Tune in with Scott and I as we discuss what we can learn from how we speak and write and how technology can help improve our communication.

In this snippet of the Modern Lending Podcast Live….

• You probably are worried more about your pitch when you should be listening to whats being said
• Find out what Scott’s original concept for Cyrano.ai 
• Your Customer is literally telling you everything you need to know
• This Zoom plugin is a game changer.

Episode Transcribe

[Alec] Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another Modern Lending Podcast Live. I’m Alec Hanson. It is 10:00 AM and you are joining us across men, multiple platforms today. We’re on Twitter, we’re on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram. No, not Instagram, YouTube. That’s the one. We’ll get on Instagram eventually. I love you Instagram. Today, man, this is gonna be fun conversation. Number one, we’re gonna go down a rabbit hole. So I hope you’re ready to like go deep and get weird. Number two, I’ve known Scott Sandland for years. We went to high school together. This guy has been somebody I’ve looked up to for a long time. And what he’s doing today with artificial intelligence, hopefully makes you nervous and excited at the same time. And by the way, we’re not even gonna talk about just artificial intelligence. We’re gonna talk about what’s going on in hypnotherapy, and all the things he’s doing, and why he started his company. But pay attention. Pay attention to this because what words you use matter. And we’re gonna unpack that. ‘Cause if you’re in sales or management or leadership or whatever, the words you use matter. And so let’s understand that with Scott Sandland. Let’s bring him on right now.

*Modern Lending Intro Jingle*

[Alec] What’s up, dude?[Scott] How are you, man?[Alec] I’m so good, man. It’s gonna be a blast ’cause many people don’t know our relationship, right? And so I wanna set the stage here really quick for everybody to really understand how you and I kinda grew up together. But first, you saved me from grinding my teeth.[Scott] That’s me. Yeah, I’m the guy.[Alec] You actually stopped me from grinding my teeth. And this is the funny story as we open this up, and then I want you to share your background and all this fun stuff. ‘Cause when I met you professionally, obviously I knew you growing up and all that stuff ’cause you were water polo and you had that killer body and you’re just shredded all kinds of stuff.[Scott] Thanks for saying so. That got in the past tense by the way, that felt good.[Alec] Yeah, well, I mean we’re a little older now. Our buddy Kevin Kramer was like, I was joking about I’m grinding my teeth and he’s like, hey Scott’s a hypnotherapist. And I was like, what do you mean? And I’m like, he’s been like the circus. Like he’s like the guy that[Scott][Scott] I’m at the fair.[Alec] And makes you dance at the fair.[Alec] He’s like, no, he seriously does this. And you should see him. ‘Cause I was grinding through like full on like football[Scott][Scott] Mouth guards.[Alec] Mouth guards. And three sessions with you, dude.[Scott] Yup.[Alec] Three sessions, and I don’t grind my teeth anymore. So from that story, who are you Scott? Like what doing?[Scott] We can leave it there. And, everyone use a loan depot and don’t grind your teeth and wash your hands, right? So, yeah. Alec and I have known each other. We’ve known each other what? 25 years more.[Alec] Yeah.[Scott] But yeah, so 20 something years ago, I was the world’s youngest hypnotherapist. And I was a water polo player like you said. I was in a car accident where I ended up on pavement which destroyed my shoulders. My shoes flew off, like all really bad stuff. And I found out that night, by the way, I was with Randy when that happened. Of course I was.[Alec] Yes.[Scott] So like I found out that night, that opiates don’t really work on me. Like they help a little bit, but like my tolerance for getting wasted is way different than my tolerance for getting pain relief. So the amount I would have to take in order to have any kind of sustained help was terrible. So long story short, I tried everything and totally skeptical, like last ditch effort, I tried hypnosis and it worked better than everything else combined. So, I’m a skeptical dude, but if it works, it works. And so, I was a water polo player in college. So all my friends were athletes. Everybody had chronic pain, and I just started doing the hypnosis that the woman was doing for me, for my shoulders on my friends, and it kind of worked. And I was like, oh, this is cool, I’m helping people. And the rest is history. I started doing it in drug rehab centers, started doing it with professional athletes, started doing it in dental offices for like oral surgery, when people are allergic to anesthesia, they would use me. Things like that.