Episode 24 Season 3: Unleashing Pet Longevity: An Entrepreneur’s Journey with CEO/Founder Richard Nilsson of MyPetGo

Transcript

Dave 0:00
Welcome to another episode of the agency balance season three. I am so excited. We’re back for another great season. We have an amazing guest lined up, including one for you today, Richard Nielsen, from my pet go, is joining me on the agency balance from from a distance, Richard, welcome on.

Richard 0:21
Thank you for having me. I appreciate it,

Dave 0:23
Richard. We had a we had a great conversation. The other week, we were catching up a little bit. I’m really excited to dig into my Petco and learn more as I shared with you that, you know, I’m a fur father here, and, you know, interested in technology. We talk a lot about tech. So this is really, I think this is different for our listeners. We’re talking about a device here that’s really designed to improve your pet’s longevity. It’s a wearable device. There’s an app really, really interesting. We’re going to dig into that, but before we jump into the craziness and the amazing benefits that this app and wearable technology can do. I would love for our listeners to learn more about you and your amazing background. I took some notes you talked about everything you started out doing things in pizza you were born in. I’m gonna let you just do it. I’m gonna turn it over to you tell our listeners about your background, please.

Richard 1:24
Yeah, thank you. Yeah, sure. So I guess entrepreneurial bloodline. So what does that mean? Well, both my parents were entrepreneurs, so I kind of early on understood that if you want to be in control of your faith, then your destiny, you might want to be your own boss. As a matter of fact, my my father always told me, If you want to be in control of life, be it good or bad, you you might want to be your own boss and kind of decide for yourself when to go to work and when not to go to work, and it kind of gives you that sort of freedom, right? So, so I come from that background, however, my sort of choice of entrepreneurship became quite technical quite early on. So there was not, I guess, any inclination to go into technology specifically. It was just opportunistic and kind of the thing at the time, right? So we’re, we’re sort of in the early 2000s here, and that was, you know, the the thing popping out, this sort of.com era, you know, for the listeners that might not recall, but it kind of really started in 1995 right? With, with, you know, the Googles and others kind of forming, right? So, so it was early on, and I saw this opportunity where, you know, you could kind of blend passion with tech, and that could become something so, so, I guess, you know, I did a bunch of stuff try to become a tennis pro didn’t really work. But what that taught me was the sort of similarities of trying to be an athlete, a professional athlete, I should say, and then sort of trying to be a professional entrepreneur, which shares a lot of the similar traits, right? You have to be very determined, and you have to be stubborn, and you have to have very strong conviction in your own efforts. But you know, in essentially the craft, that you’re you’re you’re you’re you’re conducting, right? And so for me, that was tennis. I was okay, you know, top 10 in Sweden, which is my native country. I have younger twin brothers that were sort of top 10 in Europe when they they tried it. And, you know, we didn’t make it the whole way. I’ve worked in a lot of different things. You know, event marketing. Did a lot of events. Did two seasons up in sort of, up in the mountains. I love skiing, and kind of, you know, did night club and night life events in the evenings. Always, kind of event marketing, kind of infusing brands into that whole sort of club experience. And, you know, I’ve done, you know, all sorts of things. But I think it all changed around when I was 2021, and I moved to Hong Kong from Sweden, and kind of started my, what I like to refer to as my first real kind of technological venture, which was a lifestyle magazine that was online based. It was the, I guess the early days for digital publishing, at least in the Far East or in Asia Pacific. And so it was kind of a community with a magazine, with an Event Guide, with a city guide, and so people could congregate read about their passion. Discuss their passions. We took a lot of pictures from various events, and that kind of was a draw factor. So every Monday, you could kind of see what coming on during the weekend, who went out with who, etc, etc. And that wasn’t just, you know, your celebrities or interesting folk. That was your regular folk too. And so it kind of gave them that kind of glamorous thing. And people would save it and put that up on, you know, all sorts of social and stuff, but, but that was kind of 2005 2006 and then sort of tech, as we know it has emerged, right? And, and, you know, it is a completely different world today. I mean, this is the fourth industrial revolution, and, and I think now we have a fifth one, which is sort of artificial intelligence. And obviously I’ve kind of asked it has progressed. I have progressed in my efforts, in being a technology entrepreneur and, and obviously what I do today is very AI driven, and sort of AI driven in tech care, and that kind of then fosters longevity, which is kind of what I do. So that’s, that’s a bit of a backstory. I live in Barcelona today. I have lived in Malaysia, in Singapore, in Hong Kong, you know, different parts of the world. But I’m kind of come back to Europe so that I can be closer to North America, so that I can be closer to the European market, so that I can be relatively close to AsiaPac, but it’s kind of time zone wise, this works the best for me, and I got a good airport here that can take me wherever I need to go. So very good connections. So that’s the backstory.

