Chronic Cow

00:00:07 Speaker 1: are you a business owner looking for real advice and input. You're in the right place from concept A launch to growth, funding and beyond. Welcome to start up. Hustle with your hosts. 11 sold the business for $150 million. The other the author of $1,000,000 Bedroom. Here are your hosts of Start off Hustle, Matt Accorsi and Matt Watson. 00:00:31 Speaker 1: And we're back. Another episode of started postal. Matt DeCourcy here with Matt Watson. Hi, Matt. What's going on, man? Just here for another episode of startup. Also, which is brought to you by full scale dot io. Have you heard of those guys before? I've heard of it. Yeah, two should check him out. They build software teams quickly and affordably. You know, I'm going back to subdue in three weeks. Marina? Yeah, to see the team. Well, that's good. Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure you will be welcomed with open arms. Yeah, 00:00:56 Speaker 1: Well, today 00:00:58 Speaker 1: we have a very interesting founder and business name. 00:01:03 Speaker 1: I'm gonna go ahead and introduce Dr Kevin Pain of chronic cow. Kevin, What's up? It's an outstanding day, isn't it? It sure is. 00:01:12 Speaker 2: Thank you, gentlemen, for having me 00:01:14 Speaker 1: and ah, so ahead of time. 00:01:17 Speaker 1: You know, I like it when you're interactives to go to chronic cow dot com or on the gram, you can check out at chronic cow while you're there were at start of hustle podcast. 00:01:28 Speaker 1: So, Kevin, 00:01:30 Speaker 1: tell us all about the cow. 00:01:31 Speaker 2: Well, 00:01:33 Speaker 2: chronic cow delivers when we use 00:01:37 Speaker 2: advanced analytics to deliver 00:01:40 Speaker 2: improved quality of life for people who live with chronic illness like me. 00:01:46 Speaker 2: So it's 00:01:48 Speaker 2: personalized answers grounded in science, driven by data and personalized for you. 00:01:54 Speaker 1: Okay, so but not for cows, not for cows. So why is it called chronic cow? 00:02:00 Speaker 2: I'm glad you asked. There are two reasons one's a personal story. 00:02:06 Speaker 2: And when I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, um, I was, you know, my kids were very small, 00:02:12 Speaker 2: And so I went home and I gathered the family around the table 00:02:17 Speaker 2: and I explained this thing that was going on with me. 00:02:22 Speaker 2: Now you have to understand that I lived in England during the mad cow scare of the early nineties. And so to this day, I can't deliver, you know, I can't. I can't give blood, 00:02:35 Speaker 2: you know, Even almost 30 years later, because of that. Yeah, because of that, 00:02:38 Speaker 1: because you were in the vicinity. Just because I was 00:02:41 Speaker 2: in the vicinity of the American Red Cross will no longer allow me to donate blood. Almost 30 years later, Anderson. Yeah. So it became a running family joke that one of these days I was going to come down with mad cow disease 00:02:54 Speaker 2: and 00:02:56 Speaker 2: so explained all this and my kids were very quiet for a minute, and one of them leaned into the other and said, Daddy got the cow 00:03:06 Speaker 2: and it's stuck. So it became, you know, Daddy's Man cattle. And when my symptoms were acting up, 00:03:13 Speaker 2: my kids would say, Daddy's cows man today and when it was really bad 00:03:18 Speaker 2: and they didn't think I could hear, they'd say, Daddy's cow is really pissed. 00:03:25 Speaker 2: So that's the first thing. The second thing is, I've helped so many people over the years that 00:03:31 Speaker 2: when they get diagnosed with chronic illness, they frame it as a battle with a monster. And if you frame your life is a battle with a monster, you will never win. So it's not a monster. It's a cow. She's reading. She's bulky, she's smelling. She gets in the way, but you can handle a cow, 00:03:51 Speaker 1: not even sure what to say. 00:03:55 Speaker 1: So if you want to see the look that Matt Watson just gave me, you can check out the startup. Also YouTube channel. 00:04:01 Speaker 1: That was Well, Kevin, you know, I want to talk a little more about you know, the what you do and how you do it. And you know, that's Ah, it's an interesting That's an interesting way to name your business, for sure. Um, one thing you've recently published a book, Your life lived well, the science of crafting a good life under chronic distress, pain and illness. 00:04:25 Speaker 2: Yeah, it comes out on December 3rd. Okay, so we're doing advanced presales here the next month, and, 00:04:34 Speaker 2: you know, we're excited to get it out. 00:04:36 Speaker 1: So when it comes to chronic cow and the business 00:04:41 Speaker 1: and I see that you also have an association with Don Peterson, who Dawn's been in here before, he's associated with Launch Casey and stuff like that. Is he also associated with the business or just a podcast? 00:04:52 Speaker 2: Just the podcast. He's been an enthusiastic supporter of chronic cow from the very beginning. 00:04:58 Speaker 1: So you mentioned you mentioned using data or different stuff to help people improve. Like, let's talk a little bit about that. So we have a back story about, 00:05:07 Speaker 1: you know, you're your own struggles or challenges with chronic illness. But what as far as the best this goes, you know, How do you What do you guys doing without and tell us all about it? 00:05:19 Speaker 2: Sure. 00:05:20 Speaker 2: One of the things that I realized is, 00:05:23 Speaker 2: you know, I'm a science guy. I'm a date a guy, and, uh, that's kind of my safe place. So when I was diagnosed, I went to the science and 00:05:34 Speaker 2: I turned myself into a guinea pig. And I I collect 80 different variables on myself and measure and monitor and model them every day. And such as, uh, various things from biomedical indicators to behavioral and attitudinal and social and environmental characteristics. It it runs again. 