Welcome to the leaders mindset where we have illuminating conversations with leaders making an impact in their companies, their families, their communities, and how they build those teams around them they need to make that real impact in the world. Today, we've got a great guest, he grew up right here in Las Vegas, he's founded multiple businesses which we're going to get into all of that, including a co-working space and a multi-million dollar marketing agency and now he's tackling the tech space and he's a CEO and founder of Record. He's also shaping the next generation of entrepreneurs as an adjunct professor at UNLV. Please welcome Kenny Ellison. Hey, what's up? Hey, so tell us about Record. What is it? Why did you start it? What are we doing here? Man, that's a loaded question. There's a lot that went into Record. Record right now is a tool for personal injury attorneys to connect better with their clients. So it's actually an app for the client of a personal injury attorney that they use to facilitate data transferring and communications back to their attorneys. The goal is that clients are more satisfied, cases are higher quality, and settlements actually increase because of both of those things. And when clients are happy and they make more money, they tend to refer more clients, which means more happy clients and more money on top of that. So that's what we're building right now. Yeah, because what's the challenge with the clients, right? There's a challenge. Yeah, every client is usually their first time being in a car accident. And so usually they have no idea what they're doing. And so a lot of an attorney's day is spent educating a client and telling them what they're doing and what they should be doing and why they're doing it. And so we're offloading a lot of that education and that training to the app, which hopefully increases compliance with the clients. They're more willing to do just like you don't like doing anything. You don't know why you're doing it. Clients are the same way.  So we're giving them that why and that helps increase the compliancy so that they do the things that they're supposed to do. That's fantastic. Great customer experience is going to help the clients be better clients for the attorneys. It's going to help the attorneys do a better job, getting them a better settlement. Yeah, exactly. Win for everybody. Yeah, exactly. It goes back to my time. I worked at a personal injury law firm for a long time and I was a legal assistant. I speak Spanish, so they hired me only because I spoke Spanish, not because I knew how to do anything with law. I actually did not want to do anything with law and just fell into the job because I needed a job. Ended up loving it. And the main thing I loved about the job was helping the people, like especially in the Hispanic market. This is way different to the stuff that they're used to. So I was a really important part of their case and I developed friendships and relationships with these people that I still have friendships with to this day, 20 years later almost. And so taking that same love for the people and now being able to digitize it and make it into a tech solution is the real reason why we're doing it. But you went through a long gap of time between working in that law firm and starting record. So what led up to starting record and what was the catalyst that made you pull the trigger on starting a tech startup? Okay, so brace yourself. It starts way back in 2004 when I got that job. I didn't want to, didn't think I'd love it, ended up loving it. Over about an eight year span I did pretty much every job imaginable inside the law firm. I went from being just a legal assistant to a paralegal to office manager, to office manager, over two offices to even at the towards the end I was actually representing clients at hearings for work comp cases that you didn't have to be an attorney for. So I was a hearing advocate for some of these clients. So I did everything inside the law firm and I became really, really close friends with the attorneys. And again, like I started off saying I had never ever wanted to do anything with law. That was not on my radar. Until one day I'm sitting in a meeting with the attorneys and I got wind of how much money they made every month. And I said, yeah, maybe I'll be an attorney. That sounds like a bad job. So I signed up for law school. I did the LSAT. You know, my family, I mean we're, my dad was a carpet layer my whole life, you know, like we don't do a secondary education, let alone professional degrees. And so I had graduated from UNOV with a degree in Spanish by that point and decided to go to law school. So did the whole thing. Some of the parts I wish I would have learned, well, I learned a bunch about how law schools function. Unfortunately, I learned them in the wrong way. But we didn't know any better. I didn't know any better. I was choosing schools. I think a lot of attorneys would agree with you on that. It's surprising. It's surprising. Yes.  So I get accepted to like five different schools around the country. We go and visit all the schools and I liked a lot of them. Ended up picking California Western down in San Diego for a number of reasons, proximity, easy to come back on the weekends, a lot of different reasons. So I picked that school. I didn't know much more about the school than they taught law like every other law school did. So I go through my first year of law school and I get to the end of my first year and I rolled right into the summer semester because I was going to do it in two and a half years instead of three years. So I'm halfway through my summer semester when grades come out for the first semester, for the first year. And I learned that important thing about law school at that point. And that is that every law school, every law school, not just my law school, every law school cuts a bottom percentage of their first year class. And they do that so that they can keep their bar passage rates up. They believe at least that if you're going to not do good your first year of law school, you're probably not made for this. You won't pass the bar. That'll look bad on us if we don't output bar passing attorneys. But the bigger problem was that the school that I happened to choose, different than all the other schools, there's like five law schools, man, maybe four law schools down in San Diego. I happened to choose the law school that, well, most law schools across the board cut the bottom like 3%, like that's kind of an average number, 3%. So if you're in a class of 100, like three kids go home, the school I happened to choose cut the bottom third. And so a third of the class went home after the first year. I'm halfway through the second semester already. And here I am getting noticed that I'm not welcome back at the school anymore. And man, I had just had my first baby at that point. We had relocated. We had a lease that still went on for another three months, you know, we were, it was quite the world rocking experience. So needless to say my attorney career at that point came to an abrupt halt. We moved back to Vegas. I went back to being a legal assistant at the law firm I was at previously. And that's just not, that wasn't going to be my career. For some people it isn't, it's a gricker. But for me, it wasn't going to be my career. So I started looking for other things to do, which I've always been a big tech and marketing guy. My dad, he never actually did anything with marketing, but he loved it. And so my whole childhood, I remember driving around looking at like empty Kmart buildings and imagining what could be in that building and why they put that billboard up. And so I just had this love for marketing. And at that point, my good friend had an agency. It was called Engage Media. And sorry, I'm talking a lot. We're here to hear from you. He was doing some good stuff. I had actually used him on my, so my parents at that point owned a trampoline park called Flippin' Out. And so I had used his agency to do some of the marketing for the trampoline park. The law firm I was working at, I had him do some marketing for the law firm that I was working at. And I knew what he had going on. And this is 2010. This is really early with social media marketing especially. Like most people thought it was crazy that he had a social media marketing agency because you just didn't do that yet. This is before Facebook business pages, right? Like everybody was using profiles. And so I had watched what he'd done. And I was kind of like, you know what? I could do this. I want to help. So I approached him. We were good friends. He was like, you know what? Actually, I could use the help. Let's do it. And so we joined up and within like a week, I realized that pretty much every one of his clients were about to fire him. And the way I knew that was every time I went to a new client meeting, they said, can we have all of our usernames and passwords? I was like, you're not going to be around much longer, are you? And sure enough, they all went away. And so I quickly said, never mind, not going to do the agency. I'm going back to work at the law firm. I went back to the law firm. Fast forward a little while later, my same buddy comes back to me and says, look, he had some really good reasons. He actually had a really big client that took most of his time. And so some of the other clients got neglected and whatever. But he came back and said, you know what? Let's team up again. Let's do it. That company's gone. Let's start a new one. Let's do it right. 50-50. We're going to kill it. It's going to be great marketing, social media marketing, SEO, website development, all the good stuff. And I went for it. So how much detail do you want? I got more detail here. Let's see. So we got plenty of memory cards go on. So I start doing it part time at that point. He was in charge of sales. I was in charge of execution. And so he would go out and sell $1,000 websites, $2,000 websites. And then I would work at night with our Indian development team because that's when they worked. So it was convenient. I worked at my attorney's job during the day and my marketing job at night.  And then finally about four or five months into it, he landed a $50,000 website, which we had no business building, and we were going to figure it out. He sold it. And so I quit the firm, went full time into the agency, never looked back after that. We ended up building the website. I ended up realizing that the websites we were building weren't great. And so I became a self-taught developer at that point. So I started building all the websites. And then over the next 12 years, we built a team. Had about 15 people on the team at the peak, did a lot of good stuff over the years for a lot of people. So it was a good time. Yeah, that's how we get to... But something pulled you back. Something pulled you back. That was the initial question, that's right. Something pulled you back into, that's why I have the cards. That's right, that's right.  