OSN's Hustlebus X In Her Land: Ohio's Startup Momentum
01:01
This is Carrie Aguilar with a new episode of In Her Land. And I'm here to welcome Sarah Barrick with Ohio Startup Network. Sarah Barrick, I'm so happy to have you. Welcome.
01:13
Thank you, Carrie. Excited to be here.
01:16
So, Sarah, I am so excited to tee up this conversation. We have a series of conversations with founders that we actually shot on the back of a bus on the way to Ohio X Convention, or is it convention, I guess, gathering in Columbus, Ohio. We took it a couple weeks ago now. But I was wondering if you could talk to our listeners a little bit about the Ohio Startup Network.
01:50
And the Hustle bus was such an event. All the founders getting interviewed in the backseat of a bus and pitching their business. It made for great content, which was.
01:58
The objective, literally at. At 7:00 clock in the morning, by the way.
02:03
Literally, yes. But we had coffee.
02:05
Okay, that's true, that's true.
02:07
Caffeinated, you know, at least a little bit. But Ohio Startup Network got started when, you know, most of my work in the last handful of years in venture capital has been on the coasts and has been supporting underrepresented founders. So women founders, HBCU founders, all types of minorities. And in that, I started to broaden my thesis for geographic equity as well. So I started to poke my nose into some of the deals happening here in the heartland. And it was a very different game than what I was used to on the coast. And so the first year, yeah, it was mostly a listening tour where I was, you know, getting acclimated, saying, okay, this is how things are. What do other people in the ecosystem think that this ecosystem needs? And I met my co founder, Shanna, along the way.
02:52
You know, I had reached out to a bunch of event organizers and offered to list their events on a centralized calendar. And she was the only one who took me up on it. And we started co hosting events together and just like the value was immediately apparent, like all the impacts, all the events that we did were very high impact. And one thing that came out of a lot of that first year of listening tour and hosting events was that Ohio founders do not toot their own horn. They do not, you know, scream their achievements from the rooftops. You know, unlike coastal founders, which even if they have a half baked idea, they're talking about if they're the greatest thing since sliced bread.
03:27
Right, Very true.
03:29
So humble. But they're building real businesses that really are with real product and yet they're so humble. And I said, okay, nobody else is going to shout their achievements from the rooftop. You know, content was definitely a weakness. Like founders creating content to post online and be very visible. That's something I've spent my career doing, is doing a ton of viral movements from like the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge to presidential campaigns and you know, even congressional campaigns here in Ohio. I'm like, I know how to get press coverage. That is a way that we can add value, is creating content, being there to capture stuff and elevate it into the local and national discourse.
04:04
And so that became the central mission for Ohio Startup Network was to basically create content, whether it's organically like going to already existing events and just filming the amazing stuff that's happening that founders are already doing, or creating events where we can end up creating content and, you know, soliciting pitches and all these other types of content. And so it became really, how can we capture the amazing stuff that's already happening, create cool situations for content and then give that content back to the founders so they can leverage it on their own social media to talk to investors, prospective talent, and then we also go ahead and work on lobbying the press to get coverage for some of this stuff as well. So that'll be coming next. We've done some events, we've created some content.
04:47
Next we're going to start seeing headlines for Ohio startups. That's the goal.
04:52
I love this so much. So with Ohio Startup Network and the Hustle Bus, this was the first Hustle Bus, Right. So can you walk the listeners through exactly what the Hustle Bus was, how it was set up, and potentially what the future is for more of these events?
05:10
Yes. So the Hustle Bus was actually the first official Ohio Startup Network event, period. And when Shannon and I got together at the beginning of the year and we're like, this is the first year we are officially incorporated, what's on the Agenda. We had been wanting to do Ohio VC Day in Columbus, Cincinnati and Cleveland and just create this like event series that's a little educational, but we wanted to try some other things as well. Just like try some new stuff. I was not very original. I came up with a brunch concept and Shannon came up with the Hustle Bus. And I totally did not get it at first, to be honest, but I was like, beach picked an event, supporting it, let's do it. And I didn't fully understand what it was until I showed up that morning on the.
05:53
And I suddenly got it. I was like, the energy there, like you could feel it even though it was seven in the morning. Just like this concept of getting all these founders on a bus from Cleveland and caravanning to Columbus, bring them to the biggest tech summit of the year to be part of the action. Even on the way there, I could feel like this was extremely meaningful and we need to do this a lot. Like scaled this up. And even on the way back after people were talking about what that experience meant to them, it just solidified it where I was like, okay, Hustle Bus is definitely going to be a thing. There will be more Hustle Buses. Connecting the ecosystem physically is definitely a very worthy cause that is clear to us now. And then there's plenty of opportunity for content.
