Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: Welcome to From Caving in to Crushing it, the podcast for those who find themselves immersed in adversity and choose to write their story instead of having others write it for them. I'm Drew Duraney and I'm your host. Today's guest is Kyra Shishkin. Kira Shishkin is the CEO of Informed, the news concierge service To Beat Misinformation Overload. Kira is a four time serial entrepreneur, strategic advisor and investor in the technology industry.
His experience spans investment banking, corporate strategy, and private equity investments in category defining ventures. His education includes University of Chicago, Booth School of Business and Stanford.
Kira was in Forbes 30 under 30 about informed informed is your news concierge to beat Misinformation Overload. It provides minimal, concise and factual daily news briefings via SMS to keep you informed without the influence of bias, sensationalism or advertisements. No more, read less, get informed now.
Enjoy the show. Kira. Great to see you.
[00:01:24] Speaker A: Drew. Thank you so much for welcoming me on the show. It's been, it's been awesome getting to know you recently and I'm really excited to share this conversation with you.
[00:01:32] Speaker B: I'm looking forward to to it. Also, I always thank the person who introduced me to my guest and this thank you goes out to Leia Pantas. Leia, thank you so much for listening to the show and for sharing it with Kira because if you hadn't, we wouldn't be on together and this was we we needed to meet. So thank you. Leah.
So you know my the audience knows. I always talk about how when we're young we're taught that life is a straight path, it's linear and it's not a malicious teaching because the people teaching us that want it to be that way for us, they want us that they say to us, you have to, you have to do A plus B plus C. If you do that, D is going to happen.
And for the most part, life is linear until it's not.
At some point, ultimately in our lives, an external circumstance comes and it's called adversity. And it gets in between one of those letters and kind of derails our straight path in life and turns it into a more circuitous roof.
With that, we either have a choice or we don't. The adversity is there.
Now think about that adversity and think about what I say are three different types of men.
Man number one has a ton of blind spots. He doesn't even see the adversity. And because he doesn't see the adversity, there's no choice there because he believes he's living his life, yet he's really living somebody else's life. He's on autopilot. He changes nothing. And that's how his life ends. Then there's man number two. Now man number two sees the adversity.
He says to himself, you know, I see that. That is a barrier. I'm the victim. Life is to blame. It's doing it to me. There's nothing I can change. It is what it is. And he lives his life on autopilot and on his deathbed. Here's the difference. On his deathbed, he's got so many regrets because that's when he realizes he had choices and he didn't make any decisions to change.
I don't have man number one or man number two on this show. I have man number three on this show. I have Kyra Shishkin on this show. Man number three sees the adversity. He's got a heightened self awareness. And he says, I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. I'm not going to do this anymore. This adversity is not a barrier. It's an opportunity for me to take massive action, do something differently, and become a stronger man on the other side.
So with all that, Kira, if you could reach back as far as you need to for that defining moment, whether it was the tap on the shoulder, the whisper in the ear, or like what I needed, the 2 by 4 upside my head, that kind of transformed you from the man you were, whether it was man number one or man number two or both, to the man you are now and how that transformation has impacted you personally and then professionally. Would you care to share with us, my friend?
[00:04:22] Speaker A: Absolutely. Drew, I love the. The framework that you like, you surface. And I think for me personally, I've been all three of these men. And I'll tell you the story of all three of these men.
And I'd like to think I'm the third. Now, time will tell if my future self will agree with me now, but when I was 12 or 13, I was just growing up, or I would say maybe the men number one is that childhood. So I don't know if man qualifies because I was a boy, but, you know, the boy number one, I was living on autopilot. I was, I had many flaws, gaps in emotional awareness, gaps in, you know, intelligence. Just I was, I was a kid and I very much felt like I was living on autopilot. Not really concerned with self improvement, not really concerned with, you know, I was just kind of going through the motions. And frankly, now looking back at that image, that, you know, boy, one image, uh, you know, I, I was really concerned for that kid because I, I felt like that boy was not going places, so to speak. He was not aware of the trajectory of his life or of the, the sort of the consequence of choices and the fact that he had choices to begin with.
[00:05:45] Speaker B: Right.
[00:05:45] Speaker A: And that was very much like the kind of, like that sort of man. One image of going through the motions, being super unaware, being super. I think in many ways on autopilot, I think you put it really well and it's a generous way to put it.
And then something happened to me. It was something that I could not foresee. It was a tragedy and it was a really, a real stick in the wheel.
But I grew up in Ukraine, in Kiev, in the capital of Ukraine.
And one summer morning when my family, which was my sister, myself and I, we had like this nuclear family.
We were coming back from a big city called Odessa that's also like one of the big cities of Ukraine. We're heading back to, to Kiev.
And we were driving on a, you know, on a high speed interstate highway.