00:05:58 Speaker 2: And, 00:06:00 Speaker 2: you know, of course, you can't generalize from minute of one. So I was not only interested in finding solutions that made my life better, but also 00:06:10 Speaker 2: for other people as well. So I interviewed hundreds of surveyed thousands. I built a scraper that went out on the web and collected 2.23 million data points. I reanalyzed the results of over 7000 studies on over 150 conditions. Wow. Yeah, well, I'm an obsessive date. A guy. Ah, and you know what I found was once your diagnosis TTE with a condition. And you know, again we're looking at data from people with over 150 different diagnoses and those could be things like multiple sclerosis. It could be 00:06:46 Speaker 2: diabetes or obesity. Or it could be what are classified as mental health conditions like depression and anxiety disorders, post traumatic stress, etcetera. 00:06:59 Speaker 2: Most of the challenge is over 80% of the challenges that we face day in and day out are not medical. 00:07:07 Speaker 2: They have to do with the distress of living with a condition that's always getting in your way and that you're never going to get better from, 00:07:17 Speaker 2: you know, the entire medical community are. Our whole system is built on an acute care model. The idea is, something is wrong. You go into your physician and they fix it somehow and return you to a normal life. But with people like me, 00:07:35 Speaker 2: there's no other side. There's no normal to go back to. There's no happy ending here. This is something that I have to live with every day. And it's something that over half of all Americans are now living with. 00:07:50 Speaker 1: Just a chronic illnesses, some kind of chronic diabetes or depression that covers a huge percentage between the two, right? Yeah. 00:07:59 Speaker 1: All right. So the doctor and Doctor Kevin Pain, What's your background with that? 00:08:05 Speaker 2: Yeah. You know, I realized my 00:08:08 Speaker 2: then wife told me, You know, you're not the right kind of doctor to develop a medical cure, 00:08:14 Speaker 2: But I am a social behavioral scientist, my doctorate in sociology and psychology 00:08:20 Speaker 2: And when I realized that most of what we're facing were were issues about 00:08:27 Speaker 2: mindset and behavior and how we adapt to our environment and deal with our relationships 00:08:34 Speaker 2: well, those are the kinds of of problems that I do have the background to come up with answers for. And so that's what chronic. How does I don't think of it as a health care business. I think of it as health care adjacent. 00:08:48 Speaker 2: So we're dealing with all of those aspects of your life that are affected. When you're diagnosed. How do you stick with a treatment regimen. Well, that's not a medical question. That's a behavioral question. 00:09:04 Speaker 2: How do you find 00:09:08 Speaker 2: the will and the grit to move forward day after day when you know that, 00:09:15 Speaker 2: you know, there's gonna be some really sucky days as you go through this. Well, those are the kinds of questions that the social behavioral sciences can answer. 00:09:24 Speaker 2: But it turns out that what works for me doesn't work for you, and it doesn't work for you. 00:09:31 Speaker 2: All of those answers will work for someone. But the problem is matching you with the answers that will work in your case. And 00:09:40 Speaker 1: so will the data patterns help identify, you know, people that have somewhere symptoms somewhere outcomes. 00:09:47 Speaker 2: And that's what we do. Yeah, we we use those, you know, that massive amount of data to identify? Well, if you need to change our behavior, there are 100 50 different ways that you could approach behavioral change. And 00:10:01 Speaker 2: normally what you do is trial and error. 00:10:05 Speaker 2: Somebody gives you suggestion, you try it, it may work and and you get discouraged because most of them don't work for you. So what we do is is we profile you and we use those to say. All right, For someone like you, 00:10:21 Speaker 2: this is gonna be ah, you know, say aye. 00:10:27 Speaker 2: Maybe it's It's 00:10:30 Speaker 2: a behavioral change that's based on external factors. And we're trying to 00:10:36 Speaker 2: move your environment in a different way. Maybe for somebody else, it's monetary, maybe for somebody else. It's habit formation 00:10:48 Speaker 2: and and so forth. And we can go through that and we can say We're gonna match you with one that's likely to work for you. Then we monitor you. And if you're on the right trajectory, then we we keep you on that. And if you're not, then we know what's the next most likely thing for someone like you. So then how do you 00:11:08 Speaker 2: How 00:11:08 Speaker 1: do you Ah, cell or 00:11:11 Speaker 1: take this to market? So, like, who is your customer? How does the business work? 00:11:15 Speaker 2: We do it a couple of ways. We've got to be to be model and to be to see model. And the B two B is 00:11:22 Speaker 2: We're doing a couple of things. One we're way have a chronic count partner program. And so these are medical health wellness professionals in practices, and they're faced with a lot of questions like this day in and day out that they're not trained to answer right. 