So, yes, the tie-in is COVID, like everybody, right? So this is a COVID story. So COVID happens. We had 15 people. We go down to two people overnight. Me and my partner were the only two people left, right? And this unique storm happens for marketing agencies. A lot of people don't realize this. But when COVID happened, businesses stopped doing all their advertising. So we went down to nothing overnight. But about two months into the pandemic, this unique storm of circumstances came up where all these business owners had a ton of free time because they weren't open. They couldn't do anything. They had a ton of free time. What did they look at? Well, they looked at all their marketing and online efforts in the past. Now they had the need more than ever for that stuff to work. So they needed to have it fixed up. And all of a sudden, all these businesses had a real desire to make changes and money to fuel it. So we started getting a bunch of clients that we didn't have before. Now, to your building a business perspective. So when I first started Neon Brand, I even remember the first meeting. It was at Casa Don Juan right over here on Main Street. I was with Chad. One of the things we talked about was Chad. I told him was, look, I want to build a dope team that builds cool marketing and cool websites for everybody with the eventual goal of someday taking that dope team and putting them on our own project. That was the goal from the beginning. And so our initial plan with getting to that goal had always been for those first 10 years almost was reinvest in the team, reinvest in the team, reinvest in the team all the time. Like I, when we were at 15 people, I was making embarrassingly little money. It was all about building the team. I don't know how I survived. I was making that much money. And so now COVID happens and we let everybody go. My partner and I said, you know what? We're going to do it different this time. You know, we're going to focus on smaller team and we're going to, you know, bring some of that, bring more of that home and try to execute the same level we were doing before. And an interesting thing happened, right? Like all of a sudden we were able, like I look back and it's like, we were doing about this. We were probably doing more post COVID with four people on the team than we were doing with 15 people on the team pre COVID. But I was making way more money than I had ever made previously. What enabled you to do that? What were you doing different as a leader that enabled you to be much more productive with four than with 15? The realization was how much time it took to manage that team of 15 people. So my job pre COVID was keeping everybody on task. Like finding work for them to do, making sure they're doing it, helping them when they're stuck, which was a full time job for me to be doing that. And what we found was while we could have been more efficient for sure. But when we took that job away, because me and my partner were the experts, right? Like at the end of the day, we knew it better than anybody else. And we knew, and there's also unique perspectives when you're a founder, you can sell and build whatever you want. When you're a sales guy, you have to sell and build whatever the boss says you can do. So in that different perspective of now being the sales guy and the executioner, that's a weird word, what we were able to deliver way more than we were with a full team with just the small team. Just because we were faster, quicker, more nimble able to change to whatever the client needed and deliver faster. Did you bring in a whole new team to do that? Or was this a subset of your other team? It was a subset of the other team. And it was very different. The original question because post COVID, we were all remote. And so when we talked about the co-working space. So this new team, while we were all in person before I'm a huge, I love the people part of work. Like that was my driving force of building a 15 person team. I loved seeing my team. Like that was what I was all about and helping them do better and learning how to, we can work together. Post COVID, there were me and my partner and two more helpers, and we had a lot of assistance that did websites and some of the marketing stuff and some of the customer service stuff. And they were all remote. Even during the summer of 21, which is kind of where this pivot happens to record, I was mostly at the office by myself most days. My partner was on a lot of business trips, visiting clients around the country, and I had some vacations too in there. And most days I'd find myself sitting in a room by myself staring at a wall thinking, I'm making more money than I've ever made before. I'm making things. This is really, really good. Do I want to do this? Like, I don't have any people. Like that was my people. We're my people. I like that part of work and I didn't have it at that point. So I started dabbling with other things on the side where back to my original idea I had when I started Neon Brand, I wanted to be in a startup. I wanted to be in a tech thing. And I figured it wasn't going to happen the way I intended. I wasn't going to be building the team anymore. So my perspective changed to, I need to find a team to join. And then my perspective changed to, well, what are my skills that I can offer a team if I'm going to join a team? And it was more tech. So I wanted to be at that point in summer of 21, I started thinking I need to be a better developer and I need to be a better co- I need to be better at building product because I had gotten out of it with my team and everything else. I can build a WordPress site in 30 seconds. But when it came to doing anything more than that, I really lacked. And so I jumped into a coding school, signed up for a bunch of boot camps, really dug in on trying to build my skill set so that I can go and offer myself as a CTO is what I wanted to be for a startup. Give me your idea and I will build it. That was my goal. So I ended up at a conference up in Utah. It's a three-day long conference. I had actually been to it before. But this time I went with the express desire to find a startup to join. I was going to go in and I was going to say, you know what? Because I remember going previously and the number one thing all these startups needed was a tech co-founder. I was like, the number one thing we have going on today. Exactly. Exactly. And so I figured it would be an easy, an easy deal. I get up there and a lot of the startups that were there were great. Some of them were looking for tech. They weren't very good matches for me and for a lot of reasons. And we're only in like it's a three-day seminar. So it's really, really quick. It's all day, all three days, but it's not very long. And on day two, I'm sitting in the room. It's conference room. We're all around this table. There's only like 20 people in there. And I get a text message from my old attorney boss. Now, some backstory on my relationship with my old attorney boss for the decade I was doing Neon Brand. He and I get really close when I worked there. Like really close. We were good friends. He's got me by about 10 years, but we're really good friends. Both love technology. He bought me my first iPhone. When the iPhones came out, he bought me my iPhone. It was really cool. And through the years, through the decade of Neon Brand, every so often, maybe once a year, maybe once every year and a half, he'd send me a text message and say, hey, you ready to come back and work for me yet? And I'd always say, no, I'm doing this Neon Brand thing, man. I'm good. I'm good. I get that message every, every so often. Well, I'm sitting in this meeting, looking at a screen about startups, learning about startups, blah, blah, blah. And I get a text message from Dean. And this text message does not say what all the previous text messages say. This one says, hey, this is the last time I ask. I'll ask, I swear. And this time it's different. And he says, I'm not asking you to come work for me again. He says, well, we've been building, we've been building a case management system for personal injury. And we've been building it inside of our law firm. And we want to take it to the market. And we're wondering if you want to help or do that. Do you want to be the lead and take it to the market? I took a picture of the screenshot, startups. You know, like, yeah, I'm interested. And so, again, I've been out of PI for 10 years. I didn't want to be a PI guy. Like, this is not my life's goal at this point to be in personal injury anymore. But I was kind of good at it back in the day. I was kind of a good personal injury. And I've learned everything about it. And so, when this happened, it was kind of like one of those serendipitous things like, you know what? If there's any industry I could disrupt, it's the personal injury industry. And I know a ton about it. I know they're super delayed. They're technology. I mean, attorneys, like literally like last year are still learning how to text their clients. Like, that's how behind they are. I think you still see a lot of fax machines. Everywhere. Everything is faxed. They write paper checks everywhere. I mean, they're so old school for so many reasons. It's like, this might be the opportunity I needed. And so, that's what kicks off. And then there's a whole story about what record, how record is what it is now from where we started. It's very different. We're going to get into that to you. Don't jump ahead. It sounds like you did everything possible. You could to not be a tech founder and to not go back into the PI industry. And yet here you are. 100%. And it's, you know, it's ironic or whatever it is. But, you know, I'm going to get my PI money one way or the other. You know, they kicked me out of law school. I'm going to find it. You are probably going to be selling record to every single one of those lawyers. That's the goal. That you were in law school with. Let's shift gears a little bit. I do want to get into what was different when you started the platform versus what you're doing now. Yeah. Quick question going back to when you were running a remote team. What do you think, because there's this whole argument about can teams really be remote? Yeah.  I'm sure. What do you think were the keys to success for running a remote team? Um, you know, I have a remote team right now. I'm the only guy that goes to the office right now. And I love the guys. They're all great. It is so different than being in an office with people. Um, it takes a lot more patience and it takes a lot more communication. Like you've got to be, you've got to be very clear on your expectations. You've got to be very clear. You've got to be able to be bold. You have to be bold sometimes where it's awkward to say, no, like you need your camera on because this is the only time we see each other and there's a human element to our, to our team here.  Like you got to turn it on, which isn't fun.  