#005: StoryPath - Software to Promote Human Flourishing

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In this episode of 'To a Million and Beyond,' host Matt Willis, partner with Wizard of Ads, engages in an enlightening conversation with Michael Boerner, Founder and CEO of StoryPath.us. They explore how StoryPath is bridging knowledge gaps across various industries, from healthcare to financial services and required training. Michael shares the inception story of StoryPath, the hurdles faced, and the innovative solutions driving their success. Michael also delves into his personal spiritual journey, the importance of data-driven storytelling, and how his previous experiences with Engage Technologies and Mission 17 paved the way for StoryPath's rapid growth. Tune in to discover how a clear mission can lead to massive impact and business success by delivering timely wisdom and radical process improvement.

00:00 Introduction and Personal Transformation
00:11 Welcome to To a Million and Beyond
00:17 Understanding Knowledge Gaps
00:48 Introducing Michael Boerner and StoryPath.us
01:24 Bridging Knowledge Gaps in Healthcare
02:17 The Rapid Growth of StoryPath
03:18 Defining and Identifying Knowledge Gaps
04:27 StoryPath's Approach to Knowledge Gaps
05:43 Innovative Solutions in Healthcare
09:19 The Power of Storytelling in Business
15:39 The Journey of StoryPath and Personal Reflections
22:48 The Evolution of StoryPath and Future Prospects
37:58 Smart Binging and Personalized Reminders
39:26 Challenges in Video-Based Learning
40:44 The Power of Pixie Dust in Branding
41:44 Balancing Technology and Content Creation
43:20 Exploring New Market Verticals
44:27 Innovations in Required Training
47:17 Ensuring Knowledge Transfer and Engagement
51:04 Meaningful Work and Company Culture
52:08 Key Inflection Points and Mistakes
58:21 Advice for Entrepreneurs
01:02:31 Future Goals and Vision for StoryPath

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Transcript

Michael Boerner: 0:02

And so that really just gave me a huge passion and desire to be able to see the same type of transformation that happened in my life, being able to be given to others.

Matt Willis: 0:11

Welcome to To a Million and Beyond. This is Matt Willis, partner with Wizard of Ads. Have you ever felt intimidated when a doctor, financial advisor, realtor, or other professional lays out options but it doesn't quite click? That's because there's a knowledge gap. You're missing key information they incorrectly assume you have. These types of knowledge gaps are everywhere. Since, as the saying goes,"a confused mind always says no." These knowledge gaps cost companies billions of dollars every year. Today we're talking to Michael Boerner, Founder and CEO of StoryPath.us. After starting and growing Engage Technologies to over$6 million a year in revenue by bridging knowledge gaps in healthcare, Michael is now building StoryPath.us to bridge knowledge gaps everywhere else. In today's conversation, you'll learn how a core life mission can be a through line for various business successes, making each step an opportunity for continued growth. I hope you enjoy.

Michael Boerner: 1:24

We've been working on rapidly evaluating how we can penetrate into new markets that we've decided to enter, the required training space. So we've had a major shoot. We had one of the top North American teachers from one of the medical professions who teaches continued education fly into Boise. Shot a full blown four hour course. She's one, best, educator, best, leader in that whole North American space for the last two years in a row. And then we also had a phenomenal, opportunity to meet with some of the top insurance executives that have been in that space 30, 40 years to look at how this technology can dramatically disrupt that space. So it's, we just get extraordinarily powerful meetings because we really have a tech and a methodology that people just haven't seen before.

Matt Willis: 2:17

So when you started StoryPath, did you have any idea that it would take off this quickly based on your previous experience with Engage and Mission 17?

Michael Boerner: 2:27

Not really, because we didn't really plan on creating a new technology focused outside of what we were doing before I was ready to focus it in on ministry. And then the opportunity came to be able to acquire the tech platform and focus it outside of clinical medical. And so that provided a whole new realm for us to stand on top of all of the previous learnings and tens of millions of dollars of sales and investments to now set it onto a course that can be, liberated into multiple markets that we're really thrilled about the response.

Matt Willis: 2:59

No kidding. you explained to me and when it finally clicked what you guys do, it was just absolutely mind blowing that one, something like that doesn't exist. And two, given the technical complications that you were able to crack that code. But before we get into all of that, which we will. How would you define a knowledge gap? When you say that your goal is to, bridge knowledge gaps, like those are three very packed words when strung together. What do you mean by that?

Michael Boerner: 3:31

Knowledge gap to us is any distance between a subject matter expert and the end user, consumer, customer, or pedestrian. And there's actually another word besides knowledge gap, and that's what we would refer to as a high value knowledge gap. And so there are knowledge gaps virtually everywhere, but what we try to do is find out where are the knowledge gaps in a contrast between high value where you've got a, a patient who has a choice of moment where they're trying to understand something, if it's clinical world. And if that doesn't go well, the stakes are high. And so those knowledge gaps, there's a lot of different knowledge gaps. My knowledge gap on how to put together an IKEA piece of furniture. Pretty, pretty good knowledge gap, but it's not high value.

Matt Willis: 4:19

Sure.

Michael Boerner: 4:20

And so that's where we try to identify where would this have the greatest difference or could it save the most money, make the most impact?

Matt Willis: 4:27

How are you identifying those knowledge gaps at this point? Is it primarily driven by people who are coming to you in desperation for you to help them solve them? Or are you going out there and doing a lot of research into where there's the most green space?

Michael Boerner: 4:42

It's contrasted both. We're heavily researching the market verticals to identify where are those market gaps in knowledge that could be turned into radical process improvement, because it isn't just an issue of a knowledge gap, it's also an issue of how do you close it efficiently? Learning management systems, the internet, there are great ways to close knowledge gaps, but they're riddled with difficulty, friction, and layers, and a signal to noise ratio. So what you really have is an opportunity to be able to mix the need, the knowledge gap with a frictionless moment to put them on a journey. To create mobile intelligence and nurture. And so we have a lot of focus and energy doing a lot of listening to where the markets are that need it. And then we have a number of people that know us and go, oh, you've gotta meet the CEO of this, or the CMO of that. And then we say yes to, you know, the ones that have scale. And so far, virtually all of those meetings turned into, oh wow, never standing like this. What's the next step? How do we get started?

Matt Willis: 5:42

That's incredible. what industries are you already building out or have you already built out?

Michael Boerner: 5:49

It's been pretty heavily used in the environments that we built at Engage, which had to do with ophthalmology, optometry, some in dentistry, as well as aesthetics in plastic surgery, dermatology, and then in surgical environments

Matt Willis: 6:04

quick before we

Michael Boerner: 6:05

yeah.

Matt Willis: 6:06

Are we talking about from, for example, the owner to the practitioner? Are we talking about from the practitioner to the, patient? What specific knowledge gaps are, would you consider high value? Which ones have you been solving?