06:36
I mean, just seeing the videos of founders pitching on a moving bus being there was awesome, but seeing the content is even more awesome.
06:43
I love it. I love it.
06:43
And I enjoyed so much the conversations. I think what really resonated to me was, I mean, so you guys will listen, you'll hear in just a moment the conversations that we had early in the morning with these incredible founders that have these amazing ideas that are building life changing companies here in the heartland with this incredible. Now, with this backing of the Ohio Startup Network, with people like Sarah and Shanna who have megaphones to create this incredible content, I think is amazing. And we need to stop being humble guys. So here's to us stop being humble, tooting our own horns and really bringing ourselves to the next level. So thank you so much and we look forward to more Hustle Buses and more from OSN in the future.
07:38
Absolutely. And if you or you know of anyone who has an exciting milestone as a startup or a founder here in Ohio, drop us a line at osn. We want to cover it. We want to be there. We want to support and shout your achievements from the rooftops.
08:29
Welcome to In her land.
08:30
Thank you.
08:31
It is exactly 9, 10 in the morning. We are just now leaving a rest stop. Have you ever done a podcast on a bus before?
08:38
Never.
08:39
Oh, well, there's a first time for everything. If you would introduce yourself and tell us just maybe 30 seconds about your business and what brings you on the bus today.
08:51
Sure. Well, my name is Kim Vergatini and I'm the founder of smartly, which is Simulated Medical AR VR Technologies and Learning environments.
09:00
Very cool.
09:00
So it's a very long acronym and I'm a nurse, so this is very normal for us to have long acronyms.
09:04
Got it.
09:05
So my business is that I have developed a platform in virtual reality to train doctors and nurses to replace the traditional way of doing clinical simulation where we use mannequins, which are very expensive and built out physical spaces that look like hospital rooms. But we do this all in the VR headset and it.
09:26
Oh, that's so cool. That's amazing. I guess my first question is, how did you come up with this idea?
09:32
I was working for a hospital system in the Middle East, a very well known hospital system in the Middle East. Recruiting nurses from all over the world.
09:40
Okay.
09:40
And giving them their orientation.
09:42
Okay.
09:42
So I have a lot of experience with doing clinical simulation when we onboard nurses and getting them up to speed with how we would do things in our particular hospital.
09:52
Okay.
09:52
And then I had some exposure to the Microsoft HoloLens back in 2018.
09:57
Okay.
09:57
Which is a mixed reality platform. And the demo that I saw was.
10:02
And that's for. Primarily for doctors, right?
10:05
Yes.
10:05
Okay.
10:06
So they were doing a presentation for the doctors, but they were doing it in the SIM lab where I worked.
10:10
Okay.
10:11
And I was sneaking in after and saying, hey, show that to me. Yeah, I want to see what that's all about. And then I got to thinking about it and I thought, well, why aren't they using this technology with physicians when nurses make up most of our healthcare system?
10:26
Right.
10:27
So I started to think about how could we use this for training nurses Instead.
10:31
And so that's incredible.
10:33
That's how I started thinking about the idea. And then the more I got to know about it, the more I realized that I could become a software developer and start working on that myself.
10:41
That's incredible. So you start off as a nurse. I had this, like, incredible career as a nurse. You went to the Middle East. You saw that this was. This hololens was being used in a. In a SIM lab there or. Or like for doctors to help them with their surgery.
10:58
I'm assuming, like a Hollow Anatomy. It's got a different name now.
11:03
Okay.
11:03
The original software was Hollow Anatomy.
11:05
Okay.
11:05
And it was actually spun out of Case, which I have no idea.
11:08
Oh, that's so cool.
11:09
Because it was a different company that was bringing it into the hospital.
11:13
Okay.
11:13
So I didn't even know that there was a Cleveland, Conn. There.
11:16
Oh. Kind of feels circle.
11:18
Yeah.
11:18
Yeah.
11:19
And I've since been to Case and talked with him about this.
11:22
I love that. I love that. Northeast Ohio. I love that. So, okay, so you came up with this idea and then you just were like, I'm going to become a programmer to build it.
11:33
Well, first I took the idea some. Some semblance of the idea because it was a very early idea that I had.
11:39
Right.
11:40
And I went to some software developers to get estimates on what constant develop. And it was astronomical. It was. Out of my little nurses, of course, knew that. And so I'm a very persistent person. I don't give up on things easily.
11:55
Love this.
11:55
And I just thought, I wonder how you learn how to do this, how you learned to do Sonic, this kind of software development.
12:02
And then. Is it that hard?
12:04
Yeah. And I kind of feel like I can do anything if I put my. My mind to see.
12:08
This is incredible.
12:09
I'm at the great. I'm an avid learner. I'm a person who. I just thrive on learning lots of things. Probably too many things.
12:16
Okay.