[Alec] Well, so I really wanna talk about that for two minutes before we get into what you’re doing with AI and all this crazy stuff. But like, it blew my mind a little bit when you’re talking about using hypnotherapy because people in like oral surgeries when they couldn’t take pain medication. And all of a sudden through hypnotherapy, they could tolerate it. I mean, what is that like?[Scott] So here’s what’s crazy is like, that is really old school stuff. Like before the discovery of ether and things like that, that’s what was being done like in India, like thousands of years ago, they were using meditation and hypnosis like stuff for dental procedures and things like that all the time. But what it’s like when someone’s getting a medical procedure. Like I’ve done skull surgeries with people where they’re like, it’s really stressful. Like I don’t enjoy it. Everyone involved is like, they’re used to having the anesthesiologist tell them when everything’s working.[Alec] Yeah, you’re walking in, and like[Scott][Scott] Yeah, and it’s like me, like with my hands in my pockets. And, they’re like, they’ll look at you the first couple times like, so now? Really now. And I was like, yeah. How do you know? It’s my job. So I’ve done all that. So words matter to me.[Alec] Well, that was weird. Did I lose audio?[Scott] What was that?[Alec] I don’t know. Somebody like joined our call. I don’t know.[Scott] Oh, that’s exciting.[Alec] Keep on. By the way that’s because your wife stole all your podcast gear, and now you’re forced to use all this gear, right?[Scott] Yeah, I’m definitely using the B team set up here. My wife and I are both on podcasts right now, we’re competing. And she took all the gear. And so[Scott][Alec] You don’t have the lighting, you get the other mic.[Scott] No, I own all the lights. I’ve got the ring light. I’ve got the whole thing. I promise my webcam is propped up on a water bottle right now. [Alec] For sure, yeah. All right. So years of hypnotherapy, you’ve led conferences, you’re on podcasts and all this stuff, and then you decide to start a company. What’s going on with that?[Scott] Yeah, so I wanted to scale. Like I just one[Scott]to[Scott]one I did hours with people, and helping people and that’s great, but I wanted to scale how I could help people. And I was really looking at the teen crisis, right? Just people don’t know this, people really don’t pay attention to this. Suicide is the second leading cause of death under 24 in America. 3000 high school students attempt suicide every single day. And 80% of them have very obvious warning signs, and many of them have asked for help. So it’s this huge problem. And that doesn’t even get into like over[Scott]medication or dropping out of school or any of that stuff. I mean, that’s just like final tier stuff.[Alec] Yeah.[Scott] So I looked at it and I was like, we need to do something about this. So I was working with at[Scott]risk teens and adolescents. I got set up with seven or eight drug rehab centers locally. And I hired a team of about 10 people. And we were doing group sessions. We were doing 40 hours of group therapy a week. We were doing one[Scott]on[Scott]ones that come from that. We were seeing a thousand people a week for years. And about two years into doing that as the executive director of the clinic, I realized we were still chasing everything, and we were still getting there too late. And a good friend of mine who I’ve known for a long time. He’s a neuro linguist and sociologist. He and I were having lunch and a school shooting had happened, and we saw it on the TV. And he’s like, you know what’s crazy is every time there’s a school shooting, kids grab their phones because they know their phones are more powerful than they are. And I was like, that to me was okay, I need to stop trying to scale with humans and I need to scale with phones because kids trust phones, they don’t trust adults. And so they will tell their secrets to a phone.[Alec] And it’s almost true of like adults these days cause I joke about it all the time.[Scott] Increasingly.[Alec] We don’t go to local professionals or referral partners anymore and ask for questions. We go to our phones and look stuff up.[Scott] Yeah.[Alec] So the trend is pushing way through youth, but it’s fascinating to hear you say it from a youth person.[Scott] Yeah, I mean, people say like, oh, those darn millennials. Millennials are in their thirties. Like I’m a millennial.[Alec] Paying taxes, millennials.[Scott] Yeah, these damn millennials worrying about their parents. Anyway, so like as soon as I heard that, I was like, okay, I need to figure this out. And you know, I’ve always been like a tech nerd. And so I just started reading it and learning and figuring out how artificial intelligence works, how natural language processing works. And I saw this real opportunity where the people who are building, like the reason Chatbots suck, and Chatbots are pretty terrible.