Introduction
[00:00:00] Detective Ev: Well, hello my friends. Welcome back to another episode of the Health Detective Podcast by Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. My name is Evan Transue, aka Detective Ev. I will be your host for today’s show about customizable meditations.
We are in the midst of our Summer Open House event currently. So, if you are listening to this, you do have some time to check it out. It is a big month for us. We have over 22 Live events that we are doing. And by we, I mean that I will be hosting 19 or 20 out of those 22. It is quite a month.
I’m just kidding cause I have the easier job as host. I don’t have to actually present the whole time. It is pretty nice getting to do it and getting to hear from these wonderful people. We’ve had a ton of engagement so far. It’s just been fun.
If you have not checked any of that out, go to fdntraining.com/summer to check out some Live events. If you do want to get the recordings, that is a paid option. And when you are filling everything out on the website that I just gave you, you will have an option to do VIP. When you do VIP you will have access to the recordings. That is how you can see the stuff that was already done. Otherwise, it is free, but you will have to attend the rest of the events Live. fdntraining.com/summer.
Customizable Meditations: A Better World
Okay. What we are doing today is interviewing a gentleman named David Gull. And he has created something that is, in my opinion, quite groundbreaking. I don’t say that lightly. Sometimes, I feel like I use a lot of hype words. It’s not that I’m trying to ever do that. I just get excited, man. I’m an excitable guy. That’s why they gave me a podcast. With David, I really do mean this when I say it’s kind of groundbreaking and revolutionary, what he’s created.
I’m going to read his bio here for you guys, then we’ll get to it. He is a tech entrepreneur founder, a licensed architect, and a creator. He thrives on designing and building new products. David is currently co-founder and CEO of Ogimi, the first AI Meditation Coach. With Ogimi, he is mission-driven with the goal of helping 1 billion people fix their mental health through highly personalized daily meditation practice.
Meditation has been deeply meaningful to David since he started the practice 15 years ago when he hit the point of burnout early in his architecture career. He knows that if he can help others create and deepen a meditation practice to explore their inner world, he will have made the world a better place.
You can try the app for free at www.ogimi.ai. Of course, we will have that in the show notes for you guys. I’m not going to lie, I’m not someone that’s wild about the AI thing. Some people get ticked off at me for that because they’re like, dude, you’re already using a computer, you’re using a phone. I get that; I was forced into that, basically with the generation that I’m in.
Customizable Meditations: Improving & Inspiring
But man, I guess I’m just one of those people that as things get added on, I’m a little hesitant. However, what I am aware enough to know is that everything has a favorable and unfavorable use. And if we’re going to use this stuff, I think David’s nailing this. I think it will become very clear how he’s nailing it as this podcast progresses. So, without further ado, let’s get to today’s episode.
All right. Hello there, David. And welcome to the Health Detective Podcast. How are you?
[00:03:05] David Gull: Hey Evan, thanks for having me. Super excited to have this conversation with you.
[00:03:09] Detective Ev: Yeah, likewise. It’s a little bit different. You know, at this point in the show when we’ve had a lot of episodes, we bring on a variety of guests and different backgrounds, but I always kind of like going away from, I don’t want to say cookie cutter, but our routine that we have.
Cause typically it’s a person that is an active, like functional nutrition practitioner or whatever, which again, it’s cool, that’s the main point of the show. But anything that we can do to improve people’s health or even inspire them entrepreneurially cause I have a hunch that we’re going to get some of that today with your shift in careers and stuff. That’s always good to get. I love having that on the show.
Customizable Meditations: First AI Powered, Guided Meditation App
So, a little background for people, something that I wouldn’t have mentioned in the bio when I was recording this intro to the show itself is that we have an interesting connection here. For longer term FDNs, they would definitely know Ryan Monahan. He was like one of the fan favorite clinical advisors at FDN. A brilliant, brilliant guy. Super successful practice. The only reason he recently left FDN in that capacity is cause his business was so dang busy he couldn’t justify it. So, very good problem to have.
His partner in crime, Lindy Curtis, works for us now and she’s been doing a lot of affiliate stuff. She got connected with David who, you guys knew each other from when she was back in her real estate days, right? Or just maybe she still does that on the side, I’m not sure. But commercial real estate and now you both somehow got into health, so do I have that correct?
David Gull: Yes, that’s correct.
Detective Ev: All right. So, I gotta ask then, we’ll talk about your company today of course, but commercial real estate and holistic health in any capacity is not typically something that I would imagine goes together too often. Give us a little background on yourself. Did you deal with health symptoms, or did you have something going on? Like what led to this?
[00:04:46] David Gull: Just for quick context, this that it led to is the first AI powered guided meditation coach app. We’ll get into that. But how did I get here?
Customizable Meditations: Healthy Lifestyle Changes
I actually started out a career in architecture. Well, I don’t know if you know much about that as a career, but it’s pretty intense. It’s super long hours. I was working 60-to-80-hour weeks, pulling all nighters, low pay, total grind. Everyone at some point in their career hits burnout, runs into a wall. For me it just happened to be only one year into my professional career.
