Today we’re joined by Nicole Gibson, author of Love Out Loud and founder of In Truth Gibson. Nicole Gibson Nicole Gibson, one of the one hundred Top Influential People in True Technologies, is the first company in the world that has successfully found a way to biometrically track emotions. So we’re always subconsciously, I think, building the thing that we most crave and we most need, like, how do you how do you quantify something that just kind of is there? But, you know, to me it wasn’t a satisfying answer because the adaptation is like such a big part of it, of everything that you’re doing. Exactly. Adaptation, flexibility, the ability to deal with ambiguity. Yeah. I think is going to, um, be the thing that that separates amazing entrepreneurs from those that that can’t go that kind of extra mile. And most amazing entrepreneurs say it. You have to be a city like San Francisco, New York, London, you know, like you’re not gonna eat or pay rent unless you’re the best.

Every occupation that has been built to try to help people with their emotion only deals with the subjective psychologist. It’s conversation. How are you feeling? Well, I’m here because I don’t know how to express how I’m feeling. So this is really unhelpful dynamic. In truth, we’ll hopefully pioneer such a new way of looking at this and understanding it that we’ll look back at the way we used to try to get there and recognize that we were as a founder. What’s a non-negotiable? I’d say that the biggest one is choosing investment partners that work life balance. When you’re solving something that you’re obsessed with, there’s no that is the balance. That is it. Um, don’t. When you raise your first big chunk of capital, do not. People with lived experience of all kinds of mental health conditions were seen as, um, unequipped to actually have a voice in how mental health should be treated. I was following the guidance, actually, of what I thought it meant to be a good performer, that perfect young performer, which was, you know, heavily linked to body image. And for someone that’s going through anorexia, it’s visible. You know, I dropped thirty kilos off my body weight. So and that that happened in a very short amount of time. The weaker I got and the more real the prospect of like an adrenal crisis or a heart attack became, the clearer it got that I wasn’t I wasn’t willing to die for that, that my life had to be about more than that. You can only experience the highest joy if you’ve experienced the deepest pain. I had to rebuild my inner world from the inside out. Every thought, every behavior, you know, that was self-destructive, which became my entire life. I had to turn that into something that actually helped my flourishing. And I just thought to myself, like, there’s got to be more to this. Nicole, thank you so much for joining us today. It’s an absolute honor and a pleasure to have you on our show.

Thanks, guys. I’d love to kick things off just around your your journey. And I guess the knowledge and insight you’re bringing into into the world around AI. Talk to me about the journey you’ve been on to get to where you are today. No, I think like any founder, right? It’s the journey starts long before you found the company. Yes. Um, and in my case, that’s very true. Um, when I look back at my journey, what I think I see the most is how much I’ve always been trying to solve this one problem. And when I met you guys, um. And I was giving that talk, um, at the event where we met, I think I was saying this to, like, the best founders are the most obsessed with solving a single problem, in my opinion. And so when I go back in my past, you know, all the way to really childhood, seeing the world in a very different way, having quite different experiences, I think, um, I went to many different schools, left to mainstream school at fifteen to go to an arts academy. Um, you know, so very diverse experiences. Traveled the world at a very young age. Um, I was always perplexed by people’s unwillingness to be present with things that were emotionally difficult. And for whatever reason, that became this kind of fixation that I had and this problem that I wanted to solve, which, you know, if you now look at the facts, um, that I’m creating in truth, which is a world first technology to actually be able to see emotion for the first time, to measure it for the first time, to try to bring some kind of standardization to the language of emotion. Um, I can see that obsession started for me at a very young age. I think it catalyzed when I went through, um, adversity as a teenager.

You know, I went to an arts academy that I loved. I kind of call it the best and worst years. The best years because I got to do the thing that I loved, which was performance I like. That was my first love, for sure. The thing that I didn’t have, which, you know, I now hope my work can help people find, was the the self-love and the self-assurance and the emotional capacity to deal with the pressures that I was under at that time in my life, because that role as a performer was excelling, and it was excelling at a young age. And for me, that resulted in dealing with a life threatening eating disorder, which was, I think, a very unique experience in that a lot of people that go through mental health challenges, I think, you know, they have invisible scars. Someone that’s dealing with anxiety or depression, as an example, you can’t physically see it, you know, and it’s, I think, somewhat easier to conceal for someone that’s going through anorexia, it’s visible. You know, I dropped thirty kilos off my body weight. So and that that happened in a very short amount of time. And anorexia is often seen more as a physical and mental health condition, but I kind of see it more like an addiction. I think that when you look at the behavior of anorexia, it mirrors more of an addiction than it does anything else, because it’s a compulsive behavior that starts to socially isolate you, that starts to disconnect you from, um, you know, the things that you truly love and the people you love, and you develop a very sort of, um, intense amount of secrecy around your behavior because you don’t you don’t want to recover. And I think this is what’s quite different to anorexia from, for anorexia compared to other conditions.

It’s like you’re unwell, but you have a phobia of getting better. So if you think about most other conditions, um, except for addiction, you know, you want to get better. Yeah. Cancer. You want to get better? Depression. You want to get better. Um, someone who’s a drug addict or someone that’s dealing with anorexia often, you know, it takes the absolute breaking point. Um, before they surrender, did not know that it was like, classified or like it’s seen that way and not as an addiction just from looking at the outside like it’s like exactly what you described. It seems like from people I know that have gone through it, there are a lot of those traits. So it’s interesting that the world hasn’t seen it that way. Yeah, I agree, I mean it still doesn’t, right? Yeah. I think even back then. So I was diagnosed kind of formally diagnosed at sixteen. I’m thirty two now. So we’re going back sixteen years ago in the mental health system really like some doctors took it on face value because the definition of anorexia nervosa means a loss of appetite. So, you know, they’re treating you as if you’re not hungry. I’m not hungry. And I can I can tell you right now without, you know, being too, uh, humorous about it. Like people that are struggling with anorexia are definitely, definitely hungry.