Dave 6:32
Wow, that that there’s a lot, there’s a lot in that backstory. Amazing journey thus far. Congratulations on on all of your success and your obviously, you probably have had this amazing, you know, life moments along the way. Let’s just stay on that last, that last point a little bit, because that, that obviously, has been the theme this last year, plus it continues to be the theme around AI. We talk about it. It seems about every single day, every episode that we have you mentioned that it’s like the fifth revolution. I like that. I heard something yesterday. I want to say it was through the times or the or Washington Post or something like that. They they’re saying that AI is losing steam. And I’m really, really hyper paraphrasing there, but maybe talk about that a little bit from your perspective, what you’ve seen, obviously, with how we’ve all seen it this amazing ramp up of AI, and now it’s this race to kind of figure out what is the best output. How are we going to use it? But like, give me your take there a little bit

Richard 7:42
Sure. So I don’t know who wrote that piece, but, you know, my, my sort of take on the whole AI thing is that there is certainly a lot of hype. There’s been a lot of hype there. I think a lot of people are, you know, throwing out AI into whatever they’re doing, because that’s what you’re supposed to be doing. But I think AI is not very powerful if it’s not meaningful. So it needs to be meaningful AI. So I think the conversation must be changed to meaningful AI that can help to change and transform the world, whatever industry that may be, I think who wrote that piece is probably not very much into AI, him or herself, and therefore there is that kind of negative connotation to what’s going on. But look, AI is going nowhere. I think you know, depending on which industry you’re looking at, specifically, I think there is, there is tremendous growth opportunities, right? We’re seeing open AI now raising money at Crazy valuations, right? We’re, you know, if we look at kind of web two companies, it took them a very long time to achieve that valuation. So things are progressing very quickly. I think there is a lot of nonsense in the industry and, and, but so there is in all industries and, and I think, you know, there’s a difference between meaningful and good, AI. And then there is a lot of, you know, bad stuff, right? I think in particular, when you look at image, there’s a lot of bad things that can happen, that can go wrong with that. I think, you know, if you think about, you know, two step verification with face recognition, it’s been proven, you know, that that it has a lot of challenges moving forward with with deep fakes of all kinds that are coming in. I think when we look at the election. Now, in the US, we’re seeing a tremendous amount of fake content with deep fakes that, you know, I can usually spot it, but it’s getting better and better and better. And it’s scary how you can take someone else’s voice and face and kind of attach it to something and it looks quite great. Close to what possibly the reality would be. So, so my take is, is, obviously needs to be meaningful. There is bad and danger for AI, but the industry, I think, is going to grow tremendously. There’s, there’s going to be a need for AI in, in essentially every industry out there, right? I think it was also something that was quite interesting that I I read. I can’t remember what what magazine it was, but it was a person, and this is not completely how it was written, but the person said, I, I don’t need AI to write for me and take, I think she was a journalist, this person or correct what I’m writing or change what I’m writing or write the whole thing. For me, I need AI to do my laundry and cook my food and do my cleaning, right, and so and so. Again, coming back to that kind of meaningfulness, right? It’s sort of like, you know, what do we really need AI for? And how can it be meaningful to to the individual? And that can differ a lot, depending on who the person is, right, but, but there is great stuff there, right? If you look at healthcare on the human side, there is, there is amazing things that AI can do to give the doctor a second opinion, almost in real time, that can help that individual doctor with. You know, is this the correct diagnosis or not? And, you know, am I saying the right kind of thing? So if that person is an individual practitioner, that could be very, very useful, right? And so I think there is amazing things that we also need to kind of remember that AI is helping to really shape a lot in the healthcare space.

Dave 11:39
Yeah, I absolutely agree with you 1,000% I like that. The way that you put it is making meaningful. It’s beyond a toy. Now it’s beyond just a tool. I think what it is interesting to me is we’re starting to see defined categories happen in AI. You’re just naming a bunch there with image and video, and we use that. I have, I have my virtual avatar, if you will, that I send out automatic videos that are created on the fly. You know, people, people are smart. They know that. I think they’re already embracing that. And then I think no question, from a research perspective, AI has jumped to be a way that we can research much faster, that we can gather all that data. And that’s no different, whether if you’re in healthcare or you’re in sales, you do the same thing. You know, 3040, years ago, you were pulling off books if you’re in healthcare to do research. 10 years ago, you were Googling something, right? And now it’s kind of, you almost have that assistant, if you will, like you were saying, it’s, it’s a, it’s a, it’s an opinionative gives you the that instant feedback as to, you know what’s happening there. You know it’s for us being driven in technology, using marketing technology, using sales technology, to try to understand it’s making our jobs easier but harder. Let’s say that so it’s, it’s allowing, it always allows us to free up more time that we can then use as humans to do the harder things, right? But it’s also an impact to us. And saying that it could be a can be perceived as a threat, and then it’s, it’s kind of doing some of the services that we normally would charge for. We’re not, we’re no longer need to do those. So it’s constantly reinventing. Are you using AI and some of the technology that you’re using? We’ll get into my pet go a little bit here, but like, talk to me about how that’s impacted. Are you not using it? Talk to me a little bit about that.