But for me, teams are super important. Always has been. So being a little bold and I think it's makes it makes a difference. You know, when you're saying we're going to be remote or we're going to do it as in the most human way possible, the human connection way possible. So it's hard if I'm choosing. I'm not choosing remote at the end of the day. Like if there were an option I'm a, I'm an in person guy. I still love my in person team. Um, but I actually, that's probably not entirely true. There's probably a hybrid that I'd actually go for because I do like seeing people, but I do understand the value of being locked in a room by yourself and especially with coders. Yeah, I, I see it a lot of ways. When I was in the Air Force, we, we sent teams and I took teams all over the world when I was doing rapid prototyping. And some, sometimes the only communication you would have with back home was drive into a pay phone somewhere and whatever country we're in and talking like in code for two or three minutes about how things are going for the day. So, uh, one of the big challenges I see with working with remote teams is how do you maintain that culture? How do you keep people engaged with the meaning of what they're doing? Why what they're doing is important? Have you had, is that a challenge for you? Do you have advice on that for the audience? I wish I could unlock that secret, but what I, what I'm doing and I hope it's working and if my team watches this, let me know if it's working is, uh, is, uh, I try to be very, I try to regularly engage with the team on goals and expectations. So they probably get sick of it, but I'm posting in there, Hey guys, these three things are most important right now. And here's how tech fits into those three things. I'm raising money. That's number one. But in order to raise money, I got to have this tech thing. That's number two. And then in order to do that tech thing, you got to do this tech thing. That's number three and constantly keeping them aware of where my mind's at as the founder. And then being super understanding, like because I'm a developer myself, I understand that code takes a while and I know that estimates are meant to work. So I'm aware of all those things that I'm, and I'm understanding, but also the business requires speed and agility and fast and moving quick and it's a startup. So that's what we have to do. And so I try to just keep them reminded of we're going for good, not great. We need, we need done, not perfect. And let's move forward because we got to get this thing on the road. Do you have expectations for them to step up and take more of a leadership role? Cause you're, you're raising money. And that is pretty much a full time job. Oh my gosh, is it ever? So it depends on the depends on the member of the team. And as our team has grown, yes. That has been one of the great parts about growing our team has been like, oh, you can take care of that now. Thank you. I'm not going to, that's no longer going to occupy part of my brain. And so passing that off is definitely part of what I'm doing and trying to be good at delegating. I mean delegating is, is it can either make or break you, right? Like, 100%. It can be great or it can be the end of everything. And so I try to attend to be I don't, I, I am very hands off on 99% of things. Except for when it comes to making sure people are getting their stuff done. So I'll let you have your space. Like you do it however you want to do it. You're doing it though, right? Like just checking in. Just checking in. You're doing it, right? Okay, cool. As long as you're doing it, we're good. So I don't micromanage in that way, but I do try to stay on top of things to make sure they're moving down the tracks. So I don't think that's going to be important. And if that expectation is there's an outcome, you need to deliver an outcome. Right. I'm not going to get in the middle of how you deliver an outcome. Right. But don't forget you need to deliver me an outcome. By the way, how's that outcome coming? Yeah, exactly. You know, you know, trying to keep moving down the tracks. Well, that sounds fantastic. Yeah. So, all right, so let's get back into what was the vision by Fold and they said, we've got this and we want to take it further. Yeah. What was the, what was, was it their vision you were trying to execute? Did you have a vision initially? What was that initial vision? So I had been to this thing called startup ignition a couple of times by this point. It's this, it's that boot camp, actually. So in the boot camp, it's all about building a startup and the necessary components to the startup. And so I had this knowledge in my head of like, if we're going to do the startup, we've already done this. Right? We need to make sure that none of the stuff we're trying to do is patented. Okay. And like, we need to make sure that those people that have done it, if we think we can do it better, that we can actually do it better and we can afford to do it better. We can make it all the way till we win at the end of the day. So I had all these boxes in my, or all these check boxes in my head that I had to figure out with regards to the thing that they had already built. Now, what they had built was a case management software for personal injury firms. They were wonderfully for their law firm. The attorneys derive a ton of value out of it. It helps make all the staff job easier. It does a ton of good stuff. It has AI and machine learning and they were doing that before open AI came out. I mean, so it's got a lot of cool stuff. But that was only one of the check boxes. Like make sure it's dope. Yeah. Okay. That's that box. But now it was, what's the competition doing? And so when I came in, I asked them that question. They had knew who the competition was and I actually knew some of them three times when I was at the law firm to different case management systems. When I started, they were paper files like old school. And I was the first one to help digitize, scan every file in and created systems with it. So I knew case management was a thing. I knew it really well, but I didn't know about the current competition. And so for about three months, I set up demos under the guise of investigating for the law firm, whether or not they should be using a case management software. And I was sincere, like, because this guy's already doing it way better. Like, that would have been a successful time for me in doing those demos. I'm glad you point that out because a lot of, a lot of people don't think that's a success. When you go find out someone's doing it and doing it better, right? And that, that can be a catalyst in your startup to either say we've got to, either we should go invest our time and money in something else or we really have to, we really have to go disrupt this. We have to go further than these guys are. I have a lot of thoughts on that. I've been in it because I've got a lot of thoughts on that because of being in the startup scene for so long here, I 100% agree. It's a big deal. It's a big deal. So I started doing that. I started trying to find the proof that said don't build this app. And I demoed a bunch of them and there were probably three that really stood out. And two of them did not, none of them. Okay, let me start over. None of them had the same capabilities that the current one did, but two of them had tested them and they were so far ahead as far as market share and everything else that you need in order to win that we, we may have been able to beat them, but the odds were very low. It was not in our favor. And so my advice at the end of all of it was don't take this to market. This is not what you should be building. These guys are already doing it and they're already way further along. It's not a wise move. Stop and use them. That was what I, that was the, that was the resolution that I was up with, which they weren't stoked about. They have a lot of pride in their app and to them, even if it didn't ever go to the market, it was already driving value for them inside of their own firm. They were settling for higher and doing all the things that they wanted to do with it anyway. So it wasn't a lost or sunk cost or anything in that way. But as far as taking it to market, that was what happened. So here comes Kenny taking one more step to not be a tech founder. Exactly, exactly. And it sucked, but that was one of the things I learned at the, the startup thing was, you know, like, make sure, if you're going to lose, better to learn and lose soon than learn and lose after you spent. Who knows how much time and money build something that's going to lose ultimately anyway. But I told them through that process of interviewing all these case management softwares and being, being in PI again and thinking about where I'm at in my career and Neon brand and all this is just on the side right now. I'm just doing it nights and weekends trying to learn all this. It was kind of like, you know what, I need to build something for PI. Like, it's not going to be your case management software, but I'm going to do something. And we actually had, we had this tool that me and Dean built on Excel, my first foray into, into programming because Excel is programming at the end of the day and I'm a huge Excel person. I love it and that was my first programming love. We built a spreadsheet that automatically calculated settlements and then it would predict the, it would help you negotiate and then it would create the disbursement and in the 10 years I did Neon brand I always kind of toyed with that, like being something that I would build and so when I told them that sucks, I said, but we should build a settlement calculator thing. Like, I think this would go well all around that same time we decided when we decided we should, we should proceed because we hadn't done anything formally. We weren't paperwork partners or anything. We were just the guy doing some investigation. But when we decided we're going to go forward with something we just didn't know what. We all, there were four co-founders at the time which there's some fun stories there we could talk about. We all went to startup ignition together and attended that conference because up till then it was all in my brain and I needed my co-founders to understand all this cool stuff that I had learned about startups and it was up there where they got on board with this problem hunting is what they call it problem hunting idea we came back and I started problem hunting which I actually teach my UNLV students about right now. The idea being don't build something that ain't broke, right? If there's not a real problem then there's no real solution and so I started interviewing attorneys which took four or I spent like six months interviewing like 50 total. Like that's not a good ratio. That's one every few days if I'm lucky. But it's 50 more than a lot of startup founders interview when they start a startup. Exactly. And so we started when I'm doing this problem hunting it's a couple different things it's really the conversation is not about my idea. I go in with an idea I went in every one of the meetings with an idea but I didn't go in to pitch the idea and I didn't get the meeting on the premise of the idea I got the meeting on the premise of I'm doing research I just want to get your feedback on what it's like to be a personal injury attorney and just tell me about stuff like which podcast oh these podcasts oh okay that's interesting I'm thinking why are they listening to that and I'm figuring that out or I'm a sports radio guy oh what's your favorite team oh do you have roots in Chicago you know wherever the team is you know and I'm having this conversation just trying to get to know them as a human because ultimately that's what they are at the end of the day and they want to have they have real goals and desires like one of the attorneys I talked to sorry I talked really fast to you guys are probably realizing that one of the attorneys I talked to told me his two goals are when you're building a tech solution to know what the goal of life is for these guys and so those were the conversations I was having and along the way I'd pick up on something