my
my journey in my path. I've had the fortune and
the misfortune to grow up across a lot of information conflict.
I was born and raised in Ukraine, UH, and had

(11:11):
you know, almost a decade spent in Israel, where you know,
these are both some of the most you know, loud,
some of the loudest conflicts uh in the world today.
And I believe that all conflicts like that really begin
as information conflicts in the first place. And so I've
just seen misinformation, uh, information overload as tools of manipulation,

(11:36):
tools of misleading, and tools of you know, overall misinformation
that has really impacted societies, really impacted generations of people.
And you know, coming the United States about a decade ago, UH,
there really was sort of an observation of like wow,
like we really have the tools, with the technology that
we have, with the talent that we have to fix

(11:59):
the information infrastructure of our culture, of our society, to
be more mindful around the media that we consume it,
to be more mindful in the way that media is
presented to us. And so it's been a very personal
journey sort of you know, between Ukraine, Israel, and the
United States that sort of you know, developed this passion

(12:19):
turn into purpose of helping folks be informed without being influenced.

Speaker 3 (12:27):
And what a path to getting there because now you
talked about having this really diverse background of being obviously
growing up outside the US and then obviously growing in
the Ukraine and as well as Israel. So when you
come here, you said you've been here for roughly about
a decade, correct, Yeah, yeah, what was the first thing
or did you even notice how I would say news
is disseminated in the United States versus perhaps where you

(12:50):
see other places, because I've heard people flat out say
they have come to prefer BBC America or even Al
Jazeer watching the news then actually watching for like a
global perspective, so to speak, for those outlets versus watching
US news.

Speaker 4 (13:05):
Yeah, I love that you mentioned. I think it's it's
a really important But it's so like, you know, there
is a saying that if you want to hide something
from people, the best way is you put it right
in front of their nose. You put it right in
the middle of the middle of the center. And there
is some sort of a I wouldn't call it a
conspiracy because right I'm not really a conspiracy guy, but

(13:29):
there is a tendency, a trend, just a reality that
we sort of wake up to. In America, we seem
to be very overserved on news. So everywhere we go
go to a bar, we go and there is sort
of we're in a sports bar and there's sort of
an anchor on TV talking about the latest events, or
we turn on any channel on there someone talking about

(13:51):
the news to us. All the time we go online,
there's all this kind of news, really news content, and
a lot of Americans, I think, tend to say, well,
I know what's going on, I've seen the news, when
in reality, they haven't seen the news. What they've seen
is news commentary. And that's a really big distinction, right,

(14:14):
whether you're you know, interacting with primary source kind of
reporting factual information, or you're interacting with a pundit right
who is talking about and sort of digesting interpreting news
for you. And I feel like one of the crises
in America that we are most focused on is the

(14:34):
one that we observe and are responding to actively with
informed dot now is the idea that there is a
there is an abundance of news commentary, but there is
a there is a shortage slash you know, poverty of
factual you know, news itself. And I think to the

(14:56):
question around how does information get disseminated in America? It
seems to come through personality, through characters, through folks, you know,
talking heads on TV talking about news, commenting on news.
There's a lot of discussion, but there is very little
just news itself, just the facts themselves. That's part of

(15:17):
our observation behind what we're doing.

Speaker 3 (15:21):
So say someone says, okay, it sounds like I like
this idea of news without noise, which is your tagline,
which I love. So one, how do you, with then
creating informed decide to okay, this is worthy of reporting.
How do you find your sources? How do you separate
yourself out from kind of becoming more like something that's
identified as okay, even though informed is not a person,

(15:43):
it's an app. But how do you kind of I guess,
keep that through sense of just want to report the news,
Like where do you go for your sources?

Speaker 4 (15:52):
Totally? Yeah, I feel like there's a few questions packing
what you're saying, and I'm going to try to hit
all of them. But we're essentially emulating or essentially doing
what any person would do in their own journey of
trying to get to the truth of the matter.

Speaker 1 (16:07):
Right.

Speaker 4 (16:08):
So, so you wake up one day and there is
crazy updates. You know, government shut down, huge trade agreements
that are affecting everyday life, prices arising, there's inflation, unemployment,
AI is you know, things are going crazy. And I'm
not being hypothetical. This is just any day this past week. Right,
You wake up and there's stuff going on and say like, okay, well,

(16:28):
I need to figure out how this affects my life.
I need to understand what I need to know and
and I'd like to do that quickly. So you set
out on this journey of reading, cross checking a lot
of different sources, trying to figure out where the commonly
kind of agreed upon fact bases. What is truth and

(16:48):
what is you know, bias on the two different sides.
You're trying to essentially distill a lot of news commentary,
a lot of news content into like the base ground
truth facts as to what's actually going on. And that
process is extremely demanding, right, And a lot of busy people,
which is all of us, right, don't have the time

(17:09):
to spend a few hours a day sort of seething
through the noise and trying to figure out what is factual,
what is biased, what is sensationalism, and what is a
faithful retelling of a story, and how do you aggregate
that insight across multiple sources. We essentially do that work
for you, so instead of you having to spend a
couple of hours a day, which how long it takes