12:16
I've sometimes had to contain my enthusiasm.
12:18
Yeah, of course.
12:20
And so then I started realized, like, oh, you could do this with like, Unity game engine or Unreal Game Engine.
12:27
Right.
12:27
If you learn.
12:28
And then I started looking at YouTube. You can teach, you know, if you want to learn something, you can learn anything on the Internet, you know. So that kind of started me on the journey. And then I realized I really could do this.
12:38
Wow.
12:39
Probably do most of it on my own. And so I did eventually hire some developers to help me speed the process along and to do some more sophisticated parts of the software development.
12:48
Right.
12:48
But I Started the journey on my own.
12:50
That's incredible. I love that you started on your own now.
12:53
And I also think that it's very beneficial for me now because as I work with other developers, I know the language.
12:59
Right.
12:59
And you know what? You know the language, you know what you're asking for, you know what you're talking about. And I'm sure, like, as your business develops and grows, you can speak it and like, bridge the gap between the developers and the people who don't necessarily know to say, like, this is what it is, but this is what it means. Right, Right. I love that.
13:21
It also means that I understand if I ask a developer to do something whether it should take three hours, three days, or three weeks, they can't really fool me on that.
13:30
You're like, I know.
13:31
I know what it is. And they know really fast that I speak their language.
13:34
Right. You're like, you're saying it's three days. I know it's going to be three weeks to bullshit me. Yeah.
13:39
So also, nursing and medical is a language of itself. So.
13:43
Right.
13:43
So I kind of had a lot of time by developing things for myself self. Because I don't have to explain to someone else how something should look or work right when I'm developing it, because as a nurse, I already know how an amber bag works.
13:57
I know how you should hold it on the mouth.
14:01
So if I have to teach another developer that.
14:04
Right.
14:04
I then have to spend a lot of time to teach that person.
14:08
I understand.
14:09
Something should look like how it should work in the environment.
14:11
It's like a game of telephone. In this way, you don't have to worry about the game of telephone person. Yeah, I love that. So tell me, what are you. What's next steps for your organization?
14:22
So we have a developed product.
14:24
Okay. But we are still in the point.
14:26
Where we need to test it more and put it out into the market. We want to sell it to universities, hospitals, nursing schools, medical schools. And before we can put it out, we can't just put an untested product in. So we need to do some beta testing. And right now we're in the process of setting up some beta sites.
14:44
Cool.
14:44
And we're also looking for funding, so that's so that we can continue to support that.
14:49
So today's heavy networking. Priyanka. Excuse me.
14:53
Yes. So, yeah, I've been bootstrapping the project up till now.
14:56
Oh, congratulations. Thanks.
14:57
And. But that's, you know, difficult to keep sustained.
15:00
Right.
15:00
It's.
15:00
So we're looked. We're looking Forward to make connections and network and see what see if we can interest other people in joining us.
15:07
Awesome. Well, I'm very excited for you.
15:09
Thank you.
15:09
And I'm excited for you to have such a great day today in Columbus.
15:13
I'm looking forward to it. It's already started out pretty amazing.
15:15
Yay.
15:16
Wonderful. Well, thanks for joining me Foreign. Welcome to in her land. I have a quick question. Have you ever done a podcast on the back of a bus before?
15:34
I'm gonna say this is the first.
15:35
If you could start with just a short introduction and if you could tell me maybe 30 seconds of your business and what brings you on the butt today.
15:46
Brilliant. Well, first of all, thank you for having me on the world's most lumpy podcast.
15:51
Yeah, of course.
15:51
My name is Daniel Dudley. I see him. I am a serial entrepreneur, founder, startup executive.
15:59
Okay.
15:59
Throughout the last 15 years in the health tech space. Currently working in marketing strategy and positioning. Then I co founded a medical device company, ran that as chief operating officer for a couple of years. Put up with that was a stint me doing SAS for were muffin disease was the head of revenue operations and then most recently I headed business operations for whom the largest provider of gender affirming hormone therapy for the trans and non binary community in the United States.
16:28
That's really cool. Yeah.
16:30
And that's actually what brings me on the bus today at the beginning of the year because of the changing administration trans healthcare. Is this undergoing a lot of changes.
16:40
Taking a gut punch?
16:41
Honestly, it's a very difficult time to that community of which I consider myself a member. I identify as queer trains and at the same time telemedicine itself is has an uncertain future. There's something called the public health emergency which was started in Covid which enabled this generation of telemedicine companies and currently sent them expire in December. So I ended up.
17:07
Oh wow, I didn't know that.
17:09
Yeah, it's called the phe. Only seems to last a year. But there's a non zero chance that what we know as telemedicine fang will disappear. And so it's a scary time for a lot of telemedicine companies because what has enabled their prosperity is the suspension of a lot of currently on the books laws under this public health emergency.