You know, it has nothing to do with that. Um, But I think, you know, there is a growing recognition of, um, different types of addiction. Like there’s a sort of gambling addiction. And some people are now acknowledging, uh, anorexia or other eating disorders as behavioral addictions versus like, physiological addiction, which might be, I don’t know, like heroin addiction, for example. Um, but within that, you know, I had to basically decide if I wanted to live. And I think at a very young age, um, because my, my health had deteriorated so much, being confronted with that choice, it sets you on a very different path in life. I think, you know, I’ve had the privilege over my career to to talk to so many different kinds of people, all different ages. And I would say in the kind of afternoon of people’s lives, these usually tend to be the questions that people start asking. What is the meaning of my life? What is the purpose of my life? You know, what does it all mean? Um, but the addiction had such an intense grip on me at such a young age that I had to find that will somehow to to overcome it. Because the other option was to die. How did you manage to find that, will? What was. What was the driving force? You know, it’s a really it’s a very hard question to answer because I think as as you fade into lifelessness and I mean, for me, that was as my body was getting weaker and weaker. You feel in that state you feel your life force, like, you know, I have so much vitality now and so much energy for life and so much I want to achieve. And I can see the future so clearly in that state. It was like I was, you know, my spirit was moving in the opposite direction. I was becoming lifeless. And as that nears. Yeah, as that nears it, it’s like something very innate and deep inside of you, you know, activates. And the weaker I got, um, and the more real the prospect of, like, an adrenal crisis or a heart attack became, um, the clearer it got that I wasn’t I wasn’t willing to die for that, that my life had to be about more than that. And, um, especially because I had this talent that I loved so much and I was dealing with this very deep heartbreak, actually, because it was kind of comparable to, like, a sports player that trains, you know, their whole college life and then, um, has a life changing injury and they’re not able to actually pursue professional sport. For me, I was following the guidance, actually, of what I thought it meant to be a good performer. Like I was trying to hit every benchmark of what that perfect young performer was, which was heavily linked to body image and all kinds of things, um, related to that. So to hit that point where actually, you know, one of my doctor’s orders was you can no longer perform because it’s too physically tolling on you. Like, uh, theta, the type of theta I was doing was very physical. So I wasn’t allowed to exercise.

Wow. I had to, um, deal with that heartbreak, you know? And it’s like it, it’s, I think a different, deeper kind of heartbreak to your first romantic heartbreak because it’s it’s how you envision your life. So I had to sit with all these deep questions around, meaning it’s much more personal, isn’t it? Like, because it’s only you that’s really dealing with the performance like an athlete. I’ve seen it, um, in the basketball space where athletes that either played college or professionally and all of a sudden there’s nothing they have to stop for injury or for whatever other reason, and there’s nothing else that they know. And it’s like life becomes meaningless, almost like. And they do have that heartbreak as well. Yeah. It’s harsh. I’ve seen so exactly. Especially because that industry for for a performer, a young, especially a young female performer, you’re encouraged to lose weight to a certain point. And it’s sort of I had to process this level of abandonment, too, because it was like I was meant to lose weight to a certain point, but past a certain point, I became a liability. So I was encouraged. Wow. It was like a Goldilocks zone. Yeah. And until I was abandoned, you know, and that also, like, liberated me healing from that. All the bullshit that people get caught up with, you know, around just vanity and hang ups. And I just decided to do life very differently. So I think I had a different set of priorities. You know, there’s and I don’t want to compare them either. Like it’s a completely different thing. But obviously ADHD as a child definitely all over the place. Didn’t fit in, couldn’t learn properly, like things didn’t fit around me. So the one thing I learnt much later in my life and very much in the same boat, is turning those things that we saw as problems into superpowers. Yeah. To help us enhance the things that we do do in the world, to get over that hump. Did that come into play for yourself as well as you transitioned into, I guess, who you are now? Of course. Yeah, one hundred percent. I think you have to like it’s sort of I kind of see life as like a there’s there’s polarity to our experience of life. Right. Always. And it kind of sounds cliche to say, like you can only experience the highest joy if you’ve experienced the deepest pain.

Yes. You know, but but that’s true because it’s kind of like it’s it’s this corridor that gets built in you, this depth. And that depth always is a double edged sword. Very much. And I think in pain, the mind has to find meaning if you’re going to get through that pain. You know, for humans who accept that pain was meaningless or in vain, I believe is one of the most psychologically challenging things. So we have to find a point of focus to transmute that pain. And for me to find a voice, because I knew that I was never going to be able to explain my experience in a way that every person could understand. So how was I going to build my voice in the world? And for me, that that actually that was entrepreneurship. Um, but beyond kind of entrepreneurship, it was about sharing my story and inviting other people to share their story, which for the first I’d say, you know, several years at least of my entrepreneurial journey, my focus was really about that. Like, I was actually not I never thought I would end up in tech, put it that way. I actually started in the nonprofit sector, which I’d say is the opposite of big tech. There’s cope out there, folks watching here. I mean, you had some incredible journeys. I mean, you were top one hundred most influential women, even by the age of twenty one. Um, you had a strong voice and even in Parliament. But you’ve one of your first ten not for profit was the rogue, Rouge, Rogue and Rouge Foundation, which you founded at the age of eighteen, which is incredible. Tell me about tell me about that journey. Yeah. So that that was, you know, where, um, well, I tried, I tried to go to uni for. Just thought the, um, I actually did get my degree, but I have no idea how I got my degree, but I did, um, you know, I lasted about two trimesters before I was like, you know, after that experience as well, I would sit in the back row of my lectures and, you know, Facebook was just becoming a thing that was like twenty ten. Everyone would just be sitting on their laptops on Facebook, and I was going to a private uni, like every class was like four or five thousand dollars. No one was listening to the lecturer. And I just thought to myself, like, there’s got to be more to this. Yeah, like, this cannot be, this cannot be it. And um, I was I was thinking about how I wanted to transform that experience into something meaningful. Um, yeah. And I eventually landed on wanting to found a nonprofit with a very different kind of set of a different ethos to what I saw happening in the mental health space at the time, and just timing wise, for people’s reference, this was kind of just before mental health became this really mainstream conversation. Like when when I say mainstream kind of, are you a are you a K sports players, royal family members? They all started to talk about mental health. It became a cause that was on the political agenda. This was right before that, and I had this very strong view that the cause of mental health disorders, um, not exclusively, but was largely a result of social and environmental causations. And this at the time was actually a really controversial opinion because the leading voices were mostly, um, you know, well-known psychiatrists, psychologists that really believed this. This really is a biological predisposition. It’s more to do with your brain chemistry.