00:11:44 Speaker 2: And and so those partners drive their clients to us, and so they can try and yeah, 00:11:50 Speaker 1: provide better care to their patients. 00:11:51 Speaker 2: Exactly. Um, you know, then the other thing is, we provide a lot of training, too. Health wellness, medical professionals because they're not trained to deal with people like us. There's a lot of burn out. There's a lot of distress that's involved day after day after day with caring for patients who will never get better. 00:12:16 Speaker 2: And so, you know, we go in and we trained, say, the personnel in in, ah, hospital or practice or you know so forth so they can better deal. I mean, your people they're facing. You 00:12:29 Speaker 1: talk about your background and for these types of illnesses, I can definitely see it's much more psychology, right? It's like you have to understand that these people are gonna have these issues and how to deal with them, how to help them cope. Whatever. It's not just writing a prescription. That's a different scenario. 00:12:43 Speaker 2: It is. And you know what? We're interested in theirs. There's a movement right now in the United States and other countries, too, 00:12:52 Speaker 2: see medical care in the larger context. And and that's what we're trying to do here. Where is about life care? It's not necessarily about medical here. 00:13:02 Speaker 1: So when it comes to chronic illness and the psychology that comes around that 00:13:07 Speaker 1: and this this I think this is, ah, a kind of an interesting thing. Is it Is it about accepting it, or is it about not accepting it? And then you're fighting? 00:13:18 Speaker 2: No. So if you frame it as a fight, 00:13:22 Speaker 2: that's an acute response. Are our fight or flight response, which is really five F So there's a lot more to it than that. It's not just fight or flight 00:13:33 Speaker 2: when I kind 00:13:34 Speaker 1: of want to know what the other F SAR. Yeah, there's there's 00:13:37 Speaker 2: freeze in flea and faint. 00:13:40 Speaker 1: Okay, that would make sense to, uh, be a quiz about that later. 00:13:46 Speaker 1: Oh, and that makes a lot of sense, though, because a lot you talk about freeze, flee or faint, 00:13:51 Speaker 1: like fully as fully, just kind of like moving off to the side. Or is that like, Yeah, 50 flight is, like, truly taken off, right? 00:13:59 Speaker 2: Flight is is truly taken off, but but some of these other responses are about just kind of metaphorically looking in the other direction, or or not acknowledging it somehow. Uh, and a lot of a lot of what we understand about addiction, for example, can be framed as one of these kinds of responses. It's a numbing response. It's about making the world not so threatening because you're 00:14:30 Speaker 2: technically, it's called a narc. It izing dysfunction. 00:14:34 Speaker 2: So So, yeah, there are a lot of responses that that you can have, but you have to understand in the book, I call it The Edge, 00:14:43 Speaker 2: and 00:14:45 Speaker 2: the thing about being pushed to the edge where your capacity is is being outstripped by the demand of the task in front of you. 00:14:54 Speaker 2: Use 00:14:56 Speaker 2: that. You can look at that. You can frame it as a threat. You can frame it as something that's frightening, 00:15:03 Speaker 2: but that's also the place in our lives, where joy and growth and happiness reside as well. It's when you have that flow experience right when you're when you're being pushed. But not so far, 00:15:19 Speaker 2: stress is not necessarily a bad thing. There do kinds of stress. There's distress negative stress and there's you stress good stress. 00:15:28 Speaker 2: And we have to have 00:15:30 Speaker 2: the good stress in our lives. And part of living with chronic condition is learning to frame the stress in a different way. What's an example of good stress? Ah, what? Anytime we learn 00:15:45 Speaker 2: we're being 00:15:47 Speaker 2: stressed were at the limits of what we know, right? And And if we if we successfully meet that challenge, we learn something new, then that's good stress. 00:15:58 Speaker 2: You can you can use a, uh it's a direct analog to 00:16:04 Speaker 2: working out with weights, so you have to stress your muscles. 00:16:08 Speaker 1: Yeah, I was just actually thinking that exact same things. Actually, yesterday I was exercising. 00:16:13 Speaker 1: And that that stress creates growth exactly in an odd way. I mean, I'm a little sore the next day from it, but sculpting a gun begin? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. 00:16:23 Speaker 2: And you know, I'm 00:16:25 Speaker 2: and avid, Uh, you know, weightlifter, you know, I lift weights every every day and not to get big, but to be strong and to give my body as as many tools as possible to, you know, live with the n s. 00:16:42 Speaker 1: Does it help with your condition? 00:16:44 Speaker 2: It does it does. You know, I'm very particular. More of the things we teach with chronic cow and threw the book is you've got to give yourself enough. Resource is in order to move past this. And that's 00:16:58 Speaker 2: Yeah, that's nutrition and exercise and sleep and meditation. And ah, whole host of other self carol 00:17:08 Speaker 2: sorts of things. So 00:17:11 Speaker 2: how long have you been doing this? By the way? That's the business. The business is almost three years old. Now, how many employees do you have? I've got I've got me. And then I've got six or eight part time people again, and we Ah, I made a commitment when I started this business who, As much as possible higher 00:17:32 Speaker 2: others with chronic illnesses. 