Richard 13:40
Yeah, sure. I mean, I, you know, I’m a flawed man in many ways, so I use various tools to either save time or improve, right, and hopefully both. And I think, you know, if you look at a company like open, AI and I have no particular, you know, inclination to thinking that that’s better than anything else, but I just chose to kind of start with that quite some time ago, and kind of, I’m still using it, but so I think, in terms of text, I use it, the text for kind of make something and, you know, I’ve seen the progression, how It’s getting better and better. I think you can mimic a style of writing for something that isn’t necessarily yours, but it kind of become yours, but it’s kind of more appropriate for what it is. So as an example, you want to put out a LinkedIn post. It’s still your wording, but it’s been written in more of an a way, where it comes with a hook that kind of works for that specific target audience that is on LinkedIn. That exact same thing may not be as relevant on another platform, but, but it kind of works there. So So I do use it. I don’t overly use it. I think the problem I see sometimes with tools like that, it’s it takes away from your. Creativity, right? So if you only use these kind of tools, your creativity goes down the drain, right? You’re, you’re, you’re essentially allowing someone else to think and be creative for you and and I think that’s, that’s a danger, right? So, so I would kind of urge everyone not to get addicted to these tools, because then your own unique selling point, kind of slowly but surely disappears, right? But I use, use it for that. I think, you know, I’ve used deep learning quite a lot for translations, right? So we translate a lot of things from, say, English to Spanish. And I think deep learning is, is a great platform. You know, I had then have Spanish friends and people kind of look at the translation. They say, Wow, this is, this is very, very good. But you could use Google translation. I mean, Google translation and the AI that they have, depending on which language you want to translate to, I would say it’s the caveat here. But if it’s Spanish, for instance, it’s very, very good. So, you know, there is a lot of things out there with AI where you actually cut out the middleman, whether that’s good or bad. Let’s say I go to Upwork and I find someone who could translate for me. I’m taking away that 500 bucks that I could have paid to that person, because now I can kind of virtually get it for free. So, you know, is it great? I mean, it’s good from a cost perspective, but, you know, it is also stealing away possible, you know, remote work from for individuals, right? Yeah,

Dave 16:34
well, that’s interesting. And I jotted something down earlier, and I’m glad we kind of were connecting on this point a little bit. So we’re talking about AI a little bit. We don’t have to this all. Doesn’t have to be just around AI, but we’re using that as a resource, as a tool and an assistant, if you will. But talk to me about and maybe this could be where you are right now with my pet go or your journey. But talk to me about talent, talent, the people that have helped you along the way, obviously, unless if you’re doing this all yourself, amazing. But I’m sure you’ve had others help help you, whether, if it’s from the technology side, from the research side, from the science side, how do you, let’s just talk about that a little bit, finding talent, leveraging others for their strengths. How do you balance all that?

Richard 17:26
Yeah, well, I kind of begins with realizing that I can’t do all of this stuff, even if I wanted to try to attempt it. I just can’t, because I’m not gifted in all areas in life. And that’s, that’s the grim reality, right? So I guess in my case, it was kind of like, you know, what are those those tasks that I need help with, and how do I find people who can conduct those in the best possible way? And, you know, I’m not huge when it comes to recruiting. I’m not huge on going to actual recruiters, though, there are some very good ones. My hold back with recruiters is usually that they come and steal away the very people that they kind of helped you to get in the first place right a year later or two years later. And I’ve seen that firsthand many, many times. So I used to use a lot of recruiters when I was in the media industry and in, you know, and it kept on being this apparatus where you just keep on using the same guys and paying fees. And I don’t know what the fees are today, but used to be in media, 25% of them annual salary. And then, then it changed a little bit, but So, so what I’ve done instead is I kind of look at my network, and I go to my network, and I try to, you know, that could be my virtual network, or that could be like my, you know, sort of in a physical sense, and I say, Look, I need help with this particular area. Would you know, anybody that’s really good at this, right? And so I think that kind of trusted recommendation has worked for us. I try to, as an example, I try to to recruit someone I met at a at a pet care innovation summit in Boston, and he has his own kind of pet tech startup. And so he said, Look, I can’t come in. And he’s a vet. That’s his background. And so, I guess Big shout out to Dennis schmeal, if you’re listening. So he kind of said, Look, I but I have this old colleague who I used to work with at Pfizer, and she’s just amazing, like she’s better than I am, and I know that, or sorry, they work together at sweats, which is another big, the largest pet Pharma. And she’s amazing. She’s both a DVM, a doctor and veteran in medicine, but she’s also a biologist. And she’s like, she can do things that I could never do, because she has that, that kind of, you know, double straddle. And I said, Well, amazing. Okay. Right? And so we connected and through him. So she’s now, today, our Chief Veterinary Officer and based in New York, and, you know, has tremendously helped with marrying the technology together with the medicine and, I guess, with science and making sure that we’re being as science backed as we can be. And in the you know that we, from a medical point of view, don’t talk about the values being abnormal. It’s more kind of it’s out of range, like that. We have the right lingo, and you know that, that we do things the right way. So, so, so, yes, I think, you know, recruiting and finding a good, balanced team is super important. And if Georgette is listening, which is her name, then, you know, shout out to Georgette, which is obviously helped us tremendously. So, fantastic person and talented, right? But I think it goes with everything, right? So we’re kind of marrying AI, where we have a team in India who kind of handles that, and then we have engineering, which is tech, and we have a team in Vietnam for that. And then front facing staff. We have more kind of in Europe and US, or the C suite team, I should say, and, and so it’s been kind of recommendations for me, mostly, and, and one person knows another person, it’s like, I need this guy who is a machine learning expert. Like, where do I find that? And then, you know, through the existing team, somebody knows somebody or or it’s an external who kind of pinpoints us.