So, I was in New York City, high powered architecture firm. I took a vacation from New York City out here to LA where I now live. It took stepping away from the day-to-day business to realize I was completely fried. I spent that vacation sleeping 12 hours a day and realized that I had come across my first health crisis. At this rate, I could not sustain for another 40 to 45 years of a professional career. That was a wakeup call for me.
This should resonate with your listeners. I went back from that vacation and knew something had to change. And I immediately started the paleo diet to address what I was eating, started an exercise routine to address the weight gain and the body pain that I was feeling, and I started a meditation practice. That to me was deeply meaningful in helping me ground myself and get through the stress and anxiety I was experiencing as a result of that career.
It was a complete 180 for me, honestly. You know, I basically took all of those three things, did them simultaneously. I was going to the gym downstairs in my building on my lunch break. Then I would go outside to a nearby cemetery because it was the only place I could find privacy to meditate for 30 minutes. That became my regular go-to routine.
Customizable Meditations: Career Changes
It helped me get through the next five years of that architecture career. Which then led me into the real estate career. So, that’s how I got into real estate. From there I was super excited about entrepreneurship and technology and that’s what kept me going.
But about seven years into this process, I hit another mini crisis, and this one was more existential. It was a wake up one day and I realized that the work that I was doing was no longer meaningful to me. I didn’t feel like I was bringing a sense of purpose into the world and really helping people.
So, I was at a broker conference. I looked around and said, this is not what I want to be doing with my life. I was exhibiting. Well, I actually left, flew home early, called a business broker, put my business up for sale. It took about a year to do that. But in that process, I reflected on my life.
I said, where has it been hard for me? Where did I need help? And what helped me? If I could help other people find that, I would know that I’d made a difference in the world. So, that’s what led me to Ogimi, to really help people create and sustain a meditation habit for their personal wellbeing.
[00:08:05] Detective Ev: Gotcha. That’s an even better story considering you were exhibiting there too, and then just like, nah, I’m out. This is it. Right? Like, can’t do it anymore.
What I find interesting, and I’ve always found this interesting with anyone who comes on the show, is everyone, typically, no matter what they’re doing now, shares this kind of aha moment or these little wake up calls.
Customizable Meditations: Looking in the Mirror
It sounds like you had a couple. You had the initial one a year into the architecture job, and then another one comes almost 11, 12 years later, at the point when you’re realizing the real estate might not be the thing that you want to be doing either.
My question is, you talked about how you went immediately to a paleo diet, meditating, all this stuff that is not necessarily for most people, even in today’s world, a logical transition. How did you know about that stuff?
[00:08:48] David Gull: In some ways I got lucky with the people around me. I turned to friends in my life. It was just finding the most immediate source of, hey, this person seems healthy, this person seems grounded, and I asked them what they were doing. So, in some ways it was fairly simple.
But for me, it was the obvious need for something to change that actually made it happen. That look in the mirror, so to speak, of recognizing something was wrong and I had to fix it.
[00:09:22] Detective Ev: I’m glad that you had those people in your life. Cause a lot of people, it takes many years before they even consider the dietary aspect of all those things. So, I’m glad it worked. And it worked well enough that you were able to at least survive in the job for the next several years afterwards.
I’m curious about this too, those next several years, I’m sure they were better. Was that something that would’ve been sustainable now indefinitely with your new habits, or was it just a ticking time bomb that had a lot more time to it than it did before?
Customizable Meditations: Learning Coping Mechanisms
[00:09:50] David Gull: I think it would’ve been sustainable. Really it was just that after five years, I got excited and interested in entrepreneurship. In the architecture job, it was a large corporate firm. Nothing wrong with that for some people, but to me, I could see the next 40 years of my life where we’re already mapped out if I stayed there and that wasn’t necessarily what I wanted.
[00:10:14] Detective Ev: The reason I asked this is not because I’m trying to encourage people to work crazy hours. I like that personally cause I kind of am that person, that’s my chosen stress, right? I eat super well, I go to bed on time, do all that stuff so that I can engage in the work.
But the reason I was asking that question was more because you just proved the situation was the same, but you changed. And it actually made your response to the stress of the situation better. That is not to say that you weren’t way better off leaving the job. I mean, obviously you’re doing something now that you’re super passionate about. We’re all thankful for that.
But a lot of people that listen to this from a consumer perspective, this podcast, it is sad but very common that because of what they’re going through, they almost get into this victim mentality, or like, what do I do? I can’t leave the job right now, I got bills, I got kids. And that might be true. But what we can do is get better and learn coping mechanisms to handle stuff, which of course is a main focus of today’s chat. So, we need to focus on ourselves first and try to change what we can, what we do have control of.
Customizable Meditations: The Root of Almost Everything
That’s encouraging, and also the perspective on work helps a lot too. A lot of the entrepreneurs I know, like myself, are actually able to sustain long hours a lot of the times. I think it’s because of the perception of the work. Of course, if you go into a place 60 hours a week that you’re not perceiving to be a fun job or something that you actually want to do or you’re passionate about, yeah, it’s going to burn anyone out.