00:17:34 Speaker 1: Okay. 00:17:35 Speaker 1: Okay. So 00:17:37 Speaker 1: you talked about your like B to C model. And this some of that also include the people you talked about caregivers and we talked about medical professionals and we talked about people with chronic illness. Is part of this, like the that outside of it. Also, the people that live with the people that have chronic illnesses 00:17:55 Speaker 2: Yeah, those air, those air caregivers, you know, got a sense. Okay? And and we certainly include those because, you know, not only did I live with multiple sclerosis, you know, for all these years I spent a decade in there at the same time 00:18:09 Speaker 2: supporting a wife, dying of cancer. 00:18:11 Speaker 2: And 00:18:12 Speaker 2: you know that there were there was probably more stress coming at me because we had little kids at the time. And 00:18:20 Speaker 2: there's probably more stress from being the caregiver than there was from facing my own illness. 00:18:24 Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I was asking because I feel like, you know, you start looking at the way these things branch out and the people that are also adjacent to the illness or the chronic, you know, whatever have you know, a different set of issues and problems. It's you talk about stressors are like, 00:18:42 Speaker 1: um, you know, having been around a few Ah, a few friends that had Children that have different, you know, chronic ailments or something like that and looking at the way that it changed their lives as well. Um, so you know, when it comes to stress and anxiety, one of the things that 00:18:59 Speaker 1: is a big driver and cause of that in people's lives or things that are completely out of their control right, which is in a chronic chronic illness, is an example of that. But other, Some other people generate stress and anxiety. You know, you look at like world events. Are, you know, like, Oh my God, the sky is falling 00:19:18 Speaker 1: S o How what's the approach the chronic cow like, How does it recommended that you deal with that? Because it seems like that's that's tricky stuff. 00:19:29 Speaker 1: Did you have someone to start? Stop worrying about things that they can no longer control? 00:19:34 Speaker 2: It is. And you know, there's I brought in a lot of research. There's There's actually one 00:19:40 Speaker 2: group of people who are well researched, who 00:19:45 Speaker 2: not just deal with 00:19:47 Speaker 2: extreme stress and pain all the time. But they choose to do it and those air extreme athletes. 00:19:54 Speaker 2: And it turns out that 00:19:57 Speaker 2: making the cognitive choice to deal with the stress gives us a much greater capacity for doing that. So, like, 00:20:09 Speaker 2: you know, my own in my own life, I haven't had a pain free day in 17 years. 00:20:15 Speaker 2: I'm in pain right now. 00:20:19 Speaker 2: So what? 00:20:20 Speaker 2: And and I don't mean to minimize that, it's because, 00:20:24 Speaker 2: you know, we all have pains that that we deal with. But 00:20:28 Speaker 2: you can either focus on it or you can learn to live with it and move through it and and turn it into a motivator for better life. 00:20:40 Speaker 2: And 00:20:41 Speaker 2: changing that mindset 00:20:44 Speaker 2: is often a crucial first step to changing behaviors. I think 00:20:48 Speaker 1: there's definitely a lot of people that when they have these issues, that 00:20:50 Speaker 1: their whole life revolves around the issue and they can get past it right. Like I've seen this with family members have a death in the family that kind of you know, which is a different, never lean illness. It's a different thing, right, but same sort of issue where they just cannot get past that event. You know, that happened, and they just struggle forever, writing to accept it and move past. 00:21:10 Speaker 2: I talk about that in the book because there's a lot of grieving that's that's associate ID with chronic illness because, 00:21:19 Speaker 2: you know, I went through it, you grieve the life that you thought you were building for yourself 00:21:26 Speaker 2: and you know, that's 00:21:29 Speaker 2: that's heavy. 00:21:31 Speaker 1: Some and some of these things seem similar to ah, just issues you have with age. Yes, right. Like I see my parents, like my dad, has different health issues is like nothing he can do about it. It's like I give him crap all the time, like this old man problem. I was just thinking, You have to learn to deal with it. It's like I was just thinking the same thing because, you know, my my my dad's had heart problems for a while, and I guess that's that. B s can't as a chronic illness, right? My mom's got dementia 00:21:58 Speaker 1: and, you know, like the And that's why this is so fascinating because it's like that. It's that that coping not only for us his family members, but also like dealing with her cause, you know, dimensions a weird. 