Michael Boerner: 6:21

Yeah, the knowledge gaps really are, are quite multiple. I mean, when it comes to, let's say Matt, you're my doctor, and you say, Hey Michael, you need a surgical, procedure done, let's say a hip replacement or a knee replacement, that requires me to go, wow, what does that mean? I'm be going under the knife. What type of risk is there? What's going to happen with my rehabilitation schedule? Are there pre and post-op instructions? There are so many different characteristics to that particular end-to-end patient experience. And in fact, when we did this with, hip replacement surgery, I believe it was, we counted over one hundred items or pieces of knowledge that that patient needed to be aware of or know about. And when it comes to consistency across the continuum of care, it really makes a difference when you've got doctors, nurses, administrators, front desk people, all trying to carry the load of 132 items. How Consistency, how consistent, how consistently can that be done? It's very hard. So when you build a video-based nurture system that's delivered via text without an email, a password, or a login, so you're eliminating the barrier, the friction, and allowing that patient to go through just in time microlearning delivered from their doctor, wrapped in their brand. It's an extraordinary experience because it does what we all want. It takes the lift away from the surgeons, from the administrators. They don't feel like they're answering the same questions 10, 20, 30, 40 times a day. We've had some of the surgeons tell us, you've given me my life back. So it's a completely new way to bring consistency, but it also tremendously changes the weight of the patient to not have to remember it all because it arrives just in time.

Matt Willis: 8:05

What are, in this case, doctors doing currently to try to bridge that knowledge gap? Because if there's a hundred plus things to remember for each patient, and yet of these things that you're talking about seem like they're pretty important to make sure they're communicated. How are they currently reducing variability from patient to patient?

Michael Boerner: 8:25

It's a great question and it's one of the reasons why this became so attractive because the current systems they do use'cause they care deeply about getting this right, but they're using verbal, they're explaining it with the patient. It takes a lot of time. They're also having to do it in a brief amount of time when they've got, patient facing moments. But they also do it by here's your written instructions. Well, those written instructions often are really not the biggest priority when they get home to read'em all. They also often don't have a lot of context because they're not just in time. If you're reading'em all up and some people use, learning management systems. Some have apps which are great, but it often requires a tremendous amount of energy on the patient side to go create an account, go log into it, and remember to see it. And so there's a huge desire to do this well for people in healthcare. I have immense respect for just the load on them is extraordinary. Every day, all day long.

Matt Willis: 9:19

Sure. So before we get too far, how would you describe what StoryPath.us does?

Michael Boerner: 9:27

StoryPath is a methodology that allows us to take a moment we call a height of interest, time of need in the healthcare space. That would be diagnosis or pre and post op instructions. Or in the non-healthcare world, it would be the moment you're considering a product purchase that guides you through that process of understanding the product or a post purchase product moment, what StoryPath does is it tells the story based on that very specific moment, walks them through the journey. But what we're doing is we're building content for an audience of one, delivering on mobile with a sequence of short form videos. And now allow them to be able to understand exactly what they need to know wrapped in the brand of someone they trust. The big breakthrough is no longer needing to go register for an app, an email or password.

Matt Willis: 10:14

That's incredible.

Michael Boerner: 10:15

So yeah.

Matt Willis: 10:17

so dive into what you mean by story.'cause when I think, okay, I am at an optometrist office and I need to know about what the implications are of the procedure. My initial thought is well share the data. How does story factor into the data that I need downloaded in my head?

Michael Boerner: 11:38

Yeah, we often refer to it as data-driven video storytelling, and the data piece comes from highly contextualized journeys that we're taking people on. And so if you remember the, movie with Bill Murray, Groundhogs Day Lot people have seen this. Have you seen it? So it's a great film, but you haven't seen it. Well, you need to watch it. It's with, famous actor Bill Murray, who has to relive the same day over and over, which happens to be Groundhog's Day, and he finally gets so sick and tired of living that same day in this little town where he was doing a, a weather reporting with the groundhog actually, and he decides to kill himself. He's like, I can't handle this anymore. Then he finds out he can't. Every time he kills himself, he wakes up in the same day. The reason I tell that story is because what Bill Murray decides to do is he knows every person in that town. He knows exactly when a little boy falls outta the tree when a person needs the hamlet'cause they swallowed wrong or when someone needs their cigarette lit. So he goes, you know what? Since I can't kill myself, I might as well use all of this, what I would call data to go around a route throughout the whole town, and he knows exactly when Jimmy falls outta the tree, just in time goes right to jack up a car. When the elderly ladies have a flat tire and he knows exactly when to give the hunt maneuver to this particular person, he becomes like the mayor of the town because everyone just loves him. Because he's used his knowledge of their behavioral patterns that have been perfected over years to serve them. That's very similar to what we do with data. When we get with the customer or the doctor, the constituent owner, we walk them through a very detailed whiteboard session where we have them tell us what are the choice of moments, what are the nuances of this person's journey, all the way through your process, your system, and help us design a story that touches that person right at that moment where they're leaned in and want to learn, and then it drives them through in a whole process that makes the recipient feel like, while they're reading my mind, that's the next question I was going to ask. Well, how do we know all that? Because the clients that we're serving. Through a very intricate process of discovery. They tell us, we map it and we build things based on an end user journey, based on a specific persona. And that content is mapped towards that experience. But what we're looking for, and this is the real key Matt, is where does that mapping coincide with thousands or hopefully millions of people who have that same situation? You can do what I just described for individual clients, right? You can do these bespoke, beautiful workhorse deployments, but for our business model, it's even better if you can build a universal library that applies to every doctor's office for the specific procedure or diagnosis or this particular product or this particular, end user experience in whatever company it may be. So we have figured out a way to help take that moment, put them on a nurture based journey with micro learning and the ability to do that again without the friction. So you're really holding their hand all the way through beginning, middle, and end of this experience.

Matt Willis: 14:39

So the story, instead of talking about inserting a narrative into the data, what you're doing by story is you are building out what the customer journey is in making that buying decision or going under the knife, it's figuring out what is the sequential order of that they will be thinking about, wondering, et cetera, and basically crafting that into a story-based, informational platform.

Michael Boerner: 15:10

That's exactly right. And that's why our organization really has a combination of kind of three different types of companies. We call it the mixture between, in a kind of Venn diagram, Pixar, which is famous for doing not just movies, but really dwelling on and brooding over the storytelling. They get the story right before they ever turn on a single, animation, process. So we really are big, about telling the story in a way that moves the heart, not just the head. Secondly, we're much like, Google that develops very sophisticated technology and then third, much like a McKenzie or an Accenture that is dealing with tremendous amounts of consultative C-level innovation, either in a market sector or a particular company that's trying to make decisions usually around what we would refer to as radical process improvement. So for me, I just really love anything that dramatically improves human flourishing. But that really deserves and needs immense improvement on scale. And so we're living in the moment when you've got huge infrastructure changes that have allowed new business models to come about. And so that's what StoryPath is really all about, is bringing Story plus tech, plus really specific thinking about strategy and how to bring that together and apply it to a particular market vertical and most importantly, an end user customer experience that just blows their mind because it feels like it was designed just for them and where they're at in their own emotional journey related to their product, their service, or whatever it's, it was designed for.

Matt Willis: 16:39

How long has that been a passion of yours?