17:29
Wow.
17:29
They sell. And that's kind of what brings me on the bus today. I I left clinic because they were really focusing on kind of battening down the hatches and my boss, the de facto coo, Jennifer Dewey also left at the same time. We loved Working together. She has a 30 year history of running clinical operations for everything, large unicorn telemedicine startups. She took one company from Belgrade, 30 clinicians to about 3,000.
17:59
Oh wow, that's impressive.
18:00
Yeah. And she also ran critical care for a large network of correctional facilities. King personal behavioral health. Incredible. So we loved working together and she was getting a lot of questions about, hey, can you help my. My wellness business, where I started my healthcare business. And she loves doing that on the clinical side, bearing blood there really is. Is herself a clinician.
18:26
Right.
18:27
And doesn't have necessarily a business background.
18:30
Got it.
18:30
And so for me, because that's what I did for Plum and so the two of us started the actual advisories to help companies in those two areas.
18:40
Wow. What are the major. I mean what you just mentioned is huge. Let's just call that. But beyond that, what are the major obstacles or major issues that these types of businesses are running into right now that you're helping them with?
18:54
Biggest issue is one that is not necessarily unique to healthcare and wellness, but is especially acute, and that is the founders are often clinicians, physicians or nurses or PAs. And they have a lot of very specific experience in their area, but are very experienced or unfamiliar in many other areas. Marketing, fundraising, business.
19:25
They've never run a business before.
19:26
Absolutely.
19:27
Yeah.
19:28
We can come in and help them figure that out. We both have seen and made a lot of mistakes ourselves.
19:35
Right.
19:35
In all of the startups that I have, you know, been an executive in, much of the same mistakes happen. Now what's going to happen so I can help someone avoid those mistakes. Those mistakes. And that's what I'm here for.
19:48
I love that. What. I guess my next question would be slightly leading, but what would be a common mistake that you see a lot of these clinician type founders, what do they run into?
20:01
And I choose my words carefully here. I would say the biggest problem or challenge that the clinician foundries have is leaving the. Leaving the OR in their lives. And what I mean by that is as a clinician, you have a patient and things that you need to do for the patient and if you need someone around you, this is especially true research. If you need something done, needs to be done how you want it to be done, it needs to be done now. And so when you say something and everyone has to ask, how high should I jump when what do you need? Reason is if they don't do exactly what you say, the patient could die.
20:42
Right.
20:43
That's a perfectly reasonableness of friends. But A lot of clinicians maintain that mindset when they leave the or, right. As a founder it's very difficult because you don't. The best way to do something in a. For treasury man, right. Raised a bunch of money. How do you manage that? You have this mentality of like I'm the best one. Then you're going to either drive away the people who can help or you are going to create a culture of fear and mistakes.
21:18
That's really interesting and I'm sure also like incredible burnout, right? Like this. It's like incredible pressure you're putting on yourself because you run the or, you have the checklist, you are the ultimate. But then you go into this space where you actually have really no background, no idea and you have obviously a subject matter expertise in what you're doing, but not on the, necessarily on the business side. Which my guess is, which is why you guys come in and help.
21:49
Absolutely. And I think what makes us kind of different is I'm not an MBA, I didn't work at Bayern, BCG or McKinsey. I don't have a consultant. So he's saying that we're advisors and he said our value to a founder is not that we can tell how to do things, it's that we've done these things right. We're operators who have lived what they're living. So we can come in and we're not telling a founder, hey, you know what? Don't work so hard work, do this and that without the context of like Marcus, right. You know, we understand what they're going through and we bring that to the work that we do. A great company that I'm working with right now is a very unique approach to cancer. It's blended trauma and character support, I think aa but for surviving cancer.
22:43
And so that's one you think I was like, it's such a thing to see. It's something that if you were in a traditional and I just soaked in certain space you might say, oh, what's your growth strategy? Like how are you going to monetize? And the reality is like your patients, your members are dwelling with, for, with life changing events, right? Having survived cancer. And so you can't just go to them and say like hey, why are your engineers not working harder? Because in many cases these engineers are dealing with chemotherapy and like we have to tech modifying what we do. And that's one of the key reasons why I love working healthcare and that's just kind of why I do the.
23:25
Work that I do, I love that. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to hang out with me today. Can you start just real quick with like a short intro and tell me 20 seconds about your business?
23:44
Sure. So Digiogarden is an indoor farming company. It's difficult to talk about the nuance of the business.
23:51
Okay.
23:52
But in short, it's how do you make produce basically grown year round in cities like Akron, Ohio, where it's cloudy as it is today and it's not great weather. So that's great. In a nutshell, what we do, there's a lot more to it.
24:07
And how long have you been doing that?
24:09
Oh, it's been a journey. I started almost 11 years ago.