And, and as we were driving, we had a car crash into us.
Two, two drunk drivers who were also elderly, lost control of, of the vehicle, crashed into ours at a pretty high speed. It was, you know, think of the German Autobahn. It was a very high speed freeway.
And so, you know, a few months later, I sort of wake up, open my eyes, and I'm like, whoa, what happened?
And it was a miracle that I, I, that I woke up in the first place because I wasn't expected to, I was expected to be, to be gone, but I woke up. Right. You know, attribute that to sort of any force within our control, outside of our control. But for some reason, one reason or another, I woke up and, and I couldn't remember, not just that, you know, accident or, you know, many things, but I couldn't remember my life.
I had this, you know, pretty long term amnesia over the century, all of my childhood.
And when my father walked into the, into the room, I couldn't recognize him. I was like, who is this human? Who is this person?
When I woke up, I couldn't walk and I couldn't talk. I've lost a lot of my usual, or taken for granted functionality.
And it wasn't certain if my awakening wasn't certain, my coming back into full facilities, full faculties also was not certain.
And so it began this sort of Climb back up.
And with my trauma and with my sort of physical disability that has haunted me for years, after the accident, my family had to move to Israel.
And in Israel, you know, coming from Ukraine into Israel was a huge cultural shock and shift.
We came there for health care. We came there to.
To heal the traumas that myself and my mother have sustained that were very, very damaging, so to speak. They were very serious injuries, and it took years to.
To sort of heal them and to get back on top of.
Of life.
And now I sort of have my faculties regained and I feel. And a lot of people don't realize that I've gone through this experience.
And so now it's almost hard to. To pinpoint and say, hey, you know, nothing happened to you, right? Like, you're completely fine. They can't see the scar. They can't see the kind of the story behind it. And I like it that way because I get to tell the story selectively to people that matter, and they get to show them the scar that sort of starts at the base of my head and goes all the way around.
But I think for the purposes of perhaps your interest, I'd love to take the audience to those couple of years when the recovery was far from certain and when, you know, it was not clear if I had a life to. To live outside that moment.
So when I woke up in that hospital bed in Odessa, I was.
I just felt a weakness, a weakness of mind, a weakness of body, weakness of everything that I've never encountered. You know, I was like 13 years old. So for me, I had no toolkit for interacting or processing trauma of the scale that has just occurred to my family and to myself. And so for me, it was just. I had no idea how to deal with this.
And as I started sort of regaining some very base motor functions, of just being able to walk without a. A stick or, you know, a stick or a wheelchair, which was initially as I started being able to form sentences and sort of be able to use my muscles again after, you know, months of atrophy, we moved to Israel.
And in Israel, it was just a whole different ball game because not only was I going through the physical recovery experience of, like, getting back in terms of my functions, I couldn't think, like, I couldn't mentally, I couldn't function, I couldn't learn anything. I couldn't remember anything, and I couldn't, like, concentrate. Like, I couldn't focus. And I think for me, and I think we'll get into this later on, as to, you know, what I'm working on right now.
My attention was one of the biggest losses that like I've ever experienced. I could no longer wield my focus.
It was stole, it was. I felt like it was robbed from me. I felt like someone stole. Someone came in and stole my attention. I mean, they also stole my ability to function mechanically, motor skill, ability to do anything.
And I find myself in this new environment. On top of all this, I find myself in a Middle Eastern culture, which is a huge, you know, huge orange. Apples and oranges from Eastern European culture.
[00:12:31] Speaker B: Right, right, right.
[00:12:32] Speaker A: And I have no friends.
I'm so alone. I'm 13 years old. And if you've ever been alone as a kid, I think it's one of the most torturing experiences that you can have. I mean, I think generally in life, but especially as a kid, it's incredible.
And so here I was, physically disabled, mentally disabled, alone in a culture I don't understand. I can't relate to it. I don't speak any languages that this culture speaks. I didn't speak English, I didn't speak Hebrew. I don't understand anything that's going on.
And, and I'm 13 years old, so I have no toolkit for navigating this, this sort of like, you know, challenge this adversity.
And so there comes the man number two, right? And he sort of comes into, into my, into my spirit, into my body and he feels victimized, right? He feels like, how did this happen to me? More importantly, how did this happen to my little sister and to my mother who have never done, you know, anything wrong in their life? There is no destiny, fate, you know, God that could allow this, right?
And so the anger, the anger that I've held in my body and the victimization, the feeling of this was done to us, Right? Right.
And the victimhood that I've embodied for, for years led me to only make matters worse, led me to suicidal thoughts and suicidal attempts, led me to self harm, led me to anger that would whiplash on other people, right? People that I loved and cared about and people that I also wanted to connect with in a moment where I needed connection the most. I was going through these contortions of processing this curse, what felt like a curse that has come on to me. And it took years of like healing, of working through, of crying and trying and figuring out like, okay, maybe I'm a victim. So what? I'm the only one who can rescue me, I'm the only one who can regain my faculties. I'm the only one who can do anything about making the situation better.