(17:31):
to figure out what the truth is, we do that
hard work for you with a real faithfulness, a real
sort of loyalty to primary sources. So we don't just
go and read journalism layer the journalistic layer for you.
We don't just read the press. We go to the
primary sources, right, whether that's a Supreme Court case or

(17:52):
the Bill of Congress or a United Nations proclamation or
an European Union resolution. We'd look at resources and distill
the facts from the horse's mouth instead of from the retelling, retelling, digesting,
interpreting journalists. In times when we don't have a primary source,

(18:13):
we would rely on the reporting layer, which is the
folks who are on the ground collecting evidence before that
evidence gets spun into the CNN version of the story
or the Fox News version of the story, or the
NBC version or the I don't know, you pick your outlet,
there's always some kind of color, there's some kind of

(18:35):
you know, interpretation that's put on it. And so we
focus through primary sources and primary reporting on doing the
research for you so that you can move on with
your day and just be informed and not drained or
overwhelmed or lose three hours of your day every day.
It's too much that.

Speaker 3 (18:54):
Would be agree because if you were going to go
through the due diligence of trying to fact at the
things that you reach. I mean what you just said,
cross checking, going to sources, and like you said, you're
not necessarily always getting something directly from the horse's mouth.
One of the things that we definitely hear within the
US news the news cycle is that everything definitely does

(19:14):
seem very politically driven. Whereas you know, you'll hear people say, oh,
if it's Fox News, then you know it must be
you know, Republican based, or it's going to be MAGA.
And if it's you know, CNN or something else, I'm MSNBC, Oh,
then that's more democratic, which means instantly news you know,
news stations are being pigeon held. How one we're gonna
make the We're gonna make the assumption even though you know,

(19:36):
I love One of my favorite sayings is from the
show Reacher that in an investigation, assumptions can kill. So
I want to retract that word and not say, but
most people will assume that, well, how is it that
informed is not somehow politically aligned? How would you answer that?

Speaker 4 (19:52):
Yeah? And I feel like it's it's it's crazy because
it's it's so hard to imagine for us to have
a non you know, I'm on biased, non political outlet,
because every player in the industry has sort of succumbed
to that force, whether that's through sponsorship or through advertisement
or some sort of other flavor of influence. Every player

(20:15):
in the media industry, in the news media industry has
sort of succumbed to the to the force of political
and biased sort of partisan games. And it's almost hard
to imagine because there's no precedent for it. But I
would actually say, it's not so hard to be objective
if you just stay true to the goal of Hey, like,

(20:36):
I don't have a bias that is blue or red
or any other color. I don't have a bias to
to share. Our whole mission has always been to be objective, neutral,
and you know, credible, reliable, And as soon as you
accept bias into your sort of you know, journalism, you
lose credibility. You know, at least we have the people

(20:58):
and if not with if not with more than that.
And so for us it almost feels like it's never
been hard to be neutral because we've never had the
goal to convince anyone of anything. How does this practically
work out? One is we look at the most essential facts.
We're not looking to sort of tell you what it means.

(21:19):
Sometimes we offer context, but we don't ever tell you know,
this is a good thing, or this is a bad thing,
this is scary, or this is frightening, or this is amazing.
We just tell you the essentials, right, They use themselves
without the commentary. And you know, people ask me all
the time, what does that actually entail? It entails answers
to three questions, just the what, the when, the where,

(21:43):
and the context around it, right, like may see maybe
some basic numerical context things that are all factual. Right,
so it stops short of saying how you should feel
about it. It stops short of saying, you know, is
this amazing or is this terrible. It's leaves the space
for you, the reader, to make up your own mind.

(22:04):
And so our reporting and the way we sort of
communicate is extremely concise.

Speaker 1 (22:09):
Right.

Speaker 4 (22:09):
We don't say much. We just say the things that matter,
the things that you need to know. But we limit
our writing on any given issue to just a couple
of lines, right, And so in our concision, we give
you the essentials without you know, bearing the risk of
influencing you, without attempting to interpret the information for you.

(22:30):
And it's a balance we've struck pretty early on that
We've been you know, rewarded by a great user feedback,
folks saying, hey, I really feel like this is not biased,
and we haven't really struggled with that. You know, it's
unless you have this nefarious goal of trying to make
people believe a certain thing, it's actually not hard to

(22:51):
just tell people the facts.