that was annoying then oh so what's the first thing you do when you get to the office oh well I usually go in I check the mail slot and then if I check the mail slot and if there's any checks in there that don't make sure the checks it's like oh so you get all these checks via paper like yeah yeah everybody mails checks oh okay what do you do with the check after that I went to the PI firm I knew this already but it was more of a hunt to find whether or not that problem existed elsewhere and so I go through this process I'm interviewing these people and if the conversations resulted in a way I could talk about my idea then I would and sometimes they wouldn't it would never get there we'd end the conversation and my idea would never come up but if there was a natural segue into hey I have an idea can I tell you about it I would and so I started off with an idea of the settlement calculator and now that's four or ten years from when I built it the first time in Excel we got all kinds of cool tools out there I could do some really cool predictive analysis stuff using not just Excel but AIs a thing machine learning machine learning was a thing before chat GBT was a thing and that was when in the time that we were doing this chat GBT didn't come along until after we had our final idea and so I go into these law firms with this idea and this is another very interesting thing that happened a lot of them would give me feedback that says cool I like this and then the main thing you're supposed to ask is well if it was built right now would you buy it can I take a can I take a prepayment right now and see if and when it comes out in two months you can have it for that discounted price and see if people wanted it right nobody wanted it nobody wanted to pay for this settlement calculation idea and so then the follow up of course is well why not well it's the hold up and interestingly the attorneys felt like and this was a good job like that's what I'm here for I'm the guy who negotiates cases I'm the guy who predicts outcomes if I'm not here that's doing that for me then what point am I in being here it's not that the tool wouldn't have worked the tool would have worked great we could have predicted every case they could have plugged in like five things and I would have known how much every case is worth in a heartbeat there's actually some startups out there doing that right now it's not gonna be good and it's gonna be good for you it's gonna be good for me but they didn't feel like they'd pay for it so ultimately it wasn't that the product was bad for the solution so it wasn't a real problem because they didn't want the solution they were totally content with the way they were doing it so I'd pivot and I'd pivot and I'd pivot I pivoted six times over those interviews I interviewed not only attorneys I interviewed about 50 attorneys I also interviewed 20 doctors because of personal injury a lot of a case is built on what the doctors experience so I interviewed them and learned all about their side of the story I interviewed clients of attorneys because I wanted to know what their experience was like went through all this being in solution finding and I'm pretty sick of being told my ideas suck at this point like I'm going on six months of nah, we wouldn't pay for that pretty much at the end of my rope like I'm not doing this for much longer this isn't gonna work and I'm in an interview with a buddy and he knows my story and he brought up he said let me tell you about my favorite client again, tell me about your favorite client I mean I had favorite clients everybody has favorite clients tell me about your favorite well this favorite client every time he had a doctor's appointment he would text me and tell me he was gone and then after he got out he would text me and tell me what happened I never needed a reply but I had it in my phone in case I needed it and then at the end of the case he showed up with an excel sheet with every doctor appointment he ever went to and all the information related to each one the bill amount all that just laid it right out just gave me a spreadsheet all I did was plugged it into a demand and sent off the letter and we settled the case almost immediately it was wonderful I was like okay and you're probably thinking like me I was thinking I could do that with technology like I know Excel and it also sounds like a real need that attorneys and doctors have yeah I can enable I can do that back up for a second one of the other things that I one of the other pivots was a messaging platform where I was going to make it easier for clients and attorneys to message each other that idea got told no they thought it was cool but told no primarily because they didn't want to change their own behavior and that was a theme across a lot of my ideas a lot of my ideas were based on adding a new software to the attorney side to make the staff or the attorneys or the reception as somebody do better at their job they all hated it it was too oh we gotta do more tech so that was kind of that was one of the things that it was all in my mind all the time so back to my friend so he tells me about his favorite client and then for whatever reason I said well tell me about your worst client and he says oh man let me I got lots of those you know I got lots of worst clients they're the ones that never call never write they disappear fail on their thing da da da da da da da so you found your you found yourself a root cause and you found something that your target market was willing to pay for but only a sample size of one at that point I had a buddy that was telling me about this and so my next course of action was to ask all the other 49 people that I'd interviewed before if they had a similar experience so I went back and asked a bunch of them not all of them and meeting after meeting the same stories involved right like these are my favorite things of clients that I like to these are the things that all the other clients and every time I'm thinking I can replicate the good stuff and I can make it easier for those that don't do it to do it more huge opportunity right that you're living through technology exactly and it doesn't affect the attorney's job they don't have to do anything different so I'm not introducing a new software for them it's for their clients and it evolves faster the pricing and everything else gets really interesting when it's something for the client so out of that is born record where we are helping clients be better clients like at the end of the day it's that easy and turns out nobody else is doing that yet there's a couple that are trying they're doing it in different ways it actually goes back to when I worked at the law firm everybody wanted a client portal that was the thing that was the way to help customer service with clients was give them access to stuff that we're working on in the firm everybody wanted it nobody used it because every time you turn it on everybody was scared that the wrong thing was going to show up inside the attorney portal and the client would see it like oh my gosh we're in trouble so they end up not using it where what we're doing so that was very attorney to client focused messaging we're not doing any attorney to client stuff we're doing all client to attorney driven stuff so as long as they're feeding information in helps them stay connected we're using AI and chat like things to give them information in the moment like they had an MRI we teach them why they go to MRIs all that stuff so awesome that's where we end up that is fantastic but now we know what record is we've answered a lot of my questions so that's fantastic you're really focused on creating a scalable platform so with all you've done in the past different experiences with different businesses what's different about trying to create a scalable tech platform man it's hard and that's why not a lot of people do it if you can make it through the slog of getting something that works the right way then you can find a lot of success so I love the scalable startups that is I wish people would try to build scalable startups that's where as far as the ecosystem and we talked about that before I love Las Vegas I'm born and raised here this is my home I've been in the startup scene for a long time when I owned the co-working space I was in the startup scene for a long time you don't see a lot of scalable startups in Las Vegas we won some award for the most startups last year or something like that I was astounded I was like where where are those startups it's a lot of small businesses get born here which are great they're great they're real magic of a startup the thing that people think of when they think startups when they think of Silicon Valley the show those are scalable startups and that is what I am enticed by is this ability to and for anybody who isn't sure what that means basically in a traditional small business startup your operational expenses and your profit margins are running in parallel if you hope you hope yes in a perfect world forever like that and that's how accounting lawyers everybody operates in that small business realm where a scalable startup is different obviously you've probably talked about this before in your things eventually the operational costs should plateau or at least slow down dramatically and incrementally you don't have to spend as much money and your upside can scale indefinitely essentially with minimal minimal cost increases so that's what we're going for scale is a platform that any attorney can use and I can be the customer support backbone and help clients be better clients how are you setting up your team and developing your team to have that mindset about scalability to get them on you know we gotta think like this yeah that is a hard thing you gotta know about my team I have a pretty unique team right now you want me to tell you yeah so it goes back to founders I started off with me as CEO a CTO friend of mine who was awesome CFO that was great and a C something else four of us gave some C's they didn't mean anything really at the end of the day we were all a bunch of slackers not knowing what we were doing I lost my CTO nine months in that's a whole story we could do a whole podcast off of it was really sad and really not fun for me because it cost me a lot of money and at the end of the day I didn't have anything to show for it and then my CEO at the time decided that he wasn't a good fit he self decided which I respect him for hard decision to make in the tech community I'm not the right fit for that I need to move on to something else I need to let somebody else step in here and so he self-selected out and you know canceled all the shares he's out and so that left me and my co-founder attorney friend and then since then we've brought on a CXO who's awesome I'll tell us in order because I had my CXO who's great he helped me build so much stuff brought in a contractor to help us get to market that was great and during that time was when I was at a start-up Vegas event and I'm sitting in a room out at WeWork and this is why these events are important and everybody should go to them I sat down next to some dude I'd never met before as these things go and small talking with him his name's Alejandro like what do you do he's like I work for UNLV he says oh I run the internship program oh which college computer science engineering