And around there, I think year one, two, maybe it was year two or three of my recovery post accident took. It took a while where I started feeling less like I wanted to be a victim. I was getting tired.
I was getting sick and tired of getting sick of being sick and tired.
And that sort of began the third image of myself that I believe still sort of carries with me, of I'm the only one who can do something about this. There's no use. I've spent a few years whining and crying and feeling like a victim. And now there is. Look, no one can deny, right, in an objective sense, that I was a victim of the situation. Exactly. And I want to rob myself of that. Like, I didn't do this. We didn't do this. There was a drunk driving elderly couple that lost control of a vehicle, smashed into us. I mean, this is, this is like a meteorite. You're walking on the street, you're walking in the field and it's a meteorite falling down.
Right. So I've accepted that this just happened. Right. And I get to feel like a victim. And you know, I am perhaps just a victim.
But it's not an image that I wanted to see myself through. Right. Like it happened to be the circumstance, but not my identity that I was willing to adopt.
[00:16:34] Speaker B: Right.
[00:16:34] Speaker A: And so I began this journey of, you know, taking everything much more seriously. I felt like I could learn because it took me hard. It took me so much more time to read, to understand, to remember. I had to put in double triple 10x the work just to keep up with other kids, other peers.
But I was determined because I was like, it's either I go through the hard part, right. Or I am left with very. I'm left with nothing. I'm left with very little. I'm left with my status quo, which to me was unacceptable.
[00:17:10] Speaker B: Good for you.
[00:17:11] Speaker A: And that sort of began the recovery and the more conscious recovery of like, I want my life back.
I am not. Okay. Not having my attention, not having my memory, not having my learning. Yeah. An ability to improve myself.
And so, you know, I'll pause here, but I'm giving you a big story.
[00:17:36] Speaker B: Well, first big question, how's your sister?
[00:17:41] Speaker A: Better than ever, I'd like to say. And we've all three of us have had very different experiences from this accident, very different traumas.
My sister has had the least physical trauma, although that's just comparing to myself and my mother comparing to any normal human. She was extremely traumatized.
One of the things that I really admire my sister for and could never sort of forget that, is that she was awake through all of it.
[00:18:17] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh.
[00:18:18] Speaker A: You know, I wasn't there. I was dead for all intents and purposes that I was put back to life.
[00:18:22] Speaker B: Right, right.
[00:18:23] Speaker A: My sister was. Was there with my mother awake through. Through the fire and through the glass shards and the blood, and seeing me. Essentially seeing me die, seeing me disappear.
[00:18:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:38] Speaker A: And, you know, seeing these other two people actually pass away.
And I can't imagine the mental emotional damage because she's also my younger sister.
[00:18:51] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:18:53] Speaker A: So she was eight or. Or so eight or nine when.
When this happened.
[00:18:58] Speaker B: They have that dish. That additional layer of trauma of recalling the accident where you were kind of spared that part.
[00:19:06] Speaker A: Yeah. I've. I've had to learn it through stories. I've had to learn it through stories. And I was surprised to. I was surprised to hear about it when I woke up in the hospital bed. But my mother and my sister were.
I mean, absolute.
The toughness to have gone through that experience and to still be.
To still be with all their senses and still be on top of it and very much thriving. I'd like to say now our family is thriving in different ways and on different continents, but we are. We're persevering. And my sister, as well, is, I think, is doing very well. And I'm so, so grateful and so, so happy for her.
[00:19:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:49] Speaker A: That. It's just terrific. Thank you for asking.
[00:19:51] Speaker B: No, absolutely. So I'm curious.
You have a recollection now of the past prior to the accident. Has that come back, Any of your childhood?
[00:20:03] Speaker A: Very little, I feel like.
[00:20:05] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:20:05] Speaker A: But, you know, I'm comforted in this thought that so much of our memories made up. Anyway.
[00:20:12] Speaker B: You know what? That's a good point. Because our recollection of 30 years ago isn't exactly what actually happened 30 years ago. It's just a recollection of what we think happened. That's very good point.
[00:20:23] Speaker A: Right. So I'm comforted. I'm comfortable in this thought that, like, hey, memories aren't real anyway. They're just stories we tell each other in ourselves. And so I feel like I have the human equivalent of memory because I've heard a lot of stories and I have some pieces left over that helped me string it all together.
[00:20:41] Speaker B: Right. All right, how about this one? How about this one? So the attention piece that you so wanted to get back, do you recall the moment you realized, like, you were aware that. Oh, my gosh, my attention My focus, it's back.