Michael Boerner: 16:42

Yeah. You know, this passion for me began kind of actually on a spiritual journey. I was raised in Boise, Idaho, went to college in Phoenix. And for some reason, I don't know how this got in my head. I wanted to be president of IBM. So IBM was a major amazing company back in the, seventies, eighties. so Matt, as I was dealing with that kind of major spiritual enlightenment, one of the things that was told to me by this gentleman is he said, truth never fears investigation. And there was something about that that really resonated with me, that put me on a journey to discovery that made me not afraid to be able to research what I believed and put it up against, biblical truth that said this. So I'm so grateful for that person's, you know, impacted my life. And so I started studying computer science and then had a substantial spiritual transformation. I ended up becoming a Christian and this concept of grace was quite the compelling understanding to me that I really had not understood before. And so I was dating a Christian gal and she was trying to explain to me the power of this concept of grace and having a relationship with Christ that was personal and having this moment when you receive Christ into your heart, as your savior. And that was the moment that actually created this forgiveness. And I was like, there's no way That's true. You have to earn it. Everybody knows you gotta be a good person, right? You gotta earn your way to heaven. So when I found out that biblically, that was actually incorrect, it was actually done by the whole spiritual message of Christ and the cross. And it's given as a gift, which you have to actually receive it. So when I had that massive realization, it took several months of processing and study to, to arrive on. It was kinda like this moment where this kind of scales fell off the eyes of like, wow, grace is real. And then it became, do people know about this thing? This is so incredible. And so that was the pivot point for me where it caused a significant change. And I wanted to say, you know what? Let's use the most powerful tools at that time in the late eighties, which were broadcast media, television, radio, print, billboards, et cetera. So we decided to start a nonprofit ministry that would get the churches to work together. In cities to be able to collaborate and bring really great flourishing to the city, and not just grow spiritually, but also help people with marriages, with their relationships, with leadership, et cetera. And after 17 years of doing a whole lot of very innovative and extraordinarily fun things, we started developing software because broadband had come about. And we'd spent all these years producing media and doing a lot of broadcast broadband comes along. People kind of forget, there was no real video on the internet before 2005 because it was all dial up. Remember when the internet was angry at you every time you got on it and hissed at you? So broadband comes along with 256K shows up. Wicked fast speed, right? So we realized you could shift storytelling to add video. Onto the web and make it seminal with a mouse click. And so we had worked with a lot of wonderful leading experts and so we built this website called I Questions that was designed to be the first safe and trusted place for your family, faith and career. And we started interviewing and shooting original content. We shot over 2000, originally produced videos with the bestselling experts from marriage and parenting and leadership, et cetera. So you had, Evan Lehman and Gary Smalley and Ken Blanchard and all these phenomenal, wonderful leaders all vetted. And we shot this content all the way back in the early two thousands before we had flat screens on our walls and broadcast HD on$75,000 Mary Cams and beautiful filmmaking on Dolly and track lights. But we made a destination website that would allow people to go there, look up the question they had, click it. And it's just like you and I looking at each other right now, all the way back in mid two thousands, and you could summon expertise. People forget that was just, that was not a thing when we started. There was no YouTube yet. So that led us to finding out a really exciting and a very difficult thing, which was this, you can have one of the best websites for the great content, but when people arrive at your site, they don't necessarily keep remembering to come back. So people say, oh, I love the website. You've got the best experts in the world. But they didn't remember to stop their day and go back to the website. And so after finding out how difficult it is to have exclusively a pull strategy. We realized, wait a minute, these people really want more content, but they need a way to be able to raise their hand and have this permission based moment to what we call reversing polarity and pushing content to people based on them saying, Hey, I would like this to come to me. And that's when the concept of drip based micro learning began and what we call an arc of engagement. So not just short form videos, but a sequence of them put together, much like the way you eat potato chips, just one after the next. But people love video. They just want it to be brief. And so there's something about this desire for brevity, which is a really enemy of complexity. So you can't explain a whole lot in two minutes, but you can, if you put them in a sequence, we call that arc of engagement or kind of a modern day yellow brick road. So that facilitated the need for us to start writing net software infrastructure that would organize these assets into these sequences. And then we designed the software so it could be wrapped in the brand of the end user constituent that made it available. And so we did this at first for churches, for counselors and others who,'cause we had all this great content, but frankly, back in mid two thousands, it needed to be integrated into their websites. But back then it was like, who, who did our website? Cousin Jimmy or someone volunteered. So they were willing to pay a SaaS based subscription fee. But the chasm that we did not anticipate was that it took a tremendous amount of integration, physical integration of our platform to a website

Matt Willis: 22:32

Sure.

Michael Boerner: 22:32

that was a real problem. Not even necessarily for the money, but just for the time and energy. So that created that real, friction point. But what ended up happening is, we had investors into the organization and someone said, Hey, let's send over a friend who worked for the billion dollar hospital system to take a look at what we had. And that ended up triggering a, wait a minute, this person said, could you do this for healthcare? So he said, well, we considered that, but we have no background in healthcare. And so they said, can we bring people over? We ended up having about six months worth of meetings and just one after the next, and they'd never seen anything like it. We were, by God's grace quite ahead of the, of the marketplace. And so we ended up landing a contract that went from, well, I think 125,000 was the first number all the way to a$7 million contract. And then we built out full blown libraries of content that walked through medical processes from heart and vascular procedures to oncology, all types of surgical environments or diagnosis based videos that would help a patient understand that beautiful sequence of information perfectly delivered with a smile and fully measurable. So that's kind of where it all started. And then all of a sudden you have this whole world where we had the honor of going out into that marketplace, which wasn't the original plan in design. But as you know, many startups begin with pivots.

Matt Willis: 23:50

For sure. How did you go about getting initial traction with Mission 17? how did you get investors? How did you start, landing churches? How did you build credibility at that point?

Michael Boerner: 24:05

Well fortunately, we had the background of working in the ministry environment with churches, major organizations, and we had the honor of doing an awful lot in those 17 years. We built a lot of great relational equity. We'd become really great at being able to tell a story. When it came to moving into the internet, it pivoted over well, but it was kind of a fun scenario, and I have to credit the people in the healthcare world, the particular hospital, they were filled with visionary leaders. These people were absolutely looking for the forefront of innovation. And so we had these extraordinary meetings and they said, Hey. We think what you've designed here is the future. Now, we didn't design it for healthcare, but what everyone realized is we created a new best practice for transferring knowledge instantly, especially if you treat the content in the same way. When you eat a cinnamon roll, what we all want is that hot, soft, mushy, middle. Like just gimme that piece. And so when we build a sequence of videos, we try to make sure every video is so concise, so concentrated, it's like, Ooh, that was so good. I wanna watch the next one. And so you build this arc of engagement through a beautiful through line of listening. And so when we apply that to medical, I'll never forget this meeting of these extraordinary executives. They said, could you build the sequence, this arc of engagement for bariatric surgery? I said, absolutely. But just one question. What's bariatric surgery? It's one of the most amazing meetings. We had a long history of producing, but a great producer, frankly, does not need a tremendous amount of subject matter expertise. What they need is the ability to bring together the finest minds who are the subject matter experts, and view it from a fresh new lens, and bring together not just the experts, but also the people that we're serving and walk through our entire storytelling process so that by the time you're done with the video content, it's some of the finest in the world because you're seeing it from a new perspective. But you do have to bring really great talent into the kind of documentary and filmmaking process.