If your perception of your work is this is fun, meaningful, what I would choose to do in my free time, I’m going to be able to do double the amount of hours. Not because I’m special, but because my perception of the work is literally less stressful than someone who has that other perception. So, interesting. I was just curious about how seemingly small changes like that could actually lead to really great outcomes for you.
Then my next question would be why the meditation thing? Because you talked about multiple changes that you made, including diet. Many people become diet specialists, or they will become like Lindy. Before learning about FDN and stuff she did NTA, which is Nutritional Therapy Association, which we love those guys. Great coaching program. So, why not that, why the meditation specifically? What did it do for you?
[00:12:23] David Gull: Yeah. I think throughout my practice I came to realize more and more that our mindset and our inner world is the root of almost everything. What I mean by that is if you think of our health as a three-legged stool of diet, exercise, and mental fitness or meditation, your inner world, which of those can directly impact the others?
Customizable Meditations: Everyone is Different
If you use meditation as a mindset tool to secure your approach to diet, you’re much more likely to succeed. Right? So, if in your daily meditation you reinforce your commitment to a diet, you visualize yourself eating healthy, you visualize yourself in the state and the body that you want, you’re more likely throughout the day to sustain this commitment that you’ve made to yourself for your physical health. And the same goes for exercise.
I think it being kind of the root cause of the root cause or the root benefit of everything that you do is what led me to meditation. But certainly, I’m curious about and have other ideas in the health world.
Yeah, in terms of what we’re doing differently within meditation, as I mentioned, we’re the first AI guided meditation coach. What that means and why it’s different is every meditation on the platform is personalized. And that is essentially like having your own meditation coach. And why that’s important, everyone’s different, right? Everyone has their own unique journey; everyone has their own unique challenges and issues that they’re faced with.
They might be a single mother who’s dealing with raising two kids and stress at work. That person deserves a very specific guided meditation approach. And although meditation is our beachhead for coaching, certainly this technology that we’re building will enable us to do coaching in other aspects of health, so physical fitness and dietary coaching.
Once we’ve kind of really nailed this aspect of how do we take everything we need to know about an individual and start to tailor routines and guidance to them to really succeed at anything that they need to succeed at.
Customizable Meditations: Mindset Matters
[00:14:35] Detective Ev: I think that’s a really fair point.
Going back to my other question about why meditation over anything else, I do agree that it has this wonderfully beneficial effect on almost everything. Because we’ll see certain practitioners and clients alike, they’re really great with the routine of FDN, the diet stuff, and the supplements. In fact, these are normally the people that are the best at that side. They will do every little thing that you sent to them, and they get 80% better.
That last 20% it’s lingering and just doesn’t go away. Then we kind of come to realize that there’s an irony in all of it. The reason that they are so successful in the FDN program is the same reason that right now they’re still struggling with some of that health stuff. They are so Type A wired, like you and I were discussing off air, that they just can’t get out of it.
I was talking to a woman a few months ago and I actually had to refer her out. And I tried to do my best with the onboarding, everything I could, but it was a rare referral out when I had already done lab testing. I’m looking at her labs, her labs actually looked overall great. I’m going back and trying to figure this out and she was able to identify herself.
She’s like, you know what, I never gave myself that time for the mindset stuff and getting this under control. I’m still doing the same toxic habits I had before and now, I just do it with health. So, I think this is a real problem solver, not only for our clients but for some of our practitioners as well. Maybe I’m speaking to myself.
Customizable Meditations: Getting in Touch with the Inside
So, let’s take a second, I don’t want to go too elementary for you here, but I think it’s worth defining this. Cause even on our show, I’m sure there’s some people out there that don’t fully understand meditation, especially when you talk about this aspect of customization. They might be like, wait, how can meditation be customized? I thought it was blank. How do you define meditation? What does that mean?
[00:16:16] David Gull: For the broadest audience, to keep it super simple, sitting with your eyes closed and the impact of that alone is significant. So, what you’re doing when you give yourself time and you sit with your eyes closed is you’re turning off 90% of your stimuli, right?
You’re not turning to your phone, you’re not scrolling Instagram, you’re not looking around, you’re not scoping danger or anything, you’re really just turning off a huge amount of your external stimuli. That allows you to sit with what’s going on internally in your mind. So, in the most basic sense, that’s a huge amount of meditation.
For people that find it intimidating, what I encourage them to do is use our app if you like. But if not, just set a timer for five minutes and sit and close your eyes. Don’t wonder if you’re doing it wrong, just do that. That’s a good place to start.
From there, really what you’re doing is raising a level of awareness of your mind and your thoughts, a level of awareness, getting in touch with your body and what’s happening within your body, a level of external stimulation. So, hearing the sounds around you and all of this again, it’s just kind of bringing you to presence with yourself and with your body.
Customizable Meditations: The Monkey Mind
It’s hugely beneficial to do that because we do spend so much of our time in the day focused on doing and seeing and being productive and reacting. So, this puts you into a different mindset and brain state that’s hugely restorative and hugely beneficial.
[00:18:02] Detective Ev: I love both the general definition, but then this kind of next level one, it’s this awareness of the thoughts and kind of what’s going on.