Do you recall that?
[00:21:02] Speaker A: Gosh, no.
[00:21:04] Speaker B: No.
[00:21:05] Speaker A: It was not a specific moment. It was.
It's almost like. It's kind of similar to like working out. You know, you go to the gym and you're like, I want to have a six pack or I want to have big biceps. And you start doing it and you do it every day. You do it for weeks. And like, some time passes and you're like, you like, don't notice it in the first week, you don't notice in the second week, you don't. Can't see it. And then you wake up two months later and you're like, oh, my goodness, you can't recognize yourself. I did was a very similar experience around. I just, I put the work in and I did it every day and I didn't stop and I didn't rest. And a few years later, I was already in high school.
And I wake up one moment, and I realized that all the kids in class look to me to have the answer. You know, it's like this moment when the teacher's asking a tough question, everybody's silent, everyone's looking at that kid, and they were looking at me, and I was like, I actually do know the answer. And here it is, right? And, you know, it's something that is so, you know, so small in the context of my journey as a person. And like, being a, being a high school nerd is not much, but to me, in the moment when I graduated my school as a valedictorian and I, you know, learned Hebrew and English and I had all these like, awards, and they were small scale awards because it was high school, right? But when I was receiving these awards from teachers and universities giving me scholarships, and I'm like, who is this person that's receiving all this acknowledgment? Who is this? I was like, oh, my God, it's me. And I can do this and I can remember things and I can learn and I.
I am back. I am back to my faculties. And so it was that moment. It was delayed. It was a delayed moment. But at one point when it hit me, I was like, oh, my God, the gym was paying off.
[00:23:00] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, look what I did. And, and you know, that's so important that we celebrate the small. Well, small, the big victories. But I mean, you know what I mean? The small, like the, the steps along the way need to be celebrated because most of us wait until we get to this part to celebrate. And some of us don't get here, but if we, if we remember to celebrate every step towards, you know, in the progress in the process, we're going to be building our confidence up and it's just much more fulfilling when we celebrate the small wins along the way. And I'm sure you did that. I mean you celebrate the. You got your attention back, your focus and then you get these accolades and you realize that people see you, they see you for who you are and for the hard work you've put in in every aspect of your life. And that's something to be proud of.
[00:23:53] Speaker A: Yeah. I would say for me, I didn't do enough of the celebrating of those small moments. And if I could go back in time, at least in that single moment, I would say celebrate those wins when you were able to. When I, when I left the kind of special classroom. Because there were a couple of years when I was in a special classroom, ye. Which was for me, it felt very diminishing and it felt very like, like I can get out of the situation where I'm being kind of where I'm playing on easy mode. Like I want to play, I want to play in the big leagues. You know, there were these small, small moments along the way where like I wrote my first essay in English and I. And it made sense and like it made, it made some sense when I was able to like do math again. Right.
Those moments. I wish I participated more in those moments and like was more present in the celebrating of them because I think a lot of people who go through this journey of like, let's say, let's bring back the working out analogy. If you don't celebrate those wins, you might not have the patience or the stamina sometimes to get to the ultimate waking up and you're ripped, right?
And I woke up one day and I was ripped. But a lot of people, and I think myself, I had that risk of like this could have not happened. And I think slipping the small steps along the way helps you get there with, with more.
It prolongs your stamina. At least it does.
[00:25:24] Speaker B: It feeds the resiliency. And you know what?
No one, you can't. You can celebrate those small wins even now if you wanted to just by, you know, re reliving those memories of think about what the heck you did, man. I mean, I'm celebrating your, your small victories now because you know, hearing the story now and seeing where you are now, my God, that's a feel good story. And that's, that's why I wanted. Someone wanted you to be on because it's a story that people need to hear because they're going through stuff. And, and you're right, you can tell that story when you feel like it because no one could tell that you went through all that stuff.
[00:26:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
And I appreciate that.
[00:26:07] Speaker B: Yeah. Thanks for being vulnerable. So let's, so let's bring all of this to where you're, what you're doing professionally. Not necessarily now, but what, when you got out of high school, you got out of college, what was your passion? What did you want to do?
What, what did you want to do to pay the bills? Like, what was your thing?
[00:26:25] Speaker A: Yeah, I wanted to learn. And I think to me, that was a very important ideal, like both coming out of high school and, you know, I was coming out a very nerdy kid. I took the most classes in the history of the, of the Huff High School. I took all these electives, all these additions. I graduated valedictorian. And then I was like, what I want to do next, I want to learn, I want to keep doing this because I'm getting rewarded for it. For me, it's the, it's the biggest, you know, orgasmic feeling. Right. Of like, I, I've made right on my biggest adversity, my biggest challenge, and I'm now being celebrated for it too. So in college, I wanted to have the same experience.