Dave 21:35
Yeah, thanks for sharing that. It’s, it’s interesting. I mean, networking and how you, how you build this kind of digital, modern Rolodex of of people over the years, you never know who you come back to. I, I constantly, I constantly do that. I I’ll always go there first, right? I mean, people always ask, like, what’s your, what’s your number one source of business? I’m like, It’s referrals. They’re like, You should call. You should call up Dave, you should call up Lisa, you should call up Jeff at Smart acre, because, you know, they helped me years ago on this, and they’ll take care of you. So, yeah, I think, I think that makes, that makes total sense. Um, so let’s, let’s, let’s, let’s talk about my pet. Go a little bit. Can you just at the at the at the highest level, and I was looking at kind of the positioning statement that your values, your mission statement that’s out there. And it resonated a lot with me, I guess, like I said, as a as a fur dad, and I’ll drop a picture of my of my my dog. I have a 12 inch Beagle, little pocket Beagle. Her name is Aurora. She was we were thankful enough to have just my second. Second one. I had my first. My first was a border collie Beagle. So I’ve always had beagles, and a lot of a lot of our smart acres have beagles and dogs and cats for that nature. So I’m excited to get to get this published, to have everybody listened about this, because we always, we always love pets here. But you know, I don’t use any wearable technology for for my for my pets. I obviously, as probably most rely, you know, closely, on my local vet on to help me when there’s an issue. Obviously, she’s getting up there in eight she’s going to be 12 in January. You know, she’s had a slip disc. She’s had, you know, the joints that go in and out, as as most beagles do. She’s had the occasional seizure, you know, like, so we, we’ve had all of this. My biggest fear, too, is like, like I was saying earlier, like, if she’s out in the backyard, we let her she’s got full run, which is awesome. We’re thankful enough we have a fenced in yard. We don’t have to worry about her, or if we’re away, if something happens. So talk to me a little bit about kind of how my pet go got started, and kind of what it’s all about,

Richard 24:02
right? Okay, so I’ll get my dog commercial, just to kind of show you the inspiration. He’s also, he’s, like, yours a little bit older now, that’s him. That’s, he’s a Maltese, awesome, 11 years or 10 years plus turning 11. And so he was part of the inspiration, right? And it was kind of like I was asking myself, How do I get to better understand how my pet is feeling physically and emotionally, right? And it’s like, okay, so we live in a in a world where data is becoming everything, right, and, and a lot of you know, if you’re, you know, we’re part of this data driven generation. A lot of the things we do is kind of backed by, you know, what does the data tell us? And so why don’t we try to apply that in a sense, where we look at the data that we can pick up from sensors and from a wearable, and then how do we translate those data points? Those X, Y and Z values into something that’s understandable, right, that a human, non vet, non scientists, non kind of tech person can relate to, right? So how do we, how do we express that in a layman way? And that was kind of the starting point. So had this guy wanted to to, obviously, you know, do what I can to to understand him better, but also to extend his life and ensure that he lives happy and healthy as he’s here, but also kind of improving that lifespan. And so the thesis was, can we create a wearable that can extract the data points, can we then translate that into a simplistic, understandable way, and then can we, then, with that, also tell the user what they can do with this data and how they can improve the livelihood of their beloved dog and and, and then who can help them kind of connect and bridge that contact to a service provider or a physical product? And so that journey started about four years ago, and we’ve been building, building, building, building, building and and, you know, here we are. And you know, things have changed, and we’ve pivoted, and AI became such a very, very big thing, I think, throughout these four years. So we had to kind of rejig and change, you know, the initial concept as it was to what it kind of is today, but we are very much a health and longevity wearable, where we got a program inside of the application that explains to you as a pet parent what you need to do across three pillars, Right? So we give you kind of tasks, like we give you some things to do on a daily basis, and the first pillar is kind of activity and mobility. So that’s all about moving and resting, right? So, you know, if you think about the original wearable for humans, that was kind of the Fitbit, right? And the Fitbit, they are known, and they were the original gangster when it came to step count and calorie burn, right? And so that’s what we know. So we we do that too, you know, step count and calorie burn, and kind of you know, you haven’t moved enough today. And you know, you should move a bit more. You’ve moved too much. You need to let your your your dog, rest, right? The second pillar is across, you know, nutrition and hygiene, right? So you want to have a well fed pet, but not overly fed, right? So if you look at the US market as an example, 55% give or take of the dogs are obese, right? And so that leads to all sort of other chronic and, you know, very hard to reverse kind of issues down the road, not irreversible, but but hard to reverse, right? And so and so. You know, nutrition is very important, diets, supplements, you know, deworming tablets, all these different things, but also hygiene, right? You know, if you never clean the ears, you’re gonna end up having possible issues with the ears, right? Unless you’re super lucky, right? But it’s not nice for your your your dog, right? And you can’t always rely on a groomer. If you go to the groomer. I mean, I hear some people going once a month. I mean, I tend to go at least every, every, every couple of weeks. I do it myself too. I’m not, not, not a snob who can’t, you know, clean my dog, but I try to keep him tidy and neat and quite short. But I hear people going to the groomer once, once, every three months, or once half a year. I’m like, my god, you know? And then they don’t do much at all. I mean, I see this in Barcelona city, right? You you have a Maltese that looks kind of gray, and it’s like, it’s, it’s because the Maltese is very dirty, right? It’s like a floor mob. And so, you know, that’s, that’s an important aspect. It’s grooming, cleaning ears, cleaning eyes, tear stains, teeth. Obviously, you know, dental scaling, all of these different things that you should do. You should take your dog to the to to the dentist, which is usually a vet, who will kind of do the scaling twice a year. It’s no different than than being a human, and that’s kind of how it is taking care of a dog, really, it’s the same kind of things that we need to do they need to do, right? But we often neglect it, and we shouldn’t, right? So we’re kind of giving you that daily kind of, this is what you should be doing, and if you do and then the third one is sort of preventative care and and obviously us communicating certain health markers and next step recommendations. We do that you’re engaging with these and kind of following them, but if you do these three, you know these tasks across these three different pillars, in a timely manner, you will have a happier and healthier dog and a dog that should, by default, live a little bit longer, right? So, so we have the program, we get the wearable where we look at. Of HRV, which we know very well as humans, right? But in the pet sense, we don’t really know that marker that well, right? It’s not something that’s commonly used. So we’re trying to own this marker and work with leading cardiologists to kind of help us to make sense of it. And how do we use that in pet care? Broadly speaking, we look at respiration, we look at Pulse rate, and we look at temperature, so that’s the core for vitals. But with these, we also look at a lot of behavior traits, you know, activity, inactivity, resting, all sorts of things. So that’s kind of the behavioral side to it, but, but, yeah, that’s kind of what we do as we see that health markers are out of range, we give you a push notification. We tell you that this particular marker is out of range. Don’t panic, right? It could be 100 reasons for why, and if that marker is then out of range for a longer duration that we deem as dangerous, we then send you a second one where we tell you these are the various reasons to why it is now sort of out of range or has been out of range for this long period of time. And here are a couple of solutions to you with sort of CTA buttons. You can click on them, that data can be shared to a telebet or to your personal vet that you have down in wherever area you live in. And we don’t dictate that. You have to pick one of the two. You can, you know, whatever gives you peace of mind, and that’s what we’re trying to give you here. Peace of mind, stay on top of health markers, health values, you gotta you’re a first time pet owner. You’ve never had a pet before. It’s a bit daunting, and you don’t really know what to do. Or you have a senior pet and and dog, and there are certain issues that are creeping up, and you just want to kind of stay on, on top a little bit more so. So we do this. It’s an ecosystem model, you know, data simplistically explained. What can I do with the data as a second step, third step, who can, who or what can help me with this problem and that kind of, that’s what we’re doing. So, you know, it started with something, and it kind of it as it escalated, it kind of became this bigger ecosystem play. But, you know, we’re, we’re looking at doing a lot of other cool things, but, but with near neural image, we can take snap pictures, and we can tell you, kind of what that means. It can be stool, it can be fur, eyes, teeth, we can tell you can kind of give you more insights on that. And again, what can you do with that? So, so I think, yeah, that’s, that’s kind of what we do, in a nutshell. And I know that was