00:22:10 Speaker 1: The weird thing is, it just kind of erases the person, and then, you know, they're like there, But then they're not. And you know that those other folks, too, like so also with the date on which you what you guys deal with to some of that deal with the incremental steps like because there's, you know, my my wife's my wife had gone through dementia with her grandmother, and as we've gone through with my mom, we've you know, Joists told me. She said, Oh, word. They're going to come and it goes in stages And then, you know, like there's even like a stage where they're just, like, really angry 00:22:44 Speaker 1: and it's like a level of frustration or something. But I mean, my mom was like, I mean, almost like a 00:22:50 Speaker 1: a card carrying hippie of some sorts at one point and then, you know, to see her like, angry and yelling and like, you know, one time we had to, like, take her home because she was kicking my couch over and over again. For like, you know, reasons. She's just like mad at different seven. You know, it's it's ah, So how do you How do you treat and deal with, like, the incremental steps of certain things like that, 00:23:11 Speaker 2: Right. That's one of the the things that that I've got personal experience with two because 00:23:17 Speaker 2: multiple sclerosis comes in several different varieties and what I happened tohave currently is relapsing remitting. You mess so 00:23:28 Speaker 2: there will be exacerbations and things would get really bad for a time, and then they'll ease off and you can get better. 00:23:38 Speaker 2: But the issue with that is you never know when relapsing remitting m s will become progressive in s. So in other words, there could be an exacerbation that I have one day 00:23:52 Speaker 2: and I never get better from that. 00:23:54 Speaker 2: And I won't know beforehand that that's coming. So I've had exacerbations where, you know, I've been so blinded by the pain that have passed out. 00:24:07 Speaker 2: I've had exacerbations where my body is completely frozen up on me and you know, I'm completely spastic and and I'm falling over on the ground 00:24:17 Speaker 2: and I don't know, is it not going to get better? I had because a mess can occur anywhere. You know, the lesions can strike anywhere in the brain and the spinal cord in the central nervous system. Because everything we do feel thinkers say, comes through our central nervous system. The symptoms could be anything. So I had an exacerbation that was a massive right frontal temporal exacerbation that's like dementia. 00:24:49 Speaker 2: And 00:24:50 Speaker 2: suddenly I couldn't control my emotions. And my cognition was really fuzzy. 00:24:56 Speaker 2: And and, you know, I was doing this in the midst of 00:25:01 Speaker 2: trying to start up a company 00:25:03 Speaker 2: a couple of companies ago, and 00:25:06 Speaker 2: that was terrifying because suddenly I couldn't function at the level that I needed to function 00:25:14 Speaker 2: for my clients and my employees and everything else. 00:25:19 Speaker 2: And 00:25:21 Speaker 2: you've gotta learn that that this is a possibility. And you've gotta build in here these buffers for you know what I can do And you you've gotta learn different ways to take care of yourself. And so that's part of what we teach with chronic cow. 00:25:38 Speaker 2: You know, I'm on a middle aged guy 00:25:40 Speaker 2: with, you know, two decades into M s and 00:25:45 Speaker 2: I skydive. 00:25:46 Speaker 2: I love to jump out of planes. Wow, I do it all the time. Yesterday morning at sunrise, I was up on a load and, you know, it's the sun peeked over the rise, and we were out of 14,000 feet over owned. You know, watching the sunrise is no better way to see it. 00:26:03 Speaker 2: But But, 00:26:05 Speaker 2: you know, I have to do it 00:26:07 Speaker 2: when I can't feel my legs 00:26:09 Speaker 2: and people think, Oh, my gosh, how do you land a parachute? And it's actually winding. The parachute isn't the most difficult thing. It's learning to control your legs in free fall when you can't see them 00:26:19 Speaker 2: because my signals don't 00:26:23 Speaker 2: don't tell me exactly where my legs are, and that's how you get your stability in your drive. 00:26:28 Speaker 2: So, you know, I figured out a way to do it. Doesn't mean you can only 00:26:33 Speaker 1: do it on certain days or certain times or, 00:26:35 Speaker 2: you know, I have to. I have to monitor myself because, you know, always dealing with fatigue as well. That's part of M s. And so, 00:26:44 Speaker 2: you know, there's sometimes when I will just have to say, you know, I'm gonna ground myself today. How often do you do you skate? 00:26:51 Speaker 2: Oh, you know, I 568 times a week. 00:26:55 Speaker 1: Oh, wow. 00:26:56 Speaker 1: That's awesome. 00:26:57 Speaker 2: I'm 10 minutes from my drop zones. Like, just zip right over hop on alone. Ever done. And 00:27:02 Speaker 1: I think we should do it. Yeah, I'm very quarter podcast. Well, good luck getting me up there. 00:27:07 Speaker 2: Ah, you know, I had this dream that that, you know, I could become a licensed skydiver, 00:27:15 Speaker 2: and 00:27:18 Speaker 2: and I thought I'd lost that because off what had happened there to my body 00:27:24 Speaker 2: and, ah, couple of years ago, My my son, who was then, you know, between said, Dad, you really suck at doing things for yourself 00:27:33 Speaker 2: and it was right. That was the one thing that I'd let slip by in my life that I started the training before and had just let's split. 00:27:42 Speaker 2: And I thought, I'm gonna go back and reclaim that. I'm gonna figure out a way to get my license. And now I'm up to my be license and 106 skydives. 00:27:51 Speaker 1: Wow, 00:27:52 Speaker 1: your 106 ahead of me. 00:27:54 Speaker 1: So let's let's move forward In our conversation here to talking about tech start ups and some of the challenges that you've run into, um, feel free to share any any interesting stories of failure way we openly embrace that here. 00:28:12 Speaker 1: But what I mean, what are some of the things? What are some of it would have been some of the challenges that you've dealt with. 00:28:18 Speaker 2: I've got a couple of good failure stories. I think, uh, one was my very first company. So I'd spent 15 years, is a professor and, you know, did that. And I love that and and it was it was a great career. But I woke up one morning and I was like cheese. 