Speaker 3 (22:53):
There you go, everyone, you're tuned into Maya, My Ambition,
Your ambition. This is episode seventy seven, And of course,
as you know, we've rolling out something special I called
the Ambition Shows, which we bring on people to the
show to tell their stories about how they have taken
something they were very passionate about and made it into purpose.
And we know that things like that has to be
driven by they're motivated and they're ambitious, and that's what

(23:14):
we want to focus here on the podcast. So our
guests in this episode, let's talk about being informed because
it's really one of my things that drives me crazy
when I hear people often saying things KRAA that are
not factual. So of course discussing how to be informed
with us is Kara Shiskin, who is the CEO of Informed. Now, well,
we finally have a person who wants to contribute to

(23:36):
the show. I appreciate this, and YouTube can be active
in the show. If you are watching the show, you
can always type your questions into the chat. Whether you
are watching via YouTube or doing Instagram, and we're also
doing LinkedIn, you can type your comments and they will
appear on the screen. So this listener's question for you
would be this, how do you pretty much determine what

(23:56):
is worthy of reporting? Because I guess on a daily
news site, well there can be a lot of things
going on, So I guess their question is like, well,
how do you decide what's relevant what should be reported.

Speaker 4 (24:06):
On such an important question, and the central question of
what we're doing is we focus on the most significant news.
And the way we define significant news is actually, you know,
it's sand dramatic, but you know, we should focus on
these things world changing news. So we focus on things

(24:26):
that are changing the world actively, and we ask this
of the question of does this change the world or not?
Or is this just you know, a loud story. We
focus on two sort of sub questions. One is how
many people are being affected? And two is how much
are they being affected?

Speaker 3 (24:45):
Is this an.

Speaker 4 (24:46):
Incremental change in their life or is this something that
is a gigantic force is going to change their freedom,
change their ability to exercise choices right, be able to
purchase things, be able to select between options, just have optionality,
and of course matters of life and death, if their
lives are going to be threatened, that they're going to

(25:07):
be feeling safe. And so, you know, an easy contrast
that I like to surface is an example of something
that we do not think is world changing. Are hyper
local tragedies, right, And this is just an example. So
for example, if there is a huge bus crash or
a train wreck, god forbid, in you know, in a
part of you know, part of India. Right, It's it's

(25:29):
a human tragedy. Thirty people died, it's a it's a
terrible thing, and it certainly is newsworthy in that locale,
and it's certainly newsworthy for so many families that that
you know, that you know are connected to the story.
But when it comes to zooming out on the scale
of the world, that event, albeit tragic, is not going

(25:49):
to change the course of history. Contrast that with some
of the events that have been unfolding in the last
couple of weeks. You know, they the China meeting, the
arrival of the leader of Syria to the United States
for a meeting with Trump, the first meeting of Assyrian

(26:10):
and American leader since nineteen forty six. Right, these are
changes that are going to shift and are actively shifting
the freedom of hundreds of thousands and millions of people
in the world, Americans, Syrians all over. Is changing economic relations, right,
if you're looking at trade agreements from the European Union

(26:30):
or China and the United States, these are changing, you know,
generations worth of economic, social, cultural exchange that are going
to affect so many people's lives. Well beyond a you
know what is a local tragedy, and so that's sort
of the question that we go through is how much
does this change the world? And based on how much

(26:53):
does this affect the lives of how many people?

Speaker 3 (26:58):
Now that makes sense, And the thing is, I think
a lot of those things do need to be reported upon,
because just because it's not top of mind for someone
does not mean it's something that they shouldn't know. So
I know, part of what also makes and form unique
is this collaboration between AI and obviously humans. How does
that work? What does that mean?

Speaker 4 (27:17):
Absolutely, we sort of you know, and this is part
of a larger conversation about the ethics of AI, like
what is AI good for? What is AI dangerous for?
And I really think it's just another really powerful, maybe
an overpowered tool in our hands, and I think, you know,
using it for the right purposes is really important. So

(27:37):
in our case, I come from a background of technology,
a background in artificial intelligence, and I've never had a
sort of an ambiguity around it. You know, you're going
to be successful implementing a new technology if you know
what it's good for and you don't expect to do
things that it's bad for. So in our case, we
leverage AI to reduce the noise and increase our coverage

(28:00):
reading capacity well beyond human ability. So for example, you know,
contrasting with a traditional sort of news company or reporting
company or a news digest company, right, if you are
confined by the capacity of humans, you're not going to
be able to read as much as you would need
to get to truly sort of diversified broad cross reference coverage.

(28:25):
Where we leverage AI is what AI is good at,
which is a set of procedures that we describe as
scraping sort of collecting information online in doing that at
a pace and at a speed that like a human
team could never do. Right, we're able to access and
read something around you know, ten thousand articles a day,

(28:46):
sometimes an hour depending on depending on the day, and
be able to see through the information and see how
many times are they mentioning these events. Is there a
fact that keeps repeating that seems to be the commonly
agreed upon true across any publication you look at. Is
there certain words that are being used? So being able
to essentially read at a larger scale. But what we

(29:09):
don't do with the eye is we don't let it
make judgment decisions. We don't let it make calls that
would exacerbate bias or just translate bias from its input
to its output. And that's where we have what we
call the tech and talent combination. That's what we bring
in the human eye, and it's a diverse team of

(29:29):
folks who all look with one goal of is the
output of our work neutral, completely neutral, not a language
tone shift, not obviously our literal evidence, curation or even
sometimes a curatorial bias around our coverage. And so we
sort of bring in the AI for the grunt work

(29:52):
stuff that is really hard for humans to do successfully
and at scale and quickly. Then we remain with our
human judgment towards the most sort of editorial part of
actually making sure that there isn't just bias being carried
through by the machine and that we're able to, you know,
lend that human eye, which is really important, especially when

(30:14):
it's diversified, when it's not a single person but multiple people,
and every single person has the same goal of objectivity,
but they come through a slightly different lens of like Okay,
I'm a woman, I'm a man, i am gay, I
am straight, i am white, i am you know, a
person of color. It has that sort of you know,
multiple multiple layers of defense or rather of constructivity.