Dave 32:36
a lot, it’s, I was taking notes down because it’s, it’s, I think I can always improve. You know, in some of these areas, I like that there’s a focus around the three, you know, pillars, especially around, you know, activity and moving and resting, as you put it. You know, I was, you know, saying with, with Aurora, my dog, like she she’s getting older. She likes to sleep a little bit more. She likes those sunny days, but she does like to go for her walks and and move around. And then I got to be conscious of of her, you know, her slip this so she’s got her little stairs that she can go up on her onto the couch, because, you know, she’s one of us. She, she, she gets the chill with us there. The nutrition and hygiene is, is obviously, you know, huge too. Like for us, we always try to watch her weight, because even, like, two pounds over where she should be, that’s going to be more, you know, stress on her joints. I give her joint I give her joint supplement every day. It’s helped her. I really do. I’ve since it’s probably been two years now, it’s like a professional grade that we get from from our veterinarian. And then there’s, like, a vet source here in the US where we can get it direct, which is nice. And then, you know that preventive care too, at the end, I I’m glad that you can share it, that the data with your pet, because I’ve always found that to be, you know, a little bit of a challenge. Not so much with, like, now with smartphones, because, like, if something’s happening, I like, I will record it, or I’ll take pictures of it and share it. And my vet’s great and kind of has a modern working relationship with me. We can text and, you know, share like that stuff too, but talk to me about, like, like the home diagnos, like diagnosing at home, a little bit like, I’m kind of a DIY or myself too. I’m not a snob. I wash my dog. It’s she doesn’t have to get trimmed, which is great. But, like, I’ll try to diagnose a lot myself and my wife’s the same way. She’s like, she’s like, she’ll I always call her like, are you on WebMD, like, diagnosing me right now? Going on, are there resources, like in the app that can help with that, or talk to me about kind of like helping out, like, because obviously you’re going to invest into something like this. Does that? Can you do some of that yourself? Sure.