00:28:36 Speaker 2: This is every day for the rest of my life. 00:28:40 Speaker 2: This is it, you know, because I knew I didn't want to be like a dean. I'd run a department and I knew that. 00:28:47 Speaker 2: You know, they say academic politics is so vicious because the stakes are so low. 00:28:54 Speaker 2: You think about it for a minute. It's true. Ah, and and I didn't want to deal with that. I wanted to do something new 00:29:02 Speaker 2: and something different. So I was in the process of starting my first company from, ah, 00:29:10 Speaker 2: some research that I've been doing and 00:29:13 Speaker 2: put together a team. They were really a 00:29:17 Speaker 2: get really confident guys and and they had all the skills to do it. But I think 00:29:25 Speaker 2: my biggest advice to start up entrepreneurs is there's one thing 00:29:32 Speaker 2: that you can't teach 00:29:34 Speaker 2: your team 00:29:36 Speaker 2: and then his risk tolerance. 00:29:39 Speaker 2: Some people just have a tolerance for risk and uncertainty, 00:29:44 Speaker 2: and others don't. 00:29:46 Speaker 2: And that first company just blew apart. I had an exacerbation 00:29:51 Speaker 2: and I wasn't ableto to drive 00:29:54 Speaker 2: things like I was hoping. And 00:29:58 Speaker 2: the rest of my team, you know, when I jumped from being a professor to an entrepreneur, the rest of them were like, 00:30:04 Speaker 2: Man, we can't give up the safest job in the world is academics climbing a tenure track for the risky life of being entrepreneurs 00:30:13 Speaker 2: and boom there it waas 00:30:15 Speaker 1: we'll rest. Tolerances is just is unknown factor and personality types. It is it. And ah, like my personality type is, is I don't have an issue with that. It doesn't freak me out. Some people, 00:30:29 Speaker 1: it's it's overwhelming, and it can You can cross you and typically those air those people that tend Maurin that Type B personality. Maybe we're gonna be real general and keep it on A and B. But, um, you know, and you know that's that's true. I mean, I think that there's a lot of things you can't teach 00:30:47 Speaker 1: as well. I mean, some of the I mean, I'm mad. I'm sure you've run into these over the years to there's just certain qualities and people that, in example is and this is kind of, ah, different example. But likability, 00:31:00 Speaker 1: like some people, are just like way. We've talked about this before, and it's like, you know, you can't really train that you can soften. You can soften sharp edges, not what are some of the things that you've run into that air that you can't train. I mean, another thing, too, is you can't teach people to care. Yeah, sure. I mean the caring part. Like I mean, if we have Ivan employees that cares about about our users, clients, other people of the company, the company in general, like that's a quality you just can't. You can't teach. You can't. You can't. Uh, that's valuable to the other big one. I always think about it. It's kind of vision, Pete. There's a lot of people. They just they just they can only see what's in front of them. They cannot see even what next week looks like they struggle so hard to prioritize things and plan and and, you know, then you know the other side of vision, like product vision and market vision and stuff like that. Just some people can just such a struggle so hard to look past what they're doing today, and you can take your pick. Some of that is actually like revision, like you look at something that's broken or something that's downtrodden or just in the gutter, and you will you just like Oh my God, this is terrible. We got to keep doing this because it's the way we've always done it. Right? 00:32:16 Speaker 1: Have you? Did you run into any of that stuff along the way, 00:32:18 Speaker 2: huh? Yeah, I have. Um 00:32:22 Speaker 2: I think that, 00:32:24 Speaker 2: you know, obviously if you've if you've been in this world for a while, you learn that that 00:32:30 Speaker 2: it tends to to weed out some of the people who just don't have 00:32:38 Speaker 2: the drive and the direction to do that because you've gotta be really internally motivated. 00:32:45 Speaker 2: And you've got to be really internally motivated against an uncertain future 00:32:50 Speaker 2: when you do it. And 00:32:52 Speaker 1: that that I mean, drives another thing. Dr is literally a personality type driven. 00:32:57 Speaker 1: And there's that I often refer to those people is having that high motor. 00:33:02 Speaker 1: Now they're also sometimes obsessive. Yes, like, you know, my ex girlfriend wanted to break up with me because she said I was S c D. So I asked her to shut the door five times on the way out. 00:33:15 Speaker 1: But now there's 00:33:17 Speaker 1: there's a level of obsession, and that's, you know, that's something I've had a really interesting conversations with people about like Are you obsessed or you driven? Are you a genius? Or are you crazy? Because they're like, there's this, like, I'm not even sure there's a line. 00:33:32 Speaker 1: Yeah, it's real fuzzy if there is, You know, the funniest. The best answer that someone has given me it was actually recently, and it was just Who cares? 