24:12
And how did you decide to start?
24:14
That's a tough answer. The. The short answer is we saw an opportunity for cancer patients. So when you go through chemo, terrible T spuds you don't want to eat. And so we had family members going through cancer. We thought, what's a product that nourishes them, tastes good? And that was microgreens. The answer was then how do we grow microgreens in our at the time, basement, provide them to our family members. That was the start. Pretty quickly we learned Cleveland clinic says no to basement grown greens oncology board. So we had to do a little pivot. But that was the genesis.
24:52
Just out of curiosity, do they say yes to visual gardens now?
24:56
So not into the hospital oncology floor as like a preferred treatment or anything like that?
25:03
Got it.
25:03
We have had dozens and dozens of testimonials of people going through those type of challenges, utilizing our products in a way that I think is beneficial. It has to be anecdotal evidence. All right. It's nothing that's third party tested, but it's definitely healthy, safe produce. And we think that helps you when you go through that cancer process.
25:25
Can you talk to me a little bit about where you are? Because you're in Akron right now. How do you find your facility and what does it actually look like?
25:32
So we're in found innovation hub. It's really fascinating facility. So it was. It's. The old Bfitter factory is one of the main buildings of it. They took it and created a. Basically an incubator for. There's 65 companies there. Everything from software development through manufacturing, through farming. It's a fascinating place. You got to check it out. It's in Akron, Ohio.
25:57
I love it. The. I'm actually an EIR with balance. Oh, yeah. So yes, so I've been there.
26:02
They know a lot about. I'm one of the most abrasive people.
26:06
Yeah.
26:07
But outside of that, it's what does it look like? So indoor farms tend to look a lot more like a factory than they do like a traditional field farm.
26:16
Okay.
26:17
So think automated equipment. Number one thing that we want to do is make the worker more impactful. So rather than backbreaking work that doesn't have a high output, we want to make it more manageable. Work with an employee who's a little bit more skilled, much more akin to that of manufacturing than farming.
26:33
I love that. So one of your missions being in Akron is kind of repurposing this workforce to a different type of work. Right. Like, I mean, that's exactly right.
26:47
I love that it's. There's a dormant blue collar workhorse and all of the rust belt that I don't think that the right path to prosperity is through further, necessarily further investment in education. It's. These are people that have incredible skills and talents. They can do things like grow your food, make anything that you need. I think it's time to appreciate them, provide jobs that are living wage jobs and do it in a way that is innovating.
27:13
That's incredible. Wid is next geographically for Vigor.
27:20
So we want to own our region. I think we love the idea of going national. I think a lot of people do. But owning our Great Lakes region is the. Is the next play. Okay, so look a little bit more west, probably like a Chicago type area. We've looked and don't have an exact location identified yet.
27:36
And so does that look like for someone who doesn't know, does that look like looking for a. Another like empty factory? I mean, what does. Are you purchased? Looking to purchase? It depends.
27:51
So as a business, I think there's an opportunity for the real estate to still be a value for a company.
27:56
Yeah.
27:57
There's different debt vehicles that come along with it.
27:59
Right.
27:59
For anybody who's trying to raise capital, the number one thing that you have to understand is how much they get. Capital stack is not just equity, it's not just debt. It's a blend of you don't plume where all this money is going to come from, but you'll scrap it together. Putting a building into play is a part of it. There's a lot of times where municipalities have millions of square feet that are sitting dormant that they love to see tax generation on or just job creation. And that seems to be really good opportunity for us. But I love that kind of like drinking through a fire with all the options.
28:32
That's wonderful. So one more question. Close your eyes and open them. It's five years down the line. What does Vizio Gardens look like?
28:41
So I think the simplest way to say it is our mission is to really, truly accelerate the world's transition to indoor farming. And we see that. I close my eyes, I see a distributed network of indoor farms with about a 300 mile radius around them serving hyperlocal, safe, fresh produce to all those in that 300 mile radius.
29:03
That's incredible. Well, I'm so excited to watch you get there.
29:06
Thank you.
29:07
I really appreciate it. Thank you for talking with me. Let's enjoy the journey.
29:19
I wanted you to start by telling me a little bit about your business.
29:23
So. Good morning. So I am an attorney and I was joined by two other attorneys were women.
29:31
Bootcamp loved us.
29:32
What we saw throughout our career was that contracts can make a huge difference for businesses and people. When something goes wrong, many of them don't understand what's in that a contract. But once you've signed, you're bound for the most part.
29:46
Right.
29:46
And there's a lot of pain that happens there and people don't also or companies don't understand really what's in their insurance policy. So we set out with a goal that people at companies should understand what terms and those agreements before they sign.
30:01
Wonderful.
30:02
So we realized that using tech, we could solve that problem.