Richard 34:49
I mean, we, we just want to be very clear, right, that we’re not an FDA approved medical device. Nor do we attempt to be, and we probably never will be. We’re a lifestyle offering. So what, what we’re giving you as a concerned pet owner and an obedient pet owner is insights to things that are worth looking into, and we’re giving you kind of the data on that, and then the next step, and then we connect you to to to an appropriate solution. I think you know our job is to inform and then give the best information we can based on the ground, the closest that we can get to the ground truth. But yeah, I mean, when we look at things like neural image recognition. Since you asked a question, I’m going to dig a little bit deeper here. So we are partnering with a company that we’re actually embedding kind of into our app. And what that means is you’ll be able to kind of snap a picture of, you know, let’s say stool as an example. So that would be the feces or the poop. You take a picture of it, you snap it, you upload it into the app. And we’re going to ask you to do this on a relatively frequent basis, right? It’s part of the longevity program, and we will be able to tell you if you have any underlying kind of issues there, like it could be liver issues creeping up, or kidney issues creeping up, which, which are obviously two big, big issues, any other gastro issues that you may have, if there is any sort of parasites in the stool, and, you know, blood, Red poison, all these different things. And so you will be able to kind of get somewhat of an indicative, I guess this is worth actually talking to a professional about, or this is okay, right? And I think you probably, as a pet owner, you realize that, and you know, you know quite a lot about your pet and you know quite a lot about, you know, the various aspects that that kind of surround your pet. So if the poop doesn’t, doesn’t look as it normally does, then that’s a good kind of time to snap that picture and upload it, right? So we’re kind of built, you know, expanding on that take with eye teeth and fur, right? And the idea is to kind of give you indication if there is skin irritation or, you know, issues with the fur, right, so that you can kind of, you know, find a solution to that. If there is issues with the teeth, and there is tremendous issues with the teeth. I mean, I pulled out 10 plus teether quite recently, not on myself, but on my dog, unfortunately. And you know, I was maybe I had moved from Singapore here, I had brought him, and, you know, the last time I did a dental scaling wasn’t Singapore. Everything was fine. I think that maybe they took pulled up one again. He’s 10 plus, so he’s not a little pop. And with these toy breeds, it’s really hard to kind of brush their teeth, because you can hardly get anything into their mouth. They don’t like it, but it’s really hard to get the things in the back right, and so and so we, you know, we had to pull out quite a few of them, and, and, and maybe I went a little bit over the six month period, but it was hard to kind of get a time. And here in Europe or in Spain, they don’t do dental scaling as frequently as we might do in other parts of the world. So it’s not, not that you can just go to any of that and do it. They’re not, they’re not used to doing it here. Just kind of leave it at what it is. And if teeth fall out, or if there’s pains, too bad, right? But I remember just before I took him, he was kind of shivering at times, and I thought maybe it’s because he’s not used to this, to the climate, you know, it was winter time, but it was probably that he had, he had, like, some serious toothache, right? And, and so if I would have had a neural image technology at the time, you know, where I could kind of take in pictures of the front and both sides and kind of upload it, and that would then chug through a bunch of good and bad teeth for similar type of set of teeth, right? A toy breed and a Maltese. Then maybe I could have, you know, gone down to a vet a lot sooner to kind of try to correct that. So, so I think, you know, our job is to help you with some sort of a home in home diagnostic capability. Yet we’re, we’re, we’re not going to give you a full picture, like our job is really to ensure that you go down to a vet when you should go to a vet, but also that if you don’t have to go down to the vet that you don’t have to. We want to try to streamline and ensure that. Is the you know, because there is a supply and demand issue with vets, right? You know, in the US, I think you’re going to need another 10 years to educate enough vets to meet today’s demand, right? So this means that there’s going to need to be tons of digital tools in the toolbox for the vet where you kind of bridge the gap from what can we do at home to when do I actually need to go down in person? And we are by no means trying to take away from the vets, or we’re trying to kind of help them out, streamline, ensure that pets that kind of need that attention are going down, and pets that you know you could, as you said, you’re a DIY, right? You know you can, you know, find a remedy through that. But, yeah, very much. I mean, that’s the whole notion of what we’re doing with the next step recommendation, right? And being an educational source, and so over time, you’re going to kind of understand your pet more, but also understand broadly pets better. So you will get educated. It’s it’s another question, whether you you take it to heart and you let it sink in and stay up here in the the cortex, or if it’s kind of, if it’s full and you can’t add any more info than you know, too bad.

Dave 41:22
No, I think it’s great. I mean, for me, um, I always try to learn more, right? Like, I always, I want to, I want to. I ask the why? Like, a lot of times when I go to the vet, they, they, they say, Well, you know, her liver enzymes are up. I’m like, what does that mean? Is that, is that okay, there’s a there’s a concern there, but what is the action and, like, you know, so, like, obviously, Aurora can’t talk to me, so like, you need to help me. Like, what do I do? Like, do we just go to just go and test and test and test and test, and then what are we getting towards here? So I think, I think the data, like you said earlier, is important that you know this, this, this resource, and this tool that you’ve developed is going to help me be educated more to to make the, you know, the right decisions, too. Because, yeah, especially as, like, first time pet owners, like, obviously, it’s like, their their child, so they’re like, they get, I would imagine. And I remember back when first thing that happened. I’ll never forget this one time, my, I think it was my, I don’t know it might have been my first dog. She was running, and she was a puppy, and she’s in the backyard. She’s kind of, like, Goofy, you know, she’s like, she’s like, all over the place. She’s, you know, kind of not aware of her surroundings. She just runs like, full speed into, like, at his brick, like, burning area, like, from that, from the previous owner that they used to burn their garbage, that’s, that’s not a thing anymore, you know, but it the dog ran right into it, and it was like, and then we had moments, like, after I was like, should we have done anything for that, like, is she okay? Like, did she get concussed there? Like, is she gonna be? All right, she was fine. But like, in our eyes, it was like, Oh my God. What did we just do? You know? So I think there’s, there’s a lot of that. I mean, I’m personally sold on it. Like, I can’t wait to learn and try it. If our listeners right now are, like, all right, I’m sold. Like, like, you guys, like you are Dave, like, where do they go? Where can they go to check this out? Is there? Is there? Is there? Well, I