I totally believe this, do you think that people in today’s world, including ourselves sometimes if we’re not conscious about this, one of the issues for us is the fact that we are so stimulated that we actually never have a chance. I mean, really, almost from the time we wake up to the time we go to bed, to ever have the awareness of those thoughts. You think that’s what a lot of people are suffering with?
[00:18:27] David Gull: Yeah, I think exactly that.
Again, the intimidation factor of this is that people think there’s something they have to do that’s super intense when they meditate. But if they can get it around the fact that just five to ten minutes of this with your eyes closed is beneficial, I think that’s the entry point.
I think in meditation a lot of people use the monkey mind as a really great frame of reference. So, we all have thoughts, right? They run and we call that our monkey mind. If you don’t become aware of your monkey mind, it controls you. If you spend time becoming aware of your monkey mind and training it through meditation, it starts to serve you. That’s a subtle difference but it’s hugely beneficial.
Customizable Meditations: Overstimulated
[00:19:14] Detective Ev: I wanted to word this properly on a show like this cause we never bring up this topic. What I find interesting about this, and hear me out if you’re listening, I’m not going to mention anything specific, I’m talking from a very general perspective.
I’m seeing the repercussions of this in a lot of political discussions. What I mean is that I’m someone who’s mostly independent, no problem saying that, so I actually go out of my way to try to study both sides. I’m like, why does this person think this? And why does this person over here think that?
What’s fascinating to me, David, is I’ve seen Instagram accounts where I’ll just use United States politics. You have the right and the left. We got the Republicans and the Democrats, generally speaking. That’s the two-party system here. You know, you hear both sides screaming at each other. They cannot believe what the other side is doing. And I’m always fascinated by this.
I go onto these certain Instagram accounts and YouTube accounts, and I realize that there are interviewers that interview one particular side. This happens in both places. And they’ll ask the people at a respective rally, let’s say, of either side’s candidate of the day what they might think about something. You hear the answers, and the answers are sometimes ridiculous. Like it really does make the people almost seem dumb.
Now I don’t believe that, but it makes them seem that way. And if that’s all you’re seeing in your feed and you only trust the one side, of course these people hate the other side cause they’re never going to go look at both. If you heard this, you would actually think it’s ridiculous.
Customizable Meditations: Stealing our Time
My point in attaching to this cause we’ve seen more political issues than ever before over my lifetime. I think what’s happening is, we are so stimulated we never take the time to think. So, the first thing that we hear, whether it’s politics or whatever topic, we assume that’s right, everyone else is wrong.
And it’s not that these people are dumb. I don’t believe that in these videos. Unfortunately, they get framed in that way because of who’s interviewing them. But they’re not dumb. They just have never had a second to sit down and think about the narrative they’re being told or why do they even have the opinions that they have. Do they actually hate the other side, or do they just disagree on a couple of things?
I won’t frame that as a question cause I won’t put you on the spot politically, but I really do believe that maybe our lack of thought in taking a second to sit is one of the reasons that we’re so hostile with each other over major things. We should be discussing politics, not hating each other because of it, in my opinion.
Maybe I will frame it as a question. Do you agree with what I said? Do you think it has any validity from a general perspective?
[00:21:38] David Gull: Yeah. I think it’s a really interesting framing. And I think you’ve nailed something really important, which is the consumption on social media, right? It’s literally those apps are intended to get you to just spend time on them, right? What that does is take away from time where you’re actually sitting there thinking or having a conversation with a friend where you’re actually creating a dialogue around a topic instead of just consuming that information.
Customizable Meditations: Habit-Switcher
I am glad you mentioned social media because one of the things that we try to recommend at Ogimi is use social media as a trigger for your mindfulness habit.
So, if you catch yourself on social media, use that as a trigger to instead open a meditation or mindfulness app, hopefully Ogimi. But that’s really where you can start to replace one habit with another one. Once you’re there, exactly to your point, if you want to, you can dedicate that time towards thought about a particular topic.
Again, the cool part about what we’re doing is you could prompt our meditation coach for something to say, help me be thoughtful about this particular political argument. You can literally write whatever you want there. What we’ll do is just create a baseline for you to say, hey, here’s my thoughts, here’s where I might need to challenge them. It could be a really effective way to give yourself that time to think.
That’s personally what I do. I have two triggers with social media. One is physical exercise. So, every time I catch myself on Instagram, I make myself do 30 pushups. Or I make myself do a five-minute mindfulness session. Those are the two, let’s call it, like, it’s not a punishment, so to speak, but it’s a replacement.
[00:23:40] Detective Ev: A healthy replacement.
This is interesting cause now I’m excited to talk about the actual application of your app and how this works. Because I’m already thinking, man, from the political side, if people actually are willing to plug that stuff in, you could save the fricking world if people actually had the time.
Where to Find Ogimi
I mean, I encourage you guys, if nothing else today, please just actually think about why someone else might have a different religion or political affiliation than you without assuming that they’re bad. Let’s think about why they might have gotten there, how they might have gotten there. That could help. And if apps like this can encourage it, I think that’s even more powerful.