what do you mean tell me more and so turned out they were at the start of a new program where they were paying for interns to work in jobs I was like brah how fast can I sign up so in like three days I was the guy's first onboarded person and boy did I feel it because they didn't know what they were doing over there they're good now but it was a painful process at the beginning from UNLV they're rock stars I've told them they should not be in school they should have careers in coding because they already know it all like it's tricky with them but they're great and so they worked with me through the summer and towards the end of the summer now operationally it's me my CXO and I'm acting CTO at this point because I know how to code and there's so much to try to CEO and CTO it's not fun and two interns so there's four of us plus Dean who's really just in name he helps with industry knowledge but not in building the product I need a CTO I needed a CTO real bad and so I was driving down the road one day another serendipitous type of thing lots of I got a whole note log of all the serendipitous things that have happened with this thing and I remember my friend Lucho and I hit him up turns out he's interested one thing leads to another he says yeah I'll take on your CTO he has a full-time job so he's not he's working only at nights right now but I found my CTO that was great big huge relief and then the fall semester starts and I go back to UNLV because every internship only runs for the semester and I go back to UNLV and I say so how many of these interns can I have paid for by mind you 100% by UNLV and they said how many do you need pick a number I can do a lot so I came up with six they said what are you going to do with six chat GPT what would you do with six interns here you go send it over to them they approved me for six interns so I've onboarded two more immediately so I have four interns and just this morning I offered two more interns so we're going to have six total interns working for us by the end of this week plus Lucho, plus Garrett, plus me so it's a unique team these guys are focused on school and they're not necessarily all the interns that is they're not necessarily experienced coders but they are I'm not paying for them I am paying the process is pay and reimburse but it gives them the liberty to spend a little more time than I normally would allow an employee to spend because you know these foot in the bill build my stuff fast as you can because I need it but also if it takes you an extra day it's fine well it sounds like you got yourself a ball game now so yeah yeah it's busy it's busy and I can't remember your original question now but that's okay I'm sure it was answered we were talking about developing your team and I think that's as good as answered what what is some advice through all of this is there any other advice you have for founders especially if they don't come from a tech background and they want to get into this tech space yeah so so many people and we've touched on it a little bit actually this is the part where I said put a pin in it one of the things I learned was traditionally when we think about building a startup it's a three-step process it's traditionally have an idea build a cool thing show people said thing and hope they like it that's what we've done for years that's like the GM model almost like have an idea build it show them the people will like what we tell them to like exactly and that's broken because what happens is they tell you something's wrong with it you've already spent all this time and money now you've got to change the thing that you've built and that cost a lot of money and you've already spent a lot of money to get it to where it's at so the real way those same three steps are what people should be doing founders should be doing those same three steps except for take the customers from the end and put them in the middle ask your hundred people first have the idea and then go ask people and hope they tell you no like that's the crazy part like hope they tell you there's lots of strategies around getting them to tell you if they really do mean it the mom test is an excellent book I read it all the time it's perfect for this scenario but if they tell you no just think of how much time they've saved you I actually when I was doing my interviews with all these attorneys and I'd present my idea the times that I'd present my idea I'd preface my idea with look I haven't built this at all yet if you tell me this sucks you're actually saving me a ton of money so please don't hold back if this is not something you want tell me now and then I'd give them the idea and they would feel so much better telling me no you should not build that dude I'm gonna save you a bunch of money right now whereas if I had gone in there saying hey I already built this cool shiny toy what do you think they'd have felt obligated to say yeah I guess it's fine sure it's cool yeah that's cool not for me or maybe they would never even tell me not for me maybe they'd lie and say yeah I'd buy that so that's my tip for founders make sure you validate that the problem you're solving is real and that people will actually buy your solution before you spend any time on it well kudos on doing what we all tell everyone in the startup community should do in doing your market research and asking a hundred people first kudos to that I know a lot of people will watch this and still not do it so you wanna play a game sure alright we're gonna play a game it's called this or that I'm gonna ask you a this or that okay and you're gonna respond with this or that or whatever pops into your head oh boy so don't feel like you are limited by my choices okay alright ready to go ready this or that round Kenny Ellison your time begins now digital or analog digital dogs or cats dogs Yankees or Red Sox Red Sox yes I went to the playoff game a couple years ago no at Fenway yeah it's always great to see a game at Fenway I highly recommend it sweet or spicy spicy Halloween or Thanksgiving Halloween east coast or west coast west Vegas sunrise or sunset sunrise I think I know the answer to this one downtown or the strip downtown baby downtown DTLV for life dress up or casual casual this is the most dressed up I'd like to be I think it's the most dressed up I've ever seen you Instagram or TikTok neither Instagram I guess I don't like either of them anymore but yeah Twitter Twitter oh wow now you know we got a real tech guy on the show because he's all about X not these other visual platforms great well thank you for playing our game with us fantastic it's a good way to get to know you a little bit going back to your team yeah you guys are all either experienced tech guys or you're growing people young folks into experienced tech guys and girls what are some of your favorite tech tools working in record that you guys can't live without hmm like I mean Slack all day Slack, Notion some new ones that Lucho's actually introduced us to is a cool app called Linear I think it's a newer one on the scene it's for issue tracking which really really grown to love and it's not a tool necessarily but new database and it's called SuperBase really enjoying working with those new things that have been introduced to lately so other than that Visual Studio we use GitHub Copilot a lot the usual suspects GitHub Copilot's phenomenal it's amazing what the AI can do inside of your ID that suggests code completion it's amazing so you've been part of the Vegas tech scene for probably about as long as there's been a Vegas tech scene close yeah if what contribution would you like to leave behind for the Vegas tech scene man I love the Vegas tech scene I was here 2012 and all the DTLV DTP stuff started happening when Shea brought Zappos downtown a lot of friends with all those guys that were down here what's interesting is I never had like I never did business with any of them I was just kind of on the peripheral and so we worked out of their co-working space work in progress so we were around them but I never had a startup never worked with startup teams never did anything with that so I just watched it and then we owned the co-working space and I tried to do a lot with the startup tried to bring that back to work in progress which was great and long term man so I've seen I've watched the Utah startup scene really explode yeah they're amazing it's yeah it's I mean the past 10 years up there have just been incredible like unfathomable how many startups have come out of there and not that we're ever going to be that but long term my goal is to grow and scale to a point to where I can help give back in a in a VC sort of a wave not mentoring I know there's a lot of people doing a lot of good stuff right now in Vegas the ratios are still really sad in Vegas there's only a few people doing good stuff compared to other markets and I hope to someday be a way that we can attract I want to be the first big win out of Vegas like we've had a couple wins out of Vegas and I know of them but I want to make a I want to make an impact where people go oh they can do stuff in Vegas too so hopefully we can not only do that with record but with future companies I love it you're singing my tunes you're talking about founders mentoring founders and founders becoming funders as Kurt Walker says and I think those two things are going to be the key that makes our community successful eventually I think it's why it didn't happen the first time because actually when I was watching all those first round of startups a lot of them were focused on technology solutions that were actually exports we shipped them to other cities and they exited and had great success but they were in Austin and San Fran and Tampa or wherever else they ended up with their startups so I think we need to keep some of that here homegrown and keep it here to all the way to exit well speaking of giving back you are working with students at UNLV and you are teaching at UNLV I got suckered into it again so what are what are you teaching them that they're not getting taught in their university education whether it's about entrepreneurship business life whatever it is so I taught at UNLV a couple years ago and the class I taught was innovation and teams and I enjoyed that that was fine I had done a lot of work with teams the topic was cool I stopped because I started doing this the startup and I did not want to have my focus distracted with teaching but then they came to me with a new class topic and this topic really hit me and I have a deep love for this and that's starting entrepreneurial organizations is the topic and so all the stuff we've been talking about is what I'm teaching to kids right now awesome and so we're talking last week was all about the mom test and how you should be interviewing people for ideas for a business now they're going to go out and test those ideas next we're going to validate whether or not the solutions they come up with are good then we're going to test the solution so we're going to go through the whole process of building these startups with these kids right now and hopefully teaching them a way that actually can scale and grow teaching them the difference between scalable startups and small businesses and all that a lot of people don't even realize there's a difference lifestyle businesses like there's all these different