Um, but I had my own experience of seeing how changes to environment and changes to the culture that you’re exposed to improve mental health. You know, it sounds so obvious to say now. It kind of does because, like, but it wasn’t people going through like, a war scenario. You see how they get massively impacted to the negative side. So had it not been for that massive environmental kind of factor, their mental health would be different. But I guess they saw that as something else. But it’s fascinating that we didn’t see it that way. Yeah. And it was it was actually because people with lived experience of all kinds of mental health conditions were seen as, um, unequipped to actually have a voice in how mental health should be treated. And when I eventually did become a national mental health commissioner, the actual press release that went out is a person with lived experience appointed onto the National Mental Health Commission. So it was it was a big deal that my credibility in that position was actually a lived experience, because before that, you know, you would be disqualified to have an opinion because you were seen to be mentally ill, you know, which is insane. So you had people that, you know, really had never developed an empathy, a true empathy for a condition that requires so much empathy, actually, that we’re making all of the decisions and calling all of the shots. And I started to grow this grassroots movement around that, actually transforming the skills that I learned in theatre, which was around like the basics of performance, which is really about showing yourself authentically. Like I transformed that into storytelling. And I, um, in the early days of my nonprofit, I would travel to communities and invite people to share their stories, um, and set a set of a context that would make that this really kind of cathartic and healing experience for people like, you know, try not to judge each other, the open minded very much, you know, um, and I would see the transformation and people would tell me how transformative those experiences were. But this was so counterculture to what mental health said was appropriate. Mhm. Um, and it was it was amazing to see, you know, I ended up actually traveling the whole circumference and inland Australia for about two and a half years in a van. Um, and in that time I visited three hundred communities. Wow. Yeah. And it became a tour.

The tour was called champions for change, and it started just basically by, like, me wanting to speak at schools. And then, um, it ended up getting sponsored by Sunsuper, which is now the National Retirement Trust, I think is called they merged with another super fund, Qsuper. So art Australian retirement trust. Yeah, yeah. That’s right. That’s so good though. I know and so like, you know it was fifty grand. But as an eighteen year old I was like, oh my God, I’m a millionaire. Yeah. It’s like I’m a sky high. That’s awesome. Yeah. When was that? Like, uh what years? Twenty thirteen. Okay. Well, the end of twenty twelve, um, and it became this incredible tour. So when we first, I then had sort of a team of a few other people and our two dogs, which was, you know, the best, um, what type of dogs do actors. Uh, so one was like a so my dog was like a Shih Tzu cross Chihuahua, and the other one was like a, oh, man, I actually don’t even know the breed. Like a small white dog. I can’t remember the breed super fluffy type thing. Yeah. Not a not a Pomeranian. Yeah. I’m that’s, you know, too many years ago, little white fluffy one. And like here. Yep. Yeah. So small dogs that were traveling in the van. Um, and initially we’d have, like, maybe five people turn up to these community workshops and then just watching the power of grassroots movement building actually were with writing to local journalists. Obviously, we’re going to communities where there’s no news happening in these communities, right? So you are the news like you are the biggest thing that’s happened to the Jewish community, just like outside where there was the line just before getting in here, guys, there’s a miss Dior cafe, something opening up next door, red carpet out there, and it’s like it seemed like it was for this podcast. It was not. But you had that. It was for the podcast. Yeah, yeah. So in Sydney, it takes a Dior opening in a rural community. It takes, you know, someone from the city. So it is a but initially it was um, there was only resistance. You know, people didn’t want to talk about this stuff. I also experienced hate, you know, and, um, you imagine, but there’s tenacity involved, you know, where you just have to keep showing up and at a certain point the gears changed. And it was actually we were getting invited to communities and schools were asking us to. And then, you know, Sun Tzu was doing the media for us. So we were kind of we had this engine where I really got to experience growing this grassroots movement from nothing to what became this national tour. And I heard in that time tens of thousands of stories from all different walks of life. Um, you know, we all grow up in this bubble that we believe is the normal way to live. And I think that that’s it’s it’s, I think a part of my message and why I’m here to help people understand that there’s no one way to live. This is something that theater taught me so much because as a as an actor, you have to break past, break past the barriers you create in your identity in order to be versatile as a performer. Because if you can never imagine yourself as a liar or a cheater or a whatever.

You know, a bad guy or whatever it is that you’re resistant to. You can’t play that role. So you have to stretch what you what you understand your identity to be. And those two and a half years on the road just took that to a whole other level of lived experience, where I was talking to teenagers in rural communities that had never left their community of a thousand people all the way to, you know, boardrooms in, in, in cities with people that have traveled the world. But the thing that touched me the most about that was, yes, everyone’s story had different wrapping paper, different levels of privilege, different life experiences. But as they would really get to the core, like the tender core of what they they were truly wanting, it was all the same. Every person just wants to love and be loved. It’s so true. And that was it for me. When I saw that truth, I was like, We need to find a way to expose that in, um, in a way that’s scalable, that’s not dependent on one individual, that’s not dependent on the frontline mental health workers that are overrun with demand, or the fly in, fly out doctors that are going to, you know, these communities once every two weeks and don’t have time to see everyone that needs help. Um, suicide rates at that time were on the rise, and I just kind of went fully anti-establishment to the mental health sector. And I was like, we need a cultural revolution. And that was a very unique idea. At that time, I had a lot of support. I also had a lot of hate, as you would, you know, you would expect. Yeah. Um, and yeah, that that led me to serve as a commissioner, because actually the ideas that we were implementing in those communities worked. You know, they worked in a very cost effective way. Go figure. It was basic communication and kindness, really. It’s like the one thing the government hasn’t tried. You know, show some love and share some. Yeah. And make people feel like they’re part of the story. It’s. And it’s something like a lot of people have that as currency. They might not be rich in other means, but we we do all have that capacity and currency to give as much as we can in terms of kindness. Well, yeah. All we need to develop that capacity because this is this is what I saw. It’s like the art of facilitation is you’re creating a container where people can just kind of put whatever they’re going through at the door for a minute and listen, and then also have the opportunity to share their story. And in that you have kind of two or three hours where all of a sudden people do have a willingness to be kind. They have a willingness to show empathy. They have a willingness to a willingness and space to connect in a different way. But transferring that to the busyness of people’s everyday lives, to me, became the next challenge because I became really good at creating spaces, you know, that led me to eventually run retreats all over the world and trainings. And these were deeply transformational experiences, very unconventional, but deeply transformational. We’d have people leaving retreats like, you know, leaving twenty year relationships, quitting jobs. And then also a part of me was like, wow, what are we going to do about integration? Because you expose people and give them a taste of freedom. You know that you don’t have to be a slave to your identity.