[Alec] Yeah, they’re widely used.[Scott] Yeah, they’re widely used cause they’re easy and they’re cost efficient, but one of the main reasons they’re so terrible and frustrated ’cause they’re basically a frequently asked questions interface. And it’s because they’re built by data scientists who care about math and correct answers. And the thought leaders in that industry talk about openly, their goal to have complete, accurate responses, which is the opposite of effective communication. And I saw that[Scott][Alec] Why? Unpack that. You can’t just like leave that out there. Why is accurate responses the opposite of effective communication?[Scott] Because effective communication is about messaging. It’s about knowing what to say for the audience. It’s about being able to feel the room. The cliche is that show “Big Bang Theory” where the main character has Asperger’s. And so he’s always accurate and complete, but that’s really frustrating to interact with. And the point of the show is that it’s frustrating to interact with. And if you get rid of the laugh track, it’s somewhere between annoying and sad.[Alec] And painful, yeah, I was gonna say, yeah.[Scott] And that is the prototype data scientist. And that is the prototype, like the guys who, by the way, are way smarter than I am. Like the Lex Friedman’s and the Richard Soldiers and like these guys out of MIT and Stanford who are brilliant, hardworking, talented people that are better than me and most categories in life are wrong about this. And I just saw it like “Moneyball,” where there was like this opportunity where everyone was going in this direction and they just didn’t see this. And I was like, oh, if I can build a robot that like cares more about empathy, that’s what matters. And empathy is about genuinely caring about the other person’s situation. So the difference between sympathy and empathy, sympathy is you’re having a bad day, that sucks. Empathy is you’re having a bad day, how can I help? Situation.[Alec] You have this desire to help teens. Teen suicide’s up here. It’s a tragedy. Now they’re on their phones. You’re realizing, hey, there’s a connection here. How do we bridge this? Maybe AI is a solution to start talking to these teens.[Scott] Yeah.[Alec] How does that turn into what you have today?[Scott] Yeah, so I started building it, started learning, and I realized AI when you’re building it, it’s not very good at first, and it just gets better and better and better. And so I was like, oh, where I don’t want to learn is in the teen crisis hotline. Like suicide hotline is not the place to get a C minus. And so I was like, okay, I need to find a place where I can prove this works. Keep refining my models, keep refining my data, and make funding happen. And I was like, oh, that’s sales. Sales, there’s a winner. Like you can see if the conversation works, and there’s money in it. So we built everything to be influential sales, high value conversations, so that we can go save lives.[Alec] Well, and that’s where we started talking about this, interestingly enough. And I remember it over whatever cocktails it was, but this concept of a listening AI that can pay attention to the word choice being used, and that can come back around and deliver real[Scott]time results of like how to best communicate with somebody. I mean, I really want you to break it down ’cause when I posted this, some of you guys saw the article I posted, thank you for sharing it. But there’s a Zoom plugin you’re leveraging where these calls are being transcribed and then the plugins reading it and then coming back. It’s almost a little, feels a little creepy.[Scott] Oh yeah. It could definitely go like somewhere down the “Black Mirror.” Like there’s, I think two episodes of “Black Mirror” that are about my company. It’s super creepy.[Alec] In layman’s term, like break down what it does. Where’s the position? Like give everybody the core of this thing.[Scott] Words are a behavior. The way you speak about things is an external set of data points, right? Like the way Google pays attention to what you search for. Good salespeople pay attention to what you say. So a lazy example is I want to buy a car. I need to buy a car. I will buy a car. The difference between want, will, and need, is a hierarchy of commitment. Or, I’ll try to stop by. It means I’m not coming. [Alec] For sure.