Jeff Bullas 00:00:02 - 00:01:20 Hi everyone and welcome to The Jeff Bullas Show. Today I have with me, John Rarrick. Now John is the Head of Marketing at Movius who specialize in digital marketing. That's sort of close to my heart and the blog's core and the podcast. They do mobile communications for compliance and for
telecom. He's responsible for all brand, customer acquisition and partner marketing strategy. So he's got a lot to do between Monday to Friday and John has held senior marketing leadership roles at T-Mobile, Sprint and Comcast. And if you notice a theme there,
it's got something to do with mobile technologies and companies, but he was the co-founder of a PR company called BullsEye Public Relations. John's area of expertise in the B2B technology space includes brain development, communications and crisis management. And if you're bored, a good crisis will help you fix that. And digital marketing and social media and digital sustainability programs. And we'll talk a little bit about the role of and the passion John has on basically helping digital mobile devices be more sustainable and that's not about being more digitally sustainable. It's about more ecosystem sustainable. He is passionate about leadership development and building highly efficient versatile teams. John, welcome to the show.
John Rarrick 00:01:20 - 00:01:22 Thanks so much, Jeff. Great to be here. Jeff Bullas 00:01:22 - 00:01:47 So, John, I don't know where to start. Shall we talk about your secret and your original first gig in life apart from being born was that your love of music. Let's just go there. So before we get into stuff that really maybe doesn't matter,
but let's talk about what really matters such as music to you. So how did you get stuck into music? John Rarrick 00:01:48 - 00:02:49 Well, I was always passionate about music, you know, going back even to my high school days, I was in bands playing guitar and singing and found myself in the theater as well. So I ended up going to a pretty prestigious art school in New York called Purchase College and I got a bachelor of fine arts in acting and actually started my performing arts, professional career as an actor, commercials, soap operas, you know, and regional theater mostly. But man, I loved singing still
and I just gravitated back towards it and for a solid six or eight years then that became my job. I was a touring musician and like all touring musicians. You come off tour pretty penniless and what do actors and musicians do when they're not acting and singing, they work in restaurants. Jeff Bullas 00:02:49 - 00:02:53 I was gonna say that. So, they said the term, the starving artist is completely true. Is that right? John Rarrick 00:02:53 - 00:05:25 Yeah absolutely. And, you know, living in New York City for most of my life,
no shortage of restaurants to come home to work in and I had friends in that business who decided, you know, you're not going to be a waiter anymore, you're going to become a manager and we're going to show you the business. So my first real foray into the business world was in the food and beverage industry and I guess I had a knack for it because I worked for independent restaurants for a while. And then I started to work for these big restaurant corporations like the Walt Disney Company and company here in the states called Rainforest Cafe where it's sort of a restaurant, but there's robotic monkeys and there's rainfall actually happening in the restaurant. So it became more of entertainment eatery retail, but it was an enormous, just crash course in how to run a business, you know, going from, you know, singing to reading a PnL in the course of just a couple of years for me was, and I, but honestly, I loved it because I started to find the creativity in business itself. And I continue
to pursue that and it keeps leading to bigger and better jobs. And I went from Disney to work at all of the places for Vince McMahon at World Wrestling Entertainment who was also looking to open a bunch of large themed eateries. And I started to work in that realm and it was there that I realized if I stay in restaurant operations much longer, I'm gonna not only lose my mind but probably my family as well because restaurants and happy marriages do not go hand-in-hand. So they gave me a chance to start moving into more marketing, public relations type activities and that's where I started to cut my teeth because World Wrestling Entertainment is mostly a marketing company. And there was no shortage of educational opportunities there for me. I learned live television production,