So, let’s break this down. How literally does this work? Let’s assume that we’re now talking to the person, cause this is probably the case for the majority of the audience, the person who is a little more advanced, they’ve messed around with meditation. We even have avid meditators in the FDN community and for our clients. So, how would this work? I download this somewhere, or I get this somewhere, and then what does this look like for me?
[00:24:32] David Gull: You can find us at ogimi.ai. That will link you directly into the app. It’s free to use with certain limitations. Then for a paid upgrade, it’s unlimited use.
But really what happens once you’re in the app is, it’s essentially like having your own personal meditation coach. That’s the idea. We believe that everyone deserves some kind of affordable access to personalized care. And before AI, this was difficult to do at scale because it’s expensive to hire a meditation coach, or it’s expensive to hire a life coach or a personal development coach, right?
Someone might charge you $100, $200 an hour for those types of service. You might meet with them once a week. And then you have seven days to go mess everything up in your life again before you meet with them the next time. Not that those coaches don’t add value, but it’s expensive.
Customizable Meditations: Precise Support
Again, it’s not constant care. It’s not like having someone in your pocket that they will always be available to help you. Really that’s our vision is, in your pocket, you have someone that’s there for you at any point in time.
What that means within the app is, you open it up, we say, what do you want help with right now? And based on what you tell us you want help with, we generate a custom meditation. There’s a lot of magic that goes into that. I think it sounds simple, but again, from the user perspective, you shouldn’t even need to know that it’s AI. You should just feel like you’re getting the exact support that you need in that moment for your challenge.
It can be anything from fun and inspiring. I personally like to use it, I play sports. The other night I sat in the parking lot before my ice hockey game and did a meditation, visualizing, scoring a hat trick. Now I didn’t score a hat trick, but I did score one goal. That was super fun.
The other day I spoke to a user who used it to process going through a divorce. Basically, they were losing their home. It was a very difficult time. They just told the app, hey, I need help. I’m losing my home in a divorce to my ex-husband. Can you help me process this? The guided meditation was loving kindness. If the users know what that is, it’s a process of sending love to yourself.
Customizable Meditations: Be Specific
So, she sent herself love for the challenge that she was going through in her life. And then she sent love to her home and all the memories and all the value that it had added to her life. Then she sent love to her ex-husband, which was, of course, the most difficult part of the meditation, but recognizing him as a human with his own challenges and everything else. It was very powerful for this person to have that generated for her in real time based on this challenge that she was going through.
It can be something at work. It could be, hey, I need help dealing with my difficult coworker, John. Every time we talk about my ideas for the app, we get into an argument. It can help you go through how to sort of see John’s side. This is similar to the political argument, see John’s side, see if you’re having a balanced conversation, be more productive in how you present your ideas.
So, all of these different things. Again, it comes back to what do you need help with today, be specific. And that’s what we do.
[00:27:54] Detective Ev: This is so cool. So, to make sure I have this understanding correct, if I’m not mistaken, you use the words you can say to it. Are you literally suggesting that I take the phone, I’m not even writing this out, I’m telling it verbally what I want to do? And then the customization aspect, I’m assuming these are guided meditations, obviously, otherwise, I don’t know what would be custom about it. So, this is actually using words or at least putting things out there every now and then to guide this meditation.
Customizable Meditations: Text to Speech AI Voice
[00:28:22] David Gull: So, for now the input is text. But it will definitely be voice as you suggested.
And just to reiterate that simple example, like the text that you might type into the app is, help me process the loss of my home to my ex-husband. And then what happens is AI generates a script based on our instructions from our AI model. Then we have what’s called a text to speech AI voice that reads that out in a guided meditation fashion with the intonation and the pacing that you would want for a guided meditation.
[00:29:04] Detective Ev: I remember a kind of a profound thing for me. The first time I ever consciously meditated, and I say consciously because I would assume prior to this day I had at least had some experiences where I closed my eyes and just sat there probably trying to go to bed. If that’s going to be the lowest level of meditation, yeah, we’ve all done that at some point intentionally or not. The first time I intentionally, I should say, instead of consciously, meditated, was 11th grade. It’s ironic looking back.
I know you don’t know my story, but I’m very transparent about it on the show. I mean, severe mental health issues was using drugs. And I think what happened that night, if I’m not mistaken, is I actually didn’t have the drugs and I couldn’t sleep without them. So, I looked up, something triggered this guided meditation on YouTube, and it was The Honest Guys. They still have a channel to this day. Awesome folks there. And it worked, it really worked well. I kind of got this warm feeling too which I hadn’t gotten every single time since then.
Customizable Meditations: Audience Feedback is Encouraged
But I’ve gotten it plenty of times where this is a very pleasant feeling. I feel good. That would be a nice thing to have right now. And life is going overall, thankfully, pretty well right now, let alone back then. That was a genuine time of peace to be able to experience that. So, that was some random thing I found on YouTube, older audio files, not nearly the quality that we have today.
It’s incredible to look at this roughly 10, 11 years later and now we can text in what we’re having struggles with, and an AI program is going to be able to formulate this for us. It is able to formulate this for us so that it’s custom.
I don’t mean to ask this in a negative way. It’s just I always try to assume what the audience would say. Are the AI voices realistic enough that if you played it for me without me knowing it’s AI, would I have an idea? Or have you guys been able to do well enough with this that it sounds actually pretty realistic? Because that might, I guess, be distracting to some. But I’m wondering how you guys have done with that.