[Scott] And so there’s like all these different things that as humans, we just know, like we just understand that. And state[Scott]of[Scott]the[Scott]art right now in the industry is a thing called sentiment analysis, which is like fourth grade reading level. Did they like it or not? And what we’re talking about is what humans can do. Know what fourth graders can do. What like a good sales person can do is like read the room and like feel their audience out and say, okay, this person is this type of guy. And I can tell by what he’s saying, that he’s gonna value just bottom line results. And I’m not gonna give him details and bore him to death. Or this is the person who needs all the homework to make their own decision. And a good salesperson, I mean, an average sales person with experience can do that. And so, we were just looking at how you can measure that. So my co founder is a sociologist, neuro linguist who has like written books on sales language. And he and I just got to work on these categories of words. And it’s very similar to the way the human brain does it. We just built a computer to do it so that you don’t have to.[Alec] So I love what you said and I wanna unpack it like a little further, ’cause there’s been tons of books, articles, thought leadership on how to read somebody in order to understand how to speak to them so they can hear you.[Scott] Yep.[Alec] And so often like a novice salesperson won’t take the time to pay attention to that stuff while they’re just spitting at somebody. And that person is not, it’s not even going into their brain. Like it’s just being blocked like right here. And so, you’ve developed an AI that can read a transcription of a conversation and really break what it delivers back to the end user. You used it on me.[Scott] Yeah, I used it on you, it’s fun.[Alec] It’s fascinating.[Scott] You should, yeah, post in the notes, what it says about you.[Alec] I don’t think they’re ready to hear that about myself.[Scott] Well, the truth hurts. So the Zoom tool that we built, it does a couple of things. First, it addresses your overall commitment. So your commitment to follow through on the thing you’re talking about. Like, I’ll try to stop by, or I will buy a car, those kinds of sentences. But it does this with thousands and thousands of words. And all the words are way different values, and phrases are different values. And so it’s very mathematical process that creates a graph in five minute intervals that says how committed the person is. And then from there, it goes to the priorities. So in any conversation you have a mindset and it’s not a personality, it’s just your mindset going in that’s very context dependent. So do you care about like rules and order and process? Do you care about trusting your gut and instinct? Do you care about facts and data? Or do you care about feelings and relationships? And it tells you this person’s, and no one’s just one of those. So the combination of those is kinda how you navigate that person. Then you get their communication style, and you combine all these different things, and then the system just generates a report of bullet points of this is what they’re like, here’s how committed they are, here’s what the next steps should be. And if you wanna have a longterm relationship with this person, here’s how to do it. So it’s not just about transactions, and it is not just about closing deals. Oh, you posted a thing a couple of weeks ago that I loved by the way. It was about like customer for life and like loyalty past the sale. So they’ll always call you back and like, you worked all this to have this relationship with this person. Like I read that, that you posted it on LinkedIn. And I was like, that’s exactly it. Like, we’re in a world now where lifetime value of a customer is everything ’cause it’s so easy to reconnect.[Alec] Yeah.[Scott] Yeah, so that’s what we built. We built a system that’s optimizing for a lifetime value of a relationship.[Alec] And what’s the stat you said to me? Like how many people are using this right now on a regular basis or accessing it?[Scott] We’re adding like 5,000 users a week right now. We’re processing over an hour of conversations every minute. And oh, and all our stuff is HIPAA compliant, right? Because of my background, everything’s all HIPAA compliant. And privacy is like number one, and no human’s ever listening to the calls, and we don’t even get a recording of the call. So all that’s safe.[Alec] Yeah, I’m sure there’s somebody out there who’s like, oh, he’s listening in on my calls, and he’s like, nah. But this is what’s fascinating to me. And I think you’re on the tip of the spear of something that’s gonna become more and more prevalent is, this AI assistant/kinda concept where some AI is helping you as a sales person, a professional do your job by giving you information so that you can see through it and understand where to go from there.[Scott] Yes. Yeah, I mean, the idea of augmentation is I think the story of the next five or 10 years.