[00:27:05] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:27:06] Speaker A: I wanted to go to a very academic school, which I wind up going to, I would say, the most academic school in probably the world. I went to the University of Chicago, which for me felt like the, the, the Mecca of intellectualism, academics and academic rigor, like rigor of inquiry.
So there I continued on my journey of, of overdosing, on the learning, of building that muscle. And I, I got three bachelor degrees, so I, it's essentially three majors, but they are each given as a separate degree at the University of Chicago. And so I got a BA in economics in abstract mathematics and in philosophy.
And I loved it.
Kept feeding this high of like, I have it back. Perhaps I was overcompensating a little bit for not having it for so many.
[00:27:59] Speaker B: Years, but it felt amazing.
[00:28:01] Speaker A: It felt amazing.
And so when I started thinking about my early career, I was like, well, I want to keep riding this train.
I wanted to have very intellectual, very rigorous, very high stakes environment where I could learn very quickly.
And going through the University of Chicago, there's a pretty big focus in the college experience on finance. And finance generally is a pretty rigorous discipline where you get to learn a lot about other disciplines. You get to bring in the social, emotional, and humanities muscles combined with the mathematics, the mathematical muscles, the statistical muscles, and it felt like a really great area. And so I actually went into what I would describe as the high finance world, which for me looked like investment banking initially.
Very high exposure field. You learn a lot very quickly and it's. You're expected to be a learner, you're expected to be a very fast learner, which for me felt very right. And it gives you exposure across so many other fields I've since done since in private equity, venture capital, in corporate strategy, corporate development.
These were all to me, high learning, like high paced learning environments.
And that was I think, the continuing thread.
But that thread sort of evolved into what I'm doing now, which is something I think is a little bit different.
[00:29:37] Speaker B: What are you doing now? I'd love to hear that because I mean all the stuff I feel like I'm now going to see, I'm going to see if we can tie into what you're doing now and see if those three bachelor's degrees like what you've brought with you from those degrees. Because quite often we don't end up doing professionally what we went to school for. So now I'm curious to hear.
[00:29:58] Speaker A: Totally. I'm definitely one of those people. And I went to school to learn, not to get a trade skill. Like to me that was very important. I think there's no wrong way of going to school as long as you're in school. Like there's many ways to do it. For me, I wanted to have this idealistic space where I could truly learn for learning's sake, not for a professional sake. And knowing that if I'm successful in learning and if I can learn to learn, I can then pick up any sort of profession, any sort of skill. And so I never had the intention of becoming a philosopher or becoming a mathematician or becoming an economist. But all of these skill sets have benefited me tremendously because I had different ways of learning.
And so as I kind of spun out of the orbit of high finance and strategy and strategic finance, which are all these things that I've mentioned, private equity, venture capital, investment banking, corporate strategy.
As I spun out of those sort of worlds, the learning hasn't gone away. And I realized that learning is just something I'm going to do everywhere, all the time, every time.
But I've had a reawakening of sort of a going back to my younger self and I think in many, in some ways honoring that experience of the attention piece where I wanted to, to build something that helps Other people regain their attention.
Right. And it wasn't a medical. It wasn't a health care. Yeah. That's where the connection is. It wasn't a health care or like a medical device, although obviously those would be phenomenal. It was a tool that, you know, in a technological way, with a software way, with a. It was a process that gave people attention back.
And as I thought about. It's sort of these two big threads of my life. One was the attention supremacy, like the focus on attention, how important that is. And the other is Isaiah left at that point in Ukraine, in Israel and all around Ukraine and all around Israel and then in the United States. At that point I was in New York, in Chicago, in San Francisco.
And, you know, I was feeling that people have lost the thread on what's going on in the world. People have been resigned from the. From the public, sort of the public's connection to political, economic, world developments. And I felt like people were losing the power of facts. All they were left with, with the legacy news media is news commentary.
[00:32:46] Speaker B: Right.
[00:32:46] Speaker A: Is conversations about news, discussions of news, but not actually the facts themselves.
Yeah. The clickbait. The clickbait headlines. Right.
And so those two threads combined to say, well, what if I helped people get their attention back in the world of world news and current affairs so that I could help people who identify with the world and think of themselves as global citizens. Right. As I've always felt.
[00:33:16] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:33:16] Speaker A: I could. I could empower that instinct to. To learn, to understand.
Yeah.
[00:33:23] Speaker B: Well, the thing is, I happen to know what you're doing now. Now, I did read that you. You've had three other companies prior to the one you're doing now.
[00:33:30] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:33:31] Speaker B: So let's just really briefly. What was the first company you founded? What was it?
[00:33:36] Speaker A: It was a learning. It was a learning company.
I.
I wrote a book that was a. You know, book is probably a strong word for it, but I wrote a.