[00:30:55] David Gull: Yeah. The voices are amazing. And, of course, I love the audience feedback if they do use the app. There’s a feedback utility right in there to leave it. But I think you’ll be blown away. For any of the audience that is following AI I’m sure they also see that the rate of improvement is sort of exponential. Even if you could say, hey, today maybe it is 95% as good as a human voice, the rate at which it will get even better is sort of mind blowing.
Customizable Meditations: Human Intelligence Leveraged Through Computers
The other cool thing, maybe anticipating again what the audience might ask about AI is, it’s a computer, does it really know this human aspect of things?
What I’d like to touch on is that AI is actually the collective knowledge of human intelligence and wisdom, right? So, all of human history that’s been written, at least, and including of course the massive amounts of written stuff on the internet, is what created the foundation for AI. So, it’s not computer intelligence, it’s human intelligence that’s being leveraged through the power of computers.
[00:32:07] Detective Ev: Yeah. It’s fascinating to think about. Oh my gosh, man, we can go on for hours with this. But there’s someone that I follow that talked about AI in a different way. And they’re always trying to encourage us to be as good as we can as humans because they had this exact same perspective. It’s an accurate one. It’s like, no, it’s not artificial. Like, it is us in a sense, right? We’re the ones that are feeding this, so we need to be careful about how we’re interacting with the world and the things that we’re saying.
Then you go on social media and it’s one of the worst places in terms of how people talk to each other. So, it’s an extra reminder to just show love to people. Or if you don’t have anything nice to say, that’s fine, but just don’t say it at all because AI is watching. So, thank God you’re using this for good and really helping people out.
Customizable Meditations: Instantly, Immediately, for Zero Cost
And then, you know what David, it’s not exclusive to our audience at all. We have had a bunch of different religious affiliations on. But I’ve always been surprised, it does seem there’s a lot of Christians that listen to this show. I’m a born again Christian, myself. I have no problem with any other religion. I was an atheist most of my life.
My point in mentioning that, that I find so unique about yours, is whether this is true or not true, a lot of people that are religious or get into religion somehow believe that meditation is not in alignment with what they’re doing. Despite, I mean, I can speak for the Bible at least. Scripture says meditate on this. We can all agree that it at least says meditate on that.
So, what’s cool about your app is, I could go in and on text, say, hey, I want to meditate, like, I don’t know if it would interpret this, or I’d have to write it out. Like, could I say I want to meditate on John 3:16 in the Bible? Would it already know that, or would I have to write it out? Either way, it would allow me to meditate on that, right?
[00:33:43] David Gull: That’s exactly it. I’m so glad you came up with such a specific example.
Again, everyone deserves that level of attention to whatever in their life is most important to them at that moment. But imagine trying to find a meditation coach that could help you meditate on that verse. The fact is, because we have the collective knowledge of human intelligence in AI, you can now find that instantly, immediately, for essentially zero cost. That’s what’s super exciting about it.
Customizable Meditations: Customizing It to Yourself
You could say, create a meditation to help me deepen my connection to God, if that’s your religion and that’s what you want to focus on. So, yeah, that’s the beautiful aspect of it is whatever you want, you can get.
[00:34:32] Detective Ev: Listen, I really am huge into spirituality, I like it. And I know that we all live in our bubbles, but I do think that matters to a lot of people out there, especially if they’re doing stuff like this. So, some of the stuff that they maybe learned when they were a kid, it could be contradictory. And I get that certain practices could be contradictory. Fine. I don’t think meditation should be exclusive to any one religious group or whatever. Again, most scriptures that I’m aware of actually say meditate. They just say meditate on specific things.
The coolest part about this as advanced technologically as it is, which you think would be counterproductive to the religious side. No, this is actually perfect for it because now you can customize it to yourself. So, thanks for that point. I think that’s really cool.
How have you seen consumers using this? Because I can picture us as practitioners, like a lot of, again, practitioners listen, I could see them almost wanting to assign this or give this to their clients. Do you guys do more selling to practitioners and people that will work with others or is it a lot of direct-to-consumer stuff?
Customizable Meditations: Simple Subscription Model
[00:35:31] David Gull: Yeah, that’s a great question.
The app launched D: to C: but we’re just rolling out all of our collaborations with coaches. So, basically, yeah, the way that we think about this is it’ll allow them to 10x the impact that they can have on their stance. Even though you could go directly to us for that request, if you still want to work with a professional, have that kind of weekly touchpoint with them where you hop on a zoom for an hour, they walk you through the practice.
But then for, again, the other six days where you might go mess it up, which is kind of my ongoing joke about what happens between coaching calls, cause I do it too, is they can then assign them meditations using Ogimi that are personalized or coach them on how to use it in a way. So, hey, for the next six days, why don’t you try this, this, this, this, this, and this. And then next week we’ll talk about how that went for you. Then we can go further. So, those coach collaborations are going to be really, really impactful.