Matt Willis: 26:06

Yeah.

Michael Boerner: 26:06

So that's what we had the honor of doing. We ended up going on to win, the most innovative new healthcare company at the Web 2.0 Show in San Francisco Nationally. It was just a huge honor to go like, where did these guys come from? And I'll never forget meeting with a VC in those days because we shifted it from a ministry to a for-profit because we wanted the I Question site to be free of charge. Which meant advertising that was carefully selected. But advertising is against the rules of a nonprofit. It creates what's called unrelated business income. So that means we had to create a for-profit entity and take on investors versus donors. And so investors would prefer a return on their investment in this lifetime. So we worked hard to be able to pivot it, to try to really succeed for, the sake of the shareholders. But what ended up happening was we entered a space that we really hadn't anticipated. So someday I'd like to write a book Accidental Business Guy.'cause it really wasn't part of the plan. But it ended up bringing us into space of innovation. But that led to working with all these phenomenal Fortune 500 companies. There's a particular meeting I really appreciated where we were sharing this with a venture capital firm, and I think we're in, in the Bay area. And he goes, you know what my favorite video is of all these healthcare videos that you've, you've done, I said, what's, which one's that he goes. The one where it shows you where to park when you come in to have your surgery. He goes, what you guys have done is you've looked at this from a comprehensive design thinking approach where you're thinking about the entire patient experience, not just once you get into the surgical suite. And so that's really what we tried to bring to this is thinking about what it's like to even pull up to a giant campus and not even knowing where to park or what building the entry level door to go back. So we really tried to apply this extraordinary view, again, back to Pixar. Telling the story in a way really respects the end user and what they don't know and where they are emotionally in that process.

Matt Willis: 27:58

you're exactly right. That, in that context and probably plenty of others, like when you walk in and you know you're gonna have an operation done, like it's vulnerable enough feeling like, Hey, I'm about to be put under open, and I don't want to come across though I'm completely ignorant of everything. The more I know, the more comfortable I feel, the more confident I feel in what is about to take place. One of the things that really stood out to me about what you're saying, I think so often the entrepreneur type world, there's a big focus on the present. What are you doing in the present? what I hear from you is, while it doesn't sound like any of these businesses or ventures have failed, what has happened is with each one you have learned, you have grown, and then that by God's grace have opened doors for new opportunities. And you had no idea that Engage Technologies would come about when you started Mission 17, and you probably had no idea that StoryPath was going to be the brainchild of the both of those. so it just, happens that the more that we continue to learn and grow, we don't necessarily know if the thing that we're working on in the present is going to be the thing that we spend the rest of our lives focused on. Or if the Lord is going to open up alternative doors or additional doors for us to walk down.

Michael Boerner: 29:30

So true. And along the way of any entrepreneurial journey. There are certainly mistakes, failures. I've had plenty of my own mistakes and failures along the way. And a real big part of that is figuring out what the learning lessons are in the hypothesis that don't work, and the failures or the things that occur. The human dynamic, the hiring. There's a really challenging combination with what we do because we've mixed together the feeling and the tempo of a startup. Often we hired people that never have worked in a startup before. We usually attracted very extraordinarily talented people. And sometimes that mix of coming from a Fortune 500 to work in a startup, it's, it's sexy and it's alluring, but it's like, wow, this is not at all. And we think in times of, a week is like a quarter.

Matt Willis: 30:19

Yeah.

Michael Boerner: 30:19

You know, in, in the corporate world. And then you also have this very odd combination of mixing a filmmaking culture with a technology culture. And those are just completely different methods.

Matt Willis: 30:32

Right brain.

Michael Boerner: 30:32

Yeah. And they're different, methods of leadership style. And so your culture is kind of a bit of a challenge because you're mixing two worlds. And then the third world is you have to become a subject matter expert in the domain you're trying to serve. So most of the things we ever, entered into, we didn't know anything about them when we started, couldn't even spell ophthalmology. So anytime you enter a specific market. You have to really rapidly understand who you're serving. Go to the conferences, take notes like crazy, do a huge amount of listening, bring together advisory boards that become your advice and, editorial boards for your content design. There's just a lot going on because most organizations don't take on most filmmaking companies don't develop software. Most software companies don't develop content, and most of them don't have to learn a marketplace at this level to inform their storytelling. So it goes back into the customer's hands, with a level of expertise that's necessary to really make everyone happy and make the end user patient, in this case, in healthcare, extraordinarily satisfied. So, yes, there's a lot to it. You gotta put the time and energy, but one of the things that really always kept our team and me personally really excited about is we call what we do, really transforming lives by delivering timely wisdom. And so it really comes back to, there's a great verse in, the Bible in New Testament. John chapter eight, verse 32, if you know the truth. The truth will set you free. Well, that isn't just true spiritually. It's also true when it comes to your health, when it comes to surgical processes, when it comes to exercise, leadership, parenting. So wisdom has an immense impact on human flourishing. And so being able to transfer knowledge really simply, and at scale that moves someone from a place of despair into a place of flourishing is, there's just nothing more rewarding than that.

Matt Willis: 32:22

That's incredible. I wanna circle back to something you said earlier where you wanted to become the CEO of IBM, and then because of a radical change, spiritually, you started a nonprofit. in that season where you were processing through that, did it feel like you were turning your back on a desire for, or a pursuit of the successful life?

Michael Boerner: 32:50

Yeah. Not one bit. I was so enamored by this revelation and the power that it brought, and I was also really blessed to be poured into and discipled by a phenomenal man named Lane Franks, who's still my dearest friend in the world 40 years later. And when someone really pours and cares and invests in you, it really strengthens you from a, a very young, you know, spiritual age. And so that really just gave me a, a huge passion and desire to be able to see the same type of transformation that happened in my life, being able to be given to others. And so it just, you know, never bothered me at all. I, I probably have never made such a small amount of income for the first 17 years of my career, being married to my amazing wife, Natalie, and our four daughters. So, you know, I think the height of my income. When I made the transition, gosh, back in 2005, I think it was like$55,000. So you don't go into ministry to make money, that is for certain.

Matt Willis: 33:50

Yeah.

Michael Boerner: 33:50

But I have just never had more fun than innovating in that space. And then when we had the opportunity to get into the for-profit world, kind of almost by accident because of Frank takes care of shareholders, it added a whole nother environment to be able to innovate and survive and thrive and grow and go through the mistakes and go through the learnings required to be able to build something from scratch. It's just quite the combination of learning. So I'm really enjoying today being able to apply all those learned lessons in both the spiritual world, specifically working in ministry and churches, but also, really serving corporate America businesses and those who really are, very frankly impacting lives in their own way because. You know, God made all of this. It isn't just spiritual and secular. And so everyone who's doing what they do yourself, everyone who's doing business is adding value to people's lives, creating employment, creating family structures that have income. So just a real thrill to be able to do that on, you know, both worlds, but to use the combined synergistic, sharing of knowledge and learning from each of these so we can synthesize all those build, measure, learn cycles into whatever we're working on.