Speaker 3 (30:41):
Okay, okay, let's see another question. Kind of falls in
love what we're talking about here. They wanted to know.
It sounds like does inform dot com create custom news
based on user interests? So it sounds like they're saying,
can they select maybe what they want to do? I
guess the updates about.

Speaker 4 (30:58):
We get that question so much. One thing I'll mention
it's informed dot now, not informed dot com for anyone
who is looking to to c our website, which has
a lot more information about sort of our work in
our and our mission. We are currently focusing on our
flagship product, which is sort of the global citizen coverage,

(31:22):
but it is sort of angled for an American, right,
So it's we serve nationwide America. We're the largest news
by text toll free number in the US and we've
also gone live in Canada, so we sort of serve
the American who views herself as a global citizen, right,

(31:42):
So we sort of focus on a curation of world
changing global news. We are currently also developing and some
of these are already live. Thematic focuses right. So for example,
informed dot now, healthcare, informed dot now, technolog informed dot now,

(32:02):
you know, real estate. These are our in limited access
right now to kind of our our VIP base. I mean,
if anyone is interested in testing our products before we
release them, we are very very glad. But we do
not importantly, we do not let a user handpick exactly
the type of content they they will see in their

(32:25):
tech So we don't do like a hyper personalization. We
do kind of thematic customization that you can opt into,
but you cannot hyper personalize based on your own individual view.
And this happens for a couple of reasons. One is
we are still in the middle of this debate as
a team and as a as a company whether that

(32:45):
would be creation of echo chambers that is, you know,
already a huge issue online and is that something we
want to facilitate. And two is our bar for quality
of editorial and accuracy is so high and it goes
through not just the technological but also a human process

(33:06):
that personalizing at a scale of every single individual, and
we have a lot of subscribers would be very difficult
for us to sustain the quality that we are absolutely
not looking to sacrifice.

Speaker 3 (33:18):
No, I mean that would probably be quite a task
to try to like tailor everything to what a person
interest might be. So it sounds like what you're really reporting,
Like you said, your globals is in top of mind
to kind of go from there. Another person post a question,
is it free subscription based kind of how does it work?

Speaker 4 (33:37):
Yeah? Absolutely, because we because we don't have any advertisements,
we don't have any sponsors, which is exactly how we're
able to stay true to the reader right and to
the reader alone. As a result, we refuse any sort
of revenue from an advertiser, any sort of revenue from
a sponsor, or anyone who would sort of bring in

(34:00):
an interest of their own and you know, insist that, hey,
I'm paying you money, I'm sponsoring your content, so you must,
you know, you must write about you know, red politics,
or about blue politics, or about these issues or about
those issues, because we refuse all those influences. We only
accept revenue from our user because that's the way that

(34:22):
incentive based. We can align our interests only with the
interests of our readers. And so the way it works
literally is it's free to join, it's free to start,
is free to see for yourself, and it's very easy.
You just you know, click one link on on our
website and it puts you in a in a week

(34:43):
long free trial that shows you the power of facts,
shows you the power of factual information and how easy
it can be to access it through informed of now.
And then if you feel like, hey, this is actually
an influence I'd like to have in my life, this
is the way I'd like to consume information, then we
ask for a subscription. And our subscriptions are a nine

(35:05):
dollars a month, so I say eight ninety nine, which
you once up being about one hundred dollars a year.
But we like to think of ourselves as the last
new subscription you'll ever need, because our coverage cuts across
every every other coverage of every other news organization essentially.
And so if you, for example, we're choosing a new service,

(35:28):
if you go for the New York Times, we're only
going to get a very very particular coverage of what
they think is important there kind of you know, take
on things. If you go for the Wall Street Journal
or Washington Post, you'll get that. And so if you
want to have a balanced perspective, you're going to have
to combine a couple of subscriptions, all of which are

(35:49):
sort of more expensive than us. We are both the
cheapest and the broadest so to speak, service, and not
to mention, we save the most time because our whole
goal is to give you back the time.

Speaker 1 (36:03):
You know, try to.

Speaker 4 (36:04):
Take up the least amount of attention while still giving
us giving you the value. Versus with any other kind
of information service, you're playing the game against each other.
You want to get informed and get out while they
want to hold you, you know, when they want to
clickbait you and they want to hold you for as
long as possible.