I learned public relations and after 9/11, tourism dried up in New York for, boy, almost a solid two years. And it was the right timing for me to get out and do my own thing. And that's when I launched BullsEye PR and that, so that's my brief early business history going from, you know, performing arts and into full on run, you know, running multimillion dollar operations. Jeff Bullas 00:05:26 - 00:05:43 So tell us a bit about BullsEye PR. So what was the inspiration to start a PR firm? You saw that as I suppose a collection of your expertise and experience and something you enjoyed? Was it that intersection of those three? John Rarrick 00:05:44 - 00:08:08 Jeff, you pretty much nailed it, you know, when I was at WWE, I was managing our divisions, public relations agency as far as I was working very closely with them because we, as a new division, the earned media opportunities we had, I knew were gonna be really vital to our success and I loved working with them. In the back of my mind, I was like, wow, that this is something I'd like to do more of and I picked it up pretty quickly. So when I was done at WWE, a partner of mine, a former business partner of mine, we said, hey, wouldn't it be interesting if we launched a public relations agency? But we only represented brands that we love, trust and even use in some cases and so we could wake up every day and only promote things that we've really felt great about. And it
was him. And he said, well, why don't we? Let's do that because no one else does that. And he said, listen, if, if we fail, we'll fail having done something that at least the mission was great. And we were on the right track. So we did it. And for 10 of our 12 years, we followed exactly that course. And every morning I would wake up and just basically talk to the media about things that I already loved. So the story came out really easily. Like I didn't have to make anything
up because if we didn't love you, we didn't represent you. And it was a challenge. Listen, it was challenging. I won't kid you. You know, we started with a handful of clients and just the two of us. But we built that company to a multimillion dollar agency with 25 employees
and a lot of sleepless nights. But like I said, we would wake up every day and just have a blast. The last couple of years and as we started to get nibbles from companies looking to acquire us, we deviated a little bit from the plan and it did take a little bit of the fun out of it. But ultimately, it also kind of led to our exit, which was a successful exit. So I can't say that I regret it completely, but I'm mostly proud about those first 10 years. Jeff Bullas 00:08:08 - 00:08:14 Yeah. So what years were they? And I said it's a good bit of
that technology, I suppose, e-replacement. John Rarrick 00:08:15 - 00:09:23 Yeah. So we started in ‘01 and we got acquired by a public, private equity firm in 2012. And throughout that we represented a number of software companies. Telco towards the end, T-Mobile was one of them, which was almost a seamless transition for me when we were done to go work at T-Mobile and just sort of continue on that path. But we also worked for a lot of sustainable technology companies as well. People, companies looking to develop, you know, superior battery technology, alternative fuels and that really, that just really fired me up. So much to the point where I got a little bit, I went
a little overboard and I started driving an old Mercedes diesel that ran on French fry oil and, you know, solar panels in the back of the office and anything we could do that could follow that track. And still to this day, I'm still fascinated with sustainable technology. Jeff Bullas 00:09:24 - 00:10:00 So let's jump on that bandwagon in terms of what you're passionate about in terms of that and mobile and digital sustainability. So you mention some things about and we've talked about things like, you know, we buy a phone for two years and throw it out and then it's full of rare earths. So tell us a little bit about what you see as what's important in the discussion about digital sustainability. And I suppose
you talk more about digital smartphone sustainability a little bit more, isn't it? John Rarrick 00:10:00 - 00:13:47 Yeah, sure. So, you know, when we think of when we, I'm gonna assume most of your listeners believe that climate change is actually happening. So we'll proceed with that in mind. But, you know, when you think of climate change, though most people think of the big ticket items like fossil fuels and, you know, smog and all the things that we perceive are really making a radical change.
But most people don't think of the little everyday commodity driven issues that are actually adding to global warming and mobile technology is at the forefront, who doesn't have a phone at this point? If you're either, if you're between two years old and 102 years old, it's likely you've got a phone, right? And those phones turn over. I don't know about your plan, but I get an email every couple of years saying, hey, you're eligible for an upgrade and now that the new iPhone 57 is available. So, you know, you need it because it's better than the 56. And that's the way the world works now. I mean, we are just now conditioned to look for the next technology. Whether there's
one feature that's better or 15 features, that's better. Everybody's queued up for the next one, right? And we try to recycle them and I think all the carriers do make an effort to do some recycling. But at the end of the day, 25% of those phones get recycled and 75% of them will end up in a landfill. That is just the reality of it all. And these devices, they create an enormous amount of carbon equivalent. Every single cell phone, it equals 80 kg of carbon equivalent a year, 80 kg.