You can make a different choice. And I think entrepreneurs are very good at this because you have to recreate yourself constantly in order to reach that next level. Definitely, the adaptation is like such a big part of it, of everything that you’re doing. Exactly. Adaptation, flexibility, the ability to deal with ambiguity. Yeah, I think is going to, um, be the thing that separates amazing entrepreneurs from those that that can’t go that extra mile. And most amazing entrepreneurs say it. You have to be relatively delusional. You have to have a delusional level of self-belief. You have to be a psychopath. Yeah, but I, I like to sort of explore it from a different angle, which is, yes, I agree in a sense, but also when you understand how reality actually works, what I mean by that is we are we are creating reality with, with our thoughts, with, with our frequency in all moments every day. So it’s it’s less about delusion and it’s more about taking the time to curate your inner world. And I think going through something like anorexia, I had to rebuild my inner world from the inside out. Every thought, every behavior, you know, that was self-destructive, which became my entire life. I had to turn that into something that actually helped my flourishing, and I had to do that consciously. But a lot of people go through their whole life and they never challenge what they believe. They never challenge the way that they see the world, what they think, and that that was the gift. And I think that’s the gift in all adversity is if you want your life to start moving in a different direction, you’ve got to change how going through the experience leading up to where you are. In truth, what were some of the the hardest moments coming from, you know, twenty one being in government supporting policy and oh man, I mean, yeah, as an entrepreneur especially, you know, intellectually, I had the capacity to, to, to serve in those kinds of roles. Young. But a twenty one year old is a twenty one year old, you know, and I think that as a society, this is something that we don’t appreciate or understand. It’s the same with, say, you know, musicians in Hollywood that that rise very young. Like, you know, they have talent. The talent is undeniable. Yeah. Um, or they have the intelligence and the intelligence is undeniable. But at the end of the day, like you’re young. And there were so many hard moments for me in that, and I acted out like I had the polarity to the responsibility. I, you know, I was so hard working, um, really all through my teenage years and then probably until twenty two, twenty three and then my life kind of had this, like, stark contrast for a minute where I had high levels of responsibility. But I would party really hard. And I look back and I’m like, oh, wow, that was me actually trying to cope. I was trying to cope with the responsibility. I was trying to, uh, I didn’t know how to go home on the weekend and tell my twenty year old friends what it was like writing recommendations for a thirty billion dollars budget. You know, I just I had no way of relating. There’s no easing into it. By the sounds of it, though, it was impossible, you know, and then I also I mean, you guys wanted to get personal, but, you know, I, I also developed relationships with much older people. And I think that that’s what I needed actually, because they had more capability of understanding me. But then in some ways, I kind of missed out on what a normal I feel like. I lost my teenage years to an addiction, and then I lost my early to mid twenties to ridiculous amounts of responsibility and then kind of come in like probably twenty seven until thirty whilst I was building, in truth, actually, and doing all the things that a startup founder has to do.

I had to rediscover myself. Wow. And that was like a, um, that was like a dark night of the soul for me. I see a title in there, like how building my startup helped me find myself or something like that. I was gonna say, did in truth help you find yourself? Was totally and like, as a creative, right? I always see life as art and and art as life. You know, we’re always subconsciously, I think building the thing that we most crave and we most need, like anyone that has drive. People don’t just have drive. Drive comes from somewhere. Ambition comes from somewhere. If you were fully enlightened and fully integrated, you probably wouldn’t have much drive. You’re just. It’s just an isthmus, right? So anyone that has intense levels of ambition, they’re trying to figure something out that’s personal to them. There’s an urge or something there that’s driving it, and I’ve seen it come from actually, I don’t know anywhere where it’s come from a place of good. Yeah, unfortunately, yeah. I actually was at this invested in a little while ago. And um, one of the questions that was asked. So the format was like a bunch of investors and then they invited me in a couple of team members to get to know one truth. And one of the um investors asked the table, what do you think? Uh, the common denominator is in founders that go on to build unicorns? And I’ll never forget it. One of the investors said childhood trauma. Oh, great. But I was like, you know what? This is not advice. If you traumatize your children. Oh, goodness. But I think, you know, a lot of the time it’s true. You have different kinds of entrepreneurs, too. Like, you have opportunistic entrepreneurs that are less emotionally connected to what they’re trying to do. And it’s more just like you see an opportunity. I don’t know, like the people that supplied Covid masks in twenty twenty. Mhm. Probably wasn’t coming from a deep existential or toilet paper. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t want to judge because I don’t I don’t know that person’s story, but I, you know, I would, I would say but people that really go on to do something that challenges systems.