Speaker 3 (36:24):
Actually like that that you like they want to, you know,
kind of hold you hostage. You want to get informed
and get out. I'd like that. It's true. You want
your news, simple, clean, without all of the extra commentary
that might come with it. And one of the things
that I have to say is, and people should expect
that if there are no ads like you know, and
none of those kinds of things, there's no clickbait, which means,
like you said, those the reason you see those things

(36:45):
most of their revenue generation for anybody generally who is
using them. And I do think that it's really important
to understand that this to me for nine dollars a month,
Let's be honest, you almost pay more than a couple
of coffee at Starbarks, seriously, and it's not informing you
about anything. So I always tell people the minute you
want to say they think it's too much, I'm going

(37:07):
to say, if you are a person like you said,
this is for leaders. This is for people who want
to be informed, you know, looking for their news to
be simple and clean and not all the clutter and
the noise. The nine dollars has nothing to spend. I
feel like the person who would haggle about that is
probably the person who is not all that serious about news.
But I've liked the news people like who really want like, hey,
I just absolutely want to experience this. Give me the

(37:30):
top things that you know overnight, maybe that people were
talking about. That's what I want to know, and then
I can decide to do further research based on what
was provided on the inform dot now app. By the way, guys, obviously,
and you see a QR code at the top of
the screen. If you scan that, it'll take you right
to being able to you know, sign up for reform
and like you said there's a week free trial, so

(37:51):
you're not committing to anything. It's you sign up, you
try it and if you like kind of you got,
you know, your nuggets of news. You know, I'm assuming
is it kind of more of a morning delivery of
like the text.

Speaker 4 (38:04):
Right, you get to pick what time you'd like to
receive the text, and we should also mention my I
feel like we've neglected this. But the news comes to
you by text, right, So it isn't an application for
a website. The news that you get is SMS texted
to you. So instead of going through the motions of
having to go to a website, click around, do I

(38:27):
acrobatics around advertisements and pop ups and now you have
to remove your ad blocker. Now you have to click here,
and then you have to a video pop up. Instead
of doing this kind of hunt for the news or
which some people appreciate if they have a lot of
free times, news comes to you, and as it comes
to you, it has already been reduced away from bias,

(38:48):
away from clickbait, no sort of a solicitations of advertisements
or anything of the kind. And it's completely privacy respective.
No one's going to be actually asking you to accept
cookie or accept tracking or you know, sell your browsing
history to this website is completely privacy preserving and actually

(39:09):
a lot of our users are anonymous, so we don't
actually know anything about them beyond their phone number, and
we don't need to because we don't. We don't sell information.
We will never violate your privacy. The way we're designed
is intentionally to you know, give you the value while
taking the least from you, taking the least attention, and

(39:30):
so it brings them back. This conversation about like value
right is sometimes someone when they hear about our service,
they're like, what paying nine dollars for news? I would
never do that, That's ridiculous. I get news for free.
It's like, you don't get news for free, you don't
get used, you get used commentary for free. But getting
news is.

Speaker 5 (39:50):
Actually, you know, quite expensive, and you're paying for that
news commentary with your time, with your attention, and often
with an emotional cos right, an emotional response outrage, anger, fear,
which most news commentary works over time to try to stoke.

Speaker 3 (40:08):
And you said something I think that people have probably
said to themselves, why do I get so many what
feels like spam emails because ultimately you've gone someplace, you
took the clickbait, you know, and boom, now your information
has been put out there and now you're getting all
these emails about, you know, different things that you don't want.
And I love the idea about the privacy piece to

(40:30):
this that you go in. It's pretty simple. You know,
you plug in your phone number. It sounds like it's
the only information you're asked to get and it doesn't
go anywhere from there, so you don't have to worry
about all of a sudden you're going to start to
get all these advertisements or these different things coming through
your text, which often can happen when you sign up
for things. So that piece of for nine dollars, like
nothing is really free. So granted you may have felt

(40:51):
you were getting something for free because you were reading it,
but ultimately, as you were the consumer, that person whoever
was producing whatever it is that you're consuming, I had
to find a way to get paid for it. So
this is just very clear and authentic. It's like you know,
and it's no different than people, for instance, who still
love to buy a newspaper. So, like I said, I
think you know your audience, and I think you thought
well about this, like, this isn't going to be for

(41:12):
everybody necessarily, It's going to be for those people that
really want to be informed. They're definitely newspeople. They're people
who probably still buy their Sunday paper, you know, if
you can find one these days, you know what I mean.
But I think it's important and you're clear about this
isn't for everybody. But I'd like to say if you
decided you want to kind of up your information and

(41:33):
news game, this is a really good place to start.
And you can start that first week for free and say,
you know something, everything that I got this really this
worked for me. It kind of set me down the
path to do more research. So scan the QR code
that's right there, try it out for a week. This
is called the call to action everybody, as you can
see scrolling at the bottom of screen. Informed Now you

(41:54):
can go ahead and go there as well. As it
looks like if I remember correctly, you can text hello
to eight four or four for zero six four six
three six as well, and then that can start the
process for you as well. So there's plenty of ways
that people can try this out. You know, for no
cost to them. It's not going to cost you anything.