Richard 43:29
mean, I mean, yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, first of all, I’ll send you one. So you so awesome. Your your beloved pet, can can give it a crack? Uh, certainly. And if anybody else would would want to get one. You can go to triple W, my petco.com, and you can, you can get one there. We should, you know, everywhere across the globe, maybe not North Korea, but, but you know, pretty much everywhere else. And so you can get one there. I think you know. What I will say is, if you come in and buy a first generation, we will give you a upgrade to a second generation that will come kind of end of as a mid to end of next year that’s going to be improved, a bit smaller, a bit beautified, you know, better battery life. But, you know, by all means, get a gen one. Be part of the community. Give us feedback, anything you think we can improve on, any want or needs that you feel, that, that you may have, that we’ve missed out on. So So yeah, we’d appreciate that for sure,

Dave 44:33
awesome. We’ll make sure that that’s linked up on agency, balance.com, on YouTube, and all the great places where you get your podcast, we’ll make sure that there’s a direct link and you can check it out. There’s, I look that’s both on Android as well as Apple correct on both both platforms. Yeah, sure. We’re

Richard 44:52
on Apple Android Hua if anybody uses Huawei. So we have that too. We don’t discriminate. I would say that we’re not a pet cat offering, yes, jet, but that is going to also come in the future. There is a plan, but, you know, it’s a different type of creature. We do love cats, but we’re, you know, mastering dogs before we kind of move into the feline industry. But it’s, it’s coming for those listeners that may have a cat and wondering, you know, what about my cat? Yeah, we will have a solution for you in due course. Yeah, that’s super important.

Dave 45:29
So the last area I kind of want to dive into, and we just talked that we’re subliminally talking about balance there, balancing, trying to get it right for for dogs and canines first, before we get into the felines. But, you know, how do you how do you balance? How do you balance, like decisions and features, and, you know, making sure that you stay quarter your your pillars here, talk to me about that from the business side of it, sense of it, and the way that you process things. And then maybe even, you know, dive a little bit into, like, you know, balancing the output of what this can do, right? Because that’s what we’re all about on this podcast. Is about balancing. Like, how do you balance, like, the taking the data, the diagnosing and over diagnosing and freaking out, and, like, really leaning into it, and maybe over versus, like, not at all. So balance in general, let’s talk about that. It wouldn’t be a proper episode if we didn’t talk about balance. Good.