30:05
What is the name of the business?
30:06
Sorry, Business contract?
30:07
Scope.
30:08
Contract. Scope. Love that.
30:10
Our platform right now that I want to talk about is Insure.
30:13
Scope. Insurescope.
30:14
Yeah.
30:15
Great. What? So I love this. First of all, as someone who has their own business, I can't tell you how many times I have blindly signed a contract and kind of just wished and hoped that what I've read was I've like interpreted it correctly or I will copy and paste it into Google or Chat GPT. Honestly to say, like please decipher this. Can you walk me through what the experience is like for someone like me who has a business to use your platform?
30:47
Certainly so on our one of our platforms since it's contract. So for a business, if you were asked to sign a contract that. So you're going to be someone else's contract.
30:58
Right.
30:58
Okay.
30:59
You're going to be supplying something to them.
31:01
Okay.
31:02
You would take the contract that's been handed to you, we would upload it onto our platform and we will have worked with you before to understand what you're looking for. Maybe you're looking for risk shifting provisions.
31:13
Okay. This is really key. Okay.
31:16
Those are provisions in the agreement where the other side, if they're being unfair, unreasonable, might be trying to make you liable and pay you for all sorts of things that you shouldn't be.
31:28
Oh wow.
31:28
So what you would do is you would upload your agreement and we will flag the agreement would show in line those plazas that are risk shifting provisions.
31:37
Oh wow.
31:37
Our guidance like so it's like our head.
31:40
Oh wow.
31:40
Written out saying this is an indemnity provision. Watch out for this. We also have guidance on payments, right. Like make sure you actually have a date on how you're going to get paid.
31:50
Good deal.
31:52
We have hundreds, thousands of clauses that we can search for.
31:55
And is it all like automatic? So I upload it and then in the platform it automatically like highlights all areas that you guys based on my profile file and my say like risk profile capture. And then you say like this might be like a red flag. This might be an issue.
32:16
Absolutely. And what pops up is not something that's generated by Kimo's flare from intuitive AI. It's our guidance. You've been on all of our years of experience. We have 60 years combined as attorneys. So it's not a substitute for a lawyer. Okay, is that we can solve my next question. Okay, so that slows you down and think about it. Do I want to go to a lawyer? Do I want to negotiate this agreement myself? Do I just want to walk the way? And maybe for the most part you felt the other side's giving you something in good faith.
32:46
Right? Right.
32:46
Not always the case. There are some very bad agreements out there.
32:50
And do you flag like, do you say like hey, our recommendation would be these are the next steps or how does the. How does what is the result of these highlights or these lags?
33:02
So the result of it is that we're flagging provisions with our guidance which is pre written right. To take that and then you're going to need to make the next decision.
33:10
Okay. So it's not like you say based on this, like go back and ask.
33:15
For this or okay, our hope is by saying for example you were missing a terms of how you were going to be paid. Yeah, that's a bad thing to miss.
33:25
That's terrible.
33:26
So we might. We identify missing. He turns. Okay, so you read through it. It's hard even for most people, right. If there's a 30 page agreement to be like, okay, I think everything's in there. But unless you actually have A checklist or have done this.
33:42
Right.
33:42
It's hard to identify the missing. So if we flag something and missing we hope that like oh this isn't in there. So let me use a sample. They could put. You could put it in there or you could go back to their side or you could call them. So it's like something for you to decide but to slow you down before you sign something that you're found with.
33:59
Oh, that's wonderful. I love that. So I guess my final question is how can businesses get in touch with you and then what is the next step in your business?
34:09
So what we're doing right now actually is different.
34:11
Okay.
34:12
You can reach me of course I'm an email.
34:15
Okay.
34:15
What is@contractsco.com but we're really doing. We've been in the AI contract space for a while.
34:21
Okay.
34:22
And we are focused on insurance companies. Okay. So we have a platform right now for rovers so they can do policies just to make sure when they're recommending a policy for a business that covers all the risk.
34:37
So. So is it pursuing partnerships with insurance companies? Is that what your goal is? Okay. Brokers.
34:44
Sorry.
34:44
We're happy to talk about contract scope where but from our experience on that we learned that a lot of people don't companies understand what's in their policies.
34:53
Got it.
34:54
And brokers are reading those policies like manually right now.
34:57
Right.
34:58
What we want to do we can do using our tag.
35:01
Got it.
35:02
Help them like understand like the CPUs policies are too.
35:05
So negotiate with brokerage brokers and brokerages to. That's what you're looking for is like growth on that end for insurance.
35:14
Yeah. We're looking for what brokers do to sell is it's really great. So as a company will go and say hey I have this type of caring. I need insurance.
35:23
Right.
35:23
And if you trust your broker of mine to go and shop different carriers and find the one that fits you.