(42:16):
It's totally free coming out the gates. And then you
say to yourself, in today's climate, with everything that's going on,
and as I tell people, you got to quiet down
how much you're taking into your life on a daily basis,
especially with the news, because unfortunately, and it's true, and
I think most people get this, that news for most
people at this point has almost become anxiety driven that

(42:38):
you know, it's whether we're trying to figure out how
to get out of the government shut down, you know,
So imagine the person who's tuning in because maybe they
lost their snap benefits, or maybe that the person who
you know has a federal job and isn't going they're
kind of tied to the news because they need to
know what's going on more often than not. And other
people want to know what's going on because, like you said,

(42:58):
they are global citizens, and when you're a global citizen,
you do want to know what's going on in the
rest of the world. And that's why I asked you,
you know, how do you feel about how we report
news here, especially the Ukraine and Israel? Okay, how do
you feel about because most Americans can only consume what
they see in front of them. I always tell people

(43:18):
it's probably not everything you think it is. You should
probably dive a little deeper. So, even on those two subjects,
when you look at the news, how would you grade
Let's say, how the US is reporting on the Ukraine.
Let's start with that.

Speaker 4 (43:30):
It's so hard. I mean, first of all, I love
all the things you mentioned. I mean, it's like, what
we're trying to do is, in many ways, revive the
dignity of being informed, because it is a dignity and
it's a global citizen dignity that's been robbed of American people,

(43:51):
of the everyday American right, because the rich executive, right,
the people that have a lot of resources to spend
on information, actually have you know, information services that are
very powerful, right, that don't look anything like the news
that the everyday American gets. So we're looking to give
the power of facts and the power of like information

(44:13):
services designed for the reader to the everyday American, which
has been robbed of factuality. It has been robbed of facts,
and it's very unfortunate. So it's a real generation, multiple
generations affected by this. And so we're looking to give
that power to the everyday American. And it's sort of
a lost art, right when the everyday person looks at

(44:35):
the coverage on Ukraine on Israel, there's so much sensationless right,
Israel did something terrible, right, or or or Gaza is experiencing,
you know, you know, something something dramatic, right, or Ukraine
Russia is this new escalation of aggression. Ukraine is is
doing X y Z. It's it's very hard because it's

(44:56):
it's sort of like sometimes you just look at the
headlines and you you realize if you just take a
step back, this article never means to inform me. This
article is looking to trigger me. This is trigger news.
It's trying to evoke fear, anger and generally put outrage.

Speaker 3 (45:15):
Right.

Speaker 4 (45:15):
And so you know, I can't comment so directly on
saying like the way you know, American outlets are reporting
on Israel, Gaza and Ukraine Russia. It's hard to say
because they're all doing in different ways through different kind
of you know, color lenses, red blue, you know, et cetera,

(45:35):
the political kind of color. But there they are all
guilty of the same sensationalism. And I think that is
like an even greater sin than having bias, Like it's
okay if you have a perspective as an outlet, you know,
you can you get to talk about the issue in
your own light. You get to have the bias that

(45:55):
you that you bring it should be transparent about it,
but you should. You have the right to be a
biased publication.

Speaker 5 (46:01):
Right.

Speaker 4 (46:01):
You'll attract some people, you will repel others. That's okay.
But the sensationalizing that happens across every side of the political,
social cultural spectrum, that everything is being dramatic, everything is
being you know, life and death, and that I think
is a really toxic and in a very like it's

(46:22):
a guilt across the board of the reporting and the
journalistic layer. It's it's a real guilt. And I think
that is almost a bigger problem to be solved, the
sensationalizing of everything. Then the bias piece. As long as
you're transparent about bias, you know, people can opt into
your bias or not. But the sensationalism is malicious because

(46:47):
people can't really tell, Okay, is this actually the worst
thing in the world, or is this just being overly
dramaticized to be that? And and I think I think
that's the kind of the primary issue with old news,
but especially with the two loudest conflicts of the world
right now.

Speaker 3 (47:06):
And what I like about what you just said, which
is probably a good place to kind of to leave it,
is that ultimately everyone should be sitting in the seat
where they're making the decision about how they feel about
what is being reported. And I would say, you know,
hopefully everyone at least at some point realized that, you know,
there's three sides to the coin, there's not just two.

(47:28):
And so if you're looking to be a person who's
more informed versus just being influenced by what you're hearing,
you'll dig a little deeper and find out more to
the story. And people are often very surprised here when
they do like, oh wow, I didn't know that. I'm like, well,
you know why you didn't know it, because most of
the time they realize that they bury something in print,
people won't go looking for it because they say, if
you don't want people to be informed, just put it

(47:49):
in print, and they won't read it because people just
don't like to read me more. They just like to
have people talk and tell them, you know, what's going on.
Versus putting the due diligence in into educating themselves about it.
So you have now provided a tool that people have
within a lot of their control. It looks like there's
another question we can take before we close up. Well, okay,
I don't I can ask you this question, but I

(48:11):
think I don't. But you know what, this is a
fair question. And this might be a question because people
are feeling probably maybe a little money sensitive right now
with things that are going on, So they're asking that
this subscription can be monthly or is an annual commitment.
So it sounds like they're saying, do I have to
pay for it all upfront or can I just subscribe
to it monthly?