Matt Willis: 35:01

that's incredible. And one of the things that I find the most fascinating about your story, is the concept doesn't exist outside of your business. it's not an industry like you are doing something so truly unique. And so there's no way that, when you started Mission 17, that you knew what you were building toward. you were innovating something completely new. it's just absolutely mind blowing to me.

Michael Boerner: 35:32

So true.

Matt Willis: 35:33

And now you're literally creating an entirely new industry,

Michael Boerner: 35:37

yeah. Well, we certainly would've expected by 2025 as we're recording this, we would've had a number of competitors because it's a mobile world now. Everyone prefers video for their methodology of learning. Somehow we've all kind of landed on this agreed upon preference for text being the way we would prefer to communicate, but I think a lot of the differentiation that we've, ended up being blessed to develop comes from being story first, not tech first. And so since we've always focused on story from the beginning back, I mean the very first big project I ever worked on was in 1989 when I worked, was in the Yellow Pages and the coolest tech in the world back then. Before the internet was something called audio text where you could call a local phone number, type in a four digit code and you can get a business report or soap opera update or all kinds of other stuff. And we thought, wow, wouldn't it be interesting to put a four digit code in that actually gave spiritual growth information? So we got a bunch of churches together to unify to do a double full page, and then a third page in Spanish. So that was the coolest tech back in 89. And so all along the way, it's always started with story first. And then we've constantly looked at or developed technology for one simple reason, scale and efficiency. And so because we start with story and then we've developed technology to be the driver to tell that story, and then we focus it on an industry that we go and learn a lot about. For some reason that combination is hard to find and so far all of our clients have told us we don't know of another organization that does what you do and has technology that's capable of doing it the way you do it.

Matt Willis: 37:38

Why do you think that is? Why aren't there any true competitors out there?

Michael Boerner: 37:43

Well, I think there's plenty of competitors. I don't think there's any direct competitors yet, which I'm sure that will change at any moment. But I think a lot of it has to do with the way that our interoperability works. And without giving away our secrets, it's really has a lot to do with this component of being able to measure completion rates, measure behavior, remind if people don't perform properly, or complete video, watch goals. And being able to have this nurture you to be able to, like in our technology, if someone binges ahead so they watch five videos in a row, they just keep hitting next. They don't wanna wait for the next morning for it to arrive. That smart binging allows people to go ahead and then we give them, if they watch five videos in a row, the next morning gives'em episode six. And if they forget to watch, our technology knows they didn't. So it sends them a reminder, but it isn't just a reminder. This is the magic, it's a reminder specifically related to that particular exact use case. So, if you're my doctor and you put me on this yellow brick road to learn about my, hip replacement surgery, the videos are gonna be going through it all just in time, including, Hey, good evening, it's the night before surgery. Make sure tomorrow morning you cannot eat anytime after midnight, anything. Otherwise we'll have to cancel your surgery. Well, it knows. If I didn't watch it will remind me, but the reminder will say, oops, Dr. Johnson wants to remind you to please watch this important videos. It relates to your upcoming surgical process or your post-op instructions, or whoever it may be. So because we have this beautiful, smart binging reminding that's fully in context to what I am going through just in time, it's a completely different way to look at things. So I believe one of the reasons why is because most companies want to build one of the finest business models, which is SaaS. Software as a service, which is what we have. But they're often not the people who design the stories, they just leave it to others.

Matt Willis: 39:37

Yep.

Michael Boerner: 39:37

that process is far more complicated than people realize. And so I think that's why this has worked well is because we take them all forward.

Matt Willis: 39:45

I remember I spent several years, selling software for a learning management system, and they were getting into the video based learning, I directly asked'em, Hey, why why is it taking so long? And two, there's some courses that were just not moving into video-based format. Why is that? their response was, the challenge with video-based learning is that oftentimes industries are changing, are growing, there's new, SOPs, et cetera, so quickly, and video is much harder to swap out than if it's simply text-based.'cause you have to get all the equipment out, you have to get all the, stage setup, et cetera. But with you guys, you've managed to build the infrastructure where you're able to close those high value knowledge gaps. And that's just built into the business model, which I feel like most businesses of the three spheres that you discussed, as far as, Accenture, as far as Google, and as far as Pixar, I feel like most of your competitors, if you will, are leaning more toward one, maybe two of those, and certainly not three.

Michael Boerner: 41:04

Well, I think your analysis is exactly right and in my career what I found is those who did not come up from the storytelling film production or agency world really focus on the core engine, which is the technology. And they just wanna let others do the content. And that's a very fair and reasonable hypothesis. But what I've found is it's really difficult to have people use a platform like ours to do the specificity of what it does at the very specific moments. And do it themselves. They're usually too busy. They need someone else to be able to drive that process. But the price, that process is extraordinarily detailed. And so that's why we also try to find market verticals that are both large, high value, high risk, or the engagement, a component, we would call this an engagement scale. So rating from a 10 down to a zero, you know, having surgical, procedures on your body or cataract surgery and putting, scalpels or lasers in your eyeballs. Pretty high value moment where you wanna understand what's going on. But if I told you, Hey, Matt, I'd really like to sell you, you know, my chapstick, that pretty much goes down to maybe an integer, maybe below one. So there's not a leaned in moment. So that's why we try to focus towards the height of engagement scale, but also in content. That by and large, is pretty evergreen. Once you build it, it'll actually stay true for years and years and years. And if there is a modification because it's bite size. We can go in and make that modification one time and it goes to the entire platform. So that's a big part of the strategic decision making of what markets you enter.

Matt Willis: 42:38

That's really neat. So we've talked a lot about healthcare, but StoryPath is not focused on healthcare. What are some of the other verticals or industries that you at StoryPath are pursuing or are already engaged in, and what are some specific business types within those verticals?