35:28
Right.
35:28
Well what they are doing is they're manually through. Based on their analysis they're looking through all these different policies.
35:35
Right.
35:36
To figure out which one's the best one for you.
35:37
And they're not a lawyer and they don't. You know. And they're doing it manually. Right. Like yeah, yeah.
35:43
What we've done is we created this new platform that's amazing that allows them to upload this policy and within a couple minutes we blag the key provisions that are like based on. They're the right. They'll tell us like these are what we want to look for and then we create ability for them to compare it and that's so they make sure people be businesses aren't exposed and then they can go back to their customer and say I X number of policies or X number of quotes. This is the best one for you not just on the iphoneomics but because you're gonna have better coverage.
36:14
Awesome.
36:15
So yeah. So that's our the next steps for us.
36:18
No, that's really great.
36:19
I love that.
36:20
Well thank you for taking the time to talk to me today. Well why don't you start with introducing yourself and saying what Tell me a little bit more about your business.
36:38
I'm Susan Libertour. I started Visions Images. I've been agency for supporters working with franchise owners and franchisees.
36:46
What type of franchisors and franchisees?
36:49
Home service franchises. So surf pro is I work with Florida America. Stick around those people and emerging brands as well. So working it's like complete pastel lotions.
37:00
What do you do for that?
37:02
So I do a lot of corporate marketing and then individual for the franchise. So everything from like SEO, which blog post content, social media, paid advertising and that's really the nutshell and it's kind of getting that consistent do graph define as well getting. Getting everything consistent all throughout their brand.
37:20
That's interesting. Do you just out of curiosity do you work with the corporate to negotiate like what you're going to do with the franchisees or.
37:30
Yeah. So we'll create a plan. It's out of the way. We always additive constantly changing. So in that journey I heard people talking about grant information and software and all these things that I started to research and kind of be like why isn't there something out there like this?
37:48
Got it.
37:48
And so that's how franchise clarity came in a way. We want to create something that's marketing AI driven, automated driven for these franchisees because those are like the main customers.
38:00
Right.
38:01
Talk to franchisors as you can negotiate as well. But this part specifically for the franchisees we're doing preview management first as we want to launch other pieces later. But we heard from that they wanted to get more reviews because typically KPIs, SEO, all that stuff.
38:19
Right.
38:19
All those fancy word and there wasn't anything to kind of customize and automate. So the AI obviously is hot and popular right now.
38:28
Yeah.
38:29
So creating a brand voice that can automatically respond to their stuff that doesn't sound like overlap. It's really niche and specific.
38:36
Okay.
38:36
Is kind of where that came in. Incentivizing employees as well and where customers really bringing that in and then integrating it with emails and text messaging, et cetera. But also the cool part is franchisors can come in and see like a big leadership board as well to see like who has the news and what's happening.
38:56
Wow. I love that they kind of get.
38:58
A feel for that so that we can again incentivize franchisee right away. Right. So kind of there's kind of like a few different angles audiences that come to light now.
39:08
So I know that you spend a lot of time in the home service sector. Let's pretend that I am just a local business and I'm not necessarily in home services. Just interested in knowing the best way to position myself in today's like crazy world of marketing. What would be like three things that you would say I should spend time on individually?
39:35
Yeah, I would work on kind of your brand as a right. Kind of creating that overarching brand. Who's your audience really niche you down into that.
39:44
Okay.
39:45
That's most important, as we all know in marketing. Creating your voice, creating identity.
39:50
Okay, that's great.
39:51
And really, I mean, you have so much AI tooling that you're about in this episode.
39:55
Okay.
39:55
I would plug it in the ChatGPT and start to create your foundations in that aspect.
40:00
Okay.
40:01
You can like say this is my audience. What kind of brand should I create? What kind of brand voice? Where should I have those types of things? That's first and forecast. And I mean you can do as much as you want without a website too. Like I always say, you should have a website even if it's just a landing page. But beyond that, you kind of have to have social. Yeah, it's huge, right? Yeah, but it's so competitive on social. So how are you standing up and creating that campaign strategy? That launch is really important as well. And then having to experience the third place because people are going to go on Google and start searching for you and when they see your big news, that helps with brand a little less.
40:41
Do you as someone. I used to work at Yelp, so I got. Yeah, so I got lots of questions about reviews and what to do when. You know, I know that local businesses and small businesses, all they do is work their tail off to make sure that they provide great service. But in the fringe cases that doesn't happen and they do actually get like not a great review. What do you recommend local businesses do to kind of not combat but like what, like what is your. What do you typically say to your clients to kind of, you know, make it be not the end of the world.