That's an enormous amount when you think of how many phones are out there in the world and where do those, what's causing that? It's the device itself producing it. It's the precious metals we have to yank out of the ground by, in many cases, very unethical means. It's the power to charge them day in and day out. But most importantly, it's the power to put them up on the wireless networks that creates that carbon footprint issue. So what we've done and this was not a mission of
ours and it would be incredibly disingenuous for me to say this. But what we've done at Movius by, with our multi line product, which allows you to simply put two numbers on one device solely through software instead of a SIM is we've helped reduce the amount of phones that a company might need. And when you talk about a company, you're talking about say a global tier one bank that might provide 100,000 devices for their employees that might otherwise be carrying two phones means we have just helped remove 100,000 devices from the world. And to me, you know, we sort of realized that by accident, we were like, hey, as we're looking at our own ESG rating, why don't we look at what we can also do for our customers and we can help our customers make a big impact on the world. And to me, I'm very proud of that and just that simple thing. And I think, and you and I talked about it a little bit before we started the show, I don't think it's about these solely about reducing big companies and reducing what they're doing. I think it's a lot of smaller companies like what we do, if they all just took a look at what they might be able to do to participate in reducing their customers carbon footprint. We'd be in a different place right now.
Jeff Bullas 00:13:48 - 00:14:39 So you obviously had an interest in sustainability. And, you know, for me to buy a phone, I generally do turn them over every two years and it's only just one feature I really want to, I'm really keen on for the upgrade and that's the camera. Yeah. So, because we now have essentially a high end, you know, digital single lens reflex DSLR in our hands now, it's just amazing. And I've, you know, I used to drag around a big digital, you know, lenses and everything with me when I was traveling. I went, I don't need to. And,
you know, there's the creativity part of that as well and lenses and stuff but yeah, the technology within our smartphones today is just amazing. John Rarrick 00:14:40 - 00:15:04 It is amazing. And you talk about the camera, I'm the same, Jeff. I just shot a short film in 4K on my iPhone. So the idea of being able to do that even five years ago was like it, it just was not reachable. And now, I mean, between the audio and the video capabilities of today's phones, you can almost do anything. Jeff Bullas 00:15:04 - 00:15:33 Yeah exactly. So let's move on so you're been working in a lot of mobile tech companies. So
the move to Movius, how did that happen? And then we'll talk about things like, okay, how do you go about acquiring customers? What are some of the digital marketing strategies you use for content marketing, whatever paid, let's talk about that next. But so you moved to Movius. Why did that happen? John Rarrick 00:15:33 - 00:17:37 Yeah. So much like my move to T-Mobile after BullsEye, my move to Movius was similar. I had participated in another exit with another agency and was literally packing my bags. So a bit of a side story that'll help get us there. I'm also the CEO of a vineyard and winery in Abruzzo, Italy called Cantina Di Rosina, which is a story unto itself. But the brief story is my family 100
years ago were producers of wine in Italy and due to the vineyards failing due to a disease that affects grapes called Phylloxera. They all emigrated to the States in the early 1920s. Well, fast forward, 100 years later, I bought back the vineyards and replanted them all. So I was about to just do that full time and I was packing my bags and I got a call from a friend of mine who was another former T-Mobile associate and he said, hey, what are you doing? And I said, I'm packing my bags. Really? What are you doing? He said,
well, I'm at this place called Movius and I think we're onto something and I think you might want to listen to it. And he connected me with Anant Sivar, the CEO who showed me the technology that they were working on and what they had cooking. And it took me all of 10 minutes to see the value proposition of multi line by Movius. And he said, I think this is something you're gonna want to stick around for. And he was absolutely right. And boy, the last two years have been a wild ride. We have just been having a great time. And so the vineyard is still going forward, I've got people, I've got a team in place there that keeps things going. But I'll tell you right now,
I am wholly fixated on multi line by Mobius. And getting that out there to the world. Jeff Bullas 00:17:37 - 00:17:46 So tell us a bit about what that means because most people wouldn't know what multi line mobile means or multi line. Tell us about it. John Rarrick 00:17:46 - 00:18:31 Yeah, absolutely. So multi line is a digital solution that allows users to put a second dedicated business line on any smartphone. We do it not from the traditional way with a SIM but through software and it's actually what we call phone 3.0. So what was phone 1.0 was, you know,
the first rotary phone, the one on your grandma's wall, the one that you had to dial. And then, you know, as we moved on to phone 2.0, that was the mobile technology that we know that relies on a tower and a SIM card to connect to it. What we've done is what we call phone 3.0 which is being able to connect to that tower through a wireless carrier, but not with a SIM card.