[Alec] I’m just sitting here, like with my head spinning, and this is even spinning before we get on this podcast, which is like, man, can I imagine a world where all of my salespeople, even my direct to consumer partners who are over there on the phones all day doing six hours of talk time right now, a day, talking to customers, getting fed back a report saying, hey, when you talk to Susie, she’s in, she wants this loan, like there’s all symptoms point to go. And this is the language you should use to talk back to her. This is what she cares about. This is what she’s interested in. Here’s the word choices. And all of a sudden, the conversion of that loan officer goes up exponentially because they come back in the same way that customer wants to be communicated with.[Scott] Yeah percent.[Alec] Sorry.[Scott] We’re looking at like a 26% increase in conversion so far.[Alec] Just by giving them help and information about how to talk to people.[Scott] Yeah. Because all we’re doing is we’re taking the middle people. Like we’re not telling anyone how to do their job. We’re just giving them a playbook and like a headstart on, hey, this is one of those people who’s like this. This is one of those people who’s like that. And you go, oh, okay, I know what to do about that. Thanks, I wouldn’t have known that because I was so busy paying attention to my pitch.[Alec] Right.[Scott] We just help them pay attention to their customer, just to help them pay attention to people.[Alec] So let’s go a layer deeper here, Scott. Talk about what it’s actually listening for.[Scott] Okay.[Alec] Let’s just talk about it like that you are gonna train someone to actually listen like your AI listens.[Scott] Sure.[Alec] How are you gonna coach him? What are you going to tell them to listen to, listen for, take notes on? Break it down.[Scott] Okay, so an easy one is the word, but. And everyone knows, like try and but are two words that are like very like a linguistics 101 kind of stuff. And so, a great sentence in a real estate sales. So it’s similar to loans is, I really like this house, but the kitchen is too small. So the first half of that sentence is, hey, I really like this house, but. And now the second half negates the first half. So the good thing was just undone by the second thing. So if you can just take that sentence and flip it on the but. So this is where my co founder, Dan Paris, he created this, it’s called the but flip. And so he goes[Scott][Alec] A very professional term.[Scott] So all he does is take the whole sentence and pivot it on the word, but. And he goes, so you’re saying the kitchen’s too small, but you really like this house. And so you just, that simple thing. So you’re looking for words that are connected to strategy. I really do see conversations very much like a chess match. Not that there’s a winner and a loser, but there’s a board and we both take turns moving pieces. And sometimes one piece keeps us going in a direction, and sometimes a move changes the landscape of what’s happening, and what we should all do.[Alec] By the way, before you go any deeper on that, you have to go back to your previous point. Most salespeople aren’t even listening to the chess piece moves.[Scott] Right.[Alec] They’re already thinking of the next thing they’re gonna say while the other person’s talking to them, and they would just slow down and pay attention. They might have a chance to actually move the conversation in a different direction.[Scott] Yeah, one of the things that I’ve noticed lately is that talking is at an all time high, and listening is super valuable. Like the supply and demand of listening is better than ever. Everybody wants to feel heard. Everybody likes to talk and wait to talk. And the more you can prove that you’re paying attention, the more the person likes you and respects you. And so all we’re doing is giving a tool that makes it easier for you to know what to listen for.[Alec] What are the things is the AI listening to? You said try.[Scott] Yeah, try, but I mean, tens of thousands of words. But an example is, when a person’s talking about what we call softening or hedging. So I just, or maybe, or might, those words are really interesting because when you correlate those with low commitment and high logic, that’s a person backing away. But when you correlate those words with high commitment, that’s a person negotiating. And so they’re trying to like mask their commitment level by throwing in like just here and there. So there’s a signal to noise game where you have to figure out which things matter in which categories. And that’s why you use an AI.[Alec] Yeah. Otherwise you’re sitting there fumbling around going, are they just negotiating or are they just saying they’re gonna try to go to my birthday party?