Mhm. There was obviously there was obviously pain that was inflicted by the system. Yeah. Otherwise what’s the motivation you know to, to, to want to change that narrative, whether it’s your own pain or the pain you’ve seen from someone else, which obviously you can take on and you feel. Yeah, definitely. I think it comes back to what you said at the start that, you know, I wonder if, um, Australia being like the lucky country and things are really good here lends itself to just not having as many entrepreneurs sort of thing that are growing because we got there. The pain is, is not as much there. There’s one hundred like we’ve got a good economic system, we’ve got a good financial system. Yeah, yeah, that that is actually true though. That’s if you go to a city like San Francisco and New York, London, you know, like you’re not gonna eat or pay rent unless you’re the best cheese. And actually the average it was my book publisher in LA that told me this when I first moved to California and I was like, oh God, what have I done? She said. The average amount of time that expats or foreigners, even people that moved to California from interstate America, the the average amount of time that people lost in LA and San Francisco is less than three months. Wow. So it it because it’s you know it’s hard. So if you you have to commit and everything is hard. I mean, any like, expert who’s ozone that or, you know, any nationality that’s gone to a, uh, America would understand. Like you go to the Department of Motor Vehicles and you just like you you’re gonna like I. I didn’t even know that I had that level of rage in me. Like. Like they make you wait for, like, ten hours. I was gonna say, that’s when you realize you’re part of the system. That’s like. Yeah, like it just everything is challenging. Trying to figure out the documentation. Like there’s no place you can go when you move to a country like America, that’s like, okay, these are the steps on how to survive in in America. You know, it’s it’s very different, I think, to being an expat. I don’t know, in like Southeast Asia or Bali or somewhere where the lifestyle is, is easy. You know, America is not an easy place. And so to to make it there and to actually, you know, even getting the visa process, you know, not having a Social Security number, figuring out how to live like it’s tough. You’ve got to want it. So that’s from movements to government to now. Tech entrepreneur. How has this journey brought you to where you are? I guess in terms of building out, in truth, how are you seeing yourself now and how is in truth, I guess, become your baby? Yeah. So what I came to through the kind of, um, juxtaposition of those experiences like grassroots and then in some ways the opposite of grassroots, which was high level politics or, you know, informing policy as a commissioner, you’re not a politician, but you’re involved in that process.

Um, I realized that both those ends were needed in the same solution, which seems kind of like the impossible problem to solve because it was a paradox. How do you create something hyper personal, which is what frontline mental health workers or people like myself who were trying to do grassroots movements. Um, so very, very personal and human with the scale that came from, say, the distribution of federal budget. How do you have both of those things in one solution? And I didn’t jump straight to tech, actually, when I left politics or like I like to say, retired from politics at twenty five, um. Went on a soul searching trip around the world. Yeah. Did a vow of silence in the Amazon track the Andes, like, really went deep? I actually wrote a book and that was kind of like my the beginning of my therapeutic journey. And the book started to grow this, um, this following of people that really loved and believed in what the book was about. And the book is called Love Out Loud. It was a philosophy. Yes. Um. And Love Out Loud explores nine key concepts. So the philosophy to sort of explain it simply, it’s just that we are love. was seeking love. You know, that’s what is motivating all of our behaviors, both good and bad. Um, and loving out loud is the ability to strip the limitations and the resistances that prevent us from just expressing that and living that, and being that in whatever form that wants to take. And people loved it. You know, people have love out loud tattooed on them. So that was like a crazy thing to experience. And that, that started, um, like a different crazy chapter where I was traveling the world and speaking actually mostly that that became my life for a good couple of years. Um, and I was experiencing scale in a new way because I had content, you know, that was scaling and I had impact. That was that was scaling on a global level, not just a national level.

But again, I just I couldn’t let go of how much I, I knew that wasn’t going to be the thing that was going to change the world in a thousand years from now. But I wasn’t a technologist, right. So it took me some time to to land on kind of moving back to first principles thinking. And I think the space that the beginning of the pandemic created, that was the first time really my in my life that I stayed still for you. I always traveled, and this is also probably why catalyzed the dark night of the soul. Like I’d never been around the same people I’d never been. I really had to face myself. I was so used to I kind of got like the honeymoon phase with everyone and everything in my life all the time, because I constantly traveled, so communities were constantly happy to see me. Then I got to leave. Then it was, you know, my friends didn’t see me very often, so they were always happy to see me. Relationships kind of the same thing. So all these highs, highs, highs, highs, it was just like I was riding high basically from like when I graduated art school through to twenty seven. It was there was a lot of highs. And obviously, you know, there were lows within that. But I was just there was always another high, and then everything stayed still. And I realized that I was dispensable and that I had to create a solution that wasn’t. And so I came back to first principles thinking, and I asked what is really at the core of of the work that I’ve done, you know, to date. And it was to help people build emotional capacity. And then I this was basically my thought process. Emotion is arguably the most defining part of the human experience. It drives more than eighty percent of our decisions. And so it literally is the thing that’s defined, that defines us. And that’s on an unconscious level. So even if you’re listening to this and you think you’re rational, you’re not. You’re not. Humans are not rational. We’re emotional. We make emotional decisions that we later rationalize. And that’s autonomic. Emotions are happening every two hundred milliseconds. You know, it’s before the brain can catch up. It’s often predisposed based on lived experience as well. Right. So you’re. Yeah. Things you feel the decisions you make are driven by the impacts of things that have happened, whether it’s the person you met, whether it’s the life you live, the pains, all that type of stuff. They trigger those constant change of emotions and how you bring in everything, how you interpret stimulus, how your how your physiology interprets it exactly. And you don’t even know sometimes, like maybe other people around you, if they really know you well, they’re like, hey, I think you’re a bit hungry or something like that, you know? Yeah, because you’re getting a little bit angry, but you don’t know. You don’t realize that you’re getting a little bit hangry if you’re strong headed too, which I think, you know, people, people like us. Like I’ll be. Yeah. Working for like, you know, twenty hours straight thinking I’m fine. Yeah. Because you’re just strong headed, you know? But your body has, like, a very different story to tell. So true the measurement side of things. I think getting to that like that’s, that’s really interesting because that’s a big part of in truth isn’t it. Like, well that’s it. And that’s what I came to in that thought process because I was like, okay, this is the most defining part of the human experience. Who’s measuring it? How how have we think about the things that we have standardized, we’ve standardized the two examples I like to give. We’ve standardized language which which has allowed us to organize complex thoughts. It’s allowed us to have debate, intellectual conversation.