Jeff Bullas 00:18:31 - 00:18:37 So is this like a virtual SIM which is basically in almost every phone now that hardly anyone knows about? John Rarrick 00:18:37 - 00:20:12 Well, it's similar to that in technology, however, it gives you a carrier grade call, but it allows you to interface with all of the communications platforms that you, the end user, typically like to use from SMS to voice. So it integrates seamlessly into Whatsapp, Microsoft teams, WeChat. CRMs like Salesforce and HubSpot and it does it specifically to be able to archive and capture that communication. So it's a perfect compliance tool for highly regulated industries like banking, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, education, first responders, anything where you need to capture those calls or texts and archive them. So we archive those in on the cloud server of choice by our clients in that way, if there's ever any issue with a compliance subpoena or audit, everything's in a nice tidy package for them to get to. But most importantly, it allows them to communicate the way they want to when they want to. And there's no interaction between the SIM
which is the personal and the multi line, which is the software. So your data stays completely separate from one another. We're not interested at all in the conversation or text to your Aunt Mary. We just wanna make sure that everything that you do from a business standpoint can be captured. Jeff Bullas 00:20:13 - 00:20:19 So did the idea come out of trying to meet a compliance challenge? Is that how it happened? John Rarrick 00:20:20 - 00:21:18 Well, it started as a simple, let's put another number on a phone and it developed from there and our first customers were large global tier one banks. So we knew we were on to something right away when we created that conduit, the cloud storage and from there, it just took off. And what's been great for our customers is they, the number remains with them and the data remains with the customer, not the end user. So simply if you, Jeff, leave
your company and you're replaced by Jim, well, that number could easily just be transferred from Jeff to Jim and it's a seamless transition. So if you're a salesperson for a company, what normally happens in the sales world is Jeff leaves the company, he leaves with all of his contacts and all of the data and then when he lands at the new company, he just reaches out to the client. Well, now all that data stays with the firm. So we're really here to help protect the firm. Jeff Bullas 00:21:18 - 00:21:23 Okay. So there's multiple reasons to use Movius.
John Rarrick 00:21:24 - 00:22:02 That's correct. Yeah. And while we started in the as a financial services tool, it has really gone in a number of wonderful different directions from large hospitality companies with many seasonal employees so that those numbers can simply be transferred when the new seasonal employees come in to first responders so that they've got a separate number they can use to education so that teachers and administrators can communicate with parents and students in a much more regulated and secure fashion. So we've taken in a number of really interesting directions in the last couple of years.
Jeff Bullas 00:22:03 - 00:22:31 So it sounds like it started off with trying to solve one problem and ended up being able to solve several problems, which is always one of the biggest reasons a lot of businesses start to succeed. So how do you go about customer acquisition? How do you do digital marketing? Which is your role within the organization? So what are some of your key ways for you to grow your customer base because you're talking at the big end of town, really more enterprise than anything else, aren’t you? John Rarrick 00:22:32 - 00:24:25 Yeah, great question. So for the different industry categories that we target, it's a little bit different. Social media comes into play but almost all of our customers live on LinkedIn. It's not like I don't have customers on TikTok. So my job becomes a little bit easier when you think that I don't have to do a lot of analysis to try to figure it out. Do we have what percentage of my banking customers are on LinkedIn or X or TikTok? They're not there at all, they're all on LinkedIn and that's where they live. So from a social standpoint,
it's been quite easy from a digital advertising standpoint. It's far more challenging because I've got the same challenges that any B2B company would be first identifying who exactly are the decision makers and then where do they live? And how can I target them from a digital advertising standpoint? I would tell you though, our most effective means of reaching our customers has been earned media and it would be that way. Had I known about public relations or not coming into this? Fortunately, I was quickly able to discover though that was going to be a vital tool. So
sometimes gifts fall out of the sky from a public relations standpoint and you may or may not have read. But there's been an awful lot of fines handed down to some large global banks in the last couple of years for mobile communications missteps. And when that happens, we usually find ourselves in those articles. And when we are, it certainly feeds an awful lot of
new customer inquiries and we've been able to find some customers, many customers do those articles. Jeff Bullas 00:24:26 - 00:24:47 So that would perfectly intersect with your background in PR because PR is about essentially the, you're seeing the opportunity in a crisis and a problem within an organization and that you can solve that PR crisis, not the current one they've got, but the potential future one they may have. John Rarrick 00:24:48 - 00:25:07 That's right, Jeff. And how that crisis might also translate across multiple industries, which of course does regulated industries have similar communications regulations. So it then led me to start looking at what those are like and researching the earned media opportunities we could find there as well.