[00:36:33] Detective Ev: Very cool. So, if I’m a consumer or a client, or maybe I’m just a practitioner that wants to just give it to one client, maybe that’s what I want to do, what is the current cost on the time of recording this? Is it like a subscription model? How does that work?
[00:36:46] David Gull: It’s a super simple subscription model. And again, it is free to use without that just with certain limitations. But yeah, if you choose to upgrade, it’s just $9.99 a month and then we’re going to have a $99 annual plan launching soon as well.
Customizable Meditations: Keeping it Super Affordable
So, using the traditional analogy, it’s less than two coffees per month or less than two lattes at Starbucks. Really our goal is to help as many people as possible and to keep it super affordable for folks out there.
[00:37:14] Detective Ev: Yeah. Well, with our crew and how much they spend on labs and supplements, don’t worry. That was the least shocking price tag I’ve ever heard on this podcast in 240 episodes. So, you’re good to go. They’re like, oh yeah, I’ll buy it right now.
All right. Just to be clear then, I think you said this in the beginning, and I had read this in the description, so this is the only meditation app right now on the market that is currently using AI in this way?
[00:37:38] David Gull: Yes, exactly.
[00:37:41] Detective Ev: Wow. Just from the entrepreneurial perspective, I gotta ask. And I know it seems off topic, it’s really not because a lot of our practitioners are entrepreneurs and they sometimes struggle with that, so they just might find it inspiring.
How on earth did you get that idea? When did you make that connection? Cause that’s kind of brilliant, man. That’s a really interesting thing and it’s a really unique way to enter a market that is otherwise kind of saturated. There’s a bunch of apps out there, but this is new, this is fresh, and it’s interesting. So, how’d you come up with the idea?
[00:38:06] David Gull: Actually, previous to the AI powered meditations, I was starting to build a meditation app that was just going to use elements of gamification to make it fun and exciting and interesting. We actually were using AI to author scripts that we were then having a human record.
Customizable Meditations: Ogimi’s Ultimate Goal
It was just kind of this light bulb moment where, again, a really high-quality text-to-speech podcast came out where they had cloned Joe Rogan’s voice, I think, and Elon Musk and they were having a conversation. But it was all AI generated. And when I heard the quality of it, it was that light bulb moment of, oh my God, we’re there. We don’t need a human to read this script, we have the ability to do it that way. And so that was quickly the impetus. We moved very quickly to launch.
And, of course as you pointed out, in an entrepreneurship, I’m certain there will be competitors very soon. Nobody gets away with no competitors. But for us, we have a very clear strategic roadmap on how to continually improve our product, how to expand it beyond its core current features. Really, it’s also just about the community and bringing the right folks into the app and those partnerships with coaches, health coaches, personal development coaches, and everything else.
Ultimately our goal here is to reach as many people as possible, a billion people. If we can help them create and sustain a meditation and mindfulness habit, we know we’ve made the world a better place.
[00:39:40] Detective Ev: That’s excellent. And yeah, you’re right, there’s always going to be competition. But to do that first, I mean, that’s pretty groundbreaking stuff.
I’m a little scared now because if they can mimic Joe Rogan and Elon Musk that well, well, I’m a curve ball. I don’t know if AI’s going to get me that well. But they probably will given enough time. Hopefully people want the real Detective Evan, not the AI version, we’ll see.
Customizable Meditations: Consumer Testimonials
Jokes aside, I like to always spend the last bit of time talking about what I would typically consider client testimonials, but this would be more consumer testimonials. So, I’m curious, cause you have that feedback place that people can submit feedback, have you heard any great stories out of people that maybe struggled with meditation before and are now having great success with the app or whatever it might be? I’m curious about some of the testimonials that have come through.
[00:40:22] David Gull: It’s super exciting. That’s the juice that keeps me going. Anytime someone just says, this is amazing, this really helped me, or I was on YouTube for hours trying to find some content and I found you instead and it’s changed my approach to meditation. People saying, I’ve been a meditator for five years, and I was super skeptical, but I tried it and I’m actually blown away. We’ve had really great feedback.
I had a user interview that hopefully someday I’ll have a chance to record something like this with him because the conversation I had with him left me in tears. It was just inspiring. His name was Wayne Adams, and he basically had terminal brain cancer. He found meditation, not through Ogimi, but he has been alive for five years beyond the one month that the doctors gave him. And meditation is what kept him strong, kept his mindset.
When I was speaking with him, he said, my wife referred me over to Ogimi. When she saw it, she said, this will be perfect for you. He just was telling me his story. He’s been spending anywhere from one to three hours a day meditating on the platform. For him, it’s the core of how he addresses his personal struggle.
Customizable Meditations: Refueling the Charge
Yeah, that conversation was enough fuel for me to charge through the next couple of weeks of what’s obviously a difficult process when you’re running a startup. You’re always running into challenges, hurdles, doubts, and everything else. But just to hear the impact that we were having on one man’s life was incredible.
[00:41:56] Detective Ev: That’s amazing. You hear that even just one time, I’m not going to lie, that’s maybe above on par with some of the stories that we hear here. That’s incredible.