[Scott] Right, you’re tallying on a whiteboard next to yourself, and yeah. So that’s what the AI does. Is it just tallies for you in a couple of dozen categories, it tallies thousands and thousands of words, but some words get five tallies and some words get one tally. And so it knows what the ultimate math problem is.[Alec] I’m sure you’re getting lots of feedback, even though I know that your company and this product is really in its infancy. What kind of feedback are you getting? What are people saying? What are they experiencing? You mentioned the conversion rate, but like what else? Like what the actual things are happening here?[Scott] Yeah, so it’s really interesting. People use it the first time and they’re freaked out because it tells you about everybody on a Zoom call, and we[Scott][Alec] It’s like taking a personality profile test for the first time, and you’re like, I didn’t know.[Scott] Yeah, it’s that.[Alec] Yeah.[Scott] And so you get this report that tells you something about everybody on the call, and you’re one of the people on the call, so you get a section on yourself.[Alec] On yourself.[Scott] Yeah. And so you’re like, how does this thing know who I am? It’s very personal. And then, so like, my wife is using this tool with her business stuff. And so she’s on Zoom calls and she gets these reports, and she will be talking it at dinner. And she is like, I saw new stuff on the report today. ‘Cause it creates new reports every time. It’s dynamic, it generates like 20 billion variations. And so it’s not like the same, like three pictures every time, it’s new. And she’s like, I saw a piece of feedback on the system that I had never seen before. And I was like, oh, what was it? And she tells me, and we have like this interesting conversation about the person. So it actually creates conversation. And then like I’ve had conversations with people where they say, hey, thanks for sending the report. ‘Cause I use it on every Zoom call and I’d forward it to the people like, hey, here’s what it says about you. And they’re like, this is crazy. How did it know this thing? And then we can talk about them as it relates to our relationship and how to work better with them. So it’s great for relationship and team building.[Alec] Yeah, I absolutely could see that, right? ‘Cause you get a lot of managers, and by the way, we’re all on Zoom calls now.[Scott] Yeah.[Alec] Everyone runs calls now. Everyone’s on these group Zoom calls, and all of a sudden having real[Scott]time feedback, even as a leader to go back to your team and be like, hey, I’m not communicating the way this person would wanna hear it. And if I wanna up my leadership game, I’ve gotta start paying attention to this.[Scott] Yeah. Or just notice 60% of the people on my team, the AI says 60% of the people on my team are highly auditory and not visual. And so all the graphs and charts are nowhere near as effective as a good Q&A. And so I need to, as a manager or a sales person, adjust what I’m saying so that my message is getting transmitted. Rather than just being correct, I wanna have effective community.[Alec] Yeah. It’s funny when I put this together, I was like, the power of words. Now I’m realizing it’s not the words themselves that matter, it’s how they’re being used, it’s how they’re being framed up. And that’s where the depth of the AI comes in to understand all the different intricacies of where it’s being used and how it’s being used. And it’s fascinating to me because, I mean, this is sales 101. Build rapport, listen to somebody, speak to them back in their language, all the way back to like how to win friends and influence people’s stuff. It’s like, this is the deal. What company is this? I need this, LOL. Scott, Jennifer’s asking. It’s right there under his name.[Scott] Yeah, cyrano.ai. Oh, if you go to insights.cyrano.ai, that’s where you get the Zoom tool. So insights.cyrano.ai, there’s the Zoom tool, right there.[Alec] Awesome. Mikey, throw that in our banner real quick, and so we’ll put up on the screen so everyone can see it. So Scott, let’s go back again. ‘Cause now we’re 26 minutes in. By the way, if you’re viewing this right now, first of all, drop in where you’re viewing this from. It’s always fun for me to understand like who’s viewing from where, I love that. And if you’re watching this in the future, hit #bypass, ’cause I always get a little smile when somebody pauses their day to watch an episode of this stuff and engage. But I think the stuff is that. Is that right? Right there, insights.[Scott] Yeah, that’s perfect.[Alec] Go there, you can check out what the product is, how it ties into Zoom, but think that the future of our business in sales is to understand what our customers want. And you’re clearly doing that with a powerful tool about language. Keep it up there, Mike, we got another comment too. I’d like to see who’s jumping in. Oh, we got Boston. Nice. So where does this go, Scott? Like where does this go?