Speaker 4 (48:28):
Yeah? Absolutely, We actually only do monthly commitments to again
give you the power to decide, right, I think annual
contracts are a little I don't know, there are weird
kind of pressure that we are not interested in putting
on our users. So we've actually always done monthly subscriptions.

(48:49):
That's our default option. And you should be able to
change your mind whenever and not feel like you are
being strung along and being kind of held hostage. Like
we're not in the business of keeping anyone against their will.
So all of subscriptions are are monthly. And I should
also mention because I think, you know, we've been getting
this question a good amount recently because people are sensitive

(49:09):
about money and we are going through financial contortions in
this country right now. Yes, so I should mention. You know,
if folks are really you know, as you go through
the free trial and you're feeling like you want the
power of facts, and you just you're a few dollars short,
and you know, nine dollars is a lot for you,

(49:30):
which I understand, just text us. You know, we have
a line of communication with every single user. That's how
we sort of talk to you. You can just text
back saying, hey, like I'm in I'm in a financial
I'm in a place where I have financial needs right
now and I am not able to afford, but I
would like to have the power of the service, and

(49:52):
we can offer sort of a you know, a discount
for folks who really want to use informed but don't
feel that they can pay the full price. We are
not you know, we don't play you know, we don't
play capitalist like that. So you're happy to help and
make it accessible to folks if they're sensitive on the

(50:13):
price point.

Speaker 3 (50:14):
See that right there speaks so much valumes that you
don't want people to not have the opportunity to be
informed and to have access to a tool that can
really help them to kind of navigate sometimes what are
very difficult waters when you're trying to be an informed person,
you know you're not. And I love the fact you're like, no,
no annual subscriptions. We're not trying to pigeonhole people. See

(50:35):
that right there can tell people like your passion and
your purpose are so closely aligned that you really want
to give people the opportunity to have access to information.
And that sounds like a crazy thing to say, like
people should have access to information, but I'm talking about
let me rephrase that good information, not just there's a
lot of you know, information being pumped out. They're the

(50:55):
people That does not mean it's necessarily good. And I
like that again, you're putting the control back in the
user's hands, like, hey, we don't want that to be
the reason you can't afford to be informed. Any parting
thoughts for our listeners. You've been a fantastic guest. Thank
you so much.

Speaker 4 (51:10):
Yeah, it means a lot and I really think just
jumping on what you were sharing, it's it's we're designing
an experience to help you make up your own mind.
We are proudly the only media company media service that
has been designed from the very beginning with the reader
only in mind and with the with the sort of mission,

(51:32):
and it's really a public service mission that's been sort
of masqueraded as a company, but it's really very much
like a public service mission to just give folks an
option to make up their own mind on anything, on everything,
without having it made up for them, having that perspective
imposed on them. We give you the power to make

(51:53):
up your own mind, and everything we do is in
service of that goal. And so if it feels like
it speaks to you and you feel like you're you
want to join us on this media mindful mission, on
this sort of power of facts mission, I welcome you
to you know, get in touch join us. May mentioned
a couple of ways to learn more about us. It's

(52:14):
throw website, which is informed not Now, or text a
text our number directly. The twelve three number is eight
four four four oh six info, which is the same
as eight four four four oh six four six three
six right, so many numbers. I know I said too

(52:36):
many numbers, but we look forward to funding our people
on this journey.

Speaker 3 (52:41):
Thank you. I love that you know, just the idea
that the bringing back in tigrated media. Everyone. This has
been Kirakin, CEO of Informed Now, thank you. I appreciate you.

Speaker 4 (52:54):
Thank you for having me.

Speaker 3 (52:55):
Alrighty, so everybody, this is episode seventy seven, highly informative.
So a couple of things are takeaways. One, being informed
is what we choose and what we want to be
here when we listen to my ambition and your ambition.
So ways to connect with inform dot now. Obviously you
can scan the QR code that's at the top of
the screen. I'm trying to make things a little bit
easier for people as we kind of move through and

(53:18):
we do different things. I know it's not always easy,
but as Kira mentioned, you can always text hello to
eight four four four zero six informed, which inform info,
which happens to be four six three six, which I
didn't even notice that when I was putting this together.
And of course you can always if you happen to
be sitting at your computer and right now is just
easier to kind of jump on the web you can

(53:39):
get You can go to www. Dot Informed dot now
and sign up. Remember this is all text based, so
even if you jump on and you sign up, moving forward,
you're going to get your information from them via text
and no other way. And look, you can even ask
questions back when was the last time someone wanted to
inform you? But also still give you an outlet to