Jeff Bullas 00:25:07 - 00:25:12 So if you see a crisis emerging, do you reach out and go, we can help you in the future. John Rarrick 00:25:13 - 00:25:52 Absolutely, Jeff, of course. And any good PR person would be preemptive. That's right. Now, listen, you know what I'll do sometimes is I will reach out if I see someone who's written an article for the Wall Street Journal, I'll just let that person know, hey, this looks like something you're interested in writing about. If you continue to, in the future, we'd love to be a resource just for you to, you know, if you want to pick my brain on how that's affecting other industries. We're here at your disposal and listen. Good PR people are a resource. They're not
a nuisance. And so I've always preferred to just be there as a resource and it's always paid on. Jeff Bullas 00:25:53 - 00:25:59 Right. Okay. Cool. So, content marketing and media are very important to you then? John Rarrick 00:25:59 - 00:26:57 Yes, email marketing as well. The email marketing has allowed us to be able to build relationships,
but also do it in a multi touch faucet. And I'm very sensitive when I use email marketing to how many times we reach out and touch a prospect, but also making sure that the frequency is predicated on their level of interest and their intent to potentially buy. So I know that I love email marketing if it's something I'm interested in, you know, and I'm a big motorcycle enthusiast. So, and always have been, I restore old motorcycles. So when a company that sells parts for an old
triumph reaches out to me. Well, I'll take that all week long. Give me two or three of those a week but if I see something I don't want hitting my inbox three or four times a week, I will be unsubscribing and blocking immediately. So I'm very sensitive to the intent to buy. Jeff Bullas 00:26:57 - 00:27:04 Okay, cool. So Movius, how's the growth been, like, how many employees?
John Rarrick 00:27:05 - 00:27:34 Yeah, growth's been sensational in my two years here. So we're up to 150 employees. We've got offices, we're headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, Alpharetta to be specific, we've got offices in Bangalore, India and New York as well. SoI'm back and forth between here in New York and Alpharetta, Georgia. I'm in Philadelphia where I live, but I spend most of my time in New York City or Atlanta office. Jeff Bullas 00:27:34 - 00:27:53 So in terms of, when did Movius start? And how did they get funding? Was it done privately? Like was it the founder started it on a what did you bootstrap? How did you do that? So when did Movius start? And number two, how have you funded growth? Because growth is a good thing as long as you can fund it. John Rarrick 00:27:54 - 00:28:20 Yes. So, Movius is not a startup although I would tell you, we operate as a startup with
that mentality and most people assume we're a startup. But the company has been around for 25 years and has had many different lives. So started building beeper infrastructure for some of the larger beeper companies back in the day. And I don't know about you, but my beeper has not gone off in quite some time. Jeff Bullas 00:28:21 - 00:28:24 So you, so you're calling a beeper is a.