Without language, there’d be no podcasting would just be grunting at each other. That was the original plan for the first show. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Got it. There’s a lot of followers. Yeah, yeah, people thousands of years ago would have liked. Yeah, yeah. Um, you know, so that level of, um, organization allowed us to reach new intellectual heights. Yeah. The birth of, um, the Latin language, etc.. And then we did the same for time, Greenwich Mean Time. We standardized time. And that allowed us to organize global trade. It allowed us to meet at a place at a particular time and allowed life to have more complex structure that was global time zones, etc.. Um, but no one had ever done this for emotion. The thing that was the most defining part of the human experience. And I got really curious about that. You know, as I as my mind started to move into. Well, what if we could do something about that? What if we could build a solution that changed that? So I asked a lot of intelligent people why they thought this had never been done, and everyone’s answer was, well, it’s just too subjective. It’s too elusive. How do you how do you quantify something that just kind of is there? But, you know, to me it wasn’t a satisfying answer because every person I knew from my work had this impulse and this desire to want to express themselves. But so often not being able to place or understand their emotional state was the reason that they couldn’t. Um, and so that was kind of the first realization. And then the next was, well, how would we measure that? Okay. Well, emotion is autonomic. It’s happening in the nervous system. Um, so it is measurable actually like we have this subjective Is layer, which is yes, it’s subjective. Like when I ask you guys, how are you feeling? And you say, I feel happy. Sure. That’s your interpretation. Unless you’re a Australian, it’s like, yeah, I’m alright, I’m fine. Fine, fine is not an emotion. I like to remind people. Your girlfriend is saying I’m fine. It’s like she might not be fine. Yeah, she’s definitely fine. Yeah, I can tell you that right now. Yeah. So, um, that’s what by the time you’ve said that, you’ve actually experienced tens of emotions that have triggered, you know, like, um, like neurons. Neurons in the brain, like in the body is emotion. Um, and I also recognize because everything, every, um, kind of occupation that has been built to try to help people with their emotion only deals with the subjective. Like you go to a psychologist, it’s conversation. How are you feeling? Well, I’m I’m here because I don’t know how to express how I’m feeling. So this is really unhelpful dynamic. I mean, I’m not sort of shitting on therapy as it’s placed, right? But but, uh, I think in truth, we’ll hopefully pioneer such a new way of looking at this and understanding it that we’ll look back at the way we used to try to get there and recognize that we were kind of, you know, using a, um, uh, well, like reading tea leaves. It’s it it feels like. Exactly, exactly. Great analogy. Because because what you’ve got here and in many industries, like I’ve come from a background of like, um, financial market research and it’s about qualitative as well as quantitative. So the qualitative have always been there. Like what does this piece of news mean and sentiment. But the quantitative that measurable stuff is massively important in that space. And it feels like it wasn’t there in this area. And now you’re bringing that quantitative side. Exactly.

Well, if you go back to the origin of psychology, like go all the way back to, um, Carl Jung, like these are amazing minds. Psychology was the only quote unquote, science that was forced to be considered a hard science when it was built on soft data is the only science, right? I know that, um, and this is, you know, kind of the joke within the, the, um, the different sciences that psychologists aren’t real, you know, science, but it’s because, you know, the data you, you’re using just watching the show. So that’s okay. Look, I have total respect for what you guys do. I’m just trying to make it better. Yeah, yeah. That’s it, that’s it. You know, and if you go to a GP and you say, like I’m struggling with my mental health, they’ll give you a k ten test. It’s a Likert scale. And they’ll say, have you felt stressed? On a scale of one to seven in the last fourteen days. Like it’s so okay.

Yeah. It’s like, am I gonna answer truthfully as well? Yeah. Like I guess how many so, like, look, just give me the drugs. Prepare yourself for, for for. Yeah I don’t know. Yeah. Like. Yes. But also like, how do I quantify that? Like, have you felt tired in the last fourteen days? Sure. Like every human has, you know. Um, so it’s just bad data, like it’s unreliable data. And. Yeah, like, in truth, is bringing up hard, objective, reliable, continuous data, which is the other thing, like, you know, this sort of what the tech actually is for the purpose of your listeners. It’s an emotion biotechnology that takes the raw data from wearables like the Garmin I’m wearing translates that in an AI model, which has been taught to delineate the discrete emotional state and then can translate that back to the user. This is taking a reading every two hundred milliseconds. So all of a sudden we have continuous objective data that’s actually mapping emotion. And when you think about the data that’s replacing within not just psychology by the way, but all industries like you take most organizations, if you ask them, how are you capturing this data right now? Because it is very interesting to leaders. The sentiment of your team, you know, how people are actually feeling about their projects and their team dynamics and things in real time. Yeah. Well, the way that they’re currently capturing it is an evaluation once a year or twice a year, and it’s a self-assessment and it’s subjective report. So maybe you have you know, as as a company leader, you have two data points annually on Chris. What if we could replace that with a data point every two hundred milliseconds? So the fidelity difference in the data is just insane.