A textbook component that was a standalone learning resource for people who had a hard time with the way history was taught in thematic ways. You know, how US History specifically is taught through themes. Right. There is the Western expansion, and there's the antebellum, there's the post bellum. You're like, what year is this? Like, I don't know what year we're in.
[00:34:13] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:34:13] Speaker A: Yeah, it was actually that it was trying to teach a chronological way of United States history. And I wrote a book called American Chronology that it became a business when we started selling it to schools and history departments. And they loved it. They Were like. They were like, this is exactly how. This is what we were missing. Right. Because as part of my research, I went through all these textbooks that exist on American history. I went to all these libraries everywhere, and not a single one of them gave you a faithful and complete chronology of American history.
It all was broken up in these themes and topics and chapters that had crossovers between them, and so you couldn't tell what year was going on.
[00:34:58] Speaker B: I love that you did it chronologically, because then people can understand how this wove into this and how this connect. You kind of put American history into context, proper context, exactly what was happening at the time, then what occurred, and how what occurred then fed into. I love the quote, the chronological aspect of it. So that was. That was the first one. Now what?
[00:35:20] Speaker A: That was the first adventure.
[00:35:21] Speaker B: Yeah. What happened from first one to second one? Did you keep the first one while you open the second one or what happened next?
[00:35:27] Speaker A: I KE cap the first one. We even still have some of our copies. We wind up publishing two editions, both internationally. So the first edition was. Was published mostly in Israel, but the second edition of the. Of the book, it was. It had an ISBN, so it was an international serial book number. That's the code of the books that are. Give them the ability to be sold worldwide. And so. And we've brought them to schools, a lot of international schools. A lot of American international schools in Israel, in Ukraine.
[00:35:57] Speaker B: Did you bring it to University of Chicago? We got to bring it to, you.
[00:36:00] Speaker A: Know, I would say so. I would. I would agree. And we did physically bring, you know, because I spent some time there, but it was much more geared towards high school. And so to me, yeah, I think. I think it's a. It wouldn't be a bad resource for, like, university, but it was very geared towards, like, high school. High school folks, because it was channeling back my experience.
[00:36:28] Speaker B: That's a good time.
[00:36:29] Speaker A: It was nice. Yeah. It was like, that's when US History is most generally taught. Right. At least in the U.S. system.
And it channeled my high school history of, like, I had a hard time learning the traditional way, and I wanted to build a way that other people could also relate with and then, you know, understand that gave them a different way of conceptualizing the same things.
And people have been very successful learning through our system. And it made me feel the name of that incredible.
It's called, you know, quite literally, American Chronology.
[00:37:03] Speaker B: All right, I'm writing that down. All right, guys, you write that down and get a copy of it. American Chronology. Okay, cool. Sorry to cut you off. Go ahead.
[00:37:11] Speaker A: If, if you're interested in a copy, if anyone wants a copy, I would be delighted to, to send one over. It's, I think it's been taken off Amazon. We've taken it off Amazon prime and we've taken it off our, you know, all the. Yeah, so it's, it's, it's much less accessible because we also used to sell them in wholesale. We didn't really ever sell them to individuals, we sold them to entire departments.
But we still have a few hundred copies laying around. You know, we had big, big volumes. So we're happy to, if anyone wants a copy, just, just, you know, shoot me an email. Should be a LinkedIn message and I'll be more than happy to, to share it. Means a lot to me.
[00:37:49] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. All right, so then, so the second business.
[00:37:55] Speaker A: So the second business was, you know, an experience very different. It was mostly learning for me. It was getting into the crypto world and understanding. Yeah, like how this whole era was working. You know, this was early days of Ethereum, early days of the whole crypto universe. And this one was less around helping other people, which for me kind of left a bit of a mark because I felt like the reason I think it didn't stick for me is because it was very technological, it was very anonymous and you were contributing to an ecosystem, but you weren't contributing to individual people. For me, I've struggled with that. I need to feel the customer impact. I need to feel that somebody's benefiting. The kids are reading the book or the folks right now with Informed are getting the tangible effect.
So it felt very much like it was too distanced from the impact. And so that was a crypto mining company where we helped validate at a large scale the Ethereum network and a couple of different tokens on that network. And this was like 10 years ago, if not more.
But that was a fascinating field where I was learning a lot. It was back to me learning completely new, different things.
[00:39:19] Speaker B: I love what a big difference kind of difference between all your three BAs to economics, philosophy, investment banking.
[00:39:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:39:27] Speaker B: All right, so we got. That's business two. How about business three?