businesses you can start and really trying to say but you really want to do the scalable kind no not true but and also you do have to go to class you can't just watch this video that's right that's right although we'll send you a copy it'll help get me out of class one day what was one of the best mistakes you've ever made and what did you learn from it oh man I'm the king of mistakes so I joke a lot that people make a few big decisions in their life and I made those three big decisions and failed at all three of them I got married and then unmarried six months later super cool I bought a house in 2006 and sold it in 2008 super cool and I went to graduate school and failed out after one year super cool so I've failed on some big ones amongst many other small ones but I think at the end of the day no matter what happens to us you can spin those in positives all three of them made me a better person in the long run I've learned so much out of that first marriage in those six tiny months that I now am so grateful for my current wife she's the best thing that's ever happened and I have so many so much more respect for that had I never had that first marriage experience my house buying experience man that rocked my world I thought I was doing the right thing and I sold it for a fourth of what I paid for it you know like learned about a ton about money in real estate and how that all works and how what a yeah real estate and with law school I learned so much in my law school career even just in the year I was there that I'm still applying and it's for sure gets me in the door with so many attorneys right now because I think you mentioned it earlier on was you know attorneys when they find out two things happen they find out I went to law school they have an increased measure of respect for me because they say oh this guy knows a little bit about what I'm going through and then when I tell him I failed out they say man you got lucky so they have an increased amount of respect for me in that way too so it's worked out great all the things that are bad can be good that's fantastic who is someone you admire as a leader or in business ah well I'm going to say the answer that's about 50% of the population is going to hate me for it but you know I'm a huge Elon Musk fan at the end of the day that's good that's views and clicks for us that's right Musk man I love him or hate him he is fascinating to me it just got his biography a couple days ago just just fascinating he doesn't do a lot of things right for sure like he's missing a lot of very important skills but the fact that he can do what he's doing right now and run all these businesses like he's running it's phenomenal it's phenomenal it's going to be a business case for the millennium it's certainly fascinating to watch isn't it it's right exactly so that's my guy I was a Steve Jobs fan before when Steve Jobs a lot of similarities between the two a lot of same business tactics they don't treat people well like they have a lot of problems with their staff and liking them never thought there'd be another one and then Elon comes along and blows it up too so who knows what the next one who's next who's next right well I think you might treat your team a little better than Elon totally okay so this has been a lot of fun but running a tech startup being the CEO and sometimes the CTO of a tech startup is not not always easy and you've got some big challenges in front of you what keeps you up at night what are what are you thinking about what are the challenges you need to overcome and how are you thinking about doing that so the startup stuff that I did in the early days you know kind of lays out the startup journey and startups usually start off all exciting and fun and then eventually they go through the trough of sorrow and then if you can survive the trough of sorrow then hopefully you find success on the other side we're deep in the trough of sorrow right now and the trough of sorrow looks like not enough clients which means not enough interested investors which means all the problems that come with all of that but I've been through hard things a few times now and if anything going through this hard thing is just evidence that once we get through it because we're going to get through it that we're going to have something great we're going to be dope on the other side of this we're going to have learned a bunch I've already learned a bunch through this process so much about investing or I mean getting investors fundraising that's the word and it's going to make us better it's going to make our product better at the end of the day we're pivoting we're changing we're growing we're making moves in real time that are going to make the product better so right now I'm sleep I'm up in sleepless nights because I don't have enough money which is just what it is that's life as a founder that's life as a founder and it will hopefully not forever but for a long time into the future plan on it being the problem and I mean that's the main one and building tech that clients want and we're getting there though we're figuring it out well you're optimistic so what are you excited about what's you know what keeps you excited to get through that trough of sorrow you know I was just talking to a potential client before I came here and the thing that gets me excited is I have this vision long term of what this becomes and at the end of that vision is it's super exciting I don't know if I'll say it or not but it's super super exciting and the the probability of it coming to light and being reality is so high just because of market trends and everything else that I'm confident that we're building today is going to grow into it to like this infinite degree and so when people tell me like the guy I was talking to before this meeting he was just kind of worried about I didn't think it was going to be great like it doesn't slow me down because broader vision of it like it's going to happen with or without the people that I'm talking to right now and it's going to be dope and it's going to be awesome we're going to make it work and so I just got that long term vision and you know I've been through the trenches as an entrepreneur for over a decade now there's been plenty of times where we don't have enough money for payroll on Thursday and we figure it out for payroll on Friday like I have no doubt that I'm going to figure that out because I've done it before and so just knowing that it's going to work out and having that I call it unrealistic optimism where everything's going to be okay when everything says it's not well it's going to happen you need to be as a founder more so than the other folks on a startup team the other folks on a startup team you kind of need them to be realistic and you know down to earth but a founder has to have that vision and I will be clear I think because a lot of a lot of founders that I've seen over the decade of doing startup stuff in Vegas have that optimism but they don't do the execution part to back it or the research and everything else that you can have with that optimism and it can be to your detriment too so I feel like for us and not trying to be braggadocious or anything but we've gone through the trenches of knowing whether or not this is a good idea because we've tested validated it so much to where I can have that I rightfully have that and after doing all those interviews I was ready to quit because it wasn't going to be a thing but now I'm so confident because we know that what we're building does have a future so I can have that confidence but without that I don't think it deserves it as much as it might Love that well it sounds like you've got some plans and we'll have to have you back after you've executed so we can so we can find out what those were and how they how they came to fruition I do have a couple kind of personal questions for you that we like to wrap with but before we get into that what else should we know about Kenny Ellison and record hmm what else should we know my background is in hard work my dad was a laborer my grandpa was a laborer you know you get what you you get out what you put in and that kind of plays out in everything I'm doing even though it's tech and I'm pushing keys on a keyboard at the end of the day my mind is still very much the hard work ethic mindset I'm not trying to do anything easy I'm not trying to get a quick buck I'm trying to put in the work and the effort that merits a reward at some point the saying is an entrepreneur's job is to do the things I think do the things now that nobody wants to do so that you can live the life later that nobody can nobody else can or something like that that's where I'm at I'm in the trenches and it's okay and it's hard it's supposed to be hard if it weren't hard everybody would be doing it right so I'm okay with hard work that's just who I am that's what I've been trained dad, my grandpa everybody around me has been hard working people and so I think that plays out in this scenario as well I don't have what do they call it? I don't have quit in me I just don't it's just not a thing Awesome Well where can everybody find you and where can they find record? I hang out a lot on LinkedIn and Twitter and both of them are Kenny you listen one word and then getrecord.com is the website so send your PI friends my way I'm ready to help them make their life a lot better Well it sounds like you're ready and sounds like you have something definitely something of value to offer Hope so Alright someone or something you're grateful for Oh well my wife and my kids I have four kids they're all awesome eleven no twelve eleven eight and five I hope I think they're awesome couldn't do any of this without them man they're such a support my wife my poor wife my sweet poor wife she was an entrepreneur for over twelve, thirteen years she thought she was getting an attorney she ended up with an entrepreneur it's very different but she rides the roller coaster and she's patient and she roots me on all the time so what was that thing about doing the things you need to do today to live the life knowing you can live tomorrow exactly so keep telling her that's around the corner babe we're almost there twelve years later but anyway she's great and my kids are great too awesome what is we've talked about advice for founders what is any advice you have for young people in general making their way through the world about leadership yeah there's a cool book called what I wish I knew when I was twenty it's by Tina Selig I think it's an awesome book talks a lot about that I learned a lot from that book reading it when I was thirty five whatever I was um but the big thing that I tell people especially young people I got a friend I got a friend that just got out of law school this is a good example I got a friend that just got out of law school and he had an option to go work at this big firm or to stay at this smaller firm and grow into a lead role but maybe it might take ten years and he could jump right up to this big fancy salary at this other firm the advice was be patient this what you're doing there's no quick there's no quick wins like the world wants you to think there is like social media says there is um putting your time and effort do the grunt work do the hard labor show up and do the hard crap and that's what gets rewarded in the long term if you're not willing