[Scott] So we’re plugging into CRMs right now. We’re figuring that out. We wanna get on Microsoft teams, hopefully in 2021. Like Q1 2021, we want to be in teams. We wanna be in Enterprise. Honestly, the only reason I care about doing that and going at scale and my COO. My COO sold his Salesforce company and is now working with us. So he’s great at enterprise, CRM, all that stuff. And I’m looking at, okay, how can I get this tool? ‘Cause it works real time in text, chat and text message. I was like, how can I real time immediately, as soon as possible, get this into Teen Crisis hotline, Veteran’s Affairs, those high value conversations. That’s really my focus. Now that we’ve got 10,000 users, I can start pointing my efforts there ’cause it’s gonna take time while the rest of my team focuses on the enterprise and scale of that sort of stuff.[Alec] Yeah, you gotta love where your heart’s in on that. It’s always fun to see like, you’re not in here necessarily to make a quadrillion dollars selling AI to help a sales person close a loan faster. The end game is to get this kind of tech in front of kids, on their phones who are struggling and have a place they could talk to without this adult figure or scare.[Scott] Yeah, there’s no judgment, there’s no data mining. This is my office, this is my therapy office that I’m in right now. Like, I’ve spent tens of thousands of hours sitting across from a person who needs help. Like, that’s been my career for 20 years. So I know what it’s like to have all the things that get in the way of listening, even with best intention. So my memories, my feelings, my random associations, my thoughts and predictions, my bias, all those things, I have to effort[Scott]wise, try to remove, to focus on the person in front of me. And the point is this tool doesn’t have any of those things. So always be 100% attentive with no ego. And I think that for people who need help is huge. And every one of us has had someone listen when we needed someone to listen, and we didn’t care what they said, we just needed them to reflect back to us. I hear you and it’s things like this that you’re saying. And the process of doing that is therapeutic. And that is a thing that we can give to people who either socioeconomic[Scott]wise or logistics[Scott]wise or for a whole bunch of other reasons, don’t have access to help, we can provide that 24 hours a day for basically nothing.[Alec] That’s so cool, bro.[Scott] Yeah.[Alec] That’s so cool. And at the same time, by the way, this technology is so cool. So we have a couple little late joiners and we’re tailing down, so I want you to do this, Scott. I want you to go back a little bit and go, okay, here’s what… Your elevator pitch for what your company does. What’s the elevator pitch?[Scott] The elevator pitch is, we’ve built an artificial empathy engine that helps people be more effective in high value conversations.[Alec] And I just look at the future of this tech guys, and if you haven’t played around with it, you can see the banner down there to get it on your own Zoom. Jump on a Zoom call with your friends, jump on a Zoom call with your parents or your team, and watch this run in the background, and watch what happens when the report comes out. ‘Cause when Scott, when you did it to me, it was amazing. And all of a sudden I realized, yeah, this is right. Like, if in the next call, Scott starts talking to me in these languages, in these choices and this kind of this is what matters to me, I’m gonna be more connected, I’m gonna be more interested in buying what you’re selling and the power of words matter, man.[Scott] Totally do. The expression is not what you say, it’s how you say it. That’s true. And so it’s a fun thing to be working on. There’s a bunch of challenges and the biggest challenge we have right now is people not believing that it’s real. They’re like, this, it can’t be true.[Alec] I mean maybe from like, we’re talking and somebody could be watching this and being like, this is bullshit. AI’s gonna read my words and tell me what? But then when they get a report and they’re like, oh yeah, that’s 100% right. Like, that’s how I like to be talked to. Talk to me like that.[Scott] Think about what Amazon and Google are doing when they say people who purchased this tend to like those things. And you’re like, oh, you’re right. Easy things like, oh, I bought diapers, therefore, we’re gonna show other baby related things to you, right? But some of them are weirdly connected and it because of like three things you purchased combined to make an interesting output. And we all trust Amazon to do that. We all trust ways in Google to reroute our traffic. We do these things constant. Even like in neighborhoods we know. And so all of a sudden in conversation, we’re like, oh, not that one. Yeah, that one. Because every word is a data point. And there’s more data here than there is an Amazon.