[00:39:31] Speaker A: Business three was very special environment because it was an incubation within a large corporate environment where we sort of, we're brought in. It was a small team. That was one, we had, you know, five other co founders and we're a small team of five, this founding team. And, and we essentially saw a, we saw a problem in the industry. This was in the Tax world of Intuit, in The world of TurboTax, in the world of Intuit, where we were kind of brought in to solve a problem of why can't we help customers at scale with accountants? Like why can't we enable and make it successful for people who no longer want to use software, no longer want to use TurboTax, but they still want technological help and accountant help to do their taxes. And so we created a solution that was in some ways very sophisticated, in some ways very simple. It was an expert marketplace that allowed the tax filers to connect with verified and vetted accountants that were independent accountants and practice owners, but still have the power of TurboTax Portal of document management, of security, of video calling through secure channels, of document storage, of a lot of, you know, QuickBooks credit karma integrations. So that there's so much more professionalization where the accountant is not left with moving papers and trying to figure out where all their clients are, but they're working with a system that's very sophisticated, they're working with a TurboTax engine, and you're able to, as a tax filer have a really premium experience.
On the other side of the accountant, you had support. You weren't alone running the practice. You had the support of Intuit, the credibility, the reputation, the distribution of Intuit and you had website support, technological support.
You had your own QuickBooks for an accountant. You had your own Mailchimp, you had just the power of Intuit in your back pocket. You had essentially the backing, you had the backing of Intuit to build the business. And so it was a two sided marketplace where we're helping accountants run their businesses and we're helping tax filers get on top of their taxes. And so that was a very special project.
We allocated $30 million to building it and, and it was a very successful marketplace. And then it evolved into what is now TurboTax Full Service and TurboTax Alive, which is a big part of the TurboTax business.
[00:42:13] Speaker B: Good, so you still have a legacy there.
[00:42:16] Speaker A: Absolutely. I mean, I think that model of helping accountants connect with tax filers is just so needed in this country where everything is run on tax. Taxes is the bloodline of, of America.
[00:42:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I love it. Okay, well, I'm glad that's still around. So that's great. Now drum roll please. Informed. Now I want to hear about that. And let's, let's, let's bring this to the, to a close by talking about inform now. And then I have a couple questions.
[00:42:48] Speaker A: Absolutely. And I think that's where it was a, you know, moment in my life where I'm like, hey, how can I have the most impact that feels right to doing justice to. To my. My history, my story?
[00:43:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:43:02] Speaker A: And it's funny because I'm actually wearing an informed shirt.
[00:43:05] Speaker B: So for the folks who are just listening, he's got a shirt that says Informed Dot. Now, that's actually the name of the company and the website of what Kira is going to tell us about.
All right, now we're going to learn about Inform now.
[00:43:20] Speaker A: And I was in this moment where, you know, I really felt I wanted to kind of marry those threads. I wanted to keep learning myself. I wanted to enable other people to learn in powerful ways so they can improve themselves, become more in touch with the world and have that sort of global citizen connection. But then I also wanted to do justice to the attention sabotage that was happening to me in my earlier life, but also is happening left and right across legacy media. I was feeling the predatory clickbait, the structural sensationalism, the ceaseless solicitation that was taking place in news media. And it made me sick. Maybe like. Like it. It reminded me of those years of disorientation, of not being able to figure out what's happening, what's going on. And it just. It broke my heart. It broke my heart.
[00:44:12] Speaker B: And you lived it. And so you actually.
[00:44:14] Speaker A: And I lived it. Even if you, immersively, you had no choice.
[00:44:18] Speaker B: You were forced to live it because of the accident.
[00:44:21] Speaker A: And so now I was seeing generations of people, generations of Americans growing up in a media environment that was inherently predatory and inherently disorienting. Clickbait advertisement Sensationalism, dramatization, bias, agenda, all of this stuff pushed down the American's throat. And I was just like, we can do this better. We can do this so much better. And so I set out to build Inform now, which combines sort of all these things I mentioned. What we do is we make news readable again for people who want their attention back when I wield their attention themselves. Don't want to be hijacked, don't want to be clickbaited and held hostage by the Doom scroll or by the media algorithm.
They want to be informed, but not influenced, informed, but not manipulated.
[00:45:16] Speaker B: You're helping bring back critical thinking.
[00:45:21] Speaker A: Yes. Helping to empower that. We're giving the tools for you to make up your own mind, for you to think through things yourself and informed up. Now, essentially, in simple words, to keep it short, we read all the world's news 24 7. We monitor the Most world changing phenomenon. And we surface it to you via text message. We actually SMS text it to you.
We give you the facts without bias, without clickbait, without solicitation, without advertisement, without dramatization, without verbosity, without any of this noise that has become so commonplace in the news industry that we just take it for granted. We don't have to take it for granted. We can have a better way. And that's what Informed up now does.
It's the number one news by tech service in America and we are just getting started.
Bringing the power of facts in your pocket, the power of facts on your phone so that you can read in peace and get informed without getting influenced.