Michael Boerner: 42:58

Yeah. Great question. So when we ended up, focusing the platform, now that we're, have a new company, a new brand that's going outside of clinical medical, we started to really evaluate what other marketplaces are there that have high value knowledge gaps, mass scale, and have not yet been. Radically improved based on new infrastructure. We're all very familiar with what happened to transportation with Uber. There was a huge infrastructure improvement. Same thing with, Airbnb. Same thing with Netflix too. Blockbuster. What other industries are there that have not yet gone through that transformation? And what we begin to look at is financial services. We looked at a number of other markets where they're pretty good size. Then we realize, there's Kind of this, not hidden, but very quiet industry that's pretty massive. And that is something you would label required training. And required training is kind of in two big, buckets. One would be anyone with a license from a realtor to a doctor, to a school teacher. And all of the people who have a license, like an attorney, et cetera, must go through a certain amount of hours of continuing education every year. So we went wag. That's, that's a very interesting market because there's, you know, roughly 25 plus million people who have licenses. And then on the other side of required training are the people who work in corporations where they have to be trained on heavy equipment and construction, or sexual harassment training or chemical training or whatever it may be. Turns out there are 75 plus million people in the US that have those jobs that require over 450 million hours a year of requirements for OSHA and many other regulatory environments. So we thought, wow, that's a very large environment of market vertical. But what I actually like about the market vertical as well, is it's one of the only ones I've ever seen where content is a requirement that they have to consume to keep their job. So they don't get fined if they don't watch, they actually lose their license. And so we realized the last major innovation in that space was probably in the mid to late nineties with a learning management system. And LMSs are wonderful tools. We, we, we have high regard for them, the challenges. They've not really been massively transformed since, you know, the late nineties. And so with our technology, it allows us to be able to break content experiences for really large market verticals and also allow them to then consume content in the margins of their life on the go. Instead of sitting for an hour to three hours, they can actually have it drip to them on their mobile device. No app, no email, no password. But our technology knows who they are and knows if they watched and lets them binge forward and lets us ask them questions that are required for knowledge transfer to be proved. And to collect immense amounts of sentiment. So this is the space we decided to go all in on. And so we have the first deployments in that space, which have come back extraordinarily great because of the simplicity, the completion rates, the sentiment feedback has just been wonderful. So right now, that's what we're in the middle of, pursuing both of those sides, people with licenses, people who required training, and we're meeting with those who are the subject matter experts in that space, the large corporations behind it, the large LMS systems to bring our technology in to radically improve that entire process and frankly, be able to create a much easier consumption process, but also collecting immense amounts of feedback, which has really not been possible to do.

Matt Willis: 46:35

That's incredible. how are you ensuring comprehension? Are there exams at the end of the sequence? Is it watching their eyes to make sure that they're not, it while driving, for example?

Michael Boerner: 46:50

Yeah, good question. So when it comes to proof of knowledge transfer, the way an LMS handles that is it can actually track, once you create a login in an account, it knows what percentage of the video you watched or what your time on site is, and it also couples the video content to questions that are required to move forward. So fortunately our technology is able to do exactly that. So our tech knows if you watched a video, what percent you watched. So we set completion rates that have to be over 75% of video completion. And in addition, you have to answer the question properly. If you don't, it doesn't even provide you a next button. You can't advance. So our technology knows once you get it right, it gives you the button that says next and you can continue to move forward. So this allows us to have all the benefits of a hundred percent trackability. We also find there's a decent amount of people out there that just scam the LMS by just moving their mouse or having their assistant move it, and they just go take the test at the end. Which isn't necessarily bad because if you know that information, but the main concept here is creating true engagement that that produces professional advancement in their careers. So our technology, you can't scam it. So it knows if you watched or not. And if you did not watch every video to at least 75%, the certificate is not deployed. In coupling to that, you also have to answer usually five questions inside of an hour and a half piece of content, properly. So it's a really great combination. But what's fascinating in much of the particularly, corporate and construction world and agricultural, these are all desk-less workers. These are not people that sit at a computer and so they all have mobile phones. So now we have the ability to be able to have them consuming content wherever they are, as well as giving feedback. This is a great feature because they can actually give feedback on what they're seeing from that particular, specific episode and that content and sentiment. Suddenly you can go to the edges of your networks of people and get on the ground real-time feedback at scale in real time. That gives us immense amounts of ability to serve that customer that they haven't had before. But most importantly, it's the convenience of not having to pull people together in a single meeting, because that's how most companies get over the fact they don't have, desks and computers. They have to stand there, can tell you construction workers not their biggest, desire to go stand in a meeting,

Matt Willis: 50:11

Yeah.

Michael Boerner: 50:11

they can consume it on their mobile device huge differentiator.

Matt Willis: 50:14

What are some examples of high knowledge, high value knowledge gaps in the financial service space that you are looking into potentially bridging?

Michael Boerner: 50:24

Yeah, in the CE space, the continued education for those folks, of course, is constantly changing regulations, FINRA and other regulatory bodies that, deal with financial services market vertical are really strict. And so being able to produce content that is approved by the subject matter expert leaders, what we find is in any one of these market verticals, there are always a small handful of really famous folks that most people follow and have great appreciation and respect for, and they're the category kings for the editorial credibility. So what's great for us is we already kind of focus on going to those who already have mass distribution, mass respect. And they're looking for a much better mousetrap, so to speak, to be able to put into the hands of their constituents. So there's no thought leadership and innovation and a tremendous amount of additional tools that we haven't had before.

Matt Willis: 51:17

That's really neat. curious, you mentioned meaningful work earlier. What does meaningful mean to you?

Michael Boerner: 51:26

Yeah. You know, for us, in the company culture we have, there are a whole lot of people here that really enjoy coming to work and working on something that creates a difference in people's lives. And, you know, no matter how menial anyone's job is, every job that exists is meaningful because, you know, comes calling in our life and things. Even a, person who empties it, trash, without that, we would've a mess. So, every job is meaningful. It's just particularly special when we can work on content that can be transmitted and that scale to someone to help them be a better dad, better mom. Help them be a better leader, help them understand how to manage conflict. We produce this really exciting piece with a phenomenal business leader named Ford Taylor called Social Covenant, which teaches people how to manage conflict, how to go through a six step apology, how to create peace in their workplace and get rid of gossip. So things that have immense downstream impact because of wisdom that can be applied instantly. This is extraordinarily meaningful to our team.

Matt Willis: 52:27

What were some of the key inflection points in your journey to build Mission 17? Engage and now StoryPath, key decisions that you had to make or difficult, seasons that you had to navigate.

Michael Boerner: 52:42

Yeah, when we started Mission 17, early on, it used to be called Mission Media when we first started back in, 90, 91. That was all about getting the same stakeholders to work together. So I had to go door to door one at a time and meet with the pastors and say, Hey, what about this vision of us working together? There is this great verse in John chapter 17 that says, Hey, Jesus was praying God make them all one, make my followers one. Why? So the world would believe so that we're unified, that we can show up as a family. So getting pastors to work together was a huge passion and desire. And once you get people like that to work together and get together in proximity, they build friendships. And the friendships lead to trust. And trust leads to really great, ability to work together and foster citywide applications where they're thinking about outside their four walls. And how do we bring flourishing to our city, you know. What prime or what negative things are happening that we could push back on? How could we help families really grow in their relationships, et cetera. And so as we moved into the work that started in the medical world, it actually was very similar. We started meeting with one doctor and then another one, and then we got these doctors to come together and go, what if we built this in unity and had your voices bring a beautiful pathway of your collective wisdom to the patient experience? And that ended up being, you know, one of the great joys as well.'cause these are some of the sharpest, most educated people who every day, all day long create better lives. Ophthalmologists let people literally see again. And so it's just a, a blessing to be able to work together with people who are making meaning together and putting it into a framework. They can really do that at a very inexpensive, SaaS offering and individually bless patients, you know, throughout the nation. And then we've been fortunate to see some of these deployments begin around the world.

Matt Willis: 54:33

What about mistakes? Have there been seasons where stuff hit the fan and you're like, I don't know if this business is gonna be viable because. Fill in the blank happened.