[Alec] But you said something interesting in the beginning, you said that our word choices are a behavior.[Scott] Yes, absolutely.[Alec] So, go a little bit deeper on that. What do you mean by that?[Scott] So go back to your Dale Carnegie thing, right? People like people that are like themselves. And your social circle has a way of speaking. You guys talk in a certain way. And not just slang, actual diction. You guys fit, and your communication styles overlap well and compliment each other well. And people who have very different ways of speaking, and I’m not just talking about slang or like regional dialects or anything like that.[Alec] Yeah.[Scott] Yeah, like social groups. Social groups have ways that they speak. And you can guess a lot about a person really accurately by listening to them talk for an hour. Like, you can get a ballpark education level, you can get a ballpark socioeconomic level, you can get those things and you do them automatically. You just don’t show your work. You’re doing this subconsciously all the time. And your speech is a representation of your subconscious priorities and biases. And so if we can just really look at all that data and measure it, everything we need to know about a person, they’re telling us on purpose.[Alec] Such a good line, dude.[Scott] I came up with right now, it sounds good.[Alec] Just right there.[Scott] Yeah, thanks for getting that.[Alec] We’re gonna clip it out for you dude. We’ll clip that clip for you. So Scott, what would you share for somebody who is exposed to this right now, they’re hearing your heart for kids and they’re loving that, but then they’re exposed to this and they’re like, they’re skeptical or they’re, is it safe? You mentioned HIPAA before. Give somebody some background in this.[Scott] Okay, it’s free right now. We’re making it free during COVID. How about that?[Alec] It’s very nice. But I don’t know if I want you listening to me.[Scott] No human listens. The way we’ve built it, no human listens to anything. Our robot does it and automatically sends you a report and we don’t keep things, we delete everything. We don’t want it. We just want you to trust our system so that we can… Like, the game I’m playing right now is earning trust. That’s it. The way you talk about people needing to be online and live, to earn brand and credibility and trust, the brand I need to create for my company is, you can trust us with high value conversations and you can trust us with your truth. And so right now I’m just proving it. And so our tool is right now, free on Zoom. If you want a business account on Zoom, you just press the button on our website and it works. If you don’t, we partnered with a company that’s a Zoom bundler, and for the same price, you just get it. So we’ve made it effortless there, really easy. And the free version, you get five calls a week for free. And if you like it, you upgrade to more. And it only works in Zoom when the recording feature is on. And we did that for everyone’s privacy. So if you don’t want to call it to be transcribed by our system, turn off recording. If you want the call to be transcribed, turn on recording. And that’s it. So you can opt in and out of every single call.[Alec] I would encourage you guys who are listening and paying attention to this, to go give it a try. Just try it out. I had it tried out on me, I’m trying it out now on some of the conversations. I always, always, always, when I’m talking to somebody be like, hey, can I record this real quick? I wanna try this, I wanna send you this. And they’re always like, oh, I’m super interested, I wanna see what it says. And it’s fascinating that the word choice you use is powerful. And we don’t listen. We don’t listen to it at all. We’re too busy pitching and selling and thinking about what we’re gonna say next. We do not listen, but this technology will help you.[Scott] Yeah.[Alec] So Scott dude, thanks for hanging out with me today, man. This is a blast. What you’re doing is super cool. I cannot wait to see this mature into a tool that can help kids who are dealing with terrible times. So you’re the man, dude, I appreciate you.[Scott] Thanks, man. I love you. I’m so glad to be doing this. I love everything you’re doing on this. I know I said that off the air a couple of times to you, but like everyone needs to listen to Alec, he’s killing it.[Alec] Guys, have a wonderful day. If the Modern Learning podcast brought you joy, subscribe, share, like, comment. Appreciate you all, have a wonderful day. I’ll see you on the internet.