Like that to me, is the real Disruptiveness, because my end goal is to have a data set globally of emotion that that this data is considered equally as important as all the other data points that we leverage and use to make systematic and global decision making. Because at the moment, global sentiment isn’t a consideration. You’ve had projects like, um, you know, the Global Happiness Index. You know, you’ve had people attempt it, but it’s so hard to implement. It’s still so subjective. But this this gives us an ability to actually build hard data. One of the points touched on is, is obviously it plays a big role in leadership and business. Seeing how the team are tracking or even your yourself within the business. Um, not touching necessarily on the security or the data that your personal information, but the, I guess the privacy around your emotions in work environments. How do you see that with your product? So the thing that comes to mind is, I know you had a meeting with your boss, didn’t turn out, didn’t turn out as good as you thought. And you walk out and you’re frustrated and obviously your your gut and watch picks up. You’re a bit of a heart rate increase and you’re a bit of sweaty. And so you’re clearly frustrated. Um, and that data then goes back to this leader or manager that’s called a manager, because it’s usually the managers that are the ones that get frustrated, not the leaders. Yeah. Inverted commas. How do you perceive that in terms of, yeah, this is this is the most common question we get, by the way, and rightly so. So obviously it’s a really important question because, you know, if, if, um, anyone’s looked at any of Intuit’s content, like we are really gung ho when it comes to data sovereignty as a, as a topic in a subject. Um, and I’m so, I’m so passionate that, you know, I’m even actively, um, lobbying in the US to make sure that biotechnology is, are regulated and not data is not used. Um, data is only used in the interest of public health because that is a that is a dark rabbit hole. We’ll get to that in a minute. Oh, we didn’t even start. But we were talking about the the robots. So imagine like a machine having that information, knowing how you’re going to react before you do it. Not good. I thought we were calling them pleasure bots. No, but now knows your emotional. Yeah. And all of your emotional. Very scary. So, um. So the first thing we, um, as a company, have an ethos that say you’re an organization that’s implementing, in truth, you as the employee, are the only one to get your individual report. What the employer gets is the aggregate report. So there’s no individuated data. Very smart. They they see the aggregate data. Um, and you even have to be at a certain team size in order to do that. So it’s, you know, impossible to figure out whose data is who. Basically a small startup with only two people. I know it wasn’t me that said this, so it must be the other.

But, you know, that’s that’s really interesting that you’re doing it that way because a the company is still getting great insights at that aggregate level. Yeah. Like yeah like Jenny from HR shouldn’t really care about your what you were feeling on Tuesday at ten a m. You know that’s not the data that’s going to help them make constructive organizational decisions. On the other hand, what’s really cool is, uh, you as the individual, as part of the insurance rollout, will actually get that individual report. So you get that, you get that data, you get that opportunity to understand yourself. And we hope that that changes then kind of twofold that the organization can make more constructive decisions. But the individuals are actually empowered with that self-awareness and that self-growth and seeing themselves compared to what the norm is. And maybe it’s like, wow, I’m really feeling emotionally different versus my peers. Am I in the right company? Yeah, totally. That, you know, you subjectively feel responsible for that. Yeah, fine. But I think, you know, it goes back to, you know, the start of this podcast, it was all about there was no voice for this kind of stuff, and there was no voice because there was no way to standardize, measure, quantify and actually have some, some insights that are coming out from the emotional layer now, because there is this what you’ve been creating and hopefully, you know, it spreads out more, not just from this podcast, but from many. It gives language to where there wasn’t a language before and a common kind of standard of doing it. So it’s amazing that standards actually are what leads to this kind of stuff. I love that you’ve brought that into the conversation, because this is why we call what we’re building in Elm an emotion language model. Um, obviously, you know, a play on LM, but, um, emotion because of how nuanced it is.

Whenever I don’t believe we’re ever going to be able to get a fully comprehensive understanding through language, but what in truth can do is go to visual language, okay? Because it’s data. Yeah. So I believe that we can actually educate and empower our users to such a degree that they become fluent in understanding that data. So say you’re in a relationship and you’re going through conflict. Imagine being able to show each other that data and have the opportunity for immediate empathy. Wow. Past all the miscommunication and disagreement. I know exactly how this conflict is affecting you because I’m. I can read that data, actually understand that language. That’s amazing. Like, it’s coming from my background as a data visualization person. Like I’m loving all of that kind of stuff. But just from having those things, being able to be visualized is what gets you to that truth or sorry, that common understanding far quicker than just talking about it or yeah, it’s so hard. Like, you know, I, for example, am quite a like a logical I have strong logic. None of us are fully logical, as we’ve already discussed. But if something if someone’s saying something to me that doesn’t make sense, I really struggle in a conversation to get past it. Right. So that that can mean that if I’m not self-aware, I’m losing empathy quite quickly because I’m getting hung up on what they’re saying. Doesn’t make any sense. And as someone that really like wants to be a compassionate and empathetic person to the best of my ability, I’m aware of where my empathy starts to wane because of my wiring. But if I had something that truly made sense to me and I could understand it, then I just feel like for people like myself, my empathy would just be infinite. And I think that would kind of be that’s my hope, is that in truth, can create this ability for us to just understand each other at the deepest level and just evolve beyond these ridiculous conversations around vulnerability, being weak, emotions being stupid to talk about. And, you know, there’s just there’s such a high level way of approaching this whole landscape in in my opinion, that’s, um, that actually comes down to true, um, self-awareness at scale and to recognize that emotions are no different to breathing. Like, we cannot help it. Um, and by hiding it and avoiding it, all it’s actually doing through that repression is creating the opportunity for, um, the opposite. You know, whatever’s repressed in us individually or as a society, we’re going to experience the other side of that pendulum. And that’s exactly what we see in culture, right? Like, you try to repress sexuality and then you have a you have a society that’s oversexualized, you know, and it’s just trying to find its balance. But what if we could have the understanding and expose that so that we were actually able to be conscious and balanced in our decision making? I think now, because of where technology is tracking, that’s never been more important, because the risks that I see especially, you know, living in San Francisco, you see people that don’t have that emotional, spiritual maturity who are inheriting ridiculous levels of power, like ridiculous, like unprecedented levels of power where single individuals have, um, the ability to dictate what life looks like for billions of people. Just look at any of the current LM model, you know, CEOs, Sam. Yeah. Everything. That’s insane. Yeah. Yeah. So we need this. And and it’s we need those people to get interested in this. But we also need to help the world understand that power dynamics and power imbalances don’t just happen one way. Like if we have individuals with that much power, it’s because we have millions or billions of people that are giving their power away to single individuals. And that’s like it is going down. That track of thinking helps you understand how, I don’t want to say broken our systems are, because I think all systems are built to perfectly create the outcomes they create. But just how in need we are of different systems? That’s a good way to put it. What’s next for in truth, where you’re at because you are still you’re kind of in beta. You know what’s next. So for us, um, our biggest focus is working with, what we’re classifying as high stakes industries, high stakes, high stress. So that could be anything from, say, first responders to emergency workers, even like lawyers, surgeons, um, where they’re dealing with very high levels of, um, stress, probably, you know, big emotional highs and lows and where their decision making has very high consequence. That, to us is the kind of obvious fit as a starting point for early adoption.