[00:46:29] Speaker B: Okay, so we get it on our phone, the text, but we can go to your website Inform now for more information.
[00:46:38] Speaker A: Exactly. The best way to learn more about what we're doing and sign up. And if there's anyone who's interested in reading news in a different way, that takes 30 seconds a day and never should take more than that because that's already turning into entertainment. And we don't do entertainment, we do news pure.
And Inform now is our website, but the way we run the whole experience is entirely through SMS. So you can text us at 1-800-ORRY, 844-406-INFO. That's our.
We think of it as the biggest news by text toll free line in America.
So we've got 800 junk, 800 flowers. You know, all these things.
We are more associated with the flowers than we are with the junk, to be clear.
But we are 844406, info, which is another way to connect with us is to just shoot us a message.
[00:47:39] Speaker B: Yeah, I was going to say folks, you definitely captured the essence of Akira Shishkin right now. And you can reach him on, on LinkedIn. He's only, as he said is his words, the only Kira Shishkin in the world.
So you can find him on LinkedIn easily. Go to Informed now. That's the website and the name of the company and that number again that they can text to. 844-840-info.
[00:48:07] Speaker A: No, it's 844-84406.
[00:48:10] Speaker B: I'm sorry, 406.
[00:48:13] Speaker A: Yeah, info, guys.
[00:48:15] Speaker B: 844406 info. That is awesome week. You and I could probably talk for another few hours, but we are definitely gonna have to wrap this up. So I want to ask you my two final questions. You ready for this?
[00:48:31] Speaker A: I'm excited.
[00:48:32] Speaker B: All right, so. So Kira, you're sitting in your happy place and you're sitting down with 7 to 10 year old Kyra Shishkin and you want to give him advice about life. What are you going to tell him?
[00:48:48] Speaker A: Everything has the power to make you stronger if you let it.
I think that's been a personal mantra that I've picked up.
I don't think anyone else. I think it's my own little invention. But it's obviously a combination of other quotes.
But everything has the power to make you stronger if you let it. And I think of this every time that I re. Encounter adversity as, as you know, I'm Ukrainian Israeli, so ever since all this stuff happened, we've also had a war in both my countries rage out for now, many years. And so I've had no shortage of adversity since my, my big sort of, you know, childhood moment, right? But as I encounter adversity, I just remember this quote because I've lived it and I've proved it to myself that everything has the power to make you stronger if you let it.
[00:49:44] Speaker B: If you let it is the key piece. You got to let it in. You got to be willing and able. I love that advice. All right, so now let's switch gears. Now you're sitting down with young businessman, young entrepreneur Kira Shishkin, and you want to give him advice about business. What are you going to tell?
[00:49:59] Speaker A: Tell him, gosh, the, the single most important advice comes from Nike. And it's, it's so, it's so cheesy, right, because it's Nike and it's a sneakers company. But just do it, just do it. And if I was to phrase it in my own words, I would just say start now.
Like, start now if you're 7 years old, start now. If you feel any semblance of an instinct, of a feeling, of a gut check that you want to do something, whether that's building a solution, building a practice, whether you're an accountant or a coach or a psychologist or a therapist or an entrepreneur or anything that you want to be, if you have any sort of spark in you that says, oh, I know there's a better way, I know we can do this better, just start now. Don't wait until perfect. Don't wait until you're ready. You're never going to be ready. Just start right away. It doesn't have to be dramatic. Don't quit your job. Don't, you know, tattoo it on your face. Don't tattoo your logo on your, on your chin.
Just begin whatever that little scale of begin looks like, but begin today. Begin now. Don't wait.
[00:51:18] Speaker B: I love it. Start now. Well, I want to thank you, Kira, for coming into my life. I want to thank you for being who you are, wonderful human being. You've gone through a lot, and rather than be the victim, you're out there trying to help people find that attention, to find that focus again. And I thank you for that because the world needs Kira Shishkin. So keep doing what you're doing. Doing, my friend. I appreciate you.
[00:51:46] Speaker A: Thank you, Drew. It means a lot to to have this conversation with you, and I'm so, so grateful.
[00:51:51] Speaker B: Thank you so much, everybody out there. I want you to be good to yourselves and I want you to start now.
Take care, everybody.
Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, please subscribe and give us a review to help others find it.
I'd like you to answer this question.
Are you living the life you want to live, or are you living the life others want you to live? I'd like you to think about that for a second because I strongly suggest you live the life you want to live. If you want to learn more about what I stand for and my services and how I'm able to help many men get out of their own way, please go to my website at www.prophetcompassion. com.
Feel free to also email me at Drew at profitcompassion. Com. I'd love to have a conversation with you.
Take care of yourself and choose to write your own story instead of letting others write it for you.