Richard 46:27
Let’s get into it. So look, I’m going to start with the latter. There balance in terms of, you know, finding the right balance with how we recommend and how we give insights. And I think, you know, one can totally do way too much of it. I think an inspiration for us in how we like to communicate is kind of how the whoop strap is doing it. If anybody has ever tried a whoop strap, you know, they have a very nice way of communicating through push notifications. And, you know, an email and other in other ways. And so we like that model. It’s not too much. It’s not too little. We have an opportunity for you to decide how much you want to get from us as well. So you can kind of decide, like, I don’t want to get marketing stuff, you know, I’m not interested, or I don’t want to get, you know, things pertaining something else. So you can actually choose in the application, what type of communication you want to get from us. So that’s on the one hand, right? So you can balance that yourself, but in terms of how much and how little we’re trying to find kind of the sweet spot. And I think this unfortunately depends on the state of your pet’s health, right? So if you have a pet that has more issues, we are going to communicate with you more naturally, because that’s our job to be done. But our job is also not to get you nervous and anxious. So I think having a professional person like a Chief Veterinary Officer who looks at all the wording, the wording comes from her and and so I think there is a calmness to how we talk about, you know, your beloved pet, and how how we recommend certain things we don’t want to bombard you with stuff if it’s not necessary, and we, you know, so we try to find that balance. And that is, I think, you know, you ask a user, what is what is too much, what is too little? That is very subjective question, so you’re going to get different answers. You You want to try to kind of find a, a sort of a middle ground and work with that. And then, then, I suppose, for the one or two users that want to get absolutely everything for free, to kind of keep it unrestricted in there, and you’re going to get everything. And we have those two. So, so So I guess that’s on the sort of app and the business side, on the, you know, personal side, I guess, you know, keeping a balanced mind, I think, which is very important if you’re in this high stress kind of environment that I’m in. For me, it’s exercising with a personal trainer, which I have never invested in previously in my life. It happened only here in Spain. I thought I was one of those that can go to the gym and just pull a few things here and there, like I know what I’m doing, but I clearly had no clue what I was doing, I was lifting a lot heavier stuff, but the wrong way. So it was kind of easy. If you lift the same weights the right way, it’s actually almost impossible, right? And, and so I’ve learned kind of so I think having a personal trainer, so shout out. To Alex, if you’re listening, has helped a lot with having a clear mind, getting certain tension out of the equation, certain frustration, certain anger. Because, you know, I’m problem solving all the time, and the problems never disappear. I mean, they do, but new ones arise. So it’s kind of like, you know, you’re always having this, these issues. So I think, you know, exercising is very important. I do that at least twice a week with the personal trainer, if he’s not around. I do go for a walk, maybe an hour, and I listen to podcasts, because that’s pretty much the only thing I listen to. I don’t listen to any of the old media because I don’t think it can be trusted, unfortunately, and and it’s just, you know what I kind of like to do, I think. And sometimes I live listen to business stuff, and sometimes it’s more uplifting stuff. It could be a preacher, like a favorite preacher, I like, you know, it’s a great, great app for that. Pastor, Joseph Prince, Singaporean based pastor, but very, very famous across the globe. A lot of amazing books, but, but he’s very good. Joe loston, American pastor Lakewood also, I think so he preaches a lot on on hope. We’re, we’re, we’re, obviously pastor Prince does more kind of grace, and so more New Testament stuff left Old Testament. And, you know, so, so I do that, and I think also, you know, praying every day, starting off with praying and trying not to look at other things before I pray and do my sort of meditation and then exercise that’s, that’s kind of kind of how my day starts, those two things, and that kind of keeps a pretty good balance. It kind of tees me up for the day in a beautiful way. And I think, you know, meditation can be anything from, you know, whatever you may believe in, be it a god, or you might, you know, mindfulness might be your thing, or, you know what, whatever kind of helps to prime you as, as, as, as some people like to call it right the morning priming, kind of but, but that’s kind of what I do. And then, then I try to work. I work usually five to five so that’s 5am to 5pm then I try to be a father and a husband and a pet owner, a pet father, I should say, But, but. So I try to work that way, but with us, it’s, it’s tricky. So I can do PST calls at five. I’m talking 5am C, A, T here. And so I do that. And then I do some US calls, like, with you now, which is my afternoon, which, is, you know, fine. And then I can do kind of Asia as I wake up as well. And then I can do kind of Europe the whole day. So So that’s, that’s, that’s my rhythm. Try to keep it balanced, try to eat quite clean, try to drink less. But that never works. So I do like my wine, and I’m in Spain where they have some great wine. So, so that’s just how it is. But I think, you know, my coach always tells me, my my trainer, you need to have equilibrium. He always says, you know, you gotta drink and do your your things, with your friends and be social. And that’s equally as important as you’re exercising and eating clean, right? If you don’t do the other thing, it’s really hard to do this well. So you kind of need to have that kind of balance. And I think, and I think he’s quite right, you know, it’s really hard to stick to something for too long of a period if you don’t, kind of break out every now and then do other things. So that’s, that’s, I don’t know if I gave you the right answer, if I missed any other balance related question, no,

Dave 54:00
that’s, that’s a there’s, first off, there’s no right or wrong answer. And second off, that is, that is some, there’s some great advice in there. You’re doing a lot, so having, having a balanced routine and a rhythm, I like that word, to a rhythm of things is important consistency. You know, I start up. I usually start my day with just kind of being by myself. I showed you. I was hanging out with with Aurora this morning. I drank my latte before I did anything else, always first but coffee, you know, really good coffee. I breathe. I was breathing as we were about to get started here this morning, just taking deep, cleansing breaths. It’s a beautiful, beautiful blue sky here. So, you know, just staring off into to looking out there. Grounding is something that I’m trying to do some more of, as well of being connected with, yeah, Earth. Super good. Grounding, yeah, super good. Um, yeah. So those are all. Those are all amazing things, um, I just want, I want to throw it, throw it out back to you. It. If someone wants to connect with you, if they want to learn more about my Petco, just again, one last shout out to to any any links or anything that you want to share. We’ll make sure that’s all linked up@agencybounce.com but if they want to get in touch with you, can they do

Richard 55:14
so sure? The easiest way would be send an email to Richard at my petco.com I do not have some strange person replying. It would be to myself. And if you want to do something else, you can go and check me out on LinkedIn. That would be Richard Nilson. That’s n, i l, s, s, O, N, you’ll find me there. You could my next don’t be a stranger if you have a question, if you’re in the pet space, you have a question in regards to a partnership, or you have a question in regards of entrepreneurship, where you want a second opinion on something that pertains to one of the things that I could possibly help you with. Could be AI, could be, you know, the pet space, could be entrepreneurship. Could be starting a business, whatnot. You can also write to me on LinkedIn, and I should reply you there. So, yeah, don’t be a stranger happy to help well.

Dave 56:20
Thank you so much, Richard for coming on and being an amazing guest. I’m excited to to get my my pet go and start using that with Aurora. I always love new pieces of tech, so I’m really excited about that. Thank you so much for sharing your journey a little bit with us here. And we look forward to maybe having you back on once we see, you know, version two and a year from now, drop, but in the meantime, sounds like a great, great way to to get started with the the first gen that’s out there. Thank you so much. Thank

Richard 56:49
you for having me. Appreciate it. I’ll be happy to be back on anytime.