to do that stuff now then you're never going to make it past that fancy job that you think is great and you will probably won't even stay there very long if you get it um for my attorney friends stick it out at that smaller firm because eventually you could be running the whole thing and what would that mean in ten years from now to you versus getting the job that pays a little bit more in the short term um so put in the effort don't be afraid to do hard things oh I got another good book recommendation for you um the book is actually by a guy named Michael Easter who is actually a professor at UNLV I don't know him personally but he just coincidentally is a professor here um he wrote a book called Comfort Crisis it's phenomenal it's about doing hard things and how as a society we need to do more hard things and I think you'd love it especially with your military background it's not a military book by any means but it's about um pushing yourself not just doing easy stuff all the time which we've been trained to do over the last many many decades is to focus on the easy stuff air conditioned buildings to air conditioned cars we never go outside anymore um it's a great book that's another one I'd recommend young person we believe very strongly here in doing the hard things that's right for all the reasons you said so well thank you for being here thank you for sharing some of your time with us so much of yourself with our audience I'm sure they got a ton out of it I got a ton and we you and I have talked before and I learned things today that I had no idea about so thank you for being here today Kenny Ellison thank you all for watching the leaders mindset whatever you go do today please make sure you have an impact


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In this talk, I will talk with me and my team at Carnegie Mellon can infer from just looking at a small section of your face. In fact, we will show we can perform reliable phase recognition where many current systems will simply fail. Phase recognition and eyes recognition have always made a huge splash in Hollywood movies such as Mission Impossible and Minority Report. Here you see Tom Cruise entering the gap and being identified through his iris and getting personalized ads. You may think this is Hollywood science fiction, but this is actually science fact. This is the technology we have built here in my lab at Carnegie Mellon. This is our system. It can capture someone's iris up to 12 meters away. There is no X marks to spot. It will detect, track the person and capture the iris even if they're wearing glasses. We can even capture someone's iris through the side diameter of a car and make an identification in just a matter of seconds. So how does all this work?  The iris is the annual region of the eye between the white sclera and the black pupil. It is the muscle that dilates and contracts the pupil to allow more or less light in depending on how bright the environment is. So we take this circular iris pattern and we unwrap it into a rectangular form. This form is then processed by special functions to generate a series of bits, ones and zeros, to form what we call the iris code of a person. If the irises have iris codes that match with a certain number of bits being the same, then we can say that they belong to the same person. Now, even if two faces look exactly the same as in the case of identical twins, they actually have distinct iris patterns. Actually, an iris pattern of a person is thought to be stable over a person's lifetime, i.e. the pattern of a baby will actually not change as they mature to old age. Now, iris recognition became popular when a famous natural geographic photographer, Steve McCurry, took a picture of this beautiful Afghan girl with amazing green eyes. 17 years later, he wondered what happened to her.  So as you can see, iris recognition can play a significant positive role in society. You can imagine our system being used to identify and find missing or abducted children before they're trafficked outside the country. Unlike fingerprint recognition that requires you to touch a physical sensor, iris recognition can be formed at a distance in an unconstrained fashion. But what can we do when we don't have such long-range optics? We have to revert to using the current surveillance infrastructure of the current camera systems. And that's where we come in. We develop smart algorithms that can infer from these low-resolution images. And that's actually what we did in the Boston Marathon case. We reconstructed what this aspect looks like amazingly well. So let us look at what kind of cameras are out there. The surveillance cameras are everywhere. Airports, subways, 7-Eleven, retail stores, even your home. We have to develop smart AI technology that can perform reliable face recognition despite these low-quality images. This is our smart AI face detector. It can actually find faces that are masked. Extreme off-angle, headgear, extreme low-resolution. It can even find a face of a football player playing in the snow with a helmet. So the next step is to be able to find a fine set of maps of the face. We can extract a three-dimensional model of a face from just a single 2D photo. And that's the key thing to be able to perform face recognition. We will show in a second we actually use a single photo of Angelina Jolie and we can render what she looks like at any angle. But what about faces that are masked or occluded? What can we do there? Well, we've developed smart AI software that can infer what the person looks like as a whole face just using this periocular eye region. We're showing here successful that a system can match someone out of a database of 100,000 records. Let us examine how our algorithm is working. The first row is the input to our algorithm, just a periocular region. The second row is the results of our algorithm, the whole face. And the third row is the original faces. So you can compare the second row to the third row. As you can see, our algorithm is performing remarkably. It can actually even neutralize out facial expression and facial hair. So what does this mean for you, the everyday consumer? Our smart AI software is revolutionizing the tech industry. You can imagine a smart home security system running our video analytics performing face recognition to identify intruders who are possibly a burglar and give you a notification before it's too late.


You fall in love with yourself, a narcissist. You are actually falling in love with your idealized self. For many people this is the first time they experience self-love. They are able to experience self-love for the first time through the agency of the narcissist because the narcissist projects onto them a version of themselves which finally they are capable of loving. And this is the whole of mirrors. The narcissist does not exist. The narcissism is not about existence. It's about absence. The narcissist is an entity of absence. So he's not there. There's nobody there. There's nobody home but you.  You're looking at yourself. You're falling in love with yourself. And it is possible to say goodbye to someone you love with all the heartbreak. How do you say goodbye to yourself? And that's why people stay. They stay because the narcissists had made them infatuated with themselves through his eyes and he's a master at this.


The World Cup is the greatest sporting prize on Earth, competed for every four years by all the qualified nations of the world, and only eight nations of our planet have ever won the elusive prize. The current World Cup has been in use since 1974. The previous World Cup was retired as an award for the Brazilian success in the competition and in 1970, Brazil took the prize permanently after three straight World Cup wins in a row, something never achieved before or after. Originally named Victory for the Greek goddess Nike, but later renamed the Jules Ramey Trophy, an honor of the Frenchman who proposed on 28 May 1928 at the 17th FIFA Congress in Amsterdam. Jules Ramey tabled the extraordinary proposal that FIFA stages a world championship, later named the World Cup, and the trophy victory would be the prize. A competition that is now the greatest show on Earth and the 2018 World Cup in Russia was watched by 3.6 billion people across the globe. A staggering figure and the connections the beautiful game brings across all cultures and beliefs is a symbol of the potential of unification. It was designed and modeled in France in 1929 before traveling all over the world over the next 54 years. Jules Ramey himself stipulated that the trophy should be given in perpetuity to the first team to win it three times. The World Cup was stolen twice in England in 1966 and when missing, only to be found by a sniffer dog named Pickles behind the wheel of a car while out walking with his owner. When England won the trophy that year, the dog and its owner were awarded heavily. £5,000 in 1966 was a significant sum and a reflection of the true value of the trophy, not in a monetary sense, but as an object of wonder and hope. The second time it went missing, the trophy was on display on the third floor of the CBF offices in Rio. On the evening of December 20, 1983, the building's night watchman was overpowered by a group of thieves seemingly in no mood to embrace the Christmas spirit. After apparently tying up the night watchman, the thieves pried open the wooden frame of the bulletproof glass display box that housed the trophy and took it. To this day, it has never been seen again in public. The crime triggered a desperate search for the perpetrators and the trophy, with several covert foundries in and around the city, fears grew that the trophy would be melted down. The bullion value was believed to be around £8,000 at the time, while the Rio de Janeiro state bank issued a hefty reward of millions for the trophy's safe return. In his book, Martin Atherton writes that the CBF president made a nationwide appeal asking all Brazilians to help recover the trophy, saying the spiritual value of the cup is far greater than its material worth and that the thieves had no feeling of patriotism. The nation hung its head in shame. The police embarked on an intense investigation pursuing an inside job line of inquiry and condemning the night watchman's evidence as inconsistent. The day after the theft, two men who had previously worked at the CBF offices as janitors were arrested. However, no charges were made and the trophy was never discovered, widely believed to have been melted down and sold as bullion. And so the glorious trophy, the gilded 30 centimeter high statue of Nike, the Greek goddess of victory, made by the Parisian sculptor Abel Lafleur in 1929, vanished forever. We hope you have enjoyed this video today, guys, for all the sports history buffs out there who may not have known that the trophy was actually stolen and possibly lost forever. A needless theft that would have benefited so few and when you consider how much influence the trophy had on the world, then this is even more a sickening loss of something that isn't ancient. But the symbolism was a glowing beacon of all that is good in a world that is eclipsed with darkness. A beacon lost for the purposes of keeping us in that darkness, but the light must prevail. Always. What do you guys think about this anyway? Comments below and as always, thank you for watching.