John Rarrick 00:28:25 - 00:28:26 Paging. Jeff Bullas 00:28:26 - 00:28:28 A page, a paging device. John Rarrick 00:28:29 - 00:28:32 The old paging devices. Jeff Bullas 00:28:33 - 00:28:56 So, I used to own one of those actually, but yeah, when you didn't have mobile phones and then you had to get this call, then you had to go and try and find, was it a letter, a phone booth? I don't know. Look,
I think mobile phones, I started using in the late 1800s. So it's not too much but the beeper was where you had a crisis happening anyway. Sorry, I interrupted the beeper versus pager conversation. John Rarrick 00:28:57 - 00:32:44 That's alright. So yeah, and then when the pager started to go the way of the dodo, we pivoted to
voicemail infrastructure for wireless carriers and you know, I don't know about you, but again, voicemail definitely not plays playing a big role these days and hasn't for quite some time and mostly I'm deleting voicemail at this point in my life. So we pivoted again as needed and, you know, I think good technology companies continue to innovate and we certainly did with the invention of multi line. And to answer your question about funding, always being privately funded and continuing to be, the multi line product has made, you know, has certainly sparked the interest of investors because it's one of those products that certainly has legs beyond what you see today like, we also have a pretty robust AI division that we, where we've been able to integrate some really cool AI solutions with our multi line product.
For instance, we have a product called CLARE. And I want to just talk about how that came about, the use of CLARE came about in a really interesting way. We had assumed, Jeff, when we started to have success in the financial services industry, we said, hey, I bet the pharmaceutical industry would love to use this multi line product because they're also highly regulated and their sales force can't just be rattling off claims to doctors and, you know, calling doctors willy nilly. So why don't we talk to them? Something kind of kicked in the back of my head. I said, let's not assume anything. Why don't we gather a bunch of pharm executives together and have some focus groups? And I'm glad we did because what we realized was while that was certainly a use case for multi line. They were much more interested in potentially using multi line for clinical
trials because coming out of COVID, no one had really created a turnkey method of doing a remote clinical trial and they were struggling to be able to do them. We have an AI sentiment analyzer called CLARE. Now we're not the only ones clearly that have, you know, call sentiment analyzers. But what CLARE does is it, it's a two way call sentiment analyzer with an uncanny ability to really be able to read emotion in the call and to be able to claw through the data at a very, very rapid clip at scale. So what we've done for the pharm industry is create this really nice tandem product of teaming up multi line with CLARE so that you can now do a remote clinical trial conversation, capture that discussion and from the doctor or they call them the clinicians or trial investigator with the patient. And to be able to claw through things like my elbow itches at noon when when I take the drug or, you know, you name it, I'm in a lot of pain at 2PM, when you think of thousands and thousands of calls having to go through say Zoom conversation recordings and try to collate that data manually. It's virtually impossible. So we've been able to help pharma companies now keep on track. Every day that they go over schedule for clinical trials that can be
as much as $100,000. So you just now think about what that looks like when they go weeks and months over schedule and we've been able to help keep them on track. But also mostly important, we've been able to keep the patients safe because the data from those trials is all collated and loaned. Jeff Bullas 00:32:45 - 00:32:55 Cool, so essentially you're saving the time of the pharmacy industry when they're doing these, you know, tests. John Rarrick 00:32:56 - 00:33:10 That's right. But it's really about patient welfare at the end of the day. I mean, I love it. It's great that we've been able to save the customers money, but their goal is mostly to get
to market on time, but to make sure that they've got the best product for their patients, right? Jeff Bullas 00:33:11 - 00:33:43 So what are the other roles of AI that you're exploring at the moment without giving away too much? Where do you see AI being used in mobile communications? Where do you see that unfolding in the next few years? Because a lot of the creativity is gonna come out of combining different or combining different combinations and doing things in ways that were never imagined because the technology allows us to do that such as AI. So what are some of the things that you see exciting for the role of AI and mobile technologies? John Rarrick 00:33:44 - 00:34:23 Well, Jeff, I'm really excited about the potentials for AI and public safety, particularly when it comes to first responder, public safety and how we can make some of these large public places, for instance, airports safer using AI being able to parse out particular sounds and being able to parse out particular visuals between what might and what might not be dangerous and to be able to notify first responders. I'm fascinated with being able to apply the technology for things like that. Anything that can help save lives and keep people safer out there. To me, that's a great use of AI. Jeff Bullas 00:34:23 - 00:34:51 Yeah. And essentially because it can scale so quickly because sometimes when a crisis happens, like there was a PR exercise with a company in Australia, a mobile company, telecommunications company and its call centers couldn't handle the inquiry. So AI helps scale crisis management. John Rarrick 00:34:52 - 00:35:20 Exactly. Help us get there quicker and safer I think is the key and listen,
we wake up every day and read about, about uses for AI that to me seem frivolous and you know, like we are, but maybe some of those frivolous uses are going to help us refine them for real reasons. So I'm okay with the direction things are going as long as ultimately we apply that technology to something that can actually make the world a better place. Jeff Bullas 00:35:21 - 00:36:07 And I think the area you mentioned with the, you know, in the pharma area and I’m not talking about farmers on the farm. We're talking about pharma companies, pharmaceutical companies. I think the opportunities lie in medicine with AI are just mind boggling. The challenge is sometimes dragging an old industry into a new world because even before COVID happened, you had to send information via a fax to the doctor or the doctor would never call you. It's like what? Anyway, So I think medicine being very traditional centuries old in terms of as an industry is gonna be, is being dragged, kicking and screaming into the future, which is great.