(54:00):
be able to ask questions or to get more information.
So that part is so so key. So I'll put
up my last graphic for those people who are visual,
because I know my people. Some people are more visual
than others. Here you go right here, you know, go ahead,
you can take a picture of that if you didn't
do the QRR code, which'll take you right there. Same thing.
It's informed, it's news without noise. And if you're like

(54:23):
me right about now, that's exactly what I need in
my life. I don't know about you. So we're wrapping
up this episode. Make sure we're actually doubling up this week.
On Saturday, we're gonna actually have episode seventy eight and
we're gonna have on Leticia Pearson, who granted she's a
reality star, but I say this loosely because she's a

(54:45):
reality star because she created this show called The Bell
Collective that airs on the own network, which is the
Oprah Network, and she's also the founder of the Women
Brunch Foundation. The thing that's so unique about this particular
are this reality show and I'm not really a reality
the show person. I will tell you this is that
it's one base in the place you least expect, Jackson, Mississippi.

(55:06):
I promise you, Jackson, Mississippi. I'm not throwing shade at you.
I am not, but if you've ever been there, you
kind of go, hmm, it's not a lot going on.
Well until I actually had a chance to meet Letitia
and talk to her about what's going on. She has
a mission to bring back something called Farish Street, which
used to be a prominent area in Jackson before the
great migration of actually African Americans from the South, which

(55:29):
happened between like the fifties, sixties and seventies, and then
a lot of people left Jackson, Common North. Matter of fact,
quite a few of them landed in Chicago, believe it
or not. She has this mission to kind of revitalize
that area. But what her show is focused on, this
isn't banter about a lot of women wanting to be
caddy and messy. She brought in women in Jackson, Mississippi
that are entrepreneurs and how they are themselves revitalizing Jackson

(55:54):
and bringing kind of a new image and letting people
know it's not the place that it used to be.
So she herself does these women brunches that started in Jackson,
but now she goes around the country and it's about
empowerment for women. She does that. She also has a
mental health therapist on there who has her own practice
that's grown. She has a radio host, she has quite
a few, she's a dentist. She has all these women

(56:15):
who have pretty much taken their passion aligned with their
purpose and they're doing big things in Jackson. So definitely,
you know, check it out. Again. I'm not a reality
show person, but i'm season three in they earned season six,
and I have to say there's some moments in there
I'm like, come on, ladies, But outside of that, it's
really interesting watching how these women really have built what

(56:37):
for many of them has turned into like empires, and
it's really interesting coming out of Jackson, Mississippi. So make
sure you tune in this Saturday at two pm Central Time,
and Latisha Pearson will be our guest telling us about
the Bell Collective and things that she's been doing and
what her passion and purpose are as well. So everyone,
as you know, I always say thank you for listening

(56:58):
to this episode. I said, the whole purpose of this
podcast is to help you to identify your ambition, harness
that motivation, to help you acquire the success and satisfaction
you speak, not just in life, but I want you
to focus on your everyday life. Remember, you can always
find episodes of Maya anywhere there is a podcast platform

(57:19):
you're gonna find me. So it can be on iTunes,
Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Amazon Audibles, Spotify to search Maya my Ambition,
your ambition. Of course, you can always listen to episodes
of the show at my website mayadesk speaks dot com.
Make sure you check out my two blogs. I'm highly
passionate about my weekly inspiration blog as well as my

(57:39):
blog that's focused on menopause, which is me on pause
a little play onwards there. Of course, the easy way
too is if you subscribe to my YouTube channel, you're
always know when there's an episode coming up and I
managed to get myself together because my YouTube channel, along
with all my other social media plans are all Maya
Speaks to you. So you can find me on Facebook,
Instagram as well as x and following the show. This

(58:03):
has been episode seventy seven. Let's talk about being informed,
and I hope everyone took this very serious because right
now we are in the midst of what i'd say,
some difficult times and a lot of this get a
ton of information like literally dumped on us. This is
a chance and an opportunity for you to be able
to get news that has been filtered out. No noise,

(58:25):
no click, no ads, none of that, just simple information
for you to be able to say, level up your
news game because right about now it's a tough thing
to do in today's society because a lot of things
are very biased. And here we want you to be
informed and not influenced. So until next time, everyone you know,

(58:45):
I always say this, remember your present becomes your past
and your future is no more. Those are not my words.
I stole them from Pearl Jam. That's one of my
favorite groups. Love the song that comes from So make
the most of every day. So stay safe, that's the
key thing be well. As I love to always say

(59:07):
to people, just keep being amazing, be you, and don't
worry about what you're not. Just enjoy who you are
right now, That's what matters the most, all right, anybody
until next time. Shall Whether you're.

Speaker 2 (59:22):
On the go or listening on your cell phone, tablet
or laptop, you can find the show and the iTunes,
Google and iHeartRadio platforms the respect.

Speaker 3 (59:31):
I believe this is going to be our finest hour.

Speaker 2 (59:33):
Just search my my ambition, your ambition, and get ready
to be inspired and motivated to harness your ambition.