41:23
So there's two parts to that. First is the software that we have is that will send out an email to your customer or text or whatever and it'll say like, if you have a positive experience, click here. And then it goes to the platforms of Google, whatever. Yeah, but the other part is if it's negative or they say they have bad feedback and again, we're kind of working on the verbiage so that it's not so. Because if they know it's negative, they might still brighten it.
41:47
Right.
41:48
We don't want to bypass that, but we want to be able for them to provide feedback to us. So kind of bypassing the online part if possible to have a company turn.
41:58
But okay, I love that if they.
42:00
Write it on Google or Yelp or ever, always respond first for those people. Everybody's human, right?
42:06
Of course.
42:06
I feel like a human really dive into what the problem was. Ask, you know, say, can we give them a call?
42:12
Right.
42:12
It's your number. Or if they're not even a customer, it's just spam, like acknowledge.
42:17
Right.
42:17
As well.
42:18
Okay.
42:18
If it's a customer that's had a bad experience, absolutely. Take it to heart. But you know, Right. Take it internally and like figure out how you can better if it was a serious issue, if they're just kind of complaining or you know, offer them something to make them feel good.
42:33
In life as well.
42:35
So that's kind of what I was doing.
42:37
Okay, I really appreciate that. So tell me a little bit about what you're looking forward to at this event today.
42:43
Honestly, I'm open minded. There's so much to look forward to. I'm excited to learn more about the technology, AI, talking, networking, all of the things, growing the business. And that's awesome. Just meeting people, that's really what it comes to.
42:56
Oh, that's wonderful. Well, thanks for taking the time to talk to me. Why don't you tell me a little bit about what brings you on this bus today and what do you do?
43:12
So I'm Josh Tech.
43:13
I run End Station.
43:15
End Station, Yeah. Okay.
43:16
End.
43:17
Okay.
43:17
But it's so it's startup. I started because, well, really I saw a paper back in 2022 where like Microsoft had managed to get a reinforcement learning agent to be able to play Minecraft and tied it to like GPT2 to drive it.
43:35
Okay.
43:35
That is overly complicated. Decimpler, you know, started a company with the goal to like kind of solve transportation interoperability. Because I was tired of downloading all of these different apps through doing the same thing, you know, decided that was too big of a scope. So narrated to focus on parking.
43:55
Okay.
43:56
Because Cleveland has more than 10 different parking apps and there's a couple hundred across the country.
44:02
Yep.
44:02
And that's just very annoying as a user.
44:05
So annoying.
44:05
So just.
44:06
So what you're saying, just to clarify, parking apps are the apps that you have to like download to pay for parking. Okay.
44:14
Right.
44:14
And they do have like the locations, but only the locations of the parking spots that will make them one.
44:22
Right, of course. And so you feel like putting your zone and. Right. Most recently, I was in Boston.
44:30
Yeah.
44:30
And it took me 15 minutes to download the app. I had to go back to.
44:35
It was.
44:36
We. I was in Boston at Harvard, actually. I had to download the app. The app like timed out three times. I had to put in. I got those like the wrong zone number. I was in a rental car. So it didn't have my. I had used the app before, but it had my. My radio. Yeah. My normal car. So I had to like go back to the car to look at my. It was a whole thing. So it's a. It's a pain. It's a total pain. So I'm. I'm following. Okay, so what are you doing? What? So what. So what are you doing to solve this?
45:05
Okay, so basically we built these very simple AI agents that we're using to, you know, pay for those spots in those apps so you don't have to, so.
45:17
Oh, wow.
45:18
Yeah.
45:19
So we're.
45:21
So we have an app. We've done a bunch of scraping to know where all of the spots are.
45:26
Okay.
45:27
And we're also working on a crowdsource feature so. So that people can go and add spots and like tell us when spots are free, specifically for like street parking.
45:38
That's amazing.
45:40
And so it's a one stop shop to find your spot and then pay for it. And you don't need to download a new app. You don't need to go. It's a. You know, you sign up once you can put as many cars as you want on there. We're working on a feature where you can just take a picture of your car and it shouldn't fill out the details.
45:57
Wow, that's incredible.
46:00
And yeah, that's.
46:00
That's huge.
46:01
That's incredible. So tell me a little bit about where you guys are at. Just in Cleveland or.
46:07
So the team is a little bit spread out we're mostly in Cleveland and Detroit, but we have one person in Atlanta.
46:14
Okay, so to clarify, I was saying, like, the parking spots in Cleveland.
46:18
Yeah. So we have a full coverage of Cleveland right now, and I'm running some scripts so that we have some data for Columbus, because we're going to Columbus and we have some stuff in Detroit, and we just launched the app. There's still, like, a little bit of fine tuning we need to do, but it's up and operational. So in theory, when we get to Columbus, we should be able to pay for parking with Scooch.
46:42
Oh, it's amazing. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me. Yeah, well, thank you. And everyone go check out Scooch.