Michael Boerner: 54:46

Yeah. And the mistakes, boy, that's always a fascinating thing when you're entering a new market. It's very much like Lewis and Clark who are going out for an expedition and they have a certain amount of supplies that'll last a certain amount of time. And they realize in order to survive, they have to kill and eat along the way. And you don't know exactly how long that is. And will there be wildlife, will there be fish? Will there all.

Matt Willis: 55:11

a great analogy.

Michael Boerner: 55:12

Trying to figure out your hypothesis of will this total addressable market in this particular service, addressable part of the market purchase, what we have and what's our manufacturing process? How long does it take? So there's so many variables and that's why so many startups, fail. You have to pick, I think, a particular market that you care about and you better love learning and you better love putting in the extra hours. And that's frankly, really hard when you've got little ones at home or you're on the road. I'm really grateful for, one of the things that came out of Covid is it reset the whole world to use Zoom. And so we don't have to be on the planes all the time, which is a benefit, but it used to be you had to buy a ticket and we were gone traveling, usually two to three weeks out of the month presenting our strategy to major companies. And then who knew how long that was gonna take? So one of the, many mistakes that we made, one of them had to do with going into the retail pharmacy market. So we had a history in our first company to be able to land, billion dollar to$10 billion companies. They would pay us really good sums. They would often pay for exclusivity, they would pay us to scope. And then we had this idea to use these data-driven moments to go into retail pharmacy, where when you picked up your medication, all the data that came from all the switch points have what's called an adjudication moment that would come into our technology and put you on this beautiful yellow brick road to explain what your medication is and how to use it as it connects to the diagnosis from your doctor. It's phenomenal. However, what we didn't know, the big mistake was not understanding. If we're going to have a SaaS based offering that was not exclusive and you're gonna offer it to Kroger and Rite Aid and Walgreens and CVS, that each of those companies, many of them had between, five and 10,000 locations and because they had such a giant landscape, they were very used to everyone under the sun coming to them and being willing to actually pay to do pilots and pay to go through all this, not have them write you a check, but have you write the checks.

Matt Willis: 57:20

Yeah.

Michael Boerner: 57:21

And we got yes to death. Everyone loved what we had. But then through that whole process, we thought, oh, we're gonna get to a check. No, we actually are gonna get to another department that will say yes. But then you finally get to the place where they go, oh, well you guys need to do a pilot. Well, who's gonna pay for it? Well, you guys are, we may give you a small, tiny little bit of money, but the ability to actually get to a contract close and a master service agreement was gonna end up being three to five years all at our expense. And if you didn't raise enough capital to go through that gauntlet, especially when you're telling your shareholders, Hey, we're getting yes, they love this now, it was a big deal to even get a yes. But what we were not prepared for in our previous experience, actually was somewhat betraying because we found when we got yeses, they would get to a check, which they did. But what we fundamentally missed, this is a completely different industry. We didn't have the power of exclusivity. So we were actually expecting them to pay for what we were used to getting paid for. And just like, the famous Walmart example of, they make everybody, really stretch because of everyone wants that large scale scenario. So there's multiple things that you learn that you don't know, you don't know. And it's a very dangerous spot, which is why it's so great to have a phenomenal board of directors and others to do your strategic, planning with as you go into these new markets.

Matt Willis: 58:38

Yeah.

Michael Boerner: 58:39

all part of the learning process.

Matt Willis: 58:41

And so I'm curious, what advice would you give to someone who's building a business and they're questioning whether they're going in the right direction or the wrong direction? Am I spreading myself too thin? Should I focus on maybe a different segment within this vertical? What insights have you gained from your experience?

Michael Boerner: 59:02

Yeah. Wow. There's a lot there. One is, get back to the Lewis and Clark analogy. If you and I were, Lewis and Clark and Indians came up and said, Hey, we're gonna give you guys a bunch of seeds, assuming we could understand what they were saying. They give us all these seeds of all different kinds. We don't know what they are. And if you plant them, you don't know how long the gestation period is, how long it's gonna take to grow outta the ground or produce fruit. It's very much like that in a startup entering a market vertical, you think you know what you're planting, but you don't know how long it's going to take for that to bear fruit. So what you end up doing is you end up taking a lot of meetings and planting lots of seed in multiple places, and then pretty soon you're stretched very thin because you're trying to hedge your bet and take every meeting you can. Now all of a sudden you've got this indigestion of all these different things that you're trying to put through your process while you're trying to isolate what is our best market vertical that has velocity and near term revenue, or at least some sort of predictability for the outcome of how long the revenue takes. So your shareholders, you have to raise more money, can understand what that's going to require in terms of time and burn rate, and you know how many months until you get to cash lower brick even, or you get to your next round based on growth. So it's just a lot to figure that out. And so that's why you really want to bring in great advisors and a great board of directors. What's difficult about a board of directors is they can be one of the finest assets in the world, and selecting them properly is really important. What's tough about a board is it has a important and disproportionate amount of influence and power, and that's really the CEO or founder's boss. The challenge is oftentimes the people who end up arriving on your board may or may not have the right relevant market vertical experience. And so I've been in board meetings, I'll never forget one we had in Orange County, gosh, 15 years ago, where we had, six board members. Five of them came from the same business vertical, and one of'em came from a SaaS base environment. And I'll never forget, I think it was, it was either four or five in a row, said, we need cash flow now. We need cash flow. The sixth one who actually came from a very famous company, you know, the name Giant SaaS company said, guys, that's exactly the wrong advice. Cashflow is the last priority. Right now it's scale. We need to figure out how to have mass adoption of our offering so that we garner immense amount of market share. Then we turn on the economic engines. And I'll never forget, that person had the gravitas where everyone else from a different industry went, oh, it was the antithesis of their advice because in their market sector, that was the wrong advice. And it was for their market sector, for what we were in. It was the right advice. However, that particular board member unfortunately passed away literally a few months later. And so the mix of advice, what's really difficult if you're truly innovating, is you're trying to bring people in. And I found this same thing when it comes to key hires. So if you hire a person who came from a very specific market vertical. They may or may not actually know the innovative way to do this, but their past experience has proven everything they've ever done was golden. But that application of their knowledge in this new space may not be what you need. So it's like, Hey, you're an athlete. Great, come on over. Well, they're a golfer and now they're in hockey very different, you know, types of context. So you have to be extraordinarily careful who you bring onto the board because often you get into places of ideological debate and the board may be right. You gotta be very careful. Listen, at the same time, the applicable knowledge of how to deal with execution in a particular market vertical better be being informed by people who really know it. But most of the time they're really good at what they did and so that it's never betrayed them before.

Matt Willis: 1:02:51

Where is StoryPath now and where are you trying to go?