As I look back now, I have a few regrets and loads of beautiful memories of my 20s. Most adults regret how they spend their 20s but you don't have to. Now that you are in the 20s, you can build memories you will never regret later in your 30s and 40s. Your 20s is a pivotal decade that lays the foundation for your future. If you are unsure how to spend your 20s better, here are a few lessons you can learn. 1. You can't please everyone. I spent my teens and 20s concerned about how to please everyone. I said yes to things I shouldn't and for a very long time, learnt the hard way that no matter how hard you try, everyone will not be pleased with you. People just can't be pleased. I will later find out that people project their values, expectations, standards and insecurities on you. So really, what they say or think about you reflects who they are. You cannot change what people say or think about you but you can change how you respond to them. 2. Acknowledging your mistakes is strength not weakness. I thought it was weak to acknowledge mistakes. I treated mistakes like they were plagues and often imagine people would throw you out if they knew you made so many mistakes. I realized I loved people who admitted their mistakes and apologized for them. This wasn't a sign of goodness. I learnt people who admit their mistakes and apologized for them, showed they weren't full of themselves and were willing to make things right. I had to adopt that attitude for myself. 3. We aren't all perfect. It took a long time before I learned I was working progress, just like every other human being. People may appear to have a perfect life judging from their social media feeds but when you get close to them, you realize even the most successful among them have challenges, insecurities and problems. Knowing this will help you put your life in proper perspective. Although you will appreciate people's beautiful Instagram posts, you will also know they aren't as perfect as you think and don't have to bemoan yourself for not being perfect. 4. Leave according to values. Defining what my values are have set me on a path to personal development. I learned early that unless I define my values, good health, an excellent life, a life of success, I might not end in the right place. Your values guide you to a place of personal growth. They help you make difficult decisions, like giving up on wrong relationships, starting on a dream and becoming a better colleague at work. Letting your values guide your decisions may be a difficult choice to make but eventually it will turn out for your good. 5. Work and live. I used to think life is all about work, that you weren't of any value if didn't spend every minute of your life working until my health broke down for nearly 2 years. I learned the hard way that all work and no play truly will make Jack a sick boy and burn him out. Live as much as you work. Rest as hard as you work. Take occasional breaks as hard as you work. Even researches prove moments of ideal fun after some period of hard work increase productivity. 6. What's happening outside shows what's happening inside. Nobody could make you feel negative unless you had negativity on your inside in the first place. Nobody could make you feel little unless you thought you were little. I realized external circumstances often reflect what's happening internally and that if you can change what's happening on the inside, what's happening on the outside will change. If you can change your inside, you will change the external circumstances. For example, be happy inside and happiness will surround you. 7. Health is important. It's easy to undervalue good health in your 20s, eating all the pizzas you want won't harm you. Yet, taking a lot of sugar and working so hard with a risk couldn't do so much until we crossed to our 30s and 40s. I realized I needed my help to increase the quality of my life. So although it was difficult, I got into a few exercises. Doing right, exercising, working hard and resting well are all in your interest. Your 30s, 40s, and 50s will prove that to you soon enough. 8. To be free. Forgive.  But I learned too early that resentment doesn't hurt the other person, it hurts your psychological, mental, spiritual, emotional, and physical well-being towards the point. This may not be easy, but if it leads to a less strenuous life, then it was in my best interest to give it. People may not often deserve your forgiveness, but it wouldn't be forgiveness if they deserved it. And since you are concerned about living a long, healthy life, wouldn't it be better just to forgive? 9. We are all biased. Your perspective is neither better nor worse than someone else's. Realizing this could be scary and equally freeing, but letting go of the need always to be right and the need to always be understood will help you see the world constantly from a different perspective. 10. Kindness changes things.  When I react unkindly and without compassion towards the world, I have seen it treat me the same way. But adding a little bit of kindness and compassion to others have always changed things. It will also let you see the world from another perspective. 11. Making plans still work. I know it's a piece of overstated advice to make plans, but I never believed in making plans until I had lost a good deal of opportunities. Soon as I started to make plans and saw the tremendous changes it brought to my life, I was hooked. It is true what they say, failing to plan is planning to fail. To have a great life, make great plans. 12. Plan to adjust. Too many times, things don't work out the way I plan. What do I do? Make adjustments. Of course. Well, it took a while of struggle to learn. I should always make adjustments to my plan. When things go sideways despite your plans, figure out other ways you can make your plan work. If this direction isn't working, try the other direction. 13. Give up ego to have successful relationships. It's easy to let your pride cross the relationships that are most important to you. Refusing to apologize to a friend whom you are certain is in the wrong may seem a good thing to do until your ego starts to get in the way of your relationships. The fear of being taken for granted almost made me lose one of the most important relationships in my life. A relationship is one ship. If what you are trying to do is to win the battle, you will sink the ship. But letting go of the fight so you focus on a common goal will go a long way for helping you develop the relationship and even better relationships. 14. Connections are important. Humans are social beings. You don't survive alone. However hard you try, no matter how wonderful your life is, if you don't have people with whom you share your life, you most certainly won't be happy. Have people around who know who you are and appreciate you for being that person. 15. Comparing yourself to others is a route to unhappiness. Believing everyone is better than you sabotaging your own growth, potentials and gifts. I learned that if God wanted us all to be the same, He would have given us the same parents and placed us all in a single country. It takes determination to celebrate other people's success. But doing so will liberate you from comparing yourself to them. Let other people's success inspire you. Investing in your skills is recipe for future success. Your skills and knowledge is the only thing you carry with you into the future. Learning to invest in it is the best decision you will ever make. 17. Never let things get to you. Letting things get to me stopped me short from making progress for a long time. Soon, I learned things would always happen. I always have a choice to let them go or hold to them. But since it hurts so much to hold on to things, better let them go. 18. Stop being Mr. Nice Guy. It's wonderful to be nice, but don't take it overboard. Being assertive, saying no when you have to without being impolite was a lesson that took a while for me to learn.  You aren't going to please everyone so never be the guy who always says yes to every request. It's a recipe for Dan Young. 19. People won't always need your help so stop trying to force your help or your beliefs on them. I made this mistake back then. I was so passionate about wanting to help I would force it on people. But bad experiences have taught me when you force help on people, you'll often do them hurt rather than good. 20. Good health habits pay off. When you're young, your body can handle a lot of things, drinking, smoking, consuming so much caffeine, etc. But wait till you're old, the effects start to show. Changing your life may be the best thing you would do to your life. Eat right, rest well, exercise regularly, visit the doctor often. Your future will thank you for it. If this video inspired you, like the video. We love you.