00:33:42 Speaker 1: I mean, it's but unlike the most basic level, it's like it's all an external observation. Yeah, which is interesting. So, um, in regards to chronic cow, what are some of you talked about Gathering 00:33:56 Speaker 1: millions of data points and different stuff like that. And, you know, you go out and you scrape a bunch of data, 00:34:01 Speaker 1: and that's not, you know, the wildest of technologies at this point. But then you get you have all this unstructured data, as data scientists will talk about. So you're talking about structure data and unstructured data. 00:34:16 Speaker 1: Obviously, you always want to start first with the structure data because it actually has wrappers around it. So I have built things in the past that nor even currently they go out and gather a whole bunch of information. 00:34:28 Speaker 1: Um, you know, has was that that has had to have been something that was a challenge to try to make sense of any of it. 00:34:35 Speaker 2: Oh, it's huge. And that's part of the intellectual property that that we bring to this. 00:34:42 Speaker 2: You know, over the years, I've been what we now call a data scientist for almost 30 years units for long before that term ever existed. 00:34:53 Speaker 2: And I've I've designed, manage, consulted on over 1000 projects during that time. 00:35:00 Speaker 2: And so a lot of what we did with chronic cow was 00:35:06 Speaker 2: build some adaptive hierarchical metal layers around the data to to impart a lot of meaning and 00:35:17 Speaker 2: to put those meaningful points of distinction in those data so that we can take 00:35:23 Speaker 2: semi structured data and unstructured data and drop it into some really interesting ensemble algorithms that that give us 00:35:33 Speaker 2: this kind of answer that we need to do because really, what it is is it's two things. It's a matching over them that takes you and matches you with a potential solution set. And then it's a recommendation algorithm that saying Okay, uh, here's we're gonna We're going to rank 00:35:55 Speaker 2: these kinds of these possibilities 00:35:59 Speaker 2: and, you know, and then monitor you within those so that we can get you as efficiently as possible. to those solutions that change your behaviors and mindsets and environments in ways that are useful for you. 00:36:17 Speaker 2: Do you have any good, um, success metrics from what you do? Yeah, We d'oh usually what we what? We do this. So we we do a couple of things. One is, 00:36:29 Speaker 2: uh, 00:36:31 Speaker 2: when we're profiling you and screening you where we're getting from you, what are the changes 00:36:39 Speaker 2: you would most like to see in your life? 00:36:43 Speaker 2: And then we're taking those. And because of the data that we're bringing in from the back end, we're saying Okay, so this potential change is probably going to deliver 00:36:54 Speaker 2: the most benefit to your life. You know, whether you will recognize that or not at first in Here's the second and third and fourth and so we're we're measuring. 00:37:06 Speaker 2: We're actually measuring happiness and satisfaction and meaning and you know, these other kind and security and these other values that you're applying to your world, 00:37:21 Speaker 1: Matt, actually, in my book balance, me use that same, that same approach, It's like, you know, here's where I spend my time. 00:37:30 Speaker 1: And then how would you really like to be spending your time? 00:37:33 Speaker 1: Because they're never the same. And then part of like, what you just mentioned is, you know, what kind of change do you want to see in your life? So, like, what are your goals? Like, what do you really want to accomplish? What's the most important to you? And then it's in, You know, I make it pretty simplistic, but I think it can be it's about Okay, well, let's do let let's do last of the stuff that has no value and then chip away at some of these things, 00:37:57 Speaker 1: much like dealing with any type of recurring. You know, anything. You can't tackle the whole thing all in one day. It's very rare. Um, so yeah, I mean, it's ah. So I think you're gonna find a lot more driving motivation, getting people to chase the things that they want. Yes. Oh, and that And that doesn't necessarily mean work. I mean, sometimes it's just simple. I mean, people have different. Everyone has a different dream, right? And, you know, you talk to say I want to learn how to speak French. You're But I don't have the time. Really. Actually, you D'oh! I'm sure you need like 15 minutes a day or 30 minutes a day or however many times a day. And so the thing is that you get a finite amount of time each day, so your cheese and how you want to spend that, what you want to do of it. So 00:38:42 Speaker 1: okay, as we head captain, thank you for coming in today. For those of you listening, make sure you go to chronic cow dot com. You can also find them on instagram it at chronic cow. If you want to check out what Kevin is doing, probably pictures of him falling out of an airplane 00:38:57 Speaker 1: or some have something like that. He's also on Instagram at Dr KJ Pain. Um, before we get into our closing comments here once again, today's podcast was brought to you by full scale dot io. That's the business that Matt and I own together. We help you build teams of expert developers quickly and affordably 00:39:14 Speaker 1: while you're looking at our website, stop back by the instagrams and check out pictures from today's episode of that started posting podcasts. You can also check out the new startup hustle YouTube channel. So, Kevin, is it over the last? I don't know, however many episodes we've really, we've been kind of doing a little closing round table of comments in which you it's kind of the founders freestyle. There you go. We have a name for it now, but I think that that's, Ah, I think that that's inappropriate and maybe that's just what we'll call it from now on. But, um, you know, anyone that comes in here, we want to give you an opportunity