Michael Boerner: 1:02:56

So where we're going now is trying to really stand on the experience of the last, nearly 30 years of doing what we've been doing and telling a story that has high levels of relevance can bring impact to both the end user as well as the one that's in the relationship to that constituent. We have this amazing technology and we have the opportunity to stand on all the learnings from our clinical background and then bring that outside of clinical into the broader market. We're really trying to figure out how to apply it into these channels that have existing masses of people they're serving and come in as a servant to that particular marketplace. So we can kind of be like the intel inside to an existing channel that allows'em to be able to dramatically improve. And usually we're living in that moment where it's quite an inflection point when new infrastructure can actually create a dramatic improvement of the customer experience, but often bending the cost curve way down. And so that's a big opportunity and that's a rare moment when that happens. And so that's what we're trying to focus on. We're also excited to be able to focus the technology on our ministry pursuits in Mission 17, to put this in the hands of churches all over North America. As well as around the world. So there's so many applications for it when it comes to spiritual growth and discipleship. So we're really blessed to be at that intersection and it's amazing how many times we share it with a ministry and they're like, wow, this is amazing. We've got a business, can you do it for them? Or, Hey, this business, hey, we've got a ministry support. Can you help them? So it's quite a synergetic approach to really the same methods of learning that applied to very different sectors.

Matt Willis: 1:04:35

Yeah. So you've talked about bespoke work as well as library work. Do you have any libraries completed now?

Michael Boerner: 1:04:44

The first library that we released was actually in the dental hygiene space for continue education. And so we worked with a wonderful leader named Brandy Hooker Evans, who is a national speaker. And so we took some of her existing content, put it into the platform and deployed it. It's an hour and a half, it's called Stellar Outcomes. Just beautiful. And she's a delight and has the respect of major, major brands. And so that's been put out in the market. The response, the completion ratios, the analytics. Amazing. And so it's been nice to be able to show that efficacy to the major companies that we're working with.'cause in the CE world, especially in the dental space, you have the end user pay version. So if you and I are dentists or hygienists, we can actually pay to consume our continuing education. And then there's also a pretty large percent of that market, probably 70%, that's free ce. So we can take it for free, but it's sponsored by Colgate or Crest or you name it. So those large companies sponsor it so they can have visibility among that particular group of very qualified professionals. And so we've been able to do both of those to bring sponsors in as well as the end user pay. We've added the paywall, so there's a number of different applications. And then the next library, we've already shot a four hour course, that'll be coming out here soon. That'll be, distributed throughout North America. We're also working on courses in, the corporate learning space with great experts like Ford Taylor, so they can be consumed by, the training components of major corporations. And then the safety piece, we're working on major partnerships with those who are in the safety and required training space as well. And so far. The response has just been off the charts. One of our new team members who's got a long, major corporate career, never forget, She walked by and said, did you hear what they said? People never say those kinds of things. We said, yes. We're just, we're really honored and blessed and that kind of response each time. And it's truly humbling and we're excited to be able to put it to work in a way that hopefully exceeds all of our expectations.

Matt Willis: 1:06:45

Yeah. seems like with every new course that you create, you're doing everything phenomenally, right? Not cutting any corners. And so as soon as that's done, it sounds like with every course you do, the momentum builds more and more. The referrals come in more and more, and it sounds like it's very much like a duck on the water, as they say. It looks frictionless on the top, just super peaceful, but there's

Michael Boerner: 1:07:14

Yep.

Matt Willis: 1:07:14

a lot of moving parts under the surface.

Michael Boerner: 1:07:17

Yeah, you're exactly right. A lot of feet moving there. What's a blessing for us is every time we build a new build, it just keeps getting sharper, better, cooler, more refined. We've integrated AI into this whole piece. A friend of mine, Steve Gandera, calls it Sage on the stage guide by your side. So you have this beautiful video through line. I'm an expert. And then right below the video, under every video is an ai, application where they can tap, it covers up the page, they can ask any question they want, but this is AI built on the chat, GPT-4, framework, but it's only indexed on the subject matter experts, books, tapes, videos, white papers, It's not open to the world. This is just giving wisdom in the power of 24/7 AI built right into our framework. Along with all the different things that go on with being able to set the delivery time, I can set it to whatever time I want to arrive. It's amazing how every single time we build a new bill, it just keeps getting more and

Matt Willis: 1:08:13

That's incredible.

Michael Boerner: 1:08:14

Well, we have a phenomenal team that loves doing it

Matt Willis: 1:08:17

that's amazing. Is there a way that we can give any viewers or listeners access to see what this looks like in action regardless of the context or the industry?

Michael Boerner: 1:08:29

Yeah, we just built a new framework called Get Matt Willis' podcast to 10 million. And if you scan it, no, I wish that's something we should do. So we built, a really great framework that probably has the biggest applicability to maybe your audience, which is something we did with Dr. Les Parrott. He's written over 50 books. Number one New York Times bestselling author, and he's worked with a hundred of the best marriage experts in the nation. And so we built this really cool thing called Marriage Breakthrough, and we actually distribute it to churches, then they offer it to the people that are parts of their congregation, but it's open to everyone. So if you wanna put that in, there's a big QR code there. And on that QR code, all someone has to do is point their phone at it. And all we use the QR code to do is to make the phone when they, when you point your camera, when you do that, it makes your phone open up your texting app, and then it types in the keyword for you. So it just gets rid of all that friction. And then just simply tap send. And when you tap send, it goes into our mobile intelligence technology and it'll send you a text right back. In this case it's wrapped in the brand of Capital Church. And then it'll give you the opportunity to say, Hey, would you like to have this brought to your phone? And then just simply type in the word yes. So the word yes is important in two levels because that gives regulatory TCPA approval for this technology to now nurture to that person. But most importantly, we call it permission based engagement. I just raised my hand and said, yes, I would like this content from this great expert to be drip to me. It's about 58 minutes, two to four minutes per episode, 21 episodes. So well done. The response has been phenomenal. And you can tap the share button at the bottom, share it with the spouse. But yeah, I think that'd be a great way for your listeners to be able to see how simple and friction this is. This also has, AI built into it so they can actually see what that looks like below. It's really cool to be able to ask questions that Dr. Les Parrott would answer them.

Matt Willis: 1:10:20

That's incredible. Thank you for that. What are you shooting for now as it pertains to, the organization? Do you have a growth target? You're trying to reach X million dollars or reach x in a number of industries? What is your, longest term goal as it pertains to the business?

Michael Boerner: 1:10:39

Yeah, well our 10 year goal would be a billion journeys started. And so being able to put people on a billion journeys that they begin,'cause each of the journeys we make really are bringing value to someone's life. So that's probably one of the biggest goals. In terms of financial goals, we'd like to see, a hundred million plus in revenue within the next five years. We believe we have a very specific method of being able to get there or maybe exceed that. By being able to put this new breakthrough into existing channels that already have tens of millions of users. So in much the same way that you had, the established behavior, people renting movies at Blockbuster, well, you've already budgeted for that. You're already in the habit of that. You already have mass consumer behavior pointed that way. If you can bring something in that truly makes it better, cheaper, faster than you have a potential opportunity to really be a unicorn

Matt Willis: 1:11:34

that's incredible. So for anyone listening who might be interested in what libraries are available or inquiring about if a StoryPath Library would work in your field, in your industry, at your company, you can go to StoryPath.us and submit a contact form. Again, that is StoryPath.us, Michael Boerner. Thank you. It has been just such a blessing, having the opportunity to connect with you.

Michael Boerner: 1:12:05

Matt, thank you and thank you for the way that you draw stories out of people to bring value to other people's lives. So respect what you're doing and the many things you're involved with. So appreciate you.