It’s actually fascinating cause when I was in my more exploratory phase of religions and spirituality, I went to a Buddhist monastery years ago. One of the things that I found incredible; these guys literally live in a state of meditation for almost the entire day. They don’t talk, they never talk. It is all walking meditations. It’s under that gentleman who had passed away, Thich Nhat Hanh. It’s incredible stuff.
The reason I bring them up and him up is because, I know that you’re not making that claim so I’m not putting words in your mouth, but I find it interesting that this gentleman was given one month to live and here for several years afterwards, that’s pretty impressive. That’s not a small number by any means.
And what I found fascinating about those guys, and even Thich Nhat Hanh’s passing is these people that do this for long periods of time, and these people that are living it, they like choose when they’re going to pass away. Thich Nhat Hanh told the whole world, hey, my time is coming. He had all these people gather. I mean, this is weeks that this went on. And then decided, okay, I’m good to go. I’m like, what?
Customizable Meditations: Extending Life
That is just not what you are used to, that’s not what you grow up hearing for most of us at least. It’s not that we don’t die, but the idea that these people have such a deep understanding of their own body and their own thoughts or whatever that they can say, oh yeah, my time is coming. Come join me, and then I’ll decide when I check out. That’s incomprehensible to a lot of us, certainly myself.
But I would have to imagine, yeah, that a lot of what you guys are doing did lead to this guy having any life, I guess at that point is great, but a greatly extended life so far with what’s going on. That’s amazing.
For the last question before I ask where people can find you, just to reemphasize it, cause I know we said it in the beginning, and of course they can always find it in the show notes, but what are some of the more recent studies showing on meditation? Because I feel like all of us, at some point, maybe it’s on Facebook and you get like a link to Google or somewhere it says meditation does this, meditation does that. But I know there’s legitimate promising stuff coming up all the time.
So, what are some of those things that you’ve seen? Maybe it’s mental health stuff, ADHD, anxiety, what’s some of the latest research showing promise for with meditation?
Customizable Meditations: Prioritizing Health
[00:44:13] David Gull: Just so that I don’t misspeak, I’m not going to say any specific statistics.
What I will say is the more you look at, especially the meta studies that just look in aggregate the benefits of meditation, the more you understand it, the more you see it, the more you realize that to not include it in your practice is a serious detriment to your health.
I don’t really know how else to say it other than kind of that three-legged stool analogy again, about diet, exercise, and mental fitness. Meditation is, by far, one of the best tools for your mental fitness. And when you address that, you can also address these other aspects of your life. It’s just such a core foundational element to your health.
And obviously your listeners know, if you don’t have your health, what’s the point of everything else? Right? What’s the point of your success and your wealth. If you’re in pain or you’re sick or you’re dying, nothing else matters.
Again, I come across it all the time, there is resistance to meditation. The resistance typically is, I don’t have time. And the response to that is, could you replace five to ten minutes of social media time or TV with meditation? Are you willing to give yourself that gift for your health? That’s really what I want to encourage people to do.
[00:45:40] Detective Ev: Amazing. I heard this in a personal development book when I first started getting on my journey like nine years ago, my journey into personal development and just bettering myself, I guess. It said an adult saying they don’t have enough time is the adult equivalent of saying, the dog ate my homework.
Customizable Meditations: It’s an Investment
It’s not that some of us aren’t busy. I’m not discrediting that, but at least say it correctly. Say, I don’t have time for that. Cause you certainly have time, but you’re choosing to not make it for something.
And this is so simple in terms of the time commitment, the idea that you are so optimized that you don’t even have five to ten minutes is crazy. You’d be, mentioning him again, Elon Musk level. And you might as well be making billions of dollars if you’re going to be that optimized with your time. So, I think we all have some five to ten minutes.
I might even make the argument that you don’t have time not to do it. You should be doing this because it’s going to make everything else more efficient. So, it’s kind of an investment. It’s just like the health stuff, right? We don’t all go to bed on time here and eat super well just to have the rest of our life suffer. We do that so the rest of our life is better. I would put it right in the same category. I like the three-legged stool analogy in this case.
So, David, thank you so much for coming on today. Where can people find you and get this downloaded? I love that they can use some of the features for free. I’m going to give it a try myself, I’m excited.
[00:46:49] David Gull: Awesome. Love it. Yeah. So, everyone can just go to ogimi.ai and direct to sign up through there.
Conclusion – 20% Discount
Then I’d also love to offer the listeners a 20% discount on the paid plan. So, anyone that wants to upgrade to that, they can use the code all caps, HEALTHDETECTIVE20 and that way they can get in there and try out the whole feature set.
[00:47:16] Detective Ev: Nice. I think that’s fair enough.
Yeah, thank you again for coming on. This is really a unique episode. I’m really excited about what you’re doing and congrats on having that thought. It seems simple in concept, but I think that’s very impressive to connect those two together. I’m excited to see what you guys do.
[00:47:30] David Gull: Appreciate you, appreciate the time and the great questions. Really enjoyed this conversation.
You can always visit us at functionaldiagnosticnutrition.com. Our Instagram handle is @fdntraining.
For more informational and functional health-oriented podcasts like this one, go to functionaldiagnosticnutrition.com/health-detective-podcast/.
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