Because when we show interest as a solution to these industries, um, they correlate it with safety. So it’s a it’s a great, um, place to begin. It’s also very dynamic kind of data. Um, meanwhile, we’re going through the regulatory process. So I hope sooner rather than later. FDA and TGA says you get the software as a medical device classification. Brilliant. Um, and through that process, we’re where validating clinical claims. So diagnostic claims for example like as an as an example of that in truth can predict PTSD or in truth can can support the diagnosis of anxiety or depression. Um, once we have that tick, I want to see emotion positioned as a biomarker, no different to blood pressure and no different to heart rate to actually make this something that is integrated into healthcare. Um, when you see your GP, a physician, that they would consider that biomarker in the same vein as every other biomarker. Yeah. Building some health tools ourselves and working with some pretty incredible people that um, and the biggest thing that we always hear is that empathetic side of specialist bedside manner and imagine them already knowing how you’re feeling and being able to relate to you in that situation a lot more with with a tool like this or understand that like they, you know, usually they see you, you’re in this kind of state and then they see heightened markers or whatever. And then it’s like, okay, that good, understand? But I was even thinking with parents and, um, whether it’s immigrant parents or other parents, whether it’s just like a lack of understanding of your child’s emotional kind of state. Yeah. Because maybe you will raise different or you’re you’re just a different culture mismatch and different human being. And then seeing your child and going, oh, okay. It’s not just them acting out like there is. They are doing it anymore. Yeah. Like you’re understanding because like you said, it’s a biomarker now. Just like blood pressure. That’s amazing. Yeah. Like you wouldn’t you wouldn’t judge someone for having, um, blood pressure of two hundred and one fifty. You’d be worried about them. Exactly. You want a camel? Yeah. You don’t like camel. And it’s, um. Empathy is an interesting thing because we all have a different way that we experience it. Right? But I think with a common language, we’re going to get so much closer to that. I’ve got some quick fire questions to close this out. This has been an incredible, incredible journey. Thank you so much. Um, but some quick questions for you as a founder. What’s a non-negotiable for you going into business. That’s an interesting question. Um, compromising my values? Yeah. Would be top of the list. And there’s different ways that that, um, you know, can show up. I’d say that the biggest one is, um, choosing investment partners that see the same future we do. Work life balance. What’s the most important thing to you? That whole concept is like rubbish. Like. Especially if it’s just, I don’t know, I don’t want to shit on people that try to achieve that, but I just I think when you’re when you’re solving something that you’re obsessed with, there’s no that is the balance. That is it. Yeah. It’s not like workplaces and corporates going you have work life balance when you take away life.

Exactly. I love it. There’s no clocking off at five. Yeah. You’re obviously we’re here. We talk about AI quite a lot. What are the most interesting trends you’re seeing in the air space and potentially things that you’re utilising the most with the work that you do? You know, emotion AI was not a thing that was talked about when I started in truth. And now I don’t know if it’s just my echo chamber, but it seems to be a really growing conversation. Um, so that’s, you know, an area of AI, obviously, that I track very closely and then broadly, uh, where biotech is going and what decisions biotech companies are making and what, um, data deals they’re making to. That’s something that I keep probably the keenest and closest eye on because it’s my passion. Um, but yeah, like from the, um, uh, the side of building in AI systems that, that improve efficiency. Like, I’m all for that. I encourage my team to do it as long as it’s, um, as long as we stay human and empathetic would be my kind of line. Final question. Uh, if you had to start over tomorrow, what would be the one thing that you would do differently? Uh, that’s so hard. One thing, every country would do so many things differently. Yeah, I mean, the two things, though. Okay, I want to find I want to find the thing that would actually be, like, the most helpful for a new founder. Um, don’t. When you raise your first big chunk of capital, do not go and hire the most expensive executives. There’s the worst fucking thing you can find. The people that just, like, want to get into it with you, roll up their sleeves, are willing to actually work for under market rate and that bring energy and actually want to be on the tools and be hands on. I wish I had done that. I love the reason I love that so much is one of the biggest things that people miss out on when forming businesses is culture. And if you just go out and find that big executive high just because of the number and the experience, you’re missing out on building that cultural from the start. Whereas if you find the right person from the start, they blend well. You you’re going from a positive growth and they’ll learn with you and also the disposition, like I found, hiring those kinds of people. They sat back and they wanted a whole team to execute. Yeah. And it’s the opposite of startup culture. You need people that are dynamic hands on. Yeah. And the irony is, is that, um, as this scales and stuff, your tool could actually be used to help other startups find those right people, which is the really. Which is awesome. Right. But please don’t like, you know, use it to, I don’t know, fire people and things because there’s gonna be a PR nightmare for us. But yeah, looking at the collective consciousness and understanding coherence as a, as a, as a group, that to me is like one of the most exciting use cases. Amazing. Yeah. Nicole, we can’t thank you enough. I’ve loved it.

You guys joining us. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Cheers. Amazing stuff. Very fun conversation. That was beautiful. Thank you so much. Yeah, yeah. So I heard somewhere that you have a very open. When AI becomes like, when AI partners become more of a thing. Like, I remember having an argument with a dude because, like, it was all about like, oh, we shouldn’t judge AI answers. Blah blah blah. We should look at the idea and the substance rather than the, you know, the thing that kicked off on LinkedIn. Didn’t expect like hundreds of comments on it. I’m like, I just want it to be a little thing. But one guy was like, well, if we’re gonna robots, why not? Like, okay, well, let’s not talk about that yet. Like, you know, it’s the slippery slope idea on the podcast. Yeah. Because seriously, actually, yeah. If our tech starts to merge with, like, our bots that are also powered by AI, I think that’s very problematic. Is it so it’s like a robot that knows your emotions, your emotions and can manipulate you. Yeah. Like that’s that’s. And then as a sex robot like this is just a and then you have all these incels in the world that just, you know, it’s a dark hole that that’s what creates the guy who made the nukes is like, I become death destroyer world. Yeah, yeah. We are. Yeah. We’re recording. It’s like, you’re gonna be great.