to stand on the soapbox that we've created with listeners and 00:39:55 Speaker 1: 190 countries and thank you to all of you. And I hope that one listener in the Isle of Man is not a man, because I think that would have some irony. So, Kevin, what would you like to say to start up Hustle Nation on your way out here? 00:40:13 Speaker 2: Too often, our lives become driven by fear, 00:40:18 Speaker 2: and 00:40:21 Speaker 2: we are adapted to see fear when we're at our own personal edges. Maybe a physical edge, maybe emotional edge of cognitive edges, social edge, whatever it is. 00:40:34 Speaker 2: But 00:40:36 Speaker 2: when we perceive a threat, 00:40:39 Speaker 2: it can also be a challenge and an opportunity, 00:40:43 Speaker 2: and it seems really trite, but 00:40:46 Speaker 2: how we frame it 00:40:48 Speaker 2: is 00:40:49 Speaker 2: a massive part of whether we're going to succeed or not, because if you're running away from a fear 00:40:58 Speaker 2: man, that's a lousy way to live a life. If you are running to an opportunity, even if it knocks you down, 00:41:05 Speaker 2: did you get up again and you keep learning? 00:41:09 Speaker 2: And 00:41:10 Speaker 2: as simple as it is, that's that's, I think, the important part of it. If you want to build strength, resilience, grit, if you want to be successful, 00:41:22 Speaker 2: that's the thing you have to learn, and you're not only fighting what's out there in the world, but when you frame it that way, you end up fighting yourself for it 00:41:32 Speaker 2: and and you can make yourself your ally. 00:41:39 Speaker 1: Master Watson. 00:41:41 Speaker 1: My question for you is for those of our listeners that have M s or fibromyalgia are some sort of illness that maybe you could help. Is your Web site the best place to go? I mean, can can get help directly from what you do. 00:41:55 Speaker 2: Yeah, they they can get help directly from what we do. We also, uh, you know, we we released the premium service is first, and and so for those who you know I understand that a lot of people living with chronic illness aren't in a position to take advantage of that. So, you know, obviously by the book when it comes out because of book is not much. And there's a lot of you know, our entire core curriculum is in that book. 00:42:25 Speaker 2: And I also, you know, we're just launching a new PATRI own option. Okay, so you can pay just a few bucks a month and get some really valuable insight and some interactive stuff with me and other chronic how guides. And it's a good way to get good value for, you know, a really economical price point. 00:42:47 Speaker 1: Okay, 00:42:49 Speaker 1: Was that your freestyle man? A question it's up to. You get to do whatever you want. So once again, Kevin's book and that's Dr Kevin Payne. I'm assuming you can find the sun. Amazon. Yes, that's where everyone buys books now. Yeah, so in the pre sale on Amazon for the pretty sale 00:43:03 Speaker 2: will be on Amazon as well. And that will be early next month in November when that releases 00:43:08 Speaker 1: and that'll be this will be closer this episode of probably come out somewhere in between now And then anyway, that's called your life Lived well. The science of crafting a good life under chronic distress, pain and illness. Once again, you got a chronic cal dot com. I think it. And you know what I really took from today and and I love I love the concept of framing. 00:43:31 Speaker 1: Um, I think that I spent a lot of time talking about this and you know this. But I was probably, like, 23. Something didn't go my way. And my dad was like, You know, there might be a lot of opportunity. You need to just, you know, quit staring straight into the corner and maybe turn around. There might be a hallway of open doors, you know, right behind you. 00:43:49 Speaker 1: And, you know, that kind of changed the way I looked at a lot of different things, but I think that I think that, you know, opportunity is everywhere. 00:43:58 Speaker 1: Unless you dig through the mock, sometimes you won't find it. But sometimes that's where the best opportunities exist. I I also think that if there's something that you want in life, figure out what that ISS in reverse engineer your way back tow wherever you're at. And you know, there's a lot of phrases and sayings and say, you know, you don't eat an elephant, you have to eat an elephant One bite at a time with a lot of lions. Yeah, with a lot. Well, maybe with lines, if you can get him. But if you're if you're gonna start, if you're gonna eat that elephant, you might as well start with the tail. But the point is, and it's I don't really endorse eating elephants, but that the idea is you can't just you can't just munch that whole thing down right away. So anything you want to do is likely. 00:44:41 Speaker 1: Ah, people look at goals and accomplishment as one singular task, and it never is. There's like, 10,000 things that need to occur on your way to doing so. You got to just break down what they are. Any time you get an opportunity to put a check box next to wanna crossman off the last, you're one step closer to what you wanted to dio and that can that can go for a whole lot of different things. So well, Kevin, that's all I have to say here in the in the newly named Founders Freestyle. But I really do appreciate you coming in. 00:45:11 Speaker 1: See y'all next time. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Startup Hustle with Magic Horsey and Matt Watson for more great content to stand today. Visit Startup Hustle Thought X, Y Z and enjoyed today's episode. Please write and subscribe and we'll catch you next time on startup Hustle.