John Rarrick 00:36:08 - 00:37:04 That's right. And listen, ironically, you mentioned pharmaceutical and not farm as in farming. But another fascinating use that's really exciting for me to watch happen is the use of AI in agriculture. And that is bringing a new technology to the oldest,
the oldest industry out there possible. So with it, you've got a lot of small and medium sized farms that are so resistant to the technology yet, if we can get it right, can have such an impact on the world, being able to increase yields and increasing safety on it and on farms and large scale agricultural institutions. So that to me is also incredibly exciting and there's been some major advancements just in the last couple of years on that front as well. Jeff Bullas 00:37:05 - 00:37:53 It's the challenge for us as humans quite often, we're limited by our own frameworks and habits and routines and templates that have been posted since we were born. Whereas I think one of the things that interests me is the intersection of AI and creativity in that people say, well AI is going to take away our creativity. I think it's actually just going to amplify it.
And especially if we use it as a tool, not as a replacement, but as a tool and I think using AI to come up with new combinations and intersections of ideas in ways that we as humans look, we're not, we're pretty good at pattern recognition. But I tell you what big data is even better. John Rarrick 00:37:54 - 00:37:55 Absolutely. Jeff Bullas 00:37:56 - 00:38:18 Yeah. So just to wrap it up, there's a question I always ask. So what brings John real deep joy? And it might be several things. It might be a happiness ecosystem. What brings John great joy? John Rarrick 00:38:19 - 00:40:05 You know, maybe one of, this could be seen as a positive or a negative personality trait in mind.
But I suppose at the end of the day, I'm a bit of a people pleaser and I think everybody that has ever been involved in PR probably is right. We love to tell a good story. We like to see the reaction of telling that story. I've always wanted to make sure that whatever I was doing was gonna bring some happiness or joy to the world. And the only times I've ever left jobs was when I
saw that that wasn't happening and I'd seek out what was bringing joy. So I would tell you if you're waking up any day at all and you're doing something that doesn't make the world a better place or bring some joy to some person, you might be off track. And that's just me. Maybe that I can't speak for everybody out there. I can only speak for myself. But there's something about,
even, you know, even my business making wine when I, there's something about watching someone's face when they take a sip and they enjoy what they've had or they love it. That, man, that just makes my day. And that's a, I mean, that's a very small piece of the puzzle we talked about, you know, potentially having a small impact on global warming. Like that's a much larger piece of the puzzle. But I think if you embrace every day with, how can I make the people around me a little better than they were yesterday? What else can you ask for? Jeff Bullas 00:40:06 - 00:40:42 Okay. That's fantastic. And that, what I'm hearing is that essentially it's making a difference, whether it's something you create or something you say for people and that gets you up in the morning. Thanks John for sharing what brings you deep happiness. I've discovered that
happiness is complicated because it means many things to many people. And you know, we can break in two areas we can bring you, I suppose, fleeting joy versus deep sustained joy. And you've just talked about deep sustained joy. And thank you very much for sharing. John Rarrick 00:40:43 - 00:40:44 Pleasure being here, Jeff.
2024-02-22